#8 - A Creative Cat on Blades with Scott Moir

Welcome to leave your mark where I explore the influences that have shaped the lives of our incredible guests. These are the stories of lives we're talking about. Follow me on Twitter @BuildBySkod and Instagram @KingOPay. Or link up with me on my Facebook fan page @ScottGinaNiston. My goal is to create a community of people who take every opportunity to live high performing lives. Before I get started on today's podcast, I want to take a moment to connect you with my sponsor Re-ConitioningHQ.com. Re-Conitioning is a method and language of integrative practice and brings the worlds of therapy and conditioning together and helps them become more powerful and more practical. If you live in one or both of these worlds or you use the services of a therapist or conditioning coach, you know that sometimes they don't see eye to eye. They aren't on the same page. Re-Conitioning provides a time-tested process for aligning these two worlds and creating impactful solutions to performance problems. Follow them @Re-ConitioningHQ on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook or become a member of their Facebook group Re-ConitioningHQ Revolution and join the Re-Conitioning Revolution. Hello, this is Scott Livingston from Leave Your Mark. Today I'm honored to be speaking to Scott Moyer, who's an amazing human being. The main reason I've asked him to come on and leave your mark is not because of his accomplishments, but because of who he is as a person. He carries himself with humility. He is a friendly and caring about everyone he meets. And if he knows you, he always takes the time to make you feel his connection. He is a proud Canadian. He, along with his partner Tessa, won all there is to win a nice dancing. Most recently, two gold medals of the Olympics in Korea. They are considered by many to be the best of all time. And yet when you meet him, you are nothing but impressed with the way he carries himself and how he treats you. I'm honored to spend some time with him today. Welcome. Scott, thank you, Scottie. I don't know how to follow that up. I love when I do interviews. I'm hoping I do a whole interview that has no humility in it at all. I'm changed since that. I hope I don't want to go. Humiliate you whole. So I know you love the leaves. But who's your favorite leaf of all time? Leaf of all time, Wendell Clark. What? I just like the way he played because he's kind of all around. He didn't know whether he was going to score a hat trick or fight Bob Probert or he just played with that edge. It's also, I think, a lot to do with the time that you kind of fall in love with the sport. For me, it was a young boy when Wendell Clark was the captain. So I was very natural and I kind of went towards liking Wendell Clark to a Gilmore day of amateur chocolate. That was kind of my error when I first started. And you know, it never gets better than that. I don't think. Even with all some athletes, I mean, this kid is probably going to be the best of each ever. And it just doesn't have the same connection to me as Wendell Clark. As when you were a boy. Yeah. Well, how do you feel about them? They're doing good. Yeah. Well, they're doing great. Special team right now. Yeah, they're a special team. They're really tough. They're missing some big pieces still, but you know, we're at least fans of Tessa and I both. And it's just nice to be able to go down to the ACC and have them in it a little bit. You know, like it's been a long hard road here these last 10 years or so. So, but we're friends with everyone knows about kind of our friendship with Mike Babcock. And, you know, even with Brennan Chanahan, they've always been so great to us. It's been fun to get to into their ink a little bit more now when we're in the even in the last two months since we've been retired. We've been there a couple of times. So, look forward to seeing them do some things, but they're further away probably than they want to be at this point, but at least they're always in the game. They're so explosive offensively. You know, Mike, relatively well, you've bounced into him. What impresses you about him? What I like about Mike is that there are no secrets for him. There's no secret to success. You know, his big thing is living by the coat. You wake up every day. You try hard. You dedicate yourself. You care. You go home. You love your family. You know, it's a very simple formula for him, but he follows it relentlessly. And if you give him from what our discussions have been, obviously, I've never played for Mike. I've never will never pretend to know him in the way that his players do. But from what he says to me, you know, if you give him everything you have, he's going to take great care of you. What has been a powerful conversation you've had with him? Do you remember something that you had? Yeah, the biggest thing that I'll always take with me for the rest of my life is when Mike said to me, he said the scariest thing about life is you can have everything you want. And just to get a goal for that and not shy away and not to limit yourself. Even as a young adult, at that moment, this was after Sochi. We had already won an Olympics. I was silver medalist and Sochi. And even then, I was found in parts of my life, I was putting limits for no reason. So I kind of opened it back up and allowed me to kind of chase after a couple of things ahead. That's awesome. Yeah. Do you find, what is for you easy to do and what is for you hard to do? That's a good question. In exchange, as I've