Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Stewart Mason on Ultra Marathoning, High Achievement and Living a Successful Life

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

Check out this episode to find out how Dr. Stewart Mason adapted US military philosophy, and used it to live an exceptional life. Stewart is a practising veterinarian, a father of three, an ultra-marathoner, a small business owner and someone who’s taken a proactive approach to designing a great life. In our fascinating conversation, we followed Stewart’s journey in both his professional and personal life, touching on issues of fear and uncertainty. We also discussed frameworks for being happy and how to approach leaving a legacy. Stewart is a real ball of energy, and this show is sure to give you a real motivation boost. Here are a few other topics we dig deep into:   The key qualities that make a good ultramarathoner The draw for Stewart into high-performance areas like veterinary and neuroscience The acronym VUCA, and what it stands for Why DNF are the letters that every ultra athlete fears the most How to push through particularly difficult moments in life The four tenets of human happiness and success The challenges of being a clinician and a business owner at the same time Why fear is such a prevalent part of many people’s lives   Links LinkedIn Paws Galore FacebookSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ladies and gentlemen and fellow Freedom Fighters, this is Bushy Martin from KnowHow Property Finance and welcome back to the Get Invested podcast. Today we're going to enjoy a fantastic conversation with Stuart Mason on ultra-marathoning, high achievement and living a successful life. In this really great conversation today, we find out how Dr. Stuart Mason adapted a US military philosophy and used it to live his exceptional life. Stuart's a practising veterinarian, he's a father of three, an ultra-marathoner, a small business owner, and an absolute gym junkie, because I see him there about five days out

of seven, and he's someone who's taken a very proactive approach to designing a great life. In this really fascinating conversation, we follow Stuart's journey in both his professional and his personal life, touching on issues of fear and uncertainty. We also discuss frameworks for being happy, and how to approach leaving a legacy. Stuart's a real bottle of energy and this show is sure to give you a real motivational boost. Here's just a sample of some of the really great topics that we dig into. The key qualities that make a good ultra marathoner and its parallels to everyday life. The acronym VUCA and what it stands for

and it's a great code really worth having a listen to. The four tenets of human happiness and success and why fear is such a prevalent part of many people's lives. So if you're a time poor professional and you're looking for some answers then I know you're going to get some fantastic value out of this sensational chat with Stuart. So sit back, grab out your pen and paper, take heaps of notes and enjoy. Let's get on with it. Before we get into it, if you're a time poor professional who's interested in investing but don't have the time, you don't have the expertise, you don't know

where to start, you don't know who to trust, then grab a copy of my book The Freedom Formula that gives you all of the know-how. You can check it out at www.bushymartin.com.au or email me at hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au and mention Get Invested for a special bonus. I might add that all of the proceeds of the book are going to Living It Rough and Doing It Tough, a really dedicated group who provide for the needs of the homeless and their pets. So please get involved. And now, I hope you enjoy this interview.

Everyone, everyone, everyone has some of those fears to some extent. Anyone who says they don't is lying or they're a total robot. But the difference between, I guess, one of the differences between people who have achieved more the successful ones and those who don't, that they embrace that fear. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created.

You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You will hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can

live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream not someone else's more episodes can be found on itunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash get invested thanks for listening and now let's get invested right we're here with Stuart Mason and I've been fortunate enough to know Stuart almost casually without really knowing him at all for the last couple of years. We sort of rubbed shoulders at the local gym and had a bit of a coffee with Stuart recently and he talked

about some of his escapades in the ultra marathon front and it really pricked up my ears because when we're talking about getting invested, the qualities that go with ultra marathon running are pretty parallel to success in their area of life. So, welcome, Stu. Thank you, Bushy. Pleased to be here. Yeah, really good to have you here, mate. And I guess to get invested where I'd really like to start so that people get a sense of who you are is to perhaps go back through your life journey

and talk about what you invested your time, your money and your resources in early and where that led you to, what you've learned from it, what that made you change and how that's led you to where you are today. Okay, I'll start trying to dig those little grey cells into action. Memory never being my strong point. So how far back do you want me to go?

Well, probably back to the point where you made a conscious decision to go in a certain direction in your life. So for most people, it's probably the end of high school. You've obviously made a decision to become a vet. What was your thinking at that time? Why did you want to become a vet? Let's start there. yeah i suppose um i've always relished a challenge and wanted to sort of go at the high end of things

and i learned that um veterinary medicine was um something that was going to challenge me a lot with um the career requirements and the grades that were necessary to get it which were pretty high the uk okay um so you'd classify yourself as a high achiever you were right from the get-go you were pretty much focused on that yeah i don't like to blow my own trumpet or inflate myself but i i'd say i've got the high high achiever mindset i certainly haven't achieved everything i want to achieve i'll make that quite clear but um yeah which is pretty normal of the high achiever by the way oh good good i'm on the right track then um but um yeah i think i mean being a veterinary veterinary medicine that was coupled with um an interest in nature uh medicine biology um

i was led to believe by people's lamentations and complaints about veterinary fees that it would give me a high income um that was probably the one bit of advice that the vets i spoke to weren't bullshitting about no it's not a high paying job um so yeah it was sort of coupled with you know i liked i like diversity in life as well so um yeah that was it was quite a clear thing i'd have to put a lot of time and effort into i don't have an eidetic memory i'd have to study hard and remember and study and study again and you know throw enough shit at the wall until some of it stock um was there a lot of animals that oh absolutely yeah um because it could have become a doctor i guess it's got similar school base exactly yeah um why did you go down the veterinary

road rather than the the it was probably a fair 50 50 mix part love of animals and part it was seen a greater challenge than going into human medicine because you had to obviously have to study a lot more comparative anatomy of different species and different physiology things and it would get you doing you know you could have to be a surgeon and an endocrinologist and an obstetrician or whatever um okay it had higher grade requirements so it was more selective and being the stupid arrogant youngster i was that appealed to me at the time not unusual um so So, yeah, it was like, yeah, challenge, let's go for it, study hard. And throughout my childhood, my parents, they did a good job of trying to install discipline,

you know, you put the effort in to get the results, nothing wrong with that. They were very good at, you know, not being overly pushy and demanding, but pointed out and made me feel a sense of shame when I got a bad school report, which I did quite frequently for my first few years of school. Yeah, okay. I don't know why I suddenly managed to change, but knuckled down when I was 10 or 11 years old

and started moving up the rankings because you're actually given positions of where you finished in school academically. Yeah, okay. That's how they did it in the UK. Not anymore and probably very rarely even then. And I don't think that's something I agree with at all, but it probably served me,

but I don't think it's a good thing for kids generally. Yeah, yeah. It creates a whole world of expectation, I guess, that can have good and bad results. Exactly, yeah, expectation. So when it was put on me, I would take the bit and go for it. But, you know, for another people, I'd say for the majority of people, it detracts more.

