Why Success Isn’t Enough: Jehan Casinader on Mental Health, Burnout & Rewriting Your Life

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Life, nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, professional athletes all over the world. This show is for people who refuse to settle, people who are driven, people who want to grow, who know that there's so much more to learn and want to learn from the world's best. Each week I bring you insights from a special guest who's at the top of their game with whether they're in Formula one, whether they're a billionaire, whether they've started a company from scratch and take it to the top. I bring them to you so that you can rewire your mindset, take action and lead a life of purpose.

Let's get started.

Today's special guest is award winning journalist Johan Casinatter. His book took me to so many places, it brought me to tears, it inspired me and I just had to sit down with this incredible human. Sit back and enjoy the show, Johan.

A huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you, James. Great to be here.

So good to have you here. You're a man who is hard to pin down. You're in demand. I see you on stages all over the world. Here in New Zealand, you're a household name and I'd like to start by getting right into 10 tax and I'm sure we'll zoom out. But if the listener could do one thing right now to improve their mindset, to take it into a place where they're feeling happy, they're feeling curious, at ease. What's one thing, one habit that you do that helps you set your mindset.

I would ask myself, how can I tell a different story with the same facts? So right now we're surrounded by so much negativity, so much overwhelm. There's a lot going on in the world and there are a lot of facts that we can't change. We can't change the inflation rate, we can't change the geopolitical issues that we're facing. We can't change some of the things that are happening in our own communities. Those are the facts. But every day we have the ability to ask ourselves, what is the story that I'm telling? And how do I take the facts that are in front of me and tell a more hopeful and helpful story that actually facilitates growth and change and wellbeing and all of the things that we want in our lives?

I love that. It's interesting because I believe in the saying that your perception shapes your reality, and this perception could be reworded to your story shapes your reality. And we have these stories that are often formed, I think, based on upbringing, trauma, pressure, real world experiences, media, social media. And so this idea of story is powerful. Now, you wrote an incredible book. This is Not How It Ends. I picked it up on a Friday and by Saturday afternoon I had finished it.

And you sent me a lovely voice note on a Saturday afternoon. You're obviously a voice memo guy.

I'm one of those guys. Yeah.

No, it was nice.

I was deeply moved by the book.

Thank you.

There's a part in the book where I felt very emotional. And just how you wrote it, how you connected with your story, how you showed your vulnerability, was powerful and made me think about my own stories that I have narrated and crafted. So this idea of story, some people are quite intimidated. I'm not a storyteller. I don't know how to speak. I don't know how to write. I don't know how to journal. What. Where do you start if you want to start looking at your own story.

With a blank piece of paper? People often ask me, do I need to go and do hours of therapy? Do I need to go and climb into my past and analyze things that I'm not even comfortable? Revisiting those things can be helpful, but I think it starts with actually putting yourself in a frame of mind where you're willing to reflect. So at the back of that book, I included a bunch of questions for people to reflect on, questions that can help you to sort of surface. What are the memories, the experiences, the conversations, the influences in my life that might have shaped that story that sits at the heart of my life experience? And what you've touched on there is that most of us are not even aware that we have a story, let alone the contents of that story. And I think for people, it can be quite a confronting and scary experience to sit down and ask themselves that question. What is the story that I'm carrying around each day, and how is that story influencing the way that I experience the world. But if you're brave enough to step into that space, I think amazing things are possible.

I 100% agree, and you're right that it can be daunting, frightful, almost to go, what's in my story? Because there's stuff that some of us don't want to talk about 100%. Most of us have things that like, God, I want to forget about that or ignore that or I'm shameful of that moment. So again, if we were to get a journal out or just a blank piece of paper, what would be the first question, the most important question to help someone pass that fear of I don't want to go there.

Where have I been? Who have I met? What were the moments that changed the trajectory of my life? Those are some really simple questions to start with. Just brain dump, brain dump, the stuff that comes to mind. When I started writing this book, I was sort of fishing around in my memory for conversations or experiences that had shaped my understanding of myself. And one of the first memories that came to mind was from a crystal clear blue sky day in Lower Hut back in the 1990s when I was standing on the corner of the school field talking to a girl called Olivia. And Olivia said to me, are you brown because you don't shower? I thought, why did my five or six or seven year old brain file that memory away? And it's pretty simple. It was one of the first times that I realized that I was different to everybody else. Now I don't remember the year, I don't remember the context of that conversation, but I remember the feeling of shame in my chest as a little kid. And so memories or experiences like that are clues that can help us to sort of decode or decipher what has actually shaped us in our life. And so for me, there are a number of memories that helped me to understand that as a very young kid, I started to create a story that there was something wrong with my body, that my culture was something that meant that I was set apart from the other kids. And those stories I then carried into my adult life. And that was the mind blowing moment for me when I realized here I am as an adult man trying to work and spend money and build a life and create relationships. But the stories that I was living out of were these kind of toxic, disempowering stories that I'd basically written in crayon, metaphorically as a very young child. And I think there are many of us as adults who behave in ways that we can't quite understand, but we can trace those things back to some of our formative experiences.

