 So coaching journey, I guess my coaching journey started three or four years ago. I was working as an accountant at the time and I started to volunteer my time as a creative coach, coaching representative teams. And then slowly but surely I sort of made the decision to stop being an accountant. It just wasn't for me seeing an office all day. It's quite taxing and there's a few other personal issues in the side there, which we might get into talking about later, but yeah, I guess that was sort of my journey in. I've always been interested in sport. It's always been an awesome outlet for me personally. It's where I've thrived socially as well. So for me, it was, it was a no brainer to get into the sports industry. I guess for me, where my business is at now, I'm extremely surprised how far it's gotten to because for me, it was only just something to get me through uni. It was only supposed to be a little hobby job, but I quickly realized I think about a year in that it was, it could potentially be something lifelong. So yeah, it was sort of out of the blue, I guess, to get into where I am now. It wasn't something I expected. Okay, awesome. So when was that moment where you decided, do you know what I want to go all in on this? What was that turning point? I wouldn't put it down to one specific moment, but I guess I started to see myself becoming more confident not only as a coach, but also as a business owner and starting to make more business-like decisions. And I think I started to put more of a price on my time. When I started, I would travel and I've listened to interviews before and people have said the same things, but I travel an hour to a session and back from a session to just see one client because that was just how you had to be. You had to go and see that first client and to get more. So once I quickly got a few more clients, I sort of made the decision to stop doing that. I needed to put some value on my time. And once I started to make more business-related decisions in line with that, I found myself picking up more clients in different areas. We were close to the home and it started to become a lot more manageable. And I guess when things become more manageable, you can start to see that there's a bit of a future there. It sort of clicked your brain together. You might be able to make this worthwhile. Absolutely. So tell us a bit about your coaching business then. What does your company specialise in? So the company sort of specialises in private and small group training. It was mainly just private stuff until maybe the last couple of months where I've started to integrate some smaller group coaching into it and looking forward, I'm looking to actually go a little bit further with that and run some more academy-style sessions where the groups are a little bit larger and I'm working with. And doing things slightly different instead of just working with one person and working on things very technically with a player because cricket's quite a technical sport. Sort of branching out and making things a little bit more game-awareness-wise and testing players in a different way. I think cricket's a very different sport to a lot of the other sports out there and a lot of the other sports that have been inspired by you guys before. It is so individual, but the individual fits into a team-based environment. And as a coach, we often find that players look very good in a training environment, but then can't actually perform into a game situation. So I think that's where, that's the direction I'm heading at the moment. Looking to make things more game-based. And I think to do that, you need to integrate more group programs into the business. So yeah, a transition I'm looking forward to making actually. Okay, cool. So for those that don't know too much about cricket, tell us a little bit about what are the type of struggles that clients are coming to you with? Like what's a common theme you're seeing in cricket at the moment with players? That's a good question. I think it's just, as I was sort of mentioning before, we're now in a transition, something that happens in a training-based environment into something that happens in a game. I'll take batting as an example. There's one or there's two people out batting, but you're the one person who might be facing the bowler. But then there's 11 other people on the opposition who are trying to get you out. And it's that mental, that mental battle between focusing on yourself but also focusing on what the other team are trying to do. And I think, I work with a lot of kids who are around the ages of 10 to 13 and they're going through so many things personally. And they're maturing personally, but cricket's a game that's quite fickle and you can often find yourself on the wrong side of decisions and become quite unlucky. And it's quite hard for kids to actually process that. So I think it's more on the mental side of the game. I'm finding that kids really struggle with. And for me, I've struggled personally as well. So it's quite a good thing, I guess I have experienced in dealing with a few personal issues and being able to try and relate that into cricket and to help players is being interesting. And I've seen some really good development with some of my players as well in that area. So yeah, less technical issues, more game sense and awareness and then just judgment. Yeah, awesome. So do you feel that in cricket in general, coaches touch on the mental side of the game enough or do they focus more on the technical? Hoping that if they develop technically, they're going to become stronger mentally. I think there is an increasing focus on the mental side of the game, but nowhere near enough. And you can see it's almost like, I can speak from players in my area. You can almost see kids who have a coach's blueprint. And you can see, you can look at a kid and go, that kid's coached by that person. And you can see that they have some good technical qualities. But then when it comes to the actual game sense, you can see where it lacks. Whereas for my players, I put a real emphasis on actually playing the game rather than looking the best or, you know, hitting the best shot, because it's not how cricket is scored. It's scored with how many rounds you get and how many we can get. And just because you look good doesn't mean that actually translates. So let me take you back to when you first started, your business then, what was some obstacles you faced at the beginning with your business? Question, I think for me, it was a complete lack of confidence in myself personally. You know, for me, that's been the biggest obstacle that's been me. Which again, I think it's very different to a lot of people who've come on here and answered these same questions before, let's say it's, you know, I didn't have my program structured well, I was accepting cash, I was doing this, that, whatever. But for me, it's me personally. You know, I don't want to go into too