It's counterproductive. I could be wrong. Yeah, but it worked for you, obviously. It worked for me. You were pretty self-motivated. You didn't feel the pressure from your parents. It was something that you wanted to do? I wanted to do.

I didn't want to disappoint my parents. And I also felt, you know, you don't want to get anything in life for free. and I hate the thought of relying on charity and relying on other beneficiaries all your life. I had good, hard-working, productive parents that did provide for me very well and I acknowledge that, but I wanted to make my own way in life

and have some... I guess there's an underlying feeling of self-worth in all of that, that you've done your best, you've put the effort in and you've got results that you've worked hard for. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay.

Now, for those of you hearing barking in the background, we're here at the homestead at Clarendon, so we've got four dogs, and they often like to have their say in things. They're not my dogs. Try and ignore that as you're listening to us. But, yeah, okay. So once you've finished, how long is the veterinary degree?

The veterinary degree in the UK is actually five years long. So it was on a similar sort of program to the medical degrees, dentistry degrees of doing two years preclinical and three years clinical. So it's a five-year degree course. Yeah. And I was less, I grew up a bit by then, I was less competitive about the academia and I'd be surrounded by a lot of kids that were much smarter than I was.

And it was a case of just, you know, I wanted to get through it and get my qualifications. But it was a demanding degree course. So, you know, you'd be there studying while other students are out on the piss. And, you know, the attendance rate for lectures in the veterinary degree was very good. You know, most students would be there most of the time and studying hard afterwards. um yeah actually yeah i was there six years because there was an option of having a year out to um do another intercalated degree so i got a okay i got a bachelor of science in neuroscience as well right which sounds all yeah academic it sounds like i'm yeah again trying to be a high

achiever but that in all honesty was trying to have a break from the vet course and chase women for a year because i've spent grew up in an all boys school a bit of catch-up yeah a bit of catch-up time exactly awesome so the uh doing that degree then that's pretty intense uh did that start to hone your self-reliance and uh i guess work on the fact that it was all up to you Yeah, I think, well, university, I was smart enough to realise that it's just that natural progression in life. You're working towards becoming independent, becoming self-reliant, so it wasn't the best.

It would have been good to have other life skills and training around it, I think, And one thing, if I could get into that point in my life, one point where I really want to help other people, I'd almost go back to uni students. And I'd like to talk to some of them and encourage them to develop other life skills. If you're doing veterinary medicine,

you are studying to become a clinician. So you're taught medicine, you're taught surgery and all the backup studies of anatomy, pharmacology, physiology that goes with it. Sure, sure. And that's what the university needs to do and that's their job and they've got limited funding and you're going to be a pretty crap vet if you don't have those skills. But there is a lot more to success in life of being interdependent

with people in other backgrounds. really really understanding your clients uh the whole art of um listening to them and trying to understand their point of view to really learn to empathize with someone which is such an important life skill but it's not something you're taught on a medical degree or i wasn't um or not apart from one or two little fun exercise lectures in it um yeah so that's something that you've had to develop yourself pretty much i guess yeah you're right i think the the the older i get the more i realize that everything's about relationships and being able to empathize listen and understand where they're coming from because if you're focusing on the animal yeah and yet the the

the animal is a pet of some others who might have a completely different view to you, being able to understand where they're coming from and then you probably spend as much time being a doctor to the owners of the pet than the pet themselves, I'm guessing. Yeah, I was thinking it was sort of, yeah, you're just focusing in a very, very narrow field. I mean, broad in the term of the studies required, you know, you have to, you've got to focus in so many areas of medicine and surgery as a veterinarian. But whatever you're doing, whatever trade you learn, whatever profession, whatever occupation you're geared towards, it's very easy to focus your whole life or all your studying and training, all your self-improvement on that. and then you know like me one day in your 30s you wake up and realize you spent a lot of time

learning an awful lot about very little um and um but a necessary step though yeah this is a it's a you need the knowledge and i think what i'm hearing is that you've been smart enough to have the awareness to look at the fact that that's that's not the be all and the end all Yeah, well, you work on yourself in certain areas and get very good at it, but you need to, say, get into that spirit. I think getting into the spirit of giving and giving back is very important,

but it's actually learning interdependency. I don't know what people think about these business courses or self-help books or Tony Robbins and all the TED Talks, But if there's one book everyone should read, if you listen to this podcast and you've not read it, I would say make sure you read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Yeah, that's a classic, isn't it?

I was talking about learning to listen to people, like the hardest habit for him and for me, I think, is seek first to understand and then to be understood. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a whole... yeah investing in yourself is a big thing and trying to yeah learn to work effectively with other people is so important and yeah yeah once i mean once i got to be a veterinarian i i got out of vet school and i i knew that there's always further studying and i knew i always had to

improve myself that's probably one strength i've got um i don't know it's good to be a hater um to hate on things but one thing i hate and i really can't stand is complacency i can't stand looking at someone who thinks they know it all scary yeah and uh yeah you've always got to try you've got to make an actual conscious effort to improve not just let it all come to you and so yeah when i hear of all the experienced vet and you know nothing wrong with experience it's good yeah it's also the only way that stupid people learn something that's it's good yeah i hadn't thought about it that way but uh and i'd probably take it for granted as well i'm a lifetime learner i never ever think that i've uh yeah learned everything

about a subject because the minute you think you have then something comes yeah something comes at you that it's like well i didn't think of that and that that's an attitudinal thing and so if you If you've got that open learning concept, then you've always got two ears open and the old analogy of two ears and one mouth and that's a proportion that should be absorbing and communicating information is probably something that quite a few people don't ever get.

I know myself when I finished uni, I thought I knew everything about architecture. I knew enough to be dangerous. seriously it was it was scary when i got thrown into the the real world and started to get my hands dirty it was um and it was a big wake-up call it was like holy hell i've only just scratched the surface in terms of what i need to be able to do to be able to really put something together yeah but there's a lot of people don't don't even get that far because they don't have the self-awareness to step back and say well hold on there's a lot more to this yeah okay it's just

not always you know you you come out of vet school and you go to a clinic and it's sort of disheartening it doesn't do a lot for your your ego your your feeling of self-worth when you see like all the clients they want to see your boss and they don't want to see me or speak to me yeah right you felt that a fair bit early on oh yeah absolutely and so you know i worked hard on myself to be a good surgeon. I was admired for great surgeries and I didn't have the best bedside manner. I want to say it was atrocious, although I have met worse.

