Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Former Olympic Gold Medalist Marion Jones

I recently interviewed former Olympic Gold Medalist Marion Jones on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was considered by many to be the greatest female athlete in the world. Marion Jones won an unprecedented five medals in track and field at the 2000 Summer Olympics, three gold medals and two silver medals before returning all of them amid an equally historic doping scandal. Marion, thank you for joining us.

Marion: Thank you for having me, Adam.

Adam: You're a fellow LA native. You grew up here. You bounced around Southern California as a kid to compete on a number of different junior high and high school teams. You were competing internationally by the time you were 12. By the time you were 15, you were dominating high school sports in California, both on the track and on the basketball court. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Marion: I would love to. I am a product of an amazing single parent. My mother and I have two kids, myself and my older brother. My family is from the country of Belize originally. It's a small country in Central America. And when my mom was young, after she had my brother, she came up to the States for a better life for herself and for her kids. And I share all that because that's kind of the heart of my upbringing. I am a product of hard-working immigrants. who fought for everything that she got, had a dream for herself and for her kids, worked hard to achieve it and instilled certain morals with us that you work hard and this country, this life will pay its dividends, give its rewards. I was nine years old when the Summer Olympics came to Los Angeles. And my mom made sure that she took me out to the parade. Adam, I don't know if you remember, but way back in the day for the Olympics, the Americans, they would parade the athletes through the city streets to be celebrated prior to the game starting. And so, we went out there and we watched, I watched the athletes in the floats and in the cars. And that summer I sat in front of my television and I watched the games. It was my first exposure to the Olympic experience, and I was hooked. I went into my room, Adam, and I erased whatever homework, summer reading I was supposed to be doing. I remember I got in trouble, and I wrote to Adam that I was going to be an Olympic champion. This is what I want. Now, in what event, what sport? I had no idea at the time. At that point, I had been dabbling in all kinds of sports from soccer to T-ball to ballet and tap. You name it, I did it. I think that summer or the year after was my first exposure to track and field. We signed up for a local track meet and I remember there were these popular shoes Adam called ROOS, R-O-O-S. And my mom purchased them for me, Adam, because they had a zipper on the side that I could put my Girl Scout money on. Anyways, I competed in it and loved it. And I did well. And I said, you know what, maybe this is my thing. Maybe this is my passion. So fast forward a few years, and I started participating in a lot of other sports. Track and field really stuck. And I realized that I simply wanted to get better and train, and I was willing to sacrifice all of the childhood pleasures that most of my other friends were experiencing. I wanted to go practice. I wanted to train. I wanted to learn. I wanted to get better. I remember competing there at the UCLA stadium, many, many practice sessions there and some big competitions. And at the age of 15, I made my first Olympic team and made the choice, though Adam, not to travel to Seoul, Korea, because I didn't feel like it was really my time yet. Fast forward a year and a half. By that point, I had started to participate in the sport of basketball and was very good and decided to take a basketball scholarship to the University of North Carolina. During that time from my childhood days to when I went off to college, a lot of lessons I learned, one of them was this whole dynamic with my biological father and that my parents were divorced when I was very young and I never got to see him. He never came around. And so, I really started to hone in on dealing with my anxiety and my stress through sport and through physical movements. which is a good and a bad thing. I never got into alcohol or drugs or any other type of weird behavior, but I poured myself into competing and training. And I can certainly attribute a lot of my success to going through a tough time as an adolescent and normal, natural thing that adolescents go to, fighting demons within, all these types of stuff. And then having an outlet, a healthy outlet to get all that out. So those are some of the lessons that I learned, like all of that negative thought process that a lot of young people experience and they unfortunately don't know who to share it with. I found the sport of track and field and basketball and I poured myself into it to deal with a lot of stuff that was going on in my life at that time.

Adam: Marion shared a lot of really interesting background and interesting lessons. The last thing you shared around how you were able to channel a lot of anxiety and channel negativity into sports, turning a negative into a positive, did you deal with anxiety when you were competing, whether you were competing on the track or competing on the basketball court? How did you deal with the moments when all the chips were on the line?

