 Life is not about a finite thing. It's not about I will achieve this thing and then I will be happy. It's more about the intrinsic motivation that you can get from doing a thing. And so by doing the thing, that's what can make you happy. Welcome back to this Sevo show. We are in March now. Things are going hectic with the three companies. So for those of you who have been waiting for this episode or for another episode, thanks for your patience. We do have more coming in on today's show. We have Sian Brennan, a seasoned professional with a strong background in construction contracts and project management. He is currently the CEO of Quantum Contract Solutions, which is a Perth-based company assisting construction contractors in risk management, negotiation, and contract documentation. Brennan has held key positions in renowned organizations such as Turner and Townsend, Inpex, Chevron, Ankara, and Lightsight, where he has shown his expertise in construction contract and cost management at various project stages. Sian holds a masters of engineering management from Curtin University and a Bachelor of Science, like me, with honors, not like me, in construction economics and management from the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is fluent in French and has been endorsed by clients for his commercial expertise and professionalism. Brennan's career spans across Australia and the Middle East. He's got over 15,000 followers on LinkedIn. That's a huge B2B player there. Brennan, thanks for joining me. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. I am not fluent in French. So this is the perfect example of why you don't use AI to analyze someone. When I did the analyzation on here, I was like, okay, cool, let's go and check through LinkedIn and see if it's accurate. Never did I find anywhere it said that you were actually fluent in French. So for those people that are trying to use AI for everything, always double check everything. Thank you for validating that. Now, I'm going to skip the other question. Discuss a project where your fluency in French was instrumental. Sorry, Brennan, thanks for being here. Now, we had a chat before off mic about a whole bunch of things already and we'll definitely dive into them but for everybody at home, the younger audience specifically, give me three words, in three words, what do you do? I am an entrepreneur, a leader and I'm a writer. Nice. And what's your thing that you write about? Construction. Nice. Construction. So that's an interesting question because I have kind of exited my own business. So I'm no longer in the day-to-day ops and I sit on our owner's team so the business runs by itself and so that happened reasonably recently. So last three months and I thought that's kind of the game of entrepreneurship where you start off by yourself and then you hire someone to do the stuff that you don't want to do or the other way to say it is hire people so you can focus on high revenue generating activities and then you grow from there and then you hire key positions and then you hire someone to run the company and then you have a leadership team in place and then you eventually kind of exit your own business or you go for a proper exit and so that was always the goal to play that game and the goal for this year is to write a book on how to run construction businesses properly because in our business we have all of that that and we can see how it goes wrong and so for the last three months I've been a writer which I've found really hard but it's a kind of an identity shift in that I have really struggled in this three months I thought it'd be great and it turns out I really miss the day-to-day ops the kind of pandemonium and it's hard to find that new place for me where I can operate in my best capacity so that's kind of my last few months has been that and it's trying to be a writer and spending time which is a different mode like I found that I can't write in my office at all my office is a place is my watering hole for work and just smashing stuff out can't seem to write so I've been going to cafes to do all my writing and just trying to get into that mindset of operating at a different pace in a different way more creatively which I found quite difficult. Amazing, amazing so let's go back to the exits let's talk about that for a second for the younger audience an exit is where you pretty much don't have to do anything with the business it runs itself because you've replaced yourself completely and a proper exit explain to the audience what a proper exit is. Okay well there's all different kinds of proper exits so you can have a trade sale so you sell your business to a third party completely, entirely that whole thing is fraught with loads of different ways that can be done you can sell the business to employees a lot of people do as well a combination of those things can happen as well you can sell a portion of your business and retain some equity and then there's obviously exiting your own business and so it just sits on your own personal balance sheet as an asset and someone else is running it someone else is growing it so there's a different kind of exits in my mind have you experienced all of them or just that one specifically where it's asset? Yeah no I've experienced I've had two acquisitions so the first one was I would say and I'm not allowed to say names, confidentiality but a very well known entrepreneur in the online business space I think most people will know who I'm talking about and so I went through an acquisition process with those guys and the thing is and a mentor of mine has told me about is people who acquire companies have done this hundreds of times and you may only do it once in a lifetime and it is, it opened my mind to all of these different games that are being played all the different risks that can happen so the first one was someone just wanted to buy a large chunk of the business and then there was seller financing which means that they don't actually give you any money you they will of the profits that they get from the acquisition they will repay you until they hit that number so you kind of finance it yourself that's one type of way that can happen so that was the first one going through all of those issues in there and the due diligence and people going through your accounts and questioning stuff and all of that like was eye-opening for sure and fraught with dangers but that was actually okay and I decided or both of us decided not to go ahead in the end which was fine a lot of money spent on both sides but ultimately it wasn't a good outcome for both parties the second one was more of a venture capital company so this is again these guys are totally this is their game they play this game and so typically the game that they play is they want to buy small, medium-sized companies that are very profitable have a lot of cash flow and they're trading at three or four times a multiple so a multiple is like your profit, your EBITDA and multiply it by three or four and that's how they value the company and so what they generally try and do is these VC companies is they'll buy four or five of these companies put them into one company and then that company given that now it's a much higher profit should be trading at seven or eight times multiple so they'll either sell that on or they might list it onto the stock exchange so they merge and then they flip they flip it right and so one way to look at this is that entrepreneurs are in the business or in the game of value creation these guys are in the business of value extraction how can we get businesses put them together and extract as much value as possible which is ultimately the reason I didn't go ahead is not a game I wanted to be part of realistically and so these guys offered me a large amount of money upfront like half and then the other half was equity in this new business that they had this company that they were going to buy businesses and then they're going to list it on the stock market and so it sounded good the total values looked like it was going to be a good deal but then when I dug into that company that I was now going to be a 47% owner of it had $1 million sitting in the bank it had no and that was it it had no revenue whatsoever and so my dividend of 47% would be nothing and so it was all promises of what they were going to do so that the portion of the business that they valued very, very highly actually wasn't worth very much and so the risk I would have had was I would have, I'm sure I would have gotten a bit of money upfront but the other part of it I would have relinquished control of my own business they wanted to get rid of our leader of the organization and replace him with different CEO you didn't want to dog him did you? no I didn't no I didn't that's good of you and then and the risk of that other thing not happening and having no control over this other company that they were going to acquire and then listen to the stock market just the whole thing was just too risky to me wow but it was going through that process twice where I realized oh there's different ways to exist you don't have to I mean really if you sell your business you all of a sudden you lose cash flow which is one thing you get money sure you lose half because you get paid in one tax year so you're going to lose a lot of it in tax a lot of it in tax and then you probably pay off some big things in your life which is cool but then you've got this money left over and what are you going to do like if you're an entrepreneur like me you're probably going to buy your business but I already had a really good business and so you're taking steps back it's almost taking steps back it was almost like an ego play where I was like I just wanted to say I sold my business so I could be a real entrepreneur that has exited that way which is kind of like oh that's why like I thought that was the next level of the game to do that okay so