Archives for May 2025

Still discovering what working for myself looks like after 15 years

Last week marked my second week of my audacious plan to take 30-days away from my business to give space to pursuing my dreams.

I’m noticing 2 things:

The first is, that I didn’t realise what a weight it was on my shoulders constantly showing up and creating content.

I thought I’d hacked the code for creating content that felt good to me.

Not too much social media stuff.

A newsletter, a podcast and some video on topics I care about.

But after 2 weeks away from it I can see how draining it was to my brain.

The second thing is, that without the pressure of the 7-day content cycle wearing me down like some torturous hill climbing video game where every time you get to the top of the hill you instantly respawn at the bottom, I’ve been noticing a lot of guilt around working hard enough and ‘enough’ enough.

A new business needs new goal posts

I’m not sure when it happened, but over the last few years my metric for success with Bootcamp Ideas had switched from doing the minimum possible for the maximum results to simply: create as much stuff as possible.

So the last couple of weeks when I haven’t been flat out while working, it’s felt kind of odd. Uncomfortable even.

Why aren’t I doing more?

I don’t have a full roster of clients. I haven’t launched my men’s fitness group.

Shouldn’t I be doing more?

But when take a look back at the week. It’s not that I’ve done nothing, it’s that I’ve done small actions that haven’t taken a huge amount of time, but will have a big impact on my business.

Here’s a look at some of the things I did last week:

• Took the whole day off on Monday because the weekend was huge and I knew that resting would set me up for better work the rest of the week.

• Spoke with and signed a new coaching client.

• Set up a new onboarding process for clients.

• Reached out to connect with a few more people who I think would make good clients.

• Created a list of men to reach out to for my new fitness group.

• Stayed visible by connecting with other’s content (rather than creating my own).

• Wrote an article for this newsletter (this by far took the longest out of anything I did this week).

• Spent a morning with my youngest daughter. Did all of my workouts. Trained with the fire brigade. And played a new video game.

There was no grind here, just short, intentional tasks that felt very in alignment with me and my energy.

At the end of it all I asked myself…

‘Is this what work looks like now?’

And with that came a surge of excitement and a sense of peace.

It feels almost too good, that this could be ‘work’.

So what does work look like for me?

This:

I think these 2 things are really what it boils down to. It feels like a very human business to have.

It’s not about my output, it’s about showing up. For them and me.

As I write this, I get excited, but I also know that I’ll need to keep an eye on slipping back into habits of proving myself. Of doing more just for the sake of doing more.

I’d love to hear about your experience with this

What does ‘working’ mean to you?

Is it about how much you get done? Is it more about what you’re working on? I’ll be waiting for you in the comments below.

Through the Human Design Window

This whole thing makes a lot of sense if you look at my Human Design:

• I’m a Projector. I’m all about efficiency because I don’t always have the energy for big, grindy work sessions.

• My profile is 2/4. The 2 is the Hermit which is all about my need for alone time to process things. That mixes with the 4 which is all about how my opportunities often come through connecting with others.

• I have a Splenic authority and undefined throat, so it makes sense that I should connect with others when I get the intuitive hit to reach out, rather than on a schedule. Also that I’d only reach out to a few people at a time rather than sending dozens of messages out into the world at once.

Work With Me:

If you’re getting a feeling that I’m here to help you, here are 2 ways you can work with me:

1. Human Design Session: In this 60 minute guided session, we’ll look at your Human Design and how you can show up feel more aligned with your natural gifts.

2. Ongoing Coaching: I have a limited number of spots for 1-on-1 coaching for high performing creators and founders.

If you’re interested in either of these, send me a message and I’ll send you through the details.

Back to Fitness Coaching – Part 1

Welcome to my series ‘Back to Fitness Coaching’ where I will be sharing behind-the-scenes of starting a brand new fitness coaching business.

4:50am – Alarm goes off. Roll out of bed before I think too much. Shuffle to the kitchen and hit button on the electrical kettle (we call it a ‘jug’ in Australia).

