Habits of a Champion: Nobody Becomes a Champion By Accident, with Dana Cavalea

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics at Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor Group, Ed. Ed Molitor. And what a fantastic conversation we have in store for you here today with Dana Cavalier. Dana is a former director of strength and conditioning and performance for the New York Yankees. As a matter of fact, he led the team to a World Championship in 2009, which is the same year he was awarded the prestigious Nolan Ryan Award given to the top strength and performance coach in Major League Baseball, as voted by his peers. Dana is also the author of his new book, Phenomenal Book Habits of a Champion. Nobody becomes a champion by accident.

And in addition to his on field coaching, he works as a performance coach and consultant to companies, organizations, and some of America's top CEOs, executives and Wall street fund managers and traders, helping them to optimize performance, productivity and sales. And some of the things you can listen for inside of this podcast is how we talk about Dana's ability to foster deep relationships, fueling his career early on with the New York Yankees. We'll talk about why consistency is so important and how champions go about their business. Then we'll talk about struggles, right, something we're all going through right now with the COVID 19, the coronavirus struggles and fear and anxiety, and how those who really aren't very successful are always trying to switch things and change things, something new in the new quick fix. Whereas the champions, what do they do?

They double down on their process and dial in their focus. And speaking of focus, he'll talk about the different types of focus. Do you focus on the emotion or do you focus on the action? And then he'll share some great advice and insight that he received from Mariano Rivera along with obviously a bunch of stories from his time with the Yankees. And then we'll really spend some time and talk about our current situation and looking at the opportunities that are presenting themselves which might not have presented themselves otherwise. And Dana and I will discuss how this has grounded us to the point where we get back to the basics and the fundamentals that make the great ones great. Dana, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of Business podcast. I am really fired up to have you here.

Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Well, let's jump right in. We're Living in a very odd time, a strange time, a challenging time, in the middle of COVID 19, the coronavirus. And we're going to jump into some certain things, talk about mindsets and actions and behaviors that can help us grow through this. Right. Not just get through this, but can you do me a favor? Talked a lot about you in the intro, but let's hear it in your words. Tell us a little bit about your journey and bring us up to speed to where you're at right now and what you're doing.

Yeah, well, listen, my journey, like everybody else's journey, is filled with struggle and adversity and constantly having to figure out ways, you know, to adapt. But, you know, I started as an aspiring baseball player looking to get to the big leagues like every other kid. I grew up in New York, so I wanted to play for the best team in town, which was the Yankees. And ultimately, I got a chance to start my journey by playing in college. And I quickly realized that my talent set wasn't good enough to get myself to the big leagues, by my assessment and by the assessment of Major League baseball scouts. So what did I have to do? Right away at 19 years old, I said, I'm going to start pivoting and figure out what's next, you know, in my journey and in my life.

And I said, what do you love most about the sport? And I said, you know, outside of, you know, dressing in very comfortable clothing.

In the world of sport, Amen to that.

Yeah, I really enjoyed coaching, and I really enjoyed being coached, and I really enjoyed the training. So I said, how do I take coaching and training and put it all together? And I had some unbelievable coaches that sort of untangled that damage and moved me forward and helped wring out that talent sponge and get every little drop of talent out of me. But I reached a point for myself where I couldn't go any further. No matter how hard I worked, I just didn't have the talent to go to the next level. So I found another way to get to the big leagues and another way to get to the Bronx.

I was going to say, and you got to the big leagues and you got to the Bronx. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I started as an intern and my journey, you know, I decided to leave the New York and go to college at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I knew that there was a lot of professional sports down there. One team in particular was the Yankees, had spring training there every year. So I got my degree in sports medicine, and I started an internship with the University of South Florida Football. And I wasn't into football. I didn't know too much about it in terms of coaching those players, but I learned quite a bit about strength and conditioning. And literally come February, you know, I hear the New York Yankees are coming town. I drive over, you know, in my beat up old car over to the spring training complex.

I park about a mile and a half away because I couldn't afford to park any closer. And you know, I walk up to the field and I'm taking pictures through a chain link fence of players like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and all these amazing players sending them home to New York. And literally that day I had to go back to my internship. And the head strength coach calls me in his office and says, hey, Dana, can I talk to you? And he says, I just got a call from the head strength coach with the Yankees. He's looking for someone to basically hand out towels, give out water and keep the weight room clean. Would you have any interest in that? And I said, as a matter of fact, I just got back from there. Have tremendous interest.

