Former Psychologist for the Navy SEALs Dr. Eric Potterat

00:01:24.320 — 00:01:41.600 · Peter Mallouk
I am here with Eric Potterat today. I'm very excited about this. He. I've seen him speak at a few events and including one that we had at my firm, and he absolutely blew everybody away with his insights. So I'm excited for him to be able to share some of them with you today. Eric, welcome to the show.
00:01:41.640 — 00:01:42.400 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Honored to be here.
00:01:42.400 — 00:01:52.360 · Peter Mallouk
Thanks, Peter. And you've got a background in psychology, but then you immediately took that to the military, which is not where most people would immediately take it. So tell me about how that started.
00:01:52.800 — 00:02:56.920 · Dr. Eric Potterat
So, uh, within my PhD program, the typical pathways that you've complete your PhD, and then you do an internship, typically outside of the institution where you're studying. And one of my professors said, hey, have you thought about a military internship? And I said, look at me. Do I look real? So long story short, I went to do an open house and listen, and I was literally blown away with the breadth of training.
Um, so my wife and I did some thinking, and, um, a lot was family background as well. My paternal grandparents emigrated from Switzerland in 1956 to this country, so I kind of thought it was a dual reason, I guess. Number one, I thought the training was better. Number two, I thought for me, everything that this country had given my family, I felt like I could pay back a little bit.
So I went into the Navy and, um, I didn't think it would be a career, to be honest. I thought I'd finished the internship and kind of do the obligated service and get out. But I loved it so.

00:02:56.960 — 00:02:58.960 · Peter Mallouk
And how long was your total run?
00:02:59.000 — 00:03:00.840 · Dr. Eric Potterat
My total run was 20 years.
00:03:00.960 — 00:03:01.640 · Peter Mallouk
Incredible.
00:03:01.680 — 00:03:17.600 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Half of that was more of a typical clinical psychologist. And then post nine over 11, I got kind of detoured and got picked up by the Seals to be their performance psychologist and clinical psychologist. And my last ten years was markedly different than my first ten years.
00:03:17.640 — 00:03:35.280 · Peter Mallouk
So, I mean, your whole I don't want to define you, but when I watch you speak, it's really about mental toughness, mental clarity, converting thought process into excellence. What was the tipping point in the military where you thought, hey, I'm on a I'm learning something here.
00:03:35.600 — 00:03:36.200 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah.
00:03:36.240 — 00:03:38.640 · Peter Mallouk
That that I can take to others.
00:03:38.880 — 00:03:47.440 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I think my first ten years, I want to believe I was a pretty good clinical psychologist. And the typical pathways that,
00:03:48.560 — 00:04:37.920 · Dr. Eric Potterat
you know, you learn theories and practices that make people who don't feel well, feel better. And that was working well. And then nine over

11 happened. I was at the naval hospital in southern Spain and I got picked up to go more the operational side. And once I hit the Navy Seals as their first psychologist at Bud's, and then I ended up staying with them for ten total years.
Um, that's when it clicked for me. It's like you don't have to kind of be sick to get better. Um, and I realize that a lot of what I learned in my traditional PhD program, I think with respect to just different marketing, different semantics, we could apply those same principles to really high stakes environments and watch people kind of move the needle of their performance.
So.
00:04:37.960 — 00:04:46.120 · Peter Mallouk
So was it when you were with the Navy Seals, was it about taking them from good to great, or was it about peak performance so you can survive whatever mission that you're on? I mean.
00:04:46.400 — 00:05:01.530 · Dr. Eric Potterat
A little bit of both. Um, so this gets complicated, but but post 911 there was a a congressional mandate that came out that they wanted. Our government wanted to create 500 more Seals in the next ten years.
00:05:01.690 — 00:05:03.290 · Peter Mallouk
How many were there to begin with?
00:05:03.810 — 00:05:06.530 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Quite a few. I mean, the numbers, I don't recall.
00:05:06.570 — 00:05:07.490 · Peter Mallouk
It's not like 12.
00:05:07.730 — 00:06:40.810 · Dr. Eric Potterat
No, no. A few thousand. Um, but I think our government knew where the ball was going or where that proverbial puck was going, and they needed operators to do kind of a different type of engagement, a

different type of war. And, um, there really are only two ways that you can increase the number of seals. You can decrease the standards, which was non-negotiable, or you can hire someone as the first psychologist at Bud's to try to figure out what is it about the people who are making it through and more importantly, what is about the failure rates.
So Bud's had a, I think, statistical historical rate of failure of about 75%. So that's not a huge ROI. And that's the most arduous training on the planet. And it's difficult. So long story short. Big Navy Pentagon park me at Bud's with really a two missions. Number one was to develop an assessment tool which would try hopefully, to better understand those failures and then ultimately change how we're modeling that and backfill them with people who had a higher likelihood of success.
And then number two, to your question. I think the second one intrigued me more, which was create a codified mental toughness program for this cohort, which frankly, I was blown away. I'm like, these are the most incredibly mentally tough men on the planet. But there wasn't kind of a codified way to go about that with evidence based.
00:06:40.850 — 00:06:49.650 · Peter Mallouk
What was the definition of failure? I mean, 75%, is it how many of them was the physical part? How much of it was the mental part? How many of them selves? I can't do this.
00:06:49.690 — 00:08:09.090 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah, so. Look, I'm not a seal, and I'm going to always kind of defer to that community. But I will say the traditional failure is what they call a door drop on request. And some of it is physical. But you talk to the Seals and they'll say, it's so physical it becomes mental. Yeah. So it was really interesting.
I mean, you know, my background was in, you know, psychobiology. And I was statistically very always interested in modeling. So I knew that failure was going to be much easier to predict than success. So we really took a few years to take a look at those failures, those doors, try to understand under the hood what they're doing differently compared to the success individuals.

