Chief Endurance Officer

CEO_Matt Dixon
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[00:00:00]

Greg McDonough: I'm super excited for this guest today. He is a professional triathlete, two time Olympic trials finalist in swimming, who is now a master coach for Ironman. He is the founder and CEO of the world, one of the world's premier triathlon coaching. Businesses trusted by everyone from Ironman World Champions to first time endurance athletes. His co, his company has coached over 350 Ironman and 70.3 podiums and victories, including multiple world titles, the founder and CEO of Purple Patch Fitness. Please welcome Matt Dixon. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Dixon: Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here and, uh, goodness me, my, my bio almost sounds impressive. So that's, uh, that's good. [00:01:00] Who are they talking about there?

Greg McDonough: Right, right. Well, I'll uh, I'll tell my producers they did good copy editing on that, but

Matt Dixon: There you go.

Greg McDonough: It's funny, just chatting with you. He's got my palm sweating 'cause I'm approaching Ironman Ottawa and expectations and the logistics has got me all wound up. So this is a perfect time to

Matt Dixon: There you go.

Greg McDonough: Energy into the show.

Matt Dixon: Smoothing coaching. So.

Greg McDonough: There you go. Uh, Matt, you know, I love talking about endurance and especially the endurance mindset. So if you, could you tell us how your endurance mindset has impacted your life Unexpectedly.

Matt Dixon: Yeah, I, I think actually, uh, for, for me personally, um, I, I, I'll say two things to that, interestingly, the first is, uh, a journey that I've gone on where, when I started my own business, uh, and I've obviously put forth a lot of the energy, a lot of the traits that are necessary to be a great athlete. I just channeled that into business and I never could have anticipated two decades ago that it would lead me to working with so many executive [00:02:00] teams, so many leadership to.

Teams trying to solve a, a challenge. Ultimately that is very, very different than how I first started coaching, which was trying to create world champions, although as I'm sure we'll unpack closely related in other ways. Uh, and then the other thing I'd say is actually, uh, endurance mindset of being a, um, being a father and partner.

It's a real journey. Um, my wife Kelly from Montana, and we've been married 14 years now, we've got a 13-year-old son. And, um, and it's, it's amazing how it just cross pollinates into any piece of life, whether focusing on the most important things, the boulders and not the sand and, um, adaptability change is ever present, uh, particularly the way that we live our life.

So, uh, uh, so yeah, so that's definitely two different channels that I've really leveraged that.

Greg McDonough: You know, the, the breadcrumb you left for me there that I have to pick up, uh, is around your partner parenting children and the endurance mindset. You know, I've got two young. Girls as well. I guess they're not [00:03:00] really getting young, uh, young anymore. But, um, my wife and I have that same principle of showing them endurance, showing them how to get knocked down and stand back up.

You know, they come to our races, they think it's sort of the normal lifestyle. Um, would love for you to go a little bit deeper around, sort of have your, how you're seeing that show up, one as a parent, and then any illustrations that you have seen. When you said, Hey, my child, just like that, he or she's enduring, like she's learning something from us that we've passed that we're actively passing down.

Matt Dixon: Yeah, I, I'll, I'll go all the way back to actually when Baxter, my son was born, and we have, like any new parent, you, you have no idea what's going on. You have no idea. You, you know, you can't be prepared. And, um, Kelly and I had a lot of conversations and we, we put some building blocks into place to say this is, you know, we are not gonna be able to control everything.

And uh, and we don't want to. Parent, [00:04:00] this young baby boy who, who now is a 13-year-old, uh, which listeners will know, is going through heavy transition around that age. Uh, we, we can't, like, we don't wanna predict where he's gonna come. We just wanna provide every exposure, every opportunity, and try and equip him to be the best around, well-rounded version of whatever he wants to do in his life.

And, and we started with several things that we said. These are building blocks we really want to. Uh, encourage him to learn a musical instrument to hopefully do a little bit of theater, maybe to learn a language. Really good for the brain to, to do a whole bunch of different sports, including we wanted him to be able to swim for water safety, to ski, 'cause that's an activity that we can do as a family for the rest of our lives.

