Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Business Mindset With Paul Avins | The Christian Reeve Podcast | # 155 |

Transcript

Business Mindset With Paul Avins | The Christian Reeve Podcast | # 155 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:02
  podcast. Today's guest is an
• 0:04
  award-winning business coach Mentor, investor, public
• 0:07
  speaker, all the way from Oxfordshire.
• 0:09
  His name is Paul avens. Welcome to the show Paul Hayden.
• 0:12
  Hey, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, man.
• 0:15
  Pleasure to have you. As always, I love having
• 0:16
  business people on my show just because it offers kind of a
• 0:20
  different element from what I normally do as I was saying to
• 0:23
  you off camera, but for those listening who might not know the
• 0:27
  podcast is kind of going through a transitional period.
• 0:30
  It and I suppose if I you know, because the reason why this is
• 0:34
  important and you appreciate this from a business standpoint
• 0:37
  is I get a lot of questions asking me like, well, what is
• 0:41
  the podcast? Why should I listen?
• 0:43
  You know who's it for like what's it about?
• 0:45
  And that's a hard question to answer because when I first
• 0:48
  started it was like an interview podcast, but sometimes it's not
• 0:52
  sometimes it's discussions. Sometimes it's just a really
• 0:55
  good conversation. Sometimes it's an expiring
• 0:58
  piece. Sometimes they'll Episodes like
• 1:00
  this where we talked just straight business and maybe we
• 1:03
  trade expertise, but even then, you know, sometimes it can go in
• 1:07
  in any which way. So, I think what I'm trying to
• 1:10
  achieve with this is like life stories life lessons, expertise
• 1:15
  a bit of everything. Let's see where it goes.
• 1:17
  You know, maybe that's the USB. I don't know.
• 1:19
  Well, I think, okay. So, I think I think it's
• 1:22
  interesting, right? Because I think when you do
• 1:24
  startups and I've done, I'm over done half a dozen startups.
• 1:28
  And I've done three startups in the last For years, there's a
• 1:32
  there's a part of you that has an intention when you start out,
• 1:35
  which is what you think. It's going to be.
• 1:36
  All right, and then there's a part of you that goes live for
• 1:38
  the first two years. I'm really trying to figure out
• 1:40
  what the heck, this thing is, right?
• 1:41
  What is it? Even?
• 1:42
  What is this business? Right?
• 1:43
  Like, can I make money doing it? You know, Richard Branson talks
• 1:46
  about, you know, the first two years of any business is about
• 1:48
  one word, which is survival. Can you actually survive?
• 1:50
  Can you make a living doing what you're trying to do?
• 1:52
  But actually, until you get a few customers and actually start
• 1:55
  working with people and start figuring out what their real
• 1:57
  issues are, what they want, what they don't what?
• 2:00
  Works for doesn't, you know, you're going to have a whole
• 2:02
  bunch of assumptions, right? But like it's like the old quote
• 2:04
  from Mike. Tyson says, everyone has a plan
• 2:06
  to beat me until you smack me in the face.
• 2:08
  So same thing with a business or anything, right?
• 2:10
  It's like until you actually put your inner strategy into action,
• 2:14
  actually go in the marketplace and and test it.
• 2:17
  It's just assumptions. Right?
• 2:19
  So like you have to be prepared to.
• 2:21
  It's a commonly used phrase now, but it's over uses a pivot.
• 2:24
  But what I mean is just you have to be able to adapt to go.
• 2:28
  Actually, this is where the flow is this.
• 2:30
  Where the energy is, this is where the money is.
• 2:32
  This is where customers are you have to be prepared to not be
• 2:36
  too attached to what something is at the very beginning because
• 2:39
  you don't really know right? You have an idea and you have a
• 2:42
  hope in. You have an aspiration in a
• 2:43
  belief but until you go out there and take feedback from
• 2:46
  customers and figure out what they really want, versus what
• 2:49
  you think they want. You don't know.
• 2:51
  So, I don't think it's for me. Listen.
• 2:53
  I've spent years working with startups first, 11 years, in my
• 2:57
  career, and I can tell you right now, is that the ones that
• 3:00
  Exceeded the ones that prepared to change and evolve and you
• 3:03
  know, keep Reinventing who they are and what they're about and
• 3:06
  the problems that they solve. So I think it's cool.
• 3:08
  You're evolving makes good thing.
• 3:10
  So how often I'm going to rephrase that we've the most
• 3:15
  stubborn sort of Business Leaders that you're dealing with
• 3:20
  this, you know, there's just starting out their business
• 3:22
  because it's like some people you just can't get through to
• 3:24
  and you just have to accept it and be like, well, you know, you
• 3:28
  find out for yourself, but for the people that you know,
• 3:31
  they're stubborn, but maybe you can reach them.
• 3:32
  What steps do you use to kind of reach them and make them realize
• 3:36
  that hey you need to just tweak this.
• 3:39
  Push it a little bit more this way because it's going to add a
• 3:41
  lot more to the business. Dennis, or it's going to
• 3:43
  potentially pursue in the direction that you need to go.
• 3:47
  Okay, so a good question for me. I don't.
• 3:50
  So here's the thing about working with a business coach,
• 3:52
  right? You have to want to be coach,
• 3:54
  you have to want to be coached. It does like in my entire
• 3:58
  career. I think I've only ever sold
• 3:59
  coaching to one person and it was the biggest nightmare of my
• 4:02
  life because every month did turn up to a coaching session
• 4:05
  and go go on, then justify your fee.
• 4:07
  Why, why am I working with you again?
• 4:09
  Uh, and after after about six months of this is not a pleasant
• 4:13
  experience for me, right? I remember I missed the flight
• 4:15
  to Ireland. For a conference because this
• 4:17
  guy was like, no, I'm not leaving the room until you until
• 4:20
  you've done. Another thing.
• 4:21
  That turns me my money and I was like, this is not, this is not
• 4:25
  how coaching works, right? Like you for a coaching
• 4:28
  relationship to work. The other person has to want to
• 4:30
  be coached, right? So - can you imagine it in a
• 4:33
  sports context? Can you imagine being an
• 4:34
  athlete? And the coach is going.
• 4:35
  Listen, you need to run like this if you want to get faster
• 4:38
  and the athlete going. Well, no, I'm not going to do
• 4:41
  that. Well, it's like, well, hang on a
• 4:42
  minute. Then you don't want the outcome,
• 4:44
  right? Because we're giving you The
• 4:46
  strategy and you're going, no, I shall do it that way.
• 4:49
  Okay. So with that particular person,
• 4:52
  because I remember having a business coach on before, and
• 4:54
  they said something fairly similar about this help people
• 4:56
  can be difficult. But did you did you give them
• 4:59
  like, okay. Here's the thing you need to try
• 5:02
  and here's like a quantifiable way of studying it, come back to
• 5:07
  me. Did you sort of present
• 5:08
  something like that? And then they were just like no.
• 5:13
  I think the challenge was that. I sold him on a bigger vision.
• 5:16
  In for his business than he had. I think I said, yeah.
• 5:20
  So, like I had a much bigger busy vision for his business and
• 5:23
  therefore drive and determination and sort of
• 5:27
  aspiration for his business and he had.
• 5:29
  So, when I would say, listen, we need to do this this and this,
• 5:31
  this is where we got to go next. This is the, this is the plan,
• 5:34
  he would be like, yeah. I don't know if I really want to
• 5:36
  do that. Okay, it's like, well, yeah, but
• 5:42
  I thought you said you wanted to grow their business and get this
• 5:45
  result and it's like yeah. But that seems like a lot of
• 5:47
  work, and I'm like, okay. All right.
• 5:50
  It's like, so there has to be an element of matched.
• 5:52
  So, it's where I came up with the principal.
• 5:54
  I call the principle of matched effort.
• 5:56
  Right? And I tell everyone in the
• 5:57
  clients I've ever worked with listen, I will work as hard to
• 6:01
  catch. You work with you, as you are
• 6:02
  prepared to work yourself. I will match your effort, right?
• 6:05
  If you go full out. I'll go full out.
• 6:07
  If you go 50%, I'll go for it. I'm going to match your F.
• 6:09
  I'm going to do it for you. I'm never going to do it for
• 6:12
  you. This is your business.
• 6:13
  I'm not building your business. I own three of my own and busy
• 6:16
  building. In those.
• 6:17
  But if you want me to coach you, I'm going to coach you to be
• 6:20
  better. I'm going to improve you and
• 6:21
  push you in and make you uncomfortable.
• 6:23
  I'm going to ask you questions. You don't want answers and I'm
• 6:25
  going to, I'm going to force you to look at things.
• 6:27
  You don't want to look at sometimes, and if that's not for
• 6:29
  you, then don't do this. Don't get coaching.
• 6:32
  Don't because it's going to be uncomfortable at times because
• 6:35
  that's how you grow your not. If you're a relationship where
• 6:38
  it's all great and everyone, hugs each other, and it's all
• 6:40
  high fives and no one has the difficult conversation.
• 6:42
  Like why the hell did you just do that?
• 6:44
  You just you know, you just wasted a bunch of money.
• 6:46
  What? Thinking if no one's going to
• 6:48
  call your own UBS, then it's not a good relationship.
• 6:51
  Right? You have to be able to be the
• 6:52
  unreasonable frame. It's like, look, I am absolutely
• 6:55
  the best friend you will ever have if you're in a crisis.
• 6:58
  I'm also the worst worst friend in the world.
• 7:00
  If you're not doing what you said, you're going to do and
• 7:02
  you're lying to me and lying to yourself because I'm going to
• 7:04
  call you on that BS. And I'm not going to let you get
• 7:06
  away with it because that's because ultimately, you're
• 7:09
  paying me to hold you accountable, to do what you said
• 7:12
  you were going to do, right? The best thing about being in
• 7:16
  business. Yourself, is that you don't have
• 7:17
  a boss. It is.
• 7:19
  It's great. It's pretty nobody tells you
• 7:21
  what to do. Nobody, you know, you don't have
• 7:23
  to be at work at 9:00 on a Monday morning, to do, want to
• 7:25
  be all that fantastic. Right?
• 7:27
  The worst thing about being in, being your own boss is that you
• 7:31
  don't have a boss. Nobody knows.
• 7:33
  If you skydived off, nobody do for you were supposed to do what
• 7:35
  you said, you wouldn't do today. Right?
• 7:37
  Nobody said, if you actually, you know, you got that post out
• 7:40
  where you wrote that proposal and nobody knows, the only
• 7:43
  person who knows is you and your conscience, when you go to sleep
• 7:45
  at night, whether At the promise you made to yourself and most
• 7:49
  people and this is horrific lie, true.
• 7:51
  Most people are you know, go on about wanting to keep promises
• 7:55
  to customers and they can't even keep a promise to themselves and
• 7:58
  it's like look you got to learn to keep your own promises first,
• 8:01
  right? Stop trying to worry about
• 8:02
  keeping promises to the bank and you know, the customers you
• 8:05
  gotta learn to keep promises. She's up.
• 8:06
  You say you're going to get them, do it, get them, do it.
• 8:08
  Like it dat's. The only measure is whether you
• 8:11
  can show up even if you don't feel like doing it.
• 8:15
  You know what? I think a big elements this is
• 8:17
  what because I can relate to this.
• 8:18
  I I'm a freelancer subcontractor.
• 8:20
  I do a lot of different types of work and to be honest with you
• 8:24
  when I compare it to like doing the 9 to 5 jobs and stuff, I
• 8:28
  used to do back in the day. I actually work.
• 8:31
  Yeah, more hours generally and harder than I did before and
• 8:36
  that's not to say I didn't work hard or whatever but like you
• 8:39
  just you just find yourself kind of You find yourself motivated,
• 8:45
  motivated because you're working as you say for yourself or like,
• 8:48
  you know, you got more freedom, right?
• 8:51
  But then you can pick and choose how you sort of construct that
• 8:54
  within a standard working week. But I think also an important
• 8:58
  element to this which I think is very important is when it's your
• 9:01
  bread and butter. When it's like, that's the stuff
• 9:04
  that is your living. How you sort of survive.
• 9:08
  There's a lot more motivation there to work harder than if
• 9:12
  it's like, A pet project or like at all.
• 9:14
  Maybe I'll do this. I don't know.
• 9:16
  Like I think that's a big element to it.
• 9:19
  Yeah, because like failures, if you don't show up and do what
• 9:24
  you said you're going to do if you don't turn up and you know,
• 9:27
  if you know you do this is a freelancer either way.
• 9:29
  It doesn't matter, right. It's like if you don't show up
• 9:32
  and generate the revenue or generate the profit and get you
• 9:35
  don't get paid. It's like it's like this is the
• 9:38
  bit that most people who transition out of corporates or
• 9:43
  Like an employee droll struggle with, right?
• 9:45
  Because when you're in a, this is my analogy, but when you're
• 9:47
  in an employed roll, you get given the, the monthly fix,
• 9:52
  right? We just call it money or salary
• 9:54
  but it's a hit, you get a monthly hit, you get that hit,
• 9:56
  whether you did a good job most months or not, you know, and see
• 10:00
  you get the annual prize are you don't know if you did a good job
• 10:01
  or not and do and they give you just enough money to keep you on
• 10:05
  the hook for another month, so that you're addicted to the
• 10:08
  cash. They get you addicted to cash,
• 10:09
  right? So, the Mustang way of thinking
• 10:11
  about it. But that's the model, isn't it?
• 10:13
  Then when you come out and go on your own, guess what you have to
• 10:16
  do for the first 90 days or six months or 12 months.
• 10:18
  You have to go cold turkey and everybody doesn't understand
• 10:21
  that. It's just like coming off.
• 10:22
  Any other drug that you would come off, right?
• 10:24
  You, you got your going to go through withdrawal symptoms.
• 10:27
  You're going to suddenly go. Hang on a minute, the end of the
• 10:28
  month. Where's my money?
• 10:29
  Well, actually, you have made any yet because you've just
• 10:32
  started the business up, would you mean I haven't made any yet.
• 10:34
  I've got overheads of got there and people people find that
• 10:37
  freaking, but it's, but it's like, well, did you plan?
• 10:41
  Did you put anything? Yes, I did it.