It's actually the reason why I came to school down here. And next thing you know, I started the next day, I drive up to the stadium, I got a parking spot up front. I walk into the main office, they throw a credential around my neck with a C for clubhouse, an F for field access. They throw me in Yankee gear, and next thing you know, the same field I was taking pictures of a day earlier, I was now day before. The day before. Yeah.

And you had never had a conversation with who you, the strength coach you were interning for. Like you had never told him. This is the reason I came to sit down in South Florida.

Well, I got a chance to tell him that once I began. But here's crazier part. When I was in eighth grade, I went to a Yankee game with my father. My parents are both teachers. We sat up in the nosebleed section. You know, we waited for all the rich people to leave so we could move down closer to the field. And I remember looking out on the right field line and I saw this guy with all these stretch bands and this guy was talking to players, stretching players. And I never forgot that image at the time. I had no idea who that guy was, what that job was, what that position was. But I saw he had a great relationship with all the players and boom, next thing you know, I was working for that same guy. That's unbelievable thing how it All.

Yeah, I didn't plan any of that.

What was it like when you told him that story for the first time?

Wow. You know, he got a kick out of it because it's. It's like, it's surreal because also too, like, nobody's looking at a strength coach and saying, wow, you know, there's a level of idolization of that position. It's just not one of those things. Usually the head coach or the manager or the player that young men are the glory, right? Yeah, yeah. And for me, it was that in a sick way. And it was amazing how sometimes, you know, visually we can connect the dots.

Well, it's funny because you think about it, the poem, little eyes upon you, Right? Like, all of a sudden, that's an aha moment for a strength coach. Like, I guess people are actually watching me.

Yeah. Yup, exactly.

That is really cool. So you're with the Yankees. Tell us about that.

Oh, man, it's an amazing journey. You know, I always have. I mean, I started as 19. I was the head guy at 22 to 23 years old. And I ran that out for another 10 years. And it was like traveling with the Rolling stones through your 20s. You know, the Rolling Stones of baseball. And, you know, these players that I grew up watching, you know, you're now coaching and you're now, you know, learning from them as much as they're learning from you. And in the beginning, just being frank, I was totally under qualified. I didn't know anything. I was just starting in my field, right. So I relied very heavily on building relationships with players, with coaches, with the staff, with the front office. And that helped me, you know, make the journey smooth and a very smooth transition for me.

And you just answered the question that I was going to ask was, okay, so you're just getting into your journey of doing that, just getting into your career. But there had to be some sort of compensating factor, and that obviously was your ability to connect and develop deep relationships.

That was the only tool that I had because I didn't know enough about my field of performance training and strength training at the time. So, you know, it was actually back in the early 2000s, you know, when core training and functional training and this new way of training athletes was starting to emerge. But it wasn't actually going on in baseball because it was a very dated sport in terms of ways and practices to enhance player performance. So I knew that I also had a chance to be somewhat of an innovator. So I had literally go home and study as many core exercises as I could and as many functional training exercises as I could without any really understanding the purpose of some of these exercises. But I knew they looked cool and they were different.

So I knew that I could take that relationship that I built with the players and said, hey, when they walk in, hey, can I take you through some core? Can I take you through? So I was learning on these Formula one race cars.

Unbelievable. So what would, like, a Derek Jeter, when you get innovative and come in and say, hey, Derek, just try this. Okay. What would he look at you like?

Well, again, in the beginning, I gotta say this, and if hears this, I'll have to explain myself. But I thought he was very standoffish in the beginning because he wouldn't really give me the time of day. We became very friendly afterwards, you know, as our relationship built in the years went on. But he really didn't give me much of the time of day. But who did give me the time of day were two players. Number one was a Rod, and number two was Jorge Posada. And Jorge Posada is actually best friends with Derek Jeter. So I started working very closely with Georgie, gave me a shot, and then Georgie got me Derek. So that's how it all kind of came together.

Just the power of connection, internal networking. There you go.

Exactly 100%.

