Special · Relaunch + Our 8th Birthday

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back to the Virtus Performance Podcast. Little special bonus, I guess, relaunch episode of the podcast today. We just hit our 8th birthday. Huzzah! What a time to be alive. But we haven't really celebrated it. And yeah, I thought I'd take the opportunity now to take 10-15 minutes, hopefully it's not any longer than that, to take a bit of a pause, bit of stock of how we got to this point. Thank a bunch of people because, as you all know, this place wouldn't exist without the wonderful people that inhabit it. The people that have been here that aren't here anymore.

And then I want to finish off with just a little bit of what we've got planned for the next 12-18 months and beyond and 30, 40, 50 years, who knows. So first of all, happy birthday to Virtus and everything that Virtus stands for, everything that Virtus is. It's pretty special eight years on to be able to come into a place and know that the original principles that we set out to build a business and a community on are still alive and going, but in a way that I guess has evolved and has transcended what our initial goals and plans were.

It's pretty crazy to look back at 2015, October 2015, when we first got keys to 1/2 Torque Terrace. I still remember the first time we came in here and it's maybe a bit big or maybe a bit too expensive or a bit more than what we want, but when we saw the space and saw out the back and saw where it was and what part of the world we wanted to be, it was a no-brainer and essentially there's been many ups and downs over the last eight years, but we haven't looked back. So to Jesse and Soph and Katie and Cam, the original coaching crew, thank you.

Thank you for contributing to this place in a way that's immeasurable and I won't sit here just naming names for the next 20 minutes, but you guys were pivotal in getting this place up off the ground, but every staff member, every intern, every contractor, every physio, myo, every person that has viewed this place as a workplace or as a place to learn and be educated, thank you for putting your trust in me and in us to help you do that. It's just crazy eight years on to think about how many lives, how many professionals have

been impacted by this place and I guess the biggest, most immeasurable thank you goes out to our members, every member that we've had along the way. I was trying to do some numbers the other day, but we're essentially thousands of members in over the eight years. We obviously started out very different to what the gym looks like now. For those that are relatively fresh or relatively new to the community, this place started out very heavily like one-on-one based coaching. Essentially, Jesse and I saw and felt a gap in the market around quality coaching, quality training.

There was the PT models and then there was the cross-fits or the big high intensity group trainings and we saw this gap spending time at many different elite and sub-elite environments. We saw the gap of high quality strength and conditioning for the general pop and essentially that was our jam. We started out very heavy one-on-one, introduced our group training which originally was called healthy bodies because we didn't like the way the group training was ran and then essentially over the course of what is now eight years, which still blows my mind that it's been that long, over the course of eight years, we've tinkered and tweaked and adapted our business model, our coaching streams, the way we coach.

We've evolved and updated and introduced new coaching and life principles to the way we go about our business and essentially got it to the point where it is the way it is now, which I guess you could argue it's a semi-private coaching model that has two coaching streams. One's our group training, one's our athletic development but at any time on the floor everyone is connected in one way, shape or form. They're going at their own pace, they're doing what they need to do and essentially now the goal for our programs and our sessions is that

everyone comes in and can unequivocally be who they are and they can express who they are but then also chase that place on the other side of their current capacity to find ways to improve and to become a better human and to feel, act, look, believe, behave better like the ultimate version of yourself. It's really cool now to be able to look back at each of the steps and evolutions. Don't get me wrong, I look at our system now like man we should have done that five, six, seven, eight years ago but I think as a business and as individuals you kind of have to work through those things to get ready to be that and to do that.

I've got a timer going on my laptop so I'm just making sure which I realise is probably unnecessary because there's one there but anyway. So to everyone that's contributed in one way, shape or form to Virtus over the years, a little throwaway line I've used is it's not Virt me or Virt you it's Virt us and I think that's been exemplified by the quality of people that we get into this place. This place for many years for a long time has been bigger than me but it's so much bigger than me now. It's nice to

be able to come in and just see the place running and humming along and people getting after it and people doing what they can to get better and to contribute to themselves and community and things like that and to be able to do it in a way that allows everyone to level up together is pretty wonderful. So yeah, we cannot thank every single member that's come through this place, come through these doors whether you've been here a week or you know eight years which there are a handful of guys and I'm so proud of them as individuals but us as a community, as a business to know that people want to stay here for eight years.

It's a pretty phenomenal feeling and a pretty phenomenal place to be and to be able to do that with people of all walks of life. I love the fact that we can have AFL players in here, we can have we can have mums, we can have grandmas, we can have teenagers, we can have you know professionals, we can have people who are retired, people with students all training in the same space at the same time all getting what they need. It's a pretty special feeling and yeah I cannot wait to see how this place continues

to evolve if you if you'd ask me like I've got a few I guess five three five-year plans that we've done over the years that you know we did a big one in obviously at the start and then did a big one in 2019 and and then that whole COVID shmazzle kind of happened and adjusted what we wanted to do or where we wanted to take the place and people would always ask us you know are you going to move somewhere bigger or are you going to open another one or things like that and I

think the the answer kind of posts that soul searching soul searching time was probably just no for now we just want to get as good as we can get at being this size and find ways that we can service our community service our athletes as well as possible and essentially we're on it we're still on the journey with that we are so far from finish it's not funny I know we'll never be finished which there's part of me part of me that hates that but the the rest of me loves it because I know I

