143. Behind The Scenes of Building Collective Shift w/ Performance Coach Travis Thomas

I remember crying on the couch for like days, just not knowing what to do. That was the worst year of my life. It was horrific. I don't know what it was like on your side and my side world was ending.

Yeah, it had been pretty intense. But then you called, I'm out in the dust getting blown around and talking about are you serious? That you want to keep going. And we had that conversation around. If you go forward, you're going to be in for a really rough patch. If you really want this, go ahead. But if at any point you doubt it, you need to stop because this is going to be a show for months. And you went, nah, I'm going to do it.

Welcome back to the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of ClickBank Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and COO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as a behind the scenes view of us scaling a fully remote subscription research business here in Australia. And today we've got a very special guest that's part of the Collective Shift team. We're over here in Perth, Travis Thomas, the CEO and executive coach of Team Buffalo. Travis works with leaders across corporate, non for profit and local government organizations right through from small businesses to Fortune 500 and ASX listed companies. And he also works with business owners and corporate leaders to solve their complex people problems and he solved a lot of my complex problems over the last few years, man. So thanks so much.

They still keep going.

They still keep going. Bergs is still here so we've still got a problem.

Talk about it later. Yeah, we'll get back to that later.

But thanks for coming on.

No, thanks for having me. We've been talking about it for a while, so good to be on here, good to do it face to face.

Yeah, 100%. So yeah, we're over here in Perth. Bergs and Travis both live in Perth and yeah, we've been working together for shit how long now.

It must be 4ish years coming up on 4, maybe 5 because the business, it's my second firm so this one's coming up 5 years next month. Yeah. And I think you came in around that six month mark. Yeah. So it's been four, four and a.

Half years I reckon. Yeah, I was gonna say it's probably closer because I. The previous business that I worked in started 2017, 2018 was when things were getting crazy and I reckon it was maybe late 2018, 2019. Because how did, how did even this come about? How did I meet you?

So I met you because I was a moderator in the group, Right?

That's right. You were an early member.

I was like, okay, you guys need some help? I was doing my mba. I'm like, okay, I'll help you guys out a bit more.

With Ericsson, right? At the time.

Yeah, with Ericsson. And then, you know, we kept progressing and then you were just hitting the wall. You what, 17, 18 years old. And I'm like, I'm not.

Right. You could probably benefit for some coaching here. And I'm like, oh, my buddy Trav. So Trav and I did our MBAs together.

Econ together.

Oh my God, that guy.

I hated that guy. Oh my God.

So there was an amazing economics professor and then a not so great one. Literally Brexit was happening and he didn't discuss it at all.

And he was from government, so he just wanted to discuss macro, not micro. And I'm like, hello, business in the room. And he's like, no, no, no, micro is only a function of macro.

And I go, no, what the hell.

Are you talking about, dude?

It was like a brown suited economist.

Yes.

And he was a historian.

He was talking government.

He talked about people that were from the 1700s, I think ex treasury, wasn't he?

Or something like that?

He looked like it, mate.

You can see by his face, like.

You know those ghosts that come out of government buildings. That's the.

And he called on me all the time. I never had good. Like, my answers were always controversial to the question he was asking. Oh, well, it's my life.

So the good thing about Ben, even though he was really young, was he was hungry. He would listen, he would go and execute on what you said and he would pick up the phone and call people. So I said, right, I got my buddy Trav. So I kind of handed you over. I said, you know, give this guy a call. And then you guys kicked it off. What were those first few moments, like a few months when you're like, did you think it was a stitch up when I sent you hit, mate?

No, Back in the day it was.

Like, yeah, to be fair, you were actually the fastest signup I had had at the point like we spoke. And I was like, we can fix that. We can fix that. I think you need this. Do you have these in place? And you're like, I don't know what that is. I was like, are you meeting with people?

Okay, here's the Thing signed, done. And then we were on a call.

That week, I think it was, I can't remember now. Cause for context, in the previous business we were going through rapid scale.

It was like super fast.

It was me and the previous founder and then all of a sudden we had, we had like, God, I reckon we had 12, 15 full time staff. It was like 20 contractors.

20, 17, 18. You're like bull run time.

Bull run time.

Like we were doing Scrooge McDuck moment. Like the vault just there, swimming in it. Yeah.

And I was like all of a sudden head of operations. Like I was running the show, not doing anything.

Front pace.

I was completely behind the scenes, no fucking idea what I was doing.

So Ben was hired in that business as an assistant. Your job was to like book flights, which you cocked up.

It's a terrible job and do okay. Now all of a sudden you're running the business.

I went from a system to running the business in six months.

Yeah, I mean that's a pretty rocket ship.

And I wasn't a good assistant.

So like you're not good at this job. You're now coo.

To be fair, you weren't good COO either.

No, no, it wasn't duo. It was just like in charge. And I could hide all the.

You're meant to be founder and while.

The money's pouring in, you look great anyway. You can do anything, mate. Don't worry, we're winning.

But we, we just didn't have any like, any processes, any. Any ways to like manage our team. I don't remember what the, the big heavy things were when we first. I'm not sure if you remember what the.

So communication across the team, like how to get them focused around particular goals. Setting your quarterly goals and your monthly goals and making sure everyone's was unified because they were all kind of off doing their own thing and it was all working, but all it would take is one event and it would all come undone. And making sure you knew how to have one on ones with people. So how do I get good performance out of people? How to ask the right questions and unlock the talent. Because you had resources. Often in businesses you either have a resource problem or a time problem. You had a time problem and you had buckets of resources, but you weren't deploying them because you didn't know and didn't have the time to think about what to do with it. And so I was like, you need this, you need this. Let's do this. Hey, I can sit down. And I even Sat down with some of them and said, hey, let's talk about this. Let's make sure you're clear on this. Let's do some baselining. How do we actually have hard conversations in the business without getting grumpy about it? So all those things that corporates do them okay, because they've got nothing but time. Like, I've got a bunch of people sitting around. We'll put you in a four hour workshop. You're like, four hours will be literally six figures wiped off your cards. Right?

And this is a very small business. And all of a sudden you got money pouring in. You didn't have time to do like any strategy planning, not even like vision, mission goals. Like, there was none of that. It's like, let's just start some.

Whoa, this thing's on fire.

And I think that's what I learned so much. Because during that, we didn't have any. We didn't have bad times back then. It was like we had this YouTube channel that was just producing just money and we were just. We just could throw money at problems. And we had no strategy, no vision. It was just like, whatever's going on, we talk about.

Yeah.

And then. And then that, like overnight just, you know, completely flipped on his head.

He had no accounting, didn't pay superannuation.

No accounting, no bookkeeping. Like, we.

I didn't know about any of this. I didn't know anything.

Was like a random spreadsheet and Facebook messages and like, how do you reconcile all that?

We had thousands of members paying crypto that wasn't through an E Comm platform. It was sending money to a bitcoin wallet that we had to manually reconcile.

And half the money was eaten in fees. None of it made sense. Some people paid, some didn't.

Please see your lawyer before. This is good advice. Yeah.

But I think the biggest thing learning when. When all the shit happened beyond that was just like strategy and learning. Like, you know, what are our goals? What. Where are we going? What are we. What are the things that need to. To be done? And we've brought that right through today, where I feel as though that's been our competitive advantage in this space. Like seeing other competitors around our space at crumble. I feel as though our strategy has been top notch. Like, we spent so much time and money and resources and knowing that we're doing the right thing.

Yeah, yeah. And there was a lot of splurging and splashing and things going on.

All right, let's.

I know this has been on your chest.

Okay.

So 20, was it? 2021. We flew over to Melbourne.

Yes. Yeah.

All right. So we flew over and, you know, it was great. We're staying at Crown. Brilliant. And you had an office out in Brunswick, right at this was it. Co working space.

Super swanky area.

They had so much money that you gutted and redid the co working space. You know, you're literally renting it. So you redid it all. You had this massive room. You had this $10,000 Zoom TV for God knows what reason. It was during, like, COVID 19.

It was closer to 20, wasn't it?

It was. Honestly. Honestly. It's going to sound bad, but I don't even know because, like, my assistant ordered at the time and this thing rocked up and we sat down to have our. Because we didn't even use Zoom. We sat down to do a Google Meets meeting and it wasn't compatible. You could even use it.

You had, like, a cry room with a bitcoin side and you had, like, all the snacks and everything lined up.

You raided the hell out of that.

Oh.

My food.

Like, we had that much. We could feed a small army in there.

Expense accounts at, like, everywhere. Like, just go get a coffee. Just put it on the expense account. The office was pumping with people. Everyone had new equipment. The assistant had an assistant.

Yes. You had a standing tab with the cafe. Like, oh, they're here all the time.

To, like, go do stuff. I didn't know people. I don't even know who was in there. It was just like.

It was feral.

Yeah. And that was an interesting time in 21. And then after that was like, the really trying time that you had. And I wasn't consulting to the business end, but you and Trav was still there.

