Modern Wisdom - #371 - Ollie Marchon - Identity Change & Personal Growth

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Ollie Marchon is a coach, Nike Master Trainer and business owner. The last year has caused everyone to ask some big questions about life direction. Change is often good but always scary and learning to find your place in a new world takes a lot of work, so how has Ollie managed to balance his family, work, business, coaching and training with finding a new identity. Expect to learn what happens when you've outgrown an old version of you but don't know who you are next, how to ruthlessly chase down goals when the pressure is on, why a support system is crucial if you're driven, where Ollie's confidence comes from and much more... Sponsors: Reclaim your fitness and book a Free Consultation Call with ActiveLifeRX at http://bit.ly/rxwisdom Get 20% discount on Reebok’s entire range including the amazing Nano X1 at https://geni.us/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Follow Ollie on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/olliemarchon/ Check out Marchon Online - https://www.marchon.co.uk/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people, welcome back to the show, my guest today is Oli Marchon, he's a coach, Nike, Master Trainer and a business owner. The last year has caused everyone to ask some huge questions about life direction, changes often good but always scary, and learning to find your place in a new world takes a lot of work. So how has Oli managed to balance his family, work, business, coaching and training while trying to find his new identity? Expect to learn what happens when you've outgrown an old version of you but don't know who you are next. How to ruthlessly chase down goals when the pressure is on, why a support system is crucial if you're a driven individual, where Oli's confidence comes from, and much more.

If you're not familiar with Ollie, he's kind of like a sort of super dad ex-England rugby 7's trainer coach business guy. And what I like about having these conversations with him is that it allows us to peer into a high performer who's been an elite athlete, who's been to the absolute top of their game with regards to mindset, and see what happens when they face challenges too. Covid was an ugly time for everyone and Ollie is no different. Getting to see that insight, learning how he has dealt with things, how has he transitioned and moved and tried to keep going and performing and achieving goals

whilst having the pressure and the challenges of Covid on him, it's an interesting insight. I hope that you take turns away from today. But now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Oli Marchon. Oli Marchon, I'll keep the show. Thanks, Fabmi Chris. Good to be back. Very good to have you back, man. How's the last year been for you? Talk to me. Eventful, as I'm sure it has been for many people.

But good fun, I think, a lot's gone on. Has it been a year since it's probably been longer than a year since we spoke, I think? Yeah, you're in two months. Yeah, so lots of change. My second son has arrived. So Enzo is now in this world. He's actually one year's old tomorrow, which is flown by. So learnings become a parent, I think we spoke, we touched on sort of parenting last time when I was on, but yet learning to parents who kids has been fun, challenging. How much harder is two versus one? I'm sure many people that have got two will understand. It's, you can't even compare it to one.

Because it's not just twice as hard. It's more than twice as hard. No, it's, it's, it's far more than twice as hard because you, you just can't, you can, any sort of plan or, or structure that you try and implement, or even, you know, with anything just goes out the window because these are babies we're talking about. So there's no self-regulation for them.

It just things happen and you just got to deal with it. So things like being on time, leaving the house, feeding, nappies, sleep, all that kind of stuff goes out the window. I mentioned last time I was on that. I'm very fortunate that my wife is very good at this sort of thing. So she makes things a lot easier, but yeah, that's been a really good challenge. I still think it's probably one area of my life that I don't take as naturally to,

but it's something that I really enjoy the challenge. Other things, Jim's a back open, which is a big part of what we do at March on, obviously with our facility. So that's been cool. We've had some growth in areas of the business due to what we kind of went on when the gym was closed, in the online space and kind of awareness and the communities growing a lot more what we kind of offer our community as grown. That's come with some personnel change as well. So the teams grown, people have kind of been and gone and others have kind of joined and I guess

taking us to another level because we've got more hands on deck. What else? Well what's different about you now, what's different about the guy that stood in front of me now than the guy that was stood in front of me 14 months ago? Okay, so I guess the main difference is I'm not locked up at home, so I feel as I'm, you know, life is, life is back to a million and one miles an hour Whereas back then it was very much is very very for someone like me. It was very slowed down There was a lot of constraints planes placed on me and at the time I probably perceived that as being quite inhibiting

but Upon reflection there's probably a lot of positives that that that came out of that time and that maybe If I'd have sat back and slowed down a little bit, or just been deeper with my thoughts a little bit at the time, I'd have seen a lot more positives in that. It's only now kind of looking back and hindsight that I realised that those things are actually great for someone like me. I think in day to day, a big change for me is that I've come off the coaching floor, so the identity that I had back then as Ollie Martian, the coach and personal trainer, which of course I still kind of hold on to that,

but fundamentally, day to day, I don't really do any coaching or personal training, so I guess I'm kind of faking it if I still say that I am a coach. I'm a coach of sorts, but less so on the gym floor. What do you do now? This is such a good question. To be honest, I don't actually know. And I know that sounds really bad. It sounds really bad, it's part of the bits.

I'm sure we're going to come onto it as like this identity change piece that seems to be happening too often or more often than not knowing my life. I thought the original identity change was from sort of post-rugged becoming into this personal training, Jimona sort of realm. Obviously, I'm still the Jimona, but the day-to-day running

of the gym isn't necessarily all in my hands now. There's people that sit in management roles there, operational roles. I guess if we distill it back to the two businesses, March on and the PFCA, so March on being the physical gym, the online training, nutrition, and all the bits that will come with that. There's some roles in amongst that, and then there's also the PFCA, which is the online training, nutrition, and all the bits that will kind of come with that. There's some roles in amongst that,

and then there's also the PFCA, which is the Professional Fitness Culture Association, which stands for kind of education and mentorship of personal trainers and gym owners. So, I guess I'm the key person of influence, and I hate the word influence within those two businesses. IE, the person that kind of pulls things together and makes things happen, a bit from a strategic level as well,

and I guess just like boots on the ground as well, and in different areas with contacts and networking that can kind of like kick doors down and get in there and get things moving. I think a lot of what I do now, given those people in management roles, is to work collaboratively with them to enable them a little bit more, facilitate their kind of growth and development, and also that air of the business, just try and make sure that we are constantly trying to iterate on that and make it as good as we can. What's it like then? You said that you were this guy on the gym floor, being a PT, always being an athlete,

always being involved in training. Now, you're closer to an executive board member who's got to be, you know, ops director, logistics, making sure that the branding guidelines are done right. What was some of the challenges that you went through letting go of that old version of you? I think just the terminology is there,

it's like the board member sort of CEO thing. I'm like, how can you... You make you want to throw up in your mouth, in your mouth. It does a little bit, but it's like, how can you be a CEO when you're just a personal trainer? I still kind of have that mindset. I guess the main difference is being for someone who's always been appointment-based, a lot of them will go off at a certain time every day because I've got to be somewhere for

