1300 307 445
TRANSCRIPT
Jody Lowe
This is an ohs.com.au production
Brendan Torazzi
Welcome to Episode 62 of the Australian Health and Safety Business Podcast. I'm Brendan Torazzi, the host of the show and today I'm joined by Jody Lowe from average AF. Now I was asking what the hell is average AF?
Jody Lowe
Average? Everyday it was just the concept of conversation started to, to shock people into having a conversation about what, what, what's written on my shirt. Yeah, the concept was that everybody is sort of determined to through social media to believe that we have to be more than average. And I'm trying to get people to actually believe that being average at everything, which gives you balance is a lot harder than what people believe. So, Tiger Woods, for example, the greatest golfer in the world, not such a great husband still had alcohol problems, by default ends up every day, if because if you don't focus on the balance, you'll come unstuck somewhere along the line. So the conversation starts with average, as most people say, Oh, you're as averages. And we know the F stands for and when you when you go into the app, it sort of says that you get to choose you don't have to be the same as everybody by being average, but you can be average and find everything friendly everything for you and everything Foxy. So if you were to come and ask me what my A F stands on my shirt, I'll tell you it's average and formidable because I'm a bit of a bull in a china shop at work. And, you know, that's, that's my wife was averaging 40. But now she's worked away in her old age back to average and fun. So
Brendan Torazzi
fair enough. So what sort of like, take it you're like, This is a bit of a side hustle for you, or tell us tell us a little bit about God and what you're doing at the moment.
Jody Lowe
So I I grew up I grew up on the hard side of the railway track in a small country town and sitting mining town in central Queensland. It's a very long story, but I grew up probably what I consider a third generation bully. And I basically was in flight mode for a lot of my life that I didn't realize till later in the day, we don't talk socially about it. We don't talk enough and family about family history and problems. So my defense for flight mode instead of flight mode, or its flight mode, so I just attacked everything, my entire life. When I get in the morning and found a home for my sarcasm and my quick wittedness, I realized that, you know, all of these problems were going to catch up to me sooner or later. And they did when I went into a management position. So I sort of got to a point where I was, I wouldn't call myself suicidal, but I look at suicide look and look at prostitution, I know that it's an option, I just have never been desperate enough to take it up. So I realized I have four beautiful daughters. And now we're getting to a critical point of worrying about me, and I didn't want to pass on the bad family traits to family history. So I dive into it a bit more. Once I started uncovering that sort of stuff, I realized that I needed to do more fun for my family. So I started documenting my journey back from the dark place, just through YouTube videos, and found that resonated well with a lot of my co workers. So I turned it into a bit of a safety model for for how I trained frontline leaders who, you know, a supervisor in mining used to just be the guy that was best for putting bolt up in the roof. Now they are now they gotta be inclusive and diverse. I've got to be educated on you know. What do you say? Political correctness, they've got to be mentally stable themselves, they've got to handle the mental stability of others, they've got to be on target under budget, safety, and they are legally liable. So
Brendan Torazzi
to figure out it's quite a big responsibility isn't step up?
Jody Lowe
Yeah, it is. It's a lot for people to take on. And it's, it's really, it's really causing a lot of grief in minds around you know, mental health. You know, there were a lot of seven, seven losses away from their families. So all I've basically done is tried to use my journey. I'm not, I'm not a professional at any level. So I just try and use my journey is to let people draw some parallels from it. Yeah, so and so on. So on site, I worked seven and 705. And two, depending on what they need. On site, I spend my days teaching uneducated people the best way to get the most out of legislation to understand how to use the system to get safe and productive results without having to be overruled by the intellectual to leadership, you know, the management levels that have these big degrees and fancy names and titles. To keep them into check. I work with multiple teams in the inclusion and diversity teams, the mental health teams, to make sure that everybody that anybody could get in trouble for or get pushed back around they understand so that if they make a decision on site that's on them if they if they are aware of what What it means to be female or indigenous on a site, and they make the decision that's on them at least they've had the opportunity and off site as a side hustle, I started the average AF app to So there's five principles, principles and what are the spiritual, physical, intellectual, financial and emotional I think of the five pillars of good wellness for people. The one thing that I can say that I'm a professional at is playing sport. And because I played every single competition sport there is in Australia at some time during my loss, and I noticed that once my body started declining, my mental health started declining. I drank more because of it. So yeah, I created the app most based around all these transports there's over over 130 Short version of sports on there that that community and friends and teams and get people back at the site for you got one minute to spare, you can do it. You got to go to the gym, you can do it. Golf, cricket, football, soccer, whatever it is. So
Brendan Torazzi
that's the physical pillar, I take it. That's right. And so give me give me an example of auto I like AFL, you got AFL on there.
