A family member around Christmas time, they, you know, wanted to lose weight, which is a normal sort of conversation to have. And they blamed their bloating on gluten, which is true. Gluten can do that, right? If you're a celiac, but they've played on a gluten. So what they say was, I'm cutting out gluten dairy. That's without like blood tests and, you know, all sorts of stuff to see if that's even an issue. And I'm sure that that's a debate for itself. Within the hour of us having this conversation, they had pizza and a beer. And so some people might know or they might have a very, very simple knowledge, but whether people execute is another thing. So guys, we are back on the Sevo show with Brendan McCormack. But before we start the show, we've got a big shout out to Hunt and Brew again, the coffee that has no ingredients in it other than coffee and milk. No added sugar. That's it. So if you're diabetic, this one's for you. And if you're not a diabetic, this one's for you. Smoking kills. Thanks, Eddie. Maradona. Cabinet noir. Good threads. Good shirts. Good thanks. Now on to the show. Brendan McCormack. How you doing, dude? Yeah. Can I tell you a story about Eddie? Come on, son. Is this going to go straight from the ad to the podcast? Yeah. Awesome. So I saw him the other day. I was at the beach. Yes. Yeah. And just walking along. Nah, I'm North Beach. And so I was like, Madam's forward. And he was just strutting along the beach, getting a tan. Yeah. Yeah. He's always hanging out there. Was he, was his phone out? I don't think so. I don't think so. I've seen him a couple of times. And I don't know if he knows me, but I'm sure he does. But it's one of those Instagram things where it's like, Oh, should we go and say good day? So next time, hopefully, seize this next time. I'll be like, Hey, Eddie, how you doing? Well, just break the ice. Say, we were talking about Yonsef's podcast. Like really? Smoking kills, bro. That's it. Which leads in to fitness. Yeah, that's it. So about Brenda, Brenda has been everywhere and he's, he loves the microphone. MC of many events, including Crossfits all over the country. And serial entrepreneur, father, husband, and doesn't like hair.  So what has happened in the last kind of couple of years? So I think when we caught up, that's when I was doing fitify, which was a date enough for fitness people, which it started off as a joke, literally, you know, through Instagram stories and people wanting wanting to find dates. And I was like, man, fit people want to date other fit people. And, you know, they don't have a good experience on Tinder and bumble. And so that's what started fitify. And then that was like a whole startup journey of itself and just before I had Evie, who's our baby, or little dim sum, I saw my shares, so much, so much shares from fitify was pretty much a stay at home dad for three months when I went through this weird little post business depression of, you know, you've cashed a check, you've kind of completed the goal. And then it's like, man, I don't want to do next. And so yeah, I literally didn't do anything. I got some really good advice, because I felt compelled, like I had to do something.  And like, I hadn't thought of it like that. And I was like, oh yeah, so simple. So literally did nothing for three months.  And I was like, all right, I've got to go do something. And I wasn't ready to get back into business. And I was like, all right, well, I want to go help someone else. So there was a few offers out there. And I ended up being the general manager chasing better of there's essentially four businesses within the group. So as a general manager and them for about nine months. And then I was like, you know what, there's unfinished business that I wanted to do with Perth Fitfam. I'm ready to get back into it. And that was pretty much it, man. So from June or July, let's just say the new financial year kicked it back off.  So last year ticked off a couple of bucket list items. One of them was MC and Torian pro, which is like the CrossFit Games semi-final. And that was sheer luck that the MC dropped out a week before the event. And all of a sudden I started getting tagged in this post and I was training. And I looked at my phone and there was literally like 100 plus notifications on on Instagram. And I was a bit weird. And so looked into it. And it's just my name tagged like 100 times in this looking for an MC and I'm like, okay, cool. And then the main organizers are one of the main broadcast crews like, Hey man, the guys know about you. I've talked you up all week, reach out to them. They're going to fly you over.  And then at the end of the year, got to go to Woolloongong to MC, down under CrossFit Champs, which was real nostalgic for me because I was there seven years before it's the first time that I went to a regional event. And I don't know why, but back then I wasn't interested in being an athlete. I was more interested in like the media team and not like the camera guys, but like the people on the broadcast team, the people, you know, MC and I said to my friend who was over there, I reckon I'm going to MC this one year. So to be able to go about seven years later and be able to be that dude was epic fun, tiring, but like epic fun. So yeah, man, it was a big end to last year. And we talked about stress off camera. And I definitely, if I did that burnout test, I definitely would have been at that max limit by the end of down under. And yeah, just kicking back off this year, we live in such a good place, being able to spend a lot of time in the beach doing the, you know, during the downtime. And I'm like, all right, we've got some goals. Let's get back into it. So the baby's EV, she's walking now. Yeah. Oh yeah. She's 18 months today. Amazing. Yeah. So after this, I've got to go like do some like dad stuff and then go home with some presents. 18th, but what 18 months and you get a present? I don't know. It's a key day. Fair enough. Yeah. I don't know.  She's definitely daddy's girl. And I'm like, all right, I'll go get her something after this. You got to celebrate 18 months. Yeah. She's got no expectations. So it's a win-win. Yeah. It's a funny stage. Like when you come up to it, obviously you're going to get a lot of advice from dads. And a lot of dads said to me, hey, man, it gets better. And I was like, what do you mean? Like it's already, it's already awesome. Like, you know, it's been, it's been a good time for me, except as they start to develop and they start to know things and they start to get cheeky and you're like, oh, these guys actually get cooler. So yeah, it definitely spirals up. Nice. I saw a clip of her lifting her first barbell. That was cool. Yeah.  Because, you know, I'm at a barbell club, which is an Olympic weightlifting gym and she watches everyone do, you know, when she comes in to pop in the office, she watches everyone, you know, lift and she saw one of the dows and she just like pointed at it and like, you know, got me to get it for her. And then she started like doing a snatch with it and like, was so proud. So we got her a little plastic barbell set. So now she can do that at home. That's amazing. It's very cool. Very cool. And what's the earliest age that one can start doing that, you know, a little bit properly? You mean like properly? Yeah. Yeah. So we, we have a partnership with weightlifting WA and they actually have a kids competition. And some of the kids are as young as four, which is, yeah, it's wild. What sort of lifts do they do? Oh, it's probably a two kilo bar and maybe like, I don't know, let's just say 2.5 kilo weights. Yeah. I think it's just more the experience. I've been amongst it with everyone else and I've just been on a platform to be able to perform. But yeah, Evie, I was going to say Squid. I'm probably going to go between Squid, Dim, someone, Evie. Yeah. So she's definitely going to do something like that for sure. That's awesome. That's awesome. I see Corey, Corey Green from athletic institute. He's got the, he's got the young ones from I think as young as eight coming into the gym. Sorry if I got it wrong. And yeah, they're killing it over there. I think it's the best like, and I'm sure like we'll delve into it and, you know, chat more into it, but it's, it is, it's like that monkey see monkey do. So I go through a lot of industry insights and to look at like just people's progression into fitness. So I grew up in the, actually, I'll just go, I'll go into it. So from when I was 16, I started training like I grew up playing baseball, but when I was 16, I started training from when I was 18. I was actively working in the industry. So that's around about 2003. And I grew up around fitness people from when I was pretty much 18. So I've always worked in the industry. I've always been a rep on the road. My wife's from the industry. All my close friends are from the, you know, fitness people. I won't say they're from the industry, but it wasn't until probably about five years ago now that I actually started like looking into the industry, not actively just working in it. And I had the perception that the world wasn't like or Australia wasn't like early 2000s where there was no such thing as 24 seven gyms. There was no CrossFit. If you went past a supplement store, people thought you were selling paint. And I'm sure that still happens today. But I always had the perception that it wasn't like then, you know, that there is 24 seven gyms is CrossFit. There's boutique gyms. There's so much stuff everywhere. And I'm like, Oh, you know, everyone trains now everyone exercises like, but that was the lens that I saw because I was around it all the time. And then when I started going through a lot of the industry insights and the reports and the statistics is the amount of the population that still actively exercise is around about 18%. Actually a little bit less. So let's say less than one in every five people that you see. And for me that was mind blowing because I'm like, Oh, 90% of people that I see are into fitness. So how can that be right? And it's not until you go into the city or somewhere where there's more jam pop or into a, you know, a shopping center that you actually realize, okay, cool, that number is probably right because it's really less than one in five people that I'm seeing now that you can tell actively take care of themselves and take care of their health. So that was like the first thing that I looked at. And I'm like, Hey, nobody regrets getting fit. Like, you know, there's not one person that went, Hey, I went from being out of shape to in shape and I really regret regret that I wasted my time. It's yeah, it's crazy. And it's like it only benefits people individually. It makes their life better from, I guess, higher level for every inactive person. It costs the government on average two and a half thousand dollars a year. So it's $1.6 billion a year in preventable health care costs. And so we're in a funny situation. Like that's that's wild, like prevent just preventable things just by people not even necessarily going to a gym, but being active and taking care of their health. Yeah. And I'm like, that's crazy because us as an industry, we're considered the other. And what I mean by that is if you're like, let's say on LinkedIn or you're so doing a form and you've got to select your industry, it may have changed, but there's no fitness industry. There's like health and medical, which we're not under. And we're sort of that other when you select when you look at government or you speak to government. And last year, I became a lot more active with Oz active, who's the governing governing body. So I went over to their leadership events and just got like a lot of a lot of insights from the higher high level people. And we're still considered recreation or culture and recreation. And the way that the government views the fitness industry as people in stringer T's or, you know, stringer singlets, getting ready for stereos on it. Ziz. Yeah, exactly. That's what they picture it is. No, no, this is recreation. So people can look good. And it's a younger crowd. And it's this hard task now of overcoming that and actually being looked as a serious industry that has a benefit to society, essentially. And that's where the push of it should really come. And of course, you're going to have your recreational and the people that want to look good. But we've got to look at it from a more health perspective as opposed to just that on flexing in the mirror. But there's definitely a place for that too. And I think that a lot of people do go through that. So I'm not saying that that is bad. And that was a really roundabout way to go through the kids. So when I went through the statistics and a big thing for me this year is I want to meet people who don't do fitness. If you go through a startup, like a lean startup process, your customer discovery is like the top of it.  