• 10:42
  Well, no, I just I started this business because I'm passionate
• 10:45
  about it. Okay, great, but, like, people
• 10:48
  don't realize, it takes 90 days of being out of the system
• 10:51
  before you even start to realize you were in a system.
• 10:53
  Let alone anything else. And this is what causes people
• 10:56
  to really struggle. They can't survive long enough
• 10:59
  to generate cash and generate cash flow to keep themselves.
• 11:03
  Going, let alone figure out whether the business is got any
• 11:06
  real potential, right? Because they're geared to highly
• 11:08
  individually and and they haven't figured that out in the
• 11:11
  mud. They didn't put enough behind
• 11:13
  them to be able to fund while it got off the ground.
• 11:16
  And therefore I can give you numerous examples where people
• 11:19
  ran out of cash personally, and that was what drove them back
• 11:22
  into corporate life rather than the business was not being
• 11:26
  successful. Always not making traction.
• 11:28
  They ran out of money personally because they were too highly
• 11:30
  geared. Is it?
• 11:32
  So they just kind of put all the money in the wrong areas and
• 11:35
  then I'll just start. Now they just, they just had a
• 11:37
  massive lifestyle expenditure. Right?
• 11:39
  So, like the, you know, their running costs were less use
• 11:41
  numbers for a second but so 10 grand a month, right?
• 11:43
  Okay. So, you know, then when you come
• 11:45
  out of corporate, if you haven't got 60 Grand in savings and you
• 11:48
  can't generate money for six months while you figure your
• 11:50
  business, out very quickly burn through your savings and run out
• 11:54
  of money and suddenly it's like, you know, we'll how we're going
• 11:57
  to pay the mortgage. Are we going to pay the cars how
• 11:58
  we're going to pay the school fees?
• 11:59
  Whatever the number is, right? And quite often that fear of
• 12:03
  running out of money is what drives people back into
• 12:05
  employment, rather than staying with something.
• 12:08
  That's that, that they could potentially make great if they
• 12:12
  could stick it out long enough. One thing.
• 12:15
  I always find really interesting about the sea shows like Dragons
• 12:19
  Den. For example, is when they bring
• 12:21
  them on the show, and it's just one individual as opposed to an
• 12:24
  entity, something that said, you know, attend business with
• 12:28
  assets versus just investing in that. person and with the people
• 12:34
  that they don't tend to invest in more often than not, the
• 12:37
  concern is what, okay, we're going to give you all this
• 12:39
  money, but you know, we're investing it in to you and the
• 12:45
  person that when they tend to reject them, it's because, you
• 12:47
  know, A lot of the expenditure and investment has been sort of
• 12:55
  coming out of that person's pocket, which that's a big
• 12:58
  problem. I think, generally speaking for
• 13:01
  most businesses, trying to get off the ground, you know, you
• 13:04
  need to be like looking for investors and now I disagree.
• 13:09
  See, I do. Okay.
• 13:10
  Interesting. First of all, I ever Dragons Den
• 13:13
  and me have a whole lot. Interesting relationship in
• 13:15
  that. I totally it's so unrealistic.
• 13:18
  It's ridiculous. And secondly, oh, okay, 58% of
• 13:22
  the deals are done in the room or something.
• 13:24
  Never get converted outside. The room.
• 13:26
  We're due diligence. So there's a whole, you know,
• 13:28
  anyway, I'm much more of a fan of shark tank in the u.s.
• 13:32
  If I'm entirely honest with you I much prefer Shark Tank because
• 13:34
  it's way more about possibility and potential than it is about.
• 13:39
  Whether somebody can remember a bunch of numbers at
• 13:41
  cross-examination. And if you asked most of my
• 13:44
  clients to stand in a room and remember all of their financial
• 13:48
  numbers for the last, Last two off the top of their head and
• 13:51
  their pll's and their margins and their this and there that I
• 13:55
  will tell you that 90% of them would go.
• 13:57
  I don't carry that stuff around in my head.
• 13:58
  I have a finance person or a baton or on a computer on an app
• 14:01
  and I can pull it up. It's like why the hell do I have
• 14:03
  to carry that in my head? That's ridiculous.
• 14:05
  I always wonder why they don't just get all hold on a second.
• 14:07
  Let me just get my phone just because it's not good.
• 14:13
  It's designed to make most people feel really
• 14:16
  uncomfortable, which is what he does, which creates really good.
• 14:18
  Learn and then allows the dragons to Lake Superior, right?
• 14:21
  So that's a hold of a different thing.
• 14:22
  Anyway, yeah, but where was I going with this?
• 14:26
  So like, for me, it's the most, like, most people when they
• 14:30
  start up right? Then this is a given good
• 14:33
  example. The online world is really the
• 14:36
  weather stuff proliferates. Right?
• 14:38
  So people would say start an online business, you know, set
• 14:40
  up a website, start selling your services online.
• 14:42
  I'm like, hang on a minute. Wait go find 10 people who've
• 14:46
  got the problem that you want to solve sit down.
• 14:48
  Them face-to-face and offer them your solution in the real world.
• 14:52
  Not a digital world, right? If you can't make sales face to
• 14:56
  face in the real world. You're sure as hell not going to
• 14:59
  be able to make sales in the digital world, right?
• 15:01
  Without all the keys without all the body language without
• 15:04
  everything that you're going to need that you get access to in
• 15:06
  the real world. And if you can't sit in front of
• 15:08
  somebody and convince them that you've got a solution that
• 15:10
  genuinely solves their problem. You haven't figured out a
• 15:13
  business yet or whether you've even got a product yet.
• 15:16
  And this is why are things in one of my He's we do.
• 15:19
  We have a product. We talk to people about this
• 15:22
  whole idea of test your offer, right?
• 15:24
  Tim many people think that with the offer that they've got in
• 15:26
  their head is the one that's going to work and most people
• 15:28
  go. Look.
• 15:29
  I'm going to build a whole business around this offer and
• 15:30
  you go. Oh have you tested it yet?
• 15:32
  What do you mean? We'll have you sent any traffic
• 15:35
  to the landing page with the offer on it.
• 15:37
  Have you done a survey of any of your people that, you know, have
• 15:40
  you? What testing if you done to
• 15:41
  validate? This is something that anybody
• 15:43
  actually wants, like, really genuinely wants, right?
• 15:47
  And most people go. Well, I just I just know.
• 15:49
  I'm, right. I'm going to trust my gut and
• 15:51
  I'm like, well, okay. Well, crackle that one then, you
• 15:54
  know, like that's that's a Surefire way to end up in
• 15:56
  financial trouble very quickly. Right?
• 15:58
  Like, you have to test. You have to test it in front of
• 16:00
  a paying audience. Somebody who's got the problem,
• 16:02
  and genuinely has the money to go.
• 16:04
  Yeah, I'd pay for that great. Now, I've now I know that
• 16:07
  somebody will give me money for the solution.
• 16:09
  I'm saying. I've got no.
• 16:10
  Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea should do it.
• 16:12
  That's not feedback feedback is. That's really good.
• 16:15
  I would give you money for that. Okay, that's what I'm looking
• 16:18
  for. When you I want 10 of those.
• 16:19
  When you sat in front of 10, people who go, I would give you
• 16:22
  money for what? You're selling to me.
• 16:23
  I would give you cash for that. Now.
• 16:25
  You've got a business that you can go right now.
• 16:27
  I can do something with this. Now.
• 16:28
  You can, you know, now you can launch your website, but I'll
• 16:31
  tell you this. I built a business about a
• 16:33
  couple years ago, which and we got 200,000 pounds worth of
• 16:38
  contracts. Signed before we ever had a
• 16:40
  website. Okay, we have a had a website,
• 16:43
  right? We got two hundred thousand
• 16:45
  pounds with a contract, signed by going and talking to people
• 16:47
  in my net in my network. Going, you've got this problem,
• 16:50
  right? Yes, if I can solve it for you.
• 16:53
  Would you pay us? Yes, I would great.
• 16:54
  Well, then here's a six-month contract for us to prove that we
• 16:57
  can solve that for you. And if we can't, I'll give you
• 16:59
  the money back and we sign six, like many contracts.
• 17:03
  It was, it was. I hope it doesn't.
• 17:04
  I think it was about 200 grams where the revenue and we had.
• 17:06
  And then we went right now. Now we'll build a website.
• 17:09
  Now, we'll build a sales funnel. Now, we'll do all the other
• 17:11
  stuff because we got guaranteed contract and revenue, right?
• 17:15
  But it was like so many times people get hung up with this
• 17:18
  idea. Go to have this of go to have
• 17:19
  that. I can't launch.
• 17:20
  Without this. I can't be a cat.
• 17:23
  Yeah, you can. Yeah, you absolutely can write.
• 17:25
  Don't let those excuses. Get in the way of you actually
• 17:28
  making start. This brings up an interesting
• 17:31
  point, actually, at the risk of sounding stupid to bear with me.
• 17:34
  But I think given how much the world is changing as far as
• 17:39
  like, technology is concerned, as you pointed out there.
• 17:41
  There's a lot of consideration points.
• 17:44
  Let's say when someone is looking at your business for the
• 17:47
  first time and going, okay, well, you have of this sort that
• 17:49
  you have this sort of that you have this sorted out but like
• 17:51
  when it comes to this like the same networking events pitching
• 17:56
  idea that classic, you know pitching here's my business.
• 17:59
  What do you think? Or even just having a coffee and
• 18:01
  stuff like that and talking about it like I guess my
• 18:06
  question to you is, is more kind of like how much of that still
• 18:11
  represents the reality of modern business versus, you know, all
• 18:16
  of the stuff we see online about what people are talking about,
• 18:19
  how businesses, like, what's the reality, I guess.
• 18:24
  So the reality is that business is about people.
• 18:28
  It's about D. It's about talking communicating
• 18:30
  with people, right? So Most people are terribly
• 18:34
  terrible at crafting, a message that explains who they serve the
• 18:40
  problem. They solve and the solution,
• 18:43
  they get clients. Well, they get customers, right,
• 18:45
  but they're really bad at it and you could go on to 50 different
• 18:48
  websites and nine times out of ten.
• 18:50
  You'll look at it and go. I have no idea what you do.
• 18:52
  I don't understand if it's for me.
• 18:54
  I don't understand if it's relevant.
• 18:55
  So my point of view he's like that's just communication,
• 18:59
  right? That's copy.
• 19:00
  That's, that's being able to communicate.
• 19:02
  A value proposition to people who go.
• 19:05
  Oh, that's for me. Is it right?
• 19:07
  Brilliant? Excellent.
• 19:08
  Right now. If you like, for example, if you
• 19:10
  turn around and say we help insert who your ideal customer
• 19:14
  is. Yep, right.
• 19:15
  We help who struggle with insert problem, said, customer
• 19:20
  struggles with and and stop the and help them avoid X this by
• 19:26
  using our so and safe solution. So that they get this result
• 19:32
  like Literally, if you follow that five-step framework, I
• 19:35
  promise you, if you do networking, stand up, everyone
• 19:37
  stands up and and their most people, it's terrible.
• 19:41
  I ran a networking Organization for 11 years, right?
• 19:44
  We had hundreds of homes of members in the first thing we
• 19:46
  would do is we would drill everybody when they came in
• 19:49
  right, stand up in 60 seconds and Pitch me your business and
• 19:51
  it would be terrible. At the beginning of it would be
• 19:53
  all for, right? Is that sound?
• 19:55
  I'm go. Well, I'm sort of, you know, I'm
• 19:57
  an accountant and I do books for and I'm like, no, no, no, stop
• 20:00
  stop. Stop.
• 20:01
  Who do you look? Well, business has no, that's
• 20:04
  generic who in like small businesses.
• 20:06
  Also, generic what, size businesses, what industry?
• 20:09
  What sector like, nobody's here. Nobody ever sits in a networking
• 20:13
  meeting by the way, and you'll hear this a lot.
• 20:16
  Okay, people stand up and go people stand up and go.
• 20:18
  Yes, I look after SME, business owners, right?
• 20:21
  I guarantee you, if you went around the room and asked
• 20:24
  everybody, are you an SME business, owner?
• 20:26
  That go? No, I don't even know what that
• 20:29
  is right now. Nobody's here.
• 20:35
  How do you fix that? Let me does that right?
• 20:37
  We wake up in the morning day. Oh, I'm an accountant or I'm a
• 20:40
  bookkeeper and I'm a butcher or I own an IT company.
• 20:43
  You nobody wakes up and goes. I'm an SME.
• 20:45
  Nobody. It's like stop using that in
• 20:47
  your marketing or any of you Communications because nobody
• 20:50
  resonates with it. Like a what point are you now?
• 20:53
  Not an SME. Right at what point are you not
• 20:55
  a small or medium-sized Enterprise?
• 20:57
  Where's the brake? How do you know, do you know,
• 20:59
  there is a break but like how many people even know whether
• 21:01
  I'm A large business. If I employ 100 people, if I
• 21:04
  employ 50 people what, like, that's just a complete.
• 21:09
  It's such a terrible phrase that gets bandied around all the
• 21:12
  time. We look after smes.
• 21:13
  Well, good luck with that. Right?
• 21:15
  Because none of them are showing up to networking meetings with
• 21:18
  badges that say, SME on there not to like They just not.
• 21:25
  So it's a good point. I mean, I suppose it speaks to
• 21:27
  the point as well as it like, you know, when you are, when you
• 21:31
  represent a company, you'll talk about, you know, for instance,
• 21:37
  some of the companies that I work with when people ask me
• 21:40
  about them and I'll talk about what the company does like, you
• 21:44
  know, major contracts who they represent stuff like that.
• 21:46
  I'm not gonna be like, well, this is our business structure
• 21:50
  and you know, this is all turn over IP.
• 21:52
  Don't care. We sometimes, yeah, if if you're
• 21:54
  in a few investment meeting or something, I got that.
• 21:57
  But like a lot of the time those financials are just to me.
• 22:00
  It's no different than when someone's looking at, like, my
• 22:03
  CV and they asked me about my degree as to.
• 22:05
  Why do you care about my degree for like, well, what do you know
• 22:09
  why they are? So that question is because they
• 22:10
  don't have any other questions. Yeah.
• 22:12
  I know. I love it.
