I'll get a team. It's Harps and Tiff because that's what we do. It's the new project. I'm sitting here, fresh out of the gym in my ac D T shirt T shirts brand new Eat and ten bucks it came out. I think I'm a big spender TIF Wow.
We yeah, new shirt. Don't often see you in different gear.
I'm out of the everlast, I'm out of the long style.
I mean we're brought on the rapid change.
Well, I would you know it's still a black T shirt. I wouldn't say it's a massive departure.
A lot of color. There's a lot of.
There is a bit of color, isn't.
There branding ac DC.
A little bit of angus on the front there in his bloody kids baseball cap. Yeah, it's multi colored, which for me is and isn't this riveting listening for our listeners? How are you? What's going on over there? It's bloody two degrees in Melbourne.
Yeah, it's pretty chilly. But you haven't even commented on a new setup here. It's been one weekend rearranging in my studio and you've given me donuts.
I did notice it that you've got the U project banner over your right shoulder, unless you've got this all ass about and inverted, but looks to me like your right shoulder. And you've got the picture of yourself of course you have on Mark c more and noun the toes the boxer over your left shoulder, and then right behind your head there's a picture of you roll with the punches.
Let's want to be some posters printed for it to pop up at a at a gym.
And I thought i'd pop one in the background.
Oh kiddy up, Well it looks very professional. You've got a couple of well paced placed plants. You could do a TV interview and you'd be good to go.
Well, I'm going to send you some snippets of me, stupid cat and the chaos that went down in this studio amidst the rearranging and the introduction of artificial plants because she's been demise of all of my plants. I used to have no more house plants for tip, so I went the artificial path.
And what she is? Not a nice person?
That cat.
Not a person, but not a nice feline. We'll go on per she's my person, she's your person. If you had to get rid of the cat or the dog. I know this is an unfair question, but I'm not saying one of them is going to die. But one's got to go and live somewhere else for a year, and then you get that particular family member back. One had to come over and live at my joint for a year. Which one would it be?
I don't think you'd be very nice to my cat.
As long as it was the dog, I'd be fine as song as it was Luna. If it was the cat, I'd turn it into Moccasin's stop it.
That's very naicety.
Well, I'm joking. I'm joking. I do I like cats. I just don't love cats because cats are selfish fucks.
The thing about Yeah, that's true.
But the thing and we can learn everything, we can learn different things. I'm learning a lot from help, you know. I'm learning boundaries. How to set a boundary. That's a good lesson I can learn from Bear because she doesn't fuck around when it comes to boundaries. She asks for what she wants and if she doesn't want to do something, she'd be telling me. And I need to learn a lesson or two in boundaries. So that's the lesson I'm going.
To take see, I reckon when your cat is teaching you, you're going backwards. I have something in me says it's meant to be the other way around. When you're the fucking student and the cat as the teacher, you've fucking devolved and you've gone backwards.
And the fact got things backwards. You've got a fair point there.
You should write a book when the cat becomes the teacher. Yeah. Hell, how to give up and throw your life the way to a cat? Oh god. But recently there is a terrible segueu it. But recently, in fact, this morning was one of the times. But recently I've been chatting to people who are also I did this the other night I was in Brisbane. I had a big chat to in fact a couple. I had one this morning and then won the week before when I was in Sydney with people who are at a bit of a crossroads
in terms of their professional life. So either they're doing a job that is okay, not great, but okay, and it kind of ticks certain boxes but not others. And that's I think that's pretty normal. It might tick the financial box but not the I love life box or the it doesn't fill up your emotional or mental or social bank account perhaps, but sometimes that's just what's required, and that's okay. And I spoke to a bloke this morning who's got a pretty good job, as in a
really good paying job. So it ticks that box in a big fat way, and he doesn't hate it, but he doesn't love it. And he really feels like he's forty two. And I think he's very talented, and I think he could do you know, but it's individual, isn't it. But you know, for me, like I like starting things, I like creating businesses and doing projects. But that's just me.
That's not for everyone. But he feels like if he doesn't do it soon, he's going to open his eyes in a minute and he'll be forty five or fifty. And so I thought we might just have a chat about And again, everyone, this is not advice or direction or prescription, but just the pros and cons because I had a multitude of jobs when I was younger, and then I've had businesses for the last thirty plus years. You've had jobs most of your life, but the last
few years you've been your boss. And I just think that, you know, I mean, I know this is an obvious thing to say, but like, we spend so much of our adult life working and our waking hours working, and even when you go one hundred and sixty eight hours
in a week and you might only work forty or whatever. Yeah, but you know when you take out travel and you take out sleep, and you take out paying the bills and doing the shopping, and you know, it's like it actually in terms of the hours that you have available to you just to enjoy stuff and where you're wide awake. And we do spend a lot of our high quality
hours doing a job. Now that's not a bad thing, but it's whether or not you know you're doing a job that you're surviving or thriving in, whether or not you hate it, whether or not you love it, whether or not there's good and bad days or just bad days.
What the ratio is whether or not you're the kind of person that would be able to, I guess, embrace the vulnerability and the unknown and the uncertainty and the unpredictability of stepping out of a job with a predetermined wage and maybe annual raises and you know, sick pay and holiday pay and all the security and all of the predictability that comes with that, whether or not that's and I definitely don't think that there's a best option.
