The High Performance Life

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Sunita Sah!

Sunita is a Cornell professor, former physician, and one of the world's leading experts on compliance and defiance.

Dr. Sunita Sah is a national bestselling author, award-winning professor at Cornell University, and expert in organizational psychology.

She is a former physician and management consultant whose research focuses on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American, among others.

Her book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes, explores how to reclaim agency and speak up when it matters.

The paperback edition, How to Speak Up When It Matters, releases February 24, 2026. Key Takeaways

• Why we've misunderstood the word defy

• The hidden cost of always saying yes

• Compliance vs. true consent

• What "false defiance" looks like

• The five elements of a true yes or no

• How to teach kids (and ourselves) to say no without confrontation

Clifford Stephan is the founder of Booze Vacation, a health and wellness company created for high-performing men who want to elevate their lives and careers by leveraging the benefits of taking a strategic break from alcohol.

He is also the founder of OneCompensation, a successful Bay Area compensation consulting firm that has helped Silicon Valley companies—including Google, LinkedIn, Kaiser Permanente, and Motorola Mobility—attract, engage, and retain top talent.

In his mid-40s, Clifford realized that his regular, "semi-responsible" drinking was quietly undermining his health and long-term potential.

He chose to take a year-long break from alcohol—what he called a "booze vacation."

That decision reset both his body and his relationship with drinking, ultimately inspiring him to create Booze Vacation so other men could take a structured break, reclaim their health, and expand their professional capacity.

Clifford holds a B.S. in Nutritional Science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, has completed more than a dozen long-course triathlons, and is determined to "kick ass and take names" well into his 80s and beyond.

Key Points

• Booze breaks can upgrade your baseline

• Wearables expose alcohol's impact on health

• Breaks from alcohol can recalibrate cravings

• Sleep, fitness, and mood improve sans alcohol • Life clarity and enhanced performance without alcohol

• Clifford's Booze Vacation concept explained

Best Quotes

01:45 - 01:58

• "Yeah, in short, scratching my own itch and yeah, I don't like the term cutting. It sounds kind of, you know, negative, harsh, we, we use in term taking an extended vacation from drinking."

02:54 - 03:03

• "I had, I had got sleep apnea, which was a pretty, pretty bad about that. And yeah, just wasn't feeling my best."

05:30 - 05:49

• "I think that when I started wearing the whoop in 2019, it was probably one of the most eye-opening things that I had done because I, I've worn it consecutively for many years now, and you can tell really quickly what alcohol does to your body."

07:58 - 08:06

• "It's a kind of a lifetime lifestyle experiment. And especially men of success. I think it's important that if you make it to the mountain top, you wanna stay there and enjoy it as long as possible."

10:41 - 10:51

• "You're gonna need more, it's gonna be harder on your aging body and you're gonna find yourself continually in lowered and lower states and, and, and kicking the crap outta yourself a lot faster."

Andrew Brodsky is an award-winning professor, management consultant, and virtual communications expert at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.

Recognized by Poets&Quants as one of the "World's 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40," Andrew is widely regarded for his work at the intersection of workplace technology, communication, and productivity.

He also serves as the CEO of Ping Group, where he helps organizations improve how people connect and perform in modern, digitally driven workplaces.

Andrew earned a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard Business School and a B.S. from The Wharton School. He currently lives in Austin with his wife and two rescue dogs.

Key Points

• Crafting Effective Virtual Messages

• Enhancing Trust in Digital Relationships

• Pros & Cons of Remote Communication

• Leveraging AI for Productivity

• Personal Anecdotes & Communication Research

Best Quotes 03:49 - 03:56

• "The old way of the office was if you had a question, you'd go to your coworkers' cubicle or office and ask them."

05:10 - 05:15

• "I was left with an immune deficiency. So I'm often having to communicate with others from a distance."

05:42 - 05:58

• "And if you show up and you have the right energy and you, you're, you're animated, you're, you're empathetically listening, you know, there's so many things and some people, you know, this thing just draws them down like immediately you're on the computer and, and they're shutting down and they're getting uncomfortable."

17:23 - 17:39

• "One of a good example of this is research on the email urgency bias where basically these researchers found that when people receive an email, they ex they think the sender wants a response a lot more quickly than they actually do."

In this week's episode I am joined by my good friend Stephen Drum!

During his 27 years of service, he developed and led high-performance teams in combat at every level and in the most challenging and extreme environments.

Stephen was a principal architect and co-creator of the US Navy's Warrior Toughness Program.

Stephen is a professional speaker, trainer and author, helping leaders and teams optimize their performance and execution in challenging and high-pressure situations.

Key Points

• Grasp leadership in high-stress roles

• Parenting: Kids, sports & life lessons

• Embrace life's imperfect moments

• The power of maintaining friendships

• Navigating transitions as families grow

Andrew Herr is the Founder of FlyKitt, a breakthrough travel protocol designed for high performers—from the battlefield to the boardroom—who need to function at peak capacity no matter the conditions.

