From Rugby Pro to Fitness Innovator: Chris Feather's Journey to Creating 98 Gym and Inspiring a Resilient Community #499

And then there's certain things that , like you might get invited to this like look , that just doesn't fit in there . As much as I'd like to Go to it and it you know it'd be great . Unfortunately There's just no more timing this week for that thing .

He's the founder of 98 gym here in Australia , a Place that's not just about lifting weights but also lifting standards and expectations , a place where inclusivity means holding everyone to the same High bar . Ladies and gentlemen , gentlemen , i'm thrilled to introduce Chris feather . Now .

Chris has built a fitness empire That's transforming lives , creating a community that's as focused on mental resilience as it is physical strength . Today We'll delve into his journey , the hard work , the transitions , the challenges and the triumphs .

We'll explore the philosophy that drives 98 gym and learn about the unique programs that are making a difference in so many lives . So , whether you're here for some fitness inspiration , insights on building a brand from scratch , or you're just curious about the man behind 98 gym success story , you're in for an absolute treat .

But before we dive into the conversation with Chris , i would love to remind you to subscribe to the man that cam project podcast , wherever you're listening .

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You know guests that we have coming up . We'll have a naturopath coming on talking about the link between gut health and mental health . We have an expert on psychedelics , which is going to be a very interesting one , a longevity expert And so many more brilliant experts coming on to help you gain the insight and tips to better improve your life .

Now , if you could take that 30 seconds to do that , that would be amazing . But without further ado , let's get started on the episode with Chris . To live more fulfilling lives . We are here to challenge your beliefs , redefine success and talk about the important stuff in a relatable way . Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review . My name's lucky Stuart .

Let's get into it . Chris , feather on the show , mate , welcome . Thank you , just checking out the new facility . You're pretty stoked with it .

it's been good . It's been a sort of , like you said , a talk came from a professional sport background , so having the opportunity to open a gym in a , in a Professional sport high performance center , was a , was a no-brainer really , and and so one of the things that That got to me was they call our entrance the boot room and so the boot room .

Yeah , so we walk in through the boot room and the swans players go right into their gym And then the 98 members go left into our gym and it was like I was just like right there , you know , brushing shoulders with professional athletes on the way , and it's Pretty cool .

As a professional athlete , i think you'd have you definitely have some sort of rowers and stuff like that . I'm out of a lot of gyms that could come and and beat some athletes , but then it's like could you go in the field and do what they do ?

You got to have Chris on the show because obviously you both Englishmen but he hit it off well , and When I was doing a little listen up , listen to a few podcasts that you're on , and then obviously looked all through 98 and The boys in twomba , like Phil Curry and Simon Cook and all that , have been doing your program for as long as I can remember .

There are a few things that I Wanted to pick your brain on that I feel , from a selfish standpoint , are going to help me better , improve my life , but I also know our audience can benefit from it as well . You know , run a hugely successful business . You've had a . You know , would you play 20 ?

I say not 20 , 9 to 10 years , professional food or maybe more 12 years .

A lot of our audience are blokes and you know There's a thing around midlife crisis and all that sort of stuff , but to me , i just look at it as . Look at it as a change from one Moment in your life to the next .

You've done that , from being a professional athlete to then go on into business , yeah , and obviously then the influence of mentors and the environment around you .

But before we sort of navigate into that , i'd love to sort of hear where it all began for you , back in , back in the UK , yeah so I'm from a like a small town called Keithley , which is a , an industrial town in the north of England .

He was a mechanic , mom was a teacher , so they both worked all the way through and I had I have a sister , so a year younger than me .

We sort of , like I say , went to school , grew up in Keithley and enjoyed life there , plenty of , plenty sort of outdoor activities and , you know , played a lot of different sports and all this type of thing And I got to Sort of I went , i went , i started as a swimmer , did sort of athletics .

And then Towards the end of school It wasn't till I was about probably 15 I guess 15 , 16 where I took up Ruby League , so that was a . So we didn't play at school , it was a sort of an outside thing . I had a lot of mates who played it and yeah , yeah , couple of lads like , oh , you got to come down and play , play for us .

So When it played and you definitely shouldn't have to come back , so you get joc陣 , just le Done , and he did get there . Yeah , i had several . No , sorry , actually I played . I played really young . I was probably 13 , like I played for Keith Lee and a couple of other clubs .

When I got to finishing off at school I'd applied to go to uni sport and exercise science at Leeds Met , which is a pretty decent uni over there , and at the time I was playing for a club called Wakefield Trinity . So I was playing for the academy . It wasn't like I wouldn't be impaired or anything like that It was just for fun .

I had a few mates out there and you ended up getting off at a full time , So I have a full time contract to play Super League when I was 17 . So just in the gap between leaving school and going to university . So it was a bit of a yeah , it was one of those things . Like I said , I hadn't played sport all my , all my rugby , all my life .