kind of gone on early on as a male in my sport, I struggle a little bit with self-confidence. And I don't think that'll read in the way that many people would think. It's more about how when I start or when I start out a new project with choreography or with movement, I was never trained to dance. I was never trained to move in a specific way. I'm more of a feeling person. As I was young, I was always really insecure about the first thing that was going to come out of my body. And I knew that it was going to be compared to Tessa because she was right beside me. And most of the time, nailing it right away. Actually, all of the time, nailing it right away. But that kind of changes I got older. And now, mostly the thing that I am not so good, I would be controlling my emotions, making sure that I'm using it in the right way. I think it makes me very powerful athlete, very powerful performer. But it can be my worst enemy if I let it get in the way. But my strengths are, I'd hope that my strengths are personal connections. I love people. I like right now we're on tour. I like making connections with the crew, the person who does wardrobe, the person who's doing the lights. I like creating that family and that kind of, I guess, for a lack of a better word culture. And pushing that kind of being the team captain, that really motivates me. I'd rather do that then. I'll do, I'll help other people before I kind of help myself, I guess. Is that an energy in for you? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. What's an energy out for you? Energy out for me is, huge is when people don't respect each other's time. Huge energy out is when, we're just kind of going through the motions. I can't do that. And most of the times I will kind of snap. But I don't have too many energy out. I just need to make sure I check in. I have a lot of energy to give, but I have to make sure I take care of myself. I spend time with my family, I spend time at home, or also do run it, I guess. So who in your family is a grounding point for you? So mom, dad, is it? Well, I'm super, I'm really, really fortunate. I think the grounding point for me has always been my brothers. I'm the youngest of three. And I'm very, very proud of my brothers. They're both firefighters. They were kind of in the sport. Well, not kind of. They were in the sport, but never really to the level that I pursued. Yet they never, not that they didn't care about what I was doing, skating because they did. And they were so supportive. But I really needed to rely on them for just being my brothers. And I always felt like they had my back no matter what. And the help important is that in life when you can walk out the front door of your own. I always had no that no matter what. These guys have your back. That was interesting for me. Well, one of your brothers competed fairly significantly in life. Was that an influence in you? Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's when I kind of clicked for me that, well, like I could do this and then travel the world. And for him, that was a big part of it. He was on the junior circuit and a little bit on the senior circuit. But he talked a lot about the connections that he made, the friendships, how neat it was to travel to Europe and meet people from America, from Asia, from Poland. And have a great time. And you know, that's kind of what kind of drew me into this sport. I thought, okay, if I'm successful a little bit, then I will get to go to Austria. And I'll get to go to Croatia and Japan. That was kind of the first thing that hooked me. And then once I got these competitions, it didn't take long before I just won to win them. I want to broach one topic with you that's probably a little bit difficult to a degree. But it's, you know, ice dancing is not something that, you know, most guys, when their kids kind of look at and say, "That's what I want to accomplish or do." Right. But for you, the reason I want to bring this up is so for young people who are listening and stuff, how you kind of managed what is the perception of that versus your character, you as a man, et cetera. And now I think in some sense it's probably you being successful and it's a really powerful thing for some younger person who wants to do that. So how did you manage that growing up in a sense? Well, that took a long time for me to fully understand. And it's only been probably in the last four years that I have truly started to be more comfortable. at the beginning, it wasn't difficult, like, people would think. I played hockey and I skated. And I never got bullied in school. I mean, there was teasing amongst friends, but all of my buddies and my good friends have always been really supportive of me being a figure skater. And I look at some of the teasing and then the bullying that happens at school and then it breaks my heart. But I can honestly say I've never really had to go through that to that extent because my friends did it for me. I had really great friends and they were allowed to tease me and I teased them about stuff. But if somebody who wasn't one of our friends said something, then there was a real problem. And I always kind of respected that. The other thing I had going for me is that I did play hockey with these guys. So they could make fun of me for being a figure skater all they wanted, but they knew that I'd be playing on the first line. Yeah. I'd be playing on the first line against them or with them that night and they'd be sitting on the bench watching me go. So they kind of understood that skill. And