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The Price You Pay
Host Natalie Cook, Olympic gold medalist and five-time Olympian, shares the inspiring and untold stories of athletes who face financial obstacles in their pursuit of becoming Olympian's and Paralympian’s.
Discover the sacrifices, challenges, and unwavering determination behind their pursuit of greatness.
Be inspired by their resilience and determination to turn their dreams into reality.
The Price You Pay
07: Nat Cook's Passionate Fund-RAISING for the Athlete Dream!
Indigenous Olympian Taliqua Clancy sets the tone for Season 2 of the Price You Pay Podcast with her genuine Welcome to Country - with respect and acknowledgement of the rich history of storytelling of her culture and the land on which these athlete stories are received and and recorded...
Host of Pod and founder of The Aussie Athlete Fund, Natalie Cook has the mic directed her way as she shares her relentless mission that has seen her FUNDRAISE a staggering $135,000 (that has already supported 35 aspiring athletes) in its inaugural year!
As a retired athlete turned author, speaker, and strategist, Nat embodies passion and ambition in all that she does. Whether that’s in her role as a Director of the Brisbane 2032 Organising Committee, inspiring rooms with her stories of resilience and fortitude or founding her not-for-profit, The Aussie Athlete Fund; she is consistent and unrelenting in her approach.
Inspired by Lisa Curry's victory at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games in ‘82, at only 8yrs old, Nat went on to create her own dream picture by winning GOLD in Beach Volleyball on Bondi Beach and being one of the only females in the world to qualify for 5 Olympic Games!
When we first sat down with Natalie in 2023, we discussed her mission with Green and Gold Athletes (now named Aussie Athlete Fund) and what she hoped it would achieve. We discovered the financial challenges she faced in her own family growing up in sport and how that influenced the passion she has today for the future of athletes in her own country and the world. We also touched on the purpose of the podcast, which was to shine a light on what it really takes for young athletes and their families to make the Games. Nat’s vision is to create a sustainable funding model for Aussie Athletes - from the emerging to the elite. Watch out, bc she will not stop until she gets there!
There is a big season 2 ahead of us featuring young athletes who received their first allotment of financial and educational grants from Green & Gold Athletes Australia. Sitting down with the Hudson’s, the Molly’s, the Jack’s, the Stacy’s and their families to find out what it really does take to make the Games has been eye opening.
Some of her updates include:
- Rebranding due to intellectual property issues
- Debunking the myth of guaranteed riches with Olympic fame
- The pressing need for a dependable funding model.
Become a part of our athletes' success stories: Whether its a personal donation, a corporate partnership, a round of golf, or simply by spreading the word, your support has the power to uplift our athletes and inspire countless others!
Website: https://aussieathletefund.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aussieathletefund/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aussieathletefund
Thank you for tuning in to The Price You Pay podcast! To ensure you never miss an episode, hit that "FOLLOW" button and remember to leave us a like, review, rating or share the podcast with someone you know needs to hear the inspiring stories of athletes and their families giving their all for the dream!
My name is Talika Clancy and my mob is the Willy Willy people. I am the first Indigenous beach volleyball player in the world to win an Olympic medal and I honour my ancestors in that endeavour. The host of this podcast, nat Cook, has been a guide for me and my family as I travelled the road to my sporting dreams. We wish to acknowledge the land on which the Price you Pay podcast is being recorded Minijin country, commonly known as Brisbane. We are inspired by the world's oldest living culture and seek wisdom from the people who came before us, the Yaggara and Drupal people. We pay homage to the tradition of storytelling when we share athletes journeys and we extend our respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first Australians.
