Former Prime Minister Sir John Key ON How to Build Wealth & Influence

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Life on Purpose. My name is James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself.

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You are in for a real treat. So put your feet up and enjoy this intimate interview I had with Sir John Key, former Prime Minister of New Zealand. The interview is held in Queenstown, New Zealand in a live setting. John was a special guest of mine this year at my Leaders Mastermind event. If you'd like to learn a little more about how to join the Leader's Mastermind, please head over to my website, www.jjlochlan.com mastermind. Members of my most recent mastermind included CEOs of software companies, property investors, financiers, startups, and professional rugby player Sam Whitelock. So head over and check it out. But for now, enjoy the.

John, I'd like to welcome you down to Queenstown.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, glad to be here.

This is the leaders mastermind 2021 and we've got leaders from all different backgrounds all around New Zealand.

Yeah.

And today's all about listening to you around what you did as one of the country's greatest leaders. So, John, I'd love to ask you, you know, what is your definition of leadership?

Ultimately, it's achieving the outcomes and the vision that you have for whatever you're doing. Because leadership could be of a scout pack, or it could be of the country, or it could be of a business organization or a sporting team or, you know, there are many different forms an organization or entity can take, including just yourself, leadership of your own life. So I think it's ultimately about what am I trying to achieve and how can I make that possible. And more often than not, that just does involve a lot more than one person. And so I think it's a plan for putting together how you're going to motivate people to achieve the outcomes you want and the results you want.

And in your time as a leader, obviously as pm, but then working now in a lot of boards, you get to rub shoulders with some amazing leaders. What would you say are some of the core principles, key principles of leadership?

Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is they always sort of say it's a bit like when you take a ship out from harbour, you've got to know where you're going. So I think the first point is, how would you define success? And can you write down what the definition of success is? Because in a lot of companies, when you go in there and you say, okay, tell me what. Tell me what success is, right, they. They can't actually write down. Or if you ask 20 people in the organization, they have a very different definition of that. And if they don't know where they're going, they know what that really looks like. How will they even know if they've actually got there? And how will you know what. What they, you know, sort of stuff strategy is? And our son, he's 26, and so he's got degrees in property and finance, and he worked at Jardens for a couple of years and the equity desk, and then went and did the big one year oe, unfortunately, just before COVID actually, and then he was going to actually go to Los Angeles. He had a job in finance in Los Angeles. And I said to him, what do you want to do? And he said, actually, I really want to be a property developer. I want to live in Auckland. I think I want to live there for next year. My life, you know, 50 years, something. And I think conceptually I can do really well in that. And so I say, okay, well, if you come back, you have to go away and think about what that looks like. And then if you want to, we'll back you, you know, good enough resources to make that happen. So anyway, so he came back and he spent months actually, and came back and said, here's the model of what I want to do and how it's going to work. And it actually worked out really well. And I said to him, okay, you know, you have to set up a little company. And so he did that. It's called MTK Capital, because Max Tim Key. So it's all good. And I said to him, what's the vision statement for the company? He just looked at me, oh, Jesus, you've been too long in the boardroom. And I said, no, no, what's the vision statement? He goes, I don't have one. I go, when you get one, I'll think about whether we're going to give you some money. And anyway, but Tayote lady came back and then we sort of panel beaded this thing and I said to him, the vision statement. Well, in the end, the vision statement we broadly agreed on was we're going to buy and develop houses that we would like to own and other people want to own. And you sort of sit and you go, okay, well, that's pretty simple. And they go, yeah, this. But we've looked at about three or four sites in the last six months and I've said to them, does it meet the vision statement? Do we really want to own that? Do we really? And he goes, yeah, yeah, but we can make money on it. I said, mate, yeah, we can make money on it today, but by the way, everything we do is time delayed. So, like in a year and a half it's going to come out of the ground and be finished or whatever. And so are you really sure? And we turned down things that we thought because they just didn't fit what we wanted. So I think. And for companies, it's easy to sit there and say, well, it's all about profit, but is it really? I mean, you know, it's also in the modern world we live in, about the reputation of the organization and whether it fits with a whole bunch of things. Do you even have a climate policy or. I might even agree with some of the things. But ultimately you do have to have a broader view. So I think firstly, it's about where you're going. I think the second thing with leadership is really clarity, really, of not only where you're going, but I think some sort of consistency about the messaging you have. I think it doesn't matter if you work for people that are massively volatile, if they're always volatile, because at least you go, oh, yeah, he's just in a shitty mood today. But if. If you're the sort of person, like, I'm really quite calm, like it takes awful. You just never want to be around me if I'm not in the right mood because it happens so infrequently, it just won't really happen. Generally, I just let stuff wash off me. But if you can't be like that and then have every third Thursday, we're having a meltdown because, you know, it's very hard for people to work around that, which sort of leads you to the next bit, which is ultimately the team, you know, And I think I was really Lucky as Prime Minister. And yeah, sure, you make your own luck, but the luck was also created because we had Bill and Stephen and Paula and, you know, just a million other people, Wayne Ingalls and my chief staff who most people wouldn't know. And that's what comes through when you read Obama's book, you know, it's, yeah, sure, he's the greatest orator, you know, probably the world's produced in a very long time and ye had a vision for what he wanted a modern America to look like, but actually underneath it all had this cadre of people that were in the sanctum of his team and like I had when I was there for, you know, really 10 years, leave of the party, they never left, you know, and so I think that's a lot of what it has and I think just the last thing is you constantly have to be evolving and creating yourself. It doesn't mean that you always have to throw everything out and it always has to change. But we live in a world that is constantly changing, like. So I'm chairman of Anz and do you really think banking services is going to look like it looks today? It's not. I mean, the reason we close branches is no one goes there. Not because we're trying to be annoying, it's because, you know, it's not just people in this audience, but it's. Everybody gets up in the morning and says, I don't want to go down the bloody branch and work out what my bank balance is or actually see my bank manager if I want to buy a house or anything else. Actually, everything they want to do is digital. So just to give you an example, at Anz, people go onto the AnzGoMoney, their digital app, twice a day on average, sometimes three times. They go into the Internet, their laptop, twice a week, they go into a branch once a year and that's usually to get foreign exchange. We'll cash a cheque and now we're getting rid of checks and we're not even getting much in foreign exchange, so you're never going to come in and see us.

Wow.

That kind of thing. I would, yeah, I love that.

And in terms of visionary, so I think all great leaders are great visionaries. And when we look back to when you were a child, you had a vision of around eight or nine years old, maybe younger, to make a million dollars. Mum, and I'm going to be Prime Minister. Where did that vision come about? What inspired you?

Well, I think firstly, Mum was a really interesting woman, actually, so I kind of have a.

