People of the Pirates with LA
A behind the scenes podcast sharing stories, characters, and community that make Noosa Pirates RLFC more than just a club. From players and coaches to volunteers and local legends, hear the voices driving the pirates forward.
People of the Pirates with LA
MATT BUNKER
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EP8 - Matt Bunker
Honest, raw & inspiring.
The former SAS leader opens up on some the formative moments of an abusive and traumatic childhood.
How he made some brave and difficult choices to brake the cycle.
Self doubt & challenges whilst rising through the ADF on the way to leading his brothers in arms in the SAS.
Battles with the Black Dog, re finding himself after the military & the unexpected toughest battle to date.
Rekindling a love for a career path that drives his “Why” and how he is helping people level up to the best versions of themselves.
Strap in legends, this is a compelling listen.
Episode sponsor:
Empower Longevity
www.empowerlongevity.com.au
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SPEAKER_01G'day and welcome to People of the Power with LA. This is a feature of some of the amazing individuals we have around the News of Pirates Rugby League Club. Enjoy their stories. The opinions voiced on this podcast are our own and not the official position of the club or the league. And there is a mild language warning. Enjoy legends. Alright, Pirates fans. Welcome to episode number eight. Today we have Matt Bunker on. Welcome to the potty, Matt. Thanks, mate. Nice to be here. Thanks for coming on, mate. I'm really excited about this one. Mate, we'll keep it nice and open. Let's give us the uh the big elevator pitch on who Matt Bunker is and a bit of a backstory, brother.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. Jesus. Put me on the spot. That's good. So originally military, army, 17 years, and got out of the military and then retrained as a nurse. Now an emergency and oncology nurse. I mean, I've just started a new business with a doctor here in the Sunshine Coast. We just started Empower Longevity, which is a longevity clinic looking at health and hormone optimization. Prior to that, I suppose, where did all this start? I grew up in a fairly dysfunctional family. My father was an alcoholic and he used to beat up my mum. Rescued from that situation by my uncles, and we moved in with my grandparents for a period of time until myself, my brother, and my mother moved out of home and we got our own place. Yeah, my brother had seen a lot more of that violence that I had because he was six years older than me, and I think it really affected him. Very talented human being. He was picked in the under-19 North Sydney Bears side when he was like 12, 13, playing the wing, right? Very talented individual. But unfortunately, obviously dealing with a lot of demons, he got into drugs from a very early age, and that progressed quite quickly to the point where he was pretty much a full-blown addict in his early teens and getting in, starting to get into a lot of the trouble. Often mum would have to come and wake me up and we'd have to go searching for my brother on the streets to find out where he was. And there'd be times where we'd come home, the TV would be gone, and the VCR would be on. Those people out there that are listening to VCRs, those old schools. That's how old I'm uh I am. That'd be gone, right? My brother had flogged him and he'd sold them for drugs. My mum met someone else and developed a relationship with him, but unfortunately didn't break the cycle of violence. He was also an alcoholic and was violent towards her and to me. But I'm old enough now to see these things similar to my brother, right, going through it. But from a very young age I knew that I needed to get out of this situation. Why? It's because one, I didn't want to end up like my brother, and two, I didn't want to end up like those male figures in my life. The difference between my stepfather and my father was my stepfather had money, and so I went to both of them and I said, I want to go to boarding school, and I chose the most expensive boarding school in Sydney because I wanted to make that motherfucker pay. And to my some to my surprise, he agreed, and my parents agreed. I think he wanted me out of the house just as much as I wanted to be out of the house. So very grateful. Not a lot of people get those opportunities, and so I am still very grateful to this day for the opportunity that I got to be able to go to boarding school. Saved my life, absolutely saved my life. But still at being exposed to the these episodes of violence, I can remember one very clearly. My stepfather beat my mother to the ground one night and and held a held an iron over her face, ready to burn her. I I jumped up and I grabbed her rolling pin out of the drawer and I went at him. My mum got in between us, probably lucky because I was still young, he probably would have beaten the shit out of me. Police were called, he was taken in, spent the night in the locker, but my mother took him back into the house. So there was always this continual violence between them, whether it was yelling, alcohol was involved, and so it just solidified in my mind that I was never gonna be the person that I wanted to be if I remained in that environment. And that's where going to boarding school was was so important for my personal well-being. My brother in the meantime was getting he was in and out of prison all through this. He wasn't living at home anymore. It was untenable him living in the house. But I was home from boarding school one weekend and I got the knock on the door, and there's my brother standing there at the door, and he was a mess. I don't know what you know, he was on every drug and owner man, probably. I mean he came in, he and he he said he was homeless. He didn't he'd just gotten out of prison a few months ago and didn't have anywhere to live. He was living on the streets and he wanted to stay. And my parents said no, but well, we'll give you some money and you can stay down at the the local hotel room. Well, he didn't like that too much. He went up and he he got a knife out of the kitchen, he said, if if I'm if I've got to go, no one's going anywhere. And he took my parents hostage. And my stepfather being the idiot that he was, instead of trying to de-escalate the situation, met my brother's aggression with his own. And my brother stabbed him right in the chest, blood everywhere. Uh the police got called. And and well, this is a fairly affluent um suburb in Sydney, right? The whole like riot squad, everyone turned up, dogs, you know, they bashed the door down and just let the dog go in the house, these two big German shepherds. I've never to this day, of everything I've done in the military, right? I've never to this day heard someone scream like he screamed when those dogs got a hold of him. So he was arrested, charged with attempted murder, and was downgraded to grievous bodily harm with a deadly weapon, and he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Now, I've got two brothers. I've got my street brother, same person, got my street brother, and then I've got my prison brother, right? And my prison brother I had this amazing relationship with. I don't know whether it was the structure and the routine of him being in prison, you know, away from the streets, but that street brother was very, very afraid of, very scared. He was unstable. When I finished school, boarding school, I was then back in the home, and it it was just there was no change. Yeah, my stepfather would would never be violent in front of my mum if I was there. Yeah, typical coward. There were signs that things were still happening, and then the screaming, the yelling, the fighting, the alcohol, that hadn't stopped. And so I knew I needed to to get out of there. So I thought, uh, I don't how the fuck am I gonna get out of here? So I went and joined the army. Yeah. I don't even know why I do chose the army. I fucking hated being told what to do. And so, but anyway, it was an opportunity for me to get out of the house. And I did very well. Like I did really well at boarding school, and I did very well during my training, my initial training, because I thrived on that structure and that routine and that discipline and that focus. You know, it gave me a sense of purpose. Got towards the end of my training down at the Royal Military College, Duntron, and my brother, just so