Jonathan Puskas: Exos & An Appetite For Innovation

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey listeners, this episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at InsightTracker. Do you want to add more years to your life and more life to your years? Of course you do, which means you need to make a change. And that is what Insight Tracker is all about. Founded by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometric data from MIT Tufts at Harvard, Insight Tracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. So what's their secret? First, Insight Tracker uses its patented algorithm to analyze your body's data and offer you a clearer picture than you've ever had before of what's actually going on inside you. Then, Insight Tracker provides you with a concrete, science-backed action plan for living a longer, healthier life. And it tracks your progress every day, every step of the way. For a very limited time, Insight Tracker is offering Future of Fitness podcast listeners 25% off store wide. Visit InsightTracker.com slash future to get your offer code and try to Insight Tracker today. Insight Tracker, because change is an inside job. This episode is also brought to you by Morpheus, the world's first and only fitness intelligence platform built by coaches for coaches. Look, there is a ton of fitness and health data being collected on you and your clients, but are you leveraging it? And perhaps more importantly, are you saving yourself time and making more money because of it? Well, I'll answer that question for you. You're not, because you can until now. Morpheus arms coaches with accessible, intelligent, communicable client insights to save coaches time and ultimately increase your value and earn more money. By collecting lifestyle data from 90% of the current wearable market and combining that data with cutting-edge proprietary technology, Morpheus provides an accurate and reliable recovery score for all of your clients served up on a simple and elegant dashboard. No more guessing, just the real, honest data alongside the insights from Morpheus into what to actually do with it. But wait, it doesn't stop there. The Morpheus platform also provides live heart rate training for your clients that can be tracked and shown anywhere, in the gym, in a home, outdoors, with personalized heart rate zones for each individual client. Combined with custom alerts, in-app messaging, and other amazing features, this is the ultimate coaching machine. Go to trainwithmorpheus.com to learn more. That's trainwithmorpheusmo r-h e-us.com. Please go check out our wonderful sponsors. And if you get value out of this show, I ask you to do three things. Please go subscribe, give us a favorable rating, and share this episode on social media or wherever you like to go chat with friends. I am your host, Eric Malzone. And once again, welcome to the Future of Fitness. Oh, we're live. Jonathan Puskis. Welcome to the Future of Fitness. Hey, thank you, Eric. I'm really glad to be here today. I'm thrilled to have you. Every conversation we have, I feel like I learned something and I get a little bit of inspiration along the way. And man, your experience is uh noteworthy for lack of a better term, going from being an athlete, spending 27 years in the Navy, working at Exos and within Google. Man, you just seem to always be doing really interesting work. And I don't know if that's intentional or luck or a mixture of both, but it's we're gonna get some good insights out of you today, no doubt.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I think it's probably a little of both, a little bit of intention, but mostly luck. I have a great mentor, and he always just says follow your bliss. And I think we all do our best work and we're doing the things we enjoy. And so I tend to move where my personal heat is.

Awesome. I think there's one thing that you are particularly strong in your expertise, and that's change. And that'll be one of the big topics and something that we'll dive into. But to give people context, let's go through your background. How'd you get to where you are now at Excess?

