Episode 342: Best of 2024
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon highlights the achievements of Purple Patch in 2024, including qualifying over 50 athletes for world championships with an average weekly training of 10.6 hours, and 30 athletes for the Boston Marathon using a multi-sport approach. The organization also launched a leadership program, added new team members, and introduced the Performance Hub for better community engagement. Key events included a fundraiser for the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a team race in Santa Cruz, and transformative camps in Hawaii, Napa, and Greenville. Notable athlete achievements featured Jeff Dolan and Susie Orca qualifying for multiple world championships, and Jake, CEO of Fellow Products, excelling in various endurance events.
Dixon sets the stage for a fun and reflective episode, highlighting 24 key things that happened to Purple Patch in 2024. He emphasizes the importance of reflection for high performers and the lessons learned throughout the year. Matt shares his personal reflections as the leader at Purple Patch, discussing the organization's accomplishments and challenges. He encourages listeners to start planning their performance goals for 2025 and mentions the proven coaching programs available at Purple Patch. Matt Dixon reflects on the history of Purple Patch pros, highlighting the journey from coaching professional athletes to developing a high-performance culture.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:24 Webinar Promo
1:51-4:14 Introduction
4:14-52:29 Meat and Potatoes
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Folks, just before we get going, I want to give you some news about an Ask Me Anything webinar, December the 19th. In today's episode, we're going to look back over 2024 it's a tremendously fun episode, but it's also time for you to plan your breakthrough performance over the course of next year, 2025 and on Thursday, December 19, at 9am Pacific, that's noon Eastern, we have an ask Matt, anything, well, at least almost anything, style, live event that's going to be all around your questions that you want to bring. This is a unique interactive opportunity to get direct answers directly from me. Now, if you want to dial in your off season, maybe you want to set up your season strategy, you're going to get to ask me anything, and I will help you in an intimate setting. It should be some wonderful group learning. I might even tell a few stories along the way. It is just $15 for access, so seats are limited, and if you want to be a part of it, join in. It's going to be a lot of fun. You can register at a link in the show notes, and remember again, it's December the 19th, so it's right before the holidays, and it's all about looking forward for you to break through your next layer of performance and show up with greater capacity and not just thrive in your sporting results, but also amplify your life. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I look forward to hanging out with you, and I hope you can join me. Alrighty Barry producer, let's lead in. It's the Purple Patch Podcast. 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 01:51
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever your host, Matt Dixon, and goodness me, what a year it has been for Purple Patch in 2024 we thought it would be fun today to have some fun, and we're going to highlight 24 key things that happened to us as an organization, that occurred over the course of 2024 throughout today's episode, we explore some new programs, new platforms, athlete accomplishments, some highlights for the Performance Center here in San Francisco, which is where I'm recording this show, and much, much more. It's packed full of actually, lessons, as well as a little bit of inspiration and nuggets that you can draw from to benefit your performance journey over the course of the coming year. It's pretty fun. It's fast firing, and it's all in today's meat and potatoes. But before we get going while this week's episode does include a lot of fun stories and plenty of inspiration. It's really around the Purple Patch team and the Purple Patch athletes who embrace a purpose and challenge driven life. And those folks, they tend to not only achieve great things in their sport, but they also gain an edge and show up better in other parts of life. What we do at Purple Patch is we help people nail their goals, develop a greater capacity to drive effectiveness across life. And it's important. So if you sit and you listen today and you think, I really want to take my performance in whatever is important to you to the next level in 2025 I would encourage you to consider starting now, before the craziness of the New Year rush, we've got proven coaching programs, individual and our tri squad, and we have a set of offerings for corporate teams and leadership teams seeking to sustain high performance and get better outcomes and results In the workplace, all of the details purplepatchfitness.com Also check out our new leadership performance page there. You're going to enjoy that. It's going to be very interesting and fun for you. You can also reach out directly info@purplepatchfitness.com we'll set up a complimentary consultation and see how we might hope you. Let me tell you this, we don't let people down. All right. We deliver results. Let's do it, folks, it is time for my favorite thing, 24 things. We're going to go through pretty fast firing. 24 things in 2024 it's a lot of fun today. It is the meat and potatoes
Matt Dixon 04:21
as we start to dance towards the end of the year, we get to have a little bit of fun on the show. We get to reflect. That is a key trait in high performance. All high performers are really, really equipped to pause, come out of the weeds, and reflect a little bit. And it's so easy, I think, when you go on a performance journey to forget some of the things that you've gone through throughout any calendar year. What are the things that went really well? What are the lessons that you can grow from? Where are you going to apply your energy when you look forward? And so I'm going to do a little bit of that today, from a personal standpoint, from me as the leader at Purple Patch. My reflections of what did we accomplish this year? And I thought we would break it up into different sections and just give you the highlights of everything that we lived over the course of this year. And it's not over. We've still got a month to go on this thing, but I still think it's a good time. I'm going to give you some numbers, I'm going to give you some athlete accomplishments. I'm going to talk about programming and some of the things that we've done as an organization. And goodness me, I tell you what, running a small business is not easy. It has an ongoing set of almost sometimes seismic challenges that you face that is what you buy into, and it's also tremendous fun and rewarding. And the thing that really ignites me is our team that we get to work with, and their passion and their commitment to helping people like you thrive, and our athletes, our people that come on board and embrace the Purple Patch methodology, that want to show up in anything in their life, fit and fresh. That's a saying that, yeah, it's on a t shirt, but it has real meaning. And so I hope you enjoy today's meat and potatoes. And we are going to start by the numbers. What has happened this year under there being umbrellas of the numbers. So let's get going. We're actually going to start with the Purple Patch pros. And if you're a frequent listener, or you're an athlete of Purple Patch, you're going to know I don't coach professional athletes anymore. 