And to ride a bike, it's a good, uh, skill set to have. Those building blocks have actually still, when he 13, are still in place. He's. Bilingual, he speaks French. He plays guitar in a little rock band. He does all sorts of different [00:05:00] sports. But I, it's interesting. Now, you know, we, Kelly and I run Purple Patch together, so it, it, it can't help have an imprint.

Much in the way as a CEO is ultimately a role model for the culture of any organization and habits, behaviors, actions. We'll have an imprint on what he, what and how his team, uh, take different, you know, influence from, and their team members below that. Baxter can't help but be influenced. By how Kelly and I live our lives and the organization we run.

We're in a performance organization. So interestingly for, for, for me and for Kelly, one of the big challenges, he's a really athletic kid. His sport, ironically, that he's really fallen in love with is the sport that I started with swimming. It's the sport of the reason I came to the us. That's what I find in the Olympic trials.

That's provided a different challenge for me. [00:06:00] Because I really want to ensure that I encourage support, et cetera, as does Kelly, but I don't want to have any sort of imprint that it becomes my journey. And uh, and so the way that we've combated that is making sure it's a sport that they love you to commit very early.

No, you're not gonna swim eight times a week. You're gonna swim two or three times a week. You're gonna do multi-sport. You are gonna keep it mixed up and, you know, and, and helping him in that journey. But there is no doubt that through that experience, swimming is a very, um, it's a very quantitative sport.

Pass you pass, failing the results. You win or lose. Yeah. It's in a controlled environment. He has gone through. The fostering of commitment, of camaraderie, of coachability, of ups and downs, so adaptability and resilience, and you see that express in his confidence, his passion of the journey, et [00:07:00] cetera. So yeah, it's, it's a pretty, I know that's a pretty long-winded answer, but it, it, it's been fascinating to follow.

And, and the one thing I will say is also as a parent to really step back and not coach. Because he's got his coaches and that, that, that is a really important factor for me to, to really have, have developed as a, I wanna be his dad. I don't wanna be his coach.

Greg McDonough: You know, that's so important, uh, Matt and it, and it. It aligns with the philosophy that Monique and I have as well. Um, I've had a sports background. I played soccer up until college swimmer all through my life. Did a bunch of long distance swims a handful of years ago, and, um, both of my girls are really into swimming and it. Really difficult not to sort of nudge the coach and be like, Hey, you know, they should be doing this, and they should be doing that, or sort of break them into their own training sessions, just one-on-one with dad. I gotta tell you though, I [00:08:00] refuse now to do a 50 meter swim against my girls because I know they can beat me.

But until that's proven, I think I'm still faster.

Matt Dixon: Well, I, uh, I, I had a slightly different, uh, experience of that. We were just up in, um, in Montana. That's where Kelly's from. So we spent a lot of time up in Montana and Baxter really in love with it, wanting to go swimming. So I swam with him and I haven't swam with him for about a year, and I don't swim that much.

I made sure that I beat him on every single swim. I never let him beat me just by a bit. It's getting closer, but. He's gonna fail a lot if he's gonna go on and be successful in life. So I made sure as his dad that I still made him fail.

Greg McDonough: Good man. Good man. Yeah. My girls were just, uh, at their year end the summer swim All Stars this past weekend and they did a really, really good job. And so there's a lot of pride coming across. I'm gonna change topics on you a little bit, um, and talk about the professional athlete. is sort of transitioning out of [00:09:00] professional

Matt Dixon: Mm-hmm.

Greg McDonough: as a competitor and into the next phase of life, and I, I suspect you've worked with many, many athletes that again, have hit from a performance perspective and on the, in the pool or at triathlon, you know, world champion, et cetera, et cetera. As they transition into the next phase of their life, what are some key sort of components to help them? Kind of take on that new, that new adventure.

