How important is it to learn from your experiences
and how do you find the drive for happiness
after you've had everything taken away from you?
G'day, it's Luke Darcy.
The idea of self-improvement and leadership
both on and off the field
has been a lifelong passion of mine.
With one of my oldest friends,
we created a leader collective
and have had the privilege of working
with thousands of leaders in education,
sport, industry and the arts
that have helped shift to what we see
as the 21st century style of leadership
where everyone has a voice.
In this podcast, we hear stories from these iconic leaders.
I was joined by one of my closest mates, Craig Ellis.
Before founding one of the world's most successful
bikini brands, Triangle,
he was an AFL player but with a uniquely creative mind.
We discussed finding and following your passion,
taking risks like selling everything you own
and moving to Hong Kong
and how the best thing his parents had given him
Well, mate, this is an out-of-body experience
for me and someone else.
I appreciate you joining me
as one of my oldest mates,
someone I've spent a lot of time with.
Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Definitely a different side that I don't normally see,
I don't normally hear you,
but so this will be interesting.
Can I go back a little bit,
your early life and what shape,
you want to get to the Triangle story
and your sporting story
and many other stories, mate,
but your mum and dad were both school teachers.
How many schools did you attend
across your schooling journey?
Off the top of my head,
I don't actually,
but I know it was a lot.
We were probably moving every year or two
little country towns
and it's interesting.
I think that part of moving around as a kid,
definitely don't mind jumping on an airplane now
and changing scenery.
So that definitely had an impact.
Every second year or every year at some point,
you were changing schools.
That's got to make you pretty resilient.
Yeah, yeah, a little bit.
There was a few trips to the principal's office
on the way through that journey,
but yeah, definitely change.
Learn to embrace change.
I think it was probably the key message out of all of that.
And yeah, I think that part of moving around
when you were young was really enjoyable.
Now I'm going to get in early
because you often accuse me of adding
a bit of GST to a few stories.
So I'm going to give myself 10% here
and you can correct me on any of them,
but fashion's been a huge part of your life.
And one of my favourite stories for me
is that with grade three or grade four,
and you can pull me back if I'm wrong.
I know where you're going with this already.
You decided that.
And it's not correct.
You did, 100% it's correct.
You decided that you're at Stool Primary.
For those listening, Stool's country, Victoria,
it's farmland, salt of the earth type of people.
Your dad's a principal at the school.
And for your birthday in grade three or four,
you wanted a pink polo top, true?
Not entirely true.
I think mum wanted a daughter
and she's brought the pink T-shirt
and said, son, that's your birthday present.
I'm not buying that for a second, mate,
because I know exactly how you operate
and you would have seen that that was a look
that you wanted to go with.
Now tell me what it was like
walking through the gates of primary school
wearing a pink polo
and did you get in a fight literally
as you walked through the gate?
Not at all, not at all.
A week later, most people were in a pink T-shirt
You're not going to tell the truth here, mate.
I will tell some stories.
But jettisoning forward, mate, that has been you.
I remember when I first met you,
we'd be going out and you'd turn up in this kit
and we'd go, oh my God, mate,
what are you looking at?
Leather pants or something.
But sure enough, it was about a three-year lag.
We'd be buying those clothes three years.
Where did that come from, mate?
That sense of style for a kid growing up in country schools
and all around regional Victoria.
How did you get that sense?
Well, I think first, let's be fair
and paint the story on both sides of the ledger here.
I mean, you were getting around a pair of tweed pants there
that looked like Arnold Palmer off the golf course.
They were a regular Saturday night.
I'd be curious to know where they came from.
I haven't gone on and created
one of the great fashion businesses in the world.
I knew exactly where my skill set was
and it wasn't in that space.
But let's move then into the footy part of your life.
As a young kid, mate,
you're a bottom age under 12 state player for Victoria.
Now, for those listening, that takes a bit.
You've got to be a gun junior to play under 12 state twice.
How much of a passion was it for you at that age?
Yeah, definitely growing up,
footy was absolute as a country kid.
You probably got tennis,
tennis in the summer,
a bit of yabbing and footy.
So the choices are pretty limited,
but I particularly love,
you know, the old man played country footy a lot
and with two brothers,
that was always the after school thing
that we did in the backyard
or up at the local footy ground.
