COACH'D
Join us on COACH’D, a podcast where the some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right.
Think of it as a "locker room" chat — unfiltered, raw, and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and culture.
COACH'D
BRAIN DUMP: The Latest In The Youth Space (Should You Be Worried?) & Building Partnerships w/ Brands
Each week I'll share some of my thoughts in a mini episode called "Brain Dump" with some of the things that's on my mind.
These are designed to be short, sharp and straight to the point (maybe with some ramblings).
Let me know what you think!
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1YJMztpYSgnPusEXB3fWcc?si=FJsWITv7QdSCSgCt3lkElw
Join us on Coached, a podcast where some of the world's top athletes, coaches and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right. Think of this as a locker room chat unfiltered, raw and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and sporting culture and sporting culture. Hear from those who have played, coached and built their way to the top with athletes from the field, coaches and medical in the performance setting, or owners, managers and brands in the front office, while also getting an insider's view on my own personal experiences in this high-performance world. If you're passionate about sports, curious about the minds of champion athletes or looking for information and inspiration on your own journey, coach is the place for you. How we going? Welcome back to another brain dump. We'll keep today's nice and short off the back of trip down to melbourne last week, which was fantastic for a bunch of consulting, but also had a presentation for Iron Edge at the ACHPER. Now I wouldn't have a clue what that actually stands for, but long story short, it was for a teacher's conference, pe teachers in particular where basically I just had a topic of. It was called mastering, strength and conditioning for youth athletes. Now, if you think you can master strength and conditioning for youth athletes in an hour, someone's absolutely lying to you. So really, for me, it was about giving school teachers with limited knowledge in the S&C space in particular, a lot of them had training knowledge, whether that was from coaching teams or themselves and what they've previously done. There was a few CrossFitters, bodybuilders your typical, I guess, fitness crowd, if that makes sense and I guess one of the things that we actually established was we have to understand that when we look at our training for our students in this case, that we we come in with our own biases based on our experiences. So it's really important a to understand those biases but then be not to fall in the trap of because you did something that that's how you implement or that's how you then forward that message or that communication onto the students.
Speaker 1:So basically, for me it was introducing a bit of a framework and a model that they could take and apply, which was received really, really, really well, and then, looking at some of the non-traditional ways we could look at some progressive overload for youth athletes simple things like changing lever length, changing tempo, changing the implement that we use. That seemed to really resonate, which is really cool. You know, simple things like alternating. Instead of just thinking a barbell straight away, what can we do to build a really big foundation and really big base? So things like med balls, things like, you know, light plates, bands, kettlebells, sandbags, aqua bags all these different things we can think about before we get to a barbell.
Speaker 1:And I think what probably really resonated with them on that particular topic was a story of an athlete that I've been working with as of late, who's a professional um been going around for for quite a long time now and he's been a part of a structured strengthening program for over 15 years now. And when we were working together a couple of weeks ago, he goes to me if I do another fucking barbell rdl, I'm walking straight out the door. Uh, and because he's been doing barbell RDLs since the last 15 years, and my point to that was, you know, yes, not every student that they will have will go on and be in professional sport and have the luxury of having gym a part of their daily life from a professional standpoint and from a job role standpoint. But hopefully what we are preparing students for is lifelong active citizens, humans, whatever you want to call it, and if we can just delay some of those big movements or big compound movements that they're going to do for the rest of their lives, can we keep it really interesting for them and, as I said, build that really big foundation. So that seemed to be like a really big take-home message for them and I think another really positive thing, just in general, the general consensus of that room in particular and I went to another presentation as well with a similar sort of crowd was that be through PDHP in the actual curriculum or external curricular activities, whether that be based around sport or a lot of the schools also have wellbeing and longevity programs as well. So I think as a whole it's a really positive step for the school direction, which probably bleeds really nicely into a conversation I had with a facility around high schools, the youth space, and how that market may actually be shrinking a little bit and I think that certainly could be the case to some extent.
