The Real Reason You’re Unfulfilled (and How to Fix It): Simon Alexander Ong

0:00I think for many of us is that we've fallen into a trap that success has been something that we've come to define by other people's definition. The fact that so many of us are living a life, living a story that is not out. We're exhausted, not because we're doing too much, but because we're doing too little of the things that bring us joy. So we want to avoid burnout. We have to make sure that we are addressing all of these four areas. so i see energy in four dimensions you've got physical mental i learned this from bruce lee when bruce lee created the martial arts in kundo he was asked in an interview is this the best martial art there is out there a lot in a lot of cases the reason we don't take action on the things deep down we know we must do or even we don't even follow through the resolutions we set ourselves at the beginning of the year it's because before we get started with the episode our books are now open if you need help getting in front of the right people, finding your dream customers or winning new business, we might be able to help.

1:04Why not outsource your sales to We Have A Meeting? Just go to wehaveameeting.com. Simon, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited for this one. We always start the podcast off the same way. So who are you and what problem do you solve? Who am I and what problem do I solve? Well, simply put, I'm someone who wants to make an impact in the world through the work that I do. The problem I solve is the fact that so many of us are living a life, living a story that is not ours. We're exhausted, not because we're doing too much, but because we're doing too little of the things that bring us joy and we're running someone else's definition of success.

1:45And so the problem I solve is fulfillment, is to help people lead more fulfilling lives so they can have a bigger impact, not just in their own community, but in every interaction they have. So if we think about fulfillment, what are the symptoms of feeling unfulfilled in your life, the things that might have snuck in? I think for many of us is that we've fallen into a trap that success has been something that we've come to define by other people's definition. And so we haven't spent time really to take a step back and ask ourselves, well, what is my definition of success? I know that's something I didn't do for the best part of the first 25 years of my life but I find that when you take time to explore what your definition of success is that's how you begin to live more in this feeling of flow that's how you begin to collapse years into months maybe days even because you're able to be focused productive and bring a sort of energy into everything you do that makes it infectious for people to be to be around you hmm so for people listening to this simon why why are you the best person to give this advice why should they trust you well i just in context what you said that i wouldn't say i'm the best at anything because all i am doing with my work is i'm simply expressing wisdom and insights that i've learned i would say there's no best of anything when we're looking to pursue our own personal growth, it's less about finding the best way, it's about finding your way.

3:16And the analogy I like to bring to mind for this is that let's say three of us go to a restaurant buffet. Now if we go up to the food counter and we start filling up our plate, it's virtually impossible that we come back to the table with exactly the same plate of food in exactly the same portion. It's impossible, we will come back with a very different looking plate of food. And so what I say is rather than looking for the best of anything is to look at what resonates with you given your circumstances given your priorities in life and how can you over time as you test these ideas find your own philosophy of being of doing yeah I learned this from Bruce Lee when Bruce Lee created the martial art Jeet Kune Do he was asked in an interview is this the best martial art there is out there by you creating this does it mean this martial art is better than karate better than western boxing and he said absolutely not he said i've integrated what i've learned from western boxing karate taekwondo and other martial arts into my own philosophy called jeekwondo for me this is the most efficient way of performing fighting moves doesn't mean it's the best way but it's what's worked for me and i just want to share this with people i love the analogy simon so if we think about self-development as a spectrum and you're you're probably further along the spectrum now as you go through life if we go back to that first step for you what what did that look like the first step i think in any self-development journey is self-awareness you can't have self development without self-awareness and for me it was when i went through this mistaken belief that success was defined by a job title so when i finished school my head was focused on becoming either a banker, a doctor, a lawyer or an accountant.

5:03Very traditional roles, reputable, paid well, decent and well respected. But unfortunately I started my financial career at the worst possible time, the middle of 2007, the year before the financial crisis. And even though it was quite a hard moment to go through redundancy early in your career, it actually became a blessing in disguise. Because for the first time I had capacity in my head to think about what I wanted to do. And what I realized was that when we go to school, we're taught to specialize very quickly. So, you know, your career as advisor would say, what do you want to do when you go to university?

5:40What do you want to do in life? What do you do when you graduate? And so there's so much pressure to think about one thing we want to do very early on when we haven't even explored all our capacities and interests and curiosities. And I found that I never gave myself the chance to explore all those interests. And we actually have it the wrong way around. we should actually encourage children to follow all of their curiosities and their interests so over time they can narrow it down to one thing but not have the pressure to think about that one thing immediately so when i took a step back the analogy i i i show in my book is that i went through this period of embarking on the longest journey we humans make which are the inches from my heads to our hearts never an easy journey but the most important that we will ever embark on.

