YouSaid · the spoken record

Rob Fraser

lines on the record: 120
first: 2024-10-15
most recent: 2024-10-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Some large goal and ultimately being in kind of control of my destiny. And yeah, so it was about a two year period of trying to navigate that and figure it out and really make sense of it.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Friends, but you don't see them in the common interest starts to fade. And that kind of led to this dark period for me where I was like, what am I going to do with my life? At this point, I was in my early 20s. So the rest of my life was still ahead of me. But I felt so lost, you know, because I just, I didn't really know what to do. And the idea of not having that big goal was terrifying. And it really led to this period of trying to figure out what am I going to do with my life. It sounds a little ridiculous sometimes, but it was just kind of, yeah, it was this identity crisis of how do you reinvent yourself? How do you build a new network around something you don't even know? And what am I good at? You know, like I didn't go end up going and or finishing university. You know, I hadn't worked any other career jobs. I worked the odd jobs here and there, but cycling was my life. Sure, you could go into coaching or something like that, but that wasn't really where my passion was. It was really about that fulfillment.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for 10 years, I woke up with a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life and where it was going to go. And I loved that. I woke up every day with a fire in my belly saying, this is the goal. Here's how I'm going to get it. And here's what I'm going to do. And then almost seemingly overnight when I walk away from the sport, that's gone, right? Your identity's gone. You know, like the day before I retire, it's, hi, I'm Rob Fraser, professional cyclist. The next day it's hi, I'm Rob Fraser. Who is that, right? I've identified as this cyclist for so long my entire identity is that my friend network is that. You know, my friends at this point were from all over the world. We would meet up during the season or the offseason and be in the same place. It was the common language we all spoke. It was everything the next day that's gone. And over the next year that fades away because you're no longer on the scene. And the friends, they're still.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I talked about you just have to do them. That taught me you can do it. I was feeling was so crazy, but ultimately you get up there and you're prepared and when you're ready to execute, the pain goes away. I think it's really important to go through those tough times and realize that you can come out the other side because that's ultimately where you start over time to build that muscle and be able to deal with the really high stress things as they come and stay calm during them. I'd be very surprised when we could teach themselves to do that without going through the tough times.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, so the way our sport worked is you train all winter and you basically compete in the summer. And so you spend so much time preparing for a race that you have three months of racing and you would constantly get injured and you would just have to figure out how to make that work. And yeah, leading into one of the biggest races of the year, I had a broken wrist, a broken finger. There's no long-term damage to just dealing with the pain. I can get this dealt with when the season's over. In my mind, it was like I've worked too hard to just back away from this challenge. It's like, so I asked myself, what is it going to take to get this done? You know, I couldn't hold on to the handlebar. I didn't have the strength. And so I was like, I'm going to have to tape because everything's led to this moment. I'm not going to back down. Like if I physically can do it, if I'm awake, I'll be there. And I think it's those lessons. And ultimately, we talked about earlier about resilience and that mindset of doing hard things.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The wrong way to approach these things. It's just so important to extend the timeline on these things and really just give it your all.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a total mess in both really in sport being a professional athlete or a competitive athlete is glamorized. You're seeing the very tip of the iceberg. You're seeing the 1% of the time that it goes right and you're standing on the podium and you're seeing these people succeed, but you're not seeing the early mornings. You're not seeing the injuries. You're not seeing the setbacks, the mental health that comes along with it. And similarly with business, you see the headlines, but you don't see what led into that. The athletic careers and the business successes that we all read about, these are often these 10 year overnight successes, right? And people glamorize that and latch on to that and be like, you know, that's what business is or that's what sport is. And I think that's somewhat destructive because it really misses the true nature of these endeavors, which is resilience and tough times and a long time to get there as well. And we kind of get into this world with where people want to hack or they want to shortcut. And I just think it's the wrong messaging.