make sure everybody's aligned on the mission. When you have alignment on mission, people give you more. They know why they're doing what they're doing. They're going to do it more specifically and they're going to do it better. >> Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Leadership is not easy, but there's one magic ingredient that can make it a little easier, especially if you're an entrepreneur. It's the power of going all in on your mission. My guest today is an incredible example of what that looks like. Rocky Collis is the CEO of Mustard. Now, if you aren't familiar with Mustard, it's a fantastic sports coaching app that's backed by people like Drew Breeze, Justin Rose, and Mia Hamm, just to name a few. As you'll hear today, it's Rocky's relentless focus on Mustard's mission that has helped him and his team set clear priorities, attract top talent, and get these A-list investors on board. It can help you do the same for your organization. Plus, if you're a golfer, you're going to get a sneak peek at something that could absolutely transform your whole game. So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Rocky Collis. Well, this is going to be fun for everybody because we get to learn about a company that not a lot of people have heard about because it's a startup that you've initiated and it's called Mustard. Give us a snapshot of the business that you're leading today. Mustard is all about democratizing the world's best coaching. So what we do is we create products where people at home or at their local field can get the experience of being coached by the best coach in their sport. Take a simple video of yourself performing whatever your sport is, get back within about 30 seconds, a really simple report card designed by the best coach in your sport, showing you what you're doing well, what you could be doing better, and then automatically get drills and exercises recommended for you. Then on top of that, we host in-depth classes with many of the best athletes, many of the best coaches in the world. And you know, when you start up a company like this, you really have to do everything from scratch. You know, you just basically describe the mission that you have, which is the democratized coaching, which I love that. You know, how important was it for you and your co-founders, Tom House and Jason Goldsmith, to have a noble cause for what you do? I think the noble cause, the mission is the thing for a startup and probably really for any company. You know, but I think for us, we're in a really exciting place as a startup company. We've done great in many of the most important ways. And I think it's all attributable to the fact that we've got a mission that people feel strongly about. I really think the reason for somebody to become an entrepreneur is what I call wins above replacement, because this is kind of my philosophy for picking a career. Wins above replacement is a famous baseball metric where you can evaluate a player's success based on their statistics above and beyond what their replacement would do, right? But I think about entrepreneurship, it's an opportunity to change the way the world works. It's an opportunity to not just be a cog in somebody else's wheel, but to really kind of design what do you want the world to look like and then work backwards from there. So for us at Mustard, we saw this problem where most kids quit playing sports. And even in kind of what we call forever sports like golf, most people hit a roadblock where they stop progressing and often that leads them to quit. We felt like we could attack this problem, we could really level the playing field, we could provide a platform where kids could keep progressing in their sport, get all the personal development that comes from being an athlete and working with a teammate and working with a coach. We think that's an important change to make in the world. So when you kind of hone in on a concept like that, a mission, as you described it, I think that's what attracts people to your company. It attracts all the people that want to be a part of it, that want to build the product, that want to market it. For us, we've had to attract a lot of famous athletes, a lot of great investors to this company. It's the mission that does that and making sure everybody's on the same page about what that mission is. You have to obviously have some major strategies to get Mustard up and running. How would you describe your top three strategies? Mission is number one. I mean, it's just, you know, you may not hear that often as a strategy, but for us, we didn't do anything until all the key stakeholders were in a room, even some early investors in that room with us and defining very specifically what the mission was. Until you know what you're doing and why you're doing it, I don't think you can build anything else. For us, we're then, you know, getting into more strategies and tactics. We're a tech company, so there needs to be some sort of tech, moat and tech advantage. And for us, again, really being keyed in on what the mission was and wanting our products to be usable by the most number of people possible, we created tech advantages that are about mobility and scalability. Okay, so as opposed to about detailing every possible piece of capture to the, you know, one degree of accuracy, our technology is about usability, making it super easy for people to use and then actionable for them to use. So mobility and scalability. And then on a brand side, for us, we're about coaching. So it was critically important to us from day one that we have the best coaches in the world involved and the best athletes in the world involved. Again, that kind of relates back to mission. We were only pulling those people in because they wanted to be a part of what we're building. But if I'm picking three things, it's those three things. It's mission, mobility, scalability, the tech, and then having the best people in the world on board. And then you got to get structured to go after this. You got to build the team from scratch. I mean, tell us how you really went about that. Having the team, the internal team from scratch, I think in an early, early startup like day one before we've even met an investor is a little bit about luck. I mean, look, we initially were just researching this concept. And can we build technology that would accomplish what we're interested in and having a thousand phone calls around that and just out of stupid luck early on, we met these computer vision engineers who happen to be the best in the world at what they do. And it was just a conversation to find out whether this was even possible. And they were like, not only is it possible, but we can show you a prototype in a week. And so, you know, a little bit of synchro destiny, we called it to get to that point. And then I think team building, again, you got to recruit the best people in the world in every vertical of your company, right, in every department. So it's really making sure that you've fired people up about the mission, explained why