[00:01] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B show, where Katie Stoddart high performance coach interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now, here's your host. Katie.
[00:32] Katie: Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus Be Show. And today's guest is Laura Tirada. Laura is the co founder of Wave Up, an executive coaching company that empowers executives and founders to navigate their challenges, especially regarding business and personal growth. Thank you so much for joining the show today, Laura.
[00:55] Laura: Hi, Katie. First of all, it's a real pleasure to be here talking with you. I think we have the same focus, what is helping entrepreneurs to grow. So it's a pleasure and let's get this started.
[01:09] Katie: Amazing. Yes, we do have a lot in common. I'm really excited about today's show. It's a bit like talking with a Spanish version of myself, so I have a lot to find out too. Why did you start wave up?
[01:25] Laura: Why so Wave Up, first of all, started one year ago, so it's pretty recent. And it started because I was finishing my master in executive coaching and I was back then working at an international company and I had pretty clear that I wanted to be an entrepreneur myself. And while starting coaching, I realized that that was my thing because I was working in HR back then. So I was really much into people development, talent development, but I really like the opportunity to help people one to one. And I had the pleasure to meet my actual co founder, Albert, and he also wanted to be an entrepreneur himself. So we were thinking, where can we add value to the society in terms of giving executive coaching? And we thought that in Spain, multinationals are using a lot coaching, but startups is a really cool environment that we like and that we have worked in the past and that it's going pretty fast and there's really a lot of opportunities for people to focus, stop, slow down, and put themselves also in the center too. So we thought that there was an opportunity there and we were studying how it's working in other places like United States, and we decided to bring all these new methodologies to Spain. And that's how we started with web app, with a focus in Spain and Latin American countries especially.
[03:08] Katie: Amazing. That sounds like such a fun and exciting journey. I also know from what we've briefly discussed that one of your main focus is Epigenetics. And to be perfectly frank, I have a vague idea of what this is, but I don't even know. So I'm curious myself, and I'm sure my audience will benefit from knowing what is Epigenetics and how does it contribute to our performance.
[03:35] Laura: I was the same the first time I heard about Epigenetics. The point about Epigenetics and why it has sense in coaching, it's because it influence how our genes are expressed and it's very much focused on lifestyle, and that's one of the main parts of our coaching sessions. We do leadership coaching, but we also do high performance and lifestyle coaching and we believe that lifestyle is a place where a lot of transformation takes place. And when you really do healthy lifestyle choices, that really has an impact in your potential. So the question a little bit for me was like how to choose the lifestyle practice that makes sense for the person and that's what brought me to Epigenetics. I tell you a little bit how this practice appear in the first place. The point is that back then when we map the human genome, everyone thought, oh my God, this is like going to the moon. Now we know everything. But what we discovered is that our DNA is mostly identical between everyone. 99% of our genes are the same. So there's like this 1%, which is called the polymorphisms and that's what makes people different. So on top of that, on the genetics that we have and we cannot change, this is like the hardware, we have Epigenetics and this is the software, the code. You cannot change it over time. That's what everyone asks like how can I change my code? It's the hardware that operates, but Epinetics is the software and that's where we have control. Everything we do can change gene expression and that's what Epigenetics is. What kind of lifestyle choices you make in order to change your gene expression? For the good, DNA in the end is a very super intelligent molecule and what the role is, is to thrive. And it's all the time assessing the environment, like how the environment if it's stressful, if it's not stressful, and then it optimize the function of the body, whatever it is. So when we eat certain foods, what we call bioactives, when we exercise chronically, for example, we can take half of our genes. When we meditate, we can take like kind of 23 from the 23,000 of the genes. So there's a fantastic deal of variability and all what we need to do is to do the right thing for that to happen. So that's going to depend on this 1% that I told you, which is called the polymorph systems and it's mainly based on variability like probability. So there's been a lot of studies in terms of gene expression and some people, depending of this 1%, how it is, they will be tending to thrive with different lifestyle choices in terms of eating, in terms of exercise, et cetera. So that gives people the responsibility once they know to do what is correct in order to thrive.
[06:38] Katie: That's amazing. So you're basically taking all the things that I already believe in very strongly, such as nutrition and maybe sleep and exercise and meditation and looking at how it impacts the body directly. I've always felt and noticed and measured how these things have impacted the body, but not directly on a genetic gene perspective. So I think this is just fantastic. I love anything that gives sort of hard physical proof of why these things work. So when we look at studies of how the meditation changes the brain, I love this because all the people that are skeptical to it, they need this sort of logical approach to talk to them. So some people just buy into it because they like the idea or they tried a bit or they felt it. But other people they need more convincing. Same with nutrition. I mean, for me it's just obvious what you eat changes your body, but some people don't really think it'll make that big a difference. I love all of this. I'm wondering how do you measure the impact it has? So it's all great, this theory and all these great words. Polymorphism. What was the word? Polymorphism.
