276. From Olympic Ice to HPF Brotherhood: The Mark McNee Story

Hey, if you're someone who really connects to this message and you know there's someone out there who needs to hear this, but they're too proud. The walls are up. You can't show them. No worries. Flick them the link, share this podcast, send them the link. They can listen to it in the car, in the comfort of their own home, behind closed doors, in private privacy. Listen, absorb, and you know, you are creating impact to change. There are so many people in pain who need to hear this message, who need to empower themselves, take their control and power back and get back in front. Appreciate you all, much respect. Enjoy the episode and again, share the love, spread the love, and let's create impact and change across the world. Cheer. The moments finally arrived. We've got Mr. Mark McNee. Finally got him on a podcast. Traveled the Himalayas, went into the Congo, all around the world. And finally,

yeah, the man himself. Look, Alex. And yeah, you're, you're here with your new hair. We both had a haircut this morning. Onto it. Maintenance is important.

That's right. Yes. Now we're both looking shimmering with our hair in its appropriate places. Those listening to the podcast, just to be clear on that, Marco's not naked. He's got a, he's got a phenomenal, well groomed beard and I struggle to get a mustache.

My, my hairdresser's just closer to home. Al's got to go places for those things.

You got like a $30,000 brawn. I've never seen a beast like that before. Is that like AI as well? That does it for you. That, that's a phenomenal device, mate.

That's it. No, it's the pit bull. No, it's super. Look at his jaw. I just want to have a jaw like I'm going to chew on the worst steaks I can find. Just so I got a jaw like that guy. Look at him.

How good, how good? Gents, looking forward to this session and sharing it with you all. We've got a dual Olympian, Mr. Mark McNean, who no longer always goes left, a speed skater. The man is fast and he's fast and ambitious and what I wanted to really dive into today. Yeah, of course, promoting being an athlete and the mentality and mindset walking through Marco's life, but also the big picture of life and, you know, and whether it's a, every four year type season or it's a decade long season, 30s, 40s, 50s, what I've always said, Marco is one of the hardest sports around, is the sport of life. Too. But I can't wait to dive into. I mean, geez, mate, going to the Olympics multiple times, that's pretty fucking impressive, man. So I'm not here to take that away either. I can't wait to hear about the stories, the journeys, the struggles. But ultimately for all of you, man, we're here to talk about family, self and service and how can we win the ultimate game, be the killer whale with a pod of orcas out in the ocean, as opposed to remaining where we are. So, a big piece today, fellas. Yes, family, self and service. Getting to know Marco's story in more depth and detail, but also self mastery, the ambition of a man and why. Why there is no end until we breathe our last breath. But, mate, thank you so much for making the time. Great to have you on.

No, likewise. No, no, it's. Yeah, the Congo. Hopefully you didn't get too many leeches on your way to getting me, but, yeah, apologize. It's ships in the night until now, but no, Pretty pumped, pretty excited out there in the ether. Let's see what we can pick up. Existing members on the inside. Let's go deep and go deep quickly. See what we can pick up. Keen to hear your feedback. You know, call up like we are. We're part of this tribe and we're looking after each other and building together. Yeah. But if you're new to this and this is your first touch with hpf, or the Real dad movement, as it used to call. Used to call it then. Yeah. Strap in. Yeah, we're ready. So, you know, blokes, we're men here. I'm very openly a blokey bloke. I like when my dad talked to me about what I wanted for my 15th birthday. It was a forklift license. You know, I like monster trucks. I'm building two engines currently, openly and without shame. I'm a really blokey bloke, like those things. I like cricket. And that doesn't mean we can't be gentle. I got two daughters and the amount they've taught me about myself is incredible. They're so lovely. I maintain that those humans just built the way they are. I don't think it's the boundaries or the guidelines I give them. I think they're just nice kids. But anyway, I'm just trying to maximize my time with them while they still think I'm funny. That horrible stats.

Oh, it's cool.

Stat. Whatever. It. It's a real 99% of the time we spend it with our kids is by the. You Know the day they leave the house.

So that's incredible, isn't it?

If you're. If you listen to this and you're at home and your kids are there. Pause it. Go play with them, go talk to them. Go find out what they want to do. Listen to this on the train on the way to work or sometime when you're on plane for business like this is if you've got access to your kids right now, just go spend time with them. Hey. They're such a gift. They're such a gift.

You've gone from an incredible intro where I was going to invite you to co host, to pushing people away from the podcast. What a start.

Oh, that's it, mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come back. Let's go deep. When it's right, the right time. Hey.

Oh, yeah. Two. Two little. Two little princesses. But one's a teenager, one's about to be a teenager. And I love it, man. Like, it's. It's the whole chief index, right? When to be Viking, when to be Panda. Like, when we look at our companions through life, fellows, which isn't always our wife or our wife alone, but the important relationships we have, there's always two halves that make the whole. And I think that's really important. So can we be soft and gentle, just like a woman can? Of course. But what I've found historically, through working with the men, as well as my own observations with my two daughters and my wife, is they really are drawn and attracted to the man that can complete their half that is not as engaged, active and. Or missing, which is the masculine in us. It's the drive. It's like, wow, Alex, you shouldn't do that. Don't. Don't jump off, you know, and jump into the pool and. But like, that's one example of me doing something that might be a little bit more risky and courageous or foolish or whatnot. But that when it's done, is like, wow, I could never do that. That's an attractive thing. So I had this beautiful game of. This was like tennis with Corinne, back and forth as well, teenagers, where she loved that I was a risk take, had the dominant masculine traits to follow through and even if I was wrong, perform. But then through that, fellas, you get your battle scars and you prove yourself and you earn your right at the table. Don't ever take that away. That's a. So my wife obviously sees that, but so do my daughters, and they love how strong daddy is. And they try and squash my biceps and my chest and I Flex it. Just silly things, but they. There is a real undercurrent of desire that. That women need that from men and for us as men, we feel valued and more important as well as the facts of providing. We know we matter in life and that's a beautiful thing.

But.

Mate, can't wait to dig into the parental stuff. But do you want to give us a bit of an update, a bit of a background? Not an update, but give us a background, mate. So Mark McNee, who is he? Where did he come from and what led to you essentially as a man moving through life before marriage and kids and hpf, going to the Olympics multiple times.

Yeah, thanks, mate. All right. Well, it all started in 1981. No, no. So I'm an 81 model. I'm the last of the WB Holden's, the square headlights and. Yeah. So my first memory is steering down in a place called Bonus. It's a plantation called Bonus in a small island called Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. My parents actually met up there. Mum was up there running the hospital as a nurse and a midwife and my dad was up there, he had his company making chocolate. But also part of that was his drive to educate and hand over agriculture after the independence in 1974. So we're still there in 81. So he mustn't be very good at it. No, no kidding. He was. He's a. He's a gun, my dad, he's a. He's a top bloke and a really good leader and he's taught me a lot too. But no, so that's my story. That's. That's me at two and yeah, lived in and around Papua New guinea doing local school as well as School of the Air, but School of Distance Education from the Queensland Curriculum and yeah, just had this perfect idealistic lifestyle. My older brother, who I'm really good mates with, he was very sick. He got a really bad kind of malaria and it swiped him. Hey. It wiped him sideways. And so that took a lot of focus from my mum, who's a nurse, obviously, to try and bring him back to full health. And it took a long time. It actually that Shadow was with him for a decade or more. So he was a sick kid and he did well. But it's also meant I had a lot of time with the local kids, with the other plantation owner kids and time to myself. Not that I was being neglected. Yeah. But Andrew needed a lot of help and dad was running a farm, so. Yeah, perfect lifestyle, no boundaries. Be home by 3:30. Yeah. Like got caught driving a tractor once. I couldn't read to pedals and I got in less trouble for that than I did getting home at, you know, 3:45 instead of 3:30 because that's when the mosquitoes come out. Yeah. So boundaries were really clear in my house and, and I, and I try to replicate that as well. Yeah. So fast forward another six, seven years. There was a civil war on a little island I, I was on. So we were agricultural with the other end of the island, but there was a large copper reserve called Panguna Bougainville Copper. It was a Rio Tinto asset at the time. And you know the short. This is, this is about parenting. So we can do another podcast on Bougainville if you like. But fat and skinny of it was there was a lot of money going back to the mainland and not much coming back. So there was a civil war. They're like no, we want our share. We didn't have a side so much in that. But yeah, there was conflict and conflict's not a great place for children to be. So mum and dad scooped us up and we came back. But dad stayed there to get all the, all the locals who weren't from our island off the island. So that's a very like, you know, these big skep skips of time in my mind that time when, when dad wasn't with us, that was tough because no comms, he's in a war zone. He, he, he was a conscript in Vietnam. So he actually did two years of conflict and was trained for, for such. So I was confident that there's only so, so confident a 10 year old boy can be when, when, when you'. Okay, so no, dad came back healthy, got a lot of people out. Maybe nothing could have would have happened to them. Maybe they would have had strife. So here we are in Brisbane, 1989. Max the credit cards out just before the insurance companies cancelled the, you know, declared a war zone. And there was nothing left in those businesses. They were insolvent, they were frozen. Yeah, yeah. So dad and mum had to rebuild. Just walking into the biggest recession Australian's ever seen. So yeah, amazing what they pulled through there. So we started living in a caravan park. We went from palatial like colonial leftover relics in PNG to the caravan park here. And not that we're above it then or above it now, but it's a big shift and yeah, off to school as a kid while they started to rebuild from zero. So yeah, fast forward a few More years. My brother and I ended up at a nice, at a private school here in Brisbane. Very fortunate that dad was able to link that in with his career. And so he shifted from agriculture and because of the work he was doing agriculture with the local communities, he actually moved into mining. And this is his life legacy now. He's one of the best in the world at looking after the communities who are displaced by mines. So from early on, from end of mine, during mine life, he shrouds it in a, in a, in a world of risk. But yeah, very, very muchly, objectively looking after those communities and, and you know, the necessary commodity that comes out of such a concentrated place to the rest of the world. So yeah, my, my dad was, you know, through the world, worst recession that we had in Australia and what, 17% interest rates. He had to fly a lot. So yeah, I was a FIFO kid and that was tough. I've done my time FIFO before my kids were born and I've learned from that. He didn't have a choice. Yeah, he had to do it. And as a 14 year old he probably, when I was 14, he probably copped a lot of flack from me about not being home. But looking now as a man and a father, he had no option. That's it, he had to do it. Yeah, he seemed like a guy.

Great leadership though, like doing whatever it takes for his family at a time that was very turbulent. No certainty. But he seems like a very, very driven man. Military, professionally. He's loved for providing for the military.

Wasn't his choice, it's not his birthday came up, but.

Yeah, but he made it mate, you know, and he made it through and then obviously, you know, but, but, but that aside, it's, it's very interesting. Did he ever speak to you about ambition or drive or what, what, what was some of the conversations you did have with him as you started to get older? What did you see? What did you learn? What'd you pick up from him? Because that's, that's, that's pretty, pretty unique. Look, we all grow up with challenges, but that's, you know, but it's different. Different for us all too. Pretty unique man. What, what he, yeah. And how resourceful he was as well.

He has a great perspective. Yeah. So my, my grandfather, his dad died when he was 11 or something. They were tobacco farmers up in the, up in North Queensland. So yeah, he didn't have an, have a model to, to model this on, so would have been tough for him. But whatever, whatever he did he didn't have HPF like I do. Yeah, he did good. He's a storybook dad, you know, great boundaries, really clear what we could and couldn't do. He, he did have a short fuse and he laughs when he's cranky. So we used to have a joke in the house. When he starts laughing, that's when we start running. But he was never violent. Never, never, never inappropriate. But probably. He went 0 to 100 Viking pretty, pretty quick.

True laughter. That's a good signal.

Yeah, that's it.

No countdowns. Just start laughing.

