Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast
Looking for a quick dip into the world of Masters Swimming? Join us for TST Quick Splash, a bite-sized podcast that keeps you up-to-date with the latest developments and trends in the sport. Whether it's highlights from global masters swim meets or insights into open water swims, your host or special guests will deliver a concise and informative report. You'll also get valuable training tips, dry-land ideas, and product reviews to help you improve your performance in and out of the water.
Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast
Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast with Niklas Hedegaard - Danish National Swimmer and Co-Founder of The Magic 5
Get ready for a thrilling episode on this week's Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast where we swim through the dynamic life of Danish national swimmer, Niklas Hedegaard. With Danish National titles, two European championship appearances, and a national record under his belt, Niklas isn't your average swimmer. He's also one of the innovative minds behind The Magic 5 goggles, a revolutionary product that has been making waves in the swimming world. Join us as we navigate Niklas's impressive swimming career, his preparation for the Ultra Swim Series, and his exciting entrepreneurial journey.
We deep-dive into Nicholas's illustrious swimming career and his preparation for the exciting Ultra Swim Series in Montenegro. Listen closely as Nicholas shares his training regimen, including pool sessions, open water swims, and strength work, along with the insightful benefits of being part of the open water swim community. He shares some really poignant information about breaststroke technique and some ways to improve this technical stroke.
Niklas also shares how he and his co-founders birthed the ingenious idea of The Magic 5 goggles. We discuss the unique robotic production process involved in creating these custom-fit goggles and the thrilling moment they pitched their product on US Shark Tank TV show during the pandemic. You'll discover how they secured an investment from Robert Herjavec and Mark Cuban and the profound impact of their advice on the business.
So, put on your swimming cap, ready your goggles, and let's make a splash in this remarkable episode!
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Today's episode of Torpedo Swim Talk podcast is brought to you by the Magic Five. Magic Five are customized swim goggles made by robots that fit your face. Use code TorpedoSwimTalk15 at checkout to get 15% off all full price products. Hello Swimmers and welcome to another episode of Torpedo Swim Talk podcast. I'm your host, danielle Sperling, and each week I chat to a master swimmer from around the world about their swimming journey. I'm joined on the podcast today by Danish national swimmer and co-founder of the Magic Five goggles, nicholas Hedegard. He has a fascinating swimming story to share and I think you'll be really interested to hear all about it. Let's hear from Nicholas now. Hi Nicholas, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, danielle.
Speaker 1:It's really great to have you here. Where are you coming to us from in Denmark?
Speaker 2:I'm in Copenhagen at the moment, so the capital.
Speaker 1:Yes, were you born there or were you born elsewhere in Denmark?
Speaker 2:I'm actually from Copenhagen, but I have lived abroad for years in the past because of swimming, and now I'm back and it feels right.
Speaker 1:It feels good to be there. You have been a professional swimmer in Denmark and now a successful entrepreneur. Could you share with us some of your most memorable moments from your swimming career?
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah, I think most swimmers that have had a professional pool swimming career would say that a lot of the most memorable things that you have accomplished has been with your team. For me, it's when I think back. It's about the team aspect of it, all the things that I've made over the years. But if we talk about strictly swimming accomplishments, I've had a couple of national records here in Denmark national champion 30 plus times, something like that. I've been to European championships twice, which was probably the biggest competitions that I ever entered, and that was so much fun they were in front of the home crowd that you had happened to be in Copenhagen actually so they refitted a stadium or a multi-purpose arena into swimming pool competition. That was something.
Speaker 1:How often do they hold the European championships? Is it a yearly thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's bi-yearly. It was the short course championships. I was by far better in short course than long course, so it's bi-yearly. And then on the old-school years it's the world championship short course.
Speaker 1:How did you get into swimming in Denmark, because I feel like it's obviously for a lot of the year it's extraordinarily cold. So how's the pool situation there and how did you first get introduced to it?
Speaker 2:So I think it's very common in Denmark to learn to swim because we're surrounded by water and there's no place in Denmark where you have to drive maybe more than an hour, then you're by the sea. So it's very common for parents to be like your kid has to swim. You need to know how to survive if you get lost at the beach one day. So that was the motivation from my mom's side in the beginning. And then my swim coach at the kids' swimming was telling me when I was 10 or 8 or 9 or 10, I think, saying hey, we have this other branch of the club where you can enter events Like you can go to meets, you can compete. I'm like that sounds fun, let's try that. Then I found out I was quite good at it pretty fast. So I stuck around and I swam so much right, 10 sessions per week. It escalated pretty fast and then continued that for years and I ended up stopping when I was 28.
