Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 4: How to survive in uncertain times with Conor Neill

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

As we continue our series on surviving in uncertain times, the best person I know to help you reset your outlook and approach is today’s very special guest Conor Neill. Conor is a sought-after international keynote speaker on leadership. He teaches Leadership Communications at IESE Business School, one of the world’s leading executive education schools, and is the President of Vistage in Spain, one of the world’s leading CEO organisations. The Vistage mission is to improve the effectiveness and enhance the lives of intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs. He also holds the rare honour of being Permanent Faculty on Entrepreneurs’ Organisation’s Global Leadership Academy. He has founded six companies, raising capital, hiring teams and generating more than 10 million euros in sales. For six years, his company Taxijet revolutionised private jet transport. He has also successfully invested in startups.  Conor has worked with companies such as Accenture, IBM, Microsoft and many others delivering seminars on leadership communication. As a resident Professor, Conor has a degree in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence, and holds his MBA.  His hobbies include playing football, long distance running, tennis, mountain biking and traveling to historic places along with being the devoted father of his two daughters, Alexandra and Sofia. Conor has a great blog at www.conorneill.com and you can't afford to miss his youtube channel where I’ve gleaned lots of life changing guidance over the years.  Today’s episode is absolutely jam packed with words of wisdom that will help you to not only survive our challenging times but to seize this rare opportunity to thrive. Conor's book recommendation: Man's Search For Meaning By Viktor Frankl 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.

Yeah, the three most important lessons I took from that time is faith, hope, and love. Faith is everything that is happening is happening for a reason. There is a reason why I'm facing the challenges I'm facing right now. There's a reason why you, Bushy, are facing the challenges you're facing right now. There's a reason why each of the people listening to this podcast right now are facing the set of challenges that they have in their life. and you know we are here for a reason so faith is there's a reason that the podcast is going out there's a reason why the person who's listening to it right now is hearing these words hope is action changes the future only action changes the future thinking about something doesn't

change the future only action changes the future and so often in our life as human beings we stay at intent and we don't turn that intent into action we intend to buy an investment property we intend to check out whether we could improve the mortgage conditions but that just stays at intent and for me hope is that intent is never enough what matters is action changes the future not thinking about action. Only action changes the future. And no matter where you are, no matter how much you're struggling, no matter how bad it feels, there is always an action you can take now that changes the whole trajectory of your future. And love is that I never ask questions of myself that have me at the center. Love is fundamentally putting other people at

the center of the questions that you ask yourself in your head. 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, 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, friend and fighters. How are you responding to our current times of radical uncertainty and constant rapid global change? How are you feeling?

What are you thinking? What are you doing or not doing? At the time of this episode, everyone on the planet is drowning in fear from uncertainty. The current pandemic has heightened uncertainty over the economy, employment, finances, relationships and of course physical and mental health And as human beings, we crave security We want to feel safe and have a sense of control over our lives and our wellbeing Fear and uncertainty can leave you feeling stressed, anxious and powerless over the direction of your life

It can drain you emotionally and trap you in a downward spiral of endless what-ifs and the worst-case scenarios about what tomorrow may bring And we're all different in how much uncertainty we can tolerate in life Some people seem to enjoy taking risks and living unpredictable lives while others find the randomness of life deeply distressing But all of us have a limit If you feel overwhelmed by uncertainty and worry, it's important to know that you're not alone.

Many are in the same boat at this time. It's also important to realise that no matter how helpless and hopeless you feel, there are steps you can take to better deal with uncontrollable circumstances, alleviate your anxiety and face the unknown with more confidence. And today's guest will help you do exactly that. While we may not wish to acknowledge it Uncertainty is actually a natural and unavoidable part of life Unfortunately our instant iPhone Google everything world

Has created an illusion that everything can be known immediately This has created a dangerous illusion And the same iPhone has also created a social contagion that means that fake news and fear can engulf the world in seconds. However, despite our illusion of certainty and control, history repeatedly demonstrates that very little about our lives is constant or totally certain. And while we have control over many things,

we can't control everything that happens. As the global response to the coronavirus outbreak has shown, life can change very quickly and very unpredictably. You may have suddenly become sick, lost your job, or found yourself struggling to put food on the table or keep your family safe. You may be anxious about when the pandemic will end, or if life will ever return to normal. to cope with all this uncertainty many of us use worrying as a tool for trying to predict the future and avoid nasty surprises worrying can make it seem like you have some control over uncertain circumstances you may believe that it will help you find a solution to your problems or prepare you for the worst maybe if you just agonize over a problem long enough

Just think through every possibility, or watch the news or read every opinion online. You'll find a solution and be able to control the outcome. Unfortunately, none of this works. Chronic worrying won't give you more control over uncontrollable events. It just robs you of enjoyment in the present, saps your energy, and keeps you awake at night. But there are healthier ways to cope with uncertainty. and that begins with adjusting your mindset. So how can your mindset help you to thrive and survive in our tumultuous times?

Well, history leaves clues. When we look for the example of people who have not only survived but gone on to thrive in the direst and scariest of life-threatening situations, you can't go past the living example of Viktor Frankl as captured in his timeless book, Man's Search for Meaning. and it's a book that our special guest refers to in today's episode. Frankl's timeless book details his horrifying experiences in Nazi concentration camps as one of the few Holocaust survivors,

along with his outlook and approach that allowed him to survive while most perished. From 1942 to 1945, Frankl survived four Nazi concentration camps. Now in these death camps, everyone was reduced to a number. Viktor Frankl was number 119104. Upon arrival at his first camp, about 90% of his fellow transport passengers were killed in the first few hours. Now, in Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl adopts a psychological and a practical approach

to the importance of faith and hope, in contrast to the normal spiritual or religious approach. One of the underlying tenets of his book is that when you realise that it's your destiny to suffer, you then embrace suffering as the key to growth and success. Frankl quotes Nietzsche's words, He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. This is a guiding motto for all of his survival efforts,

for both himself and for other prisoners. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, He would give them a why, an aim for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Some of my favourite timeless and timely quotes from this must-read book include, Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves

Between stimulus and response, there is a space In that space is our power to choose our response In our response lies our growth and our freedom Frankl developed the concept of tragic optimism where the only kind of hope that can survive the harsh blows of reality and uncertainty needs to contain five key ingredients. Acceptance of what can't be changed, belief in the value and meaning of life,

self-transcendence over tragedy, courage to face adversity, and finally but most importantly, faith. Frankl's basic formula for tragic optimism was that to maintain faith and hope in spite of tragic experiences, we must learn the courage and tenacity to keep striving for a future goal, no matter how bleak the present is. This revolves around faith that all things are happening to us for a reason

and hope in continuing to take action that will improve our lives if we persist in our efforts. For Viktor Frankl, it was his faith in being back in the arms of his loving wife and his faith in surviving so that he could use his experience to help others live through challenging situations. It was this faith and belief that allowed him to endure the indescribable horrors and sufferings of the death camps. DeFranco, an optimist, acknowledges and accepts external reality,

even at its worst. But importantly, the optimist then says yes to all of life, including its problems. The optimist decides to harness and use life's difficulties, uncertainties and challenges to create something more positive and meaningful for themselves and others. So let me give you a challenge. During today's episode, our special guest refers to Viktor Frankl and leaves you with the following unanswered question.

