From Homeless To $400M: Tobi Pearce On How To Find Your Purpose, Mindset & Motivation, Overcoming Adversity, Self-Judgement & Criticism and Learning From Failures.
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Mari has grown her to fitness and nutrition brand. Co-founder of Bloom Nutrition. Forbes 30 under 30 list. A successful entrepreneur. Someone who has lost 90 pounds. Today's guest is Mari Llewellyn. Mari Llewellyn. My friend Mari. Welcome to the pursuit of wellness.

Hi guys, welcome back to the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. Before we jump into today's episode, I have a super exciting announcement, something that you guys have been asking for and I've wanted to do for a while. This Sunday, October 8th at 9am, I am hosting a community walk for the

Pow and Bloom community. So the podcast community and the Bloom community are coming together. Everyone is welcome. Bring your dogs, bring your kids, bring a friend. The walk will begin at Little Lunch Coffee Shop in Venice. If you look that up, you'll see exactly where it is. Little Lunch Coffee Shop. We've rented a private room for you guys. We'll have coffee

goodie bags, free coffee, free matcha. I want to warn you the parking is a bit limited, but there's beach parking down the street and a bit of street parking. But I recommend you guys take an Uber if you can. Come hang out. I will be there. Greg will be there. Fi will be there. Arnold and Lulu will probably be there. Go check out the POW and Bloom social medias for more details. We cannot wait to see you guys.

Now for today's episode, we have an incredible guest, Toby Pierce. He's a tech founder and ex-CEO of the Sweat app, investor, and now an advisor to other founders. He has a super inspiring story. He went from being homeless to selling his company, the Sweat app, for $400 million, all before his 29th birthday. And it's very clear to me that Toby has learned a lot from the sale of his company and having financial success at such a young age.

beyond business. He's full of mindset and motivation advice, which can be applied to your career, fitness journey, or just life in general. He also happens to be the partner of one of my close friends, Rachel Dillon, who is the founder of Crop Shop Boutique. She was also on the show. So make sure you go back and listen to her episode too. It's an amazing one. On today's episode, we talk about

hitting rock bottom and finding purpose through pain, whether your career and passion need to align, learning from failures, values that change after financial success, becoming a parent, dealing with self-judgment and criticism, why achieving your goals and getting to the top actually makes things harder, why being successful means your circle is smaller, learning to sit in stillness and be alone with your thoughts and so much more.

I absolutely loved this conversation. I took so much away from it and felt so inspired and I think you guys will too, regardless of where you are in your journey or career, whether you're an entrepreneur, work for a business or simply trying to find your future purpose, this episode is for you. With that said, welcome Toby to the show.

Toby, you are arguably one of the most successful founders and entrepreneurs in the fitness space today. You're also partners with one of my favorite people, Rachel Dillon, who I've interviewed on this show before. She's the founder of Crop Shop Boutique.

My husband and I are aware of your story because we've been in the same industry for a few years now. But for anyone who doesn't know, I want to kind of start from the beginning. Sure. I know you had a unique childhood, a unique start to life. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I grew up in a really small town. I left home.

during high school in year 12, which in Australia is the final year of high school, basically because I wasn't having a good time at home with my parents. Shortly after finishing school, and finishing is a strong word, I just survived the end of school. Eventually, I found my way into personal training, so it became a PT in a general sense. I had clients working in a gym and doing all that sort of stuff.

About a year into that, I set up my kind of first like real business outside of PT, which was effectively group fitness boot camps and stuff like in like we're literally talking like, you know, in a park that's like the size of half of a footy oval, you know, sort of scenario with like 15 or 20 women in the morning, you know.

I ended up, that was actually quite successful. I had a few franchises and that eventually led me to creating some content, which I sold online, which then eventually became eBooks. And then that eventually became an app. And so they all kind of evolved from one thing to the other. Obviously built that business to, you know, we sold over $500 million worth of fitness products online, sold it for a couple of hundred million dollars a couple of years ago now. And yeah, had a great journey now doing a whole bunch of other stuff, of course, but yeah. Amazing. And why did you leave home at such a young age?

Yeah, so the short version of the story basically is that my family had some trouble navigating some complexity with my sister. And as a result of that, I

I ended up in quite a lot of very uncomfortable situations, a lot of just general family tension and all that sort of stuff. And I think if I'm really honest, I probably just wanted to get away from that as a kid. And so I'd been expelled from a school, had family tension at home, didn't really feel like I fit in there very much. And so yeah, I ended up leaving school before finishing the end of that school year, spent most of my time living at friends' houses and whatever over the next couple of years and moving around a little bit. But I

Like, I don't look back on that time and think that's a bad thing. Like, you know, sure, it's not like, I would say maybe it's not the most conventional path, but I think a lot of these things, no different to a lot of other opportunities we have in life, actually present the best opportunities for kind of growth here. And that for me, during that period of time and at that point in time wasn't fun, but I look back on it now and think, yeah, I got a lot of value from that. So.

I feel like everyone I sit down with who has had some level of success has had some tumultuous past. Something hard. Something hard, everyone. And I always say, I think hitting rock bottom is actually kind of a blessing because you just have such a different perspective and a place to work yourself up from. How much do you think that time of your life has impacted who you are now as a person, as an entrepreneur? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huge. Huge.

I think there's this really interesting idea of fragility, right? So a lot of people think either they are fragile or their business is fragile, their job is fragile, their relationship is fragile.

And so as a result of that, they don't want to, often they'll avoid facing into certain discomfort, which is otherwise necessary or useful to kind of get where they want to go. And it's different for everybody. But when you hit your kind of version of like rock bottom, whatever that might be, you come out of like a long term relationship and that's hard or you lose a job or you leave home or whatever it might be.

Inevitably, life kind of goes on. And then when you get to the point of what this point is, but after you've kind of come to the conclusion that, well, life is still here and I'm actually okay and you're kind of surviving and all this sort of stuff, it helps you realize that you're not fragile. And I think the idea of you not being fragile also then kind of implicitly teaches you that, well, I can. I can do this or I can do that.

I think for people that have experienced adversity and hardship in their life, it very often creates a strong, you know, like kind of motivation or, you know, like motivating driver to try and do other things. And it's very commonly like this idea of like, well, they said I can't do it, so I will or whatever.

I'm worried about not having this, so I'll work really hard to get it. And whether or not those motivations are useful long term is another thing. But in the short term, I think for a lot of people, and as you mentioned, a lot of people that are successful at whatever it is that they do, they normally come from that position. And they use that pain or adversity as a driver to achieve more. Yeah, and I feel like when you have nothing to lose, it's like you might as well just try. Yeah, yep.

I absolutely agree. And I think, you know, part of the art of, you know, in this context here with business, like part of the art of getting really good at that is being like, well,

If you get to the point where you are confident enough in your own skills to fix problems, you will take ideally more and more calculated risks, which will present more opportunity to you. It's the individual who wants to perfect something before doing it or wants to intellectualize it rather than try it that ends up in this kind of circular loop where unfortunately they're not actually able to make the progress that they want because they're too afraid to take the risk.

