EP138 - BUILD YOUR IDEAL LIFE - GOOSE MCGRATH | WHOLE MAN ACADEMY
Podcast episode (Whole Man Academy, EP138) interviewing Goose McGrath, CEO of Dash Dot. Goose recounts his recovery from long-term substance addiction (started with prescribed morphine at 14; sobriety around age 32), his partnership with cofounder Gabby, and how they bootstrapped the company with $5,000 to roughly $25M revenue in about five years. He describes major setbacks (COVID caused ~97% revenue loss and client refunds), strategic pivots (descale then rebuild), rapid team growth (team of 4 on Jan 1, 2021 to ~85 18 months later), and cultural focus as key to scaling a service business. The episode emphasizes designing your ideal life, defining values, living without fear and doubt, resilience, and balancing business growth with personal priorities.
Questions this video answers
$5,000
Around 32 years old
Roughly $25 million
Approx. 97% revenue loss; ~94% of clients requested refunds
Team of 4 on Jan 1, 2021; ~85 team members 18 months later
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Are you ready? Okay, so this is the Whole Man Academy podcast, episode 138. My guest today is Goose McGrath, a CEO of Dash Hot Property. Now, we're going to talk about Dash.in a minute because I think you've got a great story. And for the guys listening, they might be like, okay, well, why would I listen to this? And your tag of like, I went from a drug addict to a $20 million, you know that we're going to break that down a bit, but this is where people should be like, oh, this sounds interesting. But first of all, before we jump into that, tell the guys who are listening across the world, but like, how are you and where are you?
So I am, well, thank you for asking. And I am, as we record this, I'm at my home in Phuket, Thailand, overlooking the Andaman Sea. So, you know, I've managed to build a life that is suited for me, which is something I think it's useful to consider. And we were actually just chatting about that, that kind of stuff a second ago. And for those who are just tuning in, don't worry, you're not just going to be listening to a freaking real estate guy. The fact that I've got a property business doesn't mean that we're going to be talking, just waxing on about real estate. So I'm excited to get into it. Now.
That's. It's a good point because, I mean, this is, you know, say 138 episodes now. And I would say I've tried to bring on inspiring, motivational, aspirational men from all across the world, but from all different backgrounds and sectors. Because I learned that when I was listening to my own podcast. Sometimes I'd. If you listen to just the, let's say the famous celebrities, you get the same story. And you're never going to get an honest, truthful interview because they can be thinking, my sponsors are watching or you've heard it 20 times before.
And that's why, you know, it's a program. They've got a. They've got a script, kids rolled out every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I, I spoke to a guy a while ago who interviewed a fairly famous guy and I was like, oh, what was it like? And he's like, honestly, it's one of the most boring ones I've. Because the guy was like, looked like he's reading from a script as he was talking, you know, like. So that's why when I saw your story I was like, this guy would be perfect to talk about resilience, about growth, about hardship, about everything else. So just quickly tell the guys firstly tell me about Dash Dot, just in a nutshell, what it is and then we'll come back to that. So they understand what kind of you're in at the moment.
Yeah. So I think fundamentally the things to understand about Dash Dot is it's a service business. That's the first thing we help people to invest in real estate. You know, it's kind of like a buyer's agency service. Although there's, there's heaps more to it. Like we're far beyond what, what that is, but we help people to invest in real estate in Australia. But the fundamental things to understand, understand about it in a way that kind of transcends that because if you're not a property person, who cares, right? Yeah. The things that you probably want to pay attention to are the fact that it's a service based business. It's very hard to scale. We've managed to scale it to be the largest of its kind in Australia. And the whole reason we've been able to do that is because we've been focused on mission and culture. And so there's a few pieces in there that I think are useful. I mean, nobody wants to hear the story of some real estate that's got real estate agent that's gone and made a whole bunch of money. But actually what we've done is we've actually built something that is fundamentally unique and is redefining the way people invest in real estate. And the reason that that's important is because it's helping to elevate the standards of wealth for thousands of people, literally thousands of people. And I believe that's the greatest impact that we can have in our communities by helping people to build wealth and directly and indirectly benefit the lives of those around them. So it's making a huge difference and I'm really proud of it.
I love the story and we're going to delve into that because I know a lot of guys at the moment who are working in a job and I've literally just written a couple of articles about it and I said, you haven't truly got freedom if you're working for someone else. Mainly because if they decide they don't want you anymore, you're out. And we had one or two guys in our membership who'd been made redundant unexpectedly recently and you know, suddenly look around and think, wow, the money I've been spending, which didn't seem unnecessary at the time, but now I've got zero coming in. And that's why I'm interested in talking to guys who have not just who, who are running a successful business but also have gone from what you consider, you know, hardship to bringing that to the fore. Because so many guys, it seems such a long, you know, it seems such an impossible dream to be working on that. So give the guys, let's go back. I mean, how old are you now?
I turned 38 last week and. Yeah, 38 last week and I'm seven.
Years older than you and I, and I, I'm still learning. I learn more about myself, especially when I've had kids, than anything else and I guess you have. So take me back to let's say the kind of 20, 25 year old you. And where were you at that point?
Well, so mid-20s, I was basically heavily abusing drugs and alcohol for basically like 12 years. But I was doing that in a really high functioning way. So I managed to do that whilst whilst also building a career, you know, in organizing festivals and building those. You're in the uk. I used to spend six months of the year in the UK doing festivals like Glastonbury and Boomtown and all of this kind of stuff in really significant management positions. I was probably top 1% in my industry for what I did globally. So I was, you know, relatively high performer. But at the end of the day I was going nowhere. Like, you know, I, I was burnt out, I was working long hours. It was good for an adventure in my, in my 20s.
