EP#1- Rowing and Resilience with Keziah Beall, Elite Athlete and US National Team Hopeful

[MUSIC] >> Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Everyday Endorphins. I'm so excited to start off the series with interviewing a good friend and mentor of mine, Kazaya Beal. Kazaya and I met at Rooney York, which is the club crew team I rode for during high school. And we were paired together through a mentorship program. Kazaya was on the young executives board at Rooney York and I was an athlete on the team. And we were paired together for her to serve as a friend and a mentor to me. And I'm so happy that our relationship has persisted beyond Rooney York and throughout the entirety of my college experience. During the episode, you'll get to hear more of Kazaya's trajectory throughout her rowing career. But she had rode at the University of Virginia and won the team title, which was a really incredible accomplishment. And after graduating from UVA, she took some time off but then decided to continue to row again and ended up training for three years with the goal of earning a spot on the US national team. She had won the US Elite Nationals in the Women's Double and placed third at Olympic Trials. I'm really excited for you guys to hear this episode to hear all the insightful things that Kazaya has to share about her experience with the sport and all the lessons that she's gained from rowing. So before we get into the episode, I have one quick sponsored segment I'd like to give a little shout out to Inker, which is the app I am using to create this podcast. All right, let's get into the episode. Without further ado, I'm excited for you guys to hear Kazaya's story. Hi, Kazaya. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. How have you been doing? Good. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk more about rowing and all the lessons that you've taken away from competing in the sport as an athlete, but also how those lessons have helped to shape your day-to-day life now in the present. I'd love to start off by talking a little bit about how you first became exposed to rowing and what really sparked your interest in the sport. My parents actually both rode competitively at a very high level. My dad was in the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles and my mom was on the lightweight national team at the time when lightweight women's rowing was not an Olympic sport. You could say that I was sort of bred to row, but I resisted it for a really long time. I was a swimmer growing up through high school and I really thought I was going to swim in college. And I kind of, I guess I kind of actually tried rowing because a bunch of my friends were doing it and I needed a mental break from swimming, but I wanted to stay in shape because I still had my high school swim season. But swimming is a very intense sport. I started at a young age. So yeah, so that's how I kind of tried rowing and I fell in love pretty much immediately. It's very similar to swimming in the sense that it's very repetitive. It's very technique focused, but the difference is that it's truly a team sport. You have to be perfectly unified with the rest of your boat and it just kind of brought sport to like a really a new level for me. Having that kind of connection with my teammates in a way that I hadn't had with swimming. So when you started rowing, you just picked up the sport. Did you know from that moment, I want to train competitively, I want to do this in college, I want to train for the national team, or was it something that you had started and it was an activity sport that you really enjoyed? Yeah, kind of the second one. I think it took me, you know, I still, I did the first spring season. So it was the span of three months. Knowing that I was going to go back and swim and, and you know, my identity was sort of as a swimmer who was trying rowing. But then once I wrapped up my high school swim season, which was in the fall, and I had, you know, basically the spring to either, I could keep swimming if I was going to swim in college or I could row again. That was when my mindset kind of shifted and, you know, I was, I still hadn't decided where I was going to school. And, you know, because of Title IX, women's rowing in college is the sort of the beneficiary of a lot of funding at schools where there are significant football and basketball programs. So, so yeah, so it really kind of opened my eyes to the opportunities that were available to me through rowing in college. And I was really, really lucky to make a connection with Kevin Sauer at the University of Virginia, who's the women's rowing coach. And he, I think he kind of saw a lot of potential in me. And it ended up being just an incredible opportunity for me to go there. And so I kind of never looked back, I guess. That's amazing. And it's such a commitment to be a D1 athlete at a really amazing school. How did you balance your time, your energy, your simple life, everything with being a D1 athlete? Yeah. I struggled to be honest. Like, it was, it was hard. I was never like a great student. So it was, I really had to learn how to ask for help, how to use the resources available to me. I'd gone to a good high school, but it really did not prepare me for just the scope of the work that I would need to be doing in college. And so yeah, so on top of rowing, which was hugely time intensive, yeah, it was a real learning experience to kind of figure out that balance and and take care of my health and mental health and, and yeah, and have a social life. And you know, I'm not the biggest, I'm at the most social person in terms of when you think of, you know, college social life, I was really lucky to love my teammates. And so I had sort of that instant friend group. And we, you know, did our partying on Saturday nights because Sunday was only morning, or the only day that we didn't have practice. And that wasn't for me. And, and yeah, you know, I know that isn't enough for everyone in a college experience, but I was really happy to have that one night a week. