David Jackson & Sam Wood, Class of 1998 Fitness entrepreneurs

Lucy Loney | Development Manager

The friendship, warmth and humour shared between “28 by Sam Wood” founder Sam Wood (left) and Australian Life Technologies CEO David Jackson (right) was abundantly clear in their recent Zoom interview, sharing with us the joys of working in a tech start up and how they came to be business partners.

David: We met around Year 7....?

Sam: Around Year 7? It was Year 7!

David: There was an intake of a bunch of people and one of them was Sam. A tall, skinny kid with a big personality. I think even at that time he had aspirations of being a comedian. He was one to keep an eye on. We instantly became extremely good friends. Sam: Part of the bonding came through cricket. It was the tail end of the cricket season and we ended up playing Friends’ cricket together for the next six years including three years in the Firsts. There are six of us that are still incredibly close and five of us were in the cricket team. The other one was Samuel Beltz, the amazing rower. Can’t throw a ball, but pretty impressive athlete. David: Cricket’s actually a great game for friendship forming because you spend a lot of time standing in a field doing absolutely nothing, so you have to talk to each other. Sam: Or if you’re as good at batting as us, a lot of time in the grandstand watching... and doing absolutely nothing!

Since Friends’...

Sam: I discovered a love for fitness in Year 12. I actually got accepted to do Psychology/Law at University and was reading my acceptance letter and thinking to myself ‘I really don’t know what this is and just applied for it because there was a lot of pressure to apply for

something’. So I deferred for a year. I went away to America as an 18 year old, I coached basketball in Chicago. While I was overseas I thought ‘I don’t really want to be in an office, I don’t want to be desk bound, I’m not hugely academic, I need to be around people and if I can combine sport or fitness with that in some way that feels a lot more like a natural path that I would like to follow, something that I’ll be better at and something I’ll enjoy a lot more’. David: I studied Law/Commerce at the University of Tasmania and I accepted a job at (what is now called) PwC, but I took a year off before joining, did a bit of travelling, surfing with friends from Tasmania. I left PwC and joined an investment firm in their private equity business. But I’d always had a desire to run a business, ideally a technology business. I was seeing the amazing things Sam was doing with “28” and an opportunity arose for me to join. Funny how life takes you on these journeys, from us standing in the slips cordon at Friends’ playing cricket to here we are both 40 years old, married with kids, partnering in this business. Sam: I’d always admired David from a business acumen perspective. I’d always had small businesses and whenever I was stuck, or needed a sounding board I’d go to Dave and he was very balanced, very level-headed. I’m a founder through and through, everything’s passion and ideas and whiteboards and brainstorming and I love people and I love fitness and I love helping people. The business grew so quickly and to make sure it grew into long term sustainable success I needed to surround myself with brilliant people and I knew Dave was one of those. Since David came to the business we’ve doubled in size and gone to a whole new level. It’s pretty special to be able to build a business like this and it’s twice as special when you can do it with one of your best friends. David: It was certainly a shift. All the fundamentals I’d learned in the corporate world were certainly relevant, you just do things a slightly different way. Everything you do has an impact on the business. There’s a big level of accountability and responsibility. But we are really the perfect combination because Sam has that entrepreneurial spirit and drive to build something bigger and better than anyone else and forge new paths. Whereas I come from a corporate, structured background. The learning curve was probably steeper than I expected, but it’s been a really healthy process for me.

Sam: David rocked up on his first day here in the office with his jacket on, and his shirt on and his suit pants on and that was on the

Keeping your eyes wide open and having a ‘yes’ attitude to everything is really important. Taking opportunities and giving things a go. Talent and intellect only play part of the role. There’s a lot of quick wins people can have in life just through demonstrating a lot of passion, work ethic, and the right attitude.

Monday. By the Friday he was in his shorts and his thongs and his t-shirt! He’s like… “I’ve made it to tech start-up!” We’ve got table tennis tables and I come to work in my runners. If we’ve got important meetings we’ll look the part but it’s about being comfortable and being happy and getting the balance right.

For those starting out...

David: Keeping your eyes wide open and having a ‘yes’ attitude to everything is really important. Taking opportunities and giving things a go. Talent and intellect only play part of the role. There’s a lot of quick wins people can have in life just through demonstrating a lot of passion, work ethic, and the right attitude. These all sound like very basic things but are actually really powerful. Those softer skills are really important. Sam: As a leaver in 1998 if you said you were going to be an entrepreneur and go into ‘tech’ people would have looked at you as if you were nuts. But if you said that now, people would be much more accepting of it, there are many more formal pathways. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to do. Try as many things and take as many opportunities as you can in life. You always think that everyone else has it worked out and they don’t necessarily. I probably felt a bit lost when I left. I think that was because I hadn’t found myself yet but Friends’ had at least started that for me rather than push me into something or make me think I was something that I wasn’t. I’m really grateful for that. These sliding door moments in life, we don’t even realise they’re upon us until we look back sometimes.