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EP 220: Pushing Limits Leadership Inspiration from Ultra Distance Athletes with Bryan Gillette

Bryan Gillette is a long-distance runner and cyclist who has pushed himself beyond physical and mental limits in various self-supported tours and races. He completed a 205-mile run around Lake Tahoe in 76 ½ hours with only 90 minutes of sleep. 

His experiences in endurance sports have led him to write a book titled "EPIC Performance." In addition to his athletic accomplishments, Gillette has also found success in the business world. He founded Summiting Group, a company that coaches executives and advises leaders on performing at higher levels for themselves and their teams. Gillette lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family.

In the episode we talk about his experiences, how he lead himself through all the tough endeavors and what he learned about leadership from interviewing 100 executives which he documented in his book.

Links to the Guest:

Bryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryangillette/

Website: https://summitinggroup.com/epic/

Bryan on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bryan.gillette.9

Book: EPIC Performance: Lessons from 100 Executives and Endurance Athletes on Reaching Your Peak https://www.amazon.com/EPIC-Performance-Executives-Endurance-Athletes/dp/1637552173

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Transcript:

(This Transcript is AI generated)

Bryan Gillette

Hello and welcome to the Human Innovation Podcast, the podcast for innovative leaders. I'm your host Jens Heitland, and today my guest is Brian Gillette. Brian is long distance runner and cyclist who has punished himself beyond physical and mental limits and various self-supported tours and races. He accomplished a 205 mile run around Lake Tahoe in 76 and a half hours with only 90 minutes of sleep. He raced across America with his bike and his experience in endurance sports have led him to write a book titled Epic Performance, where he interviewed 100 executives and documented what he has learned from them. 

He also founded Summit Group, a company that coaches, executives advises leaders on performing at higher levels for themselves and their teams. In this episode, we talk about his endurance experiences, what he learned himself from it, but also what he learned from interviewing the 100 executives. Please welcome to the show, Brian Gillette. 

Hello Brian. Welcome to the show. Great to have you. 

Oh, it's nice to be here Jens thanks for having me on the show. 

This was one of the episodes where I was really looking forward to the whole week and was looking at my training schedule. I was like, oh, I'm not really up for this talk.

I'm not fit enough for talking to you. No really great to have you and looking forward to learn from you when it comes to leadership, obviously. But before we go into leadership, we need to talk sport a little bit. And before we do that, tell us a bit about yourself so that the people understand who you are and where you come 

from. 

I live in California in the San Francisco Bay area, and I've got two teenage boys, happily married and grew up in this area, and so love it. As you mentioned, we gotta talk about sports. I have for much of my life been, an ultra distance athlete. And, and I remember early on as a kid I was a kind of a, a young teenager I think, and I cycled from my home in the San Francisco Bay area up to Yosemite, which was 200 miles away.

And I did it with my parents. They, they wanted to go, and that just got me hooked more so into cycling. And then I started to do longer ones, eventually cycled across the United States. Then in the last 10 years, got more involved in running and started to do, you know, it's like you gotta do the marathon.

That's kind of the ultimate runs. I mean, you, you know what it's like. And then so did the marathon and thought, okay, what's next? And I'm always asking that question, what's next? So did a 50 miler, then a hundred miler, and eventually did the 200 mile run around Lake Tahoe, and I know, we'll, we'll dig deeper into that one.

And, and, and one of the things that got me thinking about this stuff is I had people say, oh, I could never do that. And I thought, oh, no, don't, don't, don't hold yourself back. So we can, we can dig into that. I am a former human resources executive, and then about 10 years ago started my own leadership consulting business.

And so I, you know, work with executives one-on-one as well as facilitate executive retreats. 

Yeah. There are a lot of nuggets in that and we, we can dig into 'em. Yeah. Let, let, let's start. Running. Do you, do you fo follow Candace? The, the race director of Tahoe 200? 

I don't follow her regularly. I, I was for a while and so apparently you do.

Yeah. Candace Burt, 

organized, she's doing a crazy thing in the moment. She's doing an ultramarathon run streak 50 kilometers a day, and she's today at day one, 105. So she has already broken the world record in this, which 

is epic. She, she is a rock star. Yeah. Yeah. Just a bundle.

I, I, I met her at the beginning of the Tahoe 200, which she's the race director. She manages a couple of races and so just a, just a rockstar, an amazing woman. So I'll have to, I'll have to follow that a little bit more closely. 

It's just so funny when she crossed the 100 days. Yeah, it's, it was a day like anyone else was like, yeah, I was a little bit, but yeah.

Now, now I go cooking with my kids and then tomorrow is the next day. 

You, you get into, and I'm sure you experience this when you were training for Ironman, you get into this rhythm where like you start off and you think, oh, running, you know, five miles is so hard. And then five miles becomes okay, yeah, that's easy.

And then it's 10 miles. It's so hard. And then 10 miles becomes so easy. So, you know, a lot of people say, I could never run a marathon. And I say, well, you can't run it today. Yeah, agree. But you start running a marathon by first running three miles and then go in running four mi miles. So you may not be able to do it today, but how do you build up to it for tomorrow?

