Modern Wisdom - #252 - Tom Otton - You Are Not A Victim

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Tom Otton is the Managing Director at Create Group and an Ultra Endurance Athlete. Everyone experiences negative self talk and doubt, how you deal with it is what makes the difference, and the choice is yours. Expect to learn what it's like to run for 50 hours without sleep, how to create the perfect company culture, why a victim mindset is the most important thing to overcome, how to lean into your fears to overcome failures and much more... Sponsor: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 3.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Tom on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tomotton/  Subscribe to Tom's Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creator-sessions/id1384284937  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello people in podcast land, welcome back my guest today is Tom Otten, managing director at create media group and an ultra endurance athlete. Everyone experiences negative self talk and doubt how you deal with it is what makes the difference and the choices yours. Tom has run some of the toughest foot races on earth. On top of that is the managing director of one of the quickest growing companies in Dubai and has a brand new marriage which hasn't fallen apart. The fact that you can put all of this together means that he has an awful lot that we can all learn from him. So today, expect to find out what it's like to run for 50 hours without sleep, how to

create the perfect company culture, why a victim mindset is the most important thing to overcome, how to lean into your fears to overcome failures and much more. If you enjoyed the Mark Smith episode from last week, then this is right up your street. I've absolutely adored recording with both of these guys. I do need to hold my hands up. It's another episode in my buddy Nick's flat, so there's a little bit of audio bounce. Also, someone in the YouTube comments last week identified that the call to prayer coming out of the local mosque could be heard just as Mike first and started talking about

his sex life. So I'm not 100% certain what is in the background of this episode, but I'm not liable if that happens again. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Tom Otton. I changed completely changed your headspace. I'm a completely different person than what I was when I started the whole ultra conversation. I completely different you look at things differently, I approach things differently, I value things differently, I'm interested. Like everything, everything changed. Well that's a good place to start. So, what has changed you have done multiple ultra events? What like? And what's the impact being on you?

In terms of races, the first big one for me actually went really badly. So, my self-mark is flew across the Wales and we did a 80 kilometer run across the Breckenbeekens. First time I'd done anything like that. it was a little bit last minute in terms of deciding that looks like fun, let's have a crack, training was terrible for it in terms of when I look back now. Body kind of felt to pieces, head felt to pieces, and it was one of those situations that we've all been through, you have to hit the bottom before you can start to realise where you want to go and you look back on that later in life and you realize

That's exactly what needed to happen for me to then sort of evolve from there. So that that didn't go well I mean like I said what's not well. No, I just and just body broke down which is fine I mean that happens if you haven't trained for something then obviously you can't expect to get through very well finished it but like Weeked complaining just morning about shit. I'm done with this just like to get through it very well. Finished it, but like weak head complaining, just morning about shit, I'm done with this. Just like, as I suppose you'd expect somebody that hasn't worked on any form of mental strength or tried to sort of build that side of themselves up, you fall to pieces when you get into an environment like that when you're, however many hours we were in. So that was

a first experience and it haunted me, it really stuck in my head. It's going to say a lot of people might have just turned back after that. Yeah, well to be honest, it was one of those situations where I knew, I know myself well enough to know that I was going to sit with me for a long time and it sat with me for a while and I realized that I had to do something bigger and I had to do something fairly soon to fix that and it was, it's gambling, right?'s gambling right you like I'm gonna go bigger and if this called the Sun Cost Files in your area there is there's a casino floor yeah exactly right so let's throw more money good money after bad money and but I thought it's a risk

right because you're playing with your own mental space then you're like if this works out I'm good again but if it doesn't work out I've had two losses here and they're getting bigger So you know, it's the same as gambling like good analogy So the next thing we signed up for was a marathon disarmed which was 250 kilometres across the Sahara desert I'm not sure if Marx is chatting about that that earlier and That was the first big thing that was when we talked about the reborn and the entire change of mindset I I sat on a charter flight out of Gantwik into Morocco and I was nervous as hell. I looked around the only people on the flight were with those doing the marathon just so. And you guys were like, I am man tattoos all over them just like,

you just like elite athletes, extreme people and I'm just sat there thinking, what am I doing on this flight? I'm a guy who can play in the batter race and work. Yeah, last time, yeah, last time I tried this, it just felt pieces. I sat there and I wrote a few notes on a piece of paper. There were behavioral goals, yes, it was finished, yes, don't die. But then it was inspired others to finish. Another one with dark complain once. I was challenging myself to the extent that

it wasn't just about you need to try and finish this race. It was going far beyond that to say, you're not going to utter a single complaint, a single word that's negative for eight days on what the Discovery Channel has turned the toughest foot race on earth. And you're going to inspire other people to finish. So it was so far removed from where I'd been in the previous race, that that was the challenge I was trying to set myself to really push limits and boundaries. And it was, it was sitting on the flight out afterwards, yet not necessarily having a physical medal or

anything like that, but I still had that dirty half torn piece of paper that I'd kept with me the whole time. And to be able to look down at each of those things and say I achieved that. And that was a real defining moment or pivotal moment in terms of my journey and in terms of improving mindset and headspace. And it went from there really. I did the mouth and the salve again. This time down in Peru. So another 250k self-supported you carry everything on your back. They only give you water for six days, everything else you're carrying with you and you're running through sand. So you can imagine, I'm going to talk the details, but then you can imagine what that's like. And then the most recent one, which was a little while back now,

which was the 137km down across the Hatter mountain range in Oman, the borders between UA and Oman. That was a whole different ballgame. The 250 crosses the hardest sounds crazy, but you break that down into 30 to 40km a day, apart from on the fourth day we did 92km something like that, which was pretty intense on the fourth day of running, because you're basically sleeping on the floor for five days at that point. So you can imagine there's no showers, there's no nothing. It's a really good way. Yeah, it's not the best.

But the one in down in a mom was a complete of a ballgame. That was, it was single, single leg, 237 K straight through. And the combined elevation of that race was 8,000 meters. To put that into context, you know, Everest is 8,800. So that was a different ballgame. How long did that take? 42 hours straight. Without sleep? Without sleep.

I was awake for 56 hours. So yeah, that was a different ballgame. What is it like to be awake for that long with physical exertion? You've hallucinate. You start to have out of body experiences and it's not just, I don't know, that sounds dramatic but that's literally what happens. So during the second night we started at 7pm, so you run through the night, you start to feel a little bit like all over the place as the sun's coming up because you're still going. Then you go through all the heat of the day and the mountains, then you go through sunset again when your body started to tell itself it needs to sleep because of your circadian rhythm as you well know, and then you're still going, and then

you're going through that next night. Now your body's like, hold on a second, we've been through two of these nights and you're still not in bed. What's going on? It's not being that easy. So your body starts to do certain things to try and get you to stop. You have all the logical conversations with yourself around why it's okay to stop and why you should stop and that pain is actually or you don't know what that could be, that could be something really bad, all this negative self-talk, all of the reasons, logical reasons, is why you should stop. And then you start to hallucinate and that's a really interesting space.

