Good morning, friends!

I freaking love the Olympics, so this is my favorite season of all. I love the energy, the ambition, the thrill, and most of all, I love hearing the personal stories of the individual athletes that led them to this moment.

I watched two swimmers showing each other just how badly their hands were shaking just moments before they had to stand at the starting blocks and compete. You can’t help but feel the nerves even though you’re sitting at home. What would it be like to be inside their head in that very moment?

I was reminded of Kara Lynn Joyce, the three-time Olympic swimmer who I interviewed for this newsletter in 2021. She gave me a great mental tool that I still use before high-pressure events. Allow me to tell you her story and offer you the same tool that you can implement in your life immediately.

In 2012, Kara Lynn Joyce was sitting in a tiny dark room with seven of her competitors minutes before the race that would determine who would win a spot to compete in the London Olympics.

She needed to get first or second place in order to qualify for her third Olympic Games. By this point in her swimming career, Joyce had become an expert at finding her focus before high-pressure races.

But in this particular moment, she was falling into an uncontrollable spiral of negative thoughts. For the first time in a long time, Joyce felt like she wasn't in control of her own mind.

"Things just hadn't been going my way," she says in an interview with The Profile. "I had been thinking about all the things that had gone wrong. As humans, it's easy for us to go down the path of negativity."

And there was plenty of adversity Joyce could've focused on in that moment. In the previous year, she had dealt with debilitating back pain, she switched swim programs twice, and she hadn't been performing as well as she'd liked.

"I had all of these negative thoughts going through my mind, and then I was like, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute.' I'm about to walk out on national TV and swim in the Olympic Trials for the chance of making my third Olympic team. What am I doing? If I learned anything in 21 years of swimming, it's that if I don't think I can succeed, then it's not going to happen."

Thanks to that realization, she was able to mentally re-calibrate by asking herself this very important question: "What can I do now to get into the right mental state?"

The way she did it wasn't by "thinking positively." Instead, she played a mental movie of her entire career — from watching the Olympics on TV as a little girl to breaking records to falling short to getting back up to sitting in this room right now. She had survived and persevered through it all, and she deserved to be here.

As a result of this mental exercise, you can see Joyce's quiet confidence on full display as she stood at the starting blocks before the final event at the Olympic Trials. "It's my favorite race," Joyce says, "because I was able to change the outcome of the race before it started."

Joyce went to her first Olympic Games at age 18, and then she retired at age 26. After years of training every single day, she suddenly found herself accountable to no one but herself.

"It doesn't matter if you're 26, 60, or 75," she says. "If you retire from something, it can feel like the rug is pulled out from under you. You go from being accountable to something or someone every day to, all of a sudden, nothing. The biggest thing I feared is not finding something I was as passionate about in retirement."

That fear never came to fruition because Joyce was willing to take the first step into the unknown. Her swimming career had taught her an invaluable lesson: "The antidote to doubt is action." So she refused to sit still.

Joyce was able to pair her Olympic experience with the adrenaline-filled journey of starting a business. In 2017, she founded the Lead Sports Co, which hosts the LEAD Summit, an annual, all-inclusive event that connects young female athletes with Olympic champions and experts in sport and mental health.

In the last four years, Joyce has discovered that running her own company can be equally as grueling, frustrating, and rewarding as training for the Olympics.

"The skills I developed as an athlete in keeping my confidence up when it was really important have definitely helped me on those crazy days as an entrepreneur," she says.

In this conversation, Joyce explains that self-confidence and mental resilience are the keys to succeeding in sports, business, and life.

Check out the full interview below:

PROFILES.

— The venture capital titan [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The world’s most famous therapist
— Comedy’s new kingmaker
— The philanthropist getting political
— The Murdoch kids fighting for the empire

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The venture capital titan: Roelof Botha is now the head of Sequoia Capital, one of the oldest, largest, and most successful firms in venture capital. Botha joined the firm in 2003 and had been running Sequoia’s U.S. and Europe business since 2017, scoring lucrative wins over the years with investments in YouTube, Instagram, and Square among other blockbusters. (More than 25% of the overall market capitalization of the Nasdaq—more than $7 trillion, as of mid-July—is composed of Sequoia-backed companies.) That stellar reputation is precisely what makes Botha’s job so hard. When you’re on top, how do you continue fighting to stay on top? (FORTUNE; complimentary paywall bypass link)

“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

The world’s most famous therapist: A couple of years ago, the actor and filmmaker Jonah Hill made a documentary about his psychiatrist, Phil Stutz. In the film, titled Stutz, the two men do all sorts of things that therapists and their clients usually avoid. They say “I love you” to each other, and they crack immature jokes. Unlike other therapists, Stutz is charismatic and gruff and outspoken. As he puts it in the film, he tells patients, “Do what the fuck I tell you. Do exactly what I tell you. I guarantee you’ll feel better.” (New York Magazine; For more, check out my Profile Dossier on Phil Stutz here.)

“You can be working on something, understand its roots, understand how it’s damaged you, understand how helpless you feel, all that stuff — it adds up to nothing. There’s a gap between that and actually changing.”

Comedy’s new kingmaker: Ever since podcaster Joe Rogan relocated to Austin, Texas, the city seems to have become the new center of the comedy universe. Over the past two years, a growing cadre of comedians and podcasters have heeded Rogan’s siren song and set up shop in Austin, including Shane Gillis, Brian Simpson, Duncan Trussell, Matt McCusker and Tony Hinchcliffe, to name just a few. Now, along with an influx of Silicon Valley expats and downshifting Hollywood transplants, a new type of creative vortex is reshaping the city’s storied culture. Here’s how Rogan became comedy’s new kingmaker. (Bloomberg; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“We’re in a Rogan moment.”

The philanthropist getting political: In May, Melinda French Gates said that she was leaving the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she helped found in 2000. Despite her divorce from Bill Gates a few years ago, the couple continued working together, and it was understood that Melinda was a crucial part of what made the foundation so effective. It’s hard to overstate what an earthquake her departure was in the world of big-donor charitable giving. In this longform interview, she talks about why she’s becoming more vocal about politics, what life after divorce is like, her philosophy on raising rich children, her new YouTube series, and her evolving views on how to use her own money. (The New York Times; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“I’m just ready to set my own agenda as my own person.”

The Murdoch kids fighting for the empire: Rupert Murdoch is locked in a secret legal battle against three of his children over the future of the family’s media empire, as he moves to preserve it as a conservative political force after his death. His family trust currently hands control of the family business to the four oldest children when Murdoch dies. But he is arguing in court that only by empowering his eldest son Lachlan Murdoch to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent. Those three siblings — James, Elisabeth and Prudence — were caught completely off-guard by their father’s effort to rewrite what was supposed to be an inviolable trust and have united to stop him. (The New York Times; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“The fight has left Mr. Murdoch estranged from three of his children in his twilight years.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨...