221: Andy Clayton — Finding Your Sweet Spot and Playing within Your Genius Zone

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Have you ever felt like you spent too much time working on low value things? Things you don't love? Not playing in your sweet spot? Have you ever felt like your team are working on things that they really shouldn't be doing? Spending too much time in places that aren't in their sweet spot? Well, today's show is all about how to and spend more time doing the things that you really should be doing. The sweet spot is the things that you love and that you're great at, but that also are really high value. Hi, I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the show. This show is all about how to scale and grow your business no matter what the economy is doing, no matter the industry or what part of the world you're in. You can also find hundreds of other episodes on leadership and scaling up at our website scalingcoach.com and we've got downloads there of all the tools we talk about in our show notes. We'll even send you a free copy of the international best selling book Scaling up right there@scalingcoach.com Listen in now to a great conversation with Andy Clayton on finding your sweet spot. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and Scaling coach Bill Gallagher. Joining me now, Andy Clayton from the uk. And you're a couple hours outside of London.

Yeah, that's right. Yes. In Oxford.

In Oxford. Oh yeah. And Andy is head of Petra Coach in Europe and working with coaching company Petra Coach is one of our coaching groups within the larger Scaling up world of coaches. And Andy and I have had the pleasure of working together in particular on an offshoot of our work for the last few years in the world of Scaling up, our accelerator program that's run through the EO organization. So we got a chance to work through Stuff and learn and appreciate. And I'm excited you've got a new book out now, Sweet Spot, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

Fantastic. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Bill.

Tell us a little bit about. Because you've been much more than a coach, you've had different companies in different parts of the world. Take us through a little bit of more of your background before we get into the book topic.

Sure. Well, I went to university here in England, here in Oxford, in fact. And afterwards, I know in retrospect, I think I found out the reasons why, but at the time I didn't fully understand, but I had this burning desire to go to China and so I did. I went out there and I worked as a charity worker for a couple of years, similar to your Peace Corps. And that thing, you know, led to. I then got paid work Shanghai, another job, a bigger job and another bigger job in Beijing. And so I had a kind of career, professional career in China throughout my 20s, which is a real fun stage of my life and a fun time to be in China as well. Lots and lots of growth and opportunity and excitement and then kind of everything changed. When I was 30 years old, I founded my first company. It was a difficult time as a doctor. My company didn't really work out very well, which led to a kind of trigger of cascades and negative events for me personally. I had to get sober and it was difficult times. My life kind of shrunk down a little bit for a few years and then gradually, bit by bit, I joined eo. I sort of got some models in my life of what good finally looked like. And then it was quite a long process of rebuilding and original company didn't really work out and then folded it into a new one. And bit by bit, I built a company over there, operations, outsourcing agency that worked out really well. We had a nice team together, we had a good sense of purpose, a common plan and a good group of customers. And what we really enjoyed doing was helping Western businesses, particularly those here from the uk, who had opportunities to sell in China but didn't have the operations on the ground. And so that's what we would do with them. And we used to really enjoy going around the country picking up companies who otherwise wouldn't have had the means to go out and sell in China. And, you know, like the States, we have a very bad trade deficit with China. And it was good to feel that we were playing a part in putting that right. And then I sold that almost three Years ago now, partly because we'd moved back to the UK and it was just getting kind of tough going back and forth to China. So that's. Yeah, I was an entrepreneur. Well, still am, but that company for 13 years. And then the past two or three years I've been doing petrocoach Europe full time. Yeah.

Isn't that funny? I'm guessing you might know Evan Rudowski.

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Evan's a friend from over here who moved over there helping companies go there from the US and you were helping companies from there go to China. And it's funny how we follow these interests early in our life and they weave together to create kind of a unique background. And I think that's what I loved about the idea. We've been talking actually a lot about things all in and around Sweet Spot lately. I just recorded, in fact, we released, as we're recording this, we released another episode with Dean Jones from the Gallup Organization, my old friend and. And former mentor. Talk about how did you come to develop this idea of Sweet Spot?

