Speaker 1: She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2: I'm tiff. This is Roll with the Punches and we're
Speaker 2: turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
Speaker 2: to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family
Speaker 2: Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Speaker 2: Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
Speaker 2: all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
Speaker 2: custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
Speaker 2: and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
Speaker 2: reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
Speaker 2: test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au A and Stevens my
Speaker 2: new friend. Welcome to Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3: Nice to be here, Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2: My favorite memories from my recent trip to Queensland and
Speaker 2: three two day conference at the Tea bos the business
Speaker 2: of speaking.
Speaker 3: That's it, The business is speaking. Yeah, seventy to eighty
Speaker 3: speakers in the room. Was it was good fun.
Speaker 2: Like that energy was. I'm addicted to it. It was
Speaker 2: the energy and people in that room for a bunch
Speaker 2: of people that I knew five percent of online. That
Speaker 2: I'd never met in real life. There wasn't I don't
Speaker 2: think there was anyone there I'd met in real life before.
Speaker 2: And I just couldn't believe how much I felt like
Speaker 2: I'd just come home from a high school reunion or
Speaker 2: hang out with my friends that I always hung out with.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, a little shout out to Jacqueline Brooker at
Speaker 3: any given Tuesday, who hosted and curated that event. The
Speaker 3: business of speaking, I guess, you know, she really understands
Speaker 3: how to not only put on a party, but also
Speaker 3: the dynamics of either existing speakers or people trying to
Speaker 3: break in. And it's an interesting industry, you know. It's
Speaker 3: to have a tribe of people in the room that
Speaker 3: are on the same page and aligned. Was really great
Speaker 3: because I've got to say to if my family, I've
Speaker 3: been doing this for twenty six years, but really my
Speaker 3: family does not understand what I do. You know, it's
Speaker 3: high level weirdness as far as they concerned. What do
Speaker 3: you mean You're a professional speaker and you make a
Speaker 3: living out of talking? I don't get it.
Speaker 2: So for you, was it the attraction to speaking that
Speaker 2: came or was it the knowledge that you got pushed
Speaker 2: into speaking. How did that evolve?
Speaker 3: Well, if we go back on my journey, I was
Speaker 3: a operations manager in the West Farmers Group over in
Speaker 3: Wa West Farmers Federation Insurance. So I'm a marine bloody
Speaker 3: insurance underwriter by trade, would you believe? So, you know,
Speaker 3: cargoes and ships and boats and in the insurance world.
Speaker 3: But they made me a supervise at a pretty young age.
Speaker 3: And I'll never forget. I went along to a training
Speaker 3: program called PERFORMAX back in like the eighties for leaders.
Speaker 3: Everyone in a supervisory level and above in the West
Speaker 3: Farmers Group had to do this program. And again it
Speaker 3: might sound like high level weirdness, but it's not. While
Speaker 3: I was sitting in that room, honestly, tif there was
Speaker 3: just a quiet whisper. It wasn't like a voice in
Speaker 3: my head, but it was a knowing, like a gut
Speaker 3: feel raw knowing that that's what you're supposed to be doing,
Speaker 3: and that guy out the front facilitating that program, that's
Speaker 3: the sort of thing that that's your calling, that's where
Speaker 3: you should be going. And I'd always enjoyed public speaking
Speaker 3: during my upbringing, so it was kind of a hint
Speaker 3: that that's the direction we need. I need to go
Speaker 3: in with my career. So you know, long story short,
Speaker 3: I said yes to a move east when we acquired
Speaker 3: Federation Insurance that took us Australia wide, because I just
Speaker 3: knew that making a living out of speaking and training,
Speaker 3: if you weren't on the East Coast, where eighty percent
Speaker 3: of the head offices were, you were going to be
Speaker 3: spending a lot of time in aircrafts. And so I
Speaker 3: went east and that kind of I went east with
Speaker 3: West Farmers, but I was I knew and I had
Speaker 3: my eyes open for an opportunity to move into into
Speaker 3: speaking and training. Yeah, so that's kind of my back.
Speaker 3: Do you want to know when I love and I
Speaker 3: fell in love with speaking? Yes, I was a sixteen
Speaker 3: year old at a weekend hockey carnival. We're playing this
Speaker 3: big event. We're down in Esperance in Wa and I
Speaker 3: just after we'd won the final, I happened to be
Speaker 3: off in the lou right, and that's when they selected
Speaker 3: who was going to do the acceptance speech. So who
Speaker 3: got dobbed in? Me? Because I wasn't there to defend myself, right,
Speaker 3: So with three hundred odd people all standing around, I've
Speaker 3: got to give a speech, and I was so nervous
Speaker 3: that I made a little fraudyan slip because we were
Speaker 3: billeted into the ladies' clubrooms. We had our sleeping bags,
Speaker 3: you know, and we kind of just slept in there
Speaker 3: for the long weekend and played all these hockey games.
Speaker 3: But in my nervousness, instead of thanking the ladies for
Speaker 3: the use of their club, I accidentally thanked the club
Speaker 3: for the use of their ladies, And of course that
Speaker 3: got a massive laugh. The audience was very patient tolerant
Speaker 3: with me. I was only sixteen at the time, and
Speaker 3: I kind of got hooked on making an audience laugh.
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, that was my first experience as a
Speaker 3: sixteen year old. So I kind of just was always
Speaker 3: open to opportunity to speak, and that led me into
Speaker 3: the training and development industry.
Speaker 2: It's funny when you look back. I was just thinking then,
Speaker 2: when when when did I start to appreciate it? And
Speaker 2: I think of the moments when my dad, who was
Speaker 2: not a speaker at all. I mean, he did a
Speaker 2: lot of things in his life and none of them
Speaker 2: are on a stage, but he would at family events,
Speaker 2: he would he would give a speech that moved the
Speaker 2: room emotionally and I just couldn't look like I was
Speaker 2: just so moved by and captivated by that. And then
Speaker 2: I remember having a particular boss in when I was
Speaker 2: working in sales of a very small business, a small,
Speaker 2: little print business, and he would talk to us. He
Speaker 2: would give give it, not obviously not on a stage,
Speaker 2: but he would he would talk to us in meetings,
Speaker 2: and I just was really I was intrigued and captivated
Speaker 2: by his ability to motivate and shift and I don't know,
Speaker 2: impact people and influence people with his words, and I
Speaker 2: was I was terrified.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know it's still the case that most
Speaker 3: people say they'd rather die than speak in public. But
Speaker 3: you know, I always tend to point out if I
Speaker 3: push you towards the edge of a cliff and say
Speaker 3: I'll either push you over or you deliver a brilliant
Speaker 3: speech right now, people will step up and speak beautifully,
Speaker 3: I reckon. So it's a skill too, and your dad
Speaker 3: obviously had that naturally, just to engage and shift people's
Speaker 3: thinking or stir them emotionally. And that's the power of
Speaker 3: a great speaker. They're able to They're able people can
Speaker 3: see their own stories within your story. You might be
Speaker 3: telling your story, but I was taught by a mentor
Speaker 3: to always turn the mirror on the audience. So a
Speaker 3: lot of speakers when they're speaking can only you know.