Yeah.
But I got to, I got to kind of 30 years old, I had one failed marriage and you know, I lost all sense of self and I was basically drowning and shrouding myself in drugs and alcohol because I didn't want to face up with who I was. And it wasn't until I was like 32 that I got sober and actually started to sort my life out and in on the 1st of April this year. So as we record this, it's late March on the 1st of April this year, it'll be the 5th anniversary of starting our company. And so in 5 years, we've gotten the business to roughly a $25 million revenue business in 5 years. And when we started the business, we had $5,000. So me and my partner Gabby, who's co founder of the business, we had $5,000 to our name. That was it. We had no safety net, no backup, no networks, no nothing. And so the transition from, you know, like the difference between who I was at 25 and who I was at 32, there's not really a big difference. It was the same like I was lost. I lost all sense of self, I lost who I was, I lost my purpose, I lost my vision, I lost all of this kind of stuff. And in fact, the period of time from 25 to 32 was the period where I lost myself the most. And that was where that was where it really became derailed because I lost all know, I lost all sense of my own personal identity. It was only through sobriety that I managed to get that back. And it's only really been in the last five or six years that I've actually, you know, anything that we would want to kind of hang the hat on and say, I just look at this success that's been created that's only happened in the last five or six years. And so I fundamentally believe that anyone from any position can create any life that they want in three to five years. I. And I mean that, and that might sound like a flippant, throwaway statement, but I literally mean if you want to become a billionaire, you can probably do that in five years if you really wanted to. If you want to get to a point where you're only working two days a week and you're making a million dollars a year of income, you could probably do that in three to five years. You know, you can basically create whatever it is. The biggest issue that we, that people face is they actually don't take the time to work out what they want. And if you don't know what you want, then you have no chance of achieving it because you're going to be going somewhere, but you're going to be going to. To where? To what destination? So getting clarity on that, I think, is the most important thing. And also understanding that it's going to change continuously over time. And so it's continuous process of just defining and then designing your optimal life to get to where you want to get to. That's the only, like, you know, objectively speaking, if I looked at my story from the outside, there's a tremendous amount of growth. We're one of the fastest growing companies in Australia. We're bootstrapped with, you know, we've, we've built. You mentioned earlier about you can't really have freedom unless you work for yourself, basically, something along those lines. We can't do that working with somebody else. We've, we've been recognized as one of the best places to work in Australia because I tried to build a business based around that idea that I've never had a real job and I would not want to work. I would. Like, we were like, how do we build a place that people would want to be? Yeah. And so we. My biggest concern is that the team are going to leave, but they won't because. Because we've built a business where we try and empower them to have everything they need for that to be an integrated part of their life. And so I think you can do all of this stuff. So whatever situation you're in, you might be working at 9 to 5, you might hate it. Whatever. You could be down in the dumps. You know, six years ago, I was living on my office floor addicted to drugs and alcohol. I'd wake up in the morning and do about a gram, half a gram of cocaine and then drink half a bottle of straight vodka and then I'd go and get my morning coffee.
Yeah.
So. So whatever, whatever situation you're in, like, I'm pretty sure I've been there.
Yeah.
And you can create whatever you want. Just if you can define, defining and design.
There's, there's multiple anchors I'd love to talk about, but I just wanted for you the first one because, like, addiction, you know, I spoke to guys about porn addiction about. I mean, coffee's a good example because you can kind of be addicted to coffee and everybody doesn't know, like, it's a, it's a sociable addiction, if that makes sense. If you sit there and have like six coffees a day, no one's like, this guy's got a problem. But if you're sitting there looking at porn on your computer or snorting coke off your desk, people are going to realize there's an issue. So what was it? The, the decision you made to basically stop with the alcohol and the drugs? What was it that, Was it a light bulb moment or was it something that kind of had been building?
So, so let me, let me tell you a little bit about my story of addiction. So I broke my back when I was 14 years old in a motorbike accident. And as part of the, as part of that, I ended up on morphine, you know, prescribed morphine. I was on more morphine than a terminal cancer patient. And I know that because my mum's a nurse and she's, she was like, right, you're on like the high, the highest legal dosage that could be given.
Yeah.
And I was on that for a really long period of time. In fact, I was recovered and I was going back to school and all of this kind of stuff and I was getting ready for school one day and, and I was just caught myself, just spaced out, staring into the mirror. I was 14 years old, I thought something wrong here. And I went to the doctor and I said, hey, just, just checking, like I'm still taking all this. And he goes, I'm so sorry, we're supposed to take you off that six months ago. So at 14 years old, I had a full blown morphine addiction. And I said, I'm not going to be a victim of my circumstance. I'm not, I'm not going to be an addict. That's not going to be my story. I went home and I took all the morphine, I threw it in the bin and I went cold turkey. And I made myself not miss a single day of school. I said, I'm not, I'm not going to be a slave to this, I'm not going to be a, to my circumstances. So I went to school every day. The cold sweats, the, you know, withdrawal sentence, the whole thing. 14 years old, year 10 at school. And I went through that. Now I, I know what it's like to experience addiction. I also know what it's like to get out of it. And as someone who has experienced addiction to morphine, to amphetamines, to alcohol, to cigarettes, to. I've. I can talk from experience when I say this, so please don't think that this is a flippant kind of throwaway statement. Anyone can quit any substance or any addiction as long as they have a strong enough reason. If you don't have a strong enough reason, you will not give up. It's literally that simple. And so if I go to. When I was sort of like, you know, 30ish, you know, maybe 30, say 30ish, before I met my, before I met my partner, Gabby, you know, I had no reason. I literally didn't care that I knew that I was killing myself. Yeah, I didn't care. I didn't get. Now the reason I didn't care is because I had stopped being my true self. So I Had no self love because you can't love someone that you're not. And so I was just this shell of a person. I'd lost all my sense of self. And so I literally didn't care that I was killing myself. You know, smoking heavily. I was doing the whole thing. I was way out of shape. Met my partner Gabby. I didn't instantly get sober. In fact, she put up with that behavior, which was continuing to worsen, by the way, for, I don't know, let's say a year or so. And then one day we were ended up, we ended up working together and we were at a festival site and she basically said, look, I'm not going to tell you what to do and like I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, but I can't watch you kill yourself. So I'm going to go and you just need to decide what you want to do, basically. And so yeah, she, she, she left and we were out on camping. Festival site. I finished, I got two more weeks that I was on the job site and you know, I still kept playing up and. But I knew that I had a decision to make and I didn't care about killing myself. I didn't care the fact I was drinking myself to an early grave. What I cared about was it was more important that I didn't lose gathering. And so for that I finally had a reason that made it worthwhile.
