Jun 14, 2023
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You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized sessions, and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the MAVEN podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And in this first episode of our EXOS series, I'm joined by our guest, Anthony Hobgood, senior director of performance at EXOS.
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In this episode, we kick off the series to highlight Anthony, who tells us about his humble beginnings and how his early life influences played a significant part in carrying with him his purpose as an EXOS leader and coach, one who dedicates his craft to healing others. Anthony explains the foundation of how EXOS came to be, the programs offered and what it takes to earn results.
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Which is a brief summary of the EXOS mission as they commit to serving communities, companies and our military. Anthony's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn. Seek to understand as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. What's going on, Anthony? Good morning, Chris. How you doing? I'm doing all right, thanks.
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A little trouble getting in today, did you? Yeah. The three mile bridge coming to work. I got stuck in traffic for a half hour, which was a great way to kick off your Monday morning. But actually, Tuesday morning, Monday, it was like a monday. What did you do over the weekend? My son had a baseball tournament, so I coached a nine year baseball tournament in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
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The weather was pristine and perfect. Monday, I cooked out with some friends of ours and built a homemade slip and slide that was four times larger than what you could buy. So cooking ribs and a barrel cooker while your kids run on a 40 yard long slip and slide. That's it was a good day and is a good day.
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The one we had when I was younger was, what, ten foot? Yes. Usually ended up on the edge of the grass that transitioned into the sidewalk. Belly Burns. Exactly. Yeah. You can. You can go to a Home Depot and buy a big roll of of plastic that makes the best slip and slide in the world for about $15.
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So it's a great time. It is a great time. Nice. How about you? What was your day yesterday? Yeah, it was great. Thanks for asking. And it was, you know, of course, Memorial Day. And so we do. Well, I do. Family will follow up later, but from my house to the Presidio National Cemetery is just over 26 ish miles, just enough to call it a marathon.
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And so I yesterday rucked, learned I got baby feet. So footwear is key but but in on the route passed by two cemeteries go Golden Gate Cemetery and then landed at National Presidio National Cemetery which is nice because it's reflection walk and you know just good opportunity to walk through the community and see where we are at the society.
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So that's that's the idea. Yeah. Good. It was good. Awesome. So today we are talking about the first of our seven episodes Anthony is going to cover expose the organization, how he became a part of it and what the contributions of him at an early age bring it up to his dedication to the field in which he's working and we'll start to hammer out some details that'll just give us some teasers on on what the company's about and and the services that they provide and how it helps our community and others.
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So, Anthony, if you wouldn't mind just and we talked about it, you can start where you want. Well currently I live in Pensacola, Florida, and our facility access facilities in Gulf Breeze, Florida. My current position now, I'm the senior director of performance for XO Sports Division. Essentially manage the teams and the service we deliver across our our sports training sites.
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I've been at this location now, actually, I think going on 16 years I've been here. We opened up this location in 2007, so I'm basically then I'm a coach, so I've had my I kind of had my head under the hood for the last six years at this location, coaching, training, athletes, working primarily, working a lot of the military, which I will get into a little bit later.
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But yeah, I've been here that I've been here a long time been it's been a tremendous, tremendous last six years being here. But yeah, prior to coming here, I grew up in a little small town in Mississippi called Picayune, Mississippi. It's a little town on the Louisiana Mississippi border, just probably 40 miles, 45 miles outside of New Orleans.
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I grew up there in a little small community, in a little country town. And it's interesting, I was reflecting on this this past weekend. You know, my parents didn't let me play any sports until I was ten years old. And when I started playing sports at ten, it changed my life like I was I was really good at it, just naturally play baseball.
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Started out playing soccer, but started playing the sports. And that led to going in and playing football in college. So I was playing football at Ole Miss from 2002 to 2006, and that whole journey was just as is another long story that was very, very life changing for me. I think about it quite often and just how all the pieces fell together and how my journey from high school through college and how I even ended up here.
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But I got into this field because I was an athlete and fell in love with the strength conditioning piece and got my degree in exercise science. And and that's that's essentially the, you know, the catalyst for how I stepped into the human performance field most students do through athletics. And then once we started work on the military, I realized that working with tactical population was really the the gold standard of my field.
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So. So yeah, that's, that's the big rocks of my of my background. Got it. So small town sports that's a big deal. I mean how seriously was was did the community look at sports pretty seriously and think about think of a little town where on Friday night everybody's at the football game you know and and then growing up in little community that I grew up in, I was around you know, the street I grew up on was named after my last name I grew up on at first when I was a kid was a dirt road.
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It was called I think my address was Route six, Box 59. That was my address. It was a route under coach. And then as I got older, it was changed to Hobgood Lane. That's because my family owned the land that was there. And so I grew up around all my cousins and I mean, imagine waking up in the summertime as a kid and you've got about four or five cousins your age and acres of woods to explore and bikes to ride, and I mean trails to riding your bike.
