Episode 319: Leveraging Team & Community for Your Performance
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Welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. This week, our show focuses on performance. Purple Patch is a performance coaching organization, and IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon is well-known for coaching successful Ironman athletes and inspiring strong individual performances. Surprisingly, the backbone of his success has been the use of a team approach. Ironman is an extremely individual sport, but team and community have been essential to Purple Patch’s sustained success over the last two decades.
In this week’s episode, Matt discusses the power and importance of a team approach for individual performance success. He uses a recent Purple Patch training camp in South Carolina as proof of concept. Despite the attendees being vastly different athletically and having individual goals, they came together in just a few short days, created a shared purpose, and emerged as a high-performing team. Matt shares his key takeaways from the training camp and his years of coaching experience to highlight the elements of teamwork that lead to improved individual performance.
We believe you can extract lessons from this story for your journey, whether you aim to improve individual performance in sports, organizational leadership, or any other focus.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:23 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:24 - 15:42 - Coach’s Corner
15:50 - 32:27 - Episode 319: Leveraging Team & Community for Your Performance
32:30 - 34:51 - Purple Patch Promo
34:51 - 44:17 - Episode 319 Cont.
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
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 sports into their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:24
In today's show, we're going to talk all about teamwork, but you can't be a great member of a team without bringing the very best version of yourself first. A little tool that we use at Purple Patch to help individuals show up their best is sidetracked, because by taking a look inside and assessing biometrics and then combining it with the action plan, all sourced from peer-reviewed research and the team of scientists, we get to refine our focus so that we can focus our intentions on the things that are going to yield the biggest performance gain. I use it myself so that I can show up better in life and keep doing what I do to the best of my capabilities. I also leverage it with all of my athletes, and I invite you to leverage it too. All you have to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. That's insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and there's a sneaky code for you, Purple Patch Pro 20, that's going to get you a healthy discount off everything at the store. All right, enjoy today's show.
Matt Dixon 01:28
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host is Matt Dixon, and this is a show that is about performance. We are a performance coaching organization, and I'm probably best known as being a coach of very successful Ironman athletes, particularly professional Ironman athletes. And if you think about that, that is the most individual sport. You swim, you bike, and you run as fast as you possibly can. And yet, the backbone of our success with professionals as well as individuals that were just seeking better port sports performance and, of course, executives and leaders has been a single word: team, deploying a team approach to help individuals find greater success no matter what their quest or focus is. Across the purple patch, team, and community have been key components of our sustained success over the last two decades or more, and today, I want to dig into the power and importance of team for your performance success. I'm going to do so with a little point of reflection for myself, because we just had a magical experience at a recent training camp in South Carolina, and I wanted to break down the days and what started to occur as a group of individuals that, as you're going to find out, were pretty different from each other, came together for the challenge, went on shared permission and purpose, and ultimately emerged as a high-performing team. It only took a few days. It doesn't take much, but it drives both individual and collective performance. The good news is, I think out of this story, you're going to be able to extract some lessons for your journey, whether you're looking to drive individual performance in sports or whether you're looking to be a better leader in organizations. Whatever your quest or focus is, I think this is going to be helpful for you. Before we get going, I always prime in some additional education, and we do that in Coach's Corner.
