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 This week we have a special episode to kick off the new year Reed pretty member of the US Men's National Volleyball Team for 16 years. He participated in four Olympic games, multiple medals, including gold medal, and we got a chance to talk to him about a leadership team, culture, fitness, wellness. He has a new leadership program.

Called Max Potential, which I got to sit in on. It's fantastic. A new wellness program in sand. I actually participated in that as well out here on the beaches of Huntington Beach. It's sort of a mix between CrossFit and sand volleyball. A lot of really cool new exercises they're able to do because it is in sand.

So it's a fantastic program, very exciting conversation, and I'm happy to open the new year with this episode. Welcome to this Week in Health, it influence where we discuss the influence of technology on health with the people who are making it happen. My name is Bill Russell, CIO, coach and creator of this Week in Health.

it a series of podcast videos and collaboration events designed to develop the next generation of health IT leaders. This episode is sponsored by health lyrics. I coach healthcare executives on technology strategy, vision and execution. Coaching was instrumental in my development. As ACIO, and I'm excited about the progress that my clients have made over the past couple of years with this service that I offer.

And so we took a three month break between our last home ownership and our next home ownership, and we rented this place and it's a bucket list thing That ocean you're looking at is fantastic, but it is ice cold and you can only go in it with a wetsuit on. So it's really about the views. You're looking at Catalina.

I'm looking at mountains with snow on 'em. So this is one of the most amazing places. To film this, even though the lighting's not perfect, I'm gonna do it while I have the opportunity. So as I said, I'm excited to share this conversation with you. Reid has such great insights based on his experience with the US men's team.

Great conversation. I think you'll get a lot out of it. We talk about the journey that high performing teams go on, and we also delve into the individual journey that members of the team go on as well. I learned a ton and I think you'll get a lot of it as well. I really hope you enjoy. Read pretty. Thank you very much for joining us.

16 years professional indoor volleyball player. Yep. Four Olympic games. Number eight, US men's national volleyball team. Alright, you impressed that I memorized all this. Good job, man. golfer, entrepreneur. Father friend and thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, appreciate. Thanks for having me. I like that you put golfer in there.

Yeah. That's more aspirational than it is. Uh, , golfer. Anything else? So golfer isn't in the same category as volleyball ? No. Maybe from a passion I've seen you play. Yes. I mean from a passion standpoint, you do love it. Yeah. I'm all in. You're all in on the golf. Well, we have a lot to talk about. It's interesting 'cause someone might say, you know, what does this have to do with health?

it? And it has a lot to do with health It. 'cause I sat through your max potential program and I thought, man, there's so many leadership. Principles and things that I wanted to share with my audience as I sat through that. You have a new program in sand that's about health and fitness, and it really relates to your journey going from hardcore to sand volleyball, to professional sand volleyball.

That's where we're gonna start. Tell us about your volleyball journey. So, yeah, how did you, uh. You don't just become a professional volleyball overnight, . No, that's right. So I started pretty late. I played all the different sports and it was right around 15 years old. Gonna be a freshman in high school.

And I just tried it in a PE class. It was a PE requirement where you do everything. And I guess the coach saw something and encouraged me to come out, but at the time I was only five feet, four inches. So , I'm not quite sure what she saw. So I tried out and I loved it and I'd been playing. Baseball, basketball and a lot of soccer.

Up to that point. I did some swimming. There was something about volleyball that was just different and I was successful on my first team, which was interesting. Even though I played just in the back court. Our biggest claim to fame that year was we were on the junior varsity. And we went 11 own conference in JJV, which is a big deal to us.

But we beat varsity in a scrimmage, which they probably weren't even trying, and they were like men, and we were still like little kids. So that left an impression, but that kind of just kick started off and I loved it. And eventually just one door after the other just kept opening. There was no plan like it is today, where everyone sort of at eight years old knows exactly what it is that they want to do.

Right. So yeah, it just kind of was a passion that turned into a profession. So did you end up going to college and playing? Is that how it progressed to professional? Right. So I played through high school and uh, went to college and it was in college that, it was about my second year in college that there was AUSA volleyball tryout.

