{"id":159154,"date":"2022-06-24T19:11:20","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T19:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=159154"},"modified":"2022-06-24T19:11:20","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T19:11:20","slug":"ash-dylan-dusty-mindset-coach-ben-crowe-explains-how-he-makes-our-best-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/ash-dylan-dusty-mindset-coach-ben-crowe-explains-how-he-makes-our-best-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Ash, Dylan, Dusty: Mindset coach Ben Crowe explains how he makes our best better"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Melissa Fyfe<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Ben Crowe: \u201cThere is a whole generation of 50-plus, alpha males who have woken up and they\u2019ve achieved but they are not fulfilled.\u201d Credit:<\/span>Paul Harris<\/cite><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an otherwise stunning day in Byron Bay, but things are far from perfect. And, frankly, I don\u2019t need Ben Crowe, Australia\u2019s most in- demand mindset coach, telling me what I should be thinking. I know, I know! Embrace imperfection<\/em>. Yesterday, after I was bumped off a flight and spent three grinding hours in an airport queue, Crowe texted to say the airport was a \u201cprimary location\u201d for his clients to practise \u201ctwo of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves\u201d. Can I do anything about it? If so, take action. If not, can I accept it? \u201cHaving said that, they do hate those 2 questions haha ,\u201d his text read.<\/p>\n

I lack the zen-like mindset of Crowe\u2019s most famous client, champion tennis player Ash Barty. But I accept this setback. This morning I accepted Uber cancelling my 4.30am booking, too. I also accepted being briefly bumped off my 6am flight (not graciously; I did cry).<\/p>\n

Finally, after I reach Byron, Crowe and I are riding old bikes to the beach when my voice recorder bounces from the back basket and hits concrete. I accept this, too. But I just can\u2019t accept that my interview questions \u2013 printed on three A4 sheets \u2013 have also escaped and are now floating somewhere around town like empty chip packets in the breeze.<\/p>\n

Madly, I set off, retracing our route on a wonky bike. Crowe, wearing shorts, mint-coloured thongs and a black T-shirt that reads \u201cEmbrace your weird\u201d, catches me on his bike. He helpfully ascertains the wind direction and is kind, empathetic and generous (as clients, friends and family universally describe him). Indeed, spending a day with Crowe, 53, reminds me of the 2019 Tom Hanks film A Beautiful Day in The Neighbourhood<\/em>, which was based on a real-life magazine profile of American children\u2019s TV host Fred Rogers, who disarmed a hard-bitten writer with his kindness. (On the beach later, Crowe says: \u201cLet\u2019s wander back and get you out of the sun, Mel, I\u2019m worried you\u2019re getting burnt\u201d.)<\/p>\n

In the original Esquire<\/em> profile, writer Tom Junod described Fred Rogers\u2019 \u201cunashamed insistence on intimacy\u201d. Within 30 minutes of meeting up with Crowe, fresh from his morning surf, he wants to know my \u201cnot-enoughness\u201d or \u201cshame\u201d stories. This is core Crowe philosophy: identifying and letting go of when we\u2019ve told ourselves we\u2019re not \u201cgood enough, or loved enough, or smart enough\u201d. I\u2019ve been doing his app-based mindset course called Mojo Crowe, so I\u2019m all for identifying my not-enoughness, but sharing it with an interviewee is confronting and mired in another big part of his method: vulnerability.<\/p>\n

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Crowe (right) with\u00a0Ash Barty\u2019s coach Craig Tyzzer and\u00a0Dylan\u00a0Alcott.Credit:<\/span>Courtesy of Ben Crowe<\/cite><\/p>\n

Ben Crowe is asking Australians to be more vulnerable, kind and connected. To love ourselves unconditionally, cut ourselves some slack, and unshackle from expectation and shame. He wants us to identify what\u2019s within our control and stop fighting what\u2019s outside it. Find purpose and serve others.<\/p>\n