6am, ordinarily. That's the latest I would ever start at 6am on the gym floor, session starts, or gym opens. And you're going to, when you're in the moment on that quote unquote shift of delivering personal training, there is nothing really else that you should be thinking about ideally towards the latter stage of my career on the gym floor. There was plenty of things I was thinking about

outside of coaching because I knew things needed to get done. And whilst I was on the role on the gym floor and no one else was in the role of doing those things, it could kind of eat away at me, which actually made my coaching practice, not as good as we say. So the big difference being, like I say, alarm, routine, structure there, working a shift,

and then trying to fit things in in the rest of my day, and then constantly feeling as though, it's always constantly feels like you never really escape things, but now you're just escaping or trying to escape, not even trying to escape them, I now feel as I can't escape escape things. But now you're just escaping or trying to escape, I'm not even trying to escape them, I now for the desire I can't escape different things. One big change, a different change in September of last year when gyms did reopen was that for the first time in my life I decided not to have an alarm, so I decided to make sure that I was

waking up when my body decided that I was ready to awake, be awake. I mean, kids don't really allow for that, so I was often being, being woken up by, by one of the two boys. But that was a big change, and like I say, I'd find myself waking up, almost feeling guilty, that I hadn't set an alarm. I was waking up a little bit later, ordinarily. What sort of time? Still, still I'd say around half five, six o'clock latest. Sometimes if the boys would sleep in a little bit later and that, then I would probably sleep in a little bit more as well. And then that just starts that cycle of guilt because you've not had the alarm,

you're not going to work. There's sort of, I suppose it's almost like a tangible thing where you feel as though your value, or your impact on the business, is you being there in front of the customers on the gym floor in front of the members delivering the product. Whereas now I wasn't delivering the product. I was almost like trying to think of like where can I take the product and what is the product, what is the bit that I can now influence. So that for a long a large period, I'd say sort of three months. It was took me a while to try and get into a routine. Now, I had my home office. I had, at the time, it was just a home office. We weren't in the offices where we are now. So I was like, where is work and where's pleasure? Like, if I'm working from home.

And also, you get this kind of, it never really happened and it was never verbalized. And I'm sure they never really thought that. But you almost think like the people around you that have always seen you as the first person, the gym and maybe the last person there, or you're always in and around when our product was just delivering personal training. It's not kind of like

it's only just got his feet up now because he's no longer on the gym floor. So that's a little bit of time to get used to. It's so interesting thinking about this over the last year. I don't think it's just business owners that have had this. A lot of people were either given restrictions or opportunities. Covid was a stimulus and the response to that stimulus from many people was a desire to change something. What should I change? Should I go down a different route with my relationships

with my daily routine? I got exposed to something online that really sort of changed the way that I see the world or I created new good habits or I built bad habits over this period of time. And the outcome of that has been for a lot of people that they've needed to let go of a version of themselves before that perhaps wasn't serving them quite so well.

Or maybe that version was serving them fine and they wanted to scale up and level up to, okay, what's the new version of this? And yeah, that guilt is a big deal, man, like when you've attached your sense of self-worth to being Oli Marchon, PT on the gym floor, letting go of that must be a challenge. Yeah, the biggest challenge is just a lack of purpose every day.

When you don't know what that thing is, that you're going to go and attack or where you need to be, or there's not an appointment, it's almost like... The destiny of... Yeah, my sort of fate was back in my own hands, and the destiny of where this business was going to try and go. it was all had to be self-actualized by me. It's like now it's like my ideas and all these things I said I was going to do if I didn't have any constraints around me like now I don't have the constraints you know Jim's open I've taken myself off the Jim floor I now have by proxy that open up a large period of time which I can go and fill with good work. So now it's down to

me to go and do the good work. So I mean thankfully the people around me gave me a bit of time to sort of like build in get my feet under the table with that new role. And not just the team members in the rowing the coaches but also the gym members because for them it's a bit of a change as well. Like I said that adds to the guilt as well. It's like, where's all it? Is he ever going to get back on the gym floor? Is he, what's he up to now? And I think the position, some days, the position I've kind of moved into,

which is a little bit of a corporate world, it's a bit of a schmoozer. We're just kind of going out and building relationships and networking and looking at opportunities and those sort of things. And I think that a lot of my data they now is actually via social media. In fact, I'd say 75% of my data is taken up by social media. And there's not an initial return on the investment from what you're doing on social media.

And that's nothing I've never even looked for the return investment on social media. It's kind of happened by default. But I guess compounding on that over time and the sort of success leaving the clues here, it's like the more time I can spend communicating with our community and the people that have kind of brought into following my journey, the other's journey, the story of kind of March on what it stands for, the more it actually enables these other things that we're trying to bring out to actually be successful. Last time that we spoke, you were very routine-nised and regimented.

How are you operating now? What are the disciplines and the processes that you have in place? The routine that I had in place before was by that came about by having more time, right? You're trying to fill your time with stuff, particularly during lockdown, where you feel as though you're doing something of worth, right? Of value. So by having almost like this back-to-back, order events that take, go on through your day, you feel as though you're actually working and doing something. And by nature of what lockdown kind of gave people like me,

well, everyone really, you had all this time that you could try and fill. And I think I've got guilty of just trying to overfill it. But at the time, I couldn't identify that because it was a situation that we're in, that was the environment that we had. As things begin to open back up and change, and family changes, business changes, the day to day changes, all those things that you attach to yourself to, you can no longer do, because it was probably too much. I think

we've all been there as well. We try and optimize every area of our morning routine, every area throughout the day, every area of how we go to bed at night as well. And I've done that in the past a little bit when I came out of rugby before, and it always sort of comes off the back of this identity change bit. It's like, well, I'm struggling to kind of work out where my value actually lies and where my purpose is and what I should be doing. So I'm just going to make sure that I feel as I'm doing all these things that are actually moving the needle forward

by putting all this order and structure in place. So it's changed a lot and that starts with things like I mentioned before with the alarms and things, but I think I was just guilty of over-optimizing and with all that comes just a lack of enjoyment of where you kind of are. And I think just on top of that, for me, I'm someone that needs to just keep reminding myself

to just be a little bit more present and live in the moment a little bit more. It's not that I need to try and improve everything that I'm trying to do. The grass isn't always going to be greener. Just kind of work where your feet are and just try and board the grass where you're standing. And I think that's kind of a bit of a lesson

from that time as well. But only looking back at it now. Would you have been able to keep going the way that you were, like how close do you think that you were to burn out? I think you can keep going, I think you can always keep going if you're incredibly selfish and it is just all about you, like you, but where I was at 25, 26 years old, even before that right, so when I was growing up in my early 20s, like when I was, you know, university trying to get back into rugby, the only thing that

mattered to me was rugby. So any girl that came into my life or any social occasion that came into my life, it was always secondary too, I need to be a full-time rugby player. Same sort of thing happened at 20, 26, 27 when I came out of rugby and it's now like, I'm going to go into being this business owner and open a gym, everything came second to I'm going to open a gym and I surrounded, I made my entire day in life just what the way I thought I needed to be to be a successful gym owner or business owner. And what happens in that process is that the people around you

soon get pissed off and just, you know, you're just not a very likable person because you're not well-rounded I think you don't have enough balance. Yeah you need dimensional right? Exactly so I do and I burnt myself out in that sort of 27-26-27-28 that sort of that sort of stage. I think just with a little bit more maturity and being a bit wise and also the fact that there are people that actually depend on me, are you my two sons and things? I can't go so far down that road because it's not fair, which is a large part of, you know, we might bring it up later on, it's a large part of why I've stopped being

competitive in like the fitness space, for example, but a lot of people kind of often ask that, why don't you compete so much? Because I'm not really the sort of, I'm not able to compete and it just be like, just take part and compete, which is a bit sad. And I'm kind of working on my ability to do that. And actually last weekend I competed in a national fitness games, there's a last minute sort of replacement. And I was very much in the mindset of like, I'm really not fit or strong enough to be doing this to the standard I want to be doing it. And I feel a bit exposed, but I was able to do it and just have a lot of fun just sort of like just taking part. So I'm hoping that like I say at this sort of age I'm coming into now and where my life is and all the responsibilities that I have that I can just allow myself just to take part in things for the pure enjoyment of stuff.