15 years, it was a terrific journey, but I tell you what, for 15 years, having 810, 12 teenagers, which is sometimes what it felt like, despite everything that they delivered me, I think I've done my time, but I do want to highlight the Purple Patch pros in 2024 and that's because this was the year that we did a reflection of the pro story, the genesis of me starting as a young coach, starting to actually take on my first Pro. Her name was Tyler Stewart, and the big journey that led to the next decade plus of us becoming a performance factory. The reason that we did this web page was that we actually had a new employee start with us, who's great, by the way. But she asked me a really funny question. She said, Have you ever coached a pro athlete? And I had this pause and looked around and thought, Oh, dear, how quickly your star fades. Now we've got folks that work at Purple Patch that don't even know if I ever coached a pro athlete, and so as a part of our programming for leadership teams and reflections, we decided that we would retell the story of a timeline of how Purple Patch really came to be, and it started with the pros, and it was one of the highlights for 2024 for me, because it was really, for lack of a bit of a phrase, cathartic. It was invigorating and it was fun, but it also drove me to actually unpack many of the lessons of that coaching journey around high performance, developing a high performance culture, revisiting why we integrated many of the systems and behaviors that still permeate all the way through Purple Patch, some of our models of coaching, the science behind it, and also taking that model of coaching and leveraging it through the art of coaching, the importance of simple language, making sure that it's memorable and repeatable, so that people can actually adopt and adhere to the methodology in a really simple, pragmatic way. It also really got to enforce the importance of team in this highly individual sport, how important team was for us with professional athletes, and why it still exists throughout all of Purple Patch. And so I invite you to kick it off number one today, the story of the Purple Patch pros, check it out. All you need to do is head to Purple Patch fitness.com, and head down to the our methodology tab, which is under education. So if you head to education, we'll leave it in the show notes, education. Drop down, you'll see our methodology, and it's a really fun page that we built this year, all around the Purple Patch pros. And there's a lot of depth and a lot of the lessons in there around your own journey. So number one, the Purple Patch pros, keeping with the theme, to begin this off 2024
Matt Dixon 09:28
let's talk about something more simple. We've got a rich history of qualifying folks to the world championship events, whether it's the Hawaii Ironman or now the nice Ironman, as well as what is this year, the New Zealand Iron Man 70.3 world championships this year, yet again, and it's been more than 10 years in a row now, we've qualified more than 50 athletes to world championship events. That's something that we're really proud of. We have a slightly evolved, uh. Relationship with high, higher performing athletes. As I said, I don't really coach pros anymore. We still have a lot of elite amateurs, but many of these folks are very, quote, regular people, very busy, time starved, that are getting more out of themselves. And of those 50 athletes, probably a quarter of them are folks that have been with us for multiple years, and it has been a big goal, and they've gone on a journey to develop over the course of multiple years, and now have achieved that goal. And those are the folks that I'm so excited for to see them achieving something not at the consequences of the other part of their life, their relationships, their ability to show up in the of course, ultimately, more important aspects of life and, most importantly, their health. But those people, if you're one of them, that have qualified to the World Championship, and it has been a big passion of yours, well done. I hope you had a great event, and I hope you do have a great event next week in New Zealand, 50 athletes qualified, once again, it has added up, by the way, in more than Well, it's probably more than 1600 athletes now, but I'll keep it simple, more than 1500 athletes at Purple Patch that have qualified via our programming to world championship events. Obviously, that's a huge source of pride from us leading with the numbers number three. Here's an interesting one, 10.6 hours a week. 10.6 hours a week. What's that? That is the average number of weekly training hours for those 50 plus athletes that qualify to the World Championships. That's pretty amazing. The perception in the triathlon space is, in order to achieve great performance, you have to put in the work, which is true, but that work has to entail over 20 hours a week of training. That's not true. Our athletes, 50 of them half Iron Man distance and Iron Man distance, the average number of training hours, 10.6 straight, a little lower for the half Iron Man, eight to 10 hours, typically a little higher for the Iron Man, 10 to 14 hours, that's it. And if you do it over time and you're patient and it's supported with great habits, you can achieve your great performance. That's how we integrate sport into life. Very important, 10.6 hours, let's call it 11 hours a week. Fantastic number four, a good one. Here we qualified more than 30 athletes for the Boston Marathon in 2024 and 100% of those 30 plus athletes that qualified in a pure running event, all of them leveraged a multi sport approach to running. So yes, they ran, that's very important. Yes, they integrated strength, but they also used other modalities that ranged