Shaun Peet, the first Canadian pit crew coach in NASCAR history, can train five athletes to change four tires and add 18 gallons of fuel to a race car in 12 seconds. What can you do in 12 seconds?
Q: What is your number one business goal to accomplish this year?
My number one business goal this year is to pour as much light into the world as I can. he goal is to inspire human brilliance. To uplift and affect as many leaders, teams and companies as I can possibly reach. It is to remind people that we were all born to shine and that every day, every single one of us finds ourselves somewhere between over confidence and self-crushing imposter syndrome.
Q. What is your favourite thing about what you do in your career and why?
My favorite thing I get to do is share energy with people. I love walking into a team or a company and helping them realize what they are capable of accomplishing when they come together. There is a scarcity mindset that exists in a lot teams and companies. People are worried that there is only one promotion, one corner office and one C-level position within the organization. Most of the abhorrent behavior we see in companies is a result of this thinking. What if we re-thought that? What if instead of a scarcity mindset we adopted an abundance mindset? What if instead of, “I am going to get my piece of the pie,” we just worked together to make the whole pie bigger? A rising tide lifts all ships and when we can come together we often find that the result is that there is more for all of us. A mantra that lives within our team is:
“From Abundance, and still abundance remains”
Q. Do you have a mantra or phrase that you live by? What is it?
The phrase I live by is: “Never put a period where life intended a comma.” We are all in charge of the punctuation in our lives. But so often we let others fill it in for us and we end up playing small in life. As human being we are capable of so much more. But what most of us do is we allow self-limiting beliefs, usually formed from other people’s opinions of us, to limit how far we rise. We were all born to shine, but as we go through life we let other people place periods, hard stops, along our path. You will never get a hockey scholarship. You are not smart enough to make it at an Ivy League school. There are no Canadians in NASCAR. Other people’s opinions of us are none of our business. Our business is how we react to them. And if you understand this then you realize that the problem with most of us is not that we aim too high and miss. It is that we aim too low and hit, and we think that’s the best there is for us.
Q. What keeps you motivated on a daily basis?
What keeps me motivated on a daily basis? It’s pretty simple. I chase joy. I pursue the things that speak to my soul and wake me up in the middle of the night. I learned early on from my experience attending Dartmouth College that chasing money was a race without a finish line. When weighing the cost of my dreams, I was not willing to sacrifice my health, my family, or my time on this earth for titles, zeroes on a pay check or a corner office. So I decided to chase joy. The decision to chase joy took me and my Ivy League degree to Texas to play hockey instead of Wall Street to be a banker. The decision to chase joy led me to NASCAR, a sport I knew nothing about, but seemed like fun. The decision to chase joy led me to an opportunity to speak at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, which has put me in rooms and on stages that I could have never dreamed possible. The decision to chase joy has rewarded me with the solace that at 45 years old, I feel like I have never worked a day in my life.
Connect with Shaun:
Instagram: swpeet
Facebook: shaun peet
Twitter:@PeetShaun
