Chief Endurance Officer

What can endurance training teach us about scaling a business, and how do you know when it’s time to build structure into your chaos? Professional speaker, fractional operations leader, and Ironman finisher Katrina Purcell joins Greg to share how endurance training has shaped her mindset as an entrepreneur and operations strategist. From running her first half-marathon to founding her own company, Katrina’s story shows how structure, discipline, and resilience translate into business growth. She reveals how she helps founders turn chaos into clarity when it’s time to start building SOPs, and why ruthless prioritization, not doing more, is the key to scaling sustainably.

Takeaways:
  • Structure fuels freedom. The discipline learned in endurance sports mirrors what’s required in business; building systems allows you to eventually step away.
  • Start operational planning when you can’t take a week off. That’s your cue that your business depends too much on you and needs process support.
  • Ruthless prioritization drives growth. 10x growth requires cutting more than adding; create a “not doing” list before a to-do list.
  • Find your coach. Just like in Ironman training, every founder needs a guide, someone who can see what you can’t and keep you accountable.
  • Celebrate progress, not just performance. High-performing teams thrive when leaders intentionally pause to recognize small wins.
  • Failure breeds connection. Sharing setbacks builds authenticity, resilience, and stronger communities than sharing only successes.
  • Journal the journey. Reflecting on your daily wins, losses, and learnings creates perspective and a roadmap for future challenges.

Quote of the Show:
  • "Growing 10x is easier than 2x because you have to not do a lot of things. People want to be different, but they don't wanna stop anything. " - Katrina Purcell

This Episode is Sponsored by TRIHARD! Use Code TCEO for 20% off their Website: https://www.trihard.co/?utm_source=tceo&utm_campaign=podcast


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Chief Endurance Officer is produced by Ringmaster, on a mission to create connections through B2B podcasts. Learn more at https://ringmaster.com/ 

Creators and Guests

Host
Gregory McDonough
Greg McDonough is a seasoned executive who has owned and operated businesses in the professional services sector, navigating them through both good and tough times. He brings his personal experience of knowing what it’s like to be ‘in the owner’s seat’ when working with clients, taking time to ask the questions others may not.
Producer
Rebecca Leberman

What is Chief Endurance Officer?

Join host Greg McDonough on a transformative journey as "The Chief Endurance Officer" explores the incredible power of positive energy and sustained effort. This podcast delves into the real-life stories of individuals who have harnessed the endurance mindset to achieve remarkable goals in every facet of life – personal achievements, professional success, and athletic triumphs. Visit our website www.chiefenduranceofficer.com for additional resources and exclusive content, and subscribe to hear these inspiring episodes every Friday!

Greg McDonough: Well, welcome to the show. I am super excited of our guest today. She is a professional speaker, fractional operations specialist driven entrepreneur, fellow Ironman.

finisher.

has a strong background in media and business, working with major organizations like Bloomberg and Integral Ad Science, the co-host of a successful podcast, managing Chaos, where she

dives deep into strategic operational planning, mentor,

at the

engage new.

York Executive council and executive member of Dreams and Doers, please welcome

Katrina.

Pur

herself. Katrina is

Katrina Purcell: you on the show. I'm tired hearing all the things that I do.

Greg McDonough: And I

only, I left out half of 'em, so we'll leave that to the audience

Katrina Purcell: Discover,

Greg McDonough: discover.

Katrina Purcell: you hit all the important ones.

Greg McDonough: Awesome.

Well, Katrina, as you know, I love

talking about the Endurance.

mindset. So I'm

curious, How has

your endurance mindset impacted your life?

Unexpectedly.

Katrina Purcell: I dunno if it's unexpectedly, although I will say I fell into endurance sports unexpectedly. Um. I was not an athlete growing up. Uh, in fact, when I completed the Ironman, both my brother and sister were in kind of shock and awe. Um, because as a child, they were the ones who were shuttled from sport to sport.

And, and I was very academically focused. Uh, and I think my endurance was more in studying as opposed to physical endurance. Um, but I think for me it's, it's the structure. So I have always loved structure. Uh, it, I've always thrived in structure and, and the thing with endurance training is that it's so structured and it can be a little addicting if you, if you have a personality that really loves to be, to be structured.

And so for me it's really the structure and then also just the sense of accomplishment. Right. So you set that big, huge goal for me. I trained well over a year for my Ironman. I was, I was. An amateur, I knew nothing. Um, and so it was really just the culmination of all that work. But you have to stick with it, right?

You have no choice but to keep going because you wanna achieve that high when you cross that finish line.