Someone who speaks a very unusual backgrounds. So Mum was an Austrian Jewish refugee. So she was born in Austria in 1922. Jewish family. Her father died when she was about 15 and when mum was 16, the Nazis were invading Austria. And the way the world worked then was that the way it works today is if you want to come to Ireland like I come to New Zealand. Okay, and you're Irish, all good. And say you had a brother and they were the only two kids, right? And your brother was here in New Zealand. And then you wanted to bring your parents out, for instance. That would be allowed under New Zealand rules. And the reason is that's family reunification. And the nucleus of the family would be deemed to be in New Zealand because both of the siblings are in New Zealand. Right. So that's not how it worked in 1938 in the UK, which was. It was about whether you were married. If you were married, you could sponsor someone in. And so Mum had an aunt called Lottie. And Lottie literally paid a British soldier to marry her so that she could sponsor mum and her brother. And the rest of the family wouldn't come. And all of mum's wider family, with the exception of her mother, went to the concentration camp. So they were the only two to get out. And then, you know, Mum met Dad and they came out to New Zealand. It was a very long story. But when dad was. When I was about to 5 or 6, dad just had this massive heart attack and dropped down dead. So I don't know him at all. So I was really raised by him. I have no memory at all of that. And I think it was really through Mum, who sort of. She was a combination of lots of different things, but very determined woman. So she would just say, look, your life is going to change in all sorts of ways that you don't know. I never thought I'd go to England. I couldn't speak a word of English. I always thought I'd be well off. The family was well off when they were in Austria. Couldn't get the money out, obviously. And, you know, I never thought I'd be raising three kids without a husband. But you know, guess what? That happened all these different things. And so she just sort of said, look, you gotta focus on the things that they can never take away from you. Which is sort of education really is one of those most things. But she said also in the end, you know, you get out of life what you put into it. And if you really put enough into it, you'll make your own Luck.

Not everything will work out. You won't succeed at everything, but you'll never succeed if you don't give it a go. And you'll never succeed if you don't give it 100%. And so I kind of thought, well, in the end, yeah, I don't want money just for the sake of money, but money's all about what it can bring for you. Mum always used to say to me, money won't bring happiness. And I always used to go, sure as hell helps.

And it does. The reality is that if you've got financial independence, you don't feel constrained and you don't feel frightened in the way that so many people do when they can't pay the bills. So that was important. But I mean, obviously I was just always politically interested. And I think what motivates you when you're 9 versus when you're 40, which was Iran is different. But I just always thought, in my kind of adult years, New Zealand was an incredible country that underperformed. And I think I just sort of thought I could make a difference. And I think you have to have. Truthfully, every politician has an A type personality and has an ego, and if they don't, they probably shouldn't be there because you really need that to bounce and deflect all the negative stuff that comes at you. Really?

Absolutely. And so you went away to North America for quite a bit.

Yeah, well, I went to. What happened was I initially, when I came out, actually, I was an accountant, so I did accounting and economics and then I started in the financial markets when they deregulated in 1987, basically, and sort of spent eight years in New Zealand running Bankers Trust, really, in the end. And then I just decided, look, I'd really outgrown New Zealand. So I went to London, went to Singapore, actually, to run Asian foreign exchange for Merrill lynch, who were sort of huge but useless in foreign exchange, but absolutely huge. And I got out there for about three months and I had an Australian boss. The guy was crazy, actually. He was really nice guy. He's mad and he comes down. Turns out he had sacked the guy who ran Global Foreign Exchange. So this guy ran a number of businesses and he came down, he had dinner with me and he said, I've got rid of Sons. I don't think he's up to the chart job. And I said, I'm not surprised. He goes, why? I go, because this operation sucks. It's so bad. I'm thinking about going back to Auckland. Honestly, people got clueless and he Goes, if you're so clever, I'll send you to London to run Global Foreign Exchange. Then I went, okay. He goes, if you don't make it in 12 months, I'll sack you. I said, don't worry, sunshine. If I don't make it in 11 months, I'll quit. We'll just get out in front. And we went there, and that business was making about $200 million a year, which for Merrill was not a lot of money. It sounds like a lot, but it wasn't a lot. Trying to run the US and in the first year I ran it, we made a billion. And we never made under a billion after that. But we completely changed the business. So we went in there and said, okay, we're doing this and we should be doing this, and we've got to evolve to this and this. And so. And we built. Amazing again, amazing group of people that came and worked for us who wanted to have Merrill lynch on their cv, like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley Blood in this moving.

And you were relatively young when you.

Went and did that.

So how did you know to pivot? How did you know? Like, hey, I want to take it this way. I'm seeing what's going on there. It's not really working for us. Go from 200 million to a billion. Substantial in a very short time. So how did you know what to do? Or was it hit and miss, trial and error?

No, well, it wasn't really hit. It was a bit technical getting into the boring details. But the fundamentals of the investment banks in those days, where they were price takers. So if they had a big client, because we ultimately, we had massive hedge fund clients who we supported, if they came in, like George Soros or Tiger or whatever, and came in and said, I want to buy $500 million against the yen, we would ring up Citibank and say, give us a price. And that doesn't make sense because those clients know you're doing that. And so why don't they just go straight to Citibank? That's the argument. Now. They can't always get the credit and things. So there are some reasons why they come to you. But we got a fraction of their business. So we used to look around and we were the number one in every product category. Like, we were the biggest hedge fund manager, we were the biggest equity player. And so we were like number 25 in foreign exchange. And so I'd sit there and go, well, it doesn't make sense that we have the best relationship in the world. With all these people from Boeing to George Soros, but we don't get their business. And the reason why they get their business, they don't think we're any good. So to do that we have to have liquidity. So I went to London. When I first went to London, the first month I was there, I thought, well, we've just got to change. We've got to make ourselves look like Deutsche bank or Citibank and we've got a different that. And so I went out for lunch with the guy called Lloyd Blankvine who ran Goldman Sachs. Lloyd, you know, some people think I've done all right. Geez, Lloyd's really. If the definition is making billions, then Lloyd's done bloody well. So he was the managing partner of Goldman, you know, actually right through the GFC and everything else. Amazing guy, Lloyd Blanklin. And I had lunch with him and I said, we're going to go into bank and you should come with us. And he said I'm not coming with you. And I said, well, why not? And he said, because we don't need to. I said, of course, you need to work out, you know, work out what's happening. You guys taking all this risk you can't get out of things, you know, captured by these people. We're going to kill them and, you know, we're going to take these guys apart. We are their customers and when we're not there, we're going to dominate. And he said, oh, I don't know. I said, oh, don't be such a scaredy cat, for God's sake. Anyway, worked on for about a month and eventually said, okay, if you go, I'll go. And Morgan Stanley came with us and within about two years we were dominating the world rankings and it was pretty logical. And so we went to being from 25 to, I think, number four in the world in effects and just huge volume. So it was a bit like, you know, we could work out what to do. I mean, I'd love to tell you we were rocket science, but it was a bit like when I became Prime Minister. I mean, I came in PM in 08. It was pretty bloody obvious that China was going to be the biggest economy in the world. You didn't have to be that smart to say if we have a good economic relationship with them, we can underpin a lot of jobs and make a lot of money. So I went eight times when I was prime minister and we had a great relationship with them and, you know, it was part of what got us through the GFC Amazing.

