Navigating Transitions with Joe Jacobi
None of us are immune to transitions—it’s just that they seem to start piling up at “mid-life”. My friend Olympic gold medalist and performance coach Joe Jacobi shares his story and how you too can navigate resistance and uncertainty to pursue purpose, performance and impact.
What working as part of a two-person boat teaches you about collaboration (and it’s probably not what you think).
Why sometimes winning comes down to making fewer mistakes than your peers—and correcting them more quickly.
How focusing on the unique ways your experiences and expertise can help others will magnify your impact.
Learning to appreciate where you are “in the river” and navigate toward what you value most.
When seeking alliances as a Soloist can provide more opportunities for fruitful collaboration.
LINKS
Joe Jacobi Linktr.ee
Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
BIO
Joe Jacobi is an Olympic Gold Medalist, Performance Coach, Transition Expert and Author who collaborates with high performance leaders to unlock purpose, achieve peak performance, and create a lasting impact.
Joe practices and refines these core principles and strategies in his own life and pursuits at his Pyrenees mountains home beside the 1992 Olympic Canoeing venue in La Seu d’Urgell in the Spanish state of Catalunya – the same canoeing venue where he and his canoeing partner, Scott Strausbaugh, won America’s first-ever Olympic Gold Medal in the sport of Whitewater Canoe Slalom at the 1992 Olympic Games.
In 2022, Joe published his first book, Slalom: 6 River Classes About How To Confront Obstacles, Advance Amid Uncertainty, & Bring Focus To What Matters Most – Joe’s reflections, experiences, relationships, and strategies from more than 40 years on the river transferred to navigating your river of the life.
Today, he writes and publishes Thinking In Waves, short and focused weekly essays that transfer his experiences and lessons from surfing off-shore ocean waves on a surfski kayak to an innovative model for clear thinking, better choices, and increased value alignment.
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00 – 00:31
Joe Jacobi: Energy can travel in different directions and the more you become aware of it and you put yourself to manage Not just the expenditure of it, but the replenishment of it as well You change the game and you really start to think less about time and how you really set yourself up to have the capacity to do what you want to do when you want to do it. And don’t feel pressure rushed to spend energy that you don’t intend to spend or don’t want to spend.
00:36 – 01:21
Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast, where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton. And today I’m here with my pal, Olympic gold medalist, performance coach, transition expert, author, and all around good guy, Joe Jacoby. High performance leaders seek his collaboration in navigating resistance and uncertainty in their pursuit of purpose, performance, and impact. Joe practices and refines these core principles and strategies in his own life and pursuits at his Pirine Mountains home besides the 1992 Olympic canoeing venue in the Spanish state of Catalonia, the same canoeing venue where he
01:21 – 02:07
Rochelle Moulton: and his canoeing partner Scott Strasbaugh won America’s first ever Olympic gold medal in whitewater canoe slalom at the 1992 Olympic Games. In 2022, Joe published his first book, Slalom, 6 River Classes, about how to confront obstacles, advance amid uncertainty, and bring focus to what matters most. Today, he writes and publishes, Thinking in Waves, short, focused weekly essays that transfer his lessons from surfing offshore ocean waves on a surf ski kayak to an innovative model for clear thinking, better choices, and increased value alignment. Joe, welcome.
02:08 – 02:13
Joe Jacobi: Bon dia, Rochelle. It’s great to be here talking with you, my friend.
02:13 – 02:43
Rochelle Moulton: Well, Joe, I have so enjoyed watching your journey in coaching and especially how you’ve embraced life as an American in Spain. It’s like whenever we talk or even just watching 1 of your videos, I can feel your happiness, your contentment. It’s infectious in a very warm, kind way. I mean, I just have no doubt that that’s 1 of your personal keys to success. And there’s so much we can talk about today, so let’s just get right to it, okay?
02:43 – 02:50
Joe Jacobi: See, yes, yes, see. See, see. You listen to me. I have to make the… We’re speaking English today, not Catalan.
02:50 – 03:12
Rochelle Moulton: We can speak whatever we like today. So I feel like we need to start with your Olympic story for those that haven’t heard it. So you won your gold medal in a two-man canoe doing slalom through white water, right? Yes. So talk about that experience and what that whole process taught you about focus and overcoming obstacles.
