Athletics, Sacrifice And Mindset: Setting Up For Business Success With Jo Shattuck

Sports and athletics require hard work, sacrifice and a focused mindset. These are the same things that you need to grab on to business success, and former Top 10 in Women’s Racquetball, Dr. Jo Shattuck has these in spades. In this episode, Stephen Jaye and Dr. Shattuck share insights on how the qualities necessary for sports also translate to business. Dr. Shattuck talks about getting her late start in racquetball and bucking that to climb up to a top 10 rank in the sport in the US. We also hear of the creation of PantherTec and the Kinesthetic Awareness Training system based on her experiences as an athlete. Listen in and be inspired by Dr. Jo Shattuck’s journey. --- Listen to the podcast here: Athletics, Sacrifice And Mindset: Setting Up For Business Success With Jo Shattuck Pursuing and realizing our passions takes some hard work and sacrifice. The things that are important in life, bring satisfaction, actualization and all the like are going to take a little bit more effort and even some sacrifice. Some people in some pursuits naturally lend themselves to understanding that sacrifice. One community that I've found that understands the idea of sacrificing for something is the athletic community. I trained and completed Ride The Rockies, which here in Colorado was a 6-day, 400-plus bike ride up and down the mountains in different places. It's one of those experiences that you work hard for and get a certain feeling of that reward for that hard work. My guest, Jo Shattuck, understands that particular aspect of working hard and training for a passion as she is a former racquetball champion and has started a business called PantherTec, which helps people with techniques as well as some other things about their athletic pursuits and everything. --- Jo, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Stephen. This is great. First of all, I'm going to start by talking about your racquetball days because not everyone is an athlete or has an athletic pursuit. Athletic pursuits do have that whole air of you're following a passion and working hard for it. What brought you to racquetball? What was the process of training to become a racquetball champion like? If you put yourself in some other experience that you have no idea what it is, you don't even plan what it might be like, that's how you get some of the extra sensory inputs and different ways of perceiving concepts and ideas and things in the world.Share on X I don't know how far back you want me to go but I had a lot of energy as a kid. In the ninth grade, my mom saw the writing on the wall. I was getting in some trouble, staying out past curfew and stuff. She signed me up for 100 different things, Girl Scouts some basket weaving and whatever else. At the local club, I went, played it and lost every game, 21 to 1 or 21 to 0. That was way back in the day. I went on to undergraduate at Louisiana Tech. They had thirteen beautiful glass back quarters. In those days, being a teenager, you could drink, study or play racquetball. I did the 1st and 3rd. I decided I wanted to be good. I remember the exact moment I decided. I was hitting the ball and it went where I wanted it. I went out to the hallway and asked the fellows. I was like, “This could be something that I might get into. Are there racquetball contests?” They laughed at me because they're not called contests. They're called tournaments. I went to my first tournament with my glove. I won a Ladies B tournament in the middle of Louisiana by myself and all that. I was probably still smoking cigarettes at that time and doing all the things that teenagers do. I did not take the normal path to elite athleticism like some of my other colleagues did. You tried hundreds of different things. Do you feel like that's a common story as far as people finding that thing that they're truly passionate about? You've tried a bunch of things. Maybe some things didn't work out at all and maybe some things you're like, “This is cool.” You eventually find that one thing and feel like you were meant to do it. Business Success: When you teach a boxer, you don't want them to get their butts kicked too early, too often. You want to gradiate your success. As far as personal development, everyone's different. In my case, it was my mom saying, “We got to find something for you to do so you don't end up in trouble.” I was a teenager so I'm not driving yet and all that. People, in general, need to pursue a lot of different things. I often say this to people I’ve met in Colorado. You can’t get there from here. You can get there from somewhere. If you sit still, you're not going to do anything. What I mean is going out and taking a tennis lesson or learning Spanish. It's information. You're not marrying somebody and committed. I tend to filter my thoughts through, “Is this reversible or not?” Almost everything in life is reversible, aside from wrecking a relationship, that kind of thing. If it's reversible and you can learn something, say yes. This applies not just to teenagers but if someone's reading who is already in their 20s, 30s started a career and didn't necessarily like it, you're saying it should be the next step. One of the ideas of my previous guest described it as being in a situation where you say, “I don't know what I want to do but I can't keep doing this.” If someone's in that position, the next step you would recommend is to try something or a bunch of things. There's a lot of different lessons that tell that story. One of the times I quit college. Oddly enough, I'm a PhD but it took me a long time to get there. Mom and I were having a moment. I was like, “Mom, I don't think I like what I'm doing anymore.” She's like, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I don't know.” She goes, “What do you like to do?” I said, “I like to play racquetball.” She said, “Why don't you make a living doing that?” I noticed those 5 or 6 words. I was like, “Oh.” I love my mom to death. I say thank you to her a lot because she's that kind of woman. She would say, “Don't do anything you don’t want to do for longer than two weeks.” That's a metaphor for life's too short. If you're exploring a lot of things, if it's reversible, it's information. You can't get there from here. You can get there from somewhere else. Once you decided that racquetball was your future and it is what you wanted to do, what process did you undergo to make yourself successful? You can't get there from here, but you can get there from somewhere. If you stay still, you're not doing anything.Share on X I don't think I took the typical road. A lot of the racquetball starts younger. They have coaches, go to Junior Worlds and start planning as early as 6 to 9, all the way up to collegiate and all that. I started late. I would not recommend the way that I did it to people, which is to throw myself in. When you teach a boxer, you don't want them to get their butts kicked too early too often. You want to gradate your success. There is this theory of performance that success builds on success. The first two years, I played the pro tour. I lost every game. I don't even think I won a game. In 1991, I played Caryn McKinney, who was number one at that time because another girl got injured. I spent every nickel I had to go to Atlanta and lost 1 and 2 or some ridiculous score like that. Good or bad, it made me want it more. I probably had no business trying to do it. You had a couple of years on the tour and lost every game. What I'm wondering is what kept you going? What did it take for you to get to the place where you were more successful in that endeavor? What sacrifices, changes, attitudes and things like that? This is real deep. I came from a position of being an underdog. It's not a therapy session or anything but I identified much with the fight, struggle and underdog of it. Without that ingredient in me, I don't think I would have continued. Bon Jovi's like, “You live for the fight when that's all that you got.” On a side note, I give performance speeches as an athlete but that held me back in some ways because I identified with an underdog and not ever being above that. Some self-sabotage subconscious allowed me to get to number 6 in the world but not to number 5. Oddly, number five was my goal and I never got there. I got the number six for a quarter of a season. The idea is that I should have been more flexible enough to change my identity. I don't always have to be the underdog fighting. It would be nice to be on top and I can defend my successes. That’s about what's inside of me. I loved competing and every second of it. In the court, you can control yourself, ball, breathing, emotions and all that. It's your way to manage your environment. Everything else in the world is beyond your control. The other thing that was so exciting is it's 10, 10 and you're serving to make the US team represent the Pan-Am games. You have the ball and nobody knows what's going to happen. Not you, not the ref. It is so exciting to know that it's competing against yourself or another person. I love that and the underdog part, even though it stood at fault. You talk with the underdog part about being flexible with your identity in a way. If a reader out there is struggling, say they launched something, not getting success or getting that standard rejection, that standard delayed gratification, even starting with a failure and having to go back to the drawing board, what do you think a lot of people need to do with their flexible identity to be able to withstand something like that, rejection, initial failure and still want to keep going? That is the part that you can't get there from here, except if you always relied on something, you're much more comfortable keeping that something and not giving it up. A little bit of success can hold you back and might make you hold onto something that's not quit