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Life-Sparring Podcast - Round 1: Show Notes

Synopsis:

As much as I was looking forward to diving right into this podcasting adventure, I was also pretty nervous about it. Fortunately, I managed to book an absolute rockstar and professional for Round 1, trail running “heavyweight” Vlad Ixel from Perth, Australia.

So despite my initial shakiness, Round 1 of Life-Sparring is definitely worth your time and provides a lot of inspiration.

Vlad has an inspiring story to tell and is not just a professional trail runner with an insane winning rate; he is also a running and triathlon coach and a fitness influencer with more than 70k followers on Instagram and recently started his own supplement company BIX Hydration.

In our chat, we cover all three of Vlad's careers and what becomes very clear during the interview is that despite Vlad's innate athletic talents, his success is as much a product of his strategic approach.

We cover Vlad’s youth, his short career as a tennis prodigy, how he started trail running aged 25, and why his mindset was probably better suited for trail running than tennis.

Vlad was probably one of the first trail runners in APAC being able to turn pro due to his sponsorship by The North Face Hong Kong. Like most things in Vlad’s running career, this was much less of a coincident than a consequence of his very strategic approach to building his career.

We dive into Vlad’s business as a running coach, his approach to learning new skills, and his strategy for building his personal brand and growing his Instagram account within a bit more of a year from 20,000 to 70,000 followers by posting a steady stream of exercise videos.

Last but not least, we cover Vlad’s newest career as an entrepreneur with BIX Hydration, a supplement company he co-founded with his wife, Silke. Listen, and you will hear how BIX came about and how it is starting a mainly direct to consumer brand during the COVID-19 epidemic, with airfreight rates skyrocketing and shipping services becoming notoriously unreliable.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Vlad’s personal website

Vlad’s Instagram and YouTube Account

BIX Hydration’s website

Vlad’s insane race statistic according to the International Trail Running Association, ITRA (only representing a share of the races Vlad ran and won)

Spar with us and become part of the show! Just drop a message with your comments, hacks, questions, or ideas!

About the Life-Sparring Podcast:

Sparring is an important part of martial arts; it is the reality check of your abilities. As Mike Tyson famously said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Life-Sparring takes the sparring from the ring into real life. Hear Life-Sparring host Fabian Gruber punching above his weight, interviewing top experts in their respective fields, trying to fight (his own) mediocrity one round at a time.

The Life-Sparring podcast is hosted by Fabian Gruber and produced by Thomas Latter.

Intro and Outro beat is produced by Markezi Producer.

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