What are the three sources of why and meaning that Viktor Frankl uncovered in his book that will help you to survive life-threatening situations? Now I'll give you a free copy of my book Get Invested if you jump on our website at knowhowproperty.com.au and send me the answers in the briefly tell me what you need box of the how can we help section at the bottom of the homepage or just email me at bushey at knowhowproperty.com.au. Now let me reinforce the importance of one of Frankl's best insights.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response In our response lies our growth and our freedom Everything in life is about our mindset and perspective And the fact that the same situation can be interpreted in many different ways And hence, our lives are entirely dictated by the way we view and react to situations And all of this revolves around a level of faith Unfortunately, in our scientific, technologically based world,

where everything must be logically explained and evidenced, faith has been relegated, sidelined and often written off. I'm not just talking about spiritual or religious faith here, which is where faith is traditionally associated. I'm talking about our underlying faith in ourselves and our faith in life. As Thomas Aquinas famously said, to one who has faith no explanation is necessary to one without faith no explanation is possible when things don't go according to plan we lose faith not only in ourselves but also in any

potential outcome in our lives life challenges will do that to you when we experience life's monumental ups and downs it's easy to lose faith and hope faith at its core is deep-rooted in the expectations of good things to come, and that everything happens for a reason. It goes well beyond hope. While much of hope lives in the mind converted into action, faith is steeped in the heart and the spirit. It can't be explained away by reason or logic, or be understood through a single dimension. While life can be hard at the best of times, faith is the knowledge, deep down side that things are happening for a reason and that things will get better. It's taking the next step when you can't see the entire staircase. Simply put, life would fail to have reason if

we didn't have faith. Without faith, we stop believing that things will turn out all right for us, regardless of how bad our situation is. In this regard, I've come to believe that faith is just as important as the air we breathe. While air nourishes our body, our faith and belief nourishes the heart and our soul. It's the energy that courses through every single fibre and cell within our beings. It's part of every muscle and every strand of thought.

It's the fundamental foundation of our existence. As Viktor Frankl demonstrates, people have moved mountains with their faith. Even when situations seemed dire and bleak, It was their faith that carried them through. There's little to no explanation for this in the physical realm. It's the metaphysical fibre that binds us all, carrying each of our deepest wishes and desires.

That's where faith lives. Unfortunately in this day and age, many people don't believe in things that they can't see. They explain things away due to other causes and effects, failing to find the small miracles in life that exist and work in our favour on a constant basis. For me, there's an enormous level of importance attributable to having faith in life.

Faith isn't just a notion that some people hold on to in tough times. Faith is an important element to all human life on earth. As some of us are now experiencing, life can be remarkably difficult at times. Faith is what helps to get us through, eliminating and illuminating the pathway in times of darkness. Helping to give us strength in times of trouble. Without faith, it's easy to allow stress, anxiety and fear to run our lives.

We go from moment to moment worried about one thing or another. Sometimes, those worries manifest themselves in highly stressful situations, causing not only mental anguish but physical problems as well. There's a clear and documented connection between stress and the increased likelihood of disease and illness. When we allow our minds to move into that realm unchecked, there's no limit to the damage that can be done. But it's faith that helps to keep those things at bay. Even when we have no reason to believe that things will get better,

it's through faith that our situations improve. When you hold the utter expectation of that in your mind, no challenge is too difficult. Learn to harbour faith and use it to eliminate stress, anxiety and fear. think back to situations in the past when you made it through something you thought was insurmountable believe that our current situation is meant to teach us and expect that good things will happen and they will this isn't about ignoring your problems this is about knowing that your situation will improve if you use your hope for the future to take action and the final ingredient to your

survival is to focus on love if you focus your energy on actively helping others rather than worrying about yourself your reticular activating system attracts more of what you focus on you need to give before you get if you stay in your head you're dead but if you give you live so in the words of today's guest faith hope and love create the pathway to finding solutions in your life keep in mind that human beings were made to thrive not to survive if you're only surviving, there's a far greater opportunity in store for you. There's a pathway to all of your solutions and that pathway is steeped in your faith and the expectation of greater things to come. So no matter how bad the situation is, no matter how dire you think it might seem,

your faith can and will get you through it. Accept that there's a reason we're facing our challenges and hold on to the expectation of greater things to come. Don't stop pushing or searching for an answer to help resolve whatever challenge you might be facing in your life. Never give up on taking action towards your hopes and your dreams just because you may be facing some setbacks. And in this regard, fear is a liar. Fear, uncertainty and discomfort are actually your growth compasses. The fear you're feeling right now is actually an indicator that you're stepping out of your comfort zone. And by challenging yourself, you'll start learning and growing and moving forward. So start reframing your fear as excitement and a barometer of your

progress. So in times of fear and uncertainty, like we're currently experiencing, shift from being paused to poised, from being stopped to restarting, from sitting on your hands doing nothing to taking positive action, and being prepared and ready to pounce on the incredible opportunities that change always brings. And the best person I know to help you reset your outlook and your approach, with the ancient wisdom that has stood the test of time through every crisis that humanity has endured over the millennia is today's very special guest, Connor Neal. Connor is a sought-after international keynote speaker on leadership. He teaches leadership communications at the ISE Business

School in Spain, one of the world's leading executive education schools. And he's the president of Vistage, part of the world's leading CEO organization. The Vistage mission is to improve the effectiveness and enhance the lives of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. He also holds the rare honour of being permanent faculty on Entrepreneurs' Organisation's Global Leadership Academy. He's founded six companies, raising capital, hiring teams and generating more than 10 million euro in sales. For six years, his company TaxiJet revolutionised private jet transport. He's also successfully invested in start-ups. Connor has worked with companies such as Accenture, IBM, Microsoft and many others, delivering

seminars on leadership communication. As a resident professor, Connor has a degree in psychology and artificial intelligence and holds his MBA. His hobbies include playing football, long distance running, tennis, mountain biking and travelling to historic places, along with being the devoted father of his two daughters, Alexandra and Sophia. Connor has a great blog at conorneil.com that's c-o-n-o-r-n-e-i-l-l dot com

and you can't afford to miss his YouTube channel where I've gleaned lots of life changing guidance over the years today's episode is absolutely jam packed with words of wisdom that are going to help you to not only survive our challenging times but to seize this rare opportunity to thrive So please enjoy this great conversation with Connor Neill. Hi Freedom Fighters. Now today's special guest, Connor Neill, has been one of my very select virtual mentors

now for a number of years, even though we've never met and even though we both live on opposite sides of the world. And without knowing it, he's helped me to become a much better communicator, a better public speaker and a better leader. So I'm very humbled and quite excited about today's conversation. So welcome and let's get invested, Conor. Thank you very much, Bushy, and great to spend this Monday morning speaking to you from Barcelona, Spain. And as I said before, today is one of those strange days in Barcelona where the clouds are grey and rain is falling.

But we're on our fifth week of quarantine with the coronavirus raging through the world. We're insides. I've not left my four walls of my apartment except to go and buy food or put out the garbage in the last five weeks. So it's a strange time. And one of the things that strikes me each morning is three billion people around the world are all in their homes. So I think, you know, as we spoke and I saw you at your home in Australia, and I'm in my home in Barcelona, Most of these listeners, I don't know how long it will take for the podcast to get out, but I assume most of our listeners will also be within their home. And for me, the reflection that half of humanity is feeling the same thing, is in their own home, is not able to just go out, is giving up their freedom. not necessarily for themselves but coronavirus is a disease where the agent of the disease is

not a mosquito the agent of the disease is not a rat the agent that helps this disease is a human being and each human being has to take a decision are you an agent of this disease do you go out and put yourself in a situation where you can become infected and become someone who passes it along or do you keep some distance from other people for a period whilst the medical researchers figure out a vaccine whilst the hospitals get themselves geared up with the protocols for treatment and for people of action and i know that the people listening to this podcast are listening to this podcast because they want to know what to do what action to take what actions they can take now that can change their future and all around the world we're being asked not to act to sit

still and i think if you wanted to give me a challenge that would really test the limits of my capability it would not be to do something it would be this to be told to sit still at home and do nothing that's a very good intro mate you've set the scene beautifully in relation to what we're all uh trying to come to grips with but uh but i i feel like you've been a friend uh for some time but for for those listening who don't know you can you sort of start by uh giving us a rundown on who you are what you do and where you're currently heading please mate i was born in Ireland. And my father's job moved to Chicago when I was 14. And I think that was quite a transformational moment of me. Ireland would be a fairly laid back place where people don't really

aspire to be wealthy or rich or change their life greatly. When I arrived in America as a 14 year old, I went to school and I just remember everyone around me wanted to be a millionaire. And in america it was more than wanted it was they believed that it was just waiting for them and i spent 14 15 years old in a high school in america and i think that really affected my attitude towards the life that uh you know if you work hard if you focus on things you can make a big difference to your own life i spent three years living in australia from 97 to 2000 and i think one of the things we commented on in the conversation pre the podcast is i learned a very interesting lesson from my three years in australia and those three years in australia