So it wasn't one of those things where I've just always wanted to be a professional rugby league player . It was one of those things where I really enjoyed it and it was something I didn't expect really . So when it came up , it was a . Yeah , it was a . It was a bit of a sort of tough or weird time .

I guess My mum , like I said , my mum's an academic , she was a teacher and everything else , and so the university path and my dad he was , you know , he's a , a workhorse really , but he wasn't really into sport . You know , he watched my sport , but he didn't still doesn't watch any other sport apart from , like myself or my sister .

That really , yeah , and so it was a . Yeah . I remember getting off of the contract and thinking , all right , let me wonder how this is going to go with my , you know , with my parents , and you know , like they sort of locked into me going to university .

But I went home and , yeah , my mum sort of one of the one of the two major things she ever said to me , like , or most major things she's just like , oh , look you'll . You know , so many people will never get this chance and you'll never get it again .

Like you could always go to uni later if you don't enjoy it or if you don't work out , but there's no way he can turn this down . So from there , yeah . So I put a pause on university and went and played , yeah , 10 years .

So I played for a few clubs in the Super League and then had a year in France with a with a mate that I'd played rugby league with . Yeah , i sort of played with him throughout my career . and then he moved home and I moved there . I had a year with him , which was great . It was kind of like a wind down .

You know , we sort of played a game every other every other week and we were in the south of France , so you know you go down to be a ritz on your weekend off . Living the dreams Up to the snow and yeah it was crazy And yeah I really enjoyed that .

But it also kind of gave me a bit of a break as well from the , you know like the , the sort of wheel of of Super League .

I'd been offered a deal to go back and play another three years at the club I'd finished with , but I just kind of yeah , i don't know , i felt like I'd kind of had enough And my one of my really good mates , sam Burgess , had just signed to play for South .

So as I was wrapping up in France , it was like all right , i either kind of go back to England and sign another three years professionally or something else , staying France or whatever . Sam rang up and just said , mate , like oh , this is you know , we'll have a . You know , come on holiday , take a break .

We'd already been to Australia a few times on holiday . Yeah , you know , come over , see what you can do . Like you can , come stay with me . Don't worry about rent . Like you know , i'm sponsored by J . For the time You can , i've got to spare car you can use . And so I was like , um , yes , again I made that phone call to my mom .

I was like , oh , look , you know , kind of wrapping everything up and and throwing it in and going to Australia and seeing what happens or coming back to stability in in the UK . And you know , my dad , dad has a business , and you know that was kind of always in the back of my mind that I'd finished playing and go work with my dad .

And again she's like , look , do it . You know , get over there , test it out , see what it's like . You know we're always here if you , if it doesn't work out . And so I did . And then yeah , that's kind of from that . So I got over it , i loved it .

Um , you know I was a retired sportsman , so it's kind of Australia don't need any more retired sportsmen . So the visa was like impossible to come by pretty much . So I was on a holiday visa .

The only sort of options looked like from my experience , which was , like I said , professional sport with no qualifications really apart from that , um was Jim , jim stuff . So like gym manager or personal training manager , with the two visa options at the time , um , neither of which I'd done before .

So I hadn't been a gym manager , i'm going to PT manager , and both of which you had to have um 12 months on your visa , which I only had a 12 month visa . So as soon as I got here it was less than a year , yeah , it was a bit of a random one .

Um , from there I did , you know , i went and did a PT course in Australia because I'd done a lot in England but it was sort of different over here .

So I did the PT course , started doing a bit of PT just in the parks and stuff like that , and then , um , then another sort of real pivotal point in my life I um , i met Russell Croy in England when he was shooting Robin Hood , when he first met Sam .

So we have a , we had a mutual friend , dean Widders , who , yeah , so we had a mutual friend , dean on . I was playing with Dean on the time and obviously , like I said , really good mates with Sam and Dean , i was really good mates with Russell . So I'd he'd said , look , can you get these guys ?

Let's meet up , let's have a , let's have a Guinness in , uh , in Nottingham uh , sorry , not Nottingham show forest .

Um , and yeah , so I'd met him briefly in England when I got here , obviously I was living with Sam So we'd we'd kind of bumped into each other , had a couple of drinks here and there and , um , yeah , got kind of got on , did a few little jobs and ended up getting a um , a job training him for a company called Jim Jones .

They were a US based company and there was a I needed to do some training pre-production of Superman , so they needed a trainer to train him in Australia to just follow their program . Basically , make sure he did what he needed to do before he got to the US . And yeah , I got him .

So I think , yeah , off the back of that we just sort of got a yeah , could you know ? phone call to help through this piece And Russell had requested I do it And , yeah , training for it went really really well .

