Latest / Career Clarity with Athletes: A 2ndwind Podcast with Ryan Gonsalves / 74: Alex Cech - An Olympian's Journey, From the Rowing Lanes to Business Innovation

Transcript

74: Alex Cech - An Olympian's Journey, From the Rowing Lanes to Business Innovation · Career Clarity with Athletes: A 2ndwind Podcast with Ryan Gonsalves

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I always wanted to go to the Olympic Games.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I thought for me, lining up at the start line with the best in the world.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I couldn't picture anything better than that.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe I played too small in a way.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I could have thought, oh, imagine having the gold medal, but for me it was always about the rowing.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: So lining up on the start line with the best in the world for me was what I was picturing and that's, I suppose, what I got.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: So it was really tough to get there.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It was a long journey I went through, I'd say, a lot of joyful moments, a lot of low moments.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: To get there, I had to do a lot of work on my mindset.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I had to do a lot of work on my muscles.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I was always too small, so I had to build up more muscle strength and bulk up and eat up, and it was definitely a long time in the making.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: But when I got there it was spectacular.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Ryan God-Salvez and welcome to a Second Wind Academy podcast, a show all about career transition through the lens of elite athletes.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Each week, I invite a guest to the show who shares their unique sporting story.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Please join me to delve into the thoughts and actions of athletes through a series of conversations.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Don't worry, there's plenty to learn from those of you that aren't particularly sporty.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Elite athletes are still people after all.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Let's be inspired by the stories of others.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Alex, welcome to the show.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks, ryan.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to be here.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: You've got such a cool company name Second Wind.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, it seems to resonate a lot with athletes, and former athletes in particular, who certainly know what finding your Second Wind feels like.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it speaks to a perseverance, I think, which resonates with me.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I like that a lot.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah well, I suppose we're going to chat today, and a lot of this conversation probably will rest on some of that perseverance and some of those transitions that you've had in your life and throughout the careers that you've had.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And I'm interested I often like to start right at the beginning for someone to understand what was sport for you when you grow up and how did it sort of weave its way into your life.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So sport for me was always front and center.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I suppose I grew up in South Africa, which is a great sporting nation.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It's part of our fabric of society really, and for me, being part of the sporting team was the most important thing that I could ever dream of achieving.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: So, funnily enough, when I didn't make the first swimming team, I cried my eyes out, and I think that was the starting point for me.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess there was a loss.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: And then it sort of lit the fire in your belly.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: That competitive spirit came through.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: For me it was not making the team and just then feeling this very strong drive that I had to, and next thing I begged my dad to let me go for runs with him.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I was going for swimming lessons whenever I could and the next time around I made sure I was in that team.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: So that was my beginning, I suppose.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: And so for you, then you know the competitive edge.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: The fire in the belly began, and as you go up, it sounds like sport continued to be an important part of life.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: What about academic prowess?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: What role did that play for you as you were growing up?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Well, school was always really important, and I knew that I needed to do well at school.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I suppose my competitive spirit transitioned out from sport and into the classroom as well, so I liked to do well at school.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: For me, I was lucky, learning was always quite easy and it seemed to just happen quite naturally.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I did enjoy doing well at school, and so I think that stood in good stead.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: You know it's interesting.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: As I speak with those who do, I'm going to say not mainstream sports when we're young.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So when we're young it's younger.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: It tends to be well, just go and run and throw something or catch something For you in rowing.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: When did that come to life for you?
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So for me with rowing, I wasn't always a rower, I was actually a swimmer and a runner first, and it was only when I hit high school, and it was, funnily enough, my dad who said oh, this looks cool, look at this cool boat, you go backwards in it.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And I looked at it and I said no ways am I going in there?