happens my brother was getting released from um Golburn prison. So to put things in perspective, he wasn't just in like minimum security farm prisons. He was in Long Bay, he was, you know, Cessnop prison, he was in Golburn, maximum security prisons for that better part of ten years. Now, if you want to understand what the definition of stupid is, and you open up the dictionary, there'll be a picture of me looking straight back at you. The definition of stupid is inviting your violent criminal brother who's just spent the better part of ten years for a night out on the piss. And everyone takes that for granted because you it's just an Australian thing to do, and especially to do with your brother or your father. And I never got to experience that, so I thought, yeah, I'd really love to go out with my brother to celebrate life and have a beer with him. Well, it didn't end well. There was a point, and uh towards the end of the night, I just saw him change, right? Is you could just see something changed in him, and I I could feel it, and I said, Right, let's go, let's get out of here. When we went outside, and then he kind of pushed me in the back a little bit, and I turned around and I said, What you know, Michael, what's going on? Let's let's just go, mate. And he goes, I'm gonna kill you. And you people say things like that and in anger and stuff like that, but he's got four. And he picked up a beer bottle and smashed it, and he came straight at me. I fought him off and I ran. I was running down the street and I ran around this corner, and by the grace of God, when I ran around this corner, there was this cop sitting there on the end of his car, on the boot of his car, like the bonnet of his car, sorry, and he was eating macas. Right, he took one look at me, you could see the fear of God in my eyes. He goes, What's wrong? And that point my brother came running around the corner too. He dropped the bottle and he froze when he saw the cop. And I said to the cop, This is my brother, he's a violent criminal. He's literally, he's been out of prison for two weeks. He's trying to kill me. And they put him in handcuffs and they said to me, What do you want to do? And I said, What do you mean? And they said, Well, if we arrest him and take him in, he's broken his patrol. He will go back inside to spend the rest of his 10-year sentence inside and may get a little bit more for another violent crime. And I don't know why I said what I said, maybe it was because I thought this great relationship with this my brother who was on the inside versus my street brother, I was very scared of. And I said, take him in. And as they led him into the back of the paddy wagon, he broke down like you'd never seen it before. He's just blubbering like a mess, crying, begging me, begging me not to do it. I never saw him again after that. He died of a drug overdose. Inside? No, he he spent a bit of time inside and got out and and then died of a drug overdose after that. But for many years, and I still now struggle with the thought that me sending him back to prison led to his death. And so that's point solidified in my life what my purpose was always gonna be moving forward. And there's my purpose was always gonna be this. And the first part is that I was never ever gonna lend up like any of the male figures in my life. Right? The cycle of violence would stop with me. And everything I did moving forward had to be in support of helping other people. And whatever I did, I wanted to excel at it. And so that's when I was in the army, I I got into I went and tried out and I got into the SAS. And then when I got out of the military, I became a nurse. And because I wanted to help people, and I I thoroughly enjoy, I honestly thoroughly enjoy helping people. And then as a nurse, you know, choosing and going down that route of emergency nursing, and then now trying to excel and and trying to build a business and build a better life for my family, but at the same time helping people out there that don't need it. So I suppose in a nutshell, that's kind of my background and what got me to where I am today.
SPEAKER_01Wow, what a story to to kick things off. And mate, just wanted to say thank you for being so vulnerable and brave to tell us in such a raw way. And mate, I've got to applaud you for breaking the cycle. Those wounds that we carry from trauma through our life, they don't go away unless you you work on them. You've got to continually work on them.
SPEAKER_02They they haven't gone. They haven't gone. They're still there, they'll always be there. They do raise their ugly head at certain points in time. But it's about having, I suppose, the mechanisms to deal with them. The people to speak to is so important. Like you need to find someone that you can talk to and you can be open and honest with and have open and honest conversations with and people that can help you through these things, right? I I mental health, it's no different to breaking your arm. You've got a broken arm, you get you go see a doctor, you get it fixed, you go through rehab, you repair it. The brain's the same thing, it's just it's an injury, and and you you need help with it, just like you would need help with any other injury. Then that's the way I see it. And I feel you've got to want to get better. That's the important. When you break your arm, you want to get better, right? It's the same thing I that I've seen with like my own mental health is that especially when I had kids, I wanted to get better. I didn't want to be a victim. I never wanted to be a victim. I could sit down and I could blame everything in my childhood that happened to me, and then making excuses as to why other things in life weren't going my way. But I was never ever going to do that either. I was never going to be a victim. Break the cycle of violence. Don't be a victim. Establish your purpose, move forward, excel, and show people that by working on yourself, you can be a better human being.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, you you nailed it. It all comes from self. Unless you're willing to put the work in, ultimately, the only thing that we can really control in our lives is ourself and how we turn up in situations. So I love what you're doing, and I think it's fantastic this journey you're on. And like I said at the start of the potty, mate, I'm really excited about exploring it a little bit more. So why don't we rewind to the early years again? So it was King's College that you I went to Joey's. Joey's Joey's. Just as expensive.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Joey's is a rugby union school predominantly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I played rugby league before I played rugby union. Very I was, you know, I played front row rugby league during my early years and I loved it. But when my stepfather came on the scene, he was into rugby union and kind of forced me to go down that way. But I can very fondly remember my days playing for Rubers Club in North Sydney.
SPEAKER_01Mate, whether you're playing league, union, AFL, bloody netball for that matter, as long as kids are in a team sport, that's that's what really matters. That's the values and the team accountability and the things that you get from a team sport. Obviously, we were up rugby league. So you went through school, you were boarding. Boarding school, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Is it all boys at Joey's? Yeah, it is. Yeah, all boys. Yeah, it was great. I had the best time of my life there. You know, it was it just got me out of the home the most important thing, got me out of the home. I've thrived. I just I never didn't want to, even on the weekends, I'd always find some excuse to lie that I couldn't go home. I know normally go to my mate's place or something like that. So yeah, it was good.
SPEAKER_01You graduated from Joey's all the way through. Were you playing footy at school the whole time? Or did you find academically you sort of flourished in a more structured environment?
SPEAKER_02And you know what, I I pulled my finger out towards the end of year 11 and year 12 and really knuckled down into my study and actually got a really good result. And then I went to uni and in my first year out of school I was doing medical science, but just that home life was it it was untenable for me to stay there, and that's that that's kind of what shifted me towards the army, getting out and going somewhere that was in Sydney.
