MBA2704 Extended Interview: Dale Beaumont - How to Run a Multi-Million Dollar Company and Go on Holiday 6 Months a Year

30:55I ran this event and there was like 150 people showed up. And a lot of them, again, were people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, successful entrepreneurs. And they were coming to me for like business advice. And so I then started running this program, which is called Business Blueprint, which is a business education program and started with about 12 clients. And now we work with about 500 clients at any point in time. We've had about four and a half thousand people go through a 12-month transformation program. that we have. This year, we're celebrating our 16th year anniversary of Business Blueprint.

31:28And then along the way, I've also diversified into about seven other companies that I now have partnerships in or invested in as well. So yeah. That support your clients. Exactly. So Business Blueprint is kind of like the thing I'm most well known for, but then on the side, I have a bunch of other businesses. And then for the last decade, They've been investing in mainly property and also shares as well. And so, yeah, being able to sort of like diversify from just business into other assets. I had an interview recently with a guy named David Royce who has created a$500 million company in pest control.

32:11And his specialty was sales. And he was talking to me about like how important being likable is in sales. Yeah. Like people actually just buy because this person's all right. You know, like I'll give him this person to try. For those who don't know, like Dale and I are close friends. I spent a lot of time with him, trips together, shared a hotel room with you one time. He's really a nice guy in real person. Like in real life, what you're seeing here is who he is as a real person. What I want to ask you is like, how much has the success of Blueprint and getting people to join your program can be attributed to the fact that you're just a good person?

32:45Like people want to buy from you. I do think that likability is an important factor. I remember there was a moment that kind of just shifted for me when I was putting together this series of books that I was talking about before called the Secrets Exposed series. I kind of wrote this initial proposal document that was written to successful people and it was written in a tone that was like, Like you've been invited to become part of this book. And if you get selected, you'll be lucky enough to kind of like, and it was just like, I wrote this letter and I gave it to someone. And they were like, this is so like, not you.

33:26Like your ego is kind of like thinking that you're way beyond where you actually are. You're talking to these super successful people that are going to be kind of like seeing straight through you because you're not yet successful yourself. and so maybe a more grounded humble approach will kind of work a little bit better than trying to be someone that you're not and in that moment i just kind of changed into a different kind of gear around being grounded being humble being respectful so the way that i see myself is that because sometimes people want to be their dominant person the authority and sort of like bully people into submission and stuff like that.

34:10And there's a lot of speakers that do that. There's a lot of salespeople that do that and they're effective to a point. And a lot of the times they get short term success because they can kind of bully people into submission and eventually they ground them down. They say yes, but that person is no way telling any of their friends about you whatsoever. Cause they're like, I don't want to subject any of my friends to that type of kind of like treatment. So you basically stop at that point of growing your business. And, and so it's difference between someone that plays a long game, which is basically like, I want to still be effective.

34:43And I'm even happy to be less effective in the short term because I'm not going to be ultra aggressive, but I'm going to sell in a way that is respectful. So never see myself as above any other human being, even if I know more about the subject and like in God's eyes, we're all equal. Yes. I'm kind of here to help you, but I never see myself as being superior to anyone but in the same token i never see myself as being inferior to anyone i see myself as being like an equal when yes i've got some knowledge and some skills that are going to help you um but it's up to you whether you want to kind of buy on or not and i'm cool with either kind of like outcome and so that kind of humility or that feeling of not being like pushed or manipulated um then uh normally works out well but then people go ah that was a nice experience and I can feel comfortable in telling my friends about this guy because I know that he's going to be respectful, he's going to take care of them, he's going to treat them well, etc.

35:41And one of the things that I'm... I know this is maybe going to sound a little bit kind of weird, but what's great about my program is that over 50 % of people that are in my program are women, which is very, very rare. You know, I went to an event just last week and there was 25 people there and it wasn't just an event for men it didn't say that in the advertising but every single person in the room was a man yeah not one female in the whole kind of like room i've noticed that yeah and so i was like isn't that interesting and obviously it's reflection of the person's persona and character and marketing and their marketing and how they come across and um and so it's like if you're that type of person you're only going to attract half of the population you're also doing a disservice to the group exactly adding a different dynamic to the discussion to the to the energy in the room yes yeah yeah so um i think being more grounded and and more respectful in your kind of approach if you call it likability that would be another kind of like word for it just means that you can open up to bigger market right both genders and also you're going to get a lot more referrals yeah as well so you end up playing a kind of a long game and i've got kind of a lot of people now that have just called me up and say, I want to join your program because someone that I really, really respect said that you're amazing and you've been so consistent after so many years.

37:07And based on that endorsement, I want to join. What's the next step? Zero selling. Yeah. I mean, we're going to talk about referrals in a moment because I want to get into that big time. But my first experience of you on stage at a Blueprint event, I was attending your event i just moved to australia my initial reaction when i saw you on stage presenting talking to your audience was this guy is brilliant like i was just seeing it from a marketing positioning point of view uh and i was saying like the way i phrase is like he's playing the reluctant hero which is which you're not playing it you are this is who you are but that's how i perceived it when i first saw it but it first of all it works really well the idea of reluctant here is just like this idea of like, hey, I have something I stumbled upon.

37:50It worked for me. I just want to share it. Hopefully it works for you. That kind of thing. And it's a different approach. I think it works really well here in Australia because for those who don't know Australia, they eat humble pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The tall poppy thing is a real thing. And it just doesn't come off effective if you go out and say, hey, here are all my accolades. And where's my YouTube plaque? I'm bringing it out. Whatever it is. Bank statements and all that. yellow highlighter stuff doesn't work here because people do feel like everybody's equal. They do feel like, hey, I want to learn from somebody who I can relate to.

38:24And you presented as somebody very relatable, like, oh, I can learn from this person because he's not saying, you know, I learn, I know this stuff because I'm brilliant. I know this stuff because I have so much experience and I've done this a million times. Just trust me. You know, like that wasn't the attitude. The attitude was, hey, I'm learning just like you. And I, you know, I think it was one of your segments where you share five new tech tips or something like that. And you're just like, hey, I just found these new five things in here. You should try this. I'm still learning. If you learn something, pop it in the community, that kind of thing.

38:54And it was more collaborative. And I felt that this approach was fantastic because the audience was leaning in because they want to learn from somebody that they respect. But also they were leaning in because they're like, hey, if this person is trying new things and doing things and it's working for them, I should try that too. You know, and I just thought that it was just a beautiful kind of first impression of you as a business person. Because, you know, I was living in the US before I moved here and, you know, every event, any speaker, it was almost the opposite. It was this idea of like, before I even teach you anything, let me teach you about who I am.

39:32And this is what I do. And this is, you know, these are all the awards I have and how much money I made and da, da, da, da. And like, you're taught this in like internet marketing courses. like you have to like earn the right earn the right social proof you know all this stuff and that doesn't work in a lot of markets that doesn't work in europe that doesn't work in you know pan pack you know in australia new zealand all that kind of stuff and i think it's working less and less in north america you know because people are just kind of tired of the influencer the the person what i loved about your approach was even though you weren't you presented yourself as i'm just a few steps ahead of you let me show you what i just experienced so therefore you can do the same.

40:13Obviously, you've built Blueprint to an incredible business, and one of your jobs is to try to get new members constantly. But you are also aware of the limitations of the market, especially because there are physical events in Australia, things like that. How much have you focused on retaining your customers? Because I've been to events, bike rides, all kinds of stuff, and there's people that have been Blueprint for 10, 15 years. Like, what like i've been blooming for paying annual for x amount of thousands of dollars every single time and what i realized that you built a community you built almost like a lifestyle club you know because it's not just events you guys go on trips and you go to fiji and you go to europe and you have you know you went to egypt with as a group and so like how much of that is like i need to work on retention because i can't constantly try to fill in the bucket and how much is like, I want to have fun in my business.

41:09Yeah. So retention pieces are really important. At the beginning, I sucked at marketing, but then I got really good at marketing and bringing new people in. But sometimes that can actually be a trap because you're so good at getting new customers in. You don't worry about the customers that are just kind of delivering that are just leaving because you're like, oh, just, you know, go get, but then you kind of do that for three or four years and you go, wait a sec, I'm working really, really, really hard. And all I'm doing is just replacing that i'm not growing i'm just replacing the customers that i kind of lost out the back door um and then you realize oh okay there's this whole other thing which is called you know retention or some people like would label it like churn which is people kind of like leaving how do i have um more um ongoing revenue repeat repeat business and it almost would kind of i'd go so far as to say now that's your really big obsession as a business owner is how do you actually get more repeat business because otherwise all you have is you just have a revolving door you know of just people coming in and people kind of like leaving and every year you start at zero and that's hard work and it gets really exhausting so you've got to become focused and obsessed about how do you look after the clients that you've got how do you retain them a few little tips one is around fair pricing I saw a lot of people in my industry they're going like, you know, my program's 25K, my program's 50K, my program's 75K, you know, and they're beating their chest about how much money that they're charging their clients.

42:39And every single one of those clients after a year, they lose every single one of those like people. No one stays long term because if they feel like, okay, you've just taken all the fruit off this tree and then there's no more fruit left. Also, I have to deliver$35 ,000 worth of value in that year, in that one year, if you don't, and that's kind of hard to do because they have to implement. Yeah. So I look at some of my 10-year clients, for example, that have paid sort of$10 ,000 a year for 10 years. That's a$100 ,000 client. I'd much rather that over a longer period of time than, you know, $25 ,000,$50 ,000 or whatever, and then it just goes to zero kind of the next year.

