The Hidden Cost Of Hustle Culture With Rob Tracz

In this heartfelt conversation, high-performance coach Rob Tracz shares his journey from an overworked strength & conditioning coach (12–15 hour days, 7 days a week for years) to becoming a “Prime Performer” coach for young entrepreneurs and side-hustlers. Rob opens up about the personal cost of hustle culture — deteriorating health, lost relationships, and missing precious time with his father during his final months with pancreatic cancer.

Through these hard lessons, Rob discovered that true success isn’t more money or hours worked — it’s living in alignment with your deepest core values, cultivating self-awareness, and building a life that still has room for relationships, joy, and reflection.

A powerful episode for anyone who’s ever felt trapped in “robot mode,” chasing the next milestone while life passes by. Learn practical ways to slow down, reflect consciously, use values as your compass, and build a thriving side hustle without burning out.

Transcript

Hey,

I don't want to be strength and conditioning coach forever.

That's when I kind of realized like,

Oh,

What is it that I do want to be doing in life?

And that brought me back to really starting to identify,

Okay,

What do I hold as values in my life and,

And why such,

And that helped me because I'm like,

All right,

Well,

I know in business,

A lot of successful businesses have their core values and I'm like,

What does that even mean?

And so I went down this journey of trying to figure those things out.

And that helped me discover the things that I hold most valuable to myself.

And that's how I would kind of define successes.

Hold this.

Welcome.

This is Josh of InnerSkilled.

And today I have Rob Tracy with me.

Rob,

What's going on today?

Hey,

Josh.

Uh,

Not too much,

Actually.

It's a busy week,

But,

Um,

It's beautiful out today.

So I'm excited to kind of dive into conversation with you.

Thanks for having me on,

By the way.

You're welcome.

My pleasure.

Yeah,

The weather's okay here too.

We got a little shower here in Missouri,

Uh,

But the temperature has been really mild and seasonally being mild.

But then again,

That's kind of the standard these days.

What do they say about Missouri weather?

If you don't like it,

Wait five minutes.

So either way,

Who is Rob and what kind of work does he do?

Yeah.

So I'm a high performance coach specifically working with,

Uh,

Young professionals who are either interested,

Excited about,

Or already started some sort of a side hustle or a small business.

Um,

I help them become what I call prime performers where they're moving well,

They're feeling good,

And they're just equipped to handle a lot of that early stage entrepreneurship that kind of takes time to get used to.

Um,

A lot of people kind of go into it knowing it's going to be difficult,

Kind of starting a side project.

Uh,

But then they kind of fail to realize that how quickly it becomes a second job.

So then juggling multiple jobs,

Personal life,

Family,

All that stuff can make things pretty hectic.

So that's where I come in to try to help prevent some of that or reduce some of that friction and help them move along and have a pretty good successful project.

Well,

Right on.

I have a little bit of background years ago,

Uh,

With some entrepreneur brothers who were really successful.

They had a ticket broker business starting off.

They sold that to TicketsNow,

Which then was Ticketmaster and whatever they are now,

Like Live Nation,

Went on to,

Uh,

VA Mortgage Center,

Which is now I think Veterans United,

We're doing billions of dollars in,

In,

Um,

Veteran home loans where they call it.

Yeah.

I think it's a no VA loan.

And so they were so good to their employees,

You know,

But they also encourage people to leave and go do what they did and become entrepreneurs.

And they were like angel investors and stuff like that.

But a lot of people didn't leave cause they were treating them so good,

But they also have quite a few,

Um,

Successful spinoffs too.

And,

But that aside,

So that's,

I don't,

I mean,

That was years and years ago.

I'm showing my age here.

So I did a little bit of familiarity with that and all the stuff involved and how it can be quite stressful,

But also quite real rewarding as well.

So why don't you tell people a little bit about your background and how you got into entrepreneurship and then how adding,

Which is a popular term now,

I,

Uh,

Side hustle,

Right.

And adding that onto it and how you did that.