I think there's the best option for people as individuals. But I also think that you know, like if I was not if I was the same person, like, same brain, same DNA, but I was say thirty three year old Craig and I had a wife and three kids, I'd probably have quite a different perspective on this. But that
isn't and was never my reality. So I acknowledged that I had a lot more freedom to take risk and to expose myself financially, whereas other people go, yeah, that's all good for you, but I've got to make one hundred grand and feed three kids and blah blah blah. And I get that too. So there are a lot of variables around this, But I think one thing is for certain that most of us spend a lot of
our lives working. And I think also we could probably say with a level of certainty that a lot of people don't love their job and spend sometimes decades doing that's not rewarding, not fulfilling, not enjoyable, and maybe even detrimental to their physical mental and emotional health. So with that in mind, what was your first job ever? Was at that job in Lonceston working for that lady that you've spoken about a bit for a start, That was in Devonport.
That was my first full time job.
Yes, but my first job was at working in hospitality at well, my parents had a motel and restaurant, but I was always too young to really work there. But then I worked in a friend's restaurant from about fourteen, so that was my first job, little restaurant to a little waits food carrier we used to call it.
Well, my parents always owned businesses. They owned a multitude of businesses. They had a hardware store for a very long time in Latro Valley. I worked in that from when I was a kid. They had a news agency business. They had a like basically a mini supermarket slash news agency, which was one business. They had an Italian restaurant which was very very successful in La Trivalley called Carlucci's, which was booked out a month and a half in advance.
So my parents were always entrepreneurial. Wow Ron and Mary Yeah yeah, yeah, So they had businesses when I was growing up, so I was always working in the businesses, and I always saw, you know, and with respect they're not I mean, they're clearly not dumb people. But it's not like they were geniuses. But they were just good at taking an idea and doing something with it. And I think, you know, for me, that was so maybe
that's a bit genetic. Like I was never lazy, like I never didn't want to It was not like, oh, I don't want to work like I want to work. I just want to work at something that I like working at, you know, and we talk about we'll circle back to this, but you know, we talk a lot in the corporate world talks a lot about work life balance, and I've had this conversation maybe five times in six years.
But you know, work life balance kind of infers that there's some kind of an equation or some kind of quantifiable numerical balance, whereas if we work this many hours working and then we're not working this many hours over on this imaginary seesaw or scales, then if we get those numbers right, then we've got work and life balance, which kind of makes sense until you consider the fact that like five hours of something you love is way less traumatic than one hour of something you fucking hate,
and in fact, five hours of something that you love might make you happy and fulfilled and excited and be a positive impact on your mental and emotional self, whereas one hour of a job that you hate might traumatiz is you. You know, So not all work hours, just like not all calories are equal. You know, a calories yah, well, as a protein is it fat? Is a carbohydrate? Is it nutrient dense or nutrient poor? So we have this kind of way of thinking about things that isn't really
telling the whole story. And so twenty hours of work could be something that literally produces dopamine, improves your immune system, gives you joy, gives you fulfillment, purpose, focus, excitement, social connection, you know, a part of a team, belonging. Or it could do the opposite. It could be something that's toxic, stressful, and you know, even traumatic, depending on the job, depending on your suitability for that job, depending on the work environment.
There are great environments, there are fucking horrible environments, you know,
depending on the relationship you have with a boss. I mean, some people stay in places for a long time just because they love their boss and their boss is awesome, you know, the job might be a five out of ten, but the bosses and eleven and they love the culture and they love the relationship, and so they just hang around, you know, like I was talking to I had coffee today with Josh Me Me, Me Me Pittman, as you know, and he was asking me about Melissa and I how
long we've worked together, And the answer is twelve years. And in twelve years, we've never had a disagreement, let alone a fight. It doesn't mean that we've never sought differently, but in terms of a problematic disagreement where there's a bit of angst or we've never had that. We've never and it's because I respect her and she respects me, and I want the best for her and she wants the best for me, and the same with you and I. We've had a few issues, but we've never had a fight.
And the only reason you and I have issues is because we're probably a little bit alike. But there's never been any hate. There's never been an argument, you know, because we care about each other. I want the best for you, you want the best for me, and so I assume. So anyway, I'm being very presumptuous, but well For me, it's very much like it's important that I
work with people I like. And I know that's not always possible, but if it's my company, you know, and it's my business as much as possible, I'm going to you know, if I've got to spend a fair bit of time with tif Cook, I'm going to make sure that I like tiv Cook and hopefully vice versa. And so I think there's there's a myriad of variables, be they sociological, environmental, financial, commercial, practical, that need to be factored in that makes something a good job, you know.
And like this. People might not believe this, but if I had to have a job job, I would rather earn sixty grand a year doing something I love than one hundred and twenty grand a year doing something I hate. And I promise that on my mum's life. I shouldn't say that, but my mum's my most important person in my world, right I. For me, money is not that important. If sixty grand could cover my expenses, I mean that's it. I'm fine, you know, like making lots of money but
having no joy in that. And I've done that, by the way, I've made lots of dough at times and in the middle of all of that been fucking miserable and it just didn't work.
You know what is over all the time and all the experience you've had, Now, what do you know about you in terms of what what do you look for? Well, if you had to go and have a job, what would that look and feel like? What are the things, the traits or the attributes of that.
