Episode 1: Mastery is Overrated
Brett Malone on Growth Mindset, Reinvention, and Saying Yes to Everything
About This Episode
For today's episode, I'm joined by Brett Malone. Brett is a dynamic executive now leading the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (www.vtcrc.com), one of the largest research enterprises in the country. He’s fluent in a broad range of technologies and has had 4 successful startups in his career. He’s been in aerospace, biotech, software, and engineering and he’s passionate about building and leading high-performance teams.
Brett’s also an accomplished ultramarathoner, completing multiple 50k, 50 milers and 100 mile races, including the Leadville 100 in Colorado. He’s coached marathon runners and has helped hundreds of first-time marathoners get across the finish line.
In this episode we zoom in on the process of reinvention, talk about why it’s useful to find activities you aren’t good at, and dig into how to test out new experiences to see if they’re a good fit for you. The episode of packed with insights and actionable experiments. I hope you enjoy!
Links and Resources
Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule)
The Genome War - James Shreeve
Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center
Level 5 Leadership - Jim Collins
Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey
Episode Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
trail, leadville, marathon, growth mindset, running, confidence, learning, surf, mastery, mental training
Brett Malone 00:00
The energy in your body is, is unfathomable. People have no idea what their capacity, what their capacity really is in their body. And it's not until you really get it dialed in mentally. So I don't know, for me. For me, Leadville was 80% mental and it's like you had to be able to say it's possible.
Pete Kadushin 00:32
Welcome to the mental training lab. I'm Pete Kadushin, your host, and my job is to have fun conversations that leave you with actionable tools, little experiments that will help you improve your mindset and mental skills so that you can do the things you love at a higher level. Our guest today is Brett Malone, let me tell you a little bit about Brett. Brett is a dynamic executive now leading the Virginia Tech corporate Research Center, one of the largest research enterprises in the country. He's fluent in a broad range of technologies, and he's had an absolutely wild career that includes for successful startups. I mean, he's been in aerospace, biotech software engineering. And the thing that really stood out to me in this conversation was his passion for building and leading high performance teams. On the personal side, Brett is an accomplished ultra marathoner, and he's run multiple 50 K's 50 milers, 100 mile races, including the Leadville 100, out in Colorado. And he's also coached marathon runners and has helped hundreds of first time marathoners get across the finish line. In this episode, he zoom in on the process of reinvention. And we talk about why it's useful to find activities that you aren't good at. And we dig into how to test out new experiences to see if they're actually a good fit for you. But enough already, let's get to the show. Brett, welcome. It's so excited to have you on the show. Really appreciate having you here. And I'm excited to talk a little bit about really unpacking what goes on in between your ears from a performance standpoint, because you've spent a lot of time on the trail, right, but then also thinking about what that would look like for entrepreneurs and researchers, and how they could also leverage those mental skills. And so that's a long way of saying thank you. And welcome.
Brett Malone 02:05
Thanks, Pete. It's great to be here. And I really look forward to sharing this with you. And it's exciting to be your first guest out here into the podcast. And we're already talking about trail running, ultra running, entrepreneurship and everything in between. and
Pete Kadushin 02:19
hopefully this is not too serious a conversation because at this point, you know that I'm not that serious of a guyto kick things off. So we were talking a little bit before we hit record. And you said that in this month alone, you'll have surf the Outer Banks, you will have swept a 50k Trail run. Working on the support squad, you're going to race motorcycles, and you're gearing up to paddle surf the New River. Did I miss anything?
Brett Malone 02:45
No, that's pretty. That's pretty much it. It's March March Madness. So I'm trying to cram as much adventure as I can into the month of March is an important month for me. And why not find a better way to celebrate, then get out into 45 degree Atlantic Ocean and surf the Outer Banks. And you know, I just finished on Saturday. So I helped a good friend of mine, Ron a 50k, where I was the safety runner, make sure everybody completed the course safely. So that meant I was the first guy on the trail and the last guy off the trail. And it's just a lot of fun, especially when you put your mind when you're helping others. And so yeah, I'm looking forward to wrapping up the month with a little bit more adventure on the racetrack with the motorcycle.
Pete Kadushin 03:30
That's wild.
Brett Malone 03:32
it's all it's all it's all new growth experience minds that I love him
Pete Kadushin 03:37
Well, I mean, you're clearly you're looking for new opportunities, new ways to engage with ways to go fast, you know, Mach five with your hair on fire. And one of my questions, though, because you have a new day job. And so I'm curious how you think about time and how you fit together the training, the playing and to the working? And so how does that all come together for you?
Brett Malone 03:58
Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about that mastery is overrated. So that's my current mentality, which is get into it. You know, I've got enough trail miles on me, you know, after having done Leadville and training like a maniac, you know, in breaking your body down to almost nothing. And always spending time being injured. I'm actually taking a more holistic view of it and really just, you know, trying to get out there and do different things mix it up. And, and I think the variety, it definitely keeps me motivated. And I don't feel like I've got one gigantic rock to break down and I've got to train my guts out for one race. And so it's actually very easy to do and it keeps me mentally sharp because I'm moving from adventure to adventure.
Pete Kadushin 04:51
This actually led me into my next question really well, and I wish we had planned this actually, but we haven't. And so I am curious because your performance experience your Your performance life has evolved over time. And so if you could give us the quick sketch, you know, if we were going to be writing your performance story, what would some of the major chapter headings look like?
Brett Malone 05:09
Man? Okay, so personally, I did a lot of marathon. So one thing that I will say is, I spent way too much time being sort of one, you know, one sport focused marriage, you know, road marathon running, and we were coaches for leukemia Lymphoma Society. So I started doing a lot of marathons. There was a point where, you know, I was doing five or six marathons a year, I think I have probably over 40 marathons under my belt, and all with, you know, with the good team of raising money for leukemia, Lymphoma Society, we were coaches, so we mentored we, you know, we coached we advise, so we spent, you know, every Saturday on the trail with long runs. But then, you know, I kind of got burned out. What I learned was, I wanted to take the next step into bigger adventure. So I started doing more ultra running. And you know, me along with the whole rest of the ultra running community that read Chris McDougall's book Born to Run, you know, you, you read a story about Leadville, and then all of a sudden, it sort of clicks, it's like, I want to do that. And so like, You're asking me the story of my sort of performance, it was a lot, it was a lot of those things, where it's like, Oh, that looks ridiculously hard. But it also looks doable if you put your work into it. And so Leadville was really my motivation to, to get into the trails, it took me probably three years to train and to get to the point where I could go out there and do it. And, but it's also, you know, similar to what I did with my professional career, so, you know, thinking about exciting new adventures that I'd want to get into from a technology perspective.
Pete Kadushin 06:53
And so you had the road marathon experience? And then so then organized the new endeavor around Leadville, and the bit that would you say, the big rock to break down. And now you've you've transitioned into a third phase or a third chapter where it's really an opportunity to do different things and expose yourself in new ways. And was that from the it sounds like the Leadville and the ultra running took a toll on the body? And so is it that that pushed you towards trying new stuff getting in the water, racing motorcycles? Or was it something else?
Brett Malone 07:30
I think it's just, you know, all of a sudden, it's about can you accumulate experience? So, you know, I find now that the interesting stories about the interesting experiences are the currency. And so, you know, to be able to say, hey, March Madness, you know, I'm gonna do all these crazy things. And it's really just about experiencing what's possible, and to be able to, like, enjoy these different sports. You know, there's, there were a lot of times when I was training in Leadville, that I got a lot of joy from being on the trail. And it wasn't while I was racing, it was just being there. And you know, so and there are a lot of times you don't have to be in a competitive mode to enjoy surfing or, you know, obviously, learning how to, you know, race a bike quickly around a track. And so, for me, it has morphed into trying to accomplish one thing like a race, and moved into enjoyment of the experience.
Pete Kadushin 08:37
I also heard that shift towards beginners mindset, and that this whole idea of mastery being overrated, that it's fun to be a beginner again,
Brett Malone 08:47
oh, man, I tell you exactly, you know, and so I was on a panel session for entrepreneurs not too long ago, and they asked me, hey, what would what would you tell your 25 year old version of yourself? And you know, and I look back on it, and I think to myself, Oh, man, I sweat a lot of details. That didn't matter. And I didn't try enough new things. And so I was really hesitant to take risks or what I perceived as risks, but, you know, really, they were, it wasn't until I started doing new experiences that I felt like I was growing. And I was frustrated when I was in my 20s because I was trying to get one thing done perfectly, as opposed to, you know, rounding out myself and experiencing other things. And as I look back on it now, in hindsight, there were the variety of experiences, what makes me helpful to other other companies, other people.
Pete Kadushin 09:43
One of the things that's really standing out, and what I'm excited to explore is how your performance career and then the or evolution of your professional career have really mirrored each other in some ways and that the skills that you learned in that journey professional Then carried over in the way that you've now continued to seek opportunities to, you know, be the worst person in the water when it comes to surfing and being excited about that. Right?
Brett Malone 10:09
that's right. Well, you know, I think learning to jump from experience to experience is sort of what that currency is. And a lot of people, I hear a lot of people say, Oh, you know, someday, or, you know, they need to adapt and pivot, but they can't. And, you know, sometimes you have to leave something you love behind, because, and that can be very painful as well, because you have to move on. And there's that sort of friction between letting go, and, you know, you know, all the grief that comes around that, versus, you know, being able to take on having an open mindedness to be able to take on new things. And it's, it's sort of that attachment, if you want to go to a Buddhist point, you know, you can talk about this attachment is the source of suffering. And so, for me, being able to be open minded to try new things, and not be afraid to fail. And, you know, everyone analyzes this word of failure, but to me, it's sort of like, having the confidence that you can get into new things, and maybe you're not going to be the world's best at it. But if you have the confidence that you can reinvent yourself and go into a new adventure, then that risk of failing is is not, it doesn't feel so scary.
Pete Kadushin 11:27
Man, there's, there's a lot to unpack there in terms of directions, we could go, right, because I'm getting the lightbulb shining, you know, the with around growth mindset, right? There's the mental flexibility piece, right? So that attachment, and then being able to notice that I'm attached to an idea or to my identity, and then to have a skill that you can purposefully use. Right, that it's not an accident, but instead you go Oh, that's no longer useful to me. Let me go ahead and unhook from that. Yeah, right. So there's that piece. And then you mentioned confidence and fear of failure. And so there's kind of those different streams spreading out in front of us, which one would you like to wander down?
