Welcome And Meet John Coyle

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Insight Podcast, sponsored by Co-Fanancial Group, where we interview leaders around the country that share their wisdom, insights to help you become the best you could be. Today I'm honored to have John. John Coyle is a global keynote speaker to 500 plus stages in over 20 countries, an Olympic silver medalist, and an Emmy Award-winning storyteller, five-time TEDx speaker, an award-winning-winning author, an Eddie and an ASB of two books. John has a degree in product design and engineering from Stanford, an NBA from Kellogg. John's also a seasoned former head of customer experience innovation for a Fortune 500 wireless company, professor and a guest lecturer at over three universities, a world-leading expert in the field of design thinking, strengths, resiliency, and chronoception, the neuroscience and psychology of time perception. Did I also say that John has a silver medal from the Olympics where he's also a commentator and just an all-around incredible guy? John, thanks for being on the show today.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Great to see you again, Chad. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

You bet.

Childhood Training And Early 10,000 Hours

SPEAKER_00 1:15

You know, as we kind of just dig in here, let me just ask and have you start back, maybe even in your teens, as to what got you into wanting to be a short speed skater.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

So my the origin story for speed skating and cycling, I did both sports, was I grew up on a lake, and so we were always skating. Actually, my dad froze the backyard for me when I was two years old. So I started skating when I was two and a half years old. I got on the bike when I was four, and I just spent a lot of time doing Tuesday. I got my 10,000 hours in really early, particularly on the bike. When I was eight years old, I joined my father on some bike tours. I ended up doing 13 century rides, 13100 mile rides as an eight-year-old. How many kids on the planet did 13100 mile rides? Probably one. So I got my I got my time in early, and that parloided itself into bids for the Olympics in both sports and being able to go for one of them.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

That's just absolutely fantastic. So, John, you also seem to be a little bit of an overachiever. You have an undergraduate and a graduate graduate degree at both universities that are just, I think, very high level, maybe even Ivy League, as they call them. So, what's that like to be both cycling, skating, and going to university at the same time in in kind of like a a master's program of engineering science and what you believe in is is time management?

When Fixing Weaknesses Backfires

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Well, they did all intersect in a really fun, interesting way. And it's one of the talks I give. I'll give you the shortest version. So I I went to Stanford because I got in. I mean, if you get in, you have to go, right? Like you have to, I believe so. It's impossible, it's impossible now. It was impossible, nearly impossible then. And while studying there full-time, the engineering program, I also was trying to be an Olympic speed skater. And that doesn't necessarily mesh that easily because it's in California, no coach, no training program. But I managed to get 12th place in the world in the sport of speed skating my senior year. So when I graduated in product design, which by the way, the core of art is always it's problem solving, it's creative problem solving. Are you solving the right problem? That's really the core of design thinking. Uh, I went and joined the Olympic team. They put me on a pattern of fixing my weaknesses. So we identified the problem that was my weaknesses. We worked on that for two years, and I went from 12th in the world to 34th in the world to not even making the US team two years later, finishing 30th in the U.S. trials. I had won two years prior. So I was about to quit, but I anchored back to design thinking. I'm like, maybe I'm not solving the right problem here. Maybe I need to go back to doing what I do and train by myself again. So I quit the team, not the sport, designed for my strengths, trained that way for an entire year. And in a sport where hundreds of seconds determined first from second, usually, I showed up to the exact same meet, same people, same everything. In my first race back, I broke the US record by five and a half seconds, broke the world record by over a second, went on to set every single US record back to back, which is to say, designing for your strengths is the way to go.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

And I would say that coaching might be overrated, and that coaches want to sell you on what they believe is your future. But when you do design thinking and you know your body, you could possibly self-manage with the right discipline, with the right calendar, and with the right motivation for future thinking.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

100%. I mean, I there's some really great like thoughts on this, but a lot of coaches are failed athletes, and a lot of them believe they didn't work hard enough. So they they they assume that's the problem out of the gates is you probably just need to work harder. And at some point, that is a law of diminishing returns, and it doesn't always work for everybody. It certainly didn't work for me.

