The Resilience Expert: £200m Business To High Security Prison - Lessons Learnt Inside - Riordan Maynard

48:18And you go and have your breakfast. I want to have breakfast, and then I go and do another work, a proper workout. So what sort of breakfast would they have?

48:30uh nothing very good like gruel what's gruel like porridge oh fucking hell yeah some days you would get this sort of powdered eggs um but the food is not good in prisons which again you'd expect wouldn't you you wouldn't expect you to have great food yeah yeah amazing yeah i always laughed when people complained like the the other prisoners they always complain i mean you know like humans love to complain yeah they're always complaining about something or other and i'm always thinking mate it's prison we are in prison designed to punish you know that's crazy so yes you have a breakfast what sort of workout are you doing uh strength training running i would do because i would work out in the morning and the evening i still do now i still go in the morning and the evening i'm like that's one of my good prison habits that i've kept so what sort of I do in the morning resistance.

49:23Yeah. Calisthenics. Or if they had weights, I would do weights. Yeah. And then in the evening, I would do cardio. But then you, so you do your exercise. Then you get back to your bunk for count. They're always counting you. And what time is this bunk thing? Half 10? In the morning. Yeah. Half 10. And count is when they make you. They count you. You have to stand by your bed. and they count everyone in the prison is counted about six times a day to prove, you know, to check that you haven't done a runner.

50:03And then you're hanging around. There's a lot of hanging around in prison. Yeah, I bet. A lot. Then you're hanging around. You must love cues now. You must be so adapted to cues. Do you know, there's two things that I, well, no, they're sort of the same thing that I'm a bit upset I haven't learned. patience i'm still not patient yeah you would think i'd be really i am so impatient and tolerance i still have zero tolerance that's wild yeah yeah yeah but you're right you do you learn that you're like lines lining up for food lining up for fucking everything yeah um and then and then you go for lunch and then i would go out in the afternoon there's different um it's different to when we had COVID because in COVID we were locked down.

50:49We weren't allowed out. So we were in there 24-7 in the cells unless you were having a shower. That was unbelievably difficult from a mental perspective because you literally are in… It's not solitary confinement. It's basically solitary confinement, but you're with the people that you're with. But you're locked in. and that was for a long time i mean that was i think that was two years how long did covid go on for about two years yeah so so mate that's yeah that was beastly yeah i bet you know because i want to get into all this mindset stuff that you've developed with mindful that's yeah that's when i said well i'd already started working on it but that really got me through yeah that time so so i said so then yeah so you have your lunch and then you basically go back to you how many hours of the day are you in the bunk bed or in the cell versus out?

51:43How often are you allowed outside into like the... In a normal, if there's no COVID. Yeah. It's pretty good, to be fair. You're allowed out. Basically, you're allowed to move every hour. There's 10 minutes in every hour that you can move. Move as in like... Anywhere. You can go outside or you can go and read something or you can... Go wherever you want to go. Go to the chapel. And then you're fixed for the rest of the hour. And then you can move again. Everyone moves at the same time. Right. And you're going around with your gang at this point. No, not necessarily. Yeah. You know, I mean, I sort of did my own thing.

52:25But, you know, they stick together. I mean, relationships form, don't they, in the gangs.

52:37But you say you can move every hour. And sometimes you're stuck in the cell between sort of 11 and lunch. And then four. At four, they count you. And you're stuck until about six when you eat dinner. And then you're all called in about seven or eight.

53:02So you can go out. It's quite, you can go out quite a lot. and I but you do spend a lot of time on your bunk it's incredibly unhealthy prison yeah I bet unless you make the reason I did all the exercises because if I hadn't done it I would I would have come out like crippled because you're basically just lying you don't get a pillow they don't let you have a pillow fucking up yeah so you're sort of lying like it's just so uncomfortable that's crazy yeah what would you ever get like any like so with the 200 quid Did you ever buy like a Kit Kat or like? Oh, yeah. You can buy stuff in the commissary.

53:41What was the best thing you would buy that would like you give you a little smidge of happiness? Milky Ways. Oh, great. Yeah. The American chocolate's fucking shit. Yeah, awful. It's fucking awful. Yeah, it was. Like the Cadbury's dairy milk is just rancid. It's so sweet. Really bad. It's got palm oil in it. Yeah, it's rancid. It tastes like oil. It's awful. I think Hershey's now, they're not allowed to call it chocolate. Hershey's is rancid. It's called chocolate flavoured candy. It's rancid. Yeah, that says a lot. Yeah. So what, you'd go into your little tuck shop, what other shit could you buy?

54:09Once a week, you can go to commissary and you buy, you know, they have crisps and they have what you'd expect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can stock up on that. And then you buy all your toiletries. Yeah. Yeah, that's not bad, actually. I mean, that's a pretty good bit of prison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not healthy. Yeah. It's not a healthy environment. I'm only saying that because some people just chomp, just sit around all day, do nothing. What sort of stuff are you having for lunch and tea or dinner? Well, in the private prisons, they basically feed you beans, rice, and this inedible turkey, which we went on hunger strike twice in one of the prisons because one of the kitchen workers found the labeling for the turkey and it said not for human consumption.

55:12Fucking hell. Basically, like dog food. It was stunk. It was sober. I didn't eat that. I spent nearly a year. How long were you on hunger strike for? Hunger strike. A few days. And what do they do? They do react when you do that because the privates, the federal prisons don't react. They don't care. but the privates care because they might lose their contracts if someone dies or but um i went nearly a year and a half i couldn't eat that i ate packets of fish and peanuts packets of fish yeah because in the commissary packet of fish yeah you can buy these packets of mackerel really in in the commissary you must have been in good nick then we are in good nick now well yeah yeah i'd lost a lot of weight yeah yeah yeah because i couldn't eat the food so i ate these i was eating like eight to ten packets of fish a day i was buying up the fish in the prison and they use mac the mac they call them max macros they use them as currency they use mackerel as currency packets of mackerel yeah so if you have a haircut you give them two max you know or yeah yeah so what's the weirdest shit you could sell Max for anything really oh yeah I mean you can get anything in prison you can get drugs you can get you can get anything you want really yeah so how do they get the drugs in the guards bring it in really yeah for sure oh it's mad yeah yeah it's just totally corrupted is it so what are the what's some of the craziest shit you saw in there well most of the I tried to stay away from anything contentious because i i just didn't want any trouble and i didn't really get any trouble i had a few run-ins with people but um you see i mean people are high all the time we're completely out of their minds on k2 is it k2 k ketamine no i don't know they used to call it k2 i don't i'm not really up with the old drug vernacular but there was all sorts of stuff I'm sure you'd fit in at Boomtown Festival I don't even know what that is It's full of like cranks basically Yeah no they're sort of totally out of it They make alcohol in there How many people did you see get murdered?

57:38Oh only that one guy was beaten And what happened? How does that change you as a person? I don't know I mean I think I must have some sort of

57:53detachment is it detachment yeah where you we don't or disassociation or something would you become sort of a sterilized sterilized yeah sterilized almost like you weren't there yeah there must be a there must be a um it must be a coping mechanism yeah but this person was

58:15And he was basically beaten up in front of my bed by a guy with a lock in a sock.

58:26And amazing because the guy who was beaten up was a massive guy. And the guy with a lock in a sock was a little guy. But he was, it transpires, a Sicario for the Mexican drug cartels, which is a hitman. so is that what Sicario means yeah he was a pro have you seen the film Sicario yeah yeah outstanding film yeah a really good film yeah so he was just a fucking lunatic he was a full on yeah he's a small little fucker yeah when he just battered him with a thing yeah and it was over a sexual dispute what do you mean a sexual they were like lovers or something are they allowed to bring are they allowed to bring their like wives in no not in federal in state they are so their wife's allowed to come in for in state prison yeah They have like conjugal visits.

59:14But it is pretty prevalent. And then do you think that, so these like traditionally straight men. There's a lot of that. Yeah. Gay for the stay, they call it. Gay for the stay. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of that. And then just because they're just horny motherfuckers and then they fall like. I guess so. Yeah. I mean, I never got the urge. Yeah. Just have a wank instead sort of thing. Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just mad. I definitely never got the urge to, no. There's a lot of opportunity. Really? Yes. And it just, because didn't you go into the music room? Which is not, yeah, I mean, that's the boom boom room.

