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hey Runners only with dime Harley red is only with dom Harvey and Mike ruddling Radix nutrition founder and CEO
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g'day mate g'day thank you so much for having me here today and your fabulous
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space um here we are Radix Nutrition HQ in the waikato a massive state-of-the-art
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factory it's uh it's a beautiful environment I I if I was sick I think I'd probably feel safer here than in
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middlemore hospital in terms of the hygiene and the beauty of this place oh it's great to have you here thank you so
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much for coming down yep first things first um what what is a Radix why Radix why
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did you see if I'm if I'm you and I'm 23 years old which you were when you
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started the company and I'm starting a nutrition company I'd probably call it
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Dom Harvey nutrition you weren't tempted to call it you know rattling nutrition no well I the name's
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a pretty special thing and uh we had a few weeks of soul searching a lot of uh looking online or looking through for
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meaning on Words and thesauruses but we I wanted a name that would really represent how we viewed nutrition and
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health which is to take it right back to fundamentals and understand where these
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things actually come from and I found the Latin word Radix which is the root of a complex system in biology or
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mathematics and that is represented for us we've always taken a really deep first
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principle to look at where our health and performance comes from what is metabolism what's it's affected by what
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what nutrients and that that word's given us meaning ever since and yeah the the Latin term
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for a complex system which is how we view nutrition I appreciate that explanation I had no idea what people
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ask me what is what does it mean I don't know yeah so there's the few companies
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around the place called Radix now but at the start there was uh just one or two yeah but um who knows maybe it's trendy
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one thing that I've learned from my association with Radix nutrition over the last couple of months is just how
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focused you are on on being the leader and and the front runner and ahead of the competition you are and I suppose in
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a way that extends into things like um being Innovative with your marketing like sponsoring a podcast
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um podcast is a growing sort of media form um but you guys approached me about sponsorship which I was I thought that's
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that's really Innovative why why did you decide to sponsor the podcast by the way
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do you know how long that decision took us I don't know I'll spend a bit of time
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shadowing you today I can't imagine it was a quick one I feel like it was a fairly meticulous decision I reckon that
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was under five minutes oh really yeah we um did you rush into a decision no it was a no-brainer it was a no-brainer
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yeah we uh I didn't spot the opportunity some of my colleagues did and you guys
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were fantastic and have been ever since so we thought it was a no-brainer the other one we loved about it is that your
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story and what you're trying to start if if we could spend our any of our advertising budget into help bring
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awareness to what you're doing we thought that'd be a fantastic Mark to leave behind and um you know I you you
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guys will go on to be huge and we we hope that we could play some role in in helping get that going so no it was an
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easy decision it's been fantastic oh that's brilliant wow easy decision um and I I um I'm you know so pleased to
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be associated with you guys it makes me want to work harder to spread the Radix nutrition name as well you guys are
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doing great yeah well thanks I appreciate that actually um yeah something else that might be
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worth bringing up um the biggest podcast episode I've had to date was one a couple of months back
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with um sane Robertson uh one in New Zealand's uh most accomplished middle distance Runners of all time
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um but he did an exclusive interview with me on the runners only podcast uh when it was announced that he'd been you
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know banned from all forms of sport for seven years for using Epi which is a performance enhancing drug and I I was
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very excited when I scored this exclusive and I got on the phone to your CEO because I thought he'd want to share
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in the excitement yeah and to my surprise he said well let me run this past the team and I'll get back to you
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and you guys intentionally wanted to be excluded from that episode you didn't want to be
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involved I I don't know if we did the right thing on that we were having a really really busy day and I wanted to
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say yes I I probably don't have the view on drugs and sport that many people
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would think that I do but a lot of athletes it's a really tough industry you need to be pretty forgiving with
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young athletes and the decisions they make because a lot of times they're just
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kids but I thought that was a yes and then I thought I'd just too tired and too fast to make a good decision so we
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decided but I don't know if we did the right thing but it was I haven't listened to the full podcast but it was
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a really it's a tough lesson it was a really meaningful question and an experience to have gone through and we
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probably should have been there alongside it did you was part of it nerves that people would would see the the content
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and then see the Radix nutrition logo and and draw a loose length between the two yeah yeah right I didn't know but um
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we we've been so busy and I I just thought we'd play it really safe right
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and um that was why but I I will listen to the podcast and um it's a challenging time and I hope he's
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okay yeah I'm in regular contact with them on WhatsApp so I mean day by day he's getting better and better it's
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funny though isn't it so I'm from a commercial radio background where any
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sort of publicity you can get you froth at the opportunity so I and then I saw it from your perspective and I thought
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okay this is why I'm not running a successful company but we might have done it wrong but I uh how did he get in
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touch with you I I don't know the story oh we've been bouncing messages backwards and forwards on Instagram for
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a while now so that's how that link came up um yeah but you you guys are um you take
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that stuff very seriously don't you like um yeah clean cleanness and Sport and
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that reflects in your products and we yeah I mean we we make our products uh we go to
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extraordinary lens to make sure um we're not going to get positive result for someone so we drug test our
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products and we know our facility Well on our suppliers but um it's a difficult
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part of sport and um you keep hoping it will go away but it's there's a messy side to Sport and a
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lot of pressure and and young people as they figure out who they are in life and
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what you're meant to do and not meant to do and I feel sorry for guys that go through that and make those decisions
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and invariably they end up you know seeing seeing the error of their ways and you
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just hope that they get past it okay but well that's the thing with saying I
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think it's um probably a valuable lesson for any young people in sport saying you
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can see him and say don't do what this guy did like he's he's messed his life
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up like uh yeah it has yeah everything that that means something to him he's
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now gonna I mean he'll be fine he's 33 he just has to reshape his life but at
