Anna Archer on Burnout, ADHD & Building Her Own Brand | Ep 58

0:00Anna Archer, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate you coming in today. First of all, obviously you've been over in London for the last couple of weeks. Yes. How are you finding it? It's been good. I found the last week more entertaining because it has been more busier with doing events and online drops and exciting things like that. And that for me keeps me motivated. So that side of London I do like, but otherwise I do miss Australia a lot. yeah and you moved out there two years ago yeah two years ago yeah for the people that may not know who you are would you just be able to sum yourself up sure um i started social media when i was 18 fell into it didn't really know what it could become and i think i caught the right wave covid and grew my platforms and within that created a lot of opportunities worked with some awesome people and then got into running and then my content and my own brand has kind of like evolved around running and I moved to Australia two years ago and yeah I just share my life online got a podcast YouTube socials and I have my own brand that's a lot going on there yeah you're an entrepreneur well let's take it right back to the start so starting off with socials what was kind of like the content that you was posting about I was posting a lot of the general fitness content workout eating foods like recipes that I would make and I just put it out on like every single platform possible at the same time and so I grew from that at the beginning was that kind of like a an intention to grow like did you start socials to try and build a following no when I first opened up the account it was purely like a random side quest and then as soon as a video would do well it was just kind of eye-opening to oh I could do that again and again and I could do it here and I could do it there so yes it did end up turned into like how much can I grow this but I didn't go on to it going I want to be a big name in this because I didn't even know that was possible it was i want to share my workouts and my recipes and get creative and then it you know turned into a little part of that with wanting to grow yeah no no of course that like it's understandable really because if you're putting all this time and energy into creating the content you want people to see it you don't want it to fall on deaf ears yeah i feel like you've always been like really savvy with everything like looking at kind of like your history of everything like you've always optimized everything um what platforms were you on i was doing instagram tiktok youtube i didn't have my podcast then but yeah those three i feel like were the main ones and just pushed on on those really yeah and when it comes to like the fitness side of it what did people relate to the most at the time i was posting a lot of content based around aesthetics i didn't do that anymore it was just the place that i was in and so that kind of attracted people that maybe wanted to change what they look like and all of that my content did end up changing it was just at the time that was kind of focus i think it was like more popular then it sounds weird but like i think the world's gone through phases we don't really like focus on that maybe we're just not in it ourselves but back in 2020 it was like chloe ting ab workout and you know it was like all these kind of weight loss things everyone was trying to get fit it's mad because we look up back at it and like almost like you're ashamed to train and look for aesthetics but like that's just was the culture back then and it still is a culture in many kind of like societies like training for aesthetics a lot of people go to the gym to look better and that is the number one priority now you just have to be an ultra athlete as well yeah you have to perform well doesn't matter if you don't yeah you can't can't do just one but um when did that kind of like all change and when did you actually get into running i got into running three years ago and relatively new yeah yeah i wasn't like running my whole life just started when I was 21 and a friend could run and I couldn't run so I was like right I need to get into it and then you know at the beginning it's like you feel like everything's against you because you're not used to running so your body just feels like like an elephant on the concrete it's like this doesn't feel natural and then as soon as you kind of surpass that and you get into the flow of running and you realize why you really love it I think it just becomes like a natural part of your routine and your everyday how long did it take you to do that because i feel like the first bit the first start of running like even like six months in like you still i would say close to two years two years so only like kind of like the last year yeah yeah only the last year have i like felt really confident but i'd say the first year was me feeling like an elephant on the concrete not feeling natural to my body the second year there was enjoyment i had lots of fun with it I was doing races but running still felt like I didn't quite have the gist of it that I couldn't quite settle into my technique or the pace or I was hitting pbs but I think you naturally hit pbs when you're a beginner because there is so much room to get better whereas when you do get better suddenly those pbs get smaller and smaller and smaller because you do get faster whereas the last year i'd say i felt like a runner so yeah i think that's an accomplishment within itself did you did you ever get coached ben parker oh ben parker he would run me around battersea park so he did like and he taught me how to move my arms and taught me some bits but i've actually never had like a in-person coach like again ben would one-off help me around the park but it is something that like I think we've always got room to improve and to think that, oh, you're doing everything right.