As a happiness recipe, none of this is new. Crowe points out that the Stoic philosophers talked about control and acceptance 2000 years ago. But Crowe, who bowerbirds wisdom from all corners \u2013 including investor Warren Buffett, Buddhism, US academic Bren\u00e9 Brown, Dr Seuss and his grandmother \u2013 packages these messages in a way that\u2019s finding a growing audience with a deep thirst to listen. \u201cIf you believe in his message, it\u2019s really powerful,\u201d says Macquarie Bank executive Nick O\u2019Kane, a Crowe client. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit intoxicating and it frees you up from a lot of different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s success is partly due to his charisma, communication skills and willingness to be vulnerable himself (although this profile veers into territory he\u2019d prefer to avoid). But it\u2019s also about his ability to use sport to promote emotional intelligence through the hero-power of his athlete clients. These are, most notably, Barty \u2013 \u201cCrowey, you\u2019ve changed my life immensely\u201d she said after winning the 2019 Newcombe Medal \u2013 but also Trent Cotchin and Dustin Martin, the captain and star player respectively of AFL team Richmond, wheelchair tennis great Dylan Alcott and world champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore.<\/p>\n

This alchemy of sport and self-help makes his message more accessible, to men in particular, but it\u2019s also brought a deluge of demand: a mentoring wait list of more than 100 CEOs, senior executives, athletes and teams; 7500 people having taken his app-based mindset course ($240 subscription); offers of \u201cinsane\u201d book deals and speaking fees; and approaches from the majority of AFL clubs following his work with Richmond. Now he\u2019s working with the Brisbane Broncos and is on the verge of going global, with an English Premier League team and a US National Basketball Association club recently asking for his help. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to make sense of it all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But for the moment we\u2019re not focused on answers, we\u2019re still looking for questions. Riding alongside me, Crowe says: \u201cFrom a client perspective, Mel, I\u2019d be telling them to ask themselves two questions\u2009\u2026\u201d I know! I know! I\u2019ve listened to every podcast Crowe\u2019s done and seared into my brain is his oft-repeated line: \u201cFocusing on something you can\u2019t control but want to control is the definition of anxiety or stress or pressure or worry.\u201d Within a few minutes we find the pages, flat against a sports-ground fence. Huzzah! We return to the beach, where I take out my recorder.<\/p>\n

It is unresponsive.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think this whole interview is more about what it is teaching you than me?\u201d he asks. Perhaps, I say, panic rising. \u201cWell the good news is,\u201d he says, as we sink our toes into the Byron sand, \u201cI can help you with all that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

We\u2019d started the interview<\/strong> earlier, on the patio of Crowe\u2019s holiday rental, a slick two-storey close to the beach, with fresh white interiors and disturbing art pieces that are half-human, half-bunny. When he\u2019s home, which is infrequently, Crowe lives in Melbourne\u2019s south-eastern suburb of Glen Iris. But Byron is his \u201cspiritual getaway\u201d and he\u2019s rented the house for several weeks, in part to contemplate these new demands but also to recuperate from six months of emotionally heavy client work: mentoring Barty and Alcott through their retirement decisions and supporting Dustin Martin after his father\u2019s death in December. In a few days, his wife Sally Grace and their three sons Harry, 23, Sam, 21, and Ned, 19, will join him for the Byron Bay Bluesfest.<\/p>\n

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Concentrate on \u201cthe human being, less so on the human doing\u201d, says Crowe, who recommends writing a \u201cto-be list\u201d rather than a to-do list.Credit:<\/span>Paul Harris<\/cite><\/p>\n

At a table outside, where the bamboo hedge knocks in the wind, Crowe plays music on a portable speaker \u2013 Coldplay, Dusty Springfield, radio pop. I already know about key parts of his childhood from studiously watching a video on the Mojo app where he draws his life story (he encourages clients to do this to better understand themselves). In the clip, Crowe draws a long line of shortening stick figures and puts himself at the end: he\u2019s the youngest of six, with two brothers and three sisters (parents Daniel and Marianne Crowe were committed Catholics).<\/p>\n

