Speaker 1: Good team.
Speaker 2: I hope you're bloody terrific. Welcome to another installment of
Speaker 2: the You Project. It's Harps and what's your middle name? Coops?
Speaker 1: Is it? What is it?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: If you were addressed me formally, Harps, it would be
Speaker 4: Jacqueline and Cooper.
Speaker 1: I thought it was Anne.
Speaker 2: I thought it was Jacqueline and Cooper. Five time Olympian,
Speaker 2: five time World champion, Woman about town, business woman, keynote speaker,
Speaker 2: highly paid, way much more dough than me. She cosper
Speaker 2: hour you could have about ten hours with me and
Speaker 2: one for her, because she's a big deal.
Speaker 3: What I said, because I'm better?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, well, no doubt. I mean that wasn't even
Speaker 2: in question. Oh that's why they paid the big bucks.
Speaker 2: So you've got nowhere to go now. I didn't argue
Speaker 2: with you. How you fucked?
Speaker 1: An't you?
Speaker 3: Yep? I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you are. You are a big deal.
Speaker 2: But despite the fact that you do take the piss
Speaker 2: out of me, which is because we've been friends for
Speaker 2: four hundred years, you are very good.
Speaker 1: At what you do. Welcome back to the Youth Project.
Speaker 2: You're the busiest woman in Australia.
Speaker 1: What's going on with you?
Speaker 2: There's a few things we can't discuss, but might one
Speaker 2: of them might become apparent in a week or so.
Speaker 2: We need to be evasive and somewhat mystical. No's that's
Speaker 2: not the right word, but anyway, there might be something
Speaker 2: that the public might become aware of mystical.
Speaker 4: I like, yeah, so end of last year, I went
Speaker 4: away and did something pretty exciting. I wouldn't say it
Speaker 4: was a bucket list thing for me to do, but
Speaker 4: once I got offered the opportunity, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: this sort of kicks all of my boxes. I want
Speaker 4: to go and do it.
Speaker 3: And in the next.
Speaker 4: Couple of weeks we'll be able to actually announce what
Speaker 4: it was, where I was, who I was with, and
Speaker 4: why I was doing it. So it's going to be
Speaker 4: a lot of fun. I'm excited to see it.
Speaker 2: All may Yeah, that'll do.
Speaker 1: That'll do. Hey.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're when you've got a profile and
Speaker 2: you're you or like you that is well known and
Speaker 2: you know, five times Olympian all that stuff, five times
Speaker 2: World champion, you get offered lots of things from you know,
Speaker 2: different opportunities. Some of them are not really opportunities, they're
Speaker 2: kind of dressed up as an opportunity. But when you
Speaker 2: get into it and I get asked a few things
Speaker 2: as well, which on the surface it's like, we've got
Speaker 2: an opportunity for you, and then you go, no, this
Speaker 2: is actually an opportunity for you, not me. But what's
Speaker 2: the weirdest thing, the weirdest opportunity in inverted commas that
Speaker 2: you've been presented with, like whether or not it's working
Speaker 2: with a company or doing a weird gig, or some
Speaker 2: kind of sponsorship or some kind of alignment or relationship
Speaker 2: where you got into it and you went, this is
Speaker 2: actually bullshit.
Speaker 4: Well it's it wasn't even a sponsorship. I guess it
Speaker 4: was a request where they thought it would be I mean,
Speaker 4: money would be changing hands. But when an Australian, as
Speaker 4: someone that lives in Australia heard that I was going
Speaker 4: through IVF, they offered to buy my eggs because of
Speaker 4: the potential DNA.
Speaker 1: Wow, so yeah.
Speaker 3: It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 4: They thought, well five time, limping, good jeans, nice muscular
Speaker 4: and they said, if you've got spare either embryos, which
Speaker 4: is obviously with my husband, come together, ready to go,
Speaker 4: or just my eggs.
Speaker 3: And they said, yeah, they slid into my DMS.
Speaker 4: Then asked if that would be an opportunity that I'd
Speaker 4: like to seek and I'd be rewarded for it. I
Speaker 4: was like, oh my gosh, imagine if I did that,
Speaker 4: I'd have fibblings of my children, like their potential brothers
Speaker 4: and sisters are wandering around.
Speaker 3: That's a big no. So you do get to them.
Speaker 2: How many minutes did you consider that for?
Speaker 1: I was like, don't lie, block, block, no, not okay,
Speaker 1: hang on a million dollars.
Speaker 2: They offer you a million dollars for one of your eggs.
Speaker 1: A million.
Speaker 4: Now we've still got one in a freezer. And it
Speaker 4: was talked about in a book that I wrote about
Speaker 4: my IVF journey, and that's why it's sparked an interest
Speaker 4: in somebody, like you've got one in the freezer because
Speaker 4: the IVF. I guess it's always that conundrum at the end,
Speaker 4: when you are lucky enough to have a family like
Speaker 4: Mario and I and you do have spare embryos like that.
Speaker 3: What do you do?
Speaker 4: What do you do when you know that your family's complete?