So, you know, you work hard on that and becoming very proficient in your surgery. And if there's ever that sort of state where you can become the rock star in your practice, you get to that point, but then it's not giving you everything you want and it's gone the other way. The clients are always wanting to see you

and you're thinking, piss off and see that. They're just as good as me. There's nothing I can do that that person can't. How long did that journey take to go from feeling that you were the understudy to hold on, everyone wants to see me now? I think it was probably quite a quick snap change once the point you bought a clinic and you're the boss wrong and the clients seem to know that

pretty quickly and you know his wife and myself are the only vets there and we had a business partner so yeah yeah a lot of but yeah they just don't want to you know your clients aren't trusting a locum or why is that do you think um i think they like familiarity or they they have this trust in me that i've been there longer i'm going to care more and i've yes i've worked with their pet longer but so is that their preconceived ideas before they met you because i it's something that i think about a lot of it is this trust and care care equation because i think in any business regardless of what you're doing until you've got trust and until you can genuinely show you care people don't believe what you say anyway and is that is that so you think people are coming in

well you're the owner of the business so you must care so i must trust you more or i suppose be motivated to um really pander to the clients and work on your bedside manner and service them as best as you possibly can and work on the whole art of veterinary medicine whereas employee vets associate vets who are on a fixed salary they know they're very predictable what their life is quite predictable like that they know what they're going to be paid yep they they're motivated to do what they studied to do and there's a there's a boss you've got there's other factors yep so you do work on that independency with other people um sure okay but so how long how long did it take you from so you finished veterinary school you you became a locum in a

practice somewhere how long be between there and opening your own practice um so i graduated in 2000 worked in the uk for about three years moved over here in 2003 um and was an associate veterinarian over over here um did a little bit of work in the emergency center was a bit different again but that's only about a year so about it was 2008 we bought into a clinic so it took eight years to get to that point it's pretty quick probably yeah pretty quick probably I don't know if that's average or not for vets between graduation and getting into practice now owning a practice but yeah you know that was the journey that I took with my wife and where did you meet your wife back in the UK or um yeah she was um I told I was talking about it weren't we how um I told you how

I took a year out to do neuroscience so when you take a year out of vet school and you come back you've got to join the year coming up below you and uh okay she was in my seat in lectures one day and the rest is history yeah the rest is history pretty much so yeah awesome okay well So, let's dig into that a bit because living and working with your wife, Philippa, is it Pip or Pip? Yeah, Philippa. Yeah, Philippa. Philippa, Pip, whatever you call her.

Must come with its own challenges in terms of if you're both investing in the business, quite often that can create challenges for the relationship and the delineation between personal and business. How have you worked through the challenges there? the day-to-day challenges um i think we work together very well because we're able to empathize with each other um we're both at heart very clinical people so yeah in terms of sharing case responsibility and making medical decisions um i think we work together very well um we try and uh share the duties with it's not watch one of us can do that the other one can't um yeah

i mean i've got probably more of a interest in orthopedics and other surgeries so if there's any nasty surgeries um i'll take them on i think um yeah and then yeah i mean philippa's good with certain other areas like neurological cases and things um yeah she's certainly more gifted in dealing with clients and um than i am okay so i think you know she she finds that far less challenging to um take on you know the more difficult demanding clients than uh i do right she won't admit that but it just tends to happen that way yeah i mean that's sort of a typical husband and wife thing maybe you can deal with i know you deal with it no you deal with it yeah yeah but we won't get into a feud over it no no do you have sort of uh within the broader

spectrum of the leadership and the management of the of the practice because you've obviously got a team how many is in the team um there's myself and my wife as um yeah business owners and um we and veterinarians um we've then got um five people working for us yeah okay that's a pretty good team so the the general leadership and management roles do you divide that up between you or do You just, is it sort of, how does that operate? Have you got sort of, well, I'll handle this and you handle that or is it just something that you collaboratively do or how does that work?

We do collaborate on it a lot. I mean, I suppose when we get home at night, it's a very draining profession and the last thing one of us wants to do is really talk about work. Yeah. I think, I mean, Philippa just, she's not into the whole running a business, managing a business thing. She's a vet to be a vet. Yeah, she's, well, both of us have made the mistake of thinking that running a business is just,

a veterinary business is a natural progression from being a veterinarian working in the business. probably a bit like um well actually i say a lot like um in that book the e-myth revisited where michael gerber's talking about um yeah someone will be in a job and because they know that trade or that profession that they it's a natural progression then just own that business and run that sort of business and you don't you don't end up owning a job and yes worst job in the world because you're working for a lunatic. Which happens to be itself. Yeah, I've done that one.

I was going to ask you about that. You can read through all the mistakes that you talked about. Yeah, I've done that, and I've done that, and I've done that, and I've done that. I'm very good at ticking these boxes off, aren't I? I was going to dig in a bit too. What was it that yourself and Philippa made the decision to invest in your own business? Was it just, look, I'm sick of working for a dickhead, I might as well work for myself?

or was there more to it than that in terms of why you decided to make that investment? I was a lot luckier in terms of employers than Philippa, so I can't say for Philippa, although we were working for the same boss towards actually ending up buying him out. Okay. But, yeah, in the early years,

I've always had good supportive employers. That's something I'm very grateful for and guys that I've learned a lot from. Yeah. So for myself, it was, yeah, it was part having something to retire on and hopefully have a bigger income and then actually have something, an asset to sell,

say, for a business. Are veterinary clinics normally quite saleable? I mean, if you pull yourself and Philippa out of it, what are they buying? There is a goodwill asset to it, and I've heard from a knowledgeable source, not that they can be infallible, but yeah, for every, like,

you increase the goodwill for 50 cents for every dollar of turnover that you increase the business buyer so there is that um yeah we we ended up buying the building that the clinic's in okay so that's another investment yeah um yeah so there is part of it that um yeah you're not going to just leave as an employee and have nothing in 40 years time whatever um and that would have certainly applied to both of us and yeah you you have more autonomy and the time you take off or what sort of clinic you want to be running, I guess.

You know, it's good to have, yeah, some control. Yeah. But underestimated how time poor you'd feel at the time. Yeah, I could well imagine. Well, the reason that we're talking now is the fact that we've bumped into each other at the Paragon gym and that's probably because you've got a little bit of that flexibility and owning your own business to be able to fit that big rock in.

