Champion's Playbook for Business Success - FroPro Story - Ed O'Donoghue #535

My understanding of business was I admired people that had done well in business , but I hadn't really ever had any formal training or education around it .

But I'd love to just dive back into the early years just so people can have a bit more of an understanding around how we've got here and your drive and some of the lessons that you learned through your professional rugby career . Yeah , absolutely .

If something comes easy , you sort of lean into that a bit further . And so , yeah , look , I had , you know , got pretty lucky with that side of things and I went to a school it was a rugby school and , you know , played multiple sports .

And then , you know , post school there was a lot of opportunities to continue on a track towards professionalism and I was given those opportunities as much as I probably nearly wasted a couple of them . And then , you know , I saw I was in and around . You know I played Australian school , this rugby union in Australia under 19s and then got to about 2021 .

My father was Irish , so I'd always , you know , we'd never . We were the only family that moved over .

He had 14 brothers and sisters and I knew about my Irish heritage but we I hadn't really had those cousins and things like that growing up and so I always wanted to go back to that side of the world and you know , sort of meet my aunties and uncles and whatnot , and so , yeah , I sort of got to the end of the line .

I wasn't really offered a position to play professionally in Australia around that 2021 . And a lot of my teammates and stuff were and , looking back , they worked a lot harder than me , so they definitely deserved it . But , yeah , I was lucky enough to be able to get over to the UK and I played for a great team called the Northampton Saints .

I sort of looked just at the back of the professional squad there . But the coach there was a guy called Wayne Smith who's pretty well known as one of the best coaches ever . Essentially , he's coached the All Blacks . He's actually just been a part of the last couple of World Cup campaigns as well and won a World Cup with them and he was nice enough .

He took me over and so that was sort of the start of my opportunity and it was a pretty big sort of culture shock for me because of the amount of professionalism that I went into and I probably wasn't totally ready for it . But yeah , it certainly taught me a lot and to have .

Like you know , I was playing with while I was in the squad with all Blacks and Springboks and Wallabies and whatnot Guys Mark Honnes is a Queensland Red legend and yeah , so it was a big eye open .

I didn't actually play a game for about seven or eight months like an actual professional match , but yeah , it was a huge opportunity and sort of started my journey .

I think I was always just happy to be on the team and again , that's something that probably kept happening for a few years for me , Like I think you know , and looking back at you know , no regrets because obviously it's all brought me to where I am , but it's certainly something that taught me later in life when it dawned on me that I probably was just you

know happy to be there , sort of thing , and I saw other guys that were like you know , working for the next level and the next level and the next thing , and yeah , so I sort of got some learnings later in life , but at the time I was probably just whatever happened the next year was all I really cared about . Yeah , nice , that's cool .

I think , like everyone's got those sliding doors moments in life , and if I didn't potentially , you know , make that one decision to go over , one decision to go overseas , I said it probably just would have been that I would have played for my local club here in Brisbane , found the job and that would have been , you know , that would have been the level I'd

stay at and that that would have been fine .

But yeah , I was really lucky and again , it just comes down to having a shot because I think I sent as a VHS which is pretty embarrassing in those days I sent it to a few club coaches in this and just so happened that , you know , one of the best coaches in the world was the one that sort of gave me a chance .

And then , you know , like I said , it wasn't immediate but it was certainly being there and being around players that I've seen play for the , for the all blacks in the spring box , and things like that . It was quite eye opening , especially in Australia . At the time it wasn't as common to leave Australia at a young age .

There's a lot more of it now and so , like it used to be , the guys that were over there were really proven veterans and so , yeah , it was . It was a good experience and also , like I said , you know , the core aspect of it at the time was the was the .

I sort of see family and people that I'd always known of but never really properly met , because yeah yeah , so I was actually born in England and we lived in Ireland for a couple of years when I was young and then I was back here in Australia . By the time I was sort of yeah , two and a half or something like that .

So I've never really met all that side of my family .

would have been cool . Was it tough leaving , I guess , behind the safety blanket of all your mates and what you knew ? In Brisbane , though , was that a big risk for you ?

I was literally going , you know , living 30 , 40 minutes north of London , and then at any one time I'd have three or four mates that were traveling through and living in London at a house in Northampton with a couple of other rugby guys and we'd be cycling through my friends like our backpackers . So , yeah , no , it was pretty comfortable .

