Dr. Jeff Spencer, Ultimate Goal Setting to Win Big | Human Behavior | YAPClassic

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Hello, Yap Fam.

We've got another fantastic Yap Classic episode about to come your way. Do you set goals and struggle to achieve them? Would you like to hear more about how big names like Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, and Richard Branson achieve their goals? Well, lucky for you, I had an epic conversation about this back in episode 179 with Dr.
Jeff Spencer, one of the world's leading experts on elite performance. Jeff is a former Olympic cyclist and a life coach whose nickname is the Corner Man because he's well known for working with famous athletes, leaders, and CEOs to level up their performance.
Jeff likes to say that success is not just about talent. It is both a path and a process, and there are patterns and steps that all successful people take.
In this episode, Jeff and I talk about his framework, the champion's blueprint, and how you can learn to hyper-focus on your goals and get better at identifying your blind spots, and how elite preparation can help you win before you even start. So pull up a chair, hop on that treadmill, or just kick back and get ready to unlock your inner champion with Dr.
Jeff Spencer. Hey, Jeff, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
Well, thank you. What a pleasure to be here.
I am so excited for this conversation. You are a former Olympian, and over the course of the last 40 years, you have coached, mentored, and been the corner man to some of the world's highest achievers in business, sports, and athletics.
You've coached many of the former guests that I've had on the show, like Dave Asprey, Chris Voss, Jim Quick, just to name a few. And I do want to get into the tools and the tricks of the trade that you use to help winners get to the top and stay on top.
But before we do that, I did want to learn more about your personal journey. So let's go back to when you were seven years old.
You had a natural talent for riding a bike and you knew you were going to be an Olympian. And by age 11, you made a deal with yourself that you would work for the next 10 years to accomplish the goal of being an Olympic cyclist.
You ended up achieving your goal at age 21 when you competed in the 1972 Olympics, but it was totally against all the odds because you grew up pretty poor and most Olympic athletes have financial support to fund their dreams. So take us back to your teenage years.
What were you like? How did you stay on track with your lofty goal? And what inspiring stories can you share about accomplishing your Olympic goals? Well, first and foremost, I got the self-start gene. I don't need any motivation whatsoever.
I just get up and I make things happen. And I show up every day and I faithfully execute the one or two things that have to go right to move me forward.
And that's the way that I've always done it. And it's always served me really well.
So that would be, you know, first and foremost. You know, the other side of this as well is that, you know, I had three amazing angels in my life that made up for the lack of mentorship that I got at home because my father was virtually a non-entity, as was my mother.
They certainly didn't get in my way, but they were not there to support me. So I was really lucky.
I had an amazing cycling coach that actually chose me to be able to train with his group of Olympic champions and world champions. And I was like 11, and they were like in their mid to late 20s.
I mean, they were the top of the pile. And he said, you know, winning is a learned skill, and I want to teach you that skill.
And I want you to be around the conversation you need to listen to now so you know exactly what it's like. And if you have it within you to be able to become this, then our conversation will awaken something that's already within you to be able to make that happen, you know, which it did, you know, 10 years later.
I just had amazing mentorship, and I had people say the right thing at the right time to naturally harness my abilities to be able to manifest that first and foremost goal of mine.

That's super cool.

Why do you think they saw so much potential in you?

I mean, you were just 11 years old.

Did you have great natural ability?

Was it just your mindset?

Why did they take a liking to you, you think?

I think it was everything, actually, because I was a self-starter.

I'd show up on time.

I didn't need to be told anything. I would always show up well-prepared.
I would work really hard. I would ask really good questions.
I was always respectful of the opportunities in front of me. And also, I did have the physical ability to do this.
There has to be a blend of mentality, being able to stand in front of leadership, to be able to take constructive criticism and advice, to be a student of the discipline, all of those things I naturally had. And that endeared them to me to be able to share with me what the secrets that they used to become the standout performers that they were.
And I deeply appreciate their acknowledgement of that within me. Yeah.
So something that I want to touch on is the fact that you grew up pretty poor. And that must have been difficult when you were trying to accomplish this goal, because I could imagine that it costs money to fly places, it costs money to stay at hotels if you're competing.
So talk to us about how you kind of scrapped through, even though you didn't have the financial means. Well, I never saw that as a limitation.
I actually saw that as an opportunity and a strength because I saw the other people put way too much confidence in their equipment, staying in the best hotels. You don't need a fourth season to become an Olympian.
You can sleep anywhere. You just have to decide you're going to show up and get the job done.
So I actually felt that I had a huge advantage in not having the financial means to do what other people did. I was able to find a way forward.
And because of my natural verve and my natural enthusiasm, people were really willing to be able to support me in ways that I couldn't support myself. Yeah.
So I read that you actually had two mentors when you were growing up. So the first one was your cycling mentor, and he helped you become an Olympian.
And you also had a second mentor, which was sort of like a Renaissance man that you met when you were 18. So tell us about the later mentor that you met who was more of a Renaissance man and what he taught you.
Well, I met him through a very interesting series of coincidences. Ha ha.
I think it was very deliberate and it was Providence actually. And he chose me.
I was an athlete. First and foremost, I had Olympic ambitions.
I was well on my way to becoming an Olympian. And he chose me to be his apprentice because he developed a whole new type of art glass sculptor, but he hadn't found anybody that he felt that could be trusted with supporting him and creating his masterpieces.
But he chose me, and it wasn't because of my artistic ability, but I did have a lot of artistic ability because my father and my mother were both extraordinarily creative. But the most important thing that that mentor showed me, he was 76 and I was 18 at the time, so it's a very unlikely pairing.
But during our lunches and during our breaks, what he would do, he would read poetry to me. He would read the great philosophers.
He would share with me classical music. He said, I need to fill you up on these other aspects of life.

And he was correct because I had the ability to be able to absorb that. And because he brought the heart and soul to my athletic prowess, I now had these two other assets that just made me a better performer in every way possible.

