Automatically transcribed, so expect the odd wrong name or word.
Hey superstars happy Monday if you're listening to this on a Monday if it's not a Monday just sub in whatever day it is for the after the happy bit but I hope you are having or have had a spectacular spectacular day it's time for yet another episode of the Virtus Performance podcast it's it's crazy to see how this thing that we do that we talk into this thing is making a difference in people's lives it's nice to get messages messages from people mentioning how our guests are able to impact them with a simple conversation so
if that teaches you anything it's the the importance of actually connecting and conversing with humans doing good things or either struggling with this whole life thing that we've got to deal with so if there's someone in your life that you can speak to to pump them up to help them work through something or to help you work through something I would highly recommend it today's episode is with a local guy who touched base with me a couple of weeks ago it turns out we share a lot more in common than we thought we both went
to ACU study exercise science did some exercise physiology afterwards both taught search rate for chism he got to the point after that where he shifted his path a lot different to mine obviously I opened this thing that we get to hang out at it called vertice and he has among other things started a or started and dove into a protein company called my health addiction so we kind of chatted about that journey about the similarities he threw a few questions my way which was a bit rude but you know we worked through it so today's
episode is with Karl Ashdown a very very good man and someone who I very much enjoyed the pleasure of speaking to so let's dive into today's episode be amazing 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 vertice podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests Carl mate welcome to podcast thank you very much thank you for having me or a week later than
first anticipated yep unfortunately life gets in the way we made it happen yeah first question for you yes I'll get you out of bed in the morning um I was thinking about this the other day actually well it's a similar sort of question but I think what gets me out of bed in the morning is there's nothing specific and that's that's I'm not trying to dodge the question but I found that every day is different well like some days you don't want to get out of bed some days you're feeling a bit crap or you
just a bit rundown or you unmotivated like if I'm going to to do work that I don't want to be doing yeah then I'll really struggle and so those days I'll I'll become more look at my internal motivation so I'll do more meditation or I'll go for a walk or go to go to the gym in the morning to stimulate myself and just get my body ready for the day and because I enjoy those things and I find that really sort of centers me and gets me ready for the day other days like today I
was all pumped I was up and about well and I slept through my alarm shit so I knew I had good things on the day and so yeah I'm motivated to I find learning things I'm really stimulated by that um learn new things that I feel are gonna make a difference in my life or other people's lives in helping to grow my business and being creative so if you've got something planned that you're working on that you're really sort of engaged with that's that gets you out of bed because you you feel like you've got
that purpose and drive so that's cool yeah what's what's kind of fueling that purpose and drive at the moment I suppose the the fueling the purpose and drive probably those two factors is learning new things and I really like which is funny because like at school you sort of you go and see a school I don't really like it but the more of the longer I've been out of school the the more I find I enjoy learning and enjoy learning things that you're interested being curious really so like like for you with the gym like
you're going well I find this really interesting and you'll dive into it so I like whether it's learning about training so obviously when you're when we're at uni you're learning about that sort of stuff and because yeah I find I obsess about things and so I just want to know as much as I can about that topic yeah I've been diving into values a little bit lately and kind of like what are your and what are your highest values because then when you know your highest values and you understand the things that you that really
like make you want to jump out of bed yeah and if you can censor all the things you do in your life around those yeah and you know when you when you have something you're about to do or you're going to do and you're just like I'm so excited to do this yeah yeah usually it's because it aligns with one of your values yeah and John D Martini's got a book called the values factor I've been diving into a little bit and he kind of says like he asked 13 questions anyone can google it and
find them but yeah one of them was like what do you surround yourself with okay and I was like stopping and thinking and like like I look around this office and it's just books yeah there's two or three chairs and there's usually two or three chairs on the other side of the desk there's always room for other people yeah there's gin and there's a bunch of coffee stuff so yeah I was diving into why I actually like the gin thing and it's it's all about it's it opens up a conversation yeah and you sit someone
in front of you with a glass of gin yeah now drops of gin if I get around it yeah and it's just connection it's just an excuse for connection definitely well that's the same with coffee you like same stuff you you say let's go for coffee you don't even have to drink coffee you can just go there and drink some water yes but that's how we connected right yeah it's like hey let's go grab coffee yeah and yeah next thing you know us we're now a deep middle conversation about every topic on demand values yeah
so what was the values like what was his sort of approach to so there's 13 questions that he asked that help you kind of work out what your values actually are because it yeah and a lot of us have like like low low water values or fake values that yeah we think our values because society thinks that's what we should do yeah that's should thing right what do you want to do say well I should do this I should do that they're probably not the things you actually want to do yeah yeah so it's all
around finding ways to link that up so okay it was it was a cool little exercise because I I've kind of written a thing about values maybe two months ago yeah and wrote down my values and it allowed me to nail down some of them that were there but then it'll have led me to like a couple of the words I've written like in integrity and freedom they were like part of other values rather than like okay because they cool words like yeah there was like I want to live by yeah but it's not the
thing that gets me excited in the morning okay so what was the real sort of my real ones we're kind of around like connection and conversation was like the one that kept coming up like yeah I will forego most of my responsibilities if someone goes hey let's catch up and have a chat yeah the teaching and coaching thing is just like if I can sit in front of a student or one of my clients or one of the mentorship guys that we've got and they can ask questions and like that's what I feel like the
most like a lot of lights yeah I feel like I always held as always in the conversation like that and I'll just be bouncing off the walls I'll be so excited yeah and then like reading and learning and and like being able to understand the world around me and myself a little bit better yeah it helps with those the ones up the chain yeah I'm teaching it well and that's the curious mind a lot I sort of say the the best way to learn is to teach so I you you you figuring more about yourself
and and helping people along the way yeah yeah that's it can you like can you articulate what your values are like obviously it's a hard thing if you haven't like sat down like written down and thought about it yeah I think I in terms of values again I'm similar in that I feed off other people's energy and and really look for um I suppose you look you always look for reassurance on things and um and you want to be not praised but yeah like feel like you're you're making a difference or feel like you're being
