Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Doug Adamson on questions, creativity and innovation

Episode Date: May 23, 2020

To help you make the shift from conformity to creativity and innovation by learning to ask better questions, and the right questions, today’s guest Doug Adamson is the perfect antidote. Doug has spent his entire life asking the right questions as a key ingredient for his initial and ongoing success.  As an inquisitive boy from good old Adelaide, after completing his training as an electronic engineer in the early 1980s, Doug’s first proper business in the UK involved producing radio shows and interviewing rock stars such as the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Talking Heads, Sting, Pink Floyd, Mark Knofler and many more – what a great way to develop your questioning skills by sitting face to face with the world’s greatest rock legends – and we have some fun digging into his experience with many of my music heroes.  And his constant questioning and pursuit of improvement and innovation also led him to become a world record holder in an obscure branch of cycling. Since then, Doug has gone on to entrepreneurially build a number of companies in the UK, Europe, South East Asia and Australia - mostly commercialising new ideas.  He’s also founded a business in organics, acquired a boutique tourism business, and made several angel investments. Along his evolving progression, he’s built expertise in investment management and capital raising via his experience with early stage venture capital funds. Doug now loves filling his days working with innovative companies. Doug is motivated by questioning, testing and helping businesses bring new products to the market.  Doug's book recommendation: The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Question everything when you're assembling the information about what you need to do or how you think your industry might be affected or your job might be affected or your group of friends. It's, you know, information and understanding that information and analysing that information has to be the first step, I think. Secondly is knowing yourself and then going, okay, well, because I've now got the information and I know myself, let's think creatively and differently about the options I've got. It starts with curiosity and loving learning and meeting people and, I guess, thinking laterally. um so so that's i think the common thread um as well as being on the the leading or the bleeding edge of of new ideas um because i find that exciting you know i i'm not very good at looking in the past and looking at history but i'm i'm way more excited about the future opportunities welcome to the get invested podcast where we share great conversations with experts from

all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now.

Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters. How curious are you? How creative are you? How much do you ask questions? And do you ask the right questions or do you just accept things on face value. What questions have you asked yourself about the recent global pandemic so that you can learn from it, innovate and better position yourself for the future? Because there's no doubt about it, we're certainly living in amazing times. Now one of my observations of our total

global panic shutdown and lockdown response is that now more than ever we react more to fear than being motivated by opportunity and the media and to a lesser extent governments are learning that the best way to control us is to control our emotions by keeping us scared first it was the bushfire bushfire bonanza and now it's the covid show 24 7 reality tv count the killing shows a thin slice of reality that's totally misrepresented and over emphasized as the thick slice. Now, I'm not underestimating the impact that it's had on a lot of people, but we need to keep some perspective. And in parallel with the excellent musings of Dr. Joe Dispenza, whose approach reinforces a unique thinking of Get Invested guests and

leading intuitive Craig Wilson, unfortunately, I'm not sure I believe anything I see on the television or read in the news anymore. I'm just not sure that it's actually factual because it flies in the face of everything that we know. And that is that there's a general sense of goodness in every one of us, no matter where we are in the world. We instinctively know that we're wired to care for one another, to support one another, to give to one another. I believe we're naturally wired that way. And I think that if someone is trying to diminish our caring, giving nature as a way of controlling us, they instill stress hormones by instilling fear, they instill hostility, they instill anger, they instill pain, they instill suffering.

And it's these emotions that begin to create separation, isolation, and conflict. And once these emotions are dominating how we feel, we stop trusting anyone. Because in survival, we just focus on taking care of ourselves. So if we're constantly living in fear and focused purely on survival, we're easy to control, to comply, to conform. So I think that this time of global uncertainty and fear-driven, panicked, stampeding herd response has shown us that we need to be able to rise above these emotional stress responses. And when you do, you're no longer controlled.

The best way to control us is to control our emotions. And when someone can control our emotions, of course they're going to keep our attention, moving from one apparent disaster to the next so that we're constantly drowning in drama. We become conditioned to become fear-driven reactors instead of proactive opportunity-driven. We become conditioned to move away from rather than moving towards.

In other words, to become victims instead of victors. Social distancing, shutting down the borders, they're all necessary, but they're instilling a subtle reinforcement of separatist, isolationist, survival-driven exercises that are moving us to selfishness. and it's very subtle the increasing frequency and perceived severity of rapid changing radical uncertainty is here to stay as we collectively continue to demonstrate to the media and our governments that fear sells fear motivates and fear enables control on the positive side the recent global stay-at-home conditions have given us a rare opportunity to pause and retreat from

the day-to-day busyness of our lives to reflect by removing the constant distraction and stimulation from our external environment that reminds us of who we are as a personality, e.g. we're not going to the same places, we're not seeing the same people, we're not doing the same things, we've been confined to a kind of personalised retreat in the comfort of our own home. And the beauty behind this and the opportunity is, who are we going to emerge? As we break back out of our cocoons, are we going to continue to be the caterpillar thinking that the world's about to end, or transform into creative butterflies where this is just a new beginning.

Sure, the conditions in our environment are causing us to be uncertain, and in uncertainty, when we can't predict certain things, we move from everything that's predictable and known to this realm called the unknown. And if we're truly going to make a difference in the world, we have to learn to be creative and adapt. and humans have demonstrated over thousands of years that we're very good at using challenging circumstances to grow bigger and better.

The global pandemic has provided us with a necessary wake-up call. We're at a new crossroads and the recent and ongoing shocks are resulting in a growing divide between the constantly scared, conforming, complacent, compliant and the creative, connecting catalysts. Between those that continue to react and focus on problems and those with questioning minds that are proactive and create innovative solutions. So which side are you going to be on?

How can you shift from remaining deceptively comfortable short term, like a frog in a slowly boiling pot, to embracing change as opportunity and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable so you can become more comfortable long term? How do we create and break the scared survival nexus? to swing the pendulum back from fear to flow as Craig Wilson puts it to move the dial from taking back to giving

from hiding to hugging from withdrawing away in fear to moving towards with love and joy from severed to synergy ultimately from dark back to light. I've already started carrying this in recent episodes turn off the Fear Factory media tab develop optimism and resilience

by focus on creating a better future and make and take time to think and reflect. And on top of becoming future-focused, optimistic, resilient and taking that time, the next step is to become constantly curious and creative. Now, unfortunately, many of us have forgotten how and we haven't really been curious and creative since doing art at school. Why? Because the world has progressively knocked this out of us on the road to ever-increasing levels of compliance and conformity.

And if life is about complying and conforming, we no longer need to think and create. But rekindling our childhood fascinated curiosity by becoming a creative artist is exactly what we need to start doing. As Seth Godin so well put it in his book, Lynchpin, Are You Dispensable? An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity and boldness to challenge the status quo. It no longer has anything to do with a paintbrush. As Godin demonstrates, Charlie Chapman was an artist. Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod, he's an artist. There are now artists who work with numbers, business models and customer conversations.

Art is now about intent and communication. It's about creativity. Tom Peters, the famous author of In Search of Excellence, he's an artist. Even though his readers are business people, he's an artist because he takes a stand. He takes the work personally. he constantly questions and he doesn't care if someone disagrees his questioning art is part of him and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important not because he expects you to pay for it reinterpreting seth godin's words the art of questioning is a personal act of courage

something one human does that creates change in another and in another great book how to talk like Ted, Carmen Gallo quotes that in 10 years time, 47% of current jobs won't even exist. And to be in the half that survive and thrive, you need to be a connecting creative catalyst, to be a creative problem solver. And as you heard in the opening excerpt from today's guest, this all starts with the quality of our questions, because the quality of our questions would determine the quality of your answers and solutions. Ultimately, and unfortunately, Our information overload world puts much higher emphasis now on exuding knowledge, even when we're ignorant.

So a higher premium is being placed on our answers rather than the quality of our questions. So how do you kickstart your creativity by asking better questions and asking the right questions? As Albert Einstein famously said, learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing though is not to stop questioning. He also said that if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. Einstein believed that the quality of the innovative solutions you generate is in direct proportion to your ability to identify the problem you hope to solve by asking the right questions. To reinforce this insight, Thomas J. Watson famously said that the ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer.