It was . I mean , the guys at Jim Jones were great , the program was great . You know , it was a it was a like dream job really in Sydney . So I was , you know , training a few clients and then I'd have Russell and it was , yeah , it was gold .

And then sort of from there this is this is a long , like a long story , Just stop me if you need me to but from there went to Jim Jones .

Then , sort of within all the stuff , we trained Russell for Superman I met Mark Twight , who was the founder of Jim Jones , who's an unbelievable bloke , like sort of really I suppose I met him and a couple of the other guys at Jim Jones upon like retiring from sport and kind of like not having that , not having the team around you and not having the highs

and the lows of the games every week . Like it'd been a long career . It was , like , you know , it was a big sort of there's a big drop really . I was in Australia , it was brilliant , you know , but it was a bit of a weird time Going , having the opportunity to do some work for Jim Jones .

Meet Mark Twight , who definitely had a great outlook on I really I really latched on to like what he had to say and the way he sort of approached life and the way he sort of his values and whatever else . I had the opportunity then to go spend time with those guys in Utah .

Like sorry , the first time was about four weeks and then I went another couple of times after that , eventually becoming a fully certified instructor over there , and at the time there was only eight in the world . So , it was the first yeah , and there's only one .

Well , it was only me in Australia , so at the time then worked with Russell on sort of five movies , I guess . So traveled with Russell all over the world for a couple of years , like yeah .

It varied depending on what , i suppose , which job it was , but generally , you know , if you were sort of in pre-production , so before the film , you'd sort of you don't need , we'd only train like maybe once or potentially twice a day And so you just have like I'd be in the gym in Sydney probably , and he might come in and we'd train in the morning and

then train in the afternoon . So it was a pretty standard client . And then when you went on , when you went to the , wherever the film was , you kind of you were full time then really , so we'd you know you get up in the morning and it was .

We spent a lot of time bike riding , so we'd go a bike ride and then we might like you'd sort of train and we'd eat and you know , like really it was , like the best it was .

. And then suppose , when the film starts , then it's very different , like it's a very , it's a very taxing job . Like , look as an actor , to look at what they actually do . It's kind of it's impressive . It was impressive to me , like watching , kind of Russell . You know , like know all these lines , know where to be , remember it . You know like it was .

It's a big , big job , a lot of sort of pressure , so , and also like then learning a script for the next film or whatever it may be . So you'd there'd be minimal time then , so you'd have , you might have an hour , 40 minutes a day where you'd try and fit something in or we'd ride to set or wherever it may be .

Like in Iceland , we rode to set every day , pretty much . So it was like it was , which was cool , you know , but the days are a lot longer there , that you know . Obviously , end of a sort of long shoot , they're gone , you need to relax a little bit and whatever .

So , but the day they varied , and it varied depending on what the what they need to look like .

Obviously , if you need to lose 10 kilos to fit into a like a suit or whatever , then that , and if you need to be a bit bigger because you're playing , Noah and you know he's , he's building an arc and so you know it sort of varied , but it was , it was cool .

I hear a lot of blokes always saying I can't put on muscle and but they refuse to track calories or they might not look at their training program , except you're saying with weight loss . But then obviously you know , with Russell you managed to do both right . That's one individual achieving two outcomes , depending on what he needed .

It just needed good guidance and you know .

Yeah , And you know in that situation , like it's very important , Like if the , if it's the job . So if you're not at a certain weight or whatever that you're supposed to be at , then you're not doing your job . Basically , And he , he's like took his job very , very seriously . So it was a yeah , it was , it was good , It was an experience .

Like I said , i grew up in a . It was like , you know , like a industrial town and my dad was a , it was a mechanic , so it was a , and it was always called and wet where we were . So it was , you know , like it wasn't a glamorous type of job . You know he's up at , up at 4am .

You know , worked all day and then it was cold and you know , and then a lot of lifting and carrying and oil and diesel and then he'd come home at night at you know 6 or 7 .

And you know I'd just and I'd be like , wow , you know he works hard and everyone and he was kind of well known for that as well , like people , people knew he was a grafter , That's what they used to say . He's a grafter or dad . But then I looked at what it brought us as a family as well .

You know , not taking anything away from my mum , she worked as well , but I looked at what it brought us . You know it brought us . We went overseas on holiday . We had a nice place to live , like we always had a sort of nice car . We had the opportunity to go out for dinner as a family and all those things , and it's like all right .

you know , this is because of hard work . And you know what I mean . It was one of those things that and you could see it , i guess it was it was drilled into me from an early age And never sort of yeah , never , it's never let me down .

There's never been an opportunity where I thought , oh , i worked too hard on that , you know like , and then you never , you know even you work hard on something that don't work out , you know , at least you've , at least you've worked hard on it . So you know you never regret working hard .

