Kiley Adams – An Internal Locus of Control - [Invest Like the Best, EP.08]

This episode is a major departure from the norm. My guest, Kiley Adams, is only 21 years old. She has crammed more learning and adventure into two decades than most people could hope to in a lifetime. She’s track-and-field star, valedictorian, varsity soccer player, Tae Kwon Do fourth degree master black belt, and philanthropic researcher. She has traveled all over the country and the globe, recently spending two months by herself in India. I had the pleasure to meet here while teaching an investing class at Notre Dame and am thrilled to share her incredible story and her attitude that makes all of this possible. For comprehensive show notes on this episode go to investorfieldguide.com/adams/ For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Neal and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Patrick O'Neal is a principal and portfolio manager at O'Neal Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Neal Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Neal Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

• 0:47Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  My guest today requires a bit of a special introduction. In this episode, we do not discuss markets or investing. It is instead about adventure and taking life by the you-know-what. My guest, Kylie Adams, is 21 years old. She's crammed what would be considered a magical and adventurous life into just two decades. Here's a little taste from the episode.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  When's the last time you lost in a competition?

• 1:11Speaker 03

  I don't remember.

• 1:12Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  And a bit later in the conversation.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  We're gonna see if we can sneak you into Myanmar.

• 1:16Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I met Kylie while teaching an investing class at Notre Dame. She is a track and field star, valedictorian, varsity soccer player, taekwondo master, and philanthropic researcher. She has been everywhere in the US and recently spent two months by herself in India, conducting research that will help people with disabilities. And that's just the start. She describes how all this is possible because of perseverance, attitude, and an internal locus of control. I'm going to keep returning to this episode as a reminder that just about anything is possible. I can't wait for my daughter to meet Kylie someday. She inspired me to, as she says, move forward relentlessly. For notes on this show, visit investorfieldguide.com/adams.

• 2:00Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  And now, please enjoy this great conversation with Kylie Adams.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Okay Kylie, maybe we can start by talking about Taekwondo. First of several interesting aspects of your life that we'll explore. Maybe tell me how you got into it and how you got to where you are today.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  So, at the age of four, my parents put me in ballet. And I had zero interest in ballet. And about a weekend, I told my parents that I wanted to fight people. And I think they decided that Taekwondo was the natural evolution to ballet. And so 17 years later, still, it's still very much one of the most important parts of my life.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  How does it work? How does the progression work? So you started really young. I guess it's kind of unusually young to start martial art. How quickly did you work yourself up the ranks? When did you figure out that this was something you had talent for? What are sort of the, how many stages are there? How many levels are there to Taekwondo?

• 3:01Speaker 03

  So you start as a white belt. So little Kylie was a white belt. And I was actually too young to start testing into, like your next belt is your yellow belt. And then green, blue, red, black with intermediate stages in between. So you start by getting little tags on your belt. But after I got over the tag phase, you start testing for each belt. And you have to learn new forms. You have to break boards. And when you're older, you break bricks. I got my first black belt, I believe in sixth grade. And a lot of people stop at their first black belt. But I, I wanted to keep going with it. And I never had really an end goal to get to where I'm at right now, which is my fourth on black belt. But I just kept progressing with what felt right.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  And two summers ago, tested and received my fourth degree master black belt.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Give me a sense for how rare, let's say, the first black belt and then the current black belt that you have are in the martial art world.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  I think the statistic is that 80% of people quit after getting their first black belt. And very few people even make it to there. But there's, there's different like governing bodies to Taekwondo. There's the World Taekwondo and United States National Taekwondo Federations. And it's extremely rare to be certified as a black belt in both, let alone a fourth degree black belt. You have to send your credentials to Korea. You have to be approved by the board. They send credentials back. So it's a pretty laborious process.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  That's wild. So how many, let's say, fourth degree? Black belts, are there in the US, women?

• 4:29Speaker 03

  No idea, but my grandmaster is obviously ranks above me, but there's not a lot. I've met no one my age that's a fourth degree black belt.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  And how often do you compete?

