S1E61 · Meg + Dan (To The Edge HPC): Don't Delay Happiness

Hey team, welcome to the Virtus Performance Podcast. Thank you to all of you guys who have been listening and sharing and getting around it. Thanks to all of you guys who have sent some messages of support, I appreciate it immensely, even though I feel as though I'm doing this for me sometimes, it's really nice to feel and to know that we're making an impact with the people that are listening, so cheers to you all. Today's guests, we've got a couple of the legends from To The Edge High Performance Center, which is an elite athlete gym in Newcastle in New South Wales.

So Coop and I were up in Sydney for a couple of days for a little bit of a mastermind event. We caught up with Dan and Meg from To The Edge, probably a power couple we'd probably call them, power couple from up there, doing amazing things, making the world a better place, so it was really cool to be able to sit down and have a chat about what they're doing, what we're doing, and how they're changing the lives of all the people that they come in contact. So without further ado, enjoy the episode. 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. Dan, Meg, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. Thank you. It's nice to come up to Sydney and see some familiar faces. Yeah, it's cool. Looking forward to it. Coop's here too. Well done. Thank you. First question for you guys, and you can take your turns answering it. What gets you out of bed in the morning? You'll be good at this question.

What gets me out of bed in the morning? It probably sounds a little bit cliche, but I love the fact of every day's a new chance to push forward towards what you're working for. I think it's pretty easy to do that when you have a really, obviously, large vision and goal and most of your life is wrapped around pursuing that goal and dream. I think a lot of people who listen to the podcast or you guys particularly can resonate with that. And yeah, I think just like every single day is just like cool, you know what your goals are for that day.

And yeah, it's exciting to sort of set new goals for every day and see how hard or see how close you can go to hitting them. Nice. Nice. Nice. Solid. I still remember when Dan and I first got together and I was like, I'll wake up every day excited. And he was like, what? I was like, that's gross. And he was like, why? And I was like, I think it just comes from the travel that I've done and I just wake up every day with so much gratitude to be waking up like in Australia. And that's so simple, but it's just like the opportunities that we have here and just the ease of our life here.

So I guess gratitude gets me up and pumped for the day. Nice. Where have you traveled? What kind of travel have you done? So South Africa, Central America, two big ones that were super like, I guess they changed me a lot. And then Europe, Japan, Bali, Thailand, those ones. So you've been around? Yeah. I've been around. She's done a bit. She's done a bit. Yeah, I've done a little bit. How old were you on your first trip? I think I went to Europe when I was, did the classic, like, I think I was 18 or 19, did a contiki in Europe and then I was like, I'm never doing a contiki again.

But yeah, 18 or 19, I think. What's like the contrast that you remember from like traveling and seeing like how different parts of the world live to like your life now? Like what kind of, apart from the gratitude, what kind of things are you trying to bring back? Yeah. So I guess just like, it's kind of gratitude again, but like I was saying to Dan yesterday, the simplicity of how they live, you know, they get up and they get things done and there's no, like here we find so many excuses and so many reasons to be upset or not be like living our best life or whatever.

You know, like in South Africa, you've got people who wake up in the morning, they pick up a basket that they've handwoven and it's got 20 kilos of stuff they put on their head. They walk up a hill with no shoes on and that's their day, you know, and then they walk home at night with the food, feed probably the village and then do it again. They're living in houses where the floor is dirt and you know, everyone's dirty. It's literally four walls and that's what their house is. And like I was saying to Dan,

I remember we were driving through some villages to go and do like a gorilla hike and the villages were like, it was like four wheel driving through their main streets and um, those, the kids would like run to the vans and run outside the vans with the biggest smiles on their face and so excited to see you. Everyone's like waving to you, everyone's so friendly and so happy and you just look at how they're living and you're like, what are we complaining about? Yeah. Sort of thing. So it's really interesting that like in an affluent society like ours, how like mental health and depression and anxiety is so much higher than areas like that.

You're a psychic, you can probably tell us why. I just think it's down to the culture and like how they live and their practices and stuff like that. I remember talking to a client who's a midwife and she was saying that she had a lady who was maybe from Zimbabwe and she gave a talk to all these pregnant women on postnatal depression and this lady from Zimbabwe or whatever was like, why would anyone get postnatal depression? You know, like you have a kid and it goes out in the community and the community has a kid.

And it's like the contrast in how we practice and what we as society do and just, you know, it's like we're constantly searching for so much happiness that we forget all the little things that, yeah, a hundred percent that they don't, maybe it's because they don't know all these other things that they could be having, but they're grateful for the things that they have and that's all that they look at, sort of thing. They probably also don't have social media as well. So they can't see the grass is greener on old mate's side of the fence in America, living in his mansion.

Yeah, all they've got is all they've got and they're doing the best with that as they can. Yeah, true. Interesting. Dan, you talked about a big goal. What is your big goal? Well basically what our, I suppose eventual business plan is to become something like the Red Bull High Performance Center of Australia. So basically what that looks like is the largest sports science based athletic development center in the Southern hemisphere. So we target, yeah, so we target the niche and work with action sports athletes in particular. We work with a large spectrum of athletes, but what we really focus and specialize in is the action sports guys.

