Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Asking an Olympian: Periods, Mindset & Raising Champion Kids [Bronte Campbell Interview]

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Asking an Olympian: Periods, Mindset & Raising Champion Kids [Bronte Campbell Interview] · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Bronte Campbell, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. I am so honored to be here. I'm so excited to be here. I wanted to wear pink today, but I thought I would blend in. I mean, I love that you wore yellow. I wore sporty clothes for you. This was me like dressing sporty for you. You can run in those shoes, can you?
• 0:19
  I appreciate the effort. I appreciate the effort. Maybe. I wouldn't put it past me. I'm pretty good in heels. I almost feel kind of awkward because I'm like, oh, my God, we're, like, very formal right now versus, like... I mean, this is very different from our weekly coffee chat. Yes. Like, this is very different to our, like, let's have a swim. So let me read off your, you know, list of achievements, which are so cool. And I don't think I really grasped your list of achievements before I, like, Googled you today.
• 0:49
  competed at four olympics rio london tokyo paris three gold medals one bronze a world record in the mix world champion combank game combank commonwealth game combank i could be a combank champion you never know
• 1:07
  Commonwealth Games champion, Medal of the Order of Australia, reality TV star, co-founder of Athletica, which you are wearing and looking oh so cute, and car boot ceramics artist on the weekend. Girl! Oh my god. That's a very funny list to put all together. They don't all go together. Do they not? No, I mean like...
• 1:33
  Swimming fast in a swimming pool doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to do stuff out of clay and be creative. Like, it sounds weird because those are like two different sides of my brain. Totally. And you are very good at ceramics. I was actually like, I lit the candle, little tea light candles that you gave me.
• 1:50
  when we moved into this house last night. They were up there looking super cute. I was thinking about to the day that we met, which was 2024, first day of Techstars. And I think you had, like, jumped off a plane from Paris...
• 2:08
  like the day before or something insane. Yeah, it was close to that. It was a pretty weird time. I went straight from Paris Olympics. I did have like 10 days holiday. And then I flew back and two days later we started Techstars. So it was like very intense. I mean, very intense. That first day was crazy. It's a lot. And it doesn't matter that I just come from Olympics, which seems like for most people the scariest thing you can do. Walking into...
• 2:37
  a room full of people that you don't know and still feeling like, oh, everybody here is smarter than me. It's just scarier in a weird, different way. Yeah. Yeah, definitely I was, like, nervous to go into that room. I feel like there's a pun in here, like you were like a fish out of water or something. Yeah, something like that, yeah. You were a Bronte out of water.
• 2:59
  If there was a swimming pool there, it would have been fine. But we were up a few stories and there was no water inside. So I was stressing. I feel like, I mean, you know me now for however long it's been since then. And I am a curious person and a sticky beak. And I have like 700 million questions for you in all different directions. A lot about the Olympics, a lot about all the things that I'm curious about when it comes to professional athletes. So we're going to be in for a bit of a ride.
• 3:27
  Come on, let's go all over. Let's like not follow a track. Let's just go wherever. I've got lots of different topics. Whatever intrusive thought you have, just say it. Oh my God, I have many. Here we go. Now, I want to start like, start easy and kind of start in that early phase of your life to understand who you were when you were a kid. Like who was Bronte pre-swimming before you discovered the pool?
• 3:52
  I think this is fun. I think this is actually where we connected is we're sort of very similar kids. Like I just grew up running around barefoot in the bush. I grew up in Malawi in Africa. And then I moved to Australia when I was seven. And I had literally barely worn shoes before. Like I think when I went on aeroplanes, mum would make me put shoes on for the aeroplane. But that was it. And I moved to Australia and I was suddenly like wearing a uniform and going to school. And this is so weird and different.
• 4:21
  And I knew that I was moving to Australia. So I'd watched the 2000 Olympics. I was like, loved watching the swimming. It's like, well, I'm going there. I really loved swimming anyway. It's like, well, I'll just be an Olympic swimmer because you're seven and you can just decide to do that. That's so weird at seven to be like, I'm going to be an Olympic swimmer. Oh, talk to any seven-year-old. You say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they're like, I want to be a fashion designer. I want to be an astronaut. I want to be an
• 4:45
  I want to be an engineer. I want to be president. I want to be an actor. I want to, like, ask someone who's seven. They've got a big dream, right? And, like, I just happened to have a big dream that also ended up having the talent that I could end up converting it. Because I definitely saw a lot of people in my sport who had the dream, same dream as I did. And then we got to puberty and they didn't grow. Like, I'm almost six feet tall and most swimmers are quite tall. Right. Yeah.
• 5:13
  Or like their shoulder got injured and they could never continue going. So there's like multiple reasons why dreams, seven-year-old dreams don't come true. And I'm like very lucky that mine could. Your seven-year-old dream came true. I know. Oh my God, that's so cute. Yeah.
• 5:29
  When you think about like, what grade are we in in grade seven? Like grade one? Grade, I think grade three by the time I was in Queens. Queensland, you're in grade three, I think. Grade two here. You know when you have like a, like there's a high school book that's like most likely to become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. In grade three, would that book have said that you were most likely to become a swimmer or would it have said something else about you from like your peers or your teachers or like someone else around you?
• 5:56
  Oh, they were probably like the weirdest girl in the grade. The weird one. Like, I'd never been to a school before and I didn't love being inside that much. And so in like my breaks, I used to go out and like catch bugs and lizards and like run around. And I'd never been in an Australian school as well, which it's like the girls would normally sit down and the guys would like run around and play.
• 6:24
  And for the first break, I had really short hair. For the first break, I got to play soccer with the boys. And I'm like, not very good at soccer, but they let me play. And then they realized that I wasn't a boy, that I was actually a girl. Because they'd never heard of anyone called Bronte before. So they thought that might be a boy's name. And...
• 6:40
  then they wouldn't let me play with them anymore. So I was like, well, what am I going to do? I'm not going to sit down. So I just like run around and like time myself, like run around the perimeter of the school and like time myself on my watch to see how long that would take me. Like I just wanted to be moving at all times. And definitely they would have thought that that was very weird. Like this like super strange girl doing laps around the school. I remember like in preschool, I got in trouble once for chasing the boys and like trying to like catch and kiss them.
• 7:09
  Oh, yeah.
• 7:32
  What then gets you actually into the pool? And, like, what is your kind of early years of being like, oh, I like swimming. I'm going to go to the pool every day. Like, how does it start? I was so lucky. So much of my journey, I think, maybe we'll say how much is luck and how much is you. I think, like, it's like 98% luck. I was able to...
• 7:54
  Grew up in a place where I learned to swim really young. My grandma taught people in a backyard pool. Then I was able to immigrate to a country. Yeah, she did. My grandma taught people and my mom taught people. It's like really the love of water has been like passed through the women in my family. It's really special. Oh, my God. And now you live near Bronte. And now I live near Bronte Beach and it just keeps going. I mean...
• 8:14
  Not what I was named after, but nice that I live close by. What were you named after? I was named after a character in a movie. What movie? It's called Green Card, which is, it's like Andy McDowell who is, she's in Four Weddings and Funeral. Okay. That sort of era. Anyway, so it's not a big movie, but my mum and dad watched it and saw the name and liked it. Cute. That's where I got it from. That's where I got it from, but...
• 8:37
  And they used to watch movie credits to get names, which is quite an old school way of doing it. But I quite like that. Pre the era of ChatGPT. Yeah, pre the era of just being able to generate multiple of whatever you want. But yeah, I think the women in my family really taught me to love swimming. And then I landed in Brisbane.
• 8:56
  And this is crazy. Like, we literally, I used to walk down the street and there was a pool at the end of my street. And it was a little 25-meter, four-lane little concrete pool attached to a primary school. And I loved going there. But I also met my coach there who took me for 21 years, took me to three Olympic Games and
• 9:13
  And it is very unlikely that your coach that you have when you're seven is also going to be the same person that can develop alongside you and develop you into an Olympic champion. And that's really what he was able to do. Had he been to an Olympics before?
• 9:29
  No. So his dad was an Olympic bronze medalist in swimming. His great uncle was an Olympic coach. And he had been off training horses and had come back to work in his dad's pool for the summertime. He was over in America being a cowboy. Came back to work. I love that. Cowboys.
• 9:49
  Yeah. And he's like, they're wearing his cowboy hat next to the pool. And yeah, then he just developed a different way of training and a different approach really focused on speed and technique rather than doing really long distances at the start. And yeah, without having all of those things come together, my journey would look really, really different. So, so much of it is luck and found a really great environment there where I could keep improving. But yeah.
• 10:18
  I could also find a lot of joy and fun and it wasn't – I mean, it was hard work, but it wasn't difficult to want to go every day. But I don't know because I'm kind of like – and I have a whole like note card on parenting that we're going to get to at some point, but I'm going to jump ahead for a minute. I'm kind of like, yeah, unbelievable luck. Totally. I hear it. But I'm also like –
• 10:40
  If you're 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old, you've still got to have, like, you've got a different brain to the other kids around you to have the, like, drive to go to the pool every day and to put yourself in these positions that it's hard, right? Like, you're being told to swim faster or whatever it might be or eat differently or do this or do this, which is, it's hard for a kid, right, to understand discipline and have the drive and,
• 11:08
  But also have supportive parents who are like, okay, cool, we're also going to support this dream of yours and whatever that might look like, making sure that you get to the pool on time in the mornings or waking you up and making sure you have an alarm or whatever. There's like the factor of you and your brain. There's the factor of like your body.
• 11:25
  the coach, but also your parents as well and the people around you. Yeah. It's crazy. There's so many variables. Yeah. The alignment of the universe is like insane. And not all of it's down to you. Like it's so easy to look at. Sorry, and talent. Yeah.
• 11:43
  Like just the talent. And you do have to have that. When I think about like, okay, what's something that is in every single Olympic athlete? You go to the Olympics, there's like all different people there. There's all different body types. There's all different sports. You've got like a four foot seven gymnast. You've got a seven foot 11 basketball player. You've got like everything in between. So it's like...
• 12:02
  There's no one body type that makes an Olympian. What does all of them have that's a common trait? And I really think about it. I'm like, okay, it's definitely discipline. It's discipline, passion, and talent. And those are the three that every single person there has. They look really different. It's expressed really differently. But you have to have those three. And the passion bit's really important because...
• 12:23
  As you said, you end up sacrificing a lot and you end up doing things that are a lot different from your peers. Like when I was in school, I used to train from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. and then go to school in the middle of the day and then train from 5 to 7 at night and then come home and be in bed by 8.30 and then start again.
