Ep219 - Stirling Mortlock (Co-founder - XV Capital) on the journey from Wallabies Captain to Sports-Tech Investor

Speaker A: So when you have a few people that are in your corner that push you and say you can do better, the butterfly effect can happen really, really quickly. So for me, Gordon at the first time sat me down and said, mate, what are you doing? And I said, I'm having fun. He said, yeah, I know that, mate, but I want you to do more because I know you can. Best thing I could have heard, I looked around a lot of the guys who were ahead of me and realized that they weren't training as hard as me, they didn't want it as much as me. So as soon as that switch went on, everything just fell into place. And within 18 months from then, I ended up getting picked a plethora of I only get to happen that quickly.

Speaker B: Hi everyone, I'm your host, Rohit Bhargava and you are listening to episode 219 of the Startup Playbook Podcast, a weekly series where I sit down with successful tech founders, investors and operators to unpack their journey lessons and insights to help

Speaker C: current and future entrepreneurs.

Speaker B: My guest for this episode is Sterling Mortlock. If you're not already familiar with Sterling, he is one of Australia's greatest ever rugby players. He's a former Wallabies captain, played at two World Cups, and is one of only nine players in the history of Super Rugby to score over 1000 points. But his story goes well beyond just the sporting field and since retiring, he's gone on to build a career as a founder and investor. He is a co founder of XV Capital where he invests into the next generation of sports tech startups. In this episode we dive into his journey from professional sports into business, the parallels between elite sporting teams and high growth startups, and his lessons on, um, leadership, resilience and risk taking. I'm also excited to announce that Sterling is one of our speakers for Cohort 2 of the Como Club, the world's first human accelerator where we help founders and executives implement the systems to help them win in business and in life. You can find out more details and apply for Cohort 2 at the Komoclub.com that's T-H-E K-O-M-O-C-L-U B.com all right, without further ado, here is my interview with Sterling Mortloch.

Speaker C: Hi Sterling, welcome to the Startup Playbook podcast and thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show today.

Speaker A: Pleasure to be here, Sterling.

Speaker C: I remember watching you. So I grew up in Canberra, moved around a lot, but Canberra, uh, is the closest thing I have To a hometown. So I remember watching you on the rugby field way, way back in the day when I was in high school. But for maybe those of our listeners that aren't as familiar with you and your background and your story, do you want to share a little bit about your background and what got you here today?

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So I was very lucky to have played professionally rugby union for 15 seasons and 13 of those seasons was down in Canberra playing for the, the Brumbies, which is a, still to this day Australia's most successful super rugby team. And also managed to play for Australia for a fair bit of that time as well. I actually got picked in 97 so before I was contracted to play for the Brumbies I got picked out of club rugby to go on the 97 end of season tour for Australia whilst I was still at university. And yeah that, that fast tracked uh, a uh, professional career in rugby and that was 97 was when I was 20 years of age. So I was in second year university and then all the way through to when I retired. I played for 15 seasons. I retired down here in Melbourne, played two seasons with the Melbourne Rebels and unfortunately Rebels are no longer around. But that was a great experience and went from being a 20 year old all the way through to a 35 year old, had three kids and uh, had gone from being a very young pup as we used to call it or a young buck to being a leader in the team and captaining the Brumbies, captaining Australia, the Wallabies and captaining the Rebels at the end of my career as well. So it was a huge journey and then probably post career transition away from sport. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I actually had a couple of years being connected to the Rebels, being involved with the commercial side of the business as well as coach, coaching team. So hot performance and commercial which was great. But I had had 15 seasons and then a few more, been actively 247 thinking about rugby and felt like I needed a break and so I went into the banking finance sector and Then probably about 2019 the Rugby World cup in Japan. Went over there. One thing that's great about our sport is you're always a wallaby and going to see the matches and as a former captain going to world cups is, is a unique honor and a privilege and I went over there and got the bug to get back. Didn't uh, know what capacity and ended up. That was the genesis to then teaming up with my now co founding partner James Godfrey. He was involved with an initiative with rugby over in North America at the time. And that was a genesis of XP Capital. And so we're a sports investment and advisory business really backing, I guess, a digital transformation space in space in sport and ideally finding transforming technologies we love and investing in those and being really active and helping them grow throughout the the globe. So that's uh, long winded answer as to how I've got to hear today to be in front of you.

Speaker C: Yeah, an incredible journey. Obviously. So many different parts of that story that I want to dig into. But you touched on the fast track that you had with your rugby career. But if I have my research correct, you actually started playing rugby when you were four.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, it's a nice little story just in itself. So Phil Waugh, who's the current CEO, Phil Wall, started when he was very young. I think I may have just pipped him, but very close to the similar age. And war is only a year or two younger than me. A year, I should say. But the only reason I started when I was that age was because my older brother Jeremy was three years older than me. And at that point in time, under sevens was the first year that you played rugby. And so dad took Jeremy to get registered and I happened to be in the car and I'm one of five kids, so four boys and then my sister who's the youngest. It was a pretty amazing childhood growing up, but I'd imagine any time to get me out of the house would have been well received for mum. And so, yeah, I just happened to be in the car with dad and the person at the registration table looked, looked at me and said, is he playing as well? When Jeremy registered and dad just said, oh, do you want to play? And I just said yes. Didn't know what I was doing. And literally my parents used to joke that I did more making mud pies and things on the sideline than I did actually playing rugby in that first year. But by the second year I started to enjoy it and the third year I was playing against people my own age, which is a lot more fun. And so from then on, always play rugby. But, uh, but having said that, said that I loved all sports, still do now. I love watching all sports now, but I, I, uh, any sport you put in front of me, I used to enjoy playing. Really active kid, full stop. And I guess one thing, having played rugby from such a young age, I even played football, say soccer for a year or two at school, at primary school as well, because I, we had rugby, but then it Stopped. So uh, I wanted to play something. So I played soccer as well. So. Only thing I didn't play was probably afl because up in Sydney, growing up in those, those days, it wasn't as prevalent as it is now.

Speaker C: Yeah. What did that look like in terms of that journey from a four year old accidentally signing up to your, to your brother's rugby team to realizing that you could do this for a, for a living and for a career. Was there a particular point where I guess you became obsessed with the sport and saw that pathway or was that more accidental?

Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say I was obsessed with sport. So I remember hounding my parents. So I, I played cricket up until about when I was about 14 or 15 and then I jumped across to basketball. I've got a number of MJ1s. I'm wearing a pair of MJ1s today in. Because Michael Jordan was, was the original and my athlete, my idol growing up as a, as a pretty keen athlete in all sports. But I tend to think if it wasn't rugby it would have been something else, another sport as well. Maybe basketball maybe. I always joke that I had two seasons in the first five, uh, at school and only one season in the first 15, the first rugby. So I was joked that I was legitimately a better basketball player than rugby player. Which is far from the truth. But I, yeah, so I do recall when I was in year 11, having a good chat to one of my best mates at school and talking about goals and things that we wanted to achieve. And I actually, we, it was really amazing. He was living over in South Africa for a period of time and happened to be at Durban in 2000 when the Wallabies we played the Springboks in South Africa. We needed to win, to win the trinations. And I also kicked the goal that m won the match at the end of the game and he actually fought his way into the change rooms. He could talk underwater. So he literally found his way and told everyone he was my brother. I'm um, 6 foot 3, he's 5 foot 4 or whatever and he's blonde.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: But he came into the change room and we had that moment where my back in year 11 where we spoke about what we wanted to do and I actually did say I'd love to play rugby for Australia and, and but at that time, uh, as I said I only played one year in the first 15. I was in the 16 hours I think at the time. Um, but if you'd asked anyone that of my teammates or anyone who played in and around rugby with me, they would not have picked that I was going to play for Australia.

Speaker C: Yeah. I was about to say obviously you've had this illustrious rugby career. The fastest to 50 and 100 points. I believe again, fine research is correct.

Speaker A: That's correct.

Speaker C: I guess for someone looking at what's, what happened in your career it can seem that that was extremely obvious even at 11 years of age. But again from what I understand you were overlooked for rep teams as well growing up. So what was that, what was that like?

Speaker A: I guess I had an interesting development. So when I was very young around about 10, 11, 12 at primary school. So before secondary school uh, I did a lot of sports and ended being a national level 800 meter runner. And I did everything I did, I did okay whether it was cross country athletics, tennis, cricket, rugby, the whole, whole thing. But at that level, at that age group in rugby I was actually was playing for Gordon. Gordon's a rep team in junior rugby. So my club was Linfield Juniors. And if you're good enough you get picked to play for Gordon and you play in the state championships which still happens to this day up in Sydney. And one of those years, I don't remember which one it was, I uh, did get the best back in the state championships so I was actually very good at that age. But I think one, one thing that I always joke about for me I grew really, really really late. I very late to go through puberty. My younger brother went through puberty before me at boarding school. That was a bit of a challenge. It was quite an interesting paradigm. But as an extension of that I didn't stand out at all. When I was young, when I was playing at school I literally grew probably at least 10 centimeters after school and I put on at least 10 to 15 kilos within the first two years leaving school so and uh, ingrained within me. I love sport. I loved, I was loved playing touch footy like every day I would make sure I did my homework before I got m home from the school bus so I could go to the park and play with my mates. And typically it was touch footy and, or anything that was going right. So I, I just love sport and then I didn't really realize it but what really fast tracked my development post school was growing obviously growing bigger and stronger and but I was happy doing sprint training. I did two or three sprint training sessions a week. I do extra kicking sessions a week. I uh, do everything I could to get better be going to the gym these, all these Things I was doing, but effectively I was almost training like a professional athlete without even thinking about when I was at university, just because I loved it. And that was actually a huge factor in what fast tracked my professional career. Training for me, training hard working when you, you don't want to. I didn't mind it, I enjoyed it. So that to me was a big determining factor even before I end up playing it at elite level.

Speaker C: Have you read the book Outliers by Malcolm Cladwick?

Speaker A: I have.

Speaker C: You have?

Speaker A: I hated it.

Speaker C: You hated it.

Speaker A: Now all of his books are outstanding. A lot of, a lot of these books around different things that happens and patterns and, or leadership and learning from great leaders. Definitely when I was on my journey as a, as an athlete, but then certainly a leader, you really try to take ammunition or lessons from other places. And when I read that in particular the correlation between age, uh, age relative to the cutoff of your age group, I did not like that. In particular I didn't like it because I was young for my age in, in my year group. So when I was in year seven at secondary school I was still 12. So I was actually the same age group as a lot of guys in, in prep and actually in sport, especially rugby, I played in the under 12s. So the, that first year. Normally in year seven everyone plays in under 13s. I played in under 12s. There was, there's a lot of my mates who were like that. But it ended up being great for me because I was mates with a lot of guys in year below me and also had all my, all the guys who were my year. I was really good, good mates with. But from the Malcolm Gladwell methodology that should have been a big challenge for me to, to do well. I actually spin that on its head. Uh, I felt like that was outstanding for me because I was technically going up with guys who are a year older than me, a year more physically developed than me. In particular, I said before I went through, I grew light as well. So when I grew and when I got physically, I'd say mentally as well, but physically caught up, it was like a slingshot. It was really, really good for me. And the whole way through I was just doing my Sunday's best to compete with these guys who are bigger, uh, stronger, faster. And the competitive, my competitive desire and competitive will to keep on staying in the fight was born through that paradigm. As I say, I think it's from my personal perspective almost the opposite of that. What, what he described, uh, I was

Speaker C: about to say I actually think there are studies. So there was a guy who was a PhD who was part of my last startup that I was involved with who looked at AFL player development and I'm going to butcher his actual research. But the crux of it was that uh, naturally kids that get picked for rep are usually ones that have physically developed more and tend to dominate sporting. Yeah but you have a bunch of kids like yourself who develop late or don't have that, that actually end up being more successful over the career because they've had to develop their technique against, as you said, bigger, stronger, uh, faster players. And so they've got the same. They almost have to work harder to kind of compete at that level. But then if they are able to catch up physically, they've got all those advantages of not having to rely on some of those physical advantages that's come from developing a bit faster.