[07:44] Laura: Polymorphisms, yeah.
[07:45] Katie: Polymorphisms sounds great. Sounds like a mathematical thompson I love math anyway. I'm sure it is actually polymorphism anyway for a different day. So how do you measure this? How do you measure, for example, someone who's meditating, exercising, choose the example you prefer. How do you measure the impact it has on your genes?
[08:04] Laura: So first of all, where we start, it's not exactly what impact do we have in the person, but we analyze these variants through DNA test. So we have kind of a lifestyle specific template for the person, depending on the genes of the person, what's going to work for the person. So we can do a biospecific plan for this person. How we do that is because we have nearly 500 genetic variants and this has been studied by a lot of genomic association. Like if the person has these variants, there's a very high deal of probability that this is what is going to happen. So this is going to work better. So in terms of what is measured, is what's going to work for you if you have these genes. The impact that you have once you get your individualized report and you do the practices, first of all, you are going to feel it in a lot of cases and that you can talk with the person because a lot of time. For example, if they are not taking the put the nutrients that some people are better dealing with high fat diets other people are better dealing with other kind of diets. So first of all, they are going to feel it themselves in terms of energy management, in terms of how they feel, in terms of weight, a lot of cases because a lot of these genes in terms of nutrition has a lot of impact in how we manage what we eat. So some people can manage it really good and in other systems it's much slower or our body is just interacting a different way. So the first of all, the person is going to feel it. And the second thing we do is we work with Dextile scanners. So through that you can have kind of a radiography of the person about how the person is at the beginning and then you have a radiography of the person after, let's put, I don't know, six, eight months. So normally you will see a lot of things changing in the body of the person.
[10:02] Katie: Also, I'm just amazed by this. I'm blown away. I love it. I love every word you say, especially how you relate lifestyle to high performance. I've actually never really mentioned it in my post or my content. But when I talk about high performance, lifestyle is just a part of it all the habits, everything you do is definitely a huge section. And it's so funny because it's like we're specializing the same things, high performance and leadership. But you have this whole other sort of secret weapon that I've never used that I'm just thinking, well, this is great. And another thing that I'm wondering here, because I'm fascinated by all of this, I think there's so much to uncover. I'm wondering, can you give us an example of a specific gene and its correlation in something that would suit that person? Because right now it's still very abstract. So could you say, for example, if we see that a person has this it means they need this type of nutrition or this type of exercise. I'm just curious to have a sort of more practical example.
[11:04] Laura: The names of the genes are quite complex. So all the time when we do the interpretation, as you can understand, we are using the interpretation guide. There's some very known genes which are very much related to obesity, for example. So there's a big family called APOE and there's different variants. So depending on which variant you have, the person has a lot of possibilities to be tending to obesity. So for example, in this case there's some kind of diets. The point is that you cannot just take a look to one gene, have to take a look to the whole thing. Because for example, maybe one gene tells you maybe this person should not have on a high fat diet, but you have to take a look to different genes. And the point is that with the genes, some of them have kind of a much higher weight or role in the process. So that's why every individual is so specific. But another point which is really easy to understand, for example, is in terms of sleeping. Because in terms of sleeping, our genes really impact in our chronotype if you are a morning person, if you are a night person and for example, that there are very specific genes that they impact in the person to be tending to be a morning person or in the person to be tending a night person. And some people don't know about that, about how they are and they are just having habits that don't match what they should be doing. Or for example, some people tend to have a bad quality of sleep because of some genes also which are related to the disruption of their sleep. And when you know that you tend to that some people at least, I don't know, they can buy some kind of ring or something that they can test how they are sleeping really. And some people, it's really amazing for them because they thought they were sleeping 8 hours and maybe they were sleeping five. So Epigenetics gives you a sign about what might be happening. So you put a focus on that and you try to change things and then you measure how everything is working. So for the next one I can give you more examples if you want, but because when I get a profile.
[13:13] Katie: I have to take a look to.
[13:14] Laura: The whole picture and measure different gins, not just one by itself.