Crowe was resourceful, quite cheeky and liked to cut corners. In musicals at Whitefriars College, his Catholic boys\u2019 school, the gun flautist would often play Crowe\u2019s solos for him, and Crowe would stand up and mime his flute, pretending it was him. For a primary school assignment about the moon, he copied a whole section from the out-of-date encyclopaedias in the family\u2019s Nunawading home in Melbourne\u2019s outer east. \u201cThe last line was something like: \u2018Who knows, one day man might even land on the moon,\u2019\u2006\u201d remembers middle sister Louise Crowe. \u201cWe used to enjoy teasing him when he got caught out with these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schoolmate Peter McCarthy says Whitefriars\u2019 blokey culture would have treated Crowe\u2019s current philosophies with some scepticism. But the seeds for his stellar career were evident, even back then. \u201cCrowey was very good at sport and music, he was very social and he ended up being school captain, so it was always natural that he\u2019d go into a leadership role.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the family was out and lost sight of their adored youngest child, Louise says they often found him talking to strangers. \u201cHe\u2019s got a great gift with people, Ben. You see it now, it\u2019s very innate.\u201d Louise remembers her parents struggling to pay the bills, mostly due to the heft of private Catholic school fees for six children, but overall it seems a sunshiny sort of childhood: annual trips to Jan Juc beach on the Bass Strait coast; loud and boisterous family meals; a larrikin dad who ran a small cleaning company.<\/p>\n

But one night in 1985, when Crowe was 16, everything changed. Woken by Marianne\u2019s screams, Crowe ran into his parents\u2019 room to find Daniel mid-heart attack. Crowe and brother Danny kept him alive for about 20 minutes, using the CPR they\u2019d learnt as young lifesavers. Eldest brother Patrick, by then a doctor, soon arrived, but it was too late. At 57, Marianne, who had never worked outside the home, took over Daniel\u2019s cleaning business. Not long after, Crowe remembers holding her in the Jan Juc car park for 10 minutes as she sobbed in his arms. \u201cOh my god, the pain and emotional release in that moment,\u201d he says, eyes welling. \u201cI cried in the back seat all the way home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you lose your dad, your greatest role model, so young, you think about what lessons you can learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

His father\u2019s death, says Crowe, was \u201ceasily the heaviest crucible moment in my life\u201d. He went \u201coff the rails\u201d in year 11, but it also sparked a philosophical curiosity in him about life\u2019s purpose. \u201cWhen you lose your dad, your greatest role model, so young, you think about what lessons you can learn. \u2018How do I move on from this adversity, and how do others move on and find purpose in the face of adversity and tragedy? And where do you find the joy?\u2019<\/p>\n

Looking back, I definitely found love and compassion through my mum, my brothers and sisters, and the idea of treating Dad like an angel and dedicating a part of my life [the helping-people part] to my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crowe studied philosophy, anthropology and literature as part of an arts degree at Monash University. In 1987, his first year at university, he met his future wife through university friends at a pub. Sally Grace, who grew up in nearby Mount Waverley and was studying occupational therapy, remembers Crowe\u2019s attire: green denim boat shoes, pink paisley pants and a Garfield<\/em> windcheater. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018He looks a bit of all right, but oh my god, look what he\u2019s wearing,\u2019\u2006\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n

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Crowe with his son Harry and wife Sally Grace. Credit:<\/span>Paul Harris<\/cite><\/p>\n

They got together later that year, both 19, and married in 1994, aged 25. This was despite \u2013 again rather cheekily \u2013 Crowe featuring in Cleo<\/em>\u2019s 50 Most Eligible Bachelors<\/em> list the same year (he had no public profile, but guesses he was picked because of an advertising relationship between his then employer Nike and Cleo<\/em>). The article depicts him as a wholesomely good-looking 25-year-old whose interview answers are less cringeworthy than those of the other blokes. Describing his biggest turn-offs, he says: \u201cRacism, sexism and getting your willy stuck in your fly after a cold surf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finishing university in 1989, Crowe was weighing further study in journalism or teaching when, in 1990, he landed his first full-time job at the Australian Hockey Association, in promotions. In that job, he secured Nike sponsorship for the men\u2019s hockey team and suggested publicity ideas to Nike for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The following year Nike offered him a marketing position, based in Melbourne. \u201cIt was more by luck than design that I started in sport,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think Nike was less interested in my knowledge of sport than my interest in storytelling.\u201d Either way, it was his dream job.<\/p>\n

