Gift biz unwrapped episode 181 You have to fight the bad
habits. You have to fight the lazy feelings.
They don't just go away just because you have a particular
goal in mind.
Attention gifters,
bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.
Whether you have an established business or looking to start one
now you are in the right place.
This is gift to biz unwrapped,
helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.
Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,
resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.
Here is your host gift biz gal,
Sue moon Heights.
Hi there And thank you so much for taking a little
bit of your time to be with me today.
Make sure to stay till the end of this episode because
I have a special announcement for you.
It's something that I've been working on for months and finally
I'm so excited.
Now is the time I can share it with you and
yes, sometimes I can be a little bit of a tease
and just play around and that's not why I'm waiting until
the end.
I just want to make sure to give my guests today
all of the attention that she's due and then share with
you something extra special.
Like I said at the end,
don't leave cause you don't want to miss it,
but first I want to talk with you about my guest.
She is an Olympic medalist and I brought her on the
show because even though she's not a gifter Baker crafter or
maker, she has qualities that she needs to use to get
her to her level of success.
That very much relate to success for us as maker entrepreneurs.
Some of the things we're going to talk about are preparation,
a mindset,
dealing with factors that are sometimes out of your control and
how intuition can play a big role in your success.
Let's jump into this right now.
I'd like to introduce you to Asia Evans.
Asia is a two time Olympian and has won a bronze
medal in the 2014 winter Olympic games as a brakeman for
the USA women's bobsled team.
Throughout her track and field career,
Asia was known for her dominance in both the sprints and
ShotPut at the university of Illinois.
She won three big 10 titles the five time NCAA division
one. All American recently completed her second Olympic game in February
at the 2018 winter Olympics in South Korea.
She and her driver,
Jamie Gribble,
poser placed fifth Asia,
comes from a family of elite athletes and today we're going
to talk about the drive,
the passion and the discipline needed to win.
Welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast Asia.
Hi. Thanks for having me.
I am so excited to have this conversation.
I'm excited.
You know,
it's kind of a different thing because you aren't like a
maker or a creator like our audiences,
but I think some of the drive and the passion yeah.
And the commitment that you have to have to become the
level of Olympian you are,
the level of athlete can go over,
I think.
Yeah. I completely agree.
I mean a lot of the things I've learned on my
path to becoming an Olympian or even Olympic medalist have helped
me in all areas of my life and I've grown in
all aspects of my life,
not only just the Olympics,
so it's kind of worked synonymous with my life and every
area. We are going to expand on that in a second,
but before we do,
I have a traditional question I like to ask everybody and
that is if you were to describe yourself as a motivational
candle, so in a color and in a quote,
how would you describe yourself through a motivational candle?
This was such a unique question.
I had fun trying to figure out my idea for this,
but I think my favorite color is purple and I never
understood why I was so drawn to the color when it
began, but I'm captivated by it and the more I looked
into it and the kind of characteristics associated with the color
purple, it's like just ambition,
power, strength,
peace, magic.
And so that really ties into me and some of my
characteristics. A motivational quote for that.
Would be a Bible verse of mine that's a favorite of
mine is Joshua one verse nine and it's have I not
commanded you?
Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid.
Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be
with you wherever you go.
For me,
especially with the places my ambition takes me,
it's a little scary.
And developing confidence and whatever I do has been a game
changer for me and knowing that from the beginning and having
that confidence because essentially I went into the sport of bobsled
where I had no background in this floor.
I came from a completely different sport and to go in
there and in two years when an Olympic medal sounds crazy
even saying it right now,
but it took a lot of confidence and trust and ambition
for sure.
Absolutely. And saying that it's scary,
I would say is an understatement.
I agree.
It's definitely intimidating.
Well, you know,
I said in the bio as I was learning a little
bit more about you F wheats have run in your family,
right? And professional athletes from your father to your uncles all
the way down.
So you were surrounded by that already.
How did your journey go in terms of zeroing in on
your sport cause you were track and field in high school
and college?
I grew up with a very athletic family and it always
encouraged me to want to do sports.
My uncle and cousin both were major league baseball players and
my father was a swimmer and my brother played in the
NFL for eight years and my mother was a track and
field Supersite in her collegiate years.
And so growing up my mom just kept us really active.
