The Mindset Experience®

Marc Hodulich is an avid adventurer, accomplished entrepreneur and proud father  of two boys. While he has founded and exited multiple event series converging community, athletics and philanthropy, he is likely most known as the CEO and Co-Founder of 29029. This is an uphill premium endurance challenge that asks participants to hike up a major ski mountain, take a gondola down and repeat until they ascend 29029 feet or the equivalent height of Mt. Everest.

As Marc describes, 29029 combines a physical obstacle, mental adversity, sleep deprivation, hunger, and unpredictable elements of weather to create an experience that helps one find out who they really are. Marc also explains his mindset as an endurance athlete who has completed this challenge 15x along with several 100-mile events and an Ironman triathlon. He discusses his definition of endurance and the ability to make a choice between  what we don’t want to do vs what we are able to do.

Through his experiences and business, he appreciates the opportunity to establish connections and relationships, help others become their best, and allow vulnerability and authenticity to bring out the best in himself. Marc is telling his own story while helping others write theirs as well.

@marc29029, @29029everesting, @29092trail

Growing up in a sports family, John Armistead always had a ball in his hand and found success at an early age. In fact, he relied on his talent too much while neglecting the mental side of sports. When he found himself without any college athletic offers, he needed to shift his mindset to create an opportunity by making an impact on the field, in the weightroom and in the classroom.

He traveled across the country to play lacrosse at Richmond for 4 years then took his 5th year to go back west and play football and one of the most historic and prestigious programs in USC. While he didn’t focus on mental health growing up, he quickly learned how important it was while balancing athletics, academics, and college life. Navigating severe injuries also tested his identity without sport and forced him to find satisfaction in new things when his usual things were no longer there.

John is now combing his personal experience and passion to help others to build a platform called AthletesTogether to create awareness, community and actionable resources.

@athletestogether, @johnarmistead

Valarie Cagle essentially grew up on a diamond as her siblings played baseball and softball. Practicing with her father, she learned how to become a player before becoming a pitcher. Her approach to the game translated to the collegiate level where she played and excelled at multiple positions at Clemson earning awards as a pitcher and hitter. Throughout her collegiate career, she became a 4X All-American, 4X All-ACC honoree, and ACC Player of the Year in 2021 and 2023. In 2023, she was also named as USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year, NCAA D1 Softball Player of the Year, and Rawlings Gold Glove award winner.

Despite her tremendous success on the field, she struggled with her identity and faced several challenges that impacted her mental health off the field. She was so focused on being the player others needed her to be that she lost sight of the person  she wanted to be. By learning to give herself permission to take care of herself and prioritize things she enjoyed doing, she redefined her relationship with the sport including her role on the field.

Valarie candidly shares that while we may see athletes smiling on the field, it does not show their entire story. She also explains that while others often remember us for what we did, it’s much more important to be remembered for who we are.

@val_cagle

Growing up in a lower income household as the 5th of 6 kids, Kevin Krause did not have some of the privileges that others had and while he always knew there would be food on the table, he didn’t get to choose what he would eat. Early on, he learned that if he worked hard, he could earn the freedom to make his own choices.

While he stumbled into law enforcement as a career, his work ethic combined with his love of physical activity allowed him to excel and better handle the stress of his job. His appreciation for people and experiences caused him to invest in life outside of work by prioritizing scheduled and meaningful trips with friends and family evolving into what is now known as “Kevins rule.”

Kevin takes an intentional approach to his job, family, friends, fitness and other “boxes he needs to check” on a daily basis. As such, while others focus on the pain and discomfort of completing a major endurance event  like riding a bike for 100 days x 14 days across country, climbing the equivalent of Mt. Everest in a weekend or completing an Ironman, Kevin looks at these challenges as a vacation! 

Kevin Krause has been a law enforcement officer for 30 years, Ironman, winter mountaineer. He has completed two 100-mile races, finished Boston marathon in 2:28 and biked across America. He is a husband and father of 4. However, he believes that he is just, “an ordinary man doing extraordinary things!”

Darian Cruz was always a huge dreamer working to chase the next great thing.  Exposed to wrestling at age 4, he didn’t have to look far to find his heroes. They lived in his house or went to his local high school. Every Wednesday and Friday evening at the local dual meet, he witnessed how champions looked and acted. By surrounding himself with greatness and “keeping the main focus the main focus,” his own ideas turned into thoughts and ultimately became beliefs.

That belief system has been continuously tested with adversity, but he keeps learning to struggle well which lights a fire that motivates him even further. He has gone from a 2X Pennsylvania State Champ to a 3X NCAA D1 All-American to an NCAA National Champion and most recently he achieved the ultimate dream of becoming an Olympian competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Darian shares his experiences, his perspective and the evolution of his mindset that have helped him become the man he is today, continues to be and wants to be in the future.

