379 ENCORE Apolo Ohno: When Your Last Closing Ceremony Is Over, What Does Life After The Olympics Look Like?

In just about a month, on the 26th of July, 10 thousand athletes from all over the world will gather in Paris for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics.  Being an Olympian has a way of consuming a person’s image. Olympians dedicate their body and their mind to the perfect backstroke, or the perfect arrow release, or this year – even the perfect breakdancing routine.  So when an Olympic athlete hangs up the towel… who are they? How do you leave behind the biggest S Curve of your life? Although he’s better known for the Winter Olympics, Apolo Ohno has some ideas. The most decorated American in the Olympics’ chillier half, Apolo is known the world over for his gold-medal talent at speed skating. I wanted to bring back my conversation with Apolo, in light of the Olympic Games on our doorstep, but also as a reminder this summer that although we should honor our past, we are never tied to it when it comes to trailblazing our future. What did retirement look like – what did slowing down look like – for the man who built his career around being the fastest athlete on the ice?  

How many times have you looked back across your whole life, looked at all those S Curves you’ve taken on and thought – wow. “I guess things do come together in the end,” even though, in the moment, those S Curves seemed so treacherous, and we felt so lost and afraid climbing them. There’s an element of faith in that statement, sure, but just as strongly, there’s an undercurrent of grit, determination, stick-to-it-ness. We appreciate the journey a lot more if we also can appreciate having felt lost and afraid – and then pushing through it. Our guest today has had an unusual trajectory, to say the least. Lisa Shalett started her career in 1990s Tokyo, producing those classic game shows – then she zig-zagged to the world of equities at Goldman Sachs, – zagging again to its compliance division – and then in charge of the bank’s entire brand during a PR disaster. And today, she’s the co-founder of Extraordinary Women On Boards, a community dedicated to supporting high-achieving women. So what can we learn from Lisa’s journey?  

Is there a particular conversation you’ve had with someone, that keeps resurfacing as you grow and get older? In difficult moments, you find yourself traveling back to that day at the cafe or whatever it was, sitting down for a conversation you didn’t know would shape you as much as it has.  For me, it’s my talk with Brené Brown, all the way back in 2019.  In case new listeners need an introduction, she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair as a research professor at the University of Houston. You might know her best as the writer of Daring Greatly, or The Gifts Of Imperfection, or as the speaker for one of the most popular TED Talks ever. When we spoke, she had just released her Netflix special, The Call To Courage, and it was a conversation that reminds me even today to appreciate the meaning that emerges from the human condition. I want to bring back that conversation today in light of her most recent book, Atlas Of The Heart – all about the thousand different ways our body generates emotion. Like Emma McAdam says, stop trying to feel better, and get better at feeling – that’s something I’m still working on today. Brené’s work on the link between emotion and the meaning we make for ourselves is just as important today as it was in 2019.   

It’s not a pretty truth of life, but we all argue with family, eventually. In fact, those arguments can be some of the most explosive moments of our lives. But why? Is it just that the folks closest to us know how to push our buttons? If so, how can we overcome that to grow? And grow alongside our family? Our guest today has a couple ideas. Cathy Carroll is the president and founder of Legacy Onward, a leadership coaching business dedicated to helping – you guessed it – family businesses. All those images I just conjured up, of fighting with your family: now add money, a lot of money, to the mix, and that’s where Cathy operates. She even comes from a family business herself – rodeo equipment manufacturing. Today, Cathy’s out with a new book, Hug of War, a real guide to navigating that tension between the good of the business and the good of the family. So what do we do when we’re fighting with the people we love most? Is it possible, as Cathy claims, for both of us to be right? And if so… then what?  

