S1E48 · The Reunion: Coop & Wallace

Hey Legends, welcome to the Virtus Performance Podcast. It's nice to be back in the country, I've been gallivanting around South America for the last six or seven weeks so I'm finally back at work, back into the podcast chair for all of you guys who listened to the 44 Days in South America podcast we did, it would have been about seven, eight weeks ago now. This is a little bit of a sequel to that, it's a chat with myself and the great man Simon Cooper about how the last seven weeks have gone from his perspective at

Virtus, just running the show with the rest of the team while I was off on holiday and how my holiday was and how the trip was, and what my mindset was like throughout what I did, what I learnt, the importance of things like time alone and then connecting with people from all around the world so yeah, this is today's episode, enjoy, if you are enjoying the podcast please share, please subscribe, the more people we can get listening to this the bigger it can get and the cooler guests we can have on and then we don't have to talk to Coop and me all the time so enjoy.

My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day, I believe everyone especially normal people have a story to tell, the Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Simon Cooper, welcome home, this is Nate, back in business, good to have you back, it's good to be back, it's nice to be home and back with the people I love, back in the places I love, but mostly it's nice to have coffee again, yeah coffee is

the nectar, I had three coffees for my whole, maybe four coffees in seven weeks, wow, where were they, one was a delicious Nescafe blend, that was the first and last time I'll have one of those, that was in Chile, that was a bad move, the second one was some filtered coffee before a trek in Peru, not much better, the third one was in Bolivia in La Paz, managed to find two coffee shops, one which did a delicious ice latte which was actually an ice latte, that was magical, and then managed to find another one which

is called, I think it was called Higher Ground, which is run by a guy who used to live in Windsor, so I thought, you know what, that's probably pretty good, so that was the closest I got to a regular coffee in seven weeks, you would have thought that in South America where a lot of our coffee is sourced from, you'd think there'd be all about it, yeah, I did a little bit of research trying to figure out if they used much of their own coffee, but it's a lot of American style coffee, where it's just

Starbucks style, lots of Americano coffees, and their attempt at a latte, which is just, I don't know what it was, but yeah, it was very interesting being the coffee band was a little bit north of where we were, but yeah, that's it, what's been happening? How's home been? Home life's been good, it's been a busy six weeks, I guess when you first took off we took us probably a couple of weeks to kind of get into a rhythm where we were functioning as a team and everyone was sort of doing their own thing, from a

vertice perspective, especially Mitch took off a couple of days after you and that was a lot of coaching hours to pick up, a lot of back end stuff, just to cover, so that was a busy couple of weeks, but Mitch coming back has been rad, he's been able to take a lot of the coaching as he does, which is, he is a very hard worker, yeah I think he did like 15 hours coaching yesterday or something like that, but good for Mitchy, he's a good lad, what do you think, because I guess from a business

point of view, but more so from an adding value to a client's point of view, what do you think was the biggest challenge of me not being there? And I don't say that in an arrogant way, I guess just my role day to day is very much overseeing how things are going and a little bit of coaching and checking in with clients and stuff and things like that, so how did you go with the rest of the team in covering that? I think to everyone's credit we picked up the slack that was left from you,

picked up all of your role and all your tasks and managed it pretty well between all of us, I mean everyone is fantastic in that they can manage themselves, so it's not as if they, not that much had to change really, just a little bit of coaching, a little bit of communication and management and I guess the higher minded thinking, all that stuff wasn't present, but day to day operations and day to day coaching and interaction with everyone, that was business as normal. It seemed like from the outside, which is weird to say, from that helicopter view out of the bubble, that day to day ran really well.

I think all the clients and everyone at Virtus was still super happy, everyone was coming in training hard, leading with a smile on their face, so I don't think there was that much that really changed. That's good, that's very good, and it's nice to be able to, as a business owner, it's nice to be able to know that your team has your back and I can leave everyone in your hands and get probably a better service to be honest, without me, without me. It's good because I guess our mission is really simple, it's just to

make the world a better place one person at a time and to know that that's spread from me to all of you guys and it happens daily, it's a magical feeling. That's why everyone is part of this amazing team that we've got because they share the same vision. Definitely. Everyone has their different approaches and everyone has their different ethos, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to the same reason. Definitely. It was an interesting feeling because the first two weeks or so, not being at work, for anyone that knows me, I like being at work and I like doing things.

One of the things I realise, I guess we'll talk about epiphanies a little bit later, one of the things I realise is I try and do way too many things at once. If I should be doing three things, I'll try and do six and it will mean that six things don't get done as well, but I realise that two weeks in, the first two weeks I was in kind of holiday mode just getting disconnected from work and from home. The novelty of being away I suppose. Yeah, exactly and just exploring a new part of the world, trying to learn how to order dos cervezas.

Dós, do you mean cóchos? Two at a time, mate. Trying to learn how to say please and thank you and things like that in Spanish. That was the focus for the first couple of weeks, but I think it was about maybe two and a half weeks in, maybe three weeks in, a little bit of travel, a little bit of time on buses where I got a little bit stir crazy and I'm like, "I need to be doing something." It's really interesting because I was talking to a lot of different people who were travelling for different

reasons and James and I was probably the only two that were running a business and travelling at the same time, which was really interesting and it made me realise that, I don't know, one of the realisations I came to later on in the trip was that most people that travel for, I'd say, more than five, six weeks are usually running away from something more so than having something to come back to, if that makes sense, so a lot of people quitting jobs, leaving after study because they don't know what they want to do, travelling the

world, like obviously everyone who's travelling the world loves travel and loves that freedom and those experiences and that connection of meeting new people, but one of the things I realised, I don't know how I got onto this tangent, but one of the things I realised that very few people who I met were excited to get home, or as excited to get home as I was and James were. You definitely left from a different perspective, like you are going away to almost give yourself a break from work rather than escaping from it. Yeah, definitely. Two weeks

in I was like, "Alright, I'm ready to go back," and about four weeks in I was pulling my hair out going, "Okay, I really need to get home to everyone," but... How much time do you think you spent on Virtus? On Virtus? I probably did something that was related to Virtus, development of Virtus or development of my personal brand or development of myself as a coach or as a leader, I guess every day. Not so much. If I listen to a business podcast, I think of that as development for those things. Take something for everything you consume.