Matt Dixon: It is really interesting you asked me that because when I, when I reflect on my coaching career with elite athletes, one of my biggest points of pride was, was a, we had really good retention amongst our squad of athletes. We took a team approach in an individual sport, so I was typically working with about 12 athletes at a time, but we had a lot of athletes that stuck with us a long time.

So I had coaching relationships that sometimes lasted a decade. And that's a, a really important chapter of life. You know, starting at 25, retiring at 35, [00:10:00] starting at 28, retiring at 38. And, and the second point of pride is that in that journey, I always, as a coach. Wanted to start to infuse as the journey went on.

What's next? What's next? Setting yourself up quite often. Encouraging them to have some side gigs, even though it is all encompassing, but, but actually do some work both for the brain. Some athletes benefited from that, but also from, from some skill development and that side of stuff, so, so we really try to prepare our athletes for that transition.

Change is hard

and uh, you know, even if it's positive change, change is incredibly difficult for us as human beings for a professional athlete. It is 10 x is hard because your routine and structure has been very singular focused around you and, and that your whole identity, particularly nowadays with everything wrapped up in social media for these athletes, [00:11:00] very quickly their star is fading.

So they go from, I'm winning iron. To, so within two years, I'm kind of irrelevant. Many people that are new to the sport don't even know them. So we have to, we have to help them go through change. One of the biggest concerns that most athletes had is they've, they've spent their prime earning years in many ways, or at least priming years before the, the great earning years.

25 to 35 or 30 to 40. In professional sport and they don't retire with enough capital to live for the rest of their life without having to worry. So they're starting without a huge resume. The important part of it, and I think this is, um, really important for listeners, is what they have got is they have got a journey of sport that has ignited, polished, honed, and developed into a huge toolkit of a might set of mindset traits.

That [00:12:00] transfer. Anything in life. So when you think about a great employee in any organization, grit, determination, focus, collaboration, um, adaptability, resilience, all of these things, a professional athlete has that tenfold. And if they are able to apply that into another endeavor, they accelerate. So one of the great athletes that I coached, her name was Sarah Pano, and she was 10 years, she retired at 40 within three years.

She's one of the leading real estate agents in the coun in, uh, in Colorado. And all she did, she had no background in that, in that industry at all. She just applied the traits of high performance into a different arena. That's really interesting because these traits are that traits, they are transferrable and they're not genetic.

And so, um. So, so I'm, I'm not sure if I'm tailoring off of your, your question very well, but, uh, the key answer to this is helping them [00:13:00] set up and realizing as sport evaporates and they move on, it's like, what are your passions? What are the, what is something that you really want to go and your biggest chapter of life is not behind you?

Your biggest chapter of life, if you're starting at 35 and your biggest imprint on the world can is all in front of you. You have to now as an athlete, apply the very same traits that fueled your success in professional sport into wherever your passion now lies. And once they find that you see them go on to great things and it's gonna include some turbulence over the first year or two because they're navigating change.

And that's really cha, that's really difficult.

Greg McDonough: Matt, that's really well said. And, and where my thinking was going was, you know, that professional athlete who is transitioning from being a pro into entrepreneurship, right? There's, there's one journey between being a professional [00:14:00] athlete. And getting your real estate license and becoming a topnotch real estate agent. Um, but there's systems and tools and training sort of in between those two endpoints. But when you're taking into an entrepreneurship journey, entrepreneurial journey, you're kind of figuring it out on your own. And I'd love to hear some stories or some examples of athletes that you've worked with or seen who have really taken on the entrepreneurial started a business. Created a product,

Matt Dixon: Yeah.

Greg McDonough: how they've sort of transitioned into that new, that stage

Matt Dixon: What, What, I would argue there isn't, uh, well in parallel with starting an actual, you know, business, like a tech company or something like that. What's more entrepreneurial than deciding to become a professional athlete? You know, that that is the ultimate entrepreneurial journey because you gotta figure it out yourself and what do you do?

You have a passion, you have a certain skill set and [00:15:00] talent. You start building a team around you for folks that can help you and you apply your focus and, and if you think about any great professional athlete, they don't just show up with physical talent and start winning championships. They go on a journey where they basically have to establish, excuse me.

