Asking an Olympian: Periods, Mindset & Raising Champion Kids [Bronte Campbell Interview]

21:22Doone Roisin:right okay right right and so going back to kind of the dynamic with your sister and kind of like having that person with the role model and like managing your brain and the chronic stress and all that kind of stuff did you ever feel jealous like did you suffer from jealousy i don't know whether it was jealousy but it was definitely there's like a friction like what were the things that you felt i mean i was definitely always happy for her there was But there's also a tension happening there as well. Yeah, you're both competitive. Yeah, you're competitive in competing for the same thing. And there's a really finite resource there that you're competing for.

22:00Doone Roisin:Oh, in the same races? Yeah, no, we do the same events. No. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Added layer of complexity. In the moment, you're seeing like we race against each other. And not only racing against each other when you're going and competing, it's in training every single day. so I think I recognized early on that if I could withstand the discomfort of that I could use it to my advantage like no one else in the world has someone who at the time she went to the Olympics she won two bronze medals at her first Olympics when she was 16 years old no one else has that person in their daily training environment and daily living environment I did that's an advantage if you can yeah but only if you can withstand the friction of being constantly second best to that only if you can stand going to training every day and getting beaten by one of the best people in the world if you can stand to like live in that discomfort it will sharpen you if you can't stand the discomfort then you're you're either gonna beat yourself up so much that you're never going to be able to continue pushing forward or you're going to leave.

23:09Those are your options. So yeah, if you can, if you can stay in it, it's good. And I'm not, I'm not the most talented swimmer. I'm, okay, we'll be in the training.

23:18Doone Roisin:Gold medal Olympian. I'm really, I'm really, really not like my, the thing that I have a talent for is competing really well in the moment that it matters. And the only reason I have that as a skillset or talent is because I've had to do that every single training session for my whole life. So it's like a learned, it's a learned skill to be able to stand up and perform because I was always against people who were faster than me. I was never the fastest person in my squad, not one time. And there was a time. But the times that mattered. I mean, yeah, there was some international events where I beat Cade and beat everyone else in the world at the same time.

23:56But in training most days, it wasn't like I was the number one all the time in the squad. There were always people who were better than me around me, which is excellent. Like that's the best place to be.

24:06Doone Roisin:Yeah, that is the best place to be. I want to know like in this time, in this era of you, like you're in the pool, you know, you're like swimming and you're teaching yourself this skill of how to like perform the best you can, even though you're kind of competing against someone every training session. What is your like actual inner dialogue? Do you remember what your brain was like, what you would say to yourself? Like what was your internal voice saying? I always find it so interesting because my fucking internal dialogue can be so loud sometimes that I'm like, shut up. Yeah. What would you tell yourself?

24:39My internal voice is quite positive in the moment, but I think it's actually one of my really big strengths. I didn't realize that other people don't do this. Like before any effort or session, I would just be like unbelievably convinced that I was going to do a great job. Even if I felt like tired and exhausted, I'd be like, some of your best things have been when you've been tired or exhausted. or like people can perform in their tired exhaust you're going to be great or be like swimming along like picturing how good my technique must be looking like really visualization yeah but like while I was doing it and like overlaying that onto what I was actually doing like the feeling of what I wanted it to feel like on top of the feeling of what was actually happening so it's like quite

25:22Doone Roisin:I'm quite positive in that singing at karaoke I sound like Dua Lipa yes that's exactly it you're like overlaying that you're like this is it this is my i'm manifesting it as it's happening i actually remember listening to like cranking out honey by mariah carey and like i literally thought that that is what i sounded like until my mom was like oh my god you're terrible at singing like she was like that's not what you sound like but that's also what kids are really good at they're really good at imagining this like future of themselves like you watch them like run and play and they're like, I'm Usain Bolt or like whatever it is.

25:56And they really like, they feel that. And that's like very powerful. And I think I kept a lot of that, like quite wishful thinking. Having said that, I would also be then looking at the times that Kate was doing, looking at what I was doing and like constantly like adding up the differences and being like, okay, she's like 10 % better than me today, or she's 20 % better than me today. And there were times where that was like really, really hard. Like I would get to the end of session. I'd be like crying into my goggles. I just feel like you're shit you're terrible you're dreadful like so there's a lot of like very positive talk and like very positive like you can do this you can do this and then like as soon as it was over and it hadn't worked it would be like all all the wheels off and like super super harsh like even while it was happening so you had like repeats of something and one one repetition wasn't that great I'd be like oh well if that one wasn't great it means I've got more energy for the next one like constantly turning it into like it's positive it's positive it's positive i think like the energy of keeping that up then at the end would just like fall away and it would just be like like this vacuum of like negativity so it wasn't always like it couldn't

27:02Doone Roisin:keep it up all the time and then what was the dynamic with you and your sister then would she be like oh my god it's okay you're gonna be great like or was it more like we have to keep separate these emotions kind of thing yeah i wouldn't have shared that with her i wouldn't have shared oh she wouldn't know that you're crying would your coach know that you would be upset or he also would be like not in the loop of that kind of stuff. You might, you'll probably notice it. If you noticed it, you'd pull me aside. But most of the time it was like internal. If you're crying to your goggles, no one can see you.

27:30You just let the water out at the end. It's fine.

27:33Doone Roisin:Salt water, salt water. Yeah. How do you think that kind of shaped who you are now and how you deal with your emotions now? Like if you were upset, would you cry in front of someone or would you be like? I cry all the time now, but I really used to keep it like very, like I think from when I was like 18 till I was 22, I don't think I like, I barely cried at all. Now I cry all the time. Like if you show me that ad you're talking about before, I probably cry. Like I cried literally all the time. It's just all bubbling up. Yeah. It's a lot of emotions. I used to like really compartmentalize. I think that took quite a lot of energy, but I'm a lot more relaxed now, as we were saying, less intense, more relaxed.

28:10Doone Roisin:Right. Okay. Okay. And so when you were kind of like, then entering what, like, how old were you when you actually like, you got, I don't know what the terms are here, but like you get assigned to going to the Olympics. So you get like kicked. You qualify. You qualify. That's exactly what it is. You know, I watched enough fucking ice skating during the winter Olympics. You know that you qualify. I should know that. So you qualify at what age to go to your first Olympics? I was 17. And you were going to go to Rio? Tokyo. No, London. London. I don't even remember it. London. Which was what year?

28:41Doone Roisin:2012. And so what does your routine become? Like what does a professional athlete that's like on track for the Olympics, what do you like eat, sleep, supplements, like train? What's like a day in the life of a 17 year old Bronte at that time? It doesn't change very much once you qualify as before you qualify. So in swimming to qualify, you have to, you go to one meet and you've got to come first or second. And if you don't, then you got to come back and do it again in four years. So it's just like one moment in time. So you're training for Olympic trials. And then once you qualify, you're training for the Olympics.

29:20But each one is difficult in its own way. Like trials is difficult because there's a really strong negative outcome. Like if you don't come first and second, it is over.

29:31Doone Roisin:Right. So it's literally the saying of if you're not first, you're last. first or second first second yeah i mean there's been people who have come third by 0.01 of a second which is nothing and that's it that's their olympic dream done like oh no and they never go to the olympics that's happened oh my god that's happened before so that's that's the reality that you're living in for olympic trials and then when you go to the olympics it's like obviously big and scary in the olympics but you don't have this like big negative thing like what's the worst thing that can happen here like i'm already at the olympics do you know what i which obviously you still want to do well and there's like this desire to do well but it feels different from trials um but what does it look like so i'd be i mean i just finished school by then um my schoolies i spent on training camp in fredbo finished school went to training camp no sex drugs and rock and roll yeah five girls not rock and roll but five girls none of that for you?

