The Uncommon Leader Podcast

Unlock Success Now: Why Taking the First Step Changes Everything!

• John Gallagher • Episode 167

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🎙 Ep. 167 — From Benchwarmer to Ironman: How Shawn Hoyt Leads with Discipline, Grit, and Growth
 
What does it take to completely reinvent yourself—physically, mentally, and professionally—in your 40s and 50s?

In this episode of The Uncommon Leader Podcast, host John Gallagher sits down with Shawn Hoyt, an everyday athlete and driven professional who went from average beginnings to completing marathons, Spartan Races, ultramarathons, and Ironmans—all starting later in life.

But this isn’t just a fitness story—it’s a leadership masterclass.

🔥 You’ll learn:
âś… How to create unstoppable momentum through discipline
âś… Why consistency beats motivation in business and life
âś… How recovery and reflection fuel peak performance
✅ The “What If?” mindset that drives reinvention
  How real community, even on social media, fuels lasting growth

Whether you're a professional leader, endurance athlete, or someone in midlife ready for your next big chapter, this episode will challenge what you think is possible.

🎧 Tune in now and learn how to lead uncommonly.

đź”— Connect with Shawn Hoyt:
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shawnhoytstayactive/
🌍 Website: https://www.shawnhoytstayactive.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaf6xdHLwTXnMx9RfEjpQF1IvvT15sBbUAKqNg4aWlQymrCtsdOQ598my0DlZg_aem_MPZ_lcX5Vg0N3ysWK30IEg
 
 đźŽ§ Like this episode?
đź””Subscribe for more uncommon leadership conversations
📲 Share this with a leader who needs to hear it
đź’¬Leave a comment with your favorite insight from Shawn.


🚀 Want to elevate your leadership or team performance?
đź“ž Schedule a FREE coaching call with me: https://coachjohngallagher.com/freecall/

đź”— Connect with me, John Gallagher:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachjohngallagher/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachjohngallagher/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrowingChampions/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/coachjohngallagher?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAacNCnPo_FY8Bu35xQgLEkEgkpf28Cfc5XNV9Xx2awTwh3JUE6zoUVFaxUQV6w_aem_b_Kvk_EzQQAcuuQIco6Scg

Until next time—Go and Grow, Champions! 💪
 
#UncommonLeader #CoachJohnGallagher #Leadership #UncommonleaderPodcast #ShawnHoyt #IronmanMindset #LeadershipPodcast #MidlifeMomentum #DisciplineEqualsFreedom #ConsistencyOverMotivation #WhatIFMindset #UncommonJourney 

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Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team)

Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!

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Speaker 1:

Well, for me, one of the things that's the most critical is that I need to have accountability, and for me, accountability starts with committing to something. Sign up, tell all your friends, put it out there, create this power of accountability that now you know, you've told everybody you're going to do this, you've got a date on the calendar, you paid 200 bucks to sign up for this thing, like you're in, and now you've got to figure out how to get ready.

Speaker 2:

Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I'm your host, john Gallagher, and today I've got a great guest for you, sean Hoyt. He's a beast, excuse me, and if I had a chance to meet him recently, I think the timing's been incredible. He's going to tell his story about his journey inside of fitness in his 50s and talk about a lot of things and how that relates to his leadership, but I found out as I started to do more homework that he's a beast in the Spartan world and I just actually ran my first one just a couple of days ago. So we're brethren when it comes to Spartan, but he's got a lot more that he's going to talk about today.

Speaker 2:

He's a runner, a triathlete you can see on his shirt there If you're watching on YouTube and Ironman as well and an obstacle course beast. I've seen some of his stuff on his website and some of the training that he goes through and I can't wait to talk about that in terms of some of those disciplines, and he keeps getting stronger with age, so we have that in common as well in terms of being in our mid fifties, but he's living proof. Ultimately, that age is just a number and he's here to share his journey, not just on a fitness, but his professional journey as well, and how he's weaved those two things together to be successful in both business and in life. Ultimately, we can do really hard things, and he's going to talk about that today. So a great Uncommon Leader podcast. Welcome to Sean Hoyt. Hope you're having a great day and how you doing.

Speaker 1:

Love that lead in, john, you crystallize so many of the things that have come to kind of be rallying cries for me. So I'm excited about our conversation.

Speaker 2:

I think it's going to be a blast. I can't wait to learn from you. I feel like when I go in some of these podcasts, that I'm trying to pull it out of folks, but this one, I'm going to be learning a bunch on this journey. So I'll jump in, though, with the first question I always have with for my first time guests, and that's to ask you to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today as a person or as a leader.

