218. How to Build a Business That Gives You Wealth and Freedom With Anderson Chong

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Burks podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me is Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We do bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto market. Plus get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. And we're in Perth today in person with an absolutely special guest, Ando. He's a successful businessman running a multi million dollar portfolio, a business portfolio including tech, Excel, AI Studio. He's also Bergs mentor in the entrepreneurs organization forum and now runs Business by Design where he mentors a bunch of a bunch of business owners based on seven key principles emphasizing personal experience and accountability. He's also helped us a lot in our own business, Collective Shift. And we know you're going to absolutely love today's show. So Ando, thanks for finding the time, man.

Thank you for having me.

We're a little bit delayed getting in the studio, so we had a, we had a free strategy session out the, at the foyer.

That was great.

Exactly. And surprisingly we weren't delayed because of you, Ben, so it was amazing.

Well, we really were, we really were.

But we had a slight delay, like 10 minutes. But that's all right. We're in the studio now and I've wanted to do this for a while, Ando.

Okay.

Because you're a very fascinating person to me. You've mentored me for at least like the last two and a half years through EO and now Business by Design. And the most interesting thing for me is just your approach and in business, how you have your end life, you have your shit together.

Like, I've never met a guy that has as many businesses as you do, does as much as you do, but he's very calm, has time, freedom, has. Well, spends time with his family. And every time I talk to you just liberates me further. To what, more of that? Seriously, it is incredible because it is quite rare for me and I gain more and more insights from you and I think a nice starting point would be how did you kind of get to this point in your life?

Okay, so let's put it, let's go back to when I first started my business in late 24,004. So I started my business, you know, similar to a lot of businesses that is just chasing the revenue, working really hard, thinking that the harder I work, the more revenue gonna get, you know, the more I can provide for my family. You know? Yeah. And then it's only until 2016 where I crashed my business. So it's where I.

Prior to that, it's all about ego, right? So how big, how, how big is my revenue? I should expand from Perth to Melbourne to Malaysia and I should look really, really good. And it's all about continued expansion. So when 2016 was a wake up call because we or I expanded the business too fast without solid foundation. So we were in Melbourne, we were in Malaysia. And that year we burned maybe about half a million dollars in two offices and thinking that the Perth office will support it. So we are basically robbing Peter to pay, poor house situation. And then we end up sending the best guys to Melbourne. Who is the new kid in town who doesn't know anything, doesn't know anybody, right? So. So we thought that we open shop, people will show up. And that was like very, very.

Naive, naive thinking. Right? So I crashed the business and I, and I came back to Phil. I was like, you know, we. We barely have enough money to survive. I need to, I need to rethink about this whole damn thing. This whole business thing, right? This whole business model that, that I was taught from my parents, from business school, it's all bullshit. It's like we need to reset this whole business. So I was fortunate enough that, because I was the EO for at the time, maybe about three years. And I've seen a lot of entrepreneur who grow their business really big and the more time they have. And I remember talking to one, I said, hey, how do you do it? He said, look, and the thing is that what do you want to achieve out of your life? I was like, I don't know. I just want to run this business. And what's the exit strategy? What exit strategy?

Don't I just go to work and everything?

Yeah, just, just make enough money. He said, life is more than making enough money. Life is that the bigger your business are, you should have more time. I was like, that's, that's that define logic, right? You know, we're told to work hard when we first, when we grow up and the parents have. Work hard, work hard, you know, get a good life. It's like he said, look, good life doesn't need hard work. Good life needs smart work. You need to work smarter. So, so he gave me a bit of data and I came back. I was like, yeah, you know, that sounds quite all right. So I was in my office one night trying to rescue the business. I was like, what if it's right? So Maybe I should start thinking differently. So that was the big thing. I was like, I'm going to reset this entire business. I always say the business basically had a heart attack. I just had to resuscitate, cut my losses, you know, and rebuild this business. Because at that point, I was about, I need to rebuild this business totally from what I was taught. I need to unlearn all the business strategy and business models. I'm going to relearn. I'm going to build this. So the first thing was, I can save this business, okay? But I want to make sure that this business is not going to tie me down. It's going to give me the freedom to do what I want to do. So then I started to create my vision about what is this business going to be like in the next 10 years? All right? So at what point I'm going to come out of the business, at what point who's going to come in, who's going to run this business, what revenue is going to turn up? And I was talking to a friend of mine. He said, ando, you're crazy. You are in this crisis, and yet you are. Rather than trying to think how to save it, you're looking at all the upside, right? I was like, yeah, but you have to look at the upside in order to rebuild an entire business, right? Not crying at one corner and. And think that everything is, oh, right, yeah. So it's like you have to change the way you think. So that was a mindset, shift moment. And when I start to map out all this, what I want to do, how retirement is going to be like, it's all become clearer and clearer. And so it's kind of like working, looking at 10 years from now, what I want to do today, what I need to do today to build that. So it's a reverse engineering. And then I started to say, all right, so I think we got it about half the team just to keep the business going. And then we rebuilt that from just from scratch.

This is like our business as well. We had the oh, shit moment that was with our finances. I think you had a similar one. We went to EO and you do cash day, and then you look at oh, shit. And then you kind of cut down your team and you start to build a strong foundation from there.

But I think to your point, and like, starting at the end and then reverse engineering it, like, listeners of this podcast, there might be business owners, there might be crypto investors, whatever, setting your goals and figuring out where you want to end up, we Went through this process a couple years ago and I was like, oh okay, this is a bit bit different. Like 3 years ago I was like I want to build a billion dollar company. And then. But that was just this ego right Talking. You really figure it out. And like how did you figure out what you wanted? Like what was, what was that process.