30:29No, it was just laps, laps and more laps. And it looked the same as what I was doing throughout all those other years of preparation. So it's like nine swim sessions a week, three gym sessions, lots of sleeping. So like the more sleep that you can do, the better. And napping is like very important for me and my recovery in between sessions. You train in the morning, you train at night and you need to be able to like recover from the morning session and like sleeping for 40 minutes is such a good way to reset your central nervous system. So do that. Once I finished school, I could actually do that.

31:04When I was at school, I obviously couldn't.

31:06Doone Roisin:Yeah, you were also going to school as well, right? Yeah. So that year in 2012, I finished school in the end of 2011 and then qualified for the Olympics in April of 2012. So for those like four months, I'd like got into university, but I deferred uni to see if I could make it to the Olympics. What did you want to study at that time? Um, what did I put in for? I think I put in for a business degree, which I, I ended up going and studying anyway, but I waited until after the Olympics to start. And like during that kind of, you know, that time where you got in and you were like, pat myself on the back, like kind of, I'm doing this.

31:42Doone Roisin:Were you really proud of yourself? Or like, were you like, this is weird. Like no one else, like my friendship group isn't kind of going to the Olympics. Like I've become a big deal here. I definitely didn't feel like I'd become a big Who were your role models? Like, who did you have a poster of on your wall? Did you have, like, Ian Thorpe on your wall? No, I didn't. And maybe because I'd been around a lot of the people who were on the team. I'd been around them a bit. I knew them, like, secondhand through Kate. It felt a bit different. But it definitely was weird going. And then this thing I'd been chasing for so long.

32:14And then being at the games and looking around and being like, oh, I don't know how to be an Olympian. Like, everyone seems to know what to do in front of the camera. there's like there's so much there's so much attention at olympics and so much more media and everyone seemed to know exactly what the thing was that you need to do to look like and be like an olympian and i didn't really know what that was what is that look like and be like an olympian yeah well what what exactly like what was i even thinking i guess like composed right is that yeah

32:43Doone Roisin:everyone was like not looking nervous or something everyone's not looking nervous they're just walking around they look comfortable they've been here before they know exactly what they're doing They've been to multiple games. They know how the system works. They know how the warm-up pool works. They know how this works. They know how marshalling works. They know this entire system, or they look like they do. And they look like they're cool, calm, and collected. I was like, I don't feel like how they look. And so I mustn't be doing it right. And then my coach was like, well, do you know how to swim 50 meters?

33:14And I was like, yeah. Well, that, yeah. And he's like, well, that's all you're here to do. like you're just here to swim 50 meters that's it you can do it that's it how many of those have you done in your life this is same just like come and do it here and so that was um that was a good way of reframing it and being like you don't have to look like an olympian you you are you already are just like do the simplest thing possible swim from this first principles thinking he's like let's just strip it back here yeah just swim from this side of the pool to that side of the pool as fast as possible.

33:48Like you could tell a five-year-old that same thing.

33:53Doone Roisin:I feel like this is fake news, but I read somewhere that an Olympian athlete or like a professional athlete eats like 10 ,000 calories a day when they're at like peak training. Is that true? I couldn't tell you because I've never calorie counted in my life, but I would say that I, 10 ,000 seems like a lot. You do eat a lot. For me, it was more like the frequency of food. I have to eat every like two and a half to three hours to like keep refueling um but the amount i'm also a sprint athlete i'm not a distance athlete so like if you were trying to fuel for a 50 kilometer race versus a 50 meter race very different having glycogen stores is like incredibly important so having enough like energy in your body to convert it into um speed is super like those little gels that you eat when you're running a marathon yeah it's like a bowl of pasta but in a gel yeah so having like carbohydrates so you can burn is really important but um my output is a 30 second race as opposed to a like four hour race that people can put themselves through so different different fueling obviously for different events but having enough fueling is the number one thing like it's like a scientific like formula right i would think that it would be more scientific i've actually never i've never found like very nuanced nutrition that has been like absolutely tailored to every single thing that I do.

35:14And there's more, there's more research now and more, it's more accessible now to be able to like design a diet around like how your body reacts to different foods. That was definitely not available when I was younger. Like the biohacking kind of like. Yeah, there's more research and more people like looking at this stuff and people get really stressed about it. In general, if you're eating carbs before you work out and protein afterwards, you're doing like most of the basics really, really well. And I would layer in that like unprocessed foods. If you can do those things really, really well. And like in general for food, like you know what's good and bad for you.

36:00You can also feel it in your body what's good and bad for you. And when I got injuries later in my career, I found some foods like really inflammatory and I could like eat them and you would be able to feel worse afterwards. Like what? Like sugar. If I ate like, I could definitely feel like if I ate a dessert, I would like feel it in my shoulder maybe like two to three hours later. And like really, yeah. I think processed food, anything that was like processed, I'd be like not so good to get rid of all of that. anything that had, I don't know, flavors 365 or whatever. It's like striver back, all natural stuff.

36:37Doone Roisin:So the grape solo that I drank earlier. I mean, I'm sure it's got lots of natural grapes in it. I'm sure. What would you do to like, when you were, let's say you were competing at the Olympics, let's say, how would you like rest, recover and recharge when you got home? Like what was your like personal process to kind of like process what's just happened, the stress on your body, the stress on your soul, the stress and pressure like on your mind, like as a young woman, I feel like it's just like this. You just must have have this different level of maturity to be like, OK, I need to actually like rest and recharge.

37:12Doone Roisin:And like, what did that look like for you? Oh, I don't think I did a good job of that. Yeah. Like I was loose. I was partying out the back. I mean, I think that's also part of it. You have to have if you've got pressure, you've got to have some way of release as well. I think I was actually really bad at letting pressure release like i would just go straight on to the next thing and in 2012 um when i just yeah i just turned 18 by the time those olympics came around and i was coming home from them and got a call that my brother had gone into life-saving surgery and we were on our way to the closing ceremony we're like whoa shit like literally do we come home now like no that you're not going to get home quicker you just have to find out if he's alive like when you get home so that was like like talk about like a come down from like you're at the olympics it's like and now something like real is happening and we got home and that was me me and kate had to really take over running the household i've got two younger sisters as well my dad had to be back at work my mom was full-time in the hospital with my brother and so we were doing like the school runs for the younger kids and all the lunches and like then trying to train a bit and like that was a very hard landing that one so that one was like no time to process anything um and probably took me many years to start processing what london was like for me um and then say after rio and in between you've got world championships and commonwealth games and another world championships it's not like start right back again yeah so you just like you just go straight back into training and then after rio olympics which i won one gold medal at those olympics but there may have been an expectation that I would have won more um because I was world champion going into those and I was wait is that like a little bit of like a I should have won did something happen oh it was like I got injured like four months before oh which didn't help me um but processing that afterwards was like oh can I swim with this injury and can I keep going with it like I personally the way I performed at those games I thought was exceeded what I'd been able to do in training because I hadn't been able to do much because I'd been so injured but also my reaction to the injury was not helpful like I just kept trying to push through and that ended up with me not being in a great place by the time I got to the games even though I thought it was the thing that was going to get me through do you know what I mean sometimes you think what would you have done in hindsight well in the face of like uncertainty which is what the injury introduced so like in 2015 I was world champion in the 50 and 100 freestyle so I won both of those at the world championships which is it's the same people that go to the Olympics it's just one year earlier and so I knew like what I needed to do to be at that level I knew I needed to be doing chin-ups with 40 kilos around my waist I knew I needed to be getting pre-measurel lactate which is like a um you know that burning feeling that you get in your muscles that's lactic acid buildup and you can measure that um and you needed to be getting that above 20 like three times a week which most people can't get it above 12 but i can produce a lot and you can push your body and learn it to to be able to withstand that amount of pain and acid in it um i knew it i knew the kilometers i needed to do i knew it right so like i had the formula for success and then i got injured and some of those things i couldn't do like as i was getting like really high lactate stuff.

