Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 7: How to survive in uncertain times with Andrew Griffiths

Episode Date: May 9, 2020

Optimism will lead us to prosperity, Pessimism will take us to poverty. And to give yourself an optimism injection, there’s no better person than today’s returning guest Andrew Griffiths. AG’s a living legend who’s own life story is a testament to the victory of optimism over circumstance. Have a listen to his incredible, inspirational life journey on episode 20 of Get Invested. From humble beginnings growing up as an orphan, to global entrepreneur, keynote presenter and international bestselling author, Andrew is a powerful inspiration to business owners and entrepreneurs around the world.  His passion is future proofing and he brings his own unique and entertaining style to this very big and very relevant topic. AG describes himself as an entrepreneurial futurist - in other words he specialises in future proofing businesses across virtually every industry and in every corner of the planet.  With 13 bestselling books sold in 65 countries, and a client base that includes organisations such as the European Union, CBS, Hewlett Packard, Hertz, Telstra and Newscorp, to mention just a few of the 500 organisations he has worked with, he is sought after to provide advice and wisdom for the smallest of businesses to the largest of organisations.  He’s able to share his observations, experiences and research from around to world to identify the exact steps you need to take to become future proof. And he delivers his advice in a down to earth, simple and hilarious way. And he’s risen from the school of hard knocks. Where he is today is the result of a lot of hard work, taking more than his fair share of risks, falling over often but always getting back up, dusting himself off, learning his lessons and just keep going. Over many years, he’s learned that there are three important keys to success - resilience, belief and determination - and all of this is underpinned by his indefatigable optimism, limitless generosity and great sense of humour – he’s just a cracking all round great bloke and someone I’m proud to call my friend. So to learn the critical qualities and approaches that you need to adopt to future proof yourself from the ongoing radical uncertainty and rapid change that will continue to dominate our world moving forward, enjoy this informative and entertaining chat with the legendary Andrew Griffiths. Andrew's book recommendation: How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie 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.

I am super optimistic about what's going on. I mean, I'm amazingly optimistic, probably naively optimistic, wildly optimistic, whatever other adjectives we want to use in it almost. But I look at it and kind of go that it is an opportunity for change, but it's also an opportunity to really highlight some major issues in the business world. And one, again, that you and I have spoken about in the past has floored me is the lack of resilience in business in terms of financial resilience. I can't believe big organizations that are kind of within a week of this happening saying, yeah, we've got no money left, and small businesses that are basically going from week to week, hand to mouth. 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, Fred and fighters. How optimistic are you about the future. Now, be honest and ask yourself, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Now, I

can hear you all saying, yeah, yeah, Bushy, what difference does that make? Who really cares? Well, the reality is that it makes a massive difference to every aspect of our lives. And despite what we may think, our level of optimism or pessimism isn't a trait that we're born with. It can be learned, it can change, and it's a choice. So do you choose to be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? Now Winston Churchill was famous for saying that a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, while an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Optimism has been proven to improve the immune system, prevent chronic disease and help people cope with unfortunate news.

Gratitude is associated with optimism and it's been determined that grateful people are happier, receive more social support, are less stressed and less depressed. Recent research indicates that optimists and pessimists approach problems differently and their ability to cope successfully with adversity differs as a result. Your level of optimism or pessimism affects what psychologists call your explanatory styles. Explanatory styles reflect the three internal narratives that we form about a recent event. Did it happen because of me, internal, or something or someone else, external? Will this always happen to me, stable, or can I change what caused it, unstable?

Is this something that affects all aspects of my life, pervasive, or was it a solitary occurrence, limited? Pessimistic people tend to view problems as internal, unchangeable and pervasive, whereas optimistic people see the opposite, external, unstable and limited. Pessimism has been linked with depression, stress and anxiety, whereas optimism has been shown to serve as a protective factor against depression, as well as a number of serious medical problems, including coronary heart disease. Optimistic mothers even deliver healthier, happier babies.

Optimism seems to have a tremendous number of benefits. People who are more optimistic have better pain management, improved immune and cardiovascular function, and greater physical functioning. Optimism helps buffer the negative effects of physical illness and is associated with better health outcomes generally. Optimists tend to look for meaning in adversity, which makes them more resilient. Optimism is also linked to longevity.

Researchers have found that for every 10-point increase in a person's score on the optimism scale, the risk of early death decreases by nearly 20%. Optimism also plays a role in the recovery from illness and disease Multiple studies have investigated the role of optimism in people undergoing treatment for cancer and found that optimistic people experience less distress when faced with potentially life-threatening cancer diagnoses The superior fighting spirit that's found in optimists predicted substantially better quality of life after cancer surgery

And optimism also predicted less disruption of normal life, distress and fatigue. People who tend to be more optimistic and more mindful enjoy an increase in sleep quality and evidence demonstrates that optimism can protect you against the development of chronic diseases. Optimism can also improve your immune system. Five studies investigating optimism and disease progression found that optimism and positive immune response were directly related. People highest in optimism have the best suppression of viral load and optimistic people have a lower mortality.

Optimism is also having a profound effect on your physical health. The mere act of expecting positive outcomes and being hopeful can boost your immune system, protect against harmful behaviours, prevent chronic disease and help you cope following troubling news. Optimism can even predict a longer life. Among psychological constructs, optimism may be one of the most important predictors of your physical health. Evidence suggests that optimism is also important in coping with difficult life events.

Optimism has been linked to better responses to various difficulties and appears to play a protective role, assisting you in coping with extraordinarily trying incidents. Optimism also correlates positively with life satisfaction and self-esteem. So optimists are generally happier with their lives than pessimists. Optimists are also able to recover from disappointments more quickly by tending to positive outcomes to a great extent than the negative ones. And optimists are more likely to engage in problem solving when faced with difficulties, which is itself associated with increased psychological well-being.

Optimists also tend to accept the reality of difficult situations while also framing them in the best possible light. While pessimists tend to cope through denial and abandoning impedent goals, optimists rely on acceptance and the use of humour. It's clear that optimism is a very powerful tool in our repertoire to keep us healthy, happy and alive. And here's the really good news. Optimism can be trained and learned. So let me ask you again.

Do you choose to be optimistic or pessimistic? about our future. Now, I know that it's not easy to choose to be optimistic in an all-pervasive media world that deluges and drowns us in an ocean of pessimistic negativity and fear. We need to remember that the media is about making money, and the best way to capture our eyeballs and our ears is to scare the hell out of us, because nothing captivates or motivates us more than fear. Now, unfortunately, news is no longer about getting the facts right. It's about getting good ratings in order to get good advertisers. It's about money. So news programming focuses on the theory that if it bleeds, it leads. The success of fear-based

news relies on presenting dramatic anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, promoting isolated events as trends, depicting categories of people as dangerous and replacing optimism with fatalistic thinking. Used conglomerates achieve this by tweaking the rhythm, the grammar and the presentation format of stories to elicit the greatest negative impact and highest negative response. Put simply, fear sells. Yet despite the continuous will-all-be-doomed narrative from the 24-7 media fear factories. We need to remind ourselves that we live in the best time, in the best place, in the best conditions, with the best opportunities ever in the history of the world. Please don't lose sight of this. My repeated advice? Turn off the television,

stop reading the newspaper and stop listening to the count the killing news. Selective ignorance of the media's ignorance is actually bliss And I stopped doing that over 20 years ago Now at the time of this recording We're just working through the global response to the pandemic And at last we're seeing some positive green shoots rising up out of the COVID compost And Australia is ranked in the top three countries in the world And how we've managed both the health and the self-imposed economic impacts to our lives

and our livelihoods of this worldwide event. Restrictions are starting to ease cautiously on a state-by-state basis and the financial fog is showing signs of lifting. So what are the key takeaways and learnings? And what do we need to do next? What is clear is that we are a globally connected, tribe-driven, fear-based community. the scared stampeding herd mentality is now more alive than ever and the media and to some extent

governments use this use this to their advantage if they keep us scared they keep us compliant and they keep us controlled and how we perceive fear and react to it will be absolutely crucial in what happens next because the only thing that we learn from history is we don't learn from history. But we all have an opportunity right now to change that. We're at a major crossroads and how we think and what we do next, both individually and collectively, will determine if the self-imposed downturn that we've put ourselves in will keep spiralling into a depression or transition into a reset recovery. And the severity relies totally on us, on you and me.

