Life Uncut - Being Successful Led To My Divorce - Uncut with Mark Bouris

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Hey Lifers, First up today, our little twinkle toes has been jazz hands-ing her way around the dance floor and we're all 'woo-girled' out from the show last night! We unpack how 70% of people have admitted to cheating on their partner at a bachelorette/bachelor party.  Then we are joined by one of Australia's most successful businessmen and entrepreneurs Mark Bouris. You may remember Mark from being the Australian 'you're fired' man on the celebrity apprentice. We chat: His priority of work over relationships and the 'cost' of a lot of his relationships Whether money changes people Whether success requires sacrifice Only investing in 'rising tides' Being completely self made You can check out everything that Mark is up to here!   If you have an accidentally unfiltered, your most embarrassing story, please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram herejoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany and it's Abil... What was that? Okay, I was just going to start this intro again because I just made a mistake, but let's

just call a spade a spade. None of us have really slept because we went to a performance last night, a concert of sorts. We are running on about four or five hours sleep today and the reason for that is, I know I said on the other week that it was going to be my first comp for Dancing With Stars but then there was some like crazy ass production issues that happened so last night was the night Sunday night was the night I jived my little ass off you really did so it's uh I don't know Laura can we say where it is can we say where it's filmed can we say what we did last night or

to be honest I'm actually not even sure how much of it I'm allowed to tell you yet because obviously so the show Dancing with the Stars is pre-recorded and we are competing now and then it comes out I know in a couple weeks maybe a month who knows who knows exactly when it comes out but basically the competition has now started and I don't know how much I can tell you or can't tell you but Britt and Keisha were both there my mother-in-law came Matt came my sister came it was a whole thing it was a whole thing and I embarrassingly threw my body around a dance floor in front of a lot of people no so it's out at a Sydney Olympic Park which is like Homebush Stadium yeah you tell the details and then i can't get in trouble i signed the fucking ndas i didn't sign nothing they didn't

want me on the show so it's out at olympic park which is a great facility but it's also an hour drive from us and it was quite late at night so we all went out there we piled in and tv takes a long time to film like it does there's a lot of setting up and a lot of redoing the set there's a lot of time in between performances as well like everything when you watch on tv is like it's really snappy it's really i mean obviously they're making a tv show but there's a lot of stop downs in between each dance and when there's a stop down between each dance there's some poor guy in the crowd which is like everybody cheer and then everyone in the crowd has to go oh we woo girls we were woo girls for six hours six hours six hours of wooing yeah kish and i

worked it out we left the house for seven and a half hours but i had to watch your one minute isn't that crazy there's what like seven couples dancing and you get one and a half minutes out of each of them so it's pretty much an hour per one and a half minute throwing bodies around a dance floor actually when you do the math like that that's crazy yeah yeah but it was worth it that seven hours no voice no sleep was worth watching your one and a half minutes because there's nothing there's actually you know there's so much prep work right like we don't see you we don't see the dancers for a long time you're in the audience for literally hours as they're going through what the night's going to be and prepping and showing you where people are going to come if there's a

fire exit over here and I'm like we will run don't worry we will figure it out it's okay but then when the dancers start coming on nothing makes you happier than like hearing the music seeing people moving seeing people have fun and it like reinvigorates you with the energy and then when you came out and did your thing it was like we were just like screaming the whole time you looked amazing I okay I know we can't it's so shit because I want to tell you everything now and as soon as I get fired yeah but I will get into a lot of trouble from channel seven but as soon as I can tell you exactly what's going on of course you will all be the first to know but look there is a real uh variation in skill set let's just say that there's some very very very good dancers

and then some very very not good dancers and i'm definitely on the not good side no you are i think you're sitting somewhere happy in the middle at the moment there's room for improvement but it could be way worse could it though yes there was paul i'm not going to name anyone but there's one couple that were the standout for being terrible but everyone loved them i'm not even gonna say if it was a man or a woman everybody loved them it was so endearing there was just an unfortunate mishap in the dance but there's always that there's always somebody that is really no good that's why they cast like when they cast the bachelor they cast the people they're gonna fall in love they cast the people that are gonna be ridiculous and cause drama same with dancing

with the stars it's definitely one thing i realized so you train so hard for so long that you feel like if you're terrible the whole of Australia is gonna look at you and be like oh my god this is so cringe I'm so embarrassed for her or him no we love you more when you're like that but watching everybody the people who were genuinely terrible are probably my favorite dancers to watch because they're so cute like it's and I know I don't say that in a patronizing way I just mean like I will riot if you give them a bad score I will protect them with all my heart because they're so happy to be there well so you know when you're shit right like oh yeah yeah it's really you do it me fucking clear let me tell you that but you know when you're bad so you know what

the score is going to be and i think that at the end of the day they're just i imagine you're just happy to be there and you've had fun it's not like a legitimate competition that you haven't trained your whole life for it and you don't make the final like this is let you guys it's fun let me tell you there's nothing more clear than moving your body and realizing that the beat is not when you're moving it like halfway through and you're like this is not in time nothing about this is in fucking time but I think also you guys probably are all a lot harder on yourselves than what the audience sees so in your head not you but like dancers because there were a few people that made a couple little mistakes and then the way that they described it was that the mistakes

were bigger than we saw so you guys know you're making mistakes because you know the dance the audience doesn't necessarily know that unless you've dropped someone's dropped someone a lot of the time we don't know just how big the mistake is so I think I don't know I think I had fun I had a great time I can't wait to see more dances well it's not very long away okay so it will be on tv in a couple of weeks time you can all laugh at me together or don't laugh at me like please get behind me I need the support it's really really demoralizing but I'm doing my absolute fucking best guys and I honestly as much as I've loved it I cannot wait to never do a jive kick ever again in my entire life.

My favourite thing, and I cannot wait for you to watch back, is to see your face, your facials. Your facials will live rent free in my mind for the rest of my life. And I cannot wait for you to say, I was like, is this chick on crack? I was like, what is happening? Is this adrenaline? Why, she just sculled five Vs out the back? I was baked in adrenaline fear and fake tan just fucking

all over that dance floor. I want to make sure we get some, let's get some free frames when it happens. We can just do a series of my face. I know that everyone listening to this is like, what are you talking about? But look, it's coming and it's joyful. It's worth the wait. Okay. There's a few things we want to talk about on today's episode. We are interviewing Mark Boris, who, do you know what? I loved this interview. And for anybody who doesn't know who he is, he's literally like a business superstar. He's easily one of the most successful businessmen in Australia. He was the host of Celebrity Apprentice for a long time. You know,

love our reality tv shows and the apprentice the apprentice and celebrity apprentice yeah he did both yeah he told everyone that they're fired you're fired yeah he was the one that had to point and be like you're fired you're fired now one of the reasons why i loved this chat is because you know we do love our relationships here is the way he spoke about his business successes but alongside his life challenges and i say that because mark himself has had three separate divorces and i think from the outset you can look at his life and think he has been so incredibly successful which he has been but he really talks about this concept of not being able to have it all and the priorities and where things sat in his life in terms of priorities and how him selling

his very first business for literally hundreds of millions of dollars half a billion dollars half a billion dollars is what also cost him his long-term marriage and relationship and so it is a great conversation around not just success but around divorce and around how priorities sit in life whether that be your focus on work or your focus on relationships and connection yeah it's nice to hear it's actually quite refreshing to hear someone say the truth i don't want to say that as in other people don't but you constantly hear this you know it's like the live laugh love thing all the memes that go around you do hear people say you can have it all you fucking can't if you work your ass off you know we all have the same hours in the day as oprah whatever if all of

these things like yes it's true we do all have the same hours but we know that this you know is surface level the fact that he was like you really can't have it all you can have aspects of all of it you can have a relationship and be really successful but one of them is going to take precedence and one of them is going to suffer for mark his drive in life and what he lives for is work it is business he sold one business for 500 million dollars he still works constantly he's constantly still doing things because it's his drive it's what fills his cup it's what fulfills him and he'll honestly say I know my relationships suffer and now moving forward in his relationships he'll say my partner now or whatever whoever he will be with has to understand

that that is going to be a big part of his life and they're going to have that conversation early on and I think that that's probably something a lot of people don't want to hear but it's the truth for him and for his life and he knows now to move forward if he's going to make a relationship work he has to be really honest and say this is probably gonna you know be more important than you I think it's interesting as well because we see this not just with people who are business people but something that you've experienced Brit as well we see with professional sports people when somebody has something in life whether it's their career whether it is their sporting challenges whatever it is that takes main priority we can often think that they're being selfish in

