Episode 1229 · Jan 8, 2026

Ben Kjar: How to Stand Out by Choosing to Disobey Average

Listen

George Wright III brought a powerful clip to The Daily Mastermind featuring Ben Kjar, an elite wrestler, NCAA Division I All-American, and world champion who was born with Crouzon syndrome. What makes Ben's story remarkable isn't just his athletic record. It's the mindset he developed when facing a life full of things he could not control, and the very deliberate choice he made to stop settling for what others expected of him.

This episode isn't really about wrestling. It's about choice, clarity, and what happens when you decide to be, as Ben puts it, disobedient to average.

What Being "Disobedient to Average" Actually Means

Ben Kjar grew up dealing with Crouzon syndrome, a craniofacial condition that meant surgeries, uncertainty, and years of being seen as different. For a long time, he prayed to be normal. He prayed to fit in. He wanted to be just like everyone else.

Then something shifted.

I learned that I wasn't created to be normal. I wasn't created to fit in. I wasn't created to be average. And that's when I chose. Now that's my pet peeve. I'm never going to be average and I'll never fit in. So why don't we stand out?

Being disobedient to average isn't about arrogance or recklessness. It's about refusing to quietly accept expectations that were never designed for you. When a coach said 20 pushups, Ben did 25 or 30. Not to impress anyone, but because he had made a conscious decision to exceed the standard every single time. That daily choice, repeated over and over, is what built a champion.

Why Wrestling Was About Control, Not Competition

Ben chose wrestling for a specific reason: it gave him control. In a life shaped by circumstances he couldn't change, one-on-one competition offered something rare. No team dependencies, no luck of the draw. Just you, your preparation, and your opponent.

I got so sick and tired of being everybody else's version 2.0. I got so sick and tired of being Billy, Bobby, and Tommy versus 2.0.

That frustration became fuel. The moment Ben stopped comparing himself to others and started deciding who he wanted to become, his trajectory changed. He went from junior varsity to undefeated district champion in a single year. The external circumstances hadn't changed. His internal decision had.

How to Call Your Shot

One of the most actionable ideas in Ben's framework is the concept of calling your shot. This isn't journaling or vague intention-setting. It means stating your goal out loud, in writing, with full clarity and conviction, and then telling the people around you.

As a sophomore in high school, Ben wrote "3XSC" on his arm. Three-time state champion. There was no ambiguity about what it meant. He wasn't hiding it. He wasn't hedging. He was staking a public claim on a specific outcome.

When you write your goal down and share it, something practical happens: the people around you can actually show up for you. His principal, his teachers, his coaches all knew what he was working toward. When he lost in a regional match and his classmates were at an assembly, his principal and teacher were in the wrestling room with him instead. They showed up because they knew the goal.

The Role of Shot Callers in Your Corner

Ben draws a clear distinction between cheerleaders and shot callers. Cheerleaders celebrate you from the sideline. Shot callers are the people who do the work alongside you when things get hard.

His parents, his coaches, his principal: these weren't just supporters. They were accountable partners who knew his specific goals and showed up when it counted. Building that kind of inner circle isn't an accident. It starts with calling your shot publicly so that others have the information they need to support you.

Ask yourself honestly: do the people closest to you know your real goals? If you keep them secret out of fear of failure or fear of not being enough, you remove the very support system that could help you get there.

Why Timelines Change Everything

The third leg of Ben's framework is the shot clock: a firm deadline tied to your goal. He makes the point simply. If someone tells you they're running a marathon in 15 months, the preparation looks completely different than if the race is in 15 weeks or 15 days. The timeline determines the urgency, the structure, and the daily actions required.

When we can have people state their claim in their dream and then put a timeline, that's what helped me achieve goals to being a three-time state champion.

Goals without deadlines are wishes. The shot clock turns a dream into a plan. According to Ben, when people combine a clearly stated goal, a support team of shot callers, and a specific timeline, they achieve 95% of their goals. Those are the kinds of odds any investor would take immediately.

What This Means for You

George Wright III played this clip because the framework applies to far more than athletics. Whether you are building a business, leading a family, working on your health, or simply wanting more direction, the same three steps apply: call your shot clearly, put the right people in your corner, and set a deadline that makes the goal real.

The question Ben leaves you with is worth sitting with: where have you been quietly settling for average without even realizing it? What expectation were you handed that was never actually yours?