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: You've got to be kidding me.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: You've got to tie your your feet into those stinky shoes and if you tip the boat you're going to struggle to get your feet out and you'll drown.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So I didn't think it was a good idea at all.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: And then, funnily enough, the school had this welcome to the school rowing camp.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: They also had a welcome to the school swimming barbecue and it was like go for five days camping with my friends and learn a new sport, or just one afternoon barbecuing with my friends, and I thought I'm going for the five days, thank you very much.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And I learned how to row and I think that was when the bug really bit from a sporting perspective, and this is, I suppose, the interesting difference in before it had always been I loved swimming because of the competitive edge.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: It wasn't so much the feeling that I got that when I swam, whereas with rowing, for the first time I could actually get across the water really fast and go and see things and go on adventures, and so for me, rowing it was a sport that I really loved because I could do it and at the same time, I could be with my friends and I could go and see different places whilst I was doing it.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So that, I think, was the biggest difference for me was it wasn't so much the competition that I loved, it was the enabling of being around people, connecting with people and seeing beautiful scenery that you do whenever you're on a beautiful water body.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I think that's fascinating.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: No one's ever looked past the pain of rowing to describe the beauty that takes place around, and I mean that's quite poetic in a sense.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: What is interesting is it's almost as if the swimming set you up to love rowing even more so.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, because swimming you're just black line, black line, black line looking at the black line at the bottom of the pool, whereas rowing you can look up, you can look around, you can see where you're going.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to me it was something special, and I suppose it wasn't just the being able to see scenery, but in rowing it's one of those very unique sports in that you can do it alone, that is part of a team, and that feeling that you get when you're completely, perfectly in sync with your teammates and you're actually driving together in the same direction.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: There's nothing on earth that feels as good as that and it's fleeting.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And so you're always in the state of there, it is, there, it is, get it, get it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's gone.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And so, almost because it is so transient and it's not there all the time, you kind of want it more and more and more, and I think that's the bug that bites people when they want to row.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: You spoke earlier about that connection with people, and there you beautifully just described looking for that perfect moment, I guess, when breathing and the rhythm and moving across the water is in sync.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: You talk about that being a connection that there's nothing else that's like it.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, is that something today that you miss from working in teams?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I miss it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you do occasionally get it in a different sense, whether it's working in a really great team at work and the project's going really well and people just seem to give you things as you need it and things happen almost organically.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: But from a physical perspective, yeah, I'd say, the only other time I felt that is during childbirth.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So yeah, Okay, I can't really empathize on that side, but I do hear that being in synchronization that you have within that team, probably something I'm sure we'll come back to when we look at where you are today and what you're looking for.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I do is interesting that piece about the fleeting nature, and it means it's then always something, probably like in golf, where that perfect stroke and it just you can hear it and feel it and it's how do you find that again, even that sense that seems quite physical in many respects.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: When did you realize you were good at rowing?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I realized pretty quickly because after the first rowing camp I was in the main team, so that was pretty quick.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And then that was reinforced because by the end of the season I was wanting my dad to buy me a boat, because we live near a lake and I wanted to row on it every day and boats were expensive.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And he said no ways am I buying you a boat?
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I said well, what if I win South African Championships, then will you buy me a boat?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And he thought it was that far away.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: He's like Alex, you win South African Championships, I'll buy you 10 boats.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And I nearly won.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't quite win, but I nearly won.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I came second.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: So to go from zero to that level quite quickly was I knew I was good.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so just talking about that pace with which you achieved South African Championships.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: What age are we talking here?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: What type of events are we trying to get a grasp of here?
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: So I was 12 turning 13?
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: .