Speaker 3: It's like they're holding their own mirror up and are
Speaker 3: seeing themselves as they tell their story. But occasionally, at
Speaker 3: the end of the story, the idea is you turn
Speaker 3: the mirror by saying something like, you know, when was
Speaker 3: the last time you got King hit by life? As
Speaker 3: you're telling your story, but that statement turns the mirror.
Speaker 3: That question turns the mirror and the audience. You can
Speaker 3: see them kind of their eyes go up left right,
Speaker 3: they thinking about a time when they got King hit
Speaker 3: by life, And so suddenly they're relating to you, and
Speaker 3: you're becoming very relatable. So I love it. It's just
Speaker 3: an opportunity to engage and tell stories in a way
Speaker 3: that inspires and shifts people's mindset.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's anyone when we're not going to
Speaker 2: speak about speaking forever? Then we just happened to curious?
Speaker 2: Do you think that there's a type of person who
Speaker 2: wants to be a speaker but doesn't that can't Is
Speaker 2: there something unteachable there some people that are unteachable in
Speaker 2: that space, can we teach all people to be a
Speaker 2: great speaker?
Speaker 3: I believe the latter. I mean, I'm an educator and
Speaker 3: a trainer, and I'm also a master practitioner in NLP
Speaker 3: and ne're a linguistic programming So I'm a great believer
Speaker 3: in the fluidity and flexibility of people's limiting beliefs and
Speaker 3: their ability to learn new skills. So I think anyone
Speaker 3: can learn to speak better and more effectively. A lot
Speaker 3: of people just have to get that limiting belief out
Speaker 3: of the way that I hate speaking or I'm not
Speaker 3: good at it. And so you know, when I'm coaching
Speaker 3: people in this space, it's how do you change their
Speaker 3: neurology and they're limiting belief first, and then equip them
Speaker 3: with some skills and talents to actually do the delivery
Speaker 3: and the speaking better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now, when we were answering about you coming
Speaker 2: on this show, tell me how a bit of a
Speaker 2: story to tell?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, roll with the punches.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's just a good fit to me
Speaker 3: because a will will swing back to the metaphor and
Speaker 3: the prop I use a lot in keynotes. It's up
Speaker 3: on stage is my portable speedball stand. So like the
Speaker 3: Rocky Ball. If anyone's ever you know the Rockies, they're
Speaker 3: hitting his little ball on the platform, I take one
Speaker 3: of them with me and I use it as a
Speaker 3: metaphor of not only mastery, but of bouncing forward from
Speaker 3: the punches that knock you around in life. But you know,
Speaker 3: I've also I've I've been through a couple of King
Speaker 3: hits that I can I can tell you about because
Speaker 3: it's I really do believe it's it's how you bounce
Speaker 3: back from things that happen to you that shapes character.
Speaker 3: You know, I often think of a lot of people
Speaker 3: can fondly remember, you know, old Mickey, Rocky's coach in
Speaker 3: the first couple of movies. Yeah, well, you know, I
Speaker 3: can always remember him saying to to Rocky, it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, and I won't try and do his voice,
Speaker 3: but you know, bounce back. It's it's it's getting back
Speaker 3: up off the off the canvas. That's what shapes character.
Speaker 3: And the famous R Lee I always quote him, he said,
Speaker 3: champions just get up and they go one more round,
Speaker 3: and that's it. That's what distinguishes the you know, the
Speaker 3: best and the great from just the good is they
Speaker 3: get up and they go one more round. So maybe
Speaker 3: we'll swing back to the speedball in a while. But
Speaker 3: when I when I first moved into the speaking industry,
Speaker 3: I came across a guy called Roger Anthony who had
Speaker 3: a program called Crocodiles not wader lilies. Right, you can't
Speaker 3: make this stuff up, right, Crocodiles not water lilies. But
Speaker 3: it was a metaphor for as humans, we're supposed to
Speaker 3: be like the crocodile. If we leave the aggressive nature
Speaker 3: of a crococide, a croc's a prehistoric survivor. It's outlived
Speaker 3: just about everything on this planet. It's left over from
Speaker 3: the dinosaur era. About a cockroach is probably the only
Speaker 3: thing that's been around longer, right, And that's because a
Speaker 3: while the old croc is actually going through a five
Speaker 3: step process to ensure it gets its prey. So if
Speaker 3: we set aside the aggressive nature, it's actually following this
Speaker 3: systemic structure to increase the chances that it gets the
Speaker 3: weak will tobeast that's coming down to the watering hole
Speaker 3: every day. Right, So a croc relaxes, then it observes
Speaker 3: its environment around it, Then it starts to manage and
Speaker 3: have a lot of patience and then it acts right.
Speaker 3: So Roger Anthony intour of crocodiles not orderly. So the
Speaker 3: principal character in his leadership program and self leadership program
Speaker 3: was called Romper the crocodile Ronpa Relax, observe, manage patients,
Speaker 3: and then act right. And if you think about well,
Speaker 3: let me ask you the question, tif, where do most
Speaker 3: people in life do you think start on that process
Speaker 3: where you know, do they relax, do they observe, do
Speaker 3: they manage to have patients? Or do they go straight
Speaker 3: to act? What's the norm?
Speaker 2: Go straight to act? Mate?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean you know, I've asked that question in
Speaker 3: twenty nine countries now and it's always overwhelmingly we just
Speaker 3: act and then we react to the results that we cause.
Speaker 3: So I find a lot of people go straight to act,
Speaker 3: then they go back and observe what they've done, and
Speaker 3: then they try and manage their way out of it.
Speaker 3: So we've got it all stuffed up. And if we
Speaker 3: were more like a crocodile, I'd achieve more of our outcomes.
Speaker 3: And the analogy is be a crocodile, not a water lily,
Speaker 3: because water lilies look pretty, they act pretty, but they're
Speaker 3: floating around subject to the winds and tides, so they're
Speaker 3: reacting to everything that's going on around them in their environment.
Speaker 3: Where the wily old croc is very purposeful and deliberate
Speaker 3: in landing its outcome, so be crocodiles not water lilies.