And so, yeah, I was pretty passionate about it
from a young age onwards.
And our friendship started at the Bulldogs
and you went on to play over 100 games
and played 20 odd at Melbourne as well.
Now, it's fascinating.
and you are as far removed from being an AFL player
as anyone I know.
And it just seems like, you know,
it seems like a lifetime ago for me.
But when I look at you,
I think it's hard to even remember you out in the football field.
And that's not to downplay,
less than 5% of people get to play.
It might even be less than that.
So to get to that level was enormous.
But how would you describe,
because you're incredibly athletic,
you could run and jump and do all those things,
but you weren't someone really invested in football,
even when you were playing.
Is that fair to say?
the game for the game,
but all the stuff around the fringes
didn't excite me too much at all.
And I've never been much of a couch potato
in terms of watching the game on TV,
even since retiring.
I probably count on one hand
the number of times I've been to a football match.
So, but, you know,
generally that career was fantastic.
And obviously our friendship spawned out of that.
But when you're a young sort of fit guy
and playing and turning up to a work environment
with 50 of your best mates every day
something which I think is a brilliant experience
for any young guy.
And what you could do,
which was remarkable,
and I'm going to have to share this story here,
which I know is true
because I was sitting next to you
when this one happened.
But if you said to you,
go and play Matthew Richardson,
who was one of the great athletes of our time
and a remarkable player,
you could just go and do that.
Athletically, you could play
and you had some great battles with him
over the journey and other players.
But when you got too many instructions
or a coach just tried
your head tended to spin off a little bit.
I'll never forget,
we were playing the Fremantle Dockers.
They'd just been brought into the competition.
Terry Wallace is our coach
who was obsessed with football,
more than any person I think I've ever met in my life.
And he was so pissed off
that the players went doing their research
and he sat us in the room,
gave a blank piece of paper,
unless you can name the vast majority
of the Fremantle side,
and no one knew in the competition
and even the guys that loved their footy
were a bit stressed.
But I remember looking at your bit
of paper and I was like,
and I'm sure there was only one name
on that bit of paper.
Yeah, I thought that test
was a little bit unfair.
It sort of came out of the blue.
We were ambushed a little bit.
Normally in that environment,
you're given a week or two
to do your homework
and a little preparation for the test.
But that one was sprung on us.
Yeah, I must admit,
I wasn't very well prepared for that one.
The thing you didn't add there
is that the name that you wrote down
was Jason Akamanis,
who was Brisbane Lions
Brownlow medalist at that stage.
So not only did you write one name down,
he actually played for another club.
So I think that was where
your transition was sort of going.
Maybe footy's heading out
and you're heading into a different path,
which around that time,
and you had an amazing year that year
and we get to a prelim final.
I think around then you started
your first clothing label,
again, you carved a path here
because there weren't players
or AFL players doing that.
It was called St. Lenny.
I've still got some of your T-shirts
made from back in 1997.
Yeah, where did the idea come for that?
And it was an incredible success.
In the first 12 months,
you turned over, you know,
a huge amount of money
in a startup business.
Tell us about that story.
Yeah, I think, look,
I don't know if apparel
was necessarily something
that was the focus more
than the business side of things,
but I just had met some people
at the time that were in apparel
and was curious about
what they were doing
and decided to give it a go,
actually, with a teammate, Nathan Brown.
And it was a really enjoyable experience.
Just, you know, I think
I just love the business side of it.
Probably more than anything.
And that was a great way
to cut your teeth, basically.
People mightn't understand
your sense of creativity.
And I always found this remarkable, mate,
is spending a lot of time with you
for a very vast part of my life.
There's things that you think of
that I just aren't even anywhere near
the world that I operate.
You had that scent that the T-shirts were washed in.
It was, and I remember picking it up
the first time and you wanted to, you know,
to wear it was like a lemon center, you know,
and it was a really, you know,
successful start, wasn't it?
who knows nothing about business,
never been in a clothing label.
Now, the end wasn't so good.
You borrowed a bit of money
and probably overstretched yourself a little bit.
So, a bit of a life lesson
in your first attempt?
Yeah, a really strong feedback loop,
as I tend to call them.
Yeah, I think that, you know,
those feedback loops are a critical part
of personal growth.