Speaker 1:And what's the scene like for swimming in Denmark? Obviously a lot of kids do it. How many people compete at a sort of a national level?
Speaker 2:I don't know how many are in the membership of the Federation or whatever and how many competitors there are. I do know that at the Nationals to turn up like 400 swimmers, I would say usually at the Nationals, but they have to qualify to get there right. So there's a lot more that swim. But yeah, I don't know how many swim. I think it's pretty. They have a lot of pools where they have good access to long-course pools just around Copenhagen, If you take Greater Copenhagen, I think there will be around 10 long-course pools around here. So I know a lot of big cities in the world where that's not the case. So we're very lucky in that sense.
Speaker 1:And did you stay with the same coach throughout your career or did you swap around? What happened there?
Speaker 2:So I actually stayed most of my career in the same club where I grew up a little bit outside the city and we changed the coach I would say halfway through. So the first couple of years I had the same coach and then I switched and got another coach and then, when it was time for him to step down, it was also time for me to move a little bit away from that club and go abroad. So I went to Austria for a little bit. I've been to the United States and Swam Ohio State not the school but the club team there. So I've, I'd say, ended up in training camps with other clubs from time to time, experienced different coaches and then through the national team. So I guess I've been in contact with a lot of different coaching styles. Of course you have your favorites.
Speaker 1:Of course. And what kind of coaching style do you respond best to?
Speaker 2:do you think Probably a bit uncommon in some sense I had. It was the second coach that I got at my club. For me, that was the perfect coaching style. It was very much about giving autonomy to the swimmer, and his end goal was saying you come here as a little kid that don't know how anything works in the swimming world and the end goals should be that you could be your own coach. So for that you don't only need to learn how to swim fast, you also need to know what goes behind that whole process, why you're doing what you're doing, and learn how to make smart choices. And it's not always about being the one that trains the hardest, it's about being the one that trains the smartest, and there's a lot of things that go into that. You could probably have a whole podcast about that as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You're known as a top level breaststroker, and I mean arguably. Breaststroke is one of the most technical strokes of the four. What did you excel at in breaststroke that made you so good at it?
Speaker 2:People are probably going to think that he's not a breaststroke when I say this, but it's probably my turn. So it's definitely the push off the wall and the underwater. This is why I excelled more at short course and I've probably done even better if I had done 25 yards, so 25 meters, but there I could significantly feel that I got an edge on my competitors. But if the breaststroke itself, I would say power, like being able to use my head. I was definitely not leg dominant in my swimming, so that I know for sure. That's why I was lacking.
Speaker 1:If you were so good off the turns, you must have had quite a bit of leg strength in that respect.
Speaker 2:Sure, but maybe there was something in the my legs also a little bit bigger, so I guess they die faster towards the end of the hundred. That was usually the case. And then, as soon as your arms are doing all the work in breaststroke, they can only do it for so long. It's a very hard thing to do. To swim that fast in breaststroke is very powerful.
Speaker 1:What's your top tip for being good at breaststroke?
Speaker 2:That's definitely to. It depends on which level you're at, I would say. But in the beginning it's about learning how to use that straight line of yours to glide. You should always extend as far as you can to end up in a straight line and get as much glide out of that as you can. And then, as you progress through it, I would say that the most important part is to use your head, because that's the heaviest object that you can throw with when you're swimming. So when you use your head to get over the water and down in that straight line position, that's really the it's like I don't know what it's called, but yeah, it's like a big weight that will sort of help you with the motion through the water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, like a momentum.
Speaker 2:Momentum. Yeah, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Moving you forward? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:I think it's more sense to. A lot of people do that in butterfly because their arms are also coming in together with the head over the water, but it's just as much the case that you need to use your head in breaststroke?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think the timing of breaststroke is also very hard for people to master.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure it's a. It is a very technical stroke and I had a coach that said it's a. It's a strange stroke because you're trying to swim the fastest you can in the slowest possible way, and that's really a. It's really the case. Right, it's the slowest of the four strokes, but you're still trying to and there's so much resistance that you can build for yourself, so it's about minimizing that as much as you can. It's really. It's really really a strange stroke in some senses.