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm kind of similar. Like, I just don't have the bandwidth to go out every night, or to be constantly around people all the time being super social. So I think honestly, one night a week is like enough. Sometimes you are three is fun, but if you're probably also incredibly exhausted by the end of the day, or by the end of the week, even with practice and school and friends and everything, so I can't even imagine having more energy to want to go out. Yeah, but you need to blow off steam too. I mean, it's, it's all a balance for sure. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Rowing is such a hard sport physically and mentally, and being a college athlete requires so much discipline, especially in the rowing community. How did, what kept you motivated to stay disciplined, to keep rowing throughout your four years in college, and to really prioritize being an athlete while also being a student? I was really lucky to, to join a team that had a very clear mission from the start. It was a team that had been created by my coach from a club team to a varsity team in the 90s, and they had never won the NCAA championship. They had come close and had a couple boats win their categories, but they hadn't won the team title, which is obviously kind of the ultimate goal. And it's, it's, there's three boat categories. So to win the, the four and the second varsity eight is incredible in itself, but the ultimate goal is to win the varsity eight and to win the team title. And because of the point structure, it's rare to win the team title without winning the varsity eight. So those were kind of the, that was sort of this big goal. And, you know, Kevin the coach told us on our first day, he said, if you win an NCAA championship, we'll put a poster of you guys up on the boat house wall. And there were posters of some of the boats that had won the, the fours and the, and the second eights. And so every day when you walk in the boat house, that's like sort of this, this physical manifestation of like where you want to be and what you're working for. So, so having that really clear goal, it's obviously, it requires a lot of baby goals in between. But having that kind of unifying goal for the team, I think, was a huge part of that. And frankly, I was really lucky to be surrounded by people who were on the same page, because that makes it a lot harder if you have people that are not there for the same reasons. And yeah, just being aligned on those goals really helps drive everyone forward together. And your boat, the varsity 8, won the NCAA championships. You guys placed first. That's incredible. How did it feel to win that title, to come in first place, and to have that poster hung out in the boat house? Yeah, it was really cool. We had a spring season leading up to a erased virtually every weekend leading up to from mid-March through May. So we had a really competitive spring season. We erased a bunch of weekends in a row against some of the other top teams in the country, teams that had won years before. And so you really have a chance to kind of see where you stack up. There's really nowhere to hide. And you really have to have a mindset of building one race to another, taking learning from your past races. And basically, we had this season that built us up into a position where we knew that if we had the race that we were capable of having, as eight people plus a coxon, who's the one who steers and calls the makes the directions. And tells people what to do. We knew that collectively, we were basically, we were the best in the country. And that's like a very, very unique thing. I've been in sports for a long time. And like, that's very rare to kind of have that sort of, I guess, valid confidence. It's, it's, it comes from a place of like having, having shown up and having proved yourself and all those steps leading up to it. And yeah, so like when we went for, for NCAAs, there's, he's semis and finals. And, and we won our heat, won our semi. And we've sort of seen other races. And, yeah, when we lined up for our final, it just, there was no kind of like nervousness. I felt just sort of this, this faith in, in the group of us. And, and yeah, so to, so to go out there and perform and, and do that the way that we had, we'd frankly like imagined a million times over. We'd practiced. We'd, we'd talked about it. We'd visualized it, you know, literally sat with your eyes closed and like, you know, looked at photos of the course. It's all very cheesy, but it's, it's true. And, yeah, to cross