Automatically transcribed, so expect the odd wrong name or word.
Lachlan Wallace, what a time to be alive hey? How the turntables! How the turntables! Tell you what it's nice to be in the other seat for once. Metaphorically, not literally because I'm in the same seat but. I need some practice being in this seat and need to develop develop my aptitude as a podcast host. Hey use words like aptitude and you're fast on the way to being an acceptable podcast host which is all we're after. I'm trying, I'm trying. It's a good opportunity to practice here. You are in the hot seat. I set the bar low so I'm expecting good things.
When was the last time you were in the Virtus podcast hot seat? In the interviewee chair would have been the great man Jared Pulsar. It was his birthday yesterday so happy birthday to him. He interviewed me 2017 at some point. I assume that that noise it's probably really annoying through the mic so I apologize for everyone playing at home. But yeah 2017 we did a two-parter basically on the on the foundations of Virtus what where it came from what the plans were initially so if anyone's looking for a flashback head back to a I think it was about episode 20 something.
Early days so five years have passed between then and now a lot of COVID lockdowns. You bought the factory. That happened. KP said she doesn't want to hear you tell the story of how Virtus started because she's heard that 50,000 times but finally enough she's lived it. Sorry KP between since 2017 and now we've got about a hundred new members this is true and a hundred different people that haven't heard the story of how Virtus started. So for those that have heard it 50,000 times I do apologize but for the majority. You can switch off now.
You can skip to the timestamp on screen here but for those that haven't would you like to give us a brief rundown of how brief because there's I've told this story a lot over the years and there are many different versions. Well we've got a one-hour podcast we're two minutes in we're not doing a two-parter so yeah good oh I guess to give everyone some context and one of the one of the things that we teach it at school now that we you know go back there and do some presentations is that it doesn't matter
what you do as long as you do it aligning with your values and do it with your eyes wide open going how can I learn from this and how can I grow from this. So I guess that informs a lot of the story around Virtus. I grew up immensely lucky with a wonderful family and love sport so running running in football growing up just wanted to be a part of sport and wanted to play AFL was never good enough took me to about 23 or 24 to realize that. Self-awareness takes some time I guess. Never
good enough got close but yeah it was was never quite good enough so you know kind of got stuck post high school going holy shit what am I gonna do with my life didn't get drafted stock standard stock standard it's definitely not a unique story but I'm a unique like snowflake so my parts were unique this is it we're all special but basically yeah got stuck at the end of school going I've no idea what I want to do and you know career counselor meetings that everyone goes through and you kind of like well what
do you like doing I'm like well I like sports so did the the natural progression from high school and jumped into an exercise sports science degree and I guess there was never really a question of whether I go to uni or not it was always in my head that I'd go to uni it was just a thing you did just like me this story the story you grew up telling yourself and telling others yeah and I guess it wasn't like mom and dad have been phenomenal in terms of never pushing us or never you know
creating a path for us that like I look back now and kind of that's the that's what I want to be as a parent over the next 20 years as the girls grow up but I guess there was always that expectation internally that I go to uni never loved school would much rather be kicking the footy or running around but yeah jumped into that exercise science degree and then you know over the summer I was kind of like I don't really want to go straight in what can I do instead what can I do to
to bridge the gap did a decide to sign up for so three four and diploma of fitness this is back when and you've all heard the cereal box PT line come out but it was back when the government was basically paying for your course handing out for fun yeah I can't remember how much we paid for it and one paid for it because she's wonderful but I can't remember how much we paid for it but yeah it was relatively cheap yeah so deferred uni for the year I did did a search free for and diploma
over a 10 month period you know we're still a stingrays playing footy and working at rebel sport best job ever top two top two and yeah that kind of was my introduction into the fitness industry right I was learning you know the basics of exercise science or basics of personal training knowing that I have my exercise science degree to come yeah so what what was the thought process behind doing yes sir three and four and diploma when you were going to be going into a lot of the advice I give is based off the my
experiences right so you know to all of our interns it's like you got to start coaching you've got to be coaching early on if you want to be a coach and like I was just lucky that I wanted to not go straight to uni I wanted to have a gap year and decided search ran for was probably an easier easier route to do that for the year focus on footy focus on you know work at rebel with some of my best mates and just have a good time and when I look back on it the
contact hours for the cert three foreign diploma were like another eight or ten hours a week on what I would have done at uni so I kind of did more work accidentally yeah but it you know I fell into coaching PT like I'd been training at a home for a couple of years and been going to the gym for you know three or four years and having no clue what I was doing I was lucky enough to have a brilliant running coach that taught me how to run and taught me how to look after my
body and those kind of things but yeah it was yeah yeah football it's getting better but football back then was a shot train I think show up train hydrate and that was about it but yeah just kind of fell into the cert three and four and I remember you know early Jan not knowing what I was gonna do was waiting for the second round office cleaning get my first round and I yeah just saw a little ad that was like so three four and diploma was it Victoria Institute of Fitness or Victoria Fitness Academy okay
remember yeah VFA was called so it was yeah just locked it in what was Lachlan the student like from all right so annoying as a as a set three for diploma student I I reckon I remember when the Gameboy emulators were on the phones oh yeah yeah I reckon I clocked Pokemon yellow like three times throughout my sir three and four yeah so they were still getting around when I was in high school yeah yeah so I wasn't the best student and wasn't through uni and it wasn't through school like I guess I'm bright enough
and intelligent enough you know to to get by rather pretty successfully without too much effort looking back I probably should have tried harder at school and definitely should have tried harder at uni but hey boxes ticked a so you're now running a relatively successful gym so yeah it's all worked out just play Pokemon and it'll work out seriously do things you like and like birth lottery could not have been luckier with the parent parents and family and support networks I had so yeah it's definitely no you know rags to riches story or like you know
