Lockdown: Your Opportunity in Disguise with Colin Sprake

There's a thing between being busy being busy and busy being productive. And I think a lot of people right now might be busy being busy. I'm looking at everything I do right now. Is this something I can carry forward with me long term, number one? So that's probably number one, the most important. Can I carry this forward with long term? And number two, is it something that I can systematize, monetize, and you know, carry on? You know, can and maybe also give me more freedom from the business? In other words, you know, be more at home. You know, I never forget getting on a plane recently and one of the guys like, hey man, I'm part of the, you know, the super elite club of Air Canada, whatever. I'm like, oh, that just tells me how much time you don't spend at home. You know, you tell me you spend more time on the plane than you do with your family. The guy that's looked at me is like, that's a really sad way to look at it. Not a sad way. It's the truth, guys. You know, I think the Bill Gates said it the best. The world is now coming together. We're going back from a me world to maybe more of a we world where it's really more community based, also supporting each other, helping each other like we're doing today, helping your community online and helping in any way that I can.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of thrivetime with Eric Edmeads. I'm very, very happy to have you here today with a very good friend of mine, Colin Sprake. Colin, like me, is a South African born immigrant to Canada who has brought some fantastic ideas about entrepreneurship to the country of Canada and around the world for that matter. I have really enjoyed working with Colin. I've spoken at a number of events over times and we've developed a really great friendship. And one of the reasons is that we have a bunch of values that are aligned about the way business should operate. Colin runs a business in Canada that really helps entrepreneurs build solid businesses that can survive even the toughest times. In fact, over the last week, what he's been doing is spending time with thousands of entrepreneurs around Canada, helping them prepare themselves for what's happening right now. And so now we get to enjoy some time with him as well. Colin, I really appreciate you making the time to come here and be on the show with us today.

Eric, it's my sincere pleasure to serve you and to serve your audience as well and to serve your members and just be here to do what we can to help people during, especially during these times, but also just to help you overall. So I'm here. It's my pleasure. And I cannot wait to be of service and answer any questions I can today.

So, Colin, you're going to be really fresh on this. What I mean by that is that having just spent the last week in intensive webinars with people really going through legal things, financial things, marketing things, sales things, you know, a lot of that stuff's fresh in your mind. I know that you had Jack Canfield on the show and other experts supporting you. Tell me this, let's just get real gritty, right? Like there are business owners that are sitting right now on a spectrum of opportunity. And for some of them, they've fallen off a cliff. They're in travel, you know, they've just fallen off a cliff and they don't know where to pivot to. And then there's others where all holy man. There's significant opportunity. Papa John's just announced they're trying to hire tens of thousands of drivers to meet the demand for pizza. So, you know, on one end there's this incredible gaping cliff that people have fallen off and then on the other side there's phenomenal opportunity. And I suspect there are times when some of the people that have come off a cliff just need to dust themselves off because the opportunity is standing right there in front of them. Talk to me a little bit about what you think a business owner should be doing at immediately day one right now, if they haven't already started.

Wow, what a great question. I think what I'd love people to realize is this, is that as you listen to this is to start to think about it. The reason why I bought Jack Canfield on my first day of my six day camp that I had, or masterclass that I had was number one is getting your head in the game. Like for most of the business owners I see out there right now, your emotions gone way up and your intelligence is low down. And now you're sitting there consumed by this emotion. It's now bringing the emotion down and bringing your intelligence back up. So for me, for all of you, the number one thing I've said to everyone this week is get your head in the game. You know, for me, it's looking at things differently. Honestly, the Chinese have a really cool way of doing this.

Eric.

The Chinese have, they have the word, when they write the word crisis, it actually is two characters. And the two characters, one character represents opportunity and the other character represents danger. And sadly, in Crisis. There's people that see the opportunity, but 90% of the people see the danger and that's what they focus on. And that's what fascinates me is how many people out there are sitting at home right now consumed by emotion, consumed by danger, but right in front of them, you are so right. Right in front of them is the opportunity. Like, the opportunity right now is so immense. And people don't see it that way because that's their own way of looking at it. Sometimes I take the glasses off, put other glasses on and look through different glasses because there's opportunity right in front of you. Every single one of you right now. I don't care what industry you're in. And people are like, no, my industry is different. Well, see, you'll never get anywhere where you keep on saying that.

So, yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think there are some people. Let's talk a little bit about the nervous response. We talk a lot about this within our Wildfit community and that is that when you allow emotions to take over you, rather than you using emotions, your emotions are using you. So you allow adrenaline and cortisol and you allow that because there's something scary going on. Well, in a natural environment, what's supposed to happen at that point is that you're supposed to become a much quicker thinker and a much quicker actor. And so at that moment when you're producing those stress chemicals, your intelligence, as Colin pointed out, right, as you said, your intelligence goes down a little bit, your empathy goes down and your connection to logic goes down. And so, and the reason being is in that moment, you got a lion chasing you. You don't need empathy, you don't need intelligence, you don't need logic. You just got to get going. The trouble of course now is that if you don't get your head in the game, then you're going to spot the opportunities. It's like this. If you're full of adrenaline, if you're full of adrenaline, then a stick on the ground looks like a snake and everything starts looking dangerous. So I think that's. Colin, that's super good to start with. Get your head in the game. Give me some ideas of practices you might recommend. Maybe some good wisdom that came out of Jack, like, how can people right now, with all the media and all the fear that they're facing, how can they get their head in the game?

Wow, Eric. I think I'm going to use one of my own ones to start off with that. I've said to People, most importantly, if we stuck at home, get yourself in some kind of routine. You know, many of us don't have a routine at home. A lot of us traveling, business people are traveling, doing our thing. Get yourself some kind of routine on a daily basis. My favorite, favorite thing, I mean, I did this even way before the situation arose, is make sure you're meditating. Let your mind know who's in control. You know, that's really. Honestly, that's my definition of meditation. Meditation is letting your mind know that you control your mind, not your mind controlling you. So I do a half an hour meditation. I have a very specific structure I do every single morning, very set routine. And I've done that prior to this. But for those of you that say, I don't have time to meditate, well, finally you get time to meditate. So I think that's one key thing, is putting that time together. Eric, of let's meditate. Let's put some time in to get in touch with what's happening inside of you. So that's one thing I'll talk about. I'd recommend immediately. And when Jack was on, you know, Jack said. Jack said some amazing stuff, like, really thought. You got people really thinking. You know, this is a time we. One of the things actually said is ask, ask, ask. You know, ask for help. Ask other people. Ask people to help you in some way or form. And then I took it, and I said to Jack, jack, let's have fun with the COVID like you were talking about. COVID Covid. Covid. Well, Covid is actually a really good acronym for all of us business owners out there. The C is for commitment. The O is for opportunity. The V is for what you vibrate is what you attract. The I is who are your influences right now. And D is for making decisions. So think about this for your life right now. Covid is the best thing that's probably ever happened to you as long as you use all four, all five of those letters. And the most important one in there. Who are your influences? Like, who's talking into your world right now? Have you got like. For me, when I have challenges in business or I have challenges, things, things come up for me. Guess what? I check in with mentors like yourself. I go, eric, help me. I've got a challenge right now. My emotion is high. My logic's not there anymore. Maybe can you bring me down with some logic and some unemotional attachment to what I'm busy doing that right now. People is really important. Who are you surrounding yourself with. And when you're going for advice, make sure the advice you're asking for. This is one of Jack's real solid comments was make sure the advice you're asking for is from people who've actually done it. You know, so if you're asking your spouse, what do you think of my marketing campaign I'm doing online, and your spouse isn't your biggest buying customer, then why are you asking your spouse? Ask your customers. Ask people out there. You know, that's. Those are some key little nuggets that came up early in the. Early on in the week. And it was super awesome. Like, really getting your head into that game and realizing this. Everything out there is not happening to you. It's happening for you. I'm such a big believer in this. It's maybe make you think of how to redesign your business, maybe how to pivot your business to something new. I have watched people pivot. That's 99% of what I've been doing all week is seeing, watching people, or actually assisting people how to pivot even though they believe they couldn't pivot because they couldn't see what they couldn't see.