43:17You're thinking lifetime value of the customer. Lifetime value of the customer. So making sure that people kind of feel like that, you know, you're looking after them. And, of course, you've got to make a profit, and you've got to make sure that it's profitable. But you also don't want people to kind of like feel like you're, you know, charging too much. Otherwise people feel like, you know, I'm not really getting the value here. The moment you drop, you might be fine for the first year, but the moment you drop, it's like, and it's not worth that. And then from straight away, they churn. The second thing is around realize, I realized the fact that the more that it was just me, then eventually like familiarity breeds contempt like if you're just listening to the same person over and over again this guy again you go from being revered to imagine if you had Tony Robbins, he was in your office, he sat next to you every single day, he'd go from being Tony Robbins to like I think about every word that I'm saying to him to just he's the guy down the street and then you know and so he would just lose that aura and lose that respect.

44:23And you kind of run out of tricks after 18 months. It's like, I've heard all your stories. I know the next sentence that's coming out of your mouth. And so what I realized was I needed to introduce other characters. I needed to have other people that were speakers, other experts. It can't just be the Dale show. And so that was where I then started to think about more like I'm the host. And this is another thing as well. Some of these people think I have to be the expert. I have to be the guru. And a guru model is good to kind of get you started. But if you want to sustain over a longer period of time, then you can't build a business just around the guru model because then after 18 months, you know, clients will just all churn because, you know, you've kind of revealed all your tricks and there's nothing more to kind of give.

45:06But if you space that out over five years or 10 years by introducing other characters, people will stay a lot longer for everyone else. And the third thing was what I realized was everyone joins for the content, but what they stay for is the community. And we realized the fact that the value is not just in me or even in these other experts or in the fair pricing, which is going to be all important. It's about when some of their best friends in the world are in the program. And this is their excuse that every three or four times a year, they get to catch up with their best friends. Then why would they ever kind of like leave?

45:44Because it's like, oh, what are we going to do in November? Like I've got clients that are planning out where they're going to go for dinner during the conference at the next conference like hanging out with each other and it's there because they come from all over australia and new zealand to catch up they plan their social life around our events and the common thing where they're all going to be together it also creates fomo like oh are you going to you know croatia he just opened up the spots you know and it's like oh i'm not going maybe i should consider going you know because you know nancy's gone and that kind of thing is like really powerful totally and and because you can go to croatia or we've been taking our clients to egypt before and we've been to thailand you can go there kind of anytime you want to but to go there with like 40 50 100 amazing people that share this your passion for in this case business and seeing it from a different perspective yeah and every conversation that you have on the bus or you know kind of at the bar or while you're kind of like waiting for your tour um is an interesting stimulating conversation about subjects that you're passionate about yeah um that becomes like really seductive and then they go i'm not going to go on an ordinary holiday and be with you know 50 people that i've got nothing in common with i want to be yeah with people that i love hanging out with so that retention piece um adding more experiences um has also been really important as well and doing special things we take them out for the movies we kind of do like go to bowling uh we've done like or puzzle rooms we've done like video arcade nights we do parties a couple of times a year as well so different experiences like that where people i remember one guy saying to me who was in his 60s joined my program he's like i feel like i'm 40 like i've like i just feel young again like i just opened up like a whole new lease of life new friends new like you know experiences um and that's kind of if you think about what business one is someone once said to me you know go think about what business are you in and then what business are you kind of like really in you know right and so we're in the business coaching business but you know we're in the the business really of transformation and helping people to get their spark back for for for business because oftentimes you get beaten up quite a lot and you you know business can be really lonely and sometimes business is a lot of stuff that goes wrong and it can be very depressing you know and part of what we're in the business of just re-inspiring people again and getting them to kind of like re-motivated.

48:11And so that's really, really important. So, yeah. I love it. Speaking of being up, you know, we all get being up in our journey. Yes. There's a story that you shared one time with me that I hope that you would be able to share with our audience. where you and Catherine, your wife, were just burnt out. And you needed a holiday, but you couldn't afford going abroad or even going anywhere in Australia. And you guys decided to go to Bondi in a hostel. Tell us a little bit of that story. Yeah, so we were 19 when we started our business. And we were also 19 when we met as well. So we started out kind of like just hanging out.

48:59and we both had sort of some debts that we'd accumulated through putting money into, first of all, doing courses to educate ourselves. So we kind of went backwards. And Catherine also had her, before we met, her father passed away, and she kind of was the oldest of the children, paid for a lot of the medical expenses and paid for funeral costs and all those type of things as well. And so we both had kind of debts, not insane amount of money, but it did feel like a lot of the time. It's around the back. It was about$70 ,000 that we were kind of negative. And again, it's all relative, right? But for us, it felt like it may as well have been a million dollars.

49:42It felt a lot of pressure. Anvil of weight. But we were both working hard. We were kind of burnt out. And then Catherine had this idea, we just need to go away. And I'm like, we can't afford to go away. and she's like no pack your bags we're going to be going away for two days so I was like okay so we kind of got in the car and I was thinking oh maybe we're going to be going to the airport how are we going to afford this where are we going to go you know but we ended up driving all of about 25 minutes so we live in Sydney there's a place called Gladesville to Bondi if you go onto the map and you type in Gladesville Bondi it's about 25 minutes away from each other and we checked into a backpackers, like a youth hostel, basically.

50:24I love it. And we just walked down to the beach kind of like every day and we'd go to a cafe or whatever. And it was like this little staycation sort of type thing. And then at night we'd go back to the backpackers and it didn't even have an en suite. There was a communal toilet down the hall and a communal shower down the hall. And I can remember when we, you know, there was a bed that we sort of slept in, but the bed was kind of like didn't really have much springs. And so we kind of ended up sleeping kind of like this. Forced intimacy. Yeah, exactly. I love it. But it was a really like special moment where we, you know, we've been all around the world and been on amazing trips and traveled first class, blah, blah, blah.

51:05But we love like that experience, you know, because it was just that sort of point whereby we were able to take a little bit of a break. And I think it's important in business to take breaks. And it's not about, you know, expensive holidays. You know, you can go put up a tent somewhere, drive in your car for an hour, put up a tent somewhere or check into a caravan park or a youth hostel or something just to recuperate and go for a walk in nature or go to the beach or the mountains, whatever kind of is going to help you to recharge. Because otherwise you can kind of be get burnt out. And it wasn't long after that we developed a plan to kind of pay off our debts.

51:43And we basically wrote down a list of all of the debts that we had. and looked at, okay, if we can save this amount of money per week from what we make and just go to debt clearing. And the way to do it is you just start with the smallest amount, whatever it is, don't start with the highest interest rate, because if you start with the highest interest rate, then it could take longer to actually pay off. So you start with the smallest amount and say that's$1 ,000, you pay that off, and then you take that$1 ,000 and the money that you're saving, and you use that to chunk into the next one, it kind of compounds, sort of like pays off your debt uh faster and so within about uh 18 months i think it was um and this is all katherine katherine was very diligent around our budget and what we were kind of spending um we were able to pay off those debts and we were kind of like clear of that and then we were able to um you know move from a little one-bedroom apartment to a two-bedroom apartment which felt like a massive kind of like upgrade.

52:40Then a few years later, we were then saving for our house and then we became parents and then basically we ended up buying an apartment and then buying a house and then properties. But it all started from just making that decision to sort of say, okay, start with what you've got. And if you've got debts, start there, you know, and get those kind of like cleared. And then, And, you know, if your goal is to get a house or even an apartment, whatever you can kind of like afford or potentially the stock market or invest in a business, just kind of get started. And all success is, it's just like effort compounded over time.

53:21And it's just like, that's really all it is. Like people look at what I have today and go, wow, like, you know, and again, not going to list my credentials, but we've done some amazing things. but it's just like 25 years I've been doing this you know I would be surprised if I hadn't got these results after 25 years of kind of like effort like it's no magic it's not like I had some lucky sort of thing or rich parents or whatever it's like that one of my other favorite movies uh mentioned field of dreams before the Shawshank Redemption yeah which is basically how did this guy break out of prison it was just like with this little you know spoon you know a big sheet of kind of concrete, compounded over time.

54:00It's just like effort compounded over time equals success. And the main thing is you just got to not, you know, blow up along the way. And before you blow up, you know, you're going to need to take a few breaks and recuperate. So I recommend to entrepreneurs, you have four holidays a year and the holidays could just be two days, just like go away for two days and just shut off and recuperate. And then every year as you get more successful, you try to double it. So then you have four holidays, four days, four times a year. And then the next year you have four holidays, eight days a year. And the next four holidays, 16 days a year.

54:33And eventually, you know, where you can kind of like get to is, is four holidays and then basically four months every single kind of year. So one of the things that we've been doing for 16 years now is two months on one month off. So we do work for two months and then we take a month where we travel somewhere in the world. We've mentioned became parents and now we've got two, not just little kids, but teenagers, young adults. We've got an almost 18-year-old and a 15-year-old as well, Finn and Callan. And yeah, we've traveled extensively with them, two months on, one month off. But we started with that little two-day staycation in Bondi.