So that was the incredible brilliance and opportunity that he brought to me, the finer points in life that I certainly did not have access to otherwise. Yeah.
Well, that's super inspiring. So today, you are one of the most prominent mentors in the world.
So you've coached greats like Tiger Woods, Richard Branson, and you've been lovingly dubbed the Corner Man. So I'd love to understand how you got that name and tell us a bit about the work that you do with your clients.
Well, I didn't actually choose that word. The word chose me through what other people said about me.
And the genesis of that is the Rocky movie. And Rocky movie.
And, you know, Rocky was someone that had talent, had ambition, had capacity to be able to become the perennial champion of the world, but he couldn't take himself there. And there's all sorts of different advisors.
You have coaches, like when they work with YouTube, Bono had his voice coach, but the voice coach didn't know about the rest of his life. So it was like, well, I hope the rest of your life doesn't get in the way of my voice coaching because I know I can do my part well, but I don't know about the rest of it.
And so it's very similar also with mentors. You can have like a life mentor, you can have a business mentor, but they don't know about a certain percentage of your life.
And to me, what Rocky had was the old guy Mickey in his corner that had seen everything, and it helped people in many different areas become their own champions. And that's what I and why people call me the corner man, because of my experience, my age, where I've been, what I've accomplished.
There's nothing that I have not seen in life, and there's nothing that I haven't participated in or guided people through at the highest level of performance. And so therefore, I have a basic competency in virtually everything.
So I can meet people exactly where they are. And because of that totality, I can select what has to go right when to be able to get the most progress with the least of time and effort and expense to move as quickly as possible towards any and every ambition that a person has.
And that's why they call me the corner man, because it's the rarest of all advisory species. I love that.
I love that nickname. And so you were really big at coaching sports people, I think, at first.
And then you moved into business. I guess my question is, what is the crossover between what you learned as an Olympian and business, which is what you focus on a lot now? Well, I mean, you have to be your own champion of both of those.
In becoming your own champion, it's a presence of being. It's not a technical difference.
So, whether it's locker room or board room, there are technical differences, but yet the us, the champion that needs to show up and make really good decisions consistently to make sure that we get ourselves into the winner's circle, that remains consistent. So I don't see that there's any distinction whatsoever.
Like, for example, I don't know what pencil sharpener to use, but we can find an expert to tell us that. But I can tell you about you, the leader of your own life, CEO of You, Inc., what it is that you need to do and how you need to show up to be able to manifest the things that have to go right for you to be able to evolve into and demonstrate and manifest your talents and create the legacy that you're capable of creating.
Yeah. So one of the questions that I have for you is, do you look for certain qualities in your clients? Like you were just mentioning how you were a self-starter since you were young.
I am the same way. You know, there's different personality types.
There's people that need like accountability and there's people who can self-start. So are there specific qualities that you look for in the people that you mentor? 100%.
You have to be coachable. you have to show up on time.
That has to be your natural set point. You need to be able to do things that are unconventional.
You have to learn to transcend your fear and the beliefs that you have that are no longer serving you well. You have to be a really great teammate.
You have to be fearless about investing in yourself and your bigger future.

And you have to have a certain amount of innate talent as well.

And you have to be able to hold reality as preeminent rather than trying to tell yourself

the stories that you want to hear.

You need to be able to look at what reality really is.

And with all of those elements that I just described to you there, if a person has those, then it's only a matter of time before they manifest whatever the goals that they have for themselves. Yeah, I totally agree.
So I want to switch gears a bit. I read that your dad was a genius that died homeless on the streets of New York City.
And the last time you ever saw him was when you were 13 years old. So you guys obviously had a totally different type of life and made different decisions and choices.
So talk to us about your father and what example that he, like, what did you learn from his story and how did you then apply that in your life? Well, I mean, it's always a tragedy when you have a genius that can't manifest their genius and lives the life of desperation and dies really being a statistic and an example of what you should never be and what you should never emulate. I mean, that's tragic in and of itself and certainly a great loss to me as well.
But the real take home from this is that he was missing two things. Number one, he did not have a roadmap that showed him where he was and what that meant and what to do to be able to move forward towards next.
And if we don't have that roadmap and we don't have the second part of this, the sound council that can help us interpret the reality of what it is that we're facing and considering, because a lot of the things that believe to be true aren't and we can't make them take us to where we want to get to if by design they can't do that inherently anyhow. So therefore, two things.
There has to be sound counsel in your life that can help shortcut your learning curve to eliminate the risk of succumbing to preventable problems, but also having a state of readiness to recognize and seize opportunities that could exponentially catapult us towards our bigger future. And then there also, again, there needs to be a roadmap that can identify where we are in process so that we don't misinterpret things as being something that they're not.
So, for example, in any highly aspirational goal, there's always a segment in the pursuit

of that goal I call the daily grind.

It's going to be hard.

It's going to be really hard.

You may actually find yourself wanting to quit, and you may actually, unfortunately,

talk yourself into it one step before you have your breakthrough.

