Mastering Change for Success W/ Jonathan MacDonald

0:00Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. Cutting-edge conversations on business and personal success, as well as how to level up. Here's your host, number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. This week on the Big Success Podcast, we have the Jonathan McDonald. His book, Powered by Change, was the number one bestseller and voted as business book of the year in 2019. His sequel to the book is also out, The Rise of Advanced Thought. Now, let's go back a little ways. award-winning, best-selling author, absolutely all of that sort of stuff. Keynote speaker, I've used him on a bunch of stages around the world and had him teach.

0:40His forethought on the digital world and where the world is transforming to is amazing. But what we're going to look at today is change. We're going to look at transformation. His take, and I just finished the interview, so it is phenomenal. His take on success is vastly different to what I've heard from so many people on this podcast before. So I think you're going to love that. How we get into his area of transformation and change in the second segment, some of the stuff he talks about there, the AI, all of these things will possibly blow your mind. I mean, this is an entrepreneur, an investor who he consults with the like of Google and Ikea and Sony, Heineken, Lego.

1:18You name the blue chip company, P &G, Apple, Microsoft. These are all the companies that bring him in to change their thinking about where they're going and set their goals and transform their business. Every time I chat with him, I feel like I've got so much more to learn. And I think that you'll find the same today. Amazing thinking. Welcoming in. It's actually his 50th birthday. He said he'd only do it for me on his birthday. This is Jonathan McDonald. So Jonathan, I got to ask you the first question every podcast asks. What is success to you? Like, how do you define success? For me, I think there's a few different contexts.

1:58There's a personal context of success, which is down to how you're measuring your own fulfillment and your own potential. I remember Mark Parker from Nike once said that he doesn't measure the distance between Nike and the competition. He measures the distance between Nike and its potential. And I like that. It kind of feels to me that that's kind of a way of personal success metrics. And then there's an external version, which is an external context, which is whether or not you're successful in the eyes of other people. yeah um and of course people like you and i i doubt hair that much about the second version um and of course that it comes it comes with a it comes with a kind of a downside as well because as soon as you're successful um you're seen as a target and as soon as you're seen as a target then people can write all kinds of stuff and and make up all kinds of crap so i'm more interested in the first context uh of personal fulfillment and personal potential that's how i see it so how do you on a day-to-day basis or on an annual basis how do you compare where i'm at versus my potential is there a way you do that yeah i kind of see it as a as a three-pronged uh metric really this i mean to be honest no one's ever actually asked me about this so uh this is kind of a world exclusive there's no other podcast you'll find with me speaking about this particular point so i'm glad you asked three there's three kind of levels the first one is um whether or not i feel as if I'm achieving my ability to think as clearly and as proactively as I could.

3:26So I'm almost constantly thinking about that, like kind of thinking about how I think. The second is around how I, what I'm saying or how I'm interacting with people, which is predominantly listening. And, you know, we've got two ears and one mouth in a, in a correct ratio for a reason. So it's whether or not I'm listening actively enough and whether or not I'm speaking proactively enough and constructively enough. And the third is in terms of action. So what I'm doing is what I'm doing the best that I could be doing for myself, which is my weak spot actually. And, or is it the best I could be doing for other people?

4:01So for instance, I, my physical activity could be better. I spent a lot of time sitting down. I could, I see you now standing up. I could be doing this standing up and I don't. And also this morning, cause it's my 50th birthday today. Oh, happy birthday, dude. I didn't know that. 1973, baby, huh? That's right. That's right. So my wife made me a giant breakfast and we've had a few mimosas. So I'm kind of out of my Weight Watchers points already, and it's not even like one o 'clock in the afternoon yet. So it's kind of, you know, but these are the healthy, these are the habits that, so I mean, I try and look at it on how I think how I speak and listen I communicate and how I act and my I think I'm probably major I'm a majoring in the the thought processes side that bit I'm probably the most active on I'm minoring in the uh activity side and health side and I need to really work on that I'm kind of you know 40 pounds overweight I've I could I there's so much more I could do to refine my habits um so So my priority at the moment is to work on my activity side and my actions.