Travis was probably the. There was one other guy. There was a buddy of mine. EO buddy of mine. It was you and him that basically fucking were there, stuck by me during that time. And that was the worst year of my life. It was fucking horrific. And I remember, you know, I don't know what it was like on your side, some of the conversations we had. I feel as though in my side, the fucking world was ending.

Yeah, I felt bad for you. I mean, I remember I went to call you and your phone was off and I was like, you. You can't get a hold of you. Like, you just can't call you. And the most. The one that sticks in my memory was I was out on mine site doing some consulting with a mining company on their team. And, like, it had been pretty intense but then you called and this thing came after and I was like, oh, that's nothing. And it was kind of. I remember there was a particular conversation around, you know, do you want to keep going? Yeah. And it was literally, I'm standing. They've got these things called the aerodromes, which is like, just like a makeshift airport with one little thing in a box. And I'm waiting for this jet to the prop engine plane to fly in to pick me up with a bunch of people coming off shift. And we're talking. I'm out in the dust getting blown around and talking about, like, are you serious? That you want to keep going? And we had that conversation around, like, you have to make a. If you go forward, you're going to be in for a really rough patch. And I mentioned the media company and got them engaged with you, that PR firm, which I think was really useful, but it was like, if you really want this, go ahead. But if at any point you doubt it, you need to stop because this is gonna be a shit show for months. And you went, nah, I'm gonna do it. And I was like, okay, cool, we'll stick around. And for me, it was never a question of do I luck or just leave you with that because you needed the support, but it was, if you were committed, then we can keep going.

And you did. That was a crossroads. At that point, I remember that was like, at the point of like everything had come out I'd learned so much about and I probably didn't even still really know the impact well, I didn't. That was going to have. And I was like this. Everything's. We went from, you know, making a shitload of money, profited all this team, to now massive legal risk. I have no idea what's going on. The founders disappeared. We're now losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah.

Everyone's leaving PR like media headlines. And I'm like, oh my God, what is. What. What is about to happen? And yeah, it was a decision that, you know, I remember fucking crying on the couch for like days, just not knowing what to do. Couldn't leave my house, my hat. My house address was shared. I moved house. It was. It was a horrific time. Still don't.

What.

Yeah, I mean, looking back, I mean, I didn't know what I was gonna go really. I didn't really know what I was gonna go through then following 12 months.

But, yeah, fuck, you handled it very well. And you. I think the thing that's always been nice about working with you is you take Advice and you actually do it. One of my biggest frustrations with corporates is when, and not just corporates, there are some small businesses, but the ego gets in the way and goes, no, that might make sense, but I don't want that or I don't need to do that. Whereas you're always like, okay, I'll do it. And then you go away and do it and if it doesn't work, you come back and we find the next way to do it. And I'll go, hey, this might not work, we'll talk about this if it doesn't, but you just go with it. And so many people, their ego gets in the way and they just go, well, I'm not gonna do that. I mean, there was a business recently I did some work with and I came in, we booked a two day session, they're like, we have to solve my problem. Problem, I'm not profitable. So we booked a two day session. I come in, sit down, this is over like the summer break here. And I went, fine, fuck it, I'll do it. Come in, sit down. I said, I need to see your P and L on your balance sheet and immediately pull it up. And they use people to deliver their service, service based business. And immediately I said, the problem is you've got about 32% utilization and you need to be closer to about 70 to 80 to make the profit. And you can see literally six figures burning every month in cash. And they're like, what do you mean? Why do you need to bring in some really big contracts which over this period is in Australia? For those listening here, that period's dead till about Australia Day. You just can't bring in business or you need to make four or five people redundant. And that's not something anyone ever wants to do. I've had to do that. You've had to do that. But I said, this is the two. You have to. Or you just burn all your reserves. And he was like, I just can't do it, I can't do that to my people. And like has been in a bad way since then. And you go like. But that's the difference, right? The ego says, well, some things, either I'm afraid of what that'll look like, or I've built such a great culture, how could I do that to people? And it's like, no, you actually, you've made a mistake. Now you need to pay the price to correct that.

This is the thing in business. Like, are you willing to do the hard thing? Are you willing to be Disliked. We do this all the time where we'll say the honest thing to each other and it's brutal, right? But we want to get over that as quickly as we can and get to the better place and stay in that better place for longer. And you always talk about the kind of fear and ego are the two sides that really drive people. Even Ben, like, we've made him do a bunch of stuff recently. He's like, I'm not doing that. That absolutely sucks. Goes away and does it. He's like, this is the best thing ever.

He made a comment yesterday that I need a day or two to marinate on it. I realize that now. I actually do. Like, at the time when I hear it, I'm like, nah, get fucking with me.

I picked that years ago. It's always been in my back pocket. I'm just like, I just message him and then when I speak to him I'll bring it back up and then it goes through.

I think I need to just take it away, turn it into my own idea and then credit and then it's fine.

Maybe. Yeah.

This came from me.

I told this yesterday, man.

Like, yeah, that's my ide now, bro.

That's my idea. All right, just have it, mate.

I'm very utilitarian, so as long as you get there, I don't care. The only time I get like, you remember when we spoke about this before and you're like, oh, yes, we did talk about that.

Oh, different trap. Yeah. So I did tell you this. Ah, you did tell me that.

And it's never I told you so. It's like, maybe write it down.

Just remember what I told you.

Oh, you do?

Yeah.

But you're right. Fear and ego, to come back to that, I think is a. It's a critical thing that like really diminishes performance for a lot of people. Whether it's you're in a middle management position or you're running your own business. It's this, like, I'm afraid of what might be. So I don't do anything and I stay in the pain. Or my ego says, well, why should I have to do that? Or why isn't that happening for me? Or, you know, you carry around this belief that the world, I mean, even the stuff right now happening in social media, I think is fascinating around main character syndrome.

Oh, right.

That for me is just amazing in terms of. It's awful as a thing, but it's interesting to see how so many people have adopted this belief through social media and otherwise that the world owes me all of these things. I think the opposite quote I've always found interesting is the whole of the world is designed basically to kill you. Right. Everything that survived through Darwinism and the theories around that is that it's the apex of whatever is emerging. So it's going to be a threat to the things around. Whatever evolves to be the most fit for survival keeps going. And I don't, you know, I don't want people to walk around scared. But the reality is that the world doesn't owe you anything and it's not designed to give you things. Yes.

And why don't people understand that the world doesn't care about you. Right. You have to provide some kind of value or utility for the world to care about you, for you to be paid, for you to survive.

Yeah.

Like you're not owed anything in this life. And it's one of those things where, you know that cyclical thing where hard times breed strong people, strong people bring good times, good times bring weak people.

Yeah.

Which bring bad times. And we can see that really playing out where people have had this a lot of money, zero interest rate environment.

You know, we've solved the food problem, most of the shelter problems, all this kind of stuff. Lots of peace for the last like 30, 40, even longer in Australia years. Like there haven't been wars here. And that's what people have grown up with and that's what they expect and they feel like they're actually owed something. But in the history of the world, that's not reality. That's not how things actually work.

Yeah. And I think there's ways you can do that. That isn't just business. Right. Like there's. I think I went to Japan recently and I have a lot of love for them as a culture and how it's not about the individual, it's about the traditions and the causes and being connected to things. So I think you can find any way to do that, but to emerge yourself as the hero that's surrounded by a story. And business owners do it all the time. You know, I'm setting up a new business. Everyone just needs to buy from me. It's like, well, hold on, what's the problem? Why you? Why not anyone else? Like, why, why suddenly should I all of a sudden just pour money into your thing? Like, what's the narrative here? It's the narratives. I'm a business owner now. Entrepreneur.

Serial founder. Like 13 failed businesses. I'm serial, founder of nothing.

Why do we pay attention to the extreme things on social media, like the one entrepreneur that's made a billion dollars. You're like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. All I need is an idea. I'm going to make all this money. That is not reality. Business is so hard and it takes like a minimum of 7 to 10 years to build a good, profitable business.

Yeah, I was going to ask you that. Like, do you. What is that year that you find businesses start, especially small businesses? When do you find that? What, what's the sort of crossing the chasm? A little bit of like when things start to work.

Yeah, so I do a lot of work with. And I'm happy to mention the name if it's fine. EO and yeah, they're great and I think there's a lot of good businesses in there and they've got a pathway to growing and good systems around that. But I, what I found through working with those businesses is that some of the businesses actually really quickly will make good money because they find a good gap in the market and plug it. Other businesses that are more standard and have lots of competitors will take several years. It's like what they always used to say about restaurants. If you're going to open a restaurant, expect the first two years you won't even break even. And then after that you'll start to make money potentially. But then beyond 10 years, they kind of get stale and you need a refresher. You don't exist. So every market's going to have different ones. But I think it comes down to the clarity of proposition to the market, how much we are willing to stick with that proposition. So businesses change gears all the time. And then what's the model for extracting value for a business owner or for the people who own that operation, whether it be employees or otherwise?

It's so fascinating because being in crypto, being such a cyclical business, but we don't know when the seasons are. Yeah, that's like great.