6:16It's so wrong. And I use Runner as a training platform, but it would be cool to have someone in person being like, oh my gosh, you're running completely wrong. So is that when you got into Runner, is that when you came across Runner and Ben reached out to you? Yeah, he reached out to me one month into my running journey. Ben's one of the founders. Yeah, co-founder. Yeah, co-founder. So he reached out to you? Yeah. and he was like let me help you let's go on a run together let me help you out and you can use my app for the marathon that you're trying for so i used it i loved it when did you when did you sign up for the marathon did you was that the first one month in i signed up and i because it was the covid year where it was pushed back it was in october so i started running and within six months or five months i was doing the london marathon which was the worst thing in the world no no i i love the london marathon that race i don't think a beginner should be doing a marathon yeah that quick into that journey well six six months later that's impressive that so you started off like running like what a couple of k at a time or did you like how did that first six months look from you going from like nothing to a marathon yes you wouldn't advise it i could run 5k i wasn't complete beginner i know there's some people that that is even let's say a big stepping stone i would run 5k's when i was like that well i think like 13 years old i was doing a few park runs but it was never anything crazy i could just run a 5k always 30 minutes on the dot could never get it down till i was like 17 and yeah so when i started training it was just like five i did like a 10k race like 10k would be like a really long run like i've got to get a good night's sleep the night before and then when you go into the plan you suddenly are doing a marathon plan so the typical kind of upping your weekly mileage so you just followed runner from the start yeah from the start and have used it ever since yeah how did uh how did that relationship with you and ben like actually started he just literally reach out to you yeah just dm said one of my one of his employees kind of had spotted that i was starting running so he started helping out and you had quite a big following obviously was you with gym shark at this time yeah yeah yeah so yeah i had a following and helped me out which was really nice and then once i kind of just used it on my own behalf of the london marathon we then went into talks of a bigger partnership with each other and then that's when we actually started like working with each other yeah how did how did that come about like what was the conversation because you're an investor right in was an investor it was an investor sorry obviously they sold yeah um so how did that like come around so naturally we were going to go into a paid partnership after the london marathon because both sides were really happy with how i was using the app i loved the app they loved the fact that i was using the app so at the time like the people that i would work with would be longer contracts sponsorships and so we were kind of just discussing that and we couldn't quite find like a a position that we were both happy with and then they basically said what if we paid you in equity and then that kind of like was like yes i'll go for that one what made you say yes to that because obviously with with equity there's there's some risk as well because they might never sell yeah um and a lot of people say oh you've got equity and then you may not do later down the line like it's a big risk yeah for sure so so how did you kind of go about that i know you well researched in the area yeah so i it was down to the position that i was in i was very fortunate where i had some big sponsorship contracts elsewhere so i had cash available and so when i was agreeing to run a partnership because it wasn't quite matching the other partnerships i was hesitant on taking it as like a typical paid partnership because i almost had like this is a minimum that i would get into a long form like a long contract with is that what you look at throughout like all your partnerships you want yeah i would like longer you want them to be a partnership rather than just like i don't know sometimes it's just yeah throw money at you to do something and that's it you want a relationship i i prefer to have like three sponsorships or two sponsorships and that's it i think that's the way to go really yeah you could and so when they offered their kind of proposal price in equity yes it was the same amount and not the amount that I would typically accept for a paid partnership I knew that it had extra benefit because it could grow and also instead of looking at it as a risk because it wasn't my capital that was coming out it was the fact that every month that I worked with them they would just give me more equity the business so I wasn't putting my own cash in so the risk factor wasn't there the only thing that i would lose is not being paid for a year but because i had cash behind me i was like that's okay if i lose it but i don't want to lose the opportunity to be a 21 year old female investor in a company that i know are doing successful already they have good finance track records i love the team and did you do a lot of research into this beforehand I definitely had like a little mooch around athlete and brand kind of investor like a tennis brand and a tennis athlete and you know night brand and a and a basketball athlete and they were kind of the only ones that I'd seen about it wasn't quite influencers yet so I saw that there was like great potential in that and yeah I kind of forgot I was saying but that's that's kind of the research I did oh and then obviously we had they sent over the finance report so I had a little look and I was like looks good to me but yeah it was a risk that I was willing to take it wasn't taken out of my capital just yet what made that different to say being in a partnership where you're just getting a fee per month like did you create a better relationship with the brand and oh for sure how did you see the brand as opposed to like say other yeah it felt really balanced because there's times where you can question a brand's incentive with you or feel certain ways sometimes and question is there an imbalance in our partnership and when you own a part of a brand you can't really have that opinion well for me anyways because they can't be using you they can't be doing any of these things it doesn't matter if they're paying someone else more or whatever you own a part of what they're building so any business decisions they make you like if it goes well you are a part of that so it kind of almost trust you yeah like it made me relax into the partnership but also become way more incentivized to help grow it and it wasn't just about me earning commission it wasn't just about code anna it was about runner itself and i would preach about it to everyone around me and where i could because one i truly believed in the brand but also you know you're trying to build the business not just your commission if that makes sense yeah i suppose if you're if you're an owner of the brand like you can't badmouth it and you wouldn't want to either you don't get competitive either with seeing other creators or athletes promote that brand you get excited you're like wow they're on our team rather than this is someone i have to compete against yeah were you ever like involved more in the brand more than a typical ambassador would be like were you in like the meeting rooms um yeah there was a few but i wouldn't say like i want to give them a lot of the credit like there were we definitely had meetings and they were always so open to like anything i said i also constantly told them like need me for and like i would beg them to be in the meeting rooms i'd be like can i can i just like come in the office and like be part you know that's the type of stuff that i do love um and i love also like recruiting people like if i see people online i'll just like send them over to them but i generally wish that i could have done more in the business perspective but the way that the team works is i am under you know athlete and content creator so me going into another pocket it's just we've got they've got people for that you know no but it's interesting like you say especially when you've come on to build your own business and your own brand after that like it's good to just have that knowledge oh my gosh 100 % and also they didn't have to have filters with me in a sense of you're just a content creator and this is all we need to share with you they could share me they could share with me more of those business insights which was really helpful for me to just grow as a businesswoman and also So me and Ben formed a great relationship.