6:25And so I got out a piece of paper. I wrote down on this piece of paper what a fulfilled life would look like by the time I'm 80 years old. And it was just a brain dump of loads of things that came to my head without judgment. And this was key. So I set myself an alarm for 90 seconds to just download everything onto paper. And it didn't give me the chance to overthink because if it came to mind, it was onto paper. And then once I had everything down on paper, I just started circling things that I would regret the most if I never made an attempt to see if this was possible. And that almost became the first step to exploring a very different path to the one I was on at the time.

7:06What were some of those things, if you don't mind sharing? So some of those things were, you know, creating a profitable business. At the time, it was quite vague when I put it down, because I had no exposure to the world of business. I'd always worked for someone. My family had always worked for someone in a company so it's things like i want to build a profitable seven figure business i want to be able to travel the world when i want i want to have a happy family i want to be able to choose what i do in my own time the freedom to choose i want to live where i want to live there's lots of the typical things we would we would have put down there and it actually ended up being about two or three pages just of bullet points and somewhat illustrations as well of like places I wanted to live and because I'm quite a creative and visual person so some of those weren't always words it was like a bit of visuals I was sketching out as well but it was just really it was a really powerful experience to put it onto paper because I I find a lot of us we think about things but we don't download it onto paper and so what happens when we don't download it onto paper is we end up thinking about our thinking about our thinking and we get so paralyzed in our head that we don't take any action but when we download onto paper we're giving ourselves the chance for our thoughts and and just to either challenge them or to create that next step so okay this is kind of the things that are important to me well what's the next step here what do i need to do in order to start making this a reality so those so we've outlined a fulfilled life right let's say i've got that list of things that are important to me a list of things i would regret how do we then look at the habits we need to kind of enforce getting there absolutely This is where visualization comes in.

8:46So in a lot of cases, the reason we don't take action on the things deep down we know we must do, or we don't even follow through the resolutions we set ourselves at the beginning of the year, is because in this present moment, we're acting from our past. So if you reference your past, you're always going to say to yourself, well, this has never worked out, or this has never been possible. I'm just not cut from the same cloth. My family has always got a track record of never succeeding. and so all of your past experience comes to define your present moment but if you act from your future from the visual you have of your ideal self that's how you begin following through on those important actions you have to act from that future self so once you know what that future self looks like you have to start asking yourself what would he or she do in this moment that embodies that success and then that that habit becomes much more natural especially when you're emotionally connected to a vision.

9:43If you're not emotionally connected to a vision, your excuses will always win out. But if you are emotionally connected to a vision, the action becomes easy. You know, it's like when you see a building on fire, you're not going to run in. You're going to look at a building on fire, you're going to pick up the phone, you're going to call the fire service and get them to sort it out. However, when you've got a friend, a partner or a loved one in that building you don't think twice you're straight in there to try and save their life that's because you're emotionally connected to the outcome so when you're able to discover what that emotional connection is and deepen it it becomes easy to be productive we are entering a new era of outbound four years in we have a meeting has leveled up our entire offer that's why multi-billion pound brands trust us and we put meetings with netflix spotify facebook even barcelona football club we've helped close deals up to 950 000 we're doing it all phone linkedin email direct mail there's a few weird and wonderful possibilities that we're keeping in our back pocket so if you're struggling to get in front of the right people at the right time inquire today so let's unpick that when we think about those self-sabotaging behaviors and those learned behaviors where are you typically seeing people go wrong what why are they self-sabotaging and how can they start to unravel them i think one of the most common fears people have is the fear of what other people think.

11:23Whatever fear you have, I think we can boil it down to the fear of what other people think. This is why many of us are afraid to begin again. You know, we may have spent 20 years in one career. We start questioning that career. But then what stops us pivoting, what stops us going back to school or learning from scratch again is what will people think of this? Will people think I'm a failure? Will people think I'm crazy? Will people think I'm stupid? And so I think a lot of the time we sabotage ourself when we're overthinking the judgment of other people. And so if we can put that to one side and trust more our intuition and our inner guide, we feel so much lighter.

