On this episode of Circuit of Success, Brett Gilliland interviews Michael Lombardi, a former NFL executive, Olympic coach, Fit Biomics Director of Partnerships, and co-founder and CEO of Rowficient. Lombardi shares his journey to success, which began with his high school rowing coach teaching him the importance of accountability and hard work. He also talks about how to think big and negotiate deals, and emphasizes the importance of understanding that everyone is different. Finally, Lombardi shares his daily routine for peak performance and how he has learned to be confident in his abilities.

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Speaker Brett Gilliland: Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I'm your host, Brett Gilliland. Today, I've got Mike Lombardi with me, Mike. What's going on, my man? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Just living the dream up here in Boston. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Living the dream, raining up there? Speaker Michael Lombardi: It's like a downpour. It's like a monastery today. Speaker Brett Gilliland: We've been having, it's been like a it feels like a hundred and fifteen literally, a hundred and fifteen. All sports have been canceled, high school, kids sports, everything. Have been canceled all week. So which is kinda nice to get a little few nights off, you know, when you get four kids. It's nice to have dinners or the family. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, I'm sorry to hear this. That's what went out, but, whatever it is. Yeah. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: You are a Princeton grad. You are Olympic coach. You are, Fit Biomics Director of partnerships. You are the co founder and CEO of Rofficient, and you got a lot of stuff going on. What we talked about before this was your wife was on my podcast about three years ago. Speaker Michael Lombardi: She's, she's the best. She She, funny enough, you know, she we've had two kids in the last three years. And, you know, I was enjoying the little break of her kicking my ass and workouts and yesterday. It's officially over. The run's done. She's back. Speaker Brett Gilliland: She's back. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Excuse me. I'm done one day. It's over. Yeah. It's over for me now. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Well, I'm sorry to hear that. And did you guys meet during the Olympics? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Is that Speaker Brett Gilliland: how you met earlier? Speaker Michael Lombardi: We actually met at Princeton. We met the first day of at Princeton in the Boathouse. We were both rowers. You know, we we just built a friendship over the first year and then started dating. And then you know, we we graduated same time. She decided to keep growing on the national theme. I started coaching at Princeton. Which is where the training center was. And then, I started helping out because we're always on the same body of water. So, you know, I'd I'd finish up a row. I'd see them coming in I say, what do you think? Can I just start giving her some feedback on it? Help them her through London. And then for the real cycle, I was and end up being her coach for, part two. So Speaker Brett Gilliland: Wow. Speaker Michael Lombardi: That's, yeah, we got married in between, but, yeah. That's So Speaker Brett Gilliland: she has to listen to you when you're on talking rowing. Right? I mean, you know, different. She has to listen to you on the water, but maybe not at home or what. Speaker Michael Lombardi: No. We're good team dynamic. You know, I I think that that's always been a strong suit for us is we have complimentary skill sets and our personalities go well. Like, I sit back and kinda see how I can help a person, a team, anything. And then you you coach them along, and Sarah's very receptive to coaching. And she likes feedback. So it's it's a it's a really good match. But yeah, it's things that I kinda learned through coaching. I've kind of taken everywhere and kind of applied to whatever. Speaker Brett Gilliland: That's awesome. So if you can, maybe give us a little bit of the backstory, Mike, on what's made you the man you are today. I'm sure there's people all around you and, some and backstory in there. But what what's helped with that? Speaker Michael Lombardi: Sure. I mean, I I think I don't know how many people say it's where they're from, but, you know, I'm from Philadelphia area, South Jersey, I think it's, like, kind of, part of the DNA a little bit that, you know, you work hard. You kinda, you don't make excuses. It's all about accountability. And I think that, you know, my my dad was always a really good role model for that, and and a big I'd say that the first person I really remember kind of like changing my life in that sort of sense, was my high school rowing coach, Gilliland, And, you know, he pointed out to me, or he he made me believe in myself to a level that I didn't think of before. Like, I was a talented athlete. You know, Varsity basketball. I I messed around with soccer, which