Getting up early even before the sun rises is not only a healthy daily habit. Sometimes, it can pave the way to a profound transformation and turn your entire life around. This is exactly what Trent Knox experienced: he got rid of his substance abuse by waking up at 3:30 in the morning every single day. Joining Daniel Weinberg, he opens up about his journey to sobriety, as well as the role of mindfulness, meditation, and community support in eliminating his self-destructive ways. Trent also shares how he now guides other people to come together and adopt an active lifestyle like him through his 440 Run Club.
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Trent Knox
On the show, we have Trent Knox from the 440 Club. I’m very excited about the conversation. We’re going to hear about what it’s like to wake up at 3:30 in the morning on a daily basis and how that can get you back to a place where you need to be. He’s going to talk about community. He’s going to talk about himself, his battle against alcohol, and substance abuse, and maybe talk to us a little bit about the tools that we can all use to overcome life’s challenges and what our true potential is. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I’m looking forward to Trent Knox.
Trent Knox, so good to have you on the show. Welcome.
Thanks, Daniel. It’s good to see you, mate.
Where are you at the moment?
Bondi, Australia. It’s 5:00 PM. It’s probably not relevant right now, but it’s a beautiful sunny day. The weather has cleared down. We’ve had about a week of rain and the sun is back out, the surf is up, and we’re almost at the end of the day on a Tuesday.
Your sleep time is?
I’ve been a bit slack lately. The goal is to be in bed by 8:00 tonight. I’ll be in bed in the next three hours.
At 8:00 at night, you go to bed. Until what?
The first alarm is 3:30 and I’m out of bed by 3:50.
There are not many people on the planet doing that routine.
Probably the amount of people I’d bump into when I get down to the beach at about 4:00 is a handful on a busy morning.
Growing Up And Struggling With Childhood Trauma
Let’s start from the beginning. How did you get to wake up at 3:30 in the morning every day and change your life around? Where did you grow up?
I grew up in South Coogee. I was originally born down in the Cronulla area, Shire in Sylvania. My mom was born in Paddington, My dad was born in Glebe. They bought the first house there but we quickly moved. I think I was about one when we moved to Coogee. I grew up there. I went to local schools here for a bit, then Trinity Grammar Private Boys School. I grew up in North Bondi Surf Club. It originally started as the Coogee Surf Club. I spent most of my years at North Bondi competing in surf life-saving, swimming pool paddling, and Ironman events. I played footy rugby union at school, but on Sundays, I played league for a couple of years. I had dabbled in most sports growing up.
You’re a very active, athletic, and sporty-fit young buck.
My old man was a rugby league player. He played a couple of seasons for South and Newtown Jets back when that was around. I guess sport was in the family. My dad thought it was a good vehicle to keep us out of trouble. That was a driver. He had a lot of trouble growing up. That was part of his motivation. Get us into the sport to get us off the streets.
Career-wise, even post-schooling, you jumped into what?
A bit of hospitality when I got out of school, and then I dived into real estate. I spent some time in the city, and then went into project marketing, selling around inner city areas. I ended up landing with McGrath Real Estate. I worked with John for a number of years and came home. I was selling around where I grew up in South Coogee and Maroubra coastal areas there. I spent probably 15 or 16 years at the company.
That’s a serious career.
It was. It was something that I was passionate about for a very long time. I enjoyed it. I wanted to work in an industry where I wasn’t tied down to an office. I got to be out and about looking at beautiful properties. I got to work with people and families. I was always interested in construction, architecture, and design. It served the purpose for a long time.
They’re still lifelong friends. I learned a lot about people, the psychology of people, buying and selling, negotiations, and how we behave. I learned a lot of valuable life lessons. In the end, real estate wasn’t for me. It chewed me up and spat me out. I think it’s the competitiveness and the nature of the selling industry. Looking back on it now, I had an obsession with sneakers for a long time, like running shoes, Nike, and stuff. I used to collect them.
I remember being in real estate and I was thinking about wanting to end up in a career where I’m wearing sneakers all the time. I used to say it as a joke. Funny enough, now I’ve realized that agents are all wearing sneakers and it changed the whole look. Looking back on it, there was a sign there saying, “You’re not going to be in this industry forever.” Here I am involved with a community-run club, which has quite a substantial presence now.
As you get older and your relationships are accumulating, you have to deal with then. Otherwise, you will be left with a messy life with so many loose ends. Share on XBefore we get there, you said it chewed you up and spat you out. When you say that, can you elaborate?
I wasn’t prepared and it’s not just the real estate industry. When you’re in a selling industry, there are deals, you’re negotiating, you’re pounding the pavement, you’re selling yourself, you’re selling a product, and there’s a lot of rejection that’s attached to that. It’s a roller coaster. Knowing what I know now, you have to be balanced. You have to live a balanced life. A lot of it is so competitive that all you think about is winning the next listing, beating your competitor, and being number one in your office. You’re constantly proving yourself and it’s all on a scoreboard. You’re constantly being measured.
It’s very public. It’s putting a name on the listings.
People get attention. Sometimes people like you, and then they don’t like you. Sometimes you never find out why they like you or they don’t like you. We take it personally. Knowing what I know now, you have to be prepared in any industry like that on how to deal with rejection, and how to look after yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually. What you do externally from work is important like how you wake up every day, how you end your day, the people you spend time with, who were your mentors, and how you disconnect. I didn’t have that structure.
Did you deal with rejection, challenges, and stress? What did you do?