Jody Lowe
Yeah. So there's banana Bender, you've got banana bend and kicks, you've got the poster plugger, which is just a straight out front kick, you've got the tram clip from clear. They're all you know, all names that are made up myself. I'm pretty good at the clickbait of bullshit that goes with, you know, Queensland mining, but, you know, I'm an Aussie by heart. So yeah, so you've got all sorts of different types. Every single you know, there's a there's a Frisbee competition. There's a there's a mono competition. There's, there's plenty of gym games, what the fundamentals of it was, was there's apps out there like Strava that are just for people that run all the time. There's rolling apps, there's writing apps, and I said, What about some people like me, God is I literally am the definition of average. I always joke that if you looked it up in the dictionary and find a picture of me and there because I've played probably be great at every single sport in the world never been accepted. Never been a success at anything on a good sportsman. But I'm highly competitive with myself, but just never I've never done anything with it. So I'm not looking at people like me, you know.
Brendan Torazzi
So that sort of the some of like, all these things being average at actually makes you excellent. In a way, that's not like a total all rounder, you can do a little bit of everything, but a master of you must be master of nothing in particular, but a generalist Is that is that would would that be fair to say God or?
Jody Lowe
Yeah, it is, and, and the dog, it all goes back to what Sasha or maybe would have you believe to that, you know, by by 50, you still got to have ABS, you know, but 60 shouldn't have any wrinkles. And if you do three days online, you should be a millionaire, you know, street online course, you should be a millionaire. So everything sort of, you know, when we used to have to look at the Joneses, when we were younger, we only sort of looked in our vision to our neighbors, and that Mr. Jones on the right had a new car, we might have to get a new car. And if you know Bill on the left had a had a nice lawn, we might have to mow your yard a bit more than we wanted to. But the window of social media now has us seeing the life of 1000 neighbors a day. And every one of them just for that one picture is a feature of them on holiday on a new car on, you know, doing something fantastic. So it's a constant, daily reminder that we're not doing as much as we should be with our life. And we're not where we should be and when you know. And that's the sort of thing that I sort of thought, well listen, social media is not going away, let's but let's use it in a in a more constructive way that the communication between me and you, for example, we live in different places, Brendan, so you might be a golfer, and I might be a darts player. But that doesn't mean we can't compete against each other as friends. So you just have to go in there and pick 10 games that suited to your physical capabilities. It doesn't care about your you know, your sex, your your gender, your age, your height, your weight. It is the best 10 games that makes you an average sports person, Brandon verse, The Best 10 Game to the iron. And at the end, it calculates a score. And we will see who's the most average as when it comes down.
Brendan Torazzi
That's awesome. So can you so that's the that's a physical pillow. You mentioned a few other so we've got the spiritual pillar. Tell us a little bit about what's in that.
Jody Lowe
Yeah. So the the website came off the back of it. And I built it basically as a rewards type program for mining in any sort of business houses to a lot of them have post post months success, they give you a reward for getting past the month when and they call that a lagging indicator. So if you've got lucky for the month, and we don't really know the result of getting lucky other than we didn't hurt anyone would give you a $50 voucher. So I set up the website. It's called the wow factor. So working on wellness factor. So wow factor points are things that you achieve every time you do something in the app to get some points and the points were designed to give you discounts inside of the website for any of the pillars so spiritually, you know what I'm trying to get out I'm trying to build it to get it's not finished. I'm trying to get people on board to, if you're a yoga instructor, if you're a tarot card reader, if you're any of those things that would like to give offer discounts to people, they go in, they use that they get well points, and they can use that for discounts on your local business. If you're, you know, intellectually, if you're a bookshop, podcast, that anything that will help people, you know, a training facilitator, that anything that helps people keep growing intellectually, you get, you get listed onto the website. Financially, you know, brokers, people that work for people that are looking to help, and emotionally, you know, an outlet for you know, men's and women's clubs, you know, country Women's Association, it doesn't really matter what you are, it's, it's where you align yourself, you get listed under that, that heading. And basically, it's just designed to have small business and small communities, you can if you just focus in on what your small communities and your small group of friends, you can look at yourself in the app, for example, and see how you're going to get into a 10 friends. Or you can go right out to Australia and see how you're going against the rest of the country. But you can be you can be as bigger as little get invested into others. And but the point was no money. You know, I mean, we've got, the Indians had helped me build this app through an Australian company. I often ask them why they weren't going outside and playing it. They loved the idea. They really were invested in it, but they weren't going outside and playing. And I said to him, why aren't you and he said, Daddy, we we don't have what you have in Australia. But again, in our farming towns, we just walk roof to roof because even the roadways