Brett Malone 12:03
I think confidence coming from experience, and being able to translate that into taking more risk, because I think it's important for young people that are, that are somewhat hung up on trying to master something, as opposed to having the confidence to to attempt something. And you know, basically always say yes to someone. So I had a, you know, a close, dear friend of mine who it was yes to everything. And it was it was a beautiful mindset, because you were never, you most people move to the negative most people think about, oh, well, I'm immediate, I'm going to react my base point here is to say no, and then you got to convince me otherwise to get into it. And her viewpoint was beautiful, because it was just, he convinced me why I shouldn't do it, you know, why shouldn't I do this? And and it's, it's that mindset that is embodied in that growth approach. And it's what separates Frankly, I think, the great entrepreneurs, the great athletes, from others who, you know, they get attached to mediocre ideas, and they can't let go of it, because everything else is a no.
Pete Kadushin 13:23
So I'm hearing a lot of the, that posture of yes is a lot about possibilities, right? When something is brought to you whether it's Hey, do you want to go surf the Outer Banks for the first time, or it's, hey, check out this new business idea. Rather than starting from a posture of here's all the reasons why it wouldn't work you go, I can see a lot of different possibilities. I see opportunity. Right, and then I can prune from there. But it's really about that shift in posture. Right to not necessarily be protective, and moving away from but instead, being interested engaged almost.
Brett Malone 13:55
Absolutely, yeah, I mean, being interested in the state of mind that you know, you're going to have, when you're done with it, even if, you know, you're gonna suck at it for a while. But even when you're even when you suck at it, when you're when you come off the beach, or when you come off the racetrack, or, you know, whatever it is you're doing, if you come off the trail, if you're a first time trail runner, and you're trying to bomb down a hill with a highly technical trail, and you know, you might just feel like this is terrible. I twist my ankle, whatever. You know, it takes practice. And so but even the novices who come off of a gnarly trail run, you know, when they get to the bottom of it after attempting to bomb it, no matter how fast or slow they are. They're all just stoked. I mean, they're all fired up. They're like, Man, that was so much fun, or, you know, like that trail was beautiful. And so that mindset of knowing that you're going to be in a different state of mind after the adventure. And yeah, I mean, if you're a master Got it. And you know, you slice through perfectly and all your lines are great. Or you get, you know, a PR coming down alpha hope pass whatever it is, you're, you know, you're still going to have that same state of mind. And so for me, I think looking at that, in, you never know really what's possible. And until you get to the other side of that, and I'll give you a great story. I mean, the what I learned from my only DNF was 10 minutes after I dropped, I realized I could have kept going, like, it was a mindset of, you know, I was completely wiped out, you know, somewhere around mile 75. And, you know, I threw in the towel is really, really early in my running career and in ultras, and I sat down, you know, got a little coffee, got some cookies, I sat down by a fire got warm, up, like 10 minutes later, I felt like a different person. I'm like, shit, I could have kept going, like, why did I, you know, why did my brain let me stop. And it's like, it was only until I learned that lesson. So now when I think about, you know, not that I think about dropping, but when I talk to other people who are like right on the edge, if we're, you know, for coaching somebody in an ultra or if I'm, if I'm a safety runner, and an ultra and somebody is really having a bad day, and they're thinking about dropping, but you know, you know that if you get a little nutrition in them, you get them sit down, and you get them to think about it like they recover so quickly. So it's really amazing what your, your mind will allow your body to do if you keep it in the right positive mind frame.
Pete Kadushin 16:43
I was actually just thinking of this earlier, totally spontaneous. I had a buddy in the high country who liked to drag me up and down mountains on mountain bikes. And we would never drive all the way to the trailhead, we would park some absurd distance away, and then we would ride to the trailhead. So like for me what a normal ride, that was just the warm up. And it's amazing what happens when you go beyond what you'd like, if your legs are already shot and you haven't even hit the trail, you've got to go find some more energy. And it's amazing to know that it's in there. And to learn that firsthand, because it can be really hard to watch some YouTube highlights of your favorite runner or your favorite biker, and go like, Oh, they can push through. I can too. Yeah. And so it sounds like you're able to share some of that. And I think, you know, within the context of a coaching relationship, or if you're safety running, and you can catch somebody in the moment, you can really tip the scales for them. I'm wondering whether it's an athlete or an entrepreneur, how do you learn that lesson, that first time because you know, you're standing at the top of the cliff getting ready to Cliff jump, and if you've never jumped before, it's really hard to go like, you know, what, even the bad stuff is probably not that bad.
Brett Malone 17:53
Yeah, you know, every company is different. Every race is different, you know, everybody runs their own race, everybody starts their own company. And you know, even if you're a software company and doing something exactly like what 100 other companies are doing, your company, your experience is going to be different. If it's the first time you've done it, it's almost impossible to know what it's going to feel like until you're out there. You know, and, you know, I look back on my first company, and I ag you know, like I said, I sweated the details over things that just absolutely did not matter. I mean, I burned the midnight oil, I was up till two in the morning, sweating, ridiculous payroll, things that could have been outsourced. But you know, I felt like I had to get all that. Right. And I had to be the one doing it, you know, it's like, it's a time. To me, I felt like I had to do everything and I had to, it was really just youth not understanding how to prioritize not understanding where to put your effort. And you know, just the basic credo principle. And, you know, for me, I didn't have a good understanding of where the 80% of the results were coming from. And so I spent a lot of time wasting, wasting cycles. But you know, I'm not sure anyone could have told me differently, you know, I had to swim around in those details, you had to swim around in the muck, and you know, to go back to trail running, nobody knows, nobody knows what their body is going to do after having 50 miles on it, or, you know, after being out there for 12 hours, 15 hours, like you're a your body is a different biological entity and 12 hours after 12 or 15 hours of running. And so everybody reacts differently. And so, you know, you've got to be able to get yourself out to that point and feel it for the first time. And then the next time, you'll know how to handle it, like, Oh, I need more nutrition I need to last. And you know, the next time you work on your startup, you'll know what's what's important and what you're going to need and what your company needs. And so, it's really a tough lesson now mentorship can go a long way. So we We try, you know, we try to make sure our companies have all the best support they can. But every company is different. And every entrepreneur is different, because everyone has a different, you know, Outlook and mindset.