what i tended to find is when someone asked you what do you do they really didn't care about the content of the answer they cared about the energy and the passion you put into the answer so my answer is well you know i'm a consultant at a global top four consulting company but you know i'm really looking for something else people in australia would look at me like you loser if i was very excited about my job it didn't matter whether i was janitor or the ceo if i looked like i cared that was a more important thing than the what i was actually doing and i've always taken that back from my time in australia what i do now uh i'm an entrepreneur i've been an entrepreneur for the last 17 years i'm on my sixth business that i've started

some from an idea on a blank sheet of paper some are so to speak franchises of a global business that was already existing in parallel i years ago moved to barcelona and i moved to barcelona to do an mba and when i finished the mba one of the professors i'd got to know asked me to just teach a class on communicating to senior executives and what started as one class back in 2004 became eight classes in 2005 and then i've been in parallel with being an entrepreneur teaching in the mba executive mba global executive programs at esa business school for the last 15 years really so i've kind of always had parallel projects as an entrepreneur i've pretty much always had a side business so to speak in standing on a stage and speaking or

standing in a business school classroom and engaging with a group of 70 mba students And in ESA, those MBA students, some 10%, 15% will go on to start their own business. The great bulk would join large Spanish or global companies as middle senior managers on career programs that would lead them up to senior management. So I think now when I look around, there's been over 30,000 participants that have come through my programs in a face-to-face basis. And, you know, if I look on LinkedIn, they run businesses, they've started businesses, they've sold out of businesses. They're senior management in companies of all different types, in pharma, in food production, in retail. And I think there's some changes that have happened to me along the way that I think are quite important for this idea. Your podcast is really about waking up and taking life seriously.

My sense is so many people, so many of the students that I've had come through my classes, some of the people that have worked in my businesses, they're waiting for a signal. They're waiting for a sign that now is the time to start. And very often in my teaching, in my YouTube videos, one of the underlying messages, the signal is never going to come. You've got to start now. And often you don't need to give 24 hours a day to start taking your life seriously, taking control of your life, beginning to build a future that 10, 20 years from now you'll look back and be so grateful that you, 15, 20 years before, decided just to plant some little seeds that began to grow into big, important projects that are really meaningful for you later on. and you know that this podcast if in some way it's a it's a signal for someone to just take an hour this afternoon take a journal and just start to write down as simple as what are the things you enjoy what are the things you don't enjoy and ask yourself the question how do i do

more of the left and how do i do less of the right yeah absolutely spot on there connor the and you've hit it on the head, that's exactly what the underlying message of Get Invested is about. What I'd love you to share with us, if you don't mind, is firstly, and I'm guessing that you get an immense satisfaction out of waking up the 30,000 people that you have so far to the message that you've introduced them to and the opportunity that lies before them.

Is that your core why, as you see it, or are there other things in there that sort of drive you to do what you do? I have a written version of my why, which is probably a little bit esoteric, so I'll probably tell you at the end of the podcast rather than right now. But I think I went through quite a transformation of what I believe to be true of how I approach life, of what I thought success was in the year 2008. And I think up to 2008, there was something my grandfather said to me when I was young.

We were 13, 14 years old. My father's father, Grandpa Henry, said to me, Connor, success is earning more than your father. and so age 13 that idea was just placed into my mind that success fundamentally was to do with earning more than my father and my family background my father is from the north of ireland from an area called banger and banger would be very very industrious part of ireland very lots very high employment lots of work and you know an area that very much values being busy and i think often in the past when my mom and dad used to call 15 20 years ago the first question

they'd ask is are you busy and they didn't mean right now they meant in life and that a good life is one where life keeps you busy because it's got a lot of stuff for you so for me from zero to 33 years old i was 33 in 2008 that was the central focus of of my life maximize income and when i worked in a company it was monthly income when I left a company in fact here in Spain when I finished the MBA rather than go back to a company I started a business and when you become an entrepreneur income doesn't come in a nice monthly simple flow so in when I first started of business my definition of success changed from earn more than my father to 30 million in the bank when I'm 42 and that was my vision was 30 million euros in the bank when I was 42 years old and that

was how I began my entrepreneurial career that and my plan was to start four businesses and sell each one for 10 times what i'd sold sold the previous one so my first business there was five partners we took over a bankrupt insurance business and we you know we took on 25 employees from the start we already had a portfolio of of insurance and i spent a few years where Every week I sold insurance policies, home, life, auto, and health insurance policies. I worked in that business for three years, then had an idea that I would only have seen because I was out there calling, meeting companies, meeting people. and so my second business was a purchasing centralization business for small business and what we we did we were a portal where small businesses we would group hundreds of small

businesses together and use that purchasing power to reduce prices uh you're typically A large company, when they buy A4 paper, for example, would pay anywhere between three times less or 80% less. But the difference that businesses pay on non-core purchases, car leasing, mobile phones, internet, compared to a giant company that has a sophisticated purchasing capability is incredible. That concept right there would be something in the context of our times that would be a very relevant exercise when people are mad looking to cut costs to the bottom line, left, right and centre. Oh, yeah, and part of it is it's power. If you're buying one block of A4, you're not going to negotiate a big price. If you're a company with 100,000 people buying globally A4 paper, you sit down with the providers of A4 paper and say, look, we're going to buy 100,000 blocks of A4 paper over the next year. We're looking for one company we want to deal with as our major supplier.

Let us know your pricing. yeah uh so yeah there is no way a small business or an individual can compete with the pricing that a global company can can achieve although what we would do is just by asking to renegotiate you would use often drop the price by half often by looking at mobile phone contracts you know the mobile phone companies usually have about eight different deals or contract settings you can set up and just spending a bit of time looking at which one most matches your consumption can impact what you pay you in business that there's a guy so i've been part of an organization called entrepreneurs organization for i guess 15 years so pretty much my entire life as an

entrepreneur and entrepreneurs organization uh transformed my life but it's also put me in in contact with a lot of ideas for great speakers who really know how to run business and one of those ideas was about one percent there's a guy called alan milts who i think is based in australia is the one percent and in running a business a one percent reduction in the price that you buy stuff at makes a huge difference to your profit a one percent increase in price makes a huge difference in your your profit that sometimes as people we look to achieve 20 percent changes and we don't value the little changes his thing is if you can make a one percent increase in your price this year, a 1% reduction in what you pay for things this year, a 1% increase in the

days before you pay your suppliers, a 1% reduction in how many days before your suppliers pay you, the impact of each of those 1% on your profit margin in a business is significant. And a lot of businesses, their profit margins are not 30%, 40%. They're 8%, 10%, 12%. And 1% changes really make a difference. And one of the ideas that certainly got to me post-2008 and is part of my life is an idea that I would best express by the idea that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. and you know this is a saying given to all children around the world the english-speaking

world an apple a day keeps the doctor away it's true the problem is every single day when you go to take the apple just next to the apple you'll find a donut and if today instead of the apple you take the donut so if today you say it's a rainy day i'm a bit tired i already worked out this morning i deserve the donut and today you take the donut instead of the apple nothing changes you know your waistline doesn't change no one looks at you and thinks bushy you know you took the donut nothing changes if every day this week instead of the apple you take the donut nothing changes you're still the same bushy you're still wearing the same pant size and no one notices if every day this month you take the donut

instead of the apple still nothing changes no one notices but if for 10 years every single day over those 10 years you've decided on the donut instead of the apple there are massive consequences massive consequences to your health to your waistline, to the size of clothes that you wear, to your thoughts about yourself, to what sort of life you've created and it's these

1% things and an example of an apple a day, saying thank you if I go through today without saying thank you to anything nothing changes, no one calls me out on it if I go all this week and I don't say thank you

my daughters don't say, Daddy, what changed? They just get on with it. If I don't say thank you every day this month, nothing really changes. But 10 years from today, if I stop being grateful and saying thank you and letting people know when I am grateful for their presence in my life, 10 years from now, I will live a very different life than the one that I would hope to live if I remain positively grateful and open with it to the people around me. And in business, this matters a lot.

