My Habits For (Almost) Limitless Energy | Simon Alexander Ong | 121

What is a successful life for you? If you could take away all of these external metrics, when you know what fulfillment looks and feels like for you, that awakens one of the greatest energetic sources within us.

Simon Alexander Ong is the author of Energize, a bestselling book on energy and performance. He works with leaders and creators around the world who want to perform at a high level.

Energy, I see it through 4 dimensions: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. In many cases, when we think about energy, we only focus on the physical. Mental energy is all about your mindset. Emotional energy is all about relationships. And spiritual energy is all about meaning and purpose.

Simon's work focuses on energy as what's underneath productivity, creativity, and leadership.

The difference between energy management and time management is that time management assumes your energy is constant throughout the entire day, whereas energy management appreciates that it fluctuates throughout the day.

We also talk about one of my favorite topics, which is showing up consistently and how you can build a way of working that's sustainable in the long run. What do you see stops people from taking action?

I think there are 3 things. First, 2: fear and self-doubt. And the third is—

Simon, how long have you been a creator?

Interesting question, because I've never really considered myself a creator. Okay. People have labeled part of what I do as being a creator because I have a YouTube channel. I post on platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram.

You've written a book.

I've written a book and I think in a way we're all creators because you can't not build a business today without creating some form of content. And I think creator is just today's buzzword for describing what we all have to do in terms of building and growing a business.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so how long have you not been a creator? So before you came into this world of, of teaching and sharing these stories and talking about energy and all of that. Yeah. Where were you before in business?

So I grew up with this mistaken belief that to be successful in life, you had to earn a certain job title. So when I was a teenager, I remember speaking to my dad, and my dad looks like the Dalai Lama. So I thought this would be quite a wise conversation. I remember sitting down with him at the dinner table and I asked him, so when I finish college, what would be deemed as a successful career? And he said, well, Simon, if you become a banker, a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant, I think you would have earned a reputable career. And so, seduced by films like Wall Street and Boiler Room and the like, I decided to pursue a career in finance.

Yeah, you strike me as a finance guy. Not at all.

At the worst possible time, actually. This was the middle of 2007, a year before the global financial crisis swept across the planet. And just to make things a little interesting, the company I started as a graduate with was Lehman Brothers, which collapsed 14 months after I joined.

Right.

Nothing to do with me, by the way.

Correlation, causation, there's no way to know.

Indeed. But for me, I always say that was— even though it was really difficult and challenging at the time, it was a blessing in disguise because for me it kickstarted what I believe is the longest journey we as humans make, which are the inches from our heads to our hearts. Never an easy journey, but the most important and fulfilling that we will ever take. And about 8 years later, I quit the industry and decided I wanted to run my own business. I was really into the psychology of personal development, understanding what made people show up and achieve the success they did. And so that led me to the coaching industry. And one thing just led to another. I started coaching people. Coaching then led to speaking. Speaking then led to doing a lot of interviews. And then that led to landing a book deal with Penguin in 2020, just as the world was entering its first lockdown.

You tend to make these big pivots, it seems like, right before global things happen. Again, correlation, causation. I'm not— so coming from, I think the intersection of finance and that background is really interesting, is then you get into the world of coaching because you have this analytical side to you, but then also everything that I hear you talk about in your content and your book and all of this, right, is so heart-focused.

Yeah.

What's the relationship between those two for you?

There's a— the relationship is that we listen to both our heart and our mind. The heart knows where you need to be, but often the mind steps in and overwrites it. So let's say your heart is pulling into a certain direction. The mind then jumps in and analyzes every possible outcome. Is this really what I want to do? Am I going to succeed in this? And it's why so often people aren't where they want to be in life. We talk ourselves out of the journey before it's even started, thinking about scenarios that may or may not even happen. But what we come to realize, or at least I did as I began in this journey, is that we live in the feeling of our thinking moment to moment to moment. So your life is essentially what you choose to see. If you choose to see failure, if you choose to see setbacks, if you choose to see why it can't be done, your mind will go out and find reasons for it. But if you see possibility, if you see potential, if you see that there could be a way forward, your mind will go out and find it. So you're just sending instructions to your mind all the time. But it's the awareness to know that that is what's causing your reality to be the way it is.

My background is in computer programming, and that sounds like you had having one program running and then choosing to say, you know, we're going to change some code and we're going to reprogram this. Is there an example where you were able to reprogram yourself and like choose to see something different and then have a different life experience because of it?

Absolutely. So one of the things we can't avoid in today's world is logging on to social media and looking at what everyone around us is doing. And so the trap that I used to be in is I would look at what everybody else was doing and I kept comparing myself to them. I was thinking, well, they achieved this amount of success because they had certain resources, they had the right network. And if I continue to choose that line of thought, I would never have started in terms of my journey to what I get to do today. But what I learned is a simple reframe that instead of looking at others for comparison, look at others for inspiration. So instead of saying, well, why can't I do it? How come they've got there? They're just lucky.

right?

Ask yourself, what can I learn from how they've got there? What can I learn from how they're doing what they're doing? And then how can I just start testing? How can I start experimenting and see what works and what doesn't? So I find my own path forwards. And ultimately, the only person we should be comparing ourselves to is who we were yesterday.

Okay.

If we are constantly better than who we were yesterday, eventually we get to reap the rewards.

So was there someone specific that you were comparing yourself to that you shifted?

Just everyone ahead of me.

Yeah.

Just as soon as I got into this industry, I was just following lots of people doing incredible things and I would just consume, consume and consume. But then I realized that when it comes to social media especially, you have two choices because social media is just a tool at the end of the day. You have the choice to just consume, or you can use what's available to create something, to create something of value. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to start using it in a healthier way so I could grow not just my brand, but build awareness about what I did.

So what did that shift look like as you got into— what were the steps that you took to step into that creative role?

So when I first started, it was just me going to networking events, speaking to people, giving people an experience of what coaching was like. And then on social media, what I started doing was just documenting my speaking. It was showing people behind the scenes, was giving people highlights of my speaking and just writing my thoughts onto articles, onto posts, blogging at the time. Yeah, blogging was the thing that was doing really well. That's how people found out about your work. And then just trying to build a profile on these different platforms. And I found that over time, that's how people came across my work. It wasn't Google anymore. I mean, some people would still search looking for your work specifically, But people would go straight onto platforms like Instagram or YouTube or LinkedIn to learn about who you were, and then they would want to have a conversation and see whether they wanted to do business with you.

So something that you've talked about really a lot is energy. And the reason I asked how long you've been a creator is I'm curious about how you're— you sustain that energy over a long period of time, because something that I see so many creators do is burn out pretty quickly and they might get to a tiny fraction of the reach that they hope to because they burn out after 6 months or 2 years or that sort of thing. And I'm now at 14 years in the creator industry. I think plenty of other people are at, you know, 5 years before they get traction or all of this. And so when it relates to creators and burnout and their energy, like, what do you see people getting wrong in both how they think about it and then the day-to-day actions that they take?

For me, it boils down to consistency versus intensity.

Okay.

We go hard and when we don't see results, we burn out. Yeah. I mean, classic example is when we start a new year, lots of people have resolutions and they go very intense. So if you've never been to a gym that often before and you decide this is the year that health is going to be my value, and you go 3, 4 times a week. If you go from zero to that without slowly building and focusing on consistency, eventually you find out you can't keep it up, you burn out, and eventually you give up your gym membership. So the key is to focus on consistency over intensity. And so when you first start out, it's understanding, well, what does that look like for me? So not to follow what other people are doing, but just say maybe once a week, posting on social media might be my frequency, right? And then slowly build from there. Because the key is you want to thrive, not just survive. And the only way to do that is to find a good rhythm that works for you. And we all come from different setups. You know, some people have a team, you might be starting out on your own, other people might be holding down a day job as well. And so you just got to work out what is my rhythm that I can sustain over, over a long period, knowing that something is always better than nothing, right?

I mean, something that I— this is not a show focused on beginners, but something that I recommend for beginners is that they start with journaling rather than actually posting. And so that the consistency that you build up is the consistency of logging your thoughts and ideas. And then once that exists, and then let's get to a consistency of refining them and then maybe posting them, right? And so you start with this much easier step.