To be honest , they thought the aspect of it was tough , like that was a baptism of fire , but the actually , you know , being over there , it's a very simple transition .

I , before I moved over to France to play rugby , I waited and all my mates did their gap years and I was still trying to crack it here and then , when I went over , everyone was back , so I was just isolated in a country where I didn't speak the language and I was like whoop , here we go and try and make some friends now .

But yeah , but I definitely learn a lot of lessons from being in that different environment . And then , obviously , the same thing being in that professional environment , you recognize what it takes to really get to that next level . You can't just rely on natural ability or you know politics to a degree . It's like there's there's a lot more that comes into play .

But going on throughout your career , what was one of the highlights that you had throughout your career before will sort of transition out to business and what comes next .

You know I was pretty much the definition of a journeyman , like I played a year and a half in Northampton and then I went to play here in Worcester , which is another Premier League team , and then my end goal had always been to play one , one or one game for Queensland . That was sort of like my thing growing up .

I always wanted to play for Queensland and so I was just fortunate the coach that was going back to coach Queensland was got called Eddie Jones , who's pretty everyone would know right now and he was coaching Sarasen , which is another Premier League team , right , basically just front footed himself really like to play for Queensland , you know , taking with you sort of

thing .

And yeah , so , and yeah he got in touch with me so I was able to go back and play for Queensland , which was sort of my year , like a big thing for me , and so I went home , played for two years at the Reds and then that was probably one of my proud moments of getting a cap there in front of my friends , you know , playing in Suncorp Stadium and all

that sort of thing . And then I went back over to Ireland , finally , to Ulster , which is in North , and that was an extraordinary experience because you know they weren't who's only 2008 . So I think you know they only put sort of like eight or nine years out of what they call the Troubles , like the other really hard sort of yeah , the Troubles , I think .

Look it up if you really want to know more , and you know , obviously , the hard times , but it was just a fantastic place . My dad was from the far south of Ireland . He'd never even been to Belfast .

It's about three hours from there , like it's not even that far , and a lot of my cousins said the same thing but extraordinarily nice people , fantastic fans , like you know it was . It was really a home away from home and I've missed it ever since . It was excellent .

And then , yeah , look , I actually again this might go back into business and life a little bit , but I then sort of finished rugby , essentially about 29 . And then so I just made a decision to move home and I had basically a list in my iPhone of notes of businesses that I'd like to start .

But anyway , one thing led to another and we , the Reds , had a new coach and they had success . They'd won the 2011 Super OV and the coach there at the time had offered me to come down and just basically train on a , on no contract . And one thing led to another and I played another three years of contracted rugby , which was probably the high level .

There was the ones that I didn't know that I was going to get met the most and so , yeah , that was , yeah , it sort of into Twines with the how pro started . But , yeah , certainly that was probably another highlight of mine and I got to play my 50th game for Queensland , which was met the world to me .

I got the little cap , which is fantastic and yeah , so there's a few little things in there , but playing for Queensland was a big part . It's awesome .

That's when I actually decided to come home and finish rugby , I suppose , but dad passed away unfortunately , but then I was obviously wanted to stay at home with my family and so obviously I think in life things like that just a sort of you know big things to cross about how you contemplate them , and so yeah , certainly I sort of took myself and where I

wanted to go and what I wanted to do a bit more seriously . I think I've been living that year to year life of rugby , which is very common .

But I had a single , I didn't have children , all that sort of stuff , and so in general the way I would have approached rugby at that time , if I had a rugby team or a contract , would have been different to how I would have previously .

But then , just so happens , because it was actually one of my ex-teammates a guy called Kliwinskowski is a great rugby league player and he transitioned into being an agent . He basically says it's a shame that you don't keep playing . It's still young and he was the one that sort of organised this thing with the Reds at that time .

And so , to be honest , I did , I took rugby a lot more seriously that time because it was a second chance at doing it better , and also I'd sort of started Fro Pro as this concept it wasn't really even in any real IGA is like you know , local independent stores or anything yet I just had a little bit more structure and ambition to my life at that time and

so it actually just helped that then , when I went back to rugby , I had a different focus , different lens on it . You know , things like big things like that in life sort of give you a bit more perspective about taking things for granted and whatnot .

