S3E31 · Shane Scott: Creating Habits, Discipline & Routine

Welcome back. Another episode of the Virtus podcast season 4 episode 4, I believe. Sure. I'll take your word for it. We're very lucky today and very shocked, I would say, that Shane actually agreed to come on today. But Shane is our resident accountant, or one of now because you've been joined by the rest of the queue. I have. Or the original OG accountant. Shane works at Illuminate. Second. The Beak and the Beak was here first. Yeah, let's not get into that, shall we? Shout out Andrew Vennebeek. We're waiting for a return. Anyway, Mr Scott, Illuminate accountant, businessman, Mr Consistent, Mr Routine, which we're going to get into later, which he now knows about, which is horrifying.

Shane, give me a Shane Scott starter pack. What's in it? The starter pack. Well, hi, I'm Shane. As Mitch alluded to, I'm an accountant by training. I work for Illuminate, who's just down the road here. I'm lucky enough to walk about two minutes to work from Virtus, which is pretty sick. But you don't. I don't know. I should. I drive here, then I drive to work. Currently, I'm just shy of my 30th birthday, which is terrifying. But I'll be nicking off to Tassie for that sometime shortly. Spring chicken, mate? Yeah, spring chicken. Especially compared to you.

Hey, I'm sensitive about that. So I'm lucky enough to live with my partner, Soph, who's an absolute legend. Shout out to Soph. She's a social worker and is a much better person than I am. And share a house with her and our three-year-old border collie, who I love having our little unit of three currently. And even though there may be some kiddos in the future, not sure about that one yet. Furbaby first. We're happy with our furbaby currently. Outside of this place, I do a little bit of everything. I'm a massive nerd. And not in

the gamer space or anything like that, but I love to understand all things about computers and do a little bit of coding and that side of things. Which is a massive waste of my time because I don't do it for a living, but I enjoy it greatly. I've been known to do stupid things around my house, like make light switches or automated stuff, which much does Sophie's. Why does that not surprise me? The bane of her existence. And when a light doesn't turn on the house because I've broken something, she just sort of rolls her eyes and wonders why she dates me.

And yeah, I don't really blame her on that one. So I do a bit of that. I don't currently play any sport, which I think is probably a relatively rare thing for Virtus. I don't know. Weekend warrior? Weekday warrior, actually. I haven't been involved in any sport for probably about a year before code, where I just dropped out of domestic basketball. And so that means that for the most part, I just lift because I like lifting. You like getting punished by me every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. And I think the only other thing is I've been a member here since 2019.

Yeah, you're coming up on your four year badge, I think. Damn. You get a little key ring, you think. Do I? Yeah, you do. It's 1200 days. Yeah, the first perk. 1200 days, how does that make you feel? I'm terrified. I'm terrified to know how much I've spent here, actually. Let's not get into that. Because that's a horrifying number, I'm sure. That's fine. It's all worth it. You're an elusive character, meaning that you keep your cards close to your chest. What is one thing that people don't know about Shane that you wish you knew, that now you have a forum on the Virtus podcast to talk about?

One thing that people should know about me... That they might not think. We know you're a nerd. We know you're good with numbers. We know you're here all the time. That's a good question. I think at heart, I'm actually a bit of an emotional wreck, which is a really dumb thing. There's nothing wrong with that. But I love my mum to bits, but one of her not so great qualities is that she is a very feeling person, which is a great quality and not a great quality at the same time. And I very much inherited that from her.

So it means that... Look, if I even think about watching Iron Legend again, then the scene where the dog passes away... Oh, who'd you think it was the dog on the mountain? I'm a wreck. So the idea of watching any movie that features a dog is just a terrifying thought for me right now. So that's probably one thing. Yeah. And I've had lots of curiosity about this. And you won't believe me when I say this. You'll be like, "Oh, he's just making it up." Lots of people want to know about you, Shane. From the fact that they see you all the time and you just kind of keep to your own.

You're normally swearing at a barbell or throwing it clean on the ground because you can't get under it because you're incapable of... PB this week. Yeah, it was. It was. I looked. I saw. What was the PB for those playing at home? 92.5, which is getting close. What's going to get there first? Bench or cleans? Bench. Yeah, we're close. Bench is very close. 597? Yeah, 97.5. Yeah, so I've got... 2.5. Yeah, that's right. We'll do it. Couple of coffees. Couple of coffees. I'll get the ammonia salts out. That'll get you going. Yeah. What made you start it first?

Oh, that's a good question. That's two for two now. Yes. All right, look. Your problem ties up here, Shane. No, look. Quick diversion here. One thing that people don't know about me is that I'm a broken record. And so that means that I've got about probably tens less things that I say and I use them over and over again. I think we all do. I think I notice that a lot in here because clients that hang around me enough start saying some of the dumb shit that I say more often. So I'll probably take a few of those off you.

Yeah, well, I'll believe you there, Knackers. All right, Dad. Or Uncle. So to get back to where I started at Virtus, I started because I was currently training at Anytime in Somerville, which is nice anytime. It was great. I've been training by myself for probably since I was like 18, 17. And while I enjoyed doing that, I'd sort of stopped making progress and actually really didn't enjoy going to gym anymore. It was just something I did because I knew it was good for me and I wanted to maintain that fitness. Just jumping on a treadmill by the end from memory?

What were you doing? No. At the end when I was at Virtus, yes, I'd do some cardio there. But previous to that, I'd sort of do all the usual free weights and that sort of things. And I enjoyed that, but I wasn't making progress. I knew the basics, but I didn't enjoy programming for myself. I didn't enjoy being there by myself and driving myself forward. And one of the things that attracted me about Virtus is that I knew the people over here and I knew that they were similar in sort of values and that sort of thing to me.

And I liked the idea of starting with that. But the idea of basically rocking up and just having a program set that was tailored to what I wanted to do and then just doing it, was what really attracted me because at the end of the day, it's why I'm still here. That was a good one. My next question, what keeps you coming back? What keeps me coming back is that I really enjoy the style of training that we do here. But for me, what keeps me here in particular is at the end of the day, I can rock up and each day I'm challenged.

And it's a constantly moving challenge that for me is really important, but the key thing about it is I don't have to think about it. And so for me, I rock up without fail three times a week. I won't even look at my program before I rock up. Unlike lots of people. And then whenever I will do my warm up and then the second we get into Block A, I discover what's in Block A and I do it. Clean. Fuck. Correct. In Block A, B and C. I think, and the topic that we're going to get into later, which we'll touch on briefly now, and this has actually come from the people.

I didn't know what I wanted to actually talk about from a topic point of view. So if you don't know, as you're not a seasoned listener of the Virtus podcast, the topic for. Oh, sorry. The reason for season four is with getting to know people, but then also giving a topic that not necessarily the people that know the person on the podcast can learn from X. So, for example, Tess and I spoke about ACLs and injury prevention in general. George and I spoke about being a teenager during Covid. Obviously, a pretty good insight into that. And for Shane's topic is going to be on discipline and creating routine.

So you are a very structured man. Where does that come from? The structure, me being quite structured. It comes from me being me, which is a really dumb way of saying that a lot of the things I picked up in life are built around of how I think. So I naturally try and understand certain things, but I also naturally try and structure a certain way. And so that's, you know, most people look at what I do for a living and say, oh, accountant. Yeah, that makes sense. And that is one of those things like for me, accounting, unlike some other things, is actually quite easy.

It fits really well into my brain. And so doing the sort of the structure and the rhythms and that sort of things and sort of putting that into that sort of habit and second nature stuff. Just fits really well with my brain. I think I'm really lucky in that respect. It does mean that like I fully admit that there's certain things that are more difficult for me and how I think. And it's one of the things that I'm really grateful for Soph and I and our relationship, because she's a lot better at that. We compliments each other really nicely in that respect.

But yeah, I think for me, it just comes down to I've picked up the habits that I have in a way due to the way I think. And then I sort of reinforce them by just continuing to do them without fail. It's a nice little teaser into what's to come. But before we get into that, how did you get into accounting? So what made you pick accounting? Because someone who's quite literal and literal and logical and normal can do a bunch of different things. Well, what was attractive about accounting? Accounting was attractive because I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Do any of this. So I was in high school, did not have much in the way of ambitions, but I was good with numbers. I was good with sort of fairly logical tasks. Wanted to do something. Typically, when you're looking at like you like a lot of the finance being a nerd and structuring like how computers work and all that kind of garbage. You're allowed to get into it. No, absolutely not. No, I will. I'll go straight past that. Hey, I used to build my own PCs through back in the day, so I can relate. I definitely did that.