At Nike, which Crowe calls a \u201cstory-telling platform\u201d rather than, say, a global sportswear manufacturer, his job was to enlist Australians as brand ambassadors. He signed the future Olympic gold medallist Cathy Freeman, long-distance runner Steve Moneghetti and AFL footballers Wayne Carey and Garry Lyon. He also signed, and became close to, the late Shane Warne. Crowe fondly recalls taking Grace to Shane and Simone Warne\u2019s house for dinner. The planned bolognese sauce was a disaster, so the two couples ate pancakes, drank strawberry Quik and played PlayStation for three hours. \u201cIt was the most delightful evening,\u201d Crowe laughs.<\/p>\n

His rise at Nike was meteoric. On his first overseas trip, in 1994, Crowe found himself at dinner after the Miami Open with Nike co-founder Phil Knight, along with Andre Agassi, his then-wife Brooke Shields and Pete Sampras, among others: \u201cI was shitting myself, you know?\u201d Knight, who is worth about $US45 billion ($65 billion), offered Crowe a lift on his private jet to Nike\u2019s headquarters in Oregon. The young Australian so charmed Knight on the plane that Knight ended up carrying one of Crowe\u2019s bags into head office, much to the astonishment of the company\u2019s long-termers. \u201cSomehow I ended up having quite a close relationship with him,\u201d says Crowe, who became Nike\u2019s then youngest director in the Asia-Pacific, based in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

At Nike, Crowe started thinking about how to help athletes live better lives. \u201cI\u2019d seen so many athletes go off the rails with really bad advice and not getting perspective on what\u2019s important in life,\u201d he says. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Nike transferred its Asia-Pacific executives to American soil. But Grace was pregnant with their first child and Crowe didn\u2019t want to take the family further from Australia. He reluctantly left Nike and spent two years as marketing manager of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, before the family returned home to Australia in 2001.<\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s message is that we\u2019ve lost the art of living. We\u2019re too hard on ourselves. We\u2019re too busy pursuing perfection, trying to meet other people\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n

Back in Byron, Crowe is locking up the house and talking about the Bluesfest line-up. He mentions Missy Higgins and casually drops in that he might do a catch-up session with her while he\u2019s here. I wonder to myself if there\u2019s any high-achiever in Australia this guy isn\u2019t mentoring.<\/p>\n

I first met Crowe<\/strong> before Byron, on a morning in late March. Delivering a keynote speech to leaders of health insurer Bupa at the Novotel in Melbourne\u2019s CBD, he\u2019d arrived early and started chatting to some female Bupa employees. He was fully engaged: direct eye contact, listening intently, telling jokes. There\u2019s nothing peacocky or stiff about Crowe; he\u2019s at ease in his own body, with himself.<\/p>\n

On stage, he captivates. No one fidgets. Crowe\u2019s message, essentially, is that we\u2019ve lost the art of living. We\u2019re too hard on ourselves. We\u2019re too busy pursuing perfection, trying to meet other people\u2019s expectations, or chasing extrinsic goals such as money, status or celebrity. We keep a mask on, hide our emotions and fear vulnerability and shame, which disconnects us from the people around us. In trying to numb these bad feelings \u2013 through alcohol or Netflix or consumerism \u2013 we numb joy as well as pain. So \u2013 and here, he borrows heavily from Bren\u00e9 Brown \u2013 we\u2019ve become \u201cthe most addicted, medicated, in-debt, obese adult cohort in the history of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s solutions involve focusing on \u201cthe human being, less so on the human doing\u201d. To concentrate on your \u201cto-be list\u201d rather than your \u201cto-do list\u201d. He reminds clients of the brain\u2019s negativity bias: \u201cit\u2019s got Velcro for negative, Teflon for positive\u201d. He encourages reframing thoughts with gratitude: instead of thinking: \u201cI\u2019ve got to pick up the kids from school\u201d, say \u201cI get to pick up the kids from school\u201d. It\u2019s your decisions, he says, \u201cnot the frickin\u2019 conditions\u201d that determine your mindset. Put another way: \u201cYou can\u2019t control the waves but you can learn to surf.\u201d (He\u2019s a walking bumper sticker at times.)<\/p>\n

He gets clients to answer basic questions like \u201cWho am I?\u201c, \u201cWhat do I want?\u201d and \u201cWhat kind of human do I want to be?\u201d A loving soulmate, grateful son or mischievous mate? He asks them to tap into their earliest happiest memory, to work out what lights them up, to identify the \u201cnot enoughness\u201d stories and to turn them around to self-acceptance and unconditional self-love.<\/p>\n