Yeah, I guess my mindset while I was away, which after the first couple of days of being stir-crazy with not being able to do work stuff was, "You know what, I'm just going to just be and be present and do what I want to do in that moment," so if it's going to go to the bar and drinking 15 beers and winning a beer pong tournament, then that's what I want to do. If it's sitting there writing a blog post for Virtus or a blog post for my website or just a journal entry as to what I've learned that day or how I felt that day, then I'll do it.

If it's sitting there listening to music, if it's listening to an audio book, if it's talking and connecting to people, then I just wanted to take it with whatever I felt like was right at the time. I didn't want to force anything, and there was definitely a couple of days where I wouldn't do any work stuff and then go, "I don't want to lock myself in the hostel," and I was tossing up before I left whether I take my laptop and what books I take and things like that. I ended up not using my laptop

all that much, but it was nice to be able to jump on, catch up on emails, or at least chat with you guys on Skype or chat with our coaches or whatever it may be. So yeah, not too much, and I think it was really interesting because some of my coaches beforehand were like, "What work can I do over there?" or "What work should I focus on over there?" And it was definitely a lot more big-picture stuff, it was a lot more, "How does it look being out of the bubble?" Which traveling you're removed from

the day-to-day, small-picture stuff, so you can start looking at the big picture and start looking at what Virtus looks like from the outside, where it's going. Which is a weird thing to do after being, like I guess, I've had, oh yeah, it's the first time I've done it like that, like I've had a week or two holidays, but I think when you get to the three, four-week mark, you're really properly disconnected, and you're in a headspace where you can think about things and helicopter over it rather than being in it. And anyone that read my

44 Days in South America blog that's on my website will kind of see a pattern of how my mindset is, because there was a time where I was just probably talking about what we were doing, and then what we're experiencing, what was coming up, and the people we're meeting, and then it moved into what was happening at home, and what I was looking forward to, and things like that. It was a really interesting experience, and something that I would, for any business owner or anyone that's in a job that they love, or in a job

that they don't love, it's a really good eye-opener to see, one, how different parts of the world live, and how, I don't know if 'insignificant' is the right word, but how, or 'meaningless', 'insignificant' maybe, as to what we're actually doing, like, yes we're there. Small cogs, you know, big machine. Yeah, like even just to sit on a plane that's going, you know, I actually don't know how fast a plane goes, but hundreds of kilometres an hour, like, sitting in there for 10 hours going over, you know, basically flying halfway around the world, or 15 hours

actually, basically flying halfway around the world to be put in a place where there's thousands, millions of people living their lives with absolutely, like, zero understanding about what's happening on the other side of the world, like, you, um... Yeah, everyone's living their own independent lives where they're the centre of their universe. Yeah, and it kind of, I really enjoy that insignificance because it makes you feel like, when things are bad they're not going to stay bad, and when things are, or even when things are good they're not going to stay good, but it doesn't matter

either way, like, it allows you to be, for me it allows me to be both an observer of my reality, but also understand that you have the power or you have the control over what you do and who you are. Do you think that it also gives you an insight into everything that you do being insignificant? Yeah, definitely, like, I love the feeling of insignificance because I think if you feel significant and feel like the centre of the universe then every little mistake, every little fuck up, every little problem you have feels like the end

of the world, whereas if you, and then you, because of that you have that, I guess, anxiety or stress around it being like, the walls are crumbling down around me, but when you feel that insignificance you realise that, like you said, we're little cogs in a giant, we're little cogs in a medium machine of a big machine of a giant machine of, like, the interaction of some people I had in places like Chile and Peru where, like, you start to learn what, like, people say where you're from in Spanish, I can't remember what it is,

and you say Australia, and they're like, oh, Australia, kangaroo, and, like, that's it, that's all they know, like, kangaroos in the Sydney Opera House, right? Yeah, basically, and it's just like, we live in such a, I'd say, like, secluded part of the world, like, border crossings is something that we get to experience, like, I don't think, oh, I've done a couple, like, in South East Asia, but apart from that, it's all been at airports, so I guess that's not what a border crossing really is, so going from, say, Peru into Bolivia, and Bolivia into Brazil,

and Brazil into Argentina, and seeing, like, maybe what you call grassroots border crossings where, like, day-to-day people just need to get across to work or to see family or whatever, that idea in Australia, we're kind of separate from it because we don't have any borders, that we, there's two completely, not completely different, but two fairly different cultures living across a river or across a, like, a gated border crossing, and it's like, it's an, like, I don't know, I had a real problem looking at it and going, this is an imaginary line, and if you're born 100 metres this side, you're Bolivian, if you're born 100 metres that side, you're Brazilian, and that shapes your identity, doesn't it?

Yeah, but it does, like, that idea of patriotism and national pride and things like that, I think that, like, it's such a dangerous, unnecessary part of human existence, and I guess we all want to belong, and I understand that, and we all want to have that community and things like that, but I think we can have that community without that line. I guess that's developed through different people and different cultures having varying views on things, right? Definitely, yeah. So that they decide that my view's different from your view, so they're going to chuck up a wall in between us, and separate it.