And long story short, developed a 24 attribute assessment called the Computerized Special Operations Resiliency Test. Um, got that validated over the next few years. And then Big Navy came in and started using that. So essentially when it combined the mental side, so someone who wanted orders to become a Seal would have to take that mental test that would marry with their physical performance.
When you look at both, we could predict and identify with 97% accuracy. The folks that just didn't have a chance to get through buds.
00:08:09.130 — 00:08:15.930 · Peter Mallouk
That's an incredible statistic. 75% failure rate. And now you've got a test that gives a 97% indication of.
00:08:15.970 — 00:08:21.170 · Dr. Eric Potterat
97% could predict the folks who are going to fail. So predict 97% of those preempt.
00:08:21.210 — 00:08:38.930 · Peter Mallouk
Exactly. That's amazing. So what were the key things actually, even before that, like when I think about everything you learned in school all this time you had, and then you get into the real world, but like hardcore, real world. Yeah. What were you what did you learn that wasn't right or that didn't really apply the way you thought it would?
00:08:40.409 — 00:09:51.810 · Dr. Eric Potterat
So I'm going to I'm going to probably create some hate mail and be canceled by my committee. First off, clinical psychologist and my colleagues are phenomenal. But I think the typical training pipeline, again, is to really learn theories and learn practices and look for pathology. And I mean no disrespect, but I was trained in that as well where a hammer looks for nails.
I think in psychology we're looking at symptom reduction. Someone comes in with XYZ ABC, you look at pathways and clinical evidence based pathways and you want to decrease those. For me I this this

kind of light went off in my head that like again you don't have to not be well to get better. So I really thought about is there a way to take or I was more attracted to taking things that I learned within my PhD program and really fundamentally making them practical, actionable, relatable, and evidence based.
And if you could do that, I think the application to any environment, especially high stakes environments first responders, military surgeons or. It matters. Um, you know, then then that that made me happier as a clinician. So.
00:09:52.090 — 00:10:06.410 · Peter Mallouk
And the tests you came up with for the Seals that had that 97% indication that they would fail. I'm sure there's a lot of questions in there, but what are the couple things that are the clear seem to be the leading indicators that's not going on.
00:10:06.450 — 00:10:50.570 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah. So we were after really more traits versus states. Um, traits are things that, you know, I like to say we thank your parents for those because they're developed over time. It's like a creek becomes a river, becomes the Grand Canyon. Traits are relatively stable. People can change, but they're they're very stable.
Versus states are psychological attributes that given whatever information is going on in someone's lives, they can kind of ebb and flow. So some of those traits that we were most interested in, that kind of the signal to helping that prediction model Adaptability, I think emotional composure, goal orientation, hardiness, the ability to bounce back from bad news or failure.
Those are trait based. They take years to develop. They're just not.
00:10:50.610 — 00:10:54.410 · Peter Mallouk
And once you develop them, you have them. Is that what you're saying? Yeah yeah.
00:10:54.450 — 00:10:54.730 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah yeah.

00:10:54.730 — 00:10:58.970 · Peter Mallouk
Yeah. So there are clear indications because you can't really change after a certain age much.
00:10:59.010 — 00:11:10.810 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Oh yeah. I'm going to be careful. You can always kind of teach, you know, an old dog, new tricks, but it becomes people become more calcified or kind of stuck in their ways, as it were.
00:11:10.850 — 00:11:14.650 · Peter Mallouk
So versus a state like give me an example.
00:11:14.650 — 00:11:15.090 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Of.
00:11:15.170 — 00:11:37.650 · Dr. Eric Potterat
A state would be maybe anger control or frustration, you know, thresholds. If I were to receive a text from someone or someone cuts me off while driving, I may just be really amped. And then I come in to do this fantastic podcast and I'm a little bit, you know, state dependent upset as opposed to trait would be how I navigate through that.
I see.
00:11:37.690 — 00:11:55.970 · Peter Mallouk
So interesting. So do you buy into the idea that. That people, no matter what. Revert to a general state. Like I've heard people speak that say like even people have become paralyzed, whatever their general level of happiness or happiness was, they revert to that after a period of time. Does that really true?
00:11:56.250 — 00:12:27.050 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I like that for me, there's a there's a saying that always stuck with me and there's always exceptions. But the best predictor of future

behavior is typically past behavior. So when we're, you know, interviewing, whether it's someone for creative planning or someone for the Seals or someone for baseball or football, oftentimes you really want to find out, given various scenarios that they've been and how did they navigate those?
Because once they're placed in those similar scenarios in the future, to your point, they're going to revert back to what worked or maybe what didn't.
00:12:27.090 — 00:12:56.010 · Peter Mallouk
So you really buy into the the idea. I think there's a lot of evidence that basically people are who they are and you're looking for. Do I have the ingredients here to take this person to the next level? I'm not. But you can't take someone who doesn't have the ingredients. You're going if they don't have the ingredients.
I can't do anything about it. Probably. So I'm looking for the ingredients and I'm going to try to take this optimize this person, this business person, this athlete, this Navy Seal. But the ingredients need to be there.
00:12:56.010 — 00:14:10.730 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I think you're spot on. I think that, you know, that I come up with a few metaphors and I'm sorry, maybe I'm the king of cheesy metaphors, but I like the diamond metaphor quite a bit. You know, you pull a diamond out of the ground and it's raw. It's fantastic. People will say, this is great, but the true value of a diamond is bringing it to the right cutter.
You know, the sword metaphor is another one. Like, we can build a sword with steel, you can polish that steel, you can sharpen that steel, you can put fancy etchings on that steel. But if that steel doesn't have the key ingredients, it's exposed and battle pretty quickly. So I think, do people need fundamental ingredients.
Yes, but I think this is the 5050. I think I'm going to go off here for a minute. I think in most organizations, we we at least the ones I've seen, most organizations focus primarily on talent acquisition. They're looking for those ingredients that they think then that people are going to naturally blossom where they're planted.

And I think the elite organizations are the ones that say, hey, we want to do the talent acquisition of key ingredients that we think drive performance metrics, but then we're going to help sharpen and help that person become the best version of themselves with evidence based tools and techniques.
00:14:10.730 — 00:14:33.220 · Peter Mallouk
I can agree with that. More. I describe it using cheesy metaphor of a garden, like I can't take a weed and turn it into a flower, you know what I mean? I want to keep the weed out of the garden. I want to find what I think is most likely to grow in our garden. But we can't just leave it alone. We want to water it or, you know, everything that you need to do to make it really reach its optimum state.
And it sounds like a little bit the way.
00:14:33.660 — 00:14:33.780 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I.
00:14:33.780 — 00:14:33.940 · Peter Mallouk
Love.
00:14:33.940 — 00:14:34.020 · Dr. Eric Potterat
The.
00:14:34.020 — 00:14:35.300 · Peter Mallouk
World. That's great. The world.
00:14:35.340 — 00:14:36.380 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I may steal that metaphor.
00:14:36.460 — 00:15:00.860 · Peter Mallouk
I'm sorry. The world of the world of talent. So? So you. You leave the military? Obviously. What an incredible impact. I mean, if you really think about the ripple effect of what you did, and you

probably can't even really imagine, right? Somebody in the middle of nowhere on a mission and you helped, or you created the system that put them there and.
00:15:00.900 — 00:15:03.140 · Dr. Eric Potterat
An incredible cohort. I mean, I'm optimized.
00:15:03.220 — 00:15:03.460 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah.
00:15:03.660 — 00:15:04.220 · Peter Mallouk
Pretty cool.
00:15:04.260 — 00:15:24.100 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Those 20 years, especially those last ten. I mean, I have nothing but the utmost respect for special operations and really the unsung heroes or heroines or the family members as well. I mean, that's it's not just the operator. It's, you know, all of the that ecosystem is phenomenal. So yeah, I yeah, that will always hold a very special place in my heart for sure.
00:15:24.140 — 00:15:29.420 · Peter Mallouk
So when does it occur to you that this might translate into other things?
00:15:29.980 — 00:16:17.140 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Boy. Um, I would say probably by year 12 or 13 in the Navy. So I've been maybe my first tour, then with the Seals, just when I completed buds and we started to see, hey, these mental techniques and that kind of codified system is actually moving the needle and they've kind of embedded it into their training paradigm.
I really had this epiphany that was like, this is if it's going to work here, it's the you know, the transferability would be quite easy. And I was I started to, you know, do occasional talks to law enforcement, kind of paramilitary, where it was kind of a close cousin to that people who were also working in high stakes.