And, you know, I actually really enjoy
And I think, you know, at the time,
sometimes you can't see those
kicks in the balls that happen.
But then when you look back and you reflect
and you go into the next chapter,
how critical it was to have that experience.
And if you're open to the learning
of that experience, then, you know,
it was actually incredibly helpful
for the next chapter.
So, people think of an overnight success,
but that, from my experience,
is an overnight success
is often take 15 years of learning.
You saw me fall on my face
for 20 years prior to that.
So, you know exactly that wasn't the truth.
But in credit to you, I saw you,
you know, you never dwell on that.
You take 100% ownership of any mistake.
You're incredible.
It's saying, hey, I look straight in the mirror.
This is what I contributed to that mistake.
So, what sort of things did you learn?
Because you're manufacturing
in overseas parts of the world
and you had a crack at, I think,
New York Fashion Week and a few.
What sort of lessons did you learn
from that first attempt?
I think the most important one
is the business model.
And, you know, I think at that time,
wholesale in the apparel industry
was pretty much how you got distribution
aside from retail,
which requires an enormous outlay.
And if capital would get up
and running in retail.
So, the obvious sort of distribution model
is wholesale back then.
And since now we have e-commerce.
But that wholesale business model,
I, you know, as I went on
and started Triangle,
I found out that that was probably
And maybe to say it's flawed
is probably not the right thing,
but I wasn't running it the right way.
And I took on, you know, production,
which I was running in Australia
and running comfortably.
I tried to move that to China.
And dealing with the Chinese
and manufacturing,
you're dealing with another language
in another country,
trying to get products shipped to Australia.
That was just a steep learning curve
that, you know, I guess combination of events
was the undoing of that business.
But a really important lesson
to understand that that model,
as I started the next business,
wasn't the right model
for that time period anymore.
For me, you're the person
that thinks that something is a good idea
and a minute later you do it.
and a lot of people procrastinate
and maybe never get to doing things
and find it really hard.
I'll probably in that latter bracket,
I think a long time before
you have a crack at doing something.
But, you know, to go one step back,
and I could give a hundred examples.
I remember sitting next to you one day at a cafe
and I always thought it'd be good to fly a plane.
Fast forward 24 hours,
you're flying over my head,
sending a message or close enough to it.
Then you go and do a commercial pilot's license
in the shortest possible time,
which I think exhausted all of your funds
that you had in life.
you get to the end of that six months and go,
geez, I don't think being a pilot's for me.
You like to learn from experience, don't you?
You like to actually go down the full path.
I actually really enjoyed the pilot scene
and it was a great,
and I think as when you're young in life,
you don't exactly know where you're going to end up.
And it's only, to me,
it was more of a process of elimination
to finally discover the things
that you're genuinely passionate and interested in.
And I think I'm sort of fortunate now
that what I do is everything I absolutely love.
There's no, you know,
I'm not waking up each day going,
God, this really sucks.
And, you know, how do I get out of this scenario?
So trying things, I think,
is an important part of that process
of throwing yourself into it and giving it a go.
And it's either a yay or an ay
and pivot or persevere.
And I suppose then, as you said,
the end of Lenny, it's bankruptcy
and you go through that.
And I remember that time of living in Elwood,
living on your own,
Scooby the dog and you.
you had a pretty challenging couple of years there
and, you know, we're a bit concerned about you
as your mates and you're going to, you know,
you're capped at what you can earn
and you sort of had your push bike
and public transport.
I mean, you're in great form in that time as well.
It was always great fun to catch up with you.
But how challenging was that time
when you look back before you then launch into Triangle?
Yeah, like, you know,
I think you fight that stuff in your head a lot
when it first happens.
But then when you finally make peace with it,
to be honest, it wasn't that bad at all.
And in fact, you,
the great lessons of those experiences,
you know, when you think happiness is connected
to all these material things and this image and whatever,
it actually, the great learning of that was,
I was equally as happy, you know,
with no money as I have been with all the money in the world.
And so, you know, you get a great perspective
from those experiences.
And I think that, you know, again,
actually I wouldn't recommend it to anyone,
but it was probably one of the best experiences I've had
in terms of learning and growth.
Because you actually got to the point where you went,
even with the barest of minimum,
you're not going to be able to do that.
