Speaker 1: I get a team, your bloody champions. Hope you're great.
Speaker 1: So your project Russell and Tara Jarrett from at Pilates
Speaker 1: and Kayabram and all over the world. They're entrepreneurs there,
Speaker 1: they're adventurers. They're lifelong, not lifelong grown up life friends
Speaker 1: of my lifelong friends of mine, high kids. How are you? Oh,
Speaker 1: I lovely mate, how are you look? I'm I'm going
Speaker 1: to be honest. I was going to say I'm fucking amazing,
Speaker 1: and I am. I'm generally fucking amazing, and emotionally and
Speaker 1: mentally I'm fucking amazing. But it's four oh seven that
Speaker 1: I did a workshop this morning, as I was telling
Speaker 1: you off air, and the people that were there were beautiful,
Speaker 1: Hello are you beautiful people that were there? But I
Speaker 1: pretty much spent about five and a half hours, six
Speaker 1: hours just talking and even after about three hours, I
Speaker 1: hate myself. So I don't know how they cope. But
Speaker 1: it's do you know when you do something and when
Speaker 1: you're doing it, you're in the zone and you don't
Speaker 1: realize how fatigued you are, But then when you stop,
Speaker 1: like seven minute, it's lady, you're completely fucked and you
Speaker 1: just want to lie in a bean bag and have
Speaker 1: a bit of a meltdown. That was me. That was me,
Speaker 1: But you guys are doing a version of that, but
Speaker 1: extrapolated over about two years, building this fucking empire of yours.
Speaker 1: Before we get into that, Tara, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good? How are you? I don't seen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. I look at me, Look at me?
Speaker 1: How good do I look? How good do I look?
Speaker 1: In my fake you project studio that no one can
Speaker 1: see except you?
Speaker 2: I know, it's very impressive. I did have to start
Speaker 2: wonder where you were.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, this is the this is a virtual version
Speaker 1: of the actual studio nover that I'm too lazy to
Speaker 1: go into. I can't be fuck because I'm lazy. Well
Speaker 1: you know. And but they are. They are awesome in there.
Speaker 1: And Rusty Jarrett excise physiologist, man about town, husband of one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm good man. I'm hanging on, hanging on for
Speaker 3: the ride as well, just like you are, you know,
Speaker 3: just getting the work done and then collapsing at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, but waking up and going again.
Speaker 3: It's good. Now we're having a good time with it,
Speaker 3: We really are.
Speaker 1: Who's the boss? Don't bullshit me?
Speaker 3: Oh, Tara well and truly the boss now absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 3: and I am more than but she's always like she's
Speaker 3: always by default being the boss. We both know that, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's the unwritten rule in all relationships. So
Speaker 1: we're not here to do an ad for at pilates,
Speaker 1: but we are going to. I like talking to people
Speaker 1: who are in the middle of building good things and
Speaker 1: you know, turning ideas into reality. Most people who listen
Speaker 1: to this show on some level want to create some
Speaker 1: kind of positive shift on planet them. Speaking of gym's nothing,
Speaker 1: you know, but you're in the fitness well in the space.
Speaker 1: Did you see where Brad and Carly from the fit
Speaker 1: shop there Jim burnt to the ground. Did you see that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did see that, And I was trying to
Speaker 3: follow the resurrection of that gym because it looked like
Speaker 3: they enlisted the help of you know, friends, family and members.
Speaker 3: It just looked like there was like an episode of
Speaker 3: renovation Rescue or something like that. Is that how it
Speaker 3: all went down?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well they last Sunday we got together, so seven
Speaker 1: days ago we got together young Tiff. As everyone knows
Speaker 1: who's going to be editing this episode. Tiff and Joel Sardi,
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, and doctor Jody Richardson and myself.
Speaker 1: We all got together and had a bit of a chat.
Speaker 1: We did a workshop. We did an afternoon workshop for
Speaker 1: people who all paid a few bucks to be there,
Speaker 1: not for us, but to support the reinvention, the fucking
Speaker 1: genesis of the new center. And yeah, it was amazing,
Speaker 1: but you're right, they did a working be rusty, So
Speaker 1: the joint burnt down on a Sunday. This is fucking amazing, really,
Speaker 1: and they found a new premises three doors down. Oh
Speaker 1: and they wheeled and dealed right, So it's literally in
Speaker 1: the same court. It's not even a very big court.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it was. The next might
Speaker 1: have been fourteen let's see Friday, thirteen days later. So
Speaker 1: on the not the next weekend, but the one after,
Speaker 1: they had somewhere around one hundred people. Picture that, a
Speaker 1: hundred like imagine a hundred people that love you and
Speaker 1: care about you enough to come and volunteer their time.
Speaker 1: So lots of tradees, lots of mums and dads and kids.
Speaker 1: That they had the best part of one hundred people
Speaker 1: there and some of them were there for fourteen hours
Speaker 1: two days in a row. Well, so they took this
Speaker 1: joint from a messy, stinky shell to a gym in
Speaker 1: about forty eight hours. And they're still they're still getting
Speaker 1: some equipment. But like I said, I was there last week,
Speaker 1: so last Sunday was fifty days since the fire, Rusty.
Speaker 1: I'm not just saying this because we're on a podcast.
Speaker 1: It is hands down the best PT center slash group
Speaker 1: training center like Harper's Brighton in the day was pretty
Speaker 1: fucking impressive because it was nearly ten thousand square feet.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, this is better. Well i'd
Speaker 1: say it kills me, but it's better. Fucking amazing. They've
Speaker 1: done such a great job. And yeah, it's amazing when
Speaker 1: people collaborate and care and come together. I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but I reckon if my gym burned down,
Speaker 1: I'm not getting one hundred people. I'm getting you two
Speaker 1: and Mary. Mary'll be bacon scones.
Speaker 2: And this is a lot about them people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing. Well I think you know one of that.
Speaker 1: You two know. I mean, for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: Russ and Tara and I work together. We had a
Speaker 1: gym together in Corefield than they into Callabrum and set
Speaker 1: up a beautiful gym up there and their sense doing
Speaker 1: different things which will unpack, but you know, part of
Speaker 1: owning a gym is building a culture and building as
Speaker 1: Brad calls it, a third place, right, a place where
Speaker 1: people want to be and you know, to build that
Speaker 1: space that people love to go to. Apart from having
Speaker 1: good equipment and a nice space and good resources, like
Speaker 1: trying to create a culture and an environment where people
Speaker 1: love to go to. That's not as easy as it sounds, no.
Speaker 4: And it's hugely important. It's one thing that's a huge
Speaker 4: part of what we do too. We always talk about
Speaker 4: you've got to build your community within your within your center,
Speaker 4: within your space. People have got to want to be there,
Speaker 4: they've got to love being there.
Speaker 1: So you too, you two are building an organization called
Speaker 1: at Pilates so for people who don't and again this
Speaker 1: is no sales pitch everyone, this is just it's just
Speaker 1: kind of an update on where these guys are at.
Speaker 1: But what is what is that Pilarates Tara.
Speaker 4: Basically our polarties where the first we were the only
Speaker 4: twenty four hour franchise for reformer polarts in Australia. So
Speaker 4: we're the first first studio that actually offers reformer polarties
Speaker 4: twenty four to seven. We're a hybrid studio, so we
Speaker 4: do have we have staff for approximately twelve hours, but
Speaker 4: participants can come whenever they want, and we've developed a
Speaker 4: platform that has over two hundred classes where people can
Speaker 4: access any time, any type of class they want to do,
Speaker 4: anytime that they want to do it in a beautiful
Speaker 4: environment and still have that, as.
