People here going mental as losing control and I just can't handle it anymore. For me it's the opposite of actually becoming even more centered and more purposeful in the chaos around me. Your path went more along the lines of studying leadership, going into a classic academia career. Now you've come to lead the sport of triathlon. One day, one course, one, O'Hana. Probably one of the most high pressure filled jobs in endurance world. For me it was education that changed my life. Going to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opened my eyes to what was possible in the world. You know 10 pm at night the winds howling. You don't know what the weather is going to be like at 29,000 feet and you've got to make a judgment call. So it is that line coming that you stop studying and actually go with that call. I had lifetime job security. Literally the protection of a federal judge could not be fired. The result may be the reward but it's not the reason. What's the worst that's going to happen? There's no good going to come from matching emotion with emotion. Here we go. This is my pre-start moment. The guns and fun to go off. The guns and fun to go. It's like the worst moment just before it goes. Doom, doom. You know what? They add those unnecessary things. You were also playing the music yet, please. Just go on. Could you please. Doom, doom. And then all the age groupers get this clapping going. Oh my goodness. Scott Eru, what an absolute pleasure to have you on. You grew up in North Carolina in a one-stop sign town as you've, as I've heard you describe it. Watching Iron Man, that never really turned you into a triathlete. But your path went more along the lines of studying leadership. Going into a plastic academia career, then finding yourself looking for challenges with some of the world's biggest sporting organizations. And now you've come to lead the sport of triathlon, probably one of the most high-pressure filled jobs in endurance world. And over the next hour or so, I'm very much looking forward to going mental with you. This is DeRou going mental. Welcome, Scott. Thank you so much, Jan. It's a pleasure and I'm excited to go mental with you as well. So let's start right there. When you hear going mental, what to you is going mental? It can be such a jarring phrase or term. I think a lot of people, when they hear going mental, think about losing control or some version of that. I actually think about the opposite when I hear the term. I think about when the world around you is chaotic and dynamic and changing so much and maybe people are losing their control. Going mental for me is about actually looking inward and becoming even more centered and connecting with sort of that sense of purpose. And going mental is really getting centered in my own mindset so that I can deal with the chaos that is happening around me. And so whereas I think a lot of people here are going mental as losing control and I just can't handle it anymore. For me, it's the opposite of actually becoming even more centered and more purposeful in the chaos around me, if that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. I mean, in a sporting analogy, I sort of used to be exactly what you say for me where it would be losing control over some external thing I had no influence on. And it's one of those things you become angry at something that is just an object because it's failing or something like that. Whereas now going mental would probably be in a similar way taking over control in a high-stakes situation. In terms of descending on a bike at 100km/h, that I find is something going mental where you just have this monofocus of all these things going on around. But let's get into risk and what it is about taking control a little bit later. I would love just in your own short words to describe your journey from being that boy who watched the greats of triathlon in your young youthful years. To becoming the man at the helm of Iron Man, describing that journey for somebody who perhaps hasn't followed all of it. All my life I have had Achilles problems. It is something I've spent months and years on trying to rehab and recover. And finally, in 2022, my wife introduced me to pillar performance. What really caught my attention was their athlete approach on clinical micronutrition for performance. Not just general health supplements, but evidence-based formulas designed specifically to support athletes under real load. And they're all tested for purity and bioavailability. When I spoke with Damien the founder about my injury, he mentioned a specific collagen peptide called Tendo forte that they'd been testing. 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[email protected] or for North American listeners on thefeed.com. That's code goingmental for 15% off first time purchases. It certainly hasn't been a straightforward path. And as you know, I didn't grow up a triathlete. I do remember watching Mark and Dave on television and seeing that. But I didn't have role models in my life that were doing sport in that way. Endurance sports was not really a thing. I grew up in Walburgring, North Carolina, where we had a stoplight and a church and a school and a diner effectively. And for us, it was about playing American football or basketball. And so we were sporty, but it was sort of classic, you know, small town America. And for me, it was education that changed my life. Growing up in this small town, you didn't even have the dreams that now we maybe even take for granted because you didn't know what was possible. You couldn't see it. And for me, going to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, opened my eyes to what was possible in the world. I was exposed to people, cultures, ideas that I never knew existed. Couldn't even imagine. And so that moment of transformation for me actually becomes a recurring theme throughout my life. Because after college, I had no idea what I wanted to do, moved to Boston, started working, and was really void of purpose. It was making good money, meeting interesting people, working with interesting companies, but really void of purpose. And at that stage, you were working as a consultant. Okay. Yeah, I started in private equity, investment banking, consulting, you know, basically the types of jobs that you do when you don't know what you really want to do. But it was void for, void with purpose for me. And so I took a big step back and said, all right, I'm 25, 26 years old. Who do I want to be when I grow up? And I decided in that moment, I wanted to create experiences that transform people's lives for the better, just like I had had through education. But I didn't know how to do that. So I went to the thing that I knew, education. So I was like, how do I become a professor and change people's lives? That was the calculus. And so I said, okay, I interviewed professors, figured out how they did what they did, went back to graduate school, and was fortunate enough to end up at the University of Michigan as a professor in 2007. I was there for 14 years and then decided to make a big life transition and went and worked for Equinox, luxury lifestyle fitness. Okay. And I was on the board of the company and the pandemic happened. I was about to say, 14 years from 2007, that must be right about the best time to be in a presence, fitness kind of industry. Yeah, it was, it was, it was a tough time. So I was on the board of the company for a number of years and the pandemic happened. And as you might imagine, whether you're a live events company, like the Ironman Group or you're a fitness company or, you know,
