Masks, Control, and The Entrepreneurial Journey: Wes Towers

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Wes Towers of Uplift 360. Wes, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Christian. A pleasure to be with you, coming at you from Melbourne, Australia. So it's my morning, you're probably your afternoon.

Yes, it is. You did the math correctly. I We had an event where we had clients in last week and he lives in Boston, but he had come from a shoot in Australia. It wasn't one of the big cities and I don't remember which it was. Anyway, he flew back on the 17th to Boston, then turned around and came back to visit us in Oklahoma City 48 hours later or 24 hours later. And I'm like, man, you are committed because I don't think I could have flown all of that and then got back on an airplane And then, spoiler alert, he gets here and he gets sick. So it wasn't from anything we had. He must have brought that contagion with him.

But yeah, all that travel, it's quite tiring, isn't it? We're quite a distance from the rest of the world. But I suppose the advantage with these types of tools and technology, podcasting, it's fantastic to connect from the other side of the planet.

It is. But that doesn't replace wanting to go to Australia. That's definitely on my wife's bucket list. We'll be coming at some point. I'll look you up. So tell us about Uplift 360. What is that?

Well, it's a digital agency, so we work mostly with trades and construction, industrial brands, those sorts of businesses. My little business, it's been running for over 20 years now, so it's been a wild roller coaster ride, as most businesses are. Ups and downs, challenges, personal challenges. In business, it feels like everything's just amplified, you know. So I enjoy it. I enjoy the, uh, the, uh, the journey.

How did, how did you get into being an entrepreneur?

It was always a vision of mine. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, start my own business, but it came around a lot earlier than I had anticipated. I'd only really been working for other companies for a few years and I had a friend who tried to start his own agency and it was just too hard so he said I'm going to throw in the towel and I said well what are you going to do with your clients that you do have and he said well you can have them. So that was the start of my business. I picked up I think there was only 2 or 3 clients and I was completely naive to business. Whilst I had a skill set, I knew how to do websites and all the agency stuff, the design, etc. I had no idea how to run a business, so I had no idea how to do a client meeting. I remember the first meeting just sweating so much, red-faced, and just totally naive, you know, how to run books and do proposals and all this kind of stuff. I felt like a fish out of water.

How old were you when you did that?

Uh, well, I might have been, uh, 23 or something like that, okay, from memory, 24. Yeah.

Yeah, I started my business, I was 26. And yeah, I remember a lot of that feeling like you're kind of faking it, like, you know. Yeah. And that went on for a long while, to be honest with you, until I figured out that nobody knows everything. And a lot of people are faking it. And I found that the best way to approach it was just admit my ignorance and ask, uh, ask the question. Um, I, I remember the first time I, I had never been a professional witness, and, and a law firm reached out to me and said, oh, can, can you be a professional witness? And I'm like, sure. And they, they interview me, and then they say, okay, well, send me your CV and You know, and I think she knew when she said it and saw the look in my eye that I had no idea what she was talking about. But I said, absolutely, I'll send it over. Because CV, especially at that time— this is many, you know, over a decade ago— that wasn't a common term in America. So I had to go figure out what CV meant. But I think what you're talking about is, you know, that fear of you're going to be found out that you don't really know what you're doing. Uh, when, when did you overcome that?

It just was a slow progression. There wasn't any one day. It was just about building some confidence. And so similar to, to you, I started to realize, um, that everyone's a little bit flawed and everyone feels a little bit, um, underprepared in some ways. So I, I joined a networking group which was a high caliber of business leaders in that group, and seeing them week in, week out, I kind of learned a few things by observation and being mentored to a degree with those people. But I realized they all had failings and flaws and personal issues and all of that, and it wasn't just me. So it put my mind at ease to think that, you know, we're all this kind of the same. We might be at different, uh, uh, areas that, you know, stages of developing as a business, but they all started where I started. So I get over myself, get on with the business.

