This is the “Best of 2022” episode, highlighting five of our favorite moments from the past year. Lots of stellar guests on Forcing Function Hour this year so it was really tough to limit down to just five. 

Listen for insights from a World Champion Gymnast, the author of Kindle’s Most-Highlighted book, one of the foremost experts on nonverbal communication, an Emmy-Nominated director of Chef’s Table, and the Artist Manager for one of the highest-paid hip-hop artists in the world.

Welcome to Forcing Function Hour, a conversation series exploring the boundaries of peak performance. Join me, Chris Sparks, as I interview elite performers to reveal principles, systems, and strategies for achieving a competitive edge in business. If you are an executive or investor ready to take yourself to the next level, download my workbook at experimentwithoutlimits.com. For all episodes and show notes, go to forcingfunctionhour.com.

Welcome to Forcing Function Hour. I’m your host, Chris Sparks.

Keep listening for insights from a World Champion Gymnast, the author of Kindle’s Most-Highlighted book, one of the foremost experts on nonverbal communication, an Emmy-Nominated director of Chef’s Table, and the Artist Manager for one of the highest-paid hip-hop artists in the world.

Kristin Allen is a two-time World Champion in the sport of acrobatic gymnastics and a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

After leaving competitive sport, Kristin performed with Pippin on Broadway, Cirque du Soleil, and the Kellogg’s Tour of Champions.

Today, Kristin is the founder and president of the Acrobatic Gymnastics Foundation and the Chairwoman of the National Gymnastics Foundation.

In this highlight, Kristin demonstrates how she uses visualization techniques.

It’s the best explanation I’ve ever heard on mentally preparing for a high-stakes performance moment.

You’ll find these techniques valuable whether you are performing at the Olympics or about to give a big presentation.

Mental preparation, in general, is obviously incredibly important. And I think we can think about it in a couple of ways. One is how you talk to yourself, and then the other is the sort of mental practice that you can do. And that's usually in the form of visualization.

So, positive self-talk—which is ideally how you talk to yourself—is basically the idea that it's just, first of all, being aware of what you're saying to yourself throughout the day or throughout your practice that you're working on, and then within that there are a couple of things you can think about. So one is just obviously, are you being encouraging to yourself? Are you saying things like, "That sucked," or are you saying things like, "Good job, you'll get it better the next time." You know, something—Kind of being that supportive parent to yourself, when you talk to yourself.

So that's one part of it. And the other part of it is really putting things in the context of positive action. And so the best sort of example of this is let's say there's a ledge, and people are walking past it, and the person standing there says, "Hey, don't trip over the ledge." You're gonna be thinking about the ledge, and you're going to be thinking about the words "don't" and "trip." So, "trip" is the main action that's now in your mind, and you now have all of these different possible scenarios that might happen, where you are more likely to trip on that ledge. Whereas if you thought about it in the context of "step over the ledge" and gave your body the exact thing that you want it to do, you drastically minimize what your body might do. Right? Now instead of having fifty different possibilities of what I could do—I could jump, I could fall, I could slide—I now have one option, which is to step over the ledge.

And so in the context of sport or doing something well, it's important to think about, "Okay, am I saying to myself don't do a certain thing, or am I really telling myself the exact action that I want to have?" So with my sport it was things like instead of saying "don't shake in a handstand," or "don't fall," really giving myself that, "Okay, well what is the positive action that I want to have happen here? Maybe that's really pushing down through my arm, breathing steadily, things like that."

So that's the self-talk piece. And the other piece is visualization. So that's—We've heard this a million times. It's, you know, imagining this scenario that you want to have happen. And obviously adding as much detail to that as possible is really helpful. You know, who's going to be there, what it might sound like. So I would always try to look at the venue ahead of time, pictures online, see what it might look like. And then once I got there I would make sure I really looked at the venue. Where are all the lights that might be distracting, where are the judges gonna be, what eye level are they at, and I would incorporate all of those things into my visualization leading up to the event.

