156: Amanda Russell: Chief Marketing Officer at Valeo Technologies, Professor of Marketing, and Author opens up about overcoming the injury that interrupted her Olympic career to her expansion into the worlds of fitness and marketing.    Amanda Russell  Amanda Russell explained the importance a mentor played early in her life while growing up without a lot of financial resources and opportunities in a small town in Canada. “I had a high school gym teacher. She told me about this life-changing thing, this word 'scholarship.’ I had never heard the word before. I didn’t know what it meant, and she explained to me that it meant that you could go after high school, instead of going to work, you could actually continue to go to school and get another degree that will put you in a much higher-paying job, and that the United States of America would actually pay you to do it, as long as you could do a sport. My family didn’t have a lot of money.” On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Amanda Russell about her vigorous drive, ingenuity, and dedication to expand on her former Olympic running pursuits into fitness and marketing. “I look at sports differently now. It took being seen. So, when you look at sports like baseball, or football, or dance, these guys get seen, and it is slightly subjective, in terms of you actually have to be good enough for somebody to physically go see you and determine that you are good enough. She (Amanda Russell’s high school gym teacher) told me I should look at running, because running was a sport that, first of all, it was free. It required no equipment, and the time on track was the time on track anywhere in the world, and if I could run these certain times, I could write my ticket.”   What You Will Learn: How did she manage to work her way into her athletic track success without even liking to run at all? “I don’t run anymore, and when I see people running, they make it look even more painful and I don’t understand why anyone would want to take that up. I think that is an important point because it has affected me in some many other ways, because I think there is a big mentality of like, ‘follow your passion, follow your passion.’ Well, first of all, if I followed that advice, I would have never done it, because it wasn’t fun. It was a lot of work and there were a lot of obstacles. Having gone through that, I thought, after training like that, and doing that for so many years in a sport that at the end of the day I didn’t love, made me realise that there is probably nothing that I wouldn’t do if I wanted the end-goal.”  Amanda Russell was 21 living in the United States preparing to run in the Olympics when she experienced a career-ending injury, a broken femur, and was facing deportation. “I feel like I’m the go-to person for a lot of friends whenever a crisis happens in their lives because you become very resourceful, when you don’t have anything left you become very, very resourceful and you find a way to do it. I’m a hustler in any way. So, I thought, I can’t go back to the pinnacle of what I feel like is the athletic world in running, the Olympics, then I still had this dream, which was really my dream, was New York City. I didn’t know what that meant. But I just knew that  I just really, really wanted to live there and I wanted to grow a career there and it was like the epicenter of my universe. I had a few challenges though, well many, four actually. Four that stand out. One, I had no money, no connections, no work experience, and no U.S visa.” Amanda shares a story about her innovative and genuine strategy that landed her an American employment sponsor to begin her life in New York City as a Canadian. “You can’t compete on what you don’t have. I don’t have experience, and I knew in order to get the job, it wasn’t like I just had to be the best candidate for the job. To get sponsored with no experience, you have to prove in some way, you are better than every other American applying for the job. One thing I did have a lot of, not money, but shoes. I had a lot of Nike running shoes, because that was my sponsor. So, I sent out a pair of used, worn out Nike running shoes to who I found out was the gatekeeper of each of these three firms, with this whole personal spiel in a box about how I had all of this work ethic and dedication and perseverance that I can now give solely to your company because I was no longer going to run. That got me the interview. That got me all three interviews actually.”    How did business school play a pivotal role in fulfilling Amanda’s desire to live and work in New York City? “My plan was to work there for a couple of years, go to business school. Business school requires at least two or three years of experience. I saved everything I possibly could when I was working. I was making pretty good money. But, I could also write a book probably on how to live on $20 a day in New York because I put everything away just to save up for my first semester of business school. I thought, if I could just get one semester, I will figure the rest out, and I know I was going to use this time, doing business school meant that I could full-time pursue something else while still maintaining a student visa.” Amanda recalls back to when she started using YouTube in business school when it was still in its early days as a social media platform. “I started watching these YouTubers, not because I loved the shows, but because I was so enamored by how these people had these cult followings, and this was back when YouTube was only dumb and dumber entertainment and a little bit of music, and you are seeing these teenaged kids or young adults in the Midwest doing these ridiculous things and they have this cult following. That to me was like, oh my God. All of these brands are putting the cart before the horse and they’re creating these products and services. But, if you can create an audience like that, they will tell you what they want or you can sell them anything.”      Fitness Model to Fitness Business Her father was not too happy about the thought of his daughter modeling and preferred that she pursue her education. Being that modeling was financially lucrative at the time, Amanda Russell signed a contract with the Wilhelmina modeling agency, leading to her online fitness subscription business. “I became one of the very first fitness models. Wilhelmina opened the very first category in fitness, and when I say fitness, I don’t mean muscle and fitness like how they are seen back in the day. This was the first category in fitness that was like Cosmopolitan magazine or Self magazine, very lifestyle-y...Every time that I was on a shoot, they called you talent, and I hated that and it made me feel very insecure. I would try to hyper-compensate by being like, no I’m in business school. I’m going to have my own company, and started pitching every editor, every brand that you can think of.”   Business in the New Normal  During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, the discussion with Amanda Russell also moves into how business has been rapidly changing before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. “The world is changing so fast, and it is just getting faster and faster. So, you have to be agile. You can’t teach anymore the way that we used to teach. We can’t teach platform-specific. That platform will change. Algorithms change. The way we do business will change daily. So, you have to teach how to think, not a how-to. When you look at big companies hiring, especially graduate students and undergraduates, their biggest complaint across corporate America is that they don’t know how to critically think.”   Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Amanda Russell on social media: Linkedin Instagram Twitter Amanda Russell’s website: amandarussell.co 

Finding Your Summit

Amanda Russell: Model and fitness expert who had to figure it out. She came from a small town in Canada where one person told her the secret to getting out which ultimately let to becoming a PhD at University of Texas.

155: Joe Kelly: Former NFL Linebacker and  and All-Star Player, gives his take on the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter response, his own experiences with racial profiling as an African American professional athlete, and the systemic biases that need to change.    Joe Kelly  Host Mark Pattison met Joe Kelly at the University of Washington. Since then, Joe Kelly has had an 11-year NFL career with the Cincinnati Bengals, New York Jets, Los Angeles Raiders, Los Angeles Rams, Green Bay Packers, and Philadelphia Eagles. But Jim’s success on the field didn’t protect him from racial discrimination off of the field as an African American man. “This isn’t something that is new for the African American community. It is just now that it is being taped. If we can go back to what half of America thought was very controversial with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. We as African Americans understood it was never about the flag. That is a discussion that needs to be had as well because it wasn’t about disrespecting the flag, disrespecting the national anthem. His focus was on what you saw in Minneapolis 7 days ago with Mr. Floyd. We are talking about the things that we as African Americans deal with, regardless of your financial status. Still, when you walk out of that door, you are black. When you come out of that locker room, you’re black. When you cash that $1 million check, you’re black.”   On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Joe Kelly about how history keeps repeating itself with racial oppression and what Joe Kelly has experienced with his own eyes. “In my own neighborhoods, I didn’t really have that problem growing up. But it wasn’t until I got to the NFL and I was making money that I started personally dealing with being racially profiled, being stopped and not getting a ticket, but having a gun put to my head. That happened to me 6-7 times. I never got a ticket. But I fit the description. So, what we’re talking about here, regardless of what Mr. Floyd did 10 minutes prior to the video. For 9 minutes, for 9 minutes the police had their knee on his neck and basically murdered the guy. But this isn’t anything new to us.”     What You Will Learn: Joe highlights the economic inequities that exist against African Americans. “When you talk about generational wealth, the African American community has never really been allowed, for years, to be able to be put in that category because they weren’t initially allowed to own homes and the banks wouldn't allow them or loan money to them to buy the homes. They started businesses. They couldn’t get loans to start businesses. So, you always stay at a point where you are always below the poverty level.”  Equality and change takes people of all races. “This thing has galvanized. Even with the Civil Rights movement we had pockets of the United States, cities. There are countries. We have countries right now, and you have 50% of the people out there protesting are caucasian. So, when we made the changes in the Civil Rights, it wasn’t just because of us protesting and rioting, because at the end of the day we didn’t have power with the politicians. We had to get out there and vote. You have to vote for people that are going to change policies.” There has been a long-wronging history of police brutality against African Americans. “Here, being a first-round pick, being racially profiled and having guns put to my head at routine stops. We’re trying to let everybody understand that plight of police brutality, and they don’t have to have a reason. You’ve seen the caucasian kid that went in and murdered wonderful African Americans in South Carolina. When they caught him, they eventually got Burger King for him. He wasn’t thrown to the grown. He wasn’t brutally maimed.”  Joe Kelly explains white privilege and how he has had to carry himself out in public in order to deal with it safely. “White Americans need to understand, not just White Supremacy because those are people way on the right, white privilege. You know, there is white privilege. Me being an African American man, I’ve been in the elevator, being the only African American in the elevator and I have to purposely make other people, other white people on the elevator feel comfortable because I don’t want them to think that I’m this angry black man and that they have to worry about getting robbed. That is ingrained.”  Black Lives Matter is about African Americans having equal opportunities, equal legal and justice treatment, and equal economic equity. “Understand that when we say Black Lives Matter, we’re not saying that your life doesn't matter, my life is more important than yours. We want to be equal. We’re not hollering because we want to be superior to you. We’ve been trying to fight for 400 years to say that we are your equal. We want to have equal access to housing. We want to have equal access to jobs. What we’re talking about here is being able to open up a business, getting a bank loan, the judicial system. Talking about black-on-black crime, when black folks kill black folks, they go to jail for a long time. It is working in that aspect. But it is not working when a black person is killed at the hands of a police officer.”    Unequal Education Systems  There is a huge disparity between schools in poverty-stricken black inner city neighborhoods and wealthy white neighborhoods. “When you are growing up with an educational system that is so inferior to a school that is probably five minutes away. Those kids have better teachers. They have better resources. They have better extra-curricular activities. Where here, kids are coming to school in inner city areas, they come to school hungry. My kids, I’ve been doing group homes since I retired and my kids go to school and the books they bring home. They had this book in the 80s when I was in school. It starts there. It starts with the educational system, getting to some point where it is fair.”    Change is Needed   During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, the discussion with Joe Kelly also delves into the importance of true racial change and unity around this issue. “The African American community can in no way do this by ourselves systemically. This has been part of our society since the beginning, before slavery. It isn’t changing overnight. You would think after Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights that we wouldn’t be discussing what happened to Floyd. That should be so far from reality. But that is our reality.”   Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Joe Kelly’s website for K.E.L.L.Y. Youth Services: kellyyouthservices.com 