I was never that great of a hockey player, but I could always get to where I needed to be and was a good playmaker and a competitor. And that's kind of the very beginning of it. But mostly with my image kind of as I came up, I always wanted to be known as this hockey player who figure skated. And I thought that my goal and life, because I went to figure skating, I kind of given up on my dream to win the Stanley Cup. When I was a young boy, I wanted to win the Stanley Cup and be Joe Sackick, like that was pretty much it. And it took me while to realize that that actually wasn't my passion. And that wasn't what excited me. When I look back now, I see the way I feel when I perform or test, I feel when I'm doing new choreography, doing a dance, doesn't add up and doesn't as fulfilling to me as playing hockey or winning hockey. And I know that I never did it at that level, but even at a young age. So it took me a while to kind of break the mold of what I thought was socially acceptable or what I thought was supposed to be normal. And that was very interesting for me. Because now when I look back, I love to dance. I got to love to dance. I love to move with Tessa. I love to be out there these last two years of performing. I've been very fulfilling for me because I've really connected with the material. And we're kind of taking that into touring. But it took me a while to admit that kind of to myself. So that was an interesting journey. And now, because I've done that, I think it's made me a more powerful performer. But what would you say to a young person who's maybe dealing with some resistance around inside themselves about reaching that because of some of those social things? What would you say to them in terms of maybe helping the past at? Well, I would say that I would push most young people to be interesting and to not fit into the mold. I know what is tough, especially tough when you're in the school system, when you're in this little world, where the kind of peer pressure can become overwhelming. But it's a huge world. And push yourself to be interesting and follow your passions. Because there are tons of people who are in the same things as you. And it's really about what makes you happy. So it's really, really tough. But those interesting people are the ones who rule the world and the end. I believe that. That's awesome. I love that. You were kind of, I guess, forced in a way because of what you were doing to leave home kind of earlier than most kids would. How was that hard and how was that easy for you, some ways? Well, it was easy for me because I knew it was necessary in order to accomplish my goals. Even as a 15-year-old, Cossess and I first left home with shoes 13. I was 15. We got third at the novice nationals. And I didn't want to be third at the novice nationals. And we wanted to move into junior. And we knew that we had to train five days a week. And we couldn't live that home anymore. So it was an easy decision. I mean, I didn't realize-- I think I did realize, but I didn't care that it was going to cost me my normal high school life. It was per se, I guess. And then I wasn't going to do prom. I wasn't going to be able to go out Friday, Saturday, be in all my high school kid. And I didn't care about that. And I said, I don't like it, I guess I don't. But once I did move away in the tough days, I always had a very supportive family. And it was tough to be away from that, to not be there when my brothers are getting engaged. Married, having kids. That was the tough part about not being away from home. But I've always got that great support. And I really just make sure I take advantage of the time that I get when I am at home. But it's been worth it. I mean, I don't know what it is about me. I think I would have left home early no matter what. How did you keep connected to-- because you talk about your good buddies and stuff. How did you foster relationships that you still carry today? What's interesting about me is I went to my high school. But I still consider my high school only in ninth grade. My two high school, which is at home. And all my best friends from that part of my life, I still have friendships with today. We have a really tight group of guys. And girls, for that matter. And I don't know, it's just people that I kind of connected with. And I was lucky because it was only an hour away. So I would come home on the weekends. And whenever I wasn't feeding, and I'd try and work on those friendships. But I actually think I owe that to my friends. They understood that I was trying to do something. They always supported me. And they always understood. I can't remember getting back us once because I couldn't make something here. They understood. And I've missed best friends' weddings. And their kids getting born now. And they just seemed to understand, which is something I don't want to make a habit of. But I really appreciate it. I think it's acceptable for what you're doing. I'm going to read you something. There's a book I fell in love with a number of years ago called "The Day You Were Born" and it basically combines numerology with astrology. And I fell in love with it because it connected me to my purpose. And so in that, it talks about the day you were born. And basically gives you a purpose statement. So I want to read it to you. To use your acute sensitivity, feelings of difference, and fears of abandonment to gain insight into yourself, become creative and bond with others. Pretty cool. That's crazy. And there's usually a tagline that goes with, "The