Yeah. 

So how did you get. Signing up for that race and the craziness, just thinking about it right now, for me it's like running 200, is it 205 miles? 205. It's 205.5, yes. Yeah. How, how, let, let us start at this. Like how, how was it signing up for this race, knowing that you need to, that you need to run that?

I, I, you know, growing up in, in California and loving the mountains, Tahoe is just, just this iconic, it's just beautiful lake and I've cycled my bike around. It kind of, when you cycled just around it, it's 72 miles. With the run you're up in, up at Elevation. So they create a 200 mile And after, after completing kind of the 50 and the a hundred, I thought I, I had friends that had done the 200, the year bef the kind of the first year, and I was doing it in the second year.

And, and it just, it just kind of called to me and it's just like, how cool would it be to say you have run around Lake Tahoe and, and just be, and, and you go through the night. It's just this crazy experience and it's like, all right. I, I think it would be really cool. So signing up isn't too hard. It's still, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's an expensive race fee.

It's, it's comparable to what you would pay to sign up for an Ironman. But, you know, signing up the, the easier part, but, and, and I'm a firm believer of if, like, somebody will say, okay, how, what's the, what's the first thing I should do if I wanna run a marathon? And I tell 'em, I said, look for one six to nine months out and just sign up for it.

Yeah, agree. And then let's deal with that, deal with everything else beforehand. So it, it was just this, it's like, how cool would it be to do it? And it's like, okay, yeah, I've gotta try it. Yeah. 

And, and then you, you got yourself ready for this. How long did you prepare from let's start with your first marathon to the 200.

How much time was in between then? 

So I think it was so I ran my first marathon and then the next year I did a 50. The next year I did a 50. Then I, the next year I did a hundred, and then I did the 200. So I think it was about four years. September, 2015 is when I did the Tahoe 200.

Yeah. In November of the year before I had completed a hundred. So I was in pretty good shape coming into the beginning of the year. Completed the a hundred, took about a month and a half off of heavy running, just did some light exercise. And then somewhere in January I started to ramp up my training.

And I had a pretty, pretty rigorous training plan that eventually took me to, I had to be able to run 30 miles a day for four days in a row. And now you look at what Candace is doing, she's been doing that for over a hundred days. But I knew if I could run 30 miles, four days in, in a row, then I was ready.

You know, kind of with the, the physical part, mental, it's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. There's a lot of other things, but it's like, that's the, that's the physical shape that I had to get into. And so that was January, up until August. The race was in September. 

Yeah, impressive still. But, but so for everyone who is listening to this, we are geeking out a little bit in this topic today, so sorry for that.

If you are not into running our sports stick to it. It's, it's weird still coming to the leadership stuff. 

We'll get to it. I, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of parallels. Exactly. Uhhuh. Exactly. Yeah. I'll, I'll I'll let you go and we can talk about some of the parallels. 

Now let's go into the preparation, because at least for, for me, it's now, I, I'm not that fit anymore because I have finished my last Ironman, what was it, 2019, directly before the pandemic.

And then built my own business. So I have focused a little bit more on that. But one of the things, and I still have my coach, and what I found for myself is, like you said, putting the carrot in front of you where it's like, there's the race. I need to be ready for that. And I don't want to go, at least for my ambition is when I go to race, I want to be fit.

I want to be in proper shape. I want to be, be racing and racing myself. I'm not in a, in a competitive shape to be able to race against anyone top or age groupers like it's called in the Ironman or triathlon world. How was it for you? For me at least, what I understood and learned for myself is the day-to-day and specifically the hard days where you, you're lying in bed and it's like, holy crap, I need to get out running right now.

Tell us a bit about that part. 

Yeah. Well, well, well, first of all, y you say you're not in shape and my guess, you know, just kind of looking at you, knowing, knowing a little bit about you, your not in shape is probably more in shape than most people's in shape that might be. It's, and, and so we have, we may have this, this skewed view of what's not in shape, and I, I would say the same thing right now, I'm not, I, I am not in the physical shape that I was before Tahoe.

But I try to stay in, in decent. So how do you get up at three in the morning when you don't wanna get up? Is that, that's I think your question. 

Yeah. And specifically maybe linking that as well to, you have been working as an executive, so it's not like Yeah. I, I have a job where I do nine to five and kind of sit around and can rest in between.

Yeah. You have to really understand why you're doing it. And, and I, I, I interviewed a hundred people for the book, and we can talk more about this, but I was talking to one guy who, he was, he, he op he started up in his running a very successful large engineering business. He was in the middle of training for an Iron Man.

And I asked him that same question, you know, during my interview, you know, it's, How do you get up and, and, and do it? And, and he said, you gotta really understand that why and what's important to you. And he goes, my why is I didn't want to end up dying on the couch like my uncle did from overweight.