Matt Dixon 03:24
Yes, Coaches Corner, a little bit of an opportunity for you—a free webinar. Yes, you know that we have a performance webinar series that is open to anyone in the public who might find it useful, where we get an opportunity to do a real deep dive into a key core subject that we think will be beneficial to people. Also, if you attend live, you have the opportunity to ask me and other performance experts any questions you have about the topic. Well, our next one is on Friday, June 28th, so it's coming up very soon. It's at 9 a.m. Pacific, and it's all focused on our secrets around marathon and half-marathon success, particularly for time-starved athletes. Over the years, we've helped thousands of athletes achieve personal bests and podium finishes across a variety of race distances, and now it's your turn to benefit from these proven strategies. What I'm going to do is guide you through a strategic plan for your next race, and we're going to try and unpack how you can train smarter, avoid injuries, and reach the start line both fit and fresh. I know one of my favorite sayings that we have while spending fewer hours in training. Now, this is a really important component. We've got a bunch of full marathons and half marathons coming up, and it frustrates me to no end seeing people who take on the challenge or are looking to break through to the next level and end up becoming unraveled by injury setbacks, fatigue, or even just showing up to the race. And just thinking, I just want this monkey off your back. There is a path that we've shown to unlock your success. So this is free. You can join in from anywhere throughout the globe, wherever you'd like to participate. And if you can't make the session live, feel free to register anyway, because we'll send you the recording following. I think we've also got some goodies to send on for live participants as well, so that should be a lot of fun and come packed with your questions, of course, because I want to hear from you on this. It is Friday, June 28; it's at 9 a.m. Pacific, and so I hope you can make it. Feel free to share it with your friends. The link is in the show notes. It's going to be a lot of fun and hopefully very, very helpful if you're planning to do any sort of marathon or half marathon over the coming year or so. All right. Second thing, I want to go into a little bit of education and perspective here, because the other day, I had a great question from someone who said, What would be my suggestion for the most important first action that I would recommend to anyone who is currently sedentary or someone that is struggling to build successful traction so far as their performance journey? And we all know those people, whether it's coworkers, family, or friends, who either just don't have interest or they just can't seem to make anything stick. So what would be my first piece of advice? Now, of course, I thought long and hard about this, but it didn't take me too long to come up with my answer, and I think it's going to be helpful for me to share my answer with you today, so that if you do have any coworkers, family, or friends that struggle to make really basic performance habits a part of their lives or just simply can't make anything stick, maybe you can help them on their journey. That would be a wonderful gift, wouldn't it? I think the first step, and my answer is, that it's important to acknowledge first, to have a little bit of empathy with anyone who is struggling, or particularly anyone who just doesn't value consistent exercise. It's quite often, particularly as you get to my age, around 50, that you start to see a lot of friends and family and people around you almost feeling like they're going into accelerated aging, where you can just see the years ahead, and you can also see them leaving performance on the table. But that's not a point of superiority or snobbery. It's a source of empathy. You want to understand their situation. And I think it's important to realize that people fail to invest in themselves or prioritize some of these components—exercise, movement, good quality sleep, etc.—for a host of reasons. The first is common because there are just so many competing demands. We're talking about people who are often really smart and performance-driven, but they have a lot of pressures in life, whether it comes from everything around family and friends or, of course, what's happening outside of their roles in the workplace. And so even with the best intentions, looking after yourself often falls through the trap door relative to the other more immediate demands. A second component is just a life that's been full of a lack of prioritization of interest in this whole field of health and fitness, whatever you want to call it, and that's understandable. We all get inspired by different things, and there are a lot of people who just really don't like exercise, and whenever they've tried it, it's just been painful, not very enjoyable, etc. And so it's easy to see how that just falls down the priority list. And even though people understand intuitively well, this is going to be important for my future self. It's very, very hard to make daily consistent habits when you're thinking about something that's going to improve you throughout the next 510, 15 years. We also have a lot of people that I've met who have a real struggle with how to get going. They want to build traction. But it's a world with so much information, much of it contradictory and confusing, that it's very, very hard to even know where to start. And then there are still some other people who have an understandable fear of failure, almost exposure to themselves. If you do take the first steps, you often have an unconscious or subconscious fear factor involved with this type of stuff. So there's a host of reasons why people struggle to build consistency over what I see as a daily performance, but also longevity performance, a set of traits, habits, and practices. And so, how would I encourage someone to get going? What would be my first piece of advice? Well, as I mentioned, I believe that most people are really smart and ultimately want to perform better. And so for me as a coach, my success is about getting them on a positive track first and helping them feel better. So when you feel better, you get better. And so once you've established this and you get a mini-victory or two, that's the first traction that you're starting to gain. And it's. It is much more likely that they are mentally and physically equipped to add to the puzzle with maybe the next steps, incremental additions to their overall performance recipe.