And that's been missing for a long time. I think we're very much absolutist creatures, right? We have, it's very easy to be completely on your diet, absolutely focused, never breaking it, or to be a complete slob, but to be able to stay on your diet for a couple of weeks and break it once, then stay on your diet for a couple of weeks and break it once, like the messy middle

is exactly where people find challenges. And it's because we attach our sense of identity to the things that we are doing. I am a professional rugby player. I am a nightclub promoter. Now I am a podcaster. Now I am a gym owner, whatever it might be. And when you bring these constraints in on life,

what you end up doing is you actually wrangle some of the chaos of what's going on into a bit of order. And you think, okay, I have a narrow set of parameters with which I can tweak and also that I need to be worried about. So Jack butch is a guy that does visualize value. It's a huge sort of, I don't even know what you call it, he literally just creates concepts out of famous quotes and makes them graphically look great, being on the show. And he spoke about the fact that one of the first things he wanted to do, remembering is's a graphic designer, his background is in making things look pretty. The first thing that he

did was give himself very hard and fast rules about what they could look like. It was always going to be white on black, it was always going to be the same font, it was always going to be a geometric design. So what he did was he brought the constraints in of his chosen pursuit so that he didn't have to worry about colors, fonts, design. And it meant that he focused on the highest in of his chosen pursuit so that he didn't have to worry about Colors Fonts design and it meant that he focused on the highest point of contribution for him, which is how well can I visualize the concept that I'm actually trying to do? So he wrangled all of this chaos, this unlimited number of colors and fonts and styles, wrangled that in.

And what it permitted him to do was to really, really focus on one piece of creativity. But I think what a lot of people do with it as well is it gives them a sense of comfort. It makes them feel comfortable because they know, okay, I just need to get up at 5.30 a.m. focus on my clients, get myself into the gym, bin it when I'm when I'm training, so on and so forth. But when you go, okay, draw yourself back a little bit. Can we have you showing up when you need, okay, draw yourself back a little bit, can we have you showing up when you need to and training, but knowing that you don't need to give it everything because you have other priorities in there.

You also have a priority being a dad. You also have a priority of being a lead or a businessman. And again, this comes back to the identity change thing that you've seen and a lot of people will have done coming out of COVID. Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I after a pandemic's happened? And it's kind of, I haven't really had a lot of conversations now retrospectively looking back at what the pandemic did to people. I think everyone was so sick of talking about it, talking about lockdowns and about, oh bro, it's so boring, isn't it? And gyms

aren't open and stuff like that. But I think that now is the time to really get some great learning experiences out of your period during lockdown. Look back and say, okay, what am I like? What's the texture of my mind like when I get under stress? What are the sort of places that I go to in terms of coping mechanisms? Do I sleep in or do I find myself really drilling down on stuff? Do I need more friends?

Was my support structure not there? All of these sort of things. But yeah, bringing those constraints in and focusing sort of narrow and deep, I think is a very common, almost a coping strategy to high pressure because it narrows your focus on the one thing. I think narrow and deep something that I need to concern myself a little bit more because so many opportunities, that's the thing I'll get caught up now, now because I have a little bit more, it's not necessarily more time, but because my attention is brought to different

things that are going on in the industry, it allows more opportunities. And it's sort of a stark understanding to make sure that I remain focused on a few things. And that's actually been something I've been trying to work on with, mentioned it before we started sort of ambassador deals and working with different bits and pieces that I've done in the past, which again was part of my identity. I work with these brands, there's a mutual benefit to both parties and that's who identified as in different sort of sectors of the industry, but actually just trying to take some of those things away from off my plate, offload these things from my plate for a short term financial pain,

but financial, these things could have really benefited particularly coming out of the back of COVID, some of the things I sort of walked into were to try and protect these opportunities for myself, my wife, my kids and all these kind of things. But what I did in doing that was added things to my plate that wasn't allow me to really focus and to use what you said there, it's just to go narrow and deep. It was all these opportunities that in the short term would work well, but in the long term vision of what I was trying to achieve and what the Covid allowed was to try and, you know, get back into what is this long term vision, you know, things are going to get back to

normal and there's a long time ahead of us to get after this. So it was useful for me. What are some of the lessons that you wish a year ago would have known? for me. What are some of the lessons that you wish all year ago would have known? I've kind of used the term already, but just really being where my feet are to actually took that from a from the performance director at Nike right. So just being I guess just being in the moment, being in the moment, learning to appreciate that each of those moments, like I said already, I've always been that person that's kind of like that.

What's text mentality in grasses, greener and keep pushing, it's kind of part and parcel of what March on really stands for, but there is still a fair amount of just like sitting back and reflecting on where you are right now and appreciating those times, particularly a year ago where I was able to have more better conversations with the close people around me,

better quality times spent with family members. So I think that would be the biggest lesson is to appreciate appreciate everything that we've done in the past to get to where we are today and just live in the moment a little bit better. Given that you're an ex elite level athlete who performed and was always about trying to improve, trying to up their game. Do you feel, do you have a sense of fear in the back of your mind that this being present nerfs some of the drive that was what made you competitive in the first place? Yeah, I think that's a pretty good way to beat. I think when you are competitive

at heart, like you're constantly looking for just like that next bit of advantage, like where can I go from here, how can I continue try and level up, find that competitive advantage over the people around you. But it can be quite destructive at times because you don't actually know what you're aiming for, you don't actually know what is next,

you just think there is something there. And I think given, like I say, just the fact that we were like my business and I know I've got a lot of friends and peers who, you know, the business unfortunately didn't quite make it. Given that we were able to do what we did in that time, I should have just appreciated that even though at the time I felt was though life was, you know, with the doors, the doors were too closed, Life was pretty miserable. There was a lot of things that were going on, even just the growth of the

personnel around me as well, you know, the team members within March on how much growth they got from being able to adapt pivot. It's a terrible word that was used too much, but change the change of working conditions, the environment, how we delivered our products and services, the opportunities that we looked at that we seek, the development of all those products as well, they grew 10 fold in a year. You wouldn't see that sort of growth in an individual over that sort of time, because it was such an artificial, tough time to try and develop yourself. So,

we've come out of it with just huge lessons huge lessons and learn- and all of us is much stronger for it. I think most people really don't appreciate the price that high performing individuals pay to be great at their career. So Eddie Halls are a really good example of this. The year that he won World Strongest Man, a sorry, an interview with him, and he was saying, if I hadn't won World Strongest Man that year, I would likely be either dead and or divorced because his

marriage was on the rocks because of the sacrifices he was making for his sport, his body was beat. I was like, I think he's only six one, which in that sport isn't actually that big and was nearly 200 kilos. So he was just this sort of boulder of a human wandering about blood pressure through the roof. And they nearly fainted after doing that deadlift, had to get put on oxygen. Just generally, everything in his life was wrecked, but because everybody saw that very narrow

domain of competence that they applauded him in, yeah, but he's the strongest man on the planet. And he says, if he hadn't given that up, he reckons that everything would have gone to put, wouldn't have had a relationship with his wife, which would have included his kids, would have maybe been dead or had some sort of significant problems. And what people need to realize is that the price that you have to pay to be that person that you admire

within a very narrow domain is probably one that you wouldn't be prepared to put your hand in your pocket and write the check for. You wouldn't pay the price that you had to be, to be Eddie Hall, and the price, perhaps, that you were paying to be Oli Marchon previously, was one that long-term, when you look at it, you think, well, I don't wanna pay that.

