Athletes Authority ON AIR | Ep. 181 - "We're Back" featuring Karl, Lachlan and Tom

We're like a jo authority on air. No no, no where, Joe robe Tom's in condfirm. I literally said, who is introing? And Carl said I will, And he's done nothing but say it's a hot minute. Now we're just gonna we're just gonna assume like everyone knows who we are. So what episode are we at? We're one eight one, one

eighty one. That's pretty impressive with six month hiatus. Yes we have, Yes, so we're back and on the podcast today we have Karl sitting opposite Lucky and Tommy as well, so all three obviously our podcast host, Jordi has left us a few months ago and it's taken a while for us to get back into it. But we're back and we've obviously we've certainly decided that this has got to be a priority for us over the next couple

of weeks and months. But we're back. Well, we've been wanting to do this from day one since Jordie left, but we've just had some important priorities, haven't we massively? Massively? Why don't we start there, Locke, If we go back to our last episode in June, where do you see the company? What are our challenges? Well, I think June, I think you've said one eight zero was me and George having a chat, and I think right then was myself at the time stepping away from Swift's. That was

the last little stint of Swifts, which was unreal. We hired a great man in James Begley to take over in the Strength editioning role. Lucky for me, I'm still involved in them from a consultancy standpoint, and a shout out to my work wife Danny Mace. She obviously didn't want to lose me, so she's kept me around, which is great, But it's certainly a priority that we decided that we wanted to double down a little bit more with a lot more education work, a lot more PD

work as well. And to be honest, me stepping away there probably timed it quite well because it means that I can be around for well. The man next to me, Tommy stepping away or at least down regulating his attendance here, so he'll be stepping away from header performance and congratulations on the new role with the Rabbit O's mate. Well done. We'll delve into that a little a little bit sooner. But obviously Jordie leaving as well to spread his wings.

The entrepreneurial man he is, obviously even I was having a bee with him on Sunday and he was showing me his sports science set up in his kitchen. Yeah what him and may have got a full Volve suite in the kitchen plus so talking about practice what you preach, certainly got everything there. So he's obviously getting stuck into some really good one on one field sessions. He's been prioritizing he's certainly learned to learn to love the speed and agility side of things over the past few months,

if not years, so that's been going well. Obvious he's kicked off his own podcast as well coached give a shout out there. And then we've had Brendan who has progressed over to the EPL side of things with the wolver Hampton Wolverhampton Wolves. I'm not a massive EPL man, but I believe that is their name, and obviously loving loving the role there is in an interesting town so to speak, there's not a lot to do there, but certainly enjoying himself with the role.

so good luck to him as well. Obviously doesn't move or leave Sydney like if you've been playing at home. He did predict he was leaving Sydney about eight months ago. I believe the flight's still booked in Jaen just in case something comes up, But now he's actually staying in Sydney.

can defend himself exactly. And our final one recently obviously last week, last week, last week, last week Sabrina. So she has nested herself for a role with the Eneral Bulldogs and eral w and she goes on to the profertional world as well, which is for her being a big dream. So you know, we wish her well and congratulations, but can't help a feel like we're just we're just breeding coaches for other people at this stage. So so hopefully.

jump to make, as we know. You know, you and I have often spoke about we know where the private sector is at. We know how strong it is and what it does for a coach's ability both on the gym floor, managing athletes and everything that goes with that. But you know, I think from that real sort of viewpoint of professional sport, it's probably struggled to be seen at the same level. But I finally feel like that tide's turning. I'm really proud to say that our company

is been a really big driver of that. And I think, if you know, I think professional sport and the landscape in Australia is going to be a far better place with a strong private sector because people can jump between and you know, it's not just about the logo there. Then you know they're able to jump between the private sector and know that they're going to get really good strength and conditioning, can be really good practitioners.

and he's doing all the same things. But the rehab list, well, if you're unlucky, he's twelve. But if we take an average of that team sport environment around the seven mark, so we've had it before.

