What it Means to be a "Corporate Athlete" with Emily Culp

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with Emily Culp. Emily is a Board Member at Mizzen + Main, at Stio and at Cordial. She has held CEO and CMO roles in the wellness, beauty, and fashion industries, and she is currently an advisor to high growth companies, as well as a board member. Emily, welcome to The Daily Bolster.

Emily Culp: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Matt Blumberg: Well, I've been excited about this conversation, because you and I both use the same phrase and we use it to mean different things. So I love the phrase, " corporate athlete", and when I use the phrase corporate athlete with one of our clients, I use it in the context of: you want to find some.... We almost always do it on board searches. We say your number one requirement is to find a good corporate athlete, which means it's a well- rounded executive. It's someone who knows how to interrogate a P& L, even if they're an HR person or a product person. You have to have someone that's fluent enough in technology. But you have a different meaning of corporate athlete, and I think in a lot of ways yours is more important. So, what does it mean to you to be a corporate athlete?

Emily Culp: Well, two things real fast on that. One is I think yours is a great definition. It's funny, what I call that is the Swiss Army knife. So I think you're exactly right, same concepts. For me, corporate athlete is something I frankly have been developing my whole life and actually been putting into practice. And to me there's three key aspects of being a corporate athlete. There's the physical fitness, which is probably the easiest one to get to. There's the nutrition aspect and then the third one to me is around mental health and wellbeing. So that's what I mean by being a corporate athlete.

Matt Blumberg: Okay. Let's dive into each one of the three. Look, self- care and self- management, a huge part of being a successful corporate executive, whether you're a CEO, a CXO, but talk about some of your top things around physical nutrition and mental and emotional.

Emily Culp: Yeah, physical training, it's interesting to me. I've always had this premise, I'm a highly active person. I weightlift, do yoga, do something every single day. I've always had this notion if I'm physically fit, then I'm in the best mental state and physical state to approach any challenges that come my way. And then I found a study that I loved that, validated this. There's this study that was done in 2015 by inaudible and inaudible, and essentially it studied 1500 CEOs and it showed, of those CEOs over a 10- year period, those that were most active, delivered, higher firm profitability and also higher M& A returns. So it also validates my thinking with a study. Some of the ways where it's been helpful for me, and I see this as a trait with many C- suite people, is when you are raising capital as you know yourself, it's nonstop nights, weekends, and what have you. And one of the things you need is stamina and you need to be able to push through and close that round of fundraising essentially. So it's whether it's applying that or even physically when you're going long haul to China, you have to get off a plane and facilitate meetings. That's not easy, but if you're in physical condition to do so, then you can hit it out of the park. So that's some of the ways, from a physical standpoint, that I think makes a huge difference.

Matt Blumberg: All right. So let's move on to nutrition. Also physical, but a different angle at it.

Emily Culp: Yeah. If we hung out more together, which hopefully we will continue to do so, on meals I've always been a clean eater, because it just makes me feel good. Think about yourself after a heavy meal, you're not exactly at your peak performance to focus in meetings. So I've always been quite prescriptive in my approach to nutrition, but what I've come to realize over time is actually supplements can make a huge difference. And there are three in the past few years, probably two or three years, that I've discovered that I wish I had unlocked earlier. One is magnesium. I really believe all people in the universe, especially me, need more sleep. Magnesium has been a game changer for me. Another one is amino acids. When you start to think about protein and having, again, structure and it actually boosts your immune system. So it's been really helpful for me on long haul travel and what have you. And then the final one for me is actually around collagen, which I know it's probably... I know it's an interesting one. But again, it's around joint mobility and just taking care of your body, so then you are able to do whatever you put your mind and body to.

Matt Blumberg: All right. And let's move on to your last one, which is health and wellness of a different, but no less important type.

Emily Culp: Yeah. This one, I have to be honest with you, out of the three elements, I've been very good most of my career on the other two. This is the third that I would say maybe has come with maturity, is the one that I always put as the tertiary: I'll get to it, I'll be fine. I think one of the most important things a leader can do is really understand that if they want to be able to embrace smart risk, drive the results that they want and really lead their team in an authentic way, they need to take care of themselves. And you can't be the best leader unless you do that. For me, one or two things that have been a huge unlock, one is meditation. So one of the leadership skills that I think is hugely important is active listening. And from me starting meditation a few years ago, I've started to realize that, as you probably know with the study meditation... Do you do it, by the way, ever?

Matt Blumberg: I have tried it. I won't say I do it regularly or ever perfected it.

Emily Culp: Well, that's the beauty. You can't perfect it. For those of us who are type A, there is no gold star in meditation, which I find quite humbling. But going back to the idea of meditation, it's actually being able to create space between your thoughts and emotions. And then when you create that space, you can actually be present and listen. And one of my favorite examples of this is in a Q4 period, you have your server go down with Shopify, I literally did a little meditation, so I could be present to work through and listen to the team how you can collectively work together. You can actually employ this stuff in real time. I think another really important part for me around all of this is positive thinking. Anyone, I believe, who's stepped into a C- suite level position at some point does question: do I have the right strategy? Have I really thought this through? And as you go through turbulent times, whether it's micro or macroeconomics conditions, you start to think, " Gosh, do I have it and am I doing the right thing?" And with that can sometimes come some negative thinking, and it's really important, again, to be able to have that mental clarity and space to pivot that thinking. So again, you can be that leader for your team and inspire them through the turbulent times and also take care of yourself. So, that's what I mean by a corporate athlete.

Matt Blumberg: All right. Emily Culp, thank you so much for sharing that framework with us today. It's so important for CEOs to take care of themselves. It's like put your own oxygen mask on first and then help the person next to you. So thanks for being on The Daily Bolster.

Emily Culp: Thank you for having me.