spiritual self must never lose its sense of utter dependence on the invisible Carl Jung, who is a famous psychologist for a love that was lit." And you know who you are? You're a certain sign aligns with other people's signs. You align with Michael Jackson. Really? Yeah. And it's hilarious. We're doing a Michael Jackson thing in the studio. Yeah, it's very cool. I mean, I think I'm really underestimated what that feeling of performance and creativity means to me and to have that outlet. And it is-- I mean, we are so lucky to have had the support in our whole career. But it's a different type of fun. It's not like the fun you have when you relax, hanging in with your friends. But I have no other rush that is like the rush in my life when I either stand in my opening position or stand in the tunnel right before I go out. And that's what I live for. And I know what to do when I get into the position, but I love that excitement. So it's kind of interesting. You exude a certain level of creativity, which is very cool. And I'm watching the documentary on you guys before the Olympics on Roxanne. And I could see what it meant to both of you, but to you, especially as well. Tell me about the creative process for you. How do you come up with something? Does it sort of just ping you in the head one day? Or what is that process? I am more of a-- I think I need to be inspired a little bit before I can really find my stride. But I plant seeds. And now I've learned kind of that there's not a bad idea. It's seeds throw kind of ideas onto the table and the best idea wins, type thing. And when I start to create-- because a lot of the stuff that Tessa and I do, we do as a team, we can collaborate. So in some ways, we rely on each other. I feel like I'm kind of just picking through the ideas and highlighting the best ones. And for me, I love Tess. I love watching her move. I love how she's a magician. So it's very easy to watch her do something and pick. It's very natural. But when I'm creating our getting into the head space of a character, I like it to be real. I do a lot of the programs that we've done have been kind of based on my own experiences, not in the way of method acting or pretending, but more so in putting myself in that position. If I want to be jealous, remembering what it's like to be jealous, and really understanding why. And that's a big part of me coming to terms with my character. But other than that, I think I've been a little bit blessed with the fact that I'm emotional. I've always loved to tell a story and act. And I bring as much energy as I can. And I've always been the guy that when I give 100% and kind of go over what I think would be seen as over the top is when Tess goes, yes, that's it. I love that. Give us that. What's the-- difficult side of being emotionally connected to what you do? Um, the difficult side is understanding the yin and the yang, I think, is, uh, because that takes energy and there will be a time when you come down. And also collaborating is huge. And that's pretty much, like, I don't, I don't create a long, I don't wish to create a long, um, I love one in one test, I do things together. And we love when we work with a professional, I can bring something different and bring, you know, pole little strands of hopefully brilliance out of us. And, but, uh, triggered question. Oh, I know that working with, um, is Marina right that you guys were, there was some difficult times in that. What did you learn from her that was, uh, that was positive about, about yourselves and yourself? Um, well, there was, there was a lot of difficult times. And when we, when we look back at it, I think, now, it was, it was her trying to, to help us mature, help us grow up. Um, in 20, or 2010, but also, oh, nine and oh, eight, like, it was there for us. You know, she just almost told us exactly what we were going to do and helped us create as well. But she choreographed most of the programs when we started to mature and have more input. That worked, but then I think in the last year, we expected a lot more input. We expected to be very similar to 2014. But because we didn't get that input, we had to be independent and we had to go kind of down that path of maybe having some material that we didn't like. But we wouldn't have had our 2018 material if we didn't have the 2014 experience. And we were very, very proud of the performances we have, maybe not so much of the program. Uh, then particularly the freelance, the short dance, we, we really liked in 2014. Um, but we needed that. And we created it all. And we're very, very proud of that. Is, is this the Olympics? The two performances the most empowering performances of your career? I think so. And, and not for the reasons I don't think people would guess. I think I'm not so sure that they were. Well, yeah, they were our best performances. But what we're most proud of, and they talked a little bit about this with Tessa. Not that long ago is the fact that we were able to capitalize when we were completely trained. We've had in 2010, we were trained well and we were in great skating shape. But Tessa was very much still injured. We're in Canada and there was, there was some sort of energy that lifted us up. You know, got us past her legs being sore and Tessa kind of just willed her way to the finish line. And in 2014, we had a bit more down to the science of what we thought was, um, mechanically moving well. Didn't quite have the programs performed well. We had trained well, but they just ran up to the level this year. Um, we were so