Some of these lines are where they are and what they are because of, you know, explorers drawing lines on maps and things like that, and it's just like, there's a lot of, there was a lot of, or is a lot of controversy now, I don't know how current it is, but I think they, like, Chileans don't like Peruvians and Peruvians don't like Bolivians in certain circles because it's Peruvian Bolivia and, like, they've had border, or what, like, controversy around who's, who owns this area and things like that, and I think Bolivia used to go to

the ocean, I don't know which ocean's on that side, anyway, to the ocean, and now it doesn't, so they've lost, like, beach access, more or less, and now they're, like, big hoo-ha about that, and like... From down the beach? Yeah, that's exactly... Well, like, the arguments, like, proper arguments, like, I thought it was a joke, but it's proper arguments that the Chileans have with the Peruvians around who invented Pisco, but yeah, and like... Does it matter? But it doesn't, right? It's a delicious beverage that is the devil, and really, really dangerous if you've had a

couple of beers and you want something sweeter, it's, oh mate, not everyone, one night was stupid on it, but anyway, but, like, just the, I think, I think it was sapiens that O'Bail Noah Harari talks about it, and a border is just a, a made up thing that enough people agree with, so it's a, so it's a thing, if that makes sense, and I think, like, as soon as we started, or we've been segregating ourselves as human beings between tribes for forever, which creates conflict, but now in a age of, an age of globalization and

connection between, like, I can, like, while I was away, in Bolivia, with crappy Wi-Fi, I was still able to call home and things like that. Yeah, definitely. We were more connected than we have ever been. And I think it'd be, it'd be really interesting to see, to be able to get, to be able to get, like, a really cool look into the future as to what borders and countries look like. Yeah. Because, like, I understand the need for governance on a, on a larger level, and then a smaller, like, city, city, like, area, suburb level, and then on a country level, but I don't know, it just seems like those borders or those boundaries aren't necessary anymore.

And like, I'm not naive enough to think that world peace or anything like that is possible, because I don't think it is, because we're naturally, we're naturally drawn to conflict, I think. We'll look at, like, North and South Korea, I don't know a lot about that, really, but there's... Aren't they friends now? Apparently. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Donald's, Donald's doing. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, well, since World War, World War II, basically, they've been segregated. Yeah. They've been separate. And there's stories about, like, them, like, having, like, half a day to go and visit their relatives in South Korea, and, you know, living in tears and not being able to see each other again.

Like, things like that. And it's so interesting that it's, here's the line, it's us versus, it's you versus me, or it's us versus them. And I found... So, such difference between cultures, as well? Yeah. Yeah. And then... It's not a thing unless everyone agrees on it, or, like, the majority of people agree on it, which is, which is really interesting. So, like, I don't know, I don't, I don't know enough about global politics to have this discussion properly. But it's, it's a really, I just find it a really interesting thing. And I think it was in Sapiens, as well, he talked about borders, but he talks about money as well.

Like, money is just a, like, it's paper or plastic or whatever. And that's a, something everyone agrees, well, this has value, I can buy this with this, so this meal is worth X amount or whatever. And currencies fluctuate, they go up and down, depending on what everyone decides it's going to be worth that day, or what gold's going to be worth that day. Yeah. It's really interesting with, like, cryptocurrencies coming in now, and, like, how does someone decide what, how much are Bitcoins worth? Yeah, exactly. Like... Yeah, what's, what the, what the broader consensus is on what everyone...

And essentially it has no application at this point. No. You can't go to the supermarket and buy something with Bitcoin, or any other sort of cryptocurrency. So it's really, like, interesting technologies coming to the forefront, that's going to start to define how we transact and how we do things. I think it'll be really interesting, and I hope it happens, that we get to the point where we have decentralised currency, because then the powers that be, whether it be governments or big corporations and things, will have less of a say on what things are worth, and

it becomes more of a, more of a decision on what things are actually worth, and the value of different, I guess, commodities, and activities and things like that, because to see, like, we say we're the lucky country, and we, I think everyone who lives in Australia, and especially in our corner of the world, down the morning to midnight, like, we know where, like we're lucky, but then when you actually go out and see how the rest of the world lives, like, it's, it's, like, it's triple, tenfold what you actually think it is, how lucky we actually are.

Like, some of the... I started reading Shantaran, which you just read, and the first couple of pages, he's, the main character, or the storyteller, is driving into Bombay and India and slums, like, for miles, and how can this be allowed in today's day and age, where some are so wealthy yet others are nothing to their name. Yeah, it's horrible, it's really, it's really interesting, and if you guys, for those listening who haven't read Shantaran, I, it's one of the ones that I've been told to read multiple times for, for probably 12 months, and I've finally

found one in a, in a hostel in El Shaltan, no, El Calafate in Patagonia, about four days before I left, and started reading, and got stuck in, and decided not to talk, talk to anyone for three days, in between, in between my tours. A 1000-page book? Yes. And how long did it take you to finish? Like, five, six days, seven days, yeah, but I did have a plane ride, and some time, but this is a book that isn't, like, it's an incredible story, like, everything that happens, and the people, and the experience is, is an

amazing story, but the ability of Gregory David Roberts, I think is his name, to paint a picture, and, and give you a really, like, a really good, like, sensory feel that you're in there, and you're part of the story, is, is magical, and I saw, it was kind of cool to read it about a different country, but so much of it was, because obviously about India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, things like that, it's really interesting to see those same living conditions, and those same, like, class systems in different countries, because I guess South America isn't necessarily third world, but parts of it probably would be considered.

The one thing that I found probably most shocking is, because I guess poverty exists everywhere in the world, no one, no one's necessarily, no one country is necessarily immune to poverty, but to see some of the slums in, say, Lima and Peru, where, like, lots of the population have come down from the mountains to try and get work in the city, and they haven't been able to find it, so the, from the airport, and this is, like, early on in our trip, a week into our trip from the airport to where we stayed in Miraflores,

which is, I guess, one of the more affluent parts of, of Lima, it just slums us, like, you just see houses that are made out of any kind of material they can find, yeah, and, like, they're smiling and laughing and having, and seemingly having a really, like, happy existence, and then, you know, you're ten minutes down the road and you see, like, high-rises and nice houses and things like that, and then the last day we left Lima was probably the biggest contrast. They took us up to one of the viewpoints and, like, drove, like, literally

through the slums to get up there, and you look down and, I'm trying to find a photo of it, I think I took one but there was basically, like, you could see that one street separated the slums that are basically, like, probably powering maybe a third of them and probably not much running water and things like that to the affluent part of that neighbourhood that overlooks the beach, that's kind of what you'd expect to see, maybe, for anyone that's been in Geelong, it looks fairly similar with the, with the bay and all the, all the boats, and then all of the really nice houses but one street over would be slums.

So that was, that was pretty mind-blowing, and to see, and to hear about, like, their daily wage, or monthly wage, which is, like, our daily wage, it's insane, and they, like, we met a lot of Peruvian locals and, you know, their saving to buy the basic things that we take for granted, and I guess we're able to go into their country as tourists, and, like, obviously we can look at it as, that's a negative thing, but we're building up their economy to a point. True. And it's almost, like, imperative to a lot of the, like, tour guides and, yeah, taxpayers and things.