SPEAKER_01Making a complete change. So you enrolled dungeon for a couple of years? Yeah, 18 months. Eighteen months, yeah. And then did you always have your eyes set on special forces or you know what?
SPEAKER_02No, I didn't. If I have to be honest with you, I I didn't. Of course it was it was a known thing, but was it something that was I went into the army wanting to do it? No. I think a lot of that happened after my brother's death, and me then I don't know whether it was needing to prove something to everyone that I was different and I needed to constantly excel, but I had this feeling in in me that I needed to excel at everything that I wanted to put my hand to doing. And so yeah, I I tempted selection the first time. I'm an idiot, I did it twice. I tempted selection the first time in 2007. I talk about failure, and I think failure is probably the greatest tool that we have as individuals to grow both personally and professionally, because when you learn to embrace failure and you identify what your weaknesses are and and what you need to improve from those episodes of failure, you enter this continuous improvement cycle, and when you into that continuous improvement cycle, then you personally and professionally develop and and you will excel, right? So the selection's made up of a mum number of different activities, and this one activity is called happy wanderer, and you are you're given five days to move a hundred kilometres on foot. You've got to get over a hundred kilometres and up and down sand dunes and Lancelin, and you're carrying 50, 60 kilos worth of equipment, so it's rough for that period of time, and you're navigating as well. Sitting on this hill in Lancelin, Sand Dune, and I could see down to the shoreline and I could see this young family playing. And I at the time, just before going on selection, had asked my now wife to marry me. And so I was sitting on this sand dune looking at this family play in the shoreline. That's what I want to do. I don't know if I want to do this. Um no, I want to start a family, so I'm gonna I'm gonna pull off. So I pulled out all my food out of my pack and I ate it all. That was the decision made. Well, I didn't have any food left, so I had to have to pull off. And it wasn't too long that after I pulled off that selection course, there was the realization of oh fuck, what have I done? Because I had spent so much time and effort training towards getting in, thinking that's exactly what I wanted, and then failing at that. And so I went through a massive period of reflection. And during that period of reflection and that episode, it really taught me to inwardly look at what my weaknesses are as an individual and constantly concentrating on your strengths, you're not improving. Those people that look at themselves and say, What do I need to improve on? What are the things that are letting me and stopping me from progressing? And when you identify what those are, well, then you can come up and set goals to be able to achieve and better yourself, right? And so I did that, and there was a period there where I had a few injuries, so I broke my back as well, and I had to have a spinal surgery. And when you fail, or when you pull off selection, you voluntarily withdraw, you you can't go back and do it again. And so I wrote a letter to the commanding officer of SASR, and I s I outlined exactly what my weaknesses were, what my shortfalls were in that first selection course, and what my overall weaknesses were as a person and as a leader, and how I had addressed them over the last few years and what I'd done to change them. And I sent that off and I hadn't heard anything for a couple of weeks. I finally got this email back and it just said, Captain Bunker, you are good to try out again. That is it. Just one line. Short and sweet. Short and sweet. And it solidified in my mind two things. Not only is understanding what your weaknesses and dressing them do, but it's accountability. Accountability for your own actions. And when you have accountability for your own actions, people listen to you more. They see that they see more value in you as a person because when you can step back and look at a situation and ask yourself the question, what did I do wrong? What was my part in this activity or this thing that happened that made difference for it to maybe fail or to even go well or whatever? But it's just having that personal accountability I I have found and I and I've kept that principle over the years about being very accountable for my actions.
SPEAKER_01Second round of selection, we're talking a couple of years later, four years. Four years. So you've had a good amount of time to work on yourself and those things that you identified, obviously persevere for through some injuries in your back and things like that, too, which is a massive thing in itself. Second round of selection obviously got through.
SPEAKER_02I wouldn't say a breeze through. I found it definitely easier than the first time. Look, selection's hell on earth. It's you know, anyone can train physically for it, I feel. It's it's a mental capacity to be able to get through selection is probably the hardest thing. And being able, you you need to mentally prepare. So, how do you mentally prepare? I think one of the best techniques to mentally prepare yourself is through visualization. And so putting yourself visualizing, not when things are going to go right, that's not mental preparation, visualizing when things are gonna go bad, and during that happy wanderer phase that I talked about before, that's when those seeds of doubt start to creep in. When you're by yourself, there's no one else to push you along and motivate you. All you've got is yourself and your single purpose. And so you need to visualize what you're gonna do when those seeds of doubt and those thoughts come in that want to hold you back from achieving that purpose. And when you visualize those things happening, then you come up with a plan to deal with them and you can push them down and develop strategies to maintain your motivation, your discipline, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Now, selection's broken up into a number of different phases. The first week and stuff is a lot of individual stuff where they retest your physical capabilities, your navigation, your individual skills, you know, navigation by day, by night, and then you you kind of get into more team activities where, especially as a leader, they put you in positions under very stressful, time-constrained positions and do activities that you've got no chance of absolutely finishing. They want to see how you respond under pressure. And and all throughout selection, there's feedback, but it's negative. There's there's never any positive reinforcement. So there's the challenge of you thinking that you're doing pretty shit the entire time, and that's another mental challenge that you need to be able to deal with. And then you go on that happy wanderer phase where you're out there navigating by yourself, lots of carrying lots of equipment, and you've got to get that hundred kilometres. I in four days I got a I'd done 115 kilometres and I got tapped on the shoulder. You've done enough. Sit down, you know, have a rest. That was so important because selection, everything about selections the last five days, everything leading up to that point is just about physically and mentally breaking you down. So you've got nowhere to hide. You can't, your true personality comes out. And so, in that last five days, it's called Lucky Dip. And you do two daytime activities that are just absolutely back breaking. The complexity of the task, it's not complex, it's just move heavy shit from point A to point B. A certain time frame. What's complex about it is that you haven't eaten, you haven't slept, and this continual negative reinforcement and pressure. The nighttime, it's just a monotonous activity to keep you awake. So you get told to dig a hole with a cup's canine. And if you you make any progress on that hole, someone will come up and tell you, I didn't tell you to dig the hole there. I told you to dig it a meter to your right, just to keep you awake. So we got fed once in the five days. I'll never forget it. I s you could smell it before you saw it. And even though I was so hungry, it was still stomach journey. The smell. It was awful. We had our cups canines and we went over and we had to dig our cups canines into this awful riot, this brown sludge with lumps in it. And then I stuck my fork in my cup's canine. I pulled my fork out, and there's this bell end of a pig on the end of my fork. Fuck, I've got to eat it. You had to eat it. So somehow I got this meal down, and then they handed out gas masks at the end of the meal, and the maiden's put the gas mask on, and we had to do burpees in our gas masks. Still everyone threw up in their gas mask. So whatever sustenance you thought you were gonna get from that meal, you didn't. And so you're that hungry and you you're that tired. But if you visualize these times, you you're better prepared to be able to deal with them, and that's that's definitely the that was the difference than the first time, the second time. I had mentally prepared myself to deal with those challenges, to deal with those thoughts, to deal with those demons, to deal with that exhaustion because I knew it was coming and I could focus on the purpose.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just solely focused on not giving up, basically, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it's very simple.