Joe Kelly: Former first round draft pick and teammate of mine, Joe Kelly speaks up about Black Lives Matter. Very powerful convo including former Head Coach Jim Mora on the pod. Joe details what it has been like to be black in America.

154: Yogi Roth: Analyst on the Pac-12 Network, Creator of the Life Without Limits podcast, Author and Filmmaker, and Hugh Millen: Ex-NFL Player and Football Analyst at Seattle’s Sports Radio 950 KJR talk about ways that football teams, players, coaches, and conference are adapting to COVID-19.    Yogi Roth and Hugh Millen  How does returning guest to the show Yogi Roth feel about the word ‘limits?’ “To me I never believed in limits, right? You can’t play major college football? Screw you, I’m going to play it.  You can’t coach at SC. Yeah, I can, watch me. You can’t call big games. Watch me. Like, that was always a mindset. But, now it’s like, well if our 5-year-old is like, ‘Hey, I want to go bombing down the street on my bike at rush hour.’ There are limits around that, dude. That’s not allowed.”  On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Yogi Roth, Analyst on the Pac-12 Network, Creator of the Life Without Limits podcast, Author and Filmmaker, as well as Hugh Millen, Ex-NFL Player and Football Analyst at Seattle’s Sports Radio 950 KJR. Hugh Millen shares his opinion on both of his athletic sons’ coping with the restrictions that have emerged in response to COVID-19. “You control the controllables, and we don’t know what is going to happen with this pandemic, and the one thing we can control is our response to it, our attitude about it. Whether it is a few months like we have had or a few more months, whatever it is, it is our choice.”   What You Will Learn: Yogi Roth talks about growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania with his mom’s parents being holocaust survivor’s and how that pushed him to be strong, resilient, and to never give up. “The harder it was, the more obstacles that came in front of me, the more joy I would get out of it and it wasn’t healthy at first because it became about proving others wrong. But, eventually as an adult, it has turned into proving myself right. That is a challenge I think every athlete and competitor probably goes through in some form. Most of us deal with that later in life. I try to tell high school kids, deal with that now because it is much more of an enjoyable process.” How is Hugh Millen controlling his attitude as a dad around his kids losing a season or even playing amid the pandemic? “It is two-fold in different ways. My oldest son at Oregon, it is actually somewhat of a blessing for us selflessly that he is home now, and so, what I’m doing I’m out there throwing with him, coaching him up and he is coming off an injury, a shoulder surgery. So, we’re making sure his mechanics are where he needs to be.”  Hugh Millen discusses talking about sports careers with his kids. “First of all I say, ‘What is your goal?’ If they just tell me one time, hey, I don’t want to be an NFL quarterback, then I change. When they say I want to be an NFL quarterback, my first response is, get in line. Right, Yogi? You aren’t going to talk it into existence. You are going to work it into existence, and it is going to get into how do you prepare and how do you perform. Very simple. It is as simple as that and that will declare whether or not you have that opportunity. But, the message I try to say is, let your work ethic match your goals.” What is Yogi Roth hearing as the path for college football after the pandemic? “I interviewed every head coach last week in the conference. Talking to a bunch of people. Everybody is optimistic. Like, there is this narrative out there that, yes the SEC is going to play. They don’t care. They’re going to put fans in the stands. You're in Texas, fans in the stands. But in the Pac-12, they’re not going to play, and that is the furthest thing from the truth. The truth is, is that everyday the conference commissioners get on the phone, along with their liaisons, with their support staff, medical representatives, etc, and everyday the people leading the conversation around the medical side of COVID-19 and college football are the people on the west coast. It is the Pac-12 conference.” Hugh Millen makes an insightful point about convenience versus fatality as it pertains to COVID-19 by using flu season deaths as an example. “If we really cared about cutting those deaths down, we could have said our entire lives, none of us grew up wearing masks on an airplane. But it could have been. There is another universe that we could have lived in where all of our lives we were used to wearing masks during flu season, because we want to say, wait a minute, 40,000 deaths is not tolerable for the flu. We have to try to cut that done.”   Post-Pandemic Sports Fans   Yogi Roth talks about what college football stadiums might look like in the fall. “Fans in the stands? Packed? I don’t know how many fans are going to want to be in the stands, packed. I don’t know. I’m sure conferences will make those decisions as we get closer. But, I don’t see that decision being made until two weeks prior to the first game.”    High  School Football During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, the discussion with Yogi Roth and Hugh Millen also delves into high school football fans and players. Hugh Millen says “Our head coach doesn’t know anything in terms of what is going to transpire because the people above him don’t know. The principal doesn’t know, the superintendents of the schools. Again, it is going to be above the paygrade of any football people I would assume. But, what I do hope is, and I do have a little bit of concern,. But it is an unfounded concern. Then maybe in a few months I will gain more wisdom and I will say, hey, I should have not been concerned.”    Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Yogi Roth on social media: Linkedin Instagram Twitter Yogi Roth’s website: yogiroth.com Life Without Limits podcast: yogiroth.com/podcast Hugh Millen on Sports Radio KJR: sportsradiokjr.iheart.com/featured/hugh-millen 

Yogi Roth + Hugh Millen : Pac 12 analyst Yogi Roth + 10 year NFL QB Hugh Millen break down what college football might look like when the pandemic lifts...

153: Scott Mellin: Global General Manager of Performance Sports and Global General Manager of Mountain Sports at The North Face talks about the adjustments that a company as massive as this outdoor equipment and apparel staple has been able to make during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Scott Mellin  How does guest Scott Mellin go about running the mega huge brand The North Face? “It is an interesting role that I have in the company. We basically operate with two business territories. So, if you thought about the larger $3 billion The North Face brand, it is split into the mountain sports, which I manage and then into lifestyle, which I have a contemporary that manages that side of the business. So, when you see our products show up on Hypebeast or with a Supreme collab, he manages that. When you see it on the back of an athlete on Losity or Everest or Meru, I manage that part of the business.” On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Scott Mellin, Global General Manager of Performance Sports and Global General Manager of Mountain Sports at The North Face. He talks about the role he holds at the company. “Quite honestly, the role is mostly specific to product innovation, and so my focus day-to-day is to develop products that help our athlete team, push the limits of exploration, and those technologies that we develop through our innovation process ultimately find their way into products that end up at Dick’s Sporting Goods.”    What You Will Learn: Scott Mellin talks about what it is like being in Aspen and the assumptions that people commonly make about it. “This place has a unique gravity to it. These mountains are largely unexplored. People think of Aspen as a posh fur and champagne place. We have 14 14ers in our backyard with some of the most hairiest skiing you’ll ever imagine and so the benefit of that is that I’m able to attract our global athlete team here into Aspen, to stay in my house, to spend time with my family and I, and we spend a lot of time in the mountains together just talking. Those conversations vary from what do you want to do in your life to what is your next big objective, to what are we not making that is servicing your needs in the Alpine?” The North Face has the resources and opportunity to create powerfully durable fabrics to handle the great outdoors. “Typically, what we are trying to solve for our markets is total white space, and so, I will use Futurelight as an example. This is a textile that we introduced in Fall ‘19 we thought would really radically change the marketplace. The reason that came to fruition was because we tapped into an unsolved need for the athlete team.” Scott Mellin understands the importance of having experience on your side when tackling the challenges of mountain climbing. “The reality of experience is so powerful because you are able to read the weather. You are able to read the snow. You are able to read the rock. You are able to read your teammates. All of those factors come into your system of dress because you don't want to get hypothermic. You don’t want to get wet at the base layer level. You don’t want to get cold because it is really hard to recover, especially at the altitude that you’re working at. So, it is a constant mindgame of reading the mountain, the weather, your team, and the speed that you are moving at in order to not only achieve your objective, but to come out safely.”   How has COVID-19 affected Scott’s love of the mountains? “We’ve been kind of lucky during COVID. Slight pivot here on your topic. The mountain towns like Sun Valley also basically emptied out. There is nobody in the mountains, and I’ve spent more time in the mountains in the last two months than I probably did all of last year. I travel a lot. I’m in mills and I’m in factories and so forth to bring these innovations to fruition. But, to be home for two straight months, just working in the mountains has been a blessing in disguise from COVID quite honestly.”  Scott Mellin talks about the ways in which The North Face has managed their physical brick and mortar storefronts during the quarantine spawned on by the coronavirus. “It is an interesting moment that obviously none of us have experienced before in our professional careers. We operate, as a brand, about 1200 stores around the world and the vast majority of those are shuttered right now. E-commerce makes up a percentage of our business. But, it is not driving enough gross margin and net income to pay for the entire operation. But, we are fortunate to be owned by a much larger entity, VF Corp. VF Corp had going into this an extremely strong balance sheet with a very high level of liquidity, and they have pledged, really a people-first approach. So, even though our stores have been closed around the world for the better part of 6 weeks now, we continue to pay all of our retail associates.”    Snowboarding vs. Skiing  Scott Mellin talks about how skiing has pulled away from snowboarding in popularity. “Today, snowboarding, based on all of our data points, represents about 25% of participation on the mountains, resort access. So, it’s definitely cooled off significantly. I think at the same time, ski equipment has gotten significantly better in terms of shaped skis, fat skis. Boots have gotten significantly more comfortable, which was an early allure to snowboarding, which was the comfort of the boots.”   Getting Back to Work  During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Scott Mellin also discusses how he sees the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic rolling out for him at The North Face in terms of bringing his employees back to work. “It is kind of a complex, layered strategy because stores are dispersed around the world and you drop from like a federal country level and their mandates down to cantons, to provinces, to counties, or in our case in the U.S. to states and counties. Everyone has a different policy. Fortunately, the way that our retail environments or our retail org designs are stacked is you have store associates, store managers, district managers, that can manage all of the individuality.”    Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Scott Mellin on social media: Linkedin Instagram  