• 22:14
  I mean, get this right. So, like one of the things I one
• 22:17
  of the things that will stop every business growing his
• 22:19
  talents not having the right Talent or not being able.
• 22:22
  To attract a talent, which is a massive issue right now, right?
• 22:24
  Like globally, there is a talent shortage.
• 22:26
  It's not going away. We're gonna have to figure this
• 22:28
  out right now. The reality is that most if you
• 22:32
  ask most business owners, have you ever done a course on
• 22:36
  interviewing? They will go a little look at
• 22:40
  you like what do you mean? And I would like that, what have
• 22:43
  you ever had any training on? How to do an interview properly
• 22:46
  and they'll go well, no, I just sort of was just a CV if you
• 22:49
  just ask them some questions. I'm like, no it isn't actually.
• 22:52
  Is a skill set to being able to interview people to get the best
• 22:55
  out of them and to being able to understand how to conduct an
• 22:59
  interview to get somebody to share information that's going
• 23:02
  to make help you make a good evaluation decision.
• 23:05
  And yet people are hiring people without that skill set and
• 23:10
  somehow expecting that. They're miraculously going to
• 23:12
  pick the right people, for the role.
• 23:14
  How, how how, how? And we're not talking about
• 23:19
  small investment decisions, right?
• 23:21
  We're talking about businesses that That could be spending 30
• 23:24
  40, 50 thousand dollars, right? All pounds on a higher.
• 23:28
  That's a big decision. Right?
• 23:30
  You get it wrong. The data says that for every
• 23:32
  person you hire who leaves within six months.
• 23:34
  It costs a business, the equivalent of three to four
• 23:36
  times their salary. So you're talking about somebody
• 23:39
  making an investment decision. That in real terms, could be as
• 23:41
  much as two hundred thousand dollars, right all pounds and
• 23:44
  yet they make those decisions on gut feel or like are met.
• 23:50
  I met two people. This one seemed to write.
• 23:51
  So I With them and you're like, you you wouldn't like, that's an
• 23:56
  insane investment mindset to have when you are hiring people.
• 23:59
  But people do this all the time. They just they just Car hire and
• 24:02
  hope. And don't don't put any plan
• 24:06
  strategy into into any kind of skill.
• 24:09
  They don't go. You know what, I need to learn
• 24:10
  how to interview. I should read a couple of books.
• 24:12
  I had to interview at least we'll listen to a podcast on how
• 24:14
  to do interviews because I don't understand how to do that.
• 24:17
  I was no, no one's born with the interviewing skill.
• 24:20
  We have to learn it. It's like well, okay.
• 24:22
  Oh, great. So if I want to build a team,
• 24:23
  I'm going to need to learn how to interview people, so I get
• 24:25
  good talent, right? I remember, I was exposed to
• 24:28
  recruitment quite early on actually in my career.
• 24:31
  I was I think is about 25:26. Something like that.
• 24:37
  I was only a year and a half into this marketing position.
• 24:41
  I had, you know, I've been promoted.
• 24:43
  I was directly under a manager and they were doing.
• 24:46
  So we basically just filling out our team's, a small team and my
• 24:49
  manager was like you want to sit in the interviews with me.
• 24:51
  I was like, yeah sure because my mindset has always been take
• 24:55
  every opportunity. Learn grow.
• 24:57
  Even if it's not immediately relevant to you just go for it.
• 25:01
  So we didn't it. Yeah, I know.
• 25:03
  I mean, it's you just always going to open up opportunities.
• 25:06
  Make itself more employable, more experiences, etc.
• 25:08
  Etc. And I thought I could be of you
• 25:12
  so I can do my manager would like lead it but you know, maybe
• 25:16
  I could contribute funnily enough.
• 25:17
  She actually involved me way more than I was expecting.
• 25:20
  Like I had some stuff written down, but I was just sitting and
• 25:22
  listening and then she's like, Christian, you got any thoughts?
• 25:25
  And I was just like, yeah, and I just threw some questions and
• 25:28
  then suddenly, I was the one interviewing and I was like, all
• 25:31
  right. But it went well and I think the
• 25:35
  reason it went well and I'll get to the breakdown of this in a
• 25:38
  second. But part of interviewing and
• 25:41
  recruitment, big part of it is Understanding that it is about
• 25:45
  people and their attitudes, you know, and yeah, the credentials
• 25:52
  are important but it depends specifically on what the job is.
• 25:56
  And as you mentioned before, you have to really clarify what your
• 26:00
  goals are with employing somewhat like why are we taking
• 26:03
  this particular person on? Like if the person you're taking
• 26:06
  on is let's say a project manager for a really expensive
• 26:10
  contract that you're working on. Yeah, you're going to need to
• 26:12
  take some time. That's Not a decision, you can
• 26:14
  make lightly and like, you know, oh, yeah.
• 26:17
  Yeah. I've got a good vibe about her
• 26:19
  or him, right? No, that's obviously not.
• 26:22
  But if it's someone that, you know, you can take a risk on,
• 26:25
  let's say, like an entry-level position or something like that,
• 26:27
  or something mid-tier. And it's as you as you said,
• 26:30
  like, you don't, you're not putting it too much stock in it
• 26:34
  because I think you have to kind of measure it against how much.
• 26:39
  Investment, you're really putting in that person, time and
• 26:41
  money versus what you can get from it.
• 26:44
  What the loss would be, if it doesn't work out, how quickly
• 26:47
  you can recover from that, this is a few variables.
• 26:49
  You have to kind of work out looking for that person.
• 26:53
  But as you obviously, you figure all that stuff out before you go
• 26:56
  into that interview and then when you go in the interview,
• 27:00
  then I really do think it becomes more about gauging who
• 27:06
  that person is. And if they fit The kind of
• 27:09
  mindset that your team has because I can tell you now from
• 27:12
  my experience of going and being interviewed.
• 27:15
  I'm sure you can relate to anyone.
• 27:17
  Listening has been an interview. You know, how yeah, yeah, we all
• 27:20
  being in an interview, right? That's right.
• 27:22
  Yeah, and I think the key difference between a good
• 27:24
  interview in a bad interview, as far as the interviewer
• 27:27
  perspective, or the interviewees perspective.
• 27:30
  I should say is it comes down yet those questions and, you
• 27:34
  know, if they're stupid or not, because if they're stupid
• 27:37
  questions, They'll tend to just be pointless stuff.
• 27:41
  That doesn't really matter like oh, you know, what's your
• 27:44
  Five-Year Plan? And oh, yeah, you know, what is
• 27:47
  your degree path? Like previous experience bubble
• 27:50
  butt like, okay. They've got your CV.
• 27:51
  They know what your previous experience is five years people
• 27:56
  in most positions. These days is between six months
• 28:00
  to years, depends on what you're doing, you know, maybe it's
• 28:02
  longer if it's a long-term project, but you already kind
• 28:05
  of, you know, ID know these things, right?
• 28:07
  So, Okay, what questions should you ask?
• 28:10
  You should ask questions that give the person a chance to kind
• 28:14
  of show who they are for real. Not like those manufactured
• 28:19
  responses saying everything you need to hear.
• 28:21
  Like this is the thing that whenever I've gone into
• 28:23
  interviews. I just go in as myself, which
• 28:26
  sometimes, you know, I've had some surprising responses.
• 28:29
  The managers would be like a bit like, huh?
• 28:32
  Okay, because it'll leave a comic Ross is confidence like oh
• 28:35
  this person's confident or they'll be surprised that I'm
• 28:38
  not saying all they're like, well, I'm hard working and I'm
• 28:41
  this and I'm it's like everyone says that like they were having
• 28:45
  a second. If you if you have to tell me
• 28:47
  you're hard-working. I'm going to worry.
• 28:50
  Okay, because if you feel that, that's a key differentiator for
• 28:53
  you in a row. It's like if you went, if you're
• 28:56
  meeting a brand new accountant and they say we just want to
• 28:58
  tell you we can add up really well.
• 29:03
  That's kind of your job. I'm kind of expecting that to
• 29:05
  given. I shouldn't have to ask you
• 29:07
  that. She'd be a competitive
• 29:09
  Advantage, right? That should be a minimum
• 29:11
  requirement standard. It's like if you have if you
• 29:13
  think telling me you're going to work hard is like going to sell
• 29:16
  me on anything. It's not it's going to do.
• 29:17
  The opposite is going to make me worry about.
• 29:19
  Why do you think I needed to know that what are you worried
• 29:20
  about? You know, and like I think with
• 29:23
  all of this, I think we have to have it against the backdrop of
• 29:25
  the labor market that you're operating against right right.
• 29:28
  Right now is absolutely a competitive market.
• 29:31
  You probably don't get the flexibility to have lots of
• 29:35
  interviews in the way that you did.
• 29:36
  This is why I'm a big fan of teaching clients to create
• 29:40
  assessment centers where you see 10 people in one afternoon and
• 29:43
  then make a Higher by the end of the day because you just you,
• 29:45
  it's quicker. It's faster.
• 29:46
  It's more efficient. Yep, and everybody always looks
• 29:49
  good on their own, right? I remember being taught this
• 29:51
  years ago as well. Everyone looks good in there as
• 29:52
  ye see one person. There was the great sea to, it's
• 29:55
  not really enough for sample size to get an assessment.
• 29:57
  But if you run an assessment Centre for six people, you're
• 30:00
  going to know by the end of the evening who the right one that
• 30:04
  you spoke to. Yeah, and the team and by the
• 30:05
  way, you get the team involved, the team's going to have input.
• 30:08
  When you're going to go. Yeah, who's the best cultural
• 30:10
  fit? What you're actually looking for
• 30:12
  is a really good culture fit, right?
• 30:13
  You're looking for Keeps culture fit first.
• 30:16
  You're looking for attitude. S, you're looking for its
• 30:18
  culture, fit, a student's skills.
• 30:19
  Those are the three things. Right?
• 30:20
  And the skills is the least one, the one on these worried about
• 30:23
  because I can I can train you that I can give you the
• 30:25
  training. I can develop that if you're not
• 30:27
  a culture fit, it's going to it's going to break down, right?
• 30:29
  People people hire for skill and fire for culture fit, right?
• 30:33
  They because somebody doesn't fit the culture.
• 30:35
  That's what tends to happen. Because you Just do.
• 30:38
  You just not like one of us. Well, that's to be fair.
• 30:41
  That's something you should have figured out earlier in the in
• 30:43
  the interview process. Like, what are their values?
• 30:45
  What do they care about? How important is family?
• 30:48
  What does, you know? And this is where again the
• 30:52
  tools are all out there for people to make better decisions,
• 30:54
  which is most people don't spend the time to Avail themselves of
• 30:58
  them. Right?
• 30:58
  Like like how people make high-level recruitment decisions
• 31:03
  without using profiling blows my mind.
• 31:05
  It's like for $50 you could get Psychometric insight into the
• 31:09
  person sitting opposite. You and have a really good
• 31:11
  conversation about them and go. I'm looking at your profile and
• 31:14
  it says this and he says, you might be struggling, you might
• 31:16
  find these things difficult in the roll.
• 31:18
  This role has a large amount of that.
• 31:20
  Did you realize that when you applied, do you think you can
• 31:22
  cope with that long term or is that going to stress?
• 31:24
  You know use that going to be a real friction point for you, you
• 31:27
  know, and you can have a genuine, genuine honest
• 31:30
  conversation because what you want what I want?
• 31:32
  Anyway any time I hire somebody in any of my companies, right?
• 31:36
  One think the thing I'm looking for is I'm looking for Somebody
• 31:38
  who's got that ambition. And I'm looking for somebody who
• 31:42
  had who's happy to say that they have outside interests and
• 31:45
  things that show me about their personality.
• 31:46
  Right? Like what are you into?
• 31:47
  What you're at, you know, but also somebody who goes look, I
• 31:50
  I'm here to learn, right? I'm here to grow.
• 31:52
  I'm here to get better. I'm here to improve.
• 31:54
  I that's why I'm here. I'm I'm not like I'm not stupid,
• 31:58
  right? You're not going to spend the
• 31:58
  rest of your life with me. I get that.
• 32:00
  But while you're here, I want to know that you are 100% present
• 32:03
  and that you're going to add value to the team and the
• 32:06
  customers and everyone else. And the contract we're signing
• 32:10
  in that discussion is, well. I'm going to invest in you and
• 32:13
  I'm going to help you become the best version of you.
• 32:15
  You while you're with us for however, long that is, there's a
• 32:19
  phrase I use which is people are with you for a reason a seasonal
• 32:22
  for life. I'm very lucky.
• 32:24
  I've got two amazing. Ladies, Becky and Leslie.
• 32:27
  They were back. He's been with me, 20 years
• 32:30
  incredibly. Now know, is it?
• 32:32
  Yes, 18 anyway, 1820 or something and saying like that
• 32:35
  writing is that, let's just be with me 11, but we've had lots
• 32:37
  of other People who've been with us, six months to years, right?
• 32:41
  People will come in and out of your life and your business and
• 32:43
  if you get hung up on, I'm trying to hire somebody for the
• 32:46
  long term. You're going to be massively
• 32:48
  disappointed because you never really know who's going to stick
• 32:50
  around long term, until you've worked with them for six months
• 32:53
  or a year and their life may change.
• 32:56
  And it's got nothing to do with you either, by the way.
• 32:59
  Yeah. No, I totally agree with all
• 33:01
  that. And I think this person ability
• 33:05
  aspect to it is very important. I guess.
• 33:07
  I think about the main Rock because I do a series of
• 33:10
  different roles. I have freelance work where I do
• 33:14
  work with a lot of different clients.
• 33:15
  That's a bit different. And then the main role that I
• 33:20
  have is basically like It's Tricky like I'm a subcontractor.
• 33:25
  What? I'm working for a company, so
• 33:27
  it's a bit of an iffy situation. But I treat it as like, I'm
• 33:30
  working with this company or working together.
• 33:33
  And the interesting thing is I remember in the interview.
• 33:37
  I wasn't sure funnily enough. Like, I went for it cause like,
• 33:41
  you know, what? At the time I was I was
• 33:43
  unemployed. I didn't have anything going on
• 33:45
  and I was just looking for like, any work and I thought it would
• 33:48
  be an interesting Challenge. And when we started talking, I
• 33:53
  quickly realize I love the people.