12:01We'll focus more on just becoming who we were, but also becoming better than who we were yesterday. Focus on becoming better than who you were yesterday, one day at a time, and the results will come. The results will come your way. But if you overthink about what people will think when you do this, when you're worried about judgment, it's hard to be it's hard to be focused on on being productive so why i guess is there anything tribal that comes to mind where you think why do people worry about that judgment i think that's because we're brought up in a culture where we're always seeking approval when you're a child you're seeking approval from your parents when you're a teenager you're seeking approval from your peer group when you're an adult you're seeking approval from your boss your colleagues to get that promotion to be seen we all want to be seen and heard and and this is why you know i'm a parent now and one of the things i've been working on is i'm seeing a lot of children when they grow up they're so reliant on their parents so when they face an obstacle or a challenge or they feel nervous or they they feel some fear instead of trying to battle it themselves they go straight to the parents and say well what do i do what's your advice but instead as parents i think we can try and teach them to manage these circumstances and these challenges themselves and i remember one of the things i did to my child is i i shared with a bit of vulnerability i said to you know i'm feeling a little nervous uh for my next talk it's uh biggest audience i've ever spoken at and you know there's a there's a bit of nerves in me and i'm just trying to think if i can do as well as i've done in my previous events and by opening up to my daughter and asking her for advice you know they just come up with some of the purest answers in helping you but what that does is at a subconscious level it shows them they actually know the answer themselves as well so when they go through the same thing again they're like well i told my dad to do this actually maybe that's what i should be doing so you're kind of building up this resilience inside of them rather than constantly seeking approval rather than constantly seeking somebody else's opinion advice because more often than not we know the answer we know the answers deep down we just don't have the courage to follow through with the answers or to believe we know the answer and so the first thing we do is go out seek approval seek advice seek uh insight from others apart from myself so self-development as a so let's say i'm i'm starting on that journey yeah changing my life rediscovering myself it feels like self-development development doesn't work without self-awareness and often self-awareness is a thing that's quite hard to cultivate so in terms of if you were to tell someone how to cultivate that level of self-awareness they need to develop where would you get them to start well first of all it boils down to fact uh do you want to change or not you know i've often been asked simon have you coached anyone who was really tough to work with and i said no actually maybe once at the beginning of my career but no this is the whole purpose of having a first meeting it's because i can't change someone who doesn't want to be changed.

15:08I can only change someone who is open to being changed. And so when we have that first conversation, I'm just gauging where they're at in life, if they're ready to be coached. If they're not, then we don't continue because it's not going to be beneficial for either of us. I can help guide them. I can challenge them. But if they're not open to being challenged or open to seeing something from a different perspective, it just becomes a complete waste of time. so this is why self-awareness is the first step now there is yeah you can cultivate it but in the majority of cases it's down to you you have to accept responsibility to change where you are and where you want to be nobody can do that for you in the same way that you can read all the books you can watch all the podcasts you can listen to all the advice from other people but unless you implement that you know and nobody can force you to implement it but unless you implement it well you don't know the true value of any of the insights and ideas you have.

16:02And this is why, yes, self-awareness is a key. And part of that, which can increase the probability that you become more self-aware, is changing your environment. Sometimes a very small shift in your environment makes you deeply self-aware about what has to change. You know, for example, if you took someone to a graveyard who was going through a tough time in their life, just that sudden shift in environment can make them realize just how small their problems are. When they see that actually life is so fragile, life is so short, is this really going to matter in 10 years' time? And so small shifts in the environment can really help with that awareness.

16:42You mentioned Bruce Lee before. I'm going to give you my favorite Bruce Lee quote. I've got it written all over the place, but simplicity is the key to brilliance. And when I first saw that, I thought, wow, that's amazing. You can frame your whole experience based on that. when i say that to you and the work that you do what does that mean it resonates a lot because i am all about simplicity i mean the joke i often have with my friends is that if you look at my social media my youtube and the events where i speak at i'm in most cases in a black t-shirt blue jeans and trainers it's the same outfit for 99 of my social engagements and it keeps things simple it means that when i wake up in the morning i don't have to think about all these trivial decisions you know what am i going to wear uh what i need to pack in my bag all of these have already been outsourced or made for me that means i have more power up here and energy focus on the decisions that are actually going to move the needle um so simplicity from that side but also simplicity in terms of how i operate now you know i was asked a question recently about whether i'm more or less productive now i'm a parent i think i'm actually more productive because when you become a parent, you're forced to simplify.