Yeah, I actually started my, when you look back, you go, gosh, my very first experience as uh as an employee, as it were, was as a young ensign in the Navy. And I was on the first aircraft carrier on the West Coast that integrated women. And if you can think about an organization with 400,000 people that was going through a pretty significant drawdown post-Cold War, and now we were integrating women onto combat ships. And so I started my career in the Navy. I spent four years on active duty driving ships. I'm what's called a surface warfare officer, and I've continued that in the reserves subsequently. And then so I did my four years and then realized that a French major from a little Catholic college in Indiana probably needed a little more education. So I went back and got an MBA at Notre Dame. And then from there I went to Intel Corporation and I was really working in the early stages of wireless infrastructure build-out, which the irony never escapes me because I'm not necessarily really richly, I don't have a rich understanding of the depths of technology, but what I do tend to do is see patterns or trends pretty early. And so we were building 2.5G infrastructure, and we were talking about how someday on your phones you'd be able to watch movies and TV and do video calls. And this is back in the early 2000s, right after the dot-com bubble burst. I spent seven years there, started their health group, got to do a bunch of fun projects there on the side. We did, we used our wireless infrastructure to build out the ability to show athlete tracking at the Iron Man World Championships back in 04-05 timeframe, way before anybody was doing live and real-time tracking. So we got to work with that group. Left there, spent a bunch of, I ended up doing about five years back on uh active duty in the Navy for a variety of reasons, but they were just one opportunity after another. So I spent some time in the South Caucasus as they were going through some evolving times from 08 to uh 13, brought a new patrol boat into the fleet and the Navy. So another change introducing uh a big sort of new capability that we hadn't had. And then my wife called and she said, Hey, you've been gone for five years. Are you planning to come home? And for uh anyone listening, like when your wife makes that call, it's time to come home. That's a hint. And I'm lucky we've been together 27 years and we we get to keep doing this together. But that was time to come home. And I came home and joined a little healthcare not-for-profit doing basically reporting on how hospitals, groups, clinics, and providers were performing against national uh standards and measures. And then the and then a funny thing happened, and my next door neighbor who worked at Nike asked me if I was interested in helping come solve some problems at Nike. And so I joined the human resources function at Nike, did a bunch of work building out their human resources analytics capability, and then subsequently went to Adidas, where I was an I was an HR business partner. And really, our role was to act as an advisor to the vice presidents on looking at the future of their talent needs, identifying those needs, and then building out a plan to get there. As I think Wade Gretzky said, good players skate to where the puck is at, and great players skate to where the puck is gonna be. And so our job was to look at where the puck is gonna be and make sure we were ready to receive. And then finally, I had this amazing opportunity where Anthony Slater, my uh former boss at Exos, called me and he said, Hey, we're doing some interesting things at Google. We've got a growing team and we're really innovative. And would you be interested in helping lead a team here for Exos at Google? And I said, Absolutely. Like to me, the industry is on the cutting edge of how we impact human performance, but I also felt like the industry was ripe for probably an overhaul or some significant evolution just based on some technology trends, some cultural and societal trends. And just I don't think anything stays and stasis for very long. And so that's how I ended up at Exos, where I where I really happily sit today.

Amazing. And I love the Gretzky quote. I think you and I talked about it, but that quote really is the ethos of what this podcast, why I started it. Because I wanted the industry skating to where the puck is going. And that was that's simply the goal. That's I want people thinking about what's next and how to position yourself well for that. And you're right, the industry has been due for an overhaul for quite some time. And it is a young industry. We talk about this often on the show. But I don't know, when did the fitness industry actually start? I think it's 1950s, 1960s, with Jack Lane was the first uh initiation of the fitness industry. And a lot hasn't changed, although what did COVID do? Changed things really fast. What have you, what's been your experience over the the last year in this pandemic, and how has Exos had to shift and modify the way it does business?

If we look at Exos, the business itself comes in sort of um three major areas. So the genesis of Exos, the DNA of Exos was elite human performance, in large part preparing athletes for the moments that matter in their careers. And we're talking at the top end of athletics. So for instance, last year, 42% of the first two rounds of the NFL draft came through our combine prep. And we've been sitting somewhere right around 50% of the first two rounds for most of the last decade. That's the that is where Mark and his early team made their uh impact, and then they expanded from there. And really, Exos was always about like how do you integrate these sort of four pillars of mindset movement and recovery and nutrition and bring them together to optimize results for individuals. And then over time we expanded and we did a bunch of work with Special Operations Command of the United States military, the Navy more broadly, and then we expanded in, and we said we think these methodologies or these pillars apply just as equally in the uh traditional employer workplace. And they do. And so what I would say is I think we've reinforced the importance of those pillars over the last four years. Never more, at no time in the last 20 years of Exos' history has the importance of well-being been more important than it's been for the last 12 months. What's different is how we deliver it. If we were to look at the last 12 months, obviously our traditional channels of the face-to-face coach way of uh communicating or meeting with individuals has been disrupted. And like anyone else in the industry, due to state or federal or other nations guidelines, we've had to shut down facilities or restrict access to facilities at a level I think no one's previously seen in the industry. But I've always I'm a fundamentally an agent of change. And sometimes you're good and sometimes you're lucky. But I think anybody that was paying attention would have said Peloton was growing fast, digital delivery, focus on community, the ability to connect people both at home, on the go, and on site. Those were all trends we were seeing and beginning to prepare for. And so what we've seen is an accelerant. And so what's the old phrase? Never let a uh good crisis go wasted. So I think what we've tried to do is say we've never had better tailwinds in our lives than right now to accelerate our investment in terms of our digital capabilities and building on our staff's capabilities to support in that environment. So I think 2020 was a year marked by our rapid iteration. I think it was a year marked by a lot of testing and learning. And then 21, 22 is going to be a period of refinement, consolidation, and ultimately expansion.