That's a great question, all right. So I'm not saying that this should be all jobs, but this is Craig specific. I would need a level of autonomy. I can't have someone standing over my shoulder correcting me all day. That wouldn't work for me. Doesn't mean I couldn't be correct or have feedback. Like if I had a boss, I would expect her or him to kind of tell me what I need to do with mine and how, and then get the fuck out of the way and let me do my job, don't micro manage me. So I
wouldn't need that. If I was going to have a job, it would need to be something where there was room for me to grow and evolve. I couldn't be put in a metaphoric pigeonhole and said you're going to do this and a version of this for the next two years. Even if you're getting paid great dough. I know, I'm creating an impossible job description here, and also something where there's fun, you know, and it's a good culture, it's a good environment, it's a good company. And I mean,
I probably, I mean it depends. I mean, there might be. There might be a version of reality where someone offered me something that. You know, if one of the companies that I do work for or said we would like you to We're going to pay you a fucking ridiculous amount of money and we want you to be our internal kind of mind coach or whatever for our organization to be a company. I definitely wouldn't do a full time job. But if they went we want you ten to twenty hours a week on a one year contract,
We're going to pay you an obscene amount. Just being honest, it would take an obscene amount for me to stop some of what I'm currently doing because I love it all. But that would be a good challenge. I would sign up for a year. I would sign up for a year, and I would do that, and even if halfway through I was hating it, I'd finish the year. But I don't think I would hate it. You know, there's got to be a lot of boxes ticked, don't.
There lots of people or a few people. What about the Is it the people and the culture or the maybe the projects and the organization for you?
For me, it's all of that. I mean, like, I want to work on stuff that I find, Like I like developing things. I like having an idea. You know, it's like my first book. Whether I'm not the only person to write a book, but my first book was an idea and an idea. I never thought I was going to be an author. I had no ambition and I went My first book, which is basically about the psychology of getting in shape, was born out of the
experience of essentially having the same conversation. Because when I started to write that book, I was working full time on the gym floor, full time as a trainer exercise scientist, full time managing my team of trainers, having conversations with thousands of people a year, lecturing to personal training students, blah blah blah, and I was essentially saying the same thing all the time, which was getting in shape as largely psychological or emotional process with a physical outcome. You know,
your body's not the problem. Your body's the consequence you're thinking and choosing and lifestyle and mindset is the is the catalyst. You know. It's like you don't accidentally eat cake or accidentally drink twenty beers or accidentally have ten thousand calories a day. These are all choices. But even that, you know, that was that was something I chose and created.
Personal training was something that I kind of of course it would have happened in Australia anyway, but I was at the ground floor with that an idea that turned into some choices that turn in some you know, bricks and mortar and a venue and an address and a landlord and trainers and you know, all of that stuff of coming up with an idea. And by the way, more than half of my ideas haven't worked, Like there's been a lot of shit ideas in there, but you know,
for me, that idea of conceptualizing something. First thing that I did that kind of worked commercially was screen printing and T shirt design. Just like the T shirt I'm wearing now that no one else can see but tip can see. It's got ACDC like this is literally a screen printed T shirt. And so I was at school quite good at design and graphic design and logos and
all of that. So when I came out of school and people used to say this is pre computers, I was designing logos for companies and brands and even groups and bands, and I would design stuff for them freehand or using what was called technical drawing equipment TD equipment and graphic design old school freehand. And then out of that I started to screenprint a bit. I didn't know what I was doing, and then I went, I've told
that story. I won't tell it again. But I learned how to screenprint, kind of learned from someone, then developed that myself. Then I started a business when I was nineteen called Classics for Imprinting, And you know, that was just a thought and I was doing something that I loved, which was design and creativity and figuring out how do I screenprint? How do I hate treat garments? Where do
I get garments? How do I how do me? How does a teenager turn up to a warehouse and not knowing what he's doing by garments, you know, and look like I'm a business person, And how do I answer the phone, and how do I avoid people coming to
my house? Because my house was my business headquarters and it was a shipfest, I couldn't have people, so, you know, I was always creating this kind of reality where I knew that I could design the tops, to print the tops and deliver good stuff, but I didn't have a business HQ per se, you know, so I had to figure that out. Yeah, and it was just for me, that just solving problems like I love solving problems, you know, And that's never stopped.
Did you Were you someone who would go to people for help or would you figure it out on your own? What drove you most?
Yes, so that's also good question. So my first ever PT client was a guy called Max, and I still see Max. We fell, not we felt, We just stopped seeing each other for a long time when our own ways, and then we reconnected probably two years ago. And every Wednesday morning at seven am, Max and I have a coffee. And back then, back in the day, Max was a few years older than me. He had his own his own business and he was successful. He was probably a millionaire in his mid twenties and I was or maybe
late twenties. And this is back when a million dollars was a fucking heap of money. And I was a few years younger than him, and I knew a fair bit about training and you know, excise and nutrition prescription, but nothing about business. So I trained him because he knew nothing about that. And while I was training him,
he was teaching me about business. So I definitely had mentors and teachers that I adopted along the way, where because I was young and I think I was not a bad kid, and I was enthusiastic and I was a bit cheeky, they would and I was I was trying, you know, I was really trying to build something and do something and be something, and I was really trying to be a better me, and I was really trying to help people, and I was really trying to understand business.
And so everybody that I met that had more knowledge and skill in business than me, I picked their brains.