I wanna pay this price. I don't want to not be able to just train for the enjoyment of training. I don't wanna be able to always have to feel like the emails need answering. This was one of the things that got brought up on the last chat, that you know, 8 p.m. 9 p.m. 10 p.m. at night. And that was obviously because you were still the linchpin that held everything together because you hadn't scaled the business down because you hadn't delegated control. You hadn't given these are the people roles to play

in. And I think that this is, it's something that every businessman needs to, a business woman needs to understand that, as you grow within the business, you as the figurehead, the forefront of what you were doing, you can't be that if you want to scale. It simply doesn't work because over time, all that happens is more and more pressure lands on your shoulders. But broader than that, as you grow up as a young guy or girl into the solidify the kind of life that you want to have presumably with a family That also probably isn't scalable from what you did in your 20s. You know the 60 hour weeks They don't work the same goes for what I do with the nightlife stuff

You know the way that me and my business partner used to work saying up till six in the morning to complete the accounts and and run back over the night He's got three kids now, and I need to wake up and I've got my stuff to do with the podcast. That can't happen. So everybody needs to let go of who it was that they thought they were. And you see it with people that can't. You see it with the punch-drunk boxer

that still is trying to win a world title at 40, 45 years old. You see it with the businessmen who constantly sacrifice their entire lives in a desperate attempt to try and achieve a goal that when they actually look at it, they're probably not that bothered about either, but it's difficult. Having the little tolerances, taking things with compromise, it's hard. 100% is that phrase isn't it? It works that it doesn't.

And I think it's something that I sort of preach with the guys we look after in the mentorship is that a lot of us that are running our own businesses or working whatever we're doing, whatever we're doing this for, it's constantly trying to just draw the correlation back to like why are we doing it? Because a lot of the decisions we make

usually take us away further away from what we're actually trying to achieve. A lot of them are financially driven and of course because more money potentially gives us more freedom but the life we want to live I always say to the people we work with this kind of like define your perfect day and let's work back from that or the perfect week. What is that perfect job, that perfect day or a job role look like and what's the sort of money we need to earn, what's the qualifications

we need to go and get, do we need to go and acquire some more knowledge, how can we implement these skill sets, what's the qualifications we need to go and get, we need to go and acquire some more knowledge, how can we implement these skill sets, what's the environment we want to try and work in, be it offices, gyms, whatever it may be. And once I think you've done a bit of that work, then you can allow some compromise because the thing that you think it needed to be isn't necessarily the bill and under one anymore.

Does this quote that I put in a news that are recently from John Maxwell and he says, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything? What he's saying is that the vast majority of stuff that we do doesn't contribute to what our higher goals. For the first time ever in human history, we have problems of abundance, not problems of scarcity, too much food, too much convenience, too many options for what to do with our lives.

What is the thing that you want to do? Where do you want to be in one or two years time? And how many hours did you spend today doing something that directly contributes to that? The vast majority of people, if they actually look at how they spend their time, it's not contributing to the higher order goals. It's just doing all of the other shit that sits around it. Like, I genuinely think that being ruthless with planning and then neutering everything that doesn't contribute to that plan solves pretty much every productivity problem. I honestly think that that's the case. And this allure of novelty means that everyone's always compelled

to do something different. You said yourself, I've got to get rid of some of the sponsorships and the affiliate deals because they're distracting me from my core contribution to what I do in my business. But it's hard. This phomo, phomo's a fucking hell of a drug. Is that, you use the word, is that a bundled mindset, right?

And that links also to those routines we were talking about during lockdown. It's like, how much more can I put on my plate until, it's almost like just a man test or a woman test to see how much you do. Suffering to? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, until you break. So yeah, 100%. How do you know when you're pushing too hard and when you're not pushing hard enough? Usually the people around me will tell, but I'm pretty self-aware to menace. I think because I've got so much lived experience from pushing too hard or or not many times where I've not pushed too hard to menace, but I kind of know where that line is now. I know when I'm telling it a little bit too much. I think also there's

sort of flow state mentality where things feel effortless. If things feel effortless, you've acquired that specific knowledge of what you feel as though you're the expert in a way you can have the most impact and in that portion of the world. But now the situation that you're in now, you no longer have that specific knowledge quite so much. You're venturing into new territory, you're not doing the things that you use to do. Is there a little bit of imposter syndrome creeping in

with sort of where you're going to at the moment? 100%. But I've always, I think, is every sort of stage of my life and growth through my career. There's always been imposter syndrome, even in my sporting career, going from playing club rugby and in the national leagues to going into a high performance environment like England. There's always been an in Poster syndrome, but I think, again, someone that's trying to push, someone that's constantly trying to push themselves, it's always going to feel that.

So it's something that I've dealt with and kind of lived with a long time, and I can recognise it and it's almost like part and parcel of their life. But I think the more I'm just getting used to this new chapter of where I can have impact. And I think now before seeing impact would be the look on someone's face when they leave a training session or sending me that message afterwards saying that was the best session I've had in a long time or I've done this or I've done that or seeing someone PB there left whatever it may be, I'd get that initial kind of return, I knew that I was having impact there and then I think now I hate these terms but you know looking at now the figures of the business

and where there's growth and sort of the key KPIs be it financial or just like growth of different areas. Something's got to be going right. And it's either the fact that I'm doing what I'm doing now or it's the fact that I've delegated and put people and facilitated in those roles where they're now doing their bit right, but they're still sort of prudent in that now.

So I think even though the job role is a little bit unfamiliar to me and it will become more familiar as time goes on, I can still see that I must be having the impact that I've set out to have because things are kind of moving in that direction. This is another thing that business people as they grow up have to understand. Previously, you used to see the look on your customer's face when you served them one of your signature donuts or the compliment that you got as somebody left your club night or the way that somebody

felt as they walked out of your gym, whatever. But then after a while, you're like, okay, if I want to scale this up, I can't rely on an individual person's feedback. Like, I need to be able to aggregate the shit that's going on and you're right. Like, it's a bit of an ugly, or to frown upon term to talk about the fact

that all the accounts are kind of going to be one of the ways that I look at this impact, but that is an aggregation of what's going on. It's very difficult to run a business badly and to see it growing, especially in a competitive space like fitness. Yeah, 100% and those things really matter now because there's a lot of people sort of, you know, salaries and mortgages and there's a lot of responsibility on those things actually growing. So I need to now pay a bit more attention to it. Whereas in the past, it was something like, it's something that I never really interested in because I never really went into it for all those things.

