In February 2021, Tom Brady stood on the field at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa after beating the Kansas City Chiefs 31 to 9. He was 43 years old. He had just won his seventh Super Bowl. Not with a dynasty roster. Not after some miracle fourth-quarter comeback. With a franchise that hadn’t won a […]

The Story You’re Still Living Inside A woman sat across from me a few months ago and told me her whole life in about forty seconds. “I’m the responsible one. I’ve always been the responsible one. My sister got to be the creative one, my brother got to be the wild one, and I got […]

In 1989, Phil Jackson walked into the Chicago Bulls locker room carrying a stack of meditation cushions and asked some of the most competitive athletes on the planet to close their eyes and breathe. Michael Jordan looked at him like he’d lost his mind. The Bulls had talent. They had the best player in the […]

Last week, I told you the story of standing in a village in Uganda and realizing that everything I’d used to define myself didn’t matter there. I introduced the identity thermostat – the idea that your self-concept sets an invisible ceiling on everything you do, and that no amount of strategy or willpower can push […]

A founder I coached had a product that worked. His clients loved it. Retention was strong. NPS was through the roof. Every metric that mattered said: this is a great business. Except one. Growth had flatlined. He was stuck at the same revenue for fourteen months. Not because the product was broken. Not because the […]

I was in my twenties, standing in a village in Uganda, when I realized I had no idea who I was. Not in the philosophical, stare-at-the-ceiling-at-midnight kind of way. In the visceral, ground-crumbling-beneath-your-feet kind of way. I had spent years building an identity around achievement. Good grades (this one took a while). Athletics and the […]