And it was very, you know, I think it didn't fall on deaf ears, let's put it that way.
00:16:17.300 — 00:16:29.020 · Peter Mallouk
So and so. Okay. So now you're, you're you're speaking to groups outside the military. How does this bridge come into the world of, uh, everything you've become a famous for now.
00:16:29.060 — 00:17:32.700 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah, I don't know about famous, but, uh, so a couple of the. We'll go back to Bob's. When I was at Bob's, one of, uh, one of the luxuries about Bud's training where seals are made is it's one of the few places that's open source, meaning when professional sports teams are in San Diego, when we used to have the Chargers, the Padres, the opposing teams that come in the Royals or the Chiefs, and sometimes in days off, they would want to tour where the Seal training base is, and that's all open source.
So the public affairs officer will allow teams to come through. So for my three years, the commanding officer asked me to give a quick, um, brief on some of the mental performance and mental toughness techniques that we were using. So you'd have these athletic teams come in and it was I would call a collateral duty.
I was just like, hey, I'll do this. No big deal. And I was never in awe with like, oh my gosh, that's so-and-so athlete. But long story short, to answer your question in a circuitous manner, I retired from the Navy and got a call from the Dodgers. Oh. So yeah.
00:17:32.740 — 00:17:34.420 · Peter Mallouk
Who calls you? I mean, like.
00:17:34.460 — 00:17:35.020 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah.
00:17:35.060 — 00:17:36.340 · Peter Mallouk
It's how they get your number.

00:17:36.380 — 00:17:49.420 · Dr. Eric Potterat
People in the front office. They had seen me give a presentation at Bud's. I see. But I was, again, no disrespect to teams. I was just it was a weekly thing where the public affairs officer would say, hey, we have XYZ team in here. Can you come give a 15 minute brief?
00:17:49.460 — 00:17:49.940 · Peter Mallouk
Incredible.
00:17:49.940 — 00:18:25.060 · Dr. Eric Potterat
For hundreds of teams and hundreds of Olympic teams would come in and women's softball and soccer. And again, I was never one of these, you know, fanboys or whatever, but I would just do my job and leave. Um, so I think they had gotten my phone number through someone and I thought it was a joke. Peter, to be honest, I was.
I grew up a Dodger fan. I was born and raised Dodger Blue, and I thought it was maybe a college roommate playing a trick on me. So long story short, we agreed. I transitioned out of the Navy and joined the front office where they wanted. They they created the director of a specialized performance programs.
00:18:25.100 — 00:18:26.820 · Peter Mallouk
Incredible. What year is this?
00:18:26.860 — 00:18:40.980 · Dr. Eric Potterat
2016. Okay. Literally three days after I retired, I started at Dodger Stadium. We still lived in San Diego and was in charge of all the mental assessment, selection, development and enhancement programs for that major league team.
00:18:41.020 — 00:18:52.340 · Peter Mallouk
So you show up at the office and then what? What do you do? Like, I mean, this is a are you just like, hey, I'm going to come up with a 50 point program waiting for the Seals.

00:18:52.380 — 00:18:52.860 · Dr. Eric Potterat
It's a great.
00:18:52.860 — 00:18:53.900 · Peter Mallouk
Question. What's going to work?
00:18:53.940 — 00:19:56.700 · Dr. Eric Potterat
And I'm going to be vulnerable. It was odd for me because these were, again, I just said I was never a fanboy, but this was my team growing up. And to see in the hallways, you know, individuals that I used to have baseball cards for that were now like, hey, you're the new doc, you're going to help. And I'm like, wow, this is surreal.
So really, you know, I just replicated what I had done in the Navy, um, you know, or the leadership of the Dodgers is to this day and was incredible. I think they empower their people. They hire the right people and empower them and did focus groups with like. What does it mean to be a Dodger? And we just started digging deep on attributes that were going to be really important to developing that team better coach ability, team ability, adversity, tolerance, and then putting them in actionable, relatable, practical, evidence based ways.
And we started winning. I mean, we hadn't. I think it was a piece. It wasn't the piece, but it was that team of individuals in the front office staff. Um, you know, we hadn't won a pennant in 32 years, and my first few years were back to back.
00:19:56.740 — 00:20:13.540 · Peter Mallouk
Yeah, it's changed a lot, hasn't it, lately? It has. Now it's like, almost impossible for them not to win the battle. But they're so talented. So how much of your training was for the team, where you're doing team settings and you're just like, hey, this can apply to everybody. And how much is one on one helping people?
00:20:13.580 — 00:20:28.180 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I would say a third, a third, a third, uh, a developed, uh, we had a wonderful staff as well that assisted in this, but we would develop kind of individualized mental performance plans for each player at

all levels. So the major league and then all the minor league teams is.
00:20:28.220 — 00:20:29.540 · Peter Mallouk
Every single player, every.
00:20:29.540 — 00:21:43.340 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Single player. Um, and the expectation is I think it's probably the same now in every professional sport, especially at that tier level, that, you know, when you're drafted here with the Chiefs or the Royals, you're probably going to have a nutritional assessment, strengthening, conditioning, assessment, biomechanics are going to figure out, hey, if you're a disposition, these are the muscle groups we need.
And then mental, you know, mental skills as well. So there was a kind of a baseline that's built a nutritional baseline spring conditioning and a mental performance. And the idea is as long as you're on this team and it happens in football, basketball, everywhere, the expectation is you're going to move and get better in these areas, not unlike nutrition or strengthening conditioning.
So I would say a third of the job was doing individual performance programs with the athletes. A third was coaching staff, helping coaches better understand how to meet this person, where they're at and how they're wired. So you can blow a dog whistle they're going to listen to. Yeah. Um, and then I would say a third is really how do we team better.
What does it mean to be a team. And that was, that was that was a harder push, to be honest. Just because coming from military team is just a little bit different, I think the consequences are markedly different.
00:21:43.340 — 00:22:31.340 · Peter Mallouk
So it's interesting to hear you talk about meeting the the player where they're at, because I talk a lot internally with our leaders about how, you know, a good leader can just get a talented group together. Things will probably be okay. And you see a great leader, say a great basketball coach or something.