Greg McDonough: Yeah, a hundred percent. Um,

yeah, and you

reminded me back,

on

my first one,

and it was about a year's worth of training.

For sure. And I still felt undertrained when I got to that starting line. Um, I'd love to know how, how you've seen that show up in your life in other areas like that.

That long one year. year and a

half, Sort of goal oriented, the dark mornings, the dark afternoons where you, it is just you by yourself, sort of

getting at your training or into work. Like how does that, how have

you seen that show up in other

places in your

Katrina Purcell: your life? So I most definitely like to take very big swings. Um, so even for running, I was ever really a big runner.

Um, and, and most of this actually can be blamed on my friends. And so when they say the people you surround yourself with, um, you know, so I did, my first running event was a, was actually a half marathon because my best friend wanted to do a half marathon. And so she said, do you wanna do it with me? I said, I guess, sure.

I hated it the whole time I was training. I thought, this is horrible. I'm never doing this again. This is just. It turned out to be a gateway drug. I crossed that finish line and I was like, this was amazing. I forgot all the training that led up to it, and I thought, I'm doing this. I'm gonna keep going. Um, but it's, for me, it's all about setting the goal and sticking with it until I get it.

So I, I did an executive MBA program, um, shortly after I finished the Iron Man. Um, and so I replaced. Two a day workouts with going on Saturday and sitting for eight hours, which was actually arguably much more difficult to be honest. Um, and learning for two years. Um, but when you start to think about, okay, well I did 15 hours and 45 minutes of continuous working out, surely I can now do whatever insert new goal here.

Um, it can't possibly be as difficult as that. Um, and so I think it helps to reframe things.

Greg McDonough: Yeah. That, that's absolutely true. Um, and, and even thinking about like

hard training days, I don't, I've,

I've never come across in situation in work or even family that has felt more difficult than those tiring, difficult days of like your nutrition fails you're in the middle of a

race or you're on your long ride. Um, I'm curious though,

like

going from the half marathon into an Ironman. like, Walk us

through that progression. Was it,

did you have

Katrina Purcell: did you have races in between? I did.

I did have races in between. So I did my first, um, the first half, half marathon and then I proceeded, that was in like November and the next year I proceeded to do eight half marathons.

And I said, I'm only half crazy. People were like, you're gonna do a full, and I was like, no way. Definitely not doing a full 13.1 is perfect. Uh, one of my other friends was like, I really wanna do a full, do I Sure you just maybe do a full with me. I said, you know what? Yeah, let's do it. So we did a full, um, and in the process of training for that, she's like, I've been looking to this thing called triathlons.

And I was like, what now? And she goes, yeah, you swim, you bike and you run. And I was like, I, I can't swim. And she was like, surely you can swim. You grew up with a pool. And I said, well, I cannot drown. But that's like very different than swimming. And I said also, when my dad taught me to ride a bike, I used to jump off if I thought I was gonna fall.

So I don't think triathlon is for me. And she was like, yeah, but I want you to do it with me. And so it took her about a solid, probably six months of trying to convince me To be fair, the first race we did was actually a half iron. We did, uh, Eagle Man. Um, and

Greg McDonough: race.

Katrina Purcell: Do think this was partially her way of getting her husband to let her get a new bike because guess who bought her old bike, uh, to start training.

Um, but she's an amazing friend and mentor to me and, and, um, she was actually my very first boss out of college and, and we've remained friends. Um, and so she's always, she still though, has not convinced me. She is now doing ultra. Mar like she is not, but I'm like, I can't, my knees and I are not friends with that and, and she has not yet to convince me to do trail racing or any kind of ultra marathon.

Well, I picked up picked

yet in there.

Greg McDonough: There, so I, I sense

There's a small possibility. always a yet.

Yeah. My yet at,

at the moment is gravel, or bike riding. I've got a handful of friends and colleagues that are super into gravel and for me it's kind of like I've been skiing all my life. and I'd really like to try snowboarding, but I don't wanna waste all those years of

learning how to ski and trying something new.

And,

um, anyway, we can go on and on about that.

C Katrina, I'd love to understand how your experience with endurance racing, and this again, this year's worth of planning where years worth of training, how that,

how does that show up in the work that you're doing?

Katrina Purcell: Yes, so I do operational work. Um, a lot of what I do is.

Mindset, to be honest, right? Because people are afraid of ops. They, they, when everything is running smoothly, no one thinks about operations. When everything is not running smoothly, everything is op, you know, all about operations. And so people tend to be scared of it. And I think people also tend to be scared of endurance sports, um, because it's somewhat unknown or they feel like there's a piece of them that isn't the right piece needed to do something.