But I think it's a business grows and tries to scale and has a bit more of a profound effect. I've needed to take more interest and spend more time with the accountants and actually look at these things in a bit more granular detail. Hmm. How do you deal with down days if your mindset's not right? How do you deal with down days if your mindset's not right?

Good question. I've not had many down days for a long time. Apart from when I got COVID, that was a tough time. How do I deal with down days? I think it's going, feeling it, with things that I actually enjoy doing. Which ordinarily is some form of physical exertion because I feel as though that's when I feel most alive. It allows me to go to a place where my head can be emptied and I can be at one with thoughts and just still and filter out why it is that I'm potentially down. Having conversations, again I think as I've matured, I'm definitely more open about having conversations before in the past I've been more of a closed book because it's often the hard to talk, you know, particularly

sort of male masculinity rights to talk about feelings and and showing vulnerability or weakness. So that's something that has has definitely changed. So I'm willing to have those conversations more. But also just accept that these things are just their feelings, they'll pass. So be it one with them for the period that they need to be there and go and do whatever you can do to either rest recover and make yourself feel a little bit better by your actions or just accept that a little bit of time will go past and you'll be back to what you want it to be.

That's a really good insight. The fact that everything is just going to be transient, right? It's here for today and maybe today and tomorrow and maybe a couple more days after that. And then it's going to leave. And this is why when we look back on periods of challenge, we can see them with a little bit more equanimity and actually maybe fall in love with some of the difficulties that we've had. Now you go through a period like COVID and at the time, you said, this feels uncomfortable. there's uncertainty about the future. You look back and you realize, fuck, look at how much growth came out of this.

But at the time, it feels really bad. This happens every time that there's a challenge. Like, it's every single time you come up against something, it feels shit in the moment you look back and you appreciate it. So I'm wondering whether there's a way, I think it would be advantageous for everybody to try and develop a way where they can have that perspective, a little bit more perspective in the moment. Like, look, I've observed something in me this morning, I've woken up and I've felt shit. All right, it looks like today's

just going to be a sort of grip my teeth and move through it. Maybe I'm not going to PB today, but that's all right. I might PB tomorrow. And if I just get through today, little wins, little wins, little wins, get to bed tonight, right, sweet. You wake up tomorrow and everything feels okay. Like that's the level of self-confidence that I think you want to get to. It seems to me like you have quite a lot of confidence in your own ability,

even if you are pushing new grounds. Where do you think that comes from? Yeah, I think I've probably got sometimes too much. I often say that if someone came along and took everything from me, I've still got myself. So I'll start again with wherever I'm left. I think the confidence grows from just lived experiences. They're trying things, failing, learning from that,

trying things, winning, learning from that, putting myself in the fire and line. And you mentioned about the other, the sort of like, live in the moment thing just then. I think each day I try and fill my day with sometimes too many challenges, but as many challenges as possible to make sure that when I put my head in the pillow at night, I feel fulfilled and that I've actually, I've grown as a person in whatever domain I'm kind of trying to grow. I suppose a lot of people often say to me like, I'm always on the ground constantly doing things

that I'm just trying to live the life that I've got and trying to fulfill my potential. I'm trying to live life to the fullest. It's a bit of a wanky comment. But if I do all of those things, like I say, there's gonna be sometimes that are gonna be really tough, sometimes that are gonna go really well,

I've been able to get myself to, you mentioned, what do I do now, and this kind of ties into it. I actually think what I do now is ride the wave and the success of the people that are around me. That's fundamentally my day today, what it's like now. There's people in positions that surround me and kind of look out after me and prop up who Oli Martian is now. So that a lot of the success people see or the lot of the, whatever you see of me is usually the lot of the success people see or the lot of the whatever you see of me is usually the work of the people around me side by side. So as long as those people are still around I think I'm going to be alright. Man, yeah I mean this is another thing of a

businessman or a business woman like letting go of you being the person that drives the girl thing, getting in people that are smarter than you or better than you in a ton of different places. You know you look at somebody like Ben Francis the guy behind Gy the girl, and getting in people that are smarter than you, or better than you in a ton of different places. You know, you look at somebody like Ben Francis, the guy behind Jim Shark, and he's now got like his MD, I swear he used to look after Adidas or Reebok or somebody, and he think like that guy's got 10 times the experience that you've got, you're still head of the tree.

Like you're still the guy that's driving the brand forward, you're still the one that understands the real nuances about the positioning with regards to the brand. There's an importance to have a figurehead as well there that's been from ground floor all the way up, but you need to be able to recruit people that are smarter than you and then sort of applaud them when they do the work on your behalf. Yeah, I just sort of looked at the segments of kind of what was my job role look like when I'm spread too thin and how can I start to

like work with and offload some of these bits to people who are just more specialists who can just focus on that. But actually, you bring up a thing that Ben Francis is probably the person that at least someone like me would watch all the YouTube videos and try and just take as much from him as possible in that for us to go to this next level now, sometimes I am left questioning whether I now need that board of people or those people that sit above me, be it someone who's been a founder and taken a business from the ground, the ground right up, be it someone who's got experience

as a CEO, be it someone who's got experience and whatever sort of sections or whatever areas of our business need expertise, sometimes I'm left kind of left wondering, either I need to go and find that myself and that might be how I actually spend my time, it's going to develop myself for that area of my game or I need to go and find someone that I can work with or they work with me in that sort of, I guess, overseeing role to make sure that we get there. Because everything's great for us and I feel we still we can we will still move in a direction that is you know towards where we're trying to get to but it just might be too slow if it's left just to me to do it particularly with the kind of ambitions that we have now.

So yeah that's that's always some constant constantly pondering over it's like where where's the gaps in what I'm in where I am now and how can I you know doing the social media things very easy but how can I actually make sure that the stuff that I am doing is in line with the big goal? The interesting thing there is that that hasn't impacted your confidence, that accepting that there are limits to your capability that you can't be master of all trades, hasn't made you feel like you're lacking in some place.