5:13Yeah. And I think I'm much better at communication nowadays because I'm learning more by listening to smarter people than me. And that's kind of some of the first two contexts are pretty much in tune. The third one is still work in progress. You know, we've all got that. We all and people use the word balance. I like the word harmony in life rather than balance. And you try and do that. I want to go backwards in life, though, and say, when did Jonathan McDonald choose success? When did you actually choose? Like, was it a young boy? Was it was there a point in time where you said, you know what, I'm going to be successful?

5:47I think that when I was younger, I was because I was I was given up at birth. I grew up in a couple of foster homes and orphanages. And then I got adopted by a family who were very working class and had to start from scratch. You know, the first 10 years of my life were, you know, I mean, literally it was Christmas time. It was an apple, maybe in a pencil or whatever for Christmas. You know, we had absolutely nothing, but, you know, it was home. And so I didn't see success as a thing that was an aspirational concept. It was more like survival. Yeah. And so my version of success internally is whether or not I'm able to get food on the table, whether or not I'm able to allow my parents to retire.

6:33And eventually I managed to do that. And so I've never actually seen it as something that is a concept that is different than survival for me. And when people say that I've been successful, I mean, apparently externally, I have been quite successful, you know, whether it's any of the achievements I've had. But I would have, I personally, I execute. All I do is I plan and I prepare and I execute. And I do that with everything in my entire life, with no exceptions whatsoever. And if you could say that success, then fantastic. That's just how I roll. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, when we define success for ourselves, meeting your potential is yours and then looking at it, it's a different way of doing it.

7:22So how, if you go back to that formula, you just sort of said, you know, I plan, prepare, and then act. Is that, in your mind, is that how success happens? Like if you watch other people who succeed, is that what you're seeing? Or is there another formula, another way you see success happening so there's a there's a netflix um documentary at the moment called breakpoint which is around last year's um tennis series and and i'm four episodes in and the entire set of i mean it's a brilliant documentary absolutely fantastic even if you don't like tennis it's brilliant because the success criteria is down to one sentence you could actually you could describe the entire documentary which by the way is by the same producers i think as drive to survive which is a formula one version yes on netflix which is coming out in 20 days time i think 25 days time for this for last season it's all inside one sentence and that's a quote mark twain quote which is whether you think you can or you can't you're right and that's the entire netflix documentary you can watch all of these all of these different episodes and it's purely based on to whether the player in their mindset in that moment believes that they can the entire thing is based on that they haven't said it they haven't highlighted it but if you watch it and i challenge any listener to to to to try and see if you can see the message that's coming through because your your match point your two match points down your opponents serve and the people who think this is over i'm done i'm in the i'm in the showers early definitely are going to lose those that say right now i've just got to win the next three points um they they almost certainly win so it's not necessarily down to quite a physical ability these players are pretty much the same capabilities obviously there's freaks of nature in the world but you know fritz the guy you know your dude taylor fritz is like six foot five he's anatomically it's useful but at the end of the day really yeah but but some of these things are kind of marginal gains the truth the real game is whether or not you actually have the capability to park your emotions for a moment and go sure you're two sets down got it that sucks it's better to be two sets up got it but the thing is this it's a fight it's the best out of five so you know there's still some there's still some leeway here i i i don't believe i it's purely down to whether or not you stand up one more time and you get thrown down that's that's the law of martial arts yeah that's the way i said yeah i said i'm living here in vegas the old doyle bronson i just need a chip and a chair as long as I've got a chance, I can win, as long as there's a chance.

9:57And that's an interesting one. So let's flip that over. How does failure teach success in your mind? I think there's only one categorization of failure, and that is not learning. So provided you're learning, you're not failing. You're just learning. And it's a real failure is when something happens and you don't learn from it. That's a disaster. That's like the most failing of fails uh whereas if you do if something happens and and and you learn from it i mean in business i would say i've come i've had out of all the ideas i've ever had and all the things i've done and all the startups i've been involved with about i've got about 50 if i'm lucky at 50 strike rate yeah so 50 of the time it works 50 of the time it sucks and and i i say this to everyone i'm ever in business with i start off in in a business and say listen this problem is it could go to shit it could go wrong or it could go right and i don't know which way it's going to go but we're going to go for it anyway yeah and and so my as long as i can learn from the times when it's quote unquote doesn't go right if i can learn from that like for instance i've learned in the last even the last five years that my biggest weakness was trusting the wrong people and and that's kind of you know this is a big kind of eye-opener because i thought i had a pretty good read on people and the last five years has taught me that i have really my read on people sucks so that's that means i haven't failed in reading in reading people wrong because i've now learned that that's a weak spot yeah um if i didn't notice that as a weak spot i didn't have the humility to think hold a minute i need to work on this then i'd have failed yeah that word humility is really important in learning isn't it you know oh you're on the big success podcast we're with jonathan McDonald.