Yeah.
So I went back, drove back to the city, met up with her. I said, right, this, this is actually more important to me. And so I had to have a reason now because I've lost all sense of self and self love and self care. The reason couldn't be me. The reason had to be something that wasn't me and it was Gabby. Now that may sound a little bit like codependent or something like that, that, oh, you're just doing it. No, you just have to actually have a validation of something that you want. Something that's worth you dragging yourself up for now. The same thing also goes in business, by the way. I'll just kind of link that to that. Because if you start a business just to make money, you're probably going to go nowhere. But if you have, if you are linked to a higher purpose, something that's worth the sacrifice. Yeah. What's your why? So you've got to have a reason that's big enough now. If you have a strong enough reason, you can quit any addiction. If you've got a porn addiction and you know you've Got no reason to stop. Like, all right, are you gonna stop? No. Because the dopamine's triggering and you have no reason to stop. Right. Same with any addiction. So you've gotta, You've got to find what that is, and you may even need to manufacture what it is in order to do that. But you can do it. And I would also say that the, the process of doing that, the process of exercising that level of discipline and restraint. And again, having done it several times with several substances throughout my life, I can talk from experience. The. The process of deciding to be in control is extremely empowering and sets you up for so much more success later in life because you start to realize that if you can do that, you can do anything.
Yeah.
That is a big unlock. By the way, have you found.
Often talk to guys about the new addiction, which is social media, for, For.
A lot of people.
And even for. I speak to a guy out in. Who's on the Gold coast two weeks ago, and of course, myself, like, a lot of men have to use social media, for example, for our business.
Yeah.
So, you know, you don't have to, but it's. It's a very useful tool. But, but it's funny, is it? Because, like, let's say it was a coke addiction or something else. You wouldn't be like, oh, I'll be around coke and I'll kind of get involved in it, but I won't touch it. And with social media, I wonder, have you found that at all that you, you know, the social media can be a draw of your time and energy?
Yeah, I don't like it. So when we first started the business, because bearing in mind, again, we started the business with $5,000, no safety debt, no backup, never worked in the industry. Didn't know anyone. Didn't know, like, nothing. Right. So, yeah, never really done sales market. Never really built a business. But like, so we were, we were. And, and you know, literally we had to choose between spending money on trying to grow the business or spending money on food. And we chose growing the business. And we, we would literally walk around the supermarket at lunchtime eating food off the shelves. That's how we'd go for lunch. We'd go to the supermarket, we go to the deli, would get some, like, meat from the deli and get some cheese off the shelves, walk around, eat the food, and then just walk out of there again. That. Just a picnic. Yeah, exactly. We called it a walking picnic. We were like, walking picnic. Now, part of the, like, when you don't Have a lot of money. Like, one of the best ways to start to build a presence online is to, is to engage with social media. It's the easiest way to find an audience. You can do it for free, all that kind of stuff. And at the time, Facebook was the, the best place for us to do that. That was about five years ago. And so, man, I was heavy on there. You know, I was like posting lots of organic content, engaging with people. I was like heavily engaged with social media and that was a really key part of growing the business. Now I did that for like maybe a year or so and then I realized that it was becoming toxic and we had built a pretty good paid, paid marketing engine at that point. And I said, okay, well I'm going to stop now. And so it was, it was kind of mid to late 20, probably late 2020. And when Covid hit by the way, we, we had a 97 loss of revenue and 94 of our clients requested a refund. So we basically went to broke. We went from broke to some, some degree of success to basically all over again.
I was going to ask you about that.
Yeah. Which we can dig into because that was a, that was an extremely challenging and as a necessarily heavy amount of growth happened in that, that period of time. But it was, it was late 2020 where I said, I'm not going to do this anymore. And I deleted all the social media, said I don't need it, I don't want it. I don't want it in my life. And my life got so much better. Like, I didn't, I didn't use socials at all for like six or eight nights now. I use it occasionally. Well, no, I use it probably more than I would like to, but it's still pretty truncated and I don't. And I use it as a tune out mechanism as opposed to some. I actually don't really engage in comments and I actually try not to get into any kind of social engagement on there because I don't want to build that connection with a machine like that. I use it as a, as something to browse content and that's it.
