Transcript: פיטר פלצ׳יק: רוצה להיות הספורטאי המשפיע בישראל

Intro

Eyal David: [00:00] Take me to thirty minutes before one of your fights.

Peter Paltchik: [00:02] God, the fear. So first of all your body tries to betray you. The Tokyo Olympics, which I'd prepared for my whole life, and I fail — a total failure. The vision to be the most influential athlete in Israel. Back when I slept in a car outside the hall at Wingate, with debts at the bank — self-discipline is the most important thing. As an athlete, motivation comes and goes. We literally put it down on paper, in black and white, and that document has stayed with me to this day. Every night before I go to sleep I say, okay, what did I do today? If it doesn't serve the vision, if it doesn't serve me, then it's not interesting — even if it's hugely lucrative. And to spot the fighters and the winners of the startup world — I've lost many battles in life, but deep down, with blind faith, I knew I would win the big war. Peter, what's up? How's it going?

What Peter is building today, after judo

Eyal David: [00:54] Great, we were just chatting a bit,

Peter Paltchik: [00:56] I came in fired up.

Eyal David: [00:58] You came in fired up and we let it roll a bit, right? I want a little — I felt just now that you were kind of already in the conversation, and when you told me about the different things you're doing, I felt like you were opening up the table, right?

Peter Paltchik: [01:08] Totally, totally.

Eyal David: [01:09] So, tell me for a second — what fills you up today? After the judo chapter of your life.

Peter Paltchik: [01:15] So, several things. First of all, speaking engagements. Talks are, let's say, something that takes up most of my schedule — the monthly one, forget daily, because there isn't a talk every day, but most of the monthly schedule is talks: companies, organizations, whether it's high-tech, defense, the army, the police, schools. And you know, sometimes — I'm happy to say this — it's not always the most lucrative, and I told Yossi, my manager, I want this because I have some crazy impact. What I get back, you know, in the end it's the next generation, I have influence, some part in influencing the next generation. And of course, sometimes I get exposed to an audience of kids who, you know, haven't heard of me, don't necessarily watch the news, don't necessarily see the features — that's another audience I want to touch and create some dialogue with. There's a chain of judo clubs — I already opened its first branch in Be'er Ya'akov, and the chain will really open more and more branches, all in due time. So the first branch launched — yesterday was the first training session at the first club. So it's fun. Startups, high-tech — I've been flirting with that world for so many years now thanks to Yossi, my personal manager and the CEO of the brand, who is a successful entrepreneur, a Mamram graduate, almost 16 years. By the way, my very first talk was at his place. It started — it started with a lie, I told it for sure, and he loved that story. "You give talks and all that?" Of course, I walk around with it all day. I went and built a slide deck, something scrappy, paid someone money, and in the end I realized I could have built it myself. And it worked, it landed, and Yossi has been a training professional for so many years, so when he — he said he was so moved and that the story touched him — I understood, okay, I was good. And from then on we sat down and built. You know, he said, how can I help you, I don't know, I don't know athletes, I'm not a sports guy, how can I help you? I told him I don't know. I always, forever, I'm kind of — you know, we'll do a brief — I've always looked at myself as a brand, even as a kid when I was nothing and nobody, and you know, I had some vision, not yet something clear and sharp, but something in my eyes. And I always looked up to people like Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James — an established economic entity of a big brand, with octopus arms, touching all kinds of sectors in the market, whether investments or, you know, even — take Shaquille O'Neal, he's got pizzerias and something crazy, a franchise of like 50–60 branches across the U.S. Amazing. LeBron has the tequila, or the wine, if I'm not mistaken. So that's how I wanted to be — beyond the medals and achievements, which of course come first — I wanted to be a brand, an economic one, strong, the American dream.

Eyal David: [04:17] So tell me, again — nothing is by accident. I heard a bit earlier about this whole octopus thing, but I hadn't heard about the high-tech, and that's really interesting. Why, actually, are you going into high-tech? Tell me a bit what you do there.

Why startups and high-tech intrigue him

Peter Paltchik: [04:32] Look, in the end it's the engine — engine, growth,

Eyal David: [04:35] That's high-tech too — give me, break it down for me a bit so I understand.

Peter Paltchik: [04:38] Look, Yossi exposed me — and really the credit goes largely to him — Yossi exposed me to an amazing world of startups, of entrepreneurship, of people who in the end, you know — and he has entrepreneurship programs and accelerators inside the nonprofit, so in recent years I really lecture there, and give them a slightly different angle to look at it. And also, you know, as an athlete who dreams of the big moves, I always sat, I'd arrive early, stay after, at every opportunity — come for coffee, listen to stories, meet entrepreneurs, even just sit next to Yossi in silence, listening, listening, listening, absorbing like a sponge, soaking it all up. And I realized we're not so different — Olympic athletes chasing that huge achievement, which is really on the edge of the impossible, and entrepreneurs, startup people, who get up in the morning, look in the mirror as Yossi likes to say, and everyone dreams of being Elon Musk — it's on the edge of the impossible, let's be honest. And capital, you know, a venture fund in the end is like that — you need that one shot that hits and launches you up, as high as possible. And I decided to dive into this world, to get to know it, to learn it.

Eyal David: [05:55] Into the entrepreneurship side or the investing side?

Peter Paltchik: [06:00] Investing, yes. Really to be in the position of an investor, to understand the technology too — you know, today I already swim in the terminology. At first, ah, it all sounded like Chinese to me, how will I understand this, how... And here, you know, with hard work, lots and lots of reading, a lot of consuming it, and just like I was in judo — you know, I was a fanatic, I was obsessive at insane levels for so many years — until, you know, in the end you swim, and you understand, you understand the processes and the whole methodology, and... nothing helps you. So...

