#78 The Art of Never Giving Up with Mackenzie Burgoyne

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:01 - (Carmen): Hi, Mackenzie, and welcome to the Committed Creative podcast.

0:00:04 - (Mackenzie): Thanks for having me.

0:00:06 - (Carmen): So the question I like to ask everyone when they first jump on is, who are you and what is it that you do?

0:00:12 - (Mackenzie): So, my name is Mackenzie Burgoyne. I own a health and wellness company. We do personalized personal training online and in person. We have a facility in Applecross, and we work with a lot of runners. I'm a long distance runner myself. I do marathons, I do ultra marathons, all sorts of running events. And we have a team. Another one of our coaches is a runner. We have a couple athletes. And we basically all put our brains together to come up with the simplest health and fitness solution for anybody. So we offer personal training, nutrition, lifestyle, comprehensive service across the board to make sure that we can make being healthy as easy as possible on anybody who wants to get healthy.

0:00:51 - (Carmen): And what got you into this line of business? Like, what made you want to start your company?

0:00:57 - (Mackenzie): So, growing up, I wanted to be a professional soccer player. I ended up getting a soccer scholarship to go over to the US in 2014. So I spent four years over there studying exercise science. I was trying to become a professional soccer player. So I was training as hard as I could and eventually got to the end of my career over there. I went to go to professional trials, and I sort of realized that I'd done all this hard work, but everybody else at that level has done equal amounts of hard work. And it was all the way down to the understanding of the game and those really sort of one percenters of improvement that made the difference if you were going to be a professional player or not.

0:01:39 - (Mackenzie): And that led me to the realization that if I had had a bit more support growing up, I might have actually been able to go professional. I grew up rurally in Brunswick Junction, down about one hundred and fifty K south of Perth. We didn't have access to the same level of coaching or support. And I thought if I had that problem growing up and that led to me not being able to pursue my ambitions to the fullest extent, maybe other people were having that problem as well. So if we can connect regular people with elite athletes, people that are elite in exercise science or knowledge in any field in the health industry, and do it online so that it's accessible for everybody, and at a price point that's accessible for everybody, then we can sort of change the future for a lot of people if they're having those struggles as well.

0:02:24 - (Carmen): That's awesome. And what are your favorite clients to work with then? Are they the types of people who maybe didn't have the support like you growing up.

0:02:33 - (Mackenzie): I think those sort of clients resonate with me a lot like young male and females growing up that are pursuing some sort of athletic pursuit, but might be low socioeconomic areas or something that is impacting the capabilities to get the support that they need. I think the biggest thing that leads to success is the work rate of somebody or their ability to stay disciplined. And if I can recognize that in somebody and they are willing to put the work in, that's what makes them my favorite client. It might not even be the client with those big ambitions, but if they're willing to rock up every day or respond to my messages and actually complete their homework, those other 23 hours outside of their training schedule on a given day are just as important as the one that we spend together. And if they can nail that other 23 hours, then they're absolutely an ideal client. And personally, I started the business working with runners just because I'm a runner. But now it's moved towards more that body recomposition for people that they're having challenges.

0:03:40 - (Mackenzie): I train a lot of business owners, so we have a shared mindset, which is awesome there, but they're lacking that time, or they're lacking the understanding of what they're needing to do. And if I can recognize that and really bring out that sort of make an impact in their life by changing their bodies to make them feel more comfortable, and then they're going to perform better in their workplace or in whatever their chosen pursuit is, that's the sort of favorite person that I like to work with.

0:04:05 - (Carmen): And you're obviously really passionate about health and fitness. But when it comes to running a business, even though you might have been well trained in health and fitness, running a business is a whole different ballgame, excuse the pun. So when you said about launching your company, what kind of advice and guidance did you get, and were you nervous about, like, did you have a partner to go into the business with, or did you do it on your own? And were you nervous about starting up a business from scratch?

0:04:35 - (Mackenzie): So I think when I first launched, the business was completely online. I was managing a gym, just a 24/7 commercial gym. I was enjoying being part of that atmosphere, but didn't feel like I had much direction personally with the growth of people that attended there. So COVID hit the gyms closed, and I figured I have to be doing something with my time. I'm not someone who can sort of sit idly. So I launched the business the very next day. Didn't actually think too much about it, which I think is a benefit.

0:05:07 - (Mackenzie): I didn't have time to get nervous or worried about what I was going to do. I just went for it. And I did have that backup of, okay, I still have my job in the background while I'm working on this new pursuit as well. And then I just committed. I think I set my goals. I'm like, all right, I'm going to read X amount of books a month. I'm going to start waking up at 05:00 a.m. I'm going to go to bed at 09:00 p.m.