55:15And then we kind of grew from there. How significant is Catherine to your success? Look, massively. I think that's the most important decision that you ever make in your life is who you choose as a life partner. And I chose someone that we shared some similar values. We were both, we both met at a personal development course. So that was like something where we had that shed um she would never have gone unless she had some ambition and she also had a desire to want to have a better life and i was obviously there for the same reason as well so we had that kind of like in common we also had just the the trainings that we'd had attended you know was around that you know you're responsible for your own you know success and and uh around um you know um yeah communication is the response you get and a whole bunch of other kind of like things that we kind of learned that have been the foundation of our relationship.

56:15But we have also had challenges as well, because we're both fairly, like, if you look at the personality profile, you've got your D, your I, your S's, and your sort of like C's, your disc profile. Like, I'm probably a D, but I can be a bit softer, and I can be more adaptable. But Catherine is like a high D. So she's a very strong, very determined, and I'm also very strong and very determined as well. So we kind of have fireworks when we spend. We can hang out together fine, but we can't really work together in the same sort of space. So she works at a home office. I go to an office. And we both have separate areas of the kind of the business.

56:55I kind of am almost the face of the business. I like organize all the events and do the training. But Catherine does all the finance, all of the insurances, manages all the investment properties, um does all of the behind the scenes stuff um and and she does that brilliantly and because of that we're kind of a really great team we're both kind of like contributing there's kind of like shared ownership uh of you know our success um and so yeah people kind of think that it's the dale show but it's really the dale and catherine show and uh she's been a big big big part of um of our success. And it's not just the business.

57:35At a certain point in time, you've got your business, but then you've got your investments. And once you have enough investments, you end up making more money from your investments than what you do from your business. And so for a long time, I would get in a moment of frustration when I'm angry. I'd say, I'm the one that's out there making all the money. And now she's like, uh, uh, uh, did you know how much money I made last year? I made more than you. Um, and so, um, yeah, it's definitely been a, a, um, an amazing, uh, partnership and yeah, we've had our challenges in, I don't want to say it's this like perfect, um, you know, kind of like romance that we've had for, uh, 25 years that we've been, um, together.

58:21There have definitely been challenging times. Um, and the thing that I remember someone saying ones is, you know, marriages, uh, like have four seasons, you know? And, um, and so yes, you could be in a winter, you know, but you've just got to hang in there because what eventually follows every winter is spring and then the summer and then maybe, you know, autumn and things like that. And you can pull yourself out of those things as well, but to think that it's going to be, you know, uh, amazing all of the time and you're not going to have any problems and you look at other couples and go, Oh wow, they're flawless.

58:53They must never have fights and arguments and all that type of stuff like you know we have arguments all the time like there is lots of of challenges in relationships yeah but the main thing is is that you know you kind of keep going and you've got to that's why we lasted so long is that we're kind of just like i'm committed to to growing and evolving and changing and she's hopefully you know get prepared to grow and evolve and change and if you if those two people are always doing that and you're learning and growing together um then you can get through anything it's when one person says you know this is who I am and I'm not going to change and then someone else digs their heels in and it's kind of like, well, that type of relationship just cannot last if you're both not evolving.

59:36Yeah, I mean, what I see... and what I can relate to with my own relationship with Nicole, my co-founder and my wife and going on the journey is that story you shared with being in the hostel in Bondi and just this idea of having somebody that you know has your back. Knowing that you're on this journey with somebody that is going to support you, that you're not alone. And the fact that she's like, we're going to figure this out, we're going to go, even if it's just Bondi and we're 25 minutes away, but your well-being is my well-being. And that agreement that maybe we're going to disagree, maybe we're not going to be always up but bottom line I got your back you got my back and that foundation is like paramount in my opinion and that's what I see even today when I see you guys together yeah at an event or you know even socially is that you know even though you guys might be different as people your agreement with each other is that you're my number one priority and I'm yours so I think that's that's something I learned from you so great thanks so much man yeah going back to the holidays One of the things that you may not know about Dale, but Dale takes a lot of holidays.

1:00:45And long ones. How often and how long are your normal vacations or trips? About a month. Normally four times a year. Last year we did six months traveling. So the backstory behind that was that we... I can still remember the kind of the month that Catherine came home and said it was 2007, honey, you know, I'm pregnant, we're going to be parents. And so I was thinking to myself, okay, I'm working at the moment. Like I'd wake up, turn on my laptop and just start working. And I would just work, work, work, work, work. And then I'd still be working at 9, 10, 11, 12 o 'clock at night. That was just my life.

1:01:31And I thought I'm about to become a father. I can't keep doing this. I need to kind of figure out how I could not be or work be all consuming because I need to make space for being a father and I want to spend time with my children. And the month after I found out that news, April 2007, Tim Ferriss released this book called The Four Hour Week and just kind of burst onto the scene. And I was like, I need to kind of like, that sounds good to me. Like if I even do like you know half of that i'd be like over the moon yeah um so how do i get there how do i get there so i read that book and he spoke about a number of different things he spoke about um the importance of of systems both um by basically the importance of virtual assistance um but the other thing he spoke about was having these mini like vacations mini retirements he said the new rich the old rich was work until you were like 65 which the government now says 75 and then eventually get the pension and eventually retire.

1:02:31We've all seen the meme of the old couple falling asleep in the gondola in Venice. You're too old now to enjoy it. Exactly. Yeah. So I thought to myself, okay, don't want to do that. He said, the other thing is to take these mini retirements throughout your working kind of life. And so we thought, wow, that'd be really cool. And we both, Catherine and I both loved travel. And we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we could actually travel with our kids? Because a lot of people kind of said to us, the moment that kids come along, you're not going to be able to travel. You're going to be stuck at home.

1:03:01And we kind of were really determined to. What's this word? You can't. Yeah. Screw that. Like we just like. What is this can't thing? I just don't like people saying no. And anytime someone says you can't do something, I'm like, I'm going to figure out how you can do something. That's just kind of how I'm kind of like wired. So people say you can't travel with kids. It's like, okay, we're going to figure that out. So I read the book for our week, talked about this idea. and so when our son was born we sort of took our first vacation I think it was around about two and a half weeks we went to Hawaii then we went on to Canada I had some business stuff that I needed to do there as well so it's a little bit of a working trip but also a big kind of like holiday and yeah it was a little bit hard on the plane we had a little baby and things like that but we got there and we made it work and we got over the jet lag and we're like okay we came back home nothing blew up you know we still had our business we were still making money while we're away.

1:03:51The systems that we had in place were working and we thought, let's do this again. So then a few months later, we kind of did another trip and then we kind of came up, well, what about if we do this two months work where we'll work quite hard, we'll come back, we'll hustle, get in the trenches, do what we need to do. You know, we still had goals and dreams. We weren't ready to fully retire, but then we're going to take a month where we could kind of like relax. So when you are relaxing, what percentage of time are you working laptop open? Yeah, I'd say on average, it would be like when I'm traveling two hours a day of kind of like work.

1:04:25In the past, it was just like on a laptop early in the morning, or we get our son to bed at like, you know, seven o 'clock, and then I'd go to the lobby, and I do another couple of hours worth of work. Now, it's become so much easier because of the smartphone, you know, and I've got 90 % of what I do on my laptop, I can do on my phone. So I'm working a little bit throughout the day replying to messages you know um checking whatsapp or our slack channel and different things like that so um but yeah some days i might go three or four days where i'm just traveling or moving whatever i'm tired and no just checking the team you're good they're like we're good so we can um nothing yeah weekend you know everything kind of like quiets down so we're all good and then other days what would happen is that after about a week sometimes like a few big projects kind of like build up and the team go we need you for a few hours and then i'll tell katherine on thursday would it be okay if i have a whole day to just do work and she'll go cool then they'll kind of go do a tour or something like that or go to a museum and then i'll just sit in my you know laptop and just work for the whole day and then you can enjoy it yeah and then i can enjoy sort of after that so on average i'd say it's probably like when i'm traveling two hours a day would be the average um and then i can just sustain that yeah like it kind of indefinitely um it gives me enough time to kind of like clear the decks respond to messages i didn't want to come back go away for a month and come back to 3 000 emails and then have like you know a month to just catch up so if i could just maintain um you know the the bare minimum um and look this is it's kind of an interesting thing to kind of um we could have been like we've done very very well and um but we could have been more successful if we just financially if we just threw ourselves into work for the last 16 years, but we would never have had all of these experiences that we've had with our children and been able to travel to over 85 countries and had these most wonderful things.

1:06:21And if you know the book, Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, he talks about your attire and your memories. Like I, we oftentimes just sit, you know, in bed with Catherine with the iPad on my phone and just go through photos of, oh, look at the kids when we were here and look at what we did here and we have one of those frames in the living room and that that's i think that's one of the best products in the world yeah because you get to relive all those things all over again yeah and so that is um what we have have done the two months on one month off um has has been something that and it also has sustained us i think a lot more because i think sometimes if you are if you're so attached to you at the beginning it's like your business is like a baby requires all of you to watch it all the time.