anything that was trying to bring people together is a really tough time. And so the executive chairman Harvey Spivak in the board asked if I would come on full time and be part of the team leading the rebuild. And that's what we did. And then a few years into that Ironman group called. And I didn't know as much about the company at the time in terms of the scope, the scale, and across all the various endurance sports and the like. But the more I learned, the more interested and excited I got. And the last now two and a half years has been just an incredible journey in this community is really special to me. So you went to Equinox. You were there for a few years. Then when you went to Ironman, you took over the helm of let's call it a community that is as invested and opinionated as can be having never done a triathlon. You know, you went, you said you had this pivot at 25. You went back to what you knew. Here you went and started something that you had absolutely no idea about. Was the discomfort something that you seeked out and something that you perhaps actually relish? For me, one of the things that's motivating in life and I think this is true for most people is that next challenge. Is finding the boundaries of what is possible for yourself and then pushing on those boundaries a little bit. And so if you look at all of the various sort of career transitions, they all come back to the same purpose of creating experiences for people that transform their lives, whether that's through education, whether it's through health and fitness, now endurance sports. These are all platforms for people to change their lives for the better. That's the recurring theme. And for me personally, it's about what is that next challenge to explore what is possible, possible for myself, possible in terms of the impact that I can have on people's lives. And so there's that recurring theme, but I love stepping into that unknown and not, you know, Ironman Group, I'm not a triathlete. How's the community going to respond? Is the community going to be open and welcoming? Maybe not, but I can influence that. How I step into that community with humility and appreciating and learning from folks like yourself about this incredible community, this incredible sport. That transition is one that was very unknown to me, but also very exciting at the same time. And what do you think you can bring as a complete outsider that, you know, a legend of the sport? Like Mark Allen, let's talk about him. What could you bring that somebody who's very accomplished in the sport as a CEO perhaps would be lacking? Well, there's always the obvious fresh perspective on the sport, but for me, it's less about the sport and the swim, the bike, the run aspects of trathlon or trail running or mountain biking or cycling or whatever it may be. And it's more about the consumer experience. About the athlete experience. The first thing I said when I came in is I'm going to be maniacally focused on putting the athlete first and your experience. And that's on race day, but it's every day in between. And we're going to be focused on the community and fostering the sense of belonging and being open to the community. And so for me, it's less about being the expert in the sport. I am the first to admit that I didn't come from a trathlon background. I'm not the expert in the sport. Folks like yourselves are much more accomplished, infinitely more accomplished than I can ever dream of being in the sport. I enjoy the sport, right? But I enjoy the community of it. I enjoy the sense of belonging. I enjoy the challenge of it. And I think that's true for most of our athletes. And so I think there's something universally human about challenging ourselves, about being part of something bigger than yourself, about being part of a community. I think there's something universally human about that. And that transcends swim, bike, and run in many ways, even though that's the sport that we all love and that I've certainly come to love and appreciate. Well, I mean, you ended up doing a 70 points read. That begs the question, have you got a fool on your radar? You've got to get your stripes. I feel like you've got stripes on one side. Aside from that, we touched on this human experience, right? And what it is that changes people's lives. And I would, as an athlete, argue, of course, it's the journey to get there, even though that's a cliche. But there is some truth in that. But I think the thing that is so unique about Iron Man is that finish line experience. I can't put my finger on it. I've tried it in many instances to pinpoint what it is that makes it so special. You've experienced it now as an athlete. You've experienced it as the man responsible for that whole experience. Has that changed your lens? And how would you differentiate between the two? Well, so I haven't experienced the Iron Man finish line myself as an athlete. And so I'm the first to admit that. That's certainly on the radar. I've experienced the 70 point three finish line. Oh, okay. Okay, all right. Right. But those are different. That's actually true. Those are different. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Certainly from an athlete in terms of endurance and adventure sports, I know how to do hard things. But I just haven't experienced that firsthand. Now tell you a story about the first Iron Man event that I ever witnessed and attended. So I just joined the company, been here a couple weeks and I fly to New Zealand for Iron Man, New Zealand. And Iron Man, New Zealand is the second longest running Iron Man after Hawaii. So there's this history, this tradition is the last mass start, mass one start that we have in the portfolio. So there's all this uniqueness about the event, the community, and it's New Zealand. So fly to New Zealand. You know, it's almost overwhelming in terms of the information coming in and all the people you're meeting, et cetera. And so I'm having a blast. Race starts, it's exciting. Everybody's going crazy. Like this is my first Iron Man. And then it's my first midnight finish. And so it's one thing to be at the finish line for people like yourself, where you're coming across in seven half eight hours. It's an incredible athletic achievement. And the level of performance in the sport right now is mind boggling. One of my favorite moments is that midnight finish and our professional athletes come back to the finish line, the community's coming out to support in Cheryl. So there's a woman who is the last finisher and we know she's coming. And so I started asking people about who she is. Come to find out she's, I'm going to guess in her 60s. I don't remember exactly. And the year prior, she had missed the finish line cut off by approximately two to three minutes. Yeah. Now imagine you're cutting and fine. Honey, you're cutting and fine. I mean, you can hear the finish line if you're all going to miss it by two or three minutes. And Iron Man is brutal in that way, by the way. It's just like, no, sorry, that's it. Yeah, I made it. We're empathetic. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But there's integrity to the sport. Yep. So the year prior, she misses the finish line cut off by two to three minutes. She's coming again. And I'm looking at the clock and I'm like, is this going to happen again? Y'all, and she rounds the corner and you can see her down the the shoot, the red, the black, the M dot, all the fireworks, all the energy you can see her down the shoot. And she's basically crawling at this point. And the clock's ticking. I get cold chills thinking about it. And she's coming down the shoot. Everybody's cheering her on. Y'all she crawls across the finish line with approximately three seconds to spare. Oh my God. I'll never forget that moment. Yeah. That to me defines the spirit of Iron Man. And I was privileged to see it at my first ever Iron Man event. And it has shaped how I think about what the sport means to people and how significant it is in their lives, whether it's their first time doing it or their hundredth time doing it, how central it becomes to one sense of community, one sense of identity, right? Where the most tattooed brand in the world. Really? I thought it's second most. I thought Holly Davins is one ahead. Do you have a Harley tattoo? I don't have an M. tattoo. Put it that way. We could solve that by the end of today. Yeah. But, you know, I don't. Totally. Yeah, I get it. Right. So, nobody's got an exact counting of it, but we'll claim it. But certainly, Harley and us are the two that most people would think about.
Think about what it means to have that deep of an emotional connection to a brand. It's no longer my brand. It's no longer the Ironman Groups brand. It's our brand. And that's a really important shift in mindset of how you think about leadership, business, and what not only this company, the sport, but what it means to the people who are your community. And that's something that strikes me at many of the banquets, right, where you get together. And there's this very emotional talk. And if you are coming from the outside with a slightly objective mindset and you have not lived through the day before, you're like, oh my god, this is the worst sales pitch in the world. This is so corny and this is so cheesy. But it does beg the question, is Ironman a business or is it actually more of a religion? Yes. Which one? I think it can be both. I think it can be a business. I mean, if we think about the concept of business and the context of endurance sports or these transformational experiences, the construct or the concept of business is simply so that we can continue to. Why do we make money? People talk about sort of the making of money and the business of sport all the time. In the context of Ironman, why do we make money so that we can reinvest in the athletes the community and the experience? That's why. Well, I mean, there is a bottom line that is to be fed and I'm not denying that, yes, the athlete experience is getting much better, but it's. I mean, there is an interplay, right? But every dollar we make goes back into the business. Our shareholders do not take money off the table. Yeah, really? None. Zero. Every dollar we make goes back into the business. That's. I didn't actually know that. That's really interesting. I mean, let's get back to you and how you run this construct. Because what I find unique is that you have a very interesting relationship with risk. And I don't necessarily mean in the business sense, but you personally go out, you're a very accomplished climber. You've done the seven summits. You have had and seen very first hand the dangers of what can happen. Whereas as a position as a CEO of any company, really, you're managing risk. You've got layers in between. You've got processes. You've got teams. You've got structures in place, right? What is it that draws you to the mountain and having that real risk of physical harm and danger and what does it do for you as a CEO? But in the context of climbing, it started simply as a reason to travel. Growing up, I didn't get to travel that much outside of the country and certainly didn't get to see the world. And I was finishing graduate school and wanted to treat myself to a graduation gift. And I basically spun the globe, picked a location, happened to be Africa in that case. And so then I, what we would now say Google, but I think at the time it was probably Yahoo. Google, what did people do in Africa? And Safari and Kilimanjaro came up. And so I went to Dysfari and Kilimanjaro and I loved it. And honestly, it became initially just a reason to go see the world. And there's a great quote from a mountaineer that says, "Some people climb so that the world can see them, other people climb so that they can see the world." I'm definitely the latter. And so it just became this passion of being able to be in the mountains, challenge oneself, be part of a team, climbing is an interesting sport because you and I, if we're climbing together, we're only as strong as our weakest climber because we're tied together. I love that interdependency team aspect to it, even though in a lot of endurance sports, it can feel like an individual exercise. Imagine if you and I were competing in a trathlon, but we were tied together. Right? Like, you're a little faster than I am. You're probably beginning a little frustrated. But I think you'd manage the aid stations. I don't know. I've seen you at aid stations. You do a pretty good job. But I just fell in love with being in nature, being in the mountains and being part of this team, this collective, trying to accomplish something amazing together, combined with the personal challenge aspect of it. And certainly there's a risk element to it. And I think of risk in terms of uncontrollables and controllables. And you want to minimize the uncontrollable risk and you want to prepare for the controllable