Speaker 1:

So this story, I think, really kind of defines the trajectory I've been on ever since it happened and it really was transformative to me. I was in eighth grade, to set the context. I was growing up in Kansas City, on the Kansas side of Kansas City, missouri, and I was a very average, low-effort athlete. At the time I played on the soccer team and sat the bench most of the time, played basketball, but I was either on the B or the C team, never done any running in my life. And every year we would have to be go through this regimen of doing the presidential physical fitness test at school. We'd have to do sit-ups and pull-ups and run a mile and do all these things and get graded on it and I usually failed miserably at almost all of them and just remember feeling embarrassed, you know, at that. And I was a little bit overweight. I wouldn't have called myself obese, but I was a little chubby, you know, kind of as I was coming out of seventh and into eighth grade and so certainly no one, not even myself, thought of me as an athlete. And over that summer between seventh and eighth grade, my stepfather decided he was going to run a 5k in the neighborhood and kind of where we lived. And he somehow just convinced me to train with him and so we would start running around our neighborhood and of course at first I thought I was dying. But we, you know, for the course of the summer, did it. And then I ended up running this 5k and, like you know, much better than I thought I was going to do. And so it kind of hatched this idea in my head, this plot, that I was going to continue training, but I wasn't going to tell anybody, and my goal was that when it came to that physical fitness test in eighth grade, I was going to win the mile, and of course nobody would be expecting it because nobody would think of me as an athlete, but it was my secret quest, shall we say. And so I trained really hard and I would train around the neighborhood and I got in really good shape, lost all of that, got a baby fat and then, sure enough, when it came time for the actual race, it was four loops around the school and after the first lap I was right up with all the soccer players and basketball players and the jocks you know at my school and I could hear them. I was right in front of them and I could hear them all kind of laughing behind me saying, oh, like he's going to fade, like you know, just just give it a, give it a little bit of time. And by the second lap I could still hear them, but they were definitely farther behind me. And by the third and fourth lap, I could still hear them, but they were definitely farther behind me. And by the third and fourth lap they were nowhere to be found. And I ended up setting the school record oh wow, in the mile, which stood for about another 10, 15 years, and it just it, was transformative to me because it showed me that I was capable of transforming myself if I believed in myself and if I put in the work, and that all of a sudden I felt like a very different person.

Speaker 1:

And the next year I went to high school and joined the cross-country team and ended up running the Kansas City Marathon at age 14. I was the youngest person in the race and, you know, never in a million years would that ever have been occurred to me as even possible If I hadn't have gone through that experience of doing something really hard, surprising myself, forget about everybody else, and realizing that, whoa, I can. I can do these. I am an athlete Um as long as I apply myself towards being one, and I think you know I've had phases over my life where fitness ebbed and it flowed when you have young kids and you're traveling early on in your career. But I've never really lost that feeling that I am an athlete and that you know I am capable of doing hard things. I've done seven marathons in total, three ultras now and one Ironman over the course of that long trajectory, but it all started with that experience in eighth grade.

Speaker 2:

I'll start with that 5K and then running that mile and setting to you again and what I hear in there. First of all hear the affirmation right that I am I am an athlete. I love to kind of hear that and how you had to set and how that really that decision came about for you. Many times in my leadership coaching I talked to folks about that. So that moment is the why that exists there, cause you can try to say I'm just going to run the mile or whatever that means, and but I heard I heard that at affirmation is very important. I heard that mindset is very important. I heard discipline is very important.

Speaker 2:

All those things are topics that we'll get a chance to talk about today. And one of the things you know people will change right when the displeasure of remaining the same where they are in this point in time you talked about that as a kid is greater than the discomfort of the change itself, the actual hard work that it's going to take to overcome that. And I think that's so powerful in terms of what you're saying because, as you said, the first time you ran to get ready for the 5K you probably thought you were going to die. When you're running that with your stepfather. That's a really cool story and you stuck with it because there was a why that existed. You talk about in some of your literature and some of your website, your what-if moments like breaking that mile record in eighth grade, the sub-three-hour marathon that you ran in college. How can leaders again taking that and bringing that into your professional career? How do you cultivate that what-if moment in your work as well and what that mentality means to live that out in your work?

Speaker 1:

One of the things that I've really tried to do and I've gotten better at it, as my mindset has solidified, you know, in my 50s is really to, you know, challenge the status quo in your own mind, and there may be a way your team is doing their job. There may be a way you're doing your job. Maybe there may be a way a company is going about its operations and I think so many times we take that as a given and then we think about how can we continually improve it? And there's and I love continuous improvement. It's a. You can get dramatic results from those slow, incremental, 1%, 2% improvements, but it never changes the fundamental starting point. It just incrementally improves it. And so I've really tried to challenge myself and my team to think, okay, let's do those things, but let's also question the underlying thing itself Is that really still the way to be going about it? Are there radically different ways to do this? And I'll just give a quick example.