the line having one very clearly was incredible, but the really special part was then rowing. You know, the, the finish line is where everyone stands to watch. And so, to get back to where you take the boat out of the water, you row past the shore where everyone is. And we didn't know that by winning our race guaranteed our team title. But when we rode past the shore and we saw, you know, basically our whole team ran out to like, meet us in the water and our coach was, you know, screaming everyone was crying. That was like, when we knew that we'd won the team title as a group. That was like, I think I, you know, burst in the tears because it was just like, that was like what we've truly been working for. Yeah, that's such a special moment, especially because you're in a boat with eight other people and you're all working together, you're all pushing together to move forward. No one can do it alone and you've all come together to achieve this one goal that must have just been such an incredible moment. And you were stroking the boat with such a huge deal for my listeners. And some people may not know what it means to stroke or the different positions. So can you kind of describe what the different positions are in the boat and in and eight specifically and how it all comes together to one cohesive movement. Yeah, yeah, rowing is definitely a weird sport when you kind of step back and look at it objectively. Yeah, so you have, you know, a very long boat. I think they're about 80 feet long and that you have eight people sitting, you know, facing, they basically face the opposite direction that you're rowing. So you're, you're moving backwards except for the coxen who is looking forwards and steering. And yeah, there's, you know, obviously, everyone has roughly the same skill set and, you know, coaches have different levels, different theories about like who should, who should sit where and usually it's someone who's very technically proficient goes in the bow because if it's really windy, they want to have really good. We call it blade work where basically you are not, you're getting your blade into the water very quickly. But, but yeah, I ended up stroking, I guess, because I was very, very level headed and very, it's a very, you have to set the rhythm for the boat. And so the, you know, the coxen will make calls even in practice that'll, you know, say like, okay, let's, let's start it. 22 strokes per minute. And so a good stroke is someone who can just set that rhythm and know exactly how they need to move their body in order to be at 22 strokes per minute and do it the right way, which is kind of hard to explain, but, but not just hitting the rhythm for the sake of the rhythm, but rolling in a way that the rest of the boat can kind of imitate that, I guess. So yeah, so it's a unique position. It's, you're also facing the coxen. So you have kind of a weird, nonverbal communication going on at all times with your eyes where it's like, you know, I think my coxen could always tell if things weren't going well. I guess I'd have like a look in my eyes, but, but also like being able to communicate, yes, like we can, we can do more. So I don't know, it's, it's a cool place to be. Exactly. I, so I also rode for those who don't know in high school and some, there was one race where I was, I stroked the boat and it was an eight. And I remember like that nonverbal communication that you have with the coxen because they're right there in front of you and you really do have to set the pace for the entire crew. And sometimes I think of rowing as more of an art than a sport, although I guess you could argue that for really any sport, if you're competing at such an elite level, and you dedicate so much of your life to it, but because of how rhythmic the movement is and how in sync you have to be with everyone else. Rowing to me is such a beautiful art form. Yeah, and I think, you know, the races are usually, I mean, it's anywhere from six and a half to eight minutes and that's a really weird time. You know, I think anyone who's done any kind of intense activity knows that it's not a sprint and it's not like, you know, it's not like a, it's not a marathon. It's sort of in between and you basically want to be at at anaerobic threshold that whole time. So the best rowers make it look really easy because you have to be not wasting any energy on making it look harder than this, if that makes sense. So yeah, I totally think it's an art too. It's, it's a very unique sport. And, and usually the two thousand meter race, the two Ks, we all call it is kind of that benchmark to assess your physical fitness, how fast you are, if you would place into a boat, et cetera. Can you kind of describe like the mental struggles that occur during a two K race, I remember sitting on the earth machine, which is the indoor rowing machine, having to watch the meters trickle down on the monitor was one of the most stress inducing moments of my rowing career. And I'm just wondering like what's what were some strategies that you adopted in such an intense rowing test. Yeah, it is hard and it's, there's something very weird about facing backwards in the boat because you're not, you're looking at what you've done, you're not looking at what you have left. And, and so I think a lot of people have, very clear