SPEAKER_01Those visualization techniques you talk about, is there anything you can share with the listeners that you've had as a fallback of ice, or is it just generally imagining yourself in different scenarios and how you respond?
SPEAKER_02It's a very military terminology to say the word war gaming, but it's literally just when you're doing the training, when I was doing getting up at three o'clock, I wouldn't just get up at six o'clock in the morning and go for my pack march, I'd wake myself up at two o'clock in the morning or one o'clock in the morning and go for pack march. And I was training down at Canberra at the time during the winter, it was fucking cold. And the other reason why I I got in is because my wife said to me when the day that I left, she said, Don't you fucking pull off this time. I'm not doing another Canberra winter. Right. But yeah, it's it's putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, and when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, then you're forcing yourself to be able to visualize better what an uncomfortable situation is going to be when it occurs. Because you in training you can stop whenever you want, and then it is very simple, it's about just visualizing thoughts of doubt, thinking about what those thoughts of doubt might say to you. And if you do hear those thoughts of doubt, that little person sitting on your shoulder telling you to stop and no, this is not what you want to do, and you're not doing well, then you can reinforce with yourself that no, I am doing well, I'm on the right path, I'm gonna keep pushing forward.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. And so post-selection, you had several years in the SAS. Yep, several tours, I'd imagine. Yep. Am I correct in saying you ended up being I might not get the terminology right, a squad leader or yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I ended up uh being a troop commander.
SPEAKER_01Troop commander.
SPEAKER_02And that was an awesome experience to be able to do that. Why was that an awesome experience? Taught me a great deal about leadership because it's hard when you first get in there because you you're leading warriors, hardened warriors. And it's very important to understand very early on that you are there to lead, you're not there to be their friends. They don't want a friend, they want a leader. Why do they want a leader? Because when you are in those situations of complete and utter chaos, when you you're sitting in a helicopter and you're you're flying towards a you know, a target, everything kind of seems eerily quiet. The helicopter flares, the adrenaline starts, the lodies are telling you there's 30 seconds to go, the ropes drop down, it's the middle of the night, and you come out of that helicopter ready to fight, and then your boots hit the ground and the chaos ensues. Those guys don't give a shit about how many beers you can drink with them on the weekend. They need someone that can navigate that chaos and keep them alive. But they also need someone that's willing to stand next to them and be a warrior themselves. So it's it's a fine line between being a leader and providing that oversight, that upward and outward focus, that strategic level focus, but then also being someone that's able to engage on the ground and do the job that they're doing. And so as a leader, I think it's very, very important to empower those people that you work with. Why is that? Because when you operate in a team, you operate amongst collectively, much more experienced than individually you will ever have. And when you understand that effectively and you empower, there's two reasons why you empower, you empower people around you to make decisions. Why? Is because you trust and value them not only as an individual, but you trust and value them professionally. And that means that when they're making decisions, you're able to be able to meet be making other more important decisions. So you enter this really fast loop of decision-making cycle that becomes that comes quite quick, and then you're outpacing your enemy, you're outpacing whatever you're doing. It implies to business. You can apply that to business as well. The speed of trust. The other most important thing is you've got to empower your people to challenge you. You've got to and I'm talking about respectful conflict because respectful conflict brings about positive change. If you're that leader that thinks you need to make the decision all the time, you're dangerous. And it's a lack of confidence, I find. If people need to think they need to make the decision all the time and and not empower their not empower their staff or not empower their subordinates to be able to make decisions on their behalf. Why? Because if you give people the resources, if you give them the time, if you tell them how things need to be done, and then they go away and you empower them to make decisions, they go away and they stuff it up, then you're still accountable as the leader. You should still be standing behind them and saying to them, No, I told you how to do that. It's fine. I'm gonna take ownership of this. And when you do that, I tell you what, your men, your women, whoever you're working with, they will do absolutely anything for you if they know that you were gonna stand behind them and put your hand up and still be accountable for the things that go wrong.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. I'm sure you would have had higher-ups in command during your time in the military that you wholly respected, and I'm sure there's times that you maybe didn't respect. Yeah, I think it's bureaucrats and stuff like that. Yeah, like you do, you get it in any environment, but that respect and that trust is is paramount.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think so. How do you build trust and respect why do you build trust and respect? You build trust and respect because you need loyalty, you don't get loyalty without trust and respect. How do you build trust and respect then to get the loyalty? Two reasons. You get value, it's called value and empathy. Value is you need to show those that you work with how much you value the work they do. And you do that by getting in and doing it yourself. Because when you get in and do the work that they're doing, you're saying that I value what you do so much that I'm gonna give up my time, my important time, to come in and help. And that creates it shows them value in what they do, but it also creates value in you. They see you as a valuable person. The other thing is empathy. And people, I think, gloss over this term empathy. What does it mean? I say empathy without agreement. You don't have to agree with why someone's done something, you just need to understand that person might be going through something at that particular point in time. And and then understand that outside influence may have made them do something, make a decision, make a silly decision. And when you have empathy for people, then you create a caring environment. And when you've created a caring environment again, those people that when you feel like you've been cared about, you'll do anything for anyone. And the one thing I always had this in my teams was family first. Right? Family always comes first, no matter what. You could come to me at any time and say, I need to go and sort this out because I've got this issue with my family. I would say, Go, you need to go and sort that out. Right. Because there would be a time when I would need your help. And it might be well and truly after work's finished and you know, someone's got a deadline, or we've got to do something important, and then I turn around and I say, I need your help. I need you guys to stay back, I need you help me. And I can guarantee you, every time, because you've set that caring environment, you've established that empathy, that when you do that, they will be there and they will stand beside you and they'll stand, they'll they'll have you back.