So yeah, we're basically working and collaborating with a few of those big companies like Red Bull at the moment, which is a huge sort of foot in the door for what our end dream is. But yeah, that's definitely what we wake up and picture every morning is the Red Bull High Performance Center of Australia, which obviously doesn't exist at the moment. There's a facility that we were lucky enough to attend in California. What was that like? That was amazing. Yeah, that was cool. Everyone there is just, yeah, just an amazing bunch of people, very, very smart people.

And it was really, really cool because for the first time in a long time, like we were surround people that were exactly like us, like same vision, same passion for producing the best action sports athletes in the world and with a team of people who basically just thought every single day was thinking outside the box like, okay, cool, what's never been done before? Let's go do that. And just to be with a group of people like that for a week was just, yeah, it was really, really cool. Went a really good insight into what potentially our future will look like.

Yeah, you could kind of crystal ball for a little bit. Yeah, it was exactly like being able to look and step into a crystal ball for a week, which was amazing. How'd you come to the conclusion that you did that with what you wanted to do? That sort of came to me a long time ago even before starting to the Edge High Performance Center. So my background is I played really high level baseball when I was younger, playing for New South Wales and Australia and stuff like that, from the time I was 12 to 16.

So I was always introduced to high level sport, but then once my career ended there through injuries and overtraining and stuff like that, I then started racing motocross and surfing and snowboarding and doing all those types of sports and just fell in love with the action sports world. So it was a combination, like me sort of coming into the pathway that I'm in now is a combination of always being introduced to really high level sport from younger and then sort of falling in love with the passion of the action sports and then collaborating them both together.

And then when I was sort of starting off on my PT stuff, someone asked me, "What would be your dream job?" And I said, "Man, I'd love to travel the world with the best action sports guys in the world." And then I just clicked and said, "I'm going to do it. I'm going to build it." So yeah, the journey started for me a long time ago with that and I think the end result just has never changed. We just work harder and harder every day to make it happen. That's super cool. Meg, how did you get involved in all this apart from...

Yeah, so I did my PT course with Dan. Dan was my mentor. Yeah. The roles have changed. Yeah, yeah. He's the boss. And when I was doing my PT hours with Dan, I was also, I don't know why I thought I'd do my PT course in my honours year of psychology, but that's what I did. So, I told Dan that obviously my end goal was to work as a sports psychologist and Dan was like, I think probably from that moment he was like, "I need this girl on my team at the summer house." Life team or work team?

And then I finished up that, did a bunch of travelling and when I got back from travelling Dan had opened the facility and I just slowly came on board working there. I think the first time I worked there was Dan went overseas to New Zealand. So, I covered a few shifts, did a bit of coaching, I was an S&C coach by this time and then have just built up my role there as an S&C coach doing the stuff on the side, which is sort of all tying in now. Very cool, so where are you at with all the psych stuff and how do you find that links in with being an S&C coach?

So, I guess the goal for me was always, and I look back at it now and I think like, what was the moment that I was like, "I want to get into psychology" and it was when I was in PE and we were learning about mental skills and I was like, "This is so cool." So, throughout my degree it was all changing but now that I look back it's like, that was the moment that I wanted to be a sport psych and it's just always stuck with me. So, when I finished uni I was like

a bit done with uni and studying, so I thought I'll go and do, well I'd been doing my PT course during that and then once I started working with Dan did my, oh no, before I started working with Dan did my S&C course and I thought if I can just get exposure to these guys and a bit of an understanding of what they're going through, I mean I've always played sport but not a high level action sport, so if I can just get to know them on a coaching level then at least I get a

bit of an understanding and then I'm halfway through my internship now, so I've got one more year of that to go to become a registered psychologist and then I can start fully practising as a sport psychologist. At the moment it's kind of just like, dribs and drabs, still learning from a sports psychologist here in Sydney and just doing bits and pieces here with clients or with athletes that we've already got. That's super cool. Yeah. How do you find your start bringing some of it into your S&C when you're coaching? Actually try and keep a little

bit separate, yeah, it's good, I have a few athletes in my role but a lot of my clients are sort of more of the general population that we've got at the gym, so I don't feel that I need to work with that, the other day I did concentration and pressure drills with some of my athletes, but that's kind of as far as I'd go, I don't sit down with them. I try and, if I'm going to see someone in a psychology consult, they're a dance client or they're external from the gym, it just blows the roles a little bit too much.