And I tried out and I actually got cut, didn't make it, and then the next tryout happened two years after that. And I did make that team. And I played in the World University. Well, I was supposed to play in the World University games, but I tore my ab. We had eight days of training. It was my first USA experience, so I was just full out, full throttle and I ended up tearing my AB and I think everybody else was kind of used to that environment, so they weren't maybe as eager as I was because they're like, Hey, that's what you're supposed to look like at the game, right?

That actually kept me out of going to the World University games. But what it did do was they flew me out to Colorado Springs, which is where the national team was, and that was the first time that I sort of saw the national team realized it was a thing and saw the Olympic Training Center was able to be around the A team.

And again, it was still so new. I had so many friends and things going on in college. I had this thing in my mind that I just wanted to finish in four years. So I ended up saying no to that. But what they did do was invite me out as soon as I graduated college. And so I was with them the entire summer and I was being told, hey.

And anybody that knows volleyball out there, this is like insurmountable. Situation. There's never a comeback because you score every time the ball is entered in play, not just when you serve. So a comeback under those scenarios, those circumstances is, is perfection you almost. Exactly. And we happened to just turn the tide and we won that set, and then we won the following set.

16. 14. So it even went over time in the fifth set. . And I remember talking about loss. You know, I remember thinking, well that was a crazy win. Like this is now destiny. And I remember thinking to myself, this is really happening. Like our experience, our gold medal experience, and the very next match was against Brazil in the semi-final.

And we go out there and lose, you know, quicker than a, you know, it was three zero and we were out. And then in the bronze middle match we faced Russia, same thing. Three zero. And we're out. And it was devastating for me. And it was very interesting because I don't think at the time I recognized that I was carrying some sort of expectation of like, things should work out a certain way because I'm trying to connect the dots of the, the data pieces that I know.

That's interesting. 'cause it sounded like in my mind you've already made that jump. You're playing professionally. You are probably working out like crazy I would imagine. And you don't do anything sort of . You're all in when you're all in. So, but what you're saying was there was another level. Yeah.

Beyond that, like I said, I think that first loss was like, okay, I'm ready to separate from my social group was here in California. I had to go live in Colorado Springs where I didn't know anybody, no family, no friends initially. I ended up building a great community there, but, or being a part of a great community.

But that took time, space, energy. The next level was, now I'm ready to do whatever it takes. And typically, whatever it takes is a lot of death to self in a sense. If I could use that terminology, I was now ready to leverage anything and everything, even if it meant my own ego towards the greater cause, which was winning an Olympic medal.

That's interesting. The reason it's fascinating to me is. A lot of people would say that you've already been successful, you've been on an Olympic team. I mean, you could have retired at that point. Gone over to the country club, played golf and told everyone I played on an Olympic team. And it's the appearance of success, right?

Versus actual what you were setting out to do, which was to win the gold medal. So formative event. Take us to, that's Athens now we're going to to Beijing and this transition. So I don't think my development was in a vacuum. I think that our whole team was sort of going through this process and right at that time we had a new head coach come in and the very first thing that he had us do was sit down in a room in Anaheim at a hotel.

The Hilton down there. For two days and talk about our feelings and talk about our goals and articulate them with words and actually put them on a piece of paper. And at the time we were just like, Q what do you mean? Like, we wanna go get sweaty and like duke this out and, and like, we've got a job to do.

We gotta go, you know, get better and compete and scream at each other. But thankfully he had a thick enough skin to sort of endure all the darts that we were throwing his way. And out of those two days, we articulated, you know, he took us through this process without us even recognizing . The impact that these two days would have.

Yeah. He took us through this process to articulate a very clear objective with a how to, you know, this is how we're gonna do it. And what was interesting about that day is that became the marching orders. And so every single day. We would start our day at the whiteboard and we would finish it at the whiteboard, and there would always be up in the upper right corner, something that referenced our ultimate goal, which was to win the Olympic Games in Beijing.

