How do you know when to walk away from something that made you?
Since she was 13, Bronte Campbell has dedicated her life to swimming, becoming a champion in the pool. Her unwavering focus has led to three Olympic gold medals, and now, at 32, she is announcing her retirement. Now, Bronte is channelling her energy into entrepreneurship as the founder of activewear brand Earthletica.
In this episode, Bronte Campbell explains how the pool shaped her mind and body, both in and out of the water.
From the daily rebuilding of her focus to win an Olympic gold medal, to becoming a leader in an individual sport and balancing her relationship with her sister as both a rival and a collaborator.
Now, she’s stepping away from it all to build a new identity away from the pool.
What is the cost of enduring when you have little left to gain?
In this episode Bronte shares:
- How she made one of the biggest decisions of her life to retire from swimming
- Why she “tried on” retirement before making it permanent
- The sacrifices required to compete at four Olympic Games
- Why the strategy that gets you to the top changes over time
- The lessons an eight-year shoulder injury taught her about recovery and resilience
- How curiosity became one of her greatest performance advantages
- Why recovery deserves as much attention as performance
- Building trust and psychological safety within high-performing teams
- The incredible “Got Your Back” ritual that transformed the Australian Swim Team culture
- Why belonging directly influences performance under pressure
- The transition from elite athlete to entrepreneur and co-founder of Athletica
- The challenges of building a purpose-driven business
- The importance of protecting time for strategic thinking
- The three habits that continue to help her stay at the top
Key Quotes
“Recovery deserves as much attention as performance.”
“Trust is the difference between a gold and silver medal.”
Episode Resources
PRE-ORDER For the Long Run by Jess Spendlove 👉 https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/n423Ea
Bronte Campbell
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bronte_campbell/?hl=en
Earthletica: https://earthletica.com/
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Bronte
Bronte Campbell OAM is an Australian competitive swimmer, a triple Olympic gold-medal winner and World Champion and Commonwealth Games Gold Medallist. After 12 years competing at the highest level, she knows what it takes to achieve long-term goals. With a degree in business and experience in business consulting, she brings her determination from the pool to her passion for sustainability.
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess Spendlove (00:00.23)
You made a huge decision around the Olympics, what is actually required to go another round.
Bronte Campbell (00:07.38)
Everything. That level of intensity and pain that I was often in was not sustainable.
Jess Spendlove (00:12.684)
The strategy that gets you to the top is not the same strategy that keeps you there.
Bronte Campbell (00:18.86)
What’s very interesting about swimming is that you compete against each other for 48 weeks of the year, and then all of those people that you were just competing against, those are now your teammates. I think Kate and I were uniquely positioned to model this. I mean, from the time I was 13 years old, I was training with the third best person in the world. The ability to tolerate the friction of competition and still find a way to have a personal connection. It’s a difference between the gold and silver medal. As I get older,
The things that get put in the sacrifice pile, not be able to work on my business in the way that I want to do, not living close to my friends and family. When that pile becomes bigger than the thing that you’re hoping to achieve, that’s where it’s it’s no longer in alignment. It’s not worth it. I have to take a step back and evaluate for myself what’s working and what’s not.
Jess Spendlove (01:11.694)
Bronte, you’ve had a huge six months. You’ve gotten married, you’ve had ACL surgery, and most recently you’ve made a huge decision around swimming and retirement. take us through that. How are you feeling right now and the process you went through to to get to that con you know decision?
Bronte Campbell (01:29.944)
Yeah, I feel great. The the the more time that goes on, the more it feels like the correct decision. And yeah, I made the decision to retire from swimming, but I didn’t make it very quickly or very lightly. I took 18 months to come to this decision. So I waited until it felt completely right. And I always said like June, July of 2026, if I wanted to start training for LA, that was when I’d come back and get in the pool. and
As I got closer to that milestone, I was like, Well, we have to we have to make a decision. We have to make a call one way or the other. And I could really see the future where I kept on swimming. I could see what that looked like. I’d planned it out with the coach that I would be going with, planned it out with him what that two year lead in would look like. I knew where I’d have to be, I knew where I’d have to move to, I’d have to move back to Canberra. And I knew what that process was gonna be. And so I just had to equally look at what the other side of it was and try that on. So
A few months ago I just said, Okay, well, why don’t I just pretend that I’ve made the decision to stop and I’ll just start pretending that that’s my entire future and just see how that feels for two or three months. Because I had the time to do it, I could really try and put myself in that situation. And humans in general are quite bad at predicting how they’re gonna feel in the future. We’re terrible at this. We’re like, when we get to this time, I’ll feel great about X. Like, it’s
maybe part of what the lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves moving forward. But it was nice to be able to really try it on properly and be like, actually this does feel very correct. And then since announcing it, I thought maybe there would be a shift of, maybe it’s a bit of regret because now it feels very final. But I haven’t felt that. So that’s maybe reiterates that it was the right thing.
Jess Spendlove (03:23.79)
I mean, you’ve got so many exciting things going on in your personal life and and business life. And I guess, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s exactly this, but I imagine there’s the, these are all the things I’m doing and enjoying. And to to go back and to do another Olympic cycle. You know that very well. Like the dedication and the commitment. Can you just take us through what that has been previously and what that would have looked like? And I guess the things that you you would have had to give up. Because I don’t think people
really truly understand in sports such as swimming and athletics, which of course there’s world championships and all of that, but really, you know, the the Olympics is the the big the big competition. It’s every four years. What is actually required to to to go another round?
Bronte Campbell (04:11.626)
Everything is required. It is not a job. It is it is every moment of every day is dedicated towards that pursuit. And that doesn’t mean you’re training for every moment of every day, but it dictates your recovery, it dictates what you eat, where you eat it, when you eat it, it dictates your entire sleeping schedule. and it is it is all-encompassing for me anyway. That’s the only way that I know how to get performance and
I mean, it looks like six hours a day, at least in a training environment, either at the pool or at the gym. It’s probably another four hours of active recovery stuff that I do outside of that. And then it looks like getting as much sleep as possible. Sleep is so critical for me for recovery. it looks like putting dedicated time in the middle of my day to sleep, which is it’s a luxury to have a nap. It’s also a pain in the ass when you’re trying get things done.
so really it is and it and probably the thing I miss the most when I’m in full training is the energy that is going into the pool and the the feeling of being very tired most of the time just saps my creativity and my creative energy and creative thought. And I find it very hard to get into that space when I’m quite depleted and all the energy is going into physical exertion.