Um, and so. I think it's a very similar mindset that I did when I was training for the Ironman. I would actually coach people who were like a little bit less knowledgeable than I was. Right? And so it's this concept of you already know more than someone you can be giving back to someone, right? And so it's really walking people through the small steps, the very achievable steps, setting milestones that are less aggressive than you're gonna go run 26 miles.

Right? And that's the great part about. Training for an Ironman, in my opinion. I had a amazing coach who really broke everything down, and it was sort of, you're going out and you're running two miles. That's it, you know? And then suddenly you realize six months later, now your training run is something you were horribly scared of six months ago.

And so within Ops, it's the same thing. It's sort of, let's create an SOP, let's just start to think about what the process should be, right? And let's break it down into small things. And then in six months it'll be somewhat unrecognizable. What you're doing on a daily basis. And then there's the new goal,

Greg McDonough: you know, as somebody who works with a lot of entrepreneurs and, and there's a

ton of entrepreneurs that listen to this show.

Um, let's unpack that or at least get a little bit deeper. Like,

you know, you're a business owner, a couple million dollars in revenue, hopefully

you're kind of just waking up and fighting the fight every day and

you start Monday and you hopefully end on Friday. Like,

Let's get, unpack that a little bit more. Like when should we be really getting into

Katrina Purcell: operations

Greg McDonough: SOPs,

Katrina Purcell: Mm-hmm. And what's a good first step in that,

Greg McDonough: that,

Katrina Purcell: in that process?

Greg McDonough: Process?

Katrina Purcell: the first step for me is when you start to think about that you wanna take a week off, so argue your whole business, can you take a week off?

So let's say you've signed up for a race and you're excited to go do it, but then you're starting to think about how am I actually gonna do this race? Because my business can't run without me. And so if you are that integral to your business's success, that's the time to start sitting down and thinking about what is a process that you're doing.

But doesn't necessarily have to be you. It could be someone on your team, it could be someone that you outsource to. Um, Dan Martell has a great book called Buy Back Your Time. Uh, and I love the concept from that book 'cause it's sort of, let's start to think about how much would you pay someone to do this task.

Is it less than you're paying yourself? In which case that task should be off your plate unless it's something that brings you such immense joy that you just really wanna keep doing it. Um, we get into our businesses because we have something that brings us passion that we are excited about, and that's why we start our business because we think, oh, if I'm doing this thing that I love to do, but then all the other aspects of running the business.

Just fall onto you because there's no one else for them to fall onto. And as the business starts to grow, for some reason, we just feel comfortable. Right? And, and so from an endurance perspective, I would, I would sort of compare it to like that easy ride where you're just like, oh, this is my speed I'm comfortable at.

Could I go harder? I could, could I go slower? Probably. But I just feel comfortable at this pace, and I feel like a lot of times that's how we approach our business. We just get to this comfortable pace and we're like, okay, I'll just keep going. But the thing is that if you were to push harder, you could probably get your business to go farther.

But in order to do that, you have to leave a few things behind and those are those processes that you need to start kind of siphoning off and, and start to, to create sort of an SOP for.

Greg McDonough: it's, you get comfortable just doing work. and Being busy.

Katrina Purcell: What does that Very busy.

Greg McDonough: With you?

Katrina Purcell: You get comfortable being very busy.

Right.

Greg McDonough: Right. so for me, I mean, I, I have always been someone who, who kind of, uh. Doesn't like the status quo and likes to sort of, I mean, I drove my parents, uh, I think absolutely bonkers. Um, and now I'm getting it back in spades. My mom keeps saying, I told you. Um, so, you know, I moved to New York when I was 25, uh, for a job left home in Virginia and kind of never looked back.

Katrina Purcell: I think my mom thought, okay, she'll go there for like a year or two. It'll be really scary, daunting city, and surely she'll come home. But I thought, eh, no, I'm still here loving it. I think it's really, for me, once you set the challenge, once you achieve the challenge, it's like what's the new next challenge?

Right? How do you, how do you keep life? Interesting. Well, you keep life interesting by. Saying, okay, great. I did this physical challenge. Now I'm gonna do a mental challenge. Let me get the MBA. Okay, now I'm gonna switch my job. Oh, now I think I'll just start my own company. Um, you know, and my husband's always like, what's next?

I'm like, who knows? You can't decide now. You have to wait. So, obviously picking a life partner who's very, you know, open to that and, and sort of, um, willing to kind of take the journey with you. Um, but it keeps life interesting and exciting.

Greg McDonough: Yeah.

it's,

You mentioned life partner, um, and the question that came to mind is of what is, were you that way when you guys first met?