Um,

And then I think maybe look,

Who are some of your role models in the space and who do you look for,

For like,

Uh,

Like a litmus test or guidance or like a,

Uh,

Reference point,

You know,

So people know where you're coming from,

I guess.

Sure,

Sure.

Yeah.

So,

Um,

I guess to kind of kick things off with a little background of myself.

Um,

I guess even before that,

I should say like the whole prime performance coaching thing that I do is essentially personal development for the entrepreneur that side hustler.

And my first introduction to personal development happened at a super young age,

Actually,

Uh,

My parents got divorced when I was like five,

Six or seven ish years old.

Uh,

My mom,

My sister and myself hopped in the car.

We traveled across state line from Philadelphia all the way up to upstate New York and,

Uh,

Bounced around a lot of different school districts at that.

Young age,

Um,

And moving around school districts makes it particularly hard to make friends and,

And even harder to maintain friendships.

Uh,

So when we finally found a small town to really call home,

That's when I first met my real actual first friend and hanging out with him.

And at the time I was,

Um,

Very,

I like to refer to myself as Dweeby Rob.

I was this little chunky kid,

Very antisocial and kept to myself and video games and stuff like that.

And my friend,

Sean,

Who was my best friend and only friend at the time,

He was the same way as me.

He liked a lot of action stuff and little fun things to do,

But he also had this athletic side to him as well.

His dad was the youth football coach,

And he would always encourage me to come out to play sports and football.

And eventually he convinced me to come to practice.

And that first day of football practice,

I learned two very important lessons that would carry with me through the rest of my life.

And the first lesson being that you can't wear jeans to football practice.

You gotta wear something athletic.

So I learned that pretty quickly that,

Hey,

I got to kind of show up and fit in a little bit.

And the second thing I learned was I had noticed that all of the quote unquote popular kids seem to get through the warmup and the practice with relative ease.

They seem to be stronger,

Faster,

And a lot of friends on the team.

They knew everybody's names.

They were having fun,

Cracking jokes.

And I wanted to be more like those kids.

And I was over here struggling just to complete the warmup lap.

And the pushups and sit ups was just no,

No way I was doing those.

It was so difficult for me way out of my comfort zone.

But what I realized I could start to do is take the stretches that I would do before and after practice as a team.

And I'd start implementing those at home.

And then I started doing some of the strength stuff that they were teaching us to do in between like pushups and the squats and things like that.

And eventually at a,

Even as a young kid,

I realized,

Hey,

The more hard work that I put in behind the scenes,

The more reward I'll get on front center stage,

And that showed up with a little bit of playing time.

And then the more that I did this,

The more playing time I was rewarded with.

And the more playing time led to more friends and more friends led to more invites to birthday parties.

And if I wanted to go to those birthday parties,

My mom made sure that my grades were good.

So that taught me a lot about prioritization and starting to plan ahead a little bit.

This whole thing became the gateway of personal development for me and leaned into a lot of this through the years and led to a lot of social and athletic success and academic success as well.

And carried me all the way through undergrad and eventually to grad school,

Where I finished with a 4.

0 GPA and then went on into the strength and conditioning realm.

Are you familiar at all with the strength and conditioning as a profession?

No,

Tell,

Tell me a little bit about it and the listeners too.

Sure.

So as a strength and conditioning coach,

You typically go one of two routes.

You either go the collegiate setting where you try to work with these bigger schools and with the hopes of eventually potentially working with a professional team or Olympic teams and stuff like that,

Or you go more of the private sector,

Which is smaller areas where like you open up your own gym,

Basically.

That's like the taste of entrepreneurship.

You got to learn how to sell.

You got to learn how to market.

You got to learn how to retain clients.

And I loved that because where I was,

That gave me a lot of control and that let me really control my schedule and my hours,

My training programs and everything.

I loved it because nobody told me that I couldn't work.

So I just kept working,

Working,

Working,

Taking on new clients.

And I quickly scaled my book of business up to the point where I was working 12 to 15 hour days,

Seven days a week for almost 200 weeks in a row.