And it all revolves around our level of optimism or pessimism in the future. What we think about is what we bring about. Our thoughts and outlook become self-fulfilling prophecies. Think about it for a moment. How many successful people are optimists? and have you ever met a successful pessimist? So I'm going to challenge you to swim against the tide of media negativity to choose optimism over pessimism

because it is your choice and your choice along with a collection of everyone else's choices will determine what happens from here. The Great Depression of the 1930s along with the pattern of recessions that occur every 8 to 10 years after economic shops have resulted from the all-pervading mood of pessimism and the lack of confidence that followed that initial trigger event.

Everyone shifted from optimism to pessimism almost overnight, fuelled by fear, perpetrated by the press. The pendulum of outlook swung from one extreme to the other very quickly. Why is this so important? because our individual and collective level of optimism or pessimism determines what actions we take or don't take. What we're seeing now is a repetition of the economic cycles that we saw during the 1980s stock market crash,

the 90s recession we had to have, the 2000s dot-com crash, the GFC and now COVID-19. And they all follow the cycle of human nature of our pendulum swing confidence. So start by reminding yourself that your spending is another person's income. Your spending is another person's income. The more we spend, the higher our incomes.

The less we spend, the lower our incomes. When spending slows, incomes drop and so the downward spiral begins. If you spend less, prices go down and businesses cut costs. This means less jobs and higher unemployment, which means we spend less, prices go down further, more jobs are lost and the negative spiral of decreasing economic activity causes a recession or even worse, a depression. We've already seen an example of this happen in the last few weeks as governments around the world jammed on the brakes and shut down our economies. Check out Ray Dalio's YouTube video on how the economic machine works

to understand how we make or break our economy based on our level of confidence. In previous times, the government and the Reserve Bank could re-kick and restart the economy by dropping interest rates to stimulate borrowing and spending. But we're already at rock bottom on rates and the only avenue the government has available is to add stimulus measures which they've already done to the tune of $300 billion or they can print more money

which is effectively what they're doing by buying bonds. So the reality is we're all standing on the precipice of a cliff. If we're pessimistic, we hide our money under the bed and we stop spending, we're headed for a long, deep depression. This is exactly what happened during the Great Depression of the 1930s. If we're optimistic and we keep spending, incomes will increase and the value of our assets will be maintained. So how do we turn around the downturn and avoid a long, slow, painful recession or depression? Very simply, we need to spend to mend, save to pave and invest the rest.

Keep spending to mend the economy, save money, but not all of it, to pave our way, and invest in assets that will secure your future. So choose to be optimistic, spend to mend, save to pave, and invest the rest. Optimism will lead us to prosperity. Pessimism will take us to poverty. I challenge you to ignore the negatives and choose optimism in the future and keep spending it's our only way out of the mess that we've put ourselves in

and to give yourself an optimism injection there's no better person than today's returning guest Andrew Griffiths AG's an absolute living legend whose own life story is a testament to the victory of optimism over circumstance Have a listen to his incredible inspirational life journey on episode 20 of Get Invested. From humble beginnings growing up as an orphan to global entrepreneur, keynote presenter and international best-selling author, Andrew's a powerful inspiration to business owners and entrepreneurs right around the world.

His passion is future-proofing and he brings his own unique and entertaining style to this very big and absolutely very relevant topic. A.G. describes himself as an entrepreneurial futurist. In other words, he specialises in future-proofing businesses around virtually every industry in every corner of the planet. With 13 best-selling books sold in 65 countries and a client base that includes organisations such as the European Union, CBS, Hewlett-Packard, Hertz, Telstra and News Corp,

to mention just a few of the 500 organisations that he's worked with, He's a sought-after person to provide advice and wisdom from the smallest business to the largest of organisations. He's able to share his observations, experiences and research from around the world to identify the exact steps that you need to take to become future-proof. And he delivers his advice in a down-to-earth, simple and hilarious way. And he's risen from the school of hard knocks.

Where he is today is a result of a lot of hard work, taking more than his fair share of risks, falling over often but always getting back up, dusting himself off, learning his lessons and he just keeps going. Over many years, he's learned that there are three important keys to success. Resilience, belief and determination. And all of this is underpinned by his indefatigable optimism, his limitless generosity and his great sense of humour. He's just a cracking all-round great bloke and someone I'm proud to call my friend. So to learn the critical qualities and approaches that you need to adopt to future-proof yourself from the ongoing radical uncertainty and rapid change that will continue to dominate our world moving forward, Please enjoy this informative and entertaining chat with the legendary Andrew Griffiths. Now, welcome back, Freedom Fighters.

One of the great privileges of hosting a podcast is I sometimes get to spend time with my heroes and role models, and today's one of those very special days, because not only is today's guest, a world leader as an accomplished author, a keynote speaker, and a small business marketing guru. But he's one of the most generous good guy humans I've ever been lucky enough to meet. Now, if you want to get the backstory on our guest today, have a listen to episode 20 of Get Invested, because it's one of our most popular engaging episodes. But Andrew Griffiths is single-handedly responsible for teaching me the three key principles of success that are actually invisibly tattooed onto my forehead and are now applied to everything I do.

And Andrew, you're going to love this. They are Leverage, Leverage, and Leverage. So in true AG spirit, he's been co-hosting an awesome, entertaining Facebook series on Let's Kick This Bug in the Nuts. So what better person to show us a positive way through our challenging times than the infamous Andrew Griffiths. So welcome, and let's get invested, AG. Mate, thank you so much, Bushy.

Jesus, really, really hard. I hope your listeners realise we can only go downhill from here, right? like there's there's really nowhere to go now this is we should just end thank you very it's been great to be on the show butchie uh see you next time you know it's it's uh you're setting me up for failure uh but but i i do love that mate i do we've had some some great conversations and i always always always always uh enjoy spending time with you and also with the the beautiful sonia as well so thank you for having me back on the show no my my pleasure mate uh You're a person who gets to rub shoulders with people in business at all levels globally.

And I think given your own personal approach to life, but also the exposure that you have to people at all levels, certainly a great person to get on today to talk about how best to work through the challenging times that we're coming through and they'll be an indicator of things to come. So, mate, I'd love for you to perhaps just to kick off really by giving us a rundown on and how has the changing world affected you and what you're doing and some thoughts from there, mate. Yeah, it's such an interesting time. And, of course, you know, the funny thing, I guess, about a podcast, Bushy, is the fact that if someone's listening to this and it's six months down the line, you know, thinking back to when we were in COVID-19 lockdown, it'll feel like such a different time. It's like if we think back three weeks ago when this really started, I think back on, I was in Adelaide on the, I think it was the 9th or 14th or something of March, which is six weeks ago, maybe a little bit more.

And so much has happened in that period of time. It all feels kind of surreal. And right at the moment, though, it feels like we're coming to a little bit more of a period of normality, whatever that kind of looks like. But it's been a fascinating time. I think we've seen, I don't know, I've been through, like many probably people listening, through everything from Gulf Wars to Y2K to 9-11 to SARS. I was living in Cairns during SARS, the outbreak which had a big impact in North Queensland. You know, disasters, the fires, all these other kinds of things that have come along.