a benefit so helping people is a big one so yeah that that conversation that connection and that's what I really enjoy about teaching is that you're able to connect with students you're able to like really the the teaching is is sort of a side thing when really the the connection like you don't remember about Pythagoras theorem or you don't remember you don't remember crap about school I haven't thought about since you know yeah what do you remember what pie is yeah for six seven nine four six it's going but yeah but yeah you don't remember
that but the skills you take away from school is like learning things or finding things out or those general sort of social skills or like even from uni you don't remember a lot of that but you figure out how to find out things yeah it's all transferable like if we look at Pythagoras theorem in mass in year nine as Pythagoras theorem I think we kind of miss a little bit miss the point it's all about being able to dive into learning a concept spending time on it rate like reiterating and working on the stuff you
don't know it's like that skill of being able to try try fail repeat until you get it right then that's the thing that we should take out of learning yeah learning yeah the what is a long side of trying to us play like yeah yeah I just yeah but yeah I think if you learn that and like you need to write and teach it think critically before anything else hmm I think yeah and if you can come out of it with that and not just go well and you know I can talk about energy systems
for a day which I could and don't want to yeah it makes it makes you realize um what parts of it you actually should be paying attention to yeah for sure yeah what did you study exercise science so I had a boy yes I was at ICU so I was a couple of years above you and so I I essentially was at school and I said well I love exercise a lot of sport always like I was in the school table tennis team the school netball team was whatever I could do to get a day
off any sport I could do I'd do and so naturally I was like all right well I like money so I'll look at studying accounting or like I was I was looking at being a pilot so I've applied for that and then um I applied for physio and and I got exercise science so I went into that area and it was it was an incredible course socially sure like I came away with heaps of mates yeah um but yeah I definitely came away with potentially more questions about what I wanted to do what I wanted
to achieve what I was going well am I just gonna am I gonna go into being a teacher am I yeah like there's not that many exercise science roles out there is there and so you sort of left with these skills but at the same time left with a lot of questions yeah what was the biggest question like when you kind of finished or were finishing up your exercise - great you remember like one or two questions that you just like I need to figure this out yeah shit what am I gonna do now I've
just spent three years learning some stuff and drinking a lot of beers but um yeah you sort of don't realize how much you do know yeah so you start talking to people about nutrition or health or training or even wellness stuff and psychology and how to approach training and any of those sorts of things that's it's huge so developing those external factors that are going to help develop your intrinsic factors to get you training or to get you eating well like yeah you might binge and you know have Mac is or whatever but then going
okay well today's a new day reset these are my goals and I'll sort of keep working towards that so to answer your question what did I come away with asking essentially how can I use the skills that I've gathered to to go into a role or what role can I go into yet to use the skills that I've gathered which is where I went into I did a postgraduate exercise physiology so I really liked the rehab area because I was interested in physio initially yeah and so I I really liked that but um I ended
up going into well after finishing that I took a year off just to get away and went to Queensland and did labouring which I found really enjoyable because well I you're going surfing and stuff like yeah a lot of the day it's nice and warm but also you're you're being physical so you're out in the Sun you're being physical you're doing stuff and you're not going home with any work you're just going home and that's it you switch off yeah which I find a lot of it was pretty awesome yeah and so but yeah then
it was okay well now I've got to go back and make it start a real career which I don't know whether that's the right mindset to have like you just but that was that was my that was the mindset I had so I came back from Queensland and thought well okay now I should start working as a exercise physiologist yeah so I was personal training doing exercise physiology and then I started teaching at Frank's and Chisholm Health and Fitness I'm teaching all right that's gonna get a workout oh yeah lots of Juniper share so yeah
teaching sort of opened up a new new door for me so that was and you're teaching people who are interested in learning that was that was something I've yeah so it's good having engaged learners and so I went from that to go okay well yeah teaching both my parents are teachers which they both said don't become a teacher but um yes I ended up signing up and doing a teaching degree yeah I'm sort of just rattling off my life is and so I was doing that so I was working personal training exercise physiology and and
Chisholm tape and I found that working as an EP I was working at a physio clinic and a lot of the time was glorified personal training like it wasn't really utilizing the skills that you developed it was okay they've finished their physio program now let's do some exercise with somebody that has an idea about how to write an exercise program or how to understand the precautions and this and that rather than just graduating to a gym program yeah and so it was boring so I again I found the best part about that was talking to
people like they don't care about the exercise they're doing essentially they're just doing whatever you tell them yeah but they care about I don't know what you did on the weekend or like you telling them about a story about whatever so it's such an opportunity for a bigger conversation yeah like for me that's the reason why I enjoy coaching so much is you get to know someone you get to know they're you know the hopes dreams desires goals all that kind of stuff is yeah you should be talking about that stuff and then you get
to touch base with them you know yeah one two five six times a week to me on how often they're seeing you so you have like a responsibility I can't look at or like an opportunity to um do something yeah yeah do more that's what I and to be able to actually make an impact bigger than like the sets and reps they do yeah and and that's yeah I think it's I don't know if it's missed or if it's just undervalued yeah it's definitely a part of the the industry that I think a lot of
people just go shallow yeah and go yeah cool this person wants to come see me to lose weight okay let's do that yeah I forget all the other layers to it yeah well what were you saying you're saying something about when people start at vertice they will do some sort of what initial process or something yeah so we have so we have the it's a three session induction process so yeah and part of what we we want to make sure that when people start training properly for like a better term at vertice whether it's in
groups or one-on-one or whatever that we know as much about them as possible so yeah so sorry so the and for them to be comfortable and to be able to open up in our environment because the community aspect of it and the there's hundreds of people here that want to help help you succeed aspect of it's really important yeah so we do yeah there's three sessions so we do movement screens we do lifestyle screens we do goal setting first question to everyone when they join up is why are you yeah and black throws people a