59:51Boom boom boom. Yeah, that was how I could. You got a little bit lost because you've got a piano behind you there. You know, I do play the piano. Tell that story, it's fucking hilarious. Well, that was just like heaven. I'd been in this shithole for like a week or so, and I'm wandering around, I find this little door, and I walk in, it's like fucking paradise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. drums piano guitars on the wall you know soundproof yeah yeah yeah and i i sort of start playing the piano a bit then i leave it go back to my cell i say um why didn't you tell me there's a fucking music room they looked at me uh don't go in that room it's the boom boom room really yeah basically where people go to shag well and so they're just shagging all day basically yeah I mean, I didn't see any in there.

1:00:37Otherwise, of course, I wouldn't have stayed. I'd have been out. No, no, but as in like, as in it's in jail, they're just, what, they shagging in the showers or they just, where do they shag? Yeah, I mean, in the showers primarily. That's crazy. What's a gay for the stay? That's so interesting. Yeah, it is. But when you think about it, there is some logic to it. What's the logic? Well, that you're, if, let's imagine you're in there for 20 years and you're a red-blooded male. Yeah. And you, you know, you have urges. Yeah. I mean, I didn't get it at all myself. Is that because you knew you were in there for maybe six years?

1:01:11I don't know, really. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. It just wasn't on the, I mean. It wasn't on the cards. Well, it was offered continually. You're a good-looking man, mate. Thanks very much. Especially, you're a British gen. I mean, you're probably getting offered up. You're putting up the Hugh Grant of the prison. No. If Hugh Grant was in a prison break. No, they call me James Bond. Really? Yeah, 007. 007. The, they call me James B. Hey, James B. Really? That's hilarious. Yeah. Which I really liked, of course. What English man would not like to be called James Bond? Yeah, amazing. What would you, so would you just say, I'm all right, thanks, mate?

1:01:52Yeah. And they'd leave you alone? Yeah, yeah, I didn't get any. So there's none of that? No, Like what you see in the films? No, no, that does happen. What, where it's getting proper? Right stuff, yeah, but not, certainly not for me. And how, but like, How did you back them away then? As in, did you have, because you were the negotiator in the group, did you have status? No, but you're in a group. You wouldn't be messed with. Really? Yeah. Mad. Let's talk about Mindfort. Well, not Mindfort, the thing that you're now building Mindfort, which people listening to this will love it. But essentially you were in there.

1:02:25You went in with maybe a bit of ego, hubris. I think we've all got that. I've got that. I think you have to just get something going. you can't sit if everyone's a fucking buddhist yeah right nothing would get built yeah so that's why i'm a bit you know suspect about like all this like namaste bro like yeah well if everyone sat around meditating nothing gets built yeah that's true like so so i think you need some of that but obviously too much um so you've gone in and you've said quite a few times reading about this it was brutal it was a beast like you're facing this motherfucking beast of a situation like i think let's start with what was in your mindset then at that period and then what were you read 450 books like we can maybe get into some of those books and then and then into mindful which is like the you know the the system you're now building to help people be fucking resilient great um so yeah mindset first yeah i was i sort of suffered a full mental collapse within the first six weeks of being being in prison and that that was a consequence of the environment of course which is totally disorientating being away from my family which was really of all of the challenges that was the most brutal was separation of family um and i'm not quite sure kids yeah i've got five kids yeah five children yeah and um could you speak to them on the can you speak to your family on the phone yeah you can speak to them on the phone but of course that in some ways that makes it worse in the early days because it really accentuates everything and you yes you sort of you can't escape what you've done you know you know because yeah i can imagine it makes it way worse so hard but of course you you also want it so it's really difficult it's difficult but the so your your environment is very challenging you're split up from your family and also you've lost so much you know in my case i'd had all the failure of the business uh the failure um which you know which you feel is a consequence of being arrested i mean that's like shockingly um humiliating yeah awful you've lost all your status yeah and money and so you've basically lost everything take me into the apex of the mental collapse well you basically become completely hopeless depressed yeah Yeah, I use the term hopeless because a lack of hope really crushes the spirit.

1:05:15It crushes the human spirit. And I think that's what a lot of people experience outside of prison, is a loss of hope. because you know if you don't have any compelling or exciting view of your future you lose hope and you become hopeless and that feeling leads to you know suicidal thoughts and just a complete uh shutdown physically of your body you know your muscles ache you you feel um you can't get up you can't get out of bed you've got no no energy and all of those things are totally alien to me i mean i'm a guy who works 20 hours a day i'm incredibly positive and optimistic and always had a really really clear vision of where i was and what I was going to achieve and how I was going to do it.

1:06:23And of course, not everything went to plan. But just having that meant that I could get up at four in the morning and make calls all day and do meetings all day and go to bed at 11 at night or whatever, whatever my schedule was, and fly around the world and keep doing it and be happy and deal with catastrophic business events and all that, all because I had this incredibly burning vision of my future, which stimulated me, excited me, and all that was gone. And so I'm like sort of crumpled up mess, really.

1:07:05And that's in the environment, in prison environment, that's catastrophic because you can't really have any weakness in prison and no one's interested in it. quite right too they've got their own problems um and so that was sort of within the first six weeks and i um and how long did that period last for well it was at the six to eight week point that i decided that i've got to get my shit together otherwise this is only how long did the collapse period last like the that hopeless oh um probably a few weeks yeah and what's the thoughts as soon as you wake up as soon as your eyes open oh you just doom you're doom looping doom looping yeah I mean catastrophic everything's catastrophic um you don't want to get out of bed you don't want to eat anything you'd rather be dead yeah it's not good sounds fun it's really bad that sounds no it's really bad yeah and and i'm afraid to say that's not exclusive to prison i mean lots of people suffer from that and it's a horrible it's a very difficult loop to get out of because you're i don't know what it is about the mind but the mind loves to beat itself up it loves the negative i'm that biggest customer yeah honestly i'm so i've got better at it but like it just loves it horrendously it's like mendacious kind of an inner critic yeah do you know what i mean yeah and it's you start yeah if you start it rolling it just it can't stop um and it becomes more and more if someone's going through that now whether it's catastrophe in business or life what are some of the lessons you learned from prison reading books to like stop that doom loop and begin to turn hopelessness to hopefulness it's all about the questions you ask yourself when you're in that state because if you if your your brain basically responds to questions and so if you ask yourself the right questions you can snap yourself out of out of it and but i don't want to minimize any of this and i also want to say i'm not an expert I only know through your experience from me so what questions are good to ask the one I always ask and I do it now which is brilliant is what do I control in this situation what do I have control of and that simple question if you're if you answer it honestly will help you uh stop the process stop the this is this well yeah yeah because most of what you worry about and the reason you worry about it is stuff you don't control so you're worrying about outcomes that you have no control over that's what creates anxiety that's what we create worry um and And so that question is powerful because regardless of the situation you're in, or let me put it another way, the situation you are in will dictate the answer.

1:10:33Because, for instance, I'm in prison. I have very little control over anything. I mean, literally, I have no control over anything. and so if i answer that question honestly and i learn the next thing which i'll tell you then i can get myself out of that loop so the first thing is to ask the right question yeah so so so what's in your control what other questions are good i've got like i genuinely believe and this is true of business this i say this a lot on the podcast the smart answer hides in the dumb question yeah and like this is for life and for business but for business and And Rory's Sutherland's got a thing, he goes, which I love, which is in school, you can't rewrite the question, but in business you can.

1:11:19And I really like that because it means, you know, like one of the questions I always ask myself in business, because I overcompetate things a lot, is I go, what would this look like? And I write on a piece of paper if it were easy. Yeah. And suddenly it means all the bullshit waffle, like the stuff that doesn't actually move the needle, kind of just dissipates. And you can see really clear. So I love questions. that's probably the reason I've got a podcast yeah that's very good and so I was like if you had the 80-20 rule if you had the Pareto principle oh yeah that's remarkable it's true of everything it's true of everything what 20 % of my time drives 80 % of the value I noticed this the other day I've got loads of clothes I was like I need to wear these four shirts well I didn't actually have them I was on a normal t-shirt but I was like I need to get rid of all this 80 % of this gumph yeah but like it's true of everything happiness 20 of your mates will drive 80 of your happiness so yeah so so so that's the business but then in so if you're trying to get out your nuts all over the shop so you can say what's in your control what other yeah what's in my control what action can i take now what can i do about it now those are the two most important questions and if you answer them honestly it'll interrupt the pattern in your head the the real challenge which mustn't be underestimated is that even if you know that you don't control it you've then got to develop the ability to let it go that is bloody difficult how do you do that just practice and you have to develop a faith in the outcome.

