August 10, 2021 • 36 mins
The days of working out, looking in the mirror or stepping on a scale to track your progress are over. Connected apps, virtual trainers and AI-driven personalized training aren’t in the faraway future of fitness – they are happening now. Exos, one of the leaders in connected fitness, is combining advanced training techniques, 5G connectivity and personalized data to leverage technology that creates human connections and positive change in their users’ bodies and minds.
In this episode of The Restless Ones, we sit with Yvette Pasqua, CTO of Exos. Yvette’s growth mindset and drive for continuous improvement has allowed her to tackle challenges across a successful career in tech – even upon joining Exos in a world of change and Covid. We’ll hear why she places adaptability and flexibility at the top of her list when it comes to the skills she leverages and searches for in her team, and how she considers operational skills just as important as technical ones to get the job done.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We're in the positive behavior changing business and that's hard,
and we need this product to be with our coaches
and members everywhere they go, frankly, in order to do
a good job with that. So in addition to their
wearable devices which are collecting data, we need to be
there with them as well. So the more reliable, the
(00:23):
faster these devices can collect and transmit data, the better
that we can be at those kind of motivational and
behavior changing experiences. Welcome to the restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
I've spent more than a decade really learning about technology,
(00:43):
what makes it tick, and then describing and explaining that
to my audience. But it's the conversations with the world's
most unconventional thinkers, the leaders at the intersection of technology
and business, that fascinate me the most. In partnership with
T Mobile for Business US, I explore the unique set
of challenges that see I O S and C t
(01:04):
o S face from advancements in cloud and edge computing,
software as a service, Internet of Things, and of course
five G. We are often left wondering how the leading
minds and business continue to thrive. Let's find out. Our
(01:24):
guest today is a Vette Pasqual, chief Technology Officer of Exos.
Exos calls itself the human Performance company, and it focuses
on delivering products for athletes, coaches, and other customers to
maximize their results when they seek to improve their health, fitness,
and athletic performance. The company uses data to refine approaches,
(01:46):
correct mistakes, and give customers the boost they need to
achieve their goals, even if those goals involved reaching Olympic
level expertise. A VET joined as exos is Chief Technology
Officer in twenty twenty. You might think joining a company
focused on fitness and performance during a pandemic would be challenging.
(02:08):
You'd be right, but a VET is not the type
to shy away from a challenge. She meets them eagerly.
We sat down to talk about her background and perspective
on Tech Vet. Thank you so much for joining us
on The Restless Ones. It's truly a pleasure to have
you as a guest on the show. Thank you so much, Donathan,
(02:28):
I'm excited to chat with you. Well, one thing I
love to do at the very top is just get
a little more background on the people I'm speaking with,
kind of understand where they're coming from. Their perspectives on things.
And I love to start off by just asking, how
did you first get interested in technology and then in
(02:48):
software in particular. Yeah. Yes, Other than being a kid
and writing some basic programs in my dork camp that
I went to for many many summers, which I loved,
the first real thing I did was learned how to
build websites in my college dorm room, and I just
really fell in love and really got obsessed with the
ability to just make things that anyone anywhere could see.
(03:10):
Way back then, in in the mid nineties, it was
really new on that fast feedback loop between hitting save
when I wrote some code and seeing the thing I
made live and my friends being able to see it. It
It was felt like magic at the time. So that's
why I first got into it and fell in love
with that feeling. So so this is like the good
old days where you would be typing up an HTML
(03:31):
markup language and a text editor and then you would
save it and upload it to a server and then
open up the browser. Yeah, and and and you viewed
a Netscape navigator, right, So that was that was the
good old days for sure. And now I'm dating myself,
but that's that's totally okay, Well when did you When
did you decide to actually pursue tech as a career,
and what was your experience like doing that. I was
(03:55):
actually pre med in college. Even though I loved to
build websites in my dorm room, I had a couple
of part time jobs that I actually got paid to
build websites and do desktop support during college and and
loved it. But I was premed and took the m
casts and loved science. I took a year off and
I talked my way into a job as a software
consultant in and I was doing y two K testing
(04:21):
for Ernst and Young's payroll and HR system. But I
loved it, you know. I I loved writing code, I
loved collaborating with folks. I love seeing my work out there.
And I did that for about a year and I
loved it so much I kind of never looked back.
And I decided not to go to med school after
taking that year off. I took, you know, I took
a life off, and I couldn't see myself kind of
(04:44):
going back to school and giving up the software side
of things. So that's how I got into it. That's incredible,
Like this love sort of began while you're going to
what you describe as a dork camp, but I like
to think of as camp awesome, and then and then
blossoming into continued interest in college and then turning into
(05:06):
a career. One other thing that I thought was interesting
is that your career really coincides with some major, major
transformational changes in technology in general. You and I come
from an era where the personal computer was just becoming
a thing as we were young, right, and we were
it was that desktop experience. Everything was local. We then
(05:28):
started seeing things like bbs S and the birth of
the Internet. But you've seen things like the rise of
software as a service, which was, I mean, a truly
disruptive idea that went from software is something that lives
on the machine in front of you to software is
something that now is an ongoing service provided. What changes
have you sort of observed as you've progressed through your career.
(05:52):
What do you think are some of the really big
tent pole things in tech. I'm still so surprised when
I look back any plus years and today how fast
everything can happen now, whether you're talking about fast learning,
fast iteration, fast releasing, the production right fast downloading data
(06:13):
to your phone fast, installing an app on your phone
over you know, over your phone's internet. Everything is just
so much faster, and it lets folks in my field
frankly just like build better and better and better things.
Being able to buy almost anything my team needs to
build our product is so different than twenties something years ago,
(06:36):
where you're literally writing code to do all that stuff,
and it's taking you six months just to get the
plumbing in place before you're actually building the customer experiences.
But you know, especially smaller teams, going from zero to
one that I've done a little bit recently, but when
I was the CTO meet up, you know, even even
going from five to fifty million members. When I was there,
(06:59):
it was essentially the same thing. Being able to buy
most of that plumbing. Buying features too that you want
to ship to your customers has been you know, just
so amazing. Almost everything is commoditized now, even building features
that are standard like logging or chat or really any
features you want to cobble together to create a great
customer experience. And then the awesome part is you can
(07:23):
do that really fast, but then you can refine it,
you launch, you get data right away, you can iterate
that day, and you know, you can launch multiple times
a day to production and just make things better over time.
So I'm just at so grateful in and off of
how quickly every part of the product development process can
happen these days. And it's wild. You know, you and
(07:43):
I started our careers right when cloud computing was just
starting to become something that dominates the tech industry today.