SPEAKER_01Amazing values to aspire to for any of the listeners. If you can be trusted and respected by what doesn't have to be a military scenario, hey, your sporting team, your peers, your family group. What a beautiful position to put yourself in. And it's not given. It's not easy, is it? You've got to earn those things. Definitely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like I said, you you just can't walk in, especially as a as a leader or even a captain of a football team, right? You can't just walk in there and demand respect because of your position. Those people are dangerous too. And so it's about creating unity, it's about and and the easiest way to do that is I feel is through care, creating that caring environment through empathy. Showing people you care about them personally and what they're going through, it it creates that caring environment.
SPEAKER_01And you don't have to be the captain or the president, whatever, to be a leader. No, you know, everyone's got that beautiful opportunity of leadership and to turn up in the right way. Yeah, definitely. Powerful. Holy. Do you want to chat any more about military or do you want to talk to after you've finished up and got out?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, look, yeah, I'd so when I got out, I was medically discharged. It's kind of what I wanted because I'd spent so much time away from home. My time at the in the regiment was great, and then I moved on and did another job after that, which I can't get into and talk about too much. I might end up in prison grades myself. There was an incident that happened somewhere, and it was close. It was a close call. My wife had been so she's such a supportive person. I've been with her now for for over 20 years. She's supported me through everything, through thick and thin. And this, yeah, just when this incident happened and I and I got home, thank God, she said, there, that's enough. I'm done. Just thinking about what she had to go through. Still guess me today. But and I agreed. I said, that's enough's enough. And so I got out and I tried my hand in the corporate world and I looked at different jobs. Like when you get out of the military, you don't think, well, I didn't think that my identity was tied to my army. Me being the army person, quickly found out it was. I was institutionalized, and my identity was firmly entrenched in being army, and then I can't even I lost count of how many resumes I put in. And every time I put a resume in, I thought, that's it, I've got it. Now no, why wouldn't they pick me? Ex-Army officer, SAS, operations, I've done everything constantly getting turned down, turned down, turned down. I decided I took a um consulting job with a consulting firm, uh risk manager, risk management, cybersecurity. Fuck no, why I did that. I just thought there was money in it. I could I would be sitting in meetings, they'd be talking about stuff, and I'd have my phone and I'd be Googling stuff underneath the desk. But I could read something, and in five minutes, I'd sound like an expert on it. Absolutely scratch the surface. There was nothing there. And then I in 2019, I think that all came to a head where I hadn't dealt with a lot of stuff, both from my childhood and things that happened to me in the the into the in the army as well. And I had a pretty big breakdown in 2019. And of course, the person that was there to pick me up was my wife. And then DVA were were amazing. I can't speak highly enough about that organization. I really can't, because they were really and I know some people have not great experiences with them. Same with any organisation, but they were tremendous with me, absolutely tremendous with me. And it's they s my uh my case worker said to me, Look, Matt, you what do you want to do? You tell me what you do and I'll make it happen. So I went away and I had a good think about it. And I I thought back to, you know, when I first left school, I was always interested in medical stuff. I said, I had a look around, had a look at paramedicine and physiotherapy, all those different things. And I landed on nursing. The the things that you can do as a nurse. And it fell back to that purpose of wanting to help people. And so yeah, I went to them and said, I want to be, I want to do nursing, and they said, right, and they paid for me. Go back to uni.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. You don't get a more patient-facing thing in medical than a nurse A. Yeah, it's good. It's good. I love it.
SPEAKER_02I love it meeting new people and helping helping people. Don't get me wrong, it can be trying sometimes. But yeah, it's it's a great experience and it's a challenging experience. I've probably had people have asked me what's harder, being a nurse or being in the SAS. Um and my experiences being in the SAS were were tremendously exciting and dangerous. I think the worst thing that's happened to me was actually being a nurse when you know had a young eight-year-old boy that was killed on an e-bike, but he came into us first, and yeah, we were doing CPR on him for like 15, 20 minutes and couldn't get him back. Just say he's mup. Right, come in it and say goodbye to the little eight-year-old boy. That that's devastating. And I still think about that. I still like that, still gets me. I still have times and I think about that moment. And but it's good having a wife that's a social worker, right? I can talk to her about these things, and that's when it comes back to one of the first points that I brought up when I was when we were talking is that you've got to have someone to lean on, you've got to have someone to talk to and be open and be open with who can just listen to you. And and you know, as a man, it's okay to fucking cry. Definitely, just cried three times in the space of 40 minutes, right? And then I think that's okay, you've got to be emotional. It's okay to be emotional. And when you are and you let these emo and I found this, the more I let my emotions out, the happier I am as an individual.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I find through my whole young adult years I've always really struggled to to cry and let go, and it's only been the last couple of years that here and there I'll mate. The most I've cried in my whole life was when I was on Kokoda, the spiritual connection and the story of that. Yeah, it was amazing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'd I've looked I've I've had some big moments of crying. Last year, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sorry to hear. She's good now. She's good now. But yeah, yeah, I would sit in the car and I'd just cry my eyes out because she's the rock of our family. The rock. I think that and she just she went through, so she ended up having a triple negative breast cancer. Which, if you want a breast cancer, that's not the one you want. The reason why we found it is because I'm so into I I became so into hormone replacement therapy and yeah, improving health, and I kept pushing her to go get her hormone levels checked, and she finally did. Went to the doctor, and the doctor said, Yeah, that's fine, we'll do this for you, but I want you to go get a mammogram. And she went and got a mammogram and they found this tumor. Luckily we found it so early because I mean, the her oncologist and her surgeon said, if this was 12 months later, we'd be having a very different conversation right now. And so she went through five months of chemotherapy and then had a double mastectomy. And is amazing now. Like, but just she taught me more about resilience and determination and courage last year than I've ever been taught in my entire life. Everything that I've done to see her move through that with grace and determination, not only for me, but to see my two daughters see that as well. Yeah, she's a jet, she is absolutely our rock.
SPEAKER_01It's all in remission. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's just back to good health. Yeah, mate. I suppose that sprung bored you into Empower Longevity. So better give it a plug. So our episode sponsor today is Empower Longevity. So um I'm excited about you to telling the listeners about what you're doing now.