So I'm like nonstop holidays,

Birthday parties,

I'm skipping everything.

And I wore that busyness as a badge of honor for so long.

And as I thought it was,

Hey,

This is,

I'm so cool.

Look at me.

I'm busy.

My business is booming.

What I failed to see was all the relationships and with myself,

My personal health and things were deteriorating.

My relationships,

Romantic,

And then friendships were also falling apart and even family too.

And one of the biggest relationships that I lost was my father.

He had got sick with pancreatic cancer.

And that came on so quick that I didn't even really have time to think about it because I was stuck in that whirlwind.

And I call that period robot mode because I was super efficient at getting things done,

But not efficient at paying attention to what was happening in life.

I kind of regret not being able to spend time with my dad.

And through that,

I decided I wanted to figure something out.

So a year after my dad had passed and after I had returned to that grind,

I decided that something needed to change.

And eventually that started this process of this seeking this,

What I do now is the prime performance coaching.

So I had to go through this whole journey of understanding who I am as an individual,

I was afraid to leave my identity as a strength coach and step into this new performance coaching realm.

And this whole process kind of built through.

And along the journey,

I realized that this is what I want.

I want to help other entrepreneurs,

Other side hustlers,

Prevent the regret,

Prevent the frustration and all these things so that they can live their life,

Have their job,

Have their side hustle,

And still have a life to share with other people.

Well,

Brilliant.

Yeah,

It's wow.

There's there's plenty to say here.

I think I want to start from the beginning almost where you're talking about seeing these kids on the football field and how some of them just seem to do things so effortlessly and so naturally and don't have to seemingly work really hard in anything.

Right.

And to me,

I remember kind of I used to really jealous.

And I'm not saying you are.

I just in my own experience,

Like,

Well,

Like,

Why can't I,

You know,

Do that instead of being happy for their happiness?

I was like,

That sucks.

You know,

Why,

Why,

Why don't I have that?

Why can't I just have that kind of ease automatically?

But then it also,

Like you said,

It kind of gives this motivation that this,

This,

These humans were known for.

If we put in the work there and have the right instructions and keep at it,

There's really nothing we can achieve.

And then it goes in my own experience where I,

I don't know if it's a Capricorn trade or whatever.

We want to say this that over identify with achievement.

And that's who I am.

How how many things I can check off my list and do things very efficiently and,

You know,

Directly and get things done.

No nonsense,

Right?

No beating around the bush and put,

Take this on as an identity for,

For my own worthiness.

Right.

And then come to realize,

Oh,

Wait a second.

Not everybody works like that.

Not everybody values that in the same way.

They,

They do things differently and yeah,

People don't relate to each other.

You know,

When you're trying to build relationships,

It's not the most healthy way.

Again,

Talking about my own experience.

What you said brought up that.

And then I don't want to use this ridiculous term,

Come to Jesus moment,

But there's usually something that happens in our lives that,

That will put the brakes on the way we're going.

Right.

And and we have to go through this challenge ourselves.

And then,

And then when we come out on the other side and master it,

Then we're kind of like a leader for those going through it.

And if I'm getting this right,

That it sounds like that's what happened to you.

Right.

And so you're taking your own experience and your own journey and identifying that there's other people similar going through the same thing still,

And they don't have to go through this exact same thing you did that they,

You know,

Or we could just say mixing the you and we or whatever,

But you know,

We can learn through other people a lot of times,

Right.

We don't have to go through the same thing that they did to,

To learn from them.

And so,

Yeah,

I'm wondering though what I find too,

It's,

It's knowing this balance between,

You know,

How much we need,

How much we can,

I guess,

Intervene in someone's experience and how much we should pull back and be hands-off and let them make their own choice to go through it.

I know it,

My own preference is if I can learn something from someone that I don't have to go through myself,

That I would choose that.

Or if I'm going through some challenge,

It used to be the opposite.

Oh,

I got this myself.

If I don't do it myself,

I'm weak.

You know,

It's a failure.

If I have,

If I can't do this all myself,

But these days I'm the opposite.

