WIN CYCLE: Manage Energy, Not Time — Sami Inkinen’s Playbook for Sustained High Performance
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Welcome to the Win Cycle Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Purple Patch Fitness Co-Founder Kelli McMaster interview Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia and CEO of Virta Health, discussing his journey of high performance in sports and business. He emphasizes the importance of managing energy over time, integrating work, family, and personal interests, and treating oneself like an Olympic athlete. Inkinen highlights the significance of sleep, nutrition, and movement for sustained high performance. He also shares his approach to building high-performance cultures at Trulia and Virta, focusing on individualized support, community, and the role of leadership in modeling healthy habits. Inkinen's strategies include weekly planning, prioritizing rest, and fostering a culture of sustainable high performance. If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:07 Episode Promo
1:34-5:26 Intro
6:50-26:56 Reflections on Coaching
27:1837:15 Health as a Strategic Advantage
37:50-43:41 Verta Health Corp
44:09-end Sport to Leadership
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Today's episode is one of those where we're hijacking the regular purple patch podcast, and it is a wind cycle edition, having said that, this is one that if you're a triathlete, you'll certainly want to listen to it as well, because today's guest is Sami inkon, and he's the perfect example of not just an optimized athlete, but also a leader. You're going to hear many lessons, and his story is the prime example of the framework and systems that we leverage as a part of our wind cycle program. And so as you listen today, I just invite you if you'd like to learn more about wind cycle and whether we might be able to help you and your team. Head to the website, wind cycle.org, that's W, I n, C, y, C, l, e.org, wind cycle.org, and if you'd like to set up a complementary needs assessment or further the conversation, fill out the form on the website. Of course, you can always email us at our regular purple patch podcast. Email Address, at info@purplepatchfitness.com, but without further ado, I give you Sami Inkinen, and it's a special one today. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of purple patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 01:37
And welcome to the purple patch podcast as ever your host, Matt Dixon and folks, it's another special one today. I know it's the purple patch podcast, but this is a wind cycle episode of the purple patch podcast. And in fact, it's not just me, your host today, because we have a very special guest on the show, and he is interviewed by not just myself, but also my wife and business partner, Kelli McMaster, this is one that I think every listener is going to be excited about. What a treat today we welcome the one and only Sami Inkinen, to give you a little bit of background if you don't know Sami. He was the co founder and COO of Trulia, the real estate search engine. He was also a coaching client of mine for 10 years, we went on an unforgettable journey together in the world of sports business and life performance, among every high performer in sports and business that I've ever worked with, and there have been some very, very impressive people I would be hard pressed to name one who hasn't had such a powerful, shared two way relationship of high performance. I've learned so much of Sami, and on the flip side, I hope that maybe he's learned one off two things for me as well. I want to give you a little bit of background. In 2012 Sami had an unforgettable year, because that was the year that Trulia went public. It went on to be sold for three and a half billion dollars. But in that same year, Sami didn't just finish an Iron Man. He won his age group at the Hawaii Iron Man World Championship.
Matt Dixon 03:19
And I hold my head, as many people would and say, How did he have time? But the truth is that by him taking on this huge physical challenge, some people might say, the biggest physical challenge you could an IRONMAN, it actually became a key performance inducing lever, one that ultimately boosted his energy and cognitive function, helped unlock a high performance mindset that informed his leadership and ultimately drove greater capacity counter intuitively, as you're going to learn today, it gave him time back. It's really quite incredible, but the most empowering part of this is that it went well beyond him as an individual leader through our work together, Sami quickly learned that by taking the practices of an elite athlete, how they think, how they behave, how they prepare, and encouraging his team at Trulia to do exactly that enabled them to feel better, be more productive, become more connected. In fact, what he ignited and developed was a high performance culture, and is exactly that playbook that he has now replicated to inform his culture at Virta health, his new venture in a completely other industry, as they go on their quest to reverse type two diabetes, it's a wonderful discussion, not just with myself and Sami, but we're joined with my co host, Kelli, my wife and business partner, and the reason she's here is she plays an instrumental role in everything wind cycle, in systemizing so many of the coaching lessons that I went through into really applicable and actionable frameworks. For everyday people to fuel performance, whether it's women participating in the purple patch Performance Center here, whether it's executives and teams fueling to show up better and perform at a greater level, she's a key cog in the wheel of everything, wind cycle. And so I give you Sami Kelli Matt a discussion on performance and leadership in today's business world. I hope you enjoy. Cheers. All right. So Sami, welcome. It's been quite some time. It's lovely to have you on the show, and thanks so much, and your first time in the Performance Center here in San Francisco.
Sami Inkinen 05:37
Matt and Kelli, thank you so much for inviting me. We've
Matt Dixon 05:40
been excited for this one. Yeah, we're going to talk about leadership. We're going to talk about high-performing cultures. We're going to join the connection, or join the dots, between your journey in sport and your journey as a leader. But I think we can only start in one place and and that's where we met each other and our journey with coaching a little bit. And so we want to dig into a little bit of your past and our past together as it relates to coaching.