It’s really hard to get my brain firing. And so I miss that when I’m in very heavy training. I miss my brain working properly. or like it does when it’s when it’s well rested, when my body’s well rested. And yeah, I like to think about it. The word sacrifice is used a lot in sport. And if you think about sacrifice as something, giving up something of value in order to try and attain something of even more value.
That’s a really great way for me to think about it because I’ve had to give up things of value to get to the places that I want to go. As I get older, the things that get put in the sacrifice pile, things like moving cities again, things like having to not be able to work on my business in the way that I want to do, not living close to my friends and family. I mean, my husband and I, we’ve been together for 10 years.
Bronte Campbell (06:35.586)
I’ve lived in a different city for five years, purely for training. so that I could chase the dreams and make them happen. It’s things like, like, what do I want to do in my family life? What does that look like? Do I really want to continue to plan that around a four-year Olympic cycle? so those things just get bigger and weightier. And so when when that pile becomes bigger than the thing that you’re hoping to chase or achieve.
That’s where it’s it’s no longer in alignment. It’s not worth it. and I wasn’t necessarily doing such a such a calculated decision making. I wasn’t doing a pros and cons list. I was more looking at like how does each one of these futures feel to me, which one feels fuller and richer and and better for me in the long run.
Jess Spendlove (07:26.808)
Love that. and you know, it’s not just, I guess, the individual sacrifice, it it’s the people around you, your husband, your your family, your friends. As you said, it’s it’s it’s really going all in on something incredibly exceptional, which very few people have have done. And, you know, I think the really interesting thing I’ve heard you say before at seven years old, you know, I I wanted to be an Olympian. And I’m sure there’s a lot of seven year olds have thought I want to be an Olympian, but very few go on to.
become one, let alone a a four-time Olympian, with three gold medals and, you know, 11 world championship medals. And if you go on to not only achieve it, but do that for a period of time. And one thing I really talk about as a philosophy that I’ve seen with high-performing individuals across industries is the strategy that gets you to the top is not the same strategy that keeps you there. And I feel like
having gotten to know you and and your career, you’ve really ad adopted that. Maybe not necessarily thinking that’s exactly what you did, but you definitely have lived and embodied that.
Bronte Campbell (08:34.494)
Really interesting. I never really thought about it like that. But there is definitely a difference in my mindset and approach as I was in my younger years and in my younger career versus the things that I needed and the things that I did later in my career. so yes, for me, definitely getting to the top and staying at the top or staying near the top has looked very different. I actually have never thought about it like that. And maybe it’s because I always just thought it was.
Me being very young versus me being more experienced and older. but they it has required very different things. And I’ve had very different mindset and approach at each one of the stages. And some of that is probably youth and inexperience. I mean, my first Olympics, I turned 18 a month before. I was such a tiny baby and very absolute and very like black and white, as you said.
When I was seven, I decided I wanted to go to the Olympics. And then I was very intense about it. I was like probably more intense about my training when I was seven than I was when I was 17. I actually had to learn to let go a little bit. so I think there’s been different develop developmental stages, but then my management of my career is I’ve gotten older and moved into
I’d say the second half of my career happened after I got injured. I have a shoulder injury, started as a nerve injury. It’s just an ongoing thing. No one a hundred percent knows what it is. And the management of that has taken me to a whole different level. When I was talking about those six hours, six hours a day in the training environment. two hours at a time, you might be in the pool training.
But I get to the pool an hour before that and I’ve got a bunch of prehab exercises to do and I stay an hour afterwards and there’s bunch of like post training exercises I have to do. And if we train twice a day, that’s that’s four hours at the pool.
Jess Spendlove (10:43.111)
Since the shoulder, since the nerve injury.
Bronte Campbell (10:46.008)
So in order to continue at the top, the things that I need to do look way more like spending more time in rest, more time in recovery, more time on like tiny little exercises, more time on set more time on settling my central nervous system, all of that requires way more time and energy. I didn’t spend any time or energy on any of those things when I was 17. I didn’t need to.
But now I have to do those. And so it takes a lot more. It takes a lot more time. Even though because I’m older and I’ve got training age in my body, the work that’s required to get me to the level in the pool is less. Like when I came, I had 18 months off in 2021 and I started training again. And I was shocked by how quickly it came back. I did not expect it to come back that quickly.
Jess Spendlove (11:40.94)
The speed and the pace and the
Bronte Campbell (11:43.374)
speed, the power, the pace, the strength. Yeah. Like we do a lot of chin-ups, like pull-ups in in our training for strength. I have not done a a pull-up for two years. And my husband set up a gym in the garage and he I pulled out the old weight belt that we used to use. You like add weight to your chin-ups. I was like, I wonder if I could do a 15 kilo chin-up just like right now. And I was like,
Let me try. I don’t know if I can after two years. Two years of like not touching it at all. And I did three. And I was like, it’s still there. Like your body just remembers so much. Whereas when I was seventeen, I’m pretty sure doing fifteen kilos was my PB of doing one. So your body holds a lot. So you have to do less work on that, but just way more in recovery and injury. So yes, the things that like I used to have to work hard at probably have
mastered a little bit more, I don’t have to work as hard at, but there comes a whole host of other things that take its place.
Jess Spendlove (12:43.756)
And that process, I mean, I imagine there was a lot of sports physicians and physios and a lot of great, you know, experts around you, but how much of that was people advising and influencing you and how much of that was you experimenting or getting curious on strategies that that would, you know, take you through that phase and and beyond?
Bronte Campbell (13:05.518)
That’s a very good question because it changed quite a bit. So the sh I’d had other injuries, I’d had hip injury and a bunch of other things before, but in 2016, that was when the shoulder injury sort of reared its head. It was about five months out from 2016 Olympics, which is not an amazing time to have a mystery injury.
Jess Spendlove (13:27.576)
And was it just you woke up one day or in a training session it kinda went or you woke up with it or how did it? Yeah.