Speaker 2: You said, sense of community and staff.
Speaker 4: There to help them when they want. And people are
Speaker 4: just loving it.
Speaker 1: So in the twelve hours where they are not staff,
Speaker 1: I come in and how do I do a class?
Speaker 1: Because there's no one there to bloody show me.
Speaker 4: So each each reformer or each piece of equipment has
Speaker 4: a dedicated screen that moves around that reformer carriage, and
Speaker 4: they wear noise canceling headphones and they access their class
Speaker 4: via a screen that's dedicated to that particular carriage. So
Speaker 4: you could be doing a beginner's class and put your
Speaker 4: headphones on and you can only hear what's on the screen.
Speaker 4: You're not just disturbing anyone else, and the person besides
Speaker 4: you might be doing you a backcare class or an
Speaker 4: advanced class, and so you've got a whole group of
Speaker 4: people doing different classes at the same time, and they're
Speaker 4: real time classes instructed with.
Speaker 2: Highly qualified instructors.
Speaker 4: We've got a whole team of instructors from around Australia
Speaker 4: and we're building that team all the time, and they've all.
Speaker 2: Got specialties in different areas of pilates.
Speaker 4: And yeah, you can come and do a fantastic class
Speaker 4: from eight minutes to fifty six minutes, depending on how
Speaker 4: much time you've got and the type of class you
Speaker 4: want to do.
Speaker 1: So I started in the fitness industry in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two working, which is forty two years ago. Fucking a way. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean what we do know even since you two started,
Speaker 1: you know, not that long. I mean a while after that,
Speaker 1: but not long after that, probably thirty years ago, thirty
Speaker 1: plus years ago, Like the fitness industry has been in
Speaker 1: a constant state of evolution and development and reinvention. And
Speaker 1: remember when I mean Tara, you you owned a business
Speaker 1: called High Energy Network, which is now called Australian Fitness Academy.
Speaker 1: That's what's called, isn't it yep? And you know you
Speaker 1: and I intersected because I was doing this thing called
Speaker 1: personal training, and everyone was going, that's not a thing,
Speaker 1: and you recognize that it was a thing, and not
Speaker 1: only was it a thing, we probably should have I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some kind of qualification and course, and
Speaker 1: you being the academic, I was about as academic as
Speaker 1: a fucking moccason at that stage. So with the IQ
Speaker 1: of a wombat. So you took me under your wing
Speaker 1: and said, I know you're not an academic, but can
Speaker 1: we can we put together some kind of qualification and
Speaker 1: do you want to be involved in that? And I
Speaker 1: went sure. And then we've spoken about before on the
Speaker 1: podcast the quality of the notes that I gave you,
Speaker 1: which was with crayon on butcher paper. But it's interesting,
Speaker 1: like because when we started back in the day when
Speaker 1: I firstly, when I started personal training, there weren't really
Speaker 1: maybe there were others, but I didn't know any, and
Speaker 1: there certainly were no other personal training or commercial personal
Speaker 1: training centers. And when you started developing and designing the
Speaker 1: first accreditation for personal trainers, it was very much like
Speaker 1: the ugly stepchild of the fitness industry. Right. It's like
Speaker 1: nobody thought it was going to happen. Everybody. That's a
Speaker 1: terrible thing. To say Craig, like, nobody thought it would
Speaker 1: catch fire, and even me, like I had family friends,
Speaker 1: older people would go, you know, basically, surf that wave
Speaker 1: while it's happening, because it's going to peter out, and
Speaker 1: you know, but it's good that you're doing it and
Speaker 1: you're making a good But people are going to catch
Speaker 1: on pretty soon and figure out why the fuck would
Speaker 1: I pay one hundred dollars a week, which doesn't seem
Speaker 1: much now but back then was a fortune. Why would
Speaker 1: I do that when I can join a gym for
Speaker 1: three or four hundred dollars a year. But it's it
Speaker 1: doesn't stop changing and adapting our industry does it.
Speaker 3: It's it's probably a blessing and a disguise. I mean,
Speaker 3: the fitness industry is unique in that regard because it
Speaker 3: sometimes changes too quickly, and it sometimes changes without necessarily
Speaker 3: the need to. And for that reason, I think what
Speaker 3: the fitness industry has created without really wanting to do so,
Speaker 3: is this almost this desire for people to expect continuous change,
Speaker 3: continuous evolution, and there's got to be something new that
Speaker 3: the consumer needs to be able to have offered to
Speaker 3: them every six to twelve months. You know that's that's
Speaker 3: great because it keeps us thinking, it keeps us stimulated.
Speaker 3: But sometimes I think the consumer moves on too quickly,
Speaker 3: and their attention span or their ability to focus on
Speaker 3: one specific program or style of exercise is sometimes incredibly short.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a blessing and a disguise. I think, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I mean, movement's movement, right, And it's
Speaker 1: sometimes one of the kids in the gym goes to me,
Speaker 1: what do you think of that black pa pa squad?
Speaker 1: And I'm like what And they look at me like, oh,
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what that is? And I go, what
Speaker 1: will show me? And I go that's Assumo spot or
Speaker 1: that's this or that's that, or or like I go, well,
Speaker 1: where the fuck did you get that name? And they
Speaker 1: got it off some YouTuber right, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: hip flexion is hip flexion and the extension is the extension,
Speaker 1: and you know what, and they'll go, you know. It's
Speaker 1: like somebody said to me the other day, what's the
Speaker 1: best bicep exercise? And I said, well, they are all
Speaker 1: the same thing. They're all elbow flexion underload, and they're like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean and I go, well, a bicep
Speaker 1: curl from an anatomical point of view is also known
Speaker 1: as elbowflexion. And you can use a dumb bell, a barbell,
Speaker 1: a machine, a cable, a fucking kettle bell, bloke holding
Speaker 1: a towel. It's all the same movement underload. And yes,
Speaker 1: you can pronate or superinnate your hand or have it
Speaker 1: in a neutral position or do full reps or harp
Speaker 1: reps or And they're like ah, because they don't actually
Speaker 1: like a lot of God bless their little socks, a
Speaker 1: lot of trainers don't actually know fucking functional anatomy. No,
Speaker 1: like the amount of trainers who don't actually know anatomy
Speaker 1: and physiology and biomechanics, And it's like terrifying. And they're
Speaker 1: the people. By the way, everyone, there are some fucking
Speaker 1: great trainers, but just like any trade or industry, there
Speaker 1: are some dog shit ones. So you know you need
Speaker 1: to the best way to find a good trainer. I find,
Speaker 1: or I tell people is by recommendation. You know, the
Speaker 1: whole trial and error thing probably not great.
Speaker 4: That was a premise behind us even doing this, because
Speaker 4: we've worked in the industry for so long. We had
Speaker 4: a gym, you know, forever we'd been involved in group
Speaker 4: X and PT and pilates and other forms of group exercise,
Speaker 4: finding instructors and finding good instructors was impossible and getting
Speaker 4: increasingly more difficult. And we just found, especially in areas
Speaker 4: we were in the country, finding great instructors in the
Speaker 4: country was almost impossible, especially in an area like for example, pilarates,
Speaker 4: which is quite special specialty, you just couldn't find them.
Speaker 4: And then you could find them, they either wanted to
Speaker 4: be paid a four tune, couldn't instruct the times you
Speaker 4: wanted to instruct, they'd move on to another another gym,
Speaker 4: want to be paid more. And that's the reason why
Speaker 4: a lot of we're finding a lot of Flighty studios
Speaker 4: now are actually changing to our particular type of model
Speaker 4: because it takes that staff headache away because we're providing
Speaker 4: the classes for them.