16:04So he taught me so much how to be a founder, how to be a boss, even though he is the most un-boss-like person because he is so humble and always credits his team. And he is the perfect kind of boss role model or manager. So yeah, it was really good to be a part of their team. Yeah, I've spent a little bit of time around Ben. He's a great guy. He's so good. You get two sides of him. one is like he's swimming in the river wearing like banana flip-flops and joking around and you know the other side is just like yeah i've not seen that other side i've only seen one side oh i remember is it brutal in a in a meeting room well not that i've seen him in like a harsh way but in a locked in yeah you know when we were in hawaii doing um a marathon and i had a few business things come up there was lawyers involved there was contracts involved and i remember just being so confused and I think with business there's always things ahead of you that you don't know how to do that you haven't done yet but there's also people that have done those things and it's very easy to get very scared of those things so when I was going through a round of problems and you know with lawyers and contracts and all these things and I'm like wait like I'm not supposed to sort this out or i'm not supposed to be able to handle this but then you go talk to someone like ben or another person that is better than you at business they go oh no i've been through this before you're going to contact this lawyer you're going to do this you're going to do that and then you go oh okay and he would basically sit with me for hours in hawaii just speaking facts for like two hours and i was just there trying to like take it all in write something down do you think he's been one of like your biggest role models within yeah for sure he's led me in this industry yeah it's a crazy industry to be in as well right yeah yeah that's it it's ups and downs it's got two sides of it you've got the content creator side but then you've also got the business side behind it and it either balances well it's whatever type of person you are if you're more of the creative and you love the content but maybe a little less organized don't want to do the deals and don't want to sort out things and you employ people to do that um but i think i'm a mix i love the front end of stuff but i also love the back end of stuff so that's always been like yeah a part that i enjoy if you always managed like your own deals um there's been a mixture but from the beginning like when i had my gym shot deals and runner deals and all those things i went without a manager i just interested how to write write an invoice at 18 i was like why would i pay someone 20 to write an invoice yeah of course i think the so i i have management and the thing that i struggle with most um is like valuing yourself and explaining that to that to other people because you've got to see people on the other side whichever brand that you're you're looking at working with their sole job is to get you on a return that's as low as possible and is as cheap as possible that's their primary job yeah so how how did you kind of like back yourself i would test it out so when i started doing deals i'd throw a number and then they would say yes and then the next one i'd throw a bigger number and they say yes and that is how i got my rates almost also i would just do not cheeky things but i i'm trying to remember what i used to do so if i was getting ready for a big renegotiation so that's let's say you've gone through a year of a partnership and you're about to enter a new year or if you're about to start a new year of partnership and this was a period where i didn't always have my rates on knuckle down i still didn't know am i here or am i there what do we do i would even if i wasn't interested in working with another brand but it was a competitor i would act like i was be emailing them throw out the rates that i maybe wouldn't want to actually tell the brand that i wanted the deal from and then if they said yes i'd go back to them and say well they want me for this tomorrow so you're gonna have to do this playing them against each other is that bad no no i think everyone does it yeah exactly but at the time when i was 19 like i had no i was like do other people do this did you kind of enjoy that oh i loved it loved it and also like i love getting a no for some reason it brings me joy well but well not if i really really want it but if it's a deal where i'm like half sure and i'm like oh i don't know and i throw a number out and they say no i'm like cool you made my decision really easy and that's that because it was a half yes or half no but again you then have to switch and if it's a brand you really want to work with and they tell you something and you're like no i want to because i really enjoy your brand and i really stand for it so i don't want it to come across that i'm just like super savvy or whatever but yeah if i really want something i'll say yes but if i don't then i'm happy with it yeah no it's good it's definitely a great trait to have especially you just can't take it personally like you don't need this amount of deals or opportunities you need the ones that you really want and so if the other ones get blocked out or pushed away because it's a no that really makes my life more streamlined i'd say coming on to uh your running brand when did all that kick off it was oh my gosh was it three years ago I think it was nearly three years ago so I can't have started running three years ago I started running four years ago sorry um but three years ago I went traveling to Australia and I was traveling up the east coast prior to that I was holding events with Gymshark a lot so we were doing gym events and so people in my community kind of got used to if i went to a new location that i would hold an event where they could you know meet up and we could do something really fun was it just literally gym shark typical event where yeah or other brands would do it so my protein sponsor or any other ones like they would create kind of events for me so when i went to australia i had like australia community that i didn't know i had and they were like so where what are we doing and i'm like i'm i'm backpacking i've got a backpack I haven't set up a venue or an event or anything like that.