• 12:41
  So yeah, you've got to have the passion to actually make that worth it. But I've also got to have the parents that will get up at 4.45 and drive me to the pool every morning. Like, that's not fun. People are like, if you have kids, do you want them to swim? I'm like, please, can they pick a more humane sport? Because that does not sound like fun for me. I mean, obviously, if they have the passion for doing it, whatever, I'll have to support it. But can they please pick something a bit more, like, less intensive? Like, literally. Yeah.
• 13:08
  But also I'm like, yeah, there's the passion, but I would – I feel like the word passion is actually like obsession because you've got to be obsessed to commit to doing that. And have you seen that like side tangent? Have you seen that ad? I think it's by like – is it by Nike? And it's basically like it talks about all the Olympian athletes and it shows footage of like athletes going from like tiny baby kids, you know, jumping in the pool or doing gymnastics or whatever to growing up.
• 13:34
  And then behind it all is the mum basically being like, I've got you there kind of thing. And it's like actually thanks to the parents and thank you oftentimes to the mums that have been like, we, you know, we helped facilitate like you becoming who you are today. And it's like one of those real like tugs the heartstrings. Have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it. Yeah, that'll be beautiful. Like even thinking about it, I'm like, oh, it's a really good art. It's like moving. That's what you want. You want the real feeling. Yeah, you want the real feeling. So...
• 14:05
  At what age, when you're like, you've met your coach, you're doing the things, you're doing the hard things. At what point do you realize like, okay, I'm actually a bit different to my peers and my friends. Like my brain is a bit different and I actually am like going to the Olympics. Like the goal is the Olympics. Yeah.
• 14:23
  Oh, when I was seven. Oh, okay. Like it actually wasn't seven. It was actually that clear and I was an absolute pain in the ass. I was literally the most annoying person. I'd go to training and I'd be counting how many laps I did and then I'd be counting everyone else's and if they like skipped anyone, I'd tell them and I was like so intense. Like I actually have got weirdly less intense. Do you have ADHD? I don't know. I don't know.
• 14:46
  But I am, like, this version of me that you're seeing now is a very different version. I feel like you're describing myself back to me, but in a different way. Like, in a different lens. Yeah. Not through sport. Expressed in a different area. Yeah.
• 15:00
  I'm also much more chilled than I used to be. Yeah. You learn to be a little bit more chilled. But I think I decided when I was seven, but I wasn't very good. Like, I wasn't immediately great at swimming. I definitely had some talent there, and then we worked hard at it. I think I...
• 15:19
  I think I won my first national medal when I was 13. But by the time I was 13, my older sister, which we also have to make part of the discussion, by the time I was 13, she'd gone to her first Olympics already because she qualified for her first Olympics when she was 15 years old.
• 15:37
  It's a very weird thing where I never ever felt like whatever I was achieving was enough of a thing. And I always wanted to keep... Because you're in the shadow of what she was doing or more just because you had a role model essentially being like, this is what you do next.
• 15:53
  Yeah, I think it was like, you could see what was possible. Like I could see it happening in front of me. I saw it like on a minute level happening. So it was like decided I want to do it when I was seven. And then you had the certainty of a seven year old, right? And then you're getting to that period where you'd really be doubting it. I was seeing it modeled in front of me. But then I got, I had to have hip surgery, I had glandular fever, I had post viral fatigue. At 13. Yeah.
• 16:17
  um at 14 15 16 it took about two and a half years to recover from all of that so I like had seen it happen for someone and then was seeing it like slip away from me during those years and there is such a it was a real real chance that that was the end and I was never going to be able to compete or swim again in that time so when you're kind of sick and you're kind of like oh
• 16:45
  It's obviously your brain is like not an adult brain. You're not fully used to like dealing with chronic stress and chronic pressure. What is your like personality like at that time dealing with these things that feel maybe like the world is like ending for you? Because this thing that you've been insanely committed to is becoming blurry. I don't really remember it being that blurry.
• 17:09
  which is weird because it sounds like it would be. It sounds like it would completely uproot you. But this is, again, I had good family and good support. And I had, say, my coach say, things will happen for you in your life, but it might not be on the timeline that you want.
• 17:26
  And you and your sister are very different. That's a good one. Yeah, it's very good. I need that today. Yeah, we all need that. It's not going to be on the timeline you want. What your journey looks like and what your sister's journey looks like is going to be really different, even though you're related and two years apart. And I treat you as different athletes and it's going to happen differently for you.
• 17:46
  And then we always had a plan. So very, my parents were very good at taking what I wanted seriously. So it's like when I had a hip injury, it was like, great, we'll go see a sports doctor. We need to do the hip surgery. Then we need to do some...
• 18:05
  I mean, I was asleep, so. But still, isn't it like a really big surgery? It can be. I mean, it's just a... Maybe I'm thinking of hip replacement. Hip replacement's really hectic. I didn't have to have that, but they do have to dislocate your hip to get into the joint. So they do have to... It's quite invasive in that way. You have quite a lot of recovery afterwards. Then we found the best hip doctor in... Honestly, she's the best hip doctor in Australia, but she was like...
• 18:31
  on the other side of Brisbane for us. So then every Saturday we were driving out to see her and she also treats chronic pain. And anytime there was an obstacle, my family did a really good job of finding people to get around it. So when I was sick and then had post-viral fatigue, we ended up finding this Chinese hypologist that was making these tea brews and like we were doing this brew, these things and drink them. I used to hate them. There's, there's,
• 18:52
  were so gross. But there was always a plan. So I think if there was no plan, I would have properly freaked out. But they were like, here's the plan. I was like, oh, great. There's a plan. I'm sure it'll work. Got it. Another side tangent question. When you have an injury, like as an athlete, I've always wondered this. Do you get like special kinds of drugs and medicine? Like, you know, they'll be like, cool. We know that you've got to compete. So we're going to put like an injection in that's like a magic injection to make your knee feel better. Like
• 19:21
  Like, how do athletes perform when they're injured? I don't get it. And I'm not talking about, like, illegal medicine. No, no, no. I'm talking about, like, legit. Like, do you get, like, an adrenaline shot and you're just, like, good to... Like, I feel like you told me once you were injured when you did one of the Olympics, like, your shoulder or something. And I'm like, but how did you compete then if your, like, shoulder was hurting? You're a swimmer. Like, or is it mental? And you're just like, I'm fucking going for it. Like, doesn't matter. I mean, for me, I just compete because that's...
• 19:49
  I've never been in such acute pain that I couldn't move my arm or anything like that. But you do see this in sport, and this is not a good thing that happens. I mean, in my sport, you're not on a contract. You just have to get up and perform, and it's up to you how you perform, and your performance will dictate whether you get any form of funding for the next year. So nobody feels like they own you. When you go into professional sport, AFL, rugby, NRL, you might be on a three-year contract, and then you get injured two months in.
• 20:19
  And they're like, yeah, but you're worth $3 million to us. So we need you to be on the pitch as much as possible.
• 20:27
  And that's when you get people getting local anesthetic injections. So it'll be like, oh, your foot's all messed up. Yeah, you put local anesthetic in and they'll take them out and they'll run them. And then they'll be like, then after that wears off, they'll be in so much pain they can't walk for two days. Then they'll rehab them a little bit during the week. And then they'll do it again and send them out on the weekend. And then they get a chronic foot injury, which destroys the rest of their career. But someone's trying to extract the value from that athlete. Like how much that happens...
• 20:53
  Now, I don't know. I've heard all this from athletes that are retired. And yeah, that's really, really, really hectic. Yeah, that's like, and that's not good because it's but I have had people say like a swimmer who had a fractured rib have to do like you, you're on pain medication a lot. I was on pain medication a lot.
• 21:14
  lots of anti-inflammatories and things like that, but, and cortisone shots and things like that. But none of those are like acute in the moment stuff. Right. Okay. Right, right, right. And so going back to kind of the dynamic with your sister and kind of like having that person with the role model and like managing your brain and the chronic stress and all that kind of stuff. Did you ever feel jealous? Like, did you suffer from jealousy? Yeah.
• 21:40
  I don't know whether it was jealousy, but it was definitely there's like a friction. Like what were the things that you felt? I mean, I was definitely always happy for her. There was all there, but there's also a tension happening there as well. Yeah. You're both competitive. Yeah. You're competitive and competing for the same thing. And there's a really finite resource there that you're competing for. Oh, in the same races? Yeah. No, we do the same events.
• 22:02
  No. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Added layer of complexity. In the moment, you're seeing, like, we race against each other. And not only racing against each other when you're going and competing, it's in training every single day. So I think I recognized early on that if I could withstand the discomfort of that, I could use it to my advantage. Yeah.
• 22:27
  No one else in the world has someone who, at the time, she went to the Olympics, she won two bronze medals at her first Olympics when she was 16 years old.
• 22:36
  No one else has that person in their daily training environment and daily living environment. I did. That's an advantage. That's a superpower. Yeah, but only if you can withstand the friction of being constantly second best to that. Only if you can stand going to training every day and getting beaten by one of the best people in the world. If you can stand to live in that discomfort, it will sharpen you. If you can't stand the discomfort, then you're either going to...
• 23:02
  beat yourself up so much that you're never going to be able to continue pushing forward or you're going to leave. Those are your options. Wow. Yeah, if you can stay in it, it's good. And I'm not the most talented swimmer.
• 23:17
  Kate would beat me in training. Says the gold medal Olympian. I'm really, really not. The thing that I have a talent for is competing really well in the moment that it matters. And the only reason I have that as a skill set or talent is because I've had to do that every single training session for my whole life. So it's like a learned skill to be able to stand up and perform because I was always against people who were faster than me. I was never the fastest person in my squad. Not one time.
• 23:47
  And there was a time when- By the times that mattered. I mean, yeah, there was some international events where I beat Kate and beat everyone else in the world at the same time. But in training most days, it wasn't like I was the number one all the time in the squad. There were always people who were better than me around me, which is excellent. Like that's the best place to be. Yeah, that is the best place to be.
• 24:08
  I want to know, like, in this time, in this era of you, like, you're in the pool, you know, you're, like, swimming and you're teaching yourself this skill of how to, like, perform the best you can, even though you're kind of competing against someone every training session. What is your, like, actual inner dialogue? Do you remember what your brain was like, what you would say to yourself? Like, what was your internal voice saying? I always find it so interesting because my fucking internal dialogue can be so loud sometimes that I'm like, shut up.
• 24:37
  Yeah. What would you tell yourself? My internal voice is quite positive in the moment, but I think it's actually one of my really big strengths. I didn't realize that other people don't do this. Like before any effort or session, I would just be like unbelievably convinced that I was going to do a great job. Even if I felt like tired and exhausted, I'd be like...