Strengths, Strategy, And Self-Belief

SPEAKER_00 5:16

And so again, I have up here visualize winning, work hard, play hard, and we're gonna get to that. But I work with a lot of people at Co-Fanancial Group who are trying to get jobs, and I say to them, they're gonna like, well, I'll do it when I get a job. And I say, getting a job takes two to three hours a day of pure focus, understanding what you need and what you want, and not being afraid to reach out to the people that can make a difference for you. And what they say to me is, but I have coaches that say we need to spend full time getting a job. And I'm like, yeah, that's what they want you to do, and that's what they think they want you to do. But if you could do the right actions at the right time with the right message, I think success comes quicker.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I would agree with that. I, you know, there's an adage that I can't I can't necessarily find the source, but the notion that if you spend at least a third of your time, third of your day in your area of strengths, of things you do well, you're gonna have triple the willpower of people that don't. So if you're doing the job search and you're not spending some time having some fun, you're probably gonna be struggling.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

And don't people understand and read aura, a way of being, a sense of being, and they could just look in your eyes and see if it's authentic or not. And I think that depression is something that's abundant and that you need to spend a third of your time overcoming that downward force of this isn't working for me, because in your mind, you might feel something's not working for you, right? I understand about strategy that you might think it's not working for you, but if you have a design strategy designed to win, if you do it enough, you're gonna win when it matters.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

I think that's well well said. I don't even have anything to add to that one.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Listen, I just put it out there. I had a tennis coach, he said, if you come in with a strategy and you're down five-one, it doesn't mean you have to change the strategy. As you could just see with what happened with center yesterday, heat exhaustion, he lost, he was up 5-1 in the third set. The opponent went in with a strategy, he didn't change the strategy and he ended up winning for the next three sets. And he could have very easily started to vary his way of thinking. But I think as a professional in business or in sports, you stick with the strategy and you have to believe 100% that your strategy is right for that day.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

100% agree. There's a great quote by a German cyclist that I really love. When people ask, like, you know, how did you leave the team and do this on your own? Like, how did you have the the guts to do that? Nobody does that. And the quote from the German cyclist that I love, who was in 19 Tourist France, is self-belief beyond all reason.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yes. And and don't you believe self-belief in life gives you the confidence to then uh have the ability to succeed because you live life without fear? You make the phone calls, you wake up at four in the morning, you prepare, you eat, you count your calories. You today they have technology that tells you how your body's acting by the second. Share with me if

Olympic Pressure And Pre-Race Mindset

SPEAKER_00 8:34

you will. You're gonna go into the Olympics, you're going into a lot of races. What are you doing when you get up to the start line? Or what are you doing even hours before? Or let me back up even further. How do you sleep the night before, knowing you're going into a race of a lifetime the next day? What goes on in the mind of an elite athlete?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

That's a great question. I'll tell you there were two key races in the Olympics, semifinals and finals. None of us slept before the semifinals. And here's the reason why semifinals are not about winning, they're about not losing. Okay, right? You've got to qualify. That's it. You do not have to win that race. It does not matter if you win, just gotta not screw up. So the mentality of not screwing up is a vastly inferior mentality to the finals mentality, which was and I can remember, I was a little bit nervous, but we were tying our skates or untying our skates after our last warm-up. My teammate looks at me, he's like, There's nothing else we can do. There's there's no more prep. At this point, all we can do is go out there and just give it everything and see how it goes. And I was not even a vaguely nervous for the gold medal final. I I was looking around, waving my parents, like I was fully in the moment and you know, got into the flow state, and you know, that's that's what you want when you can get there is to be in that mode.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

And don't discount it, you got into the flow state. Yes. Describe to us what the flow state feels like or looks like, and what are maybe some tricks that you use to get into that state.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

So the flow state you can be gotten into from in any sort of environment, sports, music, academia, meditation. It uh the flow state is the the armers of the flow state are when all of your internal clocks shut off and you can ensure near perfect performance. So you're fully immersed in whatever it is, could be spreadsheeting, it could be negotiating, it could be doing an auction. When you get really good at something and the pressure is on, that's usually the the drivers of flow state. It's difficult to get there without pressure unless you're a great like Buddhist meditation expert. They get there too. But so when the you know, when the pressure is on and you're really good at this thing, when your level of challenge meets your level of skill, that's the good uh there's a good possibility you get in the flow state. I got into flow state, probably half of my speeds getting races, and 99.9% of my bike races. Like I was always in the flow state for the last few laps of those things because it's so intense, it's so dangerous. You have to be fully there, and I'm really good at the last few laps of a race. So that all worked out nicely.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

And then did you ever think about being on the team for tour de France or any of those extreme races like that? Or is that is that another level?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

I was a sprinter, so I don't go up hills, I just go really fast for a few seconds. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

So I I'm interviewing down the road Justin Gatlin, and he's a sprinter. I said, Do you ever run the mile? He says, Why would I ever run the mile?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

No, no, he never will. No.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So so what did you ever learn about visualize the winning,