Almost a business plan for themselves. It just happens to be an athletic plan and they have to focus on the right things for them. the same principles apply you, you go and apply the same components and, and where my role as a coach was to go back and help those athletes see that picture and see it through that lens.

So, you know, we had. Jesse Thomas, who was a, a wonderful, one of the best. Um. Half Ironman and Ironman athletes in the US and and globally in the world, you know, is one of the top performers in the world, but one of the great US athletes. He went on with his wife and created an energy food company, uh, [00:16:00] called picky bars and became very, very popular.

He leveraged his brand, he built a business. Uh, he was an engineer. By trade. Very smart guy came out of, uh, Stanford, but was not Stanford Business School. He was Stanford Engineering school. But he went on and, and built an energy food company based on the same principles, basically taking an athletic journey and that blueprint of what it takes to create a world-class athlete and applied it to business.

He sold that business to, um, lead superfoods. And, um, led Hamilton, Gabby Reeson Led Hamilton, Tim Reed world Champion that I coached. Fantastic. He transitioned out of the sport. Set up his own coaching organization, has multiple coaches under him, sort of the Mac Dickson blueprint that I did at Purple Patch.

Launched a really successful podcast, went on that same journey. So that there are, there are, you know, almost countless examples, Rasmus, Henning, and Olympian that I coached that is Danish in his own organization, [00:17:00] CEO. Now gone on his own entrepreneurial journey. So, um. That has led him to, to become a CEO and a leader of, uh, an organization.

So it, it's, um, the same principle I think applies whatever journey you're going on. There is no sort of, to borrow an English phrase, school of hard knocks example, than being a, a professional triathlete. Let me, if I, if I can, let me, let me, let me sort of straddle that into something. Think about a really, a really high performing business executive and think about, let, let's, C-E-O-C-F-O doesn't matter.

Someone that's really high performing. You know, what are the challenges that they face when they're in a high pressure environment? They've got huge competing demands. They need capacity to step up when the shit hits the fan, uh, on demand. They need to show up their best every single day. And, uh, and there is no shortcut to their journey.

There's no hacking [00:18:00] of this. Yeah. If you're gonna be a high performing executive, it's a journey you've gotta go on, et cetera. I just outlined there what the journey of a professional athlete is. So as long as the athlete is smart enough to apply that, that lesson, it is the best business school that you can possibly have in in, in my estimation.

Greg McDonough: Yeah, that's a fantastic example of. You know, looking at your current skills and experiences and figuring out how they apply to your new journey, your passion, wherever you want to go. 'cause is the same principle, right? That's why we're talking about the endurance mindset, where it's not in a box for athletes and it's not in a box for CEOs.

It's really the same principles just being applied in different. Um, aspects. The one thing I would add to that, Matt, is that, that continuous curiosity

Matt Dixon: Yeah,

Greg McDonough: and

development and training on both perspectives right of, of running and leading a business, running and leading your family and running and leading your professional [00:19:00] life.

Matt Dixon: it, it's like growth and learning. If. If I got asked if, if you asked me the question, who are the most successful athletes? Who are the highest performers, leaders that you've worked with? And and I had this somewhat unique exp experience of doing both at the same time. So this parallel, so the whole time I could look at and compare a world-class athlete with a CEO.

For example, going along over, over 15 years. So it, so it, it was a real curiosity and, and I would identify two things that are the ones that separated themselves that weren't just really good and talented. That became the proverbial champions. The first was an absolute undying thirst of growth and learning exactly what you said there.

The second is coachability. So if, if I go back, those athletes that I mentioned and many others beside. They didn't just realize a coach was important, they demanded it. They, they were so coachable. [00:20:00] And, uh, and, and if we extended that to athletes that are household names, you know, whether it's LeBron James or Simone Biles or Serena Williams, that is a key common trait.

