What Can You Learn From Olympic Gold Medal Winners? | 357

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Dan Kuschell

Dan Kuschell is a husband, dad, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He runs Breakthrough3X, a company that gives you instant access to a Fractional CMO Team. Breakthrough3X helps founders and CEOs grow their businesses 3 to 10x and generate more clients daily with a simple system that gets them free from the day-to-day. Dan has owned 12 companies since 1992, building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the Host of the Growth to Freedom podcast, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.


Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Dan Kuschell shares some of the valuable lessons he learned from the 1980 US Olympic hockey team’s gold medal success
  • The power of good coaches and mentors
  • How can you create a culture that brings out the best in your team?
  • The key components that lead to business miracles

In this episode…

When the 1980 US Olympic hockey team faced down the seemingly unbeatable teams from Russia and Finland, they were a clear underdog. Yet, despite all the odds, they went on to beat both teams and win the gold medal. So, how did they achieve this “miracle,” and how can you replicate the same success in your business?

According to former players from that iconic team, the miracle didn’t come out of the blue — it came from months of hard work and great coaching. By creating a culture that brought out the strengths of each player, the team’s coach brought them to victory and achieved historic success. As a business leader, you’re the coach for your team; it’s up to you to cultivate a similar culture if you want to achieve the same triumphs.

Join Dan Kuschell in this episode of Growth to Freedom as he talks about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team’s incredible gold medal victory. He discusses how they achieved their “miracle” wins, the important role coaches play in team success, and what you can do to cultivate the same winning culture in your business. Stay tuned!

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:00

So, do you believe in miracles? This is growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation, and leadership. We are helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads, more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach, a bigger impact and make a bigger contribution. Those are the famous words of Al Michaels. When the 1980 Olympic hockey team David versus Goliath captured, the world’s imagination captured our hearts. And there’s so many incredible lessons from the 1980 US hockey team. Here’s a quick question for you. Do you remember where you were when the US hockey team beat Russia, or won the gold medal back in 1980? Quick story, if I recall correctly, I was with a friend of mine named Mike and his house when not only the US won against Russia. But then that following couple of days, I think it was Saturday morning when the USB Finland I was at his house enjoying the game as well. I was 10 years old, right? So imagine being 10 years old watching this team who definitely an underdog and that’s an understatement. And I’ll get to that in a second. Because there’s so many lessons about life, about relationships, about business that we can take from the 1980 US hockey team that won the gold medal, right? Because they weren’t even supposed to be in the game. They weren’t even supposed to be in the metal round. It was amazing. So where were you if you can remember where you were when the 1980 US Olympic hockey team played and beat Russia or beat Finland? Post down in the comments if I’d be curious to know where you were, or if you could remember, right for me, it was deeply profound. And he and here’s why. Right? Because think about this. First of all, you want to speak about David and Goliath, which by the way, is a great story, right? We talk about in business, you know, really, you’re in a story business, you know, what is your business story? So here was little David playing Goliath, the USSR, the Russian team. Well, if you don’t know much about hockey, no big deal. Let me just give you a quick summary. The Russian team had won essentially every game for over three seasons, including three games leading up to the Olympics exhibition games, where they beat three NHL teams, National Hockey League, professional teams, they be three of them handily. Then they played the US team about a week or so before Lake Placid which is where they played the 1980 Olympics in an exhibition game. And they destroyed the US team. They destroyed them. It was like I believe it was like 10 to three. Right? So they imagine you’re on the US Olympic team. You come in to Lake Placid, you just get pounded by Russia. You’re the youngest team in the Olympics, right? If you even win a couple games, it would be a big story, let alone get to a metal round game against Russia. And that ultimately gets to the gold medal game and then win against Finland and win and take the gold medal. And so what what inspired today’s session this episode this segment, if you will, I was watching a documentary a couple days ago, on the history and the breakdown. They interviewed three of the players from this documentary The three main players the goalie, his name is Jim Craig, who played out of his mind Michael ruzi. Oni who never played hockey again, after the Olympics, he retired but he was probably the poster boy or the most famous hockey player at the time on the US Olympic team. And then Mark Johnson, right. And so they interviewed the three of them in this documentary, and they literally went to a degree play by play, they collapse timeframes, obviously for entertainment purposes. And they were just gonna give speaking their mind and I’m gonna fast forward to near the end of the documentary, and they went through and asked all three players, as you recall this miracle that happened like what did the Miracle on Ice mean to you? Because that’s kind of the theme if you haven’t seen the movie, by the way, the Disney movie Miracle on Ice. Make sure to check it out. Kurt Russell does a great job playing coach Herb Brooks and I’ll get to the idea of coaching in a second how valuable are coaches you know, what does a coach do brings out the best in his talent gets them to believe in things that maybe they didn’t even believe in of themselves. It gets them to play as a team and you feel like you’re better off than before you ever met that coach, right? That’s what good mentors, good coaching can do for us, right? Think about that. Anyway, they interviewed these three players and said, What did the Miracle on Ice mean to you? And I love what Jim crag the goalie for the US Olympic team in 1980 said, well, the miracle to me was simply called hard work. And he said, what I recall from the Miracle on Ice was the hard work was coach Harvey Brooks having us work to be our very best. And it wasn’t even so much about the two weeks in Lake Placid in the Olympics, it was the six months of work together as a team, and all the memories and all the work and all the stories that were developed in the teamwork and the camaraderie that were built out of that. And see, as you hear that, as I do my best to give you my revisionist version of that, like, what could you do in your business today? To create a culture to create an environment? Yes, then it’s hard work it’s supposed to be and whatever your championship is, whatever you’re playing for playing the win, whatever you consider those Pinnacle moments, what can you do to create an environment up to that that is so memorable, that people walk out of that going, Wow, that was the best six months of hard work I ever had creating something amazing. Disney had that ability with Imagineering and bringing teams together, Steve Jobs apparently had the ability to stretch people beyond their limits. What could you do to help bring out the best in others? That’s what a great coach does, like her Brooks, like maybe like you bringing out the best and other people.