11:41We're going to come back and talk about change and communication, the digital world and transformation. This is what we're doing. Let's see you in a second. Join Brad Sugars' landlord event and you will quickly see why real estate investing has long been the backbone of serious long-term wealth for so many. That said, so many try and fail at creating wealth because they simply don't learn how. Visit bradsugars.com and attend this program as a standalone or as part of a Brad Sugars' Entrepreneurial University. And you're back on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad sugars. We are with the Jonathan McDonald, famous author, famous speaker, and crazy man sometimes.

12:17But, you know, over the years, you've come and spoken at conferences with us. You've done a bunch of things with us and helped us learn a lot of things. One of the things is that of change. How do we succeed at change? I think the main thing about change to understand is that it's inevitable and that's a massive point to kind of digest today's the slowest pace of change you'll ever experience so the we don't actually we have a choice in theory i mean when the winds of change are blowing we can either build a wall or build a windmill um but the the idea getting the getting your mind around the fact that that change is the only thing that we know is going to happen and that today is the slowest pace of change means that change is dealing with change is largely about mindset.

13:04And sure, it's handy to have a bank full of cash. It's handy to have a product market fit. It's handy to have a million customers. It's handy to have all those things. But the truth is you can have all of that stuff. I mean, you know, there are many, many companies that have had all of that stuff and still lost. 84 % of the Fortune 500 in the last 40 years have gone out of business. So, you know, you're never too big to fail. You just fail. You should just fail bigger. So, and the difference between failure and success in that context is largely about how people conceive change and act upon it.

13:36And what I've noticed is that companies that go out of business tend to have handled change in a way that's disingenuous. It's not productive. In other words, they've built a wall and hoped that change will pass. It's like people who say to me at the moment, they go, wow, I'm so glad that COVID's finished. Oh, thank goodness. You know, no more pandemics. I'm like, wow, you think that that's it? You think that you're going to have one pandemic? interesting you think that there's no more lockdowns in your life yeah interesting point it's like you know the only thing that we know is that today isn't a predictor of the future so you may as well assume and I you know my wife says that I'm realistically pessimistic my view is that you know it's pretty pretty much a guarantee that stuff's going to go south and so I'm thinking almost all the time about what would happen if and I plan accordingly you know I I created on Udemy, there's a, oh, sorry, is it Udemy?

14:28Yeah, it's on Udemy or Coursera. I've got a course called How to Be a Professional Speaker. And there's a module about how to be a professional speaker online. And I recorded that seven years before the lockdown, specifically just in case the entire speaking industry stopped and you had to do online talks. And, you know, seven years later, the lockdown happens and the course sales went through the roof. And it's only purely because I was thinking, well, what would disrupt me? I mean, if I didn't have the ability to speak on stage or I couldn't write books or whatever, what then? And now I'm thinking about what happens if I can't think anymore because predominantly I'm cognitive.

15:02So that's my asset. So I'm thinking, what happens? So what I'm building now is an AI which can learn me as much as humanly possible so that the next interview you and I do, if I'm not around anymore, you could have with my AI that has pretty much the same understanding of me as I do. I'm both excited by that and extraordinarily challenged by that at the same time. So I'm going to jump straight to, I'm going to come back to that point though. Changing your thinking, because when you did Powered by Change, you came up with this, the rise of advanced thought as the sequel, I guess, to Powered by Change.