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And it was just that was how it was. And then when I started playing baseball, I wasn't very good initially, but I was just a big athletic kid. And then I started seeing a lot of success really quick. And so it just expanded my network tremendously. So I went from not really having many friends outside of my family to it just exploded my network of people that I knew in my town and friends and in my experience, as you know, when I was 12 years old, we played we almost made it to the Little League World Series and we import Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
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Like, really, we can really close to make it to Williamsport. But what was interesting was when I we are the town, the city we represented, our team won the state championship in Mississippi. So we represented the state of Mississippi in the Little League regionals down in St Petersburg, Florida. And the city flew us down there on an airplane.
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Well, my dad and I got on the airplane and it was both our first time ever on an airplane. My dad had never been on an airplane. I was 12 years old. I had never been on an airplane. And so so yeah, that's we flew there and did that. And then and then since I was, you know, I was I was one of those kids that was early bloomer, right?
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So I was really big as a as a young kid. I mean, shoot, I was some in some cases, as you know, 13, 14 years old, I was larger than the empire that was umpiring the game. And so everybody was always on the ball. Don't you play football? You know, you should play football. You play football. And so in eighth grade I was like, okay, well, I'm going to try this football thing out.
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And I did that. And and that's when I started playing football. And that also then expanded my, my again, my network of people that I knew even greater. But what really started changing for me was two things. One, I met a guy who ended up becoming my brother in law that married my sister, who really became a mentor to me when I was in high school.
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And then the combination of him and getting recruited to go to college. So I'd never wasn't even thinking of college, wasn't even my radar and I got an invite to go to a visit to the University of Southern Mississippi, and it's the first time I'd ever set foot on a college campus. And so I started getting recruited for college football.
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And then I started thinking, Oh, man, I want I want a part of this. I want to be you know, I want I want to do this. And so football was really my catalyst for start to start creating an interest in going to college, you know, without going too deep. Both of my parents dropped out of high school when they were teenagers and got married, and my dad worked hard, manual labor jobs my whole life.
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My mom, you know, when I was really small, she did everything from job, a school bus to she was a teacher's aide, and then she cleaned houses for a living when I was a kid. And my dad worked manual labor jobs. And it wasn't even my college wasn't even on our radar. It just wasn't something talked about in my house.
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Yeah. And recruited to put, you know, being recruited to go to college is the first time that that actually opened a whole world to me that I would that I started to explore and that that absolutely changed my life. Got it that that's that's that's an interesting transition baseball to football of course the influence however they were looking at you and it's not uncommon I guess so you're pretty used to it.
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These things that we indicate sometimes is or uses indicators to point us in a different trajectory. It's amazing how it turns out. On considering things that you never thought that you were able to do. I mean, going not only in a different sport, but then expanding and going to college, that that as a result of that stuff. Yeah.
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I mean, talk about life skills development, looking at things. That's good. That's good that you and your family were open, of course, because where you are now, what was happening is my what was a time when my mom, who was my brother, my brother in law now went out. You know, he played college baseball and he he grew up in New Orleans and he grew up in a big city.
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And he had been he had been around the travel song and he sees this young kid who had very little life experience outside of a small town. And he started speaking things into my life, basically saying, hey, man, you could you got a lot of potential. You should you know, you should go to college, you should go play sports in college.
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You should, you know, And he really was an encourager to me to step out and really painted a picture for me of of, you know, some things I could have accomplished. And long story short, going into my senior year of high school, I was being recruited by LSU, Southern Miss and University of Mississippi, Ole Miss. And I went to a I went to a football camp that that was at LSU, that was put on by Nick Saban.
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And at that camp, I it was really kind of like a semi camp slash recruiting visit. I tore my ACL at the camp and make a long story short, I had to sit out my entire senior year of high school football. I was back in rehab and was back, you know, for baseball that season. And we had a great year.
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We won the state championship for the only time in history, in school. History was great, but my all the recruiting to the big schools stopped because I tore my ACL and I wasn't able to I didn't even play my senior year. So I ended up signing a junior college football scholarship and a lot of the smaller schools, you know, were still offering me.
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Well, I wanted I had kind of set my mind on playing in the SCC. Well, I wanted to go to Ole Miss and my coach who was recruited me, called me and said, Hey, we would love to have you here, but we can't give you a football scholarship. You didn't even play your senior year. So if you find a way to get here, we'd love to have you on the team.
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But you have to you have to walk on. And I'm like, Well, I can't do that. Long story short, man, I ended up getting an academic scholarship that paid for all of my college, and I showed up to Ole Miss. I passed up a JUCO scholarship and some other opportunities and I went to Ole Miss as an invited walk on on an academic scholarship.