It's just like,

If I can learn and grow from others,

Expertise and experience,

You know,

And it makes sense to do so.

I want to do that instead of,

You know,

Being this stubborn guy that has to do everything themselves,

You know?

So yeah,

I guess if there's anything in that you want to speak to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a couple of things actually.

So the first thing that kind of pops up is you were mentioning how you said maybe it's a Capricorn kind of thing about tying your identity to,

Um,

Achievement and Capricorn is,

Is that's the,

Is that the Ram?

It's a,

Well,

It's close.

It's a goat.

Like,

Uh,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Like I was going to say,

So it kind of sounds like you were also an adversity drive to like,

Oh,

I'm going to do this myself.

I want to tackle this on my own.

So that's kind of interesting seeing that through there.

Um,

But yeah,

No,

You said a bunch of things there specifically.

The people go to other coaches,

They seek mentors and coaches so they can expedite the journey or the process.

So they don't have to spend that time learning it themselves.

Um,

And I think there is something to touch on here where you're saying like,

Okay,

As a coach or as a mentor,

When do you let somebody kind of learn the lesson at their own rate?

And I think that's challenging because it kind of depends on the individual.

Obviously you don't want to see someone just totally crash and burn.

And that makes me think of myself when I was in strength and conditioning,

When I would teach somebody a couple movement patterns and watch them kind of going through it,

They get it pretty well.

And it's like,

Okay,

Now it's time to load it up with a little bit of,

Uh,

Some weight and some external load.

And sometimes maybe they're doing 10 reps.

They might do six or seven really well.

And then they might have a couple that aren't as ideal.

Uh,

But I'm not going to over cue them and chime right in and stop what they're doing because they need to feel it themselves.

They need to go through that process of like,

Oh,

Okay,

I am at a place here.

And kind of let that go back into play.

So it's tough as a coach and mentor,

Because you got to,

You got to figure out that wiggle room and where the boundaries are.

And I think that also goes into what they're looking for as well,

Right?

Like how fast they're trying to expedite the process.

Yeah,

It,

It's,

It seems challenging because like if we do too much for them,

Then sometimes they don't get the,

I guess the amount of embodied experience from it,

But then again,

If,

Um,

You know,

But if,

You know,

If someone doesn't jump in there,

They might be struggling with something for such a long time and all they need is this like pointing out or just a little bit of guidance that will save them a lot of time and headache.

Right.

So,

Yeah,

This is kind of,

I feel where intuitive abilities come in and reading and,

And kind of having the wisdom of what's needed when the hands-on approaches,

When the hands-off approaches.

So,

Yeah.

So I guess,

Um,

Another thing I'm interested in is,

Um,

Like,

I guess trends in general,

Like the,

The,

The folks you're working with,

And then I guess the larger entrepreneurial culture at large,

I know we hear AI is big,

But you're kind of more on the,

On,

I guess the physical end of things,

Like what kind of,

Uh,

Larger trends do you see in the entrepreneur space,

Um,

And then also in side hustle space,

You know,

And what's maybe changed from when you first started getting into this,

Um,

Up to now and then,

Then expand it further.

And then if you,

If you have a crystal ball here,

Where do you see it's heading?

Yeah.

So I think,

Well,

When I first kind of started getting into it,

It was okay.

Let me just grind as much as I can kind of sleep when I'm dead sort of mentality.

And all right.

Uh,

Like scaled up my book of business to the point where I was literally out of hours in the day.

So now it's forcing myself to be creative and like,

Okay,

Well,

How else can I start to make additional money,

Um,

With people and such,

Just kind of chasing after that financial milestone without ever actually slowing down and reflecting on,

Okay,

Well,

What is it that I'm actually trying to achieve with this?

Like,

Am I just building something just to build it?

Or am I building something for myself here?

Um,

Or my future self and family and stuff like that.

And I think that's kind of some of the trends that at least I'm seeing,

And it might just also be on my radar because I'm the one who's like kind of going out and talking about it and the kind of like the anti hustle,

Hustle culture.

