Leading Life Coach: These steps reduce anxiety, stress, and burnout.

0:00Money is simply an echo of value. Success without fulfillment is hollow. So if you found a way to deliver immense value to people, whether it's through your work, whether it's through the business, that money will follow. But if you follow the money first and sacrifice the value in everything else, it's not sustainable. Simon is a best-selling author, speaker, a global leading personal development coach, and an expert in the Japanese concept of ikigai. He works with leaders to help them reconnect with what truly fuels and motivates them. His clients include executives at Morgan Stanley, Coca-Cola, and Huel.

0:35Simon's book, Energize, won the 2023 Business Book Award in wellness and well-being, and he has over 170 ,000 YouTube subscribers. I think we have mistaken business for purpose, and we wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. And I don't think they're necessarily exhorted because they're physically doing too much, but more likely because of two things. Coaching is more about helping someone create consciously a better future. Can you do that without making peace with your past? They are living a life that is impressive on the outside, but not true to themselves on the inside. If you attach your emotional well-being to achievement and outcomes, you will never have enough.

1:24It drives procrastination, it drives excuses, it drives perfectionism. And ultimately, I think it boils down to the question of, am I enough?

1:37The challenge is...

1:47Simon, thank you for joining me. My pleasure. For those who are not familiar with your work, what is it that you do? So what I do now is I speak on stages around the world. I coach high performers I write books and I just try to leave a positive impact in the world through everything that I do If you were to summarize this into a role what would be your role? What's your profession? I take on a variety of different roles but I guess if I had to distill that into one title probably life strategist is the closest if I had to distill everything into one And what drew you in your life to become an expert in this?

2:27So when I grew up, I had this mistaken belief that success is defined by your job title. And so when I was going through my teenage years and thinking about what I wanted to do after graduation. And that was here in the UK. That was here in the UK. It was very much now defined by be a banker, be a doctor, be an accountant, be a lawyer. And so when I graduated, I fell into the world of finance. Worst possible time, this was the middle of 2007. And just to make things a little interesting, the company I started my career with was Lehman Brothers, which collapsed into administration around 14 months after I joined.

3:04And even though I would spend nearly 10 years in the financial industry before I would quit and become an entrepreneur, the crisis kickstarted the longest journey I feel we humans make, which are the inches from my heads to our hearts. Never an easy journey, but the most important and fulfilling we will ever embark on. so that kind of led me to explore my curiosities i knew that as long as i worked for someone my future was never guaranteed but if i could find something that i could do for myself i would have greater control over over my future and so i just went exploring in the margins of my life and that led me to the world of coaching uh you know i always enjoyed helping people i thought it was just being a good friend when you when you help someone give up some of your time to to help them through their lives.

3:52But I never realized until I went to a weekend event that talked about the skill of coaching, that I could actually build a career out of this. And that's what got me thinking about what that could look like. And so in 2016, beginning of 2017, I quit the financial services industry. And I started on the entrepreneurial path, just started coaching people one on one. And from there, I realized that this is the thing I can do this is the thing I can do that has a tangible impact and from there evolved into speaking and writing books and interviews and all the other things that I now get to do today so in 2008 Lehman Brothers collapses and then you start your new venture your new journey in 2014 so those are six years yeah walk me through that discovery so the first thing I realized so when I When I left Lehman Brothers, I moved to a hedge fund.

4:46I just needed another job because we were going for a lot of volatility in the financial services industry. And all I knew was finance. I didn't know anything outside of this bubble of being in the financial services industry. So I moved to a hedge fund. And it sounded like a glamorous role on paper. I was a junior trader. I was supporting a few senior traders. But the reality was anything but. It was long hours. I was one of the first into the office, one of the last to leave. and there was a moment probably in my second year there where my life just started taking a downward spiral so i didn't have time to to exercise i was surviving on junk food i had little sleep because i had to follow the markets almost 24 7 and one christmas which in this industry was always full of client entertainment one christmas i went to this event it was held in the nightclub in central London.

5:42And I remember before I went down, I texted my girlfriend at the time. I said, I'm going to this event and I should be back by around one o 'clock. I'm going to take the last train home. So I go down, I check in my bag. I get no reception because it's an underground club. And before I know it, the drinks start flowing, the entertainment kicks off, and the alcohol goes through my system and time just disappears. I'm stumbling outside the club around mid-morning, find the taxi, finally get home. And my girlfriend's crying because she couldn't get hold of me. She was leaving voice notes. I was unreachable.

6:18And I realized at that point that I was going to lose more than just my relationship. I was going to lose my job. I was going to lose any sense of purpose. And once I sobered up the next day, I realized that I had to live with more intention. I had to do something to change where I was. And so I took a job still within the financial industry. You think you were going down that path because your job was not fulfilling you? It wasn't fulfilling me. I was in a career I'm not sure I wanted to be in. I was chasing a version of success. I'm not sure it was my version of success. But at the same time, I didn't know what to do.

6:58And so I was using drink, I guess, entertainment, partying as a way to kind of numb that pain until it kind of came to a head. And I had to make a decision. You know, if I continued along this way, I would be going down a very depressing path or I had to make some changes. How long did you feel like that for? I think the buildup of that was probably a number of months post the financial crisis because when i got my my job at lima brothers i was over the moon you know as a new graduate you've got your first job in in a well-known investment bank that's paying you a good salary yeah of course you're gonna you're gonna feel a bit happy uh but then when the crisis happened uh suddenly the career i thought i wanted and thought i was going to build my future in was just slipping away you know when i first got my job, I was like, okay, I'm going to stay here, I'm going to build my career over the next six or seven years, move up the ladder.

7:58And then at that point, I can decide what I want to do. Maybe I'll switch jobs to another company. And I can build from there. But within just 14 months, I'm out of a job, I have to move to a new job, the new job isn't what I expected. I'm being burnt out. And I just didn't have any sense of a, of an exciting future. And so once I started sharing this with with my girlfriend, which was tough for me. I grew up in a very strict Chinese household where you didn't really talk about your feelings. You know, it's always about pull your socks up, get things done, bad things happen, get back up and continue.

8:35But we never really were encouraged to talk about what was going on in our heads. And so she gave me this space to really talk into. And I shared what I was going through and how uncertain I was about the future. and the solution really was just to get more time to to go inward which i never had as soon as i started my career so what i did is i quit that job and i was still in finance but i moved to a more research driven role which was kind of in the hours you know suddenly i had my evenings back i had my weekends back and i could use that time with more intention i would move my body more i I would change my diet.

9:14I would start thinking about what I wanted to do long-term. I suddenly had time to think about this stuff, which I never really had before. I was caught up in the business of this machine, but now I had a job that was kinder in terms of the hours at work. I was able to redirect my life in a more sustainable and thriving way. Interesting. So you have this heavily influenced definition of success, heavily influenced by society, by culture, and very sure also by your parents and their disciplined mindset. And then when you are so-called successful because you landed that thing that will make you enough and then everything needs to make sense, you quickly realize very quickly, 14 months, very quickly realize that that is not for you and you start making the wrong choices.

10:06You go out too much, you drink too much, you consume drugs. and that was the catalyst moment for you to drive change in your life. And in that moment, instead of going through a transformational change, you decide to take a baby step, which is softer. It is easier. Let me just go into a job that allows me to have more time for myself to understand what is it that I want. And then through that extra freedom, time, then is when you realize that you wanted to become a life coach. Yeah. And I think that's important because when we think about any personal transformation journey, the first step is awareness because you can't change what you're not aware of.

10:46And so I needed that time to do a bit of introspection. And no one can help you in that journey, right? You need to understand it by yourself. Yeah, I think there is this unspoken experience in any transformation journey of loneliness. You will go through a period of loneliness, especially when you shift from one environment to another. Because not everybody is going along that same path. Not everybody is ready for that transformation. But when you are ready, that first step is knowing who you are. No one else can do that apart from yourself. and when you go through that transition it will feel lonely because you're leaving behind the old version of you in order to embrace a different identity in order to embrace that new future and so i had to go through this period of loneliness where i just went inwards i started journaling really kind of understanding who i was what were the things i was interested in what gave me energy what drained me of energy what was i curious about um and and then the next challenge was to begin building my life around those answers.

11:49You know, it's one thing to put your answers down on paper to understand who you are. It's another to then do something with it. How long did it take you to find these answers? It took me a few years because I still fell into the trap of chasing money. I was so used to chasing money. You know, when it was finance, it was because it paid well in addition to... A few years is too long in your opinion? I think there's no right or wrong. It was a few years for me. it might be a few months for someone else. It could be longer for others. For me, it was important to take as long as I needed in order to make sure I was going, I was going the right direction.