They are highly coachable and that doesn't learn, in fact, their, their desire to put a team around them amplifies as they get further into their journey. So coachability and thirst for learning. That's the same by the way. You know, I've worked with plenty of well-known CEOs and tech founders and everything else.

The common traits, the ones where I know it's gonna work, where they get the BO of yield is, I want to learn, I want to grow. And how can you help me? What do I need to do to become more coachable? And, and that's, coaching is not, or being coachable, is not giving up ownership of your journey to someone else.

It's not about being, you know, just doing what you're told. It's about partnership, collaboration, leaning on, on a sounding board, providing feedback, receiving feedback, et cetera. And, and it is a [00:21:00] skill. By the way, it's not something that's just innate. You can develop coachability in the same way as you can develop all of the traits in, in my mind, that make up what we would label the, uh, the athlete mindset in many ways.

Greg McDonough: So I'm gonna shift topics on you again. Um, so yesterday I was in a golf match and I'm talking to the, it, it was a team golf match and one of the guys on the other team was really interested in my long distance triathlon career, right? How many of you done have you done it? Blah, blah, blah. And gimme some stories. one of the things he said, and I hear this all the time, is, yeah, I'd be, I'm interested in doing that, but I just don't have the time. I said, you know, I kind of pushed back and I, you know, I was in a sort of a competitive moment, so I didn't want to be too friendly. But you and I have talked about this, and this really leads into Purple Patch Fitness. Talk to us about that, that response to the athlete who comes to you, the CEO, [00:22:00] first timer who comes to you, comes to your, your facility and says, you know, I, I, have a dream of doing a long distance triathlon. But I just don't have the time or I can't do the swim. Like there's all these roadblocks that keep popping up and they're pretty common.

Matt Dixon: Yeah.

Greg McDonough: I'd love for you to start knocking down some of those roadblocks for us.

Matt Dixon: Yeah. It's, uh, without being, uh, rude to, to your buddy, he's just not a part of the enlightened yet, which makes it sound like it's a cult. But, uh, and I don't mean it like that. Because it is a paradox. You know, our most precious, I'm sure everyone listening is really busy. Everyone has huge competing demands.

The one thing we want more of is time. And it's counterintuitive to say, great, you are really busy. You have massive competing demands, and now to get more time, to get time back to gain capacity. Now put this thing on top of your life, but the key is where that becomes a truth. [00:23:00] And things become negative, is if you take this goal, this challenge, and you just dump it on top of an already busy life, the only way you'd be successful, the real unlock is when you successfully integrate it into life as a set of daily practices to unlock your effectiveness.

You know, I'll give you a a mini one minute case study on this where you couldn't have an example of someone that was more busy. That actually was really successful at this, a guy that I coached, Samami Inan, and many listeners Will, will know the organization Trulia. So Samami was the co-founder of Trulia, the real estate search engine.

And when he came to me, he was really keen triathlete as well. And he said, I, I wanna race Ironman triathlons, but I'm, you know, launched this startup and it's complete chaos. Everything that, that applies to launching a building a, uh, a startup. And in the year that Trulia went public. So, you know, went through their IPO Sammi, didn't just finish an Ironman, [00:24:00] he won the amateur title in the Ironman, Hawaii.

And uh, and for folks that listening that know Ironman, he was under nine hours in the toughest race there is. His training recipe was 10 hours a week. And, uh, and so we sometimes had six or seven hours. Sometimes we had 11 or 12 hours, but he averaged 10 hours a week, which is about 50% of what was the prevailing preconceptions of what it took to be successful at that level, at that time.

So, so we got all pushback around that. Can't be true, but the good thing about Saami is he tracks everything. Here's the key thing. The natural first question is, how did he have time? And it's the wrong question. Because what Sami went through, we faced an optimization challenge, and this goes some way to, to provide them the answer to your question.

By Sami prioritizing and committing to personal wellbeing and this training journey, it forced radical prioritization. Every week we had to look at everything he had at [00:25:00] work and say, what do we need to get done this week and what is actually a distraction? So it actually forced prioritization. Secondly, it, it created an anchor and framework of his week to really make sure that every moment in the week was really useful, including by the way I'm saying sleep and intentional recovery.

