5 Things high achievers never do

Hi everyone,

Do you remember Felix Baumgartner?

Felix is an Austrian skydiver who jumped from the edge of space on October, 2012 as part of the Red Bull Stratos project.

The jump took place above the deserts of New Mexico, beginning at 9:28 AM local time (3:28 PM GMT) when Baumgartner lifted off from Roswell in a helium balloon.

After flying about 24 miles into the stratosphere, Baumgartner exited a specially-designed capsule in a pressure suit and free fell to Earth.

The total jump lasted approximately 10 minutes, and Baumgartner's achievements included:

• Highest exit altitude: 127,852 ft

• Maximum vertical speed: 843.6 mph

• Breaking the speed of sound: Baumgartner was supersonic for 30 seconds, reaching Mach 1.25, making him the first human to reach supersonic speeds in a free fall

• Stabilizing and floating safely to earth

Here’s what you probably don’t know…

After nearly 4 years of prep and at the last phase of the project, Felix was ready to give up and quit.

Why?

It turns out that the pressure suit Felix had to wear in order to protect his limbs from getting ripped off his body falling 120,000 ft. at supersonic speed was giving him extreme claustrophobia.

Felix also needed the safe secure pressure of the suit to survive the lack of oxygen at the edge of our atmosphere and the frigid temperatures. But he couldn’t stay in the air-tight suit for more than 5 minutes during his practices at the training center.

Redbull was ready to pull the plug but Felix was willing to sacrifice it all and push through his emotions to do what seemed like the impossible. Redbull refused as they didn’t want blood on their hands.

In one last effort in Sept. of 2012, Redbull called up Dr. Michael Gervais, high performance coach and psychologist who at the time was busy helping Coach Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks trying to win another Super Bowl.

Gervais started meeting with Felix daily and immediately started to thin-slice the process of wearing the suit without even putting it on.

It started with visualization of Felix imagining putting on “just the gloves” while wearing a heart monitor. If his heart rate jumped up at all they would start over and begin the process again until Felix could control his own heart rate with his mind.

Little by little Felix was able to mentally put each piece of the suit: the boots. the gloves. the pants and so on. After some time of mastering the mental part, he and Dr. Mike started on the actual physical suit using the same process.

Before long Felix had overcome his fears and was ready to enter the pressure chamber on the ground to get ready for the world-record breaking jump.

One month later in October, Felix made his successful leap from space and shocked the world with a jump that may never be replicated.

What is stopping you from becoming your best?

In my latest interview with Dr. Michael Gervais we spoke about at least (5) things high achievers never do.

For example, you may have heard of FOMO (fear of missing out), Dr. Mike explain the perils of FOPO. What is FOPO? Listen to the audio podcast and find out how it can help you immediately at work and in your personal life. I highly recommend this episode.

For those of you who want more brand marketing wisdom and advice, check out my other podcast.

The Billion Dollar Brand Podcast.

We talk about: Liquid death marketing strategy is a Seinfeld episode; The Four Seasons Orlando wins over viral baby ; Zero Motorcycles; Tesla Cybertruck; Dame sex toys website is way too lame; Falling in love with failure and more!

What’s this new show about?

A billion is at least 1,000x better than a million. This is a podcast for anyone who is trying to build a brand -- especially a billion dollar brand. 

Marketing and advertising industry veterans, Bill Harper (aka BrandBossHQ) and Bryan Elliott (from the acclaimed Behind the Brand podcast) team up to brainstorm new business ideas, interview business professionals who are building really great companies, analyze what's right and wrong with brands, ad campaigns and more so that you can take what you learn here and apply it to your biz. 

If you’re curious about what I’m up to beyond podcasting, here’s a snapshot of what I’m doing for clients via my production company, The Goodbrain.

If you’re an individual or company with a budget that needs help with brand strategy, marketing or creating original content [video, audio, photography], feel free to reach out.

My production company, The Goodbrain has offices in Irvine and West Hollywood but we have clients in Seattle, NYC, Tokyo and wherever the project takes us.

If you’ve read down this far, I love hearing from readers and I’m always looking for feedback. How am I doing with this newsletter? How about the podcasts and Youtube channel? Is there anything you’d like to see me do more or less of? What do you need? How can I help?

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