much depth about it, but you know, I've had mental health issues. I've been there with suicide and whatnot. You know, I've felt alone a lot of my life due to certain things. And even recently, the way I've been treated by certain people that I care about. So for me, it's been a really big struggle, especially the last few years, who have actually stayed focused on the business. And when you are running your own business, well, my business name is Bellas Prickett Academy, I'm the only person in the business. And if you are suffering from mental health issues, it's really difficult to do your job. And there's been some weeks there and some months there where I'm working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, which is crazy numbers. And you know, there's some changes coming that will greatly reduce that. But you know, if you're not in the right headspace, you can't function. And I think I could have made so many changes that I'm currently doing now. I could have made them five to six to even a year earlier. And had I done that, so many more things would have been streamlined and things were much more simpler. So yeah, you know, as I said, there's the generic sort of issues and obstacles like you accept cash, you don't have committed clients. But yeah, for me, it's all about the personal. That's been the biggest obstacle for me. So you've been in our program for a while now. Tell us about your experience with the program, with getting on the calls, being in the community. How has that helped you to grow your business? Awesome question. And you know, I think I've not only grown as a business but I've grown a bit more so probably personally from joining a program. I think it's instilled a lot of discipline into my personal life. And I was thinking that's flowing into my business life. I think it's just a great way and it's a great place to actually open up. And if you don't feel like you can open up to specific people who are around you because you know, a lot of people don't know what it takes to be a business owner. You've got a really safe place to do it. In an environment where it's all about community and learning. And I think, you know, had I joined the program a little bit earlier, I think I would have been a lot further in my business life. But you know, you can only live once in front of you. And I think, you know, for me, I've been able to solve so many issues quite simply just because I've been able to ask someone on the community. So it's such a great place to learn and you learn about stuff that you didn't even think that you needed to or wanted to learn about. And I think that's, I think it shows the strength of the program. That's awesome, great stuff. So where do you see the private training industry going in the next two to five years? Well, I think, you know, from a cricket perspective, it'll just keep growing because cricket is a really technical sport. And I think in terms of coaches and also parents, there's an, I guess there's an over reliance on it. So I think people will always be searching for those technical changes. I think for me, there'll be a really, there'll be a widening of the gap between coaches who care and coaches who are just there, just coaching the technical side of things. And it'll be the coaches who can provide a better overall experience and actually take care in how the kids are doing, not only on the field, but also off the field. I think those coaches will thrive. Whereas the coaches who only just work on what looks pretty and whatnot, I think they'll have a trouble staying and sustaining. Because I think everyone in life is looking for something a little bit different now. I think COVID sort of had a bit of a role there. We're all looking for something that can be more worthwhile to us, not just in the sport that we're playing. So I think, yeah, in private training it's gonna grow, but there's gonna be a bigger gap between who's doing well and who isn't. Mm-hmm, excellent. So how many clients are you currently working with? That's a really tough thing to answer because privately in group sessions, I work with about 50 or 60 clients every week. But currently I'm coming to the end of coaching with a club and sometimes I might work with maybe 100 to 150 people across a six month period. So it's probably 40 or 50 I regularly see every week. A lot of that's individual, but more so it's turning into group-based stuff, which is awesome. But yeah, I've had the ability to get in touch with a lot of people over the last few years. Previously I worked for Cricket News as well, and that was, you take a year group of like 150 kids and you work with them for an hour. So it's good to be working with less kids now, and more, I wouldn't say high-performance environment, but kids who actually want to be there rather than kids who are sort of forced to. But yeah, 40 to 50 kids each week consistently, hopefully that'll grow over time. Awesome. So talk to us a little bit about how you made that transition from introducing groups into your business, because I speak to a lot of coaches and a lot of them are very skeptical about transitioning into groups because they can't see a way of adding more value in their program. So talk to us a little bit about that. Well, as I sort of mentioned before, I think if we get very much such a team-based sport, I think there's a real lack of integrating that into coaching. And for me, I'm really lucky. I have transitioned my Sunday work into these groups because I don't want to be coaching seven or eight hours of individual. I want to chop it down to three or four hours of group style, because no one wants to be working up a Sunday. Let's be honest. Yes. But I was really lucky that a few of the kids who I coach currently in groups have worked together or individually. And there might be like a 10-minute crossover period between someone coming and someone going. So they sort of knew each other. So that's made the integration really good. I've been really lucky that the three groups that I work with currently in Sundays are awesome. They work with each other quite well. They compliment each other. So I've been lucky enough to have kids who can do one thing really well that the other kids can't. And it helps the other kids sort of learn from them. So yeah, I think it's just about finding group sessions or all about finding kids who are around the same age, around the same skill level, but also around the same maturity level. Because all it takes is one annoying kid or one kid that doesn't function in the group to actually ruin the group environment. So I think the group dynamic is probably the most important thing that you need to sort of cultivate. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, like that. And talk to us a little bit about how you add value to your program. So what makes you different to any competitor that's in your local area? Sure. So something I'm getting into is video analysis. I'm really lucky that I've just signed a deal with a cricket AI company called Lutamoss who will revolutionise the way that cricket coaching is done. So making it a lot more, being able to provide feedback to the client via video rather than just me having to look, because we've created such a fast-paced sport, it's actually really hard to pick up certain little details with the way a person is playing, whether they're batting or bowling. And having that video there enables the client to actually see for themselves what they look like, because I think, especially for kids that have this really weird concept of how they look and how they play, but then when you actually show them something, it allows them to actually see what they're doing and it makes actually coaching them and talking to them. They have a visual reference on what you want them to do, whether it be to get them into a certain position when they're batting or bowling, or you can see that they can run a little bit faster when they're bowling or what not. It's very hard to just say that and the kid go like, I understand that. It makes it so hard for them to visually see it. Okay, love that. That's cool. So how are you currently recruiting new clients into the business? Where are they coming from? Talk to us a little bit about your sales and marketing process. In terms of marketing, my marketing is really simple. I just use word of mouth and that's how I've developed my business into something that's now full-time. You know, I probably have, I can tend kids who are sitting on the waiting list and I haven't had to market them whatsoever. So I'm really lucky that I guess the job that I do and the care and the passion that I have for my clients is enabled me to to almost have free marketing. In terms of going forward, I'm looking to increase my relationships with other coaches around the area so I can pick up potentially clients that they can't see or they can pick up clients that I can't see. I'm also looking to work with some local businesses, specifically one that's involved with Cricut Equipment to provide some advertising and some sponsorship to not only advertise me but also to add various of the clients in my program as well. Mm-hmm, okay, cool. So talk to us now a little bit about communication with clients, so well, parents more specifically. Like, how important is it? Because this is something a lot of coaches don't pay attention too much to it. It's a really broad question. Yeah, it is quite difficult, especially when you have so many people in your program. For me, you know, whenever I want to send out a group message on me to emailing or on what's happening, you know, a big WhatsApp group, and I think some people appreciate being in that group but some people probably don't, but that's not something I can be child unfortunately. I need to get some messages out to people. In terms of, you know, contacting clients personally, you know, I'm more so, especially when I'm discussing certain programs with them, I'm looking to use Zoom a lot more, and this is something that I learned from the program and it's something that's helped me in the last month or so, but it's being able to actually see a face and see reactions and understand how your message is actually getting across to someone. It's really hard to do that over a phone and it's even worse trying to do that over a text message because we all know even from our personal lives, when you text someone, something is going to be taken out of context. So being actually able to see someone whether it be in person, but you know, obviously Zoom's a little bit easier to see people. It just enables you to actually see how things are being interpreted and actually, you get that feel like you're actually having a proper conversation. And I think, you know, it just shows that you care a little bit more. You're willing to jump on a Zoom call with someone. You're willing to regress your time with someone. But I think it's really important as well that you don't give people too much of your time because your time is really precious and there's so many other clients and there's so many other things that you can be doing with your time as well. Yeah, like that. So, Brendan, tell us, where do you see your business in the next five years from now? Hopefully growing. Hopefully growing. But I think for me, I'd rather work more on the business than in the business. And I think this is something that's come across in interviews before, but I do so much coaching that at times it's been completely unsustainable. And you know, looking at my January, I was doing some 40 to 50 hours a week in 35 degree heat, which is crazy. And it's not sustainable. It's actually quite stupid to be honest. So for me, it's finding some like-minded people who can work for me. It's also making that transition into more group-based sessions. So you are literally doing this hours every week. And it's continuing to find ways to add more value to clients. Because I think, as I said before and as I said throughout, I think people are looking for more than just the coaching experience. We're actually looking for an experience in general, not just the coaching side of things. They want to feel like their time is going and their investment is going. And when you're just providing a coaching service, you could go anywhere to do that. You could pay an extra amount of money to go and see someone or you could pay less. It doesn't matter. But if you're providing something different, I think people are intrigued. And that's probably what I'm looking to do. I'm looking to go the extra mile to provide different things. I've sort of spoken about video analysis before, but there's other things like online mentoring and that doesn't have to be cricket-related. That could be non-cricket-related. Could be fitness plans. It could be other stuff. I think just being able to provide extra value to people, I think people really appreciate that. Love that. So thank you, Brandon, for coming on here, sharing us your story, talking to us a little bit about your business, your successes as well. There's any coach that might be in cricket, wants to connect with you, comes across the video. What is the best way to do that? You're gonna have to maybe look at my Instagram and what your video is. None of it by heart. Here we go. So yeah, Instagram is probably the best way to find me. So it's just at Bella's Cricket Academy. That's probably the best way to find me. And my email address is yeah, Bella'sacricketacademy.com. That's probably the best way to find me. Awesome. So I'll add that to the bottom of the video so people can go and follow you and hopefully connect with you there. Awesome. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure and look forward to maybe in 12 months from now, catching up with you again, seeing where the business is at. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Cheers, mate. All right, take care. Thanks, mate.