Let's delve into that a little bit because this is the subject that I'm really keen to have a chat to you about, which is the ultra marathons that you've spent your time in. Yeah. What led you to that? When did you do your first one and what prompted you to do your first one? Can you talk to us a bit about it? Oh, yeah.

I love talking about myself like that. Yeah, so I've always been uncomfortable with being unfit or overweight and out of shape, despite the amount of money I put into my beer belly. But, yeah, I had let myself go once I got married, had a business, had kids. like many people I think in their 30s and it just, yeah, that wasn't right for me so got up one morning and went for a run. How long ago was this one?

April 2011. Oh, wow, okay. So I can say it was six years and just kept, you know, felt good even though I was out there in my dacky shorts and cottons and so just, you know, felt you've got to keep doing it Stuart, but, you know, you've got to make habits out of these things. So, yeah, I just kept going running.

So it's a bit of a daily thing for you. Yeah, I made it pretty much a daily thing. I was going sweet. Did the city to bay that year. And then it dawned on me that, you know, we've been going to visit family back in the UK, because that's where all of them are every couple of years, but we've been going at Christmas.

And I learned from this book that the Paris Marathon was easier to get into than the London Marathon, which I did run the London Marathon as a student way back when, actually. Yeah, right. But I've let myself go a bit since then. But I thought, yeah, Fitz, could we go over to the UK in April instead of Christmas time when it's freezing? It's nice to have Christmas with your family, but it's freezing bloody cold. Everything's shut. There's ice everywhere.

and thankfully Philippa was very obliging to me because we can have a weekend in Paris so I did the Paris marathon in 2012 and I was kind of in the habit of doing running By this stage you've built up some momentum

I mean your version of letting yourself go on the average person is probably two different things I'm guessing though you're probably pretty out on yourself I can show you some before photos afters if you like you might be surprised I'm just trying to put my head around this How much sort of weight did you drop? I reckon I probably topped the scales when I was out of shape

with just over 100 kilos. Oh, wow. And I'm probably about 82 kilos now. Wow. And you're about six foot what? Six foot three. Yeah, six three. So that is a pretty massive drop.

And that happened over a 12-month period-ish? Probably actually the first, yeah, maybe the first six months I lost a lot of weight. I went down to probably around about 85, 86-ish would hover around there yeah i got pneumonia and went down to about 82 but i don't recommend doing that to someone not a good weight loss technique no um wow okay so it's pretty massive so the the marathon things i'm always interested in marathons and i let's i want to go on a bit of a journey here because i don't think i did a bit of reading on the ultra marathon exercise

and the blog that you wrote oh yeah the grand to grand exercise that um you did and i did a bit of other uh google searching around it they are just mind-blowing in terms of from someone like me and i love sport and i love keeping fit but the concept of running that sort of different distance for seven days uh let's let's yeah talk so that people understand what an ultra marathon is can you just talk through what it is and and and talk about the preparation and what you go through uh during the period that you're doing it just so that people can really understand how confronting this whole thing is uh yeah sure so it's actually a bit of a loose term ultra marathons if you go anything below that um yeah what is technically yeah because a marathon is 42.2 k's it's got a

civic distance and so obviously a half marathon is 21.1 anything else yeah 10 k's is 10 k's whatever gotcha um when you go to ultra marathon all that means is anything longer than marathon distance so probably a bit cheeky to call a 43k race an ultra marathon but effectively you might say might as well say any race over 50ks if you like is ultra marathon so it could be a single day 50k race or it could be um yeah one like the ground to ground that's 273ks which is but it's split over six days yeah this is just again for people to understand this this isn't uh 270 k's over seven days running along a flat track this is describe it because uh blew my mind when i started to read some terrain that you well yeah the beauty of these um especially these multi

stages so they split them over usually six or seven days some that are a bit shorter and maybe a few a bit longer where you you run a fixed course each day and then you have to stop you're not allowed to start till the next day um some of them are supported so um you'll certainly have to carry um the snacks you're going to need for that run and the water that gets you to the next aid station um and whatever emergency or gear you're going to need whether that's um thermals head torch etc so carrying a full pack on your back pretty yeah but it i mean it's a lot lighter if it's a supported one because um they'll carry another bag of food for you so you've got to supply your food and other like clothing you might not need so okay that's carried for you

on a supported on a self-supported like the grand to grand um was and uh well i'm doing self-supported in one in new zealand next year you've got to carry everything you're going to use for that week with the exception of the tent that you sleep in and the water that they supply you through so obviously you can't carry a week's water on your back but so sleeping bag and everything else yeah sleeping sleeping bag sleeping mat um yeah a mirror of food food will be about half the weight you're carrying will be your food um so it does get you know significantly lighter as you go along yeah okay okay but still you're running from i'm not sure how many you've run but just reading the grand to grand you're running for how many how many hours a day

um for myself i can't remember my specific times because i think that's about 38 hours for the entire thing accumulatively and most state most days were sort of marathon-ish distance so it would be about maybe for me five five and a half hours a day yeah um a few of them yeah like the one i've done and the marathon de sable in morocco and a lot of these multi-stages they have a long stage which tends to be a double marathon so that's 84.4 k's sort the shape from the goat sort of thing is it that's really um it's just one thing they sort of do to i guess break the race up make it more interesting bit of a challenge throw a long day in there and there's usually like another shorter day or two in there as well so the long

stage in the grand to grand it had like i think it had a 35 hour cut off um wow and full credit to those that were at the back of the pack and actually stuck out there and you know they just hung in there and got in just before cut-off time because I would have been ripping my hair out challenging myself and facing the course that long. But, yeah, I think the, you know, I didn't finish that one until one in the morning. So, that was about 15 hours of, yeah, slogging that because it's, yes, it's a tough course. And this is not, as I say, this is hard, yeah. This is uphill, downhill.