Okay, so I'm going to go interview people who would be in that target demographic to actually get their feedback before I start to build anything out, because you've got to work out, okay, what's the best channel or what's the best strategy to be able to solve that problem? It could be something completely different. And I don't think that we do that. Like we're not communicating to people who aren't fit, not actually finding out those reasons of why they don't do it. Now, going back to the kids, finally, 50% of people that did fitness or that do fitness grew up playing sport. And so sport had like a massive pull through effect of, okay, well, being active is a part of their lifestyle from such a young age, that is very easy to translate that into taking care of your health as you move into a later age. So there's going to be so many different target demographics and whether you're looking at FIFO, whether you're looking at an older population, you know, whether you're looking at, you know, my sort of age and then, you know, younger people who are probably more interested in the stereosonic sort of vibe. But there's going to be different ways to approach every market, but everything comes down to how do we reach that 82% and show them something to inspire them to take up some form of fitness. Do you have a different, do you have a country you can model this off? Yeah, so funny enough, the highest countries are, what was it? I'm pretty sure it's from memory. I'm pretty sure it's Norway and Sweden. And the Netherlands up there as well. Maybe it was Netherlands. Yeah, maybe Netherlands instead of Norway. So maybe it could have been Netherlands and Sweden were the two most active countries in the world. Why that's the case? I'm not too sure. They all ride bikes. Yeah, well, that's probably a part of it. But the active amount of member, the active member rate of the population is 22% versus our 18%. So it's still not drastically high. Yeah, but that's the pinnacle, right? What that means for Western Australia, if I was to put that to a figure, it means that we need to get 100,000 people who are inactive active to become up there in the fittest when you're breaking down like that. That's not such a tall order. When you're talking about 2 million people and of that, you know, that's 16, 1.8 mil. If you're looking at the inactive amount, then it's like, okay, that's when you start to break down. Okay, well, how do you create a cultural shift? Because it's not going to come from fitness influences, which to everyone's dismay, because the algorithms don't work like that either. No, I see a lot of videos on TikTok of overweight people's journeys where they become super slim, super fit, and everyone's like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Half the comments are filled with, oh, you got surgery, you know. So there's a lot of push and pull there, but it all comes down to positivity, self-esteem, belief, and from all aspects of life. But then, yeah, like you said, hitting up 100 inactive people and asking them the right questions. First and foremost, how do you approach an inactive person and then not get flagged by going, oh, what do you mean inactive? Why do you think that I'm inactive?  I guess it's confronting because it's a way that people won't feel good about themselves. And if somebody's going to put up their walls, because I think everyone knows that they should do some form of inactivity, like it's like if people smoke, smoking kills. I'm sure that people know that. And then if you confront them about it, then obviously you're more than likely going to get kicked back. I think with this, I just, I generally want to hear. I don't want to sell. And it comes down to, I want to know what your thoughts on fitness are and what does that mean to your life? And where, your health, where would you actually see that as a priority? And are you concerned? A bit of a Socratic method there. I like it. Yeah. Like, I, like, what's in your mind, what's your concerns about your body deteriorating as you get older? Yeah. And maybe I think about this more now, because I see, obviously we had lockdowns for a couple of years and I hadn't seen my family for a long time. So I'm from over East originally and one of my grandparents died during that time and I got to fly over there. It was right on the cusp of this reopening and I just booked my ticket and went over and luckily it was at that gap when I got to come back without getting caught up. But I, but like I see them and I see how they've aged. And then I think about my parents and what they go through and being 37, the, my thoughts of fitness now and why that's important to my life are very different to when it was, when I was 21. And I think that everyone goes through that cycle where they're like, Hey, well, I'm doing this for more health and less to do with, you know, I want to go look great at the beach, but I'm sure that people do. Exactly. I far, I far less enjoy the gym that I used to when I was an athlete. Yep. Last year was a terrible year for me, for, for health and fitness. I went up to the, the zip line in Madagara Bridge. Okay. Yep. Near Camfield. Yep. Near the Opus Stadium. And I was like, I should be right here. I've always, my playing weight was 107. Yep.  Okay. So, and I don't remember the last time I stepped on scales. And I know that's like a trigger word scales don't mean anything, but it's still some sort of a measurement of a ballpark figure of where you're at for sure, for people. And yeah, the, the weight limit was 120. Oh, really? I was 125. Yeah. This was like four weeks ago.  People don't have personal check-ins that they do themselves. Someone come up to me on the street going, Hey, have you stepped on scales lately? Just to check. I'm like, not really. I don't need to. I feel good about myself. It's harder for me too, because I'm 6'10 and I can hide my weight easily. Yeah. But I can feel it, you know, the, the gut especially. Remember, at the end of 2021, actually January 2022, January 1st, I did a video where I like stepped in front of the bathroom mirror and I was like, this needs to change this year.  And then, yeah, at the start of this year, 2023, it wasn't as bad, but it was still like, okay, I'm not happy with this because I had a couple of weeks to really just go hard. Yeah. But it's those wake-up calls that are different from, for person to person to get to the point where they go, oh, shit, I need to do something about this. I watched this documentary last night of the food. I watched, we watched many of them because my wife's on the health kick. Yeah. Yeah. Like the proper foods. We're looking at ancestral eating, fascinating stuff.  So how deep did you go down, liver king? We didn't talk about liver king. Okay. We talked about how good the liver is and what it does.  We talked about all the vitamins and what they do. We talked about all the minerals and what they do. And we talked about, we looked at which foods were the optimal foods for that.   And then when we watched these documentaries, we read about, we learned about a man called Ansel Keys that I studied years ago when I was doing the personal training thing. And yeah, Ansel Keys. He's the reason why everyone's cooked for the last 50, 60 years. Cooked? Cooked. Like they did the wrong thing, in what sense. So the food pyramid. Okay, cool. So his studies, that's what the food pyramid's about. Season 18, episode two, South Park. Great episode. Yeah, yeah, where they flip it around and everyone's having like butter. Yeah, I love South Park. South Park's my, South Park's like my, not vacation, what do you call it?  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Ansel Keys, he did a whole bunch of studies that were skewed in his favor because he cherry picked all the specific countries that had health problems anyway. Yeah. And he chose them. But his whole thing was carbohydrates are good for you. And sugars, good for you. But fat is bad for you. Saturated fats, no good. Yep. And then, yeah, all those studies, he had someone else. Dr. Strange, String, I forget the other guy. It can't be Dr. Strange. No, it can't be Dr. Strange. That'd be strange. Yeah, it'd be weird. I forget this. I'm so sorry. But he, so Ansel Keys needed his studies to be correct because he was the one researching them, you know, as everybody wants to be proven correct. Of course. But the problem was he was on the board of the Hart Foundation or the board of the people that approved these journal articles. And yeah, of course, he's going to be biased towards himself going, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the study. That's the study. And he didn't want to be wrong. But there was an opposing side and he forced that side to be dismissed. But that was the right side. How does, how sustainable? Like so with ancestral, actually, give me an example. What does an ancestral diet look like? Like, how would you guys? So start with organic as organic as possible. Yep. Red meats, strong meats. So you've got your beefs. Yep. And you've got your organs. Yep. You've got your livers, you've got your hearts, things like that. And then you've got your, you've got your colored vegetables. Yep. What's a colored vegetable? Like capsicum, tomatoes, things that say, eat me, eat me, find me. I'm right here. I can eat me. Right. Whereas the green leaf vegetables aren't as good. Why do they say that? So again, these are all studies and I'm paraphrasing a lot of it. But a lot of the vegetables in the, in the green range, they release these toxins as a defense mechanism. And when your body consumes that, it's not good for you. Yeah. So basically like what Paul Saladino, so carnival MD, so he's sort of the forefront of it if you take living King out who's been speaking about it. So do you think that's sustainable for you to eat that way long term? If, and this goes back to the, the percentages, right? Health and fitness, people are in there. Do you get healthier and fitter just by going to the gym? No, no, you need to eat. Sorry, I didn't know if that was a question. Yeah. Yeah. You need to eat the right stuff. Yeah. If all of these foods, the ancestral eating foods are available more accessibly, then of course it'll be more sustainable. But we socialize. I mean, it's sustainable for you to be able to stick to that long term. Oh yeah, I did it. I did, I did the ketogenic diet through my football career. And I loved it. And this was before Keto was mainstream now. Keto is up there.   Yeah. And during the time as a personal trainer, I would actually help a few diabetics, type two diabetics have that less of an insulin response. Yeah. Right.  