Yeah, absolutely. I just had a brilliant author, and I'm going to recommend the book again to the audience and to you personally, Wes. The book is called Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts, and Michael Brody-Waite wrote that book. And he went through rehab as a young man. And the book is essentially how he translated what he learned in drug rehab to his business life and leadership.

Yeah.

And one of the things where he started with is this idea of masks. That we wear masks to compensate for our fears, right? We're afraid of something, so we put on a mask. And this is in any context. It's not business. But I know, again, what we were talking about there is really that mask of I'm going to be found out that I don't know everything, that I don't know what I need to know. And that can be a real thing, right? Like if someone in business is expecting you to know how to do something and you need to get them comfortable with, yeah, I can deliver. But it's kind of an insidious thing where if you're not careful, you're always pretending to be something that you're not quite.

Yeah, yeah, the facade, the masks, we all, we all wear them to a degree. I, I wrote a book as well and, uh, drew some, um, similarities with a friend of mine who became a drug addict as well. So business lessons learned through observing how he went about life. And so the mask aspect was a big thing. We, we kind of, we were similar age and we had children at the same time, roughly. So we were really well connected. But a few terrible things in his extended family occurred, and he reverted back to some of his youthful habits of drugs. And so, and he got himself into a terrible situation. But some of the lessons I could observe in him, obviously unhealthy, but in a lot, in a lot of ways, but he could always find a way to get the thing that he wanted the most, and that was the drugs. And so in business, sometimes we need that resilience as well to figure out a way— okay, things aren't exactly how we want them to be, but what, what's it going to take to get you to where you need to be? So that's the positive learnings from, uh, from him. I mentioned it in my book. I changed his name. I can't remember what I changed it to because I wanted to protect his privacy, but Um, yeah, so, so many lessons from him, but also the mask, um, wearing thing. Um, you know, I've been able to compare— I can go into some horror stories if you like, but I've been able to compartmentalize, um, you know, in dire situations personally, but being able to function at a high level in business. And I realized that was beneficial for the short term, but it was no way to live a sustainable and successful life for the long term. So I had to go and get some serious help. And figure out some things about myself so I could last the journey.

Through that process, and thank you very much for being candid, were there things that you learned that you thought were personal? So growth you had or things you learned about yourself that you thought only showed up personally that in fact actually were showing up in the business as well?

Probably was. So I thought everything— business was fine and it was going well, but once I worked on myself, I went to see a psychologist who was really quite progressive and got some things sorted out. Business boomed after that. So, right, certainly my personal issues were holding the business back to a degree. Whilst I thought it was great and, you know, most people would have thought it was it was doing well and it was, it had opportunity to do even better.

Well, yeah. And that's one of the things that's— I use that word again, insidious about business is that if you're making money, right, everything can be checked off as being okay. And that's not necessarily the case. And I don't think there's necessarily a correlation between your personal growth and the success of the business. But in other words, you could be successful in business and still stunted personally and not growing personally. But to your point, at some point you're going to reach the limit of yourself. And once you uncap that and grow yourself, your business explodes.

Yeah, 100%. Uh, things can hold us back even if we don't realize it. Um, I mean, yeah, so at the worst, the worst of it all, I was under the— under my desk in the office crying like a baby, and I realized I had an important Zoom call to be on in 5 minutes. So all red-eyed, I didn't put the lights on so they couldn't see my red eyes. Just pretended I had a poor camera. But I closed that deal, the biggest deal we'd ever won as a business. And I realized, hey man, I can, I can compartmentalize really well and get the job done, but this thing's going to kill me if I don't sort it out. So that was really a pivotal turning point for me. I've just been, um, just newly separated, so, and I found out it was all of It was pretty abrupt. So I found out something in the marriage that wasn't, I believe, redeemable because it had been going on, I realized, for quite a while. And so from one day I was in the family home and the next day I was sleeping under the desk at the office, you know, so, and then wondering what the kids are going to think because, you know, you don't explain all of that. It's unhelpful for them to know the whole story. They're kids. And to realize, you know, you've probably a whole bunch of things that might be said about you and, you know, right, you can't sort of, um, that you can't sort of vindicate yourself because that's something, right? So, you know, so many challenges at that time. Um, yeah, so I had to correct some things in my thinking and, and, um, get on with life.