Kelli McMaster 06:09
Yeah, Sami Inkinen, so you were obviously a very talented triathlete and you were successful. Can you explain to us, like, why you decided to bring on a coach and how that kind of changed your experience?
Kelli McMaster 06:21
Yeah, well, we all make mistakes, don't we?
Matt Dixon 06:24
It's a regrettable one.
Kelli McMaster 06:27
Maybe I'm already aging myself, and I'm trying to remember when I reach out to Matt, and it definitely was before 2010 so we're probably looking at 2007 initially. Yeah, he's a good, you know, 17 years, which is crazy to think about, yeah, yeah. At the time, I was building my previous company as an executive and co founder, Trulia, and so we were a sort of high growth VC backed company, I don't know, 100 200 employees. So that was certainly kind of a seven days a week job, and I was doing a triathlon, says as a hobby, but was was doing pretty well. I think, honestly, I reached out to Matt for probably two main reasons. And the first one is that it's very difficult to see outside of your own fishbowl, as a human in general, as a professional, as an athlete. And what I mean by that is you can convince yourself about any fact, whether it's true or not, in your own head. You could say, oh, I'm not performing well enough in sports, say triathlon or cycling, whatever. Clearly, I just need to exercise more. And you say that a couple of times, and you convince yourself when, in fact, the right answer might be, you should rest more. And so I think that was one reason that I thought, okay, for me to get to the next level, I have to make sure that I haven't convinced myself of bullshit or things that aren't true. So to have an outside person who can see inside my fish ball from the outside could be, should be very helpful. I think that was one realization. And by the way, I should say at the time, there weren't all the podcasts and online information, social media, which I'm quite about, because I probably would have sucked into that and tried to find the answer myself and then convince my inside my own fishbowl about facts that don't exist. But I think that was one reason. And then second is, you know, creating to Matt's reputation already, at the time, I wanted to tap into your amazing knowledge about coaching and sports, and maybe there's something I can learn. But I think it was those two reasons.
Matt Dixon 08:38
It's funny that you sort of you your first side of that, of looking in the fish bowl. Because when, and we've talked a lot about this, the the most successful, I also coached a lot of professional triathlete and in parallel to your journey, and you got enmeshed in the in the pro squad quite a bit. But when we reflect on the 15 years that I did that, and we take a step back, we had some incredibly talented athletes, but the ones that really built careers that sort of had this really consistent high performance tended to be the ones that were most coachable. And it's really interesting. And actually, you look at all sports, whether you're looking at Ronaldo or Messi or Serena Williams, they're very, very coachable people. And then you're interesting for me, because you had that and your high performing executive, and that's also a trend that we see, that as you go higher up in organizations, the more likelihood that there is that you're going to reach out and actually reach for external support. Yeah, it's not an individual journey.
Kelli McMaster 09:41
Ultimately, yeah, the my summit visit is by training, way back when, education wise. And my favorite math equation that relates to this, which I share with my team all the time, is is 1.01 to the power of 365, which is to say, if you improve 1% every day for you. Year, how far will you get? The new answer is about 3,700% improvement in a single year, if you improve this 1% per year. So to your point, like, I think that's just a critical it's very easy to sort of flatline and say, I know how to do this and just keep doing that. But in almost anything, basically, you can improve if you have that, that mindset, whatever you call it growth mindset, or whatever. But to have a coach or just have that mindset that you go back and say, Hey, I did something, but that's a race or work thing. Yeah, the result may matter, but what matters even more, if you're in it for the long haul, is to take a step back and say, Okay, what are the three things I can learn? That's actually one habit that I think I learned from you, as I was doing sports and triathlons, that after every event the result was kind of nice, whatever it was, but I always went back and I forced myself to write three things. What are the three things I can learn from this experience for the next one reflection, you know, whatever that was. And then you think about it, if you do 1015, events a year, well suddenly you have 3045, things to improve each year. And then you compound that, two years, three years, four years, five years, and you get very far.