Speaker A: Yeah, and, and that was certainly my experience. So going back to post school and when I first got into sort of semi rep, I uh, think it was my second year at. Yes it was, it was my, my second year at colts. I was still eligible for the under 19s and so effectively I was playing, competing with guys who'd just come out of school. I'd had a whole year of playing colts so I felt like I had an advantage. However I got picked back in those days there was New South Wales country played against New South Wales city and or possibles and a pro balls and I was on the bench of whichever one was the lesser of two of those possible prowables game team and I was an outside back but I felt again I'd had that year of colts and a bit more hard edge to. I'd been through scenarios historically where especially actually in basketball was where I uh, was in a trial match to make the GPS team and I didn't. And I'd learned the hard way that whenever you're in a situation to play for a potential journey jersey or a representative team, there's no, there's no, there's no point in worrying about the outcome. There's no point in not putting your best foot forward. So I made sure that when I got a chance, I only got off the bench. I took advantage, took advantage of the opportunity. So then I got from that on the bench of the New South Wales Under 19 team and again same thing. So got an opportunity and didn't get picked in the Australian team. I uh, got picked on the. I was a shadow member of the Australian team. So if someone was to get injured, I was, I was in the next, next one to get called up. Someone did get inj. He was actually a mat of mine from the Kings, Chuck, uh, Carter. So thank you to Chuck. He got injured, I got called up. So I got called up. So pretty much reserve, reserve shadow member called up late to go to New Zealand. Chris Malone and myself were two guys who got caught up late, two backs and ended up playing in the trial, a provincial match trial match of the two ended up making the test team. And so, and once I did that then I was on the map as far as from, from our youth development and, and whatnot. But until then, uh, it was far from in the system if that makes sense.

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Speaker C: How do you I guess keep that belief in, in yourself through that period? So as you said, you're going from reserves and reserves to reserves and you had that experience a little bit with basketball, but I think with, with sport in particular, where a lot of it is based on someone selecting you for particular things or opportunities coming through. How do you as a young adult still trying to figure things out, how do you maintain that, that faith through those periods where you're still, still in reserves, you're progressing but I guess there's no kind of guarantee of an outcome.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a hard one. Uh, I think firstly there's a bit of luck involved. I was really, really, really lucky to have some amazing rugby mentors that happen to be at my club Gordon, when I, when I first came in, in my first season and that season I was actually in, technically it was fourth grade colts so it was way, way, way, way away from playing for Australia or first grade or even first grade colts. But I was lucky that the, the, the, the coach, head coach of fourth grade was an amazing man by the name of Gordon Ogilvy. He was ex Zimbabwean. Rugby was a religion to him and he was all about goal setting. And unfortunately he's not with us. But at his funeral there was probably about, I don't know, maybe 200 to 300 former players that he had impacted and there would have been a lot more who were all there because big, big G sat them down at one stage and said, what are you doing about setting goals for your rugby? What are you doing about setting goals for your life? He was that inspirational figure and I was just lucky that he was one of them. And then Mark Davis was another one who was the first grade colts coach at the time. Davo was on his way to representing Australia. He played sevens and whatnot and he had a, uh, career ending injury. But he was. His drive and desire and his high performance mentality and methodology was outstanding. So I was just really lucky to come into an environment where some amazing people like that were having oversight and believed probably. Belief is probably the number one thing I remember. Davo actually wrote a letter to me, a hand, letter, handwritten letter to me about having a goal of playing for Australia. So when you have a few people that are in your corner that push you and say you can do better, the butterfly effect can happen really, really quickly. So for me it was a little bit of. That was more Gordon. Gordon at the first time sat me down and said, mate, what are you doing? And I said, I'm having fun. He said, yeah, I know that mate, but I want you to do more because I know you can. So he's carrot and sticky. Got the stick out just and, and put it on me. Best thing I could have heard. And then fast forward to a year later. I was playing rep footy. I'd already captained that side. We won the premiership that year when I when in the force. And yeah, it was more around those guys backing me and as I said, giving me what I needed at the time, M, which at the time was probably cattle producer, not a carrot. And, and then, and then being in, in my corner, as soon as that happened, the flick, the switch went on. For me personally, I looked around a lot of the guys who were ahead of me and realized that they weren't training as hard as me. They didn't want it as much as me and I argued that potentially I was better than them. So as soon as that switch went on, everything just fell into place. And within, within eight months from then, I end up getting picked to play for Australia on that tour. Happened that quickly.

Speaker C: Incredible. I mean, so I think you referenced this a little bit earlier, but when you were 20, so I believe 97, you got picked, uh, to go on tour with the Australian team. Was there anything that you took away from being around that, around the team and around that particular environment that shifted anything for you, uh, at that age?

Speaker A: I. Yeah, I mean, I joked before we started this at borderline ADHD and everything else. I mean, I was just an Energizer Bunny on that tour. Uh, I think most of the guys just thought I was a lunatic. But what I did take away was that if I was diligent and kept working hard like a lot of these guys, Timmy Horins, Jason Littles, George Gregan, Steve Larkham, Joe Roth. I've named only, only backs. I should name some more forwards. But all these guys and whatnot, they were, they were world class, if not already world champions, but on the way to being world champions. Usually was lucky to two World Cups. But I felt that if I worked hard and applied myself, I could potentially be along beside them. I felt like I'd already been picked, but probably I needed to do a lot more to get that. To earn that respect or to earn that, I wouldn't say status, but to be. Feel comfortable in being in their team.

Speaker C: M. And you touched on the importance of goal setting and what one of your mentors really helped highlight for you. I think it's something that really stood out to me from Cohort 1, one of the Como Club as well, where we're talking to a lot of our members about what they want to achieve. And I think a lot of us just get on this treadmill of opportunity or just focus on the immediate thing versus really being intentional about the goals and outcomes that we really want and taking time to really map out what that looks like and working backwards from that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Any advice? I guess having had that experience both in sport and I guess a lot of what you're doing now for both yourself and as well as the founders that you work with as well, in terms of the right approach to setting goals and what that should look like