Bronte Campbell (13:33.038)
I think I was I was swimming within like a 50-meter like distance. It went from being a sort of normal tidish pain in my shoulder to like pain, numbness, weakness down my left arm. So it was, it was just within the I wasn’t even doing anything out of the ordinary. We think it was a virus that attacked my nerve, attacked the sheath of my nerve. But no one really knew. I didn’t know. I didn’t even, I probably didn’t even properly know how to describe.
The pain. and I also didn’t want it to be true. So there was a lot of a lot of downplaying it to myself and others. And in that phase, that very first phase, five months out from my second Olympics, where I was going in as a reigning world champion, I just decided to like lock onto the things that I knew to be true. And those were doing 45 kilo chin-ups.
It was doing all the nine swim sessions, the distances that I need to do, getting my lactate up really high, which is like very aggravating to your central nervous system, which was obviously not great if I’ve got a nerve injury, didn’t really know it was a nerve injury at the time. Doing exactly what any physio told me. Like I just went to the physio. I was like, okay, great, this is the plan. I’m just gonna do that. Not paying attention to the fact that some of those exercises were making my shoulder feel worse. I was just like, well, this is the plan. I just gotta do it. that idea of like,
ignoring pain or pushing pain aside, which is very useful when you’re trying to push your limits in the pool, but less useful when you’re looking at an injury. there was a lot of that. And I I thought that that was a very winning mindset to do like a mind over a matter. What it actually resulted in was me not being able to do all the training I could do. And by the time I got to the Olympics, I was doing like 70% of the load that I
would need to do. And I knew that. I knew that going in, which is it’s also a thing you have to lie to yourself about. You still have to walk out behind the blocks and like you still gotta look down the lane. You still gotta be like, well, like look out. I’m gonna, I’m gonna smash this. And I I mean I was very I was honestly surprised by the level of performance I was able to get to versus the level of training I’d been able to do. But in the wake of in the wake of
Bronte Campbell (15:59.79)
2016, I was like, this is not, this is not a winning mindset. I can’t just be locked onto these things that I know to be true. I have to, I have to take a step back and evaluate for myself what’s working and what’s not. I can’t just listen to like absolute truth of what people are saying to me because no one had a definite answer. I also had to stop looking for the problem and just start working on the solution. I spent a lot of energy.
Being like, if I can’t figure out exactly what’s wrong with this, how could we ever solve it? And what’s been the journey since then is that you can still find strategies and solutions, even if you never find out what the exact problem is. It’s just a longer road. It requires a little bit more creativity. It requires a lot more trial and error, but it’s still possible. but yeah, that was like a two-year journey after that. And then to the point now where
My preparation for Paris Olympics, I can manage my shoulder so well. because I’ve got a bunch of different techniques from Western and Eastern medicine. And I’ll know if it’s feeling this certain way, I’m like, okay, I know I need to go do some heavy isometrics. I’ll just go do that before it ever becomes a problem. but that took a very long time and it was a different mindset. It was like, try everything.
Give it a a moment of time, evaluate if it works, if it doesn’t, move on. And that was a lot more taking the ownership on myself and seeking those people out myself. And not to say that I did this all by myself. There was like a core team around me. there was all the people I consulted with and reached out to who said, yes, I’ll help you. And it really was a a team effort, but it was a lot more ownership. Where before it was like the first,
the moment I got injured, it was like, okay, you’re in the sporting system. Go see this. Go see this. Do exactly what you say what this person says. and that those people were saying things that were mainly correct as well. But I just needed more than one point of view. I needed more than one way to address it in order to to fix it, especially because we couldn’t figure out what it actually was.
Jess Spendlove (17:57.292)
These are your people.
Jess Spendlove (18:14.68)
And it’s quite remarkable that there was another eight eight years of of performing at this peak level with this, you know, injury that needed to be managed and and was still there. And for a lot of people, I think, regardless of how incredible they are as an athlete, that that could really be just too much. So the the your mindset and the evolution of your mindset speaks to I think, you know.
Everything you’re doing not just in your athl athletic career but some of the other ventures that you’re you’ve moved into now as well. and that will serve you really w incredibly well.
Bronte Campbell (18:53.89)
I mean, it was too much. It was often too much. Like I I had to have a break in twenty eighteen. I took three months off after the Commonwealth Games. because I couldn’t handle being in that much pain all the time. It was so draining to me. I had to give myself that break. Same with like after Tokyo Olympics. It was like I can get to the Olympics, I can do that, but I have to have a break after that. So I had to build in
I had to build in spaces where I could step away from it because it is very intense. and that’s definitely what I learned is that in for for a long-term performance, that level of intensity was not that level of intensity and pain that I was often in was not sustainable for four years at a time. So I had to pick my periods of when when I could step into it and and have the time, knowing the time was going to be there to step out of it.
It made it more bearable. Like the moment I decided to have a three month break in twenty eighteen, literally like that week, my pain decreased by like
Jess Spendlove (19:59.232)
And even like your nervous system just out your
Bronte Campbell (20:01.24)
Well, it was like I mean that was it was at the end of twenty seventeen when I decided that and it went from I have to be in this amount of pain and be doing this this amount of it’s just constant like constant iterating, constantly trying to second guess yourself, like how how much is this helping me? How much is pushing good and pushing bad? Is this level of pain acceptable? Is this type of pain accessible acceptable? Is it gonna
Snowball into something bigger. Is it actually okay to step back? Do I need to spend another two hours on this? I’d that constant like decision making is exhausting. but just giving myself an end date for it instantly reduced the pain because in 2017 I was like, I want to go to the Olympics, so I’m going to have to do this for another three years. But I changed it to I’m only have to do this in another six months. And the physical pain reduced, which
It’s so interesting to me that mind and body are not separate. They’re they’re intertwined. And I I take this into into business now too, because there’s gonna be times when things are really difficult and really busy. And you you said my last six months has been big. In the middle of that, there was a capital raise. I literally walked out of my wedding and the next day we s we launched our capital raise. And
I think I had like four days at home at any time during that time. And I was also trying to be present for other people’s weddings that were on at that time. That was a that was an insane month. And I walked straight out of that capital raise into my ACL surgery. And I got on the operating table. I was looking up at those big lights. I was like, I’m so happy to go to sleep. Just give me the joke. I just want to be asleep. But I could do all of that because I knew that there was an end point.
and I knew that there was gonna be a a time where I could take a beat and I don’t think I could have done it without knowing that. So
Jess Spendlove (22:01.772)
And you also know your capability and your capacity. You know, I really believe everyone has different levels of capacity and and and you know, when you are able to when you’re so mentally resilient and growth mindset and you’ve achieved so much, like people do have different levels of capacity, but when you’ve kind of played at those edges for a while and gone, okay, I know what I know what too much is, I know what I can manage, or I know what I can manage for a season.
because they’re maybe not the ACL surgery, although it provided a lot of rest, but they’re all some very exciting life things all happening at the same time.