Matt Dixon 11:17
Yeah, the reflection is sort of one of our key traits that we talk about the whole time. And I think there's an interesting thing in reflection as it relates to failure and success as well. People are really, really happy and eager to reflect when things don't go well, but I think it's absolutely is important to reflect when things do go well as well, because there's still lessons out of that, and even athletically. And this applies, obviously, to all things in life, but, but not every victory the pro level at you necessarily means a great performance. Yeah, and, and sometimes you can win by an accident in many ways,
Kelli McMaster 11:54
actually, there's someone, I don't remember the name now, but I think there's academic research behind what's the difference in mindset between, like the Olympic gold medal winners and the kind of silver Brahms? And pretty good, I think. But at least this is the story I tell myself, that the result was that the very, very best, even after Wayne step back and say, what is it that I can, I can improve. Because the moment you think you've done it and you're the person, you're the perfect that is definitely the beginning of the downhill. And so one thing that I've taken from that for business environment, and I think this is probably copied from from Amazon, but I use this mantra, it's always day one, and particularly after we accomplish something fantastic, like, relatively speaking, like, milestone, it's that was great, then let's celebrate. But it's still day one. What is it that we can we can do better again? Because if you think you've made it in whatever is, especially in business like that is definitely the beginning of the downhill. Like, you have to have this day one mindset all the time. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 13:02
it's continual evolution and growth. When I always talk about our coaching relationship, I always label it as the ultimate optimization challenge, because we I mean, you were right at that. You were in the vortex of Julia at that time. I mean, it really was this huge growth opportunity, and you were already a successful triathlete, amateur triathlete, that had pretty lofty goals. You know you had. You were looking to train for and race at the highest level of amateur level of Iron Man, half Iron Man, the local race of Alcatraz and everything else. And most of your peers at the time that were going to be your competition were swarning around and doing 20 or 25 hours a week. We had a recipe which people always assume was not true, but actually was true because you tracked it religiously about 10 hours a week. And so we had we faced this optimization challenge, I'd love your perspective, and I think listeners would want to know of like, how did you actually manage and juggle all of those competing demands and still yield, ultimately, world class results in such a limited budget of time?
Kelli McMaster 14:10
Yeah, well, first in terms of results, just so listeners can understand I was, I would say I was very good at an amateur level, but you know, it's nowhere near kind of winning Olympic gold. So my fastest Iron Man was 824, and then in Hawaii, I mean, a couple of times under nine. And then I had one sub, you know, eight, something, something sub nine results, although I would say that if it was today, we'd probably chip off 25 minutes just from better shoes and all the aerodynamics, no more singlets and stuff like that. So anyways, the competitor in me is coming up. Yeah, exactly still, it's still in there 20 minutes faster. But yeah, I think the conventional wisdom at the time was to do well, and that's very long distance. So even, like. Qualify to something like the how are we Hawaii Iron Man, which is kind of the pinnacle of triathlon. I guess still today, you have to train 20 hours or more. I knew I didn't even have the time. And by the way, sometimes, or I would say oftentimes, constraints are helpful, because they make the problem solving easier. And I think we started our conversation like, Okay, well, I have 10 or give or take hours per week to train. Like, how do we, how do we optimize around that? It's not an option for me to do 20 hours a week. And so, yes, indeed, I tracked. Well, I've tracked, I don't know, since 2000 so I have like, 25 years of training apps still today, but the years that I did those Ironman performances, it was 10 to 12 hours a week, and didn't really change from that year round. And maybe there was one or two weeks that I had 15 on a holiday, we could train more, but yeah, we had that constraint. How, like, how do we get most out of it? And then we build the program around that, and clearly it worked. Now you could ask the counterfactual like, well, maybe that was an optimal what would have happened if you did 20? Well, we never know that, but I'm reasonably certain, like, I kind of reached my genetic potential as a recreational athlete who actually has a job?
Matt Dixon 16:22
Yeah, I think, I think the the big thing for me was, as it approached you, of that was what I always call about integration. So, so it wasn't just that you had 10 hours a week and we slapdash. It was actually really looking to integrate it, to say, okay, what are the other components of life? Because you had to, every single week, basically go through a prioritization exercise and, and I think most people think about their work week and, and, let's, let's go outside of triathlon. Let's, let's forget most of our listeners are not triathletes and are not looking to try and go under nine hours at the Hawaii Iron Man, but, um, but they are perhaps looking to integrate fitness into life and stay consistent with that and show up for their kids sports games or whatever it might be. And I think most people do some form of exercise every single week to plan their work and their their scheduled work, but failed to integrate everything. And one of the things that we sort of built together, in many ways, was something that now we call the Sunday special at purple patch and at wind cycle, which is integrating all of those potent for notes, looking at work, looking at family and looking at sport, and saying, Let's build a recipe in which you can actually be successful? Yeah,
Kelli McMaster 17:43
I'd probably copy that from you, because I still use it. So I literally spend whatever it might be 15 minutes every Sunday evening or afternoon, planning my next week. Yeah, not just kind of the typical like, what does my calendar look like. But as you know, I still train quite a bit, and mostly cycling, and do cycling races and so forth, but I plan my entire week every week, on a Sunday evening, and yeah, it takes holistically into account everything that I have. And there's a couple of things, again, mantras that I've learned from you. One is stress, is stress, is stress. And what I mean by that is, if I know that I have a cross country flight and arrive at midnight and, you know, 6am meeting after that, that's a huge amount of stress. So that means there's not going to be a crazy workout on the following day. So that's just one example, like stress is stress. Is stress another example, the thing that I keep in mind is I try to, although my main job is to be a CEO and sport is just a hobby, I try to treat myself like an Olympic athlete, which is to say that I have to be sort of vibrant and sustainable over long periods of time. So again, if I have too many things in a week that will not allow me to be at my kind of physical peak, I might go and say, Okay, there's too many days back to back that I don't have enough sleep. I'm going to ask, you know, my team or my assistant to, like, cancel the Thursday morning meetings because I have to sleep in. So this is the kind of planning I do every Sunday. And I think it really all comes down from kind of the sports experience and sports coaching, because in the sports context, it's way easier to manage that, because everybody understands the like, if you have a big workout or big race, you can't have an all nighter, but as a professional, we easily forget that we're kind of like, well, I can just grind it like I can go two nights without sleep. I can just do this now, obviously we can, but we are not performing at our peak, and it certainly isn't sustainable. So I use that kind of I again, I'm not an Olympic athlete, but I use this mindset like. Like, if I have an Olympic athlete, how would I plan this week? And how would I plan my energy, both for my brain work as a CEO, and then my workout? So they all come together in this sort of 15 minute planning session every Sunday, yeah?
