2023: Fear, Fun, Risk, Go For It!

In late 2022 and early 2023 the wheels were really spinning for me. I didn’t feel like I was making progress with what I was doing in daveynutrition. It wasn’t that the business wasn’t doing reasonably well for where it was, but more I felt a bit flat and I was unsure about the direction I wanted to go personally and how I wanted to spend my time. I was missing the day to day interaction of working in elite sport and felt all I was doing was just work and more work. The last thing I wanted to do was just create content for online platforms and be considered an ‘influencer’! 

That’s Impossible? Or is it?

I decided to take a different approach. To give myself and the team headspace we decided that 2023 would be the year to have a go, just go for it! Try exciting ‘stuff’ and see what would happen rather than just keep pushing hard and working day to day. We decided to run events that excited and energised us. Run programs that we felt were based truly on what we believe in and webinars that covered topics that we really enjoy talking about. Rather than a constant focus on what would make money and was very nutrition specific, we looked at how we spent our time and what we enjoyed that could also potentially make money. 

Something happened. We found an energy, belief and clarity that we didn’t have before. Did everything work? No. Many events were a struggle to sell and didn’t even cover costs but we had such fun and incredible learning from everything we did. 

Here is a summary of what we did:

Find Your Next Level in Tapped, Dublin City Centre: To a small intimate crowd, we introduced the concept of better understanding your vision, identity, the power of self-talk and how to truly reflect on your life and habits. It was honestly one of the hardest talks I have ever delivered. I struggled to deliver certain elements and felt I was getting nowhere! At the end, the feeling was simply relief it was over. I was having a drink at the end of the evening with the team when a man approached me and introduced himself as Barry.  He took a moment then said, “You are onto something here with this holistic approach” and gave me his card to call him about potentially working together. I did. 6 months later I am still working with his company delivering a corporate programme like nothing I have done before.  

Corporate Performance: We worked with a number of businesses to enhance employees’ understanding of the power of nutrition, movement and stress management techniques for better ‘everyday performance’ in work, home life and hobbies. This wasn’t just the usual go in and do a talk and away you go! We had to first build a much deeper understanding of the working dynamics of the environment, what the base level of nutrition and health understanding was and build a support model. We created 2 challenges lasting 6 weeks, with 3 weeks between each challenge. We split the group into small teams and created a simple format where each team competed against each other on the key pillars of health. What happened? Not only did people’s habits, energy and wellness improve, but they learned so much about each other from spending time together on things other than work. There is a greater connection and staff morale and people are talking a different language about their health. Performance is a mindset, and it’s for everyone.

Live Like An Athlete – Portugal In May: Giving people the chance to experience a holistic approach to training, nutrition, connection and mindset. It was described as one of the best weeks of people’s lives! What emerged so strongly from this event was that it wasn’t just important to learn, experience a wonderful environment and train hard, it was doing it with people who really cared and supported each other. People left with new hope, energy and confidence. We are doing it again in April. If you would like to join us there are a few places left, click here for more information.

Courses: We launched 2 new courses, The Fundamentals of Nutrition and Meal Planning Mastery and Empower, a Game Plan for Fat Loss. Both courses were about 8 months of work, and hours and hours of conversation but they are launched and being used by people to deeply impact their knowledge and behaviour. Our latest Empower Program which is launching in 2024 is now live.

Empower Upgraded: One of the key things we learned was the power of community for supporting people on a health goal. With our most recent Empower program we used Telegram as a community care channel, which had an incredible effect. The feeling of not being alone or dealing with challenges by oneself and seeing that others struggle too with the same challenges seemed to give people more hope and belief that they could ‘ride the wave too’.

Podcast: We launched a new podcast called the Live Like An Athlete Podcast. Incredible conversations with athletes, practitioners and people who live high performance. This is something we want to really drive on in 2024 with new guests and conversations. Actually, if you know someone interested in helping with production, please let me know. That took more time and planning than I could have imagined. 

‘Clarity’ has come from a complete commitment to building the most impactful process we can create. I am not afraid to say this, based on the feedback on our support health and performance model, we now believe anything is possible. We believe in helping people understand themselves, building better overall awareness of what you need to do to have ‘consistency’ in your life. The aim is to find more ways to help greater numbers of people.  

Kinetica collaboration: For over 6 years I have been using collagen with athletes for skeletal health and supporting recovery from injury. There was no doubt in my mind that based on the physical nature of sport and the ever increasing volume of exercise that people do that solutions are needed for injury, wear and tear. Working with Kinetica over a 2 year period we developed a product  called Collagen Muscle & Joint Complex that includes all the key ingredients to support joint health. 

I also started working with Glenilen Farm who are a brilliant yogurt company based in west Cork. That relationship has been a real highlight for me because of how much the people believe in producing a product of the highest quality using milk from local grass fed cows. I’m excited to support them online and offline in 2024. 

If you asked me in January 2023 was all this possible, I would have said you are mad! Particularly because of where my head was at. There is a lot to be said for taking the pressure off and actually doing what you really enjoy. The biggest recent reflection is that I don’t reflect enough. That’s something I will work on in 2024. The last thing I will say is that none of this would be possible without a team, I work best on a team, this is team vision and we collectively believe in what we are doing. 

To Kaspars, Gemma, Eva, Aoife, and our interns Brianna and Erin, thank you. I am extremely proud of you. 

I’d say 2023 was a good year. 2024, we have the same energy, drive and ambition but even more clarity on the impact we can have. Excited? Yes we are.