Matt Dixon 10:10
So what are the things that are ultimately going to be very easy for someone to accomplish, simple to execute, and will yield immediate, short-term results, so far as how they feel, what their energy is, etc.? So what are the things that you can get a quick fix for? And we realize, of course, that this is a long-term journey. Transformation doesn't happen overnight, but if you're going to help someone get going, you want to be pretty snappy. So far as something simple to execute but also something that they can feel the benefits from pretty quickly, the two, for me, that always bubble up are movement and hydration, two really simple things. Let's break this down a little bit. Movement. Do you know that the average American walks about 3,000 steps a day? That is incredibly low; that is sedentary—3000 steps a day. Now I know that if we can get someone to progress from 3000 steps to just five or 6000 steps a day, they're going to feel better, and it's not going to take very long for them to feel better. This type of addition might be as simple as going for a walk going for a walk every night after dinner, particularly now that the summer months are starting to loom upon us, at least in the northern hemisphere. That's not a huge ask, but if you can get someone to build that habit, they're going to feel better. Now, that's not the end of the road. That's not them turning into a performance machine, but they're going to get some validation from that. So that's a really simple thing for somebody who is sedentary. And it sounds so basic, but again, if they can implement that over two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks, they're going to get a yield straight away, and there will then be a place where maybe they can add a little more intention towards their ultimate goal, which is exercise, or add something to their repertoire. And so movement is the first thing that I always look for. In parallel to that, the one other thing that I would think about is hydration, interestingly, and hydration is really important because, through my observation, so many people walk around in daily life, including many listeners to this show, like dried sponges, dehydrated, and the impact of Being dehydrated means having lethargy, unstable energy, lower energy, fatigue, cravings for foods that are going to make them more tired, etc. None of it reeks of performance. So if I can get someone to do something as basic as wake up in the morning and rehydrate after their night's sleep, have a liter of fluids, and then maintain constant hydration throughout the day, guess what? Throughout the day, they feel better, they have greater energy, and they think to themselves. Well, that wasn't too hard. And if we can build that into a habit over 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 days, then when they're coming from a place that feels better, maybe they can add something in. Maybe they'll start to do some movement, or they're starting to think about adding protein to the diet and adding more and more protein over the day, etc., whatever the next step is. But these are the two things that help people as a kickstart and a catalyst, and they're very, very easy areas to yield performance gains. And so what emerges from this answer, this response, this lesson, and this perspective is that you mustn't do. If you are moving from ground zero toward gaining traction, you don't try and evolve too many things at once, and you don't overcomplicate changes. Really simple things that can yield immediate impact create a mini-victory, and that's important. If you can create a series of mini-victories, then you can progress. Now, if you're listening to this as a seasoned age group triathlete, you might think, Well, fast forward. It doesn't apply to me. I've already got it cracked, but it does connect to you, because if you now broaden the perspective and we think about the basics, the fundamentals of sustained high performance in endurance sport, I would break them down as a really smart training program that is applied, consistently supporting that training program with proper nutrition throughout the day, always ensuring that you have post-workout fueling, daily hydration, just like we talked about an example, and consistent quality sleep. Now, in addition to that, from a training component, you should also add to your endurance training program, ensuring that you have adherence to strength and conditioning, so some really basic things. And yet, I've met an athlete coming into Purple Patch who has every one of these areas nailed down and habitual, not one. So, in other words, growth and development are always needed in at least some of these areas. And until you can master these simple concepts, there's going to be really limited value in adding anything else to your journey. And so even if you are a seasoned triathlete, you still want to go on a journey to build the fundamentals for the biggest catalyst of success. And so I hope that helps with perspective. And now today, we're going to talk about the team, and it is a chance for us to dig into a nice, nice, nice, big meal. It's the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 15:50
