How High Achievers Unlock Peak Performance with Dr Carla Fowler

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We're talking about peak performance. What can we learn? Everybody's always interested in how do I perform better, how do I got my team to perform better? That's what our topic bar show is today. Everything about peak performance. So stay tuned, listen in. All right. Hey everybody. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach scalingcoach.com this is the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host, friendly neighborhood podcast host, and we've got a great show for you today. You'll find more than 600 shows and more at scalingcoach.com or wherever you're getting this right now. Stitcher Podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, LinkedIn, I don't know. Wherever you get it, turn it on. Your notifications, your subscriptions, Follow us Get your get them every week. We put out something for you all the time, all to keep you going. So whether you're driving, whether you're listening before bed, whether you're flying in an airplane, whether you listen while you work out, show's a great place to keep you tuned, up and thinking about how to grow your business. So we also do workshops and coaching and things like that. You'll find those kinds of things@scalingcoach.com so go there. All right, listen, I want to bring onto the show Carla Foster Fowler. Carla is a performance coach. She's also though, brings background as an MD, PhD, so doctor, surgeon, that kind of thing, but moved over to coaching and brought a lot of great lessons and ideas. So really interesting conversation. She's the founder, managing director of an organization called Faxa. We'll ax her what that's all about and where that comes from. And she works and brings, you know, science and approach to her work in coaching performance. So there's a lot more we could say. Let's just bring her on the show. Carla, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks Bill. Happy Friday.

Thanks for coming on. So I said you're an MD, PhD. You move from surgery essentially to coaching. What did you bring over from your medical training to coaching that's relevant? Like what's the thing that you use most in your work or you teach them?

I think there's a couple of things that I use and that may not seem obvious to many people, but some of the things are. Number one, it is actually helpful to understand our physiology. Like when we are under stress and leading a business, for example, where, you know, you open your email and you never know what is the bad news or the good news that's going to be in there and you're leading a team. You gotta like Manage some of that just like adrenaline that's going on. So I think that is helpful. A second thing that I definitely brought over was it isn't always common that you get to early in your career and medicine is rare in this regard, where you get to actually work with people and think about helping them make high stakes decisions that early in your career, normally, like you have to wait a little longer, maybe you have to be a manager, director, like start to get to that point. And that was one of the interesting things about medical training is you immediately have to start talking with people, understanding, like, what are their values, what are either the behaviors they might need to change or what's the decision they need to make. So those are just like a couple of the things that weren't totally obvious but have helped me a lot.

You know, one of the things that I hear right away is in the medical world, your decisions very much are life and death. And in the business world, most of our decisions aren't particular. Some are depending on the kind of work you do in the company. And then of course can lead to like, serious outcomes for people when it comes to their finances. And then there can be adverse events. Like, people can be so stressed that they take their own lives or things. Like, there can be all kinds of things, product safety and liability, service outcomes that are detrimental. Like all those things I think can happen. But both can be pretty high stress. Right. Like, and being able to operate in a high stress environment still perform when you're like, oh crap, you know, this isn't going well. Like being able to be with that emotion. Yeah. And I think, like, you know, I don't know a ton about how my body works. I just know that things are happening. I know that, like, okay, I'm stressed and I know there's some kind of hormonal thing going on right now. And then I feel it in my body. I'm like, oh, my chest is tightening or my fists are clenching or my stomach's in a knot now or like, whatever. And now I'm distracted and I'm not actually in the same conversation with this person that's sitting across from me. And I'm like, all in my own body and head and like, I'm lost. Right. So I could recognize that stuff even if I don't know what cortisol is. Right.

Like, yeah. And right. And everyone can. You don't have to be a doctor to feel that. And. But knowing something about what you might do with it, what's useful to do with it, what's a perspective that might help you in that moment. And even like really easy, easy behaviors you can do in that moment. Those are things we can all learn. You do not need a medical degree for that. And so that's the good news about that. Stress.

All right, so we got some. Before we get into your transition, that kind of thing, let's talk about the. Well first, tell us what does Thaxa mean? How did you name your company?