• 4:39Speaker 03

  A lot in the past, now that I'm pretty busy with soccer and school less, but it's always been a part of, wherever I go, I always get a chance to incorporate it into what I'm doing.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  What are the attributes that make for, that allow you to be as good at it as you are? Are there physical attributes, are there mental attributes? What is it that has allowed you to get this far at a pretty young age?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  There's a very definite fighter mentality, and what fighter mentality comes down to, the two words we have in our Dojang are perseverance and attitude. And I think just starting at the age of four, when you're, every single motion you do is supposed to be done, not only with attitude, but a sense of integrity, that if no one's watching you. When I was four, our grandmaster would step out of the room and say, "100 pushups." But no one is watching you do 100 pushups. And it's this sense of, on training and off of training, you're accountable for your own actions. And that's very much a fighter mentality of, it doesn't matter if someone's holding you accountable for your work, you still, the work ethic of Taekwondo is insane.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  It's day in, day out, it's a year-round sport, no off days. So you're constantly working at the top of your performance level.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Can you dive into attitude a little more? So perseverance, obviously, I understand it seems to be a common attribute for a lot of things like this. But what do you mean by attitude?

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Attitude, that's a great question. I'm always told that I can have the most serious face at times. Like, I'll go smile the serious face, and my friends tell me it freaks them out a lot. But attitude for me comes down to the ability to say that any situation's a real situation. So when you're fighting, you're obviously not fighting for your life. If I tapped out of a ring, fight's over, I'm not in any actual danger. But it's having the mindset of convincing yourself that any situation is a very serious situation if you want it to be. So your training doesn't, like, you're not immediately applying it to anything, but in the moment, you need to convince yourself, you need to have enough attitude to, I mean, we yell, it's called a key up. We, and they tell you, you key up with attitude.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  It's not just, you're not just joking around, it's a little yell, it's... If someone were actually attacking you right now, you need to let everyone around you know that you're being attacked, you're gonna yell loud. And it's attitude for me in Taekwondo, and that just carries over into every aspect of your life, is taking things, knowing when to take things seriously, having this on and off switch with, with your attitude, basically.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  When's the last time you've lost in competition?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  I don't remember.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Have you ever lost?

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Um, when I was younger, definitely. Oh, I used to cry fighting, fighting while I'm crying, and my parents wouldn't let me out of the ring. But, um, no, it's been, it's been a, it's been a while.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  So, from Taekwondo, you said you mentioned you like to, wherever you go, um, practice, or, I don't know what that means, join, join the, you know, go for a workout or, or a competition. What are some places around the world that you've done that?

• 7:37Speaker 03

  I was studying abroad in London my junior year of college, and, um, was offered a spot on the, on England's team. Um, and so I would take the tube down to, um, just south of London, and I would get a chance to train. So we'd fight, um, whenever I'd show up, I'd get to fight with the English team, English national team. And, um, when I was in India, I actually, I was, had no intention of doing Taekwondo. I was walking around a little hill station called Darjeeling, and I saw people wearing doughbox, what we wear when we fight. Um, so I followed them, and ended up at a dojo, and I watched for a while, and I've pulled

• 8:18Speaker 03

  out, you get a card, it's actually Korean issued ID, and I have a fourth degree issued card, basically, and I whipped, I had it on me, I don't know why. I whipped it out and gave it to their master, and immediately, I, not only were people bowing to me, but they brought out a plethora of chai tea, and gave me the dojo. If you're a fourth degree, you have the rights to teach at any dojo. And so they turned the dojo over to me, and language barrier at that time was a real thing, but Taekwondo is, to an extent, an international language. Um, we do the same pum say, like, forms, same techniques, they have similar names. So we conversed in like this English, Korean, Hindi blend of languages, but, yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  So you, did you take, did you take it over and teach some sort of class? Like, what happened?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  I was in Darjeeling just for about a week and I would wake up early and go to Taekwondo and teach them. They used to teach, I think they still currently teach, but the men and women were taught separately. And the first thing I did was say that it was one class and the girls thought that was just insane, but I think they very much liked training with the guys. And when I was there, they had a belt test and one of them was testing for a black belt. And in order to legally test for a black belt through the World Taekwondo Federation, you have to be tested by someone who's two degrees higher than you. And their masters actually weren't second degree black belts, so they couldn't legally test her. And so when I showed up as a fourth dawn, they were like, fantastic, we're running the

