Pro athletes get a coach for their mind. Founders get nothing.
Most founders walk into the highest-stakes environment of their careers with no training for the one instrument they use all day. In this episode of The Dataliction Podcast®, John Staub and Travis Hall talk with Kevin Bailey, co-founder and CEO of Dreamfuel, about why the same person can solve anything on Monday and stare at a screen on Tuesday. Kevin traces it back to his first startup in Indianapolis, where he sat down and charted his own mental states to figure out what was happening. He walks through the four states a nervous system moves between, fight, flight, freeze, and focus, and the centered state he calls equanimity, where a leader actually has a choice to make. He gets specific about what to do when a meeting turns on you, and then names the one habit most executives should cut first.
Chapters
00:00 Same Person, Two Different Days
01:36 The Highest-Stakes Psychological Environment
02:33 What Happens in a Mental Performance Demo
03:41 The Chart That Started Dreamfuel
07:04 Step One Is Awareness
08:03 Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Focus
11:20 Equanimity and Where Agency Lives
13:04 Caught Off Guard in a High-Stakes Meeting
15:02 Keep Breathing, Relax Your Stomach
16:20 The Cognitive Reframe
18:45 Why the Category Is Hitting a Tipping Point
21:51 What to Stop Doing After the First Million
23:30 Sleep, Dopamine, and Micro Jet Lag
25:58 A Serotonin Day Every Week
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