Speaker 3: And yeah, fascinating program. And in fact, when I first
Speaker 3: arrived into Victoria managing West Farmer's Federation Insurance, everyone about
Speaker 3: eighty of my employees had all done this crocodiles not
Speaker 3: waterer lilies program. And the thing that amazed me tip
Speaker 3: was the stuff had stuck. I haven't been on many
Speaker 3: training programs where like five years later this stuff has
Speaker 3: stuck and people are using the principles. So here I
Speaker 3: am the new manager. I've got my team of six
Speaker 3: reporting to me. We're considering closing down one of the
Speaker 3: branches in Victoria. And then Neil Trestata goes, well, I
Speaker 3: think we need to romper this, and I've gone, what
Speaker 3: you know, And then they taught me the romper principle,
Speaker 3: which made sense, and that got my interest up to
Speaker 3: go experience this crocodiles my orderlilies program that everyone had
Speaker 3: done and understand the language and the tools and the concepts,
Speaker 3: and Tiff, by the end of day one, you know,
Speaker 3: keep in mind, I've moved east looking for an opportunity
Speaker 3: to get into speaking and training. And at the end
Speaker 3: of day one, having met Roger and experiencing his program,
Speaker 3: I started quizzing him about what was his vision for
Speaker 3: this and where was he going with it and does
Speaker 3: he need some help. By the end of day two,
Speaker 3: which happened a fortnight later, where in in depth conversations
Speaker 3: about the role I might be able to play for him.
Speaker 3: And by the end of day three it was a
Speaker 3: day every fort Note over six weeks, I had made
Speaker 3: the decision that I'm leaving the West Farmers Group and
Speaker 3: I'm going to join Roger. And I was kind of
Speaker 3: I'm a planner, I'm out of insurance, I'm risk averse,
Speaker 3: so it's like, I'm going to resign next April. This
Speaker 3: was like October and then I'll start working for you, Roger.
Speaker 3: But a month later it was like, you know, Tiff,
Speaker 3: when you've already made a decision to move on in
Speaker 3: your life, your mind's already gone, but your body's still
Speaker 3: trudging into work each day. And I just couldn't do it,
Speaker 3: so I handed in my resignation and like six weeks later,
Speaker 3: I was working for Roger. And that started an interesting
Speaker 3: journey because like three months later, I'm facilitating the odd
Speaker 3: training program. I'm maybe doing the occasional keynote. I'm loving
Speaker 3: life now, living what I felt was my calling and
Speaker 3: my purpose. But I was also dead broke because I've
Speaker 3: got a young family and there's still all this money
Speaker 3: going out in the back door and now there's not
Speaker 3: much coming in the front door for a while. And
Speaker 3: so you know, that was an interesting time when you
Speaker 3: can't pay your bills and your wife with two young kids,
Speaker 3: is going, hey, how are we feeding the kids? This week?
Speaker 3: The f post has declined again? Right, And I don't
Speaker 3: know if any of your listeners can relate to this,
Speaker 3: but if have you ever noticed that financial stress tends
Speaker 3: to magnify any cracks that exist in a relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and long story short, my ten year marriage just crumbled
Speaker 3: and fell apart. So that was like a massive king hit,
Speaker 3: you know. Go on six months, I'm in business for
Speaker 3: myself now, contracting to Roger and crocodiles not water lilies.
Speaker 3: I've fallen behind on my GST the ATO clean after
Speaker 3: a personal tax bill, you know, and and I joke
Speaker 3: with people that I was literally the four d's. I
Speaker 3: was now divorced. I was you know, I was desperate,
Speaker 3: I was depressed, and I was a demon supporter. It
Speaker 3: just doesn't get worse than that, doesn't drop it unless
Speaker 3: you follow Collingwood. No, no, no, let's let's not go there.
Speaker 3: Let's let's not get into all that. But you know,
Speaker 3: that's when I was really down and out. That that
Speaker 3: that that period of my life. I kind of look
Speaker 3: back on it now and there was a couple of
Speaker 3: principles that I've learned from the CROCS program that I've
Speaker 3: used my entire life. Whenever, you know, whenever life has
Speaker 3: king hit me, I've managed to lean on them to
Speaker 3: to get me through it. Yeah. So that was probably
Speaker 3: the first time I literally had to roll with the
Speaker 3: punchers and they were coming thick and fast, you know,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking, do I need to go back
Speaker 3: into the insurance industry. I didn't want to. I'd put
Speaker 3: my feet in the water of speaking and training. I
Speaker 3: jumped in head first in the deep end, and I
Speaker 3: loved it, and I didn't want to have to go
Speaker 3: back to a salary position in an insurance company. That
Speaker 3: felt like death to me. But what do you do?
Speaker 3: I put my resume out there and I started that process.
Speaker 3: But luckily I spotted an ad in the paper that
Speaker 3: literally it was one of those ticked the boxes ads.
Speaker 3: You know, do you have experience in managing a sales team? Yes?
Speaker 3: Would you like to be an international speaker and trainer? Yes?
Speaker 3: And I'm going wow, It's like wow, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: another long story short. I ended up for three years
Speaker 3: working with a company called Marcureing International, who were a
Speaker 3: big sales training company in forty three countries around the world.
Speaker 3: And that's where I really cut my teeth on learning
Speaker 3: the art of training facilitation. But I also after three years,
Speaker 3: I was the longest serving consultant. This was a big
Speaker 3: international consulting firm and they burned their people quickly, so
Speaker 3: you know, two years, I'm the longest serving consultant. So
Speaker 3: I made a decision pretty early. I'm going to learn
Speaker 3: from this, but then I'm going to go out on
Speaker 3: my own a second time and with some knowledge this
Speaker 3: time and do it right, which I did. In ninety nine,
Speaker 3: I left and went out on my own again. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so there you go. There's some of the times I've
Speaker 3: rolled with the punctures.
Speaker 2: Did you start building that before you left or did you?
Speaker 2: Could you not?
Speaker 3: Yes? No, Well, and from an integrity point of view,
Speaker 3: I think I built up like six weeks leave that
Speaker 3: they owed me. So I handed in my resignation and said,
Speaker 3: I'm taking you know, you've got three months notice, but
Speaker 3: I'm also I'm going to take my six weeks leave now.
Speaker 3: And I literally I didn't approach any of their clients.
Speaker 3: I went out and I saw one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: organizations across Melbourne who and I prospected and I just
Speaker 3: I did the activity and I ended up eventually doing
Speaker 3: business with about three that had definite training and development needs.
Speaker 3: And so this time I was smarter. I actually locked
Speaker 3: in a contract with each of those three to do
Speaker 3: twenty days of training and development for them across the
Speaker 3: course of the year. And so I locked myself in
Speaker 3: for sixty days with three, so three companies times twenty days.
Speaker 3: But that left me the rest of the year to
Speaker 3: get out there and keep prospecting and build my pipeline.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so that's kind of how I got into
Speaker 3: it the second time.
Speaker 2: What did you learn? What was the most important things
Speaker 2: you learned in the working for a company an organization
Speaker 2: that made it work the second time?