Speaker 4: You can either donate it to science. You can obviously
Speaker 4: just discard it. And the other one is that you
Speaker 4: can put it into like an embryo bank and it
Speaker 4: can go out there. And this person thought, well, we're
Speaker 4: not going to wait for it to go into a bank.
Speaker 4: We're going to offer you an opportunity.
Speaker 3: Just from reading my book.
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, it's we call it the frosty. It's
Speaker 4: still in the freezer. It's been there for nine years.
Speaker 4: It's it's staying there.
Speaker 2: How long is I know, you know, clearly I'm an
Speaker 2: IVF researcher. How long is the embryo viable?
Speaker 1: I think is the medical term?
Speaker 4: Oh so I think that. Well, they send out reminder
Speaker 4: letters every couple of years because you have to pay
Speaker 4: storage fees at the facility where they're being kept. So
Speaker 4: there's a couple of years that goes by, you know, minor,
Speaker 4: do you still want to pay the rental, you.
Speaker 2: Know, the storage fee, this potential human that we've got here.
Speaker 4: So I think after ten years they really get you
Speaker 4: to decide. Like I turned fifty in January, the frosty
Speaker 4: is never ever going to be thawed for us, So
Speaker 4: that I'll probably send out another email saying what is
Speaker 4: it that you'd like to do with that? So for
Speaker 4: us as a family, we still haven't even discussed that
Speaker 4: because I'm like, that's Mario, that's me, that's together. But
Speaker 4: it's something that gets talked about, and I'll probably get
Speaker 4: a lot of people after me now listening to this
Speaker 4: saying why wouldn't you donate it? Why wouldn't you give
Speaker 4: it to a couple? But when it comes to IVF
Speaker 4: and donor embryos, there's a lot of laws that haven't
Speaker 4: been really locked down. So it is the same as adoption,
Speaker 4: so that that embryo can come back and find you.
Speaker 4: So I don't think we're a bad family to find,
Speaker 4: but you know, it's something that I probably wouldn't want
Speaker 4: for my family. We feel like our family is complete
Speaker 4: the way it is. But it's that question that I
Speaker 4: still don't even know how to answer, to do the
Speaker 4: right thing by that embryo.
Speaker 2: But also, like, you know, what I'm about to say
Speaker 2: is almost ironic because we are talking about it publicly,
Speaker 2: But then what you do or don't do with that
Speaker 2: embryo is really nobody else's business. Like it doesn't impact
Speaker 2: anyone else unless they make it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's like, it's not it's a completely private decision and issue.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. It is. It's our business.
Speaker 4: It's got nothing to do with anybody else. But the
Speaker 4: word impact is a big one, Craig, because whilst it
Speaker 4: doesn't we feel like it doesn't impact them, it could
Speaker 4: impact them and that's what they think. They think this
Speaker 4: is something that could impact us. We actually have that
Speaker 4: family that you're written about, that you dreamed about, that
Speaker 4: you've now got and you're going to flush an embryo.
Speaker 4: So it's a really tricky thing.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Did you see them the series that I've been out
Speaker 4: on Channel nine moment called Big Miracles.
Speaker 1: I've seen it, No, I have not. I know that
Speaker 1: it's on, I'm aware of it, but I have not
Speaker 1: watched it. Did you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I've been watching parts of it because we
Speaker 4: were that couple, we were trying to have a family.
Speaker 4: It's about IVF and every single person's journey.
Speaker 3: Is completely different.
Speaker 4: Some happen to get pregnant the first go, and they've
Speaker 4: saved all their money to obviously try for an IVF cycle,
Speaker 4: and some are years and years and years down the track,
Speaker 4: which is obviously years of heartache and hope and lost hope,
Speaker 4: and then obviously think that maybe you're going to get
Speaker 4: that child again, and then there's loss.
Speaker 3: If there's miscarriage.
Speaker 4: So there's so much emotion when it comes into having
Speaker 4: a baby, and if you're not there yet and you
Speaker 4: haven't had one, I know what that was like. So
Speaker 4: I yearned for something so much. Who knows, maybe I
Speaker 4: would message someone in Instagram saying that embryo, do you
Speaker 4: want to have that? So I understand it's desperations is
Speaker 4: too much of a hard word, but at that point
Speaker 4: you'll try anything to try and get a family that
Speaker 4: you feel like you deserve and rightly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know very much.
Speaker 2: But what don't Is there something that people who've never
Speaker 2: been through if or never even IVF will never even
Speaker 2: open the door to think about it or.
Speaker 1: Explore it or research it.