Oh, there's a lot of climbs. Sand, cactus. there's all i mean this is yeah the first day was sort of um flat so oh yeah check me out and run look at this then made the mistake i made numerous times before going off too fast and paid for it the next day but yeah it was it's quite an odd race like that the ground to ground because the first day is very flat and then the subsequent days after was that he's almost huge hills in the way incredible yeah i mean yeah so how do you because i think the uh the qualities that you need to be able to get through something like that can you can you talk about uh that because there's

only a special sort of person that would be able to endure that sort of physical and mental um yeah i i think i'm probably more like most people i i've met i've met a couple of people that have gone and done these multi-stage ultras straight up without having run marathon distance before, whereas to me it was a progression. I guess I was inspired by seeing that these races were there and it would be a challenge for yourself to do it. And I thought, well, it's going to take you to some far-flung place

you've not been before. I love travel as well and seeing new places. and with these really long ultras they always put them in a spectacular part of the world you're not going to be running around Elizabeth's shopping centre or something so

you know you're going somewhere unique and initially there must have just been the surprise I knew I'd be surprised by something whether it was the people, the landscape

or what it would do you know to my body how my body would respond to it um yeah yeah i i was kind of initially yeah also the marathon de sabre was a you know that's the most publicized one it's the it's the most well-known ultra marathon that's in morocco i've not done it i i'd like to but um i've not done that one um so that's on the list obviously um it's on the it's one of those ones i'd happily do it but there's so many others that really grab my attention that are straight onto the bucket list so okay um what's coming up uh well i've got um one slightly different one it's a single stage one coming up around lake tahoe so i'm doing that in just under three weeks hopefully which is 330k

but it's a single single stage but again i mean the if you go on the website single stage yeah that's continuous running yeah so that you've got a hundred hours to do it in as simple as that um i've got one in new zealand coming up because um yeah the chap called michael sandry i met on the grand to grand um and uh very flatteringly after we got back from that um was asking my opinions on what i thought of a race in new zealand and yeah you know hoping it's not someone with another pipe dream but full credit he had this vision of a race of putting one together in new zealand to showcase off his part of the world where he lives and he's very proud of. And it looks, he's done his homework and it looks

shaping up to be a fantastic race. North Island or South Island? South Island, yeah. It's known as, it's called the Alps to Ocean Ultra, so going from the foothills of Mount Cook to Omuru on the eastern shore of the South Island. So let's come back to those core qualities that you believe are the keys that allow you to to get through something like this but what are they do you think um well if you when you go on these races what's brought me back what one of one of the big draw cards is spending time with some of the most amazing

inspirational people really really positive mindset and if it's what is it that makes them achieve that and probably for myself what will make me do it in one word I think it's acceptance because what do you mean by that um if you're going to do an ultra marathon like that um in your training shit is going to happen you're yeah you're going to be running out in shitty rain you're probably going to get injured you're going to have really bad days of running so you you know that it's going to be tough at times and a bit like um that brenny Brown did a talk on embracing vulnerability a really good TED talk um you've got to do that to do this you just um you're you're embracing the fact that bad stuff's going to happen and

you're not going to like it but you're you're okay with it um and I mean now these decisions are very easy for me because the investment that I make is going to I know that it's going to pay me back megafold it's it's a very easy decision the first time it's i don't want to do this do i want to do this do i want to do this was the um i was signing up for the big red run in the simpson desert here in australia oh yeah yeah and i wasn't sort of very manly oh yes i'm gonna grab my testicles and do it i just went oh bugger it yeah click click on enter but then once you've clicked on it you know it's very easy for that motivation that drive because you you know you've signed up you can't get out you've clicked enter you've got to do it you can't pull out now so

yeah so that's probably the hardest thing to do is just hitting that button yeah you've you've actually got that that goal there to do um and yeah you but the people you're with but the mindset It has to be that you know that all sorts of things can go wrong. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be worth it in the end. So it's more about the mind than the body, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I think just that habit of the old cliche, it probably is a cliche, I don't know,

of stepping outside of your comfort zone. If you and I are in one of those RPM, which is spins, or those who aren't familiar with Les Mills in gyms, so these spin classes, or similar, you hear the instructors say, step outside your comfort zone. We've all heard that. And they're right. That's true.

That's in the very physical, stripped raw sense. As you progress from that and do long ultra marathons, or you're then and and in especially in um business and other things your your professional life and also and parenting whatever it is yeah um there's there's all sorts of things that are gonna go wrong and you're not perfect and you have to embrace this vulnerability that we all have and be okay learn to accept it so i think it's acceptance that's part of it um not with punches and then yeah um and i think another course i went on i was i think what's his name i think is it patrick hollingworth but he he discussed this thing called um

vuka like this vuka um landscape or um social landscape yeah so i think it was it was a fray it was an acronym that was coined i think by the u.s military um when the uh soviet union broke up and the cold war came to an end that yep um in the eastern europe and perhaps in the middle east as well the they were facing this buka which stood for um volatility uncertainty complexity and ambiguity love it um and and pretty much they were they were spot on yeah right yeah whereas and that and that's the whole so if you've got that mindset then you yeah nothing's really going to throw you is it that's what that's the sort of life that you're going to be facing and you know the the comfort zone of any human being is the opposite of that so instead of volatility people

want stability and instead of uncertainty people want certainty instead of complexity people want simplicity and then instead of ambiguity people want clarity and those you know you have to learn to accept this you know vuca concept that you're going to be facing that's brilliant yeah he he liked um yeah this guy was um a mountaineer and he sort of talked us through um climbing up some himalayan peak as an exercise yep so sort of what do you do in a situation where you might have to rescue climbers from this thing called the death zone which is above a certain altitude if you go down and can't move you're fucked you're gonna die yeah right um okay uh so yeah and i think um when you face um an ultra marathon like that yeah there are there are so many things you can't

predict that are out of your control the way your body might respond um the weather conditions that you're going to be facing how you're going to react to your food and then and when when you're training you know how do you respond to eating this way or training here or training there it's it's very very hard compared to you know training for your first 10k which which is great and kudos to that and a 10k is still a challenge but it's um yeah this is yeah you just got you've got more complexity as you're going into, yeah, really long ultramarathon territory. How many people sort of generally enrol in, I guess it varies, but what are we talking about for most of these?

The ones, they certainly seem to vary. A couple of hundred? A popular one might have that many. Like the marathon they solved in, yeah, the MDS, I think that has over, I could be wrong, I think that one can have like 1,000 or over 1,000. The reason I ask that is how many don't make it? How many don't finish the run? It's a big dropout, right?