Yeah, I, I I had a conversation with a colleague, a fellow entrepreneur with an adult child, that this adult child did not go the direction that they had expected, and not necessarily in a harmful way, but it was painful to the father, right? We had a very long conversation. And I related to him, you know, in that meeting, like all of the failures I had as a parent. And, you know, some I know, some I don't know, right? Like, I mean, that you don't really know necessarily how you affect your children until they're grown adults, and then they come back and tell you. And sometimes it's not the things that you thought were screwing them up. It's other things. They say, well, you know, and then you're like, I have no recollection of that. But the conversation kind of turned to this idea of what you control. And it really shows up with rearing children, because I know I did as a parent. I thought I had a lot more control than I really did. Um, and that sets yourself up to some, some nasty surprises if you think that you're in control of a situation, whether it's your, your personal relationship or business, and then you end up like, oh shit, I really didn't have any control over that situation at all. Have you had a, have you had a similar experience?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's It's always, it's always the concern as a father to, um, to raise your children so that they, um, you know, you don't cause, you don't cause too much damage. There's always some— it feels like there's always some level of trauma that we, that we pass on. Maybe it's because of the, the only things we face ourselves, you know. We seem to reflect and echo the same things that happen to us, even if we didn't love love that, that experience. So it's, it's an interesting thing. Um, I was— because time with the children was taken away from me, and that was a massive thing, um, I was just— I just had to start reflecting on all the good times that I did have. I got to coach them in basketball, for example, so I was there at training and game day and taking my daughter to dance and, and all these things, all these time investments. While it felt at the time a huge pressure because, you know, you're trying to run a business and but also do all this stuff. I realized, hey man, I'm so glad that I invested that time when I did because it was soon gone, you know, abruptly gone. Um, so I would say anyone who's a father with the, with the children, uh, cherish that time even though it, even though it's, if you're running a business as well, that's, it's, uh, high stakes, high pressure sometimes. Um, but just invest in your children because that relationship will hopefully last forever.

Yeah, they're going to be the one that picks your nursing home. So, you know, right, um, you got to play the long game here, right? Um, but no, I, I, I, I'm glad you said that because I— one, yes, I think we, we we repeat the mistakes that we learned or experienced, even when we try not to. It usually shows up in a different way. Um, I think that you can, you know, I, I've had this conversation on the show multiple times that I, I think entrepreneurship can be a great tool for personal growth or it can also be a coping mechanism for you to deal with things that you don't want to deal with. And, you know, I've seen this more times than I can count of entrepreneurs that have had successful businesses as, as men, and then, you know, their, their marriage is, is in shambles, or they are completely estranged from their kids, or, you know, their health— their, their health takes a wallop. And I, I don't— I did— I just don't think that's healthy. Like, and that's where I go back to, like, success in the business can— is kind of agnostic. It can be good, it can be bad. Like, if it's good, it allows you to ignore a lot of things that you, you should, should deal with.

Yeah, 100%. That's so true. And I suppose the thing to go back to, why did you start business in the first place? And probably the reason was because you could create a lifestyle around it. Maybe that was initially to, to be able to do things with the family and to provide for the family, obviously, as well, a big part of it. But maybe there was aspects of freedom that you were chasing as well. So to reconsider and say, hey, am I getting that freedom that I was chasing? Am I investing the time with the kids that I— how do I adjust to get to create the business that I wanted to in the first place? Sometimes it feels like you start a business and you're free to work any 80 hours a week that you want. It's when everyone else is working 40 hours. So that's kind of how it feels sometimes.