And then , yeah , and at 29 as well , like it's funny , like I'd look back at 29 now and think how young you were but you're still at the other end of rugby career and you've got to try a little bit harder than the 22 year olds and the 20 year olds . So , yeah , it certainly made me take care of physically a bit more and have more ambition .

Then you look at like 30 year olds , you're like man , they're old , and now it's like everyone junk , we're all we're all junk ourselves . We'll be good .

But so you had started and I'd love to know how you managed playing professional rugby and then also having Fropo on the side but also going as well . You had big ambitions with that Was Fropo ? So Fropo was one of those lists on your iPhone , just ideas that you wanted to put into fruition .

It's probably outdated now , but at the time it was , I didn't finish a degree , I didn't . You know , my understanding of business was I admired people that had done well in business , but I hadn't really ever had any formal training or education around it .

And the only thing , the main thing that this book did , like I said , a little bit of cheesy book about how to outsource work , and you know , things aren't as hard to achieve . And it did just give me the idea , okay , it's like , oh , maybe it's not that hard .

And it sort of gave me a , like you know , broke down my naivety a little bit , but then also put me just far enough in that now I was like , oh shit , I've started , I better keep going . And so it sort of tricked me into starting because I probably wouldn't have otherwise . And yeah , yeah . So I think just getting going was a big thing .

And then learning .

You know , again , I think I've heard you say this , but you know , traditional learning wasn't my thing , but finally learning on the go really was , and when there was something on the line because , like you know , I'd made a little bit of money from from playing 10 years of rugby and once I started seeing those savings diminish from business like shit , this is

real . You know you get up that little bit earlier . You know , don't go meet your mates for beers that night or whatever it may be , because , yeah , there's stuff , yeah , you've got to take care of business . So , yeah , then going back into look , it started and you know that was the one for me because it was the one that had the most ability to be run .

You know , products sell at night . They sell in Western Australia and South Australia when you're in Queensland , as opposed to you know , like location , businesses and whatnot . So that's what attracted me to it . Also , look , I love the product at the time was ice cream .

So better for you higher protein more sugar ice cream , yeah , and I loved it and it was basically the first one of its kind in Australia that I could see . And now we love our products . That's what we're product focus business .

But , yeah , so I went into rugby and when it came out of nowhere , and so maybe there were times where I just turned off the business for a month , I just wouldn't sell anything . You know , it didn't really end .

And so , yeah , yeah , like you know , just because I was like , well , I can't commit to taking care of that customer , so we wouldn't start , we were only doing independent supermarkets and IGA's and things like that . And while I got told from the very start that's the way you meant to do it , I look back now and I think it's totally incorrect .

I think you've got to go big or go home . But you know that's it's different for different people . I mean , my goal wasn't to be doing selling at markets and things like that , and there's certainly nothing wrong with that whatsoever , but that just wasn't my goal .

And so , yeah , finally , sometimes we'd have a trip to Savaker and I don't have to get up at 2am to sort of . And again , it wasn't great for my , for the rugby , for that weekend I was trying to be quiet .

From my room You'd have to do a few hours emails at 2 to 4 or 2 to 4 30 just to make sure that obviously that anybody that was , and also I used to do the orders myself finally , which I look back and just so embarrassed about because there's so many easier ways to do it .

But yeah , that's the way it happened and , like I said , I think you learn as you're going and if you're not learning , you should probably get there .

They're not tertiary qualified yeah , 100% .

Let's jump out of bed and get to work because you're on the road , dude , which is mind boggling that you're doing this and you're getting up earlier before games to do email Is that ? A lot of people never hear that stuff or wouldn't even do that stuff because it's like no , I got to be perfect , but you wanted it to work , which is .

You know , once you're going you can't stop , and you know so , yeah , the little things like that . But again , there's very , you know , it was a bit fairly isolated , just a couple of two weeks a year in South Africa . But yeah , you got to do those things .

And the funny thing is , well , like you know , even again , I'm just normal , like from Brisbane , you know . So this is my city and it was fun going between trainings and going to IGAs to try and sell the product like face-to-face . You know , that is something that I enjoyed about the doing the small side of things .