So I was really lucky. And also because as you know, you know, like well, especially for me back in the day, most of my clients were business people, you know, because it was a somewhat elite service back then, you know, so yeah, and it was, but I think that you know, just the idea of trying to figure out are you Are you the kind of person that could thrive or survive and thrive in the middle of a level of uncertainty and unpredictability, Because if you're not or at least
willing to, you know, white knuckle it and bite the bullet and be a bit scared and be a bit vulnerable for a while, then probably starting your own business is not high on your list or maybe not suited to you. Having said that, part B to that advice is there is another way which I've advised many people to do, which in the old days that there was no such term as a side hustle, but these days
there is. So you know, many people that even with personal training, many people that wanted to be a trainer back in the day and thought, oh maybe I could do the course. And you know, as you know, when you start out as a personal trainer, you don't go from zero zero dollars income to a grand or two
a week. And so many people that I helped and coached along the way, they started off pteing as a bit of a side hustle, and then when they got to a certain threshold, then they ditched their full time job and you know, went running with the old PT. So I think there's a few ways to minimize the exposure, the risk exposure, but still it's you know, it ain't for everybody.
What have you seen in people? What tends to bring people down? What tends to sort of stop to their start when they.
If they're starting their business? Well, I think, you know, I think that you need a very thick skin, and you need to be resilient, and you need to you need to have a really clear vision about what you know. And I know I've told this story too many times, but it is a commercial reality. Is this show that I did for six hundred episodes over probably three years
that lost money? The U project that I'm talking about, of course, And I didn't know, but as close as because you can't predict the future, but as close as I could be to knowing in Inverted Commas, I knew that it would work because I knew that I was getting better at this. I knew that we had a decent audience. I knew that the dynamics and the interviews and the conversations were good because the vast majority of
feedback we got was positive. I just knew that it was going to take me a while to translate this listening experience, which was pretty good, into something that was commercially viable in a fucking ever growing ocean of podcasts. And you know, like, you've got a great podcast, and your podcast probably in the top your podcast, it's probably in the top one percent in terms of audience listeners.
And you know, it's not that you're making nothing, but you're not getting rich off yours, right, And you've done your heading towards a thousand episodes, so you're heading towards a thousand episodes. Your podcast from a financial point of view, I guess, is kind of a side hustle. It's not your main job. It's part of your totality of your work life. But if you weren't resilient, you wouldn't be doing it, you know. And that's the thing is, like
you and I have spoken about this before. The amount of people who have said to me, at least fifty people over the last five years, something like, oh, yeah, I started a podcast, and essentially they say it didn't work. And then when I inquire how many episodes did you do? It's almost never more than twenty, and it's often less than ten, and I'm like, well, of course, of course, I mean, you can't do something for three weeks and go I gave it my best because you fucking didn't
like giving it your best is sometimes years. And you know, in in the instant gratification, quick fixed culture that we inhabit, people want to be Joe Rogan by next fucking Thursday. And it's just you know, it doesn't I mean, you know, I'm not a fucking grain of rice in the Joe Rogan kind of casse role, you know what I mean. It's like, you know, Joe Rogan has more listeners in the first five seconds than we have in an episode. And we have lots of listeners, yah, but he has
millions upon millions every episode, you know. So it just is what it is. And you know, for me, if there's if we make a few bucks, which we do, and it's I'm growing and learning, which I am, and I'm meeting cool people, which I do, and I'm having great conversations like we are now, and it's it's making
me think in real time. And like you and I trained before with Christian and the Gang and the Crab and organized to catch up on zoom at five point forty five, which was thirty minutes ago, give or take, and we didn't know what we were talking about. And before we went live, I said, let's just chat about career and you know what, whether or not career is a good idea or starting a business is a good idea, and pros and cons, and then we jump on and talk.
I've got nothing, no talking points, you've got no talk You didn't know what we're talking about till thirty seconds before. And so for me, it's like, can we get on, Can we get on the mic and just talk and talk about something that's hopefully broadly relevant. And some people have already jumped out, some people are leaning in, going this is actually relevant for me, you know, And that's the that's the skill, is to be able to have a conversation that is you know, it's not an interview.
It's not choreographed, it's not rehearsed. There are no dot points, there are no powerpoints slides. It's completely organic. Yes, there's a theme, but where we go, you know, And I think you know for me that I love the fact that so much of what I'm going to do be create and be in the middle of in the next five ten years is unknown, Like if I knew what was going to happen, I don't think i'd like it.
I like that vulnerability. What about for you has been Like, so you work for you now, you coach people, you do some speaking, some professional speaking, you still do a bit of boxing with people, and you do your show. What are the pros and cons of working for you? Like? What do you like? Is there anything that you miss about working for someone else? Like, what's what's going on for you? So?
What I love?
I love that I get to do what I love. I love that I get to choose. I've got to make this mish mesh of a bloody career that's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And I can sit here and have an idea and on a whim execute it and I get excited and I can put it out there and I can do
it my challenges. So when I was in Mark Lebask's course over the last two that last week for two days, the overwhelming sense of connectedness, especially the first day of being in a room for the day with a team with it doing something together, and I really I missed that, Like there was this sense of presence. There was no being connected on the phone, there was no thinking about work and tomorrow and sessions and clients. It was you know,
it was. It was beautiful, and it was like I didn't know these ten people and we were all working on different stuff, but we were working on it together, like on this common goal, and it was and I just went, I love.
I missed that part of it.
That's why I love working with you on the U project and I to collaborate with people. The challenges are being my boss, right, so I could. I'm an awesome employee, but I'm not always an awesome boss of me because you've got to do the things you don't want to do, so setting boundaries, making decisions that would be good for business and executing them and sitting down and working on the business and not burning out.
Like I wrote that to ask you what you think.