And this idea of these bits and pieces that you
can take and use as parts of your foundation. It
really speaks to sort of the hacker ethos as well,
this idea of seeing how things work and then tweaking
(08:07):
them so that they work in a different way away
perhaps that wasn't necessarily intended at first, but then can
create something entirely new. Yeah, just just you know, being
able to take any of the technologies out there and
like you're saying, like tweak that customer experience in a
way that's different or just awesome, or that customers love
or drive value. Like that's what gets me most excited
(08:30):
these days, just figuring out like how can we make
customers feel great and feel like what they're doing is
helping their lives, Like really driving real human and rel
life value for them using technology and all those things
you can call together and tweak for sure. Well shifting
a little bit. When did you join Exos? Yeah, so
(08:51):
it seems like yesterday, but I joined last September. I
guess we've all been cooped up this year. So the
year has flown, but it's it's been almost a year now,
and it's it's been a great ride so far. And
I imagine that that must have been interesting too. I mean,
obviously was such a tumultuous year. What was it like
coming into an organization during a year like that? Was
(09:12):
that organization already in sort of a transformational period? Oh yeah,
so much right. So, for over twenty years, Exos has
been training everyone from elite athletes two employees at about
a quarter of the fortune on companies around the world.
We have hundreds of U corporate wellness and fitness centers
(09:35):
that we run, and none of those were open when
I joined in September of last year, or very few
of them. So I joined right as the company was
in both the middle of a transformation to make sure
that we could provide virtual coaching surfaces over technology, and
the team had had very quickly launched a couple of
(09:57):
products and two or three months as well as figuring
out how to navigate the waters of having to close
all of our physical facilities. We still had some folks
trickling in, but I've seen both closing down but also reopening.
This year has been a big year of reopening, and
a lot of our clients are reopening faster than we thought.
Some of them are reopening slower than they thought. It's
(10:19):
it's it's very specific to regions and and our clients workforces.
Our performance institutes have been going strong, you know, pretty
much all year. The elite athletes are all back. I've
been really fortunate, I think, to see a lot about
the business uncovered in the last year i've been here. Yeah,
it sounds that's more than being thrown into the deep end.
(10:41):
I mean, the adaptability and flexibility must have been like
top of the list of things that you needed to
have close at hand whenever dealing on just a day
to day basis definitely at T Mobile. For business, unconventional
(11:02):
thinking means we see things differently, so you can focus
on what matters most. Where some see another small town,
we see businesses in need of connectivity, so we built
the largest five G network to cover cities, towns, and
the most interstate miles in between. Where some see a
caller in a queue, we see an opportunity for our
experts to provide solutions without transfers. Where some see another
(11:25):
virtual meeting, we see five G enabling wireless real time
translations almost anywhere you do business. Our unique approach has
made us the leader in five G, number one in
customer satisfaction, and a partner who includes first class benefits
like five G and every plan so you get it
all without trade offs. Unconventional thinking is better for business.
(11:45):
T Mobile for Business Open Signal Awards T Mobile as
America's passes five G network USA five G User Experience
report you like one capable device required covers not available
in some areas. Some uses may require certain planner feature.
See mobile dot com. For JD Power Award information, visit
JD power dot com Slash Awards. Yeah, I hit it
(12:05):
off with a vet right away and wanted to learn
more about her views about the role of leadership and
what one should focus on in order to be a
successful and effective leader. And I'm really curious about how
your past experiences have shaped your leadership philosophy. Can you
sort of sum up how you you view the role
(12:28):
of leadership and your approach to it? Sure to be honest,
I hope we start by thinking about how much I've learned.
I've learned from so many people I've worked with. I've
learned from so many mistakes, some really big failures that
I've made. One of the values at Exos that's been
core for the last twenty years. We we call continuous improvement.
(12:49):
In the tech industry, it's often called growth mindset. You know,
Jeff Bezos famously talks about failing fast, and to me,
that's really just been a foundation of what motivates me
and gets me excited and the cultures that I want
to build. And I think, you know, that foundation really
sets the stage for so many other just kind of
(13:10):
positive team culture and practices. You know, eventually two products
that customers love. One of the practices is just constant generation,
like constantly going hard at learning what's not working and
trying to make things better and better, both small improvements,
but also that's you know, that's kind of how you
make the bigger leafs as well. So that really grounds
(13:30):
me from a leadership philosophy perspective, and I think you've
just touched on something that was going to ask about next.
But what do you think is the biggest challenge for
someone in your role? Yeah, I mean similar to how
I think, like real estate folks say location, location, location, Right,
I still come down fundamentally to communication, communication, communication, especially
(13:52):
communication across the other teams other functions. Really thinking of
my exact team as my first team, and the communication
and the understanding and the trust that needs to be
built there. When you have that the teams below you
can communicate well and function well. It's the only other
(14:12):
thing I mentioned about about skills. It's just I'm a
huge operator. I think it's really important to be able
to run an efficient operation and being able to focus
on both the like vision, strategy, communication, but also to
be able to execute and operate on that. Especially in
the tech world, you need both of those things. If
you don't do both, you might talk a great game
(14:34):
and not execute. And if you can only execute and
not inspire people and set vision and strategy, your long
term growth is really going to be hindered. So I'm
constantly just trying to get better in both those areas well.
It's nice to hear someone talk about long term growth too,
because frequently it's that next quarter or next financial year
(14:54):
that you're hearing about. Maybe you'll hear about someone do
a two year or three year and and obviously in
tech that can be challenging in any way because things
that landscape changes so quickly. But having this sort of
strategic vision from a business perspective is so so valuable
and so nice to hear because I'm sure a lot
of our listeners have had an experience of working with
(15:16):
an organization where there was this pervading sense that no
one really knows what's coming down the line, and it
just creates this sense of trepidation and anxiety, and it's
really hard to motivate people in that respect. I imagine
that a big challenge of being a CTO is developing
different communications styles so that you can communicate effectively with
(15:38):
different audiences. Definitely, I have to kind of switch on
the different sales modes, right and and not sales in
a bad way, but really just storytelling and kind of
authentically selling your vision and what you know and what
you've talked about with with other folks and providing the
information the context it's it's definitely different depending on the
(16:01):
group you're communicating with. For sure, Well, obviously communication the
top of the top of mind for your skill set.
But how do you identify potential leaders in organizations when
you're looking to bring in that next generation of leaders?
What what qualities do you find being particularly important? So
(16:23):
I kind of lean on a couple of things. One is,
I'm a huge fan of leaders having a diversity of
experiences and what I mean by that, And this is
a little bit controversial, but I really love when leaders
have worked in consulting or client services in some way,
have worked at a variety of different companies or worked
(16:46):
with a variety of different companies, because I think you
learn so many different ways to do things, and you
build up a toolkit of you know, there's not one
dogmatic right way right and folks who work, you know,
ten years at FANGS, they build up a totally different
tool kit of being able to do things in an
(17:08):
amazingly great way at scale, and it suits those companies
just so so well, and they're so successful because of it.