And mind you, I do wanna say that at this moment in time, if anybody else in the world of volleyball had seen the US men's team articulate it this way, they would've laughed at us. We had no right in a sense to think that this was possible. We weren't trending. Nobody was talking about us like, oh, USA, they're gonna be the next.

Like look out for them. Like that wasn't what was happening. But what it did was it set our culture in motion of a culture of learning, a culture of purpose and mission. And on. We went through that quad and we really became, a lot of the language of our coaching staff was, we're here to be masters of our craft.

We're here in process. And so all of this language that was not, Hey, we're here to be undefeated. We're here to win every game. Right? It's like we're here to learn and keep learning and keep doing this thing together, but our ultimate goal, yes, is to win something. But the way we do that is we learn along the way.

I love that story. I actually shared that, 'cause you shared that story in the session that I went to Max Potential and the next morning I shared it with one of the CIOs that I'm coaching and he goes, you have to send me that mission statement and the mission statements out there on the internet will share it with the show as well.

And it was interesting to me. It did say, you know, to win, but it, it talked a lot about process, talked a lot about learn, becoming students and learning the game and, and getting better and, and the team aspect. I mean, it was a beautiful statement. Yeah. But I think the other thing that really, really stuck out at me was when you said, and every day after practice, we would come back in and say, have we taken a step towards this?

Or have we taken a step away? And the thing I loved was you said, you know, I've been on a lot of teams where we have a throwaway practice a week kind of thing. Right. He goes, and you essentially said over those years, it was maybe two throwaway practices for the entire duration. Yeah. I mean, goosebumps as you're saying that because.

It was special, and it's really true. Like great teams would have a throwaway practice, you know, where it's just kinda like we got sweaty, everybody was here with the right intention to get something done, but for whatever reason, we just didn't get it done. But that particular group, you know, there was like two days that were throwaway days in an entire quad, which is so hard to do.

And so there was a serious commitment by everybody to basically leverage their whole selves and . And there's lots of stories that I could talk about of of moments where players had to say no to themselves and yes to the we, you know, to the collective. And it was beautiful. And in the end, I mean, that particular team suffered some really catastrophic circumstances with our coaches' family.

In the first week he had married Elizabeth Bachman and Wiz, we call her and her family were walking into Tianmen Squared and they were attacked. Her father was killed and her mother was stabbed repeatedly, and it was just horrible. And so we had to sort of be without our leader for the entire preliminary rounds, and then he rejoined us in the medal rounds and he'll be the first to tell you that we didn't win because of that, in spite of it, we had trained in such a way, and the culture was so tight.

That it sort of was able to endure that sort of, I'm gonna camp on this for a little bit. Yeah. 'cause the, the stories are so powerful. Are there other things the coach did in terms of communication, motivation, the whole operating as we, that you remember? Yeah. You know, I think what really stands out, so I'm a big support challenge matrix guy.

When I think of coaches and leaders, and I believe that the best leadership are those that have high challenge, they're making sure that everyone's feeling . Stretched, but there's high support. I'm right there with you. So I believe you can do more Bill and I'm gonna challenge you to do more, but I'm right there with you as you do that.

So, uh, Hugh was definitely high support, high challenge, but the two things that really stood out was that he was missional, it was on purpose and all the coaching staff would have language. Like we used to have the late Carl McGowan, who was a long time, just one of the great coaches of the game. He would just come in and just be like,

Well boys we're here so we might as well be here . And we knew what he meant by that. It was like, we're not just here to go through the motions, even though we probably could, we were probably good enough to just kind of fake it. But it was about conscious. Every rep you used to say, every cell in your body's listening to your thoughts.

And you know, like every rep is sort of creating this firm loop. So he was missional, but he was also relational. And this is a really rare thing in our day and age, and I think it's a hard thing to do, but I think that staff recognized that every individual in our gym was unique. And how you would speak to me to motivate me might be different than how you would speak to you.

