The Secret Pattern All High Achievers Share - Ruth Gotian

Being told you're "the glue that keeps everything together" sounds like a compliment—until you realize it's the very reason they never considered you for the promotion. Dr. Ruth Gotian spent 15 years being perfect at her job, and it almost cost her everything. Dr. Ruth Gotian is the Chief Learning Officer at Weill Cornell Medicine (recently retired), a Columbia University faculty member, and one of the world's foremost researchers on peak performance. She has interviewed Nobel Prize winners, Olympians, NASA astronauts, and NBA champions—not to report on their habits, but to decode the mindset patterns behind their greatness. Her book The Success Factor has become a roadmap for high achievers who are tired of being overlooked. In this episode, Kwame and Ruth unpack the hidden rules of success that nobody tells you—and what it actually takes to go from invisible to undeniable. Connect with Dr. Ruth Gotian: Website: ruthgotian.com LinkedIn: Search Ruth Gotian The Success Factor — featuring stories from Neil Katyal, Steve Kerr, Bob Lefkowitz, and Peggy Whitson Upcoming book on overlooked high achievers — coming 2027 Connect with Kwame: www.americannegotiationinstitute.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do something important, not just interesting. It's not enough to do good work. It's not enough to get five out of five on every performance appraisal. It's not enough to be the glue that keeps everyone together. And I didn't know what more I could possibly do.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  This is Dr. Ruth Gotian. She's spent her entire career decoding what actually makes people succeed at the highest level. I'm talking about NBA champions, Nobel Prize winners, Olympic gold medalists, and more.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  And that's when the clarity hit me was that it's not about waiting to be seen. You have to make yourself undeniable.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  In this episode, you're going to find out what it really takes to get to the top. And I promise you, it is not what you think.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  I never knew about the rules. And I think there are a lot of people like me who didn't grow up knowing what the rules were. So I am here to clarify to everyone what those rules are.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  She's studied the people who cracked the code. And she's going to share the stories that might make you a little uncomfortable because getting what you want sometimes means doing things that don't feel natural at first.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  She asked him, that guy that I nominated two years ago, he, by the way, won the award, if he would write a letter of support. And he said, I can't. I'm writing it for my buddies, the ones who wrote letters of support for him two years ago.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  And that's when I realized that those buddies nominate each other and support each other for awards all the time. And that's why when you see the same people winning all the awards, they gamified it. They figured it out.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  And here's why this matters. The path to this level of success is not what you think it is. If you keep grinding without a strategy, you'll run out of steam right before the breakthrough.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  I helped everyone. I was liked by everyone, but never once have I asked for help. And what I have learned is that if there's a goal, you can either get on the bus and come help or get the hell out of my way. Those are the only two options.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Playing it safe is easy. Playing it safe is comfortable. But here's the problem. Playing it safe and playing by rules that were never meant for you will never take you to the next level. If you've got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park, the only thing holding you back is whether you're brave enough to take a big swing. I'm Kwame Christian and this is Big Swings Only. Every week, we're telling you the stories of people who fought their fear, chased the life they actually wanted, and became who they had to become to get it. This show is built for people who are meant for more, because if you really want to get to the next level, you've got to do something big. So the question isn't whether or not you've got what it takes. The question is whether or not you're going to swing. You were built for more, and this show was built for you.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Subscribe now. Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, Granola AI, Quince, and the Anxious Achiever Podcast. Stay present in your meetings. Get three months of Granola free at granola.ai/kwame. For your gift list, shopquince.com for free shipping and 365-day returns, and make sure to tell them that Kwame with Big Swings Only sent you. Subscribe to the Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you have an idea that you want live for the holidays? Launch before Black Friday at Shopify.com/kwame.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  I was the person who always got a five out of five on every single performance appraisal.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  I was always told on the glue that keeps everything together, we'd be lost without you. The one that they kept giving every fire to put out, even the fires that I haven't started. And one day, this dean comes in and he talks to my boss and he said, "There are two divisions. We're merging them together, and this guy, we'll call him Jason, is going to head up this new massive division."

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Sounds great.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Except Jason only started eight months ago. He hadn't even gone through one cycle, one full year cycle of everything that we do. He'd never submitted a budget. He'd never had a performance appraisal. He'd never given other people performance appraisals. Why was this guy chosen and I wasn't? And it turns out that it's not that they didn't want me. They never even considered me.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  I was overlooked. And I was so, I was overlooked because I was told I was so reliable and so good right where I was. If we move you, who would do your work? And for the first time in my career, I went to human resources and I said, how can this be? How could this have happened that this brand new person gets promoted? And I have been here for, I don't know, 15 years at that point. And I wasn't even considered.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  And that's when I was told, oh, you have to go through the proper channels. And I said, what proper channels? The position was never even posted. There were no channels.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  And that night, with some anger and some clarity, with a lot of clarity, I decided to dust off a dream that I've had since I was 20 years old. And I started filling out my application for a doctoral program at Columbia University.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  And I didn't tell anyone I was applying because there were only five spots for the program I wanted. I only applied to two schools. Columbia was where I wanted to go for many, many reasons, including that it was the top program for what I wanted to study, which was adult learning and leadership.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  And I got accepted.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  And of course I went, I made it happen. Even though I was commuting an hour and a half each way to work. I have three young kids, a husband, elder care for my parents. But this is it. This was the time because I was tired of being overlooked. And I had a lot of questions about success and high performance that had been gnawing at me forever. And I really wanted to take a deep dive and learn. So I pursued my doctorate while working full time and all those family obligations and commitments. And when I got my doctorate, my life has changed for the better.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  That is powerful, Ruth. I, I want you to, let's revisit this story. And I want to talk about the meaning that you gave to that story in the moment. So that night when you were filled with emotions, first tell us how you felt like with detail. And then also, what was the narrative that you constructed at that moment? And now, looking back with the wisdom of years, now what is the, the meaning that you give to that same story?