But if we think that there's not supposed to be hard because it means that there's something wrong with us, that we couldn't make right decisions, or we chose it on the other side, that's complete mythology. But we wouldn't know that unless we had someone that really knew what the process was because our human mindset, those things that naturally occur to us to be true, it is not always our best friend.
because it does oftentimes talk us into doing things based upon what we presume it to be when it's actually not that discredits us that actually talks ourselves out of performing and playing the game that we're capable of. It was just in those two things.
Yeah. I love this.
This is such a great transition into your champion's blueprint. So I want to read a quote that really parlays well into what you just said.
So you've said in the past that success doesn't come from will, talent, or tactics. The winners know something that everyone else doesn't.
They've discovered that success is both a path and a process. So I thought this would be a great place to start.
Why is success both a path and a process? Well, it's actually a to learn behavior. And all of the prolific achievers of history have always taught us what to do when, if we're a good observer of what that is.
And many times, what they're suggesting is contrarian to pop culture. So for example, in pop culture, it's like, well, just get started, fail fast.
Well, I'm not so sure you want to do that. I think there needs to be a basis of readiness that's appropriate that reduces the risk of a premature stall.
Because, I mean, if you fail too fast too early, you may think you're not capable of doing it. It's just that you were too quick to make a judgment on something that wasn't true.
So, I really feel like there's so much mythology that surrounds the conversation of really how is it that we get from concept of greatness and manifestation to the actual three-dimensional manifestation of what's actually possible. And so, the champion's golden rule is do the homework and the test is easy, meaning that first you prepare and then you perform.
A lot of people think most people are dismal about their preparation. They start way too fast, way too unprepared.
That sets themselves up for unnecessary failure or lack of confidence in self. So I feel first and foremost, we have to recognize the fact that anytime we have an ambition of any sort, the first thing you always want to make sure that you do is prepare well.
Don't kid yourself. Make sure that the way that I see it, what history has revealed, is that there's five important steps that we should go through to make sure that we're properly prepared before we even start pursuing the goal, which would be the second half of that.
Yeah. It's funny.
I'm smiling because what you said reminded me of what up and coming podcasters often tell me. I'll talk to them and they'll say, oh, well, I don't study for interviews.
I just wing it. And I'm always thinking like, how do you think that that's going to go? Like, you're obviously not going to be successful if you don't prepare.
Yeah. I'm just like, Well, no wonder you have 10 downloads.
You know, it's, again, that's part of the mythology of this. I mean, there's so much mythology that surround our decision-making in terms of achievement.
I mean, I think it's one of the most important disservices ever to listen to some of the advice out there because it can't possibly take you from where you are to where you want to get to. Just don't see it.
Yeah, totally. Okay, so you, like I mentioned, you have this famous framework.
It's called Champion's Blueprint. It has many steps, so we're not going to be able to cover all the steps in detail, but I am going to highlight some of my key takeaways, some of your key principles.
And it's broken down into two parts, which you sort of alluded to, preparation and performance. You talked about the golden rule.
First you prepare, then you perform.

Is there anything you want to mention at a high level before we talk about your takeaways in

terms of performance versus, sorry, in terms of preparation versus performance?

No, I mean, first off, they both go hand in hand. They're both two separate halves that can join.
If you want to be a prolific achiever and consistently achieve your highest goals, you absolutely have to follow that rule. Because if you cannot follow that rule, then just prepare yourself to take 10 times as long to get to where you want to get to if you get there at all.
It just isn't going to happen. Yeah.
Okay. So in terms of the preparation section of your blueprint framework, the first step is to clarify goals that align with your body, mind, and soul.
So I thought this was super interesting and unique because I've never heard anyone bring in the soul and spirituality when it comes to goals. And I talk about goals all the time on the podcast.
So let's start there. Why do we need to make sure that our mind, body, and soul is aligned with our goal? When you have that alignment, then you have a unification self as you as an entity that has a level of belief and confidence that you absolutely must have to be able to be confident in pursuing the goals that are in front of you.
And if you do not have that alignment, you're always going to be second-guessing yourself. And if you're second-guessing yourself, you're going to be reluctant to make decisions promptly and accurately.
You're going to shy away from going all in when you need to go all in. You're not going to be conveying to other people a presence of being where they believe that you're worthy of following or supporting to manifest your bigger future.
None of that is going to happen because that is the byproduct of making sure that we have the most important goal of all time. It's not the smart goal.
It's not the big, hairy, audacious goal. It's do we have the right goal? And when we do have the right goal, and there's a very specific criteria that I use with

my clients that's very vigorous, that allows us to look at, number one, is this the right goal for

me at this time? Yes or no. If it's not, then you maybe don't want to pursue it because the timing

may not be correct. So I just cannot emphasize enough the importance of making sure that you

select the right goal. Because when you select the right goal and you have that unification of

mind, body, and soul, it gives you what I call the trademark word gocus. Kind of a funny word, but gocus means goal focus, meaning that you have the ability to focus on the things that must go right to move your goal ascension from where you are to where you want to get to.
There must be daily progress through that level of focus. But then you must also have a peripheral awareness of what's happening around you because you may be gifted with a better idea to adjust the trajectory of your goal to a bigger better that can be gifted to your consciousness.