17:52Before you become a parent, you can say, okay, I'll do it tonight. I'll do it on a weekend. You can keep putting things off. But once you're a parent, you've got only a small window of opportunity to get work done before you pick up your child from school and the night's gone, the weekends are gone, holidays are gone because you want to spend time with your children. So with a smaller window of opportunity to get work done, you have to ruthlessly prioritize you have to simplify life to be efficient and so that's what i hear when i hear that word because i'm all about simplicity i think when you simplify every aspect of your life you just give yourself oxygen to focus on the things that actually matter so let's dive into productivity when it comes to productivity versus procrastination what have you found to be the best tools or hacks that avoid that procrastination monster well i think there's two parts that you got procrastination which is one area and then productivity i think which is another area here so if i think about procrastination for me if you have a vision of a future that is and then this is simply put for me if you have a vision of a future that is so compelling so magnetic in nature procrastination doesn't become a problem because you're connected to it and action is the only thing you want to do because you're visualizing it you're sleeping seeing it you're immersed in it you can't stop thinking about it you're talking about it you're living in it you're obsessed by it and so it's very hard to procrastinate now i think when we think about procrastination i'm not saying and i think this is where people get confused i'm not saying you can't sit down watch netflix go to a cinema and just do nothing for a day there's a difference between intentional rest and procrastination so for example if i know i've had a tough few weeks my intentional rest might be i'm going to take the whole weekend off i'm just going to binge on netflix and i'm going to spend time with my children and i'm going to do nothing that's intentional rest but if that suddenly goes from a weekend to monday tuesday and wednesday as well now that's procrastination so we have to be careful between resting with intention and that becoming procrastination.

19:57For me, productivity is all about, it's an energy question. We used to think productivity was about time. If I manage my time better, then I'll become more productive. But for me, energy management, not time management is the key to productivity. You can have lots of time in your calendar, but if you're exhausted, you're just going to waste that time. It doesn't matter how much time you have. But if you have a lot of energy, if you enjoy what you do if you find it fun then you're going to get far more done in the same hours than most other people you become far more productive you make more progress than the majority of your peers it's an energy question the way the way you were talking then simon it sounded like if your why is big enough that will be enough to to drag you through and i agree with you but i also think so you're on this big maybe decade long mission to scale a business and sell for millions whatever it is there are going to be seasons within that where motivation might not show up on a monday morning and actually the energy isn't there so how do you how do you help people who are i guess sludging through the trenches they've got the mission they're still going but they feel like they don't have the will to continue yeah well and that's the thing motivation doesn't last you right and so it's not to focus on the motivation piece because motivation um it's like when i was in banking the motivation was if you hit your targets you get a bonus now what happens when everyone gets paid their bonus they're back to chilling out kicking their feet up it's the same thing with a marathon right you set a goal of finishing a marathon you train hard you change your diet you optimize your health so you can cross that finish line again what happens in the days and weeks after they finish the marathon they're back to what they were doing before in what was pretty much a bad lifestyle so for me it's less about motivation it's more about thinking about the journey as the focus how can i make the journey so fun so enjoyable that that itself becomes the thing that is rewarding not the result at the end because the thing is if you're always focus on the result, finishing the marathon, completing the task, getting the bonus, then you're just going to be going through this vicious loop of getting it and going back to who you were, getting it and going back to who you were.

22:15But if you focus on the journey itself, the key is not to make it a chore. The moment it feels like a chore is the moment it drains your energy. So ask yourself, how can I make this fun and exciting? Because when it's fun and exciting, you're just drawn to want to do it. You know, when I started, for example, publishing YouTube videos i asked myself this is going to be a tough journey you know i'm going to have to commit to two videos a month i'm going to have to learn to script i'm going to have to learn how to edit how to build a team this is going to be a tough journey but how do i make this fun how do i make this enjoyable and that gets me that gets you thinking so it was like i created a peer group on whatsapp my wife got involved i just started to think of different ways that i could make this journey fun and not something that would drain you of energy.

23:01How do you then balance short-term and long-term goals? It feels like, from what you were saying then, it feels like you could have a goal that deep down you know you will never hit, but the journey could be so fun that it'll kind of drag you through. But then how do you do that without getting burnt out with those short-term goals? Sure. So here's the way I'd say it. So goals are never the end product. Goals are sort of the stepping stones to what I would say is a vision. Now, the vision is something that can evolve and change. So as you get more clarity, as you take more steps forward, that vision will evolve as you evolve.

23:32And that vision is much more of an emotional pull. So the vision could be, I want to build a life where all of us in the family never have to work for someone else again. That could be the vision. Now, as you make steps towards that, that might become clearer and clearer. You know, you get an idea of what that thing actually is. You'll get an idea of where you want to live. All of these things will become clearer as you get more information. Now, the goals then become the stepping stone. the first goal might be okay i need to find a job where i get hours back so it's not that stressful to focus on my long-term vision then the next step might be i need to surround myself with people thinking way ahead of of where i am so that i can start thinking at a higher level then the next goal might be okay i need to now start putting myself in environments where i'm always challenged so the goals become sort of like mini steps to division but at the same time and this is sort of the paradox here is you don't want to attach your well-being to the goal working out or not because the outcome is not always in our control but how we show up is and so if you can focus on calibrating and optimizing how you show up again and again and again what you're doing regardless of if you hit the goals or not is you are stacking the odds in your favor that the vision becomes a reality now another way of putting this is you become a luck machine you are you are becoming a magnet for luck and so by putting yourself in positions where you can act boldly so for example one of the things i did early my transition from corporate entrepreneurship is i would go to events when i would when i sign myself up for an event i would deliberately go early and i would sit at the front row or as close to the front row as I could because I knew that the people I would meet at that front row would be infinitely more interesting than the people at the back of the room and as I did that again and again and again I got to know event organizers I got to know the speakers team through that I got to know Simon Sinek who endorsed my book got to know Marie Forleo who endorsed my book just by sitting on the front row now I have no idea if the goal of connecting with the speaker and the team is going to work out that's not in my control all I'm focused on is stacking the odds in my favor.