Speaker 1:I know I I'm I'm absolutely terrible at breaststroke. I've got pigeon toes so I find it really hard on my knees to turn my my feet out.
Speaker 2:It's the best part of being around the swim team. There's always those, those people that can't swim breaststroke to save themselves. Those are the funniest people to watch whenever there's Ironman program or something.
Speaker 1:Well, it's very disheartening if you can't swim breaststroke doing an IM, because you you might be pretty good at butterfly and backstroke and then everyone just passes you on the breaststroke.
Speaker 2:It's always the case isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that you spent some time in the U? S training. What club did you base yourself out of and how did you find that experience?
Speaker 2:So I went to, I went to Ohio State an exchange program with my university here from in Copenhagen, and initially I just walked up to the first coach I could see at the pool and said, hey, do you have space on the team? And they did. It was the club team because I couldn't be affiliated with the, with the school, because of the NCAA rules and they're very strict. So when you, when I was only there for half a year, I could only be with the club, but I was, I was totally fine and I think we swam six times a week or something, I don't remember correctly. Then I could do some extra stuff on the side and that that was perfect. Well, I also focused on going to university over there and that was a really cool experience to be. They have amazing facilities like big, big Olympic size pool, diving world, two short cross pools and then like a four or five story gym area. It's crazy, it's really crazy. It's like kid in a can. It was like a kid in a candy store when I showed up, so great.
Speaker 1:So did the racing that you did over there. Was that all in yards?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did yards and that was very difficult for me to adjust to. I remember doing a turn of breaststroke in yards and all my turns were just like this. I couldn't get it to fit at all with the turn, so that took some adjustment. But I only did a thing one or two competitions I saw that came. I was very shy of just shy of qualifying for Worlds before that Short course came and showed up and then I swam there for like five months and then I had like a month training camp down in Texas and then I went back home to Denmark again.
Speaker 1:And what made you hang up your bathers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I think swimming was. It's like it's very hard when you swim at that level to do other stuff, and I started this company with a friend and his uncle and that sort of took over more and more of my time and it was really difficult to continue swimming at that level while also wanting different things in life. So that was it was a priority. But I still love swimming and if I could, if I could make more hours on a day, I would probably have extended it further than I did.
Speaker 1:I know that you're training for a marathon swim coming up. Tell us a little bit about that. Where is it? How far is it?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so I'm very nervous about it. I can't preface with that. It's a. It's part of the Ultra Swim series. They're going to host one event this year and then the goal is to brought it out so that I think in 2025 they'll have eight events all around the world. But this one is the first and it's a 33.3 kilometers event so 333 and it's in Montenegro in the end of September, and I've never entered an open water race before. It's my first. I think I've done one short triathlon with my club team in the past where we swam maybe a thousand or 1500 in open water, but nothing like this. So I am nervous about it and but it's it'll also be a lot of fun. I think I'm part of this, this WhatsApp group where I can see people texting all their swim preparations and people are very excited about it.
Speaker 2:So and I know it will be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Wow, 33.3 kilometers is a long way for your first one. Is that a solo swim you're doing?
Speaker 2:No, okay, so I forgot to mention that. So it's over four days, which was when I heard that. I was like, oh, okay, then I can do it. Actually it's possible. For me it would be similar to what I would do in practice right back when I swam. So, yeah, that makes it manageable. I don't think I would have entered if it was a 33. So, solo swim, just one straight line. This is going to be more like a stage swim. So I think some of the days we swim 3k, get out of the water, go somewhere else, swim another 3k or something, and then on the third day there's a 10k. So that's the longest straight line that we go and some people want to in that 10k, get like I think that's like a marathon event in swimming and some people want to get that official time for that 10k so they can't get any assistance doing doing job and water swim, still figuring out if I want to be part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's a big one to be part of. Do they add up all the time? Add up all the times, over the over, the different parts, and then that's how they get their places.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, exactly. Then there'll be a wetsuit category and one without wetsuit. So, yeah, I still haven't figured out if I'm going to be in the wetsuit category or without one. I think I'm going to bring one and then see how, what the temperature is like, and then decide from there. It's all very new. I'm just going by advice from people and I think I know I'm pretty confident in my preparations for that, but it's I don't know what to expect. Honestly, it's not usually how I would go into a swimming competition. Right, I know exactly what to do and it's always the same amount of strokes from here to the turn and back, and I can plan my whole race. Can't plan anything for this one, so that's going to be a big no. Yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds really exciting. Montenegro looks like a most beautiful place to go, so at least you'll have beautiful scenery to look at while you're swimming.