aren't big enough to drive a car or a cart. There is the only time that we're allowed to bid anytime we can play cricket, say with our children, as we get up early enough, we can get to the local store. And there's no car parks there at four o'clock in the morning. So that's the only place big enough that they can actually hit a cricket ball without you know, without hitting a wall instantly. So there is no parks. There's no spare land. And that's what you know, I grew up growing up out here where there's every weekend, there's 27,000 square meters of green grass Park, I didn't get used anymore. Kids are at home thumb or thumb around. And I just wanted people to get back to what was what was true values of Australia. I want people to respect the small businesses in their community. I want people to look after their wellness. Because if we talk about zero harm work all the time, and there was I just don't believe that you can come to work in the mining industry and work it's 30 An hour shift. If you haven't slept well eaten well, prior to it, if you haven't traveled well if you feel problems at home with your, your family. So I'm trying to keep everyone that just a nice balance all the way all the way through because I struggled I struggled with that balance. And the more I lost the thing that I always prided myself on was my sport and fun. The more I dive into work and work became more competition and work then then that once that toxic environment comes in of work being your competition, it's like you see other workmates as opponents and enemies. So you know, I'm trying to unwind everything and get everyone to calm down, slow down and just be you know, holistically a much better society.
Brendan Torazzi
You know, what, so what age were you when you sort of came to this realization that maybe things are a little bit out of balance and needed to address it.
Jody Lowe
So I hit 3033 beautiful daughters, my own small subdivision company, you know, had a couple of million dollars where the property I swapped around drinking coffee, down on the Murray River, looking at property investments. So you know, really, you can really get your head up in the clouds or up your ass, whichever you'd like to say and about thinking that you, you know, you could turn to gold. And in the space of four years, I've lost my stepfather who was my only father figure stepfather grandfather relationship, and then dropped about $400,000 into a business business for the last end of it. So I had a massive breakdown with mental health anxiety and depression but because of that trained fight mode in me, I never missed a day at work. I just became harder to work with and harder to live with. You know, I just grounded out for eight years thinking that there was something wrong with me until I finally spoke to my mom a bit about about five years in she sort of told me that there's a family history of mental health and that maybe an uncle committed suicide true out with alcohol. One uncle had given up alcohol when I was an alcoholic three aunties were on metal. And we were on antidepressants and on what the hell are you talking about? I did not know this. It is Oh, yeah, it was just not discussed. Have you ever thought about getting all the low family together and taking them to one doctor and blood tests isn't all that common element is, you know, chromosome Z and stuff so
Brendan Torazzi
so they have like I dabbled a little bit in astrology over the years and I had like a similar family history where I had like a we had mental illness and our family and we had also had like a history of kind of like failed entrepreneurs. And it sounds to me like your story is like you've broken the chain, you've broken this generational chain by the history of your family going over and over and you've you're the one that said Stop Enough is enough. And you
Jody Lowe
that's now that's, that's my goal. I don't care. Like my my saying to everybody is when we have a problem as I don't care necessarily how we got here, I just want to make sure we're not there in six months, six years time. Yeah, I have four daughters who are very likely with the rate of, you know, I've had four kids who their mother has had five kids, my my mum was one of seven, my stepdad was one of 17, where there's a potential with my four daughters for them to turn into at least 12. And if I was to send my problem into 12 people and 12 into 12, it's not going to take you know, when you think about how many generations we are away from World War Two, and how many mental mental health problems haven't been spoken about, it's not hard to believe that we're having all these mental health issues at the moment, when we're two generations away from the from something that would be perceived as a threat that we haven't dealt with. So there's no threat anymore. But we still have that feeling of it. And it's probably mostly from the home. So my first goal was to clean my own backyard, Yara. Video that through my videos, and if one person, if one person draws parallels out of it, you know, that's great. And I've helped a lot of people, but my main goal is on the mining side is to also, you know, I was successful with a team that I had, I had 100 people under me, the last one that I worked out, we had over 500,000 hours safe, were 4 million under budget two years in a row, six weeks in front of schedule, and we had the best sort of discipline team for training. It was it was hard, and you know, I'm always the tip of the spear that gets worn down by having to hold people accountable for the standards, but but the goal is that they go home to their family safe, then then it's then it's worth it. And the mining industry particularly needs to, you know, get away from these pre populated safety tools, and needs to come back to the people like myself who come from the floor and understand what's the real story. You know, not these, not these corporate, corporate, I've got 17 certificates and things, you know, behind it, and just start sort of getting back to some real fundamental, just face to face values. That's, that's sort of where I am.
