Steven Pivnik, a tech entrepreneur and Ironman World Championship competitor, shares his personal narrative of triumph. From immigrant beginnings to top-tier athlete, his story unravels how setting audacious goals and nurturing the belief in their attainment can lead to unparalleled success. My own voyage of overcoming generational challenges interweaves with his, as we both affirm that success is not a distant dream, but a milestone that beckons anyone bold enough to chase it with unwavering resolve.
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Steven Pivnik, a tech entrepreneur and Ironman World Championship competitor, shares his personal narrative of triumph. From immigrant beginnings to top-tier athlete, his story unravels how setting audacious goals and nurturing the belief in their attainment can lead to unparalleled success. My own voyage of overcoming generational challenges interweaves with his, as we both affirm that success is not a distant dream, but a milestone that beckons anyone bold enough to chase it with unwavering resolve.
Connect With Steven!
Website
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Manifestation is a thing and it's legit. The human body, the human mind doesn't understand the difference between actually accomplishing something or envisioning the accomplishment of something. So if you can not even master, if you can on a 101 level, practice, manifestation and meditation, you can actually see yourself accomplishing, whether it be a relationship, a career, a job, a move, a car, a vacation. Your body will subconsciously start making the necessary decisions for you to get to that destination and miraculously, somehow, some way. It could take a year, it could take 15 years, it could be 12 years to get the Iron man World Championship, but I manifested it the day I learned about this.
Speaker 2:My name is Ryan Cass and I am your host, and it is my purpose in this world to inspire people to establish a foundation for sustained success by developing systems that will enable you to accomplish your goals, break systemic trends of adversity and chart a desirable course for life. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please help us achieve our vision of becoming one of the top podcasts in the world by subscribing to the show, sharing it with somebody who you believe will benefit from it and leaving a review. Let's connect with our guest. Never stop pounding the pavement. If you're not moving forward, you're going backward, and that was said by our guest today, who is an endurance machine, both physically and in the business realm. He is a successful tech entrepreneur, ultraman athlete, world Iron man competitor and the author of an incredible book built to finish, it's an honor to have with us on the podcast today Steven Pivnic. Welcome, sir, thank you.
Speaker 1:Ryan, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:A lot of cool things that you've accomplished in life, between successfully selling, building scaling and selling your company to a multi-billion dollar firm, In addition to competing at the World Iron man Championships in Kona. Most recently, before we got started, you were at the Ultraman in Florida, and we can read all these things about you and make determinations that man, this guy, just isn't human and has everything figured out. But what is it that makes you human and like the rest of us in this world?
Speaker 1:I think I'm superhuman. I mean, I'm the son of a father and a mother, I'm a brother to my wonderful sister, I'm a father to two incredible daughters, a husband to a wife. I'm as human as you get. I just have figured out a way to set some audacious goals and to go after them and to do everything humanly possible to attempt to accomplish them. So yeah, I think I'm as human as they come, but I'm just wired to accomplish interesting things.
Speaker 2:I love that and one of us is what I heard. But what I'll extract from what you said is that you've really found a way to accomplish and set audacious goals and then to use. The last thing you said is you're wired in this way. Now, what I would, what I love to understand from high performers, is that wiring process. What's fascinating about the brain is that it's so malleable and we can create these circuits that have us wired for high performance, like you, and or we can create these circuits that have us believing that, man, all the success that we see from others is reserved for others and it's not for me. Or I can't do that, or it's possible for Stephen, but there's no way I could do that. Talk through how you've wired yourself for success and what was the genesis of this and some of the influences that you've had in your life to get you where you are now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the common term and I'm nowhere near an expert right is neuroplasticity, so the brain can be reprogrammed. It is 100% possible. People need to learn and believe that it is possible. So there isn't like this master plan that is set. The master plan can be reset if you have enough willpower to reset it.
Speaker 1:I went to this personal development class which said that everybody has an event in their lives which programs them to go in a specific direction. It could be like an abusive event where somebody says I will never be abused again and I'm going to be in charge. It could be a whole new myriad of things. I think my event was when we immigrated to America and I went to school on an immigrant scholarship with a bunch of rich kids to a pretty ritzy school in Brooklyn, new York, and I was definitely low man on the totem pole and nobody hesitated to remind me that I was low man on the totem pole, especially financially. I didn't have the clothes they were, I didn't wear the clothes they were wearing, I didn't drive the cars they were driving, etc. Etc. And I was embarrassed. I wasn't bullied per se, but I was embarrassed multiple times and I think right there and then that's.