I've always looked at you as someone who takes a common sense approach. You know, there's no bs, there's no funny games. You always take a common sense approach. Whether you're being interviewed by someone who's asking awkward questions, you can write back at them. So relationships and building, relationships and rapport have obviously been a key part of your success. So do you have any tips for anybody out there, anybody in the audience here, on how to build genuine, authentic relationships?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies on all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in in the show notes.

Well, I think the first thing is that it's like a marriage, you know, you have to work on it. You know, it's lovely to assume that it's all going to be perfect and it's all going to work out all the time. But like any, like any relationship, it goes through varying different stages of development. I think that's true when you work with people. So people ultimately have to find, feel like part of the team and they have to feel valued. And I think often companies forget to do the little things. Actually, builders do it pretty well. They have a roof shout and they buy lots of beers on a Friday afternoon and they have a barbecue and, you know, they do quite a good job, actually. I think not all of them, but obviously some of them do. And I think companies often lose sight of that, you know, and I think so. I think one thing is just having a sense of it. And in fact, I signed a case, Carolyn, when she picked me up at the airport that. And this is not something I've said to Max, but he's obviously been around me so much because when you're in the political world, you live like this. But he has a bunch of different gangs of builders that work for him and he's got about five or six sites that are on the guy at the moment and he wanted to show me one of them yesterday because we were just working on something, so I said, oh yeah, let's go. So we went out and it was all good. So we wander in and must have been about eight or nine guys on the site and he went over to every one of them and I've never told him to do this. He's went over and he went, hi, Billy. Hi Judas. Hi Thing, you know, you know, blah, blah. Two of them, the guys I didn't know introduced me to them. He said, you know, why is it over there? What's happening here? What was the problem here? Have you sorted this out? Is there anything else you need? And when we left, he went around and said to all of them, you know, have a nice weekend, hope you're all good. So it's just little things that sometimes we sort of, sort of forget. And yeah, like there's a, quite a. Quite a. I think it's true. But years ago and if you look at management sort of studies that we saw, if someone comes in to resign to you and you talk them out of leaving, I think something like 3/4 of them leave within 12 months. Even when they say yes and stay. Because there's a real. If you get to the point where you walking in to resign, there's something going on that's means you're not sure and you often get talked out of it. But then you actually realize in the end when you wake up a few days later, I think it's a bit like being in a relationship that's not working and the girlfriend starts crying and then you say, oh, okay, yeah, I didn't really mean it. You see us in the last.

Totally.

So.

I think that's one really important thing. I think in the end also, I always reckon you've just got to get the best people. I don't compromise and I always trust my instincts. I always say to Max, mate, trust your instincts. Whatever you. The only advice I gave Bill Englishman when I retired and he became Prime Minister said, whatever you think, trust your instincts. And there are people in my life I've met where I just thought, I don't trust that. And I can't tell you what's wrong. And maybe I'll get it wrong sometimes and miss an opportunity, but I'd rather miss an opportunity that then go against my instincts. Because this is the problem. As soon as you go against your instincts and something goes wrong, you start second guessing and you never really believe in it. And if you look at like, you know, you've got Sam Whitelock around, go ask Richie McCrory and those guys, most of what they did actually, was training the All Blacks to get themselves in position of what it would feel like if they were leading by one point or down by one point with 10 minutes to go on a World cup final, which, by the way, is what happened in 2011. And he said to me after that game, he said, I kind of enjoyed it. And I said, seriously? He goes, no, I kind of just. I trained for so long to get myself in that mental space, but when I was there, I kind of liked it. And I think it's a bit like people that. It's a funny thing when you're in. When you're in a highly pressured environment. I think it'd be like that for a lot of sports people. Part of it is that sheer fear, fear of running out and, oh, God, if it all goes wrong. But then part of it is you feed off that and you love it, you know? So I think you've got to. You've really got. Whatever you do, you have to have the best people that you back and hopefully they'll work out. And if they don't, you gotta change it.

I love that. And so when you go back into Prime Minister mode and you're dealing with some major crisis, because I think back what you were dealing with, you walked into a GFC and then Christchurch earthquake. So when you're managing crisis, which all the guys in the audience here are managing crisis weekly with different business things and personal things, what's your approach to managing crisis? So when emotions are high and you're feeling it, heart rate's rising, the pressure's on, you got to make a decision. Do you have a process you go through to make that decision?

I don't know if I have a process, but I have a way I know that I deal with. I mean, it's not as probably almost as sophisticated as saying it'll be this and this and this. It just happens. But. Well, one of the things is, I do think actually, on balance, if you can be calm, that's really important because I just wonder, you know, how good a decision are you really going to make if you're yelling and screaming? You know, there are a few sports stars, the sort of John McEnroe's of the world, where it's been part of the Persona and it's kind of worked. But as a general rule, I would say you kind of need to be calm to make the right decisions. I think the second thing you have to realize is, okay, worry about the things you can control. So I never worry about stuff I can't control. I just go, well, I can't control that. So I mean, you know, anything might happen, but that's not my issue. I'll just worry about the things that are within, you know, and then I think the next thing is, what are the things that really matter? So, like I tell you, in political sense, there's not so much in a crisis, but in a political sense this is what matters. The economy, law and order, health and education, they are the only things people vote on. I don't care how much you tell me it's. Yep, there were some single issue voters that worry about gay rights or climate change or something. Very few of them, largely they worry about, do I have a job? Is grandma going to be OK when she goes to hospital? Will I be safe if I walk down the street at night? You know, will my kids get decent education? They are the things people worry about. And so companies I find spend, and I'm involved in one company at the moment, which. And I was really giving the CEO hell the other day because I said, you, mate, are spending way too much time on shit that doesn't matter and way too little time on the stuff that does matter. So I'll tell you what does matter and I'll tell you stuff to stop doing. If you don't do it, I'm going to change you because you just, you've got no focus. And so I think you've got to have that kind of determination, say, what is the stuff that really, really matters? And the other last thing I'd just say is you really need to be flexible and dexterous. And you know, because one thing happens in a crisis when you certainly when you're prime ministers, you would think they have perfect information and they don't. Like, I see Jacinda getting up half time on this COVID 19 stuff and sometimes you can't answer the question question and people are yelling and screaming, but I kind of think, yeah, well, I kind of know why she can't answer the question because they haven't told her the answer. Like they just don't know. They don't know what's happening. And actually in a modern world where the media are everywhere, you know, they're ubiquitous and they have, everyone has a mobile phone, they're all filming things and blah, blah, blah, you know, it's happening faster than the officials can cope with. But I think what happens is, I think in the end you have to make a decision and you have to back that decision. Whatever that is. And I reckon you back it till you're not backing it and then if you have to change, you change. But if the decision that I'm doing xyz, I mean, we went into Christchurch and we realised very quickly, look, there were tens of thousand businesses that couldn't get into town. We, you know, we couldn't get into their offices. There were 60,000 people that were employed by them. There's no way they were going to pay the wages. And if they're under 20 employees, at least they didn't have business continuity insurance. So we just sat there between Jerry Brownlee, Bill and myself and Stephen Joyce and we said, okay, we're just going to pay everybody for 12 weeks and we're going to pay them this amount of money. And the officials just, treasury just looked at us and said, you've got to be joking. We've got to go through this process and that process. Well, tell what you got to be joking. This is the way we're doing it. And if we hadn't done that, those businesses would have died. And look, my entire time I was Prime Minister.