Yeah, yeah, it's very true. When we're in that panic state, it's very difficult to see opportunity because all we really can see is the danger. And I think that that's a very important thing to do. You know, one of the crazy metaphors that I often use about this is that. And it comes from an old Jim Rohn expression. You know, Jim used to say, like, if you picked up a book and nothing happened in chapter one, would you even get to chapter two? And you picked. If you. If you got through chapter two and nothing happened, you would never finish that book. Not in a million years. We didn't. We didn't come into this life for it to be easy. We came in for it to actually be challenging. And every now and again, it challenges us just a little further than we'd like in that moment. But I would suggest that that's a much more preferable. That's way that's vastly preferable to not being challenged enough. And so here we are. It's like the video game. If a video game gets too easy, we stop playing it. The parts of the game we enjoy the most are the toughest challenge. The big boss. And here we are, corvid, in a sense, is the big boss. And we got to get through it. So if we can do as you're saying, get the mindsets straight, if we can recognize. And this is a tough part, Colin. I know that there's going to be some people watching and they're going to say, well, yeah, Colin says this is happening for me, but it's killing people. Okay, I get that. I really do. I totally get that. That's a total valid concern. The thing is, is that that's happening all the time anyway. What I mean is that there's always suffering somewhere on earth. And so if you want to distract yourself with that rather than getting on with you and your family, your community, your clients, then let me point out some basic math for you right now. Today, more people would have died in car accidents than have been killed by coronavirus. So far. Absolutely. And I don't. I know. I'm not saying that this isn't a bad thing. I'm just saying pick the suffering to focus on, or instead focus on the practical reality of enjoying your life a great deal right now. Let's go to. You're in your business and you've decided to get your head in the game. So you're going to be. You're going to be the right. You want to find that balance between being fearful and aware and cautious and also striking out for opportunity. There's a balance in there. We don't want to be foolish, but we don't want to be fearful. As an entrepreneur right now, concerned potentially about what's going to happen to sales over the next little while, what are some of the practical steps that somebody could take to really make sure their business is safe? Make sure that their business and their people and their clients are safe?

Okay. I mean, I'll give some key. Some simple examples that we've talked about over the last while, Eric. And I think the key thing that people need to realize is that, you know, let's just say. Let's just say I know you deal a lot with practitioners and different people in the marketplace right now. A lot of people, of course, that are hands on, that cannot touch people right now. They cannot. You know, it might be a massage therapist, a chiropractor, what have you. Here's the challenge, people. I want you to think about this. Let's just say you're in your chiropractic practice or whatever practice you have, and you have one day a week or one day every two weeks where there's not much business coming in and things are super quiet. Most people sit on their butts and do nothing. Here's what's happening right now. The next two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, or whatever the Things are quiet. You just have an extended one day quietness. What you do during this time is so important. So my number one thing, phone your customers. You might be like, Colin, I have 300 customers, I have 500 customers. What the hell else you're going to do for the next three weeks? You know, phone every customer. Deepen the right. Don't book them in or do anything like that. Just deepen your relationship. Hey, Eric, it's Colin Sprake here. I just want to check in with you. And how's things going? How's your family during this time? Are you safe right now? Your customers will be enamored with you. Just phone every customer. I'm not talking about email, I'm talking about phone calls. You know, I've just been with a client and I said, here's what you have to understand. You do such good work. Now this is like your one quiet day every week or whatever that you might have in your business. Just extend it. Because what's going to happen once we get through this? The habits you learn now, you'll take that one quiet day and you'll never, ever have another quiet day in your business. Because what you need to do now is set your business up for success two weeks from now, three weeks from now, because here's what's happening. People are going to go back out and spend money. I said this the most. Morning, Eric. My analogy this morning was there's these floodgates in front of you. And what happens what? There's money piling up behind these floodgates, piling up because no one can spend the money right now, Especially here in Canada where we, most of the time, most of us are in quarantine or in lockdown or whatever you want to call it, state of emergency. But here's the thing. Once those gates open, are you prepared to be flooded with that money? And that's the opportunity that's right in front of you. So be phoning all your. I cannot stress this enough. Phone every single customer. Go back and phone past customers and just do it. You know, I'd like the word check in. Just see how they're doing. How's their family doing?

Add value, add value, add value. Using the example of a chiropractor or a massage therapist or an occupational therapist, not only call them, but here's the thing. You know, you might not be able to give them an adjustment in that moment, but you could certainly give them some basic exercises and stretches that they might be able to do. You might be able to call Them up and you've looked in their phone. You said, you remember. Hey, Colin, I remember you were having that issue with your left shoulder and nothing I can do about that right now. But I want to remind you that if you do some wall sits and, you know, so you could add value at a really high level. I really like that thinking, Colin. That's super sharp. Everybody should be doing that.

Absolutely. Just connect with people. Serve your people that are out there. I mean, this whole week I spent six days and people said, colin, what do you get from this? I'm like, yeah, at the end of the day I might get some bookings, some meetings, but what have you. Remember, it's only three key words, klt. And I want you to realize that every single person that's listening today, people need to know you. Then they like you, and then they'll trust you. And the challenging part for most people right now, you're going on social media and it's become a sales media. Like you want to go to the trust before people have got to know you and like you. So right now it's just serve people. Like I have on my calls with me, I probably have maybe 150 students, but the other people on the two, there's 2000 people or 1200 people on a call on these Zoom webinars with me are not clients of make your mark. Will there be potential in the future? For sure. Just serve people right now. Get. Give your best nuggets away. Give your best stuff away to people and just serve them. Don't just do it, you know, just do everything from your heart and do the right thing. People, please, this is not one time like, how can I sell as much as I can? Right now, it's serve. And if it leads to a sale, take the sale. There's nothing wrong with taking the sale. But first get them to know you like you and then trust you.