But I don't personally think there's ever been anything that's hit so hard and so deep with such uncertainty. So financial uncertainty, business uncertainty, I mean, I can never ever remember. I mean, there was a short time when the planes were kind of grounded after 9-11, but in reality, like, this whole thing of no planes flying anywhere realistically or just minimal planes within Australia, just a bizarre time. And like most bizarre times, brings out the best in people,

brings out the worst in people. Yeah, absolutely, mate. But if we sort of begin by talking about how it's impacted on you because, I mean, your business was very strongly driven around a whole bunch of things because you're very smart at diversifying, but the keynote speaking exercise would have turned off the tap very quickly, I imagine. How has that impacted on you and what has that meant to what you're doing these days? well it's a really interesting question because i was actually at a conference for professional speakers uh on that in that march the 9th or 13th or whenever it was on a friday and there were 200 250 other professional speakers in the room and of course it was a big topic of conversation because we were starting going oh i wonder if this will have an impact or what degree of impact and of

course then all of a sudden literally on the same time everyone's phones started going ballistic and we all had 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 jobs cancelled, which is a huge revenue loss. But they weren't cancelled, they were postponed, but to who knows when. But the really interesting thing that changed in that, Bushy, was as an industry with speakers, like we've all offered virtual stuff, right?

We've all offered webinars and we've done Zoom calls, but we didn't value them. Like it was just stuff that you did. What this did, it made us, the smarter people in the industry, go we need to have a virtual product offering we need to be smarter about what we're doing as speakers and still do our training still do our presenting still do our master classes still do all of the stuff that we do but we just got to get a whole lot better at it and we've got to value it so in answer to your question and clearly i can't answer any question in a short way um

the the whole thing here is my business has had virtually no impact there's been no impact but what's changed is that i'm doing a lot of virtual stuff like i'm doing webinars this week last week to spain i've got two webinars this week in for english companies one next week for an american company um news corp i'm doing a whole pile of stuff for so all these kind of organizations they're saying well we still got to be training we still got to be teaching people stuff um we're just getting better as speakers at packaging it up and uh and saying well okay if we value our virtual stuff then other people will probably start to value it as well so we've just got a little bit smarter in a real hurry is probably what it translates to for me bushy

yeah it's a good way to put it smarter in a big hurry because let's face it it has been a tsunami that's sort of come through almost unexpectedly and a lot of us didn't believe it for a long time and i was one of those i was thought a bit of an overreaction but it has been a tsunami in relation to the responses to it regardless of of the impact of the virus itself the responses to it by governments globally has been the big thing. And as we're sort of starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, how do you see it rolling out in the short to medium to long term in terms of the impacts it's going to have on us individually

but also rolling into the economy, business, our lifestyles and where we're likely to be investing our energy differently moving forward, mate? Well, it's such a big question, isn't it? And it's so different. One thing I would say, though, that really drives it home for me, the impact of it, you know, in Australia we can look around and say, well, it's been kind of 80 people have died. A lot of them are old.

You know, we can be dismissive of it. You know, really, was it that big a deal? Very, very, very different when you talk to people in a different country. So I'm talking about doing these gigs that I've been doing in the UK, and we kind of have a call every day just to touch base on various projects and we opened by saying how many people died yesterday in england you know and like last week it was 890 died yesterday 970 died you know 950 1070 and these numbers and and they're asking me like how many people died in australia today and i'm kind of going

well we've had total of 80 and they're going what 80 today yesterday and i go now 80 in total and they're going seriously it struck home with me how fortunate we've actually been here in terms of the response that the government i i full credit what i don't you know sit on any particular side of the fence politically but i'll tell you what i i think the government did some very smart hard stuff early on i mean i spoke to a friend of mine in new york and she knows eight people personally that have died now can you imagine that you know like i mean i don't even know anyone who's had it you know let alone anyone who's died you know and you go this is just extraordinary so i think one of the challenges is is it's easy to go well there's not much going on

you know we're all kind of back to normal i don't think people realize that the people that were dying in the uk were just like me just like you just like our listeners here you know like it wasn't just you know all these old people in old homes who had terminal cancer this was you know young fit there was a big range so i guess the point that i'm trying to make is i think that we're a little bit luckier than we i don't know i i think we're lucky than maybe we think or we realize when you have those conversations um it's not a third world kind of condition that just happens in the slums of delhi this is a major issue in terms of the impact and and what does it look like on the other side of this bushy i mean i i kind of go well i think it's made a lot

of people stop and really take stock of their life their business their their their everything you know their financial position their their health and their well-being so much has changed and i feel that there is a a monumental amount of change that is that is here and coming it's just a matter of when we because it's going to be a slow burn to get back to normal none of us are going to be going to bali for a holiday in the next year none of us are going to be going to you know do the things that we normally do there'll be a real shift of things that we would be doing there's a chance that a lot of this change will become relatively permanent if it was a really crazy month and then everything got back to normal we'd probably forget about it but working from home

will be lessened but it'll be more than we've experienced in the past you know we're kind of used with you know the minute there's word of something like another virus of some sort we'd all be kind of getting ready to hunker down and there'll be no toilet paper in the shops again you know we'll we'll the the response i think we've lost a bit of innocence at a at a um at a viral level i guess is what i would look at it like that like the world just caught herpes is really what it's about and uh and it's a matter of whether it's going to come back go again who knows but there's no no doubt at all it'll be another virus at some stages now it always becomes a matter of when we haven't even got rid of this one yet so i think we're

changed forever as a result of this is what i'm trying to say again in a very very long-winded way i'm so sorry don't apologize mate this is the this is what the discussion is all about and it's because we're still in the throes of that uncertainty while there is some uh sunlight and we can we can start to see something at the end of the tunnel we don't really know what's going to fold out at this point in time. And it's so early in that process that the new habits haven't fully inculcated themselves. So this is a really interesting time for me.

And what I'd perhaps love to have a chat to you about is because I see some dangers coming not from anything that anyone's doing. And I, like you, absolutely applaud what the government's done so quickly at such a collaborative, bipartisan level to protect Australia.

I saw something the other day that said we are number two in the world in terms of how we've responded so well to the impacts of the pandemic. So hats off. Pretty amazing, really. Absolutely. Do you ever put yourself in that spot and go

how would you manage it? I mean, I watched this fantastic movie called The Darkest Hour um which was a movie about winston churchill i don't know if you've ever come across it and it was about just a fantastic movie right and and i i can't help but look at it and go how would i have handled that if the the the future of england was really basically up to me we've got you know 300 000 of our men trapped on a beach in france and we've got no ships we got no navy how do we like i just think what would i do how could i i don't think i could

cope with that kind of pressure you know amazing i i just i'm in awe at times and i and you know don't worry i'll be the first person to freaking i was the first person to say skamo completely buggered up the bushfires and pretty much everything else he's touched but i look at what they've done with this and go wow you know hats off credit where credit is due and so many of the world leaders and then of course then there's trump let's let's not even go down that rabbit hole how long can this uh this you know podcast be bullshit we haven't got enough time to talk about i think we just keep building the wall across them across some mexico and then right around the coast right up around canada and just throw the key away mate that would be

oh my god yeah i agree but anyway but you're right right isn't it the the upside is look at how incredible innovation uh as as it just happened like all of the things that could never possibly happen oh we couldn't run without planes we couldn't we know people have got to travel to sell stuff um people can't all work from home we couldn't not have this we couldn't not have that and you kind of go really well i don't know there seems to be lots of stuff that's actually kind of working i mean i look at a very micro level uh my my little um bakery down the road and i've been waxing lyrical about this place for ages um as soon as it happened as soon as we you know closure is is imminent and and we had to keep away for everyone was basically going to turn

into a zombie was the first thing they did was they they started making these packs um of bake your own bread they were right at the beginning of this curve and so you bought your little fat your flour your your yeast and salt and all that and a little kit for like 10 bucks and then you went home and made bread we made bread took like seven or eight hours for god's sake it's so hard to make bread but but the idea of it was fabulous and they were selling hundreds and hundreds of these kits a day they weren't afraid um of kind of giving away their secret sauce then they kind of every time i turned around they adapted they evolved on the fly really quick now interesting i was chatting to them the other day they're saying okay we're turning over just about the

same if not a little bit more than what we used to turn over but we got four less staff to do it in fact we're making more money than we've ever made because we've got we do home deliveries we we sell starter kits for bread people ring up an order now but they ring up and order five or six loaves of bread you know we realize that making coffee to be honest slows us down probably costs us money so they really had to rethink their entire business and now their problem is going well, we don't really know that we want to get back to normal. We don't really know that that was a better model. The model we've got now is actually better.