And so he used to always say, we're gonna be fair but not equal. You know, the 36 year old has earned some liberties. The 22 year old, I'm sorry, it's not gonna be equal. I think recognizing that like, Hey. To get the best out of this group, we gotta be knowing exactly, you know, what's the commander's intent, where are we headed?

Let's be clear on that. But at the same time, I'm gonna do the work to create relationships with each of these individuals to know how I need to speak with them. And I'm sorry, the coach's name was Hugh McCutchen. Hugh McCutchen. Great. So what do you recall from Beijing? You don't just show up and like, Hey, we did all this great missional stuff.

I mean, there's still challenges along the way. I would, I mean, obviously you talked about one. But anything stand out on the court? It does, and I would probably take you back two weeks before we get to Beijing, but I think just in general, like my, my thought process, and it was largely shaped by this experience, is that what we were pursuing was mastery, which is more like martial arts, like a black belt.

You know, you have to spend time. So you're never pursuing perfection. You're trying to level up and skill acquisition and situational knowledge, um, communication within your team. But in the end of the day, you don't know what you're about to experience. Yeah. So the goal is that you have the tools you need.

Part of that process is recognizing that you are in process. So even though we went to Beijing, we were certainly not perfect. And two weeks leading up to that, we were in a tournament down in Brazil called the World League, and we got absolutely killed by Serbia. And we completely fractured as a group, and we were in a locker room and Hugh, our coach, was talking to us.

I remember at that moment it was just sort of like probably hitting me and bouncing off of me. You know, I've heard his words before. I was really upset about the game and how it made me feel. But our captain, Tom Hoff, when he was done, maybe even almost interrupted him, kind of stood up. And just started railing our group.

Essentially, it was like, Hey, when we set out to do this, it was never by ourselves like, we are here to do this together. Whether we succeed or fail. You know, the primary thing is that we're connected and we're doing this together, and we never let another guy off on his own. You know, we were going to each of our little corners like this isn't a bunch of silos we're, and I just remember it just being such a huge shift.

I think it was an important separate secondary voice, but from that point on, it was like the last moment of cohesiveness that needed to happen. And we were in a lot of tough moments, but in terms of on the court in Beijing, I just remember like my pre-game routine was we would play cards. We had this game called fte, which is just kind of like a spades game that has been in the national team program for like 40 plus years.

It's kind of cool. It's like a tradition. Yeah. Got it. So we would, we would play that and, and any bus trip that we could or whatever. So there'd be a time of just like light snacking. We're in the locker room probably early because you don't wanna rush. And, but then there's this moment where, okay, I'm gonna put my shoes on and when I start to go through that, then it's time to work.

And I remember during that period of time, which was so special, because before you like win. But you're good enough to win. I feel like it's the perfect place to be in terms of enjoyment because there's like, like this unknown. There's no expectations of like, I should win, right? So when you win, it's pure joy.

And I just remember thinking like all I have to do is prepare myself for work for three hours. So I put my shoes on and literally just tell myself, alright, three hours of work, let's go to work. And that's such a different mindset than if you think of like younger athletes or when I was younger. I'm thinking about like, oh man, how am I feeling?

Right. How is the first couple points gonna go and whether they're good or bad, that could dictate my emotional state going all the way through state, going all the way through. But when we had this group of people pursuing mastery that had tools around our belt, it was simply going to work. And we were no longer reactive to the situation.

And the best compliment I've ever heard of any team that I've played for was that particular team by an announcer that says, you know what? I can never tell the score by looking at 'em, whether they're down by eight or up by eight. They just play the same way. And I think that's a testament of the true mastery of, you know what?

The game might go our way or it might not, but we have what we need around our belt to handle any situation that comes up and that's how we're gonna do it. So win gold. Yep. We win gold. And it wasn't a, is every game like an away game at the Olympics or is it sort of mixed? It's pretty neutral unless you're playing the home team.

But it's pretty neutral. I mean, it's, they just like good volleyball. Yeah. You know, it's great. Crowds, volleyball draws a great crowd and. Also you recognize that there's tens of millions of people around the world that are now interested in this game that you do every day, but they just see it every four years.