Yeah, that's a great outlook. And I really agree with everything you say. It's 2020 was just a forced accelerant into the change that we all saw was coming. And now we're, like you perfectly said, we're refining it. And we're seeing there's a lot of people like you and your team at Exos who are busy now launching things that are different or 2.0s, 3.0s of what started in 2020. And it's going to be really it's a fascinating time to be in the industry, man. It really is. And I talk about this sometimes behind closed doors, but I was very close to leaving the industry overall and just starting work and consulting in other areas just because I felt like it wasn't uh it was too slow paced in the fitness industry. And then this happened. And I was like, wow, things got really interesting again super fast. And I'm so excited to be still in the street uh after almost 14 years. And this actually leads nicely into what I really wanted to touch base with you because this term uh VUCA, V U C A, came into my world this morning, both in an email that you sent me in preparation for this interview as well as a client call. And it was the first time I have come across it and found finding that it came across twice my desk in the same hour means something that I should need to learn more about it. So introduce us to what VUCA stands for and your experience with it and how you, I guess, utilize it or work with it on a daily basis.

Yeah, so we'll just start with the definition. So VUCA is an acronym and it stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And the actual background on VUCA is if you go back to 1991, the military was wrestling with this idea of what do you do in a post-Soviet era world? So we had built this giant military capability and it was designed to fight the Soviets, right? We had two strong powers, and all of a sudden that was no longer the case. And the Soviet Union had become a bunch of small nations who were unstable and filled with nuclear weapons. That's a that's um that's destabilizing and scary if you're not uh thoughtful about it. So then the question becomes how do you navigate that world when you're the single unipolar power on the planet, and yet you have all these other areas where there's potential hotspots and disruption. So VUCA was actually created at the Army War College in 1991 to describe that environment post-Cold War. And so it's gained some uh traction, I think, particularly in the last sort of five years within the business space, because I think more and more businesses are realizing that the old model of we're gonna build a three or a five-year business plan and we're just gonna march steadily towards it, just simply doesn't hold up in an environment where technology changes very quickly, competitive threats evolve very quickly, macro forces, social, society forces are very dynamic. And so what you try and do then is articulate what are those elements of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and then how do you counter them? So, how as leaders do you foster cultures that maybe move from, like in our industry? I think historically our industry has been uh focused on how do we scale and how do we drive efficiency. And when you drive an organization that's focused on scale and efficiency, you risk being brittle when change comes. And so I think more and more organizations are trying to say, we need to be efficient, but we also need to introduce agility into our thinking. And we also need to be effective. And how do you create cultures that are ready for those expected but unknown changes?

You mentioned scalability and efficiency, right? And I think about the low-cost, high-volume model that we saw of a lot of health clubs. Would you agree? Is that kind of a good anecdote, anecdotal story of what that of what you're thinking?

I think it is. It's similar in employer services. Whether you're delivering food or you're delivering transportation or you're delivering fitness facilities, the mindset is a what's the cost of a customer? What's the what's the cost of delivering a service to a customer? Which is great if your customers are really predictable and homogeneous, or the environment is really predictable and homogenous. But when it changes on you, that's when a highly efficient scale model can become an albatross or a or an anchor pulling you to the bottom.

Yeah, we saw that a lot. And we're let's face forward a little bit because I know you love to engage with change. And you mentioned what a lot of people are referring to as a hybrid model, as a digitally enhanced model. If everyone has different names for it now, but it's specifically what you talked about, right? To be able to deal with people at their home, on the go, or in person, that ability is really what fitness needs to be. Give us an example of how do you see that unfolding for both the consumer and the fitness business?