Thaxa means a task in Latin. And I chose it because I think one of the earliest things, like as early as fifth grade, I started to look around and try and figure out how people did things that were like, notable and impressive. Because I think as a kid I was like, well, I want to feel important or I want to belong. All those very natural human emotions we have. And it seemed like, oh, if you're really good at something, if you can do work towards something that's big, you know, that might help with that. And so that is when I first started to learn that nobody does that all in one jump. Like you don't build a successful business all in one move in the first month. But that these big goals were actually that some of the key was identifying the right set of tasks that you would stack up towards that goal and linking them up in the right order. The right tasks. And. And so again, as a coach, I think part of my role is when I work with clients is how do we figure out and get clarity about what they want, but then also how do we help them focus and identify the right set of tasks that each in and of themselves are doable, that you could figure out how to approach them. So that's, that's why a task.

So when I think like, look, I've been a coach for 11 years full time and maybe 18 years all told, why do you decide to go? Like, it feels like it's really gratifying. I'm glad to do it and it's a high paying job in my case. But why would you go from medicine to coaching? What makes you make that shift?

I get asked that a lot and I'm not surprised at the question.

And also be honest, this is a weird thing for me to say, but like being a doctor, simpler than my world. But maybe not.

It was not a well understood nor a popular decision. Bill, at that moment when you know you've gotten your first choice residency program at Stanford, you're doing general surgery, you're actually succeeding at it, which I was, um, so it was going fine. But I think part of it is you always have to take a step back. And I think this is really true in business, right? Also, when you are building a business, picking what business you want to go into, you have to ask yourself, like, what is it? What is the life I'm building? What is it that I want out of this? And does this thing, this business or this career path actually have the ability to like fulfill that. That at the end of the day, as, as performance minded as I was kind of all along the way, and as much as I loved going into challenging arenas, when I finally got into residency and was understanding what the medical career path looked like and what I would spend my days doing, I realized that it wasn't leading in the direction that I wanted. And I could see the people who were like ahead of me on that, on that curve and I thought, oh, there, this does not add up. And that's a. It was a very inconvenient thing to realize. But I also kind of at that moment had the ability to say, well, to believe in myself enough to say I have so much training and I have been able to like lead myself, do what I need to do. I believe that I could do something autonomously and I might need to actually create something for myself that allows me to both do something challenging, do something I'm intensely interested in, help people, which was kind of what I set out to do in medicine. Think scientifically, right, about unstructured and interesting problems and maybe get a little more autonomy to build a life in the way I wanted to put it together versus like life in 80 hour a week chunks in mostly in an operating. In a hospital.

So, yeah, so hospitals, big institutional environment, a lot of rules, a lot of rigidity, a lot of structure. Long hours we think of, and we think of exceptionally long. I'm like, why do they not just work shorter hours and break it up? And I like. But obviously I don't have that background.

Yeah, well, big forces, right? Like as you know, big forces in a system that when you're practicing it, you actually don't have a lot of control over it. And again, none of us control a sort of illusion. But yeah, seeking a little more autonomy.

All right, so it's fascinating and I think interesting. Like we all look at different fields. Some of my early training and things coaching, coaching related things, workshop leading, that kind of thing. I looked at some of the different paths and options and I looked at some of the people and I looked at people who are beyond my stage and I, and I was like, oh yeah, I don't Want their life. Like his quality of life. Yeah. I'm like, I don't want that. I can't work for that organization. I can't do that kind of coaching. And then I look, kind of looked around at other places and other similar related things and I'm like, yeah, that one doesn't sound good. And I thought about my dad's work and I'm like, yeah, I don't want to do that that way. So I had to find a mix that gave me kind of the same impact and the work and played the strengths, but fit my pictures of my quality of life. Right.

Yeah.

Which is a funny thing to say because just week I, I took six flights, five flights to work with six companies across several countries in five cities and, and I spent 30 hours in the air. I'm talking about quality. That was kind of an exceptional week. But yeah, but it's a funny thing to think about. Like we trade off things and we end up with like one thing that's comfortable for us but not something else. That's a useful thing to think about. Well, thanks for that. So I, and it's probably useful to think of like, what are you doing? What path are you on? Are you really okay with it? Because if you're not right, like there's not a lot of point in elevating your performance in some way. If you need to get out of the business you're in, if you don't want to be in it, if you don't want like your role in it or your career path, that's probably a fundamental thing to think about before anything else. There's no point in hiring a coach to help you resolve something that you're never going to love that you.