Yeah, so that, that thing with comments. Yeah, I mean it's, you know, I looked at your Instagram and obviously you'll put out interviews just like me. There'll be lots and lots and lots of clips of me talking and people struggle with, they don't understand the context of a 15 second clip out of a whole interview. And I've had it. You know what, there's a guy Who's a, let's call it Carnival md who, you know, he's a big proponent of the carnival diet. Really lovely guy, Dr. Anthony Chaffy. And because he's got quite a big following, like my reels with little clips of him have had, you know, like 25,000 views, which for us is a lot. And you know, one and a half thousand likes. But you'll look and half the comments be people telling you you're completely wrong and half the comments people telling you we love you. You're completely right. And I'm like, fucking hell. If you spent your time going backwards and forwards because then they'll reply. And the best thing I think like you just said, is I see it as a tool and you try and use it as best for you but not get completely sucked in by it because otherwise it can just while away hours of your time.
I think you need to decide what you want your life to be. I think it's really important. And like, you know, you're talking there about using the context of using social media as a mechanism to grow your business. You don't need to do that, right? So you can choose other ways. So for example, you can build a completely organic, content based business and grow very, very large with no paid advertising at all. There's thousands of examples of people that have done it. But you also, you need to know that what you're signing up for is, is that my preference would be to choose a pathway that allows me to grow my business that doesn't require that kind of activity because that's not how I want to live my life. And I think there's a really important piece in there.
Yes.
Because you know, at the end of the day or like we have such a finite amount of time that we get to experience this magical thing that is happening. Just to draw on that. The fact that we get to experience full stop is just so fundamentally phenomenally, you know, just insane. Right. On every level. And so unless you are consciously auditing your life and saying, okay, is this bringing me joy? Is this bringing any closer to what is my ideal best life? Like you're, you're at risk of wasting that, that really finite resource. I think one of the most liberating things that anyone can ever do is to realize they're going to die. Right. And, and to, and, and to really own that sense of mortality because it's not going to drive you to be more ruthless with how you're going to, how you're going to dedicate your time and stuff and People chase these ideas without actually thinking about the consequences. You know, everyone thinks, oh, it'd be great to be a billionaire. Right. Who wouldn't. Who wouldn't want to want a billion dollars? Who wouldn't want to be a billionaire? Well, I'm not a billionaire, but I can see what's required to get from here where I am to there. And I'm quite happy to say no to that pathway. And I think you need to really think about what are you doing and how are you spending your time, and is it actually genuinely creating the life that you really want? And the life that you want is going to be dictated by your personal values. So you spoke earlier about your family. Family's not high on my values list. Now, I love my parents and I'm like, all good, but it's just not high. My values list. Like, I don't sit there thinking, oh, fuck, you know what I want to do? I want to go hang out. I schedule time to call my parents and shit, because I know that's what I need to do to make them happy. Right. And that's good and I respect that. But it's not really high for me. Somebody else family is going to be really high on the values list. And if that is the case, then, you know, maybe think about designing your life in a way that supports that. Because you get a lot of men who struggle with this idea that they should be successful. They have all this weight of, like, responsibility on their shoulders of what they think they should be as the provider, as the, you know, the success merchant, the this and that and the other. And they also, what they end up doing is they live a life that isn't true to their values. They become unhappy, their marriages become shit. You know, they. And they wake up in 30 or 40 years, wonder, what the fuck have I done with my life?
Yeah.
You know, and the reality of the situation is you could create whatever life you want if you recognize just a couple of key things. Specifically, what are your values? Are you designing your life?
That was where from podcasts. When I've spoken about my own situation, I. It was a podcast I used to listen to from a guy who was in English guy in the States, but he had a podcast called Mindset by Design. And his big thing was like, you know, how do you design your life? And I remember sitting there, still working in the city, still doing 200 hours a month at a desk, earning good money but not enjoying it, and thinking, I've. Thinking I've never thought about what I truly want and, and I recently put a clip out where I said, you know, I have a big problem with the, the media where they manipulate you and, you know, whether it's for nefarious purposes or just to make you want stuff that you probably don't need. And I was like, I wonder as a, as a young man and as a, you know, as an 18 year old, as a 28 year old man, how much of what I thought I wanted wasn't because I wanted it, but because what had been kind of, you know, subconsciously put inside me. And I don't think that for most men, Well, I know most men don't take the time, you said, to sit there and be like, what do I actually want? And some, when you ask them will be like, I don't know. Because I've never thought about it. Because we're not taught that at school, are we?
No, we're not taught that at school. And one of the, one of the problems when people are first approaching that question is they get scared because they, because they don't know. And then they start to worry what if they, if they pick something, whatever the thing is, they start to worry, what if they pick the wrong thing? Or whatever. And so if you're listening to this, you have the permission to get it wrong. Like, whatever, whatever you, whatever you, whatever you just. And the first time you start on that journey, I promise you, like, I'm 100% certain when I say this, you will get it wrong. There is almost no chance that when you first start asking yourself the question of what do I want, what do I like to look like, that you're going to get it right. Like, because you haven't had the time to really flesh out the context. Like you can't do it from a standing start to go, all right, I've never thought about this being, ah, now I've got it. It just, it is not going to happen. In fact, when I first start, and, and by the way, it's okay to think, oh, it's going to be fucking Lambos and mansions and, and what, whatever, if I go back and you look at what I was. Because I've kept all my writings, I used to write down every single day, the vision of my life every single day. I did that for four years. And if I go back early on, yeah, it's like, it's all the, it's all the trimming, so it's all the accoutrements, you know.
Sure. Mine says Aston Martin somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I was like, you know, helicopters, jets, and six cars and, you know, all that stuff.
Yeah.
And here's the thing that may or may not be correct for you. Probably isn't correct, by the way. Here's the Cliff Notes version. Probably isn't actually what you really want, but it's still useful because when we're going from a standing start to trying to work out how to create something better for ourselves, it's useful to have something that's going to pull us forward. And so sometimes just thinking of that really big thing, like, could be like, private jet. I'm going to fly around in a private jet. The dopamine that you can get from that can give you the fuel that you need to take the action that is required to move you closer to the life that you really want, which you're having actually worked out what it is. Right. So sometimes it can be enough to prompt the action. So, like, I think that's okay. I. I just. What I know to be true is that when you get further down the journey, you start to realize that all that stuff you thought you wanted, you never really wanted anyway. And what you really wanted was a lot more attainable. And so, you know, the life that you want is, is really not that far away.