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And just to give you a picture of what that was like, imagine you are part of the team, okay? You are training, you're practicing, you are, you're in the grind as a team. But then on the team, like after workouts, when players are getting like post-workout, you know, supplements, you can't have it. When the team has like a team meal after practice, you're not allowed to participate or to partake in it.
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And so I had this like chip on my shoulder of I need to earn every single thing that I get because they're not going to give me anything. So I went from showing up and not allowed to participate in some of the benefits that the team was getting. Even though I was on a team and practicing contributed at a high level.
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I went from that to to to being to lettering, to actually play in and, and, you know, being on the team. And so anyway, that's that was a whole that was a life experience journey for me of truly realizing that to be on that field on Saturday was more a 100% merit based system that you had to earn.
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And not just earn, but you had to like you were in the negative, like you were in the negative starting out and you had to go get every opportunity. You had to go take advantage of every opportunity that you have to be able to make it. And and fortunately, I did. So that was that was quite a, I would call a forging moment of my life going through all of that.
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Yeah. I mean, everything everything that you're saying has me swirling around life lessons, mentorship, encouragement. Yeah, accountability. You know, I mean, the last part itself, and we'll get into it more. I'm hoping. I'm sure we're appreciating injuries or things that prevent you from hitting your potential in this case because of where you are and what you do. I want to be able to plant the seed right now.
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And as you tell it, as we talk more, is how does that how does all that experience bring now a perspective into the value that you're you're providing to your clients or to customers? I mean, just just the whole idea of saying you're in a bad situation, you're in a situation bad is relative. You're in a situation right now that you don't want to be in in order to get out of it.
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We're going to we're going to approach it, but you're going to have to work for it. I'm going to give you the give you the answers. You're going to have to study and get the results. I would say I mean, I could I could go. There's even more after that. I could get into it. But I would say if I were to reflect on the biggest thing that I've learned in my life is that think about a human being's life.
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If you were to track their life the way that you see a stock, think about a stock market graph, right? So you see a graph where the line is increasing, then it drops and then it increases and it drops and it increases and it drops and increasing it drops. But then the overall slope of that graph is this gradual increase.
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I think our lives are that same way where when I look back on what I would consider very challenging and hard circumstances in my life, those are the times where I grew the most don't grow when things are easy, you grow when things are hard. So I began to just embrace the hard things, like if something is hard, it's the opportunity to get better as opportunities to grow.
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If things were always easy, I would, I wouldn't. I wouldn't learn anything. It would just stagnate, you know, I'd become stagnant if not go backwards. So every hard thing I see in my past was a very, very important period in my life that made me who I am today. So therefore, if I'm going through something challenging right now, I'll look back on that this years from now and realize that that was that was beneficial for my growth.
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Was there a sense of ownership as far as paying it forward when it comes to that of those that put helped you get into that situation where it's also included in that reflective moment of how are you going to push through the hardships? Yeah, I mean, is there like a sense of ownership in myself or you said, Yeah, and yourself, it's, it's somebody gave me the chance to, to do the things that I'm doing now.
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Without that, I have to push through it because I owe it to those who supported me along the way. Yeah, yeah. 100%. I def You definitely do. I mean, you, you're, you're going to get opportunities in your life. Okay. When I say opportunities, an opportunity may be as something as simple as you meeting somebody in the office for the first time and the way that you interact with them, like every day is every day and how you conduct yourself is an opportunity for you to expand yourself as a person to become better and it's essentially, what are you going to do with those opportunities?
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Are you going to take it back? Are you going to take those opportunities for granted, or are you going to approach life with a sense of gratitude and realize that man, that, you know, I'm thankful for being here, I'm thankful for the app and I'm thankful for my employer. I'm thankful for the people around me. And I use this opportunity to improve myself and improve those around me like a constant state of growth.
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And so so yeah, I definitely think there's an obligation there. And I think that is I think that obligation is founded in the concept of gratitude. You know, like I'm grateful to be here, therefore I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity and not take it for granted if that made any sense at all. But that's my mindset now.
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Immediately I wrote it down. If I ever wanted a soundbite, that was it. Yeah. I mean, that's a it's a very powerful statement. How, how, how people look at the things that are giving them. It's offering them everything, you know, relatively good or bad matters less, but all of it is now factor that's based off of the foundation that somebody laid out for you to be where you are.
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So gratitude is the is the key for sure in this. And we we we have said this many times. Well you know, as we'll get into a little later, you know, the founder of our company is, you know, Mark Verstegen, right. Mark Verstegen founded EXOS back in 1999. And as when I came into this company, I was giving lots and lots of opportunities like I had.
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We had special operations groups inside the military that were inviting us in and to come in and work with them. And the person that they got was me. And there's a, there's a tendency, because of your own selfish human pride, to think that, Oh, I'm getting invited here because of me and because I'm good at what I do.