@dariantoicruz.pur

Lindsey Wilson is a mindset and mental performance coach best known as The Sports Hypnotist™. With a professional basketball career spanning close to a decade, Lindsey took her knowledge of the mental game to work with collegiate athletes, professional athletes from Olympians and players in the NFL and WNBA, all the way to youth athletes. 

She is the founder of Positive Performance™ and The Mindset Coach Academy™ where she helps aspiring mental performance coaches start their dream business and impact lives.  She’s also the author of the upcoming book Think Like an Athlete which teaches the critical and undertrained skill of belief and how to build it to be successful on the playing field and off. 

Lindsey’s exposure to mental performance came at age 16 and completely changed her perspective on how to navigate physical training with her mental barriers. She also learned the power of belief and importance of consistently training it to achieve the highest goals. Despite a successful career, she did fall short of her ultimate athletic goals but is using that experience and message to create and surpass her professional goals! Her mission is to teach mental performance tools so that coaches can have a massive impact on athletes’ performance, enjoyment of competing and life. 

@lindseypositiveperform

Dr. Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist, national bestselling author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance. His clients include the NFL’s Super Bowl Champions, Seattle Seahawks, world record holders, Olympians, MVPs from every major sport, internationally acclaimed music artists, and Fortune 50 CEO’s. He is also  the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at the USC Marshall School of Business and has been featured in premier media outlets including NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, ESPN, NFL Network, Red Bull TV, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Outside Magazine, WIRED, Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine.

As the host of the Finding Mastery podcast, he explores the psychology of the world’s most extraordinary thinkers and doers. Through his work and conversations, he explains how the top 1% have a fundamental commitment to be the very best leading them to seek out information and practices to train their mind.

Dr. Gervais also discusses the difference between mental toughness vs. psychological agility and how we can use specific mental training techniques to become better versions of ourselves, stop worrying about what others think of us and improve performance.

@michaelgervais

Lanni Brown grew up surrounded by basketball. Her father, Dee Brown, was an NBA legend with the Boston Celtics. Her sister is currently playing in the WNBA and her brother is a D1 Basketball player. While she also found success in the sport, she faced lots of comparisons with her family, struggled to separate her self identity from her performance and ultimately realized that she was “not feeling basketball.”

Her transition to the D1 level exacerbated her struggle as she felt different from her teammates because she didn’t love her sport and even felt selfish, ungrateful and guilty that she was getting a scholarship despite not being fully invested. Lanni chose to shift her mindset and focus on energy, positivity and enjoying the moments and making an impact in her own way. 

Since her competitive career has ended, she is pursuing a Master’s at Jacksonville University in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with the plan to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology She is combining her personal experiences and education to better support student athletes as an advocate, ambassador and future clinician. 

@alanni.noelle

Dee Brown was a 12-year NBA legend and member on the 1990’s Boston Celtics all decade team.

While so many young kids dream of the NBA, Dee Brown just wanted to use basketball to get a free college education. By creating a process, locking in and having no fear of failing, he found himself as the 19th overall pick by the Boston Celtics in 1990. Having the opportunity to play alongside legends like Larry Bird, he learned how to focus on solutions vs successes, apply mindfulness to sport and the power of information, motivation and inspiration.

By mastering these concepts, he was also able to build a level of confidence and trust in himself to make up an iconic dunk on the spot that was memorialized and recreated years later. Through his experiences as a player, coach, parent and now an administrator at Jacksonville U, Dee Brown shares the “B principles” that are necessary for a championship culture in sports, school and life.

@deebrown_og

Sydney Moore is a Division 1 Volleyball player at Syracuse University pursuing her master’s in marketing. Before Syracuse, Sydney was a senior captain at Cornell University where she majored in psychology with a focus in neuroscience and human development. Her initial love was basketball but as the pressure increased, her confidence decreased and her motivation to improve became fear based, she found volleyball as a refreshing change. As her understanding of health and wellness grew, so did her interest in pursuing information for herself and others.

Sydney created  a video podcast titled, “Let’s Talk About It” which discusses and advocates for important topics that affect student-athletes such as mental health, gender equity, going pro, and more. In 2022 Sydney was awarded the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award at the ESPYs for her work to introduce the Fair Play for Women Act into Congress and was named one of Glamour Magazine’s College Women of the Year 2023. 

Sydney discusses her own process and passion that embodies the characteristics for which she has been recognized including intelligence, bravery, confidence and compassion. She has worked so hard to find her own voice and is using that voice to empower other female athletes.

@ssydney.mmoore