Yeah, again, I think they're going to… Or what are they called? Do not finish or whatever it's called? Yeah, DNF is the letters that every ultra-athlete dreads. DNF? Yeah, DNF did not finish exactly that. You see it after your name and you think, oh, shit. um uh yeah so i think it was around about over just over 20 percent was it okay dnf'd in grand to grand i can't remember i think they were about um i think they're about 139 starters yeah yeah

so how do you if you're in the let's say we're i'm just trying to paint a scenario here but let's say you're you're doing this 300 yeah okay run in a in a in 100 hours and you're uh 80 hours in and your body's gone into meltdown and what keeps you going what is it that gives you the the strength to just keep putting one foot after the other i just can imagine a lot of people just going i'm done i'm just i'm out um how do you how do you summon that persistence to just keep on keeping on uh i don't want to sort of brag i guess to to me some of that just comes naturally in that i one thing i'm good at is not quitting yeah um i mean i make life i make life hard for myself because i didn't stop and think and plan better i wish i you know i'd sacrifice some of my

resilience for better planning almost um so um i think so you're out i'm trying to think where i've been in that situation yeah you're out there put yourself back there and you're feeling i guess all i can say is um partly other people have done it tougher than me yeah um there's always someone out there on the course that's a better person than I am okay not necessarily and frequently not you know I don't look at them because they're a better runner I might look at like I draw inspiration for people further back in the pack than me like like I said you know there's people that have been out there for 33 hours and shit right and so I draw inspiration from people of outclassed me in

their own way yeah and then the other thing I suppose is um it's all going to be over at some point yeah it's not going to last just keep doing this then oh yeah okay um you've got is it you're looking forward to uh you can see the finish line so that that's yeah exactly is that the whole thing with ultra marathons and doing this is i can guarantee if you went and did one or just about anyone listening to this podcast if you went and did one you'll get so much more out of it than you put in and i was actually blown away with that with the first one i did because i i wasn't i didn't know what to expect of course it was kind of a leap sort of a leap of faith i mean i wanted to yeah i wanted to just have something i could tell the grandchildren about something i

could reflect on and so i went i just went and thought well i've done a couple of marathons now um i've never been to the simpson desert um seems a good way of seeing it it's a new challenge other people have done it yeah so i can learn a whole lot from it you know what is it what is there to really lose yeah um and like you said you know you've got to be uncomfortable you've got to be comfortable with the fact that you're not perfect you're fallible yeah things can go wrong and shit can happen but that's just part of life there's no there's no such thing as failure failure is just a form of feedback so without much to lose i did that and then yeah when you realize that the rewards are so worth it you'll you'll bust a gut trying to do it um it's a bit like having

a child when you're going through childbirth you think yeah god i can't do this in the minute you've got the baby in your arms right when we're having our next one is it is that that sort of feeling uh i wasn't the one i can't speak yeah when you have uh a child it's yeah it is hard no one wants like another child if they've got a two-year-old and a little baby at home but then when they you know they grow up a bit and you realize it's worth it you've ended up having a third one after that and yeah yeah i suppose another a big draw with doing the whole ultra marathon thing is um to put it very very very simply is when you when you're investing in it doing it right because giving it your best it yields happiness um because um you know people

will look for happiness in a lot of different pleasures so they'll try and find it in in good food in in money in sex and whatever and good good wine and you know there's nothing nothing wrong with indulging in those things at least you know part of the time when if you're not hurting anyone else yeah um but the character strength that you yeah the four tenets of human happiness really come from um a sense of progression um a sense of being in control yeah um a sense of being something greater than you are a sense of purpose and the extent of your relationships with your friends and your family those are the four tenets of human happiness and going on some stupidly long jaunt out in the desert is really gonna satisfy you in both of

those areas you form deep friendships with people that you didn't you hadn't met before you um you develop in so many ways going out there you learn to actually have control over your body and realize you know it can what it can do um you you're learning to pace yourself it's just you that's responsible for it and yeah it's a whole other other world um full of the most wonderful people um fantastic thing to be part of yeah when you're when you're in the facebook groups with those people that there's no nastiness everyone's loving yeah it's really supportive yeah you never hear them talking disparagingly of another runner. Awesome. Well I guess

the sort of person who's going to be attracted to putting themselves to that sort of a challenge by nature is going to be a very positive person because those that are the reverse of that

will be very quick to point the finger at people and criticise them for what they're doing but there'll be very few that are going to step up to the starting line and put themselves through that sort of a physical and mental challenge, which is pretty enormous, really. It is, yeah.

So you're pretty much hooked now, I'm hearing. So you've done, how many have you done so far? I've only done two multi-stage ultras. So, yeah, the big red run in the Simpson Desert, the Grand to Grand Ultra, which is, yeah, between the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon in the United States. And I'm really looking forward to going to Tahoe.

I know it's going to fucking hurt. And, yeah, the one in New Zealand is good. There's a whole load of others that are on the bucket list that I'd really like to do with the Atacama Crossing in Chile. Wow. There's another one that looks fantastic, the Coastal Challenge in Costa Rica. Okay.

So is there a timeline on this, Stuart? Is this something you can keep doing for years and years to come? Yeah, I could go out in the deserts all year and just go running through them all in the Himalayas or whatever. I suppose, yeah, the other thing about, I much prefer physical stress than mental stress. Sounds like a woman, don't I? No, not at all.

They dealt with childbirth and stuff, and yeah, I can't stand, yeah, I've had anxiety and burnout and stuff, so I'll take all the strain of running an ultra over that any time, but in terms of, the other thing with ultras is it's, the long ultras, is it, it sounds odd to call it the ultimate holiday but then if you think about why do you go on a holiday um if if you're in a demanding um career or a demanding home situation where you've got a lot of kids you know yeah if if you have to um uh use your head a lot when you don't really want to be doing so yeah um for some reason it's it's total relaxation like if if you're doing a business plan for a year yeah the first thing you should do is book plan out when you're going to have that

holiday and where you're going to go and it's um a big trouble i have with a business or being a veterinarian so being a clinician and a business owner is all day you have to make decisions um yeah that might be how i treat a patient it might be how i deal with one of my suppliers how i manage my staff how i um talk to clients about so all day you're doing it doing it doing it and you get decision fatigue um almost you know you get home at night and you can get yeah and you could be asked to make another decision over something pathetically trivial like you know what should we watch on television or what should we have for dinner tonight and you just think oh can you make a decision for me i don't yeah yeah yeah and and it builds up and builds up and you

really need to it's like your head needs to be emptied um so no better way to do it than yeah you get out there on an ultra marathon it is total sheer mental bliss it's kind of chasing a high and yeah i've seen discussions where makes sense i've been in discussions yeah where some people have come back and they've had withdrawal symptoms when they're back to the daily grind of life again you know you're suffering quite badly for it well imagine because you're back into the same old same old it's like oh just take me back there it's uh because there is it'd be so all consuming the ultra marathon that there would be no room for anything else which in its own sense is a very cleansing and relaxing way to restore and re-energise.