Is it summer yet?

Yeah, you're a farmer. Just waiting for the rains, mate.

It feels like the first three, I mean the first year was basically write off. We just tried to survive because all the disaster that happened in the prior business, then the next two years were deep bear market. How many times did we have to lay people off? Especially to remember that one day when I was in Dubai, October.

I remember that call as well.

That was the toughest day.

That was brutal.

And that was you, me asking you about your cash flow.

So what happened was I was like, trav, I don't know why we're losing so much money. Our books say this, but our bank says that. And I don't know what you said. It was.

I just said, what's your cash flow? What's your Runway?

And I'm like, Runway?

Oh my God. And then you. Because I had been talking about float, which is if anyone owns a business, watching float is an amazing piece of kit, tracks your cash flow rather than your profit and loss. And I just said, what's your Runway? And you, I don't know. And I said, you sat down. I think it was a Starbucks or something.

And we literally workshopped. And then we're like, you got to make the hard call. You've got too many people and you're going to run out of cash in like three weeks.

We were like three or four weeks away.

I was like, oh, my God.

That day was like, I'm roving to buy. I don't want to be there. We're trying to raise money. Things are the market's. We can't acquire any users, haven't raised any money. And we're about to run. We're about to run out of money.

Yeah, you and I got on a call because we had a third executive, but he was in the states and it would have been like 1am or something for him. And I remember we had to let some amazing people go. Like, you know when you have those absolute unicorns that you just want to keep in your company forever and like, the business just can't sustain this. We either keep this person in clothes in three weeks or, you know, we let them go and we have a little bit longer to figure it out.

And that's what we did. I think there was six or seven that day that we had to let go.

Yeah. And that was a year and a half ago, wasn't it?

A year and a half. Yeah.

And then we did reduce salaries. On top of that, everyone reduced salaries.

Everyone took a hit. Everyone did all the right thing. Even I cut my thing all the way back. Every. I think every single. We went through, we were there like, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go. And it wasn't just. I mean, you did. You sold your car. There was all kinds of stuff that happened, I think, as a result of it. But you did what? And you did it right away. And I think that's the critical bit. It's like once the decision. We talk about decision making and it's like making a decision, but then executing are both equally important. And some people decide and they sit for a while and they're just wasting the opportunity to get on top of it.

How? Because we're talking about fear and ego before doing the hard thing. When you coach people, how do you push them down that path or get them or force them to make. Not force them, but help them to make that hard decision? Some of the things you do.

Yeah.

So it depends on the. Usually I'll know, like, something will be in the way. But good coaching practices don't just say do the thing because it doesn't create the change. But for me, it can be a series of questions. One of them might be, it sounds like you're holding something back, or it sounds like you want something but you're not asking for it. Or if, if you knew I wasn't going to say anything, either way, what would you do? Like if no one was around, no one knew about, but you could make the call secretly, what would you do? And so there's these like little questions. Yeah, yeah. And then. Or I'd go, I think sometimes I've even said, I think you know the answer but you don't want to say it. And sometimes they'll go, yeah, I do, and it'll be okay. Well, what is it? And it's so. I think most people are really close at that point and they know. But with the example I used earlier with the utilization rate being too low for that business and not making money, and the person said, oh, I can't make the call. And I said, well, what's more important to you? The perception of culture and feeling like you have a happy place or the saving of cash and being able to survive another year? And he's like, I can't break the culture. And so there's no question or push or anything I could have done at that point that would have changed that. And to be fair, that's not my role. I advise, I coach, I support. But if you go, I want to harm myself, like business wise, then I go, I'm sorry and I'm here if you need me and I'm always available. But I think that that's a. You got to try and find, like, what's the blocker? And so if it's ego, I want to make it safe for them to say what they need to say. If it's fear, then I want to talk through what's the real risk. So fear is addressed by understanding risk and likelihood, and ego is addressed by just going, look, you're going to be okay, and maybe some people will hate you for a short time. But the World moves on. You're not the main character, and what matters is what happens with you. So you can address those two. You can move people forward.

So Trav's a master at doing this. And even when we have our strategy meetings, he's like, like, I have to bring this up. I've got to say the thing. What about this?

And we're like.

Just like that. Counterintuitive thinking or asking the difficult question or the thing we're not cognizant of or the thing we're avoiding. And then tackling that head.

No, thank you.

That really helps us reframe. And even, like, as we've gone through. So we had the terrible year, two bad years, and then, like, we're now, like, this year is looking really positive. I feel as though we finally got through a lot of things. But. But I think getting down to even, like, when you think about what are we trying to achieve in the business, the first thing that. And you brought this up, too, but, like, what do you want as a business owner?

Like, you can all the time.

You know what I mean? That's the most important thing, because at the end of the day, what are you doing? And then we get into this question of what's the meaning of life?

I don't go that far. That becomes a little bit despondent if you're not careful. But it's a good. Yeah, go for it. Yeah.

This goes back to, like, entrepreneurship, where you see those outliers. I'm like, ben, what do you want out of the business? I'm gonna be a fucking unicorn. I want a billion dollars. And then traps this down. He's like, well, what do you really want? And then it's like, well, I want a house. I want this, I want that. I want that or that. And then you're like, but what do you really want? And then you, like, you modeled it out, and you're like, that's not that much money. We could achieve this easily.

It was like literally 1/100th or 1/1000th.

It was so much more like unicorn. You're like, but why? I'm like, actually, that sounds terrible. I don't want that.

But you asked the question. You're like, is this business a unicorn business? And it's not.

Yeah.

Like, for us to be. To get to a billion dollar business, it would have to be fundamentally different services we offer, the pricing structure, what.

We do, who's involved, the lifestyle we live, the work that we have to do.

And once we accepted that and the money we'd have to raise the equity goes all the sort of nonsense, right?

Yeah.

Having a board, you'd have to report to all that.

For me that was the way and that was the ego thing for me. I was like, I can break the ego. Because I mentioned, and I've said this to you a few times, how do you think you would go with reporting to a board of directors if you had to answer on this issue? And you're like, I wouldn't fucking do that. And I was like, then you can't go that way. So I deal with the ego side by just saying, well, what if you had to answer to a board on this? Yeah, amazing. But you have to be able to do that. But yeah, I think to come back on that, what you as Collective Shift do really well is your value proposition. And I think that's why even in a bear market I was like, let's keep going. And when you were trying to crack things, I'm like, it's going to be quiet but. But you know, you'll get. Cause your proposition so strong and what you do and the way you do it compared to all the finfluencers. And I mean I talk about Coffeezilla stuff all the time. Cause I love how he just hammers the hucksters out there. And I see you as like just to the periphery of that. You're not hammering them, but you're showing before you even get into that space what you should be doing and thinking about. And I think that's such a valuable service in a world like finance is such a dangerous sector. It's like it runs the world, but it's run by narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths and corrupt corporates and everything else. And you go, well, if we can at least educate people, we can help a little bit. I mean I think that's like if you look at Barefoot Investor, that's kind of what that was, right? It was a first go at teaching people the fundamentals.

And I think what got me through the tough times was the ultimately the belief not only in the business, but I think crypto itself or Bitcoin, like I just had such a. And all of us did I such a strong belief that it was going to make it through. I remember the talk I did in Perth. Yeah, it's only a few months ago. EO and I did the story and at the end they basically asked me because this was back when like it was like the story hadn't ended right, we hadn't fixed the Problem. It was still pretty poor. And people like, why are you in crypto? Like, why are you doing what you're doing? You could be earning way more money doing something else. Like the opportunity.

They said that to me. They're like, why do you stick around? Like, you're on a reduced salary. You're going through all this shit. People are crying because Ben's like, basically open book, telling him what kind of the stuff he went through. And I'm like, because it's amazing. I love working with Bang. Crypto is sick. Yeah. And like, right, I could go get another job. I might be able to, what, double my income.

Great.

But when I look back and I'm old and this massive financial change was happening and I gave that up and I didn't work in crypto, I would have the biggest regret ever. Like, this is something that I want to do. I want to see through part of the movement.

Yeah.

Rather than just having like an easy kind of life.

Yeah.

Could you imagine my grandkids going, oh, granddad, like, you know, when bitcoin was popping off, what were you doing? Oh, yeah. Now we're from mining company. I didn't want to go into crypto. I left like, no, like, I want to do this. You know.

I think that's the dichotomy that some business owners struggle with. They pursue an opportunity. I know a bunch of them, actually, and I won't. I'm not going to say anyone. And this isn't about anyone. But there are a number of business owners who hate their businesses. And they're like, this thing makes me a ton of money, but I hate it.

Yeah.

And that. And that when you get those questions, you have to go again, well, ego wise and fear wise. What are you after? It's like, well, I want the safety of the money and this does that for me. But I hate my business. And you've chosen well. I think the money will come. Whether or not it does. I'm passionate about the thing I'm going towards and we have a good time working on it. And that just isn't congruent with some people's thinking. And that's okay. Right. They might go, well, I'm happy to do a thing I hate if it gives my family and I what we want.