Speaker 2: Is there something that would shock people like that, somebody
Speaker 2: like me who doesn't know much that I would never
Speaker 2: have thought about or I wouldn't get about the process
Speaker 2: or going through it.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll quickly give you a couple of things. So
Speaker 4: it's around about ten thousand dollars per cycle, so that's
Speaker 4: obviously a female's monthly cycle. So if you don't get
Speaker 4: pregnant the first time, then it might not be ten thousand,
Speaker 4: and then next it depends on how many eggs were
Speaker 4: hard harvested, so a ten thousand dollars cycle. If you qualify,
Speaker 4: if you're deemed infertile, then Medicare will step in and
Speaker 4: you're welcome for a rebate. Not everyone gets a rebate
Speaker 4: if you're socially it's a social decision if you want
Speaker 4: to try IVF because you want to freeze your eggs,
Speaker 4: or I'm not too sure about same sex now that
Speaker 4: same sex marriages are legal in Australia, but back when
Speaker 4: I was doing IVF, if you're a same sex couple,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't get the rebate because they had said that
Speaker 4: was a social choice, which is just nuts, right, trying
Speaker 4: to have baby, trying to have a baby. So it's
Speaker 4: around ten thousand dollars, and that's where you start injecting
Speaker 4: yourself for a week or so to try and grow
Speaker 4: the embryos that you can't actually do yourself. And when
Speaker 4: they're about twenty mils, so about two centimeters the follicle itself,
Speaker 4: they book.
Speaker 3: You into hospital.
Speaker 4: Your husband or your partner or your donor goes into
Speaker 4: supplies a sperm sample close by the hospital, not like
Speaker 4: in a dodgy place, but actually in a proper facility
Speaker 4: where they can keep that sperm warm all of the
Speaker 4: eggs that they've retrieved. Sometimes you might get one, sometimes
Speaker 4: you'll get none, and you'll get maybe ten.
Speaker 3: It depends. They match the sperm and.
Speaker 4: The eggs together and they'll call you back to the
Speaker 4: next day with a fertilization update. So you may have
Speaker 4: gotten ten eggs, but match with the sperm, nothing fertilized,
Speaker 4: So that is absolutely heartbreaking. You've had surgery, you've gone
Speaker 4: through a couple of weeks, you've spent ten grand, and like, hey,
Speaker 4: nothing fertilized. So you can have another process called IXY
Speaker 4: where they actually inject the sperm into the egg. That
Speaker 4: gives you a higher rated success, but it's more expensive.
Speaker 4: So now it's like the plus plus IVF is ten
Speaker 4: grand plus plus. You want to do IXY, that's plus
Speaker 4: another two thousand. You want to take the embryodo of
Speaker 4: five days in a lab being watched twenty four to
Speaker 4: seven by an embryologist, plus plus plus, So it gets
Speaker 4: very very expensive. So you can see why the pressure
Speaker 4: and the stress of trying to make it work for
Speaker 4: a cycle because for a lot of Australians.
Speaker 3: Is just too much. It's just too much.
Speaker 1: It's prohibitive, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Speaking of all things? You know, bodies, you are? You
Speaker 2: just turned fifty. Okay, hang on, you just turned fifty.
Speaker 2: You don't look at you don't look at you look
Speaker 2: you look a good forty. But you retired from competition
Speaker 2: at thirty three?
Speaker 1: Am I correct?
Speaker 3: Thirty seven?
Speaker 2: Thirty seven? Oh that's right, because when we reconnected it
Speaker 2: was thirteen years that you had Okay, So you and
Speaker 2: I used to do some work together. I used to
Speaker 2: train you and do some of your conditioning stuff back
Speaker 2: in the day when you were jumping off ramps and
Speaker 2: twisting and turning and periodically landing.
Speaker 4: Mostly landing percentage was only twenty percent. Say again, my
Speaker 4: landing percentage over my entire career was twenty percent.
Speaker 1: How does that compare.
Speaker 4: Well, that's like showing up every day to work knowing
Speaker 4: that eighty percent of your day is going to be
Speaker 4: a shit show.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 4: In the very beginning, I landed nothing. I landed nothing
Speaker 4: for years and years and years, and then I started
Speaker 4: landing one every now and again, and then I started
Speaker 4: landing a couple and then by the end of twenty years,
Speaker 4: I was landing more than I crashed. But I kept
Speaker 4: a log book, and people think that's kind of crazy.
Speaker 4: But during COVID, I got out all of my logbooks
Speaker 4: and put it into a spreadsheet, as you do, and
Speaker 4: I wanted to work out my landing percentage, and it
Speaker 4: was only twenty percent. And people ask me all the time,
Speaker 4: I'm like, why, I know, if would you keep going
Speaker 4: knowing that it is going to be a hard day
Speaker 4: eighty percent of a hard day wiping snow out of
Speaker 4: your ears and landing on your face and having to
Speaker 4: like brush off the snow and start again, and knowing
Speaker 4: that you're going to go up there and got an
Speaker 4: eighty percent chance of crashing failing, just all of it.
Speaker 4: And I said, that's where I actually learned the most.
Speaker 4: Craig was learning how to do better, how to change
Speaker 4: what I was doing, reinvented a little bit, deconstructed work
Speaker 4: with my coach, processes feedback better, because when you're an
Speaker 4: aerial scare and you do land, it's such a shocking thing.
Speaker 4: The coach is like, oh great, do that again. No
Speaker 4: real usable feedback in do that again. But where the
Speaker 4: feedback and all the work came in was actually on
Speaker 4: the eighty percent where we had to try and fix it.