kind of mental math going on at all times about how much they have left. And there are bullies along the course, so you see kind of where you're at, you know, when you've gone 500, 1500 meters. But, but yeah, I mean the er, the er, the er, the rowing machine was, was definitely challenging for me. I, I, it took a long time to kind of develop the right attitude towards performing well on the er, which, you know, it's, it's unique among. exercise equipment because you're getting this kind of instant feedback like you would on a watt bike, I guess. But there's no inertia, there's no there's no momentum. It's like you basically are, you feel like you're kind of like starting from scratch each stroke. And so basically like, you know, and it has this display where you can, you know, with like a 2k test, for example, the meters are counting down. So you have, and it shows you where you're pacing. So it shows you your projected finish time based on the pace that you're going in that moment and your, your current cumulative average basically. So it can be very demoralizing if you're not on track for for your goal. And it's like a sort of negative feedback loop. And, you know, a lot of people hate third for that reason because it's this, it's this thing you have to conquer versus, I think what ultimately helped me get better at it was realizing that it was, it was a tool for improvement. And I think a big part of my improvement also came from understanding being very realistic about where I was physically and understanding how to set myself up for the first success. And knowing certain things about myself like, you know, you'll always have that last little bit in the tank for those last, you know, 20, 30 strokes. So, you know, sometimes it's better to to start high and then work your way down, start, started a slightly higher average split than you need, but basically, you know, trust in yourself that you can push a little bit harder as you go. And if you go into it with that mindset, it becomes less demoralizing when you're seeing a split that's higher than you ultimately want to end at, if that makes sense. So, yeah, it's a real like, I mean, talk about like a mirror that you, you know, you have to look into. It's a tool and and it really comes down to like mental, mental strength and knowing yourself very well. I love how you view the urge as instead of some scary machine that just kind of rips away at your physical and mental strength, something that's super scary, you've kind of turned it into viewing the urge as a tool to only help you get better and not giving it as something so scary and intimidating. And I think that adopting that kind of mindset really plays into life as a whole. And I'd love to hear more about how you've taken what you've learned from all the mental and physical hardship you've endured on the rowing machine and on the water and how you've brought that mindset into your everyday life. Yeah. Yeah, so sort of about me as a person, I am very like non-confrontational. I really value, you know, relationships and I really like being coached and mentored. And I think, you know, as you kind of move on from college, there's, you know, obviously many unpleasant things that you have to do like taxes and I mean, you have to do taxes and college too if you're working, but yeah, it's, there are a lot of things that you have to kind of face head on and I think that, yeah, like the relationship with the urge where it's like if you kind of, if you choose not to learn about it and learn about yourself in relation to it and use it as a tool, it just makes it that much worse and so, you know, using, using your network, finding people that you can ask for help and frankly, just like acknowledging when things are unpleasant is a great, is a great way to kind of start breaking down those things that are scary because yeah, adults are scary. Yeah, definitely. And I love how you also mentioned, you know, viewing these unpleasant thoughts or things kind of arise from when you're on the earth and just acknowledging it and then letting it go that really resonates with me and the whole concept of meditation and mindfulness, acknowledging like a negative thought coming through not attaching to it and just letting it go. Tons of negative thoughts. I can imagine run through athletes' minds on the rowing machine. It definitely happened to me when I was rowing in high school, like wanting to get off of it, wanting to stop, but I love that point about just seeing it pass and not freaking out about it and just letting it ease away. Yeah, yeah, and I think, you know, I mean life is much, it's not a race. There's no obvious finish line. So, you know, learning about kind of the pace that works best for you. What's sustainable? What keeps you motivated? And how can you kind of like, how can you align with other people that help keep you motivated? Yeah, those are all, that's all part of it. And I think that makes it a lot easier. It makes it a lot easier. It makes it the hard things more enjoyable and frankly, like, you know, things you can learn from. Yeah, definitely. And so after rowing at UVA for four years, winning the team title, placing first in the varsity eight, you decide to train to be on the US national rowing team. What did that entail? How long were you training? Yeah. So, yeah, I