ready. I don't know. It's very neat as an athlete to look back and wonder what we could have done differently and actually not have an answer. Um, we left no stone unturned. We really were trained. We committed to absolutely every part of it. And that was exhausting at times, but standing in an opening position, the only thing we felt was pressure to not perform like we had the thousands of times before. And I mean, that was really cool. And we did execute. And that's what we're proud of more so is that training before. What I asked this question, Mick, um, I'm curious how you, you feel as well as it's very, you know, in society, it's you often have, hey, that's the best pizza. That's the best restaurant. That's about, but you know, that's always somebody's opinion, right? Yeah. But you, you compete in sport and there is a best. There is a moment of best. What does that feel like in the sense that you know that you are the best at something in the world is that what's the weight of that and what is the exuberance of that? Well, we have felt, we felt both. I mean, I think at, at an early age, we felt the weight of it as pressure to repeat a pressure to prove that it wasn't the best. And we proved that it wasn't just lightning in the bottle. After 2010, the most pressure we felt was at a summer competition the next year. And we felt like we had to prove to everybody that the Olympic champions were in the building and that they brought a special something different. And we were going to be on touch both forever and that was just such an unrealistic energy and not where we were skating even at the Olympics the year before. We never stayed with that energy. So to try and figure that out, it was really difficult, but Marnie McBean was one of our greatest mentors and we've leaned on her a lot in our life. Her point was that you've won the Olympics. It can never take that away from you. And now that we're older, I mean, we were so happy about winning this games, but we know there'll be someone who comes along. And it's a personal journey. I really believe that. It was nice to win the Olympics, but it's kind of just a measuring stick. If we had had those performances and come second, it's not quite the story that you want to read in the papers. It doesn't help Canada's metal count. And we want we always want to bring that metal home for Canada. But our journey would have been the same. And our journey would have been for us as athletes and people just as beautiful. So. That's a really important piece to pick up from actually. We just kind of let we now we've won. We kind of and people say, oh yeah, like you just don't seem to. You just seem so down to earth. Well, it hasn't changed us. Like I would really hope that it hasn't changed us. That's awesome because I was going to play off of that because one of the things in my learnings most recently is a concept that is. What was taught to me is we call object reference versus self reference and object reference essentially is this concept of being focused on. Just on a goal on achieving something and not necessarily connecting to the process of getting there. And so a lot of times in society today, we're like, I want that car. I want that. I want that metal. I want that job. I want. And so people go after that. And two things happen. One is either you don't get it. So there's this kind of loss of sense of self. You're you're you're despondent because you didn't get it. Or you kind of side side venture or you get there and there's kind of a hollowness in it. And it's that connection to process that self referral connection to the process of doing it that's really powerful. And what I just listened to you say for those listening is the whole thing that resonated with you in this last Olympics was your connection to process. It didn't really matter what happened at the end. Right. It was wonderful. Let it all work out. Yeah. But you were connected to that process deeply. So you could reflect back on and say that that was really powerful. And that's absolutely right. And I think you'll when you chat with test a show of a very interesting insight on that hollowness of when you accomplish your goals. And I think she felt the way to that many times in our career. And in particular, the 2012 world title. It just wasn't at all what she had envisioned it being like. And we're very lucky to have had these three cycles because we've learned very very different lessons at each of them. But when we came back and you were part of our team and our and JF, my mentor, mental coach as well. When we came back, our first message was we want we're doing it for the process. We're not done. We want to feel the rush of competing. But also we want to see what we can do to push ourselves to train differently and and be the best that we can be but in training not to win titles. And our team constantly reminded us reminded us that in two years. And then at the Olympics, a really interesting thing happened when we went to compete. We took it in a very similar fashion because a lot of people know the pressure that comes with such a huge event is the natural human instinct is you want to just get through it. You just want to be done. You just want to be on the finish line. But to for us, a big part of these games were not trying to push that aside and really be present. And we kept saying to each other in the moments before we skated that this is exactly what we wanted. We came back for these moments. Let's not wish them away. Let's take advantage of them and kind of being present