That's the. I know. I've seen it with statistics of, like, there's a, there's a, let's say a salary that you might earn, say, in the UK, like, once you get past, like, 75 grand a year, that, that covers, you know, if you're living a. A modest life. And I've met people that have got fun. If you say private jets and, you know, to, to someone that isn't from that world, because I haven't got that kind of budget, you look and be like, wow, that all sounds amazing. You realize that the, the challenges don't change that. Well, the challenges are there. They just don't change in, in the way that just because you got more money, life doesn't necessarily become easier. I know with some of the guys I met through Tony Robbins events that they seemed more stressed when. Because they were trying to scale and scale and scale and scale. Like you said, at one point, you look and go, you know what? That's, you know, bigger isn't always better. It's like, can you, can you get to that stage where you're quite happy where you are? So what have you learned about yourself in this last. Let's say from going from the $5,000 in your pocket to where you are now, like, what are the couple of things you've looked back and you're like, hell, that's really become apparent.
So I think that. I think that a lot of. I think that a lot of advice from people who have achieved some success can. Can actually be misplaced, particularly for people that are early on in the journey. I think that. I think that whatever you want is going to be very hard to achieve in the very first instance. I think you need to be ready to work very hard, but you. You need to understand that you shouldn't need to do that forever as well.
Yeah.
So. So I think that if you are in a place where you're currently, like you said earlier, you're working 200 hours a month doing it in a job that you don't like, or you just for the very first time, asking yourself, like, is this the life that I really want?
Yeah.
Which, by which, by the way, is. Was the question that Gabby and I started asking ourselves when I said, all right, let's, you know, let's. I'm going to go sober and all that kind of stuff, we started looking around and going, we're working in events, like, we're going nowhere fast. Like, is this the life we want? And we. We said, no, it's not the life we want. And then we said, okay, well, what are we going to do to get out of it? We thought we, oh, let's invest in real estate. And we. We bought the wrong property in the wrong place at the wrong time and, you know, lost a bunch of money and. And that kind of set us on the path to try and work out how to do it properly and slowly ended up selling cash. You've got to ask yourself, like, is this. Is this creating the life that I want to get from that place, whatever that place is for you, to a life that you start to be devoid of desires? Which is a really interesting context, which can talk about in a moment. Is hard. Right. And it's gonna be hard work. And so you need to accept that. But also what you need to accept is that it is only through that challenge that you're really going to become the person that's worthy of the life that you really want to create.
Yeah.
There's no easy path. There's no. There's no easy path to change. You're fundamentally looking to reinvent or redesign who you are. And that's a tough. Like. Like, ask your wife how. How birth felt. Right. I'm just going to say it was pretty painful.
Yeah.
You're going to have to go through the same thing for yourself. And so, you know, I can sit here and talk about, you know, my point of view on the world right now, but that's actually not that useful for somebody who's trying to get to the point of view. Now. What I, what I, what I can say is that making money is really useful. There is a point at which it's us have diminishing returns now it's going to be different for everyone, but it's probably, it's a lot higher than you read in the papers, but it's a lot lower than they sell you on Instagram, right? So it's it and it's much more attainable. And so I think that you just need to be ready to go on a massive personal development journey in order to do that, because, as I say, you can create any life you want in the next, in three to five years. One thing I would say that the thing that's probably changed my life the most, and that's only been in the last, let me go through some stages because in the first year or so, when I was working 18 hours a day, seven days a week, Gabby actually asked me, she said, what is driving you? And it was fear. A lot of people say you're going to be driven by, you know, all these kind of altruistic things, but it was fear. Honestly, when I said to Australia, pure failure. We had no fallback, we had no, no backup launcher. And so that's okay too. Like, so whatever fuel you've got, use it, use it, use it. Doesn't really matter what it is, just use it, right? So if it's dopamine, if it's fear, whatever, just, just, just put it in the jetpack and go, pick a direction, go hard, and it's not going to be easy. And you're going to have lots of ups and downs. No matter what the journey is, doesn't matter whether it's a business or some other thing, right? It's not going to be easy. And you're going to have lots of moments where you're going to feel like quitting, and they're the moments that you need to not quit. Now. It is okay, by the way, too quick. You need to decide, like when you're, when you chase the folly and when you're not. But nine times out of 10, sticking to it is going to be the answer. And the thing that's changed my life most in the noting what I just said about the first part of the journey was fueled by fear. The thing that's changed my life most in the last 18 months is. Well, actually we're probably just a little over 12 months from now. It was early last year. I was in the. Spending a bit of time in the States and I was, you know, we'd had some degree of success and I was continuing to try and fuel my vision of the future and try and pull myself further forward. And so I had to keep dreaming bigger dreams in order to get more dopamine hits and all that kind of stuff. And. And once a quarter, myself and Gabby do a life planning session where we sit down and go, what do we want? Are we. Are we aligned with the vision? Are we, you know, we need to redesign everything? And. And, you know, and I'm trying to paint a bigger and bigger, bigger picture, more grand, more. And I got to the end of our weekend of doing all this stuff and I felt empty. And I thought, something's not right here. Like, shouldn't I feel pumped up and jacked up and motivated? And I realized that 90% of the stuff that I'd been saying that I wanted, I really didn't want. And it was the first time that I really started to step away from the desires and start to actually step into gratitude. And that one mantra that I've been through that period of time went through a lot of development. And I started. There was a story that I heard from Wayne Dyer and he was talking about the kahunas in Hawaii. So everyone's heard of like the big kahuna.