40:39It was, it was a nerve injury. And so that would really like wire up my entire system and I'll get really, really sore from that. And I chin ups was really painful for me, but it was like my main strength exercise. And so I kept being like, well, I have to do these things to be successful. And this is the way that these are the things that make me successful. I can't not do these. Um, whereas probably a better thing would have been to like open up and be like, okay what are different ways that i can get to the same outcome and whether i could have done that in the short amount of time that i had i don't know but that's what i did for the next two years was like okay i can't do these things anymore what's another way to get the result that i want um i ended up having to go on nerve drugs and i was like i used to go fast in my first 50 meters of 100 meters and then like hold on um the nerve drugs took a while like they dead in your nervous system.

41:33They took away all my speed. So I had to learn how to like go out slower and come back harder, like completely flip how I'd normally race. So yeah, there's, I would say like less locking onto the things and more like more relaxing into it and letting it, letting it be uncertain for a little bit while you're exploring and finding what the best result should be. Whether I could have actually done that in time, I don't know, but I had to stop after 2016 and be like, okay, I can't change the fact that I'm injured. The only thing you can change is your reaction approach to it. And that's the only thing that's going to make a difference going forward.

42:10Like I still felt like I competed really well with the injury. I was like within 0.4 of my best time, which was great considering where I was at physically. But if the injury is not going to go away, what is something that you actually can change? Because if it's like, oh, I'm just, injured, so I'm always going to be 0.4 away from my best time. That's not really acceptable if you want to keep going forward. Acceptable. That's not really... No, it's not. It's just not if you want to be at that level. And for me, I don't want to be giving all of that to the sport if I don't think I can get back to that level.

42:46So what can I actually change? And so, yeah, I definitely made mistakes. I'm not definitely made mistakes in how I approached it at the start but and what did you change i then spent like two years looking at different pain management thing like i said getting on the nerve drugs redoing how i raced taking away chin-ups bringing them back in in a different way like i literally spent like two years completely exploring like weird neck exercises going seeing strange specialists getting back into hypology and acupuncture and bloodletting and pain meditation and deep-seated meditation warming around your body looking at things like really just what deep seated yeah like okay what's pain meditation you say lots of things i don't know what they are so many things i mean i did everything and you just like try it and be like does this work for me yes no what do i want to take from this okay great take that move on um and yeah i mean i say that like it happened quickly it took a while pain meditation is like there's multiple ways you can do it's just meditating on the pain and often And like letting yourself feel it and then trying to like let it go.

43:48A good way is like you might meditate and picture like a beam of light hitting the top of your head. And then like going through your body bit by bit really gently and like releasing tension in every little piece that it touches. And it's like this like healing glowing light that moves through you. And yeah. And it sounds like the most airy fairy thing. Like if you told me to do this when I was 18, I'd be like, that's stupid. I have to let go of that stupid and just be like, there's no downside to any of this. You may as well just embrace it and try it. And then some of that deeper meditation was like, after I'd been meditating for a while, then I could get this little guide thing and get in the car with him and go around my body and find, say, my shoulder, go in there and look at it and shine a light around in it.

44:35It's actually such a, this sounds so weird, shine a light around inside of it. And like, if you'd asked me consciously, what do I think an area that's really sore would look like? You'd normally say like red and inflamed and like, but I shone the light around and it just looked like gray and like dejected and a bit like abandoned, like cobwebby. And I was like, oh, and then I had like this like, oh, then you'll often get a lot of emotion come up with that. there's overwhelming like feeling of like helplessness come from that and it's like okay when was the first time you felt that emotion i was like i have no idea then it's like look down at your feet when you first felt that emotion what are you wearing i was like well i'm not wearing any shoes i'm five years old and i've been left behind on a big hike because no one thought i could do it and i was too young and i wasn't able to do it and that's the same like feeling that I was literally like holding in this injury, which was making it worse because pain is not just in your body.

45:38It's in your brain as well. And I had these stuff for so long that there was like emotions attached to it. And not only was I like in pain, I was also like angry at my shoulder for the pain that it was causing me and getting like wound up with this feeling of helplessness every single time I was in pain, which was all the time. So that's like, that's a A lot, right? That's a lot. Unlocking all of that and then there's a heap of work to do after that as well. But there's some of the things that you're like, I was like, well, we may as well just try it. You have to. And brought up some interesting things.

46:10And that was a really big unlock with my shoulder was being really grateful for the work that it was doing. And not treating it as like this burden and this like thing that I was hating. I could be so angry at it for not being able to do its job properly. But I do 19 ,000 swim strokes a week and I've been doing that since I was about 10 years old. Like, it is a miracle that either of my shoulders are working well. Like, thank you so much for being here with me for the ride as opposed to, yeah, being angry at it. And when you're angry, you get more inflammatory markers in your body. You can measure the blood of someone who's angry and will look different from the blood of someone who's like, your emotions have an impact on your body.

46:58Doone Roisin:Yeah, there's. I want to measure my markers. You can honestly, you can measure like, you can measure someone's blood and like the blood of someone who's lonely will look different from the blood of someone who's connected. Like your emotions have an impact in your body to such an astronomical degree and vice versa. What you do in your body impacts your emotions. so like being able to learn about that what a gift to like be able to do that through my sport it's so fun it's really a superpower like and that's why you are the best at what you do so on that same kind of note like we were talking about this before we started recording of my period today my period fucking sucks um as a female athlete did you still get your period and how did you if you did especially as a swimmer how the fuck do you manage that it is um i always wonder this about women who are like sports stars i'm like a do you still get it and b like if you do how on earth do you manage like because i'm sure you just don't want to take like loads of painkillers and things that can also inflame your body but then also like what if you have like endo and you're like struggling yeah i mean that happens a lot endo there's a lot of athletes that have endo and you don't know that you have it for quite a long time and there is like with training you can have an irregular or completely lose your period so like I used to spend like eight hours like severely vomiting or like diarrhea and I would be like that is so intense it was so intense it was honestly because of stress though we figured it out because when I moved back here it disappeared basically like from that level like I just don't have that problem anymore.

48:39Doone Roisin:And I'm like, you like, there would just be no chance of doing anything on a day like that. There would just be like being on the floor. So like, what, how are you managing that part of your life? I mean, I was lucky that I didn't have really intense periods, but having said that, if I was competing on a day where it was before or when I was on my period, you get like a lot of pain from lactic acid after a race. And I would very often vomit after a race, but then I would get like the most intense like back pain and like it feels like someone who's like punching you in the kidneys and knowing going into a race that I was not only going to have like the normal race pain but I was going to have this extra period pain afterwards was like so much dread but you just have to deal with it but as I got older like I got I mean I was on other hormone things so I was on different like um what's the one the thing in your arm like the bar the bar i don't know what it's called yeah so things that like managed it and made it a little bit flatter was really good i was never i was never like super all over the place with my periods which was good but um yeah also i didn't i tried the pill at some point that was not good for my training um or my emotional state seems like a weird thing to give to a 14 year old but whatever um and then yeah that was on the bar and like used other contraceptive devices more as a way of managing the actual cycle for me yeah for performance but it's really hard like what about like what if it's like the day of the olympics it is like i've competed at the olympics with my period like what what do you mean it is just so unfair it just is and the olympics by the way you think the olympics measuring who's the best in the world.

50:23The Olympics is actually measuring who is the best person in the world on this day for 30 seconds. That's what it's measuring. And there's so many variables that go into that. I will say that when you've got a lot of adrenaline in your body, you do end up being able to get up and do a lot more things, but you might need more recovery. And I think that there's not been a lot of research into it. There's not been a lot of research into women's sport because sport has not been for women. So it's an area that there's more research that needs to be done. And it's also very individual. So it's really difficult.

50:55There's people who train around their periods because there's like times in your cycle when you add more energy or you feel stronger, or there's also times in your cycle where your joints are a lot looser. And particularly if you're doing like an impact sport, if you were doing like tackling or fighting or anything like that, knowing when those times are is really important. But only now is that becoming really mainstream because most research, most medical research in general is done on men. And then if you layer on top of that, the amount of sports research that is done on women. So there's still a lot coming out now.

