[00:00:00] I don’t know if it was the wisest decision I’ve ever had. I came into 2022 wanting to, you know, level up my fitness a little bit after the pandemic, after an ankle injury. And the Goggins challenge sort of crossed my path. And it’s this challenge where you run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours. So in total, 48 miles. But, you know, as a part of that, you’re having to manage sleep and nutrition and hydration in this really small sort of chunks rather than just running the straight 48 miles. And as a non-runner who would probably maybe run 5 miles in total in one sitting. I thought that this could be fun.
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Jesse: [00:01:34] Welcome to the Smart Athlete Podcast. I’m your host Jesse Funk. My guest today has her degree in behavioral psychology. She’s a former competitive equestrian athlete, currently the EY global lead at athlete programs in women athletes business network. You can find her on Twitter at kristypingram. Welcome to the show, Kristy Ingram.
Kristy: [00:01:55] Thank you, Jesse. I’m happy to be here.
Jesse: [00:01:58] Thanks for coming on. We’ve covered a lot of ground before we got recording. How much time we talked now today and the other day, I don’t know. We probably had a whole conversation that we could have recorded by now. So sorry to you, the listener. You missed out on all the juicy secrets. We’re just going to do the boring stuff and not do anything. No, no. Hopefully, we’re going to get some really good stuff.
But so I want to jump back to something we had talked about the other day on a personal note for you, and I want to ask you about doing the Goggins challenge for the uninitiated. Can you explain what it is, why you decided to do such a thing? And then kind of the aftermath that we were talking about?
Kristy: [00:02:44] Yeah, it was I don’t know if it was the wisest decision I’ve ever had. I came into 2022 wanting to, you know, level up my fitness a little bit after the pandemic, after an ankle injury. And the Goggins challenge sort of crossed my path. And it’s this challenge where you run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours.
So in total, 48 miles. But, you know, as a part of that, you’re having to manage sleep and nutrition and hydration in this really small sort of chunks rather than just running the straight 48 miles. And as a non-runner who would probably maybe run 5 miles in total in one sitting, I thought that this could be fun and it’s a weird form of fun.
[00:03:36] I feel really happy that I made it through. I know I surprised a bunch of my friends in actually completing it, but it was one of those things I needed a goal in the first few months of the year and I’m great procrastinating, so I needed a short term goal to not let myself kind of get distracted or slack off in training and undertook this. And it’s it. It was an amazing kind of experience. But the hilarious part for me, anyway, was I ran the 48th mile and then went. Oh, I haven’t thought about how to recover.
[00:04:15] Like, what do I do now? Do I sit down and put my feet in ice? I’m not quite sure how to do this. So it’s been an interesting, you know, couple of months now really bringing the legs back and apologizing to them profusely for what I did.
Jesse: [00:04:36] The format of it reminds me of these. Like they’re kind of growing in popularity. There’s still I would still say a niche part of running is these like last man standing style races where it’s like you just have to complete a loop in an hour or whatever, whatever the format is, whether it’s six miles an hour or four miles an hour or whatever the time is. And then you just keep doing that until there’s only one person still going. That’s exactly what that reminds me of it.
Kristy: [00:05:05] Yeah.
Jesse: [00:05:05] That’s a different — I haven’t done one yet, but it’s a different kind of game than a continuous run because the start and stop nature, I think is probably both helpful and harmful.
Kristy: [00:05:20] Yeah. After sort of the first 12 hours. Well, I mean, I, I didn’t cruise through the first 24, but the first 24 were manageable. Given that I’m not really a runner. But after that, getting back and moving after sitting down for a couple of hours trying to, you know, stretch and relax and give your body a chance to rest it.
Getting back on the road, it increasingly became a longer and longer warm up to feel good in that 4-mile. So. But no, you’re right. Look, I don’t think I could have run 48 straight. I just you know, and also that’s not what I was training for, but. Yeah. And getting the mind back to be like, “Hey, we need to focus. We need to do this. Let’s, you know, crank it out.” It wasn’t easy towards that second night was an interesting mental battle to get through.