But no, I've played tech support for pretty much everyone I know for ever since I was 16. I don't think I'll ever escape that. But for me to get into accounting, it was purely just a case of I'm good at these skills. And to be honest, accountants are really employable. It doesn't matter if I wanted to work for a gym or if I wanted to work for a bank, if I want to work for that. Everyone needs those people. And so it was literally just me taking a bet on the idea that, look, I actually don't know what I want to do.

But if I had this skill set, I can go anywhere. Did you grow up down here? Yeah, I grew up in Somerville. And had always come from there like family has always been local or? Families always been local. Yeah. What was I mean, what was like little Shane like? That's a good question. Little Shane was quite different to me. And there's definitely glimmers of how I was when I was younger today, but I was quite a shy, nervous, quite reserved kid. I'm definitely still reserved, but I didn't really come out of my shell until I went to uni.

So I meant for most of sort of being young and sort of primary school and high school, I was I was never outgoing. I was never sort of taking chances or risks or getting to know lots of people like I had my crowd and I stuck to them. And while like all of my friends at high school were great, there was a case that I had a close knit crowd of friends. I didn't really sort of explore much outside of that because I was quite reserved and not not the most socially confident person. Is there a reason for that?

Like looking back or in hindsight, like what made you be socially comfortable, but not comfortable? Branch out, if that makes sense. That's a good question. And if you've had time to reflect, if not, you better hurry up. So my funnily enough, one of the things that's one of the things about me is that I often don't take too much time to reflect on that kind of stuff. And that's because a general trend so far of season four is haven't had time to reflect. So now's the time. I am at the end of the day being a relatively practical person.

If I'm not, if I don't think I'm going to receive value or find meaning in that, I don't necessarily care about reminiscing about it. So don't get me wrong, I'm super grateful for where I am today and I wouldn't change any of that. But do I need to find a cause where I am today or find meaning in that? No. Yeah. No, I'm with you. Because I echo that in very much your high school, not that anyone will believe this. I was actually quite socially comfortable in the way that I didn't branch out. I had

lots of people that I knew similar to now, but had my own little group of people that looking back, I was comfortable and didn't really want to get out of my shell to an extent as well. So I relate to that as well. Looking back, it's not something I would change. And as lots of people will say, this this place changes people. So like me starting at Virtus nearly seven years ago now, like that's when I probably came out of my shell a bit. And no one would believe me that I'm naturally a pretty good introvert.

Like I can sit at home for all day and just not talk to anyone and be quite comfortable. But obviously being here, it's a different hat that I put on, I would say, that forces me to be extroverted and loud and put on punk rock Disney and all sorts of other things. So I can relate to that. What do your parents do for work? So my dad is a logistics consultant, which is really it's a really there it is. Yeah. It's a bit of a wanky way of saying this. He is responsible for he's basically a really smart person about managing warehouses and stock movements and that kind of thing.

He works for Pioneer Electronics for a long period of time. So the ones that make car stereos and plasma TVs and stuff like that back in the day. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So he's done that. He's a big reason for why I sort of pushed into the business world and sort of fascination with technology and stuff. Yeah. And my mum is probably the biggest diehard mum you'll ever meet. She's she's very much always looked after my brother and I to the best of her abilities. And she's also poured herself into her work. But when she had my brother, she left her career in banking and sort of had different jobs over time in intervening years.

And she's always poured her heart into them, but never sort of continued on with a career outside of outside of that. What's what's something growing up that you did with your parents that you remember and it was something that made up kind of what you was like your identity as a kid. So this is one of those instances that I like looking back at how I grew up. Like there's definitely moments that sort of made up sort of what I did. And I remember doing all the junior sports and stuff like that, which I was overall rubbish at.

And I enjoy doing that and like, you know, the weekend sort of soccer trips and playing for Baxter Soccer Club, which we were terrible. We got thrashed every weekend. I don't know if that was great for my character or confidence. I come at this from a direction of like a lot of people that come through Virtus and a lot of people that I know are quite sporty and athletic and that's what they identify as. But knowing someone that didn't play sport necessarily all the way through childhood, like just what does that look like? So so for me, like like a lot of teenagers, I played a lot of Call of Duty, very good at it, too good at it.

And some of the stats when I was doing that, it's absolutely terrifying. I can also echo that. So I did a lot of that, but I also did like a lot of hanging out with my sort of mates at the time, like we would just do the usual dumb stuff. But instead of being sort of super obsessed with sport and that sort of thing, it would be more like, oh, let's let's go ahead and we'll build this random thing or we'll go try this or whatever. So it's not, I don't remember, I definitely did play my sport and I was, you know, soccer training a couple of times a week and that kind of thing.

But by the end of sort of high school, I was playing a bit of basketball and then just push, push through high school and seeing mates and all the usual stuff. Yeah. And I wouldn't say knowing you enough and well enough, I wouldn't say you identify as someone who plays sport necessarily. You're a sporty person that doesn't play sport. You are moderately athletic now. Yeah. Thanks. Hey, come on. You make people in awe when you do some jumping downstairs. Let's be real. You're allowed to pump your thighs up here. Yeah, look, I'm pretty proud of where that's gotten to.

Exactly. No, I wouldn't identify myself as a sporty person, but I identify myself as an active or relatively outdoorsy person. Yeah. What about that do you enjoy being active and outdoorsy? So for me. Well, how does it start? For someone who didn't naturally really love sport or naturally wasn't necessarily greatly talented and wanted to do it as a career, what drives you to be healthy? What drives me to be healthy? Or whatever term you want to put on that. So there's a couple of things. So one being sort of a bit of an outdoorsy person today, I very much owe to getting to know Soph and how much she enjoyed that side of things.

Growing up, I never went camping or anything like that. It was always like, you know, very structured holidays and you go somewhere and stay in a hotel, which was great. But one thing I have come to appreciate growing up is like getting outdoors and doing that. I think for me, what I like, why I enjoy it is purely how different it is to doing what I do for a living and doing what I like other things I enjoy. Like for me, like I sit down for I sit down all day standing desk, whatever, but I effectively stay still all day.

And I talk to people, I stare at a screen, I type numbers into boxes on tax returns and random stuff like that. And while there is a lot more to it and there's a lot of sort of like, you know, thinking and that all that sort of things at the end of the day, I'm stationary and I do that. And I'm very conscious of the effect that has on me, but also my mental health and physical health. And at the end of the day, by sort of keep me active both at Virtus and outside of Virtus, it provides a nice balance in my life where I get to do those things and enjoy those things.

Because I really do enjoy like the work side of things and the personal side of things. But getting outside and doing this and getting outdoors gives me an appreciation for both. What's it like when you know you've had a 12, 14, 16 hour day at times, literally looking at your computer and I come at this from an angle of one COVID. Because obviously we couldn't gym and we didn't have necessarily all the outdoorsy things or we couldn't get away as much as we like to. How do you know that has an effect on you and what does that kind of look like for you?

So I like a lot of people that do that kind of thing, like you walk away with sore eyes and that's a thing. Do they work? No, I do. Some people they work, but fortunately I sleep okay. How do I know how that affects me? I know for me in all honesty, one, my energy levels fall through the floor and then two, my overall mental health also deteriorates. And so at the end of the day I firmly come to believe that I'm not a religious person by any means, I'm as atheist as it comes. But I firmly believe that we're not designed to sit down and think all day where effectively our bodies are built to be moving.

And a lot of the way that our hormones work and all of that stuff is built around the idea that we're moving each day. So if we're going to sit there all day it's going to have an effect on our body. And for me I notice that because it's part of the reason that I try and stay active is to counteract that. What if you get to the end of the day and let's say it's a, what day are you doing your gym here? Thursday. Let's say it's a Thursday and you've just got 14 hours on the laptop, what's a strategy you use to get yourself to do something after work?

Or are you happy just going, yeah, let's just get through to Friday, go home, have a nap? You feel like you need to do something every day? I need to do something every day. What's that look like if you don't get the opportunity to spend an hour and ten here? So for me I'm really comfortable that if I'm not training I don't need to be doing something hard, I just need to do something. And so fortunately having a three year old border collie, that sort of takes care of it. You get home and you've got a cute dog sort of looking at you saying can we go for a walk?