Bronte Campbell (22:34.818)
I mean, I I wouldn’t say an ACL surgery is recommended holiday, but it it was like this date is booked in. Yeah. You will not be able to move after that. You literally have to stop.
Jess Spendlove (22:47.734)
We moved it a few times. Yes.
Bronte Campbell (22:49.792)
Yes. Yes, I did. So yes, I had to I moved the surgery till after my wedding and then after the capital race so that I could do the things that are most important to me, like dancing at my own wedding, which I didn’t really want to sacrifice just to have a brand new ACL.
Jess Spendlove (23:06.902)
It’s all decisions. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna rewind a bit into swimming and Australian swimming and you know, not just what you did in the pool, but what you did for the culture of the sport and and the policy. Because I find swimming very interesting. It’s one of the few sports where you’re competing against people 98% of the time, and then for a very short period of time you’re ti you’re teammates. And that balance of where competitors
I don’t know if you say enemies, but competitors. And now we’re on the same team. We’re on a relay team. Some of which who may have pipped you at the post and be swimming in the individual events, and now we’re competing in a in a in a a team. and I’ve heard you and Kate talking previously about how some of that was potentially received. I think more so for for her and her first Olympics. And then the work that got done as su as such to change that culture.
which you were both a a really key part of. Can you just take us through that, navigating that? Because I think there’s a lot here that can extrapolate out to teams and businesses where people might be up for promotions or whatever. I think there’s just like culture as a whole in a high performing team or environment. There’s a lot to extrapolate out from, even though this is quite a unique one within itself.
Bronte Campbell (24:30.466)
No, I think it’s very similar. I mean, I had a period of time where I was working at EY, and that’s a lot of high-performing individuals that then have to operate really well in teams together. But you’re right, like there’s there’s a finite number of promotions every year. And everyone’s kind of competing for those same things, but you’re also trying to drive team outcomes. So I think it relates I’ve I’ve seen it in sport, but I’ve seen it in business as well. What’s very interesting about
Swimming is that you’re right, you compete literally against each other for 48 weeks of the year. And then you go to Olympic trials or world championships trials. And in the Hunter Freestyle, my event, you select number one and two as the individual swimmers, and then number three, four, five, and six are selected as relay swimmers. So you might come third by point one of a second, and you’re not going to get an individual swim in the Hunter Freestyle. You’re now only in the relay.
And now all of those people that you were just competing against, those are now your teammates. And you’re trying to drive a great outcome all for each other. And that was it wasn’t necessarily a focus previously, like earlier in in my career or earlier in my sister’s career. Like she was her first ever Olympics she we qualified for when she was 15. And she, whether whether people were doing this on purpose or not, but she felt like
Everyone was angry at her for taking their spot. Like older people on the team who felt like they were the ones that should have finished in those individual spots. And she came second and she she stole the individual spot out of nowhere, like this little upstart. 15-year-old. Whether whether people meant her to feel like that, who knows? But there’s a if there’s a silence, you fill it with your worst fears. Especially if you’re 15 and you’re super shy and you’ve looked up to these other athletes for a long time.
they may have just said nothing to her. And you’ve you fill those silences with your worst fears. And so both of us came from understanding that that was that was not a good space for a team to operate in. We then did a lot of work on neurochemistry of teaming and how the feeling of belonging and being part of a team amplifies performance by decreasing cortisol. It’s like, okay, great. Well, that’s something we can definitely do, especially within the relay team. The other part of it is that, as you said, the ability to
Bronte Campbell (26:55.566)
Tolerate the friction of competition in order to drive better performance. And I think Kate and I were uniquely positioned to model this because we’re sisters. We competed in the same event. We trained together, lived together, competed together for, I don’t know, 15 years. And Kate was always, she was older than two years older than me. She was objectively a better swimmer than me. She’s still.
Is, I would say her best times are faster than mine, so we can definitely say that. And so I grew up knowing that while that constant comparison was not very comfortable, it wasn’t always very pleasant, but that I was, I mean, from the time I was 13 years old, I was training with someone who finished third at the Olympic Games in an individual event. I was training with the third best person in the world. I was training with that person, I was living with that person. And so if I could withstand that friction,
And still find a way to have a personal connection, I knew I would get better, like way better. No barely anyone else can can sit in that discomfort for long enough to learn the things that they need to learn. And I knew that. So we sort of gone I’ve gone through my career doing that and then tables changed at different times and I would come out on top. And that was a whole different thing to navigate. But we brought that aspect to the relay team. And I hope we were able to then model that for the team.
And extend it out. And it’s as simple as as soon as you finish the race, it’s like turning to your anyone. It doesn’t matter whether the ones that have beaten you or the ones haven’t you. Like we are a team now, personally going and congratulating each one of them, giving them a hug, giving them a high five, creating rituals around the team that only us and the team do. And the final point on that is that the competition doesn’t stop at trials. The thing that most people don’t realize is that in the heats of the relay, you’ll normally save
Number one and two, you’ll save them for the final. We’ve got enough enough depth in our country to be able to do that. Save them, rest them for the final, and in the heats, you’ll swim the people that finished third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. if you finish third and fourth at trials, it doesn’t mean you’re going into the final at the Olympics. You’re competing. Those four of you are competing against each other. The top two go through to the final.
Jess Spendlove (29:16.184)
Time. Time it purely time on the day. Yeah.