Yeah, that's it. Laughing. Hoof it. It was usually me poking the bear as well. I was a little shit. So. Stories from my dad. We walking around png. I used to ask him about as a, you know, single digits like seven, eight year old child. I'm asking about. Cause he was clearly following patterns while we're walking around the bush. You know, this isn't a plantation. Yeah. We're looking at cocoa, making sure it's growing properly. And I was like, why are you doing that? What's this pattern for? How come you stop every time we turn a blind corner? And he's like, it's coded into me. I can't not. I have to. And he told me about some of those conflict stories and I was very, very young. Yeah. But I just come back and talk to mum about it and I'm like, wow, that's, that's serious. Yeah, it's, it's, it's full on. So, yeah, glad he came home long before I was born. But what, what else from my dad? My dad is very cut and dry about things. He's like, this is it. You do it or you don't. I'm the consummate engineer and I want to do an options analysis on even lunch. You know, what's optimized. Whereas dad, as soon as he's got it, he's a farmer. Yeah. So as soon as there is a solution, implement it. And so that was the cornerstone of most of our conflict. He's like, go do it. I'm like, well, doesn't have to be done till three days from now. And we don't have all the information, so. But no, no, it was lots of, lots of stories from him there. Same idea. My brother was, was pretty sick, so dad had to spend that time with him as well. And my mum, yeah, mum was a big, big part of all this too. She was, she was, you know, with dad traveling. Mum was a cornerstone of that house and keeping everything moving, keeping the Food up to us. That's one thing we carry over here. Tash is amazing with her nutrition for this house. My youngest, Jasmine's just come off a quarter of rep basketball and talk about going to 0 to 100. She sort of started basketball last year. Fortunately, she's got a mum's talent for sport. Hey. So she. But, yeah, she didn't miss a session. No broken angle, no twisted ankles, no sickness, and 100%, that is the house that Tash runs here. Hygiene is high. Sleep, hygiene is priority. The food we get is delicious and abundant and not just the macros, but the art of cooking as well. So she's all over it, my Tash. Yeah. So where's that lead us? To high school. Yeah. So high school was. Was easy enough for me. They didn't quite know what to do with me. I shot the lights out at all the STEM projects, but I also was good at sport. So they're like, could you choose, please, between being a weedy nerd and making the. Making the top teams for sport, please. We want to categorize you. I was a surly little teenager, hey, because I didn't want to leave png. I didn't feel like it was my choice, so I had a short fuse as well. A lot of fighting as a teenager, which I. Which I sort of cringe at now, knowing how easy that conflict could have been to stop. But it's part of my story. I was never. I never, you know, I had this sort of mantra. I never start a fight. I just finished them, you know, and, yeah, I mean, you're grin at it. It sounds cool, but it's also not like de. Escalation of violence is critical. Lack of violence in our society is one of the building blocks of development. Yeah. I grew up in a violent society and it's not good, hey, like carrying a machete around and. And, you know, in png, it's a massive impediment to development when you. When your personal security is not paramount, when it's not a given. Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, lots of jiu jitsu now in my life, so I still indulge that part of conflict. That's part of my code. But it's on the map. Willing participants and, you know, we slap and bump and there are rules. You know, that's. Let's keep it there, gentlemen. If you do have a propensity to violence, whether you're in HPF now or just listening to the first time, do something about it. Hey, that's not. There's no, for that on the street. And there's definitely no place for that at home, you know? You know, what do we say? Bad people can do good things and good people can do bad things. So don't howl on yourself. Don't just incorporate it into your identity. If you've got violence in your background or you've actually done. Done those things, do something about it. Right now is zero, and the past is the past. And it only affects you if you let it. It only reaches from the past. Like, it's gone. You know, it's like the wake of the ship. Cannot steer the ship unless you turn around and stare at it. Then you're gonna keep going the way that the ship was going. Yeah. You turn around and face forward. You can turn the ship anywhere you want. So right now you can choose. And there's so many programs for men. Domestic violence or violence on the street. And it's such an easy thing to turn around. Such an easy thing to point to something good as well. You put that intensity into your career or your family. Oh, my goodness. Now you're. Now you're moving. Yeah. So, yeah, reach out for those. Go ahead.

Yeah. It's a reactive. It's a reactive addiction to control. Right. And that's their. That's a metric. To seek it instead of giving up

leadership to take control. And you're damaging the people you're supposed to lead when you do it.

Absolutely. So, you know, if you have. If you need outlets, mate. Sweet. Yeah. Lifting weights could be. Punching a bag. Mike could be gone.

Some people go to quiet things to stem that. I have to go to intense things to stem that. We're all different like that.

All those sayings, mate. The samurai with his sword sheath. All the things that we talk about. HPF rights, not just pander in Chief. You need the Viking in you, but it's who's. Who's steering the bus. That's a really good visual that I've done before where we all have different types of characters, right? Whether it's the savior, the pusher, obviously, the madman, the aggressive one. They're all on my bus.

But.

But Al drives it, you know? Yeah, yeah. No good points, though, man. Really good points on how you can harness it through your own journey over time, despite the upbringing you had. Because it's a big bandwidth stretch, isn't it? Like you're chewing up so much juice just. Just thinking about staying alive in dangerous situations, which means the. The fight or flight that. The way you're wiring yourself throughout the latter years and then you look at your children and then you blow up at them after you ask them three times. Like, well mate, you probably got asked 12 times or maybe you didn't, you just cop copped. Either way, more often than not is always comes back to an addiction to control in areas that are outside of yourself. Like if my child, my 5 year old Roman, like I'm so different to an 18 year old, let alone version of our. Let alone a five year old version of our. So how can I expect him to be doing things at the standard that I want or doing it the first time he's asked. Ask him 15 times or set a marker. Okay, once I ask my kids 30 times. If they don't listen. Like make it so outrageous in how you're shifting your focus at some stage you're going to get a result. But more so it's developing and nurturing. Like you said, leadership. Isn't it funny too? Leadership it is. Absolutely. Goes hand in hand, man. It's a part of a piece I wrote for Cosie actually about relinquishing leadership because you're pursuing control which means you lose the thing that you're fighting for. Is one of the questions that I, that we posed last night in our job in our big roundtable getting ready for the event, mate. Yeah, that's one thing, just one thing on the old boy. I think that's really. Val, before we dive into your professional advancement through life as a man. Valuable. And I wrote certainty over clarity. So one of the five temptations of a leader is choosing certainty over clarity. Now what that does is it runs a risk of ultimately procrastination because I need to know every single little piece before I do anything. So what your old man really instilled inside of you, despite you still have your method on processing things is a shorter cycle of processing thought into action. Think about that man. Like I've made. We've changed the tweaks and big, small and big HPF multiple times a month for nearly eight years. That's. That's hundreds of hundreds and hundreds. But it's, it's the cycle. So we, we can have a meeting with, with the, with the execs for what we're focusing on this quarter with, with HPF and our service and upgrades and blah blah. Mate, we'll have a decision within an hour. It doesn't mean we're recklessly building the end game. It's clarity on where we are now, clarity on what we want to achieve next, clarity on what that first step is and Then fucking go. That's it. Like, that's people. And I see some wealthy people talk about this. Like some people will take three months making one decision. If you took three hours and you course correct as you go by the time three months is up, fuck, how many have you made? Like, it's a lot more than one decision, right?

Yeah.

That's valuable, man.

There's a courage and an ego piece in that too that I really like and see within hpf and I work really hard on it too. The first time I noticed it in myself is a stupid 17 year old petrol head with a turbocharged Datsun 1200 ute and I was moving through traffic. But if I chose a lane that wasn't moving, I'd then feel sheepish. If I went back to the lane I came from, I'm like, nobody cares. Just change lanes, do it safely. Obviously. And the same applies here. There was no audience but me and so that was one of the biggest learnings. And what we really, Tash and I do really well, I think we do well here is when we're wrong, we call it. So give ourselves a chance to catch it. You know. Jasmine and I are so similar in our personalities and so 99.9% of the time that's super duper and we just swirl off into amazing, my Ellie and I. Ellsworth's so similar to her mum, so I actually find her, she's a complex kid. Like she's got a lot of lot going on. Not in a bad way. She's just like lots of things, lots of things on the run emotionally and, and practically. Whereas Jazz is like, like me. So it's familiar. Yeah. So when it's so with Ellie where I, I, I've got experience, 20 years with Tash. Like Tash is clone, you know, so it's a, it's, it's great fun working, working with Ellsworth and I find that quite easy. Yeah. But with, with Jazzy, when there's a lot of intensity in it, but when it goes sideways, it goes sideways fast. I go pander. I am tired. Like she's like to explain it to me, this is not logical. I'm like this 9 o' clock at night, dude. We're not, this is not a negotiation. But goes, you know, and so Tash intervenes and she's like a little bit, a little bit of time, you, you take yourself a deep breath and, and yeah, that's in the same way of changing lanes. I switch back into the appropriate lane and say, sorry Jasmine, I Was wrong. I was just adding. I was creating a boundary. Like, that's not a. It's not a choice for you to make. You know, I made the mistake and then typically did that de Escalation. She goes as well. She's like, I was digging my heels in about nothing. We hug, everything's good. Off, off we go. But yeah, so Tash facilitates that for me. And the same happens with Tash and Ellie. Their escalation is not immediately. It's a simmer and up it goes, you know, and I'll walk in. Sometimes I'm like, oh, goodness, what's going on here? I need a knife to cut through the lounge room.

You know, gotta get a kayak, the water's so thick.

What are you guys cranky about? That you're not telling each other?

Credit to you and Tash, though, man. As the leaders of the house, at least you have a process because progress is a process of lots of little outcomes. So you know that that's a. It's like your old man, I think you said, he said, you either do or you don't. What hurts so many men, even guys listening to this, whether you remember or not, is you stay in that fucking no man's land, man. It's like this hazy fog of despair because there's so much uncertainty and you don't even know where you stand. Either fucking do it or you don't. There is real value to that and giving yourself permission to be wrong. I think we spoke about this maybe on one of the charge up sessions I ran, where if you look at the numbers, if we want to talk statistics on making decisions, men, even if you're right 70% of the time with every three decisions you make, right? So three times 70 is 210% out of 300. You've hit the mark twice. So imagine that. Imagine if only 70% of the time when you made a decision, you're right, which HPF is probably fucking way lower for me. But you keep correcting.

But yes, the correction. You do. Like, you've got a great example here. You change tribe and we change some nomenclature, some names, and we came back to it. That's awesome. I respect that. Like, it's okay to make mistakes and then just go and retrace your ground. You're like, that was working. This correction was not the one. We're not going to keep keep going. And everyone's just like, cool on. You know, it's about not being sheepish about that stuff. You just like, call it. You're like, it's on me. Let's get going.

Last year, massive gala event we wanted to plan and I had to fucking cancel it when we already had registrations. Husbands and their wives wanted to do a big, big fucking theme and did a, did a big live video open transparent. So I think pre recorded live inside of the community, falling on the sword. And it's like if you, if you don't respect or like that, you don't have to stay either. Like that's okay. Everyone has their choice. But funnily enough, that got even more. But not funnily enough because that's the process of life. People respect the, the authenticity, the decisiveness. When you do make mistakes, but you make a fucking call and then you correct and you go again. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, very good. I know. So around that one out, that was the sort of the parenting challenge that Tash brought to the team. You know, it should not be within their power to cause me any distress. And if you guys work out, how can you text me? Because I'm still working on it. Like sometimes you get out, they get under your skin and you know, they didn't ever ask to be around. So it's my number one, number one priority, number one challenge is that these, these kids, as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a dad. They didn't get to, they didn't get to review. I'm a mechanical engineer in my career. They didn't get to review and vet the project manager. I'm a born into it. I just gotta shoot the lights out. They deserve everything. I have

no way to put it, man. Similar to yourself. Ever since I was young, I just wanted to be a father. I don't know, it's just something bad and I just always felt compelled and called to the servitude of what it is. That's what I love most, that it's its service. Your children are your greatest investment, mate, Without a fucking doubt. And that doesn't mean you can't invest in them through what you do professionally because you're setting an example on adding value to the world outside of the family nucleus. Absolutely. Your relationships are obviously given your health and wellbeing, your perspective and mindset on how you adjust and address problems. It's brilliant. My children, that's going to be the mental piece of my pool room one day. My fucking kids, mate. That's just regardless of the age. I remember hearing a saying from a billionaire. Success is when your children want to be around you when you're older. But I think it goes both ways. Success to me would be. I have such a great relationship with my children that I get to enjoy and experience seeing their lives as extremely successful adults at a close and intimate level. Because what that means is I did my job in setting them up to handle the adversities of life. They went out and created great successes for themselves. And I have a beautiful, loving relationship where I can be part of that with them. You know, like, imagine if your kids just want to be around you, but they're bums. Like, all right, have you done your job? So that, that to me, success, man, it's like I get to enjoy seeing the success of my children. A close and intimate level because of the relationship I have. It's. It's awesome, man. That's, that's a big thing, isn't it? Like, you think, sorry, not to segue off, but like, mate, like all you men, you got to see your life as quarters so you can still win the game. Like, you're probably in the third quarter, most of you men, some might still be a little bit in the second. I've just entered the third quarter and it's like, all right, but between 40 and 60, what can I do? Between 60 and 80, what can I do? How can I be the greatest? Like, think today, don't live there, because all that matters is now. But at least think for three minutes today, how can I be the most amazing grandfather that my children just love and adore and want to spend time with me in 12, 13, 18 years time, don't live there because that doesn't exist yet. But that's what I think about Mark. I'm like, mate, old, silver fox, grays, bald. I don't know, whatever I look like when I'm old, a few more wrinkles. Like, how could I just be the most phenomenal grandfather to my grandkids? It's quarters, man.

Yeah, so I'm sort of probably five years ahead of you and all the people who have been my mentors professionally are all retiring or have retired. And. Yeah, I've got one of those written down and I'll share that with you all now as a, as a 60 something, I'm not going to provide unsolicited advice. That's a, that's a massive trap for the guys into the fourth quarter. Hey, you know, we're building where this is that time in our lives where, you know, everybody listens to us and doors are open everywhere. So paralyzed by choice. You know, if you've, if you've built A foundation, you know, you know, I'm on the back of a startup and yeah, there's, there's opportunities and money everywhere based on what I choose to do next. And so it's a great feeling. Yeah, it's very powerful. And I don't. And I see it as a privilege too. I'm very, very fortunate that that's happened and the first one was successful. But yeah, what I found in that, when I reached out to mentors who were back in the end of their career, they're still healthy men. They're still. And good people too, by the way. They're my mentors and I've really leveraged their advice my whole career. But yeah, then get the call on a 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. Like, I was just thinking about that thing we talked about four weeks ago. I'm like, bro, we've moved on. I do not need this right now. So unsolicited advice, you know, that's a, in your last quarter, you might actually know better or maybe you do, but if you're too far from the trenches, you got no context. Keep it yourself. Wait till you're asked. There's so much ego in unsolicited advice. Yeah.