And that makes it a bit, sort of makes it easier. And for me having that sort of expectation works but the second part to that is leaving work, you're always thinking, you're always on the spot and often you don't get to finish everything. You never get to finish everything. What did you say when you got here today? I left a giant pile of metaphorical shit on my desk. I wasn't sure if you were talking about Ollie or some paperwork so I just had to clean that up. And so at the end of the day you've

got all these things that are sort of like unreconciled in your brain that are seen there and you just have to be aware that when you go home you don't automatically release that. Some people are lucky enough to be able to do that well but I don't and so for me the way that I do that is I go do something and that's just a case of whether I go for a walk with Ollie and listen to a podcast or whether I get out on the bike or something like that but I generally get outdoors away from the screen and do that.

It's very much, throwing back to a talk I heard years ago which I'm not going to be able to reference but the idea of a third space where effectively you go home but before you enter your home life you go into a third space where you can transition and that will take time. Does that look like on the way home or is that you need an exit space so what I mean by that is are you leaving the workplace going I can clear my mind of work or are you getting in the car still thinking about work and then having to switch your brain into home life?

How do you decipher between the two so coming from a place of people struggle to leave work at work and bring stuff home knowing that you are someone who one really values their job and highly cares about their job but is also highly invested that sometimes it's hard to switch off from work like how do you justify the two? And I know this is something you struggle with. Yeah I'm far from perfect and while I definitely have my own strategies to be better at it I don't do it completely and if I'm having a stressful period of time at work I will notice my ability to train here but also my ability to focus on home life.

It's just a practicality of caring about what you do and working in an industry which has its ups and downs like any workplace. But for me a drive home does help with that but for me it physically has to be doing something. It can't just be sitting there and letting stuff clear your mind I have to be doing something and so whether a done thing is just like playing Xbox for half an hour great or going for a walk or jumping on the bike it has to be doing something it can't be just passively sitting there and waiting.

It's funny you say that because I feel like I get in the car and switch off. One of the things I actually valued living further away from work is the drive was just nonchalant time and you know the age old adage when you're driving down Merida Highway and you've gone through four roundabouts you're not really sure how you went through four roundabouts whether that's healthy or not maybe not but that's for someone who is able to separate their worlds I feel like different to you which is why I really want to talk about it. Because

I can go into that place switch off get home and then do extra work and for me having to take work home sometimes and Shane goes I'll have my shoulder to muscle ups can you fix this not that you ever do that but being able to separate the two environments sometimes I struggle with but I know for you exactly what you're talking about you have you know you take your dog for a walk Ollie and we're going to get into that in a minute it's one of the favourite questions of the people and I'm sure you can guess who.

I know exactly who asked that. You know exactly who it came from. It's something that I really value that you do is be able to go home and do an activity that switches you off and that you can leave work at home even though sometimes you don't like to and you work sorry leave work at work when you get home even though you don't like to. Yeah I think like while I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home when I can and especially being 15 minutes from work like a drive whenever I can

I try and come to work because the idea of having two spaces where I've got a home space in a workspace makes it so much easier for me to switch off. I'm very conscious of when I do work from home. It's very rare that I can completely let go of it. I'm sure I would get better with that if I was able to work full time from home but I know for me right now that if I want to be able to go to work do my work and then I got home and do home stuff.

Best way to do that is to literally have two physical spaces. It's interesting you talk about physical spaces because I'm thinking I'm just trying to relate some of this to like my life as well as I have my spaces in my house as well as different spaces like I have my like my console set up my monitor and stuff at my desk which is where I also do work but also if I sit on the couch and I'm not going to any of it. It's just an interesting reflection going I think I justify those two spaces again whether that's good or not.

Maybe not. Well my my home desk is also like a fun space. Yeah, like so in a day like computer nerd at work computer nerd at home. And so like I'm like oh let's like I'm going to try building this thing and so I'll sit there on my personal laptop and do that and that's the same spot I also work from at home. Yeah, so it's not to me that is also a sort of a fun space and therefore it means when I sit there and try and do work. I'm constantly able to push myself to focus whereas I don't struggle with that at work.

Yeah, interesting. Let's talk about your dog Ali. Sure. How do you train your dog so well? Consistency. Yeah. What's that look like? And how'd you learn how to do that to actually because a lot of people struggle to train a dog. They love the idea of a dog but forget that you still need to train them. So I was, have you ever heard the idea that if you're, people describe this better than I'm about to, but have you ever heard the idea that if your parents are like really obsessed with something or really bad at something then often you'll counteract that by trying to be really.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. So I love my parents' dogs a bit but they are not the best trained dogs you'll ever meet. And I know from, you know, speaking to people and doing the usual YouTube and all of that to look at trained dogs that in the day it's less about the specific way whether you use treats or toys or praise or discipline on that side of things. Consistency is what teaches dogs. And it's the same thing as teaching people but with dogs it's more straightforward and so for... Why not necessarily sometimes? A little bit, yeah.

And so at the end of the day for me teaching only being a relatively structured person I was lucky enough to make cool. Set the structure and just keep doing it. And even though you get stuck just keep doing it and eventually it will pay off and although it sucks and you get three nights in and you're sitting there crying holding this puppy that's trying to tear you to shreds you just have to be, you have to trust the process. Do you take Ollie into work most days? I take him in once a week. Once a week, dog day?

Pretty much every day is dog day at Illuminae but one day is Ollie day. What day is Ollie day? Typically Tuesdays are Thursdays at the moment. He didn't come in today because Pip was in but maybe Thursday, maybe next week. Who's the Illuminate favourite dog? Clearly Ollie. Clearly. Unfortunately, look, historically we would say but there's been a recent contender being Rob Dogg and Rob Dogg is a very energetic GSP and he's just an all round enthusiastic doggo. Yeah, gets you up hey? Yeah he does. He'll also bowl you over if you're not careful. Yeah I can relate to that on another level that's for sure.

What's a day off look like for Shane? What do you like to do? Just diverge a little bit here. Just give your brain a rest. A day off for me is, in the very boring sense, a very slow day. I love that. Get up, take the dog out for a walk down to the local coffee shop, sit there and typically sip on some cold brew for about an hour. Which local? Harlem in Somerville. Oh good coffee. I've been there a few times. I house-sitted just around the corner from that actually. Yeah they're really good and so we've got some of our owners and they're lovely.

So it depends, like if Soph's around we'll hang out but if not I'll walk Ollie down there, I'll sit there on my laptop and I'll find something that I'm like oh let's try this dumb thing and I'll try and connect this thing to this thing and then realise that there's a reason people don't do it because it's too hard. Sounds like Excel. No, no it's weird. Typically just pretending I'm a coder and then realising that I don't do it for a living so I should stick to the simple stuff. Doing that kind of thing and

then cruising home, cooking up some food and then like I've actually just genuinely enjoyed since buying a house is actually just getting out in the garden and doing stuff like that. Oh you're getting old boy. You're getting old. I'd be lying if I said I haven't been made fun of a lot by Soph for making comments about oh it'd be nice if we could get those weeds out and all that kind of stuff so it's bad. Yeah I act like a 39 year old at 29 so. I mean I'm not that far behind you so I feel ya.

How did you and Soph meet actually? I think we've been together now. Soph and I have been together 7, it'll be 8 years in August. We met at the Summer World YMCA. I was a member there at the time and I've been training with some mates there for a while and Soph was the receptionist. There you go. So I chatted up the receptionist. Actually I think Soph actually chatted me up so I'm not sure how that feels about I know Virtus has got very strict rules on dating members. So I have very strict rules on that but let's not get into that.

But no so Soph and I got to know each other from that and I think at the time it was just a very, at the end of the day we just enjoyed each other's company. We got along, we were joking around and sort of very common values to be honest. What are they? I know she's going to listen to this too. I know she'll probably listen to this. I think in general a big one for me is it doesn't matter what you believe in, just be a kind person. For me being humble is above pretty much all things.

At the end of the day there's nothing wrong with being confident in yourself and being proud of what you do. But doing it in a way where one, you're aware that everyone else is amazing in their own way but two, you're not pushing others down. Being aware of that. I think those are sort of like two big things that I sort of like always think about when I'm interacting with people. Like at the end of the day I never want to be that sort of chauvinistic person. At the end of the day I just want

to be that kind of person where I'll enjoy each other's, like other people's company but I'm never going to be that person that's like, look at me. And it's one of the reasons that instead of having a party for my 30th I'm going to nick off to Tassie. You couldn't pick anywhere more perfect either. Correct. Middle of nowhere in the mountains. Yep. What's, I was actually, I wanted to talk about travel. What have you travelled? Have you ever done a bit of travel? Been lucky enough to do a few things. I went to, back in the day I went to Bali and went to Australia's holiday house and I don't really remember much of that trip.

