Latest / The Action Catalyst / Master the Game Within, with Patrick McAndrew (Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Self-Improvement, Focus)
Transcript
- 0:00Adam Outland: Today's guest is Patrick McAndrew, a seasoned
- 0:06entrepreneur and high performance coach and the
- 0:32founder and CEO of Hara, an exclusive membership community
- 0:36and network for the top 1% of entrepreneurs and business
- 0:40leaders. Patrick has a wealth of experience that merges cutting
- 0:43edge technology with deep human insight. Then we're excited to
- 0:46talk to him. Well, Patrick, so excited to chat with you today.
- 0:49You're coaching and providing a lot of value to, you say that
- 0:52kind of the 1% of the 1% in business. So if I somehow
- 0:56stumbled upon you in secondary school and I said, Patrick, what
- 0:59do you what do you want to be when you grow up? What would a
- 1:01secondary school Patrick have shared?
- 1:04Patrick McAndrew: I think at that time it was, it depends. If
- 1:06it was like a beginning of secondary school. I think I
- 1:08wanted to be an actor. If it was the middle of the time in
- 1:12secondary school, I wanted to be I wanted to have a talk show. I
- 1:16wanted to host a talk show.
- 1:17Adam Outland: Were you already like planning and thinking of
- 1:20coming to the states, where you want to build a career in
- 1:23Ireland, or what was that even floating through your mind at
- 1:26that time?
- 1:27Patrick McAndrew: Well, I always, I always was very taken
- 1:29by the US and this New York in particular, where I lived for
- 1:34five years, and it was sort of hung over my head. But if you do
- 1:37well enough on these exams, Patrick, my mom would say,
- 1:39taking a trip to New York. But that trip to New York never
- 1:42manifested. The first time I came to the States, I think I
- 1:45was maybe 19, and we came on a family trip, and we went to
- 1:48Clearwater Beach for Christmas. And as you can imagine, the
- 1:53United States was New York in my mind, like that was the country
- 1:57that there was no sense or curiosity about the others. And
- 2:00I remember driving from Tampa to Clearwater, and I had never seen
- 2:05things like strip malls, and they're the most foreign, alien
- 2:09looking thing ever, like seeing Dunkin Donuts and Wendy's and
- 2:14Burger King, but all in these, just sort of these, these
- 2:16parallel units alongside a road. And I remember thinking, This
- 2:20doesn't look like the impression that I had of this country at
- 2:23all. So I have to start to come to terms to realize that there,
- 2:25there are different parts of this country and and they all
- 2:28hold different characters.
- 2:30Adam Outland: Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot of drywall pre
- 2:32fabrication, not a lot of stone cathedrals that were modernized.
- 2:36Patrick McAndrew: Indeed. Yeah.
- 2:38Adam Outland: Walk me through a little bit of your time at
- 2:39Ireland after that, I mean going to school, developing what were
- 2:43things that you started to gravitate to as you, as you
- 2:46matured and aged up, and how did that influence the direction you
- 2:50were headed?
- 2:50Patrick McAndrew: I think there's always just been a
- 2:52tendency just to follow curiosities. So when I was in
- 2:56college, I studied law, but I had a radio show. I also worked
- 3:01in the regional radio station as a sound engineer. So I would be
- 3:04there during the live shows, and I would be turning on the the
- 3:08ads and fading in the music and all that stuff and meeting the
- 3:11guests. And there was something there. There was something about
- 3:14conversing and meeting people. I grew up in a home where there
- 3:17was constantly people coming through, whether it was people
- 3:21traveling from around the world coming to stay with us, or
- 3:24eccentric characters that my mom had come across, or she had an
- 3:28employment agency for a large number of years. The nurses that
- 3:31would be coming into Ireland, they would stay with us for a
- 3:33few days before they would go to the nursing home at the hospital
- 3:36where they were going to work. So we would sort of like take
- 3:39care of them, because they would be homesick and get them
- 3:41settled. She also had a jewelry business where she made bespoke
- 3:45engagement rings for couples. So there was a room in the house
- 3:48where they would come in and they would be presented. They
- 3:50would they would come in to design the engagement ring they
- 3:52wanted. And then my mom would take the design and go to
- 3:55Antwerp and get it made. And then they would come back and
- 3:58she would have a bottle of champagne, and we would see the
- 3:59joy, and we would maybe have a meal with them and talk with
- 4:03them. You know that that sort of nature, that could very
- 4:05convivial nature, was was very normal in my household growing
- 4:10up. So there was always different cultures, different
- 4:12characters. And I growing up as a young kid, growing up, grew up
- 4:16in London before I moved to Ireland, and for a number of
- 4:18years. And during that time in London, I actually lived in a
- 4:22gallery. So my parents had had rented the flat that they had in
- 4:27London and then took out a lease on this gallery to manage the
- 4:31expenses of it all. They built drywall, and they built rooms
- 4:35within the gallery which were never there was just a big open
- 4:37space, and they built like a little apartment and a home at
- 4:39the back. And when I would leave my bedroom, I would walk out
- 4:42onto the gallery. So when I would come home from school, I
- 4:45would I would enter in through a gallery to get to my room. And
- 4:48when I was there, and my mom was she didn't really have many
- 4:51staff. So if there was a lot of people coming through as a five
- 4:54year old or a six year old, it was my role to to guide them
- 4:57around and show them the pieces of glass and the pieces of art
- 4:59and. And keep them entertained for a few minutes until my mom
- 5:02could speak to them. So all of that, I think, the the way of
- 5:05observing and engaging with people had sort of been inherent
- 5:09to to my my lived experience. We also had the most travel man in
- 5:13the world stay with us for a few days. I don't know if he still
- 5:16holds that title, but he did at that time. He had been traveling
- 5:19for 24 years, and Ireland was the last country on his world
- 5:22tour. So I came home from school one day and my mom was at the
- 5:25kitchen table chatting with this guy, and she said, this is Mike
- 5:28Patrick. I think I was telling you about him. He's the most
- 5:31traveled man in the world. I heard him on the radio three
- 5:33days ago. I sent a text into the station and said, if you're
- 5:36coming to Galway and you need somewhere to say, just let me
- 5:38know. And he called her up on the phone. He said, Hey, is this
- 5:40Julia? And she said, Yeah. He said, It's Mike. I've just
- 5:42arrived into Galway bus station. Is that offer still standing to
- 5:45stay with you for a few days? And she said, absolutely. So we
- 5:48got to hang out with him for three or four days. And he had
- 5:51been in Somalia. He had been in Mogadishu. He was one of the
- 5:54first tourists there in a very long time. He was in the town
- 5:59across he had not very far away from in Iraq, where Osama bin
- 6:04Laden had been captured. He traveled through Afghanistan. He
- 6:08had been all over, you know, but places that you rarely hear
- 6:11about. He was a quirky character, for sure, but it was
- 6:13interesting conversations with him.
- 6:15Adam Outland: I can only imagine, and what a cool
- 6:19exposure that you got to diversity through your own home
- 6:22with all these people coming through. So fast forward from
- 6:24this, you've become a sought after speaker. What led to that
- 6:28type of work exactly?
- 6:30Patrick McAndrew: Well it started out with speed reading.