massive amount of struggle not a starter from the bottom now we hear sort of thing definitely definitely not so yeah did that fell into a job working at Jets shout out to Jets Lang Warren Andy Kiley one of the boys from footy who kind of took me under his wing early on because I was playing seniors at in year 12 and got to know that side of football I guess pretty early which is which was brilliant and yeah he gave me a job and worked for him for a little while and you know started coaching
at a home and we'll build and burn personal training was born get around that shit name not my best it's no vertice no it's no vertice I'm pretty happy with with the second business name what were you early experiences of the industry in the standard of education because as you said they were given a search on the boxes I mean like looking back looking back I reckon I'm the only one probably still in industry in our course and we had a weird you know for 2030 in our course maybe we were the first one through
Vic Fitness Academy and now understanding the RTO business model and staff so they would have spent printing cash but I mean it was I don't know I'm not one to to kind of rag on the education in the industry right because it's entry-level it's a certificate three and four and it gives you the baseline understanding to then go all right I need to go learn more it gives you the capacity to go all right well yeah this is my starting point what am I gonna learn from here and I guess does that lead to two
problems with the industry is that one people don't then go on and up skill yeah and educate and they're just well I think people people look at personal training and go it's a fun job you got good good hours if you like training getting up early and staying up late and having doing nothing I feel like I pick your own hours yeah well you think like it's not wrong but I guess like people in our industry in our bubble go off the industry sucks it's like every industry sucks is there's great and there's shit and
there's a lot of in-between in every industry so you know we're obviously our experiential learning is all based on the fitness industry but I look at it and go yeah it was it was a stepping stone for me and Jets was a stepping stone like I look back at the some of the programs I look back at the programs wrote last year but I look back at some of the things I did and some of the things I taught and also fuck was I thinking but I did the best I could with what I had
and you know we don't know what we don't know and that's just growth if you don't look back at what you were doing five or even one year ago and you're not cringing then you're probably not growing yeah and I think that's that's the thing it's like you know we're all I love the the close I we're all in a planet we're on a what is it spaceship we're out we're all on a spaceship without a roof hurtling through infinity and it's like oh we we can get you know caught up in the nuance of
a squat and teaching certain programs and stuff it really matters the human body so complex anyone that tells you that they've got it figured out it's talking shit no it's got it figured out I think as long as you do the best you can with what yeah and you go into it with all right how can I do this better and how can I learn it doesn't matter what stage of your career you're at seek out people that you think are doing it better learn from them take what you want yeah disregard what you don't
and just keep keep leveling up keep moving forward and yeah working at Jets was very it was I opening in terms of what the industry was like and just the 24 hour gym model right it's like let's sign 1500 members and hope that 200 rock up that that is that is that model it's just the way it works and you know it thrives people make a lot of money because of that and you know you can go our people are shit for not rocking out people you know everyone has the best intentions and life happens
and the gym is such a small part of most people's existence so that's enough for us it's our whole life yeah yeah well that's exactly it like we go where is everyone and you know like as a 20 year old PT you're kind of like everyone yeah everyone shit there's yeah you just got to work harder and you got to you got to be more discipline and stuff but there's now a 30 year old data to runs a business plays footy and you know it has a community of people that I want to see and
connect with and stuff you're like okay well there's bigger things where do you squeeze it in yeah well that's exactly and it's a priorities conversation that you know it's probably probably more of a topic for a for a later podcast but yeah that like I had great time working at Jets I've been pretty lucky to be blessed with good bosses and good work environments and just fun jobs and I guess you kind of yeah things are what you make it in some respects I wish I'd paid more attention to the systems and processes that they
used when I was there because I you know five years on I'm like fuck I wish I could you know go back and get the SOPs and everything that that I didn't use to build our business and at that time it's the last thing in your mind it's not important whatsoever and then yeah shifted to PT from home while I was doing my exercise science degree and like I said just fell into doing what I now tell our interns to do start coaching as soon as you can how was that transition from Jets to your
own private facility which was your shed it was a shed and shout out to dad Rob dog could not have given me a better space to work out of I had like a little corner and like this is when I was at school little corner with a bench press and some dumbbells from from rebel the old Celsius dumbbells we need all you need and it was great what about PK are eventually the chin up bar with the dip bar and stuff and and then and then I was like hey can I move the gym into
that corner he's like yeah but you're not going any further than this and then like three months later about hey can I have a little bit couple more meters and and yeah a couple years on it's like it's like you know probably the best 50 square meter gym going around I reckon it was phenomenal TV was our basketball ring was up and you know it kind of built it was the foundation to to this place how did you go about garnering that interest in building a community at build and burn I don't know I think
like when you start PT you start with your friends and like you know the cold calling it jets was something that again fell into was kind of like we had a I think it was like 30 minute PT free PT for any member right yeah so I still remember getting to stingrays early sitting in the car and just calling like 30 people and you'd talked to two of them and you know I was lucky that I've been working at rebels since I was 16 so had that capacity to talk to strangers and talk to different
people you know working in shoe sales is like it's not the most glamorous thing but like in that environment people come in because they love sport and they want to chat and things and had three or four years under my belt of just working customer service people talk about working in Mac as being a brilliant way to learn systems and things like that and customer service and I think like working in a sports store is a phenomenal way to learn how to sell and learn how to have conversations and learn how to serve customers so
kind of got a bit lucky there like I'll probably use that word a lot lucky but yeah you know put myself in that situation you know because I went back a couple days after interview I'm like hey you haven't called me yet and I reckon the guy just went out the back went this guy wants a job so play I'll give it to him and yeah so had a client base that or that when I moved to home and it was kind of a six month transition right it was a I'll do a couple at