Speaker A: for people, I, uh, don't think there's a right approach. You can talk about smart goals and different things like that, and they definitely help, no doubt. But I think more what is Powerful is the process of going through writing down your goals and ideally sharing them with someone. You don't have to because as soon as that whole process, as soon as you go from the theoretical world to the physical world which is writing them down is extremely powerful. And that powerful of uh, uh, I often say the antennas up, but really the manifestation cycle that can go in with that process is M is incredibly powerful. I will say this, that when Gordo, when I wrote my, my goals down that first time with Gordon, and as I said, I just finished that season of playing fourth grade Colts and I wrote down at the top of my list I wanted to play for Australia and less than two years time I'd achieved it. Gordo rang me up and said, you've achieved all your goals. It's the only time in my whole goal setting journey that I achieved everything. You don't normally achieve everything, but it's that saying you shoot for the stars, you might reach the moon thing. As soon as you put them down written paper, you, you're, you're actually accountable to those because they are in the physical world. They've gone from theoretical world into the physical world. And then even more powerful if you share them with someone that you care about, share them with someone that potentially can keep you accountable to that even more powerful as well. So I think those, that process is probably more important than, than what you do and how you do it. I, I like the whole, the millwise concept or whatever, you look where you want to go and then you reverse engineer it. All those things are really powerful as well. Smart goals are really powerful. All these things are really powerful. But the start and doing it is probably more important.

Speaker C: Correct? Yeah, I agree. There's no one right approach. It's like you said, more about the process of doing that. That being said, like you said, you wrote down your goal was to play for Australia, which you then achieved I imagine when you were 23 at the time. 23, 24.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I guess the great thing about goals is once you've achieved them or gone close to or had a cracker, you set nuance. That's, that's, that's the journey. And, and then you might add some complexity to them or smart goals or you might as you go on the journey, really refine that and be really specific on, on what that looks like. There was a period of time actually in my career where I played for Australia. I hadn't captain Australia, but I played for Australia and a couple of my goals, one was actually to captain Wallabies Gordon. Gordon pushed me on that one. I wasn't, I was umming and arring about that one to be honest. And then a part of it was actually a feeling. I uh, actually wrote down that when I take the field I want to embody someone that's 120 kilos, 115 kilos, way above my size. And the physicality, the spirituality that that embodies is how I want to be. So it's very, very, very, very different. But it worked massively for me. That was between 05 06. I end up putting on a lot of weight in the off season and going from an athlete who was all about gain line and everything else to feeling like I had enough physical dominance that I could actually start really imparting that on people, which was good fun.

Speaker C: You mentioned that your period with the uh, with the Brumbies was one of the Brumbies are the most successful Australian rugby union team. What does high performance look like for a sports team and how does that translate into how you see that in business? So I guess what are some of the habits, mindset approaches that, that you've seen work in your time in the Brumbies, with the Wallabies, with the Rebels that you look for now in, in companies?

Speaker A: I, I think it, there's a lot of things that are transferable in particular habit or routines. Really high performing organizations, the team has a rhythm every week or whatever it is and individuals will have a rhythm as well. A routine, right. That, that keeps them in check to know that that's going to get into being at their optimal for that 80 minutes at 7:45pm on Friday night or Saturday night or Sunday, uh, or whatever it is, right. And, and when you're in an environment whereby every single person is doing that and every single group collectively we are all dialed into doing that, it's really, really powerful. And then also linked to that utmost clarity in what our jobs are. So what's the focus for the season? What's the vision for the season? What are our values? What are we, what are we going to conduct? How do we conduct ourselves each day, day in, day out? What are those values and what is my job in achieving that outcome or that goal or whatever, whatever we set down. So having clarity of that is categorically critical in a hot performing club or team but certainly in a high performing corporate as well. And probably if you go one layer below that, uh, the best teams I was ever in, it wasn't just about knowing your job, it was about knowing how My job impacts my guys inside me, outside me. And knowing then when that, when done, um, well, that impacts positive on the forwards or whatever and vice versa. When I don't do my job, that impacts detrimentally here and there and everywhere. And knowing how everyone, everything fits together and in the heat of battle, knowing that's really important because you can make quick decisions to be quite agile when you need to be. If you don't know that and you just go at a whim, it can be quite damaging. Uh, so, yeah, and I guess the crux of that is there's a period of time where we absolutely knew everyone's strengths.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, weaknesses, but our ability to leverage our strengths both from a, from a tactical point of view leading to a performance or actually out in battle mode under pressure, we could, we could do it. And when you're in an environment that's doing that, it's unbelievably amazing. Yeah, it's really self, it's self fulfilling where you're playing against opposition and you know that Andrew Walker, for instance, is one of the best second wave attackers ever. And let's just make sure we do our job and give the ball to him with lots of space in the second wave and you watch him go untouched, score tries and whatnot. It, it's really cool.

Speaker C: How did, how did your approach to the game change if it'll between when you were a player versus when you were in leadership roles as a captain of the Brompies or the Wallabies?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think every captain will go through this or every leader will go through this that. Uh, often you focus on the whole collective, you're focused on the whole group, you focus on everything and inevitably you can't do that and something gives. And often it might be your personal performance that gives initially. And so there was probably two learns straight away from me. Again, go back to going back to knowing your strengths. Knowing the strengths of your team and delegating to your teammates for their strengths is really, really important. So delegation and then secondly, doing your job, going back to the rule number one, knowing your job, do your job, is really, really, really important and really simple. So as a leader, if you delegate really efficiently and effectively, you know your job and you do your job really well because you know you are a captain for a reason, that's a great start. The flip side is, uh, if ever you've in a sporting team or organization with the leader is not leading by example or doing their job, it's pretty infuriating, right? So, but it's an easy. It's an. It's an easy trap that you can start thinking about everything over. Compre. Over analyzing everything and worrying about everyone's job and everyone's doing every different. I m mean, you just can't do that. There's just not enough time in the day. So you got to have faith in the process and the system and the people around you and your leaders around you. And as soon as you do that, it becomes. It actually can be a lot significantly easier to lead when you rely or leverage everyone around you.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you mentioned this in a couple of different ways, even as you touched on before we turned on the mics, when you were talking about, I guess, your. Your own growth and your experience with adhd. And I guess some people can look at that as something detrimental, but you can almost use some of those things as. As strengths, as superpowers again. Is that trying to translate that across to business? Is that something you look for as well in terms of what are the superpowers of founders or particular companies in terms of doing things, in terms of really honing in on what makes it special versus trying to find things that are more well rounded in that perspective?