For me was the fact that I.

It becomes the arrangement of your life. So initially when we started, I started my business business. First family, then me, then I rearranged the whole damn thing to be is endo family business. Because if I can't look after myself well, I can't look after my family. If I have family, can't look after my family, I can't look after my business. Because you don't want to go home every day and your wife be out like you. Then how are you going to bring or there's not enough money in the business to fund all these things. Then you're under a lot of stress. But if I look after myself, my well being is good. I can think that's why I'm a business owner. We are all business owners because we are capable. But we want to make sure that the family is looked after so that when you go to work there's no stress coming from the family aspects of it. Then you can perform really well because you are healthy, you are good, your family is happy that you go to work and, and then you can 100 focus on, on the business. Whereas I seen a lot of business was there, they focus on the business a lot. They, they neglect their family, they neglect themselves. All of a sudden I was like, I was there before. I was 110 kilos. I was absolutely unfit. Right? When you're unfit, you're lazy. You're like every day is just. And then you don't bring the energy to the business. Yeah, everything just fall apart, right. So to me it was look after myself, get myself right, get my family right. Business will come and then revenue will come. Everything will come along the way. So that was how I rearranged a few. This one, the major rearrangement. So then I was like, okay, I need to be disciplined. I know the EO event can be crazy. Sometimes you come back with your palm, right? We need to be focused on what we are doing. What are we good at doing? What is, what am I good at doing? What I need to focus. So I basically told my wife, I said every time my wife and I had a three year agreement, every three years I said if I, if this business doesn't work out, I'll go find myself a job. So there's a renewal for every three years. And to the rest of us you say don't even renew this thing because nobody will hire you because you end up telling your boss what to do. Right? Yeah, fair enough. So because I set that as a benchmark to say that if I can't succeed in this business, I'll find myself a job. So there is a commitment to the family where to draw the line. Because a lot of business we don't draw the line. We say, yeah, I'll be fine, we'll be fine. You know. And the other commitment in the family aspects of it was the fact that I, I promised myself that I will. I only I told my team at that point, once we rebuilt the business, I said I'm going to work from 9:30 to 2:30. They're like, why? It's because I want to drop my son off at school. I come to work at 9:30 and 2:30, I want to pick him up from school. Non negotiable. So when I set my non negotiable in my business and I promise what I'm going to deliver in my family, that is sorted.

Yeah.

Right. Then when that is sorted, then it's easy. So when me MSI is sorted, my family is sorted, I can focus on the business and rebuild this whole thing. And when my team knows that you don't see Endo after 2:30, it's okay, you know, keep moving. Right? Yeah.

This is so important, especially when you're an entrepreneur. When you're starting a business, there's this beautiful naval quote. It's like you want to fix the world but your family is broken. Like you need to look after your family first and yourself.

Correct.

And oh, just there as well. Like putting in constraints are so helpful and if your team knows those constraints and you don't go out of them because like Ben and I, you know, always like, oh, just go a bit more, go a bit further. Extra hours, just keep going for the business and that's not really helpful to us and it's not helpful to the business either.

It's interesting though and like when you first started we did you already have a wife and kids, your business?

We just got married. Yeah.

Because I find it's like not having kids. I've got a girlfriend but I don't live with her. I've got all this time and I love what I do. So I nearly feel as though it's like a competitive advantage that I have Competing with other people that have kids and a family and, like, responsibility they have. You know, obviously, family is super important, and it is for me too, but also, I don't have that yet.

Yeah.

Has it changed over time for you? Like, when you first started out, you know, was it. Was it a lot of hours? Was it, you know.

Yeah, it was a lot of. When I started.

Do you think you could have done what you've done today without doing that in the early days?

Explain that again.

So, like, I like this idea of being able to, like, leave it to, like, man, I'm all for it. Like, if we speak about. That's where we want to get to. But in the start, when you're just starting out in the business, I feel as though that's. For me, anyway, it was not the case. It was like, you're grinding every day.

I think there is a point that you need to set if I were to redo again. There is a. There's a point that you say, okay, I'm going to slot through the next five years, but not slouch with the next 15 years or 20 years. Because a lot of business people own around my age, they do that for the last 20 years. It's like, hey, when are you gonna, you know, step out? When you can let your team run it? No, no, I'm still gonna run it. I'm still the. I'm still needed in the office. Right. So I think it's important. If I were to tell myself in my 2004 self, I'll say, look, set a benchmark, like five years.

Yeah.

Because when we talk about family, you know, like yourself, you have a girlfriend, but doesn't mean just only that you still got your parents. You need to spend a bit. As you get older, you want to spend more time with them. So those things has to come into the mix. Because ultimately, part of Business by Design is that it's important that what I mentor is that you need to free yourself to enjoy the fruit of your. Of your labor, not getting stuck in there in your business. So one of the key thing was in Business by Design was the fact that I am not the business, the business is not me.

Because it's hard.

Yeah. I know a lot of people become the business.

Your entire identity is tied to the business.

If you have a shit, man, life sucks.

Yeah. So when I learned to detach myself from the business.

How did you do that? Sorry to interrupt. How did you do that? Because I think that is super hard.

It is a conscious effort, so. Conscious effort Means that first thing I thought about my son, I'm going to pick him from school. And I told my team that every school holidays you might not see me. Yeah. All right. And most of the stuff, you guys should be able to deal with it. So a lot of dedication, so a lot of self awareness. I said you are the best person to do it. You do it. I'm not doing this.