Part of this involves coming up with \u201ccourage mantras\u201d that you say every day, or when you need to do something hard. (Cathy Freeman\u2019s was \u201cDo what I know\u201d; before the Bupa event, Crowe\u2019s is: \u201cI\u2019m imperfect but I\u2019m worthy and I\u2019ve got something to say.\u201c) You need, he says, to take control of your own story, because otherwise \u201cthe three biggest storytellers on the planet\u201d \u2013 the news media (\u201cpredicated on negativity\u201d), the advertising industry (\u201cpredicated on shame\u201d), and social media (\u201cpredicated on social comparison and perfectionism\u201d) will do it for you.<\/p>\n

He also talks about a \u201cconnection mindset\u201d, that we\u2019re neuro-biologically hard-wired to connect \u2013 with other humans, animals and the environment \u2013 and that\u2019s why we\u2019re here. He teaches clients to be interested, not interesting, to ditch \u201cvertical relationships\u201d where you put yourself above or below another person, and to find a sense of purpose, to dedicate your life to something or someone. \u201cTo make their day, to serve them, to love them,\u201d he says, \u201cunlocks this extraordinary sense of contribution and meaning and fulfilment.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Novotel, Crowe asked the Bupa leaders to take their pens and paper and write down three words in big bold caps: \u201cI AM ENOUGH\u201d. Dutifully, rows of seated executives bent their lanyarded necks and wrote these words. As did I. It was uncomfortable<\/em>. Afterwards, over coffee, Crowe looked exhausted. It\u2019s been a big six months.<\/p>\n

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Crowe with surfer Stephanie Gilmore, one of his first mentoring clients.Credit:<\/span>Courtesy of Ben Crowe<\/cite><\/p>\n

To understand Crowe\u2019s success<\/strong> we must rewind to 2016. Crowe, a lifelong Richmond supporter, saw that the team\u2019s president, American-born lawyer Peggy O\u2019Neal, was being undermined \u2013 and, he believed, bullied \u2013 by a blokey AFL culture uneasy with the league\u2019s first female in that role. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Who\u2019s this woman? Who\u2019s this American woman?\u2019\u2006\u201d says Crowe, a rare anger in his eyes. He could see that O\u2019Neal needed a mentor who knew the AFL\u2019s \u201cCity Hall\u201d. (The uber-connected Crowe knows the \u201cCity Halls\u201d of most Australian sports, especially, he says, cricket and tennis, in addition to AFL).<\/p>\n

He had breakfast with O\u2019Neal and immediately decided to help her for free. Prior to this, he\u2019d had two big-name mentoring clients: his friend and Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson and multiple world-champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore.<\/p>\n

Richmond was going through dark days in 2016: a small, angry and wealthy supporter group was trying to overthrow the board and coach Damien Hardwick\u2019s job was on the line. The team finished 13th. Amid this, O\u2019Neal and CEO Brendan Gale suggested Hardwick contact Crowe for mentoring. Hardwick then recommended that captain Trent Cotchin, also at a low point, do the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe changed my life,\u201d Cotchin tells me. \u201cTo some degree, he almost saved it. I didn\u2019t know whether I wanted to play footy any more.\u201d He embraced Crowe\u2019s message of vulnerability and told the players he struggled with life too, that he wasn\u2019t perfect, that he wanted to lead in a different way. This, Cotchin says, encouraged team connection and, as Crowe likes to point out, connection is impossible for an opponent to attack \u201cbecause they can\u2019t see it\u201d.<\/p>\n

After a 37-year drought, Richmond went on to win three premierships: 2017, 2019 and 2020. How much influence did Crowe\u2019s work have on this outcome? Amid so many other success variables \u2013 player-list depth, strategy, once-in-a-generation stars like Dustin Martin, the strength of the competition \u2013 it\u2019s impossible to know. But when I ask Cotchin whether he could quantify Crowe\u2019s influence, he says: \u201cJust being a fulfilled person in life helps you be happy. And if you\u2019re happy, you can execute as well as you possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From left, Crowe with some of those he has mentored: Richmond players Dustin Martin and Trent Cotchin, Ash Barty, and Richmond coach Damien Hardwick.Credit:<\/span>Courtesy of Ben Crowe<\/cite><\/p>\n