They set a standard for everyone to meet, but I think the very, very best realize every single person is different and they're motivated by different things. And if you can take the time to understand that, you can meet them where they are. Like it doesn't make sense to say, hey, you're awesome, and here's a raise.
And then they go, well, I don't care about that. I want the corner office. I'm more I want a new business card. You know, some people are motivated by different people are motivated by different things. And if you're using the wrong your word, you know, dog dog whistles, it's not going to work.
00:22:31.380 — 00:23:34.220 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Exactly. I think back to the question you asked before that just reminded me of perhaps an added answer to that. I think in psychology I'll speak for me. My old way of thinking is I would learn these principles or theories or practices and then just kind of do this broad brush training approach and assume that everyone's going to gain something from that.
And I think about midway through my career, especially with the Seals, where these are the most tenacious, like thirst for getting better individuals I've ever seen. It needed to be individualized, right? Um, and I could go off the rails on this, but I think, you know, we we often believe that, you know, all stress is bad and therefore we teach, you know, adversity, tolerance and de-stress skills.
But some performers probably here at Creative Planning, some performers on sports teams perform really well if they have a little bit more stress or others, maybe when they're a little bit less stress and more relaxed. So it's really important to individualize a performance plan.
00:23:34.260 — 00:23:52.140 · Peter Mallouk
I was talking to you about stress management, and he said that, you know, no one wants to be overwhelmed with stress. You have all kinds of negative adverse reactions to that. But a lot of people try to eliminate stress completely, and it's actually worse than that. He believed that most people want modest stress.

Do you agree with that?
00:23:52.180 — 00:24:13.190 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I do. There's this old, old, old, old research the Yerkes Dodson inverted U. And basically what it says is it fits everyone kind of under this bell curve. And if we're too relaxed, you know, on one axis you have stress levels and one axis you have performance. If we're too relaxed, we're not going to perform very well.
We're going to go into any task like, hey, how are you doing?
00:24:13.230 — 00:24:13.630 · Dr. Eric Potterat
All right.
00:24:13.750 — 00:24:34.270 · Dr. Eric Potterat
And if we're too stressed, that's the red line. We're going to be just, you know, unfocused and, you know, it's going to we're going to be thinking about other things. And there really is that in the Olympic world, we used to call that the individual zones of optimal functioning ISOs. So how do we find someone's individual zone?
It's not just the same for everyone.
00:24:34.350 — 00:24:52.910 · Peter Mallouk
It's interesting because we're all looking for that Goldilocks, you know, not too hot, not too cold. The problem is you get there and then life happens. Something comes out of the blue that you weren't calibrating for, and now all of a sudden you're in the high stress totally category again, which is why it's so I'm sure it's so hard to manage, you know, and why all the traits to get through that adversity matters so much.
00:24:52.950 — 00:24:53.550 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Totally.
00:24:53.870 — 00:25:07.910 · Peter Mallouk

So, okay, so you're at the Dodgers. Give me an example of a player that or I don't know if you can use names or not. Give me an example of maybe pulling somebody out of a slump or taking them to another level where you were like, I figured this out.
00:25:08.310 — 00:25:33.710 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah. So I think like, look. Baseball's interesting. We were having a conversation earlier just about the the seasonality of this sport in general. It and I may make some players angry saying this, but it really is a failure driven sport. Meaning it's one of the few places you're going to fail more than you succeed, and you're still potentially going to be in the Hall of Fame.
Right. If you if you hit three out of every ten. Yeah.
00:25:33.710 — 00:25:35.310 · Peter Mallouk
Well that's amazing now especially.
00:25:35.350 — 00:26:46.750 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Right. Right. I mean, it's absolutely unbelievable. So I think for me there's always and probably to this day in every team there are really working with mental performance experts on slumping players. And I think getting people to understand the recipe for success and the seasonality probably not unlike investing, right?
If I look at the market every day or I look at certain snapshots every day, the seasonality of baseball, football, basketball, I need to understand my recipe, not be outcome driven, but just make sure I'm doing the recipe and the process. I think particular players, I would say our biggest leveraged players while I was there would be like relief pitchers.
These are people that come in usually when the game's on the line, right? There's 60,000 either fans or opponents, depending on if you're in, you know, in an opponent's stadium and they're booing and the pressure's on and the bases are loaded and this person has to throw, you know, get 1 or 2 outs. So really meeting with those individuals and helping them really focus on, okay, what's the performance plan here.

Controlling their human weapon system, which is this and this and using those evidence based techniques.
00:26:46.790 — 00:27:04.790 · Peter Mallouk
Well, I can tell you as a Royals fan, we could desperately use your help. That's like literally our biggest weakness right now and for and for quite a while. So when you've got somebody going through a slump, what is is there a recipe? Does it translate to our listeners who are operators? Is there any connection that translates?
00:27:05.510 — 00:27:48.550 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Look, I think identifying if you're in a slump, I think firstly, it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think the impulse is and I'm going to get on my my soapbox here a little bit. I think that I've seen the impulse is I need to correct everything and change my swing. Or if you're a golfer, a change XYZ, change my foot stance, etc. whereas I think good coaches are like, okay, let's change a thing and then measure how this is happening as opposed to I need to change everything.
So I think firstly, it's important to understand, like I said, the seasonality that these things ebb and flow. You could go four for five the next day, you could have two touchdowns the next day or the next game rather. So it perspective is important.
00:27:48.590 — 00:28:04.470 · Peter Mallouk
It's got to feel good pulling somebody out of something like that too. It's just psychologically just watching somebody go through a slot in baseball in particular, because the season's so long and the slumps can go on for 2030 games. Sometimes just watching somebody go through it, you know, it's just killing them.
00:28:04.510 — 00:29:03.990 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah. I was working with a wide receiver a few years ago. The name is not important, but it really it spoke to. I think what you're saying perfectly. Uh, I think he must have had great mental performance processes early on in his college career and whatnot, and he got to the highest level. He's a player that we would all know, and he was

in a slump, and he was dropping passes and a lot of ESPN and other, you know, fans and blogs are noticing this.
And he really came to the conclusion that he went to his coaching staff. And I think, if I remember correctly, at the top, wide receivers drop one out of every 22 balls that hit their hands at the highest levels. So he really reframed his interpretation of a drop. You know, in his mind, his coaching staff helped him understand that.
Look, if I drop a pass instead of, oh gosh, here I'm continuing this slump, it's wow, I'm glad I got that out of the way.
00:29:04.110 — 00:29:04.350 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Right.
00:29:04.470 — 00:29:05.750 · Peter Mallouk
There's 21 catches in a row.
00:29:05.790 — 00:29:15.190 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Exactly. Everything is a statistic. So that's a really interesting way to reframe those micro failures or the slump that. Okay, I'm glad I got this out of the way. That means it's coming.
00:29:15.190 — 00:29:19.550 · Peter Mallouk
So so perspective and framing are characteristics of a resilient.
00:29:19.590 — 00:29:53.430 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Totally. We call it thought management. And kind of those belief systems and reframes are important. In fact the meta analyzes that look at this pretty deeply. Most of the time when most of your, your listeners or viewers will be experiencing any negative effect self-deprecation, anxiety, stress, anger, frustration 94% of the time when you look at the root cause, it's due to an irrational belief.
It's something else that's in the past that you think is affecting this ability. So.