in that process. I think was what was different between us and everybody's. What did you what have you learned most about yourself between gold medal one and gold medal? Oh my gosh, how do I narrow that down? We got a little bit of time. I don't think you have enough time for that. I'm just trying to think of all the. There was such I look back at those. Well, frame it. I'll frame it differently for you. If you went back to the guy in 2010 and you're facing him right now, what would you say to him? I don't even know if we could have a conversation. I love I do love that guy. And I when I look back at kids that remind me of 2010's God, it just makes me laugh. I just think you have no clue. And you think you do. And that's the joys of being 22 and a lot of the coaches or judges, even will say like, here's this kid coming up. He's cocky. You've got to go and tell him you got to tell him and advise him and get him away from that. And I just say, no, that's not part of it. He's got to kind of walk his own course. And I think that's a lot of the magic of it. But the difference between 2010 and 2018 for me, because I was probably more confident on this than I'd ever been. But it was more sincere and it was it was confidence from preparation and confidence because we really believed in our material and confidence is because we want to share we love to do with the world. I think there's a sincerity to that. And we've gotten some great feedback from Canadians across country, from people like skating fans around the world. The people really connected that. And you can't really fake that. And I think in 2010, we were playing characters and we were so young and innocent and still loved to skate and we're in our own country. So how could it not be magical? But there was a sincerity, I think, for this 2018 experience, that was very different. - That's awesome. How do you transcend that now going forward in your life to what you want to do? This whole process, this whole growth experience, this whole achieving something that you really wanted to achieve, what do you take from that? How do you leap forward? - Well, this is a very actually interesting time in my life, a couple of months after the Olympics. What I reflected on, and the big reason why I came back was how poorly I transitioned after 2014. I wanted to leave from the sport. I went and a lot of people don't know. I went and tried to, we tried to. We're still in the process of renovating it as with my brother. So I'm most fulfilling work in my world. But I was also running from sport, from my life, from figures skating. And I didn't transition while I was doing things that didn't make me happy. I was, you know, I lived my 18 year old life at 26. I was drinking the law. That was, and it didn't, it took me a long time to realize that that wasn't what made me happy. So this part of my life, this kind of six months or two years after, after the 2018 Olympics, were actually the time that I had circled for most improvement. You know, I was always, when I'm in as an athlete, I'm always all in. And I really enjoy that process. But it's the transition part. And it is about kind of not me and the most of that, but also bringing my best, all of everything I've learned in sport to the next chapter of my life. And the next chapter of my life for the short term will be show skating. We really are excited about the show that we're doing right now. It starts nice that's going through us, Canada. We really would like to create something that goes into smaller cities, not just the 12 major markets in Canada, but something that is art. And we want to pour work into that. And Tessa and I, what we've found about ourselves and the kind of our chats and our next steps is that we love to work. And we love to be involved in projects where we can be all in. Doing kind of skating shows where we just walk out, do our two minutes and leave. It wasn't enough for us. So we're trying to create a platform where we can be all and create an experience for the fans. And that would be kind of the short term. And then I'm looking to kind of give back what we've learned. And we're working with B210 and professionals that most people don't have the access to. And creating kind of a system that takes care of younger athletes a bit better in the way that they come up and talent identification as well as making sure that our elite athletes aren't just getting by, because they're successful. I want to help them push themselves to the next level, because this is the biggest thing I learned in 2017. I thought I knew what I was doing in 2010. I thought I knew what it took to be a champion. And I was a champion. We did win the Olympics, but I wasn't a professional in my preparation. And the same thing with 2014. And we opted. We were much more into our mechanics. We started to see a psychologist. But that pales in comparison with the preparation, the types of professionals that we worked with in 2018. And I think that the skating world and even most of the athletic world has to remember to keep pushing themselves. And I want to kind of get that back. So that'll be kind of my long-term goals. And for me, how do I parlay it? But I like to work. So I have to keep myself going. But also, I will just kind of hang out with the coach. What do you source or who you source for? Call it feedback or the opportunity to sort of bounce where you want to go or what you're struggling with in your life? There's a lot of people now. But I will believe it's been pretty crazy with this tour. But I will continue