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I talk to Keegan LaMar about his athletic background and how it shapes the work he now does with high performers. We did into the concept of high performance in this interview and break it down into its parts. He discusses how his sports background allows him to connect with his clients as they suffer setbacks and overcome challenges.
Keegan LaMar is a certified professional coach and performance dynamics specialist who helps people create an unstoppable mindset in sports and business.
Transcript
Frank Bria (00:00):
The 6 to 7 Figures Show. Episode 76, let’s hit it.
Announcer (00:04):
Broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun outside Phoenix, Arizona. This is the 6 to 7 Figures Show. Tired of working so hard and having no time? Take your six figure practice and turn it to a thriving seven figure enterprise. And now your host, author, speaker, mentor and strategist, Frank Bria
Frank Bria (00:30):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the 6 to 7 Figures Show. I’m your host, Frank Bria, and today I’m absolutely thrilled to be joined by Keegan LaMar. He is a certified professional coach and performance dynamics specialist who helps people create an unstoppable mindset in sports and business. Keegan, welcome to the show.
Keegan LaMar (00:50):
Thank you Frank. I appreciate it.
Frank Bria (00:53):
So what’s the connection with sports and business? What’s your sports background? Why the focus there?
Keegan LaMar (01:01):
Absolutely. So a little bit about my background. I’ve been an athlete pretty much my entire life. I grew up in a sports family. I also grew up in a family where both of my parents held pretty high levels in job positioning, some fun facts. My dad who is Kevin Lamar, he founded, in a garage with one of his buddies. They invented Bowflex. So he did that. He worked for Schwinn cycling for awhile, had a few businesses. So I had an amazing role model in having someone who was connected in business and pretty much loved business his entire life. He also played in the NFL for a few years. So as you can imagine, my upbringing was a little bit more strict than most other people. It was at a certain age, you start playing sportsand you play at a very high level or you don’t do it. So when I went into high school, I was an all state athlete, played in Fairview high school in Boulder, Colorado, and then played football at the University of Colorado as a long snapper. Sothat’s kinda where my official sports career ended was after I played college football. So since then, been working in business and just have really had this mindset towards how bringing a sports mindset to me, to the business world and understanding that there’s so much crossover between people who are in business and people who are in sports. Just the mindset as a whole, what they go through, the challenges they have, the stress that they put on themselves and how they’re put into a position to need to perform. It’s just, it’s almost one to one in some cases.
Frank Bria (02:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So I have to say then as a graduate of Colorado State University, I will not hold it against you.
Keegan LaMar (02:59):
Here’s what I’ll say. I actually, I almost went to the Colorado State University and it was one of those things whereI was on the phone with them and they were like, we want to offer you a scholarship, but we don’t want to lose this recruiting tool. So can you commit and come to us and then we’ll offer it. And I said, can we flip it for some way, shape or form? Can you offer me? And I’ll say yes right now. Long story short, it was just one of those things where it just, the cards fell where they did and I found myself at University of Colorado. But hey, no malice towards you. It’s an amazing school.
Frank Bria (03:39):
No, no, no, that’s, yeah, I’m just kidding. I did my graduate work there anyway, so it’s one of three Alma Maters I’ve got from a college perspective, so it’s totally fine. So the pressure that you’re talking about that is from the athlete perspective and the entrepreneurial perspective. I think most people who are listening to this can completely identify with this regardless of whether or not they had an athletic background or not. What are the secrets then to, I mean, what does the athlete learn about how to create top performance that the entrepreneur needs to know?