But, of course, it's a matter of whether people will want that model when things go back to whatever normal is. Yeah, I don't think it'll – well, we all know this. It won't go back to what it was. That is crystal clear because all of our thinking has changed and our habits are changing. It's been long enough in the making for us to actually change our thinking and change our habits. And what I'd love to explore with you, mate, because you do come across lots of awesome examples like the bakery you just mentioned.

And I've been listening to the very entertaining discussion you had with Darren Finkelstein on the Let's Kick This Bakery and Let's Exercise. There's some brilliant innovations that are coming out of that. And what I love about the period that we're moving into is the recognition that creativity and innovation are going to be the make or break quality. So it's either get on it or struggle like hell. So can you share with us some of those other brilliant examples of the innovation that you have been seeing? Because I think it's quite inspirational, mate.

Mate, and it's been for me just so wonderful to see how people have innovated so ridiculously quickly and i i just i shake my my head at times in the awe of of how people you know evolved i mean early on in the piece like we started to see people doing this really clever um dealing with the fact that business had to go on i mean one of the things that i saw in particular that i thought was a great response was lexus and and lexus response to COVID-19 was about, okay, we do a completely isolated car service where we come and you leave your car out, we come and pick it up, we'll leave the keys in the letterbox, we'll come pick your car up,

we'll service it, we'll bring it back, it'll be fully sanitised, it'll be totally safe, you won't even see the person who drops it off or picks it up. And I thought, wow, most people just go, oh, well, people can't get their car serviced at the moment because of COVID. And I thought that kind of simple innovation was, to me, fabulous. We started seeing vets embracing video consults. Like we did one.

It's a dog. You know, you're talking to the vet on the end of Zoom and going, how long has this been going on for? This is fantastic because it's a pain up the bum to take the dog to the vet clinic, gets in a biffo with other dogs. You've got to sit around and wait. They're always late, rah, rah. Now, 3 o'clock, the vet's going on Zoom, talk to the dog most of the time,

give us a look, you know, I mean, for what they can do. And you go, wow, bets have been struggling to get video consoles off the ground for years. Now they all do it. Yeah, it's interesting. Our industry, we've got a home loans, a broking component of our business, AG, and we've been kicking and screaming for years to drag the banks into the

19th century, let alone the 21st century in relation to that sort of activity. And, you know, up until March, we physically had to sit in front of someone to be able to say that they are who they say they are. And that means that we're interrupting families in their homes at night or they're having to make a big interruption to their day to come into someone's office. Well, as a result of the pandemic, the banks have recognised that if they can't facilitate a remote transaction, they're not going to do any business. So overnight, we're now – we can do the full exercise. Someone doesn't have to leave their home. There's no safety exposure.

We can get everything we need and do everything for them all from the comfort and safety of their living room, mate. So those sort of – I think there's a bunch of benefits that are going to come out of this. And one of the other things I'm starting to see, and I'd love your commentary on this, but we're breaking through the bullshit. That corporate crap that's really plagued the sort of protocols and the way we do business, you know, there's a lot of us now informally who are meeting continuously through Zoom and all the other platforms that you can do that on. and there's a casualness that's crept in with, you know, your dogs in the background and the kids running around. I actually think that makes it more real, mate. And what do you think?

I love it. And I've noticed that in the last 10 years. Ten years ago, it would have been very rare to be on a Skype call, for example, before Zoom, and someone would have their dog there in a business environment. It would be a little bit unprofessional. You'd be going, oh, okay. Now, I love it.

The first thing most of my coaching clients, the first thing we do is we get the dog talk out of the way. And, you know, there are kids running around and you kind of go, you know what? Why not? Why not? I agree. I think that that has changed dramatically. Are you any less professional because the dog's in the, you know, sitting on your lap

type of thing? No, I think there's a lovely humanity that's coming out of this as well. It's just that it's all happened very fast. And I think there's still a little bit of a balance. I see a lot of my coaching that I do, I see a lot of people that are really struggling still, particularly parents, right, you know, managing kids and trying to do all this kind of stuff while trying to do business is tough, negotiating on bandwidth, you know, like a friend of mine has to lock her kid's Xbox or whatever they call it these days, their controls in the boot of her car, you know, until they're allocated from 3 p.m. on, they're allowed to use the internet, you know. So we're seeing that stuff. But it's incredible innovation is happening, you know, also with businesses that are all of a sudden going,

we can offer more products now. We can offer more experiences. You can be a part of a marathon in Germany just by, you know, running your own kind of laps and being part of the 50,000 people that are doing it. You just join up through an app and you're still being timed and you're still doing all the rest of it. but you're running a marathon solo, but you're part of the bigger connection.

And I think this is, again, another interesting part of this, Bushy, where there is wonderful kind of connection that's starting to happen. Like initially we were terrified of everyone else giving us a plague, and now everyone's doing great things about innovation to be connected. I came across in the Faroe Islands where you can actually, in the tourism department, no one's travelling, of course, So they've set this wonderful thing up where you can actually go to the Faroe Islands Tourism Board, you pay a few dollars, and you basically, a local carries a camera around, and you ask them, you say, okay, can you turn left here? Can you go straight ahead here?

You actually guide the local around while they're carrying this camera around. There's something kind of weird and funky and strange and awesome about that. And there is so much of this happening. the the good stuff is blowing me away the you know from i spoke about it from and we've all heard of these kind of examples but this was early on in the piece where i got a note in my letterbox from a young couple he just said hey we live in apartment blah blah blah we're from new zealand we haven't got any relatives here we're young and healthy um where we're concerned for any elderly people don't know why they put it in my letterbox bushy um but you know anyone who needs help we

can go and do shopping for you we can just help out if you need some help with anything um we'll try and track down stuff you know just here's our mobile number just call us and and that was after we'd all gone from the freakout stage and people were having knife fights over toilet paper to hey let's actually kind of help each other and now look at some of the stuff the stuff that i've come across has just been amazing mate from wildlife photographers who are selling their images online to pay for the safari um park the what the national park staff no one's going to the national parks the government can't afford to pay the safari uh the the the rangers if they don't pay the rangers people go and shoot the animals yeah i'll shoot the shoot them and so

there's this photographer and now they've done a joint venture promotion with trip advisor so trip advisors got millions of millions of people they're promoting this photographer to say hey buy this lady's photographs to help pay for the wages of the kenyan national park rangers i mean the the the promotions are fabulous the intelligence about product offering is a big shift to mate i mean i look at one example here which is the um the ballet the australian ballet um i'm not necessarily a fan of the ballet like i don't go to the ballet but i i saw something really clever that happened here and what they did was they started to live stream the ballet so you could still watch the ballet even if you couldn't actually go and what they've done is

they've just created this fantastic new product why would they ever stop live streaming it now why would they ever not have that as a digital offering there's always going to be those people who are going to want to go they probably live locally they can probably afford to go all the rest of it but all of a sudden if you're brave enough to live stream all of a sudden you just open up your market to the world and there will be people all around the world who would want to live stream to watch a ballet performance by the in the australian ballet in melbourne about a classic of some sort so what i'm saying there is is that there's a lot of stuff that people have been forced to do and all of a sudden going well hang on why are we going to stop doing this