We can travel all these expectations and probably more pressure, I'll admit that, but ultimately management of long term rehab and the x's and o's of what you do as a rehab coach, and will refer back to strength editioning coach as well, same premise that they're so well prepared for it that that doesn't even need to be an issue for the skill set's there. It's it's then just adapting to that professional environment, which which can be done

very quickly. That's maybe a nice segue. We've been intentionally quiet about how we've navigated this time, you know, from the outside looking in, and I certainly received a lot of messages and DMS emails from concerned gim owners whatever it might be, Hey, what's going on at AA you know,

or you're great staff for leaving. It's been a bit of a psychological reframe for us, hasn't it in easily feeling like we can go we're losing great people to this reframe of nowhere developing great people and that that needs to be something that we should be proud of, because there really hasn't been a viable alternative to pro

sport as a pathway to athletic experience. And I think that's been big for us is to go no, we need to probably just champion this idea that that private sector needs to be a development pathway in a pro sport and we need to celebrate that rather than, you know, get down the dumb set we're developing but then losing great people. And I think I've said this too before, because I think I don't know who said it, I'm

probably going to bastardize it. But the old adage of you know, what if we develop people and then they leave? Are that Socrates? And then is that Socrates? That sounds well earlier what if we develop people they leave? And then the other added is well what if you don't

develop them and they stay? And for us, that's a big part that I would much prefer to where the problems that come with losing great staff that we have to replace rather than the far more adverse effect of not developing stuff and I'm staying and suddenly it's like, oh, our quality of staff are terrible. I'd much prefer to

to push, push, push, you develop where you can. And obviously we like to think of it as an organic development where sometimes you're so close to them you don't realize how good they've gotten until they leave, and then you try and bring other people through and you're like, God, there's a fair gap. And that's not a bad thing, but that just shows that the development they get here, I think has been fantastic and now we face the

next challenge of replacing good staff. And we're lucky enough that currently we've got great staff here, you know, as far as our coaches, We've got Alex Burger who's come on recently who's absolutely commanded our field program, killed it. He's with the Oli Rus. We've got Anthony SAMs has been here quite a few years now from our internship program, manage nor short or premiership this year. Probably should have done it last year as well, but the Norse Shall

curse got him. And then Denzel's who's been running our lt A D program and probably over the past six months is has really elevated into some senior athletes and working with some international based athletes that has been doing fantastic jobs, so it's not hard for them to take up the slack. We obviously still need to replace our head of performance, and we will do that in good time, and we'll find a person that is as amazing as shoes are you tell me fourteen, Yeah, well, the shoes

are hard to fill. One of the big realizations for me too, if between the three of us, you know, for everyone listening on, well, other three. Yeah, the three of us being the owners, I've probably managed this the the least well, I would say. But the big realization for me is that we probably also overweight the value in legacy experience, for example, you know, Juzzy being here for five years or Brendo being here for five years or whatever it might be, and underweight the value and

the utility of a fresh perspective, you know. And I can draw on some examples there, Kalin, who's replaced Juzzy very different skill set, are also very competent in different ways and adding things to the rehab program that maybe

wasn't Juzzy's strength, and vice versa. And so I think the big realization for me personally is that as much as it's important to secure great staff, being willing to let them move on to their next opportunity and then finding someone who can see it from a different lens can potentially be the thing that takes the company to another level. And you know, that's how we need to look at your role, Tommy. As hard as those shoes are to feel, perhaps a new lens is exactly what

the company needs. And that's how we've almost got to see that. I know, for I'm sure where I'm sure not the only gym owners who have lost great people to new opportunities. And you know, to keep an open mind is probably really important for us to not to spare because I know that was definitely that's my proclivity, that is to worry too much. So I think that's been that's been really good for us because we're at

the other end of it. I feel I think Mike Young, we've obviously athletically that he says, yeah, he wrote the code, and then every one of his staff just add to that code, and I think it's a great, little nerdy way to look at it. It's a great way to look at it that you know, ultimately what we start. He's sort of like HTML code. Is that what he means, Okay, go back to Walcross, But no, it is right, and I think you go, you know, so I couldn't let Carl go back.

But the brand's just got to keep evolving. I think that's something that's happened really well that every staff member that's come in, you know, is left there. We all there little spin on it or there we'd all sort of you know, their own stamp on it, and it's made as better as a company. So you know, I think those that have sort of gone before and have you know, really helped develop, you know, they've left it in a really good spot for the for the next ones to take cover.

We can't focus on everything. Jeordie's moved on. You know, a podcast is something that we love to do, but it can't be our first priority right now. What from your vantage point, were the things we were focusing on and how do you think that's gone?

living and everything that was increasing. You know, how did we still offer a really fantastic program that was going to deliver something that we were really proud of, but make it more affordable and make our athletes be able to continue to enjoy it and everything that they'd come to known at a little bit better.

to the gym? And that's a little bit of an exaggeration there, but to be honest, it was it was that what we were fast.

