The Power of Attitude and Effort | Former NFL Player & Momentous CEO, Jeff Byers

Michael Gervais (0:00)

What happens when athletes translate their competitive edge and discipline from sports into the business world? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Today, we have an extraordinary guest, Jeff Byers. So Jeff is a former NFL player who turned entrepreneur. He's a co-founder and CEO of Momentus, and Momentus is a leading company human performance nutrition. So he's got this unique background in professional sports and business. Jeff is flat out passionate about translating the discipline and resilience learned on the field into strategies for health and well-being and high performance. I love what Jeff is building at Momentus. It's really special now. Our values and our visions around high performance and helping others explore their potential are so well aligned that we've worked out an awesome partnership. And I'm really excited to support their mission. If you're interested in pushing your own boundaries, which I imagine you are, fueling yourself for optimal results and learning from someone who's excelled both on the field and in the boardroom, this conversation is for you. And just a quick little note here, if you found value in these conversations, I'd love for you to take a moment and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening to this podcast. It's really important. Your feedback helps us reach more people and grow this incredible community. So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation. Jeff Byers.

All right, Jeff, you and I have had the privilege of knowing each other for a while now, but we've never had the mics on. So this feels like a little bit of a treat for me.

Jeff Byers (1:59)

Yeah, it is, definitely.

Michael Gervais (2:01)

You've had, this is why I wanted to have the conversation with you is because you've had a lot of success at each stage of your life. And I don't know if you can clearly articulate all the ways that, or all the variables that go into you've continually find success or we're going to have to hunt around and pack around a little bit to figure this out together. But like you've really done it.

Jeff Byers (2:27)

Yeah, I've been really lucky. Definitely the cards have fallen my way a couple of times and have had to overcome some things. But I do feel there are some things that have continuously put me in a position to be successful.

And my dad taught me something really young and it was like these two things that still stick with me today. And I talked to my boys about them. My wife, Robbie Sick, could be saying them to my boys. But he talks about attitude and effort and two things you can always control in your life. And he kind of says there's this whole circle of things that you can control. And then there's a whole circle of things that actually drive impact in the outcomes of your life. And then there's this tiny little overlap. And two of those things are your attitude and your effort. And I remember as a little boy playing sports and him telling me about them. I remember in school, struggling in school and him telling me about them. And they've really stuck to me of like, I can control how I show up each and every day, right? And I, only I know how hard I can work, right? And I think those are the things that whether things are good or bad, that have been really impactful that I remember those things. I remember writing those on my, on my wrist tape, right? Playing for SC back in the day, right? Like when I would be down, like effort, you know, if I wasn't, if I didn't think I was trying, like those are my guiding principles that I think have really helped guide me in a lot of my success, but also not allowed me to, right? Feel sorry for myself or focus on things that aren't important.

Michael Gervais (4:10)

Okay. So for clarity, Gatorade Player of the Year in the high school kind of days, you made it to one of the premier college programs or football college programs in the country, USC, University of Southern California. And then you found your way to the NFL. And now you've founded or built a really successful company as well. So like, all right. And then that's just for context for the background. Attitude and effort. Those are pretty well understood principles that are important.

Jeff Byers (4:41)

Yeah.

Michael Gervais (4:41)