Speaker 1:

I'm a lawyer, I deal with contracts and we've all seen contracts right, they're small print and whole sections with capital letters and pages and pages of dense text, and that's the way everyone thinks a contract needs to look. And we have our contracts up online so that our prospects can see them and hopefully accept them if they find them reasonable, but they still look very unappealing and very daunting even to a business professional. We're not selling to customers, we're selling to enterprises, but still there's no reason it has to look that way. So I decided to engage in a thought experiment with my team, which is to be like how can we take the same content and present it not as a contract in that format, but as a modern web page that looks like really good web pages that are really easy to follow. That looks like really good web pages that are really easy to follow. And we ended up working with our web team to completely redesign our contract. And now, if you go to our company's web page, a company called OutSystems, and if you look up our master subscription agreement, you'll see a very different looking contract than you've ever seen before, and we're very proud of that, because we just thought outside the box and decided you know what, if you know, we didn't make this look like a contract.

Speaker 1:

Is it, is it possible? Is it legal? We had to do the research and but when you question those fundamental beliefs and usually the ones that you're questioning are the things you say aren't possible, like, well, we can't do that, or we can't do this, or I'm not capable of that. Well, why, what if you could? And I stole that from David Goggins. I'll be very transparent.

Speaker 1:

He mentions that in his book can't help me, which I can't hurt me, which is right behind me, and that, frankly, that thinking was what got me to finally sign up for my first Ironman. Because I thinking was what got me to finally sign up for my first Ironman, because I had always thought that was impossible. And then I said, well, wait a minute. Like what if I break it down and do the math on the individual components? You know how much time would it take me if I, you know, did each of these three components at a relatively moderate pace and I realized, wait a minute, I'd have like two extra hours to finish under the deadline. Like, all of a sudden, I think this is possible, where I always thought it was impossible.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Sean and you all started right off with the discontent for the status quo, not being satisfied with the way things are today. And look, I'm a continuous improvement guy, there's no doubt about it, and I know that there are times when innovation must occur. You know your story reminded me. You know, going all the way back to the Henry Ford story about. You know they asked him to make a faster horse car and he came out with a car. If they would, if they would ask him, you know, just to make it go faster, imagine if he would have only thought about make the wheels smaller or a faster horse and training the horse. No, we're grateful that he took that approach of just kind of blowing it up completely and, in essence, designing the automobile and making that possible for us.

Speaker 2:

We have to have those thinkers. We've got to have both inside of our organizations. We've got to have those thinkers as you relate it back to being athletic again and breaking it down into those smaller goals to be able to achieve those things. I love there's so much that we could spend a time on right there, put a pin in and stay right there with those. I think you get enough points there that, as I listened to you in your mid fifties, I know you got a lot more coming in terms of what's happening. You have that. Keep that mindset of innovation inside of you. Consistency, though, is a key theme on your journey, as you have. Let's start with your training first. What are some non-negotiable habits that you've done? So, if you got Goggins in your mindset, you know you got. I know you have habits that you do on a daily or weekly basis to ensure that you're continuing to get better. What are some of those non-negotiables that help you to stay in the shape that you're in in your mid-50s?

Speaker 1:

Well, I think for me, one of the things that's the most critical is that I need to have accountability, and for me, accountability starts with committing to something, and I'm a big believer in the entire Spartan ethic and kind of mindset, big believer in the entire Spartan ethic, and you know kind of mindset, Um, and the founder of Spartan talks about don't don't kind of take the view of rain of you know aim, ready fire, where you have to get ready first, Um, and then you can start. You know, just get started and then you know aim. You know, so I think it's fire ready, aim, or something like that, what he says. And I tell all my friends, like, if you really want to make change, you have to commit to something, like literally sign up, tell all your friends, put it out there, create this, this power of accountability, that now you know you've told everybody you're going to do this, You've got a date on the calendar, you paid 200 bucks to sign up for this thing, Like you're in, and now you've got to figure out how to get ready.

Speaker 1:

And with the Ironman, the fact that I know I have a date on the calendar by the way, I'm training for my second right now. So this is all very front of mind because you know I wake up, I have 11 weeks to go until race day, and so I wake up every day and say, okay, like what I'm, you know, what do I still need to work on? Where are my gaps? What am I going to do every day to kind of get to the point where, over the next, you know nine weeks and then my taper, like I'm ready to go on race day, and that is tremendous, has tremendous power for my discipline.