Marion: I generally dealt with them the only way that I knew, which was pouring myself into my passion, which at that point was sport. But I also am from a community and from a generation whereby it wasn't necessarily looked at as a positive to express your anxiety, to share it. Like, of course, now you see there's such a heavy emphasis on dealing with mental breakdowns and stress and depression and anxiety and how to handle that mindset. It really wasn't a well outspoken thing when I was growing up, so I didn't really have any examples to look to. Throughout my early career, Adam, a lot came my way really fast. After I made my choice to go to the University of North Carolina and study and compete in two sports, We won a national title, but a lot of things, school, away from home, away from family, wanting injuries, redshirting, all those types of things, being away from track and field and focusing on basketball, but missing the sport of track and field and making the decision after I graduated in 1997, that I wanted to be the fastest woman in the world and to pour everything in that. The problem with that, Adam, is anytime you become, in my case, or I think in a lot of elite athletes' case, you become a bit obsessive with success, obsessed with fame and fortune and all those things. And any type of obsession is not necessarily a good thing. There needs to be balance in our life. I've had a lot of time to reflect on why certain choices were made and I can attribute some of this time to being obsessive so much that I distanced myself from The people in my world, I like to call them now my accountability team, them talking about family members or people who know you for a very long time and can care less what you can do for them, or buy for them, but these are people who are going to give it to you straight Adam like a parent or a sibling or a best friend from childhood, it doesn't matter how much success you've gained in whatever you're doing, they love you for who you are and they're going to tell you if you're not doing right or if you are. So after I graduated and I started achieving success at a high level, I made the choice to surround myself with, as a 20, 21-year-old, people who would kind of like just pat me on the back and tell me all of the good things about me And I get it when you're in such a time in your life where money is coming at you and besides your career, like really work for anything and it becomes kind of easy. I don't want to listen to my mom when I'm 21. I don't want to listen to my brother. So, I can look back and say there was a time in my life where I distanced myself from the people who I knew loved me for what it was for a lot of reasons. And I could also see Adam, that that was a turning point in my life where I started to make choices that weren't good. I started to make choices that I didn't really, really think about consequences, just make quick choices. And it changed the trajectory of my world, of my life.

Adam: I want to go back to that time in your life as you're sharing with listeners. You entered this period at the peak. You were a dominant athlete. Things were coming easy to you. Everyone was trying to gain access to you, gain access to your world. People who were able to gain access to you became people who just said yes. They nodded. They weren't the best influences, but they were there. How did you initially get started taking performance-enhancing drugs? What was that decision, that initial moment when you went from doing things the right way, competing as a clean athlete, to that first decision when things went off track?