1:13:04So like, so let me, so like, you know, so for example, I'm not asked this selfishly. Sometimes I shit myself that this business is going to go to shit. I actually have that a lot in my head. Like I think something's going to go wrong. We're going to lose a big sponsor. We're not going to land a big sponsor. And like, it's kind of exhilarating, but it's kind of like I'm operating from a place of I'm shitting myself versus a place of like actually maybe maybe like i i'm i'm at the minute having i always have like maybe the last six seven months like existential fear that something's going to go wrong like in the business like catastrophizing a lot my mom has a lot of anxiety so does my brother like i think we've been sort of inherited that yeah like in our system like my brother almost drowned when we were younger and like i remember that vividly as like just panic um i've just seen panic a lot in my life yeah and so like and so i'll overthink stuff i'll just think something's gonna go wrong and it's like how how can i like get and i like in some fucked up way i kind of like it because it's a great force but i don't know if it's the best place to operate from do you know what i mean yeah i mean it's not it's not um unusual to feel when you're when you're building a company but i mean that's if you have recurring if you have recurring things which cause you anxiety then you have to deal with it it's a similar you deal with it in a similar way but you've got to get ahead of it so that you get ahead of it well you've got to you've got to work out what it is that's causing you that because it's just basically internal messages that you're telling yourself and then you've got to reframe whatever it is that you're catastrophizing about and you've got to develop um certainty in an uncertain situation so if you're um if i use myself as an example my current situation is not is is amazing but it's not as it was before i went to prison you know i was in a pretty good spot uh not not just before i went to prison but when when you have an in and out burger when things are going well that last milkshake things are good you know and i and now it's not as you know life's if you look on paper at my situation it's quite uncertain you know because i'm starting again i'm really starting from scratch and i'm 50 what am i now 57 or something um so and i've got five children i've got a wife and it's complex because they're in america and i'm here and so there's a lot of uncertainty in my how come they're not over here well because they have a life and they come over they've been over yeah but they and you're not allowed in america no okay yeah yeah but um the reason i mention it is because there's a lot of uncertainty in my life and if i allowed that to if i allowed it myself to feel uncertain then i would have a lot of anxiety and you know and quite justifiably yeah so i i do a lot of work to create certainty uh around the future so what is that just my confidence that firstly that i can deal with anything i have absolute confidence that whatever you throw at me i can handle it and that's based on my life experience to date and also training of my mind to to to develop that confidence yeah yeah that's what that's what how do you train say someone's feeling say like me like it's i'm sort of certain that where this podcast is going i'm very confident in that vision but day to day it's quite uncertain it's like it is as people say it's a roller coaster having your own business life's of you know running yeah whatever's a roller coaster yeah Yeah.

1:17:07Like how can you train your mind to develop certainty in uncertain situations? Is it journaling? Is it? Well, it's a whole range of mental exercises. Yeah. That's part of what this MindFought program is. Yeah. Talk me through them. Yeah. Okay. So if I tell you what we do with MindFought, we're basically, we basically start off by helping people develop a compelling future for themselves. now you've got that you've already done that because you've defined the fact that you want you've got this business that you want to run you want to build you know what it looks like it excites you you might not have done the same for your relationships and well that's something one of my greatest fears and it is kind of hyper irrational is that i'm going to like not have a family that's yeah that's something that really scares me because a lot of my mates are now getting married having kids part of me like it's a lot of limiting beliefs like doubts that I won't achieve that.

1:18:06That's sort of the narrative in my head. Yeah, you need to change that. Yeah, so come on, bruv. Help me out, boy. All right. So you start off with the compelling future and that basically looks at all the pillars of life and says, you know, if I have a blank sheet of paper, what would that look like? What would it look like from a work perspective, a financial perspective, possessions, hobbies, family, relationships, home. And you let your mind go. You really sort of immerse yourself in the exercise and enjoy it. And you build out this exciting, compelling future. And the reason that you do it is to provide yourself with context.

1:18:55All of your activity needs context context for you to be able to do it well, to do it, to be motivated to do it, and to be able to get through the shit bits, of which there are many. And so that's the starting point. So you build this company. From that work. Do you do that on a piece of paper? Yeah. Yeah. You do it on a piece of paper. And what sort of questions, you know, questions are better than statements. Like what sort of questions are you saying? Like, where do you want to live? Yeah. How much money do you What sort of house do I want? Do I want to be married or not? Do I want children or not?

1:19:30Where do I want to, you know, what country do I want to live in? What do I want my life to be? Do I want to work a specific time? Do I want a sort of fully blended life where I work all the time and I play all the time? You know. That's my ticket. Yeah. Blended. Yeah, blended. I'm a fan of the blended. I love blended. Yeah, blended's good. Yeah, because I think you can like, so we're going to Ibiza. like it's pretty mad where this thing's going because like there's this DJ I've been I like going to Ibiza I love partying and there's this DJ called Nick Fanchuli he's like he's like best mates of Carl Cox like he's a big fucking DJ I've seen him play at festivals a lot he's like some if I want to run I need to like really crank it up I'll put his tunes on nice anyway this is mad so he's now launched this amazing brand called Sober Circus and kind of like like Jamie's stuff like a cpg like a consumer brand oh yeah yeah obviously we've got this podcast with all these perfect people on for like you know we've had the yeah yeah that's kind of where we started obviously we're now moving around slightly but you know he i didn't know i got a cold in the week i was like i'm a fucking blower to nick fanciulli that's what i've watched loads of times then he's like come to my beef but we can record in my villa and his pads ridiculous and then obviously like you basically i don't need to worry about guest lists ever again hello geese yeah yeah i've just landed like that stuff is so sick yeah like and like those i love i love the like the serendipity that comes out of manifestation yeah stuff like this conversation yeah it's mad how this if you told me like a year or two years ago i'll be having a conversation with you and this is just wildly i mean i was in prison two years ago yeah yeah you were eating mackerel i was writing my compelling future yeah so so write a compelling future yeah so with this yeah right so what i find you asked me about the questions i must remember no no no this is just a chat so it's really interesting so some people a lot of the americans uh like do you know the um american sales guy grant cardone no oh mate he's he's he's funny right so he's he's a bit like it's a bit like the modern day zigzag right oh yeah but so i was listening to a lot of his sales books when i was selling peanut butter and it was a bit like i sold peanut but walking around london and selling peanut butter.

1:21:46But he's so American. He goes, he goes, guys, he goes, guys, I just want you to start your day with one fucking question. And you want to, one of you to write it on a piece of paper and he goes, who's got my fucking money? Right. And so I was going to all these little iddy diddy, like, you know, bougie, you know, bougie, like fruit and veg stops in barns on like Wimbledon village. And I was walking in with, I've got this Texan guy going, who's got my fucking money? And I was like, you need to buy this peanut butter but um sorry like adhd is going overdrive now but the um yeah so you so you write down some questions no you basically look you basically ask yourself what's what does my ideal life look like yeah and the reason you do it oh sorry sorry i know i was gonna say oh yeah so some so that grant cardone guy says like his whole thing's 10x so 10x your ambition yeah oh i have heard that yeah yeah 10x like everything's fucking 10x yeah 10x the fuck out yeah yeah uh anyway so there's that and then a guy i interviewed last week which was really interesting and he's got a gorgeous sandwich shop up in um crouch end very happy guy and he goes and he goes his whole thing is setting actually achievable goals so like and he has this sandwich shop he's very happy he's got kids he has a couple of pubs in somerset and he goes i think he's the reason people are so unhappy is we have goals up here that are impossible to achieve when they're doing your exercise are you is it the 10x or is it achievable like where do you sit on that spectrum well there's different layers to the exercise right so i'll answer your question in a minute yeah but the the compelling future is very much about visioning your best scenario it's something that excites you so if you're and bear in mind it will change across your life because your circumstances change and your needs change but let's say your current um in your current thinking you would like that dj's house in ibiza yes if that was one if that's if that really really got you fucking excited when you which it does because i can see yeah yeah then that would be under your home you'd have that in ibiza i'll title it pad yeah yeah so that it is an aspirational when you're building your compelling future it's aspirational yeah you might never get there.