home and then it was like this is way better than paying rent and yeah kind of just had a few guys that followed me over it was kind of like Andy moved to a different jets and we didn't you know change of change of owners and stuff like that and I was kind of like yeah well now's probably the time to to make the move I'd been thinking about it for a little while and just pulled the trigger and few people came with me which is brilliant and some of them are still members are still
around the community now Phil Elliott's an OG he still spends spend some time and and yeah it's it was that and then you know you train your friends and you know the thing is back some of the footy boys used to try and some of the sessions we used to do and it was just fun right it was just just us hanging it out in a gym you have people you know bouncing in and out and a few that feel the guys from uni came and trained and you kind of you know you'd hear from
I guess as you grow in any industry you your circles just get bigger and bigger and bigger and kind of like when you start painting it's just your friends and then it's like okay well your friends friends and then your friends friends friends and your family and things like that and kind of just built up you know a good little business that I was running out of home that you know people just connect with you in different ways and yeah we wish that I knew what I knew now then but I don't didn't so you
started training most of your friends like did you have to have any tough conversations in regards to like mates rates so I did my trades for years and it was so dumb I don't know who posted on Twitter and Instagram but it's like real mates rates is just paying full rate for your friends product and supporting and helping him out yeah it's like and you know you still want to do it right you want to look after your friends your family when you can and it's an it's a balance I think it's a balance because
like that's a great sentiment but you know like if I can look after a friend I will yeah and and I know that especially one that's helped me out yeah but you know friends will do like good friends will do the same so like one of you know one of the guys that I coach at the moment actually I saw a program about a month ago but he's had a big year but grats like Oh send him a program and you would just send me some money I'd be like dude too much he goes no
real nice real nice pay full price and he's always done that and I fucking love him for it but you know if he sent me 200 bucks lesson wouldn't change anything I'd still want to do it so yeah I did my trades for years and like that's something that I definitely struggled with for a long time he's like charging what you're worth or charging what you want to charge but at the end of the day I look back and I go well yeah I wasn't throwing mum or dad any cash for working out of the
shed it was you know I did my taxes fairly well I think kinda next me but it's just like you just do what you can and you have fun and and it was kind of it was a bit of an adventure I look back at early PT is a bit of an adventure for me I was like figuring out how to run a business and I didn't run a real business until two or three years into owning this place and I still stoned it some days I'm like how do people trust us with things like
like how do like how do we buy a factory how do we do did these things happen and and it's why I can nail it down to just like surrounding with good people right like you know good things with good people's on the wall here and it's more than just a mantra to me it's like you know my values and how I live my life but yeah building that community was pretty fun and I got to still work a rebel and still got to go to play footy and and go to uni all at the
same time and like I look back at some of the days we had like a get up at six and coach a couple hours then go into uni and then you know be at footy for four or five hours and get home at like 10 11 o'clock I must have been a horrible son so apologies mum for leaving in the morning probably getting back home at 10 o'clock at night to dinner on the table and giving you a cuddle and going back to bed so yeah I owe everything I have everything I am to my
family it's been brilliant so we'll dabble on some of the the major fuck-ups that you first few years of shortly but now I guess the next step in the journeys from build and burn yeah to vertice join us I still don't think PT was a career like made it made decent money and was able to have some good savings between your footy and were and coaching and rebel and and got to yeah it was like I got to do I got to do it I have a real job right I've got to find a real
job and exercise I hope I never work a real job in my life yes yes I haven't pretty much but got to third year exercise I was like fuck what am I gonna do with my life like everyone's kind of got I'm gonna go into teaching or I'm gonna be a physio pardon me I'm gonna do X fears or whatever and I was like shit I have no idea what I'm gonna do like I can't just keep eating out of my garage at home feet forever which I probably could have dad would dad would have
obliged maybe and I was genuinely went like this was my thought process back then and I this is like I would yell at our interns if I had to thought the thought process now and I've definitely yelled a lot of people across the years for saying similar things but I was like all right so exercise physiology what's the starting starting base salary all right that's you know that's pretty good I can do that and kind of be safe and like that'll be a safe job for me and you know I know I can get a
job I've just got to go do my masters so I signed up for my ex-vis masters at ACU had a you know a couple of chats with you know what were the career counselors back then we're just our tutors and then staff and I kind of went yeah I think this is probably the way to go and I remember like got stuck into it was still PT at home still still doing the things I was doing and then did a few internships did one at pace which was probably the the precursor to me jumping into
exercise physiology because I was like okay well this is pretty cool it's pretty fun they do a lot more musk than you know the chronic disease side of things and and really enjoyed my two weeks in there two weeks wasn't a whole lot but did a bit of travel and stuff and I remember you know fast forward ten months we had done a few internships and you know chatted to a few of the guys went to uni with Coop was over in in UK which he would tell you about ad infinitum ad infinitum how do
you say that and Jesse who I went to uni with and we were pretty good mates at uni both from down this side we knew each other from footy we'd had a couple of catch-ups about like how could it be if we you know did something together or open our own gym or whatever and it was kind of like a yeah I guess what would you call it a bit of a pipe dream early on in 20 well yeah 2014 and then yeah did a few internships I was doing exercise physiology and then we jumped
into the woody Woodford infant internship with woody and about him up one day and said I want to open a gym and yeah I think it might be first day and he's like everyone with me and yeah long story didn't work out grateful for the experience and all the good stuff that came from that but that kind of put us on a path to opening a gym and you know was doing PT out of home and and yeah I can't remember the timeline exactly but Jesse was doing it out of out of building burn as
