Unlocking Success with Michael Lombardi: Accountability, Performance, and Negotiating Deals

On this episode of Circuit of Success, Brett Gilliland interviews Michael Lombardi, a former NFL executive, Olympic coach, Fit Biomics Director of Partnerships, and co-founder and CEO of Rowficient. Lombardi shares his journey to success, which began with his high school rowing coach teaching him the importance of accountability and hard work. He also talks about how to think big and negotiate deals, and emphasizes the importance of understanding that everyone is different. Finally, Lombardi shares his daily routine for peak performance and how he has learned to be confident in his abilities.

FULL YOUTUBE EPISODE

Speaker Brett Gilliland: Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I’m your host, Brett Gilliland. Today, I’ve got Mike Lombardi with me, Mike. What’s going on, my man? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Just living the dream up here in Boston. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Living the dream, raining up there? Speaker Michael Lombardi: It’s like a downpour. It’s like a monastery today. Speaker Brett Gilliland: We’ve been having, it’s been like a it feels like a hundred and fifteen literally, a hundred and fifteen. All sports have been canceled, high school, kids sports, everything. Have been canceled all week. So which is kinda nice to get a little few nights off, you know, when you get four kids. It’s nice to have dinners or the family. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s, I’m sorry to hear this. That’s what went out, but, whatever it is. Yeah. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: You are a Princeton grad. You are Olympic coach. You are, Fit Biomics Director of partnerships. You are the co founder and CEO of Rofficient, and you got a lot of stuff going on. What we talked about before this was your wife was on my podcast about three years ago. Speaker Michael Lombardi: She’s, she’s the best. She She, funny enough, you know, she we’ve had two kids in the last three years. And, you know, I was enjoying the little break of her kicking my ass and workouts and yesterday. It’s officially over. The run’s done. She’s back. Speaker Brett Gilliland: She’s back. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Excuse me. I’m done one day. It’s over. Yeah. It’s over for me now. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Well, I’m sorry to hear that. And did you guys meet during the Olympics? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Is that Speaker Brett Gilliland: how you met earlier? Speaker Michael Lombardi: We actually met at Princeton. We met the first day of at Princeton in the Boathouse. We were both rowers. You know, we we just built a friendship over the first year and then started dating. And then you know, we we graduated same time. She decided to keep growing on the national theme. I started coaching at Princeton. Which is where the training center was. And then, I started helping out because we’re always on the same body of water. So, you know, I’d I’d finish up a row. I’d see them coming in I say, what do you think? Can I just start giving her some feedback on it? Help them her through London. And then for the real cycle, I was and end up being her coach for, part two. So Speaker Brett Gilliland: Wow. Speaker Michael Lombardi: That’s, yeah, we got married in between, but, yeah. That’s So Speaker Brett Gilliland: she has to listen to you when you’re on talking rowing. Right? I mean, you know, different. She has to listen to you on the water, but maybe not at home or what. Speaker Michael Lombardi: No. We’re good team dynamic. You know, I I think that that’s always been a strong suit for us is we have complimentary skill sets and our personalities go well. Like, I sit back and kinda see how I can help a person, a team, anything. And then you you coach them along, and Sarah’s very receptive to coaching. And she likes feedback. So it’s it’s a it’s a really good match. But yeah, it’s things that I kinda learned through coaching. I’ve kind of taken everywhere and kind of applied to whatever. Speaker Brett Gilliland: That’s awesome. So if you can, maybe give us a little bit of the backstory, Mike, on what’s made you the man you are today. I’m sure there’s people all around you and, some and backstory in there. But what what’s helped with that? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Sure. I mean, I I think I don’t know how many people say it’s where they’re from, but, you know, I’m from Philadelphia area, South Jersey, I think it’s, like, kind of, part of the DNA a little bit that, you know, you work hard. You kinda, you don’t make excuses. It’s all about accountability. And I think that, you know, my my dad was always a really good role model for that, and and a big I’d say that the first person I really remember kind of like changing my life in that sort of sense, was my high school rowing coach, Gilliland, And, you know, he pointed out to me, or he he made me believe in myself to a level that I didn’t think of before. Like, I was a talented athlete. You know, Varsity basketball. I I messed around with soccer, which is funny. It’s six Gilliland, like, rowing, I just kinda stumbled into it because somebody said, you should go try this because you’re tall. I was decent, but I didn’t really totally understand, like, you know, I as my most how I high school kids don’t like. What is full exertion? What what is going to the max? And I think he really kind of helped me unlock that. So it’s the combination of me being a Jersey guy going through a this high school in Philly. All those guys knew each other. In the basketball circuit, I kinda had like a chip on my shoulder. It’s like, I’m this