Episode 348: Mastering Performance with Panos Kakoullis on Endurance, Leadership, and Growth

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Panos Kakoullis, 16-Time IRONMAN Finisher

Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon interviews Panos Kakoullis, a long-time Purple Patch athlete, at the Hawaii IRONMAN training camp. Listen to Panos Kakoullis on Balancing High-Stakes Leadership with Elite-Level Endurance Performance from Boardroom to Finish Line. Panos shares his Greek Cypriot background, growing up above a fish and chip shop, and his journey from becoming an accountant, later Senior Partner at Deloitte to CFO at Rolls Royce. He discusses his transition from powerlifting to endurance sports, influenced by his wife, and his 16 IRONMAN completions. Panos emphasizes the importance of consistency, recovery, and integrating sport into life. He highlights the role of curiosity, growth mindset, and releasing mental weight in his success. Looking ahead, he plans more marathons and a cycling trip across Italy.

Panos reflects on the challenges and successes in his professional life, including the importance of integrating sport into his busy schedule. Panos recounts how he and his wife decided to do a marathon and then a triathlon, despite initially swearing never to do an IRONMAN. He emphasizes the importance of consistency over heroism and the need to prioritize recovery and nutrition. Matt and Panos wrap up the conversation, with Matt expressing his admiration for Panos' journey and achievements

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.

Episode Timecodes:

:00-9:02 Panos Background

9:05-31:10 Introduction to Triathlon

31:32-39:47 Handing Stress and Positivity

47:02-59:25 Panos Wisdom

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Transcription

Matt Dixon 00:01

Matt. 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. Goodness me, what a guest we have with us today. We have a long time Purple Patch athlete, a good friend and someone that is on the right side of London, Panos Kakoullis, thank you very much for joining us on the show.

Speaker 1 00:43

Great to be here. Great to be here in this brilliant location.

Matt Dixon 00:47

Yeah, that's right, we are recording on location here. That's why we are. If you're watching the show, we can see that Panos and I are very intimate. We're sitting close to each other because we are at the Hawaii Ironman training camp and the Purple Patch training camp in Hawaii that we do annually. This is your second camp. You are returning for another dose of excellence.

Speaker 1 01:06

It is, it is last year I came, I said, I said to the the team, when we came last year, I had no idea what to expect this year. As soon as the plane touched down the seat, I thought, I know exactly what I'm in for, and I'm loving that.

Matt Dixon 01:20

It's fantastic and and as we go through this conversation, I should point out that I'm a little bit of a shaken man right now. I am. I am a coach that is lacking in confidence, because two hours ago, Panos laid me over his knee and beat me senseless in a set of running intervals, which I can safely say, I think, is the first time that that has ever happened, and it wasn't through a lack of effort on my part. Let's put it that way. You could hear my thundering steps coming behind you. I think I

Speaker 1 01:50

could on the very last interval, I could, I knew, I knew I'd reeled him in on the previous one, and I thought he's going to go for me. And I could hear as we came down the last hill, and I just just stretched away. And it was blissful. First time ever it's happened. Big contrast. The last year. Big

Matt Dixon 02:07

contrast, good. The inner Gazelle was released. It was fantastic. But we're not here to talk about training in Hawaii. We're going to talk a lot about performance globally. And I've been really excited to have you on the show. We've got now a pretty long history of coaching and and have navigated through quite a different quite a few chapters in your life, almost, I would say, and and so to kick off the show, as I like to do always, I want to start way with a little bit of foundation. So very simply, why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, your family, where you live now, etc. Sure.

Speaker 1 02:44

So people are recognized from the name it's it's not a usual English name. It's not a sort of Dixon type name. So, so I'm Greek Cypriot background. So I'm second generation immigrant. Both my parents came over from Cyprus. My dad actually came over to the UK when he was 18, literally came over on a boat legally, and set up as a fish and chip shop owner. So that's my early part of my life was growing up above a fish and chip shop in sort of the borders the East London and God's own county of Essex. Actually, the two of us grew up not very far apart from each other, although I was probably on the the right side of the tracks compared, compared to the west side of town, as opposed to the east side of town. So that was sort of early life. Growing up the fish and chip shop, working in the fish and chip shop, sort of all the family had their own little shops. In fact, that's what that's what everyone did. And you sort of reflect on the things that mold you as you grew up in life, and it's probably things that as a 1011, year old, working in a fish and chip shop, they had, they had four or five tables, so as well as being a takeaway, they had little tables that used to go and serve people on and I'd I'd put on my little white coat, very look, very and I had my little notepad, and I'd go and serve people. But you kind of learn there's a few things you learn. One, you learn about giving good service to people, and the the importance of looking after people and the quality around that. You learn about hard work, because I looked at my dad and his brother, they ran the shop together. They would start at seven, eight in the morning, go to midnight every day, apart from Saturdays, when it was three o'clock in the morning. And so that's that was just life was hard work, so it was giving good service quality to customers, and hard work. But the probably the most foundational lesson, and something that I've carried with me all my life is it kind of hit me at that age, how people treated you. So there was, there was an office around the corner from the shop, and people used to come in and these guys, and it was men at that in those days, used to come in with their suits, and they treat you. Yeah, terribly. And where was I looked at more normal people, people that looked more normal to me, not in suits, would come in and treat me well, yeah, respectfully, you kind of as a 1011, year old, that really hits you and you think, what, whatever I do in life, I am never going to make anyone feel the way some of those people made me felt. So that's that's sort of some of the foundational things that happened at that time. It also made me pretty competitive. It made me wanted to always prove myself. I was growing up at that time, I was a little bit different in terms of the background that we came from. There weren't many of us around. So going to school, it was always about being competitive, working hard, studying hard, just trying to prove that you could.