You're onto something really important here. I would say the vast majority of our listeners and viewers are male. And I see this idea of masculinity and what it should be, what it shouldn't be. But I think, take all of that aside and go, okay, what are some of the behaviors that show up that we shouldn't tolerate? Violence, aggression.

Gender jokes, ethnic race jokes.

Alcoholism, and using that as a way to solve our problems. And then that turns into violence. So we see all these problems in the world. And when you talk, you know, I've had chats with myself and with other males. We talk about these challenges. Hey, what's probably the inner child? Like, there's things that we haven't addressed. Oh, come on, harden up, man. Yeah, like, what are you talking about? Don't be so soft. This inner child stuff, grow up. Actually, like chatting to the experts, the specialists around trauma healing, it all starts at childhood. And I love that you can go back to that one moment. We all must have multiple micro moments like that.

And the only caveat to that is that we also live in a world now where the word trauma is on everyone's lips. We have kind of trauma overload. We have a generation of young people now who have grown up with so much conversation around mental health that some of them can only view life's challenges through this lens of mental distress. Am I mentally ill? Am I mentally unwell? Do I need a diagnosis? Is it my trauma that's preventing me from forming relationships, from being part of groups at school, from building a career, whatever the case may be. So I think we kind of need to balance those things that we can understand that we all have experiences that have shaped us in good ways and in bad. But also it's not necessary to label all of those experiences as trauma. And I think that's the benefit of talking to professionals who can guide you through that process rather than trying to figure all of this out by yourself. So I think part of this is work that you can do individually, and part of it is a piece that is worth getting some support around as well.

I appreciate you bringing that to the table. And the fact that therapy is something, in whatever form therapy looks like, is something we should all consider and probably even better if it's preventative at the front end of things. I was chatting yesterday with Dr. Frank Anderson. He kind of has headed the trauma healing movement for the last 30 years. And he said, james, many Men are triggered by the word trauma. Tiny T, big T, he says they hate it. He says, so I've reframed it. Overwhelming life experience. Have you had an overwhelming life experience? Everyone says yes to that. A car crash, a divorce, a child that's witnessed a divorce, bullying at school, lost a job, lost a relationship, whatever it might be, we can all say yes to that. And he said, james, you know what? Most men covered up with two things, alcohol and overwork. Okay, I can relate to both of those. You know, when I was like competing, it was drinking a lot and working a lot. Like 70, 80 hour weeks. I don't care. Like I'm here to achieve and win. I wanted to win. So I want to go and look at. Because I've obviously read this. Not everybody has read this yet, but everyone that's listening, gonna put it in the show notes, please go and get a copy. An amazing book, but if you could just let people in a little bit before they do read it. What were some of the warning signs for you? Because you were award winning journalist, you were all over the world, all over tv, having pretty incredible experiences at a very young age. Getting to New York, you had it all from the outside, everyone looking, Jehan has it all. What were some of the little signs when you look back now and go, oh, warning sign, warning sign.

I had built my identity around my work, and I think I knew that from my early teens, which is when I started writing for newspapers and doing TV stories. I never felt like I fitted at school. I always felt different. And when I was probably much younger than that, even seven or eight, I realized that I could ask the best questions in class, I could win over the teacher, I could communicate in a way that allowed me to gain people's attention and affection. So that became my coping strategy. It became my survival strategy. And then When I was 13 or 14, I started doing all this media stuff and traveling around and getting a lot of accolades through that. And I think in some ways I matured very quickly, but not in the areas that I needed to as a teenager. I was spending time with politicians and I was getting to travel around the country and have all of those crazy experiences that you referred to. But I didn't learn how to regulate my own emotions. I didn't learn how to overcome the kind of self loathing that I had really inside me. And I didn't learn how to be okay without producing a whole lot of stuff. I built my life around performance. And so the warning signs for me came probably much later in my mid-20s, when I had built the career, everything was going smoothly. I thought, I've got the life and the career that I wanted. But why do I feel so unsettled? Why do I feel like I'm not being satisfied by this? Why do I feel so alone? And I think loneliness is a really interesting topic that we're only now starting to talk about. We live in a world that's never been more connected. Everybody has hundreds of friends on social media platforms, but how many people can you actually ring up in the middle of the night if you need to talk? And I'm fortunate that I did have a number of close guy friends who I was able to turn to in that time. But I think it took a long time for me to actually reach that point.

And so someone that's watching or listening right now, what does feeling alone be like?