Well, I'm curious, what's kept you going? You've mentioned you've been doing this for quite a while.

I mean, I truly love it, right? So it's the people that— and the relationships that I have. I also think that you don't truly understand an idea until you teach it, and that teaching is the biggest thing. There's so many things, you know, I love money and finance and like the physics behind building wealth. And so something that I've really enjoyed is trying to distill those principles down into something that I can teach because I'll be like, oh yeah, This is why it works that way. You know, SaaS companies have higher enterprise value than agencies, right? It's a standard thing. And someone's like, why?

Like, they just do.

I don't know. You know, but it's not until you can teach it.

Yeah.

That you realize like, oh, do you really understand the physics behind it?

That's also the power of teaching because I think when you teach something, you're forced to really understand it and also simplify it.

Yeah.

How can you simplify it into frameworks? Or ways where people can get it immediately. And when you pass that knowledge on, that's how we empower other people to also follow on the same journey. Yeah.

And I think for me it's having a mission and a purpose of why you're doing it. So this is something that I keep trying to recenter the team at Kit around, is our mission as a company is that we exist to help creators earn a living and to build valuable businesses. And so I will keep going back to basically learning that making money is a skill.

Yeah.

Was a transformational thing for me where I took something that was scarcity-based and I, you know, watched my parents divorce over like fighting over money and all of that and realizing like, okay, I want to— I want a path to like taking care of my family in a sustainable way and then realizing like, wait, making money is a skill. I can learn this thing. And then achieving all of the goals that I had set out. And then basically going around to the world like, do you understand this? Like, does everybody know that? You know? And so I felt like I had discovered like the cheat code for a video game and I wanted to share that with everyone else.

And that's for me what makes it energizing. You know, you go back earlier about how do we keep it energizing throughout the longevity of surviving as a creator. It's how do, how do you treat it like a game?

Yeah.

Because if you can see the journey as a game, it becomes far more fun and enjoyable. So each challenge you see, you treat it like an obstacle to get to the next level. And when you get there, you energize to try and get to the next level and the next level. And then you're working out, well, what are the cheat codes that are going to help me break through to the next level? And then for me, that's what, that's what makes it so much fun is you go in without knowing what the outcome is going to be, but just to experiment and treat the journey like a game.

Something I think a lot about is stress. And I have had times, you know, years in the past where I would have like panic attacks and really, really struggle with stress. And then other times where I really, really enjoyed the work and had like a much more, I guess, fluid, easygoing, easygoing relationship with it. But is that as you work with leaders and all that, is that something that you work with them a lot on, is their relationship to their work and, and the stress side of it?

Absolutely. So many people are stressed because they tie their emotional well-being to whether something works out or not, or even their achievements. So I don't know if you know this, but when Michael Phelps retired from being an Olympic swimmer, within the first year he talked about how often he had suicidal thoughts.

Yeah.

And that was because his identity was so tied to being an Olympic swimmer. So when you retire from that career, Who are you?

Right.

How do you describe yourself now? And so it's, it's really understanding that you are not your achievements. If you tie yourself to it, your emotional well-being is going to be like a roller coaster. You know, when things go well, you're going to be having a euphoric high. When things don't go well, you want to shut yourself away from the world. And so it's really focusing on the fact that you can choose to be happy and grateful just for the sake of it. It doesn't have to be tied to an achievement. And in fact, when you operate from a place of gratitude, for me, that's how you access abundance. It's again choosing what you see. If you're realizing that there is so much to be grateful for in this present moment, suddenly your mind finds even more things to be grateful for. You attract more opportunities into your world.

That seems like something that is really easy to say and really hard to live out. Like, how do you coach people through making that that transition and saying like, okay, my accomplishments are not my self-worth, you know, and all of those things.

Absolutely. I mean, it's one of the things that's hard because it's something we're so conditioned to believe. So if you look at how society judges success, we judge success on external metrics. So usually when you ask people, who do you consider to be successful, the traits that go into their determination of who's successful are things like how much money someone is earning, their status, their job title, the company they work with. But if you were to take all of that away and really ask someone, well, who are you without those things? A lot of people can't tell you because they don't know what that is. And so in a way, when we, when we talk about wisdom and when I'm teaching people to become wiser, I always say wisdom begins with knowing yourself. Okay, who are you? What do you stand for? Ultimately, what is a successful life for you? If you could take away all of these external metrics, you choose what is a successful life for you. What would that look like? And it's starting from there. It's having clarity of purpose. Because going back to something you said earlier about purpose, for me, when you know what your purpose is, when you know what you're working toward, when you know what fulfillment looks and feels like for you, that awakens one of the greatest energetic sources within us. It's what wakes us up in the morning. It's what pulls us forward. It's what allows us to do more than our basic job description.

Okay, so going to that stress, I want to give listeners a handful of tools for dealing with that, because I find that most ambitious people that I come across— yeah, and if you're listening to this show, you're probably an ambitious, very highly driven person— are going to encounter a lot of stress. Yeah, it might be self-inflicted. It might be whatever comes up from family, from work, from You know, anything else, opportunities you've taken, the ones that you've missed out on, whatever else. And I want to give a series of tools. So I'll kick off with one, and then I'd love for you to share one. One thing that really helps me is thinking about life as a video game, like you're talking about, and there being a series of levels. And so looking back, so I look at a problem today that feels crushing to me, where I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do about this. This is so stressful. and I will set that aside for a moment, and I will think back to a time a few years ago that I felt the same way. So like an example would be, uh, figuring out how to lead a company through a global pandemic and lockdown and everything else. And that felt crushing at the time. Now I look at that and I go, oh, that'd actually be pretty easy. Not, not easy, but I know how I would do that. Past me was crushed under the weight of that stress. Current me would be like, you know, that's fine. I've grown enough. And so that reflection in time realizes, oh, I have leveled up as a leader, as a human, all of that, to the point that what was crushing before is manageable now. And so now I can go forward in time and say, okay, so the thing that feels crushing now I bet Nathan 3 years from now will go, okay, I wish my problems were that easy.

Yeah.

And so using time in that way and personal growth to put things in perspective.

So for me, there's 3 things that come to mind. The very first thing is when you feel stressed, especially if you're going through a very tough situation right now or a period that's challenging, the hardest thing is focusing on that challenge now because it just makes you more stressed when you— the more you think about it. And so the first thing you want to do is you want to distance yourself from it.

Okay.

In order to see the solution that we all know but often gets clouded by judgment. So for example, if somebody is going through a tough time right now, or perhaps they're procrastinating on something they know they should be doing, I might distance myself from that situation by asking them a question like, well, if the next year of your life was like the next episode on a Netflix show, what would that episode be called and what would be happening on it that would make it compelling viewing?

Okay, interesting. That's not where I thought you were going at all.

So what happens is it distances themself away from them being in the trenches and gets their creativity flowing and then saying, well, I think in the next episode I would finally break my procrastination and start that project. And I'll be like, then what would happen next? What would make the viewer want to continue watching? And they'll be like, well, the project starts to take off, we start calling some suppliers, and now they're detailing out a plan forward, right? They're doing it, but they're doing it from a distance from them being in it.

When you move from analytical to storytelling, absolutely.

And storytelling has emotion, and emotion is what activates an energy inside of us to realize we know the way forward. So that's an example. Another one could be a client might say, you know, it's really tough in my company right now. I feel like my manager is micromanaging me. I can't get my thoughts across. Now, if I continue just focusing on that situation, it just makes that person more stressed. So I might say, well, let's for a moment imagine your team is in a kitchen and you are all part of a kitchen team to prepare food for a restaurant. And your manager is the chef. Tell me about the chef. And so we're just creating a very extreme storytelling scenario that just takes them away from being in that situation. But we think of it through a different lens, and then it becomes a bit humorous, it becomes a bit funny. And they say, well, you know, the chef's running about ordering people to do stuff, but he hasn't really prepared it all yet. I'm trying to tell people what to do, but no one's listening because pots and pans are just going up, steam is coming up all over the place. And then we might say, well, how are you going to get the chef's attention? And so we're coming up with a solution, but through a different, different path.