• 33:55
  I was talking to us, although brilliant, but I was just like,
• 33:57
  I don't think. I have what they offer.
• 34:00
  I could I don't think I can offer them what they're looking
• 34:02
  for. That's what was going through my
• 34:03
  head and I communicate that to them, and they're really cool
• 34:06
  about it. And then it became like they
• 34:09
  were trying to convince me. And then I was like, you know
• 34:12
  what? It seems like we're meeting back
• 34:13
  in the middle. Let's go for it.
• 34:15
  Let's do this. And, you know, it took a couple
• 34:17
  of weeks and then we did something.
• 34:19
  And hey, ho, six months later. We're doing brilliant work
• 34:22
  together, but then the point is that communication and honesty
• 34:28
  and personal. Stability is.
• 34:30
  I think the thing that is really important in the recruitment
• 34:34
  process and also just in business in general, you have to
• 34:36
  like the people that you're working with and have some
• 34:39
  degree of chemistry and I just want to throw some other things
• 34:43
  on recruitment. Just because I realized know
• 34:46
  what I've realized that my role started is my main role stud is
• 34:49
  kind of like sales and it's gone into Recruitment, and it's one
• 34:53
  of those roles where it kind of dives into a lot of different
• 34:56
  areas of the business, and I, Kind of roll with it.
• 34:59
  I'm like, do you know what great?
• 35:01
  I'm enjoying it. I'll do anything.
• 35:03
  Let's just see what see how I can use my skills to help you
• 35:06
  kind of thing, right? Says and it's taught me a lot
• 35:09
  about Recruitment and I've had experiences in the past.
• 35:12
  Now, I'm really involved with it like from a communicative
• 35:14
  perspective. Right?
• 35:16
  But the interesting thing is I'm at the point in my career.
• 35:19
  Now 56 years into like marketing and sales and advertising and
• 35:24
  everything. And so naturally you start
• 35:27
  people getting people headhunting you and And talking
• 35:29
  to you, and yes, natural part of business.
• 35:32
  But as we were talking about, sometimes people don't just do,
• 35:36
  like the basic bit of homework. I guess someone message me or
• 35:40
  call me and then they'll just be like, would you be interested in
• 35:45
  X Y position? And I'm just like, I don't, I'll
• 35:50
  never be as rude as to, to phrase it this way.
• 35:53
  But the first thing that goes through my head is, have you
• 35:55
  looked at my profile like you can see I've never done that or
• 36:00
  you can see that that's not going to be a good fit for me.
• 36:05
  Like some things are just blaring in obvious and you just
• 36:08
  know that they haven't done that.
• 36:10
  Research. All like sometimes.
• 36:13
  Perfect example. I had a conversation.
• 36:15
  A couple of months back. Someone called me and I was a
• 36:19
  bit iffy about it. But I said, yeah, I'll give this
• 36:21
  person a chance. They seem to be really eager.
• 36:23
  Let's let's see what they have to say.
• 36:25
  We get 15 minutes into the conversation and I already
• 36:28
  realize that this is The work like this, a lot of things.
• 36:31
  I don't have that they need and often particular in this job
• 36:36
  market. A lot of companies want by the
• 36:38
  perfect person, which doesn't exist by the way, but that's
• 36:41
  another conversation. But you have to kind of, you
• 36:44
  have to kind of think, like, okay, if they've got like, say
• 36:47
  what's the, what's the line that you're willing to draw at it?
• 36:49
  Let's say if they've got 70% or 60% of what you need.
• 36:52
  Maybe that's the line. Maybe it needs to be higher,
• 36:55
  depends what the job is, you know, and that's fair enough and
• 36:57
  I never take it personally. As you should deny it's just
• 37:00
  business but sometimes it'll be like, okay, let's say I've got
• 37:05
  60 percent of what they want. And in this particular
• 37:08
  conversation, I said, oh why I don't have this thing.
• 37:11
  So, I don't know. Maybe it's maybe we should just
• 37:13
  call it here. Thanks for your time.
• 37:15
  And then they just kept going on.
• 37:16
  They kept talking for another 20 minutes and, you know, me being
• 37:21
  awkward and British I just listened.
• 37:25
  Hmm. Yes, right.
• 37:27
  Yeah. And then and Then when they stop
• 37:29
  talking I'm like, so I don't have what you're looking for.
• 37:34
  And then I did. It came became a bit of a battle
• 37:37
  of just trying to carefully and calmly.
• 37:39
  Explain. I don't have what you're looking
• 37:41
  for. This is and I had to explain to
• 37:44
  this person what they were looking for.
• 37:48
  So it's even know how to react to that.
• 37:50
  It's like, I'm not even doing your job, but I'm there at you.
• 37:53
  They're better at your job than you are like, but I guess my
• 37:56
  point is with recruitment. I think it comes More down to
• 37:59
  just understanding people. And what is your team is looking
• 38:04
  for? And as you said, you, you said
• 38:06
  culture fit, and that can be a bit of a tricky word sometimes
• 38:10
  because I think it can bring about some negative connotations
• 38:12
  a lot of time. But I think the more important
• 38:14
  thing about culture fit, which is a very important point of
• 38:18
  drive home is when companies get it, right?
• 38:20
  It's all about mindset. Like what attitude do you have?
• 38:25
  Like when there's a problem either sort of person?
• 38:29
  Panics and, you know, complains or whatever or are you trying to
• 38:34
  find a solution? You know, like I can't count how
• 38:37
  many times they'll be talking to some of my colleagues and a
• 38:41
  problem will come up and they'll say, oh, I've got this problem.
• 38:46
  And then they'll say, have you tried X, Y and Z.
• 38:48
  And I'll be like, oh, way ahead of you have already tried.
• 38:50
  This dismiss hasn't worked, but I'm not like, oh no, it's
• 38:55
  despair. I'm the first thing.
• 38:57
  I'll say is, let's just keep Seeing what maybe we have to try
• 39:00
  a different method, different. And I think that right there is
• 39:05
  kind of, the key thing. You need to look for beer in job
• 39:08
  interviews. When you're looking at people's
• 39:11
  profiles, whatever you need to be looking at. the build of that
• 39:15
  person and Whether so if you're looking at, you know, just the
• 39:21
  profile or the CV or something like that, you're looking at an
• 39:25
  idea of the person so you can kind of read between the lines,
• 39:29
  a little bit until you get that initial contact.
• 39:32
  We can sit down and really talk to them.
• 39:35
  You won't really know what their motivations are.
• 39:36
  And I think those are the sort of questions you need to ask is
• 39:39
  like. Well, what you trying to
• 39:40
  achieve, what do you want from this role?
• 39:43
  And that's when you can kind of figure out what it is, they
• 39:45
  want. And if it's going to be a fit.
• 39:49
  Yeah, I mean, so I'll give you a couple of things that might just
• 39:51
  sort of help people with this process because I'm a big
• 39:54
  believer in Sharing tools that help people.
• 39:56
  Right? So one is a tool that I just
• 39:59
  teach is really simple Drew. Take a piece of paper, draw a
• 40:02
  line down, the middle of the page on the left hand side,
• 40:05
  right, must have. And on the right hand side,
• 40:07
  right, nice to have. And then when you're making a
• 40:10
  list of things for the this candidate, or this person
• 40:13
  joining the team must have. That's the, that's the, my first
• 40:16
  list, right? So, they must, for example, they
• 40:17
  must have This coding skill. They must have worked for four
• 40:21
  years. They must have a car, right?
• 40:23
  Whatever. It is stuff that if they didn't
• 40:26
  have his deal breaker, Okay, the reason you do that is going to
• 40:29
  save you a whole bunch of time, right?
• 40:30
  And secondly, you have nice to have, which is now nice, if they
• 40:33
  had industry experience, but it's not a deal-breaker.
• 40:35
  Be nice. If they knew this, this
• 40:37
  particular, you know, if they if they had experience of working
• 40:40
  in now, this coding language or whatever, right?
• 40:42
  Whatever it is. They're nice stuff.
• 40:45
  Now when you get Seabees in it's really easy to delegate it to
• 40:47
  someone. A new team and go right.
• 40:49
  Go through the seavey's, only keep cbs4 interview who have all
• 40:52
  the must-haves straightaway, right?
• 40:54
  Straight away. Before you go anywhere, don't
• 40:55
  because if they don't hit the must-haves, don't waste their
• 40:58
  time and yours. And then you having
• 41:00
  conversations with people who tick, a certain level of
• 41:02
  criteria things that you need. Do you need this person to have,
• 41:05
  to be able to do the job, right? Then it's a conversation around
• 41:08
  the nice to have stuff. What?
• 41:09
  We know what have they got? What have they got?
• 41:11
  What things do they committed to learn?
• 41:14
  What do they not want to learn? Know?
• 41:15
  Where are they in that, you know?
• 41:18
  Appearance. And I always is, there's a
• 41:20
  technique called Competency Based interviewing where you get
• 41:23
  people to go back and talk about past things.
• 41:25
  They've done not theoretical. So not like if you had a
• 41:28
  challenge, how would you respond?
• 41:29
  Because everyone will give you the answer that they've been.
• 41:31
  And they've read the interview book for dummies and all of that
• 41:34
  stuff and they'll give you those answers, right?
• 41:36
  But if you said somebody, listen, talk to me about a time
• 41:38
  in your, in your previous job where you had a really nightmare
• 41:41
  situation. Everything went wrong.
• 41:43
  How did you approach it? And how did you solve it?
• 41:45
  And what was your strategy? Because if you you ask someone
• 41:48
  that two things are going to happen one.
• 41:51
  It's incredibly difficult to lie about that because people can't
• 41:55
  lie about the past because they're gonna have to make it up
• 41:57
  creatively and you're going to see that on their face.
• 41:59
  Number two, you're going to get a better insight into how they
• 42:02
  really dealt with something when it happen because they're going
• 42:03
  to go. Well, I guess I sort of did this
• 42:05
  and I kind of did that and okay, great, then you'll when you take
• 42:10
  people back to, alright, so tell me a time when you worked in a
• 42:12
  small team and how did you, how did you find working in a small
• 42:16
  team? What and what were the things
• 42:17
  that you found? Good.
• 42:18
  And what the things that you found frustrating know, if you
• 42:21
  worked in a small team, what do you think?
• 42:22
  You'd find good and frustrating? Which is a future based question
• 42:25
  where I'm going to give you a theory, not a based on a
• 42:28
  reality. So just understanding that whole
• 42:31
  kind of idea of answering asking questions from a standpoint of,
• 42:34
  tell me about the past and experience.
• 42:36
  And when you've had this situation before and Elon Musk
• 42:39
  talks about like his single best biggest question is always,
• 42:41
  like, tell me about a problem that you solved in the past that
• 42:45
  other people couldn't seem to solve and how you solved it.
• 42:48
  Because he sat in his whole point of view is look, I'm
• 42:50
  wanting to hire people who are going to come in and solve
• 42:52
  problems from me in the, in a business that, you know, we're
• 42:55
  all our value proposition in a role is to solve problems for
• 42:59
  that company and those customers.
• 43:00
  That's our value proposition because we're looking for people
• 43:03
  who can improve the product solve an issue deal, with a
• 43:06
  customer complaint solve a problem.
• 43:08
  Someone has buying something, right?
• 43:10
  We're all there to remove a friction point in a in a, in a
• 43:13
  relationship. So it's like if you are asking
• 43:16
  people about their approach to problem solving.
• 43:18
  You have no idea how they're going to be able to really COPE
• 43:21
  in whatever role you're putting them into, right?
• 43:24
  Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with that.
• 43:27
  I'm going to roll on a few more different kinds of our chat
• 43:31
  about recruitment, wasn't it? I'll be, I'll be honest.
• 43:35
  I wasn't expecting to talk to you about recruitment.
• 43:37
  But I think it's always interesting with these
• 43:39
  conversations, which kind of Direction it can go.
• 43:42
  This is why I like to keep it a bit more laid-back and a bit
• 43:45
  more like a free-flowing conversation as opposed to just
• 43:48
  a straight-up interview because I feel like that kind of kills
• 43:52
  the vibe a little bit. Sometimes when you know, do you
• 43:55
  know why? I'm so passionate about team
• 43:56
  though, like because because here's the thing, right?
• 44:00
  Like it's so rare to work in a really good team because most
• 44:05
  organizations do it terribly badly right there really do do
• 44:08
  it, badly and business, has this assumption that if we just throw
• 44:10
  a bunch of people randomly together and take them out for
• 44:13
  pizza and bowling every six months.
• 44:15
  So somehow end up being a high-performing team, right?
• 44:18
  That just doesn't happen. And when you, where did, by the
• 44:21
  way, where does that mentality come from?
• 44:23
  But I can't count. How many officers are worked in
• 44:25
  there. So we've got a ping-pong table.
• 44:28
  We we bought an Xbox and it's like great, but I don't have
• 44:31
  time to use that stuff because I'm working.
• 44:34
  You know, your pizza thing. Yeah.
• 44:36
  Well that yeah, there's the yeah, there's someone in h.r.,
• 44:39
  Read a manual somewhere about that.
• 44:40
  But if you look at if you actually study team, you know,
• 44:43
  this is why when sports teams, you know, suddenly do amazing
• 44:46
  things. It galvanizes.
• 44:48
  The whole country is because we're not used to seeing
• 44:50
  high-performing teams. But if you look at sports teams
• 44:53
  and you look at the military, you know, like they spend, you
• 44:57
  know, hundreds of thousands. If not millions of pounds,
• 44:59
  creating High performing teams and business has still has a
• 45:03
  neanderthal approach to the whole thing of we're going to
• 45:07
  pay you money. You're going to show up, we're
• 45:09
  going to do them in, you know, we're going to give you a set of
• 45:12
  rules and somehow you're going to miraculously, just all
• 45:15
  become, high-performing individuals and without
• 45:17
  realizing Saying that the best person the best businesses in
• 45:20
  the world realize that the business is the talent.
• 45:23
  Yes. It is.
• 45:24
  The people, right? If you take, if you take a hotel
• 45:26
  you take all this the team out of the hotel.