Action Steps

Write down one specific goal in clear, unambiguous language. No vague language, no hedging. Write it like Ben's "3XSC": a statement with no room for misinterpretation.
Tell at least two or three people in your life what your goal is. Give them the information they need to show up for you.
Set a firm deadline. Put the date on paper and work backward to map out what has to happen each week to get there.
Identify your shot callers: people who will do the work alongside you, not just cheer from the sideline, and who will hold you accountable when it gets difficult.
Ask yourself honestly where you have been accepting someone else's version of who you should be, and choose, starting today, to be disobedient to that average.

Ben Kjar's story is proof that circumstances do not determine your outcome. Your choices do. It's never too late to start living the life you were meant to live, and the first step is simply deciding to stand out.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Today I want to set something up for you that I think is pretty incredibly important, especially if you've ever felt like you're doing everything you're supposed to do, but you still feel stuck, unsure, or frustrated with where you are. I'm going to play a clip for you today from a conversation I had with Ben Carr on the Franklin Planner podcast. Ben is an amazing individual. He's an elite athlete, a national champion, a world-class competitor. This conversation isn't about wrestling though. And this is what I really want to emphasize. I really enjoyed this conversation and this specific part of the conversation. The reason I wanted to play it for you is it's about choice. See, Ben was born with Krausen syndrome, multiple surgeries, years of uncertainty, a lot of things in his life that he could not control. But instead of letting that define him, he made a decision early on to take control of the things he could control. And one of the most empowering ideas that he shares is this concept of being disobedient to average. Disobedient to average. Not being reckless, not arrogant, not anything but intentional. He talks about how most people quietly accept expectations that were never designed for them and how real change started when he stopped trying to fit in and started deciding who he wanted to become. And as you listen, I want you to pay close attention to three specific things that he comes up with over and over again. First, calling your shot. Not thinking about your goals, not hoping they'll happen, but clearly stating them out loud on paper and with conviction. Second, he talks about the importance of having the right people in your corner, the shot callers, right? Not cheerleaders on the sideline, but people willing to do the work with you, people who hold you accountable when it gets hard. And third, timelines and structure. I really love this because Ben talks about how clarity plus deadlines change everything. Not someday goals, but real plans tied to real action. So whether you're building a business, leading a family, trying to improve your health, or simply wanting more direction in your life, this conversation is going to hit home. So listen real close, take some notes and ask yourself where you may have been settling for average without even realizing it and where you'd like to stand out. And then join me at the end of this clip. I'll talk to you a little bit about the movie that he has being released here, January 23rd. Listen up. Yeah. I got into wrestling because it allowed me to control something where life, there's so many things in your life you can't control like cruzon syndrome being born with something very rare for me i couldn't control that i couldn control going in all the surgeries and having my head cut open and a trach in my throat and my mouth wired shut And I couldn control all those things I couldn control how people saw me wrestling I could control certain things It one person versus one person And I decided that in life, we're always told to be obedient, obedient. I decided to be disobedient to what I call average. So when my coaches would tell me 20 pushups, 20 pushups, I chose to be disobedient to that. But do more, right? To do more. So I chose to be, exactly. I chose to be disobedient and not just do 20, but to do 25, 30, whenever. And what changed? What made me change to that? I got so sick and tired of being everybody else's version 2.0. I got so sick and tired of being Billy, Bobby, and Tommy versus 2.0. Finally, instead of begging and praying literally to God every day to say, God, please, I have the faith of a mustard seed. Just wake me up tomorrow morning and let me have a normal face. I prayed to be normal. I prayed to be average. I prayed to fit in. And eventually, I learned that I wasn't created to be normal. I wasn't created to fit in. I wasn't created to be average. And that's when I chose. Now that's my pet peeve. I'm never going to be average and I'll never fit in. So why don't we stand out? And how do you do that? You do it. You stand out by doing absolutely the opposite of average. That's why I choose to disobey average. And as I choose that, and it's a choice, it's a battle every day. things change things become a little bit easier maybe not easier where the path is issue but i'm stronger yeah so you made the choice wrestling for the reason to be able to take some control of some things and then choose to go to the next level ncaa division one all american when you started wrestling did you even like did you set goals to be the best number one did that evolve Did it evolve as your confidence evolved? What happened there? 