Yes, it's the meat and potatoes. And we're going to build today all around a single story. I want to go back to just a couple of weeks ago. It's Tuesday afternoon, and I sit at the top of the arc of 16 expectant individual athletes at the kickoff at our South Carolina training camp at a lovely hotel near Greenville, South Carolina. There are 16 individuals, each with different backgrounds, goals, and profiles, arriving at this camp as individuals with vastly different goals and expectations for the camp, and the only connection is a desire to improve individually. Now, as mentioned, this group was a hodgepodge of vastly different profiles and goals, and I want to outline the makeup of the camp as we sat there on the first kickoff day. So we had 10 men and six women, and the youngest was 19 years of age and the oldest was 72, so it's a pretty big delta, and we represented every age profile through that. We had a few who had never competed in a triathlon and didn't have any desire to. We had others that were on Iron Man number 16 in their repertoire. We had World Championship qualifiers. We had others who were just hoping to make it to the finish line or also just looking to improve their lot in health and in life broadly. We had some athletes that, on the bike, could hold over 300 watts for 45 minutes. So very, very strong bike riders. We had others that, if they were in a sprint for 10 seconds, they probably wouldn't even break through two or 250 watts. And so this was not a jigsaw of high performance in a traditional sense. Most of the people had never met each other, at least in person. And then most of them had not been to a purple patch camp before, so it was brand new. I didn't know what to expect. I came to some of them with a little anxiety and fear. Am I going to be the last one? Oh, my goodness, I'm going to be able to keep up. This is going to be terrifically hard, etc. And so it was an interesting time to kick off the camp, and at the kickoff, we had a group of individuals, which is the case. And the reason they are at camp is because they want to improve their performance. And so I went around the room and asked each of them, What are your goals? What are your hopes for this camp? And every single answer that we got that was validated was focused on improving individual performance. I want to improve my swim. I want to understand and develop my race-fueling skills. I want to get stronger on a bicycle. The list went on. It was all anchored in individual performance gains. And of course, that's appropriate and normal. But let me point out a coaching perspective and a lens on the value of a camp like this. So why do I love getting athletes of all levels, all abilities, and vastly different goals together for 3, 4, 5, or 6 days in a row and putting them through individual challenges in a collective environment? What's the value for me out of this? Well, the first thing is, that I want every athlete individually to leave with a couple of things that they can focus on and go and apply in their training and exercise when they get home. So this is an opportunity for us to get real coaching in person and deliver recommendations and advice that are actionable for every participant there to go and deploy once they get home because that's how we get lasting change. I also want to ensure that we get every single one of these athletes a high-quality training experience, because we're removing all of the distractions from broader life, and they get to come and focus on themselves and train very, very hard over a set period. But this is also an environment where the opportunity for us as a coaching team is broader than just education, skill development, and great training in a wonderful setting. This is an opportunity where we can set up training where every single individual participant is going to be challenged. And I want to ensure that we get each of those individuals well outside of their comfort zone, where there's almost a little bit of anxiety. Can I do this? And we're doing this in an almost risk-free, highly supportive environment. And so I want each of these individuals to go beyond what they currently believe they can do and certainly would do if they were at home, just training alone. So that's how we set up the training for this, and we encourage the athletes to push themselves, to embrace the challenge, to enable us to help them grow under the pressure that we deliberately and in a targeted fashion put on them and place them on them in an environment where every one of these individuals is in the same boat, going through the same experience. So while we have very, very strong athletes, and while we have athletes that are still in development at each level, I want each of them to be challenged, to be going outside of their comfort zone, but doing it in an environment where everyone is going through it together. And I think that is the key there. That's the power. Because while they're doing that, we're also educating them. We're also setting up a sense of adventure. We're getting to ride our bikes and run in beautiful venues. We also have a series of fantastic and enjoyable dinners, social events, trivia occasions, etc., and individually, we get together with each of the athletes in individual coaching sessions to help them with technique and to enable them to sit down and go through educational experiences like sweat testing or breaking down race fuel. So a whole bunch of individual stuff, but the umbrella is that you are going to be challenged individually within an environment where all of your other participants and teammates, as we're going to find out, are going through the same thing. And this becomes powerful because, in concept, I discussed this at the first session. So we sit down and say, This is what you can expect. This is how you're going to maximize it. And we talked about the concept of a team. And it's true that at that kickoff meeting, undoubtedly all we had were individuals. Because when I talked about this, there were blank stares; there was almost confusion. Team, I'm here for myself. It's not a big deal, but the truth is, in an environment like this, when you get people out of their home state when you get them together in a different venue, and you get them out of their comfort zone, and they're collectively challenged, even though they're very, very different, it forces personal growth. It forces an environment where we're fostering, even as a secondary thought, all of the mechanisms and conditions that make up highly effective teams. And so at this team meeting, I encourage each of the participants to just listen to the coaches. If we ask you to press more and hang in there, do that. If so, if we ask you to back off, do that as well. The key is to take a leap of faith, treat this week like an experiment, and go for it. After all, what's the risk? If you do suffer, you can always get in the van and take a break.