You're not going to be able to do that.
You're not going to be able to do that.
You're not going to be able to do that.
And you still feel that now.
Your life's changed.
Well, I think it also prioritizes in your head what's,
you know, what are the things that are,
when it boils down to it and everything's taken away from you,
fundamentally how do you get through a day
and what are the things that are critical
to your happiness during that day?
And you realize that a lot of the economic
and financial things are actually far from the things
that are actually driving your happiness.
So for me, that was a brilliant experience to have
because I think, you know,
that was a great lesson to become aware of.
your earnings are about $30,000 a year.
You're, you know,
having to find a way to get through.
you look back on that as a great experience.
And this is the phone call I'll never forget.
Hey, man, I met a girl.
I'm moving to Hong Kong.
I've sold all my entire possessions.
And again, I'll add my 10%,
but I think that might've been less than $40,000,
everything you owned.
It was about 12, actually.
It was $12,000, everything you owned.
I'm moving to Hong Kong
and I'm starting a bikini business.
A few of your mates were even more concerned
about you at that stage.
I don't understand what part of that story
is not compelling.
I mean, I think it sounds pretty rock solid to me.
No, it doesn't pass the sniff test at all, that one.
But again, it was, there was no plan B.
It was that that was the clearest thing in my head
and just go for it.
And you and Aaron,
and you've got two beautiful kids,
on the back of that relationship
and you moved to Hong Kong.
But I can remember, you know,
it was canned soup for the early days over there
and you might have a cocktail happy hour,
So what was your theory?
How were you planning to get through that one?
I can't, I think it started basically,
you know, just dialing into in your own head
of what interests you the most,
what are you passionate about?
And absolutely, I knew if I was to get out of bed every day
and put my heart and soul into something,
that was the number one thing I wanted to do.
And just went and tackled it
and approached it that way.
So every day was just, you know,
and I guess those little eating canned soup
it actually wasn't too bad.
And so you just get through those things
because it's not the big ticket items, you know.
I guess being passionate about something for me
was at the top of my list
far more than the bed I slept in
or under what roof it was
or what was being served up for dinner.
And so, yeah, there was definitely a lot of challenges
and a lot of growth and a lot of feedback loops.
But the whole experience was incredibly enjoyable.
You know, to move from Melbourne
where I was riding a fixie round for three years
through my bankruptcy,
scratching my head going,
what did I stuff up?
And good chance to reflect and think about it.
Then to moving across to Hong Kong
and, you know, there were so many experiences in Hong Kong
with, you know, I was traveling up to China every day
trying to get this business off the ground,
working with a factory, staying in a hotel,
15 bucks a night or some of the meals I ate in,
you know, just going and putting,
putting myself in a restaurant
that there's no people that spoke English
and pointing to a dish,
two tables across and saying, I'll have that.
And there was just lots of colorful experiences
that sort of made that journey enjoyable.
And particularly when the brand started to get traction
and you sort of reflect on what you had to do
to get to that point,
definitely wasn't a straight line.
I know you're humble and you're not,
you're giving me nothing on the pink polo shirt,
which is a hundred percent true.
And you're downplaying the success of Lenny
and your creativity.
So I know what you're like,
you're not going to take creative credit
for a lot of these things,
but how did you have in your mind
that a neoprene wetsuit material bikini
was a gap in the market?
Now explain that one for us, can you?
It's, well, I guess to rewind a little bit
before we left for Hong Kong,
it was actually our first day with Erin
and she went round that morning,
decided to choose the beach as a first date location.
Good litmus test.
But when she finally arrived,
she said, you wouldn't believe how difficult it is.
She wanted to impress and buy a new bikini.
And she says, it's actually really difficult
to find a new bikini.
You have a couple of brands,
which are, you know, sort of more premium end.
And then it was the surf brands at the other end
and her interest was more in the fashion part in the middle.
And so, you know, a lot of the conversation on that day
was about why don't we give this a crack
and see if we can create a product
for potentially a gap in the market.
It was more looking at the Australian market.
And so, I guess once we had sort of set that as a goal
to start a brand was, you know, getting across to Hong Kong.
The reason, you know, Hong Kong was because
being close to the supply chain was really important,
being close to the factory, being able to ensure.