Speaker 1:I think probably a really good eye-opener for me was certainly some of these schools have really big budgets we're talking video apps that could be over 500 grand and some of these teachers' schools only have access to very, very, very limited budgets, we're talking maybe a couple of grand if they're lucky. So I guess the bandwidth of what these schools can offer, not only through an experience standpoint, but also through the actual training they can deliver based on the constraints of their environments, is going to fluctuate. So I think for the time being it's nothing to be too overly concerned with, but also definitely something to acknowledge and, as I always try to allude to if I'm working with any athletes that are involved in a school program or a rep program, is we want to to work in. We don't want to take away, um, we want to basically let the, the school or the club lead and all we want to do is just fill the gap. So if we're looking at the program, what are some of the things that they may not be getting? And then let's just double down on that when they're there. That's what they they focus on. That's not our responsibility, but we do want to try to add value and I think that was a sort of a double down point for this particular facility that we're sort of chatting around, and there was some really interesting facts around a article that came out I think it was the last month, but it was based in the US. Nevertheless, it was still interesting.
Speaker 1:With college and NIL deals becoming, you know, very, very large, very large, some athletes are taking home millions and millions and millions. And even athletes on the lower end, though, are really nailing some local brand deals, depending on the audience that they have. That's now being pushed more by parents in the US as the first step into pro sports. So what that means is before, obviously, to get paid, you had to go pro, whether that be NFL, NBA, mlb, those sort of big sports. But now you can get paid in college, and this has only been a thing for the last two, maybe three years max. But now average students quote, unquote average they're obviously amazing if they're playing Division I college sports are getting paid. So now parents are willing to invest these funds far earlier into their development. So we're talking like 13, 14, 15. So once they get to college, they are prepared well enough to meet the demands of the college environment, but then also to hopefully play well enough to land some of these big deals and, in turn, hopefully set their family up for life. So that was really interesting. So we don't have NIL in Australia. However, australian athletes are eligible in a roundabout way of getting NIL deals. So it will be interesting to see. Does that trickle down in some way, shape or form to the Australian audience? Time will tell. And then I guess, yeah, off the back of that, consulted for a few private facilities, which is really good.
Speaker 1:A variety of different topics across the board, from implementing speed and agility sessions on the field within a program. What else was there? The youth program, some of the things we discussed there, some strategies to keep parents engaged. A lot of it fell back to something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago which was around like doing the things that are unscalable, the things that we don't necessarily think will make a big difference in the short term, but in the long term can build some really good brand credibility and some really good buy-in, really good brand credibility and some really good buying and in turn really see our programs or our services grow really organically. And that, although it's unscalable, means more work, means we can't really automate things, really puts things back into that personable and personal connection. And again, if we're talking around about that school environment, there's a lot of regulations and rules in regards to student communication, so we can have an advantage in the youth space over a school, for example, based on that communication style and communication strategy. So there was a couple of like aha moments around that, which was really really cool.
Speaker 1:But one of the things across the, the multiple facilities that we sort of came to the conclusion through whether it was through a bit of a q a or just a bit of a roundabout way in conversation was this idea of brand partnerships and also partnerships with sporting organizations, clubs, athletes, that sort of stuff. And I maybe have a little bit of a different way of looking at this and I I think it landed pretty well with everyone Discussed it. It was obviously context-dependent and a bit of a roundabout way. We got to some different answers based on you know who we're speaking to and things like that. But in turn, I always look at brand partnerships in one or two ways.
Speaker 1:One, it's a way we don't build brand brand or we don't get brand partnerships without having a brand ourselves first, and that's quite a long-term play. So you know, building brand is long feedback loops. Sometimes the stuff we do six months ago, we don't see payoff until, you know, six months into the future. Obviously, um, versus when we're doing short-term things like sales, we get quick feedback loops when we're onto something. So brand is one of those ones that it's not something that happens overnight. Therefore, we kind of sometimes shelve it a little bit versus keeping it front of mind and being everything that we do.
Speaker 1:Our base and our foundation is all about our brand, whether that be our personal brand, if we're individual coaches or even within facilities, we can have our own individual brands, which then can help elevate the facility brand. But there's a couple of ways to look at it like that. So we sort of I said, well, what if we flip the script a little bit? And said, well, what if people reached out to you, versus you having to reach out to everyone else? And that was another one of those aha moments.