Yeah, that's cool. Obviously you guys have had quite a few successful athletes come out of your gym facility, take all the credit. What are the biggest sort of success factors or personality factors that you see in these guys that determine that sort of success? You can see from an S&C point of view and a psychology point of view as well. They're very different, when dealing with action sports athletes, it's something that we sort of clicked onto early in the piece when trying to program them, you can't actually train and program these guys like mainstream sports

athletes, they're very different and we sort of, we were not running into issues or troubles, but we were basically, it stood out that these guys weren't normal athletes, like if you set like a normal periodised typical S&C program that you would give like a football player, a soccer player, a swimmer or something like that and give it to one of these guys, there'd be heaps of friction there because the way that these guys, most of them generalising here, but most of these guys think very differently. The reason they do these action sports is because they

didn't want to do those mainstream sports, they got into it because it was just a hobby or it was a freedom of expression, it's their art form in terms of snowboarding or surfing big waves or motocross the lake, they just want to go and do that sort of stuff. So the way that we approach these types of athletes are very different, we have to find a way for them to obviously enjoy their training and everything like that, but we have to find a different avenue to get them to do I suppose the sciencey stuff and

all that sort of stuff, but without them I suppose realising it too much, like we don't put it in their face as much as you would a football player or a soccer player, those types of athletes, they know that there's a regimen to follow, there's a structure, it's a lot of repetitive stuff. The action sports guys, they work very very differently and so you have to find different methodologies and different ways to get the outcome you want out of them, but approaching it very differently. So they're a different kettle of fish, they're super fun to work with and challenging, but you can't treat them like a normal athlete because they're really not.

I guess one of your biggest goals as a coach is just to keep them on the board or on the bike. Yeah, keeping them healthy, their injury rates are ridiculous, like some of these motocross riders have broken nearly every bone in their body, they're pinned and plated and fused and all that sort of stuff and so you've got this almost robotic type movement person who you now need to train at a high intensity, at a high level, and most of the challenge is literally just keeping them healthy throughout the season so they're always competing and they're doing what they love really.

If you can keep someone on the board or on the bike pain free for a whole season doing what they love, then that's what they're there for. There's different challenges with those guys. Awesome. You guys are two both pretty driven and up and about humans, how do you keep yourselves accountable and keep each other accountable looking after yourselves to fill in your cup? Yeah, this has been a big personal challenge for me and I'm lucky enough to have this amazing lady sitting across the table to help me with that, so it's something that we're still perfecting and working on.

We definitely keep each other accountable in our job roles and our study and everything like that, but coming to filling the personal cups and rejuvenating that energy has always been on the back burner for me and Meg's really good at making sure that we take that time out for ourselves now and I've created a bit of a new personal schedule in terms of morning reflection times, getting back into my own training and everything like that a lot more, trying to get away on weekends instead of always being at the track or always at events with

athletes because some points of the year we go three or four weeks in a row without a weekend because it's just working seven days a week in the gym but then at the tracks and at events and coaching on the weekends and stuff like that and before you know it you've just done two months straight without a day off sometimes and you get to the end and you just hit the wall and burn out and that's not good for anyone even though you are trying to help as many athletes as you can and always putting yourself second.

When it gets to that point you don't even realise that you are not even doing good work anymore, you are only 50% there with your coaching clients and you are not concentrating properly and you think you are doing really good work and you think because you are doing more and more and more that you are getting further ahead but you are actually stalling your own progress and doing your own clients an injustice by only being 50% there mentally so Meg's been really good for me in helping me change my personal schedule and I've learnt to

now look out for those signs in her if she starts to do that because she is very driven with travelling down to Sydney to work with her sport psych internship and then she has obviously got her own client base and at one point there she was doing pretty much three different jobs between our facility down in Sydney, her psych stuff and then local psych stuff and she started to get to that point so it was good because I had been through it not good that she was doing that but it was good that I had

been through that and she was looking after me so I could look for the same signs in her and pull her up so now we have a little bit of a system where we work in 90 day blocks and then we take time out for ourselves and get away for a weekend or something but we have created a new system to help make sure that we're looking after each other a bit more. How many 90 day blocks have you been through since you started that system? Since we've done that? Yeah. Two? Yeah pretty much two so like I said it's a new system for us before that it was literally just like you know just go go go go go.

It's a cool way of looking at it whether you're up in a four or. So yeah we've done the first one we were in our second block after the first one we went up to Byron Bay and stayed in a little tree house up there and got up with Drew our business coach and it was a beautiful weekend away so I'm actually really looking forward to the next one which before that it was just like you know what's coming up work wise that I'm looking forward to where it's now we're actually looking forward to that little break for ourselves.

You need a sort of spice of life too and that sort of invigorates you and gives you motivation to jump back into work once you've done it. I've had a bit of a break from it you've sort of taken a step back you've been able to look at it almost objectively sometimes and then you can see the bits that you want to start getting into and get stuck into again. Yeah it helps you sort of to use sort of one of Drew's terms like helicopter over everything you're doing because when you're sort of on the

ground just go go go you really get lost and yeah you get lost in because sort of what you're doing and you're really focused and obviously you're fatigued and stuff like that and when you sort of take that small break you get to helicopter over everything you've been doing and where you're going and yeah you start to get a bit of you're like oh I didn't realize that was slipping or I didn't realize I wasn't doing that as well so then when you do come back from that little break and you're you know ready to

get stuck back in you can kind of tie up a few loose ends or sort of you know go back to do something you were doing before then you start moving forward again so it gives you that over-the-top view a little bit more. That's super cool. What are the things you've noticed either in him or in yourself? Yeah yeah so um I think and like it happened a few weeks ago like when I'm not taking care of myself or when Dan's not taking care of himself like I can feel it in the work that I

do like it's shit I am the worst in my eyes you know I'm probably like no no one's left me yet but like I feel like I've done a really bad job during the week um and also too like I think I and it takes and it's taken practice and time to realize this but when I'm not being present is when I'm really busy and really stressed you know like and I'll do stupid things like I'll forget that I've like locked the house or like I'll like go back and check that my hair straighteners off

