Mark Messier: Leadership, personal growth, and performing under pressure

**Peter Attia** (0:04)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top-performing individuals in the world. And this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peterattiamd.com.
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better. I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally, and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better decisions and improve the quality of their lives.
Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy, and even before starting the podcast, that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published in this space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own. In fact, we now have a full-time person that is dedicated to producing those, and the feedback has mirrored this. So all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work necessary to support this?
As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads, but after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons. Now, the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you could trust me if I'm telling you about something when you know I'm being paid by the company that makes it to tell you about it.
Another reason selling ads doesn't feel right to me is because I just know myself. I have a really hard time advocating for something that I'm not absolutely nuts for. So if I don't feel that way about something, I don't know how I can talk about it enthusiastically. So instead of selling ads, I've chosen to do what a handful of others have proved can work over time, and that is to create a subscriber model for my audience.
This keeps my relationship with you both simple and honest. If you value what I'm doing, you can become a member. In exchange, you'll get the benefits above and beyond what's available for free. It's that simple. It's my goal to ensure that no matter what level you choose to support us at, you will get back more than you give.
So for example, members will receive full access to the exclusive show notes, including other things that we plan to build upon. These are useful beyond just the podcast, especially given the technical nature of many of our shows. Members also get exclusive access to listen to and participate in the regular Ask Me Anything episodes. That means asking questions directly into the AMA portal and also getting to hear these podcasts when they come out. Lastly, and this is something I'm really excited about, I want my supporters to get the best deals possible on the products that I love. And as I said, we're not taking ad dollars from anyone, but instead what I'd like to do is work with companies who make the products that I already love and would already talk about for free and have them pass savings on to you. Again, the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will find enough value in, one, the podcast itself, and two, the additional content exclusive for members. I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. My guest this week is Mark Messier. Mark is considered one of the greatest hockey players of all time. He had a career that spanned 25 years in the NHL, and he's played the second most games of any player, second only to Gordie Howe, and there's an interesting story that we'll get to in the podcast about how close he came to that record. He's also the second leading all time scorer of all time, or as he likes to put it, the first leading all time scorer amongst mere mortals with Wayne Gretzky being the only one who scored more than he did. It would take me too long to go through all of Mark's professional accolades, six time Stanley Cup champion, the only person to captain two different teams to win a Stanley Cup, the Edmonton Oilers and the New York Rangers, in addition to all the number of all star games he's played in and the number of MVPs that he's won, et cetera. I wanted to talk with Mark about a number of things today. I wanted to obviously talk about his career, and this is a boyhood dream of mine to speak with one of my heroes who I've had the privilege of getting to know over the past couple of years, but also I wanted to just talk about Mark's philosophy in life and leadership and the amazing transition he has made and the ease with which it seems he's been able to transition out of the limelight into his family life and his work outside of hockey. We touch on many things here, but we do sort of go through it chronologically, and I think if you're a hockey fan, this is a no-brainer for you, but I would encourage you, even if you're not a hockey fan, to listen to this one. I think you're gonna get a lot out of it. I think I was really on the edge of my seat, honestly, during so many parts of this, and even though a lot of the stories I knew, what I don't think I really appreciated growing up watching Mark was the subtlety and the maturation process that came along with his leadership and his growth as an individual. I almost forgot that he entered the NHL at the age of 17 or 18 years old, which seems almost unimaginable today. I'll leave it at that, and without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Mark Messier.