from rowing machines, elliptical machines, swimming, cycling, cross country skiing. Over the course of the winter months, 100% of them supplemented running training with modalities that we're not running a multi sport approach. I think that is a crack in the code for athlete health in running and also for performance gains. It's incredibly healthy, mentally, physically, and it also drives performance. And we're not a quote running coaching company, but there you have it, more than 30 qualifiers to the Boston Marathon, another source of pride for us number five. We had half Ironman athletes. We had 75 first timers. We also had 40 plus. I haven't got the exact numbers, but 40 plus first time Iron Man finishes. So we talked about all of the athletes that qualified for Boston, for the half Ironman World Championships, for the Ironman World Championships. But equal pride for us is folks that actually started, went on the journey and successfully crossed the finish line in their first triathlon and half Ironman and Ironman distance, fantastic, and a special congratulations for you guys the final one under the big numbers umbrella is our video coaching. You've heard me talk about this on the show before. This is a great one, and this is pretty staggering. Purple Patch athletes accumulated more than 60,000 total rides. So all of the Purple Patch athletes, of course, many of them doing multiple a week, typically two a week. We had a total bike ride completion rate of more than 60,000 most of those rides are 60 minutes because we're doing them for time starved athletes. And now then, of course, on the weekend, if weather doesn't cooperate, etc, we have some extended riding. But 60,000 rides were completed. That's fantastic. A lot of fun. A lot of them were completed via our two way Live platform, where you can be anywhere in the world. You can be coached by myself, Brad Dylan, the other Purple Patch coaches two way videos, where you can join live with a globe. Group, and of course, with the riders that are live with me or the other coach in studio one in San Francisco, that's a lot of fun. And part B of this our number 620, and 2024, and 24 was that we had 45,000 athletes complete strength, mobility and rehab sessions via the video platform. So 45,000 sessions done, not 45,000 athletes, but 45 sessions done under the umbrella of strength. We always talk about strength and conditioning integrated year round to drive performance gains. We talked about the first time finishes, we talked about the Boston Marathon qualifiers. We talked about the Half Ironman and Ironman qualifiers. 45,000 sessions complete in 2024 so far, fantastic and integral part of driving performance, not just in endurance sports, but also with your longevity and the quality of your life. In the broader aspects that we talk about, fantastic. Let's go to section two as we itemize this, and we're going to call this the four P's. That's new programming, people, products and platforms. So that's a big thing. New products, new programming, new people and new platforms. Goodness me, what do we do? Well, let's talk about a new program, item number seven on the list, we launched this year, our leadership program. This has been
Matt Dixon 16:32
an evolution. It's been tremendous fun, not without a lot of intellectual challenge, which has forced growth for Kelli, myself and the team and we've loved every single minute, but we now have rolled out and executed programs around keynote speaking one day workshops. In fact, I just got back from a leadership team in Mexico City. It was tremendous myself, Brad and will, one of our senior coaches went and did a one day workshop with Mattel, the toy company down there, tremendously enriching experience. Another one of our workshops for the year, and what we call a runway program, which is a 12 week program to help members of the team integrate many of the lessons and gain traction so that it has meaningful meaning and actually be able to develop habits and behaviors. All of that is quantifiably measured so that we can show outcome and results. We're incredibly proud of the program. We're still evolving it, I would say. But so far, we've got some great traction, and it really is an expansion of who we are as an organization, and it's a lot of fun, if you're interested in learning more about that, and I don't mean that in in necessarily buying anything from us, but if you understand what we're doing, head to Purple Patch fitness and head up to the leadership page there, and you can see how we're correlating all of the lessons that we drew from working with world class athletes, everything from talent development to sustainable health to getting more and predictable and consistent results, as well as models of coaching to create systems, performance, cultures, etc, taking all of those lessons to offer a alternate point of view of what it takes to drive results, because we have worked at the highest level of excellence, and there's some lessons there. And so far, it seems like we're joining the dots and really sparking some imagination and inspiration and, most importantly, practical education for organizations and companies to go and implement in the workplace. So if you're interested in head to the leadership page and reach out if you want to have a further conversation there, it's a lot of fun, and that's been a large part of my focus over the course of the year, and it's been amazing to see it come into real life. We've also added to our team number eight new Purple Patch employees. Fantastic. I mentioned will senior coach an amazing athlete himself, done way more extreme stuff than I would ever care to imagine, including a Decker Iron Man. So in other words, 10 Iron Man races in a row. He's an incredible athlete, but he also is a really smart coach that has great skills in education, a really empathetic streak, very, very good at holding to people to account, and he also has an extensive background in executive coaching, and so he has come on board with really a door roll, helping in the leadership program, as well as, of course, being a senior coach at Purple Patch. And we're very, very lucky and excited to have him on board. We also have a new coach, Max, who has been an absolute inspiration, a fantastic coach, a such a live wire of engagement, of new ideas, of raising the bar, of excellence of our coaching team, and both of those guys coming in have just been fantastic for the team. I always talk about how proud I am of i. Coaching team, and how connected we are and how we work together as a team to help every individual athlete that is a part of Purple Patch. Adding well and adding Max has just been an inspiration to us. It's raised our game. It's forced