And then have you earned the right to provide the guidance and the, the mentorship? And that's what I see, mate. Regardless of how successful you are as a man, how, how many can you mentee, how many can you bring up and build, how many leaders can you build? Like the game never ends. Yeah, it never ends.

21 irrefutable laws that we did first quarter this year, Alice. That's the last one, isn't it? The Lord legacy or second last one? Yeah, would be.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Awesome, awesome book. But yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a real thing, man being valuable as you get older. Like just on that. And I said this to Corinne, actually, I need to bring her on next week before the baby pops. But I said to Corinne what? And I wasn't trying to bait her or anything. I was just genuinely curious. And the same applies for men. But I said to her, hey, what value does an aging woman provide that couldn't be replaced by a younger woman or a man? So it's not a negative question. It's actually going, let's list out all the things that are so valuable. And Marco, all I kept coming back to was as a matriarch, relationships and wisdom. You know, it doesn't mean that you can't make money as an older woman, but that's A valid. So now let's flip. That's a. I'll put that out there one day on a post. We'll see how we go. But no, look, but the same goes for us men. What makes you valuable as you get older that can't be replaced

by a

younger man and, or a woman. You know, like it's great that you cook food or do it. No, it's, it's, it's relationships. So what's the best way to drive wholesome connected relationships? Leadership, you know. And what's leadership? I can provide a source of value because I see more and before that's one of Maxwell's Laws, I can see more and before others around me to provide, to provide that. So life becomes an interesting stewardship. I feel, I feel blessed. I've got lots of wise men around me. So I'm trying to accelerate the understanding and wisdom but I'm going to live through it too. I'm not trying to jump ahead and put the, you know, and put things out of place. But it is a, it is a blessing to have that perspective, man. Because then you're always looking to grow. You're always looking to provide more value.

Yeah, I mean contentment and happiness. This is one I did with my cousin just recently, you know, sort of decoupling, what are we calling it? Expectations from aspirations. We make our expectations. You're gonna brush your teeth twice a day. You're gonna go to the gym three or plus times a week. You're gonna drink a lot of water and have great sleep hygiene. You're gonna avoid substances that you know, you don't have the psychological control to manage. Whatever that is, sugar, coffee, alcohol, other things, you know, these are the expectations I have of myself. But aspirations if I decouple them. I used to always a 24 year old man. I just wish I could go in and intervene. Like I' guys. I used to wail on myself like yes, it yielded a great result and I meant it to Olympics, but it didn't have to be like that and I do think it actually pulled me. So I had a lot of injuries as a, as an athlete. You're like don't start me on injuries as an athlete, Marco. So I know your background there, Al, but yeah, so in my knees and my neck and yeah, that was irrational what I was pushing myself to achieve. There was no optimization happening there. I was just wailing on myself if I just a millimeter off course and that's just wasted energy. Yeah. So decoupling aspirations from expectations is probably if we're jumping around in my life, that's what I learned sort of five, seven years out of the Olympics that, you know, when you are an athlete like that, you can just optimize every quarter of your life, every, every, every section, every day. But when you're out here in the big bad world, you've got options. Yeah. What are you optimizing exactly? And that's why I love this, this family self and service that we use here at hpf. It just makes it so much easier. You can sort of, it's a, you know, in life we need lighthouses that are, you know, tell us where the rocks are. And it's great for ships in the water moving slowly, but also for, for planes. Yeah, they're, they're in the sky. We're using engineering to keep them up there and concentrated hydrocarbons and they got to come down. Yeah, they can't just stay up there indefinitely. You can probably bob around an ocean for a long time without petrol. You can fish some fish and have a good old time. But you're in the sky, you gotta calm down. Yeah. So what do we do in the sky? We don't have lighthouses. We have landing beacons and we have lights that tell you if you're too high or too low. We have shutters that tell you if you're too fast or too slow. And hpf, you know, using my nerd engineering analogies, has those things. We have shutters to land lights that are too high, too low. Like get you on course. Yeah. Because you've got to calm down. When you've got a tank full of fuel, your wings are full of fuel, up you go, your trajectory. Like you say 24 year old man. Whoop. Away we go. Like full throttle. Let's do it. Get to altitude. But the opposite, like we gotta come down and it cycles over life, but it also cycles over the day and the week. So those landing beacons are so important and there's so many. I mean, what do we say? Stand on the shoulders of giants. The methods are here. The methods are many, the adaptations are few. So just have a peek. Peek under the, Peek under the bonnet if you can. I'm not, I'm just a punter here. Yeah, it's Al's company, but geez. I came to HPF looking for systems for my business and well, say leave. Not leaving. I'm still in HPF because of the family circles and the self circles. I was applying Olympic mentality to Korea. That's fine, it works. Ish there's burnout there, but it works ish at home. It doesn't at longevity. Nah, doesn't work. So, yeah, there's a lot of systems in here that keep us safe, keep us on track. But yeah, the beacons, the lighthouses and the landing beacons, they're all in here. Have a look. Do the 21 day challenge. What are we day three at the moment? Alright, that's a way to peek under the bonnet. Have a look at these amazing systems we developed. I think it's five bucks or something, isn't it? Whatever it is. Oh, that's the red hot marriage playbook. 21 day challenge. Have a go, guys. You got nothing to lose.

No, it's awesome.

Yeah.

If you guys are keen and interested. So we have three different phases. Right. So happy to share. We did do some promos and some. Some ads and hand them out. But just flick some email admin@highperformancefather.com and we'll give you phase one. It's awesome, man. Like, you know, eight small, very achievable, short set targets that assist you across your life, including a time management. 21 days made 168 victories. How good? Three weeks to rack up those amount of win. That's what it is. It's always the micro steps that leads to the biggest outcomes too. So we do count them as victories and you check that box and you do eight every day of these little habits and you move through. Actually, it's probably one of the earlier podcasts as well. It is, mate. Phenomenal. Yeah. I love it. The 21 day foundations, all the members go through it. But then obviously it is our 21 day challenge, which is phase one. Love it, man. We should be hiring you as a staff member. You'd be our analogy king. That was a brilliant.

I love a good analogy. Again, that's my. My grads always talk about it. They're like, strap in. Where are we're going cross country here. Metaphors.

So good.

Yeah, it's.

It's all metaphor. Sorry. But yeah, it's mate.

Incredible. Incredible. That's correct. Yeah.

Yeah. One thing that's important, man, like the reason why this company and the business exists, that's. That's like the life force and what we'll do, drive the mission. So that is important. Having a business, having a company that's like a source of leadership, that draws people in, then drives towards results that help them individually achieve what they want. But collectively, Marco, it's the fucking vision, man. Like, it's Might be my company. It doesn't fucking matter. It's actually the vision that we all buy into. I fucking love that, mate. Like, that's what drives me. It makes it so fucking easy to do the hard things. And then the vision means we're all bought in on it. There's a mission that we all execute on, regardless of what hat that we wear. That's. It really is. It's so interesting, man. Like, the more successful we become, the more, the more humble I become in simply being a caretaker. And I fucking love that, mate. Like, it's just, it's unreal. And I, you know, I would implore all of you men to explore in not just self and family and, but, but all of it. But yes, not just service. Sorry, but all of it. But yeah, in service, is there something that I can really drive where I can create a purpose, a mission, and something that I'm bored in on? It's deeper than. Do what you love and you'll never work a day in life, mate. There's so many hard things every day that I got to do, man.

And like you say analogies and metaphors and you also have. If you love cooking, don't become a chef, you know, is an equal and opposite to all those things. At some point you gotta grind, you gotta go.

If we only did what I wanted, all we would have is fucking 5,000 podcasts, mate. I fucking love this. This charges me up, this energizing me. That's all we would do, mate. Like, what do we do? One podcast a week, sometimes two. It's like, this is like the highlight for the week for me, man. But, but I love the, the, the pushing up Illinois because the benefits and the outcomes of the mission and the vision, that's what makes it so easy. It's weird. Like, it's super hard, but the decision to do it. Sorry. Is easy. Like drawings from some of the old man's wisdom. It's like, this is really hard, mate. Like helping middle aged men drive towards a mission and vision that the world's trying to attack at the moment, especially through masculinity. It's like, it's a pretty hard thing to rally the troops, ask them to be part of the mission and vision by investing not just money, but time and energy and collectively be aligned.

That, that's, yeah, that's the bit I love about here. We're not like, where. What's that, what's the great analogy? It's stumbling uphill. You're gonna, it's. You're gonna Fall. If you're running fast enough, you're gonna trip. But as long as your trajectory is correct, as long as you're going uphill, dust yourself off. We'll be here for you. If you wanna, wanna jump on the inside, call, call your mates. Find a way. If you, if you, if you're not ready for hpf. But this is where it works. We fail, we fail hard, we fail often. We fail so well on the right path, but yeah, further to your grind point. The other one I really like. And so I was in a to doing some Olympic analogies. You got me on here because of my five circle dream. So we'll do some Olympic stuff. I was in a sport. It's a race sport. Yeah. Finish line, doesn't discriminate. Can love it. I was a fat little kid. I can align with your green cordial if you want to jump back to the first podcast. Talk about green cordial. For me, I was Mars bars. So, yeah, I just had volume of food was incorrect. The type of food I was eating is incorrect. And this is without my mum knowing it clearly. So I was probably a pretty lean and well put together kid. When I got here from png, I didn't have access to that stuff. Hey, so yeah, at school, at the waiter school, I could spend my money. I've always been pretty crafty with money. Dad tells a story how, you know, he'd asked the trade store. He's like, how come Mark's got all these pocket money? And the trade store guy was like, does Mark not spend anything here? Your brother's always up here. They're like, we'd go get our whatever. It was keener a week, which is like 4 bucks, 5 bucks a week in today's money. And the trade store guy's like, oh, no. Andrew comes here and spent. That's my brother's name. Yeah. Andrew comes in and spends his money. Mark just puts it on the tab. So I chalk it up on the company tab. Dad'll pick that one up. Thanks, buddy. It's cold. I had all my keeners at the end of the year when I needed them.

That's right.

So, yeah, there's the. The. My favorite analogy came from a. We're jumping around here, but I'll get back to it, I promise. I had a cab driver and he was from Syria and I was headed to the airport to go to a power station, which is kind of what my career is typically flying somewhere to start a power station that is in an odd place or to work on it. And this fellow was good. He was, he was clear. Scar on his face, like, it's. I had to say the cliche, but he's clearly from a war. He was well put together. Fit, tall and driving an Uber at 4:30 in the morning. Dropped me at the, at the airport and I had a good conversation with him. Hey. And he's like, he just come from the uae. And I said, mate, it's tough for you here. I appreciate what you're trying to do here. You're going to build. He had three kids. And he's like, Australia's amazing. I was like, how could you not have resentment? Like you're marginalized here? He's like, nah, bullshit. He's like, all you have to do in Australia if you want money is walk outside, look up and open your arms. He's like, it's everywhere. Opportunity and money is everywhere here. He's like, in uae, I couldn't be too successful or I would have been shot. And there's some perspective for you. Hey, and so, yeah, if you're sailing a bit close to the wind, maybe there's a bit too much beer or cigarettes in your life. Devices are expensive. Hey, gambling's expensive and I'm not, I'm not talking you down. I've had my dance with vices as well and yeah, my Irish family, jeez, alcohol is a big part of my extended family and as a vice, hey, so, yeah, yeah, just do what you can, hey, but get some help. There's so many programs out there. If you're on the bungas, just kick it because it's so expensive. If you're struggling with money, it's out there, I guarantee you, you've got impediments in your own way that makes you not like my cab driver. Walk outside, look up, open your arms, there's money around. Yeah, there's value to be made.

Absolutely. If you really sit down and explore all of the facts, you'll see like things like cigarettes and eating food and all that stuff. It really does add up, man. I've got a little piece here I just was sharing with the coaches. Get to the truth, because the truth like that, that unveils everything. Get to the truth of everything that matters and then find the best truth and make that one stick. Like if you, if you really take a hard look, you're like, oh, yeah, no, my wife's doing this with, with, with gambling. Or it doesn't even have to be you. Like any sphere of influence inside of your life that impacts you. You can really explore the facts and without too much digging, get, get to the truth of the situation. You know, whether it's financial opportunity, reward or not. It's, it's the old Jim Rohn saying, don't wish for the winds to change, develop the skills to set a better sale. I may like HPF in what it's becoming. It's definitely not about me, but the spark was me being at the worst point of my life and everything falling apart. No marriage, no money, no connection with my daughter, body falling apart from an exhale. I had fucking nothing, mate. From nothing. From nothing. There wasn't a, there wasn't a higher performing father or some other thing I could just, you know, copy. Not that we ever have or ever will, but there wasn't something I could model or see and go, I'm like, oh, I'll have a crack. I'm pretty big with coming back from adversity. So let's work on mindset and fitness. And that was the start of rdm. That's all it was. I didn't know about marriage or fatherhood. There were parts of my life that were so novice and building. But what I love though, Marco, is we will have the the Field Manual for life for men in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, which might be a series of books, might just be one, who knows? But yeah, but it's exciting. I love the stumbling up the hill.