Well, it started with a team member of mine, a lady called Tiana. And she was ostensibly our finance manager. But she was so much more than just a finance manager. You know what it's like when a small company, she was doing finance and operations and HR and customs clearance and good imports, export and stuff. That was kind of way out of her core skill set. And so we sat down and we had to come up with a way to think about of all the things that she was doing, which were the ones that she needed to focus on. And so that was kind of the genesis of it. And we realized that the only way that we were going to do that is if she was able to remove the things that weren't in what became to be known as her Sweet spot. So it was this crossover between the things that she was good at and liked doing and also were high value. And I've always been a fan of four part matrices. So, you know, reading Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly effective people, the importance and urgency and Boston Consulting Group and the growth and profitability for partner, I always thought that that's worked for me as a model. So we developed that as a four part matrix and we realized that time or activities divided neatly into these four areas. So top right hand corner, Sweet spot are the things that we like doing and are good at and also are high value. And then we typically hold onto things that in the top left hand corner, which we call distractions, which we like doing and good at, but they don't really add a lot of value. Like, you know, I like doing spreadsheets, for example, or always have done. It's not everyone's thing, but I like doing them. And so I have a tendency to hold onto those long after I should have maybe handed them over. And a lot of activities that we need to get rid of sit in this bottom right hand corner of what we call drains. So it's this important work that has to get done but doesn't sit within our own skill set. And it can be very, very draining. And then finally we've got the disasters, you know, the things that we are neither good at nor feel like a good use of time. And so we got into the habit. Every quarter we'd sit down and run this little exercise. It was like a house cleaning and it had a bunch of benefits. You know, on the one hand, obviously there was an immediate productivity game because we figured out how we could eliminate those, those activities that weren't in sweet spot. But also it was, it was about alignment, you know, so if I had a good understanding of where she wanted to develop, that means that we could put her on that path. And so those couple of years that it took to get Tiana focusing only on her sweet spot activities, only on finance, it was a time of great growth and development for her. She got more and more engaged in her work, her performance increased, she got better results because she was moving always towards her sweet spot. And what we found then obviously is two years later and Tiana's spending all of her time just doing finance work. And we've kind of recruited and delegated and outsourced everything else. Is that when we ran the exercise again, that finance work then also divided into four and we realized it's this kind of recursive thing. It's a constant process throughout life, always moving towards the top right hand corner of increasing self understanding and therefore an understanding of things that I'm good at and like. And also constantly moving up the value curve and doing work that, that's progressively higher and higher value.

What's interesting about this to me is that we tackle this from lots of different approaches. And I hear your sweet spots starting first you're organizing operations for companies moving to China or opening operations in China. And you love spreadsheets and you love matrices. So the organization of ideas and finding ways to order them is totally in your sweet spot.

Yeah, but what I've discovered, you know, so it's interesting you mentioned Marcus Buckingham, who is in it's all about strengths finder. Right? Yeah. Which is also, I mean obviously I love those kinds of models. But what we found that makes Sweet Spot particularly helpful is and usually when people do it for the first time, they focus initially on sort of skills. They'll say things like I'm good at creative writing or I'm good at strategic thinking. And that's helpful. But. But what's really useful because Sweet Spot is built around an exercise, it's very practical tool is to then actually think about activities. So where are you actually spending your time? It's not so much an activity about skill sets. Obviously you have to understand the skill sets behind it. But it's what are the activities that you're doing right now? Where does your time get divided out and breaking those into those four buckets. So it's helpful for me to say, yeah, I'm good at organized structured thinking. But when I'm doing a Sweet Spot exercise, I break that down into a specific activity. For example Finance monthly spreadsheet. And at the moment that sits in my top left hand corner in distractions.

Well, what's great about this. And some of our listeners will have heard us talk before about love and loathe, which is totally useful and powerful, but you elevate that kind of thinking with some more dimension. But that does take similar to the talent focus and then develop on specific activities. So talk us again through the matrices, the quadrants again because it's new and we're not looking at a diagram together. Right?