And I asked that question because again, I'm living a similar lifestyle where it's like my wife has no idea which direction I'm going in tomorrow or yesterday,

but it always feels like a straight line when I look back.

Katrina Purcell: So.

Greg McDonough: To day.

Katrina Purcell: The funny part is, I would actually say mine is more of a jungle gym, less of a straight line, more of a jungle gym.

I think we're always going sort of up in some trajectory, but we're kind of going left or right. Um, I was actually training for the Half Iron when I met him, um, and so he's only ever known sort of that part of it. And so I would, he would have to come, we would, uh, swim at Brighton Beach. Uh, he would have to come sit on the beach to watch our stuff and me and my friends would be out swimming and I'd be like, just, you know, make sure her car's okay.

Make sure all her stuff's on the beach. I was okay. And he'd be like, oh, okay. And he did it. And then we would go to Prospect Park. And, you know, when you're an endurance athlete, I'm not fast. I'm very slow, right? But I can go slow forever. Um, he is more of what I would call a sprinter. He can run a really fast 5K, he can run a really fast.

So he would run around the park and he would have a backpack with snacks and stuff for me, and he would come around while I was still, you know, chucking along, gimme the water, give me a snack. So he met me during, during that, um, and, and kind of has known, known, no difference. That being said, I think he's the one who pushes me though to do it, was his idea to start the company.

It was not mine. Um, I, I wasn't truly feeling fulfilled at work, and he sort of felt like, okay, but now's the opportunity. And I was like, is it? And he was like, yeah, do it. Um, and so he's equal parts responsible for the shifts in directions.

Greg McDonough: So Katrina, let's talk a little bit more about the company, the work that you're doing.

I'd love to

sort of understand big picture, what you are doing, and then we'll get into this entrepreneurial journey as

Katrina Purcell: Yeah. So I work with, uh, tech companies, mostly startups and nonprofits on efficient growth and operations. And so a lot of times they don't have a COO. Um, in some cases they do, but they're trying to either aggressively scale or aggressively grow.

Um, and they just need a little bit of support that could look like building five year strategic plans and then helping them deliver them. That could look like getting into the day-to-day nitty gritty of a system implementation. It kind of spans the gamut depending. Um, I only work with companies where I feel deeply kind of inspired by their mission and their vision, and I work with executive teams that.

That I feel like, uh, fill my cup. People who I'm inspired by or, or people who have really big goals. Um, and so that helps me to be a little selective about the type of work that I get to do.

Greg McDonough: And you're working with companies across the nation, across the globe,

Katrina Purcell: uh, across the nation. Um, I do have, uh, one company that I do work with in the uk, um, but mostly across the us.

Uh, mostly tech. Um, based companies just because that's where I've spent my, uh, my career. Uh, from nonprofit perspective. It's mostly membership organizations. Um, but it kind of just depends. I've done workshops and things, smaller things for other types of organizations. Um, but mostly I would say, uh, B2B sas, um, from a, from a tech startup standpoint.

Greg McDonough: So we have A-A-C-E-O founder listening to the show today, and she's.

Struggling with something. What's that thing that she's struggling with, that picking up the phone and calling you would solve or or help get her through that next

Katrina Purcell: step? That's a fun, really fun question. So generally when people call me, it's because everything feels chaotic, which is why the podcast is called Managed Chaos.

So when they call me, they actually normally do not know. What they need. They just know they need something because any, everything's not sustainable. Um, sometimes all they need is someone to listen and then say, it's actually this because we're so much better at helping other people than we are helping ourselves.

And so if you're able to kind of look at your company from the outside or have a outside perspective, it's normally a lot easier to figure out what you have to do. Then the trick becomes doing it. And that's why most people who train for an Ironman get a coach. Whether that's an actual person coach or just a training plan that they get from the internet.

Or like you always need a little bit of help. And I think when we start our businesses, we should be looking at it from that perspective. I need a coach. I need, whether it's an executive coach, whether it's just someone who is in your network, who's been there, done that, right? Who can kind of just be that sounding board.

Um. I don't know if this is the same experience for you. When I was training for the Ironman, I couldn't go to my family and be like, Hey guys, what should I eat on this a hundred mile bike ride? I'm about to go on. I mean, they were cheerleaders and they were really excited, but they didn't know how to give the right advice.

And so a lot of times it's actually helping them to see the path they're on, listen and then kind of say, Hey guys, this is, this is maybe where you wanna approach it, or This is how we could look at it. Um, a lot of times they tell me. That it's just great to have someone to talk to who gets it. And I think really in life, that's all we're looking for.

In any, in anything. Someone who understands.