Keegan LaMar (04:21):
Absolutely. So the first thing I’ll say is everybody wants to know the secret, right? Everybody wants to know, “Hey, this is performing at an unbelievable level. How do I do that”? And the secret is that it’s perfectly unique and everybody who’s performing at a very high level at what they do, they’re doing it in a unique way, which it gives some comfort to people, but it also stresses some people out because the main underlying truth there is that for you as an individual to become successful, you are going to have to figure out. So we face challenges. Everybody faces some of the same challenges and you look at athletes, they face the same challenges, which is you know, you’re being defended against or you’re trying to stop an offense or you’re trying to do all these other things. Same thing in business. You’re trying to create more money. You’re trying to create opportunities. You’re all, everybody’s faced with the same challenges. Where you find success is how you uniquely approach them. And so that’s the main thing that a lot of people overlook is that their unique capability to solve a problem, is usually the first thing they tossed aside and they try and look for a formula. Whereas, the formula to success is actually driven by these energetic dynamics that are at play, which I mean just kind of listing them off, there’s about five. So there’s spiritual dynamics, there’s mental, there’s emotional, there’s environmental, there’s physical, and then there’s social dynamics that are at play in what everybody does in everything that they do. So the dynamics then people just, if people sat and they really took inventory of where all five of those factors sit with what they currently do and define those things. If they looked at them and they said, what are ideal for me, they’d probably realized that there’s a little bit of a misalignment between the two, and that might be the difference between succeeding at something that you’re doing and actually feeling like you’re in a rut or you’re just kind of in zombie mode trying to figure out how to survive.
Frank Bria (06:30):
You know, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs will say they’ve experienced that feeling of, you know, some people describe it as not being in flow or the energy not being aligned, but I think a lot of people would nod their heads at saying they know what it feels like that to be misaligned, to feel like they’re not leveraging their true skill set, and feeling like there’s something about entrepreneurship which sort of doesn’t fit their skillset or maybe it’s not them. So I bet it’s a refreshing thought for a lot of people to be listening to that and thinking, “Oh wow, maybe I am trying to use someone else’s sort of secret elixir to a success when in fact, you know, it’s in me all along”. Not to get overly movie themed about it.
Keegan LaMar (07:20):
No, you couldn’t be more right. And for most people, so there’s an important aspect of that. When you’re young, obviously, you want to look at people who are successful and when I say young, I mean if you’re not 80 years old, because if you’re younger than that, you’ve got time. That’s another thing that people don’t realize is they think they’re locked into something. I’ve been working in corporate America for longer than I thought I was capable of making a change and I made a change and now I have my own business and I know people who’ve done the exact same thing. So it’s important to realize one, you have time to, it’s okay to look at people who are successful and start thinking “What is it that they’re doing that really makes them successful”? But there’s a nuance there. So the important thing is not what they’re doing, it’s why they’re doing something. So you look at someone, and I mean, there’s amazing people out there and someone who disrupts the entrepreneurial landscape really well, gives amazing advice. Someone who I love listening to and watching, Gary Vaynerchuk he’s amazing. He gives awesome advice, and the main thing for him is if you have something that’s burning inside of you to do something, then figure out a way to do it. How you figure that out is going to be unique to you because he’s somebody who just like all of us, just like me, where you come across a challenge and you realize, okay, for me a huge role model of mine is, you know, the father of coaching at this point, in this day and age, Tony Robbins it’s not a, “I want to do what he does”. It’s, “I realize that his passion is helping people create beautiful lives”. So that’s powerful to model after. Whereas coaching is something that anybody can do. They can go through a program that can do all those other things, but if the “why” you’re doing anything doesn’t align with who you are as a person, that’s where you’re going to run into friction. And that’s where you run into burnout because people go down these paths and they’re like, “this seems like it would be really cool”. But then they get into it and they realize there’s friction there because of that misalignment you spoke of. That’s the biggest indicator that you may not be doing something that aligns with who you are as a person internally.
Frank Bria (09:41):
Yeah, but you bring up a really good point, which is, I think, a relief for a lot of people. I mean talk about Gary Vaynerchuk, talk about Tony Robbins and you know, people look up to them and respect them for what they’ve built but don’t always feel aligned to the energy that they project in. And there’s a lot of worry, especially I think Gary Vaynerchuk probably pulls this out of more people than Tony Robbins does. But a lot of people look at Gary V and go, “I can’t do that. Like there’s no way I could do what he does, and if he’s saying that that energy, that dynamic is the only way to be successful, I’m screwed because there’s no way I can do that”. So it’s really enlightening to hear you say “No, that’s not how it works”. You can look at them and look up to them for the passion that they have and the why they haven’t. Those are both great examples because they have very strong background, strong wise out in the world. But that you can do it your own way and with your own dynamic.