So the second night from around about, I'd say midnight about 4am, I only went through one checkpoint and I was completely on my own because they'd had, I think it was 50 to 60% of the race and dropped out by that point. It was the first time they'd ever run that race. I don't think anybody realized how horrific it was going to be. National geographic did a whole documentary on the race. It's only been run once at that length, so they did it one more time two years later. a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweith because people can only conceptualize that on a road, and that sounds pretty crazy. It's 137 kilometers on a road. It sounds pretty ridiculous. But when you put in to the context of 8,000 meters of elevation,

that means you're talking 1.2 kilometer down gorgeous. So you get the edge of a gorge. You've got to go two kilometers as a crow flies, but you've got to go 1.2 kilometers down into this gorge and 1.2 kilometers back up. You go for 5K, you hit another one. So you're talking, it takes you six hours to go the space of six kilometers sometimes or even longer. We were clipped in with carabiners climbing up cliff faces as part of this race. It was the most ridiculous thing. We got the 120k mark. There was a checkpoint that I came into,

blown to pieces like, you know, hallucinating through the night. I'd gone legs, gone, just in bits. So that was 120 kilometers. The next three kilometers from 120k was straight through to 1.2 kilometers straight up. We were scrambling poles had to go away and we were scrambling with like literally hands like climbing. Like scrambling up a cliff face. And we were, I mean I'd been awake.

I don't know why I say weak because I was on my own. But me and the hallucinations in my head have been awake for age. It was just next level and it was scary as hell because during the day it was 32-34 which lived in the Middle East. That's okay, you can train for that. But it was at night, winds, howling, and it was between 6 and 8 degrees. So the difference, you know what it's like, you just start to get tired, you start to get cold.

Now we're not used to the cold in the middle, either. It's not you're on a cliff face, it's blowing, it's pitch black, it's three in the morning, you're hallucinating, you're trying to scramble, you're 120 kilometres in your legs, and you barely know what day it is, so you just keep trying to move. So that was a culmination in my personal journey of that first race in Wales and Abuk of Envy, but when I just fell to pieces on an 80k, it wasn't flat, it was a break in Beacons, but it was pretty sedentary. Walk in the park and after this afternoon stroll.

Then you end up with that thing and it was just like finishing, it was just about survival and it was an interesting place. You spoke about the logical, rational reasons to stop that your brain throws up. I'm fascinated by those because there's someone who's never done an endurance race like that. Yeah. I've put exercises a lot. Everybody knows what it feels like to hear that voice. Yeah.

That's a twinge. That's where you injured yourself three years ago. That might be coming back. What is going through your head? How do you deal with that negative self-talk and that doubt? Look, it's a really good question. And one thing I really want to try to help for listeners to take away from this is that everybody experiences

that negative self-talk. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're David Goggins, whether you know it doesn't matter who you are. And this is where a lot of people get it wrong. A lot of people think that person, whoever it might be, is must be made of something else because there's no way that they have the same narrative internally as I do. And it's the same narrative.

Sometimes I'm on a 10 or 15 K run, and sometimes you just feel like shit, and you want to stop. It's exactly the same narrative. I know this is hard to understand. It's the same narrative as when you're there at 120 kilometres into a race. I want to stop. These are the reasons why. That all makes sense. It's okay. All of these things. So all of that will happen and you know the listens can experience that on a 10k run or it can be 120k. It's just the same narrative. And it's understanding that it's okay to

have that negative self-talk, except it. Don't think that you're a lesser person because something in the back of your mind is telling you that you should stop when you're uncomfortable. At the end of the day, our brain is programmed to protect us. That's what it does throughout time, it protects us. So when you're putting your body through excessive strain, your brain's job is to stop you from doing it. Your brain's job is not to push you harder. Your brain's job is to keep you within side to comfort zone.

In very inventive ways. In very inventive ways. And it's crafty bugger. So you've got to accept the fact that that's gonna happen. And it's accepting that narrative and then allowing yourself to, I suppose not allowing yourself, bringing different tools into play to get through that and get past that. First thing is acceptance

of that narrative and just being like, cool, I hear you, I'm not going to listen to you, but I hear you, it's okay. And then it's also, there's all sorts of tricks that you start going, you start going, jedi mind tricks on yourself and you start thinking, right, well, there's internal motivation, there's external motivation. External motivation can be, okay, but when I get to the end of this race and I'm sat down with my support crew, you know, my wife, my girlfriend, my coach, whoever it might be, external motivation is like, what conversation do you want to be having with them? Are these all the 15 reasons why I dropped out of this race?

I didn't feel so good. So there's your external motivation right there. If you can visualize that, then straight away you're going to be like, no, I'm not having that conversation. Now I'm going to keep going, I'm not having that conversation. That's the external side of it, right? The internal side of it, and there's always a, the race field can change depending on a number of things. But the internal side of it has got to be like, why am I actually doing this? If you're going to put yourself through a very difficult situation, you need to know why beforehand. And the reason being, is because it's inevitably going to get very difficult at some point. And if you don't have a

reason why you're doing it that's valid, then what are you going to do? You're going to stop, right? You're going to pull out of it. Because why am I even here? I don't understand why I'm here. In the same way, maybe an understandable example of this, you sign up for your first marathon. Scares the shit out of you. You wake up at five o'clock in the morning. You know exactly why you're waking up at five o'clock in the morning. If you hadn't signed up for the marathon,

and I said wake up at five, I mean, you probably do that anyway, but if I said, if you weren't an athlete, and you said, right, wake up tomorrow morning at five a.m. and go for a run. Cool. OK, I'm motivated. Day three, what are you doing? Wake up and go for a run. Cool. Okay, I'm motivated. Day three, what are you doing? Wake up at 5am, you're like, what the hell am I doing?

You're like, okay, I'm not doing that. There's no reason to do it. But if you signed up for a marathon, then you're actually a bit worried about completing it, and you've got sponsorship and you've got all these things, you now have both internal and external motivation for getting through that. So it's understanding that that narrative internally and playing those Jedi mind tricks on yourself to get you through to complete the runoff, to get up in the morning on whatever it is that's causing you that pain at the time.

What was the transformation that you saw in yourself pre-injurance, Tom and post-injurance, Tom as a day-to? I'm not feeling sorry for myself by anything. So not feeling that, let's say you're in a negative situation that's related to business or to life, break up in a relationship, whether it be a work situation. Not feeling sorry for myself in terms of this is happening to me. The conversation to myself is this is happening. And then how am I dealing with it? Not this is happening to me.

So for example, if we put it into a business situation, if we lose a contract for whatever reason, it's objectively looking at it and understanding why. If somebody does wrong by you, you can sit back and say, OK, you can take that victim's mindset of saying, right, why are all these things happening to me? What would be tied me?