0:05:28 - (Mackenzie): During those awake hours, I'm going to be dedicating my time to upskilling myself as much as possible. And I also committed to something. I've recommended this to a lot of people. There's one person I know who's done it. But for the 52 weeks of the year, my goal was 50 coffee dates. So I would on Instagram or whatever I was doing, I would reach out to somebody in the industry. I'd say, hey, can I buy you a coffee? I admire what you're doing and what you're creating with your business or your athletic pursuit or whatever it is, social media.

0:05:59 - (Mackenzie): I'd love to hear more about how you got there and how you got your success. So I did that for a year, and that gave me access to 50 new people who were high achievers in their field. I would read books, I would listen to podcasts of other people that I wouldn't get personal access to, but you can listen to a two hour interview and learn a lot from somebody and then just YouTube videos as well. And that sort of took me through the first twelve to 18 months of my business and launching relatively successfully there.

0:06:26 - (Mackenzie): And then about 1218 months in was when I got offered to join a partnership with my now business partner. He'd opened a gym just to help people. He's an athletic guy. He's an elite level hockey player. As he was growing up, and he was the same thing. He was now in middle aged, all his friends and family were becoming overweight, and he wanted to make an impact on their lives and help them. So he had his set up, I had my set up, we combined them together.

0:06:55 - (Mackenzie): And he's a successful entrepreneur. For the past 20 years, he's run a number of businesses successfully. So I then got access to his knowledge, and he would then introduce me to other people along the way that have helped us in the journey. So we've got a team of five staff, but also my business partner in the network that he has access to have been massive influences on the growth of the business.

0:07:17 - (Mackenzie): I have sort of this idea of the ultimate product that we want to create to make this simple health and fitness solution, but I don't know how to scale that up to work large scale to manage my staff, to do contracting, all those sort of things. Yet Murray, my business partner, does know those people who he's connected with us with, and we've been able to grow with that in mind. The whole time where I'm focusing on product, he's doing those back end tasks that I'm not as comfortable with. And as a team, we've worked together to grow to where we are now. In the past three and a half years, wE've been operating two in the gym and then one and a half completely online before that.

0:07:57 - (Carmen): Wow, what a journey. And I mean, you're young. How old are you? Do you mind? Me?

0:08:02 - (Mackenzie): 28 now?

0:08:02 - (Carmen): Yeah. I mean, you're still so young, and you've achieved so much, and I've known you for a while now, and I know you're super, super driven. Your social media account is doing really well, and I know that you get a lot of traction from that. How many of your customers come to you through social media?

0:08:18 - (Mackenzie): So we've done the business 100% organic marketing through social media. When I first started learning about business, I heard about these guys who had started creating a social media account and then used that to build a personal brand. And then they've used a personal brand to launch a product to sell to of some kind. So that was the sort of I had this understanding. I'd heard other people who did it, and I modeled my business off that. So I originally just started posting a lot of trend videos or funny videos to get people interested. They'd see my face every single day. So I posted every day for about two years to build that.

0:08:57 - (Mackenzie): And then since then, I've slowly reduced the quantity of content, but increased the quality and focused on just providing value consistently. If we provide value on a consistent basis, we don't really need to sell to anybody, because when they have a question, they're either going to come to our account because they know that we solve those problems for people like them every day, or they're going to send us a DM, and then they're eventually going to want to sign up from there. They can see what we're doing, they can see people like them are part of it and they're enjoying what we're doing.

0:09:29 - (Mackenzie): And that's how we've sort of grown and retained a really good audience with the social media, but also retention of members within the gym and the online community as well.

0:09:40 - (Carmen): Awesome. And you're also an ambassador for Lululemon and you did something amazing, like a week ago, two weeks ago. Now, can you tell us about that? Because I was certainly following your social media when you were doing that adventure.

0:09:53 - (Mackenzie): Yeah. So two weeks ago, I ran the 128 kilometer Cape to Cape Record down south. It's typically a five to six day hike running from Cape Lewin Lighthouse in Augusta, the Cape Naturalist Lighthouse in Dunsborough, and, yeah, in collaboration with Lululemon, we ran this, we videoed and photographed the entire day so that we could create a bit of a documentary around the experience. It was a goal that I sort of set a few years ago. I've always been having these athletic pursuits, first as a soccer player and then a runner.

0:10:26 - (Mackenzie): And I had always focused, I guess, on my performance and if I can get faster, that's going to make people think I'm a good runner and then they're going to want to work with me. But I came to realize that that only makes other runners want to work with you. And if I'm trying to encourage more people to participate in the sport, doing something out there and crazy that gets a lot of attention is actually going to inspire a lot more people to think that they can do that. So it was about two years ago now.