1:07:04But then once that business grows up a little bit, you know, you need to kind of like let it stand on its own two feet. And sometimes for two reasons, one is that some of the best ideas that I've had is when I'm out of the office and when I'm in a different location and I have all these ideas that I would never have had if I stayed stuck in it. And also your team will never actually think for themselves, never grow, never take on new challenges. If you're always there and they go, oh, Dale, how do I do this? Oh, can you help me with this? The fact that they are not there and they have to think for themselves and they have to solve problems without me then builds, I think, a much better business.

1:07:40Yeah, and I'm sure you get a new perspective on things when you step out a little bit. I know I do when I go, especially when I go and see something like an incredible cathedral that was designed and built, it was designed and then built, you know, two generations after the designer, you know, put it together. And this idea of this long-term vision, Am I building something? When you really see greatness on display, you start to think about, like, what am I doing? You know, like, oh, maybe I should start to think bigger. Yeah. And I think that definitely informs your perspective on business as well.

1:08:15So you talked about you do take these holidays. They're scheduled. I want to talk about the preloaded year. I first heard about the preloaded year from Dan Martell, who was our coach when we were building Webinar Ninja and growing it. and I asked him, where'd you learn this? He said, oh, I learned it from Taki Moore. I was like, oh, okay. And then when I moved to Australia, I met Taki. I'm hanging out. Hey, Taki, thanks so much for teaching Dale the preloaded year. That's incredible. We use it all the time and it's really helped us kind of have everything we want in the year. And he was like, oh no, I learned that from Dale.

1:08:48And I was like, okay. Then I found out. I met you and we chatted. I was like, so you are the person that kind of started this movement, especially in our group of entrepreneurs. Tell us about what the preloaded year is, why it's worth spending a few hours doing this every year, and what does it empower you to do? So the preloaded year is a concept of what gets scheduled gets done, and it's living life and building a business by design, not by kind of default. and it's also based around this concept of like kind of like batching um if you have to do a lot of the same things if you do them at the same time it's actually much more efficient like for example if i had just one pair of socks and i put a whole load of washing on for one pair of socks that would be kind of a waste of time and a waste of resources a waste of water whereas if i've got like 10 pairs of socks and a few t-shirts and underwear and whatever i do a load of washing together then it's much more efficient um and so the concept is sometime before the year has started and it's part of like when do you write your to-do list the night before you know as that when you decide what you're going to do for the next day we do ours and end of november because then holidays get busy exactly so applying that set of same concept to when you upload your year you don't do it at the january you do it in uh october november um it may be december at the latest you basically go, okay, what do I want from this year?

1:10:18And by the way, you can do this kind of anytime. You don't have to wait until the end of the year before next year. If you're halfway through the year, you can just start now, but you basically go, okay, I'm going to look at the next 12 months and go, all right, first of all, we're going to, and the way that I teach it is I get people to just sort of think differently around things. Like we start with easy stuff. So first of all, your birthday, find your birthday on the calendar. All right, put in your birthday. And if you have a partner, find their birthday, put in their birthday. Okay. You're going to make a decision that you're not going to work on your birthday.

1:10:48Like, cause, um, what do you call like someone that drinks every single day? An alcoholic. What do you call someone that works every single day? A workaholic. You know, there's no difference. You know, we judge other people for smoking and drinking and taking drugs, but if you cannot live a day without working, you have an addiction and you need to break that addiction and how you're going to do it is by not working on your birthday. Now, whether it's your birthday or it's some other day that's significant to it, doesn't really matter but the whole idea is i want people to realize work is something that you do it's not who you are you know and so you know when so i get people to kind of like separate themselves from their business you know to say you are a person that has you know a life and passions and interests and hobbies and one of the things that you do is a business and you can because i've known a lot of people that have sold their businesses and go into depression because they're like, I'm a nobody now.

1:11:40I'm nothing. Like, what do I do? I've lost my whole identity. So part of that is separating out by just putting down your birthday, as simple as that. And then you've got a kid's birthday, put your kid's birthday. You've still got parents. You know how lucky you are to still have parents alive, put their birthday in, you know, and say, mom, from, you know, I'm going to take you out on your birthday. And that's going to be a special kind of thing because you may only have you know five ten twenty left who knows how many more years you've got you've got um then once you get in the birthdays and kind of like anniversaries anyone that's important to you then you put in your four holidays so four holidays starting with the fun stuff first yeah yeah i used to do the business way i used to teach it like that before and and when i realized wait a sec this is completely the wrong way around like that's like the tail wagging the dog like the business is is then telling me where i need to be when you know where it's like the business works for me.

1:12:30I don't work for it. So it's a psychology kind of thing that I flipped around. And for five years, I taught it, put it all your business first. And then basically, what does that tell you? Then your life gets the scraps, your family gets the scraps, you know? No, it shouldn't be like that. You put in your life comes first, you know, who is the most, at the end of the day, you know, what's the most important thing? Your wife, kids, mom and dad, you know, whoever's important to you, they go in first. Then you need to look after yourself and you spend time with your significant other. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a relationship and you won't have, you might have a lot of money, but you know, he who dies with the most amount of toys still dies, you know?

1:13:08So you're not taking any of it with you when you kind of like leave. Sorry, mummies of Egypt. Exactly. So what's the point of having all this money if you haven't had these amazing experiences? And I believe that that's your greatest wealth is experiences that you had with the people that you love. Four holidays a year, start off with two days. I can't afford it. I haven't got money. Start with two days, four times a year, pitch a tent, get in the car, drive for an hour, pitch a tent. That costs you nothing. So don't tell me, you know, we started with debts as well. I just, when people start making excuses, I'm talking a bit bluntly to you now, like it's just like, drop the excuses, just kind of like do it.

1:13:44Start with what you've got. That's the whole kind of message. Four holidays a year for two days, then you double it every single year. then once you put in those things then you can look at what other personal things you need to take care of like if you're over 50 then you should probably have an annual checkup with your doctor you know when you're going to do that put that in your diary you know because how many people do you know of that caught prostate cancer too late or breast cancer or those type of things so put that in you get your checkups for some people they might go okay well i got my hair cut maybe eight times a year so i'm going to put those you know kind of personal care days maybe spend a half a day and what i would recommend that you do if you have a few things that you need to do like ladies would kind of go okay i need to do my hair i need to like do my nails whatever great but you don't want to do your hair here then your nails here and then you're waxing there do them all like take half a day once every six weeks or once a month and batch them together and that's like your personal care kind of day exactly you're gonna get through it you know then you got your gym sessions whatever you put all that in then that's the first big kind of like layer and there's like seven or eight things you put in then you put in all your business things and you go okay what are the things that you do that generate the most amount of income for you?

1:14:51Some people, it's events, some people, it's sales calls, some people, it's writing marketing campaigns, some people, it's doing sales promotions if you're running an e-commerce business. So you kind of go put in all of those. And then what are the things that you need to do to kind of like promote that particular thing? Put in all of those as well. So basically call it like your rocks, your pebbles, your sand. Your rocks are all of the big things that generate your income. Then basically the pebbles are all of the delivery things that you need to do to deliver on your promise that you kind of like make um so you've got to sell the thing and then you've got to do the thing and then the sand is all of the other stuff performance reviews batching content you know looking spending like time with your accountant whatever so it's like how often do you have to do it it's like okay i gotta do this every quarter how long does it take takes an hour great i'm kind of gonna put that in four times a year.

1:15:43So you make, you spend about three, four hours and you basically preload about 50 % of your calendar is preloaded. The rest of it can be flexible and you do whatever you need to do at that particular time. But there's a saying that I remember, well, the person's being discredited kind of now, but there's a lesson in it and it's from Lance Armstrong. It's not about the bike. And one of the principles, which is still sound is like eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty. Like if you're an elite athlete and there's an entrepreneur, No, you are like an elite athlete. If you wait until you're tired, you're probably burnt out.

1:16:15And then it might take you weeks before you recuperate. And if you get sick and some people, we know entrepreneurs that have had chronic fatigue syndrome or have, and it's taken them years, literally years to recover. So you're an athlete. You need to make sure you look after yourself. Eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty is all about kind of knowing, I'm not going to wait until something breaks and then it becomes a crisis that's going to be all consuming. if I can just maintain, it's much easier to maintain something than it is to fix something that's broken. So let's not wait until the engine blows up in the car.

1:16:47Let's just go, I'm going to get twice a year. I'm going to book it in for a scheduled service and then it's done. Then you don't have to worry about that stuff. So it's applying that philosophy to your whole life and then you do that consistently for a decade and you'll have massive success. Two big takeaways from Preloaded Year. Number one is it's really important for you to have a conversation with yourself or anybody else you're working with. What's important to me? Because I need to put that first in the calendar. What's important to me, whether it's like my health, my wellness, because I could say something and do something else.

1:17:22I think it's Rameet who says, Rameet Sethi who says, if I look at your bank balance or your bank statement and your calendar, I can basically figure out what's important to you. And what you spend your money and time on is really what you love. So if you want to get into something, then put it in the calendar. Like if I want to start playing pickleball, then I'm going to put pickleball once a week or whatever it is in the calendar. So it's a good way for you to start making some decisions. Decisions are very empowering, I find. Like make a decision, then it's just, okay, I made the decision. and now I just got to do the action, which is great.

1:17:53The other thing I love about it too is that the fact you're setting this up is because a lot of people don't understand that. I think it's brilliant, especially if you're starting out in business. You don't have any guardrails when you're an entrepreneur. So the tendency is to just work all the time, right? When you're an employee at a company, they have a whole structure for you. They have parties and days off and national holidays and vacation time and hours. And a weekend. And a weekend and all this stuff. like where you kind of have to recuperate and rest and they kind of do your preloaded year for you.