Visualization And Stage Confidence

SPEAKER_00 11:50

right? So we're dealing with fractions of seconds, but are you a visualizer? And and what is that experience like? Like, how do we help other people get into a visual state for anything that they do in their life? What's the trick to that? Is there one?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Well, it's probably practice, yes, definitely a visualizer. I could I could probably even right now, many years later, count out a 45-second, 500-meter race because it's just the nice thing about speed skating is it is exactly the same. Like it's a repetitive sport. I don't know how these people do like basketball or gymnastics where they got to do 4,000 different things. Like, this is the exact same thing. Two straightaway strokes, three corner strokes, two straightaway strokes, three corners. Like it's exactly the same. So really useful in our sport, and also you know, in business. So if you want a meeting to go well, if you want to stand on stage like I do and you want it to go well, I like to always picture the room and how the audience will react. And then more often than not, you can you can get people there.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

So, you know, again, I know you for many years. I think I actually met you early on when you were just getting into the keynote speaking.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

And and now you've done over 200 keynotes, you've been around the world, and and you post it all on Instagram. Your your life is pretty much an open book on Instagram. So if anybody wants to follow you, it's an awesome follow. What's it like then to be getting hired in these corporate worlds and then being the being able to deliver your messaging about emotions drive people and just how seconds matter?

SPEAKER_01 13:29

So I think that my secret ingredient for why I do get hired again and again and invited back is there are so many amazing speakers, lecturers, trainers, teachers, coaches out there who know so much incredible information. However, information does not try to drive change or behavior. So, what I think I do really well is I can give an audience a practical framework like design thinking, for example, that they can hang their prefrontal cortex on so that you know the gatekeeper is now out of the way. They're like, okay, this is a legit person, they're talking about real facts and data. And then I tell stories. So I Trojan horse in under some framework, and then I tell emotional stories, and they're not really expecting this, but by doing so, I can elicit change in an hour that might have taken weeks or months of repeat training when it's only rational. And that's I think that's what I do best. And I and I I love it when I hear from people in the room, like I'm already changing how I'm gonna deal with my team. I'm already doing this, I'm already doing that. They make instantaneous changes sometimes, and I love that.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

So when you're there and you're getting up in front of 500 people, do you get nervous anymore? Because again, the the screens and the stages are huge, or are you kind of like looking at it like the way you're an athlete, getting it up in front of people when you're the stadium's 15,000 people cheering you on to win a race?

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Definitely the latter. The I don't get nervous at all. And the more people is better. Honestly, the only times I get a little nervous is when it's a small group because in small groups they will interrupt you, and and and it's fine, but you know, you nobody's gonna ever interrupt you when there's a thousand people in the room, right? You the stage is yours. You you get to control the flow, and I you know, I'm more of a keynoter versus a versus a facilitator, for example. Like I mostly do keynotes. I do I do do interactive facilitator work as well, uh, but that's different, different material, which is designed to be interactive. So when I'm doing a keynote for a smaller group, that's when it gets a little interesting.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

So so share with me if you will, right? Just on the screen, it's emotions drive people 94%, because we have left brain and right brain thinking, and then data points to focus on, like the F1. So share with me, if you will, some of your thoughts around that.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Well, if we know that emotions drive behavior, why are we focusing on all rational information all the time? Like that's we're missing you're spending all your time on the 6% when the 94% are is what's gonna really make change. But you know, you also know the 100% emotional lecturers where it's all woo-woo all the time, and then the skeptic in your brain, your prefrontal cortex, is gonna raise his hand and go, wait a minute here. I feel like I'm being misled. And so they don't necessarily get permission to lead the emotional part of the brain. Uh, the great metaphor from Jonathan Haidt, Stanford author, in his great book, uh, The Happiness Hypothesis, is that front brain and back brain are like a tiny rider on the back of the elf of an elephant, a giant elephant. So the tiny rider is our prefrontal cortex, our rational brain, but the giant elephant is our emotional brain, our limbic system, etc. amygdala. And the problem with the elephant, of course, is it's I mean, elephants get scared of mice. That makes no sense, right? So the the back brain gets triggered by things that it shouldn't. And so learning to manage the two in a useful way is is what we you know we're trying to do. You know, in terms of like the Formula One metaphor I used in a couple of talks is when it comes to getting into the flow state, a Formula One driver has to be in the flow state, they have to, they will die, right? Like if they get distracted by anything at the speeds they're going, they are not watching the 300 dials that the team is watching, right? So somebody else is watching that stuff, exactly. They're you know, they're thinking about three or four things, right? Tire, tire wear, brakes, accelerator, fuel, like they've got, and then just the road. Like, that's there's not much that they need to focus on. That's right. And we need to build systems in our lives so that we can focus on the things that are most important and have the rest take care of itself.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