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the moment it feels like the life that he's spent I don't know the last 16 or 17 years
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building is effectively over yeah bill is an exciting life around the corner from I'm sure 100 I agree I agree
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yeah all right so let's go let's go all the way back so what's are you a New
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Zealander you're an Englishman you're from a place called The Isle of Wight
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which is a smallish island off the mainland of England yeah see um you're born in New Zealand no no um I
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was born on the Isle of Wight I'm from the UK uh my father actually was born in London
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but when he was um eight or nine moved to Auckland and he was there until his mid-20s yeah
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that's why I thought perhaps you were born here because um yeah your dad uh was a uh basically came here at the age
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11. um became the youngest cop ever in New Zealand became a cop at the age of 16. yeah can you imagine being pulled
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over arrested by a 16 year old yeah well if she's met Paul maybe you could but uh
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no he's very proud of that but um he was uh we we spent you know all of my lifetime obviously in the UK and he he
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wanted to move back to New Zealand for a long time and I was cycling in uh San Diego at the
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time and my cycling career came to an end and I moved back home and home at that time was uh
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Russell in in the in Northland could think of worse places to come it's been
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amazing yeah yeah no I I spent when I was a kid my grandparents lived in Howick in Auckland and really fond
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memories coming over and visiting them maybe once once every year or so but New Zealand's a special country yeah so
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let's um talk about your day for a little bit so a cop in the New Zealand Police Force at the age of 16 yeah uh
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then by the time he's 21 he Taps out of that and becomes a competitive sailor
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yeah uh he yeah he's always loved sailing so um what sort of what sort of boats are
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we talking okay uh a boat called a Finn which was the men's Olympic single-handed dinghy and
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um yeah he finished his time in the place and uh he had a sale-making business um to help support uh he and a few of
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his friends uh you know beginning careers in sailing and um I think that business kind of took off a bit and he
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got split between the business and his sailing career and I think he made it to Olympic Reserve that he had other
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commitments with a young family and um his business over there but yeah he he loved uh he's always loved sailing
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he was kind of one of the founders of or pioneers I guess you could say of using
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Composite Materials in the sailing industry so um carbon fiber Kevlar you know when he
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got into it Boats were made out of wood yeah right and um he saw the boats uh pretty old-fashioned and could
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learn a lot from the aircraft industry so um which no one listened to at the time
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those are made in traditional ways and most of the Americas cup technology the materials the engineering the science
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behind it would have started with his first major company SB systems in the 90s and early 2000s in the UK and they
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made everything from I think they made the first carbon fiber monocoque chassis for Formula One with
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McLaren well they've sailing so he had a 20 odd year career in composite materials
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and yeah big inspiration it's done some cool stuff yeah and isn't it so I don't
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know if this is something you seem like a guy that's always constantly looking
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forward rather than spending much time sitting down reflecting on what's Happening not good at that but it's it's
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funny to see like the if you compare the trajectory of your Dad's life and yours
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it's very similar like a competitive sport then tapping out to focus on business at a relatively young age
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yeah yeah I get I'm kind of funny that you see those things as you go I'd like to
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learn from a few things here and there but it does look like we're going down a
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similar path I had him in learn here and there like like just what what you're dead now like raise your son
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definitely how you were raised is that what you mean or I I've grown up around
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quite a lot of pressure and I guess I keep being in those situations and it would
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um it probably a skill I don't have to avoid that but right pressure like a like a a is it a high performance family
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if you take on a lot yeah um there's a Hunter Thompson quite always like which is not related to all men in
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this but if you buy the ticket and take the ride you know if you try something difficult it's uh yeah it can be can be
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pretty hard at times well but but I like the impression I get from my dealings with you is you're a perfectionist but
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do you do you think that's something that's in your in your DNA or something
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that's been like like drummed into you from your parents uh no I'm good at
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building stuff so if if something's important it needs to be done well um you know I feel like but anything you
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do I feel like you're gonna do I'm crap at a lot of things I think but I'm good
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at some things but um I I get called a perfectionist but if something's important do it well yeah do it well
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it'll come back and bite you and then there's a lot of things I don't do so um
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I I don't reflect a great deal right what are you crap at what have you done
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that you're like nah this isn't for me what Springs to mind I can't think of anything I I you
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mentioned it before we start like I tend to focus on the things a couple of I want to do yeah and um consistently my
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favorite thing has always been learning when you do something for 10 years uh you become very good at it and the joy
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of being a novice in it goes away and it's uh it's fantastic to start uh from from fresh and to learn
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things so yeah but from my perspective I disagree it's like I hate being in the
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The Learning phase and I like like getting through that phase to the point where you can do something okay
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yeah I I think if you keep pushing you're always learning which I I don't
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I've always enjoyed pushing further I guess because you learn more so you um so you're in the Isle of Wight
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skiing I'm crap at skiing but I bet if you decided to do it well you could end up
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doing it well but no I'm never my wife is an amazing skier and um she's if we
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tried three or four times now and I'll let that one go yeah right so um so you go to boarding school at the
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age intermediate age I think we call it here in New Zealand like 11 12. yeah yeah was that um was that always the
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plan to go to boarding school the reason I ask you here in New Zealand it's um me
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and my brother when we were growing up it was like sort of hung over our head like if we're being naughty or get into
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detention at school it's like you keep that up you'll go to boarding school so
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it was like a punishment yeah it probably was yeah no I uh or was it always on the plan I was when I was a
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kid so growing up on the Isle of Wight um is pretty small community and I was uh I was a swimmer and there's a school
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in the UK which is probably uh it's a sports academy called milfield and it gave me a chance to uh
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you know be looked after with education and as I said to you earlier on pretty dyslexic and then they had an amazing
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swimming team so that was a chance to just focus on the things that at that time
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were important it was a it was a privilege but yeah a bit of it would be um yeah I kicked out of the house and you
