James Laughlin 00:00
Welcome to lead on purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven-time world champion, musician, and night executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode, I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today on investing yourself. Enjoy the show
James Laughlin 00:39
How much time do you invest in your brain? Well, look, our brain dictates so many things. It's our largest asset. We've got to look after it, right? But often we're putting things on our skin and we're doing all these other things that care for our bodies, but our brain dictates so much. I came across a product a week ago called Flow State and it's made such a difference. And look, they offer functional mushrooms that sharpen cognition, they really boost energy, and definitely strengthen immunity. And they actually use one of the key ingredients, it's lion's mane. Right? So, the lion's mane is popular among really peak-performing athletes and those wanting an edge. It's known as the brain mushroom. And it's currently being studied extensively for its nerve growth factor potential as a means to ease the symptoms of Alzheimer's and for treating inflammation in the body. Look, the thing I love about these products, they don't taste like mushrooms, you can mix them in with your tea. They're a great replacement for coffee, but I actually love the P.M. Mushroom Blend, the evening one. It helps me sleep. And to know that my brain is getting extra nutrients is just the next level. The one thing that's really important for me is what's in there. So, they've tested heavily at Hill laboratories for heavy metals, pesticide residue, and microbial, and also at Massey University for active compounds. So, I urge you, if you love your brain, and want to go the extra mile to nurture it, head on over to flowstate.nz and you can use the coupon code lead on purpose to get 15% off.
James Laughlin
I don't know about you, but sometimes I get home. And I think what I am eating tonight is the last thing I want to do. I don't know what to cook, I don't know what's in the cupboard or in the fridge. And it often leads to poor choices like ordering some takeaway. So recently, Carolyn and I started eating green dinner table, and it's absolutely amazing. After a long day, when I'm knackered, I know that when I get home, there's going to be a great recipe and all the ingredients I need right there in the fridge. And look, I absolutely love it. I've been doing it for several months. And it means I don't have to think at the end of the day. And I just know that I'm going to get good, nutritious, wholesome food. And look, it's plant-based, which has so many benefits. So, if you're a meat eater, perhaps you might want to start on maybe just three, a three-day plan. So, you've got three evening meals for you and your partner or you and your family depending on what option you want to go for. But the food is delicious. It's so nutritious, and it means we don't need to think. And as leaders of families, teams, and organizations, what we put in our bodies is just so crucially important, so I urge you to go and check it out and I want to give you 20% off your first order. So, you can go to greendinnertable.co.nz and use the coupon code purpose.
James Laughlin 03:51
Andrew Herr has been honored as a mad scientist by the US Army on two occasions, and as a fellow by the Synthetic Biology Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program. FOUNT was born out of research on how to enhance the performance of the US military. Andrew's company offers the most comprehensive and customized health and performance programs on the planet. Over the last 10 years, Andrew led human performance and biotech strategy efforts for the US military from running R&D strategy efforts to getting Navy SEALs ready to deploy. This background has made him a trusted adviser to pro sports teams, Special Operations personnel leading corporations, from tech to finance and world-class scientific institutions. Today's episode we go deep in looking at how stress impacts us as leaders, and what we can do on a day-to-day basis to really find the tune to our body and our mind. I really hope you enjoy the show.
James Laughlin 05:09
Andrew, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose Podcast.
Andrew Herr 05:12
James, thanks for having me here really excited to chat today.
James Laughlin 05:17
Oh, it's so great that we get a chance to actually get inside your head and inside your world and what you do and the level at that you do it. So just to get the ball rolling, so to speak, when we think of human performance height as enhancing that human performance influence leadership.
Andrew Herr 05:32
So, you know, often people think about just enhancing individual traits, energy focus mood, but enhancing those individual traits can absolutely affect a business and decisions and other leadership capacities. And then too, there's a whole suite of socio-emotional traits that you can enhance that directly influence leadership. So, you know, from enhancing someone's energy and focus with me having them make better decisions as a leader, for the company, to changing their stress levels, their ability to generate trust with other people. And those things all then change the social dynamics within a company and allow someone to take a big vision forward without, let's say, in a way, that's easier, every big vision, I think has its challenges. But if the team doesn't trust you, or your stress is causing you to break down and interact with your team members, or potential partners in a negative way, all those things can critically, and negatively impact your mission, and obviously, your individual leadership. So we think about everything from enhancing the individual decision-making capacity to those socio-emotional factors. And frankly, just the physical ability to maintain performance over long periods of time, which is also required, if your leader ends up in burnout, you're not going to go, you're not going to go as far
James Laughlin 06:59
as 100%. And with your own experience, you know, was there a team or an organization that you've worked with that really sticks out that you know, what they did have to perform under extreme pressure and stress? And you know, you were able to do some research surrounding what are those factors that really influenced them.
Andrew Herr 07:18
I spent seven years running human performance and biotech strategy efforts for the military. So if we're going to talk about extreme stress, I'm gonna inevitably go back to the military. And what we saw there was that there are absolute units that can military units that can go through nearly unimaginable levels of stress, and perform at a high level over weeks and months, you saw very high levels of performance for long periods of time in Iraq and Afghanistan, but then you also can go back to the Korean War, or World War Two and see, you know, units that were just faced with 10, to one odds against them of enemy soldiers, and no sleep, freezing winters. And yet, they still perform well. Whereas others seem to fall apart very quickly, under much less enemy pressure. And that actually ended up being the subject of quite a bit of work I did like, Why do some units? Why are they able to handle these levels of stress and perform well, and why do others fall apart?