and it's like I'm not in the moment like I'm thinking about all the things I've got to do at work I'm thinking about all the shit I didn't get done yesterday um and like I think that that's probably where balance comes from a little bit is more so presence like how often are you present rather than I'm thinking about all these things that I've got to do which is so easy as a business owner right because you've always got things that you've got to do and if you don't then you're thinking of what you can

make up for yourself that you can do um yeah you always want to be doing something yeah exactly so I think just trying to be more present and trying to be in each moment and do one thing at a time I'm a like chronic multitasker and it is so inefficient um so that's one of my like most recent goals is to do one thing at a time tick it off and get it done um again that helps with being present as well um and like a tiny self-care thing that Dan and I do which I

love and it's nothing at the end of every day we're like what was the best thing that happened today and it's just you know it's a way that you can look back at your day with like a positive view it's not just like I did this I did this what good did happen today and what were the standout things to me um yeah so that's a really easy self-care tip that takes three seconds yeah we've got like a new I love our new system now because it's looking after ourselves but it's sort of you know

reflecting on all the good stuff like that at the end of the day so yeah reflection is super yeah and at the start like I've now start the day like before you know since 2011 I was basically getting up at you know 4 35 o'clock every day first coaching client six and you know that's how and you know not getting home till 10 pm yeah and you know but you know for like four or five years straight on a spiritual level yeah we feel that deep inside but um yeah so like now like I yeah

I try not to start my first coaching client today till about sort of 7 30 8 o'clock most days and then but pretty much yeah I start my day every day work with a bit of journaling and stuff now so I'll get up put on some I'm a obviously crazy surfing lover so I'll put on some like wave sounds and stuff like that go to our little Zen room and yeah just do some stretching and journaling and you know start my day writing down what three things three things that I'm grateful for like right now

in my life and you know every day changes most of the time one of those is always Meg so like having her there is you know having her always there to look after me but you know just yeah three three things I'm grateful for and and then three things that's going to make today great so like three it doesn't have to be a huge goal and it's not a it's not a to-do list it's just like through like three things to make today great so I might be like seeing though like like driving past the

beach on my way back home for lunch you know or something like that or making sure I train today or you know it might if I've got a staff meeting might be like like bring bringing 100% of myself to the staff meeting and you know leading the team today so yeah like three basic three basic things I'm grateful for three basic things that I'm that I want to achieve that day and then at the end of the day we reflect back on it and you know if you hit two out of three of those things

it's been a great day it doesn't that doesn't matter you know in business or you know anything you know pursue me goals it's going to be that roller coaster ride but you know if you feel like you've got home at the end of a long day and it hasn't been a successful one you look back over and you know well actually hitting like you know yeah two out of three of those things that was a good day and it changes your perception on it and then you wake up the next day and you set three

new things and yeah it's it's it's it's been probably one of the biggest things that's helped our business actually move forward is me doing that and you never think you think you know putting in more hours or working harder or reaching out to this person or collaborating with that company or doing something would be the thing that actually took your business from here to here but kind of doing less but like doing less volume and more quality work and taking time for ourselves and introducing that basic strategy to start my day has been the biggest

thing for our business growth which I would never have thought of and I feel better I can attest to that as well yeah like I have been doing journaling lately as well and do a very similar thing so I write my gratitude I write my intention for the day and a few targets that I want to that I want to hit yeah and yeah I just find it gives you so much clarity on what your intention is for the day yeah how you want to sort of and it defines how you start your day as

well yeah like the way you start is the way you finish yeah so if you start on the front step then you'll finish strong as well yeah yeah um I agree I think that's one of the biggest factors for me that's helped my success and helped my uh productivity yeah the last few months yeah can be really easy I think as like as a business owner to feel like you're so busy but you're actually not you know like you're not doing anything productive so you're like for five minutes another thing and then next thing you

know it's three hours later and you've done nothing yeah exactly but you're like I'm so busy and it's like wait what have I actually achieved today yeah I read a really good quote in um Tim Ferriss's tool of titans that um busyness is a form of laziness it was just like it's like you always think like you know when you're building a business and people ask you like you know how's it going you're like oh you know I'm really busy you know I think like that's almost like a you know a medal of honor or

like a badge of honor that you want to wear like to show that you're busy shows like success and it's just like no like if you if you feel like you're always busy it's actually a form of laziness because you haven't done those little those little things right to make sure that you don't get you know lost in lost in the day so it's almost like a way to procrastinate as well yeah it's like oh I'm going to start this thing and I'll start this thing but I'm going to see this one all the way

through it's been for the last six weeks yeah we still do it but as long as um yeah as long as you recognize you're doing it you're like okay no I'm going to go back to what I'm supposed to be doing yeah but and you make time like I'm big on like people like I don't have time to do that and I'm like you will make time for the things that are really important to you know like if something matters like you'll find a way even still when Dan is like I don't have time for

that I'm like well like you can make time if you really want to yeah yeah if you really want something yeah you'll find the time exactly if not then it's not a priority to you yeah exactly yeah definitely some things like health and things like that like training for me become less and less of a priority but I know I need to like kick myself up your butt and just get it done because that's going to make me better for anything else like I'm sure Cooper could probably test that but what to test this when