And you can sit in that little pool of self-pity for as long as you like. There's not going to get you anywhere. Or you can understand that this is what's happening. How do I deal with it? 2020 is a prime example. We've already said it's a suboptimal year, if you very well put. As we look at that, there's a lot of people in it. And I'm very conscious that everyone's going through a different experience with

this, right? For some people it's devastating for other people, it's moving in their direction and there's a whole range in between. So certainly not being flippant to that fact at all, but also understanding that there is a way of dealing with this from a mindset perspective that will either benefit you or will not help you in any which way. And that's understanding that it's happening and the dynamics have changed, so therefore it's just how you react to it. If it's a negative, if it's affecting you and whatever your scenario is negatively, it just is what it is. And it's now understanding, okay, well, if this is the new set

of scenarios I have to deal with, how am I navigating it? Or you sit at home and you're like, this isn't my fault, look at the world, I'm reading the news every day and the whole world's melting and I can't possibly find a single positive story in this and I can't positively, possibly achieve any of my goals or I can't think of new goals to set and you know, I'm sure we all know people that are, that are sitting in that space and just saying that, none of this is my fault, therefore I can't do anything about it. And that's the key difference. It's the mindset of like, is it,

is it your fault or is it your responsibility? Like it's not your fault that the world is melting down, but it is your responsibility to do something about it. Whether that be for you personally, whether that be for you for your business, whether that be for your family, whatever it is, like that's your responsibility, right? And I suppose that's the mindset shift

of going back to a run, you know, all health breaking loose here, you can knee is gone, your waters run out, it's just a different set of scenarios and you can't constantly play the victim's mindset of this is happening to me, therefore I give up. It's just a different set of scenarios that you can't constantly play the victim's mindset of this is happening to me therefore I give up it's just a different set of scenarios that you've got to approach. And that endurance experience is then transitioned across to you into every day life. Yeah, massively, massively. So

same with whether it be work whether it be personal relationships all of these things. Just approach it that this is a changing set of scenarios. If it's a mistake that you've made, own the mistake, none of us are perfect, whether it be business, whether it be fitness, whether it be personal, with all got our flaws. So own any mistakes that you make, but just try and make a positive impact

wherever you can for yourself and for the scenario that you're trying to affect whether that be business or personal. I was reading the Almanac, given a Val Rava can, again, again for the day and in that he says, you are born, a set of stimulus occurs and then you die. How you choose to respond is completely up to you. Perfect. Perfect. And it's so simple like, which I said that

rather than the last 15 minutes, that one was that was much more insightful. That's one of the problems that I have That one was more insightful. That's one of the problems that I have. I'm unsure how I feel about this pithy aphorism maxim world. I like the fact that you can deliver an entire concept. And maybe everyone that's listening, when they think about

your born you receive some stimulus and you pass away how you choose to respond to you, maybe that will be what they take. And think, ah, that tells me all about the lessons that Tom gave me. In that element, I like it. In another element, it can become quite a sort of masturbatory showy game of who can... Syphon, that's sort of cerebral cool. But yeah, they're important though. I think so. I think that there must be little mantras that we keep telling ourselves.

And that's something that I asked your good buddy Marcus, made earlier on today. Is there anything that you keep in your mind as you're going through particularly painful sections of these events? Is there something you go back to a little mantra? To be honest, in terms of terminology, there's not one single mantra. It's just understanding the concept that is very well put by yourself, just then, in terms of, I don't want to live with regret at the end of the day.

That's what it comes down to. Forgive yourself for your flaws, but if you're coming down and talking specifically about a race, it's just understanding why you're there. It's just understanding that you don't want to be looking back on this and that you failed. And that drives me in business, that drives me in everything. And that's an approach to life.

You, as you've just suggested, there have got a lot of ions in the fire and extreme endurance events. You've also, is it 46th fastest growing company in the like unbelievably quick growing company which has got multiple offices all across this area of the world and family life and then also just trying to exist as a human. How do you balance all of those things? I and a lot of the people that are listening

will think like I couldn't do one of those things full time and somehow this guy is you got the cheat code to fit 36 hours into the day. Is there a doppelganger that you've got like a secret identical twin that you're not telling us about. Yeah, look, it's a number of things, mate. I mean, look, it's certainly putting the hours in. You know, over the years, is... They say you're going to choose your pain, right? In terms of what do you want out of life? Anything that you choose, any direction you choose to go in,

comes with pros and cons in terms of you're good with it all yeah man it's in terms of direction you want to go in with life right if you choose to set a goal that comes with comes along with different times of pain so what can that look like if we're talking in this context I've missed so many social engagements, I've let friendships that have fizzle out. I know far less people than I used to, but I'm okay with that as well because I'm very focused in terms of where I'm going and what I want to achieve out of life and what I'm trying to get to.

So it just comes down to prioritising a lot of things, you know. It's trying to be as organised as possible, but like, I'm certainly not the most organised person. People probably think I've got an agenda for everything I don't. And it's funny, I have conversations with people and people think that I must have everything I covered and crossed and teased, teased, crossed and I started and the truth is I don't make. But I do put the hours in, I do work through the weekends and I do have a, I suppose an outlook on life

as we touched on earlier when I first arrived and we were talking about this and it's, it's understanding that all of it just fits into life and it's easy to say when you own the company and you know whether you're working or whether you're not working it's all kind of the same thing. It's just, I have a goal with the business and I want to get there and that doesn't fit into a 9-5.

Sometimes I'm sad when I cook in the morning writing ideas down and sometimes I'm off running for three hours in a day. It just depends on that day, the agenda evolves. Do you pity people who haven't found this level of passion in their life. Pity would be the wrong term. I do feel that even like close friends, I feel that there's a lot of opportunity for them to grow into that space. I think it's really important that people find their passions. I've been lucky to find it in a number of different ways. My personal relationship with my wife, my business and running. I absolutely love all of those things and to be able

to explore all of them to the extremes, to go from meeting someone to getting married, from running for a bit of fun, to exploring places in the Sahara Desert that very few people will ever visit, to being able to have the opportunity to grow a business like this. I know that I'm very fortunate, but I know it's also because I've focused on these things and none of these things have just happened. It's been a conscious focus and a constant effort to try and drive that. That comes as I go back to the choose your pain thing. If you're going to be really focused on, and one way to explain it is that,

but you can't be half in on everything, because that just results in average rights. So if people have this concept of a balanced life, and if you try and remain balanced with all of these things, what actually happens is you hit a median level across all of them. If you think of them on a table chart, you only hit median level and everything.

So my focus and my kind of concept, and this isn't new, but it's said that something I followed for a long time, is this constant level of imbalance, a micro imbalance from macro balance. So if you look at my life across the board, I'm very happy with a relationship, with a business, and I enjoy my passions and enjoy my friends. But at a certain time, I'm completely happy with a relationship, with a business, and I enjoy my passions and enjoy my friends. But at a certain time, I'm completely imbalanced.

So if I'm gearing up for a long race, you won't get hold of me because I'm either running or I'm working. If there's a huge thing going on at work and when you're opening a new office or moving a country or something that's happening, I'm all in on that. And I won't be seeing so much around the running track. But then sometimes, if I'm just getting married or something, right, as you do,'m all in on that, and I won't be seeing so much around the running track.

But then, and then sometimes, you know, if I'm just getting married or something, right, as you do, you're all in on that. And then, you know, so it's focusing on whatever the goal is in a certain timeframe, going all in in that space, to try and be the best version of yourself in that space. So, like, with running, you can only get to be

having the capacity to run for 40 odd hours and, you know, run ultra-mathens, if you're purely focused on that. But the thing that I see is that the community I spend time with, and I'm not talking the inner fight community, but let's say when we go to those races, the only people there are like absolute Uber running geeks, right?