Yeah.
A kahuna is a witch doctor basically in Hawaii. Right. Or a shaman or whatever you want, you want to say. And Wayne Dyer is a. Who's. He's passed away, but he's a really great scholar, got a great books and stuff out there. He met his kahuna and he said, so what's the secret to becoming a kahuna? Like, how do you. Do you go to kahuna school? Do you study Kahuna 101? What's the deal? And the kahuna said to him, and he said, they raises to have no fear and no doubt. And I was just like, whoa. Yeah, I was like. And then I started asking myself, who would I be and who would I become if I had no fear and no doubt? And if you ask yourself that question, man, a lot of things, a lot of things change. So every, every day, every single day for several months, I just write down, I live without fear and doubt. And my world started to change. I started to realize that I was in a place Where I didn't need like anything beyond what I currently had was there's, you know, incremental improvements. It's like, oh, what do I want? Like bigger apartment? Like, I mean, who cares, you know what I mean?
Like how big you need?
Yeah, more, more of an ocean view. I mean like, like, you know, like what is it? And so that's also really confronting too. And so you got to be prepared to step into that. But, but living without fear and doubt I think is kind of the biggest thing because you're going to constantly doubt yourself. You're going to doubt are you on the right path, you're going to doubt who you are. And so if you can start to let go of that and realize that all of that noise that you feel, all of that anxiety, all that fear, all of that doubt, all of that uncertainty, you don't actually need it, like it's not actually real and you can actually choose to let it go. That like as a business owner, like how many times might you think shit, my business is going to fail? Probably happens a fair bit, right? Normal because you got these, these, these, you know, anxiety triggers, these portisol spikes where you think it's going to go back. It's not, it's not real, it's not true. And so in a very real sense, and I mean this not in a kind of woo sense, I mean this in a scientific fashion. We literally design our own reality, our perception design perception dictates the way what we perceive in the world, like in a very absolute, scientifically proven way. And so realistically all you need to do is control your mind and control the experience you have on the planet. And yeah, that's probably what I would, what I most want people to understand because you can. I like to talk about escaping the status quo. I've never been one to kind of fit within the box of the normal construct. And I think if you can escape the status quo in a way that's in line with your value, so whatever that means to you, it could be, could be creating financial freedom, it could be just living life on your own terms. You know, I think the key to doing that is mastering the living without fear and doubt and stepping into the reality that you really most desire, that would be the thing that I'd want to encourage people to do the most.
So much of that is built, isn't it about resilience because as you said, you know, people don't have growth in business or health or whatever in a straight line. There's usually knockbacks and you mentioned earlier about. It's funny when you mentioned Covid in it, the algorithms pick it up and. And you. You get like suppressed on social media when you talk about it. But, you know, I saw myself, I mean, with the whole mad academy, to state the obvious, we were an events based, growing events based business, which. And literally, I think two or three nights before lockdowns happened, I. I'd hosted a dinner for like 15 men in London. And, you know, and then all the nonsense started and all the brainwash, people started doing whatever they were told and it kind of went downhill from there. And I just wonder for you, because you said obviously your business was affected by it, and that's the reason I talk about the lockdowns as an example, is that was totally out of our control. Now, you could control how you reacted to it, but, you know, we saw. I listened to stories where people might have had three restaurants, two hotels and a nightclub, a thriving business and doing nothing wrong, and suddenly they all get shut down. And suddenly it's like, what do I do now? Because you've gone to zero from making really good money. And I heard some really terrible stories about, you know, some people that, like, killed themselves because, you know, they found it so hard to lose their business. So talk me about resilience because how did you react when that happened? And, you know, I mean it, I was still laughing. People go, oh, there was three weeks to flatten the curve, which is the joke. And you're like, yeah, they didn't stop there. But what was it like for you?
So one of the benefits or one of probably the competitive advantages that, that certainly I've got is the fact that I have been at the bottom. You know, I, I think it's a massive competitive advantage. The fact that I have been, you know, like, I'm not going to delve into all the stories in my 20s, but I went probably to the. I went to the. I went as far as I could go without getting to a point where I wouldn't come back. Yeah, right. In terms of the whole kind of drug scene and everything like that. So I've been to the edges, man, and I know what it's like to be at the bottom. I know what it's. I know, I know, I know, like most of the people I know from that period of life, my life and death. Yeah, right. And that's a competitive advantage because when you know how to eat right, when the. Gets served up, you. You know how to get it down.
I know what this is.
Yeah, yeah. I know what this is. Come on, gobble, gobble. Let's go. And if you're gonna eat, don't nibble. So when we, we. When we started the business, as I mentioned, like, we started with nothing, and that was really hard. And we went from zero for the first few months, and then we went from sort of like very nominal amounts of revenue to like 180 grand a month. And we thought we were rock stars. We thought, right, we've. We're the God's gift of business. Look at us. Like, we just thought we'd solved everything. We just ego through the roof, you know, and. And, you know, so we were humming along and I thought we were killing it, but we were making no profit because we had no idea what we're doing.
Yeah.
And. And so. And I remember speaking to a mentor that I got in that period of time. He said, you know what, your problem is this? He said, you got no business acumen. I was like, man, smack around the head. Like, I was like, damn it, that was in January of 2020. And I was like, oh, damn it, he's right. And we started to hire him and started grow, you know, the team a little bit and stuff like that. We said, you know what we need to do? We need to walk backwards before we walk forward. So we let go of the team. We started to do a strategic descale that was in February and into March. And by the time we got to the end of March, it was just myself and Gabby and one assistant. Miami had stood at the business today. She joined basically two months after we started the business. And then we had this 100% unconditional, 100% money back guarantee policy because we thought that was a good idea. So we had a. Between March and April, we had 97% loss of incoming revenue and 94% of our existing clients said, oh, that clause in the contract. Have all the money back. Thanks.