So I guess in that case, you're going from contrasting, let's say that this person actually works in a remote environment. They're communicating over Slack and email or Jira tickets. I don't know what it is. And their boss is micromanaging them through these messages or that sort of thing, or the things that are unsaid, you know, or what comes across as passive-aggressive in some way. And what you're doing is you're taking it out of that real environment.

Yeah.

And you're going into—

you're switching up the environment to get them to see their same situation through a different lens. So for example, in that situation, I might say, well, let's take you out of you and put you in your boss's shoes.

Okay.

How do you think he receives information best? And so we're just shifting perspective a little bit. It's like, I had a recent conversation with a potential client and he was telling me about all the things that were worrying him and all the things he needs help with. And he felt drowning in, in all of these challenges. He told me he's a family man. And so I just said to him, imagine you've come back from work and your children come up to you and one of them before leaving tells you the exact same thing you've told me. What would you tell your son or daughter if they told you what you just told me? And suddenly he's formulating answers and he's formulating advice because deep down we have that knowledge, we have that wisdom, but it's just having the courage to listen and follow through with it. So that would be one. The second is stillness, is to slow things down so you can see the path forward. And very often we don't rest. We see rest as a reward for working hard or hustling without realizing that work and rest are partners of the same team. So how can you slow yourself down? You mentioned journaling earlier and just to understand your thoughts at a deeper level. It could be something like just going for a walk in nature and then coming back, writing down what came up in your mind. It could be meditation, whatever form that might take. How do you begin to find rest within your routine, not as a result of having achieved something. And, and that's key to me. And the third is connection to your future self. So what I mean by this is a lot of us make present-day decisions based on our past self, and that's what holds us back. But if we make present-day choices and decisions based on our future self, i.e., what would future me do?

Yeah.

Then that changes the game. Even a process of visualizing yourself sitting down on the table and the person opposite is your ideal future self. What would he or she tell you about where you are in the direction you should take?

Is there an example from either your own life or a coaching client where they were able to have that clarity when getting advice from their future self?

So I can speak from personal experience when I was contemplating quitting my corporate career. It was probably at the time the toughest decision I was about to take. Yeah.

What made it so hard?

Nobody in my immediate family had ever run a business. They'd always worked for someone. And my environment wasn't full of people that were entrepreneurs. I grew up in an environment where everybody worked jobs. They would go to college, follow the blueprint that most of us follow in life. And so what made it hard was if I quit this job, What would my parents say? What would my friends say? There was a lot of thoughts running through my head. And so what I started to do was to close my eyes, imagine myself walking into a room where there's a table in the middle, pulling out the chair, sitting down, and seeing my ideal future self in front of me and just asking him, what would you do? What would you do? What path should I take? And just as a result of doing that, I realized the pull and the excitement came from going into the unknown. It came from just exploring what I hadn't done before, because I think that when you go into the unknown, the beauty of it is that anything is possible. But you've got to put yourself there. And just to change my environment, it taught me that the first step to getting anywhere in life is to design an environment around you that makes it impossible not to succeed. So I started changing what I read, what I watch, what I followed, what I listened to, who I spent time around, the events I went to. And that just really helped to change my vision of what could be possible.

That's so interesting. I'm imagining the, like, the advice that your future self would give in so many different scenarios. But yeah, it gives clarity where you're saying, you know, and I've done that, like coaching other people through something of, yeah, just like, okay, that's interesting. Like trying to set it aside and then create a different scenario where the end is like, well, what advice would you give this person? And they give the advice and they go, go, oh, that was me. Okay, you know, it's like, but you, you created that distance. The other one that I found is really helpful whenever someone's stuck, like not taking any action at all, is to have the framing around like doing a favor for your future self. Like whenever someone, you know, can't get past the procrastination, or, you know, you're like, you know, it's just like, hey, today all I want you to do is do one favor. Could be tiny, could be medium-sized, I don't care, for your future self. And so that, you know, that could be eating right, that could be working out, that could be going to bed at a reasonable time, that could be making a little bit of progress on the book project you've been working on, or any of those things. But it's just a little bit of a favor to your future self. And then also to have some gratitude for something that your past self did. Yeah. And like, if you, it's just these tiny little things. Like, what's one thing I'm grateful for that my past self did? Okay. Well, you know, I'm grateful that I, uh, my past self sat down for 30 minutes and made progress on the book I'm trying to write. And then the favor that I'm going to do for my future self is, you know, I'm going to, uh, go to bed at 10 instead of staying up till midnight watching a Netflix show, you know, something like that.

Yeah. That's so key. And that's why for me, uh, Beginning with the end in mind is so important. So when we wake up in the morning, is asking ourselves, how will I know that today will have been a productive day? How will I know that this week will have been a productive week?

Yeah.

And then just work backwards. And when we think about the action we take, is to focus on the feeling after having taken the action, not the process of taking action.

Right.

So for, for example, with the, with the book, rather than focus on what you've gotta do, to complete the number of words or to get to your goal. Focus on the feeling of how it would be like once you're there.

Okay.

Written the 500 words. How does it feel? How does it feel to have written 500 words today and set yourself up for a good start tomorrow? Because when you focus on that, that's an emotion. And emotion is all about energy. And that emotion excites you enough to want to do it. It's like if all your friends are watching a TV show, that you've never heard of, the excitement that they share, the feeling that you see they get from having watched this show almost seduces you to also want to watch the TV show, even though you've said to everyone you've got no time. You find time to watch it because it's now an emotional connection to wanting to watch that show.

Right. Okay. I want to dig in on this, the emotion side, because I spend all of my time, not quite all, but so much of my time in the logical, analytical side and you're talking about, oh, just focus on the feelings. Like, how, how do you actually make that shift?

Well, first of all, I'll share my, one of my favorite quotes by Maya Angelou, which goes, people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget the way you made them feel. And feeling is simply a transference of energy. And I first learned about this when I, you know, I often share about how I now have short hair, but when I was a teenager growing up in secondary school, you might not believe this, Nathan Barry, longer hair. I used to spend 20 minutes every morning gelling up my hair, preparing to go to school. And one summer I decided I'm just going to shave it off. I was back home in Malaysia and I said, I'm just going to shave it off. And I come back to school in September. I remember being in the school canteen and a friend of mine comes up to me and he says, Simon, have you heard of the rumor going around about you? I'm like, no, what are they saying? And keep in mind, this was before social media, before the internet. So people would often make up rumors about what you did during the summer holidays. And they said, people are saying that you spent the summer in a Shaolin monastery learning kung fu, and you had to shave your head. And I was thinking to myself, that's why nobody's coming up to me or wanting to start a fight with me. And I kept it ever since. And so the reason I often share that story is because we are telling ourselves stories every single day about our past, about our present, and about our future and what we can or cannot do. And stories is what activates our ability to get things done. Stories are also how we influence other people. The best communicators in the world are able to tell great stories, and it's the stories that sell because they activate something inside of us that makes the audience relate to whatever that communicator is saying.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying the episode. I wanted to jump in really quick to suggest one thing you should do this year if you want to grow your creative business, and that is to show up in person at conferences. You can do any of these great creator conferences, but the one that I would specifically recommend because I organize it, it's called Craft and Commerce. So for the last 7, 8, 9 years, I don't know how long it's been now, we've been hosting an in-person event for creators and it's basically the event that we wish we had early on in our creator careers. We've got incredible workshops and speakers and just so many great things happening. But the thing that you're gonna enjoy the most is the hallway track, the conversations at restaurants over lunch or just around the event. With other creators. My creator career changed drastically when I started showing up in person, building relationships, and then having those other creators help build my business with me and build me up and provide accountability and mastermind and so much more. So I would say get in person with creators, show up to Craft and Commerce this June, and if you want to grab your ticket, you can do that at kit.com/conference. Uh, it sold out last year. It's probably gonna sell out really soon again this year. So make sure to do that right away. Okay. Going back to this idea of stress and thinking about, I guess, your relationship to work.

Yeah.

I'll give a specific example of something I was reflecting on my year. So this was, you know, we're recording this in January. Um, so maybe mid-December. Um, and I'm sort of reflecting on the year and realizing that we accomplished so many incredible things this year. But the first thought when I was like, what was 2025 like? I was like, oh, it's stressful.