0:10:58 - (Mackenzie): My friend Cam and I, we hiked the Bilman track from Albany to Perth and that was a thousand K's. We did that over three weeks and that's when we both sort of realized that we were getting this insane amount of attention, just doing this thing that we kind of been doing a little bit already, but we just went all in on this one event and, yeah, a lot of attention from that. So that was where we sort of thought, okay, getting another minute off my half marathon time or a couple of minutes off my marathon time is cool, but running 128 km, everybody on the planet can resonate with that and that must be an extraordinary achievement and really cool. And people want to understand the mindset that goes into that or just the storyline across the whole day.

0:11:40 - (Mackenzie): So, yeah, we did the Bib track. I attempted the Cape to Cape Record last year, failed. I attempted an ultra last year, failed. And then this year I've gone back and completed those two challenges. And, yeah, successfully making it through them not only was really good for the audience to see and appreciate, but most of those followers have been watching since I just started running it. So they watched me fail and then they watched me return and succeed. And that's really beneficial for them to understand that their health and fitness journey is not always going to be a linear trajectory of improvement. Well, no matter who you are, you're going to experience challenges along the way and you're not going to succeed in everything.

0:12:23 - (Mackenzie): But as long as you keep getting out there and putting 1ft in front of another, eventually you will.

0:12:28 - (Carmen): And, I mean, how long did it take you to run the Cape to Cape?

0:12:31 - (Mackenzie): It was 15 hours and 43 minutes and 6 seconds. So I got the record by twelve minutes.

0:12:37 - (Carmen): Nuts. Nuts. So when you say you failed it last year, does that mean you failed to complete it or you failed to get the record time?

0:12:45 - (Mackenzie): So we went last year for the unsupported record. So these records have a few different categories. Unsupported means you need to carry all of your gear from start to finish. You can get water from public water fountains. And that's what we went for last year, myself and a friend. We got to about halfway. Everything was looking good. We were super confident of getting the record, but unfortunately, Shep took a turn left, I took a turn right. At one point, we had no phone reception to contact each other. We would have just missed each other. He was just behind me and then he wasn't, and then I was standing around trying to call him.

0:13:21 - (Mackenzie): It's all this big scattered mess for about an hour and a half. When I eventually ran into some other people, they told me he went that way. I ran up the beach, found him connected back up, but we weren't going to be able to return to back where we were and then complete the record in time. So we thought it would be the smartest option just to pull the pin and then set about the plan of returning again. So this year went for the solo supported record, which means you can have any guidance along the way that you need. It's obviously a faster time that you need a hit to get the record, but that also meant with all the support, I could have food, I could have water, I didn't have to carry everything.

0:13:57 - (Mackenzie): But for me, the big thing was to inspire other people to go and challenge themselves. So this also allowed us to have a film crew out on the event for the day where we've put in this documentary together, which we'll release very soon.

0:14:10 - (Carmen): And what were some of the challenges along the way? Like, did you ever feel like giving up?

0:14:15 - (Mackenzie): I never felt like giving up, mainly because I talked about it so much. And I had all these people down there, expectations. So I was like, all right, well, even if this doesn't work out, we'll get a good story out of it. So giving up wasn't really on the radar. But there were some points where I didn't feel like I was going to get the record anymore. Looking ahead on the weather, everything looked perfect. We had plenty of light. The conditions were cool or meant to be cool.

0:14:44 - (Mackenzie): I'd done all the planning, yet the very first stop, I somehow read the map wrong and I'd lost 10 km. So I was meant to get here at this time and have covered X amount of K's. I got there and there was ten K's less on my GPS. So I was there an hour early. My crew wasn't ready. They'd just parked the car and they were like, oh, he might come down from here in about an hour. And suddenly I'm there. We're really scattered. So we've wasted a bit of time off the bat and I've lost. I'm now five minutes behind record pace or goal pace that I was thinking eventually caught back up on that in the next section, and then the sun really started to beat down. There's not much shade on the trail at all.

0:15:24 - (Mackenzie): Obviously you're working at a decently high work rate, and a lot of it is beach running as well. So there's only so fast you can go, and when the heat is up, your heart rate's lifting. And then because of that, I couldn't digest any food or fuel properly. I started having some stomach issues. So Having to slow down on fuel consumption then meant that I couldn't drink my water either, because all my water had bicks in it. So it was like a hydration and fuel supplement.