You know. You know, Andrea, who runs our company, she said something really important about this, and that is that everybody is at a heightened level of emotion at the moment. And what's funny about emotion is emotion is the glue that causes memories to anchor in and stay. And so if you are the calm in the storm, if you are one of the people that people remember as having guided them through this process, if they remember that you served them, even in the example of you or the chiropractor just simply called and said, here's an exercise you can do, since I can't help you, they're going to remember that. And that's Going to go, like I might say that. What did you say? It's K. Klt.

No luck.

I'm gonna go with KLT L. Because at that next level, there becomes this loyalty, you know, this reciprocity where they're gonna remember you for being the calm in the storm or being the guide that helped them get through. I think that's really sharp. Colin, how about this? You know, within the business right now, you know, people have expenses they're currently dealing with and they may have, as you said, there's a lot of spending that stopped, a lot of retail things, travel is closed, that kind of stuff. What do you recommend to an entrepreneur right now that say, for example, I hate to say it, but they're maybe facing having to do furloughs or layoffs, that sort of stuff. What would you have to say to them?

Yeah, Eric, this is one of the hard ones. And please, people, don't take this as negative. You've got to make decisions. That was, I say the deal of the COVID is you've got to make decisions. And I just did a survey this week, so we had about 1200 people on a webinar and it was 32% of. We did a poll and 32% of people said they need all the information before they make a decision. Here's the challenging part. People out there, and it was only 27% of people said they take action immediately. So overall, it leaves us with nearly 2/3 of people that aren't taking any action. I need all this information. So the one thing for me, for all of you, is I like what I saw recently on one of the social media platforms. There's no days of the week anymore. It's just day. What are we on today day? Is this another day? It's like, because every day there's change. Like, even a week right now is a long time. For us, even a day is a long time. So for all of you out there listening, think about what needs to be done in your business, take decisive action. I'd rather you take action and have a learning experience than do nothing and be paralyzed and then lose everything. Anyways, I go back to my favorite analogy as well, is when you're on a plane, you put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you put it on anyone else. The same thing if you've got employees on board and you need to take action. I can't afford to pay these people. We're very fortunate. In Canada, our government came out yesterday and said they're paying 75% of all salaries of small business owner employees. So that's a huge, huge number. But the big thing is they're doing this kind of stuff for it. But if you haven't got that, you need to take honestly take out your profit and loss statement or have you do it in a spreadsheet or whatever you got, depending on the size of your business, look at your expenses and go, how do I get through this? What happens if a month, maybe two months from now, I haven't got any income coming in? How do I get through this? And just look at all of them and then go back to each one of them. Especially if you've got a lease on a maybe office space that you renting or leasing, go back to your landlord and say, I need a break, or how can I have a break? Or maybe I can get the next two payments off and you can add them on at the end or spread them over 20, 21, or whatever the situation.

Let's go into that. Let's go into that a little bit deeper. So, you know, one of the things we recommended on an early episode here was that it would be a really good idea, both personally and in business to take out a spreadsheet and look at every expense that you have and then really grade them as to is this urgent? You know, like, does this have to happen? Is this important and it may be questionable, or is this a little on the frivolous side? Of course, the first thing to do is to get rid of any of those expenses that are not necessary to what's going on right now. The fastest way to make money in your business is to save it and then the next piece of that. And I really want to make this point. You said it and we went over it so quickly. I want to really slow down for this minute. Negotiate, renegotiate. You're in a different time and place right now. And it's absolutely reasonable to contact suppliers. It's absolutely reasonable to have. Don't do it if you don't need to. If you are in a position and your business is operating, please do not take advantage of this situation to take advantage of others. But if you are really struggling to figure out what's going to happen in your business, be willing to negotiate. Same thing personally. Be willing to reach out to a landlord and say, I need help right now. And I think getting over that pride and being willing to negotiate is really, that's. It's really, really sharp. Thank you for bringing that up. It's important.