I'd had some experiences working with another company
where you're FedExing stuff back and forth.
And so, for me, it made sense to be in Hong Kong
so you could really control
that initial development of the product.
And then, you know,
the first bit of it was, you know,
the first bit is just a test.
At some point, you've got to take the step forward,
set up a website and find out if anyone actually can,
you can get a person to the website firstly.
And then secondly, if anyone will buy anything.
So, the neoprene thing was just, again,
we were experimenting with so many different materials
and fabrics and that was next on the list to try.
This is where the story is extraordinary.
I remember, you know, you saying, you know,
if I could sell one bikini a day,
I can live in Hong Kong and survive and get through
or whatever your numbers were.
And suddenly, you're selling two a day.
And I remember the phone call.
I remember you, I've just done my 15th trip down the stairs
carrying boxes to get to the post office.
And tell us the explosion moment
because there's a story around the Kardashians
and you strategically,
and Erin had some real sophistication
on the online e-commerce part of it too.
But when was the moment you went,
oh, this has gone out of control here?
Yeah, like you said, that was the number
was to try and get to selling one a day,
which was going to give us around 30,000 a year revenue
and replace my previous salary.
And I decided that for me, that was happiness.
And I'd be happy as a pig and shit
if I could get to that number.
And yeah, it was funny just by focusing on that.
And then Erin sort of brought to the table
the social media side
and she was heavily an Instagram user at the time
and really understood that platform.
So as we started to grow,
and again, this was just born out of
having no funds to do anything, basically.
You know, we've got to,
invent this stuff ourself
because there is no PR agency.
There is, you know,
we don't have the luxury of being able
to pay for those services.
And because Instagram in its infancy
and the gifting side of things,
and Erin had sort of explained that,
you know, some brands are doing this gifting.
And so we just started
in a like for like kind of fashion
where we didn't have a very big following.
So we'd target people on a similar level to us
rather than sort of approaching
the sort of more high profile people.
But then one day, you know,
Erin and I having conversation,
I said, who's, you know,
would represent our demographic?
You know, if we could pipe through
and pick the best girl in the world
that would represent the product and the brand.
And then at the time, Erin said, you know,
by far it's Kendall Jenner.
She's got the, you know,
she's similar demographic to our customer,
has incredible following.
And so we decided that Kendall
was far too big to go after personally.
So we started with a friendship network
and just started gifting to all her friends.
And then miraculously, a month later,
we got an email from Kendall saying, you know,
all my friends are wearing your product.
Can I get some basically?
And so we sent, you know,
all six products that we had online out to her.
She tweeted to 5 million people.
And that sort of for us was a pivotal moment
in, I guess, engaging the US audience
and things just went sort of parabolic after that.
Yeah, it was great.
Your life changes is fair to say,
you know, from canned soup to this,
this incredible model,
this incredible e-commerce model
and your circumstances change.
And as your mate watching that close hand,
it was just an extraordinary thing to happen.
You know, you've been through that cycle now.
That's, you know, several years ago.
I remember speaking at one stage and you, you know,
you're going, there is no growth in my life at the moment
because I've got all these things
I can experience now freely.
But is that joyful or did you look back and think,
God, there's a few landmines coming my way
that I didn't see?
Like, I think there's always,
there's room for growth
and I probably was referring probably on the business side
then with sort of where everything seemed to be working
for a period of time.
But those moments are always short-lived
and if you're talking about regrets,
I do have one regret and that was, you know,
we went to a company in Atlanta for some marketing advice.
We felt like the brand had grown so much
and reached a level that way beyond our expectations
that we felt perhaps some outside consulting
would be appropriate just from people
who perhaps experienced,
growth in those areas.
And they recommended from a marketing perspective
that we tell the brand story,
that we tell financially, you know,
sort of it's hard for people to understand growth
if you don't put numbers and figures to that growth.
But I felt, you know, it wasn't really us
in terms of going out and being quite public about that.
But we did it based on their advice
and trusting their advice.
But I think at the time,
it probably put a target on our back
in a number of different areas.
And we got copped.
After that, you know, we got quite a bit of publicity.
We were in, you know, all the Australian newspapers,
we were on Bloomberg TV and bits and pieces like that,
which was a great experience.