• 7:46Speaker 00

  You know, when I was overlooked, I was furious because I grew up always being told you do good work, it'll get recognized. And here was my wake up call, that's not enough. It's not enough to do good work. It's not enough to get five out of five on every performance appraisal. It's not enough to be the glue that keeps everyone together. And I didn't know what more I could possibly do. And then I realized that this guy was schmoozing and networking in a way that I wasn't. Look, I knew everyone at the institution. I had been there for 15 years and I was respected by everyone.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  But I don't think I was seen in that different type of role because of the work that I was doing in this role. I was seen as executing today's problems instead of building tomorrow's future.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  And I was, I was angry that I wasn't noticed, that being kind to everyone was not enough. Being respectful to everyone was not enough. Being collaborative with everyone was not enough. Getting perfect scores on NIH government grants was not enough. Doing hard work was not enough. What more do you want from me? Literally, what more do you want?

• 9:13Speaker 00

  And then I said, I can no longer wait to be seen.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  And that's when the clarity hit me was that it's not about

• 9:24Speaker 00

  waiting to be seen. You have to make yourself undeniable.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  And I knew I was working in academic medicine at the time. Everyone around me had an MD or a PhD. So in order to even be considered, I knew I had to get one of those degrees. Now, I had wanted to do it when I was 20, but I thought about it first when I was 20, but then life happened. Um, so I didn't, um, but then now is the time. I mean, it, it always stayed with me. And you always think, you know, like, when do you want your first child? It's never a really good time. When are you going to get your doctorate? It's never a really good time. Well, it's never a really good time. So find the less bad time and just do it.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  And one thing that I can tell you is that never have I been so laser focused in my entire life.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  And I finished it in record time.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Because I was not here to waste time.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Quick time out, Simone. I think we have our first episode, just putting that on there.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I love, Nir's work is fantastic. This is our first episode. Okay, so let's just stipulate to that. Okay, back in the groove. So Ruth, your answer gave me chills because the word that did it for me was undeniable. And you saw Simone's response when you said that because for me, my mentality on thought leadership and just career growth in general is to be undeniable. Because, you know, we're going to focus on your story, but in my story too, there were times where there were questions. And the thing is, there are shades in your story that weren't explicit, but I think everybody here

• 11:18Speaker 01

  listening can relate to a time in their life where they were overlooked because of some way that somebody saw them that was inaccurate. Whether it's race, gender, background, appearance, whatever it happens to be, for whatever reason, we have all felt that. And so the response is not to sit down and say, woe is me, and it's not to say this is unfair. It's to say, this will never happen again. I'm going to do a very thorough postmortem to figure out what led me to this position. And then I am going to make sure that I take control of my life and do what I can to move forward.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  And you create a bulletproof undeniable case so that even if somebody despises you, they have to say, this person, they are too good to say no to. And that's what you've done. And now, looking at your story too, there's so much, we've known each other for years. There's so much more of your story that I understand too. Because you study greatness. You study the greatest people to ever walk this planet and you dissect what makes them incredible. And then I always wondered, it was an interesting, I perceived it as a detour to talking about network.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Working with our friend Andy Lepata. But now I see, and tell me if I'm too, I'm off on this, but it seems as though a part of this was to make sure that you could give people the tools that you needed at that time. When you, because now you recognize being good enough, being exceptional is not good enough. In a lot of these cases, there's a different way of networking that will get you where you want to go.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  That's so true. And you know, I didn't, I'm not sure I connected all those dots when I was in the heat of the moment. But I got, I studied success and high performance because I've been obsessed with it for so long. And as you mentioned, I have the true privilege of talking every day to Nobel Prize winners and Olympians and NBA champions, et cetera.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  But it's through what they told me. And as I did these hundreds and hundreds of interviews, when I realized that their networking is different. And then I, I overshadowed their stories on my story and I realized there was a delta. There was a gap between how they did it and how I did it. I was liked and I was respected and I was, everyone saw me as a collaborator and a fixer. But the way they networked was different. They were seen as strategic, they were seen as builders, they were seen as leaders. And if I was going to be seen that way, I had to take some of those lessons.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  And, and really learn to implement it in my own way, in a way that I'm comfortable with. Because like them, networking should never be transactional. It's not who I am, it's not how it works. So to my core, I am still, let's get to know each other, let's find out if we like each other, let's find out if our values are aligned. If they are, I'll help you. And maybe one day I'll need help with something and I will feel comfortable enough asking for that help, but it's because I built that foundation. I think what I did early on was that I helped everyone.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  I was liked by everyone, but never once have I asked for help.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  And now, and I have learned that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. People want to help. They just don't know how to help you. But if you tell them specifically what it is that you're looking for, people can help.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  You know, I've been for each book that came out, I did about 200 podcast interviews. And I always say, how can I be helpful? That's how I close it. And they say, I don't know. And then I finally say, do you need to be introduced to any really good guests for your podcasts? I know that's what they need. And I'm able to make those connections. So I think offering to help, and then when you need help, ask for it. But you can't ask for it until you have already built that relationship. And that took years to figure out.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  The, this is, the simplicity is something that often can belie the brilliance beneath it.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Because it took a long time to figure out how to do it. And then how to do it authentically in a way that didn't, wasn't off putting to yourself and others. And I've been, like I said, we've been friends for a while and I've always admired the way that you do this. Because you're the kind of friend where you're saying, hey, listen, I'm on my way up. I see you're on my way up. Let's get up faster. And then we collaborate and move up. And it's, it's beautiful in the way that you do it because it is rooted in authenticity. It is rooted in reciprocity and you have a true desire to help everybody around you. And that's the beauty of it. Now let's go back to the story. Because when you said, you were saying that the people that were making the decision.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  They didn't see you in the way that you needed to be seen.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  And I want to to kind of dissect this a little bit. Because a lot of times we have this simple mentality where we say, okay, hard work pays off. You do the right thing long enough, good things happen. And really, that is a game with a very low ceiling. And what you had to do is you changed the game completely.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Changed the game completely. So what, tell me if this resonates with you. Was there any resistance internally when it came to changing the game that you felt? Where you said, okay, I shouldn't have to gamify this in order to get the recognition that I deserve and the opportunities I deserve. Was that, was that a hard transition to make?