It was a bit of fun at the time. Do you want to talk about that or? Not really, no. I did actually get scammed at the airport which was a good learning experience for me. Go on then, tell us. In short I got off the plane and I'm not sure if it's still a thing at Bali but there's a bunch of people that sort of are addressed as people that suggest they're security or suggest they're police. Yep. They're not security, they're not police. They've been to Bali. But they will very certainly grab your bags and start dragging them towards the exit.

And this is something that I think the security there or the police there just let happen and they'll walk you all the way through the exit and then won't give you your bags back unless you pay them. Yep. So anyway, I learnt that at a young age and look, I'm better for it now. So that was a thing. But for that, in more recent years, Soph and I did Vietnam probably 2018, 2016? Yep. That was wicked. Absolutely loved Vietnam. We'll go back there the second I can. Just lovely people. It's on my list I think. Well, I know it's on my list.

It's just getting there. Yeah, get there. It's just lovely people, especially if you love the food. Just going around and walking around and experiencing it. And everyone's just lovely as well. I don't think there's - you can't go everywhere in the world where everyone's just like really excited to meet sort of foreigners in a way. And so I think whenever we went places, particularly in Vietnam, like you'd meet people and they're just like, "Oh, Aussies!" And they'd be super excited. And as long as you were sort of like excited and intrigued to learn their culture, they'd be absolutely happy to have you.

Yep. So we did that. We did Japan a couple of years later and then we did Thailand a couple of years later after that. And loved all of those places and I just love South East Asia. Yep. I think in some places you've got the idea of the simpler life and in some places less so. But I really enjoy that sort of slower pace but also that more get out, explore, buy some dodgy food off the side of the road, try it, hope you don't get sick. Hope you survive. Look, I'm three for three on trips at the moment.

I'm okay. So it's going to happen to me next time but look, I've had some fantastic curries for about 25 cents and I'm going to keep trying them. Yeah, I love that. You spoke of next time. What's next time? Where would you like to go that you haven't? That's a good question. I think next, sorry if I don't discuss this, next is going to be Kiwi land, okay, New Zealand. I love New Zealand. It's my favourite. Oh, it's so beautiful. I love it. I haven't been three times now but with work. So I'm keen to go, not by myself but on a fun holiday.

Yeah, that'd be cool. So I'm excited for that. I'm not sure when that will be yet but maybe a next year thing, maybe the year after that. But I think just my goal is always to go to places where you can sort of get out, experience, I don't want to be like experienced nature and that kind of person. I'm definitely not that far down that rabbit hole but I just enjoy exploring like a lot of people and for me, I'm not, while I do enjoy exploring a city, for me it's more about trying to explore as much countryside and sort of forests and all that kind of as possible.

Because again, it comes down to that balance side of things for me. I think doing that stuff sort of recharges me and makes me more energised for the stuff that I do for work and the stuff that I enjoy. Out the elements, out of the office. You have to talk to Kat and Rach. I think they're back, not that this is going to matter, it's going to come out in a month but they're back tomorrow. So you'll have to get some tips from them and they'll tell you how to not hike in Berks, put it that way.

That's the story for next time. I've hiked in Thongs before and I don't recommend it. I'm not a Thong guy. I can't do it. It's not a bad thing. I just can't do it. I'm a close-shoe guy. That's fine. Probably too much so. It's not great if you're in Queensland and you're going snorkelling. I'd love to see that but I can't say I imagine. That's a very good thing. You want to talk work? After you've saved yourself. Let's talk work. I have to reach all that way to hear myself. It's very respectful. A lot of people just turn away and muffle in the microphone.

It doesn't work that way. We don't have mute switches either do we? No we don't. There's no foot pedals or anything here. Go on Wallace. I'll sort it out. We're getting a new camera actually. Damn. Apparently. It's exciting. Less iPhone filming. Great for my phone storage. Great for your phone storage and the battery. And the battery. I had to charge it before I came prepared. I made that mistake last time. What's a normal work week look like Shane? Great question. I say normal in quotation marks because not everywhere is normal. What is your role for starters?

What do you actually do at Illuminate? So you're an accountant but what does that look like? Great question. My title at Illuminate is a tricky one. All titles are made up. What is it? So my current title is head of tech and administration and that is the exact hodgepodge of a role as it sounds. But basically what that means is that right now I look after sort of Illuminate's technology. So I think everything from someone's computer but all the way up to the software we use, how we use it, how it connects to other things. And then I also look after our administration team.

On the side I do a bunch of sort of client support. So this is a lot of just like how do I do this in this accounting software? How do I get my payroll software to talk to this? I've got this point of sale that's spewing information here. How do I fix that? Do a lot of that kind of work. And then just a bunch of general helping to run Illuminate which is as for a business of now 20 people, maybe 21. That many? I didn't know that. Yeah it's a job. It's a job. And

we share it amongst the team and I'm really grateful for everything I get to learn from both the rest of the leadership team there but also everyone else I work with. But it's one of those things that's kept me on my toes and not something that I've been as fast as a learner. I'm typically a pretty fast learner but it's just been one of those things you just have to sort of churn it out and learn from experience whereas you can't sort of like dive into documentation and read it flat out for a day which I definitely do on other things.

Yeah. How has your role grown or developed since you started? What did you start in to end up what you're in now? So I was hired at Illuminate as an accountant. I was hired on the proviso that I would sort of help with our clients with like software and that kind of thing. So that was back in 2016 I think. Is this flat out like cold to apply for? So the job wasn't advertised. I just reached out to Andrew and I said hey I want a job and he was silly enough to entertain that. I don't think he's regretted it so far.

He's definitely regretted it at times but I think overall I'd hope that he thinks it was a good thing. I have to ask him. Has he been on the podcast? I think he might have way back in the day but it might be time for a refresh. I think lots of change to Andrew's world. Potentially. Love the guy. He loves to talk so I doubt you'll have an issue getting him on. That I know. But yeah so I started as sort of an accountant and I was very green at the time. I was only about two years into the industry.

And Illuminate taught me pretty much everything I know about what I do today. And so that's a lot of like bog standard how to tax returns but also went through and finished my CA just being an accounting certification. Did that at the time and worked through that over sort of the last I think for like the first two or three years. And so that means that yeah I went through and I learned how to work with you know tax returns and activity statements those sides of things. And so slowly worked my way up to picking

up more complex things, picking up more client relationships, picking up advisory and tax planning and all of these other things that go into being an accountant and Illuminate. And sort of at no point being super deliberate but sort of just like saying like oh this needs to be done I'll do it. I'll figure it out. And so a lot of opportunity that was just thrown my way which is sort of like blind confidence. Not necessarily confidence in myself but I say blind confidence from the rest of the crew. Just like oh Shane's going to work it out.

He'll work it out. He'll fix it. And that's very much to my detriment at times but it means that from where I started to where I am today like I often descend up fixing things. And that's incredibly broad and that's exactly where it is. But because I've been in Illuminate for a long time now I do I know how pretty much a lot of things work. I definitely don't know everything like it's impossible to know everything. But if something is not quite right or something's happened nine times out of ten I'll be like okay it's probably because of X, Y, Z.

And I'd like to think that brings a lot of how useful I do at Illuminate. And ideally I should do as little as that as possible because things work smoothly. But that's never the case in a small business. Yeah and I think that's the reason why you know you, myself, Tommy we all do the same thing at different businesses working for the same people. Yeah I think it's a role that I think we've been lucky enough to sort of run into each other in different businesses but obviously in a close vicinity. And you sort of realise that small businesses in different industries but at the end of the day it's the same shit everywhere you go.

And like own twists in every different business but I think especially from the privileged position I am in and getting to speak to a lot of business owners. You just sort of realise that we all go through the same problems and then think that it's special to us. And think that we've got to reinvent the wheel but whereas nine times out of ten someone's gone through this and even though it may not be the exact same it's close enough. You can just take their solution tweak it a little bit and roll with it and it may not be perfect but it would be good enough and good enough is what makes profitable businesses.

Is that, my question was going to be what's something you think or you hope business owners learn from or no full stop is that something that kind of relates back to that? Yeah so the big thing that I feel that most business owners, I wish most business owners knew but don't necessarily get to know is that it's effectively like you know what's in your bank account today is not necessarily what's yours. I think that's a very basic way of saying that like in your personal life nine times out of ten you've got money in your bank account it's up to you to spend it.