[13:20] Katie: This is so amazing. It's like you're adding a small box in this puzzle that I already have in my head that includes all the different areas of high performance and what makes us happy and fulfilled and productive in our lives. And you've just sort of added another piece to the puzzle. And I always knew it was related to our genes and our biology in some way but I guess I never looked at it that in depth, obviously and also never really thought about how knowing these things can also impact us. And this kind of makes me think of Ayoveda with KAFA, vata, Peter, for those that are listening who know this, because the way I think about it with our body, I tend to look at those aspects because I have a friend who's really into Ayurveda who studied it for years so she's always told me about it. And my husband is KAFA, for example, and I'm vata and I see how that impacts our sleep, I'll see how that impacts our diet. For those of you who don't know, I invite you to look it up. There's a lot of explanations online, but there's three types of bodies and physiologies and vatas like myself, Vincent, tend to be very in the air, have a lot of thoughts and so that's why meditation is so great first. And I remember the first time I meditated with my husband who's he's caffeine so he's very grounded, he just instantly that was it, he was off and I said after the ten minutes. So did you have any thoughts? No. And that was his first meditation. And me after six months or one year of meditating still had lots of little thoughts popping in. So this is just an example of vata and Kafir. But I'm thinking this is another sort of proof of how our physiology is different and how it affects our performance and our lifestyle. So I love this. I'm wondering because you mentioned the morning and the evening people, I knew this was a thing. I knew this was in the jeep because my whole family are evening people and all of my husband's family is morning people. They all get up at 06:00 a.m. And my family all gets up at nine. And I thought, I'm sure this is genetic. Even my grandmother, her whole life, she got up at 9930 and so I'm constantly striving to get up earlier. I aim around 7730, but I've always felt it goes against my metabolism. So I'm wondering how can I do this? So I manage and eventually sort of my biological clock gets used to it. It's a bit like jet lag. But do you have tips for people? I'm sure there are loads of listeners, loads of people who are evening people, who want to be more morning person. I love mornings, I want to be a morning person. How do we do this?
[15:53] Laura: The first thing we recommend is that if you tend to be an evening person, that's what your body naturally will tend. So you force your body to say it in a way, to do it in a different way. The main point is that the person has quality asleep. That's really important. And the problem with a lot of evening people is that if they go so early to bed, they don't sleep, so they are just awake waiting. So everything is about obviously habits because in the end we are what we do every day, right? So if we really get used to go I mean, you will never have exactly the same habits as maybe a morning person, but if you go little by little, like maybe going a little before to bed and above all, making sure that the sleep is going to be high quality. So there's a lot of things that, as you may know, you can do before going to sleep, so that you don't go to sleep and you don't sleep. Above all, I think that's very related to habits consolidation. So to have habits in the morning which get you started and really good routines in the night that makes you sleep like a baby.
[17:06] Katie: I love this. The evening routines totally have an impact on the next day in the morning routine. I also start with meditation, yoga, so that really helps my body to get up for the people who are listening, who don't do this. I get ready in 15 minutes because I used to sneeze my alarm when I was a student years and years ago and I would get dressed in five minutes and eat breakfast and leave. This is not good if you're not a morning person. It's super important to take time to adjust into the day. And when I do yoga, any form of exercise that really sort of wakes me up and then I can function because I think people who are more evening people are less awake or vivid or alert when they wake up in the morning. So it's important to have this space for yourself. So thank you for sharing this on sleep. I think this is super important. All of these areas sleep, nutrition, exercise, they all have such an impact. And I invite each and every person who's listening to really look at each of these areas of your life and see what you can do, what you can tweak. And I like to move on to what you mentioned right now, which is habits, because I feel that habits is such a fundamental part of high performance. I mentioned this the other day in a Women in Tech event about breaking goals down into habits. And all the feedback I received, this was the number one insight people got, how precious and important habits were to actually reach your goals. So Laura, what's your insight on this? When did you become interested in habits and why do you feel they're so essential?
[18:34] Laura: A good question because at the moment it's really a core in my life. And if I would have to say when it appeared, I think it was like back then I was in Austria living and working for a multinational company and I was traveling a lot, like to all kinds of different countries and continents. So it was really non stop. I didn't get to burn out, but I really struggled in some of the flights and some of the trips because there was no time for sleep. A lot of times the nutrition was not as good, there was not this kind of rhythm during the day. At some point I tried because I knew that was going to continue to be my lifestyle, to really have some kind of habits that I would do all the time. Like kind of to try to wake up at the same time, kind of to do some breathing exercise. That also helped me so much. In the morning I started with yoga. I tried to kind of have a healthy meals and everything while I was traveling. So I started little by little because that's I think how habits should be formed, not suddenly everything and thinking a lot also about because when we build habits, it's very important to know what do we want? You are always trying to get something nice out of it so you will repeat it. So I was also very focused on kind of building my habits in an intelligent way so I would be willing to do them repeatedly. So from there on, I really became a lover of habits and I've been doing it and trying new ones since like three years ago, kind of.