Keegan LaMar (10:48):
Yeah, absolutely. And you touched on it so beautifully. You have people who may look at Gary V’s and may look at Tony and they say, I don’t know if I have the same engine that they have. And so I can’t exactly do what they do. That’s okay. And that’s, as coaches, for me and for any other coach that’s out there, we have an inquiry based approach with what we do, which is basically trying to help people by asking them questions that help reveal and bring out the answers that are unique to them. So when you start pulling that stuff out, then the individual that you’re working with, you’re kind of creating this really creative process and you’re trying to figure out, okay, what are your internal values? What are the important things to you and how do you translate that from internal values to external successes and external things, your what, who you serve. And in order for there to become, create this really nice alignment between who you are and what it is you do. Because most people, they don’t realize that there’s a things that they could probably do, and it all depends on how they do it. Because how you do anything is the difference between finding real success in what you do and feeling that level of friction that most people do in the workplace.
Frank Bria (12:09):
Yes. So this is a really good segue cause I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about this process because it’s fascinating to me how, as you’re discussing this, connection of the why to the what and the how and I don’t know that a lot of us have connected those dots. We understand why, what gets me out of bed in the morning, but this translates into those daily dynamics and performance habits is kind of fascinating. So can we talk about this? One of the things you said up front was everyone’s a little unique, everyone’s different, everyone’s got different processes, but do you have an approach? Like is it really unique for everybody? You kind of make this up for each individual or is there kind of a process that you take each person you’re coaching through?
Keegan LaMar (13:00):
Yeah, so there are some things that are pretty standard practice within coaching. But for me, probably 90, 95% of what I do is completely tailor made to whomever I’m working with, which is what I think makes it super interesting to me. Really. I feel mentally fulfilled and it’s the right level of stimulation when whomever I’m working with, I know has this unique imperfect path that they are on. Therefore there is no kind of cold cut type of cookie cutter thing that’s gonna work for them because nobody is cookie cutter. There’s not a single person who is. So why should there be an approach in coaching that is cookie cutter? So when I’m working with anybody, the main things that I want to know is one, where they are two, where they really want to be, and three, what has been stopping them from getting there? When I understand those three big things, it lets me know a couple of things. One, how are they winning today? Because there’s, I mean cleaning up the language a little bit, but there’s a book by Gary John Bishop called Unscrew Yourself and you can probably imagine what the word is, but.
Frank Bria (14:20):
That’s okay. We have other folks that have dropped the F bomb on this show. That’s not at all. I totally understand.
Keegan LaMar (14:27):
Absolutely. And it’s an amazing read because it really hones in at a very detailed level about one of the concepts that I love to talk about in my coaching, it’s called energetic validation. So when I talk to anybody, I want to understand what they’re validating today, which means how are they experiencing life today? Because when they’re experiencing life, if they’re like, “I’m running into blocks here, blocks here, I feel this is monotonous”, it lets me know that everything they’re experiencing is actually a reflection of stuff that they believe about themselves. If people say, “you know what, money’s always tight. I’m always chasing money. I’m always blah, blah, blah”. Then I start diving into it and I say, “okay, well, tell me about your beliefs about money. Tell me what story you’re telling yourself and reminding yourself that you’re actually validating that money is something that is scarce”. So it actually attaches a level of energy to a specific thing that they’re validating externally. So energetic validation is one of the biggest things that I like to discover whenever I’m working with anybody. Next, where they want to be. So when, when I ask somebody where they really want to be, your brain only comes up with scenarios that it believes it can come up with, it believes are actually achievable. Some people aren’t. When I say, where are you going to be someone is probably not going to say, I mean