Yeah.
And so we. And we'd moved into like, a really nice apartment and we'd done all this stuff both, you know, because we thought we were legends, right? And we then had to move to the cheapest apartment we could find. And we had to go back to eating beans out of cans. And. And we. And we had to, you know, Frank, to be frank, we couldn't pay everyone back. We had to put. We had to say, hey, sorry, Covid, can we put this on a payment place? Took us nine months to. We gave everyone. No one ever. No one got. You know, we didn't. We paid everyone, but we had to pay the money, tickets, nine months and we didn't know if we were going to make it. You know, and it was winter in Australia by the way as well. And you know, it was grim and we didn't know if we were going to make it. And the, the benefit of having been at the bottom is, you know, that you can get back up off the floor. And so I had to ask myself several times, I was like, what's the worst going to happen? Worst could happen. Okay, eventually the business goes bust and what, we have to move back in with my parents and then we'll do something else. Like, like, like really how bad? How bad? Really how bad is it going to get? And once you can, you know, Tim Ferriss would call that fear setting where you basically go, okay, walk into that future. Okay, how bad, how bad could this be? And if you're going to survive it, it's probably not that bad.
Yeah.
So I took the time to go and sit and roll around it and go, okay, how, how shit can this be? But it was tough, man. And it was only through realistically. There was a couple of key moments of encouragement from my family. I remember one time I was, I was literally just about to throw in the towel and my brother, you know, he, he just gave me some words of encouragement and he said, man, don't, don't quit. Said, you've got a great business, you're doing great work and you're helping people. Don't, don't quit now. Just see it through. And I was like, okay, let's do it. But it was tough. And then just a little bit of context because you know, we kind of set the scene of how brilliant it was. But that was also the time that we really decided what kind of business we wanted to build because we hadn't really built a really good business up to that point. And we said, okay, we now have this time, now this time to define what we want the next phase of the journey to look like. So what would, how would we build an iconic company, like a truly iconic company, one that would, you know, change, change the world basically. And we knew that it was, would revolve around people and culture and you know, all of this kind of stuff, technology. And that was where we set the foundation. So that time that we had there, we actually got to really think about how do we build the infrastructure or the artifacts that we would need to build a world class culture.
Yeah.
Now so, you know, we talk about, you know, growing to 25 million in revenue, but realistically that's only happened in the last three years because it was on the 1st, on the 1st of January, 2021, we were a team of four.
Yeah.
18 months later, we were a team of 85. So we basically, you know, in three, three years, basically we were three, three to four years. We've basically grew from, from nothing to about 25 million. So it's been. But it was all because we had that time. We had that time to roll around in the darkness. We had that time to actually sit in it. And without that, we would never have been, we never would have never become this business.
It's so interesting, that story, isn't it? Because like you say, if everything's always easy, you don't, you don't learn anything when things are, you know, when you're winning all the time and when every deal comes your way. And I've seen that, you know, I've, I've learned so much when I've sat in my office and just been like, that's gone wrong. This has gone right. What, you know, what do I need to do? I need to go back to my core values and get rid of some people that I, you know, made some mistakes by letting them have their fingers in pies in some of my business. And it's, it is funny because you look back and I know there's that saying, like, how can your worst day be your best day? But sometimes, like you said, the, you know, going from shit to success and then reversing back again means you just go, right, you know what, let's, let's, let's look in it. And I wonder for you, who of you, you just mentioned, like brother, but who have you had to speak to over the years, apart from Gabby? Because I guess it's, it's like Emma, my partner, we're, you know, together all the time, but sometimes you need an external someone to just like, give you a bird's eye view and an honest opinion.
Yeah. So I was lucky, lucky enough to find a mentor in 2021. So January 2021, got a mentor, coach, whatever you want to call it. But he's got a nine figure business. His business does a couple hundred million dollars of revenue a year. And, you know, I'm really grateful for that because I've been able to meet with him every week since then. And to have someone who's that far ahead so you can go, oh my God, this thing's right. He's like, yeah, we know how to fix that. And, you know, and just someone to Tell you that it's okay and just someone to be there because, man, entrepreneurship's lonely and Gabby and I talk about it all the time. Like, imagine if we didn't have each other, you know, because we do talk to. Imagine if it's just you, you know, it's, it's crazy. Entrepreneurship is extremely lonely and it's very hard to find people that are on that same journey. I can. It's very rare that your friend group is going to, is going to transgress that journey as well because you're probably going to be growing differently. And so all of a sudden you think you have people around you, but then you don't. I, I have zero, you know, animosity or anything to. But, but I'm not, I'm not friends with the people that I was friends with in the past, barring three people. Right. Barring three people who we still keep in semi regular contact, but we're not in each other's lives, you know.
Yeah.
And so the faster you grow, the lonelier it becomes. The further you go, the lonelier it gets. And so you need to get stronger and stronger and stronger within yourself as well. I think it's, I think it's very important to find a community or very important to find someone. Right. So I know you have a community of event. Finding something that is going to be useful to you. I'm lucky enough to have found a great mentor, lucky enough to be in business with my partners. We have each other and so that's been super useful. But outside of that, honestly I've, I've tried lots of ways to try and find our tribe, but no, I have not met anyone that's been on the growth trajectory that we're on.
Yeah.