• 45:29
  It's just an empty building with nothing in it and most most
• 45:33
  businesses that are really successful realize that the
• 45:35
  number one asset in their business leaves at night and
• 45:37
  goes home. And they need to make it an
• 45:39
  environment. They want them coming back that
• 45:41
  they want to come back to you the next day.
• 45:43
  And that's, that's your job. As a leader is to create an
• 45:45
  environment that top talent wants to work.
• 45:48
  Get that we know, Google doesn't have a problem, recruiting
• 45:51
  people because people want to work there, they want to go be
• 45:54
  in there. They want the opportunity.
• 45:56
  They want to be there, right? You want to create an
• 45:58
  environment that people a never want to leave?
• 46:00
  And be really want to get into. And as a leader, that's one of
• 46:05
  your main roles is to do that because building a business is a
• 46:09
  team sport. Nobody Does it alone?
• 46:11
  The biggest myth that is that is spouted out.
• 46:14
  And every time, it's about that really annoys me, right?
• 46:16
  Is when people go, he's a self-made.
• 46:18
  Millionaire. He's a self-made man.
• 46:19
  You know, nobody self-made. No 10.
• 46:23
  I challenge anybody to stop Jeff Bezos do is not self-made.
• 46:26
  You think he did it on his own? He started out on his own.
• 46:29
  Right? He started on his own, but he's
• 46:31
  not self-made. Why?
• 46:32
  Because he'd be built teams, massive teams.
• 46:34
  Right? And like Creighton has a jobs
• 46:37
  that does he's not self-made. He did it with other people.
• 46:40
  So did Branson, right? So Nadine on musk, none of those
• 46:44
  people. Pull off, amazing stuff without
• 46:46
  massive teams. It's like, you got to learn this
• 46:49
  skill. If you're going to be successful
• 46:51
  as an entrepreneur because otherwise you're going to burn
• 46:53
  out trying to do it all yourself.
• 46:55
  What do you think of the most important elements of a
• 46:58
  successful team? Trust without question.
• 47:02
  Trust is number one, right? So I have a, I have a framework.
• 47:05
  Talk about TEAM stands for trust.
• 47:07
  You have to have trust and transparency, right?
• 47:09
  You got to be honest with each other about what you're good at,
• 47:11
  what? You know, what, you struggle
• 47:12
  with, what you find when you're, when you're having a, you know,
• 47:16
  when you having an emotional challenge in your personal life,
• 47:18
  you got to be able to share it with your team.
• 47:19
  Go listen. Look.
• 47:20
  Now, we we do this in my team on a Monday morning meeting.
• 47:23
  Every will go around and go. Hey on a scale of 1 to 10.
• 47:25
  How is everybody today emotionally physically, you know
• 47:28
  like mint. Really where we are because a
• 47:31
  lot 1 to 10 and because what, because it just lets us check in
• 47:34
  with everybody. And like we've had loads of
• 47:36
  media's where people have gone are physically.
• 47:37
  I'm in a lot of pain right now. I've got bad.
• 47:39
  I've done my back end and I'm will be like, I had no clue.
• 47:42
  I didn't know that. Well, what can we do to help?
• 47:44
  How can we look, can we do for you?
• 47:45
  Can we, you know, well, somebody will come in and we had one as a
• 47:49
  really emotional team meeting a couple of weeks ago because I'm
• 47:52
  one of the, you know, we do the whole.
• 47:53
  Where are you emotionally? And when the team members just
• 47:55
  am one. I'm I'm in a really bad State.
• 47:58
  And we were like, Going on and somebody, you know, somebody in
• 48:02
  their family. Tried to commit suicide with an
• 48:04
  over dose of aspirin at the weekend and like, and like, you
• 48:07
  can't be a human being, and not want to be compassionate for
• 48:10
  that person. Support them the to come in and
• 48:12
  when like manages to go, leave you problems at the door.
• 48:15
  Shut up, right? Just shut the hell up.
• 48:17
  Right? You're a human being, you have
• 48:19
  is a team. You want to care for each other.
• 48:21
  When you want to celebrate, when you're winning and you want to
• 48:23
  support when you're losing or someone's having a bad time,
• 48:25
  right? That's that's where trust is
• 48:28
  built and you got to start with that.
• 48:29
  Transparency. The team's got to be able to be.
• 48:32
  No, they're not going to be judged if they're struggling
• 48:34
  with something or having a tough time of it, right?
• 48:36
  That's number 12 is TE is about, you've got to have empathy and
• 48:41
  you've got to engage, you've got to have a level of Engagement
• 48:43
  with each other. In terms of look I have empathy
• 48:45
  for work. You're dealing with but I also
• 48:47
  have any I'm engaged with what you're about and it's about
• 48:49
  energy. It's about having an energy as a
• 48:51
  team that goes. Listen.
• 48:52
  My Energy's really good in the morning.
• 48:54
  Yours mg is really good in the afternoon.
• 48:55
  If you want the best out of me, right?
• 48:57
  Let's do stuff in the morning. If I want the best out of you.
• 48:59
  I'm going to During the afternoon.
• 49:00
  It's about understanding this concept of flow and energy and
• 49:04
  we all have different times of the day when we're at our best
• 49:06
  and doing things that give us energy and things that take away
• 49:09
  our age, it right? Then there has to be a level of
• 49:11
  accountability. Okay, like any great team,
• 49:14
  people have to be. They have to, you know, what it
• 49:16
  is about holding each other to a higher standard to go.
• 49:19
  Listen. I, you look at Great sports
• 49:21
  teams. They hold each other to a higher
• 49:22
  standard. It's like, look, you are better
• 49:24
  than that. You know, that you had a bad
• 49:26
  day. You let the customer down, you
• 49:28
  didn't do this for the team. You didn't get that out.
• 49:29
  Instead of going to get out. I'm calling you on that.
• 49:32
  You're better than that. Like, let's step it up, right?
• 49:34
  That's not, that's not a standard that we tolerate here.
• 49:38
  And there's an internal level of accountability where they each
• 49:40
  other to hold each other there. And the m stands for it's about
• 49:43
  measurement. You got to measure stuff.
• 49:45
  Right? But all great teams measure
• 49:47
  everything. Measure, progress, measure,
• 49:49
  kpis, the challenge we have in businesses that most measurement
• 49:53
  tools have been used, really negatively.
• 49:55
  Right? So like so, like most people,
• 49:57
  most people resist, kpis gives your It's measurement.
• 50:00
  Why? Because most managers use it to
• 50:02
  beat people up. They are your bad of that you
• 50:04
  like and I'm like, sports teams. Don't do that.
• 50:06
  Sports teams measure everything to go, right?
• 50:09
  That wasn't so good. So, how do we get it better?
• 50:11
  How do we improve it? How do we move that needle?
• 50:12
  How do we get you from? You know, a lap time of this to
• 50:16
  take in 10 seconds off that? How do we get the boat to go
• 50:18
  faster as the great rowing book about the British rowing team
• 50:21
  says, you know, so but you have to measure stuff with the
• 50:24
  intention that we're going to use that data to help us
• 50:27
  improve. We're not going to use that data
• 50:29
  to destroy someone's Confidence will make them feel crap.
• 50:31
  And, and like, the met the measurement is, what the team
• 50:35
  gets excited about. Because how how, how many, how
• 50:38
  long would you play a game? If nobody told you the school?
• 50:41
  You wouldn't. You wouldn't keep showing up
• 50:43
  playing the game. If no one told you to school,
• 50:45
  try it. Try taking a bunch of like 10 or
• 50:47
  12 year. Olds out to play football, but
• 50:49
  don't tell him to school and don't tell him how long two left
• 50:52
  in the game and watch how long they run for after a while.
• 50:54
  They just go. What is the point?
• 50:55
  Why am I? Why am I running around on the
• 50:57
  street? This makes no sense.
• 50:58
  And this is same with team. If you don't get in the school,
• 51:01
  you don't tell him how long they've got.
• 51:02
  You. Don't tell them what success
• 51:03
  looks like. You don't give them an MBA level
• 51:06
  of ambition to go for people stop playing the game and they
• 51:09
  just checking in and checking out, but they're not playing the
• 51:11
  game in. Thank you so much for sharing.
• 51:14
  Really appreciate it. What would you say about this
• 51:18
  subject as you can probably tell it's good now, I mean at the end
• 51:22
  of the day, I think when you are passionate about something in
• 51:25
  life, whatever it is, you know. You, it will be, it will get
• 51:31
  better as a witch, a sounds like a really obvious thing to say,
• 51:34
  but it's true. If you just don't have the
• 51:37
  passion, if there's no passion there you just, you just not
• 51:40
  going to care, you know, I've been in, I've been in job roles
• 51:42
  where I had no passion, and I started with passion.
• 51:46
  I had a lot of passion but then you know, whatever it is, takes
• 51:49
  it out of you. Maybe it's a particular leader.
• 51:51
  Maybe it's the company's Direction.
• 51:53
  Maybe it's not us lack of such as self satisfaction, and
• 51:56
  there's only so far, you can self.
• 51:59
  Before, you know, you just run out and motivation in a
• 52:03
  situation like that. It's different when you're
• 52:04
  working for yourself. But when you are working in a
• 52:08
  team Dynamic, you need everyone else to be passionate to, if
• 52:13
  they're not passionate it kind of rubs off in you.
• 52:15
  It's bit like when you're around friends and there's say
• 52:19
  everyone's in a - bad bad mood, you know, like eventually just
• 52:23
  going to rub off on you, you know, like you can walk around,
• 52:27
  you know, you can't it did the whole thing about that is that
• 52:29
  you it's really hard to pull everyone else up, but it's
• 52:32
  really easy with them to pull you down.
• 52:33
  Right? So it's like you can't go around
• 52:36
  and make everybody else feel better.
• 52:38
  It's a hard thing to do. It's exhausting, whereas if
• 52:40
  they're a negative is really easy for them to pull you down,
• 52:43
  right? Like that like that toxicity,
• 52:46
  you know, if you talk about team the T the T I go look if you've
• 52:48
  got toxic people in the team they got to go.
• 52:51
  Sorry. Like it's like if you're toxic
• 52:53
  you've got to go because the only thing that's going to
• 52:55
  happen is they're going to destroy the good people in the
• 52:56
  team over time and that's what toxic people.
• 53:00
  And you know the reason why I get passionate about this,
• 53:02
  right? It's because I just see so much
• 53:05
  incredible talent that sitting in organization is being not,
• 53:09
  not used, not harnessed and I see people going around,
• 53:12
  self-medicating with alcohol food, you name it because
• 53:15
  they're not enjoying their job. They're not enjoying their life.
• 53:18
  They're not enjoying it and it starts with that whole thing of
• 53:21
  going I deserve better. I want to be in a role where
• 53:23
  somebody actually sees my value sees.
• 53:26
  My talents is my contribution sees what I can do.
• 53:29
  And actually, I want to go somewhere where people value me
• 53:31
  as a human being for what I can add not treat me like some some
• 53:35
  some sort of machine because trust me the organization is a
• 53:38
  treat people like a machine. They're going to they're going
• 53:40
  to end up being the one's that Implement Ai and Robotics and
• 53:42
  stuff really quickly. Anyway, so like then then, you
• 53:46
  know, then we're in a different world, but it's like I just
• 53:49
  there's so many amazing people. I meet who have given up because
• 53:52
  somebody said they couldn't do it or they just needed to go and
• 53:56
  there was no there was no. I bet he telling them that they
• 54:00
  were there, but they're better than they currently are.
• 54:02
  They can be better. They can be better.
• 54:03
  They can grow, they can improve, they can learn, right?
• 54:06
  But that was the thing that changed my life.
• 54:08
  Somebody I was failing at school.
• 54:09
  I was absolutely failure at school, right?
• 54:11
  Colossal failure was wasn't diagnosed until I was dyslexic
• 54:14
  at 14 and I was literally written off at school in the
• 54:18
  school system said, can't deal with him.
• 54:20
  He's now you'd be labeled ADHD because everyone likes label but
• 54:23
  like I was disruptive, I was I was problematic, you know, I was
• 54:28
  all of that stuff. And my father bless him, you
• 54:30
  know, for had the strength to take me out of that school
• 54:34
  environment and put me in another environment at it's
• 54:37
  excruciating pain. Financially team to do it.
• 54:40
  But I remember meeting the Headmaster at a time and his
• 54:44
  name is me. Yeah, was it about?
• 54:47
  I remember in a minute? Mr. Norman, right.
• 54:49
  That was nice. And he was the first person ever
• 54:51
  had, a really big profound impact on my life because he sat
• 54:53
  me down, and he just said, right?
• 54:55
  So everybody's good at something.
• 54:57
  We just got to figure out what you're good at, because I'm
• 54:59
  really believe all the reports I'm being given about you.
• 55:01
  I believe that everyone's Got Talent and everyone's good at
• 55:03
  something. So we just got to figure out
• 55:04
  what it is. That was the first time anybody
• 55:07
  in any Authority, or any kind of position of influence had ever
• 55:12
  said anything like that. To me outside.
• 55:14
  My family knows the first time someone had said this, this
• 55:17
  stuff in here. That is you're good at.
• 55:20
  We just haven't found it yet, but we're going to we're going
• 55:22
  to look until we do and I was like, wow, okay.
• 55:26
  Okay, maybe maybe I'm not this this may be.
• 55:29
  Not all the labels that I've been given up to now.
• 55:32
  It's amazing to me how important hearing that is particularly at
• 55:37
  such a young age. I had a similar experience when
• 55:39
  I was 13 because originally, when we were studying business
• 55:45
  school was a very new subject. Like it was, it was not really
• 55:50
  something that was part of the typical syllabus.
• 55:52
  It was part of the gcses. I started studying at a young
• 55:55
  age 13 or something and you know, I was initially
• 55:58
  interested. But, you know, after a while
• 56:03
  similar, you know, I tensions fan was not always there.
• 56:06
  You know, I was a kid, you know, just, it just happens.
• 56:09
  I was, I definitely had the intelligence by didn't have the
• 56:11
  self belief, and I get distracted and excetera and then
• 56:14
  there are other things. Like I did.
• 56:15
  All this work, someone lost my work and then I was like, really
• 56:20
  demotivated because it was like, two folders worth of work like
• 56:23
  to terms with the work. And I remember this particular
• 56:27
  teacher set me down, I think I-i'm, I told this story before,
• 56:30
  but I'm not sure if I told you on the podcast before but
• 56:32
  anyway, here it is again. Shout shout out to mr.