And that comes with its challenges, right because everything that we've done from a service model and how we offer what we do cost money, and so we have had to really rethink and you know, I think between the three of us and we're able to come up with a model that I'm really excited about. I think is really, you know, change the way we're looking at athletic development.

I think it's something that you know, I think has been a really revolution, a big revolution for our company and the way we deliver strength and conditioning to make it more affordable for people yet still know that they're getting individualized training. So for us, the big challenge firstly was how do we find a product and then secondly, how do we roll this out? And what does that look like from a key man who are doing each aspect? And I think that was a really big challenge that

I think over the last six months. You know, I'm not going to say that we've got it absolutely perfect, but I think, you know, what we've come up with I'm pretty pretty stoked about.

some contacts. I think the assumption that was firstly governing everything was that high performance athletic training, whatever you want to call it, required the inundated attention of a coach, daily modification, weekly, modifiate, whatever you want to look at it. You know, the mentality of a coach managing an athlete, that athlete realistically having close to twenty four to seven access to that coach to be able to manipulate things. We realized that, and we sounds dumbs and we It's

not like we suddenly realized. We kind of knew, but ultimately that was the offering. But not everyone needs that full stop. And I think for us, we were probably quite caught up early on in saying, this is what we want to offer, this is what we believe is the gold standard, and that's what we offered, and there

was nothing wrong with that to start. But I think the biggest realization is understanding, well, not everyone needs to offer the gold standard, and we believe that if we were going to offer the silver standard, that we would offer better than anyone else. And I think that's the mentality that probably switched the most with us when we started to say, well, yes, we offer what we believe

is the best athletic performance product you can get. But there's a lot of people that don't need that or necessarily want that, but still want an amazing product that fits their current situation. And what I mean by that is if you're on the cusp of a league. We've got a number of especially in the women's space, We've had so many football girls come through Matilda's Future Matildas

that that's what they need. They need the nuanced adjustments where hey Tommy, we're a game rained out two weeks ago. They've put it on next Wednesday. So I've got three games in seven days. And it's like that type of stuff is where you need a coach to be in your pocket, managing load, making sure you're doing the right things, feeling confident. Sometimes just a need to talk to the next phase down is you know your shoot shield. Rugby player that's in second grade maybe wanted to go to

first grade. Even a lot of first graders that have trained for a long time, they kind of know them, they know their way around the gym, they're fairly accountable to things, but they just need solid programming, solid coaching and direction. They don't need to be able to message a coach on a Thursday morning to say that they've got an extra three games over the next fourteen days.

they want their kids looked after. If you've got kids, you know, like you want to buy trust and you're not going down to the local fitness first and just trusting anyone with a thirteen year old. So our brand has a lot of trust. Therefore, we attract a lot of parents that want their athletes or their youth you can decide if they're athletes yet or not, to be well trained, which is great, but what we were missing is that eighteen to twenty five year old mark that

was our bread and butter. They're at UNI. They're striving to make it to first grade. Some of them are also striving to make it to a professional setting, but they don't have the money to How many people do we know that make the Olympics off the back of three years of living in their car or all this type of stuff. They're the people that want our help but often can't afford it. So to that point, we said, okay,

well what costs us the most? For us? Having a coach allocated to an athlete costs us like it cost us a lot of money, because every athlete that goes to a coach means they get closer to their cap and suddenly we can't keep adding athletes to coaches. So we missed a context about three thousand dollars per athlete

is the real cost on a managed list. So that one was the our costs for us to have an athlete on a coach's list exactly, and then understanding that yes, it costs us have the facility, Yes it costs us to program, but the cost per acquisition on that is very small. Our facility, thankfully, at the moment, is quite a large facility. We can fit a decent amount of

people in the same with our programming structure. The system of our programming is very efficient, so it means we can attract large numbers of athletes and still program very effectively for them. So the bottom exit coach. So how do we remove the coach and how do we then reduce the price. Well, it's exactly that we've said. Okay, well let's see if we can't get down to that ninety seven mark, which we've done. The ninety seven dollars a week puts us in that realm of like your BFT. Again,

you can fact check me on this. I think it's like eighty three dollars for BFT. Yeah, we'll fact check it. Yeah, thank you. Did a little bit. Local cross fits, especially around the area, people that are doing three four CrossFit sessions a day, they're around the seventy seven mark almost, So at least ninety seven puts us in that realm.