Speaker 1:But the key thing for anything, when it comes to whether you're reaching out to a brand or you're trying to get a club or something on board, is what value can you bring them, not the other way around. Especially if you haven't got any runs on the board yet, you don't have any strong brand affiliations that you could leverage. In regards to, this is what I've done for someone else before. This is how we navigated this, this is how we went through that you kind of have to give a lot more at the start to build that reputation, build that brand, credibility using that word brand again before you can then start to say, hey, this is what I want, or hey, maybe we do this, and again, it's one of those things that a lot of people aren't willing to do, because they kind of have to suck eggs a little bit at the start before you actually get to reap any reward. But that's the true thing about building relationships and building long lasting partnerships is that it's not transactional, it's not something that happens straight away and it's something that you do want to foster over a long period of time.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I sort of mentioned to the guys around this in particular as well is looking at your ecosystem now, what do you use, whether that be yourself personally, in the space or as a facility? Because they are the things that you have the closest touchpoint to. They are the things you can speak the most authentic to and they are the things that 90 odd percent of deals are based around some sort of content or some sort of media exposure. They're the things you can speak to really, really authentically, versus just saying you know, I want this, so I'll reach out. And then all of a sudden it looks and it feels quite salesy. When it's authentic and when it's something that you use or something that you are really across or really knowledgeable about, you can actually interwine that into what you do really, really seamlessly and that becomes as I mentioned that word before authentic. But it lands way, way, way better with your audience.
Speaker 1:So that was another thing is like what do you use? Is there someone there that you know that you could reach out to? Again, if you're not in that position yet where you feel comfortable reaching out to, well, we're probably going back to the thing before around you have to build your own brand up a little bit more, get some runs on the board prior to reaching out, um, and sort of going from there and again, I think that worked really really well. And when we're talking about, like club or athlete relationships, one of the weird ones that we tend to do is we look really outside of our networks, like who do we have within our network that is affiliated with a club or with a team or with an individual athlete? That we could use as a bit of a warm entry point versus coming in really cold, because when we come in cold, we A don't know the people we're speaking to, which makes things really really hard, but also B going back to my original point there before around, like, what problems can we solve If you don't have a conversation beforehand or a conversation around potential ideas and avenues to explore? You really are just swinging blindfolded versus okay, you're listening, you're understanding some of the things that are going really well, some of the things are not going so well. Well, and then potentially offering a solution off the back of that which, again, nine times out of 10, is going to be received far better when you've got a bit of a roadmap, a bit of an understanding of where you're going and how that you could potentially, or your services could potentially, solve some of those problems that they're facing.
Speaker 1:So hopefully there was a couple of little tidbits in there around some brand partnerships, some club partnerships, some athlete partnerships, but also a couple of those things around that evolving youth space and just a few things that are happening in the high school space. Just over that last week that I sort of got to experience down in Melbourne, as I mentioned before on the last brain dump and the last Q&A. It's something that I try to endeavor to do every four to five weeks. I know that's a bit of a luxury and not everyone has the ability to do that, so I'm very grateful to be able to do that and very grateful that facilities, clubs, coaches et cetera are so open to having me in and sharing, hopefully, some of the things that I've learned and developed over the last couple of years in particular. So very excited about where a lot of that consulting direction is going. If you haven't yet and it was maybe something you were thinking about the mentorship is still something that's sort of sitting in the background there, so jump on and have a look at that If there's something that you want there.
Speaker 1:Again, I tried to make it really niche in regards to how the content's not only delivered but the topics that's included, really targeted towards a coach that sits within that private space across the performance, but then also the business, or in the perfect world of combination of the two, where those things actually integrate far more than sitting in those silos there on their own. I think that's pretty much it. Looking excited to kicking things off in the off season, coming up with a lot of the AFLW girls and hopefully about to net a few NRLW girls in Sydney as well, so that's going to be a really fun challenge. There's a few things I really want to try to build out from a systems and framework standpoint there with some of those girls, so I'm really looking forward to that, and then it looks like I'll be heading up to Queensland Brisbane, gold Coast, sunshine Coast again in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:So if you are up there, whether you're a coach or an athlete and it was something that you were interested in potentially connecting and catching up while I'm up there, please send me a message off the back of this. Let me know that you listen to the podcast, because that's always cool as well. And, yeah, we can go from there. But, guys, everything else, hope everyone's well, have a cracking week and we'll chat very soon.