• 24:58
  some of your best things have been when you've been tired or exhausted or like people can perform when they're tired or exhausted. You're going to be great. Or it'd be like swimming along, like picturing how good my technique must be looking. Like really visualization. Yeah. But like while I was doing it and like overlaying that onto what I was actually doing, like the feeling of what I wanted it to feel like on top of the feeling of what was actually happening. So it's like quite amazing.
• 25:22
  I'm quite positive in that. So when I'm singing at karaoke, I sound like Dua Lipa. Yes, that's exactly it. You're like overlaying that. You're like, this is it. This is my manifesting it as it's happening. I actually remember listening to like Cranking Out Honey by Mariah Carey. And like, I literally thought that that is what I sounded like until my mom was like, oh my God, you're terrible at singing. Like she was like, that's not what you sound like.
• 25:47
  But that's also what kids are really good at. They're really good at imagining this, like, future of themselves. Like, you watch them, like, run and play, and they're like, I'm Usain Bolt, or, like, whatever it is. And they really, like, they feel that, and that's, like, very powerful. And I think I kept a lot of that, like, quite wishful thinking. Having said that, I would also be then...
• 26:07
  looking at the times that Kate was doing, looking at what I was doing, and constantly adding up the differences and being like, okay, she's 10% better than me today or she's 20% better than me today. And there were times where that was really, really hard. I would get to the end of a session, I'd be crying into my goggles. I'd just be like, you're shit, you're terrible, you're dreadful. So...
• 26:26
  There's a lot of, like, very positive talk and, like, very positive, like, you can do this, you can do this. And then, like, as soon as it was over and it hadn't worked, it would be, like, all the wheels off and, like, super, super harsh. Like, even while it was happening, so you had, like, repeats of something and one...
• 26:44
  one repetition wasn't that great. I'd be like, oh, well, if that one wasn't great, it means I've got more energy for the next one. Like constantly turning it into like, it's positive, it's positive, it's positive. I think like the energy of keeping that up, then at the end would just like fall away and it would just be like this vacuum of like negativity. So it wasn't always like, it couldn't keep it up all the time.
• 27:03
  And then what was the dynamic with you and your sister then? Would she be like, oh, my God, it's okay. You're going to be great. Or was it more like we have to keep separate these emotions kind of thing? Yeah, I wouldn't have shared that with her. I wouldn't have shared any of them with her. Oh, she wouldn't know that you're crying. Would your coach know that you would be upset? Or he also would be like not in the loop of that kind of stuff? No, he might. He would probably notice it. If he noticed it, he'd pull me aside. But most of the time it was like internal. If you're crying to your goggles, no one can see you.
• 27:30
  You just let the water out at the end. It's fine. Salt water, salt water. Yeah. How do you think that kind of shaped who you are now and how you deal with your emotions now? Like, if you were upset, would you cry in front of someone? Or would you be like... I cry all the time now. But I really used to keep it, like, very... Like, I think from when I was, like, 18 till I was 22, I don't think I... Like, I barely cried at all. Now I cry all the time. Like, if you show me that ad you were talking about before, I'd probably cry. Like, I cried literally all the time. It's just all bubbling up.
• 27:59
  Yeah. It's a lot of emotions. I used to really compartmentalize. I think that took quite a lot of energy. But I'm a lot more relaxed now, as we were saying. Less intense, more relaxed. Right. Okay. And so when you were kind of like...
• 28:15
  Then entering, like how old were you when you actually like, you got, I don't know what the terms are here, but like you get assigned to going to the Olympics. So you get like picked. You qualify. You qualify. That's exactly what it is. You know, I watched enough fucking ice skating during the winter Olympics. You know that you qualify. I should know that.
• 28:30
  So you qualify at what age to go to your first Olympics? I was 17. And you were going to go to Rio? Tokyo. No, London. London. London. I don't remember. London. London. Which was what year? 2012. 2012. And so what does your routine become? Like what does a professional athlete that's like on track for the Olympics, what do you like eat, sleep, supplements, like train? What's like a day in the life of a 17-year-old Bronte at that time?
• 29:00
  It doesn't change very much once you qualify as before you qualify. So in swimming to qualify, you go to one meet and you've got to come first or second. And if you don't, then you've got to come back and do it again in four years. So it's just like one moment in time. So you're training for Olympic trials. And then once you qualify, you're training for the Olympics. But each one is...
• 29:22
  difficult in its own way. Like trials is difficult because it's a really strong negative outcome. Like if you don't come first and second, it is over. Right. So it's literally the saying of if you're not first, you're last. First or second. First or second. Yeah. I mean, there's been people who have come third by 0.01 of a second, which is nothing. And that's it. That's their Olympic dream done.
• 29:45
  Oh, no. And they never go to the Olympics. That's happened. Oh, my God. That's happened before. So that's the reality that you're living in for Olympic trials. And then when you go to the Olympics, it's like obviously big and scary in the Olympics. But you don't have this like big negative thing. Like what's the worst thing that can happen here? Like I'm already at the Olympics. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
• 30:03
  which obviously you still want to do well. And there's like this desire to do well, but it feels different from trials. But what does it look like? So I'd be, I mean, I just finished school by then. My schoolies I spent on training camp in Fredboe.
• 30:20
  I finished school, went to training camp. No sex, drugs and rock and roll for you. Spice Girls, not rock and roll, but Spice Girls. None of that for you? No, it was just laps, laps and more laps. And it looked the same as what I was doing throughout all those other years of preparation. So it's like nine swim sessions a week, three gym sessions, lots of sleeping sessions.
• 30:43
  So like the more sleep that you can do, the better. And napping is like very important for me in my recovery in between sessions. You train in the morning, you train at night. You need to be able to like recover from the morning session. And like sleeping for 40 minutes is such a good way to reset your central nervous system. So do that. Once I finished school, I could actually do that. When I was at school, I obviously couldn't. Yeah, you were also going to school as well, right? Yeah.
• 31:07
  So that year in 2012, I finished school in the end of 2011 and then qualified for the Olympics in April of 2012. So for those like four months, I'd like got into university, but I deferred uni to see if I could make it to the Olympics. What did you want to study at that time? What did I put in for? I think I put in for a business degree, which I ended up going and studying anyway. But I waited until after the Olympics to start.
• 31:34
  And like during that kind of, you know, that time where you got in and you were like, pat myself on the back, like kind of, I'm doing this. Were you really proud of yourself? Or like, were you like, this is weird. Like no one else, like my friendship group isn't kind of going to the Olympics. Like I've become a big deal here.
• 31:51
  I definitely didn't feel like I'd become a big deal. Who were your role models? Like, who did you have a poster of on your wall? Did you have, like, Ian Thorpe on your wall? No, I didn't. And maybe because I'd been around a lot of the people who were on the team, I'd been around them a bit. I knew them, like, secondhand through Kate. It felt a bit different. But it definitely was weird going and then...
• 32:12
  This thing I'd been chasing for so long and then being at the games and looking around and being like, oh, I don't know how to be an Olympian. Like, everyone seems to know what to do in front of the camera. There's like, there's so much, there's so much attention at Olympics. Yeah.
• 32:26
  And so much more media and everyone seemed to know exactly what the thing was that you need to do to look like and be like an Olympian. And I didn't really know what that was. What is that? Look like and be like an Olympian? Yeah. Well, what exactly? Like, what was I even thinking? I guess like composed.
• 32:42
  right is that yeah everyone's like not looking nervous or something everyone's not looking nervous they're just walking around they look comfortable they've been here before they know exactly what they're doing they've been to multiple games they're like know how the system works they know how the warm-up pool works they know how like this works they know marshalling works like they know this entire system or they look like they do and they look like they're cool calm and collected i was like i don't feel like how they look and so i mustn't be like doing it right and then my coach was like well
• 33:12
  do you know how to swim 50 meters? And I was like, yeah, well, that, yeah. And he's like, well, that's all you're here to do. Like, you're just here to swim 50 meters. That's it. You can do it. That's it. How many of those have you done in your life? It's the same. Just, like, come and do it here. And so that was a good way of reframing it and being like, you don't have to.
• 33:34
  look like an olympian you you are you already are just like do the simplest thing possible swim from this first principles thinking he's like let's just strip it back here yeah just swim from this side of the pool to that side of the pool as fast as possible like you could tell a five-year-old that same thing
• 33:53
  I feel like this is fake news, but I read somewhere that an Olympian athlete or like a professional athlete eats like 10,000 calories a day when they're at like peak training. Is that true? I couldn't tell you because I've never calorie counted in my life, but I would say that I, 10,000 seems like a lot. You do eat a lot. For me, it was more like the frequency of food. I have to eat every like two and a half to three hours to like keep refueling. But the amount...
• 34:20
  I'm also a sprint athlete. I'm not a distance athlete. So, like, if you were trying to fuel for a 50-kilometer race versus a 50-meter race, very different. Having glycogen stores is, like, incredibly important. So, having enough, like, energy in your body to convert it into speed is super, super important. Oh, like those little gels that you eat when you're running a marathon? Yeah. That's like a bowl of pasta but in a gel? Yeah.
• 34:41
  So having carbohydrates that you can burn is really important. But my output is a 30-second race as opposed to a four-hour race that people can put themselves through. So different fueling, obviously, for different events. But having enough fueling is the number one thing. It's like a scientific formula, right? I would think that it would be more scientific. I've actually never...
• 35:06
  I've never found like very nuanced nutrition that has been like absolutely tailored to every single thing that I do. And there's more, there's more research now and more, it's more accessible now to be able to like design a diet around like how your body reacts to different foods. That was definitely not available when I was younger. Like the biohacking kind of like. Yeah, there's more research and more people like looking at this stuff and, and,
• 35:36
  people can get really stressed about it. In general, if you're eating carbs before you work out and protein afterwards, you're doing like most of the basics really, really well. And I would layer in that like unprocessed foods.
• 35:54
  If you can do those things really, really well. And in general for food, you know what's good and bad for you. You can also feel it in your body what's good and bad for you. And when I got injuries later in my career, I found some foods really inflammatory. And I could eat them and you would be able to feel worse afterwards. Like what? Like sugar. Sugar.
• 36:14
  if I ate like, I could definitely feel like if I ate, like if I ate a dessert, I would like feel it in my shoulder, maybe like two to three hours later and like really, yeah. And processed food, anything that was like processed, I'd be like, not so good to get rid of all of that. Um, anything that had, I don't know, flavors 365 or whatever. It's like striven back, all natural stuff. So the grape solo that I drank earlier. Okay.
• 36:40
  I mean, I'm sure it's got lots of natural grapes in it. I'm sure. What would you do to like when you were, let's say you were competing at the Olympics, let's say, how would you like rest, recover and recharge when you got home? Like what was your like personal process to kind of like...