They've become such well oiled machines. And then, you know,
the second thing I lean on is actually building a
leadership team with the right team composition, So instead of
looking for the same one, two or three things and
in each of my team members, you know, whether it's
(17:31):
frankly like technical architecture or communication, or being able to
command a room as a leader and motivate, being able
to operate really well and execute and deliver, being able
to develop a strategy or vision right, these are all
things that as a leadership team you need to be
able to do. But I'm a big believer in trying
(17:54):
to find the right composition where there's you know, a
team of three, five, whatever your leadership team is, eight people,
where um, you have people who can do one or
two of those things really really well, and and the
rest of the folks compliment. I love that Ocean's eleven approach. Right,
You're you're filling out like like you're looking at where
(18:15):
might there be a gap in the competencies that I
really need to be effective, and who here exemplifies a
real strength in that competency, and where can I maybe
fit that person in or create a role. I think
that's a really frank and wise approach, something you don't
frequently here. You know, you see people grow that way
(18:36):
too where they're they're paired with folks who do have
competencies that maybe the person doesn't have well. And I
also loved your discussion about the diversity of perspectives. I
think that's incredibly important. I mean, having an understanding of
how different departments might view something is invaluable because again,
(18:56):
I have been in organizations where every thing is so
siloed that no one really understands why anyone else is
doing the things they're doing. I couldn't agree more. You know,
one of the biggest keys to launching products that people love,
frankly is working cross functionally. Like engineers can't deliver that
designers can't deliver that product. People can't deliver that marketing
(19:20):
people can't deliver that sales folks can't deliver You can't
deliver those things in a silo. But really working is
one team and making that team your first team and
not your marketing team or not your engineering team is
just something that I've seen be a huge unlock in
the past, and it's hard to do that. Like you said,
(19:40):
most companies easily fall into the anti pattern of not
doing that and working in those functional silos because that's
how folks are organized, and I feel like I'm constantly
reminding myself and my teams to you know, push ourselves
out of those silos and like really work as one
(20:00):
team and like, just like you said, understand what they're
doing and why and how and and you know, really
become a complete crafts person. You know, if possible, it's
certainly it certainly heads off the problem of having almost
adversarial relationships between departments, because I mean, I've seen it's
(20:21):
heartbreaking because you know, the individually, they know what I'm
doing is important for the mission of the organization, but
I'm having to I'm doing my work in spite of
what these other people are doing, which seems to be
an impediment to achieving the mission, and and the other
group's thinking the same thing at the same time. And
uh and yeah, avoiding that I think is absolutely important. Yeah,
(20:44):
and it's so hard to do consistently, right, Like, I
just got feedback from our head of people, you know,
a couple of months ago that I was doing that
and other people were noticing, and you know, I I
thought to myself, oh boy, I totally am doing that.
And I have been you know, understanding and talking with
the CMO enough and really building that trust and really
(21:06):
showing that cross functional alignment. And I gotta practice what
I preach. I really focused a lot of my like
mental energy and making sure I got better in that
area in that particular time. Right in this, like you said,
this really fast moving year. I'm at a new company,
and I got some great feedback. And it's a constant work.
You can't just think you're you're going to coast in
that area. Ever, It's not like you wake up one
(21:28):
morning you're like, well, solve that problem, to solve that
problem that every company faces every day. Well, in that respect,
I do have another question, and which in how is
Excess unique among the companies that you've worked for in
the past, And in what ways would you say is
it similar to other companies you've worked with? Yeah, so,
(21:50):
I think one way it's unique is that our our
software product is really based on our members achieving their goals,
becoming healthier, becoming more fit it, you know, improving their wellness,
getting motivated, having a positive outlook. And it's kind of
real human connection between our world class coaches and practitioners
(22:12):
and our members. And when I was looking for a
new job, last year. You know, I kind of became
hooked on this whole idea of building software that that
really helped people in real life and helped their real
lives as opposed to just getting them to click a
like button and scroll of feed over and over again.
(22:32):
And there aren't that many companies out there that tech
is enabling like real positive change. I kind of became
hooked on tech is not the end goal in products
when I worked at meet up, and you know, Exos
is really squarely in that camp as well. And while
there's plenty of missions that that say tech does that,
(22:53):
to find a company that truly technology is not the
end game. Our products really enable our coaches to motivate
and help our members achieve their goals and become healthier.
And it's really an enabler for that, an enabler for
that human connection. That's one thing I think is unique
and different and we and we need to approach how
(23:14):
we build our product that way. Again, the teams can't
fall back into just building product for the products sake.
We always have to remember that it's for that human
connection and if we're not achieving that, then it doesn't
matter how great the product is frankly, and I think
you know that it's similar in the extent that we're
(23:34):
going from zero to one with some new virtual coaching
products that we've been building this past year, and all
the you know, all the things you know about going
from zero to one and and product development practices and
learning quickly and talking with your customers, like all those
things still apply. You know. I hired an amazing head
(23:56):
of product that partners with me this year, and it's
been really fun but also familiar to build some green
field products here and I felt a lot of support
from the exact team, especially from the CEO and and CFO,
and that feels very normal, very positive, but also very
much like what a healthy startup product environment should should
(24:20):
feel like. So can you tell me a little bit
more about the sort of technologies that your company is using.
You touched on virtual coaches. I would love to hear
more about that. So, like I said, we really view
technology as the means to enable our world world class
coaches and science backed coaching methodology that we've developed for
the past twenty plus years. But it's not Technology isn't
(24:43):
the product, and it's it's not the way we help
people achieve their goals. It's it's the way we connect
those folks. For us, data is so key. So one
of the first things that I did when I joined
was higher ahead of data as well and really build
out that capability to be stronger and stronger. We have
(25:04):
a vision to be able to integrate. You know, we
we view ourselves far more like a performance and wellness
OS of sorts rather than say a direct competitor to
maybe an Apple Fitness Plus or or a Peloton. We're
not in the hardware making business. We're never gonna create
(25:24):
the breath and success of content like an Apple or
a Peloton who have way more resources to pay and
produce content. But our coaches can help you find all
of those things, and our software through personalization and data algorithms,
can help you come up with the best game plan
and practices for you that may utilize some of the
(25:48):
things that you're doing, like maybe Peloton or or Apple
or whatever with other services and products that that we
know about. And so we we see ourselves really integrating
with best in class services and hardware, definitely wearables, being
able to integrate with wearables, and for our coaches to
(26:09):
get that pretty rich and fast loop of data back
really helps them be better coaches, whether it's sleep data
or heart rate data or whatever it is. So we're
looking at being a pretty agnostic partner, integrating with hardware
products and services wherever it helps our coaches be better
(26:31):
coaches for our members. And this is fascinating to me
because one of the other technological changes I would say
that has happened over the last you know, decade, really
is the rise of the quantifiable, where we now have
all these pieces of technology that can quantify different aspects
of our lives, whether it's our heart rate or oxidation
rate or the quality of sleep we're getting. You know,
(26:55):
we we really saw that takeoff maybe about five or
six years ago. But the fact that now that is
also paired with the capabilities of big data systems where
we're able to actually look for meaningful information within this
just massive data that comes in. How does that all
play a part? Is this like part of the strategy
(27:17):
is just mining that information to find the things that
are are most impactful and important and provide the best
course to achieve the goals of your customers. You know, definitely, Um,
we want our customers to be all in right, we
want them to actively want to share this data with us.
