The Adversity Advantage | Turning Everyday Struggles into Everyday Greatness with Dr. Paul G. Stoltz

Audio Transcription

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the father of five human kids. My partner, Dr Robert Zoellner is the father of three human kids. Each child was created dif, different women. It’s not weird. It’s not weird. Actually. I have one grandchild and two on the way. When my face you have one up. Well, between the two of us, we built 13 multimillion dollar businesses in too because we seek out the mentorship and the guidance from proven experts and on today’s show I could not be more excited than to interview dr paul stoltz. He’s an expert in the area of resilience and in New York Times bestselling author. His newest book is called Grit. The new science of what it takes to persevere, flourish, and succeed throughout pope pulse career. He has guest lectured at such universities as cornell. Oh my carnegie, Mellon, z. These are all schools that I’ve been at Harvard business school. Paul, welcome onto the show. How are you sir?

I’m fabulous. It’s really great to join both of you and thank you for having me be part of the mix

now. Paul, for our listeners out there that are really not as familiar with your formal education and background, can you share with us a little bit about your experience at the University of Minnesota and in what you studied?

You know, I had the most amazing experience there because I had a rogue advisor who knew I was different. I wasn’t a traditional academic, so he let me do what we now call a multidisciplinary phd and so what I did is I really wanted to research what is it that sort of at the epicenter of human endeavor and that started way earlier with my undergraduate and I’ll tell you that story, but anyway, I studied in the fields of organizational communication, business training and development, learning psychology, neuroscience, and a bunch of other things that we put together under the hospices of one unified degree and that was just skull exploding for me today. Before we go any farther,

I just. Is he too classy for us? I mean we gotta we gotta pump the brake. I mean is this, if this kind of work we bite off more than we could interview him at a dive bar. Guys,

just give it another five minutes then you’ll be sure that’s not

when you went to college. I mean it seemed like you had this yearning to figure out what made people successful.

What note life is all about. The question isn’t it? And, and when I was 19 years old, I came up to my advisor, my undergraduate days, the University of California, and I had this really cool guy, so I kinda got in his grill and I said, hey, how do we know who wins? And he looked at me and he goes, what do you mean at what? And I said, business sports, life, school, like how do we know who wins and who loses? He goes, say it a different way. So I said, okay, uh, who fails and who prevails? And then he did the smartest thing ever changed my life. He pointed at me and he said, that’s your first research project. So I went to this strange place called the library and I started to kind of dig in and I thought I was so smug. I thought I was going to bang this out in an afternoon. Here I am, 39 years later, still excavating through all these different sciences. On that question,

you actually went as far as to a coined the phrase, the adversity quotient in 1997. Now, just to be clear, I graduated from Coke Hedo high school, Dassel Cokato high school west of Minneapolis, uh, about 45 miles west of Minneapolis in 1999. So you coined this phrase before I really knew it was going on. I’d love for you to share with the listeners your path to becoming the expert in the area of resilience. And I’d love for you to share about your, you know, the education and the research you put into this because you are the man. If you look up, if you look up the adversity quotient, whether it’s Wikipedia, webster, you’re the guy who’s a known as being the guy who coined the phrase the adversity quotient. Tell us about this.

You know, what happened was, and I want everything I say to be a keen relevance to your listeners. So, you know, we all have these moments where inquiry and questions drive everything. And for me, you know, the question I was looking at, the good news for me is I became theoretically agnostic, which meant I wasn’t married to just psychology because psychology at the time was definitely not answering the question. So I started to go scientifically far afield and you know, the best thing you can do sometimes is have the courage to ask ignorant questions. So if you go to the head of neuroscience at Harvard and ask a question, you’re going to learn things for sure. And I did this all over the world and we did this with 21 different scientific disciplines. So here’s the moment of truth. The day came where in a 30 foot by 20 foot room, we dumped out all the crates of research and put them in piles.