well and got to like 10 months into my ex-fis degree and my pa died and we kind of had a couple of rough weeks where I was like I don't want to don't want a bar of uni and I don't know what it was but there was one night where I was just like no this is not for me I do not want to do this I think we'll talk about like chronic disease and and one night and then business ethics and next time I was like don't want a bar of either of these two
things yeah I promise vertices run ethically but and then kind of just quit and I remember sending an email I reckon it might have been when pa just before part I but I remember sending an email from the hospital and like I'm not gonna get my assignment done and then ten minutes later like I think I'm done and I had a meeting with our course council like to the course coordinator like two weeks later she's like yeah I never really saw you as an ex-fis and I was like fuck you could have told me that
ten months and ten grand ago big headache yeah but like you know and this is something I tell our students now and people would talk to about it's like you've got to do things you don't like to figure out what you do like and it's almost more powerful to to do a course or do a or do a job that you'd like fuck I hate this or this is not me it's more yeah more beneficial doing one you don't like than something you kind of don't mind because I guess that was probably what it was
with pace I really enjoyed it it was fun but was more people than it than anything totally and yeah and pull the pin and kind of was going through this process to maybe open a gym you know fell into teaching fell into teaching like in we called it exercise exercise and nutrition course was like 12 weeks of like because you know we're coaching at that time and I was playing footy footy in VFL and you know this kind of everything was going pretty well but we're like what is the future hold right it was like
we got to build something or make something so we started that PT or the exercise course was literally just like yeah back on the RTO RTO try and it was like RTOs that were rotting the system so to speak but yeah we were a few levels down we were just a to facilitate of the course you know just facilitating the course yeah basically we had like 75 students over over a 18 month period 12 month period yeah and we just teach the stuff that we thought was important in a nutshell is like what do we
what do we love love talking about strength speed power like you know athlete development and and you know we talked about a fat loss module and like all the all the stuff that we thought was important that we'd learn over the five years okay how does that work so you guys are just paid to run and yeah it's probably a little fuzzy about how it should have worked and how it did work in the end but we were paid hourly to do the course but we were supposed to get a bone bonus for each student
that went through it and completed it yeah still waiting on those bonuses but we carry on and we learn a lot and yet did did that well well the gym was you know potentially being built and planned and stuff and did a couple of internships along that time and and then basically to the point where everything kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and we were like how we got to do our own thing that's just us and again there was some it was like both things were happening at the same time
for a while and then we went let's open a gym and I think we we'd settled on the name Virtus towards the end of 2014 I could draw out the timelines like and really think about it but timelines don't matter too much but thought about the the name Virtus and it was kind of like we talked about it for like six weeks like what's the name gonna be what's the name gonna be and we were driving back from from the Woodford internship one day and I was like what do we want it to be and
it was like like we wanted to be excellent like excellence is where I'll be but excellence coaching or excellence strength conditioning or excellence person training just sounds shit right so what's the Latin word for excellence because because like the thought process around picking the name was like I hated build and burn by that stage the name big regret it's not the business shout out to Dan for giving it me that name poor poor not your best but I chose it I picked it so don't blame other people and but we did think of Virtus we
were looking at like I remember some of the searches we had were like what are some different areas in Spain like what are some you know Greek words I think I'd read shoe dog and I was like what are some Greek words mythology mythological words and Norse mythology and and all that and then I was kind of like what's Latin for actually like thinking Zeus I don't know we were just going through I reckon we would have thought of 200 names and you know people say once you find the name you'll know and then we're
like what's Latin for excellence Virtus like connotations of excellence character and courage we're like BAM that's it and I drew I've still got this notebook it's probably out there somewhere I drew the drew a V with a guy dead lifting in the middle like shit asked I control but drew that sent it to Leroy Jenkins Leroy Sorrell the great man shout out and said can you build can you build us a logo we both knew Leroy I played footy with him and and I think Jesse went to school with you maybe and we had a
logo and a name before we had anything else I was doing it out of home home still and build and burn became Virtus build and burn became Virtus and then we're kind of doing that while we were waiting for for the gym to open and then it never never happened or did happen but we pulled the pin we went we need our own thing you know KP and I just bought a block of land this these funds that were potentially coming from coming from the RTO never came sure if you google RTO things in 2015
2016 you'll probably find them and so we always money that was promised to us it never came so we were like stressing out because we're gonna buy into this other gym and and all this other stuff and I was like fuck what are we gonna do and we like let's let's open a gym and plan was to do the education stuff and and the gym in here build a classroom upstairs all that kind of stuff where we're sitting and yes I started looking looking at laces and we were like so I mean to give a
little context and a bit of a life lesson there was a heavy life lesson for us and a life lesson for everyone else now is like when we open when we were going to open the other gym we were like where should we open it and Jesse and I had talked about morning soon we um vertice was effectively born the idea of vertice over a game of golf morning to golf club I think I won but not important and so we were like like we love the lifestyle like we'd come to come if I can
have coffees and you know we wanted to spend time in morning soon you know we'd both grown up half an hour away from away from the coast and we were like we want to be in this area and when we decided on another area for the other gym it was like well this is the growth corridor this is where all the people are you know this is what the smart business decision is and you know because initially we were gonna do it in morning soon and yeah draw a 5k radius around your gym and the
wood for gym in morning yeah yeah so we're gonna do that in morning soon and you draw a 5k radius around around your potential business location and you know half your potential customers are starfish it's like maybe this isn't the best business call we make right and then when that was you know getting pushed back pushed back we're like okay where do we actually want to be like where do we want to spend our day you know we got a couple hours off where we want to go it's like one much rather much rather walk