• 17:34Speaker 00

  I'm gonna tell you a story.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  There was this big award in our industry. And there's this one guy who I thought would be really good for it.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  And he stopped by my office and I told him, I said, I really think you should go for this award. Biggest award. And he said, who would nominate me? And I said, I'll nominate you. And trust me, I know how to put a nomination packet together. It's like, I, I put all the bells and whistles on. And he said, great, thank you. And I thought, okay, I have hours of work to put together this nomination packet. I said, just send me your CV. Oh, he didn't just send me his CV. He sent me his CV. He sent me a bio which was customized for this award that I was nominating him for. It highlighted exactly what I should highlight in my letter of nomination.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  And he gave me the names of three people who could write letters of support.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  It was brilliant.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  And then someone reached out to him and said, I want to nominate, I want to nominate Ruth for this award. Would you write a letter of support? And I didn't know she was doing this. And he said, I can't. She's nominating me already.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Two years later, it's my last year that I'm eligible for this award. And now I realize you need to ask people. So I asked this woman, because he told me that she asked and he had to say no. So I reached out to her and I said, this is my last year of eligibility. I heard two years ago, you want to nominate me. If you still think I'm worthy, would you be willing to nominate me? And she said, oh, sure. Absolutely. Now, I had already learned that I need to send my CV, a customized bio, and the names of three people who would write letters of support.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Right? I learned this game. She asked him, that guy that I nominated two years ago, he, by the way, won the award, if he would write a letter of support. And he said, I can't. I'm writing it for my buddies, the ones who wrote letters of support for him two years ago. And that's when I realized that those buddies nominate each others, nominate each other and support each other for awards all the time. And that's why when you see the same people winning all the awards, they gamified it. They figured it out. So he wasn't willing to write the letter of

• 20:22Speaker 00

  nomination for my award. PS, I won the award that year. And he was in the audience when I won. And it took him a good 20 minutes to come over to say, congratulations.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  So how did it feel? The best revenge is success.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  And I am really competitive, mostly with myself. And what I have learned is that if there's a goal, you can either get on the bus and come help, or get the hell out of my way. Those are the only two options.

• 20:56Speaker 01

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• 22:47Speaker 01

  Now everybody's seeing why I love Ruth. This is great. See, we were wasting our time, all the time having her come and talk about these gold medalists and then whatnot. No, we need to hear this. I love this because again, it's, it's helping us to understand how you got to where you are. And this is the thing, I, I tell my sons, 10 and four, the four year old doesn't get it. He will eventually.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yes. But I'd say, Kai, nothing is real. Nothing is real. Everything is made up. Tell better stories, be rooted in ethics and truth, but just tell better stories. Because we, I, I, we have this false idea of a meritocratic achievement. Where we say, okay, this is, it's, it's like the Olympics. Okay, you say in both 100 meters, everybody has an equal shot. That's not, that's why we like sports, because we know we can't get that same kind of equal playing field anywhere else.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  And once you come to terms with the fact that everything is a game, now you need to figure out what game you are willing to play and what kind of player you want to be. That's, that's really it. And I remember I was coaching this one person. He was a fellow lawyer and he said, um, it was, we were helping with his negotiation skills, but also career trajectory. And he said, I'm really frustrated because there's a community service award and the people who keep getting it. I know for a fact I do more community service and I don't do community service for, um, for recognition, but it bothers me that I don't get it and I hate that it bothers me. I said, well, have you shared that you do this? Have you shared it? Because you don't need to share it for your own sake necessarily.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  You could share it so you could raise awareness for the opportunity for other people to do it. You need to find a heart centered approach that still resonates with you while at the same time, making sure you can get your recognition. If that's something you want, use both strategies at the same time. And when did it? The next year he got the award and a few years later he was general counsel.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  You know, and again, it was, once you get past that resistance internally and start to recognize that the game you thought you were playing is very different, then you can say, okay, now I can have a little bit of fun with this. And I also want to talk to you about the fact that you have found a way to, to succeed in a way that nobody else has. So there's, there's no, think about it. Who's the other, who's the other Ruth? Tell me, tell me somebody else who is your, your.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  There's nobody else who has that combination. Does somebody come close? Honestly, no. So.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  Well, Kwame, you know, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but you know, you said about the rules. I never knew about the rules and I think there are a lot of people like me who didn't grow up knowing what the rules were. If you tell me the rules, I will win. I told you I'm very competitive. I will do what it takes. But if I don't know the rules or the rules are changing mid game,