that took a lot of you know debating with myself and figuring out what I really wanted to do and all of that sort of stuff to understand that I didn't want to do that did you get approached or did you approach these two opportunities? the first one I approached because there was kind of an application process online and then they got on the call with them and they're like hey if you do X, Y and Z and you hit these numbers we'll invest so I did the X, Y and Z hit those numbers and they're like right let's do it how long did that take? for me to hit the numbers? yeah probably a year wow are you gold driven like that? is that one of your big strengths? would you say? yes for sure how do you build that habit? it's a really good question so I mean just to book atomic habits basically ah James I love that book just like love that book so it's you've got a you've got a goal whatever the goal that you have okay it is what it is doesn't matter no one cares right you don't have to have a reason for your goal your goal is your goal doesn't matter what you want right you want you want a car whatever doesn't matter but what can you do every day that's super easy every single day if I know that if I do this little thing every day I will definitely get that and to make it as simple as possible in the business everything it's like okay we need we are out there and so we do cold calling right and cold DMing right and so so if we know if we make X amount of calls we're going to get X amount of sales and so if our goal is to increase revenue we go how many sales do we need right what does that mean to the day to day thing alright what does that mean for each sales rep how many calls do they mean to make how many DMs do they need to do yeah the mats and then we have the daily targets then we go well all we have to do is hit those daily targets every day and then the goal will come on its own that's pretty much every sales book I've ever read literally that that is the summary of it that's it that's the summary of sales it's not that hard no no and with volume as well volume is in my view volume is almost always the answer it is volume skill and time with volume com skill through time yeah yeah yeah then that's I mean for me my final hurdle is sales yeah I hate sales I'm good at sales I hate sales I hate asking because I don't like asking yeah and like I and that was like a like a big thing when I was a kid I'd always ask my stepdad if I can go on the computer and he'd be like why what's what are you doing and he's just been sitting on the couch the whole time so maybe it's like a trauma thing maybe but I've overcome it right but leading up to my journey I've got good products good success stories networking is good obviously the marketing is really good it's just the sales yep I'm still yet to crack it for this new venture that I'm in so I don't know how much research you've done on me just a quick back story my high school math teacher yes love photography hence the name Sev's Picks somehow got into weddings which I never thought I would ever do loved it wanted to prove a point to myself and someone else and at the same time I love making content went viral on TikTok I saw said to people that I do weddings on there got two bookings doubled down on that because it worked anytime something works I just double down yep I'm like sick it works isn't it funny how sometimes people don't do that so instead of doing more they change I don't know why to do that yeah but then I went through this kind of dance of after the client the couples are about to ask me how much it's going to cost so read some books it's a mentoring got a mentor who went to high school with his name is Kieran absolute legend he forexed my business all because of a sales pitch sort of kind of one one call sales pitch and it works every time it's crazy and yeah I got through that but then people start asking me how did you get so many clients because I booked out for two years and I said tick tock now everybody's asking me how they can do that as well and what does that mean now I'm a marketer or I'm I'm an advisor more so an advisor for marketing because I did it really well myself hate the word consulting because it's overused but I am technically that too but now I'm in this bigger game where the tickets are a lot higher than a five or ten thousand dollar wedding there's an extra zero on top of that and I've mastered that as well like I've closed hundred thousand dollar deals which is sound surreal because four years ago now times times gone fast but four years ago minus two because of that flu that happened it's so surreal being able to make something in one month that I spent four years studying at university to make in a year mm right but that's that's where I'm that's what I'm heading to now and to segue back to you um my ultimate mantra my ultimate journey goal is to educate people that if they study something at university and they work for someone else but they're not quite fulfilled they're not quite happy with their lifestyle they want I don't know whatever like all this bigger stuff don't go into debt get into a bigger business get into a bigger play get into a bigger game to be able to successfully do that without locking yourself into debt for thirty years right so you've would you say you've escaped the rat race if your basic costs of living are covered by your dividends whether they're in your um your business assets or maybe even your shares portfolio yes how does that feel how does that feel knowing you can literally start from zero and have that checkpoint no matter what so it's a really good question I don't think you're gonna like my answer I'm ready for it it's my answer is I've already achieved the stuff that I said would make me happy how old are you forty next month forty next month so sold by forty like achieved everything what was not achieved not achieved everything so when like you know when I first you know when I was when I was in a job it was like if I can just get to this level then I'll be happy and I got to that level and then I was like I don't want to do the job thing I'll talk about consultants in a sec we can go back to that because I was a consultant and then I was like okay if I can just get a business that pays so like just covers our expenses great like that'll be it because then I can do whatever I want and I'm happy did that and so it's more of like our friend talks about the or Simon Sinek talks about Infinite Games it's life is not about a finite thing it's not about I will achieve this thing and then I will be happy it's more about the intrinsic motivation that you can get from doing a thing and so by doing the thing that's what can make you happy and and so you might have to do like a I gave a training today to my team on on feedback and motivation and and we talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation so they're both really powerful so extrinsic motivator are like gold and things and money and stuff that I will have to do a thing and so they are they're still powerful motivators of course they are but intrinsic motivation is way more powerful and that's kind of the goal now so what can I be doing every day for the rest of my life that I'm going to be really happy doing that thing and so the analogy I gave to the team today was like learning a piano when you first start off learning a piano you're you're horrible I don't play the piano right in case your AI went in there master piano player right so you're horrible right and you're no good at it and so you need extrinsic motivation right by you know people saying hey you did a great job working on that you did like whatever you're getting there whatever extrinsic motivated goals I'm going to get to this blah blah blah to get to the point of that skill that now you can play the piano lovely and you can play songs and now you just want to play the piano because it's beautiful and I love playing the piano because I have this skill so I used to be and you talk about goals I used to be so goal oriented I'm going to do this I'm going to do this and now I've changed to be like well no I want to do stuff that makes me fulfilled and happy every day and state but at the the hard thing about this is it's sometimes I feel that you have to have achieved your goals to realize that and it's very hard to take someone's word on that it's easy for you to say because you've achieved x y and z and you have a business that is x y and z to be able to say that oh I just I like working I like running businesses I can relate I think like for me my current goal is financial freedom but I know that as soon as I get there it'll be I like doing what I do anyway yeah I really like what I do anyway yeah it's just this thing that's hanging over me that wants me to get to that checkpoint as like a safety sort of thing evidence not really evidence I don't really care about materialistic shit no I mean evidence is in like when you're thinking like I've done that achieve that thing yeah but but also I want to be able to flip a switch at any point because I've changed my career like five times within three or four years and that's just who I am but I hated starting again thinking about the money I have to make to pay the bills if I could just cover that then I can go be a barista and free man or for whatever reason start a shop see what happens with it market the shit out of it on tiktok blow it up to something big someone else comes on wants to buy I'll be like nah we're alright you know just that freedom but also that freedom of going hey if there's another pandemic we're okay you know that that sort of stuff like I come from Russia we come from nothing and we have bartering that's all we do it's all we have we get paid once every three to six months and we like have to we have our own backyards with you know veggie patch and cows and chickens and stuff so the food's right and the house we had has been passed down from generation