Byron Davis: Live Your Epic Life

The wildly inspiring Byron Davis joins the program to share his story and tools to Live Your Epic Life. A gifted, highly dynamic, charismatic & articulate conversationalist, his story of humble beginnings, Olympic dreams and service to help other's unleash their inner potential is certain to strip you bare of excuses and motivated to set a new and committed course towards self-discovery and personal transformation. Open your ears, heart and mind and let Byron help lead you there. And if you have a moment, we'd love it if you could toss a quick review up on the iTunes page. It's most appreciated! Thanks for the support and hope you enjoy the show! SHOW NOTES * Byron Davis' “Live Your Epic Life” Website * Byron Davis' “Unleash the Unstoppable You” Website * Annett Davis' “Get Fit With Annett” Website * Byron on Twitter @ByronDavis7 * Byron Davis' Bid to Become the first African American Swimmer to make the US Olympic Team – 1996 100 Fly Olympic Trials Final Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:08Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, people, we're back, back in the saddle. Feels good to be back. We had a great episode yesterday with Juliana Hever that I just got up, and I'm backing it up with an amazing interview today with Byron Davis, two in a row, two days in a row, which feels great after having taken a little bit of a break to be back in the flow of the podcast. Byron joins us today. We had an amazing interview. He's one of the most inspiring people that I know. I've known him for quite some time. He's a good friend, and I know him back from my swimming days.

• 1:49Rich Roll?

  He was an amazing competitive swimmer, almost the first African-American to make the Olympic team. He ended up falling a little bit short, and he tells that story today. But he's a guy who is really a self-made guy. He came from a very humble upbringing and really had to pull himself up from the bootstraps. And he tells a story of how swimming saved his life. And Set him on the trajectory that has made him a very inspirational figure today. He has a lot to share. He's very passionate. He's very articulate and he's inspiring. His message is inspiring and he's helping a lot of people kind of find their inner more

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  authentic self. And that's a big part of my message and this podcast. And although it's a technically a health and fitness oriented interview series, the kind of undercurrent or the predominant theme really is self-transformation, self-actualization. How can we be better? What are the tools that we can learn and incorporate into our lives to kind of transcend our circumstances and become the best version of ourselves? And that's the message of my book, Finding Ultra. And that's really, really, really important message to me personally

• 3:14Rich Roll?

  and one that I want to share whenever I can. And Byron is an amazing ambassador of that. So we have a great conversation. It's a long interview, so I'm going to keep this introduction short. I think we're setting a record today in length because Byron and I and Julie, who participated in part of it, we talked for a little bit over two hours. And so I don't need to make this any longer than it has to be.

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  Without further ado, I want to get right into the interview with Byron. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I hope you find him as inspiring as I do. Like I said at the end of the interview, I'm definitely a better man for having him in my life. He continues to inspire me and I think that his energy is infectious and I hope you enjoy it. So check him out. Byron Davis.

• 4:14Rich Roll?

  Talk about whatever you want. What do you want to talk about? Hey, let's just jump right in. Let's talk about life. Let's talk about epic body and... That's right. So, you know, this podcast is, I guess, technically like a health and fitness podcast because you have to pick a category, you know, for iTunes. But, you know, I like to think of it as being much broader. You know, it's really about, I mean, why are we interested in health and why are we interested in nutrition and fitness? And it really kind of goes back to transformation, like life transformation. How do you better yourself? And, you know, Byron, I think you're, you have one of the most inspirational stories I've ever heard about personal transformation. I mean, your life is incredible. Your story is incredible. And, you know, I'd like to just kind of, you know,

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  get into that a little bit.

• 5:01Byron Davis?

  Let's hear it.

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  Well, where do you want to start? We can start at birth?

• 5:05Byron Davis?

  At the beginning.

• 5:07Rich Roll?

  Start at birth.

• 5:09Byron Davis?

  Start at the beginning.

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  You know, you've, you had to overcome quite a bit to get where you are. And I guess I can start with, you know, when we met, I mean, well, or when I first became aware of you. I mean, I think the first time I knew who you were, and it was many years later before we ever met, but I remember being at a swim meet. It was like national championships or maybe junior nationals. No, I think it was nationals sometime back in the 80s. And I was there swimming the 200 fly and, you know, I was Good old 80s. Probably senior in high school or something like that. And, and you had started to make waves on the national swimming scene in the sprint events and the hunter butterfly. And I think it

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  was at Indianapolis. I don't remember what meet it was, but I remember walking the deck with a couple of my swimming teammates. And we had heard of you. And then I, it was warmups or something, and you had just jumped out of the pool and you were walking down the deck. And my buddy Brad Jones and I saw you and we're like, holy shit, look at that dude. And I don't want to erase that guy. Because you were like chiseled out of granite. You know, I mean, swimmers by, by nature are, you know, they're, they're built dudes and they're built like, you know, inverted pyramids or whatever. But you were like a standout on the deck. You were so cut and fit. And I was, it was just terrifying. That's hilarious. That's awesome. That's awesome.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  And then you went on to, you know, be extremely successful as a swimmer and swam at UCLA. And before we get back into the backstory, I wanted to just talk a little bit about that. I mean, you, you, you know, you, you made a solid effort to try to make the Olympic team and kind of fell a little bit short. And let's, let's talk about that story a little bit.

• 6:54Byron Davis?

  Yeah, actually, that's a really good jump off point. Well, back in 1996, I made the Olympic trials, made the finals. In fact, went and seeded first in the finals. And at that, at that point, that was

• 7:06Rich Roll?

  In the hundred butterfly.

• 7:07Byron Davis?

  In the hundred butterfly, right. And at that, at that point, that was the fastest recorded top eight heat in, in, in American history.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  And who were the other guys that were in that heat?

• 7:18Byron Davis?

  We had Mark Henderson.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  He was my teammate. I swam with Mark, my club team.

• 7:23Byron Davis?

  Yeah, and I mean, he's just phenomenal, just a lot of great guys. But, but every single person in that race had swum faster than Mark Spitz's world record way back in the day. I mean, it was the fastest top eight guys in America at the point.

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  And this is 1988?

• 7:40Byron Davis?

  Well, this is 1996.

• 7:42Rich Roll?

  Oh, 96, okay.

• 7:43Byron Davis?

  96 for the, the Atlanta Games. And that prelim, in the prelims, the preliminary, of course, you, you swim prelims first and basically the top guys from that, the top eight come back and swim another race. And then the top two make the Olympic team. And I, I swam the race of

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  Which, by the way, not to interject, but you know, it's brutal, right? It's like you're, you're first or second, or you go home. And you know, elite swimmers are training four or five hours a day. You know, it's black line mania, you know, just in the pool all the time or in the weight room. You show up for that, you, you, you bust your butt and you taper and you show up at that meet. And if you have an off, you could be number one in the world and undefeated for the last five years and you show up and you have an off day or you got a sniffle and you're not top two, you're not making the team.

• 8:33Byron Davis?

  Yep, I mean, that's it. The, the US Olympic trials for swimming, I hear this all the time, all national team athletes say this, it, it is a pressure cooker. And the competition is so thick, the United States, we have so much depth in the sport of swimming. So much depth that many people say that, you know what? The Olympic trials was tougher than the actual Olympic games.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  It usually is.

• 8:58Byron Davis?

  It is, right.

• 8:59Rich Roll?

  It's more, there's more, it's sort of like you make the team and then you go and you have a good time. You still want to win and you know, whatever, but it's sort of like there's a huge relief. It's all about the trials.

• 9:08Byron Davis?

  Yeah, it's all about the trials. And so that race at the Olympic trials, I made the final and it was a great race. It was a pivot in my life and we can get into this a little bit later, but.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  How far ahead were you at the 50 though?

• 9:22Byron Davis?

  At the 50.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  You had, he had the fastest first 25, 50 meters of anybody by far. It was hanging, it was, it was that back half for you that was tough.

• 9:30Byron Davis?

  Oh, it was crazy. Basically, you know, at that time I had clocked the world's fastest 50 meter butterfly time going out on my, my hundred. You know, so basically I broke the world record in the 50 meter butterfly.

• 9:43Rich Roll?

  Right. It's like breaking, it's like breaking the 100 meter track record in the 200 meters by the first hundred.

• 9:49Byron Davis?

  Exactly. So I went out like gangbusters, went out crazy and, and I came back the second half. Big elephant and piano and the whole ceiling, everything just dropped on my back. The last 15 meters of the race, my, my shoulders, my, my lungs, everything just collapsed. I couldn't, I couldn't get my arms out of the water. It was painful and in the process, three other guys ended up touching me out and I missed making the Olympic team by three tenths of a second.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  Three tenths of a second.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 10:19Byron Davis?

  And it was a heartbreak, but I'm going to jump back a little bit, but then we can move forward.

• 10:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:24Byron Davis?

  Uh, what the beauty that actually has come out of that race, Rich, is that what most people don't realize is I wasn't even supposed to be in that race. Most people don't realize they think, wow, that's a heartbreak and, and to be honest with you, it was. I mean, I had, I had post meat depression and went through dark days of the soul afterward and woke up and realized that my dreams of making the Olympic team and getting on the Wheaties box was done.

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:49Byron Davis?

  It wasn't going to happen, but, but what, what I had to realize out of that emerged a beautiful story that kind of set the course for the rest of my life. But. Before that race, fourteen months leading up into that race, I was two years into my retirement. You know, I had stopped swimming after college and I was on my way to law school. I had interned at a law firm in Philadelphia, my senior year. And I was preparing, you know, to take the, you know, LSAT and go and did that and I was on my way. But you know what, that summer when I interned, I realized I was in a legal library pretty much 12 hours a day. And I had stacks of depositions and a highlighter.

• 11:35Rich Roll?

  I have no idea what that feels like.

• 11:38Byron Davis?

  And all I did was highlight key words, key phrases for two attorneys. Pretty much that's what I did. And then I would do research and just highlight it. And I was like, this is not what I want to do with the rest of my life.

• 11:53Rich Roll?

  Well, it's amazing. You get this, you know, you get this college education, you know, and you're sort of prepared for the world and you kind of step forward and think, well, you know, this is the upwardly mobile thing to do, right? And then to kind of walk into that and go, really? Like, this is it? This is the big prize? And after being, you know, at the level you weren't swimming and all the excitement and all of that, to be, you know, sitting in that office, sort of, you know, reduced to a highlighter.

• 12:24Byron Davis?

  It was not fun.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  I bet you were really good with that highlighter, though.

• 12:27Byron Davis?

  Oh, man. You know what? I became just a brilliant artist with the highlighter. I was really, you know, it was...

• 12:35Speaker 02

  You applied that Olympic prowess just right into that highlighting.

• 12:39Byron Davis?

  I applied excellence to highlighting.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  You're like that in everything you do.

• 12:43Byron Davis?

  That's great. But so that summer, I realized I didn't want to go to law school. I didn't want to do anything that way, but at the same time, I realized I wanted to continue to swim. I knew in my heart that I had my best swimming still ahead of me. Yet, I had to tell my mom, I had to tell the rest of the world and my, my social network and, and people that, uh, I wanted to get back in the water and train. But now here, I'm no longer in college and the United States, there's really no professional swimming. You, you had, especially back, back in 96 and 95 and back in the early 90s, you really had to swim overseas if you wanted to at least survive.

• 13:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:21Byron Davis?

  So, I, I definitely, I knew I wanted to swim. So what I ended up doing was becoming a substitute teacher in Compton, California. So I went into the hood and taught English and PE. And then I, I decided to start training with the crosstown rival, USC. Of course, being from UCLA.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:39Byron Davis?

  Went to USC, that's, that was like unheard of, so.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  But at this point, had UCLA already, uh, decimated their program?

• 13:46Byron Davis?

  Yeah, UCLA, uh, my senior year in 93 was the, the last year we, we had the men's team.

• 13:52Rich Roll?

  Right. And just for the listener out there, uh, UCLA was a dynasty in swimming, you know, in the seventies and the eighties and just produced, you know, champion after champion and NCAA championship team, you know, one after another. And, um, it was a kind of title nine that was the death knell for the program, right? Which was a law that was passed that said you had to have equal funding for women's sports and men's sports. And so colleges across the country had to start cutting men's programs or funding more women's programs. And, and UCLA ended up cutting its swimming program, which was devastating.

• 14:27Byron Davis?

  It's crazy.

• 14:28Rich Roll?

  To swimming and, and still to this day is unbelievable to me. And it's unbelievable that they have not resuscitated the program.

• 14:33Byron Davis?

  We're, we're, we're trying to work on that right now. We, the alumni, we're really working hard. They just, UCLA just built a beautiful new 50 meter pool specifically for the competitive aquatics. So for the, um, volley, uh, the water polo team and the women's swim team. So we're trying to really get back in there.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  I've seen it. It's incredible. And I'm like, there's no men's swim team to use this facility?

• 14:55Byron Davis?

  It's crazy.

• 14:56Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable in Southern California.

• 14:57Byron Davis?