Speaker 3: Well, it actually it actually didn't, Tiff. I learned very
Speaker 3: quickly that I never want to go back to working
Speaker 3: for Demand or the woman again. I reckon. Within six months.
Speaker 3: I knew that because there was a particular incident with
Speaker 3: the manager that I reported to, and it was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can't afford to walk out here today, but you
Speaker 3: have snapped rapport with me so badly. I don't trust
Speaker 3: you anymore. Our values aren't aligned. I'm going to learn
Speaker 3: from this experience and set myself up to go back
Speaker 3: out on my own, but do it differently, in a
Speaker 3: smarter way this time. Yeah. So, I think the greatest
Speaker 3: lesson I got from going back in and working for
Speaker 3: our corporate in the training industry was that I never
Speaker 3: want to report to anyone again for the rest of
Speaker 3: my experience on this planet and for the last you know,
Speaker 3: since since I left them in ninety nine, I haven't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel that in my bones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it comes with a new set of pressures.
Speaker 3: You are responsible for the revenue you create, You're responsible
Speaker 3: for the sales activity you do. You're responsible for everything.
Speaker 3: And if you've got any small business owners that are
Speaker 3: learning listening to this, it's like you've got to have
Speaker 3: so many multiple hats that you put on take off
Speaker 3: every single day. Right, I'm our sales manager, I'm our
Speaker 3: business development manager. I have to put the hat on
Speaker 3: of being a facilitator and a trainer and sometimes I've
Speaker 3: got to put my keynote speaker hat on. The other
Speaker 3: times it's my administration manager hat. I mean, you name
Speaker 3: it advertising manager year. You've got to do it all
Speaker 3: when you're in business for yourself. So I think it
Speaker 3: takes a bit of resilience.
Speaker 2: Which is strongest hat and what's your least strongest hat?
Speaker 3: I think financial acumen would be my weakest. So I
Speaker 3: learned early have a good accountant. Have you know, someone
Speaker 3: handling the book keeping who knows what they're doing in
Speaker 3: that space, because I shouldn't be doing that type of work, right,
Speaker 3: And it's probably only in the last five years that
Speaker 3: we've got to the point where I now like I
Speaker 3: made a decision, Karina, and I made a decision there's
Speaker 3: only three things I actually should be doing. And this
Speaker 3: to come across as egotistical, but speaking training delivering is
Speaker 3: one the sales and business development activity. I don't believe
Speaker 3: in outsourcing that to anyone else. You know, with speaking
Speaker 3: and training, they buy you. So I've got to be
Speaker 3: doing that. And then product creation, so creating programs, writing books,
Speaker 3: getting new e learning programs up at our portal, any
Speaker 3: of that content creation stuff I need to do. But
Speaker 3: everything else, again not coming from an ego point of view,
Speaker 3: but it's below my pay rate. I shouldn't be doing it,
Speaker 3: so outsource it to someone who's a good at it.
Speaker 3: And secondly I get on with doing stuff that's around
Speaker 3: my gifting. Yeah, and probably the strongest hat for me
Speaker 3: given time, I very much lead into the marketplace being
Speaker 3: a salesforce effectiveness specialist. Having managed large sales teams, I
Speaker 3: do a lot of salesforce effectiveness. My keynotes are usually
Speaker 3: around sales. I can do a lot of other things,
Speaker 3: but that's the point the end of the market that
Speaker 3: I go out and position myself as that's my selected
Speaker 3: available market that I that I talk to, so sales.
Speaker 3: When I've got my sales and business hat on that,
Speaker 3: that would be the strongest hat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Is that your favorite or is that the one
Speaker 2: you're best at.
Speaker 3: Well, oh, no, I think content creation, author writing, creating
Speaker 3: E learning programs, designing a new module. That's when I'm
Speaker 3: in my happy place, right, That's that's when I can
Speaker 3: feel like you know, I won't, I'll just I'll just
Speaker 3: call it. That's when I feel connected to a higher
Speaker 3: power if we want to refer to that. That's when
Speaker 3: I can feel my all in being stirred when I'm
Speaker 3: particularly when I'm writing and creating. I think the sales
Speaker 3: business development hat is the one I've learned to be
Speaker 3: very good at. I teach and educate in that space.
Speaker 3: So I have to just buy miror you know, I
Speaker 3: guess I want to walk the talk in that space. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm always interested in the creative space, being a creative
Speaker 2: and those of us who are managing a business, and
Speaker 2: how do you how do you cultivate and nurture creativity
Speaker 2: when business? Running a business can become all consuming and
Speaker 2: overwhelming and you're in charge of everything and it's very
Speaker 2: hard to switch off.
Speaker 3: Yes, yep. So I was having a conversation with a
Speaker 3: friend who's a speaker in Singapore yesterday and we talked
Speaker 3: about the power of time blocking so it's like at
Speaker 3: six am in the morning, actually doing what again, I'll
Speaker 3: drop a couple of principles in if you're happy, Tiff,
Speaker 3: we've already talked about Romp of the crocodile. Let's talk
Speaker 3: about Pet the cat. Pet, which is a cat see
Speaker 3: the link a pet cat. But PET stands for personal
Speaker 3: energizing time. It's time on your own, free of all distractions,
Speaker 3: to actually connect in to source all the universe. But
Speaker 3: it's about just having some quiet time, to personal energizing time,
Speaker 3: to re energize yourself. So Roger taught me the habit,
Speaker 3: and look, I'm not perfect. I fall off the bandwagon
Speaker 3: some weeks, but I noticed when my life gets out
Speaker 3: of control, if I go back to doing a PET session,
Speaker 3: get up early, no interruptions, No one's up yet, no
Speaker 3: one's phoning me. I don't even look at emails. But
Speaker 3: I just take twenty minutes to think, to ponder, to muse,
Speaker 3: to look at my diary of what's coming up. And
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, okay, you've got that program with NEOs
Speaker 3: life now in three weeks, Well what could you do
Speaker 3: there that really recognizes John Desports and the role he's
Speaker 3: played in your life over the years, because he keeps
Speaker 3: coming back to me from different companies, and it's like
Speaker 3: then some creativity flows, but you've got to set the
Speaker 3: environment to tap those creative juices. So for me, it's
Speaker 3: that and pick it. Some people, evening people, they might
Speaker 3: do it at ten thirty, but I'd rather get up early,
Speaker 3: have twenty minutes just not looking at emails, not looking
Speaker 3: at social media, just sitting quietly, planning, musing, pondering and
Speaker 3: creating a space to receive inspiration. That's really what it's about.
Speaker 3: And then continuing on the time blocking theme. The current
Speaker 3: book I'm writing number seven, I think I said last
Speaker 3: week in the Gold Coast. I've landed on the title.