If I had to distill your secret superpower from seeing on the inside here is everything becomes a system rapidly. So if you're, if you're running a business and you're, and you're charting new waters, be like al and actually if you do something, document it so that others can follow in your path rapidly. You know, I throw back to all the old RDM stuff and I'm still picking through content here. There's, I think there's more hours of content in HPF than there are hours in the year. So I got a bit to do, but I'm doing my best. I'm picking through it at one and a half speed. You speak fast already. And at one and a half speed it's like you're like a rapper, but there's gold nuggets in amongst it, apart from the specific content that I'm looking at, but yeah. So you systematize things. Is that a word? I think it is, yeah, it is.

No, the Yanks use it a fair bit.

System.

It is a word, yeah. Systematized. I say systemized, but yeah, they're both words. Yeah.

Beautiful we'll do that, whatever that is, make it into a system. Yeah. And that's your secret superpower. Nothing for the second time has to be learned for the first time.

Yes. The, the other thing too on that, mate, is oh, and boys, that doesn't mean that I haven't had to fucking rebuild systems.

Right.

As we evolve, you talk about all the content I've got about.

Sometimes Zuckerberg takes the system away from you. Well, that's right, that's right.

But what's exciting though, mate, is. Yeah, I can't help myself, but we've got probably 400 videos that I'll be shooting with resources and instead of the courses we currently have, which are phenomenal, I'm actually going to break them all down into micro courses so it's. It never ends.

But I love that.

And, and you always come back to the fundamentals again. What's the most valuable thing here for these men that can and value isn't just based in content, it's based in time and attention required in a distracting world that's super fast. So making sure they're getting exactly what they need. Mate, it's going to be. I'm pretty excited about it. But that's just, that's one aspect though. But yeah, what you've done is provide

an analogy there of a really cornerstone concept that my cousin, cousin helped me with and also my, my trainer, who's a mate of mine. P.S. kwan at Queensland kettlebells come down. If you're in Brisbane, change your life. Yeah, it's the idea that you are enough. So just like we talked about those, those rocks, the lighthouse, that's one of them. If you're wailing on yourself, if your self talk is negative and you cannot take a break. The one that brought me to tears, actually, I was sobbing at the, at the drive. I was trying to drive to pick someone up from the airport and I had to pull over because I couldn't safely drive. And the words were, if you, if you treat yourself in a way that you would not tolerate someone treating your daughter, change. And I thought, and I was like, for the time over the Gateway Bridge, the two and a half minutes to descend that bridge, I was just listening to my monologue and how negative it was, how furiously horrible I was to myself. It's not that we shouldn't have discipline, it's not that we shouldn't try and improve, but what you just said, there is a little tweak. You're like, ah, it's all right. When always trying to Change. And that was pretty lighthearted. Yeah, but you also, beneath that, you think you're enough, you've done enough. Like you are enough as you are. Just like we, you know, the expectations and aspirations. Expectation is start where you are, use what you have and do what you can. So build from where you are. You are surrounded. You. You are. I know, I know where you are in your life. But you listening. You are surrounded by victories. You have no idea how powerful you are and that which you can consolidate on. Now look to your victories. Look to and celebrate them. Just turn that voice that just wowed on you for whatever you did. Turn it and make it go. Hang on, mate. You just worked a full day. You just were creative and altruistic in your business. You drove home, got some fuel, and you didn't pick up a candy bar. Good job. Like double down on that. And to start with, it seems facetious when we say that in our head. You're like, self high five. I call it. I walked out of the servo without a doughnut. Super duper. I'm a donut kid. I was a big kid. Hey, that sugar is pervasive for me. I just love it. And so I just avoid it without wailing on myself. So there's that that you can use. That same thing becomes your superpower. But you're enough as you are 100%. You're surrounded by winds. I believe it. I don't even know who you are. You're listening now. You made it to however far through this podcast you have. Maybe you're on the stepper machine and you can't get to it. You're like, ah, Marco, shut up. You can't get to your phone to turn it off, but you build where you are. So you are enough. But you also have to challenge yourself. It's the ultimate juxtaposition of personal development and for me, of parenting. I love you just the way you are. You're absolutely enough. You do not have to change. But if you so chose to challenge yourself in an area of yourself, and this has been talking to my daughters. Now that you determine to be important, I'm here. Let's build. Let's get better. They fly in each other's face emotionally, but they can. You can exist in both spaces, but not at the same time.

And that's the last part is so important. Like, let's break it down, man, into a moment. What's a moment? Three seconds. So you are enough in this moment. But then ask yourself the question, but what's possible in the next moment, like, don't even worry about fucking decades, years and months and weeks. Like, break it down. I am enough right now in this moment for this podcast with Marco. I wonder what's possible in the next moment when I talk about, hey, you know what? Momentum is actually built. More, Marco, off the things that you shouldn't be fucking doing, that you don't do, as opposed to things you actually create and do because you're spot on, man. You guys will create so much more fucking progress through not doing the stupid shit that every other fucking person does, as opposed to having these brilliant great ideas. Like, look at hpf, structure, capacity, skills, consistency. Build structure. So you've got your priorities ordered. Develop the skill sets to be able to convey a level of leadership to all the circles of your life. Develop the capacity so you have a high level of energy as an organism that can operate throughout the day. Do it lots of fucking times, and keep tweaking and adjusting. So just then, I've said that before, but it's like, well, yeah, cool. So maybe I'm the same hour this moment as I was 12 moments ago, which was 36 seconds. Doesn't fucking matter, mate. When you zoom right out and look in years, months, Marco. I've changed so much men in the last six months. I'm entering an era of leadership now where I'm looking to develop leaders, not so much just systems and just be a master technician. I love it. I feel called for that part. Like, I'm like, but, mate, you know what? Every time I tried to cut fucking corners and be this leader building other leaders, I got fucking burned badly. And that was me, my fault. I'm not saying other people, like, I failed. And I was like, ah, you can't shortcut this man. Earn your fucking stripes. Go through brick by brick. And that started something as simple as I will get to a boys and do a podcast on it. Something simple as going, well, hang on a minute, what do we actually fucking stand for? These are the HPF tenants. That was my very first. That was my rebirth into leadership. I was like, ah, cool. You're either fucking in this or you're not. Otherwise you won't be a team player and you're not part of the team. The end. And that. I was like, fuck, where was that? And I look back at all the mistakes I made, the poor hires, the lack of standards, everything over the years, and I'm like, fuck me, if only I had these tenants. But I wasn't the man at the time to be able to sell it.

You know what the hardest one for me is? Al hardest of the five. Seek growth, love and joy. That one for me doesn't come naturally. I see myself as a. As an agent of service to this environment, to this society. The environment that keeps us alive. Society that's around us. And my family, yeah, they need everything from me. But you know, and for lots of followers coming into this, got to be 100 to give a hundred. That's cans of Coke and get into the gym. That's their 100. They got to get there cardio up. I obviously had a bit of a head start to Olympics, et cetera. So I had my physicality pretty well sorted on the way in. But I wasn't at a hundred because I would give everything of myself. There was nothing left for me. And you got to start there. So I got a tinker. That's part of my. I got into my career as an engineer because I love tinkering. I love engines, I love moving parts, I love the noise and the heat. Motorsport for a patch there too. It's fundamentally frivolous. I enjoyed it. I watched it on the weekend. So I'm not above it. But I went a different trajectory into clean energy because. Cause it has more agency for me. It's more purposeful. I can help people and environment in my overlap using my nerd skills that not everyone has in this society. Yeah. So find your superpower and double down on it. Hey. But yeah, so tinker. So now sitting here, I mean I got my stupid drag car here and a lot of my renewable energy friends struggle with it. But that's their life and this is mine. My mates come around, we do work on this car. It's cool, it's fun. I'm not hurting anyone. Yeah. We've got chassis links have just gone in. This thing's about to go yet it came out with 140 horsepower. I'm shooting for 700. That's adequate for family safety, you know. Chris Merges. So yeah, we got a dream. But this one doesn't. Is not time bound. It takes parts of me, but it's four or eight hours a week. Yeah. Another follower on the inside shout out to Vinnie. He. He gave me permission. We're talking and he's like, you can do. You can work on that. Micah you four hours a week. That's okay. You're not a robot. You can do it.

Yeah, that's. It's so important. It really rounds out the tenants as well. Like when you look at. Not masculine but how driven they are. So all of our tenants are action based, which I love. It's not, it's not respect, integrity and it's. Yeah, they're action based. Seek growth, love and joy is, is the beautiful equalizer to take ownership, perform with excellence. Be a man of your word. Or it doesn't say the swear word, but be a man of your word.

But without you we're not sustainable. If it's the first four, then you're just burning the candle, the wick to maximum. Yeah, yeah. And you're going to break. You don't get that full third quarter and fourth quarter that you talking about before you're going to cook yourself.

Well, there's the spirit of the man. So we talk about family, self and service, but it's like a disc now Marco, when you turn that upside down, there's actually the spirit of the man and look underneath that and which I'm working on as an evolution for the circles of significance, as an actual disc that has the man on top of the spirit of the man underneath. So without love and joy. And it's not something you have to do alone either. Like I mate Krin got me a golf set. I haven't played golf 15 years for my 40th and I had one hit and Roman loved it and I was like just showing him the clubs and putting in the house, which probably I did a bit of chipping and I stopped that quickly. Definitely don't chip inside the house. That's just my advice to everyone, don't do chipping, putting only. But look at those little balls with the holes. But there's still no guarantee where it'll go. Not at my skill level but. So I was like, okay, well Roman's birthday coming up and they were so cheap. Mate got him a set. You only get like three or four clubs in the kids ones. These will last him years. We're going to the driving range together. I brought him with me and had a hit of golf, which obviously was the worst game I ever played. Not because of him, but it was just, it was raining, it was wet, but we were in the car driving around, he loved it. And I was like, mate, that's seek growth, that's important. We want to feel like we're progressively matters, like we progressively matter in, in life as we age because things keep changing. But the love and joy man's a big one. That's really helped me because like yourself, I've just been head down bum up for nearly eight years with, with hpf and it's you got to stop and breathe. And yeah, you can have outlets like Jim and other things. And I'm looking after myself. But no, you gotta. And it's always in the simple things. If we talk about love, men, it really is like go for a walk and just look and appreciate and have gratitude towards the shape of an iron bark tree and how beautiful that is. Like, an iron bark is completely different to, you know, to the. To the eucalypt. And then they're super smooth and they incredible patterns. And maybe there's a trail of ants or. I was laughing the other day with the kids. An ant was carrying. Of all things. There was an ant carrying a bottle brush. Like a whole. Not. Not the actual set of it, but one of the little. One of the little shoots. That's pretty fucking big for an ant. Like a whole shoot of. And we're just laughing. I'm like, what's he carrying that for?

Me.

And the kids spent five minutes watching him to see where we go, mate. That's like. It's not just love in relationships. It's a love for life and what we get to experience. I'll do a session on that though, boys. But it's good that you. It's good that you're so aware and dialed in on not the flaws, but where you can enhance like a sculptor with clay.

I think I really love that a bit. You're being too nice there. It looks pretty shiny. I'm kind of articulate and I speak fast. Hey. But it wasn't easy and I'm not so aware it was hard. I had to work on it. I have to work on it every day. But I put it on the wall like you say. And I check in every week using the systems you've developed. Did I do it? Have I done it? Have I spent time for myself? Seek growth, love and joy. And sometimes we do need to get. I still performed quite well before I had all these systems and the bits that make me nice to myself. Last quarter was Jasmine's first shot at rep basketball. Same idea. She never asked to be born. She needs everything I got to make the most out of that opportunity. That she qualified for. It was like a B grade Disney film. She made the 18. She's a third shortest in the entire trials. 400 kids, 300 kids trialing. It's our big deal. And then two and a half days later, head coach calls. He's like, I'm benching her. She's going to the B team. I'm like, whew. All right, let's see how this plays out. And Jasmine was not happy. There was tears and there was self doubt and all these things and it's just a matter of letting space like working on it. And when the monster came back out, I was like, how about you're me? And we find anyone in our network that knows basketball and we make them regret that decision. We make you the best player on the bees. We make you everything you can be. Let's feed the fire with this. And I don't know how option one would have played out. And Steve, the coach, he's a good guy. Hey, he knows basketball, he adores the game. He could be coaching at the highest level in Australia. He's got 12 year old girls cause he's a good man. So he did nothing wrong here. And he pulls me up four or five weeks later. He's like, she would've got, it would have been the speed she has but the, but the bench time like she would have been riding a pine. She was my second, second point guard and so she'd get minutes in the, in the, in the other team and I was like, cool, let's do it, let's go. Like it's done. It doesn't. I know from sport. Here's an interesting stat. Everyone asked me how to make their kids good at sport because I went to two Olympics and my answer is always how what? At what age? Apart from gymnastics and diving? I'll put the caveat at what age Al, do you think we can actually have a different a knowledge based on a kid's results, whether they're going to be good at elite sport at the highest level or not. What age do you think it is?

Elite sport? Geez. Originally I would have said earlier but mate, I started at 19 and made first grade. So yeah, I'd say it'd be much older than 21.