And, and what happened is he went on to tell me the story is his uncle had heard his back, was spending a lot of time on the couch, spending time on the couch, got him heavier, getting heavier, meant him, he spent more time on the couch and it's just this downward spiral. Hmm. And, and he saw what happened to his uncle and he didn't want to that to happen to him.

And so he focused on how do I get in shape? And so at three in the morning, or four in the morning when the the alarm goes off, that's what he was. Yeah. And, and, and on a, on a work site, another one of my clients who oversees a very large organization to try to improve the economic development of a, of a large region in California.

And I said, how do you, how do you keep going? Because, you know, he's got all sorts of headwinds in his face and people are saying, no, and we can't do that. And he said something very similar. He goes, you know, when I was a kid, I saw that when my dad lost his job, he just lost kind of a who he was. Yeah. And he lost that drive.

And I, I never want that to happen to people in this community. So it goes back to understanding that why now that's the bigger picture. There's a lot of things of how do you kind of break it down even smaller. One example that, that I, when I was training for a Tahoe 200, I knew there would be days that I just did not want to get outta bed.

And so what I did going into the training in a sense I had like about eight months of training is I said, I am gonna give myself three freebees where I could just not train that day. And it's no questions asked. Now this, you know, if I was injured, that's a different story.

These are non-injury days where it's like, I just don't wanna get up, I don't wanna do anything. I'm gonna sit on the couch. And, and so I had those three Bs. So it, it, it, it gave me, gave me that out. And so it, it, you know, three, I remember waking up at like three, four in the morning. It was raining out and I thought, oh, this would be a good day to use one.

And then what, what went through my head is, You know, if I get up, the hardest part is getting out and starting, starting going. It's getting from the bed to, you know, 10 feet past the driveway. I thought if I can get there and just get out and move, it will tr I will start, I will learn how to deal with the uncomfortableness and that will be valuable when I'm on trail running.

And, and so I never used any of those three freebies, but I always knew I had it in the the pack. So it's given yourself that opportunity to, you know, not be perfect. So, I mean, there, there's a whole bunch of other things we can talk about. Those are just a, those are a couple. Yeah. 

That's, it's fascinating.

I would love to go into what this made to you and what you learned for yourself. But before we go into this, so you're preparing for this race and then you're in this. How much of the race is because their, their listeners, most probably two or three who, who have never been running a five kilometers, like 20 minutes run or half an hour run, they can't imagine of running 200 miles.

How is it from a physical perspective, but you mentioned already the mental aspect of running 200 miles. How is that, how does it feel? 

Physically it's, it's extremely difficult. And, and you, at some point you are going to be painful at all parts of your body. So, but it is, you know, when you run, when you run a 5K and if you've never run a 5k, you get to a point where it's like, oh, I am so.

And then you get to that point where it's, that happens on a 10 k. And so, and in a marathon, you know, people, people talk about the halfway point of a marathon is really about mile 20, mile 22. Because that's when, you know, the first 20 miles isn't too bad. It's that last 6.2 that is challenging. And so you're kind of at, that's where you think of that half halfway point.

So every physically, everything will hurt at some point. You know, I had, you know, I had lost toenails. I had, you know, blisters the size of a quarter on my feet. And, and so it, it, it's hard, but it's not the physical part that stops you. It's, it's up here. And, and that's, that's in so much of what we do.

It's up here that stops us from, from moving. And it's that ability to keep your mind going. And that's why, you know, when it was raining at, you know, three or four in the morning, I knew that if, okay, I've gotta practice. And rehearse when it's hard because I'm gonna need to pull from that when I'm in race day.

And, and I'll tell you, you know, like 50, 50 hours in it started to rain and it's like, okay, I put on, I had a, a s a light windbreaker. I put that on and it's like, okay, I've done this before. I can, I've run in the rain, I've run when it's dark, I've run when I've been in pain. I can just, I can keep going through it.

And so that, it's that mindset that it does push you and you have to have those tricks of how do you get, get through it and, and, you know, I'll share, share one other. So as I mentioned, you know, one of the things I had to do is I had to run four 30 mile runs in a row. And so, you know, Saturday get up, run 30 Sunday, run 30 Monday, 30 Tuesday, Thursday, and.

Two 30. And, and so Monday I'm running 30 miles and, and I'm 10 miles into it. So I've already done, you know, 70 miles over the last two days and 10 miles into it. And I'm, my legs are tired and it's hot. It's August in California. It's kinda the hottest time of the, you know, one of the hotter times of the year.

And, and I'm, I'm miserable, I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm whining, I'm complaining to myself inside, and I'm, I'm out by myself. And I thought a friend of mine had breast ca was going through breast cancer. And, and as I'm whining to myself about how my legs are sore, it's, I, I started to put things in perspective and I, I find this is a great way to kind of look at things, is put it into perspective, is I am voluntarily doing this.

Hmm. I in about. An hour, less than an hour could be home, sitting on a couch drinking something cold, and my legs in a day or so are not gonna hurt anymore. The pain will be gone. She was not voluntarily going through it. Hmm. She, her pain was gonna last a lot longer and she had no choice. A and once I started thinking through that, I realized it's like, you know, you know, Brian, you just need to stop whining and, and kind of move you what you're going through.