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's an interesting one. I think that having that gets you to really understand how you work, firstly, and how to get the best out of yourself and try not to derail or put yourself into positions where you might derail yourself. And then secondly, I think it gave me a decent empathy to understand how people tick, what makes them tick. And probably more importantly, what I tried to do is let them to make everyone really comfortable in their own skin. When they're comfortable in their own skin, they can actually resonate their optimal frequency and all those things that are really cool, be themselves and be their best self without worrying about any judgment or anything like that. That's. When you're in an environment like that, that's really awesome. So I tried to do that. And the best way again was to live by example, to be myself. The challenge was when I. If I got too energetic and I got too crazy, I'd have to dial myself back down a bit and whatever. So I felt to me that wasn't a bad thing at all. It was an excellent thing. I just need to make sure that a. That gave me what I felt was better empathy and better understanding to how to short circuit things. And in particular, if I was losing concentration and wasn't focusing, uh, I guarantee you that a lot of other people were as well. Right. So I felt like that Kept me more, more focused on what I think the collective group needed, which is often less, is more clarity of message as opposed to saying 10 things at once. All those things were really important to me because that's what I was so. And then when I look at it now, as far as superpower, Yeah. I do feel like I look at. I look at things a little bit differently because I do look at, look at it from a lens of what is their superpower? Is this something that, that we really can get behind it? And are they doing something different? Just because I feel like the way that I looked at things is slightly different. So, yeah, definitely. And in particular, when you're talking about backing people, getting to know them and getting to know their superpowers is really, really important. And I feel like that's something that I do have a decent affinity to sit down, talk to someone and go, okay, I think this is where they're really, really good. And this is where, uh, this is where the hitting zone is. Not saying that's a strength, but not saying definitive, that's a strength. But certainly I think that that's something that I've. That I've dialed in over the years.

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Speaker C: In some ways, like, I think it's a little bit easier to assess that in someone else than sometimes it is for yourself, especially when you're used to operating at such a high level for such a long time in sport and then having to transition out. I'm sure that that's something that a lot of athletes have to go through of just having their. The vast majority of their life's so dedicated and focused towards operating in one particular way. And then your career ends and then you've got to figure out what happens from there. You mentioned a little Bit of the journey that you went on, but on a more personal level. What, what was that experience like of almost like knowing what you're doing day in, day out on the rugby field versus then having to figure out what, what comes next.

Speaker A: I think that's the biggest challenge for any athlete that's a professional athlete and then goes into something else. So we always say transitioning to the real world because there's a few things that are probably a given. So firstly, as an athlete, categorically you're going to be a subject matter expert in whatever field you're in. And you've created normally a whole support system around you or it's been provided to you. And uh, I go back to it, I mentioned a few of my rugby mentors, but literally in a team environment at an elite sporting level, you have coaches, you have dietitians, you have strength and conditioning coaches, high performance directors, you, you have medical staff, you have every single thing that you could ever wish for. Someone who's overseeing that to make sure that you can be your best self in that vertical. And then the coaches, their job is to get you to be better. So you've got all these people that vested interest in you growing and developing. Then as soon as you go into a corporate environment, it's almost, don't get me wrong, there's people who will take an ownership or might sponsor you often that's a nice corporate word, or take an active role and mentor you. But their job isn't to make you better. They're doing it because they think they can see they want to out of a desire to want to benefit you. It's very, very different paradigm. So that's one. And then secondly, I don't think it's very rare for an athlete to become a subject matter expert in their next endeavor immediately. I think that there's a determination, a desire and a will to roll up your sleeves and do whatever needs to be done. So it can happen. But there's, there's a lot of catching up to be done. And I guess for me, simple, simple math, right? 15 years of playing professional sport probably plus two. So that's 17 years before behind someone my age, really. However, what you don't cater for and don't understand or can't comprehend or commercialize or put a value on is all the lessons that you learn almost by osmosis or innately by being in this high performing environment for however long that is. And so it's a matter of there's that lag effect of you're not gonna, you might not be a subject matter expert to a certain period of time catching up from, uh, from an intellectual property or understanding of what you're doing, the different modality or different sector you're in, but then eventually becomes a point in time where you know that some of these high performance methodologies that you've been exposed to, and to be blunt, mediocrity isn't part of an elite sports person's DNA. So it's everything, uh, catches up quite quickly if you apply yourself. But there is that, that, that uncertainty. So it is, it's uncomfortable. And the reality is, as an athlete, desire to get better and evolve and constantly improve is there, it's what you do. Like literally you cannot have longevity as an athlete without that as being one of your number one focus points or pillars of what you do. But it's. How do you extrapolate that to something where you might, you might, you might never be someone that's deemed to be an expert or know the right way forward? That's a real challenge. And so then you don't know. And when you don't know, you've got to lean on your mates, lean on mentors, lean on sponsors or whatever that word is, and you got to find a way to map that out. And that's the hardest part, I think, for a lot of the athletes.

Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like that's uh, a very similar transition to a lot of people who I guess want to start a company or have exited out of one company and is trying to figure out what to do next. And it can be a bit of a difficult process. And again, in hindsight everything seems a little bit obvious and what you're doing with XV Capital seems like it fits such an important need. Your background, experience seems like such a great fit for that. But I imagine there's a bit of a process in getting, getting to that as well. What was the catalyst or bit of insight that led to what XV Capital is now?