Scott Mellin: How the Global GM of North Face has navigated the Coronavirus as this amazing brand continues to flourish...

152: Laurie Adami: 13-year Cancer Survivor, Software Company President, CAR-T Trial Patient, and Immunotherapy Fundraiser talks about overcoming cancer after the struggle of relapsing seven times.  Laurie Adami  Laurie Adami not only a 13-year cancer survivor, but she fought and overcame 7 cancer relapses during the course of that fight for her life. Before this tumultuous experience began, she unfortunately had her gut feelings ignored by doctors. “I was 46-years-old and, as you said, I was running a company. It was a financial services company, traveling a lot. Every month, on the road, London, New York, Boston, wherever. I had a little kid who was 4-5-years-old, and I just started to get really tired. I just thought something was really wrong. I couldn’t get the doctors to take me seriously. I think it was a combination of the fact that I have blonde hair and maybe there are hypochondriacs out there or something. But, definitely my concerns were dismissed, over and over and over again.”   On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Laurie Adami, 13-year Cancer Survivor, Software Company President, CAR-T Trial Patient, and Immunotherapy Fundraiser. Laurie wisely trusted her instincts and worked with a doctor that finally diagnosed her with the source of her bad feelings. “I just knew in my heart that something was really wrong with me. Come to find out, I had to finally get rid of the doctors I was seeing who would not listen to me and go to a whole new set of people, who finally send me in for a CT scan, and come to find out, I had a mass the size of a grapefruit in my abdomen, and I was stage 4 cancer. It was throughout my body, in my lungs, on my scalp, in my teardrop ducks, in organs. It was everywhere.”    What You Will Learn:   What exactly was this rare form of cancer that Laurie Adami was dealing with? “Here I am, whoa, wait, I’m not ok. Come to find out, it’s an incurable type of cancer. So, it was a form of blood cancer, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, that I was told, ‘look on the bright side, it is treatable.’ And I would say, ‘yeah, but it is not curable.’ ‘No, it is not curable, but it is treatable.’ Well, that is all fine and good. But, if the treatment works, and you can get a break, and you can be well.”   Which type of treatment did Laurie proceed with? “But unfortunately for me, the story was, I would get a treatment, and then it would come right back. So, I was what they call, a frequent relapser. This diagnosis back in 2006 was something, at the time, that had a brute force chemotherapy treatment and a bunch of other things that they were trying. But nothing was really that effective yet. So, that’s when I learned that it wasn’t such a pretty picture.”    Laurie Adami opens up about what it was like to be a mother facing the potentially fatal dilemma of stage 4 cancer. “I just lost it. I immediately thought of my kid, right? My little boy who was 5 at the time, and immediately thought, oh my God, he is not going to have a mom, because one of the things that were being painted to me as a possibility was fatal in a month. Like no treatments. That was like, boom, you're done. So, that is of course where my brain starts to go.”   At the time, physically speaking, did Laurie feel worse having this form of cancer infested all over her body or chemotherapy drips that are like poisoning herself to cure herself? “I didn’t feel that rotten on chemotherapy. Now, there are so many things that they can give you to prevent side effects. So, for example, I never got nauseous. So, that to me, you know, I didn’t feel great. I was tired. That was probably my biggest complaint was the exhaustion. But, I quickly decided if I kept moving I would feel better physically.”   Laurie talks about some of the nightmare scares that occurred during her cancer battle. “I had some scary stuff happen. Like the day after my chemotherapy, I developed a urinary blockage and I had to go to the ER, and then a couple of weeks later I got a blood clot in my lung and I had to go to the ER. So, there was stuff that I had to deal with. But, I kind of looked at it like, you know what, this is really like a bump in the road. This is going to end, and even if I feel crappy, it is going to end.     Never Giving Up    Laurie Adami shares her personal passion and motivation to survive and overcome the painful grips of cancer. “Bottom line, I kept thinking about my son, you know? I kept thinking. I had someone say to me, ‘oh, kids lose their moms all the time and they are fine.’ And I was like, that’s not ok. That is not ok. My thoughts just keep coming back to my son, and my husband would say, ‘Well, what about me? You aren’t worried about me?’ I was like, you will find another wife. But a child can’t get another mom. They have one.”    CAR T Immunotherapy    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Laurie Adami also talks about the treatment that she was able to benefit from, which is being currently looked at as a direction to go in for potentially helping those being stricken by COVID-19. “It is CAR T Immunotherapy. It stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy. They are calling it like the discovery of penicillin, or the development of the polio vaccine. It is amazing. I heard about this first in 2011 and I told my oncologist at the time, ‘you have to keep me alive so I can live to get CAR T, because I had such a different feeling about it. Because, it is taking your actual immune system, making your immune system smarter, putting it back in your body and having it attack the cancer, and only the cancer. So, I have no long-term side effects from CAR T.” Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Help Laurie Adami Raise Money for Immunotherapies: bit.ly/cartsupergirl Laurie Adami on Twitter: Twitter  

Laurie Adami: This SuperGirl came back from cancer 7 times before overcoming with new treatments. Now she wants to bring dollars and awareness with plans of climbing to Everest base camp so she can help others. What an inspiration...

151: Jim Mora: 25-Year NFL Former Head Coach, Assistant Coach, and Defensive Coordinator talks about overcoming the challenges of changing teams, finding the inner motivation and inspiration when times feel bleek, and having the flexibility to keep moving forward.  Jim Mora Jim Mora opens up this episode by addressing the COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted all of our lives, and he shares some advice on how to manage our expectations while staring ahead into the unknown. “I believe as human beings there is a strength to us that allows us to overcome and I think this concept of embracing uncertainty is very difficult. It runs counter to who we are and what we believe. But, it is so important right now, because if you don’t embrace uncertainty and look for the good in what is happening, you are going to spiral, and I see so many great things happening.”    On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Jim Mora, 25-Year NFL Former Head Coach, Assistant Coach, and Defensive Coordinator. Jim Mora talks about how adverse situations reveal who we are when we come face-to-face with them. “Adversity turns weak people into victims and strong people into competitors. We all are going to go through adversity, different types in our lives, different levels. But weak people shrivel, you know, lay on their couch and watch TV, or hide or look for an out, and it takes a strength of character to compete in adverse times.”     What You Will Learn:   Jim Mora believes that our attitude and mindset are key factors when it comes to experiencing hard things. “I think I’m like everybody. I have some really good days and I have some really challenging days. The fight is to always work through those challenging days and make sure the next day is a better day, and I have always been a ‘glass is half full’ guy. But sometimes that is hard when you get fired. I got fired at UCLA.”    Why is coaching so important to Jim Mora in his life?  “I don’t know what is up next for me. I hope that it is coaching. The reason I love to coach is that I love to have an effect on people. But if it isn't coaching, it will be something else where I can influence people.”   Jim Mora explains the way that he differentiates between sacrifices and commitments and investments.“If you want to get somewhere, you have to make an investment. You have to make a commitment. It is not a sacrifice. A sacrifice to me is not a positive word. It is a negative word, where investment and commitment are powerful, positive words. I am going to make a commitment.”    Opportunity and preparation are two key components to the success of any champion. But, they both aren’t things that we can personally guarantee. Jim Mora walks us through how we can approach opportunity and preparation. “You don’t always control opportunity. But you do control preparation. You can always be ready. You can always be learning. You can always be trying to get better. You know, for me as a coach,  I’ve always, as you know, stored a lot of information. I always had a plan in place.    How did the NFL superstar of the San Francisco 49ers Ron Lott’s champion-level approach to playing football transition over to his approach to life? “I will say this about Ronnie, I got the great pleasure of meeting Ronnie when I was in high school. My dad was recruiting him at the University of Washington and he ended up going to USC. As we all know, great career there, great career in the NFL, Hall of Famer, now a great businessman. You know Ronnie. Ronnie never compromises his standards, and I think that is one of the things that makes him so successful. That doesn’t mean he can’t be fluid and he can’t be flexible. But, he doesn’t compromise what he believes in, and what he believes in has worked for him. He treats people with great respect, with dignity. He is always honest.”    Pressure is a Privilege    What is Jim Mora’s key advice to people that are making the transition from high school to college? “It is still considered a game. But you have just entered into the world of business, and the expectations and the demands that are going to be put on you are far greater than any you have ever had in your athletic career, and I say, embrace that. I say, it is a lot of pressure. But, pressure is a privilege. You have attained something through your work ethic, through your talent, through your attitude, your mindset, that has allowed you to get a scholarship to go play college football, and there is a lot of pressure with that. But, man, what a privilege it is to be in that situation.”    30 Hall of Fame Players    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Jim Mora also talks about the commonalities he noticed that the greatest NFL football players hold dear. “In my NFL career, I was fortunate enough to be around. I believe it is 30 members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and they were all talented. Everyone in the NFL is talented, has physical gifts. But what made the great ones great and what made the great ones Hall of Famers, was their mindset, the standards they held themselves to, and the standards they held other people to, the work ethic that was beyond reproach, that once again, they never compromised. It was just part of their being.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Jim Mora: Linkedin 