Matt Dixon 05:48

It's not like East London is a huge wealth of Greek immigrants, very so. So you really were all different. Now, you didn't continue the legacy. You didn't take over the reins of fish and chip shop. Your father, I think, was heavily invested in your education. Yeah, you're on your brother. That was almost the primary thing. Is that, right, that's right.

Speaker 1 06:09

He he left school at 12. He was encouraged by his grandfather to leave school and join the farm, because that was where the future was. Thing you always regretted. So for for us, the only thing you want two things you wanted. Don't come and work in fish and chip shop, because that's hard work. And, most importantly, get educated. So we had all the opportunities to get educated, but it was us, up to us to take those opportunities. Fantastic forward. And originally, at school, I was a scientist. I went to university as a scientist. I was a molecular biologist, geneticist, all those things I was, I was not bad at it, but I didn't, I didn't love it enough, and I effectively ran away to the circus and became an accountant. Sorry, the romanticism. It was, it was, it was kind of a way of putting off decisions about what I wanted to do. Career wise, I went and joined Deloitte. The idea was to join for three years, qualify as an accountant, then I could go and get a proper job. And I ended up staying for

Matt Dixon 07:07

30 years, becoming a senior partner at Deloitte. Yeah,

Speaker 1 07:12

I ended up on the global executive. I ran one of the global audit insurance business that was about 10,000 people, big, big business all around the world and

Matt Dixon 07:24

and then post delight, fast tracking another organization. Then Rolls Royce, really different organization. Tell us about that just

Speaker 1 07:34

I joined Rolls Royce in the depths of the pandemic. And, yeah, you can imagine that was a tough time. The business had just raised about ten billion to try and rescue itself. And I joined as the as the CFO, and then spent three years there all the restructuring, all the things that needed doing with what is, effectively, in the UK and even global, I guess, an iconic business. And yeah, it's, this is the Aero engine and defense rolls. Royce, not, not the cars. I had lots, I had lots of relatives ringing me up saying, Can you get me a car? I can get you an Aero engine a bit cheaper.

Matt Dixon 08:13

And then, how about, how about family, very briefly, just as a grounding.

Speaker 1 08:17

So, so married to Helen. Now for 34 years, we've actually been together 41 years. So we childhood speech. I went to the boys school, Helen went to the Girls School, literally next next door. We met. We met at a party when we were 15 and 16, and been together ever since we got two sons grown up. Now, Mike and Chris, one's one's in Boston, and Chris is in London. And Chris is that also a triathlete as well. He is Purple Patch. He's a Purple Patch coach triathlete as well.

Matt Dixon 08:49

There you go. And sports. How about sports growing up? Because I'm always really interested in this. You you have done just for for the listeners benefit. I mean, you've got a long history of Half Ironman racing. Now, you've done multiple marathons. You've done crazy riding trips through Europe, both with myself and and Chris as well. And you taken on various adventures. So you are, by all accounts, in your your middle part of your life, and endurance athlete. And I think this is always interesting. Sports grow out where you always a runner, a cyclist, that sort of stuff. Has it always been a part of life? No,

Speaker 1 09:23

I would say what's interesting, because I'm sort of reflecting on this, the generation that came before me, my parents generation, sport wasn't part of life at all. There was no examples. I think it was all just about work, really. And maybe you played I think the closest they all got to sport was playing cards in smoke filled rooms, but the sort of competitive instinct in me at school I was, I was quite feisty

Matt Dixon 09:52

again, London thug, yeah,

Speaker 1 09:53

proving a point. So I was a rugby player, because I loved me to be at feisty. I was sort of into track. The field. I was a javelin thrower, but was, I was I competed at sort of slightly national level, actually. But the thing I was not 100% I couldn't be for more removed from endurance sports. I was the person always at the back if we had to go for long run. So I was at the back cursing. Wasn't interested. Why are we doing this? Why are we running in our rugby boots to do so? I went to university. I got more and more into power lifting. I ended up winning the university arm wrestling championship. Nowadays, I was a lot bigger than I am now and then, all through my 20s, it was power lifting and body building, and I was, I was probably 40 pounds heavier than i Wow, than I am now.

Matt Dixon 10:50

Fantastic. So, so what was the entry point into endurance sports?

Speaker 1 10:54

So it was Helen, my wife. So, so, so she, she, she, she was doing lots of circuit training classes. I was just into the bodybuilding. She said to me, come down and do this class that the local YMCA. That would be no problem. Heavy weight. I can go and do circuit training. I went to this class. You had to pair up. I was probably 29 at that stage, and I got paired up with a woman in her mid 50s. And halfway through the class, she stopped and put her hand on my shoulder and looked at me and said, Are you all right? Because I was just on the floor. We went to shuttle runs afterwards, but I I got addicted. I ended up falling in effectively with the wrong crowd. There was a there was a group of us all around the same age, and we just did more and more circuit training. Then someone said, oh, let's go and do something called tough guy, which is effectively a, like, tough mother, but it was a sort of precursor Spartan type races. And someone said, Let's do a marathon. Oh, that sounds like I could do a marathon. And so I've heard this thing called triathlon. Do you fancy doing that? So we did the London triathlon back in 2003 Wow. And that was effectively the gateway drug. And then, do you know what we're never going to do? We all swore we would never do an Ironman. And how

Matt Dixon 12:10

many have you done now? I've done 16.