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I stand in the dark, just the glow from the kettle and the gradual build of boiling water for company. When the water is boiled I make a cup of black tea (with milk) and shuffle some more to go get dressed.

I drink my tea while checking the weather (both on my phone and by going outdoors) and I go over the workout one more time on my iPad. Still in the dark so I don’t wake Zoe.

5:20am – Tea finished, I hop in the car. It’s already packed full of equipment from the night before. It’s an 11 minute drive to the park at this time in the morning. An audiobook I’m listening to plays on the way there.

5:31am – I arrive at the park. It’s dark and cold. The hint of the sun a bare change in shade on the horizon.

I lug the equipment from the boot of my car to a spot in the park that get’s plenty of light from the street lights. I decorate the area with ropes, dumbbells, cones and medicine balls like some strange children’s party.

Setting up gives me the chance to get in the zone and gets me warmed up.

5:45am – I walk back to the car park. Fix an obnoxious-for-this-goddamn-early grin to my face and wait for the first of my bootcamp members to arrive.

—

This was my morning 3 times per week for years.

And while I loved my bootcamp, the idea of going back to these early, cold starts has put me off starting a bootcamp in the town I live in now for nearly 10 years.

What was different back then was that the excitement of running a bootcamp easily overcame the discomfort of getting up early, having permanently wet shoes and everything else that comes with running a bootcamp.

It wasn’t until this year that a new format for returning to fitness coaching planted itself in my head and wouldn’t go away.

Re-Simplifying Fitness With Habits

My idea was to start a men’s-only, small group personal training sessions where fitness meets life coaching. It would be for men who are my age, and most likely dads (and perhaps even self-employed blokes) who just struggle to stay consistent with working out.

Because I’ve noticed a weird thing over the last few years:

The men around me are more knowledgeable than ever about health, nutrition, exercise and even weird obscure things they listened to on a podcast, yet the number of them working out regularly is still the same as 20 years ago.

And when I think about why I’ve been so consistent over the years, it’s not that I’ve learned more about working out or health, it’s because I started with habits and because I’ve made health a value so I make life choices that help make working out and eating well easier.

But habit building is boring. And try as creators might, it’s difficult to make the algorithm want to serve up your helpful reel about the science of habits.

So people around me just continue to be fed all kinds of obscure and not-helpful-unless-you’re-an-athlete health hacks which of course they miserably fail at implementing into their lives.

It’s just leaving people more confused and feeling more defeated as ‘working out’ feels like it’s no longer enough.

I want to create a something were a big part of the value I give is helping people break down what they want to do into small habits they’ll actually stick to.

At the moment I’m calling this thing Dad Club.

My Idea to Get Paid to Start a Business

Towards the end of last year I ran a 2-week container on Bootcamp Ideas called Group Flow where participants designed their own ‘fitness cohort’.

A ‘fitness cohort’ is basically a group of people who you take through a fitness program over a number of weeks. For example: My old bootcamp that ran in 4-week blocks was a fitness cohort.

All this year my wife has been asking me, ‘When are you going to start your sessions for men?’

(Have I mentioned that my wife is amazing?)

And each time, I would remind her of my amazing plan.

‘I’m going run Group Flow again. And instead of just teaching this stuff I’m going to plan and launch my first Dad Club fitness cohort alongside them. It will be SO amazing because they’ll get to see behind-the-scenes. That way I’ll kind of be getting paid to start my new business.’

And then a month would pass. And another.

No Group Flow. No Dad Club.

To be fair, I was going through an existential crisis during this time around the future of what I wanted to do for work so that was eating up a lot of my time.

Nevertheless, early April I set a date for Group Flow begin and started selling spots to it.

A Total Bomb

I added testimonials to my Group Flow sales page. Went through feedback from the last group and added key words to my messaging. Increased the price now the program was out of beta. Wrote my launch email sequence and away I went.

I got crickets.

This isn’t an article about online marketing so I won’t go into detail, but in terms of people signing up it did utterly terrible.