down the beach or you know go sit at a cafe then go to what Dan on Plaza and hanging out right and that was like a big turning point we're like let's sign a lease in Warrington and we've yeah we're gonna do the education coaching mashup and and and yes when when sign a lease one day we're like yep this is it this tiny little tiny little beaten down factory on kind of what it's called Diane Street or something just just around the corner and we called the areas agent yep we'll sign the lease and
he's like I'm so sorry like we just looked at it and he's like I'm so sorry my partner's just leased it and we were like devastated like fuck what are we gonna do and I remember jumping on the phone at that night going like calling a bunch of local real estate hey he's all looking for what do you got and teed up to look at this place it was an old ambulance Depot open the doors like oh yeah this could work this is huge bigger than what we were planning on get going for for the
first for the first gym effectively and I remember opening the back door and opening up to Dallas Brooks Park and just getting whacked in the face with sunshine I was like yes could work perfect and locked it away you know teed up a teed up to take occupancy like September had no idea what we were doing like signed a lease didn't realize you need permits and stuff to like two years in and I know like all the dumb stuff that you do when you're opening a business and went yep this is this perfect so did
a big opening party did a big fundraiser beforehand that we kind of teed up as like a link with it we did the ride to conquer cancer which was like a 200k bike ride around the city well it was actually from we start started in the city came down the peninsula just complete luck the overnight camping spot was at the back of Dallas Brooks Park so we all slept we all slept in here and then wrote you wrote right back to the city so we did that and then did a fundraiser for it and that
was kind of like a little soft launch and then we did a launch party when we first opened so I think we put all the equipment together on the Friday and did a launch party on the Saturday so that was sorry no start of November 2015 okay seven years this year yeah so yeah this is seven years which you know we didn't get to celebrate our fifth and sixth birthdays a bit of a bummer but we'll do a big fundraiser and golf day for for Ryman and the Johnsons this year so get around that very
exciting yeah and then we then we started vertice and you know at we were gonna do both gyms at one time we like has two of us we can do both at same time and and and yeah maybe three to six months in we were just thinking about how much time this is taking it was it was it was ignorance is bliss at its best and you know now I feel like I could I reckon do two now but just wouldn't want to suck up you have to be a sucker for punishment to do that
and yet we'll pull the pin on that which was which was a bit of a bummer like you know there's a whole heap of reasons and extra reasons that that it happened but I'm grateful for the people we met and the experiences we had and and the fuck-ups that happened both our fault and not our fault and it gave us the opportunity to kind of get like well I learned so much business wise life wise just like fast forward development five years fucking up yeah I did just on that so your first few years of
vertice and then prior what were some of the big fuck-ups and learning experience that you that you've been through would pass on yeah I think useful ignorance on business owners beautiful thing like is that the classic Gary V like you know you're only 30 so what you can afford to fuck up you got like it's like it is like say we want about Gary V but he you know even a broken clocks right twice a day right no he's definitely right more than twice a day but Gary yeah he's I mean that hustle culture is
something that probably is shifting away from from being vogue which is a good thing but yeah I think I think the and you know I say this from my experience right like I was fortunate enough to have a family that supported me and had a great community around us and you know I was yeah still working at rebel and still coaching a little bit at home when we first open opened further so like I had layers of support and I was getting paid to play footy which is still still dumb to me so there was
all that there was a lot of layers of support so if we fucked up and Jesse was pretty similar if we fucked up then we're gonna be okay yeah right we might have a bit of a lease to pay out and whatever but in terms of I liked looking at decisions as permanent or non-permanent decisions like it was a non-permanent decision opening a gym like there was a way out yeah there's a way out and worst case you know back doing what we were doing yeah we couldn't really fuck it up and and we are
yeah phenomenal support networks so I think if you have the capacity to be usefully ignorant just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks then do it like our saying for the first year of business was like it was a imperfect plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week it was basically like let's just yeah see what happens so I think if you have the capacity to do that do it like yeah yeah it's obviously not realistic for every person not definitely not the amount of times we slept at
the gym and stuff with yeah there are a lot of there are a lot of late nights and a lot of early mornings and a lot of slept through alarms and stuff like that but yeah it was just throw shit at a wall see what sticks take us through the changes of the operations and things at vertice from opening to just before COVID so early 2020 yeah so I mean I kind of look at vertices like chapters and it kind of fits fits almost to perfectly into each year but like the first 12 months was
like us having fun we'd we'd created this thing that was just a you know basically just a little PT business where we did like one-on-ones and two-on-ones and we we both brought our clients that we had so it wasn't like where it is now where you can just rock up and not completely it was completely if it was very what like one-on-one basis or very PT basis when I look at it we we had sof cam and Katie come on board pretty much as we were opening so you know just on a rent system so
we were like you know under the first banner let's support you in whatever way we can you know so that kind of allowed us to have revenue coming in both from our clients and from from coaches our I guess the initial goal with vertice like it wasn't like hey let's just open a gym see what happens like the goal was to create a like holistic health performance hub where it was like a one-stop shop I'd spent similar to a conversation we had this morning yeah exactly it's 20 this is what ended 2015 so I'd been
playing footy at pies for four years at that stage and like you see how the AFL system worked and and I didn't mention this to give a bit of context walls at uni I was like oh maybe I want to go work in the AFL system like not good enough to play there but maybe I can be a strength coach or or something along those lines I remember spending time with the coaches and stuff there and they all do a such a phenomenal job but I was like this is not the environment I want to