• 9:52Speaker 03

  test tomorrow. And so I got to sit in on a black belt test in India, which was unique to say the least.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  When you were, let's say, most involved or most active, you said it's daily, right? A daily practice? You're doing something associated with Taekwondo every day. What is that practice? Like, what would that actually entail?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, during like heavy tournament season, you're looking at two hours a day, every day. And the first hour is all cardio strength training. We'd go on team runs. So when I would fight for like Washington State's team, for like our national team, we have national tournaments. You train with your home dojo, which is maybe 25 of us. Let's say we're going to nationals. 6 a.m., you're up and working out. The second hour is strategies of fighting. So you put on all your hogu, your chest protector, your headgear, and you're sparring is the term for it in the round, which is you spar one person, you go immediately to the next for about another hour. And then we practice. We have forms that we do in

• 10:56Speaker 03

  competitions. So it's a series of moves, blocks, punch, kicks, that you do for technique and style. So there are two different ways to compete at the national level, and I did both.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Are there other aspects, you know, you mentioned perseverance and attitude. Obviously, those are mental. Are there other mental sides of this or characteristics common to people that have achieved maybe not the same level of black belt, but very high level in Taekwondo? Is there like a common DNA to the people that you encounter?

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Like body type?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Not body type. It could be body type. Anything, any common... Sort of underlying attribute that you see over and over again in the people that are at the high level of competition.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Insane mental discipline. It really is a mental sport. We, I mean, they hold us, it's almost military-like, like you hold a ready position for sometimes an hour. I mean, it's insane what they do, but really high-level black belts. I mean, not only the discipline of going two hours a day, but going two hours a day with the right mentality. It's just, it comes down to a lot of discipline at that point.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  How did you get into travel? What was the motivating force to start going to India and England and some other places you've been?

• 12:08Speaker 03

  I think my parents instilled in me at a really young age that America is not the end-all, and it's important to get wherever you have the opportunity to go, don't say no to an opportunity. And my parents, I mean, they, opportunities when I was young, we went to like 48 of the states. My parents are obsessed with the national parks. But when the opportunity came up to start going international, I couldn't, couldn't pass up that opportunity.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  So, let's talk about India a little bit. Certainly a really interesting place, a place that I've never been, but been dying to go to. Describe your experience there, maybe a bit about the culture, what you've learned.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  So, the first time I went, I was predominantly in Chennai, which is southeast England, and I was working at an NGO for kids with disabilities. It's a school, it's a community center, sort of a jack-of-all-trades, they do everything. And I was teaching a, an early intervention class for kids aged zero to six, doing physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. They considered training of a middle-aged American enough to be a professional. So, I was pretty much understood to be a doctor, which was hilarious, but the first time I was there, it was a lot of time spent in Chennai. I also got chances to go to the most southwestern state called Kerala, just a beautiful

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Lots of backwaters, river canals, coconut trees galore. And then I got to go north up to Darjeeling where I taught taekwondo, spend some time in the shadows of the Himalayas. And I love mountains, so that was where I felt the most at home.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Describe what you told me last night about greetings in India as a good example of a cultural difference.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, cultural differences are plenty in India, to say the least. But in Tamil Nadu, which is the state that Chennai is in, they speak Tamil that no one understands Hindi at all. And in Tamil, when you greet someone, I mean, in America, you greet someone, hi, how are you doing, what's your name, if you're meeting someone. And if you meet someone in Tamil Nadu, you say sapthya, which is have you eaten? And then the person responds with a list of what they've eaten. And then you say, so sorry, sapthya, and they'll say, yes. If you said you haven't eaten, then it's like literally the end of the world and they'll start cooking on the spot. If you say, so normally you would say, yes, I've eaten. And they'll ask you what you've eaten.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Then you get the laundry list, including numbers of things. That's very important. So if you say idli saptha, I ate idli, they'll ask you how many idli and you need to respond, at least with a number bigger than four. You know, renda idli saptha. And even once you've done your list, they will always respond with you haven't eaten enough. And then you'll enter their home or a restaurant and they will feed you copious amounts of rice, probably.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  So you did a lot of eating?

• 14:59Speaker 03

  A lot of rice eating, yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  What are your ambitions for future travel? Are there places you want to go back to, new places you want to visit? Maybe following that taekwondo theme or what does the future hold travel wise?

• 15:11Speaker 03

  I'm always open for wherever I see the most possibility with the intersection of all my passions. So if that is going somewhere with the soccer team here, that took me to France and Monaco this summer. And I was never expecting on going to France and Monaco, but. Another phenomenal cultural experience. Future of travel, I am in love with India and I very much hope to return. Probably through a Fulbright Research Fellowship to continue the research I've been doing.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Can you talk about that research? What the nature of it is and what you want to keep going on?