I was like, hmm.

And then I went back and I realized we actually took all these amazing trips as a family. Like, I had a really good balance to the year. I did so many of the things that I wanted to do, but stress is the thing that stood out because of, um, like some tough team transitions at the end of the year. And like, it was more of a recency thing. And I remember thinking to myself, wait a second, this is weird. Like, I have accomplished way too many of my goals. Like I went back 10 years and I was like, whatever Nathan in 2015 hoped and dreamed to accomplish, like Nathan in 2025 has exceeded those by 10x or more. Like in all of these different categories. Like just to name a few things, like the company is at over $50 million a year in revenue. The dream list of clients, it's not even, it's not just the biggest names in the creator space. It's the biggest names in the celebrity space, you know, and like, and everything. And so if I were to rewind 10 years, like 2015, Nathan would be shocked at two things. One, how successful everything was. And two, how 2025 Nathan felt about it. Like, how can you achieve all of this and be that stressed? And so I basically made a decision even just, you know, 3 or 4 weeks ago of like, okay, I'm gonna loosen up. I'm going to deliberately have a different, relationship because, you know, with my own stress and emotions, because otherwise what am I doing? And so I'm curious if there's similar transitions that you've helped people work through and some of your process.

And what you shared there is not uncommon because what I'm hearing is the reason, or maybe one of the reasons that the stress has manifested is because wherever you are in your journey, you're focused so much on how far there is yet to go.

Yeah.

And when you're always focused on how much further you've got to go, you're always going to be stressed. But when you take a moment to step back and say, well, look at how far I've come, right? Look at the journey I've been on. It makes you grateful for the present moment and you start to let go a little bit. You're not so tied to the next thing and the next thing, because otherwise you're going to be in a constant state of anxiety. You're not living in the present or the future or the past. And you fall into this tragic scenario of living as if you are never going to die and then dying, having never really lived, because you're neither in the present, the past, or the future. You're just in your thoughts. You're constantly thinking about things that may or may not happen. You're focused on control when in many cases all you can control is your input. And so when you kind of loosen up a little bit, you get to enjoy life more. You get to be open to circumstances beyond your control. And sometimes things work out better than you imagined. But when you start to try and control everything, that's what creates stress. Because stress happens when an expectation does not meet what you were thinking about. So you might expect something to happen, doesn't happen, that creates stress. So loosening your control on the outcome being exactly the way you want it helps to reduce that feeling of stress.

One of my favorite authors and entrepreneurs is Jason Fried, who founded Basecamp, and he wrote a bunch of books, Rework, Getting Real, all these great books. And he talked about learning to play the drums. And, you know, as he's playing the drums and all of that, his teacher is like, you have to loosen up. You have to hold the drumsticks loosely. Because you're not getting the sound and all that. You're death gripping the drumsticks and it is not working. And that stood out to me so much because I was like, wait, that's what I'm doing. I am controlling, I'm holding tight and I'm trying to shape and create this outcome. And, you know, you could immediately see how if you were doing that, like nothing is going to sound right in the drums and it's not going to work well in business or life at all. But I think it's a really hard shift to make.

That picture you've created is the equivalent of somebody holding so tight on something focus on a particular result and trying to force something through when life doesn't always work that way. And it reminds me of Wing Chun. I don't know if you've heard of Wing Chun. It's a form of martial art. Yeah, but it was actually invented by a female. It was invented by a nun. And the reason she invented Wing Chun was because she was challenged to fight a man. But of course, strength versus strength, she couldn't win. So the reason she designed Wing Chun was she observed animals in the environment and she wanted to understand how she could beat the other person's strength but without having strength herself. And it was simply by loosening up, by loosening her grip, by going with the flow and using the person's strength against them. And that's how Wing Chun was born. Wing Chun was simply her understanding of how to beat the person in the fight. And she actually won the fight simply by loosening up and using opponent's strength against himself.

So if we take that into the practical world, what's an area of your life that you were able to loosen up and not be so attached to the result?

And yeah, I think for me it's certainly been parenting. Yeah, parenting. It's—

yes, control that child and see how well that works for you.

Parenting is tough because as parents you naturally have certain expectations. That you want your child to meet, and you hope they do certain things, make certain choices and decisions, but you realize you can't control them. They're their own person, and every child is different. And this is why you might have the first child and it's like, oh my God, I really enjoy this child. They're so well behaved. They eat and sleep so well. And then you have a second child that's completely the opposite.

And you're like, your children are never— what went wrong?

And so I think Parenting has taught me so much about loosening up in the sense that you can't control every aspect of that person. You can only guide them. And that's why I think there's a lot of similarities to leadership. You know, you can't control every single team member and employee. All you can do in your position is to guide them towards a compelling future that you then hope they make the right choices. And so with my daughter, it's giving her the emotional space to share what she's going through and simply acting as that guide. And one of the things I learned from psychologist Adam Grant, actually, he speaks a lot about this in some of his work, is that children, as they grow up between 0 and 10, their default when they experience something for the first time or they're nervous about going to school or doing a new activity, is they go straight to mom and dad and say, Mom, Dad, what do I do? I'm a bit nervous, or I don't know anyone here. What do I do? Now, as parents, we jump straight in. We offer advice, we give them help. And this is kind of the same for adults in the sense that when you have a partner who may have gone through a tough day at work and your partner comes back and they share what they've gone through, automatically we as the other person, we feel like we have to jump in and offer advice and guidance. Now what he said is that you want to spin it around to try and get them to coach themselves by you being vulnerable. So vulnerability being a path of connection. So instead of me just constantly giving advice to my daughter, I might say to my daughter, when I'm noticing she's a little nervous, I might say, you know, Dad's feeling a little nervous right now as well. And she might go, really? You get nervous as well? I'm like, yeah, I'm speaking at this event next week. It's the biggest audience I've ever spoken to, and I'm feeling a little nervous because I don't really know the audience that well. What tips do you have for me? And suddenly her eyes light up and she goes, well, Dad, you've always done this and that, and they've always enjoyed it. And so suddenly they come up with the most purest forms of wisdom and advice. But for them, it's almost like they're talking to themselves as well. So when they next experience something similar, the child is thinking, actually, I can just do the same thing. So they're learning to build that resilience and the fact that they can trust their own wisdom.

It's a very similar thing as, you know, what would your future self do or all that. But in this case, it's just, it's a different person. And so you're giving them that distance from the problem. I think telling those stories is so important as well.

And it's trust as well. It's trusting that you've done the best you can. And whatever they do, it's really up to, up to them to take it forward. In the same way, in the business, you know, I've spoken to a lot of different companies and I've noticed that the teams that feel that they are trusted, supported, and appreciated always perform better, right? Because they have been given a freedom to do what they were hired to do and are just guided towards activating their full potential.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about, you know, this idea of control. And trying to control the outcomes. Um, I was doing that a lot in parenting. I have 3 boys, uh, they're 14, 11, and 6. And, uh, my 11-year-old really struggles with a lot of things with, um, his school, with just really a lot. And the more I tried to shape and control the outcomes, the worse it got. And The last few months, all I've tried to do is spend a lot of time with him. And so we're doing a massive construction project on a fort that he wants to build in the backyard. And he's talked about it for a long time. He wants to build a hobbit hole in the backyard. We have a little farm and there's like a hillside and, and all of that. And at first that was a ridiculous project and I don't know how to do that. And you know, all of this. But I realized that when I didn't know how to help him, I was trying to control all these things. And I thought instead, like, what if, what if the only thing I tried to control was how much time we spent together?

Yeah.

And so I said, okay, you know what? Finally, he's like, Dad, let's, you know, can we build a hopper hole? That's me, man. Instead of saying, like, I, what are we even doing? Like, that's, that's the thing. I said, I just finally said, okay, because I knew it was something that was going to give us, you know, a project that was going to take hundreds of hours of us doing things together and just being.

And the key is you're doing it together. So you're learning together, you're being challenged together. And even asking him, well, what do you think we should be doing next? And that brings you into the present moment. It's like over, over the Christmas holidays, my family, we love doing jigsaws together.

Yeah.