And one piece of visualization that's important to recognize is if you are in first-person or in third-person. So, first-person visualization would be seeing it through my own eyes. I'm in my body, I'm looking out, and what am I seeing, what am I feeling? Third-person visualization would be you're an outside audience member, and you're watching yourself. So I'm gonna be, you know, be watching myself perform this trick, watching myself on the stage. Neither one is necessarily bad, but what I found in my own practice was that if I switched between third-person and first-person on a trick, usually it would happen in the middle of a trick, usually the scariest part, that would be sort of a clue for me that I have a bit of a mental block there, something that I really need to work on. So I would really focus on making sure that I could visualize fully in first-person the entire trick, for the entire routine, and then also in third-person. And I felt like that really kind of strengthened the practice for me.

So that's one thing. That's something I still use today. Probably not to the same extreme, but I do like to kind of envision how I might feel. And I think one thing that really helps me is thinking about how I might feel after I do something, because a lot of times with these pursuits of things that are difficult, the steps along the way aren't that fun. And so if you can think about how you're going to feel after doing something, and kind of—It's gonna feel so good, I'm gonna feel that endorphin release or that dopamine release, it helps give you the motivation to actually do the less-fun parts of whatever you need to do.

So that's kind of an overview of visualization. And then one thing that I think I did that maybe was a little bit different is that I like to combine the two. So when I would visualize my performances, I would also use the positive self-talk within that. So every time I would visualize a certain trick, I had certain words and actions that were associated with that. So I knew from the second I stepped on the floor 'til the second I got off exactly what I was gonna be saying to myself through the entire performance, because I had visualized it ahead of time, and through that visualization I also talked to myself and said exactly, "Okay, I want all of these specific things said so that I remember to do them when I'm actually in that really high-pressure situation."

You hear all the time of people freezing up or forgetting to do something when they got up there, and I think that was how I kinda anchored myself through, where I knew I wasn't gonna freak out in the middle of a routine and be like, "Oh my gosh, Kristin, what are you doing?" I had specific things to tell myself. And I even took it as far as before my bigger competitions, like world championships, I would actually write myself a letter a few weeks before, and it would be all of the kind of encouraging things that I would wanna hear in those moments of self-doubt, which tend to happen right before you step out into the major event. So it could be public speaking, whatever it is for you. That self-doubt—You're feeling good, you're prepared, whatever, and then it's like right before is when that doubt starts creeping in and you're like, "Oh my gosh, what if I trip? What if I mess up? What if all these, you know, all these negative stereotypes happen?"

And so for me to solve for that, I would write myself this letter, and whenever throughout the week I would keep it in my pocket at my Team USA warm-ups, and whenever I would feel that self-doubt I would just take it out and I would read it. You're in like the green room, which is kinda like a holding area before you go out, and there's not a lot of space to kind of move around, so that's tended to be for me where the nerves would creep in. And so I would really just repeat that letter to myself over and over in my head, and it basically just helped me stay exactly in that mindset that I wanted to be feeling encouraged, feeling like, "Okay, I've done everything that I needed to do, I'm as prepared as I can be, I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna have fun." You know, just whatever I wanted to say. So that sort of was my approach to the mental side of sport.

Eric Jorgenson is the author of The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness, built from the best of Naval's interviews, tweets, and podcasts.

Eric teaches the Life of Leverage course, hosts his podcast, Jorgenson's Soundbox, and is an investor in early-stage startups as a GP in Rolling Fun.

In this highlight, Eric describes the genesis of his venture fund, Rolling Fun.

Eric identified angel investing as a key point of leverage, recognizing that increasing his check size would be the fastest path to extending that lever.

I'm valuing more and more of the divine simplicity of a few long levers in life. And one of those that is front and center for me right now is in the tech world you have friends who are all the time starting these new amazing companies, and earlier in my career I started sort of scratching together some cash and investing in some of those friends who I knew to be particularly smart and hardworking and high-integrity who were working on cool problems. And over the last five years or so I've sort of—I've seen the benefits of those investments come back. I'm like, man. These are some amazing investments. Like, we knocked some of these out of the park, which is amazing. And then, you know, at the time I was twenty-four, twenty-five, I only had five thousand dollars to spare. Like, these are tiny investments, in the scheme of things. And it's one of those things where it's the right move, but it's not any harder to invest fifty thousand dollars than five thousand dollars. I just didn't have the capital.

It still would be very difficult to invest fifty thousand dollars in the number of companies that you need for an angel investment, but AngelList has started creating—Has a new type of fund structure that actually makes it way easier for somebody like me to let investors come alongside and join my investments. Again, on a very predictable, rolling basis. So, they're called Rolling Funds. And it's different from a traditional fund structure. So I don't have to go be a full-time VC and raise a ton of money and spend two years sort of building these new sets of relationships and reach fund scale. I can just say, "Hey, I'm gonna invest my money here. If you wanna come with me, you can join as well."