Think of a relationship in your life that you’d describe as a true partnership. Why did that person come to mind? There are words and phrases that come easily when you’re describing a partnership that works:  feeling supported, encouraged, the sense that when I have my back turned, you’ve still got my back. So where do those feelings come from, and how do we solidify them? How can we grow a new relationship into a partnership? How do you pick the people you can trust? Today we’ve got two guests that are partners on paper, at the private equity firm Brand Velocity Group, but as you’ll hear, it goes much further than their roles. Steve Lebowitz is the founder and managing partner of BVG, and Eli Manning – well, you might recall his S Curve with the New York Giants, but this episode is all about a new S curve.  So how did the first overall draft pick in 2004 partner up with a revolutionary in private equity – and what do they do to make it work?  

Back in July, we tried something a little new for this show – episode 329 was all about hearing from the listeners of Disrupt Yourself. What was important to you while you were listening, what insights you wanted to bring back from older episodes and refresh. It was a lovely experiment, so today we’re bringing you another roundtable. This time, we’ve got three coaches instead, all of whom are Smart Growth certified. We wanted to explore what that initial call to action was for all three of them, as well as what certification meant – practically – for their clients’ success. Today we’ll be joined by Sarah Glover, Jordan White and Rebecca Woodard, all independent coaches in the process of growing their practice.  

Self-fulfilling prophecies – and falling into their trap – are part and parcel of being human. From ancient Greek tragedies to television like Breaking Bad, they’ve popped up time and time again. We just can’t escape our flaw of telling ourselves stories about the future, and then making them reality. But what if it… wasn’t a flaw? What if there was a real power, a real gift in being about to tell yourself a story and see it through? You might know Steph Curry from his legacy at the Golden State Warriors, but would you believe he wasn’t even scouted coming out of high school?  Our guest today is a big believer in turning the self-fulfilling prophecy stigma on its head. Nathan Tanner thought he finally had it all with a cushy investment gig at Lehman Brothers. The problem was, he joined up in 2008, right before Lehman went through the biggest bank collapse in history. To hear him say it, it would have been the easiest thing to write a personal story… of failure.  But since then, Nathan’s worked through top positions at LinkedIn and DoorDash before settling into his own coaching practice. Today, he’s out with a new book, suitably titled The Unconquerable Leader – Mastering the Internal and External Game. It’s all about learning to show up for yourself so that you can properly show up for others.  

Today, we wanted to bring back a conversation I had with Michael Bungay Stanier back in 2018, where we explored what it really means to be a coach. His self-published book The Coaching Habit had only been out for two years, and it had already sold 300 thousand copies. Bringing the philosophy of coaching into our lives can be one of the most personally disruptive and rewarding projects we take on. It changes and strengthens how we support others in our lives, and the support we receive in return. Michael breaks this down in such an accessible way that we felt a re-air was more than worth it.  

So much of what we talk about on here is change – navigating change, embracing change, creating change. I think it’s fair to say that if you’re listening, change of some form is on your mind. We’re no strangers when it comes to figuring out how to get from A to B. But what happens when we have to change… how we’re changing? What happens when we plateau with our progress, and the old models of learning just aren’t sticking anymore? What does jumping to that new S Curve look like? That’s where our guest today comes in. Eduardo Briceno is the co-founder of Mindset Works, a firm dedicated to bringing Carol Dweck’s growth mindset to workplaces world-wide. He’s out now with The Performance Paradox, a book dedicated to that question of changing how you’re changing. From Caracas, Venezuela to the Stanford Business School, Eduardo has navigated all kinds of change, even a fear of public speaking. So what do we have to learn from him?  

This week we’ve got a special episode, a longer one than we normally do. But when you have an opportunity, to talk to the person who built the Rotman School of Management into the powerhouse it is today, you have to use every minute you get.  Roger L. Martin was told that the Toronto’s Rotman School wasn’t worth his time, that it was a quote – cesspool of intrigue. Roger himself will say that he didn’t do much in his 15 years as dean, just tinkering and prodding. He’s a bit of an understated enigma, as you’ll soon find out. But when Rotman’s prestige today ranks up there with Stanford and Harvard, you can’t really argue with his results.   There’s so much to mine in this conversation, we thought it would be a shame to cut it down and fit it within our normal episode length. If you have the time, I’d love for you to give it more than just one listen.