1:24:09It doesn't matter. It's aspirational. It's very long-term. It's something that you think, why am I fucking doing this? Ah, this is why. And it can relate to anything. It can relate to your health, your fitness, your home, your money, but it's got to excite you. And it can't be anyone else's version. It has to be yours. It can't be because your mom wants you to be a lawyer, or it has to be you. It can't be because your wife wants something, or your husband. It has to be you and you have to be true to yourself that's that's the thing it's your north star basically once you've done that you can start to do the other bits and those are to come up with your purpose in life which is a direct uh reflection of your vision you can then start to see what your purpose in life is and your purpose is fundamental because that tells you why you're here.

1:25:04It gives you your reason for being. And I'm not saying that your purpose needs to say you're going to be Mother Teresa and, you know, work with the poor and make, you know, make their lives good. It might be. Your purpose might be to have a sandwich. Yeah. Or it doesn't matter what it is, but you need a purpose in life. And so you can get that. Once you've got this compelling future, you can start to get to the purpose. Then you can build out your obsessions. and I love the word obsession because only truly amazing things happen if you're obsessed about it and people they think it's too strong a word it's an unhealthy word I love it because if you want to be a great father you've got to be obsessed with it if you want to be a great businessman you've got to be obsessed with it and so there's um there's this guy who I drink with in um in the local pub i go to and uh we he's an irish guy so he's a great storyteller he works for goldman sacks and he's his name's actually he's like half he's a bit egyptian so his name's aziz but he's got this irish accent like i can't really fucking do it later that's not bad yeah yeah yeah i'll need to practice it but and then so then so i was having lunch with him and he was saying that his whole thing he was like in life he goes intensity yeah you need to be intense and he goes people especially in the uk that are intense people are like oh he's quite intense or she's quite intense yeah but i think and he was basically saying to me like you need intensity and obsession and you know he he he basically does a quite a bit of running and he goes i was once laid for work and he goes and his boss goes where are you then he shows me his phone he'd run at three at three in the morning he'd run a half marathon sorry a marathon around richmond park goes that's the reason i'm late you're calling like that yeah he's a he's a proper intense but like but he has that obsession and that's like and i think you i think british society it's like don't be too obsessed don't be you know and i think you're right yeah really the problem is they when you say it people automatically think oh you're going to be obsessed with work i'm not saying that whatever it is you're trying to get to whatever it is your future the thing that excites you you have to develop an obsession around it and i think it's good to have five that's just me what are yours uh mine are uh be an amazing father be an amazing husband um help people with their mental development help businesses transform their performance and make fuck loads of money those are my make fuck loads of money lovely i'm obsessed with those five things and that correlates directly with my purpose in life, which correlates directly with the future that excites me.

1:27:47So what's the future you've written down now? It all revolves around those five things. And that really excites me. I can see in every area, I really can get excited about it. So I've got clarity is what that gives you for my actions. And I can also make really good decisions on prioritizing my time around those obsessions, which is also another real challenge in life because we have so many distractions. So once you've got your compelling future vision, you can come up with your purpose, your obsessions, and then you can get into the really hairy world of values and beliefs. this is the most important thing to the way that you feel and the way that you manage yourself in given situations and the way that you think all of that is driven by your values and beliefs why is values beliefs so hairy then because you have to sort of confront your mind in order to identify what they are today.

1:29:05And you have to work out what they need to be in order to achieve this vision that you've created. And it's quite an uncomfortable process. What was the hardest things you had to confront? Well, when I went through the process, I developed, and you talked about limiting beliefs. I had developed the most awful beliefs about myself. which were you know about myself as a father and a husband and a son as a businessman as a human being you know I felt that I was scum um you know because I'd I'd let people down and and in the trial they they really vilify you so you you come away believing that you are a terrible person so I developed all these beliefs about myself which which categorically would prevent me from moving towards my future, my compelling future.

1:30:04And also they served no purpose. A negative belief serves no purpose. And so I had to work out what, which is part of what we do with Mindful, is what should my values and beliefs be to support this future that I want to get to and to support my purpose and my obsessions. And once you've defined that, you've obviously got to change your belief and that takes some work which comes later but and what's how did you change your beliefs in prison i'll talk i can talk about that in a minute about how you sort of execute but the first in my i'm just going through the mind for program but this was all built out of you you had this mental collapse as you said yeah you read 450 books yeah i love books we'll talk about yeah but like then and you built this own sort of program.

1:30:54Yeah, for myself. For yourself. Yeah. And also I had this wonderful luxury of time. Yeah. So I had lots of trial and error because there's a lot of stuff out there and nothing that I've got in mind for is new. Nothing. It's just a pulling together of the stuff that really worked for me. I've kept it as simple as possible. Yeah. So it's not too onerous. Super simple, yeah. And so, yeah, so values and beliefs. Yeah, so you get your values and beliefs. Once you've done that, That's sort of the first bit nailed. So you've got your compelling future. You've got your purpose, your obsessions, your values and beliefs.

1:31:28Then you set to work on your plan. And the plan basically says, okay, this is where I'm going. This is my vision of the future. This is where I am. So I need to take stock of my current situation. And my current situation is things that I love doing. So obviously you're going to do more of them. things that i hate doing or i hate you're going to get rid of them and then the hardest one which is things that you hate but you need to learn to love when we had our coffee that bit really was like yeah so interesting that last one pull on that thread a bit more yeah so in my example is an easy one which is that i i had this wonderful vision for myself which encompassed being an amazing father, husband, you know, all the stuff I've talked about.

1:32:18And I say, great, I know where I want to be. And then I say, where am I? Fuck me, I'm in prison. Eating mackerel. Yeah, I'm eating mackerel. I can't do it. What can I do in here? I can't even make a sort of phone call. You can't even make a sandwich. Yeah, I mean, if they catch me trying to do any business, I get an extra for 100 years. So that would classify as something that I hate, that I've got to learn to love. And so what I could then do is start working out in the context of my vision, what could I do in prison which would move me towards it? And that was stuff like reading. That was stuff like exercise, writing to my children once or twice a week, calling them as much as I could within the limitations that they put on you um is this written down on like a board like you have this written down yeah I've got it all written down I've got and you have it on a board yeah yeah interesting I'm just trying to think if someone's trying to action this oh you can do it however you like yeah people are different I like writing yeah um but yeah so so then um I've I so you basically you come up with your plan and the The plan is structured around having your priorities, which come from your obsessions, your mission, which is basically, you know, in the context of this really long-term thing, what are you focused on now?

1:33:49What is the mission at hand? So your mission at hand is to build this podcast. Your long-term vision, I'm talking business, your long-term vision might be to have a multimedia your broadcasting empire which spans the world and makes a trillion dollars a year i sit there in ibiza dressed as fucking what's the guy out of scarface tony montana yeah sorry the guy out of scarface yeah i thought you meant hugh hefner yeah that would be pretty sick to be fair so um so this brings it back a bit a bit more sort of focused and um once you've got your mission you You can come up with your objectives, which are even more focused.

1:34:31And then I'm answering your question about having realistic goals. And then you come to your goals. And your goals should be, as that chap said, very realistic, very achievable, measurable, and time-driven. So they've got to be in a reasonable amount of time. You've got to be able to hit them. And then the last piece of the planned puzzle is tasks. tasks so under the goals you work out your tasks and what you end up with is a pyramid of um

1:35:06stuff at the at the top it's pretty high level that's your vision and as you go down it gets more and more detailed uh until you get to your tasks the important thing is it's all linked it all has a context so when i'm getting up at 4 30 and i'm doing mobility exercise in the prison and I really can't be asked, I can think, okay, I've got to do that because I want to be able to run around with my kids when I get out of prison in six years time. So there's that connection provides you with the context and the, um, uh, and the motivation to undertake whatever the task is. Cause generally the tasks are the reason people suffer from procrastination is because tasks are usually annoying you know like i always like the the um exercise example because we all know that if you exercise and you eat well you're going to be healthier you're going to look fucking great and you're going to feel amazing we know that but the actual task is really boring yeah it's boring you ache you really want to be doing something else and uh and it's a lot of effort you swear and it's you know and so unless you can link that task to a bigger outcome you you rely purely on willpower and willpower is not enough over the long term willpower is fine in the short term that's why you can give up smoking for 10 days but you but then you want another one you can only give up smoking if you've if you've identified a bigger outcome which is important to you in your future that allows you to just stop smoking um so that's the planning piece and then the third element of mindful is i call it the persona i must have got that from someone maybe anthony robbins i really like anthony robbins the the American Tony Robbins he's a giant isn't he yeah he's actually a giant he is a giant apparently his hands are like massive he's massive yeah baseball glove hands he is an amazing yeah he's a G I read Awaken the Giant Within superb book which as a little half pint myself it was quite an ass book to read yeah yeah I read that really early I did a lot I actually read a lot of that shit like early doors because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing they are great books a lot of what I'm talking about is in that book yeah well because like I was delivering cheese around London when I finished Juni in a van, in a white van, obviously.