to generation we all live in the same sort of shell within the system we go to school we get it get a degree or something there's still universities there but the pay is terrible unless you escape which we have but just having a look at that and proving to myself I guess it's just like okay can I grab that financial freedom and then go anywhere in the world travel wherever obviously I'll still I I want to work I have I have three days off and I want to go back and do something I want to get an email and go what problem do you have that we need to solve what problem do I have and how do I solve it as quickly as possible so there's there's funny parts on this particular thing right because and and this is at a level in your business you can go wrong with this particular thing right because and so for example last few months I haven't been involved in the business at all and everything in in me wanted to just go in there mess it up a little bit just so I could fix it which is a lot of entrepreneurs go to this stage of when they're bringing in new people into the business people to run the business they undermine them they can't let them run the business and the best thing for you to do is to stay out which is really hard for an entrepreneur like like me and you who's likes the day today likes working and so that skill of you know what one thing I used to do all the time which drive my team crazy was I'm just full of ideas we should do this we should do this we should do it this way we should do this way and meanwhile they're trying to execute on the original plan and I'm there changing things left for in center I want to do this I want to do this and that's a different skill that you have to learn at a level in entrepreneurship to go no no I just that needs to do more of what is currently doing and accelerates and I need to make sure that when I have those entrepreneurial thoughts I do them in the right form that's not going to mess these guys up here yeah see going back to the whole exit strategy thing my exit strategy for my businesses my companies is selling a product that I'm building it's AI based idea script generation and it's coded prompt engineered in a way that is subjectively I'm gonna be biased but it's better than what I've seen out there because a lot of them have come up and they've used you can tell I use chat gbt code just to build this thing just just to get it out there and make a quick buck yep I've been working on this for a while right now I'm not plug in my own stuff in my own channel but the exit strategy is to be able to sell it to someone fully you know maybe there's a five percent keep in there just in case they become the next it becomes the next best thing and then but I don't I don't need that much money nobody needs that much money I need a specific amount that gets me seven to ten grand dividends every month for the rest of my life but what are you gonna do then great question I have my personal brand my personal brand I can never sell because it's me otherwise man's will work on the corner so I wanna build my personal brand to a philanthropic state where I'm helping kids going out to schools and talking and not charging much I want everyone to be able to afford it I'll fork out my own ticket to get to the remote place that the kids need to hear something from and I'm not preaching I'm talking from experience from observation answering the questions that they want answered that the teachers can't answer because the teachers have been institutionalized since high school high school uni work they've never left school system what do they know now there are some amazing teachers out there but there's only there's a there's far too many that are just career teachers they don't they don't have much value outside of the curriculum that they've been taught I've always thought that when I was a teacher and I thought how do I disrupt that I couldn't I could never disrupt that within the school system because I'm working for the school system and whatever I come up with becomes their IP so left now I'm here I make this exit strategy and then I put that money into my shares portfolio which the shares be able to pay the I guess the the salaries of the people close that we're working working with me producers, editors, videography all of that stuff I'm not consulting or anything I'm not working for anyone else I'm not even caring about any collaborations that come in unless it's visa or emirates or someone like that that can cut the costs of flights to a country that needs to hear my message for all of my crew that's a great collaboration you know offset the costs of the stuff but the philanthropic goal is to build my personal brand to the point where like kids walk down the street already they want to take a photo with me every we work down the street I guarantee three or four people will stop that's crazy to me that's crazy but I want them to have the the reason why they stop not because I'm popular on tiktok it's because they saw a video that changed their life and in ten years from now those same people recognize me because I wouldn't have aged today right of course and they were like Sev that video you made ten years ago got me on to a path that just got me focused that podcast that you do with Sian mate that was life-changing money can't buy that experience no it can't it can and it's only but the money this is interesting taught about money money gives you options that's that's it like you know bigger box to live in all all that sort of stuff but you know I'm not that anti money like I'm very pro money in that you know I do my philanthropic I can't even say the word in in a different way right so so right now we we just donate money percentage of our our uh... the revenue from the company the goal is to division for for my batch of companies federation companies is to have one of them be a foundation and so all the companies that sit underneath that banner all of them are obliged or have to donate five percent of of net profit into the foundation and the thing I've not been particularly happy with so we right now we're not in a position to do that and so we just been donating directly to run a McDonald house b1g one if you don't use b was it's great like so every time someone does a piece of work for us we don't we we buy something so everything we do is related to something so that that's very important to me but I like the idea of having a foundation that I can control what I put the money into and who I put the money into and where it goes so even even Ronald McDonald house which I love because it's for kids and is is the best I can do now but in the future it'd be nice to and we when I was back in Ireland we used to push this huge paper we used to make this paper mache duck massive like massive thing and every year we'd push it from Dublin to Limerick which was you know at three days of of just pushing it on the motorway everything's just that we'd have a van running behind it and pushing and we rotate people and we push the whole thing and every time we went through we would collect money but then we would buy an incubator for a hospital and then you bought that one thing I like the idea of going to a hospital or or something or whatever it is and go here's the project for this time we're going to buy this incubator what that they need and we're going to do tangible tangible tangible exactly so that's pretty much what I want to do but I'm the charity yep I'm the one that's funding myself to actually deliver the machine to the person but also teach them how to use it but also using it with them in my own spare time and seeing their eyes open wide going thank you so much we needed this so badly you know like you talk about Mr Beast he's got that philanthropic channel similar stuff for me it's not about documenting everything and making a video out of it you know restoring the the hearing and the and the site for people or a thousand people amazing crazy crazy guy and he's what only 25 26 crazy right I want that opportunity for me in Australia to be able to to be able to help the people in need but more importantly the kids help them realize a problem that they will eventually have but prevent it from happening which is if I put it down into a couple of words it's help them with their self-awareness through expanding and building on their self-esteem those two mixed together is like all-time undefeatable if you if your self-awareness and your self-esteem are like top you're sorted and then from there it's learning how to pivot from when you don't want to do anything anymore when you don't want to do something specific anymore financial literacy so understanding money and how to use it and also yeah the self-awareness thing yeah that's all I want to do there's I'd be open to and if you know not telling you how to go about it obviously with a with a big brand on on twitter uh... also on twitter on tiktok uh... there's different ways to achieve your goal and and you know what one of the the key things for your businesses now to consider is why would they listen to you and so if you can achieve stuff in your current businesses and I think the fact that you've achieved this the stuff you've achieved what they want to do and now you're talking to them that would make a big difference to these people it's authority it's a it's a priority yeah and then also there's just different ways to go to go about it I mean I've always every time like my daughters go to school I mean they're young now but I always think like they don't teach kids stuff that they need like obviously it's like maths and stuff oh sure okay but they don't teach stuff that they need now in the new age and the stuff that you talked about the the the financial literacy thing without that like when when kids are seventeen a sixteen seventeen eighteen without that there needs to be a course or it needs to be a module or exams on how to manage your just not even not