In health, this matters a lot. The scary thing about school, school taught me that if you're smart enough to pass an exam, you do the minimum possible and then you just pass exams and wait for success to come. And that's what I took from school. I was lucky to have a type of intelligence that finds it easy to pass a test, even though I didn't work very hard. And I had a belief for many of the first 33 years of my life that I was smart and being smart meant that I deserved to do well. And if I just sat back and allowed my smarts to do the work, success would come. uh since 33 uh i really learned that the important things in your life you need to just

dedicate time to them and for me one of the things that is very important in the academic part of my life as a professor is to write and when i first started teaching in the business school my mentor professor and guy called professor brian leggett every couple of weeks i'd go up to his office and he'd say you know you are you writing anything and i go yeah yeah i've got uh four or five articles on the way in a case i'm developing and this went on for 18 months that he'd just at the end of the conversation ask how are the articles coming along and i'd always have five but none finished five on the way but none finished and after 18 months i started to get frustrated with myself with my inability to publish an article or a technical note and i

hired a coach a writing coach and the guy was based in boston united states and i spoke to him for an hour each week, and he only asked me one question at the beginning of every call, which was, how many words do you write a day? Over the last seven days, how many words did you write each day? And he wasn't interested in beginning any conversation until I could answer how many words, and I could audit it and provide data. And I realized that very often I sat down to the computer with the intent to write and five hours later i had read on the internet i had checked on facebook i looked at my email and in the word document that was there to be filled with text there were 20 words and i discovered a thing called the pomodoro technique and the pomodoro

technique came from an Italian PhD student who had gone a decade without being able to make progress on his final thesis and one day he was at his mother's house in the country in Italy and in her kitchen she had a kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato and pomodoro is tomato in Italian and he just picked it up took it to a desk set it to 20 minutes and he said to himself I'm just going to write until this timer ends and three months later he'd completed his thesis and then he went to write a book on the Pomodoro technique which is you know how to use this time boxing technique to create focus and actually be productive and for me in my life I realized feeling productive and being productive are very different things if you just allow your

inner sense of feeling like you're being productive to guide whether you're being productive, actually productive. It's a very dangerous thing. You can feel productive when you're doing things that are very unproductive. For me, the Pomodoro technique is how I write. I set a timer and my rule is until that timer finishes, the only thing I'm allowed to do is produce words uh i just vomit words out onto a page when the timer finishes i can get up go get a coffee go get water go to the bathroom if at any time during that pomodoro that 20 minute time i need to get up when i come back i reset the timer to zero and start again and you challenge a lot of people to say yeah how many pomodoros can you do in a day

where you fully sit and the only thing you're doing is that one activity and if it's writing it's producing words you're just fingers on the keyboard or hand on a pen writing a book until the timer finishes and you know to me there's a number of activities so you know this idea of So how I made the transition, so zero to 33, everything worked out. Every business that I ran tended to grow. 2008, in July 2008, I was on my fourth business. I had a fleet of 16 private jets, which I was operating across Spain, North Africa, Italy, France.

And in July 2008, there was an offer on my table. the largest private jet operator in spain wanted to acquire my business they were going to pay me 10 million euros to acquire my business and there was a deal on my desk all i had to do was sign it and i didn't sign it because i thought my business was worth 10 times more i thought this business is worth 100 million and i didn't sign that deal uh september 2008 lehman brothers went bankrupt the 15th of september 2008 and very quickly private jet flights started to drop to zero and for me 2008 september 15th uh we saw our business really impacted october revenues almost to zero

And by February 2009, I had to do what in Spain is called an ERE, which is a legal process where you lay off all of your employees in one go. All the employees that I'd spent the previous seven years hiring, motivating, engaging in our vision, mission, values, training. And when you train a pilot for a private jet, this is a significant investment. because it'd be anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 euros of investment in each individual so that they could be certified to fly the particular aircraft that we were operating. So as I watched someone walk out the door, it wasn't just a friend and someone who'd been in that journey together. It was someone that I had invested 150,000 euros of training into that person

so that they could fly our aircraft. so that was a very tough day and for me february 2009 you know i came home and in february 2009 my ex-wife said i can't do this on anymore you need to leave so by the end of february 2009 i had no cash i was living in an office on a mattress underneath my desk. I was working many hours every day to deal with the legal problems of bankruptcy. And every night I would lie in bed tortured with the thought that my daughter, who at the time was coming up to three years old, was falling asleep under

another roof and you know the the business failure was painful but the most agonizing part of 2009 for me was the failure as a father how did you how did you feel about time and i i've been through a unfortunately a similar experience at a very similar age actually and uh the the overwhelm and the uh the i suffered i caught my howard hughes years where i would virtually withdrew for two years and reconstructed myself and a lot of that time was mirror time really come to grips with who i was and and somehow learning to forgive myself what about yourself mate can you can you sort of take us back to exactly how you were feeling at the time and and how you've managed to to move on from there what what do you do to sort of uh get yourself

out of that that zone because it's a really difficult place to be yeah so pretty much from september 2008 for the next year the predominant question in my head is why is this happening to me i didn't do anything wrong this shouldn't be happening to me this isn't fair i didn't do anything wrong and i was in a state of anger at the world anger at the banks anger at my ex-wife anger at clients that didn't pay, anger at employees that didn't understand that it wasn't me doing this. This was an economic fact. And that was pretty much my state of mind for the next 12 months. I was an angry, bitter, frustrated individual that just didn't see why this was happening this was not fair and probably towards middle end of 2009 a couple of things

happened one a very good friend of mine flew over from Amsterdam just to have lunch and dinner with me and then fly back and I remember it being very important that he came he came to see me he did nothing else and he flew back. And I think the beginning of me coming around was that a good friend of mine, a person that I value a great deal, came to just see me. And at that particular time, I couldn't understand why anyone would see any value in me because I was broke, because I was divorced. And the fact that he came and he didn't come on a business trip and then caught up with me for an hour he only came to see me and i think the beginning of my change came from his visit that after his visit i couldn't tell myself that i was worthless because someone that i value

greatly came just to see me and he gave me one book and asked me to read it and the book that he gave me was the arbinger institute's book called the anatomy of peace and that book is worth a read uh certainly in a moment when you it came to me just when i needed it but but the fact that he came spent 18 hours in barcelona just had lunch just had dinner with me and then went home And that there was now a little doubt in myself about whether I was worthless, whether I was a person that had lost everything worthy, or was there something actually still valuable in me? Then, towards the end of 2009, another friend dragged me to a workshop in London. and the workshop was a two-day program called the breakthrough experience with a teacher called dr john d martini and that workshop two full days i remember began a saturday morning at 9 a.m

and finished on the sunday at 7 p.m but we all 60 of us that were doing this workshop were in the room from 9 a.m. on the Saturday morning through till 4 a.m. on the night and then back in the room 9 30 a.m. Sunday right through till 7 p.m. and the the first question that John Demartini asked all of us in that room was who who do you hold the greatest negative emotional burden with. So write a list down of names, human beings with whom you hold the greatest negative emotional burden. And I remember back in 2009, I got my list and I just started writing down names. Our bankers, some of my ex-employees, my ex-wife, my father, just a big long list of people that i had this feeling of a of let down in some way and over the course of those two days

he worked on our beliefs about life and we went through a process and at the end of this process i walked out of that room and i remember i walked out of the room saturday night having completed the process and i have never felt long-term anger against someone again i felt a momentary reaction of frustration but i've never maintained anger or frustration or being let down by people and somehow that workshop just came at a time where i realized you know i was holding i had expectations of people that the problem wasn't the people it was my expectations and what i expected of the world what i expected for myself what i expected people to live up to with regards to me was impossible for them and i was living in a point of frustration because

the beliefs that i held about the world so i i came back from that workshop and for the next four years in some ways i i became a hermit i had a house on the costa brava right on a beach it was a an old fisherman's hut on a small beach there's only 20 houses on the beach it's inside a national park the only way you get into the house is walking the last 600 meters over a trail that You could only go on foot. And I spent 15, 20 weeks of each of the following years alone in that house, going for walks in the national park, just living there by myself. Love it.