Yeah. It's hard. But you're voluntarily doing it and so how do you put things in perspective you know, can help you get through some of those, those more challenging times. 

Yeah. That's powerful. Definitely. So you finished the just give the people listening to it without anyone understanding the average pace.

That all doesn't really matter for this races, but how, how long did you need to finish the 205 miles? 

So you've got a hundred hours to do it? And, and so I had completed it in 76 and a half hours. That's good. So, you know, in a sense, three days and wouldn't, I had 90 minutes of sleep. I took about, somewhere around, I think 60, 62 hours is when I slept for, for 90 minutes.

So y I mean, you think about it is I had a full 24 hours that if something went wrong, I could have just slept for 10 hours. Yeah. Gotten up and. And, you know, gone forward. And, and so a lot of people, you know, if they, if they bow out early, you know, my, my sense is, hey, just, just go to sleep for eight hours, get a good night's sleep, wake up in the morning and try a, see how you're feeling, and then go, but don't quit yet.

That's a good one for, for me. It's, my ambition would be too, too crazy to say, no, I'm not going to sleep. I can sleep in front of the finish line, but no, go for, 

well there's, and, and you, you would understand this is as you're going along, you have to ask yourself, okay, if, if I DN f did not finish, if I D n F, now what's worse?

You know, that kind of the pain I'm gonna experience over the next, you know, X number of hours or seeing d n f next to my name in three days. Yeah. And, and that's, you know, ultra distance athletes, you're, you're probably the same kind of look at that. It's like, okay, that d n F is a, is a hard thing to swallow, and so what is it I need to do in order to get off my butt and keep moving 

forward?

Yeah. Especially if you're not injured. I mean, if, because then it's re truly a, a mental thing, right? If you're into this different, different ball game, then it's fine. But yeah, I agree. For, for me, yes, I've had to wristband always like never. 

Yeah. And, and I think you bring up a good point. There is a point where it's safety or prolonged injury will, you know, you have to, you have to balance that out and Yeah.

And, and when you run that long, when you're out for 76 and a hour hours mentally, you know, I'm not at my best. I was not, you know, my, my brain wasn't working as well. And so I gave my crew, cuz I had a pacer, somebody that ran with me for, yeah, for much of the time, not the first 60 miles, but for everything after that.

And then I would come into into an aid station and I had a crew there and I had told them beforehand, I said, I will give you guys permission to pull me because mentally I won't be at a point where I can do that. And so I actually gave it to, I gave it to my crew chief. I said it, you have that responsibility and if you say, Brian, you can't go on.

Then I will listen to you. I want won't like it and I might argue about it, but you, at the end of the day, you have sole responsibility to pull me. Yeah. 

Let's move towards leadership. What did you learn as a leader for, especially for leading yourself, let's start with that perspective. And later on we go into the book.

When you interviewed hundred executives and what you learned from them, but what did you learn as well from the Race across America, which is a fascinating other story for yourself on leading yourself. 

What I, and and early on I used to, you know, somebody would throw out something big at work and, and I was just like, ah, we can't do that.

And, and so I found myself saying that more than my older self does. Hmm. And. And, and if I would go back, it's like, okay, that's, that's one thing I'd change. But I, I realized after doing some of these events that when you say, I can't do that, you're putting such big limits on yourself, and how do you switch that around?

Maybe you can't do that today, but how can you get to the point where you could do that? And so it has allowed me to think bigger. I mean, had you asked me 20 years ago, you know, you know, could you run, could you run 200 miles? I would've said, yeah, I can't do that. It's like, yeah, no, that's, that's impossible.

And, and there's a quote that I really like. It's, once you stop believing something is impossible, when you stop believing it's impossible, you start believing it's possible. Yeah. And, and it's one thing, you know, I, I try to, I try to get into the people I'm working with. It's definitely one thing I try to get into my kids' head.

You know, I have two teenage boys. It's like, you know, when they say, oh, I can't, it's like, okay, well what do we have to do to get to, I can, or I, you know, maybe it's, I can't yet. Hmm. So it, it's, it's that ability, it, it really helped me think kind of much broader. It's like, all right, how can we, 

and that's, it sounds so simple, but if, if just working with other organizations with humans, we are all, are limiting ourselves as a first point.

It's not that e external factors. Yes. Other people tell us we can't. Yeah. But in the end, it's, you can decide for yourself if you want to. You can at least try. Yeah. 

And, and, and, and where it, it really. Kind of came more crystal clear to me. So I was doing, I have done, I had done a bunch of 200 mile bike rides and you know, a 200 mile bike ride would take me 16 hours or so.

And I thought, alright, right. I wanna be able to do 300 miles in one day. So it'd be the first time riding through the night. Starting at five in the morning. I estimated I'd finish about five in the morning. And, and my purpose for doing it, and, you know, sounds a little crazy, but is I wanted to understand how far can I push my mind and my body.