(27:39):
We want them to see the value of it and
see the value that they're getting from a coaching perspective
from it. Since we're in the in the business of
humans and improving health outcomes and human performance, we follow
the gold standard of data privacy, data security. We're not
selling people's data, right, That's not our business model, so
(28:02):
so we take that really seriously. But yes, we want
to integrate with the data that that is available and
that they're generating so that we can help our coaches
scale and take away the mundane work in the coaching world,
but also recommend to them things that are algorithms are
(28:22):
seeing in the data someday, so you can imagine personalizing
game plans and coaching plans for our members. But I
I think there is likely more value in using data
to scale to a larger number of clients, but also
to be able to understand insights faster and more frequently
(28:46):
about how to better coach these folks. Well, and you
mentioned earlier about how a big transformation in tech is
just the speed at which we're able to do things
and the speed at which we're able to access things.
And one of the big components that I see now
that's unfolding. It's it's unrolling throughout the United States. Is
(29:06):
the rollout of five G and how that's enabling incredible
fast data throughput with very low latency with this this
sort of ecosystem where you have Internet of things devices
that are collecting data, you've got the back end systems
that are able to analyze data and make that something
that is actionable, whether it's with coaches or with members.
(29:30):
How does five G play a role in your strategy
moving forward? Yeah, it's it's great to think about it.
You know, we're in the human positive behavior changing business
and that's hard and relies on just like the right
amount of motivation, sometimes from a human coach, sometimes from
a software robot that can mimic a coach as best
(29:53):
as possible, but the right motivation, the right nudge at
the right time. And we need, we need this product
to be with our coaches and members everywhere they go, frankly,
in order to do a good job with that and
in order for them to really feel like it's helping
and driving that value for them. So in addition to
(30:14):
their wearable devices which are collecting data, we need to
be there with them as well. So the more reliable,
the faster these devices can collect and transmit data and
be there for our customers, the better that we can
be at those kind of motivational and behavior changing experiences
(30:35):
that we can deliver to them. So, frankly, like, the
better those pipes can be for us, the more successful
we're going to be in in someone's life. And I
imagine there are going to be some incredible opportunities moving forward.
I mean, when you're talking about working with professional level
athletes or Olympic athletes, you're talking about a level of
(30:58):
performance that goes well beyond the company softball league here
at I Heeart so which I'm sure you're back clean
up that and and are really racking in the doubles
as a lefty. As a lefty. If everyone just comes in,
they're just they're like, all right, let's all just stroll
in about eight steps because Jonathan's not going to knock
(31:18):
it out of the park. But but you know, like
when you're talking about that level and you start to
see the potential to partner with companies that are creating
more precise sensors for very very specific types of athletic activity,
and the ability to collect that information in real time
and analyze it in real time and act on it
(31:39):
in real time. So that like if you're an Olympic
athlete who discovers that that they can get an edge
by just doing something just a little bit different and
they find out right at that moment, I can't imagine
how valuable that information has to be to those people.
It absolutely is. And you know, I've learned a lot
talking fair coaches and and we have neuroscientists, nutritionists, other
(32:04):
practitioners on on staff in addition to coaches and trainers
and physical therapists and that sort of thing. And we
have a four pillar methodology mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery
and sleep isn't in recovery. And and I've learned a
lot from them about how, especially in the mindset and
recovery pillars, Like you know, athletes their whole lives have
(32:27):
been going hard at kind of the movement, the fitness,
and nutrition. There's a lot out there, but are more
integrated approach, especially with mindset and recovery, really helps them
with that last, so to speak, that's hard for them
to get in the context of their movement and their
nutrition also, so being able to give those athletes that
(32:50):
edge with a more integrated approach is just so so
helpful for them. We've just seen it in the results
and the outcomes, and why why those elite athletes coming
back to us year over year. I couldn't let a
vet go without asking her one more thing? And what
is a challenge you think every organization faces. I'm sure
(33:14):
some organs nail this, but at every company, at least
I've been at UM, I've learned the hard lesson of
how hard it is to really build a culture on
optimizing for outcomes, So optimizing for real, measurable business results
and giving teams clear direction on those and letting them
run and problem solve versus optimizing for outputs and UM
(33:39):
optimizing for X feature delivered on why date? If you
optimize for outcomes, UM, you're empowering your teams to figure
out the features and the dates. But really, you know,
as a leadership team, really what you're optimizing for are
the business results that you and your board know you
need to be to be successful. Versus if you're optimizing
(34:00):
for deliverables, you actually never know if you're going to
hit those results. So that's been something that I've just
like constantly learned over and over again and think a
lot of folks face that. Yeah, I think optimizing for
outcomes sounds like let engineers be engineers. They're the problem solvers.
Let them solve the problems. Yeah. Let the teams be
(34:21):
problem solving teams exactly, especially those cross functional teams. Engineers
can't do it on their own. Really, empowering those cross
functional teams is to me like the sweet spot of
a leader. If you can figure out how to do that, well,
you're like you're and higher great people. You're gonna get
really good outcomes and business results that. It has been
a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much,
(34:45):
Thanks so much. This was super fun, Jonathan, and I
really really appreciate it was great to connect with you
about you know that the timing of our love for
tech in those early days super cool. Thank you. I
truly enjoyed my conversation with a Vet. Apart from bonding
over the sometimes tedious experience of building out a website
(35:08):
in HTML, I loved her views about acknowledging failure and
learning from it and not being afraid to make mistakes
as long as you are responsible and how you handle them.
I am eager to see how the future of tech
can enable us to become our best selves. I think
companies like Exos and leaders like a VET will be
a big part of that. Thank you for listening to
(35:31):
the restless ones. Be sure to tune into future episodes.
We're all have more conversations with leaders in tech who
are shaping the future of how technology and business intertwined.
I'm Jonathan Strickland at T Mobile. For business, unconventional thinking
means we see things differently so you can focus on
(35:52):
what matters most. That's why we've become the leader in
five G, number one in customer satisfaction, and a partner
who includes five in every plan so you get it all.