Pete Kadushin 20:16
So what I'm hearing is, if we were looking for a magic wand, right, if we were hoping that you could learn the principles from somebody else, just by watching the YouTube highlights that there's still got to be some experiential component, right, that somebody couldn't have actually told you different if you could beam in a time machine back to your 20 something year old self, your 20 something year old self would be like, no, I really have to do this payroll, you don't understand?
Brett Malone 20:42
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, one of the other panelists actually said that, exactly. You know, one of the other panelists answers was, Hey, I don't think the 20 year old self version of me would listen to anybody. But I do, I do think that, you know, there are shortcuts, but at the same time, you got to put the work in and in over time, that's really all experiences. And so if you can move more quickly, to the point of where you have a growth mindset to take on new experience, you know, I might have been able to let things go faster. If If I'd have thought, alright, well, I want to do this other stuff. So I ran my first startup company for about 11 years. And I read a book in AI, my PhD is in aerospace engineering. And so one of the most common questions I get is, How on earth did you spend the last 15 years of your career in biotech, you're an aerospace engineer. And it's like, it immediately defines who, what the world how the world puts labels on you. Because, you know, when I say I did my PhD in aerospace engineering, and then I said, Yeah, and I've, I've been a startup founder for an oncology diagnostics company, they're like that, that just doesn't compute for people. But for me, it was, I got to the point where I was running my first startup company, I had mastery over that company to the point we, we were selling to aerospace and defense companies. And I had taken such a deep dive in that one industry. Our software was used by nine of the top 10 aerospace and defense companies in the world. I could walk into, I had badges to Boeing to Lockheed Martin, I had, you know, I knew all the people at all the big industry. So it was like this hyperfocused A incredible mastery of one industry. And it's very equivalent to the marathon running I did, you know, I just killed myself in one industry, killed myself in one sport. And I read a book called the genome war. And it was all about the mapping of the human genome. And Craig Ventner, in the battle between the public and the private sector of mapping the human genome, in this book was, you know, released probably around 2003, or four. And it was right after they had, they had released the first DNA sequence of the human genome in about 2000. I read that book, and it was, like, I want to do that. It was exactly the same feeling I had is, you know, when I read Born to Run, and they talked about Leadville, and I said, I want to do that. And that book single handedly got me out of the aerospace industry and into the biotech industry. And, you know, it's not as if I just left all those lessons of aerospace behind, because now I have all the depth of experience of systems engineering and software and defense contractors and, you know, what makes an F 22 fly? And, you know, there are things that translate there obviously, are things that don't translate to biology, but at the same time, leadership and technology and ability to manage projects. I mean, those are all there's a lot of very valuable transferable things and I didn't I felt like I started growing exponentially when I made that career shift and you know, most that in some people would never make that shift.
Pete Kadushin 24:15
So one of the reasons why I was really excited to have this conversation and why I want to have conversations like this in general is because I I didn't know a lot of this about you. Right, we've known each other for a while now and I I love getting the backstory to go with it like your origin story is a superhero. The funny story, I actually had no idea that you had a PhD for like the first three or four years we knew each other. He was so like under the radar, you don't walk around being like
Brett Malone 24:42
yeah, you're the only one that I don't make call me Dr. Malone. So you know, consider yourself privileged.
Pete Kadushin 24:47
Oh, I didn't know I fell right in between that right in the middle of the Venn diagram then! You know, the stories are amazing, but what I'm hearing a lot of is Is this interest or maybe just an itch that you got that you listen to? That said, getting out of what was comfortable, right? Because mastery isn't always comfortable, right, we can continue to push the edge, right. But it gets harder to find an edge when you're that good at something or have spent that much time. And so for you both performance wise, and then from a career, you saw something that was exciting. And rather than holding on to and not having that flexibility, right, you were able to say, I can totally reinvent myself, just because I was an aerospace engineer doesn't mean I have to continue to do that. Which is not something that most people have the capacity to do. And so the question would be, how did that happen?
Brett Malone 25:46
I think it boils down to an intellectual curiosity, I think passion and curiosity, and at least the ability to work hard, you know, a PhD really is just a label they put on you for saying, you, okay, you've spent 11 years at this institution, and you've worked really hard at writing this long manuscript and diving, you now have become an expert in one very esoteric, finally, you know, home thing. You know, for me, the transit, I sucked at biotech, just like I sucked at trail running when I started in, but it didn't deter me, because I was really fascinated, I was genuinely, you know, interested, I listened to podcasts, you know, when they were, before they were podcasts, you know, you'd listen to these goofy little recordings of people talking about biotech and sequencing the genome. And this was before CRISPR, and before all the cool technologies. And so, I mean, I was very, very fortunate to have some connections that got me into my very first biotech company, and I, you know, I got a job building a software software team inside a biotech company. And so I took 50%, of what I knew, you know, I was a software geek from the aerospace industry. So I left the airplanes behind, but I brought my mastery of software to the new industry. And that that's really what helped me make that transition. But my passion to understand what makes this biology of the DNA tick, really kept me motivated and kept me learning until I got to a certain point where, okay, I, I knew the basics, and I could work and communicate with people in the industry.
