SARAH ROBB O’HAGAN: I can’t tell you how many times I sit with C-suite executives, and I say, “Okay, let’s start by looking at your calendar.” And they’ll show me their calendar: back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings, And I’m like, “You’re the problem. It starts with you. Like there’s a reason your organization is burned out. And so let’s start with you.” 

BOB SAFIAN: I’ll bet they love hearing that.

O’HAGAN: Yes. It’s funny. Like, yes. And I would say, it’s almost like a therapy session of, “God, I wish it didn’t have to be this way.” And I’m like, “All right, let’s talk about how not to make it be this way.” ‘Cause it’s possible.

SAFIAN: That’s Sarah Robb O’Hagan, CEO of coaching and fitness brand Exos, and former president of Equinox. I reached out to Sarah to talk about Equinox’s new $40,000 a year gym membership and the rising craze about longevity training — geared to anti-aging and optimizing human lifespan. That led to a broader discussion about how the training tactics of top-athletes can be applied to the workplace, including how what she calls a “culture of recovery ” can prevent burnout. We also talk about Planet Fitness being sidetracked by a recent social media storm, and why Sarah emphasizes her own failures on her LinkedIn profile. It’s a heart-healthy, brain-healthy, nutrient-rich dialogue. This is Rapid Response.

SAFIAN: I’m Bob Safian, and I’m here with Sarah Robb O’Hagan, CEO of coaching, fitness, and wellness company, Exos. Sarah, it’s great to see you.

O’HAGAN: It’s been a long time, Bob.

Understanding Equinox’s new $40K membership

SAFIAN: It has been a long time. I want to start with: There’s been a rising craze, fascination, around the pursuit of human longevity. Before Exos, you worked at a number of places, including Nike, Gatorade, and Equinox — which you led for several years. And Equinox recently announced a $40,000 membership. Now the gym chain has always positioned itself as high end, but that’s pretty aggressive.

O’HAGAN: Yeah. Well, it’s funny, like, that’s exactly the same on-brand and perfect for them for this moment in time, because to the point you said about the craze, it is really taking off this movement around longevity. And I think particularly at the high end of the market where people can afford it, there is going to be people who are going to be spending a lot of money in pursuit of being able to extend their ability to perform at their best for as long as they can.

I think Equinox has always had like, let’s go after that sort of high, high, high end. And even if a ton of people aren’t going to buy it, it’s still going to position you in the market. You’re asking about it. Like people are talking about it. 

My company now, Exos, we train professional athletes, and we actually were that sort of started to do that for a pro athlete 20 years ago, right? And it’s almost like now it’s moving into consumer culture — I know I want to pursue longevity, but I’ve got so many apps, so many coaches, so many people, so many everything. Someone needs to help me make sense of it. So I understand how Equinox drove into that position, right?

What’s fueling the longevity trend?

SAFIAN: Do you have a sense of where this craze on longevity sort of comes from? I mean, obviously we want to have more time. I’m thinking, you know, someone passed me Peter Attia’s book Outlive about the science of longevity, which has become something of a phenomenon in business circles. But like, where is this emanating from?

O’HAGAN: Yeah. So it starts with, you know, on the far other end of the scale, we have the Ozempic craze happening, right? And why is that happening? Because it’s if you think about it, a reaction to decades of the food system, creating a situation around obesity, that we’ve suddenly woken up and realized we had to solve for. 

At the same time, you’ve got people suddenly realizing all those years that we were eating highly processed foods, not sleeping well, driving ourselves crazy in terms of work hours are impacting our brain health, our ability to be effective in the long term.

So those two opposite poles are reacting, I think, to the same thing of our self-correcting on years of not doing great things for our minds and bodies. And then I would say you mentioned Peter Attia’s book in business circles, I think we both know high-end C-suite executives. How do they get there? They’re competitive people. And this has almost become like a, “all right, now I want to go to the next level.” And everyone’s out-playing each other on who’s got the latest tools and cold plunges and everything. So I think that’s what’s fueling it, Bob.

SAFIAN: Yeah. I mean, I know there’s a 45 year old former tech CEO, this guy, Bryan Johnson, who’s reportedly spending $2 million a year to try to reduce his biological age to 18. Like he’s… Has science changed? Like, you know, with blood tests and biodata and whatever, or is this just sort of an aspiration still?

O’HAGAN: I think that like anything, there’s a lot of fads, and I don’t know how much science has really been done to research all of the things that people are experimenting with. 

And probably my biggest worry about this movement is it’s a very single player movement. It’s me doing all these things for me. And yet the greatest thing that helps the mental health crisis, that helps us as humans feel great, is social dynamics And I do worry that we’re almost losing sight of that a bit.