They're all in it's their entire life. But I'll step into that scenario, and then I'll step out of it. And I'll go into the business space where there's business owners and business leaders But I'll step into that scenario and then I'll step out of it and I'll go into the business space where There's business owners and and business leaders that that's all they do for like 90% of their life And they really struggle with any form of fitness They really struggle with with balancing anything and then there's you know

It's that's easier to quantify them their personal relationship But you can see you can see that what I try and do is find the time and dedicate the time to be the best I can in this space but then pull back from it. I can't be, I can't have the capacity to run an ultra-manifinal year. Unless that's all I did. So I go in and I go out and that's how I try and achieve as much as I can in a certain space. Pull back from it, focus on a different space and then maybe go back to that few months later. So macro balance but micro very much imbalanced. Is that done in advance? Do you look at your year? Is this a very structured thing? You can't just decide to run an ultra marathon tomorrow but similarly there's a lot of

inputs that we don't have control over. The new catastrophe that inevitably occurs at work. The injury that throws you, training schedule out, the argument you have with your misses, etc. What is the process that throws you, training schedule out, the argument you have with your misses, etc, etc. What is the process that you go through to kind of set that out? Because it sounds fantastic. Everyone that's listening should have listened to the episode that I did with Greg McEwan

on essentialism, focus on the vital few, not the trivial many, whereas the single highest point of contribution that you can have in your life, and go for that. Navarrava can become the best in the world at what you do continue to redefine what you do until it's true. And all of these different things take us to the same place which is deep focus work, single task focus, multitasking bullshit, you can't do multiple things at once and even if you try to spread that out really across month periods you can't do multiple things at once, and even if you try to spread that out really across month periods,

you can't open the new office whilst you train for the ultra marathon, it's just not going to happen. But implementing that, actually taking it from being a concept that everybody can really understand so really, and getting it into their life, is this a pre-commitment? Are you looking at quarters and thinking, right, okay? I have this event coming up, I have this office opening,

coming up, I'm going to do this. And I'm going to allow and notice the discomfort from knowing that my fitness is dropping off, or from knowing that I'm gonna have to miss some emails, or knowing that me and my wife are maybe gonna have a more strange relationship because of this focus, self-aware. Is that something that you have to plan in advance?

Yeah, look, really good question. I mean, it's something that I do plan. I wouldn't say that there's anything that's really down on the structure. No, there's not. But there are certain pillars, compared to your points there. Arrase, the race date is the race date, right? If you want to run that race and you've signed up

for it in six months, then that dictates a lot of the training program already. But also you can choose different races to do throughout the year based on what else is going on in life. So there's a focus in terms of what does the year look like? When is a good time for me to be training? When is a good time to be racing? What's going on in business?

And have that rough schedule to say, right, these are the things and some, but sometimes it'll go wrong. But you have to have that approximate structure. But then sometimes I'll have to bail on a race for weeks before the race, even if I've done three months of training for it, because I realize that right now the priority is something going on in business.

We might have won a big account or lost a big account or whatever happens, you know, it's control chaos every day. So with that side of things, like that has to take priority. I don't put myself for my running over business because I'm beholden to 100 people at the agency. Like my job is to look after them.

So if I'm being selfish and going off and doing altruism, that can't be a dare detriment.'s that's always a bit of a challenge. My wife is amazing so she always she gives me the freedom and the space to do as I want to when it comes to all that sort of things. But yeah sometimes you just have to put the plug in and refocus. So it's always just as constant reprioritizing of what's in front of you but they should be built on on some sort of a structure even if it's just in your head. Because if you don't have any goals, how are you going to achieve anything? Like I said, it's in business, we sit down

at the start of the year and we structure, or at the end of the previous year, we structure, this is what we want to do next year. Financial plans, goal setting, right, we want to open a new territory, whatever that might be, and that's a very structured process because that's what's needed needed that then gets assimilated through the business, the management buy into that this is what each of them need to do in order to achieve that wider goal so that's all very very structured. There's an element that you should take from that understanding into your personal life to say okay if I want to

whatever it is if I want to run a math in this year if I want to do x, y or z lose 50 pounds. Whatever it is. Get a partner. Yeah, start a partner. There we go. If you want to get a partner, for example, and you might have been meeting the wrong people, you're probably going to the wrong places. So these things don't just happen.

Business doesn't just build itself. A marathon doesn't run itself. Finding a partner, sometimes you can be lucky, but quite often, you've actually got to start to think about it. Especially as we get a little bit older, we're not meeting the hundreds of people that we use to because we're not going out as much you have to be a little bit more considerate of being like Craywell if I want to meet the right people where am I going to put myself into the situations of hopefully meeting those people so everything needs to be thought through to an extent and then life happens right so then you've got to roll with the sometimes, sometimes that serendipity and it all works out

and it's amazing and you're like, wow, I could never have scripted it. And other times the shit hits the fan and you've got to deal with new set of scenarios as we discussed earlier, but at least have some sort of structure. Because if you don't, what are you doing? You're just bouncing off the walls.

You know what, I've just thought of there, which would be a really cool thing to do and I'm going to maybe suggest to some of my buddies that we might do with this year, would be to have an AGM on your life. At the end of the year and do it you know around about Christmas time when everyone's back home. But it's achieved. Yeah how was your year man?

What went well? You know it's present to the board. Like the floor is yours Tom. You know step up and tell us what did you what did well? What did badly? What you wish you could have improved, aren't you? And what are your goals for next year? What do we all want to achieve next year?

How can we help? How can, oh, you want to do that ultra thing? Well, actually, I happen to have two complete psychopaths in Dubai that I'm buddies with, who can tell you about the best training plan of this thing. Oh, you want to start a creative agency, you happen to have an amazing videographer, whatever it might be. I think that would be a really cool thing to do. One of the issues that I have and many people may do as well, those of us that like being self-sufficient often get stuck in roots more than I think people who are pulled out by

other stimulus. So the advantage of having the AGM is that you will get that different input. We all know what we think. It's very rare that I actually have a new thought. I think the neuroscience suggests that 90% of the thoughts that you had today are the same as you had yesterday. Okay. Which actually means that existing in your mind is a lot like being trapped by the most boring repetitive capture in history. And thinking about that makes you realize that learning's a very slow process. 10% of the thoughts that you have, the different ones from yesterday, compound that over a year is, I don't actually spend that much time thinking of new stuff. Still the same traumas that I had from when I was in school, it's still the same fears

that I used to have from when I was at uni and all that stuff. Yeah, I think that the influence of I used to have from when I was at uni and all that stuff. Yeah, I think that the influence of people like that could be a real... No, I think it would be really powerful and that's an interesting point about the concepts and the thoughts being so similar. I think that's why it's so important to read, to the podcast, to start to expand your, I suppose, level of content consumption that pulls you in those different ways, because you're right. If you're self-sufficient mentally and you set your life up to be like, I'm cool as I am, I've got everything I need, etc., etc. You're not going to get pulled in all of those different directions and all the different stimulists that can affect you so

much. So as you said, you can get stuck in a rut. And if you're constantly thinking about trying to solve every problem yourself, you're only going to get so far with that, right? We all need support. We all need help. And to succeed, it's always a group effort. And no matter who it is, no matter how single focus they are, no matter how much they seem like they've done everything

themselves, it's always a team effort because they've had support from someone along the way. And I think going back to your point about the AGM, I actually used to do something with Marcus and another friend and another friend of mine a few years ago and we were all kind of coming up and we'd have monthly sessions where each time it was another person's focus. So let's say we meet on Wednesday, this is your meeting basically. You would send out a brief to us, it was all written up, we had documentation for it, we would read it, what's the scenario, what's the problem you're facing, what are your challenges, and we would then think about it, when we come

to the meeting, we discuss it, and we're all prepped. Absolutely. Yeah, and we'd support I can help with this, I can help with that. So I think, for listeners as well, I think you've always got to audit the people that you spend most of your time with, we've all heard that you're the fifth person and et cetera, et cetera. So the people that spend the most time with the most important group of people, and as we get, as we get older, it starts to change, it starts to evolve, it has to be a conscious decision. You can't just be friends with someone because you're friends with them at

school. If that friendship is no longer serving you, then you can still obviously be acquaintances to be friends with them, but they shouldn't be in your circle of five people. You're not helping them grow and they're not helping you grow. Like, you have to be supporting each other. And I think it's really important to understand who those people that you have around you, that you're learning from, and how you're supporting them, and how they're gonna support you. So if you create that environment with this AGM

with the four or five or six people that you've got in your head. And you will grow for meeting. There you go, I know grow for meeting. There you go, perfect. We've nailed it, my friend. But it's a super important concept. If you've got those people in your life, you're lucky, right?