to work with my mental coach. We've got a really great personal connection. And I think that the work that we've done and the goals that he said, he would be great to help me moving forward. It's having mental coaches, psychologists, is an interesting thing for many people. And not many athletes, a lot of the top athletes do it. But people think it's too expensive. For me, it's the most-- it's worth it. It's the thing that it's like a mattress. You can't cheap out on that because you're going to spend so much of your life. And then half an hour with my mental coach, J.F., I mean, it changes my whole perspective on the next month of my life. So I'll continue to work with him. But I also use people like I'm lucky to have Tessa. I can bounce ideas off Tessa. And then I will continue to use my team with some really great friends, some mentors that I really respect. One being my coach Patrice Osong. I still have bounce things off him. And I just try and create a network of people that I can pick up the phone or call at any time. And I hope that they feel that they get to do the same with me. That's awesome. You mentioned your mental coach. I mean, for those listening, J.F. Menhard is a very talented mental performance guy that I met 10 numerous years ago. And we were involved in common projects. What do you feel that you've probably bounced into sports site before in your career at different points? What was it about, J.F., that really resonated in you and helped you see the light that you just expressed about the value of it? Well, that's a great question. And I was pretty fortunate in my career to work with professionals. But most of the time, it was all about managing Tessa and I's relationship. And we don't have-- and most people know this-- but we don't have an off-ice romantic relationship. But we do work together many hours a day. And we have an extremely intense personal relationship. That can't be compared to any other relationship because it's so intense. And because of the nature of what we do on the ice, and we love to skate together. So a lot of the love that people see on the ice is real to a certain extent. So we spend a lot of time doing marriage counseling, doing management of that just because of the pure hours that we put in communicating, understanding. I think we're some of the best in the world of ice answers for communicating, but it's still something we have to work on. And we communicate-- it's not just because you work on communication. It's going to be good forever. I mean, we communicate better at different times. So we're trying to constantly work on that in order to be successful in what we're trying to do. But then when we started to work with J.F., not only were we managing that a little bit, we started to work on performance. And how to perform-- not just at a competition, but how to perform every day. How to be as efficient as possible. He talked a lot about reminding people in our life that are doing a good job. And a lot of it comes down to communication, but not leaving the chance and taking advantage of every moment of every day. It was a huge thing that J.F. did with us. And then when we did get to competing, we had a formula. And we perfected it every time we went out. We tweaked it. We communicated afterwards. And by the time we got to the Olympics, we just knew what the steps were. And as a performer, to not have to think, and to just find the comfort in that routine, I think was one of our strongest assets at the P-On-10 games. What are a couple of tools that you learned that when you look at performance in general, not just sport performance, but in lighting performance, to the listeners out there, you think are really valuable things, skills to know. The biggest one that comes back to me right away is QA. So I have a crazy mind. Anyone that's ever worked with me, a guy I'm super emotional, I'm super passionate. But I also can go off in 18 different directions. And what we started to work on with J.F. was making sure that we're QA with simple cues, but with what we're supposed to be thinking of. So a lot of times in a skater's performance, they'll think about having a four-minute program clean. And first of all, perfection doesn't really-- it doesn't exist. And it's probably not going to win you an Olympic medal. It hasn't in the history, but you can be really excellent. And the way you get to be really excellent is having these moments of simple cues along the way. And I would have moments in a program when I would think about the twizzles that were coming up maybe in 30 seconds. And I think, oh, perfect. There's my cue to remember what my actual cue is supposed to be right now, whether that's Ben and my knees, whether that's looking at Tessa or kind of breathing through or exploding. And back cueing probably was the most important thing, because I used to think in programs, oh crap, I'm not thinking about the right thing right now. And then I kind of start to freak out and snowball. Instead, we just use that as a simple cue, bring us back and off we go. And the other thing that we talked about was just believing in our performance, believing in our training. And one of our sayings at the games was just get to the opening position. As once we get to the opening position, we'll know what to do. And that kind of took a lot of the anxiety away. I mean, not all of it. We were so. still, we had the butterflies, we were terrified, but in the controlled way. Those are probably the biggest ones. I like the the queueing piece because we still that for