Speaker 1:That was the trigger. That said, I'm not going to be the low man on the totem pole forever. I may be now, but I don't want to be there long term, and that's one of the many things I think I can attribute to my lifestyle of setting big goals and going after them is, hey, you know what? It's not that I want to make fun of anybody that's not there which I would never do but I don't want to be the bottom anymore. So I think that's what triggered it many, many years ago in grade school and then in high school.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Now, as you say that you're not going to be the low man on the totem pole, I'm curious as to the following actions. When I made the commitment as a seven year old that I'm going to break the generational curse in my family, there was still a long period of time that went by where I kept saying it. I knew, I had it baked in my head and my subconscious that, hey, I'm not going to be the next one to carry on this trend. And it wasn't until years later, after having made that, that I then was intentional about.
Speaker 2:Well, what is it that people like Tony Robbins and Richard Branson and Warren Buffett do that makes them so successful? What's the sauce? I want to know. And I want to know for multiple reasons. One, because I keep reading about them too, because if I'm going to break the trend and fulfill this promise I made to myself, well, maybe looking at people like them will help me. And that's what led me to then writing down my goals and buying the notebook, pen and paper to look at what I wanted to achieve every single day. Those were the following actions that I took. But I'm curious. You said I'm not going to be low man on totem pole, dot dot dot. What happens next? It's really interesting.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't remember a specific plan, but I firmly believe that something was ingrained that set a program in motion that helped me execute on all the following steps. So I got a good job. And then the good job wasn't good enough. From the good job I went to an. I took an entrepreneurial risk and started a company. First company failed it did not phase me in one way, shape or form. I started another company. Second one failed. It did not phase me in any way, shape or form. I tried again and the third one hit. And this is very, very common in the entrepreneurial realm of multiple failures before success. So there was no specific plan, but as success, you know, started coming, I started implementing.
Speaker 1:You know some of the things that you actually meant journaling, writing things down. I mean, I hate to fast forward to the very, very end, but one of the last chapters in my book is envisioning the finish. Manifestation is a thing and it's legit. The human body doesn't, the human mind doesn't understand the difference between actually accomplishing something or envisioning the accomplishment of something. So if you can not even master, if you can on a one, on one level, practice manifestation and meditation, you can actually see yourself accomplishing, whether it be a relationship, a career, a job, a move, a car, a vacation. Your body will subconsciously start making the necessary decisions for you to get to that destination and it miraculously, somehow, some way. It could take a year, it could take 15 years, it took me 14, I'm sorry it took me 12 years to get the Iron man World Championship, but I manifested it the day I learned about this thing, so it is possible, hmm.
Speaker 2:To your last point there, and one item that I wrote down from your website is you distinctly put in there that finishing the Iron man World Championships in Kona was something that you had dreamed of for 157 months. So I'll even correct you there it was 13 years and one month. I looked it up because I said how long is 157 months? 13 years? No, let's not discredit the delayed gratification. And thinking through manifestation, you said, it's not that you need to become the all time guru of it, but let's break down manifestation 101.
Speaker 2:This is something that I've become a little more interested in lately, especially as I'm hearing a lot more folks talk about the importance of the energy frequencies that we give off and how that plays a role in achieving what we want to create and design in this world. Manifestation 101. I've heard it thrown around. As you sit down, you close your eyes, you think about whatever you want and then eventually you will get it, but I feel like the missing piece is okay, that's great envision, but it's gotta be followed by action. So help us break down manifestation 101 and how it applies to you.
Speaker 1:It really started with me even before I knew what, before manifestation was a word, and before I even knew what meditation was. I think it was like the beginning 90s, when I started my company. I would walk into a sales pitch Right so I started the company in Manhattan, new York City. You know, bunch of skyscrapers, every single. There was no, there was no zoom right, there was no Skype. There was. It was all face to face meetings.
Speaker 1:Walk into a building and I literally stopped myself and I don't know, I have no reason how this habit started, but it was a real thing. Walk up to a building, look up at the top. As I'm about to enter it, I would say, look at the name on the building, whether it be Jake Morgan, philip Morris, sanofi, aventis, united Nations, some of my early customers. I'm like I'm gonna eventually this company right here will be a client of mine. Close my eyes, I said I'm gonna come back here next time as a client. So that was.