didn't immediately start rowing after graduation. I actually had sort of dreams of working in the music industry. And so I pursued an internship and you know, I did that for a year. And then I basically heard, you know, I sort of, I guess, gone cold turkey in a way. And I felt very satisfied with my collegiate career. But there was still a part of me that was wondering what else I had left in the tank. And I felt like, you know, I talk about these lessons that I learned with the ERG and with learning about my self. And I felt like I learned them all kind of perfectly in time for my senior year, my final race, which is great. You know, that's, you don't want to learn them all like, I don't know after or it's tough when you like have a lot of success in your freshman year. And then you, you can't kind of like build off of that. So the timing was great, but I did feel like maybe I could apply those lessons and push myself even further. Physically, you know, women often reach their athletic peak at age 30. So yeah, so I felt like there was a good possibility that I had more in the tank. And I applied for and got invited to this development team in Vermont that was basically developing scholars. And it's you kind of have to take a step back and explain how the national team works. There are world championships every summer that there aren't Olympics for the major boat classes. So a typical, you know, Olympic quadrennial involves three world championships leading up to the Olympics, which is obviously kind of the ultimate goal as an amateur athlete. And you know, so I graduated college in 2012, which was an Olympic year and obviously didn't wasn't trying to make the team then. But then in 2013, I decided to to give it a shot. And basically there are in college, you do what's called sweep rowing, college and most high schools. And that's where every athlete has one big or. And then there's also sculling where you have to smaller ors. And that's where you see those like the smaller boat classes, like single, which is one person and double, which is two people. And there's also a quad, which is four people and they each have two ors. And then there's also four, which is four people, but with one or. So it's all very confusing. But but basically for women in the US, there's two ways to make the national team. And then ultimately, hopefully, the Olympic team. You can you can join the national team through what's called a camp boat, which is where you basically train in Princeton with the national team coach. And he selects those athletes from a group that are training their year round. And that's the big boat. So that's the eight, the four. And then he essentially selects the pair as well, which is two people, but also with their each have one or. So it's a sweet boat. And other way is to race at trials. And that's like swimming or track and field where you you can basically train wherever you want, and you show up in race, and if you win, then you make the team. And because of title nine, and because of how competitive rowing is in the US as at the collegiate level for women, making the national team is incredibly hard because it basically is this incredibly deep pool of really talented women. And based on what I knew about the national team coach, which was that he preferred women who are naturally very powerful, which is not, I don't really find that category and more of like a technical rower. I felt that it would be my best strategy to learn how to skull to row with two ores and make the team through trials. So yeah, so I went to Vermont. I spent a year kind of learning how to skull. I ended up sort of requesting a trial and was invited to the national team to train with them. And I wasn't officially on the national team, but I trained with them for nine months, which was an incredibly challenging experience. I did not feel that the older athletes on the team were particularly interested in building relationships with younger and newer athletes. It felt very much like everyone was there for themselves. And the coach frankly didn't talk to any of the younger athletes and there was really no kind of development or mentorship. And I think that's just partly the nature of the system where if you have sort of like infinite, strong young women showing up, there's really no need to sort of coddle anyone. But it ultimately was very frustrating for me. And I felt that it wasn't bringing out the best in me as an athlete, which I had felt rowing at Virginia with a team that was very close and very supportive and the coach was kept us very aligned on this sort of singular goal. So I was at the national team training center for nine months. And then we raised at, we had sort of like these trial races and I was basically told that I wasn't, this was in spring of 2015. And I was told that I wasn't going to make this Olympic cycle that I wasn't going to make the national team for Rio, but that I was in consideration for Tokyo, which at the time, this is in 2015. So that's, I'm looking at another five years of training. So I'm told that I should go somewhere else, train with another team and come back after 2016. So I packed up my stuff and I went to Boston with a teammate who had been told the same thing. And we trained with essentially another kind of club and we weren't just