I cancelled the course. Informed the 2 who signed up and watched my plan to get paid to start my business crumble.

It was… sad. I was sad.

But I also had no excuses left to delay starting Dad Club. And perhaps that was the lesson being given to me.

Let go of over-strategising. Just begin.

Rubbing Salt In The Wound

The follow week I was licking my wounds when my wife handed me her phone and said, ‘Look at this.’

It was an Instagram account for a new fitness group in our area focusing on men.

Ugh. Thanks Universe.

Literally, as I’m about to press play, it’s like the movie has already been shown.

And then I pause.

Yes, it kinda sucks that someone else had a similar idea to me, but it’s also a sign that others are seeing this kind of thing is needed in our area.

After a closer look, there is also a difference in how we’re solving this need:

While they’re looking to create a larger thing, I just want to start small with a few guys and go deep.

Enough Strategy, Let’s Just Begin

So, that brings us to the present.

With the problem of ‘how do I start’ rearing up in front of me.

And just like I plan to do with my clients with their fitness and health, let’s chuck out the edge case, fantastical business advice out there and just pick a few small actions I can start with:

1. Define who it is I want to help and how I will help them ✅ Done!

2. Make a list of everyone I know who might fit that category ✅ Done!

3. Reach out to them one at a time

Simple. Scary. But simple.

No need for ads. Or a new social media account. Or even a website.

In the next update of Back to Fitness Coaching I hope to share with you the results of these first steps, good or bad.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you if this resonated at all. Do you have a business idea that you’ve been meaning to start? You can click ‘leave a comment’ to reply directly to this article.

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Welcome new subscribers!

Let me kick off this week by welcoming a few new subscribers who’ve come over from my Bootcamp Ideas newsletter.

I recognised a few email addresses, but there were also lots that I didn’t so please feel free to say ‘hey’ in the comments at the bottom of this post.

I should also mention that I’m using a platform called Substack for this newsletter. I chose this because it enabled me to get set up quickly, but you might get some extra emails from Substack as a result. You can unsubscribe from those and still get these emails. If it gets too annoying for everyone I’ll look at changing platforms in the future.

Now let’s get into the meat and potatoes of today.

Now I’ve got a few articles under my belt on here I’m starting to see what I want to focus on.

During my 30 day break from creating content for my main business, Bootcamp Ideas, I want to get some serious writing done.

Or rather I want to allow some writing to happen.

So I’m making it a priority to do at least 10-15 minutes of writing each day. I imagine things will start off like this with me working things out and evolve more over time into me sharing what’s working.

Some areas I want to start writing about are:

1. Starting a fitness business just for dads. My plan is for it to be a place where workouts meets life coaching.

2. Developing my skills as a coach. Getting better at listening, getting better at asking questions and tools/structures that seem helpful.

3. How we grew my wife’s business by following her Human Design. This has been an ongoing experiment for the last couple of years and we’re both kinda blown away. It’s partly what’s inspired my own shift to align deeper with my own HD.

I’m thinking these will work best as a series of articles – or perhaps even audios – where I just share one story or lesson each time.

Is there one that seems particularly interesting to you? Let me know.

How I’m finally taking the time to find out ‘what’s next’

It’s strange to me that now I’ve decided I’m taking a break my mind is saying, ‘Of course you are, that makes total sense’ but for years it’s been something I’ve wanted to do but have always found good reasons not to.

A little back story:

In 2010 I registered the domain BootcampIdeas.com and started a blog there about running fitness bootcamps. I never imagined at the time that I’d still be working on it most days nearly 15 years later.

Back then I was experimenting with all kinds of blogs. I made 3 different video gaming blogs (some that did okay), some useless blogs designed to host ads, a personal fitness blog, a free online workout site and others I can’t even remember.

Once it was clear that Bootcamp Ideas was getting the most traction I went all in on it but then after about 5-6 years I began to get some itches to try other things.