Jim Mora: Former NFL and College Head Coach Jim Mora talks about putting yourself in the best position for life after Covid-19 when we all emerge out of this virus

150: Ed Rush: CEO of Ed Rush & Associates, Speaker, Advisor, Author of The 21-Day Miracle, Speaker, and Marine Corp Fighter Pilot from the Top Gun program talks about overcoming early struggles in elementary school to becoming a successful F-18 pilot and entrepreneur.  Ed Rush Where did Ed Rush’s qualities of vision, clarity, and mission really begin to kick in?  “My number one goal in life is to fulfill the calling that I feel like GOD has put me on this earth to do, and so I wake up in the morning with ‘mission’ on my mind. That is why I think that the military was functionally such a good place for me. It wasn’t always easy. I failed kindergarten. I don’t like admitting that fact, frankly. But, it is a fact that I wasn’t always the sharpest tool in the shed growing up. Got in trouble quite a bit. But, I found my way into the marine corp, found my way into the cockpit of the F-18. So, something went right. Yeah, mission was really, and still is really, a big part of the driving focus behind my life.”    On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Ed Rush, CEO of Ed Rush & Associates, Speaker, Advisor, Author of The 21-Day Miracle, Speaker, and Marine Corp Fighter Pilot from the Top Gun program. Ed Rush opens up about two of the most important mentors in his life, his father who was a basketball referee in the NBA, and his mother, who is in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a basketball coach. “1972, the year that I was born, she (Ed’s mom) was coaching a small Catholic university in Pennsylvania, their girls basketball team, and they were awful until my mom showed up. The year she showed up they went to the national championship, and the next year they went to the national championship and won, and that was the year she was pregnant with me. She went on to win three national championships.”   What You Will Learn:   How did the Marine Corp prepare Ed Rush for the fly that he is able to live right now? “I went into the Marine Corp and had this amazing group of mentors, starting with drill instructors, who I thought hated me. But, I found out later on that they were training me to live. Like, they were teaching me not to die, you know? Then I had flight instructors, who I thought hated me and I found out that they didn’t hate me, they loved me, to the point of which they weren’t going to let me make mistakes. Really, all those things put together, turned me into a good human being, and a good dad, and a good husband, and a good pilot, and a good speaker.”   What is Ed’s perspective on making mistakes and gaining an acute sense of focus? “The interesting thing about flying airplanes, and it is true for life, is that it is not so much about not making mistakes. Pilots, by no means, are not flawless. It is just what you do with those mistakes. I think that most pilots would admit that every flight is a constant adjustment, every little move. When you are dogfighting for example, you are turning at about 60 degrees-per-second. Every single move, every twitch, requires a second adjustment after that.”    You will get to hear Ed Rush share personal stories of what it took to learn how to fly and land airplanes during his Top Gun flight training. “I landed, and as I rolled out of the aircraft carrier I breathed this big sigh of relief and realized that I was alive. Now, I would love to tell you that I was alive because I was the second coming of Iceman, Val Kilmer from Top Gun. But the truth is, I’m alive because of a really great idea taken into implementation, and the truth is, I’m alive because of training. We were talking about just the pure discipline of just getting it done. Sometimes training is nothing more than repetition.”   Ed Rush offers a great comparison between seeing the reflection of stars and the curve balls that life can throw you every day. “When you fly out over the ocean, especially if the ocean is fairly calm, the stars actually reflect off of the ocean and it gives you this parallax that you, for a moment, your brain thinks, man, I must be pointed directly up. So, there is a lot of pilots that actually push their airplanes down, thinking that the ocean that they are looking at are actually stars.”   Ed looks at the down time during the global coronavirus quarantine as an opportunity for people to either get lazier or get better, and why some of the best growth opportunities take place when you are terrified. “I remember when I was a freshman in high school, I showed up and there were all these seniors there, and I’m like, you got to be kidding me. I’m going to smash into all of these guys? Pushing through that terror is what made you catch that ball in that big game. People think, oh man, you must feel a lot of pressure when you are out there on the big stage. No, you don’t feel the pressure when you are out on the big stage. You feel the pressure when you are getting your nose slammed by a guy that weighs a hundred pounds more than you in the first practice.”    Life After the Marine Corp   What made Ed Rush change his mind about flying airlines after being a fighter pilot? “Most fighter pilots end up flying for the airlines. It is easily one of the strangest transitions that I can imagine. You have these guys and gals that are the tip of the spear, trained at the super high level, massive reactions, incredible discipline and training, and then they go off and basically fly a bus for the next 20 years. I don’t mean to be disparaging about that. But, I will just tell you, a lot of thanks goes to my wife. I was getting out of the Marine Corp in 2006, and I was sitting on the couch and I had already put in applications for UPS, and FedEx, and some other airlines, were on the way to try and get an airline job, because that is basically what everybody did. In the middle of a movie that my wife and I were watching she stops the movie and she looks at me and says, is this really what you want to do? I had actually never thought about that question until she asked me, and I go, actually ‘no.’”   Life is like a Missile    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Ed Rush also explains why he believes that the changes we have to make in life and in business are similar to a missile: “When you watch a sidewinder missile, it actually moves, it is always turning on its way to the target, making smaller and smaller corrections as it gets closer. But, as it is in business, in life, in achieving your goals, two things happen. Number one, you never start the right way. You always start in some direction on the way. But, it is never the right way. The second thing is, the target begins to move.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Ed Rush’s Website: EdRush.com Ed Rush’s Book: EdRushBook.com  

Ed Rush: Ed Rush is a former Top Gun pilot who now speaks to milions on what he learned about vision, clarity & mission. Great conversation as we deal with the Coronavirus and what we can all do...