work in it's like yeah long hours underappreciated which isn't that important if you're doing work you love but you know knowing that new coach comes in and the whole strengthening staff could be could be out or you know you're very replaceable right because it's a thousand people's people that want three jobs and you know I want to one of my own thing right one of my own system that we could build and mold and tweak and and things like that so but I saw how the the technical tactical coaches the the strength coaches the doctors
the physios and the players all work together to achieve a common goal which you know obviously winning flags in the AFL level but high performance personal development growth you know all the good stuff like that's what it what it's about for me yeah it took me years and years to figure that out but saw what that system was and how it worked and I was like we've got a build a space where gen pop can have this level of service so you know early on it was like let's build some rooms upstairs without a permit
but if we fix that great man Jesse cog through some rooms up upstairs for us and and you know we we had a bit of fun with a classroom and we had a physio space and my space was the way we built it and because we were still doing some education stuff at that at that stage before the the big rug pool we were like yeah this is this is our business model right we have coaches as well as us we have couple valid health staff and we have a you know an education system as
well so first 12 months was very much just having fun Greg jumped on board middle of 20 I'll have to find a day but it was about middle of 2016 how did that come about so it was that a party you were actually all of that it's club it's a cool story because so I was playing footy at pies and it Frank's my CW at the time still still the stone cats get around us and one of our coaches Scotty Mathers asked me if I'd be interested in interested in playing footy in Darwin and this
was a conversation that maybe a past conversation had earlier that year I was like I'd love to I'd love to have a have a shot at it and and go go spend a summer over there at some point and then a couple months later I get a call from Ricky Nolan one of the coaches up there it's some Mary's and he calls me he's like hey like I'd love to chat to you about playing footy I was like oh I'd love to but about to open a business gotta kind of gotta be here for this
next next chapter you know I'd love to but I don't think it's gonna happen and I'd played at YC for years and you know we'd been pretty successful and playing VFL and stuff is I'd love to get you over at some point and I was kind of like I know business got to take take precedence and he's like yeah all good what what's your business and we started talking about it and I reckon like 20 minutes into the conversation goes oh because I'd mentioned that we were looking for like I'd had that conversation about a
health hub I mentioned that we were looking for a physio and he goes oh one of the physios that used to work for us is look he's back in Melbourne looking for a job I think looking for somewhere to work out of and his name's Greg I'll pass on him I mean yeah sure no worries and I reckon would have been like four or five months later when I get a call from this physio Greg day and he's like yeah Ricky Nolan gave me a number I'm you know just been China back just shifting back
to Melbourne would love to have a chat and at that stage you know didn't know it from Bara soap and seeing it's just another physio right because you know we're lucky enough to have some pretty phenomenal physios at pies and and I kind of knew like 74 it's good and bad in every industry and I kind of knew the standard of physio that we're after and yeah Greg came and had a chat and you know and we kind of went this is what it could look like cetera et cetera talked about like you know rental
grant all that kind of handshake handshake agreement yeah let's give it a try and you know seven years on we're still running off that handshake well six years I was to run off that handshake agreement you know anyone that's met Greg and or spending time with him knows how phenomenal he is as a person and as a practitioner but we just yeah it was a bit of like a bit of serendipity that kind of you know let let the world's collide and yeah he's been phenomenal ever since me ever and yeah we had a Mayo
jump on ash who was phenomenal for a couple years jump on in similar time did some did some yoga early on did some Pilates with Brooke which was great and kind of fruit you know that first 12 months was just like let's have fun like good people good things you know still the mantra you know years and years on but obviously we're flexing we're running a proper business now and then kind of end of that first year would have been when do we open we're in like October so it's about 12 minutes on Jess we
went out for lunch he's just like I don't don't want to do it anymore which was a I've always been pretty optimistic and pretty pretty like that's right we'll make the best of it and you know it's kind of fuck like that's that's different that's challenge yeah what like I was like what the fuck am I gonna do and he's like I'll be here for a transition and we'll do all this and and you know we'll make it work I just I just don't want to do it anymore and we kind of set set it
out and and you know I worked out worked on you know buying out of the business and doing all that kind of stuff and it was funny I was super positive about it and I had a conversation with dad he's just like like I won't repeat what he said but he was not he was less than uh yeah he wasn't too happy about it couldn't imagine Rob filthying up oh nice he can feel the outlet the best of them but he is basically like you're left with all the liabilities like it's all on you now
like with sign leases and you know we had a $50,000 equipment loan that we were paying off and you know all of this extra stuff and you know on top of that I'd come out with with some cash to buy me out and and you know dad kind of best intentions but it was not what I needed to hear it was like like and you know I guess having someone like him who's like risk-averse has been phenomenal for me make sure I don't fuck up completely like I mentioned before about those support networks but that
was yeah that was a pretty tough 12 months I kind of painted as like the 12 months I had to figure out how to run a real business yeah and yeah like surely the people around me got me through like tingy my accountant is like one of the great men he looked after me and and you know saved our business has saved our business on multiple occasions thanks to teaching me how to pay taxes and whatnot and Lincoln Bart one of our members back then kind of just said sorry we'll sort it out and we'd
catch up like once a week and go through numbers and go through stuff was Lincoln was he he was just one of our members he's a financial advisor so he's so he was he was brilliant in terms of like just getting my help me get my head in a good space he was like it's alright like let's just here I'll teach you how to track numbers and the stuff that's important because I was a PT right I was PT that didn't love school so I was like no idea what I'm doing and then Coop came
back from the UK and we ran into each other at the brewery like I think two nights in a row I hadn't been the mornings and brewery much but I went two nights in a row Cooper's there both nights and he's like got a job for me I think I said come work for me as a joke and he did and we need a great team so you know it was still fun but it was like a fuck like I would have been pain in the ass still playing footy but I would have been yeah I would have been super difficult to deal with.