There's no sugar spikes. Yeah. And I was like, I'm not, I haven't done enough nutritional studies or uni for this. I just researched this myself. And I was like, do I want to get into it? And I was close, but then I realized it's going to take a lot more than just saying to people, get on the keto diet. There's a lot of psychological thing going back to asking people, why do you think, you know, what does fitness mean to you? And but yeah, going back to the sustainable thing for me, it is sustainable because I go to the butcher and I go, this meat, this meat, this meat, this meat, I'll get some eggs done. There's my shopping. I don't have to go through aisles and aisles of rubbish.  And yeah, we've got a good system. It's amazing. And we're looking at it and we're going, this is it. We don't have to go to Woolies or Coles, you know? And I always used to say this to my clients when I was a PT about, about a generic general advice about nutrition. When you go into the supermarket, they get you to go through the aisles first, you know, so you can shop for everything and stuff. And they, they get you to the freezer, cold food section at the end naturally because you don't want to spoil in case you take hours. And then the vegetable stuff is on all on one side. Realistically, you turn the other way and do it in reverse, go straight to the fruits, veg, cold aisle where all the meats are.   Yeah, I've heard someone say avoid the aisles. So you essentially just go through this circumference. Yeah. Yeah. So we'd like the ancestral and the keto stuff. So I think it was 2017. I did 12 months of extreme, of testing extreme diets. And so for the first three months, I started off with a baseline before and after, before, during and after I'd have dexascans, blood tests. I'd do, when I was on keto, I'd do the ketones test twice a day just to see where my ketone levels were.  No, that one was a blood one. Oh, yeah. That's not fun. Yeah, that was a blood one. Yeah, your fingers definitely get a bit tender. So I think I cut it down to like one a day. But the purpose was I wanted to, I wanted to get like firsthand experience of what these did. So I started off with like just to control just something that you would have got out of a magazine, which is pretty, you know, balanced diet, I guess you would say, like a fitness magazine, not a women's day magazine. So something simple. Then I did keto for three months. I did vegan for three months. Then I did, if it fits your macro is quite extreme for three months. Oh my God. Where I just tracked everything had, you know, pizza pizza or something a day that was trash. And the goal was to lose weight when I was in that one. Headline, you wouldn't believe the results. Yeah. So I, when I went into it, my thoughts were man, I'm going to find out all this great information.  And 12 months is a long time to go through it. And I stuck to it, like to a T realistically, any of the diets work, like no matter what any of the diets work, if you're looking at the objective of body composition. So that's like weight loss, calorie deficit, 100%. Yeah. And it's like, okay, that's essentially what it came down to. If I wanted to grow lean muscle tissue, I'd need to stimulate that muscle tissue through lifting weights. If I wanted to get bigger and bigger, then you got to force adaptation. And I got to have a minimum protein requirement to reach that for me. I think keto, my protein was quite low, maybe 120 a day from memory thereabouts. And I was still able to grow lean muscle tissue with vegan, I don't know, maybe vegan was when I was just specifically trying to gain muscle tissue. So essentially, if you wanted to lose weight, you had a band of deficit, like what you just said, if I wanted to gain muscle, because they're not mutually exclusive, whatever anyone says or complicates it, you can build muscle whilst you lose fat. I've done it many, many times myself because I'm either training hard and I'm in a stage where I'm eating more efficiently, but I'm also burning fat at the same time. And like I consistently do it. So you can do it. For me, out of all of that, and realizing that, I stopped getting into, I guess, hardcore niches, because I'd done it. And it wasn't a profound effect for me. And for the general person who wants to change, number one, it's got to be sustainable for them as well. No matter what that is, it's very hard for somebody who's so gen pop that doesn't have a lot of knowledge and experience. And we can touch on some examples of that. And part of the issue with, you know, population, which comes down to education and it's small things that are going to help them be able to have sustainable achievable results in saying that no one's in great shape all the time as well. Like you talked about, you fluctuated. I was at my heaviest weight around Christmas. It got to a point where I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to go burgers and pizzas for every day. Just enjoy it. When I come back, I'm going to flick a switch. It happens. No one's in great shape all the time. So from an education standpoint, and we talk, I speak about speaking inactive people. I don't have the opportunity to do that much because my circles are active people, but I do have family members who I can, I can, I'll just say I can prod with questions, but I, because I know them well, I can do it in a way where I can get information, but I'm just asking questions. And it's more just like, I'm just observing what they say. And a family member around Christmas time, they, you know, wanted to lose weight, which is a normal sort of conversation to have. And they blamed their bloating on gluten, which is true. Gluten can do that, right? If you're a celiac, but they've played on a gluten. So what they say was, I'm cutting out gluten dairy. That's without like blood tests and, you know, all sorts of stuff to see if that's even an issue. And I'm sure that that's a debate for itself. Within the hour of us having this conversation, they had pizza and a beer. And so some people might know, or they might have a very, very simple knowledge, but whether people execute is another thing. And so how do you solve that problem? Yeah, that's, that's a big one. Not everyone's Dave Goggins. No, that's, that's like something I've been thinking about. And that's why I left a personal training industry. That was the one, the major reasons I was like, the society isn't built for that sort of sustainability. And then going back to me, when you asked me about my, is, is my diet sustainable? I'm not hardcore keto. I, I go this and that and every now and then I have, you know, my burger and whatever. Yeah. Last year was, was hard because everybody wanted me to do it.  So now I'm kind of sticking to chicken wings, right? Specifically chicken wings. That's your brand as well. So that works well. Right. But then there's the source. The source comes in and the source has got, I'm not talking about calories. I'm talking about, you know, sugars and things like that. But like when I jumped on the keto bandwagon, I was like telling all my clients, this is, this is the one. Yeah. But then I realized late years later, I realized it's not sustainable for everybody. And the reason for ancestral eating is you have to understand your, your own ancestors. What were your own ancestors eating? Where were they from? I'm from the mountains of Russia. We're all mountain goats.  And grandma was cooking potato, cooking, cooking potatoes that she grew herself in the backyard. And we would have our own chooks. Everything was organic. Yeah. There was no pesticides or anything. Cherry tree, apple tree, you name it. And the apples were like OG apples as well. And, and everything was more sour. When you say OG, you mean like higher nutritional value. So not like the farm, you know, the mass produced farms. Plus I read somewhere that where I'm from, Kyrgyzstan, that's where like the apples originated from. And I was like, that's sick. But yeah, they're like tiny. Like a crab apple. Yeah, little ones. But they taste so good. You come here, they're massive and they're so sweet. And then you learn about why that is.  Even the fruit's no good for me here because it's been juiced up, protected from best like insects and stuff and juiced up because that's how we consume stuff. And then you think about, oh, I'll just go get the meat from coals and woollies. Grain fed cows are not the best fed cows. You want the grass fed cows because of different enzymes that they produce that then relates to them themselves. You eat a healthy cow, you're going to have a healthier result. But giving this all this information can be overwhelming to someone to hear it. Yeah. I can tell you straight out. Right. For most people, that is completely unsustainable.  They don't have time. And I think the other thing talking about opening someone's mind is kind of having a cheat code in finding out how potentially you could die by doing the proper blood tests, the DNA tests. You find out where all your weaknesses are inside your body. How your blood reacts to this.  No, not yet. I really want to do one. And what did you find about yourself? It was somewhat interesting. Yeah, there were certain gene mutations. I'm not sure the specific word that they were used, but it was things like, I don't have an issue with lactose, but I have an issue with, I shouldn't say I have an issue. I potentially am fine with lactose. I have lactose but it's the casein, which is a protein inside of milk. They said, okay, well, you shouldn't have that, but you should have this. And then gluten and all sorts of stuff. Now, interesting enough, I went through that process and then I had to go get blood tests to confirm. I got my blood test done. I went to a GP and they looked at my bloods and they're like, dude, you don't have celiac because my mom has celiac. My dad doesn't. And they're like, you don't have celiac. And I'm like, well, I got told, I've got to go here. And they're like, listen, that's not how you do the test to be able to do it. I think that there's definitely some people that have, you know, diseases or illnesses or will celiac disease, it is a disease.  There's definitely people that are specifically like that. I think that there's a lot of people who self-diagnose that and over complicate the issue as well and over complicate things. So if you're looking at somebody that doesn't do fitness or they've, all of a sudden, they got triggered by something and they now want to change their life. Trying to overload them with so much information is like, it's not going to work. It's the that retention is going to be so, so low. And so making the small achievable steps to be able to do that. So go into grass fed. So I, because, you know, I've gone through those processes, you know, reading the books, going through all the different diets, I get grass fed meets most of the time. But it's not that I think that it's healthier.  But it's because I envision it being happy cows. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's, that's another reason. Yeah. And you got to optimize as best you can. Yeah. You're never going to do it. That's right. But you're closest for some reason and you're hungry and you don't want to go fast food. You're going to go to your nearest IGA or whatever and get the meat. It's good enough. Yeah. That's right. So it's better to do that than not. But if you wanted to then be, okay, well, how can I, you know, optimize things even further? You know, I'm down pat with everything. I've got the budget to be able to do it. I've got accessibility, which is, which is key to be able to do it. Then obviously you're going to want to go with the grass fed happier cows. Yeah. For sure. For sure.  I went like, I look at the restaurant options that we have.  Always comes with chips. You get the salads. The salads aren't really fully. Yeah. Or you get something else. It's deep fried. No good. Soy, sunflower oil or seed oil. Seed oils is terrible. Side story for a sec. I went to Forest Chase. I shouldn't really say where I saw this.  