And going along with that, it reminds me of we have to control what we can control. There's so many things that we cannot control that we think we want to or need to. I think that gets confusing for people. And I think that even though 94% of emotions drive people, how many people are out of the markets or don't invest or don't do the things that would be in their best interest because fear drives their way of being? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

And then unfortunately, go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

No, and then education is a piece where they could actually understand it again, um, not emotionally, but theoretically, it makes sense. But people still are tied to the emotions. And most I again, I talk about this. I think the universe is a negative emotion pressed on people, and that we need to overcome that for people to have success, which is why there's only a small percentage of people that find success and happiness on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Unfortunately, our our our wiring are our we share the same fear wiring as mammals and reptiles, and it's fight, run away, or hide. This is not very useful in a business meeting or when your toddler's screaming or when your spouse is something snarky. Like this clawing their eyes about running away and hiding on your desk is is not none of those are adaptive, and so we do. We need to learn to override our hardwired operant system and and in this case, let the six percent catch up. Prefrontal cortex is slower than the back brain. Take a deep breath, that's why the people say that, so that you can use the wiser part of your brain to react to stimulus.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Absolutely.

Emotions, The Elephant Brain, And Control

SPEAKER_00 19:59

So, as a keynote speaker and an author, you've written two books. Your latest book is Design for Strengths.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yes, working on it.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Give me a couple of minutes on that, and then I want to talk about your new book and some of the experiences you have around now writing your third book and what that's like.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Sure. So design for strengths really is introduces design thinking, this five-step process from Stanford that's pretty ubiquitous in all of the West Coast tech companies, Amazon, Google, Cisco, they all have it in-house, probably because a lot of their uh people that work there have graduated from Stanford. But the the father of design thinking, by the way, is a man named David Kelly. David Kelly is not the director one, but a different one. But he's still famous in his own way. He's still the head of Stanford's design school or D school. He's the head of IDO consultancy and innovation consultancy, but most maybe more compelling is he was Steve Jobs' right-hand man, key designer for 15 years, co-creating the Lisa Macintosh first iteration, the iPhone. So amazing designer, and happened to be my academic advisor at Stanford. So and Professor, so I was super lucky to have David. And yeah, I'll digress for a quick David story. It was either David or Dennis Boyle, but either way, one of my first product design classes, he stands in front of the room, it's all very pro professorial, right? He's got the glasses and the vest, and he looks at all of us and then he put his arms down by his side and he started bouncing and he started jumping around the room. And we're all looking at each other, like, what is going on? What this man's lost his mind. Like, what is happening? And then he got back in front of the room, folded his arms again, and he said, Our first project involves springs. If you don't know what it's like to be a spring, you can't solve for a spring. And that's the core of design thinking is empathy. They call it human sensation. Design as well. If you're not in the person's shoes you're solving for, you're solving your problem, not theirs. And so that was a really great lesson from David. And so David's in the book, his brother Tom's in the book, Dennis Boyle's in the book. I have a bunch of great thinkers in that book. And it really outlines what is the design thinking process and mindset. And then, of course, some stories to illuminate it, including the brief one I told you at the beginning about how I used it to hack my sport and win an Olympic silver medal. The fourth coming book.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

It's absolutely amazing. Share with us the forthcoming book. But before we do, silver medalist in the Olympics, seconds matter. Perseverance is incredibly important. And if you have a plan, you need to stick with the plan. It might not think like it's working. Look at the Kentucky Derby. The horse came from last place. They had a plan, they figured it out and win. Just because someone's behind you or you're behind someone else, just look forward and dig in. That's that's our guidance for today.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Love it.

Slowing Time With Memorable Moments

SPEAKER_01 23:02

So the uh the origin story for the next book, which is called Counterclockwise How to Slow the Acceleration of Time, actually does also come from sports. You know, my sport, hundreds of seconds determine first from second more often than not. And so in my sport, many sports, the trajectory of your career, your future is set in hundreds, tenths of seconds. You got on the podium, you didn't made the team or you didn't, you got on the podium, you didn't, you got a gold medal, or you didn't, right? These are all little tiny increments of time. The insight that I had after leaving sport is oh, this is true in real life. I took the job across town, or I didn't, I accepted the promotion, or I didn't, I asked her out, or I didn't. She said yes or she didn't, right? All of these things, I avoided the car crash or I didn't, I got off the right exit, or I didn't, I made the job interview on time, or I didn't like so many things in life happen in moments, and we are actually hardwired for moments because that's where we live. We are writing short-term memory to long-term memory every two to three seconds. So we're living literally in moments, and so hence it's no surprise that our future trajectories are often reset in moments. And when you can recognize that, the entire book can be summarized in the following phrase the value of an increment of time is not related to its duration. You can and often do experience in a moment more value, more trajectory-changing outcomes than in week weeks, months, or years even leading up to it. And so that's the core of the book is how do we manipulate cognitive time to our favor? How do we design moments that matter? How do we design moments that we remember? How do we design moments that we remember that make our life feel full? With the ultimate outcome of how do I experience the endless summers of use again like I did when I was eight.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

So, you know, there's a lot that you just unpacked in reversing time, looking at time, looking at moments to be able to have a full life. How did you end up coming to this as a model that you could write an entire book on?