Yeah.

That's the choice you get to make.

And aligned up, too, with back to.

What we want to build.

Collective 50B is like that. That the ability, like, business is just a vehicle to achieve the lifestyle they want to live. And that was a big eye Opening.

Wow.

Okay.

Now that was a learning from eo.

From you. Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, wow, that all makes sense now. Like, I don't want to go and raise a shit. Like, we raised money, but we raised in a way where we had good investors on that. You know, we're going to be strategic with us, but not boards and overviews and raising obnoxious amounts of money telling.

Us what to do every day.

Exactly.

You need to grow 10, 20.

And you had those offers.

We definitely did. No, even recently, we had basically a big fund that was like, look, if you guys want to do a series A, like, we're in. And, you know, that's. That's a lot of money, but then I don't fucking want to do that.

Like, you know, and what you're sacrificing is, yeah, you get the money, you play on easy mode for a while, but then it becomes progressively harder and harder and harder. If you've got some money and you stand on your own feet and you build your customer base, it becomes a lot easier.

Yeah.

And I also think the other thing I just made a note of before is, like, I was and still completely am all in, like, in terms of everything I had, I put into credit, into the business, you know, lost in terms of, like, net loss. If we were to end things, like, at a certain point in time, like, down ridiculous amounts, debt to the ATO loans lost, like, not sold. All my crypto to put in it. Like, there was also. There was the passionate side about crypto, but then also the other side was like, there's actually no other choice.

You burn the boats.

I cannot. There's no way back. Like, actually, and I remember talking to you about this, I was like, there's actually no other choice. I can't quit, because if I quit, I'm completely like, it's probably bankruptcy. Like, and that's not great.

I mean, at your age. Yeah.

But I also like that back up against the wall mentality. As you know me, I'm super competitive and I love to win. So I felt that was nearly like a. That was nearly the motivation to be like, nah, fuck you. Like, and that's, you know, looking back, the energy throughout those periods of time was pretty. Pretty red hot in a sense of, like, it was chip in my shoulder, like, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna show everyone.

Yeah. The tenacity was there.

Yeah. Which I don't know where that comes from, but, like, yeah. I feel as though that probably definitely helped in the. In the down times.

Yeah. I think that's an innate ability for a subsection of the population. But I think other people have passion. They just don't understand where it comes from or it isn't in their work. And I think that's fine, too. But you definitely had it geared towards the thing you were trying to do.

But back to the strategy piece, bringing on you two, like, and you were in a similar boat to Trav because we. You were a coach for some stuff, and I was using Trav for other stuff for a bit in the old business. Yeah, yeah. And then bringing you on just allowed because we're like yin and yang in a sense.

I'm like, let's go much.

You're like, think twice. Didn't even think once, bro.

Did you think through that? Did you send that email? Like, have you spoke to him? Like, nah, like, it. It'll be fine.

Look, then leap.

But I think that's what, again, like, the. The different. Yeah, yeah, the different.

You get the tension.

Exactly. Yeah.

And it anchors you in the right way because.

Yeah, if it was just me, we're going way too slow.

It's just.

You'd be going too fast, breaking things.

Yeah, yeah.

And without you, we wouldn't be thinking. Thinking. Right. So that's kind of how it works.

Well, that's the other thing as well. Like, he's the guy that has, like, the full view. Yeah.

Because you're not in the weeds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can be emotionally detached and ask really awful questions because that's your role.

Yeah, yeah.

In a nice way.

Yeah.

But you also have the view across all of those different businesses.

Yes.

Give us that insight.

Yeah.

I want to ask you, what is it like having someone like Trav, where he's outside of the business, first of all, the coaching side, but someone you can actually go to, because I imagine there's things you can't talk to me about or other people in the business. What is that like?

Oh, it's phenomenal. I like to have someone to go to with my toughest problems. And instantly, Travis, just like, we just have a conversation, and whether it be, like, a heat check, like, am I thinking about this? Right.

Or.

Or just insights that you've even told me about conversations or people in the business, and you go, well, they may be thinking about this this way. I'm like, oh, I didn't even think of that. Of course that's what they're thinking.

Yeah.

So this ability where, like, I get frustrated over certain things, or I'm. I'm, like, getting Dialed up because something starts happening and I'm like, travel. Like, why the isn't this, you know, travels like, well, you know, think from their perspective this is what's going on.

Like, yeah, oh shit, of course.

That'S great. And sometimes you're right so that's the other thing too is sometimes you need the validation, I think, which we all do. Right. It's an incredibly lonely journey being the sole director or, or leader of any business and especially when you go from middle to any senior role in any organization, you're kind of like, if I talk to anyone about this, there's implications or if I ask them, they're going to have a view that's skewed towards their perspective and sometimes I'll go, yeah, Ben, I think you should be fucking angry about that. That makes sense. And other times I go, why are you so angry at Berg?

What's so valuable about you, Trev, is like, you're not just sitting in the clouds like this macro, like, oh, you know, you need to raise your revenue. It's like, well, thanks, thanks mate, like, appreciate it.

Typical consultants.

Yeah, you like, you really get in the micro like Travis, I need to have this difficult conversation with this person because they're not performing at the level and this is, they've got family and like, how do I, how do I have that conversation? You'd be like, well this is, this is how, you know, you could literally lay it out to them so having that ability to go super macro strategy or super micro in like. And you share from experiences as well We've spoken about this before like mentors and coaches that don't speak from experience and just speak from, I don't know, a book like, God, that's you know, red flag number one. Yeah that's why I love AO and working with you because you've done it before Experiences are something that is much more real.

Yeah, this is literally why every time I go and speak at some academic shindig, I'm always in the trenches taking grenades because there's like. And I have a lot of regard for research and it's part of it but sometimes the research hasn't been tested in a real world setting or is only theoretical. Right. At least theoretical frameworks for how you should run a business or someone said to me the other day, the purpose of any organization is to create a happy culture. I was like, no, no, that's a secondary outcome Like, I want people to be happy working with me and I'm sure all of you do but that's not the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to generate value either for shareholders or as a not for profit, for the community or whatever. But that starts and then you hope as part of that, you're creating a but. And then it was an immediate kind of fisticuffs in the parking lot. Cool. Hold on. But, yeah, being able to, I think, get in the weeds. And you and I have always had it arrangement because I think it works well where, like, we don't book long sessions, but you've got me on voice message at any point and we do like exchange voice messages and say, yeah, I think that sounds good. Or no, that doesn't sound good. Or oh, I need you to call me so we can talk about this one. And I think that's useful when you're in that type of role. Totally.

And I think just as a leader, the way I think about it, like, I always need to be three steps ahead of the growth of the business because if I drop down and I'm not able to lead the company well, then the business is going to, you know, fall down or something bad gonna happen. So having someone like you that's worked with such awesome people in different businesses like to model myself off that. I'm very grateful for that. To see and. And learn from, to adapt, to grow. Because how else do you learn, you know?

Yeah, you don't. And you, well, you pay. The thing is, you're going to learn one way or another. And it's either you pay through business like your cost, you. You actually lose revenue, you lose people. Yeah. And you go, well, what's. What makes more sense, like pull someone in or go to a course or do whatever and accelerate that knowledge and know what the actual cost is or wait for that cost to show up one day in the form of someone walking out the door or losing customers. And it's like, well, that's the choice everyone has to make.

So yesterday we had our strategy session. It was us three. And up front, we did a couple of things where bull markets hit and you're booked up for the next, like, month with strategy calls. And we're like, there might be lost sales here. And Chad's like, bring up your website. Bring out the website. He's like, there, there, there. All your fucking buns say, book a call. You don't need to book a call. You need to sign them up.

And you're like, I'm gonna get onto it right now.

It's just so practical.

My favorite was the other week. I'm like, God, we need to do more content. We need more leads. We're getting enough leads. We look at the spreadsheet. Sales conversion rate, like, down considerably. No, you need to do sales. Oh, okay. We fixed sales, and everything's just like.

Ben comes back. He's like, I'm a genius. My conversion rate increase. It's amazing. I'm the best on the planet. And we told him to do a couple of tactics. Trav told me to do a couple of tactics, try them out in sales. He's like, oh, I'm not doing that. I can't do that. I don't want to be that guy does it. He's like, I'm amazing. I was born for sales. Fear me. It was all my idea.

And they weren't even, like, sleazy sales tactics. You were like, they're not gonna like that. And I was like, it's normal. That's what everyone does. And you're like, oh.

Came back a month later and, like, did our best week of sales. And I'm like, that's my idea, guys. Thanks.

My happiness just comes from it working. All I do is always send you, like, the flexing biceps. Yeah. That's enough said.

Ye and I go to Berg.

Let's.

We might need a bump up Travis's retainer.

Oh, yeah.

So good. Now let's switch gears a bit.

Yeah.

We've had some interesting conversations on the years. One I found really fascinating was some businesses that you would not expect that are actually printing cash.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah. And you kind of named, like, a few a while ago off the top of your head. They can be ones you coach or ones that you've heard about. What are businesses where you think wouldn't print money but are doing incredibly well? And a lot of them are boring businesses.