This was actually in 1990 and put them into piles and said, what’s the unifying concept? First we had to put a sheet on top that kind of described that stack, blah, blah blah, on and on district days. Then we said, what is the single unifying thing that puts all these studies together, which is now 3,500 studies. And the answer was one thing, adversity. And we said, okay, and this is like, you know, 15 years what before emotional intelligence came out. So I said, Gosh, you know, maybe if we have this thing called an ICU, which we know is not terribly predictive of much in life, what if there were something called an Hbcu and adversity quotient where you actually could measure and Gosh, what if you could actually measurably improve how people respond to the tufts stuff, big and small, all of it. And so we started going at it and then you fast forward, I mean just a very short time.

We started to create version one data than one.one, one dot two or what’s now called the Aiccu profile, which is the instrument we’ve used to measure this more than a million people around the world in 137 countries and all different levels of life. And we had our first 5,000 data sets and I did the dumbest but most courageous thing. I gave it to the statistic of statistical research at the educational testing service in Princeton, New Jersey. You know, they do those little things called like the college entrance exams. Right? And I said it’s like hinder your child and saying is it’s okay. And so this person came back on there, forget she slammed this data on my desk, she had these big thick glasses and she said, do you have any idea what you have here? And I want to know what you’re going to do with this. And the point was, at that point she said, in many ways this was more robust than any college entrance exam. And this was like version one dot three. So we said, wow, is this a tattoo like as a cue, something that just sticks with you kinda like we thought Icu did, or is it something we could measurably improve permanently be wire and improves. So that became our quest and that set us on our path and I have formed peak learning my, my global company around this 32 years ago.

Paul, you’ve written it for organizations, leaders and individuals. A cue is the bedrock of human endeavor, enhance Aiccu for real gains in productivity, capacity, performance, innovation, morale, and more. I would love for you to share about the adversity quotient and the more than 1500 studies and the more than 500,000 people worldwide that have gone into developing this theory, maybe even a million now. I mean, it talks to me about this. I mean the research that you’ve put into this is, this is getting. You’ve been doing this day. You did you say 37 years

at 39. The research. I’ve had 39. The company had farmed for 32 years and touch wood as an entrepreneur, which is in my blood. We’ve grown peak for 32 straight years and just by doing this good work in the world and trying to enrich people’s eyes this way. So you know a is incredibly potent. I have to tell you, I’m just obsessed with this because what I’m interested in is what’s underneath what’s underneath. So when people say you got an enhanced performance, you’ve got to grow engagement, you’ve got to prove innovation got enhance energy or health or low quality of life or relationships or optimism or anything that people are talking about. I want to know what’s what undergirds that? What’s the deep bedrock of that where you can’t literally go any deeper so you don’t. One of my favorite moments is I just love this moment because you know we’ve done this in collaboration with Harvard business school.

We’ve done this in collaboration with Mit’s entrepreneurship program where they have me teach this there at Carnegie Mellon’s Global Leaders Program in Seattle. All these different schools that make us better and better and better and my favorite moment is when we do this with companies and entrepreneurs around the world is there’s this moment imagined the most cynical, jaded people you could ever meet who’s heard it all been through it all arms folded across. They’re just like, yeah, right, and when you serve up the science of a queue. And then I asked them this question of all the factors that influence your happiness, wellbeing and success, or I ask of all the factors to human factors that drive your business success. Which ones are in some way affected by your hq? And then there’s this brilliant pause and then you hear this kind of grumble in the room like, well all of them, all of them, all of them, all of them.

And I say, pardon me? And they go, all of them. I say, so you’re saying that if you could focus on and master one thing that could fortify and enhance everything else, this is it. And they go, well yeah. I say, okay, now here’s my next question. Can you think of anything else you could focus on and grow that would have that kind of impact? And usually I get blank stares. So I love that moment because what that says to me in, and I haven’t given up guys, I’m still working on it, but we excavate down. We’ve got some real bedrock here. If we can measurably strengthen how we respond to and deal with the tough stuff, it affects everything we care about.