So we actually infused this stuff that could fuel his training and fuel his energy. And, and so he ended up building greater energy, more stable energy, enhanced cognitive function because of investing in this. All of the things that help him show up every day as a leader. And on top of it, we talked about mindset.

I won't go back into all of those. Resilience and adaptable and everything else. The journey of triathlon that he went on, that anyone goes on by the way. And it doesn't need to be triathlon, but it's getting outta your comfort zone. Taking on a challenge, that's the environment, a low risk [00:26:00] environment where you continually garden.

In other words, you ignite, you hone to develop all of these traits that are prerequisite as a leader. So for Sami. If you asked him, and you asked anyone that decides to take on these challenges, it's an investment to get time back, to drive effectiveness, to improve their leadership, to heightened capacity.

So he became a really successful leader because of his investment in this challenge. And, and I think the key thing for your buddy listening or, uh, or, or for anyone else, is. It doesn't need to be Ironman. It doesn't need to be triathlon. It might be for someone moving from sedentary to saying, I'm gonna try and walk 10,000 steps.

It might be for someone to say, I'm gonna go on a on on a hiking weekend, and I need to walk really consistently with my friend, and I'm gonna go and do this. Whatever. It can be a marathon, whatever it is. There is a reason that so many executives get out of their comfort zone [00:27:00] and take on challenges is because by taking on a challenge, you improve capacity, improve daily performance, build resiliency, and unlock your effectiveness.

It's true. And by the way, someone that just said this really recently, if you go back to the Forbes article, was Jamie Diamond, that most people have heard of his biggest piece of advice to young, uh, executives and CEOs think and act like an Olympic athlete. And that's, that's basically what we're talking about here.

So it's not about not having time. Now we do some very specific things to unlock that into integrate it within Purple Patch. Happy to go into, but I think I've been talking for about 10.

Greg McDonough: No, it's, uh, that's where my next question was gonna lead into, because I, it's a philosophy that I haven't seen across the industry, and I've talked to many coaches. I've been coached by coaches. I love my coach. They're doing great work for me this year and prior year. Um, but this is a different philosophy and. [00:28:00] It's, I, well, I'll just stop there and let you kind of talk a little bit more broadly about Patch and who should be looking, seeking you and, and give us some, give us some more intel there.

Matt Dixon: Yeah, I mean we, we, we work with a, a massive range of, of people I'll, um, uh, this will probably make your knees touch in, uh, in, in wonderment, but, uh, and, and hopefully this doesn't come across as egotistical, but it drives home the point. And then I'll get, um, I'll provide some. Actionable things of what we do, but over the last decade or so, we've qualified more than 1500 athletes to world championship events.

So the Hawaii Ironman or the Half Ironman World Championship. So it's a large group of athletes. Those are of all different levels for the athletes that are doing Ironman. For a Purple patch athlete, the average weekly training hours at at 10 hours a week. So that that's incredibly low relative to industry, Stanford standard.

But we have the results. Our, our last three [00:29:00] athletes that actually won their RAGE group in Hawaii all happened to be CEOs of different organizations. So this is real Now. They were physically gifted. Yeah. Make no mistake about it. They had a bunch of physical traits. It's not that everyone is gonna become an Ironman world champion.

At the same time, we don't need to become Ironman World champions to leverage the benefits of this. The whole approach that has served us. To be so successful is number one, we wanna make sure our athletes have a huge platform of health. So if you can show up with vibrancy, this can be additive into life and you can be healthy.

You are gonna build the magic word in in high performance, which is consistency. We also want to train and ignite all of these mindset traits. So how do you do it? Well, what you can't do is take a fixed number of training hours every single week and say, this is the magic program. Now go and do this because it leads to impossible sets of decisions for athletes [00:30:00] because life is a living, breathing thing.