15:42What is the key success factors in changing our thinking? well there is if you start it from a really base grassroots level um there is it's extremely important to understand that there are you know two types of thought there's the kind of fast and slow or system one system two you know kahneman and zversky did brilliant work in the 70s about this and thinking fast and slow is a great book but at the end of the day if you think about the two systems that we have we have a very slow rational logical thought process inside our brain which is about five percent of how we think and then 95 of how we think is irrational unpredictable highly emotional crazy right so and we're all and people will be listening to this going no i'm very much more 50 50 and it's like well that that's that's an emotional response to what i was saying so so the so we are actually irrational unpredictable people and what we tend to be as well is thinking in ways that are pretty much the same pattern as the day before so we think about 80 to 90 ,000 thoughts per day and about 80 % of those thoughts the same as the day before so we're living in a holding pattern of bias and that bias is the emotional part where we we actually prefer things that we know we like or we eat things that we know make us comfortable and we sit on a certain sofa because that's what we do things that we think is going to make us lucky we see a penny a cent on the ground we pick it up because that's going to be lucky or we don't walk under the ladders and all of this stuff is complete fiction but it makes us feel more secure and more comfortable.

17:12And so in terms of mindsets to enable change to be productive, the starting point is to realize that if we can work on our thoughts, as much as we work on our bodies at the gym, or as much as we work on our relationships, if we can work on our thoughts, then we can actually enable a life and fulfillment that's far more advantageous for ourselves, because we tend to be sleepwalking through life. And that's why the rise of advanced thought exists, because it's like, hey, this is a muscle, your thought muscle is the most important muscle, bear in mind, it controls your reality what you actually believe in and what you do in your life comes from how you think and as the saying goes you've got to watch your thoughts because they become your behaviors and behaviors become your destiny so that we have to think about how we're thinking much more and that's why i had to write the rise of advanced thought the reason i self-published it is because the publishers were absolutely disinteresting they said powered by change just needs a sequel about businesses and i said but businesses are full of people i need to book about people that's what businesses are.

18:07Businesses are people. And they're like, no, it has to be about business. And I said, well, I'm going to write a book about people. And they're like, well, you have to go on your own. So I self-published it and sold 70 times as many copies on my own. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that way that they just don't see that, you know, when we build it. But hang on, let's jump into the next section then. Transformation. Let's go to the business side of transformation, then come back to the individual side of transformation. How do we succeed at transformation? I think that if we don't have a purpose and an objective in place, it's hard to know what you're transforming toward.

18:44So it's like kind of setting a satellite navigation system without a destination. So I think it's extremely important to actually work out where it is that we want to get to and stop the negative concern about not having the roadmap in place yet. That's fine that's the part of the fact that we don't actually have the roadmap but let's work out what the destination should feel like or look like or sense and that's that's the starting point and when i see transformation programs that haven't worked my first exclusive question throughout my whole 33 years in business is the same question i've always asked which is where were you trying to get to what was the actual destination 90 of the time when transformation doesn't work they've well, we never really kind of worked that out.

19:31And I'm like, how would you imagine that the satellite navigation system would have got you to wait because you don't actually know where it is. So I would say, you know, I mean, Einstein said that if he had 60 minutes to answer the hardest question in the world, he'd spend 55 minutes defining the question and then five minutes solving it. And that's my point about transformation. Very neat, very unique. So that comes back to the work you've done on the digital world, which if anyone hasn't studied Jonathan's stuff on the future and the digital stuff, please do that. It's phenomenal. So if you're looking at transformation today, understanding what is already available is a massive part of defining where you want to go, I guess.

20:13Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, I read, I have a news feed. I use Feedly for my news feed and I pay for the premium version, which I'd highly recommend. I'm not an affiliate. I just think it's brilliant. and my Feedly feed has got maybe 900 news sources and I spend at least an hour each day observing what's happening all over the world in all industries. And the reason I do that is because if I don't have an oversight of what's going on, it's very, very hard to predict what's around the corner or sense the trends. You know, there's a zeitgeist at the moment about certain topics in certain areas of the world that are completely ignored in other areas of the world.