- 6:33So I was teaching speed reading memorization workshops around
- 6:37the country. I was going into schools and colleges and
- 6:40companies like Bessemer trust, Northern Trust, quite a few
- 6:43hedge funds and investment banks, helping these people
- 6:45improve how they processed and retained information. And that
- 6:48was a very interesting experience, because I realized,
- 6:51you know, if you want to pay, I don't know what is it? It's
- 6:53somewhere in the region, like 160 or 180,000 for for an MBA at
- 6:57Columbia University, I got to go in and see those people in that
- 7:00room. Amazing networking, amazing conceptual frameworks
- 7:04and models and ways of thinking about business. But so much of
- 7:07business is about your own internal game. You know, the
- 7:11actual dynamics of business are not that difficult. There are
- 7:15problems which need to be solved Absolutely, and problems keep
- 7:19arising. But what's the challenge there? Well, the
- 7:21inherent challenge is, is the capacity to sustain change and
- 7:26the capacity to be malleable and adaptive. I think that's that's
- 7:30what our unique capacity as human beings are. Is this
- 7:33capacity to mutate, to be one way and then to recognize that
- 7:37the environment has changed, I must mutate into another way,
- 7:40but yet I can retain my true essence. I don't lose myself
- 7:44under the conditions of the environment. I maintain myself,
- 7:46but I'm not bound to this identity. I'm good at this or I
- 7:50like this, so therefore I'm only going to try and find a business
- 7:52that operates on the fundamentals of me being very
- 7:55good at doing stuff on a computer, but I don't want to
- 7:57interact with people in person. Well, I've just cut off so much
- 8:00opportunity to myself. So maybe if I can develop certain develop
- 8:03certain qualities of how I engage with others, much more
- 8:05will show for me. So I saw in all of these environments that I
- 8:10went into that these people are learning a lot of information,
- 8:14but it's not taking them so far because they're not learning
- 8:17about themselves. In fact, they're neglecting themselves.
- 8:20They're only trying to develop this 10% area which it feels
- 8:24like it's directly relevant to business, but there's this other
- 8:2690% which determines your clarity, your conviction, your
- 8:30essence, your value, your sense of self worth. And if you're
- 8:33clear on all of that, you can achieve a whole lot more, and
- 8:36you can feel content, and you can feel like your whole life is
- 8:39is in alignment. It doesn't feel like it's so fragmented. So I
- 8:42began on that journey by teaching people about focus,
- 8:45because that was the thing. Through my exposure to different
- 8:48environments of teaching speed reading, I realized, wow, okay,
- 8:51these people that I'm meeting, they're very driven. They're not
- 8:54lacking motivation. Yet, companies are spending, you
- 8:57know, 1000s, 10s of 1000s every conference for a motivational
- 9:00speaker that people don't need motivation. They've plenty.
- 9:03They've plenty drive. What they lack is a pragmatic sense of how
- 9:06to organize themselves. They're missing internal structure. It's
- 9:09pretty chaotic in there. So the first place that I approached
- 9:12was focus, because I thought that people needed help focus,
- 9:15which they did. But then over years and years of doing that,
- 9:19working with Pacific Life, Lincoln, financial, Morgan,
- 9:21Stanley, all these companies, I realized, okay, I can teach you
- 9:25how to focus, and I can make you very good at doing the tasks
- 9:28efficiently, but there's a deeper problem there. There's a
- 9:31much deeper problem, and it's your capacity to regulate
- 9:34yourself. It's your capacity to actually regulate and relate to
- 9:37yourself, and that's actually more of the foundational layer
- 9:41that causes a lot of the problems, leadership problems,
- 9:44strategic problems. There's a company I got called in to work
- 9:48with last November. They had 26 primary initiatives.
- 9:51Adam Outland: That word primary, and 26 initiatives...
- 9:53Patrick McAndrew: And 26. Yeah, it's not, it's not all aligning.
- 9:56But where is that coming from? That's not coming from the fact
- 9:58that these people aren't intelligent enough. It's
- 10:00actually coming from more of a place that their whole emotional
- 10:02state is so scattered and so fragmented because they don't
- 10:05feel safe and secure in their work. They're unsure about this
- 10:07industry. It's going through such rapid change, like many
- 10:09are, so a lot of the problems that are appearing across the
- 10:12company is a totality in the individuals within it, much more
- 10:16about an internal thing that's happening. And a lot of my work
- 10:19previously was building fundamental qualities in people
- 10:22so that they could improve their reading and their memory and
- 10:25their focus, so that they could actually start to take action.