Pete Kadushin 27:33
I think one of the big challenges is not listening to that passion and curiosity to start with, right, with clients that I've engaged or students when I was teaching, that it can be easy to miss the signal for the noise, and not pick up on that moment that spark where you were reading, Born to Run and went, Oh, this is a write or picked up the book about the genome and went, Ah, that's no, this is the next step. Yeah. And then from there, it was taking an expertise that you'd already earned, right through the hard work, whether it was running, or it was the software piece, and it was finding a way to feed that curiosity. And then you can become really good at something right, but in a different context with a different group of people in a different way.
Brett Malone 28:19
Yeah, you know, and I had a starting point I had to base to work from so if I had not been doing so much marathon, I would not have had a base to launch into ultra running, I mean that, you know, it would have been a lot more work. If I didn't, if I hadn't have gone through a Ph. D. program of any discipline, you know, it would have been much harder for me to acclimate into the biotech field, for example. And so, you know, I had a running start, it wasn't like, these were completely Greenfield new, shiny things. In hindsight, they're very incremental. And, but the thing that kept me going is a lot of people get distracted by something that's shiny and trendy. And they chase it for a little while, but they really don't have the deep passion for it. Like, for me, a lot of the, the interest in biotech was the desire to be part of that club, because the club was so damn cool. You know, it was like, these are guys who map the code of life. And it's like, I want to meet and I finally eventually got to meet Francis Collins, Craig Venter. You know, like, I set a goal, which was I want to be part of this club and I want to meet these just giants of science. And and that's really what motivated me to keep going even when I sucked at it.
Pete Kadushin 29:39
This is really exciting because we have a new a new player on the on the court, right? So we were thinking about, at least I was thinking about mastery and competence and, and this idea of also being able to make choice right being able to say you know what, not this now it's that way but what I'm hearing now is a ton of the connection wanting to be part of the the group of people People who are doing the cool work or, you know, from what I know of you and the ultra community, right, once you're in the club once you've gone and you've been on the trail a little bit like, that's a fun club to be a part of as well. I do want to get into your new day job, right, that hearing you talk about it, there's a big community piece as well, that sense of building something, people like us do things like this. And so I guess, to kick things off, what are you doing now is a day job because it's no longer biotech specific.
Brett Malone 30:35
Now I have the best job, you could I have the job that was designed for me, and I never knew it. So I am the CEO of the Virginia Tech corporate Research Center. So we are a University Research Park, we have 227 technology companies in our park, we've got 37 buildings, is sprawled over 200 plus acres, it is a beautiful campus. And we have over 3500 people that are that are working every day to launch their company to keep their company going to grow to the next level. And, and so I am just in heaven, because we have companies that are working in biotech companies that are working in drug discovery, companies that are working in aerospace software, you know, what now we have companies are doing quantum computing. So in any given day, I can be talking, you know, diagnostics for diabetes in the morning in talking about quantum computing in the afternoon. And so, it's really exciting because I don't think I would be comfortable in this job. If I didn't feel like I could move around laterally across all these different experiences. And I can relate to the entrepreneurs. You know, they're, they're people like me, they're, they're starting companies, they're investigators, they're their technology people. They're disruptors are big thinkers. And so it's just fantastic to be able to help them. And really all I do is, is just try to open some doors for people and try to help their companies with whatever resources they need.
Pete Kadushin 32:14
And so you get the opportunity to be with people like you the big thinkers, the disruptors, the ones who are interested in starting something new, right, but you also get to scratch the itch of intellectual curiosity, right, you get to be across all those different concepts, constructs, theories. I know you just recently started a podcast, and now you get to have geeky conversations and record them too.
Brett Malone 32:41
I do that in, you know, as part of the, as part of the learning curve, I'm sucking at the podcast, but I'm getting better each one gets a little better. I've like, tipped over into the breaking point of like, Okay, well, that wasn't so bad. And, you know, as long as you have interesting topics, but you're right, I actually I still get to really grow and learn new things. And here's a great example. I never thought I would find myself in in my career dealing with this, but it's kind of fun. And I'm trying to figure it out. But, you know, what does it take to design engineer and architect a big commercial real estate transaction, because, you know, there, we have to build buildings to stay ahead of the company. So we're building labs, and and so I'm partnering with real estate investors to build biotech buildings here. And it's cool, because now I get to see the facility side of it. But what's important, what's near and dear to me, is to we got to get this building, right, because these game changers are going in there, you know, so we've got to get the labs, right, because the companies are depending on us to have the facilities they need to grow. And so Virginia Tech's a big partner of us so of ours, so we're building an engineering building for Virginia Tech, on our campus as part of a swing, what they call the swing building. So the university renovates their engineering space. And while they're doing that, they have to send a departments over to our campus. So we're building a building for the aerospace engineering department. And so to come full circle and come all the way home, you know, and I told our team, I said, we got to get this one, right, you know, if we, if we screw up the aerospace engineering building,
Pete Kadushin 34:22
Hah! That's not a good look for you, you know? Yeah, the, the more I'm listening, the more I'm hearing that sense of, of connection and community, right to get it right for the people that you're working for. So that they can go on and they can be a game changer. And so it's that interesting combination of wanting and feeling deeply connected to the group. mixed with me, I think, a drive towards mastery, but also a fearlessness that comes with being like, you know what, if I fall flat on my face, like one, I'm doing something interesting in two, I'm gonna get way back So it's no big deal. Yeah. And so to think about how to start practicing those skills, right, if I was going to try to do this a little bit for myself today, what could that look like in a, in a short, experimental way? If you had, I'm putting you on the spot here, coming up with mental training exercise Ready, set go?