It looks like being in front of a crowd or in my case, working on tv, having an audience of half a million people and going home at the end of an adrenaline fueled day where you've created something and you've connected with others and you might have done an amazing interview or been on live TV and feeling hollow inside. And that's ultimately where I got to now. There was nothing inherently wrong with my job. I loved my job and I loved the work that I was doing. And I'm still super proud of that chapter of my life. But my life was out of whack. I'm not going to say balance because I don't think it's just about balance. But there was something that was misaligned in my life and at the core of that was overwork. At the core of that was avoidance. Because my main strategy was, well, I'm feeling really uncomfortable. I'm just going to work harder and longer and try and produce more stuff so I can stay occupied and, and get more of my validation from all of this stuff that I'm creating. And as you know, that strategy works quite well in the short term, not so well in the long term.

Totally. Wheels fall off.

Yeah.

And it's interesting. People talk about anxiety, which roughly 70% plus the stats would say roughly 70% of adults experience anxiety off the back of life's traumas. Depression stats are quite similar. Not everyone reports that in terms of countries. And then further up the track, suicide in the certain countries like Italy, that really won't report accurately. New Zealand does its best to report accurately and our statistics are shocking. So this conversation, obviously we need to go to that, the darker side of that as well. In your book, I felt like I was literally in your heart, in your head, experiencing the darkness, the loneliness, the isolation, self loathing.

I could experience it with you. And I'm a very positive person, very optimistic, always looking for what's possible. But certainly there are times where I'm like, this is all a bit much or what's the point? What's the point in going so hard at this thing? If I just stopped doing that, would anyone care? And so I don't think I'm alone in that. I think many people get to the point where you're working so hard, you get in the weeds. What are we doing this all for? So for that person that's on track or in the middle of that one thing they should be thinking about doing today, stopping.

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 who 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. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in in the show notes.

For me, the game changer was a trip that I did to Europe with some friends. And I remember having some time out of work for a couple of weeks. And I was thinking, I need a circuit breaker. A word that kept going around in my head was circuit breaker. I had worked from my early teens right through to my late twenties. I had been depressed for probably three years at that point. I'd experienced suicidal thoughts on virtually a daily basis for at least a year. And I had no idea how to get out of this life in a way where I was still alive. And so I realized that I needed some way to stop the cycle that I was in. But hang on, your current life is not.

Enabling you to get better. The pace at which you're working, the level of pressure that you put on yourself, something has to change. And what I ultimately decided was to take six months of unpaid leave. Now, that's a luxury. Not everybody has the ability to do that and not everybody has an employer that's willing to even make that possible. I was fortunate that I was able to make IT work. So I packed up my car, I took all my stuff back to Wellington, and I really had no idea what I was going to do with that six months that I took off. But what I would ask someone who's in that position is what does a circuit breaker look like for you? Maybe it doesn't look like something that dramatic. I didn't have responsibilities, I didn't have kids to feed or any of that stuff, so I was able to do it. But what does it look like for you to have a circuit breaker? It was only when I stepped away from this job and lifestyle that I was able to ask myself, what do I actually want? And what does life look like without this? And what you quickly discover is that if you've built your identity around your work for a long time, it takes a bit of time to pull that costume off. And that's quite a confronting process because you go, well, who am I without this thing for me, who am I without this kind of TV journalist Persona that I had built up for over 15 years, but that's what ultimately led me to be able to get into a better space.

It's incredible. It's interesting, this idea of identity. So I talk to professional athletes, let's say they're in a team like the All Blacks, and they're getting towards the end of their career and. And there's a bit of panic. James, what do I do next? Have fun, Enjoy the journey. No, no, but I am rugby. Well, no, no, you're not. You're John or you're Bob or you're not rugby. No, but that's everything that I do. And everyone looks at me like that. And so we do tie our identities up. I did the same with drumming and everything was about winning the next World Championship, the next National Championship, selling more drums, being a drummer, I thought life could never be any different. That's it. And the panic set in when I started to get RSI and my thumb didn't start to operate and I was dropping the stick and I'm like, God, I earned money. I put bread on the table with this. So what can I do? I don't think I can do anything. I've drummed since I was nine. I've never really had a job. I've always just taught drums. Panic. And so for me, there was a lot of soul searching. And the only thing that actually really helped was stopping, like, taking a break, retiring from competing and not easy to do. So for the person that's busy, being busy right now, like you and I have been in our careers at points there might be a limiting belief in there. How can we rewrite our bs, our belief systems like a new narrative, say, hey, you're not too busy to make time for you. Where would we start with that?

I think the limiting belief that a lot of people are trapped in is this idea that, that their value will be reduced to zero if they leave their current organization, especially if they have been in that organization for a long time, or maybe even grown up in that organization. I worked with people in journalism and TV for a long time who could see the writing on the wall, could see the media industry shrinking, could see that the glamour and the excitement and the resources that used to be there weren't quite there any longer. But also people who were just kind of evolving and who were being pulled in another direction but couldn't actually leave the building. They couldn't face the prospect of writing that resignation letter and handing it in. I heard a really great leadership speaker many years ago say that your soul leaves the organization two to five years before your body does. In other words, you're gone. You're not in that organization anymore, but you keep sitting in the chair because you think that's where you need to be.