And so having a plan that's a fixed spreadsheet isn't gonna work because life is not a spreadsheet. So instead what we do is we have a very clear coaching model that I won't go into now. What it looks like on a a week to week basis is attacking the problem from the other end. So if you look at seven days of training, we wanna make sure that those seven days don't look like chicken casserole.

All the sessions might be good, but they're all just equal priority. We have two or three days at most that are the key workouts, the really important ones that are gonna drive the performance needle. The rest of the workouts are important, valuable for endurance, for resilience, but more supportive. We designate them as supportive.

What we do at the start of each week, whether you are coached individually, whether it's more autonomous as a part of our program, is you go through this process, which we call the Sunday special. Okay, from [00:31:00] CEO all the way down to intern, we do it at our organization. Every athlete from pro to newbie does this, and it starts with life.

What are my life commitments? I'm taking Johnny to soccer. I've got a date night with my wife or husband, I've blah, blah, blah. All of the things that are important. Dental appointments. And you put those in. You then go through work. And you say, what am I, what do I need to get done with work? You are not planning agendas here, but what are the th the things that I'm gonna focus on in my role?

Whatever your position is, what are the key meetings? And you start to plot that out. Some people love to do this on a Google calendar or other people on a, uh, a notepad. It doesn't matter. Then what you've got left over is a fixed amount of time and into that time you have to put training, you have to put sleep and recovery and social time.

You have to put time to have proper meals. Fueling hydration, et cetera. And so let's say that one week life is flowing. It's really busy. Maybe you've got work travel. You [00:32:00] might only have six hours a week of training availability. So let's optimize the program for those six hours. Let's get the key workouts in, let's scale the others other weeks.

Maybe your friends and family are away. Maybe you've got a couple of days off work life ebbs. Now we can leverage that. Now we might be able to train 12, 13, 14 hours, whatever it is. But when you layer that on week after week, month after month, it becomes not a luxury or bolt-on, not something that you're trying to force into where you are compromising sleep or social time or work performance.

It's a part of your program, your organizing all of the components of life. And that is the biggest unlock because now the sport isn't competing with the relationships competing with work performance. In fact, it's additive to work performance.

Greg McDonough: And I suspect that the people around you also appreciate that approach. Right? I, I'm, as you're going through that. [00:33:00] There are many weekends, and my wife's got me into this. She's a long distance triathlete, semi-retired at the moment, and so she gets it

like

Matt Dixon: Yeah.

Greg McDonough: that my key workouts have to come pretty high on the priority list, but there's sometimes that I'm deciding to go out on a long ride and she's dealing with the kids at home and getting them to 15 different things. I suspect going through this process, this unlocking. allows for that communication to happen, sort of with your partner, right? It's

like,

Matt Dixon: Huge.

Greg McDonough: sitting down talking about where, what are the family priorities this week? What are my

Matt Dixon: Mm-hmm.

Greg McDonough: This

week? then the rest I'm gonna fit in, um, not fit in, but prioritize in what you have available.

And so I can almost see it, man, as a, as a real communication tool, not just for the athlete themselves, but for those who are

around

Matt Dixon: Yeah. I mean, you know, and it, even our family, Kelly and I do it together. So there's a, there's a part of the Sunday special, as you call it, that you do [00:34:00] on your own, but then we work together and look at it and it. It's communication. Uh, I'll give you a a another example for folks that are training for marathons or training for Ironman races.

So many people, it, it's a very, very important and somewhat scary challenge. You've just gone through the journey to get ready for this race that's coming up for you, and let's just call it, you know, as it starts to get hot, as things start to really dial in that more race specific block of training, 12 or 16 weeks.

So many athletes allow every single weekend. To be, I'm out on Saturday. I leave at whatever time they leave, 6:00 AM I'm not back till 1:00 PM That's gonna cause tension and strain, and ultimately it's not necessary. To do that, to be ready to go and be really successful in these events. So I encourage, you know, partners and families to plan ahead and say, okay, give me 3, 4, 5 weekends that we are gonna designate as the sort of [00:35:00] over distance, the bigger blocks of times.