this company can be important, can be impactful and be a big deal and why they ought to want to be a part of it. And so it's being really specific about the type of person you want in a startup company. It takes a specific personality. And then it's constantly selling, right? Because you're trying to get people that could work at any company in the world . It really is a startup company. You're recruiting people that can make a lot bigger salaries somewhere else. They got to believe in the upside of your company. They got to believe in the mission and they got to want to be a part of it. What kind of personality do you look for? You mentioned that. We talk about the difference between startup personalities and big company personalities. Not that one's better than the other, but for us, we need people that are comfortable being in a startup. I think people with us that are looking to be told exactly what to do and have a checklist of things to do every day and get those done and turn in a report. They can be very effective in some companies, but it's probably not enough in hours. We're looking for people to really lead departments to have creative ideas, to be proactive, to look for other ways to be helpful, to almost find problems that I wasn't even aware of yet, and then come to senior leadership in the company with, "Hey, I found a problem you guys haven't even noticed, and here's the solution to it." I think in a startup world, there's a level of pro-activeness that it's not just a nice to have, it's a necessity. Not everything's going to get done if everybody's just waiting to be told what to do. Startup versus big company personalities, that's the way we describe it. It's interesting you said you got lucky getting these tech gurus at the very beginning. That's like you to say that because I know you're a humble guy, but you have to convince these guys who are the best in the world at what they do to come to this startup. As a leader, how did you gear yourself up to do that? How did you land these two people? It's natural, David. I know that's not what you're looking for, but for me, this mission is something I've lived and I'm born of. I think that's the other thing about mission is it can't be forced. It can't be something you just came up with to fit the company that you want to build and you think it's a way to make money. Of course, we think we're going to make a lot of money doing the startup, but there's other ways to make money. This mission for me is something that I've been working on my whole life, whether it was the startup or not. There's a naturalness, I think, when I talk about the mission that people believe in, it has to be a way that you want to change the world. I think for great engineers or great lawyers or great accountants or great product people, people want to have an impact. They want to be important to the cause. Well, that means there's got to be a cause. I think for the people we've recruited is our cause, the one they already had in mind and they would have gone off to work on on their own? No. But they were looking for a cause to attach to and a cause to have a real impact on. When they hear me and Tom and Jason and my brother Luke talk about our founding mission, it resonates. They understand we can have a bunch of wins above replacement. We can change the world in an impactful way and they want to be a part of it. How do you go about defining the culture that you wanted to have as a new company or did you even do that? We did. We've tried a few different things, if I'm honest, structurally, over time to really have the culture that we want to have. We were a company we started in earnest, as you may recall, in January 2020. In some ways, not the ideal time to start a new company, right? Especially if you're thinking about culture building. Culture building is sort of nice to be in person with people. We hired people, I didn't meet them in person for a year and a half of working together. We were doing a lot of different things. We still are as basically a remote first company to try to impact the culture. We host a bunch of different silly competitions internally over Slack and different things you got to go out in the world and compete for points. Different ways we encourage people to interact with each other. I think the biggest thing for us, we use a system called EOS, Entrepreneurial Operational System, it's written about a lot in a book called Traction. It's become popular with startup companies. At its core, I would say it's about giving people ownership over an area of the company, responsibility and ownership, and being really clear about the results you expect from their ownership and from that part of the company. And then having really clear expectations and a really clear structure around the cadence of meetings and the cadence of reporting back. I think for us that has really helped create this culture of proactivity and recognition. Those are two headlines I would put on our culture. We also do regularly a review of the mission with the entire company. Every full company meeting, I start talking about the mission. We've done a lot of work on company values and trying to make sure that the words we use for our values are not just, we want them to be meaningful. Number one, be a great teammate. Number two, be a great coach to yourself and others. That might sound familiar from the title of a book you might be familiar with. But for us, that's really what we're looking for in the company. We want people to be great teammates is a lot about being proactive, right? Not just waiting for the things you're told to do and just doing those, but looking for ways to help your teammate out. That's what being on a sports team is all about. That's what we hope for people from our company. Being a great coach to yourself and others, that encapsulates a bunch of things . We want people to constantly strive for self-improvement. We call that Kaizen. That's about coaching yourself. Then also coaching others, not just the people below you, but the people above you too. How can you help everybody around you and the company improve? Culture wise, I think not just feeding those values to people, but letting them buy in on those values, be a part of the conversation and feel strongly about those values and that mission, I think that's been critical for us too. I want to dig deeper into how you lead and how you've gotten mustard up and running like you have so successfully. But first of all, I got to ask you what I'm sure everybody might be wondering is how in the world you come up with the name mustard? I thought that's what you're going to ask. First I'm ashamed to admit it was because of initially a lack of creativity on the founding team where we couldn't come up with our own name. We hired an agency to come up with a list of names. So that was step number one. We had a very corporate sounding name, which we knew wasn't the brand we wanted to go to market with. What was it just for historical purposes? It's still our corporate name. It's qualiaOS. And