Hmm. And where is that breaking point that, that I wanted to understand? And, and, and so, you know, I, the 201st 200 miles part of an organized run and then I organized ride and then I just added another a hundred miles on and. And earlier in the day, I had seen a fellow cyclist dead on the side of the road, and that kind of shook me up.

I had collided with another cyclist and needed a new front wheel, and that kind of shook me up. And, and then I was able to get moving and, and somewhere around two or three in the morning I had, you know, about 25 miles left. I thought to myself, you know, I never hit the limit. Of of where my mind and my body could go.

And, and that's really when the book kind of started to form is, you know, we put these limits in our head and they, I I think they just hold us back. Yeah. And so how do we try to get rid of those limits? And I mean, there are, there are some limits that are natural. I am not gonna be racing in the Tour de France you know, at, at my age.

So, so I'm gonna focus on other things. But it's that where that line of, of realistic is probably a little bit further than maybe we give ourselves credit for. 

Yeah. But to, if we just take the Tour de France as, as the example, you, you still can cycle the whole course. I could without, without a doubt.

Maybe not in the speed, like the professional cyclist. Yeah. But you, you 

can still do that. I, I think that's a great idea. It's like, okay, I'm not going to race a tour de France, but if it was something I really wanted to do, I could go ride the course. Yeah. And you know, I, I look at, okay, the average age of a tour De Frances winner, the average age of a tour de France cyclist, and they're in their twenties.

I'm in my fifties. Yeah. It ain't gonna happen. But to your point, okay. Shift things a little bit. Yeah. How do you go ride the course and do it a little bit differently? So I, I, that's the type of thinking that, you know, we want to kind of get more people doing. Yeah. And, 

and funnily enough, my, my coach will cycle the Tour de France course this year.

Ah, and he's, I don't know, he's 53, 54. Yeah. Cracking it. 

I mean, it, it, it's, I mean, people often, one of the excuses we often use is, I'm too old. Yeah. It's not too at all. No, I mean, the oldest guy to run a marathon was a hundred. Yeah. And he started running marathons when he, I think was 89. It's like, all right, maybe you're not too old.

Yeah. So those are the people that inspire me that, okay, when I'm 89, what am I still doing? Yeah. 

And I think that's, I, I love this examples because it, it just means start. Yeah. It's just, if, if we take running, you don't need extra gear in the beginning. If you run 20 minutes, you don't even need extra shoes, nothing.

Just doing it and getting started is the first step. And then keeping it, going, doing, doing something on top of it. It's, it's just what, what I learned from myself training. And I see it as well when I'm not, like I said in sh am I not in shape? So now I'm running half an hour, 45 on the weekends an hour.

It's not much compared to before. But still, I feel if I'm not doing it, so when I'm not training for two days, my brain is kind of in the mood where my wife is saying, I think you should go out running. 

We might have the same wife because my wife will do the same thing. You know what I, she'll say, Hey honey, you know, maybe you need to go out for a bike ride or go out for a run.

And, and that's, that's their cue of saying, you're really annoying me. Exactly.

But, but I think that point Jens that you, that you talk about is just start is, and that applies to everything. I mean, I, I've talked, I was talking to somebody a while back and they wanted to start their own business. They, and they were, they were fully employed and they wanted, but they wanted to move into sim, similar to what I do, and do some consulting.

And I said, what can you do in the next 72 hours that moves you forward? You don't have to quit your job. But what is it? And that's, I mean, what, think about what you can do in the next 72 hours. It could be researching, it could be buying a domain name, whatever it is. And then would do that and then do it again.

Do you know what now In the next 72 hours. Yeah. You know, it's that, that whole, that Christmas song, put one step in front of the other and soon you'll be walking out the door. Just get moving. 

Yeah. And that's, that's so funny that you mentioned that because a lot of people asking me, how do you do all the things you do from an entrepreneurial perspective with like having two businesses and so on?

That's, that's just the normal grind I'm used to. And it not grind in a negative way. It's more, yeah, it's just set a goal, get, get things done, and then set the next. 

And I think that's, that's probably a good, you know, how do you link sport and business together? I mean, the, one of the reasons why you are probably successful in your business side is the same reason I would say you're successful in your sport side.

It's a, and, and when I interviewed the a hundred people, you know, 75% of 'em were on the work side, CXOs, so founders of companies, and then 25% of 'em were ultra distance athletes. So minimally they'd done the equivalent of an Iron man. Hmm. So done. You know, I, I talked to two people who ran seven marathons in seven days on seven continents.

And, and it was, it, it was not unsurprisingly, I guess to me of how many people had done those ultra events that were also very successful at work. It's that same. Yeah. I think there's a, that same mentality that that exists. 

Yeah, let, let's talk about the book and how you, how did you start with, Hey, I want to interview a hundred people, or did you start out with the goal of interviewing a hundred people?

How, how did you get into that? 