03:13 – 03:44
Joe Jacobi: You know, Rochelle, I think what the first thing that comes up for me about the sport experience is just how lucky I am to have I got hooked into a sport that truly is like a sport for life. This is still a sport I get to do today and I enjoy doing today, not in the same way, the same level. But I’ve met so many Olympians that when they finish their sport, they are just so done with it, they’re over it, they just wanna get away from it. And I feel very lucky to be in a
03:44 – 04:21
Joe Jacobi: sport that is out in nature that involves aligning with the water. I guess you could just say it just changed my perspective on the way that I see building relationships with nature. The sport itself, I was really lucky. I grew up in the Washington DC area on the Potomac River. I don’t think there are many Americans that would say it’s lucky to be raised in the Washington DC these days. But it is lucky if you’re an outdoor enthusiast. As far as the best Whitewater rivers in the United States tend to be in rural mountainous areas, but
04:21 – 04:57
Joe Jacobi: Washington DC is an exception. There’s world-class whitewater just outside of the inner city and it’s a beautiful place to paddle. When you’re on the Potomac River you feel a million miles away from a big city and it was the perfect place to grow up and I was lucky to grow up with a lot of world champions world medalists and the legendary sport of the coach that they welcomed me into their community when I was 12 years old and by age 14, these amazing world-class paddlers, they were just like regular normal people that I was going to
04:57 – 04:59
Joe Jacobi: paddle with every day. Wow,
05:00 – 05:19
Rochelle Moulton: That’s a very different experience than people like me who are not Olympians think of as the Olympic experience. You just think of it as this total immersion, work, work, work, work, work, and then when you hit the gold medal, that’s it, you’re done. Like gymnastics would be maybe an example of something like that.
05:19 – 06:01
Joe Jacobi: Yeah, I went to high school in Potomac, Maryland, and I had a fellow classmate, my graduating class who was Olympic gold medalist in the 200 meter breaststroke, Mike Bererman. And I talked with Mike just after the 1992 Olympics and the next Olympic games were in the United States in Atlanta in 1996. I just figured what gold medalist at 22 years old in the sport of swimming wouldn’t go for it again. And he just kind of told me this story about up and down the black line, and there was no way he was doing that for 4
06:01 – 06:38
Joe Jacobi: more years. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think finding that joy in the process is really important. For sure, there are people in gymnastics and swimming who find joy in the process, but I think there are also sports that I see today. I mean, it just hits me so quickly. Like when I see skiing or snowboarding or skateboarding or canoeing as an Olympic sport, I’m like, oh yeah, of course these people are going to continue. These are really fun sports that they feel great. You embrace your sense of your relationship with gravity and friction. And I think that’s
06:38 – 07:03
Joe Jacobi: exciting. I think that it brings a lot of inner challenge. I do think that’s special about canoeing, Rochelle, is that the sport has a person versus person effect, of course, like any sport, but there’s also like person against nature and person against themselves. And I think when you combine those 3 levels of competition, you know, against 1 another, against yourself and with nature, it’s
07:03 – 07:14
Rochelle Moulton: an awesome combination. Well, and if you’re in a team sport, I don’t know if you add that as another dimension, but I feel like it certainly adds a level of complexity to it.
07:14 – 07:53
Joe Jacobi: It’s a great point and definitely worth digging into because I think in a canoe or a kayak, I think a lot of people imagine kind of strapping themselves into a boat and the boat is like an extension of yourself and it’s like you and the water and you’re trying to find this alignment and when you’re with another person that throws in some very special dynamics of person to person communication as specifically nonverbal communication. So in the doubles canoe, the way Scott and I would work together, we would talk about a plan for navigating the river. But
07:53 – 08:28
Joe Jacobi: once it was time to paddle, I was in the back of the boat, Scott was in the front of the boat. So if you see 2 people in Whitewater Devil’s Canoe speaking to each other, it’s only because they’ve made mistakes and they’re just trying to come up with a last-ditch effort to fix them. What really happens when things are going well is my partner Scott, he’s reading the water and I in the back of the boat, I’m reading Scott. Like all these things that Scott is doing with his back, his shoulders, the way he’s twisting his
08:28 – 09:02
Joe Jacobi: hand position on the paddle, all of it is sending signals to me about what he’s trying to do with the boat. So I’m reading those signals that he’s doing with the paddling, and then we work together based on that to paddle the best we can together. It wasn’t really that we, I always tell people that we paddled so well together, it wasn’t like we were the biggest, fastest, strongest. What we did better on the day of the Olympic Games was that we corrected mistakes better than the rest of the field, and we anticipated mistakes before they
09:02 – 09:35
Joe Jacobi: happened better than the rest of the field. It’s like an unsexy way to tell you that’s how we won the Olympics, but it changed my opinion about how two-person collaborations can achieve excellence in the world, that it’s not by doing everything perfect. You can spend a lot of time on reducing mistakes, reducing resistance, reducing the jump that gets in the way. And not only can you have a good day, but you might have a day that lands you on the top step of the Olympic podium.
09:36 – 10:06
Rochelle Moulton: Wow. I mean, I’ve never thought about it that way, probably because I’m not a canoeist, but I’m picturing you sitting behind Scott and you’re hyper focused on his body movements, right? And you’re reacting to that. Okay, so I’m just curious. So if you popped Scott out and you put somebody else who was a world-class athlete as well in this sport, how would that change? I mean, you’re still watching their body movement, but what of the partnership changes when the person changes?