little bit off guard right yes because they're expecting to start learning I was like like why yeah and once you know very few people can't like struggle to answer it once I actually get talking yeah usually it's just to try and then they'll just like unload everything and it's a really good way for us to get to know them so yeah the movement screen and and capacity screen stuff we do is it's kind of like a baseline it's a check to see where the baseline levels out right like it's we do we have we ever
miss them and if they've got pain and we serve a physio what physical assessment is it yeah so yeah functional movement screen which is like testing patterns yeah and then the I guess if they've got pain that we go okay so go to our physio and check out what's got wrong with the parts because you know essentially something going on and if they pass the screen then we do a capacity screen on top of that which is like can you maintain posture on integrity under load what's your force generation capacity like all that those kind
of things through that we also talk about them as a person like that's almost the most important part by you put it all together and by the end of the three sessions we know them really well so I know everything that they we would know everything they want to achieve all the things that are stopping them all the things that have stopped them in the past all the reasons why they may have achieved some things that may not have changed other things we can kind of set a plan in place for them to actually achieve
them now yeah and then from a movement point of view we can either go okay you can't do this you can't do this can't do this yet so use a traffic light system yeah or you're good to go do everything like let's let's do it let's get stuck in so it's a it's a barrier to entry which we definitely find some people don't like it yeah like it's yeah 250 bucks for the three sessions yeah but it kind of crucial yeah yeah it stops us from some people from falling off the wagon two months in
yeah well it doesn't stop it but it definitely helps like you know yeah before you buy a used car you're probably gonna get it checked out right yeah we're all used cars yeah yeah this is just taking it into the shop and getting systems check and getting a full service before we actually take it down the racetrack and pull the foot down yeah and if we can do that then one people are already invested in in themselves and I think that's a big issue like again we gotta stop making this podcast about me but about
us but yeah the whole no one wants to invest in their health and fitness and I think that maybe comes back to their values and what they actually value and they've got to figure out a way to link up their health and fitness with their values right like now that I'm not necessarily competing as much anymore I need to link my health and fitness to connecting with people rather than actually just training for the sake of training yeah it's not important to me yeah but I think enough people invest in their health and fitness as
much as they should sure yeah so because because you want that investment to hurt a little bit like yeah that's why we pay people to help keep us accountable for certain things is because you know when you pay money to something you're much more likely to do it that's right but if you just go this gym thing's gonna be free yeah then they're probably not gonna absolutely follow through because they don't see value yeah well that's something that I've found with our business is like I'll give away I'll put a thing up on Facebook free
samples yeah everyone's I'll get 10,000 emails but then I've got to send out 10,000 samples and I've got hand pack those samples so I'm doing that crap but if you go okay well we'll give you a free sample but you're gonna pay a dollar or two for postage yeah then all of a sudden people go okay well now I'm investing financially and so they'll question it so the people that are signing up just for the sake of getting something free and now potentially pulling out which is perfect and so you want that with exercise as
well because you need people that are going to go okay well how much because at the end of the day it's not like you can take a pill and you you've lost ten kilos or you've increased your ability to your stability or you yeah old in power whatever yeah whatever you sort of goals are but um it's it's not easy so you can't take a pill and just do that and that's the problem is that a lot of people will they want things here and now and we're all the same like you want things as
quick as possible yeah but a lot of like everything good takes time and takes work yeah funny that and that's where like setting up the community having the process being invested and ultimately they're gonna benefit more than by just getting a pass to jets and going two times a week and then never going again that's it that's it you give them what they want if we were magically able to give them what they want now they would value it like it wouldn't value and people wouldn't appreciate it and then please you end up back but
I started anyway yeah it's the going through the shit and the time and hard work and yeah all of the other reasons what like all the other roadblocks in the way like you get to that point where you achieve something and you can enjoy it and appreciate it yeah and you go okay I'm never going back there and then you look for the next thing yeah yeah well that's something I found with like it's well obviously a competitor but things like those f45 eight-week challenges there's there's a lot of negatives to it but the good
thing is that it's eight weeks that somebody has to invest they're investing a lot of money yeah and if they're able to use that as a platform to then instill a good routine or yeah develop good habits then then that's a good thing definitely have a lot of opinion that way charges yeah like that and I'm definitely more impartial to them now like now than I was two or three years ago when I'm when I you can't kind of see the bigger picture yeah but if it's the thing that gets that person off the couch
and if it's that thing that kick starts you know the rest of their life of exercise and their journey then why not yeah I think on like the the other side of that coin is that if that is the thing then f45 have a responsibility to give correct proper nutrition advice and give correct exercise prescription and things like that and I think where I get frustrated with it all and it's why we have certain systems to to avoid that is they'll take that broken down used car out in the racetrack for eight weeks yes smash
the shit out of it and then you know it has to like be towed into pit like yeah yes and now they're seeing a physio and now they're yeah that's the issue right like if if you drive your car with a handbrake on is eventually gonna break down yeah if you drive it with a flat tires you know you know if you don't ruin everything else yeah that's it that's the issue one of the issues definitely talk me through how you went from exercise exercise fears yeah to and PT and teaching to protein and running
a supplement yeah well it actually it started to shift when I went into teaching oh no it was before teaching so when I was doing PT and EP and whatnot as a personal trainer and teaching people at Chisholm you get a lot of people asking about protein and supplements because it's all it's up in lights in that industry like it's it's a novelty sort of thing and and people like I said people love a shortcut or some sort of boost or sign novel like that like we're always looking for the next little little thing to
boost our performance or to stimulate fat loss or whatever it is and so people would ask about protein powders and so I'd have a lot of like my clientele was probably 70/30 females 70% female yeah and so a lot of them would ask about okay I've heard about protein powders should I take one what's a good one and they were the two questions so that sort of stimulated my interest in it and I said well okay well what's what is to it like I'd use protein powders playing footy and doing different sports and whatnot I've
yeah had done a fair bit of training so I went okay well let's sort of do a dive into it like I said I'll obsess about things and so when I'm sitting at work or when I'm at uni or whatever I'm researching about it well what's in these products what is actually the active ingredient so what are you taking it for and so I sort of found out about it and I said well can you improve on this because my sort of philosophy is on that mix of health and performance on honor I want to