Eyal David: [06:39] How did you do it, how did you get in?

Peter Paltchik: [06:40] I reminded myself that in the end everything, everything, you know, the processes are learning processes, they're the same learning processes. There you go — tell me a bit about learning processes,

Eyal David: [06:47] what it looks like.

Peter Paltchik: [06:48] Whether it's listening to podcasts, whether it's reading books, a lot of English — because at first, I told you a bit about the talks I give here in Israel, that's easy, Hebrew. My first talk in the U.S., a month after the Olympics, in Washington, on a crazy stage — the IAC organization, one of the biggest organizations for Israelis and Jews in the U.S., a stage of 4,500 people, in English. I gave a talk, I was good. I trembled like I never trembled in judo fights. And you worry, and suddenly I realized that the more I get professional at it, the more I learn, apply the tools, I become more and more — today I have jargon in English and jokes, the American crowd connects to a slightly different kind of laughter than the Israeli crowd — and in the end it's all learning and trial, and falling for a moment and getting up, like in a fight.

Eyal David: [07:40] There it is — I understand you have no shame,

Peter Paltchik: [07:42] No, I have no shame to hear — no, I have no shame to hear "you're not good, do it this way," negative feedback,

Eyal David: [07:48] But so — that's what I took from it, but... how do you now get into this world? How did you actually start learning? You talk about podcasts, you talk about improving your English, probably in order to consume those podcasts. But tell me, in that respect, more about identifying — you also told me about your fund, that you need to identify the "stocks," you read up on me. Exactly. How do you now enter and learn to spot a startup or an entrepreneur?

Spotting winners and fighters

Peter Paltchik: [08:09] So first of all, I'm good with people. I can say I'm good at many things, and something I can truly say about myself is that I'm really, really good — I know how to read people, I know how to spot winners, fighters. And just like we chose ten athletes in our fund, and we have almost a fifty percent success rate with truly amazing athletes. So again, I'm not alone — I have a professional team, Israel's top athletes: Yakov Toumarkin, Alex Shatilov, Golan Pollack, Neta Rivkin, who sit with me on this professional committee. And with God's help, you know, in the not-too-distant future, we'll also have a professional team of analysts who'll sit with me and Yossi, and that's the vision — that's really the vision, you know, you're getting a bit of a scoop here — the vision in the end is to build an investment fund. And to spot the fighters and the winners of the startup world. And in the end the product changes, you know, from team to team, from entrepreneur to entrepreneur, but the DNA of what's here — of that startup person willing to die for the goal, and to live it 24/7 — it exists in the entrepreneur too, it exists in the athlete too, and it exists in that doctor and lawyer and consultant and...

Eyal David: [09:22] Which content area in tech most excites you today?

Peter Paltchik: [09:25] People would probably say wellness and sport and all that, but actually — that's the obvious one, those are of course worlds I understand better, but actually medical, suddenly, you know — a few startup folks from those content areas actually got me more excited. You know, cyber and things that are more complex technologically, so I still understand them less, but yeah, that's it...

Eyal David: [09:49] Honestly, I thought medical — like, you went through a lot of injuries. A lot. So tell me — you, I called it "opening the table," you do a lot across a lot — and how do you know today that you're succeeding?

Peter Paltchik: [10:02] Good question. I think first of all, goals. Like in any — you know, like in any brand, the management team, marketing and all the sectors set themselves goals, and we too, in our small team, define our goals. Every start of the year, every end of the year, we do a kind of debrief with ourselves — what did we achieve, what didn't we achieve, what's the round of improvements, self-criticism — we really write it down in black and white, and every start of the year we define what the coming year brings us, which products we're taking to market, and that's how we actually know, we have some measure of success. Now, I don't think it's a matter of, in my case, you know, money, not money — because not every move of mine is necessarily toward the financial alone; sometimes it's strategic things that are more brand awareness, you know, branding or positioning or things like that, or impact. So I got burned once — I'll pull it out for you — early in my career, there was — I'll tell you a story — I had some offer, from some brand, that told me, look — I still was, not yet, you know, it hadn't clicked for me at first. We were friends, someone who really helped me, and I had my first agent, and it was all so financial — just, they only take money, only money, money, money, early on, that's what I needed most, right? And a brand approaches me, tells me, look, we have such-and-such a budget, per month, like, what, 3,000–4,000 shekels a month, but you'll get 2–3 products, you'll be tied to the company's name. And that's it — but it's a new squad that opened, and we really really want you to be part of this squad, and we, early on, everything is still unripe and preliminary, but there are amazing people here, and the squad is going to be amazing, super high-quality people, and we can make moves with them. And I look at it, and I say, consulting with my first agent — no, not lucrative, no. Not lucrative, we're aiming for something much more serious than money. So basically the monthly payment — you know, in sponsorship worlds you always calculate it — fine, this is late 2018, early 2019, I see — now, this is a person who approached me, not the agent, you know, the connection is personal, also someone I'd once known. Early 2019 I see billboards on the Ayalon, on all the buildings, you know, and it's like — exactly a year before the Olympics — I said, God, how am I not part of this thing?

How you know a move succeeded

Eyal David: [12:54] You probably need to pay them, huh?

Peter Paltchik: [12:56] I'm like, forget it, you know, it's like that, yeah. I go back to that person, I write to him, bro, I'm sorry, and, like, I'm bummed about the decision, and if there's room to get in, on the next squad, or any project like that, at that kind of scale, I'd love to be part of it. He didn't even reply to my message. What did you learn from that, Peter? I learned not to look at every offer, or every opportunity, or every deal, only through the financial lens. That's... maybe really the most, most, most prominent event in that respect. Everything — always examine it strategically: what other angles are there,

Eyal David: [13:38] in the story. Wow, listen, it's like — bro, it lands exactly on what you're telling me. Tell me — how do you know it's success — but let me take it back a step. What really is your vision? You positioned yourself, you gave the examples of Cristiano Ronaldo and Shaq and who not — so what actually is the vision here?