What could you do to help bring out the best in others? That's what a great coach does, like Herb Brooks. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

And so as you think about today, as you think about tomorrow, right? You know, the bottom line is, is tomorrow is your opportunity to be better than you are today. What will be your miracle, right with hard work, and action, those things precede the miracle, those things precede the miracle. So a couple quick lessons, number one, hard work. And number two, have a great coach. Number three, you’ve got to bring a team together that has beliefs. Because at the end of the day, if you have doubt, you can’t have belief and faith at the same time. Can you right, see, an ounce of doubt, will ruin 1000s of pounds of faith. It only takes a little drop of doubt, to ruin it right?

An ounce of doubt will ruin thousands of pounds of faith. It only takes a little drop of doubt to ruin it. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

A Bad Apple does what it suppose a bunch. So be careful. Protect your mindset, protect your heart space, work in faith, work in belief. And you know what miracles can come true. You and I deserve miracles.

Work in faith. Work in belief. And you know what? Miracles can come true. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Miracles happen every day. Now go create one, it takes hard work, it takes getting a good coach, it takes getting a good mentor. And who knows, I don’t know if you’re David, I don’t know if you’re Goliath, maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. The bottom line is with hard work action, and good coaching. You can do anything, make it happen.

The bottom line is, with hard work, action, and good coaching, you can do anything. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Seize the day, go out with your gold mentor today. And we’ll see you soon. Bye for now. Oh, by the way, if you like the new lighting, I just tried out a new new setup here, post your comments to below I’d love to get your feedback on the new lighting, where we did some things to create some different lighting views. Anyway, that’s it for now, if you want to go deeper, by the way with some of our resources, there’ll be a couple of links in the comments, you can check out our book over here A Champion in the Making, awaken the champion within your life, business and relationships. We also got this great book called Bootstrap Business, what you can learn from multiple experts and talent from around the globe as well. And also, if you’re looking for a way and you want help implementing strategies to grow and scale your business with less stress, drop us a message or hit a link below and we can schedule a conversation go from there. That’s it for now. Make it a great day. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

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