But in the business world you end up effectively looking after other people's money for long periods of time. That may be the ATO and you're looking after your GST or the amounts withheld from employees pay. Could be superannuation, it could be amounts people have paid you as a deposit. All these kinds of things which give you the impression that you've had made more money than you actually have. And then you have to be really wary about saying cool this is I've got this money it's in my bank account but it's not mine. And so therefore

even though it may look like I've made ten thousand dollars last month I actually made a thousand bucks because I've got to give all this money to someone else. And so it's being really wary about the idea of saying look just because you receive money doesn't mean it's yours and setting up systems to say how much money have I actually made because if you don't know that figure then ultimately you don't know if your business is viable and if you should just go get a job. What challenges does that present for business owners? What's the block that they can't see that then creates the challenge or the barrier?

The block is that they're not accountants and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Accountants we're a special brand in the respect that we're trained and we're built to do this. But at the end of the day for all accountants then we like no one will get anything done. I think there's a bucket load of value in what we do and I try and communicate that to anyone I can. But at the end of the day though like if everyone thought like an accountant we wouldn't have creatives. And that's not to say accounts can't be creative because that's definitely not the case but I don't mean that in the creative accounting sense but I'm going to regret those words.

See that partly went over my head but I know someone's going to bring that up to you. Someone will have a chuckle at that but I think at the end of the day like what working with small business owners and the great thing about doing that is that at the end of the day everyone will love something in particular and they'll really own what they do. And at the end of the day they should spend as much time and energy knowing that in and out as much as they can and just like by taking that and sort of knowing it so well that's what's going to generate value.

That's what's going to generate profit and all this accounting knowledge you need to know some of it. But at the end of the day you're there for a reason so do your day to day thing. And so it's about creating balance in people's lives where especially as a small business owner you need to know this stuff because you can't yet pay someone to do it for you. But at the same time being aware that you need to create value by knowing the core of what you do and learning just enough accounting to get you by until hopefully you get to the point where you can pay someone to do that and you can focus purely on what you're good at.

And I think, and Lachie will like me saying this, that was definitely one of his blocks starting and being here moderately close to the start that was always his challenge. He's not a numbers guy, he doesn't enjoy numbers, he hates the accounting side of things but now obviously we have an accountant that looks after all that stuff and I think that's very similar to what you were saying. Lots of people don't get into business to run the numbers. They get into the business because they're good at the day to day or they really enjoy it, they really value the day to day things and for us that's helping people make better decisions with their health and fitness.

Or creating better humans. For you guys it's helping businesses make better decisions around their money so they can be viable, profitable and then do exactly what we're doing which is help other people. I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy coming here and frankly by paying my hard earned dollars to be here. At the end of the day, while I appreciate that I'm in a position where I know a relatively good amount about training and I'm aware of a bunch of training techniques like the old 5x5 and all kinds of ones like the NSUNS method off Reddit which was massive for ages.

I know those things but at the end of the day it's not the core of what I do, I'm never going to understand as much of that as you and the rest of the team here do. At the end of the day, if I can afford it, it's in my best interest to say you know what, you know this better than me, I don't even need you to explain it to me, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I know you like that. You don't care what I give to you. No.

As much as you might hate some of it when you're doing it, you come here because it's a space where you don't have to think about it, you just get told hey Shane go do 5 muscle ups and then do 5 power snatches. It's a space where you get to progress and add value to your own life and leave the other stuff at the door. Which is I guess I would presume a lot of the reason why lots of people come here is I reckon a lot of our clients could go train themselves and be

competent at doing that because one, they've been either around enough or have self-developed enough to learn the skills that allows them to be able to train themselves but also this gives them a space to not have to do that as well. Yeah and to learn from others right, like if we were all just sort of standing around, no shade on any type of fitness but just a random gym that I was thinking of, like if we were all just standing around any type of fitness and telling each other what works for us, that's great. But

at the end of the day, we're not, like I'm not trained in that, they're probably not trained in that, they haven't gone through 3 to 5 years in university to know that and we don't know what we don't know. And so while I try my best personally to fully appreciate that while I'm lucky enough to know what I do about training and particularly around my own body, what works for me and what doesn't and you know maybe one day I'll be able to do an arse grass squat but probably never. Hey, hey, hey, we were pretty close.

At the end of the day, hello Banksy. Hello Banksy, I was waiting for your visit. Hey. Welcome back to the podcast. At the end of the day, I just don't know what I don't know and I'm perfectly comfortable with embracing that and saying at the end of the day, you and the team here do know far more and you won't know stuff and that's fine but I'm betting on the fact that you know more than me and for a bunch of other reasons that's a huge amount of value to me. I also don't think you're

going to give yourself 6 sets of sled rags and 10 sets of 10 bench and whatever other shit I throw at you on a day. I'm never going to do that. How does it feel to be the guinea pig inverter, Shane? Some day is great, some day is not so much. What's, and before we transition to our little topic here, what's like a day to day look like for you, work wise? Just like from an insider's point of view, what do you actually spend your day doing? And I know you're going to say no idea. I can see the look on your face going to that path but.

Look, usually I struggle to remember what I did yesterday and that's by no shade on what I do today. It means that often what I do day to day, I don't, like for example, quite often I would leave on a Friday and then on a Monday what I thought I was going to do that day is be thrown out the window. So you got 60 emails to reply. Because there's like a bunch of emails that's come in, there'll be a bunch of messages being flown around internally saying hey this has come up, we need to deal with this now, let's get it done.

But typically a day to day for me would be just like reply to a bunch of emails, go through, jump into a couple of clients accounts and say hey they've had this issue, here's how you fix it, record a loom video. You're in the loom, you love your loom. I. You have a love/hate relationship with loom. I have a good relationship with loom. I have to dig up the stats and send it through after this but my stats at Illuminate are like they're huge. I've recorded more than a thousand loom videos. I remember you telling

me this during COVID or maybe just coming back out of COVID of what you spent your day doing during COVID and I thought I could not do that. Yeah so I've got a lot of experience talking to camera. In particular while sort of like clicking around on the screen there's some hilarious loom videos of me from COVID where I'll be showing someone something and then I would see Ollie who was a puppy at the time like digging outside and I'd be like you little shit and run outside. I reckon you've showed me one of these and I can confirm they are proper funny.

Yeah and the professional more suited up accountant would have re-recorded that but I figured that was just funny for the person I was sending it to and I sent it through and they agreed. So for me that ends up like recording a couple tutorials, doing a daily stand up meeting with a team to circulate what we're doing that day and then typically between tech support, showing the team how to do certain things and delegating a bunch of tasks and then leaves a bunch of time to do a little bit of support in the team around accounting.

So like if a client's got a new inventory system and it's not working right and they don't know how this works I'll go ahead and jump into some docs and work that out. As of late though I've just been doing a lot of team management and so that means just working with the team to say look we need to get these things done, we need these things documented, writing a bunch of processes and that side of things. So actually very little accounting. Do you like that? I definitely enjoy doing that work. I think one of

my struggles is that I'm a person that could wear many hats and I enjoy the fact that I can wear many hats but it does limit my productivity. That was going to be my next question. What's a challenge you face? Challenge I... If that is one, what's another one you face? What's a barrier or a block or if I was to go to any of your staff what would they say Shane's block is or Shane's challenges? They would say two things. They would say two things. They would say one, Shane does a little bit of, he's a jack of all trades, master of none.

Master of a couple of things but for the most part master of none. They would say that's block number one and then two, I am a pathological saying yes to helping people kind of person, especially at work. So that means that if someone's like oh this is broken how do I work this out da da da da, nine times out of ten I'll drop whatever I'm doing to help them. And while I'm getting better at sort of parking that and coming back to it later, nine times out of ten if someone asks me for help even though I should be doing something else I'll still help them.

To give myself a little bit of credit I am getting better at that but for my history that has definitely been a blocker for me doing my own work. And typically while we quite often see this in the stats at work that you'll see a lot of people will note me saying I've helped them that day which is great and I really appreciate that feedback. It doesn't change the fact that I still haven't achieved my own stats and there needs to be a balance there. What do you see your role developing into? It's a good question.

Versus what do you want it to be? What are you thinking you're going to have to do versus what do you want to do? I was having this discussion literally an hour ago. Two hours ago. Where are you going for now? Okay. It wouldn't be much more. It would literally be an hour or twenty ago then. It was that recent. I saw you came in pretty stressed. I'm interested about this part. So right now my role at Illumate is one that we needed someone to look after a team and I'm good at it. I'm okay at it.

I'm a person I can work with people work with them to show them how to do something and get certain outcomes. But by me doing that and the other stuff that I do they get an okay manager and the rest of the team gets an okay person that does this sort of tech support sort of thing in accounting. So long term we don't want to be doing that and so it would mean that I'll step away in a perfect world. I'll step away from the day to day people management stuff and help where it makes sense.