Speaker 3: It's going to be How to Be Happy Without Money,
Speaker 3: and it's going to retail for thirty eighty nine hundred
Speaker 3: dollars right, Not really, it's called shift selling. It's about
Speaker 3: the new way to sell in a hybrid world, given
Speaker 3: we've been through COVID and a lot of people have
Speaker 3: to sell hybrid not face to face, and it's the
Speaker 3: combination of both now. And it'll be the book that
Speaker 3: goes with my consultative selling skills program. But it won't
Speaker 3: get done unless I block out time like three times
Speaker 3: a week two hours just I do nothing else but
Speaker 3: focus on just writing that book and putting myself in
Speaker 3: the right state. And as an NLP practitioner, I'm very
Speaker 3: aware that your state of mind, and I'll click my
Speaker 3: fingers with that, because the state you're in impacts on
Speaker 3: your behavior and the results you start getting. So we're
Speaker 3: lucky we've got a bit of space. But I have
Speaker 3: a particular desk in a corner in a room in
Speaker 3: a house that is my writing station. I don't do
Speaker 3: anything else there rather than write. You know, Karina pays
Speaker 3: some bills from there and does a bit of recipe
Speaker 3: planning from there. But when I'm sitting there, that environment,
Speaker 3: that space clicks me into writers mode quickly, right, And
Speaker 3: you can call this high level weirdness, but I'll do
Speaker 3: it now. I spray a bit of you know, a
Speaker 3: room missed spray, and I get myself into the right zone.
Speaker 3: I put on a piece of music in the background
Speaker 3: that helps me just it anchors me into writing space
Speaker 3: really quickly. So I think the answer is to You've
Speaker 3: got to create the environment where that creative side of
Speaker 3: you can flow quickly, right and I do love that
Speaker 3: about NLP neurolinguistic programming. It teaches you that you can
Speaker 3: put yourself in any state in a neurosecond. You just
Speaker 3: have to set the right environment and trigger a few
Speaker 3: anchors that put you there really quickly. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I do to create that environment to be creative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've found I have to toddle up the road to
Speaker 2: disconnect my computer from all this rubbish, take my little
Speaker 2: laptop up to the cafe and sit out in a
Speaker 2: quiet room in the back of the cafe up the road.
Speaker 2: And it's funny to me. So it's literally it's the
Speaker 2: same computer. Like I've literally still got the browser open
Speaker 2: with the thirty eight thousand tactics you'll there, but for
Speaker 2: some reason, in that environment, I don't click through them.
Speaker 2: I don't think of all the other things. It's just
Speaker 2: me in a word document.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Focusing.
Speaker 3: Yes, and and there's the keyword focus. When you put
Speaker 3: yourself in that same environment time and time again, your
Speaker 3: subconscious mind has been trained this is your focus zone,
Speaker 3: and so you get really focused on the one creative
Speaker 3: or whatever task you want to do when you're there,
Speaker 3: and you're able to resist that temptation to and we've
Speaker 3: all done it. We click on social media for one
Speaker 3: minute and then I love that cartoon. I saw whether
Speaker 3: the lady's kind of clicking on social media, And twenty
Speaker 3: minutes has passed, and then it scans out and her
Speaker 3: husband's in a ditch, having come off the bike, you know,
Speaker 3: blood pouring out of them, and she's going, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: I was supposed to dial triple zero, wasn't I? And
Speaker 3: we do. We get distracted by everything and we go
Speaker 3: down these rabbit holes rather than lasering our focus on
Speaker 3: the task at hand. So you've you've created what I
Speaker 3: call a laser zone, and it's for you, it's that cafe.
Speaker 3: For me, there's a there's a bench outside under a
Speaker 3: picnic cover close to where we live, overlooking the Malulaba River,
Speaker 3: and if I go there, I can focus on one
Speaker 3: particular task. So if I've got to write a proposal
Speaker 3: to a client or what I call an action plan,
Speaker 3: it's like I'll say to Karina, I'm just heading to
Speaker 3: the river office because I know that's the zone where
Speaker 3: I can just focus on that one task and get
Speaker 3: it done quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So late last year I went to India. I went
Speaker 2: to the Himalayas. It was the most amazing experience of
Speaker 2: my life. And when I came home. So because we've
Speaker 2: done hiking over there, I made a weekly ritual of
Speaker 2: going down every Thursday morning to the Dandy Kong's here
Speaker 2: in Victoria. And I had no phone, no input rule.
Speaker 2: It was just me and the walk, me and nature
Speaker 2: and it was and like I talked about it so
Speaker 2: much because the the busyness that we all live in.
Speaker 2: It was like every time it was an argument. Same
Speaker 2: as when I used to do boxing training. Every time
Speaker 2: it was time to drive to training, it was like,
Speaker 2: I'm tired, I hate this around, why do I do this?
Speaker 2: And then you go and then it's amazing and it
Speaker 2: was like, oh, it's an hour's drive to the danding
Speaker 2: Oongs and an hour back and really busy, and you
Speaker 2: could just go and walk on the beach. But it
Speaker 2: was every time I got there, you just have the
Speaker 2: eye would have this visceral response, right, I just feel
Speaker 2: my body shift in my mind would just and I
Speaker 2: just observe where my mind wanted to go for the
Speaker 2: you know, for as opposed to the rest of the week,
Speaker 2: which is directing that mind where it's going to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think the important thing there is nature,
Speaker 3: whether it is the beach, but there's something about getting
Speaker 3: out into the bush and just you're being with nature
Speaker 3: and grounding very very very important for that creative side
Speaker 3: of you. And I think just given all the business
Speaker 3: and the white noise, just to have a break from
Speaker 3: it it is important. But you've got to schedule it,
Speaker 3: and it takes commitment and it takes some discipline to
Speaker 3: follow through on it. Because easy to do, easy not
Speaker 3: to do. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like the little stories we make, and this
Speaker 2: might be a story or it might be real. But
Speaker 2: every time I went by myself, I came across an
Speaker 2: e kidnap And the second time it was walking, i'd
Speaker 2: walked past it and I stood in front of it,
Speaker 2: and it walked straight up to me and it put
Speaker 2: its poor it's hand I call it because it looks
Speaker 2: like a human hand in a glove, put a little
Speaker 2: hand on my shoe, and it looked up and I
Speaker 2: thought I was feeling. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this never happens. Oh my god, Oh my god, my God,
Speaker 2: to my God. And then when it walked off, I
Speaker 2: looked went to look at the video, and I had
Speaker 2: taken a photo and not recorded it. But every time
Speaker 2: I went by myself, I saw on a kidnap and big.
Speaker 2: I went, all right, this is a thing, this is
Speaker 2: my spirit animal. There's something here like this, and it
Speaker 2: just made me. It was just something to anchor to
Speaker 2: to go. There's something in that. Do it. Sometimes we
Speaker 2: need something big, we need to have something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, absolutely, a bigger vision as such. Sure, yeah again.