And the reason is because you're not distracted by any technology. You just focus on building the jigsaw and you're doing it as a team. And that's quality time. And when we finish the recent holiday period, I remember asking my daughter, because I'm getting her to do some regular reflection, and I asked my daughter, what was the most memorable thing you did in the past 2 weeks? And it wasn't the present. It wasn't visiting Santa. It wasn't doing all of these outings. It was simply, I just enjoy spending time with mom and dad. And what we realize is that the greatest gift we can give to someone else is our energy and our presence. Not time, but energy and presence. And children especially can feel that. You know, they can really notice that. They can notice if you're distracted or your, your mind is elsewhere, or they can tell whether you're actually present with them, listening to them and connecting with them.

You actually just gave me something about— I'm going to change how I interact with August, my son, on this project. I am— I have a plan like we drew up. We know what to do, but I have more of it in my head. And so he's like, Dad, what should we do next? I'm like, okay, well, Uh, we need to run electrical before we can put in insulation. So why don't you grab the drill and start drilling these holes, and we'll run electrical wire and all of that. What I should do instead, and what I'm going to try to do when I come home from Dubai, is to ask him, okay, what, you know, let's go work on the hobbit hole. What, what do you think we should do next? And I bet he would get, you know, he'll We're far enough into the project. There's probably 4 or 5 things that he'd be like, well, let's do this part of it. Like, great. You know, and let him drive more of that. And that's holding it even more loosely. And because even though we're spending a lot of time together, it's still pretty outcome-focused, right? We are building this thing. But if I ask him, hey, what should we do next?

Yeah.

Then it's so much more presence-focused.

But it also feels like they're valued. Yes, that my contribution is valued. Like, one of the things that, uh, I do, and I share a lot with companies as well because I think it's important when they have their team meetings, is often in team meetings it's the same people speaking, it's the same people contributing to decisions. But if you can find ways to include people, you actually find not only does morale go up, but productivity also accelerates as well. And so we have a family committee, and it's a way to kind of get my daughter involved more in what we do and not for her to be just told what to do. So it might be, for example, where we're going cinema and last time we went to the cinema, it was Dad's choice of what to watch. And then it's okay, the next time it's your choice and the next time it's Mum's choice. And so now they feel like their contribution is valued. Or we're doing the chores this weekend. What chore do you want to do? And we just put all the different choices on the table. She gets to pick, but it's one that she is naturally drawn to and she wants to do. But then we're going to do some as well. So then it feels like you're really operating as a team and she feels like what she shares, what she tells us, it's also valid, it's listened to. And I find that really gets her involved and she wants to actually contribute. She actually wants to help us.

Yeah, I love that. Okay. Thinking about this level of intentionality and energy as a leader, how, how do you think of and how do you coach people to show up at like the energy that they bring to their companies?

Absolutely. So energy, I see it through 4 dimensions, and I see it through 4 dimensions, which are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Okay.

Now, in many cases, when we think about energy, we only focus on the physical. It's things like get more sleep, have a healthier diet, do more exercise. And those are things we can see as external the most. But the invisible stuff is mental, emotional, and spiritual. Mental energy is all about your mindset. It's your creativity and how you respond to things that don't always happen the way you expect. Emotional energy is all about relationships, relationships with yourself and the relationships with those around you. And spiritual energy is all about meaning and purpose. And so if we look at the world around us, a lot of people I see are exhausted, not because they are physically doing too much, but because they are doing too little of the things that bring them joy and they're running someone else's race. They haven't figured out for themselves what success means. And the way I explain this to people is I imagine you and I were to go to, to a buffet. Now we go up to the food stations, we pick up our food, we come back and we sit down. I guarantee you that we would not sit down with the exact same looking plate of food and it wouldn't be in the same quantity. It'll be very different looking. It's the same with success. So we need to look at all of the influences and inputs as just inspiration. And what do we take from that? To design our own philosophy, to arrive at our own definition of success and work towards that. So that's all to do with spiritual energy. We talk about it a lot in popular culture. In Star Wars, they call it the Force.

Yeah.

In Maori culture, they call it mana. In my Chinese culture, they call it chi. But we don't actually think about it when it comes to ourselves. And the difference between energy management and time management is that time management assumes your energy is constant throughout the entire day. Whereas energy management appreciates that it fluctuates throughout the day. So you could have a whole day free to get work done, but if you're not energized, you're going to waste it. You're going to procrastinate.

I've done that once or twice.

Whereas if you have a certain level of energy, you will get more done in hours than most will get done in days because it's what you bring into the hours, not how many hours you work. And that's important to understand. So that for me is how I see energy.

Okay, so let's take that to the example of the creator business. Yeah, right. Where maybe we have a massive project like the— or something that's really important.

Yeah.

The writing towards the book or maybe even like a— energy makes a big difference in writing, but it matters even more in, say, the YouTube video that we're producing.

Yeah.

Did I show up with reading the script off the teleprompter and no energy, or was I able to bring in this energy and enthusiasm that's going to come through on camera and be this exciting thing?

Yeah.

How would you go about structuring your day and thinking about bringing the right energy to the right scenario?

Well, first of all, I would say when it comes to communicating something and this goes the same, whether it's a YouTube video recording or a bit of content you're recording, it's the same when you speak to an audience live is whatever you're speaking about, it has to be about something that you are fascinated by and that you truly enjoy.

Okay?

Because if it is, you're naturally going to be energized. It's like if you ask a friend who just watched a really good show or really good film, what film or show should I watch next? When they talk about it to you, you don't have to worry about their energy. They're going to light up and say, oh, Nathan, you really got to check out this TV show. It's amazing. I've already gone through the first season. Yeah, the energy is flowing. And so if it's a topic that you enjoy, and that you really find yourself connected to, the energy will naturally come. Now, outside of that, it's how you prepare ahead of recording the content. Are you kind of doing it last minute where you're rushing to get it recorded, or are you doing it in a way where you've prepared, you set things up, and you're ready in the right state to record and get that energy across? So the preparation is very important. Again, whether you're speaking in front of an audience, whether you are recording content or sharing anything live that you're looking to put out to a bigger audience. So it's how you prepare and then your connection to that material.

Are there things that you think about, not just energy on a daily basis, but on like across a week or a different period of time?

Yeah, I see a season. So there'll be seasons in your year where, you know, your energy is going to be tested more than others. So for example, we've mentioned book a couple of times. So if you've got a book about to launch, you will know that in the 4 to 8 weeks before the launch and the 4 to 8 weeks after, it's going to be pretty intense.

Yeah.

So you might be doing a lot of podcast interviews, you might be doing a lot of PR-related activities, traveling, book signing, traveling. And so if you know ahead of time the impact it's going to have on your energy, you can say no to a lot more things ahead of time. You can clear the diary ahead of this season picking up just so you have the energy to deal with whatever's going to come into your inbox. So that's how I see it. I see my year as seasons. So summer and Christmas, for example, what I call the quiet seasons, and I use those seasons to reflect, spend time with the family and just disconnect. And then there'll be particular points in my year where business really picks up, you know, beginning of the year, towards the end of the year where there are big conferences going on where people wanna book me to speak, right? Or I'm launching something that I need to just block out a bit more time for just so I've got the energy to deliver whatever it is I'm looking to deliver with the best that I can do.

Are there, you know, what other energy decisions have you made in your life to, to make it so that your energy most matches the, the way you want to show up or the outcomes that you're trying to create?