Post the earthquake, I pretty much went to Christchurch every week and every week when I walked down the street, someone would come up to me and say, they still do it now. When I go to Christchurch, they go, you saved my business. And that was the basis of what Jacinda used for COVID 19 response. And yeah, there's nothing miraculous in the way about what we did, but we just knew that we needed to do and it was the speed at which we did it. But if it wasn't working, we would have changed it. But I think you have to really, I think about them, you just have to, like I say, trust your instincts. Back the decision. What's really important, what isn't important. I remember at one point there was all these rows about, I don't know, some stupid stuff about were there enough toilets between different portable toilets in different places. And I just remember saying to Bill, geez, you reckon that's the big stuff or do you reckon that's that? You know, 187 people have died and by the way, we've got all these other things going on and when are people actually going to be able to get back into their offices? And so you will just take a bit of cop, a bit of stuff from John Campbell and he'll get over it. Yeah, move on, move on. I love it.

I hope you're enjoying the conversation with.

Sir John so far.

There's so much more to come, but I wanted to hop in for a brief moment to let you know about the Purpose Club. Not everybody can afford one to one coaching or the leaders mastermind. So I put together the Purpose Club club. So for less than a dollar a day you can get six figure coaching, life coaching, business coaching. I go live every month and share my best strategies. I also send you out weekly reminders, planning emails, templates, frameworks. It's an amazing membership, so if you'd like to know a little bit more about it, please head over to my website, www.jjlochlund.com thepurposeclub.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Guys and enjoy the rest of the show.

And so it's interesting when you talk about the CEO that you give a bit of flack this week. Oh, get the focus narrowed and focus on what matters. So that board role essentially is a little bit like a coaching role or a mentorship role.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing being on the board. I think at one level you, I mean you're not there to be at war with the CEO, but equally on the other side of the coin you are there to provide, provide a bit of contestable opinion and you are there to probably provide a bit of wisdom. I think really, I mean that's really the argument, I think. So you want them to be able to bounce stuff off you, but equally you do want to say hey, you know, is that really right? And.

I mean I can just give you the banking example. There's a different CEO, so don't take it the wrong because wasn't the CEO but, but at Anz.

Our CEO is great. Antonia Watson I appointed, she's fantastic. But ASB about two or three weeks ago came out with this product and so one, believe it or not, it's a floating exchange rate, it just doesn't float. So it's a 1.79% exchange rate if you do a new build development and it's for three years. So it's not actually a floating exchange rate but it's now that's theory. And I said to Antonio the other day, what do you reckon about that? She said it was really clever.

And she said well it's really clever and we hadn't really thought about it and I said well we should have like someone there should have, eh. Yeah, it doesn't really matter but like yeah, I mean when we're the biggest. But if you want to stay the biggest, this is our problem. We're the biggest in every product category. We're one in Three home loans, one in two New Zealanders have a relationship with us. And the problem is it's easy to get all those big numbers and stats. I mean our balance sheet's 140 billion, blah, blah, blah. And you get deluded by all that stuff and you, boiling frog syndrome, you wake up one day and you go, geez, where'd my market go? And the answer is some fintech took it off me. And so we have to be dexterous and clever and if we're not coming up with that really clever idea, we have to be intellectually honest with ourselves to understand, ask ourselves why not? Now we do lots of clever things, I'm just saying. And there's no point of being ridiculously hard on ourselves. I mean it's not like we've got a lock up on every bright idea. But I really try and encourage our guys that you just got to constantly be, we've got to be the internal competitor. We've got to constantly ask ourselves.

What are those people going to do? Because if you go to an off site for asb, bnz, Kiwi bank, what do you reckon? They ride on the board. I'll tell you what, they ride on the board anz, because we have the biggest market share in every category. So why wouldn't you go after us? Because you shoot with the Ducksar.

So shoot with the ducks. I love that.

That's a goodie.

It's interesting. So you do a lot of work in Palo Alto.

Yeah.

And Silicon Valley, See how they operate as companies and often their biggest challenge is execution of what they're currently doing and innovation of what they need to be doing.

Yeah.

So do you see anything that they do in their companies that you can bring back in New Zealand companies? But hey guys, we, we can execute on what we need to do, but here's how we innovate and balance that.

Yeah. So one thing in Silicon Valley is you just assume every.

You know, everyone succeeds and everything's Facebook and Google and WhatsApp, you know, and there's a guy actually on, I'm on Palo Alto Networks board. So we're the largest cyber security company in the world. And there's a guy on that board called Jim Goetz. And Jim is the, he is to, you know, basically VC money in Silicon Valley. What, you know, Nadal is to tennis or you know, you know, Maradona is to football. You know, he is as good as it gets. So he was the managing partner at Sequoia and he's just sort of really retiring. Really. He's 53 or something. Tahita, WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom, Google. He did everything, he's done everything. Like, he's got to be with so many billions, it's funny, like many, many, many, many billions. And when you talk to him, he goes, yeah, okay, but we have a portfolio and I can name hundreds that have gone wrong. But, you know, he's got these, he's got a lot of big calls, right?

So part of it is he just looks for these people. He really backs people and often with an idea that he can kind of see is going to be there. So Zoom wasn't the first to.