Although sometimes you hire a coach to help work through all you need to do to actually make that change. Yeah, there is that. Sometimes it's difficult to separate from something.

And I'm always encouraging people to sell, to plan, to sell the business. Like as we begin our coaching to grow the business, let's talk about when this ends and how you get out of it. Like not to not be in the one thing forever. Excuse me. So why don't we begin with focus? You shared about early in your career and maybe it started as a young, as a child even. Where did you and talk about your lessons learned in focus.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting something you said like just a minute ago about looking at your trade offs. Right. That I think one of the first places we think about focus is actually saying, well, what all do you want out of, like, your life or this business that you're building or. And for me, what that looked like is all kind of. Throughout my life, I've really liked to be doing multiple things at once. And so what for me, that looks like was often there was like, sort of an athletic activity. I really loved playing competitive sports. I was a runner in high school, but then I walked on to the collegiate rowing team. But at the same time, like, academics were important. While I was doing my MD PhD, I definitely skipped some class and really, like, was potent with my time so that I could play elite level ultimate Frisbee on the side. So for me, some of focus. Some of focus. Okay, well, I wanted to focus because it was the only way you could actually do these really different things at the same time and to try and do them at a high level. So the point was, I knew I didn't have more time than anyone else did. And so it became very important to, number one, be clear that I wanted those things. And then the second piece was really to say, how do you then say, like, pick the activities that you're going to invest time in that are going to give you the most potent impact because you're definitely not. Like, I was not doing all the extra studying that many of my med school colleagues were doing. I was often not going to class because I knew I could more efficiently, like, read the syllabus versus go to class for that hour. And I think one of the moments where someone external to me really highlighted what was important about focus was actually my PhD advisor. And his point about focus was, you gotta think about what are the most important questions you should be asking. Because I would wander into his office and I wanted to be a good PhD student. So I'd be like, I could run this experiment and I could do this. And I think the parallel to this in business is often, ooh, we could do this product or we could do this service. You know, all this, all these things we could do, or all these things we see other people doing. And just because you could do something doesn't necessarily mean it would give you the best business impact. Or in my case, that it would give me a good scientific impact. So my advisor was constantly saying, okay, yeah, I know you could run that experiment, Carla, but what would you hope to learn from it? Like, why would you do it? Why would you spend that time? Why would you spend that resource? And I think he was trying to teach me how to think. It wasn't a rhetorical question, but he was really Trying to teach me. You have limited time, Carla, like, and you want to make an impact in this community. You want to uncover interesting biological facts that will be useful and that we can build upon. Don't just go dotting I's and crossing T's just because you can. Maybe you should think about what would be really fundamentally important. And that means you're not gonna run all the experiments you could run. And I think this was really relevant to me as I started my coaching business as well, because I didn't have any business training. I definitely got a lot of advice as I was starting. So it was like, you're gonna need a blog and have you thought about social media? And you need this and you need this and this. And I think I could have spent a lot of time chasing all of those things down. But one of the things that I think I did well at the start sort of trying to take my own medicine, was actually thinking about focusing my efforts to say, well, in business, you need to make something that is of value and you need to sell it. And most businesses fail because, like, you haven't done enough selling. And so I really focused. There was no blog, there was no book, there was no social media. It was all go network and meet people and help them understand who you are. And like, that you're not a doctor. Like, that's not what you do. What you do is actually coaching. And. And then you need to every client you get, be the best coach you can be for them because you need to know that you've like made something of value, that you're actually creating an impact. And I focused on that for like at least the first three years. Two things like, make sure you are out from your office, you are out meeting people, you are selling. And then like, focus on being the best coach you can be.

And like any small business actually struggles with that balance. They get into one or the other. Like they, they get really good at selling and. And then they don't deliver because they don't yet have somebody else delivery. And the, the. One of the easiest business to start and scale is if I sell things that I don't perform, I'm just selling things that other people are doing. Right. It's a lot easier. But if you're trying to sell yourself, then you get busy doing it and then you forget to do, go back and do the selling kind of thing. And most especially early businesses aren't churning out enough referrals to have leads to.