James Laughlin 08:24
It's amazing. And why is that because we're talking about units that are, you know, fighting in wars, but actually, you know, everyday people in the corporate world or in the athletic world, they're fighting their own version of war in terms of stress and endurance? So what are some of those things that you started to see, kind of creep up and show themselves in terms of influential factors?
Andrew Herr 08:45
Yeah, and we absolutely see these not only at play in the military side, but in the sport, and even in marriages. And what we saw was, if you have an individual well, going back to the research to start, if you have an individual and put them in a high-stress situation by themselves, their stress hormone levels, let's say their cortisol levels will be highest. If you put them with a stranger, there'll be in the middle. And if you put them with someone they trust, they'll be much lower. And this is a really interesting way to show that trust basically, can buffer the physiological effects of stress. And this matters a tremendous amount to the performance of individuals in groups. Because when you have very high levels of stress actually prevents fuel from getting into your prefrontal cortex, the higher thinking part of your brain, you don't make as good decisions, and you're not as adaptable, which obviously, under high stress, you need to be adapting to the environment, adapting to new information, and it also prevents your body from recovering. And so again, you end up in this burnout state much faster. And so we saw that this is the ability of a leader to generate trust in their unit, which I think is interesting to decompose into trust and confidence. Trust is the If someone had my best interests at heart, would they, you know, would they intentionally do something wrong by me? Or will they not take care of me? And then confidence do they have the ability to carry through on it even if they want to. And so this LED magic mix of being able to generate trust and confidence, allowed units to handle much higher levels of stress. But it wasn't enough. Interestingly, we've heard a lot about emotional safety and other things out of research Google did but turns out that if you look at the industrial psychology literature, groups that really trust and care about each other, don't perform better. And the reason we found was, you know, one, in that factor, you don't have as high levels of stress, you don't need to buffer it as much. But also, you need a second component, which is this mission focus. And if we're going to be super reductive, there, it's about fueling the dopamine parts of your brain carrying about what the mission is making small or large progress to it. And that also prevents you from burning out over time. And so when you have these units that had a high trust, and high mission focus, which really did come from the leadership, they could perform at incredible levels. And what I think, even to me, what's even more fascinating, was, sometimes you think a group is going to perform well, and then they don't, and that's often when some group has high mission focus, and low trust, they're performing well, they're performing well. And then the stress comes and they fracture, and they were quite brittle. And so you never want to be high mission focus, low trust, or low trust, high mission focus, basically, you need both of these at the same time to be an elite performer.
James Laughlin 11:40
Hmm, fascinating. And with the trust piece, from your experience in watching it unfold and studying, hi, just one as a leader or as a leadership group, how do we build authentic trust?
Andrew Herr 11:54
Yep. So there are some really clear behaviors, I would say that are critical to understanding kind of where people do well, and where people go wrong. And so the first one is, I always like to start with what happens when a leader makes a mistake. Because this is one of the absolute crucible moments, for this piece. And the answer is, there were two characteristics of leaders who were able to re-energize their units or regain trust, and it was one you had to acknowledge the mistake. And two, you had to get back on the horse, or you had to, you know, basically, be able to show that you had confidence in yourself. And in your leadership. Again, if you don't acknowledge the mistake, people think you're gonna make it again, if you don't show you've regained your own confidence, people won't follow people who aren't confident in themselves. Second, you have to manage uncertainty, uncertainty and social judgment are sort of the two biggest human stressors short of not having food or water. And so you need to really be focused on making sure your people understand what they know what you know. And you know, the extent it's useful to share that with them. And also just knowing what they are, you don't know. So that they understand sort of what they should be thinking about, too, show that your competent credentials don't matter. You have to, you know, as I said, you have to acknowledge mistakes, but you don't dwell on them. You have to show you're trustworthy, meaning you have to treat people fairly, but that doesn't mean equally, just fairly. And then something else we found really interesting was, if you manage for collaboration, it's the most effective way to have your team work. Sort of like Buffer each other. Turns out that if you're under high stress prioritizing, doesn't help as much, because you'll always have, you know, 105% capacity, you don't really have the mental bandwidth to add new skills. But you have this ability to collaborate within your team that balances the load. But also, again, that collaboration, that trust can help buffer the physiological effects of stress. And then the last piece is just to cross-train amongst your team because it doesn't allow a single point of failure because, at a high enough level of stress, you will have failures within the group or within the team. And so if you have cross-trained, again, it's that ability to step in for each other. So those are kind of the biggest things about mitigating stress and building trust, and then sort of a similar set we could go through about maintaining mission focus if you'd like.
James Laughlin 14:37
Yeah, I would love to Yes. So how do we first of all get really clear on what the mission is? And then how do we maintain a focus on that?