Beautiful. What did you learn about yourself in terms of those beliefs that you started to touch on it with the work you did with Dr. John Martini? I'd love you to share a little bit more about what were your beliefs prior to that point, and you've touched on the expectations piece, but having done all that internal work over that period of time, what are your beliefs now and how has that changed your life as a result? I think I've got thousands of words written about that journey.

One of the things as an entrepreneur right from the beginning that i had committed to myself is you know i i've had a habit of writing stuff down since i was 14 years old so you know these journeys are not just remembered i can go and fish out a notebook and every day of my life is in those notebooks so for me uh you know documenting my life has has been something that I've got not not necessarily as a documenting in my life it's just I had a teacher age 14 who inculcated in all of us as students this daily habit of five minutes a day open your journal and just vomit out whatever's in your mind so you're probably the biggest single change is is a change within me of valuing the process and not the outcome

there's there's a hindu religious text that has a statement we have a right to our labor not the fruits of our labor and at very core what i took from this is i am it's absolutely allowed to be proud of the quality of your work the quality of my teaching the quality of engagement and listening in this conversation with you right now, Bushy. I can be proud that I was fully present in this conversation. I can be proud that I articulated my ideas in a certain way that felt good. The fruits of my labor, I'm not allowed to be proud about. They will come.

If you have quality in your labor, the fruits will come, but it's very dangerous to allow yourself to be proud about the fruits of your labor because they're not really under your control and they're not really yours so you know very much up till 2008 i was proud about my house i was proud about my income i was proud about the stories that were written in the press about me i was proud about my prestige I was proud about how much I was worth on paper if you did the calculation. I wasn't necessarily proud about how I carried myself each minute and each hour of the day. If I look back to pre-2008, I wanted to be a good father, but I wasn't being a good father.

Prior to 2008, if I was at the office and it was late and I thought, well, I could go home now and read a bedtime story to my daughter, I could go to a seminar and learn something or I could stay and write a proposal and send it out, I would always stay and write the proposal. I would always take the decision that grew the business. Why is that? I'd love to, because I had similar, very singular focused ambitions until I had that massive wake-up call.

Is that because it was just ingrained that, And you mentioned it earlier on that being busy was the question when you were growing up, which would obviously start to impact the way you look at the world. Where do you think that initial singular focus on me, myself, and I came, and then what did it switch to as a result of what happened at 33? I guess there is a Buddhist sense that we pass through several different stages in our development as human beings. and the very first stage of awareness zero to seven is an awareness that i exist and a good good personal development is is by the age of seven you realize that i as a distinct entity exist uh and from 7 to 14 it's a realization that others exist and others exist not as vehicles for me nor as uh obstacles to me but others exist in as full a form as i exist my desires my values

are are important but so are that of 7.4 billion others from 14 to 21 is a phase called destroy the pedestals kill your kill your idols and this phase for for the buddhists is that as long as you have someone above you on a pedestal, you look up and you think that someone has something that you don't have and that you would aspire to have them, you're going to be materialistic because you're going to look outside yourself for ways of filling the hole. And I think my inner sense,

and I think every human being gets given a sense that they're not enough. every one of us is given a little voice inside that just constantly tells you that you're not enough and the you know the adolescent response to the the the horror of hearing that voice is to seek external success to seek to be wealthy to seek to be regarded by others as successful to seek to have lots of friends to seek to fill your life with busyness so that you don't hear this little voice but you know there's no path to peace of mind that comes from the outside an idea that that really struck me again around the same time was there's a coach called michael neal who has a podcast and i remember one of his podcasts was

just talking about peace of mind. And one of his clients came to him and said, Michael, there's a company going to buy our company. Will it be okay? Will I still have my job? Will it work out? And Michael realized that this guy's peace of mind was dependent on a number of external factors. And he thought, well, that's not peace of mind. If your peace of mind is dependent on something outside yourself just when that thing outside goes is when it's going to be harder you're going to need the strength within and my peace of mind up till 2008 was if i have enough money if i have enough health if i have a good daughter if i have this i'll be okay and i need to cling on to those things since 2008 i've tried to cultivate a belief that is whatever

happens i will have the resources i need to get through it whatever occurs in my life you know someone once said to me god would never give you an obstacle he doesn't know that you can overcome and yeah i've not always had a deep belief on in god or a greater being or a wise and sentient universe. But an American lady said that phrase to me back during some of my hell time. And just that idea that the universe would never give you an obstacle that it doesn't know that you are capable of overcoming. It doesn't mean you're going to overcome it being the person you are right now.

It may mean you have to make changes inside. You may have to acquire other resources outside yourself. but the universe doesn't put obstacles in your way that it doesn't know that you are capable of overcoming it and that change of belief instead of questioning why has this obstacle been put in my way the question becomes what needs to change in me what resources do i need to develop in order to grow through this obstacle and get to the other side and probably yeah the The Spanish language has two forms of the question why. In English, the question why can mean why in the past or why in the future.

So in English, if I say why did this happen to you, it doesn't distinguish. In Spanish, we have two ways of asking the question why, por qué y para qué. Por qué is a question about the past. Parakeh is a question about the future. They're both why, but they have distinct meanings. And for me, prior to 2008, the question I was always asking was the porkeh, the looking to the past, why? The best way of framing the parakeh type of question is almost for what reason is this obstacle in my life? What am I learning from this?

Who do I need to become to get through this? And since 2008, I very much don't ask, you know, what are the factors by which this obstacle sits in front of me? I ask, you know, who do I need to become? What resources do I need to develop to be able to move to the other side of this obstacle? Yeah, it's a beautiful, timely wisdom for the challenging, radical uncertainty that we are currently dealing with.

Tell me something that I'm, again, drawing a thread through what you're talking about here. I almost sense that at that sort of watershed moment at the age of 33, one of your other beliefs that may have changed was your approach to time because I sense that you're in a hell of a hurry to do massive materialistic external ego-driven things up until that point and afterwards there's been a shift. What's your view of time and how you approach that now as far as the rest of your life's concerned? Hmm. Well, here, one of the habits that I developed over the last three, five years was each afternoon, about four or five o'clock, I take out my journal and I put two lists, love and hate. and day after day i would just stop mid-afternoon and put a line in the middle of my journal and on

the left hand side write down all of the things that had added to my life that had given me energy that had made me feel good that i appreciated and there would be names of people there would be activities there would be things and on the right i would put down the list of all the projects activities people and things that i felt had sucked my energy and you learn a lot about yourself if you honestly do this day after day after day what consistently pops up as a source of energy as a source of encouragement a source of positivity what who where pops up regularly is a source of uh sucking you of negativity and one of the things that i realized that always reduces the quality of my life is the feeling of being in a hurry

and yeah this realization you know didn't come in one go it came from repeatedly seeing what context how context changed the way i enjoyed or didn't enjoy any activity And I realized that when I'm feeling like I'm in a hurry or in a rush, it reduces the quality of anything else I'm doing at the time, the quality of the conversation, the quality of exercise. So, you know, this conversation you and I are having now, I don't have another call today. If I had another call scheduled for 20 minutes from now, part of my mind wouldn't be present in this conversation with you. It would be thinking about getting ready for the next one and wondering how we're going to close this conversation off in time. Yes. So I've gone through – this is a more recent thing than 2008.

The last five years, I've been brutal in isolating the sources of the feeling of rush and hurry in my life and finding a way of removing them. And there's a couple of things that I've realized. The first was I used to cram too many things into a day. I used to look at my diary and see an hour gap between the conversation with Bushy and the next conversation, and in order to be effective, I would jam another activity into that hour. When I would teach at the business school, I would have a class for an hour and 15, then I would schedule two phone calls to make use of the spare time, then I would teach another

class. And I realized that if I'm speaking to you and I've got a phone call scheduled 20 minutes later, I don't enjoy this conversation, nor do I enjoy the next one. And so there's a business coach called Dan Sullivan, and his rule is three important things a day. Choose to do three important things every day and don't do any more. And if it's not important, don't do it. And if you say, well, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done, well, then it's important. But then the important thing might be find someone who can do it, who likes doing it. But by forcing yourself to only do three things, it means you decide, well, what's really important?