Video messaging, was it? I mean, Skype was, and actually Google wasn't the first search engine. So everybody thinks to have the greatest product, they've got to reinvent the mousetrap or create a kind of new mousetrap. And actually they just need to do something better than what's currently being there. In fact, actually, because there's real demand in this space, it's very hard to think up something like in Silicon Valley, you will get someone who's brilliant, who will come along and say, I'm going to invent the thing they call a container, which is essentially in the cloud and it's a virtual storage facility. So, yeah, you get some brilliant people who will think up that concept. But a lot of it is just, you know, it's just them coming up and saying, here's a, here's what I do. My question is, how am I going to do it better than the other guys? And in fact, there's a guy I do some work for who believes makes green concrete. Okay. So he's worked out how to make concrete half the energy output of anything else in the world. He's a really amazing guy. And he's this brilliant Canadian. He's young, really young guy. And to understand him and say, you know, this is, this is Ryan, like PhD out the bloody wazoo. And he said, he went away one weekend and looked at Zoom and Skype and about 10 of these video messaging things and said, yeah, worked out that they were obviously the best technology with the best this and this and this. And he said, my only problem was I just didn't buy the stock.

So, yeah, there's, I think that's a bit of what they do. They, it's just a different model there because one thing is they, like at Palo Alto, we make, you know, I don't know, about 7 or 8 billion US a year.

And you're a 36 billion dollar company, but you know, I suspect we're going to be a lot more, I mean, you know, total market's going crazy as people ultimately move off to the cloud and all that sort of stuff. And I said to the CEO one day, when do you reckon we'll pay a dividend? And he just looked at me like I was a Martian, said, well Google don't pay one, so love it. And he came from Google, he was the number four guy at Google. So.

The world is very different. Whereas if you look at Anz, we are traditional defensive banking stock, we're a dividend stock. People don't buy us for growth really. They'll argue they do, but they actually buy us for a dividend. If you don't pay the dividend, then I have you.

That's excellent. So going back to everything you've done, so the banking, all the travel, being a dad, being a partner, being a prime minister, it's a lot to take on as a human and a lot to compartmentalize. So is there anything you've done when the stakes were high? You're juggling a lot to just balance your well being, balance your mindset, to make sure you just show up, be a great dad, show up, be an amazing prime minister. Any habits that you, you did?

Yeah, I think.

I think the first thing is you've got to have. Every human being needs a little bit of me time. So largely when I was prime minister I'd sort of get up at 5:30. The great thing when you live with police, you know, 24, 7, is that they're all young and fit. So you know, we'd run down to the gym, we do boxing. Well, what that really means is they'd hold up pads and I could hit them if I felt like it. Occasionally I did just to see whether they were awake and then sort of run back and we just, I mean, might do 40 minutes, there's nothing great but. And that was really where golf came along. You know, obviously I couldn't go and play all the time because that's just not practical in your province. But I'd go the range for 40 minutes, so I'd do something. And so partly firstly, I think everybody needs a little bit of that, just something to clear the mind and to feel like you're just doing something because you, you do so much in the nicest possible way. I mean this, you do so much. Everything's about stuff that everybody else, you know, and that can be the family, it can be constituents, it can be whatever. You just got to do a Little bit of something where you say, this is kind of what I do. And that's why I'm learning to fly the helicopter at the moment. I'm not really doing it because I'm going to fly myself all the time, although I probably will fly quite a bit, but I'll probably take a safety pilot with me most of the time. But I just like the mental concept of, like, you feel wrecked after an hour. Like, you're really, you know, and it's just the challenge, I think, of just doing something that's about. I'm just interested and I'm. I like it. You know, I think the second thing is that whatever you're doing, you've got to. You got to do that. And, you know, the single biggest thing, like, if you have kids, you know, pick up your mobile. If you're having dinner with the kids, get rid of your mobile phone. So I think you really do have to say, look, it is so much better. So put your phone down, concentrate on what you're doing, have quality time, and then kind of pretend that, you know you are listening when you're really not and you're playing on your phone and you're looking at some email and you're focused on something else now. You know, look, the reality is that you can have a lot going on and you can't completely switch your mind off. Reality is you'll always think about other things that are going on. But I think.

You know, especially when it comes to kids, but. But also partners, it's massively important that you.

Give them.

That time and their attention. And if you look at it in a political sense, I got to meet and have lunch a couple of times with Bill Clinton, and he's from the other side of the political fence to me and all that sort of stuff. Although he actually balance the books in America, which very few people have done. And they will say about Clinton, he's one of these guys that, you know, you feel like you're the only person in the room when you're there. But it's. I hate to buy into the sort of cliches because then it feels like you're just parroting what everyone wants you to say. But it really is true. It's unbelievable. Like, he just has this capacity to.

I don't know, just to. To make you feel as though he's solely focused on what you're saying and what you're doing. I mean, he's quite a brilliant guy. I mean, he's got a few issues, but. Yeah, but I Like, I remember I went to this Clinton Global Initiative thing at one point, I was pm, and we just announced that we were turning the Kumadex into an ocean sanctuary. And he was always quite keen on the Kumadex anyway. So to be fair, he knew a bit about it. But we were slightly late because we met this thing and it was like hundreds of hundreds. And he had. Matt Damon was on the stage with him and he had all these hundreds of people and he was doing a bit of an intro. And we came in and they had these seats near the front for us. And I just wanted to go and listen to him. So I told my guys, just carve out some time. I want to go and, you know, see Bill speak. So we went down and as we were walking, he went, oh, you know, ladies and gentlemen, this is, you know, John Keys coming in the audience, Prime Minister of New Zealand. And then he just gave this five minute dissertation about the Kumadex and about their importance in the world and the things that New Zealand were doing and about me. And it was like, you know, it was. If you'd given him, if you'd had days of warning and things and lots of briefing notes, you could say, okay, I get it. But this guy hadn't done that. And he was just curious. He was curious about people. And so, you know, it's a challenge, I think, to not dominate, not always dominate the conversation, but be engaged in the conversation. So it's a happy medium somewhere along the line.

Absolutely.

Not one that we always, you know, we. And politicians always get right. But I think there's a bit of that stuff because I think one of the things is, you know, I always said to people, you know, I came into politics, you know, as Steffi and Max's dad and as Brona's husband, and I intend to leave like that. And I did. And I think if you go to Parliament with a bad marriage, it'll never last. If you go there with a good marriage, it will. But anything, it doesn't matter whether it's parliament or whether you're running a business, whether you're doing something else, there are just pressures in there. And just because it doesn't work doesn't mean you're a failure. I mean, the simple facts of life are the divorce rate runs around almost most countries in the western world at 40 or 50%. It is what it is.

But I do think that.