I resonate with that.

And most people wait, right? They wait until they're either burnt out or, or they've lost the passion, or they don't feel a sense of belonging and then they leave.

Why do we do that?

Because we're scared. I talked to so many people in journalism who said, but what would I do? Where would I go?

You're Jahan the journalist, right? It's like, where would you go?

Totally. But they were asking themselves those questions as well. And the answer is, you could go anywhere, you can do anything. And I think particularly for people who are a bit older and had reached the midpoint of their careers or their lives, it became scarier. And I've had so many conversations since I left full time reporting with people who are like, well, how did you do it? But I don't think I can do that. And all of that is the product of internal narratives that are keeping you trapped there. The other thing that I've realized is that no matter what I say, I can't convince someone to quit their job and nor would I want to, because otherwise that's on me. People need to reach that position themselves where they're like, right, I'm confident to take that leap. And it will always be a leap. I don't know anyone who's been thrilled about handing the resignation letter in, especially if they don't have something to go to. But it's a decision that people have to reach for themselves.

Jehan, for those people that really don't have the courage to do it, there might have been a time when you actually felt, I can't leave either. How did you develop that courage to take the step?

Well, in my case, it became kind of an inevitability because my mental health had deteriorated so much that I had close friends being like, you actually need to step away from this. My best mate said, you have to just come back down to Wellington where your friends are and your family is. You really don't have much of a choice. And that was the position that I reached in my life. But I'd like to think that for a lot of people, they don't need to reach that position. I think part of it is giving yourself some time and space to consider what an alternative life would look like. When you are stuck in the grind and you're on the treadmill, insert whatever metaphor you want. It is very difficult to visualize or imagine what life could be like in another context. And it is so cliche. But it is very true to say that it's only when you take the decision to step away that other options and opportunities and possibilities open up to you. I know so many people who say that up until the moment they resigned, they had no idea what they were going to do. The phone wasn't ringing, the LinkedIn DMs weren't coming in. They were scared. They couldn't even see what the next chapter was going to look like. And the moment they made that decision and they stepped away, all of this other stuff started to open up. And I don't think that's because it starts falling out of the sky the moment that you hand in your resignation. I think it's because there's a sort of a mindset, a creative space that opens up when you allow yourself more time and bandwidth where you start noticing stuff.

Yeah.

That then leads you to make decisions that take you down your next path.

That's achievable. That's one step at a time. And I'm not a very overly religious person, but the thing I hear when you say that is faith. Like having faith that something will work out. There will be another chapter.

Yeah. And for me, I am religious and my faith is a big part of my life. And I think the key message that I would share regardless of, of what people's spiritual lives look like is where do you derive meaning? Where does your sense of meaning come from? And for me, it was more about an internal realignment, that my meaning in life is not tied up with my job or anything that I produce, that I have inherent value and dignity regardless of who I am or what I do in the world. And I think that's a universal message that's important for all of us to recognize, to almost sever that link that we have chosen to create between our identity. And so meaning can come in many different forms. And I think we live in such a wealth driven world, a status driven world, where we're comparing ourselves all the time. I think social media has exacerbated that and it's made it incredibly hard to focus on what's immediately in front of you. We have a comparison epidemic right now where young people are determining their goals, their, their value, their self worth based on everyone else's highlights reels. And so if you're able to ask yourself, what is important to me? What does a meaningful life look like? Then it's much easier to make choices that build that life rather than being carried along by the currents of our cultural context.

That's beautiful. And I often focus on, I write down WMI each day. What's most important? Yeah, like what is it? And I used to work in the field of what's most imminent, what's next? What's the opportunity, what's the silver kind of, you know, shiny object? But now what's most important? And Finn comes right at the top, my little boy. It's like, well, that's actually the most important focus. And so is that opportunity in London or in New York more important than his school play? No, it's not like wmi.

I remember when I was coming through the ranks at TVNZ and I had got the opportunity to do like a long form current affairs story. It was one of my first. It was a huge piece of work. Half a million people were gonna watch it. It was a story, I think, about people who'd become addicted to prescription painkillers. It was like the most important thing in my world at that time. And one of my really good friends was getting married. And for whatever reason, we had an interview that was possibly going to be scheduled in some tiny town somewhere in the south island on the same day. And I said to the story producer, look, if we have to do it, and if that's the only day that the person's available, I will make it work. And in her experience and wisdom, she said to me, jahan, I Know that this story feels like the most important thing in your career right now, but you are not even going to remember it in 10 years time. But I guarantee that you will remember not being at your friend's wedding. And I think it's so important that we have people in our lives who can remind us of that. They might not even know what's important to us, but they can provoke us to reflect on what is really important and to help us to realign our expectations.