20 to 21.

There you go.

So it actually doesn't matter when you're 12, don't get into injured, don't get injured and have enduring joy and passion for the sport or chess or whatever it is you're doing or your kids are doing. So it doesn't matter their results this year, yes, they're on the Internet, but it doesn't matter as long as she has enduring passion for the sport and maximizes the envelope that she's given, the gifts she's given. If she's able to play within those and push that envelope, that is the achievement we're looking for from sport. And that's probably a Good caveat for me. So she did really well. She won the defensive. Defensive award for her. Her little team. And, yeah, it was funny because I reached out to my network, another bunch of blokes like Brett Charlton and Eric Huang who probably enjoy this. This podcast and this. In this movement. And they were amazing. They're like, most of the flame. They couldn't help. So they're like, I'm getting three times a week. They're like these drills. Try this. It's a shooting trainer. Like, you reach your network because there's only so much you can do yourself, man. I'm an ice hockey player and a speed skater. When you. What the fuck do I know about basketball? Nothing. But. But I've got powerful friends. Yeah. Who are. Who. Who want to lean on this network and lean back. Yeah. So shout out to those boys. They were instrumental in that as well, as was Jasmine's coach, Marie. She's a. She's. She's amazing. Jazzy's all heart, and so is Marie, so hats off to that entire team. But, yeah, it was. It was chuckles from my best mate, Brent. He was like, jasmine has a irrational perspective. Perception that every loose ball on the. On the court is hers. She just hasn't got it yet. And that's how she won the defensive award. Very proud of us. She did great. But it's less about those stats. Hey. And that. That trophy. And more about what it revealed in herself. Yeah. We'll do a. Do a. Do. Do a tour of my Olympics, and then I'll come back to talk up my big girl. She's not a scoreboard sport finisher.

You need to get her a. Just show us some Mugsy Bogue highlights. Mugsy Bogues?

Oh, yeah. Oh, well, this is the thing, Al. Like, that dude was a weapon. There's an analogy here. So she's not short anymore. She went from being the third shortest on the team at the start of the. I think she's now the third tallest. She's just got.

Wow.

She's had a big.

That's phenomenal. Wow.

Yeah. And so she learned all the mongrel from being a small player. And she was like, dad, I'm. You know, she just sort of looked around at one some point. She'd been playing for nine months. Yeah. She's like, dad, I'm really short. I'm like, yeah, dude. That's why everyone passes your ball. Everyone assumes the short person on the court is the point guard. So just accept the pass and run up the court, bouncing the ball like everything's perspective. Hey. And perception. Yeah. Just indulge them. All right. Yeah. I'm a point guard. Here's my ball. Like up we go. I'll marshal the play.

Man. There's that growth spur though. There's something. Not to go too far left field, but there's something that I'm very curious about with at a deeper level. What we activate inside of our hormones. And the only other example maybe Pat Rafter, how he had a massive growth spurt and crushed tennis. But Michael Jordan, I remember like this dude, everyone in his family short. His brother was short. And just some of the physiological changes in his hand and the way his hand is designed with a much lower thumb that grabs the ball and his growth spurts. I. I don't know. Like again, this seems a bit.

Bit woo woo.

But like if that dude was living, breathing, obsessively channeling at a deeper than subconscious psychological level through to the core of his being. This identity, this is what I desire. Almost like the whole law of attraction. I just wonder, man. I really do. It's not that. Hey, I want to think about getting taller and I get taller. It's just I've heard a few, not just MJ and your daughter, but I've heard a few times of people just literally their physiology adapting and changing. Obviously I have many moons, not just one year of growth. But it's such an interesting thing.

I think there's a. I think about it more like a statistic. So I'm there with you and yes, you will if you focus on it. So things like music and art and drama, they're the tricky ones. Yeah. Because it's gray matter, your synapses. So that asymptotes to what appears to be metaphysical in adaptation. But I just think there is a. What we need to do is find someone's spark as parents. I think this is one thing, find their spark and just hope and keep snacking or keep doing proper of three course meals on sport until their spark aligns with something that their physiology and their emotions are good at. Yeah, it's really important and really enjoyable to be good at something. And that's being lost. It's not actually like there's some pervasive sections of society saying we shouldn't compete and this and that. Of course we should, but within the rules and we should look after our team and we should look after each other and ourselves. Striving is great. Being competitive to a fault is not. They're different things. Yeah. So striving for something and that Teaches us like, I don't want to manufacture the adversity I had with a civil war. It gave me many, many great attributes. But screw that noise. I don't want to put my girls through that. And that's not a reflection on my parents making bad choices. That's what happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't need to manufacture genuine adversity because it surrounds us in those amazing sort of. The rules of basketball have evolved over hundreds of years to make it an amazing sport, to level it so we can all play. You know, same for rugby league, same for. Well, the league hasn't been around for that long, but you know what I'm saying, You know, football, soccer, there's so many things around that we can actually try and be good at. And you know, non competitive, you go, you go to arts and drama. Objectively, some people are better actors, but they're such, it's such a welcoming community. It's so lovely. You know, some people are better singers. There's a physiology to that as well, obviously. But yeah, just seek out your spark. Seek out your kids spark. And it doesn't have to be what you want them to be good at or what you used to be good at. Find what's good for them and it might just be their, the cohort that they land on. Maybe they don't even care about scouts, but they find three really good mates there and that's their little tribe for a patch, you know, and that's great. And maybe it changes too. So. Yeah, yeah. It's about results, it's about intent and striving to make yourself better.

Absolutely.

No, agreed.

As I keep moving through life, I used to channel a lot of fear of failure. The old boy from Western Sydney grew up in the riff, you know, all that stuff and chip on the shoulder, I'll show them. So there's a big fear of failure that drove me, but I. The older I get, the more I realize that it's such a small. It's like. And we should's a strong word but we can utilize that as fuel. But it's a little rocket booster. It's not the like, it's the love for greatness. You need both. But I think the ratios as I get older are far more skewed towards 90 plus percent being that love for greatness. And for you guys out there who have kids and they're showing athletic ability or they're not or you've got ambitions for them to be a high performer in sport or not, it doesn't matter. What's important is, like Marco said, you help them find the spark and then you just stoke the flame. Whereas what I find, mate, is parents just chuck a whole fucking bunch of wood on the fire and it just dampers it and it goes out, Out. So being obsessed with. With like. Like, imagine if I tried to make Roman Tiger woods now, man, the dude would be. Whether he kept playing golf or not. It'd just be such a grind for him. Why? He's five, you know, so stoke the flames. Don't throw a whole bunch of wood on the fire because you think you've got a sure thing in validating your status as a successful parent. Because you believe your kid will be great at sport. Just honor the moment and. And enjoy the ride. Because it's their life, too. You don't own them. You're a caretaker for them. That might be harder as Roman gets older and he's crushing people on the football field and I'm watching him just rip it. Maybe he won't even play sport. He loves footy, but it's like, oh, man. Anyway, but we'll see. He'll do him.

We can. We don't want to project onto our kids our lost successes, but by the same token. And don't walk away from it. My career was riddled with injuries, and so that was my once I was. So I'm here with Jazzy and making sure she doesn't turn on herself or she's too hard on herself. Tash was the mother hench is keeping her emotionally healthy and safe and really well fed and really well slept. We're aligned on that massively. So those success bits, you see me down the court as her club coach. That's, you know, it's just as much Dash's effort to keep her. Her safe and well fed. And, you know, sports, my, my, my. My theater. Yeah. But what did I do? I flex my network and we're at the physio and I want to make sure. Yes, she's 12, but she's moving fast and training a lot. Yeah, soft issue. She was at the limit of her capacity to recover at the limit. And that's the point. And so, you know, yes, my. My career was. Was hampered by injury, but I also learned from that, you know, so we go in there, get an assessment. Ankles. Left ankle's not all it's cracked up to be. I didn't even know that before I walked in there. I stand on the shoulders of giants. Go to my mate's physio at qsmc. Here at the Gabba and we found out like, find the deficiencies and then make them. Not before it, before, it's before that. Ankle. Ankles, apparently. Ankles and knees. That's what stops people from playing basketball. Makes sense, I suppose because they're so gang. They're so gangly and they play so much. The volume in basketball is incredible. Better than my sport. My sport was so hard, high, physically demanding that we couldn't actually do the fun bit which was going fast that often because it's really hard. Your quads are working really hard and you're pushing GS on GS. Yeah. So speed skating, ice skating, short track if you want to look it up. That was my sport. But yeah, so there's a bit we can leverage without being self effacing from what we learned from our shortcomings. But. But it's not about pushing them, it's about supporting them.

Absolutely agreed. So just on that then.

Let's.

Let's walk me through the Olympics, mate. I know if you've spoken some great philosophies, we've danced around a little bit but mate, that's a. That is a big thing I'd love to go through. It's been an amazing session with you too, mate. I just.

Thanks, mate.

This could have been a four hour Rogan special. But no, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it'd be good to go through, mate, the Olympics, you know, like the process. What you did, did who you had to be because it comes with good and bad. I'm sure. Mate, I would if I was going to do something that I'd have to be pretty self driven. Not, not selfish, but definitely self driven in. Hey, I've got to focus on me right now, which is fair. Well, yeah, walk us through that, mate. And then, and then maybe we'll convert that into. Hey, you've spoken about your beautiful wife and kids and I guess some life lessons, learnings and, and the ultimate Olympics of, of life. Bill, let's start with the. With, with that journey, that experience for you.