• 25:51Speaker 00

  I don't know which way I'm running.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  I don't know what it is that you expect me to do. So I am here to clarify to everyone what those rules are. And there are a few pieces of advice that I got along the way, which have been transformational. And most of them were just one line long. One of them, when I was applying, there was actually a physician who stopped by my office. And there was another colleague who was also applying to a doctoral program at around that time. And I was wondering, oh, should I apply broadly and so on? And she said, you need to apply to a school where it will be undeniable

• 26:40Speaker 00

  that you got the world-class education and that it matters and its values. You need a school that people have heard of. I hadn't considered that. I hadn't considered that at all before. And she said graduate school is different from undergrad. Okay. Then she said, then someone else said, when I did get accepted,

• 27:08Speaker 00

  do something important, not just interesting.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  And that was my mentor, Burt Shapiro, Dr. Burt Shapiro. And he said, if you do something important, you will have a ripple effect of an impact. And you are looking at a problem from an angle no one else has looked at. And that's when I was, the population was just one group. It was physician scientists. Over time, it expanded because, Kwame, like you said, people who studied high performance,

• 27:45Speaker 00

  either A, they weren't the ones doing the research. Someone else was doing the research and they are, they are reporting on it. Or B, most people are looking at sports. Because that's the easiest to measure, and I get it. That's why I look at elite athletes as well. But when I was able to compare it to other industries, to the Nobel Prize winners, to the astronauts, to the CEOs, to some senior politicians, that's when I noticed the patterns. And that's what made it undeniable. And the reason I love it is because the work will outlive me. It will outlive me. There are always more people who I can interview. So just interviewed an Olympic silver medalist yesterday.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  This is amazing. And again, I begs the question, who else does this?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  This is, this is one of the, the most beautiful elements of your success is because it's not just the, the height of the achievement. It's the uniqueness and the uniqueness, the authenticity is protective in itself. Because nobody can compete directly with you unless they are trying to play your game, which nobody can play better than you because you made it up for yourself. Which also helps us to recognize why so many of us feel stuck. We start playing the game that other people made for themselves, and we wonder why we can't get to their level. Because you're not them. You're trying to be them when you should be being yourself.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  That's right. That's right. And, you know, I tried doing it by other people's rules. That didn't work. And I had to create a new lane instead of trying to wedge my way into someone else's lane. And was it easy? Oh, God, no. It was not easy at all. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat, in a heartbeat. And one of the reasons I recently retired after nearly 30 years from my faculty role and my chief learning officer role at Weill Cornell Medicine. And now I now am working on my own, doing the keynoting, executive coaching and writing.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  But I am also back teaching at the place where it all started at Columbia because and I teach about high achievers and high performance because I want to be around those people who are stimulating my mind to think about things differently. And I wanted to be close to that environment. I wanted to be in that environment. Because I don't agree with everything, but it gets me to think about things in a way I hadn't even considered. I want to be near those students. I want to be near those faculty. I want to be steps away from the library so that I can access the journals and read the latest research

• 30:49Speaker 00

  and compare that to what I'm doing, contrast it with what I'm doing. I can't live in my own bubble. So am I a quote unquote thought leader? Maybe I strive to be. But it's the research that pushes it forward. And I will always continue doing it because the thought leadership has to be evidence based. It cannot be based on whims and vibes and good feelings and a lot of hand waving. It has to be research based. And I do the research and I stay on top of the research other people are doing. Because together, I think it's better than what any one person can do on their own.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  I agree 100% and I think we would be remiss at this point to not discuss the secrets of success that you've found in these incredible high achievers. Because you are one of those incredible high achievers. You've studied these other incredible high achievers. And I think what's so interesting is the consistency where you have the people who are introduced to your thought leadership. They are left with no excuse for execution because you've made it clear, hey, don't say because you're not running this Olympic race, you can't implement these same things.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  There are general principles of success. So, so what are those?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  That's right. And that's what I discuss in my book, The Success Factor. So the first one, if you've ever heard about the habits of waking up at 5am and read for five hours a day and make your bed before you do anything else, I want you to forget all of it. Because you cannot copy other people's habits. That's their lives. It's not your lives. You can't just superimpose their lives into your own. But what you can do is emulate their mindsets. And what I have realized is that the mindset is the same in the Nobel Prize winners, the astronauts, the Olympians, the NBA champions, the CEOs. And the first thing that they did is they tapped into their intrinsic motivation.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Why are they doing this work? This is the reason they wake up in the morning. This is the reason they can't quiet their mind at night. This is what they can't not do. They have to do it. They love doing it. Right? It's, they get paid and get paid well for it. That's a bonus. This is why they were doing it. And I, I had a Nobel Prize winner who I interviewed, who had a serious cardiac event and he had to have surgery. And while he was recovering at home, he would bring in his lab into his home for lab meetings.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  So everyone could discuss their research and he could weigh in and hear the updates. And I said, who does this? Who wants to see you in your sweats? When you come into work in a suit in your home to discuss science right after you've had major heart surgery. And he said, if you don't understand, this is part of my recovery. I need to do this.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Try this. Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio, too. So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with

• 34:47Speaker 01

  superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami. That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami. If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up, and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than