A bit of a sense of guilt, of walking around with all this money in your pocket, and, like, to them that would be like a fortune. Yeah, well that's it, like, for a month or a year. Yeah, I complained about running out of money, and, like, it was a, it was a very, I guess, Western privilege complaint, because, like, first world problems. Yeah, well that's exactly it. I ran out of money to a point in the fact that I was expecting to have a lot, a lot more left over when I got home, but, you

know, the money I did have left in my bank account probably would have sustained, like, a family of four for a month or two months or whatever. So, yeah, I think it's a really interesting one. It's something that, like, I never think, I don't think there'll ever be true equality across, across much of the world, but I think the, the more, the more we're able to create, and I think the, the governance systems, whether it be Australia or America or the bigger powers, I think that's, I can see that changing, I don't know how, I

don't understand it well enough to know how, but I can see it changing over the next, you know, couple hundred years, if we, if we make it that long, to, to be one, yeah, to be one of those, to be a lot less one guy's in charge, and, you know, the corruption, I guess, is prevalent in every country. Yeah. But it was really interesting to hear about, like, Bolivia is one of the, is a very, very rich country, but it seemed like the poorest, poorest country being in there, because there's so much corruption, and the people running the country are the ones, yeah, yeah, so it's like that, you know, 90% of the wealth goes to 1% of the population.

Like, it was really, really evident in places like Bolivia and parts of Brazil and just, yeah. I think with the rise of technology and globalisation and connectedness, that will enable a lot more people to become connected and be able to create a living through, through these new technologies. Yeah. For example, with, like, I'm doing a bit of research on blockchain at the moment, which is, I don't know too much about it, but essentially it's a technology which acts as, like, a distributed ledger, so rather than our transactions going through a third party being a bank, and then going to the buyer, it just goes through this technology and allows people to interact directly.

So, for example, if a farmer in Bolivia wants to sell coffee or whatever their livestock to someone in Australia, they could essentially transact with each other directly. That's super cool. And the use of smart contracts and all that sort of thing will change the way that we transact and has a lot more applications beyond just financial as well. Yeah, definitely. So, this technology being developed will basically change the world. Yeah, which is really cool. Which will be huge because, like, I don't want to talk about banks for very long, but the amount of money I would have paid in ATM fees and transaction fees, but it's like the only way to do it at the moment.

It's a system that's there to make money for banks, and it's not an accident that CBA posts billions of dollars profit every year and things like that. And it's one of those things that blockchain will end up being a solution to that problem. It's just, how long does it take? How long does it take to implement? What are the regulations and the governance around it? Because it's so new, there's nothing to regulate it. But it's one of those things that's going to probably take a long time to actually happen because all of the big banks

and all of the people that have the money and have the power at the moment don't want to lose it, so they're going to do everything they can to stop it from happening. It's the same thing as Big Pharma over in the US trying to stop marijuana legalization. They just pump money behind it because it's going to cost them money. Same as, we're sort of jumping around a bit, but there was a documentary, not a documentary, but Four Corners on ABC, ran a program the other day on the obesity epidemic in Australia and how sugar is largely responsible for that.

And yet a lot of the food industry and sugar farmers don't want to regulate this. They don't want to create a sugar tax because that will take away from the billions of dollars that the food industry bring in every year. Money talks, right? Money talks, and yet our population, 60% of people are overweight compared to 20% in the 80s. It's madness. It's mind-blowing. And I think you talked about insignificance before, and we're trying to change the world and make the world a better place on such a small scale in the scheme of things, that all

of those big decisions that are made above our heads and things that we don't have any control over, like at all, they affect what people are eating and what people are consuming on a broader scale, which effectively push against what we're doing. And I think it's really easy to get bogged down in that. Be discouraged. And be discouraged. But at the end of the day, you control what you can control. Exactly. And it's all the little- Do the best you can. The little deeds and little bits of goodness in the world that just add up. And eventually, we can apply pressure to the food industry and to the big dogs who make all the decisions- Definitely.

To start making the world, for shaping the world into what we want it to be and to where it benefits everyone. Yeah. And I think it shows how important it is to stand up with what you believe in. It doesn't necessarily have to make a difference straight away. For example, Anna will stand up against takeaway coffee cups and takeaway straws to the nth degree because it's something she believes in. And she may not be able to change the world from day dot just by doing that herself, but that inspires more people to do it. Exactly. And then eventually people power will win out.

And I think- Realistically, you can't change the world. A single person can't change the world, but they have the power to influence others around them. Correct. And create a movement which can, yeah. And I think that's the important thing that you look at, I guess, poverty over there and things like that. And we can make a really, really, really small change, but you make a hundred thousand of those small changes and things start to change for the better. And I think that, I don't know, I'm an eternal optimist. I think the world is like, we live in the best time that we could ever be alive in terms of safety and affluence and things like that.

But it's just a matter of how do we make things better and more improved and more progressive. How can we use everything that we have available to us to improve our own welfare and the welfare of our society? Yeah, definitely. And I think, travel just opens your mind up to all of those problems and you get out of your bubble and you go, "Well, maybe I'm not that important. Maybe the universe-" Gives you an amazing perspective on your life. Like what you want to be doing moving forward to where you're at. Yeah. And it made me really, I got really introspective, I guess, over the journey of like 45 days I was away all up.

And it allowed me time just to be, I spent a lot of time by myself, especially the last three weeks. It allowed just getting into my head and actually start thinking about what was important to me and what I loved about home and what I didn't love about home and what were the things that, like what are the holes in my ideal life, so to speak, and what are the things I want for the rest of my life and what am I actually going to do to start moving towards it. What was the biggest thing, introspectively, that you learned about yourself?

The biggest thing, introspectively, that I learned about myself was probably just my, just understanding my patterns and getting a fair idea of who I am because I, like two weeks in I was very aware that I was missing work and home and all the people a lot. And I probably like overcompensated a little bit by trying to do too much day to day, like get up, go for a run and then meditate and then go out for lunch and go to a tour and like it was just go, go, go, go, go. And I realized that I probably, like I'm always going to be the kind of person that wants to go, go, go and wants to do too much.