growth and and that's really been fantastic. We also have added two great women to the team as well at our Performance Center in San Francisco, Crystal, who is leading all of our strength, all of our programming, a lot of our operations at the center, and fantastic expert really igniting many of those programs and bringing something more to the program. And that's great you're going to start to see as a Purple Patch athlete, if you're listening as a Purple Patch athlete, you're going to start seeing more of crystal over the coming months, because she's starting to take on board a greater role so far as video production, on our strength and, of course, our mobility side of stuff. And finally, we have Ruby. Ruby has been a fantastic addition to the team helping us with a lot of our content, a key part of our of our programming and and a live wire and, and I've talked a lot about Ruby over the last weeks. You maybe have seen our newsletter. Ruby has been a great addition to the team, and had a terrible bike accident just a few weeks ago, very, very close to to going to the other side, I'm afraid. But was lucky, lived, went through some surgeries and and he's coming out the other side. And to give you one second on Ruby, I called Ruby in hospital after a bike accident, and the first words that she said is, can you get me the newsletter? I need to start editing it. No Ruby. You need to rest. But she's been a fantastic addition to the team, holding people to account, and been a huge part of leverage for me, really, really helping me with a lot of stuff and and so we're going to talk more about Ruby a little bit later on, but it was a huge part of the team. So that's our new members of our team, which has been fantastic. So item number nine, and I think this might be the most important one, community has always been a huge part of Purple Patch. It's really important because we've always understood even though most of our members come as individuals. We can drive greater individual performance via the power of team. And we learned this lesson when I was coaching the professional athletes, and so I've always had a passion of connecting people, trying to create a shared mission and setting up mechanisms of support and accountability, but it's always been a challenge for you. How for us, how do we do that when we've got people with different stages of development, vastly different goals spread all over the world, geographically, and this year, we decided to invest in a brand new platform, and it's called the performance hub, and it has been a game changer. It is a way for us to really connect people in an authentic manner, to actually enable very seamlessly easily, folks to actually share their stories, enabling us to deliver curated education in a smart way, in a timely manner, and connect different groups together so that they can actually set up systems of support, even though they might be geographically spread all over the world. So perhaps we've got athletes that are all planning to attend the Hawaii training camp with us. We can connect them together and enable them to get together and share stories before, so that once they land on the shores of Hawaii, they're ready, and they always have a runway to know or specific races. Maybe we've got athletes that are heading to Oceanside Oregon or a Marbella in Spain, and we can connect people together. And that's really powerful. But perhaps the most important is our new female female only forum, a space led by Nancy Clark, one of our senior coaches, an absolute expert on female physiology, to address every challenge and opportunity for a broad spectrum of female athletes and members that we have. And that's just one example, but I've always felt that what it means to be a Purple Patch athlete has real depth. It is important because, yes, we want to help people get faster, but we also want to educate, empower and inspire people to improve how they show up in other aspects of life, and that means we're not for everyone. We love to work with time starved athletes. We love to see people get faster and achieve their goals. But we want it to be bigger than that, and we see that being lived via our platform and our hub as we call it, and it's really inspiring. Sean, I absolutely love going in there, and I think that's almost the number one thing in 2024 because it's really evolved our programming and getting off of some of the social media platforms, doing this in an ecosystem where we can get people together, spread all over time zones, all over different stages of development, vastly different goals, but having a common thread of I'm trying to improve. It means something, and it's really powerful. So that's our number nine. Coupled with that, number 10 is our transfer to a brand new platform. We have a return back to training peaks. And the reason I want to highlight that you might remember many months ago. Now, today's plan. Our platform that we were leveraging, boom been shut down. We had very short notice, and we had a uh oh moment. You talk about adversity, we basically didn't have a platform that we could run our tri squad program on. We're actually fearful that we're going to have to completely reimagine the program and change it, or shut the program down. And so we went back to training peaks, which was the platform that we were with originally, we had some fantastic conversations, and we said, we want to partner back with you, but truth be told, you have us, because unfortunately, training peaks couldn't deliver all of the aspects of our tri squad program that we wanted to deliver. And you know what training peaks did? They pause their technological roadmap, they put their engineering team for six weeks and did a sprint for us to enable us to make a really smooth transition back to our favorite platform that we possibly have. And so in 2024 I just want to say publicly thank you to training peaks. That is a human thing that you did that was tremendous for us. And out of adversity arrived innovation. And I spent my whole life talking to athletes about meeting demands of stress, thinking out of the box. Life is not a spreadsheet. You need to be change able. Goodness me, as an organization, we had to not just overcome and become resilient, but we had to actually grow because of that adversity, and in partnership with training peaks. We were able to do it. Thank you. Training peaks. It's a better experience for our athletes, and we combine that training delivery with our platform, our hub, boom. We've got better programming across the board. It's really, really special. So those are our new people, our new platforms, our new programs, and we're 10 down. That means we've got 14 to go. Let's take a quick pause.
