Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Olympic Gold Medalist Kaitlyn Farrington

I recently interviewed Kaitlyn Farrington on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was one of the best snowboarders in the world, before having to retire shortly before winning an Olympic gold medal. Caitlin Farrington won Olympic gold in 2014, retired in 2015, and today is literally getting ready to go to the moon. Kaitlyn, thank you for joining us.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Adam: I’m excited to have you on. You grew up on a cattle ranch in Idaho. Not too far from where you're living now in Montana, both places are equally cold. 

Kaitlyn: Yeah, I grew up in Idaho, Bellevue, Idaho, and my family had a cattle ranch and so grew up riding horses, doing rodeos, and working on a ranch as a child, and then I found snowboarding. 

Adam: You were skiing by the age of three and barrel racing by the age of five. I thought my five-year-old niece was an impressive athlete, but that's a different level. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What experiences and lessons were most instrumental to shaping your worldview and shaping the trajectory of your success?

Kaitlyn: So both my parents moved to Idaho to be ski bums and both worked in restaurants, my dad had a pile business. And they just love skiing. And so me and my sister, they took us up skiing at an early age and just kind of started sending us down the slopes of Sun Valley. And then I feel like growing up on a ranch shaped who I am today within my mental toughness and just I have the mentality that I could do anything. And it was because I learned how to work hard. As a young kid, I always had to do my chores of feeding horses and feeding cows. And that was something that we had to do before we could go up skiing or go to our rodeos that we're playing for the weekends. And so I feel like that growing up on the ranch and having to entertain myself, especially because none of my friends were close by. And so it was always just like running around the fields and hopping on horses. My parents divorced when I was eight years old. But my mom just moved a half mile down the road on one side of one of the 100-acre pastures. And so I just like hop on a horse to get to my mom's house, hop on my horse to get back to my dad's and just kind of always had the free rains of running around the ranch with no real rules.

Adam: I love it. A number of great lessons there. The importance of hard work, and the importance of self-sufficiency, really ties into the importance of being self-motivated. No matter what you're doing, whether you're training for the Olympics, or whether you're working for a small business or a large corporation. If you're someone who doesn't require someone else to motivate you, you're going to be incredibly valuable, you're going to be incredibly successful. The most successful people are people who motivate themselves, people who wake up every morning excited, ready to go ready to get after it. And it sounds like it from a very early age. That was you.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, I'd like to think so. Definitely instilled things in my brain that I still use today. And I always wanted to create my own path. And that was me as a child as well, just wanting to do something and putting my mind to it, and succeeding in it.

Adam: What did you do to become great? And what can anyone do to attain greatness in whatever they're pursuing?

Kaitlyn: It sounds so cliche, but it is like following your dreams. I feel like my family was a huge support system. From a young age when I decided that I wanted to chase competitive snowboarding. My dad, we used to load up a cow to take to cattle sales on a Wednesday. I forget what day the sale yard was. But we'd load a cow up into the trailer and then take him to the cattle sale. And that money that we get from that cow would fund my snowboarding trip for that weekend or my snowboarding competition trip that I'd be going on.

Adam: A couple of interesting points there. You said it sounds cliche, and it might be a little cliche, follow your dreams, but the reality is that. Do you have to follow your passion? You have to spend your time pursuing something that you're passionate about because if you don't love what you do, if you're not passionate about what you're pursuing, how likely is it that you're going to be great at it? How likely is it that you're going to be all in? And that goes hand in hand, with having a great support system around you, whether it's your family, whether it's friends, whether it's a combination of the two, no one gets there alone. You need to have great mentors. Were there any mentors in your life, any coaches, or anyone who made a particular impact in helping you get to the top?