I saw there was training time for training . You're picking your kids up from school , you're in the office . You know you're doing all of these things that are important to you , but you're not doing a million things , which I find it's reassuring for me , cause , as I said , my calendar looks very similar to yours .

I don't have the kids part , but it's great to see someone achieving so much but still having that balance And obviously bringing that back to your dad was a role model for you and still hard work .

You're doing the same for your family And even for the people around you where it's like Chris is , you know , successful business owner , has played elite sport , awesome family man , great mate , and he's still managing to make time for everyone .

He doesn't have to sacrifice , cause a lot of our clients in the Manitkan project feel like they have to sacrifice health and they have to sacrifice relationships in order to achieve career success , and I just don't buy into that .

And once again , i get to chat to a lot of successful people like yourself who also approving that it's possible to do it another way .

yeah , if you're on me , which is probably one of those things that I've from what I can gather , never , never happens . But yeah , you know , i value , obviously , i value my family and my wife . we , without you know , without my wife , i wouldn't be where we are now , you know .

So that's a value of those , a value of the kids , obviously , again , i see the time , i see the time that my mum and dad put into me growing up and everything else , and I , you know I've walked away from you know , moved overseas and everything else .

but I can , i can , really you can look back as well as you get older and then you have kids and you look at these things that happen to you or that you , you know , your mum and dad did for you when you were younger .

At the time , never , really , never , really clicked And then I think , oh shit , like my dad , you know he , he would come home , he'd go to work at 4 am And then he'd come home at eight o'clock and like a couple of days a week and he'd walk all the kids on our street

to school . So we'd we'd walk over the field and we'd like , look at , okay , whoever gets , whoever you know can pick , when we're at this lamp post , the school bell rings . Whoever picks the right spot when the bell rings , gets the choice of the chocolate bar on the way home .

And then he'd come and pick us up at three o'clock and he'd have five chocolate bars and it'd be like , all right , well , you pick and you think , like I think now , you know , i come to work at the same time , like for me to get home in the middle of the morning to walk , like it's a massive sort of like yeah , it's an hour , and you sort of like .

And then you to do the same at night and then to go back to work , it's not . At the time I didn't think anything of it And now I'm looking at it like thinking , god , that's , that's a massive effort , it's a massive like thing . Where it's , you know , he's put us in front of everything else you know .

And again , like I said , my mum , my mum did the same . You know she was a teacher . She kind of . I think she's been a big impact . I think the way she's kind of lived her life I suppose career-wise has made her has really kind of been like instilled in me as well , just the way that I supposed to elaborate on that a little bit .

She was , she worked , she went to school , anyone else , she worked in a tax office in like the local town where we were , had me and my sister .

After that went back to university to do a teaching degree , then was a teacher for you know , i don't even know , probably I guess I'd say it'd be 10 years , and so I moved through the ranks and got to the point where she was like actually I'm not enjoying this anymore . You know , i've spent a lot of time talked to a lot of people and everything .

Like I think back in the day which I'm talking , sort of what 20 , 20 years ago now , she wanted to be a life coach , which wasn't a thing back then , which was 20 years ago , because she'd spent a lot of time talking to people and helping people And it went back .

It went back to uni , did like sort of qualifications to be qualified in being a life coach and then quit a job being a teacher to kind of explore it a little bit .

And it started as a you know I should have two , three , four people a week and it was just helping it with friends of friends , and I looked to the point where she was doing a lot of it and then got off at a job in a you know like for a big company , but then again got to that point . She's like you know what ?

this is not right , this is not what I want to do , and drew a line in it there and then moved on to something else .

I think for me that's I think that kind of made the transition from 40 to this quite a lot more smooth , because I looked at , well , my mum did this for 10 years and then totally switched to do something totally different And still and it was a success and then did something else again after that .

You know , i'm hoping I can do that for my wife if that's something she wants . you know I can't right now . she's working . she's working as well and we're kind of both , you know , but I hope that that can be something I can do . I think I feel like I've .

I feel like I look at these things that my parents have done , whether it be as a , you know , a parent or a partner or whatever , and then I'm like , oh right , yeah , you know , hopefully I can do that .

Or they want to have a year out and go and travel the world , or they want to . We want to be able to facilitate that . I'm not saying we're going to give them everything for free you know , like , but I want them to feel like , i want them to have the ability to make a choice , to do whatever they want really .

And yeah , if we can , if 98 can work and we can , you know , like make the sort of the family financially comfortable and all that . That's kind of I suppose that's the end goal for me . There's a lot leads up to that , like you know . I love the job . So that's , that's one of those things that again , i feel very lucky that I love it .