Speaker 1:I don't know how I started that, but I did. Again, the mind does know the difference between a real event and a manifested event. And programmatically, after that sales call, after hearing their requirements, after hearing their pricing, restrictions or needs. We did, or I did, we it was a huge team we did all the necessary things in order to make that manifestation a reality. So again, but it's not as easy as just dreaming it up. You have to put actions behind that dream, so it needs to be in a front of mind or top of mind at all times in order for the actions to take place to create that reality.
Speaker 2:Absolutely One thing that I keep telling myself and that I look at my dream, my vision, before we spoke and hit record.
Speaker 2:One thing that I'm making happen, that's going to happen, that's in process, is even with the podcast, this eventually will be something where it's a studio that I've crafted and I'm sitting across the room from somebody, versus sitting across the computer, which is still amazing that you can be in Manhattan and I'm down here in Charleston.
Speaker 2:But when I look at some of the biggest podcasts in the world and study them like School of Greatness, joe Rogan, you name it they've got these immaculate studios and I'm thinking how awesome is that? And it's great to dream it up and say it. But if I don't, if I'm not intentional about even having podcasts in this format and becoming the best interviewer possible and doing the proper research, that's just gonna stay a pipe dream. So I agree with you that I love what you said just going in front of the building, closing your eyes this is gonna be one of my clients and then you follow that up and boom, it's only a matter of time. I believe when you commit to this journey of personal development and you really go all in on whatever it is that you want. It's never a matter of if, it's simply a matter of when, and that when could be the next day, or it could be 157 months later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I think a really important element of that is A to you, in order for a dream to come true or a goal to come true, first and foremost you have to believe that it's possible. If you have a complete pipe dream of I'm going to be a trillionaire in 12 years, okay, what's the reality of you becoming a trillionaire? Slim to none? There may be one more trillionaire in our existence if ever. Right, so that's not happening.
Speaker 1:So create a dream that's actually accomplishable not easy, definitely a stretch, but doable. B you have to break it down. It's gotta be. If you can't break it down, then you're not gonna accomplish it at all. When I found learned about the Ironman World Championship, I also realized the steps that are necessary to get there and I said you know what? I'm not gonna wake up tomorrow and qualify and be at the top of my age group and get a ticket to Kona. I found out about the way I was gonna get there and I knew it was going to be a multi-year process and I was totally okay with that. So, a it's gotta be achievable. And B you'd have a roadmap to get there and you have to have building blocks and get to work on those building blocks.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, no, break it down. And with Ironman World Championships to qualify, is that that you've got to win your age group at a certified race, or what is that process?
Speaker 1:So there's two ways. The easiest way there's no, I can't believe I'm actually saying this is easy If you're at the top of your age group at any other Ironman race. Most Ironman races have one to three Kona slots per age group per race. So there's 2,500 people that compete in Kona, the World Championship, and the way they get there is they perform at the top of their age group in any other Ironman race and then they say hey, you know you are top of your age group. Do you wanna go to Kona? If you say yes, you go. If you stand, it goes to the next person, next person, next person. So potentially you can be 10th in your age group, as long as the first nine said no, for whatever reason, not everybody wants to go to Kona then you get your spot. So that's if you're fast, top of your age group.
Speaker 1:Ironman also has a thing called the Legacy Lottery. I call it their Frequent Flyer Program. If you do 12 full distance races around the world, you enter this thing called the Legacy Lottery and if you're selected you get to race with the best of the world. So anytime you see on television the Ironman World Championship, it's 2,400 of the fastest athletes in the world and 100 people that have gone the Frequent Flyer Program like I did. So I knew I was never going to qualify to take from top of my age group because that requires a crazy commitment and I'm just not that fast. My motto was not fast, not last. So my journey was finish 12, get a Legacy Lottery spot, go to Kona. And that's what I did.
Speaker 2:And the 12 races or the 12 Ironmans, was that one per year and then the 13th year, and so that's what led to the, ultimately, the adoption of the Ironman.
Speaker 1:Championship. I was so committed and so not. I wasn't desperate, I was on a mission to get to Kona. I did. I think I'll go from the reverse. The year before I entered the lottery, I did three Ironman in one year.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Year prior I did four in one year, so I did seven in two years and then I did the 12 minus seven, eight. I'm sorry, I did all those in previous years.
Speaker 2:Got it so three in a year. I mean, I can imagine the toll that takes on the body just being a competitive runner and even running a few marathons and now ultra marathons.
Speaker 1:every year it was one Ironman five years in a row, and then four, and then three.