1:37:44And also all my mates were in finance. So I was like, mate, what am I? And obviously, honestly, mate, it was the best job I've ever done yet. Honestly, in terms of retrospect, mate, honestly, so I was going into the Ritz. With some cheese? With some cheese, but obviously, and obviously I dropped all the flour once and the chef went fucking nuts at me. I literally had, it was like, because I'm quite clumsy, I had this trail of flour that was following me down the Ritz. And the guy was like, who's this? And like, to be honest, it was a bit of a nepo job i know the guy who owns business right so he's like yeah we need to look after dan he's got a job but obviously everyone at the at the thing was like what are you doing but and obviously i'd go to the pub and obviously as you come out of university you're quite insecure because you don't know what the fuck you're doing yeah and all my mates and at the time finance was like you know it was probably just after wolf of wall street came out so everyone wanted to be in finance and make loving that yeah and uh and so i'd walk up to the pub you know in like a hive his jacket right and i was like but very interesting lessons actually from that because i'd go to these nice restaurants with my parents right they wait and you go front of the house yeah and then when you go in the hive his jacket you get treated like a piece of dirt i bet you do and it's such an interesting observation of humanity how someone can be a complete twat yeah like when they you know a very very interesting but anyway i was listening to a lot of this listening to a lot of podcasts because i was in a van for 13 hours a day and also some of these books it's interesting what you're saying because i didn't know what i was doing and my thing to your just trying to like pull this to my situation is you know i've got i've got the vision but my whole thing is just put out a podcast every monday yeah and just write a newsletter every friday fantastic and i've just done that for six years now well consistently four years and it begins to happen you know what i mean yeah i'm just that's a very good example just taking one action and making sure it links to the bigger vision that's so interesting as long as it links to the bigger vision if you've got if someone's got a really limiting belief yeah right so like could be anything like uh my my limiting belief is i sometimes feel like i'm just going to be die alone which is kind of a horrible feeling yeah and not really based on any like evidence um or like some people like are scared shitless of public speaking or that's a common one or like i know some blokes are uh scared to approach a girl at a bar or some you know girls are scared of like stats speaking up in a in a in a male environment a board meeting and i've got friends across you know all those cases like how how can someone crush or eviscerate a really yeah like just egregious limiting belief well there's a whole bunch of mental exercises you need to do once you've done this preparatory work so i'll finish the i call it the fundamentals and then i'll talk about that yeah because the third piece of so the first piece of the fundamentals are is is all of that compelling future purpose all that stuff the second is the plan and then the third is the persona now yes this is basically the person you need to be to fulfill your plan and live to your purpose and move towards your future and so that consists of things like the skills you need to develop and so if

1:41:18if one of your objectives is one of mine is to be an amazing horse rider you know that's in my because i have a real problem with work i'm i i can work all the time i'm happy to work i love work and in a way that's that's an that's a laziness which sounds weird because it means because i know work i know how to do it and it's it's a comfortable place for me and so anyway i'm rambling on but i want to so i i'm very focused on what can i do out can i develop outside of work and i like riding horses i'm not very good at it but i'd love to be brilliant at it where would you go riding around here regents park if i wanted yeah yeah yeah yeah on my steed but i wouldn't do that No, I'd have to sort of work it out.

1:42:07That'd be pretty sick if you rocked up to meetings on a horse. Outstanding, yeah. Maybe that's my new brand. Yeah, yeah. James Bond on a horse. Yeah, yeah, love it. That'd be jokes. But in that, if I look at that, I'd say, okay, in my skills, I've got to learn how to ride a horse. I'm giving you a very basic example. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And so you come up with a bunch of skills you've got to learn. Then you come up with the habits you need to develop. so um you know whatever that is around your uh health your fitness your eating your um uh your the your mental exercises your uh work habits you know what me you know what putting a podcast out every Friday whatever they are habits repeating activities which will move towards achieving your plan and get you to your future.

1:42:56And then states, states is interesting because this means what state you need to present in a given situation. So if you are, if you're in a family environment, you're being an amazing father, you're very different. your state is different to when you're in a high stakes meeting trying to close a big deal your state's different you are a different you're not a different person but you're you're leveraging different aspects of your character and capability yeah i've talked about this a lot actually like the way i would uh it's kind of the context of media again i'm applying that to business is like the way you're different so a billboard should be different to like a social media posts should be different to a to the context i always say it's like how i would describe my trip to ibiza with to my grandma yeah versus my pal who was there yeah still same person but you know not going to tell nana everything exactly do you know i mean yeah interesting so and that's i mean that's from anthony robbins um he talks about states a lot and it's a really it's a really useful um exercise to work out who it is you need to be in a given situation because then you can consciously be it.

1:44:20And then as you do it more and more, it becomes a natural, it becomes natural. But so anyway, those are the things that you work out under the persona. That means that once you've done that, you've got all the fundamentals done. And then you get into this thing, I call it brain training. And I think this is the least talked about, but most important aspect of personal development, of mental development, which is basically that you've got to actually train your mind to work differently how i'll tell you okay it's it's unfortunately it's just the same as going to the gym it's exactly the same you basically have to work the muscle whatever that muscle is repeatedly in the direction you want it to behave so that it develops that way and so there's if you think about going to the gym well let me let me say this to you if I if we sat here and we spent a week coming up with a wonderful exercise program for you this is what most personal development does if you read it in a book you listen to it on a tape anything or you sit in a classroom and do it we sit down we talk about you oh okay I've got to have a compelling vision I get that let's do that oh yeah okay I'll have a purpose okay I'm going to do that I've got my purpose and now I've got a plan I've got this do all this I've got that okay my person okay persona I know what I'm going to do we spent a whole week at it you feel fucking amazing because you've got all the adrenaline of all this work and then and then you leave you go back to your normal life and suddenly you feel you haven't done anything you you you over the course of the next few days you just disappear back into the person you were before because you're right there's a great book called after the ecstasy the laundry you read that no it's a beautiful book about that same like it's kind of the nirvana of meditation and then the laundry of is like the daytime but it's the same applies to the same thing yeah really and it's so true it's that you have this rah-rah moment you know and then it's kind of like the drudgery of yeah life comes seeping back in well you you haven't it would be the same as if we spent that week coming up with an exercise program for you and we talked about your biceps you know your quads and we said if you do that and then you do this and you move this and you go yeah yeah i get that yes but then i'm going to do five of those two sets of these okay i'm going to pull that there i'm going to run over that that's all and at the end we say that's an amazing program and then you just put it in the drawer that's basically what personal development does but how so what are the exercises people have so that brain yeah so the point is you then need to you then need to do the work and i use various exercises um all of which are linked to the work that you've done on the fundamentals so they have relevance but i love gratitude daily gratitude is incredibly powerful so basically recognizing a lot of the uh sort of discontent and angst in life come from not recognizing what you've got yes so that helps enormously yes uh get rid of that writing it down in the morning or yeah whatever you want to do it i mean i i have it in my mind i know exactly what i what i want to focus on and yeah because i've done it a lot but initially i had it written all written and i'd read it initially and that's what i recommend people do with mindful is they write it down and they learn it like a script yeah um the second one i really like is affirmations i think they're incredibly powerful especially you mentioned um your fear around the business so what's an affirmation a math affirmation is basically saying something as if it's real as affirming it you're affirming that let's say for instance you say i want to make a million pounds from podcasting you would say i am i'm what i write i'm i'm gonna make a million pounds yeah and you develop some people say that you should say it as if you've already done it and some people do that i i don't i like to say i liked the going to yeah i like the going to and i gives it the going to And you work as much emotion into it as possible.