I pulled a quote from your Twitter. I actually pulled a few of your quotes because I love them that I want to talk through. You said, "If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else gets. If you want a different and improved life, you will have to do different things. Different pays off, whether that be literal in a financial sense or in happiness." Yeah, absolutely. Like,

I think, and especially if you follow the rhetoric of society, right? You know, that is that like, woe is me. This is bad. I can't do that, et cetera, et cetera. That story will drive certain behavior in you. And then you will do what everything, all the things that everybody else does. But if you want to achieve exceptional things, you have to do different stuff. So where did your interest in fitness begin on a personal level? Yeah. So I definitely played sport a lot growing up.

You give me rugby vibes. No, well, see, this is the funny thing, right? So until the end of high school, I weighed...

Let me do this in pounds. I weighed about 115 pounds. Oh, so you were small. So I was like your, you know, most people would be able to kind of picture your like in the music room at lunchtime playing the piano quite like sort of skinny nerd. That was me. So I still played sport. I definitely didn't realize I was as slim as I was because like in my mind I thought I was okay. I played football, like Aussie rules football, definitely not rugby.

But when I got towards the end of my school time, I was playing football. I hurt my back. I got a knee to the back playing a match and went to a physio. And basically they were like, well, maybe you should build some muscle in your back so that you're not so frail. That's a good suggestion, honestly. Yeah. So you went to the gym to do some exercises and I happened to go to this gym, which was convenient for where I was living at the time.

a guy that, yeah, worked there. He was a great friend of mine. Now, Ben Wortley was a, you know, like kind of bodybuilder. And of course there's me, I was like 17 years old. It's like, Oh my God, like, who is this dude? He's jacked. You know, he's like a personal trainer. He's making like whatever it was, I don't know, 90 bucks an hour at this time. And I was making like $16 an hour. And I was like, so you can like build muscles and like feel good and like make money. I'm like, that was like the trifecta, you know, for me at that point in my life, pretty simplistic. Um,

And so, yeah, like literally that was like a light switch for me. I pretty much immediately started training in the gym like five or six days a week. A couple of months later, I went to do my personal training course and then, you know, kind of off I went. Why do you think you began with training women specifically?

So when I initially started working in a gym as a trainer, I actually trained both men and women. It ended up, it was kind of by chance in the sense that I was doing a full-time double degree in law and commerce when I was a trainer.

And what that meant was that I would try to do like, you know, training in the morning from sort of 5 or 6 a.m. through until about 10 or 11 a.m. Then I would go to university, do, you know, classes or whatever for a few hours and some study, come back, train. And then I would do clients again from like 5 p.m. until 10 p.m., go home, do it again and, you know, roll over.

And it just so happened that that time in the morning really suited this particular group of mums that were at the gym. So they would come in, we had a crèche in the gym, they would drop their kids off, they would train normally with me, have a coffee, rah, rah, rah. And there was a group of about 10 or 15 of them. And eventually over time I realised they would then tell their friends, so then their friends came along and I basically ended up being the guy that was just training this massive group of mums who had dropped their kids off in the morning. And then it became hard to fit them all in, so I put them in groups.

And then that kind of like, so it was quite a natural evolution. Like that was just kind of the way that it, you know, that it ended up happening. And yeah, I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was really great fun and getting lots of results. And I think also as well, like it's important to contextualize. So if you were to see a woman walk into a gym now and go and start lifting weights, that's kind of normal now. If you go, you know, this is like nearly 10 years ago.

That was quite strange. I didn't know it was strange. So I would always just take my clients in and start training in there. And it didn't occur to me until I've been working there for a while that that wasn't like a normal, you know, at that particular point in time. So, yeah, they really loved that. Obviously, you know, got great results and all that. And it was a very kind of self-fulfilling, you know, journey early on. I also feel like women are, I mean...

a better customer in a way. Because I think it's harder to sell to men. I don't know if you agree. Yeah, it can be. And I think like, at least in my experience, you know, at a train at that particular point in time,

some men certainly get the attitude that once they've kind of like learned how to do X, Y, and Z, they're like, okay, cool. I can do this now. And if they can, fair enough. You're like, I actually used to say to people all the time, I'm like, if after training with me for sort of three, six, nine months, you don't need me anymore. Good. I'm like, because then you've learned like what to do, but knowing what to do and,

being coached to two quite different things, you know, the accountability piece, the motivation, the support, emotional and all that sort of stuff. There's quite a lot to it, but for whatever reason, yeah, lots of men didn't necessarily need all that.

I think most people listening have heard of BBG or the Sweat app or they've done it. A lot of people have mentioned to me that they've done it. It really led the way for influencer fitness apps. I remember when I first started, you guys were a huge inspiration for me. Now I have my own app. I feel like all the fitness influencers have their own app now. Where was the initial idea for the app? Where did it come from?

Yeah, so it was actually a combination of things that all sort of came together at the same time. So we'd been selling e-books, you know, for some time and we like found a torrent site online. So we'd come over to the States and everywhere we went, like every –

that, you know, I'd do speaking events at, you know, colleges. We'd do media. We'd run events here and all that. And, like, there was just thousands, like tens of thousands of women of all ages being like, yeah, we use the guides, right? I think Fi actually attended one of your events, didn't you? Did you? That's so crazy. Yeah, yeah. There was, like, 4,000 people there that day. I remember that one. Wow.

But yeah, we would find people who would come to those events like Fi. And yeah, they had our e-books and this, that, and the other. And then over time, I started kind of like running numbers in my head. And I was like, there's a lot of people coming to these things, but I don't think we've sold that many things in this area. Like, so what am I kind of missing? Started researching on the internet, found a torrent website. And this was one website, one torrent from one individual had been downloaded 6 million times.

Sorry, does that mean that people were illegally downloading? Yeah, they were sharing. Okay, yeah, this happened to us too. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, so we're like, I saw that and like, you know, part of me was like, oh, that's a great marketing strategy. And then the other part of me was like, well, that's a little bit sad. Yeah, that's a little bit sad. You know, put a lot of work into that. Probably feel like it would be nice to be rewarded for that. So that was one problem. Another problem was that, you know, in a PDF, you know, you only really have like images, right? And so like we were

We would take like 2000 images to like create stage by stage gifs almost like on paper. You have this, which is like not the best user experience. Then around this time, I also started to kind of have this idea. I'd come to America a few times and I had my first kind of introduction to like the world of venture capital and private equity. I was like, oh, my God, you can like build tech companies and sell them and it would be super cool. I knew nothing about it other than that.

So I was like, oh, well, we should like do software and build a tech company. And I went through my own very simplistic process of like, well, why would that not work? And, you know, one of the reasons was obviously we only had, you know, one talent at this particular time. We brought some other talent in, other trainers later on to join on. But we're like, how do we have lots of trainers with videos, right?