12:27And so it took me a few years to really understand what I wanted to do. And part of that journey was also exploring my curiosities. It was going to events, it was reading books, it was building relationships with people outside of my industry, which eventually gave me the inspiration to try my hand in business you know i i tried a few things with friends didn't work out eventually led me to coaching um and that was the thing that stuck because i i had this there was this sense of fulfillment and reward when i could see visibly and feel the impact i was having with someone in a coaching session

13:08a lot of people might be listening to this and think that they might build some excuses to not drive change in their lives probably one of the easiest ones is i need the money so i cannot change so i cannot do something else another one might be it's too late for me because i'm too old so i've made those decisions already you know long gone the train has left the station what would you say to them i would say one of the greatest predictors of any meaningful success in your life is the stories that you tell yourself if you tell yourself you're too old you're too young you have no money you don't have enough resources you don't have the right connections you don't have time then guess what that story will become true that will become the story that drives every behavior and every choice and every action you make and so this is why we have to be aware and conscious of the stories we tell ourselves all of these stories the stories you've just shared are reasons to stop us from taking action they are a disguise of fear you know fear could come in the disguise of perfectionism procrastination overthinking excuses it's really the versions of fear we'll deep dive we'll deep dive into this later on in conversation but just give me a little nugget a little simple solution for someone to get started well to get started if you have these excuses the first thing to do is to ask yourself what is one small thing i can do today just one thing because what happens is the reason we don't start is we feel overwhelmed you know we just had the london marathon this past weekend so let's say one of my goals is to run a marathon but i've never run a marathon before if i focus too much on the running the distance of the marathon it's going to overwhelm me and i'm going to give up before i even start but if i just put that to one side and say okay what is the first small step i can take today to start to get me ready to be in the best shape to run the marathon and just focus on one step and tomorrow another step and the next day another step what happens is that in 365 days a year from now compound effect that is 365 steps forward yeah but what happens is we focus too much on the outcome which creates a sense of overwhelm and we feel scared about the fact we're not ready but we're comparing day one with day 365 without accumulating any steps beforehand i can very much relate to this because i have a lot of friends that want to become entrepreneurs and because i'm an entrepreneur myself some of them they come to me for advice and they have this brilliant idea.

15:56I personally, I truly believe it's a great idea. But then they start looking at potential problems years down the line, let's say 10 miles down the line. And those are potential problems that are so far away that they may never happen. But those are metaphorical problems in their head that are strong enough that prevent them to take that very first step, that baby step, that first kilometer that will get you maybe to the 42nd kilometer in the marathon. It's very interesting because this is applicable in so many different aspects of our lives. Now, for our audience, I would like for them to resonate with maybe some of the clients that you've coached.

16:37Can you name a few that we might know? Yeah, so clients in terms of coaching clients, and I'm talking clients more broadly. So clients from a coaching side, I've worked with quite an eclectic mix of people. these include Michelin star chefs, C-level executives can you name a few? I can only name those that have publicly shared testimonials because of agreements but just for example I've worked with the co-founder of a brand called Huel I've worked with a Michelin star chef called Merlin LeBron Johnson companies specifically I've worked with brands like Salesforce EY, Adobe, Microsoft, Meta and so on so household names, brands that people know and probably have purchased products or services from.

17:24And they inspire me as much as I help them. Because when somebody executes and follows through with what you've discussed, and they receive a lot more than they imagine, that naturally inspires you. It just proves yet again the power of not only action-oriented thinking, but also doing things that stack the odds in your favor. And that's what we can control. You know, we don't always control the outcome of anything. But what we do control is the action we take, is what are we doing today to stack the odds in our favor so we create those so-called lucky moments tomorrow. So you're life coaching all these incredibly big corporations and individual clients.

18:08In a nutshell, can you simplify for me what is life coaching? Sure. So coaching in as simple terms as possible is to empower the client or team to become artists. To become artists and to have the courage to paint boldly and the wisdom to know which colors to use. Interesting. Because often when we paint on our canvas. It sounds like if I were to summarize this in two words, you want your clients to build confidence and purpose. Absolutely. Is that accurate? Yeah. Confidence is often an excuse people use when they say they can't do something, especially if it's a new skill, it's a new journey or new direction.

18:52And then purpose is what gets us up in the morning. Purpose is what drives us when we face losses or unexpected events and obstacles. And if you combine those two, it's a very powerful recipe. And so coaching the way I see it - Sounds easier said than done. Always easier said than done because everyone's experience is different. And so when a client comes to me to be coached, one client might have certain strengths and weaknesses, another will have a different set. And so every conversation, every experience will be different. And that's what makes it interesting for me, keeps me on my toes. And also when you think about the coaching experience, my role is more as a guide.

19:31It's to use questions as the tool to unlock the answers they already have within themselves. I've been to therapy I haven't had a life coaching experience what's the difference between both because therapists they pretty much use that approach they ask you questions for you to identify the answers sure so and there's lots of definitions within the spectrum of the field I'm in so you know you've chosen therapy and coaching but you also have mentorship for example and they all have slightly different focus so if we look at therapy and coaching therapy is more focused on helping an individual make peace with their past it's really to help understand someone who may have had traumas in their past personal or professional yeah and to help them find peace with that so they can move on with their life okay whereas coaching is more about helping someone create consciously a better future so can you do that without making peace with your past?

20:32It's an essential step. And so often when I coach someone, it is with assumption, and this is where we have an initial conversation first, that, you know, they have got a good foundation, but they are conscious about the fact that the future may not be going the way they want it. And so that's where they need to have that discussion or that coaching. Now, it certainly does help if you've made peace with your past if you haven't it can be a weight on on you creating a better future and so the analogy that comes to my mind as i speak about this with you is that you can see therapy kind of like healing say a wounded tree whereas coaching is planting a forest oh so that's probably a nice visual way to see it um so once you've kind of healed the tree then you can go on and and build your forest but without healing in in some way whether it's with your past whether it's with a trauma whether it's with something you're going for in a moment it can be difficult to make the progress you want therapists they require to go to med school they have a license so they have some credentials that allow them to have this level of power on someone's life a life coach also to a different degree has a lot of power and influence over a person's life it is by definition perhaps an definition of an influencer um what are the credentials that a life coach needs to have to be able to perform that job sure so i mean today uh when i qualified as a coach there were only perhaps a few institutions here in the uk but is it regulated do you need it's not it's not regulated uh but i think it's always the same as in any industry.

22:16You know, it's like when you move into a new house and you want to get an electrician or you want to get a tradesperson to come and fix a few things. You have to shop around. You know, you have to find someone that you feel you can have a good relationship with and that you trust them in order to bring out the best in you. And so part of it is, yes, there are qualifications coaches can get to prove that they've done the training, they've got the experience, they know how to run a successful coaching session. But on the other hand, it's also the results a coach has proven to achieve. Has that coach got experience in building a track record of clients achieving some of the goals that they set out to achieve?

22:58Because you could have the most qualified coach, but they might not have the experience of actually working with people to help them towards a better future. Whereas you might have someone with less qualifications but they've got a strong track record of helping people achieve a better a better life destination what are the most common reasons why people seek a life coach different reasons i would say one of the most common is that success without fulfillment is hollow um it's it's meaningless and also because where they are isn't where they want to be they know they have a well of potential inside of them but for whatever reason it is going unfulfilled it is not being put to use and doesn't that mean that the real success should be fulfillment it is that's real success most people don't don't have that they are living a life that is impressive on the outside but not true to themselves on the inside.

24:03And this is why if you've ever read Bronnie Ware's work, she commonly notes that the greatest regret of the dying is that they wish they lived a life more true to themselves than the life lived for others. And so it's, for them, it's the lack of fulfillment. It's that they're not living life in alignment to who they are or they may be going for a transition. So in some cases, somebody who's got a promotion to be a C-level executive, they're great at their job, but perhaps they don't know how to lead. You know, you go to school, you learn core subjects, but you don't get taught how to present, to communicate, to negotiate, to sell.

24:43These are things you have to learn as you develop into your career. But then when you become someone at the top parts of a company, you now have to people manage. And it's not something you get taught. There's something you have to learn as you go along. And so that can pose quite a challenge for some people. But to have someone that they can speak to about it in a safe, trusted space where there's no politics, they don't have to care what other people think about their answers and responses, it can be very powerful. What do you think is wrong in today's world that leads so many people to that situation?

25:19They're unhappy, they're purposeless. i think we have mistaken business for purpose um and we wear exhaustion like a badge of honor and we think that if we're not constantly doing then we are unproductive oh my god that's i can relate so much to that yeah i think that is one of the yes biggest traps of of the world when you you ask someone especially if they're in their professional active years how are you usually the answer they give you is overload with work i'm very busy and if they tell you i'm doing great yeah you you might unconsciously think that they're lazy yeah but they're not doing anything and that's wrong and this is a stigma that we've just accepted and whenever someone says busy or my calendar is packed we assume they're successful we assume they must be successful because they're always doing they're always busy and i've experienced that myself and i know that this creates unhappiness uh and and i think it was a dalai lama that said this in that the greatest tragedy is that so many live as if they are never going to die and then die having never truly lived yeah so the reason we're unhappy is because we're just existing we're not truly living and to live is to feel, to connect, to feel like you're part of something.