Speaker 1 12:14

And then, and then lots and lots of 70 point threes. And as you said, stage cycle races. And it's been great doing it with Chris, my son as well, because that sort of that gave me an extra bit of impetus to try and stay a little bit competitive with

Matt Dixon 12:27

him and just turn gently, we've got father son partnership here on camp as well, Chris and Max, and that just must be so special to you, almost feel like, you know, not in a grandiose world, but like I've, I've succeeded as a parent in So many ways that I've still got this amazing relationship where you go off, you guys are like two peas in a pod. When you go and do these feel

Speaker 1 12:47

very proud, and you feel very proud of how they interact with adults. Yeah, you've seen them grow grow up, because they're interacting about around the sport that they that they love together. And I keep saying to Chris, this is like he was the prototype. When grandkids come along. Are we really good at really

Matt Dixon 13:06

good now, you've, you've been, I mean, you've achieved much of this success over the heavy burden and and having to navigate the huge adversity of being coached by me. And so I'd love you to go back, and if you can recollect, what was the motivation to join Purple Patch? I mean, I was, obviously, we grew up 10 miles from each other or so, but I live in San Francisco. You still live in the in the area London and East Side London, Essex. So what was that? Was the catalyst? What was the motivation?

Speaker 1 13:38

Well, interesting. It was here, right? We you married, but we met here. I'd, I was doing the World Championships back in in 2016 you were invited along to give a talk to the the group that I was with. And it was, it was destiny. It was almost, I just, I just thought there was, there was a click around, sort of chemistry, right? Because you'd the way you spoke. There was just a fun element to it. There was a humor to it. I think at that time it had become a bit mechanical for me. It was do the program, tick tick through. But some of the joy was was not there, and some of the sort of pushing through discomfort was not there. I got used to it, but you you sort of injected a sort of fun element. But the fun masked a serious intent. Yeah, behind it. There's always a message behind the fun that you could get. And I just thought, hey, there was a kind of click. I think you said it was almost, how did we, how did we end up meeting each other? Why wouldn't? Why wouldn't? I want to be coached by you? Yeah,

Matt Dixon 14:52

it was an I felt like, because it wasn't in Kona itself, where it was just a trigger. We we met a few times at these at. Was races, and I think we ended up tying the knot, as it were, in in Chattanooga. Memory, yeah, from a year so, yeah, a year later, I said, Okay, let's do this. And it was great. It's really funny. You sort of talk about serious intent with with the fun part of it, one of our brand values that might you, might know, might not know, but it's serious with a wink. So we're gradually deadly serious about performance. We want we take it. You know, it's an important part of people's lives. They put a lot of investment into it, but it's okay to enjoy it. It's okay to have fun. It's okay to actually make it a bigger part of life. So that makes my heart sing, that you, that you talked about that, and the reason I that, that I wanted to go back there and start of what was the motivation is that you already had a pretty rich history of completion of these events. You'd done well, you know you were, it wasn't like you were trying to get across the finish line of your first Iron Man or anything. You had all of this suddenly now you engage in a coaching relationship, and so change occurs, change occurs, and change is not always easy. So I'd love to reflect on the biggest, almost initial shifts in perspective, mindset and approach, as we started working with each other. What changed for you,

Speaker 1 16:16

I think, and you often talk about this, the key one right at the outset was this whole concept of integrating it into life. I think what I was pursuing before I said it was, it felt quite mechanical and it felt quite separate from all the things that I was doing in my professional life. I that stage. I'd just taken on a big new role at Deloitte. I was traveling all around the world three weeks out of four. I was not in the UK, and I was on some long haul flight, and I was just trying to do the sorts of things I did before. And it was not integrated. It was just two things almost almost competing with each other for my time and attention, and it was this concept of, no, let's just integrate it, and let's think about the coaching within the context of the rhythms of what life's going to be. Recognize that there'd be sometimes going to be doing lots of traveling. How do we integrate within that? Recognize, right, you're going to be getting off the plane, what you're going to do as soon as you get off the plane? And just some of those, I really just hadn't thought about it in that way, in terms of how to integrate it.

Matt Dixon 17:25

It really is. I mean, I've talked on the show a lot about the ebbs and flow of life, and like, sometimes it flows, and you, you have to be brave enough to to not actually try and execute as much training, or at least, and that might become terms of intensity of training, sometimes, because your body can't absorb it, or, of course, total hours of training, and other times you have a little bit of a break, and you can, you can let the training flow a little bit when life ebbs. I've got to say you were in that period, and it was really the first couple of years that we were working with each other. It was probably one of the most challenging travel schedules and stress. I mean, you had a very big bucket of life stress in in so far as demands, competing demands, navigating time zones, etc, it was hugely important. I think, I think the word for me that we try to really weave together was consistency. That was the big thing. And my observation was, you know, whenever you take and always talk about this, but whenever you take a training program and dump it on top of life, that's like that, that's never going to be sustainable. So how do we actually remove the big hits and actually say, let's just have a through line of consistency? And if we could do that, that would be really important. I'd also reflect a little bit in preparation of this. I thought about early Panos and and I'm going to sort of almost highlight what I'm known for, but recovery was really important as well. And do you sense that I I felt you were very under recovered because, because those things were competing in each other. So as soon as you got back, you're like, Okay, now I'm going to track up and so sleep would be compromised. Remember those early years, that was very much the case,