Unfortunately, a lot of people that are gonna be listening might be thinking, wow, I'm thinking about that people are hanging out with every day, they're not really having a chance. I hate you. I'm just going to be a board meeting of me in the car. Yeah, yeah. So it's super important, if you can't think of people to put on that board, let's say,

in this concept that we're talking about now, then you need to start to think about that, because that will have such a significant effect on your future that you need to start thinking about it and thinking, okay, I need to spend time with people like that that will make me think, make me feel good about myself that will challenge me, that will allow me to grow, that will push me to grow. That's going to be one of the single biggest, that in your own mindset, it'll be the biggest factors in determining your success. When do you see people around you going wrong the most with motivation and with staying on track.

Sure, Victor mindset all the time and it blows my mind and it frustrates the show out of me. It's people feeling sorry for themselves thinking that everything's happening to them, that life is happening to them and it's not happening because of them, they're not actually taking those steps forward. They're seeing what's happening, they're saying, hands up, I give up, this isn't my fault, I'm allowed to quit because of these things that have happened. And it's that going back to that, is it your fault or is your responsibility to come back to that thought process, and that frustrates me at the end of the day. It's people not taking ownership of whatever that

problem is, and it's very easy, it's very easy to be negative, right? There's a thousand Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r

gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio gweithio gweithio gweithio gweithio and have all the resources that we want whether that be financial or otherwise. So it's that mindset of saying, I don't have enough, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough, whatever, and to achieve what I want to achieve. And because of all these scenarios

and these things that I have no impact on, I therefore can't achieve X, Y, Z. And that, to us, may it frustrates the shared enemy. That point of people realizing, leaning into that discomfort and actually thinking what's the next step, trying to get over the inertia of noticing something wrong, is it for you, is your solution not looking to have regrets, is it an aggression like leaning into discomfort, is it a, I'm grateful to be here,

sort of mindful acceptance? You understand there's multiple different ways that people could get over that because, as you said already, everybody feels like that. Like why is this occurring? That thought, no, it pops up. It's how you deal with that and then move forward. What's your sort of personal strategy with that?

Well, I mean, for me, it's just, hey, I mean, it's a lot of it. It goes back to that same thought process around feeling sorry for yourself or not. It's just them, how do you get yourself at that right? How do you focus on moving forward? How do you keep challenging yourself? How do you keep wanting to grow? I mean, for me, there's a few, I mean you touched on something before we started the podcast actually about around leadership, right? So 2020 has been a challenge for leadership in a number of different areas. Now as you can imagine without me going into all the details, if you're dealing with a hundred people that I look after in the agency that are remote working now, so that was one thing, everyone come together,

right, as of 48 hours time, no one's coming back to the office, everyone's going remote. So the thing the operational challenge is because the clients don't give two shits for the year in the office or for the year at home, like they want the work. They've got deliverables, deliverables, deliverables, deliverables, and if you're late, you're late. So like, you know, that was a challenge anyway, just navigating that side of it, but you're right. When I'm having clients phoning up and saying, oh, we've got to put this on hold because X, Y, or Z. Our funding's been pulled by the government, so we've got to stop this contract.

And all this chaos on one side, but yet you've got to be a cheerleader to the entire team on the other side and be like, you know, we're in this together and we're going to drive through them and run through walls together and try to get everyone motivated to really pull them together and really build the culture with an agency. Now that's a real challenge and at multiple times whether it be that scenario of like you've got to lean into that comfort, you have to lean into that pain and that is how you grow, that is what a leader does. So you can have this internal dialogue.

And this is one that really worked well for me, is imagining what the ideal leader would do. So don't put yourself in the situation at this point. Let's say, okay, X has happened. You happen to be the leader of this scenario, whether it be your business, whether it be your team, whether it be here, whatever your scenario scenario is you're the leader in this particular scenario. X has happened and it's and it's bad. Now you should look at that this is how I do I look at it and be like okay let's remove myself from this remove the emotion from it and be like if I was reading about this in a book what would the ideal leader do? How would they behave? How would they act? How would they engage with

their team? How would they engage with whatever it is that's the challenge? And I built that little framework and sometimes this entire conversation can happen in my head in one minute before I also go quiet, figure it out, and then act or it can you might have a bit more time. I have a few days to understand what's happened and work out what you're going to do next. So it's understanding, taking the emotion out of it, figuring out what that blueprint looks like, and then putting itself back into it and saying, this is what I have to do. So it's what you create the blueprint of what you need to do that. You create your plan in your head, and then you say, but I'm the leader in this scenario. So I have to do

these things. I have to be the one that stands up and puts my hand up and say, actually, this is a scenario. It could be, I mean, we're talking about, often when it's a particularly uncomfortable situation, you might not know how to deal with it. It could be something at work that's happened between two people. It can be a social situation within work, but it's a worldwide social movement and you're like, how do I engage with what's going on in the world in relation to my team and be the figurehead for it and do I bring everyone together to discuss this or do we pretend light's not happening, how should we do it? So again, going back to I sit on my own, I think about what would the ideal leader do here and then I try and

do it and I try and emulate that. So, and it's mostly leaning into uncomfortable things. So, if you have that mindset, that often will dictate, because you've already made the decision to yourself, I'm going to always try and do the, once I've come up with a plan, I'm the guy that's going to do it. So constantly doing that, you remove the choice of saying, oh, do I feel like this? Do I not feel like this? Because nine times I'd tell you, if it's worth doing, you don't feel like doing it. But you look back on any of your things, shit, I'm really glad I did that. And someone else is there going, that was a really good move. That was the decision to make. Yeah. There's

a few things we've been through recently that time with this. The third party perspective is it's called, which is a mental model that doesn't take your side or the opposite side. It imagines you as a third person. There's a famous Jorogan video on it called Be the Hero of Your Own Story. He says imagine that your life is a movie and the movie starts now and the hero's downtrodden and overweight and depressed and doesn't have a partner who's lonely. What would the hero do? Like, you're that guy, do that now. You can be that hero right now. And then James Clea talks about identity-based change. So the way that James gets people to change their habits, especially difficult and ingrained ones,

is he gets you to ask, what would the person I want to be doing this situation? What would the person I want to be doing this situation? So rather than being a smoker that's trying to quit smoking it's I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker What would not a smoker do right now? Not a smoker wouldn't have a cigarette. Yeah, so not a smoker Tom or not a smoker Chris Wouldn't do it decision-made. It does help us to cut through I've been fascinated this year thinking about just how much noise our brains create and that having these very very simple heuristics George McGill, my good buddy who was on the show yesterday said Elon Musk every decision he makes there's one rule one heuristic that he follows will this get the human race closer to Mars

Jeff Bezos Amazon one rule that he follows, will this get the human race closer to Mars? Amazing. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, One Rule, does this improve the customer's experience? That's it. And when you run all of the noise, all of the, anything these guys must have, such a complex decision tree of what it is that they're doing, it's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no two of the most famous entrepreneur innovators on the planet are relying on a rule-each to guide everything they do, business and personal life. And trying to bring it back to that simplicity and this goes back to the maximum aphorist stuff that we were talking about earlier on. Having a little mantra, having these small pithy quotes and concepts that you can distill

down to rely on actually help to remind us that all of the chaos that's going on can actually be simplified down. Yeah, very much so and it comes down, you know what you said there about Elon Musk and Bezos, is that simplicity comes from a goal and that goal is so well defined in both of them in terms of what they want to do, right? So if you have a goal and let's take it, let's make it a little bit more, let's say, conceptually understandable for us, that we're not those guys, right? We're not going to Mars, but let's go ahead, let's use the marathon as an example again, right? So if you've set that goal of running a marathon or whatever the challenges for yourself. Every decision you make either takes you closer to that goal or further away. So once you define exactly what it is, that goal is in your life. Every decision falls within the framework of getting you closer or further away.