Brett Malone 35:22
Well, you know, the theme that we talked about are some of those things that I've gotten really passionate about, and have sort of directed my trajectory towards, and have not always been big things, like moving into biotech. But a good experiment, in my mind is really, is there something in your subconscious that's driving you to be, you know, purely intellectually interested in something and, you know, just, I know, you know, this coming from all the body of research, but, you know, your consciousness can only process so much your subconscious is, is in bringing so much signal in. And, you know, we're getting that sort of dopamine response, when something hits that we we find enjoyment out of, or we find passion, or, like there's, so I think the exercise is even on a small scale, you know, what kind of what moves the needle for you? And then do a thought experiment and say, Man, what would it look like for me to chase that? And you know, I don't know, does that mean, you know, going out and surfing the Outer Banks? Does that mean? applying to a different job? Does that mean going to your boss and saying, hey, I want to go, I want to try this, I've always been interested in doing this, give me a chance, I want to try this, you know, it doesn't have to be a giant career, risking leap. But I think if you can progressively as an exercise to test and push the boundaries of this growth mindset, like I think everyone has it, it's more of, okay, you know, don't stay attached to mediocre ideas, or don't let a good idea go, like if there's something you're passionate about act on it. And that's a way to test your growth mindset. And, you know, read some take a weekend and read some books on it. I can't tell you how many books on biotech I read, just because I was trying to figure out the damn nomenclature, you know, like, How do you spell DNA? So you know, like that was? That took me a weekend!
Pete Kadushin 37:31
And so the, there's two pieces here, right? The being able to tune into what actually moves the needle? Right? And then the second part, which is, how can I test that in a small way? You're right, so actually taking action on whether it's buying a book and reading it, or having a conversation? It's really trying to put on the shoes to see if they fit rather than daydreaming about what it would be like to have the shoes on?
Brett Malone 37:56
Yeah. I think, yeah, and I think you can act on this big or small, you know, not everyone is in a position where they can just sell their company and go into a completely new industry, and hope for the best, you know, I had the fortunate ability to do that. But, you know, you can still test your, your willingness to grow, you can still test your grip, you know, on smaller things. And I think it's important, you, you just build those muscles in my mind, you know, start saying yes to a few more things in it comes up every day. I mean, so even the simplest exercise of, Hey, you know, like, if your body says, hey, we've never done this, but let's go down and paddle this river. And it's like, hey, just yeah, you know, like, don't even let yourself say, Oh, well, I got to do this, I got to do this. You know, Don't make excuses. Just take one thing over a course of a week that you normally would think a couple times about, and then just say, screw it, I don't I don't care what the consequences are, I'm just gonna say yes. And just go do this and see what happens. And it's like, sort of, you know, I know we are we're all sort of geeking out on mindfulness and being present and thinking about what that means. And I mean, maybe it's in my mind, it's simpler than that by just saying, alright, well, I'm just gonna kind of go with it and see what happens.
Pete Kadushin 39:21
When you can be present in motion, you can be present to the resistance that comes up, and then you can be present to saying yes, anyway. And what's interesting, you know, I get caught telling people to say no more often. Right. But I think that the distinction here is, right, I'm generally telling people to say no to those default things they feel obligated to say yes to particularly at work. Yeah. Whereas what you're sharing is, right, this idea that if we have a narrow vision of our identity, if we have a narrow vision of what we're capable of, or what we can do, even if stuff we would like to do is outside of that, then you can start to say yes to more of those things that brush up against and create friction around that idea. If I'm not a person who goes in paddles, the New River, right, like, maybe this weekend I am, yeah, as long as you're mitigating for like physical risk, right, you don't want to go out on the river and die,
Brett Malone 40:12
Don't be stupid and shoot a class five, but that's alright, you know,
Pete Kadushin 40:15
Wear a helmet if you're gonna paddle the river and all that and go with buddies, safety buddy system, all that cover my liability bases.
Brett Malone 40:22
But you're, you're touching on the exact right point, which is we personally put our own labels on herself. And then we get mad herself because we're in this little box. And so I just stop labeling yourself. It's like, stop saying, Oh, I'm not an ultra runner, you know, who cares? Like, just go out and run, you know, like, go hit the trail and enjoy the trail, or, you know, like, Oh, I couldn't possibly go out. And, you know, do this, because I'm not I'm not a surfer, or, you know, like, Oh, I'm not that I'm not in that club is like this, or I'll just stupid labels that we put on ourselves. And if you kind of drop the myth of who you have to be, to move into a new experience, then you're going to be more willing to take on some new new challenges. And, and that's where the growth comes from. And I think it's snowballs. Because once you learn how to do that, you know, we I'll go all the way back to the shift that I made from aerospace to biotech. Now, you know, I ended up towards the end of my career, before I took this job, I was doing a lot of consulting, and I always consult I was taking gigs with, like, probiotic companies, you know, and they were retail sales on Amazon. I mean, I didn't know the first thing that stuff, but it was like, super cool. The people I was working with were motivated. And I just kind of dove in. And, you know, I, I found myself, it was much easier to take on experiences, like there's a fundamental basis that I felt like, Okay, I'm qualified to at least jump in the water here. Yeah. But, you know, I know, my abilities to adapt, will help me get through this.