Speaker 2: And you're exactly right, because you can't find them.
Speaker 1: And think about the think about the number of personal
Speaker 1: training centers over the last thirty years in just Melbourne
Speaker 1: group training, personal training or similar f forty five you know,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah that have come and gone. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm not trying to throw anyone under
Speaker 1: the bus because Harpers also came and went I got
Speaker 1: out of that, you know, we got out of that,
Speaker 1: and there's everything has a use by date. But I
Speaker 1: think one of the challenges is that, I mean, within reason,
Speaker 1: anyone can get a personal training qualification in a relatively
Speaker 1: short time yep, which is good and bad. It's good
Speaker 1: for the people who want to be qualified quickly. It's
Speaker 1: not so great for the industry from a credibility point
Speaker 1: of view. It's not so great for the clients from
Speaker 1: a safety and an exercise science point of view, because
Speaker 1: you've got, you know, somebody who perhaps you know needs
Speaker 1: a lot more knowledge and a lot more runs on
Speaker 1: the board and a lot more skill development. And that's
Speaker 1: not being critical because there was a time when Craig
Speaker 1: Arper was fucking terrible. I'm still terrible at some things.
Speaker 1: But you know, I would not wanted to have trained
Speaker 1: with me in the first twelve months of my career
Speaker 1: because I was an idiot, you know. And I would
Speaker 1: say I was in the industry for five, six seven
Speaker 1: years before I wasn't terrible, you know. But you can
Speaker 1: only be what you can be, and I didn't even
Speaker 1: do an exercise science degree till I was in my thirties,
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying that I'm the high watermark. But
Speaker 1: the truth is that you think about what a responsible
Speaker 1: job it is to go, oh, here's my body, here's
Speaker 1: this irreplaceable gift that I can't get a new one of.
Speaker 1: Tell me what I should do with it. Oh yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I've done a twelve week course. This is what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Fuck andll it's a little bit terrifying in some ways, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's one of those it's a largely
Speaker 3: unregulated industry. It's it at times has a low barrier
Speaker 3: to entry. Okay, so that allows a lot of good
Speaker 3: people to be involved in the industry. But when you've
Speaker 3: got you know, basically an open an open door to
Speaker 3: access to work in that space, you're gonna, as you say,
Speaker 3: you're going to have some good and some bad. So
Speaker 3: it's I think it's to reemphasize your point. If you're
Speaker 3: a consumer listening to this and you're thinking about being
Speaker 3: involved with PT or choosing a gym, or choosing a studio,
Speaker 3: or choosing someone to manage your health, you should pay
Speaker 3: particular attention to what the background of that person is
Speaker 3: because they ask questions and find out a little bit
Speaker 3: about them.
Speaker 1: And then also, lets let's go off at a tangent
Speaker 1: and let's go so let's say we find somebody who
Speaker 1: even they've got a master's degree like you, Rusty, and
Speaker 1: they know they're anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and nutrition
Speaker 1: and they can write programs, but they're really fucking boring
Speaker 1: to be around. It's like you don't want to go back.
Speaker 1: I mean I know that that shouldn't matter, but it
Speaker 1: does matter. Like if you are going to see a
Speaker 1: trainer three times a week or two times a week, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want you want science and knowledge and you want
Speaker 1: good advice. But also fuck if I'm going to hang
Speaker 1: out with Brian Monday, Wednesday and Friday, fuck, And I
Speaker 1: hope he can hold a conversation. Also, I hope he
Speaker 1: gives a shit about me. Also, I hope he's a
Speaker 1: good human. I mean, he doesn't have to be the
Speaker 1: DEALI lama, But if I'm just a meal ticket, then Brian,
Speaker 1: even with all your knowledge, Yeah, it's a multitude of
Speaker 1: variables that come. Like you think about the people that
Speaker 1: you know that worked for you guys that were fucking special.
Speaker 1: I mean it was a bit about their caals and
Speaker 1: their knowledge, but often it was caals and knowledge matter,
Speaker 1: which we've established. But then like that, people that are
Speaker 1: really great at whether or not it's teaching pilates or
Speaker 1: being a doctor, or being an exercise physiologist or a
Speaker 1: personal trainer, a lot of that is really about just
Speaker 1: their personality, their people's skills, and maybe their empathy.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, yeah, there's a skill. And I think
Speaker 3: the skill is I think it's diminishing a little bit,
Speaker 3: and that is the human ability to connect with someone
Speaker 3: very quickly and in a way that keeps that person mentally,
Speaker 3: emotionally and I guess yeah, mentally and emotionally engaged with you.
Speaker 3: And I think because my belief is that connection is
Speaker 3: more important than ever, but we're worse at it than
Speaker 3: we've ever been. So the ability for someone to work
Speaker 3: with a client and actually have that client enjoy the
Speaker 3: process as well as be consistent in the process is
Speaker 3: a real skill. It's hard, it's not easy to do.
Speaker 4: We have owners come to us constantly and you know,
Speaker 4: what should I look for in a you know, on
Speaker 4: a staff member, what's the most important thing I should
Speaker 4: be looking for, you know, in someone that works in
Speaker 4: my studio and constantly I talk to them about it.
Speaker 4: It's finding someone that can can connect. It's finding someone
Speaker 4: that can be with your members and your members love
Speaker 4: being around and can communicate and have fun and just
Speaker 4: enjoy the space and make people feel like they're having
Speaker 4: a fantastic experience in your studio.
Speaker 2: That's the most important part.
Speaker 4: The rest you can teach, but they've got to be communicators,
Speaker 4: So that, to me, that's the number one thing that
Speaker 4: they've got to look for.
Speaker 1: And you know, what's a really interesting thing around this
Speaker 1: connection piece and sociology and psychology and having people that
Speaker 1: give a fuck about you. I mean, really, you know,
Speaker 1: we now know I mean we've kind of known, but
Speaker 1: now we're getting real clarity around the fact that the
Speaker 1: way that people socialize has a direct impact on their
Speaker 1: immune system, their health, their longevity, their health span. And
Speaker 1: we know that people who and there are more and
Speaker 1: more people becoming socially isolated and disconnected and in some ways,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess the Internet and social media is
Speaker 1: a problem. In some ways it can be a blessing.
Speaker 1: I guess for people who live in remote areas. But
Speaker 1: you know, of course we talk about xcis. Of course
Speaker 1: we talk about food. Of course we talk about sleep.
Speaker 1: Of course we talk about lifestyle. But more and more
Speaker 1: I'm talking to people about, Hey, you know, lots and
Speaker 1: lots of time on your own probably not great for
Speaker 1: your mental or emotional physical health, you know, being socially isolated,
Speaker 1: you know, not talking to people, you know, living vicariously
Speaker 1: through your phone. It's probably not optimal. And I know
Speaker 1: I sound like an old fuck when I say that,
Speaker 1: but you know, just just that being able to and
Speaker 1: I know not everybody has a choice in this, so
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be uncaring. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone today. I told you I
Speaker 1: ran a workshop this morning. And I won't say who, obviously,
Speaker 1: but someone who ticked all of those boxes. They're really lonely.
Speaker 1: They live by themselves. They haven't had a meaningful relationship
Speaker 1: for over a decade, and I could just hear that
Speaker 1: the despair. And I know that for that person, and
Speaker 1: I only met them today for the first time, I
Speaker 1: know that that's making them physically unwell, you know, just
Speaker 1: and it's not because their diet's bad or their lifestyle
Speaker 1: is bad or they're not exercising, it's because they are
Speaker 1: lonely and disconnected, and that that emotional and psychological and
Speaker 1: sociological reality has a physical consequence.