even financial literacy not even at the level of how to make money work for you and business stuff not even there one level down of how to manage your own personal finances like yeah don't don't like don't buy a car with that you know just just like and here's why here's why and let me show you example of why not I know I've got stories myself you know making those decisions early on same same and like I don't have a mortgage because I refuse to buy a house right now because it'll put me in debt mm-hmm the debt becomes a somewhat of a shackle they say oh yeah you know the house is equity and blah blah blah but yeah going back to high school the one regret I had was buying a twenty five thousand dollar car nineteen mm-hmm my mom said live your best life but what she should have done is no buy this four thousand dollar car and be no no debt in your twenties mm-hmm I was in debt in my twenties for a stupid car that I don't care about anymore sold it years ago no one explains the impact on no on your on your lifestyle there's no practical explanation because the educators in the system they are all they're all the same to probably do that right yeah probably have there's a there's a phrase called uh... the what is it I talk about this every single day it's off the uh... tip of my tongue uh... normalization of deviant behavior yes that's great that's great and it did the buying I mean but I'm totally like a body into what you're saying I currently have have absolutely no debt and stuff changes over time yeah when you have family and kids and you want a homestead and all of that sort of stuff me right now I want kids yeah and my wife wants a house to be safe in yeah and I totally get it yeah and so there is there's a element of flexibility but there's an element of you gotta be in control and handling what you're you're taking on uh... that obviously just good debt is bad debt we can talk all all all day on that uh... but for me that is like a shackle uh... if you have no debt your stuff can go wrong but they can't go that badly wrong yeah because the risk isn't like what's the worst that can happen all you can't all you can't make payments payments for what there's no payments to make what's right and that's why I tell kids like be good to your parents have a good relationship with them obviously I tell the parents let your kids flourish without you know molding them into what you want but if that relationship can sys be sustained into their twenties they save so much money on rent they have a nice home cooked meal they have all these things that they don't have to worry about they should still learn how to do that for themselves you know leave the nest eventually but don't be in a rush just because your mates moved out at eighteen I feel slightly different like this will be uh... I totally agree with you but by the way I moved out at eighteen yeah yeah me too well it depends I went to boarding school so you could say I moved at twelve but uh... eleven there's an element that you got it like the the whole guy playing video games in his moment basement right that's not what we mean no not at all if if you're if you're living at home saving money and trying to do something I'll buy into that all day stay in my house as long as as long as you need to but if you just if you just doing it and you're not getting ahead by this scenario well then I'm I'm kind of against it because you're not learning you probably need to get burnt and go out and let it let it bad happen like buy the stupid car yeah what's your plan feel feel the pain for a while and then be like for me like growing up I always just wanted to be independent and I wanted to get out from under my parents and I wanted to not be told what to do and so that's that was my reason for I just want to do it I'll go get a job and my job was to fund my fun times so I wanted to do and that was my motivation to get out but if you're trying to build for something like I think you totally agree stay at home for as long as you can build as much cash as you can start a business if you can get into the property game and you understand that property game and at least now you're you've done it with a bit of cash behind you rather than you know get it up to the hilt and that's exactly the matrix that I want to build as my curriculum from my personal brand because I thought okay I'm a personal brand I'm doing collaborations advertising audio companies red rooster you know and I've evolved into what do I really want what do I use that I am happy to promote and then leverage that collaboration anyway you know and I've done that you know I've leveraged almost all my costs based off of the brands that I that I use you know and now I want to be able to share my story but then also tell those kids everything you just said you know what is your plan my sister she's a she's finished her degree last year in fine fashion design in Melbourne she's still in Melbourne she only just got a job in retail again she was working in retail before she's got a plan sort of and you know I'm trying to give her some hints and push her a little bit I just like network what is your dream sort of like end goal but then reverse engineering and pick those habits so we're going back to the habits thing but my brand I want to be able to fund my brand from my experiences from all these collaborations which I've done from these businesses I'm building which I'm doing but eventually the brand is that is it and people want to want to go what is they're doing next who is going to help next there's a guy called Simon Squibb he's from the UK and he's done very similar stuff in terms of he sold his company for millions of dollars and he's always on the case of everybody have you ever want to start a business that's his like main question he wants to unlock everybody's capability of wanting to start their own business because with your own business you have full control you have elements like the pandemic you have elements of clients not wanting to buy your stuff but that's where you figure it out when you work for someone else you're vulnerable and even even if you have a shares portfolio you're still technically vulnerable but with your own business you have full control it's scary and most people don't want to go down that path because it's not the safe path and that's where the school system fails people and I want to come in and tell them hey everything you just said and more in whatever scenario we're in because I talk about resilience all the time bullying you know all those things that they're currently going through but the big topic I want to talk about is prevention of a problem that they don't know yet calls in the US because we pretended that we were located in the US right just all of those things just to get off the ground just to go like all that stuff it's hard and like a job like if you make if you like let's just if you make like if you just get a million dollar business right you're making a million dollars in profit right let's just say I'm not even a profit you're making a million dollars in revenue right no mean feat right it's not like most people will be happy you're making a million dollars in revenue and so let's just say you have a margin let's say you have a good margin right you got a margin of 30% so you got 300 grand into your pocket like you can get a 300 grand job in Perth not particularly hard you can go up north you could whatever and so lifestyle wise there are different ways to do it the only thing is you probably won't grow any more than that and if the main thing I would focus on is if you're not happy in your job and you've got golden handcuffs on you're going in every day and you're getting paid that's a problem I'm seeing there's lots of people who are not getting paid enough Perth's kind of different in that there's a lot of people getting paid bloody well and are really unhappy because things are expensive but they're getting paid well they can't leave the job because they're getting so paid so well and that's a spin people get into as well where how do I leave this 250 grand a year job to start a business there where it might take me a couple of years it might take me five years to get back to the same amount of money into my pocket you mentioned golden handcuffs why are they handcuffed in the first place? yeah they're spending too much basically yeah sorry for the interruption but this show would not be possible without the help of Bright Tang Brewery they are the major sponsor of the Sevo show huge shout outs to them check them out great beers great people great everything and well let's get back to the episode well they're spending too much but they're in debt too much because they're not spending they can't they're not spending enough to quickly they're not getting enough they're not getting paid enough that's the actual that's what I have observed they're getting into debt they're living beyond their means oh that's true that's what I see golden handcuffs at yeah for sure and that is one of the problems that I want to help educate the kids for if you're working a nine to five that's great and if you're happy with that that's great but know this and this is where the pivot element comes in this is where my pivot education is do not live beyond your means because there is a high chance that five, ten, fifteen years down the line of your nine to five career that you love you might just wake up one day and go I hate this that was me but if you're in debt too bad so that's where the financial literacy comes in if you want to pivot you must, you can only pivot these days if you're financially literate and you set yourself up to be able to do that they want to start their own business today but they can't because their dream is shattered because of the golden handcuffs so what do you do you have to know from the beginning that investing into the right index funds and there's evidence that there's some index funds