SPEAKER_02A bit of backstory is that when you work in emergency, you're working in an environment where you're continually just plugging holes, you're never getting to root causes, and you're seeing the same people for the same thing over and over again. And so me and another doctor have decided we set up this business also with one of my best mates who's our IT, and he's probably the most important person in the business, actually. And it this is about preventative health care. Chronic disease doesn't just set in overnight when you you get old in your 70s. Chronic disease sets in when you're late 30s, early 40s. It takes 15, 20 years for chronic disease to set in. And so we decided that empower longevity was about giving people an option to have prevention so that in the last 10 years of their life, they were still playing with their grandkids, they're still traveling, they're still living independently, they're still enjoying good quality of life. And so we do advanced blood work, assessments, scans. We get a really good baseline of where the individual is at, and then we provide them with a health summary and recommendations on how they can improve their deficiencies or their well, we call it a biomarker, a traffic light system, right? What's good are your protective factors, what's orange come up. Orange is an optimization opportunity. What's red is a priority. You need to fix these, otherwise, they are gonna, they could lead to chronic disease. And so we come up with a full longevity plan for them based around exercise, nutrition. And a lot of the time that can include hormone replacement therapy, hormone replacement therapy for women, and testosterone replacement therapy for men as well, because hormones play an incredibly important part all throughout our body. There are androgen and estrogen receptors both in males and females in every part of our body. When those hormones get depleted, that's when you start getting neurological decline, you cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, you know, your bone mineral density starts declining. So when then when you get older, you have a fall, you break a bone, a long bone, a flat bone after the age of 65. The consequences are catastrophic. See it all the time. And so we support people with detailed longevity plans and health plans to be able to improve their health so that when they age, they age with quality of life in mind.
SPEAKER_01Getting to the root cause of things rather than just a bit of Western medicine band-aiding as ailments come up.
SPEAKER_02100%. Like we've got clients that are fit healthy, right? And we've found little anomalies in their bloods, and then we do more deeper dives with scans. Find out these these people have got blockages in their arteries in their heart. And so we we we very much stay within our lane in that we identify these things and then we refer people onto the people that can fix them. Our job is to to give you a baseline and understanding of where you are, give you a plan to improve those things. But if the if there's something out of our wheelhouse, then we refer them on to specialists that they need to be like. Our doctor, she is a specialist in her own right, and she's you know, she's been practicing now in the health industry for 32 years, both here and in the US. So she's an amazing doctor. And very, very knowledgeable, very, very forward-leaning about longevity medicine. But yeah, it's important we work as in a multidisciplinary team for the individual, and we're very patient-centred care. So we will understand what your health goals are. What are your health goals? What do you want to achieve? How do you want to achieve them? Well, we'll help you achieve them. We're not going to sit in front of you and tell you how to you must do this, you must take that. It's definitely a relationship-focused company where we get to know our people.
SPEAKER_01And your clientele, they're engaging the services because they want to identify these things. So they're self-driven to get a good outcome. Not like going to the physio, and the physio says do all these stretches, and you walk out and you don't do them. Yeah. And you go back to the city. How many times? I've done that. I've done that a few times. Free clubs now. Yeah, I know. I've done it a million times too. But where can people find you if they are interested in looking more into this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we were on socials, so Instagram and and Facebook. Just started our socials, actually. We have been in operation for nine weeks. We haven't gone live with the company. That goes live next month where we full put in a full marketing, our full marketing plan. However, in the last nine weeks, we've already got 70 clients, and that's just from word of mouth. But how do you find us? Howlongevity.com.au is our website. Register through the website and you'll get a phone call by someone within the team who will talk you through what the next steps are. Now, the next steps involved really thorough blood assessment. We send you we'll we'll do an initial past medical history first. We'll identify if there are any special bloods that we need to send you on top of our very comprehensive blood assessment that we do. We send you off for your bloods, they come back and then we provide you with a health summary. On that health summary, you'll get recommendations about what we think you should do to improve your health that are aligned with your health goals. And there's no commitment. You can take that report and you can go to your GP and you can get things fixed up. There's absolutely no commitment. But if you want, you can join the company. A we we have a membership and then throughout the year we provide comprehensive blood work at regular intervals. We provide nutrition plans, we provide exercise plans, we'll send you for a DEXA scan as well to identify your bone mineral density, what your visceral fat distribution is doing, and that will be included in your nutrition plan, your strength plan, your longevity plan. You get a full consult with Dr. Jen Luman. She'll take you through a 30 to 45 minute consult and give you your full longevity plan. And then if you qualify for hormone replacement therapy, we'll write your scripts for the hormones and then we'll monitor you closely throughout that year. And then you get you get reviews after each blood work, and then you get additional doctor's appointments throughout the year as well. So it's it's very much a we very much work with the individuals and we really like to closely monitor you, especially in that first 12 months. So we get you on track, on target, and we help you change behaviors as well. This is the biggest thing, is that a lot of the time people will go to their GPs and they will get hormone replacement therapy from their GPs and then they're left to their own devices. And now you they'll take those hormones, but they haven't changed the behaviours around exercise and nutrition because they sometimes they don't know how to. And exercise, nutrition, and sleep, they are the three most important things for longevity. And but you still need to be know how to build routines and behaviors around that. That's what we specialise in as well is building those routines and behaviours.
SPEAKER_01And consistency and even if you've got a fantastic GP, I would imagine this data would be really handy with your GP, but you can't always get in to see your GP. No, you can't. You might see someone else at the clinic when something pops up. You might only see your GP a couple of times a year, even if you've got a great one.
SPEAKER_02And just with the blood work as well, like our the blood work that we send you for is incredibly comprehensive compared to what you would get at your normal GP. GPs are governed by Medicare. You come to us, yes, you are going to pay, you pay an initial fee, which covers helps cover the blood work because the blood work is is quite expensive. And when I say it's expensive, we that's covered in your initial fee that you pay. But it's just it's so much more comprehensive. It gives us such a better picture than what your your general blood test does with your doctor. Like, for example, if you if you go to your doctor and you ask them you want a cardiovascular checkup, he'll send you four and he'll check your cholesterol. Now, with your cholesterol, you'll look at your your HDL and your LDL cholesterol. For want of a better term, your good cholesterol being HDL and your bad cholesterol being LDL, right? That doesn't tell you anything. All that tells you is how much cholesterol you've got running around in your blood. Now, the analogy I like to use with all my clients is, and I ask them this, I say, what causes a traffic jam on a highway? Is it the cars or is it the people here that are in the cars? Well, of course, it's the cars. So none of those readings tell you how many cars are on the highway. There is a test that we do that tells you how many cars are on that highway. It's called your APOB and your LP little A. And they're little proteins that attach to LDL carriers, which are the cars. They get stuck against your artery walls, and when they get stuck against your artery walls, they oxidize, and then those LDL carriers break open, and then the bad cholesterol spills out and it builds up, forms plaque, and that's what causes the blockages. And so when you understand about how many cars are on the highway, you can develop a plan to counteract that and improve that. So that's just one example of how more comprehensive what we look into things rather than than what GPs do.