But this guy was selling these things. I won't get too specific. But there was no gluten, no, no dairy, no, no nothing. So I asked the guy, I was like, the fuck's in this? He goes, soy. I'm like, soy is the worst. That's, I'd rather have all of the others put together than have soy. Yeah. Based off of my readings and my understandings. Right. And I was just like, I'm off. See you later. You know. Yeah. Cause when I did, when I did do the vegan diet and I looked at like a lot of different alternatives, I was, I was also vegetarian from when I was 13 till I was 16. So I had experience for like a few years, not even a minute at all. But definitely the scope had changed since that time when, even in 2017 for sure, when I went through it, because there were so many different options. But yeah, if you check the packages on those options, usually it's not a better option. Exactly. But, but the options that I'm talking about for my current diet, I'm not even say diet, my way of living, my way of eating, these restaurants, the best ones I found, they're so expensive. Like I went to meet, meet Wine and Co. Meet and Wine Co. Meet and Wine Co. Yeah. $90 for a 500 gram grass-fed steak. It's delicious though. It was so good. Yeah. Wasn't the best steak I've ever had? Sorry. What was the best steak you've ever had? We went to this Italian kind of Italian restaurant in Brisbane. Yeah. We just walked past something and we said, oh cool, special. The T-bone steak's on special. We didn't have a price on it. But it was, when we got the bill, it was $150 for that cut of T-bone. It was, it was so good though.  So I, I didn't remember vividly the best steak I ever had. And the reason why I know it was because it took me a long time to eat. So I've actually got, well, I'm pretty sure it's closed out now, but remember that Outback Jack's one kilo challenge? Oh yeah. Yeah. We had to eat the kilo meat, then the kilo chips and vegetables. Very. So I actually broke the record. It was a, anyway, it was a long standing record up in the Hillary's location when, before they did all the redevelopments. Was that at Hillary's Bar Harbour? No, it was at Whitford Shopping Centre. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Was it? Yeah, Whitford Shopping Centre. And so I ate it all within 11 minutes without trying because I just ate fast anyway. I do everything quick. Yeah, same. And I just sat down and did it and. Wait, one kilo of steak and the chips. Yeah. So it was two kilos in food in total. I've done another one kilo. It was one of the Brazilian places. Lapa. Some of that. Subiaco? Maybe it wasn't Brazilian. It was, it was in Subi, but it wasn't Lapa because Lapa's the one where they bring out the thingies, right? With the red and the green.  No, I don't want to do that. But I did that one kilo. It was like four minutes. Anyway, so my point is I eat quick, right? Without trying. Yeah. The reason I know that I had the best steak in my life because it was the first time I ever remember eating slow because I was like, the taste of this is so phenomenal. And it was the first time I just remember like closing my eyes when I was just going, oh, that's amazing. That was rockpool. Oh, yes. Rockpool's good. Yeah, that's rockpool's good. Yeah. That's good. And it was marbled really well. That I don't even know. All I remember is just the taste was so phenomenal that it was the first time I went, oh man, this is what it feels like to eat slow. Yeah, the fattiest bits for me. A lot of the fat bits, yeah. I remember like going to, like, for example, we did a, after footy, they put on a spread for us up in the club rooms and steak was on. And I would be like, where's the, where's like the round, round, rump or whatever. Yeah. The one with a big sliver of fat. And I would get that and I'm just like, yes, I'm on here. So I'm eating it.   That's gross. And then there's like all these slivers of fats on their plates. And I'm like, are you going to eat that? It's like, no. I'm like, can I have it?  I was like, yeah.  Yeah. And just loved it.  Yeah. Yeah. So mine doesn't. And after every, she knows after every meal. And I'm just going to look at it and I'm just going to be out of that. Sometime, there's some things that, that she doesn't eat. I think, I think she eats pork crackle, RIP. I don't know if she likes the skin of the fish. I love, I love all of it. All of it, everything. Um, chicken wings, the gristle, straight in. I leave nothing but the bone. Just bone, right? Yeah. I don't understand how people leave any of that stuff on that. My mum goes even more hardcore. My mum's nuts.  The knuckle bit, like, where the cart, the cartilage? No, the cart, she eats the cartilage. Yeah. But then the bone bit that the cartilage is on, she, she snaps that off. It's not like she wanted it. And she, yeah. Okay. So all that's left is the, the shaft. Okay, that is hardcore. And that's fucked. Yeah. You can do that at Nando's because Nando's like, they have the slow cooking and you can actually eat the bone. Yeah. That's fine, which is awesome. But no, normal chicken.  Chips as well. Yeah. And I, I value, I value the restaurants that swap out the chips for like vegetables or whatever. Yep. But like the restaurants that have three, four, five hundred gram steaks.  Like if it's got bone on it, fair enough. That's fine. Yeah. Because I buy it with the bone as well and get waited for that. But I'm like, that's not right. So. Got to do it. My sustainability is me wanting to cook for myself. And I look forward to cooking for myself more than I have ever before now. So I get home, bully butchers covered me.  So it's a good little thing we have. And I'm just, I love the DMs that I get. They're like, where the fuck's your like greens and shit?  I'm like, no. Yeah. Yeah. We're a funny machine. I don't, I think there's definitely worse things that you were doing. So we did a video. I was at an Oz active event. And one of my things, and this sort of comes back into fitness as an industry being taken more seriously, working with the government a lot more to be able to get more of the 82% active. You might be too young for this, but do you remember the life being a campaign, which was a cartoon that used to run on TV from backing like 1985? Yeah, I don't remember that one. No, I thought so. So most people don't like, I was a kid when it was on and I still remember. And it was the only advertising campaign that the government actually run to inspire the population to become more active. And it worked and they've never done it since, which is crazy. Yeah. I remember jump rope for heart at schools. That was cool. Yeah. So that, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was, that was a fun one. I remember the name. I don't actually remember ever been there for it. So that was one of the campaigns. Anyway, we're at this Oz active event and this is when a lot of industry professionals were doing the, you know, the box pop stuff. And I was just asking them, you know, how can you make, you know, how can we make Australia the fittest country in the world? Yeah.  And I knew what he meant when he said it, but I knew, you know, how it's like when you edit a video and you put it out there and people are going to get like, out of context, a little snippet of it. And which is exactly what happened. But we couldn't put the full interview into the, into the video. But what he said, I actually agree with where you talk about, you don't, you know, have sugar, right? I'm not a sugary per, I'm just not the kind of person that, you know, enjoys sugar. Yeah, I've passed that boat too. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I'm personally not a sweets person, but that's probably the biggest waste of calories that you can get specifically the soft drinks section, right? Yeah.  Yes. Cigarettes, alcohol, these sorts of things. Yeah. Infectionary items. Yeah. Why don't we have a tax on sodas? It's very American soft drinks. You know, and things that we know are high causes of health problems. And then why don't we reinvest that back into subsidies for gym memberships? And I don't know strategically how that would work, but I agree. Why wouldn't we do those things to reward people who are more physically active? Because if the government save in two and a half thousand dollars a year for that person being active, there's got to be a way to fund it. The issues is to be able to put something like this in play, to be able to put incentives from a government level for people that are active. Yes, it will work, but it will work over a long term. And you get upset a lot of companies like PepsiCo, Smith's family, like the Smith's chips thing. All of these. They sponsor kids sports anyway. Yeah. McDonald's, you know, McDonald's. All of them. Like, you know, the footy, footy awards. Yeah. At the end when you do, yeah. Yeah, go get a happy meal. That's my thing like now. Like, I know I worked with Red Rooster before, but I've moved on because now I'm like, all right, I'm going to really practice what I preach. Yeah. Because if I'm an ambassador, or even if I'm helping someone market, that's not, that's not me truly. But what I'm pissed with is McDonald's Monopoly every year. McDonald's Monopoly. Was that a scam? Probably. No, there was a document. Wasn't there a document? Yeah, there was. There was. But like, they still do it every year and whatever. But it's the, it's the luring of the, the chance to win.  Yeah.  But the other one is the toys, the Happy Meal toy. Kids just want the toy. Do you have a good memory of McDonald's as a kid? I do. Yeah. So here's an 18 month old baby, right? Yeah. Like when I say, I mean like a good impression because I played baseball growing up, whenever you'd win the player of the game, you'd get your, you know, you'd get your thing and you'd go get McDonald's afterwards. That when we used to travel to go compete in, to go playing competitions in different states, you'd always have your macros stopovers. I really still value that stuff. And I think like there's a part of culture. It was a good memory. But it's like, you're not going to turn the tap off. You're not going to have a prohibition on alcohol. Like people, you know, you know what I mean? So it's not like that extent. There needs to be some education for it. 100%. Yeah. So that's, that's exactly where I was going to come back to. People don't understand what a calorie is. People don't understand what their output is. You can still eat that stuff and you can still get into shape. There's a, there's a, there's a time and a place for everything. So I'm not like, Saturday morning, 2am. Ruling that stuff out. Yeah. 100%, after New Year's for sure. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I did. I went, you know what? I'm going to go order some McDonald's. The burgers are better at 2am. Yeah. I'm going to get some Uber Eats because I'm not even going to go out. I'm 100% certain that I did that. So it's not looking like negative on it, but it's like, okay, well, how do we, how can we reinvest that in and whether that is like, you know, statewide or national education. Education. I think it's the key. The key is education, by the way. I think reverse engineering why people keep referring it, and I've lived this, especially last year, is the convenience. Yeah. People are just too convenient, convenient. It's more of a convenience for them to just go, I'm going to go and get this made for me. I don't have to get out of my car. And now with Uber Eats, I'm just going to open up my app. I don't have to leave my couch besides getting up, walking to the door and picking up the bag. Yeah.  