can come to work every day and look at the space and look at the people and talk to the people and kind of go all right how do we make this place better today and yeah essentially you know for for me all the best things in life come from compound interest and this place is is a living breathing entity of that it allows us to show up smile make a difference and then keep showing up day in day out and to do it in a supportive connected uh loving community it's it's um it's brilliant so

yeah so this place essentially was built on the foundation of of excellence which obviously for for those that speak latin which I assume is most of you uh vertice is latin for excellence um and the connotations of of excellence character and courage are kind of our our three I guess you call them brand pillars or pillars that we started with um those those pillars have probably evolved a little bit over the years to to be education community and performance which you know essentially uh a different way of saying the same thing um and for those

that don't know the three lines in our vertice v in the logo um mean those three things so um so yeah we we essentially wanted to create a space where people could be their best and chase their best and excel in not only in the gym and I think that's probably one of the things that has stayed stayed consistent and stayed super important to me and to to our team is that what we're doing here is such a small part of our existence as humans we want to be able to and I'm big on the

way you do one thing is the way you do everything so if we if we're able to build capacity in in one area of our life and it might be it might be in our health it might be in our training it might be in our work career relationships whatever it should and ideally will transfer or translate to everything else we do in life um I believe wholeheartedly that everything we do is a transferable skill and everything we learn is a transferable skill so if you get really good at one thing it'll translate in some

way shape or form to the other um and yeah to know that this place keeps leaning on that is brilliant um I'm a I'm a big values values guy big quote guys most you would know by now um especially if you're listening to this um I'm two-thirds of the way through how long I want to go for so hopefully I don't keep talking too much but um post-covid and this is probably pretty important for the for the po for the where we're headed conversation post-covid a lot of the conversation was around like where do we

want to be do we want to shift more online do we want to be more in here and things like that and essentially the the outcome was to we want to be and these are two of you know the the key fundamental vertice values of people and place we want to be in a place that we love to be that we can be proud of that we can consistently grow and evolve and level up and we want to do it with people that want to be a part of it that love it that but also

people that we feel an innate connection to people that we can go along with for the ride with um that we can be in part of the journey and and continually level up and evolve and grow together and those two values of people and place are essentially why you know they've been the the cornerstone of their every decision that I've made from a business sense in the last four or five years and they continue to be the cornerstone of every decision we make so so when we you know when we take stock of the last

eight years of the past and appreciate everything that's gone by we can do it with you know full hearts clear eyes and look forward to going okay well what do we want the future to look like and right now the future for me is looking pretty bright for for this place is looking pretty bright you know essentially I've got a young family now which is you know completely opposite or not the opposite but completely different to how my life looks when I first opened Virtus so you know I I've been growing up with this place

as well and figuring out how to run a real business and now there's there's a lot more at stake now which I love than there was when I first opened and then we when we first opened this space so essentially now the the driver to where we're going is around how do we continue to make this a place where we want to be where people that we want to be with want to come and that gravitational pull that Virtus has and has you know continued we've continued to develop over the years for me is one

of the most important parts of this it's not just having people through the doors it's having good high quality connected people through the doors and I think that you know the whether it's the values whether it's the the mission whether it's the um whether it's the space I guess they're all factors but for me it's the people that we attract are people that you know like I'll go home some days and chat to KP um I will certainly thank KP in a moment um and just talk about like the the new people that are joining

the human like a wonderful people um and you know I I think a lot of people um unfortunately so a lot of people go to work and they don't love what they do or they don't love the people they spend their time with or or they don't love the space that they're in um I can you know I won't speak for my staff but I can say for me um and I would like to think the rest of rest of our crew and and ideally the rest of our members is they come here knowing that

they're going to be supported they're going to be loved they're going to be challenged um and they do it in a way that you know is is ultimately connected um and it's it's this you know it's community it's the sense of one of the reasons why this place exists obviously the the growth and adaptation and getting better is is one part of it but then just the connection to community and and what that allows you to do in terms of connection with self for me is ultimately important so um we will keep upgrading the gym

we'll keep improving the gym floor the space the way we coach we'll keep learning around you know how to deliver the best programming and coaching experience that we possibly can um but ultimately every decision we make is built on how pardon me how can we can how we can make this place a place where good people want to be and want to spend the time and want to grow and grow with us um and I tell you what I am that excited for the future of this place um yeah it's brilliant so to our current

current staff to to mitch been here almost since the beginning greg same um to tyler jazz um georgia renee um to mum obviously she's been there since right at the beginning um and una it's yeah you're an incredible bunch of people with the vertice family is so damn lucky to have you um guiding them through through all of the good stuff um I am immensely excited for where this place is headed and for what we're going to do um and hopefully we're going to have the biggest sum we've ever had and hopefully we can continue

to grow and evolve and do good things and and transcend our current capacities but include all of the good stuff that's happened in the past because this is a wonderful place built by the wonderful people who inhabited it and I'm so proud um of everything we've done over the last eight years um and I think something you know I wanted to do this as an opportunity to like celebrate the wins because I think as a as a society we don't celebrate our wins whether big or small enough um so if you take nothing else out

of this 16-minute conversation then celebrate your wins and enjoy when things go well do so um lastly but um certainly not least um thank you to kp for keeping me sane over the last uh eight years and beyond um this place wouldn't exist in this shape or form without you and I'm so excited for you to to be spending a little bit more time and you and the girls spend a little bit more time in here over the over the coming coming months and years and hopefully the girls grow up and you know just uh

love spending time at this place so thank you cheers to you all keep doing amazing things and uh let's get this next season of the podcast up and running hey be amazing