You strip away all of life's, well, some of the luxuries or what we take for granted, whether it's a solid roof over your head and not a tent and just the whole idea of putting make-up on and the drive that people have to do. All day people are focusing normally at home of what sort of car they're going to drive and shop for this, shop for that. And if you strip everything away, you're totally digitally detoxed.

You're not even putting deodorant on. No one really cares. It doesn't matter, does it? You've just got each other's company. Brilliant. And you see everyone's character, not their personality. Yes, as they are, not as they try and portray it. Yeah, that's a good call.

There's so many rewards from it. It's a very easy thing to invest your time. Oh, word. Your physical effort. I can see it. I can see it. It's always intrigued me. I, by nature, am very competitive.

And I've never really looked at the ultramarathon exercise as something that would interest me. But listening to you now, it's like, well, yeah, I actually sort of get this. Oh, yeah. The first time I was sort of, shall I, shan't I, now I can be on the computer and you see your friends on Facebook in various parts of the world doing them and you're like a little kid looking at a water slide, oh, I want to go on that.

Awesome. Fantastic, mate. Well, moving forward then, so would you say you're pretty much living your ideal lifestyle now if you look at yourself and Phillip and the kids? Oh, heavens no. No? What's the difference between how you're living it and how you'd ideally like to?

I'd like the business that I run to be, I guess, I'll be honest, it needs to make more profit than it's making. Yep. Go that cycle of you do this and the accountant makes your figures look good and then you have all this tax to pay on this profit you didn't say it I'd know about it if it was down the couch

so and yeah also I want to leverage myself out of the daily grind like I said before it's you become what you focus

so you think ahead and I'll think about myself getting around that ultramarathon and getting high up in the placings and across the finish line. I worked on becoming a really good surgeon and I got proficient at it and that's okay, but then you work on being that great vet that all the clients want to see, Dr. Popular, Dr. Rockstar or whatever and then I've realized I don't want that at all.

I want to really leverage my time out of it. It's a very, very stressful profession and I've made all the same mistakes that almost I think the vast majority of my peers have made trying to sort of go, you know, I think they can run a business because they can, you know, be a doctor. So they've got to have the brain to run a business, but it doesn't work like that. yeah um yep so you see yourself it's like time is the is probably the thing yeah time and back yeah i just don't it's not it's not giving um yeah the time and and i wouldn't say it's giving the financial rewards as well you know i've been there before sleeping having trouble the sleeping

How am I going to pay the baths next month? Yep. And, you know, you've got to, well, I'm saying to myself, no, I've worked hard and I'm better than this and I shouldn't have to be stressing over this. Not that life should be without toil and stress. Of course. So what are you going to invest in differently

to what you've done to date to allow you to get that time and freedom back, do you think? I think like we were discussing before, I need to work on myself first of having very clear objectives and work with my wife as a team because she's very much into horses, which is a very, very different path. so yeah yeah um say to move into a larger property where she can keep horses that's that's fine that's something we'll have to work towards um yeah because you know i don't mind whether we're on a large property or not from a purely personal point of view but because yes because that's important to her yeah yeah i i understand how important you know running out there and stuff is it is to me and yeah when you're in a marriage and when you love you've

got to make what's important to them as important yeah totally important to yourself totally yeah so it's yeah putting heads together um yeah investing in people in the so it means replacing yourself in the business to some degree so that yeah it's not so reliant on you is that part of it i think yeah to leverage myself or what i do onto as many other people that can probably do it a whole lot better than me anyway is um yeah a big a big part of that not many professionals are able to make that leap because we've invested so much energy in becoming good at what we do that we find it hard to let go and and often think well that person's not going to be as good as me yeah is that something that uh you think you'll be able to overcome when you introduce

other people into the business to start um yeah i need to have a good look into myself and yeah i think reflect again i've done it before but it's probably time for another review um if there's two things that stop you progressing when you want it one one is like we're talking before lack of failing to implement like you go and get these ideas and you you know you from from some course whatever and then you fail to implement them afterwards yeah and then the other thing is yeah a fear um because i mean is it a trust issue as well is it because i find and i've suffered from this myself that uh i don't trust anyone enough to do things in anything as well well as i can so i try to do everything myself um i think i think that holds a lot of people back

because I think what you're looking at there perhaps is a fear of a loss of control. Yep. And many people have that. I don't think that's a personal fear for me as much. Yeah, that's good. I have others. Sometimes if it's taking on more help when you need it,

it's that fear of scarcity, and fear of scarcity is probably a big one for me. because there's different fear i think 10 that i was i learned on a course that might hold you back in life so you might have a fear of failure yeah um which is a bit stupid because there's no such thing as failure it's just a form of feedback but yeah people fear success um they you can have a fear of rejection you can have a fear of not being clever enough or not good enough to do something yep um you can have a fear of scarcity you can have a fear of a loss of control um you can have a fear of doing things differently a fear of change um you have a fear of just being

seen to be different by everyone like you're off your rocker and you're embarrassed um yeah a fear of illness or ill health um is another one you can hold people back and then and a fear of leading and ordinary unproductive life so sort of 10 fears i was told um you know that can hold you back um yeah in in business or in many life's ventures yeah and everyone everyone everyone has some of those fears to some extent anyone who says they don't is lying or a total robot yeah um yeah but you know the difference between i guess or one of the differences between the real people who have achieved more the successful ones and those who don't ever that they've embraced that fear um yep and yeah it's got to be that thing of looking at fear does

it serve you or not it might it might be it might do but usually it's not and it's understandable well, why the amygdala is such a powerful part of the brain, why fear is so powerful, because for millions and millions and millions and millions of years of evolution, animals need to be afraid of being eaten or being left out in the cold or not passing their genes on or whatever. But most of the time in what we're doing day to day, those fears are not serving us, they're holding us back.

So it pays to sort of stop thinking, is it serving me? a little bit like you know yeah if you are training for that ultra marathon or you know if you're just trying to get fit and you're in that gym you know you you might be you've not had much sleep the night before it's cold outside you're in a nice warm bed yeah and you feel the discomfort of getting out once you've done that work but once you're in the workout it's not so bad and And no one ever, after they've done a workout, regrets it. Everyone's glad that you've done it. And you have to look, well, one way to confront the fear

is to look at that and say, yeah, it was worth it. This is why I need to do it again. Yeah, just feel the fear and do it anyway, top routine. You can't look at an ultra-marathoner or any fitness freak or someone who's successful in business or whatever and say, oh, they must just not have a sense of fear. They don't get uncomfortable. They do.