I train and when I've done something like I'm usually a little bit more up and about in the gym and we're a little bit more zigging my step yeah everything my step I think you're more present as well yeah like what Meg was just saying about presence and if you sort of know when you're burning out or you know when you're doing too much if you're not 100% there in the moment and if the people that you're with are doing a specific task yeah giving that 100% of your effort to that yeah things like training

going for a walk they're just like a reset yeah yes it's like a distinct start and end to the session yeah it's like your day's got a got a full stop and then you start another sentence rather than it just be like a jumble yeah like writing writing rubbish all day yeah how do you guys go and like which part of I guess the process are you in between like starting and then having that 10-year Red Bull performance and a goal in terms of like take like not just focusing on the I guess the end

goal which they'll never really be an angle oh yeah yeah but yeah having that I guess big target yeah that's that again we sort of ran into that issue with me and my energy levels last because it's hard when you're if you're only focused on that huge big goal like you know I found I wasn't enjoying the little wins along the way yeah and and everything like that and so I guess we've kind of we've kind of used a few strategies again from Drew and that in like the the seven figure mountain range type thing

but in turn not in terms of monetary but actually using that same philosophy and like our wins and sort of okay you know if we because we're just about to move our facility to the next one it's not obviously the Red Bull one but like you know scaling up the business and everything like that so we've set smaller targets between here and that Red Bull facility and you know instead of we we definitely know where we're heading and that's always in the background but it's not I suppose our biggest forefront at the moment because if

when we were doing that like I said you know we weren't enjoying stopping and enjoying those little things along the way so yeah now we've got a couple of new targets of like and our next facility upgrade and move you know obviously like different revenue numbers different different projects that we want to sort of bring into the mix as well so we've kind of broken that huge 10-year plan up into into smaller blocks kind of like you know the breaking a year up into the 90-day blocks and then that way for us when you know

we're now stopping and celebrating the wins along the way and enjoying the process a lot more I think that's the biggest thing is when you know you you do something really well and you achieve the next step you know in your business or in whatever you're doing but you've got such a long road to go you know you don't stop and enjoy it you're just like okay cool that's done what's next okay cool that's done what's next and having those little wins makes so much difference yeah definitely and again that's what that's what Meg really

brought me back to was you know we have to stop and enjoy next yeah I'll tell you at this point where it was just like everything was like okay we've got to like get to this now and get to this and even with new people that are coming into the gym like Dan about hey this is all right now but like it was almost like he was selling them on where we were going and I was like we need to be here and like this is good enough you know like and I said to Dan

like you could get to the Red Bull High Performance Center and then look back at your life and be like holy shit where did that all go yeah like I'm here now woohoo now what and where's my life gone sort of thing it's like life doesn't pause while you go and chase your dreams like life is chasing your dreams and if you're not having fun chasing your dreams then like yeah that's a point yeah yeah there was like a yeah big moment with that sort of stuff right in the middle of where I wasn't stopping

to celebrate the wins like we had like Red Bull like come up come up from Sydney and like we just started working with we've been working with one of their top level athletes Rhiannon Iflin for a little while and we did a whole day filming in there so like we basically had the gym closed off Red Bull was filming all day we had like the current world champion there training her doing a programming doing interviews and stuff and which was like a huge amazing thing and like it was a big day I got home it

was really tired and fatigued from it all because I just invested myself into it for like you know the entire day and Megan was like how was it yeah it was all good but you know this is this was and she was just like like how can you not enjoy what you just did it was like what the hell that was amazing and I was just like yeah it was all good but you know tomorrow we're gonna do this and you know like I didn't stop to celebrate that huge win for us and actually having

Red Bull come up to our facility like our current little facility now you know and utilize it and you know looking back I was just like whoa that was a huge foot in the door for us in terms of you know become the Red Bull facility and you know I was so blinded and had my blinkers on and just like I was like yeah cool that happened we got our foot in the door now let's keep moving on and yeah it was yeah it was that sort of silly to look back on but like now

with yeah now we're sort of breaking that huge gala we know we 100% know where we're gonna end up but it's it's now sort of stopping to have a look at those smaller targets that we're moving forward to and every time we hit one of those you know stop celebrate enjoy it take a break and then move forward to the next one. How long has it been open for now? The facility opened two years so just just over two years we've had the building open so um. It goes quick. It goes really quick like we

yeah just like so bad I won your birthday I was like holy crap it's been a year and then you know second year came around even faster it was like holy crap you know it's been two years now and and yeah it's it's ridiculous how fast it goes but like in in terms of you know who we who we were as a business and a company you know when the when the doors first opened to what we are now is is just like ridiculously different it's cool to look back and kind of so yeah yeah

you got you got I mean you guys have did the same thing like as your business and your company evolves and you grow and you know you remember your member base evolves with you and you know you attract the right people into your company you know like you know the the other businesses outside that you network with that you really resonate with and you start working together and yeah it's it's a crazy ride just watching it all unfold and grow and evolve and and everything but um yeah it's it's really cool to look back on