51:31But I think I was just, again, really lucky that it never had a big, big impact on me. But I definitely have swum with people that they wouldn't be able to get out of bed on that day. So it's just hard because you don't get to pick the time.

51:48Doone Roisin:Yeah, literally. I mean, women are amazing. They are. Is that something that you're interested in when you talk about research on women in sport? I feel like we haven't talked about that as a topic before ever. No, I think it is really interesting. It's interesting seeing this stuff come out now and seeing this next generation of women who have so many different sporting opportunities ahead of them. And there's been women in Olympic sport for a long time, but Olympic sport is not a super big money maker or well-funded. Like most Olympic sports are not commercial sports. They're not what you'd quote unquote call professional sports.

52:24But now you've got NRLW, AFLW, you've got the A-League and soccer and I don't know what they call the Women's League within that. But you've got the Matildas, which are the biggest sporting team that we have in this country. They've got like the highest brand score of any sporting team.

52:43Doone Roisin:For men and women? Yeah. Really? That's so cool. Oh, my God. I feel so happy to be at the finals the other weekend. Yeah. And how special does it feel being there? And you've got the IPL overseas where these women are competing and they're actually earning money for the first time. And for the first time, the women are now worth something as well. They're worth something to the league because they're earning money to the league. And so now there's the investment in it. And it's the same as like, like men's, lots of men's sports were amateur and not professional, even up until like the 1980s. And then they became professional sports and the athletes were able to earn money off of it.

53:21And the like clubs and leagues were able to earn money off of it. And then it's like, oh, now this is, now we've earned$5 million. We want to put$1 million aside to see if we can get people to stay in the sport for longer or whatever it is, you know. And so being able to have like commercial value means that you can then have investment back into things that bring more commercial value to you and to the sport. So it's definitely been interesting. And I was at Collingwood's football club last week with a bunch of their AFLW women and just looking at them and looking at them training and being like, this is a possibility for you in a way that it wasn't for me growing up.

54:01Like there was a time in my life where I was like, I love footy. I'm going to play footy. And it was like, mum was like, what, you're going to play on the men's team? And I was like, yeah. And she was like, no, you're not. They're so much stronger than you. And I was like, well, I'm going to do it anyway. And she was like, please don't do that. But it's now a possibility. So it's so cool to see that and see the push from so many years to like finally reach this point. The evolution of it. Yeah, it'll just keep going. It has to.

54:31Doone Roisin:One of the things that was coming up kind of when I was researching, you know, what are people curious about? What are people talking about online when it comes to professional athletes who go to the Olympics and compete at the Olympics is like how much money do you earn as an Olympian? Do you earn money if you win a gold or a silver or a bronze medal? Do you like, yes, you must get paid from the perspective of like, like a sponsor deal or whatever. But like the like the business of how the Olympics works and how an athlete makes money in that kind of sphere. How did it work for you? How did you earn money in the Olympics?

55:07Doone Roisin:Yeah, it's a really tricky. And how were you commercialized, I guess, as as the the star? Yeah. The Olympics in particular are really tricky because when you go to the Olympics, you sign over your IP rights. So you sign over the rights to your image to the IOC and the AOC, so the International Olympic Committee and the Australian Olympic Committee. I didn't know that. For how long? Forever? No. You sign it. Yeah. I mean, they can use your image forever. I mean, like they use your image in all the clips like forever. They're allowed to use it. They're allowed to use it to promote the Olympics. And you don't make money on that?

55:40You do not make money on that. So the sponsors sponsor the Australian Olympic Committee for millions and millions of dollars. And then the Australian Olympic Committee provides training environments and supports the athletes to then like go to the Olympics. And they also fundraise to get athletes to go to the Olympics. So like when the cost of taking athletes to the Olympics is actually all through sponsors and philanthropic donations. It's not government funding. Then in that ecosystem, there's government funding as well. But that's so bizarre because also like

56:12Doone Roisin:government funding from the perspective of like if you're going to like if you're going to a city to compete at the olympics like that city is like booming yeah well the government funding comes direct to the athletes that's not to do with like going to the games going to the games is purely from the australian olympic committee and then you have the australian sports commission and the funding that sits within that and so that funding is for like more for bringing health and wellness outcomes to the nation through inspiring the nation so then if you're like top four in the world um you'd be on a podium potential funding and that is like 20 to 30 grand a year and so that's what most that's nothing that's what most olympic athletes would live on but when you go to the olympic you do you go to the olympics you not only do you sign away your image rights you also in a media blackout.

57:06So from two weeks before until I think it's four weeks afterwards, you cannot post about your personal sponsors at all. So say you've gone out and hustled and you got some personal sponsors, you are now not allowed to talk about them in the time where you've actually got any sort of platform to give them any leverage. So if you're a sponsor sponsoring an athlete, like you can't sponsor me and I'm going to wear your brand at the Olympics. The brands are very tightly controlled. Like you can't walk out on deck wearing something that's, that's not from the Australian Olympic committee branding or the IOC branding.

57:42That's it. Those are the only things that allow, you know, to post about it, you know, let's talk about it. So it's a really interesting space. And especially as it moves away from brands used to like sponsor and do a campaign and like it would be a billboard campaign or even a digital campaign. Now it's like Most people are doing social media and collabs, and then suddenly all that social media has to be blacked out for six weeks as well. So it's a really weird system. We've seen interesting things, say like in the NBA in America, where they had a similar setup, and then they ended up doing profit share with the athletes to pay the athletes.

58:24So whatever they're bringing in from the sponsors, they profit share that down to the athletes. Can that work on a global scale? I don't know. But it is pretty weird that like there's millions and like there's billions of dollars generated from the Olympics and not a cent of it goes to the athletes from the AOC or the IOC who are generating that income.

58:45Doone Roisin:That is so weird. I wonder what the research shows in terms of, you know, like back in the days, there was that stat going around that was like, you know, kids when they grow up, they want to be an Olympian or they want to go to the Olympics and they want to be a professional athlete. That was like the number one job or whatever. Whereas now the number one job is like, I want to be a YouTuber. And so the shift in the sentiment of being an athlete has changed. And then if there's also not the incentivized kind of commercial aspect of being like rich and you're like, okay, well, it's not going to be a high earning kind of career to literally sacrifice my body for the country, like and sacrifice, you know, your teens and all the things that you have to sacrifice.

59:22Doone Roisin:I'm like, I wonder what the research shows around the trend of people becoming athletes, like are more people becoming athletes or are less people becoming athletes and like what like that's just so unfair it doesn't make any sense i would say most people are not in the sport to be making money i would say that's not like the reason like if you've got the true passion to be there it's definitely not it but as you get when you're at the top of your field you expect once you get older it's more difficult right so like my decision to come back and compete when i I was 28 and I was at EY earning a normal salary for the first time in my life.

1:00:00That's a very different decision than wanting to do this when I'm 15. Like those are very different things. And then you can make, obviously outside of Olympics, you can make money and you can have sponsors. So then I would have private sponsors as well outside of that. But my first sponsorship deal I signed was for$500 a year and equipment. And this was when I was number five in the world. in my sport. And they said, oh, we don't think that... And yeah, we don't, we don't, we're not going to put you on a base. So often there'd be like a base payment for the year for being an ambassador and then performance bonuses.

1:00:40So they're like, we're happy to give you a 20 grand performance bonus if you win. But you're going to be on$500 for the year. And I was like, and we'll let you wear our suits. It was like a swimsuit that I liked and I wanted to wear. It wasn't the best deal on the table, but I liked the performance gear the best. So I was like, yeah, I'll do it. But in two years time at the next world championships, if I win, then I go on a 30K base salary, go from 500 to 30. And they were like, yeah, like, sure. If you win, then you can go on a 30K salary. And two years later, I did win and I went on 30K salary and I got the 30K bonus for winning.