Matt Dixon 27:47
All right, our next section events, camps and races, we had some amazing, real in person opportunities over the course of 2024 we're going to kick it off with the t1 100 and the challenged athlete foundation event that we had here in center, in this Performance Center in San Francisco in early June. It was a remarkable event. We welcomed three incredibly special athletes, Jan Frodeno, the goat of triathlon, double Olympic gold medalist, Alistair Brownlee and one of the top ranked female athletes in the world, Ashley gentle we also had special guests, Bob Babbitt, one of the legends of the master of voices of triathlon, and Mark Kelli, the six time Hawaii Ironman World Champion. And we had an event where we did a bike ride live with the Android. We had people joining in from all over the world. We asked him to hit his max power, his Matt's leg speed or his cadence, we did dollar for dollar matches on those and over the course of the day, following a fireside chat with the three athletes, we raised $80,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation that's around Five prosthetics for an athlete to be incredibly empowering evening here at the center. We're going to do something like it again, but it was just very, very special. It was absolutely tremendous, and it was wonderful. And when I think back on the year that was one that tugged at the heartstrings, what a night of inspiration. Number 12, our Santa Cruz team race. Every year we designate a team race or two when we get people together. We had a marvelous one in Louisville. It was great. We had about 25 athletes there in Santa Cruz. We had our biggest team race ever. We had almost 70 athletes participate right on the beach. We had a great get together. All of the athletes raced. We enjoyed some beers afterwards, and it was a fantastic community event. Over the course of 2025 we're going to choose two more races. I will share one of them right now, we are going to designate the t1 100 race in Las Vegas in October. Is going to be. One of our special races. You don't necessarily need to be a Purple Patch athlete to participate, but in that event, we are going to have some very special events going on. You get to race, you can do the event. You're going to get a special VIP experience as a Purple Patch athlete, where you can view the pro races. You're also going to get to meet many or all of the pro athletes participating, and even train with them as you lead up to the event. It's going to be a very special occasion. Details of that to come. That's going to be one of our races. We're still deciding on our second team race of the year. But 2024 Santa Cruz and Louisville, some fantastic team races. A lot of fun. Number 13, I just got back from it another great event, really having an amazing experience with some of the leadership programs. We did a couple of organizations here in the Performance Center in San Francisco, but we also got a great chance to go to Orlando and do it with fortress AI, a cyber defense company and Mattel the toy company in Mexico City. I just got back this week. What a wonderfully rich experience it is to go and spend some time in Mexico City. I love that city. It was fantastic, and I had the most amazing meal there. But more than that, the greatest inspiration working with that leadership team. It was so much fun and also highly productive. So number 13, a great trip to Mexico City. It's great. I've always wanted to go there. Number 14, we held three transformative camps. These are special. Transformative is a word that I don't use lightly, but I really do believe that they were we had one in Hawaii in January. It's our regular that was our 15th camp in a row that we've been based out of the malilani, the north coast of the Big Island. Fantastic experience. We also had a camp based out of Napa in California that was very, very special. We had some tremendous, wonderful experiences they're co hosted with Joel, got wines which are good friends of ours, and create a magical experience for us. And then in close to Greenville in South Carolina, one of our favorite camps, and all of them, my reason that I bring up the camps is they're great opportunities to get away. For individuals, you obviously do a whole bunch of great training you have some wonderful education. You get some really good coaching and the and skills development and feedback from us as the coaching team, we've got a lot of coaches relative to campus in South Carolina, we had 15 athletes and five coaches. So you do the math, as they say, on that. But here's the powerful thing about those training camps for me as a coach, is that on day one, you have 15 strangers, and they come in and there's a certain amount of apprehension, there's a little bit of excitement, but they're not a team, and very quickly, you see the transformation occur, where we get people out of their comfort zone, we challenge every individual, ensuring that everyone can be successful. And some days, people have a tougher day than others, and other days, people are doing really well. But what starts us starts to cement over the course of just a few days, is team, and they are going through a shared experience out of their comfort zone, trying to solve challenges, and doing it as a team. And you start to see things emerge that by the last day, everyone has gone through that experience, and they've become more than an individual. They've become a genuine team, and that's where the transformation occurs, and that's where great friendships are built, and that's why we get so many, as I call them, repeat offenders, to