10:06 – 10:41
Joe Jacobi: Well, it’s a good question. You know, before we do that, I want to say something about my relationship with Scott before we pop someone else in the boat, which I think is important. I love to tell people this story that Scott and I were really different, especially at the time we started piling together. I mean, Scott was 24 and I was 17. He had graduated college. I hadn’t graduated high school. He was introverted, analytical. I was extroverted and like super positive. Like we were really different. I like to tell people not 180 degrees difference, but 179.
10:41 – 11:22
Joe Jacobi: And I truly believe this, Rochelle, if we had been 175 degrees different, I don’t think we would have won the Olympic Games. I think it’s that diversity, those differences, and the ability to work through friction and differences and bring that together to create something special. It wasn’t easy. It was actually very difficult at times, but I think that was an important part of it. And so that influenced my thoughts about leadership, my thoughts about teams. So when you talk about taking Scott out of the boat and putting someone else in, really what I’m thinking about is
11:23 – 12:03
Joe Jacobi: what can I do to compliment that other person in the boat that it’s like in basketball, I’m throwing an alley-oop pass and just slam dunks are like the easiest baskets in the world? And I would want to give my doubles canoe partner like lots of slam dunks basically. And so there’s, it’s just a lot of setting themselves up, but it’s a team philosophy and embracing what my roles and responsibilities are in the back of the boat to really make the job of the person in front of me shine through and really leverage their strengths and their
12:03 – 12:08
Joe Jacobi: best skills and perspectives to bring excellence towards what we’re trying to do together.
12:08 – 12:28
Rochelle Moulton: I love that. I could feel the synergy in that as you were describing it. Now, Joe, do I remember correctly, did you tell me a story about when you came back from the gold medal, when you first came back to the US? I think you were gonna do some motivational speaking and you got some advice on this.
12:29 – 13:03
Joe Jacobi: Yeah, So this is cool. I mean, it’s actually the, it’s also the last story in the book of Solemn, but I think it is so helpful to soloists and thinking about how we present ourselves. So we were on the bus going to the closing ceremonies in Barcelona. And I mean, obviously, it felt good. We went to the Olympics, couldn’t ask for any more than what we did. We won a gold medal. And the head coach of the Olympic team, Bill Endicott, turned to me and he said, So you’re going back to the United States the day
13:03 – 13:32
Joe Jacobi: after tomorrow as a gold medalist. What are you going to do? What do you got planned? And I said, well, I’d love to do some motivational speaking. I’ve got a couple of things lined up already, and it would be a privilege and an honor to tell the story of our sport. And Bill said, that would be great. He goes, would you like some advice? As I coached Norm Bellingham to a gold medal 4 years earlier, I’ll tell you what I told Norm. And I said, that would be great. And Bill said, listen, when you get back,
13:32 – 14:04
Joe Jacobi: you can stand on a stage with your Team USA uniform with a gold medal around your neck, and you could be a terrible speaker. You could just say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And for a few weeks, people will go, Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. You won the Olympic games. But he says it’s human nature after that where people are going to say, Joe, that’s great that you won a gold medal in the Olympic games, but how does that help me? Like how does your success help me? And Bill paused and he said, if you
14:04 – 14:39
Joe Jacobi: can answer that question, you’ll tell the story as long as you want. And so Rochelle, I still tell this, I’m still telling the story today, not because like I love telling the story or I like talking about myself. But for literally 32 years now, I’ve been thinking of just the most creative ways to get people to care, why rivers and canoes and paddles and waves and currents, why you should care about them and how they will make your life better if you do care about them. And I’ve gotten pretty good at that after doing it for
14:39 – 14:59
Joe Jacobi: that long. And it’s not so much that I’m doing the motivational speaking so much, but in my coaching and in podcast guesting like this or in my writing, it’s such a great opportunity just to help people think about how they think in a very visual and a very feeling kind of way.
14:59 – 15:12
Rochelle Moulton: Hear, hear. It’s mission status really. What we’re talking about is a sense of mission about the river. And I actually got goosebumps when I heard you describe how you think about the river. So it’s working.
15:13 – 15:47
Joe Jacobi: We’re all navigating. That’s the thing, Isley. I mean, that’s even the idea behind Solem and thinking in waves is that it puts people in a sense of I think what’s helpful about the river metaphor is that it really brings to mind very quickly what are you in control of, What are you not in control of? And how are we gonna manage the gap in between that? And that’s it. And by the way, you’re not gonna change the river. The river is going to do what the river is going to do. And whether you stop or take
15:47 – 16:25
Joe Jacobi: a break or get out or portage a rapid, the river doesn’t care. The river is going to keep moving. But the river represents a tremendous amount of energy. And when you figure out how to harness that energy and to really create a narrative around it that works for you, you really start to see the path through these complicated rapids so much more clearly. And that’s where something, a very unique story, a very unique adventure unfolds. It’s in the middle of the river, where the rocks are, where the waves are. It’s not on the shoreline. It’s not
16:25 – 16:46
Joe Jacobi: as you’re dragging over these shallow shoals next to the shore. It’s out in the middle of the river. So it’s both hard and challenging, but it’s also like the best adventure you could ever imagine. And I think as soloists, I think when we think of it like that, that parallels what is happening in our world right now.