Pete Kadushin 42:02
So I think this is a really big piece that we tend to get wrong when it comes to confidence and trust, right, because people want to be confident that the outcome is going to be perfect. Instead, I think what we need to trust is that I can adapt when stuff shows up, right, and I have the capacity to learn because what a lot of the story that I'm hearing is great that your meta skills have continued to get better your ability to learn your ability to connect your ability to scratch the itch and follow that passion when it comes up. That's all continued to improve as you've experimented in different disciplines tried different careers on and it's gotten easier to be flexible as you've gone on. Yeah. And and so that capacity then to have trust in those skills, and say, You know what, if I fall flat on my face, when I'm about surfing, that's alright, I'm going to grab the board, I'm gonna hop back on the board, it's not going to be a big deal.
Brett Malone 42:57
Yeah, you know, I'm an engineer by training. So I have to have a plan that includes a flow chart and a Gantt chart and usually critical path. And so the hardest thing for me is to let go of some of that sort of false sense of control. And there's, there's a plan and we can control that outcome. You know, you got to be smart and have a plan. But at the same time, you can't really engineer the outcome, all you can do is sort of start dealing with and I think as soon as you have, if you learn how to communicate that balance of Okay, I'm not an idiot, just going blindly into something I've thought this through. And at the same time, there are things that we just can't know right now. But we've got to get started. And so you, you launch into it, knowing that you have the ability to adapt and improvise and overcome to borrow the term from the Marines. But you know, this, this spills over into an organization too. So when I talk about community, and when I talk when we go back to entrepreneurship, and when you start leading people, when you start building a team, you know, your company has to grow beyond yourself, in your company, is your company culture is a reflection of your values and your mindset. So, if you learn this skill, you will become a better leader, you'll be infectious and you will be you know, even though you might not have all the answers, if you're, if your confidence keeps your organization moving forward, you know, you can't be blindly leading you have to be able to have a vision and have a direction and help your team see that. But your team also has to see that, okay, I don't have all the answers, but we're going in this direction and you have that confidence, you're not wavering. You know, that's where the conflict comes in. And so, if your team sees you leading from a position of confidence, and they'll follow you And it's not about following as much as you're inspiring them to help you. And so that inspiration comes from that growth mindset. You know, it's like, companies that are struggling, or they're, they've hit plateaus, they've lost the growth mindset, because now they're playing not to lose, as opposed to we're playing to win. And, you know, I, that's what I see. That's how I see teams and people, even just in a one on one relationship, you know, like, you can become more infectious, you can become more magnetic, if, you know, if you have that confidence to be able to say, Look, I don't have all the answers. But I'm confident that together we'll get there. People love that.
Pete Kadushin 45:42
It's the paradox of by demonstrating some humility, you actually help inspire because you don't have to have all the answers, then they don't have to have all the answers, but boy, do you have the tools to go get them. And what I'm hearing is, and I don't know, actually, podcast protocol. So I don't know how long we have to wait. But I'm hearing an episode to where we start to unpack leadership, which is really exciting.
Brett Malone 46:06
I love the theme. And it's so important, because if you're going to grow a company, you've got to get beyond yourself. And so leadership is huge. And you know, you've got to get yourself you got to figure out what how am I impacting these people? And what things you know, there's a lot we can unpack there for sure.
Pete Kadushin 46:24
So I now have you on, on recording having agreed to a round two so...
Brett Malone 46:29
Here I am. Yes.
Pete Kadushin 46:30
Before I let you go, I do want to be mindful of time, but I have a couple of wrap up questions. Okay. Lightning. Yeah, so we're gonna go related to trail running, if that's okay, with you. Good. How much percentage wise is physical? And how much is mental?
Brett Malone 46:44
Oh, man, um, ultra. Once you get past marathon distance, you know, I think it's, it's 80% mental, honestly, I mean, I think you've got to have a base, you got to train but people, your, your, the energy in your body is, is unfathomable. People have no idea what their capacity with their capacity really is in their body. And it's not until you really get it dialed in mentally. So I don't know. For me. For me, Leadville was 80% mental and it's like, you had to be able to say it's possible.
Pete Kadushin 47:21
Ok this is self serving, because I've signed up for the Moab trail marathon. And so I'm trying to gather all the tips I can related to trail running leading up to November.
Brett Malone 47:31
Well, you got to read Desert Solitaire. So you got to read it. We're davee if you're going to go to Moab and arches. And study the ghost of Ed Abbey. But I mean, it is making, I think having the confidence in this goes to what you do so well paid, which is, you know, helping people understand that you've done the work. I mean, the training is in the bank, like, you know, I used to tell us when I was coaching, but it's like people we'd show up on race day for people to do their very first marathon and they had already run multiple, like 18 miles, 20 miles, we never got them. We never put them out to the distance of 26 miles. And it was a little bit psychological. But it was also just you know, these were first time runners in a lot of cases, first time marathoners. And so you know, they would have run 20 miles. But they showed up at the starting line for their marathon 26.2 miles. And you would have thought we were asking them to run 500 miles. It's like it's it's another 20 miler, and then just do another loop. You know, it's like, but people, once they cross the finish line, you could see the switch go off, you could see that now they got it. And it's like, they could never have it until they got to that finish line. It's like, Oh, I can do the 26.2
Pete Kadushin 48:55
So 80/20 you said and I'm gonna keep it at marathon distance just because I can apply it to myself too.