I'm not going to do 20 things today. I'm only going to do three. what three things or people really matter and deserve getting my focused undivided attention today so by reducing and only allowing myself to do three things i don't fill my agenda and i do important things the second belief that i realized that i had that created this feeling of being in a rush was i i realized that i have this belief that you know i i would be working you're going to have energy to work till about 60 years old and you know when i was mid 40s 45 it struck me

13, 14, 15 years of work left before mentally I need to retire I had this window of less 15 years to do all the things, to leave my legacy

and I stopped and thought the world has changed I'm not like my grandparents that did retire on full pensions 65 we live in a world now where you know health lasts a lot longer it's in all likelihood you and i can keep doing podcasts producing content teaching up until i can't move anymore that's my plan so another idea that came from dan sullivan dan sullivan says he's going to live to 120 years

old. And he said he holds this belief not because he may actually live to 120, but it changes the way you deal with your life. So my current business, I tell myself I'm never going to sell it and I'm going to do it as long as I live. And the way I run a business that I'm never going to sell that i'm always going to be part of means you know what type of people do i recruit around me now people that can get me to a place in three years i can sell it no i only allow people that i want to be with every day of my life and the way i build vistage in spain is very much of this attitude that i want people around me that i would want every day of the rest of my life I want to do activities that I would love today to be the rest of my life.

And anything I don't like or sucks my energy or any person that sucks my energy, I remove them. And sometimes I feel quite selfish with this decision. but uh you know as an entrepreneur and and in your own life whether you generate your income from a salary or because you sell your own product or your own services every one of us is an entrepreneur of our own life and a creator of our own future and i just realized that it you need to be incredibly selfish about your own motivation uh you know if i wake up motivated every day for the rest of my life vistage is going to be an institution in spain my youtube channel is going to grow and impact many many lives my teaching in the business school is going to affect other lives

But if I go too fast for the next five years and the machine goes really fast, the companies grow really quickly. I recruit people that perhaps I wouldn't normally have recruited, but I allow them in in order to achieve growth. But in five years' time, I wake up in the morning and I think, why am I doing this? What's this for? I don't like these people. I'm going to throw the towel in and Vistage will never be an institution in Spain. So the only way I leave a legacy that is truly dignified is by ensuring that every morning I wake up motivated to continue, to continue being with the people that I'm around, to continue doing the activities that are core to the business, to having the conversations with the people that have resources that I want to engage with. and in some ways this requires quite a change from that philosophical question that my

father's family would have asked are you busy uh fundamentally i think the question is you is what you're doing right now nourishing you is it motivating is it motivating in and of itself because if it is, you're going to become good at it, you're going to do lots of it, you're going to attract others that are like that and you're going to make a massive impact. Yeah, that's gold advice there in terms of the switch and exercise. Just a slight manoeuvre on that subject we're talking about

because you've sort of alluded to this, but if you were to sum up what your belief now is in terms of the secrets to long-term sustainable success. How would you sum that up? Cool. Well, I was asked a while back to make a list of the 10 most important lessons I've learnt in life. And there's a couple of my recent YouTube videos

where I'm going along these top 10 lessons. um you know i think uh there is a couple of so how do i go through these yeah probably the most important lesson that i think i've ever learned in life is uh what i call the wisdom prayer of saint francis of assisi which is the prayer that goes give me the strength to change the things i can change give me the patience to change to accept the things i cannot change give me the wisdom to know the difference and you know this to understand what can you change in vistage we often say you know we're not here to talk about politics weather and traffic politics weather and traffic are three things that you cannot change if you want to talk about those

go somewhere else uh you know my attitude in life is if you bushy if we connect at the beginning of this conversation and you said so connor how's the weather uh you know was there a lot of traffic in getting here uh what do you think about the next election i just said you know bushy uh i thought you were another type of person you know your podcast seems to go deep i clearly see that you're here to talk about politics, traffic and weather, that's not a conversation that I can have any effect on and I'm not interested. Thanks.

Well, isn't it interesting that they are often the conversation openers for strangers in a room? So I love that those three are pretty much cancelled out of the visage exercise. There needs to be a point of connection where we then move it deep. So, you know, one question, you know, to take you along to get on here. But if it stays at that level, then I would shift out of the conversation. So, you know, what do we control?

And I think the number one most important thing that we control is our own attitude. And for me, one of the most important... So, you know, if that prayer of let me focus on what I can change and let me accept all of the billion things that are out there, but my work right now cannot affect and let me have the wisdom to identify two or three things right now today that if I focus my energy and my attention, I can have a massive difference. Another of the ways that this comes through in my life, I say, you know, The three most important lessons I took from that time is faith, hope, and love. Faith is everything that is happening is happening for a reason. There is a reason why I'm facing the challenges I'm facing right now.

There's a reason why you, Bushy, are facing the challenges you're facing right now. There's a reason why each of the people listening to this podcast right now are facing the set of challenges that they have in their life. and you know we are here for a reason but the reason that you and i are speaking today i may never know it but i have an attitude to this that there's there's real purpose and meaning the fact that you reached out to me and our diaries aligned and today we're speaking so faith is there's a reason that the podcast is going out there's a reason why the person who's listening to it right now is hearing these words hope is action changes the future only action changes the future thinking about something doesn't change the future only action changes the

future thinking about starting a podcast changes nothing reaching out to 10 people and saying would you be a guest on my podcast and starting the conversations that changes everything and so often in our life as human beings we stay at intent and we don't turn that intent into action we intend to buy an investment property we intend to check out whether we could improve the mortgage conditions we intend to reach out to our father our mother our old friends school and rekindle the relationship but that just stays at intent and for me hope is that intent is never enough if I think about calling my father I pick up the phone, I dial the digits

it doesn't matter whether he answers it doesn't matter whether I get the voicemail what matters is action changes the future not thinking about action only action changes the future and no matter where you are no matter how much you're struggling

no matter how bad it feels there is always an action you can take now that changes the whole trajectory of your future we are never powerless we can be very reduced in our power we are never powerless as human beings to respond to the world in front

of us and love is that I never ask questions of myself that have me at the center up till 2008 the question in my head was what do I get from this, what do I get from this

conversation, what will I benefit from being on this podcast, what will I get from my YouTube channel from 2008 particularly the john d martini workshop i just turned this question around what does my daughter need from me today what does my father need from me today what does my wife need from me today and my deal with myself is the day that i can say what does my father need from me and i can say i'm now the perfect son there's nothing missing in my quality of being a son in that day I can then ask whether he has fully fulfilled the role as father but what I've

discovered is I will never completely fulfill the fullness of the role that I could play in the lives of the people who are important to me but instead of ever asking again could my father be a better father I will never ask that question I will only look at how I could be better towards him and that love love is fundamentally putting other people at the center of the questions that you ask yourself in your head yeah matt uh shared some absolute words of wisdom in those those three lessons i've never heard it quite expressed that way before but uh faith hope and love in the way you define them is a a real compass for the way to live mate uh i'd love to transition if we could into some of the challenges that we're currently facing

as a global community. And a lot of what you've spoken about today is directly applicable to that. But what I'd love to touch on, if we can, is there's an inherent and growing fear and anxiety that I'm sensing in a lot of people, understandably in the world today. What would you say to them in relation to coming to grips with their fears and overcoming them somewhat, given the radical uncertainty that we are currently living with?

Well, I think you'll hear one of the sad things of personal growth is you need to face challenges that hurt. And if it doesn't hurt, you don't grow. 2008 hurt a lot for me. I'm very grateful for it now. I wouldn't wish for any other human to pass through it. And this is a curious thing for human beings. If you go to the gym, and there's people that join the gym and tell everyone that they've joined the gym, but they never go. But they keep telling people that they joined the gym.