You're listening to this.

I'm not getting it wrong. So when I start to do that, I start to detach myself from the business. I'm not emotionally attached to the business anymore. And also one of the biggest thing was the fact that I come to realization or I have to tell myself, is this what I want? Is the fact that if I lost my business today, are you okay? The answer is yes, it's fine. That was the aha moment. Okay. Once you can prepare to lose your business, you're no longer attached to your business anymore. You look at it as another project rather than that's my life, that's my identity, that's me. I'm the business. That detachment is very. And the beauty of that, having to come to that realization and have that moment. My business has scaled like almost 3x since the day I make that call.

And it's now like, you know, today that IT business, the IQs business, the guys bring in almost 100% of the revenue. I don't. That's why now I can focus on the AI business. I can focus on other opportunities as well because I'm a bit of an entrepreneur who. I don't like to do one business. Having one business is boring. I like to have more businesses. So I like to, I call it, I like to build. I treat all my business like ATM machines. I don't have just one ATM machine. I just built multiple business, but multiple revenue stream. And that's where I find the fun of it.

So. So when you've removed yourself from the business, you see it as a project, you don't attach your identity. Does that make it a lot easier to make the hard decisions in the business and get it to where it actually needs to go?

Because you are, you are no longer attached as by emotion. Your decision is not emotionally driven, is very logically driven. It's very calculated risk that you're taking and then you are able to sell some of the equity to your business partner so that they can take it further for you together.

All right.

And that was at a point where when I rebuilt this business, I need to get the foundation of the Business. Right. The seven essential that I talk about the business by design is that what are the core foundation on this thing? I'm going to build this building block so that every business that I'm involved, I give them this building block I can step up. So all the business I'm involved now is that I'm building that building block. Get the people, get the structure, get everything right. I walk away, that business is done. I no longer get involved anymore. I'm still the chair of the group, but I don't need to get involved in the day to day stuff.

So would you say the incentivization of equity is the reason the business continues to grow and scale? Because I think we do that within our business. But I've seen other businesses where the leader steps away and everyone starts to relax and they're not as driven because the leader's not there anymore.

And I just want to add to this as well because Harry said, he's from ypo, he said do you want to be rich or do you want to be king? Because you can't be both. And this kind of feeds into your management by design philosophy.

Yeah. So you see ultimately few things, getting the right business partner is critical. So I was, I'm very fortunate because a lot of my current business partner went through that 2016 crisis with me.

So and because they went through me, they, they learned how we rebuilt this entire business. The entire business rebuild wasn't just me. Is the whole everybody coming go through the trenches together? Right. When they go through the trenches together, what happened is that they understand the business. So all I do was I teach them the management part or the EO learning all the business strategies in that then they become better so they can take the business to the next level without me. And the other part is for me is important is because if my business provide me with the wealth at the time, it's only good for them to use the same thing for their own families and their own wealth creation. So there's always a cycle. So what we are trying to do is we're building generations. So the iQuest. There's a book called by Jim Con, Built to Last. Build to Last is about when you build a business, you need to look at the second generation who's taking over this generation. You, you got to build a third generation. So we are now building a third generation of people that will eventually take over the second generation. Because I'm going to come off of iQuest in the next five to eight years and they have to Be ready. So there's a lot of tests in the whole thing. Right. Like I say now they bring 100% of the revenue, so they know how to write a business without me. I can go away for six weeks, eight weeks, I got no email these days. I don't have to. So when the business. And then that's where we call it the legacy. If you want to build a legacy, you need to build a business that lasts forever. Whoever who owns it doesn't matter. It's no longer the ego part. Right. You know, I built this. Look at me, look at me. But when you, when you go off, everything collapses. Like, you know, and also you also have to remember the staff that worked with you for the last five year, 10 years, 15 years. When you disappear and the business goes down, what are they going to do? They're going to find a job again. They might be too old to find a job. So when we start to think about that is that you need to think about the people that you. People that work with you, how you can look after them.

Have I explained that?

Yeah, no, that's good. That's a good answer.

That's spot on. Because you want those people that have come up with you, that have agency. And I like the idea of being. Building an enduring business. That is so important. A lot of people don't think about that. And what you're effectively doing as well is also building people, making them wealthy along the way. If you need to exit at some point in time.

Correct. And my aim is that they must make enough money to buy me out.

So I incentivize all my business partners.

Make the money. I'll share profit, share with you so that you can buy me out. There's no point that when we are so big, then you can't afford to buy me out. But then what's the point? Right?

How amazing. You don't have to go to market, you don't have to do all that bullshit.

Yeah. We don't have to do all the evaluation, all the crap.

It's like guys are going to leave in six months.

Yeah, yeah. Do you want to, you know, what.

Do you do with like in terms of reinvesting versus diversification? Like, how do you think about that as a business? As you're growing, you're spinning off profits. Are you reinvesting them back in the business or it's to a point where you've achieved your goals and, and then where do you diversify? Is that into new businesses? Are you investing into assets?

Yeah, we have an investment in our business that we invest in crypto bonds, shares and everything else. And this is where the profit goes in there and that pool of money is shared among the business partners. So for me is that if anybody want to come and come and go on the right with me, you'll be looked after.

So you're investing off the balance sheet.

Into or any profit that we make. Yeah, we keep some for our cash working capital. The rest we push into investment in all those or we invest in our new AI business. We invest in that and then we start off from there.