So he doesn't surprise me. I haven't heard that about Elon Musk, but that doesn't surprise me at all. That's what goal setting is all about, right? Because if you have a clear goal, then everything else becomes so much more simple. With the altars, someone would say, do you want to go for a beer tonight? No. Very simple to make that because if I do that, it's getting me further away from my goal. If you're super focused focused on where you want to go and it goes back to the micro imbalance and the micro balance at that time, if that decision gets you closer or further away, it's a very easy decision to make, isn't it? If you fully bought it, if you fully bought into it.

What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago? Good question. Focus on people and what I mean by that is good question. Focus on people and what I mean by that is that's used across so many different ways. There's any success we've had in the agency over the last few years is purely because of the people that we have in the business but the focus on people within the communities that we have. We have an outstanding internal team cultures. It's the thing that I'm most proud of, more than any other accolade of fastest growing and declines, we have anything like that.

It's the culture we have in the business that there's no bullshit, there's no politics, there's no backstabbing, there's none of this. And we're operating in an environment that's notorious for it. Agency life is notorious for all of the things that I just said, especially in this region. So we've created this environment where we have a very, very low staff turnover and we focus on, we focus on people over profits and that's not just a nice thing that is put up on the wall, but it's, it really is the

deciding factor of everything that we do. And there's a number of reasons around that. I'm personally not motivated about chasing money. It's not why I get out of bed in the morning. And it allows me to make decisions really easily with regards to, okay, that's going to cost us more money, but it's the right thing to do for the people. So we just do that time and time and time again. And and 10 years later you end up with a culture where everybody in the environment knows exactly what's I suppose what's championed and what's you know what's celebrated and what's you know what's promoted within the business and it's it's not sales it's not bringing in a big contract it's not it's not all of those financial drivers all over they're important because we still have business that has to work for everybody to be able to come to work. But the focus is always, always about what people have done

for each other, like, even example, we do, I do a full agency meeting every Wednesday. So, we've got everybody on the call, anywhere from 80 to 100 people on a Zoom call. And we start every single meeting with 10 minutes, we call the compliment circle. So everybody in the Zoom chat, everyone in the Zoom chat writes down what they're grateful for and to whom they're grateful. So from a work context. So, oh, thanks so much for Jenny. She went over and above. What were you grateful for this week,

can you remember? Or was I grateful for this week? For me, yeah, to be honest, it's literally the management of the workload that we've got on right now. We're in a fortunate space where we spent 10 years building our digital credibility and pushing the business into that space. COVID has accelerated digital, so we're in a fortunate space that we're very busy right now because we're managing all of it. It's changing dynamics, but we're busy in that space. And I'm incredibly grateful for the amount of work that the team is dealing with, because we've got people that are burning themselves to the floor, that my job is to facilitate that as much as I can, hire as many people as we can to try and depressurize. And we're a growing organism, we're not perfect, like we make mistakes as a business, but the intent is always correct. We're always trying to do the best by our clients, we're not perfect, we make mistakes as a business, but the intent is always correct.

We're always trying to do the best by our clients, we're always trying to do the best by our people internally. And because of that, we've given leeway internally, our team will run through walls for us because they know that we're not asking them to run through the wall because we want to make more money. We're saying this is a scenario, how do we get through this together? And they're putting the hand up and we're like, well I'll run through that wall. Cool, okay. John is running through that wall and Bob's like, I'm going to run through that wall.

And because we've got this culture internally, that's what's happening. Now for me, that's great. Firstly, that's ASS' accessible business, internally, and it's the right thing to do because it's the right thing from a human and empathetic perspective. But I don't wanna build a business on people burning themselves and running through walks. That's not what I wanna do because then that defeats the purpose of my goal, which is running a human-focused empathetic organization.

So my focus is right, ship, okay, let's focus on recruitment. We need more people in, that person needs support, that person needs support, that account, the clients not paying for those extra two people but we have to put them on it because these guys are going killed here because the clients that much more demanding is a government client, we can't really say no, we're stuck in a bit of an awkward place, throw more resource at it because yes we'll lose money on that account, perhaps, but the people will be okay. And then over time we'll work out how to bring it back into a profitable space.

So we don't run the business from a spreadsheet. We run the business from looking at people and saying, okay, what do we need to do right by people? Whilst at the same time running a good organisation. And that's allowed us over the last two years to win those accolades of, you know, fastest growing agencies and blah, blah, blah. And that's what we're trying to do. It's just focus on people. That's your going to Mars. That's my going to Mars.

I really like it. I think to hear in, especially this year, of all years, a year where people have been made redundant after I had in the center and had job and career challenges, that focusing on people first has been anti-fragile is a very reassuring thing to hear. Yeah, I mean that served us so well whilst coronavirus, I just decimated everything, right? Now, in terms of how people knew that the company had their back, and that helped them in many, many ways. We paid for professionals to come in and do mental health workshops for the team. We were sending Deliveroo credit once a week to everybody in the agency so that everyone

could get Deliveroo to deliver that lunch and everyone would get on the zoo and we'd all have team lunch together. So we did so many things to try and focus on bringing everyone together and making everyone understand that the company is here for you. We as an agency will get through this together and that definitely helped the team. And as things started to get better economically with the business, we were losing clients because major events, Expo, we put our hold for example, with a social media agency for Expo. And six people on that account full time. And then they sent us a letter saying, as of next week, We had a few things like that where revenues got hit, but we didn't cut anybody's salary, we didn't let anybody go.

We didn't do any of those things, and we said, right, we're going to pay for this. We're going to fund this as long as we can without affecting anybody in the organisation, because that's the right thing to do. And that's going to cost myself as a shareholder. And that's going to be this as long as we can without affecting anybody in the organization because that's the right thing to do. And that's going to cost myself as a shareholder. That's going to cost us. But it's the right thing to do. From a selfish perspective, it will let me sleep at night to know that I'm not basically borrowing from my team by cutting their salaries to then keep that money here for a rainy day. We said, right, if we need to put all of this back in to keep these guys safe, and that's what we're going to do. And the market, fortunately, started to come back a little bit earlier than it has for most,

because we're in the digital space. We picked up more work, and then as that happened, what did the team do? They start running through walls because they saw what we did. You know, so it's not even just a, I mean, it sounds like it's a good business decision, but it wasn't. That's just, that was just the payoff for doing the right thing from a human perspective. And that's what's, you know, that's what's the most important. And that's what, why we are today. We've, you know, we've hired 40 people since January. And, you know, that's because we've, we've focused on people and they've run through walls. We've win, we win accounts because of that. And it's just, I'm proud to be part of that team, not to run the company and own that company.