Andrew Herr 14:45
Yeah. So you know, I think what's interesting is in the military, on one hand, the broader mission is very clear, but it's not always clear what the individual units' piece of that is. And so in the military, they have a concept of taking Can from the German off trucks tactic which we translate in the US as mission command. And that's this idea of telling people what needs to be achieved not how to do it. I think we all recognize this as less sort of the opposite of micromanagement. And so you know, identifying what your part of the mission is the first part, and then from there, how do we show that we care about the mission? Well, first you have to as a leader show you prioritize it over yourself, you have to be making sacrifices. And in military parlance, you can't let the BS roll downhill, meaning you can't just let all the grunt work fall on your subordinates, you have to show that you're willing to take your part. The second piece is you have to show that you prioritize the team over yourself. And so it's not just the mission, but also do you respect your subordinates Do you share rewards fairly, again, fairly doesn't mean equally. But if you're not sharing those rewards, you clearly don't care about the team over yourself. And then you have to enable your team to see progress, which means designing projects or missions for interim success and making the impact visible. You know, I was talking to a US Marine commander, who mentioned something really fascinating to me once he said, he was there, flying his he was aviation unit, and they were flying supplies into Haiti, where there have been a horrible earthquake. And he basically said he had pilots who would, you know, fly the planes to deliver the supplies, they flew over the country and saw the horrible devastation there, part of the mission was clear. The second piece was he had maintainers, people who would fix the plane, so they keep flying. And their part of the mission was very clear, as well, because, you know, if the plane isn't flying, and you fix it, it's fine, you have quite an immediate reward. And, and they did really well, and they were focused. But there was a third group, which was the people who calibrated the tools for the people who fix the planes for the people who flew the planes. And they were quite disconnected from the mission. And he said he could never get them to stay focused for more than four to six weeks at a time. And they would just become, you know, sort of like lackadaisical, they make more mistakes. And what he realized he had to do was, every three weeks or so he would put them on the planes to go fly in, see the devastation, unload the supplies come back, and they would be refreshed because they would be reconnected to the mission, even though their job wasn't as directly tied in. And so that idea of letting people see progress, seeing how they're what they're doing matters is just so critical. Because if our brains expected dopamine hit or expected reward, we don't get the same amount of dopamine released time after time. It's only when there's an unexpected reward, or when you see some new progress that you get it released. And so you really need overtime to just keep people seeing that progress in the mission. That's really
James Laughlin 17:55
powerful. Thank you for sharing that. And when we think of stress, I guess, the opposite of when I think of that is that we're well, there's a sense of wellness and well-being, you know, is there a one size fits all approach to well-being and wellness.
Andrew Herr 18:08
You know, from our standpoint, there is no test, measure, or battery of tests that you put together that can tell you exactly what will work for your mind, your body, your goals, and your lifestyle. And it's because humans are quite different. And so we shouldn't expect that the same things would work for each other. And so the work we do is all focused around running experiments to help you identify what works best for you. We have clients who are absolutely flourishing on ketogenic diets, vegetarian diets, eating more frequently and eating one meal a day, the variation is really quite surprising. But if you look around you and you see how different people are mentally and physically, some are taller, some are shorter, it's not surprising that physiologically will respond differently. And so, you know, everything we do, we design around a concept we call an experiment journey because it's not just we run an experiment, and then another one, it's you run an experiment, you take that data, feed it back and figure out what's the most likely next experiment to help run that one. And there's this really beautiful iterative process. So, you know, again, we think about collecting as much data as possible to target the most likely experiments to work for you. But there's never a failed experiment because even when an intervention doesn't work, we've learned something about your body.
James Laughlin 19:30
I love the specificity of that. And, you know, it's as you said, it is experimenting rather than going, Hey, I heard this thing works for this person, or this team or organization. It's gonna work for us. So getting very specific around your needs.
Andrew Herr 19:42
Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, we have 80, different supplements, dietary supplements we might use with a client, and all of those diets or supplements, obviously, help some of our clients or else we wouldn't use them. And all of them are also bad for some of our clients. And so again, When people ask, Well, what about multivitamins? And I always reflect that, in long-term research studies, multivitamins do not make people live longer. But I do believe that in many cases, somebody might be benefiting from something in a multivitamin, which means that there's something else in there balancing out hurting them. So, you know, there's if you're doing 100 things, and you haven't run the experiment to see if they're helping or hurting, you may actually be doing some that are helping and some that are detracting and you end up then very quickly in a situation where you can't get to that optimal. And that could be whether it's, you know, athletic performance, it could be your for your work could be, you know, optimal mood for spending time with your kids. How does the person
James Laughlin 20:47
figure out what they do need? What, kind of process? Are you able to take them through to go, Hey, I'm deficient in this, or I need more of this, I need to avoid this for what does that process look like?
Andrew Herr 20:56
Sure. So we start with, as I mentioned, collecting a lot of data. So we run a very high-end performance optimization coaching program. And, you know, the way we think about is let's collect all the data first, and that's a lab, wearable, and interview data, we spend at least 90 minutes with the client because we want to go deep on their goals, their lifestyle, family history, sort of all these factors. And then we synthesize all three of those data sets to say, okay, based on the client's goals, here's what we think is most likely going on. So is your challenge with energy in the afternoon driven by blood sugar inflammation? Is it driven by stress hormone levels in the morning that are preventing your brain from getting fuel? And are they Is it driven by a kind of sub-optimal recovery and sleep? So even just with afternoon energy levels, there are four or five physiological pathways that could be involved. And so then we'll design experiments to test and we'll obviously run the ones first that we think are most likely to work for you based on all the data we've collected. And then we'll think about not only customized to your body, and your goals, but also your lifestyle. Our clients are busy business executives, elite athletes, even frankly, you know, people staying at home taking care of kids, you're staying home taking care of two or three kids, it's a full-time plus job. So you know, basically run them through that. And then we want to look at all the tools that might help. So we think about nutrition, supplements, meditation, breath, work, sleep, light, temperature, exercise, recovery, sort of all these tools that work for some people. And, you know, again, just do that triple customization, your body, your goals, your lifestyle, run those experiments to figure out where we put you. And then you're using the data from every experiment to feedback, so we know where to go next.