Speaker 2:Right, but that's the. That's the whole goal for the ultra swim series. They it's a race, yeah, but it's also an event that you go and you get to experience the nature from a cool perspective. And they planned it in such a way that you get to see different parts of Montenegro, so it's not just along the same shoreline that we're going to swim, we're actually going to get out and move to a different part so that we get to see some different bodies of water.
Speaker 1:It's going to be very exciting, yeah, yeah it will be so how have you approached the training? Obviously it's different to the pool racing. Are you doing swims in the open water or are you doing all your training in the pool? How's that work?
Speaker 2:I've done a few sessions in open water. I'm going to do more and more from now on, but most of my swimming has been in the pool. The first thing I did was sign up with my local swim team, just pause and have it. I guess it was also just to keep me coming back. I think it's very easy for me to say that I'm busy with something else if I'm just training by myself, but if I'm there with a team, I have a time to show up. Feel that respect. Hey, I need to be there on time. I can't be missing it. So that helped me a lot in the beginning.
Speaker 2:To get back into swimming, and then I think maybe my approach is a little bit different than someone that hasn't been swimming as much as I have. For me it's about conditioning my shoulders. Again, they have been used to doing swimming like that, so it's not new for my body at all to do, but it's just about putting in some extra hours that I normally wouldn't be spending on swimming and then gradually build up more and more resilience in your shoulders to swim freestyle. For that long I'm using pull-boys and paddles more than I would do when I was swimming breaststroke, but it's good and I think I would be swapping out more and more in the practices that I go to of the breaststroke and IMS and backstroke and whatever, and just be hey coach, can I please just do freestyle the closer I get and then more open waters as well.
Speaker 2:But I'm swimming around three times a week. Three to four. Four is a really good week and it's so funny whenever I did four sessions in the past couple of months here I always thought how could I do 10 when I used to do that? There's no time in the week to do that much. So I guess you just, yeah, you get used to whatever it is that you're doing right, and 4 right now seems like a lot of swimming.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean 4 is amazing being able to fit that in with your work and family life and everything else that's going on. So I think that you know that'll be really helpful in being successful in modern aggro.
Speaker 2:I hope so. Let me tell you that some of those people in that group chat are part of all the people that are entering. We're part of the same group chat. It's really been for months. It's really cool. You get to meet all these people and some of them are really really strong and they serve a lot more than I do, so I should be honest too, and do you do any strength work on land as well as the in the water pool work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so before I signed up for this and started training for it, I would do basically 6 or 7 times a week in the gym. I just substituted all my swim training from when I was 28 with gym training. So I did crossfit, regular weightlifting. I also signed up for a spin class, to have a spin class at my local gym. So anything that could get my hands on at the gym I would do, and it doesn't really make you a faster swimmer. I found that out when I started training for this event. So a little bit less of that and more swimming, that's sort of the. I think that's a healthy mix.
Speaker 1:And so with this, with this ultra swim that you're doing, ultra marathon swim, do you think that you'll include that now in your yearly program? Can you see yourself doing more?
Speaker 2:Let me get food as first one, and then I will be able to answer that.
Speaker 1:You'll be able to say yeah, obviously.
Speaker 2:I it's yeah, let me wait and see how many nightmares I have after. No, I'm sure it will be a great experience. And again, it's like it's also that social component to it. It's going to be more than 100 people there that are going through the same thing. We're going to eat together every night after the swim and it's going to be a four day event. It's going to bring people together. So I think that thing, that component of it, is what can make me come back year after year, probably in in in some more events, because, yeah, and yeah maybe, maybe I've always been a little bit afraid of the open water, so maybe this is just going to rip that bandit off and I'm going to love it.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it's very different to pool swimming, but I think it has its own joy that you get from it, yeah, and I think that you'll I'm sure you'll enjoy it 100% I'm, I know I will, it will be, it will be cool.