You're that person right now. For many people watching and listening, I hope so. Yeah, 100%. Just that simple reminder. It's not all about work. It's not all about the next deal, the next thing that you're trying to get across the line, the next job. Actually there's things that are way more important.

And it's the classic distinction of what is urgent is not necessarily what's important. And so many of us turn up at work each day feeling anxious and focusing on all the stuff that we are being told, including by our bosses, is urgent. And it sometimes takes people a whole lifetime to work out that all that urgent stuff wasn't important. So I think that's another skill that's really important. Learning how to discern in the moment when you're presented with tasks or needs. How do I work out internally whether this thing is just urgent because someone's telling me it needs to be done soon and how do I know if it's actually important? Because they're not the same thing.

Can we apply that metrics, that urgent, non urgent, important, not important metrics to your health, your mental health? If you could go back to younger Jahan, let's say 15 years or so ago and use that matrix, what would you have said or asked or how would you, how would you have helped him get clearer on mental health so that he avoided these cliffs that he was about to jump off these.

I would have used te whare tapafa, which is a Maori model of health care of haora, which is so useful for this. So it's basically a house that has four walls. And the walls are mental health, physical health, whnau, which is family or relational health, and spiritual health. And the idea is that all four of those walls hold up your health, your well being. And I think what we've done for the last 20 years, certainly in New Zealand, but also in many of the countries that your listeners will be from, is that we've been obsessed with the mental health wall. The mental health wall is crumbling. We have an anxiety Crisis. We have a depression crisis. How do we fix this? Do we medicate? Do we need more talk therapy? Do we need less stigma, more awareness, more lived experience, storytelling? But we've neglected the other three walls. Physical health is connected to mental health. So is relational health, your community, and so is your spiritual health, your internal sense of meaning and identity and purpose and belonging and all of those kinds of things. So for me, my mental health didn't rise or fall in isolation. It was determined by those other factors. So the fact that I would eat really poorly when I was on the road filming that we wouldn't eat for hours, and then the cameraman and I would stop at a petrol station and buy a pie. The fact that I had a caramel slice every afternoon at 3 o', clock, the fact that I was using caffeine to bring myself up at the start of the day, using alcohol to bring myself down at the end of the day, the fact that I was neglecting some of my personal relationships, my friendships, because I was prioritizing work, all of those things contributed to my mental health. So my advice to my younger self would be, consider the other walls. Look at the other walls and ask yourself how you can strengthen those in a way that helps your mental health to be stronger.

That's lovely. I really appreciate how you brought that together and it's so simple to consider, but I think so difficult for many of us actually execute on.

And I don't think that I was aware how much stress I was under at that time, possibly because I was young and I. When you're in your early 20s, you feel invincible, you feel bulletproof and you kind of just throw yourself into. It doesn't matter. Working till 2 o' clock in the morning, that's fine. It doesn't matter if I have a couple of glasses of wine and then I try and do an interview the next morning. You're more resilient in some ways physically than you are as you grow up. And it was many years later that I realized when I left broadcasting, the toll that that had even taken on my body, the fact that even my. My gut, my sleep, my energy had all been affected for years by the choices that I was making. I worked primarily on evening current affairs shows, so you'd start the day and you'd build to your.

Deadline at the end of the day. That was the moment where your highest performance was required. At 7 o' clock at night, when you were in some tiny town after covering a cyclone or something like that, and you were exhausted, it's my worst time for performance. Exactly. That's when people are winding down.

Right.

So that was a really interesting rhythm to the day. And there were times where I would wake up in the morning and somebody would ring me and say, right, you're getting on a plane to wherever this has happened. Living in that unpredictability is extremely exciting and thrilling, but also has a cost.

And your endocrine system, your hormones would be going wild. Dopamine, serotonin would be all over the place. Adrenaline.

And I don't regret the lifestyle that I lived in many ways, because it was essentially tied to that job. But I think now, obviously, with the wisdom of a few more years experience, I would make different choices. Things like prioritizing exercise, changing my diet, ensuring that I got enough sleep, all of those things can make a big difference.

I want to talk about communication, but before we do that, can we just deep dive in a bit on that? What does a typical day in the life of Jahan look like? Wake up habits, go to bed. What does that look like?