• 36:57
  process what's just happened, the stress on your body, the stress on your soul, the stress and pressure like on your mind, like as a young woman, I feel like it's just like this. You just must have this different level of maturity to be like, okay, I need to actually like rest and recharge. And like, what did that look like for you? Oh, I don't think I did a good job of that.
• 37:15
  Yeah. You're like, I was loose. I was partying out the back. No, I mean, I think that's also part of it. You have to have, if you've got pressure, you've got to have some way of release as well. I think I was actually really bad at letting pressure release. Like I would just go straight on to the next thing. And in 2012,
• 37:34
  Um, when I just, yeah, I just turned 18 by the time those Olympics came around and I was coming home from them and got a call that my brother had gone into life-saving surgery. And we were on our way to the closing ceremony and we're like, whoa, shit, like literally, do we come home now? And they're like, no, you're not going to get home quicker. You just have to find out if he's alive, like when you get home. So that was like...
• 37:57
  Like talk about like a come down from like you're at the Olympics. It's like and now something like real is happening. And we got home and that was me. Me and Kate had to really take over running the household. I've got two younger sisters as well. My dad had to be back at work. My mom was full time in the hospital with my brother. And so we were doing like stuff.
• 38:18
  the school runs for the younger kids and all the lunches and like then trying to train a bit. And like, that was a very hard landing. That one's that one was like no time to process anything. Um, and probably took me many years to start processing what London was like for me. Um,
• 38:36
  And then say after Rio and in between, you've got world championships and Commonwealth Games and another world championships. Does it just start right back again? Yeah. So you just like, you just go straight back into training. And then after Rio Olympics, which I won one gold medal at those Olympics, but there may have been an expectation that I would have won more because I was world champion going into those. And I was- Wait, is that like a little bit of like a, I should have won? Did something happen? Oh, I was like, I got injured like four months before.
• 39:04
  which didn't help me. Dang it. But processing that afterwards was like, oh, can I swim with this injury and can I keep going with it? Like I personally, the way I performed at those games, I thought exceeded what I'd been able to do in training because I hadn't been able to do much because I'd been so injured. But also my reaction to the injury was not helpful. Like I just kept trying to push through and that ended up –
• 39:30
  with me not being in a great place by the time I got to the Games, even though I thought it was the thing that was going to get me through, do you know what I mean? Sometimes you think... What would you have done in hindsight? Well, in the face of uncertainty, which is what the injury introduced. So in 2015, I was world champion in the 50 and the 100 freestyle, so I won both of those at the world championships, which is the same people that go to the Olympics. It's just one year earlier.
• 39:56
  And so I knew like what I needed to do to be at that level. I knew I needed to be doing chin-ups with 40 kilos around my waist. I knew I needed to be getting pre-measure lactate, which is like, you know, that burning feeling that you get in your muscles. That's lactic acid buildup and you can measure that. I knew I needed to be getting that above 20, like three times a week, which...
• 40:19
  Most people can't get it above 12, but I can produce a lot and you can push your body and learn it to be able to withstand that amount of pain and acid in it. I knew the kilometers I needed to do. I knew it, right? So, like, I had the formula for success and then I got injured and some of those things I couldn't do. Like, as I was getting, like, really high lactate stuff, it was a nerve injury. And so that would really, like, wire up my entire system and I would get really, really sore from that.
• 40:48
  And chin-ups was really painful for me, but it was like my main strength exercise. And so I kept being like, well, I have to do these things to be successful. And this is the way that these are the things that make me successful. I can't not do these. Whereas probably a better thing would have been to like open up and be like, okay, what are different ways that I can get to the same outcome? And whether I could have done that in the short amount of time that I had, I don't know. But that's what I did for the next two years was like...
• 41:16
  okay, I can't do these things anymore. What's another way to get the result that I want? I ended up having to go on nerve drugs. And I was like, I used to go fast in my first 50 meters of 100 meters and then like, hold on. The nerve drugs took away, like they deaden your nervous system. They took away all my speed. So I had to learn how to like go out slower and come back harder, like completely flip how I'd normally race. So yeah, there's,
• 41:41
  I would say like less locking onto the things and more like more relaxing into it and letting it, letting it be uncertain for a little bit while you're exploring and finding what the best result should be. Whether I could have actually done that in time, I don't know. But I had to stop after 2016 and be like, okay, I can't change the fact that I'm injured. Yeah.
• 42:03
  the only thing you can change is your reaction approach to it. And that's the only thing that's going to make a difference going forward. Like I still felt like I competed really well with the injury. I was like,
• 42:14
  within 0.4 of my best time, which was great considering where I was at physically. But if the injury is not going to go away, what is something that you actually can change? Because if it's like, oh, I'm just injured, so I'm always going to be 0.4 away from my best time, like that's not really acceptable if you want to keep going forward.
• 42:34
  acceptable that's not really no it's not it's like it's just not if you want to be at that level um and for me i don't want to be giving all of that to the sport if i don't think i can get back to that level so what can i actually change and so yeah i definitely made mistakes i'm not definitely made mistakes in how i approached it at the start but and what did you change
• 42:55
  I then spent two years looking at different pain management things, like I said, getting on the nerve drugs, redoing how I raced, taking away chin-ups, bringing them back in in a different way. I literally spent two years completely exploring weird neck exercises, going and seeing strange specialists, getting back into herbology and acupuncture and bloodletting and pain meditation and deep-seated meditation, warming around your body, looking at things. Deep what? Deep-seated? Yeah, like...
• 43:23
  What's pain meditation? You say lots of things. I don't know what they are. So many things. I mean, I did everything. And you just like try it and be like, does this work for me? Yes. No. What do I want to take from this? Okay, great. Take that and move on. And yeah, I mean, I say that like it happened quickly. It took a while. Pain meditation is like, there's multiple ways you can do it. It's just meditating on the pain and often like letting yourself feel it and then trying to like let it go. A good way is like.
• 43:50
  You might meditate and picture like a beam of light hitting the top of your head and then like going through your body bit by bit really gently and like releasing tension in every little piece that it touches. And it's like this like healing, glowing light that moves through you. And yeah, and it sounds like the most airy-fairy thing. Like if you told me to do this when I was 18, I'd be like, that's stupid. I have to let go of that stupid and just be like, you have...
• 44:13
  There's no downside to any of this. You may as well just embrace it and try it. And then some of that like deeper meditation was like...
• 44:22
  After I'd been meditating for a while, then I could get this little guide thing and get in a car with him and go around my body and find, say, my shoulder. Go in there and look at it and shine a light around in it. It's actually such a – this sounds so weird. Shine a light around inside of it. And if you'd asked me consciously, what do I think an area that's really sore would look like? You'd normally say red and inflamed and like.
• 44:50
  But I shone the light around and it just looked like gray and like dejected and a bit like abandoned, like cobwebby. And I was like, oh, and then I had like this like over, then you'll often get a lot of emotion come up with that. There's overwhelming like feeling of like helplessness come from that. And it's like, okay, when was the first time you felt that emotion? I was like, I have no idea. And it's like, look down at your feet when you first felt that emotion.
• 45:18
  what are you wearing? I was like, well, I'm not wearing any shoes. I'm five years old and I've been left behind on a big hike because no one thought I could do it. And I was too young and I wasn't able to do it. And that's the same like feeling that I was literally like holding in this injury, which was making it worse. Cause,
• 45:36
  Pain is not just in your body, it's in your brain as well. And I had this stuff for so long that there was like emotions attached to it. And not only was I like in pain, I was also like angry at my shoulder for the pain that it was causing me. And getting like wound up with this feeling of helplessness every single time I was in pain, which was all the time. So that's like, that's a lot, right? So unlocking all of that. And then there's a heap of work to do after that as well. But...
• 46:02
  There's some of the things that you're like, I was like, well, we may as well just try it. You have to. And brought up some interesting things. And that was a really big unlock with my shoulder was being really grateful for the work that it was doing and not treating it as like this burden and this like thing that I was hating. I could be so angry at it for not being able to do its job properly. But...
• 46:30
  I do 19,000 swim strokes a week and I've been doing that since I was about 10 years old. Like, it is a miracle that either of my shoulders are working well. Like, thank you so much for being here with me for the ride as opposed to, yeah, being angry at it. And when you're angry...
• 46:48
  You get more inflammatory markers in your body. You can measure the blood of someone who's angry and it'll look different from the blood of someone who's like... Your emotions have an impact on your body. Yeah, there's... I want to measure my markers. You can honestly, you can measure like...
• 47:03
  You can measure someone's blood and like the blood of someone who's lonely will look different from the blood of someone who's connected. Like your emotions have an impact in your body to such an astronomical degree and vice versa. What you do in your body impacts your emotions. So being able to learn about that, what a gift to be able to do that through my sport. It's so fun. It's really a superpower. And that's why you are the best at what you do. So...
• 47:30
  On that same kind of note, like we were talking about this before we started recording of my period today. My period fucking sucks. As a female athlete, did you still get your period? And how did you, if you did, especially as a swimmer, how the fuck do you manage that? Yeah.
• 47:48
  It is difficult. I always wonder this about women who are, like, sports stars. I'm like, A, do you still get it? And B, like, if you do, how on earth do you manage, like, because I'm sure you just don't want to take, like,
• 48:01
  loads of painkillers and things that can also inflame your body. But then also like, what if you have like endo and you're like struggling? Yeah. I mean, that happens a lot. Endo, there's a lot of athletes that have endo and you don't know that you have it for quite a long time. And there is like with training, you can have an irregular or completely lose your period. So,
• 48:23
  Like, I used to spend, like, eight hours, like, severely vomiting or, like, diarrhea. And I would be, like... That is so intense. It was so intense. It was honestly because of stress that we figured it out. Because when I moved back here, it disappeared, basically. Like, from that level. Like, I just don't have that problem anymore. And I'm, like...
• 48:41
  Like there would just be no chance of doing anything on a day like that. There would just be like being on the floor. So like what – how were you managing that part of your life? I mean I was lucky that I didn't have really intense periods. But having said that, if I was competing on a day where it was before or when I was on my period –
• 49:00
  you get like a lot of pain from lactic acid after a race. And I would very often vomit after a race, but then I would get like the most intense like back pain. And like, it feels like someone who's like punching you in the kidneys and knowing going into a race that I was not only going to have like the normal race pain, but I was going to have this extra period pain afterwards was like so much dread, but you just have to deal with it. But as I got, I don't know.
• 49:26
  older, like I got, I mean, I was on other hormone things, so I was on different, like, what's the one, the thing in your arm? Like the bar. The bar. I don't know what it's called. Yeah. So things that like managed it and made it a little bit flatter was really good. I was never, I was never like super all over the place.