1:48:30And it needs to be connected with your, all your work, you know, so it has to be relevant to you because bland exercises, like bland affirmations, they're okay, but they're not, they don't work as well. Like you can say, I feel amazing. I look amazing. I am amazing. That's a bland affirmation. that could apply to anyone if you relate it to your personal desires and fears then it's much more effective much more effective and so if you took your fears around the business and you developed a really really tight set of affirmations and you you practice them every morning to read them out yeah yeah you read them or you repeat them in your head i'm gonna do this every morning yeah i do 10 times and i do 10 so i do 100 so i do 10 i pick something and it can be anything like i'm i don't like socializing at all um i'm not good at it i can be quite good at it i don't i don't like it yeah and the reason is i don't drink anymore and i used to be a great partier and um is that pre-prison you stopped drinking a long time when i started it once the business really started going i i couldn't do both because i was we were out on the razz every night and yeah you know it's like four in the morning i'm absolutely fucked up and i'm going to the office at six yeah i'm in that period now it's so much fun you might have to make a call on it i've done like three months like sober and i found that everything in moderation everything in moderation including moderation yeah yeah no i do agree with that because otherwise you become tara says i'm the most boring man she's ever met now but um i don't know what i was saying what was i saying so so 10 times yeah so oh sorry yes reading it out 10 times yeah so i was saying socially yeah so so i if i've got a social event in my morning affirmations i will consciously tell myself that i'm going to have an amazing time and i'm really excited about going i'm going to get a load out of it and that has a transformational effect on my demeanor i don't worry about it beforehand uh you know and i really embrace it and i and i get a lot out of it and that's because over years i've programmed myself to think of social events negatively you think of them positively and that's great you should because they are very positive events well no no so i don't like i hate any sort of sorry i've put my foot on his table no you do what you like sorry mate yeah you do what you like i'm getting too comfortable down here but like so i don't like uh conferences or like any big wanky event like that that's not my vibe at all like i like just going to the pub and like five or six people i really know like yeah the idea of a big networking event gives me the ick okay yeah so i can okay again i can do it but i just i really don't like the small talk so if you've got one of those you should do the affirmation test yeah yeah so you pick you put you know do it it's amazing have you had a mad fest a what mad fest no yeah you should you should definitely speak at that it's this sick conference um they do it in east london but i went and i i've i've walked in there and i was like everyone's got like a lanyard it's just like i'm oh i'm a twat basically it's like yeah yeah you know oh i work for ba and you're not very suited to the corporate world yeah yeah and so i said i I said, fuck this and took like three people.

1:52:09We went to the 10 bells pub, didn't watch one talk. Honestly, I won't tell it, say who the, I'll tell you the person. Well, it was like, but that just going there has been, and getting pissed with them all day has been revolutionary for my business because I actually built a really good connection with them. They've opened a lot of doors for me. So pubs. Good conference. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's actually a really good strategy. Just get three or four people. Oh, people do that. Yeah. They don't even sign up for the conference. They just go and they get on the edges. So sorry, because then I do want to get onto the sales stuff.

1:52:40Yeah, so affirmations, very powerful. The other one I think is brilliant is a switch exercise. It's called the switch exercise. When you have established beliefs or messages, internal messages about anything that are limiting you or you want to change, you basically take a piece of paper and you put a line down the middle. On the left, you write down all the messages. So you listen to yourself. Because one of the things I noticed when I went to prison, which I'd never realized before, is we talk to ourselves all day. All day. I mean, like millions of times a day we're talking. And those whatever words you're saying to yourself come from your beliefs and your past events.

1:53:31So you've got to write down, if it's associated with a specific thing, you write down all of the messages you tell yourself on the left. And then on the right, you work out the counter. So you work out the positive counter to that message. And then you end up with a piece of paper with things on both sides. The one on the left is the one you want to get rid of. The one on the right is the one you want to develop. You learn it like a script. And so every day you look at it, you say, okay, well, I'm the worst father that's ever lived. That's the message I'm telling myself. Over here it says, actually, you're not that bad.

1:54:06You provided really well. You love them. When you were there, you were great. You weren't that present. But you're a nice guy. You know, all the stuff you can come up with. Yeah. And you learn it. And you're, initially you learn it like a script. Then you have to train yourself to switch. every time your mind thinks that you're the worst father on earth, you immediately say, no, you're not. I mean, you might have to do it 200 times a day, 300 times. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. Anyway, over the course of three or four weeks, the left page becomes quieter and quieter, and the right page becomes dominant.

1:54:47Eventually, after about six weeks, maybe eight weeks, there is no left page. You don't think it anymore. So any other exercises on that you think are good? That switch one's brilliant. Switch is amazing. The other one I love is if you've got, I have a phobia of rats. And in my normal life, this didn't cause me any trouble. But going to prison has rats everywhere. Right. And it's a proper phobia. It's not like a joke. It's a sort of sweat, break out into a sweat. My mate's got that about spiders. Yeah. And so I got, in one of the prisons, I got forced into a job in the kitchen. And the kitchen is the worst because there's rats and mice everywhere.

1:55:41And so I had to do something quite significant. I came across this exercise in a NLP book, Neuro Linguistics Programming. It's amazing. I mean, it's really amazing. Basically. Neuralinguistics program is when you're retrying the conversation in your head, essentially. You're retraining your brain, basically. Yeah. Yeah. You're rewiring it. It's a lot of what I'm talking about now is NLP. Yeah. A lot of Tony Robbins stuff is NLP. Yeah. He was a very early practitioner of it. So you basically imagine that you're sitting in a cinema and you're looking at the massive cinema screen. you you you roll up the film and on the film is your image of your fear in this instance because it's a phobia we're talking about and my image is i'm on holiday somewhere in maybe greece or somewhere i'm under in a little cave and there's hundreds of rats that's where i get it from because I couldn't you know like there's hundreds of rats and um I'm very young and I don't even previous to this exercise I couldn't even have had this conversation with you about that image so I then I have the um I throw that up on the screen you have to make it really bright you have to live the moment like you're freaking sweating you feel sick you live it the sounds you've got the vision it's on a massive cinema screen then you turn it black and white the image on the screen so it's not it's dull then you take all the sound away in your head and then you um then you throw the image visually away so that this cinema screen gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and it's it's way out in the distance it's tiny it's it's a you can't even see it's a tiny black dot and that's your that's that's the exercise do that a few times completely fixes you could put a rat on my i'll give it a little stroke i don't even nothing that's mad it is mad that is mad i mean there's still a little something in there about the rat but it's not it's not that's crazy and anyway there's tons of exercise I use about 15 to 20 through the program exercises there's a thing about inputs and outcomes so once you've done all the background work again you can you can identify you can summarize the outcomes you want in your life and you can work out the inputs and then you it starts to sort of increase the connection between the two of all the stuff we do in our life whether that's getting out of bed early or whether it's eating properly or whether it's you know phoning your mum on a sunday or whatever you do you connect it to an outcome and the minute you connect it to an outcome and the stronger the desire for the outcome is the less you have to worry about wanting to do it you will want to do it yeah it's mad let's talk about sales oh yeah i love sales so we've got about 20 minutes oh yeah yeah um the yeah i love the art of the deal i love as in like not the book but like the concept no the book's good yeah no no don't be that's trump it's a very good book what's what okay let's i we don't need to talk about trump no no but i'm now i'm now hustling yeah like a mad fucker for for deals right yeah um and what's what's your approach to attack for like getting new business through the door.

1:59:33Well, the first thing is you've got to have a differentiated proposition.

1:59:41So most companies, no, I don't know if it's most companies, a lot of companies I see focus on their product and they think that they're selling their product. The proposition is different. The proposition is basically looking at the product from the buyer's perspective, from the audience's perspective. And so the reason I say you've got to have a differentiated proposition is because you are competing for the person's business against whoever else it is that you're competing with. Some people need more of a differentiated product than others. You will need a very differentiated product in the mind of the buyer.

2:00:22The actual product might not be different. Am I making any sense? Yes. Yeah. So the first thing you have to do is work on your differentiation. And you need to align that differentiation with value that is relevant to your audience. So whatever the value point is for your audience, you need to bake that into your proposition. And that value point will change depending on who you're selling to. If you're selling to a CEO, it's very different to selling to a director of something. They have different agendas. They're measured on different things, which then takes you to your second thing. You've got to get your proposition right.