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so with that, you're 13, 14 years old.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: You're doing the study there.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: You're definitely good at rowing.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: There's something that's within you and you're clearly loving that rhythm and the way that feels.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: How did things change for you, and what was it like trying to balance the goals that you had from a rowing perspective and those you'd have from a schooling perspective?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So for me, I was that obsessed with rowing that I had to make things work around it, and rowing was not an easy sport in that you basically sunk five afternoons full afternoons.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It's straight from school, getting home at 7pm and then having to start your homework and make sure you flourished at school.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And I'd say those first two years of high school were probably my hardest, because I was in a new school and trying to figure out how to do all these different subjects that I'd never done before.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: And it was rocky.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: It was really rocky, but it's almost like because I had rowing as the constant thing to hold on to I could.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Then my tolerance for the uncertainty and maybe from failure and not feeling quite so comfortable at school wasn't so bad.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: It was something I could cope with because I had rowing there to tide me over, to keep me going, to make me feel happy every day.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, what's interesting there is because of that training regime through high school you did get to row pretty much every day and yes, I did.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of studies that talk about doing things you love and having a piece of that every day and I guess for you, rowing was that constant.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It gave you that joy physically, mentally as well.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't rowing every day, but I was rowing probably three to five times a week, depending on the season.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And the days that I wasn't rowing I was training sort of cross training, whether it was running or swimming or gym or ergo, which I suppose in a way was related to reaching a goal.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: So yeah, Coming in then.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: At that time you loved rowing.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: You loved that almost daily connection that you had with the team.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: What did you aspire to become at that time?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: That's an interesting question because I've reflected on this quite a bit and for me I loved rowing because I loved being with my friends and I loved the feeling that I got when we rowed.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Well, and I loved being out in nature on the water.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: It was just, it was beautiful and it was almost because I got really good at it, because our team was really good.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: It became almost this self-sustaining thing where these goals kind of got not put on you, but you set your goals because that's what was expected and so it was okay.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: We want to be national championships winners, we want to tour overseas.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: You know it's exciting, you're happy to do it.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: But it's interesting that that goal wasn't necessarily there for me as a 15, 16, 17 year old Until later on.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Then it became quite an obvious transition.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: If you do the sport, if you spend so much time doing it, well, you've got to have a goal, and the goal needs to be going to junior world champs.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: It needs to be going to under 23 world champs.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: It needs to be going to being a world champion and winning an Olympic medal.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: That's where it kind of heads.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Do you know?
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: It's interesting listening to the way you describe that, because you talk about the goals, kind of formed, that just came along Because, in essence, your purpose of being in the sport, your purpose of being there, was actually values-based.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: It was actually based on spending time with friends and appreciating the scenery, the beautiful sites that you had and, I guess, a sense, a feeling of connectivity, which is best seen as that stroke and breathing and rhythm all comes together.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know for myself I have a very strong appreciation of anything that is excellent or beautiful.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I love new technology that has this excellence but, at the same time, beauty to it, and I think that's why, for me, I could row for such a long time, because every day that I was training I was striving for this excellence, for this beauty, and it wasn't necessarily about where I ended up.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: That, I think, later came in and almost in a way, it clouded my judgment in many ways, or clouded my performances, because you stopped doing something because you were enjoying it or you were striving for something like that transient feeling of perfection that you'd never really get to.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: You stopped chasing that and instead you were chasing the goal and measuring yourself compared to that, and I think that's possibly where, for me, it started to become not as enjoyable anymore.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed you so much to unpack, in fact, from just those statements and that goal setting and how you progressed.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: So if we, I guess, move forward a little bit and think then of you becoming that elite, so leaving school, what decisions did you have to make at the end of school with regards to career and direction?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I always knew that rowing was never gonna pay the bills.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: It's just not one of those sports and I always had a good brain, so I knew I could go to university and get a degree in something that would pay the bills.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: And most girls at the time who were smart became a doctor and I kind of thought about it and thought, well, all doctors ever really see are sick people, and how horrible it must be to sit there every day and the next person walks in the door and you say, hi, how are you?
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, I'm so ill.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And that just didn't appeal to me.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So one of my friends was doing chemical engineering and so I thought, oh, that sounds cool, I'll try that, without really knowing too much about it.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: To be honest, it was just a that's what clever people did kind of thing.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, the logic is actually quite beautiful, because today I was actually working at a high school and I was speaking with high school children about how to think about career, how to pick electives and subjects that they should go into, and the overriding piece information I was giving them is understand what you're interested in and then figure out whether you're good at it or not, and so listening to you share that story really comes around or really focuses in on what is interesting, and so following your friend or listening to your friend comes around.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Oh well, that looks interesting.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Let me give that a shot and, as we'll come on to it, turns out you're quite good at it and that help.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it did help.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: So I suppose, yeah, for me science always was interesting and, funnily enough, I was doing history at school and then decided halfway no, biology is the thing, so swapped over.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was just one of those.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: You just pick up things that interest you.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what was happening from a sporting perspective during this time?
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: What was that like for you?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So leaving school was really interesting because all of a sudden you're a free agent and you're not rowing for your school anymore.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: You can choose what club you row for.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: You get to row for your university.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So it opened up this whole raft of where do I want to row, who do I want to row with?
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And for me it changed the dynamics a lot because I wasn't necessarily rowing with the same people I'd spent the last five years rowing with.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: It was a whole new bunch of people from different universities, different clubs, different age groups.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Before I'd only rowed with people who were the same age as me, and now I could row with people who were 40 or 15.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: It's a huge range.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: So it was really quite exciting.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: At what point did things change for you in terms of what you wanted to achieve?