maybe Elon Musk, I’m not going to live on the moon, you know? But if somebody really says “I want to be in a position where I can make a big impact on X, Y or Z”, then it lets me know that their brain is capable of putting themselves there. They’re allowing themselves to envision them being able to do that. When your brain thinks something is possible, truth is, it is because your brain is only able to come up with things that it is familiar with. So what people don’t realize is the difference between where they are and where they want to be is really minuscule. Everything that makes up who they want to be is actually already within them. It’s just they haven’t found the best place to let all of those internal pieces come out and play and be able to be in full effect. For one reason or another, they believe that they’re not allowing themselves to not fully live everything that’s within them and all their values. Then, what’s been blocking them. So this lets me know what are the challenges they’re facing and how they’ve been trying to get through them. Most times it’s a “I’ve tried doing this, but I keep running into this and I tried doing this and I keep coming up with this”. Most times there’s a story or there’s an assumption, some type of limiting belief that puts people in the cycle of you run into a challenge and you think, “okay, I ran into something and there’s only one way to win or one way to lose” and it’s either succeeding or failing. Whereas if you create more win scenarios in your brain, you will realize that you will probably find a thousand different ways to actually get to really where you want to be. You can start coming up with really unique solutions on how to get there. And that’s what a good coach will help somebody do, is come up with those creative ways that they can overcome obstacles, overcome challenges through the answers that that they’ve had inside of them the entire time.
Frank Bria (17:56):
Wow. Yeah. I know a lot of people are familiar with this concept of, being able to actualize what you can imagine. But you hit on a point that I don’t think a lot of people understand enough, which is that your brain really can only visualize what it knows and it can’t possibly visualize a scenario it doesn’t know. That’s a really powerful concept of our brain for both good and for bad, you know, cause we also don’t understand the potential that we could have because we don’t believe it yet, even though it could be out there and we kind of have to go through this leveling up process so that when we get to another level, we get, a good metaphor I guess would be, to see out over the mountains, you know, your from Colorado. So you know, if one 14 footer to another, you know, be able to see over the next peak to see what’s possible and that, that’s not always doable from where you stand today.
Keegan LaMar (19:02):
Yeah Absolutely. You brought up a really good descriptor there when you talked about potential cause performance as a whole actually is, there’s a systematic approach to performance. And there’s a simple formula that I use with any of the athletes that I work with, with any of the business people who I work with. Performance is simply your potential minus distractions. So, to put it into almost, you know, the most simplest terms I can when you think of performance, you think of, how high can somebody jump? Well, how high you can jump is your muscles capability of how hard you push into to the ground and how fast you push into the ground to fight gravity. So there’s an actual measurable potential that’s there with where you are currently at. Obviously we continue to work hard and we continue to change performance based on our potential actually continuously going up. However, for some people, they feel like they hit this plateau and when in reality their potential is probably still going up, but they create distractions that actually take away from their potential. So distractions are all the things that we come up with. I can’t do this, can’t do that. The equipment’s not right. The situation’s not right. I haven’t been set up appropriately. What you’ll notice there is everything that comes up as a distraction actually comes from within the individual. It’s not external, it’s internal distractions that hold us back from our maximum potential. So it was great that you brought that up because there is a systematic approach to performance that most people think performance is just kind of this “hopefully it works” and honestly it couldn’t be more opposite.
Frank Bria (20:49):
I love that formula. Now I know exactly what we’re putting in as the little quote blurb for this episode. Sweet. That’s totally it. So who are you working with? What kinds of folks are you attracting into your business right now?