Jesse: [00:06:27] I imagine you were talking at some point, like trying to fit in what I’ll refer to as power naps. So that being like, oh, to stay up for 48 hours. And also —
Kristy: [00:06:37] Yeah, I’m very lucky I am a champion of napping. So that is a skill I’ve had my whole life. So luckily I was able to, you know, the first night was a lot of adrenaline, so I didn’t really sleep much, but sort of towards the second afternoon, I was able to get, you know, an hour and a half or so in between, which was enough to to kind of get you get you through it.
Jesse: [00:07:03] Yeah, yeah.
Kristy: [00:07:03] Although those 2 a.m. runs were still not that easy when your body was just like, why? Why are we not in bed now?
Jesse: [00:07:11] Yeah, I can. I mean, I can only imagine since I haven’t done it and I haven’t done the that format before, but just, you know, I’ve learned all the times of day. So I kind of know like this morning I was out at five and it’s just your body is just. The optimal time of day supposedly is like mid-afternoon in terms of like how limber you are.
[00:07:36] And kind of the rhythms of your body’s daily cycle. And so just thinking about. There have been times when you just have like a magical midnight kind of workout, but largely in the middle of the night. You’re going to be just, like, suffering. Just don’t want to move. You want to go to sleep. It’s dark. So close to you for making it through.
Kristy: [00:08:02] Thank you. And in New York City, obviously, I was running alone for a lot of it. I’m not going out on the road in New York in the middle of the night. From a safety perspective. So those were my treadmill runs.
Jesse: [00:08:14] Yeah.
Kristy: [00:08:15] Which are —
Jesse: [00:08:17] It makes it even tougher.
Kristy: [00:08:19] It does. It does. There was some good enough Netflix shows that got.
Jesse: [00:08:22] Like, now you got to be like, “What shows are you watching?” Like, “how are you keeping yourself engaged?”
Kristy: [00:08:30] So, yeah, no, it was it it was it was fun. I mean, the nutrition was the tough part. And as a triathlete, I’m sure you know this, that once you get to a certain point in especially a lengthy kind of exercise tends. You don’t really feel like eating, but you know that that’s when you really need the nutrition, right? So. That was my, my main battle, the mental aspect and then the nutrition.
Jesse: [00:08:59] Yeah. I haven’t gone for that long. I used to race the like Ironman 70.3 series and then training rides would be like 5 hours and then go out for 30 or 40 minute run after that. So out for some time, but not not a 48 hour stint. And I always felt like it was always a balance between like hydration and fuel.
Kristy: [00:09:23] Yeah.
Jesse: [00:09:24] Because if in this is why we developed this new sports drink line, which we won’t get into because it shows about you, but just I wouldn’t have that hydration part, right? And so I get dehydrated and thus like I wouldn’t want to eat because my body is like, no, I need water. Like, give me the water. So I always felt like if I took care of that component first, it was easier to take and fuel. Not that like not that it’s always easy. But just like if you don’t have your whole thing going, then one can screw up the other and vice versa.
Kristy: [00:10:04] Absolutely. Yeah, I know. Bucket list checked on onto the next weird one. I’m not sure what that is yet.
Jesse: [00:10:14] Yeah. So then maybe we have to back up and ask you about how do you get from equestrian to the Goggins challenge? Because you go from I guess I don’t recall whether I’d asked you. Were you like hunter jumper kind of equestrian? Like what? What were you doing?
Kristy: [00:10:34] Mainly dressage. I like precision generally as a personality trait of mine. I like things very detailed and it can be quite analytical. And so dressage was my my sport of choice.
