In August of 2020, the CEO of BC Tree Fruits, Warren Sarafinchan, felt like most CEOs in Corporate America: overworked, stressed, and completely out of touch with their body.
“When I first started using OWN IT, my HRV was 9 with a resting heart rate north of 80 bpm. I was carrying 238 lbs around,” Sarafinchan admits. “I knew I needed to address certain aspects of my health but had no idea how to do it sustainably.”
Over the course of some 1-on-1 coaching that Warren had engaged in his results did a complete 180 over the course of 6 months. “After six months in the program, my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is averaging in the 30s with some periods north of 50,” the CEO told us. “My resting heart rate is now in the mid 50s, and I’ve lost over 40 lbs. More importantly, I have a structured plan that enables me to be at my best everyday for my family and the work I do.”
In January, the entire executive team at BC Tree, began using OWN IT. To fully capitalize on the expertise of OWN IT, every team member was equipped with a WHOOP band, the OWN IT app, OWN IT coaches that provided ‘inner energy’ and ‘outer energy’ 1-on-1 sessions over the course of 6 months, as well as live, monthly calls followed by Q&A with their coaches. This combination is what enabled BC Tree employees to create a personalized framework that can take into account their lifestyle, environment, and unique variables that affect their recovery and performance.
Elite Performers are Human First
The decisions and performance of executives at companies affect hundreds of their employees and billions of dollars. Their well-being, in part, determines the well-being of their whole team AND the health of the company.
When team leaders don’t put their health and performance first, they’re not only hurting themselves, but placing in jeopardy what everybody else is working to accomplish. After all, you’re able to adapt only to the degree that we are healthy — mentally or physically. Because your body can’t distinguish the difference between mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional stress, you need metrics like your HRV to help you envision the tolls those different stressors are putting on your mind, body, and soul.
“Most people look at executives as being immune from the stress and challenges that come from running an organization. Often, the assumption is that executives will remain unaffected.”
Sarafinchan continued, “I fundamentally disagree with this. Executives are people first and have, in most cases, extreme amounts of stress that stays unresolved. I have invested in OWN IT with my executives and have seen a steep improvement in both business results and their personal lives.”
Business and Personal Success Go Hand-in-Hand When You Prioritize Health
The old adage says that you can’t “burn the candle at both ends.” And in a strict sense, this is absolutely true. In life, it’s a challenge to prioritize business success and important relationships, while still having time to enjoy life. However, by managing your health, and increasing it through actionable steps, you increase your mental, emotional, and physical capacity to succeed in all of it while living with less stress.
Teams and businesses spend millions of dollars on leadership development and retreats to plan the business out for the next fiscal year — but rarely invest in the health and wellness of their teams in an applicable way. It’s one thing to have a corporate wellness initiative, where you have access to a gym, online classes, etc. It’s completely different to build a personalized framework that enhances the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual lives of your team that is impacting the goals and plans you established.
How Data Helped Him Own The ‘8 Controllables’
Since seeing the results of using OWN IT, Sarafinchan has bought in fully. “I found I didn’t have the physical and emotional energy to be the best I could every day in both my personal and professional life. I wasn’t owning the ‘8 Controllables’ that directly influenced how I was showing up.”
Most people know that coaching works, in a simplistic sense. Coaching provides the accountability necessary to reach your goals. But in the OWN IT Coaching system, it’s not about babysitting executives to help them reach their goals.
Instead, we teach frameworks so they know exactly how to keep themselves accountable. We teach them how to make sense of their health data so they can course-correct each day.
For example, if their HRV plummets, everybody in our program knows the ‘8 Controllables’ framework. The concept behind the ‘8 Controllables’ is to give simple action steps to form sustainable habits.
Habit change is hard. However, implementing personalized changes at specific times yields 10x results. Using the ‘8 Controllables’ is more about removing things that aren’t working and doubling down on what is creating change for that individual based on their data. Because these changes are made in light of your personal lifestyle, environment, and body, it gives people autonomy and ownership of the habits and changes they’re making.
“I made the commitment to invest in myself,” Sarafinchan said with conviction. “I now control my day, my energy, and own how I show up. My family, friends, and team have noticed a complete difference.”
The Whole Team Doubled Their HRV and Added Two Hours of Sleep
Coaching systems that rely on complete 1-on-1 attention to everybody inevitably will fall short. You can’t give that to an entire team, whether in sports or business, without hiring an individual coach for every single team member.
With OWN IT, we leverage the coaches’ expertise to teach everybody how to keep themselves accountable, and initiate change themselves. We focus on helping people HOW to think, not just WHAT to think. Bringing context into every situation allows OWN IT to compliment their lives instead of forcing people into OWN IT’s systems.
In the first six months working together, BC Tree’s executive team as a whole has seen massive improvements. On average, their HRV has increased 46%, while their resting heart rate fell 33%.
Perhaps most impressively, though, their average sleep per night went from 5 hours and 18 minutes to a whopping 7 hours and 27 minutes. Note that this metric is not the same as time spent in bed — it accounts for disturbances in the night that interrupt sleep without you even remembering waking up. That’s a massive life shift, not just in one person, but across the entire team.
The team at BC Tree is sleeping more, recovering better, and making their health number one. The results on all levels are showing, including their bottom line. Sarafinchan asserts that “Our team is better able to handle the growth that we are rapidly seeing. This year will see us taking over as the Amazon in our industry. We wouldn’t have been ready to handle the capacity necessary to thrive without going through OWN IT. In fact, we’re doubling down on the use of OWN IT with our team this year, and going worldwide.”
Health and Wellness is the Foundation of High Performance
You can have all the fancy training programs and technology on the planet. You can have the best workouts and the most in-depth nutrition protocol. But those won’t matter if you don’t build habits that minimize and combat the inevitable constant stress because of your job. By identifying the variables you can control and the context of your environment, you can harness your performance by better adapting to and combating stress.
Whatever the weak link in your health, that’s what will hold you back from your peak performance. OWN IT Coaching helps you identify and take action on this weakest link, so you can solidify your foundation on which all other success builds on.
To learn more about OWN IT, see how a D1 football program used it to empower their athletes. Or, talk with us today.