Marion: It was a time in my life whereby, as I shared, I had put together what I thought was a solid team. You have to understand every elite athlete has a team of people around them, from therapists, massage, and psychologists, to coaches, to managers across the gamut. And I assumed that I had put together a team that was looking out for my best interests. During this time, there was a lot of information in the news about different supplement companies producing supplements that were just tainted. And so, because of that, I made the choice and my team made the choice that we couldn't take that risk, take that chance. So we hired a company to make my stuff so I wouldn't have to go into a GNC or I wouldn't have to go into a store brand. and take things that I wasn't 100% sure that were on the up and up and that were clean. And because of that choice to hire this company and to put together this team, I assumed that what I had been taking was clean. There were no issues with them at all. Didn't question them because again, I'm young and I put together this team whereby I thought that it was a win-win situation for everybody. I run fast, I'm clean, I'm healthy, everybody on the team wins. And so fast forward, win the medals, went to the Olympics in Sydney 2000. And to my understanding, I am a clean athlete. I am running fast and I am breaking records and I'm winning medals and I'm being tested every other week on if I've been taking performance enhancing drugs. And as far as I knew at that time, I had not. And my tests reflected that. There were no positive tests prior to the Olympic Games and even immediately after the Olympic Games. So again, I'm under the understanding that we've done what we're supposed to do to prepare me safe and clean and healthy. Fast forward a few years after the Games, there really started to be more talk in the news about athletes being associated with this particular company that I had hired prior to the Olympic Games. And these athletes were starting to be accused of taking performance enhancing drugs. And this company was giving them supplements. And things started to become a little dicey and started to question if this company had been given something to me. Again, still being tested, Adam, by every governing drug testing body in the world. Still. Nothing comes up in any type of test. So, in 2005, 2006, I got the call from federal investigators, Adam, that, hey, they wanted to bring me in and they wanted to ask me about what I knew about it all. Cool, no problem. I accepted their request, traveled to San Francisco, sat down with them, and they started asking questions about it all. And I'm like, no, I don't know anything. They're asking me questions. All of a sudden, however many minutes into the interview, Adam, they pull out something out of their briefcase. And this is two or three investigators on the other side of the table. And I have my attorney with me, they pull out something out of their bag and they push it across the table. And it was something immediately that I recognized I had been given prior to the Olympic Games. And it was something that I was told was something and when they pushed it across, I realized, oh boy, if this is something that I know and I tell them, indeed, I know what it is, Adam, and I had taken it, everything that I had trained for Adam and everything that I had dreamt of would be gone and everything I would lose. So, in that moment, Adam, I made the choice and literally it was like less than a minute. In my brain, I made the choice. Oh, no, I better not tell them. I'm going to tell this lie until the wheels fall off. Nothing has come up on my test. So maybe it wasn't really tainted or any of that. And I told them that I had never seen it before. I had never taken it. And so that is where I went wrong. I sat there, I looked in their faces, even though I knew it's something that I had been given to me and that I had taken, and I told them that I didn't. And because of that, a few years later, I was prosecuted and I was found guilty of lying to federal agents. My consequence was six months incarceration. The lesson is very clear. We all come across moments in our life, Adam, whereby in a split moment, you can make a choice that can impact your life, or you deal with consequences and you move on. Do I wish I could have that moment back and make some changes, of course, but I also find, Adam, that looking back, I was in that moment on a wave of success. And this is how I describe it, that I was being caught in a wave taking me further and further out from reality and continuing to surround myself with people or massive amounts of water waves that were just pouring into me, telling me what I needed to know. And without a hiccup, without something happening, who knows how far I would have gone out there and drowned eventually. And so, making my poor decision and facing the consequences brought me back to reality. It forced me to sit down, forced me for six months to sit down 49 days in solitary confinement. to reflect on why I had made certain choices, deal with these consequences, but more importantly now, Adam, what's going to happen moving forward? How was I going to allow this to define my life or not define my life? And so, it was a pivotal moment in my life where I'm like, you know what, I'm going to make the best of this situation. I know that without being given whatever I was given, I would have won races and I would have won gold medals. But I find that the way that I'm able to impact the lives of people now, as opposed to how I impacted their lives when I was running fast from here to there now is so vastly different. And I think, in my opinion, so much even more important. And let me tell you why, Adam, is that not many people in life can relate to being an Olympic gold medalist, Olympic champion. Not many people in this life can relate to being a convicted felon. I've shared it before. But everybody in this world, at some point, have dealt or will deal with this idea of failing at something, whether it's their relationship. failed career, failed financial decisions. And they are searching for the tools, advice, an example of something or somebody to say, how do I get up out of this dark place? How do I wake up tomorrow morning knowing that I made decisions that were poor? How do I pull myself up out of that? Forward thinking that that setback in my life can be a catalyst for an incredible comeback. And so that is the strategy. That is what I put together while I was away for six months. I paused for 10 years, Adam, took a step back, raised my kids, poured into my community. And when they became of a certain age and when I was ready to start to impact people in a really, really massive way is when I decided to come back on the scene. That is a mouthful, I know. But your failure in life does not have to be forever. You do not need to stay stuck in whatever potential dark place you are. And there are some people out there, they don't even know how to verbalize it. They are dealing with that darkness inside and they're just looking, right? They're looking for, like I say, an example from somebody. They're looking for advice, they're looking for tools on how to do it, how to reinvent themselves, reframe, rebrand themselves. And I always like to say, if you're looking for a living example of somebody who hit success on the highest level, made poor choices, lost it all, figured out a way to reinvent, re-unframe herself, fight tooth and nail, push through doors that have been slammed in my face. People don't want to hear from me and find a journey, a way back to success. Like, hey, there's probably nobody out there right now who can say that there's a more worthy individual than me.