their relationships but something that Mark spoke about was it's not about being selfish it's about talking and being honest about what is a priority to you. And then people can choose how they want to be a part of your life in response to that. And I think one of the things, I mean, when you just said this whole conversation about having it all, Michelle Obama, I love the quote, which she said, which was, you can have it all just not at the same time. And I think Mark is the perfect example of that. So that is all coming up. Now, before we get into speaking to Mark, something we did want to talk about, we on Thursday's episode, we're talking about Carolina Santos. If you listen to Ask Uncut, we were talking about how she had slid into Michael DeSoto,

which is an Australian fashion label, to get herself some free tickets to Australian Fashion Week. Now, there was a DM exchange. That exchange was shared across a few news outlets. It was doing the rounds. It was doing the rounds. And she was shut down by the fashion label. But the thing that we discussed was how it is more problematic when a brand or a restaurant

or something, shares DMs from an influencer to try and shame them. The reason why we wanted to bring this up is because there has been more revelations that have come to light. And also some of you guys slid into our DMs and we always want to make sure that we are giving you the right information and we're discussing things in the right way. And when we do make an error or don't have the right information at hand, we want to address that. So we assumed that the brand were the ones to release those DMs, which was kind of what was implied at the time by the articles that had come out at the time when we'd done the recordings but since then there has been more information and it wasn't the brand who leaked the dms in the first place it was one of carolina's

friends so basically carolina apparently put it on her stories on her close friends instagram stories where you have like 10 of your friends and that's all that the only people that see it and one of her fucking friends screenshot it and sent it to the news outlets yeah like a dog yeah good friend you want to keep those friends around i think people were us included but everyone was making the assumption that it was the brand because who in their right mind would release their own humiliating dissing yeah so that's why the assumption was made that it was obviously the brand because everyone's like who would possibly do it but to hear that it was i mean and this is all assumptions again like i don't know if the friend has come out and confirmed it so we're

going to say that but now the story is that yeah it's a friend that leaked the dms which i think is wild who is doing this to their friends totally i mean like it's probably time to have a bit of a reassessment of who's in your close friends group it's literally like the very smaller australian version of the wagatha christie shit that went down in the uk and i think most people would have heard of the wagatha why do i have so much trouble saying wagatha i think most people would have heard of the wagatha christie situation that went down but rebecca vardy it was it's basically these wags and i don't like the term obviously because people call me one but i'm going to call other people it for the sake of it because it's obviously a play on words it was this fight between some

wags and it's they're obviously like agatha christie who you know okay you guys get it i don't need to look if you don't know the story you can google it it's fucking fascinating as what it is but it's the same sort of a thing it turned it was like one woman's life like being ruined by all these leaks that were happening and she couldn't figure out what it was and it ended up being one of her close friends that was leaking it and it was this big like investigation that they did internally on their instagram to figure out who the friend was it went to court they got sued like huge huge drama in the UK I mean here's another like thought just don't use close friends on Instagram I do not use that I do not trust close friends I mean I trust my close friends but I

don't trust the people I put in close friends on Instagram I have one close friend on mine and it was an accident I accidentally starred them one day I don't even know how to do it and it's just my sister Sherry so I feel like if anything got leaked on my page I'd know who it is well look coming back to this for one quick second we spoke about it obviously on Thursday's episode and in this instance, like Michael Tesoro, they did not release the private DMs, but we have seen it happen in the past. We have seen restaurants do it to influencers. We have seen it happen on many occasions. And I do think that there is still a conversation there around why it is kind of fun, I guess, to humiliate influencers when they have asked for something

or they have kind of slid into a brand or company's DMs. But ultimately I wanted to say to the few people who did message and sent us the update on that information, thank you. And also I hope Carolina had a fucking great time at Fashion Week because it looks like she still wears it. She did make it, yeah. It looks like one of those DMs actually worked, if not to the Michael show. Anyway, there is one more thing I wanted to talk about

before we get into interviewing Mark. There was a research study that came out recently in the States. Now, look, it is a United States-based research study. Maybe the answers are not applicable to Australia, but I would go so far as to say that maybe there's some correlation that could apply here. Probably a pretty good sample. A pretty good sample and a pretty good example. So 6,000 people were surveyed on a website called

bonusfinder.com. Sounds super fucking legit. Bonusfinder at oxford.com. Bonusfinder.com surveyed. 6,000 people is not a small sample size. The survey was about bachelor and bachelorette parties and cheating. And this is a pretty fucking alarming statistic. More than 70% of Americans cheat at bachelor or bachelorette parties. So the survey found that of 6,000 people, including the soon-to-be betrothed and their guests, more than 70% admitted that they have cheated on their partners at bachelor or bachelorette parties. That is a huge statistic. I think it's probably important though to keep in mind when we talk about this, like

cheating is a pretty massive range of a spectrum, right? Everybody has very different ideas as to what constitutes cheating. And I think in order for the survey to kind of be correct or to have some sort of validity to it this was the range so it was ranging from anything from flirting downloading a dating app during the parties to sexting or sleeping with someone whether it's an escort someone at the party or somebody from the night but the thing is what the study clarifies is really important that cheating is a spectrum right so for some people what constitutes cheating does not constitute cheating for somebody else so some people are okay with flirting some people are

okay with messages some people are okay with a lap dance so these statistics have to take that into account and they did break these statistics down even further now 33.1 said they had a lap dance 21.3 said kissing 11.2 admitted to sleeping with someone 11.2 that's still pretty fucking high getting freaky yeah nine percent said they got hot and heavy in the sheets as a threesome also huge nine percent is huge why is everyone having threesomes what am i the only person in this room Who hasn't had a threesome? I haven't. Wait, have you had a threesome?

Oh, my God. Are we all that vanilla? None of us have. Oh, my God. All right, Keisha. Okay. I know last week we were hiring because Keisha's now got a boyfriend. We're also hiring.

If you've had a threesome out there, we need someone in this group who's a bit more fucking like risque. Tell me what you like. Like slide in. The kinkier, the fucking better. We've got an opening. So this is interesting because I think for me, I wouldn't want my partner to be going and having a lap dance, right?

I would be like, that's not cool. I don't like it. I'm not okay with it. did you break up with them is it a break up offense i don't think it's cheating right like if it's just a lap dance if there's just some you can like if you watch someone dance in the club like that these days i don't constitute it as cheating personally if there's touching yes but if he was on a box and i'm not saying i like it but i'm like i'm not going to break up with him but for somebody else that's not acceptable and that's okay that's because everybody has these

different boundaries okay i have a question for you yeah would you constitute a lap dance cheating if it wasn't paid for? If it was just from a girl who they'd met that night and she gave him a lap dance, is that cheating? Yeah, so I'm so cooked that if it wasn't a Bucks or Bachelorette and he'd just gone out and gotten a lap dance from a chick, I'd be like, cool, you've purposely gone out to try and cheat on me. And I'm not saying it's okay.

So if there's an exchange of money and it meant nothing to her, then it's okay. Well, I mean if it's a job for her, there are 20 guys that are all having fun seeing someone off and the girl's coming around she's done a dance in front of just say it's banned for a couple of minutes and moves on then I'm like okay I get it more so than if you just went down to the local and got a lap dance from a chick that wouldn't slide it's interesting isn't it I don't know why we see a bachelor and when I say we I don't mean us specifically or even you listening to this episode but I don't know why some people think that a bachelorette party or a bachelor

party is a get out of jail free card when it comes to fidelity with your partner like why do the rules not apply that apply on every other big Saturday night out well I think it's well I mean it's this idea of come on this could be your last time for the rest of your life like everyone knows you don't cheat in a marriage so it's now or never you know like I think that that's what happens it's also fueled by drugs and alcohol I think there's a lot of miscommunication in there like a lot of people don't really want strippers and this is bachelorettes and bachelors a lot of people don't want them but their friends just think it's the fun idea and it's all organized and once you're there you don't want to be the party people that's like I don't want this I

think there's a lot of things that go into it a lot of different reasons peer pressure along with temptation because like you wouldn't normally go out on a Saturday night and have strippers or have that sort of like hyper sexualized experience which I think is synonymous with a bachelor bachelorette party I have a wild story actually I know somebody that like a couple that were getting married and on his bucks night he cheated he got an escort now he didn't get it this situation where you know it gets a bit out of control the friends organize it turns into a lap dance someone pays a bit extra he slept with an escort he had sex yeah whole kit and caboodle and then he wouldn't have said anything he would have taken that to the grave he would just got

married taken to the grave but a few days goes past she's doing all the washing anyway she finds a receipt and in his pocket was a receipt with an unusual name at the top and the date and the date was the night of the box party and then it had a very large one sum of money so she's got this weird name on the date and the weird name on the receipt wasn't where they were going on the box because she knew what was happening you know as the wife she's like what are you guys doing this night you know and she was like something doesn't seem right so she ended up going full inspector gadget and she as you do yeah 100 i would inspect the gadget the shit out of that receipt she googled it it turned out it was a brothel so she said hey what can i it's like

when you go to the canteen and you got $2 at school and you're like, what can I get for this much money? And they're like, you can get two chicken chippies. She called up and she's like, what can I get for this much money? She called, she Googled the brothel.