And if you got business partners in each business or just at the moment.

Yes, all my business. My two business partner at the moment is across all the businesses that we start up.

That's cool.

Yeah. So you're in, you're in for all. Yeah, I like that.

And you like. You know, I described Bergs and I as yin and yang in a sense of like we're very complementary, very different, but it works. Is that the same with you?

Yeah, it's the same.

What's your superpower?

That my superpower is that I look at opportunity and I know how to scout it. So I look at opportunity from a different perspective and I know how to scout talent. So I don't hire people. I scout talent because when I want to put a team together for this new business, I know who I'm looking for because I. Because of my network and all my connection. I know if somebody, somebody leave this company, I'll pick him up because I'll have a project for him. Lineup already.

All right, let's. Let's get on to talent and scouting. I had two stories that stick in my mind that you've told me is one, you scouted a guy at a restaurant that served you and another one was training up new students to come through and go through your business.

Yeah.

Fascinating pipelines. Can you tell us a bit about those?

So the restaurant guy is. Because I'm looking for someone who has customer service.

He works in IT business, by the way. He got served at a restaurant. It's always scouting.

Yeah. For me in the IT business, it's not about how good you are as an engineer, it's how good is your soft skill. I always say when we hire it people I want 80% is soft skill. How do you talk to your client rather than your skill set?

I can pick anybody from the street I can interview. But having a good skill set and you can't talk to a client, you are nerdy to the client. The client's not going to hang around, right? Yeah. So for me it's more important is that your personality, how you manage diffuse situation.

Calm the clients down, that's more important than your skill set.

So that was what I'm looking for.

And again, when we bring the student coming in, again, we are building.

New generation of employees. So what we did was that. So we had something, a school based training program we started last year. We bring in about, I think five to six students in. So what happens is when you bring all these students in, they have an interest in it. They might not know what they want to do. So we give them the exposure of hey, these are something you might want to try. And what we're trying to do is also that we're bringing someone who. Kids who have no, they're like a sponge. You teach them, they will learn. You tell them this is how we're going to do it, they will learn. Rather than hiring some experienced people coming in and said, I used to do this in my previous workplace. I used to do this in. Then it mess up your team culture. So we bring these kids in and we train them and out of five, I think three of them, we rehire them back. We said, look, when you finish year 12, you don't want to do anything. You want a job, you let us know. Because what happens that through that one year program they understand how we work. What is the requirement? What's the performance requirement? What's the value in our business? What's the culture in our business? So it's easier rather than trying to hire someone straight away and try to fit your culture. It takes a long time.

I remember in. So I did the key executive program in EO and it'd be six or so business owners and Ando mentoring us and 90% of the problems that we would bring. There were always people problems.

Yeah.

And I know you focused a lot on your culture, your values and how do you go about hiring the right people. And we talk about how do you know you got the right people on the bus and what is your job as you know, the leader and managing director there. How do you get it right?

So I, I don't, I don't do the interview anymore. But I, I used to do it so. But my team know what, what I'm looking for. So I normally. So when my guys, when someone want to apply for a job, my guys was, was scan will filter through all the skill sets and everything. All right. They would do that. And to me, I'm the last guy to sign off, right? So I interview the guy. I basically tell them how stuck the job is. Okay, this is what I expected of you. When you have a project due on Friday, I expect you to finish on Friday, not Monday. If there's something we need to work on the weekend, I want you to work on the weekend. I don't care. So what I'm trying to tell the person is that this is the expectation of your job. If you sign up, you sign up. You know what? You sign up. I'm not painting a nice picture. Oh, you're going to get this. You're going to promote it to this in five years, three years. I'm not going to paint this rosy picture. I'm going to tell you that this how this job is expected of you. We might not have the work weekend, that's great, but we have to. You better show up. So when I tell you all this thing and you sign up, there's no more argument that you didn't tell me in the DVD I had to work overtime slot. I told you already. So we nut up all this crap from before they sign up. So that has been one of the best things that we do that. Because I'm not going to sugarcoat, I'm not trying to entice you to join me. I actually tell you, don't join me. It sucks. Okay, you sign up, you sign up. You know what you sign up for, right? So that was one of the whole strategy about hiring the right people. Because when the people sign up, they want to know what they sign up for. And I want to be very frank about it. And of course, we have our value wall that's printed at the back of our office. Everybody can look at this valley wall. And our office is an open, open plan. So that if anybody hears someone is not saying the right thing to the client, we say, hey, that's not the way to do it. You need to do it this way. So we train on the sport. Yeah. And the last thing is that we don't really care if people want to leave because you are either in the team or you're not in the team.

I remember you said, you told us, you just like, if anyone wants to quit, you tell them day one, you just bring me your cv, sorry, your resignation letter and off you go.

That's it. We don't. Because at the end of the day, if your heart is not there, your mind is not in the office, you don't want to work for us, then it's cutting losses on both sides, right?

Yeah.

Why Are you suffering here? Why am I suffering here? Having the manager, we might as well just part it. It's easy, right?

I remember you saying, when people rock up to your office to work, they decide, is it going to be a challenging day or a shit day? If it's shit, you go home. But as business owners, we beat each other up. So beat ourselves up so much about, oh, you know, this person. If I have to get rid of them, what's going to happen? And there's going to be a hole in my business.