James Laughlin 22:43
Incredible. And, you know, with the work that I do with executives and with teams, the more I look closely, the more I am seeing people engaging with wearables. And I'll often ask them, Oh, tell me about that. What's that for? What does it measure? What do you do with that data? And sometimes it's like, Hey, I seen this thing that came up on Instagram and said, it's going to help me perform better because it's gonna help me manage my sleep. But actually, they're not really using the data that to help them. So what are your thoughts on wearables? What should we be looking at? What should we be considering using and why would we use it?
Andrew Herr 23:17
Yeah, you know, I see a lot of what you described as well, which is people have a wearable that tells them they slept well, but they kind of know they slept well, that night, or it tells them they slept poorly. And they really know they slept poorly that night. And even the worst case scenario, some people will note that like, oh, it says, I didn't sleep well, that I feel worse about myself. But where they can be really valuable is you can't tell the difference between 5% better sleep, or maybe even 10%. And so where they can be really valuable is, you know, back to the experiment approach, you know, running experiments and seeing if it improved REM sleep for steep sleep, did it help you fall asleep faster, and getting objective data for those experiments can be really beautiful. As well as we don't just use them for sleep tracking, you know, the major ones here in the US weapon, or both do heart rate variability, which is a measure of how much activity there is in your sympathetic nervous system, kind of the fight or flight system, which that can also tell us about stress levels and recovery. So we really love to use them as a way to measure the effects of experiments. And then, you know, from there, they can tell us where to go next. But without doing that, you just kind of ended up learning something you already knew, and, you know, maybe getting recommendations that are quite generic
James Laughlin 24:33
100% And that's why, like, personally, I've been reluctant to embrace a lot of that technology, because when I have the information, I think, well, what do I do with this and what you know, I've got to be managing, measuring what really matters to me, but then also having a bit of a strategy to have got to move forward and make these adjustments. So how could they say the non-athlete the non-elite forces person, really benefit from this work?
Andrew Herr 25:00
Well, I think, you know, the beauty of what we're doing is we have a long-term strategy where we collect this really dense and high-fidelity data around our clients. And it's the first data set in the history of the world that'll have dozens of experiments per person, over, you know, as we grow 1000s of people and really rich blood work and wearable data and self-report. So we will be building AI coaches over the next couple of years that can allow this to, you know, go to people who can't afford the level of coaching we do now, for regardless of that, we also discover out of it products that we can scale to people who can't afford a coaching business. So we can now send 95% of people anywhere in the world with no jetlag, that's based on some brand new insights from work I did with the Navy SEAL community here in the US. And then our clients were just requesting a solution to jetlag. And so we've developed it now. And we discovered that when you fly, there's actually an inflammatory process that gets kicked off in your body due to the pressure change in flight. And we now know how to turn it off using safe dietary supplements. And we have an algorithm that tells you what to eat, and sleep and gives you a kit and use this stuff in your kid. And yeah, it's really amazing to watch people fly from the US to Europe, Asia, Australia, and vice versa. And sleep well the first night.
James Laughlin 26:20
That's amazing. Well, I'd like to take you up on that. So I've got a from Christchurch to Auckland, and Auckland direct in New York, a couple of days in New York, and then another long flight to Ireland a couple of weeks there, then back to California. So I'm chopping and changing. So I can maybe test that out amongst all those time zones.
Andrew Herr 26:36
We'd love to, we'd love to get you set up, it's really, you know, we're really proud of what we've done there. And we call it a product fly Kit with two T's. And so yeah, we're really excited. And we're looking forward to getting you the experience.
James Laughlin 26:48
Still amazing, it just I see massive value in that, you know, for the everyday traveler, let's say, someone who's going home to see family that traveling across five, six time zones, they've only got 10 days that they want to make the most of it. But also the corporate traveler, the team, says the professional team who's traveling to compete at a World Cup, or just some big tournament, you want to turn up enough to take two or three days to adjust. So that's a game changer.
Andrew Herr 27:13
Yeah. And USA soccer, for example, is using it to go to the World Cup right now as we speak. So we absolutely see that we sell it to the military for Special Operations units. And it's actually only been a couple of weeks now since it's been publicly available to everybody. So we're really excited to get that out there and support a lot more people as we make that. And then we've done some work in women's health, we have about a 90% solution to some PMS symptoms that we'll be launching soon. And then, you know, then we must also have built up catalogs of tools that can help with sleep and other things. So you know, anybody can run experiments on their own sleep and you know, whether they have a wearable or not at least see do I feel better in the morning? Did I sleep through the night? And so we really encourage people to listen to their bodies. And even if you don't have kind of elite-level data analysis this is for you. There are all kinds of things people can do in each of these major categories that have an opportunity to help them just live a better, happier, higher performing life.
James Laughlin 28:16
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James Laughlin 29:28
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James Laughlin 30:34
Yeah, absolutely. And look, you guys, I think one thing that really sets you and a company apart from others, is the level of research that you do the depth of it, the quality of it. So for you what makes good research, what's the difference between sending, hey, we research and I hate we have quality and insightful research? What do you guys do that makes it really high-level?