so many of our camps. They're special, special experiences. Our whole coaching team loves them, and I know that all the participants do as well. We've got a couple of camps coming up for this year, kona that's sold out. We still have the Napa camp. We've just got about five spots available in that Napa camp end of April. Really magical experience. If you want to come and see us in the center in San Francisco, that, of course, would be complimentary. You can come and do a class. You can come and do a little coffee and breakfast with me, but also you can come up and spend time with us in Napa, just an hour away, and go and have a great camp experience. Up there details at the website, if you're interested in that. All right, let's go on to number 15. We're starting to get towards the beginning of the end. Debbie, great live experience. This is one for spectators. I talked about that t1 100 and the Alcatraz triathlon. Well, the PTO was so generous and provided any Purple Patch athlete in the bay area or visiting the Bay Area to have a VIP experience at that race. And we've all gone down to Alcatraz as locals, and we've watched the race, but that was a. Magical 2024 experience. We had more than 50 athletes in the VIP tent. We stood at the finish line as Martin Van reel won in a sprint finish, throwing up at the end and watching a magical women's race. It was an empowering event, and it was wonderful to actually as a fan, share an experience with a bunch of other fans that were all Purple Patch athletes. It was a magical experience, and it really was, for me, my favorite event that I went to in 2024
Matt Dixon 35:35
alrighty, anything else around events, camps, races, yes, genuine and authentic partnerships to help athletes. We don't do sponsors at Purple Patch. You don't get 10% off XYZ bikes, you don't get a gift card to XYZ running shoes or anything like that. But we do try and partner to create an ecosystem of options to help you, the athlete, drive to better performance. I want to list our partners this year because they were incredibly invested in your success. 360 degree physical therapy, Renee Songa, this is a newer partnership this year has just uplifted performance within the performance within the Purple Patch Performance Center here in San Francisco. Absolutely tremendous partnership the Sports Medicine Institute doing lots of work with the San Francisco 49 there's a lot of work with the Stanford teams. Incredible orthopedic massage, Tracy and team Paul, absolute additions to the center here in San Francisco. Our friends at fuel in you've heard him, you've heard Scott Tyndall on the podcast, many times, absolutely terrific, amazing, wonderful, helping so many athletes as well, of course, so many of the Purple Patch athletes improve their baseline platform of health and fueling for their training in their racing. Real world experts, absolutely fantastic. Precision hydration Andy blow Johnny and the team at precision. They've got a brand new center down there in Dorset in the south of England. It's amazing. They are, for me, absolute world experts on hydration and fueling, wonderful partners, great friends, a lot of respect. And last but not least, Iog, Ivan O'Gorman and the team of bike fitters. A big shout out to Chris Soden, one of the amazing addition he has been to the Purple Patch family around everything from obviously fitting optimization for speed equipment choices and even helping athletes get the right bike for them delivered to the door. One story, a good one of my athletes, long time athletes, Ron decided to purchase a time trial bike getting ready to head to immense patiently waiting for his bike. There was delay from the manufacturer. It finally came. Do you know what Chris Soden did? He got on the plane. He flew the bike to Ron at race site, fitted him in person, made sure it was similar and enabled Ron to go and race a brand new bike. Now, don't do anything new on race day, but we were really confident that it was going to be helpful. You know what Ron did? He's been trying for seven years. He qualified to the Hawaii Ironman World Championship, a seven year journey. Chris Soden dedicated to the craft of making sure that folks are on the right bike for them and will go beyond the pale to get there. Fantastic and amazing. Alrighty, we are down to number 17 folks. Goodness me, this is quick killing I told you it would be. This is more of a personal one, number 17 under the big banner of events and races. Kelli Baxter myself, we got to go and attend the Paris Olympics. That was amazing. And it was amazing on multiple levels. The rate the events were tremendous. We got to go and see the triathlon, where the grandstand finish, sprint finish is fantastic. We saw the legend that was Simone Biles win her gold medal as a part of the team. Absolutely amazing. We saw a legend in the making, really one of the most incredible sporting events I've ever seen, Leon Marchon winning his Olympic gold medals. We saw three of the evenings of swimming. That was special. That was one of the loudest sporting events I've ever been to. And it was a swim meet. It was incredible. But beyond that, just Paris. Paris just bought the Olympics. It was fantastic. The Spirit, the energy, the excitement, I tell you what, la you got a big, big set of shoes to fill and I break, you can do it. But that Paris Olympics for me, that was a life experience, and for our family, and just on a personal level, seeing Baxter, 12 years of age, going to the Olympics, i. What an age to go. I thought, I wish I had that little, little smart bugger, 12 years of age. I'm sure