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really got like what what did you do I can't imagine you gotta you've got to be
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a time when just sending your kids off to boarding school is pretty appealing and I'm sure that's part of the
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calculation but um right could you think of any like incidents or reasons that your parents would have been like right
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there as uh we got to ship him off there's probably a few they'll come back
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I'll probably repress them fair enough no I think I tried my best I think it
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was okay but um yeah boarding school was an experience yeah was that how was that because it's
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um some people completely thrive in that environment yeah and just love it and then they vow to send their own Sons if
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they have them to boarding school and then there's others that just are miserable the entire time and have have
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nothing but you know done well you've got all your mates sir you've got fantastic facilities and you just get to
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focus on what you love and um you know I remember it really fondly for that and obviously homesickness and
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other things are difficult but you know I was at a school with about twelve hundred other people and um
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fantastic friends and and opportunities but uh yes they're super homesick at
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times but yeah that's good I'm sure the time will come when I wanna ask a question if you kick your son off
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to boarding school but um difficult not not on the cards at the moment yeah and what was the um the culture like at the
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time was it a like a a bullying culture or a prank culture yeah it was interesting when I was
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there um some of the older kids that culture was there um and I'd say it'd been like you get
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hazing and other terms it's a crap culture and it I'd say it stopped while I was
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there but when we started off there was all of all of that when you you're the
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first year going and it's just BS but the seniors on the Juniors or yeah and
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it's some sort of stupid tradition you know and um I was never a part of that
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and I think that probably stopped completely while I was there but right right yeah silly how did you manage to
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avoid it oh no I went through it while I went there I just never do it to someone
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else oh that's good was it still you never did it to anyone else but it was still going on in your ear and you just
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had them when we got to seniors none of us were doing it to to younger kids you know it'd stop but you went through a
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bit I think it was pretty good but um uh I was on the swimming team and the boarding house I was in was mostly
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swimmers and luckily we sort of stuck together right I think they they stood up for us a bit but what was it can you
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remember what what your hazing entailed no it's just no no good no good stories on
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that I don't think but um it's not a cool thing yeah yeah pretty tame stuff
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though compared to other things but um yeah right like short sheeting the Beards or things like that
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we we did a lot of good pranks me and a few other guys flips a guy's room in
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about half an hour turn all the furniture upside down and glue it to the floor um another guy before one of the
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holidays we uh we watered the carpet and planted crests and uh the cleaner or someone opened it up
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three or four weeks later and there was a lawn inside that's a slow burning prank yeah that's a good one there's
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lots of fun like that but no it was it was uh it's all good yeah that's cool and why
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swimming swimming I've never been a swimming myself I've always been a runner but swimming seems
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my favorite insert name here Michael Phelps uh Ian Thorpe there's thousands of kids every
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morning that are going to the pool with their parents at 5am and going back to the pool in the afternoon feels like
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it's a lot of work a lot of training a lot of discipline for yeah the very very
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slim chance of making it big a few things on that so when as I said earlier on when I was a kid I was really
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dyslexic um and my I think at the point when uh my parents were not quite sure what to
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do and the stories I've I've heard about it pretty bad and uh my parents got told by someone
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who was helping me that one thing that had been shown to be helpful is to get kids into a sport where they can have
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their own space and have a chance to practice I think something physical that doesn't involve learning and so I I got
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put into swimming um at a young age I I started swimming when I was probably three I was Squad swimming
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probably about four and a half or five what does that mean exactly um Squad swimming is not swimming lessons
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you turn up and you do an hour and a half two hours and it would be four and a half to six K in the pool you're
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joking a preschool age well I might not be doing that but that's proper sort of
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yeah right level and um I remember doing swimming lessons and my dad asking the instructor to let me up a
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level because otherwise you're learning to swim for years and um he uh a friend of ours who was actually my
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Midwife um we I was learning to swim in a class with just really young kids and dad had taken me swimming a few times
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with him and he knew that I could swim I don't know a thousand meters 1500 meters
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as a kid and you got a swimming lesson you'd swim six lengths and um so he told an instructor look this kid
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actually can swim we need to stop with these he needs to go up to a squad and so he took me down to the pool one day
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and like a Saturday and I swam some big 1500 meters and then afterwards he took me around to our friend's house and said
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oh Mike and I've just been down to the pool and I made him swim 1500 meters and
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Rosie I remember Paul saying that she looked at him and thought it was some sort of child abuse and everything
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everyone thought it was ridiculous and then I ended up going to a squad and you just straight off the bat you do three
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or four K and no one thinks a big deal of it but um swimming meant a lot for me because it gave me a chance to focus on
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something which I think later in life I've discovered that sort of myopic focus on
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things and I got to sort of meditate for two four hours a day on swimming and um you know like many small Sports the
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skill goes as deep as you want you can never perfect it and um I did that for um 12 years maybe this may be just your
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answer for this rather than speaking collectively for every swim every person that's ever swam in a pool but as
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someone that's noticed from a as a distance Runner I can go out and my mind can wander and I can think about it a
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different a million different problems when you're swimming can does your mind
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Wonder or do you have 100 yeah I was talking to someone about this last week so you can get completely lost in it
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when I learned how to swim I was lucky my father and then a couple of the early coaches I had
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were technicians they really focused on how to swim properly and I used to practice that every stroke
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and I didn't realize that other kids didn't do that you know people jump in
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and thrash up and down and then a few times a session or a few times a week they'll work on on technique and every
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time my hand went in the water in front of my face you'd watch The Catch you'd
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watch the shape of it you'd have a feel for it I stood at every single stroke
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and you would just completely fixate on it and you can wake up half an hour later and realize that you've just been
00:22:15
thinking about that and you swam 1500 meters and I've I've done some really boring swim sets that
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would be swimming can be really boring what I just can't like we did stuff like five
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by 800 or five by one thousand which is horrendous you realize the coach has just given up in the office beforehand
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but you you can do something for 15 minutes and you remember the first 30 seconds then you remember touching the
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wall at the end of it just like uh running I used to doing cycling as well which is probably a bit scarier
00:22:50
I used to get that in time traveling I you get because time traveling sucks like swimming's hard but an hour time
00:22:58
trial is just as yeah you're in you're in pain from the outside it's as painful as you
00:23:03
can make it and it's a sad thing about it and the better you get the better you
00:23:07
are at being right on the limit and that every second sucks yeah and you used to
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get to the point you couldn't remember anything that happened in the race you
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just remember that you got here but I think you can always do that maybe that's trying to sort of black out I
00:23:18
think so so you're at say secondary school age as we call it here in New Zealand what sort of swimming are you
00:23:23
doing at that stage is it like two sessions a day when I went to that school seven to nine sessions a week
00:23:30
so some days would be double so like double Monday double Tuesday Wednesday afternoon double Thursday and a Friday
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and a Saturday yeah they weren't very smart with their training and I think swimmers do too
00:23:43
much it's a lot of work they do a lot of volume and I think when you see young
00:23:48
swimmers they're always um they look a bit stressed and too skinny but um it's just the culture of it so do
00:23:55
you have any natural Talent or were you just a bloody hard worker no I was really good at swimming well yeah yeah
00:24:00
but again I only focused on um uh freestyle in the end and I managed to always get it with my
00:24:09
coaches that I just do freestyle and um I was really good at that and you um you gave it up because you
00:24:17
end up with a shoulder injury like is that an overuse thing or what yeah one day we had a uh a big session that was
00:24:24
for butterfly which I didn't normally swim and it would have been like three or four K of
00:24:30
fly and fly drills and that was the end of my shoulders and um yeah wasn't very smart but it was an
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impingement so it's just right over the top and um that never came back I I'm
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sure I could have fixed it but that immediately destroyed my swimming career right and um both shoulders and I tried
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for like a year and I got to the point where I could maybe get 10 minutes without pain and
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then it just came back and when it came back it was like that for a month and um
00:24:59
I I was fortunate I had a really good couple of really good teachers at school uh who were into rowing indoor rowing
00:25:07
which is a huge sport but everyone thinks it's a weird sport but indoor rowing on a rowing machine all right
00:25:13
right yeah it's a huge sport yes it's a weird sports but there's um it's like
00:25:19
having a running race on a treatment like yeah it is and it but it's it's
00:25:23
hugely competitive so I uh I buddied up with a couple of my uh teachers at school
00:25:29
and we used to go and do that and I ended up we did I did UK Nationals and I I'm guessing I was like eighth in the UK
00:25:37
indoor and then I went to Europeans and that was cool but the school wasn't near
00:25:41
any lakes and at the same time I discovered cycling and realized how cool that was that you
00:25:47
can just get on a bike and go somewhere yeah how did you yeah you have to after years and years of spending hours just
00:25:54
looking at that black line in the pool yeah for hours on end day after day week after week month after month yeah the
00:26:01
freedom of um being out in the open on a bike it must have been like nothing else
00:26:04
it was incredible and I um I I started one summer holiday when I was a kid and um so I was at school I came home
00:26:13
and uh my father didn't school holidays are a waste of time and uh what do you mean in his well you
00:26:21
should be doing something oh you did and I I you know and I I kind of agree but he was lucky we had a chap on the Isle
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of Wight called Roger prowse who would have been in his 60s and he was like 10 times in a row National and
00:26:36
World Champion for rowing indoors and so I used to come right with Roger in the evenings and then in the morning I think
00:26:43
it was like 6 30 I'd be on the bike and I get an hour and a half in cycling on
00:26:47
the road and um and that was a schedule and I kind of loved being on the bike you know you at that time
00:26:56
I was new to it and your son's coming up on some country road and you the birds
00:27:01
are starting to sing and you're by yourself and it's just fantastic and um
00:27:05
I loved it and I I got a chance to discover cycling uh that way and then I went back to boarding school
00:27:12
and I was the only cyclist also they didn't have a cycle team no they was you
00:27:17
were the best cyclist in the school immediately but immediately and there was one teacher called Mick day and I
00:27:23
used to go and hang out with him and we became really good mates and he would take me out bike riding
00:27:30
once or twice a week on Saturday or Sunday morning I go for a bike ride with him and he was just one of the best
00:27:37
teachers I ever had it's so cool and um he thought I was pretty good at it and
00:27:42
he he's he never raced he just loves cycling and he was really passionate the
00:27:48
sort of people that really build a sport you know loved it and he heard that British cycling had a talent program
00:27:53
where they would come around to schools and do a series of bike tests on kids and if
00:28:01
you achieve certain numbers they take you onto a development Squad and he signed the school up for that
00:28:10
and it was me and one other girl from the school and then about six other people from the local area were hosted
00:28:16
at the school and we went through these tests and I was fortunate to pass that and then went on to National selection
00:28:21
for that and then I was on that they called that the talent team and I was on that for
00:28:27
probably a year a year and a half and then um they focused on the track which I wasn't
00:28:35
very good at and it was like a velodrome yeah yeah and you you've got to be really good at bike skills for that and
00:28:40
I'd only just started riding and when you go up against kids that have been riding on the track since
00:28:45
they're five years old it's a bit much to take in um but it looks by the way yeah my only
00:28:51
experience with velodrome is watching it on the Commonwealth Games in the Olympics yeah and when you see a Wipeout
00:28:56
it looks harrowing yeah and you you end up when you end up in a bunch at a 45 degree angle with 60 people no breaks
00:29:03
and everyone's not only trying to just ride the bike and be tactical but Sprint
00:29:08
as fast as they can you can't there's if you've got any doubt in that you've lost and then it's
00:29:14
terrifying yeah and so I got into road racing I left school a year early for that but at the time I went to school I
00:29:21
was the only cyclist and uh I went to my swim coach and said look I I'm done with swimming I want to do
00:29:28
cycling and I he was happy with that but I had to get signed off from the swim team
00:29:34
to go cycling and I I went to our head of sport and he said we don't have a cycling team
00:29:40
so why would I why would we it was an old boy and he was grumpy and I said well that's kind of the
00:29:48
school's problem not mine but I want to go cycling I've got a bike why can't I
00:29:53
and he said or show me you're not [ __ ] it how do I know you're not you know you're only good I went back to
00:30:01
my dorm and I came out with a letter from British cycling saying you know I'm
00:30:04
on the on this team and he said all right you're a cyclist and he never asked me any questions and after school
00:30:10
I used to get on my bike and I'd ride you know um 50 to 80 or 100K and I'd never tell
00:30:18
anyone where no one ever asked where I was going and in hindsight I'm sure it doesn't
00:30:23
work like that anymore Oh you mean like the school they yeah so you'd be going
00:30:27
for say four hours no one would know where I was right no one cared and in a world of I'm sure safety as it is now
00:30:34
that's not okay but I remember we're in school in Somerset and the nearest city
00:30:38
was uh Bristol which was a proper drive away and when I was 15 or so I got back from
00:30:45
a bike ride and the wife Around The Boarding House said oh where have you been and I said I've been to Bristol
00:30:52
and she couldn't believe that and I could see her do the math that that's probably not okay that we've just
00:31:00
said 15 or I'd ride a bike to Bristol but I'm pretty sure she just didn't she
00:31:05
just passed on it but it's one of those things I I don't want to write an
00:31:09
incident report I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that yeah that would have
00:31:12
been like a hundred and probably 160 180k but um yeah it's good though good and why did you get into time traveling
00:31:19
time traveling seems awful like it's um time traveling for anyone that doesn't know it's a varying
00:31:25
distance what's the average distance of a time trial we do two in the UK which
00:31:28
was uh 10 Mile and 25 miles so 16k and 40K right and it's basically just go as
00:31:34
go as hard as what you if and can for yeah for that time so I'm guessing the
00:31:38
40K like under just under an hour yeah so I the best I got is very cost dependent and again in time trotting
00:31:45
there are fast courses and slow courses but I I got to about I think I was fourth in the UK
00:31:51
once or twice for my age but um I think the best I ever did for that was about 50 minutes or 51 minutes on a on a
00:31:58
normal fast course I think people can relate 51 to 52 minutes yeah yeah yes that's basically the same speed as what
00:32:05
a car goes around the city that's a fun decays now yeah a a crap motorbike a
00:32:10
scooter yeah and you've got to do an on your own you're not sitting on someone's
00:32:13
wheel or it's pretty it's pretty fun when you're down in that tuck position
00:32:17
and you've got all the kit on and you're doing you do 52 50 52 54k on the flat and then
00:32:24
down the hill you'd be doing 80 90 100K and it's it's pretty cool but it goes
00:32:29
off power output it's it's a normalized way of looking at it and I am I think the best I ever was able to do I
00:32:37
was never good at racing I was good at training but um I think I'd the best I
00:32:42
ever did on the on a TT bike was like 409 Watts at 74 kilos I think for an hour to do she's not very good
00:32:51
but it's not well a national level but I couldn't quite get above that to do it
00:32:55
to do a sport like that um not cycling but like time trialing specifically is there like an element of
00:33:02
self-loathing there or something like a self-hatred like it's you you need this
00:33:07
ability this to to put yourself in in pain and stay there and basically torture yourself for the duration of a
00:33:14
ride that's it isn't it it's an awesome feeling though is it you just you just
00:33:18
get like the feeling of it yeah when you finish I kind of love the whole you know when
00:33:24
you're on it and you know it's going well it's awesome and I uh I used to
00:33:29
love work so I could out train anyone it was the racing that was more of an issue
00:33:34
but um time trialing's just fun but really hard and the second it's not hard you need to
00:33:40
try harder right but um it's a good feeling though I think it's any athlete
00:33:44
loves being in the zone and it's kind of it's kind of that yeah you mentioned
00:33:48
before you the trend training was good racing not so good did you just get was it nerves what was it well it's not I
00:33:55
know I never actually looking back at it I just never actually figured out how to
00:33:59
race and that you need to be really aggressive opportunistic and you're there to win and take every chance and
00:34:07
and no one cares if you don't win you know no one remembers who's come forward for a third and the difference
00:34:13
between being fifth or not finishing at the end of the day not a lot and I just I never gave it
00:34:18
gave it a go and I always um I kind of always felt it was a bigger deal than it really was like when I've
00:34:25
been an adult and older and I go back to bike races and I look in it an equivalent level in New Zealand I've
00:34:33
turned up to a couple of those races when you're looking at 16 17 year old and you look at you think no one cares
00:34:37
just give it a go and at the time you just kind of feel like the way the world's on your shoulders and you can't
00:34:42
get it wrong but in hindsight I just never really gave it a go yeah yeah what was your worst accident
00:34:48
I I had um sir Ashley Bloomfield on the podcast recently and he's um taking up
00:34:52
mountain biking yet and he had some quote like there's two sorts of um cyclists
00:34:58
um those that have had a bad accident and those that haven't had a bad accident yet yeah I the the biggest
00:35:04
injury I ever had I break a collarbone um we were racing at the uh it's actually on the track that Top Gear do
00:35:10
their testing on it was a three-day stage race and I we're going around a corner at about 70k
00:35:16
an hour and I just dozed off for a second and overlapped the wheel in front and went and drove myself straight into
00:35:22
the deck but I I broke a collarbone but I was pretty lucky I've almost had I've
00:35:28
probably almost killed myself three or four times and you learned from those pretty I've done some they do say what
00:35:35
doesn't kill you makes you stronger I've I've had some yeah I remember in Spain
00:35:43
because it's fun going fast on a bike yeah and then you figure out how to go
00:35:46
quite fast and I remember doing um I remember in south of Spain I was down there training on a on kind of a
00:35:54
Motorway that you can ride on the shoulder of a big road and we're going really really fast probably like 90 or
00:36:00
90 odd which is speed's always relative to the road right if it's of course if
00:36:04
it's a Runway it's not a big deal but I remember going into a corner really fast
00:36:07
and then the corner was twice as long as I realized and I was exiting the corner about
00:36:12
Midway through it and I realized that's not good and just as I'm figuring that
00:36:16
out a a huge bus comes the other way and I remember I looked at a driver the driver looked at me
00:36:23
and I'm looking at the a pillar of a bus thinking like that's definitely where
00:36:27
I'm going to be in a quarter of a second and um he went wide and I just I don't know
00:36:32
how you can always find a bit more grip and I've had that one a few times but um
00:36:36
you learn pretty quick and it's funny when you get older the more experienced
00:36:40
you kind of give up on descending like you can go really fast on a race but if you go really fast on every
00:36:46
downhill um like we'll catch up yeah I've done some I've done yeah fun though
00:36:53
and one thing um sport for me is um a sporting movement it's one of the pillars of my uh sort of like mental
00:37:01
health like I yeah I I need it if I don't exercise for a couple of days I feel antsy I feel ready I'm not good to
00:37:06
be around um does that change when it's when you're doing high performance Sport and
00:37:12
well I suppose one person that Springs to mind is um actually from from unique that was in Cambridge cyclists as well
00:37:17
Olivia podmore who through the ups and downs of high performance Sport and Olympic selection for her which she
00:37:24
missed out on um she ended up taking her own life yeah so do I mean Did you sort of fight
00:37:28
obviously you're like a lower level down from that with your swimming and you're
00:37:31
cycling but does it reach the point where you're getting all these mental health benefits from all this movement
00:37:36
that you're doing it's drugs so that's us endorphins yeah I think there's a lot
00:37:42
in to unpacking that but I think having a fantastic training session for hours and the endorphins that come with
00:37:49
that is a is a pretty powerful experience to no longer have but I I think when I am if I'm answering a
00:37:56
question when I I stop cycling because I um I uh I was in San Diego and I ended up I
00:38:06
was trying to cut weight before the season and the best one of the best ways of figuring out your body fat are you when
00:38:12
to stop losing weight is to get a dexa scan and so I went privately booked into a dexa scan I told
00:38:19
them I'm an athlete I want to figure out what my body fat is and composition so
00:38:23
sure jump on the table did a reading and he came out and said have you ever had a
00:38:27
dexa scan before and I said no he's like okay and he's not a doctor he's just running
00:38:33
the machine he said your bone density is not good and I I thought okay well I'll remember that and he said no it's
00:38:41
actually not very good at all he's like how bad give me a scale and he's like
00:38:45
we've actually got a scale on the decks again that's what it is and he's like
00:38:49
you're about a 60 to 70 year old female in terms of bone density and I thought
00:38:53
that's probably not not great not for a dude in his early 20s no and I but then uh I'd happen to hear the low
00:39:01
bone density can be an issue in cycling and it's because when you do chronic
00:39:05
endurance training loads and you have no impact in like running you're constantly
00:39:09
giving your skeletal system a jarring which puts on muscle uh sorry um stimulates bone growth you don't have
00:39:17
land cycling yeah and then you constantly got quite an acid body from from so much aerobic exercise and it
00:39:23
pulls the calcium out of your bones if I remember correctly so it's quite common but I learned that
00:39:29
too late and I was like 23 I wasn't really making it where I wanted to be as a cyclist
00:39:34
because you kind of need to be a rock star by the time you're 22 23. I said it's not going to happen by then I I
00:39:40
didn't want to be the 30 year old cyclist that's still giving it a go it
00:39:45
would be more fun to have made it or my decision not and I just decided the problem was if you keep training with
00:39:52
that you'll never let your body recover and it gets worse and so I just decided
00:39:55
that I'd move on but I am that was pretty wrenching well I suppose it's like what identifies
00:40:04
you and was a big part of your life and I think that's the issue so that you are
00:40:07
if you are someone if you ask an athlete what they do they'll tell you that they
00:40:13
are a cyclist but it's not who they are it's just what they do but the problem is I think most
00:40:20
people are fully wrapped up in that identity and then you just kind of come off the end of that when they stop and I
00:40:25
I struggled with that a lot but um I think the issue with with that sport is that if you're not if you're not in
00:40:34
it anymore you're out and I think you lose a lot and I think I don't know how
00:40:38
that could be better but it's definitely tough I remember going to bed one night crying pretty upset that are
00:40:44
probably you know 10 years eight years of cycling as that was it so how old were you like early 20s I would have
00:40:49
been like 22 Yeah but like really upset and I thought you kind of on I I knew that that was it but you're never quite
00:40:58
sure and you're about to be in a shitload like when when you start training like that there's no real
00:41:04
transferable skill for that just goes in the in the bin and I went for a bike ride the next day
00:41:10
and none of the motivation was there and I kept trying to enjoy the bike ride and
00:41:16
it it was it was gut wrenching and crap and um kind of sad and like I didn't get
00:41:22
to enjoy that last bite right because you realize like that's there's no point in it anymore and I
00:41:28
think I had no interest in riding a bike for maybe six years five years and I tried a
00:41:34
few times and I remember you get on the bike look at your handlebars as you go down the
00:41:38
road and think I've I've done this so many times there's no fun in it and I uh maybe like
00:41:46
two years ago or a year and a half or two years ago I got back on a bike and um it was just
00:41:52
fantastic and I'm crap on a bike now compared to where I was and I I called up my old coach uh last
00:42:00
year and he asked me how I was doing I hadn't spoken to him for years and I it's just
00:42:06
fantastic to be on the bike again and I had to like really let go for a long time to get that back and
00:42:14
people could do much better than me but for me I just the love of it completely there's no
00:42:21
purpose in it right it took me well now I just love going out on the bike right I suck at it and
00:42:26
it's fantastic like when I was a kid summer morning and it's all good again but um what do
00:42:32
you mean you second it you you um you ride your bike to and from how many K's would you do on an average
00:42:37
weight yeah I used to I when I have a bit more time I ride from Cambridge to Hamilton and back every or
00:42:45
some days and that's um 30ks each way 40-ish it's a big right two and a half
00:42:51
or so so when you say you suck at it like that seems to be um a very functional bike ride it's good exercise
00:42:56
you get the endorphins and transportation you look at the speedo and I I just it's nice to sit on a bike
00:43:02
and just enjoy the process yeah and my part I don't check power I don't all of
00:43:08
my metrics would be crap and I just don't care I just like being on a bike and um but you even said to yourself
00:43:13
yourself just before that you suck at it now but most most people listening to this would be like [ __ ] this guy's
00:43:18
writing you know 40K still working 40 yeah nothing that's not cycling but it it's just good to it's an
00:43:27
exhausting being you sometimes isn't it that's one that you remember I meant
00:43:31
mentioned earlier on it's just it's nice to just no pressure and just enjoy
00:43:36
something yeah yeah it took me years to just not care at all and enjoy it but I think I'm all right I
00:43:42
feel like deep down there's a little bit of you that cares no no I'm not good in
00:43:45
the middle it's either it's it's full-on or it's it's not yeah right I'd love to
00:43:50
be good but yeah yeah um so and all your sporting stuff before you sort of close
00:43:55
that chapter of your life and you say early to mid 20s um would that have been like the lowest
00:44:00
point obviously there's a lot lots of highs was that the last point they're
00:44:03
being told about your bone density cycling was pretty like growing Up's hard and being in a
00:44:09
competitive sport is hard and I that I think taught me to be pretty tough um that there was a bit of soul searching
00:44:18
because I no one told me what to do I had no idea what to do with that and you after that you you look at kids that go
00:44:24
to school and you just progress up through school and then you progress to University and
00:44:30
then you go and get a job and there's a bit of a pathway there but when you stop
00:44:33
sport you've got to make a conscious decision on what you're going to do and I was
00:44:39
lost for maybe a few months yeah there was some that was a bit tough in there but um got myself out of that and um I
00:44:46
just have to have something that I focus I get to sink my teeth into so um it wasn't long after that that we had the
00:44:53
idea for Radix all right yeah well I suppose you had like time and energy to focus your um your
00:45:00
attention it was difficult for a while yeah like what athletes go through um I've never really been in that situation
00:45:08
I guess outside of that but you've just gotta what an issue I see is that you
00:45:12
people you just got to be busy at something and it's got to have meaning obviously but I I think
00:45:18
quitting something being in a bad place and then staying at home and not knowing
00:45:23
what to do with yourself is a vicious cycle that you people have got to get out of and they're wallowing yeah it
00:45:28
might feel like the right thing to do but it's uh well if people and people get trapped in it and need a hand as
00:45:32
well right it's um it's not easy but I was I was kind of fortunate there so do
00:45:37
you think that'll be in terms of um your mental health uh the the the worst experience you've had in your life just
00:45:44
the post cycling I've been over the years is it mostly good I think so I've
00:45:52
I've only ever done stuff for me that's quite uh quite hard I guess there's a
00:45:57
lot of pressure yeah self-imposed or like put on you by your dad or family you can only really
00:46:06
you know at one level that can only really be self-imposed right I think you're kind of often the gatekeeper to
00:46:12
how you want to feel about that but no I would have been internal and external but not giving up is only really
00:46:17
important when something when it really sucks right when if you give up when it's easy it doesn't really count so
00:46:22
I've often just tried to uh you just carry them you don't have a choice though right
00:46:31
yeah like if you find yourself in a really difficult situation you don't want to stay there you just keep moving
00:46:38
forwards but I wouldn't say I'm particularly great at it but starting Radix and other things is
00:46:45
um is like really hard and and so you just I think you get tough at it but I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at it
00:46:52
but as I said earlier on it kind of Life beats it into you yeah what's what's
00:46:57
your in a voice like him you're mostly quite nice to yourself you're quite kind
00:47:01
to yourself I reckon you're tough on yourself I don't know you're flogging yourself
00:47:08
one thing I used to like about cycling is that there's nothing easier than doing a shitload of work
00:47:17
and what nothing easier than doing a shitload of work you could just go and do a six hour ride
00:47:24
something incredibly hard and you just feel like you've done it at the end of
00:47:27
the day and I used to love that feeling and I I come I'm at a loss when stuff's
00:47:33
easy and I've got nothing to do my mind wonders and I feel like I don't have
00:47:36
purpose and you could just go and do an enormous workout and you've you've had meaning today and
00:47:42
you've done a great job and I I don't do well if I've not got something that's
00:47:47
full-on that you sunk your teeth into so like on Sundays I always get a bit lost
00:47:52
can I can I theorize that you need to exhaust yourself to help you sleep at night because otherwise your mind's just
00:47:59
clinging around with ideas no it's a fun one I I but no one you ask about mental
00:48:05
health and I it's kind of a new one to me but when I was growing up no one ever
00:48:10
discussed that so I think it's a recent thing but it's a good conversation to
00:48:14
have it's very very much a recent thing I'm quite a bit older than you I'm 50
00:48:17
and it was never even discussed and it was like um I know it like it's got a
00:48:21
label now but I think that's it's a good thing and it's a good thing to be aware
00:48:24
of it and um yeah work out I think everyone needs like a like a resilience plan or a
00:48:29
mental health plan you need to work out what's what's right for you and what's
00:48:32
not right for you the resilience terms are good one thing I you can acknowledge something's difficult
00:48:39
but you need to have the tools to get yourself through it and I that's something I've always focused on a lot
00:48:45
like I have a lot of methods that I'd get through something like that so we're talking earlier on
00:48:51
if everything gets really really difficult I'll get a pen and paper and I'll write until I'm clear on what I'm
00:48:57
doing like you might formally you could call it journaling I guess yeah I get but I will I will get clear on my
00:49:05
thoughts and and and sketch until I've got some answers and I I've done that
00:49:10
since I was probably 14 and I discovered that because I just bummed into it no one right told
00:49:16
me that but I'd have heaps of things like that I'm constantly constantly refocusing constantly tidying
00:49:24
up constantly simplifying what I'm like just that process stops me from getting
00:49:30
overwhelmed for example right like how much how much are we talking like if you had to put a word count on it I'll write
00:49:35
it yeah all right like pages and Pages or a couple of sentences yeah sentences but okay points right yeah as much as it
00:49:45
takes but you just got to find a thread to get back onto the right to the path you know right maybe there's a tool but
00:49:52
I think it's good to acknowledge when people struggle but I think it's important also
00:49:56
to help people find the tools to get past it yeah so transitioning out of uh competitive sport
00:50:03
um cycling was your last thing and into business um did you find with business um that satisfies that Competitive Edge
00:50:10
for you or is it I feel like like business you know you have you have wins and you have good days you have bad days
00:50:15
one so with Radix we have a problem that we're trying to solve I I think for the world or for us I'm
00:50:23
very kind of goal or Mission oriented you have to make money because it enables you to to build a team build a
00:50:29
better product and if you're solving a real problem um in the world then to do it at a
00:50:34
larger scale but I don't really care about that it's always been about nutrition in the world
00:50:40
is is not in a good spot in the food industry as we mentioned earlier on on the whole I think is uh quite evil
00:50:48
um and of course a lot of health issues that we're starting to become aware of
00:50:53
and it's good that people are trying to fix that now but there's a lot of
00:50:59
solutions out there aren't very genuine or very deep and I think someone needs
00:51:04
to fix that so we're having a crack at that yeah I've always chased that goal
00:51:09
and now do you get the um the same sort of Thriller like when something good happens like when you here at Radix when
00:51:15
you form a partnership with fonterra say I do get the same sort of thrill out of
00:51:19
that like doing a really good time trial or a really good swim you know it's cool
00:51:23
when everyone we've discovered things or had breakthroughs or done something
00:51:27
where people just work all night on it and it's just awesome no one looks at
00:51:31
the clock no one wants to be anywhere else and that seven days a week we have a cool breakthrough or an idea and
00:51:37
that's always really exciting and it's it's also fantastic when you see other
00:51:41
people excited at it but um protein for example and that using that Dias framework or metric
00:51:51
that project was just a massive deep dive by a small team of people for a couple of weeks and it was huge and
00:51:58
exciting yeah but it's um it's a rewarding Journey well now's probably a good time to like
00:52:04
transition to some of the business stuff so um at the time of recording this it's
00:52:08
like the uh the 10-year anniversary of Radix of the idea yeah yeah so so yeah 10 years ago you started this business
00:52:15
tell us about those humble beginnings so just you and a mate and a just a little
00:52:19
dehumidifier yeah are we uh we started out just with an idea a very uh basic view on what we could do three
00:52:30
of us my father myself and uh former schoolmate no idea on the industry um which kind of helps and hinders but if a
00:52:41
lot of what the industry is doing isn't the right solution then you get to begin
00:52:45