Speaker 2:Got it, and even then, though that's still, it takes a toll on the body, and coupling that with the swim and the bike, I'm just thinking through the marathon piece itself. Being a competitive marathon runner and running several marathons a year, it's not something that you wake up the next day and you're like all right, I'm gonna go do another one. It takes some time. So I applaud your endurance mindset and I'm also curious prior to setting this goal in this dream and pursuing it, had endurance sports played a significant role in your life growing up, or was it something that you pursued along the business journey and entrepreneurship journey, so a little later on in life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my wife hates when I say that I was a couch potato, because the things I wasn't. I was inactive. I had no sports background at all. My parents didn't invest in little league or basketball or anything like that. Actually, I tried that for my basketball team and high school didn't make it. Even though I'm six feet tall, I had no skills whatsoever.
Speaker 1:At the age of 40, I kind of started realizing that I've got some really bad genes in me. Between my grandparents and my parents they had it all Cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, you name it. They had it. So around the age of 40, I said I've got some bad stuff in me. So that started weighing heavily on me.
Speaker 1:And then, coincidentally, I learned that somebody at work did a triathlon, a sprint distance triathlon, which is the smallest one, and I said, wow, a mere mortal is able to do it. I thought a triathlon was an Olympic event. How does somebody just do a triathlon? And then I learned that there's only not as many as there are now 14 years ago, but there's triathlons all over the place. Just go to this website called beginnertriathletecom, find the local race and sign up without any qualification whatsoever. I'm like genius. I'm turning 40 in a couple of months I'm going to turn 40 in the best health of my life. I'm going to sign up for a sprint distance triathlon and that's how I got started and I trained for three months. A sprint distance is tiny compared to Ironman, still hard. I'm not taking any credit from anybody that does sprints. It's a fantastic race and it kind of mushroomed from there.
Speaker 2:What's fascinating, stephen, is that you started that journey, what some would may argue a little late, but really there's late in theory, but I don't believe that there's ever a right starting point for a lot of things in life. Just get going. Doesn't matter if you said you started at 60, all right, great, keep going. Don't stop. But to see that you started later on and then kept that going and you're still active and you're still continuing to challenge yourself. You were just at Ultraman, florida, as you embarked on the triathlon journey which then transcended into Kona and everything else. What benefits and or parallels have you seen from choosing endurance challenges to your success in the business world and even your endurance in the business world itself?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So one of the many things that I started noticing when I started pursuing the triathlon journey was the tracking right. There's a lot of tracking requirements the distances that you're running, the pace that you're running at, the nutrition, the calories in, calories out, the rest periods, et cetera, et cetera. I started keeping more data about my activities than I ever have in the past and then I just started looking at my business and sort of realizing that I could be doing a much better job of tracking things in the business and I literally went KPI crazy. I said you know what? We're tracking some good stuff. We're not like complete Neanderthals in our business tracking, but we could be doing a much better job.
Speaker 1:So I instituted a monthly operating review at the company and I had every department come up with five charts that they were going to present on a monthly basis and we had these big binders printed every single month big meeting around the conference room table. Everybody came with their charts and their reports and their KPIs and we really started having very, very quantitative meetings instead of qualitative meetings with real data, and everybody was expected to do better on their data at the next meeting and the measurement in the business kind of fueled the measurement in my endurance hobby and then the measurement in the endurance hobby, you know, fueled better measurement and better performance in business. So it became really, really intertwined, wow, and it was an incredibly you know complimentary type experience.
Speaker 2:So what I'm hearing there is that it was really the triathlons and the endurance sports that gave you the business discipline, because now you shift the conversation from hey, what are we focused on? To hey, here's what we're focused on and here's the exact things that we're looking at. It's interesting. I've actually got right across from me every run and training plan that I've done for the marathons leading up to Boston for the last several years and I can go tell you exactly how many miles I've ran, what weeks, what workouts. I didn't hit the paces, everything and I'm a little bit of a not a little bit.
Speaker 2:I'm quite a data junkie with that, but then also at work, because typically the easiest way to measure progress on anything is to quantify it. Now I believe that there are some additional benefits and I'm curious how these ones played in. Again, going to parallel between endurance sport to business, things don't always go your way in training, in competition. There's some that you haven't finished, and you also mentioned that the business that you eventually sold was number three, but the two prior to that didn't work out so well. How is the endurance world? How have endurance sports helped you become a more resilient human and leader in business person?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's really easy to fail and then to blame a whole bunch of things and then to give up. And you know what? I don't fault anybody for trying something super, super hard and saying you know what? I gave it a shot and you know what? Not for me. I'm not good enough, not smart enough, don't have enough money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And moving on to something else, that's fine, because that's something else. When one door closes, the next door can be phenomenal. That's happened to me multiple times in the business world.