Speaker 1 19:10

massively so. And I would, I would say this concept of less is more, and prioritizing consistency over heroism. Definitely knows, earlier in that sort of triathlete there was, it was almost heroic to say, right, I worked 15 hours today, and then I'm gonna go and do a run at 10 or 11 o'clock at night, because then I can tick it and what a hero I am. And then you wake up the following morning, you feel terrible, and you could sort of maintain it for two or three weeks, and then everything would come crashing down. So this, it was this consistency over heroism, is how I'd characterize it, exactly,

Matt Dixon 19:50

if you go back to those early experiences, those childhood experiences of toughness, hard work, and you're just layering on that. And it was just expressed through this. Like this film. It's funny, though, when you a lot of people would, particularly folks that don't compete in Iron Man's and don't compete in half imans, and listen to this and say, How do you even have time in the first place, in a way? And so you know when those early years, all the way through Rolls Royce was very, very busy as well, and you had all of the global travel, how did you even begin to carve out time for this thing? You know what? Why not just go to the gym for 40 minutes?

Speaker 1 20:32

I'd say it's a combination of two things. There's stubbornness and curiosity. That would be the and maybe those are sort of slightly innate traits I've got, and I'll give you an example right around the stubbornness. Well, I can remember both Deloitte and at Rolls Royce, as I got these sort of bigger roles. I can remember at Deloitte, another that's one of the senior partners, 10 years older than me, from Manchester, actually, who's a very good friend of mine, and I've sort of completely in the right space now, he wrote to me, and he said, No, oh, you've got this great new role. That's it. You can't do any more of this marathon and triathlon stuff. It doesn't work like that. Now you have to be four evenings a week. You're going to be out for dinner. This is how you do things. And the sort of stubbornness came out. No, I found a way to do things before. There must always be a different way. Because I know if I'm exercising, if I'm doing sport in a sort of joyful way, it makes me feel better. It helps around what I'm doing in my in my professional life. So I'm gonna and he was the one that, five years later was like, ended up like I was, and he said, and we had some coaching around it, and he just said, change my life. Changed my relationship with my family. You're right. It didn't have to be done that way. So there was so there was this stubbornness around there's some things that have helped me be successful in the past and that make me up. I don't want to compromise those as I get a bigger and bigger role, because it only make me less happy, or make it make me miserable. And then the other element was this curiosity, which is I'm always thinking about, well, I'm not wondering if there's another way of doing this. Does it always have to be done in this way that's just a bit dull and boring? Is there a different way of doing things?

Matt Dixon 22:21

What was it? Was it daunting? I mean, you had something you take on those bigger roles, you have these, these travels, it's a huge time investment and managing so much professionally. Was it daunting of a project to try and integrate it? I

Speaker 1 22:42

think if you think about it too much, yeah, you might end up thinking it's daunting, but, but I kind of recognized it was a big part of what had helped me be successful up to that point. And so, so why would I erase trash that and say I'm not going to do that anymore, and and just be a little bit miserable about it, and and I in the relationship that we were building at the time, there have been others that had gone through that path, very busy, people that you'd helped integrate it. So there's lots of stuff, okay, there is a way of doing this, and there's a way of doing this using those concepts around integration, using those concepts around consistency that would help that make it successful.

Matt Dixon 23:25

I really remember what the work that I did with Sami inkonon, who was one of the, really first, very busy time start, you know, and you know, he's, he's the famous story of obviously very talented athlete, but winning the amateur World Championships in the same year that he takes his company to IPO. I mean, it's pretty amazing journey. Didn't want him, but he always talked about it as a forcing, Agent of efficiency and prioritization. Is actually it the the framework of this commitment drove him to actually become more effective professionally, because it absolutely anchored in I have to prioritize, which, of course, is a key element of performance in anything in life.

Speaker 1 24:06

I completely agree with that, absent, absent the structure, frankly, that training and racing gave me, all that would have happened is the time would have been filled up with more work that I wouldn't have been prioritizing the right way, I just sort of lapsed into heroism again. And let me show you how many hours I can do right rather than thinking what, what is it? The things that really only I can do that are important for me to do, that are going to make an impact, I know I'm going to be more effective as a result of integrating sport into that, and people in my team will see that within me as well. Yeah, it's

Matt Dixon 24:46

important. I want to take a little detour and talk about the supporting habits, because at Purple Patch as you well know, it goes well beyond the swim, bike, run, strength sessions that were prescribing integration as we. Talked about we used to have this heavy focus on nutrition, sleep, recovery, all of these pieces. How important were these habits for you to stay consistent in those early years?

Speaker 1 25:13

They were they were foundational, and they were slightly organic. I would say it wasn't like a light switch was flipped and right, okay, everything, I changed everything. It started with an awareness. It started with then we moved on to a little bit of experimentation, right? What would happen if I get an hour more sleep? If I'm going to track the sleep, am I going to do something with the outcomes that is telling me? And can I see what would what change? There was more awareness around nutrition, and there were, I would say the most important one was this recovery, rather than just crashing through trying to do another one, trying to another one and then two, three weeks down the line, losing five, six days.

Matt Dixon 26:05

And I think it is a good time to take a little bit of a tour detour of in actual performance results. So we're seven or eight years into the coaching relationship. This last December, you did your fastest Half Ironman of the last decade. I did, and that's, do you mind sharing how old you are? I'm 5757

26:31

years of age. Clearly, clearly, don't look at everyone.