Unconventional thinking is better for business. Open Signal Awards TEA
Mobile as America's pasts FIVED Network US say five D
User Experience of the the Court TORF twenty two in one
capable device acquired coverage not available in some areas. Some
uses may acquire certain plant in features. Site mobile dot
(36:12):
Com for JD Powers twenty twenty award information Visit JD
power dot Com. Splash Awards
We're in the positive behavior changing business and that's hard,
and we need this product to be with our coaches
and members everywhere they go, frankly, in order to do
a good job with that. So in addition to their
wearable devices which are collecting data, we need to be
there with them as well. So the more reliable, the
(00:23):
faster these devices can collect and transmit data, the better
that we can be at those kind of motivational and
behavior changing experiences. Welcome to the restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
I've spent more than a decade really learning about technology,
(00:43):
what makes it tick, and then describing and explaining that
to my audience. But it's the conversations with the world's
most unconventional thinkers, the leaders at the intersection of technology
and business, that fascinate me the most. In partnership with
T Mobile for Business US, I explore the unique set
of challenges that see I O S and C t
(01:04):
o S face from advancements in cloud and edge computing,
software as a service, Internet of Things, and of course
five G. We are often left wondering how the leading
minds and business continue to thrive. Let's find out. Our
(01:24):
guest today is a Vette Pasqual, chief Technology Officer of Exos.
Exos calls itself the human Performance company, and it focuses
on delivering products for athletes, coaches, and other customers to
maximize their results when they seek to improve their health, fitness,
and athletic performance. The company uses data to refine approaches,
(01:46):
correct mistakes, and give customers the boost they need to
achieve their goals, even if those goals involved reaching Olympic
level expertise. A VET joined as exos is Chief Technology
Officer in twenty twenty. You might think joining a company
focused on fitness and performance during a pandemic would be challenging.
(02:08):
You'd be right, but a VET is not the type
to shy away from a challenge. She meets them eagerly.
We sat down to talk about her background and perspective
on Tech Vet. Thank you so much for joining us
on The Restless Ones. It's truly a pleasure to have
you as a guest on the show. Thank you so much, Donathan,
(02:28):
I'm excited to chat with you. Well, one thing I
love to do at the very top is just get
a little more background on the people I'm speaking with,
kind of understand where they're coming from. Their perspectives on things.
And I love to start off by just asking, how
did you first get interested in technology and then in
(02:48):
software in particular. Yeah. Yes, Other than being a kid
and writing some basic programs in my dork camp that
I went to for many many summers, which I loved,
the first real thing I did was learned how to
build websites in my college dorm room, and I just
really fell in love and really got obsessed with the
ability to just make things that anyone anywhere could see.
(03:10):
Way back then, in in the mid nineties, it was
really new on that fast feedback loop between hitting save
when I wrote some code and seeing the thing I
made live and my friends being able to see it. It
It was felt like magic at the time. So that's
why I first got into it and fell in love
with that feeling. So so this is like the good
old days where you would be typing up an HTML
(03:31):
markup language and a text editor and then you would
save it and upload it to a server and then
open up the browser. Yeah, and and and you viewed
a Netscape navigator, right, So that was that was the
good old days for sure. And now I'm dating myself,
but that's that's totally okay, Well when did you When
did you decide to actually pursue tech as a career,
and what was your experience like doing that. I was
(03:55):
actually pre med in college. Even though I loved to
build websites in my dorm room, I had a couple
of part time jobs that I actually got paid to
build websites and do desktop support during college and and
loved it. But I was premed and took the m
casts and loved science. I took a year off and
I talked my way into a job as a software
consultant in and I was doing y two K testing
(04:21):
for Ernst and Young's payroll and HR system. But I
loved it, you know. I I loved writing code, I
loved collaborating with folks. I love seeing my work out there.
And I did that for about a year and I
loved it so much I kind of never looked back.
And I decided not to go to med school after
taking that year off. I took, you know, I took
a life off, and I couldn't see myself kind of
(04:44):
going back to school and giving up the software side
of things. So that's how I got into it. That's incredible,
Like this love sort of began while you're going to
what you describe as a dork camp, but I like
to think of as camp awesome, and then and then
blossoming into continued interest in college and then turning into
(05:06):
a career. One other thing that I thought was interesting
is that your career really coincides with some major, major
transformational changes in technology in general. You and I come
from an era where the personal computer was just becoming
a thing as we were young, right, and we were
it was that desktop experience. Everything was local. We then
(05:28):
started seeing things like bbs S and the birth of
the Internet. But you've seen things like the rise of
software as a service, which was, I mean, a truly
disruptive idea that went from software is something that lives
on the machine in front of you to software is
something that now is an ongoing service provided. What changes
have you sort of observed as you've progressed through your career.
(05:52):
What do you think are some of the really big
tent pole things in tech. I'm still so surprised when
I look back any plus years and today how fast
everything can happen now, whether you're talking about fast learning,
fast iteration, fast releasing, the production right fast downloading data
(06:13):
to your phone fast, installing an app on your phone
over you know, over your phone's internet. Everything is just
so much faster, and it lets folks in my field
frankly just like build better and better and better things.
Being able to buy almost anything my team needs to
build our product is so different than twenties something years ago,
(06:36):
where you're literally writing code to do all that stuff,
and it's taking you six months just to get the
plumbing in place before you're actually building the customer experiences.
But you know, especially smaller teams, going from zero to
one that I've done a little bit recently, but when
I was the CTO meet up, you know, even even
going from five to fifty million members. When I was there,
(06:59):
it was essentially the same thing. Being able to buy
most of that plumbing. Buying features too that you want
to ship to your customers has been you know, just
so amazing. Almost everything is commoditized now, even building features
that are standard like logging or chat or really any
features you want to cobble together to create a great
customer experience. And then the awesome part is you can
(07:23):
do that really fast, but then you can refine it,
you launch, you get data right away, you can iterate
that day, and you know, you can launch multiple times
a day to production and just make things better over time.
So I'm just at so grateful in and off of
how quickly every part of the product development process can
happen these days. And it's wild. You know, you and
(07:43):
I started our careers right when cloud computing was just
starting to become something that dominates the tech industry today.