Sure. No, it's an interesting one. So what do we say? Adversity reveals character, it doesn't build it. I fully believe that. Yeah. So my Olympic journey starts. My brother is very talented. Was. Is to be the proper nerd. The engineer's version of that. Low cycles to competency. That's what I mean by talent. Very easy to learn things. He was my hero growing up. Everything he touched turned a golf old. He's so talented. We were very competitive but at that stage when I first started also very good mates. Yeah. So 12 years old. So I had a huge problem with asthma. Still do like and have to manage it actively. There was a big change in the sulfur composition of both petrol here in Queensland, but also in the power stations. And that was the biggest change in my life. But it was that adversity was excellent. So like you say Michael Jordan's thumb. Mine was my lungs. So my lungs should be 5.4 liters for my, for my mass, my size. When I finished skating. It's ticking. It's just, just a skoach under 9 liters. So can breathe? Yeah, can breathe. Does work. Does work, yeah. But that was a, that was an adaptation to adversity. So that didn't work. So they got bigger. Nothing was working. So I went. Mum was amazing through all this. She was just relentless trying to get me healthy. Different drugs, different some medicine, different places. And I was trying to train all without. So hospitalized with asthma. Yeah, proper debilitating asthma. And it sort of set in with puberty. So 12:12 I was at, at primary school I came second at the cross country and I won the hundred. And I can distinctly remember watching Tim Brooks just clear out on me. I was like, oh, I gotta get this guy. But I didn't realize quite anomaly that I was both middle and long and spring. So there was some physiology there working for me right from the get go. Fast forward two years and I came second to last in the grade nine cross country. I couldn't breathe. I wasn't metering my capacity to run. I was metering staying conscious. I was seeing stars. I was like my focus would drift in and out. I could only barely get enough air in through the system to remain conscious, let alone run fast. And yeah, it was significant. It was a bit. My cousin, he's a neuroscientist. Very clever, clever man. His favorite saying as a doctor is that a healthy man wants for everything. A sick man wants one thing and it just dominates your landscape. Yeah. So my brother, being as talented as he was, touted at many, many sports, speed skating. We found it, it was a, it was a knack. Dad took us in there, we played rugby league at South Acacia Ridge and just down the street was the footy club. So we went in there in the off season so we'd stay fit as best as we could. And this is before my asthma really set in and we both took to it. Andrew was good at it, I held my own and we loved it. It's a really crafty sport. It's super fun. Now there's like a combination of that skill that you get, that pervasive, persistent having to always improve that you get from golf. But combine that with motocross level intensity. It's fun, it's good fun. And the finish line doesn't discriminate. Yeah. So the time trial has never won the races because he had to be cunning. You had to move to the front and keep the front. So, yeah, anyway, that's our story there. And Andrew at 14 was, was touted. He was, he was phenom. He was our, he was our Australian Michael Jordan. He was very, very fast and worked hard for it too. Yeah. Not just talent, he had aptitude as well. So fast forward to me being 12, I couldn't breathe and I was jumping and I was a fat little kid. I'd found the Mars bars at that stage and I went into high school at 64 kilos. I left high school at 59 kilos. That's an example of rectifying a Mars Bar addiction. Yeah. And so, yeah, my Chinese coach, she was there obviously for my brother, but it was just easier for everyone if I stayed there as well. During training, Mum and Dad were doing their thing. They had to work. It was, it was a big, big, big recession. Mum's working at the hospital, night shift and Dad's either away or home for periods. And so we would go walk or ride to An Zhang's place. My coach and Andrew would do his phenomenal training with the, with the seniors and I could barely jump off the ground. So this is a power based sport, Al. And you know, there's my, my coach tells a story. I was like trying my best, trying. My, my technique looked fine, my shape looked good, but I could barely get off the ground. Yeah. And this is my challenge, my start. I thought I was just like my tiny little dog here thinks he's a wolf. I thought I was part of the team. And so I just kept turning up. Nobody told me otherwise. Nobody told me that I lacked any kind of physicality for that sport. So I adapted and found technique and my body adapted as well. So fast forward six or seven years, Mum finally gets on top, helps me get on top of my asthma and I started to show some promise and my body had adapted to breathing and I'd worked on my technique because I had to be efficient. The air wasn't getting in, I had to be efficient. So I was very, very conscious of my equipment and conscious of how efficiently I was skating. But it was also an individual sport. So you can't show weakness, or at least I thought I couldn't as a teenager and man in my 20s. And so I never told anyone how hard it was, how hard I was working, that I couldn't breathe. Only my mom knew I didn't want to show this weakness. And in hindsight it probably would have helped if I did, you know, because then they could have, we could have adapted my programs to suit and all those things. So yeah, just be, be conscious about that if you're, if you're on a similar journey, you know, same, same applies to dyslexia in, in community or in, in, you know, in business. You know, if you've got it, wear it on your sleeve and we, we can work together to, to get your other talent. So, yeah, back to, back to the Olympic dream. So I can distinctly remember the session, it was a skating session. And our sport, if you look it up, short track speed skating and someone you know, Stephen Bradbury. That's the one. He moved up to Brisbane and joined the team with my older brother and myself. He was from Sydney. So. Yes, that sport. Yeah. With the lycra and the big quads, we're kind of like a speedway car with a big outside wheel. Yeah. Only turn left. So. Yeah, yeah. So you can see our sport has a high intensity, high, high, high GS. So in the middle of that corner with two, two and a half GS on one leg, on a, on a knife. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a high strength endurance sport and a high power sport. And I can distinctly remember the session. And I was in Cui. We were, we were starting to actually, I was actually starting to turn around. Everyone had dismissed me as not having the talent I got. My brother got it all. He wasn't like that, by the way. He was very supportive. But yeah, and I stayed in zone. I was still playing that same game I played at the under 14s cross country all those years ago. I was managing consciousness. I was breathing as much as I could and going as fast as I could without passing out, which is dangerous on the ice. And I got onto the pack. Yeah. So if you think of NASCAR now and in the drafting, I got onto the draft. Yeah. And at that point I made this. I was just washed with lactic acid, you know, hypoxic or whatever the word is when you don't have enough air in your blood. And I made this irrational. Right here, now we're breathing comfortably, but I made this irrational. But in very, very common sense, Very, very. It made perfect sense to me in the moment where I made a deal with my legs. I was like, I'm here, I'm on the pack for the first time in my life, you know, I'm in this session, actually can compete. Yeah, that's to finish first. First you must finish. You have to actually be in the pack to get there. Yeah. And I can distinctly remember it. So I made this irrational deal with my legs. If you don't quit, I won't quit. And I just leveraged that for the rest of my career. Like conversations with my legs, you know. And my job to not quit was to eat good food and to go to bed early. To not go out partying. Yeah, that was my job. So that when, when it, when it was time to be back in that wash of lactic acid and busting our ass, that it had the, that my legs had the opportunity to perform. So the funny little watershed moments, hey, I finished that. I was so stoked. I finished that set on the pack. I didn't even know if they were trying hard or not. Else irrelevant. It gave me this impetus that like maybe actually I'm not shit at this. Maybe I can do this. And I carried that. So I didn't have per se at if I achieve this, I will win. I had this non negative. So back to the, back to the lighthouse and the landing ramps. That was a lighthouse. If you don't quit, I won't quit. And it's all meant. It was a build. It was talking about where you are and how do I improve. Where you are, how do I improve? And so from 16 through to when I finished skating, my mentality was very muchly focused on improvement, baselining, testing, getting better, you know, and it'll pop up and you look around, you're like, actually fuck. I'm actually pretty good at this. Turns out. Turns out I had the physiology for it and, and the adaptation. I was very tall for a speed skater. I was in today's sport. I couldn't compete. It was a new sport at that stage. So yes, it took me to two Olympics, Salt Lake City. And I was there that night when Stephen won his magical gold medal that everyone remembers. Where everyone else fell over. He did get in there. Yeah. Like he actually got into that race. So that's, that's commendable. Top five in the world. Yeah. So that night I came 15th, I think in that same distance. So that was. And that was about where with my skills, physiology, I do it differently. In hindsight. I was allergic to I'm allergic to dairy. I didn't know that at the time. I'd love to, you know, recut this, this world with a bit more gentle approach to myself and my development and to like, give myself the good word. You're allergic to dairy, bro. You're not supposed to have the squirts three times a day. Didn't know. Didn't tell anyone. You don't talk about poo. Well, so it's a. The Taboo told me, stop me from that. So that would have been interesting to have to recut my career without dairy in my life. But it is what it is. I don't regret it. I did pretty well. I pushed really hard, made some great mates, had guys over the weekend for Bathurst. Still, still good mates. We traveled around the world and stayed in some really cold places and some really cheap hotel rooms. And yeah, we were striving, we were doing what we could. Backwater, backwater nation. Irrationally representing in a global, global winter sport. We did really well.

Powerful share, man, that's. Jesus. There's a few things in there, but I love the. I mean, we might laugh about the Michael Jordan thumb thing, right? And just growing. But exactly what you did then, like, that's, that's what I, I did that with my knee, bone on bone, no meniscus, no cartilage. Did some crazy shit. 113 kilos, 6 foot 4 pistol squats, everything during the CrossFit times, multiple knee operations. But, mate, I used to talk to my knee every day and be like, you know, oh, nice baby. You'll work for daddy today. You know, work, work. We've got a mission at hand. But it was, it was so much in the moment, it wasn't, I'm going to win the games. It's actually like you said, that that built the very first thing that comes to mind, though, which he carried through well, which still makes it a valid question is what does build character? But I think that's what that is. It's. It's, you know, and I'm open that because I agree with the adversity. It doesn't build it, it reveals it. So what are we building before the adversity comes? And I truly believe that's one component. What you mentioned with the relationship with your legs, which to me really is a set of. It's not even belief, it's actually a set of. I think what would build character would be a set of core values and then following through on commitments that you make because then you've got your true north. Always or your lighthouse, so to speak. And then you've also got a track record that doesn't require confidence, feeling or a motivation. It's a knowing. But I'm open to your thoughts, man. What does build carry? Because that's a pretty like how you develop. That is exactly what helped me do what I did with my. My professional sport both in footy and in CrossFit. It's very interesting. Not just a lucky pair of undies. Right. It's a proper.

You've made fun of me for my analogies. I'm going to keep going now. You won't make it fun.

Is that a samurai sword? What's in your hand?

It's a steel ruler. Yes, but it'll help me with my analogy. Or welding rod might be better. Anyway. We're good here. So adversity reveals character. It doesn't build it. Yeah. So throw my dad into that situation. Without his background military and the great knowledge of the, you know, that situation, the civil war. You're asking this steel ruler to turn a 90 degree corner. He can't do it. Yeah. But he had the strength and the capability to do that. So the adversity that he was faced with was within the material limits of his. The plasticity in his mind and the skills he developed. So what I'm always trying to do with the girls and myself is to find that challenge and to develop the character into it. So where are they at? What do they know? And you know, myself. Where am I at? What do I know? How can I progress from here? So this character building, character defining stuff. My favorite race ever was the Olympic qualifiers for 2002 in Salt Lake. We were out. So the relay. So it's a cool sport. Hey. Look it up guys. If you made it this far through the podcast you must be enjoying it. Have a look. It's a sport where we're going flat out. It's like we're on two tennis courts. It's like speedway but with your own muscles. With knives on your feet. What's not to love? Hey?

Isn't it? You go nearly 60 k's an hour or thereabouts.

Oh, that's a long trackers we can get up to. Yeah, nearly.

Sure.

Nearly. Like low 50s. So the long track. There's another part of our sport which they don't wear a helmet. You can tell it's us because they got a lid on and they're on the track by themselves or with one other person. Yeah. That's on a 400 meter oval and they're awesome. Their technique is something else. If you can imagine golf where it was only a driving range, that's the long trackers. So they'd have this perfect driving technique. Yeah. And that's what they are. And they're big follows like you al. They're huge mountains of men and women. There's fast on the ice. Yes. Fast across the ice. Like irrationally fast. You see them go by when you're right on top of them, you're like oh, you can do that with your own muscles without a gear, without a bicycle, not going downhill. Like you can do that. So it is the fastest self propelled sport that we've ever invented as a species. Anyway, short tracks, long trackers love you guys. But short tracks way more fun for me because it's not. You turn up with the, with the tools you have and it's, it becomes into this, it becomes this little, little game like just like the reputation I talked to Jasmine about. You're short short here. They'll pass you the ball. They'll assume you can handle it. So let's make sure you can. So that as a person in adversity she's like saw a down short what Perceived shortcoming. Flip it, flip the script. But didn't. But the people are going to pass you your ball. So you got to deal with it. You've got to look like a guard at that point. You can't just fudge it. So we came home and we ran up and down Alicola sack up and down the street driving the ball with our dominant and non dominant hand with our eyes up. That's what makes a point guard because you can scan the environment so you've got to work at it still. Yeah, that's adversity and that's an example that I do for myself as well. So you turn up to a race and your reputation. The longer you've been in the sport, the more you have a reputation for how you race and what your physical capabilities. And I fudged so many, so many weekends where people left me at the front because they assumed I had the capacity to turn the wick up and I did not because I'd been training too hard or was peaking for another competition. So. So don't discount your capacity for reputation and how far it could carry you without your quads. But anyway, back to that Olympic qualifiers, we were down and out. Hey, top eight countries make it one athlete. And this is not an excuse. This is just how the resources work. Yeah, one athlete from the States was one and a half to $2 million to develop. And that's what they spent on them per year. Our entire Olympic at the time, before we had this Olympic winter issue. At the time we were self funded or just, just marginally into the, into the span Sports commission funding. And they were great supporters. I'm not talking them down. It's been great. But we had one, one and a half million dollars for the four year cycle for all athletes. Yeah, we gotta make a lot from what we got. Yeah. So our isolation was our benefit, our advantage. Nobody saw how fast we were, how we were training, what we were doing, how we used our gear. The Europeans can see each other. They race each other every other weekend. They're like, oh, what's that guy doing? Oh, look at his left leg. Leg. They can adapt to each other's techniques. So our isolation was both our curse but our blessing. So we popped out of this splendid isolation into a World cup which was the Olympic qualifier. And the first weekend didn't count, the second weekend did. So I remember coming from Calgary into Salt Lake City there with my brother, three others, Steve Bradbury's part of that team and just furiously like what was incredible. So in Calgary we got hoes hosed. Not off the pace, not couldn't pass, we got hosed el like we sucked. But there was never, there was not even a moment of non belief. Everyone got off the ice. Start where you are, do what you can, use what you have, do what you can. So into recovery mode. Good food, lots of sleep. Nobody went out and pissed that night. Some of the lead athletes are still getting on the beers the week before the Linda qualifiers. Not us. We're into it. Yeah. Lockdown in and all week. Strategy, strategy, strategy. How do we make this work? What's going to happen? How do we change this? And the, and, and Stephen, I think thought of it and had a big, big coach, had a big hand in it as well. But it's because they're going to write us off. They were going to discount us as an opportunity, as a problem. And so the draft in our sport is really significant. So we drafted our way to that victory. We had to get. You had to get in the race to have a shot at the race that counted. Yeah, we had three rounds to get through and had no business making it through those rounds. Everyone turned up with everything we had. The Salt Lake City ice was. The Americans put on a show. Hey, that ice in Salt Lake City, in the Delta center was something else. And we're bigger athletes. Yeah. And so that was part of our success. We could move quickly across good ice, bad ice. We couldn't. We were heavier athletes than the Asians, especially. Not an excuse, just the reality. Yeah, that's how it is. But the ice was phenomenal. So if the Americans didn't put on that amazing surface, no chance. There was also a little technicality. We invented, and I'm pretty sure Steve invented it. Steve Bradbury was the double push. And maybe my brother had a hand in it as well. So we actually. When you're doing my sport in the relay, you're gonna come out from the middle and then you get a full body weight push. So you're actually overspeed at that point. That's the fastest we go in our sport is after the push in the relay play. It's so cool because you're. It's my favorite race by far because you are at overspeed and you're trying to hold your speed and all you do is sprint. There's no conservation of energy. Conserve the energy in the middle. You know, like I said, I coach Jasmine's team. You can walk to the bench. Preserve your energy on the bench. I don't want to see you walking in defense. Same goes for the relay. You got it. Go. You got three corners. It's so much fun, Elle. I got the goosebumps just talking about it. My sports are really cool. So hexadecimal system, arbitrary distances, 500, 1500,000. It's just beyond our physiology, just beyond our capacity to actually as humans to do that. You got 38, 35 seconds of sprint. The long trackers get their long track done in that time. We don't. We got too many GS to fight. So you're actually borrowing from something you don't have. You're tapping into other energy systems. So it was all about arriving at the last 3, 5, 7 laps, depending on the distance. With energy in the tank, you gotta preserve like a motocrosser. If you get them 3/4 of the petrol they need to finish a race. Full noise. Choose which corners, you're gonna save your energy and you'll lose the lead. Yeah. Or don't. You know? So this the relay. So eight changes for the finisher and starter, seven changes. So you do seven and a half. Half. That's. It's the perfect glycogen depletion sport. Yeah, you couldn't invent it any better. You do 13 and a half seconds full noise, and you've got 45 seconds in the middle to recover. Welcome to glycogen depletion if you want to know about. If you want to know about how. What lactic acid is take up short track and do the relay, you're in a wash of it.