risk. Doesn't mean you can take it to zero. In nature, I think it's possible. But you want to prepare as best you can for the controllable risks. And the best mountaineering teams that I've been on with guides like Garrett Madison and Ben Jones and Vern Tejas and these legends of the sport, that's one of the things they're really good at is managing risk. And I've got to see them make calls. I remember we were at Camp 4 on Everest and the high camp. And the question was, do we go or not? And it was 10 pm at night, the winds outling. And you don't know what the weather is going to be like at 29,000 feet. And you've got to make a judgment call. And yes, you have information. You have multiple weather reports coming in, but they don't say the same thing. And I remember Garrett, our lead guide on that expedition, working with his team of other professionals and them collectively making a judgment call on, like based on our experience, based on the information we have, the calculated risk is we think the weather is going to cooperate with us. So let's go. Knock on wood. They were right. Right? They could have just as easily been not right. But they had done the preparation. They had the experience. They worked together to calculate that risk and make a judgment call. So you're never going to be able to take it to zero, but you can prepare, you can bring your team together, and you can make the best judgment, the best decision that you can make in that moment. That's different than uncontrollable risk. My wife and I have a deal that I won't climb certain mountains. The only variable that puts those mountains on that list is the degree of uncontrollable risk. Why put yourself in that situation? For us, we've made that decision. Other people, they'll go climate and that's perfectly fine. Right? And so I've learned a lot about risk mitigation, risk management in the context of climbing. Certainly in business, you're dealing with some form of risk every day. It could be small, it could be big, and I think about it in very similar ways. Control what you can control. Yeah, that's kind of the athlete mantra as well, right? But the truth is once the gun goes. Even in the week leading up to such an event, you have all these calls to make. You have all the knowledge and you have studied the best in the sport. You've studied the best in the business, which I think you're a student of leadership in general. Where does that line come in that you stop studying and actually go with that call? Because if you're on base camp on Everest, it's pretty consequential. And you have to be all in in a way and find that trust that all this theoretical knowledge you have acquired will actually come and play off. And quite frankly speaking, save your butt in some way or another. Where for you did you have a moment that you said, okay, I feel confident enough that my studying of leadership actually allows me to take the home myself. I think in all of the various transitions in my life, you have to get to a, they're all filled with risk. Yeah. Right? So I was a professor, you know, chair professor and dean of one of the top business schools in the world. Literally, the protection of a federal judge could not be fired. And gave that up to go into the unknown where at Equinox, we weren't even sure we were going to survive through the pandemic. Yeah. Right? And so going from a very secure, stable, almost risk-free environment to maybe, [BLANK_AUDIO]
At that point in time, the riskiest environment you could choose. Yeah. Right? Having the confidence in yourself, the confidence in the people around you, to say, we don't know how this is going to play out. Like, like, a lot of people like to play the result. Yeah. Right? And judge the journey on the result. I think that's a mistake. The result may be the reward, but it's not the reason. Yeah. And in that case, making the jump and having the confidence to do that was, what's the worst that's going to happen? I'm going to learn a ton. I'm going to get to work with some fun people. And if we can pull this off, how incredible would that be? And in that context, that company matters to hundreds of thousands of people. We employed, we had 11,000 jobs on the line. Like, if we could pull that off, how impactful would that be? And the worst that's going to happen is I'm going to learn a ton and get to work with some fun people. Well, and lose that forever job security. And that's where I find so interesting is that you see a time and time again that high performers almost seek out a headwind. Almost as though we need a headwind to actually spring into gear. And I wonder if it's just something that you need to feel alive. Because that's safety and riding it out to the sunset and going to Hawaii on holidays every year, once or twice, whatever. Is someone else's dream? Where is for you, do you think that risk is something? Well, the adventure, let's call it the adventure, is something you need for yourself to actually feel alive. It's what fuels me. And I think this is a universal human truth. I think we are motivated largely by two things. Purpose and the pursuit or sort of mastery or sort of the adventure. Purpose, you know, one of my good friends Adam Grant, we grew up in academia together. And similar fields, organization, behavior, organizational psychology. And Adam in his early career studied pro-social motivation is what he called it. And effectively what it is is how you and I are motivated by the impact we have on other people. Right? So put that in the bucket of purpose. Yeah. Right? I think at the same time we are what I studied mostly was how we respond to challenge. How we respond to obstacles, experiences that get us outside of our comfort zone. And all of my research was on how do we learn from those things, how do we engage in them, how do we make the sense of them, how do we make the most of it, and how are we motivated by those challenges. And I think we are as human beings, a universal truth is we are motivated by purpose, pro-social motivation, the impact we can have on the world or other people around us. And this sense of adventure, this sense of challenge, and this sense of sort of the getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. And some people obviously are better at that than others. And so for me, and I think for many, there's this universal truth that we are inspired, we are motivated by finding that next headwind, that next challenge in life. And it might require a small transition, it might require a big transition in our lives, but we're motivated by that. And we seek it out, and we do it hopefully with humility so that we don't go in assuming we know everything, because if you're going into your discomfort zone or you're unknown, it would be kind of foolish to assume that you know everything. So hopefully we can approach that experience with the right mindset. But for me personally, that's a big part of what fuels me, is the impact I can have on other people's lives, and this personal journey of adventure exploration, and finding the limits of sort of human possibility in those boundaries for myself and for others. But I think that's more universal to being human than it is about me or you as individuals. Yeah, I mean there is that thing of like you said, providing purpose, and you continue to do that in all of your positions. It's not like that was the actual thing that stopped you. What turned you was the curiosity of where else you can take this. I think the flip side of the coin you mentioned is never change a winning team, which is one of those like old school kind of sports things that I've heard a million times. And I'm like, you have to change the team because if you don't, people have figured it out. But what would you say to someone? Because I hear a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they send me messages, they say, you know, I've done this, I've achieved this, I thought this external thing would fulfill me. But now I don't really have the courage to take the next step, to go into where it is. And I think many people wait for them to have a personal breakdown, including myself. I've had this transitioning from Olympic distance to Ironman distance. Yeah, I was holding onto something that I knew I was, I was good at it. And this whole unknown of the Ironman journey. And it took me years and a personal crash to really actually have the courage, not even the courage is the lie. So be forced to take a step out of my comfort zone. How come you're able to do it so readily and, you know, follow, I guess essentially what you know to be true in theory, but trust it to actually then take that step. I think part of it's the support of people that are around you. So, you know, my, you know, Kathy, my lovely wife and my family are incredibly supportive when I come up with crazy ideas. Whether they're career and professional, or here he goes again, here he goes again. Right. And I think Kathy's one of her scariest phrases that I have is, honey, I've been thinking. Anytime I say, honey, I've been thinking she wants to leave the room. She's like, not again, please. So I think part of it is that, but I think it's also the case that what's the worst that's going to happen? I think we often make the answer to that question much bigger than it actually is. Right. So overestimating consequence. Yeah. And does it come with risk? Of course. Might I fail? Of course. But what's the worst that's going to happen? It's usually not that bad. Right. And so certainly when we contrast the answer to that question with what might happen if this goes well? Right. And you know, if we're able to turn around equinox and rebuild coming out of the pandemic, if we're able to really reignite Ironman and really fuel this community and, you know, the positive impact of that far outweighs and exceeds whatever risk there might be for me personally or for us as a collective. I routinely ask myself, what's the worst that's going to happen? And it's usually not that bad. And I think some people get weighed down by what they think might happen and put more weight on the negative than the positive. Which is interesting in sport because you're taught not to really overweight either. Right. The loss. The loss is a painful lesson. You move on. You use it as fuel or whatever it is. Yeah. But the win is also another step that really is just another step in your career and really can often be a difficult moment as well because you reach something and then what? You've talked about this and you having your seven summits. Now you've done it. You know, what's next? But for you as somebody who's leading this organization, how do you measure the success? And when you say you're on track to create this change, do you have moments we sit back and celebrate with the team? Or is it just something that you say far outweighs the negative? But does it actually find emotional meaning within you? So to me, the result again is a reward, but it's not the reason. And the motivation and what fuels us is more about the everyday journey. And for me, for example, it's the joy of getting to work with our team. Yeah. Getting to engage with our community. Right. I mean, I was in Brazil last week for our members. And you know, I think people have figured out that I often jump into our races. And why do I do that? One is I want to see it through the athlete's eyes. But two is I get to be part of this community doing this incredible thing. And that's really a great thing.
motivating and inspiring to me. And so I'm riding the bike in Florianopolis and you know, we're going up up these big hills and you mentioned going downhill at 100k at that I could not imagine. But I was going downhill much faster than I could have ever imagined and maybe even was comfortable with. And this woman passes me on the bike and she turns around and she sees that it's me. And she's like, oh my goodness. Scott, is that you? And so we have this, you know, a couple minute conversation. And then another guy-- -Send me a draft legal. -Draft legal, of course, 20 meters. Or no 12, sorry, 12. But we're having this lovely conversation. This gentleman does the same thing. And so it's those everyday moments of connection with my team, with our community. That to me are these moments that inspire you to keep going, wanting to keep working hard. It's not about some goal or destination that if we just achieve that, then everything's solved. Because if that's-- I mean, you want a gold medal. And I remember the first conversation we ever had. We talked about that experience and then the transition to Iron Man. And one of the questions that you got after winning the gold medal was, well, have you ever race Kona? Yeah. There's always something next. Yeah. Right? And that's after winning a gold medal. [laughter] It was slightly frictious at the time. Right? And I can only imagine how that made you feel. I was like, wait a minute, I just want a gold medal. And you're asking me about this next thing. Yeah. Right? That journey and going on that journey for yourself, with others, etc. to me, is much more rewarding. And the reason we do things, than some sort of set goal. Yeah. Because if that's your only focus, then you do get to the top of that mountain. And it becomes very anticlimactic. I remember when we were on Everest, and I had a GoPro on my helmet. And I have this wonderful video of us standing at the top of the world. Wind is howling. It's a beautiful day. You can see forever. But the wind's blowing 40, 50 miles an hour. It's super cold. And when my teammates gives me a hug and he says, "Scott, we did it." And my response in that moment is, no, we didn't. We're