That's tech and all this sort of stuff. Like how do we bring all that together? And long story short, it ended up being a mobile app. And this is like before subscription was really prominent and there wasn't really, I don't even, I think it was only like a few apps online. And even the ones that did exist, they were web apps. They weren't mobile apps. This was like, you know, Instagram, I think would have probably not even had videos yet.

So this is like super, like we're talking like super, super early on. So like now that's like kind of like to your point, it's like quite normal now. But at that particular point in time, you know, nearly 10 years ago, that was pretty, it was like pretty like revolutionary, you know, and cool. But yes, it was not necessarily one thing that was kind of the culmination of a few things. Yeah. Do you feel like personal passion and your profession have to be intertwined in order to be successful? Yeah.

Short answer, absolutely not. Yeah. And so, which is like very different to what a lot of people would say. Yeah, tell us more, yeah. So a lot of people would say you need to be passionate about what you do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And like I can understand that. But like...

for me, do I like fitness? Yes. Did I really enjoy the idea that we were able to positively contribute to people's lives in a very unique and special way? Yes, absolutely. But honestly, there was not many days where I woke up and I was like, yeah, I go on to work, so I do fitness stuff. That wasn't really it for me. My joy was building. It was building a business. That was my passion. So I'm

a little different in that regard, that I'm not passionate about like a product or a service or an industry. I just love the game, like truly in love with the game. So I was very fortunate that I was in a particular game at that point in time that was very complicated and challenging. I got to learn a lot. But I think like when you look at other individuals, I think like being passionate can be, so using that as a mindset to make a decision about what to engage in can be quite, you know, self-deprecating or like quite limiting.

In a sense, it's like, let's just make it the extreme version of the mindset. I won't do anything unless I am passionate about it. Say, okay, but 99% of the world don't even know what they're bloody passionate about. Mm-hmm.

So to figure out what you're passionate about or what you even enjoy, like let's substitute the word passion for enjoy, it's like, well, you've got to try shit. And so if you have this mindset of like I will only do things that I'm passionate about, well, you probably never actually figure much out. Yeah. And so like I think, yes, being able to enjoy what you do is absolutely important for sure. But being like thoroughly obsessed with it is not necessary, I don't think. Okay.

Do you think that applies to the CEO role? Because I'm thinking of it in terms of Greg and I as CEO, like you, he's obsessed with business. He's obsessed with playing the game. He could do that all day long. I'm genuinely obsessed with nutrition and health and hence me starting this podcast and talking about it all day.

What do you think of that? Do you think the face of the brand should be obsessed with the mission? I think, so maybe we separate this into three areas. One is kind of the running of the organization. Another is the product. And then another is the marketing or brand, right? So I think if you're going to have an individual that is associated with a product or service that promotes it, I think if there is not an authentic link

between their interests and the particular product or whatever, then I think that you're probably not setting yourself up for success. In the sense that I think that people are not stupid. They will see that it's just kind of like pay to promote sort of scenario. It feels very inauthentic and people won't be able to

They won't gravitate towards that because they can't relate. And that's part of the reason why influencer marketing or talent or individual-based marketing works is because people can relate to the individual. They're not necessarily relating to the product. They're relating to the individual. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the kind of CEO or a business person or whatever, you're there to generate results.

So your interest and key focus area has to be results. For the person who's designing the product, which in many cases, it's like founders are normally marketing or product led. That's normally how organizations start, not always, but very commonly.

You do kind of have to be obsessed with quality product, right? So it's not even that maybe you are or aren't a nutrition scientist, right? But you want the best. You have to want the best and build something great. And this is like where there can very often be a divergence of paths for these people. Like a business person who's a CEO, whatever, might just be like, I just want to make money. And you see this all the time with corporate executives where they lose touch with the customers and the audience and the product or whatever and just becomes kind of dotting I's and crossing T's.

Whereas a passionate product person will very often do things that are unscalable and in some cases irrational to get the best product, but that can very often generate great business results. So I think a lot of people want to simplify these things into like, oh, do X to get Y. But running an organization is multifactorial. There's a lot of things go into it. It's very complicated and it requires a lot of things to go right collectively at the same time to win, which requires different people. Mm-hmm.

And you are a co-founder, but also you were the CEO, which is pretty rare. Greg is also that position. And I think a lot of people glamorize that role, but also just being an entrepreneur in general. And on a personal level, I know it's very taxing and a level of responsibility. I mean, how old are you, 31? Yeah. I'm 29 and it's...

Never imagined the level of pressure I would feel just to be responsible for all the people out there. It's huge. Can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I have quite significant personal disdain for what you're talking about there where people are like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a CEO, rah, rah, rah, doing this. It's like, okay, cool. But a lot of people put that they hold or place more value in the title than they do the act itself.

right? Yeah. Because they think that it makes them call it sort of like people that believe that, you know, wearing really expensive branded stuff makes them a better person. It might make you look nicer, but it doesn't actually change the quality of your character. Right. And so like, I think when you've been in business for a long time, you can normally kind of spot people early on, like in your interactions with them based on the way they kind of introduce themselves or this, that, the other, and you can kind of go, okay, cool. Like I said, it's more important for you to look good than to be good. You know, if that makes sense. I

I think like in my experience, like it's the journey is infinitely harder than people can understand, number one. And number two, the more successful you are, typically it's harder again.

Yeah. So like a lot of people will try to justify like, oh, it's hard running a small business and kind of going from zero to one and getting started and blah, blah, blah. It's like, it is, it's, it's, it's bloody stressful. It's like, cool. And then try to do that when you grow 300% a year. Yeah. And try to do that when you're in your twenties and you probably have,

your limited business experience. What the hell is people management? Oh shit, what's a P&L? How do I read these financial statements? Oh shit, how do I keep employees happy? Oh my God, an office, where do you find a lot? There are so many unanswered questions, right? The learning curve is truly vertical. And unfortunately, the more successful you are early on, the harder that is because you have more decisions to make in a compressed timeframe.

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What do you feel like took you through your hardest moments mentally?

So maybe divide them into two things, right? So the generic like stuff's happening really quickly. This is really hard trying to keep up, right, right, right. Honestly, like I actually thrived in that. Like I love that, but mostly because it was winning constantly, right? Yeah. It's like when I could see results coming in, that was a little bit like fuel to the fire. I mean, I didn't find that hard. I actually found it thoroughly, you know, enjoyable, but

It was more when things like didn't go right. You know, like say there's the inevitable like up, up, up, down temporarily, up, up, up, down. Yeah, those were the points that were really hard for me. Like one of the greatest examples, so, you know, we go through this like deal process to try to sell the company for the first time. We effectively do the deal, like it's on paper, it's signed, you know, everything. And then 36 hours before the money is like meant to come through, the buyer pulls out.