Speaker 2:Welcome to season two of the Price you Pay podcast, devoted to bringing you the real stories of what it takes for young athletes and their families to realise their dreams. I'm your host, nat Cook, five-time Olympian and gold medalist. It's my mission to uncover the hidden costs, the sacrifices, and shine a light on the tenacity these athletes demonstrate on the road to their dreams. My vision is to create a sustainable funding model for our Aussie athletes. The time has come to go beyond just enjoying an athlete's performance to actually having their backs, both emotionally and financially. So while I'm off raising funds, doing what I do best, our pod partner, chatterbox, is talking to our athletes and their families. Over to you, sarah.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Nat. These athletes and their families are in good hands. As season two of the Price you Pay podcast comes into focus, I once again get to sit down with the host of the pod and founder of the Aussie Athlete Fund, Natalie Cook. As a retired athlete, turned author, speaker and strategist, she embodies passion and ambition in all that she does, Whether that's in her role as a director of the Brisbane 2032 organizing committee, inspiring rooms with her stories of resilience and fortitude, or founding her not-for-profit, the Aussie Athlete Fund, she is consistent and unrelenting in her approach. Inspired by Lisa Curry's victory at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games in 82, at only eight years old, Nat went on to create her own dream picture by winning gold in beach volleyball on Bondi Beach and being one of the only females in the world to qualify for five Olympic Games.
Speaker 3:When we first sat down with Natalie in 2023, we discussed her mission with Green and Gold Athletes now named Aussie Athlete Fund, and what she hoped it would achieve. We discovered the financial challenges she faced in her own family, growing up in sport, and how that influenced the passion she has today for the future of athletes in her own family. Growing up in sport and how that influenced the passion she has today for the future of athletes in her own country and the world. We also touched on the purpose of the podcast, which was to shine a light on what it really takes for young athletes and their families to make the games.
Speaker 3:Nat's vision is to create a sustainable funding model for Aussie athletes, from the emerging to the elite. Watch out, because she will not stop until she gets there. There is a big Season 2 ahead of us featuring young athletes who received their first allotment of financial and educational grants from Green and Gold Athletes Australia. Sitting down with the Hudsons, the Mollies, the Jacks, the Stacys and their families to find out what it really does take to make these games was very eye-opening. Nat, I know you're keen to shift the narrative in this country about athletes and their funding, so shall we get stuck into this and start launching this thing?
Speaker 2:Absolutely let's go.
Speaker 3:All right, the time has come to actually have this conversation. So here's the thing You've fundraised $135,000 in your first year of this legacy project. You've chosen 35 athletes who will receive the grants and have their journeys forever impacted. What is that feeling like when you realize a dream that you've held for so long?
Speaker 2:big questions because I've talked about it, thought about it, lived it for probably 40 years. Since that moment when lisa curry won the 100 meters freestyle in the 1982 commonwealth games. I still feel it, uh, sitting on the floor in my home at Townsville watching it, saying I want to do that, and then going through my own journey and now looking back at the 35 athletes we helped last year and you'll get to hear some of those stories over the next 12 months I'm super excited for you to see that it it is a team sport. To get an athlete to the games, there is a price. They pay to get there, put on the green and gold track suit, live out their dreams on the sporting field, and so to see it come to life and to have it be real and to have real athletes like Jack and Stacey, like you talked about, benefiting and being able to cheer them on from the sideline, is really it's why I keep doing it and it's why I keep going.
Speaker 3:Can you compare the feeling of when you first start out as an athlete, you're sort of achieving inside of your own accomplishments and now it's on behalf of others? Are those feelings similar? As you get older, or how would you compare them?
Speaker 2:initially I thought it was less pressure. Now I'm helping support others, but actually I feel like the pressure of hundreds and of the whole team. And so when you're an athlete, um, you know I'll speak for myself. Are you selfishly trying to get the best out of yourself from others for yourself? How can my mum and dad help me be better? Are you not really thinking about other people other than those on your team? And so, when it came to now, I'm thinking I go to bed at night thinking about these amazing athletes who are living out their dreams in the green and gold jersey and wondering how I can support them Now, whether that's through a financial grant, whether that's through an educational opportunity to teach them about fundraising and funding.
Speaker 2:I have a unique perspective on what funding and fundraising means, and it's all money. It's not just raffle tickets and donations, it's work money, it's grants from the government, it's sponsorship, it's your job, it's everything. Anything to do with money is funding or fundraising. So I now feel that pressure of how do I help this next generation through my lived experience and how do I modernise fundraising in today's world to leverage and maximise the most for as many athletes as I can.