Yeah, so one, I guess I ground on a few truths. One is I think humans need community. And so I think they're gonna continue to need a place to come and convene. People will return to churches, and for uh those that love the on-site experience, people return to gyms. But I think we often treat it as an org. And I think the reason I like the hybrid model is the whole hybrid model basically says it's an ant. And I think what we're gonna see is way back in the day when I started coaching, I won't deny that sometimes people just had me coach them because they wanted the convenience of having me build their training plan for them. They just didn't want to spend the time building a training plan, even if they knew how to. I think the days of building training plans for people are gonna be over very soon for coaches. Like machine learning is gonna replace that. And you've got examples of that today on trainer road for cyclists or ZERT. There's just too many examples where those applications can actually real-time adjust your workout while you're doing the workout, let alone the old model of I'm gonna talk to my coach once a week or every four days. And so I think that the days of the training plan are gonna go the way of the dodo. And so if coaches are grounding on that, they're gonna have difficulty. I think the the days of the coach being the sole person to provide you advice on your technique, that may get replaced by AI in the next five to 10, simply because people will be able to use their phone with a camera on it and get very accurate movement assessments. And so I think technology is gonna transform the experience of coaches. I think coaches will, the strongest coaches will be the ones that understand how to build and leverage communities and to activate those communities. And I think that will still, for many, occur on-site. Both the best coaches will be able to navigate between on-site and digital modalities. But I think what you're gonna find is that life is complex. And the old days of I'm just gonna go at five o'clock every day and go to the fitness facility, that might work for the routinized person. But for others who have more dynamic lives, they're gonna be looking for all three of those worlds to come together. They're gonna be looking for the community or the support to engage their family in the journey with them, which is probably one of the biggest barriers to participating in healthy lifestyles. They're gonna be looking for their local community. And then when they're traveling or on their go, they're gonna use their digital applications to ensure that they uh stay on the right path. So I think it's a really exciting time because of machine learning, because of AI, because of the quality of streaming that's being built, and because there's gonna be a need to return to these physical facilities and meet with humans face-to-face. In fact, I think there was a really interesting article in the New York Times today that was talking about how when humans simply move together, whether that's dance or whether that's group exercise, et cetera, it has very real effects on their emotional state in a positive way. And so I think that is gonna continue to be uh a critical component of our industry.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I want to go back to something you said is people have the ability to build and activate a community. When you say activate a community, what do you explain that a little bit?

Like right now, in many parts of our industry, you'll see great coaches that will get people to come to uh workouts and they'll get really consistent, they'll get a following. But if you look at some of the other parts of the industry, like Orange Theory, sometimes they ground on the coach, but often you start to see the participants in that program supporting each other and it becomes very organic. And at that point, it's the coach has now activated the community to be almost self-supporting on their own. And I think that's going to be the most powerful thing we can do. Now, how you monetize that? Well, I'll leave that to others. But I think CrossFit's an example of that. I think CrossFitters are amazing in terms of the way they support each other in that community and they activate towards other goals because you'll see them participate in other activities organically as a group. And so to me, I think we serve as you know, guides and sherpas, but we also serve as catalysts where people end up creating. Other communities outside of the initial. And that's how we create that virtuous circle of physical health feeding, social health feeding, emotional health. And when you get that firing, I think is when we're having our greatest impact.

That's a really good point. And it's just making me reflect on all my experiences within the CrossFit community. And I think someone I recently had on the podcast was uh Miranda Alcaraz from uh street parking. So she's a big name in CrossFit, has been for a long time. And then she about five years ago started their online subscription and community at street parking. It was funny because in her story, she's we would have been happy with a hundred members. I can tell you now they have a lot more. And one of the things that she found fascinating was that as the community built and spread digitally, that people were taking upon themselves to have local meetups and do workouts together within the street parking community. So it's had this digital global presence, but also people are taking upon themselves to make it local and do all the things that you were talking about. And I think that's a really good example of what you're touching on here. It's key. And it was say all the things that we made a lot of mistakes early in CrossFit. I will say that 100%. But one of the things that we did prove out as a community is that community is important. And I remember at times when I felt like it was so hard to get that community flywheel spinning. But once it did, I didn't have to be at the events anymore. They just happened. People were getting together, and there's even now, 10 years later, 12 years later, I'm not even involved anymore. Friends are sending me photos of people that they're still friends with because of the community in the gym that we built. And those were that's something that as digital as people want to go and great service offerings online, you just can't beat that. It's key.

Exactly. We happens in life, every once in a while we'll have a coach get sick. And in the past, if you go back years ago, we might have canceled that class. And what we've found in our small group training with our best coaches with Exos at Google is that community still comes together and somebody in that community says, I'll take the lead today. Like to me, like when I was a coach decades ago in the days of Sale, my definition of success is that the athlete no longer needs me. If I've taught them to evaluate their own body and figure out how they're performing and know what to do, like that's winning to me. And so I love it when a coach has created a community that's so strong that on the day the coach doesn't show up, they just press on and it's like we never had a, we never lost a step. Because that's the real, if we talk about the real goal of having facilities that support fitness and movement at Google, I would say 51% of the reason we do that is so that we can just create a community for Googlers to come together and feel supported. And so those social and emotional health elements are equally important to the physical elements.