I think it's important to look back because if you in terms of moving forward to where you want to go if you don't stop to look back and see where you've come from I think it's very easy to get lost in that road up the mountain if you don't stop to look back and see where you've come from. Definitely. Definitely. I want to touch on before about a bit more like training training methodologies yeah so let's say we have new athlete walking to your gym what's the sort of process that they go through to be

inducted into your into your performance center yeah cool so we're actually like really really like happy and excited with our process now with that basically what we do is we do like a three-session onboard process so for us like what we do every single member of our gym whether they're an everyday athlete or a world champion basically has their own custom tailored program to suit them their individual needs and their sport and so we obviously utilize like a lot of our you know the the sport side of it and the rehab side of it behind

building that program so when an athlete walks in the door we basically sit down we go through a really in-depth consultation with them find out who they are as a person as an athlete what they do so we'll use you know just like a action sports athlete for example so talk about them you know about what they've done in their sport previously find out all about their health history every injury they've had you know what their goals are because they're also coming to us for a certain reason so find out what their goals are find

out what their blocks are towards those goals then we'll take that you know once we've collected that sort of data then we'll go into into the gym and do sort of like a level one fitness testing which is a pretty basic overall battery test system to begin with so we just want to get a bit of framework around them as an overall athlete you know obviously their conditioning their strength their movement quality all that sort of stuff then we'll actually go into an in-depth FMS and actually go a little bit deeper dive into some of

their old injuries so see what their old injuries have left trails in terms of movement dysfunction obviously if they if they can't move well they're not going to move very often and you're going to hit glass ceilings in terms of training performance so we want to find out those now so that we don't get you know three months down the track into their training and start to hit plateaus because you know of something we should have assessed you know ankle mobility or something something crazy going on there so yeah we just basically try and collect

as much data as we can with them over those two or three sessions yeah and then from there we basically build them a custom program based on obviously their needs what you know where they are in season travel wise and all that sort of stuff and then we basically start working with them towards the goals that they've set cool and I suppose a lot of the athletes work with you long term yeah do you have any that come in for preparation just for what a single competition yeah yeah we've had guys that come in you

know either in the user facilities so like Ben Harrington we use the facility and some of some of us for like the prep for the com games this year for his last com games and yeah we have athletes sort of come in if they're if they're working just towards say well like one event and sort of use that because if it's a big enough event they'll usually take a bit of a break after that and sort of go back into a bit of a an offseason I suppose but yeah most like most of our guys

are you know on a seasonal plane so they'll be worth like following most of their training blocks and everything like that in and around travel and tapering in and out of events and things like that so yeah and we've got athletes that come back who are competing overseas and spend like you know months on end overseas and then come back home just for testing so once so when we you know have the opportunity they might only have been home for like a week before they you know ship off the other side of the world so

we'll get them home test them find out how they've been going you know see if there's any any changes or pivots we need to make in their programming set them back up and send them away and then yeah and then sort of like we have guys coming and going and then guys that use the facility every day that are local and can get to us a couple of times a week so yeah we try and I mean our goal is to reach out to as many athletes as we can you know physically in the time

that we're here so you know however we can help them whether it's just for one single event or whether it's for a whole season or whether it's for their whole career we want to be able to help them yeah awesome what about you Meg what is your role as well your I suppose current and future role as a psych sports psychologist come in yeah for sure so I work with some of the I guess the motocross athletes that we have now that we've had long term and then any of our other athletes that feel that

they need that something's not right with them or that they're held back by their mental performance before like when you asked about what determines the success of an athlete it's the same mentally as it is physically if someone's not willing to you know break down mental barriers or try new strategies then it's like you're banging head against a wall it's not going to work sort of thing so I've taken on a few clients that have just come to the gym for sports psych and that's probably where my role will go so there'll be me there

at the facility who services the athletes that we've already got but then also external athletes who might just want to come just for sports psych cool how do you guys go balancing like working home and living together and all of the yeah I guess it's so hard and like we will work on this forever but just trying to separate work and home and like making it really clear that okay we're at home now we're not talking about work we have Friday mornings this morning actually usually we would be down at the beach having a coffee

on a Friday morning and it's like a strict no work we don't talk about work someone talks about work it's like get out there's not much else to talk about so we sit in toilets open up the paper yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so we try and do little things like that where it's like and it's just being accountable to each other like calling each other out and be like oh no not work time right now dan woke me up the other night before we went to bed it was 10 30 at night and dan

insisted on drawing me a future facility diagram and i was like really is this right now showing everyone their properties at four in the morning that's that's no that is not my idea but just trying to be really separate with it and there's a time and a place for work and we can't do it all the time if we're not filling our own cups we don't fill the cups of our clients and if we're talking about work all the time you know our relationship changes too you know when we're at work with we're different with

each other um and i don't obviously i don't like our work relationship as much as our normal relationship because it's like we're just co-workers yeah um so moving between those two relationships too is really interesting but important yeah i wouldn't say we've perfected it but we're yeah we've got a few things even like sitting down at the end of the day or whatever like that you know what was the best thing happening the other day not talking about work but you know same as if you know no normal people i suppose you know one goes