Speaker 3:And you've already had some big wins in 2023 for your legacy project. What are some of the top ones that come to mind?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually wrote them all down because you want to tell your sponsors and your partners and those that are supporting all these athletes, uh, what we get up to. And uh, so our biggest one, obviously giving out 135 000 cash. Um, in our first go, which I was very proud of, an education mentoring system. We've had those athletes for probably 10 hours of solid, intense fundraising initiative education. They ask me questions, I give them projects to go out into the community to help their fundraising and then the next month they come back and share what worked and what didn't.
Speaker 3:So it's not just an online press a button type thing. They actually get exposed to you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Coaching and mentoring, and I will help them get through some of the doors that keep shutting. You know a lot of people. How do I find the right person to talk to? I'm not getting any responses back. How many times do you follow up? How do you follow up so we go through that live and with many athletes on the call, so they get to know they're not alone in this? Often a lot of parents and athletes think is it just me struggling off the court or off the bike or out of the pool? It's not. This is to be the best in the world at your sport is one part of your sporting journey. To then work out how to fund it sustainably and set up a career and a life after as well, and network and all of those things are a big holistic piece of your own confidence in your fundraising and your funding journey. How do you ask people for money? It's kind of awkward, um, and you don't always get it right. I've been doing it 40 years and I still don't get it right.
Speaker 2:Actually I have had a few doors shut recently because I'm probably overstretching and asking. Now I'm asking not for me, I'm asking for hundreds of athletes and so sometimes I ask for too much and then someone says no, I don't like no, and I I actually reframe no, a lot, um, which no also means not yet. And how do we get on and ask a different question to get a different answer? So I'm going through all of that right now. So we've, we've had the money give out, we've had the mentoring program which I'm learning what is current for these current athletes, what they need help with, and the old saying, uh, teach an athlete to fish, don't give them a fish, is what we're also trying to do in this program now. We give them a little bit of money to so they listen to what we've got to say, because it helps them get to the table, keeps them motivated it's a motivated and they know we care enough and we're just not throwing another program at them or another water bottle or another hat, which is what I used to win a lot of.
Speaker 2:And then, probably the third thing we held. My favourite sport outside of beach volleyball and now pickleball, is a golf event. We had a corporate golf event at the end of last year, our first one, the Aussie Legends Golf Classic. We'll have it every year all the way through to 32 and hopefully beyond, and we raised $100,000 in our first go and had lots of Aussie legends, from Pat Rafter to Lauren Burns, taekwondo gold medalist to my beach volleyball partner, kerry Potthast, jeff Horn, the boxer, came along, joe Wallace the trampolinist, so we had a lot of Aussie legends supporting this next generation.
Speaker 3:Wow that's a lot for aie legends. Supporting this next generation Wow, that's a lot for a year.
Speaker 2:Those are some serious wins. Well, that was just three out of.
Speaker 3:I've got a whole list. Got it, got it. Well, we'll visit your one slide later with all your wins, but I do also know that it's not all rainbows and sunshine. What are some of the challenges that you never really foresaw that you have experienced on this journey so far?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of challenges. Always when I close my eyes at night it's like running a 100-meter sprint which probably turns into a marathon, and then when you wake up it looks like the 400-meter hurdles. So I kind of know some of them have been there and you hope they go away or you hope you put in place strategies where it doesn't affect you too much. But we have had a big hurdle. You've probably seen it or read it. We had to have a name change, we had to pivot through a name change, and that's because there are rules in the world about intellectual property and we didn't want to encroach on intellectual property. So we pivoted to the Aussie Athlete Fund, which I really think even speaks more direct to what we're trying to do. We're trying to build a fund that grows over time so that for 2033 and beyond we have a sustainable funding opportunity for athletes. So that is an endowment fund that will grow, that we won't touch until after the games of 32. And then so that it continues to give.
