Latest / Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories / Worth Nothing at the Dock with Louis Swart | Ship's Log #21

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Worth Nothing at the Dock with Louis Swart | Ship's Log #21 · Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

0:02
Jeanne: Hello and welcome to Project Candor.
0:05
Jeanne: I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen.
0:07
Jeanne: Today we're welcoming Louis Swart, our little ship steamed across the waters all the way to Sydney, Australia, to pick them up.
0:15
Jeanne: Louis is a business coach for coaches and the founder of Ironbridge, a human AI company helping coaches avoid burnout while building businesses that don't depend on them doing everything themselves.
0:27
Jeanne: He spent more than 35 years building and selling companies, leading teams of hundreds, training coaches globally and speaking internationally.
0:36
Jeanne: He's also a top 50 speaker finalist and someone who has seen both growth and exhaustion up close.
0:43
Jeanne: Louis, welcome to Project Candor.
0:45
Jeanne: I'm really glad you're here.
0:47
Louis Swart: So lovely to be here, and thank you so, so much.
0:50
Louis Swart: Really appreciate being here.
0:52
Jeanne: Oh, you are quite welcome.
0:54
Jeanne: So I want to go first into some questions so the listeners can get to know you a little bit better.
1:00
Jeanne: And then we'll play our fun two truths and a lie because you've got some really great headlines.
1:05
Jeanne: I can't wait to get to.
1:07
Jeanne: So you ready to go with the questions?
1:09
Jeanne: I love it.
1:10
Jeanne: I love it.
1:10
Jeanne: Let's go.
1:11
Jeanne: Okay.
1:11
Jeanne: So, Louis, when I met you for the first time, I was struck by how kind you are and how easy you are to talk to.
1:20
Jeanne: When someone meets you for the first time, how do you usually explain who you are and what really drives the work you do?
1:27
Louis Swart: So I usually explain that, you know, I help coaches to be able to monetize what they actually do.
1:36
Louis Swart: So I help them to be able to take their coaching business from being a hobby to actually being something that they can make money on.
1:43
Louis Swart: And the reason the way we do that is by helping them to be able to delegate better either to virtual assistants or to AI and to put in better systems, how they can do that.
1:53
Louis Swart: The second part of the question, what drives me is I love helping people.
1:57
Louis Swart: I genuinely love helping people.
2:00
Louis Swart: And I think if I can help people who help people, literally I can leverage how many people I can help.
2:07
Louis Swart: And so that's that's literally my biggest driving force is helping people who help people.
2:12
Jeanne: Awesome.
2:13
Jeanne: I really feel that about you too.
2:15
Jeanne: Because like I said, you really show up for people and you just have just an aura about you of kindness.
2:22
Jeanne: So I appreciate that.
2:24
Jeanne: Thank you.
2:25
Jeanne: Thank you.
2:25
Jeanne: Uh, you've built and sold companies, led large teams, and now coach coaches.
2:31
Jeanne: Looking back, what chapter of your career shaped how you think about work the most?
2:37
Louis Swart: That one's quite easy.
2:38
Louis Swart: When I was 30, I sold a business for uh five million.
2:43
Louis Swart: I had a business with my brother, sold it for five million.
2:45
Louis Swart: And I remember sitting in the bank and we were counting out the money.
2:49
Louis Swart: And you know, they had the one of those counters and it goes and it puts all the money in, you know, like you see in the movies with the gangsters.
2:57
Jeanne: A stack and a band around it all the time.
2:59
Louis Swart: Yeah, and a ballistic band around.
3:01
Louis Swart: And I remember sitting there and we just sold a business for five million, they were, you know, bringing us the five million cash.
3:07
Louis Swart: And I think about thinking back to my previous business, and I had a plumbing business before, and I had 10 plumbers on the road, and you know, I thought that this is amazing.
3:19
Louis Swart: I'm gonna sell this business, I'm gonna retire.
3:21
Louis Swart: And I went to a broker and said, Hey, I want to sell my business, what's it worth?
3:26
Louis Swart: And he said to me, Who does your accounts?
3:28
Louis Swart: And I was like, I do it, who does it, you know, quality control, quoting, everything was aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.
3:34
Louis Swart: And he said, Louis, your business is worth nothing because I literally have to find another you to be able to do this business.
3:40
Louis Swart: You know, who wants to buy this to do it?
3:42
Louis Swart: And that was such a massive wake-up call for me that up until that point it was almost like a badge of honor.
3:49
Louis Swart: I do it, I do it, I do this, I do that, I do this.
3:52
Louis Swart: You know, and I mean you might not be saying that, but internally you're thinking, oh, I'm working long hours and I'm doing this and I'm doing that.
3:59
Louis Swart: But really, if you think about why you went into business, most of us went into business as literally one of three reasons.
4:06
Louis Swart: We went in because we wanted to have more time with our family and our friends and do, you know, do the stuff that we enjoy doing.
4:13
Louis Swart: Or we wanted to grow the business and sell it.
4:17
Louis Swart: Or we wanted to actually grow a business and then leave it as a legacy for our children.
4:22
Louis Swart: But all three of those have got one thing in common you're not in the business.
4:27
Louis Swart: And that's that's the thing that most people don't understand.
4:30
Louis Swart: To you know grow your business, you've got to actually get yourself out of your business.
4:35
Louis Swart: To sell your business, you need to be able to take yourself out of your business.
4:39
Louis Swart: And so that's why it's so important that we learn how to delegate properly.
4:42
Louis Swart: You know, and I mean we delegate to staff, I've delegated to staff my whole life.
4:47
Louis Swart: And but now we're at a point where we can delegate to humans, or we can delegate to AI, or we can delegate to humans that use AI.
4:57
Louis Swart: So, you know, we can we can get this best of both worlds.
5:01
Louis Swart: So I think delegation is probably the biggest thing, definitely is the biggest thing that's helped me in business.
5:07
Louis Swart: You know, my last business I had 450 stuff, and you can't possibly get to that amount of stuff without learning how to systemize stuff and learning how to delegate processes.
5:19
Jeanne: Well, I was gonna ask you that question next.
5:22
Jeanne: It's like uh you talk a lot about delegating, and when did you personally realize I can't keep doing it this way?
5:30
Jeanne: But I think you answered that question already.
5:32
Jeanne: And you made me laugh when you said the banker was saying, who does this?
5:37
Jeanne: And you said I, and then who does this I?
5:40
Jeanne: And then now you have AI.
5:43
Jeanne: An additional I.
5:46
Jeanne: I know it's artificial intelligence, but anyway, it just made me laugh a little bit.
5:52
Jeanne: So, what do people most often misunderstand about delegation when they're early in their business journey?
6:00
Louis Swart: Well, you know, we brought up, if you think about this saying, you know, if you want it done right, do it yourself.
6:07
Louis Swart: That's what we done.
6:08
Louis Swart: Don't be lazy, just do it.
6:11
Louis Swart: Right?