  Yeah, it's, it's crazy. But, uh, so because of that, I decided to swim, um, start training at USC. And I had no money and pretty much living, there were about six guys in an apartment. I started substitute teaching and training and that's it. But in that moment, Rich and Julie, I knew that I was in my sweet spot. I knew that I was supposed to be there, you know, I couldn't explain it to other people, but I knew that I was supposed to be there and all I knew was to get up every morning and train. And to make a long story short, I ran into a friend of mine who was a swimmer and she said, you know what, you need to contact Jonty Skinner because the US national team's

• 15:39Byron Davis?

  creating this new unprecedented program at the Olympic Training Center, the resident national team and they, they, they said, people who, who want to, the top people, top swimmers in the, in the world are invited to train at the Olympic Training Center, you should apply. Now, I thought that this was going to be crazy because again, here, I had never been proven in the 100 meter butterfly, so long course was not, you know, a, a, a strong point for me.

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you were a name in the sport. I mean, it wasn't like you were a nobody. I mean, everybody knew who you were.

• 16:09Byron Davis?

  Well, yeah, but, but again, I had no results. You know, I, I, all my results were yards and in college. So I'm training, I'm swimming. I write Jonty Skinner a letter. Okay, I don't even qualify. My times aren't even fast enough to be a candidate. And this is where again, I, where, and we can get into this, but this is where I really believe providence moves when we, when we follow our passion, even if we can't explain it. So I write Jonty Skinner, the resident national team coach at the time, a letter. It was September, I remember, it was, it was September 10th. And I wrote him a letter and just shared with him, just listed out an argument. This is where the, the whole political science and law came in. I constructed a great argument as to why I should be a good candidate.

• 16:53Rich Roll?

  With a highlighter.

• 16:54Byron Davis?

  With a highlighter, exactly. And I wrote him a letter, I sent it off. September 28th, I get a call from Jonty Skinner. And, and literally, I mean, Jonty is one of those guys really laid back, doesn't speak a lot, doesn't say a lot, says what he means, but pretty monotone, so you don't know.

• 17:13Rich Roll?

  He's a South African guy, right?

• 17:14Byron Davis?

  Yeah, South African guy. He was a great sprinter at the time. He missed going to the Olympics because being part of the, the whole apartheid thing.

• 17:21Rich Roll?

  Right, I remember that.

• 17:21Byron Davis?

  The whole issue, didn't, so he really missed his, his thing, but became a very, you know, accomplished coach at University of Alabama. Became now the, at this time. They picked him to be the national team coach for the resident program. Wrote him the letter. He calls me September 28th and he says Byron, just in a nutshell, in his, in his classic, um, I'm not giving you any emotion kind of voice. If you are honest about what you put in that letter, if you, if you really think you can do what you say you think you can do. And you're willing to be coachable, um, then I'll see you out here October 3rd. Wow, nice. Okay, so that was, you know. He's got goosebumps. Yeah, and then he hangs up the phone. I don't even remember him saying goodbye. It was like click.

• 18:07Byron Davis?

  That was it. And I'm like, okay, did this just happen? You know, this is real? And so I was like, all right. So I ended up giving pretty much 90% of everything that I owned away. Got out of my lease, all in one day, got out of my lease, packed everything else that, that I had in my 1984 Audi 5000 that I bought for 1,400 bucks. And literally drove out in $50 in my pocket and drove out to Colorado Springs. Not knowing what, what was gonna meet me there. And then in 14 months, uh, training at the Olympic Training Center after a two-year layoff. Uh, went from never being world ranked in the 100 meter butterfly to being ranked in the top 10 in the world and then coming within three tenths of a second to make the Olympic team.

• 18:50Byron Davis?

  And so that, that story, I think is the power. So although I didn't make the Olympic team, um, what I draw from that, uh, that experience was, you know what? Yeah, I, I came up a little short. But, but failure is never final, especially if you know how to use it to fertilize your future success. And so it took me a while to, to get that, uh, but, but that's what I learned because leading up to that point, here are all the small wins. There's, there's, uh, there's a new study out in positive psychology over the last 10 years. You know, they, they stopped, you know, uh, studying why, you know, all the illness in, in, in people's heads. And so they're, they're starting to study, well, great people who go through tough times.

• 19:34Byron Davis?

  What, what makes them special? Well, in positive psychology, there's, there's a, the science of small wins. That's, that's the phrase that they use. The science of small wins. Which is people who are able to truly look at and own the small wins in their life. What happens is you start to create a momentum.

• 19:54Rich Roll?

  Absolutely.

• 19:55Byron Davis?

  Even if you're going through tough times and struggles and disappointments during the times where you're knocked back or knocked down, that momentum still moves you forward. So even though you fall, you fall forward.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  It's like failing up.

• 20:09Byron Davis?

  Exactly.

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  Well, you've had, you know, 10 little victories and so then you have one setback. You can manage that. It's not devastating.

• 20:16Byron Davis?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  And the lesson is, is that you, you know, broke a paradigm or broke someone else's belief system about what could be done and your own, you know, pushed those boundaries and went for it and you actually, you're actually a champion many times along that path.

• 20:31Byron Davis?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 20:33Rich Roll?

  And also I think implicit in that is that, is this idea that you had an intuitive thought or, you know, an emotional kind of drive that might have defied logic or was inexplicable. Like your swimming career was over and it was time to get on with life and you had this nagging feeling and I think we're kind of preconditioned in our society to repress those feelings, you know, and, and my story in my book and your story is about kind of saying, no, I'm actually going to listen to that and I don't know where it's going to lead me and it might be crazy and people are going to tell me this is the wrong thing to do, but you have that something inside you that's like pushing you and making that choice to listen to that and follow those breadcrumbs wherever they may lead, I think

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  is a, is really powerful.

• 21:19Byron Davis?

  Yeah, definitely because, and here's the thing, I don't want to harp on what society teaches us, but, but we've got to be honest, you know, we struggle with in our society, what I call the gravity of, of control and comfort. You know, there is this, there is this gravity that continues to pull us into complacency. It keeps us safe and when we're safe.

• 21:45Byron Davis?

  All it does, it keeps us perpetuating and moving down the status quo. And if the status quo isn't your passion, isn't something that you're really called to do, isn't you're doing it for logical reasons, but reasons that don't resonate with your heart, you start living in a state of quiet desperation and you start becoming a drone. And here's the crazy part, people get really good at becoming drones. They become very competent and skilled in their profession. And it then keeps them even more stuck.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:15Byron Davis?

  Because they get a family, you know, we all go through this. Get a family, you have a house, all these different things you now use as logical, responsible excuses not to truly pursue your passion. And one of the things that although I didn't learn this lesson after the race, it was years later that I look back on that race, that the lessons really started to emerge for me. But during that time, after 96, I floated for a few weeks. And I just floated, in fact, I went, got out of Dodge. My girlfriend, who's now my wife, my girlfriend and fiance at the time, was playing overseas in Greece.

• 22:59Byron Davis?

  She was playing pro volleyball, indoor volleyball in Greece. And so I decided to just, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna head on over to Greece. So I convinced my mom to loan me some money and I literally hung out in Greece for two or three weeks.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. Well, I think that, you know, we're also sort of culturally compelled to, you know, sort of make a decision immediately, like, okay, that chapter ended. What are you doing now? You need to know immediately, you know? And we don't take enough time to kind of breathe and catch our breath and go, you know what, it's okay if I just like not make a decision right now for a little bit and, you know, collect myself and figure out what's next. I think ultimately it'll set you on a better trajectory if you allow yourself that space as opposed to, oh my God, this is over, like I need to get a job right away or go into some kind of tailspin panic over it.

• 23:54Byron Davis?

  Well, and I wish I could say, Rich, that

• 23:59Byron Davis?

  I knew that and I had the courage at that moment to pursue my passion, my next phase, my next chapter. After I got back from Greece, I was like, I gotta get a job. I gotta get a job. And so a position opened up, opened up to be an assistant coach at UCLA, but for the women's team. And the head coach at the time approached me, Cindy Gallagher, and she said, you know, I'd love for you to come and help me with my sprinters. And it was a job and it wasn't something that I was familiar with. So I ended up taking it. I gotta tell you, five months into the job, I realized every day I stepped foot on the pool deck, I wanted to be in the water. I wanted to be, you know, and, and I was

• 24:42Byron Davis?

  fighting this thing because it was like, no, your time is, is done. You're, you're finished. But I wanted to be in, in the pool. And what I didn't realize then is, you know, I didn't necessarily want to, you know, try to reclaim some glory in the water. But again, that passion for adventure, for expressing myself, you know, kinesthetically, for the creative process that you go through when you're, when you're preparing for your, your event. All of those things were still fresh inside of me. Yet I was in a position where my job description was really clear. And I didn't, I couldn't move too much, you know, to the left or to the right of that. I had to stay in that box. But yet this, this spirit

• 25:24Byron Davis?

  of creativity and adventure and wanting to express and use my body and my mind creatively to produce something, an idea, that was what was alive in me. So I struggled. And pretty soon after a year, I quit. You know, I wasn't a very good assistant coach, you know, and I wasn't doing my job well. Cindy would have fired me anyway. So I ended up, I ended up quitting and I got back in the water and started training. But at this- What year is this now? This is now 19, 1998, 1998. So here's the thing. So now I'm married, my wife and I are married. And she decides that she wants to play pro beach volleyball. And, and, and you know, she partnered with a person who was also new to the game.

• 26:09Byron Davis?

  And at this point, 1998, we're married and we live in an apartment and we decide that we're, both of us, we're gonna go for the Olympics again, you know? And so, we, we go for the Olympics. I start training and swimming. I go back to teaching again. This is like comeback number two. Comeback number two. Uh, long story short, I didn't make the 2000 Olympic Games. My wife did. Did you make the trials that year? Yeah, I made the trials. I made the trials and, um, I injured my shoulder a couple of weeks before and, uh, and, and I got psyched out. I mean, that's a whole nother story, but, um, I ended up not making the Olympic team. But here is the beautiful thing about that moment, uh, in 1998, again, one of those kernels of confirmation that's like, you're on the right path.

• 26:53Byron Davis?

  Stay the course. So in 98, um, we decide, my wife and I decide that we're gonna pursue the Olympics, um, but we're gonna do it full on. So we couldn't really work. So I quit my job as a substitute teacher, cause again, that's what I knew. I, I, I didn't, I wasn't a, a coach, uh, said, I can't substitute teach. I need to focus on swimming. Annette says, I need to focus on pro beach volleyball. Um, incidentally, she, she ended up making the Olympic team in 2000. So we got one Olympian in the family, so that's awesome. Yeah. Um, but here's, here's, again, here's where that providence comes in. No later, uh, maybe it was, maybe a month later, we're both into this, uh, we don't

• 27:36Byron Davis?

  have money and we're wondering what's gonna happen. I get a call from, uh, a, a casting agent in LA and, uh, they said, you know what, um, uh, I forgot, I even forgot what, what, it wasn't, um, I, I forget what company this was, uh, what gaming company, but they were creating a software, creating a game that was revolving around the Olympics and it was, uh, the swimming portion was Mark Spitz. That was the character they were using and they wanted to do a commercial with Mark Spitz and then a, you know, you know, backdrop or, you know, uh, other swimmers. So I was a, um, an extra, an extra in this commercial. So I get this call, I'm an extra. I gotta tell you. They're like, we need a black guy. We need a black guy. Byron, he's the only one.

• 28:21Byron Davis?

  Exactly. We need a black swimmer. Who can we, who can we find? There's only one. Yeah, there's, yeah, exactly. So, so we go and literally I spend the whole day and all we're doing are 25s and, and I happen to be in the lane right next to Mark Spitz, right? And so we're doing this back and forth.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  Who by the way like continues to swim masters at UCLA and like if you're a masters swimmer in Southern California, you can be on the UCLA masters team and he, you know, shows up and he still shows up and swims.

• 28:50Byron Davis?

  Yeah. And a side note, Mark Spitz is hilarious and he doesn't mean to be that this, that's why he's so funny to me because he'll be talking, we'll be, you know, swimming and all and all of a sudden he'll tell a story of how he broke the world record, you know, in warm-up. And, and he's not boasting.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  He's a caricature of himself, you know, he's almost like a cartoon version of him, of his own personality.

• 29:14Byron Davis?

  He is and everything is true and you're like, this guy is just, just a dynamo, but all of his over the top stories are actually true. I mean, he did break the, the Olympic record in the 200 free as he was warming up. It's crazy.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  What, what year was that? It was his comeback, remember that whole thing?

• 29:32Byron Davis?

  Yeah, his comeback was for 92.

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  It was around the same time, oh, it was earlier, okay.

• 29:35Byron Davis?

  It's for 1992, yeah. In fact, we knew each other because, because he started training with UCLA and he swam in the sprint lane from 1990, from 1990 all the way up to the 1992 Olympic Games.

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:49Byron Davis?

  Or trials. But going back to the, this, this, this commercial, I get the commercial, book the commercial, it's done. To this day, I've never seen the commercial, never seen it run on air, but between 1998 and 2000, I kept getting these nice little checks. Residual. Residual checks in the mail that, I mean, again, one day's work, paid for my SAG card, so we got insurance and, and we were able to subsist for two years. That's awesome.

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 30:23Byron Davis?

  While we trained. That's amazing. It was incredible, it was incredible.

• 30:26Rich Roll?