Let me add to that too. And I want people to really understand this too, is for sure. Negotiate, ask. Yeah, go and ask for what you want and do what you need at the same time. Please do not put your head in the sand and know that you can, you know, if you've got, on the 1st of April, whatever month coming up, you've got rent due on your property or whatever it might be on this office space you've rented and you cannot afford to pay it. Don't let the first come and then have your landlord chase you. Because here's a challenge. Once they chase you now you're. There's no negotiation. Now, unfortunately, you put your head in the sand. You want them to help you. The way you get people to help you is approach them before time. So my number one thing is look at your. Look at your list. I was joking about this with some other business owners just this week, Eric, but I said to them, yeah, unfortunately, we have lots of revenue and lots of profit in our businesses. We become lazy and less creative, you know, and what's happened right now is this situation for many of us and has made us pivot. Now look at my business and how much I've pivoted in a week. I want to share this with your listeners because in one week, a week ago, Friday, actually a week ago Thursday, so just like nine days ago, I did not do a single webinar. I use Zoom for some of our accountability group meetings, and that's it. And I woke up on Thursday and I said, we better pivot this company. So when you said to me, what did I do? What do we need to do? You need to take quick, decisive action.

And.

And, you know, so I did the webinar. Like, I don't know how well this is going to work. I'm just going to do what I go to. The people that I know can build a webinar for us, our guys, to do all our Facebook ads. You know, drive on your live hotel room events for us and say, can we do an online event? So we worked all the way through the night on Thursday night, woke up Friday morning, the landing page was launched. By Friday evening, we started, you know, doing email outs to our database and then doing some Facebook ads, what have you. By Saturday morning, we had a thousand people registered. By Sunday morning, 2,000 people registered. I'm like, I didn't do a webinar a week ago. You know, all of a sudden I got 2,000 people on a webinar. My business is shifting. You know, my business might shift to a completely new model during this time. So when I say this is happening for me, not to me, I look at this as such an opportune time to pivot our businesses, because lots of times an entrepreneur with money is sometimes more dangerous than an entrepreneur without money. You know, so it's all about being creative right now, but also looking at that spreadsheet or balance, that income statement, going, what are frivolous, as you said, is spot on. What are these. What are some of those expenses I have that I don't really need right now? Not just get rid of them, but sometimes it is employees and how you look after them. I mean, I had to lay a few people off because I was just like, this is what I need to do. And I took out. Took decisive action two weeks ago. You know, it's like, I saw this coming. I'm like, we better make some decisions. And I made quick decisions. I could tell you was the right thing to do. I just believed in my gut it was the right thing to do. And I also went to trusted mentors because I wasn't sure if my gut feel was a true gut feel that I needed to do it, or was it just a high emotion panic mode. So I went to some people that were my mentors around me and I said, listen, this is what I want to do in the Nicholas. Absolutely the right thing to do. I was like, okay, my gut is correct. I wasn't sure if it was my gut or my emotion that was talking to me at the time. And I think there's lots of people living in that right now. It's like I have this gut feel, but I'm not sure. It's coming from a high emotional base and my guts just sitting there going, whatever it needs to do. And that's got this funny feeling in it. So that's so good.

It's so good to have sounding boards around you. You know, you do need to have that. Those. Those peers or mentors or coaches around you that can. That you can bounce those things off. Because sometimes it's hard to know where your thinking is. I was facing the same thing. You know, we've got quite a big team. All of our live events are, as yours, gone. That's a big chunk of our revenue in any given year. And I'll tell you what, the very first thing I did is I laid myself off. And what I mean by that is I went to the management team of our company and I told them that for the foreseeable future, over the course of the next 90 days, I require no profit distributions, no salary, no fees for speaking, none of that stuff. So everything that I do for the business that's revenue generating goes to the business. I laid myself off first, and then everybody else has been placed on a sort of socialist work to rule campaign where we generate income and try to preserve the jobs of everybody that we can. And fortunately, because we're based in Canada, and there are many times when I'm proud of being Canadian, and one of them is right now, it really does appear that Canada is leading the way in terms of how to support its population through this, and that's probably going to help us a great deal as well. So I think you're right. Decisions do have to be made, and decisiveness, if it's far away, if you can't quite get to it, then pick up the phone and call the person that can help you, seek out the help that you would have. Colin, how about this? I've heard everything from business mentors saying, don't do anything new. Just stick with what works, identify what doesn't work. Stop doing that and stick with what works and don't do anything new. But then at the same point in time, I'm looking around going, wow, there are new things happening right now. There are, if you take a look. I was reading the other day that Zoom that we're on right now, I'm so annoyed. I tried to buy a bunch of Zoom shares about 10 days ago, no, two weeks ago, and my stupid investment account was locked because of some tax filing thing that wasn't right. I missed it. But Zoom is right now valued at more than all of the airlines combined, all the big American airlines combined. Like, it has completely changed. So there's clearly a lot of new going on. So now let's talk about this, because isn't it entirely possible that somebody just gets caught chasing shiny objects all this time and that's really not the answer. They want to look for the opportunities, but how do they choose? Where do they put their time and their investment to really select wisely, do you think?