She never forced us to do any sports or do anything.
We kind of played around with all types of sports and
it wasn't until my freshman year of high school where I
actually did track and field and I stuck with it and
we were really successful.
I went to Morgan park high school out in Chicago and
the city and the Chicago public school and we had great
success there.
And then I went on to go to university of Illinois
where I was told about the sport of bobsled.
My senior year of college,
my coach kind of introduced the sport to me and so
when he was telling me about,
I was a little hesitant because I'm used to checking fields
and feeling like my Olympic success was always going to come
from what I thought I was doing to get there,
which was track and field.
So I always saw myself being on the Olympic podium and
making it to the Olympic games.
But I just assumed that it was going to be through
track and field.
And so my senior year of college was in 2010 and
I was doing the 2010 when I left Olympic games.
And my coach told me about the sport and how they
look for athletes like myself who come from other sports like
track and field.
I mean you have football players like Herschel Walker who did
bobsled, but specifically he told me about this check if an
athlete named Veneta flowers who became an Olympian in both summer
and winter Olympic sports.
And so it really inspired me at the time,
but I just brushed it off because I thought that my
bread and butter was going to be track and field.
And about a year and a half later I went out
and tried for bobsled because after college I graduated and I
decided not to do track professionally.
So I was working in Highland park at EFC sports performance
and I was doing my internship and got offered a position
there. So I was helping all these people I met accomplish
their goals and the dreams they set themselves and I felt
like I didn't give myself that same opportunity.
And so I did a lot of research and went out
for the bobsled team and ended up being a really good
fit for the sport.
That's interesting because you were seeing that what you were talking
to other people and challenging other people to do,
you had to turn the mirror around on yourself.
Exactly. And I felt like I was preaching all these things,
but I wasn't practicing it and I felt that void.
I felt like something was missing.
I loved what I did and helping them,
but I felt like I didn't give myself that fair chance.
Okay. This is perfect because I think a lot of people
who are listening,
I think that starting a business,
which I know is a little bit different than sports,
but starting a business is for everybody else.
Like everyone else can be successful but not them.
Right? And so I want you guys get biz listeners to
be listening to this because this is what Asia did.
And so my question for you is how did you change
your mindset?
You just can't say,
okay, well Asia ante up.
Let's do it.
What did you do in terms of a mindset to turn
around and say,
okay, I'm going to not be afraid.
I'm just going to put myself out there and do it.
How did you do that?
Well, I had to my resources for sure.
After training and working at EMT sports performance,
I went to the owner and I told him about the
sport of BAFTA.
And this was two years out.
So this was in 2012 and the winter Olympic games were
in 2014 and so within two years I needed to learn
it and understand the sport so I could make it to
the Olympic games.
And so I told him about my vision and my goal
and he said we could do it.
And so in order to kind of get in the quote
mindset, I could to a bobsledder I worked with football players
and they are gritty,
they have a great work ethic and they're used to that
team atmosphere,
but yet they're used to competing against each other.
And that's simulator track and field.
But in track and field is still a little more individual.
So that on and off switch mentality I had to get
used to as is being an athlete and a competitor at
one moment and then a teammate and helping your essentially your
competition and your team move forward and build a lot of
the behind the scenes.
So I had to learn how to switch that on and
off as well as the physical and,
and I worked really hard with all NFL players in the
off season because it was around the same time as my
preparation for Bob.
But and so I trained with them for three months and
went out and tried out for the team and my trials
were going so well that the coach stopped me and had
me come to the side and was like,
okay, so we see what you can do but let's see
if you could push a bop lift.
So I actually stayed a few days later and in like
plastic in New York we have the Olympic training center,
which is where our headquarters is for the most part for
bobsleigh. We have our push track there,
which is how you practice pushing on dry land and training
outside of winter time and being on the track as well
as one of our home tracks.
And so I stayed there practice and learn the technique and
continue with trials.
Over the next few months I've made the national team.
And from there we went through the world cup season,
so that was the season before the Olympic games.
And then the next season I had to try out as
well and make the national team before I made the Olympic
team. Okay.
So I have a number of questions for you now after
all of that.
Yeah. Oh my gosh,
yes. But it's so good.
So Asia first for some of our listeners who may not
be that familiar with bobsled,
talk us through the sport and how many people comprise a
team and how the whole bobsled works.