  It is that crazy, magical, spiritual equation that like when your, you know, heart is in alignment and you're walking with purpose and faith and you don't know where it's going to lead you, that you get provided for, you know, I talk about that in the book and. It seems weird or whatever, but it's been proven to me so many times in my life. And then, you know, I hear stories like yours all the time.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  And it's not, and it's not often like what, it doesn't often look like what you think it's gonna look like.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  No, it's never, you could never predict it. You don't know what it's gonna look like.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  It's gonna be very unconventional and very creative, but it always comes.

• 31:01Byron Davis?

  And that's what, and that's what's scary. And it's scary, and if you're human, you get, you get scared by that. Because again, we're conditioned for comfort and control. We gravitate toward comfort and control in our lives. But the creative process is nothing, it's, it's, it's not control.

• 31:18Rich Roll?

  No, you have to, yeah, you have to surrender that. You have to surrender that control. You have to be, you have to be willing to let go and, and, you know, be willing to receive whatever is going to come your way.

• 31:29Byron Davis?

  Yeah. And, and you can relate to this, Rich, just in, in, in training for, I mean, crazy ultra stuff. There, there comes a point, and, you know, we, we call it being in the zone. But it, there, you, you, you reach a point in your, your race or your event or whatever it is, where you, it's a crossroads. And that, and that crossroads, you, you have to make a choice. Either I decide to, to, to keep control and do this through willpower, or you decide to let go. And you decide to, to just go into the, to the zone. You, you decide to say, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna chase this. And, and the pain is still there.

• 32:11Byron Davis?

  The, the courage you need to fight through stuff is still there. All, all of that, that, that doesn't go away. But at, at some point, you decide to let yourself be totally captured in the moment. And then that's where, uh, you know, breakthrough happens.

• 32:25Rich Roll?

  Absolutely. And, you know, I talk about that a lot too. And, you know, the power of surrender and the beauty of surrender. And it gets, it's, it's a confusing concept for somebody who's not familiar with it. Because the immediate kind of knee jerk reaction is, well, that's giving up. Like, why, you know, what are you talking about? I don't understand that. And I'm like, no, you know, it's, that's not what it is at all. You still take the actions, you do all the necessary things, but you're relinquishing your attachment to the results.

• 32:53Byron Davis?

  Exactly.

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  And, uh, you, uh, you sort of, um, open yourself up to greater possibilities at times.

• 33:09Rich Roll?

  And you have a great story about that. There's one race, you told Julie and I this story about that one race where you were struggling with that.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  You had the flu.

• 33:16Byron Davis?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Tell us that. Can you tell that story?

• 33:18Byron Davis?

  Well, I mean, okay, I'll tell you two stories. One, I mean, quickly, the whole idea, I mean, the race where I was just weak and I was sick and I had the flu and didn't want to, you know, compete, didn't want to swim, didn't think, you know, and being a swimmer, you play all these head games with yourself. You wonder, am I going to hit my taper? Am I gonna, you know, you train a whole year hoping that you peak at the right moment, only to drop two or three tenths of a second off your time. And that was a successful year.

• 33:49Rich Roll?

  It's kind of insanity when you put it that way.

• 33:51Byron Davis?

  Yeah. It's like, okay.

• 33:53Rich Roll?

  What were we doing?

• 33:54Byron Davis?

  I know. It's crazy. It's like the payoff, the return on our investment. I mean, we would be being jit. Well, anyway, so you're planning with all these head games and all, and I'm in the middle of the race. And at some point, again, it came to that crossroad where it was, okay, am I just going to give in to this moment? Or am I going to buy into the logical lies that I told myself? And the answer was no. In that moment, I allowed myself to give in to what I call now giving into your greatness. Everyone, we could, we all have three people in fighting for position in our lives. We can either be our average self, we could be our defeated self, or we could be our epic self. And our epic self

• 34:39Byron Davis?

  is the way that we do that is by learning to give into our own greatness. And we do that in these little moments of decision. And so in that race, I made that decision. It was just a shift to allow, again, not looking at the outcome, not trying to will myself to win, but instead recognizing that, you know what, I have everything that I need in this moment to accomplish what I'm called to do at this time. It was, you know, that was the moment. And, you know, The outcome was was great, you know, I ended up winning and getting my best time and everything, but again, that was just one of those small moments.

• 35:18Byron Davis?

  And I was sick, I was, I didn't, all the excuses that we had going, leaning into the race, um, you know, I didn't have a great taper, all these things existed, they were true, but yet, um, still walked away with my best time and walked away with with the victory.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and when you first told me the story, I was, I was so delighted because you had talked about, uh, having all those facts and the, the reality of the conditions, and then at that moment, you described it that you, you just let go, you know, you, you dissolved into your greatness and you felt something greater than yourself actually come in and you won.

• 36:00Byron Davis?

  Right.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Against all, against all logic, really.

• 36:04Byron Davis?

  Right, yeah.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  So for somebody who's listening out there, I mean, what, how do you do that? You know what I mean? It's, it's, there's the, there's a gap between kind of intellectually understanding, you know, the story, um, but, but what are the tools that you have to employ to, you know, kind of free your mind up to allow yourself to be in that headspace?

• 36:25Byron Davis?

  Um, I, I definitely think that it's, there, there comes a point, um, almost like the perfect storm that takes place where, and, and you've heard this, the phrase, um, when, when, when, when we prepare, uh, to do something. So there, there's, there's a process of ownership and even getting to, uh, the opportunity for great things to happen, um, we all have to pay that price, you know? We, we all struggle with what I call the pluck and the plop syndrome, which is we want to be plucked out of our current situation and automatically plopped into our ideal situation, um, and all the while, uh, you know, ignoring and forfeiting the process.

• 37:06Byron Davis?

  Well, we all have to go through that process, the process of training, the process of, of, of doing what we know we need to do in order to be invited to the game, you know, in order to, to actually be in that position to win or be in that position for great things to happen. So that, that's one side of it. You definitely do have to prepare and, and preparing comes in many different ways. Preparing, um, come this knowing. What your strengths and your gifts are and knowing how you operate. Some people prepare very, in a very, you know, scheduled, methodical kind of way. Other people prepare in a very creative, very random, organic kind of way.

• 37:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm the former and Julie is the latter.

• 37:49Byron Davis?

  But, but, but, but here, but the key is, so if we're gonna put this in a step formula, the first thing is identifying and owning how you like to prepare. And, and not making apology for it, but, but owning how you prepare. But then, here's, I think, the second step is recognizing there comes a point where you have to trust that you've done all that you can do. And it's that moment of trust where this, this, this collision takes place and, and providence moves with you, meaning all sorts of things start to happen in your favor that normally wouldn't if you didn't, if you didn't choose to allow yourself to let go.

• 38:31Byron Davis?

  So, in, in swimming, it's called, you know, we call it swimming out of our mind. We, we try to, we, we spend a lot of time trying to train and, and mentally get prepared, but at some point, we realize that now we have to spend the next hour or however long it takes us to get psyched up for our race. What do we do? We try to get out of our mind. We put headphones on, we, we do things to distract ourselves because we no longer want, after we've dotted the i's, we've crossed the t's, we no longer wanna to question how we prepare. And, and all we wanna do is, is, is fight to be completely present. And, and that's the second part, is, once we've prepared, now, the, the, the simple

• 39:16Byron Davis?

  key is protecting and guarding your present. Being completely present in that moment, because that's when you invite all of the other energy that takes place, energy from people, the crowd, you know, yelling for you, the energy of, of that fear that comes. Fear is a beautiful thing. Fear, fear and excitement come from the same source. I mean, just think, I hope I'm making sense, I know I'm going all the way.

• 39:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Byron Davis?

  But, but fear and excitement comes from the same source. You know, when, when we're feared, biologically, what happens? Our palm starts to sweat, heart starts to beat fast, eyes dilate. You know, you get the dryness of mouth, cotton mouth. Well, what happens when we're excited? Our hands start to sweat, our, you know, heart starts to beat fast, our eyes dilate. The same chemical, physical, biological reaction to fear is the same response to excitement. The key is fear is the anticipation of something bad, whereas excitement is the anticipation of something good.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:15Byron Davis?

  And so in that present, in the moment, we must condition ourselves to embrace what's going to be good, as opposed to embrace what could be bad.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 40:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Beautifully, beautifully, eloquently put. It's so inspiring to hear you speak and you do such a beautiful... Well, I mean, he's such a, you know, you're such a beautiful soul and you're so connected spiritually and you have, you know, so much beauty and it's just a, it's, it's a delight. Thank you. I want to work with you. How do I work with you?

• 40:48Byron Davis?

  Ah, that's funny. This is great. This is great. This is awesome.

• 40:51Rich Roll?

  It's, um, yeah, in swimming, you, you know, in addition to the physical training, there's a lot of visualization that you do. You know, you spend a lot of time kind of, yeah, at a meet, you're lying on a pool deck and you're like rehearsing your race, like every ask, every single detail, every tenth of a second from beginning to end of that 50 freestyle or whatever, so that by the time you get up on the blocks, it's a foregone conclusion. It's almost robotic at that point. Like the race is already done. And Julie used to always say this to me, um, you know, before the Ultraman races, like it's already done. You've already, you've already done it. You just have to walk through it now. But it's already complete. And that, that is exactly what you said. It's about being completely present and showing up for the moment and, and allowing for, you know, the miracle to happen.

• 41:35Byron Davis?

  Yeah. And, and you know who's a master at this, since we're, we're talking swimming a little bit? Um, and I've followed him ever since, uh, I mean, ever since he, he came on my radar is Michael Phelps. Um, a quick story I like to tell is I beat Michael Phelps, you know, people, yes, I beat Michael Phelps.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Byron.

• 41:52Byron Davis?

  He was 14.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  He was a child.

• 41:55Byron Davis?

  He was a child. He just burst on the thing. It was the international, um, Santa Clarita International meet, Invitational. And I remember him, he got eighth, uh, he went and seeded or he made the finals, he was in lane eight and I was in lane, I was in lane six and uh, beat him. So that's my, my claim to fame. I can say I beat Michael Phelps. But from that point, you knew that this kid was special. And uh, and of course, you know, the rest is history. He's been the most prolific, you know, athlete, um, you know, known to, to man, arguably the best Olympic athlete of all time. But he does something powerful and he, he dials it in. And again, going back to that whole science of, of small wins, um, in, uh, in, in the book, uh, the, the, the power of habit by

• 42:40Byron Davis?

  Charles, um, Duhigg.

• 42:41Rich Roll?

  Duhigg, yeah.

• 42:42Byron Davis?

  Exactly. Talked about this, actually. He, he talked about Michael Phelps. And basically, he says that Michael Phelps, uh, programs into his rhythm, into his daily rhythms, the small wins, where he gets into a lifestyle of winning. And everything, all these little wins lead up to his race. So by the time he, he gets behind the block, um, it's just another small win in this whole big momentum.

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  There's so much momentum behind it. That's so powerful.

• 43:10Byron Davis?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 43:10Rich Roll?

  And, and it's not just within himself, it's everybody in the world who already, who, they're all going, he's already won it too. The momentum is, has spread, you know, across the globe.

• 43:21Byron Davis?

  Exactly.

• 43:22Rich Roll?

  Quantum reality is he's winning. Yeah. I mean, you know, most people would look at it and go, oh my God, look at all the pressure on him. You know, he, he has to carry all that pressure because everyone's expecting him to win. But you're flipping it and saying, no, it's actually everybody, he has this huge monsoon of wind behind him where everyone's sort of already said, okay, you're the, you're the guy, like just follow through.

• 43:42Byron Davis?

  Right. And, and when people show up to beat him, again, whenever he's on the block, everyone wants to beat him. I mean, let, let's look at, uh, the, the Olympics in Beijing. Okay. In the race, uh, the hundred butterfly.

• 43:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Byron Davis?

  That he, that he swam with, with Michael Kavik against Michael Kavik, who's also a great guy.

• 44:00Byron Davis?

  He was supposed to lose that race.

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:02Byron Davis?

  If you look at how the race, if you look at all the replays, you look at how Michael swam his race, perfect to a T.

• 44:10Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:10Byron Davis?

  Yet, that momentum that Michael Phelps had, uh, just was undeniable. And he found a way to put his hand on the wall first.

• 44:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:19Byron Davis?

  I mean, that's powerful.

• 44:20Rich Roll?

  If it's on YouTube, I'll, I'll post a link to the video of that race, cause that, for, i- i- if you, if you're like, one of three people on the planet who didn't see it, it was the one race that he almost lost at that Olympics, where he kinda messed up his touch at the end, and Kavik almost nailed him. And when you watch the repeats, you, you really can't tell to the eye who won.

• 44:39Byron Davis?

  Right.

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  What was it? Was it a hundredth or a two-hundredths of a second or something like that?

• 44:43Byron Davis?

  Yeah, it was something crazy, yeah.

• 44:44Rich Roll?

  Right. But of course, he won, so. That's beautiful. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. So, um, let's step back a little bit, though, cause I wanna get kind of into your, into your backstory. Um, you know, you were not, uh, you know, out of the gate, nobody would've predicted that you were going to be, you know, uh, this very bright, articulate, upwardly mobile, uh, champion swimmer. I mean, what, you know, you grew up in Cleveland, yeah?

• 45:11Byron Davis?

  Yep.

• 45:11Rich Roll?

  Kinda the wrong side of the tracks, and, and let's, let's hear a little bit about that.

• 45:15Byron Davis?