Speaker 2: We all want we all want human connection. We're pack animals.
Speaker 2: We need a pack. So you know, we're not used
Speaker 2: to We're not built.
Speaker 4: To be completely isolated on our own. But as you said,
Speaker 4: so many people just live twelve hours on their phone
Speaker 4: chick by and they don't actually physically see anyone. They're typing,
Speaker 4: they're texting, they're messaging, but they're not actually in front
Speaker 4: of someone physically communicating, touching, having conversations, you know, out
Speaker 4: of their home environment. So going to somewhere like a gym,
Speaker 4: a pt center, or you know, some form of venue
Speaker 4: where they can actually be part of a community, I
Speaker 4: think is a massive part of people actually, you know,
Speaker 4: being able to find an experience that works for them.
Speaker 2: It's so important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was in Brisbane during the week
Speaker 1: we're recording this Sunday. I was in Brisbane on the
Speaker 1: Wednesday night and Thursday, and I walked up I've got
Speaker 1: a snap membership, snapped the chain of gyms and and
Speaker 1: I'm my card lets me train in any snap, anywhere.
Speaker 1: And I went to this gym that I've never been to,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can just walk in with your card,
Speaker 1: and you know, it wasn't bad. It was you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad. But I was
Speaker 1: in the different areas, but I was in this one area,
Speaker 1: which was kind of the main strength area. I counted
Speaker 1: the people. There were thirteen people including me, so twelve
Speaker 1: and me, I was the only one without headphones. I
Speaker 1: was the only one that wasn't constantly or semi regularly
Speaker 1: looking at his or her phone. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: they're bad, and I'm not saying any of that. I'm like,
Speaker 1: if you had have said to me, and again, fucking
Speaker 1: old man alert, I get it. But it's funny because
Speaker 1: there's like thirteen people in this room, not acknowledging each other,
Speaker 1: not talking, not aware of how much noise they're making
Speaker 1: when they're dropping their fucking weights because they've got noise
Speaker 1: canceling headphones and ac DC or fucking whoever blaring Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, this used to be a really social,
Speaker 1: beautiful environment where you'd meet people, you'd have chats, you'd
Speaker 1: do your weights, there'd be a bit of connection and
Speaker 1: a few and it's just not that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know some gyms are like the Fit Shop with Brad
Speaker 1: and Carley. It's a different vibe, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of these kind of chains and again, old man alert,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. I mean, the reason that they exist
Speaker 1: is to make money, and they make money, so it's
Speaker 1: not an amoral or a bad thing. But as a user,
Speaker 1: as a client, as a member, I just look around.
Speaker 1: I go, it's kind of sad. It's kind of sad,
Speaker 1: and I'm fine, I can do my own thing, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's kind of sad that we humans, like
Speaker 1: we're literally fucking three feet from each other and no
Speaker 1: one's acknowledging anyone or looking or smiling or I'm like, wock,
Speaker 1: imagine what it's going to be like when we get
Speaker 1: fucking VR goggles. We're just going to navigate the world
Speaker 1: with our head in a bucket.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So you're in the gym and you just see people
Speaker 4: with tripods and ring lights and they're chatting that they're
Speaker 4: animated when they're talking into their phone. But as soon
Speaker 4: as they're not talking into their phone. As you said,
Speaker 4: they're not talking to anyone who's physically around them. It's
Speaker 4: the most bizarre.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's like my listeners who don't go to
Speaker 1: the gym would not know what you're talking about. But
Speaker 1: a lot of people now, especially insta you know, superstars
Speaker 1: what they call influences. Now. Back in my day, we
Speaker 1: have the newspaper and the whiteboard, the blackboard. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: so people are taking tripods into the gym now and
Speaker 1: they're filming themselves. And I'm not talking about the odd one.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about every time you go in the gym now,
Speaker 1: someone's doing it. And they have their ring lights, so
Speaker 1: they're being they're making sure their face and their body
Speaker 1: are getting the right type and amount of light. There's
Speaker 1: this whole fucking setup. And yeah, it's it's a show.
Speaker 5: It's anyway, did you use did you did you look
Speaker 5: on with interest when Tony Dorty's banned that and his
Speaker 5: at Dorty's gym, no more social media filming?
Speaker 3: Did you see that?
Speaker 1: I saw that and shout out to Tony for doing that.
Speaker 1: Is like I know, it's like they're a I would
Speaker 1: love to open a gym where and the probably go broke,
Speaker 1: but I'd love to open a gym with no phones.
Speaker 1: I just go leave your phone at reception. It's an
Speaker 1: hour of your life. It'll be there when you get back,
Speaker 1: you know, and music whatever music you want, like interaction,
Speaker 1: you know, verbal intercourse. There we go, let's try that.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a left turn. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you about the business. So Tar, when did you
Speaker 1: because I think it was your idea, not Rusties and
Speaker 1: RUSSI just fucking jumped on board like he does. I mean,
Speaker 1: farcnold you. When did you conceptualize a pilates studio that
Speaker 1: doesn't have to have or doesn't have set class times
Speaker 1: or three dimensional instructors in the room with them with you.
Speaker 1: When did you come up with that idea?
Speaker 2: Look, it was probably started thinking about it even as
Speaker 2: far back as say twenty seventeen eighteen. I had a
Speaker 2: beautiful studio in our gym.
Speaker 4: It had, you know, tens of thousands of dollars worth
Speaker 4: of equipment that sat idle for eighty percent of the
Speaker 4: day because I could only get instructors all myself to
Speaker 4: instruct certain hours of the day. So the rest of
Speaker 4: the time I just sat there and I'm like, this
Speaker 4: is crazy.
Speaker 2: This is the most.
Speaker 4: Beautiful part of our entire gym space. It's one of
Speaker 4: the most expensive parts that's grossly underutilized. And so started
Speaker 4: recording classes because I know personally I had a lot
Speaker 4: of intellectual property and thought, okay, well I'm going to
Speaker 4: start recording classes and then start dabbling with a little
Speaker 4: bit of virtual instructing and played around with it for
Speaker 4: a while, and then COVID came in twenty twenty, as
Speaker 4: we all know, and that was the real instigator for us.
Speaker 4: So for me then it was that opportunity to go
Speaker 4: things are going to be different once we actually do
Speaker 4: open up again, and we could see, well, I could
Speaker 4: see that polarates was there's always that next thing. As
Speaker 4: we're talking about before, what's the next thing, what's the
Speaker 4: growth theory? What are people moving away from and into it?
Speaker 4: At the moment with the fitness industry, and we were
Speaker 4: looking at reformer plarts was starting to become mainstream, and
Speaker 4: so I knew that that was something that was.
Speaker 2: Really important to develop.
Speaker 4: And with our clientele of our gym, we basically asked them,
Speaker 4: what are the things you don't like about group exercise
Speaker 4: and what frustrates you with, you know, not being able
Speaker 4: to get a class you want at the time you want,
Speaker 4: and use them as our sounding board and we came
Speaker 4: up with basically the business plan that we've got now
Speaker 4: and tried to eliminate all the reasons why people didn't
Speaker 4: like going to group exercise or appointment based training and
Speaker 4: the reasons that they were frustrated with it. So twenty
Speaker 4: twenty we played around with the model. Then we did
Speaker 4: it through COVID Believe it or not, spoke to a
Speaker 4: COVID hotline and the police and said, I've got this idea,
Speaker 4: and we did it as a one on one virtual
Speaker 4: where people actually went in and they used their phone
Speaker 4: to enter and could access the classes via the screen,
Speaker 4: and then the next person had come and go.