Bronte Campbell (29:19.38)
So I there’s a few like little variants because there’s time on the day, there’s relay changeover time, there’s like whether you’re the person that starts the relay or finishes the relay, how reliable you are at changeovers. There’s a few little things like that. But in general, like the the the number one weighted thing would be time on the day. If there’s two of you that do the exact same time or very similar times, then it’s like a little bit up to yeah, looking into the other bits, the data points that you need. But
Jess Spendlove (29:38.862)
Trilling down.
Bronte Campbell (29:44.694)
If the times are more than point two apart, then you know exactly who it’s gonna be. So even even on the day when you’re competing as a team, you’re also still competing against each other in the heat. And that is that’s that’s pretty wild to to have that environment and to be able to stay together during that rather than splintering apart is under that pressure and that disappointment that some members of the team are are going to feel. Two of you are going to be disappointed that you’re not in the final.
that’s very difficult to manage as well.
Jess Spendlove (30:17.89)
I’ve heard you we’ve been on a panel together before, so I hope it’s okay I I bring this up, but the story gave me goosebumps and it was around this team culture and the bonding, and I believe it was around a phrase, so whether this was some of the work you were referring to and it was the we’ve got your back. Can you just share that story, that experience, what that meant and and what that culture and belief
led to from a performance outcome.
Bronte Campbell (30:48.686)
Yeah, and this is this is so interesting to me. Like I’ve I’ve learned about this as I’ve gone through it as well. When I first stepped on the team, if you told me actually when I first stepped on the team, the team was labeled as a toxic culture. There was a big review into it and it was our worst performing team. And that didn’t make any sense to me because I was like, who cares what the culture is? How is that going to affect my ability to swim from this end of the pool to that end of the pool as fast as possible? That’s all I really want to do.
And I I don’t really understand why we’re talking about leadership. I don’t understand why we’re talking about culture. None of this had any bearing on how I performed. That was my view. I mean, I was only eighteen, so as I said, didn’t know very much.
Jess Spendlove (31:34.39)
Also individual sport, it’s understandable that you have that, yeah, I’m just here to go A to B, this is this is me.
Bronte Campbell (31:39.79)
Yeah, I’m here to do my job. No one else affects me. Yeah. and it wasn’t until later in my career when I stepped into the leadership group, which I then came on and I was like, well, I know I had these thoughts when I first joined the team. If I’m now going to be standing up and saying culture is important, I’d better have a very good reason for saying it, and I better be able to relate it to performance. And we were very lucky at the time to be able to do some work with special forces and the army and
a lot of the studies that they have done, particularly the commandos that work in team of six as highly motivated individuals in a team getting a job done. because that research is really interesting around the neurochemistry of teaming and how the feeling of belonging in a team amplifies your individual ability to perform. It changes Yes, it is. It changes it changes your endocrine profile. If you can be an what they coined a
collective challenge state. So that’s when your cortisol is high, your adrenaline is high, and your sorry, your adrenaline is high, your oxytocin is high, and your cortisol is low. So you’re in a stressful environment, but you’re not getting cortisol flooding through your body and turning off your prefrontal cortex. And
The way to do that is to increase oxytocin. If your oxytocin is low in that stressful environment, your cortisol will go straight back up again and you won’t be able to think and there’s a lot of stress that goes through your body. You can literally take someone’s blood and tell how stressed they are. And you can change that by creating an environment that fosters oxytocin, which is basically creating an environment where people feel like they belong. And the great thing about this is you could.
You can do it with people without them ever realizing it. Eye contact, synchronized movement, physical touch, massive ones for all increasing oxytocin. And then rituals, common enemy. Those are like other things you can you can build in. we don’t focus so much on common enemy. We we tend to focus more on the rituals. And so we created with the team, we found the team really did not like the phrase, like good luck.
Bronte Campbell (33:57.774)
And then nobody really knew what to say to a team member when they came back after competing. So you’re in the team environment, you go out, you compete alone, you come back. If you’ve done well, everyone knows exactly what to say to you, and they just embrace you. And great job, good work. And it feels great. If you come back and you’re bitterly disappointed and nobody knows what to say to you, there’s just a silence and a backing off.
And again, you fill that silence with your worst ever thoughts. I’m worthless. I’m only here because of my performance. Nobody values me if I can’t perform. Like these sort of Yes, you are. Like you you’re certainly like, Well, I must be worthless to these people because every person is avoiding me. And it’s like this deep, deep built psychological thing of we need to belong to a tribe to survive. And it feels like your tribe is rejecting you.
Jess Spendlove (34:38.11)
Your harshest critic.
Jess Spendlove (34:52.896)
In our cave and we need we need our people.
Bronte Campbell (34:55.937)
Literally, if you were ousted from your tribe, you could die. Yeah. Like there’s it is. It’s like hardwired into us that we need our people. And to then feel that rejection on top of the disappointment is just a spiral and a compounding thing, which is so awful. So we’re like, okay, we need a ritual that we can do that lets people know that they’re part of the group again. and that was where Got Your Back came from. It came from within the team, and it was Got Your Back or a
Jess Spendlove (34:58.991)
Survival. Yeah.
Bronte Campbell (35:25.592)
Clasp on the shoulder or both. and it was something we could say as people were leaving and going out and competing. It was something we could say when they came back, no matter what the result was. And it was very powerful. It was very powerful for quite a number of years. The the future generation will have to come up with their own version of this, because it’s only powerful for I feel like these sort of things are only powerful for the people that are part of the creation and a few other people that come in. And then it needs to change.
as it as it evolves on. and then tying it directly to performance. This is what’s so this is a story I really love is it’s actually my sister’s story, but she competed in the 50 freestyle in Tokyo. she was very unhappy with that race and she came, I feel like she came fifth or sixth, and Emma McKeon won. And I was in the team area when she came back and every single person
Turned to Emma and gave her a hug, and then they turned to Kate and said, I got your back. And she talks about how anxious she was, how upset she was walking into that team area, feeling like she’d let the team down and let herself down. And then how quickly that shifted her mindset straight back to being like, okay, that’s this is fine. I’m safe. And why that’s important is she had another job to do. Thirty minutes later, she had to get up and compete in the relay team, in the women’s four by hundred Medley relay team.
And she was like it just clicked that like, okay, great. I’m I’m regulated again. I go do my warm down and I get up and go behind the blocks. the USA were the world record holders in the event, they’re the fastest qualifiers. And it came to the final leg. And Kate could see Emma McKeon, who was our butterfly, swimming in towards her. And when you do a relay change of you never see them touch the wall. You have to leave before they touch the wall. You have to get moving.