Well, no, I think that's a brilliant observation because I would agree with you on the surface. Every entrepreneur starts a business with the expectation— they may not be their motivation, but their expectation that they're going to have time freedom and financial freedom of some mix. And what I find without intentionality is the business becomes the tail that wags the dog. And it becomes this creature that sucks all of your time, all of your energy, and it can, it can crush you without intentionality. Like, like you said, you got, you got to be intentional about guarding your family time and guarding your personal time and guarding your mental health. And you've got to say those are non-negotiables and the business takes second seat. To those things. And, and I, I know, I know personally as an entrepreneur that sometimes feels like failure, right? Like, you know, it— I could work more, but I choose to do these other things. And then I see other business owners more successful than I do, and then there's kind of that like, well, you could do that if you would just do more, work harder, try harder. And then you start feeling guilty.

Yeah, it's all about how we measure success, isn't it? So 100% about income. Um, whilst obviously when you're starting out, that's the, that's the first hurdle you need to, you need to create a big enough income to sustain yourself. But most of us get to that point, but then we don't change gears and, uh, right. And realize, hey, we don't, the more that we're getting doesn't actually change our life in a meaningful way. It's just numbers in a, in an account somewhere. Once you hit a certain threshold, it really doesn't make that much difference to us, the income. So, it's about thinking about what truly is wealth, the wealth of being, you know, your family, your health. You don't appreciate your health until you lose it. Everyone says that. My health had deteriorated a lot, so starting eating healthier. Going to the gym, those sorts of things, doing some helpful activities like breathwork even, and just various things to clear my mind as well.

Yeah. And for most people, you know, the financial gains of a business don't show up overnight, right? And so there can be this incremental growth and you kind of adjust to it. And so you you don't ever take the opportunity to look back and see how far you've gone. And to say, you know, if you'd started out where you did with nothing, and you look forward and saw yourself here, wouldn't you have been satisfied? Wouldn't you have been happy? Wouldn't you have been said, attaboy? But instead, because it happens gradually, you're like, well, I could be better. I could do more. And the thing that makes me nuts about entrepreneurs is when they get together socially, there's a lot— I'm not saying all, but there's a tendency for them to be a little bit— it ends up being a dick-measuring contest. And it's like, well, how big is your business and how many employees do you have? Or what's your market share? However they measure it. Never ever have I been in a conversation with entrepreneurs in a social setting of saying like, well, you know, I've grown enough because I want to spend more time with the family or I want to take care of me. I never heard anybody say that.

Yeah, it's so true. Maybe it's more of a male entrepreneur aspect as well. It might be just a male trait, isn't it?

It probably is. I've had women on this show, but I've never asked that explicitly, but that yes, they probably don't struggle with the same things that we do as entrepreneurs for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, it's so interesting. And so I think you touched on something really interesting and even something I might look at adjusting in my own life, having just listened to what you said. So celebrating the successes. I remember a guy that I know, he was running a— he's a friend of mine. He was running a magazine at the time. And you know, getting a new advertiser on board was a big deal for them. That's kind of what they were selling, that was their business model. So whenever a new customer came on board, they had a bell and they would ring the bell so the whole office would celebrate. I mean, I think little habits like that, they remind everybody, you know, we're all on a team, not everyone's selling the ads of course, but we're all on the team together and we're celebrating the successes I think maybe I need to start looking at how I celebrate the successes because business is going great. It's never been better, but I'm probably not taking stock of it, enjoying those wins as much as I could.

No, I don't. I can tell you that this is my 29th year doing this. I don't celebrate the wins enough. And I'll tell you even worse. This has been a long time ago, probably 10 years. When you get my age, it's hard to reference. But I remember someone saying, one employee said to another, "Yeah, if you're waiting on Christian to give you a pat on the back, you're going to be waiting a while." And, you know, at the time I'm like, "Yeah, that's probably right." But I didn't understand that that was a bad thing, right? Like, you know, that what someone just said about you is not good. And that's the way I treated myself, right? Like, I didn't give myself pats on the back. I'm like, this is what you're supposed to do. And, you know, next up, do more. And I think the attitude of gratitude is very powerful. But you have to start with yourself before you can give that gratitude to others.