But if you're too hyper-focused on the action steps, you may miss that. And also in the periphery, this is where blind sides start to form that could wipe us off the face of the earth or create an untimely stall that may end up in our inability to manifest the goal that we're in pursuit of.
So there has to be this continuous, unique blend of goal-focused to get stuff done with a simultaneous peripheral awareness of better options and risks that we should be avoiding. Yeah.
So you mentioned this very lightly, this concept of the right goal. So a lot of us have heard of these like smart goals, right? But you say you have a different framework for goals.
It's called the right goals. It actually stands for some things.
Can you break down what a right goal is? Yeah, well, a right goal is a goal that aligns the mind, body, and soul because it exposes itself to a variety of different questions that should be asked and answered in the affirmative if it's the right goal to pursue. There's all sorts of smart goals that you shouldn't be pursuing, actually.
So, the R in right stands for relevant. You really need to take the time to ask yourself, is this goal really relevant to me? And why is it relevant? Put the pen to the paper to be able to create a body of evidence as to why this is relevant, because the relevancy creates a certain level of personal commitment and insistence that you do achieve the goal if you have confirmed it to be relevant.
The next thing is indicators. The I and right is indicators.
There must be adequate indicators there that assure you that the goal, again, is worth pursuing. Indicators like, do I get enough notoriety coming back from this? Does this give me enough credibility? Does this provide the income that I need for me to be able to pursue this? So there's a number of indicators that we do need to name, that we do need to hold accountability for.
Because again, when we have vetted this through a purposeful process, then it allows us to have a different type of relationship to our goal. I think people have way too casual a relationship with their goal.
They're not in love with it. They're not going to fight for it like they really should.
The G in right stands for gravity. I mean, what is the emotional gravity and grit that the achievement of this goal avails you of? What are you going to say about yourself once you've achieved this goal? Are you going to have a greater trust in your ability to be a manifester of what your talents are and your ability to contribute to humanity? Well, if it brings that level of gravity and it gives you that type of grit, well, I certainly think that it's a goal worth pursuing.
The H in right stands for humanity. You know, I think personally that our goals need to have a big slice of humanity attached to it.
Like, how is this actually impacting people, places, and things on this planet like right now. Because if that isn't answered in the affirmative, then we just kind of don't have that level of commitment that's necessary to stay in the game and keep pushing when the goal gets tough.
And every goal is going to get tough. And there have to be certain things that are there that allow us to stay in the game to move beyond that.
And that's why the idea of grit is extremely important. The H is, and humanity, why humanity is really important.
And then the T in right is time. Is this the right time to be pursuing the goal? Yes or no? Do you actually have the time to pursue the goal? Yes or no? Does the time from where you are to goal completion suit your sensibility? Yes or no.
And if you've deliberately taken the time to scrutinize the goal that you're proposing to pursue through that line of questioning, and you've answered this in the affirmative, then you have a level of commitment within self that will absolutely 100% guarantee that you will find yourself in that winner circle. Yeah.
I really like that framework because I feel like it really makes sure that you stay motivated. You kind of cross off anything that could deter you or cause you to quit or something midway.
So I think that is a great framework to follow. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsor.
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Working capital loans provided by Mercury Lending, LLC. So let's talk about the need to be super clear with our goals, because a lot of people have very wishy-washy goals.
They're vague. They're more like dreams.
So maybe you can walk us through examples of what a good goal is versus one that's not so clear. Well, I think the goal clarity goes back going through the right goal criteria.
Because if you're answering in the affirmative, all of those, because you're taking the time to really answer the questions as they're intentionally provocative to hold you accountable for being able to stand behind what you're proposing to do. And as I said earlier, I think a lot of people are way too casual.
They look at the goal as the giver of something to me later, like the home, the house, the security, or whatever. But it has to be more than that to be able to stay in the game and to be able to stay in belief and to stay in commitment when the inevitable challenges always surface within a goal.
And if you do not have that, then you cannot have and do not have the conviction necessary to do what has to go right in critical moments where you may be doubting yourself or even questioning whether you should continue to pursue the goal itself. Yeah.
And previously, Jeff, you were mentioning how you need to have peripheral vision. You need to be aware of your surroundings.
You need to be aware of the different risks that are going on. So talk to us about the importance of knowing the risks or potential blind spots associated with our goals.
Well, the blind spots are things that we cannot outrun, and every one of us has got them. I can only tell you that.
And that's why I feel like there's an important space to be held for some corner man type of accessibility to make sure that we're seeing everything that we need to see without the presumption that we know everything.

because that's a catastrophic perspective that unfortunately has taken a lot of people unfortunately out of the game that they could have won

had they had the insight to see what their liabilities and their risks are. And a point I want to make here is that no prolific achiever in any discipline does not look at it through the eyes of what can go right, what can go wrong, what are the probabilities.
And there's a certain category of person that feels, well, you know, if I