00:29:53.470 — 00:29:56.750 · Peter Mallouk
So you're finding people are unnecessarily hard on themselves.
00:29:57.310 — 00:30:03.550 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Unnecessarily irrational based on cognitive kind of schema or schemata that are put in place. That makes sense.
00:30:03.750 — 00:30:05.270 · Peter Mallouk
They're not giving themselves grace.
00:30:05.350 — 00:30:58.110 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Correct? Correct. And they make assumptions that are that are ill advised, I think. In the book, I, I brought up a dog fictitious example that if you and I go downstairs and were bitten a leg by a golden retriever, that's painful. That's a visceral response that creates pain, frustration. Next week, you and I may see a golden retriever and the hair on our neck stands up and we make the assumption this golden retriever is going to bite me.
Well, it's not the same golden retriever. That's a great example of like. Most of the time we ask the elite individuals to slow down that process. If we know that 94% of the time people kind of react irrationally, then all we need to do is have them take a knee and slow this down, saying, where's the evidence?
Where's the evidence that this person that just cut me off in the line at Costco is making this about me, as opposed to maybe they're just thinking about something else.
00:30:58.190 — 00:30:58.510 · Dr. Eric Potterat
So What?
00:30:58.630 — 00:31:06.750 · Peter Mallouk
What do you think it is about us that we're. Many of us are harder on ourselves than we would be on somebody else. Where does that come from?

00:31:06.790 — 00:31:31.310 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I think many people are. They're driven for success. And they they want to be good at what they do. And I think consequently, they have expectations of themselves first, especially in leadership positions. I mean, we have to lead by example, and I have to I have to hold myself with a certain regard and a certain set of expectations, first and foremost, and then those kind of, I think, transfer to others.
00:31:31.470 — 00:31:39.550 · Peter Mallouk
So you've you've done athletes, seals, astronauts, executives. Um. What's the hardest?
00:31:42.870 — 00:31:56.190 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Uh, boy oh, boy. For me, I'm going to create some hate mail. Um, I think some athletes have been difficult, but I think if I had to generalize to a cohort, it would be founders.
00:31:57.310 — 00:32:13.430 · Dr. Eric Potterat
of startups, particularly in the tech world. And I don't know why that is. Maybe it's load, but it's very difficult. Again, no disrespect to any individuals I've been working with or have worked with, but it's I find it difficult to harness attention there.
00:32:13.430 — 00:32:15.270 · Peter Mallouk
So yeah.
00:32:15.550 — 00:32:40.790 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I kind of call this kind of a black Crow syndrome, where a black crow finds a shiny object and they bring it to their nest, and they look at the shiny object and they're like, ah, this is great, this is great. And then there's a noise, and the black crow looks to the next shiny object and then brings that back to the nest, and they forget about the shiny object they have.
Yeah. Again, no disrespect to those executives, but it's that for me has been the most difficult cohort.

00:32:40.790 — 00:33:26.480 · Peter Mallouk
I mean, of all the clients that I work with. And I say this with admiration for them, that's by far the most difficult group. I think, like everyone else has in common, that they are used to authority. Right, whether it's the right athlete or the, um, or the military. I mean, from a very young age, all the way up, someone's telling them what to do all the time, and they've learned to respect authority.
And that that will probably work out well for them. And the entrepreneur is usually someone who's raging against the machine. That's what they're doing for a living. You know what I mean? And they're trying to break something or not listen to people and no one knows it better than me. And I mean, these are just the the traits of some of these folks.
And then you put them in the, in the tech world. And it's just everything times the hype.
00:33:26.520 — 00:33:40.360 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I think you're spot on. And it's lonely at the top too. I mean, leadership in general is is lonely. And then when you have those added pressures and the expectation is, hey, I need to do this, people are looking at me, investors or stakeholders. Right. That's Black Crow syndrome.
00:33:40.360 — 00:33:47.960 · Peter Mallouk
But and that group has become incredibly. Everyone wants your attention in that group now too, right? You become very, very popular in the business.
00:33:48.280 — 00:33:56.080 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah. Business. The book. And it blew up, which is interesting. Um, yeah. I'm humbled and honored and yeah.
00:33:56.120 — 00:34:23.200 · Peter Mallouk
I mean, it's an incredible book, and I think, I think it's gotten a huge amount of attention and it's resulted in a tremendous amount of speaking engagements for you, too. And I just having seen you a

couple of times, is fascinating from beginning to end, because, you know, people are on the edge of their seat from the beginning.
You're hearing about Navy Seals, and then you're working your way through athletes, and then you're bringing it home. Because so many of these things around resilience and traits and framing, I mean, they apply to everybody. It's just how receptive you are to it.
00:34:23.280 — 00:34:23.960 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah.
00:34:24.000 — 00:34:24.639 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Thank you.
00:34:24.679 — 00:34:36.320 · Peter Mallouk
Yeah. No, it's it's it's really cool. Do you find yourself analyzing people? Um, just when you meet them right away, like, this is who this person is. This is probably how to communicate with them.
00:34:36.480 — 00:34:43.560 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I really don't. My wife used to ask me this all the time. Or like our friends at cocktail parties or coffee, I just. I try to turn it off.
00:34:43.600 — 00:34:55.879 · Peter Mallouk
Can you turn it off? I mean, you could actually. I mean, I feel like I've read a few books and I can't turn it off. I mean, just listening to people like you and reading readings. I feel like, oh, well, this person's kind of like this, but you don't find yourself.
00:34:55.919 — 00:36:39.440 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I try not to. One of the things I learned when Alan and I wrote the book, um, the luxury of the book was, you know, we have a huge repository of incredibly talented. You know, these these performers, military executives, first responders, and really looked at this repository. And one of the principles that we found that was really interesting was around mindset.