But then, you know, we had everyone from Walmart
to Kmart, Target, bras and things,
Victoria's Secret with their 1500 stores
just blatantly copying all our products.
So in terms of growth, that was another growth chapter
when it didn't feel,
it felt like everything was going backwards
and you've just been copied everywhere
and you had this, I guess,
intellectual property lesson
that I didn't necessarily choose,
but was forced upon us.
And, but again, I think the outcome of that
was a really good business lesson
about growing a brand, building a brand,
intellectual property.
And I guess the long and the short of it,
where I've sort of concluded, you know,
that that sits today is that, you know,
the best form of intellectual property protection
And, you know, so that tipped us into another,
you know, I think in our brand,
now the innovation cycle
and that we've ramped up greatly.
And, you know, I think it's very difficult now
for a brand to copy us because of that experience.
So, yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?
I mean, even firsthand as your mate,
I could just see,
there was a point in time where two people a week
are ringing me to try and get your number
because that article and the wealth
and you're, you know, appearing in BRW Rich List
and it just, and, you know,
you can hear talking to you now,
it's very hard to get you to take credit for anything, mate.
That put you out there in a way,
you know, I could tell you're uncomfortable with
and I can tell you the reasons why you were doing it
were pretty clear because it was, you know,
the growth strategy.
But, yeah, again, for you to be able to find a solution to that,
that seems to me sums you up.
Here's a challenge.
I've got two ways to front.
I can either get really upset about it
or I'll just find a solution.
Is that how your mind works when these things come up?
Yeah, I think the more times you get kicked in the balls,
you end up with a big set of rubber balls
But pretty much, you know,
I think you either drop the bottom lip
and it consumes you for a long period
or you just get into solution mode.
I think, you know, you and I share a story of a guy
that we used to, you know, a life coach
that we used to speak to a little bit
and I loved his phrase about talking about people
being in the growers club
and I think the quickie,
you can flick your brain into that mode
in those moments of being in the growers club
and look for the lesson,
look for the, what's the,
how can I personally grow out of this
and what's the lesson I can learn?
And as you move into that mode quickly,
I think it just helps moving on.
Growers club is a term you and I speak about a lot,
and it's part of what we're trying to talk about
in this podcast as well,
is sort of leadership and lifelong learning.
And my great old friend, Matt Waterwitz,
and I have this passion for Alita,
this business we've started and created
and identifying that we think there's a big shift
going on in leadership now from the old hierarchy,
which we experienced in footy.
The coach was the coach.
He had no sense of leadership.
He had no say or no feedback,
no involvement at all in that environment at all
and working in corporate environments
where the boss has got the corner office,
you take your instructions,
here's your to-do list and you have no voice.
And so now this sort of empowered model
where really leaders are wanting to sort of connect
with their staff and hear from them
and see their staff as assets and collaborative
and the new sporting coaches we've dealt with
are very much in this space.
But by having spent a bit of time with you
and got to know your team at Triforce,
you are at the absolute upper echelon
of empowering your staff.
Tell us how that works for you
because it's quite remarkable to see
how much autonomy you give to people that work for you.
I think it's just born out of laziness,
No, look, to be honest,
I think early days, you know,
and trying to get a business model right,
there was a book I read called Maverick.
Ricardo Semler's book.
And I found that a very interesting,
I guess, approach
Managing a business,
he was given his father's business at a young age
and there was a lot of hierarchy in that business
it became his responsibility to look after it
and sort of split the business
into small democratic groups
and really empowered people within those groups.
And I tried some iterations of that
unsuccessfully early days at Triangle.
And, you know, just through, I guess,
trying to curate and learn from those experiences,
we've probably ended up now
there's a fair bit of autonomy within the group.
We're in a unique situation with geographically
where we're in all corners of the world.
And I think this COVID environment's made it
a little bit where we would see each other more frequently.
We see each other far less frequently now.
So you've got people in Monaco,
And you're all over the place.
Yeah, that's interesting, you know,
But how does it work for you?
You know, how do you allow that sort of autonomy
in a business that's at the level you've created?
Yeah, it was like, I mean, when you look at it now,
there's definitely, you know, a lot of, you know,
geographically we're quite diverse.
But most of those places were set up sort of step by,
like Hong Kong was where we first lived.
So an office was set up there for the supply chain.