Yeah, right on. And that reminds me, it was it happens as a facility owner that sometimes your 6 a.m. coach doesn't show up. It just happens. You don't want to happen often, but it will. It's embarrassing and it sucks, but it does happen. And there's multiple times when that particular group in my gym would just pull all their stuff out in the parking lot and they would just work out and then they would send me a photo later on. That is amazing. I'm embarrassed, but I'm amazed at the same time. So it's really cool. I want to make sure that we spend some adequate time in this conversation to talk about technology and fitness too, because we've we've touched on a couple different things. And you work at Exos with Google, man. You're in like the center of it all, right? When you look at the the growing landscape of fitness technology and health technology, what excites you the most?

Ooh, that's a really great question. And let me think if I can break it down into a few parts because I haven't thought about this one. But I love the quality of community that's being created through the various streaming applications, where where we've really gotten to the point where, and Peloton's a prime example, but we're doing some really interesting things right now within our Google walls of building streaming. But I think the ability to build communities that you couldn't otherwise do on site. So what streaming allows us to do is if you think about group X, right? Group X takes a physical facility, and if you only have five people interested in a particular type of dance, et cetera, it's very hard to justify the spend of eating up 600 square feet for five people for an hour and one instructor. It doesn't pencil, right? In streaming, it does. In streaming, you aggregate across ones and twos in many states or many countries all over the world. And all of a sudden, the diversity of offerings, the diversity of talent you can engage to me is really exciting because I think we're actually seeing these micro communities come together into larger communities that might otherwise have struggled in a small town or a remote location, et cetera. So I think the ability to support micro communities that are no longer micro, they're macro when you do them via streaming is really exciting. So I love that piece of it because it's a human connection piece that might not have otherwise have occurred. That's really interesting. Second, I mentioned it earlier. I do think that the ability to real-time make adjustments based on an individual's performance in workout through machine learning, et cetera, is gonna be transformative in terms of uh human performance. So, as a cyclist, as a runner, the good news for our sports is it's pretty easy to measure heart rate and power and speed. And so we have enough data now being aggregated out there that there are a lot of apps that are gonna come to the forefront in the coming years. And I think that removes so much anxiousness that you have when you're preparing for an event. Like in the old days, if you missed a workout, you didn't know how far behind you were, et cetera. Now there are just so many metrics that allow you to see where you're at relative to your intended glide path for hitting an event. And so to me, machine learning is going to be transformative and exciting for our industry. So I'm pretty excited about that. And then I think there's this element, and this is a sensitive one, which is if you look at Garmin, if you look at Fitbit, if you look at Strava, they're becoming tremendous aggregators of data. But they can give us so many insights in terms of what is working and what's not working for populations. And so I think the the way they accelerate our understanding of the needs of populations and allow elected officials, human resources organizations, et cetera, communities to plan and support the needs of their groups, I think that's very exciting as well.

Yeah, I agree with all of that. And it's it's your perspective is really interesting. And I do look at all of this stuff, and what it always seems to come back to is data. And that what we have now compared to 10, even I guess Scott, even five years ago, is we have so much data streaming in on so many different points of our life. And as new data sets get entered into that, it's really gonna be interesting how that adjusts. When you look at what some companies can do to predict retention off just the most basic data, okay, what is attendance? Where does someone live? How old are they? Do they have kids? Right. From that, those simple data points, they can predict what's well, not extreme accuracy, but accurate enough that you can retain more clients. But imagine once you start building in the lifestyle data from the data from the Garmin's and the Fitbits, and then recovery data from things like Morpheus. Uh, a lot of that information is coming in now. Like it's just it's it's opening up a whole new world. And we're just starting to think about the total applications of it. What data do you think is interesting? Go ahead. Yeah, add to that.