Speaker 4: Why'n shoe landing, We've got to get you to land
Speaker 4: What do we need to do to make that happen,
Speaker 4: because if you're not landing, you're getting injured. So, yes,
Speaker 4: aerial skiing, I crashed more than I landed. And that
Speaker 4: was a career of twenty years and I retired thirteen
Speaker 4: years ago from that crazy merry go around.
Speaker 2: And one of the byproducts of landing twenty percent of
Speaker 2: the time and not eighty percent of the time is
Speaker 2: thirty three operations or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I had twenty five surgeries during my active careers,
Speaker 4: just small scopes, scoping the knee a few times, scooping
Speaker 4: ntannie a few times. I'll be reconstruction, shoulder, reconstruction, new reconstruction.
Speaker 4: Broke my hip, dislocated, it broke my face. So during
Speaker 4: the active career there was twenty five surgeries and I've
Speaker 4: had about seven since and sort of.
Speaker 5: Like the cleanup to try and get you back to.
Speaker 4: How you were before you started the sport, and one
Speaker 4: included a total hip replacement less than a year ago.
Speaker 1: WOASA wowsa.
Speaker 2: And so you and I reconnected because of this mysterious
Speaker 2: thing that we can't talk about. Well more than that,
Speaker 2: we caught up, and now we've been catching up and
Speaker 2: I'm clearly your best friend in the world. Thanks. How
Speaker 2: has it been getting back into training, because you not
Speaker 2: that you did nothing for thirteen years, but you didn't
Speaker 2: really train per se although you're very active and busy
Speaker 2: and still was on skeeze a fair bit, but in
Speaker 2: terms of being in a gym and working out with
Speaker 2: a focus to build strength and achieve a few things physically,
Speaker 2: you weren't really doing that. And then I guess six
Speaker 2: months ago you started training again, give or take. How
Speaker 2: has your body changed? And are you hating it? Are
Speaker 2: you loving it? Are you glad you got back into it?
Speaker 2: Or is it just opened another door and that weird
Speaker 2: brainy yours.
Speaker 3: It's all of them.
Speaker 4: I think I sort of hate it now because I'm
Speaker 4: back to feeling that guilty if you don't go to
Speaker 4: the gym, where I sort of gave up on myself,
Speaker 4: so I didn't have that bit saying, oh I get
Speaker 4: to the gym, get to the gym. I just didn't
Speaker 4: even think about getting the gym, so there wasn't that
Speaker 4: internal sort of wrestle that you have every day with
Speaker 4: I've got to get to the gym.
Speaker 3: Do I want to go to the gym. I'm in
Speaker 3: the car back door. I want to go to the gym.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go subway, you know so, But
Speaker 4: I absolutely love it. I feel like that I've woken up.
Speaker 4: My body was so broken after what it did for
Speaker 4: twenty years. Then after my hip dislocation, I spent thirteen
Speaker 4: years cutting the back out of my sneakers so where
Speaker 4: your heel fits, I cut them so that they could
Speaker 4: just I could just slide into my sneakers so they
Speaker 4: almost look like wearable slippers. I couldn't bend down and
Speaker 4: do it my shoelacers. I couldn't really organize a shoehorn.
Speaker 4: That's how stuffed up my knee joint. My hip joint
Speaker 4: was so because the hip was so bad, my knee
Speaker 4: was so bad. So I didn't go to the gym
Speaker 4: because even just walking to pick up the kids from
Speaker 4: school pickup meant that I was in so much pain
Speaker 4: at the end of the day that I'd have to
Speaker 4: sort of build a nest in the bed to fall
Speaker 4: asleep comfortably, and then I had to take all these
Speaker 4: different medications to keep the pain under control, the inflammation
Speaker 4: under control. So having a hip replacement was wonderful, but
Speaker 4: then us getting back together again. It's honestly, I sort
Speaker 4: of thrown myself back into that athlete mode and my
Speaker 4: body didn't take long to respond at all. I mean,
Speaker 4: you could probably talk to that better than me. But
Speaker 4: you know, I went from being a mum of thirteen
Speaker 4: years doing nothing in the gym to walking in there
Speaker 4: now and I look at myself in the mirror and
Speaker 4: there's parts of me that look very athletic still. So
Speaker 4: I'm proud of how my body you responded. I'm proud
Speaker 4: of how the shape that it's taken on. I love
Speaker 4: that I'm fifty and I've got a pretty good six pack.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot to like about working hard, and
Speaker 4: I'm honestly, I'm so grateful Craig. It's it's been the
Speaker 4: best place to reunite.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we do take the piece a little bit,
Speaker 2: but I will say people who train a bit will
Speaker 2: understand this, and for those that don't, I'll try and
Speaker 2: put it in context. But so I introduced you to
Speaker 2: They're called different things, but basically a revolving staircase StairMaster.
Speaker 2: They're called different things by different companies, but so I
Speaker 2: introduced Jackie to this thing called a revolving staircase, which
Speaker 2: is fucking horrible. And it goes from level one, which
Speaker 2: is very slow, up to level sixteen, which is essentially running.
Speaker 2: And to give you an idea, like, I'm not unfit.
Speaker 2: I don't do heaps of cardio, but if I had
Speaker 2: to go out run five kilometers now I could with
Speaker 2: not too much problem. I'm eighty four kilos, I'm quite lean.