0:15:53 - (Mackenzie): So then I started getting dehydrated, which slowed me down even more. And then the next stop, then I was like, all right, we got to fill my thing with ice to cool me down. And then we didn't top up the water as much, so I ran out of water. I eventually found somebody walking along and I guzzled out of the water bottle. They were very helpful. I don't know who it was. Random stranger, but thank you.

0:16:17 - (Mackenzie): And that was a pretty rough three to 4 hours in the middle of the day where I went from goal pace all the way down to all right, if I don't speed up, I'm not getting the record anymore. And then as the sun dropped down and the light breeze came in, I was able to pick it up in the sort of later stages of the run, eventually still with maybe an hour and a half to go, it was pretty touch and go. I knew the last section of the run really well, so I felt confident running it, but it was very dark. I had my headlamp. I ended up tripping over some rocks, cutting over my leg and arm, got back up, kept going, and then my headlamp died. It was just a bit of a stitch up, but yeah, eventually came in twelve minutes spare on the record and yeah, super stoked. And I don't think a challenge like that would be complete without something going wrong.

0:17:04 - (Mackenzie): So if it went all to plan awesome, I would have got a faster time. But I think it's in those challenges that you learn a lot about yourself and your ability to endure and overcome those adversities and be resilient and yeah, I'm proud of myself for getting there.

0:17:17 - (Carmen): In the end, you should be. It's an amazing feat. And did you have to do much training for it? Because obviously it's like more than three marathons back to back, which is mental. So how much preparation did you have to do?

0:17:30 - (Mackenzie): So I planned it last year, about a month after my goal marathon for the year, and because that went so successfully last year, I just figured that I would be in an equal, if not better spot this year around. So I ran the marathon, the Perth Marathon, three weeks prior to this record run and I didn't quite perform as good as I thought I would, but there was more like weather dependent, but I pulled up with a bit of a calf strain. So I'd ran four times in the three weeks prior, which wasn't ideal. I would have rather to get some long time out in the bush or ideally on sand, because fifty K of this run is on the sand.

0:18:10 - (Mackenzie): But unfortunately I didn't get any of that. But I still felt good going into it, luckily just off the back of the marathon build there.

0:18:17 - (Carmen): And how much training for something like that or actually participating in an event like that is related to your mindset? And how much of it do you think is physical fitness? Like, what do you think is more important?

0:18:29 - (Mackenzie): I think to be at the top level of something like that, obviously everybody who's competing at the top level is going to be doing similar amounts of training. They're going to be feeling as fit as possible when they enter the event and they're going to feel confident. And I think the determining factor really is the mental side of things. There's not many sports where the male female participants at the top are really equal. And this is one of those because it is physical, obviously, but it gets to that stage where everybody's legs are going to hurt. At 100, you've still got 28 to go.

0:19:07 - (Mackenzie): So it's all about the mental game from that point. And it's not really about who can go the fastest, but who can slow down the least across the day. So if you can be disciplined across the day on reducing your rest time or walking where you need to, running where you need to, and just not taking those extra breaks where you don't need to, that's really where you're going to make up time on somebody else.

0:19:30 - (Mackenzie): So it takes a lot of just resilience of like, I've got to climb up this hill, am I going to walk it or am I going to run it? Like, my legs are sore? But okay, we're going to run it so that we can make the time. And it's definitely the mental fortitude that comes in at those points where it does get a bit more challenging.

0:19:48 - (Carmen): And how much do you think you can learn about business from doing events like this? I mean, you mentioned just in that short spiel about resilience and determination, persistence. What are some other lessons that you learn from training that you can implement into your own business and growing your own company? Yeah.

0:20:06 - (Mackenzie): So I think it's a really interesting experience to be participating in business and in long distance running. I think that they have a lot of overlapping factors that make you successful, and one of those being just the ability to continue to endure and to continue to work hard at whatever sustainable, high work rate you find possible. So there's always going to be challenges that you have to overcome in business. There's always going to be challenges that you have to overcome in running, but as long as you can continue to put the work in every day, you do continue to see improvement.

0:20:41 - (Mackenzie): Running is really unique in the fact that it's all about the amount of time you put in is about how good you're going to get. And the same with business, the more time you can put into it, the better your business is going to go because you're going to be able to keep refining different processes. But the key on both of those things is sustainability. If you're always working at a high work rate while you're running, you're going to get injured. If you're always working at a high work rate while you're in business, you're going to burn out. So it's important to practice self care, and that's equal recovery or taking a day off here and there, that sustainable and focusing on sustainability and focusing on longevity is going to be two of the most important factors.

0:21:23 - (Mackenzie): You've also got goal setting. So if you can set goals and ambitions following what I use is the SmART acronym. So specific, measurable, action oriented, realistic, and timed goals, be it in your business or in running, is your goal specific? So if we're talking business, I want to increase my annual revenue. All right? That's a specific goal by 20%. Okay? That's measurable. It's realistic. By the end of next financial year.