• 35:32Speaker 01

  the competition. So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Quami to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/Quami. Go to Shopify.com/Quami to hear your first.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  I need to, this is what makes me feel good.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  So that's the intrinsic motivation. Even when you have hard times, you're willing to do it. It's not about the awards, rewards, promotions, bonuses. That's when other people are judging you. And we have learned that that you cannot maintain or sustain. In fact, the last question I ask every athlete is to show me their medal.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Only two of them have had it on display. It's usually in a sock drawer. It's in a safe. It's at the parents' house. It's in the nightstand drawer. The one who I interviewed yesterday, her Olympic silver medalist is in a gallon Ziploc bag in her shoe closet.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  What? A gallon Ziploc bag. Yes, Apollo Ono was in a brown paper bag in his sock drawer.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  Because the medal was a chapter in their lives, not the entire story.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Right? It was a goal, not the goal. There's not a single scientist who started doing science with the goal of winning the Nobel Prize. Their goal was to do good science, to find a treatment, to find a cure, to find a way of doing something better. It was not to win the Nobel Prize.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  So that's number one. Number two, obviously you need resilience and grit and, and hard work and all of that. I didn't need to get a doctorate to figure that out. You can't be successful if you don't work hard. I tell people and I've told my kids, success only comes before work in the dictionary.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  But what is different is how they solve problems.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  And this to me was really eye opening. So I share the story of Dr. Peggy Whitson, who was a biochemist who worked at NASA. Not everyone who works at NASA is an astronaut, but she had a dream of becoming an astronaut. And she would see the astronauts coming in and out and she always wanted and she applied, but she got rejected. And she applied again, and she got rejected. And she applied again and got rejected. And this story kept going on over and over again for 10 years until she was finally accepted. And I said, Dr. Watson, who applies for the same job for a decade? And she said, the question was never if I was going to become an astronaut.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  I knew I would be. The question was how. You see, she put herself in the driver's seat. This was no longer about what other people saw in her. This was no longer about perception. She was not going to be overlooked. She was going to make herself undeniable. And she did get accepted because she said, there's a gap between what they see and what I'm showing them. I need to figure out what that gap is and then work on closing that gap. And that's what she did. And ultimately, she got accepted as an astronaut. She flew until recently, she held the record for the most days in space of any American astronaut.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  She became the first female commander of the International Space Station, a role she held twice. And that woman who was rejected for a decade from becoming an astronaut, ultimately went on to become NASA's chief astronaut, in charge of all the astronauts. She has since retired from NASA and then came out of retirement to now work on the private space shuttles. This woman is legendary. But that's because she put herself in the driver's seat. And she wasn't waiting for other people to notice her. She was going to make herself undeniable.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  And then the third layer of success is that strong foundation. Now, we've all heard of Kobe Bryant, who unfortunately I never had the opportunity to interview. But you've all heard the legendary stories that he would go at four, five in the morning and practice his layups. He could do layups in his sleep. Did he really need to practice? Yes, he did. Because that's what made him so good. And the same warm up you see the NBA doing is the same warm up you'd see any seventh grader doing in their gym.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Nothing is different, except the price of their sneakers. That's it. It's the same warm up, same exercises, same layups. You have to have that strong foundation and constantly reinforce it. One of the people who I got to interview was Neil Katyal. He has argued over 50 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, more than any other minority lawyer. And he does the same three things before every case. The first thing he does is he prepares a binder that has the answer to every possible question he might get asked. In over 50 cases, he's never once opened that binder.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  But he said that the process of preparing that binder prepared him for the case. The second thing he does is he holds multiple moot courts. These are simulations. So that he can refine every single argument that he has. He did that with Supreme Court case number one, and he did that with Supreme Court case number 50. And the last thing he does is the night before the opening arguments.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  He goes into his children's room and their bedtime story becomes the opening argument. Because he said, if a child can understand it, the court can understand it. He had learned how to simplify his communication. Why use a 25 cent word when a five cent word would do?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  And the last thing is, and this is the one that surprised me the most. And this is why we hear leaders or readers read for three to five hours a day. You know, Mark Cuban does it, Bill Gates does it, Warren Buffett does it. That's not what made them billionaires. Sure, they're reading and as an avid reader and as an author of four books, I want you to read. But what they're doing is they're consuming new knowledge and you can consume new knowledge by reading books, by reading articles, by watching TED Talks, by listening to podcasts. Hopefully everyone's learning something new here today. There's so many ways to learn new knowledge, but the differentiator is you take in all

• 42:40Speaker 00

  that information and you start to make connections that other people don't yet see. And I was able to do that with the high achievers across industries. Everyone is able to do that in a different way. And one of those ways, besides the books and the podcasts and the TED Talks and the keynotes, is through mentors. Every single high achiever I have interviewed surrounded themselves with a team of mentors. And that's why I wrote two books just on mentorship because it was so critical to their success. So those are the four elements of success in a nutshell. As you could see, I really geek out on this.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  To the, to the person listening, if you haven't figured out why Ruth is one of the top book speakers in the nation, you please rewind and start this whole thing over. This is, this is so good. I'm on my second page of notes. This is incredible.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Kwame, you know what you remind me of?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  What?

• 43:47Speaker 00

  I'm going to tell you, I, so I gave the keynote. It's, it's called the success factor and I was talking about the four elements of success.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  And because of what happened, I now changed my keynote. I asked something at the beginning. And now I ask, is anyone sitting here a Nobel Prize winner, an astronaut, or an elite athlete? Because I didn't do that. And there's this one guy, and he's sitting in the front row. Now, remember, when you sit down, everyone's the same size, just about. And I'm giving my keynote, this one hour keynote, and he is voraciously writing notes. I mean, pages and pages and pages of notes. And I'm like, I know I'm good, but what is this? And he comes up to me after, and he said, I said, oh, did you enjoy the talk? And he said,

• 44:41Speaker 00

  "You made me feel something I haven't felt since I played in the NBA."