outside guy, and I was not part of their crew. And that was behind I was really good at basketball. And but Roan really kinda opened, you know, welcomed me with open arms and, coach Lam, you know, he held me accountable. He’s, like, you know, I re I remember this after the two thousand four, I guess, National Championship. I was still in the JV as a sophomore. And, he’s like, Mike, on next year, like, I need you to be the team. Like, that was amazing. You won that race for that. You won the championship for those guys. It this is an eight man vote. I say it’s front of the team. So now there’s all this pressure. Okay. Cool. I gotta go do this now. You know, he’s kinda grooming me the next year and you know, I go play basketball, do that whole thing. The season’s over. I show up to practice it to race day and, race practice, and he you know, it’s like my second day back. I haven’t touched a noir in, you know, four or five months. And it just unloads a little bit of, like, to make the pull a thousand times better, not worse. And just that the course of that season was like, Hey, man, this is no bullshit. Like, people are really counting on you, and you have to hold yourself accountable. And he really he hammered home this what accountability means and holding yourself to a standard, and it doesn’t matter what anybody else is doing. Like, it’s your standard or our standard, and that’s that’s what matters. So, he completely changed it for me. And then when I got to college, I carried a lot of that stuff with me. And then through growing it instant, and then coaching at Princeton, you know, you learn a lot of lessons. And I think, I know you’ve had lots of coaches on here, but finding your voice is a hard thing, as a young coach. And what you can all you can really do is, like, you start with who who were the most recent voices or who were the influential voices in my head throughout. And that that’s where it starts. And you’re you’re more of a copy of that than yourself. So, again, another sort of inflection for me. I I took over mid year coaching, at Princeton. And I kinda came down on them a little hard on practice just because of attention to detail and one of the kids from Iowa, he said, Mike, you catch, you catch more bees with honey than vinegar. And I was like, I I think I got more upset when he said it. But, like, in just internally. But from then, it was, like, completely changed my outlook of, like, I need I that I know I wanna be as a coach now. Like, I wanna bring these kids along and these young guys and develop them, and it’s it’s about the process together. And it’s not like this is it, and this is how you do it. And that’s what I’ve kind of taken with from that point on. And when I completely changed that, then I saw way better success in the rest of that season, and then in in ensuing season. So it it, It it’s a little bit of a shift in mindset, from being so competitive as an athlete. And then shifting to, like, this is all about everybody else. Speaker Brett Gilliland: In knowing you can’t really do anything. Right? You can’t control the outcome because you’re you’re not in there. Right? You’re not in there rowing and and doing that. It’s all through other people. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. And and it’s still so fresh. Right? Like, you just did it. And it you you’re either happy with how your career ended or you’re not. Most people aren’t. You know, or I’d be still rolling for the national team or something like that. And even still, like, a lot of times, it doesn’t end up well. But, you know, Yeah. It it was it was, I would get less frustrated with the outcome more about the process. Like, you know, why why isn’t this queue working for coaching, you know, for for you making this technical change or something like that? So, you know, finding more patients and ways to connect in different ways, because everybody’s different. That that’s that’s the big thing. It’s like, because I understand something one way doesn’t mean that anybody else understands it the exact same way. So you have to reach people where they are and you might have to try fifteen different queues to get the same outcome. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So have you have you changed your definition of success over time? Right? And and I and I asked that question because I know for me, when I was twenty two years old, starting in wealth management versus now being forty five and well management. You know, my definition of success has changed quite a bit over the years. Has yours changed as you’ve progressed in your life? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. For sure. It used to be very binary. You wonder you didn’t win. I went faster than I everybody else or I didn’t. I scored more points or I didn’t. That now I look at it as those results are just the byproduct of the process. Did did we elevate the group? Like, within a team setting in terms of, like, business. So, at Woop, did we Did we elevate the brand? Did this marketing campaign? Do what it was supposed to do? Did we activate the max that we could? Did we squeeze the most potential out? Basically, did we set ourselves up for success? Did how do we execute against it? What was left on the table? And and what did we maybe over perform on? So I think it’s a more realistic and full 03:60 view of success as opposed to binary wins losses. How much money you’re making? Like, especially as, I’d say in the last two years more so, with kids, not even the first year of my, my first son’s life because it was, like, peak pandemic and I don’t, you know, whatever the world was. So I feel like I was still very stressed about I don’t wanna say the wrong things, but, at a certain point, it was just like families first and impacting the boy’s lives and Like, that that success to me, being there for them, helping them through all the things they go through, like that success. And being healthy enough, like, not going to the gym and being like, I gotta win this workout. Cool. If I do, but it’s really like, I hope I go get a good workout, spend some time with people. And come back and I can I’m healthy. Right? You know, as you get older, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Shoulder out or something. So, yeah, it it’s a completely different shift, from a mindset perspective. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Well, people are gonna think I’m a whoop, like, I’m getting paid by whoop or something. I’m not. I wear a whoop, have for, I guess three or four years now, and I had Kristen Holmes on the show yesterday. Be out next week. But, what what did you learn when your time there, as an early adopter in seeing something that’s grown, like, to what it is today? Speaker Michael Lombardi: So Kristen, actually was my first boss. She hired me a whoop. And we met at Princeton. We coached there, and we both had athletes in the London Olympics. So we spent some power there. So it’s kind of a long term relationship with Kristen. And she was very influential in my process too. I would say my, in my professional career. You know, she brought me in and, you know, the the thing about whoop, that that excited me back then and still does. I was doing this stuff on my own for the second olympic cycle. So I was pulling a lot of data, like, on my athletes of How many hours did you sleep? What’s your mood? What’s your urine color? SPO two monitors? You know, kind of, you know, I I call it, like, fluid periodization of training where it’s, like, We have an outcome we’re trying to achieve, but just because we have this sort of training plan written that doesn’t mean we’re gonna go and execute it if you’re like complete toast. And that’s more or less kind of like what Woot will also help you understand is like, do you need to pull back? Do you not? Can you push harder? Then you didn’t even realize it? What are the things that are actively impacting you, negatively impacting you. And I got to do that with Kristen for a year and a half. Basically, there’s like performance consultants to teams, and we got to help other teams win national championships which was more fulfilling to me than actually winning them myself. And, like, Wop is is continues to change the game. Like, you know, from that, we kinda, person went off on the thought leadership, performance science side, and I started doing strategic partnerships. So, I worked closely on on Woops major partnerships Gilliland and negotiating them, executing them, and then I got vary into leading, things in the crossroad space, functional fitness, all that kind of stuff, and then third party integrations. So whether that be Hyperized Equinox app, whatever, so we’re close with the product team. So, thing that that I always liked is I’m like a serial entrepreneur, I’d say. That’s what they told me in business school, which is, don’t don’t work for anybody. Not that you don’t play well with others, but you you thrive much more in small environments where you can really get your hands dirty. That’s what Woop was when I joined it. I think there were about thirty five people when I joined, and I got to do everything. Which is both stressful. But but, also really amazing. And now Woop is a huge company. And, you know, it’s it’s grow continues to grow and and changing lives. So, I mean, I do not remember what the original correction was, but, you know, there we are. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. There is there is a great answer. I was getting the question. And and so what it makes me think about is, you know, I think about, like, patching my homes, and I’m I’m a golfer guy. So Roy Macroy, Justin Thomas, you you see, you know, Michael Phelps, I mean, you see major, major, major sports stars wearing this stuff. And But go back because I I would apply this whoop thing we’re talking about. This bracelet that tells me everything about my life. Right? But I don’t want to be called bracelet, whatever you wanna call it. But then apply that to whether it’s wealth management, calling that mister or missus big client. Or I’m an attorney, and I wanna get that big lawsuit thing done. Whatever it may be, does how does your mind work when you’re calling on the Patrick Mahomes of the Gilliland you’re thirty five large and you’re trying to get deals like that? Not necessarily has be him. But, like, how does that go down? And how do you think big enough to think, yeah, man. What I’ve got is good enough for them. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. That’s a good point. I don’t I think maybe everybody’s different, you know, with how they deal with people that sort of scale. But I feel like having being fortunate enough to be around athletes like that a lot and having, you know, run ins with pro athletes and people I grew up with made the NBA or things like that, it it’s kinda, like, They’re just people. In reality, like, you get them on the phone. Once you kind of get over the fact, you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna talk to Pappahomes or Michael Phillips or whoever. You know, you just sit down and it’s, it’s normal. So it’s, you know, what does it look like good for them? So in terms of an ambassador or, you know, like, investor site sort of situation, that’s that’s more on a higher level. That’s probably above me. But in terms of negotiating longer term deals, with, let’s call them entities or organizations like a PGA, like across it like an Equinox, you know, You sit you know what you wanna get out of it. And which