Then she called it and she was like, what services can I receive? Yeah. Like when you go to the canteen and you're four years old for your lunch order. Yeah. What can I get for like 400 bucks, 500 bucks?

And cause she wanted to know what, what do you get for that much money? And basically you get everything, you get the whole service. So she figured out through all this investigating that he had slept with someone. So he, um there is nothing better than a female detective who thinks that something's gone down

like a woman in a relationship who has been scorned unstoppable i in my past relationships have been the most thorough i could probably solve a fucking murder with how thorough i have been across social media i have friends literally one friend in particular no i'm hooked what happened did they get married they got married they just got married i know i know i know they talked it out and I don't know what level what was said obviously it was positioned as drunk mistake I'm sorry for whatever reason but they ended up getting married yeah postponement of wedding no too expensive too hard it's really hard to postpone a wedding you know you postponed it twice I'm not on me to comment everyone's situation is different I don't know what I'd

do in that situation but for whatever reason they decided to continue and get married as per normal I'm sure things weren't normal in the relationship and they had a lot of work to do but at the end of the day she's obviously decided that she still wants to spend a life with this person they'll probably go to the therapy and do whatever else but at this point she's like far out the wedding's in two weeks what am I going to do my issue with this is though is that I think if you're somebody who sees bachelor parties as a pass out then what stops you from doing that in other aspects of your life like I don't think that people just go one and done i think if you have that level of disregard towards your partner like if you're okay with

pushing the limit which obviously most relationships would have those boundaries then what's to say that when you're in another situation where there's alcohol or peer pressure or it's heightenly sexualized that you're not going to make that same well because i think it's the mindset i think it's the mindset of like you get married once in your life and the idea of marriage is the fact that you're monogamous so then it's the idea of well if i'm only getting married to this one person throughout my life I'm also only having one last night and this is my last night and I think people get sucked into this mindset now I think it's fucked like I don't think it's a get out of free pass I don't think it's a you know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

night at all I think it doesn't matter what night it is it's cheating doesn't matter when it is doesn't matter if you think it's your last time doesn't mean anything doesn't matter if you paid for it like for me it's all kind of I mean yeah and we all know that there's different levels of it like we said at the beginning of this but the only thing I think that is maybe incorrect about that is that it's the assumption that it's only the groom or bride doing it, the bride to be or the groom. But the statistics of this and the reason why I want to talk about the reason why I thought it was so effing wild is because of this 6,000 people that were surveyed, the 70%, this was not just the bride and groom. This was people going to bucks or bachelorette parties.

And I think that the reason for that is because there is, and I know it's one of the reasons why it's such a trigger for some people. They don't want their partners going to bachelorette and bucks parties because they feel like it's an environment where their ability to say no or their ability to resist temptation is extremely tested which for those people who feel like that or who feel like they can't trust their partners in those situations that must be a really frightening feeling god ben probably doesn't have to worry i'll have a high teen karaoke and be done by like 9 p.m yeah we were in bed at 11 i had two pregnant people at my my hands like we hit hard at about 3 p.m we were peaking at 2 30 in the afternoon and we were at home having pizza and cups of tea

at 9 30 we were having dnms around the lounge with cups of tea at 9 30 p.m yeah and not even dnms because we were off our face on drugs it was just dnms because we were having tea and so old that was my 20s not my 30s keisha said she had a great time i'm not gonna pretend it was the night of my dreams i had a great night like for me to have hit it to have the fun to have done the rounds Do I have the drinks, have the shots, have the dancing, have the karaoke, and be back in bed with pizza at 9 p.m.? I'm like, oh, you can't ride this. It's a dream.

It's a dream. All right, let's chat to Mark. Mark, welcome to Life Uncut. Cool. I'm not sure yet. Is it cool? Do you know what you're in for? I've got no idea.

What's your favorite sex position? No, I'm joking. That's not what we're going to ask. Can I add more than one? Yeah. Well, I really like, and I don't want to really embarrass you, but like okay hit me it's nothing can embarrass me on top woman on top this is gonna make no sense to anyone who hasn't yet listened to mark's podcast but look that that's all coming mark we

start every interview the same way we want to know what your most embarrassing story is it's called an accidentally unfiltered story and you know it's such a nice way to humanize yourself well i got one for you so many years ago i got four sons and my youngest son at the time was 15 my oldest son would have been early 20s and i invited them all to come meet me in greece because they have different mothers so I you know invited them all to come and meet me and they all went on one flight I was already there but I'd flown in from another country not Australia and I always take sleeping tablets as soon as I arrive because I get jet lag and I take sleep and don't sleep so as soon as I arrived we're in Greece we're in this unbelievable hotel I said meet me up in the bar even though the

kid was only 15 young was 15 it doesn't matter we're in Greece come on up and I and I started drinking whiskey like the usual thing which I like to do so we had a few drinks had dinner looked at the bath and all that sort of stuff. And I said, guys, I'm going to go to bed. You guys go and do what you want. I went to my room and I took my sleeping table as I normally do. I went to sleep and then in the middle of the night I felt the need to get up and take a pee.

So I went up and opened the door to the bathroom and then the door closed behind me and I realised I was in the hallway. Yes! Naked. That's my story. Naked. What are you wearing? Naked.

No, I wasn't peeing on the door or anything, but by this time I was in such shock. What the hell? Like I completely woke up and because I had a sleeping tablet, I had a couple of whiskeys, the whole thing backed against me and I was like, oh, my God, I was in total panic. I saw a phone there, like a wall phone on the thing and I tried to ring the reception and there was no one answering

because it was like 2 o'clock in the morning and the Greeks aren't necessarily that good at that sort of stuff. I saw a dude walking down to his room. So I put my hands here like this and I said, hey, mate, can you let me in your room? Can you lend me a towel? I must have sounded like the biggest bullshit story. I was hoping he could speak English.

I started speaking to him in Greek. He couldn't speak Greek, so I don't know what nationality he was. He was German or something like that. Anyway, fortunately, he lent me in the room, gave me a towel. I went outside and then I asked him to ring the reception and come up and save me. But it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life because only a couple of years prior to that,

Malcolm Fraser, when he was the Prime Minister of Australia, had got caught in a hotel room in Wan Chai in a part of Hong Kong naked outside his room. And the media just hammered him. And I was doing The Apprentice at this sort of time, so I was just so worried that I was going to get out in the media. I probably will get out in the media now, but it's too late because I've told the story.

It's copycat. Also, there's like power in telling the story yourself. It's when you get caught out that then they take the power away from you. But when you're like, oh, yeah, this happened, so they can't even make fun of you anymore, I told you. Front foot. But you're very lucky it happened in Greece and not in Australia. Well, hang on, how did you get – what's the end of this story?

The reception came up and they just opened the door for me to let me in the room. How funny. The first thing they said to me, we need to see ID. I said, what the fuck? I'll pull it out of my ass crack then. Let me just get that for you. Here's my ID for you.

Google image. You can see who I am online. That's so funny. Well, I'm glad you got in safe. Look, most people know you. You just mentioned from The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice and a bit of a one of the most successful businessmen in Australia, I would say.

I don't know if you'd refer to yourself as that. I probably would. Well, I don't know what success means, but yes. If you do it in a traditional sense in terms of numbers and stuff like that, yes. Yeah. I feel like this is going to happen a lot in this interview. We're probably going to segue when something comes up, but that's an interesting point. What is success to you? From the outset, I would say, okay, worth a couple of hundred million, give or take. I know that there's no number for you because you could probably earn another hundred million tomorrow.