Speaker A: I, uh, think it was more the market need, to be honest. I think, I think certainly this is globally, but in Australia as well. There's, there's a lot of sports technology startups. There's, I think there's in between 700 and 800 sports technology businesses in this country. But as far as how many businesses have revenue north of 10 million, it would be, yeah, not many. I'd say, well, maybe 10 if we're lucky. That's 70. I think it's less than that. So what we've seen is a lot of interesting technologies that starting to have revenue profile and growing but need help to go the next level. I get that revenue profile up to 10, 5, 10 million recurring revenue or whatever, whatever you call that. And so that combined with the fact that I think historically sport in general Australians we punch above, above our weight. So there's been areas, areas of digital transformation and or technology where we've done quite well. Catapult is a global leader of GPS tracking. Has been for a long time. You've got Valve doing amazing things as well. However throughout the whole entire uh, I guess we'll call it ecosystem. Don't like using that word too often but throughout the whole entire sporting landscape utilization of digital transformation and innovation data insights across everything that's done in sport. Where a laggard sport is a, is a laggard globally and it's, we're in I guess it's a big question mark whether Australia we're actually behind certainly North America from a commercialization of sport and business of sport and fan engagement. They're amazing over there. We can get that but we're in danger of, we need to catch up. And so from, from our perspective that's been working in the sector for about five years and we feel like xv we want to try to play a really active role in fast tracking that digital transformation in sport in this region. And the reason why you don't have to look for, look further than in your own household. I uh, spoke about my childhood growing up playing sport the whole entire time. Whereas kids nowadays, or I was out in the park the whole time. Right. Kids nowadays nowhere near will be just going up to the park by themselves or with their mates every day. Their outdoor activities, you've got devices and everything else. There's so many other things that kids can do with their time and they do and organized sport is, is, is, is has diminished. So it's how does sport remain relevant? Digitizing and digital transformation and this space where, where it uh, is in enabler to do that. And so it's just been through natural evolution that we've played in where we're seeing a need, a significant need and I guess from a high level what XV is trying to do. We're working in a section of sports technology and investment and ideally if we do our job really really well, if investors want to get access to a sector that's predominantly been non correlated to most other sectors and that has lots of tailwinds being digital transformation and technology in sport, hopefully we can be a uh, meaningful avenue to doing that. And if we've done that, ideally the sports have, have thrived through digital transformation and the technology's hopefully done well too.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think uh, sports as an asset class has become so interesting in the last couple of years, both from a technology perspective. Obviously what's happening with a lot of celebrity ownership into sports teams, like what Ryan Reynolds is doing with Wrexham as an example, and just, even just evaluation of a lot of these sporting teams as well is going through the roof. I think one of the things that's often overlooked is I think sports is actually really complex industry as well. It's not like sports is a big bucket. Involves a lot of different kind of elements of that, I guess from XV's perspective. What are you finding as where the opportunities are uh, at the moment or what are kind of areas that are really interesting to you at the moment?

Speaker A: Well, I'd say that firstly how we look at sport and sports investment at the moment with predominantly sports tech, we're trying to look for sports technologies that are transformative to solving big problems in sport and ideally they've got a leverage, uh, revenue model that's scalable across multiple sports regions and ideally even sectors because we know that sport's incredibly niche. But often the adjacent sector can dwarf the actual sports sector. That is health and wellbeing, where aging population, if we're looking at neurocognitive health and everything around that, and concussions are part of that as well. There's, there's, there's interesting side adjacent markets or sectors where it's, it is significant and I guess another example of that would be in human potential high performance. All of my mates still find this amazing. Every single training session of my elite professional life, in every single game I did a recovery session, I. E. Ice bins, uh, and often probably, I don't know, three, three or four heat and ice therapies every week. Sleep. I remember we did a sleep survey. Probably we had at a wearable, I think it was around about 2001. Yeah, that was actually through the AIs. So the time frame for stuff like that, that was normal for us to understand if you're a good sleeper or not. What are your habits prior to sleep and all these things that are critical. It was amazing. We had over a third of our team who were bad slippers and some of those guys were trying to sleep with a TV on. I mean I just, I remember just saying, mate, are you serious? But this, this is what happens in a, uh, high performing elite environment whereby you're trying to do incremental improvements for 1%, something like that could be 10% but going back to it. So they're just two examples of recovery which now recovery, sleep, all of these things are huge. Uh, longevity is a big thematic for people in health and well being. But the genesis of a lot of these technologies and the improvements have been in sport predominantly. So that's just some really simple examples of things that we look at and how we look at it. And then in particular the more scalable it goes from the high performance or the elite version of the game all the way down to the every worry community participant. Obviously the more it can do that, that technology, the bigger addressable market and the more we look at that as being a great thing. So I mean another example of a company that we really like at the moment, it's doing amazing things is prevent biometrics. They're a instrument ah of mouthguard placed based out of us. They're the ones that only just last week. Their next iteration of product is a red flashing light on the mouth guard when the person has a big, big impact. And for the women's world cup that's happening right now, they're going to be using that technology. So literally via Bluetooth, someone on the sideline, um, will get that, will see that ping anyway, but every single person on the pitch will see that someone's got a red mouth. And that ain't blood, it's from the mouth guard. So that person needs to come up for a head injury assessment. We, we see a time and a place literally in the next two to three years where every single kid that's playing contact sport more than likely will have one of those smart mouth guards. So that reducing the chance, preventing the chance of second impact syndrome and or repeated trauma, which those two things from experience are really significant things when it comes to concussion and issues around heat impact. So that's another one. And, and it's, it's really interesting because that company already has a U. S. Department of defense contract. We didn't realize this but over 35% of armed forces personnel suffer concussion in training or in deployment.

Speaker C: 35.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: So as an example of something that's solving huge problems and looking, looking like being a uh, fantastic initiative as far as this whole concussion paradigm, which mentioned before, brain health and oculomotor tracking, different goggles and different things, there's lots of things out there, blood and biomarkers are out there. All these things are happening. And eventually there'll be a point in time where we technology innovation will help make our sports, uh, safer, which I think is great. But this one in particular, potentially, we don't know, but potentially the same technology utilized in armed, um, forces, military personnel might even have a big application. Maybe.

Speaker B: We're going to take a very quick break from this podcast to talk about something really important and meaningful and probably something that a lot of you listening can relate to. For the last few years, I had a front row seat into how challenging and difficult it can be to build something meaningful. The late nights, the constant pressure, uh, the feeling that no matter how well you're doing, there's always more to do and that whatever you're doing is never enough. For a long time I thought that was just a trade off. To be successful in business, everything else, your health, your fitness, your relationships, had to take a backseat. But what if that wasn't true? As an investor, I know that the most successful and impactful businesses are built over decades, not over months. But so often we approach life at our businesses as if we're running a 100 meter sprint rather than the marathon that we're truly running. These are the questions and insights that led me to launching the Como Club, the world's first human accelerator. Earlier this year, we brought together 26 incredible people, from founders, investors, professional athletes, to senior executives at some of the largest companies. It's an eight week program designed for high performers to implement systems for long term success in their business and all areas of their life, from fitness to mental health, relationships and leadership, all within a, uh, trusted and high caliber community that just gets it. So if you've been doing well but know there's another level, or if you've been running hard and want to recalibrate, I'd love for you to check it out. Cohort 2 kicks off in August and applications are now open. You can find out more details or apply at the Komoclub. That's T H E K-O-M-O-C-L-U-B.com all right,

Speaker C: let's get back to this episode that's super fascinating. I think. First of all, I'm extremely grateful to have you as one of our speakers for Cohort 2 of the coma Club, where the idea is that we want to take the same systems and principles that we use to scale startups and businesses and apply that on an individual level. But part of that is a lot of the philosophies and structures like you mentioned in some of the work that you were doing in the early 2000s in measuring sleep, measuring a Lot of these, collecting data around all of these things to get insight on that. For any founders that are listening to this, what are uh, the core tenets of things that you focus on from a high performance perspective in sport that you think founders should be thinking about for their own high performance? So sleep as an example, are there any other areas of variables that you think people should be focusing on outside of that?