Yeah. I would like to say that the a hundred came because it was a very scientific method and, you know, but, but it was pretty much, it's like, all right, I want to talk to a hundred people. I think that will give me, that will give me what I need. Yeah. And so I just kind of threw out the idea of a hundred and, and it, it was, it was big goal.

It would get me a lot of information. It would get me a bunch of stories. And so the a hundred was just kind of somewhat random I'd say. And then, and I started kind of going to my network and it was surprisingly easy to connect with a hundred people. Yeah. And, and it's, it's a, that's another kind of, one of the big lessons that I learned is I was often hesitant to ask people.

You know, ask people for help. Ask people, you know, for guidance. Cuz you know, one, it makes me look weak and I, you know, but the other thing is I didn't want to hear no. And, and so I was wondering how many people am I going to have to ask in order to get a hundred people to say yes. I only had two people say no to me.

And one of 'em was a family thing. It was just not the right time. They were having some, some issues going on. They said it's just not the right time. It's like, okay, I get that. And then the other one just didn't, didn't wanna, I didn't get connected up with her people. Which was, was the, the challenge.

But still, that's not bad. So it's like, if there's something you want at least ask. 

Yeah. So, and, and being persistent, which links back to, to sports as well. Doing consistently things, which opens up opportunities if you are not. Starting running, you're not going to be, I mean, it's not always linked to health, but you're not going to run the marathon.

Right. If you are able to do step by step, go out three times a week, it will, the, the opportunity will be there to run a marathon. Same with business. If you do it consistently, yes. You maybe get five no's, you get 20 no's. But as more, you do it as more you learn by doing it and you get more successful with it, and then there will be Yes.

Yes, yes. Afterwards, 

and, and, and I often looked at, I, you know, if you asked 20 people that said no, and 19 said no, and one said yes, I'm also, I would focus more on the 19. It's like, oh, 19 people said no. Yeah. And you know, it's taken me time to think about, okay, let's focus on the one person that said yes.

Yeah, let's put our energy there. Because you can't expect to hear Yes all the time, but you're gonna hear, no, you're gonna have to deal with. With that. 

Yeah. What was special from a performance perspective and the book is called Epic Performance. What was special, what you learned? Maybe the things that, that are not too well known where everyone would say Yeah.

Or obviously Yeah. From the hundred, 

you know, a, a couple things is the hundred are very deliberate and focused. Mm-hmm. And, and so they don't just kind of, kind of willy-nilly go into something. They don't let fate drive where they wanna go. And, and I, I'm of the view and so many of the people were that I can control or define where I want my destiny.

And some people don't see it that way, but you know, these people, it's like they have a vision, they're very clear on what that vision looks like. They may not know how to get there, but they also then have that confidence in order to start going in di in that direction. And I, I would, I would dig in, it's like, where does that confidence come from because you, you don't just, you know, you don't just start off running a marathon and, you know, they, they said the confidence comes from smaller wins.

Yeah. So that confidence comes from, you know, going out and running a two miles and knowing I can do it. And that builds me up to do three miles or four miles, or, you know, for the executive is you don't start off being an executive. You start off being a supervisor or, you know, inno another level and, and then you get some skills, and then you're a supervisor where you're oversight seeing, you know, 15 people and then you work your way up to a manager where you're, you know, maybe it's 30 people and kind of work your way up.

But that confidence comes from success early on. And the other thing is just a tremendous ability to persevere through challenging times. I mean, all of 'em had some challenging times, whether it was a, a failed startup whether it was a divorce, whether it was a death you know, a getting fired.

All of 'em had something that, that kind of rocked them and that ability to know, I can make it through this. And it hurts today, but tomorrow it's gonna be better. And so I just have to get to tomorrow. And it was just, it was fascinating to talk to these hundred people and I, and I, I, I would, I could have kept to doing that.

It's like eventually you gotta sit down and write a book. 

Yeah. The, the interesting part is because the, the in air corps's negative part, the, the not successful things that what people don't see, it's always only, hey, this is the super duper successful executive and everything is brilliant. Everything looks good and shiny and polished.

But they would not be where they are if they wouldn't have the bad things. The, the, the downturns. 

Yeah. I mean we, we look at all these people, the, you know, I live in the heart of the Silicon Valley. And so I see, you know, these companies that, you know, that have grown from nothing to something very quickly.

And, and I was, you know, part of a company that eventually sold for 4 billion. And, and the founder of the company, he made a lot of money. And, and, and I, he, he deserves it. And so as I talked to him and he said, you know, there were days we were worried about payroll and, and you don't see that as you talk about, you don't see the days.

It's like, are we gonna have to close our doors? You know, I, I was a, a, a good friend of mine runs a, an organization that is truly changing the world and we're changing a continent, I should say. And I was talking to her last night and they lost a big deal. Hmm. And, and she's nervous. You know, a about what's going on and, and it's like, you know, you don't see that when the company IPOs when they sell to a bigger company and all that stuff.