Matt Dixon 23:53
And so the camp kicked off with training sessions. But over the following days, something powerful began to emerge. And even by day two, you could feel it. On day three, it started to get locked in. Day four, it was there in existence. And by day five, we're in celebration. We had something powerful in this group—deep threads of connection. And it happens every single time, because despite vastly different levels of individual goals and variance of experience, every single one of these athletes, remember, was united by a desire to improve and a commitment to grow. This camp provided a focus on their individual development, but all in an environment in which every person around them had the same mission, and that's the first core component of this. These 16 individuals were united by a shared mission and purpose.
Matt Dixon 24:58
Understanding that with the training that was crafted in an environment where we coach and every person just needs to show up and try their best, they were united in a shared mission and purpose, We need to face this incredibly challenging swim. We need to go and try and log all of the 70 or 80 miles of bike riding with a lot of variants in terrain and a lot of big challenges, and we're going to do it together. I'm going to try my best, but you are with me, and I am with you. It took no more than a day for me to start to see examples and examples of athletes encouraging each other, supporting one another, looking out for one another, driving each other on when things got tough, and so beyond the shared mission and purpose, we also started to see under those mechanisms of support and accountability. Everyone felt like they were contributing; even though it was individual, they would go home and back to their home environments all over the country and world as individuals. Here, we had support and accountability in every single session. Interestingly, we started to see leaders popping up, and they weren't leaders through their voices—not the loudest, necessarily—but also through their actions. And within day three, we suddenly had a unified group that had a shared mission and purpose, with every single athlete feeling support from one another. We had a high degree of accountability. No excuses were being made. No one was late to any of the sessions, and everyone was trying their best, and that became something different, that became powerful, and the environment and the sense that started to emerge from this went well beyond the training. Now, every single morning, outside of these challenging training sessions that we were throwing at them and asking them to sit down and focus through the education that was happening before or after, and the breakout sessions where they had to return their brains to get individual advice and guidance on technique skills or any component of their performance from the individual coaches, beyond all of that, every morning, we make sure that we get together and have a lovely breakfast together. And every single evening, we sat at one big table and had a cracking meal at the hotel with a superfood—certainly a beer or two, maybe a little bit of wine, and plenty of conversation—nothing about performance but just about life. What started to occur over the days was that these widely different athletes, with different goals, skills, and everything else that we talked about, started to get to know each other. Beyond their passion for endurance sports, they developed a broader understanding of each other. They started to gain trust. They found connection points, shared interests, and well beyond, so beyond the sport of a group of individuals, they developed a sense of connection and togetherness. And this is something that would have seemed improbable the days prior. If I had taken the LinkedIn profiles of every single one of these 16 participants and said, Yeah, in four or five days, they're going to be united, They're going to understand each other, they're going to enjoy each other, and they're going to respect each other in this team environment. You certainly wouldn't have thought that that was a great set of picks for your fantasy team.
Matt Dixon 28:37
As the camp arrived at its final and most challenging day, we now had a team. We didn't have a group of individuals anymore. They were collectively ready to take on the challenge. And it was a big challenge. It was a big, nasty climb. The temperatures were in the mid-90s. The humidity is not far from that either. It was tough, and they took it on the big Queen ride. And even near the end, where I, as a coach, was in a moment of weakness and fallibility, I said, Hey, we can bypass that little five-mile extension. We can go right home and just finish it with a great bike ride, but let's trim five miles off. Well, as soon as one person in that team decided that no, you said 91 miles, we're going to go 91 miles, and took the left turn onto the five-mile extension, Do you know what happened? Boom, boom, boom, boom—every individual took a left turn. They found a sense of support and accountability. If Jenna's going, I'm going; if Michael's going, I'm going; if Steve's going, Martin's going; and that was it. I'll never forget a quote. It was just very simple. Steve, who turned around to me and said, If they go, I have to. Go now, and that was the sentiment that was shared. But if we had done that ride on day one, people would have just made their own decision. They wouldn't have felt any sense of accountability to go and finish it. I'm tired. I can go home. The coach said, So off I go. But now they had a team, and they finished with a great sense of joy, accomplishment, and togetherness. And by the evening, we had a fantastic meal and a nightcap that lasted a couple more hours.