Speaker 2:Often what we found, and I found in Sydney 2001, the appetite and excitement for sport dropped off and one. The appetite and excitement for sport dropped off, and so then our athletes, me included thought that I'd get lots of sponsorship and lots of grants and I I'd get, you know, get, maybe get rich for a little while. Uh, didn't happen because the attention of the country turned to other genres like arts and culture and um. So I want to make sure there's something sustainable in this for 33 and beyond um, so that we don't stir the hopes and dreams again in 32 and it, and then it be even more challenging, so that endowment fund as a part of the aussie athlete fund, then we're building um, the component, the scholarship component. How do we build the brand of the athlete? And all of that comes into it too. Lots of exciting things coming.
Speaker 3:See, Nat can't help it. She got asked about a challenge and somehow it became a victory, Always, always. But yes, the challenges are also.
Speaker 2:That's okay, the names won. You know how do you have enough people? Some people say, yeah, I'll help, and then you turn around they're gone. Um, sometimes the follow-up is is you even get a yes? And it takes 15 times before you can get the right cup of coffee or the right opportunity, and you've got to be patient. This is a long game and for me in this um, not for profit is it's a long game, so got to be patient. And someone famously said urgently patient. So, um, you know, persistence, patience, performance all come together like that. And, uh, I do always try and stay optimistic, even though it is times where it's really difficult, and I do want to. You know I keep asking myself is it worth it? Should I keep going? And then you hear these amazing athlete stories where the support we're giving through the Aussie Athlete Fund changes the course of their life, and then I know it's absolutely worth the challenges.
Speaker 3:I think we're really lucky to have someone with your perspective who's been through as an athlete so many cycles and seen this pattern that that exists for excitement and then drop off, and the kind of vision that you have for a fund is is very exciting and you're you're very entrenched in this athlete, this young athlete, space now beyond your own journey. So what would be? What would people be surprised to know about the journey?
Speaker 2:this, you know, the sporting dream journey for a young athlete well, the surprise is that when you make it to the top now the top is various plateaus it could be making an australian team, it can be winning an international title, meddling internationally at a world championships, making the olympic team or the paralympic team or the commonwealth games team and getting a track suit, or winning the ultimate prize, the FIFA World Cup. If the Matildas had have won that, the ultimate prize, right. So there's different layers of that and throughout that journey there are somewhat expectations there might be enough money where the bank of mum and dad can get a rest. Now in some sports it does. In some sports that happens earlier than others. In some sports it never happens and you're always looking, uh, for more funding to buy more equipment. We've seen bikes cost 15 to 20 thousand dollars, kite foils from oscar in the last episode, 20 25 thousand dollars.
Speaker 2:So the better you get and the higher you climb, the better equipment you want. The more coaches you want, the more technology support you want. You understand the professionalism it costs more money. As a golfer trying to be the best in the world, you need more coaches and more support and more things. So it does get expensive. So the the bit that's kind of the myth is that once you get there, it's all paid for. It's not. Um, you do get some support in in some areas and, like I said, sport is different, which also makes it challenging, because the public see some athletes doing amazing and then don't see the others because they're not on TV as often. So there's this real myth that once you get there you're set for life doesn't happen. So there's a constant the need for funding and fundraising, and understanding that and setting up your financial well-being as an athlete is always constant but you must make your the most money when you get to the olympics.
Speaker 3:You must make you know from a marketing point of view you're the most marketable when you're at the olympics is that when you make the most money well, when you're playing an olympic games, ormpic Games, you don't get paid.
Speaker 2:It's something where you attend for the love of the country, the love of your sport, your game. You train your whole life for that moment. You do get looked after for that period of the Olympics, andics and the paralympic games, um, in terms of travel, food, uniform, coaches, anything needed. But that's it in in that context, uh, and if you are lucky enough or lucky is not the right word if you've worked hard, opportunistic and luck meet together and you win a medal, then you do have a maybe a larger voice, you've got a medal to show people, but it's still your storytelling, it's still how you present yourself and all those things where there's opportunities off the court and off the ball later, but not in the moment of the o or Paralympic Games. It was never set up for that and so that is also potentially a myth.