And,

Um,

It's like,

There's,

There's value in slowing down and,

And spending dedicated time to reflect in and pay attention to the different things that are going on instead of just going from one sprint season to the next sprint season.

Uh,

So that's where I'm kind of seeing things.

And I imagine that's going to continue to go that way,

Especially with AI.

And I know for myself,

I use AI a lot of different ways and marketing and such,

But also for my own reflection.

So I have a gratitude journal.

I've got a,

Uh,

Just an easy reflection journal where I go through things.

And then I just upload a lot of those transcripts and journal entries into AI so I can kind of synthesize,

Hey,

How has my month been?

What was I going through this month?

What am I excited about going forward and kind of leaning that stuff in?

Because that becomes a different lens essentially for the same perspective,

Because you're,

You're going through and sharing your current perspective.

But then when you had the AI synthesizing,

You might be able to pick up different things that you're constantly talking about that you might not have on the conscious mind.

Yeah,

It's a,

It's,

It's a,

It's a good tool and I hope that we will continue to use it instead of it using us in a way,

You know,

And friends are good for this too.

You know,

If we,

As you mentioned in there in the beginning,

How valuable friendships are too,

Because,

Uh,

There's an old spiritual saying that,

You know,

Feedback from someone you really respect and admire is more valuable than a mountain of gold,

You know,

Because not everyone is going to be honest with helpful feedback to us and put in a way that's,

You know,

Worthwhile.

So I,

It's this,

This feedback is so valuable and that's how we can see our blind spots too.

Right.

And,

Uh,

Know where,

Where,

Where we don't know and what to do about it.

Yeah.

And wisdom and men and mentors are,

It will help with this too.

So,

Yeah,

Very cool.

Um,

The,

Yeah,

The ingratitude was a huge part of my practice too.

And I just,

It just dawned on me now I quit doing usually,

Uh,

For years and years before I even got out of bed,

I would just,

Okay,

What am I grateful for before I even got out of bed?

And it didn't matter what it was just whatever came to mind that day could be really,

Um,

Seemingly insignificant,

But it does flavor and incline the mind towards,

You know,

Happiness.

Cause if I'm grateful for something,

I can't be in a bad mood.

I can't be in a bad,

You know,

Inner conflict even.

So same way when I'm serving someone,

It's really hard and doing it sincerely,

You know,

It can't be a really in conflict.

Um,

Yeah.

So it's,

Uh,

It's,

It's,

It's a great practice.

I can't recommend it enough.

And for us to get other things,

We,

It almost seems like we have to be grateful for what we have as well.

And you also mentioned this notion of,

Um,

What are we doing this for the intentionality that drives all of our actions,

Our speech,

Even our thoughts.

You know,

Why are we doing this?

What's the intention?

And it reminded me of this,

This old saying too,

Of the mentality of,

Uh,

Growth without purpose is the ideology of a cancer cell,

Right?

So cancer just,

It just grows without any.

Not having any point of it.

So yeah,

What's the point?

I'm not saying I'm not anti-growth at all.

You know,

We have to grow,

Especially in our lives.

That's the whole point of living,

I think,

Is to grow,

Learn and grow for the most part and,

Um,

That's in a helpful manner.

So yeah,

It's hugely critical.

So the other thing I mentioned,

And I'll,

I'll get,

I want to ask your feedback on this too,

And feel free to address any of that that I've just said is what is success anyway,

Because I've,

And for my own,

You know,

I'll just answer it real quick for me once I threw out other people's meaning of success and created my own definition of what success means while respecting the other people's definitions of success too,

Right?

Not,

I don't have to really rag on old definitions of success.

I respect that and just say,

Well,

Some of that's just not for me.

I can still respect it and honor it,

But then I can have my own definition of success too.

But yeah,

If you want to talk about guidance on that and how you see what you,

What,

Uh,

Is defined as success too.

Yeah.

I think that's a great point there too,

Because like my,

When I was younger and just starting out,

I was like literally just chasing financial milestones and,

Um,

Sacrificing time in my body and relationships just to hit those things.