• 49:44
  with my periods, which was good. But, um, yeah, I also, I didn't, I tried the pill at some point that was not good for my training. Um, or my emotional state seems like a weird thing to give to a 14 year old, but whatever. Um, and then yeah, that was in the bar and like used other contraceptive devices more as a way of managing the actual cycle for me, um, for performance. But
• 50:07
  It's really hard. What if it's like the day of the Olympics? It is. I've completed the Olympics with my period. What? What do you mean? It is. It's just so unfair. It just is. And the Olympics, by the way, you think the Olympics measuring who's the best in the world. The Olympics is actually measuring who is the best...
• 50:27
  person in the world on this day for 30 seconds. That's what it's measuring. And there's so many variables that go into that. I will say that when you've got a lot of adrenaline in your body, you do end up being able to get up and do a lot more things, but you might need more recovery. And I think that there's not been a lot of research into it. There's not been a lot of research into women's sport because sport has not been for women. So it's an area that there's more research that needs to be done. And it's also very individual. So it's really...
• 50:54
  difficult. There's people who train around their periods because there's like times in your cycle when you add more energy or you feel stronger, or there's also times in your cycle where your joints are a lot looser. And particularly if you're doing like an impact sport, if you were doing like tackling or fighting or anything like that. Um, yeah,
• 51:11
  knowing when those times are is really important. But only now is that becoming really mainstream because most research, most medical research in general is done on men. And then if you layer on top of that, the amount of sports research that is done on women. So there's still a lot like coming out now. But I think I was just, again, really lucky that it never had a big, big impact on me. But I definitely have swum with people that,
• 51:40
  They wouldn't be able to get out of bed on that day. So it's just, it's just hard because you don't get to pick the time. Yeah, literally. I mean, women are amazing. They are. Is that something that you're interested in when you talk about like research on, you know, women in sport? I feel like we haven't talked about that as a topic before ever. No.
• 51:59
  No, I think it is really interesting. It's interesting seeing this stuff come out now and like seeing this next generation of women who have so many different sporting opportunities ahead of them. And there's been women in Olympic sport for a long time, but Olympic sport is not a super big moneymaker or well-funded. Like most Olympic sports are not commercial sports. They're not what you'd quote unquote call professional sports.
• 52:25
  But now you've got NRLW, AFLW, you've got the A-League and soccer and I don't know what they call the women's league within that. But you've got the Matildas, which are the biggest sporting team that we have in this country. They've got like the highest brand score of any sporting team.
• 52:44
  For men and women? Yeah. Really? That's so cool. Oh, my God. I feel so happy to be at the finals the other weekend. Yeah. And how special does it feel being there? Yeah. And you've got the IPL overseas where these women are competing and they're actually earning money for the first time. And for the first time, the women are now worth something as well. They're worth something to the league because they're earning money to the league. And so now there's the investment in it. And it's the same as like –
• 53:10
  And lots of men's sports were amateur and not professional, even up until like the 1980s. And then they became professional sports and the athletes were able to earn money off of it. And the clubs and leagues were able to earn money off of it. And then it's like, oh, now we've earned $5 million. We want to put $1 million aside to see if we can get people to stay in the sport for longer or whatever it is. And so being able to have commercial value means that you can then have...
• 53:39
  You can then have investment back into things that bring more commercial value to you and to the sport. So it's definitely been interesting. And I was at Collingwood's football club last week with a bunch of their AFLW women and just looking at them and looking at them training and being like, this is a possibility for you in a way that it wasn't for me growing up. Yeah.
• 54:02
  There was a time in my life where I was like, I love footy. I'm going to play footy. And it was like, mom was like, what, you're going to play on the men's team? And I was like, yeah. And she was like, no, you're not. They're so much stronger than you. And I was like, well, I'm going to do it anyway. And she was like, please don't do that. But it's now a possibility. So it's so cool to see that and see the push from so many years to finally reach this point. The evolution of it. Yeah, it'll just keep going. It has to.
• 54:31
  One of the things that was coming up kind of when I was researching, you know, what are people curious about? What are people talking about online when it comes to professional athletes who go to the Olympics and compete at the Olympics is like, how much money do you earn as an Olympian? Do you earn money if you win a gold or a silver or a bronze medal? Do you like, yes, you must get paid from the perspective of like, like a sponsor deal or whatever, but like the, like the business of how the Olympics works and how an athlete
• 55:01
  kind of sphere. How did it work for you? How did you earn money in the Olympics? Yeah, it's a really tricky... And how were you commercialised, I guess, as the star? The Olympics in particular are really tricky because...
• 55:18
  When you go to the Olympics, you sign over your IP rights. So you sign over the rights to your image to the IOC and the AOC. So the International Olympic Committee and the Australian Olympic Committee. I didn't know that. For how long? Forever? No. You sign it. Yeah. I mean, they can use your image forever. I mean, like they use your image in all the clips like forever. They're allowed to use it. They're allowed to use it to promote the Olympics. And you don't make money on that.
• 55:40
  You do not make money on that. So the sponsors sponsor the Australian Olympic Committee for millions and millions of dollars. And then the Australian Olympic Committee provides training environments and supports the athletes to then like go to the Olympics. And they also fundraise to get athletes to go to the Olympics. So like when the cost of taking athletes to the Olympics is actually all through sponsors and philanthropic donations. It's not government funding. Then in that ecosystem, there's government funding as well.
• 56:09
  Which doesn't come from the Olympics. That's so bizarre because also, like, government funding from the perspective of, like, if you're going to... Like, if you're going to a city to compete at the Olympics, like, that city is, like, booming. Yeah, well, the government funding comes direct to the athletes. That's not to do with, like, going to the Games. Going to the Games is purely from the Australian Olympic Committee and then you have the Australian Sports Commission and the funding that sits within that. And so that funding is for, like...
• 56:38
  more for bringing health and wellness outcomes to the nation through inspiring the nation. So then if you're like top four in the world, you'd be on a podium potential funding. And that is like 20 to 30 grand a year.
• 56:53
  And so that's what most Olympic athletes would live on. But when you go to the Olympics, you go to the Olympics, you not only do you sign away your image rights, you also earn a media blackout. So from two weeks before until I think it's four weeks afterwards,
• 57:11
  you cannot post about your personal sponsors at all. So say you've gone out and hustled and you got some personal sponsors, you are now not allowed to talk about them in the time where you've actually got any sort of platform to give them any leverage. So if you're a sponsor sponsoring an athlete, like you can't sponsor me and I'm going to wear your brand at the Olympics. The brands are very tightly controlled. Like you can't walk out on deck wearing something that's
• 57:36
  That's not from the Australian Olympic Committee branding or the IOC branding. That's it. Those are the only things that allow. You're not allowed to post about it. You're not allowed to talk about it. So it's a really interesting space, and especially as it moves away from brands used to sponsor and do a campaign, and it would be a billboard campaign or something.
• 57:58
  even a digital campaign. Now it's like most people are doing social media and collabs. And then suddenly like all that social media has to be blacked out for six weeks as well. So it's, it's a really weird, um, system. We've seen interesting things, say like in the NBA in America where they had a similar setup and then they ended up doing profit share with the athletes to pay the athletes. So whatever, like, um,
• 58:27
  They're bringing in from the sponsors, they profit share that down to the athletes. Can that work on a global scale? I don't know, but it is pretty weird that like there's millions and like there's billions of dollars generated from the Olympics. Yeah. And not a cent of it goes to the athletes from the AOC or the IOC who are generating that income.
• 58:45
  That is so weird. I wonder what the research shows in terms of, you know, like back in the days, there was that stat going around that was like, you know, kids, when they grow up, they want to be an Olympian or they want to go to the Olympics and they want to be a professional athlete. That was like the number one job or whatever. Whereas now the number one job is like, I want to be a YouTuber. And so the shift in the sentiment of being an athlete has changed. And then if there's also not the incentivized kind of commercial aspect of being like rich and you're like, okay, well, it's not going to be a,
• 59:13
  a high earning kind of career to literally sacrifice my body for the country, like, and sacrifice, you know, your teens and all the things that you have to sacrifice. I'm like, I wonder what the research shows around the trend of people becoming athletes, like more people becoming athletes or less people becoming athletes. And like, what, like, that's just so unfair. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah.
• 59:37
  I would say most people are not in the sport to be making money. I would say that's not like the reason, like if you've got the true passion to be there, it's definitely not it. But when you're at the top of your field, you expect to kind of like... Once you get older, it's more difficult, right? So like my decision to come back and compete when I was 28 and I was at EY earning a normal salary for the first time in my life. That's a very different decision than wanting to do this when I'm 15. Like there's a very different...
• 1:00:06
  things. And then you can make, obviously outside of Olympics, you can make money and you can have sponsors. So then I would have private sponsors as well outside of that. But my first sponsorship deal I signed was for $500 a year and equipment. And this was when I was number five in the world in my, in my sport. And they said, Oh, we don't think that
• 1:00:31
  Yeah, we're not going to put you on a base. So often there would be like a base payment for the year for being an ambassador. And then performance bonuses. So they're like, we're happy to give you a 20 grand performance bonus if you win. But you're going to be on $500 for the year. And I was like, and we'll let you wear our suits. It was like a swimsuit that I liked and I wanted to wear. It wasn't the best deal on the table, but I liked the performance gear the best. So I was like, yeah, I'll do it. But...
• 1:01:01
  in two years time at the next world championships, if I win, then I go on a 30 K base salary, go from 500 to 30. And they were like, yeah, like, sure. If you win, then you can go on a 30 K salary. And two years later, I did win and I went on 30 K salary and I got the 30, like 30 K bonus for winning. Right. So it's like, say that, that year at world championships,
• 1:01:25
  because I won both the 100 and the 50 freestyle. I then earned more money that year. But it's not the motivating factor to getting you to that point. You just have to have enough funding. And often, and I'm talking about this, and the numbers that I'm saying will sound small in business, but they're really big for other athletes. So I'm saying this from swimming, right?
• 1:01:50
  Government funding is the same across all sports, if you're top four in the world. But the ability to attract private sponsors in my sport is a lot easier. Even the fact that I'm saying I was on a $500 minimum with some performance bonuses. Like, there's a lot of athletes that wouldn't be able to access that at all. So... I didn't know that. Yeah, it's... But it was... Yeah, it was a very funny thing to sign. Like, sign on, like, sign away. You'll do all these appearances, you'll do all these posts, and in return you get $500.