149: Tracy Perlman: NFL Senior Vice President of Football Communications and Marketing, working in football operations, talks about her over 27 years of NFL experience as a woman in a male-dominated multi-billion dollar arena and building the NFL Legends Community.    Tracy Perlman  Tracy Perlman has had multi-facilitated and invigorating career in the National Football League. She talks about her navigation process, going from college to the NFL. “I started at the NFL the day after I graduated from college. It was literally my 22nd birthday and it was the day after graduation and I walked into an office. It felt very ‘mom-and-pop.’ I say that meaning, it felt like I walked into a family atmosphere. When you start at the NFL working where I did, I worked in HR, and people say, you worked in HR? But the job was called a ‘floater.’ So, I was able to work in every department at the NFL over a span of 10 months to try and really understand it, and a floater was essentially a temp. So, whenever someone was out I would sit in that department and work in that department for however long necessary. So, for me, it was a learning experience and I got to really understand the NFL, the way that it functioned, what all the departments are.”   On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Tracy Perlman about the expansion of her career at the NFL for over 27 years, in such a massive economic ecosystem. “I don’t think people understand how much it takes to put on the National Football League. You’ve got a PR department. You have a media department. You have NFL Films. We didn’t have the network or the website at the time, because it was so long ago. You have an HR department. You have a broadcasting department. So, I was able to work in all of these areas and sort out where I really wanted to be. The thing about the NFL is, if you are passionate about what you do, and you really care about it, and you are learning every day, there is a way forward all the time.”   What You Will Learn:   What made Tracy Perlman zoom in on the marketing department? “After working for NFL Films for a while, working for NFL Enterprises, I ended up working in the Marketing and Sponsorship department and working on a lot of different things. I started to aggregate all of these things that no one was handling. So, we took over some of the promotional stuff. All of a sudden, who is doing all of the player appearances? Wait a minute, who is doing all the hospitality? We started to build this entertainment marketing area, and within entertainment marketing, I got to do everything from product-place merchandise in movies, to running the Draft Day movie, to the Broadway show Lombardi. But, I also started to work a lot with NFL players, both current and legend. As I started to do that, I realized, that is really where my passion was and working with players that inspire people every day. People don’t understand, a player is fighting for his job every single day.”    Tracy Perlman talks about the reverence she feels about working to create the NFL Legends Community. “The thing that I am most proud of is building the Legends Community. Not booking YouTube for Super Bowl Halftime or any of those other things. It is really building a program where I got to work with legends, where the NFL started to build a partnership with players, because we should be celebrating and honoring the men who built the game.”     What are some of the elements that make up Tracy Perlman’s sense of mission and purpose at the NFL these days? “I now run the entire player vertical so that once you have an engagement with the NFL, regardless of how old you, we want to make sure that you always have the best experience you can ever have, and that means, whether you are 6-years-old or 60-years-old. So, we want to make sure that when you start playing the game, being a fan of the game, that your engagement with the game is inspirational and something that you are always proud of.”   What is the focus behind the NFL Legends Community? “What we wanted to do is make sure there was continuity. We never wanted a guy to feel like the door closed. Our thought was, ‘once a player, forever a legend,’ and we decided that we couldn’t just create something. So, we brought 24 people who played the game to New York, including Chad Pennington, and Leonard Wheeler, and John Randle, and we sat in a room for six hours trying to sort out, what is this? The more we began to talk, the more it became completely apparent that the NFL’s relationship with legends was transactional. At the time, I think we were calling everybody ‘former players.’ It was transactional. It was, I have an appearance. Do you want to do it. Here is money, and then we probably wouldn’t talk to you for quite some time.”    From ‘Former Players’ to ‘Legends’    Tracy Perlman defines what makes the members of the NFL Legends Community elite. “The way we structured it was really to celebrate, engage, embrace, and communicate with every former player we could talk to, and the reason why we called it The Legends Community is simply because every player who has ever played this game at the highest level, is the top 1% . So, if you think about 100 years of NFL football, and only about 14,000 guys who played two or more seasons, and maybe 25,000 guys who played total, that is the top 1%. So, we wanted to make sure guys felt special. Which is why the word ‘legend’ is where we ended up.”    Exceeding Expectations   During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Tracy Perlman also explains the ways in which the growth of the NFL Legends Community truly exceeded her expectations. “We are actually at 10,300 registered legends in the community, and the thing about that that is important is they are actually engaging. Meaning, we send out a newsletter monthly; 70% open rate on the newsletter. Anybody who sends out emails and newsletters will tell you that is extraordinary. Last year 4300 legends went back to team events, 4300 guys. So, we are seeing the guys really engage. All of the use of every program has gone up. So, again, for us the idea is to help the transition out of the game to make sure that you understand the information, to make sure that you know that you can engage however you want, and to ensure that once you are engaged with us, we keep giving you relevant information and that it is clear.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Tracy Perlman’s Linkedin: Linkedin NFL Legends Community: players.nfl.com 

Tracy Perlman: Tracy is the SVP of NFL Communications and Marketing. She has been a huge part of developing the NFL Legends community while becoming a force within a male dominated sport. This is all about Girl Empowerment...

148: Josh Sprague: Founder & CEO of Orange Mud talks about the struggle of trying to live a balanced life outside of the usual 9-to-5 workflow, while being a husband and father that is simultaneously running a company.  Josh Sprague  Like most every brilliant business idea, there is an initial spark, a pain point that needs to be soothed. For Josh Sprague, it wasn’t just the typical focus on making money. He explains that it was the value that he placed on his time and his wife’s time. “We started Orange Mud about 8 years ago. It was actually on an adversity note. It was after we had our first boy, and he was 3 months old at the time. I had just finished an Ironman, and I basically wanted a way that, forgetting Orange Mud or anything else, I wanted a way that my wife or I both didn’t have to work mad hours. She was a corporate lawyer and I was a vice president of a medical device company.”    On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Josh Sprague, Founder and CEO of Orange Mud who gets into the nuts and bolts of his business. “Life is a special thing and you don’t want to screw it up by just never being around. It really kind of forced me to kick off an idea that I had set back in my head for a really long time which was a bottle-based hydration pack that would allow me to carry my fluids, my cash for the Beer Garden after a race, some electrolyte gels and maybe other back-up nutrition, and my car keys so when I train or race I had just the bare essentials.”   What You Will Learn:   How long has Orange Mud been a reality for Josh Sprague? “I thought that would be a cool little product to at least have as a side hobby. I thought at least it would keep my wife busy or myself busy. Who ever quit their day job? Then 8 years  later as of January 2012, is when we started, as of January of this year we have been in business 8 years and man, we’ve got over 100 SKUs on the market, and we have two kids now, and no more for sure. It has been a wild ride, designing packs for runners and cyclists all around the world.”   Orange Mud clearly has the mind of an active athlete begin it. What do Josh Sprague’s own athletic interests consist of? “My background was adventure racing, it was kind of the core of what one of my favorite sports is. I love to trail run. I love to mountain bike. But, adventure racing combines them both, plus navigation and rope work and all kinds of fun stuff.    Why did Josh Sprague decide to design the hydration packs for Orange Mud to be worn over the shoulders as opposed to around the waist? “The really cool part of all of that as a designer, even when I wasn’t a designer, is that I stared at my teammates' backs. You’re racing with a team, always, in adventure racing. You are only as fast as your weakest link, and that is just the way it is in adventure racing. I spent just tons of time behind my teammates running because I was usually one of the weaker runners, and paying attention to how the pack moved and where it moved. Something that I consistently noticed is that your upper torso just doesn’t move very much. It is basically just a slight up and down movement, and I always hated waist packs, like despised waist packs.”   Josh Sprague digs into the practical and health benefits of not utilizing a waist pack. “I cut a waist pack with water bottle holders apart. I took a ratchet strap from the back of my truck and I took a hotel sewing kit from one of my travels, and I sewed together this crude little concoction that was in my form that I wanted and mounted the bottle high up on my back. I believe that fluid should be stored on your back because that is where we carry weight. It doesn’t make sense to carry weight on your chest. It is pulling your neck down. It is pulling your spine down.”   If you are wondering how much money it cost Jeff to get started with Orange Mud, he has the answer. “It took $54,000, if I remember right, that first year, of investment between just trademarks and patents and design and all that stuff. But, we got our product launched. It took 10 months. We launched our first pack in October of 2012. In the end of 2012 at the Somo Half Ironman, and man, it just spiraled from there in the triathlon trail-running world.”   Going Full-time with Orange Mud   Josh worked his day job for the first three years of launching Orange Mud and his wife worked the first year and a half of the company being started. What was the conversion like for Jeff when he doubled down on Orange Mud and made it his full-time effort? “When I quit, I budgeted $100,000, and I had it just sitting. I’m like, you know what, we burn through this, there is a Plan B. Not sure what the Plan B was going to be. I would probably be going back to work. I wasn’t going to burn more than that. But, I knew if I could actually work 100 hours a week on Orange Mud as opposed to 80 at one company and 60 and nights and never sleep, I thought, surely I can actually make this more profitable.”   Market Growth    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Josh Sprague also talks about the ways in which Orange Mud has grown exponentially.  “We are distributed in about 40 countries now. I haven’t done the latest count. But, somewhere in that range. Mostly internationally it’s all packs, which is awesome, and then in the U.S. it’s mostly towels and packs of course, and the whole product line. So, the Running World article was a turning point for us, and again, managing that cash flow and staying on it like a hawk. It’s not that we don’t gambles. But, we are cautious as we grow.” Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Orange Mud Website: orangemud.com  Contact Orange Mud: sales@orangemud.com Orange Mud’s Social Media: YouTube Instagram Twitter Facebook 

Josh Sprague: Founder of Orange Mud talks about the challenges of work, play & life after starting a succesful startup and what it takes to succeed!