Speaker 2:

So you've got a plan that you're following. I'm sure that's going to make sure that you get there. A, you state the goal, you put your money in on that habit to make sure that discipline's there. It's exactly how we got signed up the four guys that I was with, or three other guys that I was with on the Spartan that we did. We signed up for it first and then we figured out how we were going to get there and we each developed our own little training plans to get there. But ultimately we met up that day and made something good happen, where, if you kind of talk about it and talk about it, look and I'm guilty of that we need to do one of those someday and someday never kind of happened. So I'm going to guess that you don't really have that someday kind of attitude as you're going through it.

Speaker 1:

I, you know, hey, I'm human, you know, I I used to uh, I've gotten better at it there. There probably are, you know, still some things where I kind of like you know right now, for example, like travel, um, you know there are places that I want to go and I'm very eager to get to and I keep saying one day I'm going to get there. And you know I sometimes I question myself why don't I take the same approach with getting to that location that I do with, you know, running this Ironman? And you know it's a question of priorities. You have to figure it out OK, for this year, you know, given the constraints that we have around time and money and schedule, you know which of these are more important.

Speaker 1:

But there are areas of my life where I don't, you know, apply that same level of discipline. And it's just, it is a matter of prioritization. You can't do everything and so you have to kind of make some tough choices. One thing about training for an Ironman or any hard race, marathon, is it really forces you to assess your priorities because all of a sudden you have much less time, free time, than you had before If you're going to do your job and you're going to spend time with your family and you're going to train for an Ironman, there's not much left over, and so I have to cut out things that I used to do, like I don't watch TV like hardly ever anymore, and there's other things that I would do before that I've kind of like for now, anyway, until this race is over. You know, those didn't make the cut.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate that because that was one of the questions I wanted to ask. I mean, look, folks will say I don't have time to do all this exercise. And when you start to think about the time that it takes to train for an Ironman, I mean I knew a friend, adam, who did several Ironmans and he ended up at one of the big events, kind of qualified for one of the big events going forward, but that's three or four hours a day, no doubt about it. In terms of getting ready for that, the different training you have to do swimming, biking, running to get ready. How do you balance that out with family and work responsibilities as well? How do you make that happen? One of the ways you talked about was saying no to certain things that you may like to do. What else do you do?

Speaker 1:

By the way, when I, when I find myself even saying, oh, I don't have time for that, I always check myself because I realize I do have time, I just have chosen not to prioritize that, and so usually, you know I it's. I think it's important to always remember when you say you don't have time for something, really what you're saying is I'm not prioritizing that above other things. Amen, to put this intense time into inward, towards my training, I had to make sure the time that I spent with others in my life family, work, kids you know that that time was extremely high quality. And so when you know when I get done with a ride and I'm and I'm back home, you know I'll find my wife and I'll check in and say how's your day going. You know what can I help with. You know what do you want to. You know. You know what do you want to get do with your day, um, and find out what she needs and make sure then that I'm on for her If I come home.

Speaker 1:

And so the next three hours lying around, you know, like watching TV and recovering, which is exactly what my body wants to do, you know I just want to take a nap and put some TV on or a football game and just sit there for the next three hours. But you know, I don't know. If I do that, then I'm deprioritizing something that's extremely important to me, which is the people in my life that need me. So I've realized that if I'm going to do this, the things that I do, the trade-off or the might be the wrong word because it's not a negative, but the corollary to that is I have to be extremely intentional with the time that I spend with the people in my life.

Speaker 2:

There's that word intentional. That is so important to be intentional with how you create that so that they don't get the worst right, they don't get the crumbs that's left over when you're done. No, I mean that is very inspiring, sean, and I appreciate you kind of going through that. Look, you're not doing this on your own. You've got family that kind of is supporting you. That goes through that. But in the fitness world, in the leadership world, how important do you see community as part of that? So tell me that type of community that it takes to continuously run Ironman and I know the community inside of Spartan World is pretty powerful in the group that we had. But how important is it for leaders to surround themselves with great people in a community?

Speaker 1:

Well, I'll give the work answer first, because I figured that out a long time ago. It took me a lot longer to figure it out on the kind of fitness side. On the work side, I think I realized very early on that there was no way that I was going to be successful in my career unless I enabled others to be successful. You know, my success was going to be a function of helping others succeed. And at one point in my career I stepped into a team that I was hired as the leader of six people and I was told during the interview process that the team had the worst reputation of any team in the company. They'd done some kind of satisfaction survey or something and that team the legal team at the time scored worst. So that's why they were replacing the person that was there before and hiring me.