I’d go and punch the shit out of a boxing bag. I’d go and run 10K as fast as I could. I’d go and lift heavy weights. I’d go third big waves or I’d go out and have a truckload of booze. Stay out all night. That could be having a shitty week or having a good week. You got to celebrate or commiserate because you’re trying to numb yourself. It’s a fast way of doing it rather than going what are three other things that are better than doing that? Mine could be going and having a sauna and a plunge with a mate. Mine could be going for a walk with your mate or a surf. It could be going home and having a nice warm shower and a meal and going to bed.
Within that, you have to sit with yourself. I didn’t have the ability to sit with myself and slow down and go, “Everything is going to be okay. You’ve had a shitty day. Tomorrow’s a new day.” I didn’t have that dialogue and I didn’t have someone saying, “I’ll grab you by the arms. You’re doing okay. Don’t worry.” We’ll talk about it today but that’s a male thing, not sharing and opening up and sharing with your peers what I’m struggling with. I’m struggling with this industry, the rejection, when you’re winning, and when you’re not winning. You can have the best week and then have the worst week.
There’s a lot of bravado there. It got to look like you’re in control and you’re strong and you’re like, “What’s up?”
I wanted to be successful for my family, my peers, my brother, and all that stuff. You go and do all of that. You don’t realize that you’re absorbing stress and you’re getting so full of stress and so tense and you don’t have an outlet for excessive stuff. Over time, I’ve proven it. I’ve seen other people prove it. It’s not sustainable. Eventually, you’d break down.
Dealing With Self-Destruction And Substance Abuse
How long would you say the period of you using other vices to take care of it? Just very common like having a drink after work or doing some drugs on the weekend. It’s all recreational and all good fun with your buddies. As you said, celebrating and commiserating. How long would you say that period went on for you if you reflect on it?
I’d call it the period where I would deem it was manageable and under control because I was still turning out for work. I think it’s a period that lasted for 6 to 8 years where I was making good money. My relationships with girls were rubbish.
How would you describe it?
I wasn’t being transparent in the relationship to how I was feeling. I was tucking it all under a carpet and it’s something that in the last few years, I’ve had to open up and share it. You’re not there present in the relationship. You think you are and then you do all this good stuff. All of a sudden, you go on a big night without any reason. You have a partner looking for you and you hit the self-destruct button. You’re not being honest. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m struggling. I’m struggling with everything. I didn’t know what was happening. I had a lot of childhood trauma that was sitting beneath the surface.
I started becoming successful in what I was doing and I became good at what I was doing because I enjoyed it. I spent time with good people. I didn’t realize it was taking a piece of my soul at the same time. There was an underlying unhappiness and I always felt that I had a lot of self-worth. I was always questioning, “Do I deserve this? Am I a good person?” The big thing was I was a people pleaser. I was always worried about what other people thought and I was looking for validation, which I know now doesn’t matter as long as I can validate myself. I love myself and I’m happy with myself and I’m proud of myself. I’m 45 and in the first 40 years of my life, I was seeking approval from everyone else.
Are you saying that came from the childhood trauma?
I think it would be attributed to it. Growing up, I didn’t know where I fit or who I was. I think that when you don’t know that and you’re not steered in that direction like you can get your mentor in that way, you spend most of your time running around in circles and trying to figure it out.
You’re disconnected from yourself.
You’re like a pinball machine bouncing off a wall. I’ll try it this week and that week and I’ll try that. You’re constantly thinking that people care. What I realized is people have got their own shit going on and they don’t care as much as you think. If I had the ability to get on with it and do what was working for me, get honest with myself, and seek the right help, it might have been a different story, but I found it later in life. The most important relationship I have today is with me.
Women are more open to trying new things. They do not care about being the fittest or fastest and being at the back or the front. Share on XBack then, hence why the burnout and the self-destruction were because I didn’t value myself enough and I didn’t have that relationship with myself to go, “I’m not traveling well. I need to do something about it.” I was under the impression that it’ll fix itself at some point. It will get there unless you’re prepared to do the work.
Do you think you were consciously pressing the self-destruct button? When you got into that mode, if you reflect, were you going, “Let’s fucking go for it. Fuck it?”
No. I think in the early years, I was working well. My brand was building. Good people were around me always. I’ve been lucky with that. You have a night out and you get home at 1:00 or 2:00. You get up the next day. You get on with it and you turn up for work on Monday. You do it all. There was nothing aggressive or abusive about that. I started making more money. Internally, if I think about it now, there was stress starting to come to the surface and I didn’t have any tools to cope with it. Relationships weren’t working. The more money I was making, the more destruction.
More destruction?
Yeah, I had access to more things. Also, as you’re getting older and relationships are accumulating and life’s accumulating, if you’re not dealing with it all and ending a relationship and ending it on good terms and working on that, the mess accumulated. It’s noisy and it’s uncomfortable and you got all these loose ends. All of a sudden, the nights get bigger and the relationships get worse. You’re not holding onto a relationship and you’re blaming them. You have no ability to look at yourself and go, “You’re the problem, not everyone else.” I need to do something about it. I had a lot of people trying to help me.
You did? I want to ask about that too. People start saying, “Trent, I think you need to pull up and take it a little bit easier.”
There were people trying to help me who didn’t understand it. I guess the way they approached it would trigger me. Looking back now, they were doing their best. but then I had other people who understood me. They were very patient with me, and I learned now that all you can do is have patience and empathy for people going through it. I wasn’t getting it. The penny wasn’t dropping.