qualia is a meaningful word. It comes from Deepak Chopra who's been a mentor at Jason and we've learned a lot from. And it sort of has to do with total awareness of the present moment and it feeds into Jason Goldsmith's mental performance teachings and we think it's a really important word, but nobody knows what it means. So it's not a brand that we really wanted to go to market with. Mustard was on a list with a bunch of names and we wanted something that was playful because we want to attract a lot of kids to the company and we wanted to be this place that you're not just working to improve in sports, but it's a fun place to be and sports are supposed to be a game after all. We wanted it to feel very accessible. We didn't want to scare people off with sports and AI and computer vision in the name. We got down to two names. One was mustard and one was swivel and swivel I thought was interesting and some people on the founding team really liked it. It's actually one of the physical mechanical variables we look for in some sports. It's something Jason teaches from the mental side. If you have something negative that happens on the golf course, you got to sw ivel mentally and find a good focal point. And we proposed the two names on a big team called everybody and asked for a vote. And Jason Goldsmith, your friend called in a little bit late and he was in the car with Justin Rose, who's an investor and advisor to the company, former World Number One golfer. I didn't know Rosie very well at the time, but I asked him, I said, "Hey, the two names, what do you think?" And without quoting him on your show, he informed us that swivel was a very bad word in England and was something you use as a kind of like a vile insult to people. So we decided that was not an appropriate name for the company. And on the flip side, he said mustard in England is like what the kids are saying for what's cool. That's the mustard right now. So his quote was, his good quote was, "I can really see asking kids to download the mustard app." So that was the end of the conversation. Makes a lot of sense. You've mentioned one of your co-founders, Jason Goldsmith, who's a mental coach , one of the best in the world. Another is Tom House, a renowned coach, taught people like Tom Brady, Drew Brees, all the throwing mechanics, former Major League Baseball player. How'd you get connected with these two? Drew, my brother, who's the fourth co-founder, so my brother, Luke Collis, was a great baseball pitcher in high school. He was also a great quarterback. So he played quarterback at the University of Nevada, then Occidental College, and then he played professionally for seven years, won a few championships. But the unique thing about Tom House, who you mentioned, is he's really the father, we say, of modern baseball pitching mechanics. He was a Nolan Ryan's pitching coach back in the day, and with Nolan really invented pitching mechanics. But then became even more of a football coach. I mean, as you said, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, at one point, Tom was coaching most of the quarterbacks in the NFL. So my brother was lucky enough, he was training with Tom. They used to, this is years ago now, but I'm in LA, and Tom used to train all these athletes on the baseball field at USC. So it was open. You could walk in there, and there'd be Drew Brees, and Tom Brady, and Tim Te bow, and if you caught it just the right time of year, they'd be on the same field at the same time as Major League baseball players. Sometimes there'd be professional golfers there, other rotational athletes working with Tom. Very bizarre training environment. And my brother was there, so it was actually on my way, I was an attorney at the time, and I used to drive by the field on the way to the office, and I would stop. I would go early, and I would stop, and I would just listen to Tom's chalk talks in the morning. So he gives a specific lecture every day of the week. And I found, even though he'd be talking about something very specific to baseball or football, I found his coaching style so effective at getting people in the zone, getting people focused, that it helped me as a lawyer. I mean, he has a magical way about him. And so that's how I got to know those guys is I would stop in and listen to the chalk talks for half an hour a couple days a week just because I thought they were so cool. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Rocky Collis in just a moment. As you've heard us talk about, Tom House is a legendary coach and a co-founder of Mustard. And when Tom joined me here on the podcast, we talked about the importance of learning from the best, no matter who you are. Every night when you're hitting your sack or brushing your teeth, ask yourself, what did I do today to make myself better? And we're not looking for huge, 20% gains. We're looking for small gains. And small gains are more easily achieved if you can identify the actual problem or what needs to be fixed. I remember the phrase problem identification is half your solution. So if it's a mechanical issue, we have measurements and protocols to fix that. If it's a functional strength issue, we have measurements and protocols to fix that. This name was mental emotional, this name was nutrition and sleep. So pick something to get better at. And I have athletes right down three things. And they don't always get all three things done. But if they just do one thing better tomorrow that contributes 1% and those are the ones that have long-term success. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Tom, episode 74 here on How Leaders Lead. And you were a lawyer. Obviously, you know, it was helping you think through how you could be even better at that career. When did you guys have this idea? How did the idea itself come together with the four of you? It was really Jason Goldsmith. If one person had the idea, it was Jason. So I was a lawyer and I was very focused in my personal career on shifting to be an entrepreneur. Again, this is kind of my wins-above replacement philosophy. I just felt like as a lawyer, I was able to do, I had some cases that I felt very passionately about that were good. But I felt like as an entrepreneur, you can really change the way the world works. And that's what I was interested in. I was really fortunate to start a company with another former set of clients of mine, four members of the US women's soccer team, that company's Re-Ink, which has done great, honored to be a part of that. And kind of on the heels of starting that, my brother said to me one day, "Hey, you know, Jason would love to chat with you about some business ideas he has and just get your thoughts and advice." I was thrilled to do that. And honestly, David, I remember the first time I talked to Jason on the phone about this. I've heard a lot of business ideas over the years and I've heard a lot of good ones. But when Jason told me his ideas for what became mustard, my head exploded. I couldn't think about anything else for weeks. The way he painted it was so