- 10:27But now I'm sort of interested in working with people who have
- 10:29no issue taking action, who have no issue getting things done,
- 10:32but yet, there's a barrier. There's some sort of an internal
- 10:35block that's confusing. Either they have developed far beyond
- 10:39the business and the business is not catching up to them, so it
- 10:41feels like it's out of alignment. Or the business has
- 10:44developed far beyond them, and they've been pouring so much
- 10:47into the business, but as an individual, they're still quite
- 10:49underdeveloped in comparison to the demands of the business. So
- 10:52how do we calibrate these two and if we do, means that things
- 10:55move a lot more smoothly, and they progress much more in the
- 10:58right direction.
- 11:00Adam Outland: My experience with a lot of these types of
- 11:02individuals who found a significant amount of in a
- 11:05comparative success in their their business or their
- 11:07practice, to be at the level I think we're talking about is
- 11:10that they have to have a lot of self confidence in specifically
- 11:14what they're doing, meaning that they've developed somewhat of a
- 11:17ego. And I don't mean they're all egoists, that they are
- 11:21dominated by it, but I find that a lot of them have to have
- 11:25gotten what they had. They have to have a certain amount of self
- 11:29worth and self value that they've crested over to
- 11:33accomplish things of a magnitude. And with that
- 11:35sometimes comes some defensiveness around change, or
- 11:39a defensiveness of them that maybe not verbalizing this, but
- 11:43I'm imagined you've maybe heard at some point, Patrick, you
- 11:45don't you don't know my business. You don't know what
- 11:48we're doing. So how do you how do you overcome that?
- 11:51Patrick McAndrew: I don't see a lot of self confidence. I see a
- 11:53huge amount of fear. I see a lot of people who where their fuel
- 11:58source is coming from, growing up in poverty, and they never
- 12:02want to be in that environment again, or feeling maybe once
- 12:07again poverty, but feeling trapped, feeling like they
- 12:09didn't have choice. So what they want is they want money that's
- 12:12going to give them the freedom to choose. There was a gentleman
- 12:14that I spoke with not so long ago, and I asked him, if you
- 12:18were to kind of look outside of yourself, what do you orbit? And
- 12:21for this gentleman, it was money and power. He was able to say it
- 12:24very quickly that that's what it was. He was very accomplished,
- 12:27but he was extremely exhausted, but he couldn't seem to stop his
- 12:30relentless pursuit of whatever he seemed to be pursuing. And it
- 12:33was more money and more power. Now, as our conversation
- 12:36progressed, at the root of it, he just wanted some love and
- 12:38self acceptance. It this is not bad. This is, this is, this is
- 12:42fine. It's, it's part of the development of the human being
- 12:44and of the psyche. We come from a place of pain, and we try to
- 12:47transmute that pain into something that will take us
- 12:49forward, because we don't want it to hold us back. So maybe we
- 12:52develop another character. We develop this man or this woman
- 12:56who's able to amass money or power, and now people are drawn
- 13:00to us because of the money and the power or the knowledge or
- 13:03the capacity to get things done or to help things in the
- 13:06community. And now people value you and see you for these
- 13:09qualities and these capacities. But underneath that, as soon as
- 13:13that is taken away the business or taking action every day,
- 13:17there's a huge amount of insecurity. There's a huge
- 13:20amount of insecurity, and that causes a huge amount of pain and
- 13:23limitation on the business that ends up getting created because
- 13:26the ego and the identity of the person who found that it is so
- 13:29interwoven with the actions or what that business reflects
- 13:32about them that they're trying to keep it in a way that keeps
- 13:38their identity the way they want it to be. So what ends up
- 13:40happening is that our identity gets reduced to our biography.
- 13:44You know, you you got a biography on me. People at the
- 13:47beginning of the show heard about me. I'm not that. I'm not
- 13:50that. If I were to describe myself as that, it would feel
- 13:52like it's another person. But yet, we need certain terms and
- 13:56containers to explain it. So you're a coach, okay, great. Now
- 14:00I get a sense of who you are, but you're so much more than
- 14:02that. You're bringing your whole lived experience into it. So
- 14:05it's fine to have these sort of monikers of who we are as
- 14:08people, because we need that to make allow people to have a
- 14:12reference point of who we are and what we do. But my days,
- 14:14it's very dangerous if you think that you are, that if you allow
- 14:17your identity become wrapped up in that, you become very weak.