Peter Paltchik: [13:56] The vision is to be the most influential athlete in Israel. That's always been my vision, which got refined, really, in the connection with Yossi, when he asked me, what's your vision? So, you know, until then I hadn't really asked myself the question, but there was something, there was some... Here we really literally put it down into a document, in black and white — several weeks refining that document, what the vision is, all kinds of questions about building an initial brand — and it was really a ton, a ton, a ton of work with Yossi, who was still at his startup in Portugal, so you know, lots of these Zooms from the little room at Wingate in the national team's house. And that document has stayed with me to this day. To this day, every year anew, the vision is the same vision; inside that document the goals changed, and the strategy, and a lot of things moved and shifted a bit, but in the end, in the end, in the end, the vision is... Federer too, when he retires, still wants to be the most influential tennis player in the world, with the biggest impact, and to keep touching his audience, not to abandon it. So beyond the dreams, you know mine — I still have the desire that my identity will always remain as an athlete, as an Olympic medalist, as someone for whom sport is in his blood and matters to him. And as I said, these moves aren't always financial — I mean, the philanthropic fund, now — how much time, investment, effort it takes from me, "takes" in quotes, for the good of the athletes — and it's amazing in my eyes, no less, it's part of my legacy.

The vision: to be Israel's most influential athlete

Eyal David: [15:41] It's part of my legacy. You took me to Federer — I thought about two things: one, really, when I see that logo, I always think about it, because it's so true, of Federer; the second is that in the meantime I watched a series about Rafa actually, on Netflix. Tell me, I want to ask — so if I, for a second — I'd love to hear what it actually means, the most — what did you call it? — the most influential. I'm dying to understand what it means, how do you measure it?

Peter Paltchik: [16:05] Also the beautiful part, you know, there are all kinds of levels of influence, right? So whether it's direct dialogue, whether it's — in the end, let's say, the products I sell will always be, we'll always ask the question: does it advance my vision or not advance my vision? And a lot of the moves I choose not to make, I say, okay, sure, there's crazy money here, and I have an example, but it doesn't change my vision, and I might lose or damage the brand, or damage my name, which, you know, over so many years — so always thinking about that. And yes, influence in the end, you know — without diminishing others, God forbid — but the word "influencer," you know, in the end, what influence do you have on your audience. And I think I don't park in that category, in the sense of "influencer" as it's understood today, because in the end it's Instagram and coupon codes — yeah, I'm not there, I wish, you know, it's a crazy industry — but I think my influence is direct influence on every person who comes into contact with me. Always, whether it's today with you on the podcast here, and our whole audience listening, or my talks, schools, you know, organizations. And you know, the Jews from the U.S. and the students who are thirsty to get that hug from figures who come from Israel — you know, people with success stories of one kind or another, who are thirsty for it, you know, they experience bullying there, they experience othering there, God help us. So I think that's maybe a measure, from my perspective, of influence — that the more diverse the audience, and not necessarily niche, that I manage to touch

What influence is, and how to measure it

Eyal David: [17:55] every time. So it's exposure, and also actually seeing that you get something out of that exposure. Wow, it's interesting how you measure it over time, and probably also meeting goals to know that you can know it

Peter Paltchik: [18:07] over time. You know, I have 140-something thousand followers

Eyal David: [18:11] on Instagram. Is that currently your strongest channel? I want to say yes, but also no. Where

Peter Paltchik: [18:17] do you work? I have a lot of moments like this — say I finish a talk, and I put up the stories and all, and then I look, I go into a person, I go into a person, and I see they don't even follow me. You get it? So it's like, okay. That says something about them, you get it? After the Olympics, my reach on Instagram hit more than 10 million, more than 10 million users, reach. That's the whole State of Israel and then some. So, you know, I'm not measured by those hundred-forty thousand followers. If it's currently the strongest channel, it's one of the strongest channels. What — where else are you active? TikTok a bit, but I'm bad at it. There's no boost of, you know, tons of followers after the Olympics, but I kind of neglected the app, and I'm dying to understand it. I get it. Facebook was, once, and it's also strong — groups and all. TikTok, I don't understand the platform.

Eyal David: [19:13] It suits you so well, I think, because it's a young audience, and you make everything you bring with you accessible.

Peter Paltchik: [19:19] I want to say something that's in my hands, and I still haven't decoded it, I haven't cracked the...

Eyal David: [19:25] Tell me, when you look — who's really the audience you most, most want to influence today?

Peter Paltchik: [19:29] I want to say the next generation. Because they're the audience — you know, the most important in the end is the next leaders of Israel, and it's all this, you know, the next economy. But I've had a few examples of people — I'll give an example — I had a talk in Eilat. Maybe the example that, you know, touched me most, a talk in Eilat at the contractors' conference. They flew me to Eilat, a room, set everything up for me, I arrive at the talk, people, you know, people of that caliber, people also older, you know, most of the audience suddenly — I look, I see most of the audience is 50-plus. Folks who've been through a thing or two in life, men, women, most of the audience of course male, most people quite stereotypical about it. And I finish the talk, and suddenly I see a line, a line of people coming to tell me something, to take a photo, something. It moved me — what moved me most? At the end of the line I see — you know, I'm tall — I see people, you know, whispering, and in the end, in the end, in the end, a woman is standing, sobbing, wiping away tears, and each time someone else comes up behind her — "I want to be last" — I realized she wanted to talk, and she wanted a moment. She comes up to me, wiping tears, and tells me, look, I don't know how it happened, but you touched me in an insane way, I'm going through something these last months, and your talk was spot on, you know — I got very emotional, I hugged her and all. It's hard for me to see people cry, especially women next to me, especially since she — you know, she wasn't, no, she wasn't an 18-year-old girl. And I say to myself, the whole way home, who am I and what am I, that I — that I'd touch people, and it touches, in the end it touches, and that's the impact I'm talking about, you get it? I don't know what,

Eyal David: [21:26] I don't know what it was — it's like we didn't talk about how you measure, how it — it's so, like, one moment with one person,

Peter Paltchik: [21:32] you catch yourself and you say, there it is, that's success for me.