beautiful and it was really around this concept of Tom House has pointed out that probably every year, there's 10,000 kids that could have turned into something like a Nolan Ryan and they have no idea. They quit by the time they're 14 because they feel like they're not good enough to compete anymore and nobody's encouraged them, nobody's given them any information on how to progress. Could we create technology that fills that gap? And so when I heard it that way, there was just, we had to do at least the research to figure out if it was possible to build something to fix that. That's great. And how do you divvy up the initial roles and responsibilities between the founders to officially launch the business? For a while, I was just advising and trying to make introductions to investors as a friend. I was just trying to be helpful. Probably after nine months or a year where we had some real tech prototypes built just as the company registered, but we hadn't raised any money yet. And we had some institutional committed investors. The investors were saying somebody has to be full-time CEO and it can't be somebody who's doing it part-time and doing other things. And so at that point, I was the, I guess, logical candidate to do that and folks kind of kindly asked me if I'd be interested in doing that. Of course I was. My brother was actually just finishing his professional football career. So it was kind of lucky timing there where it was something we could start doing both full-time together. And we divided that up where EOS calls it one person being the visionary, one person being the implementer. We kind of do it that way. I sometimes call it I'm more external and looks more internal. He looks a quarterback. So he's great at running internal teams and he's a great process implementer personality. So he does that and I do a lot of the external stuff, investor relations, significant partnerships, those kinds of things. And then again, we're at heart, we're a coaching company. So to be founded by, I think, the two greatest coaches in America, maybe in the history of America, it's a huge advantage. And I think it's a lot of vision and coach and substance setting from Tom and from Jason. You've mentioned Tom House and he clearly is an icon in the coaching space with clients like Nolan Ryan and Brady and Ray's. How have you created a business model to scale Tom's genius as a coach? Starting from the perspective of scaling a great coach, rather than starting from the perspective of creating great technology is a big part of the difference for us from other companies that are sort of around the space. To take specific sports as an example, baseball for pitchers and for quarterbacks and football, we start with scaling Tom House, easily the most successful coach in the history of the world in those sports. What would he look for in a pitcher or a quarterback at various ages? And then you can easily program that into technology so that any kid when they upload a video, they're getting the computer vision system to report back to them exactly what Tom House would say to them. That's I would say step number one, they're very simple report cards that are actionable. Tom doesn't just measure things to measure them. He measures the things that he knows he can change and that will be impactful to change. So those are the things that go into our the things that we know we can give somebody drills or exercises that will actually improve their performance. And then I think there's a second step to scaling those coaches and this gets more into Jason's world too. But beyond the report cards, there's always more interaction people want with the great coaches. What we've found is once people have information on how their body works, they have that personalized information, then we can do what we call one to many classes. So rather than now you have an average direct one on one conversation with Tom House, which obviously doesn't scale. What we do is we just host a weekly zoom class where he lectures on something. It's similar to the lectures I used to go to and watch in person all the time. But any of our subscribers can join these classes. They can watch and listen, they can apply Tom's teachings directly to them because they understand what's happening with their body and their mechanics. But they can also ask questions at the time at the end and get more personalized information that way. We do the same thing on the mental side with Jason. So you do high touch and high tech. Basically, you're giving people access to the greatest coaches in the world. What other coaches think about this? Are they in fear of losing out? What kind of response are you getting people hearing about this? It's a great question. I think that initially there is a lot of fear about that. And that's something we've had to work through and overcome. But the reality is that we do not take business from coaches. We're such a lower price point. People that want to work directly with a one on one with a great coach are still going to do that. Tom House uses our technology when he coaches athletes. So you think about that. He's coaching professional athletes. He's using the mustard app to make sure his eyes are seeing the right thing. If the technology is useful for Tom House, who is the least likely person on earth to need this type of technology, then I can guarantee it's also useful for every other coach in a given sport. So that's what we've found. Coaches that give it a chance, which is an increasing number, an increasing percentage of coaches in our sports. It really elevates their practice. You said, you know, high tech and high touch. I think over time, there's a model for us that's even higher touch where we're referring to people to coaches in our network that we trust around the country. But we see our app as being kind of level one coaching that we want any amateur athlete to have to make sure they have the information they need to progress. Our classes are level two coaching where you can get some more in depth information. And then there's a level three where you're working in person one on one with a coach, but still using the mustard technology. You know, I know Tom has been working with 3D, emotional analysis and sensors for years. What's been the biggest challenge for you, Rocky, to get that same technology into an app? It was super easy. I just, you know, make other guys do it. No problem. I just sat back and watched. No, look, I mean, you're developing new technology like that. You have to be ready to go through a thousand iterations and the first many not to work. And you need to buy time and you need to have beta testers and you need to work through things. I still will say we got lucky early on to very quickly met the people that I think are the best in the world is type of technology and the fact that we got them to buy in and and join us was a big deal. It's just this scalability of the tech that I would say is maybe not the most difficult, but the most important to nail. If it takes 15 minutes to get a report