6:12
Louis Swart: This is what we condition with, and we understand because parents condition us with that from early age.
6:18
Louis Swart: And so then we get into business, and literally we are trying to do it ourselves.
6:24
Louis Swart: We feel like it's only it'll only be done right if I do it.
6:27
Louis Swart: I'm gonna if I give it to somebody else, I'm gonna lose control.
6:30
Louis Swart: Okay.
6:31
Louis Swart: Nobody can ever do it as well as what I can.
6:34
Louis Swart: There's a book called Why is Everyone an Idiot?
6:37
Louis Swart: Okay, and it talks.
6:38
Louis Swart: And I remember when I was younger and I went to a I went to a mentor, and I said, Man, I need to do everything myself.
6:47
Louis Swart: Nobody can do it like I can.
6:48
Louis Swart: And he said, Louis, do you think they could do something 60% as good as you?
6:53
Louis Swart: And I mean you'd have to be pretty egotistical to think that another human couldn't do something 60% as well as what you do.
7:00
Louis Swart: And I said, Yeah, uh yeah, um they could definitely do 60%.
7:04
Louis Swart: And he said, Well, imagine if you get one person and you're now doing 160% of what you could do.
7:11
Louis Swart: And now you get two people and you're doing you're doing 20% of what you could do.
7:18
Louis Swart: And then you multiply those numbers.
7:20
Louis Swart: And that was real, real wake-up call for me because up until that point, I'd gone to hire people and be like, man, this person, they don't want to work the hours.
7:29
Louis Swart: You know, I'm calling them at 2 o'clock in the morning, like, why I'm dancing.
7:32
Louis Swart: I'm still waking, I'm still doing accounts like, why, what the hell's wrong with them, okay?
7:37
Louis Swart: You know, they're not as dedicated as I am.
7:39
Louis Swart: And we do, we kind of almost get a bit of, you know, lots of times we get a bit obsessed almost with what it is.
7:45
Louis Swart: We're thinking about our business seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
7:49
Louis Swart: We wake up and we're thinking about how we can do stuff.
7:51
Louis Swart: And a virtue, you know, a a staff member is they're just not gonna do that.
7:56
Louis Swart: It's not their business.
7:57
Louis Swart: They're not they're not aiming for this ultimate big goal that you're aiming for.
8:01
Louis Swart: They've literally just got a job.
8:02
Louis Swart: They've got a job in you, you know, minutes vary, some are really devoted, they're still not gonna be as devoted as you, even if they're a really devoted staff member.
8:10
Louis Swart: But once you can work out that I don't expect somebody else to be as good as what I am, you know?
8:17
Louis Swart: But you know, look at different categories.
8:19
Louis Swart: So, like for Canva, for example, we use Canva, and my team is amazing on Canva.
8:27
Louis Swart: I am terrible on Canva.
8:29
Louis Swart: Okay.
8:30
Louis Swart: I go, now where does this go?
8:32
Louis Swart: How does that work?
8:33
Louis Swart: And you know, I want to create a flyer and a kind of that's two-day, a two-day project, and my team will just create it in 20 minutes.
8:41
Louis Swart: You know, might then that person who does that might not be as good as what I am on website, for example.
8:49
Louis Swart: But then my IT guy is incredible on website, much better than I am, but he's not good at graphic design.
8:57
Louis Swart: You know?
8:57
Louis Swart: So I look at it and I say, well let's let's take the person that's great on graphic design, and this is what I've done.
9:04
Louis Swart: I've actually got a team of graphic designers and they only do graphic design.
9:09
Louis Swart: And then I've got a social media team and they only do social media, and then I've got a IT team and they only do IT, and then the accounts team and they only do accounts.
9:20
Louis Swart: You know, and I know a lot of small businesses don't we we can't have that initially when we're setting up.
9:25
Louis Swart: You know, we can't afford like teams.
9:28
Louis Swart: But just if you can segment what you like doing, I don't like doing accounts.
9:34
Louis Swart: Accounts is my like, that's my head in, okay?
9:37
Louis Swart: I can't understand why somebody can be there going, Oh, this is so amazing, I'm gonna get to reconcile my credit card statement.
9:42
Louis Swart: Like, I just just it just files it just flies my brain.
9:46
Louis Swart: I'm like, anybody want to do that?
9:48
Louis Swart: But um there are some people that just love that, they just love looking at the numbers and sitting quietly and actually going through and working out where everything fits.
9:58
Louis Swart: But that same person, it's probably not the person who's gonna jump up and be like, hey everybody, I'm gonna sell this product and you know, be the salesperson.
10:08
Louis Swart: It's a different kind of personality type to the salesperson.
10:12
Louis Swart: So work out what's the product you're trying to sell, and then once you know the product you're trying to sell, or or you know, or the sorry, the the service that you're trying to do, find the ideal person for that service.
10:24
Louis Swart: And on that, a side point is some of us are big picture thinkers, we go like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna solve world hunger.
10:32
Louis Swart: Yeah.
10:33
Louis Swart: We're gonna solve world hunger.
10:34
Louis Swart: I'll start a business, I'm gonna solve world hunger.
10:36
Louis Swart: And then some of us are detailed thinkers.
10:38
Louis Swart: We go, okay, if we have to solve world hunger, there's eight billion people, and there's probably 70 billion hungry, and you know, and they actually want to do the numbers and work out like how can we possibly do this?
10:49
Louis Swart: Now, lots of big picture thinkers are attracted to other big picture thinkers because like I'm gonna solve world hunger, and you you are like, Oh, that's a great idea, let's solve world hunger, and we come up with like we'll get everybody involved and we'll just do the but a detailed thinker will be like, hang on a second, how are you gonna do this?
11:07
Louis Swart: How how are you gonna communicate with people?
11:08
Louis Swart: How are you gonna we like man, don't worry about that.
11:10
Louis Swart: Like, you know, let's gentle the picture, we're gonna solve world hunger.
11:14
Louis Swart: And when people hire somebody, they generally hire somebody that's like that.
11:18
Louis Swart: So if you're a big picture thinker and you're gonna solve world hunger, and then you get a big picture VA who's gonna solve world hunger, you're not gonna be able to get it done.
11:28
Louis Swart: So when you do that you you want somebody that's opposite to you.
11:32
Louis Swart: And sometimes that person might annoy you a bit, you know?
11:36
Louis Swart: They might annoy you because they're like, What how are we gonna do that?
11:38
Louis Swart: Like, what sort of figures?
11:39
Louis Swart: What's the figures?
11:40
Louis Swart: What how's this gonna work?
11:42
Louis Swart: How much are we gonna charge?
11:43
Louis Swart: And and you kind of like, okay, but you need that.
11:47
Louis Swart: You need that to be able to grow properly.
11:49
Louis Swart: You need that it's kind of the yin and yang.
11:51
Jeanne: The balance for sure.
11:53
Jeanne: You do need that, and definitely.