Speaker 3:Okay, so your fund has its work cut out for us and, as 2024 came into view, what kind of fundraising initiatives are you currently focused on?
Speaker 2:Well, I love my downtime which overmas is a good time, where I think most of us take a downtime and I sort of reflected and reviewed last year and wanted to work out well, 35 athletes was great. How do I make a bigger, wider impact? And so the invention of an innovation, of a fundraising challenge, is what I came up with. People get afraid when I have time to think because I come out with all these great ideas, but I really think this is the one that can be leveraged and we can go from 35 athletes to 100 athletes, to 200 to 2000, to any athlete representing Australia or with the desire to represent Australia that needs help with funding and fundraising and wants to learn can be part of the Million Dollar Fundraising Challenge, which that's the 2024 initiative. We're working on matching 100 athletes with 100 businesses or individuals within a business that want to team up and help the athlete fundraise $10,000. Now the exciting part for that, for me, is that every one of those pairs, those teams, will have a different challenge that they take on and they have to sit in the pair and they have to create their fundraising roadmap, which will be part of a fundraising academy that I've built, one of the tasks in one of the modules is to build their fundraising roadmap. So there's an education component. How do you set up your Australian Sports Foundation page? How do you raise your first thousand? How do you get the skills and tools needed? How do you ask? How do you deal with imposter syndrome? How do you deal with rejection? All of that is in the on-demand training program. And then, of course, we're going to be have these live coaching opportunities where we can help inspire in, innovate and curate.
Speaker 2:Um, the ten thousand dollar per athlete challenge. Now it'll look very different. One might be in a law firm with a board meeting, a morning tea, your lunch, and they could raise it in one go. Some might be the local hairdresser where they're donating ten dollars a haircut for six months and then it takes a period of time. We're going to incentivize people, the athletes, so that they, as they hit milestones, they'll get more stuff. They don't know what that is yet, they're kind of mystery prizes. And then at the end of the year we have an awards dinner. We give out the fastest, the biggest, the most innovative, the best social media campaign fundraising award, and then this is the cool bit we're going to take the top 20 and put them in a master's class to take them to the next level. So that's secret for later.
Speaker 3:Gosh, yeah, they did leave you alone at Christmas. That's very exciting. I all I could hear inside of that conversation was the natural mentoring process as well, and just that pairing is really dynamic. That's an amazing idea, and I guess, when I listened to you talk about it, fundraising actually sounds fun and like a game. So what is it that gets you excited about fundraising when most people are just daunted by the word itself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, most people say fundraising is hard and I hear that a lot and it really is, for me, like winning. Winning is a mindset, not a result, and fundraising it even has the word fun in it. It has. It has the word fund, it has the word raise, which is raise up, raise, lift the athlete, raise up the athlete, raise the money. I have all of these connotations around the word. For me, it is a game. For me it's about setting a roadmap and a blueprint or a context within the game and that sort of gives you permission to go play, to go ask people, to go, set a strategy. It doesn't always work, but you have a strategy in place and you have a go and then you work out how to reframe back the no and find a way. Um, if they say no, well, it's like well, who do you know that might be able to help me? If they say no, who?
Speaker 3:do you know spell it? I got it. Yeah, spell yeah. This is all making sense to me now.
Speaker 2:But one of the parts in the Athlete Fundraising Academy which is the first incentive they get when they sign up for the challenge. So they all get access to the Athlete Fundraising Academy and their first job is to set up an Australian Sports Foundation page. That's compelling because that's the doorway to their fundraising. That's how they collect their fundraising money. It has to be compelling, it has to be good storytelling. They get their modules. One of the modules that's my favourite and it was taught to me by a mentor is it's a bit further down in it, but it's to make a list of everything in the sporting journey for the year that the athlete will have to pay for. So they can sit and do this with the business. So the business then, or the individual in the business, starts to understand what the costs are for this athlete. So we'll take Holly Jackson from last series and she has a BMX bike at 15,000. She has travel costs and because she's 14, a parent has to go, so they double. She has travel costs that might be 30 to 50,000 a year. She has petrol costs to get to training. She has nutrition and food, massage, physio when she falls off the bike, which happens in BMX, and you put all those down on a piece of paper and then the challenge in this fundraising challenge is to go and find a way.