And again, I was just the interpreter of what the tea leaves were, you know, what these principles that the best soccer players and the best surgeons and congressmen were using. And what we found that stuck out like a sore thumb is they have different mindsets for every role that they play. Mhm. And this was this was interesting to me because I'd heard about growth mindset versus fixed mindset.
There's been a lot of research on mindset a lot of books great great stuff. But this one really hit with me that when you do the interviews of these elite performers. Back to your question about do you kind of constantly analyze? They really look at the role that they're in and they bring a completely different mindset for that role.
So unless I'm being asked to assess within that role. So think about it this way. Um, you know, we're again Chiefs and Kansas City Royals. I assume that's that's the team for everyone here. But if you're a professional athlete or you're a business executive and your your primary role is the executive or the athlete, I think let's pick on the athlete.
The athletes mindset to be successful as an athlete has to be perfectionistic, exploitation minded. They need to be able to exploit the opponent so they can win at whatever they're playing, and probably hyper competitive. If I'm exploitation minded, hyper competitive and perfectionistic and I go home to my wife.
00:36:39.480 — 00:36:39.920 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah.
00:36:39.960 — 00:36:42.240 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I'm going to be calling you for a spare bedroom.
00:36:42.280 — 00:36:42.600 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Right?
00:36:42.640 — 00:36:43.040 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Right.

00:36:43.080 — 00:36:44.480 · Peter Mallouk
Because that's interesting observation.
00:36:44.520 — 00:37:04.160 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah, yeah. So the word I wish I had used in the book. Peter was residue. I think that, and I would ask your viewers and listeners to think about this as well. Identify the main roles that you play and identify the key mindset you think for each role, and make sure you're not bringing one role into the other.
00:37:04.200 — 00:37:10.680 · Peter Mallouk
That brilliant. I mean, so what it takes to succeed if you're in business versus with a spouse versus with a friend.
00:37:10.720 — 00:37:11.320 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Or kids.
00:37:11.360 — 00:37:15.080 · Peter Mallouk
Or kids, these are different. Even within family, it's very different.
00:37:15.160 — 00:37:15.880 · Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:37:15.920 — 00:37:49.920 · Dr. Eric Potterat
When I was with the Seals or with the Dodgers, I'm looking for a return on investment. Like, is this a player we should draft? And I'm looking at it through, you know, looking at various things through that perspective. When I go home to my kids, my mindset is I want to be patient. I want to be a good listener.
I want to be a good mentor, not looking for a return on investment or areas for growth or weaknesses. Right. So I think this idea of residue and identify those roles that we're playing. Again, long answer to your question. I when I'm meeting new people, I don't

assess because that's not the role I'm in. I'm trying to get to know them and just like the human to human.
00:37:49.920 — 00:38:18.800 · Peter Mallouk
So that's interesting. So it feels like the two groups of people that would lead the highest quality lives in terms of I think peace would be people that are really skilled at what you just said, which I imagine is not a lot of people. It's hard that you that you are one way at work and then but it's different traits of your kid or somehow you're in a job and with a family that the same, the same vibe, the same mode of operation, you're not changing between them.
00:38:18.800 — 00:38:51.560 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Maybe I've seen both I have there's a cost, you know, I mean, I think elite performance, there's that the proverbial tax that we pay to be, you know, so tied to the identity of whatever role that is that, you know, sometimes when we leave that role, whether it's military or retirement, whether it's athletes that move on, sometimes you see that cost their identity is so tied to outcomes or that the ranking or the score, or the trophies or the rings, that once that stops and they've made it, then what?
00:38:51.600 — 00:38:52.720 · Dr. Eric Potterat
So, you know, I.
00:38:52.840 — 00:38:58.360 · Peter Mallouk
Feel for people like athletes and musicians that have gotten to know as clients because there
00:38:59.440 — 00:39:34.360 · Peter Mallouk
you have to be performance driven. It's not not an option. Whereas in business, what I've observed, you know, with myself and other entrepreneurs or business owners is or even if you're just an executive, you can just decide not to do something. It's fine. Do you mean like I can decide I'm going to travel one day a week?
There's a cost. I'm not going to be as economically successful as if I did four days a week. Sure, but who cares? If you're a baseball

player, you can't decide you're going to play 12% less effectively. It just doesn't work right. You're all in all the time or you're not.
00:39:34.400 — 00:39:35.440 · Dr. Eric Potterat
We're a first responder.
00:39:35.480 — 00:39:35.720 · Peter Mallouk
Or.
00:39:35.880 — 00:39:36.520 · Dr. Eric Potterat
A surgeon.
00:39:36.520 — 00:39:44.400 · Peter Mallouk
Or a fireman. No, they can't decide, you know, to be 8% off or whatever. They don't have that. That opportunity to recalibrate.
00:39:44.440 — 00:39:45.760 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Totally agree. Yeah.
00:39:45.960 — 00:39:49.880 · Peter Mallouk
Yeah. So were you surprised by the success of your book? I mean.
00:39:51.520 — 00:40:49.440 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I was I mean, I just I mean, I'll be completely vulnerable and transparent. I think for me, I had retired from the military in 2016, was with the Dodgers and I was I was gone a lot. I mean, we made the choice to live in San Diego. And obviously our the seasonality of baseball is difficult. It's spring training.
It's 162 games and 183 days. The playoffs if you're good. Um, so that that tax and that toll was just like, I don't want to do this anymore. I think it's time I retire. So, um, my goal was to write the book with a Google executive. I'm a bit biased. I've always been a bit of a Google stalker. I believe it's one of the most influential companies, and I used to really be interested in how they do backend analytics, not just what we think Google does.

So I partnered with a Google executive, 16 year Google exec, and we wrote this book. And I thought it would be my swan song. I thought, hey, this is a learning. I've learned a.
00:40:49.440 — 00:40:50.120 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Lot.
00:40:50.160 — 00:41:20.959 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I've been I've been in the company of excellence. There's a there's a the Michael Durant Black Hawk Down book in the Company of Heroes. I feel similarly like I'm I'm just an I think an average psychologist who's been graced to be around incredible people. And I've just studied those people. I have a, you know, I'm curious and empirically driven.
So a long answer to your question. I did this book as kind of my swan song. Like, I'll just leave this. Hopefully my field, clinical psychology
00:41:22.200 — 00:41:39.360 · Dr. Eric Potterat
is not offended by this. And instead we'll look at like, hey, look, we can not necessarily need to always look for symptom reduction. We can make people better who are good already. Um, and then it's just it's. Yeah, I didn't expect that. So I think our publisher did. But I didn't.
00:41:39.400 — 00:41:49.080 · Peter Mallouk
So do you. What do you say to people who go, oh, you know, because a lot of people, when you start talking about mindset, they just think it's all BS fluff. Yeah. What do you say to those people?
00:41:49.120 — 00:42:07.160 · Dr. Eric Potterat
There's always a handful of people. Whether it's in a presentation or a team that I'm consulting, there's, you know, that man or woman who's in the back with their arms crossed. I will say this. I'm at an age in stage now, Peter. I'm not going to get into a battle of wills with anyone. Um,