And then once I hit it,

It's like,

Okay,

Well,

What's the next one?

How am I going to get there?

And never really sitting back and enjoying.

And,

And that moment when I decided like,

Hey,

I don't want to be strength and conditioning coach forever.

That's when I kind of realized like,

Oh,

What is it that I do want to be doing in life?

And that brought me back to really starting to identify,

Okay,

What do I hold as like values in my life and,

And why and such,

And that helped me because I'm like,

All right,

Well,

I know in business,

A lot of successful businesses have their core values.

And I'm like,

What does that even mean?

And so I went down this journey of trying to figure those things out.

And that helped me discover the things that I hold most valuable to myself.

And that's how I would kind of define successes like,

Hey,

Am I,

Is it something that I'm working on?

Is there,

Is there a growth?

Is there change happening?

Is there evolution at play?

Am I getting better at something?

Is it,

Am I having fun while I'm doing this?

Am I,

Am I doing it with other people?

Are there people around me or am I isolated?

And,

And then at the end of the day is like,

Is this what I want to be doing?

Like,

Am I actually doing all of this because this is what I say?

Or am I just kind of following either routine or something else?

Because a long time when with my clients and I,

That book of crazy business,

I was like,

Yeah,

I can work whenever I want,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

But I ended up just becoming a slave to the routines of my clients.

So when they wanted to work out,

That's when I was working out 3 30 in the morning or 9 PM at night,

Whatever they wanted to do,

I was going to it because.

I was following something that I wasn't aligned with and that's not embodying freedom to me.

Totally.

This is a,

Was a,

Is a huge game changer for me is core values and orienting life to core values.

And it's not necessarily anti goal.

Cause we still have to have goals and hit goals.

Of course,

It's just a whole different way to approach life,

Really identify like,

I don't know,

One to five different core values that,

That will be there.

Yeah.

As the foundational thing,

And then can orient and make choices in life based on those.

And they're almost immediately more satisfying to,

You know,

Does this align with my core values?

And then I know where to point an aim in life and what I want to get into,

What I want to commit to,

What I don't want to commit to,

What I need to stand up for,

You know,

What I can not respond to too.

Yeah.

It's,

It's,

It's such a game changer for me as well.

And I love that you said that about the goals there,

Because yeah,

You definitely need the goal to chase and follow at the top of the mountain.

And,

And your values are like the map and like the coordinates and how you make those decisions to get there.

Right.

So it's like,

If you don't have those values,

You'll just be circling the base of that mountain forever.

Or you might go up and go right back down and left,

Right.

And never actually make progress towards the top of that mountain.

So I love that you brought that up.

That's a great way to put it.

I like that,

That,

That framing too.

It's kind of like the,

The pathway to the goal in a sense,

Or,

Okay,

What do I do with the challenges on the way to get there?

Okay.

Now I have kind of a compass or a guidebook,

Or it's not really a guidebook,

But,

You know,

I have something to know how to make decisions to get to that in a,

In a manner that's going to be satisfying along the way,

Even,

Right.

I don't even have to wait for it to get to that goal,

To have some kind of sense of wellbeing and accomplishment and goodness,

You know,

And uprightness along the way.

Yeah.

I like,

Thanks.

I might use that.

So yeah.

Well what's,

What's on your radar now,

You know how,

How do you,

What would you think would talking to a friend of mine the other day who owns a spa,

Actually he's gone through a lot of healing stuff in his life,

You know,

And some of these make the best like healers and stuff.

And we were talking about,

He was talking about you know getting people to write out what they like,

What sets them apart?

Like what is their unique putting language to what,

What sets them apart from everyone else kind of in their space,

You know?

So I would maybe ask you the same thing.

Like what do you bring to the table that's kind of unique or that you're known for that people want to connect with you for?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think what's really helped me be successful through the course of my life and with a lot of different stages and such was my ability to be adaptable.

So I think the adaptability and then what I was lacking when I was in that strength and conditioning phase was awareness.