be able to go out and charge hard all day but at the same time I want to live to be 150 so yeah to me you want to you want that combination of the two so if you can get the benefits of having a protein powder without all the additives all the artificial sweeteners all the preservatives all these things that we're sort of trying to avoid in our lives anyway but then why are you having it - yeah well like you're doing all this exercise because you believe it's healthy and you'll eat healthy and do
all this but then you're taking these supplements with all these colors like they're a bright purple or a green or you go hang on what's what's the guy it doesn't really yeah so I just sort of look into it for my own knowledge really and um and so I started I bought a one kilo bag of whey which on is the sort of gold standard in terms of the amino acids so the amino acids are like you well I'm sure you know but the tell these humans if you have a if you have a brick
wall your um your wall is the protein but your amino acids are the bricks so a protein is made up of 22 different amino acids and so they're the bricks that make up the wall so you've got to have all the 22 amino acids to be able to make a protein which protein can be used for use for hormone production it can be used for cellular health it can be used for hair skin nails for muscle recovery and muscle building and all these sorts of things and so obviously for exercise there's a big spotlight put
on it for muscle muscle development muscle growth but again muscle recovery so a big thing of it I find that people miss out on is that if you're having protein powder then let's that's calories that you're consuming that are subsidizing potential calories of sugars or carbohydrate or whatever that it could be contributing to to other sort of problems in terms of your health and nutrition but um to answer your question but it's the these are the basic things that people don't understand yeah people kind of like will keto help me lose weight like will paleo
help me lose weight and I was like well if you want to lose weight being calorie deficit yeah that's it next question yeah like we're not talking about health functional performance but if you want to lose weight then that's you go right yeah so all these simple things that you and I probably take for granted a little bit yeah because it's a it's a thing that we we do every day yeah most most a lot of people don't know it or don't understand it well enough yeah well it's complex like like we said about people
starting exercise it's not simple yeah there's no simple way to to lose weight or to gain strength or to whatever it is increase your squat like it's it's hard work and it's complex yeah and so same thing with nutrition yeah you could lose weight with keto you could lose weight paleo you could lose weight oh no you could eat potatoes for a year and lose white like some bloke did that but that doesn't mean that he's healthy yeah like yeah they're different conversations yeah and everybody's different so that's what I find everything everything's very individual
so the more you look into things the more complicated and complex it gets yeah but yeah so the so you had these questions and people were throwing at you and you were like yeah I saw a lot of crap in the market I literally bought a bag of whey protein and took it home I was living at mum's at the time and it was yeah and so I remember it was Saturday nights or Friday nights I'd come home from doing PT and I was like well I'm gonna test this out yeah and so I'd get
like cocoa out of the cupboard and mix it in and yeah and I was like well what's a powder I can get to make it sweeter like you start off I didn't want to use sugars I didn't want to I wanted to find natural things so I eventually found out about stevia and so I bought some of that so I'm just buying all this random stuff and mixing it together and going oh here you go mum does that taste any good because she's like she hates all that sort of stuff so I figured if if
she thought it tastes good then somebody else would yeah I found the biggest thing with proteins is people want things to I taste good they look good and then and then price is a massive factor as well so there's sort of free components to the things in terms of selling a product but um I wanted it to taste good because if I'm going to use it like I wasn't looking at selling it at that point in time I just think yeah I just wanted something for myself which is the cool thing about it because it's
all genuine like it's not like yeah I'm gonna make this thing and sell it to everyone and not use it myself it's like okay well this is a problem I'm aware of I'm gonna figure out a way to sell and sell all the best ideas are yeah kind of formulated yeah and that's what you can forget sometimes when you're developing new products or people are going oh you should do this flavor or try that and I'm like well at the end of the day I made a product because I wanted to use it so like
does it along with my values does it along with the guy that was such important mixing protein in a mixing bowl with a whisk and yeah giving it to his mom and so it's really like from a it's a really just a really cool story because it it shows for me like I wouldn't much rather buy that protein and you know it's in a big call rate is a big like health company that maybe goes oh there's massive pro massive proper margins in protein why don't we just get into that mmm like you trialing it
like probably fucking it up a lot of times having started tastes probably pretty yeah okay give me into your mom and everybody on mate do something else but then eventually working on it and get to a point where like now it's a thing yeah it's pretty cool yeah well you don't like I didn't even think about selling it initially yeah you're just sort of doing something because like I said you obsess about it and you just go oh this is cool like and yeah if you've got a like an interested like you're always sort of
interested in them in developing things and being creative and stuff like yeah I'll go and build a veggie garden like I'll do it and then if I if I stuff it up then I'll I'll figure out how to fix it yeah like I found that's the best way to do things you can always fix things that you stuff up but it's the learning that I find yeah like yeah I stuffed up a veggie garden but it's like like I've built it I remember I built a deck around our pool and it was just so shit
and I just ended up we never even used it cuz it was you would have just stepped through it like it was so shit but at the same time I learned about okay well the next one is yeah exactly yeah so you just trial and error but yeah so that um I started doing that and then all of a sudden like you're in conversation with clients about what you're doing and I'll be like oh yeah I was fluffing around with protein the other day after you were talking about it and I ended up making some
and it tasted alright yeah and they go oh okay that sounds cool like can I try some and I was like oh yeah okay I'll bring you something so you come in with a little glad bag of protein and guilty clients and then all of a sudden they go yeah this is really good like I'll buy some off you if you want I go well okay like I need some more glad bags and so yeah that sort of develops into you get bigger bowls and you get bigger whisks and and and I had a mate
who I went to uni with at ACU and he had started doing stuff in WA is he started this business he called it my health addiction and he goes all I need some protein I know you're you were mixing some and at the time I'd started the business side I got one of my clients actually to create a little logo for me it was called performance powders which I thought was a bit bit on the edge in terms of and so yes is this basic sort of token the paint logo that was I was using
and yeah so I stopped it at the gym and I was selling that and I ended up mixing up batches for him and he was selling it off as part of his business yeah and um and I just really like the the name my health addiction it just sort of resonated with me because well maybe because I sort of get addicted to things and um and and health is it's probably a lifelong addiction yeah you fall off the wagon but you get back on it and then and so that really resonated with me and so