20:48So if someone comes up to me and says, hey, we've got this new idea, would you like consider coming on as a non-exec or a chairman? I said, well, you do realize that Tencent are just about to launch this in Asia, right? And they're like, no, no, we didn't know. It's like you've got to at least look into the stuff that you're doing around the world. But my advice would be to look into all other industries as well. Yeah. Yeah. That's my view. So let's go back then transformation as an individual. Does the same rule apply or is there more to it transforming yourself? I think it's the same in both contexts.

21:22So for instance, I know that I want to be 40 pounds lighter weight because I'm 50 years old as of today, as we know. And I think I'm at a risk at the moment of probably type 2 diabetes risk. I think there's probably, you know, there's a few other things that are, you know, blood pressure situation and cardiovascular stuff. So I need to, for me, be a healthier version of me so that I can live long enough to see my kids grow up properly. I mean, they're 20 and 22. But is that transformation or is that just gradual shift? Yeah. I think it's pretty much same, same. At the end of the day, all transformation is a journey through change.

21:58And so it can be a micro or it can be a macro journey, it doesn't really matter. And the mindset approach is still the same either way. Because, you know, from a personal perspective of transformation, if you start with the objective in mind and the goal, it makes life a lot easier. So you'll know in business, and you've helped so many people through businesses. I mean, I can't imagine the tens of thousands of companies and people you've helped and hundreds of thousands of people you've helped in your life. I mean, I've seen you on stages for years and years and years and years and years talking about how the vision that people have is sometimes quite low in comparison to what their potential could be.

22:34Why do people think that their turnover should be$10 million? Why shouldn't their turnover be$100 million? Why would you only set the bar low? You know, my view is that, I mean, Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player, was asked in an interview on CNBC once said, Wayne, why do you think you've scored more goals than anyone else in high soccer? And he said, I miss 100 % of the shots I don't take. And I was like, oh, so really, the reason why he's achieved more goal scoring than anyone else is because he's tried more than anyone else. Yeah. Because he's actually set the bar higher, right? You know, I mean, there's lots and lots of business people in the world who can help you try and grow your business from a$500 ,000 turnover to a million dollar turnover.

23:14But there's very few that say, okay, we've got$500 ,000 turnover. Let's make that$50 million turnover. If someone gives me$250 ,000 in investment, my view is to return them$2.5 million. You know, my baseline, my baseline, baseline, baseline is 10x everything. And so if anyone's listening to this thinking, yeah, well, I know, but we can't do that because we've maxed our business out. We're making seven and a half million dollars profit. And that's as much as we can make. I bet you there's a way of making 75 million dollars profit. I bet you there is. We'll be back in just a moment on the Big Success Podcast.

23:47We're going to talk about scaling up and going big. Jonathan J. Mac McDonald has been working in the digital industry for over 20 years and has helped companies such as Google, Microsoft and Ikea to navigate the ever changing landscape of the digital age. He has also authored several books, including Powered by Change and Brand vs. Wild, which offer valuable insights on how businesses can adapt and thrive in today's fast-paced world. To learn more about Jonathan, please visit his website today. So Jonathan, I got to ask, you've consulted with some of the biggest companies in the world. What's the difference between a company that does good and a company that does amazing?

24:25What do you see as a difference in those? Well, there's been some brilliant research on this. You know, Cotter and Heskett did some great research. HBR have done some brilliant research. And everyone's research turns out the same. The outcome is always the same. In good to great and all the other pieces of work that have been done, the answer is the answer. Has been for the last 100 years of commercial enterprise. The answer between a good company and a great company all boils down to a sense of purpose that people inside the business believe in. And it's always based on whether or not people believe in the reason why they're doing what they're doing.

24:58and the company has a clearly defined purpose. It's like, this is what we're doing. And everyone understands what they're doing and everyone believes and buys into what they're doing. And then the customers believe in what the company is doing and everyone goes along with the ride. That is the difference between an average organisation that turns over, in the space of 10 years, their profit may increase by 10%, 11%. And a great organisation over 10 years, their profit will increase by 400 to 600%. And that's how most metrics are based on what good is and what great is. And it's always based on that thing.