going to stop and feel sorry for ourselves. We figured we'd still try and make the team through the trial system. And yeah, so I trained for another full year and ultimately came in third at Olympic trials and only the winners get to go. So that was sort of it for me. I felt like, yeah, I gave it everything that I had. When you placed in third, I can only imagine all the different emotions you must have been feeling. It worked so hard to place in the Olympic games and you were so close to getting that and you at that point, you'd been rowing for over six, seven years at that point. So it's a long time to commit to such an intense sport. How did you overcome that challenge and eventually make peace with the fact that you didn't make it to the Olympics and you were going to move forward with your life and do something else? - Yeah, I still feel sad about it in some ways. I, there are things that I wish I had done differently throughout the course of trying to make the national team. But ultimately, I think, you know, it was, I took a little bit of time off. I basically didn't make a decision right away whether I was going to keep rowing or not. But I took some time off. I saw some friends and I just gave myself a little bit of space and then I ultimately kind of felt that there were other things that I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to, I wanted to feel financially secure, which, you know, the national team does not, you only get a stipend from the national team if you've meddled at world championships. So I was living with a host family, you know, I'm 25 years old. I'm living with a host family. I am training three times a day, which basically makes it impossible to have a real job. So yeah, so I wasn't really putting away any savings and I just kind of had to step back and be like, you know, if I want to have savings by the time I'm 30, which is now, which is when the Olympics would have been, that I would have been training for. I just had to kind of let that dream go and, and yeah, I still, I do feel sad about it, but I think I've been able to find so much meaning and so many other parts of my life that ultimately, I know I made the right choice. - I feel like in those moments, you really have to go with your gut and know really turn inwards to find out what the next step is as hard as it may be. So I can only imagine it was, how challenging it was to make peace with everything that happened at the Olympic trials and move on to a different chapter of your life. - Yeah, yeah, it, um, yeah, I think it goes back to that kind of like, when you're on the earth and you're feeling pain and kind of acknowledging it and being okay with it. And I think when you're an athlete, there's sort of this, everything feels very linear. It's working towards one very clear goal. And if you don't achieve it, it's hard to, to feel good about that and life is very different. It's much more nuanced. There's so many other things that bring value that really aren't goal oriented, I believe. And so, yeah, it's like you kind of, you know, the sadness that I feel or the emptiness that I feel from not having that very clear goal. You know, I kind of just have to like be okay with it and acknowledge it for what it is. And I can certainly set goals in other parts of my life. But yeah, it's partly just balance and, and looking for meaning in other places for sure. I love that point about how in rowing, there's such a linear path, you're focused on one singular goal. Whereas in life, it's not like that at all. And growing up, I really thought that life is very linear. Like you go to school, you get a degree, you have a job, and it's just this one straight path forward, but it's not. And I love your story because you've dedicated so much effort and time and energy into this sport. And now you found meaning in other parts of your life and your identity isn't solely just being a rower. You're also a business woman. And you are active in so many different areas in your life, doing so many different things. So I, I think your story really exemplifies the nuances that occur in life and just learning how to go with the flow yet still staying driven and motivated and looking towards some sort of goal. Yeah, I think, I mean, not just athletes, everyone is trained in that way to think sort of like, okay, if I graduate, then I get a job. If I get a job, then I get a promotion. And then you know what I mean? And like it seems, I think just, it's just structured that way. But yeah, it's important to kind of look beyond that for sure. And you've still stayed very active in the rowing community. I know you're also the co-founder of rowing blazers and rowing blazers makes, well, I guess you can kind of describe rowing blazers a little bit. Yeah. I, yeah, so I helped my boyfriend who's also from the rowing world. He is incredibly, he has achieved a lot. He raced at the World Championships for the lightweight eight and where they got bronze, which is incredible. And he took his experience and background in rowing and combined it with his passion for fashion, but which is really about the history and heritage of a lot of British and American men's fashion, specifically with the blazer, which comes from the sport of rowing. So, yeah, so obviously, you know, when you're when you're starting a