0:21:52 - (Mackenzie): Now, there's a timestamp on that, and by increasing my organic reach on social media. So that's an action that you can put in place in order to achieve that goal. Same way you would break down a goal for running. If you wanted to run a marathon at the end of the year, you'd do X amount of training, then you would then break down the steps in order to achieve that. So I think goal setting is really important on both running and in business.

0:22:14 - (Mackenzie): You've also got strategic thinking as well. If you can plan for a million different scenarios in your business, depending if there's something negative happening or something positive happening. If you've planned for every scenario, you're able to adapt and overcome that scenario, and you can stick true to your mission. So whatever values that you feel are instilled in you personally or within your mission statement, within your business, you can look at these opportunities coming your way. You can have strategically thought about how you would move ahead with those opportunities, and you can use your mission underlying your purpose to move forward with the one that best suits you. So I think, yeah, in running a similar sort of setup, if something goes wrong on an ultramarathon, which it no doubt will, are you scenario planning and ready to either take that opportunity or deal with that negative thing that's come your way and continue to move forward from there?

0:23:07 - (Carmen): I feel like you've planned for different scenarios with your business because you've obviously got the online portion of it, which you started with, which is great. If there's another COVID or something like that, you can always take it online. Talking about the social media there, where you said about growing organically, what are some tips that you could give our listeners about how you've managed to grow your social media organicallY?

0:23:30 - (Mackenzie): Yeah, so, like I said, we've purely marketed the business organically over the last few years, and that came with a bit of a technique that I'd thought back then. Which was providing value or showcasing your expertise. So that should be at least one post per week. And it could be if we use running as an example, you offering a running tip to somebody free of charge. They scroll social media, they see that you know about running and they see that here's a running tip for them to use. You could use that in any industry that you like. But firstly, we want to provide value and we want to provide value as often as possible.

0:24:07 - (Mackenzie): Keeping consistent with your social media is important. So figure out an amount of posts that you can do per week or per day or whatever it is across whatever social media channels that you choose and be consistent and focus first on providing value there. The second thing that I feel is one of the most important things for double my company and for my personal brand as well, is humanizing myself as well.

0:24:29 - (Mackenzie): Niching down in your business is incredibly important, but it's often the unique characteristics of the founder or the person in charge that actually creates that niche. So my niche, okay, personally, I like running, I like business, I like social media. So these are key characteristics of my lifestyle that I can talk about. And people in any of those niches will then find interest within as well. You can also then showcase that you're a human and become vulnerable on social media as well is incredibly important. So whatever challenges you're experiencing, you should document them and show those to other people because they're going to experience that same challenge at some point in their life as well. And if they know that, okay, I look up to this person, I find them successful, they experienced this challenge and they got through it, why can't I do the same?

0:25:17 - (Mackenzie): So I think that's incredibly important to build your personal branding because it encourages buy in from the audience to say, oh, I know this person or I view them enough to feel like I know them and now I like them as well because they do these things that I like and they also experience the same challenges as I do. They're a regular person. They're not this person who's absolutely perfect. They do the things I do and they do these other things that I want to do and I want to follow them in their journey of doing that.

0:25:44 - (Mackenzie): So we've got value posts, we've got humanizing posts. And then it's important in my company to show social proofing as well. Depending on what your business structure is, this could be a testimonial. This could be for gym work. It's body transformations, anything that shows people like you doing things like this. So if you're the viewer and you're part of a certain demographic. As the social media challenge, my social media strategy would be to show as many of those demographics of our ideal client doing, achieving their desired outcome at the end of the day. So that can be like a before and after, like I said, but it can also just be taking a big photo of all the attendees at our run club having a great time. They're like, okay, there's 20 different people here.

0:26:31 - (Mackenzie): I actually know that person and they're having a great time. That's awesome. I want to go and be a part of that. So providing social proof that you're a human, you know what you're talking about now, and other people think you know what you're talking about and like, you're doing that. So that's the first three pillars there. And then finally you would offer in your sales pitches as well. I do these minimally. I think if you're consistently providing value on your social media, your audience is actually going to reach out to you. When they have a problem, especially in health and fitness, there is a point in everybody's life where they're going to want to get healthier.

0:27:04 - (Mackenzie): Maybe they've just had a baby, maybe they've started a business. They don't have time for it anymore. They need that extra guidance. And at some point in their life, everybody that knows me is going to think of me because they see me post all this value all the time. So asking for the sale consistently, I've found to be actually negatively impact our growth. Whereas once a month, putting something up there like, hey, we have this new offer.