Jesse: [00:10:57] I know dressage is. I’d spent a little bit of time. That’s the only time I’ve taken horseback riding lessons was a year in college with a dressage lady with American saddle breds. So I had a little bit of background in it, not nearly as deep as yours. Can you give a little bit more info for the listener on what that entails?
Kristy: [00:11:16] I mean, I think it’s changed a lot over the years in terms of its kind of popularity. I know Kevin Hart and Snoop Dog did some great commentary at the Tokyo Olympics around it, so people might know it a little bit more. It’s the dancing on horses, but really it has its roots in a military background. These movements really came from what you needed to teach the horses back. World War One, pre World War One in in order to have them move where you needed to move and avoid other people on horses.
[00:11:55] So these these movements really have a long history in them, but they have to be very precise. You move to a certain part of the arena. You do, you know, a 180 at a certain tempo, then you’re changing directions really quick. So it’s it’s a lot of fast, sort of fast changes between movements. But honestly, for the rider, the obviously you train your horse and you spend many, many years to get to an Olympic level for that.
[00:12:26] But the rider’s job is to look like they’re doing nothing but be doing everything and giving the horse all the cues. So that’s it’s a it’s a little bit of like sleight of hand, kind of it looks like you’re sort of just sitting there, but this horse doesn’t know where it’s going or what it’s doing. So it really is the rider doing it with very minimal small movements.
Jesse: [00:12:53] To that notion. So if you, the listener have ever or in the US, I guess I should say and have been ever been on like a tail, the snout kind of horseback ride that is typically available to say pedestrians. It’s not like that at all, at least in my opinion. I love you to tell me I’m wrong. But I noticed one of the things I. I had gone from taking these lessons back to kind of more in that setting with the Western style trained horses. And the biggest thing I missed was just like basically the ability to ask the horse to do something by like moving your pinkie.
[00:13:39] Just that very solid because. So you obviously could explain this better than I can. But there, as I understand it, the general difference in like bit control so the horse has a bit in its mouth with equestrian for English style riding like dressage. There’s there’s contact with the horse’s mouth at all times, pretty much in Western it’s really loose and it’s bigger, broader motions to ask the horse to do things.
So I always felt like like the saddle bred style rode in dressage and just it was a little bit more I would consider like sports car tuning, like, you know, high performance. Like you got to know what you’re doing or they’re like, the horses get frustrated and you’re like, Why are you saying what you do?
Kristy: [00:14:28] Yeah, if you’re, you know, have a little too much pressure on your knee or your foot is an inch or half an inch too far back, then that just that doesn’t mean anything to the horse. You might end up doing anything. But yeah, it is. It’s extremely small, you know, even sort of like your hip placement, so all that sort of stuff. But they, they can feel all of that. So, you know, it’s yeah, it’s the very small fine tuning piece that I like the race car analogy in in order to make sure that they’re then going in the right direction. T
[00:15:05] hey’re, they’re doing the movement correctly because ultimately they are still a giant animal. So they get frustrated. They’re really going to do what they want. So that’s why the years and and years of training and the relationship that the rider has with the horse is so important.
Jesse: [00:15:24] Yeah, it just. In the Writer’s Guild matters so much. I know as I got a little bit better, she kind of had a series of horses, obviously, from the beginner one that’s way more forgiving to the more show horses.
Kristy: [00:15:40] Yeah.
Jesse: [00:15:43] I would. She’d like, take me back to use the beginner ones again after I got better. And then you can after you’ve gotten better, they respond so much easier.
Kristy: [00:15:54] Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
Jesse: [00:15:56] It’s an interesting way to notice that, like, you become a better writer.
Kristy: [00:16:00] Oh, I’ve increased my skill level because I can make this horse do, you know, step to the side. Whereas before it would just ignore me know. Yeah. And they do. They love ignoring, you know, it’s not exactly the right command and the right tone of voice. I’m not moving.