- 14:20And I, from what I see, there's, there's very little self
- 14:23confidence, there's a lot of survival, even no matter how
- 14:26many millions you have in the bank. And I It doesn't have to
- 14:30be that way.
- 14:32Adam Outland: Yeah, interesting.
- 14:33Patrick McAndrew: And I would say, from my observation, I
- 14:35would say confidence is a sort of emergent thing. You don't
- 14:37craft confidence. Confidence sort of emerges and it merges
- 14:40through your view of yourself, and the evidence that this, this
- 14:44view of yourself, is being reinforced. So you can also be
- 14:47very confident that you can't do something you know you it's it's
- 14:51a certainty. It's a certainty of something. It's a certainty of
- 14:53your capabilities and your powers, which can be that it's a
- 14:56certainty that you can move towards something, or it's
- 14:58equally a certainty that you cannot. And. Because it's been
- 15:00evidenced so many times before. So my interest more so is
- 15:06because there's many environments that I go into with
- 15:08very little confidence that I can do it, but I have confidence
- 15:12that I can find a way. I have confidence that I'll be able to
- 15:16be in the the uncertainty or the discomfort of it, and I'll move
- 15:19through it, because that's something that I have evidence
- 15:21of, I'm much more interested in, I suppose, expanding people's
- 15:26sense of value and worth beyond just their actions. So for
- 15:30example, something that we're going to be launching relatively
- 15:33soon with Hara, which I now realize is so needed and so
- 15:37important is so many of the companies that I speak to,
- 15:40whether it's the CEO or it's an intern, are feeling immensely
- 15:45overwhelmed. Now, this overwhelm is coming because of the the
- 15:49amount of information and the amount of things that we feel
- 15:52that we should know, the amount of communication. There was one
- 15:55gentleman that I spoke with in Dallas at a conference couple of
- 15:57weeks ago, and he told me he gets about 480 emails a day like
- 16:00that's such an insane quantity that's that's beyond a full time
- 16:04job just filtering through that every day. But why does this
- 16:06happen? Why are these tools that were meant to liberate us and
- 16:11free us through the work that was most important? Why are they
- 16:13becoming the things that are holding everybody back? Because
- 16:16it's, it's a total distraction. Now, you could say it's in the
- 16:20design, and there's a truth to that. There's a design of a
- 16:23desire for engagement. That's how these products measure their
- 16:27value, not how little time you spend on them, but how much time
- 16:29you spend on them, how much information flows through them.
- 16:31But I don't think it's enough to just place the blame on the
- 16:33product and the tool. There's something deeper that's
- 16:36happening here, and it's it's actually much more related to a
- 16:40sense of social security. And I've been watching this, and
- 16:43it's only become clear to me very much. So in the last five
- 16:45or six months, if we just look at distributed teams, for
- 16:48example, where you've got, let's just say, a couple of people in
- 16:52Omaha, Nebraska, there's a company that I work with. I have
- 16:54a few people there, and then you have others which are dotted
- 16:56around the country, but their boss and their direct report is
- 16:59there in Omaha, and they get to meet up with each other two or
- 17:02three, maybe four times a year at conferences. Sometimes they
- 17:04get 15, 20 minutes. If it's 20 minutes, 25 minutes as a one on
- 17:08one chat. That feels like it's enormous, but most the time it's
- 17:11in a group setting, so the conversation is more about the
- 17:13collective like, what are we all talking about? The person that
- 17:15I'm reporting to doesn't really know me, doesn't really know my
- 17:18true character. They see the analytics of what I do based on
- 17:22the metrics of what comes in, but as a person who I am, as
- 17:25human being, they don't know me because they haven't had much