Sami Inkinen 20:17
And it's allowing you to show up your best at work, because you're taking care of your body, yeah? So you're also a better dad, likely, and a better partner and just a better performer in general.
Matt Dixon 20:27
Yeah? I like the mindset of as you say, is very similar to talk about, but I trick, I think of myself like an Olympic athlete. You're not actually trying to model necessarily. You know you're in your mind, I'm an Olympic athlete, but you're borrowing from the strategies to help you in what's important for you. Ultimately, I've also heard you say in other stuff outside of our coaching relationship. Actually, a lot of my success is about the ability to say no and filter out, which is sort of couple we're talking about here, like ruthless prioritization, in a way. And I had a conversation with with a guy that I coached, and I said, When have you ever finished a week of work, and he's a he's a CEO, and thought I got everything done. It's never happened in the in history. There's always more to do. And so therefore we have to, for long term success, be really, really good at prioritizing and not just trying to cram and fill our days. And you think Matt's a big anchor point of your success
Kelli McMaster 21:28
100% and again, I have this sort of mantras that I now have over decades of doing this is one of the things that I keep telling to myself and also my team, is you can't finish work by working as a professional, like I'd say one thing, if you packing something in a factory, and it's like, whatever, nine to five, and when it's five, it's absolutely done, by the way, which is easier than many knowledge workers, because it feels like the work stay all the time, which is true. So that's one mantra that I have, that I can't finish work by working. So what does that mean? In practice? It means you have to decide, what are the couple of things that matter, and what are the 99% of things that, yeah, nice to have, but it at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. So that's about saying no to no to a lot of things. So that's the one, one mantra that I use. And then the second thing is this, like, I just, I have to say no to a lot of things. People, people ask me often, like, I can't believe how you can do all these things. And I think the kind of the Netflix headline version would be, like, you know, I built two, or the last, let's see, since 2004 so I guess that's in last 20 years. I built two multi billion dollar companies as a founder. Yeah, you know, one world championships in my age group, in triathlon. And, you know, done lots of sports, wrote across the Pacific. And people like, how can you do all those things? The truth is, I don't do a lot of things. I do very few things, and I did them pretty well. I don't do a lot of things that, quote, unquote normal people do, like, I know what's movies. Maybe I should hang up with certain friends more than I do. But you know, saying no is kind of secret to doing a few things very, very successful. It can be hard, but if you know what matters in life, yeah, it's kind of easy to then say no to the long tail of things. Well,
Matt Dixon 23:21
I wonder, because we've been we've been dancing around this. And I want to sort of more formally join the connection between your journey in sport and your journey as a leader. I often talk about the bi directional impact of the fact that you have these responsibilities, goals, missions, etc, in leadership, building, Virta right now and in parallel, you have all of your hobbies, your quest in sport, but I always saw when we were we worked with each other for six years, something like that, 567, years, however, it felt like 20. But I think it was five magic for years, Sami, but, but I really saw you as a great case study of someone that your leadership benefited from your journey of sport and your experience as a leader actually helped you as an athlete. And I really saw that, and I just love your perspective on that of how have sport has fueled your leadership in many ways.
Kelli McMaster 24:16
Yeah, well, first I will say there's no way I could have operated at the level I have as a professional and founder for 20 years, and I'm proud of the fact that I still haven't cracked and knocking wood here, that it doesn't happen. But basically, 20 plus years non stop as a founder of a high growth VC backed company, one of which went public, and hopefully second one that may do the same in the foreseeable future. It would be very easy to crack mentally, emotionally, whatnot. And again, could happen tonight, but hopefully it doesn't. But I think, and it's kind of rare, and I see. Meat is because there is a method to the madness. I don't think I just got lucky, but in terms of sports and business, one thing I would say that what sport has given me is one, it obviously the Health Foundation of health coming into the sport personally. Second one is it's another outlet, both as a identity. So, you know, if it's stressful at work or things out going as they should I have this sports outlet and vice versa. And I remember, I think there was a point in time when for six or 12 months and I didn't have a job between my two companies, I asked Matt, like, putting in this triathlon thing, should I give it a shot and just kind of like, be a professional for a year. And do you remember what you said? You said, I know you you would go crazy, like, there's no way you could be doing this full time. You better have something, yeah. And I reflected it for like, I don't know, 24 hours, and realized you're 100% true. So the answer was, No, you're absolutely right. So, so having this yin and young of two kind of, almost like emotional, mental identities, has been very, very helpful. And then the it's also the ruthless prioritization that the sport has has given me on on the business side. And then we can talk about, like, how I've sort of manifested those to my team and my leadership team and others. But hope I would guess that the example of me having different interests me. You know, treating myself like an Olympic athlete has helped the team by kind of emulation or trying to copy me. Oh, I think
Sami Inkinen 26:38
it definitely, I'm sure it has. I mean, I guess what I'd like to hear is, you know, there's a lot of people listening to this that may feel a little distance from your story, because you're out here, right? You're an Uber achiever, you're Uber driven. And so is there some nugget or piece of wisdom for people just starting out, like, what could they do to kind of shape their day or week in a simple way to kind of get started on this journey.