If you really want to make it work, work, you really do have to say, what am I prepared to put into that? Because it won't just be enough that you've got money, because there's been a lot of very high profile people who have got divorced recently who have hundreds of billions of dollars and that hasn't saved them either. So it's not just about money, it's much more than that, I think. And with your kids, I mean, ultimately, I don't know, we've been pretty lucky. We have a great relationship with our kids. It doesn't mean we don't have disagreements or tell them off and feel they're younger, I suppose, but.

You know, in the end they're just, they're an important part of our lives.

And talking about your kids, I've got a young five year old, Finn, and certainly the day that he came along, my whole perspective of the world changed. So how do you want to be remembered as a dad?

Yeah, I think, I think, I think someone that they could rely on and was there for them and things that really mattered.

And that, you know, like, funny enough, I mean, when Max was playing baseball and rugby and football less stiff because she was slightly interested in netball and vaguely that was it, you know, it wasn't messy on sport, but for her it was other things I used to go to, like, I used to say to my guys at work, you know, I was Prime Minister, I'd say, like, Max's rugby is from 10 to 11, so take my diary out from 10 to 11. Now, obviously there's some days you're overseas or there's days where it's the national party annual conference, which case there is no getting out from 10 to 11. It is what it is. But generally I'd say, yeah, they want me to open that building or they want me to go to this thing or they want me to do something that's all cool, let's do it from 6am in the morning till 9:30, or let's say it, from 11:30 to whatever, but we're not doing it from 10 to 11. And sometimes they come in, they'd try and say, oh, yeah, but this person really wants to see you. Then I go, you know what that person does? But they're really going to send you. Also at 11:30, 99.9% of the time they did. I went to more of Max's rugby games than lots of other parents did and I was Prime Minister.

Brilliant. You created boundaries. Like I chat to clients about that, saying no, the power of saying no to things. Yeah, you're creating boundaries for the people you love.

Yeah, well, you've got to, you know, because if you want to. So I think, you know, you would hope that they would come back and say, you know. And I said to Max, when we were. He must have been about 14 or 15, but it was in the 2014 election. Sorry, maybe it was a little bit older, maybe it was about 17. We were just driving along one afternoon, it was like a Sunday afternoon and all the stuff had done, you know, because election campaigns are weird, they are lower workload than normal time when you Prime Minister, because everything's geared around the 6 o' clock news. So you do all this campaigning in the morning, you make some announcement, you do these things, you shake hands and kiss babies and then by about 3 o' clock it's all over because the journeys have got everything they want and that's the end of it. So we went off to the driving range, we're just going to hit some balls. And I said, do you reckon on balance it's been a good thing I've been promised or a bad thing? And he said, Ah, by 100% a good thing. Brilliant. And so, you know, I think so, yeah. I think that's what you want to be remembered. I think you also want to be remembered more than that because, I mean, look, we go to lots of things and gazillions of people come up and take photos and do stuff and all that sort of stuff, but, you know, to them I'm their dad and that is good and bad. They also see probably a side of me that other people don't see. And, you know, like any parent, we're going to tell them off or we're going to have bad days or we're going to have good days, we're going to have lots of fun things and. And I remember when Max was playing around first, he was really the first, it was more him than Steffi because she was in France at afs. But I remember when he started playing around in social media because we were really the first family that had that, because prior to me was Helen. She didn't have kids then. Prior to that there wasn't any social media. And I remember a couple times my office came in and said, oh, yeah, Max was always getting himself in trouble on social media because he was post some bloody inappropriate thing. And so I'd ring him up and go, you know, kind of do realise it would be kind of cool if you didn't do that. And in the end he'd say, well, look, yep, I get it then I shouldn't have done that one. I go, yeah, no, Shit, Sherlock.

But then he'd sort of say, he'd sort of. Eventually he would say to me, look, you chose to be Prime Minister. Every one of my mates is on social media. You're really telling me I shouldn't be? And I said, well, probably not. So, yeah, it's just like, you know, you have to sort of roll with the punches. And I actually think, you know, New Zealand public are amazingly forgiving and it's the media that are much more, you know, wound up in PC. And you know, the average, the average punters are just like, they have kids and they have families and they have normal things and their life isn't more perfect than your life is.

That's right.

So they live in the real world and they just, they like all that sort of stuff. They like it when you muck around and you have fun and it's just normal, certain elements of the media that don't like it. So.

No, I get it. 100% makes sense. And I was just thinking, you know, when you were Prime Minister, like, what's the greatest sacrifice? Because there would have been one thing, I had to sacrifice that to be the pm.

What would that be?

Greatest sacrifice of being?

I mean there's, this isn't the greatest sacrifice, but there is an argument financially. I mean, I'd come from, had come from Merrill lynch and you know, making, you know, a pretty big seven, seven figure salary.

To, you know, obviously you make nothing in effect really. So.

And it's that point in your life from 40 to 55 is probably a big income earning period for a lot of people in their lives. So there was certainly that was a sacrifice in that I didn't need it, so it was all fine. I'm not going to try my mater. I'm just saying practically you can make that case. Look, I think the biggest sacrifice you really make is that you can't be Prime Minister a bit of the time. You know, it really is, you know, 365 days of the year, you know, it's, I mean, outside of the whole, the holidays and even the holidays, ultimate ultimately, you know, it's still a fun. And I was just reading Obama's book at the moment. He just says that he's talking about he goes home for dinner, which is nice because it's one minute commute, because by the way, is right by the White House. But he said, you know, they'd have dinner and then he'd go down to the Treasure Room and by the time he went to bed at night, Michelle was Asleep. And so you're there, but you kind of. You give up a lot of time. But then I kind of sort of think, you know, life's for living and you only get one shot at it.

And that's why I often say to people, I say, you know, do you reckon when they're lowering the bloody, you know, box into the ground, you'll sit back and think, I shouldn't have bought that, or I shouldn't have done that, or, I shouldn't have had that experience. I mean, I'm gonna die, honestly. Unless I'm crashing in the back of a car at 100 miles an hour, smash the helicopter into the ground, I'm gonna die happy. I really am. Because I'm gonna look back and think, shit, I did all the things I wanted to do. I gave it a go. You know, what a life. Yeah. And people shouldn't feel sad. They should feel happy for me that I, you know, that I did the things I want to do. I'm not saying I got everything right.