brand that, you know, it's a direct to consumer menswear brand, it's not just for rowers, but but when we were when we were building the brand and the company, it was really important to us to acknowledge that our personal heritage comes from the sport of rowing, as well as like the story that the company is trying to tell about the blazer and and so so yeah, so we're very involved with Rooney York, which is an incredible team and and yeah, we make blazers for clubs and it's you know, we never wanted to seem like we were you know kind of appropriating the word or the history of rowing without being very true to our own history. And you know, historically rowing is a very white rich sport. So, I love everything that rowing blazers is doing and also Rooney York, the team that I rode for in high school, to change that narrative and also make it a more inclusive space. So, I think that the future of rowing, there's just so many opportunity to make it even more incredible and it's just a strong knit and close knit community. So, I mean, we also met through Rooney York, technically I guess my mentor through mentorship program. So, obviously, we've kept in touch. The mentorship program was a great idea for them to do. Yeah, it's you know, I think I certainly have so much to thank Rowing for you know, some of my best friends and opportunities and yeah, a lot of just the lessons that I've learned. So yeah, any way to give back I think is is part of what brings meaning to my life for sure and yeah, and Rooney York is is just a really great thing to be involved with. And to kind of like reiterate a point you mentioned earlier about the team building aspect at UVA and everyone being aligned on the same goal, I think Rowing also really teaches the importance of community and relying on other people to lift you up and to support you. I think that throughout life you really do need a community, a strong support network to help you get through the positive moments and the more tough or challenging moments of life. Yeah, yeah definitely and I I think that's what has drawn me to working at smaller companies because it feels like a team. You know, my current company is 14 people so it's it's really not that dissimilar to like a Rowing team and yeah, you really do need to to work together as cliche as that is. It's like you can't you can't all be kind of pursuing your own goals. It really has to be unified under one goal and and I think getting to know each other and in the way that you get to know a teammate is is important because it allows you to support and challenge and push each other in ways that yeah is not maybe part of a traditional sort of job offer but can be a really rewarding thing. Yeah, absolutely and I think a lot I've been reading a lot about leadership and a good a good leader exemplifies many qualities but one of which being able to work really well in a team and motivate other people in that team and I think something so beautiful about Rowing is how much of a team sport it is but also how individual of a sport it is whether you're rowing in the single where you're the only person in the boat or you're practicing on the erg machine and you're the only person on that machine. You might be in a room full of people also on the erg but at the end of the day you're the only one on that rowing machine. So there's something definitely to be said about you know building those leadership qualities and being a strong rower or strong person yet also having the ability to work well together in a team to work towards a unified mission or unified goal. Yeah yeah definitely and yeah and there's no you know my dad used to say this a lot but like you know like swimming and running with Rowing there's no the coach can't call a timeout and give you advice you know there's no chance to reset you have to be in it and you have to be focused and you have to you have to do it yourself basically and yeah it's it's very applicable. There's one final question I'd like to ask you it's something I ask all the guests on my podcast and it really ties into the name Everyday Endorphins. I would love to know what is one small thing or activity that brings you a bit of endorphins every day. Yeah um you know this has been a challenge during coronavirus and working from home. It's just so easy to just sit all day long and work so I've been thinking a lot about this and I actually my mom did yoga every morning while I was growing up you know even if it was just for 15-20 minutes just doing some sunsayitations to start the day. So I have been doing that and I love putting on a like a sound bath you can get them on you know spotifier, YouTube or whatever but just something that kind of it's music but it's not it doesn't have words it's not it's not my focus isn't gonna shift towards the music it's really just to kind of help me be present and move my body and I think that's um just so important when you know we're sitting and staring at screens all day. So to have that chance to to feel grounded within myself and how I'm feeling in that moment physically but also mentally because I'm not interacting with anyone else or with with a computer or whatever I think that's that leaves me feeling really refreshed and and ready to kind of approach the day a little more focused a little more kind of like peaceful.