Kelli McMaster 27:05
Yeah, well, let's see what I would say again. I maybe there's sort of two things. One is this idea, like, treat yourself like an Olympic athlete. You start from very, very simple things, and like Matt taught me in sports, was, everything starts from a foundation of health, and I think it's the same thing as a professional. So I think one thing I would say in treating yourself like an Olympic athlete is it comes down to really basics. It's sleep, nutrition and some basic moment and sort of physical moment. And even if you live in places like New York, there's something magical in being in nature, whether that central park or something that's both mental and physical. So I would say that's one thing. Like just thinking the foundation of health just makes you a better leader. You show up with more, I think, spark in your step, and more creativity and everything.
Matt Dixon 28:02
So better cognitive function and ability to focus, yeah, and then this obviously
Kelli McMaster 28:06
mental health. It's wonderful that people are more open and sure about it, but the point as a CEO, as a leader, is not to crack. And honestly, if you crack, sharing, this is a is an honorable thing to do, but yeah, the first goal has to be like, how do I take care of myself, yeah, so that I don't crack. So I think that would be one again, treating yourself, again, Olympic athlete, but start from the basics.
Matt Dixon 28:28
And just, just to interrupt there, because we use the word Olympic athlete and you are a triathlete, this does not mean that people have to take up competitive sport, correct? I think that's, I think it's an important thing is, like, you don't have to become a triathlete. You don't have to sign up for a marathon, etc.
Kelli McMaster 28:46
The reason I use this Olympic athlete is is to sort of highlight that they are high performers, and secondly, that for any athlete, the foundation of health is blatantly obvious. But again, maybe in the last few years it has changed. But if we look at the last 80 years, you know, most successful businessmen and women, you see pictures of them, very successful late in a career, they look very unhealthy. Yeah, physically, that is not the optimal approach. And so that's why I use this metaphor of Olympic athletes, you have to take care of your physical health in order to perform best, you know, in your brain. Basically, yes, that's why I use that as maybe one stepping stone. And then a second one is, I use this term internally. I call it sustainable high performance, which is to say that anyone can sprint for short period of time, but to deliver kind of outstanding and differentiated results every overnight success is like 510, 15 years in the making personal careers. So you always, in my opinion, has to. Have to think about, what is the sustainable high performance? How do I enable that? And of course, start again from a physical health but otherwise, you also have to think like, how do I maintain that? Whether that's the Sunday planning, whether that's having like, I haven't I feel like I have at least three identities. It's the CEO, founder, the tech, whatever, builder, you know, husband, father, like a family identity, and then I have this sort of athlete identity. So I I knowingly cultivate those three now I'm the same person in all those three contexts, but there's something in my brain where it's like I can kind of escape to one of them, and be very single minded in that, and it sort of revitalizes or rejuvenates me. Go back to work, it's like, oh so awesome to be here. Don't have to be with the family or I think that's just my tool. But that's again, how do you create the conditions for sustainable high performance that you don't feel like you're just trained all the time. I
Sami Inkinen 31:03
mean, that's it. That's like the leadership advantage, right? So over these last 20 years, you've just been maniacal about looking after yourself, and by doing that, it's unlocked all sorts of great things for you. Yeah? Athletics, partnerships, work.
Matt Dixon 31:19
Yeah, I heard you giggle when he used that phrase, because the the initial module of wind cycle that we love to start with is setting the mindset are under this banner of sustainable high performance.
Kelli McMaster 31:36
But so it comes back to this question I often get from people is like, I don't understand how you can do all these things. And to me, my question is the opposite, which is, like, I can't understand how I could do all these things without having more than one thing to focus on. So it's it's not a matter of slicing, taking a pie of hours and trying to split it. It's more. It's more. I'm managing my energy. If I were just to do one thing, have one identity and one focus like I would 100% burn out. This is no question about it. So there's no way I could do what I do unless I have this multitude of interests and focus areas. So
Sami Inkinen 32:15
Sami, one of the things that's been coming up for us when we've been going into these corporations and talking about this is, people often say, hey, look like I love this concept. I'm bought off on it. I want to do it, but I don't have enough time, and I get stuck. What do you say to that?