- 17:27time with me. I've given leadership teams this this
- 17:30challenge to spend 45 minutes with their direct reports just
- 17:33on one call, and I've given them questions to ask which are much
- 17:36more deep about like who they really are as human beings. And
- 17:39they learn so much about them and realize that their
- 17:41assumptions of what motivated and drove them is so different
- 17:44to what it was. So that's a norm that people are not really
- 17:46getting to see each other. Now, if I'm in New Mexico and my
- 17:49direct report is in Omaha, Nebraska, I see him or her three
- 17:52or four times a year. My promotion, how much more I'm
- 17:55going to earn next year, or maintaining my job, is dependent
- 17:58on their view of me, how they see me. So how can I prove
- 18:01myself? I make sure I do I succeed as much as I can in the
- 18:05realm of the metrics, and I also make sure that I am as
- 18:08responsive as possible in my emails and my communication and
- 18:12showing that I'm on, because by showing that I'm on and that I'm
- 18:16hyper responsive, it's a display in the best way possible that
- 18:19I'm committed and that I'm a worthy human being, and that's
- 18:22what's happening more and more, is that we're not engaging
- 18:24deeply with each other. So the context of how much we
- 18:27understand of each other is very low. So we invest a lot more of
- 18:30our energy into those low context transmissions of
- 18:33communication, which creates this very fragmented and
- 18:37distracted state. Because to be not distracted and fragmented is
- 18:40to choose for yourself, is to choose where you're going to
- 18:42direct your energy, where you see that there's things
- 18:45happening outside. But you downgrade their importance,
- 18:47because you upgrade the importance of what you want to
- 18:50do and what you see is important. But for the vast
- 18:52majority of people I meet, they've completely downgraded to
- 18:55level zero their importance of what they want and how they want
- 18:58to direct their lives or their business or their day, and they
- 19:01completely upgrade the importance of everything that's
- 19:04happening around them, that's coming in because they don't
- 19:06want to miss a thing, because if they do, it might threaten their
- 19:09job. It might threaten their sense of how they're perceived
- 19:11by their boss. And if that's not met and if that's not worked on,
- 19:16I can offer as much content and information about how the brain
- 19:18works and how to organize yourself, but it won't make a
- 19:20difference, because the human beings are in a very survivalist
- 19:23very survivalistic state, and that's driving the show, not the
- 19:25rational mind, but a very, very emotional, unsure, unsecure
- 19:30internal state.
- 19:31Adam Outland: Reminds me of a book called Tribal Leadership. I
- 19:34don't know if you've read this, but I think you'd like it.
- 19:36There's, you know, a category of stages that the Stanford
- 19:40professor observed in different culture and communities, the
- 19:44lowest level was like the kind you see in prisons, which is
- 19:47like defined by the affirmation, My life sucks. That was the way
- 19:53they had to write it and put it. They didn't see the way out. And
- 19:55then the second tier, it becomes a little bit less, My life
- 19:59sucks, and it. They can see others have it great. It's My
- 20:02Life sucks, but other people have it great. There's someone
- 20:04near them that's succeeding, probably a manager or a leader.
- 20:07And then level three is I'm great, but you're not. And this
- 20:11is prolific in the corporate world, lawyers, doctors and in
- 20:15order to be the greatest, they can't have competition in their
- 20:19office, right? It's always proving it's a survivalist. And
- 20:22then level four is we are great, and Level Five is Life is great.
- 20:26And there are very few companies that operate at that level. But
- 20:28just kind of connecting these dots in my head, as I hear you
- 20:31talk, it's, it's a little bit of that, am I hearing this
- 20:33somewhat, right?