  Yeah, I, I grew up in the inner city of Cleveland, East Cleveland, Ohio. Um, I lived a few blocks away from Case Western Reserves, and for people who know where Case Western Reserve is, it's right outside of downtown, not in a very good neighborhood. Uh, and, you know, the, the experts said that I would be just another, another, uh, stat. You know, I, I, again, grew up in the inner city, raised by a, a, a single black mom. My dad, unfortunately, chose to sell drugs for a living.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:48Byron Davis?

  But ultimately was found tied to his bedpost, shot six times in the head.

• 45:52Rich Roll?

  How old were you in that?

• 45:53Byron Davis?

  I was, I was six.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:55Byron Davis?

  And I'll, I'll never forget the day that my mom brings me upstairs, and, and by the, by the way... Two weeks before, or I'm sorry, two months before this happened, uh, my mom told my dad to leave, get out of the house because there was just a bad elements kept coming into the, around the house. And, um, you know, I, I've talked to her, of course, as an adult and kind of got the backstory on all this. But back then, I just knew that my dad was moving into an apartment two blocks down the street from us.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:24Byron Davis?

  And I didn't understand why, but as a kid, you're like, all right, I'll just roll with it.

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  And you were a single child?

• 46:28Byron Davis?

  You know, yeah. And so, no, I'm, I have a sister, um, who's six years older than I am. And, uh, so that day, I remember I was playing outside with my best friend Lamar. And we were out in the front lawn and, uh, we used to play this, uh, you know, we used to have a tennis ball and then a broomstick. And, um, we, we would, we would, you know, play bat, you know, we would swing the bat. Basically, um, I would stand by the stairs or someone would stand by the stair, the stairs. And, um, the other person would throw the tennis ball. And, you know, you just, you, batting practice.

• 46:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:57Byron Davis?

  So we were, we were having batting practice and, uh, and I remember my, my mom calling me upstairs. And she sat down in, I'll, I'll never forget it. We had this orange, um, like kind of love seat, uh, couch that, that, that we had. She sat down in there. I sat next to her, like kind of right between her legs. And she said, um, hey, your, uh, your, your dad's never coming back. And, um, in that moment, I decided, you know, my first response was, you know, okay, I'm, I've become the man of the house. And so my, my verbal response was, we don't need him. We, we don't need him. We, we'll be fine without him. And no, she says, you don't understand. Um, no, he died.

• 47:41Byron Davis?

  They, the, the police found him and, and someone shot him. And, and all of a sudden, you know, I, I just froze. I didn't even cry. I just froze.

• 47:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:54Byron Davis?

  And I didn't actually cry until actually a year later. Um, but I just froze and I didn't know how to respond. And, and then throughout that, that next year, uh, these little mini explosions would happen in my life. And, and, uh, and, you know, I, my, my stuttering increased.

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  Like mini explosions, like acting out or?

• 48:15Byron Davis?

  Yeah, acting out.

• 48:16Rich Roll?

  Getting in trouble.

• 48:17Byron Davis?

  Getting into trouble, getting into fights, um, you know, just, just be, not being a very pleasant, you know, kid.

• 48:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:25Byron Davis?

  Uh, and, and all, but I, I just remember that time. Of being very confused and hating my dad because he left us. He, you know, and, and I carried that chip on my shoulder through high school. Um, that's another thing. Again, uh, the, the, the experts thought that I was gonna go down another path. You know, you know, finding swimming was, was a savior for me. How did that hap- I mean, how did that happen? I mean, you know, it saved your life, right? Yeah, swimming, swimming saved my life. I, I credit, I credit the blessing and the gift of, uh, of competitive sports and swimming to really changing the, the angle and, and the, the pitch of my life. Um, well, one of the things that my mom did right out of the bat, um, she just became very devoted to getting my sister and I

• 49:10Byron Davis?

  out of the neighborhood and used every excuse to do it. I remember her kidnapping my friends and I on the Saturdays. And, uh, we would literally, uh, go to the art museum. We would go see the Cleveland Orchestra. We would do all of these things. Um, that, that, uh, you know, we, the kids in the hood didn't do. And my mom found every excuse to keep us out of the hood. And, um, I remember the quick story, how I fell into the sport of swimming, cause I literally fell into the sport. Uh, Gray Y, Euclid Y, which was a, um, a, a YMCA that was, uh, across town. Uh, created this, this program called Gray Y. And it was, uh, an initiative to use sports

• 49:51Byron Davis?

  to bridge the gap between, you know, the white port kids and the black poor kids who used to always fight. And so you would come together in sport and that's why they call it Gray Y. Mm-hmm. And so we, we, uh, started going to this Saturday and Sunday kind of a- activities in sports. And, and there I was introduced to a lot of different sports. Um, the one sport that stuck was swimming, but here's, here's the crazy story real quickly. My friend and I, Lamar, were, were playing, just, we were just goofing off. Um, I, I didn't wanna play field hockey. And so we decided to kinda ditch that and just hang out, uh, in the Y area. And, uh, we started playing, uh, you know, we started hitting each other. And so, uh, he would hit me and start running around and I would hit him.

• 50:35Byron Davis?

  And so basically I remember hitting Lamar really hard. And he gave me that look like I'm gonna, if I catch you, I'm gonna kill you kinda look. You know, when you play your kid, you hit somebody too hard. Well, we started running through the YMCA. Well, I run onto the pool deck. I run and I run on the pool deck and literally almost slipped and fall into the water. At the same time, the coach of Euclid Y Dragonflies comes over to me. I think I'm in trouble. He starts telling me about how cool and how great swimming is. And I'm sitting here just wondering when the hammer's gonna drop.

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  When the kid's gonna show up and beat your ass.

• 51:13Byron Davis?

  And, and he's talking, he's talking and he's telling me. Long story short, my mom comes to pick us up. Jeff Armstrong, the, the coach, ends up talking to my mom about getting me involved in, in swimming. And, and that Monday, I was on the Euclid Y Dragonfly swim team and, and started, started swimming. And that was at age nine. That was, that was when I was nine.

• 51:37Rich Roll?

  And I mean, swimming is such an unlikely, you know, outlet, like, you know, where, where's football? Where's basketball? Like, why swimming? And, you know, how, I mean, how does that happen? I mean, were there other black kids on the team? I mean, it must've been very unusual.

• 51:50Byron Davis?

  I was, I was always a pioneer at the time and I could tell you thousands of stories about, very funny stories about being black back in the, the early eighties, you know, in a competitive, competitive sport.

• 52:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and then going to school and, and feel like, you do what?

• 52:05Byron Davis?

  Yeah, you swim and, and believe me, I got it from both sides. From, from, from the white kids who didn't, you know, see black swimmers, you know? I was, I was the, I became the authority of everything black. So, so I was, I was the, you know, why do black people do this? Why do black, so that, so I would, I would get it from that side.

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  Do you know Colin Jones?

• 52:23Byron Davis?

  You know? And then on the other side, with all my black friends, I would, you know, at this point, being in competitive swimming, I disappeared from the neighborhood. And so all my black friends, uh, you know, were like, where are you? What are you doing? And they would call me white boy. And, and because at this time, I was going through to a, a speech specialist, a therapist, because again, I stuttered and when my dad died, I, it, it really came out.

• 52:48Rich Roll?

  That was like a trauma response to that.

• 52:51Byron Davis?

  And also, so, uh, you know, my mom and, and the therapist always told me to enunciate and really exaggerate the pronoun, you know, as I pronounced words. So I, all my black friends and people in the neighborhood called me white boy. And, uh, and so I had it from, from both ends.

• 53:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:08Byron Davis?

  But here's the thing, I knew I loved swimming. I knew it because that was, that was my creative zone. And back then, I didn't know how far it would take me, but all I knew at that moment, it was a refuge. When I got in the water, um, I was, I was in my playground. I was an element that just was beautiful to me. And, and I, I also credit swimming for helping me find what my learning style was. You know, back then, um, in addition to stuttering, you know, I was misdiagnosed as having ADD because I couldn't stand, you know, stay still and, and I'm not the type of learner. I mean, we know now the whole different modalities of learning. We know audio, uh, you know, if you're auditory or, you know,

• 53:51Byron Davis?

  kinesthetic or whatever. Back then, I was not, I am to this day, I'm not an auditory learner. If you ask me to sit in a seat and just listen to a professor or, or a teacher for more than 30 minutes, it's done. I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. It's not gonna get in. Um, so as a result, uh, you know, I was kind of disruptive a lot in, in, in school. Well, swimming, I recognized, wait a minute, if, if you were to demonstrate to me how to do something and then gave me an opportunity to actually do it, I could pick it up like that. I could, I could intuitively pick it up. And, and so, uh, swimming, I realized that's how, I mean, I started to excel. You know, by the first year.

• 54:34Byron Davis?

  I was picking up all the different strokes and I made it to the zone, you know, made it on the zone team and, and you know, first it was just, you know, swimming fast enough to swim in different cities and then different states and then I was invited to all these different meets and, and I was like, you know what, I'm, I'm going to stick with swimming because swimming is getting me, you know, out of the neighborhood.

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  Expanding your horizons.

• 54:57Byron Davis?

  Yeah, and I'm, I'm going to nationals and all these different places and so I'm going to stick with it and so I, I credit swimming for, you know, kind of finding my, my ultra sort of thing, kind of discovering that this is my, my, my, my love zone, my, my safe haven.

• 55:13Rich Roll?

  Well, it's also, I think, you know, from, you know, my story's a lot different from yours, but you know, I had certain, you know, sort of adolescent pains or whatever and, and swimming was always my safe place. It was my, my safe haven and there's something, you know, about being underwater where, you know, none of that can touch you. You know what I mean? Like you can't hear anything, no one can talk to you and you feel safe. You know, it's almost like this womb-like place where you can go and escape, you know, whatever unpleasant, you know, situations sort of, you know, surround you in your life outside the pool.

• 55:45Byron Davis?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:46Rich Roll?

  And for you to be able to recognize that and like lean into it, I mean, it's amazing. It really like set you on a completely different trajectory.

• 55:54Byron Davis?

  Yeah, it did.

• 55:55Rich Roll?

  I mean, do you have friends, you know, still from those days back there? I mean, are they still living back there? Or like, do you keep in touch with any of those guys?

• 56:03Byron Davis?

  Well, I've lost, since my adulthood and since I've been married and since my grandmother died and my mom moved out to Palm Springs, I haven't been back to the hood, to the, to the neighborhood in over 15 years. But I will tell you a story of the last time I was back. I remember walking down the street. It was, it was, it was in December. It was snow. I was smelling the, you know, just the, the, just the whole Cleveland vibe. It was beautiful. Just kind of walked reminiscing through the hood. All of a sudden I feel this thump, you know, this car approaching me and, and somebody, you know, music was, was just bumping, the bass was happening. And, and then I'm realizing, wait a minute, I'm in the hood.

• 56:47Byron Davis?

  And I haven't been here, people don't know who I am.

• 56:49Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 56:50Byron Davis?

  So I get a little nervous that this car is creeping. It it it you could tell, I could feel that this car, I mean, they were looking at me.

• 56:58Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:58Byron Davis?

  So the car rolls up and then all of a sudden, the car rolls just right past me and in it when when you grow up in the hood, you you learn that when you're you're in the the city, you never, you you don't walk on the sidewalk, you never walk on the sidewalk, you always walk in the street. And the reason why you you it's like instinct, you really you walk in the street, not because, you know, you want to just hold up traffic, but that's the that's the best shot at you of you running if something breaks out, you know, if you're on the sidewalk, somebody can come and jump you or, you know, pull you in the in a in a alley or something, you just learn to walk in the street. So, you know, an instinct kicked in, I'm walking in the street, all of a sudden, um, the car pulls up and then it just kind of pulls and it stops right in front of me, just

• 57:43Byron Davis?

  kind of, I mean, literally, it doesn't uh go by me, it just it it turns and now I have to purposely walk onto the sidewalk to walk around it.

• 57:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:54Byron Davis?

  And so I realized, oh, hold on, so I stop and then the the windows roll down and I'm thinking, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble.

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:02Byron Davis?

  Well, it was it was a good friend of mine, uh, we called him Deek, um, and I won't give his real name, but we he rolls down and he says, man, why are he says, you are crazy, why are you walking in, you know, in the in the in the hood like this, you could get shot. And then I'm like, okay, and all of a sudden, now, you know, I'm I'm like, uh, in my twenties now and and we're all grown and I see Deek for the first time in ages and I put two and two together, Deek is now, you know, the head guy in the neighborhood, he's he's he's he's a drug dealer.

• 58:36Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:36Byron Davis?

  And uh, and he's he's like, he owns this and he's like, um, man.

• 58:40Rich Roll?

  But he's your boy.

• 58:41Byron Davis?

  He's my boy, he's my boy, so I'm safe, he's my boy, he's like, he's like, all right, he says, yeah, you would be you you almost got shot.

• 58:49Byron Davis?

  And the funny thing, and he says, "All right," he says, "But don't worry, man. I got your back." And he says, "If someone bothers you, tell them you know me." And then he drives off. And so that was, that was my last experience in the hood. That's heavy. Yeah. And then what about the coach from that YMCA? Ah, Jeff Armstrong. Now, it's so funny, and this is, this is the beauty about, I forget the poem, but basically, it's, ah, I wish I, I wish I had it.