And so that would be hard generically, right? But it's harder when you've spoken to the media about it. You've told your whole company, you've recruited 30 or 40 new people because you're like getting ready to, you know, go through that like kind of next growth phase. Now, full transparency, they're all flaws of mine at that time. They were bad choices by me in my particular role at that time. And that became very clear very quickly after, you know, when the deal fell through. But like those particular times, like what the hell when life prepares you for that?

To walk into a room and say, hi, guys, well, look, what I said was done miraculously has now been undone. I'm really sorry. And we're going to have to downsize the company by like 30% of you. Not sure who or when or how. Yeah. And like, so these, like, there's not much in life that can prepare you for that. And, you know, at that particular point in time, I was 25, 26, I think, years old.

So, it's hard stuff. It's, as you said, something that you can never be prepared for, but also something you can't talk to anyone about. I mean, first of all, you- Well, it's unrelatable. It's unrelatable. No one really gets it except maybe your partner or your business partner. And it's also not something you want to go around kind of like airing out either.

No, no, because it's like, and again, like you don't want to be negative all the time because a lot of the world would go like, oh, well, I would kill to be in your position. It's like, yeah, sure. Until you knew what it was like. Exactly. Yeah. Like it's really hard. Yeah. And like, and Rachel and I talk about this, you know, all the time, like, you know, we're sitting there being like, oh, you know, like love my job, love the work, this, that and the other. But like, but sometimes it is, it's a real pain. Yeah.

A real pain because it follows you everywhere. It's 24-7. Yeah, and this is the thing, because you care about it like it's a child. Yeah. Like it's a full love, right? Even though it's very upsetting all of the time. Like, yeah, it's a full love. Like I always say to people, I'm like, you'll always have a disproportionate negative emotional response to this sort of stuff. And like, this is part of the...

complexity, at least for me and for other people that I've met over my journey is that when you have success, oh, it's all good. Yeah, cool. High five. Hurrah. But the high is not really, it's not actually that high. But then when something goes wrong, the low is like low, like it's like super, super low. And like dealing with that where it's like neutral, a little high, massive low, neutral, a little high, massive low. Like that's very hard. And to your point, if people can't relate to that, it

It's hard to vent. How do you problem solve that? Even for us, early on in our journey, because at the time I was living in South Australia in a city called Adelaide, which has a million people or whatever live there. It's not a very big place. You talk to five accounting firms and none of them do accounting for a subscription business, so they can't help you with that. You talk to all the marketing agencies, none of them do marketing for mobile apps.

So you make it yourself. So there's literally like no one, like no one there had done anything. So I would actually come to America all the time just to chat to people, to try to like learn from them because there was just no one around. So it's like when things go bad, that's hard.

you're learning, in my case and yours, quite young, not necessarily surrounded by people who can relate to that and can't really even find the people to help. So it's a real, like in many regards, it's a dystopian kind of scenario to be in. But for me, because I love the game, it was good fun. Yeah. And I feel like looking at the industry now, there's almost like a roadmap. Not

fully thought out, but I feel like when people get followers now, they have an agent. The agent tells them what to do. They have the app agency. It's sophisticated. I always say that we're in the Wild West. Yeah.

Yeah. Like we were literally in the wild, wild west. Like we, you know, like even, you know, like just over the last like six, seven, eight years, right? Like what's happened? It's like, well, the cost of building an app has gone down by like 90% on a relative basis. The speed of doing that is much higher because the technology is better. There is almost a default plugin for like every possible thing that you could, you know, ever, you know, want to do. Like it's all there. Yeah.

right? We had to build all of that from scratch, right? And the same concept applies to other industries too. I mean, even just social media as an example, like Instagram was successful quicker than Facebook because a large part of the roadmap was there from who? Facebook. Facebook wasn't the first either, obviously. But then TikTok comes along and what do they do? They really just roll out the same playbook, but with a few differences. And I'm not trying to downplay the success of the platform, but like

A large part of it's there, like machine learning and content distribution algorithms, like the way that they build out the advertising betting models, all this sort of stuff. That wasn't there when Facebook started. So many, many, many years later in any given industry, yeah, the playbooks are there. It's much easier to enter. However, normally, not in all cases, but the results are also less. Yeah. Because it's almost commoditized in some regard. And what I love about the time that we...

started you were way before us but I remember going through every single design frame you know when you're going through each step of the app yeah what happens if I click this button yeah what's the user experience so I had that experience so I've personally been super involved in everything we've ever done and I feel like I've learned so much more than if someone just handed me a pre-done app and said pick your colors absolutely yeah and that's like part of where the

skills are built, you know, like coming back to that, you know, comment before about being passionate. It's like, you might not need to be passionate about like fitness in this case, but maybe if you like building stuff and then you get really interested in like how to apps work and this, that and the other, like you can still have fun there. I'm good on that to be honest. Yeah.

It was honestly a pretty tedious process for me. It is. It's very tedious. I have another quote of yours. Love this one. Unpopular opinion. More often than not, intelligence contributes less to success than timing, luck and persistence. People just like the idea and feeling that their superior intellect was why they won in business, career, sport or other activity. Yeah. What do you mean by that? Yeah.

Well, so I think like a lot of the time, you know, so coming back to the status thing before, you know, I'm the CEO, I'm the entrepreneur, I'm super smart, I work 120 hours a week, you know, this flight, that flight, travel, rah, rah, rah, rah. Like they're all effectively virtue, you know, signaling things, right, to say I'm successful because I'm special, right? Yeah.

And, you know, reality is that most people that are successful have worked hard and most people that are successful have put in the time to do certain things. But like, you know, just as an aside, like if there was a direct relationship between intelligence or let's use IQ as a crappy measure, but let's use that, you know, and like financial success, it's like, well, then all the really wealthy people in the world would be the really, really smart ones. Sure, some of them are really smart, but they're not actually just successful because they were smart. They were successful because they took risks.

They were successful because they persisted for a really long time. And they were successful because the idea that they had and the skills that they had appropriately suited that time. So like timing, and I use the word like kind of luck being like the combination of your attributes and the timing and the space that you were in all coming together at the same time. That's kind of the luck component. Like, you know, you can't pretend that doesn't exist. Right.

I was lucky that I was a PT who then ended up training women who then kind of understood the content they want, who then ended up kind of figuring out how social media worked and then kind of understood apps and that all kind of came together. That wasn't like...

I'm not some genius who, you know, kind of came up with it all. Sure, I worked hard. Yes. You know, sure, I persisted in this, that and the other. But like, really, it's, you know, the timing of that and the continuation of effort is more responsible for the success than me being especially clever. Like, and that's a really harsh reality for some people. They really don't like that idea. You know, they like the idea that I discovered something that you didn't. And if you look at all of the marketing, not all, a lot of the marketing for, you

Business education, it's like, oh, well, I've built this special sales framework that'll help you get this. Or I've discovered this way that you can do Facebook ads that no one else has figured out. Or I can beat the social media algorithm. That's all the pictures and they're all effectively intelligence-like signals. I am smarter than everybody else. That's why I can win. But it's always people that have actually never started a business. Oh, look, if you're a business coach...