Whether leading teams, competing at elite levels, or making mission-critical decisions, showing up sharp after a flight is essential. Yet among the 10 million+ people who travel every day, few understand the toll flying takes on the body. Jet lag, inflammation, dehydration, gut issues, joint pain, poor metabolism, and brain fog are real, long-lasting risks that quietly erode performance.

FlyKitt is changing that.

Used by elite special operations forces, Navy SEALs, Fortune 500 executives, and professional athletes in the NBA, NFL, and Olympics, the system is built on more than 1,000 experiments aimed at neutralizing travel stress and protecting performance. Its data-driven supplement and timing protocol has shown a 94% reduction in travel symptoms, with 85% of users reporting improved circadian rhythm alignment.

Andrew's innovation stems from his career leading human performance efforts for the U.S. military, where he specialized in optimizing warfighters to perform under extreme pressure. He's also tested his limits personally, completing the Spartan Ultra World Championship in Iceland's brutal winter—twice.

Key Points

• Inflammation can lower your immune defense.

• Discover how to biohack jet lag.

• Tips on diet and sleep for travelers.

• Techniques to maintain high performance.

• Prevent travel burnout with Fly Kit.

Best Quotes

08:16 - 08:23

• "You're getting flavors of decompression and altitude sickness because of the rapidity with which this is happening."

08:41 - 08:46

• "What I'm saying is the inflammation plus the circadian shift is why jet lag is so bad."

09:37 - 09:52

• "All these things are, you know, gut inflammation we know causes these things. Brain fog. We know that when we're inflamed the actual immune cells and these cytokines, immune compounds transit into the brain and change the way the brain metabolizes energy so you feel more tired."

09:53 - 10:04

• "So all these things are secondary to this flight induced inflammation. And then if you have circadian shifts on top of it and you're flying long distance, then it prevents you from resetting your circadian rhythm."

14:11 - 14:23

• "The air filtration on planes actually quite good. Now they, there's all kinds of problems with the air on planes that I'm not gonna get into around like bleed air coming in through the jet engines, you get exhaust in the plane."

23:42 - 23:50

• "You know, my, my scientific assessment is safe. We do only recommend rates and older, but for younger we have a fly Kitt Junior where we make it with gummies."

In this week's episode, I am joined by Nick O'Kelly!

Nick is a retired Chief Warrant Officer 3 with 13 years of service in the U.S. Army, including 9 years in Special Operations.

He is one of the rare individuals to have served both as a U.S. Army Green Beret and as an MH-60M Black Hawk pilot with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

Over the course of seven overseas deployments—including three combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines—he provided direct support to Tier 1 Special Mission Units in some of the world's most dangerous and complex environments.

Nick is now the author of Stigma, a powerful and unflinching exploration of mental health in the military and other high-performance communities.

The book breaks the long-standing code of silence around psychological struggle, revealing that strength and struggle can coexist—and that battle is not weakness.

Key Points

• Life as a high performer and mental health • The impacts of mental health stigmas • Special Forces training mirrors life's battles • Family dynamics of a high-performing soldier • The liberating power of vulnerability

Sébastien Page has more than two decades of leadership experience and has conducted extensive research in positive, sports, and personality psychology.

In addition to The Psychology of Leadership, he is the author of Beyond Diversification (McGraw-Hill, 2020) and co-author of Factor Investing and Asset Allocation (CFA Institute, 2016).

He currently serves as Chief Investment Officer and Head of Global Multi-Asset at T. Rowe Price, where he oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing more than $500 billion.

Sébastien has earned six research paper awards from The Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal, and he serves on the editorial boards of both publications.

He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (the Q Group).

A respected voice in the field, he appears regularly on outlets such as Bloomberg TV and CNBC, and was named one of LinkedIn's Top 15 Voices in Finance.

Key Points

• Learning from losses is key

• Stress can boost performance

• Habits can change personality

• Empathy improves communication

• Parenting parallels leadership

Best Quotes

03:54 - 04:00

• "They're all obsessed with sports psychologists with losing and what you do with the loss."

19:00 - 19:11

• "I consider myself an introvert as well. Look, there's a theory behind it that reaches sports psychology life and setting goals in business." 19:37 - 19:46

• "It's hard enough to keep you motivated. It's not so easy that you'll get bored. And it's not so hard that it's impossible."

21:21 - 21:31

• "But if you realize that stress actually fuel for performance up to a point, then you at least stop stressing about stressing, you remove a layer of stress."

43:39 - 43:48

• "I have videos with my daughter out there where I teach her about finance and investing. We started doing this when she was 10."