that have been around for decades that are like far greater than having a bank account with savings I'm going to challenge you on this one okay so okay so my view on I've got index funds my and depends on how old you are as well and yes I get I get the old adage if you invest this and it compounds over 20 or 30 years it'll amount to a large amount of money so it's also a lot of inflation that happens in people never talk about how much inflation happens during that period so people say you invest five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars in you know in 30 years time you have a million dollars what's a million dollars worth to you then it's probably only worth what like what's it going to be worth like it right who knows right so you'll never bring that into the equation also that's a great strategy if you have a lot of money right for sure is that the best strategy getting a lot of money in my view it's not you can there's there's ways to get more money if you want to make a lot of money right you can you can play that game you're playing that game for 30 or 40 years would edit it and yes the the result is almost guaranteed I get it but you're still playing that game for that period of time whereas you could have started a business you could have learned all of those skills you could have failed at a business four or five times and eventually learned all the skills got it right and then grown that business and it will be far more valuable than the index fund sell sell the business and then you can put the money in into a passive fund and you know and you've achieved a 30 30 under 30 award yeah that's exactly where I was getting to so your challenge was part two of my message when I heard this mentor say this which is pretty much exactly what you said he said how do you make thirty six million dollars in twenty four months the speed the time and I said I don't know you're the VC you tell me I'm listening it's about finding those opportunities and looking deep into problems solving or solving problems that are worth a lot of money there's gaps everywhere that's how you do it and I thought okay and this was at the time where I just started my business and just left my full-time teaching job and I thought I'm on the I'm on the projection of making a hundred hundred fifty K a year with this wedding photography job and I'm only working thirty to sixty days a year and I can delegate half of that to an editor thirty days a year I did that the next year my financial advisor who's a close friend of mine Rakesh he said okay your next goal is to make three hundred thousand what are you crazy like twenty twenty one are you kidding me alright let's give it a go did it almost made half a million twenty twenty one and I'm like how is that possible but it's because I created those habits but that money I didn't invest in correctly at the time into the index I didn't follow the plan properly because I wanted to get out of country they're almost up in for so long and I wanted to help my wife get out of her shitty job yep so I helped her escape but going back to your point of your challenge that's exactly what I'm still trying to achieve right now but there's different ways again to consider right so question for you right you've got a hundred two hundred grand to invest right right with your skill set in growing businesses small businesses medium businesses and and you go back to your friend's question about making twenty eight million dollars in whatever let's just let's just take it down a notch right just right and you're like okay here's to you and here's your two hundred grand how can I make what's the best vehicle for me to turn that two hundred grand into three or four hundred grand or five hundred grand when you're looking at your skill set and your in investments yeah and so this the old the smart people might say put it into your index fund right so index funds in a year you'll have whatever three hundred ten grand you got your same three hundred grand and you pumped it into your businesses maybe put into ads maybe you put into a new sales process maybe you started the new service line whatever whatever whatever constraint you have in your business let's just say you pumped it into solving that constraint in your business and your great in your business grew from one million dollars a year to two million dollars a year and now the multiple of that instead of it being valued at four million it's now valued at eight million that's that's what your friend was talking about in my view it's not like so I definitely agree that index funds a passive investing it's it's the smartest thing and Warren Buffett says it all day I completely agree with him but he's talking to people who don't know anything about money and if if you don't anything about money the smartest thing you do and you don't care about money and you know you should invest pump all your money into an index fund all day long for your nine to five career and at the end of it you'll be fine but that's not the same and also Warren doesn't do that by the way which I find interesting but I lost my train of thought different strokes for different folks so he asked me a previous question before the 36 to 24 in 24 months yeah he said how do you buy a time back great book by Dan Martell buy back your time buy it how do you buy your time back is the ultimate question how do you buy a time back as quickly as possible and then he asked me that second question the first question is kind of your push-pull theory yes put money aside into index funds as you go but you have small opportunities or really big opportunities you got to keep an eye out on yeah someone's got a car that they want to get rid of and they just don't care for example and they want to give it to you for 2000 that's a small opportunity because you look on eBay or you look on car sales or whatever and you know that it's valued at 12 grand you're like ooh yeah I'll take it off your hands no worries two grand here you go cheers flip for 12 make 10 grand profit bang that 10 grand goes into your business eight of it goes into ads to boost more inbound leads which I love outbound leads that you know and that two grand can go into index funds that's what he told me took me too long to figure that out however what I've been told by a lot of older mentors after him going the shit that you know now I wish I knew at your age and now I'm saying the same thing to the kids the shit that I know now you should realise what I'm about to tell you 96.3% of Australians who retire after the age of well general age of 68 or whatever four years after they retire they have to cut back their living expenses they have to downgrade the lifestyle that they've worked their whole life to build most of those are the nine to fives they have to downgrade their house they've run out of super some of them hopefully lucky enough to have paid off their house that they've worked their whole life to you know to debt off and that's the problem the other thing we can talk about is if we go to those 70 something year olds and talk about talk to them I guarantee you that most of them will have that regret and some other regrets like not trying or not risking or not taking a jump at it and I've done that myself I should probably put that as content because that's motivating that's the secret but they're in a different time as well I think most people, well my view is that most people's regrets are the stuff they didn't do and it won't be the stuff that they did I mean you look back at all your mistakes you made in your businesses and there are scars, there are war stories, it's great they're almost good they're almost good to talk about like if everything went smoothly from A to B it'd just be pretty boring to be honest 100% and no one it wouldn't be worth doing but like the stuff that you don't get to do you say that money is the vehicle to open that whole world that's the financial freedom that I want to be able to try most of those things to be able to pick up the piano again I learnt I was really good at it as a kid and then for some reason I just didn't keep going with it I regret that but to be able to buy my time back to allocate myself an hour or two every day pay the really good piano instructor in Perth whatever they need for me to just learn it so I was like you and I've done that and it's like it's I now have the time to do all of that stuff if I want to and what's changed for me is over the course of building the business I've realised and it's the piano thing as well I've been intrinsically motivated by business there and I just want to do more business so I love it it's like I learned to play the piano and and stuff changes and I'm used to be you know you're trying to life isn't binary it's not A or B life is like a continuum it's just grays and stuff changes over time all the time and like when you're 16, 70 you might not want to spend that much money you might be happy just for your day to day going for your walks, who knows you might like from my understanding of the research the older people get the less money they spend anyway and and so a lot of these conversations can be circular in that you know and so it's important to try to figure out what what you want yeah you you have kids two kids two kids helping kids wouldn't you in two weeks so tell me about being able to, because this is my biggest, biggest motivator is to be able to be there 100% of the time if I want to at any moment pick up the kids, drop off the kids you're not, you don't have kids yet not yet I have from a teacher's perspective observation the kids that were misbehaved the most had parents who were alcoholics or divorced or financial issues or all of the above they weren't there for the kids is the moral of the story not me never me ever I want to be there for my kids anytime and I see that financials are a big burden where they have to take it in turns they have to work as a team which