Obviously still a little bit pricier than your local CrossFit, but we obviously program with far more detail, and suddenly we've reached a mark that is affordable to these people that are trying to make it. They're living around that eighteen to twenty five year old Mark. They're not making a lot of money at the time, but they come in, they get their program, they get their testing, they get their program designed based off their sport and they're testing,

and they get world class coaching on the gym floor. Yes, they don't have the coach in the pocket, but they've got it on the gym floor whenever they need it. And we've found a lot of people love that and really happy with that product, and I believe we do

it better than anyone else. So that is sort of the driving force the direction, and I suppose the logical discussions we had around moving to that model so more Neuon's coach will say, okay, but how do you now then make the programming decisions and how do you navigate that If a coach isn't the interface between the program and the athlete, you know, how do you do that and how do you do that effectively? What was our solution? Well, realistickly, it's done on the floor as a coach, so the

coaching still makes the decisions. And what I mean by that is when we think of what an athlete texts the coach about or talks to a coach. Obviously some key goal setting works some targets that we build out, and then it's a lot to do with day to day loading and when things that pop up that I suppose unpredicted, they get put through and the coach can adjust.

The ninety seven option now allows that still to happen, but the athlete will come into the gym and discuss it with the coach on duty on the gym floor, so the coach is still make the decision, but the difference is the coach doesn't have any administrative lag external to their coaching hours. So they're on the floor, they're coaching, and athlete goes, oh my, yeah, my right knee has

been give me a little bit of issues. Okay, look, let's just switch out this neee dominant movement for a hip dominant movement, give it a bit of a rest for the next two weeks. If it's still sore, then touch base with the physio so we can see that if there's any issues, they can be modified on the fly. But then also there's a follow up protocol. If they still saw then they touch base with our physio, which means the physio will then be able to modify accordingly.

Again ads to the benefit of having our physios in our four walls. They can log into our team Builder. They know the programming structure, they can set it, they can change it, they can modify it. But then the flip side is also the coaches can modify long term. So for example, if someone goes onto the gym floor and they're like, oh, yeah, I got smacked yesterday, my back is just killing me. The coach on the floor

can make the decision. But right for this training block, we're switching out a hinge for maybe a need dominant option, and that's going to be your training block. Let's see how you feel next training block, touch base again with me on the floor. More upstream into how I even get into program, we had to kind of come up with a new framework for essentially associating a style of program to the hour.

bit more lower limb dominance. It's a high running sport. When we talk about our upper body bias program, it simply means that that sport now has an acute bias to the upper body, ie cricket, baseball, tennis, things where you're actual resports spot on, you actually need to drive a little bit of outcome from the upper body. It's not just an accessory. And in concentric are our more concentric orientated sports cycling, rowing, sprinting, track work that's up

being et cetera. Love that, So then what happens from there, So then that's groups. So they have their three groupings. Within those groupings, we devise into a rate of force development group and a force development group, and that is

based off our initial testing that actually hasn't changed. Our initial testing is still the same testing all of our athletes get, but we just utilize a little bit of a smart algorithm to establish whether currently they're going to be more orientated towards building strength and force outcomes versus they've got the license to activate a little bit more

velocity work in their rate of force development. So looking at key ratios that we've used before being our RSI, our eccentric utilization ratio, and then our DSi or strength strength strength to power. So those three are three key ones that we've used previously and will continue to use to establish whether or not that one gets grouped. On top of that, we then have our resiliance components, which add a little bit more individualization to the program based

off where their asymmetries or weaknesses occur. Our key ones that we look at are groin, our hamstring, and our calf. Of those three, we do basic isometric strength testing. From that, we establish any extra work that they may need in their program that gets allocated in And what that's allowed us to do is essentially most of the leg work is done through the mechanims of testing. They have a program.