It's interesting to see who aggregates it. You've got Whoop and you've got Aura, and they do a decent job, but I think there's so many other devices that are out there that I think the aggregators are gonna be the interesting ones. But the the hard part is everybody's holding on to their data. Everybody knows they've got oil, they just don't know what to do with it yet. And so I think that's a hard part. And I do think that the smart companies are gonna realize they have to be very sensitive with it. Ultimately, in many cases, this is boarding on or actually is protective health information and how we use data responsibly and how those aggregators take that information and provide real insights and recommendations with it, as opposed to simply giving me another data dump as an individual or as an organization. So we need to move from reporting and analytics to insights and foresights. And I think that's I think there's still work to be done in that space.

Oh, a ton of work. And it's a really exciting time to be a data scientist. I can tell you that right now. Like they have no shortage of work opportunities out there. Um, you're spot on.

I I have a niece who's a a freshman in college, and as a caring uncle, you're always trying to figure out like what's the advice you give, and how do you thoughtfully guide and still have her get to have fun and enjoy and follow her bliss? But at the same time, just acknowledge that the ability to understand and use data is only going to become more and more important in our lifetimes. And so she's at a she's a she's smarter than me. She goes to Wellesley. I mean, I'm super proud of her, and so I'm bragging right now. But but the truth is, how do you have her find that balance between sort of the artistic side, the community, the human side, and yet not lose sight of the fact that we can't be in or mode anymore. We have to be in the and. Like, how do we how do we take data and use it to inform very human and humane decisions?

So I want to sweep back to your one of your kind of specialties, for lack of better term. It's leadership, right? You take a very intentional approach towards leadership. You take pride in it. What does leadership mean to you? What does a good leader do?

They do two things. They provide clarity and they shape culture. So they provide clarity of expectations and they build and reinforce the culture. And by the way, there are lots of different cultures out there, so you can decide which type you want to be. For me as a leader, the culture I'm trying to create is critical thinking and fearlessness. Critical thinking in the sense of how do we use data to make good decisions, but how do we be fearless to move fast? I think speed and agility win in the future. And so I'm trying to create cultures where people aren't afraid to make decisions and feel like they are empowered to move quickly.

I'm it this brings to me a recent thought. So I work a lot in the world of partnerships, especially within the fitness industry. And I've noticed that in the last year that the many in particular areas of the industry, let's say membership softwares or you know, the 300-pound gorillas who kind of own areas, there is very seems to be very slow or little to no movement to adjust at times. They lean on an acquisition strategy. We'll just see what happens, and if someone does it well, we'll acquire them. Meanwhile, I've noticed in the partnership conversations that I have that maybe one or two tiers down within a particular vertical, that things are moving very quickly. Partnerships are happening, people are adjusting. And I have to feel that secondary piece, it almost pays to be a little bit smaller right now. What do you agree or disagree with that or expand on that? What you're seeing out there?

It's a loaded question because if you're big, you have you can play that strategy. And I and I think we see Peloton as a prime example with their acquisition of Pre-Corp. I think two years ago, you might have expected Pre-Corp to acquire Peloton, not the other way around. Yes. And now you've layered on the Adidas relationship that they announced in the last week in terms of a footwear and apparel partner. So they're they're making it very clear that they want to make some moves into the corporate or the employer space, I think. And they've shared, I think, that in some of their in some of their recent announcements. Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own. And when you have a quantity of money, that does have a quality all its own. But you're right, the big companies may not have the incentive to move as fast because they have a high capital expenditure potentially investment in a current type of structure. And at a minute, at a minimum, it's strategically important for them to get the return out of that as the world shifts. So if you can delay that and milk a cash cow a little longer, that's just a smart move as you position for the future. But you're right, if you want to drive true innovation as opposed to acquisition, which is different, I think the smaller, more nimble organizations, let's face it, if you got a hunt to eat, you're gonna get good at hunting. And I think the smaller organizations are saying, where do we build by and borrow or partner? And when you're small, you can't do all of the you can't do everything. And so you're forced to go look at who are your fellow travelers and how can you accelerate change because that's how you're gonna grow. And so I think that it those are very different cultural questions, but I know certainly for me it's fun to be, it's fun to be in the fast moving, sort of change-centric types of organizations.

Yeah, how do you categorize what you guys are at? You guys are a major big player, but yet you seem to be moving fast, you seem to be walking the line, right? In between. How are you doing that intentionally or am I wrong at perceiving that? What's your take on that?