Looking back on it, I was terrified to look at myself and terrified to try and find out what was going on, what was the deeper issue. I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t know how bad things were. I didn’t know the trauma that I felt was there. I didn’t know what it was going to feel like when I started dealing with it. I was terrified to ask for help.
I would go to bed and I was hoping I’d wake up and it was all resolved on its own. With all of that, things get worse if you’re not dealing with it and getting help. It’s like cancer. It grows and it grows. For some people, they don’t make it out. It gets so dark for them and they never see the light. I think I was very lucky. I say that there was a higher power. They’re far greater than me. They wanted to keep me around for a bit longer. I’ve always questioned it. The destruction got worse and it got to a point for me where either you do something or you’re not going to last much longer.
The Last Episode And The First Step Towards Change
Give us that final episode of whatever happened and you went, “I’m done. I have to change it.”
It was in 2020. It was in June and lockdown.
This is COVID.
It was during COVID and we’ll talk about it. The Run Club had been existing. Over the last 3 or 4 years leading into this last episode, there were distances between the benders that I was having. I was never a daily drinker. That was my drinking history. I would have stayed for alcohol and drugs for periods of time and thrown myself into training and projects and whatever. At the run club I was going to, I was training people. Again, I wasn’t sharing anything with anyone. Therefore, no one knew how to help me. What was happening was the benders became sitting more at home on my own, drinking and taking drugs on my own. There was no fun in it. There was no pleasure like when you were at a dance party or a concert. It was at home on my own and then I switched it down.
This is not an enjoyable experience then.
I was trying to numb myself. I was trying to escape how I was feeling, the discomfort I was sitting in at that time, and over the years leading into it. It was my way of escape. The problem was when I picked up a drink, I’d always say to myself, “Have a couple of drinks.” Every time, I would then pick up a drug, cocaine. If I picked up a drug, I’d say, “You can only have a certain amount and go to bed by midnight.” I would go over the midnight period every time. It was like clockwork. It would happen and I had no control over it.
My final episode was sitting on my own on a Saturday night at home. Everyone was out. Everyone was doing their own thing. No one knew what I was doing, which is fine. I was left to my own devices and then sitting at home Saturday night, then I was up all day Sunday in my room, still drinking, still taking drugs. They finished at 2:00 AM on the Monday morning.
I had to get up at 4:00, I had to do a live, I had to do my coffee club. I held it together. I don’t know how. I slept all day that day. During the course of that day and how I felt that morning, I knew that I was in such a dark place. I knew I was done. I knew that I couldn’t do this anymore. I knew that I didn’t have another one of those left in me. I had people looking for me over the course of the weekend and stuff. I was leaving breadcrumbs to people and not giving away too much. People knew what I was doing. The patterns were there.
Were you ashamed to expose yourself to those people around you?
Beyond ashamed, embarrassed, full of anxiety. I didn’t know where to start, what to say, or how to do it. A mate of mine was looking for me and got hold of me at night and said, “We have to talk tomorrow.” I said, “I know.” I was going at that conversation and it caught me defeated. I didn’t know what the answer was. I didn’t know what I was going to do. All I knew was I couldn’t do what I did on that weekend again because it would have killed me if I did it again. I sat in a cafe in Bondi and he got honest with me. He said, “I’m worried about you. You go from being the happiest bloke in the world, you’re down running with people, you’re encouraging and motivating. You’re doing all this great stuff and it’s awesome.”
That’s the irony of it as well. You started your run club, which you’ll talk about. You were being a role model for other people on how to live a healthy, balanced, fit, and embrace life. Meanwhile, you’re smashing yourself on your own in a dark place unbeknownst to the world.
Complete fraud and it was nuts. We sat in this cafe and he told me how he was feeling about it all. He turned around and said, “Mate, look what can I do? What do you want me to do? How do I help?” I looked at him and then I had this moment. It’s like a lightning bolt moment. I looked at him and said, “Mate, there’s nothing you can do.” I laughed. I said, “This is entirely up to me. This is on me. I have to take the first step.” He’s like, “Yeah.” I said, “You can be my friend and you can be supportive but this is on me now.”
I stood up at the table and said, “Mate, I have to go.” He’s like, “Where are you going?” It was 11:45. I said, “There’s an AA meeting up the road. I’m going to go and walk in there.” I took myself up to Bronte Road up at Waverley Oval. I walked in there. I saw a heap of familiar faces that I probably saw eight years ago when I was in the room. They were still in there. They were sober. I sat my ass down and I started listening.
How was that feeling walking into your first AA meeting?
I saw people I knew, so I was embarrassed. I was like, “Now I have to explain myself.” I sat down and said to myself, “Just sit there, shut your mouth.” I started hearing all these stories and they were familiar from ones I’d heard from the same people. For the first time, I could hear their stories. I’m like, “I get it.” There are similarities in their stories to the way I was living my life. At that moment, I realized that I wasn’t pioneering my madness. I thought for years that I’m going through this and there’s no way on earth anyone is going through what I’m going through, so I’m not going to talk about it.
I went, “I’m not pioneering my madness, other people have been there. If other people have been there, then maybe they can guide me through my madness.” I spent the next 90 days doing a meeting a day. I went back to my psychologist. I reckon about four days later, my business partner at the time, Todd, there’s a bit of tough love there. I was listening. I was prepared to do whatever people told me to do. He said, “I’m worried about you doing the morning live chats. I think it’s a lot of responsibility. It’s a lot of pressure. I don’t think you should do it.”