SPEAKER_01 25:10

It really started with a phone call. So after I finished my career in speed skating, I was 30 years old, never had a real job. And I started working at Goldman Sachs as consultant, and the time was just accelerating. I'm like, wait, where did that summer go? Wait, how is this year already over? What is happening here? And I cast about, and like everybody's like, Oh, yeah, that's what happens. The older you get, like, the more time speeds up, especially once you're out of out of athletics. And so I actually called Dr. Phil Zimbardo of Stanford, who picked up, which was surprising. He was actually my psych professor there, but they call him Father Time, amongst other things. He also did the Stanford Prison Experiment, but we won't talk about that. But he's written several books on time and time perception. And so I called him and I'm like, hey, Dr. Zimbardo, I'm experiencing this acceleration of time that I don't like it at all. Why is that? And he's like, Well, 98% of cultures, 90% of adults feel this across all geographies. And I said, Okay, well, how do we reverse this? How do we go counterclockwise? How do we slow it back down? And he said, Nobody's done that research. So I just literally made a commitment in that moment that I am going to figure this out. If time is our most valuable currency and it's whittling itself away at an ever increasing rate, that's like your bank account emptying itself every night faster. Like, why would that be okay? This is not okay. So I just started asking neuroscientists, psychologists. I read every book I could find, every white paper I could find. And then I started testing theories on myself to see, you know, what will make for a defining moment, what will make for a memorable memory, what will make a mental notch and my sort of temporal yardstick. And I figured it out. I mean, I've 100% figured it out. And so that's gonna be the outcome of the book. Um, and you know, the people that read it, if they follow my advice, they will be able to slow stop and reverse the perceived acceleration of time adults seal and experience the endless summers of youth again.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

I cannot wait to read the book. I'm not gonna ask you to share with us the insights as to how we slow time down. Do you find from talking to different people that some people do not want to slow it down and that life is operating at a pace that they're comfortable with and they don't want to change what they know?

SPEAKER_01 27:36

It's rare, it it has happened because well, we'll give one insight away, and this is the one that makes these people uncomfortable. The the brain is wired in a certain way. If everything is safe, comfortable, and routine, it doesn't need to write it down, so it won't. And some people are really, really, really loving their safe, comfortable routine life. It's just gonna be a short one. That's just the way it works. The brain didn't write it down. If you got to the parking garage, you don't know how you got there, it's just because the brain didn't write it down. The brain also writes things down and then defrags. That's what dreaming is. So it might write it down and then throw it away. So that's it, it has to be written, stored, and recalled. The best way, there's six key drivers, we'll only go into one, but the number one way to ensure our memory is written, stored, and recalled is to involve the amygdala. Well, the amygdala only wakes up for two things never do that again, always do that again. Don't die, please procreate. Okay, and so our most memorable memories involve either risk and uncertainty or the excitement related to relationships and love. And so these are the kinds of memories that we are going to remember. People only want the front half, but honestly, risk and uncertainty is the single key biggest driver for creating memorable memories, and everybody's most memorable memories are when there's some sort of heightened awareness of the craziness of the situation when we are kids or adults, and this is where international travel is great because you're going to get these anyways.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Absolutely, 100%. I really value you being on the show today and sharing these insights. I can't wait for your new book when it comes out. John, you're an inspiration. You're, I think, one of the smarter people I know when it comes to time, both speeding it up and slowing it down. As an athlete, an elite athlete, you've accomplished what people dream of and you did it. So I congratulate you on that. Share with everyone how they could find you. And I want to remind everybody, as a keynote speaker, I've watched John in person. A plus, a plus, his messaging is amazing. He's great at what he does, and he's easy to work with.

unknown 29:55

True.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Thank you, Chad. I can be found super easy, John Kcoil.com. Everything have is there. All the TED Talks are there, all lots of other talks as well, blogs, posts, links, photos, images, anything you can need, you could find there, and you can also book me there if you wanted to.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you for everyone for tuning in. Please subscribe, please share, and please tune in for the next episode coming up again and again, because I'm absolutely loving this. Thank you, John.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Thank you, Chad.