EPISODE 3: Performance-Enhancing Experience | Andrew Blake

Andrew Blake was a professional athlete, but he now works in commercial real estate and helps coach executives at the highest level. 

On today’s episode, we’ll hear about Andrew’s journey and how lessons from sports performance can apply to business.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Andrew Blake was a professional athlete, but he now works in commercial real estate and helps coach executives at the highest level. On today's episode, we'll hear about Andrew's journey and how lessons from sports performance can apply to business.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

For me, I love the physical elements to anything, but uh what I've learned in my journey is also just the focus and the mindset is more important.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to New Least On, where we talk about the latest in least accounting and least administration and share stories of changes in perspective and new beginnings. I'm your host, Matt Waters. Let's dive in. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

Thanks, Matt. I'm excited to share about what where things are going.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

All right. You know, Andrew and I met in Singapore actually about a year ago at the CornEd Global Summit. And just very quickly, I think at in our first uh interaction, I realized Andrew is definitely somebody we need to have on the show. Let's just get this started. How did you get into the profession? You know, I already mentioned you're a professional athlete, but but how did you then move into commercial real estate and beyond?

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Yeah, I think it was like um for me, it was just trying to keep that creativity. I did a study study architecture. But uh I I sort of disvolved into more design and construction for a company, helping them sort of grow and uh learnt a lot of skill sets around that. Then I wanted to get into real estate, so I did my real estate license and then um sort of went down that whole path. And then that was the sort of the journey from a start for 10 years, I suppose, of doing that sort of stuff and understanding skill sets. And but for me, I didn't want to be behind the uh desk. I I quite enjoy just getting out and talking to people and understanding how we can put things together, then you know have a team go and deliver the works. But always felt that if you can go out and find the work for people and you know, making them have a job and the whole economic of the climate goes around in circles. That's sort of what I how I looked at my strength. That was a fun experience. And yeah, certainly uh growing a business from I think it was like 20 staff to 150 staff was certainly fun, learnt a lot. Yeah, I think I just like wanted to, I don't know, then I just got into something now that I'm really passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So yeah, and I know a little bit about your story, and I know it's really there's three things that you're involved in now that you are passionate about, and I I guess we'll just go through those one by one. I guess let's start in the more traditional real estate market, right? You're working on real estate projects, design and construction, and but they're actually pretty cool projects. So tell us about that. What kind of things are are you working on in real estate?

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Yeah, well, funny enough, like it's sort of you go to where your passion is, and then sport and wellness came back around. And that's what I'm really passionate about. And then we're working on another project, actually, and then someone reached out and said, Look, we see there's a huge need for more multi-sport centers across Australia, New Zealand, and actually globe. So what that means is there was a just there's not enough space to play basketball, not enough indoor courts, pickleball, paddleball, cricket, futsal, everything in that whole area. Everyone's doing single sort of selection courts, but we thought um the demand there and and with our real estate background of finding sites, and that's what we're really good at, and then understanding the design and construction process, and then the operation team, and then we've got finance part as well. So we look for sites and grow it out. We're still trying to find investors as well because we need the growth, but we've got a couple of sites already underway, and um we've got more exciting things where we're collaborating with other people who've got sites as well. But we've also getting requests now from India, Greece, USA, the UK, which was awesome because they just have a huge demand for basketball. So yeah, we're looking at how we can roll this out globally. It's called Court Culture. So that's a really project to Maha because it creates design, it creates construction, it creates looking for sites, it creates wellness, it creates sports. So really pumped, excited about that one.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Oh, yeah, that's really cool. I think for people that are watching on YouTube, I think they can see in your background image, right? This is an example of one of the courts.

SPEAKER_03 4:41

This is someone else's core, their design, but to be honest with you, I but I I love it. And you know, we're trying to just mock this sort of design because probably more because we're from Australia and we like the colour scheme, and but um to be honest, yeah, we're our ones are just underway, so we're literally just turning over the design at the moment for a site, so it's all new. But um, we've got 50 years of operation experience behind the team, so really thought out of how we're gonna develop and deliver this. So really excited, but really in you know, start a phase, which is fun. Yeah, everyone says it does take a while, but uh yeah, it's exciting and a lot of effort and money going out the door. But uh hopefully, yeah, we're gonna make an impact. That's the main thing, and that's what I enjoy doing.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