They are really boring businesses. I have to be careful about how I answer this, because I'll reveal certain people.

I think, so there's a lot of money to be made in Boring. You've landed that 100%. So things like producing of things, you think, oh, in Australia, not really a thing. Same in America, not really a thing. It's not right. There are ways in which you can still. One of the groups I worked with, as they assemble things, they're in a heavily competitive market like that, you would look at that and you go, why would anyone start a business in that sector? But they got really. They did really good branding. They found access to supply routes that no one else had found. And then they've created this kind of little, like, micro arbitrage on just bringing stuff across and selling it at a premium. And now all those competitors go to them to get access to that stuff. And you think like brilliant. And others where they're doing repair work and you're like, oh, that's. But they've created a methodology for doing the repair work and centralized part of how that gets made and then supplies their repairs. So there's all these ways in which you go, well, I know that sounds a little bit vague, but it's as close as I can get. But basically the things that's super sexy and groundbreaking and innovative is often the hardest thing to make money on. Because when you, one of my former lecturers said this years and years ago, educating a market is one of the most expensive ways to build a business. Oh yeah. A new product, a new service is always like, how do I know I have the problem? Why would I think to Google you Do you have ranking? And Google like, it's. How do I. It's not a thing. Like I've got a spinal injury. Finding pain management people is like no man's land. Because it's such a niche segment of the healthcare industry. I didn't even know it was a thing till asked around. It's like a long journey. But these guys, if they were trying to market and find someone, there's just no way. What is that for?

Yeah.

And so I think go go boring. In some cases, as long as you're interested in the business, you'll build. Yeah. And so for some people like the two I mentioned, they're really interested in model optimization. So how do I take a business model and make it more efficient and make more money out of it while still building a good business that I can then sell or scale? And if you do model optimization plus boring, you can make a shit ton of cash on those businesses. And then there's other ones. Like my business is socks. Like that. Not as a thing. I love what I do. But like scaling consulting firms is not. And that's why I don't do it. It's such a crowded, like you can break that. Maybe we could do AI consulting. But again it's. There's certain industries where you go, that's not going to be a great business or you're going to work really hard and you're going to be fighting all the time. And there's other ones where you go, I'm going to make a ton of money and I'm not going to have to do all that much after a couple of years.

Yeah, these Companies do ordinary things extraordinarily well. 102 areas I can name. One was gyms.

Oh, yes.

One was plumbing.

Yeah.

Both like really, really boring businesses.

Right.

And so the, the plumbing guy, he just did like heavy automation. Like he did a bunch of AI stuff where, you know, an email will come in, he'll do fancy AI, it'll go to his job system come through. He literally now goes to.

Companies and he made a decision to do commercial only, not residential, because they pay on time. And he says for the first three times, you guys first three jobs are free. You can see how good our systems are, how we perform everything. And he signed up close to 100%.

Wow.

It's incredible. And he's printing money and he's looking to like triple his growth.

Yeah.

And he's already huge. And even gyms as well. Like when you have multiple gyms and if you run those correctly. Yeah, amazing.

They're great. But. And that's why, I don't know if you know, but a lot of eoers do gyms as their second. Like once they're moving into their 40s and 50s. I think it's also because of the need to get in shape once you're like, you care more about health as you get older. But they. Yeah, but the thing with gyms is they're. They've got like big flares and then they crash pretty. So because people lose interest and then the market converges. So you get like three to five years to really milk that. Especially if you're like F45, rapid growth kind of collapse back down. Yeah, I think Revo is doing. Revo is doing really well. I wonder. Give it a couple more years. They'll probably have a bit of a pullback or the market will match their cheap pricing and they'll get pushed down.

Or they'll have a competitor will be something new. Then you fad. I heard from one gym owner, they took over a gym and then it came to Christmas time and they emailed all their members saying, thank you so much for being a member. The next day, 30 of people canceled because they forgot they had that membership. That $10 a week or 20 a.

Week, that's like what mackers did. You remember 90s mackers, they gave people food poisoning. So they put up posters to say, like, we apologize for the food poisoning.

So it was like, because they had poisoned and like 10 people at one location, but they put them all over the place. Something like that. And it was like one of the worst marketing things that have happened to their brand for that is Mackers or Burger King. Don't quote me on that. But. But it was, like, a great example. And don't tell me you did something wrong if I don't feel you did something wrong.

Yeah, yeah. This is another reason to have an external consultant in your business. One that's really good. Like, Trav, where we're thinking about an idea, we think it's amazing. Give it to Trav. He's like, why the fuck would you do that? Like, this is what's going to happen. There's a big truck that's going to come. It's going to crash. Like, oh, shit. Didn't think about that. Because we're so deep in crypto and stupidity, we don't even think about it.

Just the shiny object syndrome going, oh, I did my mind. You're pretty good at pulling me up on that.

But, like, it's actually good to have Trav as, like, a mediator, because Ben will be like, we need to do this. We've got to go to Mars. It's going to be amazing. We're going to use AI to get there, and all we need is a paperclip. And I'm like, you're an idiot. And then because he's tell. You're telling the story to Trav, and Trav's literally shaking his head. You've got a good business over here. Just focus on that.

And then you're, like, getting rat. I'm just.

Let him finish. And then you tell me, oh, man.

That'S happened so many times.

We'll be in our quarterly meetings.

And I'm like, guys, why don't you listen to me? You're ganging up on me. Why aren't you believing me?

I can't believe your logic.

And then, like, a month later, I'm like, God, that was a bad idea.

You get so emotional. Like, you really, like, let that drive you, right? And that's part of your passion and part of why you succeed and why you're good at a lot of things. But when that is the thing driving you and it's not matched with reality, that's when a lot of trouble. And sometimes it takes you, like, a week or two to burn that fire inside you off. And then you're like, oof. Glad we dodged that one.

But that's really important. So as entrepreneurs, one of the things I've seen symptomatic of a good entrepreneur is this constant next thing. What's the next innovation? What's the next opportunity? But what Becomes really critical is what you do well. Is that tempering of that or having a process that says, we're going to put this through a bit of rigor before we do it because we want those ideas. Like, the platinum was yours. That was your idea. And you had that for a while. And I think I was a little bit pensive just because I didn't want you distracted. Distracted at the time because we didn't have enough pro. And then I think you. It went through a process when, yeah, there's a market, you tested it with people and they went, okay, let's go. Yeah, we've got the support. And so I think that's what you need. You need a bit of that. Like, wait, okay, let's put that through something. And no, it doesn't survive.

And then.

Yeah, and then, like, commit to two weeks, a month, whatever, testing it.

Yeah.

But at the test and you stop, you look at the data and you decide if you're going to put resources into it.

That's one thing. That one. We didn't do well. When we're testing the webinars, like, well, me, I didn't do well. It's just like barreling in. And I got so fixated because I couldn't. Because I couldn't win. I hadn't won yet. And that's where I was getting so emotional when you guys, like, Ben, turn it off. Like, it's not working. I'm like, no, I've nearly got it.

Yeah.

And then we ended up turning it off and fixed our attention.

Other things.

And. And with the platinum, that's a perfect example because I feel as though we had the idea, but we just couldn't find product market fit. Like, we tried so many different things. I felt like it was a long time coming, but. And you've really built this into our model now is like, let's not get distracted. Let's just keep doing the thing. Like, stop doing more and more and more. Like, just go deeper on the thing that's working. And I feel as though that we've finally cracked platinum and now that's how fast it's growing. Like.

But if you look at any of the really exceptional businesses, they do their thing really well. It doesn't have to be an exciting thing. So it can be their model, it can be done really well, their logistics. But they're like, if anything jeopardizes that, we don't do it. It's. That's. This must always be the priority. Now if we've got space, we pull that in or we pull this in, but it's always the thing.

That's what I love about Harry's business studio, Hawk. So my mate Harry, that runs probably the largest SEO agency on the eastern side, like, they do SEO. That's all they do. They got 80 staff, some of the biggest companies in Australia. You want SEM, you want marketing, you want ads, you want anything, go somewhere else. We are the best in Australia.

He niche right down. And he didn't go for the shiny thing.

Yep.

And that's how you do it.

Yeah.

This is like why we're here. We come to this podcast studio because it's amazing. Yeah. We're at Magic Studios. Hey, Shout Out. Because we come in here, everything's set up, it's easy. We know it's going to be a great experience. We don't have to think about stuff, we just have to deliver.

Just works.

And it's super high quality.

And I feel as though that's where the brand's gone to at this point now. And we put a lot of work into that. What was, what was the model you spoke about before the pod? The.

Oh, Porter's five forces? Yeah.

Like, what are the things that are the barriers? And like, you know, you know, people will now pay us, you know, considerable amounts of money to make sure they get the most trusted information to do crypto. Right. And whether that be as simple as just knowing the right exchange to sign up, knowing how to store it, you know, you know, knowing the strategies to get in and out, people will pay a lot of money for that because they trust the brand, the trust we've.