And so it's very, very, very hard. Like, I can meet, I can go into masterminds of business owners and stuff. And you know, they're growing at 10 a year and we're growing at, you know, 800% a year. And, and it's like there's a disconnect. Yeah, there's a disconnect. It's like, okay, I love you, but like I have the conversation with you today and in a month we're different people. Right. And so it's been actually really, really challenging. And but for me, I'm naturally an introvert, so it's all of my socializing capacity gets done through company. So we have 100, we have 100 team members now. And so necessarily, like a lot of, A lot of my time is spent communicating with people in 10.
But yeah, it's so interesting because like you said that that different trajectory and similar to myself, you know, I've got one or two friends that are. My best friend I've been mates with since we were like 16 and he's been on like the journey with me. But you do find that some people, because I, I'd say I'm like a relentless action taker. And what I mean is if you and I are in business together, I will stay up till silly o' clock in the morning if we need to and I'll get on a call at 2 in the morning or whatever we need to do to get it. I'm not like a bit tired. I'll do it next week. That those people drive me mad. And like you say, you know, I've got around some people that at the, at the moment, you know, at the moment you meet them, you think, oh, this is the right person. And then a few months later you're like, no, this is, this isn't working for me. So I, that's why the podcast has been great because I've, you know, I do my background research on people that I invite on or if they approach me similar to yourself. And I'm like, it takes me about one minute usually to work out if, if I want them on. And I've had some people that I made the mistake years ago that I didn't have them on the podcast and I talk to them and then you think this doesn't. Whereas I'm feeling, you and I, if we remove the thousands of miles between us that you, you know, you could talk for a few hours about business and optimization and stuff like that. So what does the next year hold for you? Like, I know that, you know, you're on a growth kind of trajectory. So what does the next year hold?
Really interesting question. So there's a, I'm at a very, I'm in a turning point, I think, which is cool. It's not something I've actually spoken about really much before either. Dashboard as a company, you know, it can be a billion dollar company and that's not just some kind of finest guy thing. It's like it's got all the mechanics there to be a billion dollar company.
Yeah.
I want to ride motorbikes through Tibet, you know, like, you know, and there's a, there's a, there's, I feel like there's a slightly divergent path between myself and the business. Not in a way that insinuates any kind of lack of passion for it. Just that, you know, you need to at some point recognize that you're not the business and the business is not you.
Yeah.
Unless you want it to be. Right. And that's okay too. But that's not what I want. And so right now what I'm trying to do is set-dot up to become the best version of itself and, and also simultaneously allow me to become the best version of myself.
Yeah.
And those two things can coexist, but it's kind of like when you raise a child, you don't want that child to be dependent on you forever. You want it, you want to. You want to teach it all the things that it needs to learn and set it free into the world and hope that it becomes an amazing, an amazing human. And it's the same kind of thing with great business. I think dashdot can become one of the truly iconic companies of its. Of its kind in Australia. I think honestly, it could become like a household name. And I'm setting it up to free to go on that journey. And that's really exciting, you know, and it's, it's kind of like setting us up to go on a different journey in our lives as well and kind of going back to like, a lot of the thematics that we've touched on in this, in this podcast already. It's really about consciously designing your life. Because I could, I could, I could continue to put in the, you know, go on that, you know, dig deep, grind, push hard grind, do that. And it's like. But it's really a case and I can do it. I know I have the capability to do it.
Yeah.
The question you've got to ask yourself is, you know, is that actually going to be. Is that, am I actually designing the life that I want?
Yeah.
And, you know, so, so that's, that's really the process that I'm at right now. And, you know, you get to it, you get to a place as well where, you know, certainly things, things don't. Things aren't important to me. So in fact, I'm buying a new motorbike at the moment. But things, things are not actually important. Experiences are. And so for me, it's. How do we. How do I expand the tapestry of experience that I get?
I love it. And this is why I enjoy these podcasts because, like, you've given me various light bulb moments, let alone the guys that will be. Be listening. And last question is, any more plans to head back to. To London or to the UK because, because if you do you know, who wants to meet you for a coffee and have a. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Steak together?
You know, I haven't, I haven't, haven't been there in. Jeez, man. A while, a while now. And I don't have that much of a pool to come back because the weather's not that great. I live, I live on a beach in Thailand.
I mean, we, obviously we're in, you know, we're in mid March and it's, it's been raining on and off for, for weeks and before that, obviously it's cold and we're just coming out of that. I mean, literally today it's a bit of sunshine. But I've said to my partner, because we, because we've got little kids, we haven't been away abroad for various reasons, you know, the last six months. And I'm like, I, I need some sunshine. So that's why I, when I talk to guys like you on the Gold coast or if you're in Bali or if people are in Miami or have you, I'm like, I just try and you know, I, I garner some of their, some of their sunshine energy basically.
But yeah, and I think, you know, I think for me this is an important part of life, life design as well, because we were living in, you know, like, we were living in some cool places, but we really thought about like, what does our ideal life look like?
Yeah.
And you know, personally, I love living close to the equator. I live like, love living close to the beach. So, yeah, you should try pop down here sometime.
Yeah, it's, I've got, I've got multiple invites from across the world. So Emma and I always, like when, when our little one who's a little bit, a little bit older, is it slightly easier to travel but it's. Nothing's easy with three boys, to be honest.
But yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
Well, mate, it's been an absolute pleasure and I knew as soon as I saw your buy, I was like, this is going to be a good interview and maybe at some point perhaps we'll pick up with again in like a year's time or something and see where you're, see where you're riding your motorbike.
Yeah, sounds good, man. Looking forward to it.
All right, thank you, mate. Cheers.
Goose.
Home Man Academy.
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