Then as the company grew and economically things
shifted a little bit, we were looking for tax efficiencies.
And that's where I guess Jersey
and Monaco came into it.
And then later on looking to our first step into retail.
And so Australia and our store in Bondi sort of evolved a bit.
And then I guess just as we looked and added personnel along the way,
because we're e-commerce,
it became far less important to have everyone turning up to an office every day.
You know, we also travel a lot for our photo shoots.
And I guess also a lot of reading early on that as I was setting up the business,
it just made sense.
It made sense to have,
there's some countries around the world where it makes sense to have,
there's a certain skill set,
like the Philippines are incredibly,
is an incredibly good place to,
from a customer service perspective,
Hong Kong for supply chain,
Jersey for finances.
And so that was sort of more going,
well, we're e-commerce.
We don't need to all assemble in an office every day.
And so why not make it as lean and as efficient as we can
with the best people in the best countries appropriate to that skill set?
And I think one of the saddest things,
and I know this is the antithesis of what you stand for,
is people end up in a job or environment,
they're too scared to change because the wage, you know,
supports them personally or their family,
but you don't have a voice.
And, you know, we spend, you know,
I think it's a third of our life in our working environments.
And if they're not, you know,
fulfilled or you're not in an environment that's positive for you,
that's a lot of pain that's caused maybe by,
by leaders who just don't really understand their impact on those underneath.
So my huge passion for, for, for trying to,
but what you're saying, once you get to that level,
having met your staff, they're incredibly, you know,
the young, smart, they love their environment.
They're so passionate about your product, what they do.
They love the people they work with.
They're incredible people.
And you're saying it just creates balance in your life as well.
So you get the efficiencies and the life balance yourself.
Is that the end result?
Yeah, absolutely.
I guess we're fortunate in the company now that, you know,
we've been through a few cycles of growth and then, you know,
things came back a little bit when we got copied and we've had a small bit of
personnel change along the way, but because we're pretty lean,
I think that the group that's there now,
they are quite a harmonious group because I think, you know,
just over the years we've kept persisting and seeing how that we can evolve it
and change it so that, you know,
people are satisfied within their job and enjoying what they do.
in some cases that didn't work out with some of the staff that came through,
but, and perhaps, you know,
from a management perspective we've shifted how we treat each staff member a
little bit, which I think has been, it's been really good as well.
And, and so now, you know, performance wise, things are going really well.
What would you say to someone who's sitting in a work environment that
they're not satisfied with and they're frustrated with,
or to someone who's a leader in an environment that maybe hasn't got the
self-reflection that you have, which is,
which is take total responsibility,
and continue to improve what, what, what's the, what's the message?
How do you change it?
it definitely wouldn't be sell everything that you've got and buy a one-way
ticket to Hong Kong.
I think it's important just to dial into what's driving you and,
and understand, you know, what, what, what puts fire in your belly.
Cause, cause if you're just waking up and, and, you know,
sort of walking out the door as a zombie and just clocking in and following a
checklist and then going home and then numbing yourself with,
with the TV and a few beers on the weekend, it's,
I think connecting to your passion is, is probably the most critical bit.
Now, before I mentioned, you know,
pick up the phone and ringing you and you could be in the Alps with Wim Hof.
What are you talking about, mate? You're in your board shorts,
you're walking through the Alps and you're with some crazy Dutch extreme
Iceman. How did that come about?
I hated the cold and, and, you know,
throughout 40 days never carry much body fat.
And so when we used to do the sessions down the ocean, I just,
it was just the absolute worst thing I felt like doing at the time and
stumbled across him on a YouTube ad one day and thought, how does it,
this guy was swimming in Antarctica in a pair of shorts and I'm talking about
how most people would go into the water and have cardiac arrest.
And Wim was just in there like he's on a tropical Island.
And I was going, you must have some secret sauce about what he's doing.
this is the curiosity kicked in and went on a journey to find out what his
secret sauce was, but which,
which ended up, you know,
which ended up on a four day retreat in Poland,
walking up Mount Schnezka in a pair of board shorts in minus 15 degrees and a
blizzard for, for six hours.
So that definitely throwing yourself in the deep end,
you find out what, what makes you tick in those moments.
But that was a bucket list thing for me is how to solve this fear of the cold.