Unless they're here in Huntington Beach, we're That's right. We're backdrop. And one of the reasons I wanted this is the backdrop is I, you know, I would run on this pier every morning and somebody goes, do you realize that professional sand volleyball players play there all the time? Yeah. Yeah. Every day.

And there's sort of a little competition to get to the front court Right. And whatnot. So you win gold. I got to see that gold that was, yeah, that was interesting. Does winning have the same impact as losing in terms of catalyzing you and saying, yeah, I'm, I'm ready to go and do this again. So I think by and large, most people learn more when they lose.

And if you take a sports team or even a business, you know, a failed sales trip, there is more debrief, there's more communication, there's more analyzation. Like, why didn't that work? I thought we had a great game plan. Why didn't it work? And so there's this discovery process that everybody seems to be more heightened and aware of under failure.

And in the sports world when there's a win, I'm finding it to be the same in. Business as well is you sort of gloss over some of the things that you might've addressed, otherwise maybe you're not meeting as much, you're not having that hard conversation or you attribute it to this great PowerPoint that you had when actually it's really the relationship that you developed over years.

Right. And you're just attributing it to the wrong things, the success. Totally. And so what I call the double black belt. So if, if black belt, if martial arts, and the reason why I use martial arts, 'cause if you think of boxing, . Boxing is all result driven, right? Right. It's, it's all about record. Whereas the original black belt was actually white, but it became black over time of use, which I think is just so great.

So to me, the double black, like the ultimate in terms of mastery of any domain is if you approach every situation with the same level of discovery. So if I go through a win, I don't just turn the music up in the locker room and, and forget . That thing that happened between you and I that we should discuss and learn from.

We just don't think about it. And we talk about what are we gonna do? Are we going to dinner? Are we gonna have, you know, some drinks or whatever? So to me, the Double Black Belt are those teams and people and leaders that look at every opportunity as a moment to learn.

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So you're going to Rio now, right? Uh, Tokyo. Tokyo. Tokyo Next. Okay, so Tokyo's next. You're getting ready for how much change? New coach, new players. Oh, I see what you're saying. I'm sorry. Yeah, we were going to London next. Okay. And then Rio And then the next 1, 20 20 is Tokyo. But yeah. Okay. Lots of change.

Every quad we had a change in coach and, and that changes the dynamic of culture. And we could have used some, probably change management. Teams to come in and help us out. Well, yeah. 'cause that's a significant, because that team, the way you described them, they've become very close. So I would assume that.

To a certain extent. It's hard to come into that. Any group that's been together like that and gone through something like that and you try to come into, that's hard. Any coach that's taking over after somebody has had such a formative impact, that's hard too. Yeah, that was really tough. And any coach taking, coming into that environment, I mean, that was just gonna be a tall task any way you look at it.

But what ended up taking place, unfortunately, was instead of a new culture being established, the old culture was almost permitted. Like, Hey, you guys do your thing. And that's okay, but we're not, we're not gonna lean into that culture, uh, but we're not gonna define a new culture. And so what ended up happening was, as the young guys came in, there were certain rules of that culture that we held very seriously within that generation.

Right? Right. So a new guy coming in, you know, if he lets a ball drop that and he doesn't dive, there's no effort displayed. That was a huge thing for us. Like no matter what, you don't have to get it, but there has to be effort applied. So we would start to see, you know, initially that ball would drop and we're all like, oh man, this is gonna be gnarly thinking.

The coach was gonna go crazy, the coach doesn't go crazy. He didn't share the same value. He was probably looking at other values that were really important to him. And then it turned out to, you know, old guy going bananas on young guy. And it seemed like there was a generational divide, but in reality there just was no clear set of values that we all had to ascent to, which made us less productive.