cast doubt on this, then I'm drawing doubt into reality, and therefore I'm shortcutting myself when I should not be thinking about anything that could be adversarial to me in this process. And I can tell you that is absolutely unadulterated garbage.
I don't know anybody that's a prolific achiever that does not always take a full and thorough inventory of what the probability of risks are so that they leverage themselves against success. They don't de-leverage themselves in favor of failure.
I've never seen that. Complete mythology.
Yeah. And it's interesting that you say that because, like you said, some people think that they can only think positive.
And if they go and think about the different ways that things could go wrong, they think that that's negative thinking. But that's really just preparing.
And it doesn't mean that you are a negative thinker. It just means that you're preparing ahead and you can be positive because you're thinking of the solutions ahead of time so that if you hit that obstacle in the moment, you'll know what to do.
Can you talk to us more about that, about what kind of mindset you need to have through all of this and how thinking of potential risk is not actually negative thinking? I would first, I would say, let's not use the word mindset because mindset makes it sound like there's a rigid set of things that if applied guarantee an outcome. That's not true.
That's like, oh, I'll just think good thoughts and somehow everything will backfill and manifest. That's not true.
It's all about actions and the things that are done. So I kind of look at this through the eyes of the champion's mind, meaning the champions have a mind, meaning that the mind is like a three-dimensional entity that has the capacity to look at, think, evaluate, collate, transmit, share, and store information in a very thoughtful way that represents reality.
And that's the way that all the prolific achievers do it. They look at the way that I advance things forward is not a way of thinking.
We're taking action on the evidence that we see in front of us, that history has informed us that if we execute this, then it will take us here. I think that's the most important thing.
We begin to forget that aspirational achievement, it's actually a verb. It's not a passive noun.
It's a presence of being. It's the actions that are taken.
Therefore, I just suggest that we take the time to really look at the relevance and the sources that we refer to to get our information about what it is that we should be doing. Because many times, what we think it is is not what it is at all, but it sounds good to our human mindset.
It's touchy-feely nice, but historically, it can't necessarily deliver on what we hope it to be. And that, again, why I feel it's really important that we have the right level of corner man influence as we're learning the process of achievement, which is actually it's a learned skill.
It's not something that we're born with. Yeah.
So as we're trying to determine all the different risks with our goals, what are the questions that we should ask ourselves or ask our mentors in order to find out what those risks could possibly be? Well, I think there's a set of things that we should be looking at. Number one, given an opportunity, you have to look at, well, how are you perceiving the opportunity? Are you looking at it based upon what you believe you stand to lose? Well, then if that's the way you're doing it, don't do it because that's not going to take you to where you want to get to.
There has to be a vision of what the outcome of the manifest goal will represent to not only us, the individual, but to our legacy and also what this will say and mean to other people viewing it and what the impact on humanity and the planet at large will have. I do feel that we need to look at that in advance to measure the probability of how that might be answered with our achieved goal.
I think that that's really important. The other thing I would say is that don't try to be perfect.
Perfect doesn't get you to where you want to get to because then you're obsessing and all the things that could go wrong, where it shouldn't be that. You should be looking at the one or two things that have to go right to keep things moving forward.
I mean, that's what the champions do. They prepare, what do I need to do right now that has to go right that everything else is dependent upon? So it becomes much simpler.
I think the idea of fear also is another side to this. I mean, people think, well, I have to be fear-free before I get started.
Well, no, you don't. I mean, generally, anybody that has high aspirations is going to have a certain level of fear.
Like, you know, when I work with you two, you know, before they go on stage, I mean, yeah, they all had butterflies. It's like, well, look, Bono, you don't need to have butterflies because you're Bono.
Well, he did have them. Okay, well, he just knew what to do with it.
It was a sign of biologic readiness. So, a lot of how we're interpreting our experience and my experience is that it's not done correctly.
So,, we should be observant of the fear, but recognize it's our friend. To be able to put in our highest level of physical output, there has to be a certain level of fear present.
Otherwise, we're going to be asleep at the wheel. But we should also realize that you can apply what has to go right despite your fear.
So again, that's another point of mythology that I think that is really important to be mindful of as well. Yeah.
So we're talking a lot about being prepared. And let's say we do all the things that you mentioned.
We have really clear goals. We take a look at the different risks and the blind spots, and we feel very prepared.
What are the ways that some people blow it in their big moment, in that moment of reality, where they should have done what they prepared for, but maybe they go with their gut instinct or something? Yeah, well, I think you said it right. They go with their gut.
They let their emotions take over. So they go back and they do what didn't work the previous 10 times, because they get afraid about executing what has to go right.
I see this all the time. As a matter of fact, I have a white paper that I did when people go to my website to opt in.
It's called How Not to Blow It Just Before You Win. It's a 27 page document that I put together because it's that important to me.
They start to change everything before they execute what has to go right. So again, I feel like this can be pruned back to the simplicity of, do you know exactly the one or two things that have to go right, like right now, for everything else to be able to move forward? And if you can name those two things and you know what those things are, then as you execute those, then the next things that need to be addressed will then reveal themselves.
So it's really much simpler than we make it to be. But when the fear takes over, we start to believe in what didn't work in the past, and it's certainly not going to work now.
But we have to actually prepare ourselves by preparing through simulation the readiness to be able to execute correctly when you have to go correct. It would be the same thing like in a podcast.
I mean, you just don't show up and turn the microphone on. I mean, there's a very deliberate readiness process that you go through that allows you to control the pacing and the outcome.
You're not leaving this blindly up to circumstances to deliver on the highest promise possible. I just really feel like your confidence is demonstrating to yourself that you can do it because you've rehearsed it.
And then you realize when I have to execute this in real time, I'm not going to deviate from what I know needs to go right. Yeah.
And I have to say, every time I deviate from my plan, I screw up too. Like it's normal.
You know what I mean? Like I did it a few times already on this podcast where I'm like, why didn't I just stick to what I wrote, right? But that's how it goes. And you live and you learn.
So let's talk about legacy. Legacy is really important.
And a lot of people think that legacy is something that happens after you die. And it's just like, however your life turned out, that's your legacy.
But you say that you should think about your legacy from the start. Talk to us about why that's important.
Whether we like it or not, every one of us is going to leave a legacy that will be available to everybody on this planet to look at and study for all of eternity. What we do with our time and what we do with our talents.
And there are no redos on that. Once it's over, it's over.
And I feel like we really need to think about this idea of immortality. I know that that doesn't occur to people, but once you get into your late 40s, you start thinking about stuff like this.
But there's something that transcends us that lives, and it will impact people. And that is what we did.
Because what we did, you can't go back and erase that. You can't modify it at a certain point.
And I really feel like at the end of the day, we should walk off the field for the final time saying, there's nothing more that I could have possibly done in this creation to make any further contribution because I had the courage to show up and do what I was called to do faithfully. And wherever that goes, I'm okay with that.
But I certainly didn't leave anything on the field. I gave it everything that I had.

And I feel that that's a really important statement that we all have to reconcile it at some point in our life, generally in the second or the end of the second half here.

And here's what I would say also, is that my greatest achievement is the adoption of

our daughter at the age of 10 from Columbia. We adopted a 10-year-old from Columbia at the age of 10.
I was 58. I was at the height of my career at that time.
And I was called to make the decision that I was going to raise our daughter. And our daughter, number one, she didn't speak English.
We didn't speak Spanish. We had no language.
She had no school. She had PTSD and ADHD from getting beaten up and worse for the first 10 years of her life.
It's your freaking nightmare. Every second of her life was your worst nightmare.
And I chose to raise my daughter at the height of my career. And it's like, I don't feel like I gave anything up.
People say, well, look what you gave up. No, I didn't give up anything.
Our job was to manifest our human potential, not just to save a life. And what I did give her and what I learned from this was more worth anything that I've ever previously done at all, because I learned that you can love anybody.
You don't need a special reason. You just show up and you do it.
It isn't a two-way street. Make it a one-way street.
You give without any reciprocation or reciprocal expectation whatsoever. I also learned to trust the process.
I'm basically fearless because when we adopted her, it took everything that we had to be able to provide for the extraordinary needs that she had to give her a chance to get herself back into the game of life. And I didn't save anything for my retirement for 10 years between 58 and 68 because my commitment was to raising our daughter and do whatever was necessary.
And I also realized that you always have enough energy to do anything on behalf of others, or if you're called into service, there's always going to be enough energy. You know, where the energy gets sparse is where we're doing everything in our own self-interest or we're in such fear of loss that we kind of worry our life and our energy away.
And the other thing that I will say is that if you think anything you say and do as relates to this topic of legacy, when we adopted our daughter, man, she'd never been hugged, never been loved. She used to wrap her legs around me and bury her head into my chest and I'd just hold her, you know? And it's like she hung on my every word.
So what I want to say to everybody is that if you think what you do and what you say and how you show up doesn't matter, adopt a kid. Because everything that you do in life does have some level of impact that calls people to something.
And when you take the high road and you're manifestly committed to that, where there is no negotiation on that, your life takes on an entirely different level of purpose and meaning. And the last thing I'll say about this is that you never withhold the possibility of a miracle because that's what it took us to be able to help our daughter get to a point to get beyond what she did not ask for in life that was imposed upon her by other people.
And so that's why legacy is important to me, because at the end of the day, we do have an immortality that will be there, that will say something of tremendous value to people. But please don't make it like my dad.
My dad was the genius that could have, but didn't, and he can't go back and redeem himself. His moniker, his tagline is, don't be like me.
It's tragic for me to have to say that, but we do make our own choices. If we can't do it for ourselves, let's just make sure that we do it for other people so other people at least have a template they can look at that's inspirational to them to be able to step into the unknown with confidence