Speaker 1:

And I got in and I figured, oh, this must be a team of poor performers and that must be the problem. But after a few weeks of working with the people I realized that wasn't the issue. They had just been held back and constrained in their ability to do their work by a manager who was very controlling and wanted every you know to micromanage, kind of every piece of it and to take credit for kind of every piece of it. And so I said I'm just going to flip this on its head. I'm going to tell these people you know, go like you know. Here's some core principles we're going to follow as a team, but as long as you're operating in accordance with those principles, like you, go out, do your work, make the calls I'm here, escalate to me when you need to, but if you feel comfortable that you know the answer, just go, do your work and be successful.

Speaker 1:

And within a year, when that survey was done next, the legal team went from worst to first. It was amazing. We now were the top ranked team in terms of feedback, and I didn't I might've changed one team member, but it really was because I realized that that for the team to succeed, I had to empower and enable every single one of them to succeed and be supportive of them. If and I told them if you send me an email or a text or you call me and I've got 40 other emails, I'm going to put yours first and I'm going to get yours done first because there are six of you. If I can enable all six of you to be maximum productivity. That's six times more efficient than me doing my work, and it's I followed that maximum to this day on the work.

Speaker 2:

Love that you got to have a great team around you. No doubt about it.

Speaker 1:

You know even our buddy.

Speaker 2:

Being a Notre Dame fan. Everybody Lou Holtz would say that you can have a great coach all you want to, but if you don't have great players, it doesn't matter. Great players can make a good coach look really great. In terms of making that happen, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely On the personal front, though, when it comes to my fitness, I think for a long time, you know, I was pretty much doing it on my own. Maybe I had one or two friends I would do a race with, but I didn't reach out to a community, I wasn't communicating really with others, I was just, you know, if I had a community, it was one or two people that I was doing all this with, and it wasn't until the last few years, partly because of social media I really embraced social media as part of my fitness and also because of a track group that I got involved with here called Belmont Track Club, in the area here, which is just blessed with some of the most phenomenal people I've ever met, and it's a big group. I mean, there's probably 20, 30 of us that are regulars in this team. And when you and now I'm also part of a community with this group called Marathon Sports here, that is just an incredibly inspiring group of ambassadors. And now that I'm to me, now I've realized that the power of my fitness comes from connecting with these communities.

Speaker 1:

What I learned from them, what they learned from me, how we help each other train, how we push each other along and the power that comes from so many people supporting so many other people, people, and nothing makes me happier in this, in this world, on the kind of fitness front, than when somebody tells me that you know they were struggling, they were kind of giving up on their fitness, but then they saw something that I was doing and then they got encouraged to, like, sign up for a race or to get back to the gym. Like I hear that, you know, pretty often and it just gives me fuel to keep doing what I'm doing.

Speaker 2:

Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom. Forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let's get back to the show.

Speaker 2:

I love that and I think about that again. Just going back to my experience at the Spartan, I was so amazed at the community aspect that they create at the race the volunteers that are there at each of the obstacles that are going on and along the course. They're encouraging you, they're inspiring you, they're really motivating you to keep going and to do that. And the MCs that are there to get you all fired up, and the music, all those things that are there. I think that community can be so powerful and the fact that you again, now you have the opportunity, through social media, to be an inspiration to others. Gosh, what else could you possibly want in terms of passing it on? And making that happen is to have an impact there, and I know it's not easy.

Speaker 2:

You don't have all good days when you're training You've talked about this from a mindset standpoint as well and we have troubles at work and we get into tough times when you're going through training. How do you overcome what might be those bumps and bruises and pains and push through it to make it happen? What keeps you going?

Speaker 1:

I read something on social media following someone who was a lot more elite than I am I think it was one of the elite triathletes and they said something that I'm sure it's been written many times before, but it's the first time I had seen it and it said that on average, for a serious athlete who's training for a serious goal, about one-third of your workouts are going to suck. They're going to feel awkward, you're going to be slow, you're going to just feel like you're making backward progress. You're going to have about a third of them where you feel solid and then you're going to have about a third of them when you feel like it's really clicking. And you're going to have about a third of them when you feel like it's really clicking. And you know to read that. You know the elite athletes go through that. That really helped to validate, because that's pretty much what I feel.

Speaker 1:

I definitely have some workouts where I just feel off and I just feel sluggish and you know, maybe I'll even have, you know, a couple in a row, but I never have like 10 in a row. You know, for every day like that I'll have a day. Like you know, this morning I got up early and went for a swim and it just felt amazing, like I just felt. You know, my form was good, my energy was good and it was so affirming. But if I go out on Monday and I have a sluggish swim, I'm not going to panic, I'm not going to say, well, what's going wrong, I'm just going to remember the rule of thirds, you know. Okay, for every one of the ones, like this morning, I'm going to have one like next Monday.