• 15:45Speaker 03

  I do research on the community-based rehabilitation model. It's called CBR and it's, um, the World Health Organization promotes the CBR model for low resourced areas to offer services for peoples with disabilities predominantly. And the model is you train local community workers. So it's if there's a hospital that's not available, you're too rural to have a hospital-centric model. You train workers to make the community basically a hospital, an offering of care for people that can't get into large cities for that care. And in India, people, for whatever reason, are, only about 50% of people use CBR services in a place where CBR is offered.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  And so I'm looking at differences throughout India of why people don't use CBR when it is available. So looking at the low participation rate.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  And so you just keep, the idea would be to keep advancing that understanding?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  And looking at it specifically in Tamil Nadu. So last summer, when I was looking at specifically social and cultural barriers to accessing the model, and I was traveling all throughout India, I realized that every state had a very specific answer. So in Kerala, they focused a lot on marriage of children. And if a person with a disability isn't marriage-eligible, then why would you ever pour an ounce of resource into that child? Because you need someone to carry on the family name. Whereas in Tamil Nadu, the state I'm hoping to go back to, that never came up as an answer. And sort of every state gave me a unique look at my question. So I'm going back in the hopes of focusing on one area in India.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Were you alone?

• 17:18Speaker 03

  I was alone for a lot of my travels.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Like how long, like how long a stretch, let's say, in India were you by yourself traveling around?

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Two, two months.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  I assume then maybe you're some sort of autodidact or you teach yourself a lot of what you're interested in? What did you study at school?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  My parents instilled me a notion of if something's interesting to you, you go learn about it. There's no other option and I- I love learning about anything. At school specifically, I studied biology and math.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  What kind of math? Any focus, any specifics? Just a general math figure?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  I love it all.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  What are some, maybe early or recent, informative books, teachers, learning experiences that have have really like affected you in a lasting way? Maybe start with books if there are any.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, there's always books. One of the most informative books on India I've read is called Behind the Beautiful Forovers. And it's a book that explores slum areas in Mumbai. And basically, they're in the shadows of these just giant hotels. And they're technically squatters that live on, in the garbage lands, right behind the hotels. And it explores families that live there and what it means to grow up in the shadow of that much wealth. So it's one thing to be in rural India where all you know is that extreme rural poverty, but another in urban India. When you're, India is such a unique case study because they do have an incoming surplus of wealth,

• 18:43Speaker 03

  but they also have this huge income gap. And so what it means to grow up as your profession being a garbage picker, they don't have a actual garbage industry in India. You just, you get paid for picking up trash on the spot. And so what does it mean to be that when you're in the shadows of these corporate leaders that come in to these massive hotels that are your backyard? Phenomenal book. And then the health gap is written about social determinants to healthcare. So increasingly, America is looking at the, it's called biomedical model, which is, it's always your, something in your body, a molecule in your body. And it's looking at how many social determinants there are to healthcare, that how different cultures define health is differently, that, and that America specifically, ours might not be the end all. And we don't necessarily have the best health system.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Does it, does that book put forth, does it opine? Does it say this is a better model? Or these are aspects of other models that would be an improvement on the American system?

• 19:37Speaker 03

  I think it proposes that the best model is one that takes into account all the social determinants to health. So, yeah, it does.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  What would be one example of a social, like an individual determinant?

• 19:47Speaker 03

  India, for example. If you, if an Indian American, if an India comes to America and they get a seizure disorder, or they're diagnosed with a seizure disorder here, they'll interact with the healthcare system in a way that our doctors will offer them. X, Y, and Z medicine. Whereas for them, a seizure disorder at home is treated by shamans and it's considered their soul leaves their body and they need a shaman to go find their soul and put it back in their body. And so they actually, there's been research on it, they will not respond to the medications. That actually a lot of medications.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  In the US?