I love the job . I love you know , i love training firstly , and then I love the people that I get to . That you know , i used to get to hang around them and train with them . Now I can like employ them and they work for us and we all work together And I come to work and it's like my wife jokes like when I'm like oh yeah , i've got to go .

You know I've got to go to Brisbane this weekend and work and say oh yeah , work , what a night You've got to go , you've got to go train , we train . Do FYF have a coffee , a jet ?

But it's cool that you've created that for yourself , though , as well , Right , Like I think there's I'm sure there's so much risk that you've taken in order to put yourself in that position , It's very easy for people to maybe look at what you have created and not see what's going on behind the scenes , which we sort of touched on a moment ago .

How did 98 come to be So obviously ? that year you were training in Russell for a while . Your visa was running out . How did it all ? how the hell did you get a visa ?

So when we were kind of wrapping up , one of the films of my visa was dying out , i sort of said to Russell look , at the time he had to be on the building at 98 Riley Street in Darlanhurst And on the ground level was like an office gym , so it'd been fitted out like an office gym for the levels above and he owned it And he's at the time he's like

look , you can go and use it and rent . You can actually go use it , you can rent it off me . So like , rented space off him to do PT And that's where we would train him and whatever . And it was , it was nice , it was cool , like a really cool space , it'd been fit out really nicely . There was no one in there really .

So , coming back from you know , off the back of the film work and Jim Jones and these other , and obviously like a sporting career , it was kind of sore In my mind . There was a bit of a gap in the market .

I kind of came to Sydney and I wanted to train at the gym because you know , that was just what I'd done for the last , however long , and when I tried all these gyms out , i'm like thinking there's all these you know the times then , i suppose still now there's all these different fads and all these different things And I'm like thinking , you know I've been

educated over the last 10 , 11 years on how to train . It's evolved like 10 years ago we were doing 10 care runs twice a week to keep fit . You know , towards the end of my career It was a lot of ergue based stuff , a lot of mass stuff , you know , like it got so much smarter .

So when I left playing , i feel like we were training at the peak , if you know what I mean . So then I'd come and you jump in a group circuit session , for example , and I just feel like I'm not going to do this five times a week because this isn't smart , like this is not what I want to do .

I'm not going to spend money , firstly , and time to not like lift a decent percentage of my body weight to get stronger , like this is called a strength session , but it's actually not , because the limit is 40 kilos .

Like it's not going to get you know like yeah , and so , yeah , i'd seen this sort of gap and it was a sort of analogy I use all the time when people , when people ask me is like , if you wanted to , you know , be the best business person in the world , you kind of you look and see who you think will be the best business person in the world .

Then you seek out any kind of thing , any kind of sort of things they've done , like podcasts or written a book or any , any articles they've written or anything else , to kind of just you know , understand it and learn it and try and emulate it , and I'm like , okay , who's the fittest and strongest people in the world ?

Like , well , it'd be professional athletes at some level somebody along those lines . So , and then , if we want to , if we want to get fitter and stronger , why are we not doing what they're doing ? Cause , they're definitely not doing this .

But at the time it was , you know , i wanted to train a group with a team , like I had done when I was playing footy , and I didn't want to go and do PT . It wasn't a thing , you know , i didn't want what I was seeking . And I'd looked at Jim Jones and that's what they were doing .

They had groups and they were doing specific strength days and specific like energy system days , and then they'd have a team day at the end of it . And it was like , right , okay , let's try and build out something like that here . So , yeah , put said to Russell look , i think we could do this .

We could like , we could sort of off the back of this professional sport career and , you know , we pull some people in and let's build out a program . We'll open a gym that's , you know , like it's kind of it's not exclusive , but it's it's , you know , like it's It's selected on hard work , like if you want to get fair , you want to get stronger .

It was like , okay , come with us if you . It wasn't a case of like at the time . We had 50 memberships and people like , oh , the new people would know it was Russell's gym and I'll give you 10 grand for the year . It's like , that's not . It's not about that like we want .

We want somebody who comes in and puts the effort in with the team , everything else , and then , as a bike , as you know , the product looks , look some , feel stronger .

So we I suppose that business idea put it to Russell and he , just trying to , came back to me and said , look , if , put a business plan together for me , put a business plan together if you know . Tell me what you think it looks like it's going to work And you know where do you need sponsoring , at what point .

So it's basically put it together , you know , and give it to me . I gave it to me , look to it , spent some time with it at his business manager , look at it and Came back and said , look , if it , let's do it . If it works , you can sponsor yourself as a manager to stay .

Like through training , basically taking PT sessions , i met some great people and all the way through , even up to Right now , you know like I've got some very like people who like friends and mentors .

That helped and so , yeah , i put it , so I've asked one of the guys to help me with it Is still a member of the gym now put it together for me and , yeah , that was , that was the first one I ever did , and now I've still got it and I look at it , i love , because I think if somebody gave this to me now it would be like Looks like my son .