Speaker 1:Are you loving our podcast? Because we really want to know all about it. Why not share your enthusiasm with review on Apple podcasts? You'll find the section for reviews if you scroll to the bottom of all episodes and fill in your thoughts. It's really easy to do and a small way that you can help us get discovered by other swimmers. Let's have a bit of a chat about your success in the business world, because you're a co-founder of Magic Five Goggles. How did that idea come about and tell us a bit about you and the other co-founders?
Speaker 2:Sure. So it came about back in 2017, maybe late 2016, where my friend Rasmus was my co-founder as well. He came to me and said what do you do with Goggles? He was this amateur triathlete in front of my university and yes, me, naturally, because I was the best swimmer that he knew and was like what do you do with Goggles? I can't seem to find ones that fit. I'm here with my, my uncle, and he has the same problem. So how did you solve that? And I said, well, I use these very, very cheap Swedish Goggles. They don't have any padding on them, they're just hard plastic cups and you have to assemble them yourself and that's sort of how you make them fit your face. And they both looked at me like that. They came from Draftron, where everything is like a new component for your bike and it costs a lot of dollars, and they just didn't make sense. So we thought, okay, maybe there's something to this, maybe you can do that in a smarter way.
Speaker 2:And I started researching Goggles, how to make them, and went to China to see how you make Goggles and because that's where all the goggles in the world are made, and quickly found out that we could do a better job I think it was. It didn't scare us at least the way that it all happened. And I also found out that not really what has happened with Goggles since they were first invented in the 60s it's pretty much the same thing with the strap and some sort of plastic to cover your eyes, and it's yeah, which is why we could do a better job in that. And we found out that you needed to sort of capture data of people's faces if you want to make something that actually fits. It can't just be a one size fits all that you take down from the shelf and enhance the customer. So we developed a scanning technology. We scan your eye socket 3D model shape of your eye socket and then we custom produce a pair of goggles and ship them to the customer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an amazing story and amazing technology, having sort of robotics involved in it as well. So do you have a robotics machine that you produce them all in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have seven, actually Seven robots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a small robot. It's not a big humanoid robot with arms and legs. It's a small standard. What do you say production robot? It can be programmed to do a lot of different tasks.
Speaker 2:It's from a Danish company called Universal Robots and it actually it was not a purpose that it was a Danish company. It just happens that they actually produce the robots that we need right in our backyard. So, yeah, you can program it to do a lot of different things. It sort of has seven joints that you can make it move freely in 3D space. And then we started coding and usually when you work with robots in a production setting, you do it because you want to automate a task and do it the same thing over and over and over again, and they're very good at that job. They get very good at doing stuff like that. But what we want to do is to make the robot move slightly different for each customer. It's going to make a unique set of swimming goggles and that's really what makes our company unique in the way that we use for products to make a unique movement pattern each time.
Speaker 1:So do you need to put in a unique code every single time? And that comes from the face scan.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. So everything that happens behind that and that's our Coca-Cola recipe, right? That's like how to fit the goggle on your face, how we, the algorithms that we created to sort of make sure that the 3D model of the goggle fits with the 3D model of your eye socket. That whole thing is complicated and that's what has taken us years to nail and I think it's only improving with the one more face scan stuff we get and we'll be able to say well, now there's another customer coming in who has some similar facial features to Newtoniel, and then that would do a better job. If the algorithm knows that you have your goggle goggles, they will do a better job of finding a good fit for that new customer. So it's a work in progress and it's really great to get feedback from all the people that use the product to be able to continuously improve upon it.
Speaker 1:And did you all have a background in technology and coding?
Speaker 2:No, so I'm me and my friend Rasmus. We studied international business and politics. If I had gone with what interests me most, I should have studied maybe math or coding or something computer science. I think that would have fit me very well. But no, I studied politics and business. And then the third co-founder, bo. He is an engineer, so it's really him that knows how to code a robot. I know how to wear some goggles, so there's sort of a good fit there and we've had, yeah, a lot of a lot of talks about how to do it and but it's, it's honestly, it's coded by him and it's very, very smart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, it's a real collaboration, which I think is a really great idea, and, as you said earlier, being part of a team, what makes things like that really exciting. So it must be wonderful to work with your friend and his uncle. And is there another co-founder as well?