Speaker 2: I do way more weights than cardia. But don't smoke,
Speaker 2: don't drink. My default setting is pretty fit. But I
Speaker 2: remember jumping on the not that long ago. I jumped
Speaker 2: on the old revolving staircase. I did fifteen hundred steps,
Speaker 2: and I nelly died. I haven't told you this, Cooper.
Speaker 2: I did fifteen hundred. I call it Cooper. I did
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred steps and I Nelly died. Now your second workout,
Speaker 2: I think, after thirteen years of no training, you did
Speaker 2: five thousand, and you did all of them faster, at
Speaker 2: a faster rate. So like level ten, level twelve and
Speaker 2: I plot at level six, level eight, and I was
Speaker 2: just looking at you and that there's something weird about you,
Speaker 2: and because you're I mean, firstly, you weren't unfit, but
Speaker 2: you hadn't trained. Like you're just busy and active, and
Speaker 2: you walk a lot, and you move a lot, and
Speaker 2: you've got kids, and you've got sport, and you've got school,
Speaker 2: and you've got in and out of planes and cars,
Speaker 2: and you've got speaking gigs and you're always probably walk
Speaker 2: thirty thousand steps a day. I reckon, But you hadn't
Speaker 2: been training, and I was watching you on this thing.
Speaker 2: I was looking at your face. I'm like, she is in.
Speaker 1: The best possible way. She's a fucking weirdo.
Speaker 2: I was just looking at you and you were like,
Speaker 2: I'm not letting this thing beat me. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was just day two of training after thirteen years off,
Speaker 2: and you would think that it was a gold medal
Speaker 2: that you were vying for. You hate giving up, and
Speaker 2: you hate you hate like you almost can't work at
Speaker 2: If I go I want you to work at six
Speaker 2: out of ten, You're like, nah, get fucked, I can't
Speaker 2: is spot on.
Speaker 4: I feel like I have to beat the machine. Then
Speaker 4: I feel like I've had a victory for myself. Competitive people.
Speaker 4: You can't turn it off, even though it was aerial skiing.
Speaker 5: You can move that drive to something else.
Speaker 4: And honestly, it was almost like you, I don't know,
Speaker 4: let the tiger out of a cage or something.
Speaker 3: I'm not too sure what happened.
Speaker 4: But when you introduce me to that bloody stam master,
Speaker 4: because it is tricky and it is difficult.
Speaker 5: And it's so hard to actually.
Speaker 4: Get good at, I thought, I'm fucking sort this thing
Speaker 4: out on day two, and now I can take phone
Speaker 4: calls at like a level six, level seven, at level
Speaker 4: ten on board because it's too slow at twelve, I'm
Speaker 4: sort of moving along. And that competitive thing too, is like, oh,
Speaker 4: let's try and stay it for half an hour at
Speaker 4: thirteen or fourteen, and I want to try and beat
Speaker 4: last week's steps, and I photograph what I've done just
Speaker 4: so I can beat last week.
Speaker 1: I know, I get the photos sent to me.
Speaker 4: I know I've absolutely loved it though, So it is great.
Speaker 4: And you know, whether it was the hip replacement, the
Speaker 4: thing that we can't talk about coming out, you and
Speaker 4: I connecting again, I feel like as a fifty year old.
Speaker 4: If I had said to myself thirteen years ago, as
Speaker 4: a retiring athlete, in the best form of my life,
Speaker 4: just retiring from Olympic Games, I hope I can look
Speaker 4: like ABC and D when I'm fifty.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm there.
Speaker 1: Craig, Yeah, you are well. You don't look your age
Speaker 1: at all. In your face, you don't look your age.
Speaker 1: You look I reckon early forties. But your body you
Speaker 1: look like an athlete again.
Speaker 2: Like you lean, you're strong, you've got muscle, you've got
Speaker 2: definition and and you know, some of that's genetics, but
Speaker 2: a lot of that is just hard work. But I
Speaker 2: think the thing that people don't, you know, we kind
Speaker 2: of understand. We know there's a relationship between the mind
Speaker 2: and the body and the emotions, and you know just
Speaker 2: how we experience life based on those three variables. But
Speaker 2: I don't think we genuinely understand how great exercise is
Speaker 2: for your mind and for your emotions and for your
Speaker 2: happiness and for creating the right brain chemistry. You know,
Speaker 2: dopamine and you know, just the stuff that makes you
Speaker 2: feel good right, and then you do their workout and
Speaker 2: not only have you done a great thing, physiologically for
Speaker 2: your body, but also mentally and emotionally. You feel good
Speaker 2: for the rest of the day because you've ticked this
Speaker 2: big box.
Speaker 4: Well that's right, so you're ticking that big box. But
Speaker 4: if you can manage to go with a bunch of
Speaker 4: friends like we all meet up, it's also that social
Speaker 4: connection as well. So I sort of feel like there's four, five, six,
Speaker 4: seven boxes that I'm kicking just by going with you.