To me, that's success. But what is it to you? Well, I always say from my point of view, success from my point of view is the family you raise. So I'm only interested in my sons and my grandson and that's the most important thing to me because my measure for success is what i would think my mom and dad would like to see in me and uh and my mother's passed away because recently not a couple years ago but my dad's still alive so what would they feel was success from their point of view and it's not about money mom dad couldn't care less about that just as long as i got a good kids and good grandkids and i'm a good son that's success to me so that's the most important thing to me how i mean speaking of your family how were you raised because i think there's

often this assumption that if you're somebody who is hugely successful, that maybe there was a bit of a silver spoon or you're a nepo baby. I know that term gets thrown around quite a bit these days. What was your childhood like and the way that you got into business? How did that come about? Well, my childhood was very stable. So that's an important thing. I had both parents were married, stayed married, loved each other. Good parents to me, good husband and wife to each other, as far as I could see anyway. My dad was a very hard worker. Neither one of them had fancy jobs that my dad came to straight couldn't speak english my mom taught him to speak english he worked in factories whole life worked hard had lots of jobs so i was brought up as a kid who saw

hard-working parents very stable loving parents my mother was very creative very smart well-read never had many opportunities in life had no opportunities in life basically but driven and she got us to play piano like i had to learn piano from an early age we did all the sports yeah so i I didn't grow up with a silver spoon. I grew up in the west suburbs of Sydney. I went to a little Catholic school out there. I didn't sort of walk into a business. But I saw hardworking people and people who want to improve their lives.

So I guess that's probably how I started. I just wanted to improve my life. I didn't think I had a shit life. I didn't grow up with a chip on my shoulders. I never felt like, oh, wow, I've got to go and get this car because I never saw that car. That wasn't my deal. I just wanted to work hard.

I always wanted to impress my mum and dad. I don't mean impress them so much. I wanted to do the right thing by mum and dad. I always wanted them to feel proud of me. That's sort of what drove me to a large extent. I remember when I sold the Wizard business, you know, it's written out everywhere how much we sold it for. And it was, you know, in those days in 2004, that's nearly 20 years ago.

And for anyone who doesn't know how much that was sold, it was half a billion dollars. I love that you say like back then there was a lot of money back then. No, Mark, it's still a lot of money now. Yeah, but people talk about, you know, unicorns and stuff like that. But, you know, that amount of money then in terms of equipment today is huge. And the night it happened, I was in New York because I had to go to New York to receive all the payments and sign documents and stuff like that.

I was just there by myself and I remember walking up to a certain place that General Electric had sort of set the settlement would be and it was 11 o'clock at night because they had to settle in Australia as well as New York. It was sort of complicated. And I just walked up there on my own. The building that I went in, it was sort of pretty much closed. I went through a security system, walked in there, signed some documents,

got paperwork, et cetera, walked back to my hotel and bought myself a pizza in my room in New York. I always wanted to try a New York pizza and I hadn't really been to New York before. So that's how I celebrated it. Don't get me wrong, it was important, but it wasn't that important to me. I'm trying to put myself in that position right now. What was it, and you don't have to say numbers, but what was your wealth like before you made that exchange?

Were you just working hard still, making decent money, but nothing extraordinary, and then this company has come in and said, I'll buy you for half a billion? Was it an actual huge jump or were you already worth a couple of hundred million? No, no, no, no. In my previous life, I was working as a professional, worked at a charter accounting firm, which I was a senior partner of,

and then I sort of sold that. Then I worked at a law firm for a number of years. You know, I did well. I had reasonable money. You did well, but normal well? Just normal. like every professional would do i was like 48 when i sold it so you know i'd accumulated some assets but nothing particularly great you know from my point of view you know the extra money

wasn't going to buy me anything but i still can only buy a pizza for that i've got the concierge to order for me it's still only cost me 25 us dollars or something i mean i got all this money i can't go and buy a better one so it didn't make that much difference to me to my life i feel like it'd make a lot of difference to me yeah i mean that it's interesting because i think that i mean my first question is coming into that sort of success and also that purchase is exchanged obviously you built the business up but then you have this massive sale coming into that much money which is an incomprehensible amount of wealth for some people how does that change you as a person it didn't change me it just didn't change me you know the most important thing for

me was it was on page two of the wall street journal was such a big sale for someone general electric it was a big sale i've got a clip of the wall street journal still somewhere but the thing that sits in my drawer still to this very day is a letter from my mother who waited three or four weeks after the sale and she wrote in the letter I wanted to wait until the noise was down and she told me what she actually thought of me as a kid like as her kid doing this wasn't the amount of money but she talked about the effort that I put into it and she watched my effort that was probably the most important thing to me to be honest with you and I mean that and today it's a mere memory it's a mere moment in my life and people say that's successful on that day yes that was worth

a lot of money but maybe the next day the shares that i got in general electric might not have been worth as much in fact they went up but that might have been minor technicality we'll scoot over that one but it might have been worth less so because it because it's just one line you draw on one day in the sand and anything can happen every every day thereafter maybe i didn't ask the right question then in terms of how it changed you but how did it change the people around you people who were in your sphere, who were in your life, who understood this, did it change their perception of who you are? Maybe.

I think probably audiences changed their perception about me and I think probably I grew an audience as a result of that. My friends didn't really change. I mean, I still got the same friends. They were like, you're getting dinner tonight though and paying. Yeah, well, a bit of that happened. You're getting dinner this year. You're getting this round at the pub tonight.

Wedding presents became much more expensive. Christies became much more expensive. I became a godfather a lot more often. Yeah, yeah, perfectly. Could you be Godfather? I'm making you my Godfather. Yeah, I hope you know that. Could please be Godfather.

I mean, it also resulted in me getting divorced too. So, you know, the effort I put into that unwittingly, I didn't realize what you got to do to keep a relationship. I didn't realize that I wasn't doing what I should have done to keep the relationship. So a lot of the success came as a result of what I sacrificed. And I didn't know I was sacrificing it, but I actually sacrificed a long-term marriage

and, you know, the mother of some of my kids. I didn't know that. Is that because you just put 110% of yourself into the business at that time? Yeah, more than 110%, everything. I didn't realize it because when I was growing up, my dad worked three jobs and that's what he did. And mum did what she did and mum also worked. But, like, it was a partnership, you know what I mean?

And no one ever looked like to me, no one ever questioned anything and it looked right to me. but in my case and I never saw dad take mom out for dinner I never saw we never had holidays we didn't go away anywhere no that sort of stuff so probably I just stupidly assumed that that's how everything works and uh and I just did what I saw I didn't think about it I just did what I saw and I didn't realize that you had to spend time with people to make them feel appreciated and that you cared about them and stuff like that well I guess there's a sense of I don't want to say relationships work because it's not but it requires work especially over a long period of

time you do have to come to a point where you prioritize it and put effort in grow together make sure you're giving each other enough and I think that's where a lot of people probably do go wrong is that they forget that they think oh we're good we've got the piece of paper well I don't need to put the effort anymore they're always going to be there and it probably really showed you I imagine what was important in life you got the money but you lost something that you loved Yeah, I sort of regret it, but I'll be honest with you, though. I discovered something about myself, and that was that that's the bloke I want to be. I love work, and that is the most important thing to me in my life.