• 44:47Speaker 00

  I had an NBA champion in the audience, and I had no idea.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  But you see, they're still learning.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  And that's why he was taking notes. He was still learning. He had long retired.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Isn't that wild?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  It's incredible. That is incredible. Yeah, there sometimes, you know, you can hide your profession. People don't always know I'm a lawyer, but I feel like NBA players are hard to hide.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  But not if you're sitting.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  That's true. That's true. Then you stand up, you're like, we are not the same.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  When you, when you think about these four keys to success, which one is the most difficult for people to implement, based on your research?

• 45:34Speaker 00

  I think the intrinsic motivation.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  I think people think that whatever they were passionate about when they were 20, they need to still be passionate about when they're 40 and 50. But the passions change over time. Things that were important to us then are not important to us now. And one of the things that I have learned is that our intrinsic motivation changes when we have transitions in our lives. So let's talk about what are some of those transitions? You've got a new job, a new partner, a new child, a new home, the loss of a parent, a pandemic. That's why so many people quit their jobs when the pandemic broke out. They recalibrated what their priorities were

• 46:20Speaker 00

  and what they were intrinsically motivated to do. And I think so many people are stuck on those motivations they had in college to carry them through in their career. I just retired. I'm on my third career now. Right? I took an early retirement so I can do these things that I love, the keynote speaking and the coaching and the writing full time. You're allowed to change and I want to give your listeners something that they can figure out what it is that they're passionate about right now. It's a simple three column exercise to differentiate between what you're good at versus what you enjoy doing and what you're good at and you don't like doing or you're not good at.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  So if they go on my website, ruthgotian, R U T H G O T I A N, ruthgotian.com/passionaudit, they will be able to download that worksheet and get started on figuring out what that thing is right now.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Amazing. Oh, this is great. So listeners, we will have links to that in the description of this episode. And this, this is really significant because we see so many people who are stuck in the past. And really what we're recognizing is that authenticity can and should look different.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  As time goes on, and I think for a lot of people, you're giving them permission to make that shift because think about what we said off air beforehand, when I said, yeah, this will be part of big swings only. Um, this, that's my new news. And you said, well, that's not new. You told me that you over a year ago. And I recognized what I was, one of the things I was wrestling with was just saying, but I'm the negotiation guy. That's what I do. I'm the negotiation guy. But what other people have helped me to see is that negotiation is just one sliver of my identity. And really, the, the through line, even before negotiation was this, it's the big swings mentality, um, taking those big swings, making

• 48:24Speaker 01

  those big shifts. And yeah, one of the things that's fascinating to me, when I think about people's stories, is how consistent it is that what a, how consistent it is that a really devastating incident is the catalyst to success. Right? And so with the high achievers that you see, is that you're seeing that too?

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. But you know, there's some people that that devastating thing will bury them. And there are others that it'll fuel them. On the ladder. I will not, I will not let it bury me. Because the more you tell me something can't be done, the more I'm going to double down and get it done. And that's why I said, you can either help me or get out of the way. Those are the only two options.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Where does that come from? How did you develop that?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  You know, I think a lot of it has to do with my late grandmother. I grew up in a family of all boys. I am the only woman in four generations. And she went to pharmacy school. And there were, I have the picture, 13 women and 300 men in her class.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  And I assume I never asked her that maybe she wanted to go to medical school at that time, but women just didn't go at that time.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  And this is what she wanted to do. So she went, even though there were 13 women and 300 men in her class. And then when she finished, she wasn't quite 21 yet, because then it was a bachelor's.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  So she had six months before, even though she finished school until she could get her license. So she went to Europe as a single woman to go wait out the time and she traveled through Europe. So where did I get that? It is the women who came before me who did things, even though in completely different fields, that I have learned from their experiences. And it's people like them and it's people like my aunt who became one of the first female commercial real estate people in Manhattan. The more she was told no, the more she did it. So I watched that and I'm not in real estate. I'm not in pharmacy, never will be.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  But now I think because of them, when someone tells me no, all I hear is not yet.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  So good. And this is, this is the power of stories, but the power of sharing stories. And I don't want to force anybody to do anything they don't feel comfortable doing. So I'm not going to say there's an ethical obligation, but we can see there is a true value in sharing your story because who knows, I still, I know you, I still believe you would have been successful, but who knows what that success would have looked like had you not had those avatars. And so a lot of times people share stories or they don't share their successes or their journey out of humility. They don't want to make it about them. And for me personally,

• 51:45Speaker 01

  what I've found is I talk to other people, they've encouraged me to share more. And I recognize that what I was describing as humility for me in my experience was actually selfishness. I preferred to not be seen. I preferred to just work quietly behind the scenes. I wasn't telling the story. And then when people would meet me, they'd be surprised at the depth. And so they're like, why don't you tell more people this? And so for the person who's listening, it doesn't matter how trivial you think your story is or how trivial you think your success is. There is somebody who is looking up to you that you might not even know exists. But they're seeing you. So the, the, it's not just about your own big swings for yourself.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  You can think about the, the benefit, the beauty of sharing that because other people seeing you do it can give them permission to take that big swing and then have the resilience to keep on swinging.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  So true.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  And Simone, my friend, I know you've been listening patiently. What, what are your thoughts?