Greg McDonough: Yeah. Uh, You know, some compassion shoulder to cry on,

you know, fist pump,

You you name it.

I also mentioned in our intro that you're a professional speaker and you

just mentioned something about workshops. Is that Something you also do?

Like you're a facilitator?

Talk to us a little bit about

the, the speaking workshop

Katrina Purcell: what you're doing.

Yeah, so I love to do facilitation. Um, I have a very strong background in change management thanks to, um, you know, someone who taught me very early in my career about how to bring people along. And so my favorite part about facilitation is really helping teams who. Are not getting where they need to be.

Start to talk to each other and start to understand why they're not getting where they need to be. Um, you know, you can hire all the right talent but not have the right structure and not have the right engagement. And they can all be horribly unsuccessful together if you're not leading them properly.

And so I love to do workshops to get teams truly start to vibe, to really understand what their goals are, to set that five year kind of, or three year plan, and then figure out how are they gonna execute on that plan. Um, because I am an ops person after all. So for me, everything is about, comes back to execution.

Like how is this actually gonna happen? Um, it's great to talk about an idea. It's great to have dreams and big visions. Um, and believe me, I love that with the, with with everybody. But for me it's like, okay, now what's the plan to do? Like you can talk, my and my husband hates this, right? Because he'll have this big idea and he just wants to talk about this big idea and pretend like it's gonna happen.

And the next thing I'm doing is like sending him real estate listings and figuring out, okay, but like how are we actually gonna do it? And he's like, no, it wasn't an executable idea. It was just an idea. I'm like, you have to qualify that, please for me.

Greg McDonough: That's so funny.

All,

All these great ideas that I have are coming to mind.

Um,

But I, I would appreciate if you went a little bit deeper there and talked us about

uh.

the, how do you actually make it happen? Right. I, I love, to your point and your husband's point, I, I love coming up with big ideas and I document 'em and I

manifest and I do all these things and next thing you know, is the,

the to-do list just grows

and,

and the execution gets a little bit slim.

Um, which back to your point about having a coach, one of the reasons I'm able

to execute

on long.

distance triathlon is 'cause I have a coach

Tracking and pushing and tracking. and pushing and, and Having some compassion. there's a huge a lot of roadblocks in between that five-year plan vision

and

what are you gonna do today. Like what, can you give us a little insights on what your process is like?

Katrina Purcell: So first of all, it's ruthless prioritization. Um, and so what that tends to look like is not a to-do list, but a not doing list. Um, so for most people it, it actually becomes, if, if this is the big goal, right? And the big goal should be a truly big goal. Um, there's a book called, uh, 10 X is easier than two x and part of the reason 10 x is easier than two x is because you have to actually not do a lot of things right?

You, you have to kind of say, okay, here's actually the 10 things we're not doing. And those are the conversations that actually get truly difficult because no one wants to stop doing anything.

Greg McDonough: Hmm.

Katrina Purcell: They want that big goal. They want to be different, but they don't wanna stop anything. And that was actually one of the reasons I loved Ironman training because when you're doing Ironman training, I had, and to this day, I still do have a very bad cherry Coke addiction.

However, that did not mesh well with Ironman training. I had to stop, I had to give up soda for the entirety of Ironman training. Because when I would have a soda and then I would try and do a, you know, a ride or, or anything, it was terrible. And so there was immediate sort of confirmation for me, okay, well this thing I'm doing is not gonna work in business that doesn't necessarily always exist because as you said before, we like to be busy, we like to do our tasks right.

We like to keep doing the same things every day. And so we don't always get that sort of immediate feedback that what we're doing isn't great. And so a lot of times what I like to do is figure out if this 10 x, right? So if we need to move into a new market, what are the things that are keeping us from doing that right now?

Well, our teams are really busy. Why are they really busy? What are they doing? Are they doing vanity projects? Are they doing things that are keeping, you know, that we think still need to happen? A lot of founders who are still in the CEO seat will struggle with this because this is the company they've built.

Everything that's happening is decisions that they've made. Um, so there's a lot of therapy sort of, that goes into these conversations of, okay, yes, in the moment that was what worked and for two years that has worked. But that's not gonna 10 x you. That's not the thing that's gonna get you to the next level.

Um, and so it's really actually figuring out what not to do. A lot of people think it's the to-do list. It's like figuring out what you need to do, but it's not, it's, it's what's not happening because that frees up the time for what really should be happening, which a lot of times people do know it's just at the bottom of the list instead of at the top.