And I think that this is, again, another really fucking important lesson that it's like, look, it's not due to a lack of capacity on your part that you need to get other people in, that there are people that have specialized in fucking, you don't try and do your own accounts. Like you have an accountant for a reason. Just roll that out across everything, brand design,

graphic design, operations, logistics, customer service, HR, whatever the fuck it is, like all of these different things, are very, very specialized areas. And just because you think that you can do it, like letting go of that desire to be the guy that sorts everything out is one of the most important things that I think young business people need to be able to do. Let go of the fucking tether to you controlling everything in your business. Find people that you trust slowly over time, stress test them, see if they work, see if they fit within the industry, see if they fit within the company, and then

let them run wild and just check in with them and keep them motivated. That's it. I'm at 100%. The people that are associated with our business now pretty much have free reign to do what they want. The only thing we say is like, unless it's going to cost us and we put a figure on, like, don't make a fuck up, it's going to cost us, and we put a figure on, don't make a fuck up that's going to cost us this and don't make a fuck up that's going to cost the brand this as a reputation, otherwise, just get on. Get on, make mistakes, fail fast, move on, try things, be innovative, and it's not always easy, right? Because you can't just employ people and all of a sudden you've got all these people that

you need to constantly, as your business looks to grow in scale, particularly business like mine that's never taken investment like we've never, we don't have deep pockets, we're not backed by anyone. It's hard to be able to pay the salaries of some of these experts that you need to have on board, which is why I'm so grateful that we've got this aspirational brand that people want to come and work for because often they kind of come in at a level that, you know, is a little bit underwhelmed. They'll take a hit on the pay packet because they want to be associated with the brand. Yeah, but I'm kind of like, look, if we take this pun and you come on this journey with us and

you can see, you can see, by into the vision that we're trying to get to, I promise I'll get you there. We will get there eventually, we just need to do these steps first and foremost together, and they're going to have a huge influence on that as well, which often gives them a lot of excitement as well. But when we get there, I promise I'll still be the last person to eat at the table. We just need a small business, we need to just do things a certain way. So given the fact that you're not on the gym floor anymore, I'm going to tap into your old training expertise. A lot of people probably kick starting a fitness journey again after a big period of gyms finally starting to get themselves back towards a critical capacity. What are some of the biggest errors that you see people making in your gym and

during your time training them that are restricting their progress? It's difficult because, you know, again, one of our things is like, in the past, it's been trained everything ready for anything, but I think people at sort of my level of training experience that have done the sets and reps for a number of years can kind of do that. But even now I'm finding, I'm actually training for a marathon now, and I'm even now I'm getting frustrated because I'm doing all this running, but I've actually, my goals aren't to be a better runner and to, obviously, one of my goals in the short term is to do well in this marathon but I'm doing it because it's almost like a bucket list thing, whereas it's not really one of the goals I would have for my health and fitness right now.

So it is just about trying to hone in on what is it you're trying to achieve? Like is it the person that's trying to just move away from pain, just have a bit more better quality of life, you know, in whatever years they're in right now, and is it about longevity in those kind of things? Is it about the aesthetic side of things? Is it about trying to build some strength, whatever it may be? Just hone into what the goal is, because I think people just spread themselves too thin again with this kind of a bund of mindset, and particularly the offering that fitness brings these days is that you can literally do anything, and they just throw as much stuff at themselves as they can. So the first one would be pick your goal.

Yeah, choose a goal and just like focus in it. I think a lot of people that come into our world, the functional fitness space, just haven't done the sets and reps, the sort of multiple muscular contractions, the general physical preparedness. And they want to go and, you know, they want their body,

well, I can't remember the phrase, but it's something around the mind's trying to catch checks. The body's trying to catch the mind is right in checks that the body can't catch. They're trying to do all these things that have seen other people do because of social media and things that they're not able to do yet. And there's like a level of just kind of earning the right in the fitness world. All right, so let's say that it's someone who's got a few years of training behind them, maybe taking a little break, maybe just sort of ticked over with training. What are the principles that you think like, right, okay, here are some fucking mistakes that I often see people making. They're aiming for

getting in good shape. They want to be fit, but aesthetics are also a part of it. Where are people often going wrong in your experience? So again, link to the fact that they're trying to do too much. Just find that minimum effective dose, right? We want to play the long game first and foremost. We want to make sure that we still are able to train relatively hard, but we're staying underneath that sort of like that capacity where we're under recovered going to our next session, particularly for people that aren't fitness professionals or athletes where they have to go and perform in different arenas outside of the gym, be it at work at home with their family and what have you.

So just make sure that you're doing that minimum effective dose. Anything above and beyond that is brilliant. If we go too far, then there's going to be a law of diminishing returns. I think picking something, again, the modality of training, the environment that you know that you physically really enjoy. You want to be able to go to that place. Often it's going to either be before work on your lunch break or after work, that you actually want to be there. You want to, you know, you want to

be make sure that because that's going to boost adherence, it's going to get more buying, and it will make the whole process more enjoyable, which therefore means you're probably going to do it for a bit longer. I would then try and surround yourself either with a buddy that you're going to go and train with or the people that the gym or even just the owners of the gym themselves or a trainer with people that motivate you, can hold you accountable and again feed that's just that level of enjoyment. And then just the low hanging fruits, just like don't eat like a kid, eat sensibly, don't restrict yourself too much, like make sure that you are just able to be consistent throughout

the week, but you probably need to just accept that there's going to be days that are going to go better than others, make sure you get into bed on time, just the usual things. I think most of us just want to be training for, to look good first and foremost, I do think that's a big driver for most people, but it's for longevity and health, and that really just needs a consistent mindset, right, and playing the long game, train three to four times a week, things that you enjoy doing. If you do want to build muscle, we know we have to lift some weights, there's going to be a stimulus. Eat well, sleep, like as well as you can, and jobs are good, and I like it, man. The movement that we've seen over the last three years or so, three to

five years, which you've been a part of, and then other people like maybe James Smith have been a slightly more outspoken part of is kind of been this return to the fundamentals. You know, calorie deficit if you want to lose fat, progressive overload if you want to build muscle, make sure that you sleep, make sure that you eat, make sure that you get enough protein, make sure that you find a modality that makes you want to train because if you train a lot then you can climb and you can climb since the key driver of your results. And the one there that people rarely talk about is finding a training partner or finding a group of people that you can

train with that really, really gas you up, because that's a huge difference. But having somebody that you're in the gym with that gets you out of your own head that gets you out if you're on thought process and encourages you to do some more reps, to do some more sets that holds you accountable to the training plan that process and encourages you to do some more reps, to do some more sets that holds you accountable to the training plan that you're going in there to do. Now, outsourcing your willpower to either a class or a training partner is one of the easiest things that you can do. You just need to find out that that person or that class.

100%. I think outsourcing your willpower to a program, right? So when you go in there, there's just something there. What the fuck are you in there to do? Yeah, it's a poster. I'm going to walk over here and walk over there. Yeah, you mentioned earlier on, we mentioned Shark Monday and mindset David. That's a big part that what they've become now is like everyone just shows up on those days on the program.

So on the March one program, it's like the amount of people now that are posting, you know, mindset day. And just you know then is one in everyone's in it for the same, it's the same reason. And we've said like today, it doesn't really matter what the scores are. It's a competitive environment our programming, but it's like effort is the only currency. Just show up and put in the work and you're going to have a good outcome. I think you mentioned, you know, you mentioned me in the same sentence as James Smith,

which is quite nice. But I think that the key driver with that and the messaging behind all of this from the lights of myself and him and a lot of other people, that's been born out of the fact that I think now because all this information, imagery, what people's idea of fitness needs to be and what people look like now in the fitness space is so readily available through social media on all these different platforms. We do need to bring it back to just like the reality of how this shit actually goes down. A lot of what you see isn't sustainable for most people and it is a load of bullshit. The basics done very well consistently over time.