1:01:21Right. So say that year at World Championships, because I won both the 100 and the 50 freestyle, I then earned more money that year. But it's not the motivating factor to getting you to that point. You just have to have enough funding. And I'm talking about this, and the numbers that I'm saying will sound small in business, but they're really big for other athletes. So I'm saying this from swimming, right? government funding is the same across all sports um if you're top four in the world but the ability to attract private sponsors in my sport is a lot easier even the fact that i'm saying i was on a 500 minimum with some performance bonuses like there's a lot of athletes that wouldn't be able to access that at all so i didn't know that yeah it's but it was um yeah it was a very funny thing to sign like sign on like sign away and you do all these appearances you'll do all these posts and like in return you get$500.

1:02:20Doone Roisin:Like any other industry, if you're like at the top of your field and the top of your game, literally, like you usually see your like kind of, you know, remuneration like increase as well. I mean, I was earning less money when I went back to the sport than I was earning at EY, at EY doing consulting. And I was like, I was not, I was not even high up in that company. Like there is people who are like graduates in big businesses who are earning more money than elite Olympic athletes. That's just how it is. But there's stuff like other than money that sport gives you. Of course. But you do need enough to like survive and get to a great place.

1:03:00Doone Roisin:Do you think that will change though, you know, just like with the evolution of sport and with the evolution of like, you know, what we've seen happen with the Matildas, for example, and having more kind of attention on it, thus more money kind of going to it, more kinds of opportunities come out of it. Do you think it will evolve in that direction? I don't know whether Olympic sport will. I don't know whether that's the trajectory that it's on. I mean, you would think yes, but it's quite a complex model and it's also global. So it's like even more complicated. I would hope so. I mean, to flip it to the other side, the reason why it's so controlled and you get those blackout periods, The reason you have that is because the brands that want to associate with the Olympics and what the Olympics stand for are paying an absolute premium for that.

1:03:51And so you need to control it really tightly. You can't just have anybody saying that they're part of the Olympics or in any way associated with the Olympics, even to the point where saying things like Paris 2024. You couldn't have said that in any advertising unless you're an Olympic sponsor. And they've got a whole network of people that are like coming down on anybody using the Olympic rings, like in any way trying to associate themselves without paying really highly to be part of that ecosystem. Whether that's like keeping that protected is important for the Olympics to be able to exist because it's becoming more and more expensive to put the Olympics on.

1:04:29and what the olympics means for people is it's it's a really strong brand it's like one of the strongest brands and oldest brands that you have if you think about it from like that point of view it's like very highly just stands for excellence and if you want to be associated with excellence this is the brand that you have to buy into and so the brand's got a lot of value but like how how do you get the value down to the athletes and how do you also make sure that the games can keep going in a more sustainable way. So we're seeing it being very difficult for countries to host and put up a games.

1:05:04And whether it ends up looking like it's a little bit more dispersed, whether there's like one hub that people come back to every four years. I don't know. It's probably going to look a little bit different. And it depends on how well navigate the cost part of the business as to whether there'll be enough prosperity in it for it to come down to athletes. So I don't know what the changes will be.

1:05:27Doone Roisin:Do you think the Olympics will exist in 100 years? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I don't think it'll be recognizable from what it is today. Ooh. Please elaborate. Any specific predictions? I think it's quite possible it'll be fewer sports than it is now. And I think it'll be in one place all the time. like one base yeah or like a few core cities like a few like a roster kind of thing yeah like obviously surfing can only be in a few spots in the world so i mean they did that already in paris like the surfing was not in paris um for the paris olympics um so yeah seeing it seeing a little bit more dispersed possibly like i mean who knows how the world is going but there being big centers built over in um in the middle east that are big like sporting precincts that are big areas that like have the capacity to host some of these really incredible things like that could be a place that there it's always centered on the same thing so no city has the has a thing of putting up which i think is a shame because the i mean i think it's a shame hasn't even happened but it would be a loss because there's something about like going to a new city and like seeing that city come alive and like as you were saying the the amplification that that city gets like yeah like 2000 olympics puts sydney and australia on the map oh my god that means brisbane's gonna be on the map yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be so it's gonna be so fun i'm excited to be friends with an olympian at the brisbane olympics where we're both where we both grew up and went to school isn't that cute it's gonna be so fun and like so fun what it does for the city moving forward is it lets like these big infrastructure projects get done that they wouldn't normally be able to get done like you know the harbour tunnel like that was built for the tunnel that goes underneath the harbour in sydney oh like here yeah here here that that didn't get built that got built for the sydney olympics oh really yeah oh and it's like the city wouldn't work without that tunnel yeah yeah that's crazy stuff like that happen in brisbane and i know that there's a big cost associated with it so there's a lot of people that are like oh we don't even want the games it's like it's not good it's it's yeah we're spending too much and they love it i i totally i do hear that especially in a cost of living it's like why are we spending billions of dollars on this thing i think the the value that it brings like not just at the games and when you're loving it but like afterwards for the city i've seen that be really great i've also seen it be terrible like athens and rio are a great example of like they built all this infrastructure they couldn't maintain it.

1:08:12It's all decayed. It's awful. Like, I mean, the village in Rio, there was a hole on the side of the building. There was like, the pipes didn't work. Like, it was not good. And realistically, that was, they were not like set up to be able to actually deliver the games that they wanted to.

1:08:29Doone Roisin:I feel like we can't talk about the Olympics without talking about scandal. you've been to four olympics you must have seen some scandalous things happen or been on the sidelines or you know been i don't know around stuff like what happens when you're at the olympic like is your coach being like you know texting you or emailing you being like this has happened like i was looking at the scandals that happened at 2024 what scandals happened oh i don't know there was like assault, there's like doping stuff, you know, there's like in all the directions, there's some level of scandal the same way, like during the, you know, you and I were talking about during the winter Olympics, the scandal between like the, the ice figure skating judges and whether that was like, you know, on board or above board or below board or whatever.

1:09:27Doone Roisin:And so I'm like, what scandals were you part of? Not, sorry, not that you were part of, scandals did you do? Did you instigate? What is your connection to knowing scandalous behavior at the Olympics? I would say most of that stuff, I would keep it really outside of the bubble. Like never read. Protect you. Yeah. Protect as much as possible. Never read anything. Never look at anything while I was at the games. I mean, probably the biggest cultural moment that I was on the ground for was Raygun at Paris Olympics. Oh my God. Right. That went into a global phenomenon and we we were in the village we'd finished competing and then we had to leave you have to leave after 48 hours you have to leave the village but then I was coming back for the closing ceremony so when Reagan was competing I was actually not in the village I was like out in a tiny little country town in France and so that was all blowing up I was like what is happening and then we all got back together with the team and like Rachel was there and everyone was part She was also on like a bit of a blackout for that period, right?

1:10:33Doone Roisin:Like she wouldn't have been, she would have been in the bubble, not out of the bubble. She was in the bubble. Yeah. So like she wouldn't have really known what was happening outside of the bubble. She definitely knew because it was so big. Like there's some things that you, you can't stop. And like that, that was like astronomical, like going from like really not a lot of people in the world knowing your name to like Adele mentioning you at a concert two days later would be so surreal and so weird and not all of it and not all of it was super nice like there was there was this fun element of it and then there was like death threats and people being so angry I never I've never understood the anger around that like people were like so enraged like I think they would commonly say oh like you took someone else's spot that like could have done a better job or whatever I was like since when have you cared that deeply about breakdancing ever that's not what you're actually angering about.

1:11:28Like you're pretending that's what you're angry about, but it's not. It's, um, it's, I don't even know why you would be angry seeing that.