It makes no difference to their life. it probably makes it worse there's people who join the gym they buy the clothes they go to the gym but they sit speaking to their friends behind the spinning class and you know they they like their lycra sports stuff but they talk to people in the gym but they don't sweat in the gym the only way a gym is of any use to you is if it hurts if you do a workout and you're not exhausted at the end you're not doing exercise i tell students when i begin my class my objective is that training is harder than real life if this course over the next three or five days or however long i'm teaching if this course is easier than real

life then i'm doing you a disservice i'm developing leaders and my objective is that these days with me you suffer more than you ever would at work because that way i'm preparing you for whatever challenges will come your way and not everyone uh goes to the gym and works out not everyone faces the problems day in day out in their relationships uh you know one of the things i see in Vistage, every Vistage meeting begins with a check-in. And the way the check-in goes is we ask everyone in the room to give three numbers, personal, professional, health, one to ten. Ten, best moment of your life ever. Seven, there's some good, some bad. Four, really struggling. and everyone will put their numbers up on a flip chart.

What I've started to realize is if someone came in and I said to you, Bushy, what are your numbers, personal, professional, health, and you put 9, 10, 9, that's fine. You're good. But if you put 4, 3, 4, you're in a bad place, but it's bad enough that you are going to take action. whether or not we meet you're going to take action it's become bad enough that you must make some changes to how you're dealing with the world in health in your personal life and in your

professional business what i've grown to learn is the worst possible set of numbers 777 seven because when someone has a life that is seven seven seven it's not good enough that we should just leave them ticking over the way they're doing but also it's not bad enough that they are actually going to make any change and so many people have created lives where it's not bad enough for them to change but neither is it meaningful enough that this is an expression of how they want to be remembered and sometimes an external crisis is what's needed to take your 777 and make it 444 and in that crisis you're going to plant seeds that mean that post-crisis you don't return back to 777 you're going to plant seeds that mean that your life after this

is going to be stronger, better, and you have a chance of rebuilding it nine, nine, nine. There is a saying from Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell studied all the religions, and he wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is a book just on what is the story of a human life? What is the journey we are all on as human beings? And one of his sayings that to me is very profound is, we must let go of the life we have planned for ourselves to live the life that is waiting for us. Love it.

The current crisis is stopping people living the life they had planned for themselves. and their fear is real because it is stopping you living the life that you had planned it's stopping you taking the holidays you had planned it's stopping you go to the houses to the parties that you had planned it's stopping you having the income that you had planned it's stopping you building the business that you had planned but this idea of joseph campbell that very often the universe has better ideas than you your expectations are only the best that your your past self could have prepared for yourself and sometimes the universe has greater ideas for you than you could have for yourself if you can let go of your expectations of the life that you were

going to live and open to the possibility of what can come i think you know in that mindset it doesn't mean that the pain will be any less uh there's another speaker that for me really helped it's called jim rohn and jim rohn has a saying don't ask for things to be easier ask for yourself to be better and the the startup phrase on my macbook pro when i start is that phrase don't ask for things to be easier ask for you to become better love it love it like to sharing some absolute words of wisdom with us and some great life takeaways in terms of how we can approach things moving forward. I'd love to switch for a minute, if we can,

into what I like to call the ambush session, which are just five quick questions that the listeners always want to glean your thoughts on. And you've given us a lot of quotes and some great books to read on the list already. But if you were to give us what you believe is your favourite quote over and above the ones that you have shared, what would it be and why is that? I think I've given all my good ones away. You've got a thousand of them, mate.

I know it for sure. So there's one I'm desperately looking around myself here. So a mentor of mine, Warren Rustand, says, you know, don't measure yourself in comparison to others. Measure yourself in comparison to yourself yesterday. Now, he says it a whole lot better, and I'll go dig that quote out. But Warren Rustand, you know, don't measure yourself compared to any other person. Measure yourself compared to you yesterday. Yeah, it's obvious why because you're the only person that needs to improve

and there is no comparison other than that. If you're that 1% better on those 1% that you're talking about in a year's time, you're 365% better. Yeah, awesome. What about another book that you'd recommend that we read and why? And you've given us a number already. Are there any others that you think, particularly on these challenging, sort of rapidly changing and uncertain times,

and maybe people are at home and they might have a little bit more time to do some reading, what would you suggest? I think, oh, I have a long list of books, but if I was to pick just one, if I could get the whole world to read one book, it would be Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. The book comes in two parts. The first is a biography of his life. he spent four years in the nazi concentration camp system around auschwitz he went in to the

auschwitz camp concentration camp system and four years later he came out and he worked out that only one in 32 of the people that went in to the camps were still alive when the allies liberated the camps but it wasn't random all of the survivors had something that allowed them to be able to survive the second half of the book is what he calls logo therapy which is how to find your why how to find the why in your life that can get you through no matter what hell that you face i think the book is pretty tough because yeah the conditions in the nazi concentration camps were brutal and how it strips away your humanity was brutal but for me there's three sources of why you know one and i'll let people read the book to find those three sources of why

but when you can answer those three then the conditions outside are not what shapes your attitude it's something more meaningful start to shape your attitude towards your life Yeah, it's very good. I'm going to ask the listeners to email me on what those three sources are following the release of this episode. Thanks, Connor, because it's a great book. There's the short story. So given that you asked for a top book, the short story wouldn't necessarily be a book. But for me, of these times of crisis, there's a story, Tolstoy, the death of Ivan Ilyich.

and it's a story you can read in an hour i i think it's a chapter of some published books but you could probably find this story just by searching for the death of evan illyich online i bet if you put the death of evan illyich pdf into google you'll find a pdf download and it's a story of Ivan who has everything going for him and then faces a personal crisis and learns what really matters and I think in terms of a condensed story that really captures the journey of a human being through a crisis the death of Ivan Ilyich is something I give to students to read I give to every employee that joins my company we run a values exercise where everyone must read that book and come and we talk about the journey of Ivan Ilyich and how it relates

to our own lives love that love that mate um yeah this one's quite left field after what we've been talking about but Aussies in particular feel that we pay way too much tax and that's probably about to get worse as we come through this given the enormous support that the federal government has been raiding the coffers to keep us afloat so what's the top legal thing that you've done to minimize the tax that you've paid over the years well i can guarantee going bankrupt and having massive losses within a company structure and maybe the one thing here in spain if i'd suffered those losses as a person, I can only put them against my tax one year. Since I had a limited company that was the structure which took those losses, that structure allows me to offset those

losses over the next five years. So I think it's definitely allowed me to pay a lot less tax in the following five years as you try to yes yeah well i'm hoping that a lot of our listeners don't have to actually instigate that one but it's a good lesson having having been there myself many years ago where you learn a lot about yourself and business by going through that process the things in its progress not so much to pay less tax but you know to be very careful about the corporate structures you put around things So when when I was negotiating the the franchise agreement that I have with Vistage International to, you know, I bought the license to run Spain several years ago and I used to think I was a good negotiator. I now know I am a terrible negotiator because once I want something, I will give up everything to get it.

And so in the process of negotiating this deal, I have a friend of mine who's an investment banker. And once I had a deal that had the things that I wanted, I agreed with him that every time they sent me an email with a new version, I would pass it to him. he would make his changes and i would just pass it back but fundamentally he did the final negotiation you know i i acted just as an intermediary and he had worked out that the way you'll make money on this deal is if there's a sales price on it and i remember i would never have thought the way he thought about it but because he'd been through so many business deals he realized the way you really make money as an entrepreneur is when you actually sell the entity that you've created and he helped me structure it in a way that i i have an entity

that i can sell that is the brand vistage but it's not me and i think a lot of entrepreneurs end up creating a business that you can't sell because it's yourself absolutely when when you walk out the door side as a business that's exactly right yeah yeah so you know i think some of the things that he did in structuring the deal forced me to build this business in a way that i'm i'm in it and out of it uh i'm not fundamentally part you know there's an entity that you know hopefully right now it still depends greatly on me and things i do make a difference but over time Some of the things that he helped me structure into the deal mean that Connor Neal human being is not part of the corporate structure that is sellable. Whilst I don't intend to sell it, I think that was very, very, very useful input from an advisor that could make a huge difference many years from now.