But I think the biggest epiphany I had was that if I don't get enough sleep, if I don't eat well enough, I don't hydrate, if I don't look after myself, then all of those things I want to do will never accumulate to anything other than me burning myself out and getting tired. And I think there's times where we've got to, I guess, sprint at something, work too hard on something, but there's times where we need to chill out. And I had coffee with my sister this morning and she said, "You look a lot different now to when you left."

And I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "Well, the last two weeks, it was like you were 1000, like your head was in 1000 places at once." And she's like, "You just seem, it seems like you're here now." And I'm like, "It's how I feel." Which is really, really interesting because I felt like I was trying to maybe plug holes over and over again before I left. Now I feel like obviously six weeks on holiday is going to give you that perspective, but now I feel like whatever happens, I'm okay with it because I love the person I'm becoming.

I love what I do, like spending time with you guys and our clients and friends and family and KP, and I love the life I live, and I'm so lucky to have the life I live. And I'm so lucky to have the, I guess, want and desire to improve and grow, but at the same time, I'm so content with what I have and who I am. I think that was the big realization that I am enough, but I still want to keep improving. What was your big lesson? Because I guess you're studying masters and you took on a big chunk of the load at Virtus and obviously got a lovely better half to spend time with and family and friends.

How did you go balancing it all and juggling everything? Well, I think that was the biggest realization for me, balance. We all have lots of things pulling us in different directions, work, family, loved ones. We want to spend time doing things that we want to be doing and that we love doing, and at the same time, giving ourselves a rest. I think the first couple of weeks that you're away was hectic and I had to rein myself in sometimes and actually give myself some rest because I was just getting cooked. The last few weeks, I kind of took a step back a little bit.

I realized that Virtus did need me there 100% of the time and it allowed me to focus a bit more on my studies. I'm still finding the balance. I think even with you back, it's hard to get the balance. It's been three days, mate. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. All good things take time, right? Sometimes you do get a kick up the bum and get reminded about what you need to feed more of your energy into. I think it was a good experience in managing my time and managing my energy and giving it to the things that need to be given.

Our coaches gave us an activity to do where we had to raid different parts of our lives. I think we might have talked about this in another podcast, maybe. I really like it and I've done a couple of times. What was it called? Just Star Matrix, yeah? Star Matrix? Yeah, something like that. It is now. It's a five-pointed star and each point represents a different facet of your life. The five are health, wealth, career, relationships and environment. If you're not driving, grab a pen, draw a star and write health, wealth, career, environment and relationships on each point.

Then we're asked to rate each of those out of five with one being bad and five being the best it's ever been or five being good. It's interesting. I've done it probably three times, I think. The first time was we did a bit of a PD at Virtus. Overall, I got 18. Out of 25? That's pretty good. Out of 25, yeah. This is in February, so three months ago now and health and wealth are my two lowest. If you've done this activity, pick your two lowest scores and create three actions to improve that. If we

improve on these facets of our life, then let's say if I increase my health from a two to a five, then I might find that all the other points will increase as well. If I'm feeling better with my health, then automatically, I'll be able to focus more on my career and I'll be able to feed my energy to other things. I think it's really interesting because I think most people who would do it, who are in the service industry, whether it's any industry like the health industry where you're looking after other people or being a

teacher, there's a really, really good chance that the thing you're trying to drive with your clients or with your students or whatever is the one thing you're lacking at. The more we do things like this, the more we realize as coaches that we are always the last person we give our time, attention, energy, resources to, which is a little counterproductive because if I'm trying to give my energy to my clients or my friends or my family and I don't give anything to me, I'm going to be cactus and I'm going to be super tired and I think mine was very similar.

My health and wealth were much lower than they should have been because I spend all my time worried about other people. I think if I can focus on and like you're probably the same, if you can focus on those little things you need to do to look after your health, then everything else gets easier, like you said. Koop and I and Jess, a couple of days ago, we've been talking about minimums for a little while and hitting our minimums daily and what we've done is we've put down the six areas of our lives that we want to improve at the moment.

We've put a minimum behind each one, an objective measure that we can look at the end of the day and say, "Have I hit this or have I not?" Because we as humans don't like losing things, we put a $5 wager for each one for each day behind it, so if we stuff up we could possibly lose $30 a day. Incentive not to. Yes, it's an incentive just to tick the boxes and hit the minimums. The six things that we've identified are things that we need to hit to look after ourselves before we can start looking after other people.

Our hydration, so we want to hit three litres of water a day. Our sleep, so we want to hit five sleep cycles a day, which is seven and a half hours, so sleep cycle is usually about 90 minutes. And if we don't hit the seven and a half hours overnight, we can get an extra point for that sleep cycle by hitting a 30 minute nap throughout the day. So last night we had the small business awards where common folk got up, good from them, but we finished up quite late and I got about six and a half hours sleep, so I have to have a 30 minute nap today to catch up.

We're running out of day so I better get on that. We've got 30 minutes of movement per day, so it doesn't have to be a big session, it just has to be some sort of movement, whether it's mobes or walking or footy training or something along those lines. Three big meals per day, or three proper meals per day, good whole foods, 20 minutes of meditation, which I've got to catch up on today too, I've got a busy afternoon. And create or consume one piece of content, so whether we write something, whether we produce a podcast,

whether we read something, whether we read 30 pages of a book or read an article online or watch a video, something that's going to help improve us in some way. And they're the six things, so we're going to be holding ourselves accountable to it and holding each other accountable to it. It's funny, we've only been doing it three days, so we'll see how we go over the next five, six, seven weeks. But we've put a consequence behind not doing them, so I've been hyper-aware of how much water I've been drinking and yesterday I didn't get my meditation, so I owe five bucks.

Dammit! But it's made me set time aside throughout my day today to actually do it. These minimums all feed yourself. If you serve yourself then you can also serve others. We, as the analogy, fill your cup. If we can fill our cup then we can pour our energy into others. Spot on, spot on. Yesterday I didn't have a training session booked, so I chucked headphones in and listened to a podcast and did 15 minutes of mobes and then went for a walk for half an hour. It was 45 minutes of my day, but I felt amazing afterwards.