Yeah, 

that's fascinating specifically linking that back to endurance sport and as well, the commonalities because yes, people see that you have finished the 200 run, but the whole hardship to get there and finishing it. Yeah. And, and during the whole thing is for me, that's the, the journey is the fascinating part.

Not just crossing the finish line. At least in my, in my race experiences. The finish line is Yeah. A nice thing, but I'm, I'm way more into the whole process of signing up and getting ready for it. 

It is. And, and you know, people ask what's the hardest part about running, you know, the, you know, a 200 mile run And I will say it's all the training leading up to it.

Yeah. Because when you're doing the race, you know you have a hundred hours and you know you're not gonna be miserable for those full hundred hours. And, and kind of break it down into something people can kinda understand a little more. As you look at a marathon, you know, a marathon's gonna take you between four and six hours for a lot of people.

And so, you know, in six some seven hours, you are going to be done. No matter what it is. The race director's gonna say off the course, you're out and, but when you train, you've got 4, 5, 6 months that you have to stay focused. You have to deal with pain, you have to deal with misery versus the race, which is 4, 5, 6 hours.

And, and so I always say it, it's harder to get to the start line than to get to the finish line. If you can get to the start line, heal, then you did your job, you're gonna get to the finish line. Yeah. 

 Before we go into the last part tell us a little bit about what you do with your company. You already mentioned a little bit, you help people as well when it comes to leadership performance as uh, tell us a little bit about what you do and what are the people or corporations or companies you work with.

Yeah, so in, in generally I do two things. I facilitate executive retreats or leadership retreats. And, and the primary purpose is mainly to get people aligned around where they need to go. You know, most of the issues I hear about it's because, the group doesn't know exactly where we wanna be tomorrow.

And if we can get everybody on a similar page, or at least in the same book, you know, your success rate as an organization's gonna go up. So I'm j I'm you know, pulling people together. I'm working with the executive team to say, all right, where do you want to get to at the end of the day or the two days?

And then I help them get aligned and move in, in, in that direction. Sometimes it's some team building, kind of get everybody to understand more of who they are and more about the team. But generally it's, you get to understand where you want to be. Yeah. So that's on the, on the group side. On the individual side, you know, I, I may work with a director, vice president, and you know, they're really good at what they do.

But maybe they need some guidance or they need some coaching and, and how to, how to expand in a certain area. You know, maybe, maybe they've moved from a director up into a VP and, and that's a different job. And so how do you understand the differences? What are some of the skills you need to do in order to be successful?

A and, you know, being in the heart of the, the Silicon Valley, I've, I've been fortunate to work with a bunch of technology companies, but also, you know, I, I've worked with a couple of, like city governments or governments, and, and often what I hear is people's, you go into any industry and they're gonna say, oh, our industry, our company, we're so different.

And yes, a software company is very different than how a city government is run. But the issues at a leadership, at an alignment, at a communication, Pretty much the same. Yeah. So still all, all people, they're still all people and managers still, you know, whether a man, they're a manager in the in, in one area versus another, they still, you know, kind of do the same things.

Where I often see the difference is the speed in which an organization is moving. That's, that's where I see the biggest one where you got a, a startup. You know, I, I, I worked with Toyota a couple of years ago and then I worked with this small startup, same issues, but the speed in which this, this startup was moving versus the speed in which Toyota was moving completely different.

How do you bring the sports background and your endurance experience into this job? 

Yeah, it's. Part of what I talk about is how similar they are. And, and a lot of people can relate to some sports analogies. You know, some people can't, you know, most people can't relate to a 200 mile run.

But you know, a lot of us have played sports early on, and so I'll bring those examples and, and we can talk about that. It, it also helps to bridge that gap of, you know, how are you thinking bigger? And so if I use some of my examples of, you know, at one point I would've never thought I could do Tahoe 200.

Yeah. And, and so how do you try to make it personal for you? And if you can make it personal for you and get better at, at being able to think better, bigger for yourself, you can then start to do it for people around you. You know, when I do talks to different groups, one of the questions that I will ask is, I will ask people to think of something really big in their life that they, they want to do, that they've always dreamed of doing.

And get that in your head and, and for your audience. And, you know, I encourage you to do the same thing. Think about that one thing, not, not something you're gonna do this year, but something that's like, ah, yeah, I wanna do, you know, really big, whatever it is. And then ask yourself, you know, when I'm 80, will I regret not doing this?

And if you answer to yes to it, then at least go out and start figuring out what can you do in the next 72 hours, to start moving in that direction because, there was a woman by the name of Bronny Re who wrote a book about the top regrets of the dying. And she was a home healthcare nurse, if you're familiar with the book.

And she talked to people who were dying and one of the things she heard was people often regret the things they didn't do versus the things they did do. We don't regret the things we did do as much as the ones, it's like, oh, I wish I would have 

agree. Yeah, I, I've heard about it. It's definitely. So last question before we go into the last part, be just between us, we, we don't have listeners right now.

They've all checked 

off Exactly. Working with a, a person that's into endurance sport as a client or working with the person that's not at all into sport. What's the difference? 