26:45But when you're just busy, drained, and exhausted, how can you achieve that? And, you know, we know, I think deep down, that it is when we slow down, where we have our greatest insights. But we don't consciously create those moments in our routine. So these may be anecdotes, but I think there's a lot of truth to them if you go back in time isaac newton apple falls on his head um gravity is discovered archimedes eureka displacement theory thomas edison fishing but with no bait so no one not even the fish would disturb him because they knew that in those moments it would ignite their creativity it was where they would get the insights that would force them to have the breakthroughs when they went back to work interesting we're going to get into the solutions in a bit but my understanding from what you're saying is that what we're lacking is just time for ourselves yeah that the problem is just being busy with so many distractions it could be work it could be social media it could be too many social commitments and we're just perhaps even afraid to be by ourselves yeah and there's a difference between being alone and being lonely and i think we we don't give enough credit to embedding in our in our routine time to be alone and i think that's important this is why you know it took me so long to get to know myself because i got myself caught up in the machine of chasing outcomes and trophies that as soon as i got one thing is always the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the mentor once describe this as being like a hungry ghost.

28:29You're always eating, but never full. And so you're constantly seeking out the next thing and the next thing. And it's never enough for you. It's never enough. So you never get time to actually enjoy or realize how far you've come because you're always focused on the next thing. And then one day you're gone. You didn't live at all. You didn't get to spend time with the people you loved. You didn't get time to savor the miracle of just being born being alive and experiencing order is around us and that i think creates so much this is such a fundamental problem because it's engraved deeply into our society from when we start our educational years our education system is basically telling us and then very much at least supported by our parents i think your parents were very similar to mine yeah if you're not at home doing homework and you're just maybe doing something else maybe you're not doing enough right and then definitely if you're not getting that a you didn't do enough because you were not studying for like six hours after school yeah same for university but then same same when you get into the workforce so before i became an entrepreneur i was in a strategy consulting so similar to finance you were crazy hours and my definition of hard work and success was crazy hours and and that came at the expense of not having time for myself to identify who am i as a person and these are the years in my in your 20s where you need to understand who you are so then you can make the right choices at the personal and professional level that would fill back into your overall personal definition of happiness and i was missing those opportunities and then at some point i became an entrepreneur and as an entrepreneur especially in the very initial stages you go through periods in which you have so much workload but then some other periods in which you don't yeah and when i didn't have those many things to do i was feeling like i was failing maybe i'm not in the right path because my definition of success of hard work of of being enough was i need to be busy i need to be doing a lot of things and then as my business grew um and i was able to automate things delegate so many of my responsibilities i blocked one day my calendar and my brother incredible we're twins and we didn't discuss this until not so long ago but we blocked our friday meetings to have a day for ourselves in which i can understand you could be at the professional level maybe i want to do a different business maybe i want to improve something about my business maybe i want to think about my partner my friends whatever it is but it is a day for me to reflect and i found that so powerful one day a week yeah now i know that's hard for people that have a nine to five yeah but i think that there are ways that this could be achieved in anyone's diary absolutely absolutely i mean i i always say that it's not the hours you work but it's what you put into the hours you work that is most important and this is what i know we'll touch on it shortly but this is where energy really comes in because while time is fixed energy is flexible so two hours doing work at high energy will achieve far more than 10 hours of work where your energy is low.

31:32And so this is why - How did you explain this to your Chinese parents? Well, actually, I mean, true story. I gave my, I say my dad because my mom unfortunately passed when I was 17. So I gave my dad a lagged experience of my journey. So I remember when I was making the transition out of employment into entrepreneurship at the time he was living abroad because he was working for a company abroad. and we would meet at the time it was on skype so skype was the medium of communication at the time and he would say to me simon how is how is your work going how are you progressing i didn't tell him i'd quit my job and i'd started my business because i knew knowing what it was like growing up in this family what his reaction would be like and so i would consciously buy myself time i would say work is going okay but you know the economy's not great um so i would have been late, late twenties at the time.

32:25Uh, so I was just saying work's going well, tough economy at the moment, but hopefully next year I'll get the promotion, but you know, I'm just head down working hard. Let me see where it goes. And you were unemployed. I was just in the froze of starting my business. And so I only began to share some stuff with him once I started getting, getting some success. And so I remember when I was interviewed in BBC Radio London. And then we did the Sky News interview, which was great. I put into my social media, I shared it with him, and he started sharing it, which was amazing. You know, for my dad to share it was great.

32:58I mean, because he didn't really use social media. He never even had a profile picture as one of those ghost images as his profile picture. And so for me, that was really heartwarming to see, but it was very much like a chicken and egg. And I think lots of people can relate to this. On the one hand, he wouldn't be happy for me quitting because of all the years I put into it, the money he put into the education. You're an investment, so to speak for him. Yeah, it was like an investment. Whereas if I go into this thing that was uncertain, nothing's guaranteed. Well, I mean, that's kind of entrepreneurship for you, isn't it?

33:31But when you achieve some success, he's like, well, you should continue with it. The irony is you don't get the success immediately. You need to take some risks, you go through losses, you go through challenges, and then hopefully you get some success later. And so he had a very much lagged experience of the journey. A lot of people probably right now are going through a very similar situation in which they want to become entrepreneurs, but they don't have the support of their families because of whatever reason. What would be the best advice that you can give them? Because in your case, it was lying.

34:01Sorry to speak to your father. What would you tell this person, this aspiring entrepreneur? A couple of things I would say. number one is the reason I kind of created a different reality for my father is because nobody in my immediate family had ever started a business. They'd always worked for someone. So nobody could relate with what I was about to do. And it goes back to what I said earlier about you go through this period of loneliness when you transition from one world into another world. So one of the first things I would say to people is change your environment. So what I did is I started to hang around with people who had already made that move, who quit the corporate world and became an entrepreneur.

34:44I read books from people who were successful in business. I hanged around with people who were already successful in entrepreneurship. I was changing every facet of my environment. And that's one thing you can control. It's design an environment that makes it impossible not to succeed. Everything from who you spend time with, the books you read, the podcast you watch or listen to, who you follow on social media, even your physical environments. You know, just to give an example, a coaching client of mine said that they were not really energized each week planning their week ahead. So I said to them, okay, what is one of the most inspiring places you've been to?

35:21And they said the Ritz Hotel in London. And I said, okay, next weekend, go to the Ritz Hotel, reserve a table, just order a cup of tea, and just spend some time there. I'm not sure if that's the most inspiring, surely the most expensive, but yeah. Plan your week ahead, but all you're paying for is a cup of tea. so just order a cup of tea sit there plan your week ahead and he shared photos of just how much he wrote down in his notepad because of the setting he was in he was in such a different but inspiring setting so basically what you recommend uh is to create an environment of stimuli around you that are helping you move towards that direction so if you want to get into art every stimuli around you yeah needs to be it needs to be aligned with your future and your past and and that's key yeah and with that which naturally leads to point two is that when you think about environment you don't want it just to be with people in your industry you want to have diversity in that environment because what that helps with which is point two is being creative and that is a core asset when you're an entrepreneur is how do you think differently?

36:27How do you approach things in a way that allows you to think different to 99 % of people? And that can only happen when you have diverse inputs into your thinking. So me, for example, I've spent time with film directors, musicians, bartenders, tech entrepreneurs, travelers, presenters, a variety of different people. But what happens is those conversations, that time with these people, it feeds my creativity. And then third is, especially if you are currently in a full-time job and you're looking to transition to be an entrepreneur understand that the driving factor of whether you become an entrepreneur successfully or not is not what you do in your nine to five but what you do after work in your evenings and weekends in the margins of the life you have now are you doing something in those hours the hours you control to change your future or are you wasting those hours away?

37:22I'm going to play devil's advocate. Go for it. Some person might say to that, from when I leave the office, I need time for myself. Sure, have time for yourself. But are you actually having time for yourself? Or are you scrolling your phone? Or are you binging on TV shows? I don't call that time for yourself because what's happening is that that drains your energy even further. Let's try to take a step back. So a lot of people want to drive change in their lives because they're not happy where they are. They feel stuck. let's put this in a professional context they're not happy with their job and they want to do something else but they don't know what that something else is so before you apply all these different methods that you're suggesting I need to know what is it that I want to do do I want to be an artist I would challenge that and I would say not necessarily because how many people really know what they want very few in my opinion so the thing is if you say to someone go find what you want to do before you have the inspiration and motivation they'll never stop because some people might take years before they know what they want to do so the very first step is not to think about what you want to do because when I was in finance I had no idea what I wanted to do I just knew I didn't want to work for somebody else in the long term but I didn't know what it is I wanted to do for myself so I would say the very first step is to ask yourself what am I most curious about right now right now what am i most interested in okay what gets me i don't know watching a youtube video uh reading about and so for me it was about business that's what i knew at the time business was a very first step again then you start narrowing exactly then you start narrowing it down but you've got to take some action here so if business was my first step it was okay i got to go to business events i need to read business books i need to surround myself with people in business and then suddenly some ideas start coming out and then you go oh this could be a interesting avenue to explore this could be interesting for me because i like this area and then you go talk to people then you go and go to industry specific events so what you're doing is you're starting with what you're most curious about not what you want to do which is the end destination which not many of us know straight away unless you are in a hollywood film you don't wake up one morning go eureka i know what i want to do for the rest of my life to keep testing until you've got to keep testing and experimenting that's the process but it's also to have the courage to do that again it goes back to something you said earlier, which was, I'm too old, I'm too young, I don't have the money, I don't have the time.