Modifications then occur on the gym floor, and what we've now been able to do is decuple the athlete experience from a coach and the anchor it from that, reduce the price to ninety seven and we've had a lot of success because you know, we were appealing to the extremes of the bell curve. We had the fourteen year old kid and the eleven year old, twelve year old kid, and then we had to lead athletes, and we were missing the majority of the bell curve in the middle,

which was our core market. You know, the market we love to train and you know the great result of this change is we have reattracted that core market. It's that eighteen or twenty six year old athlete who is semi pro shoot shield wants a great place to train, but doesn't necessarily need the detail the nuance that those

ends of the spectrum we're demanding. And to be honest, without putting our own program to disservice, I truly believe athletic performance as a whole fits far more commonly in that area, like eighty percent of our training and even out like what you would term an individualized program, which are even the term individualized I think is a little bit overused these days, but ultimately you're going to get better, Like general physical preparation is what we do as a whole.

We certainly get specific with some individuals at certain times, but ultimately a strength editioning coaches, performance coaches, that's our bread and butter. So we'd be silly not to think that we can't cater to a large population with a more simplistic approach that's still just effective. You know, a simple approach doesn't necessarily mean it's any worse or less. It's just a simple approach that will get really good

results with those people that need it. Nice. So that was the first big change I think from a product perspective, that's the biggest change we made. What internally structure wise, staff wise, organization structure? What else did we navigate in the in the six months since dren Well.

into a new coach. So you know, we really revisited and revamped our onboarding processes, which I think is only going to be beneficial for us from a whole growth standpoint. You know, it's no secret obviously as a as a brand, we you know, we want to be prominent and prevalent in many states in Australia, if not every state in

Australia one day. And in order to grow effectively and run our brand the way that we want to, you need to be able to systemI all that and make sure that the people that come into your brand that potentially the three of us wouldn't have met right as you get bigger, how do we make sure they understand the DNA and the real characteristics of what makes an athletes authority, staff member, coach or whatever role they're coming into. And so I think, you know luck he loves to

look at the Winner Bago example. Let him talk about that. But essentially we wanted a manual. It's going to tell the story now, no, no, no, yeah, he can come back to it. But we wanted a manual or essentially something that was going to tick every box. So we knew that we could give a staff member and at least they were going to have an understanding and concept of everything that we're going to need them to do.

Do we expect them to remember all of it right away? No, but at least then they've visited or had a touch point with some of the key things that we do. So that when it does pop up, they go, yeah, I remember speaking about that or what have you, and

we can then build on that. And so I think for us like that is a real that was a real challenge, right like to install or to give new staff members the right amount of information and really give them the key processes because we sort of said that common sense isn't all that common, because some things that we thought were assume knowledge or that we thought that most people would understand was maybe a little bit more nuanced to what we did here that we were missing out on.

something that's taken a while to really master. And I think the biggest weakness we had, as Tommy said, was this assumed knowledge that sometimes thinking what we thought was very common is not that common, to the extent that when you build out what we've built out, some of the ticker boxes seem so just everyday stupidity almost, but you just have to say it because you just don't

know where someone is and that's staff are stupid. No, of course not, it's just it's it's sometimes very obvious things just completely get missed based on different people's experiences. And that's to Tommy's point with the Winnebago story, like that's that's exactly what what I've built out and we've tried to add to and we keep adding to every

time we on board someone. And the decision had to be made, you know, do we take it very slow and not overload them and stuff like that, And we kind of saw, well, to be honest, if we take it really slow and happy and everyone's really calm, that there's so many things that come up that they have no idea about. So we have opted to go Baptism

of fire style and just hammer everything. And the first couple of weeks are really intensive, like we go through a lot of stuff for new staff that come on board, knowing that they're not going to take it all in

and they can't. There's way too much stuff. But the hope is that the core things that they need to get on board with and start with they get then everything else becomes oh, you know, I do remember going through that, or I remember Locke saying something about that, or Karl saying something about it, or from a physio standpoint, yeah, I remember the physios were saying they do this and at least they've had some sort of exposure to it

in the first probably three weeks. We aim for knowing that sometimes the onboarding for a number of our staff can take eight to twelve weeks of actually solidifying everything that they need to know. But in saying that, I just don't see any other way. There's no other way for the amount of moving parts and stuff that we do here. The best way to onboard someone, in my opinion, is here is everything all sectioned out, blocked out. It's easy to follow, it's simple to understand. But there's just

a lot. So of course they're going to forget things. But the important thing is they've had a touch point of it. They kind of know about it. They don't need to master it until sort of that eight to twelve week mark. On Boarding has been a big thing we've changed. For one of the other things I think