25:29So then you look at that and think, right, so how can you enable sense of purpose and objective to be so clear? And it's like, well, ask yourself, why do you do what you do? Why do you think it matters? One of the questions I've asked people in large businesses, small businesses, is I say, what would happen if you stopped doing what you're doing? What would the impact be on life? And I remember a card company, like a greeting card retailer said to me, and I said, you know, what would happen if you went out of business? And they said, people would just walk 50 yards further up the road and buy a greeting card from a competitor.

25:59And I said, well, in which case you're already out of business, you're already dead. It took them 13 years to go bankrupt, but they did. And what the answer should be, if we went out of business, we would have 10 million complaints immediately because we would actually be ruining people's lives. How could you build a business that matters that much? And if you can't think of what would matter that much, then it's down to what would matter to you that much. If you can clarify, let's say three concentric circles. One is what you're genuinely good at. Everyone has a latent talent, even if they don't use it.

26:33What are you genuinely good at? The other one is, next circle is, what makes you extremely happy? Doing what makes you extremely happy? And the third one is, what would enable other people to have extreme value from what you're doing? And if you can overlay, what would enable value for other people, which by the way means what they'll pay for with what would make you extremely fulfilled yourself versus and on top of what you're actually latently good at what your dormant potential really is that sweet spot in the middle means that and we you and i find this naturally this is what we do you're we are doing this now because we love doing it we're good at doing it and it adds value to other people so then it doesn't feel like work yeah you know i saw this in my calendar coming up today on my birthday, the only meeting I'm taking on my birthday.

27:19And I'm thinking, great, I get to chat with Brad Sugars, the legend himself. I chat about this. We have loads of people listen to it. They then think that they can actually achieve more in their business and become more successful. It's a win-win-win. It's perfect, easy. So let's bounce that idea to individuals. How do you get an individual who has like a goal of, I don't know, a million a year and say to them, Let's transform your thinking to 100 million or a billion a year. How do we leapfrog someone from level A to level Z type thing? I think the first thing to do is to uncover what the barriers are, because mostly they're mental barriers.

28:00And those barriers tend to be bias barriers. And out of the biases, there's one that supersedes all else. And that one is loss aversion. People are so scared of what they could lose, but they prefer to do nothing and have that type of loss rather than something and potentially lose it. I'll give you an example. So if you say to someone, I will give you$500 if you walk across the street and buy me a coffee, people go, wow, that's a great deal. The coffee's going to cost 10 bucks. I'm going to make$490 profit. Fantastic. So that's one deal. Then two minutes later, you go, actually, I normally pay people$5 ,000 to go and get me a coffee, but here's the 500 nonetheless.

28:42You feel as if you've just been robbed by$4 ,000. And that's because people's concept of what's losable expands as the information becomes greater. So if I say to you, right, I reckon I could turn your business into a billion-dollar company, but you're probably going to, at some stage, you need to put your house on the line. You probably need to put your house up as collateral. They'll go nowhere. It's okay, right. So you don't want to lose a million dollar home versus the potential of a billion dollar business. No, I don't. It's like, OK, you're not suited to be a billionaire. You're not. This is not the people who absolutely and utterly max out, who actually achieve their potential from a financial perspective at some point or another, have put absolutely everything on the line.

29:27And the reason why people don't necessarily want to achieve that much is not because they don't wouldn't like the trappings of that type of income. is because they wouldn't, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And it's like, don't do the crime if you ain't going to do the time, right? So if you really want to 10X your business, 100X your business, what would you do? What would you put on the line for it? And if the answer is everything, because I believe so much in what we're doing, I'll put the whole damn lot on the line. The chances are you'll probably win. And if you don't win, you're going to learn so much that the next time you probably will win.

30:01Yeah, yeah. All right, let's go to the lightning round and let's talk about success in quick, short answers. What's the key to success in self-development? Self-development success is based on your mindset as to what your potential is and understand the difference between where you're at and where you could be. How do you succeed at goal setting? Have a crystal clear vision of what good would look like or feel like, or even observe other people's version of what good looks like and resonate with the bits that make you happy. And then you write that down as your goal. How do you succeed at communication?

30:38Understand the other person more than what you're trying to achieve in your communication outbound. If you can understand them from an inbound perspective, you can communicate 10 times better. How do you succeed at relationships? Exactly the same as the previous answer.