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But the reality is, no, you're not getting out of there because of me. I'm getting invited there because of the the the work that was laid before me by great people like Mark statement, like I'm coming there for the name of my shirt, not because of Nate, not because of who I am, because of Mark, because of that was because of the people who came before me.
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Therefore, I have to through two things. Number one, I have a I better be grateful for that because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be asked to come here. Let's get a clear to I have an opportunity. I have an obligation to be good stewards, be a good steward of this opportunity, and and basically do a great job.
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Right as much This is much bigger than me. And so I see a lot of people today who have tremendous privileges that that that they did not earn that is just there. But they don't have any sense of gratitude for what they have. They don't have the right perspective about it. They don't understand it. They take for granted that you can go to your waterfall, sit and turn it on, and clean drinking water just comes out.
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They take for you, take for granted that I can go flip on my light switch and my light bulb comes on. I don't realize that what it takes for that to happen. Okay. And so anyway, I think a the right perspective leads to a healthy dose of gratitude, but also a healthy dose of ownership and responsibility to to be good.
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Yes, to all of it. Okay. Well, that's that's a if anybody out there is not picking up what we're laying down there, this is this is the the attitude in the brand. And I can say that and I'm oversimplifying it, not doing it justice, but the relationship between individuals that are performing on behalf of others, in this case, you just got it.
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So now let's talk about EXOS. So let's talk about the founder. Let's talk about the premise in which the organization was created, what it's serving, the growth that it's experienced, and then slide in there. Anthony, if you wouldn't mind, please. You know, so you're you're out of college and you start to consider what you're going to do next.
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How did you land here? And kind of as best you can make it both a minor. Yes. So I'm at Ole Miss playing football. I had worked really hard and in the spring of 2005, I was going to my junior season and I was in line at the starting position as the full back on the football team was mine to lose.
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I had paid a lot of dues to be in that position and in the spring training I had my first concussion and medically was not cleared to continue to play. And so I had worked really hard to, you know, I played I was I was playing, I was on special teams and was in the rotation. But I wasn't a starter that worked really hard to become a starter.
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And then here it here what seems to be the rug getting pulled out from underneath me? I wasn't playing anymore. Well, my coaches wanted me to stick around the program and just like, help coach be like a student coach, like intern as a coach. Well, I didn't want any part of that, but I loved the training piece. So I started working in the in the weight room with the strength staff, and I finished out my time at Ole Miss, you know, as a volunteer and as an intern on the strength staff.
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Well, I was seeing my coaches. We were opening up the weight room at 530 in the morning to train athletes. Well, then you're you'd be there at 6 p.m. at night training the baseball team and that lifestyle of you can't do anything other than just work. I didn't want that because personally I had a lot of ambition of having a family one day and I'm going to go to coach my son's baseball team.
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If I had a son right, I wanted to be able to have a life outside of my work. I didn't want to just be one dimensional. And so long story short, my my Bama can ex professor at Ole Miss. His name was Dr. Chip Wade. He got the director of research position at a place called the Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze, Florida, and he called me in his office one day and he said, Hey, I'm going to be going down to Gulf Breeze to run research at the Andrews Institute, which was an orthopedic surgery center for Dr. James Andrews, who's one of the most renowned orthopedic surgeons in the world.
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And they're going to run a human performance facility at that campus. And they want to integrate human performance into the campus. And they're talking with this company out of Arizona called Athlete Performance. And it looks like athletes performance is going to come in and run the performance center at the Andrews Institute, and they are the leaders and tumor performance globally.
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If you're an elite athlete and you want to go to private training facility athletes, performance is the place to go. Well, I had never heard of it and I said, man, I'd be. It sounds like a great opportunity to go and be a strength conditioning coach in the private sector. And oh, by the way, I get to go to grad school and they'll pay for it'd be like a G position.
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I said, Let's do it. So I moved down to I moved down to Pensacola. I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but I moved down to Pensacola and was a grad assistant in the Bahamas in a research lab for the Andrews Institute. And I worked in the biomechanics research lab and went to the University of West Florida and got my master's degree.
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And I did that at nighttime. Well, I wanted to get my foot in the door of the athlete's performance. And so I was I was as much as I could hang out with the staff and help and take the trash out if I see them cleaning out, grab a broom. And I just started volunteering with athletes performance because we were in the same space.
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And anyway, I got an opportunity. They hired me as a part time coach because they, they, they sold a high school football speed training program over the summer. That was a hundred athletes coming in here to train and they let me come in and run it. And so that was where I cut my teeth with athletes performance. And then when I when I was I was part time and then I became full time when I graduated in oh nine.