Greg McDonough: So do you use like

a, a time analysis, a time blocking technique of like reviewing what you've been spending your time on and tasks that you've been doing? To help

identify these things that we shouldn't

Katrina Purcell: doing to go, yes. yes. So I, so I do a portion of that in my personal life as well. And so even when I was training for the Ironman, everything was by the calendar and everything was color coded, right?

And so you could actually, and I use uh, Gmail. So when you color code stuff, it very easily will show you, okay, this is how much, you know, percentage of time you spent in this color. Um, and everything has a color from the dog, from the school bus drop off from, you know, my workout. From meal planning from.

So everything has a color, and at the end of the week I can be like, okay, great. This is where I spent in all my colors. Uh, and that helps me 'cause I'm a bit of a visual person, but also highly, I guess, logical. So I can say, okay, well it makes sense that I spent that much time on that this week because there are periods of time where sometimes my workouts will suffer.

Um, right now I'm sidelined. I have to have knee surgery, so there are no workouts. There's sit on the couch and don't do anything, which is also very difficult to be honest. But I can look,

Greg McDonough: difficult.

Katrina Purcell: I can look back and say, okay, I know that that week would be less, so what am I filling that time with? Because the problem is we tend to, especially in our personal lives, we fill that time with what?

Scrolling on social media or watching TV or something. That may not be useful. And so for me, I'll say, okay, while I'm doing this, what am I gonna spend my time on? Well, here's three books that have been on my to be red shelf. I should be reading those books instead. And so then that fills in the time from a, from a work perspective with clients.

I like to do it in a way that doesn't feel so office space, um. Which, by the way, my clients are getting younger and younger and don't understand the reference to office space, which is very sad. Um, but so I like to do it more from a where would, where do you want to spend your time? Let's start with color coding your calendar.

Let's start with creating blocks. When do you feel the most creative? When would you rather answer emails? Let's create those blocks. Because we, we live in a society of such like instantaneous, we have to answer that message as soon as it comes in. We have to do this as soon as we see it, but we don't really.

Right. And I mean, unless you're a doctor who's on call, you do not have to answer the page as soon as you get it. Um, and so how do we set structure within a day that you're doing your most creative work, when you feel you're most creative, that you're answering your emails when maybe your brain is still working, but it's not as creative.

Right. And how do we start to create that into a schedule that you feel good about? And then we do a check-in because just because we set something up doesn't mean it's gonna work. Right? So you have to keep coming back and checking in very much like a coach does. And then the coach's job is also to, to dial you back a little bit.

Right? And so I don't know about you, but when I was Ironman training, my coach would be like, do not push this run in all capital letters. And I'd be like, Hmm, should I try and run really fast for this one? So there's an element of that, of, okay guys, you know, you guys are running along really well and your exec team is gelling and everyone's getting, you know, doing what they need to do.

Let's take some moment to celebrate that. What does that look like for your team? Um, because a lot of times, leaders. Get so caught up in the pushing that they forget that the team needs the celebrating.

Greg McDonough: That's powerful. Very powerful.

Let's shift gears a little bit, Katrina, and talk about the engaged New York Executive Council and dreamers and doers. I'd love to understand what you're doing with those two organizations.

Katrina Purcell: So, engaged New York, um, is part of the larger Engage network, which is a mentoring platform. Um, and the reason that I love it is because. I, you know, I mentioned before, even when I was training for my Ironman, I was still mentoring people, right?

So I had taken swim lessons six months before and I was helping people who were too afraid to put their face in the water. Um, and I think there's an element of mentorship that helps you learn yourself. And so mentorship has been, you know, something that I've believed in my whole life. Um, and this organization matches people with mentors, and it is open for organizations to come and say, Hey, I have these top performers.

I really want them to do better. I think they could, you know, become the next leaders of our organization. Let's match them with mentors and help them over a structured three month period of what they wanna learn to grow. Um, which I really, I just really love it. Um, and Allison who runs that organization is just so committed to helping, uh, people, managers, helping people become people managers.

You know, we've got a lot of companies that are. Fully remote these days and, and I think we forget how much we actually learned early in our careers by being in an office and seeing things that were happening or having those random interactions. You know, we laugh now about the water cooler, but like that is how you would meet people at work.

You would see them in the hallway. You would kind of have these chance interactions and you would learn from that. And so what she's doing is, is creating a way for people to be matched with mentors, also training people on how to be mentors. Hm. Because you don't just automatically know. I mean, some people don't know how to actually be a good mentor.

They want to be, but they're not sure how. Um, so I love the work that organization is doing. And then Dreamers and Doers is actually a net. It's a, a network for women entrepreneurs. My favorite part about that is just that I'm constantly surrounded by people who are doing way more amazing things than me.