But yeah , once , once rugby finished and I sort of it was my first year I'm like , okay , look , I'm going to give this a red hot crack as a standalone .

And I went to I got a fluke this meeting at Woolworth's , but I went down to Sydney and straight off the bat , you know you get 300 stores and I think we were I'd never had more than 100 stores at once , and so one person made one decision and you get a third of their supermarkets and it just changes your perspective on , yeah , how to do things .

But again , that was you know , 2016 . So , you know , there wasn't as much information I think in . Sorry , I'll just FMCG , sparse , moving Consumer Goods , yeah , so I don't do the lingo and so that's pretty much how it sells in supermarkets or servos or petro-convenient stores and things like that .

And there's a lot more information , a lot more opportunity for people now to do that sort of style of selling where you can go . As long as you've got a support network of supply marketing , you can achieve , like bigger ranges of stores very quickly .

Obviously , as you've mentioned , you had this journeyman experience but and you had your business sort of going before you even retired Was it a tough transition to hang out the boots ?

We had to play the Lions , which was an awesome experience at home and again , I was pretty much ready and also , look , I didn't want to go overseas again . There wasn't really much need for me at the Reds again that next year and I , like I said , I thought it was going to be a few games at Max and probably just train that year in 2013 .

And then I got three years , you know , fully paid , and that was a really

great experience . Like I said , there was guys that when I left in 2008 with kids and then now these guys were the best in the world . It was really fulfilling to see them . You know , their career come full circle and they're super champions and whatnot .

But yeah , so I was , I was pretty ready , but also I was nearly excited because I was like , look what if I can do this while I'm playing , imagine what I can do if I'm not , and that stopped the sight of things and I'm like it can't be , even like being a rugby player in general . You'd know this , that it's not forever , you know that .

So you know there's always these pockets of life where you go . Gee , I'd love it to stay just like this , but it's never going to , and so it was really exciting . I was like this is going to be more than it .

You know the idea that ThroatPro could be a business that could provide a life for me , because I know rugby can only do that for so long , so I was pretty pumped about it .

You know , I feel , if anybody in sport I hear some sports people like , oh , you know , I don't know what to do , like it's not a cliff , like you can see it come in for a long time .

In a way , like if you can transition well or even just get through that transition period , you start to , as you've just said , recognize that some things in life aren't forever and you know whether it's having children growing up or have an opportunity at a job , so you can really focus on making the most of it . Why you've got it .

And one thing that I look at is you know , I have a couple of mentors and stuff like that and some of them are like we could triple your business and everything like that . I know , but it would require this sacrifice and at the moment , you know , married , I'm living abroad and I understand my physically .

There's going to be things that I won't be able to do when I'm 45 , 50 , that I can do now , that I'd love to give a bit more time to .

So while I'm sacrificing there , I'm gaining there and I don't think I would have had that , been able to look at life that way , had I not finished rugby like , yeah , absolutely , it's very comfortable , you know like you get to go to work with 30 mates a day .

I think sports people in general , especially in Australia I'm much more armed now with the idea that it will finish and also that they're professional and personal development , being Readying themselves for the end , for the end of their sporting careers . They're much more prepared now , I believe , broadly .

So , yeah , no , I mean , look like I said I was ready and it was . It was exciting actually . But I mean I must admit like it's Is a Sort of , probably a bit of a privilege that I had something ready to go to . You know , so I didn't have , I Think a lot of sports people because they compete , you want something like that's .

The great thing about business is you know you get to compete all the time , you get to prepare and try . You know you win , have lose it losses , but it's , it's a really I think sports people have a real good advantage and anybody who trains and gives themselves Goals and whatnot has a very good opportunity to do well in business . I .

With your first year out of rugby so then I guess the first official year of you being full full time in the business Did you find it was a bit shaky because you didn't have the structure of rugby there as well , like you were sort of in control of your time there .

I could break out a couple of good hours work , but , um , because I had two hours to get work done , you know , outside around rugby , whereas when you've got eight or nine hours in a day , like I was sometimes , you know , you could , like the typical writers block , you'd have an email open for two hours and like the amount of other shit that I would have

done to keep myself away from the keyboard . But yeah , no , like I said , you know it did come down to learning on the go , and then I Think , instinct , like learning , I tell you , one of the big things is I should

really get in touch .