I think it's a mindset as well. If I'm going to mental energy, I'm, I'm a creative, which sounds weird coming from someone who used to come from finance, right? But I love thinking differently. And for me, creativity is one of those skills that is going to become, if if it's not ready, is gonna become so much more important, uh, as AI takes over a lot more of our functional skills. And so creatively, it's just the ability to see things and do things in a different way, often in ways that has never been done before. And that for me is what really gets me going. It's really understanding how can I do something in a way that has never been done before. Now in marketing, they call this UTP, which stands for unique talking points. So what happens is when you build unique talking points into your business or what you do, people can't help but share about it on their social media, on, on their platforms, because you in effect turn your customers and your audience into your marketers. They become your marketers. And I remember talking about unique talking points, talking about sort of like finding creative ways to get you energized from a mental point of view. A friend of mine in London opened a nightclub a number of years ago. And it's a very competitive space. When you think about what you want to do in an evening, you're spoiled with choices. But he decided to think about what would my unique talking point be that would get all of the guests telling all of their friends about this club and marketing it, doing the marketing for us. So they ended up getting some train tracks on the ceiling of this nightclub. And if a VIP table were to order some shots from the bar, The bartenders would put the shots into this toy train. They would light the toy train up so it would be on fire. It would go along the train tracks to the table and Day of the Dead characters, because it was a Mexican-themed bar, Day of the Dead characters would come out and take those shots and give it to the table. The moment the train is going through that nightclub, everyone's got their phones out taking photos, videos, selfies, and they're just marketing it on their behalf. And so that's the power of thinking about unique talking points and really accessing that creativity. And that's for me what gives me that mental energy. It's really being inspired to see things differently. It's why I love connecting with people from very diverse backgrounds. Now, if you only look at your competition, you can only be as good as your competition. But when you look beyond your industry, when you look at other people doing well in different sectors, you're able to bring that inspiration into your own industry and stand out. It's how Steve Jobs came up with the MagSafe cord for the MacBook. On the trip to Japan, he noticed the rice cookers there had this magnetic cord. And so curious, he wanted to know the reason behind it. And the company told him, well, the reason we have these magnetic cords is that if a child was to trip on the wire, the wire would come off, but the appliance would stay still. And Steve came back to the US And he said, we're going to bring that into the next MacBook. And that was where the MagSafe cord was born. And when it came out, the editors and the journalists said, what a genius move. This is such an innovative bit of design. But it was inspired by looking beyond his industry.

Yeah. And then you're just not, it's not another me too copycat product. It's pulled from a totally different place. And I'm thinking about the rice cooker that we have. It has that magnetic cord, right? Because the last thing that you want to do is to drop a rice cooker on a small child.

Absolutely. And so that's why for me, to keep me energized throughout this entrepreneurial journey, I'm always seeking to learn from people with different backgrounds who are successful in different ways. So if we look at the content creator space, it's not just your YouTuber, it's your TikToker, it's your Instagrammer, it's the person that's built a big newsletter, the person that's built a great audience in a variety of different mediums. What are they doing that I can learn from, especially if they've done it in a way that is different to what I've seen? Because as you start to collect all those dots, your ability to then connect them and learn from them allows you to make that progress forward.

There's so many examples of pulling from different industries. Two that worked really well for me.

Yeah.

One is when I was in the design space, I would see all of these web designers put their work on these gallery websites.

Yeah.

It was like CSS galleries or that sort of thing. And it was all of the trends in design and people would copy that and everybody sort of made things that look the same and they needed inspiration. And so they went to their peers and they got inspiration. And sure enough, it all trended towards one area. What I ended up doing that I found was much better is I found that clothing brands in particular would have really great source of design. So I would go to like Banana Republic in the mall and they would have like their You know, their fall collection would have this interesting blend of colors and textures and typography. Or you, you look at the, the clothes themselves and the tag on it would have like an interesting texture to it. And it's like, oh, well, let's, what if I build a website that's inspired by this fabric, this texture, and the font that they chose? And I was, you know, fairly blatantly copying from something. but it didn't. It felt totally new in my world because I took it somewhere completely different.

But that's creativity for you. Creativity isn't about inventing something that has never been done before, right? It's about creating something as a result of your, your influences. You're drawing from different things to give birth to something new, but it's influenced by things that already, already come to pass.

Yeah.

And so that's all creativity is. But in order to activate that, we have to be curious. We have to follow our curiosities. Right, in the same way that Steve Jobs did, in the same way lots of other people have done, the same way that you did, is to follow our curiosities again without being attached to the outcome and seeing where they may lead. And often they can lead to very interesting insights, opportunities, or introductions.

Yeah, I love that. The other one that, that was important for me is the blend between the startup world and the direct response marketing world. And so the first book that I published I had a long-form sales page, which in direct response world was very, very common, right? Long-form sales pages. The copy is very, very important. We're addressing all of the obstacles, but they would do it in this like poorly designed yellow highlighter. You know, anyone who's spent time in that space knows that look. But then at the same time, I would go over, you know, I spent all this time in the world of startups. Where simplicity, elegant, like great design really, really mattered. And so I came out with these, this landing page for my book and everyone's like, I have never seen something like this. And it was just the intersection of those two worlds because it was great copywriting, a long-form sales page, but it was beautifully designed. And it's like I just took two industries, like very, very common practice in two different industries and merged it together. And everyone's like, I've never seen this before.

And you're like, And that's originality in motion. You're just connecting different industries together. I mean, this is how we, how we launched my first book. I mean, we partnered with the Connaught Hotel in London, which at the time was the world's best bar. And my book is called Energize, and they designed an Energize cocktail.

Okay.

And so for the first few weeks of launch, if you ordered that cocktail in a bar, it would be mixed in front of you and then presented on a signed copy of my book. We partnered with a celebrity chef. We did a 7-course menu where each course was inspired by a theme from my book. So communicating personal development and leadership through food. It was a unique experience. And then we partnered with an artist and it's noteworthy.

It gives you unique talking points.

Exactly. Gives you so many unique talking points that people can't help but share and talk about it. And then an artist created this beautiful abstract painting based on my work. And again, things that often in many cases have never been done before.

Right.

But it's just, as you say, just simply the intersection of two different industries given birth to new thought.

Let's dive into this because the book is coming out, right? If we rewind in time a little bit and you're thinking about, okay, I have a message that I want to get in front of a lot of people. First, are you tied to an outcome on that or how did you distance yourself from the outcome?

So for me, it's again, it's letting go of the outcome, being grateful. So for me, if I'm honest, I was already grateful. I had a book deal with Penguin. Many people would, would love to have a deal with a publisher like Penguin. And then to get the likes of Simon Sinek, Ali Abdaal, and the like to endorse the book was for me already a huge win. So for me, whatever happened after that was a bonus. But for me, in terms of the marketing, it was like, well, what are some cool experiments I can try? And just treat it like a game, gamify the process. And we just had a whiteboard up on our wall and we just had all of these different channels that we wanted to experiment with. And the way I describe it is a lot of authors who are about to publish, it's the equivalent of their strategy is equivalent of driving through a narrow country lane in the sense that once you hit traffic, you can't go anywhere. And so a lot of authors, when they have a new book coming out, they just go into social media, do the exact same, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. It's just buy the book, buy the book. The message the whole time is just get my book. But that's not going to be effective because when you put new content out, each piece of content has to be slightly different. I mean, it can still be about the book, but it has to be something that's a little indirect and a unique way to get attention. Yeah, because it appeals to different segments of your market. Not everyone's going to resonate with just buy my book all the time. And so when we looked at the different channels, it could be things such as what book clubs could we reach out to? So when they recommend this book in a month, suddenly you have hundreds, if not thousands of people buying the book. What podcasts could we get on? Which people could we collaborate with? What sort of stunt marketing could we do, what activations could we do, who could we collaborate with, what events could we speak at, and so on. So with all of these different channels, and I liken that to driving on a highway. So unlike the country lane, when you hit traffic, you can't go anywhere. In a highway, if something doesn't work out, you just keep shifting lanes. Yeah, you just keep moving lanes. You're just constantly experimenting. And so that's how I detach from the outcome, is I just focus on the fun of it. Let's just treat this journey as a game. I've already I'm already in a very good position. I'm really grateful having got a book deal and having got these incredible names to endorse the book. Let's just have a bit of fun with marketing and see where it may go.

Yeah, you're holding it loosely. You're optimizing for fun. Yeah. You're in gratitude all the way through and you're saying, what can I do that's unique? Something else that helps. I mean, it really stands out as I'm starting to come down the final stretches of finishing my own book and thinking about promotion, realizing like, oh yeah, by default, I'm just going to run the same playbook that everyone else does. And so two things is, I guess, changing the way that you brainstorm. One is having like a no bad ideas brainstorm. You know, where you're just at the whiteboard. What are the craziest things? I would never have thought of partnering with a hotel and a bar and, you know, the cocktail on a copy of your book. Like, even if only 5 people ever ordered that and you, but you got the Instagram reel and like, that's worth it.