• 59:19Byron Davis?

  The poem, basically, it talks about, you know, "We all have to manifest our own greatness." Because when we do, the last part, the last sentence of the poem, "When we do, we give other people permission to do the same thing." I just butchered that, but you get it.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:37Byron Davis?

  Well, here's the beautiful thing. All the while, Jeff was one of those voices in my life that just always, always encouraged me. In fact, there were times where my mom, holding down two jobs and going back to school to be a registered nurse, she was like, "We can't swim this season." Jeff would step up to the plate, drive all the way to East Cleveland, pick me up and take me to practice. Wow. A phenomenal guy in my life. Any case,

• 1:00:04Byron Davis?

  you know, he writes me a letter. I'm an adult now, right? I'm an adult, Annette and I, we have our first son. This is right after the 2000 Olympic Games. I get a letter from Jeff Armstrong, and he writes me this long letter, and I ended up calling him, and we talk over the phone, and he says, "Byron, you know, you really inspired me to get my life together." I'm like, "What? What are you talking about?" He said, "Yeah, you know, you came into my life at, you know, at just the right time. And then to see, you know, how you progressed, it just really inspired me that I had no excuse." And so, I didn't know this at the time, but, you know, he was just kinda making, you know, doing his thing, had a very,

• 1:00:47Byron Davis?

  I forget what job he had, but it didn't pay a lot, but on a whim... He decided to be a volunteer coach at the Y and our paths crossed. He followed my career, he encouraged me, he invested a lot in me. But, um, once I graduated and went off to UCLA and, um, after the Olympic trials in 96, that inspired him to go back to school. And, uh, he got his degree and at that time when he wrote this letter, he was running for, um, a, a public office in, uh, uh, some town in Pennsylvania.

• 1:01:19Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:01:19Byron Davis?

  So he was, I mean, he had, you know, really just turned his life around and, and it humbled me to, to know that, wow, um, you know, I didn't set out to do that. I didn't know I had that in, impact and he was feeding me. I, you know, he was a, he was the guy I looked to and, and all, but at the same time, when we decide to, to live our best self and we decide to live our, our, our, our own epic life, so to speak, um, you never know how that's going to impact people. And so when, when he wrote and, and he, we, we talk and he shared that with me, that was just a very special, beautiful, humbling, uh, moment in my life.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and at the same time, when you're in service to another person in the way that he was to you so selflessly and amazingly, um, he ends up benefiting from that as well. You know what I mean?

• 1:02:07Byron Davis?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:08Rich Roll?

  That, you, you know, you, when you're in that, in that service mode and you're giving, you ultimately end up, you know, reaping the most.

• 1:02:16Byron Davis?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Rich Roll?

  You know, it's, that's an amazing story.

• 1:02:19Byron Davis?

  Yeah. I mean, just like, um, what, what does Mark Twain, um, says, he says, how can you hand wash a piece, a piece of clothing without, you know, cleaning your own hands in the process?

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:28Byron Davis?

  You know, it's, it's, it's the same thing.

• 1:02:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:31Byron Davis?

  And, and it's like, when, when, when we serve and we do it out of a pure heart and we do it because, uh, that's the value we bring to the world, you know, our, our gift. I mean, all of us have gifts and talents and, and when we decide to, to give it away, that's when our talents, um, and strengths become service to people.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:51Byron Davis?

  That's when, you know, not only are we adding value, it, it naturally comes back on you. You just, you just, you know, you, it just happens.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  It's almost universal law. That's the way it operates.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Can you tell us a little bit about how those experiences and your experiences losing your dad as a child and, you know, all of what you've just shared have shaped the way you are as a father? And tell us about your beautiful family and your incredible children.

• 1:03:28Byron Davis?

  Oh, yeah. I definitely feel that I've been blessed and way beyond what I deserve. My wife, of course, Annette Davis, she was, you know, NCAA champion in volleyball, made the Olympic team. I definitely married up. I always say that. I always say that.

• 1:03:48Rich Roll?

  You gotta.

• 1:03:49Byron Davis?

  Yeah. I feel like a rock star. When she wears heels, she towers over me. So we'll go to places and I know people think, how did this guy get her? You know, so that's always cool.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  I don't think so.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  I don't think so. You guys are pretty much a gorgeous family, all four of you.

• 1:04:06Byron Davis?

  Yeah, but she's just, she's been the anchor in our family and we have two beautiful kids. Maya, my 11-year-old, and I have a daughter, Tori, Victoria, who's six, actually, she'll be turning seven soon. And just beautiful family. And we ended up homeschooling. We homeschool now. And again, that's very unconventional for the typical African-American.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  That's right. Well, Annette's been my inspiration and she helped us greatly when we took the lead.

• 1:04:37Rich Roll?

  And your kids are amazing. I mean, they're so poised and present and, you know, I mean, it's very obvious that, you know, they're in good hands. They're remarkable beings.

• 1:04:47Byron Davis?

  We have a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun at the house and my son is challenging me now. He's very, he's very creative and he has an entrepreneurial spirit. And so it's cool to see how all this stuff is just kind of working its way out in his personality and his perspective, because he's very methodical at that as well. He's not, and it kind of breaks my heart, but I love it. I'm not the kind of dad who's like, ah, he has to be an athlete or has to swim. But, you know, secretly, I'm wishing that he would embrace his athletic genes, but he didn't.

• 1:05:22Rich Roll?

  It never works. It never works that way.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  It's not happening at all.

• 1:05:25Rich Roll?

  Hold on, I gotta go to the bathroom. Keep talking.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Is this happening? Is this allowed on the podcast?

• 1:05:32Byron Davis?

  This is, we're just keeping it real.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Rich Roll has left his own podcast.

• 1:05:37Byron Davis?

  Yeah, he's left the building.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Now we can really talk.

• 1:05:39Byron Davis?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:05:40Byron Davis?

  But he definitely, my son right now is definitely exploring his creative side. He has already written three books, three novels. He has, I mean, he's developing these characters and he loves to sketch and draw and he has these cartoon characters and The Legend of Zano is a book that he wrote.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:06:05Byron Davis?

  Yeah, and actually the stories are really cool, very, very cool. And so he's really exploring that and my daughter also, she's very athletic, she has athletic genes, but she doesn't care about athletics, competitive athletics. She loves dancing, she loves doing things. Again, she's really competitive, meaning we get one of the little tricks that I play on her all the time, I love it, and it's gonna break my heart when she catches on, but we'll be walking just somewhere random and all I have to do is start running.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Byron Davis?

  And she could be totally distracted and then once she sees me running, she starts running just to beat me, you know? It just, she doesn't know where the finish line is, she doesn't know why we're doing it, she just knows she has to win.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  So great.

• 1:06:50Byron Davis?

  So she's that way, but both Maya and Victoria have been huge blessings and it's really cool, and Julie, you can relate to this, you start to see as they, as our kids start to really discover who they are and start to really demonstrate and express the layers and dimensions of their character and all, you see these little bursts of genius that take place and they're teaching you and they're inspiring you just in how they exist and how they play. And that's what's going on right now in our household. I'm seeing my son and my daughter.

• 1:07:31Byron Davis?

  Approach challenges and approach problems and are solving them and it inspires me and I take those lessons and weave them into stuff that I write about or that I use in my coaching sessions, you know, because but I'm learning it and I don't tell people that I'm learning it. Cat's out of the bag now.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  Right, you told people.

• 1:07:51Byron Davis?

  But that I'm learning it through the way that my daughter approaches creative problem solving and then the way that my son just methodically learns how to translate and kind of reverse engineers how to do things.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:07Byron Davis?

  It's been a it's been a cool season right now in our lives in the Davis household.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  That's amazing. What I miss on back. We were talking about his beautiful family, so you missed the greatest part. No, he's talking about how, you know, just how intuitive and tuned in and really connected, you know, his children are and children are and how they have their own process and he's actually learning from their process, his own, his own upgrades to his creative coaching program. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But we have that same thing with Mathis because, you know, Mathis and Jaya, they actually have Rich's physiology and it's of an athlete, you know, it just is and Mathis,

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  you know, we homeschool and her PE choice, one of her PE choices last year was to swim with his old monofin. Yeah. And the monofin is like. It's like being a mermaid. But it's easily like, it's a big one, it's not like the new, well, it's a big one, it's a big wide finned one and so she would strap that thing on her feet and she's been doing it for a couple of years, but she could actually swim, you know, our pool is 75 feet long and she could easily do half the pool underwater, like she's, she's, she could be really good, but. She's got the underwater. She will not. Dave Berkoff dolphin. She does. But she will not go to a swim team, she will not go to a swim class, you know, we

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  try every once in a while, we think, you know, and she just, she will not do it and actually she went ocean swimming. With my friend Heather, who actually also swims with a mermaid fin out at Point Doom.

• 1:09:45Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  At Paradise Cove. And she, you know, she booked it all the way to the, you know, the kelp bed, which is pretty far.

• 1:09:51Rich Roll?

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  And she was fine with this fin. So anyway, I gotta get her a new one. It broke, but we've gotta get her a new one.

• 1:09:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  And she's all about that. But you know.

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  Martial arts. We gotta get her in martial arts.

• 1:10:03Byron Davis?

  MMA.

• 1:10:04Rich Roll?

  Little like discipline.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  I just don't think she's doing any, in any, you know, structured kind of program. She's very, very free and very creative and always making up her own way.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  We'll see.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  And so, um, we'll see.

• 1:10:15Byron Davis?

  Well, just, just on that note too, you know who, who inspires me and gives me hope with this, this thing, if, if Maya and Victoria aren't gonna be the, the, the traditional, you know, organized sports athlete. Um, Laird Hamilton.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:10:29Byron Davis?

  You guys had, um, Gabby on the show, but, uh, but he's one of those guys who totally does not, I mean, he, he made a conscious choice not to be a competitive surfer. He was more, he's taken the artistic, you know, adventure explorer, you know, track.

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  That's very interesting.

• 1:10:48Byron Davis?

  Yeah. Of, of, and it's like, um, just, just the, the sheer expression and the transformation and the personal discovery. All of, I mean, to him, all of that is, is the, those are the prizes. And, and as a result, he continues to push himself and then push the, the envelope on and reinvent the sport and take it to new levels. And then I think that's what happens. I think the, the, the creatives in, in whatever endeavor, in whatever discipline, whether it be in sports or business or whatever. Those who embrace their, their, their thirst for creativity and expression, I think are the ones who are the game changers. They're the ones who are gonna change the way we do things in life. So, you know, I'm thinking, okay, my son and my daughter, they're, they're gonna be game changers maybe one day.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:11:34Rich Roll?

  It's like, uh, it's like that new Seth Godin book, The Icarus Effect or whatever. Have you read that yet or checked that out? So it's the same thing. It's about, um, you know, sort of, uh,

• 1:11:46Rich Roll?

  Transcending the traditional business structure and dronedom and all of that, and embracing the creativity and independent thinking within that construct to push the envelope and take enterprises to the next level. And we need more people like that.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  I mean, what we're missing is creativity, and creativity is what is going to pull us up and really allow us to rise to a new level. And so I think it's becoming more and more aware that the school systems and what's out there and what it's basically perpetuating are professional educators and educated in what, and how does that apply to life? And so I will always support creativity above anything else because I trust in the greater design that each being has a genius inside of it, every single one. So if we approach children, or all of us, with awe and wonder of "show me who you are,

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  and show me how you were made, and what you have to express," then we will all benefit from that to a great degree. And I have to thank you and Annette for really holding this vibration of excellence in the homeschooling category, because when I really wanted to do it and Rich was having a lot of discomfort, you guys were really catalysts in allowing us to feel safe making that step. And Annette really helped me because a lot of people think, "Oh, you homeschool. Wow, you're so organized," and they immediately flash to a classroom set up in your house with a blackboard and chairs and a pointer. And so Rich was like, "You can't homeschool. You're not organized, or you're too creative, you're too flow."

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  And then Annette reminded us that if you're homeschooling, you're going outside of that construct. Like, if your child does well in that, then leave them in school. But if you're homeschooling, it's really sort of an open book. And I'm sort of probably more on the other end of the spectrum because what I'm really doing is unschooling. So it's even sort of more free. Like, our experience, life provided the experience yesterday, and that is that we came upon a barn owl that had just died somehow, we don't know how, and we made the decision that we would examine it and measure the wingspan and...

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  You know, look at it up close. And then we actually made the decision to remove the wings. And the girls dug a grave. And they did a prayer and a ceremony and they offered the body back into the earth. And we have the fans, which are sage fans, you know, in the Native American tradition, that's a very sacred thing. And of course, you know, so we, that was our experience of unschooling yesterday. And, you know, it was inspiring and meaningful for all of us.

• 1:14:48Byron Davis?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. One of the things that I think society's catching up and Stanford's actually leading the way, they've embraced the homeschooling process. They have a curriculum.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Yay, Stanford.

• 1:15:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's amazing how many Stanford courses you can do through iTunes U or whatever that are available online.

• 1:15:08Byron Davis?

  And it's powerful. They're finding out that we are in, and we all know this, we're in an uncertain world and our economy is constantly changing. Business is changing with new technology and how we interact and engage each other. Everything's changing. The people who are able to take peace in the pocket, really embrace ambiguity and are confident in how, you know, they're both, their cerebral, you know, executive brain meshes with, you know, the amygdala and the primal instinct of us, how all those things really work together to really drive us to new creation.

