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Happy Monday 👋🏾,

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about my gym crew. Three of us, 4:20am, all dads in our 40s.

Reading it back, I did them a disservice. I made it sound like I train with two random guys.

So let me tell you who they actually are.

We met six years ago, through what I call the evolution of the gym bro. (If you've ever been a regular at a gym, you'll know it.)

First, the head nod. You see the same faces at roughly the same time every morning, and you give each other a nod.

Then, the spot. A couple of weeks later, one of them asks you to spot him on a lift.

Then, the small talk. The next week it's "How are you, man? You're looking in great shape."

And the classic reply: "I'm just trying to be like you."

Then, the names. "What time are you here?" "What's your name, by the way?"

Before you know it, you're training together.

It started with a few of us. Then there were seven.

Seven men between 35 and 40, working hard.

But it stopped being about lifting weights.

We talked about life. The struggles of being a man, and the struggles of being a Black man.

Wanting to be the best dad, husband and partner we could be.

At that point, I wasn't a dad. Sheriden and I were trying to become parents.

So I listened.

One of them had eight kids, one had three, one had two. I took the wisdom from the ones who had already been through it.

Without realising it, I'd found a tribe.

Then life happened. People moved away. People changed gyms.

We still have the 110% Crew on WhatsApp where we share memes and jokes. And whenever there’s big news, we link up and wish each other well.

But there were three of us who stayed together.

Somewhere along the way, we worked out that we knew the same people. Some of my friends from college had gone to university with them.

We were the same age too. (For the record, I'm the youngest by a couple of months, and I will be claiming that.)

What I respect most is how they are as fathers and husbands. Family comes first, always.

But they still want to thrive in everything they do. Their businesses, their investments, all of it.

And it's a place where we can talk about anything. Where we can be vulnerable without anyone making it weird.

Over time, they went from the guys I train with to my brothers.

They show up for me, and I try to do the same for them.

When Zeek was born, one of them messaged me: "What's your email address?"

He sent us food vouchers. He remembered that when his first child arrived, they just didn't have time to cook.

At Zeek's birthday, they were outside directing traffic.

And they were there on the hardest day of my life.

The day we lost our son, Zach, and Sheriden was still in surgery.

One of the boys was recovering from an injury at the time. His knees were in bits.

He sent one message.

"Where are you? I'm coming."

Next thing I saw him limping in through the door.

He didn't say anything at all. He just held my hand and gave me a big hug.

He stayed with me until the rest of my family came.

This year, after my seizures in May, I was on a walking stick for weeks. When I was finally able to go back to the gym, they came and picked me up. Every single day, he got to my house early to make sure we were at the gym by 4:20am.

So there were definitely no excuses.

I was in my mid-thirties when I met them. For a long time, I thought that was too late to make close friends.

I thought the friends you made at secondary school and college were your friends for life. I thought how close you were came down to how long you'd known someone.

I've still got love for the friends I grew up with and my connection to some remains strong. But people move away, work and family take over, and it gets harder to stay connected.

When I look back over the last 10 years, a lot of my closest friends are people I've met in that time.

And it's not just the gym.

Through the Google Workspace training and freelancing, I met two guys who have become really close friends. (Funny enough, the first thing we had in common was that we're all bald.)

They were the ones who first put the idea of starting my own company in my head. That became Happy2Host, and they've championed me and pushed me out of my comfort zone ever since.

I think our tribe changes depending on the season of life we're in.

For me, it's been the gym and work. For you, it might be church, a new job, the school gates or a running club.

And I don't think it's ever too late to find it.

We may have met in the gym. But now the gym is where we go for 70 minutes, five days a week, to forget about all the outside noise, be ourselves and have those hard conversations.

And if one of us doesn't turn up, best believe you're getting some supportive abuse at 6am. (If you can call it that.)

It usually starts the same way.

"Where are you?5

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Have a great week!

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