Brendan Torazzi
But also, it sounds like, you know, working under that team environment is just like, it's a culture of winning really isn't like you got you saying about your sporting prowess and love love of a competition. It's like, I mean, that would be incredible to be part of that team. Because all the all the things, all the things that you've achieved, right, so you, you, you just have a must have a huge amount of satisfaction.
Jody Lowe
Yeah, I did. But they now the management team over there nearly broke me. But if I'm honest, like I left, I left there a mess, you know, like I was, I was, by the time to two and a half years ago, I couldn't stop my hand shaking from stress. You know, when I when I was really but but and I blamed you know, blamed them for them bullying me and pushing on me and not being not following their own legislation and not following the rules and that sort of stuff. But But what I had to do was, I had to realize that they are what they are, and that is their problem. And my wife always says to me, someone's reaction to you is their problem, how you react to people is yours. And so I realized that I talked a lot on my, on my blog, and my videos that I do about the voice in your head. And most of that talk is always about that voice of self doubt that sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, the sweet nothings, it stops you from doing everything. And it's usually not your voice. And once you identify who that voice is, whether they're still with you or not, you know, you can really start to grow in yourself and have faith in yourself that that that self doubt isn't going to, you know, keep making you feel sick and anxious and worrying. So I started focusing on me, and I stopped worrying about them while I left that mine been gone for a year now and you know, just sort of trying to take large large breaths. But yeah, now we've worked with some really I've had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people. We've had some really good initiative started from ground up we have a we started a program at the BMA mines in Morin bar. So they now have funding for for free barber shops in their camps on a Monday and Tuesday we fly a barber we follow barbers down from the Gulf Coast to give free haircuts for men's mental health. And because a young fella said to me one day well listen, every time someone sits in my barber chair, a bikes just tell you a whole life story. That seems to be a better place for them. Then, yeah, and then a couch so We call it the barber shear. It's not just here we care. And, yeah, and yeah, so we've got funding or PMI for full full year with that, that round the clock,
Brendan Torazzi
and is that just for that particular one site or you got other mines that are able to drop in?
Jody Lowe
Now there's four, there's four camps and that services for five more, actually, for five or six mines in a range of, you know, everybody from a cleaner to a cleaner to a miner driver can or you know, dragline operator can can access that. So,
Brendan Torazzi
how awesome is that? That must be a bit of buzz around the workplace. Yeah, it's,
Jody Lowe
it's fantastic. It really is, you know, like to see the people there and to hear the feedback from it, and the smiles and the happiness that come from just being able to live a little bit of a normality with your life or your way from your family from seven days a week, and just just starting the conversation, so many people don't understand what the anxiety even is because of anxiety, in my experience can manifest itself in so many different ways. One day, it could be a headache one day, it could be, you know, one day, it could be short of breath one day, it can be a shoulder pain one day, it can be just irritability, you know, I mean, so people just don't understand what's going on. So I try and talk about it as often as I can. I had a young fella come to me one day, and he was that 22 year old who just recently lost his cousin. And he came to me and he said, God, I've listened to you for six months talk about this stuff. And I like it. I like what you're trying to do. And I know that most people just completely and utterly disregard you for what you can talk consistently talk about it. And it's like, Oh, here he goes again. And he said, but I've always listened to you because I wanted to show respect to you. So but and I never understood why you kept going with so people say little people, and he said, but today I thought you were talking directly to me, because I needed it. And I didn't think there was anyone else in the room. He said, so now I understand why you do it every day. So that's why I do it every day, because there's always one person that needs it. You know? And I said, and he said, Well, what do you want from me? And I said, Well, so far in the last three months, I've had five people that have come to me and said it's dramatically helped me talking about it. So I asked you to pay it forward with five people. Yeah, that's an awesome, discount four and five. So we were just started talking recently with the unions about the type five that having those five people in your life that you consider people that you can't do without outside your family, your friends, because I said the problem with social media is all of your friends, if you just like a post, or you know, send them a little message or something like that, that's checked in no worries. And we've got so many friends these days that we really aren't spending