Jess Spendlove (37:21.899)
Anticipate.
Bronte Campbell (37:22.784)
Yes. So your feet still have to be on the block by the time their hand touches the wall. The margin for error that you’re allowed is minus 0.04. If you go below that, you’re disqualified. And Kate saw Emma coming in towards her. She saw the Americans who were already in front at this point. And she was like, Okay, well, I’m just gonna go for it. I’m going to push this.
Faster than I should. So, like normally we aim for about a point two changeover because you that’s safe, but it’s also quick. And she was like, No, I’ve like, I feel confident enough that this team loves and accepts me. I feel confident enough that they trust me and they will have my back regardless of result. And I’m gonna take a risk here, which to be clear is not the risk between coming first and second. It’s the risk between possibly winning or being disqualified, and everybody loses their medal.
She’s like, well, it’s risky, but I’m gonna go for it. And to decide in that moment under that pressure, her changeover time was point four. Well, minus point four is yeah, but yes, like it’s point eight away from being qu disqualified. Typically when you blink, that’s about point six. So it’s like it’s
Jess Spendlove (38:28.395)
Right on it.
Jess Spendlove (38:38.538)
It’s it’s not less than a blink. It’s very
Bronte Campbell (38:40.76)
Too small, like not recommended. She’s also trained with Emma for years, and so trusts her implicitly to touch the wall properly, which is another big part of it. Australia’s changeover time, 0.04, America’s changeover time, 0.4, and we won by 0.2. We didn’t swim faster than them. If you added up the entire changeover times, none of us swam faster. Every single one did a faster changeover, and we ended up winning based on changeovers, which were based on trust. So
Jess Spendlove (38:43.927)
Jess Spendlove (38:57.33)
wow.
Bronte Campbell (39:10.956)
That is I love this story because it just it shows that yes, it’s about high performance, yes, it’s about being good at your job, but there has to be a time when you rely on each other and make decisions under pressure. And if you do not have trust and foundation in those moments, you end up like the Americans, there was a th there was a very young swimmer in there and especially in their in their breaststroke, there was a young swimmer and they did slow changeovers because they wanted to be safe, which is totally fair. But
Jess Spendlove (39:11.15)
Singles again.
Jess Spendlove (39:41.154)
The difference.
Bronte Campbell (39:42.03)
Yes, it’s the difference. It’s the difference between a gold and silver medal.
Jess Spendlove (39:44.92)
But even as are you talking about here and even honestly tingles again and I’ve heard the story before. So I like i i it it’s such a I guess we’re sitting here person to person, you know, that’s this sharing, it’s this connectedness. But it fundamentally what I’m hearing, which is a lot of what people are missing right now, which is feeling safe, trusting, you know, their workplace, having job security, performing in the like how can we perform when we’re sitting on edge worried about
cuts that are going to be made. And I was on a panel last night o around all of this and and there were people there who own this space talking about some of the stories on the layoffs and being at companies for 10, 15, 20 years and people just getting an email, not even from a manager and not even a conversation, which is the complete opposite of everything that you’ve just spoken about here. And I think if there is just this trust communication, you know
safeness acceptance, then that performance outcome comes. And sitting here now, I guess you’re in the phase of building a business. And I have no doubt that the culture of that business will be incredible. But take us through the your you know, early stages, what you’ve been navigating, how it came to be. How did you go, I’m an Olympian, I’m now gonna be a co-founder of a sustainable activeware company.
Bronte Campbell (41:07.072)
It’s not a very natural leap, to be honest. And most people were like, wait, you’ve come from sport, which is very high pressure and uncertain, and you’re now moving into startup world. Like, why wouldn’t you seek a little bit more security? Yeah. And I I have done jobs in big business before, and it is more secure, but it’s also less creative. And there’s less room to to move and just kind of try things out and be able to do that. And I’m really passionate about Athletica. We we build
all of our gear with recycled fibers that are tested for chemicals. I’m really passionate about what that means for women in particular and women’s health, doing better for them, doing better for the planet. Being able to tailor make these these garments so that they stand up to a really hardcore workout, but they’re also having less p impact on the planet and less impact on on women’s hormones. And that’s really important to me. but it’s
Also a very difficult roads, and I’m aware of that. And I think there’s something about getting up every day and trying to do a difficult thing that’s very exciting to me. And it’s it’s invigorating. It’s I’m at the the the other end of the curve. I’m when I was swimming and in training, I was I was working on mastery. I was working at getting a tiny bit better at something that I was really, really good at.
While running your own business, you’re working on like the basics of everything. And what’s great about that is you see dramatic improvement over a short period of time. What’s terrible about that is like I I spend quite a lot of time in what I call the the sort of what do I call it? I call it the competence gap. and that’s the gap between my vision for what I think I should be able to do and what I’m actually capable of currently doing. And
There is there is sometimes a gap there. And now that we are a bigger company and we’ve raised and I can get other people to fill that gap when I need it, it’s so much better and things are running a lot smoother. But you just have to be the same with like the friction of competition, I have to be able to be comfortable enough to sit in that and sit in that gap which is uncomfortable and just keep trying to close it as much as possible. rather than just being like, this feels difficult. So I have to stop.
Bronte Campbell (43:30.004)
so I guess I’m passionate about what I’m building, but I’m also passionate about the process of building, which is actually very similar to training and racing. I’m I love racing. It’s the the best, it’s the best feeling in the world. I just love it so much. If I didn’t find a way to love training, I wouldn’t be able to race. So it’s sort of like the same thing, like the business and
building Athletica into being something that’s great for many women across the world, changing the entire way the active way industry operates. That’s that’s the racing, but that’s just going to be an output of the training, which is the building and doing the work. And I have to fall in love with this piece of it or I’m never going to get that piece of it.
Jess Spendlove (44:11.694)
I love that. It it’s for me it’s a complete parallel. I can see, you know, the the mindset of an a elite athlete and and this is the work of athletic ventures and investing in in startups and and founders because that tenacity, that pace, that relentless pursuit of more willingness to go above and beyond that growth mindset. It look a lot of people can possess those things, but they’re pretty they’re they’re two groups of exceptional people doing some pretty exceptional things.
can you just share a little bit more? ‘Cause I don’t know if people are actually aware of of the activewear industry and this problem that you’re trying to solve. Can you just actually share a bit more about how things have been done and and and what you’re wanting to do and why?