That's the view I take. Not many people would honestly say that. And not because I want to work, but because I want to do the things that my work delivers. I'm lacking my work in the home loan business. I help people get homes, or I help people through stressful periods. my podcast business i'm trying to tell audiences about what it's like to own a business and share those sorts of things with people so i see that as really important not because i want to work because i see that as a great undertaking a very important thing that's what i think i'm here for

i'm not necessarily here for making someone have a good relationship with me therefore i have to find someone who accepts that yeah happy to play second fiddle almost well not taking fiddle but they might have their own undertaking or they understand that this is how you have to be with mark. And I don't mean that in a sort of ruthless way. I think that this is such an interesting self-discovery. And I say this because I've witnessed it in my friends' relationships, some of them. I've also witnessed it in, I think sometimes in my own relationship. We can often tell ourselves that the reason why we're working so hard is because we want to do it for our family. We want to create a better life for our family. I'm doing this because I'm

contributing back to this in a monetary way, you're growing and growing. But there does come a point where no amount of extra money is what's needed to grow that family unit. It's time because that's the one thing you can't actually purchase. I think that sometimes we can almost try and fool ourselves that you're doing it for a different purpose, but that's such a honest revelation that you had that you were like, yes, that relationship needed more time of me, but the thing that I wanted to do was business and that's the thing that you continue to excel at and my family including my kids of course that reason is secondary i'll be honest because like my kids are all grown up now and they're all living their lives they're not saying dad thanks very much for

you know how hard you work and the things you give us or gave us you know and i don't expect it to that from them either i have to have a purpose in my life and i don't mind being selfish and i don't mean selfish in the extent to hurt people i don't want to hurt anybody but selfish is looking after yourself and understanding what's important for you so there's nothing wrong with i think in my opinion doing what i'm doing but i think that's also evident for you it's almost self-explanatory the fact that you've made these monumental sales you have monumental wealth you still go to work every day and do multiple businesses it speaks for itself because you could go and buy an island and a yacht and no one could ever see or hear from you

again but you're not you're out there doing the work and trying to educate people and be educated yourself. That's an intrinsic drive that people either have or they don't. One thing I'd like to dig a bit deeper in that you just said, you said that you didn't really change much when you came into this wealth. What I'd like to know is, was there a level of trust that changed within you that maybe you haven't thought about a lot, but I would imagine there are a lot of people that might want to be your friend now. A lot of people that might've wanted to date you when you became single for reasons that are obvious. You have a lot of money. There are a lot of people that won an easy life you're also a handsome man mark don't worry you're very handsome no you are you're

very handsome they're only dating you for your money that's it i'm sure you've got other great qualities and attributes but how do you know you know take that aside if you weren't handsome it doesn't matter there are people out there that the attraction is the money it's not physical but i mean yes or it's the lifestyle that one can provide we'll give it to mark he's handsome he's intelligent he's got the money but was there a level of you that started to pull back a bit and worry that people were coming into your life especially romantically for the wrong reason It's interesting you ask that question because what happened was that my wife, her and I who got divorced, she became unwell, very unwell.

And as a result of that, the boys, the three sons to her, came and lived with me. And I was very conscious of their mum being unwell. I don't want the boys seeing women come into my life. So I actually, I wouldn't say I was celibate, but for a long period of time. We don't need all the details. Well, I bet you liked the video.

but i was very conscious of not having relationships during that period and the only woman they saw was the housekeeper and uh i was very conscious of not upsetting my boys because it was upsetting enough their mom being unwell i mean i didn't want to sort of make it worse for them they had to just live with their dad that was a bit of a hassle you know because i'm you know you can't be the mom yeah yeah and moms provide different outcomes and dads I think and I was really conscious of that so I just didn't want to upset the abacus so to answer your question I avoided that I didn't I didn't have that issue I mean I'm sure there would have been some out there who might have gone you know might have come to me for that reason but I avoided

that and uh and I sort of to be frankly I really feel quite happy that I was able to sort of manage that process and I got really involved with kids and also had a business in India so I used to travel to India once every four weeks and I'd stay there for 10 days so I got that's where you do what you needed to do? No, not in India. I thought that's where you're going. I went to India once a month. I had one in India. No, no, no. No, I didn't know. No, no, no. No, India's a bit tricky. No, like in India, they're pretty smart. Like they work out in a minute, like what you're up to. Totally. What is it in terms of becoming such a prolific entrepreneur for you? When was that shift between being like, I want to run one business or turning a small business into a

complete conglomerate. How did you make that shift? And is it so much for you about what the business is or running businesses in general? I don't know if that's very clear in what I'm saying, but I think there's a big difference for some people. Some people have a passion for running a business because it's the mission of that business. And whereas other people can have their fingers in multiple pies and it's the actual logistics of running a business that kind of gets them off. I'm not so interested in the running of the business. I find that pretty hard and can be a bit tedious. So I have, I'm lucky I have lots of people in my business who work for me, like lots. That in itself is a bit of a, can be a bit of a challenge too,

but because I'm not perfect at handling people, but I do have a head of HR and a whole HR department who do all that stuff for me. I'm more interested, I'm a curious person and I'm interested in learning all the time and I get curious about things. So I also look at something that I think I can take on. So my podcast, I was walking back from the gym one day and listening to This American Life. And I said to my business partner, I said, mate, I reckon we could do this. And then he said, okay, let's have a crack. So that's like eight years ago, we went and hired a little studio down at King's Cross. We started this podcast called The Mark Boros Show, which became The Mentor. We had no idea what we were doing. We just did it for fun. But it was a curiosity thing that

made me do it. And then once I broke through it, I understood how it was done. I then liked to turn into a bigger business. So that's my thing. I like to go, can I do this? And lots of things have failed at, but can I do this? It's a new idea. It's a new thing. Yes, I can do it. Now, how do I turn into a business, make money out of it and employ people? And then I get someone else to run it. So I don't run the podcast. I don't run Yellow Brick Road. Yellow Brick Road runs itself. Wizard ran itself. We had hundreds of staff. Wizard was another example. I saw John Simon's Aussie Home Loans, along with Macquarie Bank, taking on the banks and pulling their pants down. And I thought, I know about that marketplace because I have a master's degree in that particular

aspect. And I thought I could do that. So I was curious as to whether I could do it. And I started off the next thing and I had this big business, but I didn't run it. So what do you think then is the difference for somebody who runs a small business, who's working in their business all the time, but knows that they want to make that transition to scaling? How would you say, or what is the first steps to being able to go from that kind of day to day where you almost feel like you're bogged in it and you can't grow because you're at capacity to then having the freedom of being able to work on it. The scaling is a really difficult thing, a really difficult concept.

But scaling for me means you've got to be in a market, this is what I call it, the rising tide. So I was in a rising tide of liquidity in the world. What I mean by that is that it wasn't that people wanted to borrow money, not that liquidity in the wizard business or the Olympic row business for that matter, but liquidity in terms of money available to lend to them. So because there's no point people wanting money from me if I can't actually get access to it.

So I understood the rising tide of liquidity in the world and I knew where to get it and I knew how to get it. My game was could I build a financial technology model, a financial engineer, something that allowed me to borrow money from the global markets at the same price the banks do so that I could competitively lend to the Australian market. That was my game. And if you're trying to work out how am I going to get my business scaled up,

you've got to know that you can get supply, the item, you've got to be able to supply the item at scale to the market. But people think scaling up is about getting more people to buy my item. Scaling up is about getting more content to supply to the marketplace. Excuse my ignorance. Where did the money come from? When you were privately loaning to all of these hundreds of thousands of people, where was it? Was it just outside investors that you promised an interest to?

No, no, no, no. Well, sort of. So there's a thing called capital markets around the world and money, money markets. Money looks to attach itself to an asset in the world. It could be mining. it could be home loans it could be real estate it's always looking to find where it's going to get its highest return with the least amount of risk and australian mortgages are one of the best returning asset classes in the world with one of the lowest risks because australians always pay

their mortgage back we have the lowest default and arrears rate in the world and have done for 30 years and there was a lot of money floating around the world so i would go every six weeks i go with my team to the US and then to Europe and we'd raise a billion US dollars or different currencies but let's say a billion US dollars and I would go to see Bill Gates' company, Bill Gates' foundation or I'd go to see Merrill Lynch and I had this group of people I'd see it'd be 10 cities in the US, 10 countries in Europe and I'd raise a billion dollars.

They would say to me, this is the return we want and I'd say, well, this is the return I'm going to give you and by the way, you're going to have a mortgage sitting underneath which is Australian Mortgage and I convinced them how our asset class was performing and over time I built relationships with them and they were so flush with money they had to get rid of it because they couldn't leave it just sitting in an account doing nothing

so I would give them a place for them, an asset class for them to get rid of it on and I did this for years and years and years and that's the part of the business I ran by the way. Everyone thinks I was the marketing guy and doing TV and stuff. No, I ran the part of the business which was the supply of money.

Well, they're the important part. That's the most important part in every business. In your podcast business, it's about your content. How do you supply your audience with new, interesting content and lots of it and probably more often because over time, they want two podcasts, they want a third one. Yeah, more different, yeah. He's got like five, six, seven in a week, Joe Rogan.

How can I supply more of these? How can I replicate myself in lots of ways? And that's sort of how I model my businesses. Do you ever struggle with imposter syndrome or you know that you have the confidence now from the years of successes or is there ever just a time where you're like, oh, I don't know how I pulled another one off? Yeah, I did in the early days of Wizard.