Speaker 2:We, there's us three, yeah, and I couldn't have imagined to do it alone. It would, and I don't think any of us could. We have so different qualities, different ways of looking at things. And it's also. It is a. It's not that other people's companies are not complicated, but of course they are. But we could have made it much simpler company Just doing dropshipping from one station to another, or we could have taken out a lot of. But we decided to to do everything for this company, from production to customer service, man, fact like it's. It's a. And then we sell all over the world as well. So it's a, I think also. Just we took in a lot from the beginning and so we're going to do all these things and Having to do that alone Think that would have been impossible.
Speaker 1:That would be a huge job, yeah, to do that all by yourself. So it's great that you've got each other to rely on. I Saw I was just watching it before, but I think I saw it when it was initially out the US shark tank, which I thought I love that show and presented your your pitch. So how did you decide which which two of you went on and what sort of? How did you work on that pitch behind the scenes?
Speaker 2:so I think if we could have decided, it would have been all three of us that went, but I Is luck. Unfortunately it was doing Kobe that they they shot it, so I was not allowed to travel. My two co-founders lived in America and they have. Rasmus lived in New York and bullet in North Carolina where the production was set up and all that, so it was easier for them to travel to the studios and and do that. But I had to stay home but I was obviously still very much a part of it and we practiced that pitch I would say 50 times, everything from how you move your hands to the way that you say the words with your Danish accent, and it was just it has to be.
Speaker 2:You get 90 seconds and you don't get 92. Right, it's TV. So it's like you get 90 seconds to to prayer pitch. We hired someone to help us because none of us are Naturally good on TV. We haven't had a lot of media training and it's also it's different to present your company in front of the sharks compared to what you would do in a regular investor setting and where you're talking to someone on a zoom meeting and you have tons of time and it's a. There's a lot more questioning happening outside that 90 second pitch that you see on TV and a little bit back and forth for cover minutes. There's a lot more that doesn't go into the episode right, but it is a lot faster than your regular Investor meeting would be and I mean they.
Speaker 1:They loved you, the innovation of the idea and they were all fighting over Getting you on board. Yeah, and you ended up going with Robert but did Mark Cuban came on later on to the program, so you've got both of them helping you. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's correct. Yeah, so my Cuban approached him after she watched the show. You can also see that he seems a little bit sour at the end.
Speaker 2:He didn't get to be part of it and he approached Robert after I said don't you want us, can we split it? And then they decided to, to split the deal, getting a, getting half of each and also paying half Money each, and we've been very happy with both of them having them part of the team. It's been a huge help. They have a whole team that helps them with their investments and that team is really brilliant and they know a lot. So it's always it's up to the always say it's up to the company to utilize those, those skills that they have, because they have a lot and and a lot of smart people working for them and it's as it's really been. It's been helpful.
Speaker 1:So do they help you on a day-to-day basis or is it just sort of like an overview type situation?
Speaker 2:It's really what you, what you want and how closely you want to work with them and what your needs are you can get. It's not like they go in and take over your customer service, but they, if they have a, an idea, let's say in customer service, of how to improve it, they will be Analyzing it with you and looking through it and giving you pointers of where to what to think about. We've used them in a lot of ways with the search optimization, searching to know to my station, so making sure that we rank higher on Google. They know a lot about that type of stuff and instead of going out and us buying those that knowledge from an agency somewhere, they just been sharing it and and that's been very helpful. So it's like having it's really like having a partner instead of an agency that you need to go through All the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that must be amazing to have that kind of help and feedback, because, yeah, I know myself with this podcast, search engine optimization is what everyone says you need to do, but I really don't have much much of an idea of how to do it, so having that advice would be lovely.