That kind of led into me being up and about for a couple of meetings I had and just being that happy, outgoing person. Most of us in this industry are here because we like to help people. We're usually those bubbly, somewhat extroverted personalities. If we're not extroverted, we tend to have to be in our environment. When we're not hitting those minimums, we lose that happiness and that joy and that bubbliness that brings everyone else up. I think it's really obvious. There's definitely, I'm sure most of my team could tell you, there's certainly times in the past where I've been grumpy or shitty or tired or short with them, it's only because I wasn't looking after myself.

I think the biggest thing for you, I just thought about this then, is that when you're not feeding yourself, you aren't present with those around you. 100%. And we can tell. But that's just keeping each other accountable. If we can see that Lockie's not been present with us. Yeah. How he's sleeping or how's your food been. As simple as asking a question. Yeah. But it's knowing each other. I'm sure they won't mind me throwing them under a bus, but Jess and Maddie are two incredibly hard workers and both of them, I feel tired all the time.

When was the last time you gave yourself a day for you? I don't have one. I think it's really important for everyone, no matter what you do to have a day during the week, whether it be two afternoons or whether it be a Sunday or something where you look after yourself. Looking after yourself doesn't have to be sitting on the couch watching Netflix, eating popcorn. It can be going for a walk with your loved ones or it can be going for a run and then going out for a coffee or sitting and reading your book for a few hours or whatever.

But when you're aware, when you're hyper aware of those things, that makes it so much easier. I think something that I've been trying to do these last few weeks is give myself a full day off, whether it's a Saturday or a Sunday, where I don't do any work, I don't do any study, I do any sort of errands or chores that I need to do and the rest of my time is serving myself or serving my relationships. So Salianne and I, this weekend we're planning on having an afternoon together. We're getting that balance between uni and work and if you can't get that balance right, which is super hard to do.

And it's never going to be, it's always fluid, it's never going to be locked in. One week you'll be really good, the next one you'll be. And you can have a good day and then a shitty day, but that doesn't matter. I think too many people beat themselves up when they have a crap day or they don't get as much done as they were expecting. I definitely have in the past, but my mantra now is just to take it as it comes. And if I need to do something, if something is really, really urgent, it'll pop up in front of my face and I'll remember.

And if it's not super urgent and it's on a to-do list and I haven't done it in a week, it's probably not super important. That reset button is super important. At the end of the day, resetting and accepting that. Best reset in seven weeks on holiday in South America. No I'm not. You've booked your next holiday. I have. Salianne and I are heading to Bali in a month or so. Treat yourself. Which is super exciting. If you're listening and haven't booked a holiday, book it. Book in, yes. Cheer cheer. I think if anyone's wanting to go to South America or thinking about it, I would highly recommend it.

If you have any questions, thoughts or queries around what to do or where to go, I end up going to Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina. Which, oh actually I went to Uruguay for a day to treat yourself. Yes. Which in 45 days is a lot of moving, a lot of ticking the legs over. So there's definitely a few things I would do differently in terms of where I would stay longer or what places I would skip. So if anyone has any questions or just ask, send me an email, send me a message. I think

South America is one of those places where it's not as accessible to us because it's a fairly expensive flight and things like that and we're kind of told that you need to book tours and need to lock things in before you go. But I've found the complete opposite. I think you can go buy a plane ticket in, make sure you've got your visas you need for places you want to go and you can basically wing everything. Which we managed to do pretty well. I reckon it's a pretty good way of doing it. Just booking your plane tickets, booking your first couple of nights.

Because planes always change, don't they? Yeah and that's it and I'm so happy that we didn't book out. Like before we went, before we went we booked flight in, an internal flight from Chile to Peru and flight out and that was it. And I didn't have any visas organised or anything like that. But I figured if I want to go to Brazil I'll make it work and we did. Definitely. What do you think of the, well give us a couple of highlights from the trip. Give us top five. Top five. I'm going to, this is one answer but a really really obvious one is things like Machu Picchu and Iguazu Falls.

I think it's really easy to look at places like that and kind of go well they're probably really touristy and really over hyped and too expensive and things like that. But I kind of found the opposite. Like yes they're very touristy and lots of tourists flock there but there's a reason for it and I think it's like Machu Picchu is one of those places you go to and it just blows your socks off. Like I remember I didn't get to sleep until about 4am the next morning when we got back to Cusco after doing it because I was so like just on a high.

It was a really strange feeling because I'm kind of asleep. God it was a good day. It was just one of those perfect days. You stand at the top and you're on top of this peak and looking at this little ancient civilization that was built 500 years ago on top of a mountain with the sun shining and valleys around you and it's just you think there's no way that a place like this can live up to the hype and it does very very quickly. Do you think that's because of the contrast between where we live day to day and that environment?

Oh 100% yeah 100%. Like Machu Picchu isn't super high like I think it's like 3,000 metres above sea level. I could jump that far. Which compared to morning sun is like 30 metres above sea level. But yeah so that and Iguazu Falls were two moments I had where I just stood there and just went woah. Like it wasn't just like a wow and a keep moving like it was like a stand there and like try and take it all in and your brain struggles to comprehend how wonderful it is. So being on Machu Picchu and meditating on top of Machu Picchu was a very very cool feeling.

Iguazu Falls staring at the just massive water going down over the rapids was just like your brain can't comprehend it. Do you know what the volume of water is that goes over? I don't but here's a wonderful thing about Google. Volume of water over. Oh it's something, what is it? So you went from the Argentinian side. I went to both sides. So one of the other highlights was I was travelling with James as most of you guys will know if you listened to the podcast a few weeks ago. Travelled with James the first maybe three

and a half weeks and then he wanted to go to the jungle and I wanted to go south so we left each other at La Paz and I went down and did the salt flats in uni and then travelled from, spent the next four or five days travelling through Bolivia to the Brazilian border, from the Brazilian border into the country a little bit and then down the western side to Iguazu Falls which that was a highlight in itself because I was by myself, I didn't speak Portuguese, I spoke very little Spanish to get to the Brazilian border at the end of my Bolivian journey and I literally didn't speak English 21 for maybe three and a half days.