In this week's episode, I am joined by Dr. Emily Falk! Emily Falk is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with appointments in Communication, Psychology, Marketing, and Operations, Informatics & Decisions.

She serves as Vice Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, Director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab, and Director of the Climate Communication Division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

An expert in the science of behavior change, Dr. Falk integrates psychology, neuroscience, and communication to investigate what makes messages persuasive, why ideas spread, and how people can become more effective communicators.

Her new book, What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change, uncovers the hidden brain processes behind every decision we make—and shows how understanding those processes can help us make more intentional choices in our work, relationships, and lives. Dr. Falk's research has earned numerous honors, including early career awards from the International Communication Association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award.

She is also a Fulbright grant recipient, a DARPA Young Faculty Award winner, and was named a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science.

She earned her B.A. in Neuroscience from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California.

Key Points

• Insights on choice-making

• The brain's social influence

• Creating impactful habits

• The neuroscience of purpose

• Parenting using brain science

Best Quotes

02:59 - 03:08

• "you know, I know that you think that when I come to your house, we're really spending quality time together, but actually we're not."

03:26 - 03:30

• "I wanna spend time with my kids, I wanna be a good boss. There are so many different things."

03:52 - 03:56

• "I wasn't sticking that landing of actually getting over there and spending the time with my grandmother."

10:44 - 10:51

• "People who are feeling more purposeful get a lot of benefits, both in terms of mental health and physical health."

19:24 - 19:33

• "Our brain figures out the things that we're choosing between, it then assigns a subjective value to each one, and then it keeps track of how things went."

In this week's episode, I am joined by Dr. Bob Rosen! Dr. Bob Rosen is a world-renowned thought leader on healthy people and healthy organizations. A psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, researcher, and preeminent business advisor, his pioneering work on personal and organizational change has earned global recognition. Each year, Bob speaks to thousands of people around the world and appears frequently in international media.

A sought-after media commentator, Bob has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, Financial Times, Time, Chief Executive Magazine, and many others. His books include Detach, the New York Times bestseller Grounded®, the Washington Post bestseller Conscious, Just Enough Anxiety, Global Literacies, The Catalyst, The Healthy Company, and Leading People. As a global keynote speaker, Bob is especially known for his insights into the psychology of self-improvement and leadership in a rapidly changing world.

Bob holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and is a graduate of the University of Virginia. He teaches in executive education programs and has long served on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University's School of Medicine. His body of work—including books, programs, and resources—is available at bobrosen.com. Key Points

• The peril of past & future attachments

• Agile living beats stability illusion

• Embrace imperfection, discard perfection

• Success: balancing aspiration & contentment

• Self-awareness: key to high performance

Best Quotes

05:56 - 06:09

• "And so I wanted to identify the common attachments that got in the way. At the same time, Western psychology teaches us about dreams and aspirations and problem solving."

09:50 - 10:00

• "So by not facing the truth inside of us, us and practicing forgiveness of what happened, we risk becoming too attached to the past."

18:02 - 18:06

• "But the present state is where peace lies, and it's the hardest place to be."

32:43 - 32:58

• "We have a choice. So detached, although it might be scary for people who are high performing, it really helps them in the long run with their success and high performance."

In this week's episode, I am joined by Jeanne Sparrow! Jeanne Sparrow is an author, trusted leadership and communication consultant, and graduate faculty instructor at Northwestern University. A 7-time Emmy-winning television host, award-winning radio personality, and podcast host, Jeanne brings more than 30 years of experience in broadcasting and media to her work.

Driven by a lifelong passion for amplifying people's stories with clarity and hope, Jeanne's mission is to create connection and community—and to help others do the same. She empowers individuals and organizations to become more adaptable, confident, and successful by teaching them how to deliver authentic value through visionary leadership and inspiring communication.

You can connect with Jeanne and join her online community at www.fearlessauthenticity.com, listen to her podcast Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow on YouTube or your preferred streaming platform, and find her book Fearless Authenticity: Lead Better, Sell More, and Speak Sensationally at your favorite bookseller.

Key Points

• Impact of being true to oneself

• Legacy tied to authentic living

• Midlife: a time for self-realignment

• The magnetic vibe of authenticity

• Action as an antidote to fear

Best Quotes 4:23 - 04:34

• "What do you actually do every day? Like that's the stuff I'm interested in because those, because the way in which we fulfill these roles is actually the thing that shows people who we are."

08:37 - 08:44

• "The saddest thing in the world is for somebody to leave this earth and with music still in their heart, right?"

08:47 - 08:55

• "And sometimes it's in tune with other people and sometimes it's not. But when you find the place where you are reaching that right harmony with other people, it's beautiful."

15:44 - 15:47

• "My mama told me, you always leave people better than you found them. That's right." 27:47 - 27:59

• "I am so passionate about, you know, people taking their authenticity to heart and understanding that they are a gift."