22:54So I was trying to wreck my brain the first day I was there. Like, what could I do? And I was like, okay, I need free venue, relatively safe. I don't want to just be like huddling in one area, no planning involved and no cap on people. And I was like, we'll meet in a spot, run and whatever. So I do my first one. And by the end, I was like, I think I just held a run club. Like I didn't realize it was a run club. I was just doing a run. Was anyone doing it before that? Oh yeah. there was a run club so I remember like yeah I'd go to pure sport run club but I did not see this as a run club I just saw it as like a run and then after the first one I was like oh this is a run club so then I continued doing it up the east coast and then by the time I landed in England after my trip all the brands I was working with were like well now we need to do run clubs with you so like we went on tour with the run club we did loads of other fun things and then when I left Gymshark I was like I want to create it was called Anna on the run because the idea was that I was running around these different countries it was never one place one location so I was like I want to make something of my own so I just like crossed out Anna and then it became on the run club and that's how my brand formed so it's now been two years running by itself and we've done events run clubs races clothing drops and yeah you've just literally done a clothing drop yeah we are in the midst of a drop right this second i've got five of my best friends back at my friend's house hoodies everywhere we're packing up orders we launched yesterday shipping them off today and then also four days ago i had a three-day pop-up shop so it went straight from three days of a pop pop-up a pop-up shop straight into an online launch and then we got a global launch in two days crazy all at once organized chaos literally what's it been like creating your own business like because as i see it like you say starting off a run club pretty maintainable manageable then to create all the back end of like designing clothes you know going getting samples choosing a country for them to be from and stuff like that and the quality of control and stuff like that how's all that been i actually really love the product side of things and when did you decide that you was going to do clothes i think when i when i decided to leave gymshark we had just done a product range so we had just done a product range and then i decided to leave and that made me realize okay i really i really want to put out more product and i basically while i was with gymshark knew that i wanted to get into product so we were going to get into product together and then i had this thought in my head of like if i'm going to grow your running range and design all the things that are in my head but there's no equity deal then i would like to build it myself now is that the harder route yes but i think i'd already outgrown the brand at the time so how long ago was this uh two years ago two years ago because gym shark had that whole thing where they were we do gym yeah and they were against kind of the the running and the hybrid space and stuff like that uh obviously they've changed tune now a little bit but um what was this yeah i was kind of in the midst of that and i was like i need more than one pair of running shorts but we do gym no they were incredible i I really can't say anything negative about them, but they were focusing more on gym.

26:32So when I was like, I want to do more running stuff, they were like, yeah, you can design it. And then it was like, it'll come out in a year. And I'm like, I want to do it now. So yeah, it was kind of fun to like start my own. Way harder, way, people are really, this is not a path that you take if you want it to be super profitable. If you want to be profitable, be a creator, because you've got hardly any expenses and you can earn a lot of cash through bad deals but I've done quite a few years of being a creator that now the spark and the ambition although I'm so privileged and grateful that I could still get those deals I want to build something and I want to build something separate and I want to test myself and challenge myself and get new skills and that will come from what i'm doing right now so even those six months work and dropping online i could earn very quickly elsewhere this is so much more fulfilling and fun and is that not what life's about yeah and if you can do it like you said you said that you got your friends back working on it at the moment if you can do it with other people as well yeah oh my gosh it makes such a difference i'm a control freak even though i think i'm not but i am and it's until my friends and i'm like doing so many things that once i was at the pop up i'm supposed to be at the front of the store welcoming people in i'm also like no but this needs to be done in the back room oh no but i need to post something and my friend would take my phone and go i am posting the run club stories right now and you're not checking them and i'm like okay like obviously it helps and my friends like were editing videos for me the last few days and got my friends packing orders and you do just have to let go because how have you found that help is it's been hard a bit hard until everything went to chaos and actually now i'm like don't even ask me how to do it just just do it yeah just figure it out no point you do the task if you're gonna ask me because i'm like then i just need to do it myself but no it's it's amazing and i can't thank my friends enough wait where do you see it going where do i see it going i want to keep the core of events community in person run clubs would love to delve more into holding our own races i have so much fun doing that what was the the race set up like like what oh it was incredible we did two races collaborated with runner they made it all happen and one was in sydney and one was in london we had over a thousand people at each we had medals we had chip time it was so legit distance always a one five k one ten k one five k one thing yeah and so the fact that i it gave me the opportunity to design a medal like i have medals at home that i designed i'm like that's crazy i did that on my ipad so i just love little side quests like that but yeah actually i don't remember what we were talking about i just mentioned where do you see it going like you said you want to focus more on events yeah so events is a core and then on top of that clothing like i do just love it and i love designing products and creating them and what's in this drop at the moment this drop is hoodies and a performance vest with socks and then we want to go into like tracksuit bottoms i really want to launch this t-shirt just like cotton t-shirts i want to get into running short so running and also everyday wear but on the sporty side do you think there's a gap i think there's always such like i think there's always saturated saturated and it's not that i've got this incredible new idea like we can see how many run clubs there are and how many cool edgy product things but i think if you want to do it go do it instead of sitting in your bedroom being like oh but everybody else is doing it you could be part of it yeah there's not just one winner yeah there is there is tons and so is there a gap i don't know but i also So as long as I create something that's from my heart, then it's got to be slightly different from someone else because no one has got, you know, my team and myself.