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: What you wanted to achieve, it moved from enjoying just training with people who were 40 or other things to hold on.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: There's something here.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I think for me it became quite clear towards the end of school, and certainly early university, that if I wanted to continue rowing, I almost had to have a goal.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I had to justify why I was spending so much time doing it, and so it was quite easy to set a goal, and I knew a lot of the people who were in the national team or trying to get into the national and this is the junior team and I was surrounded by, you know, that kind of thinking.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: So it was quite a logical next step to want to make the team, and I think that that kind of is a very you could draw a big similarity there to when I first started swimming, where I wanted to make the team and so I made sure I made the team, and I think it's that competitive nature that started to come out at that point.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: And with that competitive nature changing and now that focus to be on the team, what changed in your rhythm?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: What changed in when you woke up, how you woke up, how you balance things in your life?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I'd say I became very disciplined.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I'd always been quite disciplined, but here it was next level.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I had my journal.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I was recording my training, but I wasn't just recording, you know, waking, heart rate and weight and the sessions.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I was recording my feelings, my emotions.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I was recording everything and really tracking what it was that I was doing on each day that was making me feel like I was moving faster, and then I would try and repeat that.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: So for me it really was a heightened sense of discipline and just training a lot more and committing to doing certain camps and training requirements in order to make the team, and in some cases it meant sacrifice it.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I chose not to go to my cousin's wedding and I dreamt of being a flower girl my whole life, but I decided not to go because I wanted to be at the trials the one year.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So it I started to realize that I had to make sacrifices if I wanted to get where I wanted to go.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about where you got to the dream, what was it you wanted to achieve, where did and what was the experience like?
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: So I always wanted to go to the Olympic Games.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I thought for me, lining up at the start line with the best in the world.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I couldn't picture anything better than that.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe I played too small in a way.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: I could have thought, oh, imagine having the gold medal, but for me it was always about the rowing.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So lining up on the start line with the best in the world for me was what I was picturing and that's, I suppose, what I got.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: So it was really tough to get there.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: It was a long journey I went through, I'd say, a lot of joyful moments, a lot of low moments.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: To get there, I had to do a lot of work on my mindset.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: I had to do a lot of work on my muscles.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I was always too small, so I had to build up more muscle strength and bulk up and eat up, and it was definitely a long time in the making.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: But when I got there it was spectacular.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and look all the sacrifice, everything you did when you were lining up at the Olympics with the team did the moment lining up before the race feel like you expected it to feel.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: I suppose that part came almost too quickly.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: You're kind of building up to this and all of a sudden it's there.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: It goes too quickly for you to hold on to there.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I suppose the same theme again Events, life events.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: They happen so quickly that you can't hold on to them.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: You've just got to live them.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: You've just got to enjoy them while they happen.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it was really incredible just to be there and row with my teammate and know that we had every chance in the world.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: It was spectacular.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: What consideration had you put into thinking what you would do after that moment?
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: So there was a part of me in the last, I'd say, year to a couple of months before the Olympic Games that had decided this is it, I've had enough.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I've got other things that I want to do.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And so, whilst I was 100% focused on the Olympic Games and getting there and rowing and doing the best that I could, there was another part of me that was sort of going what else could I do?
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And I had noticed that there was this girls rowing school near where my parents had moved to, who were doing not that well.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: But I'd noticed some of the athletes and I thought these girls could do a lot better.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: They just need some help.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: And so I'd kind of my subconscious had already noticed that this rowing team needed me, and whilst I didn't actively go out and do anything, it kind of came full circle.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: After the Olympics had finished, I happened to be in the area and happened to ask them if they wanted a coach.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I offered my services and I became the head coach of this girls rowing team.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: We had just gone into you walking away.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, essentially, you achieved that first dream of lining up at the Olympics and as you were approaching that moment, your mind had shifted towards what comes next.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: And as you were looking to what comes next, you'd seen this opportunity and you'd moved to it.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, in doing so, did you consciously say that's it for elite rowing, I'm now moving into coaching.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: I was very conscious that I wanted to move to be closer to my family, to go and live with my partner, and I wasn't quite sure where that left me from a rowing perspective.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So I suppose it was a wait and see.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: So I moved and decided I'd give it six months and see where we ended up.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And where did you end up after those six months?