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. It does take. So if you think of love and loathe and in addition to liking and disliking, you actually add ability in there as well. Because I think it's important to say that, you know, you're not just about liking, you just have to be good at it. It's like I like playing the guitar, but I wouldn't force many other people to actually listen to me playing it. So in a professional context it has to. If you think of that as one axis. So like and I'm good at and loathe and suck at as being my like the, the, the Y axis. Then on the other axis it's about thinking about the, the value or the consequence or the impact of the work that you're doing. So is it for you relatively a trivial, mundane, low value task, in which case it's on the left hand side or is it something that has significance and impact? So you know, I'm obviously I'm a business person. I get involved in sales. So it's usually measured in terms of the, the financial revenue for that. But that needn't be the case in all things. For some people, it just may be what they feel is most impactful as well as being what they like doing. So that's what provides the two matrices and how you get the four blocks.

Well, I like fiddling with hardware. Right. Like, well, remotely like the organization of my office and the technology around and that kind of thing. Enjoy it a great deal. Is it of high value? Not so much. Right. Like, I mean, I, I want my office to be organized a certain way. I take a certain pleasure in geeking out on the setup and that kind of thing, or in a larger business in the way our things are organized. But. But it's not super high value. It's an amusing sideline. Right?

Right. So that's a perfect example of what we call a distraction, or sometimes we call them hobbies. And there's nothing inherently wrong with doing those things. It just forces you to ask the question, would I rather be spending my time doing that possibly diverting, enjoyable activity, or would I rather be spending my time on activities which are going to deliver more impact and more return?

Yeah. And, you know, it feels like I need a certain amount of hobby, distraction, entertainment so that I can return to. Like there's a certain kind of recovery from that. But I never for once think, oh, I should like, help people create their office as my career.

So that raises a really interesting question, Bill, because at the heart of this sweet spot is designed as a fun, simple, easy to do exercise that you can repeat. And when you do that, it becomes a habit. And when you make it a habit, it changes your thinking. It becomes a mindset. So I've work with a lot of people who, after a few times round, they say, well, having done Sweet Spot a few times, I found that my thinking changes. There's one guy in Switzerland, I love what he was saying. He says, you know, Andy, I sold my car because I've done Sweet Spot a few times. And I came to realize that I was wasting a lot of time driving. So I decided that I was going to outsource the work of driving to Uber and taxi drivers and train drivers. And actually I don't need a car and I can use that time to work. And that's improved my productivity. But. Right.

So I had very much the same idea, by the way. And I, I sold my last car two and a half years ago roughly. And I was like, I travel too much and I'M just going to be an Uber and I really hate traffic. I don't mind driving a mountain road with a stick shift or that kind of thing, but so anyway, and then look at this. Now I'm like, I never want to get an Uber again. And I certainly don't want to get on a public train.

I have no idea how well that works in California. But by coincidence, I'd actually done. I'd reached the same conclusion as this guy, and I sold my car at a similar time. One of the really interesting questions is, why don't we, why don't we spend more time in our sweet spot? Because time spent in sweet spot is going to make us more engaged, more successful, earn more money and achieve more in our lives. But there's a lot more to it than just that. That sounds very appealing, but when you really get under the skin and figure out why people don't eliminate low value or activities or things that they're not good at from their lives in order to focus on their sweet spot, you start peeling back the layers of the onion and realizing the true barriers, the emotional barriers that we have to doing that. And one that's quite interesting that you were alluding to just now is really spending a lot of time in your sweet spot. It can be exhausting. People sometimes ask me this question, so bottom right hand corner is drains. And drains are really interesting. They're activities that we feel we have to do. They're important, they have consequence. And yet because they're not things that we like doing or are good at doing, they suck us of our energy. And usually we know because we underperform, we have a kind of dread about having to do them, we avoid them. And so they're these kind of key and important things that aren't getting done typically. And it's, you know, for example, I'm terrible when it comes to networking, social media, that type of marketing. And the only way that that's going to get done well is if I hire someone else to do it. So I've got to outsource it or delegate it to other people. And what we found then is that if we're really honest about it. So there's a difference between that type of drain and, you know, that feeling of when you're doing something, you're in flow, like, I know I'm good at this, I'm doing well, I'm achieving a lot. But at the end of a long day of doing that, you're still tired, right? It's still draining. And so I've really found it, particularly recently because the removal of travel and doing everything from home. I don't know about you, but recently I found I've had days and days go by where I am in my sweet spot. For hours and hours. I'm having deep, intense conversations, helping people with their businesses, turning things around, working on strategies, all the stuff that sit within my sweet spot. And at the end of the day, I'm just absolutely zonked. So sometimes it's a really challenging question to say to people, actually, do you really want to spend more time in your sweet spot? Because it's. It's a place of intensity.