• 1:15:50Byron Davis?

  Those are the people who are, again, changing the game. They're the ones that we're looking to now for direction. They're the ones who are solving problems and are coming up with the solutions that are helping us, you know, set new courses in today's society. And schools are, people, there's enough momentum out there where people are recognizing that's how we need to really engage our kids. That's how we need to prepare them. We need to teach them how to think, dream and create, how to collaborate collectively as a creative unit. But at the same time, not sacrifice your own individuality and the uniqueness you bring to the table.

• 1:16:31Byron Davis?

  And when we work in environments, dynamic environments like that, that's when beautiful and magical things happen. And we see it all the time. We're seeing it right now in different breakthroughs in technology. And that's what excites me. That's what excites me about the state that we're in at this point. I mean, again, it's a tough economy and we're all struggling and we're all trying to figure it out. But the hope that I have is that we are figuring it out. And there are people who decide to embrace their ability to combine their creativity with a definiteness of purpose and spirit, this resolve that makes them unstoppable,

• 1:17:13Byron Davis?

  that we come to new breakthroughs and new solutions.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  Right. It's all about living your epic life.

• 1:17:20Byron Davis?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  So let's talk about that.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  So before we get into that, I'm going to have to say goodbye right now. So anyway, it was so beautiful seeing you. Please give my love to your family and I want to be a part of Epic program and I want to work with you and so I'm going to be calling with all the other listeners.

• 1:17:39Byron Davis?

  Awesome. Here, let me give you a hug.

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  All right, babe. See you in a while. So Live Your Epic Life, which is Byron's website and his program. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what that's all about. Like, you know, what is it? How do you get involved? What are you going to get out of it?

• 1:18:03Byron Davis?

  Well, Live Your Epic Life, liverepiclife.com, is an ongoing experiment in the realm of infinite possibility, if I can give any more of a vague response. Basically, in a nutshell, is... I want, I want to empower and challenge people to live their legend and ultimately leave, leave a legacy, you know?

• 1:18:27Rich Roll?

  And where did this desire to try to empower people come from? I mean, is this a result of, we didn't even talk about this, but you, you have a background as a pastor and you obviously have this, you know, this, this past that informed all of this kind of thing. I mean, where is this drive coming from?

• 1:18:43Byron Davis?

  I think, I think initially it just comes from the conviction and belief that, you know, I truly believe that God didn't make a mistake when he made us. You know, I, and all of us are, are uniquely gifted with a gift mix of stuff that, that will then allow us to, to bring and create new valuable, you know, value-added contributions to this world. I definitely believe that. I truly believe that. And if I look back, or when I look back on my life and I see there's a common thread and theme, no matter where life took me and what season I was in, or what job I did,

• 1:19:24Byron Davis?

  the common denominator was always me wanting to get the best out of myself and the most out of my life, really tinker, kind of be my own, you know, I always say I'm in constant beta. You know, we're all in constant beta mode. So really, really trying to get the best out of myself. And when things didn't work out, really going inward and examining, okay, what was the inner breakdown? So always being a student of human dynamics and my, just my own performance and trying to get the best out of myself. And then two, even more so, feeling even greater satisfaction when, when I inspired or empowered or challenged someone else to do it. So I was always a better relay swimmer than I was an individual swimmer or in individual races.

• 1:20:09Byron Davis?

  Not because, you know, I just, you know, I didn't like to swim individual races. I just, it was something about being a part of that team. That, that, that team dynamic that allowed, just made, just got me more excited about doing whatever it is we were doing. So I've always, I've always enjoyed coming alongside people who had a desire to, to experiment and transform. And, and so that was a constant theme in my life. And I reached a season in my life, Rich, where now that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. Is I, I want to constantly explore and, and experiment and, and really embrace this, this transformation process for myself.

• 1:20:53Byron Davis?

  But then also work with other people who have and share the same kind of conviction. Right. And so what, for somebody who is interested in exploring this, you know, what are they in for? Well, I, I, um, without trying to say that, I have this, you know, uh, four step program. Here's the four steps, dude. That you could get. But, but I do, I think, I think there is a methodology behind, um, behind transformation and growth and, and how to lean into it and embrace it. Um, basically, I believe the, the, the knack for us, when, when we study great performers, I call them high impact people. When we study high impact people, no matter what discipline or industry or sport, you know, we, we see that, that they intuitively do three things very well.

• 1:21:37Byron Davis?

  Um, they, they see what they want clearly. They learn to express what they want fully. And here's the, the, the third one that, that most of us miss. They learn how to let their obstacles lead the way. You know, I call it illumination, seeing what you want clearly. Uh, animation, expressing what you want fully, and then iteration, allowing to, to let your obstacles actually lead the way. What does that, what does that mean, allowing your obstacles to lead the way? Um, Buck, Buckminster Fuller, great mathematician. Sure, he keeps coming up on the podcast. Oh, yeah. That's like the third time Buckminster Fuller has come up and. That's awesome. You know, he says, "A, a problem well defined is a problem well on its way to being solved."

• 1:22:19Byron Davis?

  Uh, when, when we allow our obstacles to lead the way, we learn to embrace obstacles and setbacks and roadblocks. Um, not in the way of, of fatalism, meaning.

• 1:22:31Byron Davis?

  You know, that's it, I'm done. But more so recognize that that roadblock, you know, is asking for us to respond to the situation in a different way.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  And when you fully understand it, like you can identify like this is, this is exactly what's holding me back, this particular roadblock. As opposed to like, I don't know why I can't move forward, like not knowing. But when you know exactly what it is, then that's the first step towards trying to come up with a solution to attack and overcome it.

• 1:22:59Byron Davis?

  Yeah, but the roadblock is telling you what to do next. Your immediate next move is to, is to, is to move around the roadblock. It's like this, it's like if we, um, we're, we're in a dark room and we, we wake up and we, let's say we're in a hotel, I'm making this up. We're in a hotel room, dark and all, but we, we want to go to the bathroom. Well, we get up out of the bed. Number one, we never question whether or not we're going to get to the bathroom. Right. But it's dark, we can't see a thing. What do we do? We stumble our way to the bathroom, right? We, we kind of walk and we, we see where, uh, we kind of feel where the end table is. We kind of notice our hand on the wall. All of a sudden, these little obstacles, uh, start to actually create,

• 1:23:43Byron Davis?

  when we weave them together, a reliable roadmap that brings us to our destination. That's what obstacles and challenges do in our life is that they, they are not roadblocks. But if we know how to use them right, they become reliable, very pragmatic roadmaps to really giving us what it is we want, the result that we want.

• 1:24:02Rich Roll?

  Right. So, uh, all right. So you have these three things, these sort of cornerstone principles to your program. And is this, is this like an online program or is this, do you do personal coaching? Like, explain to me exactly, you know, what it is that, that, that this all entails.

• 1:24:17Byron Davis?

  Yeah, there, there are, there are three different kind of road, um, onramps to this road. And, and again, um, I call these, these three things rhythms. What I do in a nutshell is I help people, uh, practice these three rhythms in their life. Practice, illumination, animation and iteration, um, as it relates to their desired outcome. And, um, one that you can, there's a lot of free resources on the blog, liverepiclife.com, that has evolved over the last six months especially. Um, doing a, uh, you know, a lot of interview of experts, but then also diving deep on each of these things. So they, that's the first step. The first on-ramp is just, uh, hanging out at the blog. Uh, there's a, um, A life planning guide that I that I give away. Uh, basically, it's your epic life plan.

• 1:24:59Byron Davis?

  And it's a step by step guide that helps people get clear about what what they the kind of results they want in each area of their life. And then, how do you create a narrative or a story that you can now step into uh in order to live that that life out? Right. And so so so that's that's the first step. And then um it goes all the way up. People uh we we just launched um in fact, this the the doors are closed for this. We just actually launched uh the the Unstoppable You Bootcamp today. Uh, we'll we'll open that up um in the in the spring again. But um that's where I take a small group of people uh through a process of of really embedding these rhythms in the context of their life. Right. Um, how do we how do we really start to uh see what we want clearly?

• 1:25:43Byron Davis?

  And I I'm gonna go off on a tangent a little bit. What I mean by that, seeing what it is you want clearly, I mean, and we've all experienced this intuitively. Um, all we have to do is really analyze when we've succeeded at something, uh you can see these these components. When we when we learn to see something clearly, what we've learned to do intuitively or or by design is translate a future desired outcome into its present day equivalent or present day approach to doing life. You know, if if I set out to lose sixty pounds in the next ninety days or whatever, um ninety or sixty pounds lost, you know, three uh three months from now, looks completely different in the present moment. Mm hmm.

• 1:26:28Byron Davis?

  And it's when you start to to see, well, losing weight ninety pounds lost three months from now looks like um, you know, uh, you know, a a new uh, you know, type of diet, um, you know, a restrictive calorie, a a high nutrient, low calorie diet. Um, uh, being able to to engage in exercise that allows us to um.

• 1:26:53Byron Davis?

  Again, expend more energy than we're taking in. And then the proper rest and fluid intake of water, you know, not drinking our calories. And I'm being generic in the whole description. But well, once we start to to map out what the desired outcome looks like in our present day approach to doing life, that's when we see what it is we want clearly. And then we're able to express what we want fully. Now we have the plan. We have the roadmap. We know what we need to do. Now we can now give ourselves, we can animate, we can express ourselves through engaging in those activities. You know, I always say that that discipline, my definition of discipline is demonstrating a clear decision on a daily basis.

• 1:27:38Byron Davis?

  Once you see what it is you want clearly now, all you do is demonstrate that decision on a regular basis, on a daily basis. That's expressing fully. And then throughout the way, your plans, our plans, no matter how well thought out they are, they're never perfect. They have to be modified. They have to be adjusted. There are so many variables in life that we can't account for. Many times, we're going to have to make mid course corrections along the way. And so that's where the the ability to iterate on the fly and incorporate that into your rhythm, your lifestyle, that's where the magic happens because that's when you become unstoppable.

• 1:28:19Rich Roll?

  Right. But but essentially what you're saying is you've you're creating a calculus and a methodology for transformation and breaking it down into components that are digestible and understandable and rooting somebody in the present and in accordance to a plan to get somebody where they want to go.

• 1:28:38Byron Davis?

  Right, exactly, exactly.

• 1:28:40Rich Roll?

  That's great. Well, I mean, what do you think? What do you think is the primary thing that holds people back? I mean, it's so, I say this all the time, but people say, "People don't change. They don't change." And it's like, "Yeah, they do. You can change. It's not easy." And usually, pain is the motivator. When your back is up against the wall and you have no other choice, then you can change. But how do you, but willfully and voluntarily changing to grow and expand is the big challenge that everybody wants and people to struggle with the most. What do you think is holding people back?

• 1:29:23Byron Davis?

  Well, of course, the proverbial and the popular answer is fear. We're all afraid at some level. But let's just kind of dissect that a little bit. I don't think it's really the fear that holds us back. I think it's finding out the truth that really holds us back. I think all of us, at certain points in our life, we have a romantic vision of how things are to play out. And whenever we want to embark on something, something that we've never done before,

• 1:30:04Byron Davis?

  we automatically have this, again, we have a vision or this idea of the way things should be. And whenever we start to now pursue that, we start to recognize and experience the way things are. And when the way things are don't immediately match up to the way things should be, all of a sudden, we get uncomfortable, we get disappointment. That's when doubt, discouragement, distraction, all of these things start to flood into our life. And we end up protecting that idea in our head. And it's safe there. Again, it's safe there. We control it. And we fall in love with the idea of doing something unique, something great, something exciting.

• 1:30:50Byron Davis?

  But we're not willing to go through the process of wrestling through the way things are, you know, as we manifest or as we start to bring that into volition. So, so I definitely believe that fear is a factor, but we can use fear as a tool. Like you said, fear is a gift. I said that earlier, fear is a gift. And so it's not about being afraid of something, embrace it. Yeah, everyone's gonna be afraid the first time and the first few times we try things. Everyone's gonna fail the first times, the, the few times we, we try things. Failure is a part of the process. So let's, let's retool fear into excitement. Let's start focusing on, on, instead of anticipating that, that negative outcome.

• 1:31:33Byron Davis?

  Oh, you know what? I'm finding evidence that what I think should happen isn't going to happen. So I'm gonna stop. No, let's start. You know what? I get a clear picture of what could happen. But I'm not gonna own that. I'm not going to, I have no control over that. But what I do have control over is doing what I can with what I have right where I am. And then allowing the process to unfold, knowing that I will be able to solve the problem as it comes about. And so we embrace the, we embrace the journey. And, and really accept our, our present state of reality. When, when we can get comfortable in embracing the moment, embracing, you know, challenges as they come.

• 1:32:16Byron Davis?

  Then we start to build that whole winner's momentum.

• 1:32:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:19Byron Davis?

  We start to recognize that, you know what? I can solve that problem. Oh, you know what? I, yeah, there's a resource that I've always taken for granted or I've ignored that's right in front of me. Let me use this. And, and pretty soon we find ourselves being catapulted into or across the finish line with, with our desired outcome.

• 1:32:39Rich Roll?