Jesse: [00:16:19] Yeah. So I would like for you, the listener, if you have any interest at all in writing, try to find some English style lessons or whatever it is. Just experience the difference. I really enjoyed it as a college student. I was fortunate that it was a class that was offered. But yeah, it’s it’s a different experience than I think most people in North America have as the perception of like riding a horse, because most of it’s like the Western mythology now, right?
Kristy: [00:16:54] Right. The barrel races and all that sort of stuff, which is super fun. But no, it’s, it’s one of those it’s technically listed as an individual sport, but I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make a horse do something it doesn’t want to do. It’s, it’s, it’s not there for the party. So it is not, not an individual sport. So that relationship building style, I’m biased obviously because I love horses, but it’s it it’s a wonderful kind of experience when you have a good bond with a horse.
Jesse: [00:17:32] So I want to transition a little bit thinking about. You know, the time you spent in sport, what you’re doing now has it all together. So we don’t talk about. I want to ask you a little bit about why. Who are they? What are they doing? Why were they? I don’t know if it was partnered or sponsored with the Olympics for for Rio.
How did that all come about? Well, before we got going, you mentioned in that situation, your — I think you mentioned please correct me, you guys are the only basically private company that was in some of those conversations with the IOC or something at the time. You’ll correct me, I’m spouting off. I’m trying to get you to where I’d like you to talk about it. So ignore me. Listen. Listen to Kristy. She’ll she’ll set the record straight.
Kristy: [00:18:19] No, I mean, so back as the Rio 2016 Olympics was approaching, EY signed a local sponsorship in Brazil for those games, and we were the professional EY in general is a professional services company. So providing everything from audit to tax to consulting services around the world where we’re one of the big four. So you’ve likely seen a lot of our buildings around but may not actually know who we are.
So as a consulting arm of that, we signed this local sponsorship for the Rio Olympics and really where where we obviously we had the consulting services and whether it was supporting the local organizing committee with their project management, their finance, their infrastructure of the city, getting prepared for the Olympics.
[00:19:19] There was a lot of deep and detailed work that went on there. But as a part of that sponsorship, we we had these riots around the the the Rings and the Olympics to really promote a platform of discussion where we wanted to, to bring something to unite business and sport and where we landed on. And this piece of research is the anchor to to the programs today is looking at front foot female athletes athletes in general. But how sport translates into the business world.
[00:20:00] And the piece of research we did was interviewing C-suite women across industry around the world, and 94% of them had sport in their background. And that clear sort of correlation between skills learned on the field and how they translate into the boardroom was was really where we wanted to hang our hat on and how we’ve developed the program since then.
[00:20:23] So that’s where I got involved. I was consulting in Canada at the time and moved to New York to to help build that sponsorship and build this conversation around knowing that athletes make great business leaders, but they’re not necessarily at the rate that they should be finding their way into the business world.
And it’s that piece of transition as as an athlete moves off the field, that seems to be the sticking point. So globally, we’ve developed programs to support athletes to find their their next career. We’ve hired, gosh, I think it’s over 70 Olympians and Paralympians elite athletes into EY around the world now.
[00:21:06] The programs obviously will we can go into that have developed over the years but really it started in Rio and we seemed to be the only kind of business that was looking at supporting athletes in this way. And we had some great discussions with the International Olympic Committee, all the sporting bodies, business leaders, all in Rio, that that has set us up quite uniquely in terms of the work that we’re doing with athletes.
So it’s been a really exciting time, very purposeful work from my standpoint. I take great pride in what we do and and seeing the athletes come into EY and we have mentoring programs externally as well for athlete entrepreneurs. It’s been great to see them take the the information and put it in their little professional tool belt and learn how to really capitalize on on these skills that they have.
Jesse: [00:22:16] So one of the things in kind of the research you sent me or this website that you guys can look at, let me see if there’s a quick we’ll put the link down in the description. It’s —
Kristy: [00:22:31] EY, the website?