Mick, by the way, we still we still a lot from studying Mick. It was it was pretty neat to because I mean, Mick worked with you and Mick with with JF and we would study him. And I mean, this kid who performs more consistently and more often, he can reach all the time and he's consistent more than anyone else in the world. And when he won in Pyeongchang, that was a huge confidence based for me. Oh, I could sit there and think, that's my team. That's like, I don't know what who works with that kid and he works with me. They work with me and like, there's only the other kids that get to be me. One of the reasons why I'm interviewing you and other great performance athletes that I've worked with is and this is kind of where that, that the rubber meets the road on this conversation to me is a lot of people don't recognize that they spend a lot of time in their life doing things that have absolutely no connection to what it is they really purposely want to achieve. And you know, it's fine to sort of fritter away time from time to time, but a lot of people will say, I'm busy, I don't have time, I don't have energy, dead of the, they don't recognize where they spend a lot of their time, energy, effort on things that are really not taking them where they want to go. And what you just talked about was essentially focusing and understanding what it is you want to do. And becoming very dialed into, is this contributing to that or is it not? And if it's not, well, you've really got to think about why you're doing it. Right. You know, that's that's that's high value. And that was a lot of what we, when we built our our office program, I mean, we were doing the time like we built a lot of April and May, but we were doing a ton of things that I would say, well, what about this? And you would just say, was that make you better ice dancer? It's like, okay, well, that makes sense. You know, it doesn't make sense for me to, to bench for us when I don't have to bench for us. I, I didn't want to talk a lot about the two of you to, and that's one of the reasons why I want to speak to you alone, but I am curious what you feel, Tessa balances in your, in your character. What are, what are your counterbalances for one another? Well, I know it's, I can tell you what I, what I see in Tessa. I'm not so sure that I don't have a very, I don't know, I don't have a great view on myself. I don't think my perspective is as good, but on her, what, what I need from her and what she brings, I've never met anybody like Tessa in my life. Like I have this, she's such an unbelievable woman. And she's so, I've never met someone so consistent. I can't remember more than like, like she can get grumpy, but that's about it. I would never go past the grumpy stage. The problem with us is that we're very, very sensitive. So when she's grumpy, I always think it's my fault. And when I'm a little, I get to the angry stage. So she thinks it's her fault. But what she does is she's so consistent, but passionate. I don't quite understand all that works because my passion and emotion is always kind of a rollercoaster ride, but she brings this level of consistent and clear-headed thinking and decision making, but as well as that passion and movement. And I really needed that consistency because I would go up and down and she would kind of bring me back, be like, okay, we need, like maybe that's a little bit much or kind of that balance point. And we're very different styles. I mean, Tessa brings this sophistication when they don't have, Tessa brings the dance knowledge, the kind of that base, the principles of dance that I just don't possess. And there's just so much that technically we rely on her for, but I think that her biggest part of this is how emotionally stable she is. That's awesome. Well, I'm going to wrap this puppy up with one final question. And that is when you look forward to all of us are going to perish from this lovely planet at some point, what would you like to be remembered for? Yeah, that's a great question. The biggest thing that I always think about, I had a really good friend last year and I did a lot of thinking about that. You know, like we, this, what is the whole purpose of this? How far along does it go? And yeah, what is my legacy? For me, I think I always say I want to be remembered as a good person. And Tessa would probably see the same thing because that's what we always say in interviews. But I think what I want to be remembered for is my passion. And not being afraid to go after something. I think failure is something that I know that everyone says, fear of failure, don't be scared to fail. And you have to go after it. But few people actually do that. You know what? And I don't, I want to be one of those people who, you know, maybe loses their shirt. It goes after something that's a little crazy, but lives in that rush and kind of lives with that excitement. That's what I want to be remembered for. Scott, thank you for taking so much time with me. I appreciate it very much. I hope I wasn't too long with your time. No, I never, man. I'll do that for two hours. Awesome. Appreciate it. Have a good one, Blake. Thanks. Thanks for joining us today on Leave Your Mark. I hope we've left a mark on you today. And we wish only that you pay it forward by sharing this story. Taking the time to read and comment on this podcast. Please follow us at Twitter, at Bill by Scott, and Instagram at QOK. And become a member of this community at Scott, to you at Instant, on Facebook. Have a great day. Music by Cedric DeSaint-Roy.