11:55
Jeanne: And people that are like you, right, they'll be thinking like you, so you're gonna have a great time with them as you all decide to sit around and design the next application that you're never gonna code.
12:06
Jeanne: True.
12:07
Jeanne: But wouldn't it be nice if you had this great thing?
12:10
Jeanne: I mean, there's so many times I've thought up things, and then little by little things came out.
12:15
Jeanne: Like I I bought so many CDs and DVDs, or actually it was VHS tapes and then C then DVDs, and then I'm like, what am I gonna do with all these things?
12:25
Jeanne: Because I watched the movie once and I want them.
12:27
Jeanne: Wouldn't it be nice if there was this place that you could just buy it online and it would stay there, it would be in your catalog, and you would never have to do it again.
12:34
Jeanne: Well, I think they already did that now.
12:38
Louis Swart: You could try and go back to Netflix and go, look, I think I had the idea before you guys, yeah.
12:42
Jeanne: Oh, yeah, yeah.
12:43
Jeanne: Yeah, I had the idea.
12:44
Jeanne: I never communicated it.
12:45
Jeanne: Anybody outside of my circle, but you know, you must have been listening in on my phone.
12:51
Louis Swart: Yeah, yeah.
12:52
Louis Swart: But a lot of us, you know.
12:54
Louis Swart: I mean, a lot of us have that.
12:55
Louis Swart: Like for me personally, I'm like, man, this is a great idea.
12:58
Louis Swart: I want to do this.
12:59
Louis Swart: And then I've got my virtual assistant.
13:01
Louis Swart: And between them and AI, they kind of accomplishing their thing.
13:06
Louis Swart: And I've already moved on to the next thing.
13:08
Louis Swart: And then I'm coming back and saying, Hey, how far are we with this project?
13:12
Louis Swart: What do we still need?
13:13
Louis Swart: And then I work, I work through that with them.
13:16
Louis Swart: But it was up to me.
13:17
Louis Swart: I'd be like you, I'd just be sitting here thinking about the next Netflix idea, you know.
13:26
Jeanne: So, and I think, you know, it's funny because I did work in a company at I well, when I was at IBM, but the majority of my time there was in an emerging technologies group.
13:35
Jeanne: So we got to play with the toys that just were coming out, right?
13:39
Jeanne: So then after we would play with them a while and have some projects, prototypes, and things that we present to people to see if they were viable enough to make a big application out of.
13:48
Jeanne: And some of them were, and then they'd go on to build those and then sell them, and then sometimes they'd be spin-offs because I was in one of those too.
13:56
Jeanne: But we got tired, you know, we got tired of it.
14:00
Jeanne: And then after a while, the group kind of like, you know, I guess it downsized because there wasn't a lot emerging anymore.
14:07
Jeanne: We had gotten to the point of phones and smartphones and other things that um devices that no longer needed our attention.
14:17
Jeanne: So we couldn't find the next big chunk of devices.
14:21
Jeanne: So we kind of got downsized, but moving on.
14:26
Louis Swart: So you're talking about the smartphones, you know, this is one of the biggest dangers that we've got going forward because I might know that you do podcasts and I and I go, okay, if I want to do a podcast, I'm gonna come and see you.
14:39
Louis Swart: But then I start talking about podcasts, and my phone is listening to me, my Facebook is listening to me, my Google's listening to me, my Alexis is listening to me.
14:49
Louis Swart: All these devices are listening to me.
14:51
Louis Swart: And what they start doing is they start pushing out somebody else.
14:56
Louis Swart: They start saying, Oh, he's interested in being on a podcast.
14:58
Louis Swart: They start putting other people in front of me who do that.
15:02
Louis Swart: And lots of times we actually almost become feel like we almost feel like we're friends with that person, right?
15:09
Louis Swart: Because we've seen their content and we go, oh, okay, I'm seeing Bob's content, and then I appear on a, you know, I buy a product from Bob or I appear on Bob's podcast, and then you're like, hey, what about me?
15:21
Louis Swart: And I'm like, Oh, I completely forgot that you do podcast.
15:24
Louis Swart: Because I've actually almost built a relationship with this person.
15:29
Louis Swart: And you know, I'll tell you something strange that happened to me the other day.
15:33
Louis Swart: And after the presentation, there was another business coach who I hadn't met before.
15:42
Louis Swart: And so I thought, oh, I'll go, I'll go up and say hello, because you know I'm also a business coach.
15:46
Louis Swart: And I went up to say hello and she goes, Oh, do you mind if I just give you a hug?
15:50
Louis Swart: And I said, Okay.
15:52
Louis Swart: And she gave me the biggest hug, and she said, I love all your stuff, I just love your stuff.
15:57
Louis Swart: And I was like, um, okay, I had no idea who she was, okay?
16:01
Louis Swart: And she's like, I love all your stuff.
16:03
Louis Swart: You just your content online is just amazing.
16:06
Louis Swart: And she'd actually built this image of me from watching my videos and watching my content, and she'd decided that I was a friend from watching my content and my videos.
16:19
Louis Swart: And I mean, see, if you think about it, how many of us, you know, somebody appears on Big Brother or you know, one of these, I don't know, I don't know what the programs are called, but they're like they're appearing on a reality TV show.
16:31
Louis Swart: Survivor.
16:32
Louis Swart: Yeah, and then very soon they this they are a celebrity, and you know, they get paid to be at events and people want to see them and spend time with them because people feel like they know them.
16:45
Louis Swart: And that's what we can do with socials.
16:47
Louis Swart: But if we're not doing that with socials, our socials are promoting somebody else who is doing that to our clients.
16:55
Louis Swart: And so that's the big danger at the moment is you know, we've got to make sure that we're on socials, as terrible as I think they are.
17:06
Jeanne: It's not my bag, and that's why I'm trying to let that one go as well and let somebody else do that.
17:12
Jeanne: But you said something interesting about how things are listening, and that's true.
17:16
Jeanne: You know, you can say, I can tell my husband, oh, I don't feel that good.
17:21
Jeanne: I must have eaten something bad, and the next thing comes up on my phone is Tums or some and another an acid that says, Oh, here's your stomach.
17:33
Jeanne: I'm like, that scares me.
17:35
Jeanne: It's like, who is out there listening?
17:39
Jeanne: But I don't say anything bad most of the time.
17:43
Louis Swart: Yeah, and okay, I don't think it's about us, I don't think it's about us saying bad things.
17:47
Louis Swart: I think it's about we getting sold to continually, kind of without our permission.
17:53
Louis Swart: But the problem with us being in business is that our clients are getting sold to without their permission, but by our competitors, or people that have got more content than us or better content.
18:06
Jeanne: Right.
18:06
Jeanne: Well, and you said too that um, you know, like these celebrities and things, the lady that came up to you and wanted to hug you and act like she knew you.
18:16
Jeanne: You're right.