Why Exos pivoted to corporate health & wellness

SAFIAN: Yeah, so Exos, which you run, isn’t explicitly about longevity. How do you describe what Exos is doing now? ‘Cause it sort of seems like you’re looking to develop the nexus between individual fitness, professional performance, and sort of lifestyle.

O’HAGAN: Yeah, that’s it. We were founded by Mark Verstegen as a coaching company for pro athletes. So at this point, like we have supported and coached over a thousand now young men that went through the NFL combine going into the NFL — that kind of level of coaching. And then halfway into our journey, we moved into the corporate health and wellness and performance space because we realized that what the people we just spoke about are looking for the tip of the spear of how to improve their performance. So that’s how we got into that other market. 

And what’s interesting is the executives are wanting the exact same thing that the most elite athletes are doing. Like they’re all reading up about Patrick Mahomes, you know. They’re all going, “well, I want the best of the best.” And how you coach a human, whether you’re coaching an athlete or in our case, you know, the military Navy Seals or executives, it does come down to this holistic, like is your mind and your body working together to help you feel amazing are you doing all of the things right around sleep movement, nutrition, so that you can really perform at your best? It’s as simple as that. 

But if your work environment doesn’t enable you to bring these high-performance living ways to life, then what does it matter? ‘Cause look how many hours we spend every day at work. And so what we’re doing at Exos is we’re actually working with C-suites of Fortune 500 companies and saying, “how do we help you create cultural norms that help the entire team go to the higher level of performance?”

How to reduce burnout & increase productivity

SAFIAN: And so, to some extent you’re coaching CEOs about how to run their culture, but you’re also wanting to bring a different kind of coaching into the workplace. 

O’HAGAN: Yes, exactly. So let’s talk about the CEOs first of all. So if I was to say to them, “you are not getting the most performance out of your team because you are running them into the ground, and you actually need to build more recovery into your culture,” they literally, like, stare me down or glaze over and don’t want to hear it. And yet we’ve done studies to show if you build really intentional, what we call ‘load and recovery’ into the workplace… So think about how you see during the week, really heavy meeting days. We are asking the employees to put the maximum load on their mind and body. And then followed by really intentional “today’s a quiet day” where everyone does quiet work and they’re getting time for recovery, and really, really thoughtful breaks throughout the day. You can actually make an enormous improvement to how people are feeling. Which gets them to a place where they can get into what’s called flow state easier, which means they can do thoughtful written work easier. They can get to high levels of productivity. 

But what we have learned is it does start with the CEO and the C-suite, because if they don’t believe that, then the employee can do everything they can to try and live the right lifestyle, but they’re getting burned out by the culture of their company.

I can’t tell you how many times I sit with C-suite executives and I say, “okay, let’s start by looking at your calendar.” And they’ll show me their calendar — back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings, all incorporating their team with them. And I’m like, “You’re the problem. It starts with you. Like there’s a reason your organization is burned out. And so let’s start with you.”

SAFIAN: I’ll bet they love hearing that. 

O’HAGAN: Yes. It’s funny. Like, yes. And I would say, it’s almost like a therapy session of, “God, I wish it didn’t have to be this way.” And I’m like, “all right, let’s talk about how not to make it be this way.” ‘Cause it’s possible.

SAFIAN: It almost sounds like applying the idea of cross training to your work day and your work schedule, right?

How meetings impact the human brain 

O’HAGAN: Yes. Because I think of it as a party trick at Exos with our clients, we show them this experiment done by the Microsoft Human Factors Lab. And it shows a human brain, images of a human brain on meetings.

So it’s four meetings in a row, back-to-back-to-back, and you see the first brain scan, super healthy, happy brain. By this third meeting, it’s showing the same indicators of a brain with severe anxiety issues, right? So that’s our brain on meetings. 

Then we show them the same scans of a brain where the person literally, Bob, took 10 minutes, only 10 minutes between each meeting. Maybe they walked outside and looked at the sunrise. That brain is healthy by the end. All we’re asking is 10 minutes just to give you and all of your team some space to actually let your brain recover. It’s pretty compelling.

Why a 4-day work week will be the standard

SAFIAN: You also talk about a four-day work week. So talk to me about that. ‘Cause I struggle to get everything done in a five day work week. 

O’HAGAN: So this whole four day work week, I’m willing to go on the record with you, Bob, and say —  I truly believe 10 years from now, it will be the standard. I do believe it’s the way the world is going. 

But we decided that we were coming out of the pandemic; we have 30% of the Fortune 100 as our clients, so we were dealing with HR professionals, all of them saying the same issue —  “everyone’s burned out. People are quitting. How do we fix it?” And so that was what led us to say, “okay, let’s try and imagine a totally restructured work week. And what would you do?” 