Eyal David: [21:36] That's success. If we compare it for a second to a company, to a business running now — I mean, somewhere in X years, and I look at my competitors, measure myself against them, right?

Peter Paltchik: [21:46] How does it look for you? First of all, I try — I try not to look at the competitors in that sense, yeah, but yes, in the end there's — you know, it's a very competitive market. Let's take a good example, Yael Arad, today she's the chair of the Olympic Committee — beyond her business activity, is that not influence? You know, doesn't it serve my vision? It does. Ten years? Yes, that would be right for me — so why wouldn't that still be part of my vision?

Eyal David: [22:12] Is it the next generation? Or is it actually the older folks,

Peter Paltchik: [22:16] who are now older? Yeah, older folks — let's say, both. Both, just like I give talks not only to schools, and just like I give talks not only to companies and organizations — so it's both.

Eyal David: [22:30] What do you most want to leave behind? You're going for legacy and all, so I'm trying to understand.

Legacy, brand, and an athlete run like a business

Peter Paltchik: [22:36] I think it's a very, very beautiful word, but what is legacy? I did a bit of that — I was, as an athlete too, as a brand, with an external team beyond the national team, I was something controversial. Not everyone swallowed it easily, not everyone thought that's how an athlete should conduct himself. To this day, when people look at, you know, the moves and projects I do, there are those who raise an eyebrow.

Eyal David: [23:02] So just so I understand, sorry to cut in — the conduct around sponsorships and campaigns and money, is that what you mean?

Peter Paltchik: [23:08] Mostly yes, mostly. By the way, we touched on Instagram — totally, like, why does an athlete need to invest in Instagram and, you know, videos, and bring people into his personal worlds, and into these behind-the-scenes processes — why, why does it need to happen? An athlete should only be on the mats. I don't believe in that. I believe an athlete also needs — today's athlete needs — to invest, you know, it's percentiles, out of your whole investment as an athlete in yourself, in your abilities, it's percentiles. You know, to people it looks — from the video, from several videos, and the photos I post during the day — it looks like, okay, this is something, people don't know, like, what — I need a team to come with me so people understand what happens during a day like that, of an athlete. The schedule is much crazier, much more volatile, the flights abroad suddenly, you know, from here I'm, literally, in a few hours on my way to the airport — so it goes smoothly — to Russia, for a talk, at the embassy, and some other business move there. So it's like that, it's always chaos. And I say, in the end legacy is — I want athletes, you know, what everyone will think and know, that you can achieve anything in life. And really, I was in a very, very low place, professionally, that also spills over into my personal life, and there — so those are people who come from an even harder starting point, and really stories, stories that aren't even logical. And I say to myself, I say to everyone, always in my message, also in talks, that the starting point is nothing and nobody. And it interests no one. It interests no one until you succeed, and then it becomes interesting.

Eyal David: [24:58] That's true, that's true. So tell me, let's go in there for a second, okay? What really helps you today, to keep going? You talked about it earlier — I came from a very low place, I kept going, kept going, kept going — and we talked about it a bit before, okay, there were trainings pinned to the calendar, and there was grandpa, and there was this, so like, I show up.

Peter Paltchik: [25:16] But what helps you today? I have an internal burning fuel that just doesn't run out. I have motivation to conquer the world, I have motivation to succeed at everything I do. Obviously I don't succeed at everything, and obviously not everything happens in the best way, but the motivation is there, and it hasn't — the torch didn't go out the day I won the medal in Paris. Yes, I miss the judo. Yes, there's some kind of abyss of adrenaline that you had — you know, you'd throw the logs on the fire daily, and that fire was burning. But there's another fire burning now, no less important and no less strong — the desire in the end to bring my family to a state where no one has any worries. That no one has worries. Not my wife, not my kids, and not their kids either. That's the motivation.

The inner fuel after the medal

Eyal David: [26:14] That's already a completely different vision.

Peter Paltchik: [26:16] It's a new vision, it's a new vision.

Eyal David: [26:18] And it's maintained separately too?

Peter Paltchik: [26:20] You know, it's all part of the big, broad picture, but yes.

Motivation vs. self-discipline

Eyal David: [26:26] How do you — how do you — is motivation part of the thing?

Peter Paltchik: [26:30] Self-discipline is the most important thing. As an athlete, motivation comes and goes. Motivation is this sexy word people love to say, but what is motivation? It's an emotion. Something very, very, very volatile. Sometimes we have no control over it, right? One day you wake up a lion, one day you wake up a cat. Entrepreneurs and startup people too — how many entrepreneurs get up every morning with that crazy drive, and how much can you work 16 hours at the computer, and runs, and investor meetings — and he took it, it's insane. Motivation doesn't hold up here. Iron self-discipline does.

Eyal David: [27:04] Okay, how did you take the slap from life? How do you maintain that self-discipline? You don't have judo today, you don't have that coach yelling at you — so what does it look like?