So you see that , but you never get to understand the other elements of life that makes you successful , from being a good parent to Finances , etc . So I'd never thought that was possible for myself .

And then , obviously , going down the sport route as well , you start getting connected with people who start having conversations that open your mind and also your network to other people , and all of a sudden You know you're learning about things that you didn't think were possible for you and you recognize it . Fuck that blows just like me .

If he can do it , i can do it , and it's sort of a snowball effect . And You know I'm really deliberate with who I spend time with and who I want to learn from and why , what things I can learn from people and what I can hopefully give back to others . And for a long period of my life I never did that .

I just sort of knocked around like a piece of tumbleweed . I think a lot of people aren't very deliberate with who they speak to . They're very deliberate with who they spend time with to try and better their life . So it sounds like that's one of the things . It's , you know , part of the theme of what's helped your success as well .

I think something you touched on earlier it was like or Seem like you can do everything and you fit everything in , and you do this and you do that and actually you really there's a lot of things where you get to the point like you say , like actually You know what's the priority . It's like either it's family or it's close friends or business or whatever .

And then there's certain things that , like you might get invited to this , like look , that just don't fit in as much as I'd like to go to it and it you know it'd be great .

Unfortunately just no more timing this week for that thing , and I think that's vital , like I think you have to be able to do , i think from You know , and that we go back and forth with my wife on this a lot , because I , you know , i don't have sort of an issue in saying I just know I can't , i can't be there When if it's not a priority , you know ,

and I'll be totally honest by saying , look , i've , you know I just I can't be there and spend enough time with my kids this week

and I want to . You know I've been away all weekend , so saturday and sunday I'll be at home and that's it .

You know , like the , there's obviously things that override that , like if something happens at work that needs sort of You know some , you know for a knee Joe every maybe , but as a general rule of thumb , i think , as far as like , yeah , people influence around you , it's that you know there's an overused quarter , like your result , of the five people you spend

the most time with . Honestly , i couldn't believe in that anymore . I've been looking from from the start .

Like I said , i've met , i suppose , the gym being in Darlinhurst and sort of like you know A decent area of Sydney and there's a lot of like you know CBD's five minutes walk away and there's a lot of creative agencies around where we are and I feel like I've had some , yeah , i've got I've got some great friends and mentors that have really helped me with

some like money , cat by advice and yeah and time . And you know , like there's a guy , adam tripsmith , who He's sort of the company called convoy now and that's like a keg Higher business .

He has a family , wife , you know , like son and daughter , and I look at the way I suppose , like you said earlier , like I look at him and I just think , right , this guy Is , is doing everything like he's . He's operating a very , very high level business .

He's got , he's built a team that he has , an outstanding team , like his team all train at our gym , but they're a team inside of work and outside of work .

You know he's been and supported me Like an event . I remember being an event . I mean he does it all the time we've been in an event in Melbourne , we at the gym in Melbourne .

He came , he supported us at this event all day and it got to four o'clock and we finish like okay , like let's go and let's go and have a beer or lads , and that is like look , i can't , i'm on an Uber , i'm on the flight at five . I need to be home on a Friday afternoon because I have dinner with my wife and kids .

We go out to the Italian and Balmain and this is what we do , and it's like that decision is a really easy one to be like oh , you know what , i'll ring my wife because she will understand like I'm in Melbourne , have a couple of drinks and I'll get on the flight in the morning , because you know my wife would understand as well , like that's where it .

But it isn't . It's like a conscious decision of okay , i've done this , which is great , supported Chris and the gym and everything else . Go back , spend the time with a wife . Wake up at home on Saturday morning , take the dog out . You know like yeah , i've taken a lot from him .

I can't remember the specific question , but my response was like , oh , it's fucking fucked . And he's like how about you tell me what you really mean instead of swearing and at the time I was like angry , but then you know when away , and I thought about that and I was like man , i'm a terrible communicator . I can't Really tell people what I'm talking about .

It's like a way to sort of protect yourself or whatever it was . And ever since then I've been like I need to really hone in on my communication . Right , and I used to mumble and Whatever . But what has come from learning to communicate obviously started the podcast as a result and network has exploded and so many opportunities , and it all stems back to that .

One guy has had he not said that my mom's told me millions of time open your mouth when you talk .

It sounds trivial , but for me it's like that one what he said and just watching how people act or what they say to you can literally transform your life , as opposed to saying I'm a good father , but you know , not saying it's not , you're not a good father if you don't go home that night .

But those small things of discipline and standards really rubs off on people .