• 56:37
  Nelly. She sat me down and she I
• 56:42
  believe she was the head of the course, or she was one of the
• 56:45
  key teachers on this particular business cause she had children.
• 56:47
  So she was, she knew how to talk to children and get through to
• 56:51
  them and she sat me down and she basically just said, like, what
• 56:56
  are you doing? I mean, you know, I had like an
• 57:00
  attitude and she's up. What do you want?
• 57:03
  What do you want to achieve? Like, what your goals with this?
• 57:06
  And I got a little bit annoyed at this and I suppose in a
• 57:11
  sarcastic way. I just turned around and said, I
• 57:13
  want to Ace the course because obviously I was failing the
• 57:16
  course at that point. It's just that I thought that
• 57:18
  was funny and she basically, just looked at me with a dead
• 57:22
  face. Said nothing.
• 57:26
  And then after a minute had passed, she just turned around.
• 57:28
  She said, we're gonna have to work very hard then and then I
• 57:33
  don't know why. But like there was like a light
• 57:35
  bulb that just went off in my head.
• 57:36
  Like, when I heard her say that was like, so there's a chance
• 57:40
  and she was like, of course there's a chance.
• 57:43
  Do you want to do this? I was like, yeah, of course, I
• 57:47
  do. What do I do?
• 57:48
  Just like if you work hard you work with me.
• 57:51
  You agree to do this. I'll help you get there.
• 57:54
  And you'll get that and like just that one small conversation
• 58:00
  right there that bit of a pep talk.
• 58:01
  That belief suddenly gave me the motivation.
• 58:07
  I needed to pursue that and by the end of the course, which is
• 58:11
  a year and a half and that point I ended up getting the highest
• 58:13
  marks possible and it really was like a journey to get there and
• 58:18
  a lot of hard work, but we got there and I ended up taking the
• 58:21
  a level equivalent of the of the The course went to University
• 58:26
  Etc, you know and I already told to that initial conversation I
• 58:31
  had with that teacher and that little bit of a pep talk, you
• 58:37
  know, I think teachers don't always realize like how
• 58:40
  important the things that they say two children are good and
• 58:43
  bad. You need to sometimes just
• 58:46
  saying something like, of course you can do this.
• 58:49
  There's no reason you can't, you know, I believe in you just
• 58:52
  little things like that means. It's so much and can shape you
• 58:56
  for years and years to come like that.
• 58:58
  Gave me a little bit of confidence.
• 58:59
  And from there. I've been able to build to the
• 59:01
  point where now I do freelance business.
• 59:06
  I do all sorts of different types of business, both online
• 59:09
  with the things I'm pursuing. As well as you know, from my day
• 59:11
  job, I get to talk to business. People such as yourself and have
• 59:14
  conversations like this and it all emanated from that initial
• 59:17
  point, and that's incredible. And that was great coaching.
• 59:22
  She gave you too by the way. Yeah, it's okay.
• 59:24
  That's what great great coach is.
• 59:26
  See see potential in you, that you might not even see in
• 59:29
  yourself. Right?
• 59:30
  And sometimes, all their job is to do is to is to produce and
• 59:34
  go. Yeah, you can do it.
• 59:36
  I believe in you. I see it.
• 59:38
  And you go really looks like and that's what that's what lysis
• 59:41
  park and that's what sets the fire off.
• 59:43
  And, you know, yeah, you don't get anywhere in life without
• 59:46
  hard work. Anybody thinks otherwise is
• 59:48
  lying, right? You're going to have to put in
• 59:50
  the hard work. And the time and the effort and
• 59:52
  the 10,000 hours and all of that stuff, right?
• 59:54
  If you only get really good at something, you've got to commit
• 59:57
  to mastering it. But yeah, without great people,
• 1:00:02
  you know, at the times in our life, where we need that little
• 1:00:05
  external validation and it doesn't matter.
• 1:00:07
  The interesting thing is, it doesn't matter what level you're
• 1:00:09
  at this. This imposter syndrome element.
• 1:00:13
  I can, you know, kind of mine recently came in and sat down
• 1:00:16
  and when I feel, you know, he's running a very successful
• 1:00:19
  business model. Multimillion-pound business and
• 1:00:22
  he's came in and said, I'm not sure.
• 1:00:24
  I feel I feel like I'm an imposter.
• 1:00:25
  I feel like I'm way out. I don't really know what I'm
• 1:00:27
  doing and I'm winging it and I'm like, no, you're not.
• 1:00:31
  First of all, no, not right. We've got a really clear
• 1:00:34
  strategy, you know exactly what we're doing.
• 1:00:37
  We've got a plan, it's all worked out.
• 1:00:38
  This is just the part of you that feels insecure about being
• 1:00:43
  at this level because you've never been at this level before.
• 1:00:46
  And this is what I call the the the upper level upper limit
• 1:00:49
  thinking is kicking in where you're I can I do it, is it
• 1:00:52
  worth it. Am I capable and you're doubting
• 1:00:55
  yourself when actually, you know, every bit of evidence for
• 1:00:58
  the last five years that we've been together.
• 1:01:00
  Says that everything you faced you've overcome and he goes
• 1:01:03
  well, yeah, that's true. I said so if up to this point
• 1:01:08
  everything you faced you've overcome.
• 1:01:10
  I'm going to suggest that there isn't going to be much in the
• 1:01:12
  future that you can't overcome with the right attitude learning
• 1:01:15
  training and persistence. Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  Is it going to be hard? Yeah, of course because what
• 1:01:20
  you're trying to do is It is difficult.
• 1:01:21
  That's why not many people pull off what you're trying to
• 1:01:24
  achieve, but you've got the talent, you've got the
• 1:01:28
  commitment, you know, and I believe in you and I've got your
• 1:01:32
  back and, you know, and he was like, yeah, you know, sometimes
• 1:01:36
  us that's all I needed to hear was just that you thought I
• 1:01:38
  could do this. I was like, yeah, you can
• 1:01:40
  totally do it. I said because I'm the one
• 1:01:41
  person will tell you the truth. If I thought you couldn't do it,
• 1:01:44
  I would tell you that because that's my job and I don't want
• 1:01:46
  you wasting your time and money and effort.
• 1:01:48
  If I don't think you've got, if I I've listened I've closed
• 1:01:51
  businesses down and I'm that's not, you know, I'm not.
• 1:01:54
  But I will tell to a certain entrepreneurs.
• 1:01:56
  This business is never going to go where you wanted to go.
• 1:01:58
  You think it is, but I'm telling you, based on 17 years of
• 1:02:01
  experience, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of
• 1:02:04
  clients. I'm telling you the model you've
• 1:02:05
  got is is broken. It isn't going to work and you
• 1:02:08
  need to put it under and that's part of being an entrepreneur is
• 1:02:11
  unless you've got to accept that, not everything is going to
• 1:02:13
  go the way you want it and this one's one of those ones.
• 1:02:15
  You've got to bury it and go go find the next project, but
• 1:02:18
  sometimes people need that you know, that Disinfectant,
• 1:02:21
  Daylight's the best disinfectant, sometimes.
• 1:02:23
  My job is to tell people that not often, but it happens and,
• 1:02:27
  you know, therefore, I've I think you can do it.
• 1:02:30
  It's because I've, I believe you can genuinely do it because I
• 1:02:32
  didn't, I would tell you. It's a really, it's a really,
• 1:02:37
  really important. Point funnily enough.
• 1:02:40
  My previous guests will we spoke about similar things?
• 1:02:43
  He's a really, really positive musician, and he was having some
• 1:02:46
  sort of down dark thoughts. Like, you know, worrying like
• 1:02:50
  ah, I kind of already make it. Am I kidding myself and, you
• 1:02:53
  know, it's a very normal feeling to have, as you put it, imposter
• 1:02:57
  syndrome. It's, you know, I have it all
• 1:02:59
  the time. I look at everything that I'm
• 1:03:03
  pursuing and then I look at people.
• 1:03:05
  I know that a successful and sometimes I think like, or maybe
• 1:03:10
  I'm just not one of those people.
• 1:03:12
  Maybe that's not in the cards for me.
• 1:03:13
  Maybe I'm not one of them that that's, that's what successful
• 1:03:17
  people are. Like, I'm not one of those and
• 1:03:19
  then I don't know that. That just comes into my head,
• 1:03:21
  but I'm just up. Why not?
• 1:03:23
  Why not me? Why can't I?
• 1:03:25
  You know, it's not like it's not possible.
• 1:03:27
  It's just luck. It's a combination of luck.
• 1:03:32
  Hard, work and consistency. You know, what luck stands for,
• 1:03:34
  right? Like stands for laboring under
• 1:03:36
  correct knowledge. So I like stands for right?
• 1:03:39
  Yeah. So, you know, if you if your
• 1:03:41
  strategy think about it this way, right?
• 1:03:43
  If your strategy is right, I'm going to build a business that's
• 1:03:45
  going to do to us and we're going to take people out to see
• 1:03:50
  sunrise. Right, that's the value
• 1:03:51
  proposition and your entire strategy is based on heading
• 1:03:54
  west, right? That's your that's your
• 1:03:55
  navigational compass and goes. We're going to build this
• 1:03:57
  business because we're going to go west because no one's ever
• 1:03:59
  done that before. And you somebody needs to tap
• 1:04:02
  you and go. No.
• 1:04:03
  No, there's a really good reason why, no one's ever done.
• 1:04:05
  That is, because it's a really Daft idea, because the sun rises
• 1:04:08
  in the East, not the wet. Like what do you like some
• 1:04:11
  sometimes you actually need someone to go.
• 1:04:13
  Look, you're just drinking your own Kool-Aid for a minute.
• 1:04:16
  Stop. Just stop.
• 1:04:17
  This isn't going to work sanity. Check it, right.
• 1:04:22
  But it's like, that's like this is the gate.
• 1:04:23
  It's a game, right? Like, and it doesn't matter what
• 1:04:26
  level you're at. I always say like new level new
• 1:04:28
  Devil, right? Every time you go to a new
• 1:04:30
  level, whether it's learning a certain amount of money.
• 1:04:32
  You can ever owned before, being in a relationship that you've
• 1:04:34
  never been in before taking your business to a new level of
• 1:04:37
  turnover or profit. You've never done before.
• 1:04:39
  You are going to feel an inner level of tension and intention,
• 1:04:43
  right? And I talked about this where I
• 1:04:45
  said to me when you set an intention or a goal, if you look
• 1:04:48
  at the words, the way I spell it is in tension.
• 1:04:50
  Int int RN, intention right? There is a tension within you
• 1:04:54
  now because you've put it out into the universe that you want
• 1:04:57
  to achieve that goal. And yet there's a big part of
• 1:04:59
  your brain. That knows you have no clue how
• 1:05:01
  you're going to do it yet. But that's the process.
• 1:05:04
  You're not supposed to know how to do it.
• 1:05:06
  You're just supposed to know how to take the next step.
• 1:05:08
  Nobody knows how to build a multi-million pound business
• 1:05:11
  when they start out on day one. No one, right?
• 1:05:13
  Amazon didn't either, by the way, be started by selling
• 1:05:16
  books, and then he figured out and then took the next step and
• 1:05:18
  went. Now we'll sell this.
• 1:05:20
  Now we'll sell that and then you just take the next step, you
• 1:05:24
  have the vision, but the how is you figure out on the way but so
• 1:05:27
  many people get stuck because they go give I don't how I'm
• 1:05:30
  going to do it. No, they didn't know how
• 1:05:32
  airplanes are going to fly either till they figured it out.
• 1:05:35
  Right? At least.
• 1:05:35
  Like the how is the bit that keeps people trapped completely
• 1:05:39
  and utterly trapped and it's because you can't solve a
• 1:05:41
  creative problem from a house state.
• 1:05:43
  How is it? How is practical functional?
• 1:05:46
  And it's the stuff that gets people stuck because it's not
• 1:05:48
  where creativity lives that He's very practical.
• 1:05:52
  Great. Once you get to the point, but
• 1:05:54
  actually for most entrepreneurs, the most important question,
• 1:05:57
  isn't how, it's who, right. So like nine times out of ten,
• 1:06:01
  you go, I want to do this but Elon Musk like great example,
• 1:06:04
  when enormous anyone to build SpaceX, you knew nothing about
• 1:06:06
  Rockets right in how to build Rockets.
• 1:06:08
  He's like, he said that and he said, I do know how to build
• 1:06:10
  Rockets. He said by now had to recruit
• 1:06:12
  people who do and I'm going to ask them.
• 1:06:14
  It's like, yes exactly. You don't need to know
• 1:06:16
  everything about how to do this. You just need to know how to To
• 1:06:20
  how to ask the right questions and find the right.
• 1:06:23
  People who already know how to do it.
• 1:06:25
  Like when you realize, oh, I don't have to know everything.
• 1:06:28
  No, you really, don't you already done.
• 1:06:33
  So liberating. It's like, Oh, I thought to
• 1:06:36
  learn everything. No.
• 1:06:37
  No. No, you just need to be really
• 1:06:39
  good at your job, which is have the vision have the mission, you
• 1:06:42
  know, hold the build the team, right?
• 1:06:44
  Figure out what the customers want figure that out.
• 1:06:47
  And then and then getting get out of the way and let people do
• 1:06:50
  the The things that really get at and ask people who know more
• 1:06:53
  than you. Because trust me, most people
• 1:06:54
  are way smarter than you are. So they just don't they just
• 1:06:58
  don't want to work for themselves.
• 1:06:59
  I want to work for you and I'm grateful every day.
• 1:07:02
  I have people who are way smarter than me, working for me
• 1:07:04
  because they love it and I'm blessed that I can go and ask
• 1:07:07
  them questions and they'll go. Yeah, I'll figure that out.
• 1:07:09
  So we pulled, don't worry. Thank you for, I'm genuinely
• 1:07:11
  really blessed that I get. I get to have you on my team
• 1:07:14
  because I could never do that. If he took me five years, trying
• 1:07:17
  to learn what you know, right? Pretty.