what I like to think of them as is, like, truly partnerships, not sponsorships. I think a lot of people Speaker Brett Gilliland: confused with it. Speaker Michael Lombardi: People say partnership, but they mean sponsorship, which means you’re paying for something and I’m giving you something. And I never thought of it that way, and I got a credit, you know, Antonio over to the former CMO who was my boss for a while, of, like, changing the way I think about that stuff. And, You know, it has everyone has to have skin in the game is how I think about it. And you have to find out what’s important to you, what’s important to them, and then finding something that works great that gets everybody excited. Otherwise, it’s transactional, and it’s probably gonna fail because that’s the hardest part about actual partnerships. Is getting everybody synced up and excited about what you’re doing. Now if there’s no upside to either side, why does anybody care and why you’re doing it? So whether that’s an individual, whether that’s an, like, a corporation organization. So a lot of times what people would do is they would send over sponsorship packages. What I would do is break them down and rebuild them and say, no, no, thank you. But here’s how we see it going, and here’s the timeline for success. So not just like yours at deliverable social media posts licensing of logos, blah blah blah blah. Okay. Cool. Got it. But like, what are we actually gonna do together? Was what’s innovative? How are we gonna change the game? And do something in whatever the space is that hasn’t been done that’s going to make it better for not just you know, our brand and your brand, but anybody that participates, where we wanna add something to them. So they see, you know, Woop and cross the department, like, how does that trickle down to a, you know, multimillion, individual community? Like, what’s how does that matter to them? Right? Or the PGA, how does that matter to them? How is whooping that all of a sudden show up? And you saw it in the, like, the fan experience. Right? Like, there’s there was the whoop live at the rider cop. Right? Or, you know, these these heart rate comments, right? And so it’s like, how do you start to build those things that nobody’s thinking about? Into these deals. So it has to be very forward thinking and pushing the bounds, and you have to find a partner that aligns with, you know, how far you’re trying to push the boundaries, I guess. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. You know, I loved one of the things I saw after the Super Bowl, which was counterintuitive of what people would think when Patrick Mahomes had the football, his resting heart rate was lower than when he was sitting on the sidelines and not having the football. Right? Which it tells you, he’s like, man, when I know when I get the ball, I’m in control. Right? When I don’t have the ball, I’m not in control. And I just thought that was a fascinating stat. When you look at the elite performers, When they’re at their best, man, when when they’re in control, what their their own internal body is doing compared to when they’re not in control. I thought it was fascinating. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Do you not find out about yourself here? Speaker Brett Gilliland: I do. I I I showed this to Kristen yesterday, you know, the new stress thing on the whoop is when I’m doing this or if I’m sitting with a client, like, my stress meter is lower, then when in a know, I guess you could say a more stressful situation. Right? I gotta be on. I gotta ask you these questions. I know people are gonna watch. Right? More stressful, but yet, When I look at my stress monitor, it’s it’s not. It’s my stress is lower. I feel like I’m enjoying the moment. I’m doing the things I’m put on Earth to do. And that’s what would be my equivalent of, you know, having the football or not. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. No. I I I think that’s the case. Right? Big big time players want the ball when the game’s on the line. Right? Right. Yeah. That’s when they’re I Speaker Brett Gilliland: wanna make that putt. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. You wanna make that putt. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I wanna make that putt. Maybe Kim Banging Dunes next week. If we can, I’d like to dive in, and I funny, I just got this, feedback today, like, from Lombardi. That they want more of the behind the scenes of what people are doing, which I think is great. Because when I when I talk about a a process you go through to be at peak performance, it’s like, well, I I sleep well. I exercise. I drink a lot of water. And, you know, here’s the five same steps, but I I don’t know if you like getting in the weeds on this stuff or not. But can we do that? Like, how can you help help us, help our listeners, be at peak performance, and live the things we need to do. Let’s be as detailed as we want. Let’s kinda go back and forth on that one. Sound good? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. Sure. Let’s do it. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Alright. So, alarm clock goes off. We’re gonna start the day. What’s Mike Lombardi doing? What’s that process like for you? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Usually, I’m woken up by one kid or the other. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Exactly. And between two and seven. Right? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. So And, yeah, normally, normally, I’m up, probably, like, anywhere from, like, 05:30 to 06:30. What I’ll do is, I will take care of the three year old. My wife will feed the three month old. So I’ll I’ll get Mava So my my oldest son is Maverick, and I bring him downstairs. We make breakfast together. Make it make coffee. He helps him make coffee. It’s the same process every morning. He, covers his ear when I grind the beans, but then he helps me with it. He always wants to touch the beans, like, ground up beans after. So we get that. He helps me make whatever his breakfast is for that day. So it’s, you know, a bit of father son bonding kinda like warming him up to the day as he’s kind of got out of his sleep. Speaker Brett Gilliland: And give us some perspective on that. What are you what are you feeding to three year olds? I’m assuming you’re putting some lucky charms or cinnamon toast crunch in a bowl, or are you? Speaker Michael Lombardi: No. He he actually is, you know Speaker Brett Gilliland: Nothing against those cereals, Vimey’s list. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Now No. He’s he it’s tough because he doesn’t eat the traditional kid things, like, on his own, I guess. So we rotate through he’ll do, like, yogurt with, like, almond butter and jam and chia seeds in it. That’s one version. We’ll make them the kind of, healthy oats, so like oatmeal, yogurt, with, again, like, chicken, a couple other things in it to kinda give it a little bit of fitness. Occasionally he’ll want like chocolate chip pancakes Gilliland I’ll make that, and that’s fine. But most of the mornings, he’s he’s kind of on the yogurt train, and we’ll eat something like that. I will also make an oatmeal at the same time because we need to be out the door at 07:45 to get in the daycare on time. So we’ll kinda get all that. I, at some point, I have to also walk our French Goldock, so in between, I’m feeding him. So I have to figure out how to get my child there to walk the dog with me, which is harder most days than not, get all this stuff. So I’ll throw all that stuff in the car because I know I’m gonna to be hands on to get Mav in the car. We head out the door about 07:45 07:50. I drop him at daycare, then I go directly to the gym. I work out at a crossfit, box. I do my own stuff. I have a pretty good internal clock of or, you know, what I should be doing on any given day. Based off of kinda like, how did I sleep? Am I kinda jacked it up? This is something I’m excited about doing. I have a couple of people that kinda just follow whatever I do, which is fun. I’ve got a little training group that is kinda waiting for me when I roll in around 08:30. We hit it hard for, you know, about sixty to seventy five minutes, sent out the door back to, help out at home and then and really start hammering in the workday. So I don’t usually eat breakfast until after like, a real breakfast or my first real meal until after, the training’s done. So we’re at 10:30 now. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So then you eat at 10:30 ish, you know, probably help you meal there. And then how many times a day you eat? Speaker Michael Lombardi: You know, it’s what I’ve realized, and this is actually something from Kristen too. I I used to play around with this at Woot, where I didn’t make my food as much there was, like, a lot of, like, healthy fast casual around that’s, like, sweetgreen Gilliland probably, like, Mediterranean bowl type thing. Like, it’s really easy to get healthy enough food, but you weren’t, like, I don’t count my macros or anything. It just kind of aware of what I’m eating, and I think what I was doing was I was actually having too much protein in the middle of the day, and it was making me feel very lethargic. So what I did was I probably halved that protein throughout the middle day. So, but breakfast can still be high protein, you know, shakes or whatever supplements you wanna add in. But, you know, when I eat too heavy of a protein portion in the middle of the sort of, like, lunch time of day, it was like tanking me. So I do more, like, heavy veggie, you know, it could be a salad with with enough of, at least a serving of protein. And it’s it’s just giving me way more energy for the back half of the day. I usually have a nice coffee at some point. Usually, like, one or two. And I I don’t know. I guess you say how many meals do I eat? I’m just kind of like always eating. Again, I’m like a big guy, six seven to her thirty pounds. So it’s just kind of like consistent. So it’s like I just finished eating, and I’m like, alright. Well, I want another apple now, and I’m just gonna kinda keep doing that, but I don’t we don’t keep, like, crap food in the house, so to speak. So it’s like — Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: — Speaker Michael Lombardi: always will have to be like a fruit or a yogurt as like a snack or I mean, perfect bars are basically candy bars, but like healthy. So I might have like a half a perfect bar. It’s like a bite of something and always hydrating. I know people said that, but, you know, just gotta It’s important, man. The days I feel best, it’s hard. It’s it’s really hard. If you don’t start early, It’s it’s basically impossible. I don’t know how much Chrising got into this. We used to talk about this all the time, but like, there was a period of time where I tried to drink my body weight in ounces of water for like a week. Is basically impossible, but, it, like, my, my HRV skyrocketed. I didn’t change one other thing besides water intake. So it was wild. So back to the day, now we’re at, I don’t know, work works all throughout this. Helping out with the with the three month old. Usually, you have to leave around 04:30 to go get an ad from daycare again. Go get him. Come on. We make dinner together. He has whatever he’s gonna have, and I make dinner for the whole family, every night. And then the the masquerade of bedtime begins around 06:45, bath time, bedtime. Speaker Brett Gilliland: It gets easier, brother. I’m