Yeah. That's awesome. So let's talk about some of the things that you learn, and actually, let's talk a little bit about that journey with the Yankees, because they accomplished some amazing things when you're there. And what were some of the things you learned from working with. Absolutely the best of the best that you execute daily with your coaching clients, with your corporate clients, and as we talk about this awful virus and how you're helping people not cope, but to continue to grow and thrive with this virus and some keys around that.

One of the most important things that I learned in watching these great players is how they go about their business versus how I was taught to go about my business. And the reality is, you know, these great players, I'm talking about the hall of Fame level players, you know, they had a very simple system. They had a very simple system of habits and daily actions that they took repetitively over and over again in order to achieve a consistent result. Now, the players that weren't those elite players that were trying to figure it out, that were constantly going in and out of struggle, they were constantly changing their routine, constantly coming up with new ways of doing things that were based on either things that they had read or new concepts that were hitting the field.

There was really no stability to the way in which they go about their business, where the great players were very simple, they were very well executed, they were extremely consistent, and they weren't looking for what's the next best thing. They knew that what they had worked for them. And that was a really powerful thing that I took away. And the other thing is, too, they were not working 24 7. See, I was brought up with, if I'm not working, somebody else is. These guys weren't of that cut. They knew what they had to do, the amount that they had to do in order to be great at what they do. For me, I was so focused on the work. I didn't know how much I needed. I didn't know what work was benefiting me. So I was constantly guessing as a young player.

And I saw that with a lot of the intermediary players. But the best of the best, they knew it worked. They stuck to it through thick and thin, day in and day out, with micro adjustments along the way.

And they trust the process. Right.

When the external wasn't going the way they wanted, like their game performance, they double down on their routine.

I love that. Yeah.

They don't try to reinvent it.

That's huge. Think about what you just said. You know, the ones who struggle consistently are the ones that continually try to change the next quick fix. Or you go to golf, they're changing swing coaches constantly. Right. They're looking for different grips and stuff like that. But the ones that are the elite are the ones that actually double down on their process and really lock in.

Absolutely. And they don't question it. What I say is, you know, whether you're in the sport of business or you're in the sport of sport, you gotta know the rules of the game in which you play. And so many people, you know, they try not to fail. Where the great players know that failure's a part of the game. In baseball, you're gonna fail seven times. So your failure rate is far greater than your success rate, but you're still great if you succeed three times.

And you might be in the hall of Fame if you only fail seven times out of ten.

Yeah. There's a good chance that you'll be.

There, do some other things, Right? Yeah.

So it's kind of bizarre how that works, Right?

So here's a question for you. They double down on the process, right? They double down on it. How do they. And I know this is something you're really good at talking about how do they win the mental game inside of that, where they don't put more pressure on themselves because they are doubling down in the process, where they don't try to speed up the process, where they don't raise their level of expectations, where they still stay consistent.

So one thing I say to that is they've learned the art of emotional control, to not get too high and not to get too low. But they know how to control their emotions without the pressure of controlling the emotions. Like, if you're upset, these guys know how to strategically let that out, not hold it in to control the emotion, but they know how to strategically let it out. And I'll give you an example of that.

You know, a player like Derek Jeter, right, gets in the box, gets up to bat, strikes out, or maybe he grounds out in a big situation where the team needed him, comes back to the dugout, places his bat in the bat rack, places his helmet in the helmet rack, grabs a towel, sits on the top of the dugout bench, wipes his face, drops an F bomb as loud as he can in the towel, which nobody sees, right? Yeah. Wipes his face again, puts the towel down like. And that moment is over. It's done. So there was an expression, a release and a closure of the moment, and then a start and then start again.

What's huge about that is the fact that there's no regrets after you do that. You didn't drain energy from your teammates, you didn't draw attention to yourself. You just took care of what you needed to take care of so you can move forward.

Exactly. So open the moment, close the moment, and then, boom, you're on to the next thing.

That's awesome.

How many people take that negative moment and bring it with them? How many people are going to do that now? Again, we're in the middle of this virus, right? They're going to say, well, the reason I didn't hit my, you know, second and third quarter numbers was because of this or the reason I had a bad 2020. This is an excuse for people to have a poor performing year.