Wow, what an interesting question. So I think for me, Eric, it's not necessarily maybe new in more. When we pivot, we pivot according to what's complementary to what we're doing already. Okay, so going out and doing something completely new right now, maybe away that's not complementary or away from what you're doing, that's virtually starting a new business right now. And you can do that. I mean, I think there's opportunity in that as well, you know, I think there's opportunity, you know, for many people. I look at myself as an example is, you know, this is the first six weeks I will have at home consecutively in over 10 years, you know, Me too.

Me too.

I look at the beauty behind it. I'm like, wow. I maybe have a new business model. I pivoted from live events in rooms to online events so far. And yes, I'll go back to a certain amount of the live events in rooms, but you know what? I'm starting to realize that we're in 2020, we're in the 21st century. And, you know, I think even for myself, I've been doing this for 15 years, and it's the same. It's been. My model's worked, it's profitable, making money. I'm excited. Things are happening. Yeah. And I bought and actually I drank my own Kool Aid. You know, I'm like, oh, you know, people love to come to live events in hotel rooms. People love the interaction in a hotel room. Online doesn't give you the same experience. All my own stories and that own Kool Aid at the end of day, if you want to call it that, And I sit back and I go, I was forced to make these decisions, and, you know, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. So I think you're going to. Something completely new right now might not be the best thing, because we know we're going to come out of this. You know, I know that if you're a hairdresser, you know, people, once we get out of this, you're going to. You're going to be cutting hair. You should be open like 18 hours a day because you'll be cutting more hair than you've ever cut.

And.

And any money you've lost right now, you think you've lost, you'll make up in a heartbeat, you know, that's why I'm saying, phone all your customers, because when you do open up, our hair is not going to go somewhere else. I mean, I don't want to go home and have Gabby cut my hair or my daughter's, because, I mean, I only have a little bit left. I don't want any more of it gone. But the key thing for me, though, is just looking for something complimentary. Maybe you're talking about value. What can we do to go and do videos? Maybe if I'm a chiropractor, you know, jump on and say, hey, that guy's got that one with a sore shoulder. How can I do a little video for you on some stretches that can serve you.

So on it, and I think that is the balance is that new is okay as long as that new is. New is related to what was old. In other words, you're not, you're not reinventing everything, but you're rejigging to be able to take your existing passions, your existing value propositions and maybe present them and deliver them in different ways. And I think that's a very, very exciting pivot. We, you know, we're watching the opportunities around us. I mentioned to you before we went live that we rejigged one of our webinars and instead of selling one of our live events two, three weeks ago, I just saw it. I was like, no way, we're not doing that. And all of a sudden we shifted it to an online event and completely sold it out. It's a phenomenally successful launch of a product we weren't even going to launch for another year. At the same time, my team and my fans have been pushing me for two years to launch a podcast and a YouTube show and I couldn't really be bothered. And all of a sudden, well, here I am and this is probably our 12th episode in a week that we've taped. And we've got the podcast launching shortly. So there's a lot of opportunity to pivot, taking your existing passions and skills and helping people. In fact, also watch for trends. Right now, one of the trends I've been watching, because it's important to me is that we saw what was going on initially with Corvid coming into Europe and it was affecting older people more. But now we realize that it isn't really about older people. It's about people with pre existing health conditions. And for example, one of those pre existing health conditions is diabetes. It's dealing with blood sugar management problems or obesity. They are really in a significant disproportionate amount of danger compared to everybody else. And so we see that and go, wow, isn't that funny? We just finished writing this book called Post Diabetes, talking about recovering from it. And we have WildFit, which obviously helps people reverse that. And all of a sudden we're looking at this going, wow, we can really serve these people. Because there's going to be a huge demand when all the data comes out. People are going to go, I don't want to live this way anymore. So I think you're right. Let's not talk about full on reinvention, but let's talk about like recarving, you know, taking what we're good at taking our passions and figuring out new ways to add value.

Very much so.

What do you feel like? I know that very often you and I both teach a lot of principles around business systemization and all that kind of stuff, making sure that things are proceduralized, getting to the point where the entrepreneur is not so busy. It strikes me that a lot of our clients, both MineFromBusinessFreedom.com and yours from make youe Mark, are probably violating that rule, just like you and I are.