But I just didn't want to die wondering, and I'm not going to. And that's in lots of different things, you know. And I just kind of think, you know, I always used to say to our caucus, this is what happens in politics. People really. It's actually really hard to become an mp. You wouldn't think it is, but trust me, you gotta win the selection. You gotta go through all these things. So you walk over broken coals to get there. So the normal standard procedure is that someone comes to Parliament, they fight like cat and dog to get there. As soon as they get in Parliament, they moan and bitch and complain the whole time they're there. And when they leave, they try and come back. I used to go, you are losing the plot. You should fight like cat and dog to get there. Really enjoy it when you're there, and when you leave, never come back, and, like, enjoy what you're doing. You know? Like, it's really easy to wake up every day and go, oh, this is wrong, or that's wrong, or whatever. But is it really. I mean, compared to. And it's not about being silly. It's not about saying, well, our life is so much better than someone. It is in Palestine. Yeah, it is. But, you know, that's not the. That's not the reference point. It's like a lot of people that have life experiences where, you know, get cancer or they'll get something and they survive it. They have a completely different perspective on life. But the benchmark of everything can't be, oh, well, the alternative would be I have terminal cancer in three weeks to live. Because that's not a realistic benchmark. That's like saying if I. If you told me I've got terminal cancer, I've got three weeks to live, I probably wouldn't sweat anything either, other than the fact I've only got three weeks to live. Because by definition, nothing else really matters then. But that's not the real world. We live in the real world where someone takes your parking spot, they annoys me or, you know, whatever, you know, that sort of stuff. So that's the real world. Love it. But. But I do think that for the most part, you should try and enjoy it. Because even if you don't, the days are just going to take as long and what's the point, you know? And if you don't really enjoy it, try and find something that you do.

It's a beautiful way to look at it, John.

I love it.

And what gets you out of bed in the morning now? Because obviously as Prime Minister, you had a major reason you have a country to get out of bed for. What gets you out of bed now?

What fires you up? Things that I'm really interested in. So, you know, if it's. If it's work stuff. I actually started when I first came out, I thought I would just do really big marquee companies and, you know, I was going to be Anz Group chairman and Eden Zealand's chairman and a few other bits and pieces. What really surprised me, actually, was more the international offers I got, which were fantastic and so much better than I ever thought they would be. But even though they turned out to be that, and they continue to be like that, but actually I've sort of somewhat changed my mind, actually, now. I actually turned down Bing, Anz Group's chairman. And I, you know, well, Winston came along, so I was never going to be New Zealand's chairman. Funny that. But I actually quite like being around things that are. They might actually be quite big companies, but they're doing things that are really interesting and.

I gotta feel like I'm adding value to them. So there's gotta be a reason why I can do something that they value. So I'm not so much interested, if I'm really honest, in reading endless board papers which just in correcting the minutes, I find that a bit dull. I'd actually rather go along and do something where someone says, you know what? I got something out of that. It was good. And so on a work Front. It's those kind of things where I go away and I go, yeah, I made a bit of a contribution or I did something, or I really enjoyed what I was doing or fascinating. It was interesting. You know, that's why I do myself in Silicon Valley, because there's so many of these companies that are, like, doing amazing things and they're really cool to sort of be around. And then, you know, part of it is just a different phase in our lives. I think we're, you know, Brandon and I are doing lots in the absence of COVID 19. We'd do lots of traveling and we'd catch up on, you know, friends and things where we haven't necessarily had time. And that's really why we built the place in Hawaii. We've always had a house here, but we've just got a new one. Because I still said to her, look, you know, going back to my earlier point, do you really think when, you know, we're getting lowered into the ground, we'll be thinking, jesus, we really shouldn't have spent all that money building this new house when, you know, flush. Infinitely flying the kitchen in from, well, Spain actually seems even worse from Madrid. But, yeah. Yeah. So I just sort of think, yeah, those kinds of things. Having fun, really? I mean, that's a lot of it. And, you know, I still care a lot about the National Party, so I still spend a lot of time trying to sort out one or two issues they've got at the moment.

It's never ending.

No, it's never ending. No, never ending. And the kids, obviously, and, you know, like, they're both doing different things and so helping them, really, and, you know, where I can.

And sort of just trying to. Yeah. Give them, you know, like any parent does, I think. Give them enough rope to do the things that, you know, matter. But also you're there to sort of support them when they need it.

That's beautiful. That's interesting when you talk about being dad because you're, you know, you're the paternal member of the family. You did a lot of leadership within the family in politics. You were leading the country. So when I've chatted with other leaders, they've talked about sometimes that it's lonely at the top and they talk about the fact that they can't sometimes share everything with everybody's. A lot of confidentiality. So through your career, when there were possibly those lonely at the top moments. Damn. I can't really tell anybody this.

Yeah.

Did you have a mentor, a coach, somebody that you looked up to who you could actually let it all out.

Some things you can't because it's, you know, just either classified or it's an issue. But I think.

My chief of staff was a guy called Wayne Eagleson, who's a. I always used to call him the unelected Prime Minister of New Zealand. But he's a fantastic guy. He's got a Masters in law, He's a really brilliant guy, and he'd been around for a long time, and he's. He really is the voice of sort of reason. So if he really thought I got something wrong, he would just come and say, you got it wrong. You gotta say sorry or you got it wrong and you gotta change tact or it's not working. We gotta do something different or equally more often than not. And almost on everything, we agreed, there was only actually about two or three times where I thought he was wrong. And I just said, I just don't agree and I'm gonna do what I'm doing. Actually, on all three of those occasions, I was right. He wanted to do something which I thought. I don't know. I'm not sure about that. But mostly he would probably, I suppose, be the person. So the sort of things that you get in that category are like when a prime minister sends troops to a war or a war zone, like the SAS to Afghanistan, or, you know, we send our people to the reconstruction unit in.