You know, you're 100% right about that. And if you think about, like, so sweet spot. Does sweet spot come from tennis and the place in the tennis racket?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Squash, tennis, whatever.

Your Right. So it's the center of the racket where you get the right response from the ball versus closer to the. What's the frame, Right. Where it's a little flat, you don't get the same bounce. So getting that maximum leverage, maximum advantage. And I think about that, like, there's all kinds of drains. There are drains where I'm failing at something, and there are drains where I'm fulfilled, where I've had a really powerful day and I have done something, and then there are drains that don't fit my sweet spot, and I don't feel as fulfilled. I'm just like, okay, I'm glad that one's behind me. But they're both draining. And if you think about, like, a peak athlete, right, Michael Jordan out there playing basketball, he's tired at the end of doing the thing that he's best at, Right. You pour yourself out into it, but it's different. It's satisfying. So there's something about that modulating. Like, you know, I could spend six or eight hours now working with a team over video on their thing. And it's very much like working with a team in person. It has a little bit different dimension, but the same kind of outcomes. And I'm tired at the end of the day, but I'm also tired when I'm in person. And at the end, I just want a glass of wine and I want to chill out and I want somebody else to remind me that I did a good job and, like, my hunger for approval. Right. But they're both draining as well as having a crappy day where I'm putting out fires all day long and something I hate to do. Doing right, Absolutely.

The Other thing that we found, like if you, again, if you scratch under the surface, what's the big resistance that people have to moving in their sweet spot? A lot of it comes down actually to money, which is kind of an awkward topic, but most times. So what we've identified is that there's four ways that you can get rid of things that are disasters, drains, or distractions. And we use this very easy to remember acronym, which is soda. And by the way, I was saying this to some colleagues in America the other day, apparently because I think soda works in America because it's kind of linked to sweet spot and candy, because soda is drinks, like sweet drinks over there. But then they told me, actually in the south of America, if you want to have a sweet drink, they call it a Coke, regardless of whether it is a Coke or not. But anyway, that soda is which stands for either stop, outsource, delegate, or automate. So these are the four big ways that you can get rid of stuff that's not in your sweet spot. And if you think it through, typically each one of those involves having to spend some kind of money upfront. Stop may mean stopping with a client that's past their usefulness, or maybe giving up some revenue or letting an employee go who's causing a lot of problems and difficulties. And again, that can be disruptive because then you have to hire someone new and there's an expense, obviously outsourcing. You got to pay somebody, delegate, you've got to take the responsibility and the cost of recruiting somebody, and then automate, you typically end up tied into some commitment on a software that you can then get gouged for forever. And so what I've noticed is like in the journey of entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, they're often simply the ones that have that confidence, that willingness to take a bet on themselves, on their own abilities, and spend the money up front. Because the way the sequence of it works is you typically have to pay first to take someone else to take that activity away from you before you can then get the benefit for yourself. So you're constantly. It's this uncomfortable feeling of making investments and a lot of people just aren't up for it. And what's really interesting about entrepreneurs that are in a scaling environment, like the kind of CEOs that we work with, is that journey never stops. I'll never forget, you know, sitting down with Ben, One of the CEOs that I work with, and the guy runs a big company. It's like 150 million pound business. It's several hundred people. And so he's still facing exactly that same challenge and exactly that same pushback internally in his mind, because he's having to write really big checks now. You know, he's having to hire people for hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and he's having to hire consultants who are charging thousands of pounds an hour and these big expensive IT projects, all so that he can just save minutes and hours from his day. And so it's been really interesting for me to work with these CEOs and see that that journey really never stops. And I think the most interesting example for me actually is in companies that are scaling really fast. I've been working with one company this year and they're a face mask manufacturer. So you can imagine this year has been they 10x once in three months and now they're 10xing again in the next six months. So they're going to be like 100 times what they were less than a year ago. It's insane. And the CEO, who's a really smart, really great guy, I love him. In fact, we're friends from way back and the hardest thing for him has been just keeping up with the speed at which the growth of, of the size of the checks that he has to write. So he'll employ a consultant, for example, to help him with some aspect of production, whatever it may be. And he hasn't hired a consultant who's that expensive. And if three months later, that consultant is now not a good enough consultant for the next problem that he's facing, and now he's got to get another one who's an even bigger cost. And it's kind of compresses what is normally a lifetime's worth of incremental increase in what's an acceptable cost to me into just a few months. And so my job with him has mostly just been saying, write the check, write the check, write the check.