when things get back to you know air quotes normal and uh and that's a great thing that's coming out of this innovation even as a speaker for me what my my virtual offering now is amazing why would I stop offering that just because we can fly again? It's easier for me to do a virtual offering than it is to get on a plane, spend a day going somewhere, deliver it, get on a plane, come back. You know, really? So instead we're diversifying and we've got bigger offerings, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense, mate, and some awesome examples there, mate. Mate, clearly innovation and instant innovation has been the key. uh given the the exposure you have across the board what other qualities mindsets thinking approaches do you think separates the survivors and thrivers from the divers now and moving forward so really another great question mate i i always think that from every crisis that i've been through um personally it whatever it might be it's a speed of response you know i think so many people that's the first thing you know that are slow to react and i get that often you know people have just got to kind of figure out what's going on and and it's like is this going to last a week

a day a month a year um etc but there is definitely a speed to react and if you know you can miss out a lot of opportunities by being too slow to react and a lot of businesses go broke because they're too slow to react as well they don't adapt fast enough i think i think that's the first thing the second thing i think that he is here is that you really need to have people um around you who can who ask better questions who ask the the the what the what if not the why not and and i know that can sound cliche but it's so true right here right now you know we've got to be making decisions that we probably wouldn't normally make. And I love that.

I love the fact that it's making us go, well, hang on. What if I didn't get on a plane for the next 18 months? What would my business look like? You know, I make my money from getting on planes and going and presenting. And I look at that and go, well, okay, what is it really like? So we've got to ask better questions. We've got to challenge our thinking, and we need the right people to ask us that stuff.

It's not a time for yes people. And I said, I did these workshops around England last year, Bushy, and it was paid for by the European Union. And the whole idea, I was talking to these small businesses, and it was kind of getting these businesses ready for Brexit. And I did like 15 or 16, 17 of these workshops, and I'd have a room full of small business owners predominantly, and I'd say to them, okay, so where do you want to sell your products?

My whole thing was about branding for international sales. That's what the theme of the workshops were. and uh and i would say to them okay so who do you want to sell to and they would also oh you know germany and france and you know they're close they're good markets you know it's like italy maybe spain and i'm kind of going all the members of the european union that you've just told to piss off you they're the ones that you want to sell to okay um and what's your unique sales or unique selling proposition why should they buy from you oh because we're british okay so let me get this right so your only sales point is the fact that you're british though they should buy

and you're trying to sell to people who you've just told to rack off in a in a poll basically a referendum to say that do you see any problem what's plan b here and it was like you know there wasn't a plan b and it was like who is doing this thinking this is ridiculous this is total denial you know so i love the fact that we have this great opportunity to reinvent to rethink to completely challenge a word that drives me crazy but it sums up everything pivot you know all this kind of stuff i just look at and go wow it is a time to ask imagine if you know it is a time to to ask you know why not you know like you know it is we can ask much better questions now and we're seeing it every day. Honestly, mate, the stuff that I'm seeing, Bushy, that is happening

from an innovation point of view would never have happened six weeks ago. If you said to me, we're going to do this in business, you would just laugh. You go, that's a death now. You're ridiculous. It's never going to happen. You're crazy. You know, rah, rah. All the stuff that could never happen is happening. And I absolutely love that. And that sets the scene for the world we live in now. I think the good thing here as well is that a lot of commentators have been talking about, I've heard stats quoted that over the next 10 years, and this is prior to the pandemic, over the next 10 years,

nearly 50% of current jobs are going to disappear through AI and technology and everything else that's coming. Now, I think the good news is we've concentrated 10 years into 10 days almost. and while that creates some instant pain, clearly, it means that we, rather than have a long, slow terminal cancer, we've got a melanoma that we've cut out in a big hurry. I actually think there's some benefit in that

because a lot of the businesses that are struggling now are probably going to struggle with just a long, slow death rather than a very, very quick one. And that sounds very hard and I don't mean it that way, But I think it's actually brought forward a lot of that exercise and forced people in the big hurry to actually spin, adapt and think about what's the new way because the old way either doesn't exist or it's not going to work anymore. Well, and there's a positive. I mean, I am super optimistic about what's going on. I mean, I'm amazingly optimistic, probably naively optimistic, wildly optimistic, whatever other adjectives we want to use in it almost.

But I look at it and kind of go that it is an opportunity for change, but it's also an opportunity to really highlight some major issues in the business world. And one, again, that you and I have spoken about in the past has floored me is the lack of resilience in business in terms of financial resilience. Now, I know this is a show talking a lot about finances, but I can't believe big organizations that are kind of within a week of this happening saying, yeah, we've got no money left. And small businesses that are basically going from week to week, hand to mouth, and for a very wealthy country. And I get it. I'm not trying to judge. I'm certainly not trying to judge. I understand how complex it is, but it makes me go, wow, how vulnerable is our small business?

How vulnerable is our bigger business even? You know, when we're kind of, we're on the bones of our bum a week into this crisis. What's going to happen if this goes on for, you know, for a year? Our government can't afford to keep paying, you know, $4 billion a week, you know, in kind of managing this. But, you know, I think there's an underlying issue in there and that's a lot of businesses are not profitable. And that's the bottom line. Yeah, and they're not war chested.

Anyone who knows me knows I talk about rainy day war chests all the time. And I felt a bit like Moses in the desert up until the COVID exercise because, yeah, yeah, Bushy, she'll be right, mate. We've had 28 years' worth of prosperity. Nothing's going to change. I don't need to worry. I'll get around to that someday. Well, some days come.

And I think, again, a strange sort of benefit. But people are going to be forced to think about what they do with their money. And I certainly wouldn't be suggesting you stop spending money because the thing that will tip us into depression is if we do stop. If the pendulum swings too far the other way, what I don't spend was someone else's income, then it will manifest itself in a much bigger slide. So we need to keep spending money to keep everyone fed

but just save some of it. And I think one of the big take-homes for me and for the others that we talk to is, well, where's your war chest? Where's your survival money for the next three, six months plus? And whether that's a business or an individual, you need to have that rainy day fund sitting there and alongside that there's an opportunity to invest in things that are going to diversify your income so if you haven't done that yet i don't care what you do it in now's the time to think very carefully about making sure that you're

not 100 reliant on your income from just one source because that one source could be in danger as we've we've just experienced so well i i agree completely mate i agree and i you know the other thing i think that comes into call here is you got to look at your business model i i think there's business models that are completely flawed you know where it's just no matter how hard this business can try they're never going to make any money they're never going to make any profit if you've got a week's worth of operating capital either you haven't got enough customers or your your operating expenses are too high there's there's you know it's kind of like business 101 one but i you know i i look at that and go that there are concerns i see businesses their business

model the way it's geared they'll never be profitable because they simply don't charge enough and and i'm constantly surprised when i say that and and you know that leads into part of a bigger discussion that a trend that i'm seeing around the world mate and i don't want to sound like i'm an author doing a plug for my book but i'll sound like an author doing a plug for my book my my new book you know so um you know you got to call the elephant in the room right but my next book is someone's got to be the most expensive it may as well be you and uh and it's written for business owners and the concept is you got to charge what you're worth but if you're going to be the most expensive you've got to be the best and i feel that there

is a shift happening partially driven by the hipster apocalypse i love hipsters because i I think that they've made businesses and industries cool again. You know, like as soon as your accountant is a tattooed hipster, you know that they've infiltrated pretty much everything, right? But the thing is, what is changing is I'm seeing people saying, hey, you know what, I don't want to be the next Uber. I don't want to build an empire. I don't want to have 1,000 staff.