31:03We're going to create something that's us. And every brand will do that themselves. So as long as I stay original to like my ideas and obviously, obviously you're always influenced by other people. Like if another run club does something cool, you are influenced. But isn't that amazing that we can all kind of like help each other out. and i'm sure like one of my ideas of something we've done has helped someone else and so yeah yeah that's kind of so you've got clothing brand and events and events that's really cool um obviously we touched on before that you you're currently living in australia been living there for two years what made you move i visited there and i'd never been so relaxed in London when I was living alone between 20 and 22 I was constantly working and just you know as we all do it's great you know it's fantastic but I really couldn't chill and so I'd go work at a coffee shop all day come back work from home and again that's nothing to complain about apart from when I went to Australia I could actually enjoy my morning and my evening and my lunch time so still working the hours in the day but instead of sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of like a crazy street in london i could surf for an hour in my lunch break and that just was like magical and the ocean the people the sun my quality of life is incredible over there just think the sun impacts a lot oh my gosh it makes you so happy so happy and even in australia we get so grumpy if it rains for like half a day and we we feel sorry for the rest of the world like when it's raining we walk around and we're like how do people do this all year or for six months because we get grumpy if there's like half a day of rain so i think it definitely makes you happier yeah that's mad um did you watch kind of like your routine over there right so say like a typical day typical day wake up breakfast obviously brush my teeth but i'm not going to give you a routine i've got to get out the house that's something it's the only way i function if i don't get out the house i start questioning my life my choices who i am so anna's got to get out the house get in her car play some music coffee gym coffee home work lunch break coffee break like work friends but saying that every morning I say I just went straight to the gym in the morning big culture to get coffee together so unless no one's free for coffee which is like one time per week um wake up and by the time you wake up you've got like three text messages and they're like we're at this cafe come here and I'm like cool I'm not even being I'm not able to even like you know question myself or think about my day or think about my mood I'm already seeing friends and it makes such a difference to wake up be with other people and you just you get lightened up and you're like wow then you go home and do your day so basically friends coffee beach work yeah that's a that's a pretty good lifestyle you've sold it to me and running when i can run but i'm currently injured yeah what injury have you got at the moment grade three stress response in my femur i should be able to run soon i did run after the train today um but any pain no no pain but i am at the end i've done four and a half months no running so i really hope i can run again but i think everything comes to you for a reason and is it i bet being injured during this crazy business time has probably been a blessing right yeah i don't think i would have locked in with work so much because it kind of took everything away from me and then i was like oh i guess i do have time to answer that email i can actually do that i'm not you're not going for a running yeah yeah so So it just kind of made me focus on that, which was good because the first four months of the year, I was in summer mode, you know, I was relaxing a lot.

35:11And so when the injury happened, I was relaxing and training and a bit of work. And then when I got injured, it was relaxing and work because there was no training. So it was actually really good and kickstarted everything. and yeah as i said everything kind of happens to you for a reason and clearly i had to take a break from running and i think i'm going to be so grateful when i'm back running and be like wow the fact that i can run to a friend and jump on them the fact that i can jump up and down when i'm excited these are all things i've had to think about for the last four months like not being able to do those things and it drives me crazy it's crazy how much you take for granted and then you get injured oh my gosh i'm on like a high step and i'm about to jump down i'm like don't land on your left leg you'll break it how important is balance do you think super important but also super hard i think when we think of that perfect balance day i don't want to say it doesn't exist but you're always going to have your mind telling you other things whether you could have the perfect balance day and your brain will say well you didn't work enough or you could be like oh but I'm super tired I needed more chill time I think I work more in seasons so they'll or even if that's just a week period where I'm crazy busy with work the last week there's been no balance on my end does that matter to me no it doesn't when I go back to Australia on Monday I can chill out then but right now this is what's needed and this is what is well end of this is what's needed but also what I want to do and so that's that and there's other periods of my year where I need a lot of rest and I can't quite I don't want to say get myself to do more business things but I'm just in a period of being slower and I'm pretty good at like accepting my fate of which season I'm in and not beating myself up too much but overall yeah balance is important like I am the first person to tell myself and my friends you need a break they'll be like oh my god like this has happened this has happened I was like have you had a break today they're like no have you moved your body have you you know um and so yeah it definitely keeps you in check and i wouldn't be able to do the work that i do if i didn't have restful periods like this couldn't come out of thin air if that makes sense i had a lot of energy banked up that's a good one i've never really thought about it like like say seasons and i suppose that everyone does have it you know whether it's being a professional athlete like you have your in season you have your competitions and then you have an off season and even with you like you're transferring between locations you probably find yourself really busy when you're in london i don't know yeah you'll have periods where you're like this week is crazy then you have another week where you might go on holiday you know you don't judge either one it's just the way it is yeah it is pretty mad in it how do you uh do you ever feel guilty for taking time to relax no no did you when you was in london yeah oh my gosh so bad like i don't know if i was borderline workaholic but like i could i wouldn't even see my mum and she lived 40 minutes away and I wouldn't even if my friend made a plan if I said yes I would then cancel on the day it was work work work and the reason why I got to the place that I am today but it's not what's kept me here I've done a lot of relaxing I'd say the last two years the theme of the things that I've learned is how to relax and so then it kind of spun on to me because the first four months of this year i was like wait how do i get myself to go again because i'm really chilled out now and i'm like how do i you know and i found it luckily but it was it was definitely you have to kind of go to both ends and i went like extreme work end to kind of like how little can i do per day did it kind of like scare you thinking oh i'll never be able to work hard