Go off. Say whatever you want. If you're seeking help in the realm of business and you employ, for lack of a better word, a business coach who does not have publicly available objective data to substantiate that they can actually do what it is that you are seeking from them, then they need a coach. It's the other way around. Right?

right? And you see this all the time. They're like, oh yeah, I've coached 200 CEOs and rah, rah, rah. It's like, okay, cool. But how many of them were successful and how many made more money and how much of that success was actually attributed to your coaching? It really grinds my gears. It really grinds my gears. It's pretty funny seeing those ads, I have to say. Back to the persistence comment, I think that's so valid. And we even talk about it with the show. I think with podcasts,

Most people give up by episode, what, I think it's episode five or something because it is so much work. Simply by putting out a podcast every week for a year, you're already beating 90% of people. Yeah, but as you're doing...

the things that other people won't, which is why you'll get the results that they won't get. Back to that quote. Yeah, this is the same thing. A lot of the time, don't get me wrong, you can't just continuously apply effort, change no approach and expect to win. But the reason why continuation of effort normally does work is because the continuation of effort normally results in the continuation of intelligently applied effort, i.e. you learn over time and you improve things.

So time in the game is really time learning. Yeah. And I always, like when working with business owners, I always try to bring them back to this like basic principle that it's like decision making is a skill. Right. And if you want to win in any endeavor, but in this particular case, business, well, you will win by making better decisions than other people. And if you want to make better decisions, then you need practice. Right. So it's like, yeah, if you do five podcasts, that's enough practice. Yeah. Right.

There's a reason why corporate executives who've been in the game for 30 years get paid more and get better job opportunities than people who've been doing it for three. Or they can make better decisions. They make better judgment calls, typically, not always. Right? So like...

This notion of like being in the game for a long time and like, you know, intelligently applied effort over the long term is ultimately what, you know, drives results. Yeah. And for anyone listening, this can be applied to anything. Like if you have a side hustle or you're starting something new, a project, if you want to have an Etsy store. And literally anything. Even if it's about like a workout program, if you want to get better results in the gym. Yeah. Like it's not just...

raw time in the gym. Like, I mean, I use the example all the time. I'm quite into jujitsu and I always use that example. I'm like, yes, like mat time or like being in the gym and sparring and training, whether that matters, yes, for sure. But if you're just going in there kind of blindly doing nothing and then leaving and then coming back the next day and doing the same thing blindly again, it's like, well, that's just effort applied. It's not intelligently applied effort over time. Mm.

You have to be willing to fail and learn, assess what's happened, try to gain insights, implement new things, test and experiment. And also not throw in the towel when it doesn't go your way one day. Yeah, absolutely. Master of Arts is great for that because you're going to get beat up most of the time.

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So, obviously you had a very successful exit with Sweat, a $400 million exit at age 29? I think it was two weeks before my 29th birthday. No way. Okay, so you were still in your 20s, which is considerably young. What was it like to have that level of financial success at that age? Yeah, so...

Going back to my very early 20s, sorry, even before that. I left home and I was working two or three jobs after high school, making $30,000 a year, $40,000 a year. That was a lot at that point. For me, it was a lot. To starting PT, I did about 150K in my first year. Then three years after that, I did about 10 million.

The curve of like financial or like wealth generation or income generation was like quite aggressive early on. So I think like by the time I got to like actually selling the organization and you obviously got some money as a part of that, I think...

Two things happened at the same time. One was, okay, well, now I kind of hit a point where that's never ever going to be a problem in my life unless I've made a whole bunch of really bad decisions. So presumably there's a decent degree of safety there.

But then outside of the money, what ended up happening, which I probably naively didn't really consider enough, was that I had a massive identity crisis almost immediately after doing the deal. Because I'd worked very diligently in the background to set the organization up so that it would effectively run itself.

So by the time we sold the company, with a grain of salt, I would really do about five significant meetings per month and that would pretty much run the company. Yes, I did other stuff in between, of course, but it was really five primary meetings per month that ran the company.

So when we sold the company, a few months later, my COO took my position and I was kind of out. And so like this, after that, it's like, okay, well, you're no longer the founder guy. You're no longer the CEO guy. You don't really have a job or a place to go. You don't really like see all of the people that you love working with, you know, this, that and the other. It's like, well, who the hell are you? So like it all goes, you know, kind of just like, you know, disappears overnight. And I think for me, that was actually, it was a really very,

valuable experience because it definitely helped me realize that although I loved the game, I had my own kind of like blinders on in some regards. So those remarks before about like people take a lot of status in the CEO title, this, that, the other, that wasn't, I didn't necessarily have that. That wasn't it for me. But I definitely kind of unconsciously took status and being like, but I like have a business. This is me. I'm hustling. The business is me. So there was no, in my mind,

There was no fundamental differentiation between the company and me. The identity was like quite shared. And it wasn't until after having gone through that process, I was like, oh, okay, that was a very risky position to be in. Yeah, and that was probably a very unwise...

you know, like approach on my part. And obviously, you know, this is part of the development journey, you know, as we get older and hopefully wiser. So like that was like the money part was actually a much smaller component of it for me than necessarily like the identity piece. Yeah, that was actually something I was going to ask you about because

I've had a lot of entrepreneurs tell me and Greg that is the hardest thing to experience because your business becomes who you are, especially when it's bootstrapped. You were involved from the beginning. It's your child. It's everything that you know. I mean, Bloom is like the only real job I've had other than working the front desk at a gym making minimum wage. So I don't really know anything else.

How do you even begin to rebuild your identity after that? Because it's not like you necessarily needed to go work more. Yeah, well, it's like, who the hell are you? Right, this is a question I ask myself. And I remember it was quite an interesting thing. Shortly after I had moved house and I didn't have any furniture in the house. I had literally an inflatable mattress.

And this was, I was like working out my last couple of months of, you know, kind of handover. And so I, you know, kind of finished up on a Friday. Yeah. And I went to like give this speech to the company saying, thank you for your support and all this stuff over, you know, the many previous years.

Anyway, I like, like, I'm not typically a very emotional guy, like in this regard, but I was like, like sobbing, like I couldn't even get words out. Like, you know, it was, I felt very embarrassed at the time almost because like I'd spent seven years or whatever working with all these people and like never once having given like any emotion at all, you know, to being like completely just like, yeah, could not control, you know, the emotion.

Anyway, finish that call, hang up and that's it. My job there is done. So I go away for the weekend, I get home and then I wake up on my inflatable mattress on a Monday morning and I'm like... So you just made $400 million and you woke up on an inflatable mattress. Yeah, yeah. I don't attach much to things. You probably come to know that over time, but like... This is so funny. So I wake up and I'm like, oh...