It's the novelty. Yes.

Novelty of it. Right. So, you know, you can do this like no bad ideas and you're throwing things out there, writing it down, and no one's allowed to say like, well, that would never work because— and so that's one side of it. The other that I find really, really helpful is stepping into the pre-mortem. And that's basically going into this instead of no bad ideas. It's this project has failed. I know we're, you know, not too tied to the outcome, but let's say that the outcome is Uh, we, you know, we didn't sell 50,000 copies, we sold 50, you know, we didn't reach the people that we wanted to, we didn't achieve this goal, the startup that we're building shut down. Why? And we just step in into this world. So we're saying, okay, it's a year in the future, it's completely failed. What are all the reasons why? And in, in listing all of that out, you can identify, you're, I think you're doing two things. You're identifying the reasons that it would fail. And it's very tempting to go, oh, but we'd fix it with this. No, no, no. Remember, it failed.

Yeah.

And you just write down, here's all the reasons that it failed or that could possibly have failed. And then the other thing that you're doing is you're getting all those anxieties out of your head. Yeah. Because then it's even like listed out and you're like, oh, well, if it failed because of this, like we still learned a lot, right? You can sit in that world. And so I think the pre-mortem and knowing that you're going to do that really allows a team to step into the, the brainstorm and the positive thinking where it's so easy to like, I throw out an idea or let's go the other way. You throw out an idea and I go, well, devil's advocate, like, you know, that would never work because of this. And like, now you're crushed because you're like, oh, you know, but we can fully stay in the positive side. Brainstorming, no bad ideas, and knowing that in 30 minutes or an hour or another day, we're then going to set all that aside and switch into the fully the negative side. And instead of balancing both things side by side, we're going to separate them but give each their due.

Yeah. And also an interesting thought to throw into the mix. Instead of just brainstorming, what's also good is to question storm. Okay. And question storming is just throwing out questions into the middle of the room. And seeing what comes of it. So it could be simply like, well, what's the craziest marketing strategy you've seen in the worlds that you operate in? Because now you're giving permission to those on the table to share from their personal experience. Someone might be interested in gaming, someone might be interested in racing, someone might be interested in shoes. And then you're just saying, what's the craziest marketing campaign you've seen in the things that you're interested in? And then they just go, oh, actually, I really followed this particular product or this brand. They just did an amazing marketing campaign on this. Great, tell us about it. And what you're doing is you're drawing from people's backgrounds and experiences and saying, well, that works. What can we learn from that, right, and bring into what we do? Because if it's just purely brainstorming, some people might not feel confident that their ideas are valuable. So that's why some people just don't contribute. But when you throw questions out there, you're giving permission for people to share their insight and wisdom.

What I'm realizing about that is the question I would throw is more naturally is what's the craziest book marketing strategy that you've seen? People are like, well, this, this guy I follow in the UK, like partnered with this bar and you know, you'd have examples like that. But that's like the, the web designer just copying from the other web designers. But when you say what's the craziest marketing strategy you've ever seen? Yeah, then we go way beyond books and then we're throwing out all of these things and maybe only like maybe 20% of them would be relevant if we pulled from books. And because now we're pulling from all of marketing, only 3% or 5% is relevant, but then it would spark something else and it's just going much more broad.

That's how you come up with these ideas. Like recently I got interviewed by a friend who is launching a book in the UK and just by diversifying his inputs, he found that one great idea was when he does street interviews was instead of just holding a mic, put the mic on your book.

I saw that. Yeah, I watched that clip and I sent it to my team actually, because you're keeping it visible in the content and it's visible the whole way.

It's going back and forth and that book is going into your subconscious.

Yeah.

And that's what it's about. It's all about subconscious marketing because even though he's not explicitly saying, hey guys, this book's coming out, buy the book, it's just a natural conversation. But the book is in—

was that— so the clip that I saw was with Tim Arnu.

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so we initially started the conversation without the book. And then it was actually, let's experiment with it because I saw this in another video.

Yeah.

And then we tried it and then we looked at it and we thought, actually, that's a really good bit of content because the book is visible throughout the entire conversation. And even when you're speaking, I've now shared that with other speakers as well, that if you've got a book coming out, walk onto stage. If you're walking from left to right, walk on stage with a book in your hand and put it on the lectern and then walk off the stage with a book in your other hand. So that the front cover of the book is always visible to people taking photos and videos of your speaking.

I love that. But yeah, like, I mean, even from a content creation perspective, I always think about— I had a guest on the show who told me to really think about the visual hook for a short-form video, the audio hook, and then any title hook. And right. And so for every short-form video that he's putting out, he's like, where's— you need to hit all three of these categories. And I was always thinking about just the audio hook. What am I saying? You're like, no, you need both. But when I saw that reel on your page, yeah, the, the book being used as the microphone holder was a visual hook. Yeah. Even before I got into the audio and the title hook and all that.

And so I was like, those hooks are so important. I remember again, just me looking outside of my own industry. I follow a nutritionist on YouTube. And when she was announcing her book, the title, which created a huge amount of curiosity, was something as simple as, I've been waiting 3 years. I'm finally able to come out with this. And now you're like, well, what is it?

What is it?

You're thinking, what's she going to share? And so it just hooks you in to want to watch the video.

There's so much good stuff in there. I want to go back to energy and particularly energy with the team.

Yeah.

So something that I think about a lot is what energy am I bringing to the situation? Because running a team of 10, 20, 50, 100 people, people are always looking to you like, Nathan happy? Nathan upset? Is this a good idea? Is this not? And I naturally give off like fairly negative energy, or at least neutral. Like, I'll give you an example. At one of our team retreats, this is maybe 2 years ago, Scott, one of our product managers who actually lives in London, he gave this incredible session about the app store that we were building. It was super early in this app store project. And so he led this whole brainstorm. He facilitated it so well and all of that. And afterwards I came up to him. I was like, Scott, that was so well done. Like you nailed it with that session. I'm so excited. And he goes, really good. Because every time I looked over at you, I thought like, wow, he's so pissed. I'm probably going to get fired. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I thought that was amazing. How did you think that? He's like, you just, and I, you know, he kind of didn't finish that sentence. And I was like, I have resting bitch face, don't I? And he was like, you said it, not me. But what I realized is that the natural energy I was giving off was just, was just negative. And I didn't mean to.

Yeah, it can be often unintended. But what it tells me is that so much of our communication is nonverbal, right? You know, there's only a small percentage that is, that is verbal for what we say. but the rest is the nonverbal stuff, how we look, how we react, how we respond. And often when I'm trying to help people respond better, especially if you're just in the audience and you're in a position of leadership and you want to support that person on stage, it's just to imagine it's one of your sons on stage and one of your sons is performing in the school play. How would you respond to your son's performance? Yeah, naturally, as one of a proud father, right?

Yeah.

So it's just a picture. How would a proud leader or a proud manager respond of their employee on stage?

Oh, that's such a good framing. I love that. Yeah. And if you bring that energy, that's going to allow someone, like going back to our drumsticks analogy. Absolutely right there. If they're leading, the tighter they grip those drumsticks, the worse it's going to go. And then they're going to see that it's going badly and they're going to pick up on you noticing that. And it's, you know, it's this vicious cycle.

It's like why if you are doing something that's important to you and you have a mentor or you have a close friend or a partner in the audience and they're responding and they're cheering you on and they're yelling for you, you find that extra bit of energy to go the distance.

Yeah.

And it's the same way, you know, if you're a young child and you're on stage and your parents are in the audience and something goes wrong, but your parents are like, you got it, you got it, keep going, you'll get there, don't worry about it. You just suddenly have this belief in yourself. And for a lot of us, we just need someone else to believe in us first. To just give us the energy to perform.