SPEAKER_01And is this targeted more at sort of boys and girls middle-aged, or is it sort of right across the board from teens all the way up?
SPEAKER_02We specialise in adults. So when I say adults 17 years and older, we've got we we do have clients that are that are at that 17 early stages. We've got other clients that they want to look into their fertility, and then we've got clients right up into their 80s as well. Specifically for hormone replacement therapy, it's for women that are experiencing perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. And for men, it's those that are experiencing andhropause. So a lot of guys after the age of 30, their testosterone levels, their total testosterone levels drop by 1%, but their free testosterone levels drop by 3% each year. And it's the free testosterone figure that's the important one. Why is that? Because free testosterone when in the testosterone particle, when it's free, that means it can by have a it can bind with an androgen receptor at the cell, whether that cells in your brain, your heart, your bones, your your muscles, and it can have its effect. It can have its androgenic effect. However, when as you age, we our sex hormone binding globulin increases. And that's a little protein that's made in your liver. And then that little protein, it binds to testosterone and makes it bio-unavailable. A lot of guys will go to their doctors and ask to get their testosterone levels checked, and their doctors will just test their total testosterone. And it doesn't give you an indication of your testosterone health. You need to do more comprehensive, full hormone panels to really understand all your androgens are doing, specifically for men't testosterone. So we look at the full picture, we look at symptoms, we look at what their free testosterone, whether total testosterone, whether SHBG is doing as well, and then we formulate a plan for them based on what they want to do. But we are very ethical in our approach to testosterone replacement therapy. There's a lot of companies out there that will just test for what they need to know to give you a medication. We're unapologetic about our ethical standard and power longevity where we will do comprehensive testing. And if other body systems, your cardiovascular system or your metabolic system, is not fully optimized first, well, then we will put you through a period of optimization, which is generally about 12 weeks, retest you, see where you are with that. If your levels are stable and haven't gotten worse, and sometimes what's good is that they've gotten better, then we can have another discussion about testosterone replacement therapy. So we take a very ethical standpoint, and I'm unapologetic about that to people. And I think people understand that we have their best interests at heart.
SPEAKER_01So some things spring to mind for me, the old 12-week challenge at the gym where you rip in and then you get fit and strong, and then it'll all the weight goes back on, or a diet, or I don't know, people that are dabbling in peptides out of China. Exactly. This is a holistic approach to get real data to get good outcomes by changing behaviour. 100%.
SPEAKER_02So that's the important thing about is changing behaviours. You know, we do peptides as well, but our peptides are made here in Australia by a pharmacy that has a license to be able to produce them. Yes, they're still off-label, and we we still warn people that they're these haven't undergone human trials. However, these are the risks, these are the benefits for you. We do comprehensive blood for it before we give anyone any peptides. And there's this thing with some peptides are growth hormone releasing hormone peptides, and and that will increase the amount of growth hormone that your brain releases and increases your IgF1 release as well. Now, when you have an increase in that, you have an increase in cell proliferation. When you have an increase in cell proliferation, you have an increased chance of that cells mutating. Mutating, when I say mutating, cancerous. And so that's why it's so important to understand what your past medical history is. Do you have a family history of cancer? Do you have any markers in your blood that would suggest that you are at risk of developing cancer? And so we go into all this depth before we will prescribe a peptide. And they are prescribed by a doctor for very specific reasons. And they're you know they're not purchased on the internet from China and you don't know what you're getting. And we're actually seeding the ED. We're starting to see more people come through the ED with with issues related to black market peptides infections.
SPEAKER_01A good friend of ours is an ICU nurse, and she gives us a heads up every now and again, hey, be careful because this is getting around and this is getting around, and people are coming in really sick, and it's recreational drugs, it's peptides, unless you're getting it from a not that I'm advocating for this, but let's be realistic. People listening, you know, are gonna be grown-ups and doing what they want to do. Yeah, definitely. Just be careful where you're getting your stuff and think about the decisions you make.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. I think working in the emergency department is is definitely like I think seeing what I saw when I was younger with all the alcohol and stuff, surprisingly that didn't stop me drinking. The army, it's got a drinking culture. Well, it did when I was in, right? I think it's probably changed now. But what then we talk about peptides and alcohol and and other drugs and stuff like that, working in the ED actually changed my perspective on alcohol. You don't realise that alcoholism is alive and well, and truly alive and well today. There are so many people that are affected by alcohol. And seeing working as a nurse and seeing what it actually does to you, you know, it's the only drug that withdrawing from can kill you. Right. And so when people come in with alcoholism, you know, we c we monitor them very, very closely. And that's what like I've completely stopped drinking. When I say completely stop drinking, I might drink once in a blue moon if we go out to dinner and I might have one beer or that now. But yeah, I've it's it's just not even on the table for me anymore.