Speaker 2:

So any nutrition tips that keep you going as well. That are habits and disciplines I'm trying to learn here now. That's a significant energy drain to get ready for an Ironman, no matter how you're looking at it.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to answer your question a little more broadly, if that's okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to especially Ironman training, which is in swim, bike run, I've kind of decided that it's four there's swim, bike run and recovery. I've kind of decided that there it's four there's swim, bike run and recovery. And I intentionally put as much effort into and time into the recovery component as I do the other three. And that involves stretching, it involves PT, it involves sleep. You know I really prioritize getting my sleep in.

Speaker 1:

On the nutrition side, you know I'm very careful about the fuel I put in my, put in my body. I mean, hey, I'll have a piece of chocolate cake, just like everybody else. But you know, most of my food I'm trying to try to be intentional about and either have, like you know, my body needs carbs at this level of training, so I have to prioritize carbs and make sure they're complex carbs, you know, with whole grains and seeds and things like that, and then protein, um, just making sure I'm getting um, a lot of protein. And then also, you know, fatty, fatty fish, spinach, you know, things like that. And um, you know, I I feel like if I, you know, eat well and hydrate well and sleep well, I'll have really good energy for these workouts and be able to kind of keep up the intensity, cause you're right, it's about 20 hours a week for me right now of workouts. So that need that. I need a lot of fuel.

Speaker 2:

So I love that in terms of talking about that recovery as well. And again, as leaders, we don't prioritize those things very well, even even if and again, as leaders we don't prioritize those things very well, even if we're not athletes, as leaders, we're not prioritizing sleep or, in general, staying up late on our computers trying to get work done. You know, can you talk about some of those minor details blue light that you look at and the stress you create and cortisol and all those things that I'm sure you've studied? I mean leaders, you've got to pay attention to this. It doesn't matter if you run an Ironman or you run a Spartan or something else. You've got to prioritize sleep, you've got to prioritize nutrition so that you can show up to be the best leader you need to be to the people that you work with on a daily basis.

Speaker 2:

Too often and it took me I didn't learn at uh, in seventh grade uh, that I could be an athlete while I played a lot of sports. You know I was, you know, late in my forties before I finally made the decision that I needed to take care of myself a little bit better. So you should be commended for what you've done, sean, in terms of the work that you've put in and the consistency that you've put in over the years to continue to find that. What consistency that you've put in over the years to continue to find that. What if that continues to drive you? So you were training for the Ironman. Now have you had the opportunity to talk or think about the next? What if for you, whether it's career or life or fitness?

Speaker 1:

The way I've been approaching it the last several years is that there's a couple of key principles that I know I will follow, but then I translate that into specific goals on an annual basis. So I'm not yet thinking about what I'm going to do in 2026. Maybe I've got a few ideas percolating in my head, but I'm not committing to anything until I get all, you know, all my big goals achieved for 2025. Then I'll stop and I'll reflect. But the principles that underlie it, which I think will not change, is number one, is that every year I want to push myself outside of my comfort zone, and that can take a couple of different ways. Number one is going to say doing something that I already do, but doing the next hardest thing. So Spartan, for example, I've done I had done prior to this year I'd done three trifecta weekends where you do the beast, super and the sprint in one weekend. I'd done that three times and I had done one ultra on its own, but I had never combined an ultra with a sprint and the super in the same weekend. I'd done that three times and I had done one ultra on its own, but I had never combined an ultra with a sprint and the super in the same weekend. And so this year in 25, I said that's how I'm going to step outside my comfort zone. I'm going to take the hardest things I've done in Spartan and combine them for the first time. And so, and then even with the Ironman, when I did my first last year in arizona at 55, when I was thinking about do I want to do it again at 56, I I said yes, but it needs to. I need to take it, even if it's a small step up, like I need a harder course or I need a little bit harder challenge. So I picked lake placid, which has is notorious for its hilly bike course, and it's going to be a lot more of a challenge than Arizona's relatively flat bike course. But for me, that's the way I step outside my comfort zone.

Speaker 1:

Or another way to do it is just try something totally new that you've never done before. And I really would like to try a martial art. Would like to try a martial art and once my Ironman is over this year, I'm going to take some introductory classes in a few of the disciplines of martial arts and just, you know, try it, see what I like, see what resonates with me. But I want to try something completely new which, also from a physiological perspective, is really good for your brain. You know, when you try new things you've never done before, it forces your brain neurons to rewire in ways that kind of help keep everything fresh and healthy. So not only is it good from a physical and mental perspective, but I think it really is good in terms of you know, just your overall health and longevity.