Everybody knows who you are. It makes sense.

Yeah. When I Think about focus and what you're talking about there. It occurs for me that the people that we coach and probably a lot of our listeners, viewers, the founder entrepreneurs, are many of them some version of ADHD type add. So the ideators, the visionary strategists kinds of folks generate new ideas. And what comes with that is a real struggle to focus. I know that like I could get lost for hours with Wikipedia. Like I'll open a thing around some dynasty or whatever and then I'll read about this ruler and then that clan and that thing and the. I'm like down a whole path and I'll. And whatever it is, right? Something history, something science, something, whatever. And the slight limit I have is that instead of following a link, like I get into an article, then I'm like, oh, that's interesting and go off down that and then go off something on there and down and down and down. Instead I just open a new tab with that. So I stay on the one, I finish the one article and then I keep opening articles. But that's a never ending thing. Like, you know, there's that just, you just keep opening. At some point I'm like, oh crap, I'm supposed to go to sleep or whatever the thing is. And so there's a challenge with that in a conversation, whatever. We get distracted because we have ideas and connections and thoughts and distractions. Right. Which are both powerful but also a massive problem with focus. But then the leadership teams beyond the founder leader often have a few people at least who are pretty good at focus, who are blinders on, who have some consistency and deliberative qualities that let them be better at focus. Talk about the different types of people and I don't know, whatever that brought up for you.

Oh man. Well, I love what you just brought up because I think it is also importantly part of that, whether it's ADHD or just that visionary, interesting curiosity that's really important for many founders. Like that is the spark that creates something even to begin with, right? And so one of the, one of the things is you don't want to like have focus, kill that fire. And there are some, there are some ways that one can think about that to help create, create space for it, but then also like some channels or conduits so that the team doesn't get burned out or like not know which direction to go in because there's so many ideas coming from their leader. And so, you know, I'm reminded of a story, a client that I worked with. And so as a part of My process, one of the ways I start coaching people is with taking some time to get clarity about what is the goal for their business, for their leadership, and also what's going to be most important right now. And that's not to say that's rigid or that won't shift. Certainly we have to adapt. We take some time, and I just ask a lot of questions and we start to clarify what some of those goals are. But one of the things that was really helpful to this leader was as we started to say, well, what is it you want to have happen? And then start to say, well, what are the priorities where you're going to really be investing time and the resources of your team? That we clarified some of that. And then he actually took it to his team and shared it with them. And one of the surprising effects that happened was that his team lit up and got so motivated. And it was funny because I didn't work with the team. I just worked with a leader. But one of the things we learned from that was that by helping the leader focus and just articulate right now, here's where we. Here's where we are. And it allowed people to, like, connect themselves back to the priorities and the contributions they were making to the business. And interestingly, this is how sometimes we think about motivating teams that it's got to be like, rah, rah, and it's all that kind of thing. But actually, a lot of motivating a team is related to does the team know how they can win and how they can contribute? And do they know how they're going to align together? And so I thought that was super interesting. Now, your point about we don't want to kill the fire of the. Of the visionary who's who. And also, like, businesses and organizations need to adapt. And so you don't want to not be curious and continue to, like, generate ideas. Right. So one of the things that I found effective with another client was giving space for the ideation. And this can even be like blocking it on your calendar where you're like, I have time to, like to roam. It's like, you know, this client needed to roam. They needed to explore the idea space to think about, like, what if? But then we had to separate decision making from the ideating. And so it was like, you can generate as many ideas as you want, make the list, like, make. Make the dream chart of all the possibilities, but give yourself a pause. And it might be like once a month, you. Or once a quarter, you revisit those and pick the best ones. But every idea seems really great when you first get it. But then if you can take some time and wait and compare it to other things, it allows you to focus a little more on like, no, really, what were the best ideas I actually generated over the past month?