Matt Dixon 26:35

That's very much. So. In fact, if you are listening, it's worth getting onto YouTube. It is the fountain of youth absolutely exploded onto the life of the screen. But, but that's that's pretty incredible, because it's not like you've got this acceleration of the, you know, the early ramp of being the novice. These are, you said, 16 half Iron Man, give or take, 40, half full life. 40 half Iron Man, or 70 point threes, your fastest one in a decade, and Matt's, that's not by piling on more and more and more training on top

Speaker 1 27:09

of the note. What this last year has been has been about really focusing on the quality of, I would say two elements. One is the quality of each session to think, what is it I'm really trying to achieve on the each session, when we talk it through, what's, what's the win? Yeah, that's, that's what we talked about around New Zealand for each of the sessions that you, that you're going through, and I talked about that sort of organic shift around sleep and recovery and nutrition, that one really ramped up over the course last year where I just thought, right, okay, that curiosity that I talked about, I'm going to see what happens if I I'm going to add do a little bit more sleep so I'm going to recover in in the right way. And importantly, and you introduced me to Scott at fuel in Scott tingle, yeah. And both the awareness that that gave me around what I was eating day to day, and Helen adopted it too, and she's become a sort of poster child for them in that time. And also he got me to look much more, much more deeply at what I was doing for fueling on race day. And we kind of worked out that what I was doing was about 15 years out of date, and I hadn't really changed anything, the combination of the all of those things that the sleep, the recovery, the quality around the training sessions, and the nutrition, everything, and it meant racing in New Zealand at the worlds It was the smoothest race there was. There was not one blip. Always, when you're doing these sorts of races, you're kind of waiting, Yeah, something's gonna happen. I'm gonna have to react to some bit of adversity that nothing's there. Everything seems to be just stable the

Matt Dixon 28:53

whole time. Yeah, the you mentioned organic before, because we, we sort of went through and we a long education process of as you went through different chapters of life, thinking about recovery, adding intention behind sleep this year, if, if there was a real project that we took on, it wasn't some radical shifting training, it was, was the nutrition. And I think like giving, give Scott his credit here he, he made me look very good, but um, but his work of keeping things really quite simple for you, but, but much more intention behind it. You track stuff. I wondered whether you would be able to. You actually loved tracking it, and it was really helpful, because it was a tool and it had context, but um, but I think there were two parts of it for you. There was the race fueling, and that enabled you to have that resilience and staying power. You would say in the race, I also think what you did in your daily life and had much more intention, much greater protein intake, better maybe removal of some of the sticky puddings in LA. Stuff that you enjoy as an East Londoner, but I think it created that, that robustness, physiologically, of being able to even magnify the consistency of training, and that's what I saw much, much less times of, you know, common colds and sickness, you really were you even sick at all, really last year, not at all. And and the consistency of performance levels were able to layer weeks and weeks. I really do give fuel in and Scott, a lot of credit for that. I think it was, it was great. Well,

Speaker 1 30:32

the bit I'd add is, I ended up sounds high faluting, but treating myself like an athlete, thinking, right? What is it that I need to eat day to day? And it didn't. It never felt like a burden. It never felt like I was giving up something or making some enormous sacrifice. It's just like, What do I need? What do I need for? What's coming up, and whether that was training or traveling, because I'm still doing a lot of traveling for work, but always just that deliberate intention of, what is it I need, rather than what is it I fancy?

Matt Dixon 31:06

Yeah, so what? It's not what do I want? It's what does my body need? And that really fuels it. I want to ask about stress a little bit. We all live in high stress, massive, competed demands, etc. If I just say the word stress. How do you rebound off of that?

Speaker 1 31:27

It's not something that I really actively think about. I think, I think one of, maybe one of my personality traits, is there is this degree of calm that I tend to approach any situation in with. I think it's, it's Abraham Lincoln and where he and he stole the quote from a Persian king for many years ago when he said this too shall pass, right? Yeah, any difficult situation, but it's just not doesn't just apply to difficult situations. It also applies to you. Could be feeling amazing, but this too shall pass All right, so you treat both of those, those so I've always sort of been calm and thoughtful about whatever situation I'm in. And I would reiterate the fact that sport and exercise has massively always helped. That's why it's always been important to me to have that integrated into my life, because however challenging a situation I can think, back to Deloitte days, you're dealing with some very difficult global regulators. People want to find you that there's just challenging situations all the time that I can remember, colleagues would almost self combust with the with the worry about it. I've always been right. Let's just be thoughtful and deliberate about how we deal with this. Recognize it is going to pass because, particularly as a leader, I think the worst thing you can do is transmit stress to to your team. Absolutely, if you run around like your hair's on fire, your whole team is going to run around like their hairs so there's just this thoughtful and deliberate work our way through this. What are the things that we're going to carry on doing that keep us calm, grounded and centered as we go through those challenges? I

Matt Dixon 33:13

want to jump to leadership, because you've you've had a long career. Professionally, had a long career athletically, the bi directional impact of that, how has sport helped helped you as a leader? And maybe, how has a leadership sort of roles helped you in sport?