Bronte Campbell (44:58.38)
Yeah, I guess I I forget that because I’ve been aware of the problem for a while, I forget that it’s actually new to a lot of people. And it really it came about when I first realized that most active wear is made just using completely new plastic. How you take a new plastic and you make it into a fiber that’s soft enough to wear on your body is treating it with really, really harsh chemicals. So there’s two problems with that. The first one is the creation of new plastic.
There’s 42 million tons of plastic waste created by the active wear industry every year. I’m not talking about the fashion industry, I’m talking about the active wear industry. 42 million tons is a lot of new plastic and waste created every single year. And then you’ve got the chemical treatments that go on top of that. And I think people are starting to see this a little bit more. It’s getting a little bit more attention now. And that’s the chemical treatments that are put on the clothing.
Then sitting close to your skin, which is a semi-permeable membrane, particularly when you’re hot and sweating, and some of those chemicals then entering your bloodstream. Some of these chemicals like PFAS are forever chemicals and they’re never gonna break down. So the ability to be able to test for those chemicals. So all of our all of our products are Ochio Tex 100 certified, which means that a third party has tested them and found them to be free of harmful levels over a thousand chemicals. So that’s really important to us. And
Then being able to use as much recycled fibers as possible. So we use recycled post-consumer waste. So things like fishing nets from the ocean or plastic water bottles that have never been used. You can recycle those into fabric and recycled fabric scraps as well. recycle those into the fabric and then using organic cotton in things like outerware, where the stretch and compression enables us to use that. That’s
It’s probably the hardest part about the space, to be honest, is that I would love to say that there’s a completely synthetic free solution, but I haven’t found it yet. We’re looking. We’re looking all the time. What we can do is do better than what’s ex like what’s standard for the industry. We can do better than that. And we really believe that better never rests. And you just keep keep doing better all the time to get to get to the place that.
Bronte Campbell (47:15.596)
You really need to go. And on a very basic level, like if you think about anything that sits close to your skin, anything that has stretch and compression that uses elastane, and elastane is a synthetic fiber. think about like this jumper that I’m wearing, which is wool. Like this is not going to like go back to its normal shape. It’s not going to be able to withstand a sweaty session. it’s not going to be able to withstand the sort of sessions that I used to do in the lead-in to.
Paris Olympics, not going to withstand an Olympic session. So there’s a real balancing act between what can we do better for ourselves and the environment while still making this product functional. Because a product that doesn’t do the job it’s supposed to do or breaks down too quickly is also not a sustainable product. And we we’ve we keep trialing, keep trialing new fabrics and new products to make sure that we can find something that sits in that space where the quality is still absolute.
But we can say that we’ve tested for we’re doing better for the environment. And probably the last part of that is the recycling at the end. So if we can use recycled at the start, give the product a really long life. And then at the end of its life, we partner with our peril and they can recycle the product into other into other products. And
Jess Spendlove (48:16.558)
Yeah.
Bronte Campbell (48:38.808)
That’s really important as well. Try and get as circular as possible. Complete garment to garments recycling in activewear doesn’t yet exist when that does. Yet. Yeah. There is so much innovation happening here. Like there is people really care about this and they care about it because the way that we currently produce is not going to be sustainable in the future. And it just it won’t even not be sustainable. It won’t be possible. The world cannot continue to support this level of production in the way that production is happening.
It has to be done differently. So there is there are a lot of amazing companies and amazing people who are investing heavily in this and and driving that future. We just want to align with them and and be the first people to show the way there. And I’m not even necessarily having a go too much at the big legacy companies. They started in a time when these sort of technologies were not really.
Able to be accessed. And now, even if they want to change their entire supply chain and build a sustainable supply chain from scratch, like we have, it would take so long for them to get all of their suppliers on the same page that it feels it doesn’t feel necessary to them. It feels like it would kill their business. And so that’s where we step in and we’re like, we’re going to show you how to do this. And I one day I would love to get to the point where.
Athletica is such a a big and successful company. And then we can be like, this is our supply chain. This is how we do it. You guys can do it too. There’s no excuses anymore. and yeah, I think that’s that’s the that’s the ultimate goal, is to, is to lead the way for the entire Thai industry and prove out that it is possible to have quality, innovation, sustainability exist together in the same company and the same product.
Jess Spendlove (50:32.512)
What a mission, you know. It’s a big I mean if there’s anyone who has the vision for it and the the capability to figure out what is required to do that, I have no doubt it’s the full-time Olympian sitting across from me who’s navigated so much in that phase of your life and and now moving into this one. So excited to watch and support. And yeah, I guess as we get close to the end, you know, I I’d love to know the the the thought
Bronte Campbell (50:34.03)
Yeah.
Jess Spendlove (51:02.176)
running through my mind is what does a day look like for you right now? Like how does that how has that shifted and how much routine have you created for yourself and how much do you just go with the flow because you’ve done that for so long.
Bronte Campbell (51:16.684)
routine’s very nice to have. Yes. when I first stepped out of swimming, I was like, I don’t want any routine. I really embraced the chaos. But structure’s really important. So I up at 626, unless I have to get up earlier. Last week I had a photo shoot at four AM, which was fun. wow. but
Jess Spendlove (51:39.342)
You’re like I know these I know these hours, I know
Bronte Campbell (51:41.3)
I know these ones. I remember this feeling dark and cold. 626. That’s that’s it’s not even that early. It’s a wonderful time for me to get up. 626, movement and light straight away. Normally go to the gym, do my rehab exercises, get out of the house. Less great on rainy days, like this morning when I walked out of the house and immediately got rained on, but that’s maybe I should have checked the weather, taking an umbrella. And then I’ve either got athletic planning with with my co-founder, shooting
Content strategy for the next like few months. We’re just building out our events strategy. if we’re in product development, then there’s a lot of that going on, like looking at the samples, looking at the product for the next year, going back and forth on all the tiny little details, which to be fair, my co-founder does most of, but I get across the the major big pieces. And then I like to spend
I like to spend if it’s Monday, I like to spend like three to four hours of what I would call like CEO time where I’ve met with everyone, I’ve caught up with everyone, I’ve heard what’s been happening for the last week or so. And then I’ve got a notebook full of things, and I like sit down and really think about like what’s important here. What do we need to action? What are the th what are the big pieces of work that we need to done need to be done? Who do I know in this space who could be really interesting for me to talk to?