Yeah, so bachelor is a winter Olympic sport.
So for women right now we only have two man Aqua,
so you have a driver,
but I also go by pilot and they're in the front
of the sled.
And then you have the brakemen,
which is my position.
We also go by pusher and we're in the back of
the sled.
The goal of the brakemen is to get this leg going
as fast as possible at the start of the race.
And then we hop in after the man and then we're
kind of like holding on in the back through this mile
long track of twists and turns and bumps and all types
of G4S while the driver Sears down the track using the
velocity and the momentum we created at the top of the
track. So you're the one at the back who's like ducking
then so that you,
So my goal is to stay as aerodynamic as possible and
relaxed in the back of the sled regardless of how crazy
it feels.
So awkward.
I don't even know what the compared to,
I mean honestly,
we have to wear helmets because you risk concussions.
We wear burn invest because if you were to crash the
friction from the ice and the speed we're going at a
cocreate burns.
So it's a very intense course.
It's very loud,
noisy, and as a brakeman you don't know what's coming next.
So it's a little counterintuitive.
You want to be nervous,
you want to be tight,
you want to be kind of scared,
but you have to teach yourself to be relaxed and loose
and taking all these twists and turns as you go down
the track and hopefully come out in first.
That's crazy because as you're just describing it at the beginning
of the race,
you need all your strength because you're the one who's building
the speed and then you dump in and you have to
do the exact opposite.
You have to then relax.
Yes, and the drivers,
they go from straining to put all their effort into their
push push to having to snap out of that relaxed and
be focused and steer down,
attract. And when I say steer,
like it's not a steering wheel in there,
we drive by using these D rings.
So essentially like two wheel drive.
So the runners,
which are the blades this last,
this one,
so two runners in the front.
If you pull the right D-ring,
they go to the right.
And then if people the left when I go to the
left, and that's how you fear the sled down the track.
I didn't know that.
I thought you had a steering wheel.
I mean one of the original bobsleds were included this year
and we'll,
but they advanced their technology so much that it's kind of
a rope system and a D rating system where they're kind
of pulling these rings to help maneuver this led down the
track as efficiently as possible.
Yeah. Got it.
So let's talk a little bit about training.
How do you as a professional athlete train for this?
I'm sure,
I mean it's physical,
but it's also psychological.
Can you give us a feel for how that works?
I really started to embrace the psychological aspects a lot this
past Olympic journey because I didn't realize going into the sport
how much that was a factor.
Especially for an athlete like myself.
I'm one of those athletes that rely on what I produce
and my production in like using that as my way to
show that I'm doing good to show the team when I'm
capable of show to where where I'm capable of.
And sometimes in the sport you don't have as much power
as you would like to.
Like I come from track and field.
If I'm an Elaine against seven other athletes and I come
at earth and I'm in first place,
but with Bob,
just because you're the fastest say it doesn't mean you're going
to be with who they deemed the fastest driver.
Sometimes the coaches and the board pick and choose who races
with who.
So you don't really have much control over that as a
brakeman. The coaches pick who the drivers race with and so
the best thing I could do was put myself in the
best physical shape as well as being mentally ready to accept.
If I'm not racing with the person I had my eyes
set on or if things change,
being able bounce back because that's what happened to me at
the 2014 Olympic game.
I primed myself physically to be the best brakeman in the
country, let alone the world and to race with the fast
pace driver at that time.
And so the entire season I raced with her and we
were winning Meadows and doing great first in the world.
And then at the Olympic games,
the week before I race,
they switched by,
fled and I raced with the second rate driver.
And so if this would've happened to me a few years
side to that I might have shut down.
I might have not been able to even pull off a
metal. And so that mental aspect really came into play and
I had to understand that this is the hand I'm dealt
and I have to make the most of those cars.
And so that's when Jamie and I really built a resilient
bond and decided to go out and pull this off for
ourselves despite who was calling the shots.
And so the mental aspect has been a journey for me
for sure.
Physically, we do a lot of our off season training during
the summertime leading into the fall.
And so it's pretty much the same as like football off
season training.
You really want to work on your strength and conditioning and
your speed.
And so I don't necessarily have to be in like class
in New York at the Olympic training center longterm over the
entire off season training.