Keep going. Well, I hear sweet spot for individual performance and finding fulfillment, and I'm reminded of that. But then I also hear the implication for company strategy. Right. If we are stopping outsourcing, delegating, automating things that are not our maximum value and things that we're best at in our company, we're probably doing the wrong kinds of things, having things in house that shouldn't be in house. Right?

Yes.

On the strategy side of things.

So doing sweet spot with a team is really valuable. So I was doing one with a workshop with a team just this week and what you find is obviously complementarity, what people sometimes don't realize emotionally is that things that they hate doing that sit in their 3Ds are actually other people's sweet spots. Right. And it's such a simple point to make in life, but that's how the world goes round. And so we were doing a session this week with a team, and they had a marketing team, like three ladies, and they all had exactly the same activity in their. In their 3Ds, and there's a moment of great energy. Oh, my God, we've all got the same thing. We have to solve that. And it turned out there was one other person in the team who had exactly the right automation solution that they. They needed. And so sometimes what we see, what happens when teams doing it together is they do this thing called, like, sweet swaps, whereby one person says, oh, yeah, that issue that you're having, I can take that because I love doing those things and I'm great at that. Like spreadsheets actually is a good example. Sometimes I hate doing these things. And someone else is from the accounts department. I'll take that from you. I'm happy to.

Exactly.

But what we have to do.

Well, my wife did that with me recently. We were working on our annual tax prep for the CPA for the tax guy. And she's like, oh, I love doing this part of it. And I'm like, oh, I hate that part. I'm like, great. I like to cook. She doesn't mind doing the dishes. There are these trades that we make, and it's really valuable to be honest about it because then you can make a smart trade.

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, what we have found is the term sweet spot itself is really sticky. Pun intended. And I don't know why people haven't fallen on this word sooner, but the teams that we work with very quickly, what we find is they're talking about their sweet spot strategy, their sweet spot products, their sweet spot markets. But, yeah, they do take it beyond the exercises it was originally intended, which is great. Yeah, that's fun. When we hear that, when we see.

That flip of both things. Yeah. Thinking about your personal and individual as well as the organizational sweet spot. Even teams between different teams, as teams get larger, thinking about what one team can do versus another team, what should be insourced and outsourced. It's all really useful stuff. So what are the kinds of things that you do? Where have you taken this to so far? The sweet spot. I know it's a new book and newer area of work, but something you've been working at for a long time.