card, if you got to be at a very specific camera angle and have a bunch of setup instructions, that's not something a lot of people want to use, right? It's got to, you know, ours works like you can put the phone up against a water bottle. You can put the phone up against a wall 30 seconds for the report card to come back. Initially, we were forcing people to upload new video through the application. Even that was a hindrance for a lot of people. So now, okay, we've set it up so that you can upload video that you've already taken on your phone. I don't know that I could put my finger on one specific thing in the tech stack , David, but I just think new technology, you have to be ready to iterate. You have to be ready to try, try, try again and not get discouraged about it on the first second or third iteration. So you really want to make this app easy to use and you want to have it at a good value. And you know, basically you want the personal coaching of a Tom House. You spend a weekend with him, probably cost you thousands of dollars. And how have you thought through just the economic model for the consumer? What's it cost and how's the business model going to work in your mind? In baseball and football, most of the app is free right now. People can upload videos. They can get a report card without cost to them. And that was by design. We want kids to use it. We want them to get the feedback. We funnel people into classes that are behind a subscription, depending on which level of classes you subscribe to. It's either $8 a month or $25 a month. And I think that works well in those sports. We have some huge distribution partnerships working on those sports where I think those models will be very successful for us. Where in the free version, we're still collecting a lot of data that we plan on monetizing. We think it will be very valuable both from a advertising perspective, but also from a scouting perspective. But in other sports, we'll talk about where planning to get into golf. We will have a affordable monthly subscription for the base technology in the application. And the classes will be actually more like free content that we're doing for promotional purposes. So business model has to be, I think, tweaked in a given sport because the markets are so different across some of our sports. And so we have to just be cognizant of that. But at its core, we're a free meme application where we're charging monthly or annual subscriptions for some of the technology and for some instructional content. Hey, everyone. It's Kula from Three More Questions. And listening to this episode with Rocky and hearing all about how his team at Mustard is getting the greatest coaching in the world into the hands of athletes everywhere. Has me thinking a lot about the How Leaders Lead app. If you haven't downloaded the How Leaders Lead app, head to the App Store download it. It's totally free. And when you do that, you'll get immediate access to thousands of two-minute leadership insights that will help you become a better leader and help your team thrive. It's like having a leadership coach in your pocket. So while we're not going to be telling you how to throw the ball better or how to fix your golf swing, we are going to tell you how to beat a better leader. So download the app today. It's called How Leaders Lead. Again, it's totally free. And you'll have a go-to leadership coach in your pocket. It's amazing. I know you're going to love it. Download the app for free in the App Store. It's called How Leaders Lead. You've got Tom working on the biomechanics and the technology part of the equation. Then you have Jason, who's a mental performance coach. How do you see scaling Jason or is that part of the plan? It's definitely part of the plan. I mean, Jason's coaching will be a big part of the application. When we launch it for golf, right now he hosts a weekly mental performance class for all of our subscribers for baseball and football, which people have found to be super impactful. I personally think Jason's teaching is the most important part of the company from a user impact perspective. I think if you're really looking to change somebody's life, and even if you're looking to make the biggest leap in their athletic performance, the quickest way to do that is through Jason's coaching. I think he's the most impactful mental performance coach in the world. I think mental performance coaching typically makes a huge jump for people. I know you and I have both experienced that with him. I think from a business perspective, you have to hook people with the physical. Justin Rose said to me as we were thinking about golf plans, he said all golf ers are swing geeks. I think that's right. Any of us have played golf or constantly tweaking or constantly researching how to move a little bit better, we're constantly trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with our swing. We're very rarely on our own, boiling it down to what's going on up here in the dome. We're thinking it's something in the body. For us from a business perspective, I think the easiest thing, the best thing is to hook people with physical coaching, offer technology that's going to give them the information that we're looking for on the physical side. Once they're pulled into our community, I think we change their lives with the mental coaching and that's all directed by Jason. You mentioned that Jason has had a big impact on your leadership. How has he helped you up your game? So many ways. I have a weekly call with him, but I probably talked to him three times a week just to make sure that I'm picking up all the things I need. If I had to pick one thing from Jason, I think it's the value of a personal routine and sticking to that and making sure that there's enough time in there to do the things I need to perform at my best. Obviously Jason's really into meditation and has helped me a lot develop a meditation practice, but I think even beyond that it's figuring out what other things can I do throughout the day that make sure I'm in the proper mental state. It's not just about making sure I have time to meditate. What are the other elements of a personal routine that are right for me? Something I get from Jason, but frankly I got a lot from you too, is the annual process of going through resolutions. I've got my card here on my desk. My three by five cards is my screen saver on my computer. This is something I got from you. We've never talked about it, but I know you keep your three by five card with your resolutions in your pocket. So I work on that with Jason every year, my card. What did I look like in the past year? What do I want to look like next year? And then therefore, based on what I want to look like next year, or five or 10 years from now, even we've done it that way too, what are the elements I had to build into my daily routine? So I'll give you a more specific example. And I got this as something I got from Jason. I wanted to work on in the last year, just being more kind to everybody I interacted with on a daily