Peter Paltchik: [27:14] My most beautiful lessons are... first of all, Yossi yells at you. Don't you sometimes call him your personal coach? Like, sometimes it happens that he's actually my personal coach, and sometimes it happens that I — I meet people and I introduce him and say, he's my boss. "What, he's your coach? You pay him money." Right, but he tells me what to do and yells at me and all. It's like that. One of the most beautiful lessons that happened to me in my worlds, you know, in the Olympic sports world, is... a loss — let's call it a loss — my biggest loss in life. Not another bad day at the office. The Tokyo Olympics, which I'd prepared for my whole life, after everything I'd been through, I got there ranked number one in the world, European champion, you know, expectations up to the cosmos — and I fail, a total failure. Forget the professional level for a moment — what is it? What happens professionally? Let's talk for a second — off the mat, it spills over strongly onto the brand, right? What will become of me? Where will my life take me? The next Olympics is in another four, or three years because of Corona, they postponed it, right? So three more years, the uncertainty — will I even get to the Olympics? I'm now, like, at my peak in terms of ability — where will I be in three years? What will become of me? What will become of me? That uncertainty is a feeling that accompanies entrepreneurs, startup people, every day. Every day, what will become of me? When will the funding round come? Is our product good? Will it stand the test of time against the market and the competitors? So it's like that, it's constant thinking about myself. And one of my coaches told me something very, very beautiful. Precisely on that day when I felt like I wanted someone to make me disappear, disappear off the face of the earth. One of my coaches told me: you see this phone? He does like this — people will see the headline, and it'll hurt them because they'll hurt for you and be shocked. But then this thing will happen, this thing will happen — the scroll — and the next day the sun will rise again in the east, come on, and I mean, the ball keeps rolling, the earth keeps spinning, and people get up for work, and everything's fine. And if we experience what we experience from the perspective of "we are the world," we're the center of our own universe — and that's true, we're the center of our own universe — but the world is big, there are many more stories, and it doesn't all revolve around us. And that's something very, very calming, especially for an athlete, and certainly certainly for an entrepreneur and startup person who experiences that madness too, and just took that slap now. So in hard moments, I remind myself of that mantra.

The Tokyo failure and what it taught him

Eyal David: [30:04] What do you do with it, say — say now, I'm an entrepreneur who — I don't know, say, OpenAI just made something that basically ate my startup completely, and I got crushed. Right. What do you recommend, like, how to continue to the next day? Like, what will bother me less — sure, I'll be really down about the situation, I'll be down,

Peter Paltchik: [30:24] Hard questions. Like I asked myself: do I, do I still have it, if I've lost physical ability, now the emotional — and what I feel, I put it aside, I filed it. First of all, two days later, we won a team medal, which is a psychotic boost for the brand and a lot of things, but still not my personal medal. So I am an Olympic medalist, but as a team. And that wasn't a goal I'd set for myself, and by the way, still, that wasn't the goal I came to the Games with. So I hadn't yet accomplished the mission. So from my perspective, I hadn't completed the mission, and that's part of my "why" for the next journey to Paris. And I asked myself hard questions, and did a debrief with my team, with my coaches, and I really made a lot of changes. So I think that entrepreneur needs to ask himself: do I have the ability, am I still, still able to produce another product like this, or maybe that same product can now become, you know, something new, vibrant and fresh for a different market, or, you know, do some adaptation of one kind or another — and not necessarily say, okay, I'm a failure. The word "failure" is a very harsh, searing word, that's only true for someone who really feels that way. Whoever truly thinks he failed, then he failed. But if a person who took that hit, lost — lost that battle — but says to himself, okay, I've got this, I'll do, I'll do, I'm now going to do A, B, C, D, come on, let's run — then he didn't fail. He lost that battle, but the big war, he believes he'll win, and that's what matters. Yes, I've lost many battles in life. But deep down, with blind faith, I knew I would win the big war.

How to debrief and keep going after a loss

Eyal David: [32:06] Good line. I feel like I'm in one of your talks, right? Are these the meaningful topics you speak about in talks to companies? Yes. About what? Getting up from failure? Yeah, I don't know what you were — were you? No,

Peter Paltchik: [32:17] no, but that's a great title. I think we all go through — okay, we all go through crises, all of us, you know, experience — look at the insane year we went through and experienced as a country. Some... how it affected each of us, you know, the companies here went bankrupt and collapsed and all kinds of sectors, like, forget it, look at high-tech, how much they talk about how many were laid off — a hundred, a hundred fifty thousand. It's insane, like, the AI world too, everyone, you know, the ground is shaking. So we all constantly need to think about how we move in the space. Never staying in place, ever — how? Okay, I just got a slap in the face, it rattled me, everything's fine. I'm still on the horse, I'm galloping, and if I fell off the horse, quick, get back up. In the end it's this: we all experience the same things, you know — so I as an athlete experienced it in my world, you experience it in your world, he experiences it in his world.

Eyal David: [33:15] I think from what you're basically telling me — set a vision, no matter what, a Master Plan you called it, refine it for two or three weeks, remember me — no, seriously — but basically do it with someone else. How much were you really in ping-pong on it during those two-three weeks?

Building a personal Master Plan

Peter Paltchik: [33:31] What did it look like? Crazy ping-pong. Consider that there are trainings in between, so if it's a bit in the afternoon — because in the end you have to move too and keep some routine — but mainly in the evenings. I get back around nine, nine p.m., after dinner already, go into the room, at a stage where you don't feel like talking from all the load. Think — I'm serious, no, I'm not exaggerating — you know, do you train? The gym, yeah? What kind of workouts do you do?

Eyal David: [33:57] Boxing, and gym, and running. Cool.

Peter Paltchik: [34:01] Let's take a scale of 1 to 10, yeah? Of effort? How much are you?