• 1:07:20
  I agree with you. We've spoken a little bit about
• 1:07:24
  this throughout the course of the conversation so far, but I
• 1:07:27
  want to kind of, I suppose getting like a general idea.
• 1:07:30
  Some general advice. What can you teach us about
• 1:07:33
  having the right mindset for business success, good question.
• 1:07:39
  Okay, so somebody asked me recently.
• 1:07:41
  They said what percentage of success do I think is mindset
• 1:07:45
  and what percentages, you know, the other thing and I and the
• 1:07:48
  graphic I have on the, you know, the Flame the Whiteboard behind
• 1:07:52
  me, you know, strategy Talent, cash.
• 1:07:53
  Those are the three things that you know, you're going to need
• 1:07:56
  to understand and constantly pay attention to but the thing that
• 1:07:59
  surrounds all of those is mindset, you can have the right
• 1:08:02
  strategy and you know, you're going to you might even get the
• 1:08:05
  right talent for a period of time.
• 1:08:06
  But if your might your mindset is going to be the thing that
• 1:08:09
  gets you through the adversities, it's the thing
• 1:08:11
  that's going to get you through when everything goes wrong.
• 1:08:13
  Like, you know, give you a good example, right?
• 1:08:15
  So seven years ago. I'm out running.
• 1:08:18
  Am I running a retreat in Spain with my wife?
• 1:08:20
  If 425 entrepreneurs, right, we do it once a year now, but we're
• 1:08:25
  running it for one of the first times really great.
• 1:08:28
  Really successful event. We flew back to the UK within 48
• 1:08:31
  Hours. She got sick.
• 1:08:33
  Thought it was just food poisoning turned out.
• 1:08:35
  It wasn't turned out. She had a liver infection where
• 1:08:38
  they thought was a liver infection.
• 1:08:40
  Took her into hospital. I turn up the next morning to go
• 1:08:43
  and see how she is. And a doctor pulls me into a
• 1:08:46
  into a private room and you know, it's never going to be
• 1:08:49
  good, right? If that's How it starts and this
• 1:08:52
  is right. Listen, your wife Had a Brain
• 1:08:55
  Hemorrhage last night. She's in a coma.
• 1:08:59
  She may or may not come out. We don't know yet, but you need
• 1:09:05
  to be aware that you need to start getting things in order
• 1:09:08
  because we don't know whether she'll ever know leave Hospital
• 1:09:13
  whether she'll ever work again, you know, whether she'll ever
• 1:09:15
  recover. We don't we just don't know.
• 1:09:18
  I like that's the stuff you don't see coming.
• 1:09:22
  That's the stuff. You can't plan for right?
• 1:09:24
  You can have all the best business plans in the world, but
• 1:09:26
  life's going to knock you on your ass and your ability to be
• 1:09:30
  resilient enough to get up and go, you know, there's some
• 1:09:33
  really dark days during, I'm not going to lie, some horrific lie.
• 1:09:36
  Dark days, right? Vice to just go look, my job is
• 1:09:39
  to get up tomorrow and just get through tomorrow.
• 1:09:42
  I don't know if I can win this. I don't know if I can, if I can
• 1:09:46
  make it out, six months from now.
• 1:09:47
  I can't think. By that, I can't think about
• 1:09:49
  what happens. If my wife spends the rest of
• 1:09:51
  her life in a care home. Thank goodness.
• 1:09:52
  She doesn't. And, you know, we're she lives
• 1:09:55
  at home with us. She's great.
• 1:09:56
  And, you know, all of that. But at the time, all I could do
• 1:10:01
  is go, my mindset has to be two things.
• 1:10:03
  Number one, control the controllables.
• 1:10:05
  This is the most important mindset lesson.
• 1:10:07
  I've learned in my life. You have to focus on the things
• 1:10:10
  that only you can control because the stuff that will mess
• 1:10:12
  you up the stuff. That'll stress you out.
• 1:10:14
  Is all the stuff that you worry about that.
• 1:10:16
  You have. Absolutely no influence on.
• 1:10:18
  At all that you can't do anything about.
• 1:10:20
  So I like right. I made a list what all the stuff
• 1:10:23
  I can control. When the most important thing
• 1:10:24
  was nutrition because I was like with my wife in hospital.
• 1:10:27
  I'm going to just eat takeaways and crap, if I'm not really
• 1:10:29
  careful and that's going to mess my body up and that's going to
• 1:10:31
  lose my confidence. Then that's going to mess my
• 1:10:33
  energy up. So right nutrition became the
• 1:10:35
  single most important thing I could do for myself, right, that
• 1:10:36
  particular time, right? Number one.
• 1:10:38
  Number two. I need to share this with my
• 1:10:39
  team and I need some, what's going on?
• 1:10:41
  Because it's going to impact it's gonna change our our
• 1:10:43
  business for the next year. At least, it's going to change
• 1:10:45
  everything, right? So we've got to deal with that,
• 1:10:47
  and then we have to go. Did these are my love, right?
• 1:10:50
  I did a SWOT analysis on my life.
• 1:10:52
  I went right through. Stoked rooster.
• 1:10:56
  Right? I got a big whiteboard and I
• 1:10:57
  wrote SWOT analysis on my life. Right?
• 1:10:59
  Strengths weaknesses opportunities threats for my
• 1:11:02
  life. Right?
• 1:11:03
  So like what are the threats nutrition?
• 1:11:04
  Bad food, eating junk food or rest it.
• 1:11:06
  Well, what are the opportunities?
• 1:11:07
  Right? Okay, I could learn about
• 1:11:08
  nutrition, get a coaching help hire somebody.
• 1:11:10
  What the strengths while I got a great team.
• 1:11:12
  I've got this gut, well the weaknesses.
• 1:11:14
  I don't know how to work, the dishwasher.
• 1:11:16
  I don't have a clue about like like Like I did like weaknesses.
• 1:11:19
  I didn't know the bank account passwords because my wife had
• 1:11:21
  them all and I couldn't get them from her because she was in a
• 1:11:23
  coma. So that's a weakness and we
• 1:11:25
  Outsource it will be a threat because I ran out of money and I
• 1:11:27
  the bank won't talk to me because GDP our compliance so
• 1:11:30
  suddenly I just did this SWOT analysis of my life and it
• 1:11:34
  helped me go. Okay.
• 1:11:36
  I've got a mitigate all the all the threats are going to deal
• 1:11:38
  with that first to stuff. I can control.
• 1:11:40
  I got a right to talk to Jonathan School deal with this.
• 1:11:42
  All the stuff that I saw was a threat.
• 1:11:44
  Okay, great. Then I'm going to work on the
• 1:11:45
  weaknesses and I'm going to then figure out like, how we Through
• 1:11:48
  this and there were some days when literally just making it
• 1:11:51
  through a day. I would collapse exhausted in
• 1:11:54
  bed at night and go. I don't know if I can do this
• 1:11:56
  tomorrow and I would just I would hear this little voice in
• 1:11:58
  my brain that we just go this and you just got to make it
• 1:12:00
  through one day at a time. You just got to make it through.
• 1:12:02
  One day. I did the matter how bad this
• 1:12:04
  is. You just got to get up tomorrow
• 1:12:05
  and you got to do the basics right?
• 1:12:07
  Get up in the morning, get feed 300 feet, Jonathan walk the dog
• 1:12:11
  to go to work. Do do, you know work for client
• 1:12:15
  work? Do the work you do with client
• 1:12:16
  then go walk the dogs. And pick Jonathan up from
• 1:12:19
  school. Go to the hospital.
• 1:12:20
  You just have to make it a routine and you just got to keep
• 1:12:22
  showing up and it's like the biggest thing for me was that
• 1:12:25
  was where I just started saying to myself, who you just got to
• 1:12:27
  keep showing up, whether you feel like it, whether you do
• 1:12:30
  whether you're in the mood for it, whether you're not, you
• 1:12:32
  know, and like your job is to just keep showing up because
• 1:12:35
  this will pass at some point. This will pass.
• 1:12:38
  However bad it is at some, it might take three months.
• 1:12:41
  It might take a year. It will eventually pass wherever
• 1:12:44
  possible looks like, and I'll need to deal with that when I
• 1:12:46
  get to that. But Some point, we're going to
• 1:12:49
  find out what the next stage of this is, but for right now, I
• 1:12:53
  need to focus on the things. I can control looking after my
• 1:12:55
  nutrition. Looking after, you know,
• 1:12:57
  Jonathan making sure he's all right, he needs to school now so
• 1:13:00
  they can give him counseling. Making sure.
• 1:13:02
  You know that I keep the business trading because lot was
• 1:13:04
  really hard was, lots of customers all went.
• 1:13:06
  Oh, well, let's stop coaching with you to give you space to
• 1:13:08
  look after your wife and I'm like, no, no, no, you can't do
• 1:13:10
  that because literally, you know, then I'll run out of money
• 1:13:13
  and that creates even more stressors.
• 1:13:14
  Like I'm what am I gonna do? Sit at home and so long as I
• 1:13:17
  know I got do Something right? I have to show up.
• 1:13:20
  I need to still do my job, right?
• 1:13:22
  That's that's that's being a professional.
• 1:13:25
  And I just think that from a mindset point of view, life and
• 1:13:28
  business is going to beat you up.
• 1:13:30
  It's going to do that. Right?
• 1:13:32
  It's because it's trying to find out how badly you want it to
• 1:13:35
  trying to find out whether you're serious or whether you're
• 1:13:37
  really seriously committed to what you say, you want, or
• 1:13:39
  whether you're just mildly interested, as long as it's not
• 1:13:41
  too uncomfortable and there are, you know, you are going to be
• 1:13:44
  times when you're going to be up and there are going to be times
• 1:13:46
  when you're going to be absolutely down on your ass.
• 1:13:48
  I've Company had a business fail.
• 1:13:50
  You know, that my wife go into Comas.
• 1:13:52
  I've had life-threatening illness myself like that.
• 1:13:54
  You will face adversity. Do not think you're not going to
• 1:13:59
  face it because you are. The question is going to be a.
• 1:14:01
  You're going to keep getting up and do another day and just do
• 1:14:04
  another day. Do another day and do another
• 1:14:06
  day and do another day. And then one day, you go.
• 1:14:08
  Holy crap. We're getting my wife out of
• 1:14:10
  Hospital, six months before they said she would be home.
• 1:14:12
  Okay? Right.
• 1:14:13
  Now, what we're going to do that point and then you just get up
• 1:14:15
  another day and it's like, you know, No, any kind of Life,
• 1:14:19
  positive or negative is built on The Compound Effect and The
• 1:14:22
  Compound Effect is you know, building one good day on top of
• 1:14:25
  another on top of another on top of another and some days.
• 1:14:27
  They're only goodbye that much. A little bit tiny bit and some
• 1:14:30
  days you slide backwards. It happens to us.
• 1:14:33
  All me, like everyone else have bad days.
• 1:14:36
  But we have a rule in my company.
• 1:14:37
  You're allowed to be down for 24 hours, but that's it.
• 1:14:39
  Right then. You got to wipe the Slate clean.
• 1:14:41
  Get up. Start again tomorrow, just like
• 1:14:44
  nobody cares after that. It's like, yep.
• 1:14:46
  Great. Okay, you had a bad day.
• 1:14:47
  We all got I have a bad date that's life tomorrow.
• 1:14:50
  You got to get up and go come from a place of gratitude
• 1:14:53
  massively, you know be grateful for all the things.
• 1:14:56
  You're the singer got me. Through my wife been in a coma
• 1:14:58
  was every day. I would get up and I would write
• 1:15:00
  down five things. I was grateful for every morning
• 1:15:02
  because it was too easy to focus on all the stuff that was not
• 1:15:06
  right. But if I could fuck, you know
• 1:15:08
  what, you know what I'm alive. Thank goodness.
• 1:15:10
  I'm over here so I can take care of Jonathan.
• 1:15:12
  You know, the family we have around us how amazing the NHS is
• 1:15:16
  for looking after, you know, because if I was in another
• 1:15:18
  Other country this would be costing me, hundreds of
• 1:15:19
  thousands of pounds and I'd probably be bankrupt.
• 1:15:21
  Like, you know, I'm grateful for the fact that I get to walk
• 1:15:24
  outside in the fresh air. I'm grateful, you know, I did
• 1:15:26
  just, I would find things that I was grateful for, in the midst
• 1:15:30
  of all of that adversity, because it just the label
• 1:15:33
  enabled me to go. I'm massively grateful for I
• 1:15:36
  have and now I can go and just try and support her while she
• 1:15:40
  deals with what what she's trying to deal with which you
• 1:15:43
  know, is something that you can't understand until you've
• 1:15:46
  been put through it. This is why I do this podcast
• 1:15:50
  conversations like this lessons like this.
• 1:15:53
  Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing.
• 1:15:58
  What's the best advice you've ever received God?
• 1:16:02
  So many things. So, I honestly, think the older
• 1:16:08
  I get the best advice is just be who you are and stop worrying
• 1:16:13
  about what everyone else thinks. Because they're going to think
• 1:16:16
  about it. They were really worried about
• 1:16:18
  what you think about them anyway, but it's right there.
• 1:16:23
  Really are they what makes you think your ego?
• 1:16:26
  So important, everyone's worried about you.
• 1:16:27
  Anyway, like English, but just I think it's just you know, what
• 1:16:31
  the best advice I think I would give myself frankly is a don't
• 1:16:36
  take it. So seriously, because it really
• 1:16:38
  isn't and just just just just relax into it a bit more.
• 1:16:45
  Right, like don't be in such a hurry to get everywhere.
• 1:16:47
  Just like just go Le be yourself, be who you are.
• 1:16:50
  It's like the minute. I start, stop trying to be the
• 1:16:53
  guy in the blue suit with the white shirt and I'm wearing a
• 1:16:56
  white shirt today. I was about that.
• 1:16:57
  Lumely Blackshear red tie and all that stuff, right?
• 1:16:59
  Try to be the consultant and I was just like that.
• 1:17:01
  I'm me, right? I genuinely, you know, I like
• 1:17:04
  when I'm on stage or doing trainings, I wear bright, purple
• 1:17:06
  jackets, and I'm, you know, that's me.