Andrew Herr 30:59
I think what's really special about us is everything we do is applied. So you know, all of our clients are living real-world lives. So when we start to see something working for a group of clients, it's not like oh, this work just in the lab. But then in real life, it's not possible or it doesn't kind of doesn't, it gets washed out in the noise, we really do see things very much for the real world side. And then the second piece is, you know, unfortunately, a lot of products out there are mostly backed by animal research, mostly mouse models. And it's just the case that humans aren't mice. And, just like so much research that's been done on mice just falls apart with humans. So whereas the work we do, you know, when we recommend something to a client that happened to notice that something unexpected happened. So for example, we were trying a supplement for workout recovery, didn't seem to work. But lo and behold, people got about 20% more deep sleep and felt just phenomenal the next morning. That's just a real-world discovery of humans. And then we tested it more. And something really interesting happened, which is we found that it worked in about a third of people, a third of people that did nothing, and the last third made their sleep worse. And what that tells you is that in a research study, it would have washed out and the effect would have been zero and the study would have said it doesn't work. But meanwhile, a third of people who use the supplement we've discovered will probably commercialize it as part of a sleep product in the next year, and a third of people got the best sleep of their life at night. And then a normal research study would have thrown that out. So I think it's the, you know, the real world nature, it's all in humans. And as well just we're looking things through such an individual lens, that we're able to catch these things and we get lost on the aggregate
James Laughlin 32:57
100% Is the difference that makes the difference with that research. And essentially, you talk about sleep. So I was chatting with a friend who is the performance coach for George Russell, team, Mercedes, Formula One. And I was just asking, What do you measure with George, what is it you focus on? And so he just said, look, a happy driver makes for a really good driver. And I said, Well, what you know, are one of the major influences of that happiness, that mental joy and well-being and it says, Look, sleep, you know, we fly his mattress to Abu Dhabi to Miami to Melbourne river that f1 is we make sure his beds there as mattress and get a good night's sleep, we really measure how well he sleeps. And we know that what definitely impacts his reaction times is cognitive decision-making. So for you, Andrew, if there was only one thing that a listener was going to measure just one thing that could make a notable difference in their joy, their happiness, their well-being, what do you think that one thing should
Andrew Herr 33:52
be? Wow, this is a hard challenge. Sleep is a great candidate, you know, we think of it as the master recovery tool. So sleep is a great example not just because it's so valuable, but because so many things feed into your sleep quality that if you're optimizing there, it means probably not eating too close to the bed, it means you're not overstressing your sympathetic nervous system, your stress levels are relatively well managed. So I think sleep is an amazing outcome variable, but you do have to be careful because so many things affect it that can be hard to pick it apart for an individual. So, you know, I think if I could start with one area of activity as opposed to the outcome like that, I would probably play with sleep or nutrition. I think you know what we eat, when, and how much is just such a powerful lever especially as today there's so much terrible food available so many terrible processed food products. So yeah, I think I would with nutrition or sleep, and so what would that look like on the nutrition side, I would testify where someone does eating breakfast gives me more energy in the afternoon, or less, Does eating smaller meals more frequently or larger meals less frequently worked better for me? Does eating carbs in the morning help or hurt, and even carbs at night help or hurt? And you could just go through these like A-B experiments where you compare one mode versus another. And I think most people will find that there's a tremendous difference once they dial in their nutrition. And then, you know, I think your Formula One team really has something quite important there as well as sleep.
James Laughlin 35:41
Yeah, that's brilliant. Essentially, you say that, because I do feel it when people start to look at okay, how do I fine-tune nutrition? It's almost overwhelming, like just mind-boggling to where do I start, but that a be split testing is a great way to kind of get some of the larger items and, and start to see some differences.
Andrew Herr 36:00
Yeah, and like, you don't have to get down to the finest grain food sensitivity stuff right away, just start with the big things, how much you're eating, when you're eating it. And then you know, then if you're going to really want to dive into it, we definitely do recommend elimination diets. Super interesting to see what happens when you pull a bunch of potential allergens out of your diet and then add them back one by one. And the good news is, you know, people are like, oh, you know, I did these things. And I found I wasn't sensitive, I didn't notice anything. And they're kind of like sad about it almost because they wanted an explanation for the problem. But I think if you're not sensitive to something, or it's not, it doesn't bother you like, that's great. You don't have to worry about it, then you want to, you want to cut out as many things as you can that like don't matter. So you don't spend your cognitive energy there, spend your cognitive energy on things that do matter and say, okay, hey, it really matters. If I eat fried food. Or if I eat after 8:30 pm. Good, then you can optimize against those. And just because you find that those things help you doesn't mean you have to do it every day. But at least you know, and then you can make choices, really informed choices about your performance, say, Hey, I'm giving a big presentation tomorrow to the Board of Directors. Maybe tonight I'm going to not drink or eat earlier, and I'll have fish over steak. But maybe you're at a birthday party two nights later. And it's just fun. And it's worth not feeling as good the next day. And that's fine, too.
James Laughlin 37:31
I love it. And one thing I want to ask you in terms of the research you've done, what have you found in terms of coffee, and alcohol? The two things that so many of us love right? coffee and alcohol, I would say there are a lot of listeners right now that are nodding their heads going Yep, the morning starts with one, and the evening finishes with the other. So what have you found? What are the influences on our own body, our systems, our thinking, or our energy? What's the connection there?