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And so but here's what I didn't realize, what I what I learned by coming here was I'd learned I'd learned about this company at the time. Athletes performance was a very small company, and it was it was founded by Mark Verstegen in 1999, and back in the nineties Mark Verstegen was at IMG and he left img to at the time was to create something that didn't exist and he wanted to create a training facility, not just a facility, but think about a training experience where an athlete had everything that they needed.
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In one location. You had physical therapy, you had performance specialists, you had dietitians, you had massage therapists, you had all the different professionals in one location, but not just there, but they were there seamlessly integrated as a staff by their culture and also a methodology. So you walk in as an athlete and you have this multidisciplinary team surrounding you, all working together to help you reach your goals, whether it's recovering from an injury, whether it's preparing for an event or just training in the off season, you had a place that was like a sanctuary for pro athletes and he created that.
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He took all the he took what we knew and human performance and basically packaged it into a system that became known as the access methodology, the access training system. And that system, rightly understood, could can be manipulated in an infinite number of ways to help anybody, whether you are, you know, an athlete or not an athlete, have a healthy lifestyle or prepare for any kind of training or event.
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And so so yeah, he he started that company in 99 and built something very, very special that became a magnet to pro athletes globally which which was the catalyst for the military coming and saying, how can we take what you guys do and apply it to our world? Humble beginnings, it seems in that story, something a part of your life you've demonstrated through storytelling is gravitate towards that opportunity.
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And you mentioned some of the things that you'll do just to be around those things, you know, clean in. And then I work a couple of years without getting really paid anything for it. Yeah, paid a lot of dues. Right. But what you earned, I mean, it's priceless. You know. But that's really true, though. Like, like I was I was I was earning number one.
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I was learning because here's what I realized, Chris, is what we do. What I do for like, when I'm training an athlete, you know, I have a master's degree in extra science, I have my CSCS certification, but 99.9% of what I do, I learned from on the job training by doing it and by being mentored by the people and the education and the degrees and the certifications only give somebody a foundation.
00;30;29;21 - 00;30;54;03
It gives you an understanding of the human body and it gives you essentially you to, you know, how to speak the language, but you don't know how to do it. And so you have to basically become an apprentice and learn from others for a period of time before you can really, what I would say, do a great job at training somebody.
00;30;54;05 - 00;31;19;10
Yep. Sounds like there's continuity between that and the approach. So what is what is so Exos interesting name. What does it stand for itself? Well, prior to 2014, our company's name was Athlete Performance and Mark had had wrote a book called Core Performance, and we actually had athletes perform it. He had two brands. It was kind of two brands at the time.
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You had athletes performance that was geared more toward athlete facing populations and you had core performance that was geared more toward general population. And we actually we actually opened up our core performance training facilities in California that was geared more toward Gen POC. Well, it was there was it was kind of confusing, you know, having two brands. But in the same company.
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And then when we were going to the table to to expand our reach and influence and working with different corporations like Google, for example, or the military, when you're when you're talking to a Google or the military, the first response is, well, we're not athletes. You know, you see athletes performance, but we have a different population with different job and a different demand.
00;32;05;10 - 00;32;43;16
So how was that resonate? It didn't resonate very well. And then those different non-athletic worlds. So in 2014, as we began to expand our impact into military and and into serving employees and big corporations, we went through a complete rebranding and we went away from the athletes performance and the core performance brand to a brand called EXOS. The name EXOS comes from the word EXOSphere, which is the outer level of the worlds of the Earth's atmosphere.
00;32;43;18 - 00;33;11;27
So from just a figurative standpoint, it it's it stands for the highest level on earth, really. If you look at the if you look at the the X s, the x is broken into four little pieces. If you look at the logo. And those four pieces represents our four pillars of our of our of our methodology, which is mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery.
00;33;11;29 - 00;33;44;12
So what we if you think about our our our our methodology from high level, if we're working with military general population employees for organizations or elite athletes, if you want to optimize your performance, if you want to have sustainability long term, you need to be firing on all four of those cylinders. Mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery. Okay? If you look at the oh for the in the name excess, you'll notice is broken into two parts.
00;33;44;14 - 00;34;15;23
Well, and part of our methodology, we have a concept we call the recovery cycle, which is work plus rest equals success. Another way of saying it is work plus rest equals adaptation. That is one of the core fundamental principles of our system is if you're seeking an adaptation, you have to have work, which is some type of stimulus paired with breast, which is your recovery in order for adaptation to occur.
00;34;15;25 - 00;34;38;21
All right. And if you think about that equation, why that's important is if you were to if you think about how, you know, example will commonly used as if you look at how calluses form on your hand. Okay. So if you were to rub your hand on concrete or sandpaper on your hand, right. You do it for a period of time with the rest your body is going to adapt and your skin is going to thicken.