And. Yeah, yeah. And there's always. There's always people waiting to take the job. It's just how much you want to pay. Right. There's always people applying for. For roles if you have one vacancy. So it's okay to have people coming in and out of your organization because the right person will come in and elevate your business. The wrong person that stick around is going to slow you down. So I always say there's something called cancer in the office. You got to be careful. Who are the guys are the cancer cell in the organization, in your team. Because they will complain every damn thing. Right. No matter what you do, they're going to complain. Right. Then they could affect the people in the team. And not everybody is very mentally strong. Some are. Oh yeah, it's true. It's true. I can see this thing. Then they start to infest your entire organization. To me was cutting loose early. Yeah. And the analogy, I always say if you go to see a skin doctor, they say, hey, there's a mole here. Potentially cancer. You try to cut it now. I don't want to make another appointment. Right. Yeah. But in business we don't. We keep them around. We have. It's nice. Okay. We can performance measure. They will change. It's like if you can't change your wife, do you expect you can change your. Your stuff?

That is so good. The.

We tell ourselves it's okay.

It's the hard decision. Right, though. Like you don't want to make the hard call because you know the pain you're gonna have to go through. But the hardest decisions are usually the best outcomes.

Correct.

Yes. We.

We end up more. We have the carrier more what we have to do, but it's okay. Yeah. It's a short term pain. Right.

And they told us like, if you got to fire like one of your guys, like, yeah. You know, if it's. Even if it's at a top level, you might have to eat shit for a couple of months, do a bit more work. But in the end it's going to be better.

Yeah, fine. Well, you let go a people in our business and I think the hardest ones have always been the best decisions. Because I think back to the values piece. What the values does is if you've got a bunch of a graders, it's very clear who is not a grader and they're sort of self selecting when you've got such a high performing team is that the outer performers just aren't there.

Sticks out like a sore thumb. And you're right about like infecting like a cancer. They form cliques and they start to bring other people down. Even some good people want to leave because they won't want to work with a person like that.

Correct.

I think just one sort of point I want to make. And again, listeners that aren't business owners and more just here for the crypto. I think this idea of like burying your head in the sand is so comparative to people in crypto that have these investments that they don't want to, they don't want to sell. They just want to hope it's going to come back. But you know, you've got to, you've got to make the decision, you've got to make the call and you've got to move on from these things that you hope would play out. Sometimes it didn't. Whether it's employees, investments, whatever. You've just got to, you got to move on because it can just drag everything behind.

Correct. Yeah. And I wrote a block about two blocks about dead horse theory. Right. And sometimes it's a dead horse. It's a dead horse. There's no point trying to flock it. You know, sometimes it's cut your losses and move on. It's so funny.

Okay, so everyone, Ando has this business, business by design. Go and sign up to his newsletter. It's amazing. He's like a dead horse. He's like, oh, let's do this project. Let's do this. Like let's feed the dead horses. The horse is dead. Why are you still doing this? You're so stupid. And that's so right. Like we do that with, you know, projects or deals or people and we delude ourselves. And I think back to your earlier point about removing yourself from the business, the identity. And I have to be this, I have to succeed. I have to do that. Makes those decisions a lot easier along the way.

Yeah, yeah. Correct. And ultimately you have to be content with what you happy with where you are. Yeah. You know, I would say the in Asia we have. Or in Singapore and Malaysia we have a lot of the rich guys wear slippers and wearing singlets. They are the guy who have lots of cash, they will go, you know, not. Whereas the guy who dressed the most posh actually are the poorest people. So yeah, I seen it when I grew up, you know, in Asia I was like, yeah, these are the rich guy who just quietly being rich. Right. So rich doesn't mean rich is a big definition for me. If I'm rich, if I have my family intact, my business intact and like a lot of time for myself and explore the opportunity. That's riches. That's rich in its own way. It's not by how much wealth you have. Right, exactly right.

And that's a whole. A lot of the time wealth is what you don't see, you know, like it's not the fancy cars, it's not all that kind of. That's not rich. That's most of the time it's actually debt. I remember you showed us like at one of your. I think it's one of your breakfasts, you had like a. Was it a Venn diagram of three things with time, experience and wealth and health. And health, yeah. Can you take us through that? Because that kind of frames up how you think about these things.

Okay, so it's more like a triangle. Right. If every triangle. If you have a balanced triangle between wealth, health and time is symmetrical. Symmetrical, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But if you. Something is skewed if you have the time. No, you had the wealth. You don't have the time and the health to spend, then what's the point of the wealth? You can't take it when you die. Right. And if you are sick all day long, so what you. So there's a friend of mine who got a heart attack recently and you know, really, I really feel bad for him. Okay. He has his insurance payout, but he doesn't have the health to use the money. All right. Because every time he. He's dragged out and every. He has heavily medicated and he, he can't fly. Yeah. Because his heart was I think left with 30 capacity. He can't fly. So he's stuck in Perth, lots of money. He can't ride motorbike that he enjoy.

Yeah.

Because the vibration. He has a problem.

Yeah, yeah.

So it doesn't matter. You have $20 million in the bank, but you don't have the help to spend it, then what are you going to do? You just sit at home every day. That's why I heard he slept 10 hours a day because he doesn't have the energy. So what's the point? Right.

And if you have the wealth but you don't have the time, then somebody's going to spend your money.

Is this the thing where the husband's always at work and the wife can't have a relationship with him so she has one with his money instead, or vice versa?

Yeah. Someone will spend your money, right? Yeah. All the LV bags and all the Hermes bag, someone had to spend them.

This is a key point of difference between I think.

Me and a lot of my friends. A lot of them out earned me.