Andrew Herr 37:57
Yeah, take coffee as having quite variable effects on people. We don't think of coffee or caffeine as a bad thing. But it can in some people increase anxiety it can sometimes be used to cover up other stress hormones or sort of inflammatory issues because you're kind of covering for lower energy than you should have. And then three, obviously, if you're consuming it too late, it can then affect sleep. So as long as you're not doing any of those three things with coffee, I see absolutely no problem with it. And in long-term studies, there's no correlation between longer or shorter lifespans. In fact, people who drink a few cups of coffee a day seem to live longer. So you know, I think of coffee as generally a potentially positive tool. But if use the wrong way, it can either kind of degrade or, or hide things that are important. Alcohol is a little bit trickier. Alcohol decreases sleep quality and almost everybody. If you think about the last time you had more than a couple of drinks, maybe more than a bottle of wine or a number of shots of whiskey, most people will recognize that they warm up, woke up in the morning or in the middle of the night warm, their heart was beating faster, maybe a bit sweaty. And it's because alcohol activates your sympathetic nervous system. I've mentioned a couple of times that sort of fight or flight system, seems to push adrenaline in the body. And so when we're stressed, we know we don't sleep as well. And so it's no surprise with more adrenaline in the system that we don't sleep as well. And so that really then affects your energy levels and mood focus the next day, people often the next day have quite a bit more anxiety when they drink. So you know what I'd say to people is a great test of how much alcohol is affecting you is if you do have a wearable, you'll get your heart rate at night. And if when you drink your heart rates higher at night than when you don't drink that it's likely to be having some effect and the higher it is from your baseline, the more effective it's going to have and that can be a great proxy that in your heart rate variability, which is a measure of that sympathetic nervous system. So, you know, basically, like alcohol, if people want to have it, they should just know how it affects them. And then they can make an informed decision about whether it's worth it or not. But in most people, it definitely degrades your sleep quality and energy levels throughout.
James Laughlin 40:18
Thank you for that. It's great. I mean, it's very enlightening. They understand what it might do to the heart rate and be able to measure it. And that's where the wearables actually come as really valuable to help you make better choices or to shift the relationship with alcohol. And what does a day in life look like for you? Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that's probably thinking, Well, you've got access to all this incredible research, you've spent your life on it, you've got the education around it, you've got all the tools, you've got a whole company focused on it. What do you do for yourself specifically, from Wake Up till tonight time that really helps you? What do you measure? How do you measure it?
Andrew Herr 40:54
Well, obviously, focus on the things that I do that are quite odd, because I'm sure those are the most interesting. I wake up and eat basically like a pudding I make of mixing almond butter, olive oil, and water, I found that like, my body needs a lot of calories throughout the day. And this is the cleanest way to get very high-quality calories. So I make this pudding in the morning, eat about 1000 calories worth, and just feel phenomenal through the middle of the day. And then in the middle of the day, I do best by having some carbs. Whereas in the morning, I have almost no carbs with that without breakfast. And then at dinner, kind of a moderate amount of carbs, I tend to work out because of my work schedule. And I'm an extreme night owl. So I tend to sleep till nearly before my first appointments, which is different from a lot of people who are early birds and wake up early in the morning. But I tend to work out because of that in the afternoon. And that gives me great energy throughout the evening. And for me of the many things that help with sleep, I'm quite, quite protective of myself from blue light at night. So you can wear blue light-blocking glasses, or in my, in my home, I have lights that automatically go to orange, which means there's no blue in them at the right time at night. And so allows me to kind of gently come down to sleep and allow my brain to calm down. And then another thing that's been shown in the research to help and is really tremendously valuable for me for sleep, a shot a 10 to 15-minute warm shower before bed, helps a lot of people sleep better. And so I'll always focus on that. So you know, throughout my day, I'm in often back-to-back meetings, we're growing, found our company to you know, scale this human performance stuff to everybody. So I have, you know, a busy schedule, I don't have time for everything, but I make sure my nutrition stays dialed in, I do things to ensure my sleep quality is as high as possible for as long as I get to sleep. And then those workouts are just so powerful.
James Laughlin 42:58
And what are the wearables that you're using?
Andrew Herr 43:02
Yeah, so I personally use an aura ring at night. And I'm using that to track different sleep experiments I'm running. For workouts, we also in the company use whip straps, or what bands as well. So we use both of those. And then depending on what other experiment I might be running, you know, during workouts, or I may be wanting to look at my heart rate during the workout and measure what heart rate zone I'm in. And we're obviously experimenting all the time with other wearables. continuous glucose monitors can be quite interesting to watch your blood sugar change in real-time, done many experiments with those as well. So again, just a tremendous number of tools out there. And again, as long as you're running them, using them to measure experiments can be very valuable.
James Laughlin 43:50
And in terms of hydration, you know, what's been the study and the research the feedback you've had around optimal hydration, how that affects our performance and decision making? Yeah, it
Andrew Herr 44:00
really depends on whether we're talking about an athlete or for a normal person, or an athlete who's sweating a lot and training a lot. You have to really think about electrolytes because you lose salt, calcium, potassium, and magnesium, through sweat, and through urine. But for a normal person who's not sweating that much electrolytes aren't nearly as important in there. It's just about the amount of water you're getting. And because you're getting plenty of electrolytes through food if you're not sweating a ton of them out. So the first piece is how much water or liquid are you getting? The second piece is the electrolyte piece. And again, most people who feel like they need electrolytes who aren't working out a lot, probably it's less important. But of course, as I said, you know, humans can be quite different. So we do see clients who actually need electrolytes throughout the day because their body doesn't like to hang on to them as well. So I would say you know, our general you know, there are some people who think you need less water, but we generally like people to be at three liters or above per day, and find that tends to enhance how people feel energy-wise. And as long as you can handle going to the restroom a few times that work. And then, if people wake up in the middle of the night to have to go to the bathroom, may want to taper that in the evening and have more earlier in the day.