we've done that we maybe haven't touched on. As part of getting our staff more aligned is what we rolled out with our role scorecards, which I think have actually been quite useful and practical for getting everyone on the same page and what we were observing. If we go back to April or May, we took we canvas the whole team. I think we could potentially ask people in the same role what are the most important things that

need to happen within your role? Would get different answers, and that's not because someone was right and someone was wrong, but because of their biases or whatever it might be, they viewed their role differently to potentially someone in the same role but a different person. So what we had to do was we had to essentially go, Okay, what is the role, what are the key responsibilities, and how

do we intend to measure that? And that was a really big challenge for us because we were we probably started to build this infrastructure too late in the sense that the organization. You know, when when you're doing three and a half million dollars in turnover and you've got eighteen staff, when it's really big, it's far more complex. If we had rolled these things out when there were seven of us, and we had clear KPIs, clear expectations.

When there are seven people, it's probably easy to continue to build that out. But to that point to interrupt you, that's when you don't need it. It exactly on the same page.

harder because we didn't have many day ones. When we did it, everyone had been here for a certain amount of times, so it's about, you know, putting everything in front of everyone, almost clicking the restart button, And if you've been with us long enough, you'll know that we've probably clicked the restart button a few times because we think this is the best direction. Ends up maybe that's not the best solution, so we modify half of it, and then we end up clicking the restart button and

going again. But obviously that's business. I think anyone that's been around long enough, they've been through numerous iterations. We see major companies like Apple, Coke, McDonald's, they still go through iterations now, not to the same extent, obviously, but they're a far more established company. But we're exactly the same in the fact that as we grow, as we find new problems, we find better solutions, hopefully, and sometimes

those better solutions can be a real rebuild. Hopefully, those rebuilds get less and less and less as we perfect it. And I really think our last six months, well eight months, has probably been that last final big rebuild, and everything else now a little additions that we make as we grow. Talking about additions, something I've noticed that we've done, and I think we've been very good at it in our

de fans is actually subtraction. If anything. In the last eight months, we've probably done a very good job at choosing what our priorities are, making trade offs on what we're going to focus on and what we're not going to focus on, and our business in maybe some respects might feel more complex, but certainly in other respects that

you're simplifying. I think that's something that we had to learn the hard way is that for every time we add something, what we're actually adding is additional complexity to how the organization runs. And so every time we add something, we need to find or be willing to make some type of trade off or subtract something elsewhere. I think what we've done really well, and I think the podcast is a great example of this is there are so

many priorities in business. We have so many things that are worth doing that could add value, that can contribute to the business's value in the marketplace. But you can't

do everything, and you can't be everything to everyone. And we made a really conscious choice of three of us to go no, we're going to focus on our internal realities first, because you know, we made the decision that if athletes authority as a facility first can't thrive, then our contribution to the rest of the marketplace can't be

great either. We need to make sure that the inside the four walls that gets the attention the folks that needs and we were willing to you know, put the pause, put things on ice, not do other things so we could focus on what really mattered. I think that's an important lesson for any gym owner. We have a lot of them who listen who when they're faced with challenges,

you have to prioritize. And what we rolled out was, you know, we tried to select our three biggest challenges in the organization and essentially engineered the whole business around well, how to navigate those challenges. Maybe we should talk about that. The first challenge we identified was over the course of two or three years, we noticed that the consumption of the product was changing. You know, we had when it was a smaller organization, we were more proximate to the athletes,

were closer to them, we saw them more regularly. As the organization grew, and you know, complexity grew and the number of athletes grew, we weren't seeing athletes come in quite as frequently. Maybe we had lots of different ways that we were structuring their training weeks. We didn't see them as often, and we were noticing then on the back end that a lot of athletes on canceling were saying things online with Tommy, You're at the coal face of this, you know, I'm just not seeing the value

in the product anymore. And so we recognized, well, you know, how do we define that value? And we figured out, well, the best way to probably define the value as well, how often are you coming in? So we did a fairly significant analysis on what that was, and we found on average it was like one point six or one point seven times on average per week that athletes were

coming in. So if you anchor that to the price they were paying, it was a relatively high per session cost that you know, that the athletes were incurring to come in. Of course they were more, we offer more than just the sessions, but that was kind of how they're anchoring the value in their own eyes. So we kind of realized, we need to put a lot of eggs in the basketball. How do we get that consumption up?