So I was,

I had the ability to adapt and change and mold my life to follow the same thing,

But I was stuck in that robot mode and I lacked that awareness to come back into human mode and change and evolve and grow.

So myself as an individual and as a coach,

I think those are the two main things that I bring is,

Is the awareness,

The perspective to kind of share the process of,

Hey,

How do you pay attention to these different factors to become a prime performer or become successful with your side hustle and being the adaptability around it.

So like,

Hey,

There's this framework.

Here's this process that I followed that has helped me be successful.

Here's how maybe we could implement it into your life or the projects that you're working on.

And it's not as much of like a ABC as it is much of like,

Hey,

This is how you should think about laying out the outfit.

So it's like,

You think about the alphabet,

You know,

A through Z,

But you could say like G F C K L M cause you know all the letters.

But what I come in as a coach is like,

Maybe we should lay it out like ABC D E F G and then consider that and then get the feedback from the other person and we can mold it and make it malleable.

Well,

That's,

That's another cool metaphor.

Yeah.

And that's where expertise and like professionalism comes in and going to someone for a plan that you,

That one might not know right away,

You know,

Not,

Might not be as a parent.

So,

Yeah,

That's a cool way to put it.

Um,

This notion of awareness too.

And it reminds me of the saying met with challenges instead of being so bummed out about it.

It's like,

What weakness is this helping me strengthen as a,

Yeah.

So,

And I like how you jumped to a weakness too.

And all of our weaknesses can be turned into strengths too.

They can just be fodder for our own growth as well,

You know,

And,

And even considering it a weakness is also a type of,

Um,

Just a perception,

You know?

Um,

So lack of awareness,

You know what I mean?

Like that is like the creme de la creme of like all spiritual teachings that is in a sense,

Right.

And there's whole meditation practices,

Um,

That just give one really quick.

It's usually we're focused on an object,

Right.

Especially an external object.

But what is it that knows that object?

So the people can simplify things down of experience to,

Um,

What,

Um,

Knowing and what's being known are aware and what's being aware of.

And so we're usually conditioned to what are we being aware of,

But it's like,

Uh,

The,

The image is in a movie theater,

Right?

We're kind of like lost in the movie,

But at any time you could stand up in the movie theater,

Turn around and look at the light being projected from the projector,

At least I guess in the old school movie theaters.

Right.

And that's that light of awareness.

Like we can turn that light around and just say,

What is being aware?

What's knowing this moment.

It's a really kind of profound practice and it just kind of amplifies,

You know,

What's actually,

Um,

Involved in all this.

Anyway,

This classical spiritual question is who am I,

You know,

What is this?

So instead of what am I,

What,

You know,

What,

You know,

Uh,

What's the object?

What's knowing.

Yeah.

So you get the idea.

Yeah.

I love that too,

Because somebody recently had asked me,

It was like,

Hey,

If you,

If you had one message that you could share,

Or if you had one message that could kind of sum up what you do as a coach,

Um,

What would it be?

And I was like,

Reflect more consciously.

So reflect on the things that you know,

That are going to help you be there,

But put yourself into it and then relate it to back to yourself and,

And have that self-awareness to it.

It's one thing to just be aware of everything,

But having that next level of like that self-awareness is,

Is really what I'm trying to help people kind of pay attention to.

Absolutely.

And,

You know,

I think,

Um,

Maybe it's too stereotypical,

But for us guys,

I feel when it comes to emotions,

You know,

We get a bad rap,

You know,

We're not really taught to deal with our emotions or value them.

And anytime they need processing,

I think a lot of guys that just need some time to themselves to process emotion where the feminine,

They,

They tend to,

You know,

Have this interaction and I'm like,

Okay,

Well,

Hey,

I need some kind of space here to,

To process this on my own,

Figure it out.

Then I can come back in and meet this in a,

You know,

A more skillful way and be more available and okay.

So yeah,

It's just,

We,

We operate,

At least some of us,

I would say maybe operate just a little bit differently and they can be complimentary.

I feel as well.

It's just different ways of approaching things.