There's still things now that come to me and I think , oh , that's , we have a guy we do train academy here , and there's a guy , michael Marshall , who , like he has a coaching company now but he's been a member of our gym for again since we started and he takes a part of our train academy around communication and you know , i sat in there and obviously ,

like we put it all together in the content so we know it , you know , i know what's going to come and But I'd sat and listen to it and he said it's not what you say , it's what they're here , and I've probably heard that a million times in the past and never really

thought much of it . But in that sort of sat in there listening to him and just thinking about Like everything , like work , like home , like the kids , like I was like and since that it was one , that one a couple of months ago he's , i'm conscious of it now all the time . It's weird , yeah , it's cool .

We're running the , the program that the performance program that we run now . We've kept tuning right all he . We worked together for a long time on it and got it to sort of where it was .

And then We got to the point where it's like , okay , well , there's a lot of people asking for these programs , people sort of saying it's great And we've got , you know , 250 members in the gym that love it . So At the time we were like , okay , well , let's try .

And , you know , instead of the old school sending out the PDFs and email and whatever , let's try and build something . So We worked with a guy who's another member of the gym who built our web based app for us just to see if it worked . We sent a questionnaire out to the members , like what you love most about 98 . Why'd you come ?

and it was We love the coaches . That like the education and the knowledge we get from the coaches with the program and the community that's here . So those three things was like right , you know again , never , never really built out or ever built an app on definitely not a tech guy . But we I was like right , we just want these three things .

Basically , i don't want all these other like bits and bats that we can add on and whatever . We just want to replicate these three things as well As we can . So we built it out . The app has like a knowledge base which is Contributors , which could be coaches , nutritionists . We have like Dan Cooper who does that like mindset work and stuff like that .

That's on the on the sat on the knowledge base . And then we've got The program which is there's currently five programs on there And then we've got a community page where people can post that yeah , so . That that went well . So it was like one of those things where we had a decent amount of people came on like all the lads into umber and it was great .

There was people asking for it for a while . So when we launched it , people came on . It grew quite well . We sort of said , look , if it was , if it was successful and it paid for itself , we would build out an app .

So we we transferred it to an app , i think in 2020 so it was like just as Transfer it across into an app and then , yeah , it's kind of moved along from there . Obviously , there was accelerated a little bit over over corvid .

We kind of all the gyms closed , we tried to get as much kit out to people as we could and And if we , we wrote like an at-home training program that just sat on there . So there's , we tried to look at , we looked after our members the whole way through . If we could , we touch base , we had .

You know , people go on and do tutorials and just Q&A's and and whatever , and there was constant training . They could talk to each other in this community , community board . While all this was going on , we obviously like , i said , the sort of gyms . The gyms were closed , but pre pre that we'd all we actually opened our second site , which was Bondi .

So we opened Bondi in 2020 as well . Yeah , that was another I think I've said on multiple podcasts I would we've never open .

The reality was that we had a Lot of really great coaches , people who were , you know , gonna be good managers , people who wanted more .

You know , like from from 98 , we started to lose a couple of coaches because they just needed better jobs , which was fine , you know , they might be working for me doing five hours a week coaching and they needed that next step And we didn't have anything that sort of coupled with a guy that Had been contacting me in a fair bit about opening in Bondi and I

met , i sort of met him . I actually called him one day . It was in the middle of COVID , i was on the train to Canberra weirdly , train to Canberra . Well , he called me multiple times . He called me loads of times , yeah , and I spoken to him once . I was like , look , it's not something we're doing .

And then , over the course of probably , yeah , probably a year , i didn't speak to him . And then I have , we have a mutual friend who's Bondi Tony , who owns a burger joint .

I liked sort of I was interested in what he was proposing Yeah , opening 98 Bondi and I , like I said we knew we had staff , he had a great location , he was it , you know , he's a good dude and all that lot . So it's like alright , well , let's look at this . So he went and worked . I worked with some franchise consultants over there over the over COVID .

So I went and sort of Worked with these guys is to like okay , what could it look like ? I was heavily against like , i was just against it . Still , in my mind It was only things where I just was worried .

And then One of the guys in the franchise , the franchise consultants somebody said to me was I Was worried about controlling standard and making sure everything . I didn't want to . We didn't want to micromanage it , but we also didn't want it to dilute what we've done over the last 10 years . And he said look , in a franchise agreement you could .

You can literally Telecoach is to wear blue socks on a Tuesday if you want and if they do , i'll you know . Yeah , breach of their agreement . Like you can put whatever you want in the agreement , you know to keep that standard as you want it .

. And then , yeah , over that break , and so I met with Jane and Michelle in Brisbane and And I went , we went into another one in Melbourne with head office , went in with a business partner and and Yeah , opened another those to Brisbane and Melbourne after COVID , like say you kind of meet these people .