I'll go to my favorite cafe. So I go to breakfast and I was like, but I would normally, my routine would be like, I'd go to the cafe and get coffee, go to work. And I was like, well, I'm not going to go to work. And I was like,

so i go home i was gonna read for a bit and i'm like this is actually this is this is quite hard this is a very good thing to do you know right i'm like i'm pretty lonely actually you know like i was sitting here and like what would i do you know and so like you go through this massive and for me it was probably like a three to six month process it was quite hard actually like and my coach you know my psychologist i've worked with for six or seven years he said to me like toby

this presents you an incredible opportunity to get really good at being bored. And like I didn't properly understand, you know, like what that meant, you know, like at the time, but it was excruciatingly painful for me.

But yeah, like literally it was months of like, you know, kind of like meditating and, you know, journaling and talking to people and trying to figure out like what actually, you know, mattered to me. Like, cause when you're in a journey like that, and I mean, you're in yours right now, like it is, it is in many regards kind of a bubble, right? Like you're in that bubble for a little while and it's hard to get out of the bubble to like kind of zoom out and get like perspective. Yeah.

and figure out like who are you kind of agnostic of the bubble that you're in. And so for me, like I sat there for many months being like, well, what do I actually even like doing? Yeah, because I would just work like that because I like the game. I was like, well, I definitely love business and I want to be in business, but I don't want to rush into something because I want it to be good to do. But I was like,

well, what do I do in the interim? And I was like, oh, well, yeah, so this was one of the things that led me to the position that I'm in now, which is sort of doing consulting and advisory with, you know, with founders is because I was like, well, I love the game, you know, and I love learning, which, you know, game is learning to me. But then I'm like, I really like the idea of helping other people achieve similar success that I had, but without them having to go through all the pain that I went through. Yeah.

Yeah. And so for me, like that, I personally don't like this word, but you know, the idea of like teaching, it feels kind of weird using that word. But like, for me, that like is and has been some of the most fulfilling stuff I've done in my career that I would have never, ever imagined, you know, in my time at SWE. I would have never, ever thought for one minute, oh, like I'd love to actually help other people do that. It would have never occurred to me. That's kind of beautiful though. And I do feel like

a lot of the time we find purpose in the pain. Oh, absolutely. And I love that you've turned it into that. Rachel mentioned to me actually that we were talking about

what do we like outside of our jobs? That is such a common issue, I think, for entrepreneurs. Yeah, huge. And she said you've actually helped her a ton focus on her personal life as well as her career. How do you approach balancing the two? Yeah. So for me and for a lot of people who are first-time founders that I've engaged in, you...

You have this fear that if you kind of don't like touch and control and be across everything, that the whole thing will blow up. Right. And this is an elaborated story, but, you know, an example, a friend of mine, you know, he's in his mid forties, he's got three children and three daughters. And I was talking to him, you know, once about kids and he's like, oh, you know, you have the first one and you wrap them in cotton wool and you gently place them, you know, in the cot and then,

five or ten times a night, you come in just to listen to them or poke them to see if they're still alive because you're not sure if they're dead, right? Because you have massive paranoia that something's going to go wrong, right? You've left the hospital and you're like, what the hell is this little nugget, right? You know?

Anyway, obviously that all works out. And then you have the second kid and you're like, "Oh, you're just kind of a bit sloppy. Throw them in there, chuck a blanket over it. That'll be all right. All right. Whatever." And he's like, "Tell you what, the third kid, kick him down the hallway. That'll be fine." And the same principle is kind of apply in business, but it's really hard to get that perspective early on. And so to your initial point, it's like, how do you kind of disassociate the business and personal life and whatever? Part of this is understanding. So one, there is no disassociation. Your identity is in some regard tied up with the business.

But like to understanding from an emotional standpoint, like if you're not on top of everything and you don't know everything and it's not all working and it's perfect, this, that and the other, the baby will still live. It'll still survive. You know, like, and that's a very important mentality, I think, for founders early in their journey to have. It's like not everything has to be perfect. And it's part of that like emotional tension that makes it really hard for people to switch off.

So they might work a 40, 50, 60-hour week, but mentally they're working 120 hours because they're freaking out about it all the time. And this is like what Rachel and I would talk about all the time. She's like, you just are never worried.

She's like, you were just never stressed about anything. I'm like, you should have seen me five years ago. I was crazy. You're in a position where you don't need to be worried anymore. No, I have a very, very different perspective on it now. And again, I'm very grateful and fortunate, of course, to have that perspective. Yes, part of that is having some money, but a huge part of that is actually learning. It's actually having the knowledge and the perspective to be like, okay, well, if your business dies, cool. You did it once. You do it again.

Did that financial success change your view on success and happiness at all? Yeah, yeah, it did. And this is a fun aside, right? So if you're a first-time founder who didn't come from wealth or you have a reason that money is very important to you and you want to build it, you spend your first half of many years trying to get it. You're like, got to get money, got to get money, got to get it, got to get it. And then you get it. Maybe you sell a company or you have a really big year of profit or whatever. And you go, cool. And you go,

well, fuck, I don't want to lose it now. Yeah. And then that becomes a really big problem. Right. And the fear of not losing it is in some regards, almost worse than the fear of trying to get it because you didn't have it. So you had nothing to lose, but when you have it, then you're like, oh shit, I don't want to lose it. So it's a very different, you know, kind of mindset, right. Like to, to go through and like that in itself is a really interesting journey to try and navigate. Part of the learning that even having money doesn't change your, but won't necessarily change your perspective or the fear with it. That's a

journey like you have to go through that journey you know to try to disassociate from the safety that it provides you but I think even some of the earlier remarks people will see success as money yes they'll see success as a CEO job title or an entrepreneur job title or a big office or lots of employees or winning a business award or whatever right you know it's like

But like, and this is so cliche, but like if all that shit makes you really miserable, like, are you really winning? Yeah. Cause I have lots of friends. You have a few friends who are, you know, billionaires and they've got planes and yachts and this and that and the other and whatever. It's like, we've spoken about this many times. I'm like, are you any happier since having those things? And they're like, no. They're like, sure. I have like, it's more convenient.

yeah, like maybe my holidays are slightly good. They were here and now they're here, but it's like, but the importance of happiness doesn't come from those things. And I know some people would certainly argue that and we're all entitled to our beliefs, but like,

Having more money doesn't really make you any happier. And I guess your level of normal is just different. Yeah, absolutely. You just adjust to the new normal. Yeah, absolutely. In my position, I bought a new house shortly after doing the deal. And a few friends of mine were like, oh man, you have a new house, you've massively upgraded. I'm like, I didn't buy that with the deal money.