And so that has gone from writing ten-thousand-dollar personal checks now to forty, fifty and more checks alongside all of these limited partners and investors. And it's largely the same motion. We write a few more checks. We've got partners that we share deals with now. And that foundation is set for continued scale, right? Like, if we're investing a million bucks a year now, we can do three million bucks a year with largely the same motion, the same infrastructure, we're just investing larger and larger amounts. As long as we don't go so big so fast that we fundamentally overshoot our deal flow or the allocation size that we can get in these companies, then we're doing mostly the same amount of work, but we're including others, we're benefiting LPs, we're saving founders' time because we're writing bigger checks, and we're adding leverage to our own efforts.

And it is such a clean sort of example of like, "Hey, if you're gonna be doing this work anyway." I'm gonna always see ten to twenty great deals, great investments every year for the rest of my life, 'cause I love reading about tech and meeting founders and going to dinners, going to conferences, and writing these books about the future of technology and how to think about it. And I'm just like, all of the things that I'm doing sort of naturally synergize with investing in early-stage tech companies, and I can do that with higher leverage through this Rolling Fun model. And so we're, you know, sort of continuing to process that and open that up and it's been amazing to see. That is a lever that is definitely—Built it over the last year and now we're very much in the mode of extending that lever. And it's been a big focus recently and will continue to be.

It's a really—I think it's a clean example of sort of what we're talking about, like, find levers that you're already doing that you've proven at with your own efforts, figure out how to make that lever longer, figure out how to increase the impact very specifically in sort of like win/win ways, and find a few of those that you really love. Back to how we spend our time, that we love the process of. I love learning about new industries, learning about new technologies, meeting new founders, and talking to investors. Those are all really fun things for me to do on a daily basis, and you can do it with higher and higher impact with more leverage.

Blake Eastman is the founder of The Nonverbal Group, a long-time professional poker player, and the creator of “Beyond Tells,” the largest behavioral study ever conducted on poker players.

Blake’s passion is using visual feedback to teach leaders and teams how to better interpret nonverbal signals and monitor the information that their body gives off.

In this highlight, Blake debunks the myth of the poker face.

Poker players actually give the most information away through their efforts to conceal.

Blake shares how being sociable at the poker table unlocks other players' paradigms, thus being able to accurately interpret their behavior at the poker table.

In a lot of ways, people over-correct. So, this is the joke, that players that dedicate a lot of effort to not giving off behavioral information or being, like, let's assume your stoic poker player, right? They're in fact easier for me to process than the players that move a lot. And the reason why is if you perform behavior in the same way every single hand, you're probably not gonna be that good at it. So, like, in the super high-roller, there's a couple players that like if you showed the average person these people, they'd be like, "Wow, how are they so still? They're not giving away any information at all." When in reality when I get hired to break them down, I'm like, okay, good, this is gonna be easy. As opposed to somebody who's moving around all the way—'Cause it's less noise to filter, and it's easier for me to target where to look at.

So, for example, like if a player is sitting here—And for those of you listening, I have, like, two hands on top of each other. And let's say they are always like this in big spots. What I will find is, sometimes they will put more pressure in their hands in certain spots and not in others. Right? So—And this happens even for the world's best players. Like people think that they're immune, and they're just really not, because what they're not realizing is they're dedicating more cognition to not giving something off, and because of that they're becoming way more still. And it's not stillness that's the tell, it's the intensity of stillness that's the tell.

So it's like, "Oh, I don't want to be called that." And some players just—They don't even have an internal dialogue, it's just stuff that they do and don't realize it. And it gets kinda confusing when you're watching it sometimes, and you're like, "Is this person really doing it? Like, is this really happening?" And it's like, oh, yeah. And you go back years and years and years—this is what's so great about online footage—is that you have all that data. And then there's another thing, like, over-calibration. Right? So there's—We say there are two kinds of concealment strategies. One's 'everything is fine,' and one's absolute stillness. So, 'everything is fine,' is like they just act like everything is fine. Right? And then certain players, they just, they don't move that much, they just seem to not change. But then players, like, over-calibrate. Like, they try to show you that everything is really fine. So they'll say things, or they'll, like, in the middle of a really big spot like just start taking a drink of water or take out their phone. And you sort of have to reverse-engineer, like, "All right, is this player overcompensating and trying to communicate that everything is fine, or is this player actually like, I have zero cares in the world because I'm nutted right now and good luck."