Yes, they might be boring, but that is where most people are actually going to have most success. And it's the people that just don't get bored of the basics that will be the people that are in shape year-on-year, when the others are just jumping on bandwagon, it's going to ebb and flow, but more often than not, they're going to be in sort of troughs rather than peaks. There was an interview that James Smith did with, I want to say the head of the Chinese weight lifting team, and he asked him what the difference was between the guys that make it to the absolute elite that compete on the world stage and the guys that are just below. And he said that

it's the athletes that can deal with the boredom of daily training the best. That we look at somebody like a map Fraser or an Ollie March on and we presume that every single day that absolutely gas to go and do like in Matt's programming. If you've got 45 minutes of monostructural work on a rowing machine, no one's excited for that, not even a row is excited for that, that fucking sucks. But if you can man up, if you can dig deep and find yourself some motivation to get you through that, that makes a difference. That's where you will grow.

It's the same in any sort of area of life, whether it's your training or any kind of area in what you're trying to do. It's those sets and reps and it's the boring stuff that compounds over time. As long as you're doing the right boring stuff, that compounds over time that's going to give you the desired outcome, we spoke about it earlier. Most people just can't create order around those few things. They can create order around one or two areas of their life, be it that pertains to work or family, but as soon as you've got to grow older around the kitchen, around training, around work, around family, around social occasions,

something falls apart. It's the people that have the ability to do those four or five things that then people think, I've got all their shit together. They've just spent a bit of time trying to create that order, find what works, iterate on the process. When it does work, just allow companion trust to take care of things. When it doesn't work, try and improve it. They don't have everything sorted. They just have the few things that matter sorted. Exactly. Yeah.

For most people, they can sort one or two. The people that you think have their shit together, they're just sorting through or four. So just get one or two other things. What about fatherhood, man? Obviously, we touched on it earlier on. You've now got two boys and wife and now juggling different businesses and stuff like that. What about some of the learnings of being a young dad over the last year? I'm quite hard on myself, I think, with this. And I think sometimes it's, I think it's just justified. It's the bit that I find the hardest out of everything that I've done. Why do you think that is? And what do you mean by hardest?

I think it just doesn't come naturally to me. I get, you know, when the boys are crying or if they're kicking off or there's something like, my patience is so short. So I'm like, I get frustrated very quickly. Like, I've been left with the two boys, you know, a couple of weekends over the last year. And I can do like one day and I'm like,

where's my parents? I need my mum to come around it now and help me out. Just, I think because they are just so chaotic, right? You can't create any sort of structural routine. You have to be so, and this is where Lauren's so great, and I think where most mothers or parents that just get it, they're so selfless. Like, it's like everything they exist for that day is to serve other people. And I'm like that with most things,

like I want to serve everyone around me. It's almost just like a next level when it comes to like a kid, like a baby. Like you need to be, you need to just, you need to put anything that you had on that day or that you wanted to get done to the back of your mind because it's just not happening in the way in which you want it to happen.

I also think just being able to spend more quality time, again, because of the nature of our business and the nature of how competitive is and the way in which I need to operate day-to-day and social media, whatever it may be, that can often creep into and leak into times where I'm supposed to be, well, I should be being present with other bits and pieces. But at the same time, coming off the gym floor and not needing to be in a particular pace on certain days, there are obviously occasions where I've got appointments, but I'm now able to do things like drop my son at school, pick him up, go to these sort of things, whereas in the past, that would have been potentially taking a day off work or off the gym floor. So there's been some successes, some failures, but there's definitely a lot of work on still to come.

I'm fascinated by this transition from business owner to fatherhood and letting go of some of the challenges, because previously, in a business, if somebody had been kicking off as much as your kids were, you'd fire them. But you can't fire your own children, apparently. Yeah. Yeah, I think the biggest sacrifice I've made, and it's actually something I identified a couple of weeks ago,

I don't know any violence being played, because I do have access to a lot more resource and time to train with, but the biggest sacrifice over the last couple of years, I think is actually myself as the athlete. I think I've done really well as the business owner and to drive the business and to recruit well and to keep that moving forward.

I think where what's really suffered is myself as the athlete. And I probably play the age card a little bit too much on this, but coming here in 33 is no great age, but I'm definitely not in my prime anymore. I'm definitely at the other side of that and being surrounded by some of the young bulls that are so good at you know on the gym floor or on the training floor. I think that's the biggest sacrifice and that's something that I want to try and post this marathon really try and have one last go at it. I'm not quite sure'd put a post there. Well, just that look there. I'm not quite sure, I just think a bit more,

just again, it's gonna probably me going back to a little bit of that obsessive person and something else we'll have to give. I'm not quite sure what that is now, but just going back to the advice I just said there, it's like just focus on what is the go now, like in the past, I've resulted, if we talk about myself, what's resulted here is like a jack of all trades, yeah,

and I stand by that still being the thing that I want to be. You know, I can go, I can go and run a marathon on five weeks training and do pretty well. I can still sprint, jump, lift weights, go and compete in fitness events, that kind of thing. But there was a time in my life where I literally felt invincible with the sort of weights that I could lift or what I could actually achieve in my body, and that's not just there, that's not there anymore. So I just think there needs to be some deliberate practice and just trying to gain a bit more weight, get a

little bit stronger, get a little bit more robust, and actually go through some training cycles and phases to really try and push the needle. How long that will last, and whether I'll, you know, actually see that through, I'm not quite sure because I don't really know what's around the corner. But I think the catalyst was on the National Fitness Games the other week, just like, I'm just that little bit off the top guys in some of those, in some of the events, you know, being the top end strength stuff. And I don't have, I want to have one last go at it before it's too late That's something that very few people have spoken about I've never really heard anyone have a conversation about this and me knew the same age

talking about what it feels like to watch your physical prime fall through your fingers Like to watch that happen because You see with the elite athletes, you know, Christiana and Aldo's just gone back to Manchester United and everyone can't believe that he's worth this much money.

Like he's 36 and Capital Letters was trending on Twitter because they just couldn't believe the fact that this guy who's off that age. But outside of that, it doesn't matter that you're not an elite athlete, letting go of what you used to be able to do, because throughout your 20s, you know, for all of life, you're on this sort of ascension.

You're an appreciating asset physically. You're getting stronger, you're acquiring new skills, your capacities are growing up, you're more robust, you're better neurologically, all of this stuff. And then you like start to feel, you know, when a lift stops and you sort of notice that you're floating up in the end, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm starting to, and then you go, no, no, no, don't start going down. Like I don't want to go down.

I'm noticing it with myself. Like injuries come more quickly. Recovery comes more slowly. Wates and progress. Body fat's harder to lose. Muscles harder to build. I'm at, okay, I need to accept the fact that at this age, this is the direction that I'm going in, and the only way that I can get around this is with sheer force of will and effort. It's gonna take me more effort to achieve fewer results than it would have done 10 years ago. And that's a fucking tough pill to swallow. 100%.

I was actually a couple of weeks ago, some of the people around me actually mentioned this to them. We were sat on Bournemouth Beach after the competition. It was a Sunday, it was a summer shine, it was incredible. But for about 15 seconds, I was just having the worst thoughts in my head about my age. The day after the competition, I had had a few too many drinks and not before so I was a bit hungover.

I was just kind of reflecting the people around me, some of them were my age but a lot of them were a lot younger. I just had some really morbid feelings about just like shit. I'm at this age now, my prime's gone, I'm not gonna be that person again and all these kind of things. And I wouldn't change anything over the last five, six years, at all.