Kelli McMaster 32:32
Well, again, this is, hopefully doesn't sound too voodoo, but it's about managing energy, as opposed to time. Now, obviously, to do something, if anything takes time, yeah, I would start from something very, very small and simple. And if for someone, the challenge is, how do I take care of my kind of physical foundation of health? I would start from some very simple one or two things. If it's related to getting out and exercise. It could be something like, you know, my want to start the set the alarm like nine minutes earlier than before I have my shoes, and I'm just going to go on, I don't know, walk five minutes outside, and then I'm going to add one minute every week, and then soon enough, it's maybe 20 minutes again. This is a silly example, but if someone is doing absolutely nothing for their physical health. And instead of whatever they're doing today, they start the day with, like, a 10 minute walk outside alone with no phone, no nothing. I'm 100% convinced that there will be benefits, their thinking, their happiness, the stress, that was everything. So that's one example. And then for other people, if the issue is that they don't sleep enough. Like, obviously there's a whole host of things you can do, like avoiding caffeine in the second half of day. Like, that's, again, depends so on the individual. But the rule could be, like, after 11am zero AM, zero caffeine, or I'm gonna go to bed every night before 10pm no matter what I'm just it's a hard and fast rule and 10pm or something like that. But I would pick one on to this sort of physical improvement areas that are super simple to execute, like, five minute walk is very easy. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 34:15
successful, yeah. It's interesting, because, you know, one of the things we always talk about is embrace the journey and any time in the history of every athlete that I've ever coached when I first, including you, by the way, when I first meet them, and I look at the landscape of everything they're doing, there's always many, many things that you want to adjust and can evolve. And what you have to do is build mini victories, because you're building trust at the same time, and you want the athlete to feel successful, so you filter those out, and you say, Okay, what are the sort of 123, things that they can action really simply, and they can feel validated from. So then you build a bit of trust, but they also get a little bit of feeling better. And I think that's, um, I think it's really important. With what you said there where start really, really small and feel the benefits. Because you know that transformation takes time. We're talking about habit creation, behavior modification, often across a multitude of areas, and you can't rush it. What you can do, though, is commit to a plan of action to improve. Yes, and that, as you say, like it might be just as much as going for a five or 10 minute walk that can be the catalyst, often, of which, then other habits can be built on top of. And I think that's such an important
Kelli McMaster 35:30
I'm no psychologist, but now in my data, but vertihework reversed diabetes and obesity, I've observed this. I think this is wired to us humans. Again, I'm not a biologist or psychologist, but the feeling and observation of personal progress and success is very strong, positive drug. It's very addictive. And I say this because we now observe 100,000 people, people very obese and struggling, and sort of sustainably help them to lose weight. That's just one example. Like when they see, like a pound or two a week disappears like it is one of the most exciting things, drugs, quote, unquote, drugs happening in their lives like it is so exciting and when, in our case, it's sort of effortless, it just keeps people going. And so producing those little wins, I think, is, you know, whatever you start doing new thing and you learn is slightly better. And so that's why I am a huge believer that you implement one super, super simple thing and you start seeing the results. Is very exciting. You want to do more of it, absolutely.
Matt Dixon 36:43
So you've you mentioned Virta there, and we want to go beyond just Sami. We're going to talk about what one of the big things that we really see. And in fact, we saw this with the purple patch pros. So when we took a team approach, that's where things started to really become exponential in results. We almost have performance inevitability. You've got a reputation and you've got great success of building amazing culture within teams, high performance cultures, both in Trulia and now Virta. We want to dig into Virta a little bit and your role as a leader, and how you created this, this fantastic high performance culture, before we do a lot of listeners might not really know much about Virta, and I think it's a great moment, because both Kelli and I are so a impressed, but also inspired by your mission and what you get done. So can you just give us a couple of minutes on Virta? Give us the snapshot. Why did you create this? Where you at what? What are you solving right now? What's the mission?
Kelli McMaster 37:47
Yeah, the mission of Virta health is to reverse type two diabetes and obesity in 1 billion people, and we achieve that with a combination of provider led telemedicine so supporting patients remotely and virtually. And then secondly, the therapy really is as simple as nutrition through lifestyle change. And the miracle of Virta really is that it actually works, where basically all nutrition based programs over the last three, four decades have have failed. And you know, people lose an average of 13% of the body weight sustained on average one year and sustained at two years. So these days, I like to say that we deliver ozempic Like results without the drug, like truly nutritionally and to the point that we've now treated hundreds of 1000s of American adults and some of the outpatients have permanently tattooed our company logo in their bodies, kind of like Iron Man after these outcomes. And I mentioned that because it hopefully highlights the depth and magnitude of positive impact that our our patients have. So anyway, so that's what we do. The company itself is about 1000 employees and couple of 100 million in revenue. So it's a real business. It's a large, small company, but obviously small in Fortune 500 context, and growing very fast, almost doubling year the year. And I say sadly, because it is because the problem of obesity and diabetes is so big, and there's so much to do, and it's definitely still just, as I've said before, day one for us, that's an
39:29
incredible mission. Yeah.