Speaker 2: And it really people loved it.
Speaker 4: And then once covid was over, we expanded the model
Speaker 4: and we opened five studios to test it, so one
Speaker 4: after another just to see how it.
Speaker 2: Is this really a thing? Have we developed something that
Speaker 2: people like?
Speaker 4: And it just kept growing and people were still, you know,
Speaker 4: wanting to be part of it, and it just took
Speaker 4: off from there and it's just developed so much in
Speaker 4: terms of I guess the platform in terms of what
Speaker 4: that needs to be and what our members want it
Speaker 4: to be. The business concept in terms of even everything
Speaker 4: from the CRM, the booking structure, the security, the staffing,
Speaker 4: just the entire business model, and the studios themselves, what
Speaker 4: people want them to look like, smell like.
Speaker 1: You know, so we probably should mention that that you've
Speaker 1: created a franchise business. We didn't really say that, and
Speaker 1: so and again everyone, this is not a sales pitch,
Speaker 1: but it's just a I just love watching people come
Speaker 1: up with an idea and then make the idea a
Speaker 1: real thing, so it goes from a reality in their
Speaker 1: head to a reality that everyone else can experience. So
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to this, so I'm not
Speaker 1: kind of trying to open a particular door. But if
Speaker 1: I was to go to a regulation, run of the
Speaker 1: mill PT and there are some Pilarates I should say
Speaker 1: Pilarti studio, and there's some beautiful ones. By the way,
Speaker 1: this is it's not like Russ and Tara's model is
Speaker 1: the only good model. There are lots of beautiful pilarate
Speaker 1: studios and amazing instructors. But if I was going to
Speaker 1: go to one and I was going to go to
Speaker 1: the you know, the six am class tomorrow and I
Speaker 1: just want to do a casual what would that cost me? About?
Speaker 3: That would that would cost you about twenty five dollars
Speaker 3: if you were just if you just wanted a one
Speaker 3: off class at a typical studio. At at a studio,
Speaker 3: it will cost you about twenty five dollars at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was.
Speaker 1: More, but anyway, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it depends on it will depend on the studios.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it'll cost you about twenty five dollars to
Speaker 3: do a casual class.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, as you can be up to forty forty
Speaker 4: five dollars a session. So it's that I always we're not
Speaker 4: in the you know, like you said, there's so many
Speaker 4: studios that do amazing classes. We do amazing classes, but
Speaker 4: so do you know fifty other studios that I could
Speaker 4: mention that do fantastic classes.
Speaker 2: So we're not just in the in the business of plarties.
Speaker 4: We're in the business of convenience and affordability and flexibility.
Speaker 2: That's that's what we offer.
Speaker 3: That's different.
Speaker 4: So it's being able to allow people to access it
Speaker 4: at a price that they can afford at a time
Speaker 4: that they want to do it within a type of
Speaker 4: class they want to do an instructor they like.
Speaker 1: So that's the main When you started, did you just
Speaker 1: think you would you would kind of virtualize for one
Speaker 1: of better term your your place in Kiabrum and then
Speaker 1: maybe open another one or two or early days you think, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we could turn this into a franchise model based
Speaker 1: enterprise or when did you think about Because I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but if I had friends and chose something,
Speaker 1: I'd be fused. I've got no idea where to start.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know who to. I'd talk to YouTube, I'd
Speaker 1: talk to you too, That's where I'd start.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there was that was That probably was most
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty one. So most of twenty twenty one
Speaker 3: was all about us opening more studios ourselves and understanding firstly,
Speaker 3: is this something that the market wants? And secondly, is
Speaker 3: this going to be something that we're going to just
Speaker 3: manage ourselves as a company and just open up studios
Speaker 3: where we think they're going to work and as we
Speaker 3: can afford to, or are we going to make this
Speaker 3: a larger entity, which then required the ability to franchise,
Speaker 3: and it took us, I reckon, nearly twelve months to
Speaker 3: work out whether or not we wanted to go down
Speaker 3: the corporate owned or the franchise route. Late twenty one
Speaker 3: we decided yes, this is going to be a franchisable concept.
Speaker 3: And then it took us another year. So all of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two was spent working backwards and forwards with
Speaker 3: our legal team to get the to get everything right
Speaker 3: in terms of process, procedure, documentation, legals. Everything had to
Speaker 3: be done through this legal team to become registered as
Speaker 3: a franchise in Australia. That took us nearly twelve months.
Speaker 3: So once we made the once we made the decision
Speaker 3: in late twenty twenty one, it took us another year
Speaker 3: before November twenty two was when we got our registration
Speaker 3: as a franchise company.
Speaker 2: It's a balls and old decision.
Speaker 1: I bet that was a cheap process.
Speaker 4: I mean yeah, I literally remember the day. I remember
Speaker 4: the day, I remember where I was, and I literally
Speaker 4: had to make the decision whether or not are we
Speaker 4: happy with you know, as I said, we did five
Speaker 4: studios because we thought, well let's just see if this works,
Speaker 4: and we could have just stayed with those five studios
Speaker 4: and you know they were doing really well, and you
Speaker 4: know that's that's a great you know outcome to have
Speaker 4: five really successful studios or do we go, as I said,
Speaker 4: balls and all and really try and make this into something.
Speaker 4: But to make that decision, it's putting everything on the line.
Speaker 4: It's it's dollars and it's everything we had, plus trying
Speaker 4: to find more and every every hour for the next
Speaker 4: two years, literally of our lives to invest into it.
Speaker 4: And once you make that decision, you've got to you've
Speaker 4: got to go with it. But we did truly believe
Speaker 4: in it. Probably the hardest thing for me was I
Speaker 4: was fifty and I'm like, I want to do this
Speaker 4: and fifty I want to do this again.
Speaker 2: Have I got another business in me?
Speaker 4: And it's like, yep, I got one more so and
Speaker 4: this one is the culmination crago of the last thirty years.
Speaker 4: This has got elements of every single business both Russ
Speaker 4: and I have touched in the last thirty years, all
Speaker 4: of our learnings, all of our I think, just everything
Speaker 4: is in this business and that's why it's working too.
Speaker 3: I think that's I think that's the thing I've learned
Speaker 3: the most. When you think about, as you said, taking
Speaker 3: something from a concept to a reality, it literally takes
Speaker 3: not just not just courage, but it takes thirty years
Speaker 3: of intellectual property. So there's parts of our business are
Speaker 3: inspired by what we learned at Harper's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Like we do.
Speaker 3: We do staff education and franchise the education and we
Speaker 3: teach them things that you used to talk about in
Speaker 3: our staff meetings. Right. So there's stuff we learned from Harper's.
Speaker 3: There's stuff we learned from High Energy. There's stuff in
Speaker 3: there that I learned from my own twenty four hour gym.
Speaker 3: There's stuff in there that I've learned from my essence. See,
Speaker 3: there's stuff in there that Tara learned from her business
Speaker 3: called Rouge. So this business is taking all of our
Speaker 3: learnings from thirty years and basically putting it into this
Speaker 3: brand new model that doesn't exist or existed.
Speaker 1: I think also, people like somebody said to me the
Speaker 1: other day, firstly, I'm not taking on new clients, one
Speaker 1: on one clients. But somebody said if I was going
Speaker 1: to do a session with you, how much would it cost?