00:42:08.360 — 00:42:38.730 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I'll just let the data speak for. It's like, look, there's a reason if you want to. I will say this to those individuals. If you think it's fluff and you're performing at the levels that you need to perform, whether it's individually or your stakeholders are satisfied, whether it's owners of baseball, football teams or companies, then yeah, don't listen to me or don't don't read the book or don't listen to anyone like me.
But if you're not happy with your performance, there's a reason why some of the highest stake professions in the world are using it. It's not by accident.
00:42:38.810 — 00:42:57.970 · Peter Mallouk
So whenever someone tells me, oh, the mindset stuff, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't just matter. It's almost everything. It's literally almost everything that matters. You've mentioned the cost a couple of times of elite performers. What what do you see in your experience being the price that people pay?
00:42:58.050 — 00:43:54.170 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I think, you know, I try to titrate things down to the most common, like practical, relatable term. For me, the danger is becoming what you do. And I know that sounds like Yoda somewhere in the corner, but I mean, seriously, I think the the athletes, the operators, the cops, the firefighters, the business executives, the surgeons who have the most difficulty are the ones that have that have completely embraced and tied.
That identity is blended to what they do. Who they are has become what they do. And I think one of the first principles in the book, and doing these interviews with thousands of best performers is that they realize pretty early on that I'm not going to be reputation driven, which is interesting because we're in a world now.
I was looking for my phone where we're just, you know, I could post a snapshot of a slice of pizza, and I'm going to be judged immediately by a number of these or a number of these.

00:43:54.210 — 00:43:55.850 · Peter Mallouk
What are you doing in that crappy piece of pizza?
00:43:55.890 — 00:44:15.889 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Exactly. So I think we're in this world now of like, this reputational reinforcement that when you look at the best people in the world, they they know who they are and we call them identity markers or those values. And I think it's, you know, if you feed in water those what you do will never kind of allow
00:44:16.970 — 00:44:19.850 · Dr. Eric Potterat
that to blend or blur into what you become.
00:44:20.330 — 00:44:41.090 · Peter Mallouk
So I've a lot of people say this is a uniquely American thing in that Americans are very tied to their careers. Like, you go to a party and the first question is, what do you do? Whereas everywhere else in the world, no one says that is is it? I'm sure it's an elite performance
thing. And then, coupled with the fact you're working with a lot of Americans, probably just the perfect combo, right?
00:44:41.090 — 00:44:58.730 · Dr. Eric Potterat
I think you're spot on. My wife and I used to live in southern Spain for three and a half, almost four years, while I was in the Navy, and this was one of the first, like, gut punches that we realized as we were so used. Precisely as you said, all of we were so used to people saying, what do you do? And we didn't get that question once.
00:44:58.970 — 00:44:59.130 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Or.
00:44:59.130 — 00:45:00.450 · Dr. Eric Potterat
We got that question, but it was.
00:45:01.210 — 00:45:02.370 · Dr. Eric Potterat

Much later.
00:45:02.410 — 00:45:25.970 · Dr. Eric Potterat
They were interested in what's the best vacation or what's a great restaurant you've been to, or talking about your kids. What makes you laugh? Um, again, meeting people where they're at, not what they do. So I think it maybe is I don't know about Uniquely American, but I think it's a, I hesitate to say epidemic.
I mean, it's yeah, we need to change that, that vector a little bit, I think.
00:45:26.010 — 00:45:35.250 · Peter Mallouk
So your conviction has obviously grown over time around. What works doesn't. Doesn't work. What did you used to believe? Or you used to teach that you no longer
00:45:36.770 — 00:45:37.450 · Peter Mallouk
believe in?
00:45:37.490 — 00:46:28.970 · Dr. Eric Potterat
So I think and again, I'm going to create some perhaps hate mail with your viewers and listeners. This term mindfulness. I don't know what it means. And I'm like, you ask four different people what mindfulness means. You're going to get three and a half to four different answers. So for me, I used to really embrace that.
Now I try to break it down to more the first principles like do we? Are we teaching breathing or are we teaching like attention control? Like present thinking differently? That would be one. Um, brain games, I think when all these games came out, I won't mention, you know, I want to be sued by any organization.
But I think a lot of these games that we're making claims to kind of grow the brain that could transfer into other avenues, you know, if you do this little game for however long, then you'll be a better critical thinker at.

00:46:28.970 — 00:46:30.050 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Work or right.
00:46:30.090 — 00:46:44.690 · Dr. Eric Potterat
There's no evidence when you look at very limited evidence. Again, I don't want to be sued, but I used to embrace that idea much more. And now it's to me, it's a little bit of noise. What the research shows is they become much better at the game as opposed to the transferability.
00:46:44.730 — 00:46:45.490 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Interesting.
00:46:45.690 — 00:46:54.730 · Peter Mallouk
All this, everything you've done with all these people and all of these different fields, what are the things across them that separate the best from the rest?
00:46:55.450 — 00:47:16.970 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah. Um, that was really the foundation of the book, I think, for really five main principles that are a little bit deep. But number one is focus on your, you know, identity over reputation. That was first, what are those identity markers? Who are you as opposed to? What do you think others need you to be?
That would be number one.
00:47:17.010 — 00:47:17.450 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Number two.
00:47:17.490 — 00:47:18.370 · Peter Mallouk
True. True to self.
00:47:18.410 — 00:48:55.770 · Dr. Eric Potterat
True to self. Identify those identity markers, those values that are core and make decisions based on those oftentimes where people kind

of fall off base as they're making decisions that aren't aligned with their values, they're aligned with stakeholders or someone else, the expectations of someone else.
The beauty is, if you can get if you hire people that are aligned their own identity markers with the company culture, it's a win win. And it's easy. It doesn't feel like work. Number two would be mindset. I think we talked about that. Different mindsets for every role. Having a growth curious mindset. Number three the best performers are just we found Allen and I found they're just much more efficient with time.
We talked about kind of the magic 16 hours in the book. There's 24 hours, I know, but we have to pay the tax of sleep. And once you pay that tax, when you look at the best performers, they are optimizing those 16 hours. They have the same 16 that anyone does. But they're very vigilant and very focused on how they're spending the currency of time.
Um, number four would be adversity, tolerance, the mental techniques when life throws them the proverbial curveball. Pre performance routines. Breathing. Visualization. Goal setting.
Compartmentalization. They're they're actuating those techniques more than the non-elite performer. And then lastly um work life integration or balance.
This one is often misinterpreted because people will hear this and say, well Eric says we need more vacation. No, you just need to make sure you're feeding and watering various aspects of your life and not just work, right.
00:48:55.810 — 00:48:56.450 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Um, yeah.
00:48:56.490 — 00:49:23.650 · Peter Mallouk
And all the time you can't just go, I'm going to do that later. The garden's going to be dead, right? You're going to go water it. I wish I could. In fact, I'm going to just I'm going to clip that and I'm going to send it to everybody. I know those those points right there I think are they really resonate with me as what I've seen my whole career with all of the successful business owners that I've worked