- 20:34Patrick McAndrew: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because
- 20:37I think, I think we've been given these incredible tools,
- 20:39which are there to support us, but they're there to support the
- 20:43what we have to actually develop us so that we can develop
- 20:46internally. Whereas I think in many circumstances, there's a
- 20:48regression taking place where we're completely divorcing
- 20:53ourselves or neglecting how we need to develop internally to
- 20:56meet the demands of what's being presented to us externally, and
- 21:00we're just sort of playing the victim to how life is playing
- 21:03out around us and through Hara, the work that I'm doing is, I'm
- 21:07fundamentally trying to show people, you have a huge amount
- 21:09of agency here, but you're, you're the way that you live
- 21:13your life is what's shaping this. If you feel like there's
- 21:15no space or time for that, you'll continue to suffer, and
- 21:19that's the truth, because you'll, you'll find that your
- 21:21attention is constantly going out. It's constantly about
- 21:24what's happening outside of you, whereas what we give people our
- 21:27practices and ways to develop themselves internally, because
- 21:30we need that every time, our whole range of evolution as we
- 21:35as we develop as the human species, is dependent on changes
- 21:38to the external environment, changes the temperature, changes
- 21:42to food, changes to threats, changes towards opportunities.
- 21:47We're being given an immense amount of comfort, and so much
- 21:49of the products that are being designed are around this are
- 21:52more primal and primitive aspects of us. So yeah, there's,
- 21:55there's definitely a lot that's happening here in recognizing
- 21:58that the world is changing around us. So how are we
- 22:01changing internally to rise from top, as opposed to rising to the
- 22:06top thinking or recognizing that we have so many of these
- 22:08qualities in us that are incredible.
- 22:11Adam Outland: Oh, yeah, one of the things that you talk about
- 22:13is how to break the cycle of distraction. What does that look
- 22:16like in motion when you're working with someone?
- 22:18Patrick McAndrew: Well, are there places that your attention
- 22:21is often getting brought to that you know is not serving you, yet
- 22:25it keeps happening, but the but then there's a reflective
- 22:28tendency right to observe and say, Wow, that was not where I
- 22:31needed to spend my time, that that was not useful to me. And
- 22:36so there's different states of mind that arise. So what's the
- 22:39observation or the thing that you notice in yourself
- 22:42afterwards, the things that are sort of you keep going towards,
- 22:45and you spend a lot of time. So if we take a bit more of an
- 22:48objective perspective, so you're looking at yourself from an
- 22:50outside body, because you're in it at the moment, and you're
- 22:52sort of like you're analyzing and reasoning at the same time.
- 22:56So if we can be just more objective, so the analysis and
- 22:59the reasoning is separate, where is your attention going? Where
- 23:02it's being wasteful. If we just look at it hard and like that,
- 23:06hard and fast. Because once again, I'm not of the opinion
- 23:09that you need to be this sense of being productive, which is
- 23:13bringing utility to every moment. You're building a
- 23:16business and you're running a business, you need clarity of
- 23:18mind thinking. I chatted with a guy a couple of months ago, he
- 23:22was joining Hara, and he was saying to me, you know, I want
- 23:24to map out a five year plan. If I could only find four hours to
- 23:28just sit down and map out a five year plan. I know how crazy that
- 23:30sounds. And I said, Is it crazy that you're mapping out a five
- 23:33year plan, or is it crazy that you think that you need four
- 23:37hours to map out a five year plan? He said, It's crazy that I
- 23:39think I need four hours I should be able to do it unless so
- 23:42there's this constant sense that I should be able to condense and
- 23:44do things very quickly, when the reality is my days. If you're
- 23:47going to think about a five year plan, which I personally feel is
- 23:50maybe it's a five year vision, but it's hard to implement a
- 23:53plan. You need more than four hours for that. I think it
- 23:57should. It should take a lot of time and self reflection. So
- 24:00from an objective view, where is your attention going? That feels
- 24:04as though it's it's wasteful, and the loop of distraction is
- 24:08the constant pattern of the mind. It's not. It's just the
- 24:11constant stay, you know, in the evening, watching TV, but also
- 24:15being on our phone, and then at dinner table, then at the dinner
- 24:19table, watching something or there, but your mind is being
- 24:22taken elsewhere. So whether we appreciate it or not, we might
- 24:26consider that we're training or we're working out when we go to
- 24:29the gym and we do specific things of our body, but when it
- 24:32comes to our character and our state of mind, we're constantly
- 24:36developing and shaping ourselves to better or worse if you're
- 24:40running a business and if you're doing something for yourself,
- 24:43it's your clarity and your vision that shapes everything.