Speaker 3: You know, I keep referring to Roger, but the Roger
Speaker 3: Anthony crocodiles and my water lease, he had a big
Speaker 3: impact on my life. Be passed about maybe a decade ago,
Speaker 3: but every now and then, when I'm out in those
Speaker 3: sorts of environments, I'll see an eagle flying around in
Speaker 3: the sky. And an eagle was one of his principles about,
Speaker 3: you know, thinking big. That the king and the queen
Speaker 3: of the sky. Right. Have you seen the talons on
Speaker 3: the bloody things so massive, right, and their windspan. So
Speaker 3: the eagle teaches us to have a bowl vision, to
Speaker 3: think big. And of course they've got amazing eyesight. They
Speaker 3: can see a little field mouse from three thousand feet
Speaker 3: right and down they dive and that tenacious you know,
Speaker 3: on average they strike fourteen times to get their prey,
Speaker 3: so that tenacious little buggers as well. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: always see you know, And I don't know if it's right,
Speaker 3: but I reckon maybe the eagle is a spirit animal.
Speaker 3: And I just I get a nice thought from Roger's visiting, Right,
Speaker 3: Roger's got a message for me, just to get out
Speaker 3: of the minutia and chunk up and have a look
Speaker 3: at the bigger vision you're trying to trying to achieve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what practices do you have? Four? I guess in
Speaker 2: with shaping maintaining your mindset.
Speaker 3: Two things and unapologetic plug for the book shift mindset. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it hasn't It hasn't f It has an F in
Speaker 3: the word shift, right, because what we don't want is
Speaker 3: a shift mindset. We want to shift our mindset. We
Speaker 3: don't want an fless shift, as I'm always saying. So
Speaker 3: in there I talk about a couple of strategies. One
Speaker 3: is one is mind control or mind management. So your
Speaker 3: conscious mind and a lot of people go to the
Speaker 3: grave without understanding this. Your conscious mind controls your subconscious
Speaker 3: It always has. For example, I say to U TIF
Speaker 3: that's a lovely yellow singlet you're wearing today, or jumper,
Speaker 3: and you, at a conscious level you go, but my
Speaker 3: jumper thing is actually black, it's not yellow. So you
Speaker 3: manage your mind and you flick that thought. And you've
Speaker 3: had that ability ever since, you were able to challenge
Speaker 3: things and ask why. That's when kids are developing their
Speaker 3: conscious mind and because I said so doesn't cut it anymore. Right.
Speaker 3: Have you got kids?
Speaker 2: No? Hell? No?
Speaker 3: Hell?
Speaker 2: No fur kids, but they're challenging right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got fur babies as well, but I've also
Speaker 3: got two from my first marriage at are now thirty
Speaker 3: one and twenty seven. But when they get to about
Speaker 3: age three ish, they start asking why all the time,
Speaker 3: and because I bloody said so just doesn't cut it right.
Speaker 3: You've got to explain things to them. But even to
Speaker 3: this day, you've had the ability to flick out a
Speaker 3: thought and replace it with something more resourceful. So even
Speaker 3: when I'm down and out and king hit by life
Speaker 3: and I'm divorced and I'm desperate and I'm in debt,
Speaker 3: it was always flicking out that mindset of I'm a
Speaker 3: loser and replace it with I'm learning from this. There's
Speaker 3: a lesson in this and this is going to shape
Speaker 3: real character and stories I can talk about. So it's
Speaker 3: literally that mind mechanism incomes a negative thought, flick it
Speaker 3: out and replace it with something more resourceful. And people
Speaker 3: say to me, it can't be as simple as that,
Speaker 3: and yet it is. It is just that consistency of
Speaker 3: stop saying negative shit to yourself. You know, you're the
Speaker 3: one who puts yourself down so many times during the day,
Speaker 3: and if you just court yourself and stopped and flicked
Speaker 3: it out, right. So I grew up on the back
Speaker 3: end all three boys did. I think. I mentioned it
Speaker 3: last week in the Gold Coast that Dad would look
Speaker 3: at you a certain way when you've done something silly
Speaker 3: that he didn't agree with, and he'd go, faired income, son,
Speaker 3: you are studying to be a bloody idiot, right, And
Speaker 3: this was like fairly constant. We joke about it in
Speaker 3: our family. Now you've only got to do something a
Speaker 3: bit a bit weird and someone will go feed income.
Speaker 3: You're studying to be an idiot, right, and we quote Dad.
Speaker 3: But it also came with a cost because when West
Speaker 3: Farmers made me a leader and they put me through
Speaker 3: an EQ intelligence test, and I debriefed it with the psychologist. Now, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not up in the top five percentile
Speaker 3: of intelligence on this planet, but apparently I'm no slouch either, right,
Speaker 3: And yet when he shared my scores with me, I went, oh, no,
Speaker 3: I think you've messed this up because I'm not that bright.
Speaker 3: I'm not the sharpest tool in the tool shed, right,
Speaker 3: I'm studying to be an idiot. So I'd taken on
Speaker 3: this subconscious stuff all my life, and that was surprising
Speaker 3: when he pointed out, like, mass is not my strengths, tiff,
Speaker 3: I think I was only at the sixty fourth percentile
Speaker 3: on mathematical intelligence, but verbal I'm in the high seventies.
Speaker 3: So okay, I'm a speaker, so that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3: But your creative intelligence, I'm like up in the mid
Speaker 3: to high eighties. So again, I'm not a neuroscientist, but
Speaker 3: I am quite creative. And that was a real defining
Speaker 3: moment for me when I shifted myself talk about perhaps
Speaker 3: what's potential if I apply myself, So flicking out those old,
Speaker 3: deep seated things and limiting beliefs you've taken on and
Speaker 3: replacing them with something that's more resourceful. So instead of
Speaker 3: the oh, God exercises a chore until you replace that
Speaker 3: with it'll take a little bit of commitment, but twenty
Speaker 3: minutes in, I'm going to be feeling great, right, And
Speaker 3: that's the mindset that gets you out of bed and
Speaker 3: into the sports shoes and off to a gym or
Speaker 3: off to the nandy dongs in your case. Right. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the first thing, control your mindset. And the other
Speaker 3: principle that Roger and I talk about in our first book,
Speaker 3: The Seven Step Pathway to Mastery, really based on his
Speaker 3: crocodiles not waterly self leadership program is the swerve principle.
Speaker 3: So it's represented by a platypus. So if your listeners
Speaker 3: just I'm sure they've seen a platypus through glass in
Speaker 3: a zoo for example, or on the television, you watch them.