About burnout, Like to not burn out, to not do too much, because we associate burnout with shit we don't want to do, Like I've got a ship job of
burnt out and working hard for the man. But I think burnout you draw that silly little wheel of life that people draw, which is not silly, but you know, and if you love like I do, if you love what you do and then you end up doing it seven days a week and you love the shit out of it, there's no room in that circle for your social and your spirit, ritual, in your community and your giving and so parts. So some of your buckets end
up empty. And it's not because I'm burds out. But you do what you love and you've got so much flexibility and time off and whatever. You're like, yeah, but there's all these other buckets that are kind of empty, and I didn't realize that's interesting.
Yeah, that is a story I tell myself too, is it? Oh? Yeah, But I get a lot of my needs met through work because it's social. And it's that's true. Like I'm fucking terrible at having a holiday. Like I've noticed the amount of people who got to mean, when's the last time you had a holiday? I go, next question, Yeah, you know, but it's yeah, that's actually that's actually something think about. Gone.
I can think of times where I've I've sat and felt overwhelmingly lonely, and then I've looked scrolled at my phone and gone, actually, and I can count them sometimes and go like ten or twelve people have actually just reached out to connect with you today, not even not just work stuff, but like just connecting like you're actually not lonely, but because I'm out, but you know, it's me with my clients or me with my podcast guess,
and I love it. It's what a great job. But it's not the same as social socializing and not being someone in those moments.
So and that's not often.
But when I feel it, I feel it deeply and go you better pay attention to this feeling because it's important.
What about Oh, actually, now I'm not going to ask that question because then I'm changing the necture of the conversation. When when did you decide or did you decide or was it just a gradual shift out of having a job, because before before this also you owned were part owner in a couple of gyms, so you've worked for yourself for a while and been in business with people. Did you go did you one day go out, I want to work for people, I want to work for me?
Or did just an opportunity right as you took the opportunity and it's just been almost like an unconscious shift or has it been something that's been quite deliberate in that you working for you and you having your own business.
Now an opportunity that kind of unfolded in several little ways. One was throughout my boxing challenge, I ended up getting the opportunity to do my three qualifications in fitness really cheap as an auction item my board at one of the fundraisers we were having. So I picked that up for five hundred bus. I thought, what a bargain. Wow, I should do that because I'd be really interested and maybe one day, maybe one day it had come in handy,
but for now, it's just interested me. And I upgraded that and did the pt CORP because it took me two years, and I paid two years in a road to up to extend the time on it because I just didn't plan to use it. And over this time, the gym that I was training at I was saying, do you want to hurry up into that course?
You could take a class here. I was like, okay, cool, and.
He goes, I'll get you a key, and I don't need a key because I'm not going to be doing PTS.
I just do a class a week.
And then the week that I finished that, one of my networking contacts said how much and how often? And you're my new trainer.
Wow.
He started training with two people did that and within six months I was that busy that I went, shit, I have to make a decision because I can't keep saying yes to clients.
But I can't.
And what I felt was, people do this course and would love to be in my shoes in six months time. They would love the opportunity to throw in the towel on work and have PTE in full time. And I just thought, I kind of owe it to the like to be. I just owe it to the opportunity. And I thought, like, what's the worst can happen? I'll go back and get a job again, you know.
And yeah, I don't know if you realize this, but like, what's amazing about that story If anyone knows in a failure, it's me about personal training and that particular like the amount of trainers who do the course and then within that timeframe are basically booked out. It's hardly anyone. And it's not like you had some big marketing branding scheme, some online bloody funnel, you know, It's just like you
did it. People clearly liked you. You clearly were good at it, whatever you were doing, whether it was all about or a bit about personality, a bit about the outcome, a bit about the training, a bit about the overall experience.
Like that is a real feather in your cap that you may not like just because I mean, I meet trainers all the time, and I see trainers in gyms, I travel all the time, and there ain't many trainers as a percentage who are doing a rock solid twenty or thirty sessions plus you know it would be a small percentage.
Here's what I learned out of that about me, which is insightful and equally frustrating because I think I'm still bound by it a lot.
But when.
Safety and security is covered when I don't need it, when I'm out of my own way.
It's easy.
I didn't.
I valued the time that I had outside of full time work to do my own training and compete in boxing. So I needed to put a rate that was worth me not resenting a client. So I charged ten bucks more than I was paying my boxing trainer that had trained for a lot, like trained for a decade and had a bunch of fights, and then out of that I was like, okay, you're charging a packet. Now you'll value the session. Now you've got to kill it. You've got to make it worth their while because you're charging
them that much. And because it so then there was not that scarcity in that lack mindset. When I didn't need it, it's easy, and then you don't. I think there's an energy to you when you need a client to say yes, I've got to give them a price. I need them to say yes, what do I do?
Yes?
And it changes the I don't know whether they sense it, it changes the interaction. So yeah, I feel like it was easy. But there's something behind the situation for me that allowed that to unfold, And I wonder if it would have unfolded the same way, a little bit like when I said, you know, same with the podcast. I started it, and I was like, I don't it's not wasn't to make money or be successful or even get
a lot of listeners. It was to enhance my speaking skills and leverage the opportunity to leverage networking, to build relationships with people that were superstars like you and all of the guests I've had on the show. Because I had this opportunity to do that, and then you know, in no time, it was like you've got a stack of listeners and you're on the charts in Australia and you've got sponsors. And I was like, oh that's oh dear.
If that had to been the goal, I want to ship myself at the start and probably not achieved it.