Well, I have always struggled to practise what I preach in terms of morning routine, and I think most of us start the day by reaching over, grabbing our phone, being blasted in the face with a whole lot of blue light. And, you know, there's a really great tweet that I saw, which is, I wake up and the first thing I do is read the news because I like to be immediately sad and furious. And particularly in the global environment that we're living in now, that's how a lot of people are starting their day. As a journalist, that was my job. My job was to work out immediately what's happening in the city or in the country that I need to respond to. But I don't need to do that now. Old habits die hard, though, so I'm still trying to make progress in that area. But really simple things like putting your phone on the other side of the room or in another room can be really helpful. My mornings, I try and start with some meditation, some prayer, some time to reflect, some time to read. But if I'm on the road or if I'm traveling, then obviously that goes out the window. And I think that's the difficult thing is working out. How do you fit your optimum habits in with the requirements of your job? For me, the best time to exercise or to go to the gym is sort of around 10:30 in the morning. For other people, that might be 5:00 or 7:00 clock or even 9:00 clock in the evening once they've had dinner and put the kids to bed, et cetera. But if I can, I'll exercise mid morning and then I sort of start my work day around lunchtime. And because I'm currently spending some time overseas and the time differences, I will often work into the, the evening. So that's my current situation. But today I'm in. So this week I was in Levin, earlier in the week I've been in Palmerston North, I'm in Christchurch, I'm going back to Wellington today. All of that goes out the window, as we all know. And many of your listeners will be business travelers as well.

Absolutely. So what does rebalancing things look like then next couple of days?

Yeah, so I think it's about making sure that you build in margin.

So my five years ago I started my own business, I left journalism, I became a speaker full time and I was like, yeah, I'll accept, I'll accept, you know, six speaking bookings in one week or I'll go away and I'll smash all of these things or I'll do if for whatever reason I had three requests for keynotes in one day. But like, yeah, I can do that. But what I realized over time is that I wasn't enjoying it, I wasn't performing at my peak and I wasn't able to give my best to my clients. Now my schedule at the moment because I'm living between New Zealand and the UK is pretty crazy when I come back. But I have had to learn that if I'm going to operate at that pace, then my evenings and my weekends and my mornings need to be clear so that I'm able to actually have the energy to give out to other people.

Beautiful. Again, that's a simple thing. What gets scheduled gets done. So scheduling the important stuff.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing that communication. I see you as one of New Zealand's masterful communicators that you connect. You're not a communicator, you're a connector. Everyone communicates but you connect and it's, it's an art and a science. But you would have met many communicators, you would have interviewed them, you would have had leaders, you would have had, you know, business leaders, politicians, athletes, head coaches. What do you think about for the person that's listening right now that goes. I struggle to communicate powerfully. I hate public speaking. I would really love to be a more confident communicator. What are the two or three things that you've seen in great communicators that they should consider working on.

Great communicators recognize that storytelling is the key to influence. I don't know anyone that wakes up in the morning and thinks, I really want to be a master storyteller. But we are all looking for influence. I think the word influence has kind of been corrupted as well, because we now have social media influences, and everyone's like, that's a bit gross. I don't want to be an influencer, but I'm pretty sure that you want to influence. You want to change people's behavior, you want to change the way they spend money, you want to build trust with your clients, whatever the case may be for you. So it's recognizing that if you want to have influence, you need to hone your skills as a storyteller. That's the first thing, I think. Secondly, realizing that the way that you build rapport with people is essential to the growth of your business or your career. The fact that people buy from people, people trust people that they know or.

Have a sense of their backstory, and it's about leveraging your lived experience, all the different components that make up who you are, in order to build that trust. I think in a lot of.

Places in New Zealand and a lot of sectors, people think, well, if I just give others the information, I show them my cv, if I give them testimonials, I tell them how great our product is, then they'll trust us. But at the end of the day, if people don't know you, then all of that information is often redundant. Robert Cialdini's book Influence, which many people would have read, it's been around for, like, 20 or 30 years, was really interesting to me because he talked about likability as one of the six main principles of influence. I think when I was younger and even when I started speaking, I thought, well, if my content is amazing, then I will be really good at this. And it took me until probably a year ago to realize that as a speaker, your job is not even to deliver the best insights or the best material. It's to make your audience feel good about themselves. And you do that through the stories that you tell. You do that through your vulnerability, through your openness, through, in some ways, being naked, not literally on the stage. And I think that's a lesson that is beneficial for a lot of people.

This is really beneficial. It's gold just to hear you say that. And I feel like storytelling is happening more and more in the professional sphere. On LinkedIn, however, it's the underutilized platform. The Mr. Marketing himself, Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V. Will talk about get on there. Nobody's utilizing it, just put crap on there and people will like it. Yeah, but the thing is, people are literally putting crap on there and you and I had a chat free when we hit record about the amazing ChatGPT and large language models that have came out onto the scene and they are amazing. However, they can be misused. So what's your thoughts on what you see on LinkedIn?