Eyal David: [34:07] Each workout — relative to what? Relative to before,

Peter Paltchik: [34:09] relative to before, everything. I have no measure, no — just throw one out. Seven. Nice. That's what — that's what my conversation and what I do in this house is. People think I always, say, in some of the workouts that are gym, three times a week — they don't understand it's not a seven. It's not an eight, it's also not a nine. It's a ten. Every workout, you finish a workout, you can't talk. It takes, like, a few minutes, a moment, to come back, to get, for a second, air, and to land — I can't even always walk. In the last two years I'd finish workouts limping. Until I do some session, an ice bath, or, you know, recovery things, recovery, twice a day. And that's how you need to, to maintain, as they say, throughout the whole two years, and injury, no injury, it interests no one, you need to get yourself fit as fast as possible and get back on the horse, always. So it's like that, it's...

Eyal David: [35:03] So you basically arrived to every conversation like that on your knees, Yossi,

Peter Paltchik: [35:09] Hard conversations, that I'm, you know, sometimes already at those stages of midnight, I'm already like that on the Zoom, he tells me, are you tired? He's from Portugal. But,

Eyal David: [35:21] How did you actually know you'd reached the point where there's a vision that's tight enough?

Peter Paltchik: [35:25] When I looked at that document and said, wow. It's exactly — my personal belief — it's exactly these mantras that I talk about so much, from the inner story of ourselves, right, we speak it outward, and every day anew, every morning, we talk to ourselves, in our heads, okay, this is the day, this is this, and every night we do a kind of little debrief with ourselves,

Eyal David: [35:49] or whoever doesn't need to do it, you know? So maybe tell a bit — how do you do it?

The nightly self-debrief before sleep

Peter Paltchik: [35:53] Yeah. Every night before I go to sleep, I say, okay, what did I engage in today? What did I engage in today? What did I do well for the brand? Or not for the brand — you know, with the kids, which I'm now experiencing, something with the kids, kindergartens, we're talking about the first of September, lots of changes, they just moved from kindergarten, we separated them, they're twins, we separated them into two different kindergartens, an event, quite an event — and also within my fatherhood, what am I, what is "the father"? What is a father?

Eyal David: [36:23] Asking me? Yeah, what is a father?

Peter Paltchik: [36:27] Present — a present father — what is a present father? Nice — a shaping figure, right, who gives your kids tools, values, and your whole credo, and in the end sculpts something new, and of course,

Eyal David: [36:41] tries, yeah, of course,

Peter Paltchik: [36:43] like in the end every child has the character the genes contribute, and each of them is a world, a completely different world. In the end, at the end of every day, I think, what did I give them today? What did I give the kids? Did I teach them something new that they didn't know yesterday? And that's an interesting thought, or to think with yourself, and in the same breath you say, okay, what did I do today that I didn't do yesterday? Where did I improve? Where did I advance? Where did I go backward?

Eyal David: [37:07] Really making a kind of effort ruler. You do it at a daily level and also a weekly level, basically?

Peter Paltchik: [37:11] At a daily level, weekly level, monthly level, at a — you know, as I said, my wife and I do a very long meeting every January, we sit in front of a board like this, mark annual goals, targets, like, you know, it's one-to-one, like we used to do with my team — there's the European Championship always around April, the World Championship around August-September, and the summarizing tournament, the Masters tournament in December, you know, three, three big targets, and within the season there are the Grand Slams, the ongoing ones, I call them, you know, every week, two weeks, three — competitions. So that's how we work. We have the big goals, the big ones, of course, of course, it's something, you know, four years ahead, and there are the small goals, throughout the season.

Eyal David: [37:59] That's my model. Yeah, I'm really the Paltchik model. Yeah. Really — Paltchik means "finger," right?

Peter Paltchik: [38:07] Paltchik means finger, yeah. God's finger. That's it.

Eyal David: [38:13] So really, I want to know, around this vision — you also said that you update it every so often, right? So once a year you basically update it?

Peter Paltchik: [38:23] If needed.

Eyal David: [38:25] And it all has to serve the goal that that kid set for himself, basically. Yes. Back then. So let's talk for a second about dreaming big, okay? Because — why are you smiling?

Peter Paltchik: [38:37] No, no, I, I, I, in general, I love,

Eyal David: [38:39] I'm really curious, because, like, both in the context of vision and in the context of that goal you set, I'm kind of hearing that you don't stop, you don't allow yourself the "dream small." How did you know, at the vision level, to be big enough? Because I see here again, you're opening a branch, you're traveling — maybe because it's the startup's first year, so you're running in many directions — but how do you actually know, to set yourself some box for the place you're creating, so it won't be too small? Because that's quite a goal, right?

Peter Paltchik: [39:11] Yeah. Look. In quotes, I say, the easiest thing is to close the — like horses with blinders, to close your — your field of vision, and not look to the sides, and really choose some one thing, very, very specific. And it'll probably come, maybe at another stage, but today I'm in the discovery phase. You get it? I do a bit of this and a bit of this and a bit of this, and I'm really refining for myself some basket of projects that I really, first, enjoy. I think — my whole life I was locked, I was in a world, the judo world, one thing, very, very, very specific, and I feel like tasting new things. So... so first I want to do things I love. And also to know and to say no — I learned to do that over the years. That's one of my — also one of my lessons from the last two years, that the moment I say no to a project, as far as I'm concerned it's erased, done. Done, and even afterward when I see it, you know, and I'm not part of it, I won't be bummed. I say no from a place of wholeness. If it doesn't serve the brand, if it doesn't serve the vision, if it doesn't serve me, if it doesn't serve strategically — then it's not interesting. Even if it's hugely lucrative. Not long ago I was offered to join some reality show, a very, very, very, very strong one, very, very big. That would have served well, well, on the financial side. But it's not right for me. It's not right for me because it's not aligned with the vision, with my naming, and I have much more to lose in the project than to gain, in that strategic sense, and I said no. Once I said no.