[20:23] Katie: That's amazing. I'm re going through a phase where I'm rediscovering these habits in a way that I think one of the main things, and maybe you've seen this with your clients is I know this has happened for me and some of my clients in the past is trying to implement too many habits at once. And so now I'm really going through a phase. So 1 February was yesterday and I'm going back to my cold showers in the morning with Wim HOF. So I do my meditation, meditation, yoga, advent cold shower, stop for a bit, so I'm going back, but that's it. This is my new habit of February and that's it for the physical aspect, work is different for the morning routine, et cetera. So I feel this is a really important aspect also for implementing habit it's just one at a time, maybe every couple of weeks or every month. Because I realized that in the past what I wanted to do typically when I started my wim HOF cold showers last summer, I was also doing the breathing exercises and the yoga and the meditation and reflecting and planning my day. I did this for like a month and then it fell through because each one needs to be there long enough for us to get used to it. So live and learn and sustain performance is what I'm all about at the moment. Have you felt this, have you had moments in your life where you've implemented too many habits at once and then it just hasn't worked out?
[21:37] Laura: Yeah, and now I'm also living with my boyfriend, so I thought that would be so nice to have habits in common. For example, that has been one of my biggest mistakes, to try to adapt my habits to my couple because my couple was not as ready as me for some of the habits. So then it didn't work. So I would say that for habits it has to be something very personal. That's one of my advice because after one month trying, I said, okay, I come back to my habits. And another thing that I generally recommend is to take a look also to the habits which are not working. So I mean the habits which are giving nothing good to you, but the opposite, just by eliminating those, you are also advancing a lot.
[22:23] Katie: Yes, that's a really great point. It's looking which ones we can implementate and which ones we can get rid of and also maybe looking at which ones we can transform. So if a person is used to having a biscuit every time they come home from work, if they replace it with the fruit, then you're maintaining the I mean, probably a lot of, you know, laura for sure, you know, but probably a lot of, you know, the queue routine rewards. So it's the dynamic of the habit. So the queue is the initiative, the incentive that makes us want to do the habit. The routine is the habit and the reward is how you feel afterwards. So in the example of the biscuit, the queue would be, oh, you just come home from work, the routine was having a biscuit and you're replacing with fruit and the reward is you feel happy or you're back at home. So I think when you just thought right now about getting rid or looking at the habits that don't work. Maybe also the unhealthy habits. That's one way of doing it that I love. Because you're making it easier for yourself because you already have the queue in place, you already have the reflex. Every time you come home to eat something, you're just changing what you're eating. That's a lot easier than building a new habit from scratch.
[23:29] Laura: For everyone hearing out there, I think we should recommend the book Atomic Habits because it's game changer for everyone.
[23:38] Katie: Yes, I'm recommending it all the time. Again, the Women in Tech event I spoke to last week, I recommended it. It's fantastic. And there's a lot more about habits we don't need to dive in right now. But yes, there's a lot of different things that's covered in that book. Great. Well, thank you for sharing your insights on Epigenetics. I'm still fascinated about this. Just a brief question regarding this. How did you find out about it? What got you started doing this? It's quite niche, isn't it?
[24:05] Laura: It's very much niche and actually when I was in Austria, people were quite more open for executives to try it out. Now that I came to Stein to open this new business for startups, it's going slowly because for me it's kind of a second step. First the person has to have in place, as you say, nutrition, sleep environment, athletic, performance, everything has to be in place and then go there. Because if people don't even take that serious, they are not going to go to the second step. So I'm still little by little in order to implement that here also. But in the past what I was thinking is that there should be a way to do lifestyle more personalized. And I was reading a lot about what would be the trends for the future and I read that about health coaches, which is something that I was studying and I liked a lot. It was one of the main trends, personalization and above all the part of genetic. And then I was reading and I found that there's one company called Apironic Academy, they are also a medical center. And I was reading about the CEO, the director, and that was extremely interesting. Like he was putting a lot of focus in going from a disease model, which is very much based how we are doing at the moment, to more of a high performance model to look at people not just as an input output like a plane, but more of a complex systems. Because everything you do in a person has an impact in so many things. So after hearing him, then I researched about the training that they are doing and that's how I got it started.
[25:51] Katie: Amazing. I love all of this and thank you so much for sharing your insight on today's show. I feel we could talk forever. We're probably going to do another episode regarding this in Spanish at some point. I probably won't be putting it on podcast, but I'll link it in the show notes when we've done this podcast in Spanish. Thank you so much for all your insight, Laura. It was fantastic to have you on the show. I really appreciate Kate did. And yes, thank you so much.
[26:18] Laura: Thanks to you, Kate.
[26:19] Katie: It was a pleasure.
[26:19] Laura: And we definitely keeping that.
[26:21] Katie: Thank you.
[26:23] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus Be show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.