Kaitlyn: I feel like I had a couple of great mentors in my life. My first mentor, I would say was my old snowboard coach Andy Gilbert, who was a part of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. And I joined the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation when I was about 14. And that's when I found writing halfpipe and writing slopestyle and competing in the snowboard world. And he's been with me since day one of figuring it out, not even being able to really control my snowboard. It was controlling me at that point. And he taught me so much about snowboarding. And then another huge mentor for me was Barrett Christie, she's a pro snowboarder. She's a legend in the snowboard industry. And she found me on Mount Hood one summer when I went to Mount Hood in Oregon to do a training camp. And she worked with ngannou snowboards which I had ridden for like 15 years. And she kind of became my mentor in learning how to be a pro snowboarder and how to navigate that world of pro snowboarding.

Adam: From those two relationships, what do you believe are the keys to anyone optimizing a mentor-mentee relationship?

Kaitlyn: I think for me, it was hard for me to learn but always asking and having that communication and feeling comfortable to ask the questions that I didn't have the answers to because, of course, at one point I was a teenager, and I thought I had all the answers. I didn't. And so just having those people at my side to be able to ask those hard questions of how do I go about getting other sponsorships? Or how do I say no? This was a big one for me because I was always a yes person. And so people would ask me to do things I'd be like, yes, yes, yes. But then it wore on me, especially as a teenager, like trying to figure out how to be a professional snowboarder and how to be the best that I could be.

Adam: Yeah, really good advice. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Great leaders ask great questions. And speaking of cliches, there's that cliche that I'm sure you heard in school, I heard in school, there's no such thing as a stupid question. And there might be some stupid questions. But if you're thoughtful about the questions you ask, there is no such thing as a stupid question. Don't be afraid to ask questions. If there's something that you think is important to be asked, ask it. and surround yourself with people who you trust who you respect, and who you admire, and they'll tell you what you need to hear. They'll give you the information that's going to help you get to that next level. I want to take you and take listeners back to this pivotal moment, alluded to it in the intro. You were 24 years old, at the pinnacle of success, and you just won an Olympic gold 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Shortly thereafter, you're snowboarding in Austria. And you fall, you go for an MRI and you find out through the MRI, that you have congenital cervical stenosis. You don't need to be a doctor, I'm not a doctor, but those three words together don't sound very good. What it means is that your career as a competitive snowboarder is over. Can you take listeners back to that moment, back to that period? How did you navigate such a difficult experience? And what were the best lessons that you learn from it?

Kaitlyn: Yeah, like you said, I won my gold medal, and eight months after I had a fall that revealed that I had congenital cervical stenosis and it ruined my life for a minute. I like to say that I went from your highest high to your lowest low. It was I think in October when I found out and it was really tough because I was getting ready to go back into the next competitive season. And it was devastating for me. I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know how to tell people. I probably held off on telling my mom for maybe three months. And I was just trying to figure out what was next for me because I started competing when I was 14 and I had to quit competing 10 years later. And so, for me, that was my identity. I was Kaitlyn Farrington, a half-pipe snowboarder. And that's who I was for 10 years of my life. And then in one instant, it was, you have to quit, you can't do anything that you've done the past 10 years. I'm a grounded snowboarder because some doctors said I couldn't snowboard ever again. Because of my condition, I don't have room for spinal fluid and my cervical spine. And so essentially, when I had my fall in Austria, I lost feeling from the neck down for about a couple of minutes. And so it was scary. And it just, it blew my world that I feel like I was just hitting my stride as just won the Olympic medal was on top, and was so excited to go into the next season with big sponsor deals. And my life was mapped out for me for the next year, especially being the reigning Olympic champion. And I wanted to go to the 2018 Olympics and try again. And so it just fully flipped my life upside down. But luckily, I had some good people in my life that heard my story. And one of my friends, Maria Dubarry, asked if I wanted to go on this volcano tour, which was something completely out of my realm. And it was snowboarding 25 volcanoes through the Cascade Mountain Range. And it was all touring, which is a split board. So you hike up and then ride down. And that opened my eyes to adventure snowboarding and just led me on that path. But it was definitely really, really hard for me for a while. And even to this day, it's still hard at times that every November I always joke that it's my sad month because it is just me reliving a little bit of that depression area that I went through trying to figure out what was next for me and my snowboard career.