Speaker 1 33:35

Probably the more obvious one is sport helped as a leader. Now, as we were talking just this, this grounding through difficult situations, the setting of an example, the fact that you can do things, you can balance your health, you can balance your welfare. You can balance that with all the stresses of work life, and being able to set that as an example to your team and others can see you. I was, this is blowing my own trumpet. I was recently at Deloitte, and one of the partners there said to me, Oh, do you know how many people you changed by the the way they saw you behaving and acting, and they saw that they could combine exercise with work. They they didn't need to get to over 50 balloon to twice the size and just sit smoking cigars. They could do things in a different way. And you could, you could see that. So I feel, I feel great about that. So I think sport helped me as a leader in that way, in in that example setting. I think, I think as leader into sport, there were some hugely challenging situations in the organizations that I've worked in. It meant that when you're in a race and something doesn't quite go in the way you wanted to be, you kind of think it right. It's not it's not that big. A deal. What, what? Why am I doing this? Where's, where am I going to get the joy out of the sport that I'm that, that I'm doing,

Matt Dixon 35:08

we do going, going back to the leadership sport. There's, there's something that's really interesting. We've, we've been doing a lot of work with leadership teams and talking to a lot of people in positions of leadership. One of the things that, um, that I've really started to unpack and realize is that to be a source of inspiration for your team as a leader, it's not a prerequisite that you have to be high performing in your sport. And one of the things I've seen we talked about Sami, sometimes someone like a Sami, Sami the bull, as I used to call him, he's so exceptional as an athlete that he can feel out of reach and and I think the biggest thing, if you're listening as a leader, is having the courage to take on a challenge and a commitment and sharing it and people Seeing you improve, and that could include a leader that's going from sedentary to just make it up. Wants to go on a hiking holiday or finish a 5k or something, but that commitment can be just as infectious and sometimes even more empowering that someone that seems like, Oh, they've got it all worked out. Does that resonate with

Speaker 1 36:21

you? It does. It does. And I would say, I think the the other way that it applies is how you, how you translate that into work life around setting goals that are a little bit more uncomfortable. That's how I would characterize it, because you they, they see the leader. Setting goals are a bit uncomfortable, be they a hike, be they an Iron Man, and everything in between, but they take on something that, yeah, you sure you want to do that? They'll use that great euphemism that's very brave, right? But then how you translate that into into a work life when you're with your team and you and you because often people want to set a goal that is, you know, they're not going to shoot for the moon. They're going to just sort of jump six inches off the ground and think, Well, that's not very exciting. What is it that we're going to do that's really going to change things? So, and I think sport informed a lot of that with me in how I led those those teams. The thing I always had to watch myself on, though, because I'd sort of say, Oh, look at that great mountain. Let's go and climb that great mountain. Let's just go and do that. And I kind of think we'll figure out a way. But you have to recognize that everyone in your team is a little bit different. Some might be in that same camp. Oh, that feels uncomfortable. Let's just go for that, whereas others will say, That's great panels. But can we just sort of go through step by step how we're going to get I'd have to always check myself, so yeah, that's right, everyone in your team is a little bit different, but we can show how we're going to get to something that's really, really stretching, but we're going to do it. These are the building blocks for how we're going to get there and and I think you can, you can apply the lessons from sport in exactly the same way. You know, someone doesn't say, I'm going to, I've, I've been completely sedentary. I'm going to go and do a hike. They want to have a plan for how they do it. What about

Matt Dixon 38:14

extending on that? And he goes to lead leadership, to culture, your i I'm fearful here, because I might almost give you a compliment. You're a culture creator. You know it professionally. I know that your teams really love your leadership style, but you had a high performance culture, and how to challenges in that sort of inform how you drove a performance culture and really positive culture in the workplace.

Speaker 1 38:46

I'll go back to one of the words I used earlier. The first thing was always curiosity in terms of one of my characteristics and one of the things that I wanted within the team, particularly when you're meeting challenges that have never been really conquered before. They've never really been met before. So how do we have a culture that just says, I'm just curious? Is there if the worst thing someone can say to me old panels, we've tried that before, and you really won't work? Okay, okay, great. I wonder if there's another way of trying, of trying that. So there was, there was always something around curiosity within the culture, there's always something. And again, I guess I I borrowed this from sport, a sort of positivity, not not in A,

Matt Dixon 39:32

not in a Kelli type

Speaker 1 39:34

of way, but this positivity of, we're gonna, we're gonna put ourselves into something that's going to be challenging and difficult. We're all going to hold hands together in how we go about doing that. There's no there's going to be no consequences, negative consequences, because we're all trying to do

Matt Dixon 39:53

something different. Yeah, it's difficult. Then I want to dig into I've got so many said. So I'm just going to start hopping, but I've got to ask you about coaching, and again, at the high, heavy risk of giving you a compliment, you're one of the most coachable athletes that I've ever worked with, but I also know that you love coaching, not just through the athletic lens, but other people. So what's your perspective on building the role of building experts around you to help you stay on track, to keep you progressing and moving forward. I'd love to know your your perspective on that,