This has been quite a new thing for me, blocking out that time. Get so busy doing things, that I was forgetting to step back and look at the bigger picture and try and figure out a better way forward. So I was maybe I was just very used to everything being on me to do. That’s not always the case anymore, which is fantastic. So
Jess Spendlove (53:30.284)
And is that at your desk or do you do that away, like in a you know, near the ocean or in a creative space? So you y y y you know, that kind of cultivates a different lens.
Bronte Campbell (53:40.078)
Yeah, I definitely don’t do it around other people. Yeah. Have to get away from if I’m working at Libby’s, get away from that. And I don’t love doing it at home either. but depending on the day, sometimes you have to. But yes, very much like technology off, lots of it is like written in a book or from the written book to a computer when I need to. And and using the computer is like looking at stats and stuff that I need to look at, but not
not using it as like, another email’s popped in, like turn off all those notifications and have that deep time. sometimes that has to be in a cafe and sometimes it has to be at home, depending on on what I’m doing and also where I need to be next. I can’t tell you how much of this work I’ve done in my car.
Jess Spendlove (54:26.698)
The mobile office.
Bronte Campbell (54:29.45)
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it’s like, okay, I have a meeting in in two hours time and I’ll just drive there straight away and then I’ll just sit in the car and do this work because it’s it’s easier for me to concentrate knowing that I just need to open the door and go to the meeting, as opposed to, maybe I have to like leave this time, we’ll leave it that time. It’s like just get there, sit there, do the work. So it happens all over. I love that. But as long as the as long as the notifications are off, that’s like a must. That’s the only thing that’s doesn’t change. Yeah.
Jess Spendlove (54:57.142)
Yeah. I’ve loved this conversation and I’m excited for for what’s next with Athletica. Anything else on the horizon, on a life front, holiday, I don’t know, things that you’ve just ha have been less able to do because you’ve been training for four Olympics your whole life.
Bronte Campbell (55:15.918)
Yes, I I really desperately do need to book on a holiday. I didn’t we didn’t even do my honeymoon. Our my honeymoon. Our honeymoon. our honeymoon was me capital raising. So that needs to get booked in. And you know what’s really great about that? Is I don’t have to plan it months in advance anymore. This is like training used to be focused around like very specific times, maybe two weeks a year that I could actually take off. And now
Jess Spendlove (55:22.146)
All right.
Bronte Campbell (55:45.122)
I could decide to do it next month and nobody can stop me. So
Jess Spendlove (55:49.07)
Enjoy that. I will enjoy that flexibility. The last question I asked my guests, and you can answer this from, you know, the lens of what feels right at the moment, but everyone I invite on this show is a high performer in their own right, whether it’s, you know, an elite athlete, a a leader in their field, and they’ve obviously cultivated rituals or habits that have allowed them to do the things that they do. So
I would love to know for you, Bronte Campbell, what three things help you stay at the top.
Bronte Campbell (56:20.598)
Number one, embracing curiosity always, which goes with the mindset of not believing that I’m at the top. and constantly questioning things and being open to new ideas. Definitely being interested in other people. Number two is recovery. Whether that was within the pool or in my business life, like I have to dedicate time to recovery and prioritize it as
much as the work. It’s just as important. And then the number three bit is joy. And finding the joy always, it’s every day has to have a joyful element. And if I’m getting to the end of the day and I haven’t had it, like you need to go out and find a way to create it. Because joy for me is the sustainer of passion and longevity. And being able to actually have resilience for me is rooted in having lots of joy in my life. So
Yeah, those three.
Jess Spendlove (57:19.886)
Love that. Are you happy to share what one or two of those might be? The joyful things.
Bronte Campbell (57:25.676)
Depends on the day. Go down to my garage, create something out of clay. That’s wonderful. That’s a great thing to do. sometimes I get to the end of the day and I’m like, I feel so drained. I’m going to ring my neighbor and say, I’ll pick up the goddaughter from daycare today. And then I just hang out with her for like half an hour. She’s two and she’s so cute and she’s just like wants to jump in a puddle. And because I don’t have children, it’s not draining for me.
Jess Spendlove (57:54.574)
It’s like exciting.
Bronte Campbell (57:57.106)
Half an hour of just like lovely childlike world and wonder that you can be in. really love doing that. Or I just go for a walk and I live in Bondi, there’s a very tight-knit community there. I get so much joy from going for a walk and it is so unbelievably rare that I’ll go for a walk and I won’t run into someone that I know. And just saying hello as you’re walking past makes me so happy, which is so super lame.
I’m probably one of the only people that really loves small talk. Like I wanna stop and talk to someone for two minutes and move on. I’m like very, very happy with that. That makes me very excited. And I most people don’t feel like that. So there’s a few there’s a few different ways, but those are always gonna
Jess Spendlove (58:38.088)
I was waiting for the ocean, jump in the ocean. But I mean,
Bronte Campbell (58:41.69)
That’s actually just a given. I do that the the feeling of the water closing over your head is the best feeling in the world.
Jess Spendlove (58:48.394)
It’s medicinal. Yeah. Bronte, I’ve loved our conversation. Grateful for your time. Also very grateful that you have very kindly endorsed me and my book, which I’m so very grateful for. You and Melissa Doyle are on the cover. So it’s a bit of a pinch me moment to see, you know, to see that. And yeah, I’ve loved our time here together, getting to know you, all the insights. I can’t wait to see Earthletica.
Do all the things and then more and yeah, follow along on book two, chapter two of Bronte Campbell.
Bronte Campbell (59:24.35)
Thank you, Jess. Thanks so much for having me.
Jess Spendlove (59:26.284)
Leave it there. I’m sure today’s episode has brought a lot of value. If you know someone who you think would like it, please of course share it with them. And otherwise I will be back again next week with another guest episode helping you not only reach the top but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all then.