Yeah.

And so the last three changes determine everything. Just about every. Every country in the top 25, top 30 can do the first five changes. That full, full, full flight. Fine. Perfect. Good job. Now let's see what happens. So we took a tactic to follow. It puts you in the traffic. We're Australians. We're pretty good at this sport. We're pretty good at. At the. At the tactics of racing and the capacity to move through traffic. So we took that gamble to save the energy. Everything was about saving energy for that third race. L. Without getting out in the first first. So that. That, that was everything we had. That. That. That's my favorite race ever. Everyone did everything they could on the lead up and not just on the day. Like the Olympic committee guys were sitting there watching us qualify. They thought, they thought were written off too. They weren't. They weren't nasty guys. But they saw the weekend before they saw the results. Yeah, we had no business qualifying. And yeah, they just. But there was not a moment of disbelief. Everyone did what they needed to do in the lead up. But once again, let's. You see it on the ice and you're like, this is how it plays out. And you see that seven minutes, you're like, cool. That's not it. It's the hours, the days, the minutes of sleep that we scrap for every proper piece of food that we put in our head. You know, got to be 100 to give 100. That's exacerbated at that level. So, yeah, my favorite race ever. My brothers that, my actual brother, my blood brother, but also those other gentlemen that. That method on the line, you've got to be so vulnerable to believe. Can you imagine that crash, Al, if we didn't imagine what that night's like, if we didn't succeed and make the Olympics qualify that relay team? Because you had to work up this irrational sense of belief and it's dangerous. Yeah. If you want to believe in yourself and you want to try something, there's risk in that because you've set a target, you've set a level that you must achieve. So now you can fast forward fail. That's. There's courage in that. Yeah. Don't give up like. And then you can. All you can do is put look to those. We have aspirations and expectations. Back to those expectations. Make them watertight, make them real. Make Them everything that can make you just imagine that night without the victory, with ninth place instead of eighth. Not making the relay, not making the world. The Olympics. Imagine that night if you. You sneak in at Mars Bar. Imagine that night if you watch some telly for another hour and a half. Some point that week. That's not a good night. You've let your brothers down, you've let yourself down. So just watertight. Yeah, everyone did everything they should do. And yeah, it was a watershed race. It was so much fun. And we just got this reputation globally. I was like, where did these guys come from? And so we did it again four years later. No business making it again. But that was more tactical. We did so many 5k relays in the lead up to 2016. Oh my goodness. I was sick of them. But we were so good at it. The physiology, we adapted. The skill, we adapted. And there was a really deep sport. So when I joined the sport, my brother was the first junior to make the senior team for two decades. That was how they were running the sport. Don't judge them, but that's what happened. They choked the sport almost to death. When I finished the Sport, we had 22 people at the national championships. We're all skating top 16 times. My objective was not to be the. And I was national champion a bunch of times. Alex McEwen was my number one adversary and number one ally. So many good tussles with, with, with Alex. We made each other better. Sometimes I was pretty cranky with him and he put me in the fence, but geez, we made each other better. Hey, and I did the same to him. Yeah. So, yeah, my results, our results. Not the same without the competitiveness, but collaborateers. Yeah, we've been in the same. We're in the same team, but we gotta beat each other to get that, that national champion spot. Yeah. So we swapped that for five years after Steve stop skating. Yeah. What else? What else? Oh, yeah. So the sport was in a good place when I left it. We had eight people at the Olympic qualifier. So we had options for Salt Lake. Geez, we didn't have options. All of us had to do everything we had. So we actually. Yeah, yeah, we built that 5k team. We actually faulted on the 1500, I believe, where we didn't actually qualify one of the individual spots, which was. Was an oversight. We didn't quite spend that time on that we should have. But still an incredible result for a backwater country that in a sport we had no business succeeding at. Hey, so much fun.

That's incredible story, mate, and makes me want to go and look into the history of it more and see if there was any footage of you guys. Would there be any videos of those races you did in the.

It's all on YouTube.

Yeah, definitely. Send me the links, mate.

I want to check that out.

That's awesome.

I love that there's a. There's something a bit too narcissistic about Googling myself, Al, you're going to have to look them up yourself, mate.

Likewise, mate. Yeah, I don't watch too many of my old videos. Just keep moving forward, mate. Yeah, incredible stuff. What. So I guess on that, lessons, learnings, what to do, what not to do, as you started to season into life. So if you've moved through your career as a professional athlete, marriage, kids, not to fast forward through your life, but take us through now, you've had that. But now you're here and now, Marco, and you arrived a man in his mid-40s or thereabouts, and you're now looking to build that second half. What were the biggest takeaways? What to dos, what not to do, values and principles you took from elite sport into now. And also what has been your takeaways with hpf? What have you learned? What have you developed? What. How do you see the world now, mate, moving forward after doing a season with us?

My next meeting's just rocked up, but I'm good to keep going. He's a good egg. He'll check on the pork I've got in the smoker. I'm on for dinner tonight. So he's my master smoker advisor, actually. I'll tell him to go down the. Yeah, good on, mate. Life and the world. So, yeah, I'd say that the simplicity of being an athlete is. Ian Healy did a great piece on this Australian wicketkeeper where actually there's something about sport that's really easy because it's clear, it's binary. Everything is either, does this make me better or does it not? And sometimes letting your hair down makes you better. Yeah. Sometimes taking a day off training does make you better. Yeah. It's a tricky thing to walk out here in the big bad world. We are spoiled with options and the longevity is a real thing. Yeah. You know, we talk about balanced people in sport.

You.

I wasn't a balanced person when I finished being an athlete and neither were anyone else in the top 20. You know, they're great people and I really appreciate all that. They tried to be my competitor and how hard they challenged me, but I wouldn't wish on my kids that their headspace or mine when I was in that mode. So I hope there is a way. And there was a race Walker recently had a really great. I think she's won a medal at Com Games. She had a really great perspective and so that was really interesting to see someone who I would perceive as quite balanced from at least her interviews that it can be done. But yeah. So what do I do here now? Like how do we change out of that? Like it's. You gotta choose your direction. Like what are you trying to achieve? It's more amorphous out here. So back to those lighthouses and landing beacons. Yeah. What are you trying to do? And so this big why, like the big why. What's your objective? Be a good dad. That's an easy one. Yeah, but what does that mean? Like let's zoom into that. You know, be an amazing. I'm gonna be the best husband that Tash could ever find. You know? Yeah. I want to be more, more, more than she'd ever hoped for. Yeah. And yeah. But also I want to leave my mark on this place. I know that when my girls leave this house that I can go back to being to, to to sending it a bit more. I want to still want to spend time with Tash. I'm not just going to evacuate from the house. But my strategy is required here more than ever before and more than ever again. Because we're about to go into high school. Yeah. Or are in high school. How do we apply it here? Like strategy, like how do we hold it? Lightly. I just. What's the change? I don't take myself too seriously as much as it was going around, around in circles on an ice rink. You mentioned it right at the start, being selfish. You have to be at least self absorbed. I think the difference is selfish people know that they're being selfish. If we want to be definitional here, it's just fantastically self absorbed. On a very acute mission here to perform sustainably in life. You can't be self absorbed. You need your network. I say it when a man of mine, when we're both doing startup bits at the moment, he's in a similar sector but different. And the thing that we both caught on that we both liked was altruistic. Business is long term breedy. And the idea is that from that you actually need to, you know what you're building here. I'll hope you do. Hope you're really successful from it because it's so important. We know as blokes we used to have to stare at the fire and we used to, you know, go shooting and do things together. That's so with. Our time demands are so stretched now. We don't do the blokey things that we need to. To. To reconnect. Yeah. Male suicide rates are off the chart because men just focus on service and doing their work. And that one you gotta unpick. Yeah. What's work mean? Like work. Work is, you know, you use that word, four letter word. It means swapping your time via chores for money.

Cool.

Keep doing it. Don't just throw the baby out with the bath water, but pass the baton if you've got something you're passionate about and like, you know, never work a day in your life. That's bullshit. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, find something that's important to you. Important, like what is your purpose? And take your time with that one. That's a big question. I'm very fortunate that I didn't fall into it. I found it. I started in climate change and in reconciliation, working with Aboriginal people in Australia before it was, you know, I'm a hipster. I liked this band before it had a drummer. I did it for free. And I still do. I'm part of Engineers Without Borders. It's a great organization. You know, the idea is if you took my money away, I'd do it for free. But I do it for free now because it's important to me. But also, let's use the other side of the coin. Remember the Joker in the Dark Knight Rises or one of the Dark Knight ones? Ones. He's like, if you're good at something, never do it for free. And so that applies here too. So with my career in renewables, obviously you can go too far on that. But I think it is important. It just makes sense. Yeah. Let's summarize it in a way that's triple bottom line sustainable. It makes sense that we should use the resources we have that replicate themselves as much as possible. Let's not go climate catastrophe or everything's fine. Keep BAU doing. There's somewhere in the middle. Yeah, energy's got to be cost effective, but it's also got to be as clean as you can make it. So I tried the policy route to start with. Not me. Doesn't suit me. I'm glad people do it. So I went into business because nobody can stop me within the moral, ethical boundaries of the law. And the people who I set bounce things off, I can do what I Want with my own business. There is no bureaucracy in my way. If I want to turn some chicken poo into biogas using anaerobic digestion. As long as the farmer is paid, as long as I do obey the laws of the land, go. Yeah, go. And so make it as cheap or as cost effective or valuable as possible to do that. Yeah. And so that suits me and my mentality. Other people, they're in advocacy and policy and those sorts of things. So find something that's important to you. I got a fire in my belly on this. Yeah, but I'm. But it's sustainable. Yeah. People say, oh, you know, career's a marathon. I'm not a marathon runner. That noise. Respect you guys, but that's not me. 92 kilos, 510 iron running, but I run fast. I could jump. So it's a series of interconnected sprints for me. Find a way to sprint. Yeah. That time blocking you did, that was from, you know, the last. Last winter wars. Coming into it. This is my second season now. I was like, yeah, I got this. I'll do it just for the tribe. Yeah, whatever. I gotta phone it in. Everything be fine. Time blocking, amazing. It changed my life, increased my productivity tenfold. And I was already pretty productive. Oh, being humble, like, I get it, like. But I was already pretty good at getting done and helping other people lead them to get shit done too. And now it's even better because of you. We do our weekly war room. We do our tabs. It's very clear what your top three are. And if you're not prioritizing your top three, what are you doing? Like, today, this week, this month, what are you doing? So the HPF methods for quarterly planning, I'd done them before, but had I done them, you know, weekly planning. I'd done it before, but had I done it, I kind of find. I was like, I'm good at this. I got this. I'm getting shit done. Like bunkering down. You know, we've crossed blocks here, but I'm okay with it. I've managed the next meeting so that we. That I knew it was probably gonna run long, you know. You know, could have gone four hours today. Al. But so, yeah, crossing over into the world here, we've gotta be sustainable. Yeah. To round that one out, my favorite one that I grabbed, that's so different to asymptoting to perfection from elite sport that I do now is we rise to the level of our inspiration and we fall to the level of our standards. So when your inspiration comes Improve your systems, get better. Whatever it is that, whatever that is for you, whatever's important to you.

Well, for me it's the fourth child. Like that's the inspiration because you're right, the level of standard really has a flux about it. And what I mean by that meant is you might be performing well but that means you're also comfortable with your current situation, which means you're allowing yourself to bleed time. Whereas right now, just before my fourth comes in the world, I'm already looking at my calendar and mate, I use all the stuff that I shared with you guys, the time blocking and how to set up your production and time management to get shit done. But I'm looking at now going gone. Nah, I can still shave some stuff here, man. I can still implement that there. I can still tweak this little bit here and I can these, these and it's micro. These two mornings instead of doing school drop off and hitting the gym, which I love, I love training between 9 and 11. It's just perfect for me. My body's like no, no, twice a week bite the bullet, I'll lose a bit of intensity. But I'm going to be getting up and training at five at the gym and then coming back. But then I've just bought two hours back in a peak time where I can dive into, into either helping the wife nesting or production with, with work. So that's where I think for a lot of us we accept the current way things are where you're operating at a hundred and you max out as opposed to just going well hang on a minute. How could I build my capacity and my structure then look and go ah, yeah, now I'm operating at 80 so that when hits the fan I'm not tapping out into the red zone. I've still got capacity. So they'd made this spots in my calendar which are completely blank. There is nothing there. And that's exactly the point point. And that's the freedom for seeking growth, love and joy or doing whatever man. Reading a book, playing golf with Roman out the back, hitting the neighbors glass windows and shattering them, whatever. We haven't done that yet. But mate. So there's one of my grads have nothing that was the same. So there are times where I've actually intentionally had nothing. But then I've also, I can justify that because I've sharpened the ax where I need to be on with my high level stuff.