Speaker 4: So I'm getting all of that, and I'm also having
Speaker 4: a social outlet away from the school mum to pick
Speaker 4: up the drop off the work side being at home,
Speaker 4: and it's just like there's another part of me now
Speaker 4: and there's a friendship.
Speaker 3: Group that I think.
Speaker 4: It's like going to like the new pub, you know,
Speaker 4: we're going to go or a cafe. We go there,
Speaker 4: hang out, get a workout done, connect with each other,
Speaker 4: check in with each other, and you drive away you chitch.
Speaker 3: Feel good.
Speaker 1: Well when you think about it.
Speaker 2: So what Jackie's talking about everyone is there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of people that I kind of help and a few friends.
Speaker 2: And one is Johnny that you know that got blown
Speaker 2: up in the gas bottle accidents, and another one is
Speaker 2: the crab that you've heard about, who literally died at
Speaker 2: the gym for seventeen minutes, and his daughter Jamie, who's
Speaker 2: a freak, and you know Chris, and I'd coat some
Speaker 2: friends of mine who who have just gotten on board.
Speaker 2: And there's just this eclectic mix of humans and like
Speaker 2: in normal life, in whatever that means, we would never intersect.
Speaker 2: Like everybody is so different, so wildly different, and big
Speaker 2: Christian everybody's so different. But in that place, there are
Speaker 2: no differences. Everybody's just there for the same reason to
Speaker 2: have a good time, to lift some weights, to do
Speaker 2: something good for their body. And it's kind of the
Speaker 2: great equalizer I think in some ways working out together.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, I agree. And by the way, you actually
Speaker 4: call us the merry band and misfits. Okay, so it
Speaker 4: doesn't say the eclctic group of humans, it's the misfits. Hey,
Speaker 4: I'm getting the misfits together.
Speaker 3: Do you want to come?
Speaker 4: I'm like, right, Okay, I've been labeled, but I'm happy
Speaker 4: to be labeled. You're right, we would never have intersected.
Speaker 4: But wow, what I've learnt by Johnny and he's resilience
Speaker 4: to be there and to show up and everyone will
Speaker 4: drop there waits to help him out because he's just
Speaker 4: such a fighter and just the whole group and it
Speaker 4: isn't equal because whilst I've been to five Olympic Games
Speaker 4: and one, you know, five world titles, you look at
Speaker 4: Jamie over there and I could never have done or
Speaker 4: do what she does. So there's all there, and there's inspiration,
Speaker 4: and there's there's really just I'm just so excited for
Speaker 4: her and obviously her body and everybody else, like everyone's
Speaker 4: physical journey.
Speaker 3: That's I'm proud of them.
Speaker 2: You, you know, with your most people probably don't know this,
Speaker 2: but your your main correct me if I'm wrong, But
Speaker 2: your main job in inverted comments these days is standing
Speaker 2: on a stage and talking to groups in various you know,
Speaker 2: primarily in the corporate space, but you do skills and
Speaker 2: you do other things, but a lot of corporate and
Speaker 2: here and all over the world. Do you kind of
Speaker 2: have the same level of all the same energy of
Speaker 2: I need to be fucking awesome at this because I know,
Speaker 2: like you've done a lot of presenting. I've done a
Speaker 2: lot of presenting, like I can and I don't, but
Speaker 2: I can kind of almost just walk on stage auto pilot,
Speaker 2: do my thing, but be amusing, be engaging, tell a
Speaker 2: few stories, say share some thoughts and ideas and just
Speaker 2: rely on miles on the clock and bit of skill
Speaker 2: and a bit of awareness and.
Speaker 1: Walk off right. I try not to do that.
Speaker 2: I try to be very present and I want everyone
Speaker 2: to be the best one I've ever done. Are you
Speaker 2: kind of competitive with yourself in terms of being the
Speaker 2: best you you could ever be on stage? But not
Speaker 2: only I feel like you want to be the best
Speaker 2: speaker in Australia that's paid the most as well?
Speaker 4: Well, I want to be this. I definitely want to
Speaker 4: be the best speaker. But what I love is a challenge.
Speaker 4: So when I do a speaker brief, so once you
Speaker 4: get booked for a job, two weeks before the event,
Speaker 4: you make contact. FUR will contact with the client and
Speaker 4: the client tells you about the event and normally the
Speaker 4: client will say, wow, gee, this has been an event
Speaker 4: we've had the last ten years, we've had some really
Speaker 4: great speakers. The best speaker Where've ever had was I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: the best speaker right, I'm like, I want to be
Speaker 4: the best speaker. And I actually say to them, if
Speaker 4: you don't think I'm the best speaker.
Speaker 5: When I'm finished, you don't actually have to pay me.
Speaker 4: And they're like, no, stop, stop it stop, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: I am serious.
Speaker 3: If you don't think that I.
Speaker 4: Was better than your best speaker last time you had
Speaker 4: this event, don't pay me, because I want him to
Speaker 4: feel absolutely excited by that, thinking, Okay, he's froffing at
Speaker 4: the mouth, he's excited, thinking she's so competitive. And usually
Speaker 4: nine times out of ten, the MC will say, well,
Speaker 4: it looks like we actually have to pay this Jackie
Speaker 4: Mouth because she was the best speaker. I try to
Speaker 4: bring a lot of energy to this to the stage.