25:44I want to expand my luck surface area so that I have a greater probability of getting the outcome than other people. And I've seen this happen again and again, not just in my own journey, but just observing how people run businesses, how they get themselves out there. Like I was at the launch of Richard Branson's book, Finding My Virginity. And this was in a big event hall. And he was doing a Q &A about his entrepreneurial journey, his life and his lessons. At the halfway point, the camera turned to a music band who was providing the sort of intermission entertainment. While they were playing, I noticed about four rows in front of me, there was a guy furiously scripting down his business plan.

26:25And at the end, he put his contact details and his name at the bottom. He folded it up into a paper airplane, and then he threw it at Branson, and it landed on his lap. So when the lights came back on after the musicians had finished their set, Branson said, I just wanted to share that somebody had just thrown me a paper open and let's see what's in it he opened it up and in it was a business pitch and first of all he said I just want to congratulate this person whoever it was for for their boldness um now I don't have time to look for it now but I'm going to hand it to my team we're going to review it and I promise you we'll get back to you uh I'm not sure what happened but this is what I mean you can't control the outcome but you can definitely stack the odds in your favor of that outcome happening so there'll be someone listening to that now that's feeling both inspired but then also probably thinking but i'm an introvert that's probably not what works for me and even what you've just said then about being the one to sit at the front yeah they might go well actually simon sounds like someone who's naturally just uncomfortable sitting at the front what would you say to that person who's kind of being defined by by those labels sure well first of all that's completely fine because again it's working out what is your natural strength because i love speaking i love speak on the stage.

27:34So for me, these things come easy. But you want to find what works best for you given your talents and strengths. Now, when we think about communication, communication isn't just going up and speaking to someone. That's just one mode. Other modes of communication might be writing. It might be video. It might be presenting, speaking on a panel rather than speaking as the only person on stage. But just kind of find out what is your mode of communication. We all have a favored mode of communication where you can leverage that. So, you know, for example, if I wanted to market my book, I might do lots of speaking events.

28:07Now, if I'm not so inclined to do many speaking events, maybe I might do an online event where people can join and I'm just speaking to a camera, answering your questions in the chat, but I'm not speaking to everyone in person. Or I might do, there's another book marketing strategy called book drops. I might sign loads of books and just drop them in public places so people might find them and they might stumble upon my work so it's just about getting creative about how you can match what comes naturally to you there's something that is quite innovative and this is um yeah just as i speak about this reminds me of this book i read a couple of years back called uh the third door by alex benign i don't know if you read the book but it it's a nice summary of the things i'm trying to say here which is the fact that if you want to succeed faster than most people in anything you do you have to think about how can how can i create third doors in making a leap from where i am to where i want to be so if you go to a nightclub there are two doors by which you can enter that nightclub the first door is the main entrance where 99 of people will wait they will queue they will get to the front hopefully the bouncer lets them in they pay their ticket and they're through to the club the second door is where the one percent go through it's the red carpet entrance for the VIPs, the influencers, the millionaires, and so on.