I just have to use different examples. You know, I, I, you know, with I, I, I ha I, I, the, the sports examples wouldn't work as well.

So I have to find something that resonates with them of when they have, when they've said, I can't do something, you know, whe whether it's in the theater whether it's in, in a musical instrument, is think back to a time when you've said I can't, and, and how do we kind of, you know, take the sports out of it?

And how do we get to get to something that's meaningful to them? A and you know, I, I remember years ago I was working with a fairly senior executive in a company, oversaw all of the engineering for, for an organization. And you would look at him and think tremendously confident, tremendously successful, and.

And he said, and, and as I was doing some one-on-one work with him, he goes, I get very nervous when I give presentations, and I would've never thought that. Yeah. And, and, and we all, you know, most of us get nervous in presentations and, and I knew he liked to do bagpipes. He was a bagpipe player. Yeah. And, and so we started talking about bagpipes.

I said, you know, when you play bagpipes, you know, do you get nervous in front of groups? I go, no, no, I don't. I said, you know, why is that? And so we started going down that path and it, because, you know, I, I know that I know this how to play it. I, I've practiced it. It's like, okay, how do you take that concept and put it into your presentation where you know the material so well?

You've practiced it so well that it's just like playing the bagpipes. So you have to find that, that thing that resonates with the, with the person. Yeah. 

I just imagine when I was working as. As, as a fairly high manager in an organization, I would've loved to have you talking about sports. Like you, like we take this guy 

and, and you know, it, it works for some people.

Yeah. And some people, some people it doesn't, you know it with the surprises, the heck outta me when I did some research, only 1% of the US population has run a marathon. And Yeah. And I was taking way more. I w I was too, and I was surprised and I, I kind of looked at a couple sources and, you know, it was on the internet, so it's gotta be true.

But I, I looked for a couple sources and it's either way, it's a really low number and I thought, you know what, it's probably only 1% that can't run a marathon. I would say 99% probably could. Yeah. And so I, it's like, oh, why, why? So, it's a, it's a low number, but I think more people could do it. Agree.

Let's, let's go into the last part. If not, we are sitting here the next two, two hours and then we won't have any listeners. Yeah. Only the sports people. That's right. Okay. First question from the last part. If you could work with a project, either leading it yourself or being part of it that is impacting every human being on earth, what project would you decide to work with and why?

I'm not sure if this impacts everyone, but eventually, it likely will. And, and if you asked me this question two days ago, I might have had a different, different answer, but I was just, you know, literally right before you and I got on for our discussion we were talking about chat, G B T and the impact it is having.

And I'm, I also, I teach at a university. I teach a leadership course at a grad for the graduate course. And there's a lot of discussion around how chat G B T or AI is gonna impact learning and, and, you know, do we block it? Do we not block it? And the ethical issues around asking, asking, you know, jet G B T to write something, and then who owns that?

And, and so I think it's, it's fascinating. I think it's gonna change our business. And, and I'm excited for where it goes. And so I, I, I, it's something I'm gonna have to learn, I wanna learn more about. But it would be an area, it's like, yeah, we're gonna, we have to embrace this technology. Agree. 

Yeah.

Last question from the normal questions. What tips and tricks would you give an advice would you give to a young innovator that's just getting started? 

Last night I went to hear Marley Matlin. I, I don't know why I'd say speak, because she's deaf, and so she signs, and then she had somebody that was speaking on her behalf.

She was academy Award winner, the youngest deaf person. At 21, she got an Academy Award. She just released last year, the year before the movie Coda, which is children of a deaf adults. And so I went to hear her speak or see her speak, I'm not sure.

And what she said, and I I, I say this to my kids all the time, is she had a tremendous amount of challenges growing up. And her dad would always sign three letters to her. And I don't know, sign language, so I can't do it, but he, he would say t r y, try. And I tell that to my younger son a lot.

He goes, dad, I can't do this. I said, just try, just try it. And maybe you can. So I, that's the advice I would give to that younger person is just try it, you know, and, and maybe it'll work it, it might not work, and then try it again or try something different, but just try t r y. 

Great one. Where can people find you and how can people reach out to you?

Yeah, 

yeah. No, I always love to hear stories, especially if somebody that's trying to, to do something big the best way. So you can go to my website, which is epic performances.com, so E P I C performances with an s@theend.com. And, and then there's ways to get in touch with me. You can connect up with me on LinkedIn you know, Brian Gillette, it's b r y a n.

You can get the book Epic Performance Lessons of a hundred Executives and Endurance Athletes on Reaching Your Peak. You can get that on Amazon and, you know, so connect up with me and share the stories of something big you're looking to do. And then when you do it, send me, you know, share that cuz I love to hear those success stories.

Yeah. Now we'll put the links as well into the show notes. Wherever people are listening or watching this, they can find it and click straight away through you. Brian, thank you very much for being on the show. Was an awesome pleasure to have you, and hope to meet you one day for a run. Thank you very.

Oh, 

I, I look forward to it. Thank you, 

Jens. Thanks.