Speaker 1:The other way to look at it is that didn't work. Let me figure out why that didn't work. Let me see if there's any opportunity to do something a little bit differently and see if I get a better result. And again, there's no like this specific formula for this, because in some cases you can look at this as throwing good money after bed, trying again where success is really impossible. Or you can say I really apply these lessons learned and, like you, bring up Ultraman.
Speaker 1:I tried Ultraman last year. I'm not gonna say I failed miserably. It was suboptimal is a very, very great way to look at it. But I knew exactly what went wrong. I know why I failed a swim. I know why I didn't finish the bike ride on day two.
Speaker 1:I know there was a whole bunch of things that I knew I can improve and it was going to be a Herculean effort. I knew it was gonna take a lot out of me physically, psychologically, mentally to do better, and I made that conscious decision to try again. And I did and I'm walking away with a phenomenal result. I did significantly better than I did last year and I still learned a lot. There's so much more to do, but I'm happy that I did better. And the same can be applied for business. As long as you have to make really, really calculated risks and you have to have sounding boards. You can't just rely on yourself, because you have to fact check and double check all of your thinking from others that have been there. Done that and then you can decide whether to fold or to potentially double down.
Speaker 2:What relationship do you have with the word failure, based off how you're describing it in these instances? You went to Ultraman once, you didn't finish. You went to Ultraman twice you didn't finish, but you did a hell of a lot better than the last time, and it gives you opportunity to improve for the next time, right? I typically only use the word failure when I'm asking the question, because to me, failure isn't even the word, it's simply an opportunity. That's what I've wired in my brain. Failure equals opportunity. How do you view the word and I also use this as encouragement to others that there's really no such thing as failure, and I want you to hear it from someone other than myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean failure is just learning opportunity. I mean you can beat yourself up. You can like say, oh, what was me? I didn't do what I set out to do. As long as you learn and you want to improve and you don't want to make excuses, move on. You haven't. I mean, not finishing is not failing. You just haven't accomplished a goal, but it doesn't mean you will never accomplish that goal. Just learn, take in everything that you've experienced.
Speaker 1:And I can't stress this enough you can't just depend on yourself. You really have to use others as a sounding board to why did this lack? Again, I'll use failure just because it's the easiest word. Why did this failure occur and what? Is there something that could be done differently to increase the chances of success next time around? And if multiple people say no, then you know what? Take that advice Don't be stubborn and dig in your heels and keep going. But most of the time the answer won't be no, don't try again. It'll be adjust this, modify that, pivot on that a little bit and then try. And that's exactly what I did for this latest version of Ultraman. And, oh my God, the results were radically different, radically different.
Speaker 2:You've referenced sounding board a lot and for someone that is looking to build a strong support system around them, because at the end of the day, even being out in an Ultraman or Marathon, you're out there alone. Yet we're never truly alone, and a lot of why we get to do what we do or why we're at where we're at, is not just a result of your actions, but also the people that you've placed around you or that you have around you in your life. I get asked a lot how do you get better mentors? How do you have these people that know so many things that are all related to what you wanna do in life? What's your take on building a strong sounding board and what does yours look like?
Speaker 1:I think there's so many people out there that are willing to give back to whatever the community is right, whether it's the entrepreneurial community, whether it's the running community. Now you, as a successful marathoner I mean, if you've qualified for Boston, you're a successful marathoner. And the sentence full stop. If a beginner marathoner asked you for advice, would you be willing to give them 15 or 20 minutes of your time?
Speaker 2:I'd give them more than that yeah 100%.
Speaker 1:So I think a lot of people are just very, very hesitant to ask for advice from people that have been there, done that a little bit more, accomplished, a little bit more successful, and I've learned personally that that's foolish, because people are very, very willing to help others. I've asked. This is gonna sound really crazy. When I wrote my book, I asked Mike Riley is a celebrity in the Ironman world. When you finish the Ironman race, there's an announcer at the end of every single race that says your name, stephen Pidman, you are an Ironman. When you cross the finish line, it's a world-renowned statement when you cross the finish line and he invented for 30 years he did at least a race a month, if not more that he would welcome people to the finish line.