29:24But if you're smart enough, if you're creative enough, there is always a third door that you can create, either through knowing a mutual friend with a manager, maybe knowing the cleaning team where they've given you a key through to the side entrance. This is how a lot of people have made massive progress in the journey, is by creating these third doors. Even Steven Spielberg, who jumped off a bus doing a bit of a tour around the studios in order to stay on the studio and just schmooze all the directors on set so he could get his film seen by directors way above his pay grade so it's really thinking to yourself well what can i do to create these third doors you know the examples i gave throwing a paper airplane sitting at the front maybe sending a personalized video message things to get people's attention to say look at me this is what i can do this is what i can offer and and that's i think what summarized a lot what i'm saying here i mean that leads on so nicely so i wanted to ask you sat around this table we've all got young children i'm becoming increasingly worried about attention spans and there is so much social media and so much tiktok and instagram and there's always something to be busy doing and i don't know if that's just like a the way we go and i say oh it was better in our day but because there was also distractions we had you know i mean msm messenger and all the the joys of it but but i think more so like we're getting distracted are we having enough time to think and be creative so if you are maybe somebody in their 20s that like i can't really think of any creative ideas i'm not having the time or i'm not having the idea is how do people get back to basics when it comes to being creative great question the quickest way to improve your creativity is to diversify your inputs as simple as that so if you are spending time with just people like you who are doing your exact same job i mean you can't think different it's like if you look at a retail company that's only looking at their competitors they can only be as good as their competitors but if you look outside of your industry and see what your outside competitors are doing you can take that back into your industry from some completely different industry you become innovative because you took somebody that you saw and brought into your own a great example is steve jobs in the macbook you know when he was in japan he noticed that rice cookers in japan had this magnetic cord and he got really curious he was like well why do rice cookers have this magnetic cord and then he got his answer when he messaged the company and they said because when children trip over wires if the wire comes off the appliance would stay still it wouldn't come flying off the kitchen top and hitting them on the head as it fell down and Steve Jobs started thinking about this idea he said this this could be a genius move let's introduce a magnetic cord for the MacBook so he took an idea from from a very different industry brought it into his own and when he did the journalists and the tech newspapers and outlets called him a genius this is such a genius accessory so all he did was look at a different industry and brought into a zone.

32:35And so to increase your creativity, you want to diversify what you read, the inputs you have and who you spend time with. When I launched my book in 2022, for example, I see it as one of the most innovative book launches because we did things such as partnering with the Connaught Hotel in London, where they created an energized cocktail. My book's called Energize. And so they designed a cocktail after my book. And so if you went to this bar during the first few weeks of launch and you ordered the energized cocktail, it was mixed in front of you and then presented on a signed copy of my book. I mean, just imagine the content people were taking, photos, selfies, videos.

33:11A few months after, we did one of the world's first book launches in the metaverse. It was a virtual launch with everyone's avatars in this virtual conference center. And then last year, we partnered with a celebrity chef to put what I think was the first of its kind, taking a self-development book, six messages from it, and turning those into six courses so that the messages from the book were communicated through the medium of food. So mindfulness as an example, for that course the table was turned into a bed of water, the plate was tree bark, your spoon was a metallic leaf and there were sounds of birds chirping around you.

33:49That became a unique talking point. So much so that people were so present in that experience, talking to each other, being blown away by what they were experiencing and they couldn't help by sharing on social media the next day they were telling everybody about it they couldn't help but talk about it and and so creativity comes from being exposed to different stimuli outside of the ordinary where when you bring it into your own you come across as completely original and innovative another example that comes to my head uh it's a friend of mine called mark burton uh he used to run a nightclub in london in sloan square called tontorio he runs a different nightclub now but at the time it had everything going against it you know it's a small nightclub it was underneath a hotel the ceilings were low and you had lots of other choices of where to go and spend your money in the evening if you wanted to go out with friends so he thought how are we going to attract people to come to our nightclub even though we're small we're underneath a hotel and we have pretty low ceilings so what they came up with is this idea to grab people's attention.

34:52They installed some train tracks on the ceiling of the club. And so whenever tables ordered their shots or their drinks, they would put it onto a toy train at the bar, light the train on fire, and the train would go around the tracks at that table. And it was delivered, because it was a Mexican-themed club, it was delivered by Day of the Dead characters. And so you can imagine, every time this train went around delivering drinks to people's tables, how many people were just taking photos, taking videos, the people that went to the club became their marketers they didn't need a marketing team their customers became the marketing team they were they would have won sharing this experience with their entire network and and so to be creative you have to diversify your inputs that's how you give birth to originality and the ability to be innovative in what you do so it sounds like it's more switching up the inputs rather than pulling the inputs out completely So then what's your take on meditation, for example?