Speaker 4: I am the double espresso that the audience didn't even
Speaker 4: realize they needed, wanted, or had. They just leave with
Speaker 4: so much energy. And it's by the way I engage,
Speaker 4: It's the way I project, It's the way I connect
Speaker 4: with the audience.
Speaker 3: And I just want to bring them on my journey
Speaker 3: and it.
Speaker 4: Will lift them up, but will feel like that they
Speaker 4: can do anything and hopefully cart Wiel out of the
Speaker 4: auditorium or out of the venue feeling like life is
Speaker 4: good and I'm ready to go and attack it with
Speaker 4: a champion attitude.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And some people are going to be listening to
Speaker 2: this a small percentage going, oh, gee, she's pretty happy
Speaker 2: with herself. But I'm telling you that's actually all true.
Speaker 2: She actually is phenomenal. So if you've got heaps cash,
Speaker 2: you know, and you're running an event, you know, just
Speaker 2: reach out.
Speaker 4: I also got a research to Craig. I know you
Speaker 4: touched on that saying that you want to be prepared
Speaker 4: and stay present. I don't take for granted what I do,
Speaker 4: and I don't just clip the ticket either, So I
Speaker 4: show up hours in advance, and if there's tables to
Speaker 4: be set or conference showbacks, I go and put them
Speaker 4: to help out the event organizer, like I'm happy to
Speaker 4: be there, I'm grateful to be there. I want to
Speaker 4: feel like that I'm a part of the event and
Speaker 4: I wasn't just a transaction. I'm a big one on
Speaker 4: old style relationships. You build them respectfully, and I do
Speaker 4: a lot of research into your business, into the people
Speaker 4: that I'll be speaking to, so that when the questions
Speaker 4: are asked, I can answer with meaning and that it
Speaker 4: will mean something to them and hopefully they can use
Speaker 4: it within their personal and their professional lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that ability when you're working with a
Speaker 2: group to be able to understand their culture, their needs,
Speaker 2: what it is they do, who, what their product and
Speaker 2: services are, who their customers are, what's going great in
Speaker 2: their organization, what's not going great, what are their challenges,
Speaker 2: and why they're you know, I asked that, I go,
Speaker 2: why are you bringing me in?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And sometimes they go, oh, well, we need to speak.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, is there anything else?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So it's yeah.
Speaker 2: But if you can understand the culture of the organization
Speaker 2: and the needs of the organization and where they're at
Speaker 2: into you know, dynamically with the group, with the business,
Speaker 2: with even with the P and L perhaps or just
Speaker 2: at how long they've been around, what it is they do,
Speaker 2: what's going great, what's not going great, and then then
Speaker 2: you can share your stuff but be relevant.
Speaker 4: To them, yes, definitely. And then if you have no relevance,
Speaker 4: then there's no importance. There's no meaning for you to
Speaker 4: be there, so it means nothing. And you want to
Speaker 4: make connections. When you've made a connection with someone, you
Speaker 4: know that you're making change right, and change is so important.
Speaker 3: But I honestly feel so grateful.
Speaker 4: I mean, besides being speaking too, I work for the
Speaker 4: Trope Financial as you know, as a brand ambassador, so
Speaker 4: I get to do some really amazing things for them.
Speaker 4: My recent one was up for international women, say, inspiring
Speaker 4: women within the finance industry. I'm doing a staff event
Speaker 4: for them tomorrow. Imagine new staff coming in and they're
Speaker 4: hit with the dose of me. They're like, who is
Speaker 4: this woman? So I've got some really really great clients. Obviously,
Speaker 4: I work for some great people La Trobe, the Mount
Speaker 4: Buller and a whole lot of other people. So it's
Speaker 4: been a great thirteen years since I retired, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I've spoken with.
Speaker 2: When I say spoken with, I've spoken on the same
Speaker 2: program as quite a lot of Olympians, probably twenty Olympians,
Speaker 2: I reckon. I'll tell you off air who. But there's
Speaker 2: a couple, God bless them, and they're good, but they're
Speaker 2: a bit of a one trick pony, like they basically
Speaker 2: tell the same you know. Like there are some that
Speaker 2: I've been at four different conferences and they've spoken and
Speaker 2: they have one keynote and it goes for the exact
Speaker 2: same amount of time because it's all choreographed, the same music,
Speaker 2: the same videos, the same everything. So it's essentially a performance.
Speaker 2: Please tell me you don't do that.
Speaker 4: It depends on actually what they want. So I would
Speaker 4: say that my after dinner because it's meant to be
Speaker 4: a bit light, very engaging.
Speaker 3: It's a different audience.