39:50Now, we can use all of those excuses, but ultimately, all of those excuses are summarized by the fact that you're actually telling yourself, this is not a priority for me. If your future is a priority for you, you will make the time, you will go and explore, you'll buy the book, you'll go to the event you listen to the podcast that's just the truth what is it that because you've coached so many people aside from their individual definitions of success what is it that everyone deep down deep down wants from life deep down i think it's meaning and significance meaning and significance can you expand on that sure so when you when you get to the end of your life and someone reads out your eulogy people aren't going to say you work the hardest you work the longest hours in the office you are promoted the fastest you earned the most money in your family they're not going to talk about that what they're going to talk about are the things that are softer the impact you had in your community the value you brought to the world the person you were this is meaning and significance you know we want that it takes us a while to get to that point but eventually i think this is what we all want we want to have felt that our life mattered that we were here on this planet for a reason i think that's deep in what we want interesting because a lot of people in my opinion confuse purpose with success so then they might be chasing this definition of success for so many years of their lives um when i get that role or that promotion i will be enough everything will make sense when i buy that house when i have the third kid when i have whatever car and then when as you're saying then at the end of our life is when one realizes that we've been spending all of our resources which is time and money yeah into achieving these things that are so meaningless and right now i don't have any more time to really pursue what I really want in my life.

42:08So nothing has meaning. And this is why happiness and achievement, success and purpose aren't linked together. They're independent. You know, the challenge is if you attach your emotional well-being to achievement and outcomes, you will never have enough. I mean, you mentioned the car, the house, the title, the paycheck. the reality is the people that live that life they'll get the car and then they think about the next car and the next car because they're always comparing what they've achieved to someone else and when you're constantly doing that you're never going to have enough you get three cars and some of your friends might have 10 cars now you need 11 cars there's always going to be the next thing and the next thing and what happens is that if your identity is always attached to your achievements, what happens when those achievements go?

43:00You know, one of the first thoughts that Michael Phelps had, one of the most, if not the most decorated Olympian, when he retired, during that first year, he admitted in interviews that he had suicidal thoughts, simply because his identity was so connected to being an Olympian, to getting the gold medal, to representing the United States of America, that when he retired, who was Michael Phelps? But he's not a swimmer anymore. He's not an Olympian. He's an ex-Olympian. So who was he? He didn't know who he was anymore. That's a very interesting situation to be in because we've just discussed how to find purpose.

43:38You take the first step, you take a baby step, but in a very broad topic, and then you start narrowing it down after testing and experiencing. Then let's say you find it, but then for whatever reason you lose it. Then I think that's quite normal during your lifetime. How can you regain that? How can you find a new one? Because should we use the same approach as we used to finding it in the first place? No, because I think the reality is you haven't lost it. The reality is you haven't lost it because what you've gained is wisdom. You wouldn't have had the wisdom without the experience. And so let's say you think you've lost it.

44:20What's actually happened is your purpose has evolved. Not lost, it's just evolved into something else. So this is why I've often said when people ask me, do we only have one life purpose? No, we have multiple purposes. Because let's say before, I mean, I've got a daughter who's five years old now. Before I became a parent, my purpose would have just been build a thriving business, serve as best I can, and bring value to the world. Now I'm a father, my purpose has evolved again. Now I want to be a good father. I want to equip my daughter with the skills and the knowledge so she can build her own future and judged my success by the quality of my children.

44:56Now that purpose has evolved. And I'm sure when I build other businesses, if I have more children, when they have children, I'm sure my purpose will evolve again. The reason our purpose evolves is because we are not a constant. The world is not a constant. It changes. And when society and the world and the economy changes, we adapt. And when we adapt, of course, it means our purpose does change because we have a certain purpose in a moment of time based on what we know at that moment. And as we learn more, we accumulate more knowledge, we gain experience, we try stuff, we fail at things, maybe things go better than you expect, then of course your purpose changes.

45:33If you have wild success quicker than you ever imagined, then guess what? Suddenly your purpose might change to one that is philanthropic. You want to give back to the world. You realize how tough it was for you to become successful. You don't want to see the next generation go through that. Now your purpose is very different. And so I don't think you necessarily lose your purpose. The purpose just evolves. And again, you go for a transition. And as humans, the fact is we don't like change. And so there's a period where it might feel like you've lost it, but actually it's just evolved into something new.

46:04And it's just a process of you getting used to what that new purpose is. What you're saying makes so much sense to me and resonates so deeply because the only common question that we ask in this show, not to subject matter experts like yourself, but our other type of guests, which are Forbes 30 under 30, always the last question to them is, what is your definition of success? And only one guest asked this back to me. And it is very, very similar to what you're sharing. My definition of success is dynamic. So my definition of success, Alberto, the 29-year-old version of myself today sitting in front of you might be more professional oriented because I don't have kids and I'm about to get married.

46:52So maybe it's narrowed down to my professional success, but also my personal relationship with my fiancé. But if you ask me 10 years from now, the 39-year-old version of myself, perhaps I may have two or three kids. So my definition of success might be very different. How close I am to my family. How well do I know them? And then maybe my professional success is secondary or tertiary. Absolutely. And that's what it is for me. It's constantly evolving. And it'll be different for everyone. I mean, for someone, success might just be getting through today. For others, success might be being a good father or good parent.

47:31So success will be different to each of us and it will evolve with time as we grow. And that's just part of life. And if we can understand that, then we're not hostage to other people's definitions. You've written a best-selling book called Energize. And there's one particular thing that sparked my attention. So you are interlinking two very different concepts. So time management is very important in anyone's life. But you're saying that in order for someone to manage their time efficiently, they need to be at an optimum energy level. What does that mean? What I'm suggesting is that you can't manage your time effectively unless you first address your energy.

48:17So if I put it more succinctly, if you are time rich but energy poor, it doesn't matter how much time you have, you're going to waste away that time. You're going to procrastinate. You're just going to put that time down the bin. But if you are energy rich, even if you are time poor, you will get far more done than most people will in having more time and that's why energy is so important and so we've got to understand that for us to be our most productive selves it's about getting that rhythm right between periods of deep work and periods of intentional rest instead of just grinding and hustling so for example i remember recently i was speaking to a company and I was just understanding their working week and I said to them when do you hold your most important weekly meeting so when you gather your teams together and then you talk about what you are going to focus on what the priorities are for the week or the month ahead and they said first thing on Monday morning when everyone's back at work and then my next question for them was what do you think the energy is like of your team first thing on a Monday morning and then they paused and then they realized maybe not so high coming off the back of a weekend and so it's helping them to understand that in order to succeed in five we've got to work without energy and not against it we'll get into the emotion of that in a bit but like about that particular example is there is there a better day of the week yeah so so research has showing that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days morning or afternoon uh I think it doesn't matter just Tuesdays and Wednesdays generally because the reason why Mondays don't work is that when we hold a meeting we want our team to contribute ideas we want them to ask questions we want them to engage but when when the team's energy is low they're not really going to engage and so you don't get much involvement from your team and so this is why Monday meetings generally aren't that great yeah whereas by Tuesday and Wednesday they've got into the week the weeks kind of got on the way.

50:18And it's the same with Friday afternoons. You know, Friday afternoons, people's energy dips because they're thinking about Friday night, they're thinking about the weekend. And so it's asking yourself, how can we redesign Friday afternoons so that we're working with the team's energy and doing something that keeps them focused, but in a different, more creative way. And so, you know, some companies I know of, what they'll do is they might bring external speakers in to have like a TED-style afternoon on a Friday to bring in different ideas. They might have different teams present about the work that they're doing within their respective teams so they can cross-pollinate ideas and engagement.

50:51So it's fun activities that still allow them to draw contribution from the team, but it's also understanding that the energy might impact their focus on a Friday afternoon. This is so interesting. Let's go back to energy. For some people, energy can mean a lot of things, but for some other people, it doesn't mean much. In your book, you have a very interesting framework that defines energy, which is composed of four different pillars. So the mental, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. Correct. Can you expand on each of those? So energy is seen in four pillars, as you said there. The issue for most of us is we exclusively focus on one pillar only, which is physical.