Speaker 2:Now, this isn't the money side. This is how do you get everything you pay for for free. So this is help, helps you tell your story, it helps you sell, it, helps you ask, it, helps you accept no's, take no's, change no's. So the example there is the local physio clinic or the local massage clinic. You go in and you share your dream and you ask them to support your dream by donating the service. Now, that's not giving you cash to go in your Australian Sports Foundation page, but it's giving you. It's keeping money in your pocket.
Speaker 2:So there's two ways here. So we talk to them about all of that and I'm really excited to see how they go. Some come back to me already and say, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it worked. And I now have not only a haircut because haircuts are on the list, yeah, for myself, but my sister too, and she's not even an athlete. So it's uh, it's great to see the initiative being taken and, uh, you've got to have a go and you've got to get in the challenge and, um, make it fun. Did you learn this?
Speaker 3:from your grandfather who used to get free donuts at the local shop. I heard that story once yeah, my grandfather.
Speaker 2:He got those because he'd tell them that I was famous and he was a famous grandfather to a famous beach volleyball player and he would have his marker in the pop, his top pocket, and he would sign the donut bag and he'd get a free donut and a free coffee at the local shopping center. And so he did probably teach me everything I know about fundraising.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. Well, his willingness. You definitely got willingness to ask from him, because that's like old school influencer possibly. Thank you for those stories because I think that we we can feel your enthusiasm and your excitement for something that you're right, many of us frame it differently and therefore have a totally different um story about it, but also outcome. So I can see that you're the perfect person to head up this and I have an extension, I have an extension of that so in my list, maybe some 30 years ago.
Speaker 2:Everything I wrote down flights, accommodation, uh, the hairdressing, the food, petrol, uh everything on my list I got for free, except fuel. Now, this is the other part. You never give up on your dreams and you never. You wait, you're patient and persistent. So the actual Aussie athlete fund million dollar fundraising challenge is powered by Ample. So so I actually have realized you got there, I got there, I got it. I'm so grateful, and it happened while I slept. I'm so grateful that Ampol are supporting all of these athletes' journeys, empowering all of these athletes' journeys now through the million dollar challenge. And, uh, I can go and tick that off my list, oh my goodness, super cool.
Speaker 3:My goodness, petrol didn't know that you were coming for it, didn't.
Speaker 2:I say that in the introduction about you unrelenting, unrelenting and you have to be to be the best in the world at your sport and to make sure that you get it funded. I don't ever want an athlete to say I stopped playing sport at a high level because I or my family couldn't afford it. So that's. The vow is that I never want to run into an athlete in the street that was good enough to represent Australia and wear the green and gold that says, oh, I had to stop because we didn't have any money. So that's why this has been built. That's my driving force and, as you said, I'll never give up until I get there.
Speaker 3:Powered by Ann Pohl. I want to stop there because that was so powerful, but I do have to ask you about choosing to move your family for three months to Paris around the Olympics and Paralympics. I just have to ask because that is coming up and why is that important to you and what are you most excited about with going across the world to do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I've competed in five games. I've been an athlete liaison for the whole Australian Olympic team. In one in Rio 2016. I was a spectator in Vancouver, 2010. So I got to a winter Olympics Tokyo. Of course, no one could go unless you were on the field of play or supporting the athlete directly, and so now it's.
Speaker 2:I have a beautiful daughter, jordan um, who is eight years old, loving playing tennis and taekwondo and swimming, and she's at the age where I was when I saw Lisa Curry, so I'm hopeful. She's got a ticket to almost every event that we've paid for. And, uh, we are going for three months to immerse the whole family in the spirit of the Olympics, the spirit of the city. I can't. I think Paris will be amazing. The beach volleyball is under the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2:Um, I am watching all of the athletes that have continued to inspire me, from swimming to badminton, to track and field, to BMX. I just can't wait to see it all. Skateboarding the new ones I won't see surfing because it's in Tahiti, so it is spreading out. And then I've never seen a Paralympic Games live. So Curtis McGrath, a three-time Paralympic gold medalist in kayaking, I can't wait to see him watch the Paraswimming. The Steelers just qualified recently for the wheelchair rugby.