Keegan LaMar (21:10):
Absolutely. So I would say the types of people that I really want to start attracting into my world that I can help with are the people who are in a pretty good position. Some people might even say, “Hey, I’m in a pretty great position in my life”. However they understand that there’s something missing that would make them unstoppable. When people think of unstoppable I actually had one of my pro athletes yesterday, he had like seven or eight beautiful quotes because he’s starting to just completely change everything. So he brought up Bulletproof. So I call it unstoppable. Some people call it Bulletproof. Other people call it whatever they want. Unstoppable mindset is when you want something, you know exactly how you can get there and it doesn’t matter what challenges you face because challenges are simply a means of you being able to continuously grow and you learn how to get past that challenge and then you add another skill another arrow to the quiver if you may. So the people who I like to bring into my world are the people who are in a pretty good situation or honestly a great situation and they want to become unstoppable. And there’s something missing that would help them become unstoppable. In business, maybe unstoppable for them looks like being able to take care of all of their employees without hesitation and be able to help people create unbelievable careers. Maybe in sports being unstoppable is finally being able to give back more than what has been given to them. There’s, you know, a thousand different definitions of it. So I help people really understand what that missing piece is or pieces are. That is the difference between living a pretty good life where things are sailing on smooth seas and they want to become unstoppable. So those are the types of people that I usually work with. I have worked with people who are a little bit less than ideal and I actually just celebrated a client of mine who I worked with for only six months. He was going through a divorce, he was in a job that he worked insane hours. He worked as a first responder and was working insane shifts, was not getting paid all that well. In month four of working together, he signed a contract with a fire department that doubled his income, is paying for him to go to paramedic school, which is something he’s always wanted to do, but didn’t believe he could do it because he didn’t have the money to get there. So they’re paying for him to do that and they’re paying him more when he gets out. And he just bought himself a brand new truck because his car was on its last limb and we even manifested exactly how it needed to come into his life. Almost two days later, the scenario that he said would have to happen, happened. I’ve never seen anybody manifest as well as he has. He has talked about exactly what he wants and he learned how to control his energy like no one else I’ve met so far and he has been manifesting stuff left and right. So he’s someone who was a little bit less than ideal and now is in a place where he’s like, I couldn’t feel better about things, anything if I tried.
Frank Bria (24:43):
Wow. That’s a great story. That’s a terrific example. We are totally out of time and I apologize, I’d love to continue this conversation. I have a ton more questions on performance and this energy. It’s really fascinating. But thanks so much for taking the time with us so far. I know you’re really busy. You’ve got clients to take care of and all that as well. So thank you for spending time. One more question before we go though. If people are listening and they want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to be able to do that?
Keegan LaMar (25:16):
Of course. So a couple things. One for anybody who’s listening to this I’m going to be sharing my personal email address for my company. If anybody, and I mean anybody who’s listening to this wants to reach out to me. I will set aside 30, 45 minutes for a session for just you and totally free. So number one. Number two, I’m currently running a holiday bundle on my website and it’s four sessions plus an energy leadership index assessment and a debrief session for $1,000. I’m giving everybody on here an extra 20% off. So $800 total. Just mention when you email me, mention you want to do the holiday bundle and mention that you heard it from this podcast. So to get in touch with me, the best way to do it is my name [email protected] So [email protected] If there’s a hundred people, if there’s 200, if there’s a thousand people who reach out, I will set aside time for every single one of you because that’s why I got into this. I’m here to help everybody and anybody who, if you have simple questions to, you want to start a coaching agreement with me, I’m there for you. Sowith said, this has been amazing. Thank you so much.
Frank Bria (26:45):
Hey, thanks Keegan, that’s really gracious of you and a really awesome offer. Your contact information is below the video by the way if you’re listening to the audio on the show notes page, we’ve got it here for you too, so you can just go straight from there. If you’re out and about listening to this audio, come on back to the show notes page of the video or in YouTube and you will find that information so you can just click right on through. Keegan, thanks so much again. Really appreciate the time you spent with us. Really enlightening conversation. Thank you.
Keegan LaMar (27:16):
Thank you. I appreciate it and I appreciate you.
Frank Bria (27:20):
And thank you for listening in on this episode of the 6 to 7 Figures Show. I know you’ve got a lot of stuff going on in your lives as well. So if you’re spending time with us, we’re honored and this is a fascinating discussion about performance. If you want to take it to the next level, you’ve got a formula there and a contact. So I suggest you take a look at connecting. Thanks again for being with us, and we’ll see you on the next episode. Alright everyone, take care. Bye bye.