Adam: Marian. I want to hear from you, and that's why you're here. And I want to dive into each of those topics, starting off with the fact that you are speaking figuratively about this dark place that every one of us is in at some point in our lives. In your case, it was literally a dark place. You're talking about solitary confinement. How can we emerge from the darkness that we face when we fail? How can we bounce back?

Marion: It's this massive, massive word called hope. Knowing that Things can and will get better. It's not going to be on our time frame, usually it's not, like you want it to happen tomorrow, and usually it doesn't happen. You want it to happen in a month, usually it doesn't happen. Waking up every day and saying, I'm going to take a step forward today. It might not be a 20 feet long jump. It might not be however far, but as long as you are moving forward, meaning you've lost everything financially, you got to get back on that horse and get a job and start to figure out what your passion in life is for. Go back to school, put together a team of people around you who will mentor you or into you. And things can and will get better day by day. Realizing also though, Adam, that there are moments and there are days whereby there might be a hiccup. There might be a speed bump. And just because there are some of those, it's not worthy of throwing in the towel. You expect that those will happen because if it doesn't happen and the journey back to success is so smooth sailing, you don't appreciate it as much once you get there. You best believe, Adam, that I appreciate all the goodness and opportunity and success that I am achieving right now because I went through it, because I had days of hiccup, because I had days of people saying, we're not really interested in what you have to say anymore, Marion. If people think that that didn't happen to me, you are wrong. After you make such a massive lie, you share with the world that you did wrong, you stand on the courtroom steps, and I'm talking about myself in the third person sometimes, Adam, because sometimes it's a little easier to do that, I'll just be honest. But when you've gone through all those things, and then all of a sudden, you made a good choice, Mary, to step away for a decade. Your children are healthy and happy and they're thriving, which for me was a priority in my life. I made a decision that if and when I was going to come back into the spotlight, I was going to make sure that my message to the world was one that had nothing to do with garbage and trash and reliving the past. Do I understand the need to have to touch on certain topics in my past to give everything context? Sure, I get it. But I am not about that life of talking scandal. of talking X and O's, talking players. I'm at a place in my life where it is positive movement, positive thoughts, positive talk. You want to talk to me about that? We can sit down forever long. If you're interested in just reliving things that have already been documented and discussed and dissected until you're blue in the face, I'm not in that world. And I'm sure there are people that will, but I'm not there because I think really people need, especially during these times, is a voice of hope. I know how hard and dark and ugly and sad it can be, but tomorrow can be better. And next week can be better than that. And the following week, you might have a step backwards, but know that in two years, you're going to be this much far ahead. So if I can share anything about folks who are in that space, And Adam, there are people in your life, my life, whom we don't even know are in that space, that just hearing that privately and quietly might be the word, might be the sentence, might be the catalyst for them to say, all right, I'm going to give it another day. I'm going to give it another week. And that is what gets me up really in the morning, Adam. Oh, woe is Marion. Man, you messed up. Man, you had to give back the medals. No, I'm not there. I refuse to allow myself to be there because it is a destructive, destructive, poison, ugly situation. So, I don't allow it anymore.