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So during those six months I realised that I really quite liked the lifestyle that I was now leading and I was feeling like I was enjoying my like falling in love with my sport again, but through other people, so helping them to feel that feeling that I loved so much, and for me that was what I wanted.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I also realised that I needed, I had financial pressures to pay the bills, and so for me it was almost the rational side of OK, the rowing is done, now there's something we could do here to grow in other areas.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I mean that's amazing to have rationality of thinking and to be able to put that into place.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: To what extent, even during that period, did you feel you were?
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, did you have senses of hey, I'm settling, I'm running away from something?
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: What was going through your mind at that time?
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I only heard the settling running away from something.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: What was going on in your mind at that time?
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: That's kind of how I think I phrased it.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I was like oh my goodness me, this is such a big decision.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Or an Olympian walking away thinking yeah, I think I'm done.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: I think I'm done.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: What was going through your mind at that time?
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: You never go through life without picking up baggage and politics and that kind of thing.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And that had been quite heavy, that baggage, and for me it was almost at the point where it was detracting from the sport that I love to do and I also realized that my body and my health was important.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: So with most rowers you get a sore back, and I did.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: I had a bad back, and it was one of those situations of, realistically, I could probably nurse it along, maybe get another four years out of it, get to the next Olympic Games.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: But then how stuffed would it be and what would I really achieve?
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: And to me it was being the Olympian and lining up with the best in the world.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: That had always been the dream.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: So once I'd achieved that, I knew that I had to level up.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: And was it that I wanted to win a medal?
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And was that enough?
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: And I decided it wasn't.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's big.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I could start my career.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I actually start making money and not living off my pension, which I'd been doing, or selling rowing boats and living off your rowing boat money, which I'd also done and at the same time I had this really great new relationship and where was that going?
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And children and all that kind of stuff.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: So there was a big pull.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I would say it was more of a pull towards a different life than a push.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: And as you've spoken about the decision points that you went through and the outcome you achieved, was there a particular method in trying to prioritize what was more important for you?
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I mean I might have written a pros and cons list but I can't remember.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: But that's the logical thing to do.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I think it was more of a soul searching sitting with it and being prepared to really look hard at yourself in the mirror and say am I okay with this decision?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: And I guess the answer is you are okay with it.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: And you moved on and you started to set up that next phase of your life and the first step for you there was in coaching and schooling teaching.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: To what extent did you feel that was your future career?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: You know, were you there, Right?
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: This is it.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: 30 years, 40 years off, we go.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: That was the question.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: To what extent was that the future for you?
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: So I never really saw coaching as my future.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I saw it as a in between.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: This is a good way to transition staying in a sport where I know what's going on, I know I can earn money, I know I can make this team flourish.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I think that was quite important to me, that I saw that as quite rewarding and at the same time I did know that I needed to use my degree that I'd spent so much time trying to get.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: So when I arrived in this small town and there was a brick manufacturer and that was the only industry I thought, well, I'll go to the brick manufacturer and see what I can do there.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And I also found out that there was someone making renewable biofuel and I thought, well, I'll try that as well.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And I ended up working with both of them and trying to start two small businesses, which neither of them really got off the ground.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: But I learned a lot doing it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And so for me it was the coaching was a stop gap, Kind of a I'll just rest and recover from my Olympic experience, but I would use my skills that I'd learnt through university and through school and that I could build a career out of.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: That bit is really interesting because there you were in a town not necessarily a natural place for you to put in place your degree, you know the lessons and, like you say, the skills you developed.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: So it seems quite resourceful that you found possibly the one place in that village where you could have applied your skills.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: And you went in and you applied them and you know, essentially created a company, created two companies, and was it and we're exploring that To what extent were you fearful or scared that it would?