Right.

Doing a lot. So bearing in mind that we're creating the habits that are going to go forward and form who we are when this is over, give me your thoughts on advice that we can have as entrepreneurs where we're in the thick of it right now, but we don't want to create the habit of working so hard. We want to create the habit of having a sense of entrepreneurial freedom. Give me some feedback on that.

I think, Eric, the way I've been looking at everything I've been doing so far, so I'll share this with you, some of my journey that I've been on is that, number one is like, be very careful launching a whole bunch of stuff people. Because, you know, there's a thing between being, you know, busy being busy and busy being productive, you know, And I think a lot of people right now might be busy being busy. Like, I'm looking at everything I do right now. Is this something I can carry forward with me long term? Number one. So that's probably, number one, the most important. Can I carry this forward with long term? And number two, is it something that I can systematize, monetize and you know, carry on, you know, kind of. And maybe also give me more freedom from the business. In other words, you know, be more at home. You know, I never forget getting on a plane recently and one of the guys like, hey man, I'm part of the super elite club of Air Canada, whatever. I'm like, oh, that just tells me how much time you don't spend at home. You know, you tell me you spend more time on the plane than you do with your family. The guy that's looked at me is like, that's a really sad way to look at it. It says not a sad way. It's the truth, guys. You know, I think the Bill Gates said it the best. The world is now coming together. We're going back from a me world to maybe more of a we world where it's really more community based, also supporting each other, helping each Other, like, we're doing today, helping your community online and helping in any way that I can. But I think the key thing for me is with where all of this is going for all of us is really looking at all the different things we're doing right now. Be careful. Just getting yourself busy, doing busy stuff. Like, I'm looking at this for myself right now, too. Is. Is this sustainable? Number one is the thing that's going to help me get where I want to be. Number two is, is it sustainable? And I am very excited. I mean, I've spent more time at home than I have in a long time, and I'm super excited to be spending more time at home. So it's really looking at what. Honestly, I think it comes back to, what do you want to do? Like, I love my family. I love Gabby, I love my two daughters, Ruby and jd, and I want to be at home more. So why do I want to be on the road so much? Why do. So this. This change in the world is, like, making me rethink what my own values are, like, what's important to me. Like, and I wake up in the morning and I go downstairs and I see my beautiful girls, and I'm like, life is awesome. So I think that's what it comes back to. Truly, Eric, it's like, yes, you can be busy and you can get. To me, being a workaholic is just a really bad habit. You know, it's like an addiction at the end of the day. So it's really coming down to, if I asked your family, what would you want more of? Like, we don't want more money. Can we just have more time with you? And that's for most of us. So I think it's really coming down to, you know, why do you even do what you do on a daily basis? Yes. Serve your community, serve your tribe, serve your clients, but really, at the end of the day, the people that support you the most also want to be served. So I think that's also waking us up a little bit.

Yeah, it's funny, of course, I'm in a bit of a different situation because I've been. I'm in, you know, I'm in lockdown on my own. And I'm really aware of that. And I'm getting some of those same perspectives as a result of not being with them. You know, it's. It's really easy to notice that, you know, this thing or that thing could be annoying in the world, but, you know, in a normal life, you go, oh, that's noisy or this or that. And I'll tell you what's much more annoying than any of those potentially annoying things is the deafening silence of them not being here. You know, that's. That's another feeling. But in terms of my own experience of, you know, like, not have. Not traveling like, I. They've just told us the government here is shutting down until May 31st. So arguably, I'm going to be on my own for another two months. And what's really interesting about that is I'm not afraid of that. And I think had you said that to me a month ago, I'd have been. I'd been like, what do you mean? I'd have been freaking out. Like, what did I do wrong? Why did the judge sentence me like this? And now I'm looking at it going, okay, the family part of that is horrifying to me because we are separated. But the reality of not having to be on the road, not having to travel, and I don't know how I'll bounce in the end because I really do enjoy that aspect of my life as well. So it'll be interesting to see this great pattern interrupt and how it influences the way we all choose to live going forward.