Adam: Everyone in life goes through difficult moments, and difficult experiences, yours was an extreme. But listeners right now are thinking of difficult moments that they've had in their lives in their careers. What advice do you have on how to handle those difficult moments, those difficult experiences?

Kaitlyn: I feel like for me, I didn't talk about it. And I think that was some of my biggest regrets of actually talking about my true feelings. I played the like happy-go-lucky, you know, everything's great, when really inside, I was hurting. And so I think you don't have to talk about it with everybody, but finding those people that you can talk about it, and express your real feelings and not just bottle them up inside. I think that was something that took me a while to learn. And this made it difficult with moving on in snowboarding because I feel like I started to have a couple of grudges against some of the sponsors that didn't continue to support me. And it was just something that it took me a while to learn to like actually express my feelings and be open with a lot of people instead of just bottling up inside.

Adam: That is really interesting. And something that I'm also hearing from you is the feeling of disappointment. This overall feeling might not ever go away. And it's really not about eliminating that feeling. It's not about pretending like it never happened. But it's about learning how to move on. And a great piece of advice that you just shared is confronting it head-on, not running away from it, and dealing with it by opening up, dealing with it by finding the right people around you in your life, with who you can talk this through with any other tips.

Kaitlyn: I feel like for me, it is always about finding that next goal, always moving forward, and having something else that you're passionate about to continue to keep chasing a different dream. You live many lives in one life I've learned to realize like now, I'm chasing the dream of hopefully flying around the moon one day which I never thought would be in my life path.

Adam: Another great piece of advice. We're constantly reinventing ourselves or constantly coming up with and chasing new dreams. Your dream yesterday might be a completely different dream tomorrow. I could tell you that my dream when I was a seven-year-old kid is a little bit different than my dream today as I'm pushing 40. And whoever's out there listening, think back. What was your dream when you were seven years old? What was your dream when you were 17? When you were 27? What's your dream today? What's your dream going to be tomorrow? Not to say that it was wrong, then not to say that it's going to be wrong today or wrong tomorrow. We're continually evolving. Our interests are evolving. Our needs are evolving. Our wants are evolving. We're constantly changing his people. And our dreams are changing. Right along with us.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, I like to use the word adaptable because I feel like that's come in handy in my life. You're always adapting to different things. And even if they're uncomfortable, you adapt to it.

Adam: The best leaders are flexible or adaptable. Understand that the only certainty is uncertainty, understand the inevitability of change, and roll with it.

Adam: You mentioned the goal that you're currently focused on, which is literally going to the moon. To provide a little bit more context, there were 1 million people who applied for eight spots on the Dear Moon project, which is set to become the first civilian mission to the moon. And you were one of two backup crew members selected.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It was something that I found just scrolling one day when I was bored and signed up thinking, what are the chances? And then after a year of doing interviews and medical testing, all of a sudden, I got the call. And they told me that I was the back up crew for the Dear Moon crew. And I was definitely disappointed that I didn't make the actual crew. But like I said earlier, I adapted to the fact and I'm excited to be a part of this whole opportunity and get to chase this dream of potentially flying around the moon.

Adam: So many people listening to this conversation, myself included, have applied for jobs that have been highly competitive, have applied for colleges that have been highly competitive. But here you are competing with a million people for only a few spots. What are the best lessons that you learned from this experience?

Kaitlyn: From this experience, and I think from my Olympic experience, just going all in and showing your passion to people and just going all in and just rolling with the punches. I feel like I had a tough time making the Olympic team in 2014. And I fought my way there. And I feel like this Dear Moon thing, I've been fighting my way to be a part of this mission of just, I want to be the storyteller of this mission. And they asked to have artists and I went in I was like, I'm not really an artist. But I would like to tell the story of this whole mission. And that's my art form. And that's kind of how I went about it. And I think it's just going all in on the things that you want to do. And that you're passionate about.