Built and the quality of our content, it takes a while to build that and get to our level. So that's a barrier for new incumbents because all the people that, that went out of web 3 went to AI, they're all coming back to web 3, mate, I tell you.

And they all go where the money is.

Exactly. They're the people we're going to compete with. And the better we get at this and the more that we deliver, the more of, you know, that kind of barrier to entry. The space we're going to have is a competitive advantage we're going to have. And you're getting that through the feedback from the people that you're speaking to on the call, like, they're just thanking you so much. Like, this is exactly what I needed.

Yeah, you found the problem, you're solving that problem.

And it was, it was very much a vitamin problem in a bear market. Vitamin being like, nice to Have. But in a bull market, it's a fucking painkiller. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah.

Do you want to be that guy that has 1 to 2 million on paper and hasn't sold, hasn't even written down their goals? They don't know when to sell. They want to get to $50 million because they heard it on fucking Gary Vee saying it.

Yeah.

What are your actual goals? They're going to be a lot less than you think. Freedom costs a lot less than you.

Yes.

And can you actually sell and convert it? Because otherwise why are you investing?

Yeah.

You're investing to make some money, to then use that to change your life.

Y. Yeah. Yeah.

I think people get caught up in the mania of that. They get obsessive with, like, the pursuit of the next thing. I've had people say to me, oh, I'm always just checking the balance. Like, what's the next. The next. I said, what do you intend to do with that balance?

Yes.

Oh, I don't know. I just want the next thing. It's like, well, there is no end to that. There is no. And then one day when you're no longer pursuing it, there's just that hollow bit that's left because that's all you built your identity around, was the pursuit of that next thing. And at some point, there is no next thing. And you go, well, hold on. All that's left is, is. And you and I talked a bit about this yesterday. The. The broken marriage or the. The no friends or the whatever. All these things that happen. Or the poor health because you went, all I cared about was singular focus, which everyone told me to do, but I didn't realize. They don't say just focus on growth for growth's sake. They say, focus on the thing you want and then go after that.

Let's dive into this. This is a brilliant topic. You work with a lot of business owners and we've seen that pie chart where it's like what I think would work. And it's just like a single pie chart with working hard. But actually it's working hard, family, friends, looking after my health and mental health. And society rewards working hard. It's actually encouraged whenever you meet someone within five seconds, what do you do?

Yes.

Right. Immediately. And that's where a lot of particularly, I speak for men get their sense of worth from their job, their career progression. That's their function, it's what they generally do. A lot of my friends view themselves that way. It's a very Western thing, right?

Yeah.

It's not A it's an individual thing, it's not a collective thing thing. And a lot of people will throw themselves into their work, their businesses, and they're very unbalanced in other areas, like their relationships or their kids or they haven't dealt with physical issues or those kind of things. Yep, we see that heaps. And man, just talk us through some of the things that you've seen with business owners, even ones that have exited, and then the challenges that they kind of had and like, how you kind of try to help those people.

Yeah, yeah. So there's a few. You get different stages, right? So you get the, I've run out of energy and I just can't do it anymore. And I think we could talk about burnout and exhaustion and all of that. But the interesting one is when some of those people retire early, so 40s, 50s, whatever, and they go, I've made it, I'm going. And they're like, wait, what?

And there's all that stuff of like. And like, we even. We've talked about opportunities and what does that look like? And you know, what's the alternative? And you go, I can be a bit scary, but there's a difference between going, it could be scary and I'll keep going to. I no longer can keep going or I had to sell or I've had an exit event. And so one of the interesting things I do, I don't do it with everyone, but if someone wants real deep change and wants to get really clear on where they're going, I have this Google Doc. I built a long Google sheet a long time ago and I updated every couple of months. And it's got these fields around, like work, life, giving back, et cetera, all these different categories. And I get them to score themselves and then I get them to do their goals independent of that. And we, we create linkages between energy goal and actual feeling of those areas. And immediately you see problems, right? So they're like, well, my business is a 10. It's always a 10. I go, cool. Well, if we've got 20 units in total and you give 10 to that, you've got 10 left for everything else. Where is that going? And they're like, well, it can't be possible. Like, and it has to be like, there's 20. We could do 24, because there's 24 hours if you want. But I don't do it that way because people try and argue time. And so you do it this way with energy. And they go, oh, well, I want to have Friends like, well, okay, show me your diary. And like, oh, I don't speak to anyone for a month at a time. Like, okay. So you start to see this overall decline. And then when we look at burnout, they look at things like mental distance and exhaustion, all these things that are lifted usually by healthy social surroundings, ability to disconnect. You know, when you turn off work, do you feel guilty? If you do, you have an unhealthy attachment to your work. There's all these things we see. So for me the first bit is, all right, if that's happening to you, why and do you really want to change it or do you want to just leave it? And then in a few years you can get three to five years of therapy to try and like overcome it because things will, things will fill in those gaps or the gap will just sit there. And I think that's an interesting journey that some people have to go on. And I went through that like years ago because of my back. So I was doing 80, 90 hour work weeks, was obsessed with the like hustle culture, was on the Gary Vee train and all that stuff.

You had like 10 billion automations and SAS things connected together.

I will kill the world.

Like, bro, every phone call and then it zaps it across here and then.

This happens and then that happens. Yes. And I had automation galore. But I was working crazy hours and my health just went like, my back went and so I went through a bit of a reset and then I went through the identity change. I went through some therapy and all that. And I think that's all normal and fine, we all do that. But there's. Then you go, actually, why was I even doing that? And what was the goal of doing that? And then we've since like we bought a house in the hills, I still work long hours. Like if you contact me on a Sunday or you get me your response so fast, the difference is like, I can take time off and I don't feel guilty or I can. We've got like a puppy and I can spend an hour with the puppy in the morning. And it's not like, why am I not working? Or like, what else could I be doing to make money? And so there's, I think the shift that people have to get their head around is how do I start to form healthy attachments in the right way and get rid of unhealthy attachments to the things, whether it be my business, my growth, whatever it is.

Yeah. So mine is how do I form better and healthier habits and change the stories I've got in my brain and different loops that are running. And the one that you said like spending an hour with your puppy, like, so I've recently got a puppy as well. If I spend an hour in the morning, it's like, well, I should be working, I should be productive, I should be doing this.

I should.

I'm like, no, it's okay. This is actually good for me. I'll be more productive. But that's like a hard thing to overcome and give yourself permission to do.

Yeah. And I think the only people have started to understand that concept through fitness. I think now people recognize that's why the meditation and the 4am Journaling and all that has become a big trend is because people go, oh, the evidence is really clear. I have to do health, otherwise I'm not good at business. And so I think people have accepted that but they still haven't understood that social plays that role. Giving back plays that role. Doing things you and I talked about when you're feeling flat, go play golf, but don't be competitive. And you're like, what do you mean? Can you not be competitive?

Tomorrow we're gonna play. You don't have to be competitive because I'm rubbish.

So you can have a good time, but have fun. So don't lose who you are, but recognize that it's not about winning. It's about like, can I just enjoy it? Can I focus on the thing I'm doing? Can I enjoy the social banter of the golf without having to walk away the clear winner? And you'll hate it, but over time you'll start to go, actually this is enjoyable because the alternatives. If I obsess about winning and I do win, did I upset Bergs as part of that or did it cost me too much frustration the whole day just to win? And you go, well that's not an energy giver, that's an energy taker.

What changed for you? And I guess the either your values or the way you thought about things going from 90 hour weeks, obviously you had your injury so you had to change. What is it that you think now that makes you calmer and okay with that?

Yep, I saw that like my business has grown to a certain level. I have been approached to grow it beyond that. And I went, part of that was at the same time of all this happening. And I went, well, what do I need from a lifestyle perspective? We all always want more, right? There's always, I think it's part of the human condition.

What do you Want more. It's like, yeah, but what is more always right.

And I think that's part of our, like, what keeps us alive, too, as humans. Like, we pursued more food. You could argue, whatever. I don't know enough about it, but I think there's a drive there for people to generally go for more, whether it be in social interactions, approval, whatever. But for me, it was around this idea that I need to be really clear on what any particular moment and any particular goal is for me, and then I need to make sure that those behaviors align with that. So I wanted to decrease pain. So for context, on average I'm at a 5 to 7 on the pain.

Scale, which is massive, by the way.

Every moment of the day for chronic pain. Yeah. So that's. That's normal. And I don't medicate for that. And, like, I take, like, muscle relaxers, but no pain pills or anything. And so you go, well. And that was at its worst. And I've been able to get that down to about a three on average through, like, I have to do Pilates every day. I don't care for Pilates, but I have to do it. And so you start to go, well, what was the goal? Was the goal to keep growing and going crazy with this business or to go, actually, there's enough money here. It does what it needs to do. We got the house we wanted. We were clear on our goals. We've met our goals every year. And what is that? Extra hours actually getting me, aside from more headaches, Clients I kind of don't want to work with.

With.