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Well, I want to share two things this time. One of the things is about the rules, what, what Ruth was talking about, uh, understanding the real rules. And I remember, I, I love soccer. And, and maybe the World Cup of maybe 16 years ago or 12 years ago, there was a guy, a guy from Uruguay called Luis Suarez. They were playing the quarterfinals, the round of eight, I think. So, um, they were about to lose, Uruguay was about to lose. And the guy from Ghana shot the ball and he was in the goal. He was in front of the goal. So

• 53:35Speaker 02

  he, he stopped the ball with his hand. So the referee gave him the red card. And they then won the game, Uruguay won the game. So after that, they asked him, "Why did you break this rule?" And he said, "I didn't break any." The rule says that if I grab the ball with my hands, I have a red card. So that's what happened. I grabbed the ball and I have my red card. So I didn't break any rule. If I stayed in the field, I break the rule. But I just went out. So we won, and I used that rule in my favor. So sometimes, we don't understand what the rules really are. And there's a lawyer that can explain that to us, right?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  So the guy was smart enough to understand that the rule was that you have a red card if you hold the ball. It's not that you can't do it. So as you're willing to pay the price for doing it, then that's fine. That's what I learned. And another thing that I wanted to share with Ruth was how my intriguing motivation changed when I was living in Argentina. I was 26 years old and I had cancer. So what happened was that I was working as a designer, because I'm an industrial designer. I had a flu and I went to a doctor. He made an X-ray.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  He said, "Okay, we have to see something that you have here in the thymus gland." So I said, "Okay." They went through more and more exams. And after three months of exams, he told me, "Okay, you have cancer. We have to make a surgery here and we will work on that, but no problem. Everything will be fine." And I was like, "Oh, my God." So I was working as a designer and I said, "Oh, my God, I hate this job. I am a designer, but I hate it. And I'm about to die. And what I'm gonna do with my life? At least for the last month of my life, I will do what I want." So I quit my job and I said, "Okay, I'll do what I want to do and I won't design anymore in my life."

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Well, I designed a logo for Kwame last week. But I said, "I won't design anything in my life again." So I quit my job.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Then I went to another doctor just to find, uh, to look for another opinion. And the doctor said, no, you were misdiagnosed. You didn't have cancer. You, you never, you have never had cancer. So what you felt when I said I had cancer is what I felt. I felt I had cancer and to me it was real, right? So my mind changed and then I realized I didn't have anything. So I had the learning process, but I didn't have cancer. So I feel so, I, I felt unlucky back then, but now I feel so lucky that I learned without having the, the cancer. So that was what made me change.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  And I said, okay, I, I will do with my life what I want to do now that I, I have like, like I'm living my second life and I didn't have anything. That's, that's exactly the moment when my motivation changed. And then I started to, to work in sales and, and doing other things that I really liked.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Try this, pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me and as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too. So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami. That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami. If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea. It's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media,

• 58:26Speaker 01

  even in AI chats. And Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Quami to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/Quami. Go to Shopify.com/Quami to hear your first.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  Wow. Wow.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  I've never heard that story. That's amazing. And so where in that story did you reach out to A&I?

• 59:12Speaker 02

  A little bit farther. That happened in 2017. And then I said, okay, now that I don't have cancer, I don't have a job either, right? So I need money. And I started to sell. And I was in the center. Oh, that's a very good story for Ruth, because I was in the center of Buenos Aires. It's our neighborhood called Once, which is the Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires. And I said, okay, these guys know how to sell. I need to learn from them. So I went to these guys and say, hey, what can I do for you? They said, well, if there's a job, I'll call you. But then I realized that was electronic e-commerce was

• 59:56Speaker 02

  starting in Buenos Aires. So I said, okay, I'm going to take pictures of the things that they sell and offer without buying, because I didn't have any money to buy, right? So I started selling toys, or bed sheets, or towels, that just taking pictures and offered them online. Then when people pay, I go buy and then send. That's what I did. And at some point, I was selling too many dolls. And the guy that sold the dolls, Jose Luis was his name, he said, come here. Why you're buying so many dogs? I don't know, I don't get it. So I told him, I'm just selling them through e-commerce. And that's the power of asking for help.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Because I said, yeah, I'm just, but I can't, I can't earn more money. Because you're selling them too expensive to me. And he said, but you didn't ask, here's another, another price list. So if you're a reseller, now you have discount. Try to sell now with this list. And now I started to make more money. That's how I started to sell carpets and towels and bed sheets and many things. And then is when I realized how important negotiation was and that that's how I found Kwame.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Wow. Wild, wild. You're a hustler.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  In a good way.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  That's so impressive. That's so impressive.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  You don't ask, you don't get. That's what my father always taught me.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. And then one also, one note about Luis Suarez as well. When you think about athletes or just great minds, high achievers, one thing that they all have is hunger. They're all hungry for success. And I always remember Suarez as the hungriest soccer player because he kept on biting opponents. Do you remember that, Simo?

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did it.

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  Well, former left fullback here. I played soccer. You know, one of the questions I always ask athletes is, do you love to win or hate to lose?

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  And with only one exception, the answer is, I hate to lose.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Interesting, right?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's your thought on that?