Speaker 1 40:31

yeah, and I think there's a there's again, there's a great crossover between business life, if you want to call it that, and and sporting life. So I I'd grown up in those sporting environments, elements of of coaching, and then more and more professional coaching on the sporting side as I got as I got older. But I used to because I love watching sport as well, and I'd see the greatest athletes in the world being coached because they always want to improve. Yeah. What's that extra little thing that they can be doing, what's the latest innovation? Not, not a gizmo that's going to make life better, but always wanting to think, right, how do I push the boundaries and from in a works life? When I think, when I first got a leadership role, I've got no idea how to do this leadership thing. I've I've seen, I've seen others in my own organization do good things. I'll take a bit of those. I've seen them do bad things. I'll make sure I don't take that. But I always wanted a perspective on what goes on in other businesses, what goes on industries, what can we learn from sport? So this is 20 years ago. I thought, right? I want to, I want to have a coach on from the leadership side. And I can remember, at the time in business, at least in the organizations I was in, you only got a coach if there was a problem, yes, right? It was a real media, or there's a real media. Oh yeah, oh yeah, we should get Matt a coach. We all know what that means, right? So people, you don't need a coach, panels, you're fine. I want because I want to learn. So I started working with a coach on business side at that time. I worked with her for many years. She worked with my team as well. Because I said, Do you do you coach teams as well? So and you could see how the team bonded, got better, got closer together. You could see the impact. I mentioned the partner earlier on, yeah, whose life got changed by it. So it was always looking for those elements, and you said surrounding yourself with those experts, and that's as I've sort of gone through personal career now, that's what I'm now getting more into, as well around executive coaching too, well, that's

Matt Dixon 42:39

right, you're moving into executive coaching, which is going to be a really interesting experience for you to sort of evolve and draw those lessons to help other people. I think one thing with coaching, with that you talked about the remedial elements, people also think that if you're going to have a coach, you're giving away some of the responsibility, some of the ownership, and it's actually the reverse of that, like it is still always your journey. You're just surrounding yourself with experts or an expert or someone with wisdom or a sounding board that can help you get more out of yourself or everything, and that endeavor goes across whatever's important to you.

Speaker 1 43:19

Yeah, I completely, completely agree. And in terms of what I do now that the biggest buzz I get, the biggest buzz I get is if I can spend time with somebody who, at the start something, thinks that's impossible. I've got no idea how to do that. At the end of it, they've worked out how to do it, and they have worked out to do not I've told them what to go do, because adults, adults do things better if they take responsibility and work things out for themselves rather than just being told. And that's important guidance. Yeah, that's That's why, if I think, if I put it on the sporting side, if you have a coach that just tells someone what to do, and it just becomes very mechanical. I think it just it. It loses its soul, almost because the person's not adopting it for themselves. You can only go so far with being told what to do over and over again without thinking it through yourself and and integrating it into your own mentality.

Matt Dixon 44:17

So, so with that. But what advice would you have, either for athletes listening or professionals on how to get the most out of their coaching relationship? I

Speaker 1 44:28

think probably two or three things I would say, and this, this isn't meant to sound as legal, but contracting, and by contracting, I mean right at the outset, what's the nature of the relationship going to be, how are the responsibilities going to be split? Really importantly, what's the objective? What is it? You've talked about it in the past, you know, knowing your why, your why? What is it? Why is this person wanting to be coached? Do they recognize what it is that they want to be addressing, and what's that inner thing that that's driving them? That can contracting. The second thing, and I think back to when we first met here, all those years ago, chemistry. Chemistry has got to be right. It can't just be, if I think on the sporting side, it can't just be a here's a list of things to do. And if you don't get on with the person, if you don't, if you don't click, it's not it's not going to work. Third thing, I would say, is care. And maybe that goes all the way back to the sort of fish and chip shop and how you looked after your customers, but you want to have a coach that that's on your side really cares about what they're doing. It's not, it's not a mechanical, transactional relationship. It's, it's something really symbiotic, symbiotic,

Matt Dixon 45:39

and you, you can't fake that. No, ultimately, that's the No. I'd

Speaker 1 45:43

know if, if I was working with somebody that was just doing it,

Matt Dixon 45:48

turning the handle the easy thing for me, of course, and I dove right into it, how sport impacted your role as a leader? Because you've been a leader in multiple industries. But, I mean, I'm interested, how's, how's it influence other parts of your life.

Speaker 1 46:01

I think on on the family side, we talked a little bit about it earlier, but both our sons heavily into sport. We do quite look we've done marathons together. We've done triathlons together. It's a great thing to be, to be feeling and doing when you're when you're doing that together. I think it's it helps you set a great, hopefully a great example to your kids as well. And you can stay, you can stay fit and healthy as you get, as you get on in life. Well, that's it.

Matt Dixon 46:36

You're actually able to do that stuff physically, because you keep the body in good nick, which is good. So I want to wrap up, and it's your chance to be educators. So a beacon of hope and inspiration here, because I'm going to ask you the tricky one, you have to distill all of this journey up all of the lessons, and what would you say are your your biggest contributors to your success, and we're going to wrap it all up, life, sport, work. What are the components that someone listening can take and say, All right, I can draw from this and apply to my own journey. You've got three lessons to

Speaker 1 47:13

give. I'll give you three, then I give you three, and I've referred them as we've gone through curiosity. That's been a big thing for me all the way through, from early days, as to, how can I do things differently? Is there another way? Where can i Where can I learn? Is this something that I could pick from for from others, right? Second growth mindset? Yeah, it is the it's the growth mindset, yeah. Second one would be around consistency, be it in my professional life, be it in my sporting life, just that consistency of application, not looking for quick fixes. It's a huge frustration for me. If I see it in sport, people say, I've got this latest gadget and it's going to make things I used to see exactly the same on the business side of life, where people would say, Oh, I've read this book. This latest book will solve everything and throw out last week's book. This is this week's book. So consistency of application, and the last one, I would say, is Spark, right? That always look for that catalyst. When you look at people, do you see? Do you see that light in their eyes? That's the people you want to be spending time with, surround