Yeah, that's so true. And I mean, you're speaking about team members potentially that, you know, they might lack the confidence that we spoke about earlier on, you know, starting out a business. We have a lack of confidence and we realized everyone has a lack of confidence starting out in business, but employees potentially lack confidence as well and they need that encouragement when they've done something well that spurs them on too. So it's an interesting thing. Maybe it's just the human condition for all of us.

Well, let me ask you this, because I, I've— this is kind of an observation I've had. I, I grew up with this idea of leadership that was really grounded in what I had experienced in athletics and, and what I had observed in, like, the culture around the military. And there's this, you know, for men specifically, there's this stoicism. And then there's also of just like, it's about having this very high expectation and holding everybody to it, which certainly works. I'm not saying that it doesn't work, but it came to a point where it didn't work for me. And I had to understand that really my role is helping my team become better leaders themselves, as opposed to like, I'm controlling all the variables. And I'm going to— if you're not toeing the line, then I'm going to call you out. And have you— had a similar experience as a leader in your organization, or how is it different?

Yeah, well, I suppose similar to you, I think the— our upbringing and so on and our experience shapes the way we do anything, and certainly leadership is a massive part of that. I grew up in a cult church. It wasn't super harmful, but it was definitely really quite controlling and so on. So that was the form of leadership you kind of see. That's how, you know, yeah, so that's unhealthy. Also the other aspect, so there was a bunch of moving parts to the puzzle that made me me. And so Dad also, he grew up in an orphanage, so he didn't have any fathering understanding at all. He didn't, he didn't grow up in a normal home, so right. Um, so he's starting from ground zero. So he did incredibly well given the starting point he came from. But so I had that, um, and you can understand what, you know, it might have been a little bit difficult, uh, growing up with, with Dad. But yeah, church layered on top of that with their controlling mechanisms. So I think to a large degree I wanted to counter that. So I probably read an explored a whole lot of other things and other ideas and philosophies of how to relate to people and care for people. And so probably I learned a lot of stuff just from books and reading and listening to various things as well. So yeah, if you don't like the circumstances you're in, all you can do is educate yourself on a better way of doing things.

I want to put a pin in that and come back to that. I— but what you just said, um, I had a comment on. You're 100% right, and I think that's what entrepreneurs excel at, is they see the potential of what could be, not what, what is. And, and so if there is something that they don't like, then they say, well, I'm just going to change it, right?

Yeah.

Um, but the, the— what showed up for me most of the time was the things to change were external to me. Yeah. And, and it was, it was about, you know, if something didn't go right, it was, uh, the employees or the customers or the economy or, you know, whatever else. It— I for a very long time never looked in the mirror and said, well, maybe what needs to change is me. Um, yeah, I mean, it's— that seems to be a natural human condition of like, if something's wrong, we feel wronged, we're hurt, we don't like the situation. It's always starting with, you know, external as opposed to internal. And the thing, the thing we miss there, I think, is that The one thing that we have absolute control over is ourselves. The external things sometimes we can control, most of the times we can't. But, you know, if we— if you don't start to say, even if, even if you're in a, you know, a situation where someone hurt you and it was a bad situation, like you were, quote unquote, innocent, you have to ask yourself the question, how did I get myself into that situation? Right? Like, I mean, you contributed, even if it was a small amount, to being in that situation. So is there something to learn?