And this idea of these bits and pieces that you
can take and use as parts of your foundation. It
really speaks to sort of the hacker ethos as well,
this idea of seeing how things work and then tweaking
(08:07):
them so that they work in a different way away
perhaps that wasn't necessarily intended at first, but then can
create something entirely new. Yeah, just just you know, being
able to take any of the technologies out there and
like you're saying, like tweak that customer experience in a
way that's different or just awesome, or that customers love
or drive value. Like that's what gets me most excited
(08:30):
these days, just figuring out like how can we make
customers feel great and feel like what they're doing is
helping their lives, Like really driving real human and rel
life value for them using technology and all those things
you can call together and tweak for sure. Well shifting
a little bit. When did you join Exos? Yeah, so
(08:51):
it seems like yesterday, but I joined last September. I
guess we've all been cooped up this year. So the
year has flown, but it's it's been almost a year now,
and it's it's been a great ride so far. And
I imagine that that must have been interesting too. I mean,
obviously was such a tumultuous year. What was it like
coming into an organization during a year like that? Was
(09:12):
that organization already in sort of a transformational period? Oh yeah,
so much right. So, for over twenty years, Exos has
been training everyone from elite athletes two employees at about
a quarter of the fortune on companies around the world.
We have hundreds of U corporate wellness and fitness centers
(09:35):
that we run, and none of those were open when
I joined in September of last year, or very few
of them. So I joined right as the company was
in both the middle of a transformation to make sure
that we could provide virtual coaching surfaces over technology, and
the team had had very quickly launched a couple of
(09:57):
products and two or three months as well as figuring
out how to navigate the waters of having to close
all of our physical facilities. We still had some folks
trickling in, but I've seen both closing down but also reopening.
This year has been a big year of reopening, and
a lot of our clients are reopening faster than we thought.
Some of them are reopening slower than they thought. It's
(10:19):
it's it's very specific to regions and and our clients workforces.
Our performance institutes have been going strong, you know, pretty
much all year. The elite athletes are all back. I've
been really fortunate, I think, to see a lot about
the business uncovered in the last year i've been here. Yeah,
it sounds that's more than being thrown into the deep end.
(10:41):
I mean, the adaptability and flexibility must have been like
top of the list of things that you needed to
have close at hand whenever dealing on just a day
to day basis definitely at T Mobile. For business, unconventional
(11:02):
thinking means we see things differently, so you can focus
on what matters most. Where some see another small town,
we see businesses in need of connectivity, so we built
the largest five G network to cover cities, towns, and
the most interstate miles in between. Where some see a
caller in a queue, we see an opportunity for our
experts to provide solutions without transfers. Where some see another
(11:25):
virtual meeting, we see five G enabling wireless real time
translations almost anywhere you do business. Our unique approach has
made us the leader in five G, number one in
customer satisfaction, and a partner who includes first class benefits
like five G and every plan so you get it
all without trade offs. Unconventional thinking is better for business.
(11:45):
T Mobile for Business Open Signal Awards T Mobile as
America's passes five G network USA five G User Experience
report you like one capable device required covers not available
in some areas. Some uses may require certain planner feature.
See mobile dot com. For JD Power Award information, visit
JD power dot com Slash Awards. Yeah, I hit it
(12:05):
off with a vet right away and wanted to learn
more about her views about the role of leadership and
what one should focus on in order to be a
successful and effective leader. And I'm really curious about how
your past experiences have shaped your leadership philosophy. Can you
sort of sum up how you you view the role
(12:28):
of leadership and your approach to it? Sure to be honest,
I hope we start by thinking about how much I've learned.
I've learned from so many people I've worked with. I've
learned from so many mistakes, some really big failures that
I've made. One of the values at Exos that's been
core for the last twenty years. We we call continuous improvement.
(12:49):
In the tech industry, it's often called growth mindset. You know,
Jeff Bezos famously talks about failing fast, and to me,
that's really just been a foundation of what motivates me
and gets me excited and the cultures that I want
to build. And I think, you know, that foundation really
sets the stage for so many other just kind of
(13:10):
positive team culture and practices. You know, eventually two products
that customers love. One of the practices is just constant generation,
like constantly going hard at learning what's not working and
trying to make things better and better, both small improvements,
but also that's you know, that's kind of how you
make the bigger leafs as well. So that really grounds
(13:30):
me from a leadership philosophy perspective, and I think you've
just touched on something that was going to ask about next.
But what do you think is the biggest challenge for
someone in your role? Yeah, I mean similar to how
I think, like real estate folks say location, location, location, Right,
I still come down fundamentally to communication, communication, communication, especially
(13:52):
communication across the other teams other functions. Really thinking of
my exact team as my first team, and the communication
and the understanding and the trust that needs to be
built there. When you have that the teams below you
can communicate well and function well. It's the only other
(14:12):
thing I mentioned about about skills. It's just I'm a
huge operator. I think it's really important to be able
to run an efficient operation and being able to focus
on both the like vision, strategy, communication, but also to
be able to execute and operate on that. Especially in
the tech world, you need both of those things. If
you don't do both, you might talk a great game
(14:34):
and not execute. And if you can only execute and
not inspire people and set vision and strategy, your long
term growth is really going to be hindered. So I'm
constantly just trying to get better in both those areas well.
It's nice to hear someone talk about long term growth too,
because frequently it's that next quarter or next financial year
(14:54):
that you're hearing about. Maybe you'll hear about someone do
a two year or three year and and obviously in
tech that can be challenging in any way because things
that landscape changes so quickly. But having this sort of
strategic vision from a business perspective is so so valuable
and so nice to hear because I'm sure a lot
of our listeners have had an experience of working with
(15:16):
an organization where there was this pervading sense that no
one really knows what's coming down the line, and it
just creates this sense of trepidation and anxiety, and it's
really hard to motivate people in that respect. I imagine
that a big challenge of being a CTO is developing
different communications styles so that you can communicate effectively with
(15:38):
different audiences. Definitely, I have to kind of switch on
the different sales modes, right and and not sales in
a bad way, but really just storytelling and kind of
authentically selling your vision and what you know and what
you've talked about with with other folks and providing the
information the context it's it's definitely different depending on the
(16:01):
group you're communicating with. For sure, Well, obviously communication the
top of the top of mind for your skill set.
But how do you identify potential leaders in organizations when
you're looking to bring in that next generation of leaders?
What what qualities do you find being particularly important? So
(16:23):
I kind of lean on a couple of things. One is,
I'm a huge fan of leaders having a diversity of
experiences and what I mean by that, And this is
a little bit controversial, but I really love when leaders
have worked in consulting or client services in some way,
have worked at a variety of different companies or worked
(16:46):
with a variety of different companies, because I think you
learn so many different ways to do things, and you
build up a toolkit of you know, there's not one
dogmatic right way right and folks who work, you know,
ten years at FANGS, they build up a totally different
tool kit of being able to do things in an
(17:08):
amazingly great way at scale, and it suits those companies
just so so well, and they're so successful because of it.