35:54Meditation is important because life is busy. We're all leading busy lives. Many of us are time poor. And we are taking in so much information, inspiration and ideas. But unless you give yourself the space to connect those dots, you're not going to do anything with them. You're not going to give yourself the chance to have that breakthrough. when you meditate you are slowing the pace of your mind down and you are reconnecting with your true self but you're also you're also allowing your brain connect these random dots you may have had a conversation last week you may have met someone at an event yesterday you may have read a book that ties all of these experiences together you only can tie them together and thread this into something innovative if you can give yourself the moment to step back and this is why meditation so powerful uh rumi had this great quote that goes uh the quieter your mind the more your soul speaks and there is beauty in silence the things that we seek are in the moments of silence where we can actually hear the insights we're looking for so whenever we speak to someone who i mean you're incredibly articulate and you come across very well researching and controlling yourself it's always interesting to ask the question of what was the last thing you changed your mind about i i'm always changing my mind about stuff because i think we have to have humility in knowing that we don't know everything and so one of the things i do each year is there's this idea i call reset to zero uh which is at the end of each year i want to reset everything i've achieved to zero so when i start january the new year i'm back to the drawing board and i'm back to challenging myself and being a student again because what I've noticed is that the biggest challenge for people is not becoming successful because it's so easy to become successful in today's world you know you can just hop onto YouTube you can learn skills you can learn strategies from people you can listen to podcasts you can read books for me the challenge is once you've become successful is remembering who you are remaining who you were before you were successful and what happens when you achieve the lot you can easily coast on that success it's why you know a football team might win the premier league once and the next season they're down to 17th and facing relegation because it's far easier to win once than to win it again and again and again and so this reset to zero helps me to evaluate my thoughts and what am i wrong about what can i address how can i change to address some of the things that i did believe in the past but now i know it's not to be true.

38:33So for example, maybe two years ago, I was focused on building my LinkedIn presence. And maybe the last year I was focused on YouTube. This year is thinking about how do I scale my business using AI. And so each year I'm exposing myself to a new curriculum because I know that the world doesn't stay still. And if you want to remain relevant, if you want to thrive over the long term, you have to be adaptable. You have to be open to learning and remaining an eternal student. and so i'm always challenging my thoughts i'm always thinking well what how could i be wrong you know what am i missing uh in what i'm doing here because that's how we improve you know when when i first started youtube when i first started speaking at the end of each video at the end of each event i've spoken at i always ask myself two questions first is what went well because it's always good to focus on the positive what went well and the second is what could i improve next time now the first keeps me in a good positive frame of mind because it's so easy to look at what went wrong and then you dwell on man if only i wish i could have done that better but you can't change what happened and the second helps you be productive for the next one well what am i going to do different for the next time i get invited to talk to an audience of people so let's say then that there's the men in black pen and i can wipe things and you go back to day one yeah if taking that mantra of starting back at zero what would you do differently if you started today it's funny because there's very few things i would do differently uh there is one that comes to mind but i will sort of give a bit of context first because a lot of what's happened good and bad i'm really grateful for because it's made me who i am today you know for example when i failed my second year of university at the time you know that that was tough i felt very ashamed especially coming from a Chinese family or failing my second year of university.

40:23But if I didn't fail that year, I wouldn't have met my now wife. When the financial crisis happened, again, I thought that was a very dark moment in my career, redundancy, everyone's losing jobs. I now have to learn how to find a job again. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have gone deep inside of me and explored entrepreneurship and thus wouldn't be sitting here today. And so in some ways, I'm actually glad for everything that happened because it kind of made me who I am today. However, if I could reset to zero, the only thing I would change is I would begin building relationships far earlier on.

40:56Because one of the things I said to clients I've worked with is the importance of prioritization. And I always ask clients this one question to help them be more productive. If you only had one hour every week to work on your business, how would you spend that hour? You've got one hour a week, that's it. And when I was first asked that question, the first thing that came to my head was I would take people ahead of me out for lunches. I would take as many people ahead of me out for lunch because not only would I gain knowledge from treating them to lunch and getting to ask them questions, but it's the network I would build from that.

41:36And the network you build is what opens your mind to opportunities. It's what feeds your mind insight, ideas, and creativity. And so for me, that's the one thing I would do if I could reset to zero, just start building relationships earlier on. Our book is out now. Sales is therapy is available everywhere for people who are looking to get better at communicating, asking better questions, closing more deals and bringing in more clients. Beware, it is not for the faint of heart or for closed minded people. You can buy it in all good shops, links below. So we have a lot of people on and we talk about networking And sometimes it gets a bit of an icky topic But you know what I mean Networking is your net worth and things like that I think it's so so important to have like A network of great relationships Interesting people This might sound like a very bizarre question But once you've got those relationships I guess there is a part of you That's effectively managing them As a business person who's thinking I've now got these relationships I've got this relationship with Simon Sinek I've got this relationship with this person I could probably do with something from them or I want to ask for a favor.