So why is it more convenient? What are you doing that desperately needs your time to be saved to go out to the, to the organic butcher, to grab the meat, to come in to prep, to cook, to eat. Yes, it's going to take you more time. And, you know, as entrepreneurs, you can't understand that.   That's the goal. But that's also, you know, like sometimes you need to stay at home. You need to have that time to cook.  They're watching Netflix. They binge watching Netflix. Oh man, season three, episode five. I just want to keep going.  But meanwhile, I'll just get Uber Eats, you know. That's the majority of people now. Yeah. It's interesting and it'd be interesting. And this is why I want to interview a whole bunch of different people at different ages who are physically inactive and literally just to get insight, like just like genuine insight, because I might get to the end of this. And, you know, it might just be one of those things, like you're never going to change. Alex Homozy. The great man himself. Yeah, obviously he's putting out. Hashtag never skipped a dessert. He put out so much, he puts out so much good stuff. There was something that he put out. No, it was in his book. It was in $100 million offers. And it was only recently that I listened to it. And the reason why it stuck with me is because it was explaining something somewhat similar of what I'm trying to like process at the moment. And it was comparing meditation to Xanax. And essentially the outcome of what you were trying to achieve was low anxiety, you know, peace of mind, low stress, that sort of stuff. Now the issue is they both get you there, but one of them takes your effort and takes your time.  But even if it's 10 minutes, it still takes effort and time. The other one is pop the pill and it's there. And unfortunately, it's just our nature and we're all like it. Is if it's easier, that's the pathway that people are going to choose. So I don't think fitness and I don't think it's hard. I think it's enjoyable. That's me.  Like you get a delayed gratification. You're going to have that vision of, of, oh, that is the result. You get stronger. But you have to experience it. Mentally, not just physically, but mentally you get stronger. Every time you achieve something and whether it be something small, like, you know, let's just say running on a treadmill for half an hour, which might be a big deal, but you complete it. You've got a little bit stronger every single time and that improves other areas of your life. You've got to gamify it. You've got to gamify fitness in your world. And this is why I like Apple Watches so much. Not because I can measure my wrestling sessions with my wife, but also it keeps me accountable. Oh, you haven't stood up for 50 minutes. Sitting down for that long is cancer.  Even though calories in, calories out for me, isn't my all, all and be all and all.  You weren't quite active that day. You have a breakdown at the end of the week, breakdown at the end of the month. I bought one of my best mates on Apple Watch because I was like, I want you to gamify this and, you know, do it yourself and get better with your health.  So I think that needs to happen to a lot more people. Not everybody buy an Apple Watch, but some sort of system where we're all, I don't know, like people have a fear of judgment, right? So if we're all put on a pedestal, people won't like it. But if we come in and come, have an accountability buddy or whatever, and there's some monetary incentive, I think Samsung or another Fitbit sort of thing does it, where you can actually link it to your health insurance. Oh, that's cool. And if you meet the specific things per day on your active activity thing, you get a 10% discount. So that's really, really cool. And we need more of those. Yeah, with this going back to the Oz active thing, because they did have at the kind of the CEO, like the leaders summit that they had heads of health insurance funds over there. And they got to explain it. So because my thing is like, hey, well, why is it not covered under health insurance? We've got all these extras. Like, you know, I've already spoken about the benefit to the government. As far as cost wise, we're getting more people physically active. So they actually used to do it back up until the early 90s when they stopped it. And you would get X amount worth of shoes. You'd get your gym membership X amount or paid for. And I remember it back then, my mum would always have a new runners every single year as part of health insurance. But the reason why they stopped it was because it wasn't in our constitution. So it wasn't actually legal for funds to underwrite because it can only be chronic diseases. And it came under a certain banner where they said, well, this is actually outside of the scope based on our constitution of what we can do. Now, fast forward to where we are now. They still don't underwrite it, but there's current conversations to change that. Realistically, what that's going to look like is at the moment you've got your hospital cover and then you've got your extras cover. That will essentially be a third, which will be wellness cover, where all of these things will come under. Now, there is a way to actually, which nobody knows about, which is almost crazy, but it's a bit of a loophole. There is a way to be able to do it. So it needs to be because of a chronic disease. Mental health comes under a chronic disease. The number one reason why people go to the gym is for mental health. It's actually not for anything else. Now, everyone comes under mental health. They get improved mental health by being able to do it, but to be able to claim your membership or your PT from a health insurance fund, number one, the gym, if they're paying for a membership or the trainer, if they're paying for sessions, need to be registered with the governing body, which is, well, Ozactive, they need to be registered by. And then they can get registered by High Cups, but they need Ozactive to be able to do that. Then they need to get a referral from a practitioner. A practitioner can be a GP, can be a Cairo, can be a physio. So the easiest loophole for this, if anyone wants people to train for free, is if you've got a physio friend, they can refer people and they can, but it needs to be prescribed. My prescription is that you do a minimum of three group sessions a week to improve your mental health. That's your prescription that then goes to the trainer or it goes to the gym. And then they can claim up to, I think, $500 a year. Wow. So nobody knows that yet, but it can be done. $500 a start, but how much is a group session worth? Yeah, well, that's right. And then that probably works out to be $2.5 grand a year, but if you're looking on average at $50 a week, which is actually, it's probably $65 a week now, if you're looking at that sort of training environment, so close to $3 grand. So there is a way to do it, whether there's enough to be able to do it. Again, that's, man, this is my 20th year in the industry. I only just found that out like, you know, October last year. So let's say four months ago. When did you just sit down and go, hmm, when did I start? When did I start in the industry? You started at 18. Yeah, I'm 38 this year. Yeah, 20 years. Quick busy. Yeah, a quick bath. Yeah, so that's like just an insight that nobody knows about. And that's like just a little bit of education within the industry, which is essentially just to improve things, which summarizes, I guess, what's my goal? Like from a selfish, I guess my selfish goal because I love Perth and I love the industry and I've grown up in it. I just want to see Perth be known as the fittest city in the world and essentially getting more people active. That's a great goal. Yeah, it's an awesome goal. So one hypothetical question.  Oh, the easiest one is body fat. Body fat? Yeah. What about life expectancy? Oh, I thought you meant things that are readily available. I guess that somewhat is. Like I know Dana White, the UFC president, got that done. Yeah, 10 years they gave him. Yeah, I think it was like 10.3 years and it just shocked him. That's what I mean. That's the sort of test that I would say. Would you want to take it? And that's a question you could potentially ask. Would you take this test if it told you approximately your lifespan between now and your inevitable demise? Yeah, well, I heard when he did it and then I thought about it and I was like, oh, do I want to know that? Yeah, I would. Like now I would. Maybe if I was a bit older, it would shock me more. You know what? That is probably something for the general population that doesn't do anything.   Yeah, he's around professional athletes his whole life. But how many people do you have? It was enough for him. But how many people do you reckon will take action consistently?  And they keep smoking. Yeah. You know what the active member rate in a gym roughly is? Is it like less than 10% or something crazy like that? No, no, no, it's higher than that. But yeah, probably between, by the way, this is a big box gym. It's probably between 20 to 30%. Then you have the issue of how do you actually define what an active member is? So an active member could be one times a month. The government guidelines for activity is 150 minutes per week. So 30 minutes of five days. Set the bar low. Yeah, but activity doesn't mean activity is very loose. Activity is walking to the bus stop. Is that so that, is that so Australia doesn't rank lower? I don't know if that's like a standard across the board, but that's what they recommend. Is that you, let's say you walk to and from a bus stop for 15 minutes a day. That's the baseline of you're an active person, which is crazy. Because then if you actually do start to look at the chronic disease and illnesses is, you know, let's say osteoporosis, you know, you require strength training for own density. So even that is something that should be adjusted to be a little bit more accurate. Like we spoke about nutrition and been optimal, not been an elite athlete, but really, not what's the minimum requirement based on walking. What's the actual optimal minimum requirement of how many times should you do a resistance training? And resistance can be pilates. It can be anything that involves resistance, but to do some form of resistance and some form of cardiovascular and what's the intensity of that for a minimum person. Realistically, that should be the benchmark. And then that's where we should be looking at numbers from. And gamifying it. Like if you can, if you can, or not, not so much gamifying. No, I agree. I agree with gamifying. But also can making it more of as convenient as ordering Uber Eats. Yeah, I agree. So there's a new gym that opened up in Perth. They reached out to me and it was, it's actually a plug little bit. It's called Good Gym. And it's in Apple Cross or Ardross. So I'm not specifically sure which one it is, but around the Apple Cross area. And what got my interest about what they were doing. And they're very much in startup phase, but it's two owners.  The wife, the girl partner. Sorry if I get this wrong. She's a personal trainer. That's her background. So fitness is her world. And he's a game developer who worked in the crypto crypto web three space. Yeah. Yeah. So he literally was in the gamification within this, you know, web three software company. And he's like, well, how do we gamify this thing? So their whole thing is based around gamifying fitness for non-active people. And as soon as he said that, I'm like, oh, dude, invest. Yeah, it was, it was really, really interesting. And they're obviously going through this process of like ironing it out. But I'm like, man, if you can nail that, and we speak about the 82% and right at the start, I talk about the target markets. And in everyone's, I shouldn't say everyone, a lot of people have read atomic habits, right? Now, I don't remember this exact part, but I've heard it since then. Is that we're talking about how do you create the habit of people getting fit? And somebody in the States, it's not called black book. It's it they've done in the States at really high level where they've completely gamified fitness. And it's designed for gamers, which is I believe 71% of the population within a certain age bracket. So they've made it relatable for them. They've gamified it for them. And all of a sudden, you've hit a target market who wouldn't have been physically active. That was Pokemon Go, wasn't it? Wasn't that a thing? Wasn't that crazy?  