Okay, so I had never posted on LinkedIn until about five years ago, didn't really know what it was. Thought it was a glorified place for people to dump their CVS and hope that a recruiter noticed them. When I set up my own business, I realized that this was an underutilized platform and I could build an audience quite quickly by just telling stories. At that point, no one was really posting. We weren't talking about content creation. And it became really easy to do what I was already doing in my newspaper columns, on TV and editorials, but doing it in a much shorter, more condensed form on that platform. I think what we've seen in the last two years is an explosion of really low quality content and that is only going to accelerate. Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT OpenAI, said a year ago that ChatGPT alone was producing 100 billion words per day. Now, not all of that, fortunately, is going on LinkedIn, but I think what we're seeing in the business world is people going, well, I can be a content creator and I should be a content creator. And maybe I have a marketing person who's saying you need to be posting once a day or three times a day. You hear all these kind of metrics being thrown around and now when you go on the platform, it's a whole bunch of formulaic, generic, boring, impersonal content that has made it much harder for the good stuff to actually rise to the top. So I think we're going to see in the next few years a tsunami of similar content. And I think this whole thing almost needs to burn itself out for us to go, this isn't what we wanted, this isn't benefiting us, it's not enjoyable. And also for a lot of people, they don't want to be a content creator full time. That's not their job. Their skills are in another area. So I think there's a rebalancing that we're going to need to see. And my advice to people is post much less, but invest in telling stories that connect with your audiences rather than just focusing on, how can I get more likes, more reach, more engagement, more shares, which is what a lot of people are now doing.

100%. And a lot of marketing agencies are pushing that. Yeah, you've got to do the two posts a day. You've got to have a hook, you've got to have a list, you've got a here's a bot that can do it all for you. Plug in what your avatar wants. I get sold on this once, twice a week. Company saying, james, you got to do this, you got to do this. Why don't you try our free bot and we'll attach it into your LinkedIn, it'll post for you.

But we also know that there are people who are using AI to reply to other people's posts. I've started sending DMs to people when I can see that they've commented on my post and it's clearly not written by them just to say, hey, I'm really interested in why you're using AI to comment on my post. Do you know that it's actually really obvious that this wasn't written by you? And is that what you want for your personal brand? Does it worry you that people might actually not see you as authentic? Totally, because you would. And I've had some replies. I've had some people deny it. I've had some people admit that it wasn't AI, it was actually an external marketing agency that they are paying to reply to LinkedIn posts on their behalf. But this is the world that we live in.

That's this need. I must keep up. I must reply. Interesting. On YouTube, we kind of launched our YouTube channel a year or so ago and in its infancy. I say, anyone that comments, I'm going to write back to them. I'm going to every night. 30 minutes.

I noticed that.

Yeah, I write back to everyone. And so I'll sit down. 30 minutes, that's it. Once the clock goes, I'm done. And about five or six people over the last year went, nice AI chatbot response. I'm like, no, this is me. Yeah, how can I help you, James? You can't reply to everyone's messages. Well, I do, but I can't do that all the time. If it grows to 2 million, that's not going to happen.

A big investment of your time even now, though, right?

It is, but I'm learning and I feel like as I'm seeing the comments, oh, I see what they want more of. I see what they want less of can I ask a question that might get a little bit more, that helps me interview better or give my audience something that's more enriching?

Here's the thing. Being a content creator is not the same thing as being a storyteller. Content creation is about attention. How do we capture and monetize people's attention? We focus on likes, on clicks, on shares, on reach. We talk about things like how do we optimize engagement? This is the language that we use now. Thirty years ago, we talked about how do we tell great stories.

Yes.

We talked about being an artist or being a comedian or. Or being a songwriter. How do we get back to that? So for me, the questions that a storyteller asks themselves are not the same questions that a content creator necessarily does. A content creator might ask themselves, how do we maximize engagement? But a storyteller asks questions like, how do I build trust with my audience? How do I share content that inspires or informs or adds value? I'm not saying that content creators don't do that. I just think we need to return more to the principles of storytelling that we know from decades and decades of books and movies and art. Those things actually do resonate.

Yeah, they really do. And the art of a great story, you know, the hero's journey, there's all different structures. For someone who doesn't know what a basic structure might look like. And let's not let them go to ChatGPT to ask ChatGPT. Let's Jahan the true storyteller tell them. What does a basic structure, how, how, how does a story start conceptually, and how do we wrap it up?

To me, the four elements of great stories. Character, conflict, journey, and jeopardy. Good stories are about characters. They're about real people with names and faces. The number one mistake that businesses make is they try and tell stories in the abstract. So we talk about strategy, we talk about vision, mission, values, purpose. We talk about directions of travel, initiatives, projects, funding. Those are very difficult concepts for people to wrap their head around. How do you identify the real people at the heart of those experiences and build stories around those characters? Secondly, how do those characters go on journeys? What happens between point A and point B? Thirdly, conflict. Conflict is not just argy, bargy, or disagreements. Conflict is the hurdles, the losses, the mistakes, the wounds, all the stuff that actually pushes the character forward, forces them to grow, sends them off on a journey to try and achieve something or overcome something. And the fourth element, I think, is probably the least understood one. Jeopardy. Jeopardy is basically what is on the line, what is at stake in the story. And we've all sat in a movie theater and after about half an hour sort of thinking about what we're going to cook for dinner or checking our emails. And usually the reason is that the stakes in the story are not high enough. A lot of businesses are trapped in this idea that their thing or their product is the most important thing in the world, which I totally get because it's your baby. But they don't understand why their audiences.