Still living in Piercedale, still living in Piercedale that oh no actually it was about a week or two before Jesse pulled the pin that we'd moved into our first house KP and I so I was like how we're gonna pay a mortgage how we're gonna do a preseason at Pires how I'm gonna do it like I was like like you know I was like I was like holy shit what am I gonna do with my like I can't do this by myself and then yeah just 27 2016 2016 2017 end of 2016 so 2017 was
just like figuring it out right it was like me figuring out how to run a real business like I grew up more in that year that you know probably in any any year of my life and then 20 so that's kind of that that was like the grow-up year and then 2017 2017 was pretty much or 20 where are we at 2015 was when we opened 2016 end of 2016 Jesse left 2017 was like the grow-up year and like let's figure out how to run a real business so you know at some point during that
year hired a business coach and jumped in a few masterminds and kind of just like it was a bit of a dumb year in terms of like how much shit I tried to cram into my brain but like would have been it would have read like 100 books that over the 12-month period and some of which are up here most of them up there and I just like I would read and I would podcast and I would I like everything we did was like around how can we grow and build and do all those kind
of things and then 2018 was a bit of like a what do we actually want like what are we actually trying to achieve we'd build a cool business that serves a lot of people and we had a good time doing it and you know it was everything was around I'm just lucky that we had good people and we had good coaches and like we were very member first like everything we did was like let's cut like we're coaches first but on the other side my brain and you know it's pretty stressful companies my brain was
like how can we build this into an actual thing because for the first couple years weren't paying it ourselves very much and then I was like I've got all this other stuff to pay for and all these tax bills and all this shit and I was like how do I do these things by the way if you're paying bass set up automatic payments game changer don't know what that is yeah you don't worry yeah I've been Jim it's fun and it's and that 2018 2018 year was big because Coop and I spent a lot of
time together Coop shifted into like a GM role Mitch he was head coach cam and Greg and and and stuff still kicking around and you know it's a brilliant coaches and we'd been running the internship program the whole time so we were lucky enough to have like a pool of coaches to choose who wanted to work at Virtus and at that stage things were pretty good right like paint this picture of yeah I know I was probably pulling my hair out at home and and the late nights and stuff but we had yeah we were
running a pretty things for ticking along pretty fun business and pretty good business it was just you know it wasn't a real business in terms of like paying a lot of bills on time and paying paying the ATL on time and and actually figuring out how to turn you know revenue into profit yep and a lot of that tied to the work you did reading yeah casting a lot yeah mentors yeah I think so and you know spent way too much on business coaching and things like that but I've I spent too much yeah maybe
was kind of a it was a I think it was a growth period that I had to go through it was a chapter I had to go through to go alright well there's the business you want to run which is just having fun with your friends and there's a business that you know maybe you taught in books that you should run which is like everything done properly and like I wanted to land somewhere in the middle and you know we run a very values based business now and things like that and I think that's because
of that period but 2018 with me and coop was we spent a lot of time together 2018 2019 and it was all around like who do we want to be what are we building and you know there I don't know when the realization came but because that health hub we wanted to build like in my head I was like we're gonna build like a park but flip the size of the pools for the gym and you know have 20 coaches working and 10 physios and all these kind of stuff and and they'll start what do
I actually want I don't want that that's not what's important to me and kind of the the shift came to build a space or to stay in this space and don't worry there were a lot of like back and forth should we go bigger should we get another one should we do all that one stage we're looking at one of the factories across the road because like maybe we should have like a coaching one and a group training one and have to like it was like dumb but it was like it was like a what
should we do kind of kind of situation and the realization we came to was like let's just be really good at being the size of here because we were by no means optimizing any part of the business like we were just throwing shit at a wall in the middle of 2019 was a bit of a model change so we'd done PT for a lot of it and you know group train VGT started it would have been would have been early 2016 I reckon but we call it healthy bodies it was like we want to you
know do our version of group training and yeah it was very it was called healthy bodies and we kind of do some semi-private stuff here and there and you know cam and have his clients and Mitch would have his and I'd have mine that's on a building burn level of this healthy bodies dump but yeah it was a it was the precursor the VGT I just called first group training and then you know LA athletic development and other guys were kind of doing 16 different options and we had a group training and a group training
was going really well is building and growing and you kind of builds that community and builds that connection and and people get good training at the same time rise it's what we're here for tick tick in all those boxes and we'll come you know I guess my thought process early 2019 2019 was like how do we cultivate these good things VGT brings and give it to everyone else because it was kind of like VGT crew and the ad or wasn't bad yet but VGT crew and yeah the rest coaching the rest of the coaching and
I love still still playing at pies at that stage I think I I think I retire for VFL 2018 2017 in the 2017 maybe 2018 premiership you I know grand final year for Collingwood now you before that yeah 27 end of 2017 I pulled the pin I was just like I can't do it anymore a couple of our coaches had left and our GM had left and I was like people I love aren't there anymore always all the people I love aren't there anymore a couple of the guys who I'd played for five years with