Right.

But they don't have the time freedom that I have and they don't get to spend time with their families or spending that money and they actually have quite a low enjoyment in life. And we were talking at a cafe recently, like the level of time freedom you have at your age is rare. The time frame I have is like very rare. And with you it's probably like ultra rare. Like you can kind of do it. Well, you do a lot in the business, but this is one of the key things as well. You do need, you do need wealth because you need some money to spend and you do need your health as well to be able to enjoy it. But time freedom is just such a key thing in lifestyle design.

Yeah, yeah.

And every, that's what I meant at the start. When I say every time I see you liberates me because I can just call up and I'm like, what are you doing? Keep comfortable. Yeah, don't worry. It's like you've got the flexibility and the time to have that serendipity and do what you want to do in your life.

Correct. And I think the fact that, why, I mean that was a few years ago. I learned to respect time a lot because I'm not going to. I focus my time on the high value activities. Yeah. They give me the best outcome. So. And one of the things that I do is that, okay, I'm worth $500 an hour. Should I cut the lawn? Hell no. Guess I want to do it.

Yeah.

$200 an hour. He can do it. You can do that. You know, should I, you know, should I clean the house, not get someone to do it at all? Because it could take me two hours to clean the house. You get thousand dollars, let's get someone, get some lady to do it for $80 an hour, four hours, I'm still up. So when I start to elevate those kind of things to Measure those kind of things. Am I the best person to do this job? No, I'll pay someone to do this job because then my time is free up to do more important stuff. High value activity like business. By helping businesses grow and things like that and catching up with you guys, you know, learning from what other people is doing. When I start consciously aware of those things, I free up a lot of time.

Yeah.

Because I know where my time is best use and best spent.

Yeah, I believe that 100%. I think that's like for a lot of people maybe hard to wrap your head around because you kind of like dollar in, dollar out. But if you think about the opportunity cost, right. Like you know, having an ea. Oh my God. Like all the. Just the basic shit that you just. I don't have to deal with anymore so I could focus on, you know, I'm not, I'm not good at much. But the thing I am good at.

The thing I am good at that makes us a hell of a lot of money. So the more time I can spend on that and not all the other stuff by having a cleaner, by having an ea, by having you know, a cook or whatever that thing is and I can spend more time on that. That's going to return so much more than me.

Correct.

Doing all the other shit.

And even in your business it's using yourself for your highest utility. Just because you work, let's say 40 hours a week. And this is not just C level, this is all your employees. This is what I need you to do. Don't fill it with other shit that I don't need you to do. Don't go off and create new things. Just do that. Even if you do less time. Go play PlayStation, I don't care. Just do correct.

And that's the thing because for my, my, my time in my. All my. I'm. I'm the chair of the group, right. Of the business. All the. My time is networking. My time is catching up people for coffees. And I'm sure you hear about. I have my. One of my KPI is I need to have five coffees a week with.

New people or someone, whoever.

Right? With someone, right? So this is in my. So every two weeks I have to organize. Like this week, Monday I had to organize who's going to catch up next week and the week after because that's my KPI. But because this is activity normally we will not end up with five, we end up with six, seven. Because sometimes we've got long lunch and everything else. But this is what I'm good at doing.

That's your superpower, right?

That's my super. Yeah, yeah. That's my opportunity. I'm not good at all the fixing, all the. It's just like I can't even fix myself. Like guys, can you fix this? I can't work on this one because that's where I'm, I'm good at and my superpower and where I best spend my money, my time. Right. So, so that becomes critical and now when I, I travel to E. In Asia and where. Because it's for me to, to build that network. Right. So I think that's important because if we get so stuck suck into the, the day to day stuff. Yeah. Really, you're actually stopping your business from.

Growing the idea of value stacking. Something I learned from Dara CEO and you know, this idea of like, you know, the, the more valuable you are in a certain, certain skill set. And also if you can be valuable in multiple skill sets and stack them on top of each other.

Yeah.

That's what pays the most ROI in terms of, you know, delivery to a cap, you know, to the like to the world. Right. So the, the better you can be at something usually that is, that's going to be more beneficial for you in work, whether it's sales, whatever. But if you can value stack and be good at it, be good at, you know, meeting people, be good at opportunities, you're creating a unique value stack that is going to be more valuable to the world, you know, so for like us, for me, my ability is I understand crypto and I can, and I can speak about it simply. Usually a lot of smart crypto people are far too smart and can't break it down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's the value stack for you might be crypto strategy, content, all the above. And you know, it's vice versa. So by having that unique value stack, that's your impact on the world and that's what's going to pay you.

Correct. And that's, that's, that's going to pay you many, many times. And because. Yeah. And, and my team, every year in our budget, every year I got a $20,000 budget to spend. Okay. Because I put it in there so that I make myself have to spend the money. If my team asking how come you didn't spend the money? I'm. I'm accountable to it. Right. So you had to make yourself that this $20,000 is spent in part of the budget, go out and spend the money. So I'm trying to have my team now. Each one will have $5,000 budget. Spend it. If you don't spend it, I'll be yelling at you, what the hell are you doing? Right? Because when you have that budget set in which a lot of the business doesn't have, then how you can do your business development, it's not going to happen. Right. Because everything you're so worried about. And again, one thing about Asian business is that Asian business culture is that be generous. That's one of our key things, right? Be generous. It doesn't matter. Like, you know, most of the time I take accounts, I pay for it. It's okay, be generous about it, but be genuine because the more you start to sting, then, then you're not going to get business. You're never going to do well. So I always tell my. So a friend of mine were telling me, hey, you know, you got such a big budget, you know, doing things very expensive. I said, I say, how much can you. If I bring the two of you to Naboo today, how much can you eat? 500 bucks, 600 bucks? So what? 5, 600 bucks? To me, you know, it's nothing compared to what we're going to get later on, right? Through all the network to all the relationship we're going to build for that, right? It's 500 bucks. So what? Even they spend $1,000, I don't think we can finish the food anyway. So it's a lot of that. Right? But that is where spending the most important time that you have and also be generous about your time. The other thing is generous by your time, right? Yeah, yeah. But if you always get stuck in the, in the operation, you never have time for, for your clients, for your friends, for your family. Yeah, yeah.