Adam: Go all in and be your authentic self. Yeah, definitely know who you are, and present that to the world. In this case, you understood what they were looking for. And you said, this is who I am. This is how I can help you. And to the extent that I'm your person, great, but you didn't pretend to be someone else.

Kaitlyn: No, it was an interesting whole process of year-long interviews and going through it.

Adam: Going back to your Olympic experience and just getting to that place, you competed in a sport that requires absolutely no fear. What in your experience are the keys to fighting and eliminating fear and anxiety?

Kaitlyn: I just loved snowboarding from such a young age. I started skiing when I was three and then transitioned to snowboarding when I was 11-12. I made that swap and I just had this passion for the mountains and being up there. And I like to call it my superhero power. When I'm in all my snowboard gear, it just makes me feel like a different person. And I feel kind of invincible. And so going into the Olympics, I knew in 2010 that I wanted to make the Vancouver team, but I wasn't there yet mentally or in my snowboarding. And I went through that Olympic cycle. And after I didn't make the team, I set that goal. I was like, I will make this 2014 team. And I went all in. It was something that I had a little bit of a mental block in 2010, of comparing myself to the other athletes. Which was a huge mistake because I'd be like, oh, the judges didn't score me, right, I did these tricks, blah, blah, blah. And I like had this weird kind of negativity around it. But then in 2014, through the years, I trained myself that it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing. It only matters what I was doing. And so if I rode the best that I could that day during the contest, I was stoked. I wasn't disappointed with how the judges scored me. I was like when I came out here, I landed the rounds that I wanted to land in this competition. And I did the best that I could do. And so that was something that I had to teach myself for a couple of years and get used to just not comparing myself to anybody else. And just accepting who I was and how I was riding.

Adam: A really important lesson, is that no matter where you're competing, no matter the context, you could be competing in the Olympics, you can be competing in business, you can be competing anywhere. You're ultimately competing against yourself. You're competing against what you have in you, to give your best effort. It's on you, each day, every day to put your best foot forward. It's not about the quote-unquote, competition. It's about your ability to be your best self.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, you're your biggest critic.

Adam: Along those lines, it sounds like you clearly are your biggest critic. How do you balance that? How do you balance being your biggest critic with at the same time, not being too hard on yourself? Self-care is equally as important as pushing yourself to that next level. We've seen Olympians opt out of competition, understanding that competing could endanger themselves. How do you balance pushing yourself with taking care of yourself?

Kaitlyn: For me, it was a tough lesson to learn because as an Olympian, I was obviously very competitive. I still am to this day, but I control my competitiveness. Now, I used to think of everything as a competition. I feel like now I'm like, no, everything doesn't need to be a competition because it takes the fun out of it when everything is a competition. And so that was a pretty funny one for me. But like, especially after I had to retire from competing, I missed that aspect of competition and that thrill of it. And so I kind of had this step back. I didn't do any competitions, like being phones or anything because I didn't want to have my real competitive side start to come back out. I was still finding myself and had to find that self-care and awareness of myself and what I needed to be mentally stable, really.

Adam: How did you do that? What are your best tips for anyone listening?

Kaitlyn: I feel like for me, it was finding a different passion and stopping living my life in such a competitive way. And then also, I mean, I used to chase winter 11 months out of the year. And so moving somewhere like Montana where I found summertime and I started fishing, I started rafting, I started mountain biking, and I suck at them all. And I feel like that was good. That was kind of a good humbling moment of like, okay, you move outside of your comfort zone. Because when you're in your comfort zone, you're coasting through, it's like you're on cruise control, moving out of that comfort zone and finding new hobbies and new activities that I enjoy. But I'm not that great at it. It's fun because instead of snowboarding, I feel like I'm always getting better each day I go out when I'm doing these other activities. I find new ways. I've challenged myself in that sense. And I think that was a way that it kind of got me out of my very competitive self and I found other passions and other hobbies that I thoroughly enjoy. I love trying to go surfing. I call it drowning, but I still enjoy it every time I'm out there.