And you know the irony, I love that story. And the irony is that like when you like when you don't need clients in inverted comments, like you're happy to have them, work with them, but you don't need there's no desperation, right then you're more attractive as and then it's like with my speaking now. And I mean this with humility and grace because there was a long time
where this wasn't the case. But I can pick and choose because I don't have much free time, and so you know, if people want me to do a I'm not talking about helping people out here like work with charities and stuff, it's different. But if somebody wants me to do a professional speaking gig, then there's a certain rate and I'm like and then if they try to bargain, I'm like, it's not Victoria Market, bro, I'm not bargaining.
It's like, you know, if you want to buy you know, it's like you don't fill up the car with petrol and go, I won't pay you one hundred, but I'll give you sixty. No, dude, it's a hundred for the ptrol. You know. It's like this isn't you know, it's what it is. And I mean that in it. It's the same with you know, It's like I say to people all the time, Look, if you just want a cheap speaker, there are heaps. There's a lot of people that are weigh and that's and I don't mean that in an
arrogant way. It's like, and there are probably some speakers who cost a lot less than me per hour who are pretty good. So you know, but at the same time, if you know, without mentioning a number, but let's say my ALI rate is four x, right, if somebody rang up like an Z or whoever, or Telstra or any of the big clients that I work with on a semi regular basis, and then Melissa, who does all that, if she went, oh that'll be one x. That go what they would go, No, no, no, we want Craig. Yeah,
like that, you also need in that space. You need to charge at a certain level or above or people won't think you're any good. So it's actually a really like the perception and the psychology of value. Yes, you know, it's like, I mean, I think about this, like I was talking to a trainer a couple of days ago, and they're good, you know, they're not amazing, but they're good. They're rock solid. And then I you know, this still
blows me away. The average trainer, or the average pretty good trainer now is about one hundred dollars an hour, right, And you think, oh, imagine if you work in the morning, let's say six to ten, you know, and then at night, let's say you do just five till seven. And let's say you do that five days a week, right, So six till ten in the morning, five to seven at night. That's six hours a day. That's six hundred That thirty thirty hours. Thirty hours, yeah, or thirty hours times one
hundred bucks. Of course it's three grand, and you're like three that's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for a part time job walking around the fucking gym in sneakers and some shots or real it's hard or a tracksuit or like, and it's not like, oh yeah, but no one's doing that. No, that's not true. People. And of course, like I said before, the majority are not making a killing. But I mean I know a lot of people. I know a lot of trainers who
make one hundred dollars an hour or more. And I'm just thinking, like, unless you're a fucking neurosurgeon or you know, like I mean, imagine where you can do a part time job working in an environment that's if you like that environment and you're all about health, fitness and coaching and helping people. But for some people, I think, wow, what a dream job, you know, or you might go, you know what, I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Think about
this for a business model. I met a girl I've told this story before, a lady I should say, in the States, and she used to work Monday, Wednesday Friday. And back then, this was twenty years ago. She used to earn about one hundred thousand a year US twenty years ago, right, and so that was you know, that's the equivalent of about one hundred and thirty or forty grand Australian now. But this was twenty years ago. Now you think she worked three days, which meant she didn't
work four days. You times that by fifty weeks, that's two hundred and eight days a year that she wasn't working while making way more than the average person made in America. And she was just great. She was very efficient. She'd work hard for a day than a day off, so she never worked two days in a row. So she had Tuesday off, Thursday off, Saturday off, Sunday off
every week, and then of course she'd take holidays. But I just think that, you know, this fix to the idea of could I design my own life, and could I design my own job in the middle of that life? What would that look like? You know what if in fact, Michael who used to work with me, shout out to Suzi, he ended up. I don't know what he's doing. Oh I do know what he's doing now he's doing something
totally different. But he got to the point where he would start training people at five and finish at twelve. So every day of the week work's done it midday, like, never working past midday. I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool. And if you're an early morning person, Bibbity Bobby Boo. You get up at four, get yourself a coffee. At seven eleven, you're on the gym floor telling old mate to get on the bike and asking him about what
he ate last night at the fucking corporate dinner. And then it's mid morning and then boom, it's midday and you've done it and you've worked and you're never working past me, and it's not like you're working through the night. Like there are so many ways to build something that not that's going to be you working for you, or maybe it's just something that you do on the side.
Self worth and valuing yourself. That's like, that's something that comes into play when you start working for yourself, because I mean, I was in sales before that. I worked for a print company. It was the last job that I had. They are amazing. We weren't the cheapest. We weren't cheapest. I'm out getting quotes, I'm looking for new business,
I'm creating relationships, and price wasn't an issue. But then all of a sudden, when you're working for yourself, the price conversation and the justification and the terms and conditions, it's like you want to print this with us, This is our price, this is the terms you've got to pay before it pray or not doing the order, you pay before it before it's printed. And then all of a sudden, we're going out, I'm a personal trainer. Oh,
this is my rate. Oh you know, we have all this story about that, and then they cancel for the first time and you go, oh, you know, like, I'm a lot more lenient now. But in the beginning, my cancelation was it's one hundred percent cancelation rate for twenty four hours.
That's it.
And it worked really well for me. And what I found with a with the rate that I was charging and the terms and conditions, the clients that were attracted to me. As clients were committed, they go, oh, that's the price. That's my investment for a year. That's a year's training. We're not bickering over. There's nothing worse than someone going, oh, I can't afford to train this week, and it's like, well, I can't really fucking afford to not earn money today, But you get to make that
choice and then it's on me. So there's all of the emotion around that that I think people need to think about and go, what are my terms in creating this and find the happy medium and you'll be flexible where you need to. But you have to have boundaries. See my cat's taught me those.