Speaker A: Well, this is the thing. It's, it's how, how far do you want to go down the rabbit hole? So which thankfully I did as an athlete and dabble every now and then now, um, I've been off alcohol the last month and I won't be having alcohol until I go on my holiday with my wife in September. But that's another example, right? That's, everyone knows that that is not performance enhancing and people can get in really bad cycles in and around alcohol. Caffeine's an interesting one. Caffeine is actually performance enhancing but also has a half life of around about I think it's 10 hours. So caffeine post 2:30pm is probably a.

Speaker C: No, no.

Speaker A: Uh, that was, that was as clear as it was articulated to us when we were elite athletes. And so yeah, but it is performance enhancing. There was a period of time actually when I was playing where we were not caffeine was banned I. E. A high level of caffeine. If you, you were tested and you had it, you actually broken a positive test, what else is there? So we said, we said recovery, we said sleep. Yeah, sleep's a really, really, really important one. Ice bins and, and saunas, really really important. There's been conflicting data and uh, evidence around these though as well and I haven't really had a good look lately at what's, what's, what's, what's up to date and the most definitive research other than from my personal utilization of both, I think they're both fantastic. Both sauna for this is not just, it's as much. Even if it's a placebo effect, I think it's, it's significant, still helpful but, but certainly from my understanding saunas are excellent for broader health and well being and detoxification side of things with your body as well those processes. Ice therapy from my perspective was outstanding. I loved it. So there's those ones and then obviously diet, what you put in your system is so important or what you don't. So right now I've been dabbling in a little bit of intermittent fasting and whatnot. So previously I went off gluten for two years. All these different things, these are all interesting. Different things that are really important. Yeah.

Speaker C: And are these things that you experiment on yourself with or do you collect insight into things to figure out what works? Like what, what's your approach to it?

Speaker A: No, a bit of both. I'm um, happy to be a bit of a, a bit of a bit of elaborate on some of these things. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I've always just been that way inclined. So I guess another example of that was when research first came out about recovery compression garments would have been again around early 2000s. The data research was irrefutable that just wearing compression garments was significantly a number of standard deviations I think from recollection on impact as far as recovery. So massage therapy, ice therapy and uh, other recovery methods, even just just wearing compression garments, I think almost was better than it or it had significant improvements. So from that moment onwards I just wore compression garments the whole time. Yeah. So I guess I've always been one that if, if there's data out there, proof that this is, this is going to better, better us, I'm um, more than happy to have a try and if I like it, I'll do it. Yeah. So I don't know. That's just always been my methodology and in particular probably as an athlete I went back to placebo effect. Right. So I used to have my own typically one external massage every every week. I used to have Cairo acupuncture and physio sessions. There's a whole broader team around people around allied Health that I knew what I needed to do to be world class preparation, different stretch sessions, Pilates sessions, everything that, that's on top of what I guess the organization provided for me.

Speaker C: And just uh, just out of curiosity, what does that look like for you now? So now I guess it's like you said, it's one thing when you've got all of that support system and things like that around you to, to do that. I imagine you have a pretty hectic schedule now with everything doing with xv and it's, it's tough to find time to do. A lot of the things that you probably want to do are uh, there like particular pillars that you go. These are like the two, three, four things that I absolutely need to get done.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's uh, for me it's, it's the biggest challenge because body wise I can't train as, as hard or as simply as I used to. I actually believe it or not used to like running A lot I can't run and then. So I've got a mountain bike. I uh, will ride that every now and then but even riding that might be. Flare up my knee every now and then or whatever. So I've just got to. For me it's actually what goes in is really, really critical. I've got to be careful about what I eat and what I put into my body. The better I'm out of that, the less chance I've got her getting out of kilter. But yeah, so I think probably every. I was going to say second week but not, not that, not that consistently. But I do still get a massage every now and then. I think that was a bit the number one thing for me that would, that would help me to just de plug. So to me, for me, a deep system. I used to have one every week was the only time where I'd actually fall asleep in the middle of the day because I'd get them to be so hard that the only way I, I just had to switch off my muscles to release my muscles and then eventually uh, my whole body would just shut down for 10, 15 minutes. So I still do that. So that's one that I acutely know that it's really good for me. Golf was always a good one when I had time or sorry when I was injury free. That again, five hours or even just nine holes, two hours of no phone de plugging. Getting away from everything is phenomenal and or walking outdoors. That whole earthing concept. I don't take off my shoes, but I have. But uh, those things are they, they're really important for me. If, if I was a bit younger, I'm 48 now, if my body wasn't as broken, I probably would. Would be easy to train a bit more. But only recently, two weeks ago, I've joined a gym and I'm trying to get to the gym probably three or four times a week. There you go.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I was just saying I just signed up to BFT last week and been going every day and it's uh, definitely feeling it.

Speaker A: I think. I think the one thing that's different right is you have to structure it into, into your schedule. You've actually got to put it in. And sometimes for people in the real world as we call it, people at work, day in, day out, maybe sometimes the easiest is to do it first thing in the morning. 5:30, 6, 6:30, whatever time you get up, do it, then it's done or structure it in. That's the only way I find it. If you don't do that, it doesn't happen.