I can do my workouts pretty much anywhere.
So I worked with my trainer,
Jacob Ross and my friend coach Les Spellman and together they
helped me get into the best shape for the season,
especially entering the Olympic year.
It was a lot of the training as far as repetitive
speed drove a lot of plyometrics,
a lot of jumping and a lot of stuff just to
be on my posterior chain.
So like a lot of lifting weights,
a lot of squatting,
some power cleans and dead lifts.
And so I really wanted to build up that muscle and
that power early in the season so I didn't have to
go as hard during the season because once the season starts,
we're traveling from country to country each week as well as
racing and training on the actual opposite track.
So, So you really have to look out at a whole
six months or a year and structure when you're training and
then when you're on the road it takes a little bit
of a different look,
right? So you have to look out and plan.
It involves a lot of planning,
but during the season you have to be able to go
with the flow and listen to your body.
So as an athlete you become really in tune with our
body and what it's telling us and we know how to
push ourselves,
which you also have to know how to relax and when
to take it a little easier.
As you go through the season you're dealing with,
like I struggled with jet lag and all these European countries
we were racing in as well as having to train at
6:00 AM we would wake up,
get breakfast,
load our slips.
So with Bob,
so it's a really hands on sport.
I fled weigh about 365 pounds and so that's the sled
minimum wage and we have to move those sleds so we
have to transport them ourselves.
We put them in the truck.
Coach's job is Chuck to the track.
We unload the sleds,
put them at the line.
We do all of that stuff as well as racing and
preparing to race a train.
Oh my gosh,
I for sure thought you had other people doing that for
you. We have engineers And coaches that help and the engineers
are really great and they do all the behind the scenes
stuff and the more in depth stuff for the slab,
but a lot of the hands on moving of the sled
and preparation of the sled is done that especially the night
before a race.
People assume that's the day we have.
Like You get pampered and you rest and carbo-loading like you
do when you're running.
Right. 94 race.
We're sanding the runners,
so the runners,
like I said,
are the blades,
the SLAs that on,
we're sending those down grid by grid from a hundred grit
sandpaper down to polishing paper and then the drivers have their
own busing system.
So together that takes about four,
maybe five hours to complete.
But per runner,
if you have people helping you,
you can get it done maybe in three hours,
but that's another day with the work we have to put
in at the end of the night before race.
Wow. All right,
so from my listeners perspective,
I have a couple of things I'm curious about.
What do you do on those days when you're supposed to
get up at 6:00 AM to train and you're like,
seriously, like this is the last thing I want to do.
I just want to push this news button and I'm not
getting up.
How do you force yourself to do that?
I know we can all relate to this challenge.
We're going to hear how Asia answers the question right after
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Hard. I mean it's hard to force myself to get in
that position or get used to pushing yourself.
I think that was one of the biggest things for me
was you have to fight the bad habits.
You have to fight the lazy feelings.
They don't just go away just because you have a particular
goal in mind.
Just because I knew I wanted to win an Olympic medal
and go to the Olympic games,
it didn't mean instantly boom.
I'm a new person that likes to wake up very early
in the morning and work out.
No, I was still that same person that doesn't like to
wake up there early to workout and so you just had
to remind yourself why you're doing these things.
And so when I was waking up very early to go
to training,
knowing I had to do all the behind the scenes work
and do a workout on top of it later that day,
it can be exhausting,
but I had to keep my eyes set on my goal
and I created a schedule so I knew what I had
to do.
So that helps me to get an idea of my day.
Did the schedule just make you like you knew you had
to follow your schedule?
Whether you wanted to or not.
Having a schedule one may mean knew I needed to follow
it and it encouraged me to get stuff done because then
once I saw my schedule was clear,
I was like,
okay, like I really have time off and I can enjoy
the rest of my day without feeling like I'm missing something
or I need to do something.
And sometimes when you wake up and you know you have
to do all these things but you don't have them written
down, it can make you even more stressed and flustered and
it can appear bigger than what it is.
So one thing I tried to do was write down things
I had to accomplish that day and if I could write
a time for it,
cool. If not,
then I just knew I had to go through it.
And so I will use my reminders app on my phone
and I would literally put in my phone,
everything from I'm training today,
make sure my backpack,
my workout for the day.