Speaker 2:You have asked people. That is their job, 24, seven, right, that's what they do. It's a really it's a complicated thing and it's always evolving how to how to do that. And then the set parvix also takes really a lot of time, right, not only takes time to work with it, but it also takes time for it to work for you whenever you have made changes. It's just, it's not like Google will be like, well, good job to me, or tomorrow you're gonna rank number one. It's gonna take. It's gonna take months, right, before you actually see the future of the labor in that world. And it's just, it's yeah, there's so many things that you need to do when you're a startup company, right, and If someone could come in and help you with some of those things and make the right, smart, smart choices from the beginning so you don't have to Make mistakes as many mistakes as you otherwise would, that's, it's very helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so hit. Their focus has been more on that kind of thing rather than the product itself. They they don't give much overview on that, because that's all set.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's all set, and I also don't know if they are. I mean, they have gone. They ask questions right there like why are you doing it like this, or is this, is this my way to this, or whatever, and they they're challenging us for sure on the product as well, but that's not really yeah. So it's more like driving the business and it's sort of the skills that you could have applied to our company, but you could also apply to a different company in the, in the shark tank setting, I think what Cuban has invested in more than a hundred companies through shark tank and they all have a lot in common, right, it's more companies trying to scale. So it's more that aspect of it that they that they'll give you a lot of feedback on.
Speaker 1:And when you've got a new product, like the magic five goggles, not only do you have to do everything you've been talking about you, but you sort of have to build a community around it. So how have you sort of managed to do that? Like, how, how do you sort of build that community in the swimming world? Yeah, good question, I am we.
Speaker 2:I'm so happy to actually to work with, with my wife, christina. She she runs all of our Social media platforms, so Instagram, facebook. We have this community group on Twitter, facebook. We have this community group on Facebook for all the people that have the goggles and Try to share knowledge around swimming. I think it's a. It's a really.
Speaker 2:It's a difficult task to create a strong sort of connection in the swimming world, I think, and there's not a lot of people doing it, such as yourself, but it's a. It's a tough task. I don't know what it is about it. Maybe it's. Swimming is sometimes a.
Speaker 2:Unless you're on a swim team, it can be sort of a lonely thing. I don't know what it is about it, but the way that we have sort of attacked it is through social media mostly and generate a following there. We share on emails, we share stories from the community. So the people that use the goggles what are they up to? We have such a diverse group of people using the product and it's been fun for me to see what are all the things that they're doing, whether it's a ultra swims event somewhere, or there's so many things that come to mind of people that use the product that it's a I can't really pick one, but yeah, it's just about sharing the stories showing that swimming can be so much different. It can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For me, it was one thing, it was pool swimming, but there's people that don't do pool swimming at all. They would rather swim in cold climates or do deep pool diving or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And is the goggle going to be the only product that you do, or are you branching out into you probably can't tell me how many secrets, but are you branching out into other different parts of the swimming world?
Speaker 2:So we have the goggle product in swimming. We have debated so much about what do we want to do with this technology? Because it lends itself to the ability you can scan other body parts. You could do other fits for the eye area as well, without saying too much. It's about picking up the phone, scanning something on your body and then fitting a product to that. Where do we want to take that? That's been the big question. I would say if we stick to swimming, we'll soon be coming out with a lot of swim accessories.
Speaker 2:I think we realize that just having the goggles is not really communicating the brand enough to people. You have to actually go up to a person and ask and say where is those goggles from? That's really from a business standpoint. That's not really the best way to do it, although that does happen, and I'm also now seeing the goggles when I go to the pools around the world. So that's cool. But we're coming out with a pool bar, a kitboard, snorkel paddles, everything that you would need to train at your pool. That's going to be exciting, but I think for the technology point, until you get people to want to scan themselves full body, half in the nude, then I think it can't really make swim somewhere. That's going to be a hurdle to cross, you can imagine.
Speaker 1:The paddles and the pool boy and the snorkel. Are they going to be custom fit or are they just a generalized one?
Speaker 2:It's a lot to make all that custom, but I also think it has to be a real value add. If it is custom and to me at least, a lot of those products don't need to be custom to the same extent that a swimming goggle would I think for a lot of people swimming goggles make sense. They've had experiences with bad fitting goggles and I think whenever we introduce that feature to a new product it has to make sense logically for people to want to pay a little bit extra premium to go and get a custom pair. So I would say the next product that we do that uses that probably doesn't have that much to do with swimming. Can't say more than that.
Speaker 1:To say that more. I don't want you to have to give away secrets. Can I ask you some questions to give us a bit of a snapshot about your swimming? I always call it the deep dive, so it just gives us a bit of a. You can answer it any way you wish, but just gives us a bit of an idea about your past swimming career. So what's the favorite pool, your favorite pool you've ever spun in?