51:33So if you think back to the beginning of a new year, you will have friends that will go, I'm going to change my diet this year. I'm going to become fit. I'm going to take on this challenge. I'm going to get more rest. Now, all of that is to do with physical energy. And physical energy is comprised of three things, movement, nutrition, and rest. Is that the baseline of our energy? It's the baseline because if the COVID pandemic told us anything, it was that without your health, you can't do much. The healthy person will have lots of hopes, dreams, and goals. The sick will have one just to be well again.

52:07And so it is the foundation for everything else. Without health, without good health, you can't do anything. It doesn't matter what goals you have, you just can't attack it. And then you've got mental energy. Mental energy is about your mindset. It's about how you make sense of the world around you. It's understanding yourself. It's your thoughts. It's the stories you tell yourself. And it's also about unlocking your creativity. We all have creativity inside of us, but it's how are we accessing that creative energy. Emotional energy is about relationships. It's a relationship you have with yourself, but also the relationship you have with others.

52:39whether it's your partner, it's your colleagues, or it's those above you in a company. And then spiritual energy is all about meaning and purpose. So to give an example, if you look at society around us, you could probably agree that most are exhausted, most are tired. But the fact is, I don't think they're necessarily exhausted because they're physically doing too much. But more likely, because of two things, one, they are running someone else's race. And two, they are doing too little of the things that bring them joy and that's when we become low on spiritual energy we're doing work that is not aligned to who we are when we're doing something that is aligned to who we are that is an extension of who we are because we get to express our potential our talents and our skills we were in flow you know when people talk about flow state you in flow because you enjoy what you're doing it doesn't matter how long you're doing it you just naturally enjoy expressing yourself.

53:34Someone could be painting on a canvas for 10 hours and to them it feels like two hours because they're in complete flow. And so to achieve that flow is to be high in spiritual energy. It's to be doing something that is completely aligned to who you are as a person. Some people, and perhaps I also include myself in that basket, are not great at multitasking. So one might think, well, I cannot get one of those pillars right. How can I focus on the other three. What would be the simplest things that anyone can do in our daily lives that would ensure that our energy levels in those four pillars are optimum?

54:10I would say start by focusing on the things that you can control. Because if you focus on the things you can't control, of course, it will overwhelm you. You think you have no control and you will feel disempowered. But if you focus on the things you can control, the very first step are the bookends of your day, the mornings and the evenings. Those are your hours. What is your morning routine? How do you finish each night? Start there. One of the simplest things you can do now is to plan your day the night before. So tonight, think about tomorrow. What would make tomorrow a productive day for you?

54:43Can you tell me how does an ideal morning and an ideal evening look like, at least from an energy level perspective to to have those four pillars optimum sure so uh idle morning um again there's no right wake up time the key is sufficient rest have you got sufficient rest there's no point saying wake up at 5 a.m if you slept at 2 a.m so the key is have you got sufficient rest in the morning first thing you want to do is easier said than done but don't switch on your phone and look at it many of us immediately the first thing we do when we get us we grab our phones how long should we i think at least the first 30 minutes 30 minutes hour ideally but at least the first 30 minutes because what happens is the moment you jump into your phone uh you've got so many things hitting you mentally yeah notifications emails suddenly you're thinking about the day ahead suddenly thinking about a problem that you didn't think about when you first woke up so the first thing is to keep that at least the first 30 minutes if not the first hour for you get some water into your system this is hydration you've lost a lot of water throughout the evening.

55:46Do some gentle stretches, do something that gets you moving, get some sunlight, even if just looking out into the sunlight, step outside, just go for a walk outside, just get some sun into your system, eat something healthy, and then maybe read something journal ahead of the day starting. What that does is it just helps to center you and get you focused on what matters. It allows you to ease into your work rather than be rushed into it. Otherwise, you just become very quickly reactionary. so that for me is a good foundation for for beginning your day and then ending your day it's just reflection you know what were your thoughts on how the day went what would a successful day tomorrow look like and the reason that's a great habit to end the day with is because when you know what's important tomorrow not only do you sleep faster and deeper because you don't have all of these thoughts in your head when you go sleep but you're able to wake up the next day with more focus.

56:39You know what is important for you to put your energy towards when the day begins. Can we build up a tolerance to these routines so then the benefits are not as great as day one? Yeah, I mean, the challenge is consistency as with any skill, you know, any habit, any skill, any routine, it's all going to come down to consistency. And the way to do it is to gamify the process okay so what i mean by this if something feels like a chore you're going to give up very soon you're not going to feel excited to do something so you have to ask yourself what would this look like if it were fun what would doing this routine look like if it was fun and then try and integrate elements of fun into it and then gamify the process because when we see something as a problem we don't really feel inspired to want to do anything about it but when we see something as a challenge maybe same thing but different wording of it we're more motivated to try and overcome it so it's understanding how you can rewire your relationship to a new routine so that it's sustainable but also you feel inspired to just continue doing it each day sometimes i find that a lot of people want to drive change and perhaps these two routines are part of that change but perhaps they're not consistent with those routines because they go through conflicts throughout the day that maybe throws them off balance and then they don't end up doing the night routine usually uh interpersonal conflicts and and and those are quite challenging both at the personal and professional level they can output you and you know remove you from that center gravity that baseline that balance that peace how would you address this so how can one deal with conflict in the most effective way possible so we are not feeling unbalanced so i think there's two parts so one is how to deal with conflict one is uh the impact it has on our routine so i'll answer this part first and then actually leads into this one yeah so you're never going to have a perfect routine you know you might say this is going to be my ideal morning routine my ideal evening routine but then a curveball gets thrown your way uh something unexpected happens so what we have to understand is that you don't want to be rigid to one routine you want to have flexibility in built to it so it might be you have your ideal routine you have the routine where you try and hit on most days and then you have another routine which is the bare minimum so some days you might be doing the bare minimum some days you knock it out of the park and do the ideal routine but maybe on most days you just hit the average baseline routine so there needs to be some inbuilt flexibility with the understanding that you're not going to have a perfect day every day that's so important absolutely because if you manage those expectations then you can keep doing it yeah but a lot of a lot of times if you have this this idea that your routine needs to be perfect and the moment you deviate from it you get this feeling of failure that will make you maybe stop absolutely it you just go to the opposite extreme yes you just stop and you give up now when it comes to conflict one of the best ways i just want to give two examples of those like a lot of like people maybe that happens with with sports they start going to the gym but then they have this great routine and then for like maybe two three days or an extended period a couple of weeks because of work they can't go to the gym and then they feel like well i'm off the rails i'm just not going to carry on or with a diet absolutely and this is why like again it goes back to awareness so for example with myself um if i'm going on a family vacation for half a month somewhere, I know that I'm not going to have the perfect routine because I don't have access to all of the resources I would if I'm living in my home city, in my home, which is comfortable.

1:00:23So I have to adapt that routine. I know I might be doing different things, maybe for a different time as well, but I'm adapting to a very different routine. So I might have a holiday routine. I might have an average day routine. And when everything's lined up perfectly, there's no unexpected curveballs in my day, then I have the ideal routine. So it's already mentally knowing that there are going to be different seasons of your life, different seasons of your year, and you are ready to adapt to those. And that's just a reality of how the world is. Which also leads into the conflict because you are going to have conflicts and conflicts can be with yourself.

1:00:57Conflicts can be with those you love. Conflicts could be at work. The way to navigate that is to focus on listening to understand, not listening to respond. Because what happens is conflicts often arise in many cases, not all cases but in i would say pretty much all cases i know because of a lack of understanding or miscommunication and so if we can give space to hear someone and get them to speak into that space we can help understand them better and and this is why i think in today's world which i think has never been as divisive as it is today there used to be a moment in history where we welcome debate you know we wanted to debate a topic we wanted to understand different thoughts and opinions so we can have healthy discussion.

1:01:43Now we just want to be right. Now we just want to be right. And so what happens is that you either agree with me or you're with them. And people talk over each other. And they talk over each other. And this is why you have so much division. And so I always ask people, if you want to manage conflict better, because you have to keep in mind, fundamentally, we are all good people. We don't get born with the intention to hurt someone. We might be doing it for reasons somebody else doesn't understand, but we're doing it with a good intention. so a very simple question i get people to ask is that if you think you're right and they're wrong but they think they're right and you're wrong maybe you're missing something again there's no such thing as one right answer but maybe you're missing something that would help you understand better where they're coming from and it could be as simple as a question that goes what is it that i'm not understanding or seeing that has come from your experience to lead you to come up with this response or this understanding of what we're talking about and then suddenly you might hear some about their background something about what they've gone through that has led them to think a certain way and then that just creates a bit more empathy that creates a bit more how often should we do that versus just letting it go i think it's one of those things that is case by case you know it depends on what has been discussed and um i guess a level of trauma from that if It could be anything from quite light, if it's something a bit more severe, then I think we need to have a better understanding of that situation to decide the best way forward.