16:46 – 17:02
Rochelle Moulton: So speaking of the middle of the river and complex challenges, take us to your role as CEO of the US Canoe and Kayak Organization. Because on the surface, that sounds like a dream job. Like once you hang up your paddle,
17:02 – 17:02
Joe Jacobi: you
17:02 – 17:19
Rochelle Moulton: get to stay in your sport, you support upcoming athletes, you have a platform to make an impact. But you’ve said that you were, and I quote, overweight, unhappy, and unfocused. What did you do with that? Please tell us.
17:19 – 17:54
Joe Jacobi: Well, the first thing I need to do here is like, I need to take some responsibility for like what didn’t go well in that role. A lot of things ended up going well. But you’re right. I mean, there was the first thing is that this job to be the chief executive officer of the national governing body for Olympic and Paralympic canoeing under the umbrella of the US Olympic Committee. It was a great honor, great opportunity, but I had never had a job, like a regular job with a paycheck before. I had certainly never been a CEO.
17:55 – 18:37
Joe Jacobi: I think my motivation at the time, and there’s probably a lot of ego involved in this, but look, we had won a gold medal. The United States still has not won a gold medal in whitewater canoeing since the first gold medal that Scott and I won 32 years ago. And I think that I just really wanted an opportunity to create a mindset, a belief, a system that might produce more and better results and ultimately more gold medals for the program. But I also now see that like I was missing so many skills and coaching that would
18:37 – 19:11
Joe Jacobi: have been helpful that I think would have led to a better experience there. But having said all that, really what I experienced there was I was really good at taking care of other people. I was really bad at taking care of myself. I did put on a lot of weight, but that was just sort of a byproduct of the choices I was making. I don’t mean just like tactically and directly, but indirectly that I was making as well, like where my attention was, where my focus was, not having goals, not having value alignment, not really figuring
19:11 – 19:47
Joe Jacobi: out what the impact of all of this was going to be, but it was just taking care of whoever brought a problem my way. And that just put me like 100 points down in the first quarter. So as we speak today, I mean, I’m in a much better place. And in the low point of my job at USA Canoe Coyote, so I did the job for 5 years, the low point was like 2 and a half, 3 years in, and we were having a lot of friction and challenge at the time, myself, the board of directors,
19:47 – 20:23
Joe Jacobi: members. Rachelle, what I would say was that my belief about work at this time was that you endure maybe 80 percent negative people and 80 percent negative situations in exchange for like 20 percent positive people and 20 percent positive situations. I just thought, this is the way it works. Like that’s the way things go. Now things did get better in the last couple of years. We had a leadership change on the board of directors that was more fitting for where I was as a leader, gave me a chance to grow as a leader, which was good.
20:23 – 20:59
Joe Jacobi: And yeah, I survived essentially being fired during that time. And I think we did better work, especially in developing an amazing facility for canoeing in Oklahoma City that is actually hosting the Olympic trials this coming weekend and will host the World Championships in 2026 which is really exciting for canoeing in the United States So we accomplished some really good things after that as well. But this is when I, as things started to improve and I improved my health in those last couple of years on the job, not to the to where I am today, but I
20:59 – 21:27
Joe Jacobi: improved from that low point. That’s when I started to ask the question, yes, serving America’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes are nice, but what would this look like if I were taking some of the things I was learning about high performance and really figuring out ways to help people that are feeling stuck and are suffering to get unstuck and feel more joy. And that just sort of changed everything for me.
21:27 – 21:31
Rochelle Moulton: Well, and then how did moving to Catalonia change your life? Well,
21:32 – 22:16
Joe Jacobi: you know, that was just this quality of life move, change. I mean, yes, I was lucky to have participated in a sport as an athlete that was heavily anchored in Europe. So I spent so much time racing over here. I had a lot of friends over in this part of the world. And even a big part of our philosophy in competing well in the Olympics in 1992, it wasn’t just training on the 1992 Olympic River and learning that river like the back of our hand, but it was embracing the local culture and the spirit of the
22:16 – 22:45
Joe Jacobi: Catalan people. And very specifically Rochelle, like I had this moment a year before the Olympics where it was the first time I was in Laceo, the very first night I was in Laceo. I was, you know, I was 21 years old. I was tired from a lot of traveling and it was just feeling a little bit run down and missing home a bit. And I had this epiphany in the hotel we were staying in here in La Seau and I just sat up on my bed and I said, okay, that’s it. A year from now at
22:45 – 23:21
Joe Jacobi: the Olympic Games, I don’t want to feel like an American visitor in the Olympic Village. I want to feel like I belong here. I want to feel like my European competitors who have a sense of place here. And I got to tell you, that just changed everything. When we went into a restaurant or the supermarket, like things went from being very transactional to having this really nice connection with a neighbor. And that repeating itself day after day, week after week. You know Scott and I spent a hundred days here in La Seau in the year before
23:21 – 23:47
Joe Jacobi: the Olympic Games, almost a third of the year. So all those relationships that were being built and the connection with the community, before we ever took a paddle stroke on the day of the Olympics, I think we had accomplished a pretty big goal of connecting with the community and then winning the Olympics just catapulted that feeling to a much deeper and more powerful level.