Jesse: [00:22:35] No, no, no. I’ll start the page specifically with the with the research to just make it easy to type in. It’s so it’s the English language version which makes as ey.com/en_gl/athletes-programs.
Kristy: [00:22:48] We do have a vanity URL, so it’s just ey.com/athleteprograms and that’ll redirect you there.
Jesse: [00:22:55] Okay. That’s always like clear the URL… the English language.
Kristy: [00:22:59] I know. I know.
Jesse: [00:23:00] That’s that’s going to make that a little bit more difficult.
Kristy: [00:23:02] The joys of big company websites, they always kind of direct you left, right and center.
Jesse: [00:23:07] Right. Yeah. So so if for some reason, you, the listener, speak another language, that’s your preference. It looks like there is an option here for you to to do that should you not speak English so accessible. But so look it through that. Like you mentioned, 94% of women having some kind of sport background.
This is like I don’t know if there’s a polite way to ask this, so I don’t mean it to be a jerk, but just like why aren’t non-athletic women succeeding? I’m putting that in quotes for if you’re not listening to the YouTube or you’re not watching the YouTube version, you know why? Why is it that? Sport. You know, if we can create some kind of causality here, because it’s hard to make that inference.
Kristy: [00:24:03] I know.
Jesse: [00:24:03] But if we want to make that, we want to make that jump. What would you attribute that to? Like why are non sportswomen not as “successful” in this particular realm?
Kristy: [00:24:18] Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it’s that they’re not successful. I just think the athletes skill set that is learned on the field. Increases the speed at which they make it to those leadership positions. So I don’t think it’s well, if you don’t have sport, you’re, you know, you’re doomed in professional.
I really do think that it just adds to, you know, a a leaders ability, one, to reach those leadership positions more quickly and and to do it in in a in a way that is unique, I would say. So it’s just a different path. And we’ve seen that in our own athletes in terms of, you know, we’ve had athletes a lot of our athletes hit their promotions quicker than others. I think it’s it’s just it’s a little leg up.
Jesse: [00:25:19] I think it’s like — Sorry. As you’re watching me scrolling on the screen, I’m trying to go back through some.
Kristy: [00:25:26] Well, you have a load of research.
Jesse: [00:25:28] There’s a lot of research. I was like, oh, it’s like trying to find like there were things I had pointed out in my brain. I’m trying to find it so that I’m not missing anything.
Kristy: [00:25:37] I mean, I think for the people that are listening here, you know, if you are an athlete, you get this. This is not rocket science and this is not something new that we’re telling athletes going, hey, you know, your skill set helps. I think for us, especially in the business world broadly, and I use that term very broadly. You need the research and the numbers to back you up. You need to build that business case. And I think any of us have who have been athletes at any level have that gut feeling going, Yeah, it absolutely helps you. You ask anybody.
[00:26:13] But what has really moved the needle for us is actually putting the numbers behind it. Ironically, EY’s an accounting company, so numbers are important. But that’s honestly that’s really where we have gotten a lot of conversation started is because we have put and I don’t know if you can go to the causation part, but the correlation is really, really strong and that’s where we sort of start a lot of the discussions, be it about talent, diversity, be it about gender equity. I think there’s there’s many places that those numbers can take you.
Jesse: [00:26:51] What I wonder about. And again, I’m probing out of curiosity, not out of spite. I wonder. So in my brain, I feel like I see this. What’s the word I’m looking for this image or this stereotype. There we go. Let’s give my brain to work the stereotype of, like, if a woman’s in charge, she’s this, like, bossy bitch and nobody likes her. But then, like, if a man does the same thing, it’s totally fine.
Kristy: [00:27:31] Yeah.
Jesse: [00:27:32] So. I think about the skills. And that’s required to be a leader. And I think you and I would agree that. I think obviously that sport helps teach those skills. Yeah. So I wonder if I think I think the website touches on this a little bit. If the ability for women to rise to their potential, if that’s their goal to be a senior executive. Is in part by having that common language because so many men compete in sports and competitive men tend to go into business because we can’t literally be I mean, we become fathers, but we can’t be mothers, which is a whole different role.