Speaker 1:I wrote my book. I just emailed him and said hey, mike, would you mind reading my book and giving me an endorsement for the back cover? He's like, yeah, seven in the book. Two weeks later he read the book. He sent me a great endorsement. It's on the back cover of my book. Why did he do that? Because I asked him.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure if most people would call Warren Buffett okay, this is an exaggeration. If you call Warren Buffett and ask him for some investment advice, he'll just tell you to go invest in the SAP 500 and you'll be fine. But maybe that's a bad example. People that are successful are very, very willing to help others, so people that are trying to get to that level should not hesitate to ask. And if you get shot down five times, that's fine, because on the six or seven time you're gonna get some really cool and good advice to move whatever ball you're working on forward.
Speaker 2:Build your ask muscle, and it makes me think of a story of someone I had on the podcast a couple of years ago. His name is Chris Doris. He brands himself as the mental toughness coach. He works with a lot of athletes, primarily golfers, and grew up in Philadelphia, poor, didn't have a lot of money, but wanted to work in sports, psychology work with sports teams. So he finds this master's program at Arizona State University and Arizona State.
Speaker 2:For those that appreciate and enjoy sports, they've got great sports programs, notably golf. That's where Phil Mickelson played, that's where a lot of the best athletes or the best golfers that you see on the PGA Tour went to Arizona State. So as he's there in his master's program, they're asking him what do you wanna do? Well, I wanna be the mental toughness coach for golfers. And someone tells him well, you're gonna need to work with probably like ping pong players first and the bass team and the fishing team and all these. We'll call it, with no disrespect to the teams, we'll call it the lower tier sports that not as many people know about before you can get to golf. And someone tells him Chris, why don't you just go to the golf coach's office and ask him if you can be the mental toughness coach for the golf team. And sure as hell in his mind he's like there's no way. He's gonna say, yes, he's gonna laugh at me, all these things.
Speaker 2:But what does he do? He goes to the golf coach's office, knock, knock. Hey, I'm Chris. I'm a psychology master's student. I'd love to serve as the mental toughness coach for the golf team. Here's what I can do. What does the golf coach say? You know what? We'll let you start with the freshman team. And where did a lot of those freshmen go? To the PGA Tour, and who did they bring with them, chris? And what did it come down to? He asked a question Exactly.
Speaker 1:It does need to be said. I mean, I had a CFO that worked for me many years ago and his entire philosophy was don't ask, don't get. He would ask some ridiculous questions sometimes, and some ridiculous like asks internally, externally, and I'm like what are you doing? He's like don't ask don't get. And you know what? Half the time he got it yeah. All you have to do is ask.
Speaker 1:You'll never know the answer to an unasked question, and there's nothing wrong with it, though there's nothing wrong with it, though there's just nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 2:No, no. In my book it means two things. One, it's an opportunity to ask again. Maybe you switch up how you do it, the approach, or you find someone that can give you some leverage, or the other thing that it means is not right now. Yeah, exactly, that's it.
Speaker 2:And one thing that's given me a lot of belief or with this podcast is even I can sit here and tell myself, all right, this podcast, I don't have the fancy studio yet or the things that you see on YouTube yet Yet. But what does that mean? What? Why doesn't that mean I can't get amazing guests? Everyone can still be reachable on a riverside call, zoom call, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:And Joe Desena, the founder and CEO of Spartan races, who has been on Joe Rogan's podcast and some of the biggest podcasts in the world I see him on LinkedIn. I'm like you know what I'd love to talk about endurance with Joe Desena. Why don't I just send him a message on LinkedIn and see what happens? And Got to talk to Joe DeSena, have his cell phone number now, and I don't say that to Bragg, it's simply asking a question and a lot of people are more than willing to help out. So you gave the formula. I'll back that formula. Just ask the question, find the people that know a thing, that know the thing you want to do, have done the thing that you want to do, are doing the thing that you want to do, and reach out to them Boom.
Speaker 1:It's really that easy. It's funny, how easy it is.
Speaker 2:Now you sold your company to a multi-billion dollar firm and I've been listening a lot to this podcast called my First Million. It interviews a lot of founders and folks that have scaled and exited or are about to exit. I'm curious, just going back to mindset, if selling your company and experiencing the financial freedom that may have given you, has that made you any happier or did it contribute to any level of happiness for you? Wow?
Speaker 1:That's a very, very deep question. We may need to reset the clock a couple more.