More than two or three words and pointing and smiling and just trying to use body language to get me through which was a challenge and something that I'll never forget how much I enjoyed. I enjoyed that experience and just being by myself and having that solitude and having that time to just not talk to anyone, just be by myself. I went to the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls and my mind was blown and then the next day I crossed the border to the Argentinian side and thought no way, yes they can be topped and it topped it and then it was just epic.

This is probably too big of a number to actually comprehend. During the rainy season November to March, the rate of flow of water going over the falls may reach 450,000 cubic feet per second. That's a lot. 12,750 cubic metres per second. That's a huge number. It's probably too big to comprehend but just go there. It's one of those things, I saw it and I sent James a message and I'm like mate, whatever you do, don't miss this. It's just insane. So that was our highlight. Highlight number two, oh this is going to take forever. Patagonia,

I finished my, I love mountains, I love hiking, I love just being immersed in nature and Patagonia is probably the reason I wanted to go to South America in the first place and there was a point in time where we weren't going to make it to Patagonia because of time constraints but I made the decision maybe halfway through the trip that I was going to make it happen and I went down to, I didn't get down to Torres del Paine which is just across the, anyone knows Patagonia, just across the Chilean border because Patagonia is

down the middle of both Chile and Argentina and I didn't get down to Torres del Paine which is where some of the longer hikes are because I was running out of time but I went to a little town called El Chaltan which is at the base of the Mount Fitzroy mountain range which anyone that knows the brand Patagonia, that's the peak on the logo and spent a couple of days at El Calafate which is a couple of hours south which is where we flew into from Buenos Aires, where I flew into. That was a highlight

because it was foggy, rainy, like wet and snowing for most of the days I was hiking which was miserable in a way but magical in another like I didn't get to see the peak of Mount Fitzroy at all which was, I saw a big chunk of it but didn't get to see the top which was disappointing but at the same time it made it for a really exciting experience because the fog gave it this really weird mystique and the snow was like covering the trees and it's autumn now coming, I think Torres del Paine is closed now because of the wet weather.

The colours of the trees were like nothing I've ever seen before, there were reds and oranges and greens and yellows and no blues but all these different coloured trees and you're just walking through it and you think Patagonia, okay it's just going to be desolate with mountains but there's so many different, I guess, landscapes that you walk through and I got to spend, I spent five, six nights, five days hiking in El Chaltan just doing all of the long hikes. So were they just day hikes or what are you doing? Just day hikes yeah, I tried to, I'm probably lucky that I wasn't able to find one but I couldn't find a tent.

All of the higher places because it's end of season were done in hiring and they're like I'm not hiring anymore out and then tried to find in our hostels, in one of the bigger hostels, trying to find someone I could borrow a tent off and ended up finding one like day and a half before I left. I'm like you know what I'm probably not going to do an overnight hike now because it's snowing in two degrees but it was really good to be able to go do those day hikes and just escape and there was,

I met some really cool people in there even though I was trying to not meet, like not talk to anyone for a couple of nights because I just wanted to be by myself but I end up having dinner on Israeli Independence Day, having dinner with like 25 Israelis which is super cool, like I met a couple of English guys who did a couple of hikes together and yeah, it was just a really good experience and like it's, that's a place where, like I've unfinished business in Patagonia, I'll definitely go back there. I think it'll be

very cool to get a crew of four or five or as many as we can get to go over and hike together and it wanted to make it a lot cheaper because you hire a car and do a bunch of stuff and share everything but, you'll share the experience as well. Share the experience yeah, I'm someone that loves sharing things with the people I love so I think that'll be an amazing trip to do at some point. Peru in general was a highlight for multitude of reasons. Anyone who is thinking about going to Machu Picchu make sure you spend a couple of weeks in Peru because it was, yeah it was mind-blowing.

The food is amazing, the people are incredibly nice and welcoming and it was like that everywhere, like people talk about South America being dangerous. I didn't get to Rio but I didn't feel unsafe once and there were plenty of times where we were like walking around by myself at night and like in cities and not in cities and things like that and I just felt safe the whole time. It's positive. Do you think up north it's a bit more like Colombia around that? Yeah I'm not sure. I think Venezuela is pretty cactus at the moment

I think and I think Brazil, certain parts of Brazil is not pretty gnarly but like I heard things about Chile and Bolivia which kind of made me a little worried but nothing but smiles and warm greetings which was nice but Peru, we jumped on the Peru hot bus which is a bit of a plug but it was more, it was kind of contiguing in a way where it had a, it took you a certain way but you could jump on and jump off of the bus in terms of stay. So it's like a bus it out type thing?

Yeah. You could find somewhere you like. Yeah and you just stay there for as long as you want and then you just got to change your itinerary online and the crew we met in Lima which is where we got on it, like the 10 or 12 of us that were all together on the bus at the start, we ended up getting to know each other really well and we kind of had a little travelling party for maybe two or three weeks where we'd lose a couple of people or we'd, and then like a couple of people would come back and then we'd catch up with them again.

Nice. So that was really cool, had a little community to travel with in Peru, that was a big highlight and just the food is amazing. That's one of the best things I love about travel. I love the food, I love the drink. I drink red wine now, fun fact. Oh good, only! I haven't dabbled much over the last few years but I dabbled a bit being away. So that was pretty cool. Yeah, I'm going to give you one more highlight. The highlight I had was just consuming and creating content. I never give myself enough time

to sit and read or sit and write and one of the things that this trip's taught me is that I love writing, I love reading, I love listening to things but I need to give myself more time to do it. Yesterday I had a few things I needed to do but I was in a writing mood and I ended up writing like four or five blog posts that I needed, that I've had in my head. One of those creative juices of climbing. Yeah and I think it's a lesson for me just to let myself do what I want to do.

I didn't end up reading that many books over there, I only read three books but I listened to maybe four or five and jumped in, dove into a lot of new podcasts and things like that. So yeah, that was a highlight. The last highlight was coming home to you and KP and all the amazing people in my life. I think I wrote about it in one of my weekly emails but having that time away makes you realise what's really important. Makes you grateful for the things you have and you appreciate what you have coming home to.