is fair enough but I want to be there if I wanted to so you're a success in getting your success in business and getting the finances to give you your time is the goal to allow you to do that yes and so that is again quite binary right and so if I don't do this then I can't have that which is I would advise against that because it might not happen and you still need to be happy and you can be happy it's an like it's an aim that you know I'm not married to the idea yeah I just would like to experience it but again again stuff changes like for me I didn't want to have kids at that time and for different reasons we had kids at that time because I was like no I want to do this I want to do this they're just going to hold me back and again stuff changes so I had the kids and it didn't do that it like it drove me like on crazily I was so much more motivated like this can't fail this has to can I curse on here yeah this has to fucking happen and then it just so then all of a sudden so then I was like alright let's just let's just have more kids this is great for me this is great right for my motivation and then you know I love being a dad and the same I wanted to be around a lot I really didn't want a nine to fiveer like because I don't like the idea of being away all day in saying that again stuff changes is that I just I view parenting now a little bit different than I did when I first before I had kids before I had kids I was like I just need to be around all the time which is important that's definitely true you want to be around in important moments you want to be there in the morning you want to like be able to pick them up from school like moments when they you want to be there when they're going to bed like moments when they open up they talk about stuff right that's important moments in time but they also learn by watching you and you know if they see you being successful in your own right and see your your skill set and your beliefs and your values on how you operate in your day to day life they learn by watching and they repeat they just there's little little mimics until they they can kind of formed their own decisions right but they just mimic and they'll grow up looking at you and be like okay he he used to work his ass off right and still may time for us and then that that is it that I think is a is a better dodge than just being around all the time so I agree absolutely yeah what I mean is being having the choice to be able to yeah not not going all right yeah financially free got kids I'm there the whole time yeah I know I'll get bored yeah yeah yeah yeah and kids are hard man sometimes you just like I do not want to hang out with you today yeah so no matter no matter what happens with my journey it's the opportunity to have it in the back pocket that's what I want yeah it's a checkpoint choice again we come back to us I'm gonna give you choice so you mentioned going going forward into the you mentioned you want to talk about consulting tell me about your consulting part yeah so before I started my business I worked for a consulting company and I was like oh I'm you know I'm just trying to smash this particular thing and I'm gonna move up and I'm gonna become a director what I all all of that sort of stuff and so I remember the and I remember like they're like okay to do that you kind of have to bring in business right that's kind of like you know all the partners and PWC and Deloitte and all you know you can't be you can't be amazing you can't be amazing at your job bring in no clients and be a partner the game is bringing in clients yeah bringing in revenue that ultimately you can be pretty terrible at your job bring in load of clients and be a partner in one of those places that's the game the game is to bring in clients to bring in clients to bring in revenue people are happy and so I was like okay you gotta bring in clients I was like okay right so if I can win a few things and like I'm working in this company here now if I can get some more work and okay so did that managed to have a bit of success in there moved on to the management team and in the meetings I was expecting you know you know how are we going to deliver a better service like how can we get a better outcome for our clients you know a bit more metrics and stuff around all of those things more like more delivery-oriented stuff and it wasn't it was all about landing and expanding we need to get a guy in here then we gotta get more guys in there more guys in there more guys in there get more day rates in there to grow the business it's like a big glorified recruitment company and I was like what the hell I was like all of a sudden I was like oh my god this is just this is just as I said glorified recruitment company it's just a day they were not talking about they didn't want the best for the client at all they wanted to get one guy in there on a day race and to expand get more people in there as much as possible and the idea of the day rate so my business is a retainer model which in the construction industry is pretty different for the services that we provide so contract negotiation and contract administration and so when you have a day rate you're incentivized to be slow the longer you take on the job the more you're gonna get paid otherwise you punish yourself for being efficient you punish yourself for being efficient where the retainer model is the opposite you have to be efficient too to keep your retainer so you just explain the basic principles of every marketing agency out there yep as in like the day rate guys yeah hire the day rate people they barely have a marketing degree up their sleeve and junior whatever here's a client here are the KPIs do it this is the deadline they finish the deadline oh cool here's another one here's how many you can fit in whether it's account management whether it's social media yeah creation so we come back to it like is that value for me is that value I love the idea of creating value for someone right so yeah if you engage us in our service or you engage me and I'm solving a problem for you I want to make sure that I solve that problem and some and some because that's how you can retain them yeah that's it and then so they're happy and the customer like you think about Amazon and why they're so accessible they're like obsessed with the customers they're obsessed with complaints so they started off and they had a two like we don't live in America how cool would it be to talk about this in a second but like you know they used to have a two week delivery people complained they had a one week delivery completely complained now if it's not in America anyway if it's not delivered the next day people go wild and the expectation expectation they could be delivered the same day and a continuous improvement cycle I love that stuff but none of these companies are into that that they're all just look I'm sure there's some really good companies out there a lot of really smart people in there and of course there is but the model itself is not in the best interest not in Australia anyway not in Australia well that's exactly what I'm figured out with the marketing industry that's a PWC and you're playing both sides you're playing the government and you're playing exactly but I with the marketing agency stuff I realized the gap in the market is being able to consult the company who needs the marketing but consulting them to teach them how to do it internally that's fantastic that's really really good because marketing companies have a problem in my view and I've really struggled with marketing companies for us and we don't do any paid advertising at all we do all outbound probably for this reason is that you can get ads and you can have someone just turn on ads and flood your website right but you need a marketing company to help you with your offer help you with your landing page because if traffic is coming to your website that's like it's easy that's the easy part it's the management and operations behind succeeding the next part but the next part yeah so if your offer is bad and you're whatever is not converting flooding traffic is just putting you know flooding your system unnecessarily because people aren't going to convert marketing companies really need to help people with their offers and go further down the sales pipeline sales pipeline yeah and that's exactly what I've learnt the last year when I had that success in 2021 I was the top of the funnel and that's all I did I couldn't stress to people enough I don't do the sales I get your attention is it the right attention? it's attention what you want to do with that that's up to you then they say can you do account management I was like oh yeah cool I would quote ridiculous amounts I never done before like who the hell how do you make ten grand a month for the first time what do you tell someone who's never done that before I did that but then I was like I actually don't want to do this ten grand or not I hate account management but then I was like what if I taught them how to do it but then they didn't have time what if you had the budget to have someone internal that had that you paid for to have the time because if you don't have the time you probably have some money and if you don't have money you probably have the time that's really the push and pull there so then when they go okay cool let's hire someone the problem then was they would micromanage that person incorrectly and that's when I would come in saying don't do that because you're hindering their creative and that's the gap that I found and then going back to the turning on the funnel of the ads and not being able to kind of hold it in because your operation is all over the place I've got retainers that have paused on me because they can't afford to bring in more people more clients that's a good problem to have but their operations are all over the place so now I'm thinking to myself do I get into operational management