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- 36 | Tyler Martin – Olympian, Founder of Yes You Can Drinks
36 | Tyler Martin – Olympian, Founder of Yes You Can Drinks
Hey, a quick note before we start the Q&A…
I just started a podcast!
This Q&A (along with my future ones) will now give you the highlights of the podcast, which you can check out below if you want the full experience.
Listen to “ex-vicarious by Braith” wherever you get your podcasts: https://linktr.ee/ex.vicarious
Now back to the Q&A, with the legendary Tyler Martin
Australia just made history at the Olympics, so naturally I had to interview an Olympian.
He also happens to be a 3-time founder, early-stage investor and mentor at Blackbird.
“You gotta be taking the piss”…
I’m not, but Tyler Martin is.
More specifically, he’s taking the piss out of drinking with Yes You Can Drinks, a non-alcoholic beverage taking over Sydney.
(I had the Yuzu Sake flavour next to me during our chat – can confirm it was delicious).
Add on being a young father of two, Tyler is a master at balancing his time.
Now, from:
4:20 am wakeups at 11 years old,
winning the water polo National Championships in France
defeating the US basketball team at table tennis at the Rio Olympics village
This podcast is a MUST listen.
But if you’re short on time, tap on the Q&A first (est. 4 min read).
The full experience is here when you’re ready
Q&A
I saw that your first job was a sales role at Finis Inc. How did that come about?
“I was playing overseas in Italy in my first professional water polo experience. And when I say professional, I was earning 200 euros a month, which was about 300 Aussie bucks at the time. So $75 AUD a week. I went over there when I was 19. I wanted to play in the professional league and basically test myself against the best players in the world. So I was happy to go for basically free – I got meals and accommodation and flights. So I was surviving. And then I just happened to meet an American guy in, in a bar or a cafe where my local team was.
And we started talking because we were both English speakers and it turned out he ran a swimwear company called Finis and it was quite a big company. In fact, a couple of the Olympic gold medalists are wearing that costume right now in Paris.
So when I got back to Australia a few months later, I emailed him and sort of said, “Hey, I can do some work for you here?”, and effectively talked myself into a bit of a sales role. I was on commission there and it was fine, but I think Australia wasn’t really in their growth trajectory.
So after about a year or so, I said, “Hey, there’s an opportunity here.” This business that I’ve been doing a little bit of work for isn’t really focusing on the opportunity here in Australia and that’s fine. They had other business prerogatives and KPIs. But I thought there was an opportunity. So that’s when I basically circumvented the American business and went straight to some supply sources and started Delfina.”
The moment you reached the Olympics – what was most fulfilling about it?
“One of the things I remember most or one of the most impactful was lining up for the first game in Brazil. There were 5000 people in the crowd or more, and I couldn’t hear anything. And then I remember diving into the pool and going underwater and hearing absolute silence. And then popping my head up again and I couldn’t even hear a teammate one metre away. It was just so noisy. The atmosphere was amazing.
Another thing that I remember was that you’d walk past people in the village, you’d walk past Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, some of the basketballers, and it was quite equalising in many ways. It was like everyone who was there, whether you were in the most professional or popular sport, highly paid or otherwise, had a mutual respect for the work and time and effort and energy and dedication that it took to actually get to that level. So that was a really cool experience.”
And if you could tell your younger self who had the dream of making the Olympics in the first place – would you tell them about that experience, and the path it took to actually get there?
“Looking back, I’d probably say two things. One would be “find the joy in the journey and the setbacks and the hurdles and the physical, emotional stress. Don’t just compartmentalise. We got to the final nth degree whereby you’re not actually enjoying that moment. The Olympics is two weeks long – it’s over like that. But you train for 20 years to do it. Many people who build businesses don’t build a business to sell in 20 years. You need to enjoy the day to day and the journey.
And the other thing I’d say is when you’re actually at the Olympics, stop and smell the roses. We got so in the zone, we were hyper-focused, and then it was over in a blink of an eye. I think I would’ve taken more photos with famous athletes, I would have traded more kit, I would have watched more other events. I would have really tried to embrace it and really be mindful and present at the Olympics, because you can definitely get caught in a bubble of taking it too seriously.
And sometimes that can actually work against you.”
As a mentor, what sort of advice do you give people when they’re earlier on in their careers and they are worried about all the different theories they may need to learn or all the different ways that business works, before starting?
“Here’s a small example with my current business. Okay, what did we do? We sampled drinks at a university event. Did it work? Well, X amount of people liked it. Y amount of people said they’d buy it. Z amount of people said that they’d never try it again. Okay, then we can then find out, did it work? Is it worth doing again?
And then that’s like a simple 30 second mental analysis basically on that feedback loop. But I think if I had studied and analysed, “is this going to work?”, then by the time I actually make a decision, the opportunity is gone.
And this is for low cost things. Like I’m not saying go out there and spend 10 million bucks trying to figure out something without doing some due diligence or some market research. But I think for young people doing reasonably low cost activities, the best place to start is to actually get into the real world and sell something effectively or build something.”
If you could capture the attention of every single person for thirty seconds, what would you say?
“I’m not professing to be the best in the world at this, that’s for sure. But if we can just be a little bit kinder or smile at people. Let’s go back to having basic human interactions. I was getting a coffee this morning and I saw everyone, myself included, on our phones just scrolling.
After you pop your head up and you say, “Hey, how ya going?”, or you just nod at someone, it actually makes a difference. At an emotional, but also a biochemical or at a physical level, there’s endorphins and chemicals that work in a way that gives you a positive lift.
So I would say that if we can just be a bit more present and a little bit kinder or pleasant to people on a micro level, that would go a long way.”
Thanks for reading my Q&A with Tyler Martin.
You can connect with Tyler here:
You can check out Yes You Can here:
But if you want to experience the full podcast with Tyler, listen here:
And as always,
Keep dreamaking.