Iraq, and those kinds of things, you by definition know that you're going to lose people. So in Afghanistan, we lost 13 people. And some of them were SAS, some of them weren't. And I remember when I sent them back, we had a little farewell for them, and obviously it's in a secret location, and their real immediate loved ones. Come on. And these SAS guys, they're all guys at the moment. There's no particular reason why they have to admit that males, and they're phenomenal. They're like the Ferrari, and they. They want to get out of the garage. Trust me, you know, these guys want to be there and that they're the best in the world and everyone loves them. The Navy SEALs, them. And they. All these countries want them, and they are the elite in the world, and they want to be out there doing things. They just don't want to be practicing and, you know, Papakura all the time. You know, they want to get out and do things. Anyway, we wanted to send them and we thought it was the right thing. And I sort of philosophically believe it's the right thing to do because I Think what happens with a country like New Zealand is we don't have enough defence forces to protect ourselves. If someone wanted to come and invade New Zealand tomorrow or do something really bad to us, they could, right? I mean, our navy is about three boats and I've got friends who own more boats than the New Zealand Navy, you know what I mean? Like years go on and on. I mean, the air force was a batch of clapped out planes and, you know, we don't have much, right. So the reality is we. So what we do is we go and support all of our friends, you know, the Americans, the Australians, the Brits, whatever. And in the end, in return we sort of syndicated that risk. And so you can't just never turn up when other people need help. And so that's why we would go and train lots of forces with the Americans and things, or we'd go to Afghanistan. And I went to this farewell for the SAS when we sent them there and this woman came up to me and her son was going, he was a really young guy, he was about 22 or 23, quite young to be in the SES. And she wasn't really that old, she wouldn't have been in her 40s, I reckon. And she just came up to me and she put her finger on my chest and she went, I bloody well hope you know what you're doing, because if my son dies, it's on you, boy. And I said, well, I do think I know what I'm doing and I certainly hope he doesn't. But, you know, it's quite low. And when they did die, they did die. He didn't, but other people did. I used to go and see their families and it's very lonely, you know, in that it's not lonely, it's just you feel that responsibility. But the problem is, the problem is, yeah, you can avoid all of that, but how do you avoid it when you also need all these people in other countries? It'd be like saying, I'm always going to go to the neighbors on Saturday night for dinner, but I'm never bringing any wine, I'm never bringing any food for the barbecue. At some point they stop inviting you, so you can't. You sometimes just have to make tough decisions and by definition, lawfully in New Zealand, to deploy our military forces, you actually have to get a parliamentary resolution, essentially you have to get. The Cabinet has to agree it and then you have to get the legal authority to do it. So everyone says, by definition, the Cabinet does it and they're bound by collective responsibility. But it's not true. Prime Minister of no government walks in there and says, I'm thinking of sending the SAS to Afghanistan. And the others go, no. Well, we had people in our cabinet who said, I don't agree. And I went, well, that's lovely. They're going.

So only the PM can make that decision. And it's like in lots of different things you do. So when people say it's lonely, I think it's just more that you have to have. I think you have to have an enormous amount of self confidence. But there's a difference between confidence and arrogance. The latter really gets you in trouble. And that's really why, over time, I always took the view I should retire at some point if I had the opportunity. And I did it. Not because I felt burnt out, not because I couldn't have stayed. And actually, in January of the year I retired in 2016, I said to Brian, I'm going to retire at the end of the year. And she said, yeah, I blame you. And I said, no, I am. She said. She said, well, I'll tell you one thing and I think if you're just worried about, you know, that you've been, you know, it's pretty time consuming. She said, I would way rather you just do another term and then try and go back. I said, well, don't worry, that's not an issue. And I just said, well, better to go when they want you to stay than stay when they want you to go. And I think.

You know, when you've been to the field days 10, 10 times and you've been to APEC eight times and. Yeah. Are you really going to be as energized as that? And I just thought, I thought they could reinvent themselves and actually, to be blunt, they won the 2007 election. They polled 45%. It's just that Winston hated us and ganged up with Jacinda and the Restless kind of history, as they say. But. But in reality, the plan actually worked. This was a small fly in the Auckland such as history.

Murphy's Law.

Yeah.

Well, John, just to wrap up, I want to say a massive thank you for taking the time to share that. It's been amazing.

Great.

I've got one last question for you. So what does living life on purpose mean to you?

Living life on purpose? I think it's ultimately feeling satisfied internally about how things have played out. I mean, it doesn't mean that it's always going to be perfect or it's always going to be right. Or the putt you just made is going in the hole or whatever it is that you're doing. But I think you've got to have a reason for doing the things you do. And you know what I reckon happens in life? I reckon most people don't take the opportunities they could take. And you know why? They're not scared of failing themselves, actually, despite what you might think. They're scared of what they think other people will think of them failing. So they themselves can live with the fact that. That their art isn't the most amazing in the world, or they're actually not the best tennis player in the world. They're not this or they're not that, but they're scared that other people will think badly of them. And that's actually the problem when you're in public life. Everything's public by definition. So every mistake you make, every decision you make, every nuance that you utter is public. But, you see, I kind of think having a purpose is having enough courage to say, well, I actually believe in what I'm doing and I'm gonna do that. And otherwise you're kind of meandering around and you're scared of your own shadow. And I've just never wanted to live my life like that. I just sort of thought, I have a view on what I think is right. I'm gonna do it. And.

We'Ve done lots of things in our lives, some good and bad, but there have been decisions that we've made. They've said they're really deliberate. You know, there's a reason for them, and I don't care whether they're what everybody else thinks sometimes just defined by the fact that we're public figures. Like I always say to Max, our test isn't just profitability. Our test is, can we pass the front page of the Herald test? You know, like, does it live up to what we say it is? And he's quite tough on his builders. Like, he'll say, I don't care whether you could get away with that. You're going to do it like this, and it's going to be right like this. And, you know, I remember years ago, it's a bit of a different story, but if you've got one second visit. We built a house one time and our builder went broke. Actually, as it turned out, we didn't know that until the very, very end. Anyway, he had failed to pay the guy that did the pull and another guy, and we didn't even really know that. And one day there was this knock on the door and the. And the two guys were there and they said, we, you know, we knew, obviously knew there were. And they said, well, here's, here's basically this. You haven't been paid or at least decent amount of it. And they said, you don't have to pay us because you've already paid us, but we're just letting you know. So I said, brainer, what do you reckon we should do? He said, what do you think we should do? And I said, pay them again. Like, in the end, it didn't really matter to us. Like, it just wasn't that much money. It was. It was a lot of money, but it was money. We could afford it. And, you know, I don't know whether it really all worked out. Well, I think it worked out for them, hopefully, but. So that's why I sort of think you've got to have. What is it you want to do the way you want to be remembered, the stuff you. It's always about being a good person. We're not always good and we're not always altruistic and we're not. We don't claim to be things that we're not. I'm just saying it's about having that thing that is the test for you, that you've done your best and sometimes things don't work out, you know, and, you know, sometimes you can do everything you want and child goes off the rails or, I don't know, a marriage doesn't work out or whatever. There's a million things. My sister's had more husbands than I've had hot dinners. You know, the other ones had one, but, you know, and it just is what it is, you know, I mean, everything's different, circumstances are different. But yeah, if you said, you know, have I lived my life with purpose? Well, I've had a view on what I thought was right and wrong and the things that I wanted to achieve, and I've done my best to. To do it. And.

That'S all you really can do.

Thank you for sharing that.

No problems.

Thank you.

I really hope you guys enjoyed that interview as much as I did. It was amazing to sit beside Sir John and hear from him what he did throughout his life, how he thought about things, how he managed business, how he managed the country and how he was a dad. It was so amazing. So if you've taken anything from that, please share it with your friends. And if you want to get in touch to talk to me about leadership, about life coaching, about how I can help you in your life, please do not hesitate. Drop me an email jamesjlachlan.com.

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Me a rating and review as it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks and folks, it's that time. Get out there and live life on purpose.