just as fairly as anyone else does but we began at scratch and we were in Russell
00:52:51
in a garage testing an idea no clue at all reading studying phoning people up meeting
00:52:58
people and we were in in Russell in a garage progressed to a barn and then we stole an empty house for a
00:53:05
while we had a big kitchen um well I'm not I'm sort of imagining like an abandoned rental or something exactly
00:53:14
yeah and when when you so our our product uh when you freeze-dried it's very dry and then it's very very
00:53:21
sensitive to uh moisture in the air I had to tape up every window seam every crack in the whole house with masking
00:53:29
tape and dehumidifier and um yeah it was fun mad stupid and then but you get you
00:53:36
get a start and then we went from Russell where we were for probably a year to um an empty industrial unit in waiuku
00:53:46
where we were probably for three years and um you know it sounds like a really long
00:53:52
time but you learn so much it's unbelievable it's when you start when you started in Russell from
00:53:59
the humble beginnings with your mate and your dad and then you're in a rental
00:54:02
house like what were your what were your plan did you have like a 10-year plan then like could you see yourself being
00:54:07
sitting where we are now yeah yeah really yeah so I um was tidying up some when doing some planning recently
00:54:16
or sharpening some planning up and uh deleted some old files the the bones of it the main bits of what I was
00:54:24
writing 10 years ago the same as what we're still doing now it's a long road it's amazing yeah we're
00:54:31
sitting in Radix nutrition headquarters now in the waikato and an impressive Factory
00:54:37
um it's just it's I mean it's just beautiful from top to bottom but why
00:54:42
Bloody Hamilton well we thought when we're in waiuku we thought that we should be in Auckland because that's
00:54:48
where everyone was and uh well you know that's where everyone passes through Auckland
00:54:54
um we couldn't find any uh there's no room to build a factory the land prices are
00:55:00
ridiculously high the traffic's difficult and then rental is difficult and no one we'd we wasted I looked at 18
00:55:09
buildings in uh Auckland as we sincerely tried to do what was probably impossible which is to find an
00:55:19
industrial building a warehouse in Auckland that we could move into and build a factory
00:55:23
and I'm at a real estate agent called Jamshed I can't remember his last name
00:55:28
and he was awesome and uh he helped me look at I think it was 18 buildings in the end
00:55:34
and we were always a bargaining chip that a landlord would or or an agency not him but the others would use to get
00:55:41
two Warehouse tenants to pay more and the reality that we realized no one wants you to install the factory and rip
00:55:48
out floors and cut up car parks for a startup that could fail and we just we we were late tried really
00:55:56
hard um pretty cool process but it wasn't ever going to work and someone told us if we
00:56:03
went to a waikato or Hamilton you can just buy a clean field a green Greenfield site
00:56:09
and start from scratch and just get it right and we were slow to figure that out but
00:56:14
it's been awesome but yeah and we did so 10 years 10 years on now would you how
00:56:19
would you describe yourself now are you still a startup yeah yeah you've got um there's a few definitions
00:56:25
of startup and I've forgotten all of the good ones at the moment but um we we grow a lot each year and we've got
00:56:34
a long way yet to go until we get to our goal so we've no interest in staying still and we want to be
00:56:45
you know I would love it if this would be one of the uh best examples of what New Zealand can do on the world stage
00:56:53
and the global food industry [ __ ] in a lot of areas and someone's got to fix it
00:56:59
and it I'm not from New Zealand but the the spirit and the character that new
00:57:04
zealanders have is outstanding and uh I kind of like the fact that we're doing
00:57:10
it here yeah but it should be it should be a very big what we're trying to solve
00:57:16
will eventually be solved at a very large scale to give to make a significant impact on the quality of
00:57:22
nutrition that everyone faces at the moment yeah so um so your Radix nutrition uh you know in the listen to
00:57:28
my podcast I've been banging on about your protein powders within your smoothie powders which are amazing um
00:57:33
you also do um like dehydrated you know meals Right freeze right yeah yeah you also do freeze dried what's the what's
00:57:39
the difference uh uh freeze drawing gives a much higher quality product right and dehydrating is
00:57:46
uh quite damaging to product right so you you're just taking moisture out of
00:57:51
food at the end of the day but um freeze drawing is about 10 times more expensive
00:57:55
and a lot harder but um if you if you bought a raisin that's all shriveled up that's freeze uh that's
00:58:03
dehydrated and pretty strong it's a different process it'll leave stuff looking intact so so would you say
00:58:11
um what I call it dehydrated yeah we're not a freeze drying company we just use
00:58:15
a freeze dry right yeah people get that mixed up it's the heaviest bit of Kit in
00:58:20
the factory but it's just one of a few yeah yeah I mean yeah the gear here is
00:58:24
just it's mind-blowingly good okay so so that's where things are at now with
00:58:29
Radix nutrition yeah where do you where do you see it in five to ten years so the problem that we're trying to fix
00:58:35
I don't know how to answer that without oh without giving away no no without
00:58:39
just looking stupid but that you how do you mean why would you look stupid because your plans are that lofty you
00:58:45
should if we get this right it should it needs to be a really big company to have
00:58:51
the difference at someone should be doing a big companies and because anyone that's um watching
00:58:57
this on YouTube or online right now we'll see the factory behind me and they'll say well this is this is Tiny
00:59:03
okay yeah no we this you know done well there should be a 500 plus million Revenue company in 10 years
00:59:13
and it'll be sad if it's not bigger to be honest because I when um I don't mean I I'm not really interested
00:59:21
in the revenue but if you do the maths on on how many people I gave you that statistic earlier on
00:59:28
that one in four globally a pre-diabetic um one in three uh the the stats get a little bit woodier around that but one
00:59:37
in three have pretty sub-optimal metabolic Health right yeah you you're ex This was um of the year you were
00:59:44
explaining this to me uh before and showed me a a graph which shows the exponential growth and it's basically
00:59:49
due to processed food over the last sort of 30-ish years yeah right so and pre-diabetic that means what it means
00:59:58
pre-diabetes is one of the markers that we we use to uh try and understand the quality of people's metabolism right so
01:00:08
pre-diabetes would mean elevated blood sugar levels over a longer period of time which can have all sorts of
01:00:15
knock-on effects but it basically means that one of one of the significant factors of that is nutrition it
01:00:21
basically means that what people are eating is breaking them and it's pretty sad it's not
01:00:27
it's a first world problem so it affects everyone yeah and it ends up affecting
01:00:32
kids and and parents and oh it's it's not a good problem to have and the thing
01:00:39
I find uh pretty frustrating it was the reason that we started Radix is that no one's really fixing it
01:00:47
so most of industry is pretty happy if people keep digging themselves deeper into that hole
01:00:52
and the knowledge exists scientifically the technology exists to make a product and yet no one's really been doing it in
01:01:01
a meaningful way to enable someone to fix their diet simply and and overcome those problems so that's when I say it's
01:01:07
it's not that our interest in growing right next to that scale although it'd
01:01:11
be really fun but it needs to be fixed at that scale so right you know this would be a tiny Factory
01:01:18
and indeed you look in New Zealand at some food factories and they're enormous
01:01:21
because a lot of people eat but this should be well everyone I think it's a big problem yeah so but you're um
01:01:29
don't you think though even if people people know when they're eating [ __ ]
01:01:34
food right but they do it no they don't like if I go to KFC all right but that
01:01:39
does that's off the end of the spectrum well if you the bit you want to worry
01:01:45
about is when people think they're doing the right thing or or are trying to do
01:01:50
the right thing and struggling oh gotcha so if someone's knowingly gonna a really unhealthy fast food brand
01:02:00
that you don't get points for that right and and you might be forced to do that
01:02:04
out of convenience but you're not really in the frame at that point but when you
01:02:08
get someone who's gone to a doctor and been told that they're not well and that
01:02:13
they need to fix their diet otherwise something nasty Could Happen yeah or you've got someone that's depressed or
01:02:18
sad because of how they look or when when someone needs help in changing or has decided
01:02:25
that they want to change and they don't get help I find that quite sad it is at
01:02:30
those times that the difference between what someone will start to eat or knows to eat or can eat through practicality
01:02:36
is actually a long way away from what we know would be ideal right and and nutrition science
01:02:43
and Physiology and everything else that's known and how is really complicated
01:02:48
like no one's going to figure that out anytime soon it's not a solvable problem
01:02:52
it's immensely complex and yeah you just end up at a supermarket you're not sure what to eat
01:02:58
or cook and that's kind of bollocks in 2023 that you can have an iPhone or some in in
01:03:05
staggering level of technological sophistication and yet the thing that kills a lot of
01:03:11
people no one's actually meaningfully put forwards an unbiased genuine solution to that
01:03:16
or there aren't many and that's what we set out to to create so how would you like Radix to look in
01:03:24
like 10 years from now like a big International brand if everyone needing the dehydrated meals
01:03:30
are you planning on moving into different sort of things uh no we've got a lot of other products yeah
01:03:34
so 10 10 years from now we would hope to be pioneering or right at the Forefront
01:03:40
of personalized nutrition we'd want to be a household name we'd need to be it'd be fun if we're still in
01:03:47
New Zealand or Australia and a great company I've always quite liked Tesla if
01:03:52
you look at emission oriented I've heard of that solving a real problem I know they've