You know, Dr Zoellner a man, my partner here. He when, when you, when is your birthday? January. Oh his. Or yours is in January minds. October third. So October third when you on October. Third thing. Thank you buddy. How old were you turning on October third dark 54. Okay. So the age of 50 for you. You obviously grew up without financial resources. Some could even classified as poor. Correct. You and I share. And that same background, my wife, uh, Dr Paul actually worked for Dr Zellner at the age of 1920. So my wife was his front desk lady some 18, 19 years ago and uh, that’s Kinda how we got to meet each other. But you were rejected by almost every bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma when you want it to build drop telemetry clinic, which is now the largest or the most successful, uh, in the Tulsa area. Your auto auction is now very successful. You now own a large percentage of a bank and by the way, all the banks rejected you. You’ve had a lot of success. You own a durable medical equipment company. Um, there’s a lot of other businesses I’m not mentioning, but you’ve had a lot of success and so you have mastered this adversity quotient z. Why have you been able to push on and most people stopped in? What question would you have for Dr Paul?

Well, I think I pushed on because I didn’t have a choice in my mind, you know, when you grow up the way you do and you don’t want to live like that, then you’ve got to figure out a ways to be successful in life and obviously being an optometrist and that’s what my degree’s in Dr Paul. And so I started that business and grew that and then did other businesses within Tulsa because I’m really kind of an entrepreneur. We’re stuck trapped inside an optometrist body. But uh, this adversity quotient, this is, this is mind blowing stuff. You’ve been piddling with Isa piddling in a very nice term researchy, but researching and doing and you’ve been owning for almost 40 years. And it’s fascinating to think that this could be a bedrock formation of people’s success or not success. Right? And, and I guess my, my mind is what left?

What do you have left to prove? What do you have left to, to. In other words, why is this not on everybody’s? Why? Why’s it not everybody’s tongue? I mean, why is this not something commonly? I’m going to go to the coffee shop and you sit down and starbucks and order my, just my black regular coffee and they stare at me like I’m weird and I sit there and people around me, I don’t hear a lot of. They’re not talking about eight q. Why? Why is that? You know, I think a lot of it has to do with our business model and approach and undergirding values and philosophy. Years ago we got asked to go really big, but it was going to be sort of mass commoditized versions of what we have and you know, there are a lot of assessments out there and I won’t mention their names because I don’t want to bad mouth them that have become watered down and they’re kind of meaningless and, and methods out there and, and things like that.

We wanted to go for the impact, that depth and duration of human impact. So by doing the work we do, the way we do, we’re exposed to fewer people. I mean, you know, I was, as you guys know, you know, the first book I was on Oprah three times I think it was, and you know, what, that kind of exposure, you know, there’s a lot of people and you know, we had the privilege of hitting all the top media and publications that got a lot of buzz and I’ve worked all over the world. You know, a lot of the top companies in the world use a cue not just to measure people obviously, but to measurably strengthened people to thrive in your word. I’m into truly thrive in an adversity world. So we haven’t, that hasn’t been our play to make it sort of the billboard.

But I do agree with you. I think you don’t think about even dating sites once. You want to know how that person responds to adversity. Isn’t that kind of everything? Yeah. And, and if you were hiring someone, we have a version where you can screen job candidates in about six minutes. We have more and more companies, big ones who are using a queue to screen their job candidates because if they can’t flourish or thrive with adversity, what could are they? Right. You know, so you’re spot on. I mean, you know, it’s an interesting. We have researchers, you know that and one of the pieces of research that stuns me all the time is, and we build on this. We’ve asked more than 35,000 employers across all industries around the world. This question, if you were hiring someone today, you had to pick a or B and a was the person with the perfect skills and qualifications, but not so great on a cube or be a person with an exceptionally acu who’s missing some bits and pieces?

Who would Japan? Well that almost 99, 98 point nine percent of people have employers pick b. So then we say, how are you getting at that? Now? There’s no only honestly, there’s only one way which is to scientifically assess that by measuring it because if you ask people how good are you with adversity or tell me about a time you faced adversity and how you did it. It’s like a first date. They’re never gonna show up smelling better, looking better and better than than in that moment. So we want valid measures. So you’re right. It’s something I think that’s the next level and I think the forefront of our research in terms of what’s left to prove. I’m going to give you a a statement I say conservatively guys, and that is I think within five years a peak learning my company. I think we will be in the business quite literally of upgrading Human Dna and I, I, we’re doing research right now around that with genetic code that and the relationship to adversity that we believe will lead to actually being able to not only predict how people will age and their propensity for cancer and depression and all these other things, but it will also be something we can fortify so that not only does afford a five year life but literally alters the DNA you pass down to your offspring and we’re working with the topics Brits in the world to do that.