23:47 – 24:06
Rochelle Moulton: So you moved then for your sport, but later you moved for you, for your life. Yes. So I’m imagining that this first experience had a lot to do with why you decided you would do it again, but what made you pick up stakes and move countries?
24:07 – 24:45
Joe Jacobi: Yeah, thank you for that, the follow-up and the connecting point there, Rochelle. I think it’s really important. So I think 1 thing is really important to say was that because of that work that we had done when I was an athlete and when Scott and I were here, that it brought us a different kind of familiarity. I didn’t come here at this latter stage of my life, wanting to reconnect with Olympic gold medalist Joe. Like, I didn’t care about that. What was really the opportunity was to be learning, like to just set the brain on learning
24:45 – 25:21
Joe Jacobi: mode. I mean, most people don’t think about scheduling their dentist appointment, their haircut, going shopping in a completely new language or sleeping in a bed and waking up in the morning and hearing a language being spoken out your window that’s not English. And you just have this moment of tuning in to like where am I what’s going on and every little thing that I do in my life here is like a learning experience and I’m 6 and a half years into this journey here I haven’t even been to the United States in 5 years. It’s still
25:21 – 26:03
Joe Jacobi: an amazing learning experience that I just treasure. And I love having my brain in that mode where it’s Learning is like a way of surviving, but of course, like I feel like I’m doing so much more than surviving. I just feel like I’m living this amazing life, close to nature with beautiful people. I’m in a great relationship with Maria, who we paddle together, we play in the outdoors together, we learn together. And then after that, I get to do my work. My work, my coaching, my writing is all connected. It all flows out of the trails
26:03 – 26:21
Joe Jacobi: I run, the rivers I paddle, the experiences that I have with Maria. All these things come together in a way that just helps me reflect back to clients and reflect new ideas creatively that I don’t know how I could get this any other way. And I wouldn’t want to get this any other way.
26:21 – 26:34
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. I mean, you’ve created your own your own personal paradise. So I’m just curious, do you dream in Catalan now? I’ve heard that said that that’s kind of when you start to cross the line to feeling fluent.
26:35 – 27:09
Joe Jacobi: I will look for that. I don’t dream in Catalan. You know, I work on it. It is funny, like I don’t speak it fluently, but very rarely, if I tune into a conversation, I know what we’re talking, I don’t understand everything that’s being said, but I always know what we’re talking about. Like, so I know those kinds of things. And I’m also at a point with the Ketelon where if it’s topical, if I know the subject of what we’re talking about, speaking becomes actually very natural. But even at the beginning of this podcast, like I know
27:09 – 27:46
Joe Jacobi: it’s 08:00 at night here, so it’s, you know, I’m a little bit more tired. I said C instead of yes. I have a lot of little default words. 1 funny story about the language Rochelle is my diet. Since moving here, I haven’t eaten meat in almost, I guess, 3 and a half years now. And it’s not that I don’t identify like as vegan or it’s not that, but I eat mostly vegetables. And I eat a lot of things that I didn’t eat when I was in the US. And I struggle to say the names of the
27:46 – 28:11
Joe Jacobi: vegetables in English. The default is I say it in Catalan. And if you just asked me what I had for lunch today, it would be like, oh yeah, pebro, carabasa, you know, ceba, poro. That’s just what comes to me naturally. Like I wouldn’t even know how to, I have to think that out in English, which is kind of funny.
28:12 – 28:20
Rochelle Moulton: I totally get it. I totally get it. So I want to shift gears a little bit. You decided to start coaching, kind of high-performance coaching.
28:20 – 28:21
Joe Jacobi: Yes.
28:21 – 28:28
Rochelle Moulton: So how did you think about building your business? Had you started the business first in the US and then moved or did you start it after?