is funny. It's six Gilliland, like, rowing, I just kinda stumbled into it because somebody said, you should go try this because you're tall. I was decent, but I didn't really totally understand, like, you know, I as my most how I high school kids don't like. What is full exertion? What what is going to the max? And I think he really kind of helped me unlock that. So it's the combination of me being a Jersey guy going through a this high school in Philly. All those guys knew each other. In the basketball circuit, I kinda had like a chip on my shoulder. It's like, I'm this outside guy, and I was not part of their crew. And that was behind I was really good at basketball. And but Roan really kinda opened, you know, welcomed me with open arms and, coach Lam, you know, he held me accountable. He's, like, you know, I re I remember this after the two thousand four, I guess, National Championship. I was still in the JV as a sophomore. And, he's like, Mike, on next year, like, I need you to be the team. Like, that was amazing. You won that race for that. You won the championship for those guys. It this is an eight man vote. I say it's front of the team. So now there's all this pressure. Okay. Cool. I gotta go do this now. You know, he's kinda grooming me the next year and you know, I go play basketball, do that whole thing. The season's over. I show up to practice it to race day and, race practice, and he you know, it's like my second day back. I haven't touched a noir in, you know, four or five months. And it just unloads a little bit of, like, to make the pull a thousand times better, not worse. And just that the course of that season was like, Hey, man, this is no bullshit. Like, people are really counting on you, and you have to hold yourself accountable. And he really he hammered home this what accountability means and holding yourself to a standard, and it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing. Like, it's your standard or our standard, and that's that's what matters. So, he completely changed it for me. And then when I got to college, I carried a lot of that stuff with me. And then through growing it instant, and then coaching at Princeton, you know, you learn a lot of lessons. And I think, I know you've had lots of coaches on here, but finding your voice is a hard thing, as a young coach. And what you can all you can really do is, like, you start with who who were the most recent voices or who were the influential voices in my head throughout. And that that's where it starts. And you're you're more of a copy of that than yourself. So, again, another sort of inflection for me. I I took over mid year coaching, at Princeton. And I kinda came down on them a little hard on practice just because of attention to detail and one of the kids from Iowa, he said, Mike, you catch, you catch more bees with honey than vinegar. And I was like, I I think I got more upset when he said it. But, like, in just internally. But from then, it was, like, completely changed my outlook of, like, I need I that I know I wanna be as a coach now. Like, I wanna bring these kids along and these young guys and develop them, and it's it's about the process together. And it's not like this is it, and this is how you do it. And that's what I've kind of taken with from that point on. And when I completely changed that, then I saw way better success in the rest of that season, and then in in ensuing season. So it it, It it's a little bit of a shift in mindset, from being so competitive as an athlete. And then shifting to, like, this is all about everybody else. Speaker Brett Gilliland: In knowing you can't really do anything. Right? You can't control the outcome because you're you're not in there. Right? You're not in there rowing and and doing that. It's all through other people. Speaker Michael Lombardi: Yeah. And and it's still so fresh. Right? Like, you just did it. And it you you're either happy with how your career ended or you're not. Most people aren't. You know, or I'd be still rolling for the national team or something like that. And even still, like, a lot of times, it doesn't end up well. But, you know, Yeah. It it was it was, I would get less frustrated with the outcome more about the process. Like, you know, why why isn't this queue working for coaching, you know, for for you making this technical change or something like that? So, you know, finding more patients and ways to connect in different ways, because everybody's different. That that's that's the big thing. It's like, because I understand something one way doesn't mean that anybody else understands it the exact same way. So you have to reach people where they are and you might have to try fifteen different queues to get the same outcome. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So have you have you changed your definition of success over time? Right? And and I and I asked that question because I know for me, when I was twenty two years old, starting in wealth management versus now being forty five and well management. You know,

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