I love that. That is, that is awesome. And you know the idea that making generations that follow you better off as incredibly stimulating. Now when you do an Iq test on someone, what is the parameters? It’s like zero to 100 and if so, wherever the parameters are, what is good? What is bad? What, what do you say? Okay, this is awesome. What are your, what are your numbers? Well, you know, the statisticians almost cry with joy because it’s got this big beautiful fat bell curve and all our studies are independent studies. So we never analyze our own data. We always handed off to expert segment attrition’s who do the data and tell us what we found. And so it’s got this big beautiful bell curve, the range on a queue, and this won’t mean a lot until you actually take the Aiccu profile ranges from 40 to 200.

But uh, you know, it’s, it’s the kind of thing you can’t gain because we’ve put a lot of trip wires in the assessment because of her work with mit and people that smart so that if you try to game it, you get kind of tripped up. So we get really, it’s the most valid, robust, reliable assessment of how people respond to adversity in the world. And honestly guys, you talked about resilience. We’ve been doing this so long that when we started, I literally had to spell the word resilience for our clients because they had never heard the word didn’t exist in common conversation. And then it became a thing like 10, 15 years later. Can you believe that? And look at where we are today. That’s crazy now. So 40 to $200. So you would advise someone to hire when you talked when you said employee a, employee b.

So when you said they have a high Iq score and above is high in your, in your opinion? Yeah. You know it’s all broken down. Statistically there’s low a below average, average above average and high. And not just on a cube, but what we call the four core dimensions of a queue which are c is control, which is your perceived ability to influence whatever happens next. Oh, is ownership. Which is like the accountability factor. It’s the step up factor and those who score higher, step up more naturally and those who score lower down and our is a huge one because its reach and the people who scored lower tend to catastrophize. You know, when adversity hits, it reaches into everything. But people who score high containment and then he is endurance, which is how long it lasts. We’re indoors in your mind, so your core responds to adversity is what we’re really measuring with a Q. Wow. That’s so cool. I’m fascinated. He’s. Yep.

Yeah. Hey, Paul, the Eric. Jeff here. I had a question as far as kind of transitioning from. We’re talking about when you’re looking at those job candidates, will a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs and in all of our clients, in fact at the thrive time show are business owners and they already have a team and so in your mind, do you have an action step for all those business owners out there who need to coach up their current team on how to overcome that adversity? Something they can train them up or coach them up on how to better overcome adversity to help the business succeed?

You better. I’m so glad you asked that. You know, there’s a couple things. Number one is we’re not. It’s not about overcoming and it’s not about, you know, getting past or surpassing or surmounting or conquering adversity. We have this adversity continuum, you know, and if you can manage it, manage, imagine at the bottom, there’s avoiding getting, trying to get away from it. Then surviving the next level. Then coping, which is my least favorite word, is the one most popular in the world of psychology, which is how do you cope with hardship laws? Sacral, you know, all these things. The next level up is managing, which is what they teach in business school, but the top, when we measure a q and a million people, these people do something different. They’re like alchemists and so they fundamentally harness the adversity, which means think about this, think about this, being able to tap the adversity and convert it into the fuel.

This high octane fuel that propels you to a place you met. Here’s the key part. You never would get to without that adversity. Oh yes. So now it becomes like you Dr Z, you know, the fuel of your life and you’re just kinda going, Gosh, you know, I can explain to people how important this is and I can try to talk them and motivate them and all these things. But what we found for business leaders go into your questionnaire is that if we don’t measure this as a baseline and then t send some of the acute tools, which I don’t, I’m not on the show to promote a book, but in my icu books we teach aikido tools that we’ve been honed in.

I want to cut you off real quick. I, I am on the show to promote your books because your books are awesome. dr paul stoltz Just so nice guys. I mean it’s. Your book is so filled with research 39 years of research and if you’re out there and you’re struggling to push through adversity, you don’t know Dr z and Dr and you don’t. You don’t know Dr. so you don’t know me. You don’t understand the level rejections that we get. You have no idea. We’ve been recording this podcast forever and to get somebody of your caliber on the show, I’m not going to be weak sauce about this and I’m not saying you’re being weak. I’m saying it’s not. It’s not polite to to promote yourself. I’m going to tell you though, if you don’t buy your book, you’ve got a psychological problem that cannot be fixed. There’s something wrong with you. Got A by Dr Paul Stoltz Book. I’m serious because

I would have to capture that quote for our website. I made this because

I have been rejected so many times. I hear so many people say, I just don’t deal well with rejection and if you’ve ever watched back to the future.

Yeah,

Lorraine. I just don’t deal with that kind of rejection. I mean his upper out there and you are dealing with rejection. That’s keeping you that rejection. Is that objection keeping you from that ultimate manifestation of your dreams and goals? You need to buy this book. Paul, what? dr paul stoltz, if you had to recommend one book for our listeners, what’s. What’s one book you’ve written when you say, this is the book that I think I most succinctly discussed, the adversity quotient.

You know, really there’s two. One is the original adversity quotient book, but of course all the examples and stories in there a bit from the past, right? We’re an updated version right now in Chinese, but that doesn’t help you. The newest book, Grit is really the one that kind of captures some of the newest stuff that we have. So we have a q and Grit. It’s like, you know, all fence in defense, right? A cue is how you respond to whatever comes at you and which is sorta like defense and as a huge effect on everything. Grit. Our version of grit, which is an upgraded version of Grit, we called grid to dot. Oh, and I can explain why is about offense. It’s sort of like how do you dig deep and do whatever it takes to effectively go after your most worthy goals and make them happen. And, and so those two pieces, I guess, any coach go into your twins and Vikings who I saw the other day in Los Angeles, by the way, uh, you know, any coach would tell you you need both, right? To win.

I want to ask you this because in your book grit, I’m on your website, you talk about it. You say grit is the defining element and what it takes to realize your most important and rewarding ambitions. If a cue is about defense, again, if acres about defense higher respond to whatever comes your way. Grit is about offense. It defines the degree, the duration and the quality of effort you invest to make good things happen. A Z I want. I want to tee this up. We’ve been doing this podcast for a long time and first you and I were offered the hell Gig, which means we do the radio show on the weekend hours. It’s the weekend show. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. And they had to test to test to see is this show good? And then Dr Paul, they said, you know, why don’t you guys try like on the way home, like five to seven, which is not a hell Gig.

It’s actually a nice time slot. It’s a heck of a game. And then it was like, hey, let’s go to prime time and now we’re number two on the itunes charts for business. And that’s just the most recent example. And if you’re out there and you’re going through adversity, you’re going through rejection, I just feel like you have to be able to process adversity as the motivation for offense. Talk to us about how all entrepreneurs, all successful people you’ve studied have been able to increase the degree, the duration, and the quality of their effort as they become rejected more and more.

You know, I love, love, love working with entrepreneurs and there are among one of the biggest pockets of people we work with around the world. Hundreds of thousands of them actually over the years in every possible business in size you can imagine. And here’s the thing, and there’s a big wake up call. We had a big wake up call, uh, years ago. I was doing some work with Harvard business school. I still am. And they wanted me to do this book. They were very interested in a book called True Grit. So we do the proposal, get it underway. We’re getting going and I’ll say, get a phone calls as a poly of bad news. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they’re releasing the movie with Jeff Bridges. I went, oh, and it was the best thing that ever happened, like adversity can be because it made us kind of go back under ground and deepen our research and here’s what we discovered.

Grit. Here’s the thing. Grit is white hot right now in education, parenting, sports, everything. You know, we’re talking to the Chicago cubs and bunch of other teams and they’re all, you know, of course everybody talks about grit, right? Here’s the problem. Can you have tons of grit and be utterly evil? Kenny be have tons of grit and be a despicable human being. Kenny have tons of grit and be hacking away at the wrong stuff. And they answered all those. Yes. So what we began to do is I’ve asked this of half a million leaders around the world, so if you had to choose, you know, we think about the kind of person you want to be, the cuddle leader. Do you want to be the kind of contribution you are making the world, the kind of business you want to grow, the kind of people you want to hire, what matters more the quantity or the quality of grit.