147: Kenyon Salo: Lead Trainer and Keynote Speaker of Kenyon Salo Speaking, ‘Checklist Destroyer’ and Founder of The Bucket List Life, and Denver Broncos Skydiver, talks about overcoming the fears that hold us back and embracing and committing to the unknown to reach our peaks of being phenomenal.  Kenyon Salo  Learn from Kenyon Salo how he embraces the mindset of looking uncertainty right in the face and pushing right through it. “I’ve always decided that nothing happens to me. It is how I react to it. And sure, I have my days where I am like, whoa, this is nuts and I’m being challenged by it. But, at the same time, I’m saying, well, what is the opportunity? And it is like something you said, the opportunity here. What is the opportunity to succeed? What is the opportunity to learn today? What is the opportunity to help somebody? What is the opportunity to make myself a better person? And just take a look at the world because, at the end of all of this, it will still be a shared experience that we will all talk about for years and decades to come, and it will be something like, wow, remember when? What did you do to get through it?”    On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Kenyon Salo, Lead Trainer and Keynote Speaker of Kenyon Salo Speaking, ‘Checklist Destroyer’ and Founder of The Bucket List Life, and Denver Broncos Skydiver, talks about what it means to him to be phenomenal. “Every single day we have an opportunity to decide how we are going to participate in that day. We can show up at 50%, 75%, or 100%. Ultimately, the way I look at it is, I’m alive. I have a day ahead of me. It is a day I didn’t know I had, and all of a sudden, my eyes open up. I’ve got a chance to take advantage of it.” What You Will Learn:   Kenyon Salo is one of five members of the Denver Broncos Thunderstorm Skydiving Team, which means he has done over 6000 skydives. He discusses the significance of this opportunity. “We’ve been doing it for over 10 years now and we are the only team that is associated with an NFL football team. Sometimes there is military, sometimes there is Red Bull for other stadiums. But, no other NFL team has a dedicated skydive team for every single home game, and we jump in coming in at 50 miles-an-hour, 60 miles-an-hour, down the stands, straight down the field and then landing right before the endzone and it is really all for the fans.”   What does skydiving do for Kenyon’s mindset in terms of the way he approaches his life? “Basically, what happens is, once we have exited the plane, that is the commitment. Well, what does that really say? It is really coming down to the fact that, all of our fears and all of our things that are keeping us from doing what we want to do in life is the story we create prior to the execution. Prior to the commitment. It is all ‘what if, what if, what if?’ But, what if you just took a leap and then let it all unfold?’    Where does Kenyon’s confidence to take a leap of faith time after time come from? “You say ‘yes’ and you let the ‘how’ figure itself out later. And so, that’s what happens. We exit the airplane, and it’s like, Bam! It’s game time. It's a mindset. You know about game time. You know what it takes to have that winning success, and that is really what it comes down to, is that we exit, game time, go, land on the field, high-five the fans on the way out, and we’re fired up, and that energy is there. So, they’re fired up. We’re fired up. Everybody wins.”   Kenyon Salo expresses what he means by living a ‘bucket list life.’ “The bucket list life is the concept that I came up with. It’s how I live my life and additionally it’s the exact concept that I share from the stage with audiences around the world. It has three very basic parts to it. The first part is, if you ever feel stuck in life, you just need to create an experience. Say ‘yes.’ Let the ‘how’ figure itself out later and create an experience.    What are the other two elements of Kenyon’s Bucket List Life philosophy? “The second part is to share more stories and share more stories is about connection. It is the opportunity to connect, to bond. It is about friends and family and relationships, and I believe that is really important because that is how we feel like we are somebody and we are able to learn, and we’re also able to share what we learn. Then it rolls into the last part which is living more fulfilled, and the way we live more fulfilled is by helping others.”     The Daily Bucket List Life    Kenyon Salo gives some insight into how he applies the Bucket List Life to his own life on a regular basis. “Ultimately, what it comes down to for me to feel phenomenal, like you said, not that many people are phenomenal, is that I need to be doing one, two, or three of those things at any given time and in any possible way. So, being on a podcast is sharing a story. I’m sharing my story and I’m able to share with you and hear your story and that type of thing. Now it is quite possible that this podcast could help somebody else. It is quite possible that somebody listening right now is going, that is exactly what I needed.”    When Skydives Stop   During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Kenyon Salo also talks about the circumstances that have prevented a few of his potential skydives from taking place. “In that scenario, we shouldn’t be there if that’s the case. So, have there been times when we have been over the stadium and we have had to back out of the jump and not actually get out of the plane and go back to the drop zone and land the plane? Yes, and that was because of weather conditions. Whether the clouds became too low all of a sudden, or there was a thunderstorm, or the winds gusted up, or for whatever reasons, we are unable to exit. You know, that usually happens about once a season when that becomes a factor. Sometimes we don’t even take off in those scenarios.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Kenyon Salo’s Website: kenyonsalo.com  Kenyon Salo’s Social Media: Linkedin | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram  

Kenyon Salo: How this public speaker & professional skydiver for the Denver Broncos helps us to navigate the Coronavirus.

146: Rocky Bleier: NFL Running Back with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Owner and President of Rocky Bleier Inc, and Managing Member of Bleier Insurance Group talks about going from getting drafted to play football in the NFL and suddenly getting drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Vietnam War.  Rocky Bleier   Rocky Bleier is from Appleton, Wisconsin, and was raised by his dad and lived above his family bar. “We also got a great coach which becomes important, a mentor, being at the right place at the right time, a guy by the name of Torchy Clark, who was a grade school basketball coach and had continuous winning records, got the high school job. He took a bunch of guys and in that period of time that we were in the conference we never lost a football, and we lost four basketball games. We became the number one team in the state of Wisconsin in football and the number one team in basketball.”  On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Rocky Bleier, NFL Running Back with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Owner and President of Rocky Bleier Inc, and Managing Member of Bleier Insurance Group. “All we can ask for in our lives is a chance and an opportunity and it is what you do with that opportunity and it is like the luck of the luck. Luck is based on what? Preparation, which means opportunity, it’s called luck.”   What You Will Learn:   Rocky Bleier explains how it was possible that he made the Pittsburgh Steelers team after being selected in the 16th round of the NFL draft. “I really, truly believe that the reason was primarily the fundamentals that I learned while I was at Notre Dame, how to read defenses, more importantly, how to block, pick up blitzes, and the thought process on the running ball. I wasn’t a fast guy.”   What was it like to make it to the Pittsburgh Steelers and then get drafted into the U.S. Army? “I got drafted by the military, it was December 2nd, 1968. So, I got a chance to play 10 of 14 games. We were getting ready for the 11th game and all of a sudden, Boom, I got that draft notification report the next morning at 7am to be inducted into the armed services.”   Rocky Bleier paints the picture of when he got wounded during the Vietnam War. “I see a hand grenade flying through the air and it hits my commanding officer right in the middle of the back. You could see it in slow motion going over and over and over and boom! Hits off of his back, bounces off of him and rolls towards me and I’m but three feet from him and I get up to jump and it blows up and it blows up through my right foot, knee, and thigh and it gets him between both legs. Then we were in another fire fight until a platoon finally fought its way down. The enemy retreated, maybe because we either wounded and/or killed their leader. But they all of a sudden withdrew. Thank God for whatever reason that happened.”    Rocky expresses what it felt like to get shot. “It was like, adrenaline took over. You get shot. Bam! It was a hit. It was like somebody punching you as hard as they could in your arm or your leg, and the second thing is that when the grenade went off, it blew me up in the air, you know, and I came down. My first thought was, is everything alright? My leg was there. Ok, fine. My foot hurt. My knee hurt. A guy came over. Nobody could give you anything. Nobody could give you a morphine shot at that time.”   Rocky Bleier shares a highly emotional story of revisiting Vietnam 50 years later where he was shot. “Wow, all of a sudden Mark, out of left field I get this emotional reaction from the bottom of the soles of my feet. I could just feel it coming up through my body. I’m confused. I don’t understand where it is coming from or why. It’s there. There is nothing that triggered it...except for the question of, how do I feel? I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry. All of a sudden I became kind of sick. It was like it was flushing my system.”   From the Battlefield to the Football Field   Coming back to football wasn’t as easy as it may have seemed. “I asked if I could go to training camp. Maybe I went back too soon. Who knows. And it took its toll and it took its beating. They kept me to the last cut. Chuck Knoll said, ‘We release you. Go home. Go do what you need to do. Come back next year. We will give you another shot at this. The next day I got a call from Dan Rooney who was then the president of the football club and he said, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there.’ He said, ‘I talked to Chuck. We aren’t going to take any room in his roster.’ He said, ‘But, we’re going to put you in injured reserve. I want our doctors to take a look at you again, and I think maybe there is something they can do. Hopefully you can help us at the end of the season.’ So, they bought me a year.”   Playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers   During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Rocky Bleier also talks about the importance of recognizing your talent and personalized skillset. We all have a talent, of one nature or another of how we can achieve and get to that point, and you have to understand what that talent may be. Different from anybody else's. But, it is yours, especially in what you do with it. Because of that one talent, my life came full circle. I got that opportunity to play and end up on one of the all-time great football teams.” Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Rocky Bleier: Linkedin 

Rocky Bleier: Former NFL great who served in Vietnam, was shot and then hit with a mortar and then came back to win 4 super bowls for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