If there was certain nutrition things I needed to follow,
I would put that in there.
And then as I would go throughout the day,
I would Mark off when I did it.
So if I looked at my phone and I realized I
did two things already,
I would Mark those off.
And then I'm like,
okay, halfway through my day I have such and such left,
let me knock it out so I can enjoy the rest
of my day.
If I wanted to go have dinner somewhere or if I
wanted to do some of the sports stuff,
those types of things,
I would try and knock out as much as I could
earlier in my day so I can have the rest of
my day off.
Sure. And then you'd have that portion of the day off
and you deserved it cause you put in all your time
for the day.
So yeah,
that's what I said.
So like it kinda made me realize what I had to
accomplish today.
But then as I started to accomplish those things,
I felt encouraged.
So I was like,
okay cool.
I knocked this out.
That was the biggest thing on my list.
I only got this,
this and this.
I can knock that out in a minute or it doesn't
even feel like you'll go throughout your day and realize you've
done so much and you still have the rest of your
day. So I think having things written out really helped me
and was a game changer for me because it didn't allow
my thoughts to overwhelm me as far as like,
Oh my gosh,
I have so much to do and it's time to do
it and you forget everything.
Right. That's a great takeaway for our listeners because it correlates
so well for business and it's so much better to do
the things that you don't like first and just get them
out of the way done,
you know,
at the first top of the day.
Well, yeah,
it's not even just that.
I don't like the ones that will take the most odd
needs because I work out so hard at such an elite
level, but I'm just like everyone else,
I don't get extremely drained after work.
I see it release endorphins and you get energy and stuff
despite how tired you are from the workout or how fatigue
you are.
So I like to accomplish my workouts earlier in my day.
Not bright first thing in the morning,
but I definitely like to accomplish my workouts and things that
I know that will physically and mentally exert me the most
earliest Monday so I can knock it out.
And then as I go through my day,
I just pay attention to things I need to do,
whether it be respond to emails or this and that.
I write kind of things down as they come to my
head because I find that really helps me to remember what
to do and to knock it out.
Yeah. So you're following a plan.
Let's circle around to nutrition.
What does that mean for an Olympic athlete?
Yeah, nutrition could be like for an Olympic athlete it could
be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Myself, I love to snack.
I love to eat without any strings attached and I just
want to enjoy my meal.
Yeah. So Asia,
I would say to that,
well, yeah,
you can cause you're going to work off any calories that
you have throughout the day.
So just go ahead with whatever you want.
Right? And that sounds so simple,
but that's not exactly how it works because even though my
schedule is in 10 I still have to maintain a certain
weight throughout the season because it's essentially kind of a weight
class sport.
You don't want to go over the maximum weight of for
the race day.
So it's the combined weight is you the driver and the
sled. And so after our first run down the track they
weigh us together and if you're over weight you're disqualified.
Oh man.
So that's important.
And as well as your energy.
So like you don't want to just eat anything that tastes
good or eat crazy candies and sugars and junk food.
You want healthy things to give you the energy.
Cause I have very long days,
especially behind the scenes when it comes to maintenance on the
sled and doing my workouts and different things.
So I have to make sure I'm energized and myself so
I'm not eating as many of the bad things as I
want. It's more so about fuel in my body and making
sure I'm managing my weight throughout the season.
And does nutrition at all.
Have to do with building muscle and all of the behind
the scenes thing too.
Yeah. For me,
I don't have a problem building on muscles.
I'm one of those athletes where I need nutrition to help
me to maintain a lighter weight because they changed the weight
limit for Bob slit down 15 kilos from 2014 when our
Olympics 2018 went Olympics,
so that's essentially over 30 pounds a different,
so we had to be 30 pounds lighter.
That's a lot.
Yeah, that's a lot.
Five of the kilos could come from the slip,
but the other remaining,
I'm sorry,
it's 15 yeah,
so five of the kilos come from the sled.
The remaining 10 so the remaining 22 pounds has to come
from the driver brakeman combination and so team USA is a
little on the muscular built side and so we were already
in 2014 near the way limits,
so we really had to work to move weight and maintain
a healthy lean weight for the 2018 winter Olympic games because
we had to be lighter.
I want to take a little bit of a step back
in your journey also because I liked when you were talking
about the fact that it was kind of a step by
step process.