• 20:26Speaker 03

  In the US. Sort of like an antidepressant. If you don't think an antidepressant will work for you, it likely will not work. It is.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Placebo thing, yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Slightly placebo and they've actually started finding that with seizures. That they have a significantly higher, a better outcome if they get a chance to see a shaman in America than a biomedical practitioner. And so any model that takes into account people's own culture. And I think America's becoming a little too focused on our model is the best model. And especially because we're becoming a minority majority, it's increasingly important to offer what we consider alternative models.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Maybe one more book that influenced you.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Ooh, I grew up reading, it's when I was younger, a book called The Silent Boy. Small book by Lois Lowry. Oh, I read a lot of Lois Lowry, but The Silent Boy specifically is about a boy in a small farming community that he can't talk, has a developmental disability not otherwise specified. He gets involved with, they think he murdered a cat. I mean, it is a children's book and it's this mystery of did he actually murder this cat? And it sort of explores the difficulties of being an individual with a disability in a community and how he interacts with the different levels of being in trouble and just a phenomenal, phenomenal book.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  If you had to pick out the most, let's say favorite and or most memorable day in your time in India, what day would that be and what happened on that day?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Ooh, great question. Probably I was in the most northeast corner which borders Tibet and Myanmar. And I was living with the Catholic bishop of Meow, very influential man of Meow.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  How'd you meet him?

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Met him on the street. No, um, one of my friends is family friends with him and in India, the guest is a god. And even if I said, my cousin's brother's uncle's son is in a city in India, and my friend is coming, they will, they will put you up like you are their child. Um, I mean, the hospitality is truly insane. So Bishop was a friend of a friend of a friend and took me in like his daughter. I think the word he used for me in Hindi was daughter. He would introduce me as his daughter, which hilarious for a Catholic bishop, but woke up one day in Bishop House and went downstairs for breakfast and he said, "We're gonna see if we can sneak you into Myanmar." And I was like, "Great." He said, "You know, you're a vellum b," which translates to clear

• 22:58Speaker 03

  water, which is what they call white people. He said, "Okay, so you're a vellum b, so it won't be an issue. You can just walk on over and all will be well." So we drive through the Himalayas, the eastern Himalayas for a while, and we come to, like, there's several quote, "border checks," men holding guns next to signs, and you stop and rapid Hindi is exchanged and you keep going. And they kept pointing at me in the car and I'm like, "Okay, all is well." And we came to a stop sign, basically, and they were like, "Oh, we're in Myanmar." And I got to go to the Burmese markets. And so not only was it fantastic to be just in the eastern Himalayas, but the whole, the cultural exchange of going into Burma was

• 23:42Speaker 03

  just fascinating. And I'm there reading what items are and aren't allowed between the borders. And so one of their most allowed items is opium. It's like top of the list of things you trade at market.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  That was the Golden Triangle area, right? Where the heroin trade came.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Exactly. Oh, it's exactly, they're such, oh, the trade is insane. But, um, and I mean, opium's a greeting like chai tea. When you come into someone's house, the first thing they offer you is opium. And that's just, that's normal.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  It must not get a lot done there.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  It's a different pace. It's definitely a different pace.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  What a neat day. You mentioned that there was an episode where you spilled into Pakistan?

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Oh, that I was considering putting that one up there also. I was in a town called Jaisalmer. It's a fort. It's a in the desert and you live in a fort. Like it's a it used to be part of the Mughal Empire. So I was living in this sand castle. That's what I called it. And we got a hold of local camel nomads. And they took us out into the desert and our guides didn't speak a ton of English and we knew bits and pieces of Hindi. And I'm the lead camel of our of our camel safari. And my guide turned around and said, hello, Pakistan. And I'm thinking, we're not currently in Pakistan. I know, I think.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  I think I know that we're still in India. And then I was going through my words and I realized the Hindi word for let's go is cello. And that in the town, they drop the Cs of words, the C sound. And so when he was saying hello, Pakistan, it was let's go to Pakistan.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  And to which I had no, I did not have enough vocabulary to say, actually, that's probably not the best idea for me.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  And I mean, we slept in the desert. We they just, when the camels got tired, you just pulled off and there was the sand dune and Pakistani sand dunes.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  What was your most, we'll jump back a little bit, memorable fight in taekwondo or match or I don't know what you would call it?

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Oh, my most memorable fight. I had some really good ones in England, ones that I wasn't expecting on winning or even having half a chance in. That I did then win. And I was abroad with a lot of my close friends. So it was cool for them to be a part of the process. Because usually taekwondo, I mean, it is a team sport, but it also in the end, you're the only person in a ring when you're fighting. But it was fun to get to share a lot of those victories with my friends. And it was a big, they would come out in all their US gear and chant America, America.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  How long does a fight last?