And as Celine Chinoy mused in her great blog on the importance of asking the right questions, most of our major historical discoveries occurred because of fearless individuals who were driven and enthused by their questions. The Wright brothers asked, what if we could fly? Copernicus wondered, is Earth really the centre of the universe? And Edison pondered, are there other ways to light up our homes besides candles? Asking the right questions stimulates our innovative capabilities because our minds are natural problem solvers.

The brain's a versatile and malleable device that loves to brainstorm, conceptualise, analyse, process and soak in new data. This immense potential can easily be tapped into by asking the right questions. Questions act as cues that direct our thoughts towards specific directions. Once we ask a question,

the part of our brain known as the reticular activating system immediately gets to work to find answers. It's a mind portal that filters all incoming information and affects what you pay your attention to. If you focus on something like a creative project, like solving an issue at work, your mind will instantly create ideas, thought patterns and solutions that you wouldn't have had otherwise

without you honing in what you wanted to devote your attention to. Now in this light, whether an experience is framed as a growth opportunity or a destructive event largely depends on the questions that you ask yourself about the experience. The mind replays events in a loop based on how you've digested and stored them in your long-term memory and your self-narrative. That's why it's critical to ask empowering questions when you're in self-reflection mode.

In addition to breaking negative thought patterns, asking simple yet purposeful open-ended questions has the potential to crack open your hidden inner treasure of subconscious wisdom that can give you breakthroughs, creative insights and solutions to your problems. According to motivational guru Tony Robbins, quality questions create a quality life.

He believes that successful people ask better questions and as a result, they get better answers. So don't hold yourself back from questioning yourself and others and give your mind the freedom to explore unknown territory. So here's a few simple ways to enhance and grow your questioning abilities. Firstly, learn to be still and take mental breaks. As we discussed last week, adopt the five-hour-a-week rule of giving yourself an uninterrupted hour a day just to think. Create the space for questions to attract the answers.

Secondly, allow your imagination to wander. Logic can give structure to your thoughts, but it's your imagination that fuels the creative inspiration. When you have time alone with your thoughts and unanswered questions, your ideas can unveil themselves from the deeper and richer recesses of your intuition. Thirdly, journal. The act of writing engages your analytical and your rational left brain while also using your right brain to intuit and to feel. Unexpected ideas, hunches and questions can come through from your writing.

Number four, let curiosity lead your way. When you're curious about a particular subject, you're more likely to come up with intelligent and well-framed questions because you're passionate about finding the answers to whatever it is that you're being drawn towards. There's an old adage that states that you should first seek to understand before you can seek to be understood. By tapping into your imagination and asking the right questions, you'll gain access to a higher wisdom. Lastly, challenge yourself to do something different every day. It's why I continuously challenge myself to play the piano and write, sing and perform my own music. It teaches me the skill and habit of constantly questioning, learning, testing and being creative.

And it forces me to be able to coordinate several things at the same time. Each hand, each finger, each foot on the pedals are all doing different things simultaneously. Developing these creative questioning coordination skills is critical to my future. It's also one of the reasons I continue to play competitive field hockey. not only does it challenge my fitness but it challenges my ability to constantly question what I'm doing from one second to the next to make quick decisions under pressure to connect and coordinate the movements of teammates and anticipate where I need to be and what I need to do team sports a great environment to hone your constant questioning skills to creatively think

and do several things at once to constantly question yourself so that you can be in the right place at the right time to do the right thing so what passion projects are you pursuing that constantly question and challenge your ability to grow and improve now obviously the best way to become a better questioner is to simply ask more questions question everything albert einstein also said personal creativity and organizational innovation rely on a willingness to seek out novel information as the harvard business review evidenced questions and thoughtful answers foster smoother and more effective interactions, they strengthen rapport and trust and they lead individuals and groups towards discovery. And I believe that the right questions

and answers have a power that goes far beyond matters of performance. The wellspring of all questions is wonder and curiosity and a capacity for delight. And the good news is that by asking questions we naturally improve our emotional intelligence which in turn makes us better questioners, a reinforcing growth cycle. So environments, cultures and organisations that encourage people to ask questions help to build innovation, freedom of expression and creativity. Questions, when properly framed, help to trigger deep thought and are useful in covering those insights that may lie beneath the surface. So I keep asking myself, why don't we ask more questions? If it's obvious that asking questions is such a powerful way of learning, innovating

and growing. Why do we stop asking questions? For some, they become complacent. They assume they know all the main things they need to know and they don't bother to ask more. They cling to their beliefs and their assumptions and criticise or reject anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions. This is a very dangerous fixed position in a constantly changing world. Some people are in such a hurry to get things done that they just don't stop to ask questions because it might slow them down. Being busy is more important than being bright. They risk rushing headlong into the wrong decisions.

Others are afraid that by asking questions they'll look weak, ignorant or unsure. They fear that asking questions might introduce uncertainty or show them in a poor light. But from where I sit, asking questions is a sign of strength and intelligence, not a sign of weakness or uncertainty. Great leaders and innovators never stop asking questions

and are well aware that they don't have all the answers. They know that intelligent questions stimulate, provoke, inform, inspire, innovate and create new insights. As Paul Sloan well observed in his innovation management blog, the founders of Google proudly say that we run this company on questions, not answers. They know that if you keep asking questions, you keep finding better answers. And here are some more examples where our great inventors, scientists and leaders all start by asking great questions. Isaac Newton asked, why does an apple fall from a tree?

Charles Darwin asked, why do the Galapagos Islands have so many species not found elsewhere? And Einstein asked, what would the universe look like if I rode through it on a beam of light? By asking these kinds of fundamental questions, they were about and able to start the process that led to their game-changing breakthroughs. And the great philosophers like Confucius, Socrates, Aristotle, Russell and Nietzsche, they spent their lives asking deep questions about the meaning of life, morality, truth, etc.

Now, we don't need to be that contemplative. However, I challenge you to ask the deep questions about the situations you face. it's the best way to get the information you need to make informed decisions. And if Google can't help you or a knowledge gap needs to be addressed ask that question no matter how naive it may sound. I often say to our clients that the only dumb question is the one that you don't ask. So start to practice asking more questions in your everyday conversations.

If you're operating in an environmental culture that frowns upon asking questions then it's time to change your environment or move to another one. as it just won't survive the radical uncertainty and constant change we'll continue to experience with ever-increasing frequency. If you don't ask, you won't last. But how do we choose the questions that we must ask ourselves? In what area you need answers, whether it's your business, job or relationships,

I suggest using a strategy called mind-storming. Mind-storming is where you write down as many possible questions and ideas to stimulate the brain into becoming an idea-generating machine. The more you do it, the better and easier it becomes. The brain's like a muscle, so it's time to start giving it a regular workout. Once you come up with at least 20 questions, start shortlisting them back to the best five and then use the mind-storming technique again to answer the questions. To get you started, here's a dozen of the best questions to ask yourself,

so grab a pen and paper or just jump on your laptop and jot down your answers to the following. What do I want to do in my life? How do I want to live? What does my ideal life look like? My perfect day, week, month or year? Who am I with? Where am I? What am I doing? If today was the last day of my life, how would I spend it? What's my definition of freedom and fulfillment? What's the number one thing that makes me tired? Why is that? How do you like to live your life at the moment? What's the one thing you need to do to change it? What do you constantly look forward to and why?