You know you first were seeing success obviously in college.
People had their eye on you already and then when you
jumped over into sled,
the nationals,
the world,
it was a progression.
So you kept going from one event to another and seeing
success along the way.
Talk a little bit about that,
cause no one just goes from being local to all of
a sudden being an Olympian.
Right. I don't think I explained it that well because the
success progression wasn't as smooth as it found it.
It was rough coming into the sport in 2012 I came
in alongside three or four summer Olympians from the 2012 summer
Olympic games and we were all really good.
So it's a competitive atmosphere.
They named nine women to the national team.
Three of them are drivers and then the other six are
a pool of brakemen.
So we all travel together throughout the season.
But only three pregnant end up racing.
And so every time you're on the ice,
you're basically competing against your teammates for a spot in the
top split.
So that's where you were talking about the difference between a
solo sport but also a team sport and you have to
go back and forth.
Right, Exactly.
And so you really have to be able to understand that
no matter how good you are individually,
you still may not get the race you think you deserve
or you may not get this or they're testing different combinations
so you're not raising.
And so that's hard to understand because in track and field,
if I didn't race or if I didn't get anything,
it was mainly probably because like,
you know,
I wasn't performing at my best.
You were responsible for your own performance then.
Exactly. But now with Bob,
but it just may be a combination of other factors that
you're not even in control of.
And so you have to be able to understand that and
not let it affect your performance and your motivation moving forward.
That is so interesting and I'm sure so tough.
It's Delta.
Yeah. What did you learn from that that you take away
today? One of my biggest lessons I learned from the sport
of bobsled was to separate business and personal.
I've always kind of been,
if I don't like you and the person,
I don't like you in the business atmosphere type of person.
So like it's not going to switch on and off just
because of the setting.
And so as an Olympian and as a bobsledder,
you have to be able to separate the two.
So on the personal side,
you're thrown into a situation with eight other women where you're
traveling the world around each other.
24 seven I'm rooming together,
eating together,
doing all these things.
And these are women you may not necessarily get along with
or you would choose to be around outside of sport.
And so you're kind of forcing the situation where you have
to kind of embrace it and you build bonds and friendships,
but you have to be able to separate the two because
it gets messy,
it gets drama,
food. And in order to perform,
you have to be able to put feelings aside and do
what you need to be done in order to be successful
in the floor.
And a lot of times we have to help out the
same people we're competing against.
And it's so confusing and it's so hard sometimes because you
can easily come right off of the ice and move to
your teammate or something and then you're all there helping each
other move on your sleds and to the truck and doing
all this work when you don't even feel like seeing them
let alone helping us.
Oh my gosh.
So how do you do it?
Just continually try and keep your feelings in check or what
do you do?
Well, I had to understand that people aren't going to hold
you in the same regard as you hold other people in
and yourself.
And so you just have to be open to understanding different
people and personalities and act accordingly.
I think that I kept my goal and my mission in
mind, which was to make the Olympic games and when the
Olympic medal And you did.
Yeah. And having that in mind helped me to maneuver through
a lot of the unnecessary BS that would have distracted me
throughout the process.
I had to learn that this girl would act like my
friend one day,
but then secretly be trying to take my position and just
name that.
Even though I have a good relationship with one,
it may not mean that I raised with them the entire
time and I had to learn how to be a good
teammate to everyone despite how I was feeling.
So it was a lot of internal things I had to
work on to be become a successful Bob better because it's
not just about results and statistics,
it's so much more involved and you're around these people for
weeks and months at a time in other countries and small
city and so you have to learn to respect each other's
space and to still get what you need to do done.
Very interesting.
I had no idea there was this whole other level behind
bobsled. That's crazy.
I think for our listeners too,
you can kind of take this back and relate it to
a work environment.
If you have an assistant who's coming in and maybe they
have been challenging,
they're in a bad mood for some reason.
You still have to keep your eye on the goal And
not let it affect your peace.
One of the things that really helped me get through a
lot of that stuff was to understand that sometimes how a
person is acting as a reflection on them and where they're
at in their life and not a reflection on you.
And so if you stop taking so much to heart and
everything someone does or says You think it's about you.
Yeah, I think that can mess you up.