Speaker 2:

Man that's so cool. Again, looking for that one in my lead. In his book the Power of One More, it talks about it being one more Like what's that one thing that I can take it just a little bit further, and some folks might think that's a little bit crazy, but it really is. Whether you define it as choosing what your heart is, David Goggins would talk about that. In terms of some of his training, he I mean, he's pretty brutal, to say the least, in terms of how he communicates and just lets you know that you're a wimp if you don't want to get this done, but just that you know what's that. One more that's going to take you to your point, outside your comfort zone, maybe not to the panic zone, but it's going to force you to learn something different. And then I love, kind of to your point, converting it to something that you've really never done before as well, like the martial arts.

Speaker 2:

What a fantastic idea, Spartans, because I'm getting ready for my second. Let's say, if I try to get the trifecta in a year, that might be the first. Then next year we can talk. It's funny, a couple of the guys are talking about the ultra next year. I'm like I'm not ready to commit to that yet. Let me get through the second event and we'll see how that goes. What's your least favorite obstacle that you've experienced at a Spartan?

Speaker 1:

There's one that I struggle with and it's frustrating because it's so simple and it's called the eight foot wall and that's all it is. It's an eight foot wall that you have to jump up on and grab over the top and flip yourself over, um, but you know, I'm roughly five, seven and I struggle to get up and just like come some. You know I can do it some of the time, but my success rate is much lower than than I would like and it frustrates me because, um, you know it's, it's just a question of technique and I don't have it down. I need to figure out a way to practice it. But I'm good at the ones that people struggle with, like the you know the grip ones where you're going on, the twister, where it's constantly shifting, or the beater, where the you know the metal bars are going.

Speaker 1:

An egg beater, Like I've gotten pretty good at those, but why can't I get it over this eight foot wall? It drives me nuts and I see people you know who are my height or even shorter go up there and find their way over. So I'm like, I know it's possible, I know I can do it. I just need to, you know, really double down on my technique and figure it out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I claim that you know the hanging stuff, the rings, the, the beater, the twister, whatever those are. You know the first time through. I'm blaming it on height. I'm six, four, so my, my arms are a lot longer. You know, they're not, they're not quite made for that type of least. That's an excuse that I'm pretty good at anyway.

Speaker 1:

So I'll train.

Speaker 2:

I'll train it for the next time.

Speaker 1:

When you're ready to train, let me know I've got some great tips for grip strength.

Speaker 2:

I would. I would love that. And if we talk about that afterward, absolutely because I'm starting the training tomorrow. For the next, we got an August of 5k, so I'll be ready for improving grip strength, no doubt about it, because that was definitely a weak point for me. What's your favorite one? Which one do you love the most?

Speaker 1:

Um, that's a great question. I really anyone that involves ringing the bell. Um, you know, the, the, the, the, the um experience of going through a tough obstacle and just gritting through it and at the end there's a cowbell and you slap it and you hear the ring and it's just, it's an electric feeling. I say probably the rope climb. Um, you know, getting all the way up to that rope and then just being able to slap that bell as loud as you can. I just love that feeling. It keeps me coming back.

Speaker 2:

You know, as you think. If you say that I don't know that in my first one I rang the bell on one obstacle, well, just because the bells are the hanging the rope, I got to within like six inches of the rope and it was raining and I lost my footing, where kind of the j hook, yes, and I kind of panicked a little bit. I couldn't get my, I couldn't get my last set, like my last hook on the feet, and I was so disappointed. But I will not let that happen next time. I want to ring that, but. But you're right, I mean those, the one where you climb along the wall, uh, you know and grip the two by fours or whatever that are there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the Z wall, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I didn't ring any bells. I got to.

Speaker 1:

I want to ring a bell next time, Absolutely Very important and once, once, you do, you'll, you'll, you'll be back again.

Speaker 2:

Guaranteed. So I had. I had a friend, dave who, who did and he'll probably listen to kind of the yell that he let out when he was done, when he got done off of that rope. That was really, really cool because it was his first Spartan as well. One last one, though, because you probably don't do a whole lot of these in terms of the penalties I had penalty laps in the race, but overrated or underrated burpees. What do you think of burpees?

Speaker 1:

You know that the burpees are controversial in Spartan racing, but Joe DeSena, the CEO, he's very clear as to why they're there, which is that the penalty needs to be hard enough that you really want to complete the obstacle. You know, if the penalty lap is too easy, you're going to be like, all right, I try or you skip it. I even see people skipping the obstacle altogether because they don't even try Go right to the penalty.