• 1:17:09
  It's like, if that doesn't resonate with you, then we
• 1:17:11
  shouldn't work together anyway, and I'm not the right person for
• 1:17:14
  you and that's cool there. Somebody out there who is and
• 1:17:16
  it's not me and I'm not offended by that.
• 1:17:17
  That's totally. Alright, you know, there are
• 1:17:19
  certain people I attract and there are certain people who go.
• 1:17:21
  I could never work with him. He's too full on these 2 e.
• 1:17:24
  He's too much is too much. It's just too bright.
• 1:17:26
  He's all about. And I'm like, then that's great
• 1:17:28
  because that's good. Then you know what, you don't
• 1:17:30
  want and the right and then it's going to help you find what you
• 1:17:33
  do. And I just think it's that being
• 1:17:36
  starting to be comfortable in your own skin and stop worrying
• 1:17:38
  about what everybody else thinks because like there is only one
• 1:17:42
  of you for a reason. But you got something unique to
• 1:17:46
  contribute. You got something you need to
• 1:17:47
  give the world, you're here to make a difference and an impact.
• 1:17:50
  And you can't do that if you're trying to fit in.
• 1:17:53
  Brilliant. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
• 1:17:57
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far.
• 1:18:03
  Always a good one. I'll explain if you want me to
• 1:18:07
  write. So the light biggest life lesson
• 1:18:09
  that I've I've got is it is easier to take the time to do
• 1:18:15
  maintenance than it is to do repair.
• 1:18:19
  Okay, so if you don't give you an example, right?
• 1:18:25
  If you don't look after your health, I maintain your health,
• 1:18:28
  eat sensibly, you know, taking vitamins at some point, you're
• 1:18:33
  going to get seriously sick. And then you're going to have to
• 1:18:36
  embark on a massive repair journey.
• 1:18:37
  And a massive repair project is a lot easier to do maintenance
• 1:18:42
  and it is to do repair, like, you know, if you've got a lawn
• 1:18:46
  mower, it's a lot easier to just get it maintained every year.
• 1:18:48
  So that it works. Rather than waiting for it to
• 1:18:50
  break down and then have to go and get a belt.
• 1:18:52
  So, I'm of the cars a lot easier to look after it, then wait
• 1:18:55
  until it gets into a bad State and then have to pay for massive
• 1:18:57
  repairs just in any year of my life.
• 1:18:59
  That's the thing I've learnt it is.
• 1:19:01
  It is easier and more cost efficient in the long run to pay
• 1:19:05
  the small price now rather than wait to pay the big price later.
• 1:19:10
  Eloquently put. Yeah brilliant.
• 1:19:12
  Thank you so much. As we draw things to a close for
• 1:19:15
  today. Do you have any upcoming
• 1:19:16
  projects or some final thoughts that you'd like to share with
• 1:19:19
  our listeners? Listen, you know, if you've
• 1:19:23
  enjoyed, if you enjoy the things I've shared in your running, a
• 1:19:25
  business or growing a business, then follow me on social media.
• 1:19:28
  I'm pretty easy to find posted or stuff on LinkedIn, which is
• 1:19:31
  obviously where we got to connect.
• 1:19:33
  And, you know, if you go to scale up masterclass, .co.uk
• 1:19:36
  there's 75 minutes of free business training.
• 1:19:39
  You can access my gift to you. Feel free to go grab that.
• 1:19:43
  Yeah, but I mean, I think I think if I was going to finish
• 1:19:47
  on one thing it would be I say this a lot but it's the idea.
• 1:19:51
  It was easy. The execution is hard, right?
• 1:19:54
  That's the hard bit. That's the separator.
• 1:19:56
  It's lots of people have ideas and I'll guarantee you.
• 1:19:59
  If you're listening to this podcast.
• 1:20:00
  You can relate to this. At some point.
• 1:20:02
  You're walking down the street somewhere.
• 1:20:03
  And you'll go. Oh, blimey.
• 1:20:05
  I had that idea and because you've seen someone else do it
• 1:20:08
  and it's like, yeah, you know what, the idea wasn't the gift.
• 1:20:11
  The idea was the gift for the execution was where you turn it
• 1:20:14
  into something of value. And it's like, you know, there's
• 1:20:17
  a phrase I use which is you get paid and what you get done,
• 1:20:19
  because nobody cares about what You talk about nobody cares
• 1:20:22
  about what you're going to do. They care about what you
• 1:20:24
  actually went out and did. So it's like, you know be a man
• 1:20:27
  be somebody in the world that the if you make a decision and
• 1:20:30
  you have an idea go execute on it.
• 1:20:33
  Just just take action, just stop, just get going because
• 1:20:36
  most people have great ideas, but never do anything with it.
• 1:20:39
  And it and then five years later.
• 1:20:41
  They look back and go already Shoulda Coulda Woulda, you know,
• 1:20:44
  and it's like, look, you get paid when you get done, so get
• 1:20:47
  good at doing more stuff. So I'm just going to work some
• 1:20:49
  of it isn't that's just the process.
• 1:20:52
  Don't expect it to work because what I'm but just go out and do
• 1:20:55
  more stuff and you'll be amazed 5 years from now, how much
• 1:20:58
  further forward you are. And and how much you've learned
• 1:21:00
  and how much you've realized you were capable of doing it.
• 1:21:03
  You didn't think you could. But in just a massive, thank you
• 1:21:09
  for sharing all of your knowledge and experiences and
• 1:21:13
  just, just for being an all-around.
• 1:21:15
  Brilliant guest. Thank you so much.
• 1:21:16
  Thank you, Christian. I appreciate that.
• 1:21:18
  Matt's been probably, we've been going for as long as we have.
• 1:21:21
  It's crazy. It flies by.
• 1:21:23
  No. I mean, I do this podcast
• 1:21:26
  because I like to obviously create content, create good
• 1:21:30
  conversations and I think throughout the course of doing
• 1:21:32
  it. I've begun to learn that this
• 1:21:34
  isn't just Something I'm trying to do something.
• 1:21:37
  I'm trying to pursue pursue amongst other things.
• 1:21:41
  I am trying to create stuff that would Inspire Inspire motivate
• 1:21:46
  and any and I get something from it.
• 1:21:49
  To, every time I have one of these conversations, doesn't
• 1:21:52
  matter who it's with. I always have something that I
• 1:21:54
  take away from it. Something I learn.
• 1:21:58
  And I use into my life in my everyday life, and I feel very
• 1:22:03
  grateful for that. I resonate with a lot of things
• 1:22:05
  that you said, like for instance, what you were saying
• 1:22:08
  about appreciating thing things, and something I've spoken about
• 1:22:13
  a lot in my recent live streams. Is this idea of kind of Changing
• 1:22:20
  my perspective a lot. And what do I mean by that?
• 1:22:25
  Well, it's very easy to complain about the things that we don't
• 1:22:29
  have the gaps in our life. But when we really sit down and
• 1:22:33
  think about what it is, we have both the little things and the
• 1:22:38
  big things, and we compare our lives, with how it used to be
• 1:22:43
  two years, five years, ten years from, you know, logo, we begin
• 1:22:48
  to realize just how lucky we really, really are.
• 1:22:51
  And I always tried to do that. Actually in those moments where
• 1:22:54
  I feel lowest and I get it I down or a bit feeling, sorry for
• 1:22:58
  myself. I try to remember what I have
• 1:23:01
  and suddenly I feel combination of two things.
• 1:23:04
  I feel very grateful and thankful and also kind of a bit
• 1:23:08
  of shame that I ever felt that way in the first place, but it's
• 1:23:11
  a normal feeling to have. It's just it's human.
• 1:23:15
  We it's natural to one more, you know, it's but at the same time,
• 1:23:19
  it's also not natural to be up all the time.
• 1:23:22
  It's like Like you would be you'd be on some kind of
• 1:23:25
  stimulant. Let's say, if you are, like up
• 1:23:28
  all the time because people say that to me, people go on, you
• 1:23:31
  must, you must be like, my, like my nightmare to live with you
• 1:23:34
  always I can listen. I have bad days, too.
• 1:23:36
  I've days where I'm down or I feel just like everything's
• 1:23:39
  going to crap and I wish you and you know, course because it's
• 1:23:42
  called The Human Experience, right?
• 1:23:44
  And like it's unrealistic to think you're going to be up all
• 1:23:47
  the time. The question isn't, whether
• 1:23:49
  you're up or down? The question is, do you have the
• 1:23:51
  strategies all the tools to get? Up, if you're down right?
• 1:23:54
  So that it's only, you know, you style be honestly, I think it
• 1:23:57
  down for like a week at a time, really years ago.
• 1:23:59
  When a my twenties he's too nice to be down for a week at a time.
• 1:24:04
  And now it's like it's a couple of hours at the worst in a
• 1:24:07
  really bad day or its go to bed and wake up and I'm done with
• 1:24:10
  it. It's like, but it's, you know,
• 1:24:11
  it's just learning to reduce the impact of those emotions on you
• 1:24:15
  and how long, how long it takes you to go?
• 1:24:18
  Yeah, right, I get that. But I've got strategies, I can
• 1:24:20
  shift it. I can I know what?
• 1:24:22
  I know where to focus. The so I know where to put my
• 1:24:24
  energy, I know who to talk to. You know, it's just it's that's
• 1:24:27
  that's part of the human experience.
• 1:24:28
  I feel so do. Yeah, I completely agree.
• 1:24:32
  And it's funny. You mentioned being your
• 1:24:34
  twenties. I'm 28 now about the 10:29 and I
• 1:24:38
  feel exactly like that. But in the last let's say four
• 1:24:43
  or five years. I have begun to realize how to
• 1:24:47
  be when things get a bit more difficult.
• 1:24:49
  And it is funny, a lot of these things resonate.
• 1:24:53
  It's the the whole just going to bed waking up the next day.
• 1:24:55
  Like, it's a new day. Take it step by step.
• 1:24:58
  But that really does help. It really does.
• 1:25:01
  And you do, you do feel better? The next day, you might not feel
• 1:25:03
  like hundred bucks the next day, but you'll feel different,
• 1:25:07
  you'll feel differently. And if you don't take action to
• 1:25:12
  try and feel different, you know, do something different,
• 1:25:15
  whether that's going out, trying something you haven't tried
• 1:25:18
  before, you know, whatever that may be.
• 1:25:22
  There's always something new. You can do to change how you
• 1:25:24
  feel. And ultimately how you feel that
• 1:25:27
  mindset that you're in a big key theme.
• 1:25:29
  That, you know, we've discussed throughout this podcast is
• 1:25:33
  mindset that mindset that you have throughout the day and the
• 1:25:39
  weeks and the months and the years.
• 1:25:41
  That's what gets you through. It's not about having this
• 1:25:44
  amazing strength that comes from nowhere.
• 1:25:46
  Like yeah, you have to build in a strength and belief and
• 1:25:49
  confidence but a big part of it is mindset and just Keeping on
• 1:25:54
  going. Just keep going, keep trying,
• 1:25:57
  keep persevering and you know, things will get better at
• 1:26:01
  certain do anything. That's Danny thing.
• 1:26:02
  That's like going to the gym, right?
• 1:26:03
  You wouldn't go to a gym and go. I want to be fit overnight.
• 1:26:07
  You know, you're gonna have to keep showing up.
• 1:26:09
  You're going to have to work out and the mindsets.
• 1:26:10
  No different, right? Like it's, it's about going.
• 1:26:14
  Okay, great. I'm going to, I'm going to read
• 1:26:16
  20 minutes every day. Something positive to keep my
• 1:26:18
  mind and I'm going to listen to an amazing podcast like this.
• 1:26:20
  You know, what? On my way to work to get to give
• 1:26:23
  me some Put this point you have to Napoleon Hill.
• 1:26:25
  Says it in the book Think and Grow.
• 1:26:26
  Rich said said negativity is all around you all the time.
• 1:26:29
  So you have to consciously and the words in the in Think and
• 1:26:33
  Grow Rich that you have to consciously and consistently put
• 1:26:37
  positivity into your life. You have to do that.
• 1:26:40
  It's not going to happen by accident.
• 1:26:42
  You know, right? So like this is the mindset is
• 1:26:45
  an intention and a discipline to go.
• 1:26:47
  I'm going to consistently put positive stuff into my mind to
• 1:26:51
  compensate for the fact that I live in an incredibly.
• 1:26:53
  Toxic environment. The world is 90% - all the time
• 1:26:57
  that, you know, most people are not positive.
• 1:26:59
  If you meet them, just ask them how they're doing and they're go
• 1:27:01
  or not bad, right, like that. Okay, you know, it's like and
• 1:27:04
  then uses - we're surrounded by negativity.
• 1:27:06
  Right? So if we're not, you know, I've
• 1:27:09
  worked for years or on my mindset and still do reading
• 1:27:12
  books getting coaching, you know, get listening to podcasts
• 1:27:16
  on the way to and from a meeting.
• 1:27:17
  It's like it's a constant working effort to stay in a
• 1:27:21
  state of being the T+ of my life.
• 1:27:25
  It doesn't happen by accident. It's not random its work.
• 1:27:29
  And like if you want to feel better, then you got to put the
• 1:27:31
  work in. You got it.
• 1:27:32
  You got to commit to working on that emotion in the same way
• 1:27:35
  that you would commit to go into a gym to get your body to feel
• 1:27:38
  better to feel healthier to get fitter.
• 1:27:40
  It's the same thing. It's it's that commitment to
• 1:27:44
  consistently do it right? Because like that.
• 1:27:47
  That's the difference between where you are.
• 1:27:48
  And where you want to be, is the discipline and the consistency
• 1:27:51
  that you can bring to. To getting yourself into that
• 1:27:54
  space, whether it's meditating every day for 20 minutes,
• 1:27:57
  whatever it is for you, but do it consistently because nothing
• 1:28:00
  shows up without consistency. Nothing.
• 1:28:04
  And testicle and to put it better myself.
• 1:28:06
  Thank you very much for this conversation, for your expertise
• 1:28:10
  and knowledge, been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:28:12
  Thank you for holding. The space to have for us to have
• 1:28:14
  it man. Always, you're always welcome
• 1:28:16
  back on the show, absolute pleasure and to the listeners of
• 1:28:20
  the Christian Reef podcast, as always be safe, be well, and
• 1:28:24
  I'll see you in the next.