telling you. It gets easier. Speaker Michael Lombardi: An hour and fifteen, an hour and a half. Yeah, it’s fine. And then eventually he’s down. Then it probably have about ninety minutes. Let’s say 08:00. It can actually, like, sit down or maybe I have to go clean up and get everything ready for tomorrow. So I gotta packaged lunch, you know, get the house in order and then, you know, it’s almost time for the dream feed for the the young baby. And, so I’ve got about ninety minutes to either, like, throw a Philly game on or hammer out some more work if I if I didn’t get done yet or, you know, try and get ahead on something. But usually I get myself, you know, a solid, like, thirty, forty minutes to kind of, like, unwind and, like, let my brain decompress from all that high activities. We’re also body training. And, yeah, I try to get to bed around 09:30 every night, you know, do the Speaker Brett Gilliland: Nine thirties or Speaker Michael Lombardi: something. 10:30, Speaker Brett Gilliland: 10:30. Okay. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Try it. Nice. Try it. Yeah. Try it. I Speaker Brett Gilliland: like it. That’s good, man. Now you take do you take vitamins? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Rinse and repeat? Speaker Brett Gilliland: Your vitamin gap? Speaker Michael Lombardi: I take, oh, I do like collagen. I don’t do, well, I guess I do like vitamin c, but I don’t I don’t think of a multivitamin, but I definitely should as I’m getting older. But, yeah, I do, like, way protein, collagen, creatine. That’s like a just to go to every day. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Got it. Okay. How do you, how do you challenge your own thinking? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Oh, that’s good. What I like to do is I put my thoughts down and then I have to take a day away and then rethink the whole thing. And, like, with fresh eyes, or I like to bounce ideas off people. I don’t know if it comes through on this podcast, but I’m very stream of consciousness in terms of my the way my thoughts go. So a lot of times my brain is firing faster than I can even get the words out. Or put them down. So what will happen is, I I’m just going like a million miles a minute as this an idea is populating. And I, like, I need to slow it all down to try and get it across to somebody else. So that’s that’s part of it is one. How do I articulate something to another person, even get their feedback? But, like, Once I do have that, it’s getting feedback from people that I trust that I know have different perspectives than me. But know enough about whatever I’m talking about. To effectively challenge it or validate what I’m thinking. So, I’m not going for somebody that’s just gonna tell me yes. Fact, I don’t want somebody to tell me yes. Like, you know, I wouldn’t keep you kind of around if you were just the yes person and that was the relationship. I think that’s why Sarah and I are so successful as a partnership because we do challenge each other in in that sense of different styles of thinking, not one better than the other. That’s just situational. Like, Oh, that was that’s a great thing. I didn’t think of that part. And being really open, like, not having an ego of like, well, this is what I thought and it can’t be improved upon. If that was the case, then I’d be, you know, I don’t know, I’d own Twitter or something. But, you know, you know, I’d have enough money to at least. But Speaker Brett Gilliland: — Right. — Speaker Michael Lombardi: that’s, that’s not that’s not the case. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Are you a journaler? Like, goal planning, journaling? Kind of time away. Like, I always talk about time in the business and time on the business. I like to go about once a quarter. We’ll take our team, go off-site, We plan. We strategize. We think. Do you like that stuff? Do you do that stuff? What’s that? What’s that been like in your life? Speaker Michael Lombardi: So at at Woop, I was a big notebook guy. And that was more for like biz stuff stuff or like keeping notes on that kind of stuff. Once I kinda got into building campaigns or partnerships, I could keep that on the computer. I would say, like, one of my superpowers is keep I can keep a, like, a ton of information in my head, like, fully organized. Not helpful for the people, but for like my tasks. Like, I can, you know, check them off, without putting them down. I wouldn’t suggest that for most people. But I usually do what I will do is, I do set, like, these are mandatory for the day. I always have my, like, long term goals up here and somewhere on, like, probably in my notes on my computer and my phone. But I will have, like, these three things mandatory today, get them done as soon as, like, before noon. They have to be done before noon, and then whatever else, you’re you’re gonna do more. But, like, definitely accomplish these things. Because I think where I think people get into trouble and myself included, You can never let yourself have any smaller winds. It starts to just mount and you it’s it’s easy to start. Viewing things as a failure or you’re not making progress because it’s not as tangible. So, like, it’s very important to have these sort of tangible things, whether it’s like, That’s a great gym session. I, you know, I clean and jerked something or, you know, like, I I accomplished exactly what I wanted. Okay. That’s good. Because there’s gonna be days that it’s not that. Or it’s like, I handled this, this, and this, for my life. Like, you know, we enrolled in preschool, and he’s got his lunchbox. Like, They don’t all have to be business related things. They they are life related to keep me grounded in everything that’s going on. And I I think that that keeps me level and in all of these things. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I I call it the roommate. I read that in a book once, and we all have this roommate that lives with us. It’s that that person, right, sits on our shoulder and may tell us things. It’s It’s our in internal thoughts, our internal conversations that we have. Are you are you good at those? Are those mostly positive? If they are negative at all, do you can you flick that guy off your shoulder? Like, that look like for you? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. The anything negative lasts very little. I I I will, I’d say I’m an irrationally competent person sometimes. And I think that anybody that’s great and anything is I don’t think that there’s, like, a, a non competent pro athlete or top performer anywhere. It doesn’t matter what the business is. You have to be so confident in yourself, even if it doesn’t, like, come you don’t want to come off as arrogance. But internally, you have to be like so confident in your abilities, that you are the best and and you are capable of anything. That those negative thoughts will come, but you’re like, yeah, okay. But I’m better than that. And I can push through this or Yep. You can understand why that thought comes, and you can also talk yourself out of, okay. Yeah. This is a thought. This is just a thought. That’s not the Gilliland I think that that’s something I’ve gotten very good at over time is this is a this is a fleeting thought, and feel it for a second and then move on because this is not who you are, and this is certainly not defining you. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I think for me, it’s that that, you see, consuming your thought that it, I’ve learned to talk to it, you know, talk to that thought. Like, almost talk trash back to it. You know, Speaker Michael Lombardi: you should deal with things about it a lot. You know? Speaker Brett Gilliland: And it’s like, man, I okay. I got it. Like, I know sun I don’t like small airplanes, and I know I’m gonna be on a smaller airplane Sunday. I’m gonna have some serious anxiety. If I kinda had it through off and on this whole week, but it’s I’ll tell it. Like, look, I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me go there and think all these irrational thoughts, this ain’t happening. Right? And it just kinda stop it, man, and go somewhere else. And that’s that’s been really helpful for me over the years. And and continuing on thinking what is there anything right now that’s maybe in the infancy stage for you, but it’s consuming your thinking right now, you know, as a leader, as a as a father, as a husband. I mean, all the things you’re doing. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Oh, yeah. Existential dread, man. That that’s the thing that actually, and I’m not sure you can appreciate this. Like, what if something happens to me? And and I feel like you don’t ever really think about that until you have kids. Maybe some people do think about it earlier, but the reality of something could happen to me and somebody has to take care. There has to be a way to take care of these kids. So I think that that’s the thing that, freaks me out the most. And nothing nothing else wakes me up in the night. Other than that. Of like, what if something happens and have I done everything I can to make sure that my family’s okay. That’s that’s the overarching thing, which is like you have very little control over. And, you know, I’ve worked a lot on not not letting it have too much control because it is, you know, do what you can do, and then you gotta just live. Things that are right now, we’re going through a lot of changes. Like, you know, we we just moved, a month ago, almost two months ago. We have a new baby. So only last three months. New baby, new new house. My son switching schools. She’s potty training. You know, it’s like, man, can we do more? What else can we go on here? And it’s hard. And it’s, you know, what, our our three year old is, like, having a little bit of a tough time. And that that’s really hard on us too, because — Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: — Speaker Michael Lombardi: you know, what happens at daycare is not what it’s like at home. And it’s, you know, it’s changes. It if it’s hard, I just literally had this conversation with Sarah downstairs. You know, if you and I are feeling it, like this level of sort of like anxiety and stress. How do you think a three year old who has no ability to regulate his emotions or articulate any of this stuff is doing. Like, he’s he’s doing better than both of us, I think. So, like, you know, That’s that’s the stuff right now. Yeah. It’s like that’s that’s the stuff that I takes up my head space. It’s like, Working is fun and their their opportunities. Whereas, I can’t even say at whoop. Like, I, when I had no kids, we, you know, young professional, like everything’s great. You can go all in. And — Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: — Speaker Michael Lombardi: like, you don’t have to care about anything else. And I I believe that, like, having kids has helped me put things in, in place. As you kinda said, he’s like, you’ve got work time and out of work time and and those sort of thoughts. And, it’s really been great to kind of have that shift of, like, there’s work and there’s life. And works necessary for life, and hopefully there’s some cool things in there. But ultimately, like, it’s the relationship just the people and how you treat them and and the joy you bring to other people too. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. It’s it’s funny. So I I don’t know that I’m that much older than you, but, probably am quite a bit older than you, but in in talking about kids and our lives, and mine are seventeen fifteen. In my fifteen year old man, I dropped him off at school today for the last time that I’ll ever drive him to school. I’m like, Speaker Michael Lombardi: really? Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So so I used my second one. So my oldest one drives, and he’s seventeen, almost eighteen, almost sixteen, and then, thirteen, and eight. And you know, one of the things I did when I my kids were at your kids’ age, and I don’t know why, but I I thought about, like, the things you thought about too, like, what if I’m not here? You know, they’re gonna get anything that I ever taught them, all that stuff. And so I would find myself sometimes literally just holding the phone while I’m driving. I wouldn’t look at the phone. Right? Gotta be safe. But do a video and talk to the boys, and then send that to, like, a email thing that we have. Like, you know, they didn’t have emails and phones and stuff back in. Right? And so I would make sure there’s a place where they could go watch those videos of what you stand for, man, because we don’t know. I could get hit by the proverbial truck tomorrow. Right? And it’s like — Yeah. — I want them to understand about who they surround themselves with matters. And now, you know, at seventeen and fifteen, they’re probably, Speaker Michael Lombardi: god. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Here he goes again. Right? This But when they’re three in one or three in three months, I mean, they don’t know that stuff. They wanna hear from dad. So just a thought for people that are listening or for yourself, for food for thought. So, this has been awesome, man. Winning is a choice. You agree with that? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Winning is a choice? Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Is Speaker Michael Lombardi: it? Who said that? Speaker Brett Gilliland: I don’t know. I’m I’m asking. I’m asking if you think it’s a choice or I because I believe there’s a lot of things that are choices, but is winning a choice. And, anxious see where you go with that. Speaker Michael Lombardi: I don’t think I don’t think that winning is a choice. I think that, what you’re willing to do to win as a choice. Yeah. Let’s say you’re running hill sprints. Like, everybody that’s running it hypothetically wants to win. But how deep are you willing to go? How much are you willing to make your muscles burn? An egg to win. And if it’s not more than everybody else, then you’re probably not gonna win. So I don’t think winning in a winnings the byproduct of the choices that you were willing to make to win. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. I I agree with you. I’m glad you said it that way because that that’s what I think where, you know, take Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, we’ll just pick on those guys. You know, there’s six, seven, eight quarterbacks that come in probably all of them, hopefully, think they can. But realistically, there may be six, seven, eight quarterbacks this year that think they can win the Super Bowl. Right? They all think they’re gonna go there. It’s not a choice, man. There’s so much stuff that goes into it, and it’s preparation. It’s how much more are you gonna work on your body, your sleep, all the stuff that we been talking about all day. So I’m glad to hear you say that because I agree. I think if we’re out there running the hill sprints, everybody wants to win, but it’s how much effort you gonna put into it? So we wanna focus on the effort. Right? Part of the circuits of success for the effort. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. And what did you do leading into, you know, those hail sprints were coming. Did you train for that? Like, or did you just, like, hey, I’m good enough to shop? Because you’re you’re probably not. It, like, it works to a point, but if you really wanna take things to the max, you have to, you know, go above and beyond. It’s everything that people don’t see. And just for the quarterback thing, J one Hertz is the best. And the Eagles will accept Super Bowl. So I Speaker Brett Gilliland: love it. That’s great. But he had a hell of a year last year. He’s fun to watch. Speaker Michael Lombardi: I like that. Love that guy. Well, Speaker Brett Gilliland: Working our listeners find more of Mike Lombardi? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Well, if you want lots of, dad and training content, you can follow me on Instagram at Lombardi Michael. We, you know, Rofish and exists still on the on Instagram. If you’re looking for rowing tips, or any of that sort of training stuff so we’ve we actually worked with Harvard’s Women Rolling Team for, like, last six years. Kinda like strength and conditioning consultant training stuff. So, yeah, that was fun. But, yeah, no. You you you find this around? Sarah Sarah Speaker Brett Gilliland: I need to check that Speaker Michael Lombardi: one out. Yes. She is. Speaker Brett Gilliland: And Sarah Speaker Michael Lombardi: is a good follow, at Sarah Henderson. Where you’ll ask you. We’ll get more content from her than you will from me. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I need to get on that rowing when you get some pointers. I mean, I got a rower about four or five months ago, the Peloton rower, and it’s it’s a hard ass workout. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. It’s it’s not easy. That’s that’s the thing. It, people make it look easy. It’s not easy. And No. Yeah. So, hey, you can you can always hit me up after this enrolling. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Alright, man. I will do that. Well, Mike, it’s been awesome having you, man. Thanks for joining me on the Circive Success podcast.