Hello. Hi. It's been a while. If you are a subscriber that is still subscribed to this, hello, it's nice to speak to you again.
If you are finding this and you are new, hello, my name is Carly Box. I'm one of the former owners of the Barak's Gym. I don't own it anymore. It's owned by two incredible people, Sam and Ed, who are doing amazing things with the gym.
When we sold the gym or when we sold the Barak's Gym as a business to its new owners, the podcast went with it. And if you have been following this podcast since the beginning, you will know that it is my baby. I built this from nothing. I built this from a Google search of how to start a podcast.
I had no clue what I was doing. I probably still won't, to be honest. But it was my baby. I absolutely loved this podcast.
Yes, it became part of a marketing and business strategy, but more than anything, I just loved speaking to people and I loved being able to help tell their stories and those stories then helped so many other listeners, so many other people who would listen and think, wow, I'm actually going through something similar or wow, it's actually not just me or oh, wow, that person has a similar story to me and they've been able to get in. Okay, I'm listening. And this podcast just became such a huge community for me and something that I loved nurturing and I had been keeping an eye on it over the years since the new owners had hold of the business. And I noticed that they weren't using the podcast.
I know that they had had plans too, but they weren't using it. And I thought, I'm just going to let it sit. You know, it's fine. I'm sure they will reignite it soon enough and it will become something reinvented.
Now, since walking away from the Barak's Gym in 2022, I have completely flipped my life on its head. I'm doing completely different things now with my life. And I've figured out that I guess I am the master of reinventing my life and something that a lot of my friends have said to me as they just get to know me more and more because I have completely new friendship circles now to what I did five years ago. And people always say to me, it's like you've lived a hundred lives.
It's like every time you tell a story, we learn something new about you or about a new part of your life that we had no idea about or something that you had done that nobody even knew was a thing. And I guess I've realized that I'm the master of reinventing myself whether it's good or bad, whether it's as a result of a rock bottom phase or whether it's as a result of, hey, you know, the world is shutting down. We need to pivot or hey, I'm doing different things now career wise and I need to reinvent who I am or yeah, like there's just been so many times over the last few decades where I have absolutely reinvented my identity and that's just become I guess a big thing for me and a lot of the work that I do now because I'm still mentoring. I have a whole business now where I now mentor people and mentor a lot of people with military and policing backgrounds or who still work in military and policing but I also mentor a lot of civilians who have nothing to do with that area but all the lessons that I have and all the wisdom that I have translates to everybody and a big thing that I have been seeing as a commonality among a lot of people is I get to a point in life where they're just thinking, wow, is this it?
Is this all there is? Or hey, I don't actually want to be doing this thing that I've been doing for the last 20 years or hey, I thought I'd want to do this forever and now I don't or hey now I'm a mum or now I'm married or now I'm a single mum or now I am joining defense at the age of 43 or I am changing my whole life and so many people go through these pivots but they just don't really know what to do with it and when your whole identity shifts, it's really confusing not just for the people around you and so a lot of the work I'm mentoring that I do now is around helping people move through those identity shifts, implementing boundaries, upholding really high standards for themselves and being able to go forth and live their best life and one of the things I always said when we had the gym was that I always wanted people to, I guess, I wanted to pay for the knowledge that I had from my time in defense so that everybody else could go forth and have happy long lasting careers and lots of you have gone ahead and done that, some of you got in and decided it wasn't for you or as a result of injury weren't able to continue some of you just decided not to go ahead with it at all and that's fine, do whatever you want but I still feel like that, I still want people to go forth and have happy long lasting beautiful lives and you know a big part of the, you know a big why for me as to why I do the work that I do with people now is that I just want to try and contribute to making the world a better place you know in my tiny little corner of the internet in my tiny little corner of the world I just want to contribute to making the world a better place for all the little people that come after us you know I always started with all the little girls that came after us because I had a daughter and now I have a son as well and now I just want to try my hardest to do whatever I can to contribute to making the world a better place for all the little people that come after us all the generations that are going to come along and enjoy this beautiful world that we live in after us and the world's a crazy place and there's so much uncertainty and I'm not going to get into it otherwise we'll be going, I'll be putting my tin foil hat on and going down some serious rabbit holes but you know we're not silly, we all can see what's going on in the world and it is a crazy place but you know we just, we get one life and we get one chance to make a really, really good fucking crack out of it and I guess that's what then led me to contact Sam who owns the Bar Xtreme now and say hey if you're not going to use a podcast can I have it back? He didn't even hesitate, he said yeah it's yours, you should have it back, you know you're the one that built it, you're the one that worked so hard I don't take it back, do whatever you want with it so I guess I am telling you all of this now because I have plans for this that is going to rebrand, the photo will change, the name will probably change, a lot of bits and pieces will change, which just won't happen for a couple of months yet but I have some really big plans for this podcast and I know that a lot of you, I've spoken to so many of you that still follow me and still connect with me over the years who have said that I've listened to every single episode which blows my mind because that is hundreds of hours of my voice that you guys have listened to and it's I don't take, like I don't take that lightly because it's so much more than I've listened to. I don't take that lightly because some of those original episodes were really terribly put together you know by way of audio and editing when I just really didn't know what I was doing in the end I just was, fuck it let's just be a one take wonder and I'm not going to edit anything and then you know I just, I really didn't overcomplicate things I kept it so simple so the fact that so many of you'll listen to every single episode really makes my heart happy and I hope that you'll continue to listen, I am going to move away from just interviewing defense and policing applicants and but it will still be a hell of a lot of storytelling and interviews with cool people and sharing my own wisdom because I love this space so much and I can be really unfiltered and uncensored here as opposed to, you know, I'm not going to be able to do that.
Social media where they put beeps over swear words and you know tell you you can't say certain things and social media doesn't push out anything that has fair language in it and you know what like fuck that's me like I'm not going to sit here and apologize for the way that I am I just am the way I am and if you want the most authentic version of me then you know that's what you're going to have to deal with so anyway all that aside I just wanted to put a team of little episode out I'm recording this on my phone with my quartered headphones sitting on my kids Spider-Man bed because it's the room in the house that has the most least ambient noise. My plan is to continue to keep things really simple and I'm really looking forward to coming back into this space so if you are still a subscriber and you are getting the notification that there is an episode out I'm excited to see who's actually around. I'll put in the show notes my current Instagram so you can connect with me there I am also where else am I that's about it I can't adapt with TikTok but I'm a bit useless with it but Instagram is probably the best place to get me so looking forward to coming back and yeah just doing whatever the fuck I want with this space boss still honoring the legacy of TbG because yeah that place will always have my heart as will of you anyway. Looking forward to chatting some more.