0:27:29 - (Mackenzie): This guy's doing it. They're liking it. You might like it too. That's an awesome way to go from there. Outside of maybe a month sales post, we sell through conversations with people that are having challenges. We actually help them up front, and then they're like, oh, actually, I'll just sign up because I could get this information all the time within my membership. And I also appreciate you helping me for free as well.

0:27:52 - (Mackenzie): So yeah, that's basically the whole strategy and that's worked from start to finish. I haven't changed anything of that over the last three years. The only changes have been the reduced posting over the past two years, because now my business is successful. I don't need to market as much. I don't have the time for it. I'd love to be posting consistently. Still, I think it's great to provide all this value, but now I'm dealing with the repercussions of my good work and I'm helping more people and spending time doing that instead.

0:28:22 - (Carmen): So many good tips there. Such a great strategy. How do you stay on top of all the DMs and stuff? Do you have someone who helps you with that portion of it, or do you do it all yourself? Because that would be time consuming, I would assume.

0:28:34 - (Mackenzie): Yeah, it's pretty time consuming. For those first few years, every single person who followed me, I would DM as well.

0:28:41 - (Carmen): Wow.

0:28:41 - (Mackenzie): And that led to probably a year of 50 different people or 50 different conversations a day, which was pretty cumbersome. But yeah, it's led to a lot of retention and buy into what we're trying to do, because if you just help people up front, that's awesome and you're providing a lot of value there. And that's what I like to do as a person anyway. I think you should give to the best of your ability at all times, which is just an awesome way to build a business because eventualLy, okay, they might buy a T shirt, even if they don't sign up, they're just going to want to support you in return for supporting them.

0:29:15 - (Mackenzie): I don't have anybody who manages my socials currently. I have in the past, but just in help with scheduling, posting, or ideas for posting anything like that nowadays, I'm pretty comfortable on how to create the content that I want to create. I don't worry about a posting schedule anymore. I was just talking before this. I'm like, oh, cool, if we could get a social media post today. But I didn't do one yesterday, I didn't do one the day before.

0:29:42 - (Mackenzie): It doesn't really matter to me as much like the regularity of posting anymore because I feel like I'm at a sort of self sufficient space in social media now and then. The DMS, I just like talking to people, to be honest. I think sometimes it gets tough. Like after the Cape to Cape, I'm like, all right, now I've got 100 messages to reply to, but it's also all right. Two years ago, when you started this business, if 100 people were messaging you, congratulating you for what you've done, or asking questions about what your next challenges is, or asking you about how you can help them, that would have been an ultimate end goal for you. So for it to be happening now, you've got to be grateful because you did ask for it in the past and now you're asking for new things, but you can't say no to what you asked for, I guess.

0:30:26 - (Carmen): Yeah, absolutely. And what does a typical day for Mackenzie look like? So you would spend some time on social media, but what else fills your day? I'm guessing training people or do you do mainly online or is it mainly in the gym? How does it look?

0:30:41 - (Mackenzie): So I think my biggest value add for people is training in person. I obviously started online originally, but I like to give my time fully to somebody when they're there. So we spend these hours together and I know that I can make an awesome impact in the 45 minutes that we spend together versus the DMS back and forth that I do. Obviously they do help create an impact. But then I'm on my phone all the time and it cuts into my self care time. So I do probably 30 hours of personal training per week.

0:31:14 - (Mackenzie): I do a content day sort of once a month or just around an event and then I'll sort of put it up on the fly if I've got a few hours spare. Training schedule When I'm in peak training for a race is looking at twelve to 15 hours a week, which cuts in a lot of time. I guarantee my 8 hours a night of sleep. So that's 09:00 p.m. Till 05:00 a.m. Every day. And then in between those hours. Podcasts like this catching up with friends has been limited over the last couple of years, but I'm now taking one day off a week.

0:31:49 - (Mackenzie): So Saturdays is my day to just do whatever I want. I don't really plan anything, but if mates want to catch up and stuff there, I'll lock it in because I'm available, which is awesome. I don't coach on Fridays anymore. I attend different meetings, different business groups. I'm back to doing the coffee a week sort of thing again, just catching up with different people and learning from them. So my life has a lot of variety. There's a handful of things that are locked in, but I'm basically just doing the things. Like I said that a couple of years ago I asked for originally and I do those from 05:00 a.m. To 09:00 p.m. Monday to Friday and then Sunday I do admin and prepare for the week.

0:32:25 - (Carmen): Good strategy there. So you've mentioned self care a few times. What does self care look like for you? And if someone's struggling to fit in self care into their life, but they really need some downtime because as you mentioned before, burnout is a real thing for business owners, what would you recommend that they do to make sure they incorporate more of those hours for them.