Speaker 3: They are constantly swerving around rocks and longs. They just
Speaker 3: turn obstacles into a game. It's like how they entertain
Speaker 3: themselves and pass the time. And there's a lesson in that,
Speaker 3: how do we view every obstacle, every punch that comes
Speaker 3: our way. We can roll with it better if we
Speaker 3: just see it as an obstacle, not a king hit
Speaker 3: as such and swerve our way around it. So the
Speaker 3: way I teach this is like, imagine you're in traffic
Speaker 3: and it's a bad day. Something's gone wrong in Melbourne
Speaker 3: traffic where you are tif it's taken you forty five
Speaker 3: minutes to go what normally takes fifteen. You know, and
Speaker 3: you need to be somewhere for a critical nine o'clock
Speaker 3: meeting perhaps, and like you just know, there's no way
Speaker 3: now you're going to get there. You're probably going to
Speaker 3: be a good twenty thirty minutes late. So stress. But
Speaker 3: if you go back in time, it was when the
Speaker 3: alarm went off this morning and you hit it and went,
Speaker 3: I'll just snooze for seven more minutes. I get away
Speaker 3: with that today, I'll be fast on my preparation process.
Speaker 3: And you doze for another seven minutes. Now, I deliberately
Speaker 3: don't say sleep, because I find this fascinating human behavior.
Speaker 3: We hit the snooze button and then we lay there
Speaker 3: for seven minutes, not getting any more sleep, but justifying
Speaker 3: why we can do it. And then we hit the
Speaker 3: snooze button another time. And if you do have a partner,
Speaker 3: significant other, spouse, all of a sudden there's a foot
Speaker 3: in your back, kicking out of bed, saying come on,
Speaker 3: you're going to be laid again. So now you're under pressure.
Speaker 3: You're not going to have a nutritional breakfast. To break
Speaker 3: the fast, you're gonna you know, you're going to munch
Speaker 3: down an unhealthy muster and on your drive to work
Speaker 3: sort of thing. So, and who's put you under all
Speaker 3: this stress you have by your behaviors and your decisions
Speaker 3: and you and your mindset. But back to the story.
Speaker 3: We're stuck in traffic. You finally get up to sixty
Speaker 3: kilometers an hour. After an hour of this, you're you're
Speaker 3: bridging seventy, you get up to eighty, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, another vehicle, bus, truck, car, motorcycle cuts you
Speaker 3: off in traffic. Now what do you reckons The normal reaction.
Speaker 2: To this tip unsavory language.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and a bit of European sign language. You're trying
Speaker 3: get up beside that person to give them the hairy
Speaker 3: eyebrow and wehear and curse at them and let them
Speaker 3: know you're not happy with them, Which is really interesting
Speaker 3: behavior because you're giving away the only thing you've actually
Speaker 3: got control over, which is your mindset. You're giving it
Speaker 3: away to someone else, and they're going to turn left
Speaker 3: or right or get off of the next exit, and
Speaker 3: you're never going to frigg and see them for the
Speaker 3: rest of your life. And yet you've let them affect
Speaker 3: your state of mind. So here's I put this challenge
Speaker 3: out to everyone. I get to speak and breathe the
Speaker 3: principle to here's the challenge for your listeners and for
Speaker 3: you tip and my wishes they come true. I'm a
Speaker 3: good manifesto. So I'm going to put it out there
Speaker 3: that everyone will have swerves over the next few days
Speaker 3: where people will cut you off in traffic. Now, there
Speaker 3: will be no accidents, there will be no bingals, but
Speaker 3: you will have to break to avoid a collision because
Speaker 3: people cut you off in traffic. It's going to happen.
Speaker 3: And what I want you to all do when it
Speaker 3: occurs is you have to say out out, whether you're
Speaker 3: in the car on your own or with others, you
Speaker 3: have to channel the platypus and you've got to say
Speaker 3: what a great swerve and actually congratulate them on the
Speaker 3: quality of the swerve. Right, And you've got to be
Speaker 3: You've got to be really authentic about this. That and
Speaker 3: genuine in like the mindset is, I couldn't have pulled
Speaker 3: off that swerve and executed it with three weeks practice.
Speaker 3: You just did that beautifully right, and you watch You're
Speaker 3: confuse the hell out of them because they know they've
Speaker 3: cut you off. And when they look in the rear
Speaker 3: vision mirror, here's a person who's staying calm, collected, and
Speaker 3: in control rather than getting stressed out. And you've used
Speaker 3: the swerve principle. What a great swerve represented by the
Speaker 3: swerving platypus, anything that hits you from left field in life,
Speaker 3: what a great swerve, right, It's an anchor, it's in
Speaker 3: any terms, it's a reframe. You're actually looking at it
Speaker 3: through a different lens. Right, Because normally, when we do
Speaker 3: get to that meeting just in time to be half
Speaker 3: an hour late, right, someone actually says to you a tiff, oh,
Speaker 3: good morning, And because of what's happened to us, we
Speaker 3: go who said, it's friggin good, right, and we're in
Speaker 3: a lousy state. Whereas when you go, what a great swerve, right,
Speaker 3: you stay in a good state and you're controlling your
Speaker 3: own mind. And Karina will attest to this. I've had
Speaker 3: police pull me over because I'm fifteen kilometers over the
Speaker 3: speed limit and you got fine. But once he's written
Speaker 3: me the ticket and I know I've got two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty dollars to pay and three demerit points gone,
Speaker 3: Karina will attest to the fact that I've gone, what
Speaker 3: a great swerve. Right. I can't control what's happened. I
Speaker 3: can control my attitude to what's happened. Yeah, this is
Speaker 3: really important. You can't control your first thought. But when
Speaker 3: I met Karina for the first time, she'd done some
Speaker 3: work on all this stuff, and she stretched, you can't
Speaker 3: always control your first thought. You've got total control over
Speaker 3: your second one. Yeah, yeah, So what a great swerve.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember in COVID when we were having our
Speaker 2: awesome Melbourne lockdowns where we could leave the house one
Speaker 2: hour day and couldn't go other than five kilometers, and
Speaker 2: I ducked over to the supermarket grab some stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: like there's no one around because everything's closed but the supermarket.
Speaker 2: And I'd come out to my car and it had
Speaker 2: been towed away because it was in I didn't realize
Speaker 2: it was a fifteen minutes own because and it was
Speaker 2: just like but you know, what I remember. I remember
Speaker 2: going one, how lucky that because I'm watching in our
Speaker 2: community pages where people are asking for work because they
Speaker 2: can't pay their rent, And how lucky that I can
Speaker 2: afford to absorb this major inconvenience minor inconvenience. But also
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, we never think about that, maybe, like
Speaker 2: imagine if when the worst thing happens, we always think
Speaker 2: about the better options, And it's like, what if that?
Speaker 2: What if I had got in my car and drove
Speaker 2: down and then at the intersection someone wildly slammed into
Speaker 2: my car and I had this major accident where I
Speaker 2: end up being severely injured.