1:18:26So you have to do it for yourself as an entrepreneur. And then eventually like you do is like, okay, how do I enjoy life more or do more of life than business and let business take care of itself and let me do all that. But I love this concept of like, I need to build the system for myself because no one's going to do it for me. And I think it's so empowering. We found it super super empowering. We've been doing it for years now. So it's been great. Speaking of like the holidays and the preloaded year and all this kind of stuff, I have a personal question that I've been wanting to ask you for so long.

1:19:00And we've hung out a lot, but I just never asked you, like, how do you not get stressed out, get overwhelmed? You do a lot of stuff, Dale. Like you, you have business blueprint, you know, you're still keeping an eye on, you know, empower you you know you're kind of still kind of an ambassador you have you know virtual staff finder now you have work pod you have investments real estate you you're you're doing trips you're doing vacations you have your own personal house builds you have all these things going on like how do you not be like okay this is just too much to handle how do i how do you keep all the balls in the air how do you relax and go on holiday when you have all this going on like for me it just sounds like either dale is just some sort of like spiritual guru and has can block this all out or he's got systems in place or he's delegated this to somebody like i'm just so curious about how do you not get overwhelmed with everything you do and have going on constantly i'm sure i forgot a whole bunch of stuff that i don't know about i use other businesses other ventures yeah yeah okay so a few things come to mind there's people there's also technology good systems um So let me unpack some of those.

1:20:11First of all, having a wife that can handle like a lot of the finances and the insurance side and dealing with kind of banks and all that stuff is a huge kind of like weight off your shoulder. So if you're in a position where you have kind of have a partner and you can have someone else take responsibility for certain things and you're responsible for other things, that just is amazing. Not everyone's in that position, which is fine. but you could hire someone to kind of help you even if someone hire you to help you around the house with kind of like stuff that you don't want to kind of do or things that you're not good at or maybe you have like a part-time bookkeeper that kind of like helps you with that type of fractional CFO like if you don't have a life partner there are other ways of maybe you have to break it up into three or four kind of people I had I was with one of my friends in Denver of colorado and he just had a person that came into his house and just watered all the plants and like you know and that was just their job to kind of do that because he's like i forget about it and then the plants die and then i kind of get frustrated that i you know so i just i realized that was something that i wasn't very good at uh outsource yeah so we outsourced that and like so you could do that um then you need to once you get over a million dollars a year in revenue in a business you need a good general manager you need someone that is going to be running the day-to-day of the business.

1:21:32What am I looking for with this person? Yeah. So you're local, international, what am I? It depends on the type of business that you have. I, I have someone that's local that's kind of like in my office cause I have sort of staff here as well. So when I'm traveling for a month, it's good that there's some consistency there and, and having people come into an office and someone that's able to, to manage those, those people and spend time with them. And, and so that creates that sort of like office vibe, but I know people that have remote businesses and they might even have their general manager based in another city or even another country.

1:22:04And so, you know, something that you can do. But having someone that manages the day-to-day, whether they become a general manager or operations manager, or even this person could be even like a fractional sort of like type of person to begin with. There's a few people out there that are like, you know, fractional integrators. It's kind of like called if you follow like EOS. That means that like 70 % of the dramas that I'd normally have to deal with between like, you know, a life partner and a general manager. It doesn't even reach you, the drama. Yeah. Most of it doesn't kind of like reach me.

1:22:35So that's kind of the first line of, first and second line of defense. Then from there, the other businesses that I have, most of them have someone that's running that business sort of day to day. So again, they deal with most of the issues and dramas and crises. So do you start that business with that in mind or do you bring them on later? or? Sometimes I have found the business and then found a person to run that business. And other times I've found a person and we've developed a business kind of together. Or sometimes they've started that business and then I've come in six or 12 months later and invested in that business and then became a business partner.

1:23:10But the other companies that we have, there's normally someone else that's running the day-to-day that's in that driver's seat. Then from there, good systems are really important as well. So we've got like a knowledge management system that has lots of systems in place, documented policies and procedures for all the things that we do. And I also have an amazing team in the Philippines as well. So we have in Business Blueprint, we've got 12 people that live in the Philippines that run various aspects of that particular business kind of as well. So it's not all coming to me. So by the time it kind of filters through those people, you know i'm probably only dealing with the 10 of kind of like stuff and then the other thing you know you need to i've just kind of learned that that um you know don't jump before the bullets left the gun in terms of if there's a problem that happens and you can do something about it don't worry like the moral of the story is don't worry if you can't do something about it's going to happen anyway let it happen and it will unfold and then you'll wait and see what happens and you have to respond so if staff member calls up you know and and says like this has happened okay is there anything i can do about it if i can't do anything about it then there's no point worrying about it just going to chew up just more mental energy and just rob you of your kind of like life force and energy better off just going okay i'm going to save my energy for when i have to deal with something that i can control and then if you can do something about it again don't worry about it because you can you're not a tree you can move you can change you can evolve you can you know be resourceful um you can solve it you know and nothing is um everything is figureoutable like everything can be kind of like solved so i just have that kind of mindset around things it's going to be okay we're going to work it out and if there's a problem and we're going to this better opportunity kind of like coming or it's happened for a reason or there's going to be a great lesson in this or this is going to be an amazing story one day and i just approach it with that mindset so i'm not freaking out all the time that's great one of the things that nicole has taught me over the years is how much you know you hear this all the time and like you know uh doctors talking about diseases and like the number one cause of xyz stress right like you know the number one reason for cancer is this like stress is a big part of yeah why people get sick and um one of the things if i'm like my mind is racing or i'm thinking about something in bed the first thing i think about is like okay let me stop worrying because this is going to affect my health yeah i'm gonna sleep well i'm gonna wake up all tired and i can't record the podcast and And all of a sudden, best thing I could do?

1:25:41Go to bed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just knock out. Exactly. You know, and it's just an important point. There is a TED Talk that has been done more recently about stress. And it's not the stress itself. It's how you think about the stress that is the biggest kind of, like, determinant of illness and other things. So I see stress as, like, something that's actually, you know, a good thing. Like, it's kind of like, yeah, like, the fact that you're experiencing stress it's like you're a human being you're you know you could be dead right now you get to live this kind of life and you get to have a good problem to have like you know i've still got two arms i've still got two legs i can see i can hear like you know i have so many gifts that i've got already and a bit of stress like i can deal with that like if everything else like i do my check up i still got my wife i still got my kids i still got my arms i still got my legs what the hell do you have to worry about you know so i do that little check and i go okay this is not this big thing of oh stress it's this thing of stress and i can deal with that and it's okay and i you know i can be resourceful and so i just feel that my it's people's response to stress and actually realizing that stress is a actually a healthy thing like too much of a uh too much of anything is bad you It can be debilitating stress, and that's not good.

1:27:04But a little bit of stress is actually good for you. And it does make you stronger. It does make you more resourceful and learn. It's actually human nature for us to even create stress. If you have elderly parents or you have somebody that's up in age, they don't have a lot going on. They're retired. They're not working. They don't have a lot of issues or problems. so they might just get stressed or create stress because it's boring otherwise there's no problems to solve anymore you know and and i think that's an important thing to think about it's like so if you're getting stress it means that you have a challenge and the challenge is good exactly and i remember like hearing this saying and and it sort of relates to this kind of point and it was something like it's this is not going to be exactly love you mom sorry no i'm not talking about you We're talking to really old people.

1:27:55But it was like, God found a way to punish him. He gave him everything that he wanted. You know, like don't wish for an easy life. Don't wish that you had no problems. The fact that you actually have problems and you have stress is a gift. You know, if you have no problems and no stresses, then you're not living. You're probably dead. Or you are on your way to death if you haven't got any challenges in your life whatsoever. however the fact that they've actually done studies that people that live at the bottom like people live at the top of the hill you know and the shops are down the bottom live longer than people that live on the flat ground people that have stairs actually have more mobility than people that don't have stairs so you know a lot of people go when they you know going into their old age i'm going to get a house without stairs no that's the worst thing you could do get a house with stairs like you want stress you want to put your body under pressure you're in two story go three story exactly but um so don't wish for an easy life you know wish for a life full of highs and lows and challenges and stress because it all is important and you look back on your life and the things that you're most proud of are the times when you've had to overcome the most amount of struggle not like oh i wake up and i had all this kind of like money in my account like who cares we got through this like we went through that remember when we had to fix that remember when we had to pay off all those debts or you know when this person kind of like you know ripped us off or whatever um there that's kind of the stuff that what makes you who you are speaking of problems good problem to have um a lot of people don't think about this until they're in this situation i'm gonna preface it this is a good problem to have first world problem all this stuff But it is something you need to think about and you need to solve.

1:29:45And that's when you start making money. You have some success with your business. You start making revenue. You have a surplus, right? Maybe you're making a lot of profit in your business. And now, okay, now you're going to be paying more tax because of that. You're going to have to do something with this surplus. You have to do something with the money you made, right? Nicole and I didn't come from means. and sometimes people are never taught like how do you not mess up being rich like how do you not mess up having some money what was the first steps you took where you're like okay i have some money how do i invest this properly so that money's working for me and i don't need to just rely on my business for income or or wealth uh if if i get sick if something happens i can take a year off and everything's gonna be okay like what were some of the first steps you took in terms of investments in the profits of your business so that you feel like you have a safety net and, again, you're letting money work for you?