See the same value. And often that's because we haven't raised the stakes. We haven't helped our audience to understand why they should care, why this matters, what their life will look like in five or ten years if they don't support this, buy this, pay attention to this policy, change, whatever the case may be. And the flip side is we don't do a good job of painting a picture of how positive and hopefully their future could look like. So those are the four elements that I engage.

Incredible.

And that's not a formula. I think things like the hero's journey can be useful, but not for most people who are in business. You're not trying to craft Lord of the Rings, you're not trying to make an epic, you're not trying to write a best selling novel. You're just trying to bring some of your work to life. So the next time you communicate, whether it's writing a LinkedIn post, writing a speech, doing a pitch deck for a client, ask yourself, where's. Who are the characters? What is the journey that they're on and what is the journey that we as an organization are on? How do we support them in that journey? Where's the conflict in the story and what's the jeopardy? What's on the line?

Powerful. I think of speed. Do you remember that movie Speed? Yeah. The bus that had to stay at a certain like the jeopardy. And that was huge. There was characters that were clearly on a journey. There was a lot at stake. So as you say those things that came to mind as an example of a very simple movie plot, but we watched it on the edge of our seat. Yeah. Until the end. I love that. That's great. Now, are you a planner? Do you plan year ahead, five years, 10 years? I want to be here. What does that look like for you?

I'm a short term planner, so I don't do goals, I, I do campaigns.

Okay.

So I will campaign on personal growth in a particular area. But I don't say in 12 months time I want to have done this or achieved this, but on a short term scale, I'm a real planner. I'm like a hyper scheduler. So I don't do lists. I think to do lists are really problematic because they don't have any metrics attached in terms of how long the task should take, when it should happen, what order should it happen in, etc. So I just use my Google calendar and everything that I need to do from.

Doing washing a couple of times a week to getting a car warrant of fitness through to sending an email, for example. When I knew that we were doing this and I needed to mail you this book, it didn't go onto a to do list. It got put in as like a 15 minute placeholder and I see those as blocks that I can move around. And I think the key thing is by the time you go to bed, you need to have a clear picture of what your next day is going to look like. If you don't have a plan when you go to bed, then you are starting the day using your energy, trying to make up what that plan will be. Now, of course that doesn't mean that you're locked into that. And of course the day that I end up having might look completely different to what I thought it was going to be, but for me, that's how I keep on top of everything.

That's brilliant. I have a client that's a thing they use called PTT plan tomorrow, today, 100%. Five minutes or 10 minutes before they go to bed before they knock off, it's like, boom. I love that.

Totally.

That's great. Now, before I ask you the final question, I want to just acknowledge how incredible this book is. So this is not how it ends. It's the ultimate in storytelling. It's raw, it highlights some of the most incredible things that went on in your life, but also some of the darkest moments. I said at the start, I picked it up on Friday and I finished it by Saturday. I want to just underline, this is not a short book. The reason I read it so quickly is because it was addictive. It's like Bourne Supremacy. I just want to watch the whole thing and all the episodes start to finish. Or people that love maths. It's like that. You just want to binge on it. That's what your book is. It's phenomenal. And as you'll see, you can see I've got lots of little turns in there and corners. Those are things for me to go back on and reflect on my own life. So I feel as this will help anyone who experiences burnout, busyness, the struggles of parenting, running a business, struggling to get the next career move happening. This book will have answers. That's the first thing. Please get a copy of the book link in the show notes, last question. So please, for a moment, let's imagine you and I are going to fast forward many years into the future and you're highly aware that it's your very last day here on Earth and a young human comes into the room who you know and you love dearly. And they say, jehan, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Ask yourself, what kind of character do I want to play in the story of my life? And secondly, ask yourself, what story am I a part of? We live in a very individualistic Western culture where we're focused on me, me, me, what do I want? What kind of life do I want to build for myself? And I've written a book, as you have referred to, that's based around, well, how do I tell a better story? How do I shift my mindset? But a lot of this stuff is internal focused. And for me, one of the key things to unlocking, well, being in my own life has been turning the mirror away from myself and focusing it out. What's the kind of contribution that I want to make to the world? Who do I want to serve? And also, what am I called to do? What sort of role am I called to play in other people's stories? I think that's powerful.

So powerful. Thank you for sharing that. There's a person that's listening right now that needed to hear that. And for those that would like to connect with you, what's the best way to do that? We'll make sure and put all of this in the show notes.

You're welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn or you can drop me an email. HelloHancastenada. Co NZ.

Amazing. And please, folks, before you do that, read the book. It'll be so much more meaningful. Johan, thank you so much.

Thank you for your encouragement.

Been amazing.

Love you.

Cheers.

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