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Two, two-minute rounds with a one-minute break in between. So it is.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  It's intense.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  It's fast and intense.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  And are there tapouts?

• 26:19Speaker 03

  If you get knocked out in a headshot, then you are considered done. But I'd be the one most likely to get knocked. I'm really short for my weight class. They call me the tank. So. I'm just this little, I have no off switch when I fight. I go forward and I plow through people. And a lot of the girls I fight in my weight class are these like extremely elegant, tall fighters who know that I'm an easy headshot target. And so they wait and wait and wait and try to drill me in the head. But I just, I don't, I don't know how to stop. I've never stopped in a fight. And I think that freaks people out when I fight them.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  So you probably have some mental intimidation aspects to your unbeaten run here.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  I think I freak him out. I'm all about it.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Is it fair to say that, that what you just described, which is that you just go forward relentlessly, is true of you in general? And is a reason why you've got kind of accumulated this, this resume, we'll call it, that seems kind of lifetime worthy and, and at a young age?

• 27:14Speaker 03

  I, my parents say that all of my success comes back to Taekwondo. That the reason I'm good at soccer, the reason I am good at research and math and everything, comes back to their choice to put me in Taekwondo when I was four. And I do, I think it comes back to the notion of, there is no backward. You, you don't retreat in a battle, you don't retreat in a fight. At least I don't with my fighting style. And I think that has very much carried over into, I'm always looking for, what's the next step? Where can I go forward from this? You know, where can I take my research next? It's not okay to just truncate something and say I'm done here. They're always, I mean, I love knowledge. There's always more knowledge to be had. So whether that's in sports or in research, I always want to go forward.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  It's a pretty incredible mentality. You mentioned to me offline that one of the things maybe that explains you or your life is that you don't like downtime. Are you satisfied? Do you feel happy and satisfied often? Or do you feel as though this kind of forward momentum is like, like you're chasing something? Or is it, or do you just love that, that movement more than downtime?

• 28:17Speaker 03

  I, I do despise downtime. I always need to be working out, add a book, something. And that's, I think it's one of the reasons I do love India is, even though India is very, it's a slower pace than America. But when you finish the day,

• 28:34Speaker 03

  You are, your body truly tells you, we lived the day. Like, you are exhausted. There is no easy anything in India. There's no easy meal. There's no easy water. I mean, everything you do is a struggle in some way. I mean, you're walking and you think you're swimming because it's so hot and humid. And I love finishing a day knowing that I have, that I'm empty. I, if I finish, if I just like read in my bed and then drank some water and ate, I would just, I would, oh gosh, that would never happen. So I love finishing a day knowing that I have lived the day. I want my body to know that I've lived a day.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Trying to think of aspects of this. So this is, this is an, I'll call it unusual conversation for this podcast that I've just started working on, given that it really has nothing to do with investing per se. But one of the things I'm most fascinated by is investment of time as well as money. Are there aspects of kind of how you've lived your life that you think can be replicated by the average, you know, Joe and Jane? If so, what are they? And then the way of asking this question is how much of this kind of relentlessness and perseverance and attitude is inborn and just innate in you? And how much of it has been cultivated by you?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  To start with the, what I think a lot of people can do, that's like a pretty easy, I mean, fix is the wrong word, but a pretty easy place to start is, I was always told growing up, and it is something that I don't think I was just innately born with. I think it was something that Taekwondo and my parents instilled in me, was always having an internal locus of control, that if you're having a hard time with something, it's not the class is too hard. It's you're looking at it the wrong way. And it's not the fight was too hard or they were better than me. It's I can be better. So just having the notion that greatness does start from within yourself and you can, you can work harder. You can study harder, whatever it is, just having that internal reference of.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  This is what I need to do going forward, not this is how the world needs to change around me, it's this is what I need to do. I think that's one of the reasons I do have a lot of success in different areas. But also just, we talk a lot about the details in almost anything I do. Research comes down to details, sports come down to details, and focusing on those details, you don't realize how important they are until you had the wrong foot and back, which gave up the headshot, which gave up the fight. And you know, you ask yourself, why did I have the wrong foot and back? It always comes down to some level of your training. And that's what they say, you don't necessarily rise to an occasion when you're in a severe situation like that, you do, you resort to your level of training. It's not rising to the occasion, it's looking back on what you did to prepare yourself. And so, details in

• 31:19Speaker 03

  my everyday life, I always think about, how could I be better in, in a little detail? Whether that's drinking enough water, getting the right nutrition, it does come down to the details for me on a lot of things.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  It seems like, again, like daily practice, right? That there are, details is all about, practice is all about doing things over and over again. I always think about like Karate Kid.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Wax on, wax off?