SPEAKER_01I still drink sometimes, I enjoy beer and stuff, but I'm very conscious that it is poison for our body, hey, and it causes inflammation, and there's it's a drug. It's the most used drug in Australia. It is. And that drinking culture, like you were saying, I I definitely see it changing in a sporting world sense. And I think it's changing in a broader society sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the younger people aren't drinking as much. I I feel there's it's not as big as it was when we were younger, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01Definitely more information now. Hey, yeah, that binge drinking, it's just what you did. Played footy on the weekend, then you got on the piss with the boys and you carried on and made stupid disciples. You can drink the whole weekend and turn up at work on Monday, you're getting high fives.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And one thing you said about inflammation there, the two biggest drivers of chronic disease is inflammation and metabolic dysfunction. So when I say metabolic dysfunction, I mean insulin resistance. And those two things together are 100% the key drivers of chronic disease. So when I talk about chronic disease, I talk about dementia and I talk about arosclerotic diseases, so blockages within heart and in your brain that lead to stroke and heart attacks. And when you have a good metabolic function and you have low inflammation, you significantly reduce the risk of developing chronic disease. And how do you do that? Diet, exercise, sleep, and maintaining a balanced level of hormones. And stress would come into play in the world. Oh, yeah, that negative recovery, stress, adrenal function becomes very, very important. Because cortisol is that that fight or flight hormone released by your adrenal gland and your body will preference. So cortisol and testosterone are made by the same precursor, cholesterol, uh, pregnatolone. Your body will preference making cortisol over testosterone. And so if you're constantly in that sympathetic nervous system activation and constant disadrenal dysfunction where you're releasing cortisol, then driving your other hormones down because your body will preference cortisol over other hormones. And when your cortisol levels rise, your insulin resistance rises as well. And then you get this cascading effect of stress, increasing metabolic dysfunction, you increase metabolic dysfunction, you start increasing inflammation, you start increasing those two things, you start getting a buildup of plaque in your arteries, you know, then you start risking cognitive decline, poor concentration, brain fog. Yeah, it's it it's a cascading effect.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we've talked about it on the potty before, but stress is normal. Stress is is healthy at times and stuff. It's where you're grossly stressed and it's starting to affect your nervous system from a lot of these precursors that you're talking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's like stress, yeah, like you said, stress is stress is such it is important and that and having that then if if it wasn't important then cortisol wouldn't be important, right? But the other thing, stress is important, and it makes you aware of your surroundings, and it I think it gives you better situational awareness when you stress. And I I think about the times when the things I did in the military. Yeah, you you get fear. Fear is a good thing as well. That fear response, that stress response is very good. You beware the person that says, I'm not afraid of anything, they're a fucking dangerous person. Yeah, fear is a very, very important quality to be able to have and embrace and work through. But yeah, I agree. Stress is an important concept, and it at the right levels, it's important because it allows you then to think through processes. That when you become overstressed, that dysfunction starts, you know, the tiredness kicks in, the dysfunction metabolic dysfunction kicks in, and then you you you become depleted.
SPEAKER_01I reflect back to my time in business and just the busy stage of life with kids and all that stuff. I went through years where I was grossly stressed, under sleeping, in a fight and flight mode all the time, turning up for everyone else, but not being honest with how banged up and fatigued I was until something breaks. Like you said, when you when you went through your your downtime with a bit of black dog and your your wife helped you get out of it, it's your your body's gonna give you a kick in the guts eventually to say, wake up. So let's try not to have that happen, hey? Let's be proactive with it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, be proactive with your health. Get out there, move, lift weight, find something you enjoy doing. That's what I tell people. Just find something you enjoy doing. And you've got to build build a routine around one or two things. What I see a lot is that people try to make too many changes at once. And when you try to wait too many changes at once, it overwhelms you and you end up failing. But if you pick one thing and build a routine around that one thing, then you move on to the next thing. You pick a routine, you pick something else and you build a routine around that, and then so on and so forth. Then before you know it, you've got this routine around five or six things. You know, it doesn't happen overnight. You've got to be consistent. Consistency is a huge part of it. But when you build routines around things, that's when you build discipline.
SPEAKER_01And the inherent reason behind why you're building these routines is really important too. If you're just doing it to look a certain way or something like that, it's gonna drive you to turn up in a different way.
SPEAKER_02My purpose for building a routine and discipline around health is so that I can walk my deal down the aisle. And I can play with my grandkids. I mean, I can go travelling with my wife when we're 70, when we're 80. That is why I'm doing what I'm doing now, and that's why I built started the company with my friends and it's just to help other people do that too.
SPEAKER_01We all know someone that's just unfortunately died as a younger person out of the blue when it's terribly second. You never know. Could those things have been prevented? It's a deeper question, I suppose. But I'm gonna get involved, I'm gonna come see and get good stuff done.
SPEAKER_02Good. Yeah, yeah. It's you know, like I said, come and get a baseline done. If that's all you do, and get an understanding of where your current health is right now. Like there's no commitment to have to join up, there's no commitment to have to take anything. But I can guarantee you that if you work on improving your health at this age, Jesus, it's gonna be so much easier when you get older. There is a turning point that you can't turn back from.
SPEAKER_01And for the younger people listening, having good routines, good behaviours built into your life that become normal will help you say stay fitter and stronger over the long term because when you're young, you've got the the whole world at your feet. You don't have a whole lot of responsibility. Whether you realise it at the time, and then work changes, you start a family, you've got mortgage stress, you've got all those things. So building the structures and systems as a younger person will certainly help resilience through those where everything's on top of you.
SPEAKER_02I find it I feel bad for this generation, the social media generation, because there's so much noise out there on social media about what they should be doing, what they shouldn't be doing, what's right, what's wrong. They've got all this information. My you know my advice is stop listening to fucking knuckleheads on social media that don't have a background in what you're trying to achieve. Like if if you want to get your car fixed, you don't go to a plumber, do you? There's the same thing that applies with your health. And I see it now as especially with young men wanting to get onto anabolic steroids because there is so much on the internet about it, and you just got to be careful, you've got to think about don't think about the short-term gains that you're gonna get from something. Think about what is the long-term benefit for me, what is the long-term risk. Got to think in long terms when you're talking about health. Because yeah, the human body's the most perfect machine getting around in the world, isn't it? It is 100%. When you start to learn about it, it's phenomenal what our body, what our body can do. Watching the state of origin on Wednesday night, the amount of stress that those guys put themselves through for 80 minutes, right? It's just phenomenal that they can be standing at the end of it. And then some of them are gonna play a game on the weekend. I don't know how they do it. I don't know how their their bodies do it. Then no, I do know how their bodies do it. They're their health dialed in because they've got people helping them with their health. They're not doing it by themselves. They've they've got very structured routine around their around their strength training, they've got very structured routine around their skills training, they've got a very structured routine around their diet, and it just goes to show that really, from a physical standpoint, anyone's capable of doing it. It's just knowing how to do it and listening to the right people with the right advice that can provide you with evidence-based guidance.
SPEAKER_01That's what you need. Having the right people in your sphere of influence. Definitely amazing. Well, mate, I'm just looking now. We've we've been on for well over an hour, and this has been such an interesting, amazing conversation. So, any parting words for the listeners before we sign off?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, look, I just I can't go past the motto of my old unit, and that is just who dares wins. Get out there, give it a go, develop a purpose, set some goals around that purpose, and just keep moving forward.
SPEAKER_01Look after yourself. Thanks for coming on, Matt, and mate, thanks for being so open and vulnerable for the listeners. I've really enjoyed it. It's been great. Thanks, mate. Awesome. Thanks, brother. Thanks. There you have it. I hope you've enjoyed the episode. If you'd like to get involved with the body, we'd love to chat to you. Reach out to myself. And the things that you can do to really support us is give us a like, give us a follow, and a star rating. We're always on the hunt for episode sponsors. So if you've got a business and you're interested in helping out in that way, I'd love to chat to you.