and certainty, with a certain amount of reckless abandon to what we think that we probably need,

which you probably need to get rid of if you're going to live the greatest life possible. So

that's kind of what I would have to answer the legacy question with.

Beautiful response, and what a nice story. What is the name of your daughter? What's her name? Ken, K-I-N.
And how old is she now? She'll be 24 in October. And how's she doing now? I'm just curious.
What is she up to? Well, again, she's a miracle because I knew that when she graduated from college, she didn't speak any English. We didn't speak Spanish.
There was no language. I mean, think about that.
Come to America at 10 and you don't have any language and you don't have any school. What are you going to do with that? And so because she has a beautiful brain, you know, God put a beautiful brain inside of her.
And we saw that and we knew that our job was again, to manifest the potential, not to save a life that we did, you know, what we had to do so that she could live her life with the normal crap that all of us have to deal with day in and day out, but find your way beyond the stuff that you didn't ask for. And so we couldn't be more, you know, proud of her for what she has done, but have been gifted with the opportunity to play that role in her life.
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So let's move on to the last step in preparation, which is around resources. I think this is very important, often kind of neglected.
So what should we consider when we think about resources? And aside from the obvious stuff like money?

Well, resources are extraordinarily important and an inventory should be taken of the resources before you actively start pursuing your goal because an adequate resource inventory is directly tied to your level of confidence. And as you're confident and you trust in your preparation, then your anxiety drops.
And as your anxiety drops, you're going to be a much better performer. Your timing is going to be superior, which is what we need to be able to get our goal aspiration launched correctly to gain initial momentum, to gradually pick up the steam where we get into belief that we can actually do it, that transforms to knowing that we can do it, to being able to complete the goal itself.
When I look at the resources that we need, and it doesn't need to be enough for the entire project. It needs to be enough to get started with responsibly.
So we need, what do we need? Well, we need time and energy for sure. We need what? We need materials and supplies.
Absolutely. We need skills and knowledge.
Yep. We also need a team.
We got the right team. Yep.
Do we have a plan? Yep. I mean, do we have the financial resources to at least initially get this started? All of those have to be answered in the affirmative to, again, be in trust.
And when we're in trust, again, anxiety drops, confidence is up, and that's the way that you want to always actively start pursuing your goal. I have observed, though, that many people are extraordinarily deficient and lax in their attention to resources.
They feel like, well, if I don't get going now as quickly as possible, then it means I don't trust the universe to provide when it should. Therefore, the universe is going to take away from me that privilege.
It's not going to support me because I don't have enough faith in it. Or somebody's going to jump in line, so I got to get going now because I'm afraid that I'll get pushed to the back of the line.
I mean, none of that is true. That's all mythology.
But yet, that's the way the human mindset thinks about this type of stuff because it's basically a catastrophizer. And that's why when we do our homework, again, do the homework first, then the test is easy, why we always want to do that so that we can check off and trust that we have adequate resources to get started, something most people don't do.
Yeah. And I feel like most people, especially young people, they concentrate more on getting investment and money rather than focusing on building their skills and learning.
I've noticed this a lot with people around my age and younger. So do you want to talk about the importance of getting skills before you start your task? I do.
I do. It's like I've always said that you can never have enough skills and you also need a lot of space to be able to create in.
And kind of my suggestion to people is that you're only as strong as your toolkit is of skills to be able to be applied. And you must have a minimum amount of skills that should be vetted accurately before you start pursuing your goal.
You must also have adequate space and flexibility to be able to absorb some of the unanticipated consequences that always shows up. Like it always takes us twice as long and maybe costs twice as much as you think that it's going to.
And I'm just going to suggest that you don't try to have a budget where everything has to go perfectly for things to go right. I don't like that.
I like the idea of some elbow room for the unanticipated things that may be arising. And as long as we kind of hold that sacred, and I will also say that there are points in our life where things are moving right along that don't require us.
I mean, I guess there's always the opportunity to jump in and screw it up. There's no shortage of that.
But when things are going too good, sometimes I feel that's where you want to ride the wave and don't try to tinker with things or push things too fast. But when you're in that situation, kind of clean things up as much as possible.
Clean out your garage, throw away stuff, create space for better stuff to land because it certainly will. And if you have opportunities that want to find their way into your life, but there's no place to land because your life is too cluttered with junk, then it's going to move on.
And so I'm just suggesting that you continually kind of weed the garden. You prune all the stuff that's extraneous to your life that you don't need so that there's space to land and that you always be thinking about what is the skill that I need next for this forever changing world that will be capitalized on by those that have the readiness that the others don't.
I love this conversation. We're getting so many good tips around how we can prepare for our goals.
But I want to talk about what happens when we actually start taking action. You've got phases like the honeymoon phase and the daily grind phase, which you mentioned earlier.
Can you talk to us about the different stages of performance and what we need to know? Yes. I feel that we need to have a clear understanding of what the different stages of progress that we will be going through from starting to pursue our goal to the achievement of our goal.
The very first phase of this is what I call start. And when we get to a point where we have the preparation readiness and we know it because it's been vetted, it's extremely important that you have a thoroughly vetted and rehearsed starting procedure to make sure that you get out of the gate cleanly and you hit an early objective that confirms that goal progress is now up and running and underway.
Like, let's say you take a horse in the Kentucky Derby that's favored to win. Well, if it trips out of the gate because it hasn't practiced its starting procedure, then the horse that should have won gets last.
And it's exactly the same thing for us. So please make sure that you have a well-organized and rehearsed starting process that ends in a certain achievement and objective that demonstrates that goal pursuit now is actually formally up and underway.
Can you give a concrete example of that just to be super clear? Yeah. I absolutely can.
So let's say that the initiative of a goal launch would be to have our first five-figure month, $10,000, right? So that's the target. I mean, that's not the goal, but that's the first target because we know that if we had $10,000 a month, this is for real.