again my god you should read my journal or even like my therapy sessions i was like to my therapist how does one get motivated how does one have fire inside of them and will i ever be able to work hard in my life again like that was genuinely what i was thinking and i think when you touch on points in success my thing was was after all the success let's say with what I had built so far the fact that I was able to live in a country I wanted to live in and not have to stress about money and you know runner being sold after all of that the most important thing for me was coffee with my friends running and being on the beach so then suddenly I'm having this crisis of so do I need to keep up everything I'm doing do I need to keep up the London lifestyle that I was doing because I don't actually want anything expensive or need anything more in my life my life is completely full of just happiness and enjoyment and I can pay for the things that I need so it really kind of again a very privileged crisis I want to mention like this is not actually a problem but it was just what I went through and I really struggled to kind of find that fire inside of me because truthfully it probably a younger version of myself who was trying to make it came from a place of not feeling good enough and not knowing what actually fulfilled her so when i did find those things and when i did feel good enough and complete i was like so why do we do hard things now why do we need to do this why do we need to do that if that makes sense i think that's good because i think a lot of people get into the position that you're in and they can't just have fun like you just said then you just explained that your life was just full of happiness like every day was happy yeah like a lot of people have money and they're miserable still what why are you different like did you have a realization that well i think because i prioritized i prioritize having fun and relaxing because i was burnt out so it was like in somewhat way my body was just like i can't even do what you want me to do right now so at the beginning i didn't feel great about it relaxing like relaxing more than the hour per day that i used to give myself so at the beginning it felt quite guilty it was uncomfortable but i constantly repeated to myself this is part of the process so i think there's a difference because i think if you're constantly telling yourself this is bad this is that no i was very kind to myself but it was an uncomfortable feeling i must say i was lying on the sofa like okay yeah we can chill um in terms of other people maybe when they're successful and maybe can't stop or whatever me feeling fulfilled didn't just come out of thin air because of anything i've done years of therapy which has helped me let go of a lot of things from the past so those things that didn't make me feel good enough have gone is there more work to do of course there is there always is but I uprooted a lot of old beliefs that I had and so that in turn kind of relaxed my nervous system relax me as a human and so that constant need to be more and bigger and whatever that was dimmed down so i think i just became more human if that makes sense it's intriguing because let's say i have a couple of friends that can't stop and they they i don't think they'd ever want to stop i think maybe because they they love the the process of building something like you picked up recently people have so many different there could be two people having the exact same crazy work day one person is doing it because if they stop they are not good enough and one person is because this is everything i love it and so you can't judge it at all and i've mixed between those two um but yeah everyone's got different perceptions of it and nothing's wrong or right you know everyone can do what they want in the world no it's interesting um have you gone through any struggles over the last couple of years with anything and how have you kind of like overcome that oh where do we start you might have to give me a smaller time frame um yeah well i mean if we just take the last six months i started doubting myself as a businesswoman as someone who could hold events someone who could be in front of people someone who could stay organized i was tempted to shut down my business i didn't know if i ever wanted to do a run club again like i really got in a low place at one point probably like three months ago what led you to get into that like rot well i think because as i explained that mindset of not knowing when my ambition would come back and how that was one thing another thing was in november so that was about eight months ago i found out that i had autism and adhd and i did not know this prior i had an inkling about adhd but when i found this out it really hit me and I was already struggling personally at that time I was having like a lot of breakdowns which is why I went to go get tested and then you slap that on top and then you're learning more about what you deal with when you thought everyone else deals with it

45:17and I kind of absorbed some of those traits that what the negative traits of what you hear from both of those diagnoses adhd and autism i took the negative things and i applied it to myself and i was like you're not going to be able to be in front of large crowds you're never going to be able to be organized you're never going to be able to do this that or whatever and so it just added onto that i don't even have any ambition right now i don't know what my goals are but i'm also told that i can't do these things or i know that there's a part of me that struggles with it already it's not just that i'm taking on this label so i was like why do i i was really tempted to go like live in a van and like go off grid and take everything off anyways it changed question before before we move on obviously you got that diagnosis yeah like going back would you would you change that like going getting tested would you like would you rather know or rather not know because i wish i knew when i was a child right okay it would have made my life a lot okay yeah i would have been a lot more understood i went through like a lot of struggles when i was younger well literally as soon as i could remember and a lot of my traits or behaviors were not understood and so i went through a lot of my life feeling not understood and feeling like an absolute inconvenience because i felt things on such a large level that my sister and my mum wouldn't feel i'd be having absolute tantrums because of the uncomfortableness that i'd be feeling but no one would understand that and you just kind of get told like oh just just doesn't matter whatever and so i feel like if i had that then it'd be great but also i would never change anything about my life that's happened because otherwise i wouldn't be sat in this chair right now yeah do you think if you did get diagnosed when you was younger you'd be where you are today that is so interesting again because like you say everything like some people i don't want to say they use it as an excuse but like they can look at all the negative things and like you said they're talking in front of the crowds if you get told you struggle talking yeah i do wonder about that with young children i obviously don't i don't think either is right or wrong yeah i think being understood is a great thing and i don't know whether if i was told that at a younger age i maybe would have absorbed it more but then at the same time i kind of disagree with that because even now finding out 24 and again i started thinking of the negatives as soon as you find out the positives you're like mate have you seen how long i can lock in lock in for have you seen about the things that run through my head and the patterns that i know like they say most