Speaker C: Yeah. I was speaking to someone who's a Hyrox, uh, ambassador in Singapore, and one of the things that she mentioned, which I actually like love that perspective on, was I think a lot of us try and squeeze in a lot of those things around everything else we have going on during the day. But for her it was this is the priority. So I structured that in and everything else kind of goes around that. It's a small shift, but small tweak, but just that kind of mindset shift really realigned to kind of focus on the consistency with a lot of these things that you need.

Speaker A: And I also think that in a warp way, if you are paying for a membership to something, then that to me then signals that it is important and then hopefully that then translates to a priority on your scheduling. Yeah. So sometimes getting a free membership or whatever it is or the, the potentially might not be enough commitment. So to me there's a lot of always historically committing is a big part of the process of then getting. Yeah. Sacrifice and commit.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You've got to feel the pain one or another.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker C: Speaking of which, again, if I read this correctly, you had 15 operations during your career.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: That's mental. So I wanted to play cricket professionally. Indian kid.

Speaker B: Growing up, I had a really bad

Speaker C: knee injury that kind of put me out for a very long time. That kind of like ended things. That was one big injury. How do you keep coming back from that many operations? Many of which I assume were quite significant as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I tend to say normally when I'm talking about this resilience and all these things, that four of my injuries were career ending or career threatening. Three of them were full shot of reconstructions and one was my back surgery, which was probably the most debilitating of all. And a lot of the other ones were broken bones that need to be repaired, set, I should say, and. Or uh, scopes, I. E. Something wasn't quite right with a knee or a shoulder and needed to be fixed immediately. And so to me it was weird. Right. So I played for 15 seasons, but once I got into the Australian team in 2000, so that was my third season full season playing professionally until when I moved down here to the Rebels. If I, if I was fit, I, uh, was playing for Australia. I just had two years and other times where I was not fit. So once I was in that team in 2000, it was an amazing year. We went in, I think I went mentioned that kick in Durban and different things. Ilse did that kick over in, over in Wellington and win the match. He was, it was just an amazing, amazing year to be part of that team. And from then on I just wanted to not, not stop playing in that environment. It was just amazing. Right. Unfortunately the next year was the British Norris lines in 2001 and I injured my shoulder. I did a, uh, dislocated my shoulder in the semi final of the Super Rugby and had uh, to have a full shot of reconstruction. So my whole year, so everything I was thinking about the whole year was to play against British and Irish lines often once in a lifetime opportunity. And that was taken. So part of me, even that time that was my first real big setback was this is out of my control. You really get good at what's in what you can control, can control the controllables, right? And you get really good at optimizing your preparation and, and they almost, almost the same, right? You, you can't let things weigh on you and especially for your mental and emotional energy on things that are out of your control. And that was done. I couldn't do it. Nothing I could do about it. Sorry. And so what I found, and the easiest way to describe this is in those scenarios there's two different ways. You can, you can, you can go with this. You can either feed the good wolf or feed the bad wolf. So the good wolf, as the American Indian, Indian folklore says, it feeds on the evil wolf, feeds on all negative sentiments and bad things, jealousy, envy or all negative attributes. And the good wolf feeds on all positive attributes. And for me, it took me a while to actually saw this illustrated and I was like, mate, this is what I've been doing. So anytime I faced one of these scenarios, it'd be surround myself with the best team, the best surgeon, the best physio, the best rehab program. And how am I going to feed the good wolf in this scenario? So firstly, I'd immediately go to a warp sense of, sense of, sense of reality. If this is the end of my career, am I happy? I'm not really happy because I want to do more. But you know what? I've played for my country. I've done amazing things. That's great. I'm privileged. Secondly, I don't want that to happen. But how do I come back bigger and better than I was before and again go back to the goals, but having a map as to how we do that in particular, one thing that is the silver lining in feeding the good wolf on a exponential level when you're an elite athlete, often you're traveling the whole entire time. You don't see your family and friends as much as when I was injured, I was at home the whole entire time. So with my family and friends all the time and your support network, which is powerful if you get it right. And so for me, that's how I managed every injury. So often I was all or nothing. So literally I would get injured and then I'd go, right, bang, I'm at home, I've got my physio. Mal Brown was my physio. He, he actually reached out to me the other day, had a good chat and he sent me a few photos of. In his practice, I used to joke that one of these wings of his house was. Should have been called the Mortlock M Wing because I was one of his favorite clients because I was always injured. But we would, we would actually have fun working my absolute backside off to make sure that whatever we were rehabbing, whether it was my shoulders, my knees, back or whatever, I would be stronger by the time I came back. And then the S and C coaches, so strength and conditioning trainers would put a program in place that maybe I couldn't do upper body for a period of time or whatever I couldn't do, but we could do certain training, sprint training, yada, yada, yada, and making sure that when that time came I was better. And that happened every time. So literally every time I came back from an injury, I came out better, uh, bigger, uh, faster, stronger and oh, three World cup was the same. So I actually had a shot of reconstruction in the year of the World cup and I thought it wasn't going to make the World cup squad in 03. So we had to fast track my rehabilitation by at the time, six months was rough for the window. I had to play four months and three weeks post operation actually get on

Speaker C: the field and play.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And we did it. And we did it quite well. And that intercept that everyone asked me about against New Zealand, actually I. A lot of the reason I actually looked quite quick then was because I actually was quick because I'd spent three to four months post op. As soon as I could start running, started doing sprint training, which I couldn't do if I was playing. Yeah. So again, feeding the good wolf, even that little moment, there was some good wolf there.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. Sterlo, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your experience and insights. For anyone that wants to find out more about you, XV Capital, get in touch. What's the best way for them to do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think actually go to our website. We've got forms anyone can fill out. We'll get in contact with them straight away.

Speaker C: Perfect. I will make sure I add those links in the show notes. Once again, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Speaker A: Pleasure.

Speaker C: Cheers.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to episode 219 of the Startup Playbook podcast. As always, the show notes from this episode will be available at startupplaybook.co. if you enjoyed this episode and liked hearing the lessons from Sterling on high performance and want to hear more from him, as well as other successful entrepreneurs on how to implement systems to help you win in both business and in life, consider applying to the Como Club. Applications for Cohort 2 are now open and you can find out more details and apply via our website, which is the komoclub.com that's T H E K-O-M-O-C-L-U-B.com I'll be back next week with another episode, but in the meantime, if you enjoyed this interview, please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. As always, thank you for tuning in and I'll see you next week.