My response was for the first time I said, “No, I don’t disagree with you but give me a few days to think about it.” He said, “I’ll give you three days.” On the third day, I was sitting back in the same cafe and I was pretty down and thinking, “How am I going to get through this? How’s it going to work? What does it look like?” My head was buzzing.” I was looking at the table. I always believe that what I’ve created with the 440 is the ability to do something amazing beyond, and whatever that looks like.
I thought, “If I give this all away and I do everything within my power, never touch a drink and drug again and get to the bottom of whatever is going on with me and deal with all the trauma, get all the help, throw everything into this, I believe it could be something amazing.” That was option A. Option B was I said, “If you go and do all the suggested things, get clean, sort your shit out, if it gets to a point you feel comfortable and you feel like picking up a drink again, and you can do that.” All I could see was the 440 burning down in flames.
Creating And Leading The 440 Club
You’re talking about the 440. The audience has no idea about what the 440 is yet. It’s a big part of your life. It’s a lot of impact on a lot of people. Why don’t you introduce the 440 Club because it’s super important, and then how that helped you bring you to where you are today?
The 440 is a run club. We’ll be turning nine this year in June. It’s down at Bronte Beach. For people who are familiar with Bronte, there’s now the car park, which is the old tram line. The old Bronte tram used to run up and drive up there back in the day. I guess nine and a half years ago or nine years ago now, I made a bunch of mates. We’re doing a lot of running, surfing, and half marathons. We took a track session, which was ten 400s. We went and measured the hill and the hill was 440 meters to the top.
We said, “Why don’t we go down there and sprint to the top and walk back?” We used to go down at 5:00 AM on a Saturday before work and before what we had to do. Maybe anywhere between 2 to 6 of us. We did it for about 3 to 6 months. We all got super fit, super fast. We were running the fastest time we could. Going back then, my mental health wasn’t great. I was in and out. I probably had a bit more control. I had my drink, but it was probably starting to get worse.
That’s the crazy part. You’re getting up in the morning and you’re super fit. At the same time, you’re smashing your body.
It’s mental because I thought I could do it. I thought that was normal. I’ve seen other people do it and I thought maybe that’s the yin and the yang and that was my understanding. The boys dropped off doing the Saturdays and there’s something within me going, “I think you should keep doing this. I think you should keep turning up on Saturday. It’s accountability. It’ll keep you out of trouble on a Friday,” so I did.
I kept doing the session and I did it. I remember that with a few more weeks under my belt, I was getting fast or strong. All of a sudden, I did it on Saturday. I’m like, this is hard doing it on my own. It’s hard because it’s running hills. We’re going flat out. We were running fast. I said, “This is not any good. This is no good on your own.” I decided instead of sprinting. I would loop it. You run up the hill and you come back down the road and you can loop the thing. I took the intensity out. I started doing ten laps at my own pace. A couple of weeks later, I thought this sucks doing it on my own.
What I do with other people, I like helping other people. I want to be inclusive. It’s in my DNA and the way I was brought up. I was transitioning out of real estate. I started to train people and I was helping some mates with the gym. I thought, “Why don’t I invite people through Instagram.” I thought, ”What am I going to call it?” I said, “It’s 440 meters, I’ll call it the 440.” I set up an account and started inviting people. On the 16th of June back in 2016, I put out an invitation to come and do hill sprints at 5:00 AM. I look back now like, “How does that look attractive? 5:00 AM, Saturday, and running hills.”
No one came. It was me on the first official day and I put up a photo of the vacant hill. Essentially, I started inviting people each week, and then for the first year or two, we’d get 2 people, 10 people. In the busy morning, it would be 15 or 6 and 8. We’d essentially turn up. Everyone grunted at each other at 5:00 AM on a Saturday. Because it’s a 700-meter loop, the time you take off, you don’t see anyone pretty much. You might lap a couple of people, but you don’t see anyone for half an hour or 35 minutes.
In that time, in those two years, there were a couple of Saturdays where I didn’t turn up. I was either hungover or still out. People didn’t say anything. They gave me space and never called me out. In 2018, my mate Todd came down. I met Todd through a bunch of other old mates. He came down and he fell in love with it and started coming more and more. He had a sporting background and a fitness background. He was keeping me accountable for someone that was had fallen in love with as much as me.
In the 2018 to 2019 period, it went from 10 people each week to 20 people to 30 people. We started getting more women coming down because the women we found were more open to trying new things and didn’t care about being the fittest, the fastest, and being at the back or the front. When more women were coming, more men started turning up because the girls were there.
When we started to layer itself. We started getting a mixed bag of people. Fast, slow, skinny, not skinny, a different religion, backgrounds, you name it, and different abilities. We encourage people to come and move. If you want to run for ten laps, great. If you want to walk for two, it’s 5:00 AM sharp every Saturday morning, rain, hail, or shine. That’s when our brand kicked in.
That’s what we were known for. Whether it rains, hail, or shine, our motto is, “We’ll get up, lace up, turn up.” Another thing we used to say was we start in the dark and it would be all over our social media. We started getting photos of old celebrities and washed-up actors and athletes and they became the poster boys and girls for our things. I guess what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to have fun with this thing called fitness, which is stressful for a lot of people.
You were building community at the same time.
Going back to my father, one thing he was very good at when we were young, as hard as a man as he is still. He never left any kids behind whenever we were training or sports, someone needed to live. As I grew up, I used to think about getting into the sport, into fitness spaces, like what happens to all these people that are terrified to walk into a gym or they’re overweight or they don’t feel like they have two left feet or they’re the wrong color and they sound the wrong way. Where do they start? How do they get going?