1:03:14Again, anything, I think, where the solution is focused on communicating better and deepening the understanding can only be healthy. A lot of people have a very complex relationship with failure. And this can take many forms on, for example, going back to the case that you were mentioning, a lot of people, they don't want to have this conflict, this resolution approach towards a misunderstanding because they feel like they can fail. And then they're afraid of that feeling. Now you can take that into a completely different context into a personal relationship with your partner, with your wife, with your husband, or when you're building a business, maybe you don't start in the first place because you're too afraid to fail.

1:03:56And I personally believe that we live in a society that is not teaching us, telling us that we should be succeeding. But nobody's really telling us, or in this case, teaching us that the only way to succeed is by failing. Because in my opinion, you learn nothing from success and you learn everything from your failures. And just by learning is when you can actually at some point succeed. What are your views on this? my view is that you have to accept you will fail you will have setbacks you will have challenges guaranteed you're going to get them now if you can accept that guaranteed guaranteed you're going to have them because whenever you embark on a journey or path that you have never been on how can you not fail because it's it's a path that you've never been on joseph campbell once said that if the path is clear it is probably not yours and so when we think about failure the way to approach it is one accept that you will fail guaranteed you're going to fail at some point now if you can accept that you're then able to move to the next step which is understanding that your power is not about whether you will fail how would you define failure but how you respond to failure how would you define failure before failure simply put is where you haven't met an expectation or whether you haven't achieved something you had expected so it's a matter of perspective it's just perspective in fact there's no real failure Failure is just a way of describing an experience.

1:05:24The challenge is, and failure has two definitions. So failure can describe an experience. So that experience was a failure because it didn't work out. But the mistake many of us make is that we shift failure to being an identity. I am a failure. Very different meaning. Failure can describe an experience. It can describe an identity. But when you use that as identity, that's when it's dangerous. Because when you say, I am a failure, that completely stops you from taking action. so we have to understand number one you will fail number two your real power is in what you do when you've experienced failure are you going to become a victim of it or are you going to use that as a teaching lesson are you going to use that to come back stronger and for me this is the difference between ego and humility when you face something unexpected and you're coming from a place of ego you will say things to yourself such as why me why couldn't i achieve that why was it easier for them.

1:06:21You know, I deserve to be there. This is coming from a place of ego. Whereas humility says, well, what can this teach me? What do I need to do better next time? And you can see there's a difference because ego is dwelling on the situation, whereas humility is looking for a path forward. It's focusing your mind on an action. What can I do to make it better next time? So again, your power is in your response. And the mistake we fall into, which I think you alluded to when you asked the question is that we have seen and i think we still see today success and failure as opposites you either succeed or you fail and it's the same with companies you know when you get promoted in the company or they do your performance appraisal it's binary you either succeeded or you failed now we think we're doing the right thing but here's the problem if you judge people in your company by whether they've succeeded or they failed you you might not say in the short term, but you are killing creativity.

1:07:18You are stopping innovation. Because when you were a startup, when it was just six of you, did you care if you succeeded or failed? No, you were just experimenting. You were just trying stuff. You were getting things wrong because you were just breaking things as you went along and suddenly one idea worked and you built it. What happens is as a company goes bigger and it scales faster, suddenly we have to have people management, HR, and then we're looking at what's succeeding and failing. but we would we would describe that in corporate terms uh as uh performance driven so we are a culture that is performance driven now what we have to be mindful of is that if we want to continue to be creative and innovative we also have to integrate a growth driver so what we mean by that is yes we judge people by what they've succeeded in but also we should be asking what have they failed at and learned from what have they experimented what ideas have they brought to the table what new things that they tried because if we can foster that element of what people are turning up and doing then what happens is that we're unlocking the creative potential of our organization we're giving them the permission to fail because we want them to try stuff that's never been done before of course it's not going to be right all the time so you're trying to integrate that growth element in into your culture i think that's incredibly important when it comes to professional contexts and that's something that i very much try to nurture yeah for example in this show with a team that there's seven or eight of us right now in this team, but there's a team of 300 people in my main business that I run, and I very much try to promote failure and testing.

1:08:52Like there is no tomorrow. Now, there's one thing that I come across. So first of all, is my personal definition of failure is segmented into quantitative and qualitative. So quantitative is you go to school, you have an F, you failed. Qualitative is my relationship is not going well. why there are so many different reasons, right? So that is qualitative. But I think even if, for example, in work contexts, in work environments, we're very much trying to nurture this failure accepting mentality and for people to have a better relationship with it, I feel like the problem is so rooted into our youth that it's just very hard to change that mindset later on in our lives.

1:09:30Because for example, I've never had the case in which a teacher when I was in school, in high school, I failed an exam and came to me and said, hey, Alberto, you failed this exam, but I know you're going to learn so much from this that you're going to have an ace around the next one. Or I've never had the case in which maybe a shareholder would tell me, Alberto, this year's EBITDA, this year's profitability is negative. But hey, I know that this negativity is going to unlock the future growth of our company because positive EBITDA means no lessons learned. You're not going to change something that is working.

1:10:02How do we go about this? It reminds me, it's funny because as you were sharing, it reminds me of this famous interview that Sarah Blakely did, the founder of Spanx, when she was describing the relationship she had with her father when she was growing up at school. And she would say her father would sit her down at the end of each week and say to her, Sarah, what did you fail at this week? And if she didn't have anything to share, her father wouldn't be happy. Her father wouldn't be pleased. but when she did have something to share oh i failed at this this week great dad her father would high-five her celebrate the failure now at the time she didn't understand the lesson her father was trying to teach her because she was a bit confused she was thinking well i made the cheerleading team i i got good grades here how come he wasn't happy at that but he was happy at the things i failed at until she started her own business and then she got into the into the business world she realized what her father was trying to teach her is that failure is never an outcome it is merely not trying yeah and so if we can ask ourselves the question what have i failed at this week if you have failed at something the reason that should be celebrated and is a positive is because it means you're growing it means you're you're edging out of your comfort zone you're expanding your comfort zone you're disrupting yourself and you're learning new skills that is a sign of growth and that we see it and reframe it into that way then it just feels a lot a lot more positive i think also now bringing this conversation particularly to entrepreneurship failure by definition it is guaranteed multiple times and while i very much agree with you that everyone should have a much better relationship with failure sometimes especially if you're approaching entrepreneurship in an advanced stage of your life you can't really learn what you were mentioning sarah learned those intrinsic values when she was a kid right because her father was building a mindset sure at the end and it's just hard to build a mindset into an adult brain you can you can change some things i think we're neuroplastic but not as much as when we're kids now um someone in their 20s or 30s they might want to start a business and they know that they're going to be failing a lot and we have a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs listening to the show and they might be wondering how can i know if i am cut out for this because if failure is so much guaranteed how do i know that this is something that i'm actually is that actually going to make me feel purposeful well i think that yeah and i'm related to my experience um i never knew if i would succeed as an entrepreneur sometimes you don't uh until you're faced with no option but to succeed and so that kind of evolved as I became an entrepreneur but I think if you were to look at yourself now and say am I cut out in this moment there are a few things you could ask yourself number one is am I okay living with uncertainty for a long time because when you become an entrepreneur when you run a business every day is uncertain you don't know when your next customer is going to come in you know what problem you're going to have tomorrow every day is uncertain.

1:13:10And that's why it's not for the faint-hearted. Because every day you have to stretch yourself. Every day you have to take on a new challenge. If you're okay with that, that's a good starting point. Number two is, are you willing to bet on yourself when no one else will? This is all about belief. To succeed as an entrepreneur, you've got to be willing to believe in yourself and your value when nobody else will. Especially if you're coming from employment to entrepreneurship, when everyone will question your decision and say, why are you doing this? what if it doesn't succeed you know why are you risking everything you've built in this career for something that might not even work out no one is going to believe you at the beginning no one's going to be there for you right at the start so you have to be the one that becomes your biggest cheerleader and then the third thing is are you okay to play the long game now a lot of people enter entrepreneurship i think we touched on earlier they want instant success because they look at social media, they read magazines, they watch TV shows, and they want the outcome and they want success now.

1:14:09But entrepreneurship and business is a long game. There's no such thing as overnight success, only over time success. So if you are okay at doing ordinary things for an extraordinary amount of time, guess what? You will reap the rewards. You don't know when, but at some point you will. All you can do, and I think this is when you know you are cut out to be an entrepreneur is if you can focus less on the outcome and more simply on stacking the odds in your favor you are going to create lucky breaks that's how it works focus on the activities that will stack the odds in your favor i think very powerful three three uh metrics the second one was was the one that that particularly led me to an example so we are in generally speaking not prepared to become entrepreneurs because since we go to school so for example even all the way until the age of 17 yeah when you want to go to the toilet you need to ask for permission and you're going to ask that same kid a few months later to make one of the hardest choices in his life which is what is it that you want to study yeah when a few weeks ago this person needed to ask permission to go to the toilet now you get into university and it's not very different from that and then you get into the workforce and again it is very much you need to ask for holidays in a to ask, you know, can I take my phone in this meeting because they're calling me and maybe it's an emergency.