I ended up sort of approaching him about getting involved and that at that time it was an all-encompassing health food online health food thing with nuts and seeds and dried blueberries and all this random stuff teas and books and whatever yeah whatever was he had it but um it was just a little bit everything and so we started that and all of a sudden I'm getting these massive boxes of like 10 kilos of blueberries and Inca berries and all this stuff I've never heard of and he's going okay package it into this and that and
and then go to markets and I was going I was spending hours just packaging these little things of cashews or whatever yeah selling them in markets and people thought it was cool you'd sell a little bit but not a lot it's hard to get people to invest in health food in their health they'd much rather go well the the busiest stand the business saw the Frankston market was by far the um the donut stand they would have a line for 50 meters I'd have two sales for the day market because of society market because you
see what people actually interest yeah interested in and where they're drawn to yeah well why would they buy a bag of 250 grams of macadamias for 10 bucks yeah and they can get a donut for a dollar yeah and it tastes delicious it stimulates the dopamine receptors as packed full of sugar and it makes them feel good yeah we're not definitely just buy macadamias have some honey roasted macadamias oh stop yeah a combination of the two yeah yeah so then it eventually got to a point where I said well mate I don't think we're really
gonna do that well if we're just selling all this stuff like it's just too complicated yeah so it was sort of like that whole 80/20 rule like 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your product or 20% of your customers so you focus on that yeah I said look I think we're better off cutting the old stuff if they want nuts and seeds they're gonna go to you can get from Coles yeah so so that's where we shifted to the protein and we made a product that combined all this leftover stock essentially called
nut hola which was a nut granola yeah and it was it was naturally sweetened with honey and coconut oil and cheese seeds and apricots and also stuff and and that was good like I've really liked it it was a great snack it was a great sort of thing you put with yogurt and it was a quality product but it took a lot of time to create it and again you're trying to educate and convince an audience that yeah they're going well why would I buy that when what I paid 15 bucks for a little bag
of that you know I can buy a massive box of cornflakes you're going well you're only gonna use a quarter of the amount and you're gonna feel fuller for longer and this and that and so again you're you're in that you try to educate yeah which is hard if you're trying to sell in a store or something like that that's just it's too complicated so long story short we ended up shifting and again and and focusing just on the proteins and I ended up buying out the business and Ryan who's now gone over to he
started a business with his business partner Julian and they started a company called lifecycle yeah so that's really cool actually they go around to cafes like what common folk and and they'll collect coffee grounds grounds and they um so it's sustainable they're recycling and they combine that with like different like newspaper and mushroom spores yeah and you get these boxes where you can grow mushrooms out of it you just spray it and it grows these gourmet oyster mushrooms and so that's been really cool and from that they've expanded and and and so we're now making
a protein for them which is a vegan protein with reishi mushroom in it so it's combining that recovery not even recovery so protein I find people go you have to be exercising to take a protein like proteins one of your basic macronutrients like carbs fats and proteins and if you're not eating meat or you're not eating eggs or dairy or whatever it is like most people avoiding something yeah it's something you need supplement then that's a great source it's convenient it's it's cheap if you take into account it's like a dollar per serve yeah and
so that's where I find I'm sort of saying to people well I don't I don't recommend that you take a protein powder every day I don't say take free protein shakes a day then I want to get jacked yeah well then take steroids yeah so that's where I find that yeah you need a certain amount for for everyday life like I said it's not just muscle recovery the protein is going to work on um it's like saying you only need carbs if you're doing an intense exercise session like heaps of people will eat carbs and
they don't do any exercise so yeah that's something where again it's education but it's it's um it's it's only one area of education focusing on now so yeah that's cool so yeah the protein that's that was really cool working with them and they've been a great partner for us to work with and to expand and learn from so sort of mentoring I suppose and just learning from what they're doing same as I've learned from what you're doing so yeah I've sort of delved into more of that now the protein side of things are now and
that's really been my focus the last sort of couple of years and really this year shifting into that more yeah it was more full-time well you want to take it or besides world domination yeah apart from world domination you know 10 million a year all that kind of stuff yeah like what do you want it to look like in three five years like I hate when people ask me this question so I'm sure yeah yeah exactly it's like what do you want it to look like or what's realistic what are your goals all those things
I find some people are so sure on what they what they believe but I actually I got this one yeah thanks I really want to get it into like you can put numbers on it but stores around Melbourne I want it to be self-sustaining I want to be able to work on a full-time I want to be to have people around me that I'm able to to share the the process with to share the the benefit of the business with them and to again inspire like to have something more so to me it's not just
protein to me it's it's what it works in with so if you're taking a protein shake like I said you don't have to be exercising but generally you're somebody that will luck with your exercise programs like care enough to invest in their health and their well-being you might not exercise at all I don't really care but yeah at the same time it's to me it's something that if it's going to benefit your health you combining that with you make a smoothie with spinach and you got almond milk and you got all these other nutrient-dense foods
then then it's going to benefit your health your physiological health and then hopefully that it benefits your psychological health and your spiritual health and all these sorts of things so it carries over into other aspects of your life rather than just okay have it probably go do some push-ups and I'm just excuse for being a conversation yeah I think and definitely once you've I think the important part of that is like we had to get through the you know the three that you need a couple years of PT before that I'm like the coaching the
whole time to realize that it's part of the bigger conversation yeah it's a be that guy in your kitchen making your own protein powder yeah selling it and then working on all the other stuff and going to markets to be able to get to this point you're like you know it's a it's an opportunity to have that conversation about health yeah and well well being about telling on that bigger bigger scale rather than just the protein and push-ups kind of yeah yeah and a deal for sure what do you wish everyone you knew about knew
about slash thought about supplements probably just about supplements in general yeah I say supplements that I don't want to talk I don't want to talk about the bastardized side of the side of the industry yeah like I'm more about supplements and protein the way you're doing it okay probably probably what I'd like people to know is is that it's not something where you have to take it every day yeah it's not something that it is a supplement for a reason like it's a supplement if you can't eat real food if you can't get up in