They've become such well oiled machines. And then, you know,
the second thing I lean on is actually building a
leadership team with the right team composition, So instead of
looking for the same one, two or three things and
in each of my team members, you know, whether it's
(17:31):
frankly like technical architecture or communication, or being able to
command a room as a leader and motivate, being able
to operate really well and execute and deliver, being able
to develop a strategy or vision right, these are all
things that as a leadership team you need to be
able to do. But I'm a big believer in trying
(17:54):
to find the right composition where there's you know, a
team of three, five, whatever your leadership team is, eight people,
where um, you have people who can do one or
two of those things really really well, and and the
rest of the folks compliment. I love that Ocean's eleven approach. Right,
You're you're filling out like like you're looking at where
(18:15):
might there be a gap in the competencies that I
really need to be effective, and who here exemplifies a
real strength in that competency, and where can I maybe
fit that person in or create a role. I think
that's a really frank and wise approach, something you don't
frequently here. You know, you see people grow that way
(18:36):
too where they're they're paired with folks who do have
competencies that maybe the person doesn't have well. And I
also loved your discussion about the diversity of perspectives. I
think that's incredibly important. I mean, having an understanding of
how different departments might view something is invaluable because again,
(18:56):
I have been in organizations where every thing is so
siloed that no one really understands why anyone else is
doing the things they're doing. I couldn't agree more. You know,
one of the biggest keys to launching products that people love,
frankly is working cross functionally. Like engineers can't deliver that
designers can't deliver that product. People can't deliver that marketing
(19:20):
people can't deliver that sales folks can't deliver You can't
deliver those things in a silo. But really working is
one team and making that team your first team and
not your marketing team or not your engineering team is
just something that I've seen be a huge unlock in
the past, and it's hard to do that. Like you said,
(19:40):
most companies easily fall into the anti pattern of not
doing that and working in those functional silos because that's
how folks are organized, and I feel like I'm constantly
reminding myself and my teams to you know, push ourselves
out of those silos and like really work as one
(20:00):
team and like, just like you said, understand what they're
doing and why and how and and you know, really
become a complete crafts person. You know, if possible, it's
certainly it certainly heads off the problem of having almost
adversarial relationships between departments, because I mean, I've seen it's
(20:21):
heartbreaking because you know, the individually, they know what I'm
doing is important for the mission of the organization, but
I'm having to I'm doing my work in spite of
what these other people are doing, which seems to be
an impediment to achieving the mission, and and the other
group's thinking the same thing at the same time. And
uh and yeah, avoiding that I think is absolutely important. Yeah,
(20:44):
and it's so hard to do consistently, right, Like, I
just got feedback from our head of people, you know,
a couple of months ago that I was doing that
and other people were noticing, and you know, I I
thought to myself, oh boy, I totally am doing that.
And I have been you know, understanding and talking with
the CMO enough and really building that trust and really
(21:06):
showing that cross functional alignment. And I gotta practice what
I preach. I really focused a lot of my like
mental energy and making sure I got better in that
area in that particular time. Right in this, like you said,
this really fast moving year. I'm at a new company,
and I got some great feedback. And it's a constant work.
You can't just think you're you're going to coast in
that area. Ever, It's not like you wake up one
(21:28):
morning you're like, well, solve that problem, to solve that
problem that every company faces every day. Well, in that respect,
I do have another question, and which in how is
Excess unique among the companies that you've worked for in
the past, And in what ways would you say is
it similar to other companies you've worked with? Yeah, so,
(21:50):
I think one way it's unique is that our our
software product is really based on our members achieving their goals,
becoming healthier, becoming more fit it, you know, improving their wellness,
getting motivated, having a positive outlook. And it's kind of
real human connection between our world class coaches and practitioners
(22:12):
and our members. And when I was looking for a
new job, last year. You know, I kind of became
hooked on this whole idea of building software that that
really helped people in real life and helped their real
lives as opposed to just getting them to click a
like button and scroll of feed over and over again.
(22:32):
And there aren't that many companies out there that tech
is enabling like real positive change. I kind of became
hooked on tech is not the end goal in products
when I worked at meet up, and you know, Exos
is really squarely in that camp as well. And while
there's plenty of missions that that say tech does that,
(22:53):
to find a company that truly technology is not the
end game. Our products really enable our coaches to motivate
and help our members achieve their goals and become healthier.
And it's really an enabler for that, an enabler for
that human connection. That's one thing I think is unique
and different and we and we need to approach how
(23:14):
we build our product that way. Again, the teams can't
fall back into just building product for the products sake.
We always have to remember that it's for that human
connection and if we're not achieving that, then it doesn't
matter how great the product is frankly, and I think
you know that it's similar in the extent that we're
(23:34):
going from zero to one with some new virtual coaching
products that we've been building this past year, and all
the you know, all the things you know about going
from zero to one and and product development practices and
learning quickly and talking with your customers, like all those
things still apply. You know. I hired an amazing head
(23:56):
of product that partners with me this year, and it's
been really fun but also familiar to build some green
field products here and I felt a lot of support
from the exact team, especially from the CEO and and CFO,
and that feels very normal, very positive, but also very
much like what a healthy startup product environment should should
(24:20):
feel like. So can you tell me a little bit
more about the sort of technologies that your company is using.
You touched on virtual coaches. I would love to hear
more about that. So, like I said, we really view
technology as the means to enable our world world class
coaches and science backed coaching methodology that we've developed for
the past twenty plus years. But it's not Technology isn't
(24:43):
the product, and it's it's not the way we help
people achieve their goals. It's it's the way we connect
those folks. For us, data is so key. So one
of the first things that I did when I joined
was higher ahead of data as well and really build
out that capability to be stronger and stronger. We have
(25:04):
a vision to be able to integrate. You know, we
we view ourselves far more like a performance and wellness
OS of sorts rather than say a direct competitor to
maybe an Apple Fitness Plus or or a Peloton. We're
not in the hardware making business. We're never gonna create
(25:24):
the breath and success of content like an Apple or
a Peloton who have way more resources to pay and
produce content. But our coaches can help you find all
of those things, and our software through personalization and data algorithms,
can help you come up with the best game plan
and practices for you that may utilize some of the
(25:48):
things that you're doing, like maybe Peloton or or Apple
or whatever with other services and products that that we
know about. And so we we see ourselves really integrating
with best in class services and hardware, definitely wearables, being
able to integrate with wearables, and for our coaches to
(26:09):
get that pretty rich and fast loop of data back
really helps them be better coaches, whether it's sleep data
or heart rate data or whatever it is. So we're
looking at being a pretty agnostic partner, integrating with hardware
products and services wherever it helps our coaches be better
(26:31):
coaches for our members. And this is fascinating to me
because one of the other technological changes I would say
that has happened over the last you know, decade, really
is the rise of the quantifiable, where we now have
all these pieces of technology that can quantify different aspects
of our lives, whether it's our heart rate or oxidation
rate or the quality of sleep we're getting. You know,
(26:55):
we we really saw that takeoff maybe about five or
six years ago. But the fact that now that is
also paired with the capabilities of big data systems where
we're able to actually look for meaningful information within this
just massive data that comes in. How does that all
play a part? Is this like part of the strategy
(27:17):
is just mining that information to find the things that
are are most impactful and important and provide the best
course to achieve the goals of your customers. You know, definitely, Um,
we want our customers to be all in right, we
want them to actively want to share this data with us.