with and the people that I see here that have the most success, they really do have those that thread through all those traits.
00:49:23.650 — 00:49:24.050 · Dr. Eric Potterat
That you've.
00:49:24.210 — 00:49:24.690 · Peter Mallouk
You've talked.
00:49:24.690 — 00:49:25.290 · Dr. Eric Potterat
About.
00:49:25.690 — 00:49:39.010 · Dr. Eric Potterat
We found I think I was again Mondays, Tuesdays. And then you interview thousands of the best performers in multiple verticals. Alan and I are looking at each other like, oh my God, this is we have to we have to document this. This is, this is what the best people are doing.
00:49:39.050 — 00:49:48.410 · Peter Mallouk
All right. You're on icons and ideas. And so tell me, someone that you either looked up to or that was a mentor, whether you knew them personally or not, or an icon to you.
00:49:49.130 — 00:49:49.570 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Who.
00:49:50.370 — 00:50:03.250 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Ages and stages. Um, I'm probably going to get a chuckle for this one. I think early on in my teen years, uh, the drummer from the band rush, Neil Peart.
00:50:03.290 — 00:50:04.010 · Peter Mallouk
How cool.

00:50:04.050 — 00:50:19.490 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yes. Um, his lyrics just. Yeah, it really did send me down. I will, I will say this. And again, people are going to laugh. I will say that Neil Peart was the best high school teacher I had. Um, he obviously wasn't a.
00:50:19.490 — 00:50:20.010 · Dr. Eric Potterat
High school teacher.
00:50:20.010 — 00:51:31.810 · Dr. Eric Potterat
But it got me interested in reading, you know, Ayn Rand and just things based on the lyrics. I think that within my PhD program, I had a very high expectation. Mentor. His name was Bill Perry. I talk about him in the book. He he rode me hard, but it was to create the end product. I now see it was a process and he's probably the best clinical and professional mentor I've had.
That just taught me to be to have high psychological acumen, to understand, to be able to read, research and be able to communicate research. And all of my colleagues were finishing their dissertations faster, and I would have to do rewrite and rewrite. And his point was, we're going to do it when it's right, not because everyone else is doing it.
And I think lastly, now that I'm kind of past that and more swimming in in the professional world, I think Daniel Kahneman work. Um, he recently passed, obviously, but I think his his book thinking fast and slow. Amazing book. For those that don't know, he's a was a behavioral economist at Princeton and won a Nobel Prize.
I think that work thinking fast and slow in my lifetime, in my opinion, is probably the most seminal work in my lifetime.
00:51:31.850 — 00:51:32.330 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Wow.
00:51:32.370 — 00:51:33.690 · Peter Mallouk
So that is really saying something.

00:51:33.730 — 00:51:49.930 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah, I think his approach to understanding human bias, it's in the stock markets. It's how we make every decision. It's everywhere. Human bias is a powerful thing. So as a psychologist, um, that was very impactful for how I approached all of my work, for sure.
00:51:50.370 — 00:51:51.690 · Peter Mallouk
Rush is touring.
00:51:52.090 — 00:51:53.010 · Dr. Eric Potterat
R.E.M. twice already.
00:51:53.010 — 00:51:53.250 · Peter Mallouk
So have.
00:51:53.250 — 00:51:54.410 · Dr. Eric Potterat
You really? Where in.
00:51:54.410 — 00:51:54.610 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Los.
00:51:54.610 — 00:51:54.970 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Angeles.
00:51:55.170 — 00:51:56.010 · Peter Mallouk
Did it deliver for.
00:51:56.010 — 00:51:56.890 · Dr. Eric Potterat
You? Incredible.
00:51:56.930 — 00:51:58.650 · Peter Mallouk
Yeah, I heard I heard the new drummer that.

00:51:58.650 — 00:51:59.410 · Dr. Eric Potterat
She's Anika.
00:51:59.850 — 00:52:03.570 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Is she does she does it right. It's unreal. Yeah.
00:52:03.610 — 00:52:05.290 · Peter Mallouk
That's a great favorite rush song.
00:52:05.650 — 00:52:07.010 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Um. Ooh.
00:52:07.530 — 00:52:15.170 · Peter Mallouk
It is interesting to me because they are so influenced by Enron, who's all about self-reliance, which is kind of a part of your. Yeah, theme.
00:52:15.170 — 00:52:22.820 · Dr. Eric Potterat
It really I mean I for me the, the aha was 2112. I mean the overture of 2112 when I first heard that when I was a teen.
00:52:22.860 — 00:52:23.860 · Peter Mallouk
And you got all of it on this.
00:52:23.860 — 00:52:24.300 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Tour, right?
00:52:24.300 — 00:52:29.380 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Yeah, I blew my mind. But there are other ones. I mean, yeah, it's that one.
00:52:29.420 — 00:52:37.980 · Peter Mallouk

All right. In closing with your your best idea or an idea that got away or an idea that you live by, is it staying in the circle as you write about in the book or is it something different?
00:52:37.980 — 00:54:00.380 · Dr. Eric Potterat
Um, I like that idea a lot. Staying in the circle is, you know, it's a metaphor we used with seals and now in professional sport as well, there are only three things that human beings can control 100% of the time it's attitude, effort and actions. What's my attitude right now? What's my effort level right now?
Unless I'm physically broken, no one controls effort. And what are the tactical actions or behaviors I'm going to take? So I like that metaphor. Staying in the circle. What I have found is that most people who struggle are focusing on things outside of the circle. The supply chains, politics, the weather, the umpire, and they're really attaching there.
Andy Warhol 15 minutes of energy towards these things as a root cause, as opposed to those things are going to continue to happen. And in fact, I will argue and again, not to wax philosophical here, but the world is getting more and more complex, and I think there are going to be more and more things that want to draw us out of the circle.
And I like that concept a lot of like, fundamentally, if you're a firefighter, if you're a tier one operator on a mission somewhere, if you're a baseball, football, basketball player, you're a surgeon, no matter what life or the circumstance is going to deliver. Fall back on what's my attitude, what's my effort, and what are the tactical actions I can take now that are within my control?
00:54:01.500 — 00:54:10.820 · Peter Mallouk
My God, this is one of the best, absolute best conversations I've been able to have so far on this podcast. This was I could do this for four hours. Thank you so much for making.
00:54:10.820 — 00:54:10.940 · Dr. Eric Potterat
This.

00:54:11.100 — 00:54:14.740 · Dr. Eric Potterat An honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me, Peter. Appreciate it. Thank you, thank you.

Investing in stock markets involves the risk of loss. Rankings and/or recognition by unaffiliated rating services and/or publications should not be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if Creative Planning is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. For additional disclosures, visit https://creativeplanning.com/important-disclosure-information/.