And I sort of really lean into "Hey, Shane knows how to work with these systems. Let's use him to set up a bunch of new processes. Let's use him to set up a bunch of these things that will make our team more efficient, more organised and give better value, more value to our clients." And then once we're sort of comfortable that a lot of that stuff's been ticked off then we'll start again to do those same things for our clients and work with our clients to say "Hey, you've got X problem. How do we go about solving that?"

And obviously being quite linked to accounting but being quite linked to accounting in the respect of saying that we ultimately know what sort of transactions and what kind of efficiencies are going to help with your profit. In the day profit pays the bills and so doing that in a way where we can help people not just "Oh, this is how you do your books." But also "Here's how you implement this system which talks to your Shopify store and your Xero organisation so you can keep track of how much money you're making on this particular sale of this glass."

And at the end of the day a lot of people in small business actually don't know how much they're making on each unit or how much it actually costs them to put this employee on for this shift. And helping people make those decisions is something that I'm keen to push into more. What do you see as the most valuable thing that businesses, small or large, miss to start with that you have to bring their attention to? The most valuable thing? Yeah or something that you find quite valuable that a lot of people don't have to start with that's not necessarily your selling point but how do you add value?

That's a tough one. I'm not sure but is there like a topic or an area or a system or a process that you see highly valuable that you present to businesses and they go "Hey, this can change our world." That's a good question. I presume it's very different and adaptable based on the business too. It is. And this is one of those things where I'm lucky that each of us illuminate our own specialisations. And while I've got a bunch of stuff where I can jump in and help people fix issues, about having that sort of one piece of value that starts your business, that may not necessarily be my job.

I'm perfectly comfortable with that. But for me at the end of the day, the one piece of knowledge that people running small businesses need to sort of understand is that at the end of the day where you need to do that thing that makes you special. And just because you see people selling a coffee mug, you're like "Oh, I'll sell coffee mugs." Well at the end of the day, you're never going to make a bucket load of money out of that because that's already sort of like its own market. Whereas, using Virtus as an example,

I think there's a bunch of gyms out there, but doing it in the Virtus way is what makes Virtus special and therefore can help Lockie look after his kids and pay for his house and all that kind of stuff. So I think at the end of the day, it's always looking and saying "Look, what about me makes me special and therefore what can I do in the business world and what can I sell that's different to anyone else?" Interesting. Shane, we're going to transition to our topic of the day. We've been going for just under an hour.

Is there anything else in Shane's world you'd like people to know about before we go to here as an elusive character? I'm not that elusive. You are elusive. No one knows anything about you. The general consensus I got from talking to people for about a week about this was you are someone who keeps your cards relatively close to you and that no one really knows anything about you. About Shane. Not about Shane's world or accounting or throwing power cleans in the floor because you can't get none of them. Look, I'd like to think I'm a relatively friendly person, but at the end of the day, I'm definitely not the one to typically initiate conversations with people I don't know.

It's just something I'm not particularly good at. But as far as knowing stuff about me, I'm a relatively simple person I'd like to think. Don't get me wrong, I know my shit about certain things and I will talk and talk and talk about those things. But it also means outside of those areas, I'm useless. Don't get me wrong, I will happily watch a game of footy, but could I name a single player in the AFL right now? I potentially couldn't. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And so there's a lot of areas where I just have very little knowledge and when we've discussed random things at the gym about certain artists or certain music and stuff.

Unless it's sort of punk rock that was big between 2005 and 2015, you just can't. I just know nothing about it. One thing I think is special about me is that I can be very focused and deep on knowledge in certain areas and be perfectly comfortable. I know nothing about anything else. In other words, if you ever go to a trivia night and I'm sitting on a table, sit on a different table, I'm outright awful. It's not tech and punk rock? No good. Pretty much, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Now, today's topic that I threw

to you as you got here, which I and lots of other people find value in the way that you are able to deal with these two things, which is creating discipline and creating routine, which you may or may not be self-aware of. I think you're pretty good at it and knowing and talking to people that you worked with and spend time with. Sophie, shout out to Sophie. What do the two words relate to you? How do you create discipline and what is a routine? When you hear those two words, what do they mean to you? What are they?

Discipline to me means the ability to do something you don't actually want to do, in a way. I know that's probably not the correct definition. All words are made up, all definitions are made up. It's true. But effectively, the ability to say cool, even though to be able to do a task with a certain irregularity, I actually wouldn't have a clue what the definition is, but at least to me, for most people, to me, it's like, at the end of the day, you may not necessarily want to do what you're about to do or that kind of thing.

But you do it anyway. I guess as far as rituals and habits or whatever we want to call it, you didn't say habits, did you? You said, anyway, sure. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Well, podcasting. It's a genuine consensus so far in season four. Doesn't matter. Podcasting, whatever we want. Go down whatever tangent we want. That's terrifying. But anyway, I guess habit formation to me, at the end of the day, that's what I feel like, whenever you're talking about New Year's resolutions, we're not just into the New Year, we're nearly at the end of Jan, but anyway, at the end of the day, setting goals is not what gets you big strides in life.

It's actually creating habits. Because doing anything with repetition is how you make a big change, not by trying to do one big thing at once. Lots of people say that you don't cram for an exam and then get great scores. Sometimes you can. That definitely does happen. But you see people who are the smartest in every field, they're the ones that study an hour per night for 30 days leading up to the exam, as opposed to that person that crams 30 hours just before the exam. Is that something you've always had? No, I'm a horrid procrastinator.

When I say I'm the person that crams before an exam, I am that person. Me too. It's interesting because I kind of know that about you as it is, but it's an interesting dynamic to know that you are pretty disciplined and habitual about the things that you do, but also know that you can procrastinate and leave things. How do you balance it to? Because lots of people's challenges want and need to an extent, but it's the action that they struggle with. How do you counteract the two of when you don't need to play Xbox for two and a half hours instead of doing X, Y, Z?

For me, the reason that I'm quite disciplined about certain things is a direct result of me being a shocking procrastinator. I form those habits and I stick to them without fail because I know the alternative is if I start to break them and let any sort of doubt into my mind about them, I will fall back to procrastinating the crap out of it. The reason, because I'm aware I've got that side of my brain, the procrastination monkey, if you've ever seen that TED Talk. It's a great TED Talk. I love it. I know that monkey is in my brain and it has control of pretty much everything.

I feel you. But I'm aware of that and so I know that for me personally, if I create certain habits and I work well within my limits to create those habits, then once the habits are created, it becomes easy. A dumb thing of recent history, I so firstly put me onto watching that Limitless series on Disney with Chris Hemsworth. If you haven't watched it, I loved it. It's basically about a bunch of ways that Chris in this case was trying to prolong his life but also pushing his body. And one of the things they're talking about is habits and stuff you can do to prolong your life potentially.

And one of the ones is the whole cold shower routine. And I never put any serious thought into it. I'm like, "You know what? Let's see how hard it is." And so at least for me in my brain, I'm like, "I'm not going to do this if I do a cold shower day one because that's going to suck." So for the first week, I started with a slightly colder shower and a slightly colder shower and a slightly colder shower and then I worked my way down to it. So it took me about eight days. But instead of me trying to throw myself in the deep end, I said, "No, creating the habit is important first."

I worked my way into it. Because it didn't say, "Now that's a habit, I'll quite happily turn a cold for the last 20 seconds, 30 seconds of a shower." While it sucks, it's actually not that much of a shock because I'm used to it. How do you work out the path to that? So taking cold showers is moderately straightforward in your plan of attack. I guess you could call it of, "I normally have a hot shower. I want to have a cold shower. I've got to bridge the gap so I need to get it colder before I get it cold."

For things, I don't know, potentially around work or life or even taking Ollie for a walk, what's the process you go about creating those habits? So for me, it's all about identifying your capacity and then two, starting small. Is there some other examples you can think of? A silly example is when I started here. I think I started maybe two days a week, one day a week. I think it was two. I think it was two and I worked my way up. Tuesday, Friday, from memory. I don't know why I remember that. No, that's fair. A habit of remembering shit that's not that important.

Like we all do. And forgetting the important things, but anyway. Yep. So for me, it was purely around I can't, even though I'd love to throw myself in the deep end, I definitely do on certain tasks. For something that I generally want to be able to do a big task over time, it's more about instead of, I just prioritise the habit. And so that means that if I want to start running every day, I'm not going to go out and run, I'm not even going to run 5K on the first day. I'm just going to run a K.