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I raced downhill mountain bikes, but I grew up in Pickering, Ontario. There's not a mountain in Pickering, Ontario. So how do you compete with people that live around the world, around mountains or the what I call the BC kids, the people who lived in BC with all the mountains and British Columbia? And you have to really figure out how to make that work and how I made that work is I would build little 10 or 15 second parts of the course on the hillside by my house. And what that taught me was I really learned precision and the importance of really executing at a high level and executing when it mattered, positioning myself and being prepared for when the race run came to be the most ready I could be. That started way before the actual event started that was studying the course in advance, it started preparation, the training all the offseason and just knowing ultimately when you get to the start line, whether it's in sport or business that”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in sport, I was never the most talented rider. And honestly, sport was a manifestation of my entrepreneurial tendencies because, like I said, I grew up in a sport family. I think when I look back, if I had been introduced to business at that time, I would have gone into business and done something more entrepreneurial. But I didn't have an entrepreneur model growing up. I didn't really even know that was a thing. It was, like I said, traditional family, normal jobs, and sport. And so I was like, okay, I have all these kind of tendencies of, you know, wanting to go after a big goal, willing to take risk, resilient, pointed at a sport, you can be pretty successful. My superpower that I use with those entrepreneurial tendencies in sport was preparation and positioning. How can I be more prepared than any other athlete when it comes to the start line? How can I study the course? How can I take what I know that's coming up on the season before, replicate that at home and practice and study it, knowing that I had disadvantages?”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like having the network I did was so incredible. And I just think that sport, if I boil it all down to like a succinct dancer, it's really that it taught me that everything is earned, not owed. You had to do the work. There was no substitute for the work that things almost never go to plan and you need to figure it out. And then just built so many skills of performing under pressure, you know, talking to people. It's just, it just, you're immersed in it. And there's no getting out of it. And I just thought that was such a formative experience. You know, everything we'll talk about today and everything I've done in business has been on the like on the back of the sporting career. I didn't go to business school. Of course, I've read all the books and I've tried to learn the common knowledge and I have, but the lessons and the actual mindset I take to business for almost the last 10 years is the same mindset I had when I was competing in sport.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really know where Europe is at that time embarrassingly. If you said point out Italy on a map, I would have had a tough time. And so that's like how kind of I just, but now I'm there and how do you deal with that? And how do you meet new people? And then how do you perform? All of these lessons, and we talked about earlier about building a resilient mindset and how do you learn to kind of just push forward when things get tough. And sport will teach you that. You know, business school, I think's important. I don't want to knock on it too bad, but they're teaching you, you know. All the things you can read about and learn about, right? So all the tactics and kind of just the common knowledge and how you would apply that. But I think ultimately in business, at least what I've learned is like you could know everything, but it's how are you going to react when shit hits the fan. Right. And how are you going to talk to people and negotiate and use your network and kind of think creatively? And those were a lot of the lessons that I learned in sport is like, how do you use some of your past experiences to your advantage?”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember when I was 16 in high school, I was named to my first national team. And I got an email. So I had just won a national race. And that named me the team that year. I didn't even know what world championships was. I was so green in the sport, so new to the sport. And I got an email from the National Federation. It's like, hey, you've been named to the World Championships team. It's in Italy next month. Like we'd love for you to come. And I remember emailing back and being like, no, I can't. I have school. And because I had no idea. I was so green. And then I showed the email to my parents. They're like, what did you do? Like, email them back. Like, you're going to go. We'll talk to the school. We'll get you out and like, we'll support you to go. And so I emailed them back. I got on the team. And what that led into is like, it was going to Italy. So hop on a plane, arrive in Germany for a layover, having no idea where I am and just being kind of thrown into the deep end like that. Like as a young kid, just hop on a plane. You end up in Europe. I didn't even.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I think for life as well, honestly, I think, you know, what does sport teach you? Ultimately, sport will teach you that you have to put in the work. If we use running as an example, you can't just show up and run a marathon, right? You can get to the start line. Anyone can go to the start line, but it's going to be pretty clear who prepared and who didn't. But beyond that, competitive sport, at least in my experience, you know, as competitive cyclists, I was five times on the national team for about 10 years, traveled around the world racing my bike. And what that taught me was a bunch of things most importantly failure and resilience. Like, how do you like we would race maybe, let's say, 10 times a year. It maybe win once or twice. So you're failing more than you succeed. And so how are you dealing with that and building forward and how are you dealing with injuries? But more than that, how are you networking yourself? So I managed myself as well. So I was negotiating my sponsorship contracts. I was booking worldwide logistics.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is because this wasn't made kind of real for me. So I enjoy that too much, and then I did enjoy sport, like, but hockey just wasn't the thing for me. And so the ability to fail over and over again, I think you make a choice every time you fail, whether that's going to hold you back or push you forward. And ultimately, I decided early on to let that push me forward. And I've carried that through because that's where you learn your most important lessons. You can learn from winning. A lot of the most important lessons in the stories I tell and what I reflect on in my life has come from all the losses or the setbacks. And that's really over time built such a base of lessons and insights to just kind of propel me forward that I'm thankful for all those failures. They're incredibly difficult at the time. And when you're going through them, you wish they would go away. And I've always found one year, three years, five years in the future, you become more and more thankful for those opportunities.