- 24:47Because I think you know as well as I do, when the value system
- 24:52of the business, or as a way to generate interest, starts going
- 24:54through the lens of social media and posts and engagement,
- 24:58suddenly it can sort of. Start to get warped, that the
- 25:01opportunity comes from the degree of engagement. The
- 25:04opportunity comes from responding to what's happening
- 25:06in that space. But you know, I have a friend who will share the
- 25:10dark truth, which is he runs a business around productivity. He
- 25:14wanted to build more leads. He spent a day a year posting, and
- 25:18had a team of freelancers helping him. Built up his
- 25:20Instagram to 360,000 followers. The Instagram page is solely
- 25:24about this topic of productivity, running a digital
- 25:26marketing agency. Zero point point zero. 6% of his followers
- 25:33converted to actually purchasing his product. Wow. So it can
- 25:36become a trap in and of itself, where now I've lost my the
- 25:40direction the vision has become skewed. I'm I just saw that
- 25:44there was a lot of engagement on the post, so maybe we need to
- 25:46double down in more of those posts. And now we're getting
- 25:48more followers, and now we're growing the engagement. But is
- 25:51that tethered to the ultimate vision of the business? I from
- 25:55that? I mean, it's not, unless your vision is to become a
- 25:57content creator. You know, when you're a small business owner,
- 25:59you can get caught in that loop.
- 26:01Adam Outland: What's your personal practice to remain
- 26:04clear? Because, as I think we both agree, it's sometimes it's
- 26:06easy to see than others, it's harder even for us to apply some
- 26:09of this thinking to ourselves at times, because it gets cloudy.
- 26:12Patrick McAndrew: Well, a practice which has changed a lot
- 26:15of things is, I think I used to place too much emphasis on the
- 26:20market. So a lot of the businesses that I built in the
- 26:23past, or even the talks that I gave, was my observation of what
- 26:26the market needed. But in that process, you can feel like you
- 26:30lose yourself, because you start, you start just completely
- 26:34adjusting to the needs and the expectations of the market, and
- 26:38inherently, you end up that's it. That's That's a fast track
- 26:40to lose your own sense of value and worth. In the last year or
- 26:43year and a half, I've changed that. Where it's a it's a dance
- 26:47between the two. It's what is alive in me, in what I'm seeing,
- 26:51in what I want to pursue, and what are the needs in the
- 26:54market. And how can I find a way to connect the two together? So
- 26:58there will be people in that space who will not be ready to
- 27:01receive it, and there will be moments where what I articulate
- 27:04is not clear enough for what the market is looking for, and that
- 27:07creates this constant observation loop of myself and
- 27:10the market. So then becomes the practice of my own observation
- 27:14that I have to engage with.
- 27:16Adam Outland: Having done a lot of these transformative things
- 27:18yourself, put them in motion for clients, what advice would you
- 27:21give yourself many years ago? What do you think that young
- 27:24version of yourself could use?
- 27:26Patrick McAndrew: I think it would be to acknowledge
- 27:28uniqueness, not to be afraid of that, and then don't just try
- 27:33and explore that as a little thing on the side. Go right
- 27:35after it, go right after your appetite. That's, that's what
- 27:39I've done as an adult. And it's, it's, and I didn't do that much.
- 27:42I did it as a kid, but I also had this fear of the group and
- 27:45wanting to fit in with everybody else. And I think as a kid, I
- 27:49would have, or if I was to meet that guy, I would have told him,
- 27:52You see things a little bit differently, and sometimes it
- 27:54feels like you don't want to, because you want to see it the
- 27:56way everybody else does, because it can feel threatening to feel
- 27:59that that difference. But go there, just go there and let go
- 28:03of that judgment.
- 28:04Adam Outland: What a great note to end on. Great conversation,
- 28:06Patrick, really enjoyed it.
- 28:08Patrick McAndrew: Thank you, Adam, it's really been a joy to
- 28:09speak with you. You were a great, great host, great
- 28:11questions. All the best.