I certainly did. I remember someone said to me, let's do an advertising campaign. Kerry Packer said, he was my partner, Kerry, in the Wizard business, and he said, let's do an advertising campaign. I've never done an ad before. And he said, I want you in it. And he said, I want you to look in the camera. He told me how to do it and everything.

And I had to go do an ad and I didn't know what I was doing. and I've definitely felt like I was an imposter. Like I was 40 years of age. So I just turned up in a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans and a pair of boots and I had like a V-neck jumper underneath and they said, is that what you're going to wear for the ad? Like I'm doing banking ads. Like bankers in those days would walk around in ties and suits

and I turned up and said, well, I thought this would be okay. And they said, oh, okay, well, whatever, we'll run with it. It actually worked out well. It wasn't designed. But believe it or not, that's your point of difference. You wouldn't have known that at the time. I didn't know. I didn't have a clue.

It's literally what people say, oh, he's not like the rest. and also you probably look more trusting when someone comes in in a suit and starts something something's not right yeah and i was different too how many employees do you think you have worldwide at a guess now yeah uh employees and contractors are a couple of thousand and what do you think your employees would say about you if i asked them if i said what is mark like as a boss what do you think that'd say hopefully i think uh well some not everyone agrees with my views on the way the business should be run i think some of them get feel as though i don't spend enough time with them and it's not possible for me to spend enough time with them like this

week i was in melbourne tonight i'll be in brisbane the next night i'll be in hobart next week i'll go to new zealand because we've got a conference in new zealand and i get to a point and then i'm going to do all my podcasts somewhere in between and i'm going to live a normal life let's try to live a normal life in between um so i don't probably don't get to see everyone enough and probably that would be the thing that they wouldn't like about working with me is that we don't get to see Mark enough. But I do as much as I can and I'm always backfilling. So then sometimes my kids don't see me enough.

So then I, you know, my kids ring my EA to make an appointment to me, have breakfast or lunch, but they just know it's more efficient to do that. Yeah. You know, my kids, when I say my kids, they're older, but, you know, they're all in the 30s plus. But at least I've set up a structure and I know Laura has a similar structure. That's why I made a comment to you about the other day. But, you know, like I see all the parts that I have to satisfy

and I try to structure it up as best I can. But how do you find balance? When you say you try and find structure, I guess when everything is needing a bit of you and everything is needing more of you, how do you prioritize the parts that are most important to you? And that sometimes creates a problem for me. Creates a divorce.

I can create a divorce or medical problems. You know, you can get run down, which happens sometimes. and every now and then I have to give myself an uppercut and sort of say, hang on, Mark, what the hell do you think you're doing? Like why are you accepting that invitation? Why are you accepting that? Sometimes I go yes to everything and then I realize what the hell have I done to myself?

And particularly if you get the flu or something in the middle of it all, it's pretty tough. So I'm backfilling all the time and then every now and then I empty the backpack. I go, that's too much. Yeah. And I just overreact and I take it all out and so I'm not doing anything for a couple of days.

That's it. i'm big on weekends being no phone no emails no messages but emails a little bit try to read less businessy stuff and uh try to relax i really think you need i need two days out of every seven just in my garden visiting my dad seeing my grandson that sort of stuff and banal trite commonplace boring sort of stuff you know like watching netflix or something like that you know that type of thing what was the transition like for you when you started to progress into the media sphere not just being someone who was running successful businesses from behind the wall but you then became the face of what running a successful business was like how did you make

that transition and was there a period where i don't know you struggled with it or that you were kind of out of your depth in a completely new medium yeah that's a good question like that first commercial in the white t-shirt apart from that i mean but it's such a big thing it's one thing to run businesses to then be the face of what that means yeah and i think like in your role you kind of became the godfather of that look this is a fair nickname i was not that an aware person i didn't really know what the fuck i was doing naivety it goes a long way sometimes naivety and uh i'm one of those people who will try anything i'll say i'll give it a crack i'll say yes to anything my mom always used to say she'd say to me i booked you in for an instead for like

a competition piano competition like i used to think i don't want to do that like but okay i'll do it mom and my mother always said have a go at anything whatever it is go and try for this footy game and you might get into the rep side so i just did all those things because other people suggested it and it wasn't a conscious thing i thought oh shit maybe i won't get accepted by the media maybe i will maybe this could be a blowout whatever i just went and did it and i thought whatever the consequences are i'll deal with it down the track and i never really knew what the consequences because as you said i was naive to all this stuff i also think it comes down to a personality type though as well because for some people some people are real forward planners some people need to know

that they have all their ducks in a row before they start something and it's almost that like procrastination wheel that stops people from getting a head start because they need it to be perfect or need to know what the outcome will be before they can actually take the first step and then there's other people that have the confidence to kind of charge forth into the unknown and just figure it out along the way and that's definitely a personality trait which you seem to take into not just business but into how you've approached media well that's not exactly my personality trait it's it's not a strategy it's probably more a strategy these days now i'm more aware of myself but it was definitely a personality trait and it's a bit like modeling you know when

you said a lot of people try to perfect the model before they launch the model yeah one thing i know about modeling or particularly like anytime modeling catwalk business no no no that one you should perfect before you get on the catwalk that's just embarrassing business modeling is that you will never know all the inputs that you need to put into the model to make the model accurate so therefore you might as well just start off and start refine the model as you go along so that's how machine learning works how you get ai the machine refines the model as it goes because it learns about the model and that's sort of how i am i take the view that i'll learn a long way i'll pick up how i got to fix this thing up and i'll change my direction or my strategy whichever

or tactically whichever way i've got to go because i think that's the best way because i'd rather just start it because i'm starting because i'm curious in the first place i want to see if i can do it i mean i want to know what i can learn from i'm interested in learning i want to learn about as many things as possible i want to meet as many people as possible and see what i can learn from them and I don't want to sound like that's a terrible thing but sounds terrible but I actually like to get something from you and it could be a question you ask me challenging me about something I never thought about before I give you an answer I think well I didn't realize that before or it could be me doing my podcast or I'm actually asking you questions I want to get something

out of you it's very selfish again but it works and if you do it in a nice way you don't offend anybody you try not to be hurtful you be as sensitive as I possibly can I'm not always that sensitive but be sensitive but possibly can that works i mean that's one of the reasons why i stopped doing the apprentice the show with a celebrity apprentice because i felt as though it was a system that was a bit offensive you know reality tv can be a bit hurtful yeah i mean that's an understatement yeah in what ways did you find the apprentice was hurt um well it's always about look reality tv doesn't work unless there's emotions yeah and you've got to get villains and heroes.

Jeopardy as well. You've got to have some kind of cliffhanger that maybe not even is there and they're creating it. Because they want him to come back for the next episode. Drama. They've got to leave it on a certain way. I also think the audience wants to see people in your position being hard on people and cutting people off, you know, mid-sentence,

telling them they're a piece of shit. It's why Gordon Ramsay is so successful in terms of his reality shows. This is what people are attracted to for some secret. Do you think so now though? Do you think that was the case? What about now? No, I still actually do. and we've had these discussions, even if you look at things

like The Bachelor, but I hate seeing it happen when a storyline is developing for somebody and you know they're pushing it, you know people are getting bullied and trolled and people are being nasty. But they've tried it where it was all lovey-dovey and nothing happened and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because humans want to feel better about themselves by also watching other people

not necessarily succeed. I totally agree with what Britt's saying because I think for so long people say like, oh, enough with the drama, Like it's too much, you know, I can't watch it anymore. But yet Maths is the most watched reality TV show in Australia and the entire show is based around putting people together. They'll put a couple of nice couples that work out, but the majority are people who have been partnered

because they are literal polar opposites. And you feel like punching yourself there for watching it. It'll be the most explosive. I've never watched an episode. I mean, I do. I watch it and I'm a sucker for it. But I think outrage culture, we're attracted to it throughout social media as well.

You know, social media algorithms within Instagram are created in a way where it knows that if you're angry about content, you will stay on that content for longer. You will view content that makes you angry for a longer period of time than what you will view content that makes you feel good. And so it works that algorithm. If you are outraged about something, if you're angry about something, that content will get pushed out to a bigger audience.