those memories were just in print for the rest of his life. Fantastic. Great experience. A really good family event number 17 on our 24 for 24 let's move on. We've got two more categories to get through. Now we move to the Purple Patch, Performance Center, driving performance. Here are some interesting stuff from the center in this very room. If you're watching this show right here, I produce more than 300 educational videos, those infused through the Purple Patch ecosystem, some of it for education via socials. And 80 videos as a part of our leadership programming. More than 300 educational videos I've also recorded this year so far, 49 podcast episodes. Goodness me. All out of this room the production center set studio at the San Francisco Performance Center. And I tell you what, I better not talk too much about it, because Barry, the producer, he's going to demand yet another raise for his services, because I kept him very, very busy. It's a big part of what we do education. We love it. We think it's important. We want to we try and be a good influence on sport and the broader performance world and and that's what we've generated over the course of 2024 so hopefully we can be the same, and, if not more, over the course of 2025
Matt Dixon 41:37
I also want to highlight in the center a couple of partnerships and corporate teams that we got to create magical experiences for. Number one, the team at fellow products. If you've ever seen fellow products, they're the folks that do those amazing tea pots and kettles and those wonderful mugs. We have some of those Purple Patch mugs and even coffee machines now, and they're local, and their CEO, Jake, just an incredible guy, walked in off the street and said, What's this place? Then? Is it a gym? And before you know it, we got the tentacles wrapped in he's a big part of our community. But we've also been able to take his team at fellow and deliver some strength programming, some cycling, programming, some boot camp type style stuff to create a venue where he can come with his team and get together and improve their platform of health and, of course, their camera. We talked about the power of team. We helped facilitate team. Thank you very much, fellow. We also had an amazing event here with the EO organization, the Entrepreneurs Organization, 75 CEOs in the center an immersive experience. We got them all out of their comfort zone. We challenged them all. They got to have some education with myself. And we had a suite of services, including Dexter trucks in the parking lot to equip them to drive their performance and their health forward over the course of this year, and that was a wonderful experience in January. We will do something like that again with them. And I want to give a shout out to David Fauci and mainsail private equity organization that came in with their partners and did a great experience here in the studio in San Francisco for their team and their leadership team over the course of the year, which was great. So let's finish it up. We've got four to go. Let's talk about athletes and team inspiration. I didn't I didn't know what to do here. We've got so many stories of wonderful athlete accomplishment. We've got people to highlight, and I thought it's impossible, but you know what? I'm going to try and do the impossible. And so I'm going to just highlight four people here that I thought were really worthy of special notes. Number one, Ruby. I talked about Ruby earlier as an addition to our team, but I want to give you two minutes on Ruby right here. Ruby reached out to me for coaching a couple of years ago, and I got to learn Ruby's story a little bit emancipated from her family from the age of 14 years of age, she has had nothing given to her for free in her life, nothing she has worked her way through, growing up in England, living alone from the age of 14 years of age and having to work out you talk about adversity, Ruby has navigated adversity, and Against all odds, she stayed in school, she got the opportunity to start running with a great team, and at the age of 18 years of age, with no one helping her, she managed to get a scholarship to America, and she came and ran on a scholarship over here, and she stayed in this country, and when she reached out to me, I just knew that. She had that special ingredient coming out of the adversity and the challenge, she grew, and she's become a part of the Purple Patch team and and has done some great work for us. And as she gets into triathlon, she was riding a bike way too large for her, and she just got on with it, didn't complain, managed to secure another bike. Has very low resources, and just a few weeks ago, was riding now on a bike that does fit her, riding along a very quiet road in the Midwest, and a semi truck either didn't see her or went a bit too close to her, sucked the bike under its wheels, destroyed the bike she luckily bounced off and got hit, but shattered her collarbone, 12 or 13 ribs, broken, catastrophic injuries, and obviously incredibly scary, very, very thankful that she's going to emerge out of it. Had to go through surgery. She is doing fine now, and that's one thing we can be thankful for. In 2024 she's live. She's going to be fine, she's going to get through it, but she has no bike, she has no resources, and she doesn't have a massive support system around her, and that's why we put together a GoFundMe page. In fact, one of her friends put together a GoFundMe page, I should be accurate, we've built onto it, and the Purple Patch community coming together that go fund me page is now going to be enough to help her