So those are my thoughts that initially, if you're an ideator type person, you create ideas. You're an ideas guy or gal. Like, I think you. One of the most powerful things to learn is that the vast majority of those ideals are shit. You don't need them, that you could just let them go. They're fine, they're amusing. Speaking as a longtime ideator. Right. Like a lifelong person who just generates ideas all day and night. Like, most of them, they're amusement. They're like. I think of them as random connections between two things that are seemingly disconnected. You see a connection between them. Like, that's an idea, right? Fundamentally, structurally, I think that's an idea. I see a connection between two things that other people don't see. Or like, boom, there you go. Or I see things and I imagine a way to connect them and that's an idea. But it's like disparate things in a new way because there's nothing really new, right? So. But then the vast majority of them, like, if I chased them or did anything with them, they'd be a detriment to me and my team, or that kind of thing. So deciding then, okay, boom, that's what's going to go on. And I've seen variations of this many times with our scaling up clients. But since one of the key things we do is have people create annual and quarterly plans and then get aligned to those and march down to those. I remember one really distinctly more recent new client came on, and after we'd done their first round of quarterly planning, they said, okay, so how long do we run these priorities? Like, how long should we focus on these before we change and adjust? I said, well, they're quarterly priorities. And they said, yeah, so how long? And I said, for the quarter? And they're like, whoa, you mean for three months? We should. I'm like, yeah, these are created with a three month time horizon. So mostly they fit more or less into that. You might want to get some done sooner and then finish the others. But that's the focus, right? Run this and focus on these for three months. And then let's review and plan again. You're like, whoa, okay, just three things. I'm like, yeah, may, you know, sometimes we might go three to five but like, you're going to do other things. But, like, what are the big things for that quarter, for that period of time? You're like, oh, man.

Right. That was a.

On some level. But I understand that. Cause I used to, you know, like, I'd get up in the morning, I'd be thinking about something, and then maybe I'd go take a run and then I'd shower up and then I'd drive to the office. Along the way there, I had 10 different ideas about the same challenge. I'd come in and I tell my team, and then, you know, they. Some of them start working on something or doing whatever. But tomorrow I'm going to have a whole new set of.

Yeah, well. And it's. It is funny, the power of letting something sit. Like, I often, I've called this the power of the pause or let something sit for a bit and just to see how you feel about it later. Because again, the amount of, like, new information you'll get, even over the course of like a week. Right. Changes how you think and feel about something. Or maybe you had the idea because you had emotion in the moment and you were like, man, this priority I'm working on, I really like. I just don't like it. It's not going very well. And I just want to switch. I just want something different or something shinier. And often, like, we can have those thoughts during the most meaty moments where we're really doing that hard work investment to actually make something successful. And what you don't want to do at that moment is pivot if you're in the minute, the middle of, like, stacking up that important effort.

We like to tell people, have lots of ideas, try many different approaches, but don't change the goals or the priorities a whole lot. So maybe try lots of little things within a larger set of priorities, but don't waver on those big things too soon. Right. So we talked about the coaching and training and moving into that. And before we move on from that, have you just applied your own training and background in science, medicine, that kind of thing, and your life experiences to the coaching, or do you use any particular, I don't know, underlying structure, rigor, philosophy, that kind of thing in your coaching?

Yeah, so certainly I use my experience and what I've gotten from science and medicine. But what I was really interested in was loosely, performance science as a whole field. This idea that in some ways in coaching, you're trying to help someone go after a goal and their performance to that goal matters to them. And performance science, I loosely think about as the field that has basically all the different contributors to what helps with this. So obviously, strategy is an important piece of this, and you've got business schools and lots of people thinking about that. How do we identify what are the most important things we could do or the most impactful things we could do towards our goals? There's also sort of the execution bucket. Right, right. The productivity movement would fall into this. Right. What kind of systems or ways of executing tend to be better aligned with our brains than others? Psychology and sociology, obviously, are really devoted to how do we stay motivated? What are the mindsets or the things that help us be the most confident or help teams feel motivated and confident. And then certainly there's physiology, which is where we started our conversation, that turns out our brain and our body are not disconnected. And so when there are hormones flowing through you, they change how you make decisions and how you see things. So I was very interested when I made that pivot of then reinforcing sort of my understanding of all these four different buckets of performance, because both. There's a lot of my coaching that looks probably similar to what many coaches do. And also I just wanted to be armed with tools and resources to help people think about performance and almost be able to say, all right, if we have a problem, there are at least four different angles that we could approach that challenge from. Is it a strategy issue? Is it an execution issue? Is it a mindset or psychological issue? Or is it a physiologic issue? And so it gives us at least four. Four different places to look for solutions. And so, loosely, in my brain, as I'm coaching, as I'm listening to what's happening, I'm always thinking, huh, what do I think might be the best angle? And sometimes I also just ask, like, my clients are wise often about, like, what's the thing they're avoiding? Or what's the thing they haven't tried? The angle that we should approach from. So that's something that comes into my coaching.