Yeah, for sure. It's, um, yeah, it's really interesting. The, uh, the, uh, there's always— I suppose it's what created the entrepreneurial spirit you touched on, um, that we try and find a way to create a better outcome, and we have that mindset to change things. So the things that are inside our control and outside our control, that's something I kind of learned from watching footy. We have AFL, Australian Rules footy, and I remember a coach saying, we control the controllables. And I thought, wow, that's such an interesting thing. They were talking about injuries, you know, that unexpected injury mid-game and, and so on. And he said, well, we just focus on What we can do, we control the controllables. I thought that's exactly how you need to do life. Things go wrong. You get injured. Your star player goes down. We can't dwell on that in that moment. You've got to figure out what changes you might need to make in the structure of your team or make adjustments to get the result that you're trying to go for. If we focus on the things we can't control, that's a stressful— that's a stressful scenario. I mean, that's where we get stuck in, in loops, and we can't break out of those loops because we're always thinking in a circular, you know, you keep going around and around and around, you don't move forward. So I think I've found myself in those stressful scenarios a few times. Um, yeah, I think control the controllables is a great strategy for life.

I, I love that. I— we were just having this conversation in our home church this weekend about worry, uh, but the, the, the, the, the insight that I had was like, we stress about the things that we can't control and we ignore the things that we can control. Yeah, yeah. And, and, and it's like exact opposite of what we should do.

Um, yeah, with the speak from a church perspective, the, uh, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So maybe we've got faith in the horrible, that the opposite— so the opposite would be true, wouldn't it? So if you have faith is a substance of things hoped for, so it's evidence of things not seen. If you flipped it around and you had a worry or a fear, it's the opposite to the faith. So it becomes 100% manifest in our lives. So, um, but it's sometimes hard to break out of these things. I think really every— all of us need, um, insight from other people in our world. I don't think we're meant to do life 100% by ourselves. So you need people in your corner, mates we would call them in Australia, mates that can speak into your life and help you along that path. So, you know, if you get yourself in a rut, they can help dig you out of it.

Yes, because the analogy of you can't read the label when you're in the bottle, um, is, is, you know, true for all of us, that we, we can't see ourselves as others see us, you know. Yeah. And, and having someone that truly cares about you that is willing to tell you the truth about yourself is gold. I mean, it's absolute gold. But those, those relationships are where the most friction are, right? Because someone, someone in this conversation with last week I had with the other father, another father said, Yeah, but, but they love you enough to hate you. And that's, that's one of the things you find in those relationships where people that do really care about you and you, they start speaking into your life about the things that they're observing. It's never comfortable. And a lot of times, you know, if we're not willing to be humble about it, can end up very ugly.

Yeah, I think that's so true. We all need the unreasonable friend when sometimes it just feels unreasonable, but they're 100% right upon reflection.

So I want to go back to— you talked about your upbringing and your father's upbringing. How, if, you know, either good or bad, how did that work out with you unpacking that as an entrepreneur? You, you said you, you kind of like decided that wasn't what you wanted, and so you were actively searching for alternatives. It seemed like very early on, um, but was there a point where you had to, uh, exercise those demons, if you will, or, or Yeah, it probably—

as a young man, I probably went a little bit haywire having so much control and then moving out of the home. And because I needed to move location for university, so living by myself, and things went pretty haywire, as often is the case for young people moving out of home. But probably I was slightly more so than others just because of the level of control. But I think once I got over that kind of little phase of university and going and getting a career, it just felt like starting from ground zero, like everything was a clean slate. And so I just thought about what I wanted for my own life. Dad did a great job, as I said before, considering the circumstances. That he, that he grew up in. He did an incredible job of being a father. The church thing was, you know, that wasn't helpful for sure. A friend of mine, he also grew up in the church, a different branch, but the same thing. He got kicked out. He's a musician, and they said, you can't play music. Either you choose between your music or your 'Or your church?' And he chose his music. And so, like, that was a number of years ago, and so that still torments— I can still see that still torments him, um, you know, being alienated from his, um, his family to a large degree because they don't encourage relationships outside of the church. That, that's what, you know, that cults do, that control. So, you know, growing up in that scenario wasn't helpful, but it certainly made me think about what, um, even, even what the Bible really does say, if you want to look at it from that perspective. I think that the grace message, if, if you want to think about, um, how it, how it should be and what the message really was, grace is a powerful way to, to live life, you know. It's such a freeing concept. Because we're all flawed and we make mistakes, but it enables us to get better and move forward and not be bogged down by something that might have gone wrong at some stage.