Should your work always feel like work? If not, what are the ingredients you would need for it not to feel like work? If you could only pick five people to take to an abandoned island to live with you for the rest of your life, who would they be and why? What activities, hobbies, interests, books, programs, memberships do you pay for and why is that? if you could only talk about one topic for three hours tomorrow what one topic would it be and why

if you could only have five things what are they and why did you choose them these type of open-ended questions are a helpful start to understanding the power of asking questions and if you want more inspiration on this here's your challenge jump on our website knowhowproperty.com.au, hit the get in touch button, complete the form with your best question in the briefly tell us what you want box, and we'll email you chapter 14 of my book, The Freedom Formula, which helps you to identify your why through a questioning process. And the best question received will get a free copy of the entire book. So let me ask you again, how well do you ask questions? From my experience,

most of us don't question how we question. To help you further in this critical shift from conformity to creativity and innovation, by learning to ask better questions and the right questions, today's guest, Doug Adamson, is the absolute perfect anecdote. Doug has spent his entire life asking the right questions as a key ingredient for his initial and his ongoing success. As an inquisitive boy from good old Adelaide, after completing his training as an electronic engineer in the early 80s,

doug first's real proper business in the uk involved producing radio cram radio programs and interviewing rock stars such as the rolling stones paul mccartney talking heads sting pink floyd mark knopfler and many more what a great way to develop your questioning skills by sitting face to face with the world's greatest rock legends and we really have some fun in our discussion today, digging into his experience with many of my music heroes. And his constant questioning and pursuit of improvement and innovation led Doug to become a world record holder in an obscure branch of cycling. Since then, Doug has gone on to entrepreneurially have found a number of companies in the UK, Europe, Southeast Asia and Australia, mostly

commercialising new ideas. He's also founded a business in organics, acquired a boutique tourism business and made several angel investments. Along his evolving progression, he's built expertise in investment management and capital raising via his experience with early stage venture capital funds. So if you're looking for ways to survive and thrive in the days ahead, you're going to love this great conversation with Doug Adamson. Hi Freedom Fighters Now in this time of radical uncertainty and rapid change our individual and collective ability to stop, pivot and truly innovate

will separate the sheep from the goats in the days ahead A lot of that will revolve around being able to ask the right questions and then really listen to the answers in both what's being said but also what's unsaid The stuff between the lines where often the true meaning is hiding. To help us better grasp what this means, today I'm humbled to be talking with a local master in interviewing and innovation. So I'm really excited, but also a little bit nervous to be interviewing one of the icons

of interview, Doug Adamson. So welcome and let's get invested, Doug. Howdy. Mate, great to have you on board and a great introduction through our mutual friend, Andrew Montessi, who's a bit of a legend. But mate, you're sort of an unsung hero across a number of fronts over a number of years. But for those who don't know you, mate, can you sort of start off by telling us who you are, what you do, and where you're currently heading? Okay, well, thanks for inviting me on, Bushy, and it's a pleasure to be here. You know,

I'm not sure I'd call myself a master, but I'm still learning. And to be honest, that's one of the things that motivates me in doing what I'm doing. For me, if I don't learn something every day, it's a day wasted as far as I'm concerned. And I guess ever since I was little, that started with being curious about stuff. So curiosity was the thing that really drove me. So I'm not quite sure where you want to start, at the beginning and go forward or at the end and go backwards.

Yeah, I'll tell you what we might do. We might do a mix. So just so the listeners have a bit of a feel for what you're currently doing, just give us a snapshot on what your current interests are, and then I'm going to go way back as far as you're comfortable, and then talk us through the journey from there, mate. Okay. So currently, I'm really lucky in that I have a portfolio of things that occupy my time. I hate being bored.

So my main role is as a commercialization advisor as part of a federal government program called Accelerating Commercialization. I'm a contractor to that particular program. And what I do is work with companies and individuals and universities that have got new ideas and they want to bring them to the marketplace. So I work with people to help them understand where the market might be, what they need to do to improve their product or service, how they can raise capital, how they can get it to market, all those myriad things that are involved in taking something from an idea all the way through to a product or service that we might see on a supermarket shelf or in a shop. or in somewhere else. So that's what I do for one of the things. I also do some work with University of South Australia as a growth expert at the Australian Centre for Business Growth,

which really helps businesses understand what it takes to grow. And the name they give people like me there is the growth expert because all of us that are involved in helping those businesses have all started, grown, and run a business. I've done that many times. I've made many mistakes. I've had some successes. I've even had one go broke, which we can talk about later on if it's useful.

And I'm also an angel investor. I've made a few angel investments in start-ups, some of which have worked, some of which haven't. but overall, you know, I like learning, I'm curious and I've got a very high tolerance for risk. Yes, okay. Well, that's awesome because they're the exact sort of qualities that I think each and every one of us are going to,

if we haven't got them, we're going to need to cultivate them in the very interesting world that we're now living in. Mate, why do you do what you do? I love helping people. I love seeing people's progress. I love, it's quite satisfying to see people change and grow. And, you know, when the light bulb comes on with people, that's, I find that personally rewarding. I tend to be quite blunt with people sometimes, but I try and preface it with the view that it's not about them personally, it's about their business or their idea, and most people are okay with that, but some people don't accept that sometimes they need some tough love. well i think the tough love part is i mean i think the world craves honesty to be honest with you doug and uh there's a lot of fluff and bullshit around the place uh particularly in that whole startup world uh which i i'm only i only have a very peripheral uh sort of contact with uh some

peers and whatnot that are involved in that space but they need need need to hear the truth because a lot of people can burn a lot of time energy and money and an idea that's never going to fly and you're better off telling them that from the start rather than waste a lot of energy on false expectations. Yeah, I actually see that as part of my role because I'm involved in the innovation ecosystem in South Australia and in Northern Territory. And, you know, I meet lots and lots of people.

And I guess I've learned after some time the polite way to tell people their babies are ugly when their babies are their particular product or service. That's a great analogy. I love that. Mate, we'll come back to some of this shortly, but say that the listeners have got a bit of a feel for your journey. I'd love to sort of now dig in to where things all began for you,

particularly focusing on what you spoke about in relation to that love of learning and that curiosity factor and the high-risk appetite that you have. They're quite rare qualities. Can you take us back and thinking about when did you become aware of those things first? Is that something that you think you've been born with? Is it something that's been environmental? I'd love you to sort of talk us through the journey and how those things emerged. Look, I think the question of nature versus nurture is one that's a completely different concept.

And I can't answer that, but neither of my parents were particularly kind of entrepreneurial types. But I guess as a kid growing up, I was always curious and wanted to know how things worked, you know, taking the toaster apart, you know, experimenting with explosives as you do when we had firecrackers. You know, I remember getting in very deep trouble for blowing up our incinerator in the backyard by seeing what would happen if you put a pressurized mortine can into it and so on. So I guess part of it was more nature than nurture, I suspect, and I don't know where it comes from. Yeah, a lot of that curiosity, I mean, most kids have got curiosity, but for one reason or another, life tends to thrash it out of them. Clearly, it hasn't with you because everything that you're now currently doing is testing the edges on new ideas and ways to improve the world. Talk us through how that curiosity led your journey from school through to what happened after that in that part of the exercise. Well, after school, I went and did, after a false start, electronic engineering at what was the old South Australian Institute of Technology.

And I always wanted to be busy, so I had two or three part-time jobs whilst I was finishing university. And then after working for a couple of years, for the last two years of university, I decided I wanted to go travelling. and so most of my friends that were traveling and this is 1980 81 decided they would do the what i'd call the hippie trail through southeast asia india that way i said no i want to do something different so i went to africa so i spent a year hitchhiking on my own through africa and um after a year i i flew to europe and then london uh found myself in london uh and as a music fan from way, way, way back. It was heaven. So, I wanted to go to shows. I wanted to buy albums. All this music was so available and it was there. And of course, having just traveled for a year,

had no money. So, I basically turned myself into a music journalist. So, back in Adelaide, I'd had some technical experience helping one of the new FM radio stations set up, and I had a letter from the radio station saying I was their London correspondent. So I waltzed into the record companies in London and said, look, I'm here representing this Australian radio station. And at the time, the only other people that were there occasionally representing Australia was Molly Meldrum. He would come to the UK three or four times a year.

So here I was permanently based in London representing effectively an Australian radio station. So I managed to get lots of free albums, lots of tickets to shows, which was fantastic. And then they said, oh, do you want to do interviews? And I'd never done interviews before. So I said, sure, why not? So I started doing interviews, taught myself how to use the equipment and so on.

And my first few interviews were terrible, I'm sure of that. I can't bear to listen to them. Why do you say that, mate? What's terrible about them to you? Just asking dumb questions and not understanding some of the technical requirements. things like in radio and they were principally radio interviews things like saying um and ah and interjecting when the artist was actually responding and it's just so hard to make sense of that because the audience doesn't care about the interviewer they do want to hear what the

rock stars saying so when i figured out that um i was offered a dire straits interview uh just before their big australian tour i think it was 1983 or 84 um i figured ah that might be worth something so i got on the phone and called a whole bunch of other australian radio stations and started selling that particular interview and then uh that then turned into selling a lot more interviews and eventually uh i hooked up with the company that was making take 40 australia at the time so those of you that are of an age will remember take 40 is the ultimate chart show that was uh in australia in the 80s and 90s you used to listen to it all the time mate yeah and i'm going to delve into some of the fantastic people that you've had a chance to get face to

face with uh in a minute because i mark knopfler is certainly one of my rock gods uh and diastrates along with it and i still listen to uh mark knopfler actually in some of the solo stuff he's done but i can't wait to delve in deep with uh some of the great people and great interviews that you have had mate so i'm not quite sure whether you want to go there now or whether you would Want me to talk about some of the other stuff that is the gap between interviewing rock stars and being a commercialization advisor? Yeah, good idea. So let's thread the needle by just walking us through the journey, and then I'll come back and dive into some of the great stuff you've already started to share with us. so having interviewed lots of people uh and being take 40s representative the guy that was the

founder of that particular business uh and i had a discussion about setting up a similar business in the uk i was living in london so i said well why not let's give that a go so it was one of those things that um i guess where i said you know here's an opportunity yeah let's take it and see see where it goes and that and that's one of the other characteristic things i guess that i've done is whenever i've seen an opportunity uh i've gone you know what that's interesting um i'll get bored if i keep doing this one thing let's go for this thing so we started a radio production company and built that over several years to the point where we had basically partner or licensees all the way across Europe.

And every week, we were delivering radio programs to about 300 or 400 radio stations. That then spun into doing some sponsorship for some very high-profile artists on behalf of advertising clients. And then we did a joint venture with Austerio and Village Roadshow in the mid-90s for that particular business. I came back to Australia, ran the Australian arm for the business, and jumped off into the web world. So the dot-com madness was happening then. So I grew a web software business that grew really rapidly. We were in the BIW Fast 100 in 2001.

and then after the dot-com thing came crashing down, we exited that business into a listed company that was on the stock exchange in Australia. That was six months of hell for me. Never want to work for a listed company again and then came back to Adelaide in 2002 for the lifestyle effectively because I think South Australia is a fantastic place to grow kids,

and I had two young sons at that point. So in Adelaide, just a story to understand how easy it is to get things done in Adelaide. When I first got back to Adelaide, I saw an article where a guy called Greg Bolton was talking about his ventures. Greg was also chairman of Port Power at the time, And so I thought, oh, well, that sounds interesting. Why don't I give Greg a call?

And I was able to get through to him, and he took the call. Now, I'd just come from Melbourne. You know, there's no way in the world in Melbourne you'd be able to get through to the president of an AFL club. Imagine trying to get Eddie McGuire on the phone. It just would never happen. So for me, that was a really good illustration. so um i did a bunch of different things in terms of uh consulting work working for an educational business um and then i got an opportunity to work at a venture capital fund as an investment manager

so i went over to the other side to the investment side and and learned a huge amount on uh the approach that investors take when they look at early stage businesses and and risk uh and at the same time, I started another business that was in organics. So, we were helping farmers and food processors convert to certified organic production. So, there's a whole production system that you have to comply with in that particular industry. So, my business partner in that was a bit of an expert. So, together, we built a business and delivered a whole raft of training programs to farmers to help them convert to certified organic production and along the way i've i've got involved and started a couple of other businesses one in data analytics along the way i i had a bed and

breakfast in the adelaide hills so i was in the tourism business for a little while and then wound up doing this commercialization role and the other bits and pieces that i've I'm doing. So as I say, portfolio career, and I've been very lucky to have seen opportunities and just grabbed them. Is it luck though, Doug? I often question that because you've got to work hard enough for the luck to happen, I think, or have an attitude that can see an opportunity and take it, because a lot of

people don't even see it. And then if they do see it, a lot of people don't make the move. There's a really diverse number of passions and interests that I see across what you've done. Can you talk to us about what do you think is the sort of common thread in terms of how you've been able to pursue and then sustain a lot of very diverse interests over the course of your career today well it starts with curiosity and and loving learning and uh and meeting people and um i guess thinking laterally um so so that's i think the common thread um as well as being on the the leading or the bleeding edge of of new ideas um because i find that exciting you know i i'm not very good at looking in the past and looking at history but

i'm i'm way more excited about the future opportunities that exist yeah yeah absolutely and that again a lot of people are scared by uncertainty and scared by unknown futures it it sounds like that's something that really gets your blood pumping uh and and i'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about that sort of risk component in a minute and perhaps even get you to share some of the sort of risk approaches that the investors actually adopt as a way of looking at the world. But, mate, the stuff I'm really keen to get back into, of course, as you'd expect being a closet muso myself

and loved the late 70s, the 80s and the early 90s was the time where music was a massive part of my own life, both as a pretty bad muso but just had a massive interest in it. Mate, I'd love you to share some of the awesome stories and the awesome chats that you've had with some of the gurus that you've been lucky enough to sit down with. Do you mind doing that? Well, it depends how long you've got.

So I could bore your listeners rigid with rock and roll stories for a very long time. But I guess there's probably, you know, two or three relatively high-profile ones where people go, gee, I didn't know that, or that's something a bit different. So let's talk about Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones. I was really lucky in the 80s to meet and interview all of the Rolling Stones several times. and keith uh has this image of being completely wasted uh not together at all but it's entirely an image so one of my my interviews with him uh was done in a chateau just outside of paris where um i was flown over there and got to uh to meet and interview them all um and keith

eventually rolls up for the interview. And I said, oh, this is a fantastic chateau, isn't it? And he said, yeah, well, did you know this was General Montgomery's headquarters in 1944, 1945, at the end of Second World War? And I go, oh, no, I didn't know that. And then Keith launched into a 40-minute history lesson of the Second World War, saying, okay, well, Montgomery was here, and this is what the French were doing, and this is what the British were doing.

And here's where the Italians were moving, and this is what the Germans were doing. So, for 40 minutes, I had a history lesson from Keith Richards. He was as sharp as a tack, and when it came to stories about the Rolling Stones, he remembers everything. I can recommend to people that they read his autobiography. It's called Life, and it really is Keith talking. You can hear his voice coming through so strongly in reading the book. So who'd have thought that somebody like Keith Richards, whose image is this wasted, junky, doesn't remember anything at all,

that's just an image. He's completely different to that, and he's such a nice guy in person. Love it. So there's that cultured persona. And I guess, well, this is something I'd be interested to get your thoughts on. A lot of the rock gods of that time had these – all of them had quite unique personas in relation to how, I guess, they wanted us to see them. But the person behind closed doors is obviously something quite different because I remember stories back in that time where Keith Richards was famous for having a total blood transfusion every year because that was the only thing that was keeping him alive. That was probably all bullshit.

Correct, correct. I mean, there's so much stuff that's just not true. Tell me about Sting, mate. There's a couple of Sting and Phil Collins where I had a big interest in both of those and Mark Knopfloch for that matter. But tell us about Sting, mate, because he's got this sort of persona of this sort of aloof, sort of creative artist come, sort of enigmatic, I guess, in some sense. What's he like in the flesh?

um let me find the polite word he's very self-assured um and he doesn't suffer fools gladly at all um i think he would be enormously difficult to to work with um i guess he is very professional though uh and he does like a joke so there was one particular time when we were doing a live broadcast of a sting concert from germany and we were broadcasting it all the way across europe so we were doing this this radio feed and it was uh going on bbc radio one bbc radio one for those people that don't know is kind of the ultimate uh radio network in the uk and it was at the time and and probably still is and it's very prestigious to to produce something for radio one and the concert was in the middle of a paddock in germany

and i was producing the the uh the broadcast and i had to deal with sting and his manager miles copeland because the bbc when they say radio one wants it at nine o'clock it has to be at nine o'clock so uh in the afternoon going after all the technical checks and the sound checks were done uh i was talking to miles his manager and uh he said oh well sting will come on when sting comes on and i go oh no we can't have that we just can't do that and i started getting quite uh tense um and i started arguing with him and said look you know this is radio one he's got to be on at nine o'clock and and miles you know language warning said well fuck you sting will come on when he wants to come on right he's sting he can do what the hell he likes so of course i had to phone up

bbc radio one and said look i i think it's going to be on time but um you know there appear to be some difficulties and i said well it had better be on time you're the meat in the sandwich i'm the meat in the sandwich so uh we're side of stage at quarter to nine uh there's no sign of any band there's no sign of sting at 15 minutes before show time you go it's okay so i'm running around to all the dressing rooms right they're all locked right i can't get into anybody the production manager backstage is nowhere to be seen uh it gets to 10 to 9 and i'm i had to call radio one again i said look you know i think there's going to be some issues and they go we can't have any issues we can't have any dead air i go well you

better prepare something so uh this went on and at five to nine there's still no sign of anybody and so i'm on the side of stage going there's very little i can do now so at about three minutes to nine uh the crowd's there and they're all starting to get restless because uh sting's expected and you know what crowds are like when you're waiting for a rock and roller they're going you know the slow hand claps, two minutes to nine, the lights are still up, and I've gone, oh, what's going to go on? And about 30 seconds before nine o'clock, the lights go down, the band runs out onto stage, right, and picks up their instruments,

and it's about 15 seconds before nine o'clock now. and then at about five seconds before nine o'clock sting runs out with his base on already prepared he sees me at the side of the stage a complete wreck gives me the verbal finger right and then exactly nine o'clock bang there he is right on time but it was just one of those where it was just like oh no so uh you know he got me well and truly but uh it almost sounds like he was toying with you is so what i'm hearing is he's as aloof in in real life as he is in the in the perceived way he comes across uh would i would i be right because you've been very diplomatic and what you've said so far mate but uh yeah that that would be uh that would be correct

yeah okay so my opportunity uh because i'm one of these wankers with a with a uh a vision board because I love to sing myself and I would love to sing with Sting before I'm dead. And that might be in a wheelchair in a nursing home somewhere and we're both on our last legs. But what I'm hearing from that, they're probably pretty slim opportunities, Doug. Well, it may be. But just the thing that I really liked probably more about the police than Sting was the innovation that they had in their music.

And the innovation, as far as I could see with the police, was the gaps between the notes, right? We weren't expecting, oh, there's the gap. There's the gap and the rhythm, and they were fantastic at understanding the power of silence and the gap. As a three-piece, they just had an awesome sound. It's very rare to have a three-piece that can produce that amount of influence. And I 100% agree with you.

I've often said that it's the musicians who embrace silence as much as noise that really set them apart, and they were awesome. Individually, each of them are fantastic musicians, but as a combination, and I think the tension between the three because they just about killed each other most of the time, as I understand, but that creative tension, and that probably goes for a lot of bands at the time. I think others that you've had the chance to talk with,

the likes of Pink Floyd, had that same sort of creative tension amongst the members. Talk to us a bit about Floyd because, again, Roger Waters and Gilmore and Mason on drums, I used to play drums for years, so I love the drummers who are often treated as the dumb members of the band. And what would Pink Floyd like? Because, again, they're very different personalities,

but Roger Waters always comes across as extremely intense and very focused on what's important to him. What's your read, given you've spent a fair bit of time with those guys? I think, again, I've only met them a couple of times. My best example of some of the tension between them, was when Pink Floyd were out on – were about to go out on tour without Roger, but Roger was also on tour. And I actually interviewed both of them within 24 hours of each other.

So Pink Floyd were rehearsing in this warehouse in Toronto in Canada, got to interview them, and we talked about the tour in Australia, and it wasn't a particularly great interview. But then they sparked up when I said, look, you know, tomorrow morning I'm going over to Buffalo in New York, which is quite close to Toronto, and I'm interviewing Roger. And they said, okay, here's a message from us. Tell him he's a C. And I go, okay, I'm not sure I'm going to tell him that. But thanks for the interview anyway.

So I kind of had that on tape, and then the next day I go to Buffalo, New York, and I'm interviewing Roger Waters, and we're talking about his tour, and he had Paul Carrick from Squeeze as his singer. Oh, yeah, Paul Carrick. Was he there? Was he? Yeah, that was. That was a fantastic concert. And after, I was talking to Roger, and we talked about, you know, his mental health and then how challenging he felt it from time to time, the weight of the world. He was a bit, you know, very self-righteous.

And then I said, oh, look, I saw Gilmore & Co. yesterday. And he goes, oh, did they have a message? And I said, yeah, they did, actually. and he said, I bet they told you to tell me I was a C. That's a four out of C, I'm guessing we're talking about. Exactly right, it's a C. So that was my kind of best story about Pink Floyd and Roger Waters within 24 hours of each other.

Tell me about another one of my icons, and I'm sorry for the listeners here if you're not into these, but this is a rare opportunity I get to talk to someone who's really been up close and personal to these guys. Phil Collins I always like, and I'm a big Genesis fan, but Phil Collins is a sort of likeable Cockney rebel. I'm guessing he wouldn't be much different in the flesh. What was he like, mate?

He is such a nice man. He is so genuine. He is so hardworking and he was so professional. I probably did 10 or 12 interviews with Phil in the 80s and 90s, and every single time he was really friendly. After a while, it got to be a bit of a joke how many times we'd interviewed. I'd interviewed him. I've still got a bunch of signed things from both Genesis and from Phil, but he's very, very hardworking. and he, I think, has some talent

and he has a lot of grit, a lot of hard work. I think there are artists and so on out there who are so supremely talented they don't necessarily have to work as hard as others where there's those people who have some talent and they work really hard and they really develop that. And Phil Collins, I think, is definitely in that case And I guess the comparison that I would make to that is something like Prince, who was unbelievably talented.

And yes, he was a hard worker, but he had that natural gift. Phil had some natural gifts, but he worked so hard at it. Yeah, I guess I'm a bit like that. I don't have a lot of natural talent, but I just wear it down. I'll just work hard enough that I get to a point where I've got some competence in something. and it's just a sort of drip on the rock. I will literally just do whatever it takes and it takes a lot longer than some of the people that's got God's gift.

But – and I guess that's probably why I admire guys like Phil because, you know, I just love the way he just rolls up the sleeves and just he does whatever he has to do to get that to happen. What about Paul McCartney, mate? He's another gentleman of the rock industry and your comparison between Paul and Mick Jagger because it was always, back in the 70s, you were either a Beatles fan or a Rolling Stones fan.

It was a bit like Ford and Holden in Australia. There was the sort of, you couldn't really sit comfortably in both camps, even though I liked both. Talk to us about your chats with Paul McCartney and the comparison with Mick. Well, I'll start with Mick. I mean, my first ever interview with Mick, I completely stuffed up. It was, even now, thinking about it,

It's one of those bottom-clenching moments. So it was in Paris, and I'd never met him before. I was sitting across from him and going, holy crap, this is Mick Jagger. I'd had a couple of glasses of wine. And at that point, Mick had a diamond embedded in one of his teeth. And so when he smiled and opened his mouth, the diamond glinted, and it was really distracting. So the light in the studio was such that each time he smiled, there was this glint, and it put me off, besides being completely intimidated by being in front of Mick Jagger. And so I asked some dumb questions.