1:11:36Doone Roisin:Literally. How, like, so when you came back from the town and like, this is happening and you're obviously all part of the Australian team, you all have like coach, like how many people are there? Like, it's about 400 athletes. 400 athletes. What happens in a moment like that? Like, are you receiving like group texts? Are you just like, you know, on the, on the email thread or like we have like a group whatsapp and our friends like we're all just messaging each other like right like was she okay in the moment or was it like like what was the response do you know what i we were there we were like getting ready for the closing ceremony we're all dancing we're like pulling out some of her moves and rachel was there and she was still laughing along and enjoying it but um i didn't think about like i mean i was so doing my own thing and um but i didn't think about like the impact on her as much.

1:12:26And my sister's probably a nicer person than me. She wasn't at the Olympics. She was over in Paris, but she was there commentating. And she reached out to her and said, like, hey, are you okay? She was like, probably I need some help. Because you think like to have that level of exposure, you then need like some sort of management and people around you. It's like you've got no management, you've got no PR, like you're looking at this online stuff. You're looking at like people being really horrible to you, really horrible to your husband. Like if it was me, I would just want to like crawl in a little hole and like get away from it all.

1:13:03But you also want to be able to deal with it and you need kind of need someone else to like act as that barrier for you. So, um, yeah, I mean, we were just like, like, I didn't realize I was also in a bit of my own little bubble and I didn't realize like how hateful lots of it was. I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. Like, I love that this is a thing. And then didn't realize that there was so much animosity behind it. It was really bizarre.

1:13:27Doone Roisin:Yeah. Social media is kind of weird, though. Like, I just feel like, I don't know, there are some people on social media that I'm like, man, you wouldn't say this if it was from your LinkedIn profile. Like, no, but your anonymous, faceless TikTok account, you should definitely have to link your social media. I feel like that should be the thing. I want to like kind of switch tracks a little bit now and talk more about, you know, what you're doing now and kind of this like almost like exit from sport or like the retirement from sport. We spoke about retirement recently and like what does it even mean to like kind of go out of sport or like come out of sport and, you know, how does it kind of, you know, your mindset, how is your mindset when you're thinking about, cool, do I do another Olympics?

1:14:11Doone Roisin:Do I not? You know, you're injured at the moment. You have your operation coming up, Like you're building this really exciting brand, you're disrupting a category. What is the kind of like chapter or era of life that you're in now? It's so different from a what I thought it would be and what has been before, which is so exciting. And as you said, I'm like pulled in quite a few different directions now, which is honestly quite a nice thing after doing one thing for so long. um so i have my brand earthletica which is sustainable activewear and removing plastics and harmful chemicals from the clothing that we wear on our bodies every day which is something i'm really passionate about and takes a lot of time and energy and um if i think about like what my sort of goals are in general i landed on this quite a few years as something that feels really true to me is that i want to be the kind of person that relentlessly pursues the things that she's passionate about.

1:15:13And I sort of came up with that before, like while I was still working at EY, that same sort of goal, that same goal took me to Paris Olympics. It also took me into Athletica and building a company. And it will take me through many things in my life until it doesn't feel true anymore, but it still feels very, very true. That same goal can take me back to wanting to train and go to the Olympics again. But there's an equation that has to happen because there's a lot of things that have to be put on a sacrifice pile if you want to relentlessly pursue sport as opposed to relentlessly pursue business.

1:15:52Sport is way more of a lifestyle than businesses. Yes, being a founder is difficult, but I don't have to move cities and states I don't have to be in pain all the time again I don't have to possibly look at things like if I wanted to have children in the future what does that look like if you're competing every day like so there's oh I didn't even think about that I was thinking about my

1:16:19Doone Roisin:period earlier not even I didn't even go there like yeah I have to come back to that that's a fun thing in women's sport is we're seeing people have children and come back to sport which is really really cool and it's never it hasn't been that prevalent before which is awesome a there's like a bit more support around it and structure around it um when i was at in swimming i helped bring in the first ever pregnancy policy for swimming which i was really proud of which i didn't know that about you you're surprising me today yeah what is that what's the pregnancy policy it means you get once once you're pregnant you get supported for a year after that so normally it would be like, okay, you're pregnant, you can't compete, you're done, you're out.

1:16:59That's amazing. Oh, and if you're the primary caregiver, which most of the time the women are, then you get a hotel room and someone who can travel with you to look after your kids up until they're, I think it was like two and a half or three, I can't remember.

1:17:14Doone Roisin:How do you introduce a policy like that? How do you do that? What's the procedure? I was president of the Swimmers Association at the time, so advocating for Swimmer Voice. and um yeah it was just one of the discussions that we were having we were having a lot of discussions and that that one to be fair it was like we should have a pregnancy policy this is what i think it should be and they were like yeah absolutely so that one wasn't that wasn't a big process weird that there was no policy before because before it was like you have to quit to go have children like the idea that you could have a swimmer that would be a parent be a mom and then come back like we've got um swimmers who are dads but like they don't have to take any time away from training to do that.

1:17:55It's obviously still hard when you have a little baby, but it's like, you're not pregnant for nine months. So it's like very different and your body doesn't have to recover from that. So it's, um, it's very different. It just wasn't seen as a thing that you had to worry about because the women were going to quit. The women were going to quit in order to have their babies. That was, that was what it was before.

1:18:13Doone Roisin:Right. Right. How do you think about like your brain now? Because I feel like there's a lot of discussion and there's a lot of like things that you can look up online that really like links, you know, the brain of an athlete to like the parallels of an entrepreneur or a founder. There's like such strength in that blueprint kind of like overlapping. How do you think about your brain now and like these tools and these skills and like these things that you've developed in terms of, you know, discipline, resilience, like emotional, cool, calm, collected vibes that like translate really well into being a founder and going through the ups and downs of that journey?

1:18:55Yeah, I think it's, there's so much that copies across. There's like a skill set that you learn alongside sports. So I think I was learning how to swim from one side to the other side really fast. You're actually learning all these other skills, skill sets, like how to perform under pressure, what discipline looks like in action, what resilience looks like in action. And I think one of the ones that's really applicable to startups in particular is this idea of it takes a long time to get great success. And in startup world, I hear a lot about there's a lot of chasing that hockey stick growth or that one moment where it clicks.

1:19:36And there's a lot of chat about that one moment. but if you've been in sport for a long time you know that you know that most of the learning and the value comes from the grinding that happens before that one moment like i compete for one moment i compete for a minute every four years at olympics and like it's literally a minute less than a minute so that's crazy knowing that that minute's important and whatever the the moment is in your business whatever that like magic moment is that's important but it's only is only going to occur as an output of all the other minutes that come before it. So like the, the grind and like the being down in the weeds, the unglamorous part, like that's where, that's where you're going to spend most of your time.

1:20:20And like knowing that beforehand, but also knowing that that's the valuable bit is something that I think is not talked about particularly in found it people like they say oh it's hard work but they don't like say how long and hard that work is because we all want the quick sugar fix like success story and those ones i mean it happens for people quickly don't get me wrong sometimes it does in then you get like i don't know there's

1:20:47Doone Roisin:still like the there's always something there's still the decade of getting there before before they even started and maybe they had three failed businesses or whatever before they got to that yeah one moment even even the quick win stories are not quick win stories and so like deeply knowing that in your soul is like so important going into building a business it's probably the best the best thing that i know before i come in here because i don't get i get impatient because i always want to be moving faster than i am but i don't get like disheartened and impatience is fine like helplessness is not fine because that you you won't be moving forward anymore you'll just give up.

1:21:28Doone Roisin:Do you think like what's harder, business or Olympics? I would say they're harder in different ways, which doesn't answer your question in the nice way you want it. If you have to pick one for next year, what would you pick if you had to choose? I mean, because I'm in business right now, it's like it's easier for me to keep going down this track. If I was like in full training right now, I'd probably be like, oh, it's easier to keep on this track. Whatever you're on is easier. I'd say business is more difficult because success is more ambiguous and the environment is changing more. Sport, you've got very defined rules and very defined parameters for success, which is oftentimes more comfortable to operate within.