Our pastor this last weekend used the term "breathtaking grace," and I'm like, "Oh, yeah." But, you know, to your point, I I don't even think it has to be a cult. You know, I think of another colleague where his father was a pastor, and they're estranged from his kids, so his grandkids. And like, you know, it, it absolutely, whether it's a bona fide cult or not, it seems like the church/religion ends up causing a lot of division and a lot of friction.

Yeah, I think that's right. And oftentimes, I mean, it might be less of a cult, just a regular kind of church, and probably for the most part The leaders have good intentions for the people. They're trying to protect and safeguard people, but the overreach actually causes the inverse and opposite because it's not building people in the right way. So, you know, it's probably good intentions a lot of times. It's just, um, you know, not creating a great outcome.

I, I heard a pastor describe it this way. He, he asked God what a religious spirit was. And he was talking in terms of like, the Pharisees and like, in any case, God said to him, he said, a religious spirit— so religious spirit being a negative term, right? Like you're using it in a wrong way. God told him, said, "When you use the word of God for your purposes, as opposed to my purposes." And I'm like, yeah, that is the definition of a religious experience. So, and I think, yes, the intent is to protect people. But there's also a lot of people that use it because they're trying to justify themselves, right? And ultimately, at the end of the day, I think that's a lack of faith. Because if I'm comfortable in my faith, I'm happy to share it with you. But I don't need you to believe it. That doesn't affect my faith. Just because you don't believe what I believe, or think the way I think, doesn't change how I feel about my faith. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. To have your own personal convictions doesn't necessarily mean someone might share the same view, and, and that's perfectly fine. You're rock solid on your own beliefs and convictions. I think that's a part of maturity, isn't it? It's just all of us go through that journey where we're not quite sure of ourselves as young men, but as— and young people, but as we get older we're more confident in a whole lot of things.

Some we shouldn't be confident in, but you know, yes, probably.

Yeah, and that, I suppose that's part of why older people like myself, I'm 47, so older than I was, but the nature in which we communicate to the younger people, so kids for example, so sometimes it feels as though you could just tell them, this is what you should do. And, you know, you feel as though that the decisions are simple and that they should go a certain way. But if we remember back when we were at that stage of life, we, we, we didn't necessarily know the right path and decisions. And, and to, um, yeah, sometimes the way in which advice is, uh, is given needs to be done graciously as well.

Yeah, I don't— I'm not even sure if, like, my current self went back to my 25-year-old self and said, hey, dumbass, do this, I don't even know that I'd listen to myself. Uh, I'm— I mean, I, I, I seriously believe that. So why would I listen to somebody else if I wasn't going to listen to my own?

Um, true.

But yeah. It's, it's nuts. I think, I think for me, it's, it's also about being uncomfortable with the unknown. Like, I think as, as we mature, we, we understand that there are some things that are just beyond our understanding, beyond our capacity to understand, beyond our ability to control, and just being humble enough to accept the situation rather than try and control it. And I, you know, you talk about confidence. I want to have the confidence of the 75-year-old man that's in the gym locker room walking around completely naked because I'm like, that's the energy that I want. I'm not quite there yet, but like, you've got it, dude.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, all the things we speak about, the human, human condition and so on, because we do websites and marketing and so on, it feels to me with AI and the rise of AI, there's an erosion of humanity and some of these things. And I think those that are able to focus and bring these things back, the human relationships and connections and, and so on, they're going to be the big winners moving forward as we see more and more AI, um, take over those perfected videos that we see. I think people are going to create— crave the, uh, authentic.