Speaker 4: That is a very different style of presentation than what
Speaker 4: you would give when you're standing in front of a
Speaker 4: conference and they're saying exit, enter stage left, exit stage right,
Speaker 4: and there's a theme and you've got to hit all
Speaker 4: of the high notes. The after dinner or even the
Speaker 4: breakfast one, it's more punchy, it's shorter, the presentation has
Speaker 4: to lift faster, so constantly changing my presentation. I competed
Speaker 4: for twenty years. I've got twenty years worth of stories,
Speaker 4: so be very boring if I just repeated the same
Speaker 4: two or three stories. So I'm always begging for either
Speaker 4: more time so I can tell more stories. Because they're
Speaker 4: all great ones, and you've heard a lot of them.
Speaker 4: I've had some fun stuff happen, which all have great meaning,
Speaker 4: and there would be I think a benefit to companies
Speaker 4: hearing all of the stories. But you don't get all
Speaker 4: of the time. And sometimes people say, my friend heard
Speaker 4: you speak. I want you to just do that because
Speaker 4: they know that that work for that other person, and
Speaker 4: they know that that was good enough for their audience.
Speaker 4: But by the time you do a speaker brief, you
Speaker 4: generally talk about what it is, why people are coming together,
Speaker 4: how often are you having it, what type of engagement
Speaker 4: do they need? Is it more conversation or is it
Speaker 4: just a straight pinot no questions?
Speaker 3: They're all very different.
Speaker 2: When you get on stage, what's your overwhelming or perhaps
Speaker 2: underlying emotional state.
Speaker 1: Is it excitement? Is it anxiety? Is it fear?
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's not anxiety or fear.
Speaker 1: Is it like?
Speaker 3: What are you?
Speaker 1: What are you feeling? Or are you just really calm
Speaker 1: and focused? Like?
Speaker 2: What's your like? I'm interested because I know how I am.
Speaker 2: And also this is such a source of fucking terror
Speaker 2: for so many human beings. The idea of you've got
Speaker 2: to get up in front of all of those people,
Speaker 2: talk for an hour, don't say, don't fuck up, be interesting,
Speaker 2: be a bit funny, and we're all going to sit
Speaker 2: there and evaluate you ready, set go right. That's horrifying
Speaker 2: for people, but that's the real of what goes on.
Speaker 2: So what are you feeling when you get up?
Speaker 4: So start my keynote, I show a six minute video,
Speaker 4: which is a non negotiable for me. I'm really lucky
Speaker 4: that Bruce McAvaney and I became quite close over my career,
Speaker 4: and when I retired, he put together a video like
Speaker 4: a mini movie of my career and he narrates it.
Speaker 2: So he but that's not fair. That's like, that's fucking steroids,
Speaker 2: Like you're on the gear, like that is literally performance enhancing.
Speaker 4: Well, you know what I feel like at that point,
Speaker 4: I don't even need to do anything because they're already
Speaker 4: like they're in. When I get clients saying we don't
Speaker 4: really want to have that sort of audio setup, we
Speaker 4: don't really want to have major av I'm like, listen,
Speaker 4: you need to have visits, Bruce. Bruce is like my entree.
Speaker 4: You know, when you go to a great restaurant and
Speaker 4: you eat an entree and it's amazing. You're like, fuck,
Speaker 4: if that's the entree, I can't wait for.
Speaker 3: The main course.
Speaker 4: And he gets my audience primed, ready salivating. So this
Speaker 4: video plays and while the videos play, it's six minutes,
Speaker 4: I'm actually watching a video going Oh my left arm
Speaker 4: was two bent and I could have added that better,
Speaker 4: like I'm actually critiquing myself from vision from moments that
Speaker 4: happened twenty years ago. So I sort of watched the video.
Speaker 4: I'm watching the crowd. Twenty percent of the people start
Speaker 4: crying during the video because Bruce does that to people
Speaker 4: just with the words. And then I come up and
Speaker 4: I'm ready to sort of extend that moment that he's
Speaker 4: already had with them. So I'm usually, you know, foaming
Speaker 4: at the mouth, throwing at the bit, ready to go,
Speaker 4: and I just come up.
Speaker 3: It's NonStop.
Speaker 4: It's forty five minutes, barely taking a breath, never taking
Speaker 4: a drink of water. And the only time I stop
Speaker 4: is where I'm asking the crowds of questions.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: All right, well we can only chat briefly today because
Speaker 2: you've got a very busy day because you're because you're
Speaker 2: a big deal, as you keep telling me, Oh no,
Speaker 2: you're a big deal.
Speaker 1: It's all right, We're okay.
Speaker 4: With it, but is an idiot. I don't go around
Speaker 4: saying I'm a big deal idiot?
Speaker 1: Oops? Stay there, we'll say goodbye there.
Speaker 2: But do you want to tell anyone anything where they
Speaker 2: can find you or website or anything? Ah?
Speaker 4: Sure, So I'm exclusive with Saxon speakers. If you want
Speaker 4: to hear more from me your next conference, go to
Speaker 4: Saxton's or you can message me and I'll send you
Speaker 4: to the.
Speaker 3: Right people.
Speaker 4: And we forget together in a couple of weeks so
Speaker 4: we can talk about the thing that we can't talk about.
Speaker 1: We will definitely be back.
Speaker 2: We'll chat for longer in a couple of weeks, but
Speaker 2: for the minute, everyone, love your guts as your collective gutzs.
Speaker 1: See you soon.