Speaker 1: And I told them and they're like, that's a lot
Speaker 1: for an hour. I said, you're not paying for an hour,
Speaker 1: you're paying for forty two years that led up to
Speaker 1: the hour. Okay, you're paying for four decades. You're not
Speaker 1: paying for the hour. We're just I'm disseminating to you
Speaker 1: all the shit that I've learned or my study or
Speaker 1: my research, or my experience or my knowledge. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not twisting anyone's arm to sit down
Speaker 1: with me. But if all you want is a cheap coach,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I'm it's confidence too great. We
Speaker 4: know because of that thirty years. I just know, we
Speaker 4: know this business backwards. You could ask me anything and
Speaker 4: I can find the solution. I know, I know the
Speaker 4: answer before you've asked the question type thing, because we've
Speaker 4: experienced it, we've done it, and we know what the
Speaker 4: outcome will be based on, you know, the experience that.
Speaker 2: We've had in the past.
Speaker 4: So it's interesting when you watch a lot of new
Speaker 4: people in the industry that will say I've got this
Speaker 4: great idea and you said, think back, and you go, yeah,
Speaker 4: we did that fifteen years ago. But it's it's it's
Speaker 4: having the confidence here to be confident that everything that
Speaker 4: we think, we you know, the decisions we're making other
Speaker 4: right decisions.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I want to ask you a question. Either
Speaker 1: of you can answer it, all right. So you're at
Speaker 1: a point in your evolution where you've got five gyms
Speaker 1: or five pilates studios. You own them all. They're not franchises,
Speaker 1: they're yours. They're all making dough. You're not trillionaires. But
Speaker 1: it's comfortable and it's nice, and you've got a pretty
Speaker 1: good income and you've turned the idea in your head
Speaker 1: into a real world reality of five different centers studios.
Speaker 1: What's the emotional and psychological stuff that you're weighing up
Speaker 1: when you go, do we pull the trigger and turn
Speaker 1: this into a fucking goliath? Ye? Because there's you could
Speaker 1: have lost the five senses. You could have pulled the
Speaker 1: trigger and ended up with fuck all and been cleaning
Speaker 1: the bogs at Fernwood, right, Shout out to fern What
Speaker 1: I'm doing a gig at Fernwood on Wednesday. Love the
Speaker 1: Fernwood ladies. Right. But you know, you pulled the trigger
Speaker 1: and I'm not surprised that it worked. And it's working.
Speaker 1: But because it's not just a financial and a commercial decision,
Speaker 1: it's an emotional, psychological, sociological, and as you said, you're
Speaker 1: both as old as fark. I'm surprised you're still alive.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot that goes into that, right.
Speaker 2: Augh, hugely.
Speaker 4: And you know, our family, our kids were at that
Speaker 4: critical stage of their education and so our life was
Speaker 4: really busy. We had kids doing year eleven and twelve.
Speaker 4: We had one at university. So you've got to take
Speaker 4: into account their life as well, and you know they're
Speaker 4: sitting back and watching how hard we're working. And to
Speaker 4: make that decision was it was a huge was a
Speaker 4: huge decision. Yeah, I'm laughing now because I'm so don't
Speaker 4: want to go through that again.
Speaker 1: I don't blame you so Russ. I'll ask you this, Rusty,
Speaker 1: because I think you're probably newer to oh maybe you
Speaker 1: both did at the same time. But tell me about
Speaker 1: the pros and cons of franchising. Like to me, there
Speaker 1: seems like a fair bit of upside potentially, But it's
Speaker 1: not all fucking you know, disban bloody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're right, it's not all roses and rainbows,
Speaker 3: no doubt. Oh that's a that's a long answer, but
Speaker 3: I'll give you the brief. The brief is if you
Speaker 3: get it right, if you get it right and you
Speaker 3: do your legals right, and you understand the model right,
Speaker 3: and you're prepared to do the work to create an
Speaker 3: entire structure for someone to follow, and that's a massive undertaking.
Speaker 3: The pro is that you can grow much quicker. That's
Speaker 3: the pro you can you can ask other people to
Speaker 3: buy into your vision and establish studios on the ground
Speaker 3: much faster than what you can because they're actually doing
Speaker 3: it themselves. They're paying for that set up themselves, and
Speaker 3: what I'm supplying them with or what we're supplying them
Speaker 3: with is the knowledge to know how the process of
Speaker 3: the procedures and the model to allow them to do that.
Speaker 3: So that's the pro is that you can grow much
Speaker 3: quicker and people will put the studios on the ground
Speaker 3: throughout Australia for you. The con is that if you
Speaker 3: don't have everything right, the processes, the procedures, the model,
Speaker 3: the infrastructure, the admin and the legals. If you don't
Speaker 3: have that right, you can destroy your brand in a
Speaker 3: very short space of time and you can lose a
Speaker 3: great deal of money yourself and on behalf of the
Speaker 3: other franchisees.
Speaker 2: It has to work for everyone.
Speaker 3: So you've got to be absolutely right. You've got to
Speaker 3: know exactly what you're doing or be able to find
Speaker 3: out what is going on, because if you get it wrong,
Speaker 3: a lot of people are going to lose a lot
Speaker 3: of money and that's not a nice feeling. So you
Speaker 3: know you're taking on a massive amount of responsibility. But
Speaker 3: as Tara said, we had complete belief in what we
Speaker 3: had and the ability to pull it off because I
Speaker 3: didn't prior to one, I did not know the front
Speaker 3: side from the backside of a franchise franchise model. I
Speaker 3: didn't know how it worked really, But it's just learning.
Speaker 3: It's just work, reading, learning, questioning, and it's like it's
Speaker 3: like you, you know, undertaking a PhD. You you didn't
Speaker 3: know the first thing about what it was going to take,
Speaker 3: but you just it was one step at a time
Speaker 3: and that's what we did. It was just like, right,
Speaker 3: what do we need to learn today?
Speaker 2: Eating the elephant?
Speaker 1: What's the so, what's the status report? Tara at the
Speaker 1: moment where how many centers? How many are in the pipeline?
Speaker 1: Without without giving away your p and L, what's your
Speaker 1: kind of what's your prediction We're about to.
Speaker 4: Open up our seventeenth studios, So where where that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I just laughed. I didn't I thought it was. I
Speaker 1: thought you're up to like a dozen. I just laughed.
Speaker 3: Everyone.
Speaker 1: That's that's funny, and that's fucking okay, congrats, Well that's amazing. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're about to open your seventeenth. So you're both rich
Speaker 1: as fuck. All right, carry on.
Speaker 4: And Queensland, you know, is our heaviest state is people
Speaker 4: just love it, love it in Queensland. But what I
Speaker 4: was saying before is they they do they've got to
Speaker 4: work for everyone because they work so well for the
Speaker 4: franchise e. They literally are selling themselves. So we open
Speaker 4: a studio and as soon as we open a studio,
Speaker 4: we get three people from that studio who then want
Speaker 4: to open one, you know, an hour away from that studio.
Speaker 4: And basically, now, as soon as we open an area
Speaker 4: that area it then expands and then it expands into
Speaker 4: another area. So and like you were saying before, you
Speaker 4: know with the gym that you know that their gym
Speaker 4: was better than you remember harp as being. It's for
Speaker 4: the first time I've walked into studios and gone, shit,
Speaker 4: this is better than anything I've ever opened.
Speaker 2: They're amazing.
Speaker 4: So, you know, franchisees are opening beautiful, beautiful at Pilaratei Studios,
Speaker 4: and you know they're opening with one hundred plus members
Speaker 4: and you know, some of them are well over two
Speaker 4: hundred members and maintaining and holding those members. We've got,
Speaker 4: you know, studios that are nearly three years old now
Speaker 4: that are still holding really high memberships. And that's really
Speaker 4: pleasing because the last thing you want is for something
Speaker 4: to work.