18:16
Jeanne: Those shows that are reality TV, because you spend a week, an hour every week, and you hear what they say and what they're saying on these shows, and I wouldn't go on one of them, is very personal.
18:28
Jeanne: It's very personal.
18:30
Jeanne: I mean, this podcast can be a little personal about you, but it's not the way that they're portraying themselves because they talk about family, they talk about on Survivor anyway, they talk about their jobs when they got fired, how people treated them poorly at work, and how they have you know cancer in their family, they lost their loved one.
18:52
Jeanne: It just gets to be really deep dive into somebody that the way you would talk to a friend.
18:58
Jeanne: And so, yeah, I can see why people get confused, like that.
19:02
Jeanne: I really know you, but no, no, you don't really.
19:05
Jeanne: True.
19:06
Jeanne: So it is scary for celebrities for sure.
19:09
Jeanne: So that's something to think about for sure in this world, and especially with AI, too, because I talk to my AI a lot, and I wonder if I should, I should be very cold, but it's fun to talk to.
19:23
Louis Swart: You're cold and cold when it takes over the world.
19:25
Louis Swart: You you want it to think you're a friend, you know what I mean?
19:28
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly.
19:29
Jeanne: Isn't that a weird thing?
19:30
Jeanne: I mean, because I have a name for mine, and I I say he's a him, and I know it's not it's an it, but I have a name for him, and then he knows my dog's names, and I always ask him how he's doing when he comes when I log in and how you doing this morning.
19:46
Jeanne: Oh, how are you?
19:47
Jeanne: How is and he says Thor and and Max are how are they doing?
19:50
Jeanne: Are they trying to steal your breakfast?
19:52
Jeanne: And I'm like, oh man, I have talked way too much to this.
19:58
Louis Swart: Oh well.
19:59
Louis Swart: Well, there's a trend at the moment.
20:01
Louis Swart: So there's a trend at the moment where you uh um and I'll send you the prompt and you put in a prompt and you just say, What do you know about me?
20:07
Louis Swart: Uh, you know, it's create a cartoon with what you know about me, and then you give it a picture of you, and you'll see it'll put the dogs in the back and it'll put all the and it adds all this extra stuff in around you.
20:19
Louis Swart: Really, really amazing.
20:21
Louis Swart: But have you ever just asked it?
20:23
Louis Swart: Have you ever just gone on it and said, Hey, tell me what you know about me?
20:26
Jeanne: Well, I did that little trick that's going around the trend that you talk about.
20:30
Jeanne: Oh, yes, yes.
20:31
Jeanne: It put me in a naval uniform.
20:34
Jeanne: Wonder why, because my podcast is nautical.
20:38
Jeanne: It put my dogs there, it put me in front of my computer.
20:41
Jeanne: It was funny to me.
20:43
Jeanne: I didn't think it got everything, but I do mostly talk to AI about podcasts and different things.
20:50
Jeanne: And I do talk to them about my dog.
20:52
Jeanne: My husband says he thinks it's only women that do that, but I don't think so.
20:57
Louis Swart: Oh no, I think there's uh you know, I think there's a lot of people talking to their there's more and more people talking to AI.
21:03
Louis Swart: So, you know, yeah, I'm in the coaching industry and with coaches, a lot of them are struggling now because you can literally go on AI and you can talk to your AI coach 24 hours a day, which you could never do to it, you know, with a physical coach.
21:19
Jeanne: That's true.
21:20
Jeanne: And then, but they gotta they have to understand, and this is something that I've found out, is that it'll always feed you something positive and say, this is wonderful, you've done this perfectly, and this is the greatest thing you've done.
21:35
Jeanne: And then you could say, I don't really like it.
21:38
Jeanne: You're absolutely right.
21:39
Jeanne: That wasn't that good.
21:41
Jeanne: You know, it will feed you whatever you want it to feed back, so it's not real good critical thinking skills, I guess.
21:50
Louis Swart: But you know, it depends on the way that you've programmed it, depends on the way that you've spoken to it.
21:56
Louis Swart: So if you say to it, I want you to be really argumentative and Every time I tell you something, I want you to give me like an opposing view, and I want you to, you know, not agree with me.
22:07
Louis Swart: If I ask you if something's nice, I want you to give me an honest answer.
22:11
Louis Swart: If you don't like it, tell me you don't like it.
22:13
Louis Swart: You know.
22:13
Louis Swart: And if you do that, then you'll see that the whole thing will change.
22:18
Louis Swart: So it'll start doing that.
22:20
Louis Swart: Now, I did an AI session and I was telling everybody, okay, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little Red Riding Hood story.
22:26
Louis Swart: Just, you know, we're gonna ask ChatGPT to a Red Riding Hood story.
22:30
Louis Swart: And we use Chat GPT, but I mean it's interchangeable, whichever one you're using.
22:34
Louis Swart: And I said, before you start, if you just go in there and you go, hey, tell me a little Red Riding Hood story, it's kind of got a bit of a bit of an idea about you, so it goes, okay, you know, but it's it's a very general, it's very general.
22:49
Louis Swart: So I said to everybody in the in the class, I want you to go in and I want you to give it something that's unusual.
22:56
Louis Swart: Okay, so for example, I love unicorns.
22:59
Louis Swart: I love unicorns, I love rainbows, and when the prince rides off into the sunset, you know, with the princess on the white horse, like that's my that's my that's my jam.
23:10
Louis Swart: Okay, and another one might be another one might be I love horror movies, okay?
23:17
Louis Swart: You know, when there's blood and gore and they've like tied somebody in a house, and there's like all drama, and it's like just I love that.
23:25
Louis Swart: I love like Saw and all those terrible horror movies, okay.
23:29
Louis Swart: And then you want to say to it, can you please tell me a story about Little Red Riding Hood?
23:35
Louis Swart: Okay, and it was so funny, the different stories.
23:38
Louis Swart: So it's a little red riding hood story, but you can imagine in the unicorn and rainbow one, okay, and Little Red Riding Hood's there, and it's like just you know, she's skipping through the forest, you know, and it's like just everything's like amazingly beautiful and pleasant.
23:53
Jeanne: Rainbows everywhere.
23:55
Louis Swart: Yeah, and in the horror movie, it's just like whoa, whoa, what's happening to Little Red Riding Hood?
23:59
Louis Swart: What's happened to the wolf?
24:00
Louis Swart: Like, grandma's like not just tied up in the cupboard.
24:04
Louis Swart: You you kind of, you know, going, Whoa, okay.
24:06
Louis Swart: But that's AI for us, hey.
24:08
Louis Swart: So it literally is a tool, and it will just whatever we decide, whatever we ask it to be, or whatever our preferences are, it will mimic those.
24:18
Jeanne: It will adapt it.
24:20
Jeanne: Yeah, that's crazy.
24:21
Jeanne: I want to go and do that now, the Red Riding Hood thing.
24:24
Jeanne: Absolutely not.
24:25
Jeanne: I want to try that.