28:29 – 29:04
Joe Jacobi: Yes, so A couple of things. I mean, I think the first thing was when I left the CEO job, the first thing I did was write. So I wrote an essay every Sunday morning called Sunday Morning Joe. Yes. Which I haven’t deleted. I mean, I just don’t write it very often, just a few essays per year now. And they’re never structured on a particular topic, but they’re insightful and people relate to them well. And it’s a large mailing list. And that was really helpful to start organizing my thoughts. And it was the beginning of my process
29:04 – 29:48
Joe Jacobi: of me turning more inward and less outward and I think that was really really helpful and then the Coaching evolved very slowly, but I do think when I moved here, I had this idea that, oh, I’ll bump back to the US every 6 or 8 weeks and do like a riverside leadership training program or speaking engagement, that kind of thing. And by 2020 with COVID and coaching was already moving towards virtual. That’s where I am now. Most everything I do is coaching online. I do offer my clients when I put a coaching proposal together, something I
29:48 – 30:20
Joe Jacobi: learned from a great podcast that ended recently called The Business of Authority, that when you write a proposal, it’s good to have 3 options. 1 of the options I give to people is an opportunity to kind of drop in and spend time with me here, I really don’t want to leave here. But what I do like doing is the opportunity to share what I’m doing here. And while people may not opt for that option very much, I don’t really want to leave. But Most of what I’m doing is coaching online virtually, and it works very well
30:20 – 30:35
Joe Jacobi: and very effectively. And I think whether people come to visit me in Catalonia or not, I think that people feel that connection to the Catalan culture pretty quickly when through our coaching collaborations.
30:36 – 31:11
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, you know, as I was thinking about our talk today, I really noticed a theme in your work in particular, and I suspect it’s true in your life too, is that you do a lot of partnering, even as a soloist, you do a lot of partnering. And you did, relatively early on, you partnered with a performance coaching firm. And I’ve seen coaches do this for lots of different reasons. Sometimes it’s about having a steadier pipeline or more complex engagements or working with a team. What made that alliance, or really any alliance when you were at this
31:11 – 31:14
Rochelle Moulton: early stage, what made that attractive to you?
31:14 – 31:52
Joe Jacobi: Well, 2 things. That was Valor, and I still coach with Valor. What is appealing about that is the repetition. Like I don’t do sales with Valor, I’m a coach. I’m 1 of the longest standing coaches at Valor and I get a lot of repetition. I turn on the screen and I get to coach a lot of people and I love that. And secondly, especially early on, the mentoring that I had, the coaching that I had about, the training that I had for coaching was top notch. It was really, really good. And so, yeah, I still look
31:52 – 32:37
Joe Jacobi: for opportunities where I’m learning. More recently, I’ve been collaborating with a few of my coaching colleagues, Inga, Bihar, and Montes, with the Elevating Leadership Institute, where we’ve formed a growth hub for leaders wanting to elevate impact and influence. And there again, like it’s a learning opportunity And our planning and our conversation has become like a training environment that actually reminds me a bit of when I was an athlete and how we used to set difficult, challenging training environments so that when we get into the game time, we’re more prepared for a range of opportunities. And that
32:37 – 33:11
Joe Jacobi: is actually part of what we aspire to do with elevating, is to create better learning training environments based off our Olympic and athletic pasts to help people really prepare for what’s coming and not wait for what’s coming, but how do you practice that? How do you prepare for that? And I think that’s a huge part of winning in transitions. It’s not trying to imagine what the transition is going to be Rochelle, but it’s preparing for like a range of possibilities. And that mindset is like a beautiful mindset.
33:12 – 33:35
Rochelle Moulton: Yes. And the other thing is that I love this idea that soloists can have alliances. I mean, I think when people hear the word, sometimes they think, oh, I have to sit by myself in a room all day. But a soloist out in the world, like if you think of a singer, there’s a backup band, right? There’s always some other people that you’re working with and how much you do that is really up to you. So I love that you’ve done that.
33:35 – 33:37
Joe Jacobi: Oh thank you, thank you.