And if you say, had a really lovely day today, drank a lovely coffee. But was that fed to you, Mark, on the show? Was that fed to you, you know, like go in and be brutal today? Yeah, totally. uh well that's how they first approached me they just said this is a trump show here's a video a dvd watch that that's how the show goes and i said well i don't want to say you're fired because it's not an australian thing and they said well that's part of the franchise you have to say it um and you have to point your finger and uh so you had to be like you're fired i'm serious you

weren't allowed that so that was like sometimes they refilmed it refilmed it and i could do another take another yeah point the finger harder say you and like and it's harder to say the second time third time especially i've already said it once and the poor person already knows too They're like, oh, no. I know, exactly. But TV, as you guys know, TV is a tough thing when you see behind the curtain what actually goes on. But I have to say it was a great experience for me as well.

I met some good friends. I've still got some good mates out of the various contestants. I met a lot of people in the production crew who are still good friends of mine. I enjoyed it a hell of a lot. Not towards the end, though. It wasn't so good. Was it a direct invitation from Trump for you to be the host of the Australian version?

No, it was a guy called Mark Fennessy who used to own Freemantle Media, and they had the global production rights of the shows in 25 countries. I did get to meet Trump. In fact, he contacted me once I was chosen. He contacted me through the people who do the management of it around the world. He invited me to New York but I turned him down. He got quite upset about it.

He said, you know, I'll send you a free ticket, business class ticket to come to New York and you can stay at Trump Tower. And I said, I don't want to come. And he said, well, you seriously? I'm so-and-so and I'm offering you a free trip. I said, mate, I can buy a first class ticket myself if I feel like it. and I wouldn't stay at your hotel anyway. I don't need your free business.

So he wasn't very happy with that. And I had lots of interviews. I interviewed him here in Australia when he came to Australia once a few years back. No, it was Mark Fennessy brought it to me. I was sort of doing nothing in 2009 and he said, mate, someone suggested you for this show. Do you want to do a trial?

I said, I don't even know what the show is. I'd never seen it. He said, here's a DVD, watch it. We're going to come in and we'll come in at the end of the week and we'll bring some TV cameras and we'll bring some actors. Practice your pointing in the meantime. Yeah, do that and just go through the process. And I went through it and I said to one of the guys at the end who –

he was an actor and he answered me this question that I asked him and it was so fucking stupid, his answer. And as I said to him, that was the one thing that clinched the deal. Because you were polarizing. You came across as – Yeah, he's going to say something that's unfiltered. Right. And that's what they want, unfiltered comments.

Did you, when you watch it back, did you dislike the way that you were coming across? Did you dislike the way that you were framed? If you were being made to kind of be this far more just like opinionated and angry and seem like your thoughts on things were so much further in the direction than what you necessarily felt or would say normally, did you watch that and go, that's not authentic to who I am as a person? To be honest with you, some of the people did annoy me.

I didn't have to act that one. And I was saying what I actually thought. Look, you know what it's like. They got you on the set for 12 hours in the studio, which is supposed to be my boardroom. Oh, my God. I'd get there at 6 in the morning. It was seven days a week.

Started at 6 a.m. I had a pre-production briefing what happened the day before and I'd be sitting there at 6 a.m. and by 8 o'clock they'd have all the celebrities there at 4.30, 5 a.m. in the morning getting made up. That all – because we used to have 12 people in the show and they'd all turn up and then I'd be there like 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon and someone would say something so stupid.

I mean, I had a terrible run-in with Pauline Hanson, like a shocking one and she wanted to walk off the show. You were like, bye. Well, she can't because they saw an agreement. You can't walk off the show. We had, you know, like I won't say what she said, but it was really dreadful what she said. And another one, one of my sons was actually my advisor

in one of the shows, in two of the series. There was nearly a punch-up between him and Jason Ackermanis, the AFL guy. It wasn't filmed, fortunately. I remember Johnny Steffensen, the Olympic runner, 400-meter runner, and Jeff Fennec were on one show, and they nearly had a punch-up, which I had to step in between the two of them, out the back in a storeroom.

And so at the end of the day, you get pretty agitated yourself. So a lot of the stuff that came out was me just being honest. But I did have a bug in me. So they were always talking to me from the production unit outside saying she's not watching or she's lost your gaze or some of that or he's not paying attention or he did this and the other. So they were always prompting me to rip in. And every now and then if I felt there was a flat spot, I would.

Who was the – I mean we just said some of the celebrities who might have been the hardest for you to deal with, but who in your experience was the best celebrity that you had to work with? Julia. Gillard? Julia Morris, yes. Not Julie Gillard. Julie Gillard didn't come on.

I would have loved to have her. Julia Morris. She's so funny, so cool, so quick, and gets it. Like she was just brilliant in everything she did. So she was definitely one of my favorites. And look, like they all are doing this to get a leg up into TV. Yeah. Mostly.

Totally. Mostly. To extend their profile, to build on their profile. Which is fair. I know. and sometimes we say it like that's a like we're like oh they're just doing it to build their profile everybody's doing every opportunity in their work careers to get a pay rise or to get a raise or increase their employment like it doesn't matter if you're in media or if you're

working as a sales assistant like we're all working hard to get noticed no drama with it and that's what the show is sort of about it's about getting celebrities who are trying to get back into the scene yeah so i had no drama with it where i had drama was where they weren't straight with me i know like people not being straight but david haselhoff was sort of really interesting like we had the hoff on one series there and i remember him saying to me he said mark uh i've got to uh go to austria i've been booked to do the birthday party of someone mr glock the guy's got invented the glock pistols some old dude and uh i didn't realize that hoff was so famous in austria he's very famous oh yeah totally famous but he was on the wall when the berlin war was coming down

singing some song in German for everybody. It was like a number one hit in Europe. So Hoff had no understanding of the rules of the show, zero. I've got to go. I'm going to earn a whole lot of money. Hold the show until I come back, which is what we did. We had to stop filming until he came back because I hadn't fired him and I had no reason to fire him.

So we had to hold the show until he came back. So I got to sort of see some – I already knew Hoff because I had a girlfriend in L.A. who was friends with Hoff when Hoff was married and friends with his wife. and those are the days when he was drinking a lot and his wife was drinking a lot and they were in the sort of breakup period and when he came back to Australia,

unfortunately, somehow, Current Affair, one of those shows, showed a video of him that was on YouTube of his daughter crying to him about dad stopped drinking and then when he saw it, he said, we're filming and he come up to me, he said, I'm out. I'm leaving the show

because you guys have embarrassed me on Australian television and it was nothing to do with me, mate. Like I didn't, you know, and that was a YouTube video. You did it to yourself, yeah. Totally. and I ended up having to put him up in my apartment

in the city, Macquarie Street, for three weeks. We lavished him with everything you could possibly imagine and we had to sort of pretty much bribe him back into staying on the show. But they're interesting people but to answer your question, Julie Morris by far was a standout. Oh, I love them. What a compliment for her as well.

I know and she isn't like Australia's darling so it's so nice when you hear about people that we see on TV every day when they're as amazing as what you hope they are. She really is. Yeah. And she still texts me and says, how are you going and all that sort of stuff. I have everybody's texts.

Every single person who's on the show, I have all their text numbers. And when they're left, I would send them a little note and text and say, how are you going? They will have my text number too. And say, look, I'm sorry I had to fire you, but like, you know, blah, blah, blah. But you're fired. Mark, before we do let you go, I mean, I feel like we can't have possibly Australia's most experienced businessman without asking you,

what would be, and this is a very open question, but what would be the best piece of business advice that you have learned over the years? If you've got a business that's selling into something, make sure you're selling into what is called a rising tide. So know what is a rising tide globally, not just here in Australia, but globally. So it could be something to do with artificial intelligence today because there's a rising tide there. I mean, who knows where the tide will go to or how quickly it will rise or whether it will ever be deflated. But any business that has some application to artificial intelligence and machine learning today,

as far as like chat to your BT and all that sort of stuff, from my point of view, is a good place to start to build your business aspirations it could be something to do with technology podcast is a good example it's probably tougher today but like when we were setting up our podcast when we started yeah it was a rising tide and being an early adopter that's the idea of adopt early and find out what is a rising tide so always be paying attention what's going on locally but probably more importantly overseas and where's everyone directing their attention in the early stages and do I have an application? Do I have the skills and application to go into that environment?

