A few years ago, LeagueApps CEO Brian Litvack and the company’s president, Jeremy Goldberg, were gifted Oura rings during NBA All-Star Weekend, courtesy of a partner brand. They were happy to accept them, and even happier to wear them – but they weren’t exactly sure what to do with the wealth of data that they unlocked.

In a way, it was like opening Pandora’s box. Their sleek new ring came with an overwhelming new dashboard of information, not all of which was immediately intuitive.

This is a familiar starting point for a lot of individuals and teams we work with at Coya. Whether they come to us as a seasoned wearable user or as a first-time user, the problem we help them solve remains the same: interpretation.

Increasingly, we have access to the information (sometimes entirely too much of it, in fact). What we’re still at a loss for is the bridge between information and action. And that was precisely the position Brian and Jeremy found themselves in.

So, when they heard about our program, they came through it individually, just for themselves. But, as it turns out, that would just be the beginning of their work with us. Because soon after completing the program, they brought in three more members of the executive team, plus the company’s chief of staff.

And once that small group had come through the cohort together, they came back to us with a bigger question: what would this look like if we scaled and adapted it for the rest of the company?

Building a Program Employees Could Opt Into

After chatting with Brian and Jeremy about their intention(s) for the program, we looped in LeagueApps’ head of HR to build a totally customized program that would be made available to every employee on an opt-in basis.

The structure was simple and deliberately asked employees to put some skin in the game; specifically, they had to choose their own wearable and pay for it themselves. But after they made their selection and submitted proof of purchase, they were reimbursed $100 by the company. 

Brian and his president, meanwhile, asked for something else. They wanted individualized, ongoing coaching support for themselves, separate from the group rollout. Having already experienced the Coya executive program – and the accountability and structure it was built to provide – they just weren’t ready to let it go, and who could blame them?

Over the course of the next year, the company-wide program combined monthly education sessions, live Ask Me Anything calls with experts across each pillar of health (sleep, movement, nutrition, stress, etc.), and group coaching. By the time it wrapped, the results spoke for themselves:

• 100% of participants wanted similar programming in the future
• 90% reported a positive impact on mental health
• 80% reported a positive impact on productivity at work
• 70% reported a significant impact on well-being
• An average of 13 more minutes of sleep per night across the team, and a 1.5% increase in sleep quality

Brian called it the best wellness program the company had ever run. One employee described it as a sign that the company genuinely cares about the well-being of its people.

“Offering Coya has proven to me how much LeagueApps truly cares about the employee’s overall health.”

That kind of culture signal matters more than you might think. At the time, LeagueApps was scaling quickly and asking a lot of its people. Leadership wanted a way (not an empty or fleeting gesture) to show that they understood the demands they were placing on their team, and were willing to pull out all the stops to support them through it. 

When the Program Becomes Part of the Culture

LeagueApps’ results weren’t confined to a dashboard. And to be honest, they never are. The dashboard is just the beginning.

As the first year went on and momentum grew, employees started forming their own peer accountability groups and meeting outside of sessions to talk through what was working. They created an internal Slack channel just for sharing what they were learning in the realm of health and wellbeing – everything from a sleep hack to a photo of a home-cooked meal, or a question about which plants might actually survive in a New York apartment.

The program had, on its own, become part of how people at LeagueApps talked to each other.

By year two, that momentum naturally gave way to three tracks that employees could join one or more of: sleep, nutrition, and fitness. Each track paired an education session and an Ask Me Anything with a monthly challenge. In the fitness track, that meant physical activity six days a week, every week, logged and reported. In the nutrition track, it was a month without added sugar or heavily processed food, tracked daily and shared back to the team.

Each track had a “team captain”, someone who kept the group’s momentum going and brought questions back to Coya when the team needed a nudge or a new prompt to keep the conversation moving. The structure was powerful: it was internally driven, but externally supported. They had each other, a new shared culture, and they had us, in whatever capacity they needed our guidance and expertise. 

What the Data Showed

Across the 22 team members who came through the tracked cohort, 18 showed measurable improvement in their capacity to handle stress, based on HRV trends over the eight-week window. Individual HRV gains ranged as high as 48.9%, with the majority of participants landing in positive territory even during a demonstrably more intense stretch on the work calendar — one where total sleep time, for many, actually went down.

Let’s not skip past that last part. The team’s resilience went up while their sleep hours were under pressure. Even with less time to recover, they were recovering better.

It’s a good illustration of what the Coya Method is actually coaching toward: not perfect conditions, but a nervous system that can absorb (and respond to) a hard season without falling apart.

What’s Next

Two weeks ago, Brian and the Coya team sat down again. LeagueApps has brought on enough new employees since the last cohort that it’s time to open the doors again. The newest hires will be offered the chance to experience the program for the first time, while anyone who came through before will have the chance to come back into the fold as well.

What started with two executives and a pair of Oura rings has grown into something LeagueApps rebuilds and refines every year, intentionally, to keep it relevant and personalized to whoever’s in the building.

That’s the part we’re most proud of. Not that it worked once, but that it continues to work and evolve with every cohort and every enterprise team we have the pleasure of working with.