with some of her medical fees, and hopefully to enable her to go and buy a bicycle. Stay safe out there. When you ride a bike, it comes with risks. Stay safe out there. And if you listen, and if you would like to donate anything to Ruby on her journey, it will be thankful. I would really appreciate it. And there's a, there's a link to her GoFundMe page in in the show notes. And we will, we will take care of Ruby and and she will take care of herself. I also want to thank all the Purple Patch athletes that have contributed so far whatever you can afford. It might be the price of a cup of coffee. It might be more significant than that, but, but if you care about people and and you can find it in your heart, and it's an opportunity, please consider donating to Ruby and and we want to support her as much as we possibly can. Number 21 athlete highlights. Now we've got two athletes that I really want to highlight here. Jeff Dolan, you're going to get a highlight from me because you are the epitome of a time starved athlete. You are desperate to qualify for the 70.3 worlds and the Iron Man World Championship, you are very, very busy. You work at Starbucks, and you went through with a complete openness to be coached, working with Nancy Clark, who I mentioned earlier, some very strategic planning, learning how to recover, it takes courage to recover, understanding that sometimes taking a step back and allowing the work to marinate is a huge step forward. And over the course of this year, you qualified to the Boston Marathon, the 70.3 World Championships and the Iron Man World Championships because of your willingness for coach, ability and going on the journey and the trust, and you are one of the Purple Patch athletes of the year. Well done. Equal to that. Georgia, peaches. Susie, yes. Susie Orca, absolutely unbelievable. You've gone on a journey, and I've used this word once or twice over the course of the day. Athlete transformation. What you've done this year leaned all the way in to the Purple Patch methodology. You got your first age group win half Ironman. But also beyond sport, you're transforming your life and to see your journey of absolute transformation. That's what it's all about. Well done. Absolutely tremendous. I want to give you two guys highlights of just a fantastic inspiration to others. This is what it means to be a Purple Patch athlete, because both of you, Jeff and Susie, number 22 and number or 21 and 22 on our list, you're solving a bigger challenge than just getting faster. You're amplifying life while getting faster, and that's what it means. So well done. Keep building on it and keep evolving. And thank you for being an inspiration to other athletes this year. Number 23 I've got Jake. I mentioned him before. He's the CEO and founder of fellow he was amazing. He's a big part of our community here in San Francisco, and in the center, I'm going to give you center Athlete of the. Year because Jay, you leveraged all of our center programming, our bike classes, our treadmill and strength circuit classes, our strength and conditioning program, the mobility sessions. You did all of that, and you stayed incredibly consistent. And you went and did some crazy events. You joined us at the Hawaii training camp. Your longest bike ride you'd ever done was 25 miles. You rode 100 miles on that camp, and then just a few months later, you went and did marathon de Sabra, yes, that seven day meat set of marathons all the way through the Sahara Desert, leveraging the programming here while also building an incredibly successful organization. Boom, well done. And number four, last, but not least, I didn't mention in our center team here, Marsha Robles, strength expert, a big part of our video education of strength all across Purple Patch. Congratulations, Marcia, you're a mum, and that's our most important thing that has happened in 2024 You're welcome a new baby to the world. I hope you're continuing to recover. And congratulations number 24
Matt Dixon 51:11
that is our 24 things that happened in Purple Patch in 2024 and it was a lot. I'm going to give you one bonus one as well. 2024, off season. It's been amazing. So far. We've got countless aspect athletes who are building their runway to launch their next year. And I'll finish with this. It's not too late, if today's lessons or insights or recollections or reflections have inspired you a little bit. Have captured your imagination. This is a great time to join, because our off season, if you want to call it that, building the preparatory phase, it really runs through the middle of February. So it's a great time to start right now, eight weeks to prime before we drive. It doesn't matter what your sport inquest is, whether it's health and performance and longevity, whether it's qualifying to the Ironman World Championship, whether it's looking to do your first marathon or qualify to Boston, it doesn't matter. Now is the time reach out to us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com we'll set up a complimentary consultation. And remember, we're not for everyone, but who we are for well, we take care of the results. Thank you very much. I had tremendous fun building this one. I hope you enjoyed it, and we will see you next time. Cheers 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.
Keywords:
Ask Me Anything, breakthrough performance, Purple Patch Podcast, athletic potential, sport integration, athlete accomplishments, Performance Center, leadership program, new employees, community platform, training peaks, transformative camps, VIP experience, athlete transformation, off season