I appreciate you sharing that as I'm thinking through it, the corollary is ACIO takes over at an organization. They really need to be intentional on what they're trying to do. What is the culture? This is why I like that exercise so much. A lot of the CIOs I coach are new in the role . And I'll say, and they'll be like, well, I don't know if it's my place to really, I mean, this place already has a culture and my comment is, if you don't set it, it's gonna be on autopilot and you're not gonna like where it goes.

So we have to think through those elements and it's hard. It is a leadership thing. So you go to London and what you're sort of setting up here is that London didn't go that well? No, we underperformed. We were the best team there and, oh, so this time going in, you were considered . I believe we were, yeah, I believe we were the best team and we, but we didn't have a great quad.

But once we got there, what was really fascinating, and I would like to encourage, if you're a veteran in an organization and you're feeling that tension, what happened to me is we were kind of grumpy at that point, just kind of like unhappy. And we did try to lean into relationship with the younger guys.

It wasn't their fault. We didn't really have discernment at the time to recognize all the different dynamics that were taking place. But once we got to the Olympics, . It was as if all of the little things that bothered us older guys kind of lifted because the Olympics were so much bigger than that. And so we sort of lost sight of what we were after and getting so frustrated with the daily day in out stuff.

And so we were able to put together a pretty strong start to the Olympics and we won our pool. But in the metal rounds we faced Italy who it's kind of been our nemesis and they got hot and we just didn't have underneath the hood. Sort of the backbone to stay strong under pressure and we cracked it, you know, and at quarterfinal it's over.

You know, you lose a semifinal, you still have a chance to compete for a medal, right? In the bronze. And so that was really devastating, I think, for everybody involved. And again, in hindsight, we probably all would do things differently. I know I would, but at the time I would encourage that. Yes. A new C-I-C-I-O.

Yeah, CIO. Absolutely. If they don't come in, I mean, I think it's so great to sort of appreciate like, Hey, that's awesome. I wanna learn about that. But just know that this is what we're gonna do and we all need to be on the same page so that we're speaking the same language, right? And we're able to work together.

It's actually in a collective instead of a bunch of independent forces. So you've learned a lot through the, so you go to Rio and you guys medal again, correct. Again, another reset. There's a ton of stories from that. I do wanna get to the other two things. So you've transitioned from hard court volleyball to sand volleyball.

Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, that was really interesting on a lot of different levels. You know, the first being that indoors is a team, it's a, the consummate team sport. There is no one player that can win a game. You depend on all these other touches. So . To go from that out to the beach out here, which you're sort of, it's just two on two, but also there's no infrastructure.

There's nobody choosing the team, there's nobody hiring you or you know, whatever. And so it's actually like the South Pacific with all. So do you go get a coach and you go get a, it's up to you. So it's kind of weird dynamics, right? So the coach doesn't hire the players, it's the player that hire the coach's.

Yeah. And so you have all these weird dynamics and . And I remember coming out right to this pier 'cause I just live up the road and I would see 40 to 60 guys all training sort of individually, but all having the same goal. So right away I just said, this is, this is dumb. And I started to try to aggregate like, Hey, let's all train on the same court, like we're all going for the same thing.

That's fine. We can compete on the weekend. But between Monday and and Friday, let's be teammates. Let's figure out how to make each other better. And that was kind of the first shift. And the second shift was the surface. So we're standing on sand right now and what I noticed was that the hard court for me to continue to play at a high level into into my late thirties, I was taking like 2,400 milligrams of ibuprofen every day for like seven years.

So I know your listeners now are cringing. Being in the medical community, , but that was vitamin I, we would call it. That was what worked for me. You know, a lot of people use a lot of heavier things, but for whatever reason, that just really worked to take down inflammation and and allow my joints to sort of, was it knees or is it the whole body?

It was just all joint. Oh, okay. And you know, I think our bodies were created for amazing. Dynamic loading, but I just don't think that that they were meant to spike a hundred balls every day, twice a day. So there's gonna be some give when you're try asking it to do that over 25 years. But when I came out to the sand, I immediately got off of ibuprofen and I started to move around and after six months, I gained five pounds of lean muscle mass.