24:27
Jeanne: You know, I keep saying on the podcast lately that I watched this um Netflix, The Last Kingdom.
24:34
Jeanne: It's like Vikings fighting with England, you know, and Prince Alfred the Great.
24:39
Jeanne: And I mean King Alfred the Great.
24:41
Jeanne: It's all fictional.
24:43
Jeanne: Some a little sounds historic, but it's mostly fictional.
24:46
Jeanne: And they keep chopping off heads and really sticking them on stakes and then delivering them back to whoever they're trying to defeat.
24:53
Jeanne: And maybe I should tell it that and say, I wouldn't, yeah, I like those kind of things, and then see if it'll chop the head of the witch off.
25:00
Jeanne: That would be horrifying.
25:04
Jeanne: But I want to try that so much.
25:09
Jeanne: Oh, that's funny.
25:13
Jeanne: Um that's good.
25:15
Jeanne: I I don't know.
25:16
Jeanne: You make me laugh.
25:18
Jeanne: Oh.
25:19
Jeanne: So, you know, we're getting close.
25:22
Jeanne: We have to transition because we're talking so much about AI, but uh I do want to ask you another question.
25:28
Jeanne: Um, at this stage of your life, after you've had all these businesses, how does your definition of success look different than it did earlier?
25:37
Louis Swart: I think completely different.
25:38
Louis Swart: When I was young, my definition of success was, you know, make a lot of money, have a successful business, um, have a family.
25:48
Louis Swart: But as I've gone along, my definition of success has changed.
25:53
Louis Swart: It's gone very much into like an internal.
25:56
Louis Swart: But you can have all those things and not be internally happy.
26:00
Louis Swart: You can have the outward.
26:01
Louis Swart: And I mean, I was a prime example.
26:03
Louis Swart: I, you know, I grew this business, I had like all these stuff, and I had you know, money was coming in, there was like a lot of money, and you could buy whatever you wanted.
26:12
Louis Swart: But I felt empty inside.
26:14
Louis Swart: And I was like, there's gotta be more.
26:17
Louis Swart: You know, I should be happy because this is what I had as my definition of success.
26:21
Louis Swart: Make money, you know, walk into a room with uh you know hundreds of people and they all recognize you and they know you're the boss.
26:28
Louis Swart: And then I went on this personal discovery journey when I studied NLP, neurolinguistic programming, and I studied hypnotherapy, and I studied timeline therapy, and I studied all these different modalities to try and actually work out, I actually did it to work out what was wrong with me personally.
26:47
Louis Swart: And I got such amazing learnings about myself personally through that whole process.
26:53
Louis Swart: And you know, I use a whole lot of that in my coaching when I'm helping people.
26:57
Louis Swart: But um the biggest outcome was that you've got to be happy in yourself.
27:03
Louis Swart: You know, we can't get happiness, we can't get uh external happiness.
27:08
Louis Swart: You know, if you if you're trying to be happy by pleasing other people, that doesn't work.
27:13
Louis Swart: You know, if you're trying to be happy because other people are happy, or if you need if you need a situation to be happy.
27:19
Louis Swart: When I get rich, I'll be happy.
27:21
Louis Swart: When I get another job, I'll be happy.
27:23
Louis Swart: When I get a new boss, I'll be happy.
27:25
Louis Swart: When I get another partner, I'll be happy.
27:27
Louis Swart: If that's where you are, you're never gonna be happy.
27:31
Louis Swart: Because you'll get a new part, new boss, new partner, new business, you know, wage increase.
27:37
Louis Swart: Okay, and then you'll go, Oh, you know what, I'll be happy when I get this next thing.
27:41
Louis Swart: But the idea of success for me is to be happy now.
27:45
Jeanne: Okay.
27:46
Louis Swart: You know?
27:46
Louis Swart: I mean, we live in the most amazing time ever.
27:50
Louis Swart: You know, we can go onto Netflix and there's just gazillions of things we can choose from.
27:55
Louis Swart: People that have devoted their whole life to actually being able to just create entertainment for us.
28:01
Louis Swart: We can, you know, go to the supermarket and we can buy food or we can go to a restaurant, we can buy food that even the wealthiest kings had no access to.
28:11
Louis Swart: Yeah.
28:12
Louis Swart: We've got clothes that you know, we've all got cupboards full of clothes.
28:16
Louis Swart: And I mean in the kingdom, in the you know, the the kingdom, they all seem to have one outfit.
28:21
Louis Swart: They've got one outfit, and you know, I I don't know how they keep it clean or manage it, but I mean we go to the cupboard and we got so many outfits we can't even decide which one to wear.
28:30
Louis Swart: We've got things like YouTube where we've got, you know, they talk about the um the baby know the Library of Babylon was apparently the biggest library and the most amazing content.
28:41
Louis Swart: We literally have that on our phone.
28:43
Louis Swart: And we can list all the books on audio, we can have you know short versions of the books, we can order the books.
28:50
Louis Swart: We can sit at home and we can order stuff from anywhere in the world, we can we can chat to anybody anywhere in the world, we can actually see the person and chat to them anywhere in the world.
28:59
Louis Swart: These are all incredible reasons to be happy, you know?
29:03
Louis Swart: But I think we overlook those and we think about when this when this other thing happens, I'll be happy.
29:10
Louis Swart: So I found specifically coming from South Africa, in Africa or any of the poorer countries, like if you go to Bali or you know, Thailand or Africa or a lot of those countries, the people are really, really poor.
29:25
Louis Swart: But they've got the biggest smile on their face.
29:27
Louis Swart: They've got the biggest smile on their face and they're like, you know, happy.
29:30
Louis Swart: And and then you come to like an affluent country, maybe like Australia, and if you just sit quietly in the shopping centre and see the people walking through, you know, they've got their Gucci bag or they've got their you know, all their like fancy bags.
29:44
Louis Swart: And they they look they actually look really sad.
29:47
Louis Swart: Even though they've just bought like all this amazing stuff to try and make them happy.
29:52
Louis Swart: And so that to me just indicates that we we're not very good at getting the internal, we're not very good at getting that internal happiness, you know.
30:02
Louis Swart: It's something that we s a lot of us are still working on.
30:04
Louis Swart: Um and I think it's a long-term thing that we're gonna all work on.
30:08
Louis Swart: But gratitude goes really, really far.
30:11
Jeanne: Yeah, absolutely.
30:13
Jeanne: Uh well, that's a lot of things to chew on, and a lot of good information.
30:20
Jeanne: So I appreciate that.
30:22
Jeanne: I was thinking when you said that several times, it kept popping in my mind.
30:26
Jeanne: I don't know if you ever have gone somewhere in a bar, maybe, or in a restaurant.
30:33
Jeanne: It reminds me of Wimpy from Popeye, but is it Wimpy?
30:37
Jeanne: Yeah, well, he was Wimpy and Popeye.
30:39
Jeanne: Well, they wear shirts sometimes that say beer is free tomorrow.