They feel exactly the same discomfort that you do for many issues. But they've found some way of dealing with it and pushing through it. And it's easier said than done. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it all the time. Yeah, I agree with you. Going to the gym for me, mentally I go right I have three meals a day and I go to the I do something physical every day that's just so it's it's not negotiable yeah it's it's I don't care whether it's rain hail

wind or something unless I'm sick or unhealthy I just do it yeah and because I know that if I keep doing it and I keep doing it and it becomes a daily discipline then the benefits in all sorts the way you've very well elaborated from mental to physical to your confidence, everything flows from it just by physically breaking through the comfort layer and going, well, I'm just going to do it. Yeah. So, you know, that's awesome, mate.

Yeah. You've touched on this a couple of times during the chat around legacy. And I just want to turn to that a little bit in the context of have you thought about what legacy you want to leave for your journey on this planet and what are you going to invest in,

what have you invested in, what will you invest in that's going to help you to leave that legacy? Oh gosh, now you've really put me on the spot. I suppose I know it's an important thing to address, I'll give you that And I suppose when it comes to leaving a legacy, in terms of what it means to me,

I've found having an ego is one of the worst things you can have. So it's not so much what are people going to think of me when I'm dead or when I'm gone. Having said that, I think, like it's pointed out in that Stephen Covey book, that when he talks about the second habit of beginning with the end in mind, a good way of doing it is to picture your own funeral and what people will say about you.

And I think that's good. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. I suppose a lot of what I'm leaving behind is something I need to think of further down the track once i've got my business um and stuff where i want that to be um yeah once i'm giving myself the lifestyle i want uh or i'm closer to that then yeah yeah you always need to think ahead like if i'm if i've entered a race i've already i've already long been now i've been thinking of the race after it or the one after that yeah yeah so it's um yeah something that will be on my mind

I mean, the main thing is leaving something for my kids. Yeah. So to leave them as much as possible. What are the things that you'd like to leave them with? What is it that qualities or you name it that you think are important for them to take from your contribution? so I think I'd like the main thing I suppose for my children I want to make sure that

there's some safety blanket they can always fall back if they start out and times are hard then yeah there's something I can I can help them out with help them find the career path that suits them yeah another thing with my children though i um it's it's really to leave them with um the mindset uh for like we're talking about the sort of approaching a vuca world yes you know it's um you're not always taught about it we um we've gone through a generation that hasn't had any hard times or adversity real yeah and so being able to impart vuka is that how you pronounce it yeah uh as a as a way to look at life would be like gold yeah i so i think um yeah i'd get them to read learn the

principles of books like the seven habits or i think i think what else do you think what other books have uh really uh had an impact on your thinking um i think the seven habits of highly effective people was a good one. If you were to looking back on the journey so far, if you were to give some

advice to your kids or to other people on their journey what would you suggest they invest their time, their money and their energy into enjoy life to the full? i think really that whole thing like i said with like with ultra runners is

you start acceptance um yeah embrace that vulnerability in life and learn to do that remember always have it in the back of your mind that you know you're not perfect your children will not be perfect and to really um you know when you face life's challenges you you can't bullshit your way out of them so you can't make the uncertain certain like we said you know um uncertainty is part of vuka and yeah you know you'll see it with religious fanatics they want to be certain that there's a god you're not no one is just accept that yeah um yeah uh or if um you know if you're reading i suppose part of part of um trying to be a better runner and stuff i and an amazing thing

i got from the my first one also was i modified my diet okay i learned about healthy eating yep and again getting back to that you know you'll you'll see how people want to be certain that this food is is good for you and because it's what they want they want to enjoy their steak or that you know that the cheese is harmless to go having a great so it comes with self-justification yeah you know yeah the truth yeah respect science i suppose is nothing i'd say is um yeah and when i say respect science is you know respect the truth if some if there is clear evidence for something to be true yeah it's true whether you like it or not um so yeah yeah learn learn to accept the world as it is and um be i don't like the phrase comfortable with the uncomfortable

I mean you're uncomfortable except except that you know you're um that you know you're going to be unhappy with this or with that and um but most of the time it's just thoughts in your head and there's ways around that so I think um one thing I want to impart on my children you know be to um accept that it is really not um an ideal world and you are gonna face shit and be uncomfortable with just to learn you know in the best way you can to accept it and by all means try and find ways of educating it's not easy otherwise that we'd all be doing it yeah um i think and the other The thing is, yeah, getting into that sense of giving. Yes.

Because when you try and help other people out, the law of reciprocity will pay you back so much more. Totally agree. And in ways that will blow your mind, in ways you don't expect. And probably I think, yeah, Covey hinted on that in his book that a small gesture on your part can mean so much to someone else and you didn't even realize it.

Exactly. I got a good taste of that on Ground to Ground. I don't want to brag. No, I love to brag. No, in the awards ceremony afterwards, I got given this award I totally did not deserve

but it was the director's choice for the biggest contribution by a competitor I didn't do anything I didn't really deserve the award you probably didn't think you did because you're pretty humble

all I was really doing was after the race and finishing ahead of most of the pack I'd stand there, congratulate everyone as they finished each stage, pat them on the back, shake their hand, hug them, whatever. And in some cases where some of them were struggling, especially at the end of the long stage, I would carry their backpacks to their tents for them.

Wow. And, yeah, a lot of people were coming up and saying how much they really appreciated, you know, I guess just another runner that's maybe not to brag, but a faster runner saying, you know, well done, good effort. Well, at that stage where they're physically and mentally out on their feet, it might seem like a very small thing to you. It did. But to them, it's like, oh, my God, someone cares

and there's someone else that empathises with where I'm at. So I don't want to take pride in the award, but I do keep the trophy in my house as a reminder for that. What is a small gesture to yourself? Yeah. what you might think of as trivial and you almost forgot about it, didn't care about it, it means a lot to someone else. A smile.

I often say that the… Oh, yeah. A smile to a stranger when you're walking down the street costs you nothing. It's an attitude. It's a choice. Yeah. But the impact it can have, you suddenly see people smiling back at you.

It's like, well… Absolutely, yeah. And it has an impact. makes their day better yeah mate that has been awesome some really good

stuff there I actually learned a lot about I'm going to talk to you more about Vika later I'll try and

dig up the notes that was sensational really appreciate you I know how busy you are mate so to come up and spend a bit of time sharing that

with us has been awesome it's been fun I know people get a lot from my mate so any way I can

help would be great it's brilliant thanks Stuart appreciate it 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 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. Thank you.