Like you know me saying I should get in touch with that person before this thing becomes an issue , whatever it may be , and I put it off , and put it off , and put it off , and then that person will get in touch with me and you lose that Good will that you reached out to them and that's Took me a long time to get good at that because you know you

think you're gonna give someone the wrong answer or something . If I think you like again Just in front-footing stuff and seeing the ball coming , you know Like I think was a big thing for me and so I used to do all that and I'm again just some of it like .

As you know , you probably read every business blog or whatever it is that you can get your hands on to take other people's perspectives , and there's this one about eating the frog .

So the Monday morning , yeah , all the shit items that you really , you know didn't want to do like it's like , you know , people afraid of public speaking and you know I have been one of those .

But you know , sending the shit email was something I hated and I was like , but once I got my , you know that was one of the things that post rugby was really , yeah , I got me to become more confident in business and it took years , because I look back now how I was writing some of those emails like novels and they were two , two , three line emails like

they should have been and yeah , so it's just at the time on the job and it . The first year was . It was certainly difficult because , yeah , I still very , very much thought I was , you know , fate of a phony , you know , in the area , yeah , I'm a silver rugby player trying to be a business person , and you know .

But I think largely people are human and they respect the fact that you're trying 100% .

We played sport but I've also interviewed over 500 people from you know millionaires , billionaires , athletes , all these sorts of things and one thing that I've Really taken away from every conversation I've had is they've decided who they wanted to be and then they've built the identity to become that individual .

So for yourself , you said then you know , you felt like a bit of a phony , and I think a lot of people experience that imposter syndrome in their life and and . But how did you shift identity from going I came a businessman to now I'm sorry , I'm a football player to now my businessman ?

I hope I didn't impose , you know , the idea that I was a footballer on people like again , that's natural for some people because they are so well-known , and so even especially , I thought it potentially may have been a drawback Going into some offices and some , you know , going into headquarters of supermarkets , assuming that you know the product would sell because I

was a footballer and you know , if you're not a footballer of great note , that's not going to be the best marketing tool for you . So I nearly tried to like , pull that back a little bit and make it all about the product and the opportunity and you know the First mover advantage and things like that .

And so it was fairly easy for me and you know it would only be the occasional , the couple people it calls it .

There's a lot of English people that come over from the supermarket scene and they're a cousin , that they like Rugby , and then the next minute you got a really good conversation , you know because , yeah , I'd played over there but yeah , so hopefully I tried . I did try very hard to make that that it wasn't . That wasn't my Sort of thing .

I wasn't trying to push that as this you know , unique selling point . Other people , if you're you know that's Steve Smith or someone like you'd be like , oh , that is the , the court , you know people is that guy has it . So I didn't , I didn't , I certainly didn't think I had any profile that would sell .

Yeah , it's interesting with the Identity stuff and what I sort of try to I , it's how I talk to myself , but I hope that people similar to you it's not because I think I'm great at any one thing , but for me I'm like , I still believe I'm an athlete , because athletes are generally the healthiest and fittest people that I know in a specific thing .

So if I tell myself I'm an athlete , I'm gonna think more like an athlete would . How am I gonna sleep ? What would I eat in order to get the results ? The same with business , and , and there's a husband as well . So , okay , well , what's that idea ? Well , who do I need to be as a husband to be that best version ?

Or who do I need to be as a Leader or a founder or CEO to do it Well ? And sometimes that makes things uncomfortable because you have to learn new skills , you have to be assert .

So you know , there's very few things .

I think , if you know , as you've mentioned , you've Interviewed a lot of hot formers , and anything that I've read or enjoyed reading , is it nearly feels that people that potentially weren't Athletic but have been successful in business have nearly retrofitted their mindset to being in that athletes mindset of winning and training and learning .

You know all the time what can they do that will make them better . You know , certainly , like I said , I'm not anyway do that , but I certainly admire people that are .

Didn't obviously end up very well , but it was still delicious to see One and it's amazing . It's amazing product . But now you've branched out and I can see on the show you got pizzas , burritos , you got a heap of different products there .

So what's , what's the vision for you and how do you keep like , how do you select which products are coming next and why they so important for you to continue ? This is a multi-layered question . Sorry , yeah , so , and it , yeah look initially .