00;34;38;21 - 00;35;02;05
And former callus will in order for the callus to form, what is more important, the stimulus or the rest? Well, the answer is both. Like you can't have one without the other. And so what, Chris, why that's important is what that means is, is as an athlete, personally, I only focused on my training. I thought that my training is where I make my improvements.
00;35;02;07 - 00;35;26;19
And I didn't make a I didn't put a priority on how I recovered. And so as a college athlete, I was training really hard, but I would stay up late at night and I wouldn't prioritize like how I took care of my body. And so if you have the proper mindset, you're going to value how you manage your recovery just as as as much as you value how you put a training stimulus on yourself.
00;35;26;22 - 00;35;57;02
And so, again, going back to to the to the logo, you ask me what does that mean That that is essentially like outer atmosphere of the earth. That's where the name excess comes from. And as you kind of peek into the actual logo itself, you'll see our four pillars built into the X, you'll see the recovery cycle built into the oath, and that concept of mindset, nutrition, movement, recovery and work stress, equal success really is at the core of our methodology and how we serve people.
00;35;57;04 - 00;36;27;00
That's awesome that the connectedness in itself, in the brand and how it brings together through the words and the imageries. I mean, it makes sense. And you're right, always a student. I'm learning, especially in the fitness area where people like me have been making attempts at trying to be physically fit for decades. It's always working hard. Nobody brags about how much rest you're giving your body or how much recovery options that you've planned for.
00;36;27;03 - 00;36;52;21
I mean, the good ones do, right? Right. So so in that transformation, I can't help but to bring up the reflective effort to go into the brain connectedness because talking about how how people become aware of what organizations do you know, a lot of us will put myself included. I'll put weight into like we talked about the imagery.
00;36;52;21 - 00;37;14;04
I'll look at the words, I'll look at the company name. I won't make the association. So then I dismiss it and move on. I'm gathering that in that and I'm oversimplifying it. That's part of where you your organization had realized that in order for us to be more effective, expand the reach and have people gravitate towards the offerings that we have.
00;37;14;06 - 00;37;35;16
We have to be able to symbolize that in the name, in the words to get the hook, if you will, to get them to realize what we're doing. And so in that evolution where you change the name, what does that done for the organization to help simplify that process of people becoming able to connect what your name is and what you do?
00;37;35;18 - 00;38;01;12
Yeah, I think I think if you look prior to that, that brand change, it was the name I guess cured a stigma with it, right? Well, first of all, I'll say this like if you want, if there's a back up of the reason that access is where it is today is because of the character of the values and the humility of Mark stigma.
00;38;01;14 - 00;38;22;13
When Mark started this company, he didn't name it for Steeg and performance. He made it athletes performance. And what that essentially means is we have an athlete centric approach to what we're doing. We're going to put the athlete in a center and we're going to ask this question what is best for the athlete? And that's not what's best for me, what's best for my image or my career.
00;38;22;13 - 00;38;52;07
But what's best for the athlete. You're putting the athlete in the center. And so that that values that value structure of of really elevating the individual that you're serving over yourself was the catalyst for our growth as a company. Because if it if it wasn't for that, our athletes performance would still be a tiny, small little company in Arizona where elite athletes were trained in what was stagnant.
00;38;52;07 - 00;39;11;20
It would still be their coaching every day. But because of the I'm going to I'm going to do I'm not going to start going to be about me. It's going to be about the individuals that were to serve us. That's allowed us to reach all the people that we've reached over the years. I mean, thousands and thousands, if not millions of people that we've impacted.
00;39;11;22 - 00;39;36;27
And then again, as you as you think about the the name and the brand, you know, the moment you see athletes performance, you automatically associate, you know, the stigma of a training for sport. And when you disconnect from that stigma and you look at it, do you know, you're not associated with that. The name EXOS now doesn't carry that.
00;39;36;27 - 00;40;01;04
Oh, it's just for an athlete like this. This is a this is a group of people that can help me, whether I am again, if I'm in the military or if I'm just looking for how to combat my sedentary lifestyle that my office job gives me. This is a brand and a system that can help me accomplish any of those things.
00;40;01;06 - 00;40;21;19
And it just doesn't it's not pigeonholed. I'm used to, you know, to 1 to 1 area, which is one of the reasons that we wanted to get away from that name in the first place. It makes sense. It was a nice, nice way of explaining it. I mean, it was clear and concise. And the thing is, is the reality is because I am one that didn't really understand the depth of those offerings.
00;40;21;25 - 00;40;52;28
So for everybody out there, EXOS is the primary fitness center management company for Oracle. And wherever there's a fitness center in our locations, there's EXOS. And if one were to go to our headquarters, you would see a very nice facility with an outstanding staff that until you actually have the conversation, you would just think it's fitness center because you're you're conditioned to just realize whatever a gym looks like and you're like, Oh, it's got stuff in there.