1:30:48Yeah. So if I was to kind of paint a picture from a high level and then we can get into some of the detail, I think there's a certain period of time where you've got to be sold out, obsessed, like focused to just get that thing off the ground and get that business kind of like up and running. and we went through that sort of period of time where we're just completely focused on the business and I think everyone kind of like needs to to do that before you diversify too quickly but what you've got to realize is that once you've got a business that business always has risks risks could be uh in terms of your health um it could be around risks in terms of like technology you know market changes a bigger competitor coming in with like huge like really really deep pockets or people's customer preferences kind of like changing all of a sudden, you know, we don't want this type of product.

1:31:39We want this type of product. So it's always under threat. There's no guarantee. Imagine if when you started your business every single year, it's like, there's a 10 % chance that we could go under this year. You're naked and you never know. So if you kind of realize that, and it's like, if I'm in business for 10 years, there's almost a hundred percent chance that you could get wiped out. Then you start thinking very, very differently. You start to realize that you're not infallible. And therefore, Or the prudent thing to do is to go, I need to take some chips off the table every single year. Because if I just keep doubling down at the casino, which is my business, and going, you know, whatever money I have, I'm going to go red, I'm going to go black, I'm going to go red, I'm going to go black.

1:32:15You might get seven or eight great years in a row. And then all of a sudden, boom, you get wiped out. And so what you need to do is to go, okay, I'm going to take some chips off the table every single year. And it's probably 10 % of what you make to begin with. And then if you can afford to do more, do more over time as well. and put it into other assets. And so we waited about seven years before we decided to invest. We should have done it sooner. At least we did it when we did and we didn't wait another seven years. But the idea is two, three, four years maximum of hustle and grind to get that thing going.

1:32:47Once it's kind of going and you're making some profit, take 10 % and put it into other assets. What's a good first place to put it in? First place would just be to, even if you have like$10 ,000, even if you have$1 ,000, it doesn't really matter. you can set up an account like in australia we've got services like superhero and stake or in america you've got like you know robin hood and and these kind of e-trade and different types of apps e-toro where you can go i'm going to put it into the most basic thing would be like the s &p 500 yeah or the nasdaq for example the s &p 500 even warren buffett said if i was to not be doing what i was doing i'd just be investing in the s &p 500 which is the 500 richest companies like in america which is you know pretty much the biggest companies in the world and let it compound you can look at the average returns it's about 12 percent over the last like 70 80 years that they've been recording these kind of like records and in more recent years like in the last 20 years it's been an average of about 22 percent so they're just kind of compounds the then the next thing to do i was i met this guy uh just two weeks ago actually and he's like all of his friends are telling him he's an entrepreneur, like don't buy a house.

1:33:56It's not a good investment to live in. And mathematically, it's probably, you can probably rent a nicer house for sort of cheaper. But I remember hearing something from Alex Homozy and he basically said, these are some stats, that a married man will always earn more than a single man, like because a married man has more responsibilities than a single man sort of does. And so necessity is the mother of all invention, right? When you have to do something, you'll figure it out. A married man with children will always make more than a married man without children. And then a married man with children with a mortgage will make more than any of those other groups of people on average.

1:34:36So pressure is actually a good thing. Like for a decade, I had nearly a$2 million mortgage and that was like a massive motivator for me. I could take maybe a day off, but I'm like, I can't take two days off. I've got to pay off this mortgage. You've got to make some sales calls. I've got to hustle. and that pressure actually helped made me way overcompensate and has made me tens of millions of dollars on by having that pressure so i said to this guy who's all of his friends are saying you know don't invest in a property just what leave the money in the bank or go rent i'm like no like if look if you don't want to have the the responsibility or the debt that's totally fine go rent um but if you want to put back yourself and you want to actually put some pressure on and you really want that house and you want to have that security or maybe your partner wants that security and she like goes i really want to have my own home and that's important for me then do it do it and feel the pressure and then you're gonna the results that you're gonna produce over the next decade because you're gonna have that mortgage are gonna make you 10 times more money than yes than what you're gonna lose by you know owning a house nicole and i were just talking about this earlier, I think a few days ago, and I equate it to flying business class.

1:35:51If you flew business class once, all you want to do is just not go back to economy. So it's a motivator for you to just do better at what you do in your business so that you can afford. And it's not something that you're worried about financially. I would say, especially in Sydney, buying property is a little bit like that, where it's like, it's not totally a financial, like in terms of property to live in you know it's not a totally financially sound you know decision but there's emotion involved maybe you want to be a homeowner maybe you want to spruce it up change things up do things your own thing and it also is like you said a motivator for you to be like okay how do i make this happen yeah you know how do i how do i figure this out in fact how we like we bought our first apartment slash house um was that um and the reason why we kind of did is we were doing the whole i gotta rent because it's better to have that money and savings in case we need to reinvest it back for those who don't know like renting is like three times less than your mortgage in terms of uh if you the same property if you live in this you know three-bedroom apartment you know your rent is going to be you know your mortgage is going to be 3x your rent yeah so that that the property prices are quite high but you know you keep it going yeah yeah so but what happened was katherine was seven months pregnant and then the person who own the apartment that we're in said oh by the way we're selling the apartment next month we're going to have people through like this weekend and she was just about to you know go into labor at any time and was like she just felt like so what happened was we were telling this story to our neighbor who is literally across the hall uh in this apartment and we said i can't believe it they're going to be basically kicking us out you know and she's like i'm actually thinking about selling my property i was going to talk to a real estate agent next month if you like the location you like this kind of like building what about if rather than me having to lose like five percent commission to the real estate agent i'll just take that five percent off the price and this is what it would kind of like cost you and we were just literally there then doing the maths behind we could just not even have to rent like a furniture removal truck we could just move all of our stuff from one house across the hall to the next apartment one room to the next yeah and And then so that was the motivator that we needed.

1:38:04It was that feeling of uncertainty of Catherine saying, I want to be bringing a child into this world and I don't want to be having to move. And so that was the motivation that we need. That pressure of having a mortgage then forced me to overcompensate and then kind of go nuts with my kind of business and be super productive. And then because of that mindset that I had in that, then like, I got to fix this, I got to fix this, I got to fix that. that compounded over 10 years became a really smart it wasn't probably the best decision at the time numbers wise but when you look at the bigger picture it was then that was actually not that bad yes i feel some pressure of a mortgage and then we work for three years and then we go what about if we get another one that wasn't too bad another one and another one and another one and then sooner or later we had 10 properties and so sometimes just doing the first and right is a good thing because you'd be better off being in the game and learning than being on the sideline, you know, doing nothing.

1:39:03Yeah. And I think that, um, you seem like a person that is motivated by accomplishing goals, accomplishing projects. So this is something that would work really well for you, or it's like, okay, I have a new goal now, which is pay this mortgage off. You know, I have a new goal now, you know, get an investment property and that kind of thing. So, um, you know, I, I, I can imagine people, you know, listening to your advice and be like, the pressure i don't know if i want to go under that kind of thing you know like it's like it's kind of a turnoff for them but i i definitely understand because the truth is is that we don't really don't do anything unless we have to yeah yeah we don't really do anything unless that's exactly it's required yeah i want to talk a little bit about you know you prioritize health and wellness you um do an incredible bike ride for charity every year i was a part of it uh last year where you ride for 500 kilometers for charity for hands across the water you play pickleball you play soccer if i told you let's go play basketball you say hell yeah right like you're just a guy that enjoys health and fitness and all that kind of stuff how have you incorporated that in your life why is it a priority for you is it because you're running businesses because a lot of people don't really do this until they have to you know a lot of people don't actually get in shape or eat well or do whatever they need to do to be healthy until the doctor tells them they have to or they look in the mirror and like who's that person because i've never seen you on unhealthy i've never seen you out of shape why has it been such a part of your life and why do you keep doing it i in my younger years um when i was seven i started gymnastics and so i had like um i was an active kid had a lot of energy um as a as a kid but then when i became an entrepreneur because i'd spent a lot of like more than 12 years going to the gym pretty much every day with sport i kind of like shunned it for a decade and i'm like i'm just gonna focus i wasn't i was just obsessed with my business and also being a parent we have a similar story and and and also surviving like this is the other thing as well like i'm with this kind of like one of the ladies i'm coaching at the moment is a mom and she's got like you know a three-year-old I think and a five-year-old and she's like you know my business is growing fast enough and I want this and I want this and you know this isn't happening this is happening I'm like I said to her you are surviving that's the most important thing that you need to do you're still in business you know you're putting food on the table you're paying your mortgage you're in the game like just maintaining that is massive Like you are already winning and you're exactly where you need to be at that stage of life is your goal is not to conquer the world.