• 1:02:20
  Like any other industry, if you're like at the top of your field and the top of your game, literally, like you usually see your like kind of –
• 1:02:29
  you know, remuneration like increase as well. I mean, I was earning less money when I went back to the sport than I was earning at EY, at EY doing consulting. And I was like, I was not, I was not even high up in that company. Like there is people who are like graduates in big businesses who are earning more money than elite Olympic athletes. That's just how it is. But yeah, I think that's just how it is.
• 1:02:51
  There's stuff like other than money that sport gives you. Of course. But you do need enough to like survive and get to a great place. Do you think that will change though, you know, just like with the evolution of sport and with the evolution of like, you know, what we've seen happen with the Matildas, for example, and having more kind of attention on it, thus more money kind of going to it, more kinds of opportunities come out of it. Do you think it will evolve in that direction? Yeah.
• 1:03:16
  I don't know whether Olympic sport will. I don't know whether that's the trajectory that it's on. I mean, you would think yes, but it's quite a complex model and it's also global. So it's like even more complicated. Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  I would hope so. I mean, to flip it to the other side, the reason why it's so controlled and you get those blackout periods, the reason you have that is because the brands that want to associate with the Olympics and what the Olympics stand for are paying an absolute premium for that. And so you need to like control it really tightly.
• 1:03:55
  you can't just have anybody saying that they're part of the Olympics or in any way associated with the Olympics, even to the point where saying things like Paris 2024, you couldn't have said that in any advertising unless you're an Olympic sponsor. And they've got a whole network of people that are like coming down on anybody using the Olympic rings, like in any way trying to associate themselves without paying really highly to be part of that ecosystem. Whether that's like keeping that protected is important for,
• 1:04:24
  the Olympics to be able to exist because it's becoming more and more expensive to put the Olympics on. And what the Olympics means for people is it's a really strong brand. It's like one of the strongest brands and oldest brands that you have if you think about it. From that point of view, it's like very highly just stands for excellence. And if you want to be associated with excellence, this is the brand that you have to buy into. And so the brand's got a lot of value, but how do you get the value down to the athletes? And how do you also make sure that
• 1:04:54
  the games can keep going in a more sustainable way. So we're seeing it being very difficult for countries to host and put up a games. And whether it ends up looking like it's a little bit more dispersed, whether there's like one hub that people come back to every four years. I don't know. It's probably going to look...
• 1:05:14
  a little bit different and it depends on how well navigate the cost part of the business as to whether there'll be enough prosperity in it for it to come down to athletes so I don't know what the changes will be do you think the olympics will exist in 100 years yeah yeah I do and I don't think it'll be recognizable from what it is today
• 1:05:40
  Please elaborate. Any specific predictions? I think it's quite possible it'll be fewer sports than it is now. And I think it'll be in one place all the time. Like one base. Yeah. Or like a few core cities, like a roster kind of thing.
• 1:06:00
  Yeah, like, obviously, surfing can only be in a few spots in the world. So I mean, they did that already in Paris, like the surfing was not in Paris, for the Paris Olympics. So yeah, seeing it seeing a little bit more dispersed, possibly, like, I mean, who knows how the world is going, but...
• 1:06:18
  There being big centers built over in the Middle East that are big sporting precincts that are big areas that have the capacity to host some of these really incredible things. That could be a place that it's always centered on the same thing. So no city has the...
• 1:06:38
  As a thing we're putting up, which I think is a shame because the I mean, I think it's a shame hasn't even happened. But it would be a loss because there's something about like going to a new city and like seeing that city come alive. And like, as you were saying, the the amplification that that city gets like, yeah, like 2000 Olympics puts Sydney and Australia on the map. Oh, my God. That means Brisbane's going to be on the map.
• 1:07:01
  Yeah, it's going to be so fun. I'm excited to be friends with an Olympian at the Brisbane Olympics where we both grew up and went to school. Isn't that cute? It's going to be so fun. It's going to be so fun. What it does for the city moving forward is it lets these big infrastructure projects get done that they wouldn't normally...
• 1:07:21
  be able to get done. Like, you know, the Harbor Tunnel, like that was built for the tunnel that goes underneath the harbor in Sydney. Oh, like here. Yeah, here, here, here. That didn't get built. That got built for the Sydney Olympics. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh. And it's like the city wouldn't work without that tunnel.
• 1:07:38
  Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. There'll be stuff like that happen in Brisbane. And I know that there's a big cost associated with it. So there's a lot of people that are like, oh, we don't even want the games. It's like, it's not good. It's spending too much. And they love it. I totally, I do hear that, especially in a cost of living. It's like, why are we spending billions of dollars on this thing? I think the value that it brings, like not just at the games and when you're loving it, but like afterwards for the city. Yeah.
• 1:08:04
  I've seen that be really great. I've also seen it be terrible. Athens and Rio are a great example of like, they built all this infrastructure, they couldn't maintain it. It's all decayed. It's awful. I mean, the village in Rio, there was a hole on the side of the building. There was like, the pipes didn't work. It was not good. And realistically, they were not set up to be able to actually deliver the games that they wanted to.
• 1:08:30
  I feel like we can't talk about the Olympics without talking about scandal. You've been to four Olympics. You must have seen some scandalous things happen or been on the sidelines or, you know, been –
• 1:08:48
  I don't know, around stuff. Like, what happens when you're at the Olympics? Like, is your coach being like, you know, texting you or emailing you, being like, this has happened. Like, I was looking up the scandals that happened at 2024 Olympics. What scandals happened? Oh, I don't know. There was like...
• 1:09:04
  There's assault, there's doping stuff. In all the directions, there's some level of scandal. The same way you and I were talking about during the Winter Olympics, the scandal between the ice figure skating judges and whether that was...
• 1:09:23
  Yeah. On board or above board or below board or whatever. And so I'm like, what scandals were you part of? Not that you were part of. What scandals did you do? Did you instigate? What is your connection to knowing scandalous behavior at the Olympics?
• 1:09:40
  I would say most of that stuff, I would keep it really outside of the bubble. Like, never read. Protect you. Yeah, protect as much as possible. Never read anything, never look at anything while I was at the games. I mean, probably the biggest cultural moment that I was on the ground for was Raygun at Paris Olympics.
• 1:09:59
  Oh my God, right. That went into a global phenomenon. And we were in the village, we'd finished competing, and then we had to leave. You have to leave after 48 hours, you have to leave the village. But then I was coming back for the closing ceremony. So when Reagan was competing, I was actually not in the village. I was like out in a tiny little country town in France. And...
• 1:10:23
  So that was all blowing up. I was like, what is happening? And then we all got back together with the team and, like, Rachel was there and everyone was part of it. I mean, she was also on, like, a bit of a blackout for that period, right? Like, she wouldn't have been – she would have been in the bubble, not out of the bubble. Yeah, no, she was in the bubble. Yeah, so, like, she wouldn't have really known what was happening outside of the bubble. She definitely knew because it was so big. Like, there's some things that –
• 1:10:45
  you you can't stop and like that that was like astronomical like going from like really not a lot of people in the world knowing your name to like Adele mentioning you at a concert two days later would be so surreal and so weird and not all of it and not all of it was super nice like there was there was this fun element of it and then there was like death threats and
• 1:11:09
  People being so angry. I've never understood the anger around that. Like people were like so enraged. Like I think they would commonly say, oh, like you took someone else's spot that like could have done a better job or whatever. I was like, since when have you cared that deeply about breakdancing ever? That's not what you're actually angering about. Like you were pretending that's what you're angry about, but it's not. It's, I don't even know why you would be angry seeing that.
• 1:11:36
  Literally. So when you came back from the town and this is happening and you're obviously all part of the Australian team, you all have coach... How many people are there? There's about 400 athletes. 400 athletes. What happens in a moment like that? Are you receiving group texts? Are you just on the email thread? We have a group WhatsApp and our friends, we're all just messaging each other. Was she okay in the moment or was it...
• 1:12:03
  Like, what was the response? Do you know what? I, we were there. We were all, like, getting ready for the closing ceremony. We were all dancing. We were, like, pulling out some of her moves. And Rachel was there, and she was still laughing along and enjoying it. But I didn't think about, like, I mean, I was so doing my own thing and,
• 1:12:22
  But I didn't think about the impact on her as much. And my sister's probably a nicer person than me. She wasn't at the Olympics. She was over in Paris, but she was there commentating. And she reached out to her and said, hey, are you okay? Yeah.
• 1:12:37
  Um, she was like, oh, probably I need some help because you think like to have that level of exposure, you then need, you need like some sort of management and people around you. It's like, you've got no management, you've got no PR, like you're looking at this online stuff. You're, you're looking at like people being really horrible to you, really horrible to your husband. Like, yeah.
• 1:12:58
  If it was me, I would just want to like crawl in a little hole and like get away from it all. But you also want to be able to deal with it. And you need kind of need someone else to like act as that barrier for you. So, yeah, I mean, we were just like, like, I didn't realize I was also in a bit of my own little bubble. And I didn't realize like how hateful lots of it was. I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. Like, I love that this is a thing. And then didn't realize that there was so much animosity behind it. It was really bizarre. Yeah.
• 1:13:27
  Yeah, social media is kind of weird, though. Like, I just feel like, I don't know, there are some people on social media that I'm like, man, you wouldn't say this if it was from your LinkedIn profile. Like, no, but your anonymous, faceless TikTok account. You should definitely have to link your social media to your LinkedIn. I agree. I feel like that should be the thing. I want to, like, kind of switch tracks a little bit now and talk more about, you know, what you're doing now and kind of this, like...
• 1:13:53
  almost like exit from sport or like the retirement from sport. We spoke about retirement recently and like, what does it even mean to like kind of go out of sport or like come out of sport? And, you know, how does it kind of, you know, your mindset, how is your mindset when you're thinking about, cool, do I do another Olympics? Do I not? You know, you're injured at the moment. You have your operation coming up, like you're building this really exciting brand. You're disrupting a category.
• 1:14:21
  What is the kind of like chapter or era of life that you're in now? It's so different from A, what I thought it would be and what it's been before, which is so exciting. And as you said, I'm like pulled in quite a few different directions now, which is...
• 1:14:40
  Honestly, quite a nice thing after doing one thing for so long. So I have my brand, Earthletico, which is sustainable activewear and removing plastics and harmful chemicals from the clothing that we wear on our bodies every day, which is something I'm really passionate about and takes a lot of time and energy. And if I think about what my goals are in general...
• 1:15:03
  I landed on this quite a few years as something that feels really true to me is that I want to be the kind of person that relentlessly pursues the things that she's passionate about. And I sort of came up with that before, like while I was still working at EY, that same sort of goal, that same goal took me to Paris Olympics. It also took me into Athletica and building a company. And it will take me through many things in my life.