to work their work the other goes the other way they come home at the end of the day and like you know tell me about your day like we do that sort of thing and yeah we find doing that like we don't talk about you know you know like the the the typical work stuff or what we're going to do tomorrow or anything like that as if you know we were at work talking in a meeting or something like that so yeah we've got a few little things that sort of help but yeah i think

we both just have a an understanding that you know we know we're both on the same page with what we want what we don't want so you know i think when we get home it sort of just works in that sort of stuff we just sort of switch off and sort of start talking about normal life stuff but yeah i wouldn't say it was effective but we i think we're both on the same page with it yeah so it's super hard yeah like when you're so engrossed in your work and you're so invested in what

you're trying to achieve yeah it's hard to just say okay i'm going to not touch my phone for the next for the rest of the evening yeah when there's so many things you want to still be doing to move the needle forward yeah yeah i tried to do and i really liked it so i'll probably go for it again like an 8 p.m curfew with my phone where it's like 8 p.m like i'm done you know clients can wait and that's the thing you're always like oh but i've just got it like right back to

this person and it's like they'll still be there in the morning yeah without saying without sounding bad but yeah it's it's we we have to sort of like be strict on that so you gotta draw the line yeah sort of what's appropriate almost yeah yeah i mean we you know we're in this for the long haul we want to be doing this forever so you know we need to set those boundaries so we can otherwise you know you've seen a lot of people in our industry you know be there for a short amount of time

you know pushing hard with big goals and be there for a short amount of time and doing really well too like and doing really well yeah and and you know it just gets to the point where i think you know there's no there's no switch off and boundary and then they get to a point where it feels like they've got no life so they're just like no bugger it i'm just gonna go back to a normal job so i can live my life again so you know if we don't have those little things like okay

we're not gonna talk you know not gonna talk to clients after 8 pm we're not gonna you know we're gonna get home and switch off from work and things like that you know i think that's what's gonna help us maintain doing what we do at a high level forever so all right we've uh we've got stuff to do we're gonna hit the road so we finish off we finish off the podcast with a bunch of like short sharp questions so first answer that comes in your head um kubin i'll take some turns and you two

take turns with answering it okay first question have you had a defining moment that's for me um i honestly would say when i traveled in south africa it changed my whole outlook um so i can't put it down to one like moment in that trip but just yeah that traveling and the exposure i got in rwanda and zimbabwe especially it was like just changed how i looked at the world i guess yeah way back in 2011 when someone asked me what's your dream job like i just it just it was so clear in my mind

i could picture it i could i could step into it i could yeah basically step into that image of of exactly what we're trying to build way back then and so from that day and i couldn't get it out of my head so from that day onwards it was just like that's what i want so yeah it's amazing okay uh what is your do you have a specific sort of already gone over a specific morning routine take us from when you wake up to your first client yeah so wake up go into our little office

slash zen room put on some uh some ocean sounds of some waves so because that's that's my when i'm out in the ocean that's the only place i feel like i can completely switch off from the world is when i'm even if it's like you know 10-foot surf and probably like i can be relaxed out there so i'll wake up put those sounds on um do some stretching and some movement stuff and then do my journaling three grateful things um three things i want to achieve today um then i'll go from there have a shower

and then um yeah basically get ready for work head out to work and then um yeah see see how all the all the team's doing and then have brekkie out there while i start uh planning the day mine always starts a little bit differently like some mornings i work really early um so on those mornings i literally get up drive to maccas and get a coffee so those are my like two early morning days on days where it's not an early morning stuff for me i've got the morning off we've got a little puppy and

i just i love to i love vegetable and he does to be honest i think so i'll often like take him for a walk first thing in the morning um and that's a little thing too that like makes me really present i'm just focused on human playing fetch so that's probably what i do on the mornings where i'm not super early to work so let's say it's either a puppy walk or a macca's coffee yeah both equally as good what are you most proud of oh wow that's hard um didn't you go first i'm probably

most proud of i'm proud of the community that we've built as a as a company the the amount of people that we've brought together that didn't know each other that you know like nothing even to do with you know the the sports science side of it and what we're creating like like what i'm most proud of is is what we've brought together like when we have social events or just those really busy um days of the gym where everyone's in there and the vibe and like so many people and so many people become really really

close friends through that community like they hang out on on the weekends and all that sort of stuff so you know and like our team of our staffs like meg and i and then our our two coaches um harley and mckayla and you know when when everyone's in there and the vibe i just you know you know every single time i just stop take a look around and just say like you know what we've created is really cool and really special so i'm most proud of the community that we've that we've i suppose created um

through our company i'm like proud of den a lot no i didn't say i always said i'm proud i am i mean i've changed me so i'm really proud um you'll pay for that i'm most proud of probably the determination of both of us to keep doing those things um and the determination that we carry through in all aspects of our life like it seems that nothing has been too hard so far um or too too big for something so it's a hard thing to upkeep i think determination and it's so easy to stop and

give up um so the maintenance of determination maybe good awesome very good what are you most excited for in the next 12 months oh wow um the next 12 months i'm super excited to upgrade the facility um yeah to do that and for the opportunities that will come from that um in our personal life probably gonna do another trip maybe to japan so i'm super stoked to do that at the end of the year um yeah and and to like my psych career develops more and more every week and that's like at the moment that