You bought it before? Yeah. And they're like, well, what do you mean? I was like, well, I haven't spent any of the dual money. And they're like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, what would be the point in that? Have you bought anything crazy? No. Oh my gosh. Not a single thing. Well, literally the most crazy thing is a nice holiday. Which I think is amazing because it's such a good experience and memory. Yeah. Yeah. But like,

And this is like part of the point too, right? You're like, yeah, I bought a slightly nicer, larger house. At the moment in that house, at least 50% of the rooms have no furniture still. Are you just a minimalist? That stuff's just not that important to me. Yeah. Like, and it's really strange. So, you know, going the other way around, right? Like, you know, when I was...

very early in the journey. It's like I had made about $300,000 or $400,000 a year as a personal trainer and I bought myself a watch. I didn't know anything about watches. I literally straight up bought that watch because I thought that that's what you did when you made money. It was a $15,000 Breitling. I still have it. I never wear it. Literally ever. It's cool to keep that though. Yeah. And of course, I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to buy a set of Louis Vuitton suitcases. Yeah.

Right. Because that's what you do. Because this is what you do, right? Anyway, when I got them and I shortly after that discovered them, I'm like, yeah, they're nice looking and they're nice leather. But they're really bloody hard to use. I have like a $300 Samsonite one and I use that and I've got a July suitcase as well. They're great.

I don't have to worry about damaging them. And, like, you can probably see I'm quite practical more than I am. Style is not my thing. I'm not, like, cool. You look great. Yeah, this is Rachel. I was going to say, does Rachel help? These are, like, cargo pants, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't even really know what they were until we met.

That's so funny. And, like, the funniest part, so, like, the very first time that Rachel and I met, like, in person, right, so I pulled up at the airport because she flew to where I live for us to catch up, and she comes out, and I always tell this story, she comes walking out of the airport, she's in this, like, one-piece, like, bodysuit thing, and she is, like, she looked so beautiful, right? Yeah.

She's gorgeous. Yeah, amazing. She's stunning. And I'm wearing like, there's no exaggeration, I'm wearing a five-year-old set of like out-of-the-ass black cotton track pants that are like faded.

And I'm wearing like a long sleeve, like gym top, like a Nike gym top that has like holes in the armpits. Yeah. That's when you know, because you don't have to flex with the outfit. Well, I guess so. But like, then the thing was, and so that she didn't say anything to me for a few months. And then a couple of months later, she buys me a t-shirt. Right. Anyway, it's like extra large. Right. I put it on. I was like, oh, this is like, this is really loose. And she's like, yeah, you have been wearing quite tight fitting t-shirts. Yeah.

And I was like, really, are they? And then she's like, put your T-shirt on. I'm like, okay. She's like, put your hands above your head and you will like come up. No. She's like, this is just not right. Yeah, and the loose style is in. Yeah. So that was all new for me. Yeah. That was all very new for me. Yeah. It's a good match.

Yeah, yeah, she's madly increased my style game. She's awesome. I'm seeing her tomorrow. I can't wait. Another tweet. You said, time doesn't speak to the quality of relationship and instead you should look to characteristics like values, alignment, reciprocity, intimacy and utility. Yeah. So how do you feel about relationships and have you gotten to focus on them more now that you're out of sweat? Yeah.

Part of the point I'm getting at there is that a lot of people will be like, "Oh, this person's my best friend. We've been best friends for 10 years, 15 years, whatever. I'd do anything for them." Whilst I understand that's a very nice note and a very nice sentiment or whatever, what that is doing is effectively creating unconditionality. It's like, "Well, I unconditionally love you and I will unconditionally be your friend and unconditionally support you."

But then you will also regularly hear like, oh my God, I can't believe that my friend did that to me. I've known you for 15 years. Like, how could you do this? I feel so betrayed. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, that's because you weren't being honest with yourself or that person. And what this really gets at is it's like knowing someone for a really long amount of time doesn't mean that you have a good relationship. Even if you would say that this person A and B have been best friends for a long time, it does not mean that you have a good relationship.

Right. Like, you know, a good relationship would normally be represented by, you know, having similar like, you know, values and beliefs, you know, because then you can actually get along. You know, it would normally have some form of utility or like value. So you would have a value exchange of some sort and that value exchange would be reciprocated. Right. And like, and this is a, in some regards, like quite a mechanical way of looking at relationships. It's like, but you don't have a relationship with anybody in your life that you get nothing from. Yeah.

And so if that's true, right, then you have relationships to get things. And if you are in a relationship with somebody of any sort for a really long time but you're not actually getting things or the things that you want, well, then why the hell are you in the relationship, whether it's friendship or intimate or otherwise? Like it's a very irrational worldview. And I would go so far as to say like a lot of relationship discomfort or sadness actually comes from the inability to let go of relationships when you probably should.

Yeah. Because a lot of the world would go, oh, well, like letting go of a relationship or your best friend or whatever. That's bad. You're a bad person. That's mean. It's like, what? It doesn't need to be a negative thing. It's like you finish school and leave. That's not bad. You finish a meal and leave a restaurant. That's not bad. And I know that they're different. But in the same regard, it's like you can finish a relationship with somebody. It doesn't mean that you have to hate them. Or you could change your relationship with someone to not be a best friend but just be a friend.

Yeah, they're not bad things. That's a natural course of life, right? Yeah, we talk a lot about evolving and changing on this show because I think with

With the internet now, it's really difficult to change your mind and to evolve. And I really agree with you. I think if we're evolving as people, we're obviously evolving out of certain relationships. Yeah, that's just practical. And even to some of your remarks before about the founder journey and it's unrelatable and this and that and the other and whatever, it's like, well, certain decisions that you make, your intimate partner, your career choice, and personal hobbies,

Those three choices alone are immediately going to rule out a huge portion of both your existing and potential future relationships, purely just based on those three decisions. In some regards, that's probabilistic in nature. It's like, okay, well, the probability that you found a company that's successful and you run it and you work really hard, but then you can still really get along with people that have no drive in their life at all and have no interest in working, no interest in a career at all, but you knew them for 10 years.

So you should keep being best mates and hang out every Tuesday. Like that's just, that's improbable. It's unlikely. A hundred percent. Greg and I talk about this all the time because it feels quite like, I think we feel guilty sometimes. Oh, absolutely. The self-criticism and like self-judgment is really harsh because it's

A really blunt way of saying this would be in that example of the founder or the entrepreneur, it's like, you are the abnormal one. Yes, yes. It is less normal to do that than not. And a lot of the world will perceive it in that simplistic way. They'll say, but that's not normal. You're not normal. And then so then normally as human beings, we will say, well, yeah, actually...