Because at the end of the day, the idea that I'm creating that habit is the thing that's going to be able to get me over the hump. And so I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of starting as small as possible. And then once I've got that sort of repetition in my brain, I can then start to push. But because I've got the habit, I'm happy I'm not just going to immediately drop it. Yep. Yeah. I'm happy with you and I like that example because you see a lot of people coming here for their first, or their onboarding session or something similar, that kind of nature.

I want to train every day. Okay, great. Sure. Great outcome. But how do we get there first? And you know, people, we have, you know, ebbs and flows of, yeah, they train every day for a week, then they don't train for two weeks. And it's one of those things that, from a health and fitness point of view, it's something that I think we see a little bit more of. Is there anything in your world that you kind of see on a similar trait or similar vein? We definitely see it with business owners where you will charge, absolute charge into starting their business and like getting their books set up as an example and getting all the habits set up.

But more often than not, a lot of people will be excited about starting their business and they'll do it right at the start. The issue with doing it right at the start is there's a whole bunch of information you need to learn from the day-to-day running of the business. And until you've seen that information and create the habit, all this information you learn is more or less useless. So I think often what I see people is like, "Oh yeah, I'll do all this stuff and then it'll be done." I was like, "No, no, no, no. I don't want you to do it all at once.

I want you to do this once a week and then just don't touch it until the next Friday and do it the next Friday after that and the next Friday after that." But more often than not, what happens is that people will knock out a bunch at once, they'll forget about it for two months and they'll be like, "Crap, I need to do a bass." And then they'll pick it up again. Ooh, you mentioned the word. And then they'll pick it up again. He's currently shivering in his headphones going, "Oh, bass." Every, what is it, quarter?

Yeah, depending on the size of the business. Yeah, I reckon I'll walk in here once a quarter and fucking bass this, bass that. You mentioned the word. Yeah, so I mentioned the word. It's not a bad word. You seem to be prepared for it. But I think it doesn't matter, I feel like it's probably not all that different in many industries and this is the same thing. It doesn't matter what industry, same problems, just different tweaks on it effectively. But we see a lot of business owners that do that and that's okay, it's a perfectly natural part of starting a business.

And when those people are sort of happy to engage with us again, we'll then help them start the habit. But it is ultimately, from our side of things, it's habits that create great businesses. It's not this like, "Oh, brilliant idea," and you just embrace it and you make millions of dollars. No, it's that person that rocks up every single day and they do their job without fail. And that consistency and that ability to be relied upon is what creates the confidence and then ultimately the ability to make money. When do you struggle with habits or how do you struggle with habits?

I can see you're underage, you can't have that. I actually do struggle with a bunch of habits at work. So what's that look like, just out of curiosity? So more often than not, I'll rock up to work and I'll open up Slack and I'll open up my emails and I'll start sort of ticking stuff off. It comes from there, but ideally I've always structured my day where I would go into Slack, I'd find everything I need to do and then I'd move that into a task management system. And then same for my emails, I'd take all of that, move it into a task management system and then just start ticking stuff off from there.

The practicality is I make it one message into Slack, get completely distracted and then end up dealing with that thing on the spot. And then I'll then check my emails, find something more urgent, then deal with that instead of actually doing that prioritisation step first, which I know I need to do. But because of the mode I'm in at work, I really struggle to create that habit. Is that because you're a doer? I think that's just because of the pathological trying to help people side of things. Yeah, I think I can relate to that a bit too.

It's similar to getting back to Slack or emails or anything and then someone asks me a question about their program or how can you change this or how am I going to go for a run and it's like oh yeah, do that. 45 minutes goes by and I'm like shit, I haven't done any of my work. Yeah, correct. And so it's definitely one area where I do have certain habits which work really well, but there's certain habits particularly around my own workflow where I have tried to start them and I've stuck to them for short periods of time.

There's always been something that's interrupted which has meant that I've struggled to keep it going. Do you have tools that you implement to help not let that happen? In a work context, yes. Like I have a bunch of stuff which reminds me about things because one thing I'm really aware of is my brain does not, it just doesn't retain things to happen on a certain date. I won't look at the 21st and think oh, this is someone's birthday. With the exception, I hate admitting this, but I genuinely struggle to remember my parents' birthdays. Yeah, shitty with days too.

I love them both to bits, but as a result of that, I have both their birthdays in my calendar and I have four reminders leading up to their birthdays because I know I won't remember it. But I'm okay with that because that's just my way of doing it. At the end of the day, I'm lucky enough to live in a world where I can set up those systems to compensate for that, but there's no point kidding myself and thinking I'm going to remember it because I'm not. So I think for me, I will always lean

on the tools to remind me of that kind of stuff because at the end of the day, one, I don't think our brains are actually, most people's brains aren't built to remember that stuff well, but two, for me in particular, it just doesn't work. I will think on the spot, I will stay calm and collected and work something out, but my ability to sort of pick something up on ritual every single time is not one of my strong suits. Is there areas that you still find blocks in that space from creating discipline and habits that you either are overcoming currently or see other people making the same mistakes that you can go, "Hey, I think this is a good idea."

Is there anything in that space currently, as it stands, that you can think of? In a work context, a home context? So basically, yeah, some area that at least for me personally or others around me that struggle to create the habit. Yeah, because I highly value your ability to create system processes around anything, whether that's work, life, or anything like that, and I think that's something that people can gain a lot of value from you on, and I think that is also why you're really good at what you do is even though that you have

all the want and need and desire to help and fix problems per se, like you have these backend systems and processes that you are really competent at that make you really good at your job. So I think for me, at the end of the day, more often than not, everything we're trying to achieve is just a piece of information and we're just looking for the right thing to stash it in. And at the end of the day, it doesn't necessarily matter what that tool is, as long as we create the habits to consistently look at that tool and do that, if that makes sense.

Like for me, I do struggle with the idea that you will have certain things which fit certain tools really well, which some things that don't, like I think Notion is a fantastic example where a lot of people love Notion to bits. And a lot of people will try and shove everything into Notion because it can fit a lot of things. What is Notion for people that maybe don't know what that is? Notion is like a, it's sort of hard to explain, but it's effectively like a, you could think of it as like a personal wiki kind of thing, but it's effectively just this site that you can put to service.

But you can effectively create pages and those pages can be full of information, but then those pages can also have, it's technically a database, but effectively they can have a bunch of information, tags on them, which you can then relate to each other. And so it's a really dumb way of saying that you can have a, you can have like, you know, a table of meals and each of those meals will have all of the steps within it. But each of one of them might be required to have, okay, this is a meat meal, vegetarian meal, all of that.

And you can then create sort of relationships between those. So your meal plan table could be linked to your meals. And so Notion's a really cool tool for that because ultimately, like information ideas are all linked to each other and allows you to do that. Very rarely there on their own. Yeah, spot on. It comes from something else. Yeah, but at the end of the day, Notion's not a task management tool. And so if you try and shove task management into it, you can do it, but it's not great at it. It's easy to get lost.

It's easy to get lost because there's lots of options, but it also doesn't have the abilities of like repetition and all of the flexibility there that something like ClickUp or Todoist or Asana has. And so it's being aware that in a perfect world, we would take all this information and shove it into the one tool and we would have this single pane of glass. The practicalities in a small business, you can't do that. In our personal lives, we also can't do that because you can't find that one spot. So you have to be comfortable with the compromise that this thing is important enough that it needs its own spot that's tailored to that.

And then everything else is probably just going to get shoved in Apple Notes and deal with it. Yeah, Apple Notes. Oh, I remember a bad story of Apple Notes actually from the last week. Trying to sync my phone to my laptop, wasn't syncing. Got rid of every single note on my laptop. Nowhere to be seen again. Uh-oh. Yeah, that hurt. It hurt. Just five years of notes down the track. Should call tech support about that. Thought about it. You know what I thought? Mitch, you're an idiot. You deserve that. What about routine? You're pretty structured with your week, right?

Very structured. Where I know that comes from a logical system processes brain. But what do you struggle with in routine? I struggle with going home on time. Yeah, yeah. I knew that. But for the most part, I don't struggle with my day-to-day routine. In the respect that I always shove the important things in my day to start the day. Because I know I won't be impacted by whatever happens in my day. I think the big thing that I struggle with routine is not the routine and sticking to the routine. It's dealing with stuff outside of it.

So I actually go too far the other way. So for example, I have stuff that sits on my to-do list for ages. Not because I don't have the time to do it. But because the idea of sort of breaking the routine to do something is not difficult. But it sounds like a big effort. The value of it is slightly different. Otherwise it would be in the start of your day, right? Correct. So I absolutely will push everything there. And then like if something is after work, it's definitely valuable but at the end of the day, if I need to know that it's going to happen throughout the day, I won't put it after work.