Speaker 2:The reason why I'm going there is because one as I've been listening to more folks that have exited. I'm noting some interesting answers there. You're actually the first person that I've had on that has had an exit to a large company. I'm curious as to what's the actual effect behind that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really great question. You're the first person to actually ask me that question. Am I any happier, I think, if I had to give you a yes or no answer. My answer is no. I was super happy to begin with. I was living the American dream. I was basically executing on the plan that my grandparents and parents had envisioned for our family to have a better life than we had in the former Soviet Union. The company was successful. I had a really good lifestyle. It wasn't exorbitant by any stretch, nor has it become like crazy exorbitant. Yeah, I've got some more things than I've had before, but I'm not driving a Lamborghini or flying private planes. I think the answer is no, just because I wasn't unhappy to begin with. I made the best of it when I had my company and then when I realized the value when I sold other than having to work on it all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Not much has changed. I'm still setting big goals. I have other big goals in mind. I'm still parenting, even though my kids are grown. Parenting never ends. I still have my mother that I love, still have my sister. The answer is no. I'm no more happier. I'm very satisfied. I'm fortunate. I'm grateful for the event. That was super, super grateful. I think I'm more grateful than happier, if that answers your question Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Also, you don't have a case of what I call the when I then I syndrome. When I sell the company, then I will be happy, or when I lose 10 pounds, then I will feel good about my body or sign up for this race. That's what I say is when I, then I and you didn't tie something to the end of the well, when I sold it maybe again bought you some peace, if anything, but it didn't buy happiness. I'm curious what is the source of your happiness? What drives that?
Speaker 1:The happening is just like literally. I mean, I don't know if this is cliche or not, but just like living life to its fullest and coming up with things to do and making living vicariously through others. I live. My wife and I just moved our door to Miami. Literally this weekend I finished Ultraman and then we moved our door to Miami. Now I'm living vicariously through her and her new Miami lifestyle. Our older daughter lives in Mataucho, new Jersey. I'm living vicariously through her experience in this new, very, very cool town in New Jersey. I think happiness is how you define it. Everybody has the right to define it completely differently, and they should.
Speaker 1:For some people happiness can just be reading 50 pages in a book every single night and they're happy, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:What keeps you coming back, steven? Because now we know that the sale of your company isn't what has contributed to happiness. Happiness is by design for you and being with your family, living vicariously through your daughters. One could argue man, you've got it all, why go to Ultraman and why attempt these treacherous hikes in the Denali in Alaska, which you've made two attempts there and eventually you're going to go back to that? We could argue, hey, you've got it all, why keep putting your body and mind through the test? What keeps you coming back?
Speaker 1:I mean again. I think back to my earlier point. Everybody's entitled to define happiness. I'm happy when I'm doing something extreme and it just satisfies me. Coming from my parents or my grandparents' history of living in an incredibly oppressed society and not being able to exercise, not having many freedoms in any way, shape or form, I've got the freedom to do whatever I want right now and some financial resources to do some cooler things. I'm just happy executing on those freedoms that have been afforded to me. My happiness comes from, just again, just doing things that are deemed hard and challenging. I get a personal satisfaction from that.
Speaker 2:It's something I like too.
Speaker 1:Maybe my much earlier comment of I'm never going to be a low man on a totable. If you're not going to be a low man, you've got to be a high man. I'm going to Everest next year.
Speaker 2:I get to keep that. I love that. When I think through, when I even achieve the financial freedom that I envision and dream of, I'll keep doing these crazy races. It's fulfilling, brings joy, it's awesome. It's the best type of pain you could ever experience. I was just out in Arizona with my girlfriend and ran the Mesa Marathon on Saturday, getting ready for Boston now. But that Boston process wasn't a one-time thing. I'm going to keep coming back and re-qualifying and what's the next hardest thing we can go do? And let's go run all the six major marathons and then maybe let's go run across the United States. That's been on my heart and mind for a while. That's probably going to end up on the Gold Board at some point. How?
Speaker 1:about the World Marathon Circuit, the seven continents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of it, it's a blast, it's fun seeing Like. What I define as fun is like hey, what are we capable of? Your book Built to Finish helps people in a variety of different ways. Why should we? Or rather, when we pick up that book and read it, what can we expect to gain from reading Built to Finish?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think you can gain that. If a college dropout can start, scale and sell a large technology company and a couch potato can qualify for and compete in the Iron man World Championship, when there's a million and one reasons why both of those things should not occur or can easily fail or blow up, then why can't Mr or Mrs XYZ do ABC or vice versa? This world is filled with people just making excuses to not pursue certain things and I'm just hoping that by reading it somebody will say, wow, that was inspirational for me to go try this thing that I thought was not possible, and that's exactly what it's. I had a book launch for friends and family, because obviously I begged friends and family to buy my book and they did, and many others did as well, because miraculously I got on the bestseller list for like three weeks in a row. So it was much more than just friends and family. I'm assuming it's good if people are buying it. I gave everybody a notebook, right?