At 38 or 39. Yeah, 38. You know how hard that is. Like it's just, it's hard to put on weight, let alone muscle. Well, it's not hard to put on weight, but it's hard to put on muscle as we age. And I started to think that, man, there's something here with the sand. And so kind of those two elements. Kind of got my mind thinking about some business opportunities.

Yeah. So in Sand is the program, you guys actually do it down the way a little bit. You have a bunch of different programs. I went in the morning, it's kind of neat. I mean, there's a community of people, right? So unlike a gym where you go in and you maybe talk to one or two people, get on your machine and do your thing.

This was really a community of people out there working together. Those kind of things, but everything you do is in the sand. It affords you a lot of different opportunities, I assume, from a fitness and a wellness standpoint. Correct. Yeah. So I think it's the ultimate training surface and when I start to look at my experience on the national team, I had an integrated team around me, right?

So I had like six different experts whose sole job was to try to make me awesome and the team awesome. And that level of support is amazing. And when I sort of left that team atmosphere and I missed that, I started to recognize that like, man, staying in shape when you're not being paid to do it is hard to do.

And you add a 40 hour work week or a 60 hour work week, you add a lot of drive time, a lot of sitting time. I mean, your body can get pretty messed up. And so with in sand, what we've recognized is that man going into a weight room and just isolating muscle groups to lift is not really what's needed in the greater marketplace, in the greater population.

People need to have functional. Stability, mobility and strength. And what better way to do that on a surface that actually requires more muscle output without any joint impact. And so that's where the light bulb went on. And then the volleyball part. So we do sort of, you know, CrossFit really made working out a team sport.

I give them credit for that. We were borrowing that, but we're utilizing sport-based movements on the sand to just make it fun. But at the end of the day, we're just moving side to side, front to back and up and down. But it's amazing to watch 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 year olds be able to move around in a dynamic way on sand that has no adverse effects.

Only positive. Yeah. I was put in the older group. Which . Yeah, which was, which was hard for me to be put in the older group, but the reality was I've never played volleyball. I did a lot of different sports really, that hadn't played volleyball. So being with that group, it didn't really matter. I mean, it was, a lot of it really was moving around, moved to the side, you know, and it didn't matter where the ball went.

It was really about moving and getting done. The other thing that struck me about sand is you could do a lot. It balances you like almost naturally. Yeah. I mean, I was leaning back and doing things that I wouldn't do in a heart. Right. Anyway, it was good program, but, but people are listening to this and they're going, well, that's Grayden Huntington Beach because you got, you know, the beach as far as you can see.

Right. But what does this look like in Cleveland and St. Louis and Dallas? Yeah. I actually think it's harder here because you have 10 miles of coastline. What people need to recognize is that. Out here, this is very rare that we could be out here on an afternoon and it not be blown over by wind. Right? But wind adversely affects your experience on the sand, but it's our vision to take and bottle up this experience and take it around the nation and to build facilities that have sand underneath roof and indoors.

And to be able to allow people the opportunity in their busy lifestyles to engage in an activity that is an hour long. That hits all the major muscle groups without any pain. And I think, again, as we age, you know, little injuries become big problems and we don't have integrated healthcare for the most part.

And so I've been spoiled my whole career to have surgeons and doctors on speed dial. But now that I'm sort of outside of that world. I'm recognizing that like, man, my knee hurts. So I'm like two weeks out of from seeing this person and they refer me to this other person. They never talk. Yeah. Who refers me to this other person?

And so if we could build a center that has fun, fitness, pain free, all together with an integrated team, I think it's gonna be a win. And a lot of people, a lot of companies have tried to bottle up the Southern California lifestyle. But usually it looks like bikinis, beers, parties, , you know, like that's what they think about the beach.

But what people I think recognize when they come to California that aren't from here is that it's a really active community. At 5:00 AM there's what? A hundred surfers out in the water. Right? And the sun's not even up. There's people running up and down. The beaches running on the sand. And so if we could create centers that sort of capture that and take that across the US I think it's gonna be a fun experience.