100%. You know, I get in junior high. My parents come to me like, what's your goal? We're going to set goals, right? What happened is my dad came to me and he said, Ben, what goals are we going to set? I'm like, Dad, I'm going to be the first ever in junior high, Centerville junior high. I'm going to be the first ever district champion read times. And while I do it, I'm going to go undefeated. And he's like, Ben, you're junior varsity. like I wasn't the best guy even on my own team and it was interesting I'm like yeah but can I still go into fear he's like you can do whatever you want I had people in my corner that I call my shot callers they're the encouragers they're the people who hold me accountable and then the first thing I do is I call my shot that when you say what goals you set I said I called my shot I stood up I claimed it I wrote it down That why I absolutely love what you guys do And in Franklin Planner it like you are allowing people to claim what there Date it Own it Take advantage of their future yeah that's what I invite everyone to do and I chose to do it I called my shot and I put my dad my mom and my coaches in my corner and then I set a timeline you have to have a shot clock and so by the end of my ninth grade year I went from junior varsity to become undefeated and then in high school I did it at a level I'd never thought I would do it before my parents coming to me they're like hey we want to give you an early Christmas gift I'm like let's go my sophomore weird i just won my first date title and they said you want to put these patches on your jacket i'm like yeah let's go i'm like put three xsc on my right shoulder they're like ben this is uh embroidered this isn't a dry erase marker bro one time is all you get it's in permanent it's good right put it it is and when we can put it permanent in a in a planner when we get other people to And notice when we can have people state their claim in their dream and then put a timeline. That's what I love about like when you have a schedule out on dates and times. You can schedule it and reverse into that to what you're doing every minute of every day. And when you have it in front of you, like you guys allow, man, that's what helped me achieve goals to being a three-time state champion. I never had to take that patch off. Utah Valley University's first ever All-American and then eventually a world champion. Yeah, I think a lot of people fear putting that permanent. I've studied some of the top businesses and icons, sports teams in the entire world. And here's what I found out. When they've done three things and do it very clear and very concise on a consistent basis, they achieve 95% of their goals. Wow. Now, if you were to give an investor or anybody those odds, they'd be like, I'm in. Tell me what those three things are. Here are the three things. People call their shot or companies or groups or whatever. You call your shot and you make it extremely clear. I'll give you the example of my high school. I wrote it on my arm. I didn't hide it. 3XSC was extremely clear. Three-time state champion. There's no questioning what that means. Now, I wasn't in high school as a freshman. Otherwise, I would have put 4XSE. Yeah, there you go. So my sophomore year was my first year in high school. The second thing that you get to do if you want to achieve 95% of your goals is you get to have people in your corner called shot callers. These are people that are supporters. That when you fail because we all will fail Right They will be in your corner I got my jacket my junior year and i put it on my jacket and i lost in region my shock collars came out of the woodwork when there were assemblies when there were lunch times when there was any moment of spare time i was in the wrestling room you know what was cool my principal scott tennis didn't go to the assembly guess where he was at Wow. Helping you. He was in the wrestling room with me. Yeah. My teacher wasn't with this class in the assembly. He was with me. Why? First of all, he knew my goal. Yeah. When we don't write it down. If he didn't know, he couldn't be supporting you. Right. Obviously. When we don't write it down and we don't tell other people, how do they show up for us? Right. But we keep it a secret, like you said, because fear of failure and fear of not being enough. And then I set a timeline. If you were to tell me you're going to be running a marathon in 15 months, we're going to set a goal out and we're going to get people involved at that rate of 15 months on your shot clock, on your timeline. If you were to tell me you were running a marathon in 15 weeks, that changes as opposed to if you're running it in 15 days. Right. So each and every step is pivotal as people have these three things they have the shot clock they they have the shot clock they put it in right or they have the shot clock they put a timetable on it they have time or they have people in their corner called shot callers and then they call their shot when they do those three things and they're very specific about it we are seeing crazy crazy numbers go up in what they're achieving I've just had the opportunity to learn about it in my life. And what I've achieved has been because of the people in my life that have been in my corner. And that's the biggest difference. All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed that clip. One of the things that I really love about Ben as I got to know him is that he has just a massive amount of courage. He's got a fighting spirit, and he's releasing a movie called Standout. And this movie is going to be released January 23rd. And you have an opportunity to help support him. And so we'll put some links in the show notes here. But I'd really encourage you to check out his film. Do what you can to kind of support it. He's got some amazing stuff that he is supporting. And I want to do the same for him as well. So I hope you enjoyed that message. I'll look forward to talking with you more. And once again, share this message. Share this episode. If it's something that's inspired you or motivated you, remember, it's never too late to start living the life that you are meant to live. and truly with this type of message, stand out from everything else in your life that you thought that you were settling for. It's time to take charge. Have an amazing day.