Speaker 3: Yep, Like I'll.
Speaker 2: Never know that, but maybe that maybe that was the alternative,
Speaker 2: and the world just went well, if we towe this
Speaker 2: car away, that won't happen. You just get a few
Speaker 2: hundred dollars to pay the toe people to get it back, ye,
Speaker 2: end of story.
Speaker 3: It's a great swerve, but it could have been the
Speaker 3: catalyst that avoided me even bigger swerve exactly. And that's
Speaker 3: I think a belief that I was espousing during the
Speaker 3: whole COVID and the lockdowns and Victoria Melbourne. You did
Speaker 3: it tough, but compared everywhere else in Australia. And it
Speaker 3: was a great swerve. So there's swerves and then there's
Speaker 3: great swerves right that you're kind of through gritted teeth go, well,
Speaker 3: that was a freaking great swerve, but you're still practicing
Speaker 3: trying to reframe it and see the good in it.
Speaker 3: And I was saying to people, I actually honestly believe
Speaker 3: that the universe has got your back. It's actually working
Speaker 3: for you, not against you. So that's the position you
Speaker 3: took that maybe maybe this stopped me having a horrific accident,
Speaker 3: so I'll be grateful for it. And that's what the
Speaker 3: swerve principle helps you do. Reframe and look for the
Speaker 3: good in it. It's always there. You know. Nanna used
Speaker 3: to say one hundred and two and a half she
Speaker 3: lived to and I remember her saying this, so dozens
Speaker 3: and dozens of times, every cloud has a silver lining, right,
Speaker 3: That was her version of the swerve principle. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you know I've been through Okay, it's ten years ago now,
Speaker 3: but you know, Karina and I got king hit by
Speaker 3: some bad tax advice and next minute there's an ATO
Speaker 3: bill again, and then there's a company tax billin. Before
Speaker 3: you know it, there's this debt that has to be paid,
Speaker 3: and without knowing it, the ATO hasn't responded to the
Speaker 3: correspondence and the suggested payment plan. They just put our
Speaker 3: company into liquidation in the federal courts and wound us up.
Speaker 3: And it's like, my god, what a great swerve, right,
Speaker 3: and having to go through all go through all that
Speaker 3: being king hit by life again and there was a
Speaker 3: pattern there that I had to learn that bit about
Speaker 3: financial management and have some good people around me to
Speaker 3: look after that because I wasn't doing it, you know.
Speaker 3: So swerve's just coming left, right and center. But you know,
Speaker 3: in that moment Tiff, we when Dad passed, he left
Speaker 3: a little bit of money to each of the boys,
Speaker 3: the three of us and their partners, and it was
Speaker 3: enough to pay because we've been king here and had
Speaker 3: to sell everything to get out of this debt, and
Speaker 3: we wanted to own a property again. Dad had probably
Speaker 3: funded us the equivalent of whatever the stamp duty would
Speaker 3: be on this purchase, but we didn't have the twenty
Speaker 3: percent right too. But we went and found this house anyway,
Speaker 3: the one we're living in now, and loved it, fell
Speaker 3: in love with it way out of our price range. Anyway,
Speaker 3: we didn't have the money, but you know, we just
Speaker 3: said to the real estate agent, look, we've got the
Speaker 3: stamp duty. We can put down a bit more money
Speaker 3: in about three months time, but let's get creative. Can
Speaker 3: the owner look at some creative options? And long story short,
Speaker 3: we bought this home with twenty five grand down, We
Speaker 3: paid the stamp duty, the owner stumped up some vendor
Speaker 3: finance for three years. When COVID hit the property went
Speaker 3: up by forty percent. We refinance paid him out his
Speaker 3: twenty percent and still had good equity in the home. Now,
Speaker 3: if we hadn't been keing hit by life like you
Speaker 3: and your Ka Tow, we would never have asked the
Speaker 3: question are you open to some creative options? We would
Speaker 3: have just struggled on trying to raise the money eventually.
Speaker 3: But we would have missed this opportunity. And for him,
Speaker 3: he'd sold this house, they'd backed out twice, he had
Speaker 3: to move it because of some other investments. But he
Speaker 3: didn't need all his money, he just needed a decent
Speaker 3: lik of it. So it was perfect timing. And we
Speaker 3: had rented for eighteen months in NUSA, not twelve months.
Speaker 3: If we had a lease for twelve months. We would
Speaker 3: have been committed where we were for another six months
Speaker 3: when this house became available, but because we had an
Speaker 3: eighteen month lease there, it was like divine timing. All
Speaker 3: the stars aligned, the universe had our back, and if
Speaker 3: you operate to that, you can to bring it back
Speaker 3: and close it out. On your title of your show,
Speaker 3: you know, roll with the punches your podcast, I think
Speaker 3: rolling with the Punches a lot of it is about
Speaker 3: mindset and being prepared to just roll with the swerves,
Speaker 3: look for the good in it, and there's always the
Speaker 3: next step there somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your race, You're amazing.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I love watching you on stage. You were you having
Speaker 2: a very very and I say this honestly have a
Speaker 2: very very magnetic stage presence, and as a person in
Speaker 2: the speaker in the crowd at that event, your ability
Speaker 2: to show the very best in that style of craftsmanship
Speaker 2: and also point out the moments that we might miss
Speaker 2: was just a really great experience for me. Like I've
Speaker 2: raved about it quite a bit, said to so many people, Mate,
Speaker 2: I would I would be a speaker in for sales
Speaker 2: of all things if I could, you know, if I
Speaker 2: could emulate what Ian Stevens did on stage, like so great, thank.
Speaker 3: You for the feedback. It's that was confirmation for me
Speaker 3: that my people, you know where I love playing as
Speaker 3: we would be speakers or trainers, speakers, mcs, facilitators, you
Speaker 3: name it. But they're looking to up level and take
Speaker 3: it another notch. And that that was my that was
Speaker 3: my ideal audience and I had a blast. So I'm
Speaker 3: glad it went over well. And yeah, I appreciate your feedback.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Where do we go to online to stalk you?
Speaker 2: Follow you by your books and do the thing?
Speaker 3: Look, the easiest thing would be Ian Stevens with a pH.
Speaker 3: Ian Stephens speaks dot com and that will get you
Speaker 3: to my books and yeah, you name it, and thing
Speaker 3: about what I do. So Ian Stephens speaks dot com
Speaker 3: with a p h in Stephens, not a vyeh. I've
Speaker 3: got a p H. I've got a p H. I'm
Speaker 3: just working on the d D.
Speaker 2: I love that. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone, go
Speaker 2: check it out. The links will be in the show
Speaker 2: notes if you want to check out Ian Stevens and
Speaker 2: we will see you next time.
Speaker 3: Thanks Steve.
Speaker 1: She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood,