Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Greg Layton on the psychology secrets of the world’s elite performers

Episode Date: September 16, 2018

This episode is going to challenge your views on how to achieve high performance, in terms of what ‘high performance’ really is and how to make it happen. Greg Layton takes us on his fascinating, around the world journey, which has included evangelical Catholicism, desert ultra-marathons, training with monks and kung-fu masters, NLP, hypnosis and the art of framing. These experiences, and years of self-discovery, have enabled Greg to distill the essence and psychology of high performance. He has gone on to work with sporting greats like Martina Navratilova and many other elite athletes, helping them take their careers to the next level. Greg has been there, done it, and now walks his talk to help others do the same. If you’re an intrapreneur, middle manager or a time poor professional who is continuously frustrated with where your life and career is at, and want to position yourself for purpose and impact, then you’ll love this episode with Greg Layton.  And if listeners want to tap into the Chief Maker’s personal life vision process, check out the following links: https://chiefmaker.com.au/57-build-your-life-vision/ & https://chiefmaker.com.au/59-executing-your-life-vision/ 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.

If you want to be awesome at something, if you want to be world's best, you have to learn direct from the masters. Yeah. Right. And this has been something I've carried with me now for, I don't know, 13, 14 years. Whenever I'm going to go and learn something, if I want to get the next job or the big contract or nail something,

I go to the person, the best person I can possibly find, and I implore them directly to teach me. 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 bussymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now let's get invested.

Hi Freedom Fighters. Today's episode is going to really challenge your view of achieving high performance in terms of what it is and how to make it happen. Today's guest takes us on his fascinating around the world journey from evangelical catholicism to desert ultra marathons training with monks and kung fu masters nlp hypnosis and the art of framing to distill the essence of the psychology of high performance as a result of years of self-discovery he has now helped sporting greats like martina navratilova and other elite sportsmen and sportswomen in rugby and golf sports stars to take their careers to the next level. Greg Leighton has been there, done it,

and he now walks his talk to help others to do the same. So if you're an entrepreneur, a middle manager, a time-poor professional who's continuously frustrated with where your life and your career is at and you want to know how to take it to the next level so that you can enjoy a fascinating life in terms of a purposeful and impactful career as well as a balanced life of significance then you're really going to enjoy this episode with greg layton greg is the founder of chief

maker an international executive coaching company and he's also an author a speaker and an avid podcaster he loves life he's an avid learner he's an all-round great guy and he shares some enormous amount of immediately usable gold with us today, so please grab your notebook, sit down, and enjoy with me, Greg Leighton. Welcome back to Get Invested, it's Bushy Martin, and today I've got the pleasure of having a really good chat with Greg Leighton. Greg and I met through the Key Person of Influence program, and we also spent some time at the We Are podcast conference up in Brisbane last year and it became pretty evident that both

of us have got very similar values, a very similar approach and quite similar goals and what I enjoy about what Greg's doing is that both of us are really helping entrepreneurs, middle managers, time poor professionals to enjoy a purposeful and impactful career but also enjoy a balanced life of significance outside of work. So, mate, really humbled to have you on board. Looking forward to a great chat, Greg. Thanks, Bushy. Good to be here, mate.

Awesome, mate. Now, just to kick off, for those of our audience that don't know Greg Leighton and what you do, can you give us a rundown on that, please, buddy? Sure, mate. Look, I run a business called Chiefmaker. We're executive coaches that specialise in helping the intrapreneurs you speak about, middle managers accelerate their careers into C-level roles. We work predominantly in sort of mid-to-large cap

or mid-to-large sort of organisations and we're down in Australia, Asia and North America. So it's been a very interesting journey for us. We have the Inner Chief podcast, which is our way of sharing with the world all the different knowledge and I think you've probably heard a bit about that one and we've got a book out too called Chiefmaker. So we're predominantly executive coaches

and we work one-to-one and with high-performance teams. Yeah, awesome. And probably the more important question that goes along with that, Greg, is why do you do what you do? Yeah, mate, listen, I'll tell a bit of a story. Many years ago when I was in the corporate world, I held down a job in a large IT division and I was a very aspirational young man, I think a lot of us are,

and I was working pretty hard and this was government and so I was working probably three hours a day longer than most people and I'd get to work at 7 in the morning and I would do about an hour and a half's work then I'd go out and get a coffee and then I'd come back. So around 8.30 in the morning is around about when everyone else is arriving at work and this one day I remember getting in the elevator and I was first in the elevator and I turned around

as everybody else was sort of filing in towards me and I looked up and I tell you what, the lights are on but no one was home i looked into the eyes of the people who were getting in behind me and i just went oh my god this is zombie land like if i don't do something they're going to convert me i'm going to be stuck uh so the the interesting thing is at this point i didn't know anything about what i wanted to be all i knew was i needed to get out of there before i got you know turned into a zombie yep but what happened as a result of that was a a journey into the world of high performance and everything from psychology to to neuroscience and what what

i realized is there are literally millions of people out there who just go to work who are on the conveyor belt or on autopilot and they're sort of happy they're sort of okay they're a little bit over they're just then you know when i talk to them like their greatest fear you know that marilyn williamson um quote our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate it's that we're powerful beyond measure yeah and there's this little thing going on inside their head that goes i know i could be doing more i know i could do i know i can achieve a little bit more but they're just for some reason one reason or another they're just not hitting their straps like they could be and I can see it in their eyes.

So why do I do what I do? I do it because there's millions of people just like you and me that just want a little bit more out of life, a bit more impact, a bit more significance, perhaps a bit more money in the bank at the end and there's no way they'd do it because most of the coaching I do in the world is reserved for really senior executives that earn a big buck and we are trying, well, not we are trying, we are transferring that to anyone.

So anyone can have executive coaching, whereas previously it was only the top dogs. Beautiful, mate. Yeah, no, I'd say that there's an absolute ocean of people who, as you say, sleepwalking through life, and it's caught in this trap, I think, mate, where our life is good because we're, particularly in Australia, we're definitely the lucky country, but it's not great. There's that sort of chasm between the two, and it looks like you've sort of latched onto of that to wake people up to the fact that, hey, there's a whole lot more you can do here. Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's a few factors involved. First and foremost, in the modern world, it's so complex and so fast moving. You get into this sort of period of overwhelm or this state of overwhelm, and that happens when there's too many priorities in your life and you don't have time to reset. Yeah. But in that space, the analogy I like to use is you end up getting on a treadmill. Yeah. and what's going on is you are on this treadmill and the and the belt is moving all right now you

can't just stop because you've got commitments at work at home you've got family you've got all these things that are going on and you sort of feel like you can't put a line in the sand and stop yeah and so what people tend to do is all they do all sorts of things to try and exit the treadmill i don't know if you've seen the youtube videos of people and treadmill fails if you haven't I highly recommend doing that. It'll be well worth your time. Good for a laugh anyway. Good for a laugh, you know, because what most people tend to do is they tend to try and jump off the treadmill.

But the problem is they're not going to get back on it because they don't know any other solution. And when you try and get onto a moving treadmill, things go wrong, right? But here's the thing. Here's the thing is what people tend to do instead of hitting stop, hitting the stop button, they try to run faster yeah i'll do more i'll load myself up i'll do more and what happens is they start to fatigue and burn out and sweat then what do they do not only go faster i'll put a pack on i'll take more responsibility right and then they put the treadmill into an uphill incline and before you know it they're just cooked and eventually they run out of steam and

they get spat out the back of the treadmill like there's no tomorrow now i get it it's because they're caught up in this world and they can't see a solution what we need to do just first and foremost the first step is hit stop on the treadmill right don't let anyone else to do it you've got to do it it's stop get off the treadmill put on road running shoes right and leave the gym right because if you get back on the treadmill what's the main problem with the treadmill bushy It doesn't stop. Yeah, that's right. You're going nowhere.

Yeah, exactly right. You're never going to get anywhere, right? The thing with a treadmill is people don't have a vision. Yes. And they're just running like crazy. And you know this in investing. One of the first questions you're going to ask any customer that comes in your door, Bushy, is what?

How much money do you want in retirement? What's the outcome you're after? You start with an outcome. you know most people don't have an outcome for their life or their career yeah it's so true mate and it's absolutely true well talking about it and i'm going to i'm going to circle back here a little bit mate if we can because to give it some context about the the journey that got you to that point uh where you had the sort of elevator epiphany uh can we i want to go right back because it'll help uh the listeners to really understand the journey in terms of

your motivations and what you've invested your time, energy and money in along the journey and why that's the case. So I sort of, you know, doing the old Google stalk, mate, I noticed that you were brought up in a great family in Brisbane and your family were evangelistic Catholics. Yeah. What does that mean, mate? I'm just interested in what that actually transcribes into. It's a serious combo, mate, because there's Baptists who are evangelical,

but if you get evangelical Catholics, it's an intense world. So, you know, I grew up in a – it was a very loving family, so make no mistake about that, a fantastic family. I had a brother and three sisters, so I was the youngest of five. But the evangelical side meant I went to Christian retreats, you know, three times a year. Every Sunday we'd go to an hour's church in the morning and then the afternoon was two to three hours of praise.

Yep. So it was the community I was in, like, that my family was in, was very devout. But the evangelical side meant, you know, I suppose for want of a better term, you could say happy clappers, I suppose. Like, certainly lots of dancing in the aisles. And when someone was sick, there'd be laying of hands on people.

And this is the world I grew up in. And I thought it was normal for a long time until I sort of discovered that it wasn't. You know, I'm still very good friends with a lot of people in that community. They're wonderful people. It wasn't the path I chose to follow in the end, but it was just a really interesting way to grow up, I think.

And I still had a lot of fun. I still didn't like Sunday school and I never liked going to the praise sessions. But you know what? You find a way to learn anyway and get on with it. It was a pretty funny way to grow up. Yeah, I guess the, because I'm reading between the lines here, mate, but you've always struck me as someone who's very focused,

very organised and very disciplined. And I mean, that sort of environment that you grew up in would be very attuned to that. So those early lessons in terms of giving you those basic skills would have been pretty awesome, I would have thought. Bushy, my mother would love you right now. you know disciplined folk oh my gosh that's not how i started out you know like on the on the myers-briggs scale if you want to use that i'm an enfp that means

someone who is disorganized doesn't like detail doesn't like discipline wants choice wants to be open all these sorts of things so um i was i was the kind of kid that really all i ever wanted was adventure i wanted new things i wanted shiny things i wanted to i just wanted to go out in the world and experience things that that summed up who i was as a kid i think like play heaps of sport i didn't play one sport you know to the nth degree i played every sport and uh i think i think one year i think i was in about grade eight or nine i represented this school in 14 different sports good grief far out mate you know i was like you know i don't know how i ever fit in and how my dad and my mom were too happy about the amount of taxi driving they were

doing but that was me but in funny enough um well that's a cool and fun way to live it's a bit of a curse when you get into business in your career because you're totally yeah becoming structured and disciplined is the opposite to my natural preference and i've had to learn it right because now i now i am reasonably structured and disciplined and organized but uh gee i didn't start out that way well i mean anyone who's brought up in a fairly strict routine whatever that is uh often has a reaction to it and i mean i from again from just a little bit of the the google store clearly the adventure thing led you to do travel and and the sport and everything else was probably a break away from that uh i mean absolutely it was that it was it was definitely

only a way of escaping what I felt at the time was probably a very limited view of the world. Yeah. Right? And quite my opic, and this is the way. Yeah. And just I didn't want to have to be somewhere every Sunday morning at 7.30 to go to mass.

I didn't want to waste my Sunday afternoon. I wanted to be playing sport or catching up with my mates or playing computer games because I was just a kid. Yeah, of course. So you're right. I reckon some of what I became was definitely in response to the strictness of that upbringing, without a doubt. I want to just express myself.

And, you know, and the funny thing is even my parents now are way, way more laid back than what they were. You know, like they don't even go to church anymore. It's just it's quite remarkable. Wow. But we all, over time, everyone has grown in different ways and in different directions. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting how it all plays out. It is. And I guess the ongoing journey then, you spent years travelling the world and some pretty interesting stuff that you did during that period, mate. Do you want to share some of that with us? Yeah, look, I think when I travelled and looked for adventure, I think in the early days I wanted to do crazy stuff. So I did things like running with the bulls in Pamplona

and all that kind of stuff. But I think the things I was really drawn to were the ones that no one did so um places no one else would go so i crossed africa from cairo to cape town so north to south across the entire continent took me about five months to do that and that was through the you know the depths of the sudan and upper reaches of ethiopia ganda and rwanda and all these sort of places that to be honest you don't really see um any tourists you know like Like you stand out wherever you go. I went through parts of the Middle East like Iran and, you know,

these sort of places which I remember when I was in Iran, I was there for about, I think, six weeks or something. I didn't see another tourist for four, you know, and it was a pretty difficult place to get around because it just wasn't set up for tourists. Yeah. You know, I sought that remoteness, the rawness of the world that wasn't soiled by the tourist trade, so to speak.

You know, I just wanted to experience what are these places actually like? Yeah. You know, what are the people like? And you know what? My overarching discovery was that they're just good people. No matter where you go, no matter whatever you read or see on TV, the vast majority of it represents the smallest part of a population yeah i remember going into a bakery one morning in iran yeah and most people would think that's you know it's going to be a bit

of a brutal country well you couldn't be further than the truth talk about warm-hearted people yeah i was in this bakery one morning and this guy was walking past and i said i stand out because i'm you know i'm just i'm obviously a tourist i don't look i'm like very iranian and uh And even though I'm trying to dress as locally as a tourist can get, this guy walks up to me and says, welcome to Iran. And I was like, oh, wow, that's very good English. First of all, how does he know I'm speaking English? But he could just obviously pick me out.

And he said, what are you doing here? I said, I'm traveling. And he goes, welcome, welcome. I bought you breakfast. And he bought me my breakfast. Get out. And at the end, he said, I have to go to prayer now. I'm going.

And I went, what's that for? But one of the five pillars of Islam is that you have to look after travellers. Wow. He's doing his part, right? At the moment, just looking after travellers. And I've had hundreds of experiences like that where people just saw a, you know, backpacker who's trying to survive on $10 a day and they went out of their way to help me. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it, mate?

i've had the same experience a long time back that the poorer you travel the better the experience i think because you're then forced to be more and show a bit more initiative and reach out to people and that's just amazing how they respond isn't it's just uh just a great way to grow up mate that's absolutely awesome now just on that journey then i um again i noticed that you lived and trained with shale and monks at one stage mate tell us a bit about that Yeah, so this was now – this was actually after my elevator experience. Okay, yeah, righto. Yeah, so this was – you're moving on now to get me going into the world

of high-performance psychology and training. So what happened was I had been studying high-performance psych, and I'd done a lot of work in neurolinguistics. I was being mentored by one of the founders of NLP, a guy called John Grinder. And in this course I did, I studied NLP in a lot of depth, like probably more than most people and certainly more than anyone, maybe any dozen of us in this country that probably have a similar amount

of experience, maybe a bit more than that. But one of the tasks was at the end of that you had to go and find someone in the world that is a model of high performance, like one of the best of the best. and you have to learn directly from them what they do right um and so i chose a shell in monks because to be honest i felt like a lot of what they're doing was either unbelievable or actually false like i've seen them test it out i wanted to test these buggers out because they were throwing needles through panes of glass breaking bricks on heads and all this kind of stuff and i thought

how are they doing this because this you know it's got houdini written all over it or it's got wow i need to know so anyway i um i found out you know did a bunch of research or a few backdoors paid some people off and before i knew it i was sort of ankle deep in snow in um regional china unbelievable man at the shaolin temple yeah tell us a bit about that because i mean there's not many people that one would even know what a shaolin monk is and to have any clue around what their their beliefs and and principles are can you share a bit of that with us and and what was the outcome when you when you put it to the test mate uh what did you walk away with so it was one of the most incredible experiences uh of my life it was i was off the grid for three

months the the shaolin monks if you've never heard of them they are the kung fu masters so to speak so you might have seen on youtube or the traveling shaolin kung fu monks they do some of the most amazing martial arts tricks you've ever seen um to the point where people just go that is it just can't even be true or real you know these guys are you know standing on swords and stuff and anyway so i went off i went inside this world bushy and not many people get to to do this you can do it but it's not easy to do yeah um and for three months i spent all day every day from dawn until dusk training with the shaolin and and i had a uh a sifu or a master who had a translator and i learned while i was there you don't just learn kung fu and this is a really important

part of what the whole journey is about you learn everything from kung fu and kickboxing to meditation to qigong to tai chi um you learn it all right and it's a process of rounding you out and becoming very, very centred and congruent in every single part of your life. Okay. It's not single-dimensional. You're not there to learn how to break someone's neck, right? In fact, most of the, I suppose, killer moves or knockout moves,

you're not allowed to even learn them for years. Right. Because they take this, the methods they teach you come with a weight of responsibility. and we would have these morality discussions right about the morality of holding the ability to punch in a certain way kicking someone away and what that means if you're in public and something goes wrong yeah because you have the power to stop it or you have the power to do some serious damage um and like i was only there for three months so i i wouldn't call myself a weapon

like they would justifiably call themselves a weapon but it was just fascinating to watch and they they pushed you into territory you just never dreamed possible like the very first morning we went for a um about a two to three k run um into this valley um which was not it was beautiful it was freezing cold and i'm snowing on the hills and things but i remember we would go up this this road and we came back and we my very first session in my little troop of of um students was in this boxing ring on the mat on the canvas and we did this thing called power stretching and so power stretching you you get into like a splits position and then you put your hands on the ground right so sort of lent forward and then someone would sit on the small of your back

and then someone else would start kicking your foot out right and you go to a point where you can't breathe anymore now i don't know if you've been stretched so far that you can't breathe and then you you get this point where you you you want to scream but you can't you're like you're it's caught in a in your throat and then my sifu he just gets down on his hands and knees next to me and he just says just breathe just breathe no swearing and what they're doing in this moment is teaching you to handle not just extreme pain but to push the body into limits where you never thought were possible and they did this all the time and after about 30 seconds they help you back up and you roll back onto your front and you feel like you've been racked yeah you know but then

they do then they do that same that same length of stretch or depth of stretch you know leaning forward rolling backwards you name it they they literally just turn you inside out yeah the amazing thing is by the time i left i could do the splits and i could literally easily put my foot way above my head like i i was incredibly flexible when i left in three months and i and never once did i tear a muscle injury while i was there yeah right okay because it because of the mind-body connection or just the way they do it or what what's how did you achieve that man well i just push you to be honest i still find myself trying to answer that question um some of the training was brutal right so that we did sometimes we do qigong for an hour and qigong is when you

harness your energy your energy centers and you might stand dead still in a very specific pose for an hour and then other guys would come along with little mini police batons and start bashing you on all the shin on your shins and your wrists and on your knuckles and things to toughen up the skin and the bone they call them bone conditioning right and then literally i'm not joking when then we'd go over to these trees and we'd do these things like these punches and clawings of these trees. And so I remember at the moment there's this classic movie called Kickboxer with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

It was out in like the 80s and the 90s. And he kicks over this palm tree. And it's, you know, it's a classic Jean-Claude Van Damme moment. And I remember thinking, I'm going to be Jean-Claude Van Damme until my life here because I can punch trees. But the weird thing is, Bush, the weirdest thing is afterwards and the next morning, no bruising. No bruising?

No bruising. No bruising. Right. And I remember sitting there trying to comprehend this, and the only answer I've got is that it was a combination of the qigong and the preparation that we went through. I can't give you any other reasoning. Amazing, mate.

Amazing. Because normally that would have left me with a pretty serious set of bruising. Yeah. I'd love to have a more detailed answer, but no. No, but I suppose if anyone's ever played a high-contact sport like rugby, like I played a lot of rugby when I was a young fella, we'd have these brutal matches and heavy collisions and for some reason you'd come off and you went bruised.

I don't understand that part of it. Yeah, well, mate, I still play field hockey and there wouldn't be a weekend that goes past that and I don't come out with black and blue from the shins to the somewhere. So I'm scratching my head with it. but it must have given you an amazing sense of self-belief, mate. Is that one of the major takeaways? Yeah, I think so, mate.

There's a few things that really hit home by the time I left. One is that magic isn't real. Yep. Okay? So what they do is real. They do throw needles through panes of glass. They do break bricks on heads. there's a guy in my troop that over a period of about um four weeks was going to break a brick

on his head and i watched him go from zero to doing it in front of an audience about a thousand people incredible it's real step by step clean process of conditioning the scalp the muscles around the neck practicing qigong and meditation and slowly building up his capacity to break a on his head right so the mat there is no such thing as magic right is always a process to excellence always okay and that process takes time but not as much time as people think you have to have unwavering belief in the journey and i i think it really really struck home to me the that you just have to believe in yourself yeah because no one else is going to right yeah The next thing that I think is vital is if you want to be awesome

at something, if you want to be world's best, you have to learn direct from the masters. Yeah. Right. And this has been something I've carried with me now for, I don't know, 13, 14 years. Whenever I'm going to go and learn something, if I want to get the next job or the big contract or nail something,

I go to the person the best person I can possibly find and I applaud them directly to teach me and it is paid off in spades paid off in spades gold absolute gold there and I guess it's

giving you the belief but also the courage to do that because a lot of people will say oh yeah this guy's the best in the business or whatever it is very few then have the gumption and the courage to reach out and say hey I need to talk to you. I want to learn from you.

Is that courage something that came out of that time you spent with the monks or is that something that's just been ingrained in you anyway, mate? I don't think it came from the Shaolin monks. I think it just came from probably from some of the early masters being more than happy to share their time with me. So, you know, a guy like John Grinder who I said he was the co-founder of NLP and that's why he's, you know, one of the biggest guys in performance psychology on the planet, you know.

He transferred the whole field. whatever. He taught Tony Robbins, you know? Yeah. And, and for like, I didn't really seek to have John talk to me and, you know, reply to my emails when I was stuck, but he just did. And then I realized that he just wants to give back, you know? Um, and when he was out here, I'd pay to go to every course that he did, you know? But I think the big quote, the big thing is most people really do go, they won't respond. But if they've got a program that you can get on, that's the first thing to do. Get on the program, show them what you're made of,

pay them directly, and they will lead you back. I'm doing it right now. I've got two coaches right now, and they're opening incredible doors for me. So if you're not doing it, I think you're never going to really leap in performance. You'll be stuck where you are. Yeah, I love that, mate.

That's just an awesome lesson for everyone to take on board, mate. Mate, one of the other things that, and again, and I might be completely off cue here in terms of the chronology, but one of the things I was interested to have you chat to you about was ultramarathons, because I actually had an ultramarathoner on one of the early podcasts because I've just got this... All right. ..in awe of their ability to put themselves to the test

in those extremely trying conditions, and it sounds like you've run through the Gobi and the... I can't even pronounce them, mate. Atacama Desert. Yeah, you get one in Chile, yeah. Talk to us a little bit about that because, again, to put yourself through that sort of test, it takes a pretty special sort of person there.

You know, a good 250, 300K runs, aren't they? Yeah, 250Ks and you're fully self-sufficient. So you have to carry all your own food, your sleeping mat, all your clothes, all of your supplements, extra shoes. You know, so you've got a pack of around 8 to 10 kilos as a minimum. Yeah. Then you've got to add water on that, so he probably had two, three kilos of water every 10 k's.

Yeah. But, yeah, they are incredibly brutal. There's no doubt about it. So I did the Gobi March and the Atacama Crossing in 2008 and 2010. Okay. So let me think about the most important parts of those. I'll tell you how it all started. So the Gobi March was just before the Shaolin.

So 2008 was Gobi March, 2009 was Shaolin, 2010 was Atacama Crossing. Okay. So I was in this world now. So I'd stopped the adventure of going to far-off places just to travel and have fun. Now I was going to far-off places to push myself to the limit. It just transformed me, right? Yep. And I wanted to learn.

All these were personal experiments in high performance. because I now knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to coach this. I was already coaching, in fact, by this point. Yeah. So I knew that if I was going to walk the walk and talk the talk, I had better have been through it. Love it.

Right? Because otherwise, how can I possibly justify being able to help someone with something like resilience, right? Or, you know, I coach in elite sport quite a bit, and I'm not going to have some experience in what we're talking about. And so I went, you know, the Gobi March. um i'd never run more than i had not run a marathon yet before i signed up for that i think i'd run about 10ks i just started training for my first ever marathon when i signed up for it

um and so when i by the time i got there i was massively unprepared i was totally on my own i had no coach i had no one around to help me i was green so green that i was on the bus i take you from this little this town called cashgar which is way out in the very west of china yeah um right near the himalayas and they put you on a bus and they take you out to the middle of nowhere and they put you on a in these tents and i was on the bus sitting next to this guy called dean karnasas yep and um i'd never heard of this guy but i looked down at his legs and they were like just veins just phenomenally vascular and muscular man this guy had legs that i was like i went down to mine and went skinny white terrible he's vascular muscular and i was

I was like, have you done much running? And he goes, yeah, I'm Dean Canassas. And I was like, I should know you, shouldn't I? And then someone else goes, hey, that's the guy that ran 50 marathons in 50 days across 50 states in America. And I was like, I should know him. Anyway, he was awesome about it. We had a few laughs along the way about how green I was

and how, whatever he was, brown, I suppose. Chiseled, ebony. And then he was on the cover of one of the biggest fitness magazines, like Inside Sport, and it said the headline was The Fittest Man Alive. Wow. This guy didn't have any idea who he was. And so the Gobi March, man, I finished it on pure,

with a sense of just bloody mightiness. I was not going to stop. No matter how hard it was, no matter how much my feet bled because of blisters or no matter how much the chafing in places I don't want to talk about hurt, mate, we were just going to get through it. And I did. I just pushed myself to the limit. And the moment I crossed the finish line, which was –

so what they do is they go 40Ks, 40Ks, 40Ks, 40Ks, and on the fifth day they go 80Ks. Just to put a little bit of pressure on. you're not tired let's give you a double marathon and uh and they're absolutely they don't put the course like along a nice you know gravel road they put it 25 feet to the left um on a goat track or across you know assault flight crossing or over the dune they put the course straight out the top of the biggest dune you know like they don't make life easy for you at all yeah um and i remember the end of this 80k day i would say i'd been um you know jogging and

shuffling for i don't know how many hours maybe nine ten hours yeah i was ruined um and uh i remember getting to the finish line it was in the back of someone's like the back paddock of some guy's farm yeah yeah it's a bunch of guys there was no one around it was pitch black and like you you sort of think oh after that marathon ultra marathon sure there's a big zingy finish but not really it's it's your private journey you know it's a private victory and I remember crossing that finishing line and, mate, I just had tears streaming down my cheeks. It was just a moment of, like, it was a metamorphosis.

That's the belief in me, that's when it really happened because I think I did a lot of this to try and prove to myself that I was mentally tough because initially I didn't think I was. Yeah, yeah, mate. And then I just, you know. Yeah, mate. Take us back to, I mean, let's say we're, what, four or five days in and you're into that 80 80k's day i mean i can imagine that would be just like

this mountain in front of you after what you've already been through what keeps you going what what kept you going mate what kept you putting one foot in front of the other after you just mentally physically uh beyond it how did you how did you keep yourself going mate uh-huh mate up to be honest i don't think it was the eyes on the prize i think it was um I reckon it was eyes on the pain of failure right um because you know as I said I think the thing that drove me there I know the thing that drove me there was I had a sense in me that I was mentally weak I'd had a few things not go right in my life like a few years before I'd sort of had a partner leave me I'd sort of lost a job I got myself a bit of financial strife and I spiraled

I was just pathetic yeah like I didn't I didn't respond to it in the way a strong person should and I realised I needed to toughen myself up, right? And by that I mean learn the mental skills so I can thrive, not just be a hard-ass, you know. I wanted to thrive and enjoy my life. Yeah. And this, when I got in this thing and I was halfway through, there was nothing that was going to make me stop.

Right. I don't care how much it was going to cost me, I was going to finish the bloody thing because I could not, because I was raising money for a charity, I had people watching from home. I built up some public pressure to make sure it happened. Yeah, yeah. Because there was no way I was going to back out, mate, in that moment.

I think it was the fear of failure and the embarrassment was one half. Yeah. And the other half was I just had to prove to myself I could do it, mate. That's bloody awesome, mate. I mean, I love your style because by creating the own social pressure, there's nowhere to go then, is there? It's like failure is not really even an option once you've put yourself into that position where you've publicly said,

I'm doing this for you guys. It's bloody amazing. Let me circle on to that period then where things sort of hit rock bottom and I'm taking that back in Calgary in Canada where you're sort of in autopilot. Let's soak into that for a minute if we can. Talk to us about what was going on, what happened and where did that get you to? Yeah, look, I think I had a fairly inflated sense of what I could do

and what I was capable of, and I was just cruising along on a bit of raw talent. I was sort of pretty good at what I did, and I don't think I was necessarily a good guy. I think I was an okay guy. I had a good time. I was friendly to people, but I don't think it really had any real depth to me.

I had started to do just a bit of journaling. I'd started to read a few self-help books. But then, you know, as happens when you're cruising along in life, life decides to stop the boat. Yeah. Yeah. And what precisely did happen at that point in time? I wasn't, you know, then my girlfriend left me.

She should have left me. Like, in hindsight, she did the right thing in leaving me at that time. I didn't see it. I was too dumb to see it, right? um and then uh then i said i had a few things at work not go right and um and i found then i sort of looked at my accounts and i was like oh geez not as much money as i thought i did and now this travel and stuff i want to do was sort of out the window yeah and then but luckily i had a mentor there and he's still a very good friend of mine today and he coaches um with me in my business

um he took me under his wing and um he he came to the office one day and he looked at me and he saw i was pretty heartbroken and what was going on and he just said get up come with me and we walked out it was like negative 25 degrees because calgary's colder than hell frozen over and um we went to this starbucks and he just said just breathe mate it's all i want you to do is just breathe just breathe and breathe and then after about 10 minutes goes what happened and i sort of said oh well this happened and my life's a bloody mess and he goes okay i got you i'm just And so he didn't give me any coaching. He just told me to breathe.

And then he took me under his wing and he made me journal things and he made me read books that were hard books to read, like about your own shadow self or the places that scare you in your own psychology. And to start opening up the can of worms, I suppose, on your own internal thoughts, strengths, weaknesses, blind spots. and it was just transformative. I think then that's where it began, you know, like out of the fire,

I suppose, because you've got to get up, right? Yeah. You can't just lie on the ground forever. Yep. But this time when I got up, I had someone there to really take me under their wing and I think the role that he played for me is one reason why I now love coaching because I get to do that for other people, not so much that I'm there when they go through those sort of things,

but that's one reason I like coaching, I think. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And the relationship with him, mate, I mean, he must have seen, he must have had a lot of faith in you to want to help you to that level. How long had you known him before? What was the nature of it? Six months. I was working for him for six months before.

Yeah. We had touched on a few topics, but I'll tell you what he did, and he did what all good mentors do. Yeah. is he didn't become a yes man right he gave me some feedback so i remember one day he said to me um hey mate you got plenty of talent is that all you got wow you know so i i often believe that that most stinging feedback you ever get will probably be the biggest life-changing moment you have the reason why did that sting because it was true right it was true i wasn't doing the hard

work i wasn't going and pushing myself i wasn't asking hard questions in myself i was afraid of feedback i was afraid of the truth i avoided it um you know i wish someone had said that to me earlier that i respected you know like i you know i sort of do and sort of don't because i love the life i've lived but gee some early messages would have been good you know around that you know and And sometimes now when I'm coaching someone, every now and then I'll look at them and go, they need to have this feedback. And as long as I've got heaps of trust, I'll hit them with both barrels. And I know it'll hurt them.

I know for a couple of days they'll be stinging. But every single time I've done that, every single time I've done that, I've watched someone come out of the ashes and rise to a new level they never thought possible. yeah right because um that that that is what it is it is a rebirthing so to speak that if you give someone that really really difficult feedback that they know is true and it comes from you and they respect you yeah it stops them doing it almost forever

yeah yeah love it right yeah but that's gold so that's when yeah sorry mate go on no i just said that's what he did for me and it was the greatest gift um you know he could have possibly given me and then he just kept on giving me the next piece he wanted to see if i how far i would go i think yeah like he didn't i don't think he fully trusted me to begin with i think he wanted to say well i'll give him this and see if he does it and one thing i sort of had taken to heart was this learning from the masters type of idea even And at this point, I was sort of on to it a little bit. And I thought, well, if he tells me to do something,

I'm going to go and do it. And I come back to him and I'm going to tell him exactly what I found out. And you know what? Because I did that, I was like one of the only people he was sort of mentoring. He was like, I'm just going to invest heavy. Because everything I gave to him, I went back and did as best I can.

And so that's the thing. If you're going to get yourself a coach or a mentor or anything in the world, it doesn't matter what, you know, if it's a hobby or for business or for your career, whatever, if they give you a task, damn well go and do it to the best of your ability. Block everything off, spend a ton of time getting it right and take it back because a coach wants to see a student

that wants to learn and apply. Yeah. They'll give you more. They will give you so, so much more and you'll get 10 times your value for your money than someone who just turns up and wants the coach to drive them. Yes. They're like, oh, then other people come to me and say,

hey, I want you to hold me accountable. And I'm like, okay, but I'll tell you what, you're leaving a lot on the plate. And I'm probably going to give you some heavy feet on the way. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the illness of our age, mate, is lack of accountability. Everyone wants to point the finger somewhere else, but there's always at least three fingers pointing back.

And you're clearly smart enough to recognise that it starts and stops with you. That's right, mate. Yeah. You know my favourite saying, Bushy, do you know what that is? What is it, mate? Ownership precedes victory. Yeah, spot on. That's it.

Yeah. You want to win? You want to have a better investment portfolio? Start owning the portfolio. Stop leaving it up to your bloody financial advisor. Right? Yeah. Go and talk to them.

Learn from them. Take ownership of it. Love it. Right? You want to have a great career? you want to be in a C-level job, stop. Most people I say, who owns your career? Guess what their answer is?

Themselves. I don't know. Seriously? You all know. Do you want to know how to tell who owns your career, Bushy? Look in the mirror. No, no, no. Here's how you tell.

The person is, who is it that approves your education and learning and development plan? Right? So who writes your L&D plan? If the person that writes your L&D plan is a HR professional on your team or your boss, then one of those two people owns your career and is defining where you are going to end up. You're not the driver's seat. You're the passenger in the back seat, mate. True enough.

So if you want to be owner of your career, you write your L&D plan. The bits that they won't fund, you fund. Yeah. And if you don't get the result and you're not doing that, then guess what? That's your problem. Yeah, that's gold, mate. Yeah, brilliant. that's that's stepping up to the plate mate and saying right if anyone's gonna make it happen to

me yeah love it mate tell us a bit more than that because of some awesome learnings and and with the experiences you've been through with that uh during that sort of period where you were really getting into the psychology of high performance were there other other things that you did to really hone your both awareness and skills during that time yeah so i mean i'd learned um hypnosis which was an interesting process. I'm a qualified hypnotherapist. And I'll tell you what I think is really fascinating. You learn this in neurolinguistics and you learn this in hypnosis,

is the power of language. Right. Every single word you use, the art of framing, right? I would suggest that one of the biggest challenges people have in the business world is they don't know the words to use. So why doesn't someone cold call a potential client? Literally, they don't know the first three words. They don't know the sentence to open up a natural conversation.

Why don't people hold people accountable? They've got a low performer in their team. Why don't they sit down and have a real discussion about that person's performance? Because they don't have the words to use. And so if I was to say to people, probably a really underestimated skill in the world is to learn the art of framing because it has a heavy, heavy performance on your ability to perform, right?

It's just something that's vastly underestimated. Absolutely agree. And the words we use are subconsciously reinforcing our belief system as well, aren't they? Absolutely. They're a direct reflection of that and you can hear it in people's voices. And, you know, words have the power

to move nations, Bushy, like if you want to know how inspiring you are, record your team meeting. Yep. Just put on the audio and record it and then play it back to yourself. Yeah. And just ask yourself, how inspiring am I? How clear am I in our future? I see a lot of people, maybe they're a business owner,

maybe they're an entrepreneur or a middle manager, and I listen to them tell me how they're, you know, doing a one-to-one with someone in their team and there's no hope they're not inspiring the person they're not nurturing their soul yeah right and if someone comes to you in a one-to-one the very first thing you have to realize is that you are responsible for so much of the happiness in life yes what that they're what they take home to their families you play a huge role in that right number one reason people leave a company is their boss number one reason people go home unhappy is their boss so you've got to take some ownership of that and you've got to say okay what

are your dreams find out what their dreams are what their goals are find out about their family find out how they tick what motivates them and then say hey listen you're in this job but i know you want something more and i'm going to help you get there i'm going to help you have my job by the time you have my job i'll have the job above it all right we'll do this little deal okay and you develop people like crazy and when they need that tough feedback give it to them but no not often 95 of the time you're encouraging you're saying you know what maybe we didn't quite get that right what maybe just try this next time it'll be a bit easier yeah impart every single bit of wisdom and knowledge you've got right share with them books share with them good podcasts

like your one do stuff like that to help them grow because what goes on is people get stuck Yeah. And one of the first things you need to help people get stuck is to give them knowledge and resources. It unstucks people, right, because it expands their knowledge, expands their frame of reference. Yeah. So if someone in your team is stuck,

just give them the gift of knowledge and resources and just give them a little bit of hope because I'll tell you what, it's such a gift. Mate, you're sharing some awesome gold with us there, mate. What covers what you've just spoken about there is what you mentioned earlier and that is develop trust first, then you can tell them anything. Absolutely, mate. Yeah, absolutely.

You've got to have the trust, mate. And, you know, because if you don't have trust, what people do is defend. Yeah. Yeah. Or point the finger somewhere else. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, or say, you know, that person's an idiot.

Like, they've got no credibility. Why would I listen to them? They can't be right. You know, that's what happens when someone who's been mean to you gives you feedback. What do you do? Just tell them to go jump on the rope. Linda Lake, I wouldn't listen to you.

But if someone has tried to nurture your soul and someone holds your hand and can tell you the middle name of your third child, right, guess what? Jim will listen to them when they say something that's maybe a bit of hard advice you might need. But having said that, that hard advice, and you shouldn't be looking for it. I don't walk around going, what's the hard advice that person needs? I think it's, you know, I think what it comes down to is every now and then you'll see it pop up, and then what you have to realise is your responsibility

and the gift it's giving someone. Yes. That's at some point. Maintain the pure intention of helping that person take their game to another level. Yeah, it's done out of love, not out of criticism. Yeah, spot on. Love it.

Mate, that's bloody awesome, mate. But, I mean, clearly all of that foundational work that you've done over quite an extensive period of time then obviously has allowed you the respect and the ability to be working with some of the creme de la creme. So from my limited readings, it looks like you've spent some time with Martina Navratilova, some of the rugby greats, the golfing heroes. Can you share a little bit about that experience with us? Yeah, sure. Well, look, the sporting world is a funny world, Bushy. It's nowhere near as professional behind the scenes as the media makes it out to be.

Right. You know, I think a lot of the time they do a lot of really, really solid things. They've got great rhythms and great processes, but there's always gaps, mate. It's just like any business. No one's perfect. Yeah.

And so if you've got a few frameworks and you've got a few ideas, is you can survive and add value at that level, right? Yeah. I mean, when I coached Martina Natredalova, I mean, I have to admit I was pretty nervous because I wasn't sure how I could necessarily help her. She was coaching Agnes Radvanska, who is five in the world, and I was working with Martina on her coaching.

Wow. And how to coach Agnes to improve things like their rhythm and their systems. and there's a model or a framework I teach called Prepare, Perform, Recover, Review, or P2R2. And basically I taught that to Martina and what was going on was Agnes was coming off Centre Quarter like Arthur Ashe in the US Open and they were going straight into review while Agnes is on the warm-down bike.

Right. Now, because they were caught up in the process and the contracted time that happens in a major, they thought they could sort of circumvent recovery, but what was actually going on was it was costing them big time yeah so what i helped them with was to redesign their operating rhythm within a major yeah um so that they had a very clear process leading into the match post-match the right level of break so they could get data analysis video good questions presented in a way that the athlete responded really well to

so they could get them they could sort of lubricate i suppose or make the the process from one match to the next to be optimal, insightful, engaging for the athlete. And what they were applying was a bit of an old-school method that was probably used in Czechoslovakia in the 80s, you know, when she was the greatest of all time. But it didn't work now because you've got a totally different audience. You know, you've got a modern-day 25-year-old

who just has a very different model of the world and wants something different. Yeah, the old carrot and the stick exercise of those times, I couldn't see applying to someone with the current mindset. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know, and just wanted everything. You know, and as a top five tennis player in the world, most of the time when you say something, it gets done.

You know, like, this is what happens. So, you know, I helped Martina with that and some other challenges I had with the athlete. And I think the key to operating with, um at the top levels of sport um and in the top levels of business is you there's probably two big things one is you absolutely have to know your stuff yeah right you have to know it inside out the meticulous preparation to know it have your frameworks super clear have your measures have you the way you describe things have practiced just a hundred times if you can right then number

two well and i found this i sort of picked up on this real early is don't teach or don't sort of meld into areas you know nothing about right so you're the expert in one thing you're not the expert like i'm not like i know a lot about strength and fitness yes but i'll tell you what i don't even bother going into that world at all right there are people in that field that know 100 times more than i do yeah right and i just leave it so when they walk in the room we get talking and i talk about my part of the game i don't talk about theirs i don't talk about strategy i don't talk about technique i don't think about any of those things i just stick to my part of the pie smart and because i know my part of the buy better than they know their parts

of the pie and i don't try and intrude on their territory they don't try and intrude on mine and we've got mutual respect yeah right so when you go just say you're going into a big company and they say oh do you also do this be very very careful yes yes right because you might sometimes you can say yes i can do it and and you you go right you put all your resources together and you do it because it's a great opportunity because it's okay but just be careful you have to be in that environment you you could really set yourself up to cost your reputation totally agree and if you're trying to be a total distraction from what you're actually damn good at yeah and if you're trying to be everything to everyone then you're going to spread yourself too

thin and you're not going to do any of it well yep so that's great learnings mate and that I guess that's directly translatable then into the work you're doing with middle managers c-suiters and entrepreneurs and chief maker I'm guessing exactly mate and we like we teach operating rhythm right that's one thing we teach and we we talk about how do you optimize each step of that process prepare perform recover review and they're all vital and if you skip a step you're going to fail. There's no doubt about it. So I would say 60% to 70% of the things we teach in elite sport

is directly translatable to business. Yeah. What I find interesting is business loves to learn from sport. Sport loves to learn from business. Interesting. Yeah, there's some good parallels there, I guess, and sport being almost a micro-ism. Yeah, okay.

I love it. Well, let's then leap into the world of Chiefmaker, mate, if we can. And just given the wealth of expertise you've built up both personally and professionally and in the time now you've been operating with Chiefmaker, clearly you've got some sensational performance expertise and really hands-on experience working with people in business. what tips and techniques can you share with us that are helping them to overcome the these recurrent problems that a lot of people in those positions are suffering at the moment

yeah sure look um i suppose the easiest way to just go through it is i i think if you want to take your game to another level there's five elements i talk about as an individual right it's the stuff i put in the book it says um game plan routines entourage assets track record that spells great it's a great method right yeah so game plan is having a very clear um plan for your career yeah what's your vision what's your purpose your values what makes you unique and highly valuable in the market so that's your unique value proposition yeah what i want people to think is they are a professional services firm of one yeah you're just full-time employed so how do you stand out how do you do something that is beyond what everyone else does that makes and adds more value

than anybody else right never forget your customer is your boss yeah why are they your customer because they pay the bill right when you send your invoice in term of in the form of your work your time sheet your boss approves it so if your boss isn't happy with you you're not serving your number one customer so that's game plan right so you've got to have your game plan right when you don't have a game plan you can feel lost at sea you also get really commoditized so you're always market rates um there's just nothing about you that screams attention the opportunities don't come your way like you end up just being stuck in the middle yeah right and then you really are on the treadmill right yeah so get your game plan sorted that's vital okay then to get your routines

and your rhythm sorted right and so this is about prepare perform or cover of you but it's It's also about things like having a really good morning or daily focus session where you sit down and you look at things like mind maps or your strategic planning, your tactical planning, and you just recenter yourself so you're purposeful and deliberate about what you're about to do for the day ahead. So your operating rhythm drives or what I call automates the pursuit of excellence.

Yeah. Right? Have things like prepare, perform, or cover of you working for you all the time. Yeah. What actually happens is you once again get lost at sea because it's like you set out from a port and you're trying to get to, you know, trying to go from Sydney and you're trying to get to San Francisco. But what goes on is without this constant recheck in, you lose sight of where you're going. Yeah.

The waves knock you one way, the tide takes you another, the wind blows you somewhere else. And guess what? You're miles from your destination. Yeah. And you're exhausted. Yeah. so have that rhythm in place the next is your entourage your entourage has five elements right that's your external trusted advisors that's people outside the business that you can call up

anytime masterminds friends coaches mentors old colleagues they're really important they play a vital role in making sure you don't get isolated and get stuck in your business and because if you're isolated you're not solving problems quickly yes right then there's home make sure home is sorted and you're happy there and then the three elements in the business are the people that report to you your peers at the same level as you and the senior executives and your boss of your business yep if you think about those five elements and you do a bit of a red amber green analysis on how good your relationships are how many ambassadors you have in the business right you gotta double check that's all on fire and build those relationships particularly if you

want good opportunities coming your way yeah because the the once again if you remove the entourage or the importance of the entourage what happens you're on your own yeah right you're on your own and it's stressful every single time you try and do something in the business people block you yeah all right get your underage sorted then assets is the next one and assets is your skills your technique your um so your tactics or your frameworks your processes the skills you bring to the table to help a business solve a problem yeah right the more assets you've got the more valuable you are in the market simple as that you can do more right yeah and then the last one is t which is track record right and what we talk a lot about is building your track record because a

bulletproof record and it just speaks for itself yeah you know and so if you go through though but here's the thing you don't have a track record what happens bushy no one believes you sound like an academic yeah you know yeah so if you think about each of those we give you game plan which is a bit of direction, some routines to keep you on track and keep you growing, a good entourage of supporters and network, heaps of new skills and assets so you're good at what you do and a track record. Like if you did all those, I guarantee you're going

to be C-level within a few years because I know most people that aren't C-level don't have three-quarters of that. Spot on, spot on. That's a great framework, mate. It's a real roadmap to success and it's really interesting. Sorry, mate, go on. What happens next, Bushy, is you make a lot more money and then you take it to Bushy Martin and he'll invest for you.

I'll pay you later for that, mate. But it's really interesting that the sort of structure that you take people through with their careers is in fact parallel to the sort of process we take people through when they invest in property because when someone comes to us and says, oh, we want to invest in property, and says, well, we're going to park that for a moment,

it's how do you want to live? What's your perfect life look like? And we start there. And quite often, mate, very similar to yourself, they've got no clue. They haven't even put that into their brain. And it's like, well, there's no point worrying about property unless you've got a clear vision around how you want to live because it's not until you get that that that's going to form the magnet

that's going to keep you on track and keep you focused and keep you drawn towards achieving that. Otherwise, you're going to be as good as the next person that comes along and tries to flog you or something. That's right. And all of those disciplines that then follow through the routines and then surrounding yourself with the right team of independents that's going to make it happen.

It's exactly the same process in a different environment, mate. So it's very interesting, mate. That's a really simple way and the great method is a great way to capture that, mate. So I would certainly be encouraging those listeners to grab a copy of your book and we'll talk about at the end where they can get that, the Chief Maker. I've had a good read and it's an awesome and quite inspirational book, mate, in terms of lifting your eyes and saying, hey, I'm in control of this and there's some great things I can do to make it happen.

So that's brilliant. Now, I want to swing around to you personally then for a minute if I can, mate, and ask you the same question. What's your dream lifestyle, mate? What does it look like? Who are you with? What are you doing? Where?

When? Yeah, well, our vision, so my wife and I, we do a combined visioning process every year. Yeah. And so we're really crystal clear on where we're getting to. Yeah. And the vision is combined with a bit of family and life, right, and work.

Yeah. And so our vision, so the vision for Chiefmaker, the long-term vision, our dream business, is a business that's 50% digital and 50% corporate, right? Yeah. And so what I mean by that is we are about to release a whole bunch of online learning and we've got the podcast and we're doing a ton of work in that space to turn all of our content

into things that anybody can consume at a vastly discounted price and take control of their own career. So we say become the chief of your career in life. This means you don't have to wait for the company to call us up and spend a ton of money to go and coach the organisation. You can do it. Out of your own wallet and not have to pay the money that everyone else pays, right?

You don't get the one-to-one as much, but at least you get the content, right? Yeah, got the tools. And then what we want, then our other part of the business is more the corporate coaching and consulting, and we do the high-performance teams, executive performance coaching, and one-to-ones, and that is the other half of our business, and we're going to keep that at a reasonable size, not too big, fairly boutique with customers that we love working with that want to grow, that are serious about transformation and growth. Yeah.

And so we're doing really well on the journey to that vision. I feel like we are rocketing along. It's going really well. Great. We're growing nicely. So, mate, I sort of feel like we're half living the dream already, to be honest. Good on you, mate.

That's bloody awesome. Well, tell me this because this is something that I'd like to dig into as well because I found over my own journey working with thousands of people over the years, mate, that most of us invest very heavily in our work in our career or our business, and the focus is generally on the income stream. But I've sort of come to realise through lots of readings and my own journey, I guess, that to achieve real freedom, those that do so get there by investing in growth assets outside of their workspace that then allow them to replace their active income with passive

income over time. What growth assets are you or will you be investing in on your journey from here, mate? Yeah, so we have a pretty structured portfolio and I've got a stockbroker that keeps all our stuff together up in Brisbane. Yep. He's really good if anyone wants to speak to him.

His name is Ben Rodney, a bit of a rock star. Right. And he has sort of a Warren Buffett approach, right? So we have stocks that we hold long term. We don't touch. we've got our own we've got a um uh self-managed super fund which has um once again just a bunch of stocks we're not touching not that we're in um and we won't be touching for another 30 years um we have a property which we're here in melbourne and we're going for and just we're

about to do this up and we'll probably resell it in about five years so we just keep growing that and then we have um stocks outside of that so that's our yeah our investment at the moment and it's split across a range of different asset classes. Right. But we also spend, because we're a small business owner and I can start to see a direct ROI between when we build a new product and invest money in that and then actually a return. Yep.

We're getting better at that. I don't say we're brilliant at it, but we're getting better at understanding how to make those decisions more clearly for a better return on our capital, right? Yep. So we're now, as we grow the business, we're looking for a very clear ROI, which we can then take some of that additional capital

and put it into and spread it out. And we do things like income splitting and all sorts of things to make sure that we're looking after our finances long-term. Yeah, love it. Now, just sort of going hand-in-hand with that, how important is the support of your life partner in making all that happen, mate?

well my wife is critical like we've got a very young family we've got twin year old boys two and a half um she works three days a week for another company and one day a week for chief maker yep um so we and we both have we both work from the home office all the time great so we we're really tight-knit you know and we work very closely together but mate she is just a bloody rock star like you know we we are many ways opposites in the way we operate but boy is it important because the little things that I sort of leave out because I'm moving so fast there she is to catch me and keep me on track yeah um you know and vice versa sometimes I need to push her into a new territory she's maybe a little bit uncomfortable going into um you know so there's

a bit of that give and take but mate we are as I said we do our visioning process every year we this on Tuesday just gone we um we did about uh two hours um at Mount Macedon near home out in the mountains just reviewing what's happened in the last quarter so we do quarterly off sites yep right we get together we disappear turn everything off and we just sit down and just go what's happened we do like what we call an after action review what did we say we do a quarter ago what did we actually do what did we assume how can we get better what's coming in the next quarter what's the most important things how do we get them done how do we make it easier and make sure that what we're going to do is exactly aligned with our vision yeah love it

And talk to me about that vision process. When you sort of get together once a year to refocus a vision, what are the processes that you actually go through to get some clarity around that? Yeah, sure. Yep. Yeah, I've been doing personal vision processes for over 10 years now, so I've done a lot of them, and I can tell you they're fun.

So here's how you do it. The very first thing you do is you separate, just for a few hours, not for long, and you go away with your own art book, right? You get an art book. Yep. And you go away and you just write down where you want to be. You normally pick a timeline.

So normally, it depends on how, if you've never done this before, I suggest do something like two years plus 10 and then do another one, which is like 10 years away. Yep. And what you do on your own is you write down all the things you've always wanted to do, all the things you've always wanted to be, and all the things you've always wanted to have. Yep.

Do, be, and have, right? And you just dream big, mate. You dream big, right? All the amazing things. Don't worry about resources and costs because you're not into planning yet. You just dream big. Then you say to yourself, what would that look like in two years and what would it look like in 10 years?

And you draw it, mate. Look, if you've got a house, a dream house, draw what it might look like. It doesn't have to be perfect. Draw your dream car. Draw a number on there that's how much money you've got in the bank or all your assets put together. So we then do a whole bunch of different categories, and I'm happy to give you these categories so you've got it.

We've actually got a couple of episodes not long ago on the Inner Chief that just talk through this process. I can give you the show notes from that and you can just give it away to your listeners. Perfect. But the general categories are relationship with partner, where do you want that to be, relationship with kids, relationship with good friends, trusted friends, right,

you know, sort of your soulmates, your wider family, So brothers, sisters, parents, your career, your contribution to the greater good, your legacy, your health, your fitness, your big, hairy, audacious goals, any hobbies and mastery and learning you want to do, any travel goals. All that goes on there, the whole lot. So you do this on your own. Very, very open. If you want to lubricate the senses a bit and give yourself a nice bottle of red, that's absolutely fine. once you've done that so what i what we normally do that on our own and then the next day we come together have another session yeah all right and we do it together what did you write right and we

just share it yeah you know now the first time you do it you'll be a fair way away but the next year you'll be much closer yeah now the reason you go back and re-dream is because you're now at a new place in the world exactly you've seen more things you've opened your mind you've actually expanded like my my vision now compared to what it was 10 years ago was 50 times larger yeah because I didn't even know I'd ever get to where I am now. Right? Yes. So my first vision was I don't think even what I've got now, right?

And you just learn new things. Like I've got a podcast. You get a podcast. Hell, mate, it wasn't on my vision board two years ago. I didn't even know they existed. Yes. Right? Too true.

So doors open and you've got to work out if that's a door you want to go through. So you do the bit separately. You come together. You share it. You create a shared vision board. Yep. As much detail into that as you want, whatever style. Make some drawings.

do some icons put color if you want or not i don't care make it you yep right and then say okay if that's where we want to be in x number of years what are the chapters what's first what's second what's third what's fourth yep right so let's just say um you do it and one of the things on there is you want to do an mba and your partner wants to do um uh wants to write a book yep right So it's something you both always want to do. However, you both know that you've got family commitments and you couldn't do it at the same time. Yep.

So who goes first? Shake hands. What? You've got a year to write your book, then I've got two years in my MBA, done deal, shake hands. Okay, I'll cover the bases while you do it. Right? And, you know, these things just,

they just take some of the angst out of it all. Yeah, right. You know, they just make it all a little bit easier. Yeah. Right? So you go chapters, then you can break it down more if you need to into quarters of the year, what are you going to do first, what second. Then you get into your planning.

I think people generally know how to do a bit of planning, so I won't go into that. But have a glass of red or a beer or whatever you want to do and just knock your socks off. Love it. Yeah. Mate, to hear someone who does that as well, our process is slightly different, but Sonia and I do it exactly

as described, every year, every quarter. And then it breaks down to a month, and then it gets down to a week so that we know what am I doing today that's going to help me, using your words, achieve this year's chapter. Yeah, and because we're so closely aligned with business like you and Sonia, Charlotte and I make sure when we do that quarterly review, we cover family, right, and we cover business. Yeah, brilliant.

It's not a quarterly business review of Chiefmaker. It's of both. It's a life review, isn't it? It's a life vision, and included in life is business. We don't go work life, we go life. Yeah, love it. Love it, mate. Absolute gold, mate. I really appreciate you sharing that with us.

Mate, I'm going to switch you now into what I call the ambush, which is the bushfire lightning round that we just raced through a couple of. Oh, okay. Common questions that listeners love to get some of your gold on. Let's kick off with your favourite quote and why. And I think you've already mentioned it to us. Well, I think it's ownership precedes victory, mate. I really do.

And the why is because it's personal for me. Like, I think I wasn't owning it. I sort of mentioned all that. I wasn't owning it, and I wasn't getting victory. Yeah. Right? When I started owning it, I got the victory. So that just rings home for me.

Yeah. So that's it. It's my own quote. That's a brilliant one, mate. Well, it's the missing link, as we've already discussed in a lot of people's lives, is personal accountability. It's the person in the mirror, and the quicker we as a society wake up to that, the better off everyone's going to be.

So, yep, gold there. What about the top book and top podcast that you would recommend people both read and listen to? Oh, top book, top podcast. I'm turning around looking at my library, mate. It'd be pretty substantial, mate, from what you're telling me. Oh, you're going to have to cut a little bit of audio out of here while I think about it.

It's all good, man. Well, I'll tell you what, Bushy, I'm going to give something left field because I'm sure I could tell you things like I've always enjoyed things like Tim Ferriss. I've done a bunch of his experiments, but I'm going to say there's a book by Pema Chodron. She's a Buddhist monk. Okay.

And it's called The Places That Scare You. Right. Right. And what this is about is the internal objections or the things within you that you fear. Yep. They are the key to the sale. Yes.

Right. If you want to grow, that little thing within you that, oh, it's a little something you don't want to think about, oh, my God. Like, if you can go there, if you can build up the courage to go there and look deep within your soul and work it out, you will definitely grow. Yeah, I love it. What's the author of that one, mate? Pema Chodron, P-E-M-A-C-H-O-D-R-O-N, The Places That Scare You. Really, really good book. Love it.

I'll tell you what the other podcast I've got two podcasts Bushy I don't know if you know that but I've got the inner champ and the universal man the other one is called

universal man yep so that would be the one out there for and that one's a title not for profit side hustle with another guy that I

and we just talk about common problems that men have that would be my other one yeah because I spent so much time recording podcasts I don't have time

to listen to any good problem to have and i'll take my hat off to you on the universal man too mate because in a world of political correctness i often feel sometimes the good old blake is sort of being smothered a little bit and i think creating forums and opportunities for men just to be men and and to to share what's important to be a man is a very it's very rare air in the uh current scheme of things mate so um love your work on that front yeah thanks i think it's um it's important i think about what what it is is the whole idea is to help men be better men and we're not just talking about it the what this is is very practical solutions to everyday

problems that men face right so it's not oh let's just talk about how hard it is and oh i mean there's so many guys with depression like this is how you fix it yes get on board fix it quickly yeah um and i my i'm a very very firm believer that men need to lift their game right i look at what's going on not just because i see suicide rates are high which tells me that guys aren't doing their best yeah right but there's also a truckload of things that have been i think just sliding under the radar for way too long like the diversity or inequality in the world and you know if the old parlour male and stale like you and i are like we've had it so good mate like but no one's had it better than you and I.

I agree. In the history of humankind, the white bloke has just had it made, right? Dream run. In general. Yep. Yep, dream run. So the idea is that this is not just for the white male. It's for every guy from every walk of life.

I don't care what your race, colour, creed, sexual orientation, doesn't matter. Yep. It's every guy needs to lift their game. Yeah. Right. And if you don't believe that, that's right, it's not for you. Totally.

Right on board with what you're saying there, mate. Absolutely, 100%, mate. And you're sort of leading the charge there, mate. So that's absolutely awesome. Thanks. Mate, a quick spin. And this is a question that I ask because it's a topic I hear everyone talk about. Everyone feels or believes that Australians pay too much tax.

What's the top thing that you've done to pay less tax, mate? Mate, yeah, we income split. I think that's the best one. Yeah, yeah. I'm no tax expert, mate. You know that. But we do income splitting. I think that's the best one.

I think that would be it, mate. That covers it pretty well. I wish I could be – you're the tax expert. No, it's all good. I'm just really interested because it is something that everyone, when I catch up with them, oh, I'm paying too much tax. So I always just like to ask the question, and there's some really interesting responses there.

And income splitting is a good and easy and an obvious one, mate. So that's awesome. Yeah. Mate, I'll tell you what, though. But, look, I just think the politicians are doing such a damn good job, I'm happy to give them my money. You're sounding delusional now, mate. You've been talking for too long.

Mate, a quick spin as well. What's both the best and the worst piece of investment advice that you've ever received? Oh, all the best. I almost got sucked into a pyramid scheme one day. this is a classic story a good mate of mine um invited me and a bunch of my other other mates we would have been about 25 uh to an evening okay and um and and i'd just been i think i've been away well i wouldn't have been from work back then i don't know what i was away for but i was

really tired and i called him up and said hey man i'm so tired what can you just tell me what this thing is about so i can you know just think about it and not come over and he goes and i come over It's really important to me. And I turned up and there's just these seats all set out and there's a presentation. And I'm like, man, what's going on? I'm like, we're in your house and there's a presentation set up. And it was about this business called A2K.

This is Amway Rebadged. This is Amway Rebadged. And I was sitting there listening and I had to admit I wasn't my best. I was a stroppy because I was tired. I probably had like three hours sleep and it was like 6 o'clock the next night. Just what you need. And then I had this question around – I took this stuff around these exchange rates they were using and it didn't make sense to me

and I was working in numbers a bit and I'm pretty sharp on the numbers and I asked this question and the guy behind me answers and I was like, you're a plant. He was a plant, right? Good grief. So I got out – so that's the worst advice that I was given was to invest in this but um the best advice i've ever been given yeah um is to invest in yourself and your money making capacity right um now i'm with you on once you've made some money

you invest it wisely and you store it away and you let compound interest go to work over a long period of time yeah all right um but if we so one of the things i say to customers is we can bring forward, your next promotion in one year, how much is that worth to you? Exactly. And I say, well, that's worth $15,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000. And I'm like, well, it's worth $100,000 mate, why are you risking

that? You know, invest in yourself and you'll earn a lot more money in the long term and that money will compound on top of that. Totally. Yeah, that's perfect, mate. That's brilliant. Mate, to close out the ambush then, what's a

personal habit that has contributed most to your success today? Mate, I'm a voracious learner. Yeah. That's it for me, mate. I never stop learning, mate. I'm a tragic. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, yeah, and I love it. Yeah, that's awesome, mate. Now, sort of bringing things to a close then because I'm just mindful of your precious time, mate, and you've shared some absolute gold with us today. What's next new and exciting for Greg Leighton and Chief Maker? Oh, mate, I think the biggest thing is the launching of our online learning, which, you know, I mentioned before I won't bang on about it,

but that's big for us. Yeah. And we're heading to the States in October to do some partnerships and JVs over there as well. So, well, I think that's the big one, mate, and, you know, it's pretty damn exciting. Yeah, that's brilliant, mate. Well, it's the ultimate one-to-many, isn't it, mate?

You're sort of giving the tools and the power of anyone who wants to follow the ladder that you've put in front of them. And the ability to impact on a lot of people is sensational, mate. So congratulations on that, buddy. Mate, for those that, and there'll be a lot of them, who have been inspired and very interested in what you've shared with us this afternoon, mate, how can they get in touch with you? man i think the the easiest way fastest way is email which is greg at chiefmaker.com.au the website is chiefmaker.com.au um we're on instagram as uh at the chiefmaker yeah um i think that you know any one of those is fine if you reach out to me i will personally respond yeah fantastic mate well look um thanks again for uh sharing some absolute gold with us today across

multiple levels too mate it's uh you've had an awesome journey today you're doing some sensational stuff to really help people to lift their heads and really make an impact both in work and their life. So keep up the great work, mate. I'm very keen to stay in touch with you on that journey and we'll look forward to talking soon. Of course we will, mate. Partners forever. We're a legend, Bushy. Thanks for the call, mate. Thank you. Cheers. Thanks, mate. Bye. www.khgroup.com.au

That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au Or check us out at www.bussymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the GetInvested

podcast. So thanks for listening and as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you'll die tomorrow. Thank you.