for a while it's been a bit stagnant and not really moving and at the moment it's moving kind of rapidly so i'm really excited for that to progress and to be more in that career role like the more and more i take clients on at the gym for psych the more i'm like man i love it like i'm frothing so yeah for that role to get bigger and bigger i'm really excited for it yeah no same for me like the the facility the facility upgrade for us um you know i've been i've personally been working

in the background on this for a long time like like since mid last year and it's created a lot of stress and everything like that and it's finally so close to happening so as far as like looking forward the next 12 months yeah but not in terms of being able to walk into a bigger gym or you know a fancier gym or whatever like that and have shiny new things it's it's the opportunities that it creates so like you know with upgrading the facility you know and you know expanding out we can bring on like

we're gonna we've got a bunch of legends in uh in newcastle next gen physio guys they're opening up a satellite clinic in there so it's like you know and we've just aligned with some really really um really really great um sports dieticians that we're going to be working with as well and sort of um that's like the final pillar in terms of our business model um between the high performance rehab um nutrition recovery like every everything's psychology bringing it all in like our pillars of what the business are and and so yeah like the facility

upgrade allows us to finally you know expand and open up those new opportunities for us and our members and be able to grow so yeah it's nothing to do with the new equipment or the bigger space and you know like feeling better about yourself that way it's it's literally the all these things that all these things that we've sort of been waiting to unravel and be able to do um and those opportunities and then yeah that makes it i'm pretty keen to get back to the snow as well and do a few little things like

that and like our little personal our little personal breaks you know mean so much to us now so yeah there's so much to look forward to that's going right back to the start of this what gets us up every day very cool oh good uh to finish off i want a favorite book or learning resource and favorite quote um i'm a bad quotes person um just butcher one i'll just make one up yeah um favorite book or learning resource i'll jump into this one what do you think my one of my favorite books my sister

actually got me was a book by jack delosa called unwritten um it's not it's not a huge big in-depth book but like some of it was just very real and and and he's very very home with a young entrepreneur so like someone that you know especially someone that's trying to create something that's never been done because that's what jack basically did like you know when he built the entourage and everything like that like he was a young guy with a dream and just wanted to go completely against the grain of um like tertiary education and

everything like that and you know he he's built something amazing and that book like the whole way through it was i'm not before that book i wasn't a big reader like i used to you know i just used to get bored of reading because i can't sit still long enough and so like that was the first one of the first books that i just could not put down like i was excited to go to bed and read a couple more pages that night um so for me that book was yeah it was amazing and favorite

quote it's probably probably one that we've had on the gym wall for a while it was an eric thomas one like um basically like at the end of like at the end of pain is success you know like it doesn't matter if it hurts for you know a minute an hour a day a week a year like the pain will subside and at the end of that pain is success and for me as an athlete and you know now as a business person you know i think my mental toughness is one of the biggest things

that just keeps getting me through that and stubbornness same thing but yeah like you know i'm doesn't doesn't matter for me how much it hurts or how tired i am or just like how much it sucks right now i'm always going to push through that so for me it's always resonates like doesn't matter how much it hurts right now the end of this is is the success so i don't know i don't know that one that one for me is always stuck love it um a book that i probably really enjoyed and it seems like

it's a really specific book but it's it's called how bad do you want it and it's um i'm not sure if it's written by sports psyches um but it's centered around endurance athletes and sort of what goes on mentally for them um but i think it also can be really applicable to anyone um and you know how bad you want something um so that's probably one of my favorite books um a quote cracking you just stopped me oh there's no rush um there is and it comes from that book it's a it's a quote again

it's about gratitude it's something long-winded but it's like centers around gratitude being about the process um that's a few sentences but that's the heart of that quote is that it's all about what's your guys favorite quotes oh man i say the term my favorite quote about eight times a day yeah um my favorite one at the moment is probably just you can have anything you want but you can't have everything you want that's why it's gonna say oh yeah that's cool i like that so you can you can have it anything you want you've just

got to figure out what's most important because you can't do it all at the same time yeah um like i want to travel the world a lot but i also want to run a business so i can't do both yeah and i said i said to dan on the way down here i was like how cool is it when you change your mind from thinking of all the things that you have to do and you change all the things that you get to do like like i was i don't know i was thinking about that

day i was like you know what if i wanted to move to bali tomorrow because i could do that i could make that happen and it's like i think when you get stuck in i have to do this i have to pay tax and i have to wash my car and i have to you know like all those have tos it's like god you get so bogged down where it's like i get to wake up and do this and if i chose to i could do this yeah yeah yeah very cool what's yours quote her

up to finish her off wrap it up it's gonna be good i don't know if this is a quote this is just something that i've been thinking about lately a quote this is a good original probably probably maybe uh don't delay happiness yeah like why like attach your happiness to goals goal yeah or like just or obtaining something yeah material why can't you just be happy now yeah love that that's gonna be that's gonna be a card or a that's gonna pop up on a uh motivation meme or something like that in a couple of

days good for you guys thanks for coming on yeah thanks for having us