Yes, I, I, a different pastor, uh, several months ago had made the comment that He was speaking about America, and he didn't cite a study or something. So I don't know the veracity of this claim, but it definitely resonated. He said, we've never been more lonely than we are right now as a group of people. And that definitely tracks. And it speaks to what you said, that the authentic connection with others is the missing piece. And it's pre-AI. I mean, it, you know, I think with the internet and, and then social media that just exacerbated that to the point where you've got people that have no real human connection.

Yeah, it's a terrible scenario, the social media addiction, really. I mean, you see people wandering around the street just reading there or looking at their phone. Um, it's, it's— I mean, I'm no expert in this field, but From what I understand, it's that little dopamine kick that people 100% need all the time. Yeah, there's that. So there's the social aspect, the social media aspect, but also obviously COVID lockdowns were massive.

Oh yes.

Yeah, here in Australia we were the worst in Victoria, so we had the some of the worst lockdown, uh, experiences in the world. Um, So it had certainly a lot of detrimental effects for business and for people, you know. And to find our leader at the time was saying that, trust the science, this is what the science says. But it's only been exposed in more recent times that he was just making stuff up and he wasn't really supported by the science people in the background. He wasn't actually listening to them. He was overreaching and We live the consequences of that even today with businesses still struggling.

Yeah, I made the comment in the midst of it, and I was the only one in my family that did not get the COVID vaccination, and I was harassed by everybody in my family. It was brutal. But I was sitting in that moment and I'm like, I never really understood how Nazi Germany happened. Like, how does a democratic government and people end up with someone like Adolf Hitler? And what, what I saw during COVID not just the governments and what they did, but also the people's reactions, like how much people will give up out of fear. It, it really opened my eyes. And I think to your point, fundamentally broke some things. I really do. Yeah.

We had two people turning on each other where, you know, as you experienced, like family members against family members, dobbling people in for silly things upon reflection. Such a brutal time. And as you say, it just sort of happened so quickly. Like, I had no understanding that that could even happen. Um, but you know, that's what— no, um, we spoke about fear earlier, um, being the opposite to, to faith, so to speak.

And yes, yes, yeah, and the opposite, and the opposite to love. You know, you mentioned Grace. I mean, like, that, that to me is They're opposite of each other.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's crazy and wild times, and anyone in business, everything's just amplified to a higher level, it feels like. So when crisis like that happens, you know, it affects businesses more. If, you know, everything just seems to be dialed up a notch.

So, you know, yeah, you know, In a lot of ways, I mean, I was— we had 10 clients come in from around the country to meet last week. And one of the very first topics we were talking about was this just general anxiety that every— and sure, there are reasons why. I mean, like, you know, the LLMs and technology that, that I get it. It's real. You have to deal with it. But there's, it's kind of beyond that. There's just like this blanket of anxiety that everybody's feeling at a base level.

Yeah, 100%. There's so many things going on in the world. We're experiencing much of the same things that you would be, you know, cost of living. A lot of people, it seems like for here in Australia, the divide for the rich and the poor is growing, which is, which is not ideal. Feels like there's a K-shape. Someone described it as a K-shape chart. So it's people that are increasing, increasing dramatically, and those that are going backward are going backward faster than ever before. So then we've got inflation problems. That's, that's from COVID largely as well, because, you know, they were throwing around, printing a whole bunch of money and that felt great at the time. Everyone had this money for nothing, but obviously that comes back to bite eventually, and it is now.

You always have to pay the fiddler.

Yes.

Wes, how do people find out more about you and Uplift 360 if they want to learn more?

Yeah, brilliant. uplift360.com.au is the business. So yeah, digital agency, we do websites. We haven't spoken much about that, but that's cool. We do websites and SEO and all that fun stuff, mainly for trades and construction businesses.

Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast. And until next time, remember, you are not alone.