Yeah. That's interesting. As you say that, I think, okay, yeah, there's one aspect of, like, I know what to do, but I'm not doing it. There's an aspect of, like, psychology at there. I'm procrastinating. I have some mindset issue that's keeping me from being in action. I'm afraid of something. Right. Like, I'm resigned about something. There's that kind of dimension. Or another one is, I'm in action. I'm going away and it's just not working. And that tends to be like, about strategy and approach. And then I also think like there's. I'm not working well with other people.

Yeah. Which can be execution and sort of mindset in there. And like, how are you communicating? Are you emotionally sort of connecting with other people? Yeah, lots of, of good stuff there.

Yeah. And then I think also like, I'm working in a disorganized fashion. I'm like, you know, my, like executive function, my self regulation is lacking. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm good when I'm good, but I'm not. And that. And I think like we, the. So there's the person, there's the organization, there's the project and the tasks and the systems. Like all of those different things have different. And they all affect performance outcomes.

Yeah, they do. And I think this is actually part of where you see the scientists in me coming out in coaching, which is like, I mean, every day I would show up in the lab. You're trying to learn something that nobody knows. That's the whole reason you have a job. So you spend a lot of time not knowing the answer. In fact, like every day you walk in not knowing the answer and you have to sort of figure it out and you have to take different angles of approach and say, well, what if we looked at it this way? And I actually find that to be a very empowering place to start. And I think as much as I know some people had bad experiences with math and science growing up, it's not for everyone. I find it very empowering because it's say there's not just one way to do something, and this is a problem that if we spend time thinking about it and working on it. And I often use the language of running experiments, like being willing to go out and try something. It's just, it's helpful and it takes it out of fail. Like failure or success. A binary. It's this or it's this.

Right. I think when we think about it normal like in business versus science. Right. In. In. In the larger world of science, we're like, okay, wait, all these models and equations don't add up and don't agree with each other, so we must be missing something. So let's build another accelerator and see if we can find another particle. But we spend billions and billions and we build accelerators, we're not finding more particles. And we're like, wait, maybe we're missing a whole way of thinking about something here. Like something fundamental and in Business, we, I would say we have more constraint. Like, we can't do that quite as much. We have to have things hit a little faster to pay for it. Because there isn't like. And we're not solving, like, fundamental, like, who are we? And what is this universe? Kinds of questions. So there's limited amounts of money being willing to pour it into our new mousetrap. Right.

This. This is true. And, and even despite that. So you definitely have to recognize the constraints you don't like. You don't want to just keep throwing spaghetti against the wall. In business, as you pointed out, there's just not the resources or time. But ask. Being able to ask oneself what would be a worthwhile experiment to run? Or if I'm not sure about a decision, is there a way I could test it? Could I test a small piece of it? Yeah.

Could I try a little? Yeah. So let's look back on something from earlier. Frisbee. How do you go. How do you go to. I'm running, I'm rowing. What sound like serious acceptable to.

I know, totally legitimate sports. Right.

Ultimate Frisbee, both of them. You know, disc golf kind of girl.

Yes. Okay, well, first we'll just talk about. So we.

Yeah.

Oh, they do. Yes. It's got. It has a whole following. Um, so I played ultimate Frisbee, so I'm a terrible Frisbee golfer, actually. Um, so that is not the thing I ultimately did. Uh, the short story is I was like, I had decided that I was going to stop rowing, I was going to take my MCATs and get. Get on with life while I was in undergraduate. And Brown happens to have a very good ultimate Frisbee team, like a collegiately ranked team. And I was like, watching some people play and I just thought, I mean, they're just running around a bunch.

Yeah. Why don't you describe the game for listeners, viewers, what actually happens there? Because people know what soccer is. People are confused about what cricket is. Right. Like, that is fair.