I met Jane and Michelle and you know , straight away It's like look , these guys get it . You know , I mean , like they get it , like we can Get the program , we can do this , we can do that , but really it comes down to the people at the end of the day .

anyway , these guys are , these guys get it , they're on board , the kind of you know , i'm had a great space and so I moved forward .

those guys , and , like I said , we went with head office , with one in in Melbourne , yeah , and now , yeah , after Melbourne opened , and this one at Sydney , so another one in in Sydney , which is the one at Swan's HQ , and then Canberra we opened about a month ago , yeah , and then there's another couple in the pipeline .

We've you know , you're sat in head office now There's , we've got sort of a staff now that are working full-time on making sure that the standard is held Yeah , whether it be marketing operations , programming , like customer service , whatever it is .

Like the it's not just me now , like it was fine when it was just me and one Jim at Riley Street , but now , like you said , we've got the , the systems and stuff in place that we can have multiple sites and and it won't be a , it's not gonna be a 100 franchise business . You know , like it's the key really .

Be so inclusive you hold everyone to the same standard . Where did that come from ?

I don't know that it was said in the same context , but as I kind of came back to here and we were talking about you know it's clue-saving and all this , it became very apparent . I don't know like you know we're in Sydney and it's There's a lot of money flies around in Sydney and all you know exclusive clubs and VIP this and all that .

And it was like I don't want people to think that this is exclusive , like financially , or exclusive like you need to know someone to know someone , or whatever it is . It's not that . It was that the exclusivity was the ability to work hard , like effort is a currency you know like and if you're , if you have , you come in and you want to .

You know like you want to work hard to get from here to be , then great , and if you're a good person on top of that , that's what you know . That's another tick against you name and and it was about building out a team , like it was a membership , like we were .

You know we had members in there , but it wasn't a case of you know , i we had at the time People who came and we're just like I absolutely love this , the gym , i love the training of anything else , but I'm , you know , i'm a , i'm a student , i'm a car . I really can't afford it and I'll be like fine , like we , what can you afford ?

and we put them in at that because it was important to have that person and their personality and values in In our group . Yeah , so at the time we had the ability to do that . So it wasn't , you know , like I was like right , we built , i built the group . The money came after , if you know . Yeah , I mean .

So it was like , yeah , the sort of holding everyone to the same high standard is , i feel , exactly what it is . And again , it sort of reflects in the , in the online community now , with a , with a community board that we have like people who are poor Stare numbers after their sessions .

Yeah , you're being held to that whether you , whether you like it or not . Like you know , i'm looking at like Phil driver who is trains in his garage in Helensburg because he's a big guy similar to me , and so I'm looking at what he's doing on the echo bike and he knows I'm looking , you know , yeah and same with the guys into one .

But it's like , yeah , you kind of built out that we were able to kind of do it in gym and then now like it's great , so we can do it online as well .

So if I'm hanging around people that don't have the same standards , it sort of drags you back and when I read that , i was like that's absolutely bang on . Success story from obviously your online programming as well , because there'll be people listening from all around the world to this as well . Your online programming is insane .

I follow you and see you putting stories up . You put one up the other day where you're on the bike or I think it's 12k holding 141 .

And then there's a strength program where we have a guy called Nolan Cody who writes that , and then Luke Corey who does the capacity work , and so now there's yeah , there's you have a hybrid one as well , Sorry . Dan Potter . God , he'll kill me because that was the first one .

Yeah , we have the hybrid one as well , which so the hybrid and the performance are running gym and then the strength and capacity are sort of outside gym and then we have groundwork , which is the body weight sort of like , kind of edited a bit from COVID but similar to the COVID one . And yeah , it's kind of it's been great to see .

Actually it's been great to see the people get on board and , like said , the team , the team head office , are bigger . You know , like we were sort of it's a really big part of the business and I think it ties in all the franchise . It ties in all the the franchise and the company on gyms all together as well .

One thing I enjoy about following yours or Jaden's work is like you get to see the community , but you also see what you're doing online and for me , when I saw you doing your post workouts all the time and I give them a crack as well I'm like I've got to try and hit the same fucking pace .

But now I've seen the size of you six foot five and muscly is all buggery I'm like , all right , i can drop my numbers a little bit , but it gives you something to chase . So , regardless of you know where you are in the world . If you have access to the ERG , like you said , or a bit of flat space , you can get involved with it as well .

So if you don't want to get involved with some training but , mate , it's been unreal chatting to you and sort of getting to unpack your brain a little bit , and congratulations on all your success and I look forward to seeing the direction you guys continue to go . Yeah , thank you , it's been good Cheers .

Thank you for listening to the Man That Can project podcast . My name is Locky Stuart and I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful . If you did , please take a moment to rate and review the Man That Can project on your favorite podcast platform and don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date with our newest episodes . See you again next time .