Yeah. So I used it myself, obviously for many years. And then when I started coaching other companies, it just seemed like this obvious missing bit. And so I started to introduce it and I flip charted it hundreds and hundreds of times and then realized, well, this really works. So I must have drawn up a simple worksheet based around it. And then I'd written a draft for a book and our marketing manager said, which bit of this book actually would people like to read? Or some question along those lines. And I immediately said, well, there's the sweet spot activity. People always like that. And then that actually emerged and became a book in its. In its own right. So we have a website which is www.sweetspot.guru. and you'll see the whole thing is designed in a way that's kind of accessible and fun and colorful and easy to access and understand. And so we do workshops and coaching sessions, so either with individuals or with groups, and we do them with groups of entrepreneurs. So in fact, in the accelerator trainings that you and I do together, I've had many, many times where we've got 20, 50, 100 entrepreneurs in the room and we'll do the sweet spot session. I remember one time in the Netherlands, beginning of this year, I had people stand up at the end of the session based on how many hours they were going to save each month if they implemented the actions from their sweet spot activity. And we started 10 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours, and when we got to 100 hours, there's still two guys standing up. So that meant that from a one hour session they had found 100 hours of time saving which they could lock in month on month on month. So it has this really, really great roi. It's great for teams. And typically when you do it with the team, you'll immediately find 5, 10% productivity improvement across the team when you do it. But it is also especially suitable for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs are the people that have freedom and the flexibility in their lives to really control how their time is spent. I'll never forget I was doing in Switzerland, in fact, a training and we had a panel with three entrepreneurs. And one of the audience members asked the panelists, what's in your sweet spot? Because we've done the exercise and all three of these guys are CEOs, they're entrepreneurs running their own companies, tech businesses, you know, about 80 to 100 few hundred employees. And their answers were so strikingly different. One guy, he said, well, I really love the people. What I really focus on in my business is finding the right talent, bringing them in and making them successful and their successes and my successes. So everything else to do with the day to day running and the sales and the operations, I have to delegate and lead other people to take care of that. And the second guy, he says, well, I really like new ventures in the business. I like finding the new opportunities, the new markets, new businesses and product lines and I'll nurture those up. But when they reach a certain stage of maturity, I then have to hand them over and delegate other people in the business. And third guy says, well, I love taking dirty customer data. I always remember his words, dirty customer data and turning it into dashboards and insights. That's what I found at the company doing. I'm still the best person at the team doing that. I just love the products that we have. So I work on client projects. And so it's this really interesting idea. A lot of entrepreneurs love to hear this. So you may have the title CEO, but that role is your role. It's your unique role and you have to craft it and build it around you. And you totally have the permission to do that as an entrepreneur. And so entrepreneurs, typically, they really like to hear that message because it just describes the great freedom that we have as entrepreneurs.

Yeah, I think it's useful to hear that there's not one way or not an ideal leader. There are many, perhaps infinite forms of leaders. There's major buckets like you're the operational head or you're the team leader, you're the strategist, or you're really great at selling and persuading and evangelizing. And then there's many variations within each of those that show up. And you could do your own version of whatever that is. I think the problem is when we are delusional or if we're focused too much on that wrong thing. I think about the years that I tried to be better somehow at being an ops manager. And I just, I'm like terrible ops manager. I'm really great at launching something and conceiving something and unsticking something and a lot of the. And selling something. But like once it's become at all routine, I just, I can't bear to do the same thing again and again. I crave like the new and the creative and so I always would suck at stuff. And then when I had a good ops partner, I would do fine. Cause they had the stomach for the consistency and the rules and the structures. And I'm just like, oh my God.

Well, you'll be familiar with this. Because you know the functional accountability chart right from.

Yes, scaling up.

And usually what that comes down to at heart for entrepreneurs is which thing are you going to give up next? Yes, particularly in the early days, their name appears in multiple automation.

Your name is like in all of them.

And so what Sweet Spot provides is a framework for them to make that decision. Because if it ain't in your Sweet spot, then that is the next thing that you need to give up. But when we were talking just now, I was leaving through the book and there's a, actually a quote from the book that I really enjoy and it comes from one of the businesses that I love working with, client of ours called Pern Candola. And they're real hot property right now because they are one of the world's top diversity and inclusivity consultancies. And their founder, he's run the business for 36 years, been a Candola. He's this incredibly capable and decorated guy. He's got an obe, which means that the Queen has decided to decorate him. He's a professor and he's written nine books. And we did the Sweet Spot a year or two ago. I remember we spent an hour on it. And based on doing the Sweet Spot activity, once he was able to find five full days of time saving from his diary. So I worked it out, it was like a 10,000% return on investment on his time. So his story appears in the book. But he actually gave me a quote which made it into the book, which comes from John Stuart Mill from his famous political philosophy treatise called On Liberty. It says the same things that are helps to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature are hindrances to another. And he felt, and I agree with him, that that really spoke to the heart of the mentality of Sweet Spot and complementarity.

Absolutely great. We all have a different place that we love to play. And I think like in the beginning, when I think about our interaction, you and I, I hope I'm not, but like just like rub each other the wrong way in the, like the first time. Right. Because our styles, our orientations, our abilities were oddly mismatched there. And yet over time, as we know ourselves and appreciate each other, we begin to celebrate and embrace those differences.