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally. I mean, so yeah, I had a younger brother, and he was almost in our childhood the exact opposite he was incredibly good at sports. It came natural. And, you know, so we're big hockey family. You know, we grew up in a very traditional family, you know, very traditional around school, like go to school, go to university, very traditional around team sports, hockey. And hockey was the big one. And my brother was really good at it, you know, AAA and came natural. And, you know, I wasn't as good. barely could make like the select team and so seeing that is like oh my parents really like value sport and in particular hockey and my brother's really good at it and i see him succeeding and i'm not succeeding at it and my parents are great and of course they love me but i was like i want to be good i want to make them proud with something right like because i'm not particularly great at school i didn't enjoy it you know i just i never really understood it wasn't articulated in school with the purpose was and i was like you're learning”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I'm not succeeding in these areas, and everyone that is seems to be getting some level of acceptance. And, you know, for me as kind of a child and growing up as like maybe that's love, that's what I should strive for. And I just wasn't able to do that. And so that started to build and build. And so when I found early on it was cycling, I was like, oh, I'm pretty good at this. I was like, I'm going to go all in. And the drive was really, I think when I reflect back, it was a drive to be accepted, to feel like, oh, I finally am in the club. I finally am good at something. And then I didn't want to be good at it. I wanted to be great. I think that has some destructive kind of tendencies to it as well. But that's ultimately where it came from is this feeling of acceptance and a chip on my shoulder of not being able to pull it off for so long and seeing my peers do it. And assuming that's what it felt like to be part of the club or accepted.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, my drive started kind of in childhood going into adolescence early teens. And it was really, you know, my personal journey was I wanted to show the world that I could do something. My childhood was kind of marked by not quite succeeding at anything that I set my mind to. I was an overweight child and I loved sport, but I never was able to find what I was good at. So I would try out for all of the school sports, your basketball team, your volleyball team. And I wouldn't just not make it. I was always the first person not to make it. So I was always on the cusp. And that almost made it a little bit worse because I could like taste what it would be like to be there. And so that started over time to build this drive of like, you know, when I find something I'm good at, I'm going to go all in and I want to win because when I looked around me, the feeling I felt at that time was.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The stress and the idea of kind of not pushing forward wasn't even there, you know, whereas I look at other parts of my life. And sometimes you don't push as hard because there's no personal mission there. There's no reason to push. It's not necessarily something you take that mindset into everything you do, but it's really helpful in those larger goals and similar with business. I ultimately think success in any large goal comes down to your ability to endure over the long term. perseverance, resilience, I think extending the time horizon. People always talk about, you know, hacks and quick wins and how can you shorten the timeline. And ultimately, I think that leads to maybe a quick win here and there, but not longevity and in business and in sport, the careers are built on longevity. And that really comes down to a mindset because along that path on anything worth doing, there's just so”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the mindset really comes down to a personal mission. I mean, if you think about doing both of those things, whether it's sport or anything hard, having some intrinsic reason or some motivation or some personal drive to accomplish something really pushes you forward and pulls you into that goal. A lot of people talk about building a resilient mindset or building a stronger mindset. And I really think that sure, maybe there's some benefit to trying to teach that or learn it, but I really think it's something that you can really only learn by going through it. And you go through those tough times and push through those things when it's because you care about something, so that personal mission. So when it was with sport, it was this goal to become a competitive cyclist, professional cyclist, and reach different goals that I had. So whether it was coming back from injury or coming back from setbacks, the goal was so much larger than the pain I was dealing with.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For 10 years, I woke up with a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life and where it was going to go. And I loved that. I woke up every day with a fire in my belly saying, this is the goal. Here's how I'm going to get it. And here's what I'm going to do. And then almost seemingly overnight, when I walk away from the sport, that's gone. Your identity's gone. You know, like the day before I retire, it's, hi, I'm Rob Fraser, professional cyclist. It was everything the next day that's gone. And over the next year, that fades away because you're no longer on the scene. And the friends, they're still friends, but you don't see them and the common interest starts to fade. And, you know, that kind of led to this dark period for me where I was like, what am I going to do with my life?”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT