Crowie: Why I got involved with BREWYD, and why we're different
I was a late starter to the sport of triathlon. Like most kids, I’d always played and been involved with a range of sports. I had seen the Ironman in Hawaii on TV in the late 1980’s but it wasn’t until the age of 20-21 that I commenced my triathlon journey and started to take the sport more seriously.
I’ve had great success across my sporting career, supported by a range of coaches, mentors, sponsors and of course my beautiful family - without whom I couldn’t have achieved what I did.
When I think back across my 25 years of competition as a professional athlete, there’s a very big problem that needs addressing if we want our future champions to both remain and succeed in their chosen sport.
In Australia, the current model of funding our elite athletes is not perfect. It’s very difficult to come up with a system that is. Athletes often receive the majority of financial support from their National Governing Bodies on short cycles based around who can hopefully deliver medals at the upcoming major championships.
The nature of World Class athletic development is that funding, support, expertise and knowledge are all needed well before you’re in the frame for World Championship or Olympic team selection and competition.
Building Olympic and World Champions takes years upon years of dedicated work. Athletes need help long before they come close to major selections and they need that help to continue when they’ve had a bad result, get sick or injured too.
Also, as it stands now, government funding only focuses on those athletes in current competition. There’s no focus on what athletes need post their competitive careers.
Getting help with that transition to post competition life is pretty much left to the athlete to figure out for themselves. Some will succeed but others will struggle to work out how to apply the years of investment in their sport to the outside world.
It is hard to help everyone and stop young, up and coming athletes from slipping through the cracks, but there is a black hole of support and funding in the current system.
BREWYD offers a solution and it’s an exciting one.
In my nearly three decades of involvement in high level sport, it is the most innovative sports funding model that I have ever seen and it’s completely disrupting the way we look at the model here in Australia. The BREWYD model is a fresh, new way of connecting corporate Australia to our future champions.
BREWYD takes the science and methodologies of high performance in sport and applies them to organisations. They then take a portion of the revenue generated from these engagements of delivering tangible transformational change and business value, to create a support network of resources, services and expert coaching for up and coming athletes that joins the dots across their existing support structure, creating a safety net so that no athletes slip through.
What’s most exciting and something that is very unique, BREWYD creates a reciprocal mentoring relationship between athletes and corporate Australia to create inspiration for their workforce but also tangible networks and skills for the athlete to take into post competition life.
This means organisations aren’t just helping to create champion athletes, they’re creating champion people too.
High performance methodologies in sport are not just similar for business, they’re exactly the same.
Working with BREWYD Founder, Warren Anderson, we take the stories of high performance from athletes like myself and show businesses how relatable they are. Then most importantly, Warren and the team coach these organisations how to implement them, which he has been doing successfully for decades in some of the biggest organisations globally.
The BREWYD model is based on revenue generation for delivering organisational change, higher productivity and value - not asking organisations for another donation or athlete sponsorship.
We’re asking them to invest in turning their business and their people into high performers whilst at the same time changing the lives of our up and coming champions.
Leaders, by their nature, are community minded. They’ve chosen to be a part of and lead a group of likeminded people – to care about them. BREWYD gives those leaders a chance to invest in and transform their communities while addressing limitations in athlete funding and supporting another community.
So the black hole is really a big opportunity ready to be grabbed with both hands. And that's why I got involved with BREWYD.
If you'd like to be a part of the change, reach out to our Head of Growth Emma Hales at emma@brewyd.com to discuss our high performance programs or keynote opportunities.