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Well, I have lots of thoughts, but I think winning is great. They don't, they celebrate the moment for sure, but they don't dwell on the moment.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  If you lose, you're constantly questioning, what can I do better? Because for them, a loss is data. It's data. It's not a failure. It's data. There's a big difference. So now they're going to comb through all of that data. What could I do better? A fraction of a percent better? Because that will be the difference between winning and losing. So I think we all have to make that switch in our mind of if we lose, it's not failure. It's data. And we have to take that to get to the next step.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  And also, when we do succeed, we get that award, we get that bonus, we get, remember, those are extrinsic motivators. That's coming from someone else. And that does not maintain your joy forever. That it's in the moment, so celebrate it. But then they work on their next goal.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Oh, this is, this is great. I want to dig into this, though, a little bit deeper because I know there, there's more texture here. Because there is clearly a, I don't want to say, maybe appreciation might be a little bit too much, but a respect for loss because of the data it provides you. I think about my own life, I have propelled myself more from loss than through success. If I succeed, hey, I don't need to investigate, I need to celebrate. You know? And so when it comes to the losses, now I can do a postmortem, figure this out and use that to propel.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  So, but then at the same time, it is the utter disdain of losing that pushes them forward. So how do they balance that dichotomy within their mind? Where they try as hard as possible to avoid failure while at the same time? Having a healthy appreciation for the value of it to help them move forward.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  Oh, they surround themselves with a team who balances them and puts them, puts everything into perspective. Look, I've met the spouses and family members or some of these people. I mean, some of these elite athletes have now become very good friends. And these are the people that have kept them grounded. It's their coaches, it's their team of mentors, it is their family. You need to create that support system for yourself of people who unconditionally love and support you and help you see the clarity. You see, when they lose, they are, they are licking their wounds for a day or two, but that's not what defines them.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  It's not what defines them and they quickly turn it around to see, how can I do it better?

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  And it becomes that challenge of, I don't want to lose again, so let, let's figure this out.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Let's figure it out. And that is their focus. And remember, a lot of them are also on teams. And when you have teams, you don't carry that burden all alone. You win as a team, you lose as a team.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  And that helps, even if you're in an individual sport, you're part of a larger group.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Critical.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Hmm, right. Yeah, that's huge. And it's, it's so funny, especially for the us living in the Western world. We're very individualistic, but it's fascinating to see that those folks who we look at and admire their individual accomplishments, none of them do it alone.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  No, no. And if you try, you're not going to make it because you don't know what you don't know. Right? You don't know what you don't know. And how do you take in all of that failure? And how do you make sense of it all? Because not everything that doesn't work, do you need to cry about? And I'll give you an example. When I first became a faculty member and academic, one of the things that we do is we write academic articles about our research. And I, you know me, I shoot for the top, the top journals. And wouldn't you know, I was rejected. And.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  The first step was I was what's called desk rejected, meaning the editor that reviews it rejects it outright. Then I got to the next step where it was sent out to reviews by academic peers and you get back with the with the reviews and then it was rejected. And then my former chair said to me, when I was truly licking my wounds, she said, you read those reviews because that will tell you what was clear to them and what was not clear to them. Remember, we talked about that gap that that astronaut had? There was that gap. She said, that is your gap. That'll tell you what the gap is. And if more than one person, there's usually three reviewers, if more than one person said the

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  same thing, that's what you need to focus on. The rest is just opinions. But if more than one person said the same thing, you need to double down on that. Again, failure is data. Now, all of a sudden, it moved me from being on from the passenger seat to the driver's seat. Now I can do something with this. So now I have all this data. The athletes have all this data. Now they can decide what they're going to do about it. You either sit lick your wounds and watch Netflix, or you take the data, discuss it with your coaches and figure out how to get better. Those are the two options.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Brilliant. Oh, my gosh. Ruth, I could talk to you forever. And I know we've had long conversations. This is

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Why has kept me has kept me occupied and has been my my companion on my long commutes to work. We would have these long conversations.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  So much fun. And now we could do it on your way to Columbia.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  That's it. Much shorter commute.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  This is great. Ruth, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming back on the show. Really appreciate. And then also let the listeners know again how they can work with you and all of the books that you have.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  All of the books, all of the books. Well, the first one is a textbook. So not sure anyone's interested in that. That's a textbook on medical education. The big one is the success factor. That's the one on high achievement and those four elements of success with stories like that Peggy Whitson you heard and Neil Katyal, the Supreme Court lawyer and Steve Kerr, the NBA coach and Bob Lefkowitz, a Nobel Prize winner, and it has actionable tips that you can implement immediately about all four of those elements. And then there are two books on mentoring. One is the Financial Times Guide to Mentoring. And for those of you who work in healthcare, there's mentoring in healthcare.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  And now I am writing a book about overlooked high achievers, which will be out in 2027. So we'll have to come back for that. And I really hope people will reach out for those keynotes and the coaching and could just reach out to me on LinkedIn or my website, ruthgotian.com.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Amazing. Ruth, thank you again. Really appreciate it.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone. I want to tell you about a podcast I'm really excited about. It's called The Anxious Achiever and it's hosted by my good friend, Maura Arons-Mele, and it's part of the Yap Media Network. Here on Big Swings Only, we're all about going after the big stuff, but anyone who's taken a real swing knows anxiety usually comes along for the ride. And honestly, nobody handles that better than Maura. Since 2019, her show has helped millions of listeners navigate stress, mental health, and the search for meaning through work. With personal stories, expert insights, and evidence-based tools, she tackles anxiety, perfectionism, ADHD, and psychological safety at work with guests ranging from the US Surgeon General to NFL and NBA stars.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  It's a top 10 management podcast and a Signal Award winner for Best Commute Podcast. And she's been a guest on our show, too. If you're ready to take control of your anxiety and your life, you definitely want to check out The Anxious Achiever. Subscribe to The Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.