Yes, absolutely. It's been a great joy actually getting to know you better over the past couple of years. And is it the things that make us that are different or is it actually the things that are similar about us that cause that kind of reaction?

Yeah, I think. Well, it's if you're coming from a place of scarcity and survival and competing from that place, life is like that. They're in the way. They do things differently. And when you come from a place of creativity and abundance and you're good with the person you see in the mirror, you have room for other people to be different and unique, too. And you're like, look at him doing his thing there and how cool that is and how, like, he's really in the zone with that thing, you know?

Yeah. I love hearing that from you. I always. I find that it's like a shot in the arm. I suppose one thing I'd add to that is if I have a problem with someone else, what I've learned over the years, it's usually because they're reflecting something that I don't like in myself.

I can remember many years ago, 100%.

Is in China, and the guy in front of me was driving this big suv. I remember thinking, this guy is. And I'm not going to swear on your show, but there's an English word that I chose to describe him with. It wasn't until many years later, when I had bought my own suv, that I realized that the true emotion that I was feeling that day was actually envy. It was jealousy. I wanted to be that guy rather. So I find that's a useful trigger for me. If I feel something negative about someone else, it's something in me that's causing that.

It's pretty universal, right? What we can't be with in other people, we have no capacity for, and we're busy trying to suppress or hide in ourselves. And when you can sort of own it, embrace it, all right? You actually have access to move through it and beyond it, not be limited by it. But until then, it's all reacting to the whole thing that you can't be with over there. Oh, it's so funny. What are the pet peeves? It's really interesting because it does give you more access to yourself. What do I love to do? What am I unique at? And it's usually easier for everyone else to see it than it is for us to see for ourselves. Right?

Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I do sometimes have people come and ask me, I say, well, I'm struggling a little bit to figure out what my sweet spot is. And again, that's why I'd like to draw the distinction between sort of skill sets and activities, because sometimes people make the question and the problem bigger than it is. So, well, think of the things actually in Front of you now, like I can remember when I sold my company, I was thinking about what should I do next. I was looking for clues in my life. So for example, I'd been in forum for a number of years and I had heard people say to me, andy, you're a really good coach. And people don't say that I'm really good at many things in life, but I had heard them say that. And so again, it's picking up this little clue. I had done coaching with friends and other people already, so it's not like it was a brand new area. And so I was doing, scaling up right on the accelerator program. So it is often just that obvious next thing because the way that our minds work is that we program ourselves to focus on certain things. And so if I've been looking for and finding out. So for example, my last big move in life two or three years ago was to become a coach and do coaching full time. But my brain had kind of been focused on coaching for a number of years before that. And I'd spotted guys who'd gone to do coaching and I'd sort of asked them about it and followed up and I'd had conversations and created networks. So when it came to me answering a big question about what next in life, although I did go and spend some time in a mountain hut thinking about it, the answer was actually quite obvious and in front of me. And my experience in life often is that that is the case.

It's interesting. Yeah. Well, that's like the punchline to so many stories of self discovery is that people go out on a trek around the world and they seek experiences and then they, of course they always find the answer was within them and they didn't need to go off to India or do anything else.

Well, people get the equation wrong. People tend to think that the sequence of it is that insight will drive action. And I think, well, if I go and think about this question, reflect on what my calling is and what I want to do next and what my purpose in life is, that I will figure something out and then I'll take action. And that's not how it works. You do stuff, you try a bunch of things, most of them won't work. And from the trying and failing, you will gradually gain insight into yourself. Like yeah, that hands down is the formula for how life works. So it's just focusing on those next immediate activities. Take the actions, do it, see what works. Trial and error, iteration.