And yeah,

You look at all these philosophers and really brilliant people.

They do spend a lot of time contemplating and reflecting.

We need this space that we,

It's just like being a fish in water,

Right?

We don't even know if they don't even know they're in water.

It's only until they kind of get out the water that they even realize they're in it.

So it gives us this,

This space to reflect and to,

To,

To yeah,

To sum up and to see how things are going because it,

When we're just so embroiled and entangled in something,

We don't even really realize it.

Yeah.

It's,

It's absolutely vital.

I would definitely agree with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

Cool,

Rob.

I think we,

We got to start wrapping up here a little bit and then take us out on the final message.

Sure.

Yeah.

And we'll jump in here before you leave with a final message.

Now I'm interested in about conflict resolution.

Yeah.

What do you want to say about that in a nutshell?

Are you talking about like people fighting in the gym or getting a little bit overly competitive and triggering each other out?

Or like what,

What happens in this,

This area,

This sphere that you,

What's your involvement in is with it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for that,

It's because as I continue to grow as an individual,

So to speak,

I also too has my coaching.

So now that I'm stepping out of the weight room as much,

And now I'm stepping into different,

Different stages,

Both literally and figuratively.

And some of those stages are from some of these workshops where we're connecting with people from all across all different industries,

Whether they're coming in,

They're looking to either ask for a new raise,

Or maybe they're an employer and they have to have that difficult conversation of letting somebody go.

And the conflict resolution kind of comes into play because we teach a social agility,

Essentially.

We teach the contextual competency.

So being able to understand the room and how other,

What,

Almost what other people are kind of thinking and reading the room and being able to put yourself in it,

But then also communicate,

Understanding communication,

Both verbal and nonverbal and how to do it,

How to improve your own.

And then also micro political literacy is the last part that we teach in social agility,

Which is essentially navigating those power dynamics and what power bases are at play,

Which influence tactics might be more beneficial than others.

And how do you use those to resolve conflict in certain things?

And for example,

We've had,

I've worked with like sales teams at local car dealerships and up to a billion dollar soccer teams who were working with their coaching staff to help them create more buy-in between the younger players and the veteran players.

You've got some guys who've been on the team forever and they're just checking off the list.

And then you also got young 18,

20 year olds coming in,

Making millions of dollars and how do you balance all these different personalities and such as still create a culture that works together.

So it's really awesome working with Brett because I get opportunities to work with these big sports teams.

And he's spoken with like Apple and Google and Microsoft in the past.

So being around a lot of these high level people with these hard problems and seeing the same problems scaled down onto a much smaller scale in everyday life.

It's really cool to equip yourself,

But then being able to help others equip themselves to handle these situations.

Yeah,

It's soft power.

I like this term soft power now.

It's huge,

You know,

On really big scales.

I mean,

Like nation state scales.

And I love that term.

You said micro political literacy,

Literacy.

That's great.

That's a great term.

And the generational gaps,

You know,

That's just common throughout time,

I think,

Or at least in the West.

And so bridging those divides too and how those all function,

I'm sure that's fascinating work,

Especially in the sports world,

Which I know nothing about.

And there's the whole field of sports psychology,

Right?

That's a massive too.

So,

Well,

Right on,

It sounds like you've got some definitely interesting work at the least,

If not,

You know,

Life-changing things and really cool,

Interesting challenges,

Almost like putting together puzzles or something,

You know,

And figuring things out,

Right?

Well,

Right on Rob,

I appreciate this.

So yeah,

If you have anything,

What kind of message you want to leave with here?

I think I'm just going to double down on that message that I shared with my buddy and,

And just hope if you take anything from this conversation,

Just try to reflect a little bit more consciously,

Like put yourself into the reflection and,

And think about where you kind of play a role in everything that's kind of going on around you and,

And just,

Yeah,

I guess it's just that reflect more consciously.

Awesome.

Well,

May,

May we all come to know our most optimal,

Wise reflection for ourselves,

For others,

And for all beings everywhere.

May all beings everywhere realize awakening and be free.