0:32:47 - (Mackenzie): Into their day, I think no matter which way you do it. But some alone time, like, purely alone time, where you can just do whatever it is that you want to do. So the thing I like to do is running. So my alone time is when I go for a run, which kind of does become pretty helpful because I get my training done at the same time. But there's times in my life I don't want to run either, and I still have to do that, and then it doesn't become self care time. So I like to be active. I like to be doing something a lot of the time.

0:33:18 - (Mackenzie): So even if I just put a podcast on and do the housework by myself and nobody talks to me for a couple of hours, that's a really good part of my self care routine. And that's locked in on my Fridays when I don't coach, and I do meetings outside of that. So that'll be this afternoon. I'll chill out, put a podcast on or some music on, whatever. I'll do some chores, which, yeah, it doesn't sound like rest, but it's a chance for my mind to sort of switch off, which is what I've struggled with in the past. I'm always stressing about the next event, or how can I help this client, or I've got this meeting tomorrow that I need to prepare for. So that's been a really beneficial thing in my life.

0:33:54 - (Mackenzie): Also, lock in Thursday evenings. My partner and I will go and just do something. We check in on our relationship as well. Okay, how are we doing? Are we both happy right now? Is there anything that you did or I did that pissed each other off? Can we work through that? And by setting us aside that time each week, it's not an emotionally charged conversation. It's sort of locked in. This is our time together as a team to work on our relationship and improve from there.

0:34:22 - (Mackenzie): And it just removes a lot of the stress from having a disagreement. It's like, no, this is no longer a disagreement. This is where we just differed in our opinions, and we can work on finding a solution together. So that sort of removes some of the stress that we may experience on other days. And then I absolutely just chill out sometimes as well. So I like film. I don't feel like there's been as many good films lately, but, yeah, I enjoy it. Like, Lord of the Rings is my favorite. I've got the tattoo on my leg, so I'll rewatch that a couple of times a year and all sorts of other sort of long, extended movies. Catch up with mates, go to gigs, whatever it is, but general fun things that people do. I do do those things too.

0:35:06 - (Carmen): It's not just all running all day long. I love that you mentioned that you put aside quality time with your partner, because I think that's something that we often forget about. Like we have the occasional date night. And I think it does become worse when you have children. I know you don't have kids yet, but to make that dedicated time for you, I think that's really important. And I'm really glad you mentioned that.

0:35:24 - (Carmen): If there's someone listening to this podcast today, and they want to invest more into their health and fitness and well being, but they're struggling to find the time or they don't really know where to start, what kind of pointers would you give them?

0:35:38 - (Mackenzie): What we program off is something called minimum effective volume. So what we want to do is give you the least amount of work to get the most amount of result. Because oftentimes when somebody wants to start a health kick, they go from effectively zero, sometimes maybe 1020, whatever it is, but they go from wherever they are all the way to 100. They expect their diet to be perfect next week. They expect to train six days a week and take one rest day and get all their sleep and drink all their water. And there's just too many things.

0:36:06 - (Mackenzie): What you'd rather focus on is just that 1% improvement on each day or one workout a week is infinitely more than zero. If you're doing nothing at the moment, just adding one in there, you're going to get awesome benefits from. And then just making sure that you're focusing on sort of whole of life health as well. So if you're not sleeping well, that's going to impact your diet because you're going to wake up, you're going to be tired. Your body knows that when you eat that sugary food, you get a hit of energy, so you're going to have that craving. So, okay, first thing we do is we can improve our sleep and then we want to improve our diet as well. Just focus on what was somebody eating 1000 years ago before all these highly processed foods came onto the market, right? Fruits, vegetables and like animal food sources. Or if you're vegetarian, you can just stick with the fruits and vegetables. But just going for low processed foods, foods that if you left in the fridge or in the cupboard after a week or so, they would probably go off. That means it's probably pretty good for you.

0:37:06 - (Mackenzie): So there's your sleep, there's your diet. Keep up with your water intake as well. Staying hydrated just makes everything in the body that has to happen on a given day happen a hell of a lot easier. So two to three liters per day and then getting some strength training and some cardiovascular training in each week as well. So either just going for a walk could be your cardio and then going to one workout class or yoga class or something that builds some strength just so that you're getting the strength and the bone density up, and then you're also getting the heart rate up on another point in time just so that you can build that fitness as well. So focusing on all those key areas, I may have missed some, I don't have any notes in front of me, but if you can focus on a little bit of improvement across the board on all of those, you're going to be feeling way better, and then you can then focus on that next step after that.

0:37:51 - (Carmen): That sounds attainable, because I think a lot of people think I need to lose five kilos or whatever. I'm going to crash diet and I'm going to cut out all the carbs or do something drastic like that. But you might lose weight quickly, but then you're probably going to stack on more weight when you stop that crash diet. So would you recommend, like, if people want to lose weight specifically, would you just recommend overhauling their whole life and looking at the sleep, what they're eating and their exercise regime and kind of coordinating it all, rather than doing like a crash diet or something? That's probably not going to last for very long?

0:38:30 - (Mackenzie): Yeah. The best way always to lose weight is going to be in the kitchen. If you go to the gym, you might burn 200 calories or something. Whereas if you don't eat that muffin, you're going to save 400 calories there. So you'd have to go for two workouts to eat the muffin, or you could just not eat the muffin. But finding some way to reduce what you're putting into your body so that you don't have to do as much output in order to find that balance again is going to be the key area and finding a way that you can do that sustainably as well. So it might not be never eat the muffin, but have the muffin once a week and then you get the muffin, but you also don't have six other muffins in a week, which is what's keeping your weight up. So finding a way to do it long term, still enjoy the foods that you enjoy, but in a lot more moderation and then still obviously exercise as well because that's incredibly important for your health. But yeah, for weight loss, oftentimes the problem area is the kitchen, not the gym.

0:39:26 - (Carmen): Yeah, I think people forget about that and they think if I just work out every day, I'll lose the weight. But yeah, they're still eating all the chocolate and the muffins and everything. So yeah, that's great advice. So what's next for Mackenzie? Now that you've nailed the cape to Cape and smashed the record, what's next on the cards for you?

0:39:42 - (Mackenzie): So the next sort of twelve months, I just want to focus back on my road running again. Marathons, half marathons. Focusing on or not focusing, trying to do both or too many things. Running ultra marathons and road races has just left me with some injuries this year, which has been quite frustrating. So I want to get back to back at my peak performance. And running on roads is actually just a bit easier than running for 16.

0:40:06 - (Carmen): Hours straight or running on sand for.

0:40:08 - (Mackenzie): 50 km, all of these things. So yeah, just be focusing on the roads for a while. But the point of the Cape to Cape run was to film this documentary so that we could approach sponsors for a longer term ultramarathon event where we can do the same thing. Focus on telling a great story around improving your mindset and challenging yourself. And by challenging yourself, you build confidence in other areas of your life. And we're going to do that.

0:40:34 - (Mackenzie): The Bilman track, what I've already hiked previously, we want to do that in a new record time in the next 18 months. But yeah, it is a longer expedition. There's a lot more logistics go into it. So we just want to get either financial stability in my business where I can afford to take a few weeks off and not be stressed at all about it, or some sponsorship that could help us do that as well. So that's 1000 K's, ten days, sometime in the next 18 months. That's the big one.

0:41:02 - (Carmen): Wow, that will be amazing. I look forward to seeing that on socials. And you mentioned before we got on the pod that you've got a promotion coming up or a new offer in the next couple of weeks. Do you want to talk a little bit about that before we close up the podcast?

0:41:15 - (Mackenzie): Yeah, absolutely. So typically our online personal training service is super comprehensive and it is at an affordable price point for most people. But we've understood we're young guys that work in the business ourselves. It wasn't that long ago that we were students and struggling to pay for things we wanted to pay for. So we wanted to create a more affordable, budget friendly option. So we'll be launching a subscription membership on December 4 1st. Going towards runners is going to be billed at $36 a month. It'll complete your running program so you can get a new personal best. It'll be a strength program so you can stay injury free. It'll be a nutritional program and meal plan so that you can fuel your body for performance or weight loss or whatever it is that your goal is.

0:41:55 - (Mackenzie): That'll be all delivered online on a subscription membership. And once this first test run is done, we'll be planning a obstacle course racing ninja Warrior one that's one of our coaches is the best guy in WA at that, so we'll be launching that in the new year. One of our other coaches plays hockey for Australia, so we'll be doing that for hockey players. And then I'll be building out myself a total overhaul body recomposition for anybody who wants to get stronger, lose weight, and just be more healthier and happier in their body. So you can find all that information at either coach Macker on Instagram or Double Oz. So D-U-B-E-L-A on Instagram. That'll all be coming out in the next few weeks.

0:42:34 - (Carmen): Awesome. That's so exciting. And thanks so much, Mackenzie, for our chat. It's been really great and so much valuable information for anyone to take away. So thank you so much.

0:42:42 - (Mackenzie): Thank you very much, Carmen, for having me. Cheers.