The discovery phase and learning to say no

Eyal David: [41:05] Erased, erased. We'll come back to the big-dream thing, but I notice there's constant movement between this vision of yours, the big, ambitious one, of the brand called Paltchik, Peter Paltchik, and your personal vision of what you said, to set up the whole family. Wow, this dissonance, all the time

The dissonance between vision, brand and family

Peter Paltchik: [41:25] It's an internal war, that in the end my wife, you know, wants to see me grow, financially, to the biggest place there is, because that sets us up, and it's the life we have today, and our life, we'll still have, God willing. Those are the places we want, and aim, and want to reach — whether it's enlarging the house, whether it's, you know, buying a new luxury car, and that, and we have three kids, so you know, to take care of them, and kindergartens, and I only now, you know, we just got a bit out of it, out of eighteen and a half thousand shekels of kindergartens, every month,

Eyal David: [41:59] You didn't open your eyes, you didn't pour the coffee.

Peter Paltchik: [42:01] So it's this, it's constant thinking about it, and about where I was, right? That I slept in a car outside the hall, in Beijing, and I didn't have a room, and I didn't yet deserve a room. And... debts at the bank, and... it's constantly this internal war, it's really — you nailed it amazingly — it's really the dissonance between the two worlds, that you constantly need to know,

Eyal David: [42:23] to fine-tune. That it's also a fire you need to control properly, basically, that's what you're saying. Exactly. Okay, so let's go back for a second to dreaming big, so I understand, like, really, where these dreams were born — but if you now had to give a tip, basically, to someone who wants, someone young, someone not young, who wants to dream big, what would you give?

Peter Paltchik: [42:41] It's never too late. You know, I'm the oldest individual Olympic medalist of the State of Israel. I said — not long ago I told this to someone, I remembered where, we'd just finished filming Ninja Israel, I'm the new commentator next season, also one of the biggest projects of the year, and there on the panel, part of the commentators is me, Niv Raskin, and Yogev Malka. So I tell you the story that I'm the oldest individual Olympic medalist of Israel — I said, the most veteran. Veteran, yes, older, not sure. They laughed at me a bit. But there you go, it's an example, you know, it's an example that what is age, what is a number — if I had to give a grade to my chronological age, 32, that I came to the Olympics with, and a chance, versus success, probably not high. But deep in my heart, and in my faith, and in my head, I got up that morning knowing that I'm leaving here with a medal. And my wife knew it, and my team knew it, and I got there after an insane year, of injuries, and threats on my life, and what not. And you know, everything against you, as they say, everything against you, everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

Eyal David: [44:03] Doesn't matter. Like, that's it, you already can't distance yourself from that horse, what a thing,

Peter Paltchik: [44:07] But it's spot on. Bro, two weeks before the Olympics, before the biggest moment of my life, again — I'm not talking politics for a second, what happened here, we all know what happened here — personal, like, I'm after an insane year, dropping in the world ranking, losing every competition, and lucky for me I was ranked very high, at 23, that my drop, still, I was within that margin, of the Olympic criterion,

Eyal David: [44:32] yeah, I was 14,

Peter Paltchik: [44:34] 18 first enter through the main door, and then, like, a continental ticket, I called it, the best on this continent, who wouldn't have gotten in — in the end it's 30, 32 athletes. Two weeks before, I'm shooting two campaigns, like, two weeks and one week, two weeks and one week, like — my agent wanted to die, he told me, how can you? It'll hurt that sharpness. No, I know what I want, I know what I'm worth, I know who and what I am, and it's unrelated to the fact that I'm now shooting a campaign and want to do financial monetization.

Eyal David: [45:06] Also more than that, I think — that you're not afraid to dare,

Peter Paltchik: [45:10] A, I'm not afraid to dare, B, I'm very, very sure of myself, of my abilities, and I know very well how to make the separation — when I'm on the mat, my feet stepping on the mat, I enter a bubble, and I enter my zone, and nothing can rattle me. Nothing. I had a deal I did, that I entered knowing I have X money, and I can contain it, and some situation happened, about 3–4 years ago, some situation happened where the money didn't come in, and suddenly I'm in a drop of, of a few hundred thousand shekels. And I get up every morning, drive to Wingate to train, and I don't care. A, I know it'll work out, you know, in my calculations, and everything's fine, but like, my wife — I didn't tell her, I told her in a way that it'd work out. She tells me, like, how did you manage, a few months to train, and to be calm-headed and at ease, and you know, I remember accompanying you abroad and all, how? I told her, like this: I don't know. I have this psychology, like, to wrap myself and enter the zone, and really disconnect, in the full sense of the word.

Eyal David: [46:22] It's amazing that you do it inside — inside the mat, like for a bounded fight — versus doing it for a few months, I don't know, but respect.

Peter Paltchik: [46:30] Tough, tough, really tough, I...

Eyal David: [46:32] So I — a second, actually — let me take you back for a moment. You talked about your biggest fight — take me, for a second, in one transition, take me, really — this came up in our community, the WhatsApp one, and they see you before one of your fights, so they really asked there, what's really happening there, yeah? Someone wrote about it that you're on edge,