You and I both work with sales teams, right? We both work with multiple sales teams. Guess what? Everybody's picking up the phone right now. Everybody wants to talk to somebody. It's just natural. It's like 9, 11, someone calls, you pick up, you talk. You might not get the business now, but you know what? They're going to know you called them. They're going to know you reach out to them just because you care. But Anyways, I digress. But let's talk about. You put out a lot of great content, you know, and that's really how you and I connected and I followed your trajectory and I love your journey. And you put out a lot of. A lot of great content. And one of the things that. It all catches my eye.

But you said something the other day that you're having a conversation with someone and they talked about how do you want to show up? How do you want to be in this moment? How do you see yourself in these moments? So do you feel strong, powerful and ready? Are you feeling weakened and a bit down? Right. Rise up as a champion leader? Let's talk about how that is so significant right now. And after you do that, can you talk a little bit about how you get to that point?

I look at right now very similar to the playoffs in sports, right. You know, the playoffs and sports are very telling because you can have people that are all star players that when the spotlight gets on them and the moment gets heavy and the pressure builds, they melt. Then you have these other players and you see it in the Final Four every year, right? Or, you know, in March Madness, these players that were sort of under the radar all year. You knew they were decent or good players, and then all of a sudden they make a name for themselves in these four weeks or, you know, and it's an amazing thing how many people in the World Series have won the MVP that were not even premier players. And you see it over and over again.

And there's a certain personality type that looks at moments like this as an opportunistic time period to rise. It brings out the best in them because they're less focused on the negatives of the moment and more focused on the opportunities to elevate themselves, to elevate their team and to elevate again their company. So there's a certain personality type out there that almost salivates for moments like this. And it's not that they're. They're sitting there and conscious of it. These moments just bring out the best in them. Their personality and ability aligns really well with pressure and even conflict.

So let's say I'm sitting here and listening to this great stuff and I say, well, I don't know if I had that personality. You know, I don't have that personality type. How can I get to that point? You know, I know it's not. I know it's not a quick fix. I know. But there's got to be a way that I can start the process now and elevate my leadership ability.

One thing that I try to work with people on is almost grounding yourself out from an emotional. Your emotions overtaking you. And that's so common where we get so caught up in the moment and we get so hyper focused on our personal emotional state or the way things make us feel that we actually just forget to take action. So these people that rise up during these situations, they're less focused on the emotion and more focused on the action. They become even more action focused. So the way we can start that is ask yourself, am I focused on the emotion of the time or am I focused on the actions that need to be taken during this time? And it is an important question for us to ask ourselves. And so many times when we answer honestly, it's the emotion that takes us over.

It's people already thinking about what their year end numbers are going to be or what they're going to look like with a negative twist where the other person says, listen, everybody's home right now. I mean, what better time to reach out to people, engage people, reach out to clients and ask them, hey, how are you and how are your family? I don't need anything from you. But it's a genuine interest in other people during a time of conflict. I can't tell you how many people I speak to in workforces where the leader, the CEO, the head coach hasn't even reached out to the team yet.

I read that. That blows me away.

It's amazing.

Yeah, that blows me away. I firmly believe your people need stability. Right. You need to show them compassion. You have to develop that level of trust and to not even reach out to your people blows me away.

Crazy, right?

Yeah. And you and I are talking about this a little bit before we started recording. It's almost as if. And now I'm not. I do not want to try to minimize this virus by any stretch of your imagination. It's awful, but it's almost as if this is, it's real, but this is almost like a reset button. It's almost something that brings us back to reality. It almost grounds us like we're talking about, but it's also full of opportunities that you're talking about. Right. And we talk about, are we focused on emotion? Are we focused on action? So let's say we're focused on emotion. Can you talk into a little bit about how you can change your emotions by your thought process?

Yeah. Well, your emotions are driven by your thought process. Right. So we have feelings because of what we're thinking, right? If you're thinking about things not working out, not being able to pay your bills, not being able to cover your mortgage, not getting your bonus at the end of the year, that thought process is when it's on repeat, it's definitely a destiny killer. So so many times we get focused on it. And this is what I call them reoccurring loops or tripwires. And they're going on even when we're not in crisis, by the way. And they're oftentimes the reason why we can't get to the destination that we want to go towards. This is why people can't get out of stress and anxiety loops, or why people live in depression. You have to break the loop.