00;40;53;05 - 00;41;16;00
There's some people stand around, help in training, what have you. But I will advocate for this. If you're curious about what else can be offered to you and you know that you need something else other than just the physical component, you need to have a conversation and be curious with the staff members and could do this anywhere to kind of test what would Anthony's describing it, what EXOS is.
00;41;16;01 - 00;41;58;13
It's it's the holistic view that encompasses all the elements, the pillars, all the elements of what an individual needs to plan for. Because one if one of those is deficient, that's not going to get you to where you believe you want to be, where you can be your potential. So that's the element, which is what got us to sit here today and introduce this seven episode series of EXOS the depth of EXOS today we're just talking about the introduction and some at the very high level, but it's to set the foundation of the people that EXOS brings in which Anthony's talked about who he's developed to be, from where he started to where he is.
00;41;58;13 - 00;42;22;27
That's an element that's a good symbolic range of the type of individuals that you'll be working with when you talk about EXOS. Well, we'll get into that a little bit more detail now because I am curious and there's more to share. But just just to be clear, the the realization that everybody has to have on how we're how how you play a part in society is to understand where you need to be better.
00;42;23;00 - 00;42;59;01
And that comes with realizing how well rounded of a perspective you should have on the pillars, because they all play a part in each other. So now, now that we have a better understanding of the cultural component which traversed from an old way of of presenting the value athletic performance, focusing on like you call it, like a pigeonhole sort of to where now people just misunderstood that to be only specific to a demographic, a specific demographic that is moral, all encompassing of anybody.
00;42;59;03 - 00;43;30;16
What what organizations or what other demographics are you specializing in now with what you're offering? Well, you have at our at our training facilities, you'll see here you're going to see that we work with the spectrum of athletes from youth athletes, high school athletes, sports teams, college athletes, pro athletes of all sports. We also have extensive experience working with the military, which is really my favorite, my most favorite thing that we do.
00;43;30;18 - 00;43;53;00
And very thankfully, you know, a lot of the work that we did in the military, we have done military was originated out of our facility here in Florida. And so if you think about the broad reach of of access, every spectrum of athlete and in in even every spectrum of of military personnel. So there's a think about the life cycle of in the military.
00;43;53;02 - 00;44;14;28
If you're young in your career versus you're in the middle of your career, you're 20 years in, you know, we have solutions for both of those. You've been injured and you're trying to get back to the, you know, operational capacity. We have programs for that. That's that is our that's our our key program in Florida. We call it the Accelerated Return of Duty program.
00;44;15;00 - 00;44;41;20
And so that program is built around this concept that you have an injury that has that prevents you from doing your job. You come here and we take you to an immersive experience. That is a monologue that we help you get back to where you're able to go back and do your job. So there's that. But then there's also as you begin to transition out of the military, your goals change, right?
00;44;41;20 - 00;45;16;19
You're you're trying to stay fit for operational fitness. Well, then as you retire, you're not trying to maintain that level of operational readiness. You're just looking for I want to feel good. I'm going to wake up in the morning in my back, not hurt. I want to maintain a level of fitness for my health and longevity. And so then whether again, whether I'm early in my career, whether I am operational, whether I'm injured, trying to get back to operational status or retired and looking for health or longevity we have plans for all of those.
00;45;16;21 - 00;45;34;19
And then if you think about it, this and probably the same concept for somebody who's, you know, just general population, we're all at one point in time play sports or you have these different goals. But then at some point time training is really reduced down to I just want to be healthy and be able to function and live the life that I want to live.
00;45;34;22 - 00;45;59;00
And so EXOS is motto now is we help you get ready for the moments that matter most to you wherever you are. Right? And then if you if you look into the corporate setting, you, you know, you may not be training for a particular event or something that requires you to perform at your peak. However, you know, these days we do most of our work on computers.
00;45;59;00 - 00;46;26;06
And so you're sitting at a desk for 6 hours a day, you know, how do I get out of that position and and go and activate my body in a way that allows me to maintain a level of cardiovascular fitness, you know, muscular strength and movement in my body to where I can still thrive as a person and live the life that I want to live, even though I'm not I don't have any particular performance related goals in terms that relate to sport or my job.
00;46;26;08 - 00;46;52;11
And so again, I'm an athlete or I'm in the military or I am working as a as a employee for a corporation, I still, you know, wherever I'm at there, we we serve that whole spectrum of individual needs that's solid. I mean, that's I guess the question I would have then is how do you how do you plan for with the staff?
00;46;52;11 - 00;47;17;26
How does the staff learn the component of discovery? I'm going to say discovery, but you're asking questions and finding goals. I mean, there's got to be at some point, not only the hard skills that you have, bringing to the table, learning how to to work with bodies and then all of its functions, but how the conversations going with people that want to learn exactly what it is that people say and how it translates and what they mean.