Absolutely. Let me share one thing with you, which I love about you and who you are as a human being, and I trust the listeners will really get this, or the viewers out there will get this, is even though you're in an adverse, call it, quotation mark situation, you've taken that Chinese definition of crisis and you've gone for the opportunity. Like, now I can build out my podcast. Now I can build out these things. I have so much time on my hands. You could have crawled into the corner and gone, oh, my life's so miserable and I'm so sad and jump on the phone every day and, you know, with leaves and cry. My whole life so miserable and everything else. Or you've just taken the whole thing gone. There's opportunity in this. I have no option. It's here. I might be locked down for two months, and this one needs to be. And, people, that's what I want everyone that's watching today to realize. The opportunity is here for us. Opportunity is here for us to take. You know, it is about getting our emotion down and getting our logic back and, you know, really getting on track with things. But I commend you on what you're doing because you've got this opportunity in front of you.

Yes.

It's not enjoyable at the end of the day. Not having family around and what have you. But the thing is, you cannot change what you cannot change. You can just move forward.

And, you know, it starts with gratitude. I keep making this comment that, you know, my gratitude list starts with the timing of this event. Thank God it didn't happen 10 years ago, you know, 10 years ago. And I keep joking, like, if you want to know what this would have been like 10 years ago, just go unplug your router, you know, because sure, we had Internet 10 years ago, but it wasn't anything like we've got today, the speed of it and the, and the services that are available and so on. And it starts right there for me. And then the gratitude list continues to grow. You know, I'm very fortunate in a place where there's mangoes and papayas falling off the trees around, you know, and so I'm really grateful for all of that. And so, yeah, you know, actually I think I might, at the risk of sharing a story I shared on a previous episode, but because you're, you and I are fellow fellow South Africans, I was in the Kruger park about, I don't know, 10 years or so ago and we were out walking, you know, walking in the park and the way they do that. Have you ever been on one of those walks in the Kruger?

Absolutely love it. Done them many times.

So, you know, they always put the guides two at the front. And I always thought that's a bit weird. You'd think one at the front, one at the back. But it turns out 99.99 in market research, 99.99% of incidents happen at the front. So they don't need a gun at the back. And in any event, we're walking along and we just find ourselves in the middle of a hurricane herd of buffalo. Like, I'm talking 300 head, like. And we're just, how did this happen? They just kind of walked around us. And then a couple of the old bulls got a bit ornery about the whole thing and they didn't like us very much and they started chasing us at a soft jog. So now the guides tell us to run out. Normally the rules are never run in the Kruger park, right? No, they're telling us to run out and the guides are at the back because that's where the danger is. And there's this guy at the front and Colin, he's running out, looking backwards, right? He's running out, looking at the buffalo, watching the buffalo running out. We're in the Kruger park. There are elephants and Snakes and lions and leopards and trees and thorn bushes and big gullies because we're in this area with these big river gullies. And he's running without looking where he's going. He's so busy focused on the fear that he can't. And that's what we were talking about before. When you get stressed out and fearful, logic disappears, empathy disappears, intelligence drops down. And that's what happened to him. And I shouted at him, I was like, look ahead. And that's what I want everybody to do right now. Look ahead. Sure. Glance in the rear view mirror every now and again. Yeah, sure. But look ahead. Keep an eye on the opportunities in front of you where you can add value to people. Keep your eye on what's ahead because there is a significant opportunity for personal growth and business growth at this point. Colin, time with you is always valuable and always fun. But I have to say, some of the just, you know, basic solid, sensible stuff you're sharing with business owners is really great. How can people get a hold of you? You know, how do they find you? I mean, I know, but you tell them.

Yeah, I think the easiest way is directly through our website@mymsuccess.com so mym for make your mark mymsuccess.com and you know, it's, that's the easiest way to get hold of us. There's a contact us page, there's a whole bunch of different things. You always get hold of me on Twitter or Facebook. You just search my name and you can find me easily. Colin Sprake. You can see it there in the bottom of the zoom and you can actually easily dispel it out. And you'll find me super easily anywhere on the social media or on the Internet because my name is pretty damn unique. So really cool. I'm very advantage probably very much like yourself, buddy.

Yeah, well, my name is really great as long as people can spell it. There's a few too many vowels, spikes a little more straightforward. But listen, Colin, again, thank you very, very much for joining with us today. I really appreciate it and I'm looking forward to the day that we can occupy the same space again. And I am really seriously dreaming about my next Kruger park trip. And I know that you and I have talked for a long time about organizing one for a very special group of our friends. I think it's time, we've got some time to do some planning. So when you've got through all those calls you got to deal with, let's have a let's have a future fantasy planning session of a Kruger park trip.

I'd love to, brother. You know what? It's time. It's long, long overdue.

Sounds good. Colin, thanks very, very much. Have a fantastic rest of your weekend.

You too, my friend. Thank you for the time as well. And to all the listeners and viewers. Have a great weekend as well.

Sa.