the morning and make it an awesome word or whatever and like really should be having whole foods you should be having veggies in every meal and things like that yeah but to me it's it's the combination of okay well if I can't do that what's the second best thing so that I'm not going I'll just grab it up and go or all whatever if you're able to like you got a neutral bullet or something like that and you're able to like even oh oh my quick little smoothies where I've made a shot of coffee I'll
put that in a smoothie banana I had some spinach and avo and then a scoop of protein yeah that's what gets you out of it okay yeah yeah well there you go so like it's it's a it is a supplement so you're adding it to an already healthy diet and to me a lot of it comes down to what what you're trying to achieve is is that is feel so like I can talk to people about the benefits of the physiological benefits of protein powder and this and that and it can help with recovery muscle
recovery and it can help with all these other things that are going on in your body and so like I said educating you about the physiological benefits but the the biggest thing to me is that is that feel is your mental state is how and then this comes down to a lot of psychology yeah with how are you gonna feel by implementing that into your life and it's probably not even the protein it's it's the fact that you've taken the time to to to do something that you feel is going to benefit your health it's
like meditation like you take the time out you slow yourself down you do it and you feel incredible doing it definitely so it's people don't really care about the the all the the important factors and this and that like they care about how it's gonna make them feel yeah and if they feel good and that's gonna resonate into other areas of their life and hopefully they're ultimately using that for the power of good yeah a lot of mental health really yeah yeah we fuel our physical body now our spiritual and emotional self becomes more capable
and you know the capacity grows for it to deal with the shit of life throws at us yeah and then all that and on the flip side and all the good things that we enjoy absolutely well if you look at like they're so intertwined and that's what I think we probably don't learn enough at uni or at school and things like that because like if you're in a state of stress so you're exercising you're drinking coffee you're not sleeping enough you bad relationships all issues yeah yeah exactly but you've got work stress like there's so
much stress in life and then we're stimulated by devices and and whatnot so we've got so much cortisol we're in that state of hyper like we're in that sympathetic nervous state and so our bodies are riddled with cortisol and then cortisol what people don't realize is that's gonna cause you to retain fat and that's gonna block gaining muscle which a lot of people if they're trying to achieve that a lot like who doesn't want to lose a bit of fat like most people just be chill and overly stressed right like you know exactly cortisol responses
is a good thing if it then fucks off yeah but when we're at a high end state of cause our release all day every day because all we do is add stress to our body yeah it's this thing I'm trying to help you with training right training is only it's only part of it but our body looks at emotional stress work stress training stress you know fatigue whatever as stress it doesn't I can't do it can't actually differentiate between the different doesn't know we keep adding and adding eventually something will break exactly I was talking
to some guys actually they were doing that f-45 thing again yeah and they're doing like two sessions a day and we go mate you you did nothing last week yeah are you now doing two sessions a day like it's it's ridiculous 14 sessions in 12 months and then do four sessions in two weeks yeah so you're gonna fall down like you can only take so much like it's setting up to fail oh come in we were saying it but they're talking about like you've got your bucket and if you bucket like you keep filling up
your bucket yeah unless you empty out a bit then it's gonna topple over because it's too full and so you hit that brim and that's where people get over training or adrenal fatigue or any of those stress sort of problems and and that's all inflammation like what people don't get is that's now putting your body in an inflammatory state where these autoimmune diseases and all these sorts of things will compound upon yourselves and next thing they know they're taking blood pressure medication and they're taking all these other pills yeah quick fixes when really so for
a walk like slow yourself down yeah exactly so it's that combination of body self-awareness nutrition if everyone understands stress response yeah then they they should be able to adequately assess what they're doing yeah but one way or another am I adding not enough stress so that my body's not going to change there's no adaptation happening or am I going too much so that my body's gonna eventually fall in a hole yeah and I think if everyone understands that we need X amount of stress to to adequately or often ultimately adapt yeah and then we adapt
and rest and do it again and do it again do it again we're gonna keep getting better yeah but we skip that for the the quick fix mentality where it's just like well if I do more it's better yeah yeah and it doesn't it doesn't work that way unfortunately being self-aware yeah self-aware self-aware whilst also understanding yeah like how stress response response works for sure and that's where you were saying before how you've been crook like even with all your training even with everything like you don't realize sometimes yeah other stresses in your life will
compound upon itself yeah definitely so you could be doing lots of exercise and sleeping heaps and doing a lap but then I don't know you have a day where you're not eating too well or you yeah well works a bit harder or whatever it's going on and then all of a sudden you're sick and you're going well what's going on yeah I'm doing this but yeah that's where there's so many again it's it gets more complex oh that's it is so many different factors of play like yeah really just off the top of my head
like if you just go okay sleep hydration nutrition exercise movement and then you've got your you know you're supplementing that all of those things with work stresses and yeah etc etc there's so many different ways we can even fall down and go wrong hmm and it takes it you know the kind of helicopter view of your life to be able to go okay well shit I didn't eat very well this week or I haven't had drink water in three days like yeah what is the area that you're letting yourself down that's going to impact everything
else it was domino effect and that's where I think like I wasn't really aware of it at the time but that's where with the protein taking it down that more natural and organic approach using that mentality of real ingredients real sort of foods to emulate as best as you can eating real foods or getting those nutrient-dense foods into your diet then at least you know that that's not a problem well that's not an area where it's where you're falling down so you can you're gonna you're rushing around like you stressed with work or whatever and
so you know that you're going to not have lunch or whatever you can take a protein shake with you to work or you can take it to school or whatever and at least you're getting some nutrient nutrition that is is of benefit yeah so that's been a real tool right yeah exactly live a better life and be a better version that's it it's not gonna change the world something like you'd lose 50 kilos it's not going to put on ten kilos of muscle like it's it's a tool and if you use it properly then it
can be a benefit and hopefully it people are able to use it as a subsidy and as a supplement to real food and it stops them from eating eating shit yeah so that's been a real focus for me yeah yeah it's really cool cuz like you it's all it's a breath of fresh air like it's coming from someone that went through the diving into the gym and then going like just going commercial gym and working in commercial gym and then yeah oh shit I need supplements thing trying everything under the Sun as most of us