[00:28:25] So this is a sidebar, but some are related. I remember a friend at one time mentioning to me, like, women have children, men build businesses because they can’t have children. So just thinking about like that paradigm anyway, I wonder if sport gives a common language between the genders and then makes it less of a disparity and less of that stereotypical. Like. Like she’s a bitch for doing this or that. Do I have any thread of truth or relevance here, or am I just spouting nonsense? Please help me out.
Kristy: [00:29:06] I mean, I think there is a common language of sport, and not to be cliche, but sport is a universal language. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the favelas in Brazil or on a soccer field here in New York City. If you’re playing football, you’re playing football and you’re learning the skills of sport. So, you know, the spoken language doesn’t really, really matter. But I think there are themes that come out to level the playing field. And sure, there might be sort of gender stereotypes around them.
[00:29:41] But I think the self-confidence, the grit, the purpose are sort of agnostic of gender or sex. I really think that the skills do a leader well, irrespective of sort of who they are or the industry that they’re in as well, because they have a lot of industry sort of stereotypes that can play into leadership positions too.
[00:30:05] But yeah, like I said, that, that the grit, the purpose, the resilience which has, you know, especially in the last couple of years, been in the word of the minute to know how to be resilient, know how to be agile, you know, both in business and for your teams. And I think there’s a level of an athlete, irrespective of gender. They know how to put their teams together to really capitalize on the skill sets that they have. They know how to put their players on the field, theoretically. So I think I think those kind of traits span across everybody.
Jesse: [00:30:54] It. I mean, to me, it seems like. You know, I did for the longest time, and I still do because I come from a running background. The spouse, the idea that running is life and there’s all these parables and analogies you can have between the language of running and the language of life or business. But sometimes I wonder about and this was a question. So I have we’ll get to this year’s question in a bit.
But I have a question at the end of each episode where I ask people the same question for an entire year. And a couple of seasons ago, I asked everybody, what’s the purpose of sport? And, you know, I got a lot of different answers, but one of them, I think, is possibly teaching life skills, right? It’s it’s a relatively safe in that consequences of failing. Pretty low generally speaking like yeah you lost or you know like obviously —
Kristy: [00:32:00] Like the ego but —
Jesse: [00:32:02] Right.
Kristy: [00:32:02] But like to change your life necessarily.
Jesse: [00:32:04] Yeah. Right. Probably not going to become destitute unless you like illegally bet on your own team and bet the house or something. But just like it’s this. Place that we can work on some of those soft skills, you know, working at a team. Being a leader. Being a follower. Yeah. Knowing when to step up one to step back. How to communicate effectively. Like all of those things are important. Whether you’re a small business entrepreneur like I am, or whether you’re going to work for a Fortune 100 company like you’re still no matter what you’re doing, you’re dealing with people, right?
Kristy: [00:32:48] Absolutely.
Jesse: [00:32:49] So sometimes I think about maybe maybe that’s the ultimate purpose of sport is like really being this kind of playground for these life skills for us in many different facets.
Kristy: [00:33:02] 100%. And I think one of the most important, you know, you listed a lot of them, but one of the most important that I see is learning how to fail and taking that failure as feedback and being able to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and course correct and move on. And that’s be it in a football game, be it in a business meeting, because not all of those go as planned as well. But being able to sort of take the L and and learn from it is, look, I think it’s one of the most critical life skills not letting it end. And with the loss, making sure that you have to fold, get it back up more times than you fall down.
Jesse: [00:33:54] Yeah, I mean, you had an easy pick up there with you fall off the horse and you got gone, but you didn’t go with it —
Kristy: [00:34:04] I know. I’m sorry. I figure I’ll look for another place to put in a riding analogy. There’s plenty of them.