1:41:43Your goal is survival until the kids get to school. And then once the kids get to school, then you can breathe a bit more and then you can nothing's permanent, you know, so just stay with it. You know, don't think that you need to be anywhere else or living someone else's life or you need to be more like, I should be making all this money right now because you're comparing your chapter three to someone else's chapter 12, you know, like you're exactly where you need to be at that particular point in time. And it's meant to be hard. it's meant to be kind of difficult and it's a season that will pass so for 10 years uh i did nothing and then i kind of realized the fact that not looking after your body is actually counterproductive to productivity and success you if you want energy you've got to give energy and so because unless your body is put under kind of like stress uh it's not going to it's not going to give you anything kind of back so again don't wish for an easy life you want to be struggling you want to be out of breath you want to be pushing yourself because that's how your muscles then grow and respond and you know and so I then realized okay I need to um start exercising again so I started kind of like jogging and things like that and or going for a run and then because at the beginning it was just like I'm a parent I have no time I was exhausted and I was working late in the night last thing I wanted to do was like you know go exercise so if you're in that point whereby If you feel like you can't, it's okay.

1:43:07Don't feel like I've got to do all these other things. Just get through that period of time. But then when things become a bit easier, know the fact that you need to start then exercising. And so then I started to play soccer and then pickleball. And that's kind of like forced exercise, you know, in a way. And there's that team sort of element. Going for a run, it's kind of like if I don't go, no one's going to know other than myself. but doing team sports forces you to go i would let myself down but i won't let my sort of team down so i've done that and also i've realized the fact that you look at them you know the book tony robbins did around health something like you know if you're someone that exercises three times a week on average this is like general population yeah you live about 10 years longer than someone that doesn't exercise and so i kind of basically did the maths and i realized every hour of exercise you get to spend another day on this planet, right?

1:44:00So every hour of exercise equals an extra day of life you get to live. So it's like how much, that's a pretty good investment. That's a 10 times return on your money. So on your time. 24. So yeah, exactly. So it's 24. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to like every time I, so basically if you're not motivated to do something, link it to something else that is important to you in your life. like seeing my children's children uh is a big kind of like you know motivator seeing what type of yeah what type of world we're going to be living in in 2081 i was born in 1981 imagine 100 years time you know from when i was born what type of world we're going to live in will we be having like um people living on mars hope so you know what type of uh what will ai be like you know all that stuff i want to be alive and and see that for as long as possible um you know so how much of it is i think about this a lot how much of it is identity like you refuse to be overweight or be out of shape because early on in your life you identify as an athlete you were a gymnast and like you know maybe also the fact that you're on stage and you know you have to be presentable how much of it is like that's not who i am i'm not an unhealthy person yeah how you identify yourself i think that's important i think your identity like does how you think it how you feel the actions you take the results that you get so i think changing your identity and seeing yourself as a healthy person this is who i am and i'm someone i'm a runner you know people that are runners they're like you know they get the six o 'clock it's like i haven't run today i've got to i gotta run like you know because i'm a runner that's who they are they identify you know with that i'm probably not at that extreme but i'm like okay if i can be exercising two three times a week um either with forced through sport or a bit of self-discipline to kind of like get up in the morning and go for a run i've got a peloton now so i can kind of like if i um don't get up in the morning and i then i'm kind of like seven o 'clock at night i can go okay well at least if it's dark outside or it's raining at least i can jump on an exercise bike for 20 minutes and do something kind of like physical you just basically yeah do it i love this concept of like i see myself as a healthy person and healthy people exercise so like i have to do the things that those types of people do if i want to be in that club yeah you know i think one of the best hacks i got was um from adams scott adams the dober guy his book one of his books he mentions that your goal should be just get into the gym just walk into the gym that's all you got to do you know like if you lift the weight fantastic maybe the next day you do a rep or two you know like just the fact that you stepped into the gym yeah three or four times a week you've won yeah right and i think that was so counter the way i think which is like no i gotta go all out two and a half hours what's arnold working out like i'm gonna do arnold's workout you know like you know and this and it's so easy to kind of you know hit a wall and be like yeah you know that that was tough you know and then not be consistent and kind of lowering what success looks like it really helps you kind of people even said if you can't get to the gym just put your exercise shoes on yeah just put your shoes on and then take them off like just lower it down to something you can the first step of the process i love it um you've grown an incredible business or businesses along the way and i would love to get into every single one but uh you know we will be here for 24 hours i want to talk about the fact that you've learned throughout these years of building blueprint and the other businesses and and partnering with other businesses that a lot of it is a science a lot of it is a set of systems uh systems that you can basically repeat and i remember you mentioned this to me that like a lot of business owners think that their business is so unique and it's so like special and all that stuff but basically we all run the kind of same business.

1:47:52It's about 80%, right? 80 % the same. And one of the things that you're launching that I'm really excited about is this concept that you are sharing the 500 most important systems to install in your business and helping people, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, leverage the experiences you had. Basically, you're doing this at another scale, like you did this with a book, but now you're doing this at another scale. It's like, you don't have to learn. You could just install this right inside your business. So tell us a little bit about what is 500 Systems? I want to know why you started it.

1:48:26Who's this for? What pain point does it solve? So as we talked about before, for the last 17 years, we've been doing two months on, one month off. And when people hear about that, that we've been to like 85 countries. They're like, how? Well, it's like, how do we do that? Like, you know, and a big, big part of it is because my business doesn't need me day to day because we have a whole bunch of more than 500 systems. So systems is basically a document or workflow or for how to do something like in your business. It could be as simple as, you know, how do we answer the phone? How do we follow up an invoice?

1:49:05How do we put together a marketing campaign? How do we onboard a new client? How do we onboard a new staff member? all of these different things in your business is a there's policies there's processes and the standard operating procedures so they all basically we'll just use a generic term systems and so what i realized was when people when they go how did you do this i go well let me show you when i showed them inside they're like wow that's amazing like can you one can you teach me um so if i've spent the last 16 years with business blueprint teaching other people how to build all of their own systems.

1:49:39But then I kind of like realized was that when I sat back, because everyone's would say, Oh, but my business is, I can't do that. My business is unique. My business is special. My business is different. But what I've realized is that 70 to 80 % of what a business needs is the same. Maybe 20 to 30 % is different, but there's more that's the same than there is. It's like a car, like every car, like the parts are 75, 80 % the same. They come from the same factories. It's just the shell on the outside and maybe the dashboard and stuff like that looks different but the under the hood the mechanics the chassis the you know the kind of wheels and suspension they'll come from the same factory so they're all the same kind of like uh parts essentially it's the same with uh with business and so what i thought was what about if i could build the 500 core systems that every business kind of like needs um now there's probably a bit more than you need there's probably only maybe 350 400 that would be used by your business but i've given a whole bunch more um just to kind of make sure so you kind of go through the 500 systems and you can then basically go, okay, these are all the ones that I want in my business.

1:50:41And then they go inside your business. And then I'll show you how to create another 100 or 150 that are unique for your business. So what you're left with is 500 systems so your business can run without you having to be there day to day. It's like a playbook that anybody can go to. Exactly, yeah. So what I love about this, first of all, is like the first rebuttal I get when I tell our audience or our students at the$100 MBA, like, hey, you've got to document everything. you got to put SOPs together, you got to put this in Google Docs, whatever. The first resistance I get, it's like, that's going to take forever.

1:51:12I got to write this thing. I got to make a video. I got to get it transcribed. I got to get somebody to do that. Like the fact that you're just like skipping over that step of like, you don't throw anything. It's done. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's great. So rather than starting from scratch, like I've done 80 % of the work for people and they just can go in and then just tailor it for their particular business. I've even written AI prompts that can that alter the systems depending on what type of business that you're in. And it's now loaded into a build our own software. It's a knowledge management system called OneBrain.

1:51:41And it comes pre-installed with 500 systems out of the box that they can then tailor. So it would save, I don't know, at least a thousand, if not 2000 hours worth of time. And so anyone that kind of wants help to build systems, that would be a really good investment. Yeah. I think that But if you're building any kind of business, you should always think about how do I systemize everything, not only to make your life easier and you can go on holiday like Dale does. But one day you might have to sell your business. Like you may not want to sell it right now. My buddy Rob Wallang always says we all sell at the end.

1:52:15We don't take it with us like the mummies, right? We're either going to hand it over to a family member. They need to know the systems. Yeah. If it's all in your head, you don't have a business. You have, you know, basically you're a solopreneur or you're self-employed. You just bought yourself a job. If you're selling it to a company or a third party or something, this is going to increase the value of a company tremendously. I learned this through Women Are Ninjas acquisitions that when it's easier for that team to be like, oh, we can just follow this playbook and just train our team and just watch these videos.

1:52:45That's easy. Okay. It increases the value of your business tremendously. So I think that I don't know what you're charging, but whatever you're charging, it's probably going to be dwarfed compared to the value it's going to increase into your business. how much time you're going to save, how more efficient things are going to be. And the old-fashioned way is what Derek Sivers teaches in his book, Anything You Want. He used to get frustrated because he had a company called CD Baby, where they used to basically sell CDs for artists on their website. And anytime his team, he would be in an office with his team around him.

1:53:16Anytime his team asked a question, he got tired of answering the same question over and over. Somebody asked a question, he would say, okay, is it in the playbook? Is it in the systems that we have? And they'd be like, okay, let me check. They'd check the binder. It was a physical binder at the time. And they would say, no, it's not. Like, okay, then we're going to put this in the book. Okay, this is how you do it. One, two, three, four. Now I want you to write it down, put it in the book. And then the next time somebody asks a question, like, is it in the playbook? Oh, actually it is. Okay, then just read the playbook, right?