So we had to start tracking that. We had to you know, set some expectations and targets, we had to build infrastructure around that, We had to change the way we tracked visit history. There was a lot of kind of internal realities we had to start changing to make sure that we navigated that challenge. But you know, the six months that follow we made insane progress where all time record facility highs for visits. So it's it's really interesting.

You know, you can have a challenge, but unless you choose to allocate resource to the challenge, both attention, time and capital potentially, you know capital in the sense that people we were paying you ad Z our data site a lot of time to build infrastructure that allowed us to track. So we're spending cash in that way to track it. Unless you unless you actually allocate resource to

the challenge, you can't really expect to overcome it. And I think I think that's something that we should be really proud of, is you know, our decision to focus on what can we improve, what is the most important to improve, and can we stay committed to that because I think certainly me, you've you've helped me to account lock and Tommy you too. Is you know, we need to stay focused, and I think that's an important lesson. You choose a couple of things focus on and just

stick with it. Well, you think of us as a as a young company, and you see the same as a child or a teenager. They bounce around different passions, Lars, they try everything, they make mistakes, and that's exactly what we did. You know, every opportunity for us as an opportunity, and we took it and we tried it, and I think it puts us in a better state in the end because we know how things interact with our ecosystem. We know how things work and what things actually benefit

our core values and what we want. And as I say, you know, if everything so priority, nothing is so. I think we've all been guilty of bouncing around things and getting excited for the new thing. And I think that's yeah, I'm spot on with you, and I think the best thing we've done over the past six months has regardless of the mistakes we've made, we've actually stuck to what we want to target and aim for and we continue to keep taking steps that way, and I think it's

been great. Maybe that's maybe a nice segue then to wrap this first episode of the revampart is what's the future for us look like? From your guys perspectives? Where do we go from here?

well and we've really only dipped our toe in. I think we show it with our coach Immersion program. We showed it with our one Days that we've hosted. A couple of online releases we've done have been very, very big, and to be brutally honest, it hasn't even been I think, from our standpoints, something that we've consciously really invested a

lot of time into. That's not to say we haven't put time into our Coach Immersion, because we have, but ultimately it's one product within the ecosystem of our full education and I think the new revent we're about to go with is going to be fantastic, can be a little bit more specific with things. I'm really excited to announce and launch our little Physio series. I think that's

going to be really good. We're going to be running some key topics that are going to be targeted for clinical physios that really want to get up skilled in that practical side. So you know, one and two day events like that are going to be fantastic for us to get in here and also turn to running mechanics, intro to gym and load introduction, all that everything you could possibly think about. We're going to be starting to prioritize into this the Physio series, which would be great.

The style of mentorship that we're going to set up. Obviously, Carl runs our business mentorship, which is a hugely success for our ACL mentorship has been hugely successful, and these little things that we just alluded to where we've had these things that we've i suppose focused on and really had some great results from, but then we've moved away in other avenues in other areas. So for us to double down in these mentorship style setups is going to be big. So Team Sport mentorship is going to be

coming back. We've got Strength Power mentorship, Sports Science mentorship, all these little short form mentorships which are going to be really powerful and have a lot of information in them and allows the consumer to be able to really double down in an area that they want to specialize and improve on. And Mate, to be honest, that's probably for me the twenty twenty five that's one most excited for I O that, Tully.

a brand. I think to the part why our education has been successful, why it's been able to be successful, and why we can continue to grow and develop, it is because we have delivered fantastic training to athletes and actually been at at the cold front.

to to more athletes around Australia. Speaking of just getting back from the a s c A Level three and there was a lot of coaches from Brisbane and all over Australia, Western Australia, and you know that was very interested in in our brand and what we're doing and a lot of the questions were when are we when are we coming there? So you know, obviously, for me, I think that's something that I'm really excited for is how we look to continue to deliver what we do to athletes but all over Australia.

and we've experienced everything in between. And so certainly something we've learned is that you know, opening up a gym once you account for facility, you know, start up, and then you know running at a loss for a gym for years, which is always going to happen. Because you need the staff before you have the athletes. You know, that's that's not an easy thing to navigate. And we've certainly learned that the hard rate but prob the best way it is. The hard ry is often the best

way to learn it is. And accounts try to spin and say, oh, you don't need to pay tax. Not profitable, that's one positive.