  Right. I think that, but I think sort of getting at a, at the fundamental kind of starting line of the whole thing. In order to trigger that excitement or to even come up with any kind of trajectory, you need to know what you want. Like what is it that you want? And I think that a lot of people. Don't know, you know, and then, and then they're ashamed that they don't know. Like, there's a lot of people that, that say, "I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up." Or, "I don't even know, like, I know I'm not satisfied, but, but, you know, if I had to pick my ultimate career, I don't even know what that, what that is." And then they feel bad because they, they think they should know. And, and there's a, there's sort of a disassociation from the self.

• 1:33:17Byron Davis?

  Well, let's, let's, let's call the big elephant in the room out here. You know, really, you know, what's wrong with not knowing? That, you know, we, again, I think our, in our Western culture, we, we learn, and it becomes ingrained in us that we have to have the solution or the answer before we begin. And, uh, but yet, life doesn't play out that way. And so, if, if you're starting at a point where you really don't know, well, then that's the first obstacle, what can we learn from it? Well, let's explore what the possibilities and the opportunities that are available, that then start to resonate with, with your strengths and your passions. And also, so the first step in most people, uh, you know,

• 1:34:00Byron Davis?

  the first step that most people have to go through is stepping into a discovery process. Robert Green, in his book, he just came out with it, Mastery, uh, talks about, you know, there is, there is a phase of apprenticeship that every master goes through. And, uh, and, and if you, if you ignore this apprenticeship process, then you keep yourself stuck and not really discovering, and then therefore honing what your passions are. Because having a passion is not gonna pay the bills.

• 1:34:32Rich Roll?

  Right, but then even, but taking it a step backwards, some people don't even know what they're passionate about. And I think a lot of that is because we're so, we're, you know, everything is so cheap right now. It's so easy to buy distractions. So, you know, everybody's watching TV and playing video games and, you know, staring at their cell phones. And we're, you know, we're, we are almost by design, you know, in this constant state of distraction from ourselves. And I think when we're, when that's perpetuated, we, we do get into this disassociated state of being, where it's like, "I don't even know what I'm passionate about." I mean, there's a lot of people walking around, like, like, you say, "Well, embrace your passion." Well, like, "Well, how do I even know what I'm passionate about?"

• 1:35:15Byron Davis?

  Well, and that's where the whole apprenticeship process comes in. Um, I, I call it allowing yourself, giving yourself room to play. And experiment, most of us, most of the time, because we, we pack our lives with all these distractions. Um, as, as you, you know, eloquently pointed out, I think that's so true. That we fool ourselves into thinking we don't have enough time to play and experiment. It's only when we allow ourselves the room, the space to become an apprentice. To allow, even as, it gets harder as, as an adult. As we get older and we move into and we operate in this professional zone. You know, the older we get, the more we're supposed to know what's going on.

• 1:35:58Byron Davis?

  And so the more we, we like to hide the fact that we really don't know what's going on, you know? So it's, it's easy, we, we get into that momentum, we get into that mindset that then keeps us stuck. What we have to do is, is learn to embrace the apprenticeship mindset. And technology and the resources that are available to us at our fingertips. We can have virtual mentors and, and create our own apprenticeship. You know, instantly, all we have to do, and this is the key. This is how you discover your passion, okay? Even if you don't know what your passion is, here's how you discover your passion. Allow yourself to care more than normal and more than necessary about an activity.

• 1:36:40Byron Davis?

  And, and then when you, when you, when you allow yourself to care more than normal about something and more than necessary. You start to move out of the realm of being your average self. You start to step into that, that, um, that fanatical realm. Of let me really explore and, and really chase this rabbit hole to see how far it really goes. When you, and all, and all it has to, all we have to begin doing is just caring about it more. Than, than, than the average person. And what that does is start to unfold. You'll find out very quickly whether or not something grabs your heart or resonates with you. Or not, you'll find it, and if it doesn't, cool, guess what? You move on to something else.

• 1:37:24Byron Davis?

  And if, if that doesn't work, great, you move on to something else. The value in that discovery process is that, um. Again, God doesn't waste time in our lives. Whatever process we go through, we will discover something that leads us to ultimately what it is we really want. But we've got to be willing to, to move down that process. We've got to be willing to be an apprentice. And, uh, and then I would, I would also add to that, um. Many people say, in fact, a guy that I was coaching said something that was just authentic. He asked this question in just very, very pure innocence. He says, Byron, what if you desire to do something that you really don't believe you can do? You really don't, you don't have the confidence, you don't believe that you can actually do it?

• 1:38:09Byron Davis?

  And it was a great question. And, you know, the, the short answer is this. You, you learn how to, number one, discount your own voice in the process. Okay, that's a step one, because you really, you really don't have the authority or the credibility

• 1:38:27Rich Roll?

  To make that judgment call.

• 1:38:28Byron Davis?

  To make that judgment, because you failed at it so far. You haven't done it. So you can't, you can't make that judgment. So logically, if you were to, you know, if you wanted to know something about, you know, financial investing and you wanted, you had an opportunity to learn under Warren Buffett or learn under someone who's tried really hard but hasn't gotten the results you want, who would you choose? Warren Buffett, right?

• 1:38:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:49Byron Davis?

  You would want to do that. So in this case, in this scenario, when, when you really realize that I don't know how to do something and I don't really think I can, you've got to recognize in that moment that you're not the Warren Buffett in the situation. You are the other person.

• 1:39:02Rich Roll?

  And you're not in a place to even objectively judge whether you can or cannot do that.

• 1:39:07Byron Davis?

  Exactly, exactly. So why be unfair to yourself in that? And the second step is, so once you acknowledge that, you know what? I've got to discount my own, my own judgment, my own belief in this situation. The second step then is to submit yourself under, become obedient to a proven process. So now you have to now give your trust and your faith over to a proven process. So that's when you seek out, you know, who's doing this? Who's gotten the results that you need to get?

• 1:39:39Rich Roll?

  Right, if you think, well, I'm not musically inclined. I have no musical talent. I'll never be able to play the piano or whatever. And then saying, well, I'm going to go to this teacher and I will apprentice to this person who has taught many people how to play the piano. It's a proven procedure and process that I can undertake.

• 1:39:55Byron Davis?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and, and we know this as athletes, you know, there comes a point where we have to buy into the culture and the methodology of the program we're in. If we don't, if we don't buy into how the coach is preparing us, then we'll second guess our preparation and then we'll lose all confidence in our ability.

• 1:40:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:14Byron Davis?

  There comes a point where you have to give your trust over to the process. You have to fall in love with the process. You have to give your heart to the process. Again, you've got to care more than normal and more than necessary. And then what you, what, what takes place is you suspend your disbelief long enough that you then invite new experiences that give you better results from which you can then base better and stronger beliefs on. So your beliefs ultimately will catch up to your experience. And that's where confidence comes from.

• 1:40:44Rich Roll?

  And it all goes back to trying to propel some of this momentum that we were talking about earlier.

• 1:40:49Byron Davis?

  Yeah, yeah. And so I'm not an advocate of, you know, just pump yourself up and muster up enough, you know, confidence to do something. No.

• 1:40:57Rich Roll?

  Well, that's, it rings false. It's sort of, you know, it's, it's not, it's not backed up by anything. It's sort of, it's pretending.

• 1:41:04Byron Davis?

  Yeah. Become, allow yourself to embrace. You know, it's like this, when I, when I speak to athletes and I go out and, and, and talk, I, I say, you know, at times you will not be confident. Okay. Recognize that, embrace it, don't be surprised if and when it happens. Confidence has very little to do with your capability of actually doing it, making it happen. In that moment, don't worry about not being confident. Allow yourself to be curious. Okay, we can all be curious. We can all allow ourselves to go into a moment, into a situation where we don't know the answer. We acknowledge we don't know the answer. But, but we all can embrace that and be very curious.

• 1:41:47Byron Davis?

  And when we're curious, it's just like a kid, when you're curious about something, you put on the hat of a professor. You, your awareness and, and all of, of your, your, your energy, your brain power starts to become acutely aware of scenarios, of patterns, of, of, of little answers. All these things start to now come at you when you decide to be curious. You, you invite enough room to create experiences that then you can start to stack up that will become your confidence.

• 1:42:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:20Byron Davis?

  So, so you don't have to be confident. You don't have to believe you can do something in order to do it. Just allow yourself to be curious enough to, to, to move through that, that moment in that period of ambiguity. And then allow the small incremental results you get to dictate your mid course corrections. So that ultimately you will cross the finish line.

• 1:42:41Rich Roll?

  Right. And that that confidence will come as a result of that. It's sort of like acting as if it's like, I don't believe this is going to work, but I'm going to show up and do it anyway. And then, and then over time, you know, the sort of objective feedback becomes undeniable that, oh, actually I can do this. Or, you know, I proved myself wrong. And, and I always talk about this too. It's sort of understanding that, you know, your mind is not always your friend. And, you know, when it's firing signals off saying you can't, or, you know, I stink, or I'll never be good, or whatever. Those are just messages and that you have a choice, like your higher self has a choice to give those credence. Or to dismiss them and say, hey, that's interesting that my brain is trying to tell me that I can't do that.

• 1:43:24Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I'm just going to shrug that off and not pay attention to that because, you know, I know better. Or I, I choose to, you know, believe otherwise or act differently.

• 1:43:34Byron Davis?

  Yeah, that's, that's the, I mean, I call that our inner child, you know, our inner child will start acting up and, and be rebellious. But as, as the adult in the situation who has better perspective.

• 1:43:46Rich Roll?

  You gotta smack them down.

• 1:43:47Byron Davis?

  Yeah. You say, well, no, I, I'll demonstrate it. I'll show you. Take my hand and I will lead the way. In those moments when our defeated self or when our average self want to take the lead in our life. No, that's when our, you know, our, our best self, our epic self has to say, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to lead the way. And, and we allow ourselves enough room to fail, embrace that because we know that, again, that's the whole idea of iteration. We recognize that, you know, my failure in 1996 wasn't the end of my life. But I was able to ultimately use that failure to set up future success.

• 1:44:26Byron Davis?

  And in different areas of my life. Likewise, that's the, that's the attitude and the, and the inner culture we have to embrace. In order to, to really do things that are meaningful in our life. And I know I'm throwing a lot or going off on tangents here, but. It's for the same reason why I'm not an advocate of setting goals the way we've always been taught in school. You know, I'm not a, I'm not an enemy to setting goals. But, but I think we limit ourselves a lot when we get trapped in the, the need to set goals. What I do believe in is, I mean, not setting goals is not licensed to not just do anything in life.

• 1:45:07Byron Davis?

  I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about actually learning how to engage vision. So, learning to stop setting goals and start engaging vision. What that is, is, what that means is, learning how to own

• 1:45:22Byron Davis?

  a, a process and a plan in our, in our life. We, many of us are afraid to make a choice, make a decision. Because we're afraid that decision will be wrong. So, we settle into this idea that I don't know what my passion is. What we're really saying is, is I'm not willing to make a decision to draw a line, definite line.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  I think that's very true. That's interesting.

• 1:45:44Byron Davis?

  Yeah, and, and go with this, good, bad, or ugly. But, it's only when we decide to make that definitive decision will we find out, and we'll find out quickly, whether or not it was the right or wrong decision. But, if it turns out to be the wrong decision, that's okay.

• 1:46:00Rich Roll?

  Right, to give yourself permission to make the wrong decision.

• 1:46:03Byron Davis?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:04Rich Roll?

  I think that goals are, are, they have their place in the sense that they create that structure for people who operate well within that kind of a paradigm, like myself. But I think you're correct in that what happens with goals is that they're, they're, not only are they limiting because you're putting a cap on it and, you know, are you the best objective, you know, decision maker to decide what you're capable or not capable of? Like, probably not, you know?

• 1:46:33Byron Davis?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:46:34Rich Roll?

  And secondarily, they tend to be very destination oriented, where instead of journey oriented, you know?

• 1:46:41Rich Roll?

  So it's sort of like all about like, you know, the obvious example is always the weight loss example, like I want to lose 10 pounds or I want to lose 50 pounds. And it's all about getting to that day or, you know, crossing the finish line at that marathon or whatever it is. And but then it's it's sort of the questions never asked like, well, now what, you know, like you get there and then you have the the sort of what am I supposed to do now? And then the kind of weird emotions that swirl around, you know, what happens next? Because it was all about getting to that end point as opposed to being actively engaged in the moment and in the destination and in the journey. And even, you know, I mean, it's you hear it all the time, people that achieve these goals, whether it's an Olympic gold medal or whatever it is, will always tell you like,

• 1:47:24Rich Roll?

  well, you know, it was really, you know, thinking back on everything it took for me to get there is where the best memories are and where I really can engage the, you know, the joy was in that process and in the journey.

• 1:47:37Byron Davis?

  Yeah. And while I definitely believe that that the magic and the beauty and the and the nectar is in the journey, you know, like, like you, I am a results guy, you know, I like, I like to see results. But but I also think that let's, let's live a life that's prolific as opposed to goal oriented. And what I mean by that is, you know, being prolific is, is establishing a rhythm of life where we're, we're accomplishing stuff, meaningful stuff, stuff that matters, you know, on a regular basis. When we think of Steven Spielberg or Stephen King, we think these guys are prolific. They keep coming

• 1:48:18Byron Davis?

  out with great stuff over and over again. For them, it's not about the goal. For them, it's, you know, their work is just a snapshot of their, of their expression of their existence. And and before they finish one thing, they're off to doing another, another.