And now I'm going no to clients turning away projects. Even you and I talked about one yesterday. And so you go through that and you go, okay, if I can be really clear on my goal and then I can give myself permission to stick to that goal, then that's fine. But if I go, my goal is like, to be healthy and to not have pain, but I'm also going to feel really guilty that I'm not working 90 hours anymore. Then you will never win. And that's the problem. We have this mental detachment, and we don't seem to reconcile that, that you can't be okay with a goal and then beat yourself up for not being okay with that goal. Yeah, you have to pick them. And people don't do that.

If you have a client that has that. That wants to go towards this thing, but I feel guilty for not doing the thing, how do you intervene there? Do you remind them of the goal or do you help them in Those.

Situations, well, it comes back to, like, the ego thing we talked about. So I go. I keep hearing you say so often, they'll refer to the thing they're not doing, but they'll still have the goal, be the goal. So they'll go, well, I want to have more time with family, or I actually want my. Sometimes it's even, I want to grow my business. Right. I want to grow my business. But they've got two staff members who are really awful, and they don't want to deal with them. I want to grow my business. And it would be easier if I just. If Sally and Joe just stopped. And you go, but I really want to grow my business. I'm like, can those two exist together? And they're like, yes.

Well, they exist now. Is that happening? No. Okay, well, where do we. And so you start to pull that apart, and eventually you get to a moment where you go, can these two. Sometimes they can, but can these two things coexist, exist? No. It's like the guy who said, I want a happy culture, and I want to be profitable, but I don't want to make the trade off. And so eventually, I will always get to a point where they have to make a decision. And sometimes the decision is, I don't want to do anything. And I said, well, okay, you've chosen one, then you've chosen to keep the underperformers for the sake of lack of profit. And so I think that's really important. You have to get people to understand. And they talk about in coaching as revealing people's blind spots to their own patterns. And if you can do that, then they get to decide. And I feel like I have won at that point in terms of helping you. If you've got enough information to now decide how you want to go, we've made. We've done the right thing.

Yeah.

But it's. When you can't see that, then you end up with frustration, burnout, mental detachment, et cetera. And we see that that's on the rise.

Let's talk about that. Because.

You see a lot out there. You talk to a lot of businesses. And one thing that really resonated with me was we were talking about burnout, just kind of casually.

Yeah.

And you sent out a burnout survey. Yes, and I filled out the survey, and the survey at the end, the result was basically something to akin to, you're fucked in a very nice, like, business way, Right?

Yeah. If it makes you feel better, 3/4 of people who filled it out were in the same Category was that okay.

Was that surprising or eye opening to you? And what are you, what are you seeing out there? What's happening these days?

Yeah, so it's interesting because I don't like to, like. I'm not a psychologist. I'm studying post grad psych at the moment, but I'm not a psychologist by background. And so I want to. You're gonna say something.

Didn't you do psychology undergrad?

Yeah, I did undergrad.

Okay. Yeah, but you nerd a psychologist and now you're starting to be a clinpsych.

Yeah.

So just a touch of psych.

Yeah, that's fair. Fair. I do have an mba.

You do stuff like organizational behavior and everything in there as well.

I'm on cind to myself. So, yeah, I wanted to look at the research first because I thought I just keep hearing this over and over. I'm tired. I hate, hate this place. I'm over it. I've had people say I hate my business, like I don't want to be here anymore. And for me, I was like, what's going on here? So I went and looked at the research. I won't pronounce the guy's name right, but he has the best body of research for anyone to look at. It's like shoe filet. And he's done a lot and he's looking at even meta analysis and his stuff. Always he does something called the bat, which is the burnout assessment test. So I had to look at that and I was like, ooh, this matches a lot of the stuff I'm seeing with business owners. So what's the business version of that? Because he just looked at it from an individual psychology perspective, and the answers from people in the survey was basically the same thing. So it's things like, regardless of burnout, the first pillar is exhaustion. Like, everyone agrees exhaustion is the first mark. So when anyone presents with low energy, I don't have the stamina I used to. I get bored in meetings. I'm frustrated with people around me. I go, ooh, okay, tickle those boxes. First one. And then they get mental distance. So now I'm starting to daydream. I'm starting to wonder about what the alternative might be. I'm starting to go, well, if this just happened, then I would love this place. So now I'm pulling myself away from it. And then the last two are cognitive impairment and emotional impairment. So emotionals I might feel depressed more often than I used to, might feel down. I might have psychosomatic symptoms, which is Like, I have tummy aches all the time. I'm always got migraines.

Yes. Tension.

Because we know now through good research that psychosomatic psychology is a real thing. Our body will manifest stress and it will present it as symptoms. And you'll go and be like, like, what's going on here? And they're like, I think you need to go see a psych. Because this is actually not an illness for you. It's your brain causing an illness to tell you, hey, we've been telling you for a while, you're not listening, so we'll start breaking things until you listen.

I firmly believed when I was in health, my body would make me sick, so I would take time.

Of course. Yeah. It's a circuit breaker, and it has the ability to do that.

And it gives me permission to relax for, like, two weeks because I'm sick.

Yep.

Yeah.

And then cognitive impairments. Like, I can't think clearly, I'm in strategy sessions and I'm muddy or I feel anxious. So there's these four show up. They're the culmination of burnout. All those things pack into burnout. And so when I'm talking to people, I'm going, I can't focus. I'm frustrated. I feel sick all the time. I notice I have the flu. They come in every coaching session. They're coughing or wheezing or they got a migraine. I go, oh, something's happening here.

This is you, mate.

So.

It was always going to happen. No, no, no.

Like, it happens to all of us. But in one particular moment, I'm like, dude, you're doing too much. You go for a cycle, you get sick. And I'm like, you're just burning out. I looked at your calendar. I'm like, you're fuck. Go and have a session with Trav. You had a session with Trav. Like, an hour later, you call me, bro, I'm so happy, man. Do you want to maybe. I don't know what happened in this session, but talk about maybe some of the things Trav talked about, what you're doing, if you even remember what was going on.

So this happens every month. It's like, I go after three weeks, then I feel as though I'm better at it now. We've spent a lot of time on it.

Yeah.

And one of the biggest things are you. You sort of told me, travel. It's not like, you know, calendar management. And, like, burning out is not going so hard for a month. And then going for a weekend away and coming Back. It's like you've got to put in consistent breaks throughout the day that break things up.

Even if, like, I'm not. Even if I only work a standard, like 38 or 40 hours, I'm still thinking about work the entire time. That is taxing.

Yes.

While I'm just walking around or I'm with my family.

Yeah. So. And I think. I think what I'm trying to do, I'm playing a lot more golf. Like, I'm doing running. Like, I'm trying to add in these other things around just like going hard 24 7. But I think I manage. I think I'm better at managing my energy. Like, I can feel myself and I'm like, oh, you know. You know, this is not. Like, I'm feeling pretty worn out. I usually get that exhaustion, like, the end of the year.

Yeah.

Like, if you can bring me a problem, I'm, like, off. Like, I don't want to do it.

We both went on holiday start of this year in January. It took us, like, over a week and a half to calm down. Then we calmed down, like, bro, when we came back, like, we were like.

I remember on holiday in January, like, waking up in, like. Like in sweaty anxiety over nothing. Like, the fact that I'm not stressing about something stressed me out.

That's your body, like, trying to reconcile. We're in an event where we're constantly under stress and possibly distress. And now we're taken out of that. But we're used to the physical symptoms.

And where's the stress?

And so you've gone. It's like a body.

Yeah.

Isn't it so crazy?

Yeah.

So I think. I don't know, it's. I think, trying to optimize. I try and optimize anyway now, like, just to do more things that I enjoy doing. And I think that's been super helpful, like, just whether that be in work or outside of work and doing more friend stuff. I think, like, my pie chart was like 90% business and 10% everything else. Now, like, if there's a social event, someone invites me to something, I try and say yes, unless I absolutely cannot go.

Great.

And I actually find even when I'm tired at the end of the day, going for dinner with someone or going to an event, I feel as though I can't be fucked. But I get there and it's great. Yeah.

Yeah. But, like, the mental thing of, oh, I have to get ready, I have to drive there, I have to go, then you're just so tired already.

But Then once you're there it's like great.

I'm not thinking about work, I'm not thinking about like stress. I'm like this is great. How are you? You have a great conversation.

It's so simple for me because I work from home 24 7. It's like two dinners a week. So one will be like go out with my wife once a week and once with my friends and my life is fine. Just having that small kind of connection. Just relaxing, sharing a meal.

Yeah.

That's all it's takes.

Yeah. You have to. There's these energy givers we look for. So. And that means also being choosy. So some people say, oh, just time with friends. It's like make sure they're the right ones because they have the energy sappers who you go, well that was. I actually left more tired or more frustrated because I was feeling crappy about my business. I came in. Now I'm feeling crappy about your life.

Yeah.