Yeah, that really was. And he had all walks of life. All getting together, a bikey and some girl that just love ballerinas and Pikachus. Yeah. They get together like, oh, look, there's a thing there. And if you can do that with fitness, oh, my God. And I think they may be needing some monetary value in that. Yeah. Or something collectible, something unique without the unfit people going, oh, well, what's the point of playing? Because the fit people are just going to do it. Yeah. So in the crypto space, there was quite a few companies that were like in what's called a move to earn space. And so I think Steps moves. I think one of them was actually Australian that performed really, really well. And it's like, OK, well, there's a new sort of avenue brewing because I agree, how do you get paid to do fitness? How does a general person, for being more active, get paid? Where does that come from? So yeah, the crypto space was sort of trying to work that out as in development. But yeah, this dude, man, how cool is that? Gamifying, like the whole fitness routine is around these games and these teams, like these teams and these leaderboards that they have and these challenges. And I sat there and I was just watching them as I was like, just observing how they went about it.  Because if you can put an intrinsic value on that, and it's, hey, these people aren't doing the traditional thing, but they're still burning next amount of calories. Part of the games, you know, he's like, man, we ended up doing half an hour's worth of lunges. That's going to force some adaptation, especially for people who aren't like super duper fit, like marathon runners. Yeah, I think they have VR, these games, which are connected into a Vitruvian machine who's also a Perth company. Perth base, yeah, at a North Beach. Yeah, so he basically builds games and then runs them through the, runs it into the Vitruvian API. So people are doing different games with resistance. Yeah, and that's out of your own home. How cool is that? Through the resistance platform. It's all games, it's all gamified. Like there's, that's a space, which I think was really, really innovative. And I was like, oh man, like, I don't know how hard startup is, but if you go through this process and you nail it. Vitruvian is actually, I've worked with them in their formative years, only recently, like a few years ago, but they're, I'm just like, that's the ticket. Yeah, it is the ticket. But then there's also other spaces, like the swimming, the cycling, the cycling, you can do it really easily as well, because you put that on a TV and then you, I've seen it happen. And then you can join with other people online and have tour de France from your living room. How cool, that gaming experience. So Peloton was the leader in that space. And you know what's weird? I was driving here and I was like, man, it's 2003. We're at the start of 2003. Three years ago is when we went into lockdowns. 2023. Yeah, sorry, 2023. So yeah, but it's 2020. So three years ago, we went into lockdowns. Like that was a crazy two years. And so much changed within the space. Like you're saying a few years ago with Petruvian and then all the time we go into lockdowns and then there's all these like home gyms and it sort of inflated the industry. And now, you know, last year, we definitely went through a re-correction. So Peloton, all of a sudden during lockdowns were valued at something like crazy. Like they were the big thing. Like Peloton was the cool thing to have. And as far as what I'm aware, I think at the end of last year, they were in a lot of problems. And I mean, I'm not sure what that looks like from a business perspective. But, you know, there were a lot of problems because they went from having these forecasts that were completely inflated because everyone's in lockdown and training at home was cool. And, you know, they obviously had a problem solution fit there. Yeah, so it's going to be interesting. This is the first year that people in our space aren't going to be impacted by COVID because even at the start of last year. Yeah, we had a bit of a mask thing. Yeah. So, yeah. And I reckon this year, there will be people that are going to go back to their old ways. They have already. And there's others that have made use of that lockdown and using that momentum and experience something that only athletes, young athletes would have experienced because they grew up with sport. You know, you feel useless when you're at home, but you don't feel useless if you have that kind of release outside. Just because you can order Uber Eats every day doesn't mean you should. I had a completely different experience. When it all happened, I like to set myself challenges outside of the box. So, when all of that happened, I'm like, I'm just going to get a 24 kilo kettlebell and I'm going to, like, because we didn't know how long we're going to be locked down. I'm like, I'm just going to train every day at home and I'm going to end up more fitter than what I was when I went in. And that was my challenge and I did.  And I think that's just like that mental fortitude of, you know, of, okay, well, how do I, how do I face adversity? Which sort of goes back to, you know, why would someone do fitness? And that's what I want to know. I still have my studio. I still have my personal training studio. Yeah, yeah, of course. And, but I, we were, we were two minutes away from the gym and our gym was still available. Okay. But then it wasn't available and then all this, and then they were moving and things like that. And yeah, I made a bit of bank with all the equipment that I had during that time.  Yeah, that was, that was the craziest time. If anyone had steel and equipment, like, man. I had kettlebells, dumbbells. I had a whole squat rack. So there was gym owners that I knew that wanted to stop and then the lockdowns happened. And then that was their green light. And they sold and, you know, probably had leases on equipment and debts and whatnot. And they sold their equipment for, obviously a high price. Ended up in a better situation than what I were in before. Hey, I was like, hey man, good exit strategy. I did, I did mine probably a couple of weeks too early. And I didn't assess the situation. And a little bit of regret, even though I got rid of everything. But I remember, because I did it all on Facebook Marketplace. And I just wished that Facebook Marketplace had a bidding option. Yeah. Can you imagine a bidding option on Facebook Marketplace?  But if I did it during that time, I would have made probably five, six times the amount. I remember I had a lady who was like, I'll get your whole collection of dumbbells. I'll come pick it up right now. I'm like, yep, sick. And then like a minute later, another lady was like, I want to pick them up. Have you sold them yet? I was like, I just sold them. She's like, I'll give you $100 more.  Did the original lady come pick it up? Yeah, unfortunately. But you know, I, yeah. What do you think the number one reason people use Facebook now is, I was asking myself this last night because I sold something on Marketplace. That is a great question. My wife's obsessed with Facebook Marketplace. Every half hour, she tells me about a new table that's available. And I'm just like, I don't know. I don't use it. I deleted Facebook. I deleted Facebook off my phone. Yeah. I'm one of those people. I've still got Facebook. I just deleted it off my phone. But I think it's because it's local and the name of the person is attached. You've got that kind of validity about it, even though people ghost all the time. Gum trees, a little bit more sus. eBay's a little bit, feels a little bit more international and a little bit more sketchy. That became real marketplacey. Hey, before it was like, I'm just going to put something called letter auction and you don't get some more. I can set my price. And eBay's got heaps of fees where Facebook doesn't have any fees. Yeah. My first, my first business was on eBay. Yeah. My first, I was just saying, my first entrepreneurial adventure. So it's 2006. I moved to Perth. And I had just discovered Alibaba, which most people would know about now. Alibaba, Aliexpress, Wish, yeah, so I used to order. This is back when there was iPod generation twos. And I was learning about ordering stuff from China and getting stuff manufactured in China back then. And I saw iPods. I keep going to say iPods. So iPods is such a weird thing to say now. And I'm like, oh man, I can order iPods for like $55 USD and then land them. And they're selling for like 180. Oh, easy.  Oh, no. I just started bidding, made bank, realized that that would counterfeit. It sold through them. And I was like, yeah, I should probably shut this operation down. You're the guy. Yeah. It was you. Yeah. I'm probably the dude.  That was a whole bunch of this. I did similar with Gumtree. Yeah.  And I got microSDs, you know, the memory cards. Yeah, of course. Yeah. 128 gigabytes for like, I bought bulk. Yeah. So I ended up being roughly $3 each. Yeah. And I sold them for $40, $50 each, which was like super below market price. Of course. And I got so many people interested. Yeah. And I tested it as well. Did my due diligence. And I was like, yeah, that works. It rocks up on the computer. And then, yeah, no worries. And then, yeah, because it was Gumtree, I had people come over and cash in hand and find out where I live. Of course. And everything. And then a week later, one of them was like, hey man, just uploaded some stuff on my SD card and microSD. And yeah, it went corrupt.  Can I have my money back? I'm like, yeah, OK. How much did you put on there? He goes, a few gig.  And I'm like, fuck, OK. So I gave him money back, took it offline because I only sold like maybe 10, 20. Nobody else complained, luckily.  And yeah, I tested it out. And after you upload two gigabytes over that, it shits itself.  And they edited and pretended it was 120. It was really two gigabytes. So I felt instantly bad because I was like, imagine someone's photos of a trip at the start or even like grandkids or, you know. And all these photos are saved. And then all of a sudden one extra photo is uploaded. Bang.  You ever lost a camera?  Hey, you ever lost a camera? Never, ever, ever. What are your weddings? Never, ever. I back it all up. I've had one time where I lost the SD card because I put it in my pocket. Yes.  And it was in the same pocket as my phone. And I was up and about at a convention doing something else. And I was taking photos. Yep. And I must have taken my phone out and it would have like stuck to the phone and then slipped out. And I had not backed up a lady's 50th. That was the only time.  You only needed to have it once. Yeah, man. So I was at a wedding in the last year. Oh, no. And I'd never take out my camera. So I had an A7 III. And I just never used it. Like, you know, other people do the creative for perfect family. It's best if I don't. So I was like, you know what? When going to a wedding, I want some nice photos with my wife. I'll take the good camera. I'll get some snaps and whatnot. Anyway, so I got in the Uber on the way home.  