The Day My First Daughter Was Born, I Carried Her Home and Was Put on a Plane for Two Weeks on Rugby Tour.

In 2016, my first daughter, Hunter, was born.

Like every first-time parent, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

One minute I was helping elite athletes perform on the world stage, and the next I was standing in a hospital holding a tiny little human who was completely dependent on me.

A few days later, I carried Hunter through the front door of our home for the very first time.
And then I packed my bags and had to leave the same day..

Another rugby tour with SA Rugby.
Another two weeks away.
At the time, that was simply life in international sport.

The outside world sees the jerseys, the stadiums, the travel and the prestige. And don’t get me wrong, I was incredibly fortunate. I worked with outstanding athletes, coaches and teams. I travelled the world doing something I loved.

But there is another side to high-performance sport.

The side nobody talks about.
The sacrifices.
The time away.
The moments you miss that can never be replayed.

I often get asked what it felt like getting on that plane.
The truth is, it’s hard to describe.
It wasn’t sadness.
It wasn’t excitement.
It wasn’t guilt.
It was a strange combination of all of them.

Part of me knew I was doing the job I had worked years to build.

Another part of me was wondering why I was leaving one of the most important moments of my life behind.
I remember sitting there thinking, “Surely there has to be another way.”

Not because I didn’t love the work.
I did.
But because something had changed.

My definition of success was starting to change.
For years, success had been about performance, results, opportunities and climbing the ladder.

Suddenly success looked a little different.
Success looked like being present.
Success looked like family dinners.
Success looked like school pickups.
Success looked like watching my daughters grow up instead of hearing about it from the other side of the world.

Every entrepreneur has a moment.
A moment that lights a fire.
A moment where they stop accepting the life they’ve built and start imagining the life they actually want.

For some, it’s frustration.
For others, it’s an opportunity.
For some, it’s the desire to build wealth, create impact or prove something to themselves.

For me, it was sitting on that plane.

A few days earlier I had carried Hunter through the front door of our home for the first time. Now I was heading off on another SA Rugby tour.

I wasn’t angry.
I wasn’t bitter.
I wasn’t looking to leave sports.

But I knew something had shifted.

For the first time, I found myself asking a different question.
“What would life look like if I built something of my own?”

Not because I wanted less work.
Not because I wanted an easier life.
But because I wanted more control over where I spent my time.

I wanted to be present.
I wanted to see the school concerts.
The sports days.
The ordinary Tuesday afternoons that end up becoming the moments you remember most.

That flight didn’t give me the answer.
But it gave me the question.
And sometimes one powerful question is enough to change the direction of your entire life.

Looking back now, that was the fire.

The spark that eventually became a business.

The reason I left the security of a career in international sport and stepped into the uncertainty of entrepreneurship.
Not because I was running away from something.
I was running towards something.

My family.

Ironically, building your own business is probably one of the hardest things you can do.

The hours are long.
The right and wrong people you go into business with and trust.
The pressure is relentless.
There are no guarantees.
But there is something incredibly valuable that it gave me.

Choice.

The choice to be there.
The choice to walk Hunter and Halle into school.
The choice to have breakfast with my family.
The choice to attend the moments that matter.

Today, when I do school pickup, sit around the dinner table with Juls and the girls, or spend a random Tuesday afternoon with my family, I often think back to that flight in 2016.

I don’t regret my years in international sport.
Not for a second.
They shaped who I am.

They taught me leadership, resilience, excellence and discipline. I made the most incredible friends and worked with the world’s best coaches.

But they also taught me something even more important.
Time is the one thing you never get back.

Businesses can be rebuilt.
Money can be earned again.
Careers can be restarted.
But your children only grow up once.

The day I carried Hunter through our front door and then climbed onto a plane a few days later wasn’t the day I left international sport.

But it was the day I started thinking about what I wanted life to look like after it.
And looking back now, it may have been one of the most important decisions I never knew I was making.

Because the business wasn’t the dream.

Freedom was.

And freedom was never about me.
It was about being there for the people who mattered most.

Huge Love and High 5’s

Johno