not it's not inspiring to get stuck into. So I agree with you. Yeah, so long long form content for what I'm most excited about. Obviously, the podcast is a big mechanism of that. Like you know, we've we've all discussed had as long best provide value to this given you know, you've got one of the most unique skill sets in the country with your experience, and you know

you doing more of the long form education stuff. I think is the best way that we can kind of contribute to the industry because you know, despite the challenges, I think we've navigated, We've navigated them like we haven't. We've gotten through those challenges. I think we've learned a lot in that process and have a lot to share

that I think is going to be really valued. But I think that's what I'm excited about, is, you know, how do we just get back to contributing to the industry and sharing ideas And now that we're in a far more stable place facilities wise, and we've we've we've got far more clarity around accountability and structure that better supports it up until three months ago. You know, Tommy used to do the sales in Sydney, Nate used to do the sales in Melbourne. Now we have a sales function.

You know, we all used to kind of broadly speaking, share marketing responsibilities. Now that's at least a more clear functional. You know, until it's that role is filled, I'm doing it. But you know, we've spent a lot of time figuring out, you know, what what needs to happen in this business for it to be successful, and reverse engineering that and having that type of support structures there. So I'm just

looking forward. Now that we've got that in place, how do you get back to doing what we do best, which is to improve the lives of the industry and make that easier for people. Whether it's you sharing the new structure of the base program and how we figure that out or whatever it might be moving forward. That's kind of what what excites me. For sure. I grow and a tan because we all live on the beaches. Now that's what happens in God's country. It's amazing that

God's country seems to follow Lockie. If you noticed that, Tommy, where Jesus settles, God is there. That's a claim not actually even religious. I probably shouldn't be saying that. Yeah, you probably shouldn't. But now we've got a c A conference next week as well, so for people that are up in Brisbane, Brizzy Convention Center be a great couple of days. So looking forward to being out there. That's

a bit of a plig clock. Yeah, definite self was plugged me and I'm presenting one What are you presenting on? What am I presenting on? For a second, I got a few presentations around my heade. We are I am presenting on impacting your team? So how you how you coach a team and and talk about impacting and influencing your athletes. The simple stuff, not the complex stuff. The simple stuff that works. Give us a give us like

a teaser. One one basic one that that I do focus on is what I refer to as conversational threads and being able to grab onto a conversational thread. And I think when I was Tommy smile because he's heard this story a few times. I'm sure if Geordie's listening to this, he'll be yelling out one of the stories. But when I was a young coach, I really to

try and be professional. I never really engaged in saying on the weekend, if they go, how your weekend, my response was always oh yeah, programmed, programmed, which trained, just because that's professional when an actual fact, Yeah, I was twenty two, so I went and got on the piss with my mates on Saturday night, had a good time. Yeah, white shirt, blue dots, short sleeves, the Lucky Special, ready to roll and yeah you don't you don't change what vip?

Yeah yeah, yeah, I think the Floto is still up, actually still on the waar mate, Yeah yeah, exactly good And Wallaby Bar if anyone's old enough to remember Wallaby Bar that had zero trophies in the cabinet, I remember that one Oka just mate. But ultimately, yeah, you are forty two, so it's for those playing you know, I'm not forty two. That for me then in that conversation gives them no threads to grab onto. So obviously for them, the programming maybe training a little bit, they've they've got

really no interest in that. But the older I got, the less professional I got, and the more open you get, and the more you actually open up multiple threads within one respect onto one conversation that I talk about them being able to grab onto. You know, if I was to say that I got went and got pissed with my mates. Whether you think that's professional or not, at least it's a bigger thread for a nineteen year old

AFL player to grab onto rather than programming. And yeah you may not, but that may actually be a conversation started because they've probably gone and gotten pissed at some stage, so there's at least the ability to have a conversation. Now I use it as a reference. I'm not saying you have to go and get pissed every weekend to have a conversation, but being open with what you do and not actually being as professional as probably everyone thinks

you need to be. So be more like yourself correct like what you think you need to be is more exactly exactly. But yeah, just a little teasy if you want to find out or Brisbane conventions the tickets, your tickets, Tell me what's on the horizon for you new role mate? You want to tell us about that?

just put a message out month Cisco's Live. You guys were not exactly showing the new structure for the podcast, but we're definitely thinking more of a host type panel type as I'm concerned it'll be. We'll lock in a regular time and what we do will will be dependent on the available staff at the time, but I think keeping keeping the AI inside of important and then yeah, if we've got visitors at the time or people that

we want to get in, we obviously will think. So your Mike destruct away there, mate.