do yeah I'm learning it and definitely trying everything and having like 17 shakes a day and all that kind of stuff yeah I've gone from that to like now and like zero supplements yeah and it's and purely because of there's so much shit out there yeah so it's a really it's a breath of fresh air to know that there are people that are doing things the right way and they're going about it the right way and like I'm excited to kind of follow and contribute hopefully to your growth over the next however long because it's
gonna be cool to see it definitely actually be a thing that people can use to help them yeah and I found I was speaking to a lady who runs a store in Seaford health food store and she was going oh this is perfect timing we've ran out of protein and we're going oh crap what's what's a good one for us to get involved or get get into the store and so me reaching out and talking to her and like once you speak to people you like you're again you're educating and so that's where where I
sort of find it's most beneficial because then you help people to understand and knowledge is power yeah so it's been a big thing for us I think just spreading it through education yeah having the opportunity to speak to people to educate about like you with exercise and it's it's bigger than the actual bigger than lifting heavy things yeah it's bigger than raising your heart rate it's bigger than sweating or whatever than that yeah that is so so that's been it's exciting that's the the challenge and the battle and the the enjoyment as well so exactly
three questions for you yes yes we got to talk about juniper as well yeah what do you what questions you got give me a question then I'll throw the last rate you um well what do you where do you see the future with with that is a very long long question let me answer I'm not sure yeah and like the the big part of it or the big like I try and look at the purpose and like a direction and we were headed like a horizon so I want to be able to see the horizon
and know what it looks like someone yeah but then we're never actually gonna reach it we're just gonna keep it keep working towards it and you know the goalpost moves slightly yeah but we just want to help as many people live their best life as possible yeah and we use the term making the world a better place but we want to make everyone's own world a better place as well so yeah I guess the goal with it or the intention or whatever like whatever your words you want to put around it is just like figuring
out how you can do that one on as big a scale as possible but also we want to make sure that that as we grow and bigger scale it doesn't dilute the quality of the service that we give to people on a day-to-day basis yeah I guess the problem with scale is that sometimes sometimes you can lose quality then we want to make sure that whatever we're doing we you know under promise and over deliver and add more and more value to the people we're serving every day as we grow yeah figure out how to
do that though like if you got any ideas let me know yeah we've got we've got a lot of it a lot of projects in the works yeah a lot of things that are coming up that we've been working on for a little while like a lot of them in any education space like we just launched our online platform for our mentorship students so to bring stuff like that to everyone our clients will be the first guys to trial it but like little seminars online stuff clients been able to actually dive into why we do
certain things in the gym and how they can optimize their lives and yeah and then to go into bigger and bigger courses and yeah I don't know where it will go yeah but I don't really base basically what we we train people but it goes way beyond yeah the four walls of our gym on that's it's a very closed-minded approach to think we're a gym we train people sort of like me with the protein like we're a protein company you buy protein like yeah if you're doing that then you're just selling a product you're not
selling yeah like you're not offering anything really yeah when like people don't come there if you've surveyed your customers they wouldn't come there to exercise yeah there's a very small percentage of psychopaths that just come to the gym to train yeah I don't get it freaks me out yeah but to be a part of the community and be a part of people wanting to be better that's that's yeah like I want everyone to be able to access and reach their potential whatever that is yeah some people it's business some people are starting a family some
people it's athletic pursuits we started out very heavily in the athletic development side of things and that hasn't necessarily it's definitely hasn't gone away but it's definitely become less of a focus because you a human for a lot longer than you're an athlete yeah so you know we want to support and help our young young and not some not so young athletes achieve what they want to achieve from a from an athletic pursuit point of view but at the same time when they're no longer sprinting or running or jumping or playing the sport we want
them to be able to see use those skills to improve the rest of their life still have goals still have things they can work on yeah like and that's where I find that yeah we were working with women's football the AFLW and providing product for athletes and this and that but like I'm not a professional athlete but at the same time I like going to boxing gym I like testing myself I like pushing myself you playing footy like he's still challenging yourself you still like to heart to charge hard and smash yourself and so there's
still benefit to to treating yourself like an athlete to going to getting soft tissue treatment or to taking the time to yeah like technically everyone's an athlete like if you look at that yeah the right way everyone's an athlete we've always got different events like whether it's a for 40 or whether it's top like top-end athletic like athletics yeah or whether it's you know wanting to be able to chase your kids around and not hurt yourself like yeah they're all in a way athletic pursuits yeah it's because you're not getting paid it doesn't before you
spoke about a health and performance right like we've got a pyramid that's health and function at the bottom like healthy health is just not being ill basically just being being able to function at an optimum level and then functions being able to react react and adapt to whatever life or sport or whatever throws at you and then the performance is like actually executing on everything underneath yeah and you can take those three boxes and you know you're kicking goals yeah so you know see where it's headed that's probably it it's just figuring out how we
can do that what we're doing currently and more capacity yeah yeah it's exciting definitely and there's so many areas in which you can work on like that's the worst part so instead of making decisions and have a crack and if stuff doesn't work just yeah you trying yeah exactly that's interesting yeah but um shameless plug tell me about this yeah we're doing a gin thing yeah if anyone follows me on social media they would be annoyed at me talking about gin again but drops of juniper is our is our gin thingy we just had a
we just had a little nip which was delicious was it yeah it was incredible just fuel the fuel the boys a couple years ago started talking about talking about gin and enjoying gin on a Monday and then it kind of snowballed from there I got involved and we started talking about what the industry was missing around like good quality tonics and a good quality gin and tonics already prepared and stuff and it just kind of fast-forwarded snowballed a little bit from there and we've got a couple of podcasts coming out that we'll talk about a
little bit more detail but a couple other guys got involved and now drops of juniper is a thing and we're gonna have probably by the time this definitely by the time this episode is out we're gonna have a thousand liters in bottles well all branded up ready to go yeah so it's um it's crazy that's actually a thing that I've got a bottle of it in front of me and so do you go for a swim in it or something before it gets bottled? I don't know if that'll work. I don't know if that's preferred.