I thought we were starting in the dark. We’re doing these stupid hills that no one wants to do. The more people we get from different backgrounds and we all come together, it’s going to help everyone. I became passionate about turning every person who said they couldn’t run or they had no athletic ability for them to prove themselves that was bullshit. It’s like, “I cannot run.” Cool. Come and walk. “I got to work Saturday morning.” You’re not working at 5:00 AM.
If we do not have the tools to deal with stress, we will start acting out. That’s why how you start and finish your day is super important. Share on XWe heard thousands of excuses and I used to say, “That’s cool. We’ll get you eventually.” We had this whole thing about starting in the dark and running to the light because the sun would more often than not come up. It was showing people that it’s not dark forever. We all experience darkness, whether it’s in birth, relationships, finances, heartache, illness, and all that stuff. We all go through darkness. Some people don’t come out of it. We spoke about that. A lot of people do and there’s light at the end of it.
Coming and running before the sun comes up on a Saturday morning when the streets are empty because everyone is either hung over in bed or still out, it’s starting a week and off on the right foot, which means you end your working week. For the first four years, I didn’t know what I had and I didn’t know where it was going. I knew it was helping me and it was helping people but then there’s this dickhead running the run club who’s not being honest and sharing what’s going on with it.
It became in a very short period of time, especially around 2018 and 2019, a big part of my life because it was helping people. The more people that we’re helping, it made me feel good. The thing I loved about it the most, and I still love about it is how simple it is. It’s Saturday morning, it’s 5:00 AM. It’s running up a hill. You can walk, you don’t even have to run. If you want to come and sit on the fence and take photos, you can.
It’s going through the whole exercise of getting someone out of bed in the dark on a Saturday when everything’s telling them to stay in bed and how they can come and walk with a bunch of strangers and they can download or they can run. They can jump in the ocean. They can have a coffee by 7:00 AM. They completely rewire themselves after the shitty week they’ve had. We go back to where I was in 2020 and I’ve had my last bender and I’m sitting at this cafe and I’m looking at, “Do I go all in and do all the work and all the suggested things?”
I knew I didn’t have another bender in me, so that was the only option I had. I saw this flame on the table of the 440 burning down and torching it if I ever picked up a drink again. I walked out of the cafe and I rang Todd and I said, “I want to see where this thing is going to go. This coffee club chat, which we started three months before, and I’ve committed to, and we’re still in lockdown. I want to continue it. I think that if I can drag myself out of bed to go live at 4:30 every day, I think it’s going to help me stay sober.”
Discovering Yourself Through Live Chats
You do one of these. You get up earlier than everyone else and you do a live on Instagram.
I go live at 4:30 every day, wherever I am.
You talk about randomness, talking to the people. People turn up, I can see they’re live.
People walk past, come and say, “Hi.”
“Hi, Tracy. Mikey. Good on you, mate.” You do that. It’s engaging people and it’s that discipline.
I was very tired and I said, “I think this is going to be good for me. First of all, it gives me accountability that I have to be up. Whatever’s going on right now in the day that I know, whatever goes on that alarm is going off at 3:30. I need to do whatever it takes that day to stay sober. If I can do that, I think it’s going to help and I’m going to go to my meetings and I’m going to go see my psychologists and I’m going to try and send somebody and not overdo it. I’m going to get as much rest as I can. I’m going to do all the suggested things.”
He said, “Cool.” I think having that conversation and having his blessing with it helped. I think we got to a hundred days of it. I thought, “Why don’t we aim to get to 440 days? That’s our, that’s our brand. That’s who we are. Let’s see if we can do it in 440 days.” I started sharing it. I think when I was about six months sober, I started then on the coffee club sharing what was going on and I’d break down in tears some days and I thank people. The interesting part of doing that live chat every day was definitely within the first twelve months, I started to get an indication of who I was because you’re being deeply honest.
I had no script, no dialogue. I had no prep. It was more a bit of a hi. I’d have my little welcome every morning, but I didn’t care who I was. I didn’t care about what I said. I didn’t worry about pleasing people. Before I started going live, I used to pre-record them. I had all these bloopers of cameras falling over the wind and because of the Apple iPhones have improved, but all the microphones were rubbish. We’d have howling winds, things that fall over.
I had makeshift tripods. They were resting on bins and shoes. I kept turning up every day. When I stopped worrying about what I was going to say, that’s when it all started to sink in going, “This is you. Whatever’s said this morning, that’s you. They’re getting you every day. They’re not getting a teleprompter, they’re not getting scripts and dialogues. It’s you.” That’s how I’ve always been able to describe it.
That’s me standing there in the morning where I can get up out of bed, and say what comes to my tongue. I’m not worried about what people think. I’d try not to offend anyone but what started coming out of me was I started sharing my experiences with a variety. I started sharing my experience of starting my day in the dark every day. I started having conversations with people about their experience with the 440 and about their wellness journey. People started gravitating towards me. I started getting all this intel.
You’re making yourself vulnerable to others. In turn, permitting them to be vulnerable with you, I guess. It’s like your opening up allows them to open up to you.
I guess from there, I always between March 30 and June 20, 2020, a three-month period. I think I missed 2 or 3 because I was still playing up but I call it from my sobriety day on the 22nd of June. We’ve done a coffee club every day, the 22nd of June, 2020. Still today, I had to do some pre-recordings last year when I went to India and I was in an ashram and my phone was off.