Adam: Push your comfort zone and seek balance. Were there moments in your time as a competitive athlete when you felt this pressure? You obviously got to a point where you mentioned that you felt like a superhero the minute you put your equipment on, but did you ever feel pressure? Did you ever feel anxiety? And if so, how did you deal with it?

Kaitlyn: Yes, I did a lot. For the U.S., I went into my Olympics, in a different way than a lot of Olympians on the snowboard and ski side. I did quit U.S. snowboarding, which is different from Team USA. And so two years out of the Olympics, I quit the national team and found my own coaches and kind of chose my own path to get to the Olympics. I still had to do all the same qualifications, but I decided to do it my way instead of the conventional way. And it was definitely hard because I did have to fight to get spots in World Cups. And I was just out of the loop in the sense of U.S. snowboarding, too. But then when I made Team USA, I was obviously on the Olympic team and with the same coaches that I had previously before I quit the national team. And it was just a very interesting way to go about making the Olympics. But it was better for my mental state because I wasn't happy when I was on the national team. I called it the flavor of the week because there were so many good girls. And the coaches seemed to focus on who was doing best that week or those weeks of competition. And so I decided that I would go and work with a coach that I really enjoyed being around and working with, and change my mentality of just only riding halfpipe every day training to actually going snowboarding as well. And mixing up my halfpipe training with regular snowboarding and just cruising the mountain, which really helped me in my mentality of going into the 2014 Olympic season and trying to make that team was just it was a whirlwind. But I fought for it. And I was so happy that day that I made the Olympic team, it was the last qualifier. And I kind of had written myself off for making the 2014 games. But I dropped into the last contest and I heard the announcer being like this is Kaitlyn Farrington's only chance to make the Olympic team, she better have a great run. And I was like great, thanks, D.C. ended up landing my run and ended up winning that competition. So I qualified automatically since I had first place and made the team that day. And it was just quite a wild whirlwind of mixed emotions. And just I was not expected to make the team at all going into the Olympics, I was the dark horse. And so it was crazy to end up receiving that Olympic gold medal at the end of it all.

Adam: It's awesome. And it also speaks to the importance of having a great coach. What in your experience are the key characteristics of a great coach and a great leader?

Kaitlyn: I feel like great coaches, they're your mentors as well. They always have your back and they believe in you. And that's the best thing about a coach, they believe in you. And they convinced you that you could do anything. And so I feel that coaches are so important, and especially in the competitive snowboarding world that you just need somebody that has your back at all times. And that's what I feel like most of the coaches around that's what they do for their athletes. They give them that reassurance that they can do something.

Adam: And I think that that's applicable to all leaders. Great leaders have your back period. Yeah. Kaitlyn, how can anyone listening to this conversation develop a winning mindset?

Kaitlyn: I think it's just setting those goals that you want to achieve. But I'm a big list person. Oh, I have all my lists. But I think it's mainly just setting the goals that you want to achieve. And following through with them. And also just having a good attitude about things. I always say 100% fun is how I went about doing things. If I wasn't having fun, I wasn't going to do it well. And so just enjoying the ride, really.

Adam: Enjoying the ride, enjoying the moment. It's a key theme with so many of my conversations with so many of the people like you who have made it to the top in whatever fields they have pursued, whether we're talking about Olympic gold medalists, Hall of Fame athletes, Grammy-winning music. Since it's about embracing the moment, the people who are there watching you are there for one reason, and one reason only. And that's to have fun. So if you're there competing, if you're there entertaining, you should be there for the same reason to, which is to have fun.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, it shows too. And like you said, being your authentic self as well. And it shines through when you're at that kind of competitive level.

Adam: Kaitlyn, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Kaitlyn: I think communication is always the big key. And also just having a positive attitude. And it's okay to be sad sometimes. But don't let it ruin your month or find somebody to talk to, to get over it. And just being yourself and finding who you are. It's important for everybody.

Adam: Kaitlyn, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors. 

Kaitlyn: Yeah, thank you for having me.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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