And I leave those calls being like, I'm gonna do the like. Here's my next thing, you know, and someone on one of those calls, I'm like, yes, that is your next thing. Let's do it. Um, so it's just a, it's, it's a group of people who I feel very akin to. They feel all like my best friends every time I get on a call.

Um, and they really are not only just dreaming though, they're doing, and, and that's like the part that sometimes I struggle with is like, you get into groups where people are like, yeah, we could. And I'm like, but how? What is the, like, let's do it. Um, and so that group is equal, equal amounts doing as they are dreaming.

Um, which for me is, is speaks to my heart.

Greg McDonough: So I am curious as you think about it, the word entrepreneur, and this is a,

a,

TEDx topic that

I'm trying to develop, especially in the female entrepreneurs, Um, you know, I I think historically we've

defined entrepreneurship as somebody who builds and runs

businesses. And for me,

Entrepreneurship is different. I think it's the encouragement to try new things. You could be a middle manager, you could be in the.

a cube a cubicle. You could be like just starting your career. You could be in college, you could be at home, you could be five years old, like teaching entrepreneurship and having the courage to try new things and fail.

To me is really what the definition of entrepreneurship is. or being entrepreneurial and I, and I'm teaching that to my

girls and My wife's the CEO of an executive, of a HR tech business, and I, I see her being entrepreneurial. I'm curious in the dreamers and doers, are you,

do you define it that way or something similar where it's not just, Hey, you're running a business and you're trying to sell widgets, or sell a service.

It's really encouraging these women to sort of.

get the courage, take on risk, be okay with failure, et cetera.

et cetera.

Katrina Purcell: I would definitely say that is the way they define it. Right? And some of these, some of the women have, you know, a full-time nine to five and they have some kind of side hustle that they're envisioning, whether that's a nonprofit, whether that's a CPG, whether that's a, you know, a, something that they're, uh, a service based business, right?

And so they may not currently be running a company, but very much like you said, they have a dream and an aspiration to go out, try something big, swing big. Fail and move on. Um, and I think, I love that you mentioned sort of that concept of failure because I think we've, we've raised a generation of people who are almost like, too afraid to fail and think of all of the wonderful, glorious things you're missing out on by not trying something.

Um, and I'm not advocating I'm, I am fairly risk adverse. I, I, I do like to create my checklist and I have all my things right, and I account for the risk. Um. But try stuff because if you don't try and you don't fail, then you're not gonna learn something new and you're not gonna grow. Um, and you're gonna be a pretty boring person, to be honest.

Like, you're not gonna have any interesting stories. You're not, you know, I, I, I, um, I didn't finish a half iron in, in Canada. Um, the wind was so bad. Bikes were literally getting blown off of the, the course. Um, and I missed the bike cutoff by two minutes. It's, I was really unhappy person. Um, but luckily my parents were there to cheer me on and, and while I sat in my ice bath in the hotel, uh, bathtub, you know, it was like, okay, I'm disappointed.

I'm upset. I feel like I've let people down who were like cheering me from afar. Um, but it was a learning experience and I knew my bike needed work, right? I knew I needed to get stronger. I knew I needed to get better on the bike. Um, and that was pre Ironman, right? So it was all this training data, it's all this information, all of this feedback that comes in.

And do you know that that post about feeling like a failure and not reaching the actual end of that race? Got more comments, more support, more likes, more people being like, oh my God, you're so inspirational. Then if I had posted a picture at the end of the race, like having accomplished it. And I think it's because we're used to this culture of success, of like everyone's only posting all the happy moments and all the like great things, and you don't always hear about all the like slogs, all the like really hard training things, which is why I journaled my entire Ironman so I could read it.

Before the race to be like, okay. Yeah, there was that training day. I just didn't even wanna get out of bed. And then I wrecked my bike and then I had to cross the GW walking my bike like a little, you know, nerd and everyone looking at me because I had wrecked my bike and I couldn't ride it back because it was broken, you know?

And so you don't like, we don't talk about those things enough.

Greg McDonough: You left me a little breadcrumb that I have to pick up.

you mentioned journaling with your Ironman.

training. Can you tell me a little bit more about

what your process was there?

Katrina Purcell: So my best friend's husband recommended it, um, because he had done Arizona.

Um, and he said throughout the training, just create a journal. He's like, I don't care what you write in it, just write whatever you're thinking that day, or write what went well or what didn't go well or what you hated about the nutrition or you know, and he said at the end, read it. And it's so funny, I still have it and it's so funny to go back and look at it because it was just.