He told me to fuck off at one point, and I kept on interrupting him and saying, mm-hmm, uh-huh, mm-hmm, uh-huh. And listening back to it, even now, it's painful to listen to. But he was very much on autopilot. I remember asking him a question, you know, do you believe in God? And you could see him thinking, now, I answered this question seven years ago. What did I say seven years ago? He wasn't very kind of natural, as it were. okay uh mccartney though i mean i've got a number of stories about mccartney i i can just tell you

one good story i've because i've got some bad ones that i won't outline here but the good one was in november 1990 we were doing a live broadcast with mccartney all the way across europe and it was before the days of the internet and it was being beamed by a satellite and it was a call-in show talking to paul about his new album we had every single capital city radio station all around europe and about another 400 radio stations all taking this agreeing to take this broadcast the one organization that wouldn't take it was the radio the commercial radio station in london at the time now we were paying to use their studios in the basement to do this broadcast from but the radio station said no no we always play uh soccer uh broadcast soccer on wednesday night at eight

o'clock so we're not going to take the mccartney show i'm sorry um so mccartney walked into the studio at half past seven before the show's due to go to air at eight o'clock and and don't forget we're in this the studio of the station that's not taking the broadcast so we're chatting away up to paul and the managing director of the radio station comes into the studio and he's and he bowls straight up to paul and says to says to paul look um you know we we can't take this show i'm sorry because we're doing soccer but we're still playing music and you know the beatles uh core artist um and it happens to be the radio station's birthday today do you mind coming upstairs to our studio and just saying a quick hello to the listeners and wish us happy birthday and we

McCartney looks at me, and I kind of shrug. I'm not about to tell Paul McCartney what to do. He looks at his manager, and his manager shrugs. He's not about to tell Paul McCartney what to do. And then Paul turns around and says to the managing director of the radio station, nah, you can fuck off. It was such a beautiful moment when – because McCartney knew exactly what was going on, right? He knew the radio station wasn't taking the program.

So it was one of those where, you know, I could have kissed him. I didn't, but it was one of those where, okay, yeah, you know exactly what's going on and your heart's absolutely in the right place. So that's my one of the McCartney stories, but we haven't probably got time to talk. No, it's good though. Maybe another time. I reckon we might get you back and we'll have an episode specifically on that.

The only one I'd love you just to finish on, again, and someone I still respect and still follow is good old Mark Knopfler from the Dire Straits. Tell me a bit about him. He's very quiet and very measured in his response. He doesn't really like talking about what he does. He'd rather let the music talk. He was quite a difficult interview.

I found he was one of those where I go, well, I have to do an interview. I'm only going to do one for Australia. yeah, okay, we'll do this one. So he was passionate about talking about other musicians, people like J.J. Cale or Eric Clapton and so on, but when it came to their own music, he said, look, I can't really articulate a lot of this stuff. It's in my head, it's in my heart, it comes out in my fingers.

But it is what it is. So it wasn't the easiest of interviews, to be honest. yeah let's let's talk about interview technique for a minute and the reason i want to do that doug is that uh being a bit of an amateur podcast interviewer when i started the process and i started to look around for just information generally on on how to conduct a good interview there's very little very little indeed in this space and you've done a lot of it But having done some, in your words, some good ones and some not so good ones, what did you learn? And for someone like me and for others that in this current world where communication is going to be absolutely key, whether we're connecting face-to-face or as we are doing now remotely, it's going to become a core skill, I believe, in the world as we move.

but what advice would you give to myself and the listeners in relation to how to conduct a good interview? I think preparation. You can't over-prepare for an interview, I don't think. Whether it's a job interview where you're interviewing candidates or whether you're interviewing Mick Jagger, you can't actually over-prepare. You need to actually think about all the things you want to know

and think about the questions that are going to hopefully give you some insight into what they're about and are they going to actually give you the right kind of information. As an example, when I'm doing interviews for roles, one of the questions I now ask is, especially to men in particular, or men only actually is tell me about some strong women in your life and their response is really kind of interesting and it tells me quite a lot about how they might treat women or their attitudes to women because that's that's uh you know it's so important to

make sure that you don't have those kind of uh people with the wrong attitudes in your particular staff or management team. Yeah, what else? Any other thoughts around that? I think it's really important when you're face-to-face to keep your mouth shut. Sometimes as an interviewer, you get far more by maybe having an uncomfortable silence sometimes and raising your eyebrows or nodding. and the person on the other side of the desk will keep talking.

So I've noticed Americans do it much more easily than British or Australian people, but I found that's always quite useful. Somebody might answer something and then you just use silence and you nod, raise your eyebrows, keep your mouth shut, don't say anything and see what else comes out. Yeah, I love it. The beauty of silence in music and in real life, mate,

is something that not many of us have the courage to embrace, unfortunately, because of that uncomfortableness that sort of comes out of silence. People feel the need to jump in and fill a hole. If you can do what you've just said and keep your mouth shut, and my biggest challenge as an interviewer is to just shut up and let the guest run because I want to sort of jump in and share my stuff, but no one gives a shit about what I think when it comes to that sort of gear. So that's a work in progress for me.

But, I mean, that's a good attitude to take, though. I mean, I always took the view that, you know, what can I learn from this interview? And what's, you know, when you're talking to Paul McCartney or something like that, you go, oh, God, what new question can you ask? And it's enormously difficult to come up with something new and different. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and a lot of us are stuck on having to be unique

and having to be different when just being a person that connects with another person is probably one of the major goals and, as you say, learning something from them in the process. Mate, you've given us a fantastic run-through on your career and it's been a very interesting and very one. Talk to us about the biggest challenges that you've faced over that very diverse journey so far. Are we talking business challenges or personal challenges?

Both, both really, mate, because the listeners are going to be in both situations. The world that we're now living in, every one of us is faced with some pretty big personal challenges as well as some career and business challenges, so I'd love you to share your learnings and the approach that you think has brought you through them and allowed you to enjoy such wide and diverse success as you have.

Well, one business one. So, in the 80s, we were building the business in the UK. We didn't have enough cash. So, we said, let's get a business partner. So, we did a deal with a company that was a very much larger company in the UK, and we did a deal where we sold them 51% of our business, but we retained a contract to manage the business. So they put some money in. They put about half a million dollars in to help us grow the business. About 18 months later, when everything was still going okay, in the late 80s, there was a recession all the way across Europe.

And that larger company made the decision, no, we're going to close us down. They made the decision on a Sunday. On the Monday morning, I had on my doorstep, I said, okay, well, I'm from your business partner here, and we're closing you down because we don't think that you're a core business of ours. And I've gone, well, we manage the business. And they went, yeah, but we own 51%. And I said, but we manage the business. And they go, yeah, but we own 51%. It took me about three hours to get them out of the office.

And then it was kind of on for young and old with the lawyers. for about four days and eventually they agreed that we did have some rights so we ended up buying our 51 percent back but we still had the we still had the problem of not having any cash so at that point I put the second mortgage on the house and provided cash to the business and said right okay we can trade through this and you know luckily we did so so that was one that was a business type challenge. What have they sort of diving into that a little bit? Obviously the big lesson there

is don't let someone else control more than 50% of your enterprise given that they can pull that Swifty at any stage. What are the other learnings that you took out of that? I think it's really look at who your partners will be uh you know and and do you really in business you know do you really uh trust them to do the right thing when you need to and our mistake then was going okay well these guys were they weren't in exactly the same industry as us they were in a slightly uh allied industry and we should have uh tried to get some money from somebody that understood our business better so you know it

was our strategic mistake right at the beginning that did that yeah that's brilliant advice i've had a some business hiccups myself and in the past and the the approach that i now adopt for any enterprise if i'm not prepared to marry the partners and i don't share the same vision and the same values and we don't spend more time talking about how we're going to get out of business together than what we do getting into business then i'm not even interested in having the conversation. So is that sort of a similar outlook that you've adopted given some of the lessons that you've been through? Yeah, absolutely. And look, you typically tend to make those mistakes when you're younger and hopefully you take the learnings from them and don't repeat

them. I mean, there's a few I've managed to repeat, but it's all around understanding your personality which you know as you get older you get more self-awareness uh which which becomes valuable in in challenging times like this yeah so let's talk about some of the personal challenges that you've had and what you've learned from it and how that now influences what you think and do well uh after 27 years of marriage i you know my wife first wife and i um went our separate ways and that's enormously challenging on a family. Many people go through that and I'm not unique in that but the core thing was that I guess drove us apart

was both a lack of communication and a lack of sharing of shared goals of what we actually wanted to do. We're both on different paths and I guess more To her credit, we ended up separating without having to go through the lawyer's route. We decided that we didn't need to have that, and we probably have a better friend relationship now than we did in the last couple of years of our marriage, but that's several years ago now. but that's a particularly challenging time but it's all about communication with your partner and understanding what you both want

and being clear about that. Yeah, I'd take my hat off to you to come through and still be friends with your partner. I've been through a similar exercise and haven't been quite that fortunate. And you talked about the importance of the communication piece in relation to that. How important do you see communication in everything that you're doing,

particularly in that sort of groundbreaking innovation space? I don't think you can over-communicate too much on things, even to the point of tedium sometimes. People go, you just have to understand that people need to hear things multiple times. The other thing I think that's really important to understand is if you're communicating in one particular way and people don't seem to be getting it and you say, well, it's your problem, you're not getting it. In fact, it's not their problem, it's your problem because you don't understand their communication style well enough. And so you need to change your own style so that the communication method is different so that people that you're communicating with actually get it. So some people prefer writing.