Adam: Really breaking down the advice that you shared. When you're in a dark place, how do you emerge? It starts by taking that first step. you're not going to be able to get to where you want to be overnight. But it's the small steps that allow you to ultimately take that one big step. Don't get discouraged by the hiccups. Don't get discouraged by the speed bumps. There's no such thing as a linear path. When something goes wrong along the way, get back up, understand that it's part of the journey, which comes back to the power of positivity. To your point, Marian, with all that you endured, you're here able to remain positive. Finally, a key theme, really from the beginning of our conversation, the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. You can have a great team around you that can uplift you. You can have people around you who bring you down. In many ways, your actions, your behavior, how you live your life, so much of it is driven by who you surround yourself with. And to a large degree, that's in your hands. You get to decide, who do I spend my time with?

Marion: I share with young people in particular, you are whom you surround yourself. If you hang out with thugs, eventually you're going to have thuggish behavior. If you surround yourself with positive, like-minded, hopefully individuals who are here to make the planet better in some capacity, eventually it's going to start to rub off on you. And so, the sooner that people can start to put together this type of team, this type of family, this group of people whom that is their circle, they will see some amazing things happen in their life. I'm almost 50 now, Adam, and it's easy for me to say now I have put together that group of individuals in my village. And people might say, well, you're older and you've learned, and you're right. Sometimes you have to go through stuff, but really the earlier in your life, you can really adopt this practice of surrounding yourself with good people, which is a catalyst for you to be good. And for you to make good decisions, the better off you will be. And it will start to create what I call in my training of people, muscle memory, muscle brain memory, where you do things over and over a certain way. That it becomes a natural. If earlier on in your life, Adam, you surround yourself with good people making good choices, helping people for the sake of helping them, and not what you're going to get out of them. It is a practice, it is an attitude, it is a way of living, that is going to become the norm. as you get older, which is what we want. So that team, as you said to me, really is everything. They're also there to lift you up. They're also there to say, slow down. Let's rethink this whole thing. There are people in your life that are not just going to say how awesome you are, Adam, and I'm sure you are, but not always. Some unique people in your life, and they're not concerned that they're going to step on your toes or they're going to hurt your feelings. These are people that you know, love you, care for you, and they're just here for you.

Adam: Whether we're in our early twenties, just starting off on our journey or whether we're about to turn 50, how can we find the right people to surround ourselves with?

Marion: It can be a challenge. And I have found that the people in my life who have real-life experience, and this is particularly when I was younger in reflecting on my journey, instead of your buddies, when you're 15 to 25 years old, the people whom you are relying on for advice are the same people who have limited life experience. So, they are giving you advice based on what they heard and not what they themselves have experienced. So, I find that finding people in your world who have been through stuff, lived through stuff, and it's not everybody. A very select few find a healthy mentor. It could be a teacher of some sort. I get it, especially younger people that are hearing this story or this podcast. You don't want to always tell your parents everything. I've been there. Of course, your parents would be an excellent resource. But again, I get it. These are people in your world whom you look at and you're like, there's nothing I can do for them. You cannot buy them anything. They don't want what I have to give them. They literally have been here for so long and have poured into me, even when I was a little punk. They were still there and they're still there and they will be there just because they care for me. And that group is very small, usually maybe three, four, five individuals. And are they there sometimes for the long haul? Yes, but occasionally they're there for a season and don't feel like you can't bring some new people onto the team.

Adam: Ensure that you're surrounding yourself with people who can provide a diverse range of perspectives. If the people around you look like you, talk like you, think like you, and nod every time you say something, anytime they hear you voice an opinion, all they do is say yes. That's not going to enrich your life in any way. It might make you feel good in the moment, but it's no more than a sugar high. Surround yourself with people who are capable of offering contrary perspectives and who are going to offer contrary perspectives, who have a different set of life experiences. How do you find those people? Get out there. To your advice, to your point. Don't be afraid to cultivate relationships with new people.

Marion: Absolutely, Adam. I shared before we hit record that I have my middle son is a freshman in college and he's an athlete. And he and his father have shared with him numerous times, even through high school. Don't stay stuck with just athletes. Get involved in other clubs, get involved in other social organizations. And especially now that he's a freshman in college. Every other day when I text him, I'm like, have you gone to this meeting to explore this world? You will meet the international students. That really is how you are going to enhance your college experience. And another plus to that, Adam, you are going to expand your network, which is what you want to do in college. You want to make friends with people who are different, who you potentially will be competing with in your career. You want to be exposed to different people who think differently, have different thoughts, can have constructive arguments and discussions with, because that is how you learn.