I'm very fortunate. I work within my account, and and Exos models this as well, but it's particularly adept at Google. So Google is the rare place that has figured out how to do innovation at scale. And what I mean by that is they have 120,000 employees, and yet every day, my experience with people I engage with is there is a um willingness to take risk. There's very little fear of trying new things. One of the areas of Google is called Area 120. It's their area where they test and innovate new ideas and they incubate new businesses. And one of Area 120's metrics that they use isn't how many ideas move forward, it's how many they eliminate. Because what that incents them to do is try lots and lots of ideas, even if lots and lots of them don't make it. And I love that sort of twist on things. So instead of having the mindset of we tested an idea and now we're all beholden to it and we're going to push it forward whether it's the best idea or not, they're quicker to say the best ones will come forward, but our metric of success is how many don't move forward. And to me, that's a really important mindset, which is we're we're just comfortable testing and learning when things maybe don't go accelerate at the pace maybe you'd hope. So, yeah, but if you're asking me, like when I arrived in my account or when I arrived at Google, one of my wise partners at Google said to me, the way we operate best is when we operate fast. So let's look to make decisions quickly, whether it's to move forward or whether it's to stop something. But either way, let's bias towards speed. And some have heard the phrase like getting inside the ODA loop. It's an old Boyd Air Force phrase. It stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. And Boyd really talked about UDA, and most people treat it as a tactical thing, like how to fly in a combat jet in air-to-air combat. But Boyd actually takes the concept much deeper. He was a very deep thinker, and he was really talking about the mindset of an organization. And so some have called it the Tao of Boyd, I think, in one article, and it's worth reading. I think it might be in the art of manliness where you can find it. But but I think getting inside the OODA loop of your end users or your competition, that is the key to me. And that's that's the fun part of the journey. And so we've got a my Exos team, the health and performance team at Google more broadly, and then the global programs team have really tried to be intentional about moving at speed with decision making. And so I think it's it starts with a cultural and a mindset, but it ultimately then gets translated into a management cadence. So how do you set up the right cadence of decision points to quickly move on or off trends?

It's great, man. I love your answers to all these questions. I'm really enjoying it. So I have one more because I want to respect your time. So willingness to take risk, is that something that you believe is innately in a person organization, or can it be learned, or is it a balance of both?

Can totally be learned. Some people are going to buy us more than others. I have a I have an appetite for risk. So by the way, because I have an appetite for risk, I always make my executive officer in the Navy or my right hand somebody who doesn't, because I need somebody to counterbalance. Otherwise, I could steer us into harm's way. And so I've realized that I have a high appetite for risk. But I think a lot of people don't have an appetite for risk because they are in an environment that punishes failure too quickly. And I what I think we do as leaders is we can cultivate an appetite for risk. We can cultivate an appetite for innovation by simply removing the fear. It goes to my earlier comment about culture. As we reduce fear in an organization, we create that organization's, we expand that organization's appetite for risk. And risk is, I think, the wrong word. It's really expanding your appetite for innovation, for exploration, for new ideas. And that applies to products you build. But I think if we were to take it to a level I think we are all recognized as increasingly important, is how do we bring diversity of ideas and people into our organizations and how do we create an environment in which there's true belonging for all team members? And when we do that, I think that's when the I think that's when the magic really happens. That's great, man.

It's so funny because I'm reflecting as you're talking, I'm like just the relationship I have with my wife, who's not risk tolerant. I am. But we balance each other out so well between our finances, between the occupations that we have, even when we do something as simple as a backcountry trip. Yep. It's really good to have, and I'm so grateful. I think it's one of the reasons we work so well. Man, Jonathan, I like I said, I could ask you questions forever, but unfortunately I don't have you forever. I really appreciate you coming on. Give us people insights. Where can they find you? Where can they get a hold of you? Give us the goods.

Yeah. Hey, I'm always uh looking for new thought partners on LinkedIn. So Jonathan Puskis, P-U-S-K-A-S. I think there's only one of me. Definitely reach out. I'm happy to meet people there. If you want to learn more about Exos, www.teamexos.com, and you can see a little bit about what we're doing in the industry. I think that's an exciting time. And then yeah, those are two great places to reach out to me. And I'm always happy to share ideas and I love learning from others.

Right on. Jonathan, thank you for spending uh 45 minutes to an hour of your Friday. And you gave me a lot to chew on over the weekend. So it's been an absolute pleasure.

I I couldn't think of a better way to start my Friday morning. So thanks for giving me the time, Eric.

Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Jonathan Pouskis. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm going to ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the feature of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.