the quality time we need with our tight five. So that five is the people that you should be able to drop everything for giving me a last all the shirt on your back, you met last mouthful of food or take on their kids who have an accident happen. They're the five people that you are you might have the same five people that they have in the same five people. But as long as you feel that way about them, you're always gonna look after him. And because you're so close to him, you're going to notice the difference if something changes, and you're going to have the time to spend a day with him if something changes. Yeah, and it's not going to be I'm so sorry. I'm so busy because I really need money before I need friends that I can't give you a kind of give you my Saturday. Yeah, and that's and that's why I was trying to leave out but we used to play sport every Saturday we put new transport all day long. And now I can't get people to waste five hours of game of golf too busy. So I invented it. I invented the excuse. Something to get rid of the excuse cool. Brennan this afternoon. Would you like to play golf now? I'm too busy. Brennan would you like to come and have a planning competition with me it's called the Roland hole and it's up in competition. And you know, the the chip and dip is the 100 meter chip and competition you know so all of these silly names the three point shootout was called the gays don't but they said that are pushing it too far. But I'm like it scared you frickin gays. He was like the greatest greatest BMA like you're pushing the too far. And I'm like, sure enough.
Brendan Torazzi
So. So what's the so how does the app work? It's Is it free to download or what?
Jody Lowe
Yeah, it's free. It's free. And it's difficult because as you can tell this conversation, my mind is reasonably complex. And I have a lot going on. Simultaneously. It's it's probably too complex. It's one of the one of the ladies that was involved with helping me with it said that there's no nobody has ever been able to take a virtual digital app and turn it into turn it into actually a physical physical thing. So basically, you download the app. So let's let's say you're working your circle cup of friends. Let's say your five your top five, five friends. You will download the app. You start to rises to Razzies champions. Yeah, you community, make your own community name or whatever you want. And boy, your five friends can do that community. Yeah, then you go into the five the five categories so there's cricket, kick it rip it. Aim it shoot it again. Remember it's been a while since have sparked spoke about but basically If you go in there, you're supposed to pick two games out of each category to get your final 10. To play the games could be there's a threat, anything from 3k, walk to netball shoot out to tennis back in, get your scores rolling, you can even click against each other. You can see how he's going against each other. And once you get your 10 scores, it becomes your average day at school and you're on your homepage. The problem is with it most people just don't have the delayed gratification for anything. So what I'm finding is five or six games in their life, you know, really want that sugar rush. You know, let me get let me get back to Candy Crush with every time I complete a screen it goes. Yeah.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. That's cool. All right. Well, look, we're at the end of the interview. Now, God if people want to, how's the best way to download the app? Or do they would they go to the website first? Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, that's what
Jody Lowe
I had. I used to fund it myself on a monthly basis that when I was funding the prizes, it was driving enough people to sort of keep it moving and growing. But then yeah, soon as I sort of stopped, when I, when I was supposed to leave are forced to flee BMA because I couldn't get a job. So I had to move on, all my work sort of fell fell in the heat. And that's why I've just started getting to go on again, now that a friend of mine that's not worried about it. So that as soon as I started paying that, for those funds, that the numbers just died off and just stopped. And I didn't have any time for it. So I'm sort of looking for, for corporate belief. It's a free app, the websites there, I tried to I tried to differentiate between the app and the website because as soon as people want to hear wellbeing or mental health, it's something that takes time to get inside the head. I want people that don't think they need to fit into use it to just use it for fun. And that that inadvertently helps them with this over here. Yeah, if they haven't traveled, they can go to the website. So everyday f.com is a website that's got the links for all of it there. It's about the journey, the story, it's got my blogs, it's also got links to the Facebook page, the YouTube videos, and any anywhere that you'd like to follow me. You get some weird, you get some weird videos on Tiktok to So
Brendan Torazzi
alright, God that's, that sounds amazing the work that you've put into this up until now and thanks very much for coming on the show today.
Jody Lowe
Great time. It was great. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
You've been listening to an ihs.com.au production.
Brendan Torazzi
I hope you've been enjoying listening to the podcast if you are. It'd be great if you could help us out by leaving us a review and sharing this with friends and colleagues.