It was via Richmond that Crowe connected with Ash Barty, a Tigers fan herself. She knew Cotchin and asked him about Crowe. Separately, her coach Craig Tyzzer and manager Nikki Mathias also approached him. At Wimbledon in 2018, Barty was playing Russian Daria Kasatkina when she became distracted and crashed out of the third-round match with 24 unforced errors. Says Crowe: \u201cShe got quite upset and said, \u2018This is not who I am.\u2019\u2006\u201d She flew straight to Melbourne and spent \u201ca few emotional days\u201d with him. The pair continued with regular sessions, often attended by Crowe\u2019s spanador Molly; Barty loves dogs.<\/p>\n

In 2019 Barty took her first grand slam singles title, the French Open, and was soon world number one. Winning the Newcombe Medal that year, she said, \u201cI can\u2019t thank you enough for helping me become the woman I am today, for helping me realise the person I want to be off the court. You changed not only my life \u2013 my mum and dad, my sisters Ali and Sarah\u2009\u2026\u2009I\u2019m very lucky to have found you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Father Rob Barty has said the difference Crowe made to his daughter\u2019s life and tennis was \u201cjust incredible\u201d. (Crowe also took on Dylan Alcott. The champion tennis player and 2022 Australian of the Year says that while he\u2019d considered himself totally comfortable with his disability, Crowe helped him identify that he didn\u2019t have to win everything to be worthy. \u201cOnce I let go of winning everything, you know what happened? I won everything. It sounds a bit woo-woo but it\u2019s real\u201d.)<\/p>\n

Crowe started talking to Barty about trying to find motivation after she\u2019d achieved her dream, last July, of winning Wimbledon. Part of him is \u201cgenuinely sad\u201d about her retirement: he\u2019d love to keep watching her play tennis. But she was clearly no longer motivated by extrinsic factors such as more money, titles and fame. Whatever she does next will primarily be about intrinsic motivations, her dreams from within, says Crowe, as we edge around roadworks on our way to lunch in Byron. (\u201cI reckon we stay off the tar. That would be just your luck, Mel, your shoes will get stuck and you\u2019ll have to go to lunch barefoot\u201d.)<\/p>\n

Extrinsic goals aren\u2019t inherently bad, Crowe points out: we need money to live on and it\u2019s good to be recognised for our efforts. But when extrinsic motivations dominate, \u201cwe might achieve, but we won\u2019t feel fulfilled\u201d. This part of Crowe\u2019s work is fascinating when applied to elite athletes. I imagine an old-school, winner-takes-all coach \u2013 beetroot-faced and setting alight one of Crowe\u2019s life plans \u2013 shouting: \u201cI don\u2019t care whether your motivations are extrinsic or intrinsic, just bloody win and keep winning!<\/em>\u201d After all, elite sport \u2013 and most other fields of high achievement \u2013 have always been fuelled by people trying to avoid the shame of failure, secure parental approval or heal childhood scars.<\/p>\n

But Crowe says you can succeed at elite level and be a more balanced human. \u201cIf you assess my work based on the extrinsic level, then I like to think my clients have been successful performers. But that\u2019s not how I see success in my work. It can\u2019t be measured today. I am passionate about how my clients turn out five, 10, 15, 20 years from now: what kind of husband or wife, brother or sister will they be? If I can inspire them to be good human beings first and great athletes second, then I\u2019m not going to apologise for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Crowe with Cathy Freeman, Ash Barty and\u00a0Evonne Goolagong Cawley.Credit:<\/span>Courtesy of Ben Crowe<\/cite><\/p>\n\n

The Ben Crowe life story<\/strong>, as told by Ben Crowe, often jumps from his dream job at Nike to working with Richmond and Barty. But mindset coaching came relatively late in his career. \u201cIt\u2019s taken me 53 years,\u201d he jokes, \u201cto work out what I want to do when I grow up.\u201d Before finding his groove, he spent 15 years running several sports marketing businesses, and it\u2019s this part of his life, I discover, that he\u2019s a little uncomfortable talking about.<\/p>\n