And when we talk about this, you know, you don't need a huge, massive business to be able to do this. Like, I remember when we started together, Ben, you're like, I want a billion dollar exit. I want this, I want that, I want that. And then eventually over time, like, okay, what do you really want? And it turns out to live the life you want is we don't need to make that much money in the business in order to do that. And this is one of your things as well. And like you teach us in small businesses that it's more of an intentional choice to go down a path and structure your business this way for your life. It doesn't have to be a massive business.

Yeah. And business, I find that the bigger the business, the more complex you Add into the business. So in. In business, in Business by Design, I always say, keep it simple, Keep your business very simple. Business should not be complicated, but people complex the business up because they added more noise in the business and everything else, then they become very complex. But if you keep your business very simple, you can make a lot of money. So we have one Business by Design client, he's turning over 450,000 a year, but he's taking home 250,000. It's like, how good is that? What's the point of turning over $10 million and take home 250,000? That's a lot more shit you have to deal with. Right.

We see that. I see that in EO all the time. Like, wow. Like, you've got so much complexity in.

Eo, there was a.

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king. That's like you say, like, when people meet you, they're like, oh, how much revenue do you do? It's like, who matters? Why does that matter? How many people do you have? Why does that matter? How much do I take home at the end of the day?

Yeah. And how much free time I have? Right. Yeah, but. Because people don't measure that. But if you measure that, this is the real stuff. No point in doing $100 million, $10 million, and you don't have a time for your family, you don't look after yourself, you don't have the time for your family. Everything's on the business. Then why are you enjoying.

People have this fallacy where I'm going to make all this money, I'm going to make this big sum and then I'm going to enjoy my retirement. When you're 60, 65, like 70, whenever you retire, you're going to be very old, you're going to have multiple chronic illnesses, your legs aren't going to work, you're not going to, like, travel the world and walk around everywhere. The whole idea that I have been fascinated with and what I'm implementing is bringing that forward and it's seeing people like you that have actually done that and they're living that kind of retirement life now whilst doing the things I want to do and running a business.

Yeah. It's amazing once you start to do it this way, because when I start to. Like, this year, my son is 18, so he's now in uni, he got his own car, he drives. All of a sudden, I call it. This is my second growth in my business because I got so much time. Right. And. But because I reset my Family, right? And everything else. This is the next stage of our growth. It's going to be a massive. It's going to be at least a 2 to 3x growth because I got so much time left. I got so much time now. I can see all the opportunities that's built up. Like, oh, shit. It's like, it's about what project do you want to take? End of, there's a lot of things, right? But because I got time to do it, whereas, you know, my family comes from a business background. You know what I seen a lot of my uncles and they got big businesses is by the time when they turn 60s, the kids doesn't know them anymore, all right? They either divorce or they break up and everything else and things go to pear shape. So they go into retirement, very lonely.

Okay? Or they pass it on to the kids, the kids burn it off, burn their entire wealth in three years, right? And then they reset back to zero again. So there's a lot of that, but to me was, let's get. Again, it's back to your reverse engineering. Get it right at the beginning, okay? What you want to achieve in 20 years from now, reverse engineer so that you don't go down that path where a lot of them in their 50, 60, they divorce, new wives, new kids. Like, what are you doing? You know, so, so, so that's very important. All the kids doesn't want to know them. And things like, there's no point. What's the point having all the money where you don't have family, you don't have anything left.

This is one of the key things as well. It's not just the time, freedom and the wealth. The most important thing that you have is you've. For me and what I want and have now and want to continue is the relationship you have with your son. Because you're not a distant parent. You're involved in his life, you're involving him in explaining things of business, going on adventures and things with him. And I remember you telling me, like, with your kids, you've got 18 summers. That's it.

Yeah.

And most business owners will not know their kids because they won't be around. And to me, being able to have wealth, time, freedom, health, but also spending time with my daughter is incredible. That's like the ultimate correct.

And that is again, is one of those, you know, really, really good business mentor that I have that told me, you got 18 summers. Don't mess it up, okay? 18 summer of your kids, if you mess it up, the 18 summers, okay? Your kids even know how much money you have. The kids doesn't want anything to do with you. All right, so because of that, I lost the first six summer because I was really busy in the business, but the rest of the 12 summers was like, okay, I'll become your basketball coach, managers, you know, whatever, you know, organizer and things like that. So I get involved a lot. And because I know that remaining time is, it's a time to build the family foundation. Right? Yeah. Business will continue to grow, don't get me wrong. We still got the team in and things are going right. But once that is done, you build it for life. You build your kids for life. After 18 summers, they'll stick with you for life. Then you can go and do anything you want to do. You know, like, like I said this. All of a sudden the opportunity opens up. Yeah, there's so much business opportunity out there.