I'm proud to be part of that group of people where I can walk in and everyone's high five or each other and just think, shit, you know what, this is a good place to be. I've seen some companies that I think, you say, dictatorially trying to achieve the same thing So I've seen some companies during my experience where they have a Autocratic forced level of socialization and people are walking along and they're always they've got a high five everybody Yeah, when they make a sale and the other thing stops and stuff like that and I always wonder It feels a little bit like America sorry to all of the Americans You know when someone's in a brand new relationship and all they do is post about the relationship That's not just America, though. Yeah, but I'm getting up America. Wait. I haven't forgotten about Americans and

Someone's in a brand new relationship, all of their Facebook photos, then they get to normal level of Facebook photos, and then they start popping back up and you think, I think there's something wrong in it, I think that that is what they're holding on to. And when I hear the way that people from America who are quite rightly proud of their country, it's a little bit like the Lady Doff protest too much. It feels a bit sort of like I really like all the time I love my country. I miss that a lot. Well, it's quite a lot of problems in the country. But when I see these companies, it operate in the same way. It feels incredibly forced and realizing that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes happens so quickly for people.

Now one of the interesting insights I learned here today is why we have white as humans around our eyes and it's so that we can see where the other person is looking because gaze is such an important indicator of truthfulness. If you look at all of the other primates, you look at gorillas and chimps, black eyes. So you wouldn't be able to see where someone's looking and because truthfulness is such an important part, we have 14

million sensory cells in our body and 11 million of them are dedicated to sight. Same again, massively skewed towards what we're looking at. And my concern for companies like that, and also for other ones, you maybe don't have this, this employees-centred focus, is that if it's not there, built into the source code, emergent, coming out of the day-to-day activity, people are so quick to pick up on hypocrisy. and it's a dangerous situation to be in. It is, I listen to your podcast of the day about we work as well. Wow.

That was really interesting. And that's, if you're talking about a spectrum, that's the furthest end of the scale where it is forced, right? And it was forced and it was. Very much so. There's a lot of, yeah, a lot of hypocrisies, you say, there was a lot of, just talking about saving the planet while we've got three private jets.

There we go, it's in holiday homes. Yeah, exactly that sort of thing, right? And it is that. But if we break it back down into a more granular level and we talk about the culture's inside organizations and his free lunch is going to do the thing. Is it all the perks? Is it the whatever you go into Facebook?

Oh wow, you've got a whole kitchen there, you can make your food. Is it all those things? No, it's not. People want to feel safe. That's it. Like if they feel safe when they come into work that they're not gonna be judged,

they're not gonna be ostracized for whatever reason, they're not gonna be fired because politically it was the right thing to do. If they feel safe coming to where they can really bring themselves to work as humans and that can be anything that goes with that. So we focus on the fact that this is something that I speak to every single person in an interview about. I say, look, you're choosing to come and work here, and we really respect that, because you're choosing to invest your time,

which is the most important element that any of us have. You're choosing to invest your time in the agency. You're choosing to invest your career in this organization. And we're firstly, very grateful for that, but we understand that this is a two-way relationship. Yes, you're getting paid a salary to do that, but you're investing a huge amount of who you are. And I know how busy the agency is,

so I know what you're going to be investing in this. And that comes from a new joiner or existing, it's the same dialogue, same conversation. So therefore, as an agency, we have a responsibility, not just to say, cool, well, at 6 p.m., all right. You're not our responsibility anymore. You go and keep your personal life out of this

because that's your life. And we're only interested in the hours that we pay you for. That's not how we operate. That's how a lot of businesses operate. You should be able to come in and start crying at work because something's happened at home. Like you have to be human in the workplace. And if you create the environment

where someone can really bring their humanity into the workplace, and so I'm having a really shit day because of A, B, C, and D. And when we're dealing with a size of workforce that we have, we have parents dying. We have scenarios of someone getting terminally ill. We have, whether that be the workforce or their sister, their brother, this thing's going on all the time. And we had a core focus from early on of saying, right, we need to look after them

and their entirety. So we've gone to pick somebody up from an office because we've been told something has happened in their family before they've been told. And we've had to pick them up from a client meeting with a plane ticket and be like, you need to go home and take them to the airport get them on a plane. Like we have to look after people to that level because at the end of the day

how can we ask so much of people in the workspace when I know that they're working on weekends, I know that they'll be working the evening for that pitch tomorrow morning, all of those things. So as a company we've made the decision that we look after the entirety of that person, whether that be sometimes financially giving them like, something's gone on at home, will that help? Could that help? And that's not something we talk about across the business. And from one person to the other person, they don't know that we've done it.

It's not something that we celebrate, but it's something we do on an individual level often, because we'll have someone in the office crying their eyes out, because of ABC and D. And if, if myself or as a company company we have the opportunity to fix that problem by telling that person that what do you mean you're waiting for a week to get on the plane because of X Y and Z like absolutely no workload off money there you go go you know if that's scenario is where someone's not wanting to say that they're waiting for their

salary to come through in a week's time to get on a plane to go and see their sick father I was just like what they were new they didn't know that they're waiting for their salary to come through in a week's time to get on a plane to go and see their sick father. I was just like, what? They were new. They didn't know that they could actually ask for these things. And I was like, there's a plane ticket, not even taking it out of your salary. What if you go, come back when, you know, when you're okay? Right. One thing that I've thought about a lot recently in this ties into it is how athletes and sports people have a lot of mental models that we probably should

port across into real life and think about what every group sport is called. The team. What does the team do? Team works together to achieve the goals. I think team in a business context a lot of the time it's just a title. I've been a part of teams I'm sure you have as well where no one cares. You turn up how many people know that I can't be myself at work. I can't say what I mean to say. And the team isn't working together. You're pulling in that direction, I'm pulling in this one and John's pulling that way and we're getting nowhere. They're ones pretending to be robots, right? Because they're breathing, they work, selves to work.

So that's, there's a problem there already. And like I said, there's high performing teams and there's certain indicators of high performing teams that are similar across all. So on one of the Wednesday calls that I do, I talk through different things that I want to picked up during the week that I think will help the organization, help the team.

And one of them, the other day, was actually the all blacks. So it's the tenets of the the all black rugby team. Whatever. I can't remember all of them But one that certainly stands out is no tickets Fine, that's that the actual words what one unbelievable rules are live life by and they literally like it doesn't matter How good you are if you're a decade you're not on this team So you can be the greatest rugby player the world has ever seen if you act like a ticket You're gone. They're other one is sweep the shades. So sweep the shades is, it doesn't matter who you are, could be Richard McCaw in this case, it's the captain of the team.