It's like we're no longer talking about this. This is for real.
And why having that target and declaring that target in advance is important is because when you hit it, it confirms that the preparation was correct. It also confirms that the leadership that created the preparation processes were correct and should be followed.
It also gives the team confidence that we can actually do this. You always want to start off on a positive when that doesn't need to be big that confirms that we're actually in process and moving forward.
So once we've hit that liftoff point, then we move into what I call the honeymoon phase. And the honeymoon phase is where, okay, now we hit this liftoff.
We have this confirmation. We're now at $10,000 a month.
This means it's going to be smooth sailing to the winner's circle. Well, hold on a second.
It doesn't really mean that. It means that we've just gotten out of the gate smoothly.
And so the honeymoon phase is that when everybody's hyper excited, then they go out and they become very sloppy and relaxed about scheduling. They don't look at their policies.
They may start overspending certain things. You see this in startups all the time where they're not even making any money and then they're going out and spending all this raised money on stuff that doesn't matter because they already think that they're in the winner's circle.
So, you know, it's a complete abuse of the honeymoon, but we know that when we're in a honeymoon, there's always the opportunity for reckless choices that can really hurt us. And that's why I suggest that you just be mindful that at some point, the honeymoon is going to wear off because they all do.
And when the honeymoon wears off and you feel like there's a loss in momentum or enthusiasm, that doesn't mean that it's the wrong plan or you can't do it. That's supposed to happen.
It means you're now living in reality. It's actually something that you actually want to see because that level of enthusiasm cannot cure you forever.
It's not possible. So we need to be aware of that because we're not aware that the honeymoon is supposed to wear off when the motivation drops and we all think, oh, bad plan, bad management.
Maybe I should get out while I have at least some resources left. Really bad idea.
Misinterpretation of the circumstances completely. What I will say also is that the next phase of this, once we get beyond the honeymoon phase and we have our reality check where we reconcile things, we get things back on track, then we may think, well, okay, now we've made this huge correction.
Now I know we can do it. Well, you kind of don't because the next thing coming is going to be the daily grind.
And this is where your plan is now facing reality for the very first time. Prior to that, it's been a conjecture, a hypothesis, or a presumption, but it's never been fully tested.
And we know that whatever the weaknesses are in our preparation will surface during the honeymoon phase. That's what it's for.
It's supposed to reveal to us what we don't know that we need to know so that we can get it. It's not a sign that we were behind or it was a bad choice, even though people will oftentimes misinterpret it as that and quit prematurely.
It's something that we have to anticipate showing up. So for example, I would say, okay, everybody, now that we're through the honeymoon phase, I just want to say that the daily grind is now in front of us and just know that there will be difficult moments that show up.
It's supposed to be hard. This is going to reveal to us what we need to learn.
This is our friend. I'm glad it's here.
It helps us get prepared in a way that we cannot lose. But let's not misinterpret this as something that we did wrong or incorrectly or we can't do it.
You can see how easily people misinterpret situations unless they're informed that this is going to happen. So here's the promise.
In the daily grind phase, if you're looking at the right metrics and you've got the right plan and you got the metrics to confirm that you're making progress, you're going to get up one day and you're going to get up and believe that you can do it. Like, you know what? I really now believe I can do it.
If he can do it, then I can do it. There's no difference.
But then we need to go from believing we can do it to knowing we can do it. It's different.
So when I was working with Dave Asbury at Bulletproof, helping him build Bulletproof, I said, look, Dave, we both believe that Bulletproof can be really big, but we need to now know that we can do it. What do we need to do to go from believing to knowing? He said, well, we need more inventory and we need more people at the higher levels in the marketing department.
He said, well, what is it going to take to do that? He said, probably a couple million dollars. He said, you know all the guys in Silicon Valley, you go up there and raise that, let's get this done.
So he did it, got it done. And at that point, Dave and I both knew that Bulletproof is going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which it proved itself to be.
And we did kind of declare what it is that we needed to get to take us from belief to knowing. That's a really essential step here.
And then please, everybody, listen up. Then there's the final step that puts us into the winner's circle.
Once you know you can do it, I can only say that there's always time to screw it up. And this is how people screw it up.
Until you get to the winner's circle, you're not there yet. And if you trip before you get there, don't cross the line, then you don't win.
So when you see that it's possible and probable that you're going to be able to achieve your goal. Don't try to speed up to try to get to the finish line faster to enjoy the chocolate cake and the champagne waiting at the finish line because it's never over until it's over.
And I've seen people trip at the last second and screw things up never to eventually get past the finish line. Please do not do that.
Or don't try to control things so much thinking that you're being safe.

Because sometimes when you slow things down way too much, you start to daydream. You think the safety is in the speed.
It's not. If you're going too slow and you start to daydream, then you're at equal hazard as if you're going way too fast.
So don't change your pace. Keep your pace.
Be vigilant. Keep your eye on the ball.
Keep executing what has to go right until you're way beyond the finish line. And once you're beyond the finish line, then you can celebrate in victory circle.
So as long as we're aware that there are these five different steps and stages that we go through from active pursuit of goal to arrival in the winner's circle, and we can name where we are and we know what that means, then that's our safety net for sticking together and working together as a well-organized, coherent team that can get things done most efficiently and get us into the winner's circle with at least time and effort and expense. This is great.
I have a question for you. Do you think that every goal is possible, Or do you think that there are some signs that should be like abort mission, you should stop, you should quit? Or do you feel like anything is possible with the right preparation and plan? Well, I think, again, if we look at plans and preparation, that's not really reality.
What it is, it's our best estimate about what we presume reality to be and what we presume the path to get from where we are to where we want to get to is. It's not reality.
Reality is when our plan meets real time. And at that point, then we can make the adjustments necessary to carry momentum forward.
So I think we have to be really mindful about that, that plans by their inherent nature are designed to change, and goals that we have are meant to be modified based upon the reality of the opportunities that present themselves in process.