I am not normal. And actually, I am getting rid of a lot of my old friends, actually. And we really don't get along anymore. And actually, I don't have as many good friends. I'm a little bit isolated, actually. And then you start to tell yourself this story. And it's a very, it would be a very easy thing to then say, oh, I am bad. I am wrong. Rah, rah, rah. It's like, but if you remove the emotion out of it, it's like, well, but that's normal. It's a normal part of life. And it's

so valuable to me when I do meet someone who can relate, whether it's you or Rachel or people who do get it. It creates such a special bond right away because it's just someone you can bounce ideas off and talk to. It reminds me of, I think it's Step Brothers where they're like, we just become best friends. I think we just became best friends. It literally is like that. But honestly, I feel that's a little bit like adulthood as well in general. The later in life you meet people, I think you opt in or out

quicker yeah of relationships in general and you normally opt in or out a little bit harder like you'll get deeper into your friendships and relationships quicker than you will when you're younger because you know yourself better yeah I think I think you become more honest with yourself yeah and more honest with others yeah yeah and it's like it's a waste of time yeah yeah the energy and time thing right if I meet up with someone and I'm like I know I'm

not going to vibe with you. Yeah. I'm for sure not going to get coffee with you. No, no, no, no. And that's another like guilt inducing scenario, right? Especially if the other person's like, I really want to catch up and you're like,

I don't want to. Even if someone's super passionate and works hard on something that's completely different to me, I can still get down with that. Yeah, because you can relate. Yeah. Like I met someone the other day who is a competitive road biker. Yeah, cool. And I was like, he was like, I'm so sorry, this is so boring. And I was like, no, no, no, you're passionate about it. Therefore, I care. Yeah. Love that. You're a dad now. Yes. What has parenthood changed for you in terms of relationships? A lot. Yeah, a lot for sure. Yeah.

I think, yeah, I mean, the headline is that firstly, parenthood is not at all what I ever thought it was going to be. Because like context, I don't think I'd ever really even held a child before having one. Wow. Yeah, like I just hadn't really been around them that much growing up. But I think it's this massive patience thing, right? It's a massive patience game. And someone once said to me as well, they're like, you know, parenting is really, really, really hard only for people that want to be good at it.

So it's like the better that you want to be at parenting, the harder it feels. Because it's very easy to be harsh on yourself, you and that process. Kids are going to be kids. They're going to break stuff, spill stuff.

be annoying and irritating like a lot of the time you know for certain parts of it and that it goes through kind of waves obviously I can only speak to being four and a half years in I can't talk to anything after that yet I'm sure there'll be more more learnings to come but yeah I think it's been a really big like patience thing for me and I think also as well like it's a very different experience of like love

I think in a really unique way. I mean, honestly, like it's been one of the best things that's happened in my life for sure. And I'm sure it's something to keep you busy as well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's, I mean, that's probably a thing too. Like,

This is an interesting perspective, I think. So yeah, when you have a child, you effectively have... So before that, you've got all of your own autonomy and freedom and flexibility. Maybe you have a partner or a family or a hobby or whatever that has some dependency on you, but really it's still all your choice, right? As soon as you have a child, that kind of goes. So you kind of go down a rung on the list of priorities.

And so that's a really like confronting challenge, you know, to go through, which I don't think much can prepare you for. It's a very big kind of change to your entire worldview. But part of what that presents is this really interesting, you know, fork in the road for a lot of people. And so one thing that's always really, you know, kind of irked me a little bit about certain people is I'll say like, oh, I have to do this. I have to do that. I have to do this for my kid. And it's like, no, no, no, no. It's like, you get to do that.

Like this is an opportunity for you. Like it's not like you don't have to go, you know, take your kids to the sport game or have to take them. That's actually an opportunity for you to spend time with them. It can be fun for you, you know, this, that and the other. That's actually the good part, you know. And I just feel like sometimes people, yeah,

I mean, in parenthood and it relates into lots of other things, business included, but people wish away like a lot of that time. You know, they're like, oh, I really don't want to do this. I've got to go to this fucking business event or I've got to pick up my kid here or whatever. It's like, dude, that's the good stuff. Yeah. Because there will be a time, you know, and whether it's in business or parenthood, right, there'll be a time where you look back and go like, God, I wish I could do that again. And I think about this even now, like sometimes in my career, I'm like, oh, man, like everything was so fun when it was all new. Yeah.

You know, when everything is like new for the first time, it's like, oh, hit this goal for the first time, learn this thing for the new time. That's all like so much fun. Yeah. Right. And then at some point in time, that's gone. I mean, like the parenting thing, I don't actually know if this is true because I haven't looked into it, but I did see in a couple of different places online this notion that like by the time your child is like 18, you've spent like 80% of your time with them.

Because they move out of home and then it's a call or this or that and the other or maybe they travel or whatever it is, but they're not like actually living with you. You don't see them morning and night every day, right? And you kind of go, okay, cool. But then when you realize you have a kid and time goes so quickly, you're like, shit, it's running away. Oh my God. Yeah. I'm very excited to have kids and I'm just absorbing all the information right now. Where are you at career-wise now? What are you doing? Yeah.

So yeah, a couple of things kind of all at the same time. So it's sort of like the founder mentoring and advisory. I do that for about 15 companies at the moment, which I love. That's really enjoyable. I do a fair bit of investing alongside that, not normally with those businesses. I try to keep that separate, but a lot of investing. And then I've also, so I founded another company about, I don't know, it was maybe four or five years ago now that I

that I was not running at the time because I was doing sweat, but I founded it and we had like the other founders were management, like they were running the company. But a couple of months ago, I took over the CEO role in that business. So now I'm kind of, yeah, running as well. Amazing. Back in the seat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back in the seat. Yeah. It's a lot less stressful this time, but yeah, back in the seat. What's some advice you'd give to the listeners that you wish you knew before you started? Yeah.

Yeah, so one of the things I said before is I think that not everything's going to break. Your business isn't as fragile as you think. I think it's a really big one. And I think like with a lot of these sorts of things, like intellectualizing that or, you know, like intellectually understanding it is one thing. So you can kind of go, okay, taking a day off won't kill the business or going on a holiday and not checking my emails won't kill the business or whatever. But like being able to get to a point where you live that is like it's very freeing and it'll make you a 10 times better business person.

Like, because it allows you a degree of like disassociation and disconnection from the business. Yeah. Love that. That's very helpful for me as well. Thank you. Now it's time for the question we ask every guest. I started this podcast because I believe everyone's pursuit of wellness looks different. What does wellness mean to you?

Yeah, I think the idea of wellness for me would probably be working towards or finding a way to like live my best life. And what I mean by that, like not in a generic sense, you know, like I would suggest for me that's a combination of finding a way to love myself, finding someone to love.

Yeah. And finding something to pursue that I love, like, and that might be multiple things, right? You know, but, you know, I think for me, like, I don't think that you can kind of like be well, if you don't have those things in your life. Absolutely. Where can people find you online? Where can they go see your amazing quotes? Yeah. Hit me up on Instagram. Yeah. Toby underscore Pierce. Thank you so much, Toby. This was awesome. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Go comment on my last Instagram at Mari Llewellyn with the guest you want to see next. I'll be picking one person from the comments to send our bloom greens to. Make sure you hit follow so you never miss my weekly episodes.

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