Matt Dixon 39:31
How many people pass away a year from diabetes or related complications?
Kelli McMaster 39:37
Yeah, so there's two ways to look at it. Directly. It's 10s of 1000s or nearly 100,000 in America, 100,000 a year. Yeah, it's in that order magnitude. But then if you look at the cardio people who die from cardio metabolic disease, because usually they have type two diabetes, and then it's sort of up for debate whether it was a. High blood pressure or cardiovascular disease or diabetes, because they are the same thing effectively, then you're looking at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 1000s. So it's one of the you know, cardio metabolic disease is the number one killer in in America, so people with insulin resistance, inflammation, obesity, basically metabolic disease, that is the number one killer. Yeah, today,
Matt Dixon 40:19
can I just ask word slightly tangentially, but it does spark nature. There's it's telemedicine, nutritional intervention at the core of it, when you believe some of that success, accountability, support, community, those elements, do you see those elements as really important, supporting
Kelli McMaster 40:42
officer sense. So people always ask, wait, wait, wait, how is this possible? You say, you reverse type two diabetes. You get people insulin and, yes, indeed, public spirit results. Hundreds of 1000s of people benefit. And those are some of the key elements. But it's, it's always a combination of two things. One is the approach to nutrition, nutrition science. If you ask people to do the wrong things, obviously it's not going to work. So we have the right science, and how do we individualize that at scale? So that is one piece of it, but then you can have the best science, best purple in the world, but if people don't follow it, and we can't support in a little hiccup in your life. Obviously, it's going to fail. So then that's kind of the second part of it, which is what you detailed. So the support the community. We have medical doctors who work for us, full time employees. We have coaches who use remote monitoring, so practically on an almost hourly basis, we know what's floating in your butt stream so we can react quickly and say, Hey, maybe you should adjust this thing to get back on track. And so it is really a combination of right approach to nutrition and individualization, and then all these things that you mentioned, the support. It's sort of a times b. If one of them is zero. We all know math end result is zero. So you have to get both of those two things right
Matt Dixon 41:59
way less important of a mission and task world class performance amongst the pros, but it really reminds me of the pro squad, yeah, the purple patch pro score, where we, you know, we had, as you all know, a pretty polarizing methodology. How can we get people to actually follow these athletes, to actually follow and adhere to, having the courage to recover and integrating strength? And we set up non negotiables and a whole bunch of mechanisms of support and accountability. And that was the thing that got us to hold traction. That's I was really interested in,
Kelli McMaster 42:29
that, yeah, you really have to get again, you have to have the science and the protocol right, but then you have to have the support individualization and quote, unquote, adherence, which is kind of a negative world word, and in today's world, information has more or less been commoditized, like you could go to Google, or you can go to AI, yeah, you can find any piece of information there, like basically any problem, and more or less likely it's correct. However, why haven't we solved all the world's problems, you know, starting from medical account to high performance the office and whatnot. And so the second piece is, how do you actually implement that, like, how do you adhere, how do you then believe that that's right? And then when you have the first hiccup, how do you make adjust and course correct? And so this is kind of way, like coaching. And to me, at the end of the day, it's it's human to human. So again, information is more or less free today. Yes, can access all the information in the world through a smartphone, but then how do you implement that? And I would predict that the value of implementation and coaching will just go up, and the value of information itself is going to go very rapidly towards zero.
Sami Inkinen 43:47
Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. So just circling back, we've talked a lot about your individual performance, and we've got to learn so much about Virta. So thank you for sharing. One of the questions that's kind of bubbling up for me is, what do you think a leader's role is in shaping a sustained high performance culture? Like, how do you do that at Virta?