And 100 percent, that’s an impossible statistic, say quality. And so we have the only measure and method in the world that gets a crit, holistically quantity with quality. Meaning isn’t there a difference between Dump Grit and smart grid? We measure that. Isn’t there a difference between good grit and bad grit, which is the effect you have on the people around you as you go after your goals. I mean guys, I’m super intense about what I do. I, we’re on a mission doing this work in the world. But if I go after it in ways that burnout my team, even though my intentions are good, that’s bad grit. So we have a way of measuring and awakening leaders and their people at all levels of down to, you know, a sixth graders, a tooth, not only the quantity of grit, the magnitude of grit, but the kind of grid that you demonstrate as you go after goals.

And that affects the quality and the quantity of effort you put in. And by the way, not just for anything because you know, what I found out is that most people are like cheap sandpaper. You know, it’s few went to home depot and he said, give me the grittiest sandpaper you got and you got like a 40 and it had tons of grit and you began to apply that grit if you didn’t apply it right, or if you apply to Harvard, then pretty soon it wears off and so a lot of people you meet say I used to have a lot more grit when I was younger, but there’s a kind of sandpaper and I found this out through a beautiful story that I encountered from a top craftsmen that if it’s applied right, gets better with use. And so I always thought, you know, which kind of sandpaper would you rather be? So if we use our grid in the right ways for the right and most worthy goals, it just gets better and stronger our entire life long and that makes us make the kind of contributions we want to make in the world. That’s what it’s all about.

Your new book. And again, for the sake of time, I don’t want to take too much of your time. Your new book. Grit is sensational and you broke the book down into three. Simple timeout, timeout, timeout. What we’re in the south is a grits, cornmeal mass. You boil, you slow, boil over the stove, and then you eat it like an oatmeal is passive aggressive attempt. What do more grits is this, is this we’re talking grits, right? Or did you say grit? Because it gets. I get all kinds of etc. Standing. So that’s a good one. I’m sure there’s a good metaphor in there somewhere, right? You start with something that has a hard shell and work it until it becomes soft and delicious. Good. Really good. I want to. I want to aSk them because at the book, grit is broken into these three sections and I’d love for you to break them down succinctly. For all the listeners out there who are thinking about purchasing the book, let’s talk about grok. G, r o k, are you talking talking about rob gronkowski and are you spelling it wrong or was this section of your book about,

you know, an obsessively practical nerd if, if you can’t use it, what’s the point? Got it. And so I broke it into three g’s grok, gauge and grow, because grok is a word I love. It comes from an old science fiction novel that means to understand something like at the cellular level so you understand or comprehend it fully. And so the attempt in the book is to help you understand grit across all the dimensions, growth, resilience, instinct and tenacity, and also an additional factor we call robustness as well as the quality of grit very simply so we lay it out simply so you can grok, grok is all about. And then gauge. We actually give you a private code in the book to access the instrument that’s used all over the world by companies from amazon to deloitte to everybody. That is the grit gauge and so you get a link to go and measure your grill so you gauge it, get to see what does mine look like and what are all the results of click with some video coaching and everything else and some chips to begin to grow it. Which is the third part where we teach some of the tools that we use in the programs. We do with companies and for entrepreneurs, companies around the world, uh, to help measurably improve your grit. So just grok gauging, grow.

Now I want to ask you this because I know that you lived in Minnesota during a time. I was born in 1980, so in 1987. I remember the Minnesota twins, uh, went to the world series and the twin cities. We’re caught up in this hysteria. We had the homer hankies. We went from worst to first. We did, we did really well that year. And I would like for you to share with listeners out there, uh, were you involved? Did You go to the games and the, in the 1987 Minnesota twins world series, did you show up? Do you measure the aiccu of all the players? Talk to me about the team that overcame massive, massive adversity to get to the world series. I’d love to hear you share with share with the listeners about that.