But the human mindset that I said, that human way of thinking that doesn't serve us well,

it will make us think, well, if you've declared a goal, you have to keep your word by maintaining the original goal as stated. Otherwise, you're going back on your word.
And that's not true at all, never. Because all the greatest goals always happen like by accident, or there are a bit of a deviation that comes off something that we presume to be true, but now we found out that it was slightly different.
But we had the courage to recognize that we were being gifted with a different direction that could take us to a bigger, better, faster that we could not have conceived of in advance. So that's how I would answer that question.
And I do feel that if you find yourself being in blind faith, doing something with the hope that it will take you to the finish line, don't do it. Because unless there's a body of evidence that confirms to you the probability of moving forward will manifest the completion of the next step, then I would suggest that you don't do it.
Because I feel far too often people believe that I'm a person of my word, therefore I have to stick rigidly to something that I declared. And if I don't do that, then my word can't be trusted.
That is absolutely not true because the plan and what you proposed to be true was an estimate based on a presumed reality. And if the presumed reality is like, don't do this like now, then I would suggest that you heed that.
And I do feel that in our lifespan development, there is a natural period of our life where we are big dreamers. But my hope is that we don't invest too much in a dream that has too many reasons that are informing us.
It's either not the right time to pursue it, or we're not properly prepared, or maybe there's not the right fit because we don't have the assets actually to do this. So I'm a little bit kind of cautious on all of these absolutes.
I feel that they need to be tempered with an interpretation of the reality as it currently exists at the moment of time while you're making decisions. That was exactly what I hoped you were going to kind of go off on because I feel like people are so attached to that one outcome.
I want to be a famous NBA player. And so few people achieve that goal, but really maybe they just want to be somebody who inspires other people of their ethnicity or something.
And it's really not about playing basketball. It's the impact that they're making on the world.
Yeah. And I have something to say to that, if I may, is that my definition of a champion is a manifest or a gifts.
If you're manifesting your gifts, then you're a freaking champion, in, you know, here's what I do know is that there's only one of us in all of creation.

There's never going to be another you.

I mean, think about that.

There's seven and a half billion people on this planet right now, and there's only one

of you.

And what that means is that each and every one of us has a unique capacity to influence

humanity in a way that nobody else can do it.

You know, the question is that, you know, can we live within that and can be okay with that? Because here's the reality. Some people are meant to have the aspiration of influencing a billion people.
Yeah, there are some people that are not meant to do that. They can't even think about that.
They want to look through a microscope, an electron microscope, and they want to influence a nano. They can't think in terms of billions.
Does that make it any less significant? No, it does not, because everything that happens is the product of every other thing that's happening in the world simultaneously. So I think we're the problem because we assign the value to what we believe to be true that I don't think represents what it really is.
Like, you know, for example, a teammate may enable the team star to get the MVP, but was the MVP more valuable than the person that gave the MVP what they needed to do their job correctly. You can't say that that's true.
It's not. Every one of us, I think that we should look at team as like a linkage rather than a hub with spokes.
It's a linkage where each of the links in the chain, someone that possesses that spot and their unique contribution contributes to the integrity of the whole, therefore the output capacity of the team is the sum total of all the parts, which you can't really separate one being more important than the other because in a certain sense, it's really not. And I feel that far too often the rule is people dramatically discount the value of what they do because they're comparing themselves against everybody else's yardstick.
And I don't think that we should be doing that. There's only one of us.
And if we take ownership of what we're best at, we're passionate about what we're doing and we're giving tremendous value to humanity. We're honoring our gifts.
We're showing other people what's possible. We're saying thank you to those people that helped us while we're creating those things that are unique to us.
To me, man, to me, that's the champion. The champion is not the hyper achiever that mows everybody down in the process to get what he wants.
That's a self-serving narcissist, in my opinion. So there's this whole other definition that I think that we need to encourage each other to pursue, which is our uniqueness and our unique gifts.
That is super inspiring, Dr. Spencer.
This whole conversation has been amazing. So I'm going to wrap the interview up with a couple questions that I ask all my guests, and then we do something fun at the end of the year with them.
So the first one is, what is one actionable thing that my young and profiter's can do today to be more profiting tomorrow? I would say, what is the skill that you need to build that you don't have, but you need? Okay. And what is your secret to profiting in life? I can be absolutely explicitly clear on this.
Number one, the reason why I made an Olympic team, I showed my art in the best galleries in New York City, why I've worked with some of the greatest, prolific achievers of our time, is that I was fearless in showing up and answering the call when me, Jeff, gets the insight and I get the calling to show up and do something. I'm fearless about doing that.
And so I'm not particularly ambitious about

creating something to grandstand and showcase myself because I don't care about that. I do,

though, care deeply about being able to answer the call that if I have been called into service to do

anything like adopting my daughter, I will show up faithfully and fearlessly to execute that to

the nth degree.

Amazing. Well, where can everybody learn more about you and what you do?

Well, probably the best place is T.me slash Champions Experience. You know, that's my,

you know, telegram. And that's where it kind of posts what I'm doing and what I'm up to.

That would be by far the best place to go to see where I am and what I'm up to next. Awesome.
We're going to stick

that link in the show notes. Thank you so much, Dr.
Spencer. It was a pleasure.
Well, I can't say

enough for the opportunity. Be well.
Remember everybody, there's always room at the top for