And that's a puzzle that depends on the player's personality and your experience and so on and so forth. So it's like navigating that world is—It gets pretty interesting.

You're able to reverse-engineer how a player is actually thinking, or their school of thought or approach, and I don't think people interact socially enough to really unlock that world. And when you do, it's incredibly valuable.

Abigail Fuller is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work includes five seasons on the Emmy-nominated series Chef’s Table, Dear Oprah for Apple TV+, and the feature documentary Do You Dream in Color?

Her work has twice premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Telluride’s MountainFilm, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to name a few.

Abby is dedicated to telling deeply human stories that allow for empathy and sharing new perspectives.

In this highlight, Abby shares how to identify the stories worth telling.

Abby reveals that all great filmmakers have the superpower of active listening.

They arrive on set with a clear vision of the shots they want but are also are attuned to the frequency of what is happening in the here and now – ready to follow the story wherever it takes them.

I think that everyone's story is worth telling, to some degree. And that's kind of the point, is that we can see ourselves in all of these stories, because there is so much shared humanity. We all are born, we're all going to die, we all go through heartbreak, we all go through rites of passage and change and growth and we all have hopes and fears, and so I think that pretty much, you could present me with anyone and ask me to tell their story, and I could apply that craft of helping to tell that person's story. So I think it's really about once though you have locked into the story you're going to tell, or the subject that you're trying to tell the story about, how do you decide how to make that resonate with an audience? Right? What are the ways that you're going to obviously—and I'm talking right now more in like a biographical storytelling way, versus—obviously there's so many different types of storytelling, but in this sense of like having the honor or the privilege of telling a specific person's story, like we do in Chef's Table. It's really about making these evaluations about how I am looking for their truth and what makes them tick and what makes them both different from anyone else, but also the same.

And that really is a process of listening, and with the goal of making sure that there is the integrity of what is their truth is heard, but at the same time we're crafting it into a story that can be heard and felt by potentially millions of people. And taking somebody's life and condensing it down to a forty-five minute film, for example—there's a lot that we have to omit, there's a lot of choices you have to make, there's a lot of decisions. It isn't just an objective portrayal of the truth, right? A lot of choices are made by filmmakers and the teams that we have working on these projects, but the essence of their truth has to be there, and the closer we get to that, the closer it is usually felt by other people.

When people ask me why am I any good at documentary filmmaking, or what has allowed me to have a career in this field, I think that I'm good at it because I'm a good listener and I'm actually interested in what people have to say and how they feel. And I think the emotion is where the truth is, and that's where the power of the story is. So by giving someone the opportunity to say, "First of all, you can trust me." That's the first step. Because if they don't trust you or they feel self-conscious or they're unsure of the idea of putting themselves, right, because I'm not usually—Sometimes I work with celebrity talent, and that's a totally different ballgame, but when you're working with somebody who's not a professional of being on camera, and they're going to have to share it, share their ideas and share a part of their soul with their audience, the first step is to create that sense of trust.

And that's a process, obviously. But the next piece is just really listening. Right? And if you listen to the stories that they tell the most, or if you listen to the things they zero in on or where the emotion is, that's where I want to dig in. And that's where I want to learn more, and then I'm going to corroborate that with other people in their life. I'm gonna ask them more stories about that. But it's kind of a slow process of really kind of honing in on what does this person want to tell me, what do they want to share? And that's usually kind of the first piece of developing what the story is going to become.

It's that going in with a specific point of view of like, "Here's where I think the story is going, and so I'm gonna push it in this direction to make sure I have the pieces to tell that story." But also being ready and open to move in a new direction when you hear something that is more interesting or shines a light on another truth that you didn't recognize that was beneath that. So it's that constant dance of having a plan and feeling really confident in sculpting that and directing the narrative, but also knowing when to pull back and say, "I'm actually here to listen, and I want it to be authentic and real, and so I have to let this person and the story guide me." So it if it's unguided and there's no direction, then you know, there's no story. There's no beginning, middle, end, there's no emotional arc. But if you come in too prescriptive, you're gonna lose the essence of the truth. And that's really the fun part in filmmaking, and making sure that the film is good and really resonates with people.