Jesse: [00:34:15] We couldn’t have a better setup for that. No.
Kristy: [00:34:20] I think I’ve fallen off a lot of times. Maybe I don’t want to relive that.
Jesse: [00:34:25] That was the only thing I thought. I was like. Maybe you’re like, No, it hurts more than that. People let on.
Kristy: [00:34:33] It does. It does. You learn how to do it —
Jesse: [00:34:39] Yeah. I would hope. Well, I mean, I would hope you minimize the falling off.
Kristy: [00:34:44] But possible. Yes.
Jesse: [00:34:46] As you said, failures, feedback.
Kristy: [00:34:49] Yeah. Right.
Jesse: [00:34:52] Um. Now we’ve got it off course.
Kristy: [00:34:55] Sorry.
Jesse: [00:34:58] So before we run out of time, I did want to ask you a little bit. I want to ask you a little bit about. You mentioned, like you develop various programs over time. So trying to get my head around all what what it is that they and you do are you going out knowing now you’ve got the numbers to back it up knowing now that the vast the overwhelming majority, not just vast majority of women are had some kind of support background. Are you going out to youth to advocate hey let’s get you into sport. Are you I think you mentioned trying to support Olympians as they retire. What what is it that you guys are actually doing to try to foster this environment? I guess.
Kristy: [00:35:50] Absolutely so. I mean, look, it’s a it spans from, you know, kids who are five, six years old to, you know, multiple time Olympians, potentially in their thirties, in their forties, looking for a new career. So it’s a it’s a big playing field that we’re covering. We really you know, from the EY perspective, our focus is on athletes who are moving into that next chapter, whether they want a professional career or whether they’re starting a business.
[00:36:24] But we absolutely see the value in making sure that kids stay in sport and young girls in particular drop out of sport at a much higher rate in their sort of tween early teen years. And it is so incredibly important to make sure that we’re working with organizations who specifically work in those areas like the Women’s Sports Foundation here in in the US and headquartered in New York. We we have a wonderful relationship with them and they’re doing great work in making sure that for young girls, sport remains a priority. We know actually a piece of research that we did a while ago, and it’s probably buried in one of the reports we have. If girls say in their sport, playing sport, just a school level, it doesn’t even have to be competitive. Their post-college salary is 7% higher just by staying in sports.
[00:37:24] So there are so and like we’ve just been talking the life skills. There are so many great lessons to be learned and there are wonderful organizations working to make sure that that young athletes are supported. We can warriors or those that are looking at, you know, going on to professional sports. For us, it’s really making sure that we’re tapping into athletes at that know as they’re looking towards retirement, which I know can be a superstitious word. But we want to be having those relationships and conversations with athletes so that for as long as we can and when they do decide to step off the field, is when we sort of enact our programs and transition support.
[00:38:11] But we’ve obviously been doing this for a little while, so athletes are coming to know us, but we also do go looking for athletes, you know, as a as any big business would be facing right now, the war on talent is fierce. Making sure that we’re getting people with the right skill sets, the right mindsets, diverse backgrounds is really important to to make for a successful team and a successful business. And athletes are a part of that. So we do proactively seek athletes as well when we see business opportunities that could fit an athlete skill set.
Jesse: [00:38:55] I think it’s good to know that there’s at least somebody or an organization out there to help help that transition. I’ve had a number of Olympians on the show over the years, and I seemingly always ask them about the transition because I know — It’s it can be difficult. I mean, even for people who weren’t Olympians, who were collegiate athletes, who were high school athletes, whatever, just that that moment of demarcation where you’re no longer part of that team or that club or that sport that you had identified with for so long.
[00:39:32] And I ask the Olympians, because often they’ve been in it the longest. So it’s like it’s even more ingrained. And I ask about it just because I think we talked about this before we were recording just the idea of transitions that we all go through transitions,
Kristy: [00:39:51] Absolutely.