entrepreneurs i think there's something like five or ten percent of people have adhd but percentage of entrepreneurs that have adhd is like 30 yeah and it's just so you can lock in on the things that you want to lock in on yeah no it's great you can block out everything else yeah me and my best friend did a 14 hour shift yesterday in her house it just did not stop we weren't tired at all we woke up ready um but yeah so i i don't know what it would have been like yeah if i got it when i was younger and i don't know if i would have been here today but that is the same with so many different things like so many particular life experiences or occasions took me to where I am today whether that be a certain day I had that made me start getting into fitness more or the day that I created my account or I mean six months before making my Anna Archer account I was in a really low place like lower than low so how can your life change that quickly you know it's just you just can't and if I didn't get that low maybe I wouldn't have got into fitness as much in that period I didn't get into fitness I wouldn't have made the account so whenever I go through a struggle like for example you know three months ago four months ago when I was really like oh my god I don't know if I'm going to be able to continue this or ever enjoy it I just didn't rush anything and was really gentle on myself and also know that okay yeah maybe you have taken the wrong turn in life and maybe you are made to be a little hermit by the beach surfing and you can do that but i told myself i'm going to try one more time at this industry and brand stuff and if you hate it then you can not do it but i already love it so that's kind of my answer for the moment but yeah like it's just crazy how everything comes together really do you believe everything happens for a reason i mean i want to say yes but i also think it's also such an unfair mindset because of when people go through traumatic experiences like when someone says everything happens for your reason and you're like come on don't say that like i'm grieving don't say that someone's not supposed to be on this earth for a reason like or i had a few like not so great experiences when i was younger no one wants to be told that happens for a reason but overall if we talk about the more the more not so traumatic things yeah i think i think so everything leads you to where you are right now and as long as you learn from those things if i think if you're not going to learn from an experience you might as well put it in the bin like take the pop-up shop I just did or the launch day when I tell you the list of problems that has happened is about this long if I just take the problems take them personally get upset think I'm not a good person for organizing out like things right or forecasting these problems I might as well just scrumple this whole week up put it in the bin and I'm not going to take you're not taking anything onto your next time whereas if i get that big fat juicy list and go thank you for having all these problems because next time i'm not gonna have any of them i'm gonna have new problems but that's gonna take me to the next level and that's how i like to look at things like if something goes wrong what did that teach you and what can you take on and yeah that's been the quote of the week that makes sense and i think that's across every field like uh if you if you lose it and if you know if you don't get a pb within fitness you know maybe it's a running race and you don't get your pb you you get better than if you would have got your pb if that makes sense because you then analyze all your data whereas if you just get your pb you might you might just say yeah i'm sick and then move on to the next thing or go celebrate and that's it whereas like if you embarrass yourself maybe by fucking up you then have to take a deep dive into everything but the key is to actually like take a deep dive into it everyone's got to be humbled now and then you can't be winning all the time you gotta have a few things that hit you and be like oh yeah it's good it's all good what's what's next for your fitness wise to do my one minute on one minute off running can't wait then once i can run well again i want to get into half marathons or 10ks i think i'm over the marathon i'm gonna be completely honest i got injured doing a marathon i need i need a break i need a breakup with the marathon what's your what's your talents for the marathon um i ran 359 a year ago and then when i was training for london this year i was aiming for a sub 330 um but i got injured and that was so fun but um yeah like if i if i do a marathon again i'd love to get sub 3.30 for sure but yeah just keeping it shorter distances i mean i don't want to say i'm not fast for time but i'm more fast on the feeling yeah if i feel fast and feel like i'm making improvements and i'm running with fast people i'm really cool so i think sometimes it's more impressive doing a fast or a or a cool 5k rather than like a longer distance like i feel like so many people go longer and longer and longer and don't get me wrong that's great and it's impressive but there's a point where it becomes unhealthy yes for sure and and again it's great to experience you know once you've done the 10k to do a half marathon and then do a marathon but then i think after that pick which one you like and i love a half marathon because you can really build in it and that's very fun whereas a 5k you just got to go out whole time it's grim yeah not for me it's a different kind of pain so i would like to do half marathons when i'm back have you got any one in mind um no i assume one in australia oh why don't you do the uh one on tasmania yeah maybe the hardest one have you seen that one the world's hardest half marathon i think it's like oh yeah no thank you no you're not for that i think you start at the bottom nice and flat even a bit downhill okay but um other things in terms of fitness i'd like to be injury free continuing so i need to keep up my strength and conditioning and then i want to be a pro surfer pro surfer yeah when i say pro i just want to be really cool on the waves i don't need to do the competitions but currently i'm i'm working on catching the wave and standing on the board so that's where i'm at sick nah i find it crazy i've only been to australia once we went to uh sydney we were staying on bondi beach and i remember i think we were jet lagged one day so we woke up like 4 a.m and the sun only came up at like five but there were people in the sea at 4 a.m yeah in the dark what what are these crazy bastards doing like why why are they not just waiting another hour when you obviously i suppose that they might be in there to see the sunrise but like just wait waves got to get in there before work you want to go there before you know your girlfriend wakes up and they're like why have you been out in the water whereas if you go in there asleep you could be out in the water for hours honestly the surfing the surfing community that well not even community but the people they they just think in waves wind direction and tide like i live with two surfers and they're like oh they're always checking the stats and being like oh yeah yeah we'll go out at three and then at three they're like no we're gonna go about 3 30 and we're gonna change location and go here but yeah i'm like i aspire to be you i haven't learned all the lingo but i've learned a few so yeah it's funny i don't even think about like tides and stuff and wave heights and yeah i just let them do the math for me and tell me when it's and we have something called anna waves that's waves for me what's that like a little bit smoother always no that's amazing so you're living in the gold coast at the moment yeah do