2:01:05You need to know who your audience is, who is your buyer. And you might have multiple types of buyer. In a big deal, you have lots of different types of buyers, but you need to know who they are and what's important to them so you can align your proposition with what's valuable to them and um and then you need to work on your pitch for those different audiences um and then you need to work on your sales method so how to how to prep for a big pitch yeah and how would i do that how would you do that well it depends on what your proposition is but you're any decent sales meeting involves the prospect giving much more than the seller yeah so you're trying to extract information and that if you remember that one principle that should guide how you structure your first meeting i mean for instance if you go for lunch or dinner with a prospect if um let me i'm going to get this right they should be doing most of the talking oh yeah they have to do all the if you if they finish their food before you you are an absolute loser i mean you are the worst you shouldn't even be in sales because what it means is you've spent the whole lunch talking and they've just been eating they need to spend the whole lunch talking and you're doing the et al.

2:02:36Wow, yes. And so the same applies in a sales meeting or a pitch. Your job is basically to stimulate the prospect and then get them excited and guide them in a way that takes them down the path of your proposition and your points of value and allows you to discover their pain. Yeah, Alex Hormozy's got a thing, which the pain is the pitch. totally i love that and it's like i mean i love this all this sales stuff i could talk about for ages but like so then so yeah really finding out what their pain is what their needs are and that the more you kind of press on that pain the more you can create a solution it's interesting like uh with the podcast like we're what we're like one of the only really businessy food and drink podcasts there's a lot of food and drink podcasts that uh talk about like we never actually really talk about food and drink yeah really it's i never talk i'm not i'm not a fucking chef no so i'm not for me to sit there and go oh yeah it's the lute you made was so delicious yeah like i've no i've never been in the kitchen so it's all about how did you get the restaurant busy how did you make money so that when we're selling it to sponsors is our point of differentiation so you have a very unique audience that's brilliant yeah so that's our point of differentiate differentiation it's so interesting i love these little tactics so you know i'll never use a deck not more because everyone now has a deck yeah yeah and i just don't think you i don't personally i think it works better i never used yeah yeah and i also think like you wouldn't go on a first date with the deck no right no like you'd be a proper loser if you're doing that yeah like yeah yeah you know um i've got size 10 feet you know yeah um so that's interesting so then so basically so then if you get more information out of them when we were having our coffee mate you said so there's you know the the old adage is don't sell the features sell the benefits i think the nuance you had is there's don't sell the features don't sell the benefits sell the outcome yeah i think that goes deeper?

2:04:33Like, talk to me about that. Yeah, I mean, that is our, when we had touch base, we were winning extraordinary business from major competitors. And we were a little company from London with no money, basically. And the reason was that we were very focused on outcomes. So if, rather than products. So if someone spent a pound with us, what would they get out of it? What would they get out of it from a return perspective financially? What would they get out of it from a customer experience perspective what would they get out of it from a internal people but whatever the measure was we were very focused on selling that and by the way you've got to do this which is the tech but we were really into the outcome and that that way of selling is a differentiator in its own right because most don't do it and so if you go to someone I mean let me let me say if I if I went to you and I said, um,

2:05:34give me, give me$500 and, uh, I'll give you back$10 ,000 a week on Friday. And, um, you believe me. And I say, here's five times I've done it before. And you know, you, you, you've got confidence in me. You'd be jumping over the table to give me the$500. So why don't you take that principle and bake it into the way that you pitch your capability? Because if you can go to a client, which we did, and say, OK, look, Nestle, you're spending I'm trying to remember the real numbers. I can't remember. But you're spending$8 million a year on your voice and data services in North America currently. and we think that if you do these four things we can get that eight to four and save you four million a year and it'll cost you six to do it they don't think oh i've got to spend six million what are you asking me for six i can't find six million dollars they think fuck me you can get me whatever i'm the numbers four million out of my opex a year forever yeah i'll buy that and you you then start you get this sort of enormous um energy in the deal from the buyer's side because they're not just thinking of you as a cost so yeah i mean i think outcomes i love that yeah i mean another thing i've someone taught me is like make your buyer famous if you're in a big corporation that's key so like if say so selling supermarkets right is there's multiple buyers for different categories like people can go in and be like oh this is my you know you know this is my it's kind of links to that outcome thing it's like what do people actually want they don't really care about your brand they want to be known as the as the as the buyer who found the most innovative kombucha totally yeah and they want to be able to be able to tell everyone at work that they were the one that found it so they can ultimately get a pay rise yeah so they can ultimately go on holiday and buy their kids some fucking yeah toys totally right and i feel like that as soon as someone told me that it changed everything so you're starting to change the conversation about like this is my product buy it like needy it's like oh we're gonna make you famous yeah i love that yeah yeah what other one other bits so also it's with the outreach how many how many how many calls were you doing to land the same anymore is it but now apparently you can do videos on linkedin that works really well no i don't mean that that's not as relevant but it's a different way of doing it now but we would do calls usually about 100 a day Yeah, I'd love calls.

2:08:09It was 100 a day and you might get... What's the first thing you'd say on a call? Can't remember. Hello, mate. Hello, lad. Want some phones? Want some telephones? God, I haven't done that for a long time. That's how spoiled I am now. I don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I just find it interesting. It's an amazing skill. If you can do cold calling, really, everyone should do it. Yeah. To start. Well, that's what I did when I was doing the peanut butter thing. Yeah, I'm sure. It's just so brutal. So brutal. But I feel like the lessons I took from that have been so valuable with getting guests on the podcast.

2:08:45Yeah, I mean, the resilience. Once I called this guy in Budgins. He goes, I don't need another peanut butter. He goes, I don't need another peanut butter. It was in Islington. I go, I can be there by one o 'clock. All I need is a spoon in five minutes. And he goes, you can't. And then literally, I said, look, just trust me. I gave him a spoon and he bought it. And we actually ended up selling loads, loads there. Really good. I love that. Yeah, I'd try all sorts. That's really good. And also, I think swearing is quite funny. Like in sales pitching, because everyone's getting the phone call. It's like, oh, hi there.

2:09:17How are you today? And sometimes you call and go, oh, fuck me. I'm sorry. I've just stubbed my toe. And it makes it human within the first 10 seconds. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Break the pattern. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything else? I love all this stuff. I like that. Yeah. What other like, what's the art of closing up massive business? So I say I wanted to bring on a sponsor that was, pay me a million pounds. How would I do that? I think it starts with this principle of outcome, which is that if you make the outcome compelling enough, it will close itself. I know that sounds a bit twee, but it is true.

2:09:53And when you look at pipelines in sales teams and you see lots of deals hanging, it's very common. Yeah. That's partially the salesperson wanting the security of the deal, but knowing it's not going to happen. But it's mainly because they haven't articulated enough value in the deal. If there's enough value in the deal, then the deal will close. There's no question. But how do you demonstrate more value? By focusing on the outcome. and that's all about that's all about um building your sales method to discover areas of value within the client organization how would you what's again what questions would you ask to find on unhidden sort of hidden areas of value that other people wouldn't find well you've just got to ask open questions about their business and i mean i'm talking about business to business sales i don't understand consumer i'm not i just i've never done it so um but you you you have to have an element of discovery in in the sales process that might be a really it depends what the product is depends what the proposition might be really short and small or it might be a foot we used to have full-on discovery days you know like three days where we would go into the client organization we'd find out everything about what they're spending what their customer experience is what you know and then we turn that into a value proposition that said you know if you spend this and you do these things you'll get this back and that creates the momentum in the deal usually the easiest is financial i mean if you can say to someone i'll give you give me 500 i'll give you 10 grand back you usually it's a no-brainer sometimes it's not that easy to make it financial so that's what i was going to say you might have to look at other levers there's opaque information like that's the bit i found hard like so we don't know you know you don't know what you're selling so you don't know how sometimes we've had it with sponsors they don't they don't want to tell us their roi because it's their information yeah so that's kind of hard sometimes hard information to get yeah that's just happened like yeah we have on you know we have on on we you know we work with a couple of agencies i can they they didn't want to share the exact numbers on the ro of the podcast sponsorship but it was um like they could tell me the number of leads they brought in off the back of it do you know i mean but like yeah so it's kind of maybe it's how you frame it as like did sponsor this much got this many leads you know i'm trying to say that's what you need yeah you need to get that as granular as you can with the with the outcome i mean the reason google uh adwords works so well the reason it's so mega is because it it turned advertising from a sort of hope and you know sort of spend and hope to something approaching science you know where you could link spend to outcome i mean that's why people love it what's the craziest deal you ever done like when everything was hanging by a thread when you walked into the meeting

2:13:03the best yeah this is the best yeah go on meeting i've ever done where was it oracle oracle yeah where's that so oracle is you know the big u.s yeah i know what it is but we were trying to win their european their european uh managed service but it was a big deal i don't know how much it was we had this guy in switzerland uh an engineer in switzerland called ralph he was very swiss he was brilliant but he was very swiss very swiss well they find it difficult to go with the flow on the sales patter when you're you know because you've got to you've got to paint a picture yeah Yeah, you got to sell the dream.