145: Kevin Rutherford: CEO and Chief Eternal Optimist of Nuun hydration talks about growing his business insights and bouncing back from getting let go from one CEO position to landing his current role at Nuun and helping to spur its steady impressive financial growth.  Kevin Rutherford   Nuun is the second company where Kevin Rutherford has held the job title ‘Chief Eternal Optimist.’ He shares with Mark Pattison what this label means to him. “The truth is, we need to find the issues and fix them, and so I think sometimes when people see a title like ‘Chief Eternal Optimist,’ self-proclaimed by the way, I don’t know if my team agrees with me, hopefully they do, it doesn’t mean that everything is rosy, right? I think that is the myth. An optimist believes that we can solve it and we can continue to move forward. But, it doesn’t mean that everything is always great. In fact, far from it on many occasions. But, it takes the optimist to see the solutions. Otherwise, you're only going to see the problems and you’re only going to stay stuck there.” On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Kevin Rutherford, CEO and Chief Eternal Optimist of Nuun hydration. Hear how he explains the philosophy of having an ‘attitude of gratitude.’ “The attitude in going in with this ‘I’ve got this abundance mentality.’ So, a lot of gratitude becomes contagious within a team. And so, the reason I think that it is bigger than that is you can’t accomplish really almost any goal, including what you are about to take on right now. So, Everest is the last of the climbs that you are going to do. You couldn’t do it without a team to help you prepare and get ready for that.”   What You Will Learn:   Kevin Rutherford shares the importance of maintaining a strong team. “In my mind, culture is the single biggest advantage in any team. Business, sport, doing your case studies in grad school or something like that. Like, truly, the single most biggest advantage is all about the team. There is plenty of data that shows the accumulative IQ of a team is always much greater than an individual. And so, that is the greater part that truthfully gets me fired up. The product is one thing. What gets me fired up actually is getting the team rallying behind our cause.”   Was there a moment in time that Kevin Rutherford had in his past prior to Nuun, where the impact of gratitude struck him clearly? “I need to be part of a team as opposed to consulting because I’m not getting energy from that. I realized that I think I have a gift of connecting people and helping people and helping them accomplish maybe more than what they thought they could. I realised I didn’t know that until I really reflected, and an abundance mentality and gratitude gave me more confidence and then I stepped forward and put myself out there. So, I didn’t actually start Nuun.  But, I did take over well over six years ago.”   Does Kevin find pleasurable fulfillment in solving problems instead of being stuck in the office all day? “I didn’t realise it at the time when I first started moving forward in the Triathlon world with swim and bike and run. It is so meticulous, especially swimming for me, it is so technical in that you are always trying to perfect it, and the repetition. So, what ends up happening is by refining this skill to get fine-tuned to get more efficient at everything you are doing, over and over and over, and over again. It is these incremental gains and what ends up happening is you end up becoming sharper and your head becomes clearer because you are just so focused on that moment in time. I have found that it actually helps me in my work life. Because that sharpness, that ability to focus and concentrate then translates to when I’m in a discussion with somebody directly across me.”    Why can unplugging from technology strengthen our ability to focus? “The phones we have, the smart phones, are basically connected to us. They are an extension of our person. So, we’ve got all of this clutter, and imagine if you could take that completely away for 2, 3, or 4 hours depending, even longer if it is a weekend day actually. It is close to eight hours in a day. So, you take that and you are full-on focused. Like, the muscle that you are building with your brain by not getting all of this clutter of the world really does translate well. I’m a massive believer in integrating sports into your life and that will help you in your business.”    What exactly does Kevin Rutherford mean when he says, ‘culture is alive.’ “When I think about a thriving team and culture, there are many things that come into play. By the way, my belief on this one is ‘culture is alive,’ meaning, it is a living ecosystem that changes all the time. A person leaves your team, comes on the team. Culture is changing. An issue happens. A new competitor comes in. Something went wrong. Something is going right. It is changing. You have to feed it. It is not a checklist.     Adapt or Die   Kevin Rutherford gives us his perspective on being nimble enough in your field to adapt in our ever-changing world. “You need to adapt a little bit. Or, if you don’t adapt, you’ll die. So, in the business context, I love using the example of Kodak. Actually, do you know this? Kodak actually invented the digital camera. But, yet where is Kodak today? Because they basically had it but they kind of held on. They didn’t adapt as to where it was going, and so they thought well, if we hold onto this we are good to go. Then sure enough, the digital camera went and catapulted. They couldn’t actually get theirs on track because they waited.”    Projecting   During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Kevin Rutherford also talks about his career transition at Nuun and the business growth that flourished after his hiring, “I actually came in and said, I’m not changing anything right away. I need to figure out first of all what is going on and first and foremost, what is working. Because there is something that got us here to this spot. So, this is what I find really cool about the power of people and culture. Within the first two months, 60 days, I personally cannot do anything to change this. To be clear, I might be at the helm. It's a mindset that then drove execution and changed the trajectory of the company. Within 60 days we were already starting to truck long and grow faster, and we actually never slowed down since that point.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Kevin Rutherford: Linkedin Nuun: nuunlife.com 

Kevin Rutherford: Chief Eternal Optimist (CEO) of NUUN Hydration tabs and the keys to happiness. Get inspired...

144: Shawn Richardson: Life Coach for parents of special needs kids and an avid Mountaineer discusses how she managed to overcome an emotionally shattering unexpected divorce and arrived on the other side through the clarity that came with mountain climbing and being a heroine for her son Charlie who has autism.  Shawn Richardson  Shawn Richardson is a super woman who found her superpowers through the transformative clarity that comes with her passion for climbing mountains. But before this metamorphosis took place, first Shawn was married for over 23 years to a successful man that graduated from Harvard and managed a hedge fund, with whom she had three sons in high school with. What happened in 2008 when his hedge fund was decimated and much of their capital disappeared along with it? “It’s five years after 2008...I’m not seeing it happening and I’m not thinking about the end of our marriage. But, I’m getting resigned to the fact that life doesn’t feel so great. So, anyway, we are still very married at this point. He goes on a business trip to check on some residual investments in Thailand and came home and immediately told me that he wanted a divorce, and I was so surprised by this news, and I thought that it would pass, that it was just a moment of fear or something, a reaction that he was having and he would come down in the following days and come to his senses so to speak. It never happened. He kept saying every day, ‘I want a divorce. I’m actually moving to Thailand.’”  On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Shawn Richardson, life coach for parents of special needs kids and an avid mountaineer. Shawn discusses what pushed her to step into the fear of her situation and face it head-on. “I was trying to repair and prevent the divorce from happening and there was a very clear moment when I made the decision to not protect the marriage but protect myself and my children. So, that was a clear decision. I think a lot of people may face that moment when they’re trying to prevent a divorce from happening. Then there is that moment when they say, the divorce is going to happen, and I must think and make my decisions accordingly.”   What You Will Learn:   How did mountain climbing play a role in Shawn Richardson’s revitalisation process after the pain of her divorce? “I’m a big mountain climber like you. So, I grew up in Montana and climbed a lot during my college years. But, then I stopped all throughout my marriage, and after my divorce I ran into an opportunity to climb Whitney, and I just did it, just to get back into the mountains. No particular drive. Just to pursue the experience. I got on the summit and I stood up there and I was reminded after 25 years or however long it had been, how great it is, how amazing it feels to be on top of a mountain, and I said, ‘why aren’t I doing this all the time?’”    What was a pivotal moment in Shawn Richardson resetting her mindset into a more positive direction? “I studied spiritual psychology in L.A. for three years and the very first night of my very first class the teacher said, basically, that we are all divine souls using human experience for our learning and that everything happens for us, not to us, and that, in fact, we have chosen these experiences for our learning. That whole reframing, moving from victim consciousness I’m here to heal from a divorce, into how is this happening for me? What is my opportunity here? Moving into empowerment. That night was the moment, I drove home and I said, I can build whatever life I want for myself, and I set out to do that, and I have been doing that.”    Shawn Richard talks about the tumultuous elements of fear that bubbled up to the surface during her shock of divorce that she would later face directly. “I saw a very large transfer of money, six figures, leave our account and go to Thailand, and it was in that moment where I was WTF, yikes. So, I got to get a lot smarter here and I need to protect myself and my kids. I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know what is going on. So, that was the moment. You know, I didn’t even know how divorce worked. I knew nothing. While processing all the emotions of what was going on, my children not knowing what was happening at all. They knew nothing at this point. I also had to do the legal study of, what do you do? How do you get control over money so that it doesn’t all disappear?”    What is it about mountain climbing in particular that makes it such a force of healing for Shawn? “For me, the whole physicality of climbing, it is just a massive movement of energy. You are moving and processing so much energy when your body is traversing a mountain. Just that alone is an incredible experience. Anything stagnant in you, any feelings that are stuck, you just get agitated and move. So, I also find in the meditative movement, the step after step after step and the beauty of Mother Nature, just clarity, descends in my thinking. I am so clear in my priorities.”    Shawn Richardson has a 25-year-old son named Charlie that is autistic who is the lead singer in a band where every member has autism. What has this experience been like for her? “I think part of the reason that happened, my divorce, and everything that happened in my life actually, was to set me up for the new way in which I see Charlie and experience Charlie and know myself as his mother, and it is a way that I want to help others that are parenting children with special needs, if they are interested.”    Charlie’s Autism Diagnosis   Shawn walks us through that moment in her life when Charlie’s autism diagnosis became a reality. “There was very much a message given to me that I needed to fix him, and I actually had a very successful business that I was running, and the day that he was diagnosed, I closed down my business to fix Charlie. Nobody really knew what autism was or what you could do about it or what caused it. So, I went into a big learning mode, which is my M.O.. I went to work fixing him, pursuing every kind of therapy, trying everything. We homeschooled. It was insane.”    Projecting Unhappiness    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Shawn Richardson also talks about the work she does as a life coach for mothers and fathers of special needs sons and daughters and how she realised that she was projecting her own unhappiness onto Charlie. “I started thinking, why did his soul choose such a difficult existence? I was awed. Then I spent several weeks thinking about that as I was hiking, training for my next climb. I really came to the awareness that in fact, Charlie is not unhappy at all. He is a very happy person, and the happiest person I know, and that all the unhappiness that I was perceiving was frankly and quite truthfully was unhappiness that was living inside of me., and that is called projection. It is a psychological defense mechanism and it is when you take things that you cannot or will not accept inside yourself and you place them on others.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Shawn Richardson: shawnrichardsonglobal.com 

Shawn Richardson: Through divorce, this amazing woman found her way back through the clarity she found in the mountains. Psst: Sounds like me!!