Kelli McMaster 44:08
That's yeah, it's a good question. There's probably some tangibles and things that I do consciously, and then there's things that I do I don't even know how I do and if I do them. Yeah, there's a lot of things. I'm trying to think a couple of things. One is, I definitely always had a very conscious focus on company culture, and that starts from obviously defining it early that hopefully is somewhat aligned with the founder or the founders, because you can't fake it. You have to be authentic. So defining values and then living up to them and having practices that allow people to to kind of follow the values along the way. I think that's one huge part of it. Second one is, which is, I think the most powerful is, like, however you show up as a leader, is people will start solely imitating. Thing. And obviously I over index CEOs, founders very much on the kind of physical health, athletics and so forth. So I actually try to under index, it in my kind of what I talk and what I say, but everyone can see and hear what I do and how much I take care of myself. So I'm hopeful that most people can say, Hey, maybe I should take care of myself. And I'll just give you sort of an actual example of this. Again, our treatment at Virta is nutrition based. I never tell people like, Hey, he's gonna eat better and do this and that. But I can tell you that almost everyone who joins the company as an executive now, otherwise, within their first two years as an employee, they are like, maybe I should sign up for this employee version of the treatment to take better care of myself. And so that's just an example of I think just looking around and seeing what I do, like, maybe I should take better care of myself and use our own product is one example. So that's kind of the second thing. And then the third one is, I do use my communication vehicles quite a bit. So I write a team letter to the whole company once a week. I'm now written 500 of them. I speaking every Monday, all hands. A little bit. Ings, I have leadership meetings. So I talk about these topics, like sustainable high performance. I write about them like, what does that mean in practice? So those are some of the, I guess, mechanisms, things that I do consciously and
Matt Dixon 46:31
on a really tangible level. And I think about your journey and you you choose to with Meredith, your wife, go and row. You're about over 42 days to Hawaii, and you're training for Iron Man. You've just come home from Cape epic, which is a very challenging mountain bike race through South Africa. And so you take on these big challenges, and so many of the buzz words in corporate forms, resilience and adaptability. There's no doubt that those journeys, taking on big challenges, helps foster and develop those through experiential learning. So as a leader, do you really encourage like, is there a cultural component of not necessarily, go and row your boat to Hawaii? You know that's not. That's not what you're encouraging. But is there a Do you embrace culturally people taking on challenges to help them build those traits that you're looking for as a leader,
Kelli McMaster 47:26
yeah, and I talk about this sustainable high performance a lot, and I would say certainly as a leader, I'm not the kind of like, Damn work harder kind of a person. I'm more like the opposite, which is to say that I hope we mostly hire people who are very self motivated and they really want to do the best work in their lives, and if anything, they kind of put too much into it. So what I mean by that I'm a little bit kind of the opposite is I try to manage people's energy for them. So example is we have some systems like, think it's if you've been five or six years, I'm now blanking on it, but once you've been certain years you worked at Virta, you have a sabbatical that you can take, which is fully paid. So that's an example of it's like, okay, this is like, on a macro cycle, you should have a break and recharge yourself. I think it's a one month, which, by European standards, is called a summer vacation. Yeah, exactly. So there's that second one is, particularly people who report to me as leaders. Like, if I know this, like, clearly, like, they dial the screw themselves too much, like, hey, maybe you should just go on, take a Friday and Monday off and have a four day weekend and go do whatever with your spouse or family. So I often try to manage people's energy that way, and it's less of a problem. Like, hey, work harder. And like, I think we hire people who are very, very self motivated. So that's how I implement sort of sustainable high performance in a team and try to build resiliency in that sense. And then I think secondly, again, comes back to my own behavior. Yeah, hopefully most of the people in the team like, Huh? Like he's doing something, right? Can I pick up from his behavior? But I'm not very prescriptive, and say, Hey, this is what I do. Used to do the same, yeah, outside of kind of just professional duties,
Matt Dixon 49:25
happens by by osmosis. So if you, if you've we asked this question for folks that don't identify as an athlete on an individual level, what about for leaders that are listening and think I want to level up here, and I want my teams to level up. Is there any piece of parting advice to finish up the show that you could maybe give them of the long journey of cultural development to sustained high performance? But what would you say to a leader listening to say, You know what, I want my organization to level up on this? Yeah,
Kelli McMaster 49:57
well, let's, let's try to give. Two things I will say. The first one, I again remind like, there really aren't shortcuts to most things, personal performance or organizational performance. Like it's a long journey. And again, most kind of orb and success stories are 510, years in the making. So I do think you have to think about it sustainable high performance and compounding like, that's what it is like, little things, and you do those things right over a long period of time. And then a second thing again, I will say that you have as a professional, you have to think of yourself as a professional athlete again, even if you don't do any sports. But how do you take care of yourself? So I would, I would pick one thing, whether that's sleep or movement or nutrition, one of those three things, I would say, what is? What's a one thing in one of those three areas that I can do better tomorrow, small steps over a long period of time, and you have amazing results
Matt Dixon 50:57
that side just I'll add one piece of coaching context, because they can't help it, but being a coach sometimes it stresses. The word, you know, people talk about stress the whole time, if you think about stress processing, stress management, we really have a few tools at our disposal. Sleep, really important movement, is actually scientifically validated. Of that proper nutrition so that we're not overloading in the right type of food, the right quantity and hydration. We would add that when you're dehydrated, those are your levers. And so it can be really simple to help you build capacity to be able to manage the competing demands.
Kelli McMaster 51:35
Just remember that beer also hydrates, but that may not be the that might not be
Matt Dixon 51:39
the optimal despite my English Heritage, I have to say, as a performance coach, that's not it well.
Sami Inkinen 51:46
Sami, thank you so much for joining us. You've given us so much to think about, and there's a lot of little nuggets in here for everybody, and we hope to see you again. The wind cycle podcast.
Matt Dixon 51:57
Yeah, so much fun. Thank you guys, thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the purple patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the purple patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the purple patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Sami Inkinen, high performance, sustainable high performance, Virta Health, type 2 diabetes, nutrition, telemedicine, leadership culture, energy management, Ironman, Trulia, coaching, reflection, physical health, mental health.