And if you look at your own stats and you look at your own record over the past few years, whether you run the company or you're a part of the company, if you've stayed the same, it's just because you're running the same loop and the same play over and over again, which is based on the same thoughts, which create the same feelings, which create more thoughts, which create more feelings. You have to interrupt that loop. And what a time like this actually does, believe it or not, for many people is it either strengthens their loop or it allows them a chance to finally break their loop. I haven't taken time off. I haven't been out of the office. I haven't spent this much time with my family.

And that changes the sequence that they're running or changes that play that's going on repeat and maybe has been on repeat for a year, five years, 10 years. And how many people do we come across that say, I'm stuck, You know, I just, I can't get over that hump. My business can't get over the hump. And it's like it's you.

No, and that's absolutely. You talk about the natural response to a crisis, right? It's. We can contract, we can shrink over, evaluate paralysis by analysis. When we start to recognize that's happening to us, what can we do to snap ourself out of it? You need to talk about Derek after he struck out. He had his routine. I mean, I know I have certain things when I catch myself because we all, you know, one of the things I work with, my clients, especially right now, you got to have a little bit of grace with yourself. You're going to, you're going to be flawed in your thought process, especially in a time like this. But you Also have to really get better at catching it and pivoting. How can you do that?

So it's interesting. I have a client, he's the CEO of a private aviation company. And one of the things that we came up with was it was called letting it out. So, you know, I would actually work with him on the physical side of things where I'd train him and I'd get his body prepped, and literally, while he's on the treadmill, we'd make moments where he would just yell at the top of his lungs. You know, same thing. You could do it in the car with the windows closed. People may think you're crazy, but you have to get it out.

I see.

You got to get your demons out sometimes. Don't be ashamed of it and realize that we all have them in different ways. For me, it's sometimes like, let's go. I'm very big on coaching myself, and I believe how you coach yourself is also based on your personality type. It's the same thing. If you're a coach, you coach different personalities, different ways. For me, I have to be very aggressive with myself. I call it taming my lion. I have to be aggressive with myself because the soft, passionate, like, compassionate, that doesn't work for me. I gotta shake myself up. But for somebody else, they may need to be more gentle with themselves. It's just figuring out what works for you. But you break the cycle with aggressive action, aggressive incantations. And for me, it's that level of aggressive force through language, right?

No, it's huge. And it gets the blood flowing. It gets your positive energy going. Now, you just said something that. It's a question I hadn't planned on asking, but I think it's very significant, especially with so many people working remotely. Right? Yeah. Okay. Their wellbeing, their physical, mental, emotional well being with your clients that can't go to the gym, and maybe they don't have everything they need in their basement or their home gym. And your clients that can't go run with the 20 guys or ride with the 20 guys, they normally ride with their gals, they ride with their, run with their. You know, what do you have your clients doing right now that our listeners can do in their house? And things to take care of themselves physically and really, truthfully, emotionally and mentally as well.

Yeah, well, the other day, you know, I wrote something about a champions checklist, and it involved taking care of your physicality, your mentality, your daily recovery, your nutrition and cellular health, and then making sure. That your objectives, focus, you have one objective for the day professionally and one objective for the day personally. Right. So if we can execute on those five things daily right now, we got a really good chance of actually improving our overall wellbeing and vitality. And you know, when it comes to not having what we're used to available, you know, when we would travel city to city with Yanks, you know, our weight room and our training facilities in New York were second to none. They were the best.

But when we would go to these other cities and were dealing with really crappy conditions, poor equipment, I mean, broken stuff, it was awful. And most of our training actually became body weight oriented. So we used bands, we used body weights and we broke the routine down into upper and lower body using body weight. So there is always an opportunity to train your physicality. I tell people if you want to break it down to its most simple form, run in place, go 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for 10 minutes and tell me how you feel, right? You're probably going to be pretty gassed. So there's always an option as it relates to our physicality. But if you break a sweat, right during times of chaos, if you will, you're going to feel better about yourself.

I tell people this or I ask them this, when you work out, how do you feel about yourself? You feel better, you feel stronger, you feel more confident with your overall self and right now, don't we need that more than ever?

