David Cohen: I'm David Cohen, and I'm the founder and CEO of TechStars.

Brad Feld: Brad Feld, I'm one of the partners at Foundry Group, which is a venture capital firm in Boulder.

David Cohen: TechStars is a mentorship driven startup accelerator. We take the best entrepreneurs from around the country and surround them with amazing mentors.

Brad Feld: I'm also a co-founder of TechStars with David Cohen and my partners at Foundry and I have all been very involved in helping TechStars grow as an organization.

James Hill: If you look at these guys, they've invested so much energy in their work, and they're terrific. You just tell them something, they grasp at it, they put it right into their business. Part of the issue here is they've never learned the right way to keep a healthy weight.

David Cohen: I've never really paid much attention to my weight, and as I got into my 40s, it just got to a point where I was pretty annoyed with where it had gotten to.

Brad Feld: It's very frustrating, or it's been very frustrating to me, to have an area of my life, that was difficult for me to make any sort of real sustainable progress against a goal.

James Hill: Entrepreneurial types really like the technology. They're very data driven. They like to track things, they like to look at how stock prices have changed, or trends. What today's technology allows you to do, is to very accurately track your weight, your behaviors, so they can look at their past progress, they can see trends. I think it's a huge motivator because that sort of feedback helps you understand the effectiveness of the behavior changes you're trying to achieve.

Brad Feld: I've been talking about dropping 20 pounds for a decade and it hadn’t happened. I run - I run marathons. I can't work out more, and so I know it's diet and behavior change.

David Cohen: For me, it was more about, you know, being around for my family and living a long life and feeling good.

Brad Feld: I'm very intrinsically motivated by learning in general. When I realized that, OK, I'm going to learn about my health, and I'm going to learn about how to lose this weight and keep this weight off, that became very motivating.

David Cohen: I thought I was going to be having cravings all the time, and sort of "how do I cheat on this a little bit and not get caught?" It hasn't been that at all. It's been really, actually, pretty easy.

James Hill: So what we're promising in Retrofit is a lifestyle that doesn't involve deprivation. It doesn't involve food restriction. It involves eating smarter, and it involves being physically active.

David Cohen: I have a rule, which is if you're on a phone call, you walk. So I either walk around the office or I walk on the walking treadmill when I'm on the phone, which is a lot. I find I get 6 to 8 miles a day because of that one commitment.

James Hill: Talking on the phone is something that David does all the time. Now, he linked walking with talking on the phone. Brilliant. So simple ways to take the changes and put them into your daily routine, so that you're going to do them every single day.

Brad Feld: I've tried a few things, in terms of my own discipline, and none of them have stuck. Yeah, I'll lose 5 or 10 pounds, and then I'll come back. Retrofit was the first time that I felt like there was something that fit within the way I lived, my schedule. I eat out constantly, I travel all the time.

David Cohen: You don't really get much exercise if you're in New York City, you know, walking a couple blocks between meetings. So that was where I really had to learn some techniques for eating better or sneaking in a little exercise. The folks that were helping at Retrofit were really great in giving me those ideas.

Brad Feld: A combination of the measurement, the real-time communication, in terms of the portal, the structure, the feedback, the Skype calls, that was with real people, rather than just some thing I had to follow. But in a way where I didn't have to been in a place. I could schedule it in my normal schedule. It was just another meeting that I had for 30 minutes sort of in the midst of everything else. The whole package really fit well, and of course, there were direct results.

David Cohen: What attracted me to it was the sort of data-driven peer accountability. So you would get people that would help you through the journey.

Brad Feld: Yeah, when I reflect on it, the number of things I changed were very basic, relatively small number. It was mostly applying some very discrete rules to certain eating patterns, that I felt like were long-term sustainable.

David Cohen: Brad Feld and I sort of went through this experience together.

Brad Feld: At the end of the meeting, there'd be a little pile of chocolate wrappers, and now it's like, "Hey, let's go for a walk."

David Cohen: So we had several walks talking about strategy for TechStars or investments we were in together.

Brad Feld: Both of us sort of looked at the "go for a walk" as a chance to work through whatever our thing is; as part of the maintenance of taking care of ourselves.

James Hill: What they had figured out is how to incorporate this into their lives. So if you're going to change your behavior, you need to hook it into other things that are important.

David Cohen: Honestly, I'd say the first 10 pounds of the 30 were pretty easy. I mean, I almost didn't need the help because I just had made the mental commitment.

Brad Feld: I had about 15 pounds come off really quickly, and then I stalled.

David Cohen: The middle 10, or maybe 15, were a little more gradual, and I needed a lot of the coaching and help and feedback. I mean, it's amazing. They looked at the menus of the restaurants I go to, and they said "Try this instead of that," and I did. Those things helped.

Brad Feld: To get the next level down, I had to change some other stuff fundamentally.

James Hill: What's so gratifying is that when you give them the one-on-one coaching, they get it, they incorporate it into their lives, and it works. It's like, "Wow. Got it. Learned it. Makes sense. Great!"

Brad Feld: I have confidence I'm going to have mastery over it this time around. Whereas every other time I ever thought about it, it was always like this something in the future that maybe I would get my act together on someday.

David Cohen: Retrofit will help you fit it into your life. The people are amazing. They give you great advice. They customize it and tailor it. It doesn't matter how busy you are, you can find time to do this for yourself; and it really works.