Speaker 1:So at the end, my present at the book launch was a notebook, just a little journal, and I told my friends and family that my next book is going to be about them. I want to write about normal people like myself establishing audacious goals and going after them. And so please write down your goal in this book journal, it right. Journal all your progress, and I want to hear from 12 of you in one year's time on your progress towards accomplishing whatever brand new goal you set for yourself tonight at this book launch. So that's what I'm hoping the book accomplishes. I mean, the financial gains will be great. I mean, if it sells, I make money on it.
Speaker 1:That was never the intention. I just wanted to memorialize my journey so my grandkids can read it one day, and my great-great kids. And I just want to inspire others to do similar great things, because I firmly believe that when we set large goals, we go after them. We become a better version of ourselves, like you have in your marathon journey, and then we inspire others to do similar things and now, of course, around the back, people that are doing great things and going after big goals. We're just a happier group of people, we're a better neighborhood, we're a better society and should I relate that you know a couple of us out there may be peace in the world. I mean, I know that's a super, super far cry, but anything is possible.
Speaker 2:How awesome that there's a second book coming and you want it to pay tribute to those in your family and really continue to show that anyone can do anything. There's another theme that's really emerging from this conversation Now, Stephen, you have two big goals and we've talked through manifestation and how the powerful that is manifestation obviously must be met with action. Talk through those two big goals and some things that you've used that show us that the power of manifestation and visioning really do work.
Speaker 1:I had two goals many years. Five years ago I'm a world championship and selling my company. I wrote a check on myself. I think Drew Carey did this. I'm sorry, not Drew Carey. He wrote a check to himself for $10 million.
Speaker 1:I wrote a check to myself for a large amount of money and I pasted it in front of my computer screen In my peripheral vision all day. Every day, I saw a check made out to myself for a large amount of money and I also printed out a banner of the Iron man World Championship. I literally had no choice but to look at that when I walked into my home office and as I was working on my computer all day, every day, it was in my peripheral vision for years on end. In addition to writing it down, write it down and make it visible and paste it. Others can see it. Obviously, it's more important for you to see it, but you need your family members to see it. I was not embarrassed to have friends and family come into my home office when they visited and to see this check in front of my computer. They're like what's that? That's how much I'm going to sell my company for? They said, okay, good luck. Guess what I was off by maybe half a percent.
Speaker 2:Almost being read on the dot. That's amazing. Again, to speak to the power of writing things down, having the belief system looking at it daily and taking action, it's customary to end the podcast with a rapid fire session. The way this works is it's called One Gem, one Step, one Book. Imagine that we're on an elevator and we're going up three floors to go grab lunch somewhere in the upper west side. Someone gets on each elevator stop and asks you a question. The amount of time you have to answer the question is the amount of time it takes to go up one elevator floor. Not a whole lot of time. Someone gets on and they recognize you. They've listened to the podcast or they've read Built the Finners. They ask Steven, what's one gem that you have, whether it's a quota or a mantra that you live your life by, that I can put in my back pocket and live my life by Life begins at the edge of the comfort zone.
Speaker 2:That's right. Next person gets on Steven. What's one step that I can take today to build my endurance mindset? One step start, just get going.
Speaker 1:Start. Forget about the planning. A horrible plan started today is 10 times better than a perfect plan started five months or now, or two days, or five days or now.
Speaker 2:That's right. Last person gets on, Steven. What's one book besides yours that I can read this year to sharpen my mindset?
Speaker 1:The one thing, the one thing. The premise of the book is pick a challenge, pick a goal, pick an opportunity. What is the one thing that you can do that'll make everything else unnecessary or easier towards accomplishing that goal? Phenomenal book.
Speaker 2:It is. I've read that one and enjoyed it. Steven, it's been a blast to have you on the podcast. All of your information is going to be linked in the notes, including the book, your website, how people can find you folks. I encourage you to check out Steven, get a copy of Built to Finish and keep up with all of the great things that he's doing. Steven, I appreciate that you gave us a framework that isn't difficult to achieve what we want in this world and to be able to not only set but accomplish audacious goals and recognizing that there really is no such thing as failure. Getting who we want to have in our lives is simply asking the question and believing that we can and will accomplish anything. When we do that, we are going to finish and we are going to win today. Thanks so much for tuning in.