So, you know, you can contact the driver and stuff. And anyway, they didn't get back to me. So I'm like looking for this camera. And yeah, it turns out I lost four grants worth of cameras. So the Uber guy kept them. Yeah, apparently the one time someone scored it. So if anyone's listening to this and you found an A7 III in an Uber, hit your boy up and give it back. Jesus, Jesus. So what's the ultimate goal for you personally for this year? For me personally this year. So the ultimate goal, I'll go through small goals. So every year I've usually done different challenges and whether that was the 12 months of extreme dieting, which was my challenge or my project for the year. And then something as simple as, because for those listening and not watching, I'm quite bald and I wore a hat for about seven years. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to not wear a hat.  So one of my challenges was not to wear a hat. And it turns out that was actually quite a hard challenge because when the new year you turn around, I was reluctant to take this thing off and now quite own being bald. So that was like one challenge. So this year I wasn't sure from the personal side of the challenges and it wasn't until New Year's Day where I was like, okay, I know what's in my mind, like what's on my heart of what I want to do. One important thing is to interview at least a hundred inactive people. I want to find more about people who don't do fitness to be able to empathize with that and just be able to understand. And that's essentially it for that one. The other one is I used to be a lot more involved in the broader fitness industry. I was very active on the road and I've definitely been in my box for the past couple of years and I just want to go out and see more people. So that's part of it, literally just to connect and just, I don't know, just find out people. One of my things I literally just love finding out about people and just asking them questions. And it's probably why you like doing podcasting and stuff as well. Oh yeah, I get to learn heaps of stuff. You just literally get to chat with people and it's like just find out. And I think that gives you more insights as well. And so they were my two things on that side of it. Obviously with Perth Fitfam, we really ramped things up and like took it off. I took, you know, took it out of the cooler and midway through the year had a really big year. We spoke about like Torian. You know, we brought along a team. And so I just really want to drill down. And for us as an organization, obviously we, you know, we work as an agency. We help brands, same issue. We help brands with content and marketing. But how many Western Australians as a brand can we reach to inspire more of them to go, Hey man, I saw that and that's cool. And I want to try that.  Now the key metric is how many inactive people do we inspire to become active?  I was like, okay, how do we actually track this? And when we revamped it from a website standpoint, that was my key thing. How many people can we inspire to click that inquiry button for a gym, which doesn't really benefit us, but that for me shows that we're making an impact. So I don't know, can we get 100,000 Western Australians to take up some form of activity? Health and fitness, that'd be awesome. That'd be amazing. One final outro for yourself, for anyone out there looking to get fit, what's your advice for them? To get active. If somebody is looking to get active and let's assume that, actually let's not assume that it's just going into a gym. Number one, I would find something that appeals to you. We talked about, is it sustainable with nutrition? Is it sustainable with training? Is it something that you can do?  Does it go, hey, I'm nervous, but that looks cool and I want to do it. That would be my first thing. The other thing outside of that would be make sure, and it's also something that we spoke about, which was accountability, make sure that if you don't know what you're doing, you invest in either a coach, a trainer, group fitness classes, something that is going to guide you through the process and also give you community. Because number one, you've got to start. You've got to do it. Number two, you've got to know how to do it. And then number three, you've got to consistently do it. So those take care of all of those threes. And then just have fun. 100%. 100%. Well, hopefully everybody got a lot of value from Brendo. And we can find Brendo on at Perth Fitfam. And what's your handle? I'll put it all in the buyer anyway. It's Brendo McCormack. Just look, just type Brendo. And if you're in Perth, it'll pop up. Brendo.  And I'm looking forward to seeing what you do. You're doing the great things already. And yeah, inspiring the youth as well as the oldies. Get that 100k worth of people to push that button to get active. For everybody at home, if you have any questions, you know the drill, you can ask a question, a bit of feedback on the Spotify section. Otherwise, comments in the YouTube section or both. Let me know. The more the better. And I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for coming in, Brendo. Good. Thanks.


Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. One man shot dead in Black Lives Matter protests by attackers protests intensify in the US. Cuba commemorates National Rebellion Day. Tunisian President appoints a new Prime Minister. Jordanian authorities possibly closed down country's largest teachers union. We begin with an update on the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, the number of infections has reached 16.4 million cases with around 652,000 fatalities reported as of today afternoon. The number of new cases reported yesterday was around 221,000. In the meanwhile, the number of recoveries worldwide has crossed over 10 million. Two months after the killing of George Floyd, protests continue with great intensity across the United States. Over the weekend, demonstrations were held in solidarity with Portland residents who were up against federal law enforcement agencies deployed by the Trump administration. But as the protests intensified, so did the violence from right-wing attackers and law enforcement agencies. On Saturday, as nationwide demonstrations were underway in solidarity with Portland, a man at a Black Lives Matter rally in Austin was shot dead. Protesters have stated that the shooter drove his car into the march and then shot other protesters. A similar attack happened at a demonstration in Aurora where a car was driven into the march. On the other hand, in Seattle, demonstrations faced intense repression from the police, leading to the arrest of 45 protesters. A similar crackdown on protesters occurred in Omaha where 75 protesters were arrested and also lost angers with the police preemptively declared tactical alert against a rally under the banner of refused fascism and arrested four. In Seattle, the clash between police and protesters was particularly intense after a group of protesters set fire to an under construction juvenile detention facility. The police declared the demonstration a riot and used tongue grenades and pepper spray to disperse the crowd. This Sunday marked the 67th anniversary of Cuba's National Rebellion Day. On July 26, 1953, Commander Fredel Castro with a hundred revolutionaries launched the attack on the Moncada Army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. On the same day, another group of militants attacked the Carlos Manuel de César's military garrison in Bayamo. Although the attacks failed, they marked the beginning of the Cuban Revolution and eventually led to the defeat of the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgincio Batista on January 1, 1959. On the occasion, President Miguel Díaz-Canal recalled the contributions of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution. He also encouraged the citizens to defend the legacy of Cuba's national hero Jose Marti and the revolutionary ideas of Commander Fredel Castro. He stressed on the need to face today's challenges with the same will that the heroes and martyrs of the revolution did 67 years ago. Díaz-Canal also sent watchful hugs to the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Raul Castro, Commander Ramiro Valdez and others who participated in the attack on Moncada Bay. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time since 1959, Cuba commemorated the national holiday without the traditional rally to pay tribute to the heroes and martyrs of the revolution. However, thousands of citizens and activists took to social media to remember them and pay homage to their legacy. On Saturday, Tunisian President Kaisai designated HM Mechichi as the country's new prime minister. Mechichi succeeds Elias Fakhfakh, who resigned last week after a no-confidence motion was presented against him in the parliament over allegations of corruption. Mechichi is an independent legislator and served as interior minister under Fakhfakh. Even though his name was not proposed by any party, Said chose him. The democratic current, a member of the ruling coalition and the third largest bloc, has welcomed Mechichi's appointment. He served as legal advisor to the president. He now has a month to form the government and prove his majority in the parliament, failing which the president can call for a fresh election. The October general election threw up a hung parliament. The Islamist Anada party, forming the largest bloc, promoted Fakhfakh as the prime minister in February. However, after revelations that he favored certain companies in getting government contracts, Anada filed a no-confidence motion against him, prompting his resignation. Mechichi would be the ninth prime minister since the 2011 revolution. The political turmoil is yet to be over, as some have already filed a no-confidence motion against the Speaker Rajesh Kanuchri of the Anada. The vote on the motion will take place on July 30th. On Saturday, Jordan ordered the closure of the nation's biggest teachers union. The Jordanian teachers syndicate for the next two years. Jordanian security forces also detail several union leaders for questioning, along with reading union offices. Authorities charged the union leader of incitement for a speech last year critical of the government, led by Prime Minister Omar Al-Razaz. Other members of the union's governing council were also summoned by the authorities for questioning over criminal and corruption charges. The timing of these actions comes just days after the union staged a mass demonstration against the government. The unions have accused the government of not fulfilling the 2019 agreement to increase teachers' salaries. The union meanwhile has announced a demonstration on Wednesday, July 29th against the Attorney General's decision and the arrest. The order to close down the union was given by the prosecutor general Hassan Abdalat. Exact details about the charges slapped on the union's council are yet to be disclosed in detail. The only thing Abdalat was quoted as saying was that the charges included financial violations. Additionally, a gag order has also been issued on the investigations over the charges. The union represents more than 100,000 teachers across the country. It has been organizing protest demonstrations against the government regularly over the failure of the 2019 agreement. The agreement included as one of its clauses a 50% salary increase in the year 2020. The agreement itself was a product of a massive month-long strike that forced most schools in the country to close. However, the government unilaterally withdrew from the agreement over the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and declared holding of public sector wage hikes this year. And this is all we have for this episode of the International Daily Roundup. For more such stories and videos, visit our website PeopleSysPass.org. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.