like operation stuff do I get into BDM I was a math teacher at school I love problem solving of course I want to get into it but I'm happy with the marketing I haven't moved on from that yet I haven't conquered that yet but the gap that I'm seeing here is hire internally someone account as an account manager and then I will help them with the rest make sure they find the right creatives make sure they use the right tools that I have you know experience with because I'm a practitioner and that's the point of difference that I have but then I see other consultants not yourself but like other agencies and stuff I look at their top of the line management where's your proof where's your where's your anything except pay more money in ads and hey look we've got 1% click through rate what about the organic what about the sales what's the where's the tangible they don't have any in America they do because they have to you have to they have to hear you know yeah cool we're killing it with word of mouth yeah we'll let the agency keep taking our money we know it's burning they don't realise it's burning though yeah the agencies go oh look a million views it's a hard model of the agency in my view but I love disruption I disrupted the school industry I disrupted the wedding industry marketing industry would be fun to disrupt oh for sure my bet is that within the next five years most companies will be looking for internal marketing team oh I mean my general strategy for these things is find somebody who's really good at it or find a company that's really good at it and just do that yeah exactly what you said show us how to do it ourselves show us what like not just you turned on this that's what your mind did yeah that's it exactly show us how to do it and that really works because then you learn as well I mean I could ask you a question about that how far back do you think Australia is with the times compared to America I think there's there is that right I don't think that far because the internet is all over it really but there's there's definitely a culture thing in that in Australia and the US like sales in the US is hard like converting people into US it's hard to so battle hardened from cold callers so battle hard from from sales calls that are just they're just like under cut route but then but then when they signed they're like they're good to go they're great clients great clients Australia is different people people don't really like to be sold don't like any hard tactics in selling when in America you have to use them because otherwise they'll walk all over you right it's not like hard tactics is like you need to have it your sales because it's dialed Australia you don't really need to have it dialed you can have a you can have a friendly chit chat conversation you want to buy this all right I'll buy it right and that can happen but then on the other side people get you know they don't use the services as much and they they kind of get distracted on on that side a little bit as well and so for like bizops I think in America is a lot better and so that when they can use an outsource company and they're more inclined to use outsource companies because they can save themselves money they will use it and they'll use it heavily yeah they'll they'll actually yeah and that I feel the same here it's it's hard to retain someone that doesn't give you the time to succeed for them and that's what I'm finding as well and as much as I try everything to over deliver to go hey this and this and have you done this and I need this from you to be able to do this next thing and you don't hear from from weeks or you come up with something and they go oh actually no yeah let's not do that and then you're like you just spent two weeks I've just spent two weeks of this paid time you're paying me and I get the sense of like because I've got empathy right yeah not a piece of shit I feel like they didn't get their money's worth yeah but is that on me it depends yeah it does depend it depends but like this is where reporting and meetings and all the you know like this is the plan do you agree comes into play and setting expectations as well so if I come into your company and I help you with brand marketing and then making sure that it's an easy process for your sales team to then take over yeah do you have any objections with how I'm going to do it do you give me free creative reign with the content yes no right I feel like what we've had success with so I can just talk from my experience is in Australia you really have to demonstrate success so it's it's and that's like when I'm talking about reporting not just talking about numbers it's like okay so like it's part of your sales process or part of your onboarding process like what what what is success for you guys in this yeah and then then you report to them here's where we are on that thing that you said was a success yeah you you know you don't allow them to hide you you make them set the goals and then you just smash it yeah pretty much but you need to show them that I'm delivering on my goals yeah and that's what I teach people as well when they say serve how do I get a promotion and I said it's simple how much more do you want to make and do you think you deserve it right now what are you expected of you every week of your daily tasks and job and they'll be like this I'm like great how much more than that are you doing to warrant that pay rise they're like oh no I've just been working there for for ages I should get a bigger pay rise I was like why yeah I mean loyalty yeah fair enough you do get like that inflation rise and a little bit of a pay rise every year but other than that you got to think of it from their perspective you know yeah yeah you know it's capitalism it is yeah it is capitalism but it's like and I and I I empathize anyway but at the same time like who's taking all the risks if the business folded tomorrow that person has no business you could just get another job right and they're like oh okay some get it some will come up with some more bullshit but then I'm like okay so you want to get a pay rise ask your boss what is it that you need to do to get that and if they say this this and this you hit it once you hit it okay do I get a pay rise now and if they say no are you in the right place so I had a sweet that went pretty pretty good yeah and it was so what happened was I had an interview and and this guy comes on and he says I've got 20 years of construction experience we're looking for a contracts manager hmm and candidly top very highly of himself and when I looked at his his resume and after the interview and I didn't say this in the interview and I tweeted it anonymously and I was like no you don't have 20 years experience you have one years of experience 20 times and so if you think of it I didn't say it to him all right I tweeted anonymously which was which was true because he could do that one year really well I'm sure right but not additional stuff so let's let's just use an example of a bricklayer for example right you could if you're a bricklayer in the in the 90s and you work for 20 years being a bricklayer right you'll still earn the same money proportionately or or very you know slightly more maybe you're a senior version of the bricklayer but no more right because you're being a bricklayer this whole time that's that's what most people do or as if you started off as a bricklayer and then you learned okay well you know I'm gonna I'll be I'll be I'll learn how to lead other bricklayers then okay well now I've got a bit of a team I might start a bricklaying business now I'm leading four or five because now all of a sudden that guy in 20 years time is infinitely worth more than the bricklayer because he's got management skills not just practical you know the the foundational skills just continue of upgrading of your skills and then so your friend who's been working there for a long time has been doing the same thing for that whole time from a business point of view you're not worth more money to the business because you can't provide more value because you've been doing the same thing in fact I'm gonna have to invest in you to train you to do this other thing that you or or to get more value right if I'm going to have to pay you more that's what people need to move on that's why people need more mentors and then just the same mentor they need that different perspective true and that's where I because I used to do personal training that was my first business that I did and I moved out of the gym because the overheads were ridiculous put it into my living room and made so much more money and and as a full-time uni student so yeah you know but then I was like okay what's next I had someone use my living room during the weekends when I was not there as a studio I was like cool so that means I should get like a commercial space for this because my neighbors are probably going to be like are you you know what are you doing but they were all chill because I've been there since I grew up there but the next part of that was something I didn't I couldn't get through the glass dealing with I didn't want to manage people at that time that's a different general struggle with that too yeah and then as a teacher I remember one of the things I hated and my principal telling me when I was when I was a school teacher was everyone should be on a path of principalship and I was straight away I don't like that and I still I still don't like that maybe I'll change up my perspective what did he mean like like everyone should be aiming to become a principal eventually principal for school yeah all right I'm like I don't want to do admin I don't want to tell other teachers how to teach I mean I have some suggestions but I just want I'm in there for the kids and yeah sure if another teacher could be a better teacher and I can help them with that great if I want to be a team leader head of learning in a specific