Speaker 2: For a short period of time. It's got to work
Speaker 2: long term.
Speaker 4: It's got to be able to create income for people
Speaker 4: for you know, a long period of time, and members
Speaker 4: to want to be part of for a long period
Speaker 4: of time. So it's growing fast and that's probably our
Speaker 4: biggest thing at the moment. We're at that next stage.
Speaker 4: We'll be probably between twenty five and thirty studios by
Speaker 4: the end of the year. But to do that, our
Speaker 4: infrastructure had to grow. So we've for the first time
Speaker 4: brought on full time staff to help us in our HQ,
Speaker 4: our head office, you know, in terms of helping our operations,
Speaker 4: our compliance, our education and platform, our marketing, our filming.
Speaker 4: So we've just done we've now moved into a head
Speaker 4: office in South Melbourne which has our filming studio and
Speaker 4: corporate offices down there. And we've got our own studio
Speaker 4: opening in August, so we're doing a flagship studio in
Speaker 4: South Melbourne which will be absolutely beautiful. So I'm in
Speaker 4: the process of training that at the moment. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: that's exciting.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit offended. I haven't been asked to
Speaker 1: come in and do some filming for any of the
Speaker 1: but I'll just keep an eye on the letterbox. I'll
Speaker 1: just keep it. I'll just keep an eye on the
Speaker 1: mail I mean a public holiday tomorrow, so I'll check Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll just see if there's an invite for Fatty
Speaker 1: Harps to come in and do some power pilates on
Speaker 1: the Reformer. But no offense taken. Do you have like
Speaker 1: just for me? Like all the business stuff is good,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the life stuff. So let's zoom back
Speaker 1: out of the micro of the business and into the
Speaker 1: macro of just your lives as a couple. And you
Speaker 1: know three awesome boys, one of whom is my godson,
Speaker 1: My god son, Mitchie, shout out to you, son. And
Speaker 1: what about the long term do you have an exit strategy.
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to probably give away state secrets,
Speaker 1: but are you going to do this for another year?
Speaker 1: Two years, ten years? And I'm sure there's a bit
Speaker 1: of gray and it's not all black and white, but
Speaker 1: have you got an exit strategy?
Speaker 4: It changes all the time. The main reason Mitchell's actually
Speaker 4: started working with us now, so he's just finished his
Speaker 4: law degree and he's actually come on board and helping
Speaker 4: us with sort of compliance and that whole franchising legal
Speaker 4: side of it, and very heavily involved in franchisees and sales.
Speaker 4: And he came to me one day and he goes, right, Mum,
Speaker 4: you know I need about two more years. I'm going
Speaker 4: to go out and do this, this, this and pass
Speaker 4: the bar and go work out and I'm going to
Speaker 4: become come back and be the CEO. Going okay, that's
Speaker 4: a great plan. So you know, we we we jokingly
Speaker 4: talk about that, but it's sort of it's only a
Speaker 4: half joke because I actually think, you know, having someone
Speaker 4: in the not too distant future that you know, understands
Speaker 4: how to run a business bigger.
Speaker 2: Than what we can, so it'll outgrow us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that's I think that's the
Speaker 3: most important part. I think we we we're keeping all
Speaker 3: options on the table at the moment because it's very
Speaker 3: difficult with these with these companies sometime to see too
Speaker 3: far in the future. Although you've got to have one
Speaker 3: eye on the future, you've got to have another. I
Speaker 3: firmly planted on the present, because it's the day to
Speaker 3: day that people need you to be present on. I
Speaker 3: think what's going to happen is the we're working on
Speaker 3: bringing people into our company and our organization that are
Speaker 3: obviously younger than us, but have skills that we don't have,
Speaker 3: and so we're looking we're trying to actively replace ourselves
Speaker 3: and build on our skill set with other people. And
Speaker 3: I think in the years to come, whether or not
Speaker 3: we exit, or whether or not we just step aside
Speaker 3: and still let everything keep functioning just as it does,
Speaker 3: but with different people in the chair, I think that's
Speaker 3: probably what's going to likely happen.
Speaker 4: We're not even at the not even at the tip,
Speaker 4: like there's so much growth still, we're constantly now getting
Speaker 4: inquiries from overseas, and that's you know, we will We'll
Speaker 4: be in New Zealand and Singapore before either the end
Speaker 4: of this year or very early into next year. But
Speaker 4: it's there's steps that we want to take at the
Speaker 4: right time. We don't want to say yes to everything.
Speaker 4: We've got to make sure that we're saying yes to
Speaker 4: the right things at the right time with the right people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's a very.
Speaker 4: Different landscape than it was, you know when we first
Speaker 4: started talking to about you know, I've got this idea.
Speaker 4: So now it's gone to that next that next level,
Speaker 4: and it's really done that probably in the last three
Speaker 4: to four months, and I can see the next twelve
Speaker 4: months will be a you know, a really big growth phase.
Speaker 1: Do you know who's done you know, same industry, different product,
Speaker 1: Dive Williams from Fernwood.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she's done a great job. And I've worked for her,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I'm working for them on Wednesday, and yeah,
Speaker 1: she's really figured out a way. I don't know her well,
Speaker 1: but just the kind of the brief moments that I've
Speaker 1: had with her and the conversations I've had with her
Speaker 1: and the like, I think I wouldn't even be rude
Speaker 1: enough to guess how old she is, but she's older
Speaker 1: than us. She's older than me, and she's old, well
Speaker 1: and truly older than you two, but she's still in
Speaker 1: the business. They still love her. She's the matriarch. She's
Speaker 1: a straight up killer. But I think she's just really
Speaker 1: she's really created a great model that and they have
Speaker 1: a fucking brilliant culture. You know. They're either the best
Speaker 1: actors in the world, all those Fernwood ladies, or they
Speaker 1: actually love the fucking organization. And I've been to a
Speaker 1: bunch of their stuff. They love it. Yeah, they love it.
Speaker 1: And I mean that's it's a tribute to her that
Speaker 1: she's built an organization that's you know, national and commercially viable.
Speaker 1: And but also that she's built again, like we were talking,
Speaker 1: a culture that people really want to be part of,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, I think there's and also I
Speaker 1: think you know what I think honestly knowing you two,
Speaker 1: I mean not you know, if somebody I know this
Speaker 1: ain't the case, but if somebody walked up tomorrow and
Speaker 1: went here's twenty million, fuck off and don't work anymore,
Speaker 1: you guys would be great for about three weeks and
Speaker 1: then you'd go nuts. You'd be like, oh, buck, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got twenty million, we're gonna and then you'd go
Speaker 1: nuts because you'd you would, you'd hate it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think you'd love retirement. Like my mom said to
Speaker 1: me last night, I went and saw Ron and Mary,
Speaker 1: right because I go see Ron on Saturdays and I'd
Speaker 1: take his raggedy old ass to the gym and try
Speaker 1: and fucking get some muscle on his bony frame. And
Speaker 1: my mum said to me last night, you know, what
Speaker 1: are you thinking about retirement? And I'm like what, I'm
Speaker 1: like what. I don't even know. It's not an unreasonable
Speaker 1: question because I'm sixty, but I don't even I don't know.
Speaker 1: I do not even think about it. And it's not
Speaker 1: because I'm a worklcoholic. It's just because work, like all
Speaker 1: the shit that I do, Like right now, this show
Speaker 1: is sponsored, right now, this show is making money. This
Speaker 1: is part of my job. But there's no sense that
Speaker 1: I'm working.