You know , coach say not heavy enough and I need crap to get heavy , and then I'd be a fart and then they'd be like your skin Falls are too high and I was just always trying to chase my tail and look , that was just me , especially when I was , yeah , that younger period of my Time of rugby .

And so are you trying to get better at how I could sort of inch you ? I'm just love food , love food . And I mean I know everyone does , but you know I just enjoy so much , especially , you know Sort of you know you come for foods and so , yeah , ice cream was one that I felt had some some space to be .

You know better , everything that I'd seen was very Sort of artificial and whatnot , and so , yeah , that was the first thing we tried to crack home with and yeah , so I had a really good first products , because actually back then we had to try to even convince manufacturers to make it for you . You have to try and make it yourself

somehow . So I quite like a small . It's called a quies and art ice cream machine . I'd like make a later at a time , and I got pretty close with a few things just googled , like what makes us you know , what's the Structure of ice cream and how do you ?

start at it , yeah weird Like health food stores to buy like Gua gum and xanthan gum and all these gums , that sort of thicken and Mulse fire ice cream and whatnot . And so we got . I got pretty close and convinced a couple guys to make some larger runs of it and then so we got like a viable product that I could sell .

And so look the Again the stupid parts of it , because it sounded so great like healthy protein ice cream , like what could be wrong . But what you guys , you know in Queensland we have like 40 degree summers and transporting ice cream in summer is fucking crap . So a lot of . We lost a lot of stuff .

You know I was always melting , especially because we're doing small deliveries and all that sort of stuff .

But essentially the idea of the product was to create permissible indulgence so that you could have something that you enjoy and have a Better relationship with food , so that you're not Absolutely picking out and absolutely feeling shit and then , and again , look this Even , as you mentioned before , we jumped on . There's just a great environment .

Now I think social media has got its good and bad things , but there's a sensational amount of Australian sort of , you know , advocates for Having a better relationship with food through , you know making small different changes , and so everything we make Sort of tries to fall into being permissible indulgence so , and ideally around nutritious comfort food , so things that

were previously you know you would see as being Not great for you , and then obviously just been able to introduce that into your diet a little bit more often so that you don't feel those you know frustrations with eating well , and so even just what eating well means to you , it just becomes a little bit closer to what eating , you know , having fun in your ,

you're having fun .

Food means yeah , and so it's like there's a thing in sport , and if we're all about your , your best game being closer to your worst game and that and so Like , if your best week and your worst week are really close , I think you've got a much more , a better opportunity of succeeding long term about how you feel about yourself , you know , and just your

self-confidence . Because if you've got that again everyone's gonna have that bad week , that everyone is gonna go see the Colonel every now and again . You don't .

If it's all the time , that's when you're first , you're gonna be upset with yourself , and so , yeah , to that point , we , you know , ice cream was our entire business until about two and a half years ago and I'd always had this vision of a healthy pizza that we could buy . And so I worked on that for a couple years and I actually got rejoated .

A couple rejected a couple of times by buyers . They're like , look , we love the idea but it tastes crap , and then keep working on it . And so then we got it right and then they took it and it's been phenomenal for us .

So that's the backbone of our business now , and so then that allowed us to pitch these better for you frozen burritos that are high on protein . You know , use , like I say , canoa , because I'm bogan , but quinoa and so it's really healthy , high protein , sort of just small changes and and and they've been a huge success for us .

And and then this just a couple months ago Start of a table we launched a healthy fried chicken . So that's fpfc for a fried chicken and that's that's been awesome . So we launched for four lines of that and just we just used that again .

Just replace some better for you Ingredients into the batter and we use whole breast Chunk and things like that and whole breast fillets . And again it's just three pillars We've got time , money and health . So health obviously is already been covered .

But time and money a lot of people like self , you're busy and you want to come home and you know making a breading station with you know chicken and egg and batter and all these sort of things a little bit time-consuming and wasteful of ingredients . So that's sort of we try to make a solution , you know , with the price . So that's the spear mate .

I don't want to sell you on them on the spot .

this , you know , greatest thing , sadly , actually moved on from ice cream about two months ago as well .