Random thoughts. It's, it's not, it probably means nothing to anyone else. Sometimes it would just be like, oh, the, you can, was too thick today. Or like, what did, how did you do this? Like, the sweet potatoes were too mushy. Or, you know, don't, don't have those next time. You know, you don't like this goo packet, why did you get it?

But then there were some that were truly like, you woke up this morning, you didn't wanna do it. You still did 60 miles, right? Like, get a new bike seat. Right. They were just like random things, you know, where you're like, oh, that's what I felt that day. Um, and for me, I, you know, I never train with music. I, I ne because you couldn't race with it, so why train with it?

And so you're just alone with your thoughts. So some of them are really random. It's like 10th loop of Central Park, you know, and at the end you go back and you're like, oh my God. Like, how many loops did I do at Central Park today? Why are there so many tourists that hill really suck? You know, some of them are random, but then there's like these glimmers of sort of like.

Yeah. Really inspirational moments of I did not wanna do this, I still did it, and guess what? I finished, I'm alive. Everything's fine. No one died. Um,

Greg McDonough: awesome.

Katrina Purcell: And so it, I think sometimes when we create bullet journals or we create journals, we're like, oh, it has to be so perfect. And like, you know, and no one has seen that journal but me.

It's, it's mine, right? And so it doesn't have to be perfect. Just write down whatever you're thinking. They got more coherent as the training went on, but there were definitely some of them where they're like, legitimately these calf socks suck. Like, never wear these again. Don't try this.

Greg McDonough: Refer to yesterday.

And would you write that at the end of the day, kind of, or at the end of a train,

your

Katrina Purcell: So I would try to do it at the end of each training session. So, um, you know, living in the city, typically in the morning I would try to go to the pool. Um, and then essentially on the commute from the pool to work, I would write.

Um, and then, um, I would do, in the evening, I would do my second workout, whatever that would look like, right. Whether it was strength training or my bike trainer at home. Um, and then I would do all my long bricks on the weekends. And so it would always be kind of either before, so especially if I was having a tough day getting out there, I would write before, but then I would also write after, um, because it was sort of like.

It sucked. I don't wanna go do this. And then you would come back and be like, I did it and it was great, and I got a PR and like, oh my god. You know? Um, and the fun part when you're training for your first one is like, everything's a PR because you're like, I've never gone this far before. And you're Garmin's like, look at you.

You know? Um, and so there's all this like positive reinforcement as you're going.

Greg McDonough: That's really powerful. I'm gonna pick up that habit. Uh, Katrina, I gotta ask you about your podcast.

Can you, you give what? what?

was the inspiration? Tell us about the show,

a

little bit about the about the Uh, so Well Managed Chaos, the name came from someone who I'd worked with.

Katrina Purcell: Um, I was a chief of staff for a, for an HR tech company. Um, and we were raising a series B, and, and someone told me, you managed chaos better than anyone I've ever met. And, you know, I think that is the chief of staff role, to be honest. Um, is, is taking all the chaos and making it hum. And so that's where the name came from.

The goal was really be behind democratizing access to information that people needed to scale and grow their business. Um, the episodes are 15 minutes long. The goal is that by the end of an episode, you're walk away with something that you can implement that very day, whether it's about growth mindset, change management, or maybe about a CRM and HubSpot.

It's also, we have founders on who talk about, um, we had a founder on who talked about. Losing 90% of her first shipment of her, uh, CPG. Good. Because of contamination. Like how do you get through that? Well, she did, and guess what? She's now launched more products and like she's learned lessons and, and so it's about learning from other people's failures because we hardly ever talk about it.

We only talk about the, the happy successes. And so there's a lot about other people's chaos that you can learn from.

Greg McDonough: That's awesome. We'll include that.

obviously in our

show notes. Um,

Katrina, an audience member wants to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to

find you?

Katrina Purcell: you? Uh, LinkedIn most likely, just because that's where I post pretty frequently.

Um, but I have a wonderful website. It's just katrina purcell.com. Super easy to find. Um, and then obviously Managed Chaos. So Managed Chaos is on Instagram. Um, and we are on all of your podcast platforms.

Greg McDonough: Uh, and again, those would be in the show.

notes. Christina,

Katrina,

it's been fantastic having

you on. Like our, our paths are so similar from podcasting to Ironman to time blocking.

you know, it's, uh, it, it's been a great show. the audience members, if you got some value out of today, please like, please subscribe to us. Please follow Katrina, find her on socials, reach out to her if you need

some operational structure. Um, you've got my mind spinning about that color coded calendar.

I've

I've got it color coded going forward, but looking back it's not so organized. So, um,

I've picked up a lot of value just from our conversation. Again, it's been great having you on the show.