Okay. Ultimate looks a lot like a combination of, like, soccer and football. So the play is continuous, sort of like soccer in. Uh, but it's a Frisbee instead of a soccer ball. Uh, but you have end zones, not goals. So you have like a rectangle at the end of the field. And the way you score is you have to throw the Frisbee to a teammate of yours who catches it in the end zone. And the one catch is you cannot run with the Frisbee. So like basketball, you have to. Once you catch the Frisbee, you get a couple steps to slow down. You have to set a pivot foot, and then you have to, like, find a teammate to throw it to. And that's how you advance it down the field. You tend to play games to like, 15. You have offense and defense. And. But what happens is if you drop the Frisbee or it gets intercepted, now the other team is on offense. So it's continuous play like that. So that's. That's how that works. There is a whole.

But no hockey, like offensive, defensive moves, right?

Yes. No, it's non contact, but there is a lot of, like, aerial and diving for the Frisbee. It's actually a very exciting sport to watch. But again, yes, it. It sounds ludicrous when you say it out loud, but that's what the sport is. And I was like, well, that involves a lot of running and I know how to run. That was. But, you know, after. After I played. So I played like one year of collegiate and then went off to be a grad student. But it turns out you can continue your collegiate career as a graduate student. And there's also club teams, so there's a whole circuit of elite level ultimate Frisbee players where adults, you know, out of school play this sport. There are national championships, there are world championships, and I basically capitalized. This is another place where focus came into play for me. I knew that I had a lot of endurance and that I could run, and I learned how to throw the Frisbee, but I was not an amazing thrower. I learned. I was like. And I knew I would never be the person who would be like, you know, in basketball, like the great point guard who just always has the basketball. I was like, that is not me. So I need to become really good at defense, because all defense requires is, like, being really athletic and being able to, like, knock the Frisbee out of someone else's hands.

So you don't even have to catch it perfectly. You just have to get it well.

You do have to catch. So I was like, you got to be really good at catching. You need to be able to throw well enough that you can get it to a teammate and then you can run off again. So this is a place where I was not the All Star, but I ultimately made it onto a team that won multiple national championships and I won a world championship at Beach Ultimate. And it was about not. I was not the All Star, but it's like, can you find the things you are good enough at and strategically align yourself to say, here's how I fit in. And here's how you could plan a path to where you want to go with it. And so that when I think about, I had no business being there in some ways, and yet it was like, well, but maybe I had a dream of being a world champion. And I was like, maybe I can do it in this sport.

Let me ask you this from two perspectives. Where does this, like, quality of life, pursuit of passion and play come? Like, which of your parents does that come from? And then. And the sort of part two, then is, what do you think is the relevance for the people you coach?

That's interesting. I. So my dad was a mountain climber. He was climbing mountains during graduate school. He was a. Both my parents were in graduate school, and I know he was in mathematics forever.

They were both graduate school for 18 years.

Long time. But, yeah, this was long before I was imagined. And one of the interesting things he has always said about his life was that he had this realization that his colleagues in the grad school wanted to do math on the weekends, and he did not want to do math on the weekends. So it, you know, for him, he ultimately left and became a consulting actuary. And so really, like, took the mathematics and. And really turned that into something, but was not a professor. Like, that was not ultimately what he wanted to do. You work in insurance and what, like, pension plans, huh? Yeah, yeah. But I think as a family, they, like, took that and they, like, took us outside, they took us backpacking growing up, like, out into the wilderness for seven days with young children, carrying our. Carrying our stuff. And I think. I think there was something about. I don't know if it was that or just maybe it was just the idea of saying you want to use your body and your brain in lots of different ways that, like, we as human beings like to be stretched. Like, we. We like to. We were built to actually stress and recover stress and recover. And I don't know, that's kind of when I feel most alive. Now, to answer your second question, how does that come into work with clients and people? For me, like, play is athletic, and being outside what play looks like for other people is different. It's not always the same same. But I think one of the most important things as we're going through our careers is avoiding boredom and stagnation and, like, the narrowing of our world. And I think what you brought up about play reminded me of that. So this idea of. And even sometimes when people are encountering uncertainty in their work, or even the thought of, like, oh, every like the, the whole landscape is changing. There's AI, there's this, there's that as a. It can be a threat for sure. It's very uncertain and our brains don't like it. But another thing is sometimes it's the landscape giving us the opportunity to actually like grow or play or like introduce something new that actually makes us feel more alive, that changes things up. And so how it comes into time with clients, sometimes people come in saying, hey, I feel like I need some more balance in life or I need some life outside of work. So comes in there, but it also comes in with the work itself to say what most lights you up, what makes you feel most alive in the work you do. How can we make sure to not lose some of that?