I don't want to work 1,000 hours a week. What I want to do is I want to buy 40 acres of land. i want to grow 20 cows i want to make get x amount of milk out and we're going to make the world's best camembert cheese and sell it at the local markets in mulaney every saturday morning or you know we're going to open a cafe and it's going to be nice we're going to run it for as long as we want to we're going to make amazing coffee amazing food and you know it's we're not going to open 12 franchises we're not going to open this we just want to run a good honest business where we can make a good living, a comfortable living, get ahead and, you know, raise our family

and do what we want to do. And I call it kind of the slow business movement, but I don't really like that term. I've got to come up with a better term. But it's that thing where we're kind of getting back to a simpler way of doing business. Don't get me wrong. If you want to build an empire, you want to be next to it, but that is awesome. Go for it. But a lot of people think that they have to do that unless they're building an empire, unless they're building a giant business while they're not really you know in a real business it's like a few years back i remember you know as you know mate i lived in cairns for years and and i lived in cairns and i worked from home right so initially then when that happened if i was having a conversation with someone and i say

oh so you know where's your office and i'd say i work from home that kind of don't worry mate things will pick up that's right and then the next part of the conversation is you know like they'll assume that you're making spice racks, you know, from your garage. It's a sheltered workshop. Or something else, yeah. Yeah, or something else, right? You know, or they'd kind of go, oh, you live in Cairns. Oh, well, you know, don't worry.

You'll get a gig in Sydney on Melbourne someday. You know, just keep trying. Keep trying. Mate, you're tickling my elbow there because Adelaide, as you know, has always been the butt of most people's jokes around the country. and living on acreage in one of the most beautiful parts of the world down in the southern vales surrounded by wineries suffers the same fate. And you've just described, I mean, the small business movement,

I call ours a lifestyle business because it just gives us an awesome lifestyle with the Samoyeds and, you know, the fun stuff around us with the business just sort of filling the cracks and paying the bills is exactly the decision we've made. We've made that decision a long time ago that we don't want an empire because we've become a slave to the bloody machine that you create, which gives you no time to actually enjoy the income that you've created. So I'm with you, mate.

I think this is a big and growing trend, and what's just happened is we've put the oxy-torch on it through what the world has just been through. So that's exciting, mate. How do you see that sort of shaking out? Well, that's the interesting part about this, right? so probably 10 even 15 years ago that was the response that i had but what i noticed the change in the last probably five six seven eight years was you'd go oh so you know so so where do you

live and you would say cairns and they go oh my god i wish i could do that and these are ceos of you know big organ banks you know mines um you like big big organizations and they it shifted from don't worry mate things will pick up to oh my god how did you how do you live in cairns how can you teach me so that i can commute i actually work with one bank ceo and and helped him to to adjust so he could have an apartment in cairns and commute um but but also that changed and all of a sudden now working from home and people go oh my god i wish i could work from home it'd be so fabulous so all of these things that and you're respected when you work from home like i look at people that working from home and they're doing all kinds of things they're not just making spice

racks in the garage so i just laugh how that changed so much in in a relatively short period of time and all the things that were kind of um hindrances to being successful now are desirable if you can work from home live in a regional area and you do something pretty extraordinary then that's the trifecta and you go my god how it's changed so um so i think more of that mate i don't i think that's terrific some of the some of the i'd like to talk about some of the warning signals as well with you, if I don't mind, mate, because some of the talk I'm hearing at the moment around this protectionism and, you know, we've had forced isolation both internationally and locally, and that will get into our psyche a little bit, that sort

of fear that sort of drives that herd mentality has been reinforced in a big way and fuelled with lots of petrol from the mainstream media. but one of the concerns I have is locking the gates and because, you know, we talk about Australia in particular, migration has been a massive nation-building component of our growth ever since we landed on our sunny shores. When I start hearing that sort of talk, I get a little bit nervous. What are your thoughts around that, mate?

I agree and I don't know. I think the world is bigger than that, though, too. You know, I think we just don't really know how to manage what this looks like. I'm sure that the world will, the doors will open and things will, people will migrate, people will move, travel will come back in different ways. I guess it's just that we're still in the belly of the beast. I'm like you, Bushy. I get concerned when it feels like we're just closing all the gates and closing

closing all the systems and doing all of that stuff. I just think that humanity won't let that kind of continue for too long because, you know, we live in a very fluid kind of a world and it does slow things down. There is no doubt shutting all the borders and doing all of that stuff stops the virus, but it also stops the world from, you know, doing what it does. So except for America, that should stay shut forever.

Let's just get that one clear right now. And that's not to let people in, that's to stop them getting out, mate. Totally, totally to stop. I read this really fascinating book a few years ago called The Next Hundred Years. And I can't remember who wrote it, but it's a fabulous book to read. It's written by a futurist. And this chap just talks about around the world. What does the world look like?

Who are the countries that will rise up, the countries that will, you know, fall down? Like, what are the parameters? What makes a superpower? You know, why has it become a superpower? And you kind of looked at it, and I never really understood it, but it was a fascinating read to see things like Turkey has the fourth largest army in the world. And it was the old question that they said was, with humanity, whoever rules the oceans basically ruled the planet as a superpower. That's kind of true when you think about it with the Portuguese or the French or the British. Everyone went through their time, the East India Trading Company, all that kind of jazz.

And this guy put into perspective saying that America is a superpower because of its military might. When you look at the reality is that the American Navy is seven times larger than the rest of the world's navies combined. Wow. And it was like, wow. Okay, that really is an interesting perspective on the sheer might of America. So as dysfunctional as the country is, you know, the president is, the people protesting in Chicago with guns saying 50,000 people with guns in the main street of Michigan or something, as crazy as all that stuff is, it's going to be a superpower for a long, long time to come. I'm not really sure why I went down that tangent. It was just more of a, like, part of me is just shaking my head in exasperation.

And I'm sure that Donald Trump is just itching to blow something up, you know, like it's just – there's a big red button on his desk somewhere that he just wants to press, but he just can't, you know. Mate, too. I don't even know what the question was, Bushy. I'm so sorry. No, I love it. I think I just went down a – not a rabbit hole. I went down a hippopotamus hole. Here's the good news, mate.

I think every U.S. president who's come through recessionary times has never managed to get back in, mate. Really? There's an election not too far away, so that might be a breath of fresh air. But I'll leave the audience to make the decision on that one, mate. But, mate, we've talked a lot about some of the stuff that's coming out of it. And what are the other learnings and takeaways that you think listeners need to take on board in relation to how they approach the future? Is there anything else that we haven't covered there?

Well, I guess, I mean, I tend to look at things from a business point of view. What I really think this is an opportunity, Bushy, it's a great opportunity to take stock. And it's a great opportunity to stop. And I think we're all doing it, to be really honest. To take stock about your business, to take stock about your life, your personal life, to take stock about your health and well-being, to take stock about your goals, your values, what you want. I think there's a lot of people going, you know what, I don't want to be on this freaking hamster wheel. I don't want to be working myself to death. I don't want to work for an organization that lacks any integrity.

I don't want this. There's different things, and I don't think it's just us in Australia that's thinking that. I think this is a communal and a global thought, a global consciousness that is happening. And I think I encourage people to be doing that. I'm certainly doing that. I'm definitely taking stock of everything in my life. What do I want? What do I value?