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: That would just fail.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: To be honest, when I and part of one of the companies was signing up to do a PhD which had never been on my roadmap no member of my family had ever done that before A PhD was not on my list of things to do, but it was the only way I could think of to start that business and make it fly and earn enough money whilst it did, and I was pretty sure that I was not going to complete that PhD.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I wasn't convinced that I would manage it at all.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: It was one of those.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll do this.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Hopefully it pays my bills for long enough while I get the company up and running.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's my maybe perseverance, that by the end of it, it was okay.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I've done all the work.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I may as well write it up and have something to show for these five years, but I expected to fail.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe is the I expected that I wouldn't get it right straight away.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: That's interesting because, whilst that's almost, the outcome would fail, but you knew you'd get benefit from the process.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really well put.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think I realized that I'd get so much benefit from the process.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Being successful in that regard wasn't the thing that you were aiming for.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: It was actually to well give you a cash flow.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Let you use the skills you're good at to build something whilst you're on your way.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I was building it.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: As I was flying it I had no idea where it was necessarily going.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I can kind of laugh about it now, but I honestly didn't really know all too much about what I was doing at the time.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I was just going where the breadcrumbs laid me and with a bit of hindsight I wish I'd enjoyed the process a bit more and just trusted that it would be okay, and not just being kind of waiting to get there and just enjoyed it instead.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Well, how would that have been different?
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's about how you enjoy something.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: You can still have this kind of end point in sight, but you don't delay your enjoyment until you get to the end point that you can actually enjoy the process along the way and have faith or trust that you will still get to the end point, whereas my whole sporting career had been around delayed gratification.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: So I felt that I could only really enjoy myself once I got to the end point.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Whether it was failing or succeeding, I could only do that once I got there, whereas if I'd maybe chilled and enjoyed the process a bit more, it would have been more fun.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like the way that similarity for you is in building those careers after the sport.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: You know, it's that same sense of celebrating as you go along, not just waiting for the very end.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a key part of any kind of undertaking you have is to celebrate as you go along, and that's certainly been a big, a big life lesson for me.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: And so now, yeah, my family actually gets so tired of me.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Let's celebrate in the.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: What are we celebrating?
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: We haven't done anything yet.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Come on, what is it?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: No, the fact we've started, we've got to go then yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: This is it.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: This is celebrating the wins as you go, and I think that's the key to me is already a theme of this conversation is appreciating that beauty from busting your lungs on, you know, rowing with a team but appreciating where you are through to, even now, as growing business or building businesses in this example, enjoying some of those steps as you go through it too, and we spoke of whether it was a failure or not, or those businesses.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: How did for you then, in running those businesses, where did you eventually get to?
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: You know what was the outcome.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Where did you get to at that time?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: So the first business was great it was making green bricks and we made green bricks so that worked.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: It was just the whole other side that I hadn't seen on the supply chain.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: That didn't work and so that, unfortunately, died a natural death.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: The second business was linked to the PhD, and that was a goer that was.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: It had everything it needed.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: It just couldn't get.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get enough funding to get the idea to get off the ground and so by the end of it, even though I'd built a mini prototype of it and it worked, it just didn't have enough money at the time, so had to fold it in and write up the PhD and move on.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: That sense for you when we talk about you at the Olympics.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: You'd achieved that vision of where you wanted to get to With these two activities not quite the same thing.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: So how was that for you, and what did you move on to next?
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Well, because I thought that I would fail to start with.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think it was that much of a, especially the first one.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: It was a very quick failure, so it was, I think, within six months.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: We knew it wasn't going to work, so that was less to let go of.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: The other one was a lot of effort that went into it and I think it was one of those projects that was on again and had funding and then would die.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: And then it was on again, had funding and would die, and it's very typical of projects at that time in South Africa.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: So I think at the time it was disappointing, but almost.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: If you compare that to if you think of those businesses and all studying as school at this point in time I had a new constant that had been rowing before.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: My new constant was that I'd recently got married, I had become a mother, I'd had two beautiful babies, and so watching my sons grow up, that was kind of my constant, and so whatever happened with these businesses was just well okay, that's unfortunate, but I still had that thing to hold on to.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, I love that.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: It's a message, a story of having something constant in your life, whatever that might be, and well, it can be a reference point.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I suppose it's anything that you choose it to be, but it's trying to keep something that you can look to and think okay, I have that.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And what's even better, though, is if it's something in yourself and not external.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: That's really the Holy Grail.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, it is the Holy Grail.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Getting it, getting it, yeah, yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I think that is the journey that we're all on and I think what's interesting because that constant that we talk of probably doesn't stay still, unless it's a lamppost it probably keeps moving because, like you talk about, it was a relationship, a relationship that then had children and those children changed all of the time.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So that constant isn't fixed, it's something that moves with us as we progress.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: And when you think then of your because here we are at this transition for you as an athlete and coming into the workplace or running your own business, starting a family, what was difficult about that period for you?