Especially with me going into a sport like that,
I didn't realize people were doing stuff because they were maybe
intimidated by me or you know,
we're essentially all working for a different position.
I'm thinking people don't like me that like obvious other factors
and then once you realize it's a competition or it's a
business, you got the personal feelings aside and you get what
you need to get done for your own goals.
If you remember what you have except for yourself and why
you're there,
it helps to mute out all the other noise.
Excellent. I love that we brought this up.
That's really going to be helpful to everybody,
so I really appreciate that.
Let's move on and talk about what's happening with you today.
Tell us what you're thinking.
What's in your life today?
Right now I'm kind of on this open path to discovering
what's next for myself.
I've been blessed to be in two Olympic games.
I don't think that chapter of my life is officially over
with because I have had Olympic goal set on my sites
since day one of being an athlete,
let alone being in the sport of boxing.
I know it's possible for us and I know we have
the talent and it's right there,
so like the fact that I know I can really go
for gold makes me want to return,
but I've also had a knee surgery and I've just been
trying to lay low and figure it out the next move.
I think that my mindset is so different this time after
your Olympic game versus 2014 after the Olympic games.
Because I felt like I had to have a plan,
I had to have something said,
I had to have my next idea down.
Because that's the first thing that after you win an Olympic
medal is like what's next and you gotta feel like you
have all these things.
And I rested into something that,
I guess I wasn't ready for it because I ended up
getting injured and having knee surgery.
So I think that right now I'm just kind of trusting
the process and seeing where my journey takes me,
trying to approach this phase of my life with the same
confidence I had when I approached,
but in the Olympic and going for that.
And so I think that it's gonna pull off for me
and I'm gonna make myself,
You also have maturity now you have experience with two Olympics,
right? So you're walking in as a different and more experienced
person really.
And you have four years,
you have four years now.
Yeah. And the things I want to explore it and relate
to my old shirts and some of my create some new
shift for me fell.
It's all about I think at this point in my life,
the mentality asset and not scaring myself and stressing myself into
thinking that I don't have it or I don't have anything
next like I just have to trust us and trust the
process and this culture with the same confidence I did when
it came to wanting to win in the Olympic medal and
Bob said when I had no background in this sport.
You're right.
I love when you say it that way because so many
people are afraid of the unknown and for you just to
say, I'm going to trust the process,
I'm going to go with what feels right.
I don't have to decide everything right now yet and just
see what comes of it And doors for yourself.
Even when I look back,
just from talking to you and looking back when my coach
told me about Bob flick,
I had a set in my head that I was going
to be an Olympian and track and field and you couldn't
tell me otherwise.
And so little did I know that he planted a little
seed in me that kind of stuck around and I ended
up accomplishing my goals just a different way.
And sometimes I think you have to be open to the
various ways your goal comes to fruition.
Like a lot of times we think you have to do
this, this and this in order to get your goal.
But if you focus more on your goal and what you
want for yourself,
and it shows up in various ways and manifests in so
many different ways.
Like I never would've thought I would have ended up becoming
an Olympic medalist in bobsleigh,
let alone a two time Olympian and Bob.
But, And think of what would have happened if you would
have been so rigid and say,
no, it's track and field.
I'm not doing bobsled.
You might've missed it entirely.
Hi or if I had that feeling where I wanted something
more, even though I was having success at EFT force performance
and even though I had great success training my clients and
helping them,
but I still had that feeling on the inside.
I think your intuition kind of guides you a little more
than you give it credit for sometimes.
Yeah. Just listening to it and trusting that it's meant for
it to work out in the end and you're meant to
be happy and confident and that could fear it as much.
I think everyone's just in a fearful state a lot of
the times and even when it comes to talking to other
people and getting feedback and help,
sometimes you got to realize people project their own fear onto
you so they may have their own fear,
insecurity and you have to make a decision of what you
want for yourself regardless of what anyone tells you what anyone
else says and do it because a lot of times you
won't even accomplish something that you know you want for yourself
because other people are scared for you.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean,
it's just like how love is,
success is the same way,
not a zero sum game.
Just because you're successful doesn't mean another person can't be successful.
I mean,
when you win an Olympic medal,
no one else can win that medal in that game in
that year like you,
but it doesn't mean they can't be successful in some way.