Do you find that's a big piece of the puzzle with your corporate clients that they might be missing because they're so head down, they're so locked in that they're just grinding and grinding that they forget to do that,

They forget to put themselves in the first position. Because what I find is a lot of people in business leadership, they're accused of being selfish people, right? But they don't really spend do anything for themselves. They're so focused on goals and achievements, you know, and to better the company and to run their team and lead their team better. But they forget to put themselves like their whole being into that equation or they make it secondary to those work objectives. And that's where a big problem comes in. So when I work with people, it's like we got to address your physicality and mentality first, make sure you're recovering. And then what I do is I build what I call goal posts.

So you have from the time you get up to the time you get to work, that time is yours, then you go to work to lunch, that's another goal post. And what are you doing in between that time? Lunch is yours. Don't Forget to take one. Right? You get that hour for lunch, 30 minutes, take that for you. And then you have from after lunch till the time you leave. That's another work block. Then once you leave the office, that turns back over to you. So how many people, right, they. They leave work and they go home and they work more. You can't do it. You can't. If you want to do something maybe a little bit later and you have to get it done, I get it.

But that can't be your day to day because you're giving too much time to one thing.

And that's a perfect segue. So that really lays into what we're talking about now, working at home remotely, right? You have to have that shut up valve, don't you? You have to shut it down at some point.

You have to, because it's so easy to keep going all day long. And instead of coming out of this recharge, rested, recovered, fresh and creative, you could come out of this time totally sizzled. And if you blow this time, you made an epic mistake. So how do we handle that situation? Right?

Right.

We build a workday. We build a workday from home, right? So for me, I'm in my office from 9 pretty much to 12. And then I'll take again, I'll take that hour off. I may go for a walk, do some stretching, you know, hang out, do whatever I want. And then I'll come back around 1 and I'll work till about 4, 4:30. And then where I live, you know, it's still. The weather's nice down in Florida. I can go outside and, you know, play some golf or whatever, play a couple holes and I'm done. You know, I mean, answers to emails, my phone casually. But I got to work when it's time to work and I need to rest when it's time to rest. And I learned that strategy.

And watching players, like people think that Derek Jeter trains all day and he played, he must hit and he must work on base running and his defense all day. He doesn't. It's a scheduled event with a start and a stop. And when he's off, these guys love watching sports. They love watching, you know, movies, going out with friends. Athletes do a great job, especially at the pro level of resting, recovering and socializing, right? Which play their butt off when they have to play, right?

And we can all take note of that, especially right now. And as we sit here and we start winding down, which I hate, I wish we had all day to talk, but we're going to have you back on. But I want to talk about something that we sort of prefaced at the beginning. Struggles, right? Because it is a struggle right now. I mean, we can wake up every day and the first choice that we have is our attitude, right? We can start the day positive drive, positive energy. But the way the news is coming out, the way the updates are coming, the numbers, right, the print, it can challenge us. So how do we handle these struggles? And you said, you know, I've got some stories of struggles that we experienced with the Yankees during my time there.

Can you talk about how maybe one or two of those struggles, what the story was and how you didn't just get through it, but how you grew through it?

Yeah. So, you know, Mariana Rivera taught me one thing years ago, and he said, what you focus on, you get more of. And I realized that is so powerful, right? And we get to decide what a big situation is. You know, we get to decide that because every situation is the same. That's another thing that he told me so very situation is the same. Everything, you know, how we react to things is really, you know, determines what we make out of that situation or what that situation does to us. And you know, for me, like I said, I had a lot of struggle. You know, I was an underdog as a player, you know, fighting to try to be good enough. Playing college. I was an underdog as a 19 year old trying to tell multimillionaires what to do.

While my part time job after I was working at Yankee spring training facility, working with the Yankees, was sitting on the back of a tram at Busch Gardens, welcoming people to the park for seven.

Hey, that's an important job.

It is.

You know, I mean, that's their first impression.

True, but more struggle, right?

Yep, absolutely.

And then, you know, you get this job and you're trying not to lose it because, you know, you're young, you know you're an underdog, you're questioning your knowledge. So more struggle. And then I always say in professional sports, what's really interesting is the day that you sign your contract, you turn that hourglass over and the sand starts moving and it moves slow. Sometimes it moves really fast, sometimes it almost appears to have stopped. But ultimately, when you work in pro sports, at some point your contracts won't be renewed. It's just the way it works, whether it's pro sports, whether it's college sports, it is what it is. So I had that happen to me and I had to make a decision like, do I keep going and try to work with other teams or say, hey, I worked with the best.

