Hamish McLachlan on the Last Three Percent

**Layne Beachley** (0:02)
You're tuning in to A Wake Up Call, which is your weekly dose of purpose packed with science-backed tools to beat burnout and boost happiness.

**Tess Brouwer** (0:09)
Hosted by us, Tess Brouwer and seven-time world champion, Layne Beachley.

**Layne Beachley** (0:14)
We're the founders of Awake Academy. This podcast mixes raw life lessons, expert wisdom and practical tips to help you stop sleepwalking through life and start living it on your terms. You ready to wake up and thrive? Let's go.
Season 3 is proudly brought to you by AIA, a leading life, health and well-being insurer, supporting healthier, longer, better lives. Protect what matters most and AIA will help you to do it for life.

**Tess Brouwer** (0:42)
Welcome back, Dream Team. Today's guest has had one of the best seats in the world. For more than 20 years, Hamish McLachlan has sat just a few feet away from world champions, gold medalists, premiership heroes, business leaders, and some of the most remarkable people on this planet.

**Hamish McLachlan** (1:00)
And Bruce McAvaney. Yeah, and Bruce.

**Tess Brouwer** (1:03)
After thousands of conversations with extraordinary people, you begin to notice patterns. You learn what greatest looks like before the cameras even arrive. You discover what pressure really feels like. You see the difference between confidence, ego, resilience, toughness, masks, success, and fulfillment. We call that a life MBA.
Not one earned through lecture in theatres, but through a lifetime of learning from extraordinary people, willing to share their extraordinary and normal moments. So today, we're not interviewing the broadcaster, we're interviewing the student. And Hamish, we want to take you to life MBA school through your eyes. So to kick us off, I asked the person who knows you the longest to give you the real introduction of who is Hamish McLachlan. So I'm going to give you this iPad now.
And this is from your mum.

**Hamish McLachlan** (2:00)
I'm getting emotional already before.

**Sylvia McLachlan** (2:03)
Introducing this very special person, my second son, is a big deal for me. I do it with great joy and pride. Life doesn't come with a manual, it comes with a mother. And if you've been, depends how you've been dealt with this card, but you've got to make the best of it. I have been best several times over as a mother. They all have a great love and respect for each other, to which I think is one of my greatest achievements. As a little boy, I think of Hamish being a little shy, loving, athletic, competitive, and superstitious. When we were going to competitions, he and I used to lift our feet up over any railway line, and we both still do it to this day.
Now, the shyness has gone, and I'm so proud to see a very polished product in front of the cameras. People here are confident, amusing, sympathetic man. I see all of that, and the same old sharp wit, outrageous often, makes me laugh till I cry. And a gentleness that has gone from the boy through to the man.
I often feel in danger of becoming a bit blase, getting so used to how wonderful you are, my darling boy. I love you.

**Layne Beachley** (3:33)
Oh, wow.

**Hamish McLachlan** (3:35)
You're supposed to cry.

**Layne Beachley** (3:36)
Bravo, mum.

**Hamish McLachlan** (3:37)
Yeah, she's a good mum. She's an incredible woman.

**Layne Beachley** (3:41)
Yeah.

**Hamish McLachlan** (3:42)
Very emotional woman. But she, so if you said to me, you're a product of Angus and Sylvia, Angus was loyalty, integrity, hard work. If it's light, go on work, dark, come in. If you say you're going to do something, do it. Mum was a much softer version. He was very hard. We used to call him a singlet because he was always on her back.
Mum would soften things up a bit.

**Layne Beachley** (4:07)
What did you call her?

**Hamish McLachlan** (4:09)
Always mum or Sylvia. Her name is Sylvia. It was funny, no one else called them mum by the first name. But we'd always say Sylve. That was how it was.
When we were growing up, she was such a hardworking woman. When we were about five or six, we would load the UDUP and go to the end of the drive and feed the horse on the other side of the road. I look back at that now. Gillon was seven, I was five, Banjo would have been two. Mum, that was quite a big thing to do. He said, we treated you like you're adults, and you behaved like you're adults, and we trusted you.
My kids can't make the bed.

**Layne Beachley** (4:47)
What does that say about you as a father?