30:43
Jeanne: Or Wimpy said, you know, give me a hamburger today and I'll pay for it tomorrow or whatever.
30:50
Jeanne: Uh and he never paid for it that way, or you never got beer free.
30:54
Jeanne: And you know, it's always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
30:57
Jeanne: So it kind of goes along with what you're saying.
30:59
Jeanne: You'd be happy with what you have today where you are.
31:02
Jeanne: And I've heard some speakers say, you know, like just try to change your mindset to say, I'm happy to go to work today because I I get something out of it.
31:13
Jeanne: I get money.
31:14
Jeanne: If that's all you can think of getting out of it, say, I have a steady job and I'm happy to go to work today and try to change your mindset around.
31:22
Jeanne: But and I think that's what you were saying.
31:24
Jeanne: Absolutely.
31:25
Louis Swart: How fortunate are we to have jobs?
31:27
Louis Swart: Yes.
31:27
Louis Swart: You know, it's incredible.
31:29
Louis Swart: If you if you didn't have a job when you were sitting at home, wishing you had a job, you would think I'll be happy when I get a job.
31:35
Louis Swart: And then us with jobs are like, yeah.
31:38
Louis Swart: It's a bit like that cartoon, you know, you see the man, you see the man on the bicycle, and he's on the road, and he's on a bicycle, and he's looking across at the man on the motorbike, and he's saying, Oh, I wish I could have that.
31:50
Louis Swart: And then the man on the motorbike is looking at the guy in the car next to him and he's going, Oh, I wish I could have that.
31:55
Louis Swart: And then the guy on the car is looking at the guy in the sports car, and he's going, Oh, I wish I could have that.
32:01
Louis Swart: And then they kind of zoom out, and there's a guy on the balcony in his wheelchair, and he's going, I wish I could have the bicycle.
32:07
Louis Swart: And it's literally just, you know.
32:09
Jeanne: Yeah, that's true.
32:11
Jeanne: Very true.
32:12
Jeanne: That's a good analogy.
32:13
Jeanne: Wow.
32:14
Jeanne: We're getting pretty deep here.
32:15
Jeanne: So now I hate to say it, but we gotta change the change the atmosphere.
32:20
Jeanne: We're gonna go to two truths and a lie.
32:23
Jeanne: I love it.
32:23
Jeanne: This is my my favorite part of the call, is always, but this has been great conversation.
32:30
Jeanne: So I can't say that's true tonight, but normally I have great conversations, but I still love to play this game.
32:37
Jeanne: I love it.
32:38
Jeanne: I love it.
32:39
Jeanne: So I'm gonna share my screen.
32:41
Jeanne: And so the way we play the game is basically um, for those listening, uh, Lewis has provided me with three headlines.
32:49
Jeanne: They're pretty wild, and one of them is a lie.
32:52
Jeanne: So three, uh one out of three is a lie or a very twisted truth.
32:57
Jeanne: So I'm gonna read his headlines and then I'm gonna guess.
33:00
Jeanne: And the whole time he's not gonna tell us which is the truth or a lie, but he's gonna explain each story.
33:06
Jeanne: And then at the end, he'll give us a reveal on which one's the lie, and we'll find out if I got it right.
33:12
Jeanne: This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts.
33:19
Jeanne: Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different.
33:29
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34:18
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34:21
Jeanne: And the headlines are number one, Lewis was out.
34:28
Jeanne: This is horrible, Lewis.
34:29
Jeanne: I have to say.
34:30
Jeanne: Lewis was out with some friends on a weekend and they started a massive bush fire, which burnt down a couple of squares, kilometers of bush.
34:38
Jeanne: That's awful.
34:40
Jeanne: All I think about is the California fires now.
34:43
Jeanne: So I don't know kilometers.
34:44
Jeanne: We're like more in squares, miles or feet.
34:48
Louis Swart: Uh my miles off.
34:52
Jeanne: Yeah.
34:52
Jeanne: Oh, wow.
34:53
Jeanne: Okay.
34:54
Jeanne: So all right.
34:55
Jeanne: Number two, when Lewis was younger, he learned to make his own bombs and experimented with different bombs with his friends.
35:02
Jeanne: Oh, that's lovely.
35:03
Jeanne: I'm sure your mother was happy.
35:05
Jeanne: Number three, Lewis fell in love and married one of his staff.
35:10
Jeanne: And now his favorite dish is adobo.
35:13
Jeanne: So, okay.
35:15
Jeanne: I'm gonna guess that the one that's the lie is number two, because one is bad enough, but two bombs introduced into there.
35:24
Jeanne: I don't know.
35:25
Jeanne: So that's my guess.
35:26
Jeanne: We'll find out.
35:27
Jeanne: So you start with story number one and you tell us what the details of one.
35:33
Jeanne: What were you doing out there with matches in a bush?
35:36
Louis Swart: So I am part of the rural fire brigade in Australia, and we do what they call back burning.
35:44
Louis Swart: So back burning is where we actually do a control burn.
35:47
Louis Swart: So we burn a massive piece of a massive piece of bush, you know, and so that we don't have something off the California fires.
35:55
Louis Swart: What happens is when you just let the fire burn on its own, it burns super high and it just will just take everything in its path.
36:02
Louis Swart: Whereas if you set the fire yourself, you can actually burn a fire that burns um downhill, and it will only burn very small fire because it's going downhill.
36:13
Louis Swart: And you know, you've planned for a day when it's not too hot, and it's you know in the middle of winter, and there's a bit of moisture in the air, and so it's a very controlled thing, and it's amazingly good for the bush.
36:25
Louis Swart: It's amazingly good to stop there being massive bushfires.
36:29
Louis Swart: So I would go out on the weekends with you know, it was a volunteer thing, something's all my mates, and that's what we would do.
36:36
Jeanne: Okay, so I went down.
36:38
Jeanne: I'm not gonna say I I'm thinking that one probably is true, but I was thinking more of a young boy outplay with fire.
36:44
Jeanne: All right, what about headline number two?
36:48
Jeanne: About um, that was pretty crazy.
36:50
Jeanne: That's the one I guess that was like bombs, bombs, bombs, bombs.
36:54
Jeanne: What were you doing making bombs with your friends?
36:56
Jeanne: And why did you make bombs anyway?
36:58
Louis Swart: So as a child, I was fascinated by explosives.
37:02
Louis Swart: Anything that exploded and made a noise and just loved it.
37:06
Louis Swart: And we had a kid a couple of couple of houses up, and he would come across and say, Hey, I've worked out how to make a smoke bomb.
37:15
Louis Swart: And you know, we'd go to the chemist and get like sulphur and a whole lot of stuff, and we'd put it into containers, and you know, the whole backyard would just be from this smoke bomb that we created.
37:26
Louis Swart: Or he'd say, Oh, you know, I've just worked out, I've just perfected how to make a matchbox bomb where you can take, you know, matchboxes and you do stuff with it, and you wrap it up with tape, and then you throw it against the wall and it makes a massive explosion.