Yeah, and I think people who are listening to this that are part of employer wellness programs, yes. I think is, is another opportunity. If you were a large employer in a city, you could bottle this up, create a space to do this for your employees. And we've talked about that, and you're like, that's, you know, step number two or step number three and you know, are you able to take the same intensity from volleyball to being an entrepreneur?

Well, yeah. I mean, I think that that's what athletics has done for me is kind of shaped me into being who I am. So I'm really big on being integrated as an individual. So how I am at church on Sunday is the same way that I am on the court in a finals at the Manhattan Beach Open. And I bring that intensity, no doubt.

Now I'm learning how to temper expectations in the business world. 'cause I got news for myself that business is really hard, , it doesn't move at the same pace and it's larger teams and some of those teams don't report to you. And it's hard to know like who the opponent is. Sometimes am I fighting against myself?

Is it my inability to communicate the value proposition? Is there something else? You know, like against, I know who I'm playing against when I'm on the court is sometimes you don't know who you're playing against and, and a lot of times we can be distracted by our perceived competitors and in reality it might just be our in-house processes that need some overhauling.

But yeah, I will say . Everything from sport is carrying over. And the biggest, most important thing is the team dynamic and just recognizing that like, hey, no thing has been invented or created or sustained by a single individual. It's always been team. It was interesting to be with your team at the max potential thing 'cause they're so committed to it.

It's not that they're committed to it 'cause they get huge paychecks and, and those kind of things. They're committed to it. They believe in the vision. And clearly the vision's been articulated so that they can grab onto it. But you seem to have taken what your coaches had done and they're committed to each other.

They don't wanna let each other down. Mm-Hmm. . So how do we make this work? That's what I saw. So let's talk about Max potential a little bit. 'cause you're gonna be coming out with a series, is it a video series on demand? Correct. Yeah. In a couple weeks. If you read pretty.com, you'll be able to register.

Well, we're gonna give the first module for free and then the other seven modules will be a, you know, an opt-in. But we're just trying to get this out there and I mean, it's been so fulfilling to see . If you would've asked me to create a curriculum three years ago, I would've created a curriculum on how to be a better volleyball player.

But over the last three years, I've been in enough situations where I've been asked to speak or share at so many different industries, steel financial restaurant, and I'm recognizing that these principles are applicable in every domain. You know, when you talk about domain specialty expertise or mastery, you know, it's nothing earth shatteringly new.

But maybe it's just phrased in, in a way that might land with you. That was certainly the case for me. I've played for so many great coaches. It's funny how the way one coach says it just computes one time, even though your other five have been saying it, you know? Yeah. The same concept. So yeah, we're looking to launch that in the next few weeks.

I love it. I mean, the one thing I took out of it, and I appreciate you staying longer than . Oh, yeah. The one thing that I, I mean, I took a lot of things out of the principal process and black belt that was interesting, but the four quadrants to me was the thing I've talked about over and over again. And it's measured from casual to all in and then it's process to results.

Yes. You know, you draw those quadrants and you realize if you're casual and results driven, you're probably frustrated. Yeah. I think is is the right word for that. Yeah. But if you're casual and process driven, that's a hobby and you enjoy those things, it's like golf for the two of us, right? Sometimes. Yes.

Every now and then our mindset drifts and then we don't enjoy golf as much. 'cause we're not all in on it either. We're not process driven. Mm-hmm. and all in. Is the upper right hand quadrant. You know, after I went to that session, I sat back and I thought about it and I'm like, what am I actually all in on?

And it was interesting. I started putting dots on the paper. It's like work. And then I had to break work down into different things I'm trying to do in work. And I'm like, I realized I'm not all in on that. I'm not all in on that. Hmm. I am all in on that. And as I sort of painted that picture, it was sort of a self-revealing kind of thing to go, gosh, I don't know why I expect results.

You don't get results just for showing up. Right. You. You really do have to get all in and commit to process, not necessarily just the results. Right. It was fascinating. It was a great, great program. Well, Reid, thank you. Yeah. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me.

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