James Laughlin 45:17
That's brilliant. And let's talk a little bit about fine. Like, why it was founded what you guys are on a mission to do and what the structure of the company actually looks like. So where did it all begin?
Andrew Herr 45:28
So, you know, I ran these human performance efforts for the military. And then I'd be speaking at conferences and business executives coming to me and say, Hey, I get with the Navy SEALs, but like, what should I be doing? So I built an executive coaching business. And the big conclusion from those two work periods of my life was one, if you can find the truly customized program that's optimal for an individual, you can drive incredible results. But as I've already mentioned, there's no test, there's no way to predict it exactly for a person today. And so you have to have some sort of elite coaching to do it. But of course, that doesn't scale. And so when we looked at this, we said, you know, what are the options to scale this so we can make this available to more people? And the obvious first answer to that is, can we use software somehow? But unfortunately, even though we have such powerful AI and other software tools today, you need good data to base that off of. And unfortunately, the dirty secret of the health field is that the data is extremely poor quality. And so we said, you know, if you really wanted to do this, right, you don't want to 20 or 50-person clinical trial, you want 1000s You don't want one experiment per person, you'd want dozens, you could say, hey, if works for you b doesn't see works. What about E, F, G, H, I, J, K. And then, of course, you'd want instead of just one test at the beginning or one test at the end, like in most experiments, you'd want regular blood work and wearable data and self-report. But unfortunately, you know, collecting that dataset is a multi-100 million dollar project if it was funded by the government and cents academics. And unfortunately, the government's not going to fund that. And the academic world just isn't scaled to handle that. But we realize that in our coaching business, we were already collecting this incredible high-fidelity data set. And so from there, we said, if we can scale this coaching, and deliver a world-class program, so people not only get great results, but we collect this incredibly high fidelity data, we can use that to build AI coaches that can scale this to millions of people. And so that's what we're doing it found we are building the highest fidelity data set in the history of healthcare, just as we help our clients navigate their performance every day at the highest level. And the cool thing is, we never have to sell that data. We just use it to build these AI coaches. So the people who do it now and who are participating now, they're actually helping make this available to people who couldn't afford it to the rest of the world. And so we've built found to scale up the coaching business and build these AI coaches. So what is today only available, the executives and professional athletes will be available instead of 1000s of dollars a month for 20 or 30 bucks a month? And then along the way, we discover really cool things like our flight kit jetlag products, this work we're doing in women's health, these brand new supplements for sleep, and we'll just continue to make these products available to general consumers as we move forward as well.
James Laughlin 48:35
It's incredible, like, honestly, it's inspiring what you're doing and the rate at what you're doing it. So what are the risks in the industry? Because obviously, there are lots of regulations when you're dealing with people's health and data, what are the big risks and challenges that you're facing at this point? Yeah, so
Andrew Herr 48:53
we can't because we're not medical doctors, we can't make medical diagnoses or give advice on prescriptions and other things. So you know, there are things we would love to do for our clients that we are just lines we don't cross so we stay on nutrition, supplements, meditation, sleep, that side of the fence there, and for wellness factors, and not for, you know, medical conditions. So, you know, we definitely want to always be smart about that. And then look, we just want to make sure what we're doing is safe for our clients and helping them not only in the short term but in the long term. And that's one of the reasons I really love that we get regular blood work on our clients is because there are things that will make you feel better, but push your bloodwork in the wrong direction, especially your cholesterol and lipid levels. We see that not infrequently. And so the beauty of what we do though, is if it's happening, we can see it and reverse it or find a second solution that allows you to feel better and have kind of your longevity markers where you want them. So you know, I think it's really about making sure you optimize for the short and long term and then you know from our standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint, being very clear that we're not doctors, and we don't, you know, this is not medical advice, but we're just helping people optimize. And I think it's good enough for us to help people optimize their energy, focus, mood, sleep, gut health, longevity, fertility, all those factors that people ended up pretty happy with that. Yeah,
James Laughlin 50:16
massively. It said it's a very different life when you can start to see big improvements in those things. So the meditation thing really interests me, I have been meditating for, I don't know, maybe seven, eight years. It's a daily practice. And it's a challenge. But it's also there are rewards that come with it. So what have you found through you know, through practice, but also through research, the benefits of meditation?