So it just got really tricky in Australia manufacturer at a good price , and we didn't want to stretch our consumer because it's , you know , the cost of living Tough in the moment , and so we pulled out of that for a little while and , to be honest , as as much as it was though they were complaints about us leaving ice cream .

It was sort of a nice thing because they're like oh , what am I gonna do now ? And you know , so it just showed like we'd given like a nice product and a good solution , yeah , so , yeah , we just want to keep making really nice , good , fun , tasty , delicious , nutritious products , and that's sort of the core of the business .

But you touched on time , money and obviously health With the options and once again , super busy , so you're looking for those quick options and I love breakfast burritos , like they're just my favorite thing .

America's the home the home .

I love walking supermarkets there and they've got about three doors of frozen burritos at least in every supermarket over there . And , to your point , breakfast burritos are the king . But Finally , australians are a little bit different . We had us , we have a sausage and a burrito . It's probably a slower seller .

I think in Australia we love you know what , you're just have the same breakfast every day . But I feel , yeah , in America you they indulge a little bit more .

You can't have everything , so you got to find this perfect Compromise or balance between them . That's gonna allow you to get the outcomes that you want and for most of us . Once again , we're not professional athletes , so I don't . I don't want to be on this super restricted diet where I'm eating kale all the time and that's it , and it's not very enjoyable .

I Understand how we all do . Life goes so bloody quick . You want to enjoy the meals that you're having , but you also don't want to let it blow out too much that you look back , go fuck . How to put on this extra 20 years ?

It's quite liberating because , um , yeah , and again , I'm like a set , I'm a binge , binge eater from way back , but uh , it's just when you go , when you can think , oh shit , I haven't been , I haven't been here for ages , when you do turn up in the markets or KFC , my travel days are the hardest because we're in Brisbane , go to Sydney and Melbourne for

meetings quite often and travel days are really tough and I'm never like , if you make a small mistake , that's fine , but it's just get back to it the next day .

And then we contract , we contracted out , but now we've got a small team and they're excellent and they're like we all love coming to work and hanging out and doing , you know , having a good group , meeting Everyone , even if it's not someone's area of expertise .

Everyone understands the products so well that we all get , you know , talked to each other's parts of the business .

And so one thing we really pride ourselves on is understanding and communicating to our community and our consumers , cause , like that's , you know , we wanna please them , we wanna make sure that we , you know , like even previously in ice cream , we'd actually design products specifically through request .

So , like , as far as marketing goes not a marketing genius by any measure , but I'd certainly like to listen to people , you know , cause if they tell you and you're pretty sure they're like , they're telling you the truth , like it all sells .

So one of the big things is we just wanna continue to make stuff that people are asking for or that we feel would be benefit to them .

And yeah , so to grow and even if we can just see areas of the supermarket that are under you know , you know under innovated , so like , for instance , we do everything currently in the freezer , because freezer just got ignored for a long time and they got a lot of big players , like a lot of multinationals that have just been there for 20 years , like then 25

years , like frozen pizzas hadn't really had a new pizza for quite some time , and so anywhere that we can make something , it looks actually we're really nice factors .

We had like something like 80% of the growth in frozen pizza last year came from just us , because people just didn't go there In , you know , people that train , you know your 20 to 40 year olds probably didn't go there , and so it was just that the new customer went there .

And so we , anywhere we can do that and make things a little bit easier , quicker for you at home is sort of what we wanna do . It's not about , you know , global domination or anything like that . We're just like nice growth and keeping the customers , giving the consumers happy .

Like that perseverance , once again , I think comes from being an athlete but a lot of people for those who are listening to this , and maybe you're not quite getting to where you wanna get to , like there's so many things that Ed said that if you were to just break them down and go , okay , what's the framework behind what he's done here ?

It's what most other successful people do and there's nothing sexy about it , or you know , there's no fast tracking doing it , it's just consistently showing up and , as you said at the beginning , it's like you just had a reason to do it and you just didn't stop . You know , didn't stop trying . One last , or I still wanna ask two last questions .

The other one was how did you deal with that rejection when people were saying your product wasn't , wasn't where I needed to be it ?

I think if you can keep dialogue like that's , I hope my probably something I'm reasonably good at is if you can get dialogue to start with , because some of these people don't wanna be found like buyers and you know companies , they get approached a lot but if you can get in and obviously offer value .