only halfway there. We still got to go down. Yeah, we've got to make it back now, which is. And if you're only focused on getting to the top of whatever that metaphor represents for you, then when you get to the top, it's going to be an anticlimactic experience. It's going to be less fulfilling than you drink it to be. Because what has fueled you to get to that moment has been the journey to get there, not just the destination. And that is a cliche, of course. But cliches can also be true. 100%. I mean, that's kind of. Yeah, I think that's the whole point of the arrival fallacy, right? That you get there and you realize, "Okay, well, yeah, there is always something next because your life goes on." And this kind of forever battle that sports has, but probably also business in many ways, is the finite versus the infinite game. The finite game of reaching and needing to have targets and needing to meet numbers and needing to meet expectations versus your own. How far can I actually sail the ship? How far can I actually go? And I think if we put. We all need goals, right? We need goals to give us something to aim for and to keep pushing for. But the goal is a step in the journey, not simply the destination, whether that's in sport, whether it's in business. And so our team, we certainly have goals that we want to achieve this year, right? If we didn't, then I probably shouldn't be in a position that I'm in. But why do we have goals? To give us a shared nor star, right? So that we know what we're working towards together, right? It's a forcing function for creating alignment, right? And when we get close to that goal, what do you think's going to happen? The next goal is set. And the next goal is a little further and then a little further. What's important is that we make sure that we're celebrating along the way, that we're learning from what's not working and we're enjoying doing it together. If we're celebrating the wins, we're learning from the failures and we're enjoying doing it together. Then as we go along and accomplish those goals, then we set the next one, we set the next one. And that's how I think we as individuals, as companies, we evolve, we grow, we develop, and ultimately, we accomplish more than we maybe even thought was possible. Because when we set those goals, those goals are constrained by what we think is possible in that moment. Yeah. Yeah, of course. If we keep stretching those goals, then we wake up two years later, three years later, five years later, and then we look back and we could have never imagined that that was possible. But every day with the discipline, the teamwork, the commitment, we made it possible. I look at that all the time because from the outside, it seems like a slightly masochistical undertaking. And I, man, right, I mean, there is, there is, you know, everybody's always like, how do you suffer this much and how do you put this much work into it? And then every time I come to an event, your team is under-slept, generally over-caffeinated, running around, trying to figure out X, Y and Z. And I find it interesting because no one's complaining. And you find that in a lot of high-pressure environments, which it is, you know, the thing that I find so compelling about sports. And doing sports events is you have a date and it's set in stone, more or less, not actually more as it's very much set in stone. And you need to perform to that very deadline. And that creates a very high-pressure environment. And it's one of the few times that I see people being under this much stress and so much under the pump for, you know, and yet maintain what you say is joy. Because I do agree, you know, finding joy in what you do is the biggest performance enhancer you can ever, you can ever have. Is there something that you engineer to this or, you know, how does it get to that point that it stays joyous? I think there's a few things. One is people select in and out, right? So I think, you know, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, organizational behavior, there's this selection, selection, a, a, a tradition model where people, you know, eventually find the work that is joyful to them. Okay. Or they leave, right? And so I, I think there's, I think there's a part of that. But I think when I joined the Ironman group, just like I've done it every stop prior. Usually I spend at least the first 30, 60 days, just going around and talking to people. Yeah, it was quite amazing actually. Yeah. I got a call out of the blue from me sometimes. I'm like, what, what, okay. Yeah. I don't know what I don't know. And, and so I go on basically a research mission, right? To try and learn and try to understand. And I remember when I joined the Ironman group, I said, I'm not making any consequential decisions unless we have to. There's always something to make them up. I'm not making any consequential decisions for at least three to six months. Because I want to take time to connect with and learn from our community. And that's our team. That's our athletes, fans, spectators, partners, etc. And so I just spent the, you know, first few months, mostly talking to people and listening and learning from them. And with our team, coming back to your question, with our team, the single most common thread, the universal theme that ran through every conversation when I asked people, why do you work here? People had different language for it, but it came back to our athletes and the experience we create that is life changing for those athletes. And again, it might be their first time with us. It might be their hundredth time with us. But being a part of that, not everybody that works at the Ironman group is a triathlete or an endurance athlete. But everybody that works at the Ironman group is fueled by the impact that we can have on other people's lives through what we do. And that is a universal truth. So when you travel the world and go to our event,