Thanks very much, Thank god for the cat cding you. I mean, I'm with you, but like I also think, like your clot your clients need to and it needs to be genuine. Your clients need to feel like they are more to you than a meal ticket. Do you know what I mean. It's like, you know, if my clients would ring up and go, oh fuck, dude, I'm sorry, my daughter's been up all night with Tonsla, I'd be like, yeah, cool, of course, look after him or her. See you next time.
You can't go, oh, well, I don't give a shit. You know, they're sitting in Sandringham Hospital with a sick kid and I'm going, well, that's going to cost you one hundred bucks. You know. So I think rules are good, but also, you know, in that kind of dynamic with clients where you genuinely want to care about them. Yes, they're not your buddies, they're still clients. It's still a commercial arrangement. But I remember, so I shut Harper's ten
years ago this month, right, so that's interesting. But towards the end where I wasn't training many people, my team were training people, even I would say fifteen years ago, which is say two thousand and nine. I you know, I had clients, but as people would drop off, I
wouldn't take new people. So fifteen years ago, if somebody wanted to train with me or to train with one of my team, that was sixty dollars an hour fifteen years ago, which was a lot back then, right, because the average I don't know, the average wage was probably fifteen to eighteen dollars back then in I don't know, sales or perhaps customer service or something, maybe not even that, So sixty dollars was like three to four times what a lot of people were earning per hour. So it's
still a good right wage. And I put up my basically just assuming that people would go, ah, don't worry about it, because I didn't want new clients because I was doing other things. And in a nice way, I've said, how things have a use by date. I didn't hate it, but I just wasn't excited about being on the gym floor being a trainer anymore. So I worked with the people that I had had for a long time, and when one dropped off, I wouldn't take on a new one.
So I put up my price to two hundred and fifty dollars an hour in two thousand and nine, and still regularly people would come in. Now they could train with Tiff on the floor at sixty bucks an hour in the same gym, on the same equipment and do
pretty much the same thing. And a lot of people did that, of course, but there were still people who would choose to pay four times the amount to train with me, and I would try to talk them out of it, and the most I would do is one a week with them, and I would say, well, you know, it's like this is silly because you can go do you know. And I had ten trainers that were somewhere between good and fucking great, and then another bunch that
were pretty solid, right, so you know. But again that's that perception where people think, oh, well, you know, like for some people they might think two hundred and fifty dollars with me is actually better value than sixty bucks with someone else. I don't think it is, by the way. I'm just saying that people like that's that psychology of value.
But and that's it, Like you don't get to choose that. You don't get to choose what someone's taking out of that, you know, Like I realized after all these years that everyone is having a different is placing different value and has very different needs in how I show up as their trainer and it's got nothing to do with the exercise on the day, you know.
I was talking to Josh today as you know, and Josh Pittman, who was who is one of Australia's best, if not best, stage performers, Fantom of the opera Laims Cats a whole bunch of staff London West End. He was the phantom. He was also the Phantom in Australia. And also what's the lead in Le Mis Jean Paul val someba I don't know, but anyway, not my space, but anyway, world renowned stage performer. And he was talking
to me about, you know, just work. We were talking about he's starting to do a little bit of corporate stuff and speaking and I'm helping him with a few things. But he does he does corporate singing where he'll do an event. Now I don't know what, I actually don't know what, but I'm guessing that having Josh turn up for an hour or something is going to cost somewhere
between ten and fifteen grand That's what I'm thinking. And you think, oh my god, that's you know, blah blah blah, and you go, well, here's the thing, right again, It's like, well, we could get a singer to come in for probably three hundred dollars, someone with a pretty decent voice. But they're not the Phantom of the Opera. They're not the guy who played the Phantom on the West End in London to rave reviews and sang on the Sydney Opera house stairs to a global audience and bleue Andrew Lloyd
webber Away, who then asked him to come. He's not the guy who sat and sang for King Charles at a table with the King on the table, you know, he's the guy who sang to ninety two thousand people at the mcg live. I mean, so that's what you're paying for, right, And it's like, yeah, he can sing. There's a lot of people who can sing, but obviously
he's amazing. But it's still like you're kind of buying the brand and you're buying the product, and yes, he can sing great, but you go, oh, we've got the Phantom of the opera or the guy who is the Phantom of the opera is coming and blah blah blah blah blah. People want that. And there's probably people out there as good or better than me, perhaps that might be able to do a corporate gig for one x, not four x, but no one knows who they are.
And so this is the part of the you know, and that's the journey you're on now with corporate speaking. You're on the journey of building brand, profile, experience confidence. But as I've said to you one thousand times, your potential is vast and your hourly rate is worth way more than it was a year ago, and way more than it was two years ago. And it's not that you're of course you're better, but your hourly rate has
grown exponentially, while your skill has just grown. Yes, because it's still about oh so you do corporate speaking, yes, whereas a few years ago it's now I'm starting, But
now you do it. Yeah, you know. So it's that perspective of like what people think of you will influence their their perception about and whether or not that's as an accountant, or whether or not that's as Josh singing, and whether or not that's as a pt or whether or not it's as you know, if I'd pay a grand to go and see an awesome doctor, not that I want to pay a grand. Let's be more reasonable.