Over lunch, for example, I bring up James Hird, the Essendon coach who became embroiled in the club\u2019s supplements scandal. Hird was an equity partner in Gemba, the sports and entertainment marketing company Crowe co-founded in 2002. They had big clients \u2013 Tennis Australia, Toyota, Reebok \u2013 and big plans; they wanted to create a tennis World Cup. But, in 2010, Hird took the coaching job at Essendon. \u201cIt was amicable but emotional,\u201d is all Crowe will say reluctantly about the split with Hird.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Unscriptd, a company Crowe co-founded in 2011 with fellow former Nike executive Brent Scrimshaw and a friend called Todd Deacon. It developed technology that enabled athletes, via an app, to access previously inaccessible content \u2013 such as photos and video highlights of themselves \u2013 to help create their own personal stories to distribute to their social media audiences. Unscriptd then charged sporting bodies, broadcasters and brands subscriptions to access the athletes\u2019 audiences. A few of these athlete storytelling platforms sprang up in quick succession, notably The Players\u2019 Tribune<\/em>, founded in 2014 by US baseball player Derek Jeter. They aimed to disrupt traditional sports media by directly connecting athletes to fans and sponsors.<\/p>\n

Unscriptd seemed to go well, at first. It raised $10.5 million in private investment from big names: Andre Agassi, who Crowe knew from Nike ($1.8 million), his wife Steffi Graf ($663,000), Stephanie Gilmore ($274,000), Cathy Freeman and her husband James Murch ($419,000) and former Brisbane Lions great Jonathan Brown ($276,000). The biggest shareholder, with a $4 million investment, was Unscriptd\u2019s chairman and former IOOF chief executive, Ron Dewhurst. The company signed a deal with nine AFL clubs and briefly flirted with floating on the Australian stock exchange.<\/p>\n

But in 2017, amid a crackdown on the misuse of R&D tax incentives in the software industry, the Australian Taxation Office deemed such an incentive paid to Unscriptd, worth $610,000, \u201cinvalid\u201d and asked for it to be repaid. The company appealed the decision. The following year, in November 2018, Unscriptd sold its business assets to The Players\u2019 Tribune<\/em> for stock in the company. But when Tribune was later sold for a bargain price to another outfit, Unscriptd\u2019s investors were left holding worthless Tribune<\/em> shares. The liquidator appointed to voluntarily wind up Unscriptd in 2020 found the company had an unpaid ATO debt of about $610,000.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Crowe has come to mentoring late in life: \u201cIt\u2019s taken me 53 years, to work out what I want to do when I grow up.\u201d Credit:<\/span>Paul Harris<\/cite><\/p>\n