Yeah and I think it's, KP and I have been together for a long time but it was really nice to properly miss each other. We've probably never spent more than ten, twelve days apart over the last nine years or eight years, twelve months apparently because I wasn't here for our anniversary. Wow. Yeah, top that. Eight years, thirteen months now, fire out. But having that ability to miss each other I think is really really important and it just freshens you up from a relationship point of view, from a work point of view to like, I'm so excited to get back to footy on Saturday.

Whereas I probably fell out of love with footy a little bit over the last couple of years, in certain times, just because it was a constant and there was never that break from it. Yeah, I concur with all that. I think giving yourself some time off to gain a fresh perspective to you forcing yourself to miss something and you find out what you actually miss and what you don't miss and then when you come back you can omit those things that you don't miss or not give them as much time. I looked at it as a stop take on my life.

You figure out what's going on, what's not, what do I want to be doing that I'm not. One of the books I read or one of the documents I read that one of my business coaches shared to us was about habits and creating a life plan that centered around what will drive you and what will serve you long term. Just go on holiday, just get out of the normal day to day and it just freshens you up and I'm so excited to dive into work and everything we do at Virtus and everything I do outside of Virtus.

I think that's going to be a big driver for me for the next 6-9 months is just diving into work and doing the things I love day to day and that's it. Mate, thanks for the chat. It's been fun. After we came down from Machu Picchu I was walking along the railway and I was in a really good mood. I felt like I was on top of the world. It was a 10k walk. For anyone who wants to do Machu Picchu you don't have to spend heaps of money on a trek. We got a bus

to a train station where we walked 10k's along the railway to get to the town at the bottom of Machu Picchu which is an amazing town, Aquas Calientes. And then we did the trek the next morning and then we had to walk back along the train track to get a bus back which cost like, Machu Picchu all up would have cost me about 80-90 Australian dollars including the night in the Aquas Calientes. If a travel agent is trying to sell you it for like 1000 bucks, don't do it. I think I talked about that in my little thing but I went for a run.

I ran for like 5k's and then I was walking after my run and I went, you know what, I kind of feel like recording a little podcast so at the end of this episode I'll plug on the 6 minute ramble I had at the bottom of Machu Picchu talking about the experience and what it was like and things like that. If you enjoy it, yell out and I'll maybe do a couple more little ones. If you don't enjoy it, that's fair enough. I haven't actually listened to it so I don't know what it's going to be.

It could be absolute rubbish. There's a good chance it's rubbish and I'm talking gibberish but that's ok. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, subscribe, post about it, all that kind of stuff. Share it to your friends. Hey legends, welcome to a special episode of the Virtus Performance Podcast. This is a quick little bonus episode for you guys. I've just finished, or just got to the bottom of Machu Picchu so we got up nice and early this morning and hiked up the mountain from Aquas Calientes which is the little town at the bottom and hiked

up to, basically straight up through the jungle up to Machu Picchu which is one of the 7 Wonders of the World and words can't describe how incredible it was. It was game changing in terms of just the... yeah, I got no words. The valleys and the canyons and the mountains around it just provide this perfect backdrop for this city that was built like 600 years ago so it was pretty incredible. It's something that I would highly recommend anyone do. It's not super easy to get to being in the middle of South America but as we realised over the last couple of days, all of the $3,000 and $2,000 trips are definitely not the only way to go.

We hired some transport in town in Cusco which is one of the biggest cities in Peru. We got a bus here, bought our tickets, climbed up, probably only ended up costing us $80 to do it all, plus a $12 hostel. So absolutely incredible, would highly recommend it to anyone. It's definitely ace to ticket off the bucket list. It was pretty cool to sit at the top after our tour. We got an English speaking guide, Louise, who was an absolute champion. We sat at the top, or I sat at the top after our tour, and meditated for about 20 minutes and it was bliss.

It was very magical so I'm stoked I was able to tick that off my list and to be honest, there's a good chance I'll be back at some point. It's a pretty crazy adventure this part of the world so having a magical time a couple of weeks into our trip. One of the, I guess something that I was thinking about, probably a little theory or a little analogy I've been working on. I'm sure someone's thought of it before but it's about hiking and I think hiking is very very similar to life in that you have

a prolonged period of, like with hiking you set your goal right, you set your target destination, you set where you want to end up, chuck a bag on your back and tick the legs over for an extended period of time. So you know where you're going, so you've already planned out the route for most people, for most hikes, you have a fair idea of the direction you need to take, then you have a prolonged period of walking, running, jogging, marching depending on how you hike and the speed at which you hike and I think that

hiking is a very simple metaphor for life in the fact that you set a target as to something you want to achieve and then you work really hard and you put in a lot of effort and you keep working hard and you keep ticking the legs over even though it's hard and even though it hurts, even though there's struggle because you know there's light on the other side or in this case you know there's a peak of a mountain you're going to get to and you're going to be able to stop, take a breath and enjoy the fruits of your labour so to speak.

So I think if we look for, if we're talking about happiness for example, it's about to get really loud, a train's about to go past me, but if we take happiness for example, I think if we, there's the fresh sounds of the Peruvian rail system, I think if we just focus on the peak and being at the peak and being at the top and being happy and... That'll do, train's gone, just. The path that we've got to walk from one little station to the town at the bottom of Machu Picchu is on a train line so yeah, ticking the legs over another walk but what was I saying?

Yeah I think if we focus all of our energy on the joy and the happiness of the peak we tend to miss the importance of the struggle or the importance of the hard work, the importance of putting in that extra effort to get to where we want to get to. Life's like 90% hard work and struggle and 10% bliss and I truly believe that so yeah, just a little metaphor for you guys, a little analogy, let me know what you think, let me know what you think of this short little episode if you enjoy it.

I started off with the podcast with a couple of little Be Better episodes which were like five, ten minutes so if you guys enjoy this I'll send me a message or send me an email, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff and I'll keep doing them on top of the weekly episodes. Have an amazing day, cheers to you all, adios!