1:22:08So there's been lots of challenges for me stepping into a more ambiguous environment and being like, I don't know whether today was successful or not. Whereas normally in my training environment, I like know how to measure that like to the nth degree. So that's like, those are different challenges. But the good thing about that ambiguity is there's a freedom with that as well. So there's like slightly less structure, which equals slightly more freedom, but it also equals slightly more uncertainty. So there's a bit of a trade off. Ask me on any given day, it will honestly change.

1:22:41Doone Roisin:I feel like for you, like in this new kind of chapter and this new chapter in business. There's like all of the kind of things like the playbook that you can apply to building a business that you've learned through, you know, your training and how you've kind of grown up. But then there's also this like new undiscovered, like journey of self and like a new challenge that's like not what you have any kind of like guidance from because of the uncertainty and things like that, which is actually really exciting. Like the freedom, like you talk about. The freedom is exciting. It's always a balancing act between like freedom and purposelessness or freedom and uncertainty and like which you can have the same choice when you look at nerves and excitement it's like the physical reaction in your body is actually the same like your heart rate goes up your hands get sweaty your breathing increases like your breathing rate increases that could be excitement or it could be nerves so like how you choose to interpret that is like am I excited for this race or am I nervous for this race am I like feeling super uncertain about this or am I embracing the freedom side of this?

1:23:47And like trying to choose that interpretation of your feelings as much as possible is important for me to keep wanting to do it because I could equally have done something a little bit more in my wheelhouse and less challenging. Like there is so much stuff in this business that I don't know how to do that I'm learning on the fly. And that's really uncomfortable going from being an expert in what I do to being a beginner and doing really poor attempts at things and then just getting better at them. I think the willingness to do a poor attempt and be like, okay, this is my best I can do today. And I'll need to get an expert in to help me do some more of it.

1:24:25But I've come so far, like I didn't know how to build a financial forecasting model. I had no idea about like marketing strategy. And like you learn these things as you go. And now you look at you're like on your sixth or seventh different model that you've built because you didn't like the other ones. And you now like deeply understand that part of your business. So I think there's like something to be said for like learning as you go. But I definitely had to let go of like things being perfect, which I was used to honing things to be perfect. Like that was what I was doing. I was at the top end of that law of diminishing returns.

1:24:57Yeah, I was at the top of it. And now I'm at the bottom of it. And just getting them done is the thing.

1:25:04Doone Roisin:But I feel like because you're someone who has like a competitive spirit, and you like a challenge, it's like also so suited to your personality type to be like literally in the deep end. Yeah, it's actually really fun because you get a really good sugar hit back from it because you can look a month earlier and say, oh, I'm way better than I was a month ago. And that's really cool. Whereas what I was doing before, the best time I swam in the 50 freestyle was in 2015, which is 11 years ago now. The best time I saw him in the 100 freestyle was in 2018. And so in all of that time, I have not improved those two times.

1:25:49So you're like fighting every day to try and get better than all of that. Like you don't, you don't move ahead that, that much. I don't mean I've been in within like 0.1 of those times.

1:26:02Doone Roisin:Yeah, whereas in business, the compound kind of like it does increase. And that's like remuneration. There is like the commercial aspect that also increases the more successful it becomes. Yeah, it's satisfying in a way that even like just looking at my skill set, and the business, like how far we've come in a year, it's like, whoa, we've come a long way. It's because we're down the bottom of that like graph of diminishing returns. It's like effort versus like how much better you get. And at the start, how much effort you put into it, you'll get a lot better because you're just learning the easy basic stuff.

1:26:37And then as you get further and further, the more effort you put in, you're fighting for these like tiny returns that you're getting at the top, but you still have to put in like all of this. So that's, that's what sport versus business is like for me. I'm like down here at the bottom of the graph, like putting in all this effort, but getting like astronomical returns, which feels kind of great and improvement. When I say returns, I mean improvement and personal improvement and business improvement versus, yeah, like when you're in swimming, you're fighting so hard to improve like this tiny, tiny little thing.

1:27:08Doone Roisin:Tiny, tiny little thing. You are in a really exciting moment as of today slash tomorrow. I think we're in the last 24 hours of your capital raise on virtual. I checked like an hour before we started talking and I think it was like close to hitting 800 ,000 raised. Well done. Thank you. Coughing for you again. Very happy to be one of your investors on your cap table. How are you feeling about this? How, like, what is the emotions that is happening for you in this moment where you've been doing this campaign for the last, like, month? You've been preparing for it prior to that, like, I guess, like a year, maybe, like, in terms of all the background work that you've been doing before you actually launched the raise.

1:27:54Doone Roisin:and it's like super exciting I imagine also probably kind of stressful well sorry I don't even imagine I know what are you feeling well you know because I've talked to you about it I think honestly the the biggest emotion is I feel very grateful that people want to be part of our journey and like grateful to have you on board grateful to have other female founders who invested in us and being like we want to be part of this like business we want to be part of the future that you're building. And like to have, I think we've got about 300 investors. So about 300 people have been like, I want to not only say I like what you're doing, but I want to put some money behind that.

1:28:36And I believe in you. It's a really big, I feel a big amount of gratitude and I feel a big amount of responsibility. I'm used to chasing excellence for myself all the time. And now I'm like, okay, I've got to do it for these people as well. And it's quite motivating in terms of like raising that amount of money. It's just going to do so much for a business. And I'm so excited to operationalize it and get Athletica going to the next level. And I'm excited for me, but I'm also excited for this cohort of people that are coming along. And I really, anyone who's come in, I really view them as like, they're now a partner in the business and I have to treat them as a partner in the business.

1:29:15And what's going to be best for us as a whole as we continue to move forward. And capital raising is not something I knew. I literally knew nothing about it a year ago. Like I'd barely heard the word VC. So it's one of the ones that you end up learning as you go. And I've never gone, I spent last year talking to a lot of different people across investment landscape. I've never gone away from a conversation with nothing. There's always something like a lot of them were no's. That's fine. but it was either an introduction or an insight and asking for very honest feedback from these people can feel very intimidating, but it's been really useful.

1:29:53And it's shaped where we are now. Like if I didn't have those conversations a year ago, as you said, we wouldn't be doing this raise now. I wouldn't even have known that crowdsource fundraising was a thing.

1:30:06Doone Roisin:Lots of learnings. What are you excited about? Like, you know, if it closes in 24 hours, What does next week look like? What does next month look like? What does the rest of this year look like that you're like, I can't wait for this thing to happen? Well, I mean, next week looks like me getting ACL surgery. So that's got to happen first. Oh my God, it's here already? Oh my God, it's April. Yeah. What? Yeah, it's happening. I forgot. Like I knew it was happening, but I also kind of forgot. Right. Okay. I've got to do that, which is actually... There's a thing. It should be done. It's a really good time.

1:30:39I put it off until after my reading and after the raise because I needed to get through those two big things. You needed to dance on tables. I needed to dance, obviously. I needed to be able to fly and go around with some investors. So anyway, we did that. It's good. And then this month of April will be like a rebuilding thing. The thing with the crowdsource fundraising is you don't actually know how much is going to come in. You've got a minimum that you want to raise and you've got a maximum. and you don't know how much is going to come in. So we've got like a rough skeleton plan of what we want to do with that funding.

1:31:13There's a reason why we're raising. It's to invest more in marketing and new product as very high level. But then once you've got the final figure in, it's like, okay, great. How do we actually plan this out properly? So April will be a lot of planning for that, which is a good time for me to be immobilized because I'll be on my desk a lot and with the team a lot, making sure that we're building that and start testing properly in marketing. and then continue to look what that looks like for the next 12 months. It's really about, for us now, we've spent so much time in supply chain and building a really great supply chain that can scale.

1:31:49It's now like, okay, let's switch into the supply chain and product. We've done for sort of three to four years. And now it's like, okay, let's switch into the selling side of things and look at marketing properly and deeply. So that's my next little thing to jump into. So exciting.