1:53:42So this idea of like you not having to be so critical to the business, but also the single point of failure. You know, like that is something that I learned the hard way. something I had to learn very quickly when I built a software company because Nicole and I were operating in the beginning like it's a content business. It's like, no, no, no. We need to systemize things. You need to be in charge of training the support team. I want to be in charge of how are the stand-ups for the developers going to be. And these systems are basically the way we were able to multiply our knowledge or the way we want to do the business to everybody else.

1:54:20in your experience of building your businesses how often do you modify these systems how often do you say actually we could do this better let's improve it yeah like they should be constantly evolving and improving every time that you're doing something you just have the system kind of like there you oftentimes you'll you'll kind of know it by then but you go oh this is kind of changed now the location of the button is now me move so i'll quickly go in and kind of like updating it. We're not using Google Me anymore, we're using Zoom. Exactly. So you'll constantly be kind of like updating as you go.

1:54:53But then what I believe that businesses do is at least once a quarter, sometimes people do this like every sort of two months, but once a quarter, the whole company down tools for four hours, half a day, and you just go through all of your systems and go, what's changed? What's new? You know, what tools are we not using anymore? Or could I make a quick video for that you know i'll just record a video and i'll pop that in there and so that way they're kind of refreshed uh because otherwise what can happen is three or four years go past and then you someone's doing it and it's like this is completely kind of different so you know you call it like um at school we used to have like working bees which was like you know you stopped kind of class and everyone cleaned up or everyone kind of washed the windows or did all that type of stuff like a deep clean yeah exactly so every quarter take four hours and the whole company just kind of goes, okay, your job is to go through your systems and basically go give them the spring clean.

1:55:48Because it piles up. It piles up. It reminded me of like when Webinar Engine we used to do Fridays once a month and it would just be like bug swashing day. Yeah. We're like, okay, these bugs are piling up. Building software, bugs are going to happen and then we build something new. A new bug will pop up. So it's a good way to kind of also maybe even make it fun, party, get your favorite cup of coffee or whatever, drink and let's squash some bugs or let's update some systems. Yeah, yeah. So I love it. Dale, we've been through so much. I love the fact that you shared so much with our audience, but I want to kind of end on something that I learned from you.

1:56:22One of the things I learned from you is that you give so generously and I never feel, I never feel like you want something in return. Like I never feel like you're doing this because one day you're going to ask for a favor or one thing or the other shoe's going to drop. You know, like my question to you is, where did you learn that and how has it helped you in life and business of this idea of just like i'm just going to give and help like you've helped me in so many ways helping give me the advice you've opened doors for me you've put me on your stage like i can i'm you know i'm cutting you short here but so many things you've given me and i've never felt like you're like okay omar now it time for you to give me something you know like it never felt that way ever where does that come from where did you learn that and and how has it helped you yeah um it probably was influenced from my father like he was a small business kind of like owner and his philosophy was just like do the right thing always because uh it's kind of like a long life and the most valuable thing you ever have is your kind of reputation it's kind of who you are when no one's watching sort of type thing that's kind of like you know if you're going to do it do a job um then do it do it properly and don't think that everything needs to be like transactional like i've got to give something to you you have to give something for me like today or this month you know you might give and give and give for three years and then all of a sudden you know they talk to someone that you know have then gives you your biggest contract kind of like ever you know what i mean it all kind of just be a good person no matter whether you're getting something in that moment or not and you will kind of win over the long run i've just seen so many people that have become really rich very very quick being very very transactional but then they end up kind of like crashing and burn kind of getting completely kind of it's so transparent you can see a mile away yeah so just play that play the long game i just need to be a good person deliver value work hard over an extended period of time.

1:58:25I remember I had a mentor, a guy called Brad Sugars, and he said to me, I was 19, and I went along to, he was like a business coach, and he said, anyone can get rich quick in business as long as your definition of quick is 10 years. It takes like 10 years of consistent effort, minimum over time, and you'll do great things. People were always like, I want to get amazing results in six months or a year or two years. And there are some people that do that but oftentimes what goes up really fast must come down even faster normally yeah and so it's better off being consistent over a long period of time and that goes for effort but it also goes in like relationships and looking after people and because that's the one thing that you'll have forever is who is Omar you know who is Dale you know it's that reputation that um is your most valuable kind of like asset.

1:59:19And so, you know, people kind of say like, I've tried to find dirt on you. I've tried to like, I just can't find it, you know, and I'm like, okay, like, you know, it's just because I've never, I've, you know, maybe I don't, maybe I've got a few unhappy people out there, but I've, if anyone's found out about it, I've always tried to, what can I do to kind of make it right? There's some people that just can't be, you know, kind of like healthy if they, if they are just being unreasonable but uh i drew i care and it's not just um you know i don't just say that i really do do kind of care and um i'll just try to be helpful for for people whether i'm going to win in that moment or not it's just like who's a person i'm in front of how can i help them whatever they're doing or not help them or just be a friend or just kind of like because it's a long life and uh you know you're not doing this for getting something back in the future but you also never know when by you might need to call in a favor or just say, hey, you know, is there something that you can kind of do here?

2:00:17And if you've given without asking for anything in return, then if you do ever need help, you know, there's going to be a whole bunch of people there that'll go, sure, I'd love to give something back to you. Now I have a lot of people just reach out to me going, what can I do for you? Like, I want to give back. I haven't even asked for anything in return, but they're like, you've been so kind, you've been so helpful. What can I do for you? And sometimes I go, oh, this would be helpful or this would be helpful. I love it. I mean, we live in the same world of entrepreneurs and, you know, we go to the same events and we know kind of the same people and things like that.

2:00:50And you have the acquaintances and you have the people that you do business with sometimes and some people you refer to and all that kind of stuff. But I would say from all the hundreds of people that we know, probably you can count on maximum two hands who you could say they're a real friend and I would consider you one of those people yeah like you're you're actually a person I can I would call and be like hey man I need some advice you know like and and um you'd answer even if it's two o 'clock in the morning and and it's important to kind of paint a picture what I see in my head is like there's two things um apart from you know your family and your health which are important pillars but a lot of people it's like the one ladder is I want to become rich I want to be successful I want to make a whole bunch of money but they don't see the ladder of I need to be a good person it has a good reputation as well and be a good human being so I can enjoy that yeah and then so otherwise I'm just going to be at the top of this ladder with no one to kind of like you know share it with and everyone thinks that I'm an asshole and I've got all of this money and no one to kind of that wants to hang out with me like what's the point of that like I'm just sort of like for me and you look at all of the longevity studies and they talk about the fact that it's not money that helps you to live a long period of a long life.

2:02:04It's friendships and quality of relationships with people. And that social element is actually more important than how much money you're going to have in your life, which will determine, you know, not just your length of life, but your quality of life is way more important than your social aspect, which is being a good human being, as opposed to how much money you have. One of my heroes is Professor Stallone. I love the story of rocky and how he started you know created that film and that story but one of the things he says that i think is a good kind of note to kind of end on is all great movies have great supporting actors and actresses like if you think about any movie that you love you know there's the main character and there's the hero there's a protagonist but then there's the supporting almost the supporting characters are more endearing and they make the story what it is and his advice was be somebody that attracts great supporting characters be that kind of person and it's an interesting thought like life is better your whole story is better when you have great supporting characters in your story so true yeah so good so good dale thanks so much for being here being here i'm in your office thanks so much for having uh being on our show and and uh spending the time and i love the fact that we got a chance to do this is well overdue thanks for being a friend and being a part of the community.

2:03:25Great pleasure. Thanks, Emma. Appreciate it, man. I had a blast with this conversation, going to his office, going to the studio, enjoying the whole process and learning so much more about Dale. I mean, I know Dale personally for years now. We're good friends, but I learned a bunch that I didn't know before in that conversation. If you want to learn more about Dale Beaumont and Business Blueprint, go to businessblueprint.com. I can't recommend Dale's work enough. Anything he produces is absolute value, absolute gold. He's incredible at what he does, and I've been a part of his events. I've spoken at his events on stage.

2:03:59I've gotten to know him over the years, and I can vouch for this man 110%. If you want to learn more about what he's doing with OneBrain and his 500 systems, if you want those 500 systems, check out OneBrain.it so that you can learn more about that. Dale is an incredible entrepreneur, but he's also a great person. So if you're ever in Sydney, if you're ever in Australia, make sure you reach out to him, have a coffee with him. He's very approachable despite all his success. I think maybe I'm going to be flooding his DMs now, but he is somebody that I'm so thankful I got to know over the years because he's not only been a good friend, but a mentor, but also a person that you can rely on that is going to be honest with you.

2:04:40So love that for Dale. Love the fact that we got a chance to sit down and talk to him. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I learned every time I sit down with these entrepreneurial giants like Dale is nothing comes easy. There's sacrifice involved. Everybody has their own path of struggle, their own path of getting there. But one of the things I learned from Dale is you've got to be proud of how you got there. You've got to be proud of your journey. You've got to be proud of who you've become along the way. At the end of the day, like you said, your reputation matters.

2:05:09Your reputation is everything. And it's what people remember even when you're long gone. So keep that in mind. Also understand that you're carving out your own journey. And your journey is going to look different than Dale's. And you should be proud of that. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

2:05:41By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.