Yeah. So thinking about that, that framework of bringing that proud energy, the proud energy. Yeah. Yeah. Because then that's going to allow someone to loosen up. I mean, in my talk yesterday here at the conference. Yeah, right. I was a little thrown off because maybe about 10 minutes before going on stage, I realized this stage is in the round. Like, I've never given a talk before where the audience is on all four sides of me. And so I'm like, wait, I, you know, it's a short talk. I know it pretty well. I know I can deliver it well, but now you've thrown in a variable that throws me off. And I'm like, how quickly should I turn to each side? You know, do I like, what do I do here? And there were a few people in the audience. Uh, I think of Gabriel who runs the Creator Leaders Group in the UK. You know, he was on one of those sides. He was sitting front and center with this great smiling, encouraging energy. And so anytime I was like, you know, in my head of like, am I doing the right thing? I'd kind of come around and there's Gabriel just feeling like thoroughly enjoying the talk and supporting me. And I was like, oh, you know, I was getting that proud energy from him and it was like what I needed.

And just imagine how you felt at that, right?

Right.

And imagine how someone else would feel when they get that same, that same experience. And this is where, you know, when we go back to gratitude for a moment, the way I tell people how powerful gratitude is, is imagine if your manager or your boss were to send you a voice note or come up to you even and say, hey, I just want to say I'm really grateful for the effort you put in yesterday. It really contributed to us winning the pitch. How would you feel? How often do people do it? And so what I say to people is, as often as you can, go up to someone and verbally tell them how grateful you are for them, focusing on something specific, or drop a voice note to someone if they're not, you know, within your proximity. That's not just in the professional setting, but it's also in your personal setting as well. So how can you drop someone a voice note to tell them how grateful you are for them? Yeah, because voice carries energy. That's important. If you send them a text message, it just doesn't land the same. Yeah, because you don't know the emotional state they were in when they, when they wrote it. But when you tell someone verbally how grateful you are for them, you're expressing gratitude. And it doesn't just impact the recipient. It impacts yourself as well.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I mean, that's a simple action item that you can do that any leader could do coming out of this episode. Yeah. Is just say, you know what, let me send a voice note to— if I have a team of 5 people.

Yeah.

Let me go spend 5 minutes total, right? Like, this is a very simple action to send a 60-second voice note to each person saying, hey, you know, right, we're at the end of a year, or any of this time, like, hey, I really appreciate the work that you did this year. I was just reflecting on 2025 and You know, made a huge difference and we could not have gotten here without you. And I just want you to know that I'm honored to work with you and so proud of the work that you do. Right.

And it's incredible because I think once you start expressing gratitude, you access this sort of web of abundance. So I got invited to speak at an event by Canon. So Canon, the camera company in the UK. And the person that put me forward as a speaker was someone that was in the queue about 5 years prior at an event I spoke at. and I stayed right until the last person had a question they wanted to ask me. And we briefly met maybe for about 3 or 4 minutes speaking, only a couple of minutes. And then she ended up following me on Instagram, and she put me in contact with Canon. And she said, I want to put you forward. I met you a few years back. I didn't remember her, but she said, I just wanted to express my gratitude because you stayed behind to speak to every single one of us that had a question to ask you. And I'm helping Canon with this new event. and I will be delighted to put you forward as my way of expressing gratitude back. And so you access this web of reciprocity. The more gratitude you put out in the world, the more that comes back.

I also even just think about, yeah, all the relationships, like the creator world is built on relationships and it's the little things. If you listen to a podcast episode and you express the gratitude for the thing in there that you took away, or you follow up for a friend like, hey, I was just thinking about you and Really grateful for the time we spent together at that conference. Right. It gives these little touchpoints. It's just such a great place to hang out.

It's an appreciation of the fact that you never get to the top alone. Where you are is a result of all the people that have helped you get there. Your partner, your children, your colleagues, your team. And that's why for me, the favorite part of my book is not any single chapter. It's the acknowledgments section. Because when I wrote that, it just reminded me of how important the people around me have been.

Yeah.

And the role they've played to help me get to where I am today.

I love that. Okay. The thing that I want to end on is what stops people from taking action. There's so many things where you're like, I want to do this, but I'm not going to, or I can't make myself. Or like, as you're working with clients or in your own life, what do you see that stops people from from taking action?

I think there are 3 things. First, 2: fear and self-doubt.

Okay.

First, fear of the unknown, fear of what's going to happen. That stops a lot of us. Simply put, though, nothing beats fear like practice. You've just got to chunk things down to the smallest possible action and then build from there. Second, self-doubt. Self-doubt stops us because we're doubting our talent, we're doubting our potential and our capability. To adapt to whatever the world throws our way. And the third is trust. Trust in what you have to offer. And the way I put it is that there are always two sales that happen in business. The second is selling you to others, and the first is selling you to you. And until you can sell you to you well, the second will always remain a challenge. If you don't see the value that you have to give to the world, how is anybody else going to see it? But if you see worth in what you have to offer, other people will see it as well. They will feel it and they will want to work with you in some form.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. How do you think about bringing this idea of energy to decision-making? Because often when we're making decisions, like the thing preventing us from action is knowing which decision to make. And so, and we're like, if you told me like, Nathan, you need to make a decision on this, like, all right, so pros and cons list, like let's spend all of our time in the intellectual space. But that's not where you do it if you're following energy.

Truth is, deep down, you already know what the right decision is. We all do. It's the courage to take that action. So to give an example, one of my favorite activities that I like doing with coaching clients when they're in a mood of indecision is I take the two decisions and I say, I'm going to put a coin in one hand. You've got to choose which hand the coin is in. and if you choose the hand that the coin is correctly in, you choose this choice. If not, you choose the other. And often when they choose the hand without the coin and have to choose the alternative, I can tell from their body language that wasn't the result they were hoping for. They wanted to choose the hand the coin was in. And so that tells me deep down, we already know the path we want to take. It's just discovering the courage to venture into the unknown.

Yeah, I've done this as well with, you know, when you're trying to make a decision and it sounds flippant, but you say flip a coin.

Yeah.

You know, heads you do it, tails you don't. And so someone's like, wait, you're going to, you're going to put this decision down to a coin flip? And you're like, yeah, of course. When that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is you're creating a moment. You're creating an opportunity that you can react to.

It's a moment of insight. Yeah, it's a realization. That, you know, the path you're meant to travel on. You just have to find the courage to now believe you can make it happen.

Yes. If you flip that coin or you choose the hand and it says like, yes, do option A, and you go, oh, I feel relief, I feel, you know, a sense of peace or purpose, then you're like, okay, that's what I'm meant to do. And if you feel disappointment, yeah, or something like that, then you're like, oh, well, Okay, I like—

I then go with that, you know, and you're not all about energy because if a vision is so compelling and magnetic in nature, it just pulls you forward. You don't need motivation. It pulls you forward. That's excitement. And so you're following what your heart is telling you. If your heart is saying, we're really excited about this, then you follow that wisdom. If you're feeling tension inside, then of course that's another sign. It's saying to you, maybe you're not meant for this. It's why people talk about this term Monday blues. You know, you finish the holiday, you finish the weekend, you got to go, you have to get back to the office on Monday. And people talk about the stress or this depressing feeling they get on a Monday. That is the physical manifestation of something that is draining you. When you do something that is not aligned to who you are or an extension of your skill set, you have this physical manifestation of fear of like, I'm not living the life I'm meant to live. But when you're doing something that energizes you, you can't wait until Monday, right? You're looking forward to the emails coming in again. You're looking forward to an ocean of possibility ahead. It's a very different feeling.

Yeah. And what I'm realizing is the reaction that I want to have when I encounter that feeling and notice it is curiosity.

Yeah.

Is then going, okay, why do I feel that way? Because it might be that I'm very frustrated with work overall, or it might be something, or it might be down to there's one interaction Yeah, that like subconscious, like, oh, I'm going to run into this person and I haven't given them the feedback that I'm supposed to, you know, like I might realize, oh, I'm actually just worried about this interaction because I haven't shown up authentically to who I am and I'm afraid of that conversation. It's like, oh, well, that I just need to seek out that conversation and I can let go of all of it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not to avoid the things of discomfort, but to actually find a way to face them head on.

Yeah, I love that. Simon, this has been amazing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for coming on. Where should people go to follow your work and see everything that you're doing?

I'm on all the major social media platforms, so you can find me on YouTube just by searching my name, LinkedIn, Instagram. My handle is @simonalexandero, or you can check out my newsletter on my website, simonalexandero.com, which is hosted by Kit.

Thank you so much for using the platform. Nothing brings me more joy than playing a tiny role empowering the businesses of all these amazing creators.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.