I had to pre-record them and I got one of the girls to have them and she would upload one every day. It’s funny because I had to, as I’m recording, I’m trying to remember the day of the week and I kept stuffing it up so everyone knew it was pre-recorded. The hidden message in all that is trying to make someone laugh and seeing the light side of life and taking the piss. That’s where these chats led to is about I’m up. If I can get up, you can do it. If you keep it simple and stay in the day, if I can do that, you can do it.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. I started sharing whatever was going on any particular day. Some days I’d had nothing to say. I get on and get off. We went through a period of having a lot of guests. We’re going to come back to that this year. We’ll get you as a live stream as a guest one morning, mate. We’ll have a chat. The whole underlying thing, which is on brand with our community and why we still exist is it’s about helping people face their darkness by helping them start their day in it.
The Secret To Staying Pumped And Energetic
For the audience, I want to hear your full toolkit. What’d you say are the key things and you have what seems to be a very programmatic routine now in your life? You’ve created a program, that is not just helping you get by, but I can see it’s beyond that. It’s energizing you. Every time I’ve spoken to you, you’re pumped, you’re jacked. You’re excited. You’re feeling good and that is infectious. I can see how people around you want to join the club and “I want to be like Trent. I want what Trent’s on.” What’s Trent on?
I think in between all that, and especially since I’m over four and a half years sober, it’s been a roller coaster. It hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows. What I’ve learned is that when we accumulate stress, which we do, and we do it when we don’t even realize it, we can have it from an early age. If we don’t have tools to deal with that stress, then that’s when we start acting out and that could be binging on food. It could be sex. It could be drugs or alcohol. It could be spending, or it could be violent.
How I start my day and how I finish my day is super important. That’s paramount. I’m not perfect at it. For me in sobriety, getting up before the sun is super important. That’s the first thing I recommend to people. Before I say at the start, I always recommend things to people that are sustainable, that are accessible. Not everyone has plenty of dough to go and buy the greatest diets, the best gym memberships, and the greatest psychologists.
Going for a run and being healthy doesn’t cost a lot of money.
It doesn’t. It’s looking at the things that I call them, the tools that are laid at your feet that we overlook. It’s like, for me, get up before the sunrise. Now I get up a bit early because I’ve stupidly decided to start doing a coffee club chat and I stupidly started a run club that starts at 5:00 AM. However, it got me sober and it saved my life. Getting in the ocean every day, I need to do it. Like connecting to getting that salt water on the body, getting energized. I’ve sent you images of what it’s like and they’re laying in the water some mornings when the moon’s over the water.
You cannot buy that experience, but you can go and experience it for free. It’s there, but you have to get out of bed. I like interacting with people first thing in the morning. There’s a whole bunch of characters down there, all shapes and sizes, all ages. We all get to know each other. I can walk down the foulest mood and then someone whistles at me and says, “I’m out.” It’s like they caught me out.
Every single day, you have to do something good for yourself. Share on XGetting energy from other people.
Also, which has stared me in the face my whole life, being part of North Bondi Surf Club, older guys who have been the old guys since I was a little fellow and they’re still old, even though I’m older. I look back now on their patterns and their behavior since I was a kid. They’ve all got successful businesses and most of them are still married. They’re successful because they’re happy and they’re successful because they’re doing the same stuff now that I used to see them do 20 and 30 years ago.
They get up in the dark. They get down to the beach. They get down to the surf club. They yell and scream at each other and rant and rave in the gym. They jump in the sauna, they go and have a swim together, they get a coffee. Now they’re doing that between the hours of 5:00 and 7:00 or 4:30 and 6:30. They’ve been doing it my whole life. They’re still doing it. I’m like, “It’s working for them and it’s worked for them. All I’ve done is take what they’re doing and I’m doing the same thing.” It’s simple stuff that we overlook.
The other thing and the reason that I keep it up is because twelve months ago, I had some family stuff going on. It was a rough couple of days. One of the days kept me up to about midnight on a Sunday night. I was exhausted. I was stressed and there were all emotions flying around and my head was all over the place. I remember getting in my head on that pillow. I was going to cancel my classes and I went, “I have to do this bloody coffee club.” I remember the alarm went off at 3:30 and it’s like I’d been drinking all weekend.
I felt so exhausted and stuffed and I got out of bed. I grabbed myself by the hair and dragged myself out. I walked down the beach and I went and laid in the water for five minutes and I let all the ocean wash over me and it temporarily got rid of that stress that I needed. I went up and showered off. I got dressed. I got into a coffee club. I did the coffee club. I did my morning. I was able to then take the rest of the day off, I went to bed.
That was a clear indication of how quickly you can change your mood and change your direction if you are willing to. If you have a set of tools that you have tried and tested. All I’ve been doing in the last 4 or 5 years have been trialing tools, things that work for me, things that don’t work for me. The drugs and alcohol weren’t working for me and I had to do something about it. I needed help to deal with that. Since that, I started sharing my story with that community.
I started turning up every Saturday. I started seeing the psychologists, I kept going to my meetings. I would then evolve things like I added the swim before the coffee club chat. The coffee club chat worked at the beginning and I still do and it still works. The difference is today, I don’t think about having a drink or a drug. I know where it goes, I know where it leads and I don’t need to go and dip my toe in the water. Even though I abstain from alcohol and drugs and I know it’s not good for me and I know it doesn’t work and I know where it leads, I still have an alcoholic brain.
Explain that.