(27:39):
We want them to see the value of it and
see the value that they're getting from a coaching perspective
from it. Since we're in the in the business of
humans and improving health outcomes and human performance, we follow
the gold standard of data privacy, data security. We're not
selling people's data, right, That's not our business model, so
(28:02):
so we take that really seriously. But yes, we want
to integrate with the data that that is available and
that they're generating so that we can help our coaches
scale and take away the mundane work in the coaching world,
but also recommend to them things that are algorithms are
(28:22):
seeing in the data someday, so you can imagine personalizing
game plans and coaching plans for our members. But I
I think there is likely more value in using data
to scale to a larger number of clients, but also
to be able to understand insights faster and more frequently
(28:46):
about how to better coach these folks. Well, and you
mentioned earlier about how a big transformation in tech is
just the speed at which we're able to do things
and the speed at which we're able to access things.
And one of the big components that I see now
that's unfolding. It's it's unrolling throughout the United States. Is
(29:06):
the rollout of five G and how that's enabling incredible
fast data throughput with very low latency with this this
sort of ecosystem where you have Internet of things devices
that are collecting data, you've got the back end systems
that are able to analyze data and make that something
that is actionable, whether it's with coaches or with members.
(29:30):
How does five G play a role in your strategy
moving forward? Yeah, it's it's great to think about it.
You know, we're in the human positive behavior changing business
and that's hard and relies on just like the right
amount of motivation, sometimes from a human coach, sometimes from
a software robot that can mimic a coach as best
(29:53):
as possible, but the right motivation, the right nudge at
the right time. And we need, we need this product
to be with our coaches and members everywhere they go, frankly,
in order to do a good job with that and
in order for them to really feel like it's helping
and driving that value for them. So in addition to
(30:14):
their wearable devices which are collecting data, we need to
be there with them as well. So the more reliable,
the faster these devices can collect and transmit data and
be there for our customers, the better that we can
be at those kind of motivational and behavior changing experiences
(30:35):
that we can deliver to them. So, frankly, like, the
better those pipes can be for us, the more successful
we're going to be in in someone's life. And I
imagine there are going to be some incredible opportunities moving forward.
I mean, when you're talking about working with professional level
athletes or Olympic athletes, you're talking about a level of
(30:58):
performance that goes well beyond the company softball league here
at I Heeart so which I'm sure you're back clean
up that and and are really racking in the doubles
as a lefty. As a lefty. If everyone just comes in,
they're just they're like, all right, let's all just stroll
in about eight steps because Jonathan's not going to knock
(31:18):
it out of the park. But but you know, like
when you're talking about that level and you start to
see the potential to partner with companies that are creating
more precise sensors for very very specific types of athletic activity,
and the ability to collect that information in real time
and analyze it in real time and act on it
(31:39):
in real time. So that like if you're an Olympic
athlete who discovers that that they can get an edge
by just doing something just a little bit different and
they find out right at that moment, I can't imagine
how valuable that information has to be to those people.
It absolutely is. And you know, I've learned a lot
talking fair coaches and and we have neuroscientists, nutritionists, other
(32:04):
practitioners on on staff in addition to coaches and trainers
and physical therapists and that sort of thing. And we
have a four pillar methodology mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery
and sleep isn't in recovery. And and I've learned a
lot from them about how, especially in the mindset and
recovery pillars, Like you know, athletes their whole lives have
(32:27):
been going hard at kind of the movement, the fitness,
and nutrition. There's a lot out there, but are more
integrated approach, especially with mindset and recovery, really helps them
with that last, so to speak, that's hard for them
to get in the context of their movement and their
nutrition also, so being able to give those athletes that
(32:50):
edge with a more integrated approach is just so so
helpful for them. We've just seen it in the results
and the outcomes, and why why those elite athletes coming
back to us year over year. I couldn't let a
vet go without asking her one more thing? And what
is a challenge you think every organization faces. I'm sure
(33:14):
some organs nail this, but at every company, at least
I've been at UM, I've learned the hard lesson of
how hard it is to really build a culture on
optimizing for outcomes, So optimizing for real, measurable business results
and giving teams clear direction on those and letting them
run and problem solve versus optimizing for outputs and UM
(33:39):
optimizing for X feature delivered on why date? If you
optimize for outcomes, UM, you're empowering your teams to figure
out the features and the dates. But really, you know,
as a leadership team, really what you're optimizing for are
the business results that you and your board know you
need to be to be successful. Versus if you're optimizing
(34:00):
for deliverables, you actually never know if you're going to
hit those results. So that's been something that I've just
like constantly learned over and over again and think a
lot of folks face that. Yeah, I think optimizing for
outcomes sounds like let engineers be engineers. They're the problem solvers.
Let them solve the problems. Yeah. Let the teams be
(34:21):
problem solving teams exactly, especially those cross functional teams. Engineers
can't do it on their own. Really, empowering those cross
functional teams is to me like the sweet spot of
a leader. If you can figure out how to do that, well,
you're like you're and higher great people. You're gonna get
really good outcomes and business results that. It has been
a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much,
(34:45):
Thanks so much. This was super fun, Jonathan, and I
really really appreciate it was great to connect with you
about you know that the timing of our love for
tech in those early days super cool. Thank you. I
truly enjoyed my conversation with a Vet. Apart from bonding
over the sometimes tedious experience of building out a website
(35:08):
in HTML, I loved her views about acknowledging failure and
learning from it and not being afraid to make mistakes
as long as you are responsible and how you handle them.
I am eager to see how the future of tech
can enable us to become our best selves. I think
companies like Exos and leaders like a VET will be
a big part of that. Thank you for listening to
(35:31):
the restless ones. Be sure to tune into future episodes.
We're all have more conversations with leaders in tech who
are shaping the future of how technology and business intertwined.
I'm Jonathan Strickland at T Mobile. For business, unconventional thinking
means we see things differently so you can focus on
(35:52):
what matters most. That's why we've become the leader in
five G, number one in customer satisfaction, and a partner
who includes five in every plan so you get it all.
Unconventional thinking is better for business. Open Signal Awards TEA
Mobile as America's pasts FIVED Network US say five D
User Experience of the the Court TORF twenty two in one
capable device acquired coverage not available in some areas. Some
uses may acquire certain plant in features. Site mobile dot
(36:12):
Com for JD Powers twenty twenty award information Visit JD
power dot Com. Splash Awards
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