Well, you know, there’s a bigger story here, isn’t there guys? And that is, if you look at any sports team that has, I mean, baseball’s ultimate grid, isn’t it? Because it’s not 16 games, it’s a hundred and 62 games before you even hit the playoffs and that doesn’t include preseason. Right? So how do you stay focused and on your game and honed and sharpened fit for for that duration. That’s all about grits. So we. I was doing this research at the university of Minnesota at that time. I did have the privilege of us attending game seven. No you didn’t. I did win. The metrodome just exploded and you get, you know what that at the moment is this. People talk about happiness. I think the highest goal is to achieve this deep sense of what we call gratification, which means you’ve gone after like the twins did or any sports team, something nearly impossible but so awesome and so elevating not just Cuba to those around you and dig deep, do what it takes, just reroute all the way along and somehow make it happen. And that’s what the twins did that day and that year and any great sports team, any great business integrated human being who creates the real breakthroughs that improve human life. That’s what they do.

For the listeners out there that want to learn more about you and potentially you want to talk to you and maybe debate with you about whether ken, her back in is 34 home runs or kirby puckett and is 3:32 batting average was more important. We want to learn more about you and the 1987 Minnesota twins team are how, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you? What’s the website you would direct all of the listeners to learn more about you, Dr. Paul

outlets kind of. You’d ask. Certainly you can Go to peak learning.com. P e a k leaRning.com. That’s our main site and we’re going through a big upgrade on that because we’re relentlessly trying to improve our sort of mantra at peak is ever better. So we hold ourselves to that everyday and say, you know, what are we doing to be better today? And so we’re working on that. Second of all, uh, Info at [inaudible] dot com that way my team is sure to get me your message and I really do want to invite anybody who’s listening to this. You’re brInging your questions, your skepticism and your concerns, your applications, anything you’ve got your thoughts, your suggestions. I welcome all of it. Uh, you know, this is a lifelong conversation for me and I just am privileged to interact with you and share my life’s work with you.

This is a bonus question because you’re from Minnesota, you’ve grown up around Minnesota and this is the, this is kind of like an off the record but still in the podcast question. Okay, that’s fair. I’m going to speak minnesotan here. there we go. Oh, dr paul stoltz, don’t you know what, what is your favorite hot dish? I mean, if you are new, uh, describe, uh, your favorite hot dish or version of rhubarb, what would it be? Hey, you know, I ha. I just, a couple of weeks aGo, I went there to that high school reunion thing, you know, and so people came up to me and some of them had that accent and he came up and they said, hey, hey, hey there, Dr. Paul, how you doing? I mean, I was in your class, I don’t know if you remember me and everything, but uh, we went to that smorgasbord thing together.

I don’t know if you remember who was it? northern played a bit of ice hockey and all right. And, uh, and I think he scored a goal once and so if anybody who is there for that day, I actually scored a goal, uh, you know, it’s a lifelong friend to me because I was not worthy of my high school hockey. We celebrate that goal with you celebrate that. A lot of adversity. Stoltz, I appreciate you. You’re a great american. We’d like to end every show with three to one and a boom at whIch stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum which you, which is what it takes to overcome adversity and to become a successful entrepreneur. dr paul stoltz, are you ready to give her boom on the three, two, one? Are you ready to bring the boom? Let’s do it. Here we go. Are you ready? Absolutely. Tough. Are you ready? Let’s do. Nothing’s right. Boom.

All right. The three is this. You got to be able to know you’re a queue and you to be able to know your grit, you gotta be able to use them together. It’s changed people’s lives. Number two, the two is this, that when you take figure out what’s your biggest, most important adversity, that if you conquered it, would number two lead to the biggest positive breakthrough in your life. And number three, the moment you end this podcast, ask yourself to pay keen attention. Put on that lens of how do I handle every adversity from the smallest frustration to the biggest tragedy and setback. If you start to change that, you will change your life. You will change the world.

Dr. Paul, have a great evening. I appreciate you so much for being on the sheer awesome. Thank you man. Hey you guys. Thank you. It’s been a real privilege. Keep. Keep being awesome. Take care. All right. Thanks guys. Take care.