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: I think the complexity was difficult.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: As an athlete, life is just so beautifully simple.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you wake up, you train, you sleep, you wake up, you train, you sleep, repeat, and your goals are very set and don't necessarily move too much.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: And they're also pretty obvious goals.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to get here, I want to win that race, I want to.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: It's quite easy to set a goal, but when you're doing something like starting a family, you don't say I want three children, that's my goal.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: It's a bit weird.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You kind of go with the flow.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: It's not like you get to put in an order and that comes out the kitchen.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: And the same thing with starting a business.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: You can have an idea of where you want to go.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: It's a lot more of a wavy goal because it likely will change dramatically as your business grows.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And you might start a business thinking okay, I'm selling X and end up actually I'm not selling X, I'm selling Y.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's a lot more complex operating in that family business workplace rather than than just being an athlete.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: I think beautifully said and you know it does talk to the well, the complexity of life and how we at least prepare ourselves for that as we come out of being an athlete and step into, I guess, the real world of business and life.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: And it is quite an adjustment that we have to go through.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Now we are had you for ages and I can definitely continue to talk.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: I'm curious about where you are today and you know the transition that's got you from that point of PhD and businesses to where you are today.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Can you just talk to me a bit more about that please?
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: So today I am very high up in the business in the Asia Pacific region and I've led an innovation technology and innovation program for Australian and New Zealand Water Utilities, which has been groundbreaking in that we set them a roadmap and set them a direction that they could take so that they could deliver water faster, cleaner, cheaper, better for the planet.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: That's been really rewarding.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I've also run innovation festivals for some utilities as well.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: So for me I moved from rowing, I suppose, to science and technology and then I've moved more into innovation and as I've made that transition, I'm now realising that all the technology and science that we need we actually have already.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: The biggest challenge that we're facing at the moment is how do we activate the people so that we can bring through all these changes that we need to create a better environment for our people and our planet.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm really excited about the work that I currently do and it's certainly helped me with the whole engineering side that I had.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: But I'm finding more and more that I'm increasingly relying on the skillset that I learnt as a rower and working in a team and understanding people and connection that I'm using in my workplace the further I go, which is interesting.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: I think it is fascinating because it is that people side that connection and you eloquently mentioned it earlier on that sense of connectivity you had when you were in the boat working with that team.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: And now to hear you talk about wanting to find that again to well make, I guess, a real positive dent in the world in the way that moves forward, I think is fascinating to hear, really interesting to go down.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: You spoke then of the skills you feel you've brought from rowing into your current work and, as someone who loves innovation as well, operates in that space.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: For many they talk about innovation as a process and as athletes we tend to love a process.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: To what extent do you find that love of process and love of rhythm is important to you now?
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: So for me, I think the reason I love innovation is that it can go anywhere, and in rowing, certainly, when you got on the water with a crew, you were never really sure where it was going to go.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Was it going to be a good session or a bad session?
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: What were the weather conditions going to do?
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Were we going to go here or there?
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: And that's what I love with innovation is that it kind of grows and it depends on what people add into it in terms of where it ends up, and so it's not a very defined process.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: In my mind.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: It's more of a beautiful mix of inputs from different people and different relationships, and it kind of grows and feeds off its own momentum and then becomes something quite unique, and I think that's why I like it so much.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: I love that explanation.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I think that's great.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that you've certainly found it, and even listening to you now it just makes me think, you know.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: I think that's why I love, I enjoy that about innovation, or at least that facilitation moment.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: And you think, well, we know roughly where we want to get to, but here's a problem we're going to solve.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Now let's figure out how we can best do that.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: And the power of people always comes through.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Listen, Alex, I want to say thank you very much for, well, just sharing your story and having a great conversation with you.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate you taking the time out today.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Ryan.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: I've enjoyed your insights it's always interesting hearing other people's take on your story and definitely given me some things to reflect on and think about.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: So thank you Awesome.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: I'll see you next time.