1:32:06Doone Roisin:So exciting. I love that part of the journey. Well, that's the one where you're an actual expert. Like you are literally the marketing queen. You are though. You understand it on like a neurological level. Lol. I'm just going with the flow. I'm always just going with what feels good. I'm a gut feel kind of person. Well, your instincts are just odd. Like you have a talent for it. Like I do not have a talent for it. So I have to get in there and manually learn the skills. And like you can get to a certain level. I'm never going to be like you because like you understand it like in your body and it just makes sense in your brain.

1:32:41There's like a level that you can theoretically, like theoretically learn, but I'm never going to be like, oh, just on like you are all the time. It's like such a, it's like amazing watching you do that.

1:32:53Doone Roisin:Listen, we're here to talk about you. When, well, when I was thinking about like what I wanted to finish with in this episode, I just wanted to ask you kind of like two, two final questions. The first one is like, when you look back at all the different things you've done and now thinking business and sport and life and like just everything, what are you most proud of in terms of your accomplishments in your life? I'm probably most proud of a really strong community I have around me. And that's, that's a it's not it's not any of the things that we've talked about now but I still have friends that I went to high school with I still I have like a really strong community around me now who I'm really connected with and I see lots of the time and that's where I get a lot of meaning in my life like having really long and deep relationships and it's quite difficult when you're quite driven and you're all over the place.

1:33:56And for a long time, swimming comes first. Now the business comes first before a lot of these things, but being able to have still maintained that and built that, I think I'm, I'm quite proud of that group of people that I can be connected with them because it's not, I actually think that that's, that is the thing that'll bring me most like joy and longevity in whatever the other things are. If I, if I didn't have that, I don't think I could do any of the other things. So yeah.

1:34:24Doone Roisin:I love that. Okay. This isn't my last question. I'm squeezing another one in because I didn't ask it before. And I feel like now I have to ask it when you're like with that answer off the back of that answer, what is it like, you know, if, if Benfield, your husband was sitting here right now and I asked him like, what's it like dating and like going through life with a professional athlete who has another top priority that kind kind of probably comes ahead of you sometimes. What is it like for him, like dating you and like, obviously now being married to you, but like, but what's it been like from that perspective of cultivating that relationship and like prioritizing the two?

1:35:01It's really hard because I mean, we were dated for eight years before we got married. And for like four of those years, I was living in other cities because I needed to get my thing done. And when I was considering going back and training and competing for Paris Olympics, I had to move cities again. And that was obviously going to take a big toll on our relationship. And I was like, I really wanted him to be part of the decision. I was like, you have to be part of this decision with me. Like, this impacts both of us. Like, this is our life that we're planning together. This is how we're living right now.

1:35:39It's going to change everything. Like, I'm not going to be able to earn as much. I'm going to be living in Canberra. You're going to be living in Sydney. That's going to be the next 18 months of our lives. Like we're not going to see each other, blah, blah, blah. Like we need to plan this because it doesn't just impact me. And he was like, no, I refuse. I was like, what do you mean? Like, I need you to help me make this decision. He's like, no, because I will never, ever, ever stand in the way of something that you want to do. So you need to decide whether you want to do it or not. And if you want to do it, then I'll make the sacrifices this to make that happen.

1:36:11But I'm not going to weigh on in this. I'm not going to tell you that I prefer you to be here. Like, it's obvious I'd prefer to spend time with you. But even more than that, I prefer you do the things that you really want to do. And like, that is so special and so rare. Like he is the, he's always been like that. He's like, well, I understand that that's, that it's, it's part of who you are. And so I would never try and clip that. If anything, it would be like me making the decision to like make it easier for him um but yeah he's always been incredibly supportive of that and so not just supportive as like oh like i'll um like be there for you whatever like being like no actively i will make decisions that are worse for me so that

1:36:56Doone Roisin:you can do the things you want and that's that's really special man i love him he's so cool he's such a cutie. I love that for you guys. I love your love story. It's so beautiful and so special. And like, how amazing to be on the journey together. And even though apparently you're making the decisions and he's going along for the journey, how amazing that you are building that life and making those kind of choices together. That's so beautiful to be around you guys. And obviously coming off the back of your wedding, I'm like, oh, so cute. Back to my final question. My last question for you, when you think about young women who look up to you as a role model and think, wow, I want to be like her.

1:37:37Doone Roisin:I want to be a professional athlete. I want to be a business owner. I want to be this fucking rad chick doing cool stuff that she dreams about and puts into reality. Or the mom or the parent of those young women. What is your message to them? I say like dream big and then go out and do it and just start doing it and don't let anyone tell you dreams are too big um when I was in high school I got told I couldn't write down that I wanted to be a professional athlete in my career counseling I couldn't be able to pick something because it was too unlikely like at this point I was already training 30 hours a week but that was too unlikely so you can't do not do not let someone clip your wings when you're 15 years old.

1:38:20I mean, like, I didn't listen to that person. I was like, whatever. Um, but that happens all the time. And even if you miss, even if you miss your mark, you will end up somewhere amazing and like, listen to your passion and your dreams and follow that. And say, if you want to, like you said, like be like, be like me, don't be like me, like be like you and your passions and like follow, like listen to that intently. And it will, it'll always lead you to somewhere interesting. It might not be the place that you thought. Like, I thought I was going to do one Olympic Games and then be finished. I thought I was learning how to swim.

1:38:58As I said, I've learned a lot of other things. And I'm now in business, which I also never thought would be something that came as a result of being in sport. But it is. So you don't know. You don't know what the end is. Just, like, really listen. Listen to your dreams. And then for the parents, this is something that my parents did. that I come from a family of five children. So there's a lot of, there's a lot going on there. And if I wanted to do something, they were like, we'll support your dreams, but you have to put the effort in. And what that might look like on a micro level was going to training every day.

1:39:33I could set my alarm for 4.30 in the morning. And if I could get out of bed and get ready, I could go wake mom up at 4.45 and she would take me. But she wasn't getting me out of bed. she wasn't like hounding me to do all of this stuff she wasn't like pulling me along she was like if you want to do it i'll support you but you've got to show me that you want to do it and that was always like really useful because i always felt supported but i also knew that like it was on me to make it happen which is like that's a hard balance to strike

1:40:05Doone Roisin:i've loved this i feel like we could talk for a really long time i don't know what the time is I'm afraid to tell you the answer of how long we've been here in case you had plans afterwards. Yeah, it's been a while. It's been so fun. It's been so fun. I know that you brought your medals. I know that they're somewhere here. Oh, I only brought one. I couldn't find the other ones. Well, I don't think you can say that publicly. But let's bring one out. Show and tell. This is the only one I brought. It's the prettiest one, too. Look at that. Do you want to catch it? I don't want to catch it, but I want to put it on.

1:40:42Doone Roisin:I mean, we definitely want to finish with a little. Yeah, see, that looks good. But the message that I take away from your last answer is like, you're saying that I still could be a pop star. Like, I can still be a K-pop star. You definitely can. My dreams can come true. You have no idea. You could be like an 80-year-old pop star. Yeah, an 80-year-old pop star. You could do that. You could set the trend. You definitely could. I feel like it suits me. I think it looks good. You're like, I think this feels right. Yeah, like I feel this feels at home on my neck. Does it? Because it's quite heavy.

1:41:21Doone Roisin:Actually, it's really heavy. It's heavier than I thought. That is so cool. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Oh, what a pleasure. And tell me all the things. What a pleasure. You've got an open invite. You can come on the show anytime. I've been dying to come on. Yay, in the pink room. In the pink room. I'm so excited. New studio. The best. The best. This is by far the coolest setup I've ever seen. I agree. I agree. I did it. I agree, to be honest.

1:41:52Doone Roisin:Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C and interesting business resources. And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate ask me anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.

1:42:39Doone Roisin:As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.