So if they lose to you in one race,
that doesn't mean they might not win in another race.
And honestly,
I'm going into 2014 Olympic games,
one in win gold.
I didn't go into just one into one.
An Olympic medal.
No. Cause you want to shoot for the top.
Yeah. And I won Brian.
Then you think I'm complaining about bronze or not winning and
go? No,
you shoot for the stars.
Well I don't think you missed very bad.
I've held your Olympic medal and I think it's pretty super
awesome. Asia.
So real quickly,
are you doing anything else right now?
Are you testing out some other things right now since you've
got four years or what's up with you?
Yeah, I can turn it around with a few things.
Yeah, it's possible that the games,
I've worked with some really amazing sponsors and so I've been
getting into a lot more modeling things and I did some
broadcasting, so I'm going to play around with those a little
bit. You might see me on your television screen.
Oh, you got to tell us if you are.
I will for sure.
So hopefully some of those things will be coming into place
so, and it's all been so fun and so I'm enjoying
every minute of it.
Wonderful. Well,
I love that you are testing out new things and just
keeping all of your options open.
I think that's a great example for us.
Yeah, I agree.
Let's close this out now,
but as we do,
I want to invite you to dare to dream.
I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.
It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.
I don't know,
maybe there's even some golden there.
I don't know.
We'll see.
This is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable Heights
that you would wish to obtain.
Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.
What's inside your box?
Asia. Ooh,
this is fun.
I've never really like kind of done this and a lot
of times like you set goals for yourself and you set
these things for yourself,
but then you're scared to say it kind of out loud.
Well, this is like the law of attraction.
You're putting it out into the universe so it can come
back to you.
Olympic gold is definitely in my box.
I know it's there.
I feel it every day.
I felt this since I've been an athlete,
let alone done.
Bob says so I know Olympic gold is in that box
and I know,
I think a successful career for me is in that box
for acting or broadcasting.
I've been doing a lot of stuff on television and it's
been working out for me and I'm getting a lot of
good feedback from that as well as getting my foundation off
the ground with my mom.
I know that's intuition.
We've been working on that for awhile.
I don't know anything about that.
I've been working with my mom creating the Asia foundation.
My name is spelled Aja,
so it stands for aspiring journeys ahead and if we want
it to be a mentoring program to work with Chicago public
school students and basically kind of introduce them to for us
and it can help create different types of journeys and lead
to different types of paths.
Like I said,
I started off in track and field.
It ended up leading to me and an Olympic medal in
a totally different sport.
But I have friends who did football and basketball in college
and one's a lawyer and one's a doctor so it can
lead to different things.
And so I think it's all about just opening your eyes
up to the journey and see where it takes you and
sports are one of those avenues that I think can really
help kids And starting off young like that too.
Yeah, Getting involved young.
Well you are certainly a great role model to start a
foundation. I think that's fabulous.
If any of our listeners want to know more about this
foundation, where would you direct them?
I can direct them to my Facebook page.
It's Asia Evans,
facebook.com Asia Evans,
and then if they want to learn more they can shoot
me an email and we can send them some more information
or direct message on there.
We're still working out all the details and it's kind of
just been something I little project so hopefully we'll get a
project off the ground and our first even herself later this
year. Super well give biz listeners,
you know there's a show notes page that's going to be
attached to this.
I will give you all of Asia's social media sites as
well as any updates,
Asia and the foundation as they come by.
We'll just update the show notes page too,
so cause people might actually listen to this a year from
now, two years from now,
maybe four years from now when you're on your way to
gold again.
So we can always keep this alive and update it accordingly.
Because I love the Asia foundation,
I didn't know anything about it.
On behalf of me and my listeners,
I want to wish you all the luck and I'm so
excited to watch your journey continue and thank you so much
for sharing.
Really, really solid advice in an interesting different way,
you know,
from an athlete perspective,
but so much of it that we can relate to our
businesses. So thank you so much Asia.
Thank you for having me.
It's been a blast talking to you.
There you have it.
Gift biz listeners and I really liked this episode because I
have some intuition of my own.
I feel like four years from now I'm going to be
reminding all of you about this episode and that's going to
be because Asia Evans wins a gold medal at the next
winter Olympics.
That will be so exciting.
And something else that's exciting that I referenced in the very
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