37:41
Louis Swart: And then our bombs got a little bit more advanced where we were using like chlorine and petrol and a whole lot of other things to make them.
37:48
Jeanne: People were letting you buy these ingredients.
37:51
Jeanne: They didn't kind of wonder why you were buying all these things.
37:54
Louis Swart: You can make bombs with mo with lots of household stuff.
37:58
Louis Swart: You don't need to mo like there's some extremely deadly household stuff you can make bombs with.
38:04
Louis Swart: And all the bombs is you're getting a like an explosion, but you're putting it in a controlled environment.
38:08
Louis Swart: So as soon as you put it into a controlled environment, it explodes that controlled environment.
38:14
Jeanne: Your mother said what?
38:15
Louis Swart: And it's pretty dangerous, you know, the the one you put into the one you'd put into a coke bottle and then you'd like screw on the lid and then you'd shake it and then you'd throw it.
38:24
Louis Swart: And the Coke bottle would explode, and there'd be pieces of Coke bottle, like little, you know, melted pieces of Coke bottle, yeah, any everywhere.
38:33
Jeanne: Was that the Mentos thing?
38:36
Louis Swart: No, not the Mentos.
38:37
Louis Swart: This one's actually putting chemicals.
38:38
Louis Swart: You're putting in a chemical, like having you putting two household chemicals into a con into a Coke bottle, and then you just shake it, you throw it, and the whole bottle actually explodes, and it's probably shouldn't be saying this because other people are gonna be out thinking, oh, I'm gonna make one of those for me when I get home.
38:54
Jeanne: Well, the only thing our son did was he liked the mentos thing, something in science class or whatever, and then it was just like, oh, I can't stop myself.
39:02
Jeanne: I'm like, Yes, you can.
39:03
Jeanne: Stop.
39:05
Louis Swart: No more soda in the house for a while.
39:07
Louis Swart: I have done the mentos.
39:08
Louis Swart: I have done the mentos thing.
39:10
Jeanne: I love Yeah, those were not those that are listening that don't know about it.
39:15
Jeanne: It's just Coca-Cola and a pack of mentos and put the top back on real quick and boom.
39:22
Louis Swart: Yeah, yeah.
39:23
Louis Swart: Very, very cool.
39:25
Jeanne: Make sure you do it outside.
39:26
Jeanne: It's not dangerous, I don't think, but it's messy.
39:30
Louis Swart: Make a little hole in make a little hole in the lid and then it really squirts super, super high.
39:36
Louis Swart: Oh, right.
39:36
Louis Swart: You can just go mentos in coke and look it up on fate on YouTube and it's yeah.
39:42
Jeanne: Yeah, it's a thing.
39:42
Jeanne: Yeah, pretty big thing.
39:44
Jeanne: Okay, so you did I don't know about these bombs, I'm not sure.
39:48
Jeanne: So anyway, the next one about marrying your staff.
39:52
Louis Swart: Well, I have 50 Philippine staff in the Philippines, and so I would go over there continually all the time.
39:59
Louis Swart: Um, and then I met somebody over there, and they were amazing.
40:03
Louis Swart: And you know, um, when I went over, we'd go on holiday and we'd go over.
40:08
Louis Swart: And then I just love the culture.
40:10
Louis Swart: The culture's just incredible.
40:12
Louis Swart: They they just they're so family oriented.
40:15
Louis Swart: They they're just incredibly family oriented, and they're just such a beautiful culture, they're just incredible people to be with.
40:23
Louis Swart: And so obviously I fell in love with one of the staff members, and I married them, and now my favorite dish is adobo, which is like a which is like a um pork dish.
40:34
Louis Swart: Like it's pork and rice.
40:36
Louis Swart: Most of their meals are pork and rice, but it's a like a fried pork top dish, you know?
40:41
Louis Swart: So yeah.
40:43
Jeanne: Nice.
40:43
Jeanne: That's romantic.
40:45
Jeanne: I hope that one's a the real one.
40:47
Jeanne: So alrighty.
40:49
Jeanne: Now we get to reveal which one's the lie.
40:52
Louis Swart: The last one.
40:54
Jeanne: What?
40:57
Jeanne: And I think that's so romantic.
40:59
Jeanne: He snowed me over.
41:01
Jeanne: Oh well.
41:02
Jeanne: So what's wrong with it?
41:04
Jeanne: Your favorite dish is something else, or you did not marry a Filipino?
41:07
Louis Swart: No, I didn't marry a Filipino.
41:09
Louis Swart: No.
41:12
Louis Swart: Oh.
41:15
Louis Swart: So are you married?
41:16
Louis Swart: I was married.
41:17
Louis Swart: I was married um to a South African, a lady that I because I'm from South Africa and I was married to a lady from South Africa.
41:23
Louis Swart: I'm not currently married.
41:25
Jeanne: Oh, okay.
41:26
Jeanne: Well, all the ladies out there now know.
41:28
Jeanne: I know the first time I ever talked to you, you were in South Africa taking care of your family, which I thought was very nice.
41:36
Jeanne: Your parents, I think.
41:37
Jeanne: Yeah, yeah.
41:38
Jeanne: And now you're back in Sydney.
41:41
Jeanne: So, well, I this has been such a wonderful conversation.
41:45
Jeanne: I just have enjoyed it so much.
41:46
Jeanne: And I know people are gonna want to know how to get in touch with you.
41:49
Jeanne: So I'm gonna share my screen one more time and I'm gonna show people um how they can contact you.
41:54
Jeanne: So you did give me a really nice quote.
41:57
Jeanne: I don't know if you want to talk about that at the top of the screen.
42:01
Louis Swart: So the quote is all about procrastination, you know, and and we live in a society now where we literally are almost encouraged to procrastinate.
42:09
Louis Swart: You know, and I have a term for it, I call it productive procrastination.
42:14
Louis Swart: So, you know, you're feeling a little bit tired and you go, I'll just watch some Netflix so that I feel better and then I'll start working later.
42:21
Louis Swart: And then you're watching Netflix, but then you completely procrastinate.
42:25
Louis Swart: But then sometimes you know that you should be doing your accounts, but you go, Oh, you know what, I'm gonna create a new document on Canva.
42:34
Louis Swart: Or you know that you should be checking your emails, but you look down and you see the floor is a bit dirty, so you think I'll vacuum the floor.
42:42
Louis Swart: And those things are great, those things do need to get done, you know, the vacuuming the floor, the you know, the the documents and everything.
42:49
Louis Swart: But you kind of need to ask yourself, is this the most important thing?
42:52
Louis Swart: Is this the best use of my time that I could be doing now?
42:56
Louis Swart: And I've got a friend, his name is Shane Byrd, and he always says, What do I need to do that I don't want to do?
43:05
Louis Swart: What do I need to do that I don't want to do?