There’s a thing they call a dry drunk. A dry drunk is someone dry, they don’t drink. They’re drunk in the head because they’re not getting help to get to the bottom of where all their stress, their resentments, and their trauma. They go around. I see them and they’re angry at the world. It’s your fault. Everything is everyone else’s fault. They don’t take any responsibility for their actions. They’re not getting any help. They’re not meditating.
They’re not exercising, not spending time with their community. They’re stuck in a loop and they’re frustrated they cannot drink. They’re frustrated they cannot go and do the things that they think they want to do. They don’t have a relationship with themselves. They haven’t sat with themselves. They haven’t gotten to the bottom of why drinking became a problem and why their drinking got out of control.
My alcoholic brain is when it kicks in when I’m not meditating, and my practice falls off, which it did last year. When I meditate, my meditation is paramount. It comes before AA and my recovery because if I meditate when I’m meant to, it helps me make better choices. I go to all of my meetings. I see my sponsor all the time. I take more days off. I rest, I don’t overtrain, eat better food. My dialogue with people is better. I’m not short and snappy and I don’t blame everyone for everything.
I went through a bit of that last year where I wasn’t meditating and I had some family stuff going on and probably wasn’t sitting with it and dealing with it and I wasn’t seeing my psychologists enough. Everything was everyone else’s problem last year. The difference in what I learned last year was that I don’t act out like I used to. I store it inside and resent everyone. I called myself out at the end of last year. I thought, “Mate, you’re over four years sober and you’re pissed off with everyone. What’s going on? You’re not meditating. You’re eating shit. You’re over-training. You’re not resting enough. Your meetings can drop off and then you’re not seeing a psychologist. You’re the problem. Not everyone else.”
I got to the end of last year and I said to myself, “Have you had enough? Have you had enough of being angry at everyone? You had enough of being full of resentment.” I went, “I think I am.” I said to my partner, “I want to make some changes.” She said, “We’re going to fix your food.” We did a couple of running events together. I said, “It doesn’t feel right.” I’m putting shit in my body. I went through a whole inflammatory cleanse. I think I’ve been carrying a virus for a couple of months. I believe I picked up the virus because I’m in the healthiest space that I’m meditating. I don’t know what it is. I don’t get sick when I’m meditating. I’ve had this virus I couldn’t get rid of. I went through this cleanse. I rejoined North Bondi Surf Club, which I’d been putting off for years.
I wanted to start racing again. I went and did that finally. I ticked that off. I’ve entered more runs and I said to myself, “Go back and meditate. Do the things you love like running and paddling. Stop being cranky. Stop being pissed off. Stop blaming other people. Sleep.” I was even like, “This is the first podcast I’ve done in a while. I put a few on hold last year because I didn’t want to talk to anyone.” That was a product of what it can be like when you’re still sober, but you’re not doing your work. You’re not doing the work you need to do. The work is ongoing. It’s not work. It’s fine when you’re doing it.
The point is it will never stop. It’s always got to be putting in.
Every day, you have to be doing something. I have a rule that you have to do something good for you every day.
Give me an example of something you do good for yourself every day.
I jump in the ocean first thing in the morning. I love it. I’m back meditating twice a day. I love my meditations. The more I meditate, the more I want to meditate. I train with my friends. I have fun when I train. I try and have some cold therapy where I can even stand under a cold shower. I’m back reading books again, do some reading every day. This is the thing people might hear and say, “That’s a lot of stuff.” I can ask you, “How many minutes there are in a day?” Off the cuff, but they had to calculate it. Do you have the number?
Wait one second, 60 minutes, 24 hours. At least 1,200.
It’s 1,440 minutes. It’s funny our number sits in the middle of that. We did a running event a few years ago. It was a 24-hour event. We called the 1440, which is great. A great marketing tool. Whenever I hear someone say, “I don’t have this. I don’t have that in time.” It’s like when I say I’m evading meditation, I suggested twenty minutes twice a day, it’s 40 minutes. I cannot find 40 minutes, so I go, “Mate, you’re full of shit, it’s 1,440 minutes in a day.” You can have this 1,400 minutes of everything else to do what you want, but you cannot give yourself 40 minutes.
It’s like, “I want to give myself an uppercut.” I use that because if you then look at percentages if you put 2% of the total minutes of the day back into you, 28 point something minutes.” It’s fuck all, pardon the French. I have to remind myself that you can find the time if you want it. If you said to someone, “I want you to give yourself 1% of the day, it’s 15 minutes. Most mental health institutions would be going, “Run fifteen minutes a day. It’s good for your mental health.” If you can slowly then increase 1% of the time, 4% is still under an hour.
I respond better to those when I look at percentages and numbers and I look at the big picture. That’s what we are gifted every single day. I know that in sobriety, I have to do my meetings. I have to meditate because, for some people, I call it a disease. It is ongoing. Once you take your foot off the pedal, you may not pick up a drink straight away, but if I stopped going to meetings and stopped doing all the suggested things, I guarantee within 3 to 6 months, I’ll pick up a drink. Why? It’s because I hear that from other people in the rooms. That’s what they did.
I go to the meeting so that I hear those stories and they tell me what’s ahead. I know people who have five years up, they go back out. They get ten years up and they go back out. They’ve been in the program for 30 or 40 years. They’ve let them learn the hard way of what happens when you stop. Going back to what I said, I’ve developed a bunch of tools that work for me. I know that I love getting up early. It’s my social. It means I get to go to bed early so I can get up early. I get to see the sun come up.