What happens 30 minutes before a fight

Peter Paltchik: [46:52] that you're kind of getting organized there, and it's... what's happening in your head here? God, the fear. God, the fear, fear of... you know, in the end our body is a very, very primal machine. And once, a state like this of adrenaline, of the kind you feel, was a survival matter — either you're going to hunt, you're not sure you're coming back, going back to sit like this — it's like, thousands of years, right? The mechanisms, the physiological ones, are the same mechanisms. And when you understand the mechanism, it's easier to do the right manipulations. So first of all, the body tries to betray you. The body tries to betray you, the legs shaking, the knees, the excitement in the stomach, you know, already at the heel, and the thoughts, scenarios, only bad scenarios, and you need to defeat the bad scenarios — A, don't suppress. Don't suppress — I learned not to suppress, to let those thoughts embrace them, and like, you know, my psychologist, Guy Suskin, who accompanied me to Paris, gave me an amazing metaphor, amazing, amazing, amazing, that I took, really, in every such moment when those thoughts surfaced, I used it, I'll be glad to share. He said, imagine, like a classroom, right? A classroom has a teacher standing in front of all the students. Now, imagine that all the students are emotions — this is fear, this is success, this is courage, and then, and then pressure gets up, takes a chair, boom, throws it at the wall, starts chaos, says, come on, join me, all the emotions, we, I'll lead you — and pressure is now the leader of the class. And now the teacher, that's us in our heads, with the wheel, has to decide what she does — like, does she let pressure take over the event, or does she... And then he told me, take the pressure, bring it to you, flip it, like, embrace it, and bring all the emotions to you, and all these little kids, and hug them all together, and say, we are now all together inside this event, and together we'll win, and I need each of you, you too, pressure, you too, fear, you too... like, like that. And then, when you metaphorically imagine it in your head, and you say, okay, pressure is important, it's — that excitement, it's also what makes me come sharp, it's what makes me sharpen all the tools I need for the fight. That's good. And it's good that I feel it. But it shouldn't be dominant. It should be part of — part of the whole array. And that's something very, very calming, that always regulated my pressure and excitement for me.

Eyal David: [49:26] And you manage to do this

Peter Paltchik: [49:28] a second before a fight. Wow. It's a process, yeah, but a second before a fight, I know I'm going up, and I'm with 100% courage. 100% courage.

Eyal David: [49:38] Wow, what a lesson. Listen, it's a bit like the movie Inside Out, it just threw me there,

Peter Paltchik: [49:42] So you know it? The kids' one, no? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right, right, right. I, by the way, I'm waiting for the day my kids — a bit visually very, very... it's tough, but it's an amazing movie, you're right, right. It's, with the — with those, right, right, right, in the head. I'm waiting for my kids to grow up and be able to watch it, it's an amazing movie

Eyal David: [50:00] for kids, amazing. That and also

Peter Paltchik: [50:02] if you want... so it's called "The Voice in the Head," right,

Eyal David: [50:04] in Hebrew, yeah. I want to ask — we're getting a bit close to the end, so I want to ask — tell me, the Peter of ten years from now, we talked about him a bit, right? Will he have exposure to new markets?

Peter Paltchik: [50:16] Yes.

Eyal David: [50:18] Tell me more, because, like,

Peter Paltchik: [50:20] what, what occupies you in that future? I don't define it for now — I'm today still very much in the entertainment field, I talked with you about Ninja Israel, that's the new season, and TV and Instagram and all these content worlds. I want to think that in ten years it'll be, as they say, if I do something of that kind, it'll be something like, you know, to refresh my schedule and my day. I want to be more and more invested, you know, in the tech worlds, and the startups, and the investments,

Eyal David: [50:54] To be there, you said, simply the most influential. So I'm trying, for a second, to understand where it's going — nice, intriguing, good — toward the end, so tell me for a second about the fund and the philanthropic activity you do, and basically — I don't know, maybe you're

The philanthropic fund supporting athletes

Peter Paltchik: [51:10] looking for something, maybe. So first of all, yes, what even is the fund? Thanks. Almost two years ago I founded my fund the day I got back from Paris, from the Olympics. I don't celebrate over successes, Yossi knows that, and by chance Yossi and I were on the same flight — I was there in that moment in Paris in the crowd, and we're on the plane back, and he tells me, now we can celebrate. He knows I don't — I don't like to celebrate, because I'm always like that, the target, the ultimate goal was the Olympics, and I knew in my heart that until I achieve what I achieve, every celebration is momentary. So I said, why, why already — in short, he tells me, what can I do for you, how do we celebrate? And then I tell him, I want to establish a philanthropic fund that will support athletes financially, on the basis, on the basis of my story. He thought I fell from the sky, says, like, now you — you're it, the moment that — let's set up your table, I don't know, let's celebrate big, champagne. I told him, we'll do that, but first let's establish the fund. Within a month we launched it, in less than five months we already raised the initial money, identified ten athletes, and set off — in February. Here we're talking about August, we came back September, launch in early February, first event, ten athletes, checks on stage, and we set off. So we really know how to move fast, we know how to produce things at that scale fast, and that's really the main thing on the philanthropic side. Maybe really the thing I'm most, most proud of, of all things — the real impact. You know that you support and you save athletes, ten athletes already now, this is the second cohort, and you can really influence their fate. To me that's

Eyal David: [53:00] Because you're basically creating here — I'd say more replicas of Peter that will go out and be in the world — not Peter, each in his own world

Peter Paltchik: [53:09] That's beyond that — they're athletes, role models, each of them, I wish, yes, we're working on it — each will be a brand in his own right, will be a big ambassador of Israel, a sports diplomat I call it, like I do today, journeys around the world telling my story, and it's the story of Israel and of the Olympics and what I went through and experienced. I was always a flag-bearer — it's like, each of them needs to be in those places and more. So to be, you know, that small percentile that influences their fate, their professional fate, their personal fate — so it's a great and immense privilege. And yes, I call on companies, on organizations, on private donors, everyone who hears us, come and join and be part of — basically, go into our website, and — because when they said "website," you can see everything there.

Eyal David: [54:05] Good, Peter, the pleasure was really, really, really — what fun, and next time you come back, then maybe you'll also tell us how you find those athletes, we didn't get to touch that, there are all kinds of questions of — yeah, but tell us really how you progressed along your Master Plan. I had a great time. Bye bye bye.