Matt Dixon 30:30
And so, through this camp, we had individual growth. We had individual development. Every participant got what they wanted individually out of it; they left a better and smarter athlete, but it was magnified by that sense of team, and that's it. That's the power right there. Being a part of a community or a team isn't just about the whole. If you look at it through the most selfish lens, by giving and being a part of it as a team, you get more out of it. We can get a group of individuals who are united by a common sense of mission and purpose, and they're collectively willing to commit to a challenge and get out of their comfort zone, but they do so knowing that when they are hit by adversity and that challenge, they'll go through it together with systems of support and accountability and slowly build trust with one another, something magical happens.
Matt Dixon 31:37
Now that I am leaving the camp, I do not doubt that every participant got what they hoped for. Do you remember what they said going in? I want to improve my swim. I want to understand my fueling and hydration. All of that was pretty simple to execute, but I believe that the biggest rewards were much greater than you could have even imagined were going to occur in the first place; they went on a journey together. They became a team. They supported others, they felt support, and they grew. And that's where things become powerful. That's where we get exponential results. Every single participant did so much better and went beyond what they could do because of the backbone of being a part of something—a team. And for me, this is performance.
Matt Dixon 32:30
Guys. Let me just interrupt the meat and potatoes for a very quick promotion. We're talking about team, community, and today. Did you know that every single coaching program at Purple Patch is so much more than a training program? Let's take our squad programs. Yes, you get a training program that is dynamic and flexible and integrates into your life. It is the world's only training program specifically designed from the ground up for time-starved athletes, and we've had marvelous performance and results from this. But our training goes well beyond just the workouts in the plan. I believe a huge part of the power is our hub, our community, where we have an integrated, standalone place to connect like-minded athletes to help try and accelerate exactly what we're talking about today. Support accountability by taking on a challenge together. Every single time that we have an athlete join and start to execute their training program, we lean into all of the resources that we provide remotely for athletes to become a part of something, to develop the concept of a team. That's where the magic occurs. Now add to that all of the support of the experts and their coaches from Purple Patch, and suddenly you've got an incredibly comprehensive program at a fraction of the cost of what it takes to have an individual coach. That's the driver of our performance and results over the last two decades. And you can get involved too. There are three simple steps. Firstly, check out the programs. Tri-squad, run-squad, the bike, live programming—all on the Purple Patch website. If you're interested, why don't you set up a complimentary call with us? Info@purplepatchfitness.com and we'll chat. We'll understand your goals, we'll outline the program for you, and if it's a fit, you can get going within minutes. And we always back our work; if you're not satisfied over the first 30 days, of course, we'll give you your money back. We don't do that very often because we have a very sticky and engaged community that loves getting faster, but not at the cost of life. Alright, let's finish it off. The key takeaways of teamwork Enjoy the rest of the show.
Matt Dixon 34:51
So let's wrap this up. What can you take from this story? This is a lovely story of 16 individuals who come to a training camp, hoping for individual performance, and leave to become part of a team. They got something more than they could ever imagine. But if we think about so many arenas in life, a team is a driver of performance. Whether we're talking about a professional athlete looking to go and achieve the very best result, they can't do it without being a part of the team. And if you're an individual athlete at any level, you magnify your performance if you have mechanisms of trust, understanding, support, and accountability to drive your performance. We all know the power of teamwork in team sports, but also beyond that, when it comes to performance culture and driving results in leadership teams, companies, and organizations as a whole, the team is the backbone of performance. And so this story is a wonderful case study of how you can develop magic in a short period. It's not limited to sports. It just so happens that our example here, the vehicle, is, in many ways, a sport. When we investigate highly effective teams in any arena, the common building blocks are nearly always the same: at the foundation is a sense of trust and understanding. I don't believe that you can have a highly effective team over the long term without a sense of understanding of your team members, and that becomes even more powerful when that team has clarity and a sense of shared mission and purpose. If you can get those two components, you are nine-tenths of the way there to greatness. Now, you want to work hard to set up systems of support and accountability, and the little secret catalyst is a shared desire to improve and a will to win. And I don't think we should be shy about talking about that. Those are some of the powerful components. I don't believe that there is any better path to developing any team than taking on a challenge together, coming together and unifying, and having the courage to get out of your comfort zone and go through shared experiences.