Speaker 2:Well, that has to be the pool that they built in Copenhagen for European championships. Talk about it in the beginning. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:What's the name of it?
Speaker 2:Well, it was called Royal Arena. That's the name of the multi-purpose arena, I think. Two days later they hosted a concert in that arena. So it's a you can't go swimming. That doesn't exist anymore, but it was very beautiful, but I think that it did exist. Yeah, that was my favorite pool ever. I would say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. And what about a pool that does exist that you also like?
Speaker 2:So people can actually go to.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. Let's say, in Marseille. It's a really cool pool down by the ocean. I think it's pretty similar to the one you have in Australia as well, is it that? Where is that actually? Is that Bondi Beach, something where you have this?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, bondi Icebergs yes. Right, yeah, right on the edge of the ocean.
Speaker 2:Exactly, they have that same thing in Marseille. It's just a little bit, you see, accessible for me coming from Denmark.
Speaker 1:Of course. So yeah, it just gives a nice contrast.
Speaker 2:Right, you have that ocean right there and the waves coming in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful. How about your favorite open water swimming location?
Speaker 2:It's probably going to be Montenegro, but here in Denmark I like to go to the local lake that I had close by me when I was a kid. It's called Fursøg. It's the deepest body of water in Denmark. It's 33 meters. I remember that Denmark is completely flat right, so that's, but it's a decent sized lake. Water is nice. You got to catch it before it gets too warm and it feels so well algae, but yeah, it's a really, really nice place, calm.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. And how about your favorite breaststroke training drill?
Speaker 2:Favorite breaststroke training drill? Hmm, probably with pin-san Summers, and then fly kick with breaststroke arms Gives you that rhythm, yeah.
Speaker 1:How about your favorite training set?
Speaker 2:Four times 100 freestyle at threshold, so not killing yourself at all. Starting 140, I would usually do. And then after that I move into four times 50 of one easy one all out, one easy one all out, and those are on a minute 30, so with decent rest in between. And I do that set four times and then each of the 50s in the first round I would do fly. Second round I would do backstroke, then I would do breast and then I would do freestyle on the last. It's a long set, it's very hard, but that was my If I. I know exactly all the times that I would usually do in that set short course, long course and I know what would be a good sort of. I would always do it a little bit out from the competition before I would have my taper Right and I would know what would be good times to go into the competition with. And I would also sometimes do it more than once in a training cycle and it's a good workout. It's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds like a hard one.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:And tell me your three favorite breaststrokers from all of swimming history.
Speaker 2:Three favorite breaststrokers. I like Cameron Cannebro. I met him a couple of times. He's a very nice guy and I raced him a couple of times as well and I he was. He was really good by around the time when it was before Adam Peedy really came and destroyed everyone and he really looked up to the way that he swam. His breaststroke was really smooth and, yeah, then of course, adam Peedy, very, very aggressive. I think that's where a lot of people can see what you can actually do with sort of your head and timing your breaststroke and Because, yeah, he has a lot of power, right the way that he swims and he's able to sustain it much better than any other swimmer out there.
Speaker 2:And then the third one is a good question. I would say someone that I Admire but that's also because I don't know how she swims like. That is a regular from, from Denmark. She had the world record in the 200 breaststroke long course and Face the 219, 11, 13 to 219, 11. Yeah, it's really really fast. And seen her in practice, she, just she, she was so much faster than me in a 200 right and it's all leg dominated and perfect glide and just Just a really really good athlete and standing on the sideline, being so close To her, being able to see her how she trains, and all that is an inspiration and, I think, just very, very different from the way that I would move myself forward In breaststroke and I, yeah, it was. It's always good to get a different perspective on it, because there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat right, and especially breaststroke is so many Different ways that you can that you can end up with the same result.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I like those answers. Yeah Well, nicholas, thank you so much for being on our podcast today and giving us a bit of an insight into your swimming journey and a little bit about the Magic 5 company. Will Put the links to Magic 5 in the show notes so people can check that out if they want to go and have some great custom fit goggles. Thank you, yeah, it was fun talk yeah yeah, absolutely Okay, take care and good luck with the swim coming up.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I Hope you enjoyed my chat with Nicholas today and took something away from his story to enrich your own swimming. Check out his website at wwwthemagic5.com. Till next time, happy swimming and bye for now.