Because at that point of the day, I'm tired. I potentially have got home somewhere between five and nine o'clock. And if I need it to happen, I'm not going to count on that shame being able to do it. Is creating your routine for you marking value on tasks? To an extent? Yeah, absolutely. Is value from a time point of view or from an outcome point of view? Meaning it doesn't have urgency or is it something that's quite important you need to get it done? Or is it a bit of both? Because to an extent, it could be both.

So yeah, it's a tough one, right? So for me, it's not about the time it takes. It's about the outcome. And that switches depending on the context. You can't say that something is worth what it is irrespective of the time that it takes to put in. But yeah, for the most part, my sort of using versus things like my health and fitness is important. And the habit of it is important and that's why it's at the start of my day. But I'd also say as well that the reason I put those stuff to the start of my day is also because it's difficult.

Yeah, to an extent. It gives you a high quality day, I would say. It gives you more energy and makes you look more alert. Have you ever trained in the afternoon? Yep. Sure? Yeah, prior to Virtus. Oh yeah, prior to Virtus. Okay, that's a little different. Because I was actually thinking about this before when I knew that this was going to be the topic. I don't think Shane's actually ever trained in the afternoon. I trained in the afternoon for my onboarding. I've trained in the afternoon for barbells and beers. Yeah. And that it's about it. And there's definitely only one or two, but that's about it.

People hearing that would be just like how? Because the training in the morning is the easy part. Like I don't even have enough time to think about not going to Virtus in the morning as I get up and I come here. What makes you get out of bed knowing that? Because a lot of people, I'm sure as you're aware, have been lonely at 7am many a time here in winter. Yep. For you, what's the thing that gets you out of bed when it's 2 degrees and you know it's going to be cold in the gym? Whereas you potentially think other people might stay in bed and go "I'll do it after".

Is it just knowing that it's adding value to your day? The thing is... Or is it just like you don't really have to think about it, it's just something that's ingrained in you now? Well the reason I do it, it's ingrained at this point. But the reason I do it at the start of the day is because I know it won't happen after work. And so if I know it won't happen after work, the only option is do it before work. And coming back to the procrastination monkey, the only time that the procrastination monkey cares about something is if it needs to happen now.

And so I think to bounce off that, I've taught myself to say "well it can't happen after work, I start work at 9am so it has to happen now". I find that something that I know lots of people struggle with that. One, especially when it's colder in here. But two, it's a thing that you unlike most will only ever train in the morning, but you'll always still get your three sessions in. Which I think is something that can be admired for, one from our aspect is we know we're going to see you full stop. But two, from other clients seeing you in here every morning going "oh yeah, Shane's here, it's a normal Tuesday morning".

It's something that, and which is why I want to talk about this is for your topic of creating a routine and discipline and habits and things around that. People see that as value and I wanted to tap into your brain around how does that work for you. Which I think is interesting. Yeah, I think creating the false sense of urgency is a really dumb way, but at the end of the day, the reason I do it with regularity is not because I create that false sense of urgency. But also, like any part of your day, once I started small and I created those steps, I just stuck to it.

So I didn't try and start training at 6am, because the practicalities I knew I wouldn't do that. And so I started training at 7.30am and then when the timetables changed a few years back, I shifted back to 7. And that was just being very comfortable with the idea that I knew I wasn't going to do that, so I worked within what I knew I would do. And so literally starting small, create the habit and then push harder from there. Before we wrap it up, what are some recommendations you would have for people who are trying to create a habit or trying to create a routine around potentially their training or their work?

What are some things you find highly valuable that helps you, one, to either start a new one or maintain a current one? Train in the mornings is number one. I love my mornings. Amen. Yeah, but in all seriousness, for me it's always start small. At the end of the day, you need to start with something that is super easy to accomplish and then from there, creep it up. Because at the end of the day, the value is not in setting the goal and doing these big strides towards what I want. It's about creating the habit that will stick with you for a year, for life, whatever it is.

And so prioritise creating the habit above everything else and then the results of that habit will come over time and just being okay. That's not going to be immediate. It may not be six months, it may not be 12 months, it'll be years. And I think for me and my ability to squat, it gently was years. We got there. Getting there. It's getting there. It's still not perfect. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's a lot better than it was, that's for sure. As simple as it comes, habits meet goals and therefore your new year's resolution shouldn't be to create goals, it should be to create habits.

Yeah, and a lot of the value we add here is you want this and I think I can bring this probably back to our goal setting. I onboarded our interns today. We're talking about our onboard process that we do with Virtus, which is goal setting and movement screen. It's the first session they do. The goal setting is what they want or the tip of the pyramid. The movement screen is the bottom, it's what they need. Our job as coaches is to merge the two together and I think when we're talking about creating habits and things

around that, I think that's a highly, highly valuable skill of work out what you want, what you actually need and how you're going to work out the path from A to B, which I think is what you're talking about of starting small and then building up to what you want or what you need. Yeah, 100%. I think the nice thing about training here is that you've got your accountability buddy and I think wherever you can, you give people permission to hold you accountable to that. That's not possible for everyone. I'm lucky I work a 9 to 5 job and it's really easy for me to structure my weeks.

But if you can give the people here or you can give people your personal permission to hold you accountable to those things and react nicely when they do that, it makes the social expectation for you to do that appear. And like a lot of things, we find it a lot easier when someone's doing that for us. I can think of a practical example right now. We've definitely dragged Kat here a few times earlier than what she would have liked to come here because she knows we're waiting for her at 7. Correct. And Kat will like and hate us saying that.

She will and she will forever rock up at 7.05. Or 7.15. Correct. We will forever take bets on it. But we, as accountability for her, understand that we're to an extent creating urgency around creating habits. Yeah, correct. And creating urgency about doing the Monday session on a Monday. Yeah, start your week early. Don't get to Wednesday and think, "Oh, I've done nothing." Yeah, right. Yeah, I think like ultimately it just by sort of sticking, and I hate to say sticking to it because it's definitely not that simple. But I think by effectively saying like at the end of the day, this is starting any new habit is difficult.

But by, one, just saying, "Cool, I'm going to make this super easy." And I think sort of like with Verz as an example, like having those movement, that movement screen session as a first session is great. Because all you have to do is rock up and you're going to do a bunch of uncomfortable movements, but it's not that hard. And so having that as sort of like a first step is great because it's very low and confrontational. So you have that and then the next one is then a little bit of a step up, but not that much.

And so it's sort of easing into these steps, which by doing it just makes it, you can effectively trick your brain to say that what's going to come is not that hard. And the reality is it isn't that hard, but we just make it out to be more than it is. Yeah, barriers are barriers because we create them. A lot of the time they exist because we create them and there's always situations that that's not the case. But for the most part, the things that people struggle with, they struggle with it because they decide to create the barrier, whether they're subconsciously or consciously.

Either way, it's only there because they believe it to be there. It's our mental fortitude or our willingness to be able to get over that barrier that helps create the things that we're good at for a long period of time. Which therefore creates habits and routine and discipline and we get to where we want to be. Yeah. Easy as that. Not that easy. Yeah, it sounds easy. Yeah. On that note, I'm going to wrap it up Shane. Thanks mate. What did you enjoy that you didn't think you'd enjoy about this? Have you done a podcast before?

Sorry? Have you done a podcast before? Haven't done a podcast before? Technically, kind of maybe. Kind of maybe, I'll take it kind of maybe. Yeah, done like a video thing for some accounting software provider. Of course you have. Yeah, it was incredibly nerdy. I loved every minute of it. Yeah, you thrive in that too. And I challenged the shit out of the people on that. Love that shit. And I was not invited back. But that's okay. Hey, worth it. But yeah, it's been good. I am not one to talk about myself. I try and avoid it as much as possible.

Which is why I really want to hear you on. Everyone's like, "Get Shane on." I thought, "I don't think Shane's going to say yes." I'll say yes to a surprising amount. At the end of the day, I do lots of dumb things. I never thought I'd skydive. And I did that just because someone asked me to do it. But I think one step for me, looking forward for the next 10 years, I think one thing I'd like to do is instead of being that person that's always open to saying yes, I want to try and be more of that person that is asking other people to say yes.

Yeah, yeah. What do you reckon that's going to look like? What do you want it to look like? Today, yeah. That's exciting. Well, I'm a cliffhanger. Guess what? We're out of here. Thanks for coming on, Shane. We're done. Have a good day.