Milan Ackerman is a serial entrepreneur and investor, best known as the artist manager for hip-hop superstar Russ.

Today, Milan is the CEO of M-Pack Entertainment, one of the most successful independent music management companies.

Milan broke into the music industry as an artist manager with no previous experience.

In this highlight, Milan shares actionable advice for anyone going through a career transition. How do you start doing something that you’ve never done before?

Start dreaming. Start dreaming, and dream big, and understand that you have all the power. Like, it all starts from within you, so I'm super confident in the fact that all the information exists out there, and that could be like—You might not be speaking to the right people, you might not be googling the right information that you're trying to obtain, but it exists. So a lot of it is just being comfortable being uncomfortable, understanding that you need to dream big, and you're not going to get anywhere unless you have persistence. Like, it can be anything, man. It's like, even as an investor I find myself, like—You have to be persistent in this. You know, just because you think something is gonna take off doesn't mean it's gonna take off. Like, you might have to go through the storm. So just be comfortable being uncomfortable, and understanding that it's like, you know, you might fail, you might get knocked down, but if you get back up, anything is possible. So really, really harness that, tap into that, that's like—I came from nothing personally. You know, I really had no resources around me, but it really stemmed from my drive to accomplish my dream.

I even told him, too, you know, when I was with him. And I think Russ did as well, 'cause he's his favorite producer, but it's like, it's surreal where like the things you have dreamed of become a reality, and I'm the testament for anyone else to like, "That's possible." You know? It's like, and I have so many more that I want to accomplish that I'm like dreaming of right now, and I got "Living the Dream" tatted on me just so I can wake up every day and see, like, have gratitude, understanding that this is where I'm at currently in my life. Blessed, but like there's so much more to accomplish, and knowing that looking back, like, I would never have thought that I'd be here. Like, I did in my mind, but like, in reality, god, I gotta pinch myself, man. It's crazy.

Yeah, so. I use that. That gives me confidence every day in how I move, and my visions. Like, my dreams. Like, I had some crazy-ass dreams. You know, like I told you, I think I told you at dinner, this was another thing, is that I wanted to make a movie. Yeah. So like ever since that time that we talked in December—I mean, this is you, right? So it's like, you bring that out of me, because I wasn't thinking like that. Like, I wasn't thinking, like, "This is what I want to accomplish this year." And even if I don't, it's given me this, like, I'm always referencing back to our conversation, and I'm always like, "I'm making the right steps in order to accomplish what I said I would accomplish." You know?

So ever since that dinner, like, all these crazy things have happened to me. Like, manifested that happened. Like, I got with a production company who does this, you know what I mean? Like, they go get the financing for the movies. They have the screenwriters who will take your idea and develop it for you. Now it really comes down to like, I need to secure my idea. So I met with the people I had to secure the idea with, you know, make sure I can do that before taking the next steps. I did that already.

So it's like, I've never made a movie in my life. You know, my goal is to be a producer on this film that I was telling you about, and it might take me years to accomplish, but I already see myself sitting at the Oscars. No joke, I see myself with my mom. I just—I know it's gonna happen. So now I just have to reverse-engineer it.

Thank you for listening. These were five of my favorite highlights from 2022, but it was not easy to choose.

I’ve had so many wonderful guests this year, and I wish I could have included them all.

We had a Team USA triathlete, an emergency room physician, a social superconnector, a poker OG turned restauranter, a language polyglot, a branding expert, a Scrabble world champion and many more.

Check out forcingfunctionhour.com for all the episodes.

I’m excited to continue deconstructing the superpowers of top performers in the new year, revealing routines, systems, and mindsets for achieving your competitive edge in business.

Make sure you subscribe to Forcing Function Hour on your favorite podcast platform.

See you again soon.

Thank you for listening to the Forcing Function Hour. At Forcing Function, we teach performance architecture. We work with a select group of twelve executives and investors to teach them how to multiply their output, perform at their peak, and design a life of freedom and purpose. Make sure to subscribe to Forcing Function Hour for more great episodes, or go to forcingfunctionhour.com to sign up for our newsletter so you can join us live.