The outstanding debt and the investment losses of some high-profile names hasn\u2019t been reported before; it\u2019s buried in Australian Securities and Investments Commission documents and the liquidator\u2019s report of an obscure company called ACN 153 220 225, which, it turns out, was Unscriptd rebranded. So when, one evening on the phone, I ask Crowe about it, he is unprepared. \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about it, to be frank,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still on good terms with the investors who\u2019d lost money that he personally knew \u2013 Agassi and Graf, for instance. He still mentors Gilmore, and Freeman is a \u201cvery, very dear friend\u201d (Freeman and her husband Murch decline to comment). And he doesn\u2019t see how this is relevant to his current work. He\u2019ll come back to me, he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tricky and confusing moment because, of course, he\u2019s the one telling us to own our imperfect bits, warts and all. An hour later, at 8pm, he texts, apologising. I\u2019d caught him off-guard and exhausted. \u201cYou\u2019re right\u2009\u2026\u2009I will speak about that chapter.\u201d A week later we talk again, but \u2013 having been reminded by Ron Dewhurst of a non-disclosure agreement \u2013 he makes only this on-the-record comment: \u201cI can say hand-on-heart that I was excited by the opportunity for Unscriptd\u2019s technology and excited by the sale to The Players\u2019 Tribune<\/em>. But obviously disappointed with the end result of the investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crowe doesn\u2019t<\/strong> limit himself to mentoring in sport. He has, for example, collected a number of high-level banking clients ripe for some soul-searching in the wake of the banking royal commission. \u201cThere is a whole generation of 50-plus, alpha males who have woken up and they\u2019ve achieved but they are not fulfilled,\u201d Crowe says of this cohort. \u201cThey\u2019ve been extrinsically motivated \u2013 money, fame, status, and made an enormous amount of money \u2013 but [now] their kids are all adults and out of home and they are thinking, \u2018Shit, what\u2019s happened to the last two decades?\u2019\u2006\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s certainly not where Nick O\u2019Kane, 49, Macquarie Bank\u2019s group head of commodities and global markets, would like to end up. The top banker \u2013 who earned a tidy $36 million in the past 12 months \u2013 started working with Crowe in August 2020 after seeing him at a Macquarie conference. O\u2019Kane thought the vulnerability stuff \u201cself-evident\u201d but he did learn to accept the uncontrollables, embrace authenticity and understand his core values. \u201cWe focused on the individual first rather than the job, which is different to how some other corporate coaches might approach things,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing to be a little careful of is that he\u2019s carving out a new niche. He\u2019s not a psychologist or someone that\u2019s a skilled health professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another client of Crowe\u2019s is top plastic surgeon David Chong, 52, who is based at Melbourne\u2019s Royal Children\u2019s Hospital. Chong waited almost a year to talk to Crowe about a professional dilemma. He was becoming less fulfilled in his private work in adult aesthetic plastic surgery \u2013 noses, faces, eyelids \u2013 and wanted to focus on fixing facial differences and cleft lips and palates in places like Morocco, Senegal and Madagascar.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter talking to Ben, I realised [the overseas work] is what I enjoy and maybe it\u2019s why God put me on this green earth. Part of me thought that I should be trying to earn more money and status and just do more aesthetic surgery because that\u2019s what\u2019s defined as success.\u201d Crowe also helped Chong get over his FOPO (Fear of Other People\u2019s Opinions). \u201cWorrying what people thought of me made me a really good surgeon. But I can still be a really good surgeon and not let that be my driving force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chong says Crowe\u2019s talent is in recognising people\u2019s behavioural patterns. \u201cThe only thing to be a little careful of is that he\u2019s carving out a new niche. He\u2019s not a psychologist or someone that\u2019s a skilled health professional\u2009\u2026\u2009he comes from the school of practical human experience, coupled with an innate gift to understand people.\u201d (Crowe acknowledges this: \u201cI\u2019m not trained in mental health in a medical sense. I work in emotional health in a personal leadership sense.\u201d )<\/p>\n

In 2019, another Crowe client, comedian and producer Ryan Shelton, created The Imperfects<\/em> podcast with two mates, in which successful people share their imperfections. Their episode with Crowe \u2013 their high priest of vulnerability \u2013 was one of the podcast\u2019s most popular episodes, and Shelton noticed his male mates sharing it on their WhatsApp groups. These were footy-loving, beer-drinking men Shelton thought would never listen to his show. \u201cMessages about spirituality or self-help have often had a bit of stigma attached, especially for men,\u201d he says. \u201cBut Ben makes it very accessible and reframes what being manly is and makes it okay\u2009…\u2009For men, it\u2019s just literally life-changing. And, often, I\u2019d say, life-saving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Ben Crowe<\/strong> came to Byron Bay to slow down, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be happening. \u201cI\u2019m in such a hurry to get these principles out,\u201d he says over lunch at the Balcony Bar & Oyster Co. He wants schools to be \u201cless obsessed with external expectations and more focused on the intrinsic joy of learning\u201d. He wants to reach more men, to encourage them to have more self-compassion, to stop comparing themselves to other men. And \u2013 stressing this is outside his expertise \u2013 he wonders if these emotional health messages could impact levels of domestic violence and male suicide, issues he thinks about constantly. \u201cThe number one fear for men is not being strong, looking weak. The number one fear for women is body image. I believe men may need this more than women.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s freaked out about \u201cwhere the world\u2019s at\u201d. He\u2019s freaked out about the demands on him and distracted by the future and what he needs to do for his clients. \u201cI\u2019m really struggling with being present,\u201d he admits. The mindset coach, it seems, needs a mindset coach. And that\u2019s fine because even Ben Crowe is human \u2013 just like the rest of us.<\/p>\n

To read more from<\/b> Good Weekend <\/i><\/b>magazine, visit our page at<\/b> The Sydney Morning Herald<\/i><\/b>,<\/b> The Age<\/i><\/b> and<\/b> Brisbane Times<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n

Most Viewed in National<\/h2>\n

Source: Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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