• 31:38Speaker 02

  I think about that scene a lot for some reason. It seems, it seems applicable, right? If you're gonna be a fourth degree master Taekwondo, master black belt, that you need to be very good at the small things. So, alright, so we've got a, quite a story, math, biology, Taekwondo master, Fulbright scholar, hopefully, community researcher. What are other areas right now that you're most interested in, that you haven't, we'll call it mastered, or, you know, pursued a lot that you think you will pursue in the future?

• 32:11Speaker 03

  I'm a very avid hiker and backpacker, and I've always looked at ways to tie into my love of nature and the outdoors, to my love of health, healthcare and disability. And so I've been reading a lot about, I'm in a anthropology, medicine, health, culture, medicine anthropology class. It's a great title. And I'm looking at intersecting those two loves, because a lot of people do find Increased health when they get outside, basically. And so in the event that I either don't get the Fulbright or just choose not to pursue the Fulbright, I'm looking at exploring work in Alaska with doing, intersecting, getting peoples with disabilities outside, seeing if it's possible to get them modified equipment that allows them to hike, or even kids with autism.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Having a lot of success with getting them outside somewhere where it's quieter and they don't have the pressures of having to act within social norms in society. So that's something I'm definitely, it's on my radar of pursuing. But there's, I mean, there's always something I'm looking at, reading a book on.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  I haven't mentioned this intentionally until the end because I just wanted to hear everything else first. But what we are here at Notre Dame, I was here teaching a class yesterday and we're doing this because you're close friends with my younger sister who's at school still. And this was the source of our connection. Maybe talk for a second about what Notre Dame has done for you. You know, things that you love or don't love about Notre Dame. And we can wrap it up there.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  People are always asking me, why Notre Dame? Why Notre Dame? And I was a dead tie between like nine schools the night before decision night. And my parents locked me in my room and said, don't come out until you've paid the deposit.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  What were the other schools?

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Brown Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Caltech, Wash U, amongst others. But when I came out of the room, my parents said, where, where'd you get, you know, where are you going? And I told them I wouldn't tell them. I wanted them to guess. And I wanted them to guess where they think I'm going and where they wanted me to go. And they said, you know, we think you're going to Northwestern. We wanted you to go to Notre Dame. And I was like, psych, you know, going to Notre Dame. Which, and I asked them, why, you know, why did you want me to go there? And they said, they went on all my college tours and things with me and they said, we wanted you to go there because we thought they had, you know, the strongest community. And it sounds cheesy that sometimes in a very parent-like answer. But it is ultimately what I have found at Notre Dame

• 34:34Speaker 03

  and what I love the most is there is such a huge sense of community. Whether that's I needed funding to go to India and I have. So many different funding opportunities and people willing to read over research proposals. Not only my friends willing to read them over, and even my friends, your sister, that can't read a scientific research proposal, someone who's willing to go out to lunch with me and just laugh for an hour as a break. But there's always, there's such a sense of community here that I need in order to have success on the soccer field, doing research, whatever that is. You very much, you need that support system.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  That's great. So we'll, we'll end it there. Thanks for doing this. This was a blast, some awesome, awesome stories and perspective and hopefully some, you know, three or four incredibly applicable little things that people can, can take away and do themselves in their own lives. I know I will and hopefully can start to step my own game up a little bit, feeling, feeling rather inadequate at, you know, six in the morning or whatever it is here in South Bend, Indiana. So, so thanks Kylie so much for doing this.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, thank you.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone. Patrick here again. To find more episodes of Invest Like the Best, go to investorfieldguide.com/podcast. If you're a book lover, you can also sign up for my book club at investorfieldguide.com/bookclub. After you sign up, you'll receive a full investor curriculum right away and then three to four suggestions of new books every month. You can also follow me on Twitter, @Patrick_OShag, O-S-H-A-G. If you enjoy the show, please leave a quick review for us on iTunes, which will help more people discover Invest Like the Best. Thanks so much for listening.