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KARL GOODMAN

FOUNDER ATHLETES AUTHORITY

BUSINESS STRATEGIST

MARKETER

NEWSLETTER PUBLISHER

  • Founder of Athletes Authority
  • Marketing Maverick
  • Business Strategist
  • Newsletter Publisher

“This is Sparta” But For Business

Got an interesting story that I think you’ll like:

This morning at our AA media meeting, I mentioned something off the cuff to the boys:

“We’ve got to be more like Sparta, and less like Persia.”

No one had any idea what I meant.

So I pressed harder:

“You know, Gerard Butler in 300.”

I got nothing back… just blank faces waiting for the punchline.

Tough crowd, right?

Now, I’m not sure if this is saying more about me or them, but, the point I was trying to make was this:

What I love most about the movie “300” is what those few hundred men were able to achieve.

Every single man in that army fought so much harder, and contributed so much more, because they knew there were only 299 others. Each man had to go over and above what was expected of them simply because they had no other choice.

Compare that to the Persian Empire, who outnumbered them 20:1.

Compared to the 300 spartans armed with only a shield, spear and a loincloth to cover their gigantic nuts (figuratively, at least), the Persian Empire had many more luxuries.

First of all, there was of course the imbalance in sheer numbers, a handy advantage when it comes to warfare.

Then there were the war elephants, the ‘Immortals’, the battalions of archers, and all the other sorts of crazy war stuff that should have made killing 300 men a breeze.

Yet, and despite these advantages, the Persian empire suffered ridiculous amounts of casualties.

I won’t ruin the ending of the movie, except to say this:

The more time I spend owning a business, the more I realise that “more” is definitely not “better.”

Especially when it comes to staff.

Because more staff equals:

– more lines of communications
– more chances for shit to get wrong
– more HR headaches
– more compliance
– more personalities
– more individual sets of ambition to manage
– more places to hide
– more sick days
– more annual leave

Pretty much more of everything…

Except, one thing, which you get less of.

Which, unfortunately, is perhaps the most important part of all:

Relative output per employee.

As an organisation grows in size, each staff member becomes less and less productive.

This is known as Price’s Law — it states that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the number of employees.

For the non math’s types out there (myself included), here is a basic breakdown of how this plays out:

If you have:

2 employees, the square root is 1.5.

So essentially, both of them are working pretty hard, albeit one more than the other.

But let’s ten times that amount to 20 employees, and you’ll start to see the difference.

The square root becomes 4.

So now, 4 employees are doing as much work as the other 16 do.

When you take that to 50 employees, 7 employees are doing the work of the remaining 43.

Holy shit.

Talk about inefficiency.

And trust me, I’ve seen this show up at AA.

The bigger the team gets, the less efficient we become, and I mean that with no disrespect.

When we were 8, we needed nothing else but knowing that we all had each other’s back. We did whatever work needed to be done, under whatever conditions came our way. We live and died for the brand, and the honour we had while serving it.

Which is why, as I start build the Athletes Authority ecosystem synergistically (media agency, the education arm, the sports agency etc), I am taking a completely different approach to growth.

Any addition to the team is decided with utmost caution and trepidation.

Because what is clear to me now –that wasn’t a year ago — is that there is no such thing as too ‘Spartan’ when it comes to business.


– Karl Goodman

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Lachlan Wilmot

DIRECTOR OF COACHING & PERFORMANCE

Qualifications:

  • Bachelors of Exercise and Sport Science
  • Honors in Rate of Force Development in Team Sport Athletes

Lachlan began his professional sports coaching career as the second ever employee at the GWS Giants in 2010-11 season prior to entering the AFL in 2012. Over 7 seasons, Lachlan grew a team of talented young men into back-to-back preliminary finals contenders. As the head of strength and power, his role was to turn teenagers into physically dominant men, developing their strength, power, speed and most importantly, their resistance to injury.

In 2018, Lachlan’s success afforded him the opportunity to shift codes, having been offered the role of High Performance Manager for the NRL’s Parramatta Eels.

In as little as one rebuild season, he had taken the wooden spooners of 2018 to the finals in 2019, where they inflicted the greatest defeat of the Brisbane Broncos in NRL history. By 2019, it was time for Lachlan to go ‘all-in’ on his other baby, Athletes Authority.

Now, Lachlan leads the performance program, designing the programs for all the athletes here. He works closely with the sports medicine team, just like he did in pro sport, to help athletes achieve more and reach new heights with their athletic careers.

Karl Goodman

FOUNDER & DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Karl began his career in coaching as a Personal Trainer back in 2007. After competing for NSW as a Baseballer, and then competing at an elite standard as a cyclist throughout university,  Karl received the opportunity to work with Gordon Rugby in the Shute Shield competition. From there, he found a way to marry his passion in sports and competition with coaching; selling his investment property to start Athletes Authority in early 2016.

Starting from humble beginnings, the facility vision was taken to another level when Lachlan and Karl partnered up in 2017 and Athletes Authority was incorporated. It was no longer just a gym training athletes; Athletes Authority was committed to becoming a brand athletes worldwide could rely on for quality coaching, advice and service.