And it wasn’t about the four-day work week so much as we actually did this grand experiment for six months and worked with Adam Grant and the Wharton team, and we restacked the way meetings work. So we call them Team Tuesdays and Thursdays, heavy, heavy, heavy meeting days. Mondays and Wednesdays were like blocked quiet time or one on ones — like if you were doing a one on one meeting with a colleague, you weren’t allowed to sit on a screen. You actually had to go for what we call a Walk and Talk. And then we had what we called You Do You Fridays. So that was: If you get to Friday, and you are so wiped out because you’ve been working on a client pitch all week, you can take a day of recovery. You do you. If you feel like you want to do quiet work, you do quiet work. 

And we got to the end of the study, and we were testing everything from levels of burnout to how productive the team members feel they are at work. We tested the individuals and their managers. So did the manager say, “you’re still as productive at the end as you were at the beginning.” We obviously tested against the business results that you would expect. And the net-net of all of it is you get to the end, and we found not only we were we more productive, not only did the company have a literally one of its best years of performance against all of our stated metrics, but we took people from 70% experiencing feelings of burnout to 35%.  

And when you really dig into the data, what I found the most interesting about the four-day work week piece was actually 70% of the team did work on a Friday. And they enjoyed that work because the rule was you could not do meetings, you couldn’t text one another. It was a quiet day, but for most people they could use that day as they wanted to, to clear the decks, not be disturbed, get all their thinking work done and have a better chance of actually enjoying the weekend as opposed to work just bleeding through all seven days, and you come back on Monday, and you’re still tired.

SAFIAN: You’re on the board at JetBlue and other places. Do you bring the idea of a four-day week up in those settings?

O’HAGAN: Yes, but it’s super complex. Like you have to figure out how to sort of meet the needs of all sorts of different work groups. That’s why I go, “It’s not necessarily a four-day work week is the answer for every work group, but it is how can you build in what we call a pro recovery culture?” That’s important. I do believe there will be a world where we’re rotating scheduling so that you can have closer to a four-day work week. But it does take a lot of really thoughtful, intentional work.

SAFIAN: Sarah’s emphasis on a “pro recovery culture” goes against many workplace norms, where revving-down the engine is often derided as slacking off. But hey, if intentional hard and easy days works for Patrick Mahomes, maybe it’s worth emulating. After the break, we’ll get into why our smartphones might be the enemy of performance, and why Sarah tends to lean into her most public failures. Stay with us.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, we heard Exos CEO Sarah Robb O’Hagan talk about the longevity craze that’s sweeping health clubs and boardrooms across the country, and the case for a four-day work week. Now, we delve into building healthy tech habits and Sarah’s personal fascination with failure. Plus, the recent Planet Fitness controversy. Let’s jump back in.

Two ways to avoid burnout in the workplace

SAFIAN: When you were talking before about the frantic burnout that happens at work, much of that is fueled by our relationship with our technology. I used to feel like I could put my phone aside, but now it seems like I could get something I’m supposed to respond to at any time. What do you do to try to disconnect?

O’HAGAN: So first of all, as part of our experiment, we had really strict rules around using the ‘schedule send’ function. You literally are not allowed to email teammates over the weekend, unless obviously if it’s a giant client pitch or something urgent that come in.  

The vast majority of times when you’re getting those messages, I think we’ve all been trained to think, ‘Oh my God, I have to respond at 2 a.m.’ You don’t really. It’s like often you wake up the next day, the problem is still the same problem. Or in some cases 14 other people have responded on the string and resolved it for you. 

SAFIAN: Yeah. And it’s resisting sending those emails. I know sometimes, you know, oh, I gotta get through my to-do list, so I’m sending things out. I don’t care when you get it back to me, but you’re not thinking about when the other person is receiving it. 

O’HAGAN: And that’s a big one for CEOs. I was the worst offender, Bob. Every time it was me breaking it, and it was me emailing people when I shouldn’t because I was just trying to get through my to-do list. And then when I learned that I can get through my whole to-do list on a Friday, but schedule them all to go out Monday morning, it’s fine. And in actual fact, like why do I need anyone to respond on Saturday? I don’t. 

SAFIAN: And it’ll create space for you too, if you’re not getting the responses on the weekend, right?

O’HAGAN: I would say for your listeners, if there’s two things to take away from this conversation, that’s number one, like, cause if you set the behavior, then it’s not coming back at you. So that gives you more space. 

But secondly, we do this exercise with our C-suite clients, we call it calendar bankruptcy. So we look at their calendars and say, “take every meeting off, and start over and have really justified… Is it needed? Who really needs to be in there? What can be accomplished, you know, are you making the news or reporting the news? Because if you’re reporting the news in a meeting, you can send it out in a document. You’re good.” And it is amazing how meeting creep has just happened over the course of the pandemic, and if you get really strict on that, you’ll be amazed at the space you can actually pull up to block for quiet work time.