Some people prefer talking. Some people prefer pictures. So it's such a critical skill, and it took me a while to learn that, that sometimes the communication is your problem and not the receiver's. Yeah, a brilliant observation because a lot of people just keep saying the same thing. and they call the audience the idiots when actually it's the communicator who isn't tuning into how they're actually going to pick up the message. That's an awesome insight, mate. So, mate, you've talked a bit about risk in terms of you not having much fear of risk at all,

but you've also spoke about learning the investor's approach to risk when you were involved in both the angel investing and some of the other work you're doing in that regard. Can you sort of talk through, one, why you think you have little risk aversion and, two, what you learnt and what some of the principles are that applied to risk when it came to investing in start-ups and others? I think that because I've always kind of had a go at things and had some level of success as well as failure,

that has given me the confidence to go, you know what, if I lose a whole bunch here, then I can make it back again. You know, the biggest loss I've had has been 250 grand, and that kind of hurts. But nonetheless, it's still, you know, it teaches an interesting lesson, that's for sure. so so um but but now i think in terms of of risk uh in terms of uh when i'm looking at something to invest in especially in the early stage or the angel uh space it really comes down to four things

it's people product market and systems so each of those is you know makes up a percentage of the investment decision and the people's always 50 or 60 percent of it um the market is you know 15 or 20 percent the product is 15 or 20 percent and the system is is how i categorize how people run their businesses you know have they got you know decent uh internal systems financial systems management systems or whatever but now i would much rather invest in good people with a me too product in a growing market than investing in something that is, you know, a whiz-bang product which might have a completely enormous market in, you know, three or four years' time with people that are kind of not uneducated but unwilling to learn.

Yeah, okay. They're so fixated on what they believe, they're not really interested in what anyone else has got to offer. Is that what you mean? And are they such strong believers in technology that the technology is going to be so fantastic everybody will want one? When I would far rather invest in companies or products or technologies where the customer really is going, God, this solves a problem for me. I really want this.

So it's market pull rather than technology push. Love it. Love it. Yeah, beautiful way to sum that up. So let's sort of bridge into the innovation space for a moment because I think like it or lump it, the days of the same old, same old are well and truly behind us and we're waking up to a potential new world and it's going to function very differently. And I look at it as a massive opportunity in that I think it's brought forward some of the lifestyle stroke business mix practices that are really going to stand the test of time. And that means working remotely, working from home, closer to family, mixing lifestyle. So this whole concept of work and life balance, which I've always believed, bollocks, they merge together.

and innovation is going to be absolutely critical to that at all levels. Can you talk to us a bit about what you believe innovation is and probably more importantly then, how can people embrace innovation and creativity at times? What's their approach? What do they need to do to really prosper in challenging and changing times? well i think um our world is being disrupted whether we like it or not um you know disruption is is kind of been a bit of a buzzword uh for the last few years you know here's this new

disruptive innovation that's going to change the world but um you know now we don't have a choice we we're being disrupted because of the the particular pandemic that's out there at the moment. So, we have to think, okay, creatively, what's going to be different? And maybe from a business point of view, there has to be, I think, three things that have to be in place from a business to be able to at least accept and figure out how they move forward. Firstly, the CEO has got to be fully engaged. If the CEO isn't fully engaged, if they're only in self-protection then then that's going to be difficult secondly there has to be permission to fail because in disruption and innovation you try new things and not everything's going to work

um you know look at uh dyson james dyson in the uk how many prototypes did he make of his dyson vacuum planner before he actually got one to work so permission to fail is important and thirdly there has to be some commitment to some kind of budget to experiment so if those three conditions aren't there within a business or you're not thinking about those in a business in this time, then, you know, you really need to – you do need to think about them because you're unlikely to have the same kind of business unless you embrace this. I think there's

probably some sectors that will do fantastically and there's some sectors that will be, you know, completely messed up as a result of this. You know, I think if you're in commercial property, when you think over the horizon a bit, you go, okay, well, businesses can actually cope with people doing work from home. Why do I need so much office space? So, if you're a commercial property trust, I would be thinking, okay, what does that

actually mean for my office buildings? Do we need as many? and so on i don't know what your view being a property guy is one and i've been saying for quite a while that cbds are going to be hollowed out because the trend towards all we've seen happen with the pandemic is it's going to accelerate what was going to be a long slow painful death into a very short execution and what that's going to require i believe is a total rethink on what those spaces now need to be converted to, and that's probably going to be a move back towards more residential living options in and around CBDs to breathe life

into them. But the typical office building that's used nine to five, five days a week, I think it's got a very limited lifespan, and we're about to find that out in a big hurry. Talk to me about some of the other sectors that you think are either going to flourish or flounder, given what you're seeing. Oh, look, we're recording this probably a month before it gets broadcast. So, you know, I'm a little loathe to make too many predictions because the world is changing so fast. But, you know, obvious things like home delivery, obvious things like technology suppliers that are going to enable those kind of technology enablers that will make it easier for people to work remotely is going to be an interesting sector. And that technology will be applied across lots of different businesses, I believe.

But I think that from a personal point of view, there's some stages that people kind of need to go through. They have to kind of go through the grief stage of actually understanding they've lost some stuff. You know, they might have lost their job or they might have lost some routine or they might have lost, you know, some particular project they've been working on for months. So it's only natural that, you know, from a personal point of view, you have to understand, you know, yes, I've got to go through the grieving process to lose that, but there's always something positive to take from it. So the other thing I think is really important is, from a personal point of view, is not to allow either your job or what you do or the money in your bank to have that determine how much you're worth, your self-worth. So if you say, oh, well, I haven't got as much money or I haven't got my job or I'm not as productive, oh, therefore I'm a failure, that is so bad for your mental health. So you have to think that my self-worth isn't determined by how much money I've got or what my job is or what I'm actually doing. Yeah, that's really sage advice in that regard.

But, yeah, okay, any other – in terms of embracing innovation, and I don't know about your thoughts about this, but I've been saying for a little while now that the future's going to be along to the creative catalysts and the creative orchestra leaders. Using that music analogy, bring you back to music again, if you're creative and you're also an orchestrator and you're coordinating the opportunities of others, that there's always going to be a space for that

regardless of what technology or AI and other things do to it. But what's your view on where people should be positioning themselves given that massive disruptive change that we will continue to go through to optimise their own opportunities moving forward? Look, I think it's challenging for people to determine what their outcome is going to be. You know, I want to be this by the time I get through this particular crisis.

I think that can lead to a narrow view. And if you don't get to that, then once the crisis is over, then it becomes even more challenging. You have to reinvent yourself again and again. I think what's more important than focusing on the outcome is what process is to actually think about where you're going as an individual, as an employee, as a business owner or whatever.

So what is my process that I'm going to go through to help me get out the other end of this? Do you want to share some light on what you think that generically that sort of process and approach needs to be? i i think the the process is around thinking about what am i good at how well do i know myself what what are my skills who do i know um and then sometimes it's a case of getting up with a a bunch of yellow sticky notes and categorizing these things in in various orders and just letting your mind wander on some of those things and go okay well gee i know so and so i wonder

what they're doing uh can i network with them have a conversation with them oh gee i've got skills i didn't realize i had uh in terms of being adaptable or resilient or whatever okay maybe i should go into this particular area so it's it's really a combination of that um But also, I'm trying to figure out, have I got enough information? Now, we live in an age where we can get the world's information in our phones. So, I think so many people make decisions on opinions rather than information. Information is key in this kind of thing. And just because it's on Facebook doesn't mean it's accurate information.