Well, I think sometimes it's not so much the deep thought on the mountain that leads to it. Although it's the exercise of the questions that you ask or the act of going off to India or Greece or wherever you go and the exposure to those other people that has you see yourself in a new way and reflect on your life experiences, the lessons that you refuse to acknowledge or embrace that were there all the time. Sometimes those things, like, give you the moment where you could look back and see them. I was doing something the other day, it was a couple of weeks ago actually, and my wife went, you know, that is so, so easy for you. You do that thing without even thinking. Do you know, there are people that struggle with that all the time. I struggle with that. Other people, like you do this one thing and other. She's like, you could actually just make a whole other multimillion dollar business of just that. Create a structure and a flow and do a little bit of that and teach people to do that. That's a whole thing in itself. And you don't even think about it. You just use it.

Isn't that great though, when you get that sort of feedback? Because it's hard to objectively look at ourselves and see those things.

Yeah. You start to look back and you're like, oh my God, of course. And then you think about the people you came from and the things that you avoided and oh, I didn't want to be like that family member. And you're like, I'm totally like that family member. Yeah. There is something beautiful in all this, and I think there is something better. So it certainly helps when somebody else can help you reflect. But you have to be in the right frame of mind. You have to be open and interested and curious about it. Because the rest of the time when they tell you something like that, you're mostly like, that's not what I'm listening for right now. Don't bother me. That's a distraction unless you're actively looking for it. Those messages that people have that give clarity. And I think that's why we hear that, like, insight leads to action. When you see for yourself something or when you're ready to see it or hear it from the world around you and the people around you, then you take action because you fully own the insight. Like, oh, yeah, like that. There's a clarity in that. Even if people have been telling it to you most of your life.

Yeah, I completely agree. And that's, I guess, one of the reasons why we granted towards coaching. Right. And it's wonderful when we see that happening for people, you know, as you've.

Been talking, I'm reminded of this, the opportunity in this. It's one of my favorite quotes. My dad gave it to me or shared it with me originally, George Bernard Shaw, about the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose, recognized by yourself as a mighty one. And it goes on. And I won't share the whole thing, but I want to be thoroughly used up when I die for the harder I work, the more I live. And this idea of if I work in this area, in this space that I recognize as a mighty one, that I'm doing my highest work and I am exhausted and I'm ready to go to bed or to, to give up this realm at some point in my life. But I do it feeling fulfilled, having done my best work.

So what I strongly believe and my experience has been, is that the journey and the path, as an entrepreneur at heart, it's a journey of self discovery. Because through taking that bold step of going out and trying something in the world and trying and failing, I find out what are the things that are actually good and bad for me and the things that I'm actually well suited to and not suited to. Because, you know, my experience is that in a professional environment, I'm somehow secluded a little bit from that. I'm guided on a path or I can use certain relationships within an organization to shield myself. Whereas as an entrepreneur, the market is a cruel mistress. There's a certain purity and clarity in having to compete in markets. It's not going to put up with my BS or my ability to manipulate. There's a truth to it that I get a real kick out of and that clarity. And that's why for me, becoming an entrepreneur was initially a really difficult experience. Like, so it goes hand in hand for me with the journey of getting sober and not kind of clouding my, my mind with alcohol and medicating myself and having to face reality, like the reality of myself and who I am. And I was, I was on a, an event actually a few weeks ago, and there's a really good speaker there, guy called Daniel, Daniel Priestley, who is an EO member here in the London chapter. And someone was asking him because he's a very erudite, capable, successful guy and he presents himself really well. And people were saying, hey, Daniel, so tell us a bit about your investment portfolio. Because he runs an accelerating business that he invests in. And it was kind of one of these opportunistic questions. The guy asking it, you could tell he was seeing, where could he make a quick buck. And Daniel gave this really great answer that stuck with me ever since. I've got it on the wall here. And he says, well, I have investments in the right businesses for me. And what he meant by that and he actually explained it with a, with a little equation. He says, my experience is that self awareness plus patience delivers the right businesses for me. And I thought that was just a really good message, you know, because opportunistic thinking, I do believe doesn't get you that far. It's about understanding what's the right fit for you and from that deriving not just material success but also a sense of purpose and well being that goes with it. As you say, having found those few things that make use of you.

Yeah, the book the Work Sweet spot Sweetspot Guru Go check it out. Sweetspot Guru Andy, thanks so much for coming on the show and talking with us today.

Bill, it's been a great pleasure. I love talking to you mate.

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