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The Oldest Fire
Something is breaking down in the West and we are arguing about the symptoms. Australia's birth rate is at its lowest ever recorded. Bondi Beach, once shorthand for everything easy and good about this country, now has a Menorah painted on a wall where gunmen stood. Men and women are retreating from each other. A generation is finding meaning in the wrong rooms. I want to propose something that will sound reductive and isn't. It starts in the bedroom.
Tom Kooy
2 days ago15 min read


The Weight
The gym is one of the few rooms left where the honest version of a person shows up. The mirror doesn't hide the truth. The bar humbles. And the weight you're lifting is never just the weight.
Tom Kooy
Apr 1717 min read


The Emperor’s New Clothes
It was 2016. A glass-walled conference room, all clean lines and whiteboards and the faint smell of filtered air and corporate ambition. Perth spread out below through the window; the Swan River, the city, all of it arranged at a distance that felt, as it always does in these buildings, like a form of authority. Five of us around the table. And on the screen at the end of the room, live-streamed from Harvard Business School, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, one of the genuinely great mi
Tom Kooy
Apr 615 min read


The Podium
This is about what happened when my nine year old daughter touched the wall first, looked up, and showed a room full of adults something we've spent years convincing ourselves we don't need.
Tom Kooy
Mar 271 min read


the hinge
There is a moment, right at the beginning of a meal with someone you don't yet fully know, that I can't stop thinking about. Before the menus are even open. Before anyone has decided. The hinge — the space that hasn't formed yet, is one of the most psychologically rich environments available to us. And most people move through it as fast as possible.
Tom Kooy
Mar 1912 min read


The Oldest Demon
Everyone is carrying it. The fear of being seen and found wanting. Most people have been carrying it so long they've stopped noticing the weight. It just became the baseline, the hum underneath everything, the thing they stopped asking questions about because the questions were too uncomfortable and the days were too full.
Tom Kooy
Mar 101 min read


Abundance Is a Harbour: How Geography Shapes the Mind.
It’s about the difference between scarcity and abundance as lived psychology. Why some environments train you to brace while others train you to build.
Tom Kooy
Mar 29 min read


When Intelligence Becomes Abundant: How artificial intelligence is forcing a deeper question, not about what machines can do, but about what humans are for?
This latest essay explores why the coming renaissance may be less technological and more human. Not about what machines can do, but about what remains uniquely human when knowledge is everywhere.
Tom Kooy
Feb 101 min read


The Cost of Being the Adult in the Room: On Community Sport, hard decisions, competing values, and the price of protecting what matters.
In my latest essay, I explore what leadership actually looks like. Whatever the sporting organisation, the same pressures play out, identity, expectation, fear, belonging, and the quiet weight of decisions that don’t always have perfect outcomes...
Tom Kooy
Feb 28 min read


Kids Are Hyper-Connected, But Quietly Alone: Some thoughts from a small town.
Something has shifted in childhood, and most parents and educators can feel it even if they struggle to name it.
Tom Kooy
Jan 229 min read


Why We Look Away: Eye contact, distraction, and the loss of depth.
Real eye contact feels rare now. Not absent, just quietly avoided. We still glance at each other, enough to register a face, not enough to stay. Long enough to be polite. Not long enough to be changed.
Tom Kooy
Jan 1812 min read


Present Joy Is a Practice: On First Principles and Lasting Habits for 2026.
And in this pause, once the food is eaten, the drinks are finished, the conversations had, what’s real tends to hold its shape. And what was being held together by adrenaline, distraction, or sheer momentum starts to crack. That’s not failure. That is data to use. We tend to treat this moment as a time to set goals for the year to come. Outcomes. Targets. Resolutions. What do I want to achieve in 2026?
Tom Kooy
Dec 28, 20257 min read


Slaying Beasts: The Quiet Battle Between Who You Are and Who You Could Be.
There comes a moment in every life where the beast standing in front of you stops being poetic language and becomes painfully literal.
Tom Kooy
Dec 5, 20259 min read


Why Masculinity Isn’t Broken, Just Untrained...
Something is breaking inside the modern man, and he knows it. It’s not dramatic. It’s quiet.
Tom Kooy
Nov 10, 202510 min read


Learning Organisations, Failing Systems: What Regional Australia Can Teach the World
It’s not effort that’s missing. It’s clarity. The system we’re operating in, the way funding, decisions, and influence actually move through towns like Albany and Denmark, is invisible to most of us.
Tom Kooy
Nov 1, 20259 min read


The Silent Majority: The Builders History Forgets
There’s a pattern in every regional town. The ones who build the most, speak the least. And the ones who speak the most, often build nothing at all.
Tom Kooy
Oct 8, 20256 min read


The Strength of Teams and the Cost of Disruption
Think about the visuals of a team room at half-time. The scoreboard is close. The air is thick with sweat and adrenaline. The walls hum with tension. The captain stands, not to shout orders, but to remind the group: stay in your role, trust each other, keep the shape.
Tom Kooy
Aug 26, 20255 min read


From McLean Oval to the Big League: A President’s Playbook for Building a Club That Lasts
This week’s blog is different. It’s long. It’s specific. It’s written for a very particular audience, the presidents, COOs, and...
Tom Kooy
Aug 11, 202516 min read


The Anti-Guru Sprint: Why Real Builders Just Get It Done!
Let’s be honest: The world is drowning in gurus. Every second ad is some guy in a linen shirt, “living his best life,” flogging a shortcut to six-figures, shredded abs, inner peace or the next crypto moonshot. And here’s the problem, they are selling dependence, not capability. The Guru Economy Is a Scam (And It’s Getting Worse) The “guru” machine is booming: Courses for $4,000 that promise “passive income.” Coaches with no runs on the board teaching you “brand building.” Inf
Tom Kooy
Jun 9, 20257 min read


Life is Painted in Shades of Grey. And That’s What Makes It Real.
People love to believe this myth, that life is just a series of choices where everything can be split into “and” or “or”. That things are clear, clean, simple: right or wrong, win or lose, good or bad. We build stories around black and white. We crave the comfort of certainty, the mental handrails of clarity. But that’s not real life. Not even close. The truth? Life is only “and.” Life is painted in the grey. Title: Life Painted in the Greys In fact, it’s more like purple, a
Tom Kooy
Apr 28, 20259 min read
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