So, you know, question everything when you're assembling the information about what you need to do or how you think you might – your industry might be affected or your job might be affected or your group of friends. It's, you know, information and understanding that information and analysing that information has to be the first step, I think. secondly is knowing yourself and then going okay well well because i've now got the information and i know myself let's think creatively and differently about uh the options i've got yeah yeah brilliantly said and and part of that is letting go of the past and as you say it's it's going through that grieving process and accepting what's been will no longer be let's embrace the future as an opportunity and use those steps that you've just talked about to start defining how you fit into the world and where that best opportunity may be.

Brilliantly said, mate. Mate, I'm going to switch into what I like to affectionately refer to as the ambush series, which are five quick questions under the bushfire lightning round that the listeners always want to share your words of wisdom. So first of those, mate, is what's your favourite quote and why? uh of a favorite quote uh i guess i probably got got two uh one of them is quite long and is quite well known and people can google it it's the theodore roosevelt quote about the man in the arena um where you know he's there and at least he's having a go that's really about uh that

particular uh uh aspect of life um you know it's really not about the critic who counts it's the man who's in the arena so the Theodore Roosevelt's man in the arena quote that's really good but but the one I particularly like is actually comes from Keith Richards so Keith and I were talking philosophically and we're talking about how you know rock gods get put on pedestals and he said in that kind of gruff voice he goes you know Doug all of us rock gods you know we might be up there We might have a skill that's made us high profile, but you know what? Our shit still stinks, which I thought was very good.

You know, we're all people at the end of the day. I love it. Absolutely love that, mate. That's gold. Mate, on the literary front, you've mentioned Keith's book, Life, in our chat. Are there other top books that you'd recommend people read and why would they do so?

oh look i i've only got one and it's really related to these particular times now and it's probably something that that many of your listeners will have looked at already and that's the barefoot investor scott paper's book i think there's such good advice in there uh even though you know i class myself as you know reasonably educated i still go back to that and have a read and go you know you know what that's that's good i recommend it to a bunch of people just because it's just got good solid uh basic advice around finances and and you know financial literacy uh i i think should be taught a whole bunch more in schools but that's another topic all on its own on that one like because that's a can of worms which i 100

agree with you we're almost inept when we uh finish school uh and it puts so many people behind the eight ball and some fairly simple, timeless techniques would position individuals, companies and the community and put us in a far more resilient position than the one that we're currently experiencing. Mate, on a sort of semi-related topic, and it's something that most Aussies have very strong opinions about in that there's a feeling that many of them pay too much tax,

what's the top legal thing that you've done to minimise the tax that you pay? I got a tax specialist. There's a whole bunch of different things I could talk about, but tax is a complex area. I got a tax specialist, the best thing I ever did. So they've said, okay, well, you can do this and this and this and this and this, and I go, hmm, that's actually pretty interesting.

I didn't know that. So I'm not going to give any advice on a particular legal method or tax minimisation or any of those things. It's see an expert. Yeah, brilliant. Again, I've learned in time that, you know, yes, we all have capacity to learn stuff, but stuff like that, you just don't want to muck around with it.

No, and you don't want to become an accountant yourself. So why wouldn't you employ someone who does that every day of the week and knows the ins and outs of quite a complex area? So great advice. Back on the investment subject for a minute then, and I'm not just talking about hard investment in property, shares, cash or super. I'm talking about investment across the board.

What's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received so far? I think the worst one was when I was, again, much younger and didn't have the skills to understand the market and the dynamic and that was, Here's this great dot-com company, invest in it, and I put a bunch of money, lost a lot. So it was about the technology is going to save the world. So invest in that.

That was the worst bit of advice. And I think the best bit of advice is really about understanding what I'd call the colliding trends are that can help investment decisions. So, what are the trends in the marketplace that are really going to be important in the future? So, you know, even in now, this time of pandemic, you could say, okay, what's the trend here? Okay, there's going to be more homeworking. What does that mean in terms of companies that provide services that facilitate homeworking? Gee, let's go have a look at them as potential investments. But the advice is really about look for the colliding trends in the marketplace and look at the companies that are solving the problems in those colliding trends.

Yeah, that's a brilliant insight. Smack on. Last one of the series then, what's a personal habit that you believe has contributed most to your success so far? Look, I think it's I'm an information junkie. I love information. I love finding out about stuff. I love learning about stuff. So I think getting information and finding it out, going down the rabbit hole deeply when we're finding out about something, and then the ability to hopefully mine some gold out of that information, that's the thing that makes the biggest difference to me.

A lot of the things that I look to invest in are technologically related. So whilst I might necessarily understand the technology behind it, I can understand the way that it might solve a problem in the market. Yeah, and that's the gift. That is the – because it's ultimately in the hands of the user that success is made or otherwise. And as you say, there's a lot of propeller heads in the IT tech area that sort of lose sight of that and fall in love with the technology over the problem they're solving. So awesome advice. Final question to bring it to head, Doug. If I gave you a microphone that was hooked up to speak to every single one of the 7.7 billion people currently in the world and they're all listening avidly and I gave you one minute to talk, what would you say?

You are not alone in this. Hold your family tight. Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Be kind to each other. Think positive. We will get through this. Read a lot. Use sunscreen.

Look for the joy in your situation. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. That's it. That's gold. That is gold. You've spent some time thinking about that, Doug. That's almost poetic, the way you delivered that.

That was awesome. Thanks, mate. Mate, it's been an awesome conversation, and I would love to go down a thousand rabbit holes with you from music through to technology through to innovation. I think we've only really just scratched the surface, and I'm going to look forward to catching up with you personally to chew the fat on some of those things

and shout you a nice red or whatever it is that you like to drink to oil the juices on that. But for those that, like myself, have been totally engrossed in what you've been saying and are in that innovation space and want to know more about you and perhaps want to get in touch with you in that area, what's the best way for them to do that? probably shoot me an email uh doug d-o-u-g at dna innovation.com it's not a very good website it's it's one of those things that's

done from a long time ago and you know it's on the list so yeah doug d-o-u-g at dna innovation.com easy very easy uh what's next new and exciting for you mate what's what's uh the future look like i'm i've got a whole pipeline of new technologies and new products and services i'm looking at um just in the immediate future i'm looking to uh help out and mentor some of the businesses in my portfolio who are currently struggling to figure out okay how am i going to manage my cash flow in this particular time of challenge? How am I going to look at the end of it and what other opportunities are there that will be popping up? So most of my time is going to be spent with my portfolio, helping them and at least chucking ideas at them to see how they can get through it

and spending time with my wife and family and picking figs off the tree, eating tomatoes out of the garden, and cooking rhubarb and apples. Oh, rhubarb and apples, mate. I'm a big rhubarb and apple fan. Mate, I know it's right at the end of the exercise, but you touched on something that we haven't spoken about and something that's going to be absolutely critical to the lifeline of individuals and businesses moving forward

is how to manage that cash flow. Given that you're going to be working with people around that, can you share a couple of principles or a couple of things that might be useful to people coming to grips with, well, how the hell am I going to financially survive long enough to get to the other side? Okay, I think it first starts with information, like most things. so what do we know as to what might happen

and have we got enough good financial information? Secondly, it's what's our scenario planning? And scenario planning doesn't necessarily mean that these things are going to happen. It's just you going, you know, what happens if our revenue goes down by 50%? You know, what happens if we don't get paid uh in 90 days instead of normally get paid in 30 days so so it's it's all about the cash it's much

less about the profit and loss it's all about the cash so so it's really this the information and then the scenario planning and then uh that is almost uh monitoring the cash flow as a daily exercise. It's asking customers to pay sooner and it's also being prepared to change again and run a different scenario and run a different scenario. And the other thing that's important to understand is that perfection is the enemy of speed. So don't try and get it perfect because if you try and get it perfect it'll change so just get as good as you possibly can uh at that particular time make a decision based on that if it changes you'll have to plan again yeah that's absolutely brilliant advice and a great way to bring our sensational conversation to a close with with

some really actionable things that people can be applying right here right now being very generous with your time and your thoughts and and that loved your stories doug uh look forward to Staying in touch and look forward to getting you back on again to dig a bit deeper into some of those subjects. Thanks for your time. Okay, good. Thank you for having me. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that?

To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash Get Invested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening.

And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you'll die tomorrow.