33:37 – 34:14
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah so Joe I know I’ve been digging at your story quite a lot today but here’s why I wanted to do that. You have built this highly successful practice helping professionals navigate midlife transitions And hearing about how you walk your talk, I think is really important. It builds authority. And frankly, it’s just inspiring. So I wanna give you a chance to talk about how you see, beyond your own, how you see these midlife transitions. And I’m assuming we’re not just talking about work, but health and life, right? It’s such an interesting topic, but
34:14 – 34:46
Joe Jacobi: Rochelle, it stemmed from my own transition. And in my case, like I will just sort of say the way I see it is like that first half of life to second half of life transition. I think it’s kind of put in front of us at different stages and in different ways. The fingerprint for each person is so different and so unique and This is not done for you kind of coaching this is just support for how you may or may not want to do that and I think the big part of that is that you have
34:46 – 35:22
Joe Jacobi: to go back and be willing to take a look at that first half of your life and the kind of choices that you made and how things progressed and 1 thing led to another and start to reconcile that. I think that’s a, it’s a, it’s very much like a reconciliation. And I sort of started to do that. I think what’s interesting about living here in La Seau and living next to the river where we won the Olympics was that it helped me to actually go back to the day we won the Olympics and start looking at
35:22 – 36:01
Joe Jacobi: the way my thinking changed about life, what I thought I needed to be as an Olympic gold medalist, who I thought I should have relationships with, what I thought I needed to be correct about. And I held on to all of those things for many, many years, many years, decades. And then eventually I got to about 50 years old and my ego is kind of waving the white flag saying, Joe, we’ve had enough here. I’m ready to hand this off to our inner self. But that was not quick, that was not easy, But I started to
36:01 – 36:34
Joe Jacobi: really become interested in this topic. And so when I went into this, I said, OK, I’m going to write, I’m going to talk about this idea of midlife transition. It can be around work, it can be around health, it can be around life, emptiness, finance. These are all very real things because we’re ultimately thinking about our values, our impact, our performance. And 1 of the things that I’m so excited about, I’m actually working on a manifesto right now called the Midlife Peak Performance Manifesto. And yeah, I’ve kind of written out some ideas behind this. I’ll publish
36:34 – 37:09
Joe Jacobi: this, I hope, later this year in Sunday morning, Joe. But the idea is that this is the best part about it, is that no 1 is going to define peak performance for us at this stage of life. Only we can. But that also means that as much as we are going to define what peak performance is for us, equally, we are not going to let someone else define what it means for us either. Yes. So it’s like 2 systems at play, right? What am I gonna do and how am I gonna sort of clear the junk
37:09 – 37:40
Joe Jacobi: that’s getting in the way from the things that I want to do? System A and System B. And I want to give credit to Arthur Brooks, who wrote Strength to Strength, because he had this wonderful quote that the absence of unhappiness does not equal happiness. And when he said that, I’m like, I got it. It’s 2 systems. We can work on getting rid of the things that don’t make us happy, but we still got to work on the things that make us happy. System A and System B. It’s not 1 or the other. It’s both.
37:40 – 38:00
Rochelle Moulton: Listen, you’re preaching to the choir here. So 1 of the other things that I appreciate about your worldview, which I don’t know if you’ve, I don’t think you’ve really touched on right now, but you have in your writing. I mean, I’m well into midlife too, so this is top of mind, is this focus you have on expanding energy versus managing time.
38:01 – 38:01
Joe Jacobi: I
38:01 – 38:26
Rochelle Moulton: mean, at least for myself, it feels like the older I get, the more I value the amount of energy I have and the quality of how I spend it. So I’m very conscious that I only have so much to spend. I mean, it’s also why I devoted the last episode to productivity for soloists. I just think it’s important. I feel like productivity is the wrong measure and yet we just keep beating ourselves over the head with it, especially Americans.
38:27 – 38:27
Joe Jacobi: I
38:27 – 38:32
Rochelle Moulton: mean what are your thoughts about this idea of expanding energy versus managing time?
38:32 – 39:05
Joe Jacobi: So Rochelle, I’m actually pretty familiar with your current reading list as I think a lot of the listeners here are. You’ve been reading some really great books. I love the books. I’m a big fan, I mean, Gay Hendrix. We could have a whole another conversation about that. Great book. Love him. But 1 book I think that you would enjoy a lot if you haven’t read it is The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lehrer, a sports psychologist. So that book was written in the late 90s. I read it in the early 2000s, just after I retired
39:05 – 39:37
Joe Jacobi: and it kind of hit me like a bolt of lightning and I haven’t been the same since. So Jim Lehrer is a sports psychologist and he was collaborating with an exercise physiologist named Jack Grapple. So they didn’t write the book together. They chose to write separate books and said around very much the same topic. And that is that the thesis is we don’t fail to do the things we want to do for lack of time. We fail to do the things we want to do for lack of energy. And from there, they kind of expanded on,
39:37 – 40:14
Joe Jacobi: you know, how that plays out and ways to work with that. And I just thought that was so powerful and so sensible. And it spoke to the way Scott and I paddled the canoe. It spoke to the way my teammates and I used to race in the sport of canoeing. It was all about managing energy. And energy can travel in different directions. And the more you become aware of it and you put yourself to manage not just the expenditure of it, but the replenishment of it as well, you change the game and you really start to
40:14 – 40:49
Joe Jacobi: think less about time and how you really set yourself up to have the capacity to do what you want to do when you want to do it. And don’t feel pressure rushed to spend energy that you don’t intend to spend or don’t want to spend. Yes. None of this happens quickly. I just feel Jack Grapple, by the way, has become a mentor of mine. I still collaborate with him, but I think he would love Jim’s book, Power of Full Engagement. It’s so good, but it really just speaks to this idea of where we can think about
40:49 – 41:33
Joe Jacobi: managing energy when we have energy, whether it’s health, whether it’s our work, whether it’s relationships and showing up as a better version of ourselves. Time doesn’t necessarily solve that. Just giving ourselves more time, more hacks on saving time, it doesn’t do that. But what will do that, even if you are busy and fairly over-scheduled, is energy. And energy will wake you up to what you’re doing time-wise as well. So I’ve just found a really nice way to expand upon work that Jack and Jim started with the High Performance Institute, And that’s what good art is all
41:33 – 41:44
Joe Jacobi: about, is taking the work of the people you love and respect and keep building upon that. And I hope someone takes what I’ve done with energy management and goes even further with it. I mean,
41:44 – 41:59
Rochelle Moulton: just think about what the world would be like if we were all lit up with what we were doing because we could create energy from it and we’re saying no to the things that that don’t make that happen. I mean that’s that’s a world I want to live in.