What's important? And how do I really want my life to look? Now, it's easy. And I know that some of us will go, oh, yeah, it's easy to do that. But it's not realistic. You know, rah, rah. I think it's incredibly realistic. and and i think we have an opportunity here to do a big reset and whatever that looks like

um for you for me for for others i i think that we probably won't get another opportunity like this to do this kind of global reset whatever that means and i think that we realize that and i think a lot of people even though there's you know we can't sit in our coffee shop for our latte and our avocado toast and we can't go to our favorite restaurant and we can't go to bali and get our hair braided but we're kind of looking to go you know what i kind of enjoyed this time hanging out with my family i kind of enjoyed going you know i'm kind of going enjoy going for a walk twice a day i kind of enjoyed making bread on the weekend i kind of enjoyed you know watching a cooking show you know with gordon ramsay and learning how to roast a chicken

you know and we've managed to slow stuff down in a very interesting kind of a way that i think has made many of us go i don't really want to get back to the way it was yeah i want certain things but i there's a lot of things that i don't want and and i i don't know i i get the feeling that that's an underlying theme for many of us i mean i certainly feel that way and my i got a fantastic life i got an amazing life i'm incredibly fortunate in my little world and i'm saying that so i can imagine people who perhaps don't have the same kind of life or you know have bigger challenges i don't have any challenges you know so yeah it's very good mate and i think you've hit on a really good point there because uh our lifestyles in australia generally are so time poor

that uh there either is no time to think or we don't take any time to think there's plenty of time to worry and we're worried to death by every time you turn on the news there's there's uh excuse my friends but shit loads to worry about but yeah you actually don't take time out to think and to think about, well, where am I? Where do I really want to be? What don't I like about what my current situation is and what am I going to change to take me from where I am to where I prefer to be and what an awesome opportunity

we've just been given to do exactly that. And it is an opportunity, isn't it? A massive opportunity and it's an opportunity to really get invested in your future in a positive way so that, you know, I sound like a stuck record here because this is my bandwagon, but this is a chance to start living by design, to get really crystal clear on what's important to you and orientate your whole lifestyle around making that happen

and creating enough income to give you that lifestyle without having to chase the golden carrot and end up killing yourself in the process. And I think, Bushy, the other part about this is this is one of the things that's different with this particular issue and this challenge, you know, that we're facing. it's open-ended we're not sure how long there is a risk and a fear of death you know of of illness there's uncertainty about economics there's all these kind of things it's not like it's all going

to be resolved next tuesday so it's a long kind of a term issue and the thing is that i think for many of the the challenges critical periods like a natural disaster comes along the fires go out you know yes the issues linger on but the recovery the rebuilding stuff we know what we're getting back to rebuilding the towns you know rebuilding the houses you know it's very clear what we can actually do you know the government we've got to put the infrastructure back in we've got to mourn the people that have died we've got to try and get tourists to come back to these places you know there's a very clear plan of attack we don't really have that here we don't really know what this plan of attack is and what it's going to look like because it's such a variable and and

i think it's actually kind of nice to sometimes get comfortable with uncertainty right in a strange way because it changes the way that we think it changes our thought process it changes what we think is absolutely positively you know taken for granted and i think that we need to be doing more of that at the moment and i think we most certainly are so the the upside of of this time versus other you know the gfc and all these other kind of scenarios is the gfc times are tough well we had to wait for things to get better now we're not really sure what we're waiting for you know and i i like the tension that's created by the uncertainty of what's going on at the moment and that's part of what is driving the fact of of people to be innovative of people like during

the global financial crisis people just rolled over and said okay we're buggered for the next five years you know like really whereas now people go well you know what we can be a bit smarter we can do this we can do this we i i the and the innovative energy is just extraordinary and i don't think i've ever seen that at any time and i've been an entrepreneur for 35 years i don't cannot remember any time where i've seen innovation being so active so energetic so inspirational so like just fantastic um and i think i i don't know i think certainly the entrepreneurial world we're kind of going to get used to that so i think those muscles are going to become mainstays mate uh if we have an innovative creative gym then we're going to be

dying on the vine so this is our first taste of things to come so i hope so i think and if we we go into it thinking and expecting it and you know part of me as well ag and i'm sure you're the same my the biggest challenges in my life have been my biggest times of growth so i actually enjoy times like this because i'm forced to look at myself in the mirror and go right well what do i need to do differently what i need to think differently here as well to make sure that we can actually learn from this rather than what you know i've had some concerns for a while there's a of a growing victim mentality across a lot of Aussies, well, I think this is going to shake the tree

and be very good as a result of that. What do you think? Well, you know, I like a tough time. To be honest, I kind of rise up to it. Like I'm looking at it and I'm not taking away from other people who have had, you know, major challenges and all the rest of it, but I kind of look at it and go, you know what? It brings out a bit of mongrel in me.

it makes me work harder it like i'm in a good paddock times are good it's like oh yeah you know i mean i'm you know i i tend to go with the flow a bit it's a take the easier path this has made you know it's given me my entrepreneurial spirit give me a bit of an uppercut it's made me get up and and and and actually see what i can do and see how how do i cope and how do i manage so you're right you know out of good out of tough times good things happen and there's a we're tested and it puts us to it challenges us and i i personally i like that challenge i like the fact that stuff is harder i like that it's you know it's uncertain and there's a whole pile of things going on and i and i think that i personally will become better as a human

being as a result of it and i think many others will too yeah 100 agree mate and and you've given me the perfect segue into the challenge that i'm about to get you to tap dance to with the bush fire lightning round mate because it's it's five questions that the listeners always want your words of wisdom on so you've given us a couple already in terms of quotes but what would your favorite quote at the moment be and it's interesting because you're right at the moment is that i think uh my favorite one at the moment is a martin luther king jr quote um and it's the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where He stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Mate, that's gold. Yeah, that is. That says it all, mate. And what that reinforces to every one of us listening to this is that the times we're going through have happened countless times before, and they'll happen countless times again. It's how we respond and what we do as a consequence that separates the sheep from the goats. Absolutely. Absolutely.

It's a time to rise, yeah. It is a time to rise. Yeah, absolutely spot on. Switching to your favourite subject, which is talking about books, apart from your next book that's coming out and we'll all be eagerly anticipating, what's the top book that you'd recommend people read and why? That's an easy one for me, mate. It goes right back to Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It's a book that I read every year. i read it in christmas morning i've read it every year for the since i was 18 so about a thousand years and uh and it is a a book that taught me about how to deal with people how to how to how to how to be a better human being when i'm dealing with people to be really honest and i was lucky enough to have a very wise man give me a copy of that book when i was 18 and i was you know young cocky arrogant all that kind of stuff and he gave me a copy of this book which was basically a pull your head in and learn how to actually deal with people and interact with people kind of message and i'm and he never said that but i'm very grateful that he gave it to me and uh yeah

definitely a book that everyone needs to read in my opinion absolutely there it's right up there mate uh had a very formative impact on changing the way i act and behave that uh at an important an age in my 20s too, mate, so he's a timeless cracker. There's no doubt about it. Mate, this one's a little bit left field, but again, a lot of Aussies feel that they pay too much tax, and one thing we can be sure of, we'll be paying a lot more tax as a result of what we've just come through,

given that we're going to have to pay for the support that we've had. What's the top legal thing that you've done to minimise the tax that you've paid on the journey, mate? Oh, you're really making it boring here. I think the best thing that I've had, the best thing that saved me a lot of tax over the years was I found a really good accountant and I got very proactive about understanding what I could or couldn't do. I asked better questions. If I didn't have an accountant that couldn't give me the right advice, I found someone who could. um i i wasn't passive about it you know someone said oh okay this year you made this much but i

didn't find out about my my tax return three months after the end of the financial year i i got very proactive about it because i worked my ass off and i wasn't making any money and i was paying lots of tax and i realized that something had to change and after gst i found a lot of accounts became very compliant focused and they stopped offering good advice and uh and just simply setting up one decent you know a trust and and uh and a range of companies underneath it and accessing you know being able to share profit and loss between companies all my wealth is really comes from my companies um you know that was such a transformational kind of a a shift for me and really what it was bushy i took responsibility for my own money yeah yeah you know stepped up

took responsibility didn't just treat it as an afterthought and uh and yeah that that was a big big thing once i did that that's when i stopped paying anywhere near as much tax yeah yeah you made a really good comment there there's i think there's a lot of aussies who think well if i just work hard enough the money's going to look after itself it never does no it doesn't does it and there's very simple things that you can do that means that you're holding on to a lot more of it and you're getting much better use of it. And if there's one thing I'd 100% reinforce there is actually stepping up and taking responsibility.