42:48How do you approach those situations where it doesn't just feel like it's take, take, take? The key is it has to be when you do take, the caveat is that you have given so much in value that when you take, they are more than willing to give. That has to be the feeling. In many cases, when we network, we network with the ambition to take something. that we're strategically networking in order to take something and we know what that thing is want to take before we've even got into a relationship but the best relationships are when you focus so much on giving value that when it comes eventually to you needing to take something people love to help you they want to help you they actually want to see you succeed and so that's why what i would say is to focus when it comes to building relationships focus on value make sure you're giving far more than you're taking because every time i've asked in network i've been in like you know can i get endorsement uh can i get your advice on this what would you do if you had this challenge people have been more than willing to help me out just because the amount of value i give and keep in mind when i talk about value it doesn't have to be financial your value can be something as simple as hey i saw you share that you're going through a tough time at the moment i think this book might be really helpful for you or you know my friend going for a similar situation i'm happy to connect you so you can have a conversation as simple as that because again fundamentally we're humans which means we want to be seen and heard so if you show that you can resonate with what they're going for and you can add value in some way that's for me the foundation of every successful relationship a lot of relationships i built came from literally finding a way to add value and it's easier than you think if we listen most of us aren't listening to understand we're listening to respond you know when i was putting together entrepreneurial events again as i made the transition from corporate to entrepreneurship i wanted to bring in the co-founder of hello fresh to speak to a room of 200 plus entrepreneurs but i didn't have the budget to pay him so i remember he was promoting his new cookbook so he was like the he was one creating all the recipes of hello fresh and so i saw he had a picture of his new book coming out and obviously anybody who's got a book coming out wants to see it rise up the bestseller charts so i just dropped a message and i said hey congratulations on your new book.

45:07If you're interested, I would love to bulk order 200 copies of your book so you can come and sign them at my event and we can help push your book up to become a bestseller. Four hours later, his PA reached out and said, let's chat. So again, it was finding a way to add value. And the way you find a way to add value is to understand what is important to someone and what is important to someone will change over time. If they've got a book coming out, it might be how do you help them become a bestseller? If they've just become a new parent, or how do you find a way to help their kids or to help them through that parenting journey?

45:39So people always sharing their challenges, their problems and what they're going through. The thing for us to do is find ways to be of value, be a person of value. And then people will always remember how you help them. I like that. I really like that, Simon. And then let's talk about, I keep thinking about that. If you've got that, that why, very Simon Sinek anyway, of like sticking with the why. Okay, cool. I'm going through the process. so many entrepreneurs and business owners will be listening to this so how do they then avoid burnout well how you avoid burnout this comes to energy management which is what i wrote in the book energize so i see energy in four dimensions you've got physical mental emotional and spiritual physical is the one that we naturally think most about so when you talk to friends about resolutions chances are uh most resolutions will be to do with physical energy and physical energy is your sleep, it's your nutrition, and it's how often you move your body.

46:38So people often say, I'm going to exercise more this year, I'm going to change my diet this year, I'm going to get more rest. That's all to do with physical energy. But we don't focus enough on mental, emotional, and spiritual. Mental energy is your, simply put, your ability to focus, your ability to tap your creative energy, and to manage your mindset. Emotional energy is all about relationships, the relationship with yourself, and the relationship with people around you. And spiritual energy is It's all about meaning and purpose. So if we want to avoid burnout, we have to make sure that we are addressing all of these four areas.

47:11Are you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually energized? If not, you are very quickly going to burn out. And through this process, you begin to learn that work and rest are not opposite sides of the spectrum. A lot of people say, I'm going to work my ass off and then I'm going to rest. and then what happens is you go through this process of overworking burning out and then treating yourself overworking again burning out and have to go to a spa day to kind of recuperate again and so it's very unsustainable and you get to a point where you just go okay i just have to switch off now because my body's just shutting down if you want to thrive you have to realize that work and rest are the opposites they're partners of the same team and you have to integrate rest into your everyday.

47:56In fact, there's a famous, I say anecdote because I'm not sure if this is true or not, but Thomas Edison used to spend an hour each day fishing, but he never caught a single fish because every day he fished, he fished without using bait. So no one, not even the fish would disturb him. So he would use that time just to be, to be still, to be with his thoughts and so he could come back into his office reset re-energize and refreshed so then to for you personally to work at a high level and also have that balance with rest what are the non-negotiables for you on a day-to-day basis yeah you have to set boundaries you you have to set boundaries some of the non-negotiables for me uh for example are to get up early uh for me if i don't get up early then i'm going to get nothing done in the morning because as a parent uh if you're not up before your child is on you know you're hands on for the whole morning until until they're dropped off at school so for me the non-negotiables get up before my my daughter gets on so i've got space to ease into my day i've got space to sit down to journal to plan uh to kind of work out what are my focal areas uh the most important things to get done for the day are uh other non-negotiables are reading and learning every day i have to have learned something new either through reading listen to audiobook or podcast, watching an educational video or having a deep conversation with someone.