This year we'll do over 250 events in over 50 countries. There's only a few weekends a year where we don't have an event and some weekends we have 12, 13, 14 events. So we have teams all around the world all of the time fueled by that common purpose. And my job in many ways is CEO is first and foremost about igniting that purpose that binds us together and creates that inspiration, that motivation, and then making sure we have a shared-nour-star that we're aiming for. And if we can unlock and sort of ignite that purpose and make sure that people have a shared-nour-star that we're all aiming for together, and then the every day of, and it's certainly not perfect, but every day how we work together to accomplish that, then ultimately good things happen. It might be a bit of a roller coaster, there might be some ups, there might be some downs, there might be some twists and turns, but if you stay the course, just like an athlete, whether it's a company, whether it's someone like yourself training for the Olympics or our main world championship or whatever the case may be, you stay the course. You're going to have good days, bad days, meet some twists and turns, but you stay the course and ultimately you get there. But again, the result, however it plays out, that's a step in the journey, not the destination. You touched on it there, and I've gotten to know you as the guy, we've always got a smile on your face. You've always got good energy, you come to the events, you actually very calm amongst the chaos. And you just mentioned 250 events and 5 continents that makes it 5 events a weekend. And that means that there is always something going wrong. There must be, you know, from swims being cancelled to governing bodies saying we don't want this traffic running through here, we want it rather going there to, you know, all sorts of things. I see your face from the outside, I see you attending to these things. But what's your internal process to stay calm and resolute in some way, that you're actually, you know, staying, what's your internal process to keep you cool? Yeah, that's the going mental. Right, so you've got all this chaos around you and you're right, every week there's something. Yeah. Every week, every day. Right, there's something. And the internal process comes back to, well, let's first understand what is actually happening here. Because a lot of times in the chaos, you're getting information from all different angles, and you don't know what's what. So first and foremost is making sure that you have accurate information coming from multiple sources and really, really understanding what's happening. Right. But then, okay, let's control, we can control. Right, there's no, there's no good going to come from matching emotion with emotion. Have you ever found a situation where matching chaos with chaos, matching emotion with emotion leads to a good outcome? I have not found one. Outside of competition, I have not. In competition, it's quite, it can be a good thing. But I understand the point you're trying to make. And so for me, that's when going mental becomes really important. Is, okay, let's, let's refine center, let's focus, let's break down what are the really important two or three issues that we have to solve for here. And let's go solve for those. At the same time, with 250 events in over 50 countries, this isn't about me. I can't be everywhere making every decision. If that's how I tried to organize our teams and run our company, we would not be successful guaranteed. So the cliche would be building great teams, but true. Right. But then empowering them with a clear set of guiding principles that we are operating on globally so that we can be consistent and at scale. It's creating those structures. It's creating the processes. But most important, it's about people and culture. And having great committed, talented people on the team, who you trust and can empower, to make those decisions. But then spending the time to align on whether, what are the principles by which we make these decisions? I get that. But in the end, the buck stops with you. And these events, some of these events athletes have spent years preparing for you. You mentioned the lady New Zealand. She's failed at this and makes it by her hairs with to come across that line. And there's real emotional energy at stake here. And in the end, you're not a robot. You have your decision. You're human. That's all out there. You're human. You are human. And you have this initial reaction. You have your kind of fight or flight brain that wants to react and jump in and meet the chaos. And that's really what I'm trying to see where if you have a, a mantra, if you have a personal, just something that really helps you fall back onto your processes. I mean, by now you've probably practiced it enough time that it's an automation. But how did you get there? Yeah, I think there's within the context of, let's say the Ironman group, you come to appreciate how meaningful these moments are to be. And where I think a lot of leaders, executives go wrong is getting disconnected from that really human moment that matters to people. So why do I jump into our events? Why do I travel to a lot of events? One of the reasons is because I get to interact with our customer, with our athletes, with their family, with their friends. You learn a lot by doing that, but you also stay more connected to their experience. So when we do things really well, great, let's celebrate that. But when we don't live up to our expectations, you have an appreciation, you have some empathy for that experience because you're closer to it. You're closer to the human, you're closer to their experience. If I ever get to a point where I'm disconnected from our athletes, from our community and their lived actual experience with us, then it's time for me to move on. Because you can't have the empathy for that experience if you're not connected to it. And so I can do that by being an athlete and participating. That's one version. But I can also do it by being around our community and engaging and talking and listening and understanding. And so for me, it's less of a mantra and it's more of a philosophical approach that I want to be as close to our customer as I possibly can be. One, because it's motivating for me, go back to the purpose. If I'm disconnected from that, I don't get to see the impact we're having on your life. So I need that fuel. I need that motivation. But at the same time, I'm always getting more and more information about what are we doing? Well, what are we not doing? Well, where are the opportunities? And the reality is with nearly 260 events this year. And well over 50 countries, there are many opportunities for us to do things better. And the mantra that I preach to our team every day, 1% better every day. 1% better every day. That is a key shame. It is. But that becomes impossible because that's 100% very quickly. 100%. But it's less about one adding up to 100 and it's more about that mindset every day. But it forces you to, okay, we're doing this well. We're not doing this well. How do we go make that better? How do we do more of this? That mindset and that approach keeps you connected to the experience of our athletes and brings with it a sense of humility. We're not perfect. And it's sort of a, you know, Carol Dweck's language, sort of a learning mindset. Yeah. Where we're always trying to get better. And I think that's true whether we're an athlete. I think that's true whether we're in business. I think that's a universal human truth as well. Yeah, because essentially, I mean, I'm and doesn't live in a vacuum. Right. I mean, there are federations, there are governments, there are organizers, there are athletes always tearing.