I'm a Yankee through and through. This is where I'm going to stop. So that was a struggle that I faced. And then on the business side, anytime you start up a business, you're going to have struggle in terms of cash, in terms of business things working, self doubt, all those things.

Amen. Yep.

Yeah. And I also.

That's amazing. You just said something about what you just said. Self doubt. We're sitting here, we still have self doubt. You still have that inner voice, sometimes that inner critic, that flawed way of thinking. How do you deal with it?

And let me tell you this, right? When you realize that everybody has it, you no longer see it as a problem. So I work with a guy that oversees 17 billion in his private equity funds, right? 17 billion. And he's afraid that he could lose it all. So I'm sitting there saying to myself, I see a very common theme. People are afraid of losing it all. So how do we combat that? You know what I have people do? This is an exercise I have them do. Okay, let's go through all the steps for you to lose it all. Let's go through every single step. What would have to happen for you to lose it all? And when you take them through the exercise, they realize how crazy that thought process is that they could actually lose it all.

They see that they have some sort of control over the shutoff valve, don't they?

Yeah. And it's really hard to lose it all because what it does is it actually shifts you back to saying, well, why do I even have this in the first place? And you realize that there's a way in which you go about your business. There's a way in which you see things, there's a special talent that you have. And when you align all those things, that's why you have what you have, either good or bad.

Right.

You know, so you have to trust that it's who you are and how you go about your business that's led you to success.

I love that. So before I ask you the last question. Okay, yeah, let's talk about where our listeners can find you on social. Let's talk about the book. I mean, give us everything and then we'll get to the last question.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Danacavalia.com that's where I write my daily blog every day, I say Monday through Friday. Give people a little bit of inspiration, motivation, and just a real simple 90 second kick in the butt to start their day. So. Danacavalia.com and then you can get to my social media, you know, whether it's LinkedIn, YouTube and all that from there.

Okay. So they can find all the links there. We'll put all the links in the show notes. Let's talk about the book. Okay. I mean, it is so interesting what you share in there and the 15 lessons about what it takes to become a champion. Yeah.

So here's the book. It's called Habits of a Champion and it's Nobody becomes a champion by accident. That's the subtitle. And really I'll give you just the origin story of the book. I had no intention of writing a book, but. And you can relate to this, you know, as a coach, you're always trying to read and find different angles and learn as much as you can. So you can be the best coach that you could be for your people. So I started to read a lot of books in the field of psychology, self help, personal development, all of those books, even a lot of the standard books that many have read. What I started to realize was a lot of what was written in those books. It was theory, it was classroom based.

And then I'd go to work every day and I'd watch these unbelievable athletes. I worked under a manager like Joe Torre, like Joe Girardi, and I saw how these elites, these winners, went about their business and I said, you know, what I'm reading here and what I'm seeing on a day to day basis, both in sports and business, it doesn't match. It's not matching up. I got to figure out a different solution here. I got to write a book that's for the person that wants to see, like real personal development and real self help.

Real less. I love it.

Yeah, be real. We keep it real.

That's right. That's it.

Yeah. But just from a standpoint of some, like, I've been through it, I've dealt with the struggles. Here's other people that have dealt with struggles. And I put that in the book as opposed to just this perfect plan, how to live your life like a robot. That's not real.

And this is like, you use the word real, you're in the trenches. This is a reality. This is things that are applicable and it's what people can connect to. I mean, it's something that makes sense to them and they can see and they can feel the emotion that goes into it when they watch this stuff happen and when they read the book. So. And there'll be a link to that book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you this, you know, most self help books today and all that, they all say, well, I was, you know, sleeping on my sister's couch or I was living in my car. I wasn't, I didn't live on. I don't have a sister, she doesn't have a couch. And I wasn't sleeping in my car.

Yeah, yeah, that is that. But I was taking pictures through the chain link fence. I love that story.

That is true though.

That is an unbelievable story. Hey, I know you got a role. I appreciate you making the time to join us here today in the athletics of business. Another great podcast episode here. Please rate and review this podcast episode. Share it with your friends. Share it with your peers. We greatly appreciate it. Dana. Keep doing your great work, brother. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks, Ed. Thank you for listening to the Athletics of Business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathletics of business.com now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.