you know moved on and I was like yeah I don't do that anymore so came back I actually went away started 2018 miss first couple of guys 40 but went away for seven weeks in South America a bit of a bit of finding myself in a personal development bit of like classic you know let's let's see what the world has to offer and I was lucky enough to do a bunch of travel over the over the last decade anyway but travels travels just phenomenal for to like you know ground yourself and figure out what it
is that you're trying to achieve so yeah and love the team base string conditioning that we did it footy over the years it's like yeah just having 20 votes boys girls doesn't matter but 20 people in a room all training doing their own things is just the best vibe like it is no one very few people some people like training by themselves but very few people can spend time that go I don't want more of that and kind of went how do we build this in so kind of threw the idea up to the guys
of like why don't we do like an athletic development you know sports performance version of a GT and you know what Mitch is like he's just like me I just do it and we'll make it work two words yeah yeah yeah and it was kind of all right well let's call it you know verse athletic development VAD and let's you know VGT and it was kind of like a four or five month project to kind of like how do we take you know all of the guys that are on 16 different programs and go hey
we got one for you now and we got three options and this is one of those things simplifying your offering is really important when when growing and building a business and we kind of went well we're gonna have two options we're gonna have three options for each two coaching options and you got three options for each we have six different products and in that time the team had you know over 2015 when we started there was like five of us and I think the biggest at one point was like 14 between like yoga and a
couple of my therapists and coaches and physio and all that kind of stuff and it was kind of like and dietitian and you know we kind of went how many people do actually need like who actually wants to be here what are we actually doing you know how do we build this long term and you know while you're making those decisions and while you're making mistakes there's always a lot of fuck-ups and things don't go the right way but kind of landed on along the way that we wanted the model to run we started out
with two coaches every shift and kind of ran that for like a six to eight month period and then you know I we had Lucy and that was probably one of the precursors to like the fucking business out is you know simplifying it was like holy shit I'm gonna have a I'm gonna be dad soon and that was that was a bit of a shock to the system yeah it was yeah next level shock and cape capey and I just got engaged we found out like a couple weeks after engagement party that we were we're
expecting which was uh yeah boy there's a moment it's just yeah it's like nothing I'd experienced that like what the fuck is happening because we talked we hadn't really talked about we we knew was inevitable we just it wasn't really like a let's you know it wasn't like it let's do it now kind of thing yeah it just happened and I'm a long way off day yeah that's why I would have said maybe a month before we found out and yeah then we middle of 2019 we kind of went rebrand as well we did the
rebrand when we did the new model which and the rebrand was just change of logo and and just simplification of the offerings and then kind of was going pretty well I'd taken a month off Cooper Cooper's in charge Cooper Mitch were in charge started 2020 kind of rolling just hanging out loose basically okay and KP and we'd moved from Tyab down to Mornington middle or end of 2019 like a couple weeks for loose was born and it was kind of like sweet everything's coming up Milhouse right like where we got it got the like we
weren't as busy as we wanted to be like we'd lost a few clients in the transition just the way things things went but we were building yeah and then yeah March 2020 here and the world exploded and then do we leave it on that little cliffhanger right there at the 50 minute now we have 58 minutes I've talked way too long yeah so that's vertice in a nutshell that's part a you told me you said we wouldn't do a part part a maybe we'll do a puppy yeah and you know then we got hit with
COVID and obviously things are a little different now but covered in a nutshell gave us another like full stop open chat open open book empty book like all right what do we want to do now which I guess we'll talk about next time absolutely I talked way too much I think I said ten words fucking I know it's for anyone doing anything take time to like revisit your story because it's um I know I've always one of the one of the reasons why we started the podcast is a little flashback so we started podcast in
2017 when we're doing heaps of when we're cooking I'll do a heaps of personal development stuff I did just ran the podcast I just interview people and the goal was like to get extraordinary stories from what we consider ordinary people I'm a big believer that everyone has a story to tell if you listen back to the old podcast intro it's pretty much that everyone has a story to tell and you know it was a great opportunity to connect with people because you know back then podcasting wasn't the saturated market that it is now and very
few people just sat and had long-form conversations so yeah I guess we'll have another one of these long-form conversations next week maybe on next week and uh go from here lovely good start getting some ordinary people on but all it's been is ordinary people which we love but if you have been enjoying the last what seven this will be episode eight of season three of the first podcast give us a like give us a share give us a subscribe get around it we've intentionally you gonna use these first ten episodes to reconnect our community with
that team obviously just spoken about the first what four years of vertice five years of vertices have changed things have changed a lot since we last did the podcast and the team's changed and I guess our intentions have changed Tyler's here which we love so yeah get to know everyone jazz's episode very good very good for Mitch and jazz very good the best thing is and I know this this hour has completely gone against it but you don't have to hear my voice anymore which is phenomenal refreshing for all involved so anymore for anymore now
it's been an absolute pleasure part B we will delve into covert and you got the rebirth definitely worth the death and the rebirth yeah Glenda thank you for tuning in love a good cell death