you know, at you basically. And when you say it's athlete first, I guess that's really the interesting part is that you said, you know, just try and get 1% better every time because many of the decisions you would make would be a compromise in some sort of sense, right? Which brings me back to something that you shared with me on a bus ride when we were talking about the quota for Hawaii, men and women and the participation of women. And you introduce the concept of equal opportunity or equal outcome versus equal outcome to me. And it got me thinking a lot and I was hoping you would share your ideas, especially regarding kind of female participation. And you know, you're climbing mantra of bringing everyone with you and how you balance that in your role, but also for you as a person. - Yeah, that role. - So, one of the things I love about sport is, in most cases, it's meritocracy, right? And whether it's the scoreboard or the clock or whatever it may be, there's meritocracy there. And one of the things I love about Iron Man is whether you're a professional athlete or whether you are 90 years old. - Yeah. - You're lining up on the same course on the same day. - The structure is about as equal as it could be. - Exactly, right? And that's true, whether you're different ages, whether you're different genders, different backgrounds, whatever the case may be, it's sort of this ultimate meritocracy. Now, our journeys to get to that start line may not have been equal. - Definitely not. - Right? One had more supports, more tools in their toolkit, whatever the case may be. So I think that's important for us to acknowledge and recognize is there are these systemic differences of our journey to the start line. But once we're on the start line, same day, same race. - Yeah. - Right? And so that's what I mean by equal opportunity. At the same time for us, whether we want to talk about it from a sort of philosophical sort of social good angle or whether we want to talk about it in terms of business, as we think about the world of sport and endurance sports in particular, a huge growth opportunity is encouraging more women to participate in endurance sports. And in road running, several decades ago, this was the case. And we've made enormous strides in road running. And part of the growth that we're seeing in road running today is because of many more women coming into the sport over the last several decades. As we look towards longer distance endurance sports, whether it's Iron Man and Traffeylon, whether it is UTMB and trail running, et cetera, the longer the distance you go, the less women participation you have. I think about where can we be, not just this year or next year, but where can we be in five, 10, 20 years? And I think the same thing is going to happen in longer distance endurance sports, not just Traffeylon, but just longer distance endurance sports, as we've seen with road running from 5K, 10K to Marathons because we see the same thing in Ultras now, right? And it's beginning to shift, but it's a huge from a business perspective, it's a huge growth opportunity because you have this whole population who's not today your customer, right? - Yeah, of course. - At the same time, we all know that the community is more alive, more vibrant when it's more diverse across age groups, across genders, et cetera. And so we've got a lot of work to do, but I'm really excited about some of the progress that we've made, but I'm at the same time very optimistic about realistic, but also optimistic, about where we are and the work that we have to do to achieve those aspirations. Again, not just this year next year, but five years from now, 10 years from now. - Which brings me to the point that Iron Man is turning 50 in two years time, 2028. - You're gonna come out of retirement to race, right? - Well, it's LA, it's Iron Man, I think they're gone. I'm not sure, I think I might do it like you and jump in, you know, jump in for a somewhere, some part of it. - We can do a relay. - Yeah, we can do a relay. It seems like you're trying to avoid the swimming part. I'll take the swim part. (laughing) - What do you think in the next 50 years, we really need to protect of what is coming as the sport is growing exponentially, as it's becoming a worldwide phenomenon. And where do you see the chances of change that hasn't yet occurred? - One of the phrases that I heard when I first joined the Iron Man group was that Iron Man is a soul sport. And that led me down a path of asking lots of questions to people that had been around the sport for a long time, Bob Bavid. - Yeah. - And we had John and Judy Collins who founded Iron Man in Kona last year. And I got a chance to take a helicopter ride with them and talk about the sport and their journey and I remember talking with Valerie Silk, who rest in peace unfortunately passed away here recently. But and many of the questions that I would ask them or have asked them is really relates back to that phrase of Iron Man being a soul sport. I mean, it started with 15 people basically making a barbed on the shortest of Hawaii. - It was a Bob Bavid. (laughing) - And this sort of grass rootsy sort of feel that like can this even be done? And this, we talk about adventure and exploration and climb, I mean, these were the ultimate adventures. - Yeah. - Right, of can this even be done? And so this notion of a soul sport, so to your question about what needs to be protected? As we, I think of Iron Man as a global brand but a very local business. - Okay. - And as we grow the brand, we grow the reach and we've certainly seen that evolution over the last 50 years and we'll see it over the next 50 years. There are not many brands and companies that even get to celebrate their 50th birthday. Much less one. - One hundred. - That has been the successful over this time period. I think as we grow the brand, we grow the reach, we grow the community, we invest in the experience et cetera. I think one of the things we have to protect is this notion of soul. And how special Iron Man is to the people that tattoo it to their bodies, right? That it's part of their identity. It's their sense of belonging. And that balancing act is really hard, right? And it's not simple, but if we stay true to the mantra of putting our athletes in our community first and everything we do, it will force us as we continue to grow. It will force us to make sure that we're doing so in a way that hopefully preserves and protects the soul of the sport. And I tell people all the time, if at any point you don't feel like we are getting that right, I wanna be your first phone call because that's something that's really important to me. And my time, even at some point will come and I will no longer be the CEO of the Iron Man group. I hope that's many years from now, but at some point that time will come. And looking back, whenever that time is, one of the things that is really important to me is when I look back, I wanna feel good about not only everything that we've achieved and all the growth and the impact and all of that, but the preservation and the protection of the soul of who we represent and what we represent. - Leave the jersey in a bit of place. It's a, Scott, thank you so much. Honestly, from a barb at to a global sports phenomenon that you're at the helm of, find a question. When was the last time you went mental? - Recently, I, again, going mental for me, chaos around you, how do you find center? And we've had some unexpected twist and turns in the last month or so that created chaos. And in those moments, you have a choice of how you respond. And I think I went mental a couple of times, and certainly you want to,
You have all the emotions, all the feels, frustration and anger, whatever it may be. And you can't let those emotions get the best of you. And so we had to find center and figure out how to respond in a way that served our community and our athletes first. And that's what we've done. That's God. Thank you so much. I think you're the first person to answer consistently with a definition and they're last time going into it. So, honestly, it's been a great hour. I've really, really appreciated your insights and getting to know you a little bit better. Good luck with all the future. And again, thanks for all you do. I appreciate it. Thank you. This podcast will be produced by Portzdaas.
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