• 1:15:33
  until it doesn't feel true anymore, but it still feels very, very true. That same goal can take me back to wanting to train and go to the Olympics again. But there is an equation that has to happen because there's a lot of things that have to be put on a sacrifice pile if you want to relentlessly pursue sport as opposed to relentlessly pursue business. Sport is way more of a lifestyle than businesses. Yes, being a founder is difficult, but...
• 1:16:01
  I don't have to move cities and states. I don't have to be in pain all the time again. I don't have to possibly look at things like if I wanted to have children in the future, what does that look like if you're competing every day? Oh, I didn't even think about that.
• 1:16:18
  I was thinking about my period earlier. I didn't even go there. I didn't have to come back to that. That's the fun thing in women's sport is we're seeing people have children and come back to sport, which is really, really cool. And it hasn't been that prevalent before, which is awesome. A, there's a bit more support around it and structure around it. When I was in swimming –
• 1:16:40
  I helped bring in the first ever pregnancy policy for swimming, which I was really proud of, which is awesome. I didn't know that about you. You're surprising me today. What is that? What's the pregnancy policy? It means you get, once you're pregnant, you get supported for a year after that. So normally it would be like, okay, you're pregnant. You can't compete. You're done. You're out. That's amazing. Oh, and if you're the primary caregiver, which most of the time the women are, then you get...
• 1:17:07
  hotel room and someone who can travel with you to look after your kids up until they're, I think it was like two and a half or three, I can't remember. How do you introduce a policy like that? How do you do that? What's the procedure? I was president of the Swimmers Association at the time, so advocating for Swimmer Voice. And yeah, it was just one of the discussions that we were having. We were having a lot of discussions. And that one...
• 1:17:31
  To be fair, it was like, we should have a pregnancy policy. This is what I think it should be. And they were like, yeah, absolutely. So that one wasn't, that wasn't a big process. Yeah, it was weird that there was no policy before. Well, because before it was like, you have to quit to go have children. Like the idea that you could have a swimmer that would be a parent, be a mom, and then come back. Like we've got swimmers who are dads, but like they don't have to take any time away from training to do that.
• 1:17:55
  It's obviously still hard when you have a little baby, but it's like you're not pregnant for nine months. So it's like very different and your body doesn't have to recover from that. So it's very different. It just wasn't seen as a thing that you had to worry about because the women were going to quit. The women were going to quit in order to have their babies. That was what it was before. Right, right.
• 1:18:15
  How do you think about like your brain now? Because I feel like there's a lot of discussion and there's a lot of like things that you can look up online that really like links, you know, the brain of an athlete to like the parallels of an entrepreneur or a founder. There's like such strength in that blueprint kind of like.
• 1:18:35
  overlapping. How do you think about your brain now and like these tools and these skills and like these things that you've developed in terms of, you know, discipline, resilience, um,
• 1:18:46
  like emotional, cool, calm, collected vibes that like translate really well into being a founder and going through the ups and downs of that journey. Yeah, I think it's, um, there's so much that copies across. There's like a skill set that you learn alongside sports. So I think I was learning how to swim from one side to the other side really fast. You're actually learning all these other skills, skill sets, like how to perform under pressure. Yeah.
• 1:19:11
  what discipline looks like in action, what resilience looks like in action. I think one of the ones that's really applicable to startups in particular is this idea of it takes a long time to get great success. And in startup world, I hear a lot about, like there's a lot of chasing that like hockey stick growth or that one moment where it clicks. And there's like, there's a lot of chat about that one moment.
• 1:19:40
  But if you've been in sport for a long time, you know that most of the learning and the value comes from the grinding that happens before that one moment. Like I compete for one moment. I compete for a minute every four years at Olympics.
• 1:19:52
  And like, it's literally a minute, less than a minute. So that's crazy. Knowing that that minute's important and whatever the moment is in your business, whatever that like magic moment is, that's important. But it's only going to occur as an output of all the other minutes that come before it. So like the grind and like the being down...
• 1:20:14
  in the weeds, the unglamorous part, like that's where, that's where you're going to spend most of your time. And like knowing that beforehand, but also knowing that that's the valuable bit is, is,
• 1:20:26
  something that I think is not talked about particularly in founders people like they say oh it's hard work but they don't like say how long and hard that work is because we all want the quick sugar fix like success story and those ones I mean it happens for people quickly don't get me wrong sometimes it does in then you get like I don't know there's still like the there's always
• 1:20:48
  There's still the decade of getting there before they even started. And maybe they had three failed businesses or whatever before they got to that.
• 1:20:57
  Yeah. One moment or whatever. Even the quick win stories are not quick win stories. And so like deeply knowing that in your soul is like so important going into building a business. It's probably the best thing that I know before I come in here. Because I don't get, I get impatient because I always want to be moving faster than I am. But I don't get like disheartened. And impatience is fine. Like helplessness is not fine because you won't be moving forward anymore. You'll just give up.
• 1:21:26
  Do you think like what's harder, business or Olympics? I would say they're harder in different ways, which doesn't answer your question in the nice way you want it. If you have to pick one for next year, what would you pick if you had to choose?
• 1:21:44
  I mean, because I'm in business right now, it's like it's easier for me to keep going down this track. If I was like in full training right now, I'd probably be like, oh, it's easier to keep on this track. Right. Whatever you're on is easier. I'd say business is more difficult because success is more ambiguous and the environment is changing more. Sport, you've got very defined rules and very defined parameters for success, which is oftentimes more comfortable to operate within.
• 1:22:13
  I don't know whether today was successful or not. Whereas normally in my training environment, I like know how to measure that like to the nth degree. So that's like, those are different challenges. But the good thing about that ambiguity is there's a freedom with that as well. So there's like slightly less structure, which equals slightly more freedom, but it also equals slightly more uncertainty. So there's a bit of a trade-off. Ask me on any given day, it will honestly change.
• 1:22:41
  I feel like for you, like in this new kind of chapter and this new chapter in business, there's like all of the kind of things like the playbook that you can apply to building a business that you've learned through, you know, your training and how you've kind of grown up. But then there's also this like new undiscovered, like journey of self and like a new challenge that's like not what you have any kind of like guidance from because of the uncertainty and things like that, which is actually really exciting. Like the freedom, like you talked about.
• 1:23:11
  So freedom's exciting. It's always a balancing act between like freedom and purposelessness or freedom and uncertainty and like which...
• 1:23:20
  You can have the same choice when you look at nerves and excitement. It's like the physical reaction in your body is actually the same. Like your heart rate goes up, your hands get sweaty, your breathing increases, like your breathing rate increases. That could be excitement or it could be nerves. So like how you choose to interpret that is like, am I excited for this race or am I nervous for this race?
• 1:23:43
  Am I like feeling super uncertain about this or am I embracing the freedom side of this? And like trying to choose that interpretation of your feelings as much as possible is important for me to keep wanting to do it. Because I could equally have done something a little bit more in my wheelhouse and less challenging. Like there is so much stuff in this business that I don't know how to do that I'm learning on the fly. And that's really uncomfortable.
• 1:24:12
  a beginner and doing really poor attempts at things and then just getting better at them. I think the willingness to do a poor attempt and be like, okay, this is my best I can do today. And I'll need to get an expert in to help me do some more of it. But I've come so far, like I didn't know how to build a...
• 1:24:29
  financial forecasting model. I had no idea about like marketing strategy and like you learn these things as you go. And now you look at your like on your sixth or seventh different model that you've built because you didn't like the other ones. And you now like deeply understand that part of your business. So I think there's like something to be said for like learning as you go. But I definitely had to let go of like things being perfect.
• 1:24:50
  which I was used to honing things to be perfect. Like that was what I was doing. I was at the top end of that law of diminishing returns. Yeah, I was at the top of it. And now I'm at the bottom of it. And just getting them done is the thing. But I feel like because you're someone who has like a competitive spirit and you like a challenge, it's like also so suited to your personality type to be like literally in the deep end.
• 1:25:17
  Yeah, it's actually really fun because you get a really good sugar hit back from it because you can look a month earlier and say, oh, I'm way better than I was a month ago. And that's really cool. Whereas what I was doing before, the best time I swam in the 50 freestyle was in 2015, which is 11 years ago now. The best time I swam in the 100 freestyle was in 2018. And so in all of that time, I have not...
• 1:25:46
  improved those two times so you're like fighting every day to try and get better than all of that like you don't you don't move ahead that that much i mean i've been in within like 0.1 of those times
• 1:26:02
  Yeah, whereas in business, the compound kind of like, it does increase. And that's like remuneration. There is like the commercial aspect that also increases the more successful it becomes. Yeah, it's satisfying in a way that even like just looking at my skill set, and the business, like how far we've come in a year. It's like, whoa, we've come a long way. It's because we're down the bottom of that like graph of diminishing returns. It's like effort versus like how much
• 1:26:31
  At the start, how much effort you put into it, you'll get a lot better because you're just learning the easy basic stuff. And then as you get further and further...
• 1:26:40
  the more effort you put in, you're fighting for these like tiny returns that you're getting at the top. But you still have to put in like all of this effort. So that's what sport versus business is like for me. I'm like down here at the bottom of the graph, like putting in all this effort, but getting like astronomical returns, which feels kind of great. And improvement. When I say returns, I mean improvement and personal improvement and business improvement versus, yeah, like when you're in swimming, you're fighting so hard to improve like this tiny, tiny little bit. Tiny, tiny little thing.
• 1:27:10
  You are in a really exciting moment as of today slash tomorrow. I think we're in the last 24 hours of your capital raise on virtual. I checked like an hour before we started talking and I think it was like close to hitting 800,000 raised. Well done. Thank you. Coughing for you again. Very happy to be one of your investors on your cap table. Yeah.
• 1:27:34
  How are you feeling about this? What is the emotions that is happening for you in this moment where you've been doing this campaign for the last month? You've been preparing for it prior to that, I guess like a year maybe, in terms of all the background work that you've been doing before you actually launched the raise. And it's super exciting. I imagine also probably kind of stressful. Well, sorry, I don't even imagine. I know. Yeah.
• 1:28:02
  What are you feeling? Well, you know, because I've talked to you about it. I think, honestly, the biggest emotion is I feel very grateful that people want to be part of our journey and grateful to have you on board, grateful to have other female founders who invested in us and been like, we want to be part of this business. We want to be part of the future that you're building. Yeah.
• 1:28:26
  Like to have, I think we've got about 300 investors. So about 300 people have been like, I want to not only say I like what you're doing, but I want to put some money behind that. And I believe in you. It's a really big, I feel a big amount of gratitude and I feel a big amount of responsibility. I'm used to chasing excellence for myself all the time. And now I'm like, okay, I've got to do it for these people as well. And it's quite motivating.