Each time I tried something new, the lure of the success of Bootcamp Ideas brought me back.

I love that audience, but have also known that it’s not really where my heart is, and I think that’s become obvious over the last 3-4 years as it’s slowly declined and I’ve been unable to adapt to the new way of online business. I feel if my heart was really in it, I’d be finding more success because I’d simply be willing to do things I don’t have the energy or enthusiasm for right now.

My Worries

I’ve always been worried with Bootcamp Ideas that I’m not doing enough.

I’m not doing enough to grow it, to serve and to create. But that’s waged war with my desire to not do too much. To not overdo it.

So I’ve been stuck in this weird in-between, and while I only work 15-25 hours per week I still freak out about:

• Stopping the weekly newsletter

• Stopping updating or writing new articles

• Stopping the podcast (again, because that’s failing right?)

• Not feeling a general sense of productiveness about the business

• Not providing new content for my members

• Letting my foot off the peddle

But here’s the thing, I took significant time away from my business after the birth of my 2 children. And everything was fine.

Why I’m Doing This Now

While taking time off from your business when you have kids is great, having a newborn doesn’t really give one the space or brain power to contemplate, experiment and explore what’s next.

And while I’ve taken a week or two (or more) off since then it’s usually during times of the year when we’re busier as a family, so again, not really time to take some space.

As we’re coming into Winter here in Australia, I feel like now is a great time to just be idle with this discomfort. There aren’t a lot of demands on my time right now.

Also something has shifted to make me feel okay about this.

If I had to say why, I think it’s because I’ve been focusing on two things:

• Being calmer and more intentional about how I work

• Freeing up time to explore new things (like this newsletter)

As I’ve done that I’ve realised how much Parkinson’s law had been in effect with my Bootcamp Ideas work and, perhaps, how when I’m not frantically working the work is less… satisfying? Like I’m off that rollercoaster of frantic and then feeling good that I did a thing.

Parkinson’s law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

How I’m Planning to Take Time Off

As I mentioned in my worries, part of what’s held me back from taking time off has been the idea that the universe will implode if I stop doing something like sending my weekly newsletter.

And that that’s backed up by more practical thoughts like ‘What about my paying members? I rely on that income right now.’‘

Those two thoughts would often send me back into my Bootcamp Ideas work even harder. For some reason, I couldn’t separate these as two different things. I can still serve my paying customers while taking time off from the other things. Again, working calmer has helped me realise this.

So my plan is:

• Go about this gradually, I’m currently in the middle of a launch for a course for Bootcamp Ideas. I’ll finish this launch and the 4-week course and plan to go on hiatus a week or 2 after (about 6-7 weeks from now).

• Stop doing: Writing and sending weekly Bootcamp Ideas newsletter, recording and publishing my podcast, launching and creating new products for Bootcamp Ideas, creating and sharing social media content.

• Keep doing: New content for my members (should only take 2-3 days per month). Still check-in with emails at set times each week.

• Start with 30 days at this new pace with the option to extend to 60 or 90 days.

What Will I Do With My Time?

One thing that I’ve been drawn into again and again is coaching. I’ve gotten a bit burned out on coaching fitness trainers though as they don’t place a lot of value on business-type coaching. They’d rather do another fitness-related course or accreditation.

So every time I would try to move into coaching I’d focus on my current audience and end up feeling bitter and resentful.

Recently I realised that my issue wasn’t with coaching but that I needed better clients.

I’m wanting to explore coaching online creators and knowledge workers around how they can best use their own energy. I’m not sure if this is fitness/health related or more executive-type coaching.

I’ve also had a pull to return to work as a fitness coach, particularly for other dads. So this is something I want to explore doing in my local community.

Giving myself space to explore these rather than feeling like I have to hop between the sometime frenetic energy of running and online business and a slower, more thoughtful and experimental mindset feels very spacious.

Have You Done Something Like This? (Or Thought About It?)

I’d love to hear about your experience or what’s holding you back too if you feel like sharing in the comments.