1:15:32So you have all these sets of rules that if you are a person that is a rule follower, which by definition is what society is telling us to do. It's also even related to being legal or illegal. I don't think you can be a great entrepreneur. So in my experience, the greatest entrepreneurs that I've seen, they have a very unconventional, rules-free way of viewing life. And they're very wild. They're often misunderstood. But that's, in my opinion, the only way where you can actually build something from scratch. I'm speaking particularly building something from scratch, because there are so many barriers that if you are always used to follow these rules, those rules are just going to prevent you from building anything.

1:16:13You have to be a little crazy. You have to be a little crazy to succeed as an entrepreneur. And I think that there's a book that comes to my mind as you shared that. I don't know if you've read it by Alex Benayan called The Third Door. And he looked at the most successful. I love that title. Yeah, it's a great title, actually. He looked at all the successful business people, entrepreneurs. And, you know, there's lots of commonalities, but one in particular he found was something he would call the third door. And the reason he calls it the third door is because when you go to a nightclub, you usually have two doors by which you enter the club.

1:16:44So the first door is the main entrance, where 99 % of people will queue up. Hopefully the bouncer lets you in, and then you get to pay your ticket, and you go into the club. And then you have the second door, which is where the 1 % go in, the red carpet entrance, VIPs, influencers, celebrities. But there is always a third door if you can create one. So it could be because you built a relationship with somebody who knows the manager. It could be because you've got a friend that has a key through the side door. Now, whatever that third door is, you're always thinking about what that third door is to get from A to B.

1:17:17And we call that entrepreneurial thinking. Yeah, unconventional by definition. Unconventional thinking. And this is why like, I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee's work, not for the martial arts, more for the philosophy. And one of the most powerful quotes of his that resonates with me is where he said, do not bar your children the things that you never had, teach them the things that you were never taught. And so this is one of the things I've been doing a lot with my five-year-old daughter. And just to give an example of how she started to think a little outside of the box, there was a class she was in.

1:17:48It was a week-long class, like a camp. And at the final day in the final class, the parents were invited to just see what they were up to and collect them to bring home and just before the end the teacher sat my daughter down she was at the end of this circle and all the children down and she said there's a thank you for coming uh i want to share with you a colored egg shaker so i've got a basket of colored egg shaker i'm going to go on a circle just take one so each child takes one as they've been told and then the teacher gets my daughter my daughter stands up she smiles and she takes two and the teacher says hang on a minute you were only meant to take one egg at which point she hands the second egg to me and she says i did the second was for my dad and so the teacher couldn't really say anything against that because technically i guess your dad can also have one yeah and as we walked out of the class on the way back home she looked up at me and said dad can i have my egg back so she got away with having two eggs.

1:18:47And so for me, it was trying to instill with her that there is always a third door. And this is entrepreneurial thinking, is that there is always a way to think differently, to achieve an aim faster than most people would think possible. I agree with you. And it's so interesting that you're mentioning Bruce Lee, because Bruce Lee is a figure that represents by definition to its core discipline. And I think the best entrepreneurs have the best of both worlds. So at the same time, incredibly unconventionally open-minded. Yeah, it's powerful. And this is what helps you stand out. We live in a world that is starved of attention.

1:19:23Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And so when you have the ability to think different, to do things in novel ways, you grab attention. You make people want to know more about what you do. And this is why communication is so important. The ability to communicate well can be one of the greatest skills you can learn. I mean, even Warren Buffett said it. He was asked one time, what is the greatest business skill we can learn? And he simply said communication. In all forms, if you know how to communicate well, then suddenly you get people interested in what you have to offer.

1:19:56When I published my book, when I first published my book back in 2022, this is what we did. We partnered with the Connacht Hotel where they created a cocktail after my book. We put together one of the world's first book launches in the metaverse, where you could join for your VR goggles. Last year, we did a collaboration with a celebrity chef where we had two nights, 18 seats, six courses with each course inspired by a theme for my book. And so that ability to do things differently, the term that comes to my mind is UTP, unique talking points, grabs attention and gets people interested in what you do.

1:20:34And if you have fun with that, then naturally you're creating curiosity, and intrigue about what it is you're offering the world.

1:20:49You're an expert in a concept called the Ikigai. What exactly is it? Ikigai, simply put, is your reason for being. Very similar to purpose, which we touched on earlier. It's your reason for being. It's where you are clear on what your passion is, what your mission is, what the world will pay you to do, and where you can do something for long enough that it doesn't feel like work for you. If you can do something that overlaps all of those areas and it gets you up in the morning, you're living your ikigai. And we call it an English purpose. Japanese call it ikigai. The French call it raison d 'etre.

1:21:27Whatever we describe it as, it is essentially something that drives us, that keeps us living for something bigger. But the difference in between the Japanese definition, definition which is the ikigai versus maybe other western societies definition of it which is purpose is that the japanese one is mainly composed of these four different elements right can you expand on those yeah i mean i think it's evolved over over the years i mean it's an overlap of these elements which i think like it is probably taking purpose to the next level because if we think of purpose in the western world as in what it is that gets me up in the morning the ikigai version says and you can get paid for it and you can actually build a career out of it and often when we think about hobbies or purpose it might be good for us but maybe we don't know how to monetize it maybe we don't know how to turn that into a career so ikigai just probably takes it a little bit step further yeah and says well how can this become your vocation and i think it's talked about a lot because if we think about japan it is one of those areas identified as a blue zone which means people end up you know living the longest in japan and ikigai is one of those things that a lot of people talk about when describing um why they've lived so long um can you have multiple ikigais throughout your lifetime yeah i think like i said i think ikigai is very similar to the purpose in the sense that it evolves i mean for example i i remember doing some research for the book and there was this 85 year old woman who had lost her husband and she felt she had lost the icky guy because the icky guy was very closely aligned with the husband yeah but then it almost gave her freedom to kind of evolve that into learning again and then she kind of took up lessons in a variety of different subjects and it led her to coding it led her to building an app for senior citizens and then she got invited by tim cook to speak at the developer conference in in san francisco and she completely transformed herself into a completely new person um but again it took a period of transition to find what that for her the new ikigai was interesting i have been following the concept of the ikigai for quite some time right now and my girlfriend introduced me to it so basically she gave me this book and i deep dive into it and i understood that it's something that you love something that you're good at something that the world needs and something that you can get paid for um and And we were mentioning or discussing this earlier, but when I built this podcast, these four things were in the mix.

1:24:00Obviously, getting paid for it was not a priority. In fact, probably is the last thing. And I'm not looking to monetize it in that way, but obviously it's part of the mix. And definitely it's something that I love, something that I learned, something that I believe that the world needs. This kind of very honest, raw, authentic conversation where people can learn and unlock the best version of themselves. I'd like to think that I'm good at it, that our subscriber base in such a short period of time is telling us this. And I immediately realized that, well, this is my Ikigai. And one of my worries was, well, I'm 29.

1:24:36I found my Ikigai. I still love my main business, which is a large company that I built with my team. Brother, something very beautiful. I love my girlfriend. We're about to get married and my friends, my family. But thank you. But this is my Ikigai. So I had this sort of like understanding that the Ikigai is this one thing, you know, it is perhaps maybe even a profession, some sort of profession that has the combination of these four factors and it's going to feed your soul for the rest of your life. But now based on what you're saying, then maybe 10 years down the line, this same thing that I'm doing right now won't be enough to be defined as an Ikigai.

1:25:11I'll give an example. Like when you think of a vision, a mission, a purpose, or even Ikigai, often it can be sort of very high level, but the method of execution can be through different mediums so if i look at myself my vision might be my ikigai is to inspire people uh to think differently to awaken their imagination to what is possible so they can write a better story we can do that in multiple ways now i can execute that through books through interviews through speaking through coaching through mentoring it can be executed in different ways so we need to have that flexibility because it goes back to what you said about the ikigai there where there's a need in the world that a need in the world might change yeah you know the world isn't constant again can i get paid for it yes well again you know how people get paid might change as well so naturally within those elements of ikigai there are variables that will change and so it's about how you're going to execute on that and be able to adapt executing in different ways yeah so you know even with my business you know when i first started it was just coaching yeah that's evolved into speaking into writing last year we started the youtube channel so now we've got video content we've got the newsletter there's lots of different ways that i'm able to execute my ikigai my my values my my skills and my talent and i think that's necessary because what happens is you only do one thing over time it can pigeonhole you and it can start to feel like a chore but if you're trying stuff if you're experimenting that variety is what keeps you excited and energized.

1:26:42I'm so happy to hear this because that's exactly the assumption that I had. So I thought, well, it is not just this one podcast or this particular show, but it is the overarching reason why I'm doing it. So in this case, I am conveying a message. I'm trying to share a very powerful message for people to not be afraid to look inwards, to have a better relationship with failure, to become the best version of themselves, regardless to whatever that is. It should be unrelated to what society tells you. but to understand what is it that you want as a person. And that could take the form of a podcast.

1:27:15We're doing a season two, but we're writing a book. Hopefully soon there's also going to be a TV show. So there are different forms in which you can, or different mediums, as you were mentioning, to convey this message and maintain a Ricky guy. And it's interesting because when we think about the money component, the money component always comes if you are satisfying those other areas. And this is why there's a book I read at the beginning of my journey called The Go-Giver. and in that book it said that money is simply an echo of value so if you found a way to deliver immense value to people whether it's through the podcast whether it's through your work whether it's through the business you've created that money will follow yeah but if you follow the money first and sacrifice the value and everything else it's not sustainable so think about how can you bring value into the world and then the money will follow i want to ask you some personal questions.

1:28:07What was the hardest internal battle you've had to win and what did it teach you about yourself? Simply put, hardest battle is that I've been through is I am not my achievements. Now the reason I say that's the hardest battle is because I, you know, as you know I grew up in this very strict Chinese household, it was all about academics. Top of the class, get to a good university, get good grades, get a good job, get paid well, get promoted and so on. I got to university and in my second year I failed my year which meant I had to re-sit a year at university. So a three-year degree became a four-year degree.

1:28:47Now can you imagine what it would have been like to see the results of your exams? No I didn't just fail one exam, I failed three out of four exams. To come down the stairs and to tell your parents that you failed a year and you have to re-sit a year. That was really tough for me. I felt ashamed. I felt like I let everyone down. Again, I tied myself to my achievements. Because I didn't achieve a grade that would get me to the second, the next year, I was completely ashamed of myself. You know, I felt like I let everyone down. And yeah, I had to kind of go for a bit of healing through that. And again, when the financial crisis happened, I kind of lost myself again because I was attaching myself to achievements.

1:29:29I can't keep a job down. You know, I'm not employable because I couldn't keep a job down. I couldn't find jobs at certain points in the volatility of the crisis. And so that was probably the hardest battle internally I had to deal with was to separate myself from my achievements and not to let my achievements or lack of determine my wellbeing. Otherwise, you know, I would never live in the present. I would never feel empowered in any way at all. My second question is, what's something you had to learn to grow? Unlearn, sorry. Something you had to unlearn to grow. In order to grow. I think something I had to unlearn, and I think this is something I think a lot of us have to unlearn actually, is that asking for help is weakness.

1:30:18I had to unlearn that fact. Now I believe asking for help is a strength. It's not about your ability to pass a finish line or achieve a master on your own. It's about understanding that we never get to the top alone. And that we need people around us to help us through the tough, challenging moments of any journey. And we're human beings. We crave social connection. And so relationship building, being around people has been a fundamental component of my journey. It's been something I've been very focused on nurturing, especially when you leave the corporate world and start on your own. When you're in a place of employment, you've naturally got people around you to speak with.

1:30:58But when you go out and start your own business, suddenly, in many cases, it's just you at the beginning before you find other people that you can relate with. And so I had to unlearn that asking for help is a weakness. It's not. It's a strength. It doesn't make you any less of a leader. It makes you human. and I think this is what we need more of in the world to feel that we can relate to those ahead of us, to feel that we can relate to those in positions of leadership. I feel like that's particularly harder for a man than a woman. Yeah, absolutely. And this is why if I look at my coaching, on average, it takes longer for a man to open up in my coaching sessions than a woman because men on average have a higher defense and they're not used to talking about their feelings and emotions just like i i said it in earlier that i i wasn't myself uh i'd never been encouraged to do so and we were always told when i grew up just to man up that was the saying you know man up and get on with it but we have feelings and emotions too and i think when we give space for that to be talked about you realize there's so much that they have to share and when they do I think they become a better person for it yeah what's an emotion you have spent most of your life trying to understand probably something I fully touched on earlier which would be fear I think that's the emotion I've been trying to say my whole life because fear in my own journey and in other people's journeys I've seen to be one of the biggest hurdles to growth, but also because it manifests in very different ways.

1:32:43Uh, it, it drives procrastination. It drives excuses. It drives, uh, perfectionism. Um, ultimately I think it boils down to the question of, am I enough? And if you see yourself as enough, if you see yourself as you already whole as you are, then I think you lose that fear. And you realize that what you actually need, we mentioned confidence earlier, what you actually need is not confidence to begin. What you need is courage. And courage is not the absence of fear. You're always going to have fear. I have fear today as well. We all do. You can never eliminate fear. Fear is a natural part of being human.

1:33:22But what you can do is to understand where the fear is going to be part of the journey. How can I still have the courage to move forward despite those fears to realize that fear is healthy but i'm not going to let it stop me because once you have the courage to step ahead despite your fear that's how you build confidence confidence is a byproduct of having the courage to step into the unknown to try something and then often you might say to yourself internally that wasn't so bad maybe i'll try something else maybe i'll try something bigger next time i agree with that i have a slide um i approach fear through a different angle again with the aim to overcome it which is by accepting so i think a lot of times we try to feel that void that fear void that gap just by building a fake level of confidence by ignoring the fear i'm too strong for that i'll deal with it but i think the most powerful way at least in in my perspective in my experience to deal with fear is by accepting that you're human that things are finite your resources your energy and then perhaps let's say we're approaching this conversation and let's say that this is my very first episode my very first podcast which i still remember my very first episode um i went to it very much accepting that i don't know how this really works i i've done public speaking before i was i'd like to think quite good at it but this may be something different and i'm just going to go and do it try my best focus on the effort and not the the result absolutely exactly because i can't control it and that obviously i don't think will ultimately remove fear at all.

1:34:56Because as you said, and I've looked at fear also with different guests more at a neurological level and what are the different neurochemicals that get released in our brain. So this is something that we can't control because it comes from one of the oldest parts of our brain, our limbic system. And it was used in prehistoric times to preserve us and for us not to die. But to register it that I'm feeling it and how can you use this in a purposeful way? and for me it's about accepting and then learning and and it's important because you know you touched on speaking as well and it just reminded me of a conversation i had with a friend recently and we spoke about fear and one of the things i said is while you cannot eliminate fear you can reduce its impact and the way we reduce the impact of fear is through practice nothing helps you beat fear like practice so let's say you've never spoken in front of an audience and now you want to go and present a ted talk yeah now if you jump to the ted talk and you've never spoken before of course you're going to be flooded with fear but the way you reduce that fear and you build in practice is by going hey i've never spoken before maybe i'll first go on a panel maybe i'll share the stage with a few other people yeah and then the next stage is maybe i'll do a fireside chat maybe i'll share the stage with an interviewer yeah and then i'll talk on my own to a small room of people and then you're building that confidence but also that fear level begins to decline because you have reference points you actually i have spoken to a room actually i have been on stage before you're building up that confidence and thereby reducing the impact of that fear if today was your last coaching session ever what would be the final thing you'd want to live with final thing for the client to leave with if there was my final coaching session would be live your life by design not the fault and when you do that you begin to live with intention and the reason I would leave with that to live your life by design not the fault and live with intention is because we can have lots of goals I think the most important goal that we can have you can only have one goal this is simply be better than who you were yesterday because if you are constantly better than who you were yesterday in no time you'll become unrecognizable you will achieve results beyond your wildest expectations and you won't recognize who you were last year because you are constantly growing you are stacking yours in your favor you are increasing the probability that you will succeed that if you can only choose one goal should be it because by the very nature of being better than who you were yesterday you are not living a life by default you are living it with intention so when you've very much answered this last question sort of with this with with your answer right now but i'd like you to find maybe an alternative version of it if you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential advice that everyone can implement and must implement in order to become the best version of themselves what would that advice be that advice b would be

1:38:06action take action on what you learn that's as simple as that the best ideas you have the best insights you're going to receive will mean nothing unless you do something with it so that's why i think having an action-oriented mindset is absolute key because when you make moves towards what you want what you want will make moves towards you take action what matters even if it's a tiny step just take a tiny step every day and you'll be surprised at how far you can go thank you Simon thank you for coming I admire you and what you do deeply I find that us as humans we've tried numerous times throughout history to find answers to the most important question in our living which is why does everything matter, what are we here for what is it that we're doing here just try to find purpose and we initially tried to fill that gap that void through religion yeah and then through science the theory of evolution and then in modern forms of therapy at an individual level but life coaching approaches this from a slightly different angle so as you were mentioning previously instead of trying to understand my past it's a very pragmatic approach that will take me from where i am to where i want to be so it's very much hands zone and I can see that from your advice which is action and that's perhaps not something that a therapist or religion or the theory of evolution would tell me and I appreciate that and I think action is what a lot of people need in their lives to find purpose and to not be afraid of failing, to test and then once they are purposeful I think the world is just going to be a much brighter place at a personal and professional level so I thank you for that and you've transformed a lot of things my view in a lot of things in the two hours that we've been chatting and I'm pretty sure also the team that is here with me so I cannot imagine how much you can transform a person's life if they give you more of their time so thank you thank you so much