143: Alan Arnette: Mountaineering Expert who has climbed Mt. Everest four times, summiting it the fourth time, has reached the peak of K2 and has climbed with Garrett Madison, who Mark Pattison will be climbing Everest with in 2020, discusses what it is like to attempt a summit climb during disease concerns like the ones we find ourselves in with coronavirus and the precautions to be aware of.  Alan Arnette  Alan Arnette has the vast knowledge and experience to aid mountain climbers to be at their very best as they reach towards finding their summit. But what separates Alan from many other climbers is that he knows what it is like to be pushing towards an expedition during a widespread public virus dilemma. He speaks to the growing concerns arising from the spread of the coronavirus labeled COVID-19. “It’s obviously a global tragedy, getting close to 100,000 cases and over 3000 people have lost their lives to this disease. So, it is certainly not something to ignore or to make light of. There was a similar experience back in 2002 with the SARS virus. It was a similar respiratory virus and it just so happened that I did go to Everest in 2002.”  On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Alan Arnette, Mountaineering Expert who has summited Mt. Everest upon his fourth expedition and has also climbed up to the top of K2. Alan returns to the show after having appeared on episode 115 and shares his experience of traveling to climb during the time of the SARS virus spreading. “That was my first time and it was smack dab in the middle of the SARS and I remember walking through the airports. I think I connected through Bangkok and having my temperature taken and an infrared scan of my face to see if I had a fever or not. I guess there is a precedent for this. That year nothing happened at base camp, which is certainly what we hope will happen this year.”   What You Will Learn:   What are Alan’s main concerns about Everest as it pertains to the coronavirus? “But the concern. Mark, that I think everybody should have that is going to Everest, and we will just stay focused on the very narrow area of Everest relative to this virus, is that you know, base camp on both sides is a very intimate environment. The camp itself, Garrett Madison runs an outstanding base camp. So, I have no doubt that things like hygiene and all of that will be doubled and tripled up in terms of washing hands and washing dishes and those types of things. But, all it takes is one person to get sick.”   Alan Arnette mentions how even the normal flu sickness has impacted mountaineering in the past. “It was three years ago that the common flu had an outbreak on the Nepal side and practically everybody at camp got that and it actually took out a number of climbers that year. So, this does happen, and it is an environment where disease is spread very, very quickly. So, if one person comes in that has it, you know, it can take out everybody at camp. But ‘taking out’ I mean in the season. Everybody would have to go home.”    Mark Pattison and Alan Arnette talk about how many people live in a state of fear and that 350,000 to 400,000 die every year of the flu from influenza and fortunately we haven’t reached those types of numbers with the coronavirus. Alan talks about how this COVID-19 virus has still caused many mountain climbing expeditions to be canceled, leading to less people and traffic on the mountains. “I was forecasting this year that we were going to see over 1000 total summits. Last year we approached that. We were in the 970 range, on both sides, all routes, all people. This year, I think it is going to be half of what it was last year. I think we are looking at like 600. The number of permits I think are going to be on the Chinese side cut in half. I only think we are going to see about 50 members and then additional 50 support people. So, maybe a total of 100 on the Tibet side. On the Nepal side, instead of the normal 1000 that is at base camp I think this year we will probably see close to maybe 500 or 600, which translates into maybe 250, maybe 300 at the most that will summit, and that is compared to the over 600 that summited last year.”   Alan Arnette breaks down some of the changes that are taking place in the mountain climbing industry that could be attracting many inexperienced and unprepared climbers. “Now, you’ve got the sherpas, they are running Everest basically, and we’ve always been the guests in their country and now they are just taking over and running it. So, now it is that 80% of the clients are guided by these Nepali companies and they have cut out the middleman. They’ve cut out the western guides. So, as a result, they are competing primarily on price because their cost structure is so much lower. As a result, that is attracting a new class of clientele, people that don’t have the experience and they are going for ‘the t-shirt’ in many cases.”   What are some of the contributing factors to people taking the skill and endurance needed to summit Mt. Everest for granted? “There is an arrogance associated with it, because the press has for years, especially after Into Thin Air came out in the late ‘90s, just demonized the mountain. They think it is so easy to go up and down it. There is a McDonalds at the top. There is a Starbucks...and on, and on, and on, and so you read that anybody can summit Everest, and anybody can go. Typically, the line that I always read is, you pay your $65,000 and a sherpa hauls your a*s up to the top. It couldn’t be further from the truth, as evidenced by last year when 11 people lost their lives.”  Summit Coach    Alan Arnette talks about the importance of knowing why you want to climb Mt. Everest before you even attempt it, to keep you focused and give you the inspiration you may certainly need. “I had this consulting business called Summit Coach where I consult with people. I don’t sell any products. It is just information based on the experience on how to prepare and what to expect. And one of the first things I spend time with a new client on is, what is their motivation?”   Climbing Garrett Madison    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Alan Arnette also talks about Garrett Madison’s professionalism and what Mark Pattison can expect while working with him to climb Mt. Everest in light of the coronavirus. “What you can expect from Garrett is a world-class guy. Just a consummate gentleman. His attention to detail is outstanding.”  Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ Alan Arnette: alanarnette.com Alan Arnette Social Media: Linkedin Twitter 

Alan Arnette: Former Everest summiter talks about Coronavirus in Nepal and the challenges of climbing the mountain..

142: Ronnie Lott: Former NFL player, Hall of Fame Inductee, 4-Time Super Bowl Champion with the San Francisco 49ers and 10-Time NFL Pro Bowl All-Star discusses how he grew up into being a champion on the professional football field and is now championing the lives of others through All Stars Helping Kids.  Ronnie Lott  Ronnie Lott talks about not just his early athletic influences of greatness, but also other examples of a winning attitude that literally hit home for him while growing up. “It starts with the people that you are around and the people that you have a chance to interact with. I think one of the great things that it started with, with me was my parents. I have two incredible parents that shared with me the things that they did to do and create a dynamic around our family and that was, we are going to go out and we are going to do the best that we can do. We are going to work hard. We are going to find ways to add value to our community.” On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Ronnie Lott, Former NFL player, Hall of Fame Inductee, 4-Time Super Bowl Champion with the San Francisco 49ers and 10-Time NFL Pro Bowl All-Star. Ronnie Lott explains why his best time in all of sports was when he was going to Eisenhower High School in Rialto, California. “There were things that you didn’t think about, meaning the stakes at that time were just the stakes of joy. The stakes were not around the consequences of whether you are going to win the Pac-12 or whether you are not going to win the Pac-12. The stakes were just totally different. They were totally innocent.” What You Will Learn:   Was there ever a point in time when Ronnie Lott didn’t want to go to USC for college and play football there? “No, I never had that moment in my life. The only time I had a moment before that was, there was a period where I wanted to go to UCLA and the reason I wanted to go there was because I was a big fan of John Wooden. I was a big fan of a lot of the players that had gone to school there. Growing up in Southern California watching John Wooden, watching that whole run that he had and the philosophies and the way that they went about it, I was drawn to even thinking about the possibilities of even being near him.”    What prevented Ronnie Lott from pursuing a college career at UCLA and going to USC instead? “Unfortunately, in life you find sometimes things are said, in this case one of the coaches said, ‘Freshmen can’t play.’ In those moments when somebody says that, you are kind of like, ‘What?’ The next thing you know, John Robinson says, ‘Hey, if you think you are good enough, give it a shot.’ To me, life is when people tell you, give it a shot and you are giving it a shot.”    Ronnie Lott discusses his freshman year on the USC football field and exhausting all opportunities to make the most out of life. “There is a movie called, Everybody’s All American and in that movie he is trying to figure it all out. He is trying to figure out what he is going to do. He's trying to figure out his life and trying to figure out a lot of things and I think we all go through those journeys in life of what we are trying to do, what we’re trying to achieve. We make choices and sometimes those choices become choices that are good, and then we make choices that sometimes are not the best choices in life.”    Ronnie’s college success at USC led to him becoming an NFL first round draft pick with the San Francisco 49ers, a team surrounded by strong teammates. “When you are built to be something and people know that you are built to be something, very seldom do you find ways to not allow that person to do his job.”   Out of the four Super Bowls that Ronnie Lott won with the San Francisco 49ers (XVI, XIX, XXIII, XXIV), which team did he feel was the strongest? “I think the ‘84 team is the strongest team we had just because we had so much depth on the defensive line. We had so many different weapons on our offense. Roger Craig was playing really well. We had Wendell Tyler who was a phenomenal running back that did so many different things. We had Charley Young as a tight end. He was really amazing. We had Freddie Solomon who was an incredible wide receiver. We had Dwight Clark who was really an excellent wide receiver.”   Being a Source of Assistance     Ronnie Lott has continued to be of service to others, carrying on that compassionate family tradition that he was raised with. “What can you do for others? What my dad taught me is what he did so many times and continues to do, and that is, there is always somebody that needs something. There is always some way that helps, somebody. There is always some way to figure out that you can play a role in somebody’s life. I’ve always been curious about that capability because that is kind of what my mom and dad do. They still go to church and they still serve. They still help people.”   All Stars Helping Kids    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Ronnie Lott also talks about the ways that he feels compelled to live his best life and give back to others. “All Stars Helping Kids, it started in 1989. It still exists. It is still going and it is all due to the fact that everybody has a chance to be an all star and hopefully working with all stars you get a chance to do that.” Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest for the Epilepsy Foundation: markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy-wb/ All Stars Helping Kids: allstarshelpingkids.org 

Ronnie Lott: Former USC All American, San Francisco Hall of Famer, now champions All Stars helping Kids. Inspirational dude...

Mark Pattison is a former NFL player, entrepreneur, philanthropist and mountaineer who is now climbing the Seven Summits. Through his life’s journey, business, sports & charity work, Mark has been fortunate to meet some of the world’s most incredible people who share their stories of how they overcame obstacles to succeed and what their driving force was.

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Finding Your Summit

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