basis. And sometimes I think for all of us, but I know at least it's true for me, you get so caught up in what you're doing work-wise and the things that feel important to you, that you can skip over some of the familial interactions or interactions with people you just meeting on a daily basis and you can maybe not mind your manners or not be as nice as you could be. And so I was talking to Jason about the fact that I was feeling badly about that and feeling like I had to do better at some of that stuff, especially with some specific people. He suggested, well, you know, rather than have a goal of being nicer, because you'll kind of lose track of that, why don't you build in a routine of giving yourself a kindness score. And every time you have an interaction with one of those people that you're trying to do a little better with, just think to yourself, what kind of score do you give yourself on a scale from one to ten? Don't punish yourself if it's a bad score. It's going to be a bad score sometimes. You're just observing that score and by nature, the fact that you've made it a routine to give yourself a kindness score after every one of those interactions, you're going to naturally improve it over time. So that's one small example. But the point is, Jason Goldsmith, I'm talking to every week and I'm getting something like that every week for him that's important, not just from a company leadership perspective, but a life perspective. I love the idea of having a kindness score or tracking your daily performance on something that you want to change or get better at. I think that's fantastic. As a leader, you've got to keep growing this business and you've brought in all kinds of sports celebrities. Just rattle off a few real quick for everybody. Sure. Yeah, I mean, look, we've been really lucky to work with a bunch of incredible people on this company. So I mentioned Justin Rose, who's our lead golf investor and advisor. It's been a treat to get to work with him. In football, Drew Brees, the big investor and advisor of ours. Drew, I learned a ton from as well. Somebody who we talk about personal routines, you ought to have him on the show sometime. I think he, on a personal routine, is one of the top few people on earth in terms of what he's created for himself. Some football, Ronnie Lots, the investor of ours, really impactful for us. Ronnie's incredible. In baseball, we're lucky to work with Clayton Kershaw. I'm just a huge fan of, I'm getting used to dealing with these athletes a little bit, but still when I deal with Clayton, I'm enough of a fan boy that I'm a little bit nervous if I'm honest. We've been lucky to work with him. We've got a bunch of baseball players we work with, in part through the Major League Baseball Players Association. Nolan Ryan, who I was a fan of when I was a little boy, was an investor and advisor. That's been ridiculous for us to get to work with him. And soccer, Mia Hambs, an advisor, number one person on earth. We would have dreamed of working with there. Cindy Parlacon, president of US Soccer is an advisor to us. Super, super lucky to work with her. I'll mention Fred Whitfield as an advisor, particularly in basketball. He's president of the Hornets. Fred's been very impactful for us. You're probably afraid you're going to leave somebody out. So if you're out there wondering what he's going to mention you, I just cut him off. We've got a bunch more. You've got these celebrities. And as a leader, I was really curious as I thought about this. You've got to be careful not being a fan boy. How do you work with them and motivate them? Is there any difference? I hate to be a broken record on a pit. It's just mission. I just think entrepreneurs ask me all the time, "Well, how did you get all these people involved? How did you get people involved?" I don't think I have anything that I'm good at. It's not like I pitched them really well or they like me so much and we're buddies or something like that. It's not that. For many of these people, I probably pitched them really awkwardly. I was nervous and I just did my best. But there was a mission that resonated. So that's what it is. You've got to have, you're talking about people that have already wanted life. Most of them have made a lot of money. Of course, they like to make more money, but there's lots of things they can do to make money. Why are they doing this? They're not going to do it because they like you so much. They're not going to do it because you paid them a little bit more. As a startup company, you're not going to be able to afford to pay them enough cash to get them to move. Equity, okay. But there's got to be a mission assault to it that they actually want to change the world in the same way you do. You can't force that. That just is or it isn't. You're really looking at broadening mustard, moving into other sports. I know golf is something that you're excited about with Justin Rose helping you there. I understand you've just really signed up an extremely exciting deal with Golf Digest. Tell us about that and how you made that happen as a team. Look, we're honored to work with Golf Digest. As a startup company, to be able to partner with the brand that has been around for 60 years and is really known for instruction in this space. For me, I learned to golf as an adult, reading Golf Digest articles. And so now to get to work with them on this product, it's a huge deal for us. Also, as a startup company, you can win on product. You can win on people. But if you don't have the distribution, then you still haven't won. So it's this constant thought process of what's going to be your go-to-market advantage in addition to all your other advantages. We think Golf Digest in the Golf Space is the ultimate unfair distribution advantage for us. How do we make it happen? We did meet them sort of just out of luck. Justin Rose played a practice round with the editor-in-chief of Golf Digest. And so that's how we started talking with them. That was right the week Rosie won at Pebble Beach. So that was nice that Rosie did us a favor and won that week too. Got some good buzz gone. It's a partnership that we couldn't enforce. We have to be able to do something that helps them. They're not doing it to be nice to us. And I think from both perspectives, this partnership can be really impactful. I think for them, they have been around for a long time. Their brand is really well known. And I think they've got a bunch of incredibly smart business people there that are constantly looking to innovate and evolve. And I think in our space, they recognize that innovation for them probably works best through a partnership, that they're not going to go out and hire 15 computer vision experts and developers to build something like we have. So partnering in an important way is the best thing. They're basically in the coaching democratization business. They are instruction at scale in the golf business today. But they realize that what kind of holds people back from getting the best out of the Golf Digest coaching is the lack