And then gimme other weekends that we're gonna go really minimal. And we're gonna build a really good week of training with maybe a little higher intensity, but you are, you can sneak in a 90 minute or two hour workout and then be the, with the family with the rest of time. And then when you are gonna be gone, typically, let's say in your example, if it was then your wife and the kids, they're like, okay, I know that's coming.

It's not a surprise. You know, Greg's going away and doing it, so I'm gonna go and do this with the kids, and, and then you're gonna meet afterwards, whatever it might be. So e exactly your point. Suddenly now, the other important constituents in your life are partners in your journey rather than constantly negotiating.

That's not a way to create. Ultimately a lifestyle because if we think about why you are doing this, why anyone does this, it's great for pride, satisfaction, ego, fun challenge, [00:36:00] but real success comes when you integrate a challenge-based lifestyle to fuel. Not just your longevity, your health, but how you show up as a partner, as a father or mother.

How you show up as a, as an executive, and as a leader. And so it, it all cross pollinates. So we want longevity in this using a very cute, trendy word at the time.

Greg McDonough: That's amazing, Matt. An audience member wants to get in touch with you. Wants to learn more about Purple Patch, uh, Purple Patch Fitness. Um, what's the best social media platform? Give us some of your intel.

Matt Dixon: Yeah, you can follow us. Uh, we do a lot of education on, um, on, uh, Instagram is probably the be the best place for that. We, we try, and that's very education heavy. A lot of, uh, fun different videos. That's, uh, Purple Patch Fitness, so at Purple Patch Fitness. And, um, our website is Purple patch fitness.com. The truth is, if people, uh, ever just want.

A complimentary [00:37:00] consultation or needs assessment, as we call it, it's completely no pressure. We, we are not for everyone. We, we understand that we, we serve a specific need. We, we look for partnerships. We have a great global community. People can just reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com, mention that, um, you are listening to this show.

We'd be happy to have a chat, explain our programs, given the tour of the website, understand most importantly. The goals, the challenges that the listener faces, and then we'd, uh, have a conversation and, um,

Greg McDonough: That's.

Matt Dixon: and, and I would say that extends by the way, until we have a, a program that, uh, that is really taken off the last two years that is called WIN Cycle, which is our leadership program about equipping leadership teams to perform under pressure.

Navigate, change, foster all of the conditionings. Basically taking all of the lessons of my journey in world class sport and applying it the same as we've talked about today in many ways on a singular basis to teams to drive [00:38:00] sustainable, high performance, and great culture. So if people are interested in that for their teams with workshops, keynotes, et cetera, happy to explore.

So yeah, really am.

Greg McDonough: Yeah. And we do have a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, right? We're all sort of thirsting around this endurance mindset that listened to this show. And so, um, we didn't really explore that side of it. And it's a, I'm really happy, Matt, that you mentioned it because it is those principles. Just beating the 0.1 more time. Really

Matt Dixon: Yeah.

Greg McDonough: team

performance and longevity and, and really apply in that business setting and, and being able to bring that into a team, not just a team that's outside competing, but a team inside competing. that's a real asset and as an entrepreneur, myself and a guy who likes to build teams, I can attest to that. it's been awesome having you on the show. Audience members, if you like the show, please subscribe. Please give us a thumbs up, reach out to Matt, follow him on Instagram and, and what he's doing out there. [00:39:00] It is a completely, not completely different but a really refreshing mindset and methodology and, um. I, I could see why you have long-term athletes and executives that work with you and your team because it's, it's a very refreshing approach. Anyway, I could talk to you for hours. It's been great having you on the show.

Matt Dixon: Appreciate, thanks for having me. Appreciate it and best of luck to everyone out there and, uh, any leaders you wanna do it, we're happy to send you a brochure or give you information on that stuff as well. So just reach out, no pressure from mine there. But Greg, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

It was a fun conversation.

Greg McDonough: It's, it was my pleasure. And, and a lot of those, all those links are down in the show notes too, if you didn't pick 'em up off firsthand. So just scroll down and you'll find them. Perfect.

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