And if it's not your thing, you know, maths come, accounting come, money because of the educational upbringing, people have a fear of it, well, do what you've done. Get a bloody good accountant who's going to do that for you but at least have enough awareness around it to ensure to ensure that money is the oxygen of our capital system. And if you can't handle it well, you can suffocate or worse. So really good advice there, mate.

Mate, just on the investment subject, and this doesn't have to be investment in things. It can be investment in others. What's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received to date? The worst investment advice when it's broad like that was, I remember when I came up with the idea for my first book 21, 22 years ago, and I remember reaching out to a whole pile of other people. It was a book on marketing, for those listening, 101 Ways to Market Your Business.

I thought, oh, that'd be a good book. I remember reaching out to a whole pile of friends of mine who were in the marketing industry and asking them what they thought, and all of them said to me, don't do it. So all of them said to me, you know, who are you to write a book, you know, and you've got no formal qualifications, you know, all this kind of stuff. And I just remember, like, I am so glad that I was pigheaded enough to completely ignore that advice, because that was without a doubt the best investment that I ever made was my time to write that first book, which then, of course, led on to the next 20 years of my life and all that I do around the world. um so you know that was definitely the worst advice um that i had and i'm glad that i probably ignore it and yeah and that probably the best um the the best uh i guess from an investment point of view the other side of that the best advice i ever had um and this is actually a property one which is kind of funny but in cairns i always remember the smartest investors always said when

the locals start buying investment properties that's the time to get out of the market and um which is again just kind of hilarious and kind of related to the fact that the locals were kind of the last to know you know about what was happening in the market and i've got to say it was really true whenever i bought investment properties and stuff like that uh bush it was hilarious the minute the minute like you start saying oh you just bought investment properties the old timers go oh quick get out get out sell everything the market's going to change because the rubes are buying in there and I went oh god really I didn't know I was a rube I didn't know and it was true it was true I love that mate coming back to your worst investment advice

around the book I'm going to reinforce with you because the thinking that they were saying to you was the thinking that was in my head around who am I to write a book who's going to want to have any interest in what I'm going to put between the covers. It's actually been the best thing that I've ever done, AG, thanks to your mentorship and inspiration because it not only was a great experience and forced me to self-reflect and get really clear about what I actually do believe because once you put it in print, you're putting it out there for people to have a crack at.

But it actually crystallized my thinking and the way of communicating what we believe way better than what we ever have. So if nothing else, if no one read the damn thing, it's still been a massive impact on the way we communicate the message both personally and to help others, mate. So yeah, fully endorse that. And there's certainly no one better than you to help people through the process in terms of the confidence to do it, but the way to do it in a way that's meaningful to you and people that can't wait to enjoy your message. So, awesome, mate. Thank you, mate.

Mate, what about that last one of the ambush round? What's a personal habit that you feel contributes most to your success today? For me, mate, it's probably I invest time in things that I'm going to invest in. So, I mean, I did quite a bit of stuff on the stock market and whenever i got too busy to really to study the stuff that i was buying the shares whatever it might have been um i always lost money and uh and i kind of made a point of saying okay the only

things that i invest in and i get asked to invest in things all the time and what kind of i only invest in stuff that i really understand and i know um and that's i haven't always been like that and uh so that habit for me is um i still buy shares i still buy things but i do it in a really educated way and uh and i guess that's probably a bit of age a bit of wisdom it's kind of coming to play there over the years bushy i um i'll i'll never be um you know i'll never be pressured into buying or investing in anything you know like if you don't get in now you're gonna miss out like all of that stuff that just makes me shy away i i i'm a i'm slow to invest but long to invest you know like that that kind of has always been a bit of a mentality i play a long game

you know and that habit is very that's been very successful for me in terms of anything that i've invested in you know once i've got wise before then i just blew money left right and center you know bought shares bought property did this did that and just did my utmost to try and burn as much money as i possibly could and was pretty good at that pretty damn good at that you know it was like i'd buy a house in your street guaranteed the property is going to drop by 20 in a week you know so um you know if you if you it's a share that you don't like just i'd go and buy it and it would drop in half you know in the next week you just find out oh the board's just been arrested okay well you know that's awkward um so yeah so invest in things i know is probably my my best

descriptor there, mate. Yeah, I love that, mate. And warming my heart with a slow to invest and long to invest, that's a really good way to describe successful investment ultimately, mate. Mate, closing question. It's one I've sort of been introducing recently because it just opens up the scope. If I gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7 billion people that are currently enjoying the world and I gave you one minute to talk what would you say well right now it's a very timely kind of a time isn't it so I think right now my conversation would be around that this is an opportunity this is an extraordinary time this is like a time that we haven't experienced before where the enemy is this tiny tiny little virus

thing but but with this there is a huge opportunity for us to rethink pretty much everything on this planet how we treat this planet how we treat each other what we're here to do what we're here not to do the our story about where we go forward from here and i think there'll be a lot of people that will want to hear that message and a lot of people that won't care they'll just move on and that's the way it is but i feel that this is such a profound moment and then we have such a profound opportunity it would be a real shame to waste it yeah absolutely spot on mate this uh this is when the real learning happens and this is when we become better people as a as a result of that mate so mate it's been an awesome discussion uh for those uh of the listeners who want to reach

out to you more around all of the great stuff you do in relation to speaking in relation to virtual presentations into relation to writing books uh how do they do that and what's the best way to contact you man easiest way is just to reach out go to my website andrewgriffis.com.au you can find me on on all the social medias and things like that drop me a line say hello let me know what it is you need help with or what you're looking at whatever the case may be um yeah by all It means I'm always kind of keen to help out however I can. And the new book, Someone is Going to Be the Most Expensive, it might as well be you.

When's that going to hit the bookshelves, mate? We're looking at August 2020, so that's the plan. And hopefully everyone will be, all the suppliers and printers and all those kind of people will be doing what they do and it'll be on the shelves, the virtual shelves as well. Great, mate. Always awesome talking to you, mate. But love your energy, love your passion, and love your generosity.

Really appreciate you coming back on to share your wisdom at a time when everyone needs to hear it, mate. So keep on doing what you're doing and can't wait to stay in touch. Thank you, Bushy. It's always nice. I love our chats. Really, it's no different. It just means that you and I are just having a chat and recording it

as opposed to anything else, you know, as opposed to a formal kind of a podcast. And I enjoy that. And good on you too, my friend, for kind of doing what you can and doing, you know, sharing some good thinking around what we can do. You know, we're not helpless in these situations. There's always stuff we can do. And it takes people chipping away little bit by little bit. Your message is getting through, Bushmeister. You know, you just got to do it kind of one person at a time sometimes.

So good on you, mate. Keep on doing it forever, mate. Yeah, I'll have a microphone in my coffin, mate. I love this. The excuse this gives me and the license this gives me to talk to great people like yourself, I wish I had discovered it earlier because it's just been an awesome way to build relationship and do a lot of learning myself.

The gold that I take away from yourself and the others that I have on the podcast has actually been very good for my own growth. So it's an awesome process, mate, and I really do appreciate you being generous enough to come back and share wisdom at this great time. Anytime. Anytime, mate. Thank you very much, Bushia. It's been great to be on the show. And thank you for your listeners for tuning in as well. Thanks, mate. We'll talk soon. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that?

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

and live as if you die tomorrow.