Lessons from Planet Fitness controversy

SAFIAN: So change of subject. Planet Fitness had this new CEO who joined amid this kind of firestorm, right? A woman at a gym in Alaska posted a picture of a transgender person shaving in the women’s bathroom, which went viral. And now, it’s hurt their business financially, nationally memberships are impacted. And I’m just curious, has that prompted any discussion among your group or among the clients you work with? Are there any lessons about it? 

O’HAGAN: Yeah, this is an example of what I like to fondly call “The Truman Show of social media” that we all live in now, because the standard procedures that Planet Fitness has had in place, gyms have been doing this for 10 years. That has been very inclusive, like, going into the bathroom with which you identify for 10 years. No one even, it wasn’t a thing, you know? And now in the world we live in, it’s just, all it takes is one firestorm to go into social media. And suddenly, I really feel for the team having to manage it because I think for any executive in any category, you can’t plan for those sudden random social media fire bombs that happen. You just can’t. So you just have to continue to lead with what you believe is true to your policies, your values, the way your team goes to market.

Leading with failure on LinkedIn

SAFIAN: I wanted to ask you about your LinkedIn page because you’ve got some unusually candid descriptions, and I’m going to read these for the audience. So your position as the Lead Marketer for Virgin Megastores, you say, “I was fired after one year for being too cocky, unwilling to help, out of my depth and ineffective.” For your job as VP of Marketing at Atari, you say, “EPIC FAIL in all caps, couldn’t grasp the product, the consumer, or the business.” You mentioned failures again at Nike, at Gatorade. Why did you do this?

O’HAGAN: So a couple of reasons: First of all, when I got fired from Virgin Megastores, I was given a one week severance and a plane ticket back to New Zealand. It was like, “you are so bad. We do not want you in our company or our country.” I mean, literally. And when you go through something like that in your career, your first orientation is, “Oh my God, I’m interviewing for my next job. I have to make up a story as to why I haven’t worked for three months.”  

And I eventually realized if I just walked into the job interview and said, “guess what? This went really badly. And here’s why. And here’s what I’ve learned from it.” That’s exactly why I got my next job, because suddenly the person on the other side is like, “all right, well, at least she’s honest. She’s authentic. She understands. And she’s learned from her mistakes.”  So that was the personal reason why I decided to get a lot more comfortable with this discussion of failure. 

Because on the second side, just mentoring young people and everyone is just constantly barraged with LinkedIn, “Look at me, and look at all the awards I’m getting, and I’m amazing.”

And that really knocks someone’s confidence. And I’m like, if you could just have more people on our stage in our careers be much more honest about how every one of us have had embarrassing screw ups. It’s part of learning and becoming a good executive. What’s wrong with that? 

I’ve typically found when I can just show up and say to whoever is hiring me, my teammates, “here’s what you’re getting, here’s what I’m good at, here’s what I’m not good at.” By definition, you end up with a lot more ability to be effective because you’re surrounding yourself with people that you know are supporting the bits that aren’t your strengths.

What’s the best version of a business leader?

SAFIAN: So several years ago, you wrote a book called Extreme You, about being the best version of yourself. So what’s the best version of a business leader?

O’HAGAN: I mean, when I wrote the book, I did interviews with a lot of amazing leaders that I deeply admire. Angela Ahrendts, who you’re a good friend with, like the sorts of people who I had observed from afar. And I think what it comes down to for me, and that was really the premise of the book — whether you’re 25 and starting your career or 50 and really in this leadership part of your career, it does come back to being true to yourself and deeply understanding like where your unique strengths are to help the team and understanding what they’re not so that you’re not trying to force your ideas that aren’t terribly well-informed, so that you’re developing a really great team dynamic to go and attack an opportunity. Like it was interesting listening to your conversation with Brian Chesky, and I just love hearing it because you could tell he knows exactly where he has a very unique skill to bring to the team. And then there’s other pieces where you’ve actually got to get completely out of the way and let them do their thing if you’ve put the right people in place.

SAFIAN: Yeah. Well, Sarah, this has been great. Thank you for doing this.

O’HAGAN: Oh, of course. This is so fun!

SAFIAN: Some people want to live forever. Some people want to work forever. For most of us though, we want to do the best living and working we can in the time that we have. Talking with Sarah was a great reminder to be mindful of how I’m managing my own workload. That doesn’t just mean taking a break sometimes, but thinking about when and how I’m working, and giving my colleagues the breathing room to create their own balanced work schedules. Who knows, if I do this thing right — I might be recording Rapid Response long into my hundreds. Gosh, I hope not. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.