• 1:28:52
  In terms of raising that amount of money, it's just going to do so much for a business. And I'm so excited to operationalize it and get Athletica going to the next level. And I'm excited for me, but I'm also excited for this cohort of people that are coming along. And anyone who's come in, I really view them as like they're now a partner in the business. And I have to treat them as a partner in the business.
• 1:29:14
  and what's going to be best for us as a whole as we continue to move forward. Capital raising is not something I knew. I literally knew nothing about it a year ago. Like I'd barely heard the word VC. So it's one of the ones that you end up learning as you go.
• 1:29:30
  I've never gone away from a conversation with nothing. There's always something. A lot of them were no's. That's fine. But it was either an introduction or an insight. And asking for very honest feedback from these people can feel very intimidating. But it's been really useful. And it's shaped where we are now. If I didn't have those conversations a year ago, as you said, we wouldn't be doing nothing.
• 1:29:59
  this raise now. I wouldn't even have known that crowdsource fundraising was a thing. Lots of learnings. What are you excited about? If it closes in 24 hours, what does next week look like? What does next month look like? What does the rest of this year look like that you're like, I can't wait for this thing to happen?
• 1:30:21
  Well, I mean, next week looks like me getting ACL surgery. So that's got to happen first. Oh, my God. It's here already. Oh, my God. It's April. Yeah. What? Yeah, it's happening. I forgot. It's happening. I knew it was happening, but I also kind of forgot. Right. Okay. I've got to do that, which is... There's a thing. It should be done. It's a really good time. I put it off for until after my reading and after the race because I needed to get through those two big things. And now I can... So you need to dance on tables. Yeah.
• 1:30:47
  I needed to dance, obviously. I needed to be able to fly, go around with some investors. So anyway, we did that. It's good. And then this month of April will be like a rebuilding thing. The thing with the crowdsource fundraising is you don't actually know how much is going to come in. You've got a minimum that you want to raise and you've got a maximum. You don't know how much is going to come in. So we've got like a rough skeleton plan of what we want to do with that funding. There's a reason why we're raising. It's to...
• 1:31:16
  invest more in marketing and new product as very high level. But then once you've got the final figure in, it's like, okay, great. How do we actually plan this out properly? So April will be a lot of planning for that, which is a good time for me to be immobilized because I'll be on my desk a lot and with the team a lot, making sure that we're building that.
• 1:31:34
  And start testing properly in marketing and then continue to look what that looks like for the next 12 months. It's really about, for us now, we've spent so much time in supply chain and building a really great supply chain that can scale. It's now like, okay, let's switch into the...
• 1:31:51
  supply chain and product we've done for sort of three to four years. And now it's like, okay, let's switch into the selling side of things and look at marketing properly and deeply. So that's like, that's my next little thing to jump into. So exciting. So exciting. I love that part of the journey. Well, that's the one where you're an actual expert. Like you are literally the marketing queen. You are though. You understand it on like a neurological level.
• 1:32:18
  Lol. I'm just going with the flow. I'm always just going with what feels good. I'm a gut feel kind of person. Well, your instincts are just odd. Like, that's what I mean. Like, you have a talent for it. Like, I do not have a talent for it, so I have to get in there and manually learn the skills. And, like, you can get...
• 1:32:34
  you can get to a certain level. I'm never going to be like you because like you understand it like in your body and it just makes sense in your brain. There's like a level that you can theoretically learn, but I'm never going to be like, oh, just on like you are all the time. It's like such a, it's like amazing watching you do that. Listen, we're here to talk about you.
• 1:32:55
  When, well, when I was thinking about like what I wanted to finish with in this episode, I just wanted to ask you kind of like two, two final questions. The first one is like, when you look back at all the different things you've done and now thinking business and sport and life and like just everything, what are you most proud of in terms of your accomplishments in your life?
• 1:33:20
  I'm probably most proud of a really strong community I have around me. And that's, that's a, it's not, it's not any of the things that we've talked about now, but I still have friends that I went to high school with. I still, I have like a really strong community around me now who I'm really connected with. And I see lots of the time and, and,
• 1:33:46
  that's where I get a lot of meaning in my life, like having really long and deep relationships. And it's quite difficult when you're quite driven and you're all over the place. And for a long time swimming comes first. Now the business comes first before a lot of these things, but being able to have still maintained that and built that, I think I'm quite proud of that group of people that I can be connected with them because it's not...
• 1:34:13
  I actually think that that is the thing that will bring me most joy and longevity in whatever the other things are. If I didn't have that, I don't think I could do any of the other things.
• 1:34:25
  I love that. Okay, this isn't my last question. I'm squeezing another one in because I didn't ask it before, and I feel like now I have to ask it. When you're, like, with that answer, off the back of that answer, what is it like, you know, if Ben Field, your husband, was sitting here right now and I asked him, like, what's it like dating and, like, going through life with a professional athlete who has another top priority that kind of probably comes ahead of you sometimes? What is it like for him, like, dating someone?
• 1:34:53
  you and like obviously now being married to you but like but what's it been like from that perspective of cultivating that relationship and like prioritizing the two it's really hard because i mean we were dated for eight years before we got married and for like four of those years i was living in other cities because i needed to get my thing done and when i was considering going back and training and competing for paris olympics
• 1:35:20
  I had to move cities again. And that was obviously going to take a big toll on...
• 1:35:26
  our relationship. And I was like, I really wanted him to be part of the decision. I was like, you have to be part of this decision with me. Like this impacts both of us. Like this is our life that we're planning together. This is how we're living right now. It's going to change everything. Like I'm not going to be able to earn as much. I'm going to be living in Canberra. You're going to be living in Sydney. That's going to be the next 18 months of our lives. Like we're not going to see each other, blah, blah, blah. Like we need to plan this because it doesn't just impact me. And he was like, no, no.
• 1:35:53
  I refuse. I was like, what do you mean? Like, I need you to help me make this decision. He's like, no, because I will never, ever, ever stand in the way of something that you want to do. So you need to decide whether you want to do it or not. And if...
• 1:36:08
  You want to do it? Then I'll make the sacrifices to make that happen. But I'm not going to weigh on in this. I'm not going to tell you that I prefer you to be here. Like, it's obvious I'd prefer to spend time with you. But even more than that, I prefer you do the things that you really want to do. And like, that is so special and so rare. Like he is the, he's always been like that. He's like, well, I understand that that's,
• 1:36:31
  that it's, it's part of who you are. And so I would never try and clip that. If anything, it would be like me making the decision to like, make it easier for him. Um, but yeah, he's always been incredibly supportive of that. And so not just supportive as like, Oh, like I'll, um, like be there for you or whatever, like being like, no, actively, I will make decisions that are worse for me so that you can do the things you want. And that's, that's really special.
• 1:36:59
  Man, I love him. He's so cool. He's such a cutie. I love that for you guys. I love your love story. It's so beautiful and so special. And like, how amazing to be on the journey together. And even though apparently you're making the decisions and he's going along for the journey, how amazing that you are building that life and making those kind of choices together. That's so beautiful to be around you guys. And obviously coming off the back of your wedding, I'm like, oh, yeah.
• 1:37:26
  so cute back to my final question my last question for you when you think about young women who look up to you as a role model and think wow i want to be like her i want to be a professional athlete i want to be a business owner i want to be this fucking rad chick doing cool stuff that she dreams about and puts into reality or the mom or the parent of those young women what is your message to them
• 1:37:55
  I'd say like dream big and then go out and do it and just start doing it. And don't let anyone tell you dreams are too big. Um, when I was in high school, I got told I couldn't write down that I wanted to be a professional athlete in my career counseling. I couldn't be able to fix them because it was too unlikely. Like at this point I was already training 30 hours a week, but that was too unlikely. So you can't, do not, do not let someone clip your wings when you're 15 years old. I mean like, I didn't listen to that person. I was like, whatever. Um, yeah,
• 1:38:24
  But that happens all the time. And even if you miss, even if you miss your mark, you will end up somewhere amazing. And like listen to your passion and your dreams and follow that. And say if you want to, like you said, be like me, don't be like me. Like be like you and your passions and like follow, like listen to that intently. And it will always lead you to somewhere interesting. It might not be the place that you thought.
• 1:38:52
  I thought I was going to do one Olympic Games and then be finished. I thought I was learning how to swim. As I said, I've learned a lot of other things and I'm now in business, which I also never thought would be something that came as a result of being in sport, but it is. So you don't know. You don't know what the end is. Just like really listen, listen to your dreams. And then for the parents, this is something that my parents did that.
• 1:39:17
  I come from a family of five children, so there's a lot going on there. And if I wanted to do something, they were like, we'll support your dreams, but you have to put the effort in. And what that might look like on a micro level was going to training every day. I could set my alarm for 4.30 in the morning. And if I could get out of bed and get ready, I could go wake mom up at 4.45 and she would take me.
• 1:39:41
  But she wasn't getting me out of bed. She wasn't like hounding me to do all of this stuff. She wasn't like pulling me along. She was like, if you want to do it, I'll support you. But you've got to show me that you want to do it. And that was always like really useful because I always felt supported. But I also knew that like it was on me to make it happen, which is like that's a hard balance to strike.
• 1:40:05
  I've loved this. I feel like we could talk for a really long time. I don't know what the time is. I'm afraid to tell you the answer of how long we've been here in case you had plans afterwards. Yeah, it's been a while.
• 1:40:17
  It's been so fun. It's been so fun. I know that you brought your medals. I know that they're somewhere here. Oh, I already brought one. I couldn't find the other ones. Well, I don't think you can say that publicly. But let's bring one out. Okay, we'll bring one out. Show and tell. This is the only one I brought. It's the prettiest one, too. Look at that. Do you want to catch it? I don't want to catch it, but I want to put it on. Frigga, I mean, we definitely want to finish with a little...
• 1:40:47
  Yeah, see, that looks good. It's shiny. But the message that I take away from your last, like, answer is, like, you're saying that I still could be a pop star. Like, I can still be a K-pop star. You definitely can. My dreams can come true. You have no idea. You could be, like, an 80-year-old pop star. Is that the wrong way?
• 1:41:05
  Yeah, an 80-year-old pop star. You could do that. Set the trend. You definitely could. I feel like it suits me. I think it looks good. You're like, I think this feels right. Yeah, like I feel this feels at home on my neck. Does it? Because it's quite heavy. Actually, it's really heavy. It's heavier than I thought. That is so cool. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. You can tell me all the things. What a pleasure. You've got an open invite. You can come on the show anytime. I've been dying to come on.
• 1:41:35
  yay in the pink room in the pink room i'm so excited new studio the best the best this is by far the coolest setup i've ever seen i agree i agree i did it i agree to be honest
• 1:41:53
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 1:42:17
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• 1:42:40
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