If I had to pay three hundred bucks for an appointment with an awesome doctor versus one hundred for an average one, I'll pay three hundred. I want awesome when it comes to my health. I want the best person I can get, So I'm not looking for the cheapest doctor. And yes that's a lot of money, but you go, well, fuck, what is my health worth?
You know, when you like it just reminds me of who you were to me at the beginning. Like I remember taking a phone call from you and I was
still working at fight fitting Collingwood. I remember standing out like it's funny you remember moments I remember standing I'd ask you to if you look over my speaker bio and you rang me and I was pacing up and down in front of the gym talking to you on the phone, and you said something along the lines of it's good, it's not as good as you are, And I just remember that that just like the way I held on to that feedback and you said, I'd like to let me spend some time on it and I'll
help you write it. It's really good, but I think that it could be a lot better. And I just went that Craig Harpert just said like I was like, Craig Harpert just said that to me. Hey, Carpet just said that to me, like the confidence I got from now. Anyone else could have said that, Oh great, old have been whatever. I don't care, but you said it right, And it's about what matters more is who am I when I'm around that person? Who am I when I
choose that person to be in my corner? Who do I show up as?
And what does it?
What effect does it have? Well in both ways, if you've got a ship person or a great person.
And you know that I've given you tough love and I've given you love love, and I'm always speaking what I be believe to be the truth, and you know it's like my job. I feel my job for you as whatever I am in your life a mentor obviously a friend first but mental coach, whatever is to help you be great and all of whatever that means in all of the ways that it can mean something right to whether or not that's as a communicator, a business person,
a podcaster. Ah, you know you've already nailed that, I think, But you know, a corporate speaker, my job is not to make you feel great for thirty seconds, or my job is not to stroke your ego or manage your emotions. And I know that, and I you know, I think part of the problem these days is that that's what people want from a friend or a mentor, is someone to make them feel good. Like that's a fucking problem, Like that's a problem. I will definitely, I definitely don't
want to hurt your feelings. I definitely don't want to be a source of whatever emotional or psychological pain for you. But I would rather tell you what I believe to be the truth if I think that's going to help you over the long term, you know, and you know that's I think, which harkens back to that idea of an unreasonable friend. Somebody who loves you, cares about you, wants the best for you, but they're not always going to tell you what you want to hear because it
doesn't actually help you. It doesn't you know, the great molly coddling of the twenty first century is we're all got to tell each other that we're all fucking amazing and special, but we're not. We're dumb cunts sometimes, Like sometimes we're just fucking idiots, including me and you, And sometimes you're an idiot and sometimes you do dumb shit. But do you have vast potential? Yes? Do you have great genetics? Yes? Can you learn well? Yes? Are you improving? Yes?
Are you better in everything you know? In terms of the stuff you know? Even you in a gym, like you've never really trained properly with weights until a year and a bit ago. Now your body's very different, your training's very different, your understanding of how to not only train yourself but tray others with because you've been through this learning process, right, and you know I train you sometimes and it's not fun, but the outcome is fucking great.
True, Then the value of that because I'm now heading into my forties and my clients have so many clients that are forty fifty sixty plus, and the so much content that I've consumed around how we need to strength train in this period of our life, But that has been coupled with the experience with you, which is just like, I'm so grateful for it because it's literally changed how
I've been training people. I've dragged them into a completely different type of training, and I have completely different conversations.
I think you and I both probably even despite all of our individual and independent research and study, and you've done a bit and I've done a lot, you know, Like, I'm okay at study. Let's be honest.
I'm not a superstar, and you're PhD candidate.
Well, you know, but I'm I'm not fucking killing it, am I. I'm just fucking humpty, dumpty. I'm just fucking I'm just the I'm the turtle, you know, of the tortoise. I should say I'm the academic tortoise, but I'm.
Okay with that. But what I was going to say is I'm an experiential learner. You're an experiential learner. Yeah, Like, I'm not going to talk about how to deadlift. I'm going to show you. I'm going to deadlift in front of you. Then I'm going to get you to deadlift, and I'm going to go no, change this, do that
movie feet, movie hips, head up, activate your tva do that? No, nearly there, No, yep nah nah yet perfect done right, And that's going to take seven minutes, Versus I could give you a one hour lecture on the fucking theory of deadlifting and you won't remember it and you'll get in the gym and you'll do a dogshit deadlift because that's not how you learn optimally. Can you learn like that a bit? Can I learn like that a bit?
Is that optimal for you? No? You know? And this is this speaks back to everything, and whether or not it is a job good for you depends our Alma's good for you. It depends. Is this kind of learning paradigm good for you? It depends, because it's all about the person in the middle of whatever the activity or
the process is. It's you know, this assumption that there's a best way to do anything is built on ignorance, because if you actually did a deep dive or even opened your eyes a bit or your mind a bit, you'd realize that there's no best way for virtually anything, like, you know, everything from grieving to eating to sleeping to relationships. You know, is there a best relationship model? Nah? Is there a best way a single best way to build a business, nah, you know, and that's the thing. So well,
it's been fun. We went a lot of places.
As always, if people want to reach out and contact you because they want somebody who's good but doesn't fucking rip them off like Harps, how do they do that?
Can check me out at tiffcook dot com and all of the social places.
Yeah yeah, And if you've fucking cashed up, you can go to Craig Harp't there and I'll rip you off like a fuck. No, I won't, No, I won't, No, I won't. I won't do that at all. All right, everyone, love your collective guts is Thanks Tiff, Thanks HAPs