The student loan crisis in the US impacts around 45 million people. The average borrower has a debt of almost $40,000. Many of these people remain in debt well into their early years, in their 60s and 70s, as they are unable to pay back the loans. Why are so many American citizens under so much debt from trying to attain education? What is the structure of the education system which has led to this crisis? The student loan debt crisis in the United States is a crisis that's not in an overstatement. The student loan debt total is $1.7 trillion and it's actually growing at a rate six times that of the overall economy. So as of the most recent data from 2020, over 45 million student loan borrowers are in debt with an average of almost $40,000 each. There's about 43 million US residents with federal student loan debt and the federal government actually owns a majority of this debt, 92%. But we're seeing President Biden refuse to cancel debt up to $50,000, which was a very popular rallying cry from members and leaders of his own party. In terms of how this is affecting adults in their 30s and 40s, we see people paying back their student loan debt into their 60s and 70s in this country. These are astronomical numbers, so people cannot afford to pay off this debt and they end up paying it until they're in their elderly years. So it's truly a crisis of huge proportions and it's only a matter of time before this debt bubble is going to burst in the US. In the United States, education is not a right. Yes, there's a public education system. There are public community colleges and state universities, city universities, but they are not free. Higher education is not free. So even those people who do choose the route of going into public education, they're still owing tens of thousands of dollars. And unfortunately, our public schools and just universities, we're specifically talking about colleges and universities, are severely underfunded. And the reason why a lot of people choose to go to the more expensive private schools is because in large part, those schools tend to have a more prestigious reputation, tend to offer better programs and get more funding. They have larger endowments and can give people the kind of quality education that they need to find a job that can sustain them. So right now, you see people drowning in debt just to go to a school that has a solid enough reputation. I know speaking for myself, that was why I chose to go to a private school instead of a public school because from what I wanted to study and the experience I wanted to require, I knew that the state university in my home state was not going to match up with what I could get at a private school. So that's really the fundamental issue here, that an education is not a guaranteed right, and that the public schools are underfunded and are now left in a situation that leads people to take on this debt in order to go to a more expensive private school. And there are solutions to this, of course. Right now, the Build Back Better Bill, which is still awaiting passage in Congress, would give every student the right to attend community college for free. But community college is only two years. It's only those first two years of a bachelor's degree. So that's still a band-aid on this gaming world of a crisis. Most of these student loans, about 92% are owned by the federal government. President Joe Biden had stated repeatedly during his election campaign that he will act on the student debt crisis and implement loan waivers. Now, however, his administration has failed to take any steps in this regard. Student loan payments were scheduled to resume in February after a pause during the pandemic. After widespread opposition, the Biden administration has extended this pause by another three months until May 1st. What is stopping Biden from fulfilling his campaign promises? What are progressive movements in the country saying about this situation? Yes, so the biggest demand that we're seeing within the Democratic Party is to cancel student loan debt up to $50,000 per debtor using executive action. Biden has the ability to do this. And we're seeing a lot of leaders in the Democratic Party in Congress like Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are pushing for this $50,000 forgiveness and asking that he do it through an executive order. And again, this can be done through the executive office, through the Secretary of Education. And this was actually the power that was used by Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to suspend student loan payments under the Trump administration. And now, even though this was something that Biden promised to do all on the campaign trail, saying that the student debt crisis needed immediate action, now he's acting as if his hands are tied to cancel even $10,000 worth of that debt. His press secretary on Monday, Saki said, essentially, it's on Congress. We're waiting for a bill from Congress. Yeah, it's very clear that the easiest way to go about this and the most feasible way would be for Biden just to sign an executive order cancelling this debt. So this debt cancellation would simulate the economy, but also help to address the racial wealth gap because we see black and Latino people facing the worst of this debt crisis in the most debt compared to white people in this country. So, yeah, this is the situation that we're confronting. And this is what President Biden is refusing to do, despite the fact that leaders of his own party are calling for this. So what I'm seeing in a lot of progressive and leftist spaces and organizations and movements, calling for is total student loan debt forgiveness, completely 100% across the board forgiveness of this debt because education is a human right. That's the basis that they're making this call under because everyone has a right to higher education. And if we're living in a system where a prerequisite for most well or just decently paying jobs, I can even say all well paying jobs just to make a livable wage in this country, a livable salary that you need to have at least a bachelor's degree under your belt, there should not be any sort of monetary gatekeeping to this. And that education is a fundamental right for all people. So higher education should be free across the board. So that's what folks are calling for. And also the fact that all this the student loan crisis and the incredible interest rates that are put on these loans are something that is just benefiting Wall Street. All of these big banks that own this mine and that have contracts with the government, you know, despite the fact that the government owns 92% of the student debt, all these ties to Wall Street just make it so that the richest people in this country are literally making money off of this debt crisis. So what we need to see according to all these people's movements and leftist organizations in the US is a complete cancellation of all student loan debt and is making higher education free across the board.


The review of the SOTM TX USB Ultra was online for only minutes when the questions arrived whether it would pay to use it in between the SOTM SMS-200 Ultra streamer and the DAC. Well, that looked to me like washing your clothes twice. Let me clarify. The SMS-200 Ultra is a streamer slash network audio interface by SOTM. It essentially is the standard SMS-200 with an added reclocking board. See the link below this video or at the end of this video for a review of both versions. When I reviewed the SMS-200 I immediately bought it. Then the Ultra Edition came out and I thought it might bring improvements but not to the extent it did. The SMS-200 is very good high-fi. The SMS-200 Ultra is from another planet as you might have seen in my video review. It immediately took the place of the standard SMS-200. So why would you place the TX USB Ultra in series with the SMS-200 Ultra? Because it further increases the sound quality according to SOTM. OK, let's set up a test. It wouldn't make sense to use either the SMS-200 Ultra or the TX USB Ultra powered by the switching mode power supply they came with since I know the clear improvement audiophile power supplies bring, being the S&PS-based SPS-500 by SOTM or the S-Booster. My optone Ultra Caps LPS-1 doesn't supply the necessary 9 volts. This time the SOTM distributor didn't supply the SOTM power supply for I have the S-Booster at hand. The difference between the S-Booster and the SOTM, if there is a difference, is such that I wouldn't buy the SOTM if the sound quality is the only criterion. The SOTM does look a lot better, especially when combined with the Ultra products. To get back to the review, I borrowed a second S-Booster power supply so now the SOTM SMS-200 Ultra was fed from an S-Booster 2. I received audio over the AudioQuest Diamond Ethernet cable via an S-Booster powered TP-Link switch from the RoonRock running on a 6th generation Intel NUC i3 that is powered by the standard power supply. In the standard setup, an AudioQuest Diamond USB cable was used to connect it to the MiTech Brooklyn DAC. The interlink to the amp was the Crystal Cable Standard Diamond. Watch my video tweaking my network audio interface for more details. The link is below this video in YouTube and at the end of this video. This setup sounds so well that it would take a lot of money to find a second frontend that sounds just as well. When a Dutch retailer criticized the Brooklyn by saying that his customers found the difference between MQA and non-MQA files on the Brooklyn very small and that they didn't like the Brooklyn anyway, I claimed that it would come fightingly close to a Meridian Ultra DAC. The dealer was a Meridian dealer, but not a MiTech dealer of course. My Dutch colleague Jaap Veenstra of AlphaAudio.nl was interested in that comparison so I agreed to take my setup to his listening studio. He had arranged a Meridian Reference 818 V3 preamp and DAC. The Ultra DAC was not available and this was close enough to make the point. The conclusion in a nutshell was that there was a sound character difference so it's a matter of preference whether you like one over the other. Of course my setup is a stack of boxes while the Meridian is a neat one-box solution while the preamp functions of the Meridian fire exceeds that of the Brooklyn. But it also costs more than double. For those that master the Dutch language, I'll put the link in the show notes. The test simply puts the TX USB Ultra in and out the chain between the SMS-200 Ultra and the MiTech Brooklyn. Since I have only one AudioQuest Diamond USB, I used the USB cable that came with the TX USB Ultra to connect it to the SMS-200 Ultra and used the AudioQuest between the TX and the DAC. The idea being that the last cable to the DAC has the highest quality. In my setup one, any switching mode power supply is connected to a mains filter to not disturb the mains going to the linear power supplies that feed the sensitive digital and analog audio. Please bear in mind that at this level everything and anything can have its influence. Well it must be clear that I didn't expect much of it. It's just that you, the viewer and Azoteam persisted. And I'm glad you did, for it appears indeed that even more quality is hidden in those damn bits. Now let me be clear. If the jump from the SMS-200 to the SMS-200 Ultra was an increase in quality of 100% or so, if you can't express that in percentages, the quality increase adding the TX USB Ultra is another 30%. Not that I want to be negative. I am very positively surprised such an increase is still possible. As long as you don't have the wrong expectations. Now what exactly did improve further? The stereo image became larger while more in focus. Percussion came with even more speed and more detached from the background. The tonality in the lows got even better. Voices became even more real and the background was even blacker. If you consider the sound quality the SMS-200 Ultra offers, I have amazed quite a number very experienced listeners with it. The extra quality the TX USB Ultra adds is amazing. It does wonders on modern recordings like Lonus by Caroline Rose but also on classics like Space Oddity in MQA by David Bowie or Vincent Sondor by Charles Nauvour. Also in MQA. Of course, the period sound remains but because you can listen deeper into the music it fascinates even more. I might even hear more detail than the artist did. Of course, the laws of diminishing return supply here too. Remember the TX USB Ultra is a thousand euros without the power supply. But let me give you an example where it can save you money or even your marriage. The SMS-200 Ultra already made the lows more defined and more tonal. The TX USB Ultra even goes one step further leading to a better low end in my room. I of course sit at the sweet spot when judging equipment but not always on other occasions. Using the Ultra made the area where proper lows can be heard a lot wider. I often hear people say that buying expensive equipment without room treatment is a waste of money. I strongly believe that when you place your speakers properly, see my video on speaker placement and have the right combination of equipment, there is no need for acoustic treatment unless you live in a fish tank. Those quasi-modern houses where the living has glass walls on two or three sides. The next time you visit such a house, please note that coughing or working on high heels already causes an unpleasant sound that mask any conversation. If that is the case, a stereo will sound bad too. But if in the room an acoustic piano can sound good, then why not a stereo? Audio is all about learning and I have learned that in the end our auditory system is capable of so much more than we can understand. I rather have an SMS-200 Ultra than MQA for the effect is so much bigger. But why not stack it? Use the SMS-200 Ultra with the TX USB Ultra and MQA for it really all stacks up to a quality I would not have believed is possible for this kind of money only a few years ago. And I keep searching, assisted by your questions and advices for even better quality at lower price, as long as it is done responsible. So subscribe to this channel or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. See the show notes for the links. If you like this video, please consider supporting the channel through Patreon or PayPal. Even a dollar a month is appreciated. The links are in the show notes, just as the link to the description of my three setups. Help me to help even more people with their stereo by telling your friends on the web about this channel. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.