00;47;17;29 - 00;47;42;06
Yeah. So if you really if you really zoom out and look at what it is that we do, we take the needs and the wants of people and we build game plans from that. And so you, you find out what somebody needs through a process of evaluations and that can be different depending upon where you are. But here at this, we're out we're at our performance training facility here.
00;47;42;09 - 00;48;06;21
When somebody shows up, we take them through an in-depth physical therapy and email to find out about injury history to to to have to move and and discover other dysfunctions in their movement. Do they have pain with all of that? Gives us gives us information about needs. Okay. We'll take them through a nutrition consultation to find out what their goals are.
00;48;06;21 - 00;48;26;25
From a nutrition standpoint, are you trying to maintain your body weight, lose body weight, increase body weight, change your body composition? What are your goals there? Well, that needs assessment for body comp or for nutrition standpoint drives the plan and game plan for how we support someone a nutritionally an improved form of performance standpoint. We have performance evals.
00;48;26;25 - 00;48;50;15
We take our people through. That usually takes the form of doing what's on top of force plates where we can look at how they how they generate and exhort force. And so we have a we have a performance evals, nutrition evals and physical therapy evals that gives us information about needs. Sometimes you don't even know the things that you need from there.
00;48;50;15 - 00;49;12;12
We do. We do a a consultation where we find out what somebody wants. And that's a that's essentially sitting down with somebody having a conversation seeking to understand what are their big picture goals and the short term goals, like what are you trying to accomplish while you're being here? And we take those that combination of needs and wants and we build a game plan that fits that.
00;49;12;15 - 00;49;39;16
Now, if you zoom out and say, well, how like that same concept, the Navy came to us many years ago, the Navy, and they said, Hey, we hired we have all these fitness instructors that train our sailors across the entire force. There's no integration or it's all just it's all siloed. And in terms of how we do it, can you guys help us build a training program for our sailors?
00;49;39;18 - 00;50;05;14
And we said, absolutely. So we went out to the Navy and they took us aboard their large ships. They took us aboard aircraft carriers into submarines, onto their actual gyms that they have. That's a military base. And they said, Can you build us a program that whether you were at a full working gym out on base, if you're on an aircraft carrier or in a submarine, then you can still do it.
00;50;05;16 - 00;50;25;09
And so we built a program for the Navy called the Navy's program, which stands for Naval Operational Fitness and Fueling series. And we built that. And if you look it up, you look up NAF, Naval Operational Fitness and PHENIX areas, you will see a program that 100% of that was built by EXOS. And how do we build that?
00;50;25;09 - 00;50;47;05
We had to go in and seek to understand what are the needs, what are the constraints, what's the environment, what are you guys asking for? Who's the problem, what population we're working with? And and so we built that program and I was part of the team that went out and ran education courses with all of their all of their fitness instructors for the Navy, for the for the Navy.
00;50;47;07 - 00;51;14;19
And we ran these education courses where they're with their teams going through our training methodology and actually diving into the actual training program self. And so that's just an example of seeking to understand it before you go build a game plan. The performance code we have is called Learn, design, deliver, refine. And so you learn about somebody. You design a game plan, you deliver the game plan, right?
00;51;14;19 - 00;51;33;28
And then you riff and then you refine the game plan. And it's a constant thing about a feedback loop, learning design to deliver, refine, learn, design, deliver, refine. You constantly are doing that with people that you're working with or organizations you're working with. The idea there is in fact the growth, the growth pattern, right, is as things evolve and change, you're constantly reassessing.
00;51;33;28 - 00;51;58;17
So I, I can see why it's successful. You're out there putting in front of everything that you're doing. The intent, if it's not the name, it's the people and the way people conduct themselves. It's the the manner in which the professionalism and the brand and the caring of the individuals paying it forward for the foundation that's been built, it's the continuity between an expectation and hope.
00;51;58;19 - 00;52;17;01
You know, an individual that is in, I'm sure you know, in front of you is there's hope. A lot of you know, for me it would be desperation. I'm like, I'm in a place right now I'm not familiar with and I'm I'm struggling to accept it because I'm limited in the things that I used to do. Well, I can't do as well now.
00;52;17;03 - 00;52;42;10
And I'm hoping that you can help me. So with that comes with the confidence in what you're doing individually as you represent the organization. But the approach I think, is it's an outstanding approach because it's incorporating the factors that not only makes sense, it gives us the confidence in trusting you to help reshape whatever it is that we're needing and wanting.
00;52;42;12 - 00;53;13;24
Yeah, I suppose we can leave it there because we don't want to give too much away for the next couple episodes, but that's been my head. What what else would you like to share that we haven't yet covered? So if you really think about our our work with this other military just really big picture of man probably back 2005, I believe there were some groups inside of the special operations community that that came to service and said, we want to seek to understand what you guys do and apply it to our world.