I think that's brilliant advice because let's face it, if you got hit by a bus and you've got quite a team around you, then Vistage needs to continue in its own right. You're an essential part of the personality and the engagement and the trust and relationship that builds around that because ultimately we all do business with people. But if you've created a structure, an environment, a vision, values and a culture that is self-sustaining, then that's good for everyone internally and externally. So that's a brilliant piece of advice there, Connor. Let's – sticking on that – sorry, mate. Go on. Yeah, we're coming to – I've got a whole range of little lessons I learned about setting up corporate structures that I used to do poorly that i realized over time how they massively change the value that an investor would put

on the entity that you are creating uh you know and one of the things as an individual you tend to complexify things to make something that an investor values is you want to simplify the processes and my first businesses every contract we signed was slightly different than every other contract. Vistage, every contract is the same. My last couple of businesses there's one contract that everyone signs. If an investor needed to look at the business Vistage, I could say here's the member contract. You understand that?

You understand it? Yeah, it's spot on. And again, we do tend to self-justify by making things more complicated than they need to be. But in a world where we're full of noise and increasing noise, that's very sage advice. But back on the investment piece for a minute, and I'll ask you a couple of questions here. One of them, I'm going to slip this one in, actually, because what I've seen over the years is that most of us invest in our work, our career or our business

and there's a focus on income. But those that I've studied who achieve real freedom also invest in growth assets that effectively replace their time so that they can put that time and energy into things that are important and not relying on them. What growth assets do you or will you invest in yourself to sustain that lifestyle that you've shared with us today? Well, I think I love Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

And, you know, probably I'm not a good investor. And I guess investor I think of as investing in stock market and investing in other businesses. I've been very poor in my success rate of any of that. Right now, my money is in index funds, the ETF funds. I'm not attempting to beat any index or generate any massive income. Just not be stupid. uh the way

probably five years ago i got together a group of people who have a similar income structure as mine so not just one salary my income comes from five different major sources i own businesses that i run as an entrepreneur i teach classes in the business school i got paid to go to conferences around the world. I generate revenue from my YouTube channel. So a few years ago, I got together a group of people and we agreed we would meet each month and we would hold each other accountable

to becoming financially free by 55. And the five of us began meeting and we probably spent the first year just trying to agree what the hell did financially free actually mean and i have a specific number in total number of euros that if i had a fund with that much money in it i would live a good life without ever needing to generate another euro of income again so i know what that number looks like and it's kind of scary when you do the maths and i think it's important to do that scary maths to realize If you want to live a good life where you get out and see the world

or you do projects and you have enough income to finance all of that, it's quite a big number. It is. We call it the freedom numbers, and it's a process that we actually take our clients through because if someone wants to enjoy a lifestyle of $100,000, in simple terms in Australia, you're going to need $2 million worth of income-producing assets

to make that happen, and it goes up from there, obviously. so yeah but it's i'm really impressed connor that you've actually put some thought around what that number is because for most people they've got no clue they chase that 30 million euro that you're talking about in your early days just thinking that that's a big number and that's that's got to give me what i need but if you're clear on what your lifestyle is and how much that lifestyle costs then all you need to do is monetize that and work out what the nest egg number is and get there and the job's done well here i think you know i i i love teaching and you know i i often tell my my wife the one fact my wife says to me uh you enjoy work more than you enjoy holidays

she said you know when you work people listen to you they say thank you and they clap at the end when you're on holiday your daughters don't want to hear your stories don't clap at the end and have no interest in your autograph on anything and you're very frustrated when on holiday and and i guess yeah in some way i feel very lucky that i've through crisis and i think 2008 was a hell for me. It was a crisis. It was really brutal. I would not recommend it to any other human being. I had hair on my head before 2008. And if you look at any photo of me now, you'll see that hair is gone. That hair went 2008, 2009. But everything valuable in my life now has fundamentally come from seeds that were planted or changes that were made during the

financial crisis of 2008. Yeah, the obstacle is away. The old Ron Halliday quote I think is pretty appropriate. And it's something I totally resonate with, mate. I often say I had to break it to make it. And it's not until you face the challenges and you learn who you really are that you really start to learn and grow. And as you've said a couple of times already, it's the person you become on the journey,

not the destination you end up. That is the key piece. So, no, mate, just leveraging off that, Ben, and a great question to end our sensational conversation on. If I was to give you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7 billion people currently in the world and I gave you one minute to talk, what would you say? Two things.

One, you are enough. the second start the day slowly and start every day when you wake up sit on the edge of your bed and just answer the question at the end of the day today what do i want to be grateful for and if every single human being the first thing in the morning was just to become aware that they're alive to think about who they are where they are and what this opportunity of the day brings and to picture the end of the day just think how do i want to feel what do i want to have been grateful for at the end of this day if everyone started that way we'll become consciously aware and instead of reacting to the days the chances that we'll start to proactively put our

own attitude into the world will be greater yeah i love that love that and it's it's living in the moment it's it's starting with gratitude and and focusing on what we can do today rather than worrying about what might happen tomorrow that's a brilliant way to end a very enjoyable conversation i feel like we've only just started to skate across the os and uh if you're open to at an appropriate time, would love for you to come back because there's a whole heap of subjects that I haven't even had a chance to get to dive into today. But very humbled by you taking the time in the beautiful climes

of Barcelona to join us. I know the audience is going to get a lot of fantastic insights from today's discussion. So before we close up, what's next new and exciting for you, Matt? At the moment, it's what's next new and exciting. I would say what I've started is actually YouTube live streaming is the one thing that I'm exploring, given the limitations of the quarantine. So, you know, exploring how technology allows us to do things that you couldn't do face to face. And I think one of the difficult things that I've, you know, I've figured out over 10 years how to teach when I'm physically present.

I now need to figure out how to let go of all the superpowers I've developed when I'm physically present and figure out how do you do some of that over video, but not just copy the past in video. What can I do that's new that wouldn't be possible face to face via video? i love that i love that because it's right it's if we just take our old thinking and apply it to a video it's a very different scenario we're talking about because we're not face to face you can't truly read the the body language and the signs from uh the audience it does require a different skill set so i'm going to love to follow your journey on that mate because i do a lot of facebook live stuff as well and going through a similar journey you know i would say a lot of my videos i would characterize as man talks to camera and i think video gives us a lot

more capability than that and i feel i'm using five percent of the power of video what i'm doing is just taking what i would do in a class and doing it to a camera and i need to go back down and think you know how do i learn to tell a story in video how do i learn to create a dialogue in video when when you're not seeing the signs coming back to you because right now i feel my videos are man talks to camera i love that by the way i think you do video very well because i've been i've loved the analogies and the stories that you've told on the videos you've been doing for some years on youtube so i think we're probably just playing with the edges not uh i don't think there's a massive change there but i love your thinking in relation to

let's have a really good thing about this medium and an approach to it a different way. Mate, just on that, because I've been enjoying your content for years and it's been a massive help to me in my journey. For those that aren't aware, how can the listeners reach out and contact you and start to enjoy? Where do they do that? Where's the best way to do that?

Well, there's a blog, conorneil.com, C-O-N-O-R-N-E-I-2-L-S.com. and most of my YouTube stuff is linked to through there and the blog is sort of the centre of my messaging out to the world and also listening and receiving questions and comments and thoughts. Mate, you've been very generous with your time. I can't wait to follow your words of wisdom and everything that you share. I want to thank you for joining us here on Get Invested and I'm looking forward to staying in touch with you.

I had heard that the listeners of your podcast are the best listeners of any podcast in the world. So it's for them that I chose to give this time and I've enjoyed this conversation. You clearly have a wealth of wisdom that comes through in the questions that you choose to ask. Thank you, mate. Flattery will get you everywhere with me, mate.

So I appreciate that a great deal and looking forward to staying in touch, Connor. Thanks for your time today. Great. Have a great day. Cheers. 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 getinvested. 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 die tomorrow.