I was involved in a startup at one time, and and when I was being hired, they said, Oh, it's a startup environment, it's a startup culture. And I thought, well, oh, well, that that must mean that I get like free lunch and you know, that maybe maybe I can bring my dog to the office or something, right? But then uh what I what I realized it actually means is that you work around the clock, you know, including Saturday and Sunday. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And especially the time zones are 11 o'clock in the morning, uh, 11 o'clock at night, and uh, because we're trying to get investors from US, we had a chat with them and the hours and then Belgium, and uh so but it's so funny, you have to find investors from all around the world where there's a huge problem in different countries, which I find quite interesting. So yeah, solve a problem. But the other thing is everyone says you're a startup, but we've got that much experience, and you're like, but you're still like trying to prove a point where it's already existing, you know. Multi sports have been around, you know, centers, uh community for community root councils, but you know, this is like going to the next level, so it's not like we're trying to create something unique, but yeah, it still feels like a startup, and you still explain that you you know you've got this site, next site, and we've got like a hundred sites already out earmarked, so oh great. But yeah, we're looking for partners to journey with that as well, which is cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah. Well, did you ever think that your past as an athlete would end up colliding with your education and experience in real estate, or was that a surprise to you?

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Yeah, it's a good question. Like, I think like I always wanted to be a bit higher in my athletic sort of ability, but a couple injuries, but also I felt there was more of a need of what I was trying to achieve in this lifetime. Everyone has one life and what my focus point, and I think for me now the focus is really making an impact to others, and I really want to help athletes, other athletes. So if I can create centers to create more athletes in the world, and that to me is my passion. So as much as I wanted to be more of a star in the athlete world, I wanted to, and now I think it's just come around. But I think my skill set of enjoyment with property, I've been working around the clock. I've just developed, uh finished off two sort of knock-knock uh special retreats that you know when you're burnt out, you go away as an athlete and you come back recovered. And so we've been working on those two projects and they're sort of completed now. So there's always that how we help youth sport and how we help everyday people become better in themselves. And um, so that's what core culture's about. We created another one called with a team, sort of how that came about was creating experiences. That's been fun, but we we now just customize experiences. We want to get people back into nature, we want people to focus more. That's uh got a great team. They even do DNA testing and mindset coaching, and they're amazing what they do. And we just created something because we found that people nowadays only focus for 45 seconds, like I was saying before. Yeah, used to be about the study about 20 years ago was like, you know, you can focus on something for five minutes, and now you can only focus on something for 45 seconds, they say. So that's all backed by research. So if we can get people focusing more back into nature, having that sort of feeling of like more focus, and yeah, so we created that as well. So, and then from there, Matt literally uh someone knocked on the door and said, uh, from a big hotel association, you know, we're finding that we need to create more luxury nature accommodation. They've got beautiful hotels, and they wanted to how we could develop into luxury nature accommodation. So we're looking at a plan, a franchise around that program. Already allocated sites. Now we're just working, we've got a great team that does the prefab build, and so yeah, we've got design elements into it, uh build elements, uh nature elements, finding property. So that's another wicked project, and got a cool team that's running that as well. So and then being half Kiwi Cup group of Kiwis have asked me to sort of help with their planning around uh head of infrastructure for an adventure park, and I can't say too much on that one, but wow, yeah. So we got some exciting projects, which is cool, and then I think everyday we're living everyday work is more the industrial where we have sourcing sites for clients, you know, lease agreements and and then you know designing construction elements on that. So that's every day, but I've always wanted to have exciting projects and uh yeah, but uh it's having the mindset and the focus and the team around you, like that's the most important. So yeah, and my role is just finding capital and finding the site. So then the operation team they've got, they can do whatever that's their skill set, so it's cool, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

That's incredible. I mean, yeah, I I've kind of seen this collision of sport and business in my career as well. And I think starting out, I always just kept things separate, right? It was always I'm gonna have a hobby, you know, and then I'm gonna have my job. And the two are separate, right? But then more and more I I realize that really your passions can collide and and actually you benefit one from the other, right? And now, even this year, I submitted a speech for the Kuala Lumpur Cornette Global Summit, and the title of the speech that that was accepted, and and I'm planning to deliver that in March. The title of the speech is real estate lessons learned from running a hundred miles. Right? That's right.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Yeah, we started that conversation. That's how we I think we connected at Cornette because that's right, yeah. Yeah, well I did that 100K with no training in uh Mount Kosyoska, and I did no training because one of the guys pulled out and then I was driving to Melbourne, and then I said, Oh yeah, I'll jump in and do it.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