Speaker 2: But that's the difference. That's the difference. It's just what
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 4: So whether or not it's called work or not, we
Speaker 4: all saying the same thing. It's you know, we actually
Speaker 4: this is just what we do. It's not work.
Speaker 2: It's just we.
Speaker 4: Get up and this is what we do in our
Speaker 4: day and it just happens to be work.
Speaker 2: You're the same. We're really lucky from that aspect, you know.
Speaker 1: I did, as I said, I did a thing this morning.
Speaker 1: I did a workshop and we were talking about one
Speaker 1: of the things I talk about briefly in gigs is
Speaker 1: work life balance or what people used to call work
Speaker 1: life balance. You to have heard me talk about this,
Speaker 1: but like the idea of work life balances that you
Speaker 1: work this much and you don't work that much, and
Speaker 1: it's almost like this numerical scale and if you balance
Speaker 1: the working hours with not a working hour and you
Speaker 1: get the equation right, then you're ticking the box.
Speaker 2: It's grew.
Speaker 1: But what that doesn't factor in is what if you
Speaker 1: work in twenty hours a week of something that you
Speaker 1: fucking hate and it gives you anxiety and you can't
Speaker 1: sleep and you don't want to get out of bed
Speaker 1: to go and do the thing that you hate. Versus
Speaker 1: on Planet Harps, where nearly everything that I do it's
Speaker 1: somewhere between enjoyment and joy you know, like it's it's
Speaker 1: like the thing that I did this morning, because I
Speaker 1: spoke for pretty much five straight hours. It's tiring, but
Speaker 1: it's fucking awesome.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, we'll be doing stuff and the boys are
Speaker 4: going I'm stop working, and I go, but I'm actually
Speaker 4: doing this.
Speaker 2: I actually like doing it. I don't find it work.
Speaker 1: It's just right my last one. So, Tara, I feel
Speaker 1: like you're very creative, and I feel like Rusty is
Speaker 1: more the pragmatist, pragmatic process driven. Like you both got
Speaker 1: big engines, you both work really hard. I could be
Speaker 1: wrong on that assessment, so correct me. But how are
Speaker 1: you too different? And how do your strengths individually contribute
Speaker 1: to the whole?
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, when we we've always known that we have
Speaker 3: a good ability to work together. Otherwise we wouldn't have
Speaker 3: done all of these businesses together. You know, we know
Speaker 3: what our own strengths and weaknesses are. But I must
Speaker 3: say with this business, right from the outset, we were
Speaker 3: very careful to make sure that we didn't stand on
Speaker 3: each other's toes because and I was and I also
Speaker 3: said to Tara, I go, there has to be a leader,
Speaker 3: and it's not me, it's you. This is your idea,
Speaker 3: this is your this is your company. So when push
Speaker 3: comes to shove, you need to make that final decision.
Speaker 3: And also I think that it's very important for the
Speaker 3: brand of the business to be successful that everyone understands
Speaker 3: clearly that there is one leader and that's Tara. So
Speaker 3: so we we definitely have our own strengths and responsibilities,
Speaker 3: but we've defined them probably better than we ever have.
Speaker 3: And I also think that it's really important that there
Speaker 3: is one person that you know is defined as that
Speaker 3: person that it takes full responsibility because at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, you know, it's her concept and she
Speaker 3: knows what's in her brain better than anyone else.
Speaker 1: Now, what, Rusty, Rusty, you just made all the women
Speaker 1: listening to this show fucking love you. That's the most
Speaker 1: emotionally evolved you've ever been. I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, looka, it's taken a bit longer than what you
Speaker 3: would have hoped. I reckon, Craigo, because.
Speaker 1: I reckon.
Speaker 3: I remember many conversations where you said, mate, I love you.
Speaker 3: You're good at what you do, but you're an emotional spastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah we can't say that, but anyway, Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: remember like Rusty's kind of a model for talking to staff,
Speaker 1: or his protocol for talking to stuff that were getting
Speaker 1: shit wrong. It wasn't the warmest you reckon, I'm intimidating
Speaker 1: fucking hell. I'm like Humphrey Beck and beared to what
Speaker 1: he was. That was hilarious he was, but he didn't
Speaker 1: like he was just direct. I mean what he said
Speaker 1: was true, but he's got all warm and Fuzzyara, what's
Speaker 1: your what's your take on that question?
Speaker 4: I was just I was remembering back to when we
Speaker 4: were starting, and Russ was like, what am I going
Speaker 4: to do? Because you know, I really was taken off
Speaker 4: with this, and I said, I've got this idea and
Speaker 4: I'm going to do this, this, this, this, this, And
Speaker 4: I actually said to us, it's crazy you going and
Speaker 4: doing something. Come work with me, you know, work work
Speaker 4: with me. And I remember literally him going, yes, yes,
Speaker 4: I should. And he hadn't actually thought of that before.
Speaker 4: He hadn't actually thought that this was something that could
Speaker 4: grow that big and we could do together. But we've
Speaker 4: got our definite roles. And I couldn't do what Russ
Speaker 4: does in a heartbeat. I just would drive me and
Speaker 4: drive me nuts, and but he's so good at it
Speaker 4: and he'll just trust whatever I tangent I want to
Speaker 4: go off into, or what the next idea is or
Speaker 4: concept and he'll run with it and trust me, and
Speaker 4: yeah it works really well. So we're lucky from that respect.
Speaker 4: A lot of people say, how do you live and
Speaker 4: work together?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: And also if you put aside the fact that he's
Speaker 1: your husband and you just go, well, what does he
Speaker 1: bring to the table, you go, well, he's been a
Speaker 1: successful business owner, he's an elite strength and conditioning coach,
Speaker 1: he's worked at the AIS, he's got a master's degree
Speaker 1: in exercise exercise physiology. It's like, that's not the worst
Speaker 1: person to have as my partner in a fitness based business,
Speaker 1: you know, So all right, give it a plug. How
Speaker 1: do people how do people learn more about the business
Speaker 1: rus franchise, whether or not they want to, I don't know,
Speaker 1: think about having a look at a franchise, or they
Speaker 1: just want to come and do a class at a center.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the best place to go. Is is
Speaker 3: our website. So it's at pilarates dot Studio at Polarates
Speaker 3: spelled at Pilaratees dot studio, not the at symbol. If
Speaker 3: you go to a website, you can you can find
Speaker 3: a studio near you to train at. You can find
Speaker 3: out all the information you need about franchising, you can
Speaker 3: make direct contact with myself or Tara. So the website's
Speaker 3: the place to go. Obviously we're on social media as well,
Speaker 3: but you know the best place to start is the
Speaker 3: website and then you'll you'll know exactly what you need
Speaker 3: to do from there.
Speaker 1: Bibbody, Bobby Boot, are you going out for dinner tonight?
Speaker 1: You too? It's eight minutes past five on a Sunday.
Speaker 1: Or you just sit at home and have a bloody
Speaker 1: toasted cheese sandwich and watch the news.
Speaker 2: Now I've got one.
Speaker 4: I've got one child from Melbourne here looking for a
Speaker 4: free feed, and my gorgeous eighty six year.
Speaker 2: Old mum is coming over for dinner, so she'll come.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she'll actually come and jump on the reformer before
Speaker 4: she actually has dinner.
Speaker 2: She's a superstar. And then yeah, it'd be a nice night.
Speaker 2: You have a good night.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you too. We'll say goodbye, affair, but for
Speaker 1: the moment, Rusty Tara, thank you.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so here mate, Bye honey,