Jesse: [00:39:52] Regardless of whether you ever did sport or not. And if you’re listening to this, less than likely you did or do. But. That’s another life skill. I feel like it’s like understanding deeply that you are more than your sport, your job, your title, your whatever, and that you have the ability to reinvent yourself if you want to look at it that way, but also not tie your self-worth to, I’ll say, output.
Kristy: [00:40:28] It’s it’s difficult, you know, for so many years, especially once they get to the professional or Olympic level, your descriptor as a person has been your sport, you know? Hi, I’m Kristy. I’m an equestrian or whatever, you know, whatever it might be, it is how you describe yourself. And naturally it is wrapped in the identity, and that is absolutely okay. But as an athlete, being able to see that you’re more than that, you don’t have to get rid of it. And it’s something that I talk to all of our athletes about. It’s like, please don’t forget your sporting experience. Once you’ve been in the working world, it’s the first thing to get dropped off your résumé or your LinkedIn profile.
[00:41:13] Like your skills are still really valuable about how you talk about them is what probably needs to change a little bit, you know, and having it be a piece of you but not the whole of you, I think from a mental transition piece. And it’s hard. It’s really hard because they do lose their identity and and some are more adept at a figuring out who they are beyond that and all this this struggle. And that’s why we want to be supporting people as well.
Jesse: [00:41:51] Yeah. Kristy as we’re starting to run down on time, as I mentioned earlier, I have a question for everybody this season. So let me ask you, this season’s question comes from me to me from a friend who is pertinent to this conversation, because I’ve mentioned a number of times by having just given her more descriptive she’s an entrepreneur friend of mine and I’m trying to find the stat it was in one of these one of these research articles you’d had.
There’s basically like there it is. Only 2% of women family companies in the US, for example, richer exceed the US $1 million in revenue mark that would be her. She very amazing woman runs a very good company. She suggested this question to me because she’s big on helping women succeed, helping people succeed and knowing that this is a weak point for a lot of people. And the question that she wanted me to pose this year to everyone is how do you celebrate your wins?
Kristy: [00:43:03] Oh, my goodness. I feel like I need to know her. I don’t like —
Jesse: [00:43:07] I can introduce you. I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.
Kristy: [00:43:11] And I don’t like that question. But it is so. It is. It’s so interesting, I. I think there’s a couple of ways I can answer that. I think in the workplace. I think making sure for for me, the win is about the team as well. And, you know, I might have had a bigger role than others, a smaller role than others, but making sure that. The and as I’ve moved through my career, this has been done for me as well that the doors are open for. You know, my team that either reports into me or the new people coming coming out of college, making sure that the credit is given where it’s due and the win is for the team.
[00:44:13] I don’t know if I’m articulating that exactly how I want to, but it is for me, it’s really important to make sure that. I’m not celebrating a win alone in a room because it would never just be me. There would be a lot of people around. So. And. And. Personally, I think I tend to shy shy away from that. So I might do something with my office or close, but I think for for me being able to. To own the success. And and not be shy about it. That’s me personally said yeah to end to take motivation from it so. That is the question.
Jesse: [00:45:09] I think so. I think so. I think you’ve got it in. Kristy if people want to learn more about EY, the programs, see what you’re up to, any of that kind of stuff. Where can they find you do that? Learn more?
Kristy: [00:45:23] Absolutely. Yeah. Everything. All my details, all our social media channels are on our website, so ey.com/athleteprograms. But pretty much if you search on any channel, it’s just eyathleteprograms. And I’m sure we will come up where on Facebook and Twitter we’ve got a website and my email details are on the website as well. So people can reach out directly if you have questions, want to get involved, want to talk about it. We we don’t want to be the only voice in this conversation. We want to bring as many people into it as possible. So you have great ideas. I would love to connect.
Jesse: [00:46:02] Awesome. Thanks for hanging out with me today.
Kristy: [00:46:04] Thanks so much, Jesse. It’s been great.