So I think and that's everything I think that's a life and definitely a sport lesson is no coach is not gonna pick you if you offer them something that's gonna help them win .

So if I look at the buyers that we deal with as sort of that the coach essentially and if they say , look , work on this , take it on , because they're not doing it to be pricks to , they're doing it because it'll generally please , you know , fix their problem or they solve their issue , and then if you can go back and work on it and come back to them .

So I think a couple of times we've had that and then the second time round we've you know , if you can literally address someone's problem that they've got with it , or you know consumer tells you or something , I think you're in a pretty good place .

So I don't think see it as a like spiteful thing , you know , see it as like okay , I can fix that if I do that exact thing . And I think sometimes , like , even if you don't agree with it , you can bring it somewhere closer to what they want . So yeah , I don't think there's always an opportunity and rejection .

Like one month could make me absolutely shit myself and go home really anxious for like a month . But then we just started getting those , the pizzas are coming out and all this sort of things . So I made things better . But again , later in life , children I imagine would be there's pros and cons , but certainly

I felt better . And you know , it was also around the time when we , you know , we're able to start hiring some staff and we had , you know so , our boys 18 months old and , yeah , I probably just a bit more confident and all that sort of thing . So I love it .

It was an opportunity then as well that we were sort of a time when I had , you know , I can make , I can do daycare , drop offs and I can , you know , do pickups and things like that , because we have staff and so I'm lucky in that regard , also my wife's .

After we had our daughter and she'd finished sort of maternity leave , we decided like she shouldn't go back and work , so she should make her own business . So she's a property manager in Brisbane and she's yeah , so she's made her own agency and she just won Queensland's number one property manager at the real estate awards .

Again , it's easier for me to say because I'm older and I had a lot more time under my belt , but you know , I think it's about designing the opportunity that if you work hard , make one of the . I had a coach .

I really didn't like him and I realized later that it was probably because I was the dickhead that he was , and I remember making like a cover tackle , saying he's like that's , and he had to go with me about it .

He's like , oh , you know , you should , you should have worked harder earlier and it was like not enough that I worked hard when it was absolutely needed .

And so I feel that , yeah , sort of you get the fruited labor if you put it in when it's not really needed , like I think , and then later you get all like it's like you know , delayed gratification of training and anything like that . You know you it's , you're getting it now because all the stuff you did earlier . So hopefully , yeah , I'm very .

So to you there , the long-ended , a long-winded answer is yeah , it's good Life . It's a good life , work balance with family .

I want to be present in this moment , but I also need to plan for you know , 10 years down the track , what does that look like ? And I think a lot of people may be .

Potentially , why a lot of men experience midlife crisis is because they wake up one day and they haven't thought more about what they want their life to look like since they were 18 and they started . You know , whether it was sport or their university degree .

So I think it's important to make sure that what you're doing now is going to allow you those you know those luxuries . I started this business in 2014 with the intent to be able to have a flexible work life and you know it's nearly 10 years later to be able to .

And then I mean again , it's not to , you know , to be living in Bali or whatever that you know the plans are , but it's like you know , literally just to have your time , even if it's that hour in the morning , an hour in the evening , to be able to get the kids or do whatever . Yeah , but there's definitely the hard times . Allow the good times .

Actually , very unusually , I went to a rugby live show the other day and one of the people was the chairman of the QIU and he said one of the big things that was not respected by the rugby public was the lack of humility , and I probably agree with that .

However , I sometimes think that you know you need to give people time , you know in a role to work it out . But I think the guy that's just taken over , dan Herbert , is one of Australia's best ever players and he's also like a tremendous bloke that I've had a couple of dealings with . So I think it's in good hands .

If they get a really good coach , I don't think it's a problem . We've got the best . I hate to say this because I've got a few New Zealand staff , but we've got one of the best rugby nurseries in the world in Australia and in Queensland and New South Wales and just getting better and better . So we're never going to be short of having stock .

It's just about , you know , working out how we can keep them and nurture them . So I always have a positive view , but we'll see .

But , mate , it's good to get to learn more behind the business because obviously when you see a business from a shop front , you know we were talking about this before . Getting to hear the founders journeys and put a sort of a name to the face and to the brand makes me love a brand a lot more .