Sure. I mean what I got from my grady was like, oh, you've dialed in. So everything's A substitution. How you're pulling something out with something else in to see if you can optimize. And I'm like, yes, and everything's a substitution for you. But what you're substituting is lack of direction. So I'm not wiling on you. If you're new to this, to this, this podcast on you, new to this moment, you know you're doing something at every moment, whether it's scrolling Facebook or doing some bullshit like you, and it's not helping your trajectory for your family or for you or for this, for this environment, for society, then you're still doing it. Yeah. So everything is a substitution. But those easy wins feel great. So if you can pull those out, delete those. If you. Yeah, pause. If you're listening to. On your phone, I get it. But YouTube, whatever, delete Facebook and Instagram and all that crap off your phone. They are floors and floors full of people marshaling bots to try and steal your attention right now. You cannot beat them. Do not talk to me about discipline. I understand discipline. Two Olympics. I understand it. I can't beat them. I can't beat them. They are pervasive and relentless. Turn it off. Remove it. Yeah. If you're an alcoholic, a house full of beer, probably not your best idea. Yeah, same idea. If you, If. If these, if these apps are pervasive and they're stealing your attention, delete them. Sign yourself out. There's method. Methods in there to actually sign yourself out for weeks, months, years. Delete your account, whatever you need to do that. Those. Those sorts of vices for the, in the attention economy. That's. That's going to be a number one. If you, if you're hampered for capacity, burn it. And then you get amazed at how much time you've got. It's a substitution still, but it's from a vice to a virtue to a. Something that's important to you. Spending time working out what's important to you. That's a good use of that time. Yeah.

I was going to say, even documenting, even if you guys documented every half an hour what you did for that half an hour, the time you spend documenting what you did for the half an hour that's just passed last, you know, let's say 16 hours, 32 times, you'll actually have even more time.

Sure.

Than if you didn't document at all. So if I spent five minutes documenting that, it's like, oh, what do you mean us? That's like. What's that, 75? That's 80 minutes.

Right.

Okay, so spending 80 minutes now just writing about my. Yeah, man. But what you'll find is you'll actually have even more time because somewhere throughout the day, if you weren't aware, you've probably bled 90, 100, 150 minutes. 20 minutes there. 10 minutes. I go and do a. Don't sit on the toilet till you can't feel your legs scrolling through social media. Do your. Wipe your ass and move forward there.

I did that 100%. I did. I'm not fake. This is me. I don't want to pretend like I'm just on top of everything. Like, and. And I downloaded it. It's so pervasive. Yeah. I downloaded Facebook Marketplace to sell some weights and they're just stayed on my phone and then it's fucking. And like you say, and this is weeks ago, like, I'm it.

Yeah, you're an engineer, so you actually. You've created a seat where it's actually a toilet as well. So right now, through this session, Marco's gone to the toilet several times. So he's efficient, man. Yeah, that's good.

So, yeah, just realize that you gotta. Yeah. Help yourself. Block those things out. What was it called? Dopamine Nation, I think was a really great book. I'll just look it up real quick. That was life changing for me. Cause it was something that was clearly not just me. Yeah. Where are we? Indestructible is great. But yeah. Dopamine Nation by Anna Lemke. Have a go at that. If you're struggling with. And she's like full addiction. Psychiatrist, psychologist. Full, proper next level addiction. But that's the same triggers. Yeah. The same things that are pulling us to dopamine and trying to make us zoom in on that. I'm not a doctor. I don't understand. But those methods, the actionable protocols she had presented in there were excellent for me.

Well, when you. Yeah, mate, that'd be phenomenal. You guys should definitely check that out. Because when you boys. When you get something for free, but the source of that doesn't have your best interest at heart or wants to serve. And you are the commodity. Yeah, you're the commodity. You're the product. So this podcast is free, but this is to serve you and help you empower your life to drive actions and create results and change. But when you're looking at all these little things, like there's a lot of science and psychology behind everything that you'll see in the digital world that is driving your attention with advertising, marketing, all that sort of stuff. It's like, fuck, where's this place come from? Is it genuine? If it's not and you don't know who it is or the source, mate, you're the products, you're the commodity. Even though you think you're getting a deal, you're giving up the most valuable thing you'll never get back in, in your time. But Marco, what? Hey, finding hpf, man. I guess wrapping up has been a big session. So we'll wrap it up, maybe we'll do a part two. But yeah, I guess just a bit of a way to cap off this session, mate. Hpf, what it means to you. Maybe some final thoughts or wisdom for the men. But yeah, we'll wrap this up, mate. It's been awesome having you on. Thanks for spending the time.

No worries. I know. So I'll do the final thoughts and then I'll wrap up on hpf. I'll go off piste, even though you try to get me to deal that way. So if you're listening to this, as a bl bloke would be, father someone on the way, but. Or you got your kids and all your kids aren't home anymore and you've lost that marriage and you've lost that, like you matter. You count. You're at the middle of a small network that feeds, a larger network that feeds, you know, eventually links back to Al and myself. It's. Don't give up. You matter. You're. You're really important and so just don't wail on yourself. Don't turn to these substances like just. Yeah, you're important and so we need you back in the game. Your kids need you back in the game if you've got them. So start where you are, use what you have and do what you can. I believe in you. I don't even know who you are. Your kids need you. Let's go. Whatever it is, you know what needs to happen now do it. Action bias. Go do it. Go to the gym, go for a walk. Put that phone down. Do what you need to do and look at yourself. Don't get bitter and twisted about your ex wife or your partner and what she did. Look to yourself. Just make yourself better. You'll be amazed at what difference that makes. I didn't have any of those experiences myself. Tash and I are solid. We're getting much better from the content in hp hbf because I'm me working on myself, but I'm watching the carnage around me in hbf. Early entrance, but also just in general and yeah, yeah, you count. Don't write yourself off. Don't say that you're a piece of shit or don't play that game. We need you back in the game. So do your kids. So that's my little pep talk. If you're building, if you're a seeker of mastery like I was, come play. There's so many systems in here. Come play. Like, you'll have no idea. I was egotistical enough to think that I was going to get through on a legacy program. And that's a. That's a great value. Like, don't get me wrong, the bot taught me in there. And I. I've been into AI since, you know, early adopter, most technologies I am, but. Yeah, Al actually called me. He's like, yeah, good one. All right, you're going to do fine here, but you need the best of this program. I'm like, yeah, I got this. Don't worry about it. You're talking about guys who drink too many Cokes. I. I've sort that out when I was a teen. And, yeah, it had to work on me, but it did work. And so the whole is more than the sum of the parts. It's not one plus one equals three in here. It's like two plus two equals 50. We support each other. We need each other. There's no judgment in here, but it's not a freebie. If you fucked up and you reach out and say, oh, it's all her fault. And then a car ran a fuel, and I was like, bro, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to fix that? How are you going to make it so next time, time you don't run out of fuel? That's on you. Nobody stole fuel out of your car. I've said that this week to one of the brothers tribesmen here. Stop playing the victim. Let's go put fuel in your car at the start of the week when you've still got money in your bank account. Not her fault, your fault. Go own it. So what happens in here? Very nurturing, very supportive, but we're not going to take your shit. Like, you're going to have to go. You're going to have to move. This tribe's got your back, but, yeah, it's gotta. Yes, you'll be challenged. You will be challenged from a loving position because your kids need you. We need you. I want you to find your spark. I want you to harness something that makes you feel energized, that you're going to make a difference. In this world from your service. So if you don't like your job, fine, keep it. Don't just throw baby out the bathwater, but actually find something that's important to you because it's probably important to me too. And you're going to carve out that niche in the world world. You're the only one. That's you and you have the other one with your passions and skills. So you can have at it. You can carve out your little part of the world. And if you're genuinely in service, not work, and you're serving this community and this environment that keeps us alive, revenue will come. It's a secondary thing. Yeah, it's gonna come because that's fundamentally the building block of this economy is that you're providing a service that isn't cost. Whether it's a piece like it's a service or an artifact that humans need, get after it. But make it yours. And it'll take time. Yeah, but so what did it mean for me? Where did we go? Upgrade from legacy. I was hiding in plain sight. I used lots of confidence to mask a very deep seated lack of self belief, relief. I also had developed a glass ceiling. That was the first conversation we had. Al, what brought you here? I was like, I'm stuck in this Pareto. Yeah, I'm an 80% guy. I never finished my first business. The objective was to make a million dollars. I made 800,000. Everything in my life. I was a top 15, top 16 athlete at speed skating. I just came up that little bit short. And something about being elite was gelled with me. But something about being a champion. Champion wasn't in my nature and I had to peel back the layers to stare at it. It's very, very challenging. I had to be very vulnerable with myself, my coach. With yourself, Al. And so if you're a seeker of mastery, this is a good place for you. You got non judgmental course correction, which has been great. Inadvertently, I joined here to be better at business and I came out a better dad and husband and this person. Like, it's just, I like being in this freaking dome with myself now. It's actually quite fun, this life. And it can be. When I walked in the doors, I wasn't very nice to myself. Hey. And it was counterproductive. Yeah.

Brilliant insights, mate. Thank you for the shares. And boys, there's just levels, you know, like disconnected husband, burnt out provider, overwhelmed father. But then you ascend through those which none of us are born with. But as you move through, through manhood, in your 20s and your 30s. You carry them like a turtle with the shell on its back. But then you move through and you break through in a self mastery and legacy builder. And Marco is one of those shining pupils of hpf, but shining examples, you know, and, and there are plenty and, and men move through that journey. And that's the beautiful part about this. But I completely agree what you're saying, mate. Like, if I didn't think like fathers, you are the backbone of society. That doesn't mean that there's only one piece. You know, you've got the beating heart, which is, which is the mother. But it's, it's like without the spine, the world is fucked. Like, if I didn't think with full conviction that you guys were important, like Marco just passionately shared, I wouldn't be doing this. I'm dedicating my entire fucking life to it. Like that matters. You see all the other copycats and all the other people advertise fucking good for them, mate. Do the best with what you can, but for us, this is so much deeper than a fucking ad. Do this and do that. It's driving you towards the life that you were born to live and deserve to live because you matter. Yeah, you truly do, mate. Unbelievable session. I remember this old quote, just talking about the stumbling up the hill, but I was going to expand on a little bit and the quote's this. When you see a man standing at the top of the mountain, you can be sure, you can be certain that he didn't fall there. So what that means is Marco's right. Like we need to take ownership, we need to do the legwork, we need to take action, take the steps. But one thing I'll promise you though, is along the journey, he fell many times. Now that's not part of the quote. It's a very old quote. You see a man standing at the top of the mountain, you can be certain he didn't fall there. But it's also. Yeah, but along the way he wasn't unscathed. He fell so many fucking times. But he got up and like you said, he kept stumbling up the hill. And I think that's important. It's this beautiful balance where there's no judgment from us. We're seeking the truth through compassion and direction to make sure that you're living. That's the whole fucking point of having a brotherhood. Not patting you in the back, not, are you okay? Days driving beyond that to know that there's zero judgment from us, us. And we're here to make sure that you won't fail. That's our promise. No man will drift, but let's put the legwork in together and conquer the mountain that awaits you. And that's. I think it's a beautiful balance that we found Marco. Like it's, it's. And then you get men from all different calibers, but there's a universal ambition and desire. That's. That's. That's the icp. That's the ideal client profile. Right. Like it's not money to join. It's. I have a burning desire and ambition and a core set of character traits which I'll talk about with our tenants in another session that defines the man's place. Despite what avatar and what he's currently carrying. We call them avatars. Was like okay, I feel like I'm a burnt out provider. Despite what shell you're carrying. We move you through into Marco's position and more. And that's the beautiful part. Never ends. Because guess what Marco. When you're crushing self mastery and legacy, the very first thing I'll say to is you cool. How many fucking people are you building up? How many other leaders. How are you as a ment. Like it never ends. We've got men at that level in their 50s and moving through and successful everywhere. It's like cool. Yeah. But how many success stories have you created through people within your. Your sphere of influence within your network? And so that'll be doing this if God willing I'm still alive and kicking at 80, 85. I won't stop. I'll still be looking. Where's the next man I can help with his family and. And that's. It never ends. That's what I love do to in

distillation of your finding your purpose. Yeah. It's alignment of your skill set and what's important to you. It's out there. Keep hunting, gentlemen. Go well, Al. Appreciate it, sir.

Thank you, boys. Hope you enjoyed. We'll see you soon. Well, that wraps up another episode. And just as we wind this down, I want you to just reflect and think back through some of the golden nuggets. Some of the revelations, some the of of the sore points, some of the things that might have hit home with you. And then just look at ways that you can apply a different set of actions to change your position, change your circumstances, change your feelings and change the facts. These episodes are done with your best interest at heart. And there's always something we can get from that. Maybe it's not the first time maybe it's the second time we've had members listen to episodes four or five times and then it finally clicks. But either way I I hope you got a lot of value out of this and also if this is something that you really want to solidify inside of your life, repetition is the key. You've listened to it. Write down your revelations, think about them, read them, speak them, believe in the changes that you will carve out in the action plan of those revelations to create change in your life and then share that. And when you teach you learn the second time right? So teaching and showing this to others you love and care about is the greatest way that you can revisit, remember and make sure you consistently learn and relearn what is it's true and what is it is important to you in your heart. Take care, have an amazing day night weekday weekend and I'll see you for another one soon. Cheers.