But like I say, one thing I've not really focused on is, it was a deliberate change. Like I didn't wanna focus on myself as the athlete. I just wanna try and get back to, like I said, I'm happy for marginal returns. So long as I can go, okay, for that period, I've given it as much as I could. Yeah, everything within reason of all the other hats that I'm trying to wear. Whereas I feel as though there's been a large portion of time where I have just been ticking boxes. And those boxes have served, you know, I've ticked those boxes and I've been able to do other

things, some great profound things in other areas of my life, to afford me the opportunity to go to, you know what, for the next year, here's the time and effort I'm going to put towards just like seeing what sort of athlete I can be at 34 years old. What challenges can I go and do, what weights will I be able to lift and numbers and that kind of thing. Because I've just not, for the last, I say, for the last four or five years, the kilos on the bar or the times here and that kind of thing, it's not even being an interest

of mine. And that's quite weird. I'm ready to just give that one more go. Fucking interesting, man. Really, really is, like, quite a profound thing to be thinking about. I don't know what the equivalent is for girls if they've attached their sense of self-worth to something, but if you're a guy that's spent a lot of time in the gym throughout his twenties and then starts to notice stuff happen, like metabolism slowing down. So, and actually, it does, I can't outwork a bad diet anymore, which I used to be able to do. Like a genuine account outwork a bad diet. And it takes a little bit longer to rehabilitate stuff and the hangovers are beyond fucking otherworldly. They come hard and fast when you're not prepared for them.

Mate, I'm fortunate I don't really, because I don't drink that often. I don't really have to experience hangovers much, but I mean the hangover on Sunday was horrific, but you brought up the injuries. I mean, yeah, just like nickels and injuries and even just getting myself up for training. Some days I'd have mild anxiety about the fact I had to train, whereas before, I was just like, I want to train all day every day. And there's a couple of young lads that kind of work, work from arch on that, like they can do back to back sessions from 6am through to midday, like it's nothing. Run upstairs, have a quick, you know, a bit of porridge or coffee, and then they're throwing ridiculous weights that I've never

even touched above their head, and I'm like, where the fuck, like it? I'm never going to get that back, but I just need to get some sort of... Yeah, just chase it down a little bit. I think, I've called it one last dance. We'll see how far I get with it. I'll still never hit the numbers that they're going to hit, but I'll give it a shot. I had a conversation with Navy SEAL, X Navy SEAL, they actually created the mind gym for SEAL Team 6, which was the mindset side of the Navy SEALs. He was talking about the fact that the older stage, fuck this hurts so bad, said that the older stage that you could join the SEALs, that was 28. And I tried to sort of defend the old, I was like, 28 seems a bit sort of,

you're like, well, yeah, just physically the guys over 28, they're not really there. Like if you're in at 28, you can stay on, but if you don't, and he told me the story about some guy was climbing up one of those, I don't know what the grapple rope type things, you know, the rope nets, climbing up. Cogonnet, yeah. Cogonnet, climbing up apparently, it's like 25, 30 foot off the ground on sand on the beach running with a pack. This kid was 18 or 19 years old, climbed all the way up to the top, got one foot

down and just fell 25 feet to belly flop onto the sand with a pack on his back with like heavy shit in a burgeon. Apparently just stood up, brushed it off him and ran, he said, if you're in your 30s and that happens to you, you're snapped in half. This guy that was 18, bounced off the floor like a fucking rubber ball and just and set off again. You go, yeah, yeah, okay maybe I remember in the rugby days like in my early 20s even mid 20s like the boys who were considered the old boys at like 32 33 there was a couple of 35 yours. Maybe a 36. They've got kids. They're married And I think you like this is a short career if like I'm only a few years away from that

Like why do they talk and act like that, like they're old? And now I'm there. And I'm like, going back to rugby, I couldn't even fathom trying to try to rugby. Yeah, I'd literally get snapped in half. I genuinely think I'd last five minutes. It's getting old is a very humbling thing, man, and like, what all on that path? Especially when you used to be the young guy. Like, I used to be the young one. And now, other people are socialised with now, are 5, 10 years old to me. Like, sort of by, through the career I've had,

a lot of my friends now have come through the gym and their members or what have you. So a lot of time I spend with them and when I talk about being old, they're like, how are you? Yeah, you're still very young. But then a lot of the people I spend a lot of time with as well, people that kind of in the fitness arena,

we had someone competing for us every week who was 19 years old and I'm like, fucking hell, like a lot of the lab to start 2020, 24, 25. And I know that's not a huge difference in age, but there's a huge difference in feeling between someone who's 25 and someone who's knocking the door with 33. So, got to make the most of it while we can. I love it, man.

What's next? Can people expect over the next six months to a year from you and the business? So a lot of people that follow our journey would have seen the rebrand that kind of took place over the last couple of weeks or last sort of month and so. So that's been a lot of work that's gone on behind the scenes, a lot of internal research, a lot of research of our community, people that we kind of look after. Just trying to really understand if like what we think ourselves, is that what our consumers and our customers feel, where could we be better, just constantly trying to improve what we do.

So that's taking place, which is great. So hopefully now, it's just like trying to elevate the brand to sit alongside, it feels weird talking, saying the word brand, right? Because again, how do you... Thank you to the person, you know? Yeah, it's become something that, obviously when we set out, we wanted it to become something, but it You know? Yeah, it's become something that obviously when we set out,

we wanted it to become something, but it's kind of like, it's now happened. So we want to make sure that we, everything we do that comes out from the brand, all the services and things are of the very best quality that we can. As people know, we've got a bricks and more facility. I, one of my biggest goals is to own and operate a second site,

just to see if we can be a multi-site operator. And hopefully that is a catalyst to then go on to have multiple sites, ideally. So that's kind of what we want to do in sort of the gym world. In the online space, you want to just grow the online audience and the online programming that we do. We've been able to, fortunately,

get into multiple different countries around the world, which is amazing, and we just want to improve on that. The goals that sit within nutrition nutrition are doing an incredible job. So again, being able to influence people's relationships with food, their behaviours, and the way... Just the relationship with themselves, right, is the way our girls coach nutrition is, I honestly, it's so profound. So trying to develop that, we obviously got our clothing on a merchandise, which is going

through a process of, again, improving what we do there be it the probably the quality of the products and also just the logistics and how we deliver it And then some new bits a few people know this sort of stuff But we're moving into sort of sports nutrition and supplementation with some real sort of core products that we believe in be it for performance and lifestyle So yeah lots lots going on lots going on in the education business as well. We do have a level three qualifications further, CPD and also mentorship. So I think just more of the same.

So what people know as for, we're just going to keep on that, I'll put you trajectory hopefully. And I still think there's a lot of work that we can be, is to come from us. And I feel as though now we've got the rebrand out the way and the personnel that have come aboard, we are just about to get started.

I love it, man. Good luck over the next six months. Oli Marchon, ladies and gentlemen, people want to keep up to date with what you're doing in the brand, where should they go? I just want to ask the only platform I can get my head around is Instagram. So Oli Marchon is the best place.

You'll probably then see a lot of the team members through that as well, so you can follow them as well. Cheers dude! Cheers Chris, thanks mate. you