Speaker 2:I'm truly a fan of all sport and Kate Campbell says I am the biggest sporting fan she knows and she kind of laughs at me. She thinks because I know all sport, I played all sport, I loved all sport, I watch all sport and I can't wait to see how paris embraces the olympic and paralympic games, what they do in between, how the city stays alive in between the games, and I think it's just a great time for the family to go and live in paddy well, I'm glad to know it's not just about the pain au chocolat um, oh, those two, and coffee, cafe and pan au chocolat.
Speaker 3:Oh, very good, french. Um, your eight-year-old has a lot of pressure on her, so that's going to be exciting and I think we're all getting your passion, your enthusiasm, and let's close it out with you painting a picture of how you see the next 10 years of this aussie athlete fund and this real legacy project oh, I've got big dreams.
Speaker 2:Um, I I think I've always thought that the athlete never made the spreadsheet in a business profit and loss statement. So I would always look down and I'd see the ceos paid and the high performance director's paid and everybody else, like, gets paid to put on the event, to put up the scaffolding, the grandstanding, to bring in the toilets at the beach, to the catering, to the tent everything gets paid. And I just used to always feel that the athlete wasn't on the spreadsheet. And if it is, if the athlete is on the spreadsheet, they're grouped athletes, so you don't know the humanness of who these athletes are. And if they are, they're at the bottom and it's like oh, we don't have any money left for them. Off we go.
Speaker 2:So I have this vision of changing the story. So we get an athlete on the spreadsheet, we get the athlete's name on the spreadsheet and also the athlete gets to create their own athlete economy and I call it postcode raising. So I want it localized, I want it communified, I want it so that the community can connect into. We saw the Matildas have this amazing effect when we knew their story more. And how do these young athletes like Hudson and Stacey and Jack get their stories told and it's through this pod that we can share their stories at a deeper level so that there's this intimate emotional connection that we can support our athletes along the way. So the Aussie Athlete Fund is part of that too Sharing the stories, allowing platforms for them to share their stories, making sure they're on the spreadsheet, building an endowment fund that can give beyond 32 and just creating this sustainable athlete funding model.
Speaker 2:Funding opportunities, opportunities, fundraising be part of events networking, because most of these athletes don't get invited. I get invited to a lot of events, but I've built that over 40 years and the key is I still have to invite myself to lots of events. So I'm teaching them how to invite themselves to events. I want them to get in the game, I want them to get in the challenge. I want them to stay in the game and not ever have to say I left my sport because I couldn't afford it. That is not an option anymore. We're going to provide opportunities for them to learn, grow and become household names while they're wearing the green and gold jersey for Australia.
Speaker 3:Well, Nat, if season two is as passionate and excited and visionary as you, it proves to be very thrilling. So thank you very much for this conversation.
Speaker 2:Aussie, aussie, aussie, oi, oi, oi.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us on another episode of the price you pay podcast.
Speaker 2:We hope we have inspired you with this insider's look of the challenges faced by aspiring athletes, the highs and lows of playing sport at such an elite level, and what's possible when you are so devoted to your craft.
Speaker 2:It's our mission at Aussie Athlete Fund to create a sustainable funding model to support our athletes for both their financial well-being and the education of their own athlete economy. To be part of the journey, please visit our website at aussieathletefundcom and choose how you would like to be involved, whether it's a corporate partnership, teaming up with an athlete in the million dollar challenge, or even hosting your own event to raise funds, or maybe even a game of golf. Choose your own adventure. If you know someone who would benefit from listening to this episode or this show, please send it to them now and before you go. Pressing the follow button on our show makes a massive difference. Rating us for Season 2 means more people get to hear these stories, which helps us have a much wider impact. Join us next time for more captivating stories of triumph and resilience on the next episode of Season 2 of the Price you pay.