I'll probably I don't know we'll do something cool it'll be a it'll be a pretty cool moment to actually get our first run of bottles and a contract distilling with the legends and alchemy distillers at the moment but the plan is to have our own distillery and set up and and bar and etc sometime in the next year or so yeah cool it's a cool little side project it's taught me a lot about transferable skills yeah things that I do at Virtus that helps with this and just the the power of a couple of cool
ideas and then actually taking action on it how you can turn an idea into an actual thing really quickly we've been less than 12 months and yeah we'll have a bottle soon yeah so yeah the uh the freshest new morning to a potential gym yeah so gym sorry to cut you off is it like vodka that's name being so is it so it's a juniper base spirit so you can or you can use whatever spirit you want a base spirit so the gray spirit grain spirit but then what makes gin gin is the juniper so
cuz I've a gin to be gin it has to have juniper in it and juniper is juniper is a little I think the berries okay it's a really I really should know that so it's like little black little black black black berries so yeah so it's like a it's an infused spirit with this juniper yeah and then whatever sort of other things you'll flavor with so like kombucha how you put lemon rind and different things in it yes whatever botanicals you want it so like ours is pretty heavy heavy heavily citrus with a lot of
orange in ours it's a really basic gin we've heard but there's a bit of spice in as well like you probably taste the cinnamon damn a bit in there and we want it to be something that here's the problem with gin right and this is someone who had knew nothing about gin two years ago is that if you get a really floral a botanical gene botanical heavy gin and you put it into what most people do just Schweppes tonic yeah the shitty tonics will overpower the taste of gin and you go this is disgusting yeah
sure so we wanted to make a gin that any idiot could pour it into a bottle into some Schweppes tonic and it's really good and I think we've done that I think we've we've made it we've kept it simple we will do the fancy florally crazy taste stuff down the track yeah but for the first run we just wanted it to be a good quality basic basic gin and yeah I think I think we've nailed it sort of like an idiot proof gin that's exactly I'm currently rolling through a blog of yeah how how to
make you need proof yeah that's been a word we've used we wanted to make an idiot proof gin yeah you should have got my mom to test it yeah product testing I'm send a sample to your mom yeah all right that sounds good yeah so that's just a little you know another little project yeah it's all based around the same stuff like connection community yeah I guess having a crack yeah and then seeing what happens like you know we might sell 20 of actually well already sold over 100 pre-sale which has been really cool but
we might not sell anymore yeah and this could fall in a hole and still be an awesome experience so hopefully that doesn't happen it becomes a big thing but yeah but even the guys like the fact that you've got that bird community around you you've got these guys you're doing it with yet they'd have communities and I understand so all your early adopters will no doubt get on board and and and buy the gin hopefully because again it's bigger than just a gin product yeah and like it and it's simplest essence it's like six little
guys having a crack at something that luckily it's yeah I'm really proud of how much work we put in but also how quickly it's actually come together yeah it's exciting and the jetty rug guys in them shout out so grants morning mission mentioned you to him yeah you said I fuel the common folk boys a lot of the common folk boys James from for pause who will be on this this podcast very soon but yeah just cool guys like idiots trying to make your proof things basically oh that's the best ones to know I don't
say pretty cool yeah what are you most proud of most proud of probably I think helping people like when you when you're helping people and making a change like I I would used to I was seeing a lady at the gym she was coming in for um for a pay and initially she was able to she was able to claim it through DVA and this and that but again it was it was so basic it was we'd we were trying to do a different exercise and strengthen her and get all these functional outcomes but in
the end we ended up spending half an hour doing stretching yeah and even that basic stretching she was getting a massive benefit of because it was releasing hip flexors or was taking strain off her lower back or whatever it was and and so she saw massive benefit in that and unfortunately it got to the point where DVA tighten the strings so much that we weren't able to get funding for it I wasn't essentially getting paid but I said well it's to me I was getting I was probably getting more out of it than she was
yeah because I enjoyed seeing her and helping her and doing those things so yeah the thing I'm most proud of is being able to do that like having those skills that I've learned that you can benefit other people's lives and that's that to me is a big thing yeah it doesn't take much to improve someone's quality of life yeah there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that we can yeah we can kind of jump on to and whether it's exercise or gin or or protein like there's so many different things that can improve someone's quality of
life and if it doesn't and it's worth as white gold Oh smiling at people saying hi I'm being polite like saying thank you for something like that such so basic yeah never start full of generous impulse yeah that's sick yeah second question yeah what are you most confident about confident probably I can be quite confident confident versus on bordering on arrogant you can get this about pattern synonyms I think yeah so probably with them sporting things like I've probably done a lot of different sporting things I've developed good skills in those areas so yeah I
can get quite arrogant confident should I say well yeah if you're not sort of um big noting yourself then I think it's confidence is probably more internal yeah and if you know that you're okay it's like yeah exactly you got the self-belief so I like in a lot of areas I can be quite shy or reserved like I'm I know that I'm like you got to know your limitations and I know I'm I'm not very confident with sales and things like that but it's like put me out on a golf course or kicking a football
or something like yeah I will be confident yeah so that's that's probably the areas I'm confident yeah what am I most excited for probably the next couple of months really I'm very excited about what I can create personally that's that's something I'm personally looking forward to yes that challenge can I develop MHA to a point where it's self-sustaining where I'm able to live off it where it's able to benefit other people where I can I know like I see developing a community like you've got where I can go oh hey like Dave he's just lost
his job come and work with me come work at MHA and you know do this and we'll create it together and and keep growing and coming out with creative ways to to benefit people's lives or to create value for people so that's all I'm really looking forward to so what are you happening yeah that's a nice happy people get around you and MHA and how can I buy some protein and sure we'll talk about some sort of energy going forward sounds good pump it um so obviously our website my health addiction calm down I use
so we've got a lot of so by the way yeah look at it yeah oh lovely if you didn't Google search it did you we had some areas coming up on the Google search for some reason it's working yeah excellent um yeah so via the website obviously we've got products there we we do have a sample where you can try the product and we'll send it out to you so two bucks and we'll send send to your product if you are in the morning to mention oh we're pretty local so we were happy to drop
off stuff um we are looking for stock us at the moment so if you've got a health food store or you're looking to a stock at a gym or something like that then obviously that'd be cool but then Facebook my health addiction Instagram my underscore health underscore addiction yeah so people can follow us there or or you can contact us by email it's color my health addiction dot comes out of you good and it's all emails to be sent to protein God protein yeah I'll probably drunk on her on that yeah few junipers mate thank
you very much coming on it's been absolutely all right it's been great to the being you press the button again bang oh yeah (upbeat music)