of a diagnostic. So you can read Golf Digest articles right now, but not understand which articles are applicable to you basically. And in partnership with Mustard, we can actually show people which Golf Digest content is most impactful, most applicable to them. We can be the diagnostic tool that I think Golf Digest has felt is lacking. So again, I don't think we got that partnership done because we did something so brilliant. I think it was really about honing in on how can we actually be helpful to them . Not just asking them for the favor of partnering with us, but thinking through, you know, how can we help their business get to where they already want to take it to? I want to shift gears for a second and take you way back. Can you share a story from your childhood days that really impacted the kind of leader you are today? Great question. Look, I was a baseball player myself. Baseball was my world. I was sure I was going to be a professional baseball player and that was going to be my first career, let's say. Yeah, I went to good schools. I did fine at school, but I always say like, you know, in college, my major was baseball. So I have a lot of athletic stories that really impacted the leader I am. In fact, I would say a big premise of our company is that most people in this company, we got our personal development from sports and we want kids to be able to have that same experience. I remember the worst start I ever had in my baseball career, my sophomore year in college. So I pitched a Cornell, not a baseball powerhouse as much as I loved it there, in part because the weather is not too good as many people know. And you take a spring trip every year. So you come, you know, March, we get on the road, we fly somewhere and we play some team that's already played 30, 40 games and it's our first game of the year. And so my sophomore year, we flew out to UCSB and I'm from LA. So this is a big deal for me. I was going to start game one and I had a ton of family coming. I had my old coaches come in. I had high school and younger friends coming to watch me pitch and I was sure I was going to throw a complete game shut out. And I give up nine runs and two innings. I remember that. I think four home runs, you know, loud, awful home runs. I mean, I can still feel them in my bones. And I remember thinking after the game, what was I thinking? Why did I think I was going to be good? Why did I think I was good at this? Why did I think this is my future? My whole life isn't shambles here and without making a long story too long, I just said my next start, I had my best start of my college career after a lot of great coaching in between. And so from that one experience within a week's time, I would say I learned the value of, you just got to be okay getting hit around sometimes and coming back for assistance. And I learned the value of great coaching. And some of the advice that I got from my parents and also my coaches in between those two starts was life changing. Well, you did pretty well, Rocky, because you're drafted by the Seattle Mariners. And that's not bad. Not many people get drafted into the major leagues. You know, this has been so much fun. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Great. Let's do it. Yeah. What are three words that best describe you? I think persistent, thoughtful and committed. You should say kind now since you've made that an objective. Yeah. Next year, maybe next year, who would play you in a movie historically? If we could go back and maybe get a young version, I know all my friends would say, Tom Selick, if you see pictures of me with a mustache, it's pretty Tom Selick. So we're Tony Danza, a young Tony Danza. I look a lot like him. I see both of those. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? I'll take Tom House for what we're doing as a company. That would be really interesting to see the world through his eyes. But I also just think he's somebody who, again, his coaching is just magical and impacts people in a unique way. I'd love to see the world through his eyes. Your biggest pet peeve? I think as a company, it goes back to this notion that we are constantly looking for pro-activeness. And so my biggest pet peeve is when we're working with outside partners or anybody else who feels like it's trying to do the bare minimum. That gets to me. Do you have any hidden talents? I fancy myself a decent singer, but nobody else agrees. If you add four bats against Clayton Kershaw this afternoon, how many hits would you have? Definitely zero. By the way, that's true for anybody listening to this. Unless you have an actual major league baseball player listening to this, nobody at home should think, "I've stood there in the bullpen while Clayton's throwing. No average person is getting within two feet of the wall." If I turn on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Cheesy pop music. You got cheesy pop music and country music and nothing in between. What's something about you a few people would know? I think for me, just the fact that it's family first. And obviously I'm doing, I'm working really hard on our company and I'm spending a ton of time on that. But for me, my wife and our son and our daughter who's on the way is number one . We're at the end of the lightning round. So you're in a startup mode. It's 24/7. How do you balance the professional with the person? It is 24/7, especially mentally. You're right about that. It's something Jason's helped me with a lot. And realizing that to be the most effective version of myself as a startup leader founder, I got to also take care of myself and taking care of myself means making sure I 'm focused with my family when I'm with them. But that gives me energy. Making sure I get my sleep, making sure I get my workouts in. When I don't do those things, I'm just not the best version of me. So a little bit you have to relate it back to that. And then I think my wife works in advertising. She always has this phrase. She says, "Strategy is sacrifice." And part of what I take from that is we have to be really clear about priorities. And sometimes it's hard to say, "Well, something's number two and something else is number one." Or for me, it's just being clear that family's number one. I love that strategy is sacrifice. That's great. I wish I would have come up with that one. That's terrific. I love that idea because it's so true. You know, I got to ask you this one. What drew you into the legal profession? And when did it hit you that, "Hey, I've got to do something more?" So look, I played minor league baseball as you mentioned. That ran its course through no choice of my own. And so a little bit of what's next. Both my parents are attorneys. My mom was a judge for a long time. My dad didn't practice but he went to law school. It felt natural for me to go to law school. I was really interested in using a lot of degree to do good in the world. I was interested in politics. I was interested in a bunch of areas of practice that I thought could have a huge impact. I loved law school. I felt