It's like, and now you're so, it's, you're always thinking ahead where you did EO and then eventually go to business by design. Like, okay, when I'm this age, my kid's going to be 18, they're probably going to move out. I need something to do, I'll have some more time. What do I, where do I want to be? And then if you hold off on a few of those, you know, business things you're going to do now you're older, you're more skilled, you can see things more clearly and you've got more time, more time to execute.

Yeah. You're more experienced, you have more time, you know that you can start the, we can start another business very quickly without making the same mistake that we make. 20, 20 years of experience. You don't need to make the same mistake. We're like smash, smash, bang, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. You get the guy right on almost the first day. Right.

Oh, I think that's been the biggest unlock for me is learning this idea of like, business is a vehicle to help you achieve the things in life. It's not, it's not the thing. It's a, it's a thing to help you get to where you want to go. And I think that's the same for people in crypto and investing. It's like crypto is a way to get to what you want to do in life. But again, the biggest mistake people make when, when investing crypto is not selling and they round trip cycles because they don't have a goal. They don't know why they're in crypto. They're just they're just hoping for this massive number and. And there's not really thinking about what it could actually do for your life.

They forget the actual goal. The measure becomes the goal.

Right.

As a measurement comes across a bad outcome. I want this number or I want this in business it's like, no, no, no, you're doing that so you have whatever you need time or capital to then live your life.

Yeah. And investing in crypto is the same as investing in your business. It is over time. Yeah. It's not like, it's not like on a steroid, right? Sugar hit, right? It's not sugar because I always advise, you know, I always tell people, if you're in crypto, if you think it's a sugar hit, don't, because you're going.

To go crying, you get wrecked, you're.

Going to lose a lot of things. Because crypto changes within 20% every few hours. Right.

But if you can't write through those roller coaster, it's worse than the share. My share market might drop 3% tomorrow I come back. Right. But this one is fluctuating such a big. If you don't have the appetite, don't get involved. Because it's actually a long term start. And the important thing, you guys, you can produce a lot of the research. Use the research to help you make a decision.

And I always tell people, you cannot treat crypto like going to the casino and put a bat.

And crypto is not a gambling. There's always a fine line between gambling and investment. Okay.

We see this in business too. We saw it with some of the people in our EO forum. It's like, well, the decision you're making is like, feels like gambling.

Yeah. You know, try not to go into the. It's a very fine line between gambling and investment. Right. But I think one of the key thing about between fine line between gambling and investment is time. Yeah. All right. It's time is how much can you afford? All right? Because how much can you afford in terms of cash, in terms of fun, in terms of time? If I were to, if I want to have a quick win in casino or playing crypto, if I don't have the time to hold up and I don't have the money to hold up, I'm in shit, right.

I can wipe out very quickly, Right? But if I have the time and the money to invest, I say, all right, I put 50,000 in crypto, I don't really care, leave it. If it goes up, great. If it goes down, I'm able To hold it. And then I get a few. All this subscription from you guys on your membership. Look at it. Okay, 50,000. Where should I put it? Subscription will come in. These are the things to put in. I'll put it in and then keep an eye on it. And.

From time to time it's okay. Right? So I think that's important because we sometimes, yeah, need, need to be very clear, are we gambling away? Are we investing?

I always take that long term view with my investing. But I remember you saying to me in the business, you're like, aaron, do you want to be in business for one year or do you want to be in business for 50 years? I was like, fuck, let's start making some better decisions. Because we also underestimate what we can achieve in one year. Oh, sorry. Overestimate what we can achieve in one year and underestimate what we can achieve in 10.

Correct, correct. Because a lot of business is sugar hit, right? Sugar high. And then after they disappear. But for me, a good business is about building legacy building, where.

Whether you retire at 35 or 45, you have passive income coming in.

That's the whole idea, having the business by design. Design your business to give you passive income regardless of what age you want to be. All right? And then you can enjoy the time you have. And if you are young, like 35, 40, you still got plenty of time to enjoy having a family and everything else. Right. So. But some people start business on the wrong foot. Yeah. And then they're starting to unwind a lot. It's like, I think there's a lot more.

What an awesome place to end.

Yeah, that was, that was, that was epic. I think just the realness is like, you know, getting past ego, getting past like numbers, getting past the fancy shit and just going, what do I actually want to do? And I think for all of us is time and freedom. And I think for a lot of people listening, a lot of people can hate what they do. A lot of people want to get to a certain number so they can quit their jobs or earn an income. And I think sometimes it's actually like far closer than what you probably think.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And investment is a lot of things. You know, crypto and all those things. They are great vehicles, but you just need to know, write it out, when to exit. Right. I think that's last time you talked about a lot. What's your exit strategy?

Right, yeah, that's the thing. Like, know which game you're playing.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Ando, thank you so much. Man. Where can people find your stuff? Where can people, you know, your newsletter, all that sort of thing. Where can people find you?

They can go to the My Business by Design website. It says WW Business X Design.

Awesome man. And we'll put that link in the.

In the description Cracking bi weekly newsletter. It cracks me up every time. And you read the stories like you see yourself in the stories. Absolutely. Great sign up. I always like copy and paste of.

This and you send them to me.

I'm like oh my, this is you.

That's me. And that was awesome man. Thank you so much guys. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you enjoyed this, have a business friend, have anyone that you think would find that valuable, please share it with them. That's how we grow the podcast each and every week and we'll see you next time.

Thanks Andrew and thanks for listening.

Excellent.