42:00 – 42:38
Joe Jacobi: And 1 thing is that you know I always throw in this word in a lot of my taglines with meaning and adventure at the end of it. And so the meaning is intention and purpose, but the adventure really speaks to nature. It’s not that I’m looking to have a big conversation about technology or AI, but no matter what happens in the world, we will always have this relationship with nature that is conspiring to work with the most human part of who we are. As long as that’s there, we have an ally out there in the world
42:39 – 43:11
Joe Jacobi: that is cheering for us, that really wants us to go to do well and to be the best version of ourselves. And I think I initially saw nature as this place to just disconnect and get away. Like it was there to serve me. What has changed at this stage of my life, I just see nature now as like 1 of my most valued relationship. Like it’s another living, breathing entity, and we’re here to serve each other, like a positive, healthy relationship. That has been huge for me.
43:11 – 43:26
Rochelle Moulton: Well, I feel like that’s what I feel in your thinking in waves pieces, right? Because you’ve got some great metaphors, you know, for work, for life, for dealing with adversity, but it very much feels like an integrated relationship, if you will.
43:26 – 44:08
Joe Jacobi: I mean, I think that’s it. And it’s available to all of us. You don’t have to live in Yosemite or in the Pyrenees mountains. I literally have coaching clients that walk their dogs in a city of millions of people, and they’re able to kind of focus their attention on some flowers or a leaf on the ground or a park. It doesn’t take much to kind of initiate that muscle, to initiate that relationship. But I think it connects so well into that energy management piece of where we’re expending and where we’re replenishing, who are our allies in
44:08 – 44:13
Joe Jacobi: our pursuit of living a richer, fuller life?
44:13 – 44:29
Rochelle Moulton: Hear, hear. So, Joe, there’s a question. I know you’re a loyal listener, so I know you know what’s coming. But so if you could go back to who you were when you first started your business, what’s the 1 thing you’d advise him to do?
44:29 – 45:09
Joe Jacobi: Since I started my business in the United States and now I’m picking up here is that it’s the time that I spend not working and really having those appreciating the things that happen outside of work and giving the space to build and grow and breathe and let that really be the basis of what makes work special, what makes my contribution to work valuable to the clients and the collaborations that I join. That would be it. But at the same time, I know you asked that question and then part of me also says, gosh, maybe if I
45:09 – 45:34
Joe Jacobi: had changed something that might run the risk that I wouldn’t be exactly where I am now. So I’m also really grateful for the hard things that came along and the things that really felt like were not going well or weren’t ever gonna turn up and go in a better direction, but here we are. And this is a wonderful conversation, celebrating a friendship that I’m so grateful for.
45:35 – 45:57
Rochelle Moulton: And so am I. So am I. I’m so grateful for all of the things that you’ve done for this community that we share, that we both participate in. And I just love being able to watch what you do with your alliances that honor people and their unique gifts that they bring to the table. So right back at you, my friend.
45:58 – 46:12
Joe Jacobi: I can’t wait till We are together here in Catalunya at some point. It’s still on my bucket list. I look forward to seeing you guys here in Catalunya where we are eating paella together by the sea. Won’t that be a great day?
46:12 – 46:17
Rochelle Moulton: Oh, it’s gonna happen. And you don’t know this, but paella is 1 of my very favorites in life.
46:17 – 46:23
Joe Jacobi: I have sneaking suspicion, sneaking suspicion. So Joe, we’ll
46:23 – 46:29
Rochelle Moulton: be putting all sorts of links to you and your content in the show notes, but where’s the best place for people to learn about you?
46:29 – 47:08
Joe Jacobi: You know, I think for today, and I’m working on my website right now, which I’m going to give my Linktree address, which is linktr.ee slash jojacoby. And there you’ll find anything, any way to connect with me. And I included a cool resource there which is my journaling framework, the same framework that I’ve been using for many years in my journaling Rochelle that actually is based off the training log that I used to keep as an Olympic athlete. So you’ll find that at my link tree address. Perfect. Well, Joe, thank you.
47:08 – 47:21
Rochelle Moulton: I mean, as always, you are such a generous human being. Thank you for sharing your story, even the parts that, you know, were not so lovely at the time, even though I know you appreciate them now. So thank you.
47:21 – 47:29
Joe Jacobi: Thank you, Rochelle, for doing this, the podcast, your service to this community. I’m grateful. Thank you. It’s been wonderful. Awesome.
47:30 – 47:35
Rochelle Moulton: So that’s it for this episode. I hope you’ll join us next time for The Soloist Life. Bye bye.
