The CEO of a 100-person start-up, Cameron Vance (pseudonym for privacy purposes), by all external measures, was on top of his game in the cut-throat corporate world. He had just sold his company to a private equity firm during the pandemic, and was celebrating a huge win for himself and his whole team.
However, he was completely exhausted. “I was burnt out and completely depleted across mind, body, and spirit,” he said. He had pushed through, yes, but at the expense of his health. This is not uncommon. It’s actually where 200+ other CEOs and executives have found themselves before using OWN IT. At that point, Vance decided to see if OWN IT could improve his situation.
Within a year of joining the program, he saw massive improvements in his health:
- Average HRV doubled from 38 to 76
- 27% improvement in sleep quality
- Resting heart rate (RHR) slowed ten full beats/minute
These health improvements were the precursor to performance improvements as CEO. Vance said these health improvements allowed him to show up for his team. “To deliver peak performance as a leader, my own health and wellness need to be at their peak too. By taking conscious, deliberate action to grow my physical energy and mindset, it’s easier to show up with higher capacity, be more present, and sustainably deliver my best work.”
Peak Performance Begins With Health and Wellness
These health and wellness basics are the foundation for everything else. He called his improvements from OWN IT Coaching his “springboard” to improving in all other areas.
Too often, corporate leaders focus exclusively on strategy and results — which are critically important. Companies think the way to do that is push harder, stay up later, send more emails, operate more meetings — but it actually starts with managing the energy of their employees.
If you ask Vance though, “there isn’t enough focus brought to the underlying health and wellness of the employees and teams who are driving those strategies and executing those results.”
Your Health is a Double-Edged Sword
Not only are health and wellness the springboard to improved performance, but they’re also the weakest link. Bodies can transform only to the degree that they’re healthy. You can have the fanciest nutrition and training systems in the world, but if you’re chronically dehydrated, that’s going to cap your ceiling.
Great companies spend massive amounts of energy planning out the year and detailing how goals will get achieved — but many fail to put a blueprint in place as to how the key stakeholders (their team) are going to be equipped in order to achieve those goals. This doesn’t mean less work. It means more purposeful, impactful, and energized work.
Even in the most high powered corporate leadership offerings and high end sports performance athletic settings, the same thing is being overlooked. More broadly, this speaks to how every component of the individual is connected.
Despite a coaching environment that segments professionals into different roles, everybody’s actions still influence one another. For someone to carry out their job at the highest level, whether athlete or CEO, they must begin with tailoring health and wellness habits specific for their mind and body.
Understanding the “Inner Energy” and “Outer Energy” Framework
In the OWN IT Coaching System, we create an individualized program by bringing together what we call “Inner Energy” and “Outer Energy.”
Combining them together systematically sets the standard that no part of the individual is separate from another. The body can’t differentiate physical stress from emotional or spiritual stress.
Outer Energy
While the coaching method itself is holistic, our framework breaks it into two parts. You’re likely familiar with Outer Energy, which centers around the body. An outer energy intervention might involve encouraging someone who consistently sleeps poorly to exercise briefly in the morning outside. What does that do? Sunlight and movement in the morning reset our circadian rhythms, helping us to sleep better. This also improves our mood and well being, and is a great example of how Outer Energy is part of the recovery equation.
Inner Energy
Inner Energy interventions involve those that begin with mindset shifts. These are less obvious to most people, and much more difficult to commit to because they haven’t flexed these mental muscles like they have their body. An example here would be helping a CEO recognize that they’re having a hard time dealing with the internal stress of managing their organization. Working with inner energy specialists, we can give them stress-reducing mindset shifts and practices which will make them more relaxed, and allow them to physically perform better.
Compartmentalizing in some form helps make actionable shifts, but this approach begins with the understanding that it’s all connected.
Wearables are Part of the Solution, But Not Enough
The wearable device revolution has democratized health data in a way we haven’t seen before. And it has allowed individual users to do exactly this: take their data and make changes. However, a coaching system in conjunction with this, accelerates this change.
This exact situation was examined in a recent study, and it showed that wearables + coaching outperformed wearables and education alone. This shows a need for hands-on coaching and accountability that helps an individual accelerate their progress and improve their health.
Vance insists the hands-on coaching taught him how to make long-term changes, and he began to make these shifts on his own. “One of the most powerful aspects of the OWN IT program has been learning why I feel the way I feel and using data to detect early warning signs about my performance and overall health. Now, when I see unexpected changes in my core metrics (HRV, strain, recovery, and sleep) that can’t be explained by changes in my underlying habits, I know how to respond accordingly.”
This happened because he was given his own personalized framework to help him make shifts to his routine. By developing a framework based on his body’s inputs and data, Vance saw massive improvements in his health, as reflected in his personal metrics.
Within the OWN IT Coaching system, we use our tried-and-true frameworks to accelerate this even beyond what the research showed, some of which we discuss in this article on the ‘8 Controllables.’ With the 8 controllables, we use HRV to identify your weakest link in the chain. Most often, it’s health-related. With simple, applicable interventions, your weakest Controllable becomes a contributor to your health instead of a detractor.
The Coaching Revolution is Coming
The future of elite performance is shifting towards this health-first approach. Professional sports teams are hiring performance directors to oversee everything. Businesses are instituting wearable devices to track and improve critical health metrics like HRV and sleep quality.
When looking at the overall results of 200+ BC Tree employees that used OWN IT, the improvements are astounding:
- Average HRV increased 17%
- Average sleep increased 12%
- Average sleep consistency increased 22%
- Average RHR decreased 7%
This level of improvement confirms that OWN IT’s personalized frameworks for habit change and health.
We believe the best system is a combination of it all. See how this is working in the corporate world with companies like BC Tree Fruits or with D1 football programs like the University of Miami.
That’s the power of building personalized frameworks that incorporate your personal data. You can get a closer look inside the OWN IT system today by talking with us today.