Matt Dixon 37:15
Now, if we're going to jump over the fence and connect performance in business and life from this example in sport, I think it's a really powerful component if you can draw from this and encourage a team, any team, to go through an experience that extends beyond your normal workday, beyond your normal home environment, because when you can get a group of people out of their typical patterns and behaviors and do something outside of that environment that's immediately creating a little bit of discomfort, and then if you share a challenge, and you collectively take it on, and remember from that story, you don't all need to be passionate about whatever it might be, sport in this example, it can be vastly different levels of commitment, of goals, etc, but if you have a shared sense of mission and purpose that you're taking on together and you individually commit, but then focus on the journey as a group, that's the vortex of when things can truly happen. So think about that in your life, in your current situation, and ask yourself, Where can you lean into the people that are important around you to build a sense of team out of individual performance goals?
Matt Dixon 38:47
The second component is if your endeavor, whatever is important to you, is wrapped around individual performance. We use the example of triathletes who swim, bike and run as fast as they can. If you can seek to build a sense of community and team, you're going to get outsized performance results for yourself. Let's just take the purple patch. We coach individuals to try and improve their performance in both sport and life, and yet we invest an incredible amount of time, energy, and resources into ensuring that we have a thriving community where we can connect these individuals. And we don't do it just because it's fun. We do it because we understand that we're going to drive individual and collective performance consistently by doing so. We've just recently invested thousands and thousands of dollars so that we can share a more powerful community platform where we can integrate every piece of education, all of the live events, the webinars, and everything else, but also connect our members so that they can, from anywhere in the world, share the journey, increase mechanisms of support and accountability, and develop a sense of belonging. It is a performance catalyst. And so if you're just a lone wolf going on this journey, if you do nothing else, at least sometimes, go and do your exercise with maybe a buddy, a friend, a group of friends, a team, or a club. And if you live anywhere in the world and you don't have a great system of support locally for you and then join something in which you can get that remotely, it's now viable. Our athletes are all over the world, but I tell you what, they develop and feel a sense of belonging, so much so that we've got athletes with purple patch tattoos on their bodies, and that's powerful. Their performance is driven by this. And so find a way—find a way to go beyond yourself. Connect. It helps you.
Matt Dixon 41:02
And thirdly, when you're thinking about performance gains in anything, it's never a straight line. Whether we're talking about individual athletes, sports teams, or the leadership team of an organization, it's not about inputs and outputs. You need a plan, you need a commitment, and you've got to be tough because it's a journey, but you can deliver and achieve outsized results when you truly lean into activities and approaches that foster more effective teams. And that's why a big part of the reason that I love sports is because I understand its value and importance. It's not a selfish endeavor. When we see people taking on a journey of sport and performance gains, They improve as individuals; they improve as a team. And we saw that just a couple of weeks ago in South Carolina. It gives me great joy to see people develop skills, tools, and strategies that are going to make them go faster in their sport and passion. But it is life-changing to see people connect, feel like they belong, and gain the power of a team. That's what I think the participants are going to remember. Remember this camp experience for these 16 folks? It is a powerful, powerful experience of transformation. And so I encourage you to think about performance from a broader perspective and lean into team and community; it is a critical piece of the performance puzzle. Alright, I'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 42:45
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 on YouTube, and you will find it there, and you can subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe and share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, if you have any questions, 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, 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 show's comments on the purple patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, 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 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 and have fun. Keep smiling and doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
individual, performance, athletes, team, day, participant, purple, journey, patch, camp, sport, environment, powerful, started, single, accountability, challenge, component, hydration, ensuring