My business. And all I did was listen to you. Yeah. And so you need those energy givers. But it's that combination of friends, family, fitness, taking time on non productive or non achievement things. I sent you a thing a little while ago around the westernized achievement orientation and around. It's actually good to be not good at some things and to enjoy them. So I have a keyboard. I'm awful at it. I don't think I'm ever going to be good at it. I've got some little things but on occasion I'll take it out and I'll just pound out some keys and that's okay. And it gives you energy and it's not like I'm forcing myself to do it. I just like the sounds that come out of the keyboard. Yeah.

I. This is the thing. Like I actively try new things because I need to be shit at things.

Yeah.

And I need to have like a beginner's mindset, go to a curiosity and know I'm going to be. And get frustrated.

Yes.

Classic one Napoli pizzas and sourdough bread. Like the amount of times where because you know, work with your mind, relax with your hands kind of thing. So I'm like doing dough and it's too wet and it's gone everywhere and I'm screaming and I'm really. And I have to throw out the bin and it's annoying. And I'm like ah, I failed. Then I'm like this is just normal. Like no one gets this the first time. Right. And like willing to be kind of. Even though it's just in a private thing. But be vulnerable, not be great at something. Not have to do the best job ever. And now it's just like an ultra relaxing thing that I do. Like I don't even really need or want the bread. Like you make the bread, you do the thing and it's just really great. Yeah. And putting yourself in those situations, learning a new thing and being crap at things or going around the little one and just like running around and going on monkey bars and kicking footing and falling over and doing stupid shit just puts you in completely different mindset. Just playing.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's the things we know we need to do, but we just go in at the expense of what. What am I going to give up for? And it's like something, anything to do it.

Yeah. And it's weird because it's more like a vitamin rather than a painkiller where you do those things consistently. Like you work out, you play, you see friends, and your life is great.

Yeah.

But you don't necessarily get immediately rewarded for it. But you do kind of long term because your mental health's great, your physical health is great.

100%.

You feel your cup is full. Yeah. It's hard, isn't it?

Yeah. Think about that a little bit more longer term health rather than just the short term dopamine of like doing the thing.

Yeah.

Working. Yeah.

Yeah. But you're doing that now. That's something that you've consciously built into your day. Yeah.

Yeah.

Good on you, man.

Better.

Better.

And what's next for you, man? So you're doing your clean psych. How long have you got left on that?

I'm about halfway through that, but I've been pacing it. So I took a little bit of a break this term. I have to figure out this. It's a bit of a weird thing to say, but I have to figure out what I want to offer next. Like a.

That was my next question. So. Because it can give you a lot of. A long time ago, this may not be the case now.

Yeah.

You were saying you want to be like a kind of Wendy Rhodes, like for anyone that watches billions.

Right.

Has that since changed a similar thing?

No, it still does. I think the. The interesting thing is balancing that with like doing the right type of work. So if you do that and you end up in the wrong spaces, you end up just more damaged than what. So you fix people and you walk out broken. So I think for me that's part of it. I think that's like the work I do with you is stuff I really love and enjoy. But there's always the, like doing that on mass is always interesting. So like I ran a public leadership program that sold out. So that was good. So had like the Dockers sent some people and so yeah, good mix of people and it was nice. So I'll probably do that again. But actually the sad answer is I don't know. I've got enough work that I'm booked up like fee wise till next year, so I'm fine. But then on the other side it's like, what's the thing? It might be something in the burnout space, but I'm also like, what do I do with the entrepreneur side of things? I think there's a bit there because there's like the work we do is. It's not uncommon. It is something that business owners face and it's like, where do I go and how do I know? But then you want to make sure you don't get the dregs. I ran ads against that in my first couple of years. Oh my God. Some of the businesses you get, you'd be like, like you're making like 40 grand a year is like candles or whatever and you want a business coach.

Yeah, yeah.

It's probably not the right scale.

It's also hard because I feel as though like the value for me is the fact I can just message you and call you. Like that's what I want.

That's the on demand stuff.

Like I don't want a course. I just want you to fucking help me fix the problem.

Yeah. And that's one to one.

That's one to one. That's not scalable.

I'll just set up a coaching hotline.

How do you manage that? Or do we get kind of like special treatment? Do you like, you know people that you have on retainer?

Yeah.

Are you just that good? And you reply kind of. Cause I think you're just always there.

Like I'm always in between stuff. So like even if I've got a full day, one workshop on breaks, I'll respond to retainer clients if there's messages waiting. But they're, they're generally okay. It comes in peaks and troughs and. Or yours will be like five minutes and generally I can come up with the answer or ask a question back and then you have to go away and think about it and then come back. So it's more like ping ponging, which is the nice bit. I was never a big voice message person. You were the first one to really push me into voice messages. And I was like, oh, book a concession. But then it was fine. It's actually great because it's like micro coaching. Yeah.

I like the context of the voice messages.

Yes. So I. I hate your written messages, but I love your voice messages are really great. So that's how we communicate.

Yeah.

Even in eo. I remember we were sitting around, we're about to have one of our sessions, and I was like, oh, Ben, can you do this on WhatsApp? And everyone's like, what the. And they're just like, I want to be able to do that in Maybe just have to sit down after one email, be very formal.

Yeah. Yeah. You're definitely ahead of the curve.

Business.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think some. Maybe something in that. So it's. I actually don't have a good answer for you, which is.

That's all right.

Yeah. I think I really enjoy helping other businesses grow, but at some point, I got to figure out what I want to do with my life when I grow up one day. Yeah. When I grow up. Yeah.

And you said you'd like to run a couple of kind of workshops a week. Is that something you're going to continue? Do you like that interaction, that one to many.

I love the workshop side of stuff because the interesting thing, too, is when you get a bunch of leaders in the room. So if we work together, I can help you unpack things. But. But when I get a bunch of leaders together from different organizations, they can start to break each other's habits or show each other things that I have to take longer to get to. So, like putting in an AFL team with a marketing company and an engineering firm and putting them all in the same room was really cool because they were like, oh, that doesn't happen here. And like, oh, you did that. And it worked. Like, oh, we've never thought about that.

That's the eo. So you just. You learn from each other.

Yes.

I love that.

Yeah.

It makes it normal and okay because another lead is doing it, and I.

Can do that, too. Yeah. So I think I'll run another one in July because that one. Yeah. So that went really well. But I did it as a different format to be unconventional. Most courses you got to go full day or multiple days. I did it as two and a half hours from like four to six, 31 Tuesday, every Tuesday for five weeks. And people like, oh, this is great. Like, get out of the office. Went along and it was fine.

That's good as well, because things will happen. It'll marinate over the weekend.

Well, they had homework every session. And so, like, we did difficult conversations. Like, you have to have a hard conversation, or you have to come back with why you're afraid to have the hard conversation.

I like that.

Both are punishing. One has a reward, and one ends in shame.

And then, like, only one person was like, I don't really have any hard conversations like we're about to have. And they came back with why they didn't want to have a hard conversation. But it was great because then one. One person came back, and in the room, like, three people. Like, that worked because I give them tools. Right? I don't just say, go, duke a hard conversation. So we have a session, they get tools. All the tools are out. Actionable. That was the biggest piece of feedback. Everything's actionable because, like, the stuff I gave you, it's very. Just go and do it. No theories. And then one of the four came back, and she was like, oh, it didn't work. And so we were having a conversation, and I was like, what did they say? And they said, this. And this is up front of all 20 people, and they're fine. It's safe environment session four. And she goes, oh, I said this. And I said, oh, how did they take that particular line? And she went, oh. Like, they just. Like, that was the end of the conversation. I said, you gave them an out? And she's like, I know. And I said, why? And she's like, I didn't want to upset them. I said, so you didn't have the hard conversation. You tried to have a conversation, and when it got hard, you pulled back. And she's like, that's fair. And so we had a separate conversation on how to go ahead and do that. But that's where you get learning, right?

Yes. I was gonna say this is just a learning thing. Like, even if you get coached by someone, you try and do the thing, there'll be things that'll pop up. You won't get it right. But then you can come back, and the more you do it, the easier it is.

Keep unpacking it. Yeah.

Awesome. We might. We might wrap it there. Trav, how can people get in touch with you if they're after some coaching or any courses of content?

Yep. So just hop on the website. Teambuffalo.co not.com. couldn't get the dot com. Yeah. Or check me out on LinkedIn. Travis Thomas.

And we'll drop all that in the show notes as well. Highly recommend Travis. He's been in the business for ages.

Yeah, 100.

As you can see, we're very comfortable with it. We've reversed nothing, barreled in, had a good conversation station. It's always a good time when Travis.

And we've even brought you in to do some EO stuff as well. So if there's anyone companies out there that you, you want Travis to come in and do leadership sessions or strategy sessions. Yeah, you definitely reach out.

You're trained in scaling up with eo.

Yeah, scaling up and then have worked with eos before as well.

Yeah, the problem fixer.

Nice.

You get like a thousand calls.

Perfect. Send them my way.

Thank you everyone for listening. If you like this episode, we'd love you to subscribe if you're listening on YouTube or give us a follow on your favorite podcasting app. It's how we grow the podcast and we'll see you next time.

Awesome. Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks, champions.