Adam: The advice that you gave your son is the same advice that I share with senior leaders, which is that if your team is homogenous, you're going to run into a lot of problems.

Marion: You're going to limit yourself. Interesting, Adam, that you bring that up because what I share with current Olympians or college stars, I share with them that their moment in the spotlight really is so limited. And it's hard when they're in the midst of it to really think like that, but it is. There will be gold medalists from this summer's game. who in four years, you won't even know who they are. And the advice that I give to them is that while they have those moments in the limelight, which is a very short amount of time for the majority of them. attach themselves, align themselves with a cause or something bigger than sport. It might seem like they're inspiring the world by running fast from here to there or flipping here to there, but in the long grand scheme of things, aligning themselves with something bigger than sport will allow their name to go on and on and impact the lives of so many more people than what they think. But they only have that moment in the spotlight for a limited time. What is the change that you want to see in the world? What impacts you? Have you had somebody in your life who you've lost because of something? Have you been affected by climate change? It doesn't have to be something massive like that. But if you align yourself with a cause that is truly from the heart, and that really is the catalyst for why you want to impact people, and you happen to be great at baseball, let me tell you how much more and greater and legendary you can become if while you capitalize on your moment in the sun, you're also impacting the lives of people who can really care less about baseball. So, it's just a little thing that I share with some of the current athletes.

Adam: It's a great lesson and even though only a small percentage of listeners of this podcast are Olympic gold medalists, I know that we have some Olympic gold medalists who listen to this podcast and had quite a few who have been guests. The lesson that you shared can be applied more broadly in that every single one of us has a voice, every single one of us has influence, every single one of us has the ability to make impact, and it ultimately comes down to us to make a decision as to whether and how we're going to use our voice, whether and how we're going to exert our influence to impact others. And the example that you gave around Olympic gold medalists capitalizing on this moment when their impact is going to be at its highest, to ultimately align themselves with a cause that can give them the opportunity to make a greater impact and to create greater positivity in the world. Anyone listening to this conversation, wherever you are in your life, wherever you are in your career, who do you influence? Who listens to you? Where do your words resonate and who can you impact and how? What can you do to allow people to become better? What can you do to be a greater positive force?

Marion: I agree. I mean, I love how I'm in the world of sports for so many years. That is some of my examples. Sports is such a metaphor for life that it is unreal. And I'm just in such a good place, Adam, whereby things are so clear now that we are all here to make other lives better. And how can you do that? And sometimes you do it based off of your experiences. Sometimes you do that based off of the knowledge that you've gained. Sometimes you do it just because it's the right thing to do. And the sooner that we get that, the better we will all be. I'm just so pleased that I have a voice that has been able to not be stifled. or extinguished. And I believe that is because I have and had a rock star parent to help guide me that when you get knocked down, and you will, you fight, you fight, you fight until you're where you want to be, which is where I'm at now, Adam. And so, I'm just so happy to be able to share this story that failure is not forever, everyone listening to this, if you're going through something or you've been through something, you can make your comeback and find that example that you can look to that it can get better.

Adam: And to your point, we're all going to fail in some way, big, small, infrequent, frequent. For most of us, it's going to be frequent. Failures are inevitable. The choice that we have is how we respond to failure. Do we view failure as something that is terminal? Or do we view failure as an experience that can enrich our perspective?

Marion: Yup, I agree.

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

Marion: Well, I think that's finding your passion in life, finding that magic sauce, finding that thing that you wake up wanting to do, that you get excited to do. If you happen to make a living doing so, that's great. Even if you don't, you go to bed at night fulfilled, fulfilled that you have made a difference in this world for your short period of time here. And that if tomorrow was your last day on this earth, you can be content knowing that you did all that you could do to make it a better place.

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

Marion: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me, Adam.

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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