• 1:48:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:48:36Byron Davis?

  And so it's, it's that, that perpetual journey that produces results is what I'm after. That's, that's living prolifically. That's what we want. We, it's in, guys will tell you, people will tell you, again, After a big event, after the Super Bowl, why is it that, that, you know, we hear story and story after story of people doing something great and then immediately, a short time afterward, you know, they blow their brains out or they go off on the deep end or something. And we're like, how did that happen? It's because, you know, partly, they got themselves so wrapped up in defining who they were in that moment when the moment was gone.

• 1:49:16Byron Davis?

  You know, if they didn't immediately have another hill to conquer, they were lost. Well, I say, well, let's, let's not limit ourselves by that. Let's have definite checkpoints. Let's, let's have moments where we, we can celebrate victory. I'm totally into that. But instead, let's create a lifestyle and in a culture within ourselves where, where we're producing these things on a regular basis.

• 1:49:41Rich Roll?

  It's just, it's basically just a constant manifestation of who you are. So as opposed to, yeah, I want to win the Super Bowl. It's like, or if you're Spielberg, it's just, this is what I do. I'm doing it all the time. I'm on to the next thing. I'm not, and you're not, you're not overly attached to the result of, of any one thing because that's not your focus. Your focus isn't, you know, crossing the, the finish line at the marathon or what the scale says that day. It's just, this is what I do now. This is who I am and I'm constantly expressing it.

• 1:50:10Byron Davis?

  Exactly.

• 1:50:11Rich Roll?

  It's a completely different perspective on, on the whole thing. But yeah, that's amazing. That's very interesting.

• 1:50:16Byron Davis?

  Mm-hmm. Very good, yeah.

• 1:50:18Rich Roll?

  Cool. Live prolifically.

• 1:50:21Byron Davis?

  Yeah, let's, let's live our epic life. Live our epic life. And, and here's the thing, the reason why I, I say epic, I know that's, that, you know, for some, that's kind of over the top, you know? Live your epic life. That, that's birthed out of the, again, the conviction that we all have a story to tell in our life. And every epic tale, whether we read it or in a book or watch it in a movie, has three main elements, right? You, you have a flawed main character who decides to embark on some type of ambition, who ultimately must come up against an antagonist or conflict in order to do so. And it's in that process that the person's story plays out, that a transformation has to happen.

• 1:51:07Byron Davis?

  That ultimately allows them to be positioned, to position themselves to actually accomplishing what it was that they once thought was impossible.

• 1:51:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:17Byron Davis?

  You know, and what I believe is what makes for a great, an epic story also makes for an epic life.

• 1:51:23Rich Roll?

  We all have that story, you know, it's this Joseph Campbell hero's journey and it's incumbent upon all of us to, you know, be, be the hero in our own movie. You know what I mean? Stop being an extra.

• 1:51:37Byron Davis?

  Right.

• 1:51:37Rich Roll?

  Or a supporting actor in your own biopic.

• 1:51:41Byron Davis?

  Well said, well said, yeah, exactly.

• 1:51:43Rich Roll?

  You know, and we all have that power within us, you know, we all have that power and it does require a decision and it doesn't mean that it's easy and it's not about buying a book that's going to give you the three steps that where you're not going to have to do anything and your life's going to change and you're going to lose weight and all that kind of stuff. You have to take personal responsibility for it, but if you're willing to do the work and take direction and engage in this apprenticeship, you know, this, which is sort of a lost art form, you know, in which we all used to kind of grow up within the construct of that's kind of gone away. But I think because technology is becoming so predominant as a part of our economy and so specific that that's really coming back, you know?

• 1:52:26Rich Roll?

  I mean, if you want to be a film editor, you have to apprentice with a film editor. You know, I mean, you can go to school and learn the, the software program, but you know, I think that you're seeing a resurgence of that and I think that that's a, that's a good thing.

• 1:52:38Byron Davis?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Rich Roll?

  You know, it's sort of like, you know, when I went and worked in a law firm, yeah, I had partners and, and senior associates that I reported to, but I don't, it wasn't an apprenticeship, you know, there wasn't like one guy who said, I'm going to teach you how to do this and just you're going to follow me around and do everything I do. You know what I mean? And I think that we could all benefit from having more of that in our lives and we could all benefit from having, you know, a, a support system, you know, a strong mother who believed in you and a Jeff Armstrong at the YMCA who went the extra mile to look out for you because he believed in you. And so I think we all need to look at our, at ourselves and at our own lives and say,

• 1:53:20Rich Roll?

  who is that person for us and who can I be that person for?

• 1:53:24Byron Davis?

  Right. You just said something, man, that's, I think, magic, powerful.

• 1:53:31Byron Davis?

  There are, there are situations and people out there right now who, when they honestly look at their life, they don't have that person. They don't have a mom who was totally sold out to investing in them. They don't, they don't have that person who was a champion for them even if they, if and when they didn't believe in themselves. Yeah, they are, but here's the key, and, and I go back to what you, you, you jarred this in my mind. My eighth grade teacher always said the fastest way to master or learn anything is to turn around and immediately teach it to someone else.

• 1:54:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:02Byron Davis?

  Well, you can reverse engineer the whole apprentice process, apprentice process, where all again, you just decide that, you know what, I am going to teach or invest in someone else and, and show them, demonstrate to them how to get results in this area of your life. And if you, if you just do that, if you just even start there, have the courage to start there, all of a sudden, you will start out of the woodwork. Resources and relationships and things you used to take for granted that you look at it a different way will then become your teacher, that they will become your source of, of content and

• 1:54:41Byron Davis?

  information that now starts to funnel through you. And in the process of you just inviting someone else along the process with you, you begin to practice the very thing you, you once thought you couldn't do. So, so really, learning and, and if you don't have anybody that you can think of right off the top of your mind that, that you're champion and, and all that, you know, that's no excuse to, to not immediately turn around and invest yourself. Put yourself on the line. Call yourself to the carpet and say, you know what, I don't quite know how to do this yet, but I am committed to showing and demonstrating someone else the best approach to do it. And just putting yourself in that position

• 1:55:25Byron Davis?

  immediately, all of a sudden, you now become this, this, this honing device where all these resources and, and all of, all of the information you need will start to come together for you. And in the process of you sharing, you giving yourself, you pouring yourself into someone else, you benefit in the process.

• 1:55:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a, that's something I learned a long time ago and is a, is a key cornerstone in recovery.

• 1:55:53Rich Roll?

  Essentially, that, you know, if you're feeling stuck, or you're unhappy, or you get wrapped up in your story of, you know, why your life isn't the way you want it to be, or you're getting all sort of, you know, um, what's the word for it? Um, just sort of self-defeating and running these patterns in your brain, you know, you can't think your way out of that. You've got to act your way out of it. And the best way to act your way out of it is to reach out to somebody and be of service to them, whether it's somebody who's less fortunate than you, or it doesn't even matter the form in which the service takes. It's the simple act of doing that that gets you out of yourself and into somebody else. And there's something magical about that that will shift your, not just your

• 1:56:36Rich Roll?

  perspective, it will shift your energy, it will shift your life. And suddenly you start to forget about your problems. And, you know, and there's a joy in that. And, and there's always, you will always end up reaping more than you you're giving every time. It's like this weird spiritual equation.

• 1:56:53Byron Davis?

  Yeah. And, and not only that, there's, there's science to back that up as well. Because as we begin to, to practice, again, um, express ourselves, animate, do these different things, we now start to engage and, and call on our nervous system to, to fire off in new and different ways. And, and create new, new neural pathways that engrain new behaviors and new responses to, to, to external stimuli or to triggers. So what used to trigger a certain behavioral pattern, now triggers a more empowered behavioral pattern. And so all that starts to happen when, again, we, we allow ourselves to pour

• 1:57:38Byron Davis?

  into others. And again, we, we hear it in different language in business. Um, the whole, and Seth Godin's a, a big proponent of this. When you start to deliver value, when you start to give away your best stuff, all of a sudden, what happens? People start to see you as the trusted authority and pretty soon, even though they could get the same stuff from someone else, they choose to get it from you. Well, in the process of you doing that, you begin to own being that trusted authority and everything now starts to become second nature. So what happens in business also can happen in every context and every area of our life.

• 1:58:20Rich Roll?

  Right. Amazing.

• 1:58:22Byron Davis?

  Hope that makes sense.

• 1:58:23Rich Roll?

  No, it does, man. I think that's a great place to start, too. How long? Well, we've been going for two hours.

• 1:58:27Byron Davis?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:58:28Rich Roll?

  We gotta sew it up.

• 1:58:29Byron Davis?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Rich Roll?

  I think we did it, though.

• 1:58:31Byron Davis?

  Yeah. Oh, this has been awesome.

• 1:58:33Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:58:34Byron Davis?

  This has been a lot of fun.

• 1:58:35Rich Roll?

  You want to get anything off your chest?

• 1:58:36Byron Davis?

  Well, you know what? I feel like jumping on the bike and running. I'm pumped right now.

• 1:58:41Rich Roll?

  Me, too.

• 1:58:42Byron Davis?

  I'm gonna go run.

• 1:58:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I got my bike right over there. You want to borrow it?

• 1:58:46Byron Davis?

  I have to.

• 1:58:47Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for your time.

• 1:58:51Byron Davis?

  All right.

• 1:58:52Rich Roll?

  It's really great to have you, man, and I'm a better man for having you in my life.

• 1:58:56Byron Davis?

  Man, I just want to tell you, I know this is a love fest right now, but you and your story inspire me so much. I mean, just your story of finding Ultra inspired me to get off my butt and do my first Ironman.

• 1:59:11Rich Roll?

  Right, that's right.

• 1:59:12Byron Davis?

  You know, you definitely walk the talk, brother. So, thank you.

• 1:59:16Rich Roll?

  All right, thanks, buddy. So, for people that want to hook up with Byron, they can find him on Twitter. It's ByronDavis7, right? ByronDavis7. The website is, is it LiveYourEpicLife?

• 1:59:29Byron Davis?

  Yeah. LiveYourEpicLife.com.

• 1:59:31Rich Roll?

  LiveYourEpicLife.com.

• 1:59:32Byron Davis?

  Or UnstoppableUHQ.com.

• 1:59:35Rich Roll?

  I didn't know. I didn't check that one out.

• 1:59:38Byron Davis?

  Yeah, UnstoppableUHQ.

• 1:59:40Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. And they can sign up there, they can read the blog, they can check out upcoming. Do you have any kind of upcoming speaking engagements or any kind of group activities for people that would maybe want to contact you in person?

• 1:59:54Byron Davis?

  Yeah, well, on the UnstoppableUHQ.com website, although the boot camp is closed right now because we're working, we have a small group of people going through this three-step, three-rhythm process, it'll open up again in the spring. And the people can again leave their name and their email just to be on the notification list.

• 2:00:13Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Cool. Anywhere else? Anything else you want people to know about? What about Annette's site, the Healthy Moms thing?

• 2:00:24Byron Davis?

  Yeah, yeah. I've been very excited about her. Annette just retired from pro beach volleyball. She did the Olympic thing. She did the, you know, she got her star on the Walk of Fame in Malibu. So anytime someone goes down-

• 2:00:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, she did? I didn't know that.

• 2:00:40Byron Davis?

  Yeah, so she's queen of the beach. So she's done there. She's been there, done that. And now she's moving into a new phase in her life where she's on this mission to empower moms to take back the health and fitness of their kids and their families and themselves. So her website is-

• 2:00:56Rich Roll?

  Fit Moms Fit Kids?

• 2:00:59Byron Davis?

  Yeah, fitmomsfitkidsclub.com. She really, she's creating a community of moms who want to take back their own health and fitness and then take back the health and fitness of their families. So fitmomsfitkidsclub.com. And then her regular or branding site is getfitwithannette.com.

• 2:01:18Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right.

• 2:01:19Byron Davis?

  All right.

• 2:01:20Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks so much, dude.

• 2:01:22Byron Davis?

  Thanks a lot, Rich. Appreciate it, man.

• 2:01:23Rich Roll?

  So thanks a lot for stopping by. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want to support the show, you can click on the Amazon banner ad on richroll.com in the podcast section. If you're going to buy something on Amazon, click through there first and it'll throw a couple nickels in our pot and won't cost you anything extra and help support us, keep the bandwidth flowing. I want to buy a new microphone, stuff like that. Or you don't have to. It's okay. Jai Lifestyle, you can check that out. That's where we have our products and services. We have a digital e-cookbook, Jai Seed, which is 77 pages of awesome plant-based

• 2:02:06Rich Roll?

  nutrition recipes. My Jai Repair Athletic Supplement, plant-based protein product. Julie's meditation program, Jai Release, which is pretty awesome. We're getting some great feedback on that. We just came out with a vitamin B12 supplement, which is really important. Particularly if you're on a plant-based diet, but a lot of people have trouble with vitamin B12 deficiency. So you can read about that and check that out. I'm at RichRoll.com, Rich Roll on Twitter. That's it, man. We're out of here. Thanks so much, Byron. Take it easy. Take care. Peace. Plants.

• 2:04:33Rich Roll?

  The.