Andrew Herr 50:39
My favorite analogy for meditation is to think of it like weightlifting, if I do a bunch of bicep curls, my biceps will get stronger and bigger. And what you're doing in meditation is you're intentionally stressing the attentional circuits, the circuits that direct where your attention where your mental capacities going. And just like intentionally stressing my biceps as weights, if I do it so that parts of my brain, those parts of my brain will get stronger, and actually denser, more than bigger. And so you can actually see in functional MRI imaging parts of the brain and people who are meditating a lot get denser, new connections and different pathways. And so basically, Meditation allows you to optimize being able to control your attention, which in some people means they can focus on work longer. And other people, it means you don't go to anxiety, places with high anxiety in your mind. And so it can help with stress levels, anxiety, focus, mood, and a number of different factors. We even see in studies where you know, six weeks of medication can dramatically drop your cortisol stress hormone levels. So big, big potential benefits, and the person who meditation works for, we also see some people who don't do as well as meditation do better with breath work, for example. And, again, there's no, there's not one that's better or worse, it's just about what works for you. And then I guess one other little tidbit that I find really fascinating. Most meditation people start with what's called focused attention meditation, it could be focusing on your breath, or let's say one stimulus. And just really, If your mind wanders, you bring it back. And studies show that right after you do that, you have this, you know, increased ability to focus on what you're working on. But interestingly, if you do another type of meditation called Open monitoring, which is instead of focusing on one element, don't focus on anything and take in all the information. And if your mind kind of falls in and crashes down into one area, then expand it back again, an open monitoring meditation has actually been shown to increase creativity in the hour after you do it. And so we find it pretty cool to be able to enhance people's creativity, as well as just their focus. I love it.
James Laughlin 52:55
And for me, meditations get twice a day thing. It's in the morning, which is usually quite brief. And then it's an evening, which is more lengthy. So have you found any feedback or I'm doing it more frequently? And in benefits and even short, sharp bursts throughout the day? Is there anything there of interest?
Andrew Herr 53:13
Yeah, so we did a review of over 1000 Meditation studies internally, and we found two things. One, for the hour, after you meditate, you get benefits even from as little as eight minutes and studies. So you can really do something quite short, less than 10 minutes, and get benefits. And then second, across many studies, you get not just those short-term benefits, but the long term benefits from even 320 minutes sessions a week. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or pick any three days, you can get 20 minutes in, you'll start to change the structure of your brain over time over a series of weeks and just get tremendous benefits. And the other reason I love 20 minutes as an amount of time is that if you have a 30-minute block on your calendar, and you block that off for meditation, but maybe you want to go to the bathroom, you got a phone call to finish, you want to grab some food afterward, you can still usually grab 20 minutes out of that 30-minute block and you know, really just get tremendous benefits from it. So you know, as little as eight minutes if you want the benefits right after and then if you want those long-term benefits, that 20 minutes three times a week, appears to be a really tremendous kind of protocol.
James Laughlin 54:30
I love it. Honestly, what you've shared so far, Andrew is just so valuable. And I know that well-being and you know, thriving and flourishing. It's such a big focus for a lot of our listeners. Not only those who are on the sports field but those who are running day-to-day life and being parents and showing up at work and leading others so that there are no stresses that we've got to try and manage so that we can enjoy our downtime. We can go on a holiday and be present and we can feel good physically, in spirit Totally, and mentally. So what you've shared has been absolutely incredible, I'm going to make sure that we put in the show notes link where people can go and check out your incredible company or your offerings. And that you know, you're truly a global company, what you're doing is incredible. And I love this idea of being able to travel and not have to worry about jet lag. You know, I spent, I think one year it was 130, plans, 140 plans, and constantly traveling, and I felt terrible, I was constantly groggy. I was I wasn't able to think for longer than a few minutes. But having a product as this would, would have changed my whole experience of life. So thanks for putting the time into it. I'm looking forward to checking it out. But before we wrap up, I want to ask you a question. Actually two questions. The first is when you think of leadership, what comes to mind?
Andrew Herr 55:54
You know, I can't get away from the work we did with the military, where we really saw the impact of trust and mission focus. So when I think of leadership, and when I think about my own leadership running founds, my goal is to create a culture internally in the company, where I can generate that trust, and people will not only trust me but also trust each other. And that means that's a big question about who we hire and let go as well. And then we have that intense mission focus that we care about more in many cases than our individual selves. So we can really all band together to do something great for the world.
James Laughlin 56:32
Incredible, I love that you bring it from the military. And those are two very simple pillars, but yet many of us wouldn't be clear and collective on those. So I love it. And the last question I'd love to ask you is if we fast forward to the end of life, and you know, it's your last day, in fact, you know, it's your last few minutes, and a young person in your life with a really dear to you, asks you this question. So they ask, How can I lead my life on purpose? What would your advice be to them?
Andrew Herr 57:06
My advice would be to find something that truly matters to the world. And don't allow others to tell you it doesn't or don't allow others to tell you it's too hard. I think if I if I pull from my own history, there were plenty of people in the military who said, Oh, this is too expensive. We can't roll this out to all the soldiers or, oh, you know, the data is very hard to collect in the healthcare field. But I certainly, you know, with what we're doing now, I really believe we have a chance to change the world by saying, we're going to do this the right way. It's gonna be hard as heck. But it matters. And so it's, we're gonna go after it with everything we got
James Laughlin 57:50
incredible love. And it really comes from a place of doing and a place of knowledge as you're walking that walk right now. So, Andrea, that's amazing. I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for taking the time to share what you're doing and passionately share it. So I've no doubt that our paths will cross again. And I'm going to be engaging in your products as you continue to expand your range as well. So a massive thank you and I wish you nothing but the best.
Andrew Herr 58:16
Thanks so much, James. It's really been a wonderful time chatting with you today. And thanks for the opportunity to share what we do with your audience. And yeah, I look forward to getting you on the flagship program and making you feel better when you fly without all that inflammation. Thanks a million
James Laughlin 58:46
Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button. And I'd love it if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.