I get to see that morning magic and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t have it if I wasn’t sober. It’s one of the gifts of sobriety. I probably see more sunrises than most people. It’s one of the sayings that we have to be able to capture that morning sunrise and see the magic sunrise, you have to start your day in the dark. You have to get up early in the dark but be in a position to watch the sunrise.
You cannot get up at the first light coming through your window and expect to see the sunrise. It’s been and gone. There is that connection to the sun and honoring the sun and welcoming the sun every day that’s recharging as well. I do a lot of that stuff through the Vedic community and a lot of it’s the sun. My relationship with the sun is important. It gets my day off on the right foot. I can wake up in a foul mood and then I watch that sun come up and I’m like, “Shut up, you’re fine. Get on with your day.”
Answering Rapid-Fire Questions
I finish off my conversations with five questions. I’ll ask them, you can give as brief an answer as you’d like, but let’s go for it. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?
Rather than say sorry to one particular person, I probably want to say sorry to everyone that I lied to, deceived, and let down when I was in the midst of my drinking and drugging. There were a lot of people I let down. I probably want to say sorry to them.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
I’m proud to face up to my problems and I took responsibility and walked back into AA. I’m proud of that and I’ve continued the work and the Run Club has blossomed. Since I did that, it’s helping people within the community face their darkness and dealing with their own addictions and traumas.
How many members have you got of the club now, would you say?
We’ve averaged for the last few years about 150 to 200 people every Saturday. Some people would think we have 25,000 followers on Instagram. They’re probably all bots. I think that the successful part is that rain, hail, or shine, we’ve averaged 150 to 200 people every Saturday, 52 weeks a year.
Unbelievable. When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting at least?
I had a turbulent relationship with a good mate of mine, Tom. We met many years ago and we have a beautiful relationship. I sabotaged the relationship when I wasn’t well. I used to give him a hard time. He stood by me through that until I completely pushed him away. He stood by me longer than he needed to. We didn’t talk for a long time and then we reconnected a few years ago. I won’t mind me saying this, he got sober on his own time as well. We have this beautiful relationship of honesty. We talk about life and we wouldn’t have what we have if we both weren’t sober.
That’s cool. What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of? You mentioned your father teaching you ten lessons in life before.
We had a chaotic childhood and there was a lot of, amongst all the madness. One of the things that my mom used to say, which I use now, probably years ago, was the idea of counting to ten when you were pissed off. I don’t know if she ever practiced it.
Self-regulation in a way.
I use it now. I’m in meditation now, I don’t respond to things like I used to, but that’s stuck. I think with Dad, I’d have to say the thing that stuck with me with Dad and the heart of the man that he is, and I believe that the 440 is what it is today because of him, because of the inclusion. He never left anyone. He used to flog us and train us all and yell and scream at everyone. He was a nightmare, but he never left anyone behind.
He included everyone. If someone needed a lift, he shoved them in the car, whether they had a seatbelt or not, didn’t matter, he got them in. That’s something that I’ve carried. It’s making this community as inclusive as we can make them. The only thing where exclusive was it, it was 5:00 AM on Saturday. That’s when we run, but everything else inclusive. That’s the gift from dad.
That’s nice. The last one, which is my favorite, what is your superpower?
My superpower is sobriety.
Talk us through that.
Men still struggle. Just put your hand up and ask for help. Even if the words do not come out properly, never give up on trying to express yourself. Share on XI have the best life now. I have a better life than I could ever imagined. I don’t hide from people. I won’t disappoint. I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to make things up. I get to be me every day and I drive everyone mental, but they get me. Being sober has allowed me to do that. Being sober has allowed me to be me. Everyone gets me. Whether I’m in a good mood or a bad mood, it’s my true authentic self. That’s my superpower.
Trent, it’s an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Thanks mate.
I love what you’ve done. I love the honesty and I think it’s very inspiring to us all that we can all help ourselves. At the end of the day, it’s up to us and it doesn’t take a lot. It sounds to me like it’s discipline, commitment, and doing one little thing at a time and layering. It’s the getting up first step. Getting out there and you keep adding and adding and optimizing and committing to it.
On those bad days, our motto from the Run Club is to “Get up lace up, turn up,” and do it every day. I had two intentions that I dragged into this year and I’ve carried them forward. One is leading by example to continue what I do. Getting up and doing the coffee club, getting up and putting up the photo in the morning when I have a swim.
Leading by example, but the other big thing is leaning in on the people around you. That’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, ask for help and lean in. I still struggle. I still get in trouble with people going, “Do you need help with this? Can we help you with this and help you with that? What do you need?” Men still struggle. Try to put your hand up, try to ask for help. Keep trying even if the words don’t come out properly. Keep trying until someone understands what you’re saying. Don’t give up on trying to express yourself.
Trent, thanks, buddy.
Thanks, Daniel.
Have a good night’s sleep.
I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, mate.
Important Links
About Trent Knox
“Trent Knox Trent began his real estate career in 2002 selling homes throughout the Eastern Suburbs. By 2016 he was burnt out and found himself in a dark place. Having grown up surrounded by sport and the ocean Trent began leaning into his training routine and running loops at Bronte cutting – this is where The 440 was born.
Trent’s purpose is to help people improve their mental, physical and spiritual health through community and connection. 8 years later, Trent prides himself on his contribution to the mental health space through movement. he works closely with global brands and organisations sharing both his and the 440’s story through events, content and story telling.
Trent believes we can make the world a better place through the power of community and face to face connection.”