Don't try and get into those environments after seven or eight years when it's completely full and very competitive because then you're just going to be either buying yourself or investing in a business that's you could probably go and get a job somewhere and earn the same amount of money and have nowhere near the hassle. So look for the rising tides. Mark, thank you so much for being a part of the pod. you are insightful but also a joy to speak to thanks for giving us so much of your time today

thanks very much i appreciate about you but i'm going to start a business find the rising tide i'm inspired i'm rising the tide riding all the way into the sunset well you guys know we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of the week i'm gonna kick it off so all right jump in there girlfriend first of all i have one quick suck that was just like a real real suck which is i've been horrifically ill. Now I feel like I've taken over you. You're so dramatic. I only think Matt is the second most dramatic person when you're horrifically ill. Oh no, I was hovering over. I know I do for myself. Yeah. It was really bad. And I feel like I've taken over you. I feel like there was a little

while ago that you were on this, you were sick all the time and I was really healthy. Now I feel like I'm getting sick all the time, but I'm not healthy. I'm like a shell of a human. All I do is dance, dance, dance. All I do is dance, dance, dance. So really sick as in, this has not happened to me before, but I got really bad vertigo in my sleep, which is where the world is spinning. And then you start vomiting and you cannot move your head anyway, or you vomit. And I vomited for 12 hours straight. It was wild. And they thought that it maybe was a side effect from doing the skin treatment. Nothing related. No, no. Anyway, we won't go too deep into that for now. So that was one suck. And now I'm going to go into my sweet, which we're going to another suck. So my

sweet. Bear with me. My sweet of the week was I never hang anything in my house. I got some art recently and I loved it. I moved my house around. I moved all my furniture around and now there are these big walls that were like really barren. So I was like, I need to hang some art on there. And so I got all romantic and I, she's laughing because she knows. Online ordered three frames of photos to be delivered to my house because I'm too lazy and don't have time to go do it of Ben and I when we did that really funny on the spare of the moment professional photo shoot at the Louvre in Paris if you don't know that story guys we were at the Louvre in Paris and this random photographer asked to come and shoot us we thought it was a scam we said yes for a laugh and we got

these ended up getting these really beautiful photos from it so I ordered three of them and printed them out decent size and I put all three of them on this one wall in my lounge room really next to each other I thought it looked really good and I was so proud of the fact that I did it on my own I hung it I measured it I was just really feeling myself the pictures are great and I'm in love this is going into my suck is I thought it was really nice I've never been in love and put a picture up of me and my partner in my existence first time all my friends do it everyone else does it anyway do they do that do people put up yes I go into my friend's house and there's like giant nude photo shoots of them anyway really yeah so producer Keisha and my other

friend kim yes i'm naming and shaming you kim they both they both come into my house and just start tearing strips off me for the fact that i put photos up of myself and my partner in the lounge room first of all they were like okay it either looks like someone's died someone's died and this is a shrine or it looks like a wedding shoot and apparently you're not allowed to put photos up of yourself and your partner unless you're married now i disagree people i think that is bullshit. I'm calling bullshit. Why do I have to be married to put photos up of me and my lover? I don't think it's that. Like, I mean, I have a couple of little photos of Matt and I, we got this like little pack and there was a few photos of us. And like, they want you to put on

the wall. They're like hard picture frames that you put on like a little side table. So there's a couple of those of Matt and I, I think it's more the fact because your lounge room is the first room you walk into when you enter your house. I don't have a West wing and an East wing. I've got a tiny apartment. You walk in and there's a lounge room. So maybe it looks like a shrine because it's three big photos together. But can I just, in your defence, because you're a partner and you're doing long distance, you don't see them every day.

No. So it's nice to have like a daily shrine to sit and look at. Also, I sort of did it because he's coming here in two weeks to visit and I want him to be like, oh, cute, like I mean something to her, she's done something. Or you think he's going to see it and be like, babe, why have you got a shrine to us? No, because I showed him and he thought it was really cute.

And at the end of the day, fuck you, producer Keisha and Kim. I will shrine the shit out of my house. I would love to know. I would love to know who has big photos of them and their partner put on the wall. I know, but they're usually wedding shoots is the difference. But what if I choose to never get married and just be in love? Does that mean I can't also bask in my own love?

No, you're allowed to bask in love. That's beautiful. I'm so happy with the basking and the loving. But I would like to know where the limit is. like I know that a picture in a picture frame on a side table is completely fine so if it transitions to the wall it's not okay but if it's bigger than a4 and it's on a wall and there's three of them is that not appropriate like what limit to the proclamation of love are you allowed to have in your own living space or declaration of love yeah declaration whatever or can you just have whatever

can you can you have like a full fucking artwork made of you and your partner and your love of each other I mean you can do whatever you want and just to clarify guys this isn't like they are only a4 sized photos but there's three of them so it's more like an a4 yeah but then they've got the frame so it adds a couple centimeters but then there's three but they're all of the same shoot which I thought was a vibe but I'm not very good at aesthetics so it's all three different photos from the Louvre which stuff you all I like it I can't wait to see this I can't wait I'll take a photo of you because you don't come to my house anymore so I'll take a picture how they ever get to come to your house that's not true I was there the other week but I was quite offended

producer geisha wants to put on insta i don't know if i'm there yeah i don't think we could put on insta because that just opens it up to a vote of people saying whether it's okay or not okay which i think you know what it's your house you do whatever you want to in your house and that's okay if you want to do a shrine of dildos on the wall that's fine too this is my point i was so taken aback that these two were laughing at me and had the audacity to laugh in me in my own home after i bought them dinner i was like the hide of them i think it's fine i've seen heaps people with photos of their partners and i reckon if we do a poll which you know we're all gonna do we're gonna do an instagram poll i think it's okay i don't have a single wedding photo in my

house not a single one yeah but that doesn't shock me because you're a very disorganized person oh you think it's just because i haven't gotten around to it yet oh absolutely that will never be done because it's not a priority for you at the moment yeah because you've got too much other stuff going on but no i just don't i mean we've got them in a nice book and matt got a lovely wedding book made up I just don't think I'm a wedding photos in my house kind of person I think it's a I don't know it's a beautiful day that shocks me I think it would be nice to have a wedding photo you get once in your life the best day of your life I hope yeah I think you should print one I'll print you a couple well you know where to buy them so could you

I'll send you the link swipe up temps and all all right guys so my second suite for the week is my suck is a boring one and I know I mean I say it quite a bit recently but I'm gonna say it anyway. Things have been so busy recently. I've had Matt's mum come and stay with me. She's not stuck. Ellie's actually my sweet. She's fucking amazing. But I just literally have not seen my kids like training and fitting work schedule around everything has meant that I'm out of the house at 6am. You miss Marley's 18th birthday. Yeah. Marley's moved out of home. She's got a boyfriend. I am not home until 7pm most nights, which means I'm pretty much missing from the time that they wake up until the time they go to bed. I know it is just a period in time. Like I know

it's only for like another 11 days of filming but it's really hard and it's been now for like the last couple of weeks that my ability to spend time with them has gone less and less and less and it's at the point now where it really affects me I get up in the morning and I feel really sad that I can't spend more time with them yeah that's fair and I know for me as well as much as I've loved doing Dancing with the Stars it's been really really fun and I love all the work that I do I know that like that's it for me for a while like I need some I need some time out absolutely you do yeah but it's like fucking do not say yes to anything else i was hoping you'd say that i'm hoping you'd get there on your own yeah i just it was my nephew's birthday party on

the weekend which i couldn't go to and i just feel like i'm missing out on stuff with them now it is it's one of those things in life that sometimes saying yes to one opportunity means there's a sacrifice in another aspect of your life and we talked about that with mark burris it's one of those things and you chose this opportunity which you've had a great time and you've learned and but something had to give and it will be over soon and you'll be back on track but you definitely need to go take a fucking breather and get a massage and i need to eat some magnesium and babysit an ice bath also get laid no no i had sex the other day oh yeah nana took the kids out at lunchtime and i was gonna have a nap but we had sex instead oh lunchtime nap yeah i had lunchtime

sex midday menage a trois yeah it was like literally one o'clock and i was like excuse me i don't know i did this was alliteration wait did i have a midday threesome with my mother-in-law I just went for the alliteration thing, midday, midday, midday, night, night, or twilight. No, okay. I haven't had any threesomes as we established earlier. And my sweet for the week is my mother-in-law. And the reason for that is that Ellie, Matt's mom,

has taken three weeks of annual leave to come and live with us and she has just been doing everything. So she's been cooking, she's been cleaning, she's been filling up the love cup for the kids because I've not been there to do it and she just is fucking amazing. And it really reminds me that it takes a village. You can't do it all on your own. and you know

I think that's kind of been the theme of today's podcast episode yeah absolutely well that is it from us guys if you love the app jump onto Apple Podcast please leave us a review

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