subject I don't want to be further away from the kids I want to have a full day of just teaching the kids my kids but then I realized there's a glass ceiling there I don't want to become a deputy I don't want to do any of that that and also the other stuff and that was one of the reasons I left teaching yeah there's a funny funny concept you should get a guy called Bill Widdows on your podcast um let's get him on he's he's he's I would describe yeah he's impressed yeah he's got a company called adapt by design yeah and um he talks about specifically what you talked about there and one of the problem in a lot of organizations is you might have a technician like so let's just let's just use technicians as a person who's who's got who's who's an expert in a role so it could be a teacher yeah and so the technician typically if the technician wants to move up in a company or get paid more progress his career or become financially more secure he has to go up in the business which means he has to become a manager then like ideally a leader and move up through the organization to doing the stuff doing the stuff exactly what you described that you didn't want to do there was the only way to make more money and so he talks about how can you create an organization that has a leadership team that allows people to remain in their technician role but still be a leader of the company it's very interesting philosophy and because it's it's very good like one of the key things is from from sales for example right and i've learned this the hard way like honestly like twice over right and it cost me a lot of money sales people like a closer is a different beast to a sales manager completely different mindset completely type of person and so promoting a a closer or an account executive into a sales manager almost always goes to shit and but sometimes and the closers often i just want to be closed i want to make a shitload of money just closing deals i'm really good at but how do i move up in the company and so having a business that has an organization leadership team that runs the operations and then you also have an owners team i think it'd be great if you got bill on to talk about that because yeah he's it's a fantastic way to um to grow a business that is resilient and lasts the test of time i'll get him on i'll get him on so i've got a couple more um questions for you like really quick ones shoot um and thank you for the conversation it's been enlightening and and validating at a time um um what's one book you recommend to everyone oh what's one book i recommend that's a hard question to answer because i love books books have always solved problems for me so my first experience with with books was in university and just like a big poker scene it was like i think it was a global everyone got into poker yeah i love me some poker and so people were coming over to our house and we're holding games and i was rubbish yeah rubbish i was like i'm gonna get a book and read up on this so i got a book and i got a dole brunson's um poker book i can't remember exactly what's called got another book and i read it and i started playing i cleaned up i was like these books things are great right i need this book i haven't cleaned up in a while right was it daniel negrano was it phil ivy or who was it it was that that era dole brunson is the is the main one i think it's called super system dole brunson's super system there was another book about the guy who was super popular at the time his name escapes me um and uh so i was like oh books and then whenever i came across a problem that i needed solving in my life i would read a book on it and then implement the book and so with business everything so marketing read marketing books read all of you know brunson's books different brunson right russell brunson read all of his books marketing okay sales read sales book alex harmosi's books offers and leads and then okay scaling books so ready ready fire aim and leadership so then as you're going through this now all of a sudden like i'm in a leadership role and i'm i'm shit at leadership okay let's let's read some leadership books right until you learn leadership books and motivational books so that's a hard question to answer i can't really answer it i can tell you what i'm reading now but um um i i think books are specific to solving a problem in your life at that moment in time is the best book for you that's a great answer what's what's the book you'd give a teenage boy to read what's a book i'd give a teenage boy to read how to get through high school yeah what's a book i'd give a teenage boy to read it's kind of every teenage boy um i i would say how to win friends and influence people you love that great answer yeah just because it's just too like i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to lead him down the garden path of trying to start a business read all these business books he's not interested in but how do we inflate an influence will help you in all aspects of life and in business love that speaking of skills and trying to learn them and reading books about them what's the one skill you're currently trying to learn writing writing exciting yeah yeah i've never been the best at writing um all right and finally if you could give one piece of advice to your younger self what would it be one piece of advice to my younger self um i don't know things turn out pretty good so far um like just like i've messed up so many times made so many mistakes got drunk so many times when i shouldn't have been and like don't know all that sort of stuff but i feel like at the other end that was all it all made me better today and again it's one of those things where you kind of almost need to experience it to um to like i often think if i had gotten into entrepreneurship in my 20s that would have been cool yeah i would have loved that so that it would probably be something i'd go kian it took me a long time to realize that that was what i was good at and that was who i was um you know do you know the way instantly you know hey i'm pretty good at this thing right it seemed other people seem to struggle here and here and i find that pretty easy it would have been nice to have found out hey that's that's actually what you're good at rather than trying the corporate game and trying to be great at that and it was kind of pushing a rock up a hill you know and i was trying to be someone i wasn't a lot of the time it's a great answer there is an extra question that's sprouted from that um and this goes more into your specific field um what's the biggest challenge you faced um in quantum contract solutions and how did you overcome um the challenges are always there they're always coming the biggest one that you just like oh man so at every there's all it's like um you know computer games remember the mario back in the day um and you have the boss at the end of every level uh i feel like that's kind of what business is like you you kind of have to conquer the boss every time right so you know the first time you hire someone it's like how scary is that right you hire someone and you kind of have to get over that i think but all all of those things considered the hardest boss for me to get over was um becoming a leader um and stopping manager that was hard so i remember having a discussion with a mentor of mine and i'm like well if i'm not doing this i'm not doing this like what am i doing he's like you don't understand leadership at all do you and i'm like i guess not um and i think that was it so you know i was very good at telling people what to do and i wasn't very good at leading people love that love that that's awesome now um there's a tradition on on this podcast oh right the red phone it's calling it's calling it's calling you have to answer it and the conversation is with someone that needs your leadership they don't know what to do they don't know what to do they don't know what to do and they're worried they'll make a mistake and you're going to be on their case what do you tell them what's the problem it could be anything it could be anything okay and so i'm going to talk to him his name's max max max just happened yeah we didn't too much um all right so hmm that's an interesting question so you don't know what to do okay so my way am i talking to you am i talking to the phone talking to max so max all right tell me what's going on okay all right okay so what do you think are your biggest feelings around that all right so you're you're scared why do you think you're scared what are the things that are making you scared okay you don't know what's going to happen why don't you know about what's going to happen because you haven't laid out your your options okay do you think it would be helpful if you laid out all the different options in front of you yeah which of those options do you think is going to give you the best likelihood of going well all right which of those options are you going to choose all right go for it that's awesome that's it cound brennan everyone that's good thanks for joining me on the show thanks for finding me on youtube shorts yeah do you remember which video i can't remember which video i can't remember which video i was like uh because we i've got a youtube channel as well i was like oh it just it's kind of some press because you normally in my feed there's no one from prayer is it from prayer i should be checked let's go and have a chat and that's why you post shit on social media on every channel because someone will find you and you have conversations like this and it could sprout to something even bigger yeah appreciate you thank you for your time and uh hit up hit him up on uh or his his website and his LinkedIn page you can stalk him on there will be in the description and it's for everybody else let me know what you thought about the conversation what spoke out to you and uh what you would have asked him uh in the conversation until next time good thanks