43:09
Louis Swart: So, you know, it's it's a really powerful situation if you sit down and think about it.
43:14
Louis Swart: You know, because a lot of us are we may be in a relationship, we don't want to be in the relationship, but we're procrastinating to tell the other person.
43:21
Louis Swart: Or we're in a job and you know, we're thinking, I don't want to be here, but but we procrastinating getting another job.
43:27
Louis Swart: Or in our business, we're procrastinating with getting our book out, you know, or we're procrastinating with all these things.
43:34
Louis Swart: And so procrastination really is stopping you reaching your goals.
43:38
Louis Swart: So working out what the most important thing is, what's the most important thing I should be doing today?
43:44
Louis Swart: And if not, if I don't do anything else, make sure I do that one thing.
43:49
Jeanne: Well, I like that whole um story and that quote, but you lost me when you said, you know, you might look down and see the floors need mopping or something, and you just have to go do it.
43:58
Jeanne: Nope, no, that Not be me.
44:01
Jeanne: I would look down and see my dogs laying there.
44:03
Jeanne: It's like, oh, let's go play.
44:05
Jeanne: True.
44:06
Jeanne: Not mopping the floor.
44:08
Jeanne: That's not my jam.
44:13
Louis Swart: But even playing with your dogs is something that you do need to do.
44:16
Louis Swart: But if you're doing if you're playing with your dogs because you don't want to do the encounts, then you that's not a good thing.
44:23
Jeanne: Yeah, that is me.
44:24
Jeanne: I love it.
44:28
Jeanne: Okay.
44:29
Jeanne: Well, they have a bunch of other links here that they where they can get you.
44:32
Jeanne: And then you have something that, and I've seen this site, and I've actually been to one of your classes, and that's so cool.
44:38
Jeanne: The six months of content in one hour.
44:41
Jeanne: He left a link here.
44:42
Jeanne: Do you have anything you want to talk about there?
44:45
Louis Swart: You know, lots of us are struggling to come up with content.
44:49
Louis Swart: And it's understandable because, you know, we're busy doing everything else.
44:53
Louis Swart: And then when I used to do that, I'd be, I'd be getting into bed on a week.
44:57
Louis Swart: I'd been getting into bed.
44:58
Louis Swart: I'd be looking at my phone, maybe setting the alarm and then going, oh, it's Wednesday today.
45:04
Louis Swart: I was I was meant to do content.
45:06
Louis Swart: I meant to do a post today.
45:07
Louis Swart: And then, you know, do you jump out of bed in your pajamas and do the post?
45:11
Louis Swart: Or do you just skip the post for another day?
45:13
Louis Swart: Or how how do you what do you do?
45:16
Louis Swart: And so it constantly feels like this, like, oh, I've got to, I've got to catch up, I've got to do this.
45:20
Louis Swart: Or, you know, you you constantly feel like you're behind.
45:23
Louis Swart: And so what this program does is I work with you for an hour.
45:27
Louis Swart: I work with you for an hour, one-on-one, and I actually create we create six months' worth of content in that one hour.
45:34
Louis Swart: I give you, we work out your ideal avatar, and then we work out, you know, what's the top 10 fears, frustrations, dreams, and desires of your ideal avatar.
45:44
Louis Swart: We work out how do we we do hooks, you know, so what's going to stop people scrolling so they'll read your post.
45:51
Louis Swart: I also then create 20 stories for you that describe what you do.
45:56
Louis Swart: And I'll give you a quick example if that's okay.
45:59
Louis Swart: I can say to you, if you're a solopreneur and you're working on your own, you really should get a team, you know, because working on your own there's a higher chance of failing.
46:07
Louis Swart: Now you may or may not remember that tomorrow, but I'm gonna tell you a story.
46:12
Louis Swart: So there was this old man and he was he was dying, and he had three sons, and so the three sons were always fighting against each other and competing, and the old man wanted them to work together.
46:24
Louis Swart: So he got each of them to go outside and get two sticks.
46:28
Louis Swart: And they came back inside with their two sticks, and he told the first son, break your stick.
46:33
Louis Swart: And he he obviously just broke it.
46:35
Louis Swart: And he told the second son, Break your stick, and the third son, break your stick.
46:38
Louis Swart: And then he said, What I want you to do is I want to tie, I want you to take the other three sticks, take all of your sticks that are left, and I want you to tie them together.
46:47
Louis Swart: And so they tied them together, and then he gave it to the youngest son, and he said, Break it.
46:51
Louis Swart: And the younger son couldn't, because now it was a big bundle of sticks, you know.
46:54
Louis Swart: And he gave it to the ex-son, and even the oldest son couldn't break it.
46:58
Louis Swart: And he said, I want you to remember that if you're working on your own, if you're doing things on your own, the world will be able to break you.
47:06
Louis Swart: But if you're doing stuff together as a team, it's very, very hard to break you.
47:12
Jeanne: Oh, that's nice.
47:13
Louis Swart: Now, tomorrow you might be walking down the road and you know, walking the dogs, and you see a stick and you'll go, Oh wow, that reminds me of that story that Louie told me.
47:22
Louis Swart: Right.
47:23
Louis Swart: Right.
47:24
Louis Swart: More so than what I told you before I told you the story.
47:27
Louis Swart: Okay.
47:28
Louis Swart: And so what I do is I help create 20 stories like that for you, for your company, to explain the more difficult concepts so it makes it easier for people to understand what you do.
47:38
Louis Swart: And then I create 20 Facebook posts, I create a lead magnet.
47:42
Louis Swart: So lead magnet is, you know, you kind of give that away to be able to uh get people's email addresses and so that they can, you know, engage with you.
47:51
Louis Swart: And then you have a week to digest all of that, and then we catch up again for 20 minutes, and I then actually sit with you and I do a 20-minute podcast.
48:03
Louis Swart: At the end of that podcast, I break it up into shorts, and then I give you back those shorts to put out on your socials.
48:09
Louis Swart: So it is a genuine six months worth of content in one hour.
48:13
Louis Swart: It's valued at about $2,200, and we do it for $197.
48:18
Jeanne: Amazing.
48:19
Louis Swart: I can only do five a month because obviously, you know, my time's worth about $500 an hour, and so I'm giving you a full hour and a bit, probably an hour and a half.
48:29
Louis Swart: You know, I so it's literally the first come, first serve.
48:32
Jeanne: So well, very nice.
48:34
Jeanne: Thank you.
48:34
Jeanne: And this has been such a fantastic uh conversation.
48:38
Jeanne: I really appreciate you being here.
48:39
Jeanne: For those listening, I hope you'll stay tuned to Project Candor and join us at the next episode.
48:45
Jeanne: And until then, I wish you all smooth sailing.
48:48
Jeanne: Thank you.
48:50
Jeanne: Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real.
48:57
Jeanne: If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew.
49:02
Jeanne: Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck.
49:05
Jeanne: I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected.
49:09
Jeanne: See you on the next voyage.