And I got the great privilege only a couple of years later to spend about
three hours with him and interviewing one day.
And he was saying to me that day, it's like the cold's there,
just to be able to, you know,
just to remind you, if you're not present, you're going to feel the pain.
If you're present and you, and you breathe properly, you don't,
you don't feel the cold.
Can definitely vouch for that after six hours on Mount Schnezka at minus 15,
that presence is a big part of it.
this conversation is sort of born out of this passion for,
for a change in leadership that we're working through with our business
And you've got to know Matt over the time and we're sort of trying to get
some, some consistent questions to all the people.
We speak to them and early days to see your empowering leadership model
mate is, is inspiring to us trying to share that with other people as well.
But there's a handful of dimensions of learning and leadership that we're
keen to ask you some standard questions of all our leaders.
So I'm going to run these by you.
They might seem a bit dry for you, mate,
but see what you can come up with the first one.
What does self-leadership mean to you?
Self-leadership would be setting an example, you know,
just trying to extract the best out of yourself and,
and being an example for other people.
How do you go about positively impacting others in your environment?
I think it's just getting to know them on a,
on a personal level and genuinely being interested in them and caring about
them and caring about, you know,
I guess I don't ever look at triangle as being the final destination for them
that it's understand that we're a stepping stone in their career and,
you know, you want to develop them as people.
That is a fascinating line that you've just got there is that you've never
really wanted to put people and see if I can keep them for 10 or 15 years.
You're really comfortable in how do I make you as happy in that environment as
I understand that that may be a stepping stone to somewhere else.
that's truly what you,
you are all about,
And that's just based on personal experience too,
as you go through your career and,
we have different generations from young and our brands predominantly focused
on younger people,
but it shouldn't be the final destination.
You want those people to go on to bigger and better things.
And if we can sort of,
mutually work together and they can grow and learn from working with us and
they can add some value.
I think that's the,
you want to sort of encourage them to move on to bigger and better things is
been my approach.
And meeting those people,
they're extraordinary people because of the way that you collaborate with
How do you go about creating and sharing your vision?
it's over the journey that that's shifted,
and the models change,
but as I think it's just remaining flexible as well because,
curve balls sometimes frequently,
sometimes less frequently.
And so the business has had to adapt many times,
we've sort of been going since 2012.
hasn't been around that long,
there's been many times that we've need to pivot and change direction on,
on a number of things.
And just having a culture that I guess shares that mindset is enabled us to,
continue to grow and thrive in,
in a lot of environments.
And what's your approach to learning and improvement?
I think just asking a lot of questions and being open-minded and,
and generally interested.
How do you communicate with clarity?
Communicate with clarity.
Probably I find my best way of communicating is typically by phone or Zoom or
face-to-face would be number one preferred way.
I'm absolutely terrible on email.
my staff could verify that,
face-to-face is always.
how important is collaboration to you and how do you go about doing it?
Collaboration's super important.
I think it's difficult to go through this world doing it all on your own.
And it's important to find like-minded people.
I think passion is probably,
fairly high on the list there,
finding people who are passionate about what they do.
And if you can collaborate around a passion and a purpose,
that that's probably where I'd start.
I've got another couple of hours in me,
but in the interest of,
of time and we might have to do it again some stage,
but it is always a learning experience being around you.
But I have to go back the first time,
and I don't know what your experience is,
but the first time I,
you'd been at the club,
at least a year before me or six months before me.
And I remember looking around and going,
that bloke is the one guy I don't want to have anything to do with.
And about two weeks later,
It's a little judgmental.
It was a little bit.
you were bouncing off the walls and,
That was probably a bit extreme,
but we didn't get on those first two weeks.
Do you remember that?
I don't have the same grudge that you obviously had from back then.
It's turned on into one of life's great friendships,
Forever appreciative of it.
And I love chatting to you because I learn something every day.
Thanks for sharing some of it today,
It's inspirational,
great to catch up and,
and great to have worked with you guys as well.
Empowering Leaders was presented by me,
produced by Matt Dwyer,
with audio production by Darcy Thompson.
To start your leadership journey,
I encourage you to go to elitacollective.com,
take our Empowering Leaders Indicator Tool,
and understand the impact you have on your environment.
Join us at Elita to learn,