2:13:52Yeah, you're selling the dream. So I'm full, full flow sailing in this big meeting with the Oracle European leadership team about Touch Base, how amazing we were. We were amazing. That bit wasn't smoke and mirrors. But our coverage in Germany and Switzerland was Ralph. and we had good coverage in France and Holland and Spain but they were big and so I'm fucking waxing lyrical about our coverage and how amazing we are in Europe and I hear from my left no no no no no no no it is only me painting this picture of massive men in vans yeah yeah yeah ral said no no no it's only and it's like the whole room went oh and um somehow i managed to recover it because we did win but how did you recover it i can't remember yeah that's probably much more mumble swerve but that's definitely my most memorable because i look how i remember it i mean of all the that that was my most memorable it's i love it so like i did a lot of field set like sales like um like every weekend i'd go and sell this peanut butter in like different shops around london and like man it's hard to get it's basically yeah i mean that's brutal it's brutal but i love it so i'd go to like it's just one of my things that zig ziglar is using different analogy and picture language to sell stuff yeah so like in saint john's wood i genuinely in this deli in saint john's word panzers jenny saw about fucking 100 jars in like two hours i just say two things i was either this is the ferrari of peanut butter and they want it within two minutes brilliant yeah and then the other one was um like this was when it was five pound for a pint it's like five pound for a pint that gives that happiness goes within in three minutes or ten minutes yeah this is five pound for a jar of peanut butter the happiness will last for two weeks and like yeah I love all those little things work.

2:16:05Yeah, they do work. It's like painting the picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any other principles or lessons? I've got about five minutes. I could talk about this stuff for days. I love it. No, it's a big topic. Yeah. What about trying to close a deal if it's gone, if they've come back with a no? Because I think sometimes a no is just another. It's just that they need. I think you can press people. like a no is not a no that makes sense no means yeah not like no no i know what you mean yeah uh like anything you've done to like i don't really like the idea of coming in to rescue a deal i think it's too late at that stage i used to get asked that a lot come on we're gonna lose it we're gonna lose it and i said why don't you get me in at the start so what would you've done differently at the start to communicate value yeah i've done all the all all the selling, but even if I'd been engaged at the start, I would then have more leverage at the end, you know, because I'd have been a part of the, rather than coming at the end and trying to save it, like, oh, I'm going to get my sales manager involved.

2:17:08It's like, I don't think that's a very intelligent way to do it. But you're right. I mean, you should always understand the objection and overcome the objection. I mean, that is sales. And that is at any point in the sales cycle. Obviously, sometimes you can't overcome it. But if you've got enough control over the deal, which leads to another area of discussion, which is massively under-focused on, which is qualification, deal qualification. What do you mean by that? Well, there's all sorts of tools you can use or methodologies for qualifying a deal, working out how likely is it that this deal is going to happen, How much control do I have it?

2:17:57Where do I need to focus in the deal? And we used to use one called Network, which was need, effort, timescale, work, opportunity, risk, threat, or something. There's these new ones called MedPick.

2:18:15It's probably not that new now. But it's basically a systematic way to analyze a deal so that you can see how you're positioned within it, how well you've articulated your value, who the buyers are. So you can sort of grade it and either say, we're not going to bother with this one, or say, I need to do these five things in order to get it to where I want to go. So deal qualification is a majorly important part of running a quality sales operation. It's almost understanding who to go after. It's understanding your deal. And people don't. You'd be amazed how they sort of live in hope. It's going to close.

2:19:00We're going to get it. Why? Well, we just have to. That's not really. We need it for the quarter. Yeah. Yeah, but that's not why it's going to close. And so what sort of stuff should I be thinking about in terms of qualifying deals? So obviously one's probably budgets, two's fit. Yeah, need. Need. So have you established the need? Yeah. How much effort is that deal going to take you? If it's too much, then you should focus on other deals. I'm just going through my network. Yeah, yeah. Time. Yeah. Yeah, how much time is it going to take? Is it a two-year? Is it going to take you two years? In which case, it might not fit with what you need.

2:19:45You might need a deal next week. Effort time scale. Work. How much work's involved on both sides? I can't remember the rest. But the best one, if you're doing a complex sale, is MedPic. M-E-D-D. You can see I've been out of this for a long time. P-I-C-C. it doesn't matter which one you choose there's another one called sportsman they're all the same and they're really good what's med pic stand for i don't know what's the top of my head but i can google it it's yeah do and so and then sportsman so a sportsman sales same this stands for something it's all the same sort of stuff but it it's really good for qualifying deals and you if you're running if you're if you want to run a decent sales operation you you need to qualify your deals because there's a lot of time wasting that goes on.

2:20:41Especially you need to because you've got lots of other stuff to do. Yeah. And you've got some big strategic deals. And so... Yeah, so those big ones have taken my time. Yeah, you need to run them through. But I also like the kind of, you know, the little quick ones that come in, just a little bit of dough coming in. Yeah, yeah. You know. No, there's nothing wrong with that at all. Yeah, I like those little small ones that you can basically do the whole deal on WhatsApp. Yeah. That's what we're doing on now. Yeah. And it's just voice notes on WhatsApp. I'm like, this is just like, oh. Whereas the big, more strategic ones are like, emails, upload to Google Docs.

2:21:13Every fucking thing, one needs to sign it off. You've got lunch, but I could talk to you for hours. No, no, no, there's lots to talk about. We could do a whole podcast on sales. Final question, what are some of the best, most transformative books you read in prison? Well, I always talk about Man's Search for a Meaning, which is Viktor Frankl. It is an extraordinary book, and it really changed my life. and allowed me to get through prison. So if anyone is facing, you know, uncertainty or challenges in their life, they should read that. The second one is, I always mention, is Mind is the Master by James Allen.

2:21:55That's a big old book, isn't it? Massive, yeah. It's a collection of essays. That's brilliant. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It's a terrible title. It's misleading. is a brilliant book about mental development, mental strength, goal setting, enjoying your life, that sort of stuff. It's a really good book. Any Anthony Robbins book I think is brilliant. Some of them are a bit cheesy. Same with Zig Ziglar. Yeah, Zig Ziglar. He's total cheese. He's so cheesy. Zig Ziglar, he's brilliant. It's so good. Robinson Crusoe, unbelievably good. Really? Yeah. and that's what I thought Robinson Crusoe yeah who wrote that was it an English guy Daniel Defoe yeah is he English yeah it's the first published book or something novel or something but it's what year did that come out I don't know yeah a while back a while back yeah but what other fiction do you like I think fiction oh A Gentleman in Moscow is that Amor Taos he's a beautiful writer stunning writer yeah the way he writes language is just unbelievable yeah I think he's the best living writer I'd agree with that what's the other one he's got Midnight in Paris no what's the other one he's got the one about New York yeah there's one about New York I've got both of them yeah they're absolutely genius yeah he's a genius

2:23:21I love all the classics I read all the classics which you know like War and Peace all the stuff you did you read Crime and Punishment yeah Dostoyevsky all the Dostoyevsky yeah Brothers Karamazov or whatever that is yeah Le Miserable my favourite is probably Count of Monte Cristo I love the Count of Monte Cristo a lot of people say that's one of the best books of all time I absolutely love it is it a big it's big yeah did you read Infinite Jest no that's a big old book it's good though is it yeah maybe if you ever go back to prison you might be I'm joking hopefully not yeah God there are so many books that was one of the best things about and how often Would you just read all day?

2:24:05Yeah. I was either reading, writing, exercising, eating, sleeping. That was it. That's mad. Mate, you're going to have to run for lunch. I could talk to you for hours. Absolute fucking joy. And I'm so, yeah, well done. You've managed to turn a... Oh, thank you. Yeah, and I think a lot of people... I've been very lucky. Yeah, if they want to get mindful for your business. Yeah, mindful. If you, yeah, I mean, I didn't even talk about my other stuff, but... We'll do another one. Why don't we? Yeah, it was great fun. Game on. Absolute pleasure, mate. Thank you so much. Thanks.

2:24:40thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much