Brett Malone 49:03
Yeah, well, don't don't forget to train you got to log your miles but
Pete Kadushin 49:06
you know, I can't think of myself across the finish line. You're saying, sport psych isn't all powerful?
Brett Malone 49:11
Yeah, you can try. It's helpful but you know, people overtrain everybody, most people overtrained because they don't they think they need more miles. I mean, you know, the worst. Injuries come from overuse. And overuse is like people running junk miles because they don't have a plant. They're not training with purpose. You know, I I was lucky. I had a great coach. I'll give a shout out Francesca Conte. She was the the race organizer Saturday that I helped run her ultra. And so I was her safety runner, which was really fun to be with her. But you know, Francesca really trained me very specifically to very specific parts of the Leadville course. So I went out and I trained and I ran it the first year and it's like God, you know, I really sucked at this part. And it wasn't really the climbing, it wasn't really the outfit, it was like there's this one part where you had to run almost five miles on a road in the middle of the course. And it wasn't steep. But it was just paved, it was hot, it was the middle of the day. And you know, you need it was an opportunity for you to bank good time, if you got there the right way. But if you if you kind of, if you didn't have the right training mentality to hit that road section the right way, you also could have lost a lot of time. And so I trained very specifically, every time I went on a trail run, I could visualize the part of the race that I was, I was trying to accomplish whether it was like a tough hill climb, you know, the backside of hope pass. But yeah, I think to answer your question, I'm not sure I remember what the question was maybe at 20. But you know, don't forget to train.
Pete Kadushin 50:56
And don't forget to train! And then, last question. And so I'm always curious about the beautiful moment, right, everybody who's drawn to a sport or performance endeavor, there's something about that experience, that's just beautiful, even if it's not actually beautiful, right? I've been to enough trail races and crude them to know that there's snot and blood and other things. But I guess for you, what's the beautiful moment? And it could be training, it could be performance, it could be indeed anywhere other than that, right? But related to that experience, what would you qualify as the beautiful moment,
Brett Malone 51:35
for me, it's really crystal clear. So the top of hope has, it was getting dark, you know, the aid station at 12 and a half 1000 feet is, you know, they got a campfire going they're serving you chicken soup with mashed potatoes in it. And it's like, man, it all you want to do is kind of curl up, you already got like 65 miles on your body. And, you know, I sat down in front of the fire just for a minute. And I remember telling myself, if I stay here, 30 more seconds, I'm never gonna leave. And so I got up, left the warm, put my headphones on, I forget what I cranked some, some kind of crazy music, and I just bombed down the front side of her pass. And it's like, you know, I kind of got this new energy, which was driven from a I can do this, you know, be I had motivation to get down the hill to get to Twin Lakes. And, you know, that stretches incredibly memorable. In my mind, it was getting dark. I had my headlamp on, it was just me in the mountain. And, you know, I declared that I would get down that mountain in the time cut off, and I certainly did. But that, to me is very memorable. I can think back and see that very visually, to this day. You know, crossing the finish line was awesome that I was pretty toasted. And you know, there's so many moments that you can think about, but it's the beautiful moments for me have always been when I've dug deeper than I thought I could. And I came up with something that got me further along than I thought I could get.
Pete Kadushin 53:18
Man. That is I'm getting goosebumps cuz I've been I've been on that stretch of trail as it's been getting dark. Oh, with the headlamps on and it's cold up there. And the bonfire is so
Brett Malone 53:30
everyone, well, here, here's the thing I forgot to say. So everyone else sitting around the bonfire had dropped. So they all collectively decided like, Oh, I'm not going to make the cut off. Or even if I make the cut off, I'll never make it down to half pipe. And so everyone collectively sat around the fire, they just kind of threw in the towel. And you know, I looked around at him. I said, I'm going and they were all sort of collectively I get cheered me on. But, you know, I was not going to throw in the towel at the top of the mountain like that.
Pete Kadushin 54:03
Well, I think that's a perfect spot to leave it. I could keep talking and I would just define the gorgeous moment you just shared. Brett, thank you so much for being here. Before I let you go. Where can people find you or learn more about the corporate Research Center?
Brett Malone 54:19
So the CRC you can find us at Vtcrc.com We are always looking for Game Changers disruptors if you have an idea for a company if you have a company. If you're a student looking to start a company, we you know we are really welcoming to the whole community of people have a big idea big plans, where we're building new space to make it easy. We're building new programs to make it easy for people to get involved with the CRC. Even earlier on. We're creating new co working space. We're building labs for those biotech companies who need space with purpose and so VTC are see.com Check us out, give me a call, find my information on our website, drop me an email. I would be glad to talk to you about anything and everything.
Pete Kadushin 55:10
Alright, that's it for today. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe rate, leave a review. If you want to access to the show notes if you'd like to dig a little bit deeper into all of the mental training goodness and find out how you can continue to level up your mental skills and your mindset head over to MTL dot Academy. That's MTL dot Academy, where you can find other episodes in the mental training lab and all those extra resources. Until next time, be well