Matt Dixon 48:21

yourself. So what about someone that's really struggling because you have this, you know, these conversations sometimes risk venturing into almost the summing scenario that I talked about. Here's Panos. He's got it all sorted out, but someone that's just really struggling with all of these components right now, that is, and I wouldn't often ask a question that's in many ways quite challenging to answer, but I want to imagine a listener that's struggling, either in sport, broader life, not having great performances, whatever. What would you tell that that person

Speaker 1 49:00

you're right. You have asked a challenge. You have a challenging question. I think everyone's everyone's different around this. I'll only put it from my own lessons, and I know we've gone through, we had a sort of free flowing conversation. And even over the time you've known me, there's been some massive ups and downs. Career wise, I ended up in some pretty challenging situations. There's been some massive ups and down on the sporting side, there's been a bunch of DNS and all that. The biggest lesson I took out of all of those is something I just call releasing the mental weight. Because I think the mental weight that we choose to put on ourselves, and it is choice. It is choice. Is the thing that ends up for me, ended up sort of weighing me down and holding me back. If you look at it and say, right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get back to that curiosity. I'm gonna get back to that commit. I'm going to get back to that spark, because the mental weight blocks all of those I'm going to keep looking to clear that out of the way so I can get back to those three.

Matt Dixon 50:09

It's funny you say, I've never heard you talk about that before, but back with the Purple Patch pros, one of our defining we had all sorts of cute sayings, as you well know, but one of them was freedom to fail, and it was, it was really a drive to enable the group of pros. You know, on the razor's edge of world class performance, we wanted to drive process. We wanted to drive behaviors. And so if you do everything that's under your control, it's a parallel concept that I'm talking about here. Then you have freedoms of fail. It's okay if things go wrong. And it enabled them to navigate the DNFs, the broken femurs in some scenarios, etc. It was the journey that they went on. It's really quite we just released the mental weight, and what they knew is that if they had a bad race, they weren't going to get a coach from me, going, well, we messed that up, didn't you? But it's like, okay, let's work out why. Let's move on. It's a liberation of stuff. And I think that's really good. I do want to ask I've got two more very brief questions, and I think this maybe locks into your your curiosity and your growth mindset. You just had a fantastic performance. You had a great year. You're not done yet. We're talking at the start of 2025, so I'm sure listeners would like to know what's what's next for you in sport and life as you look ahead. So

Speaker 1 51:36

sport wise, we talked often New Zealand, right? That very enjoyable, but it was, it was good performance for me, but most of all, it was a kind of joyous performance, right? Where could that go? What? What more? What more could we push just to see what happens? And it doesn't really matter if it doesn't, it doesn't go brilliantly, but releasing that mental weight and just what more could be. So some more, 70 point threes this year, Marathon, another marathon coming up this year, just because, and then just for fun, because I am able to, and I've got the fitness to a friend and I are going to be cycling the length of Italy later this year, not in any competitive conditions. But just, you know, he's even older than I am, and we can go but you think if I look at previous generations, they would never have counted as doing something so, something like that. So that that's so this year, it's, it's marathons, some more triathlons and some sort of stage cycling as well.

Matt Dixon 52:37

Fantastic. So you were um, one final question, you were? You were born in Romford. I was a fish and chip shop. Was you now? You have an apartment in in London. You live in Brentwood in Essex, so 10 miles away or so from south end in Essex, where I was born. And you probably that you being born in Romford, you're probably eight miles away from Upton Park, the old home ground of West Ham United, the great premiership team that I support and yet you support, with all of the glorious years behind or years behind them, the Most successful team in the history of English football, Manchester United, that's about 300 miles from your house. Can you explain yourself other than glory Hunter? No, I

Speaker 1 53:30

there is no glory hunting. As a Greek Cypriot, you supported one of three sides. If you lived in North London, you supported Arsenal spurs, or you supported Manchester United, because a lot of the Cypriots came over around the time of the late 50s, and my dad supported Man United. So I supported man united, and our two boys had zero option other than to support Man United. So it's actually a genetic trait. It is a gene rather than a geographic link. It

Matt Dixon 54:00

okay, and you really don't have much love for West Ham, do you?

54:04

They're fine. They're fine.

Matt Dixon 54:06

They're a shocking team. Come on, let's face facts. Panels. Thank you so much for spending time and and I will say, folks, panel says we mentioned at the top of the show, second time here in Hawaii, it's these are great benchmarks. These are so immersive. We've got 25 athletes here. It's a wonderful group. We're halfway through the camp so far. So I'm amazing that you had enough amazing had enough faculties to bring your best self to this but what a difference a year makes. What a great benchmark coming back last year, eyes wide open, unsure what to get this time, just stepping off the plane and stepping right into it,

54:44

and putting you over my knee today. And

Matt Dixon 54:46

let's not forget putting shamefully, I had to succumb, and I really did chase him down. I went to 10 out of 10, and I couldn't do it. And so I need I've got some work to do, that's for sure, and I'm going. To do it. That's going to be my quest for this year, but, but I wish you all the best for the year ahead, and I really appreciate your time looking forward to Thanks for having me. 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 you.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Hawaii training camp, athletic potential, fish and chip shop, competitive instinct, Deloitte senior partner, Rolls Royce CFO, family support, endurance sports, leadership impact, growth mindset, consistency, recovery focus, nutrition awareness, executive coaching, future goals

Carrie BarrettFebruary 4, 2025