01:03:59
got people love them or maybe people don't but you you couldn't argue that
01:04:03
people they didn't care I think Elon Musk is incredibly polarizing but I I think he's a genius myself and if I see
01:04:09
that he's appearing on a podcast I'll always listen to it and the the fact
01:04:13
that he's thinking on just a different plane to everyone else and and has thousands of other people solving those
01:04:19
same problems it's pretty cool but we should be a really big company by then
01:04:23
done well right that's brilliant well I I wouldn't put it past you like 10 years
01:04:27
ago in a garage and now you now we're sitting here in This Magnificent warehouse and also just seeing how
01:04:34
um how you live and how you drive yourself and how you apply yourself and your tunnel vision
01:04:40
um I think wherever you see yourself being in 10 years that's exactly where you will be yeah well it's a good
01:04:45
journey one thing I need to bring up with you you've become a Dad recently Congratulations by the way you've got a
01:04:51
son 12 months old yeah um Happy Meals are going to be part of your he's going to watch some ads on TV or
01:05:05
pre-roll on YouTube or whatever you're um you're gonna have to break and go to
01:05:09
McDonald's aren't you McDonald's going to become part of your we'll see about
01:05:13
it I was talking to your wife earlier she said um she's um she may introduce him
01:05:18
to Chocolate this weekend oh that's okay is that okay yeah no we um we'll do our best for him how are you
01:05:26
gonna how are you gonna get around the McDonald's like I'm sure it will happen
01:05:30
oh yeah we'll we'll see what we can do for give him some purpose and I hope
01:05:35
he's an athlete when he grows up yeah yeah he went to gymnastics for the first
01:05:39
time this week which was pretty cool at one I didn't know they did that but he
01:05:42
loved it I think quite basic stuff but he had a fantastic time yeah but um yeah how um
01:05:49
how are you gonna because you like to think every generation gets slightly better or tweaks or makes improvements
01:05:54
how are you going to raise them differently from how your dad raised you or how I was raised and yeah yeah I um
01:06:02
looks pretty hard raising a kid I'd I'd be doing pretty well I think if I if I matched that in hindsight but um
01:06:11
I think sport was great yeah um one thing I always got from sport that I was I was sorry to see a lot of
01:06:18
other people didn't have is the chance to really try hard at something and be a
01:06:22
part of a team and to learn how to practice for me was a big deal and I think it's sort of
01:06:28
Master yourself Mastery or the ability to to chase something you can never catch is is a big deal and I think I
01:06:36
hope he discovers that in something maybe sport maybe art I don't know yeah but sports are
01:06:43
pretty cool way of learning these things and has has it been um a fun thing for you because
01:06:50
seeing your your dad as a grandfather how is he different as a grandfather Harry was as a father
01:06:56
I think being grandfather's he's still getting used to that but um is this his
01:07:00
first grandkid no no or getting used to it with me I guess but uh no but he uh no Mum and Dad loved it it's good
01:07:09
they're um we live in Cambridge and they live in Russell so there's a bit of a
01:07:11
distance yeah it's been an amazing process it's pretty cool getting it having a small human yeah
01:07:19
yeah is it how's it changed you yeah well do you think it's changed you at
01:07:21
all uh even less sleep um it takes a while to realize that you've got zero free time
01:07:30
um and that you feel pretty guilty if you feel like you're wasting time but um
01:07:35
as you have been an amazing process it's kind of cool um I guess everyone says that but you
01:07:42
learn a lot about I've learned a lot about myself when you realize a little bit of introspection yeah but
01:07:49
it's uh you're one of the biggest learnings you think about yourself I was really I've focused on having him
01:07:56
as happy as possible because I I um for various reasons but it's impossible with babies though isn't
01:08:04
it they cry all the time yeah but I I know I just I I'd love him to have a good happy start to life yeah to
01:08:12
experience things and um we've met some wonderful people like daycare which I've
01:08:17
haven't been around since I was there myself those guys are amazing and you discover a part of a community
01:08:24
and not my own but in living in Cambridge now and it's just fantastic of people that devote so much care and
01:08:31
attention to other people's kids it's amazing to see and um as I said earlier I guess I focus
01:08:38
a little bit myopic and what I focus on it's lifted my horizons a little bit and
01:08:43
you see what's around you and appreciate why it's important and that's been pretty cool has there been a
01:08:49
something that you've just wanted to do or something that you've had to do in
01:08:53
terms of um your family no in terms of like um you're being being present and
01:08:58
engaged when you're with when you're with them your son rather than focusing
01:09:01
on Radix stuff I'm having to learn that but again it's a fun process yeah I'm
01:09:06
I'm not good at that and I'm learning yeah but uh that's good I think it'll
01:09:11
make you better better at running your business in some ways to give you a perspective it's a great teacher yeah
01:09:17
yeah that's awesome and you and your wife when you've been together since almost
01:09:23
as long as Radix she's been yeah she was she's German she's German she was uh
01:09:28
traveling in New Zealand you know work and travel and I met her in Russell and um
01:09:37
uh she was in New Zealand for a few months and then we had um a five-year long-distance relationship
01:09:45
so we'd see each other maybe twice a year and then that was a FaceTime course
01:09:51
morning and evening for like five years that sounds arduous but I'm guessing for
01:09:55
you you were like yes I can focus on building this business and have a relationship and he used to be on
01:10:02
FaceTime uh phone in the factory somewhere headphones at 11 o'clock at night I'd be
01:10:08
doing something and she'd be studying at home in Germany and would just be hanging out
01:10:12
but yeah I think it probably had to be that way looking back at it because I didn't have a lot of time but she's
01:10:17
incredibly understanding um although I pushed that right to the age almost continuously but um I I was
01:10:24
um chatting with her earlier she seemed she works here she seems as passionate about the business is what you are yeah
01:10:29
I think I'll balance that kind of okay yeah probably right on the edge was it
01:10:35
um would you say was it like love at first sight or was it a slow burn with each other she's kind of fantastic yeah
01:10:42
yeah so straight away yeah really comfortable around her happy yeah she's she's been great really
01:10:49
supportive um yeah that's been good and what about the proposal you guys got married uh like
01:10:57
only recently A couple of years ago like during covert I was pretty slow at that
01:11:00
oh yeah yeah so uh I had all of the hints everyone pushing but um I was busy but I I I was just not good at any of
01:11:15
that right right and you know what like but like like picking up on the social cues or being romantic or mum brought
01:11:22
down uh her mother's old engagement ring right I said I put it in your bedside
01:11:27
drawer you should probably hurry up and then was it just not a priority with you you're like we'll get there
01:11:33
eventually I've been busy and I thought hey you know we're just we'll get there
01:11:37
yeah um yeah no I I picked up what everyone was putting down and uh eventually figured that out and then um
01:11:45
I'm just not that I'm not massively inclined into a not a romantic no whatever probably not well how was The
01:11:54
Proposal what'd you do you get down on one knee I did yeah well if if you're
01:11:58
not good at it what else do you do right now um no I did that it did the whole lot
01:12:03
but um I couldn't have anyone there taking pictures and stuff like that that
01:12:07
would have been way too much pressure but um what do you mean in what way we're surrounded by uh cameras
01:12:14
no we uh it was we just quite just quite sort of private when it comes to that stuff I am yeah but it's the best way I
01:12:22
think but no it was good it meant a lot happy memory yeah well that's really
01:12:27
cool and what was the what was the wedding like um what was everyone eating were they eating um we were between two
01:12:32
lockdowns so uh we didn't know the wedding would go well and we we were up at in Russell
01:12:38
and um we had a fantastic wedding in New Zealand which was awesome and his family
01:12:43
didn't get to come over which was pretty tough for her because of travel restrictions and then um
01:12:49
or was it 11 o'clock at night it got announced that the next morning country
01:12:53
was going into lockdown and um yeah it's a difficult time we've got another wedding in Germany later in
01:12:59
the year for her family so it's it's been good but it's uh it's kind of cool growing up going
01:13:06
through those experiences but I wouldn't say I'm good at it but it's um
01:13:10
Annie's everyone's pretty strong at getting through that and uh it happens yeah that's cool
01:13:16
um were you imprisoned at the birth yeah it was yeah how was that it's a life-changing experience were you
01:13:23
emotional you cry I don't no I I it was emotional but it didn't grow it's pretty
01:13:27
cool yeah I it's an amazing process just completely eye-opening and I maybe as clueless as a
01:13:35
kid around things like that but it's um it's just an incredible process as you
01:13:39
go through that and uh yeah life's pretty cool when you when you see how it works and yeah that's
01:13:47
been an amazing experience but um no just hopefully hopefully it goes well we'll raise a super baby nutrition
01:13:54
shouldn't be an issue is he going to be swimming 1500 meters by the time he's
01:13:59
four it might happen I hope he enjoys it amazing hey um thank you so much for your time today
01:14:06
Mike rudling CEO and founder of Radix nutrition um I I even though you still describe
01:14:14
yourself as a startup I'd still describe you as a New Zealand success story I
01:14:17
think well we're really proud to be in New Zealand and it's um it's meant a lot
01:14:21
being here and it's a fantastic country and I I think that's um let's show everyone what we
01:14:29
can do yeah I mean it's exciting to be on this journey with you and it's
01:14:32
exciting to think where you will be in five or ten years from now I can't wait
01:14:35
to see it thank you thank you so much thanks thank you so much he said [ __ ] a couple of times he swore does that count
01:14:42
as a spirit [Music]