you think that's the best place for me i'm not city girl so sydney's then crossed out melbourne's crossed out and i'm sure that well there are so many places in australia but gold coast where all my friends are at friends that i've met out there and we have like a whole family out there we are each other's family yeah so and the training's got out on the beach training oh they are beasts like everyone's running well i don't know if that's like london now but everyone's running at 5am 4 30 20k training double days every day it's just mad yeah it's crazy it's i'm on the bottom of the the training schedule like i have the least amount everyone else trains way more yeah maybe i do train okay but not right now nah it's uh it's crazy to see like the difference like you say just even like wake up times and going to bed like they were saying i know we've got some friends that do hierarchs and they're from australia uh james kelly and he will be in bed for 7 30 yes sleep for eight yeah 8 p.m bedtime 8 p.m it's crazy like all the all the restaurants like short at eight yeah it does get dark in the summer at six latest so two hours in the dark and if you're training if you're running in the summer you need to be out the sun by 6 a.m so if you have a 30k run or a 20k run you need to be starting at 4 a.m yeah so then you you got to get in bed for eight you got to be asleep by eight it's mad whereas over here like it's like oh my god i thought melbourne was a little bit different i go to bed at midnight over here yeah melbourne was different people were like sleeping until like seven eight it was kind of like a a sunny manchester yeah that's what that's what it looked no i've heard that yeah for melbourne but uh yeah it was nice but no it's just it's just super interesting what do you um so obviously uh we touched on fitness goals the the business do you think that you're ever going to take up any more hobbies like what do you see yourself doing in like five ten years time like the same stuff oh this is a good question and it definitely ponders on my mind i think i still i'd really love to keep growing this brand that i've created i think it really depends what avenue like if i'm done with the crazy life i'd be a barista and be a videographer that's kind of my mojo um and and maybe like yeah edit for other people that'd be so fun but with with currently where i'm at i i'm always like open to investment opportunities i think getting involved with some brands on an equity basis is like very exciting because you can you don't have to create a new brand you can partner up with a brand that already exists already has a great team but you can contribute to it so that i'd like to build like a little pool of companies that i'm invested in that would be super cool um it's interesting you that we've uh we've got a friend out out in texas he's called he's a little bit older than us i think he's like 46 eric hinman and he is like a fitness investor and he's invested into like roker sunglasses uh he's invested into quite a lot of brands um like supplement brands stuff like this uh and he's he obviously gets investment and his kind of obviously is like a bit of an influencer so he can sell as well but then he wants to kind of like build the community side in brands i feel like you'd be sick of that yeah no i i'm like i mean if i invested in a company they said can you sort out our finances like i'd do anything honestly like i'd clean the floors i i just love being involved with helping a brand grow but yeah even just like being a face in the content or editing the content or anything like that like if i maybe wanted to step back from me always being online like if i was investing in a few companies then yeah i can help them with bits and bobs skills you think a lot of fitness say in the fitness space or this running space do you think a lot of brands are going wrong in areas so say for example content do you reckon you could help like oh no i think people are ahead of me with content yeah i think i was on the top of my game when i started because when you start in the year that you do you actually are the pro which sounds really weird but in 2020 because i started then you firstly start as a as a consumer so you would have been on the consumer side of socials then you start your account so you already know what type of things are going on you put out content but also it's new and refreshing and brands look at you they're like yeah and you're growing and you you are more ahead as the years go by it's like being a boomer like you just won't do socials as good as we do right like just naturally but i'm becoming a bit of a boomer on socials like i've been on it for like six years now and there are way more beginner accounts that have way better content than me 100 because they've started maybe this year where the standard is this they've also got new ideas they've got way more drive because they're like well i want to grow to this amount or get started and they become the pros and that's why brands are always on the lookout for the new young faces not necessarily they have to be young in age but just like young with having a fresh account because if they start growing at the beginning they're going to keep going up because they've got that that hook and the really really great creators are creators that can adapt through the years because social media adapts so what worked for me when I grew six years ago wouldn't work now and so I have to remind myself to constantly adapt and I'm not saying I'm not good at it but I would say the last two years like content hasn't especially let's say Instagram or TikTok hasn't just free flowed out of me like it used to it's a little bit more like you know so I I wouldn't say I'm the content queen anymore, but I'm okay with that.

1:02:56I'm okay. I'll do things where I can, but - You prefer long form though. Yeah, I prefer long form. I really can't speak about one thing in 20 seconds, you know, like a voiceover or something. And my thoughts are ever changing. And if I can make a 20 minute YouTube video once a week, I can say my thoughts and people can clearly see that that was a year ago. They'll understand that probably my thoughts have changed or really understand my point. and yeah so i prefer long form because i can get my point out and point across i think when i do enjoy instagram content is when you find your blueprint of the type of videos you like to make and right now i don't have that but i'm also okay with that because if i had everything going good for me right now it would just be a bit weird you know boring yeah it's just you know i've got other areas of my life that are exciting and new and if one little area isn't doing as well as it used to i'm okay with that yeah yeah i want to finish on this question if you could tell your younger self something what would you what advice would you give i would tell her that she had so much more coming for her than she was told that she had or what she thought she could do and that you won't possibly be able to imagine what will come to you and so just keep doing everything you're doing i don't think my young self no she did stress don't stress about anything and be yourself don't hide those parts of yourself that were more quirky or more expressionate they are actually the things that will allow you to achieve all the things that i've achieved today like if i didn't show my personality in places or be myself then i wouldn't be here so i would just keep i would just tell her to keep being herself that's uh i think that's a great way to end the podcast thank you so much for having me on it's been so fun yeah and uh all the best of your travels back to this i was just going to say the states then the states australia thank you so much appreciate it