Speaker 1:

Because they think there's no way I can do this, so they don't even give it a shot. But if you're doing 30 burpees, you're going to really try as hard as you can on that obstacle. Now, 30 burpees is hard.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

I tell Joe hey, can we make a 20? You know that that still would be, I think, accomplish the objective without taking so much out of you physically. But that's the thinking behind it and there's definitely a core of truth to it.

Speaker 2:

Um, 30s a lot, but that's why it's there 30 is a lot and they only had it in one. They had it in the uh javelin throw. It was the only one that had the burpees. Everything else was a run uh in the, uh the spartan this past weekend. But I hit the javelin. I couldn't was so great, I hit the javelin, the first try.

Speaker 2:

I'm so happy I don't know if you can really train for that one, but that felt pretty good. Um, I'm gonna assume, since you're up in that boston area, then you've run the one inside of Fenway Did they have one inside of Fenway.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I bet that was fun too in terms of going through it.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, Sean. How do folks stay in touch with you and learn I want to be inspired by you as well and what you do in your mid-50s and how you continue to grow and how you're teaching others how to do this also.

Speaker 1:

I created a website. It's called Sean Hoyt stay activecom. Sean is S H A W N and that's one of the kind of clearing house for everything that I'm doing. If you go there, you can get to kind of. I've got an Instagram channel that I'm very active on. I've got Spotify content that I've created. I've got YouTube content I created, but you can get to all of that from the website. I do tell people that on Instagram, like you know, I love following people's journey. I follow as many people as follow me intentionally and you know, if I love to follow people's journey and have it be reciprocal, I try to be really active in commenting on what people are doing. You know, every time I catch myself just scrolling through Instagram, I stop and say, okay, I'm not really engaging here.

Speaker 2:

Engaging sure.

Speaker 1:

The point of this is this needs to be active and not passive for it really to be a community. I welcome people to connect with me there. It's just at Sean Hoyt, stay Active. You can pretty much just do a simple web google search too. It'll all come up okay, um, but I really, uh, I'm very much enjoy the community aspect of it also.

Speaker 1:

You know, we you and I were talking about this a little bit at the beginning, before we started recording, but I have met so many people in real life that I first started engaging with over Instagram or social media. It's amazing to me, as I travel around to races or to cities, I'll find people in the cities that I've been, you know, following their journey for years on Instagram, will connect for a cup of coffee or a dinner or a drink, and I have all of these like real life friends. Now we're all started over social media. So people think social media is fake, they think it's not real, but these are real people and you can meet them in person and develop real friendships. And you know, I've certainly done that and it's meant a lot to me and my community has grown significantly, in part because I've been able to engage, you know authentically with enough people over social media that they turn from online friendships to real friendships.

Speaker 2:

John. I love that. That's how we got connected. Another guest on the podcast connected us and ultimately not through social media, but that's how I'm following you as well, and then I think those things are so powerful that community in and of itself can be powerful, and the community of people who inspire each other. It's so important. It's something that we don't see enough of. Sean, I can tell, obviously you're an inspiration to many, those that you teach, if you will, on your website and social media channel, your family and your workplace as well. I can hear that in all three areas. I appreciate you adding value to the listeners of the Uncommon Leader podcast. I'm going to give you the last word here with the question I always finish everybody else up with. I'm going to give you a billboard and you put it anywhere you want to. What's the message you're going to put on that billboard and why do you put that message on there?

Speaker 1:

By the way, I love this question. I've been listening to your podcast and and and reflecting on this ever since I heard you first ask it. Um, I think it's really important for everyone to kind of think about that. Like, what is my message? If I only had 10 words or so, you know what would they be, and so, uh, you know, for me, I think it would say, um, and I chose these words very intentionally. I think it would say you will succeed when you start. And I think there you know a couple of things.

Speaker 1:

To note is that you know, so many times I hear people talk in in very equivocal language you know, I want to do this, or I'd like to do this, or if I can do this, and I always try to tell people, you know, turn people towards like, well, why can't you know? Why can't you know? Why isn't it a will, like I will do this. And then it's like, instead of if you start, it's like when you start, like you're going to like just create this momentum around it. This is going to happen, but you can't have the one without the other to happen.

Speaker 1:

Um, but you can't have the one without the other. You know you can't succeed until you get started, commit, put in the work and you know with, with consistent discipline, um. But so I tried to combine there, you know, my focus on you know, commit, you know, kind of believing in yourself, committing to something, putting in the hard work, but also with the very intentionality around the language that we use with ourselves, because I think that that language can be either so important or so destructive.

Speaker 2:

So so good, Sean, thank you so much. I wish you the best, and that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared. Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders. Until next time, go and grow champions.

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