Yeah, I think it's really important. There's something about a range of things, not always the one thing. Different days for different kinds of things. Like I could go do a day and I could record, record a whole bunch of shows, create a bunch of content in a day or two of like really intense stuff. But then I'm like, I can't do that anymore. I can go work with clients for a couple days, but then I can't do that anymore. I could think I could write, I could like do one on one calls. But then I like, it has to change. And maybe some people are wired to do like I had somebody who's fantastic accounts receivable clerk for years and she, she had a kind of a party life on the weekend. And then she just worked really hard, did the same thing every day. And there was comfort in that routine for her, for me and for a lot of leaders I work with, the range of activities is greater. Like we need more difference in our kind of thing. So I like 2020 came along and some of the social things stopped. So I'm like, oh, I need something. And I see a friend doing a new kind of surfing. I'm like, I have to learn to do that kind of surfing. Um, so I start doing that. I did triathlons for years and I like needed that. I was never at risk of becoming a top podium level triathlete, but like, but I got a lot out of it. And so it was important for me to do it because it provided something, not because I was going to get good at it. Right? Yeah, because it was going to benefit everything else I did.

I thought you just brought up something really important which is sort of specking what is the role of something in your life and what does performance have to do with that, that one can care about performance. And yet my example of this is like, I eat a lot of bag salad for lunch. Like, on one hand it fits my health goals. Right. But like, you basically dump it in the, in the bowl and, like, could I create, like, a much more amazing lunch for myself? I could. Would it take three times as long? Absolutely. Does it matter? Does that thing matter? Does it need to be higher performing? Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, I need lunch. So, yeah, you. And you want to make sure you're getting what you want out of the thing, but that doesn't mean you have to be on the podium for the triathlons.

Right? Right. I watch with one of my dear old friends now, has started doing triathlons more recently and, and he's been on the podium a lot. I'm like, oh, he, he got a little older and then he picked races that are a little less competitive. I'm like, ah, maybe I should have done that. I could have had some more.

Once you get into the right masters category and you're like, I have a.

Huge stack of medals over there and I was never remotely close in the swim, bike or run. It's fantastic in the transitions, though, like mounting the bike, dismounting the bike. God, I looked really smooth there. I just was the last wish.

You know how in the Tour de France, like, there's all the different jerseys? It's not just one.

Yes. Why is there not yellow?

Why is there not a jersey for, like, transitions? You might, might have bit. You might have been on the podium, Bill.

Yeah, I'm like, you know, and I remember when I was learning or when I finish a race and then I'd watch the next day or the next whatever thing and. And I would watch with such cringe all the people who just did the most awkward things coming in and out, right. And I'm like, oh, I am going to look. Because that's where everybody watches you. Not way out, you know, miles out on the run. I'm like, nobody's looking out there. So you could slog along there. But like, when run you're under. Everybody's guys just look good. Just like bring it in at those moments when the cameras are going, well, listen, we've talked a long time. If you want to know more about Carl and Carla's work, go to thaxa.com thaxa.com we'll throw that on there in the show notes and so on. It's T H A X A dot com. So if you're listening, only T H a x a dot com Faxa is the website and super helpful. Thanks for joining us on the show today.

Bill. This is really fun. I appreciate it.

Pleasure. Another great conversation. Listen if you want to know more, you want to find any of those back catalog or you want to join one of our monthly workshops or come do your annual or mid year planning with us. We're focused about the business performance. Carl's focused on the individual performance. We all bring different things to it so you'll find the rest of our stuff@scalingcoach.com and Big Shout out. And thanks as always to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who created this whole scaling up framework that we use and then to the folks at Storion who produce our show each week. Christelle, Seth Cameron and team get our show ready. It takes a team to get it out. Thanks again for watching for listening till we talk to you Next time keep scaling.