like law school really taught me how to look at issues for multiple angles and do sort of in-depth analysis of things and frame arguments in a really impact ful way, which I see as applicable to a lot of different professions. I got to work at great law firms. At the time, I think some of the best law firms in the world. There were cases I enjoyed, but overall I didn't enjoy being an attorney because I felt like I wasn't having any wins above replacement. I felt like they could have plugged anybody from any good law school into my job and they would have basically been as effective and the cases would have turned out the same. And it didn't really matter that I was there. I thought I was really going to like the competitiveness of it. I need wins and losses in my life. I get a lot of drive out of that. But I just didn't feel like I was really impacting the winner or loss as a junior attorney at a big law firm. So for me, it just came down to, again, if I'm ranking my priorities, how much do I care about making money? How much do I care about work, life balance? How much do I care about? Number one for me was impact. I want to leave a mark. I want to change the world in meaningful ways. And I just feel like, I continue to feel like as an entrepreneur, you can have the most wins above replacement, you can most directly change the world in the ways you want to change it. You know, within a few years, I decided I want to shift from being an attorney to being an entrepreneur. Would you learn with Reink, your first startup that you've really tried to take into the mustard launch? Number one, the value of building a brand around people. Okay. So this is a Sequoia trained thing as well. But we really saw the importance of this in launching Reink. When you're trying to launch a direct to consumer brand, you're trying to give that brand personality, you're trying to give it meaning, the average consumer has to be able to look at that brand and understand what it means, what it stands for. The quickest way to do that is to build a brand around an actual person. That gives the brand personality. So at Reink, you know, I'm honored to be a part of it, but the brand is co- founded by Megan Rapinoe, Chris and Press, Tobin Heath and Megan Klingenberg for icons of the US Women's National team. So for people that follow those players and are fans of them, Reink has this massive starting point that most consumer facing brands could only dream of. It's got a devoted following out of the gate. Maybe more importantly, it's got meaning out of the gate. So we've tried to replicate that in a parallel, but much different way. We've tried to replicate that with mustard. We've talked a lot about Tom House and Jason Goldsmith building brands around them, two of the greatest coaches of all time. Doing brands around, you know, Drew Brees, Clayton Kershaw, Mia Am, Justin Rose , Liz goes on with our athletes, Kerry Walsh, James Blake, you give the brand meaning and you let people understand what they're coming to get. It's not just a technology company where you're not sure about the data they're giving you. You're coming to get coached by our people who you know already. You know, speaking of impact, you're on the board of the Hollywood Community Housing Corporation. What's the project you're working on there that you're really excited about? We've got a project in Venice that has become a bit contentious in LA for a variety of reasons. I mean, the thing about affordable housing is everybody realizes their cities need it, but a lot of times we hope it gets built, you know, somewhere that's not in our neighborhood. And so there's been a lot of talk in LA about this project. We're working on a Venice that I think will be really important for the community. We'll house a lot of people that need the housing, but it's taken a good bit of work from the great folks at Hollywood Community Housing to make sure that project goes forward. Well, it's good that you're volunteering on that front. And last question here, what's one piece of advice you'd want to give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? Can I give two? You can't. Fire away. Number one, make sure everybody's aligned on the mission. When you have alignment on mission, people give you more. They want to make it a bigger impact within your organization. They know why they're doing what they're doing, they're going to do it more specifically, and they're going to do it better. So I think alignment on mission is number one. Number two, the value of persistence. People ask me a lot as a startup founder, how did you raise the money and, you know, how do you continue to raise the money? And my answer is always nothing that I do so well. It's just being willing to get told no, being willing to get punched in the face a thousand times and just keep trying your best. So alignment on mission and persistence for me, those are the two north stars. Well, Rocky, you're very focused on your mission and it's contagious in terms of how you presented to the world and the success that you're having so quickly as you build a startup, which is not easy to do. And you are definitely persistent. There's no doubt about that. Even though you got rocked, you know, that one outing in college, you came back and you got drafted, you know, major league baseball potential. I mean, not many people have that and then go on and be a lawyer and then a great entrepreneur. So thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today, Rocky. Well, David, I've learned so much from you. Honestly, it's just an honor to be with you. I really appreciate you having me on. Now, Rocky says that when you have alignment on a mission, the people around you, they just give you more. And boy, he's absolutely spot on. People want to know how they're making a difference. That's the power of a clear mission. But listen, you can't just assume people know what that mission is. You've got to be all in on it yourself. You've got to talk about it, shout it from the mountaintop, strategize around it and believe in it with all your heart. This week, consider how much you talk about the mission of what you lead. Ask what you need to do to embrace it more fully. When you do, you'll have the kind of noble cause that helps you build a great team and win together. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders go all in on their mission. Coming up next on How leaders lead is Charlie Sharf, the CEO and president of Wells Fargo. Ultimately, our culture is going to be defined by the way people view us, whether it's our customers, whether it's people who work there, whether it's people in our communities. That's going to define what the company is, not what's on our sheet of paper. You want those two things to agree, but you have to live it every single day. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in. While I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I may get a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader that you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]