You should still be the kind of sweeping the changing rooms after a game. You should be able to do that, and you should do that at times. So it's about understanding that nobody's too big, nobody's bigger than the team itself, nobody's more important than the team itself. And myself included, am I in the business? But I'm there, sleeves rolled up with the team when it needs to, that's what you need to be able to do. So the way that we talk internally is we're somewhere between a family and a high performing team. We do more on the family side than most companies would,

but don't think that you can come in to work day after day at not perform because you will be asked to leave And everyone knows that and no we've we've moved people out of the business Is the just a the only the only thing the only thing we're ruthless on in the company the only thing is culture So we've had people have come in done a great job I'm getting what's that message from the client say how happy they are with this new person that's running their account But they've been a dickhead internally three weeks later. I got I front the client I'm sorry, I know they're really good at their job. I know you love them or blah, but no internally They were gossiping they were

Just niggling just they're the sort of cancer that you need to pull out very quickly before it starts to poison the well And that was yeah,, that's the one thing that we focus on. To back that up, I remember reading an example about putting problem students in with groups of high performers and what the researchers are trying to look at was, does one bad apple spoil the lot or can an overwhelming number of high performers bring up the person who is lazy or unmotivated or negative or transactional. And it turned out that it was one bad apple spoil the lot, fairly robustly across a number of different studies. They found if you put into a, I think it is academic work in like correcting a portfolio for some masters

program. And you could put one underperforming student in with a group of five of the highest performing students and all the high performing students would start to downregulate. So being, how do you say, being dictatorial with culture and liberal with emotion, I think, seems like a nice idea. My final question is what you're working on personally over the next year. You've still got areas of yourself that you want to enhance and reduce. What have you got sort of on the personal AGM for the next year? I have good questions. There's a couple of different areas. Firstly,

AGM for the next year. Good question. So there's a couple of different areas. So firstly, to know the easier area of that question to answer, to fit the sides. So, I'm focusing on running the fastest marathon that I can. So, I'm focused on goals for that. So, I changed all of my training from some of the longer ultra stuff to try to run as I feel like it's sprinting. Yeah.

It's a very different way of training, a very different mindset. It's what you're hoping to do. My PB at the moment is 3-14 for the marathon and I want to get a sub-3, so I've got a bit of work to do. So yeah, so see, but it doesn't help with bloody racists get canceled. Having got canceled, the bike got canceled, so we'll see. So when I get back to actually being lined up for a race then that's going to be the goal. Outside of that, look, my focus is, I'm fairly newly married, so it's making sure that I'm balancing that side of things with everything that's going on with work, because we're just opening the office in Saudi, we're in the process of opening in Egypt, so that's sucking up a lot of my time so it's just trying to balance everything that I'm going on and with you know focusing on the work because I need to push

that as far as I can right now it's one of those points where I have to go all the way on it but not to the detriment whereas before I had girlfriends and stuff was a lot more relaxed it's like okay let's push that stuff yeah you know now I need to be bigger commitment bigger commitment a bit more focus so just trying to be the best I can in that space. And to be honest, just constantly growing, you know, from a leadership perspective, every day is a new set of challenges. Every day I've never done X before.

There's a company grows, right? You've never looked after 30 people before. Then you've never looked after 31 before. Then you've never looked after 32. So we get into the stage now where there's, what I've noticed, obviously the business books say this, but it's only when you really get to it, you really understand that when things get to a certain scale and size, everything changes. So the difference between like X and Y is not a huge, it's just more hours of the same.

Now all of a sudden my role completely changes. So I'm now further out of my comfort zone than I was six months ago, and I'm exponentially. Exponentially, and it keeps challenging that, right? So I'm not doing the stuff that I feel I was good at. So you start off doing whatever X is, whatever your artistry is, and you build a business around it. And then you do more of it, and more of it,

and more of it, and then you actually start to do less of it, but it's the start to bring people in, right? And then it gets to a point where you don you do more of it and more of it and more of it and then you've actually started to do less of it. That's the start to bring people in right and then it gets to a point where you don't do any of it and your job is completely different because you don't do any of these things anymore. Your focus has to be completely, it's driving the strategy of the company forward, looking after people, making sure that resourcing we're set up, making sure that where are the problem points, where are things maybe falling between the gaps? As we're scaling so much, we grew 91% to headcount last year, so you can imagine it's

a different business. It's a completely different organisation, and like I said, we're not perfect in any which way, we're trying to be the best that we can be, and sometimes there's things that we do incredibly well, and you know we get that visibility for it which is down to amazing people in the organization and other times we get it wrong and my job is to look across the business and try and pinpoint where we're going wrong or where we're going down a path that's wrong or where we've got the wrong people doing the wrong things. So my job now is mostly resources, you're just literally not letting us put square pegs in round holes and in the round pegs in the round holes and that's the, if you get that right then everything works well. As soon as you get high performing people doing the wrong thing they're not

high performing people anymore. So you can end up losing really good talent because you haven't focused on what they're actually doing day today And would they be better over here? So it's a constant move because this person is on leave and this person sick and this person joins So it's constantly evolving so being better at that Is my core focus so try to consume whatever I can to just improve? Couple of insights there the first one being you were talking about your relationship and I was thinking about the analogy with the team

and don't let bad apples spoil the lot. Internally, especially when you're spending a lot of time with one person, all of the different dials and knobs of emotions and resentment and undelt with trauma that you have, are kind of like different players or different team members. And what you don't necessarily want actually is to set the tone early on, early on in this marriage

that you've got with some of those bad apples, actually starting to plant and get some roots in there. And then I've stopped it for a bit. And then it comes back and it's much harder, you know, as we've spoken about, using the word exponential, that can grow into a real big problem. So I think setting the tone in relationships early very positively and doubling down on that

Front loading the lack of The lack of arguing. Yeah, I think our front loading the harmony is a way that you could look at doing that I think it's a very very smart way to run a relationship and the second thing was you were talking about doing something new that I've never done before, which is imposter syndrome. Like feeling I am unprepared, unqualified and inexperienced, that all of the stuff that I have to do every day, had Seth Golden on the show a couple of weeks ago, and he gave this wonderful example about imposter syndrome, when he said, when you're feeling post syndrome, say thank you. If you're doing something that you've never done before, you have every right to feel like an imposter. Feeling like an imposter is a sign

that you're doing good work. It means that you are breaking you ground. It means that you're doing things, pushing the boundaries of what you have done before. So say thank you. And I was like, such a good way of looking at it, isn't it? I did a whole podcast for myself, my business partner on Imposter Syndrome.

And it was one of the most downloaded shows that we ever did because everybody feels it. Every time we get a new job, every time we get a promotion, any of these things, you always feel like that surely someone more qualified than I am. And I've gone through it multiple times, but now I'm going through, like I said, all these new challenges of where we're at with work, but I'm totally cool with that because

the freedom I give myself and the freedom I give my team is that it's okay not to be great to anything. Like, anyone in the management team can be like, I know that's within my remit because I look after X, but I have a lot of fucking clue about that side of things because I know that they're really good over here and nobody's good at everything, right? And you have to give yourself, you have to be easy enough on yourself to understand that if you're going to grow, you're out here. It's growth for reasons, it's because you don't know how to do it.

And it's understanding that. And I think he put it really, really well with saying thank you, because if you have that gratitude mindset as well, to know that, okay, well, I'm going into this space I should be thankful that I've either put myself in it so gratitude to yourself or thank you to x person that believes in you enough to say that they feel that you can do that so you should be grateful for that and that's how it all grows. I love it Tom Mann today has been fantastic thank you for joining me

people want to check out your stuff where should they go? At Tom Arton on Instagram it would be the best one. Anything professional on LinkedIn as well, I know, I'm on there. And then, yeah, podcast the Creator Sessions. So yeah, that's it. Fantastic, thank you, mate. Cheers mate. And we're done. Easy as that. Get over, get over, get over.