So yeah, making out like your mindset of just going in and doing things, but and you learn so much, and it's just so many parallels from the athletic mindset, right? The mindset that you have to have to be successful as an athlete really does translate very well into the professional world. And I see that so much in what you're talking about, right? You're saying, yes, you're combining the court culture into, of course, the real estate profession, but it's also more of a mindset, right? Like helping people become more successful, athletes, yes. Also, then taking that same mindset you mentioned teams. I think you mean not just teams of athletes, right? But teams of professionals can create these experiences with you where they can learn and grow together, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Yeah, yeah. We've taken some people down to like Queenstown on um just even like just a mindset, like certain things we've taken people skiing, we've taken people um through like the cycle path, which is fun. You know, if they can a couple people to Australian open tennis, where we put a group of people through that, and then they had one of the star tennis coach, uh star players give them a two-hour lesson. And cool. Yeah, but I think it's most of the a lot of people doing that. We found that a lot of people look at just doing an amazing experience, but they really don't know themselves about so we thought, well, we included the DNA, so you actually understand how to train properly for the thing that we might create an experience for the ride nutrition, the right mindset. So with even someone in our team now, like if you want to be an amazing tennis player or golfer, or they can actually get the training to be uh through mindset to see the improvement, and we've got heaps of case studies on that. So that's been pretty cool. So that's any professional person can become change their mindset. Yeah, yeah, all these things are all around just making an impact on people's lives, like if it's becoming new sports, creating more game time for people to play, yeah. If it's uh well-being, wellness, and then it's also uh evaluating the property as well. I think you know, property is a massive part of all this, and if they can work on how to increase the wellness and property and then creating environments for people to go to, I think not just a building, you know, like actually understanding why in more depth, that's for me, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Oh, absolutely. What are the top you know three or four things that people learn when they attend one of your retreats or or when they get their DNA testing, or you you connect them with a professional? Yeah, like what are what are the things that they're taking away that that you could share with us?

SPEAKER_03 14:08

Yeah, to be honest with the I think the the biggest thing is the right training. Say we've got a lot of guys who've been doing a lot of weights, and then they realize that it's more around this type of movement, this type of stretch will increase this, or overtraining as well. Like we had some guys wanting to do this 50k venture, sort of we put together like a bit of a bike, swim and a run, and and it was just for them, you know, like four or five people, the right food, the nutrition, it was just for their executive team. So it was understanding who was the pressure cooker who could actually cope with it, and then looking at you know, most people at that sort of level when they're at a CO, they're so what's the word? It doesn't matter if they haven't trained for years, they're just really conditioned to do well. Yeah, they put so much pressure on themselves and their heart rate goes racing after the anything, so it's just managing that process as well and um showing them that you know this is what they need to do. So that test actually does all that for them.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

So oh cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:12

So what else is probably expertise on like actually other athletes who have been really good at car race driving and then they wanted to play golf. So they thought they could pick it up pretty straight away because it's a mindset game and obviously totally different. And uh, but then yeah, then go, she's put them through this whole mindset coaching course, and uh and they became a better golfer just by understanding their you know, they had to add some skill set, but changing their philosophy and the way they thought was pretty cool. And um, yeah, it's it's definitely like for me, I love the physical elements to anything, but uh what I've learned in my journey is also just the focus and the mindset is more important, to be honest with you. I've seen some pretty amazing athletes who don't train as much and just have the mindset of doing well, and then you've got some guys who train the house down, and it's an amazing philosophy when and that's across where when you're traveling. Like I was playing in the UK, I played in South Africa, and and then being a key, we played in Australia a little bit and um have the same type of people. And uh when you're growing older too, oh you know, the 45 mark when you're getting that older and you try to keep up with the young guys and you try and find techniques of to stay in the uh keep up with the 20s, and uh that's always a challenge too.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

So yeah. Well, yeah, I guess for us old guys that uh it's good news that mindset matters, right? Yeah, only so much the uh the muscles can do anymore.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Yeah, always trying to find the edge. Uh what else can you do to elevate uh your own self?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Andrew, always fascinating to talk with you. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today, and uh really look forward to hearing about your continued success.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yeah, and I love sharing the uh the visions and what we're trying to do and the impacts we're making in this uh and across the globe, actually. So looking forward to seeing hopefully we see some projects happening over in your space and your country and uh reconnect all the dots. But uh yeah, good luck in in KL when you get when when when do you go over to KL?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

I'll be there in March. I think it's the the first week in March.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Yep. Okay. Yeah, I should need to go back. We've got a little uh project happening in Penang, so I'm not too might might try and get over to that. But uh mate, no, thank you very much for sharing and uh enjoyed the uh conversation. Hopefully something someone gets something out of it and uh reach out if you need to get involved. We're always looking to collaborate with people, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, great. Love to. Well, thank you so much, and um yeah, we'll see you around.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Thanks, Matt. Cheers, guys.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Cheers. Thank you for joining us. I'd be grateful if you would like and subscribe wherever you listen. Perhaps today is your day to get a new lease on. Would you like to learn more about lease accounting? Check out the CGLA program. That's Certified Global Lease Accountant. You can earn 16 hours of CPE credit, study at your own pace, and earn the CGLA professional designation. Find out more at CGLA Institute.com.