Creating Change From Within - Mike Irving - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 37

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome today's guest. He's been studying sales and communication skills since 1997. He's building a network of leaders and business owners who support each other. He's created the Resistance Removal Sales System and founder of Advanced Business Abilities. Welcome Mike Irving, all the way from Perth, Australia. Welcome.

Hey, Joe, thanks for having me, mate. Really glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm really glad to be here. I'm glad our time zones synced up and everything. I know it's a long ways apart, but that's the wonder of technology these days. You can talk to anybody anywhere. It's an amazing, amazing thing.

It is. Well, it's amazing as long as it works. Hopefully we don't have any technical difficulties today. That's true.

That's true. I've got some outsourced team members that are in the Philippines and they get some weather over there at times where just the whole island goes down or one of the islands.

Yeah, I have the same and we regularly deal with that same exact problem. So internet's just gone at the blink of a hat, blink of an eye. So, yep.

But it comes back. Well, good. Well, let's get started. One of the questions I like to ask at the beginning is to just think about one thing that you're interested in or passionate about that you think other C-suite members or business owners and leaders might be interested in knowing more about?

Yeah, sure. There's one thing that definitely springs to mind there for me. And I think a lot of people relate to this. You know how sometimes you'll have situations occur in your life or in your business somewhere. It might be there's an irate customer who's calling up and just really getting stuck into you or you're in the middle of a negotiation with somebody. And you hit that moment where you just feel this resistance. You just, you just feel the moment of pressure and a little degrees of stress, and you get through the moment. And then an hour or two or three hours later, you have another thought where you go, oh, if only I'd thought of saying this in that moment, that would have totally changed the way that that went. Can you relate to that?

Yeah, yeah.

I think a lot of people do. And the thing that I would love to share as an opportunity for people to look at is that there's actually one thing that is available to every single person on the planet that you can do that will dramatically change your experience of those moments of pressure and stress. And it's really simple, and because it's so simple, it's often overlooked. And it actually comes down to the power of the way that you get your body to breathe. Every single person I've worked with since 2007 in performance coaching and sales training, the one thing that I've covered with every single person prior to anything else is making sure that they know how to take a centered breath consistently throughout their entire day. And it's a breath that comes down into your belly. And it's, it's one of the most valuable tools that we have in order to be able to choose how we respond in every single moment that occurs in life. And it's, it's so often overlooked. I wish more people would consider it and inspect it and, and look at the way that your body was designed to breathe. That's, that's fine. My biggest thing that I think I could share right now.

Maybe we can practice some breathwork here in a little bit, but are you suggesting that the action of taking centered breaths throughout the day prepares you for that moment, or at the moment is when you need to take that breath to then prepare to respond?

So in my experience, if you wait until that moment to take a centered breath, it's too late. You're already on the back foot. You're already in that moment of pressure and stress, and now you're going to react. So it's not about taking a centered breath a couple of times throughout the day. It's actually about making sure that centered breathing is a way of life for you. It's about making sure that you are aware and intentional with the way that you're breathing from the moment you wake up in the morning. If you do that, when those moments of pressure and stress occur, you're not going to be on the back foot. You're going to be more causative over what you choose to do in that moment.

And is that a similar philosophy as meditation in the mornings, a lot of, or throughout the day, putting you in that same position? Is it similar? Is it different?

Well, I think there's similarity. Yeah. One of the things that happens in meditation is you really focus on your breathing and you're looking to essentially clear your mind. You're looking to, you're looking to make sure that you are able to direct your attention to this moment right here, right now. Now there's lots of different types of meditation and ways of meditating. The thing that they all have in common is, is making sure you're aware of the way you're breathing. So if you just extrapolate that out— and I'm certainly not saying meditation is not really powerful, it is, it's incredibly powerful— but if you extrapolate that one piece out of all the different meditation techniques that, that exist and you apply that one thing, I've found that it has a significant impact on all of your abilities. You're more able when you're completely present. Now, Eckhart Tolle wrote The Power of Now. Well, the number one thing you can do to make sure that you are in the now is make sure you're breathing.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in that, and I do practice some yoga as well, and almost every yoga instructor says breathing is yoga. If you did nothing else but show up this class and focus on breathing, you're doing yoga. It's very simple when you put it in that context that it's just about the breath and awareness and understanding. Do you also think there's a technique involved that's part of it? Awareness and understanding, but is there a real technique in the breathing that you focus on that needs to be done?

Yeah. If we were showing this in video, I would probably stand back and side on and show that when you take a centered breath, your belly expands when you breathe in. And when you breathe out, your belly serves as a pump, so it actually compresses when you breathe out. And that feels awkward to a lot of people when they first start doing it because we're so used to taking shallow breaths for two reasons. The first reason is because A lot of society kind of teaches us that, oh, as a man, chest out, shoulders back, keep your gut in, make sure you don't look too fat. Yeah. And similar for a woman. And at the end of the day, that doesn't really help us. But the other reason that we tend to be used to taking a shallow breath is because there's little parts of us that stay stuck in moments of trauma. Now, the word trauma is a lot of times a nasty word. When I refer to trauma, all I'm referring to is moments that occur that we are unwilling to experience. We feel resistance in these moments, and we can give them a gradient from 0 to 10. You know, level 10 traumas don't tend to happen that often, but they do exist. Level 5 traumas, yeah, they happen more often but still not frequently. Level 1 traumas, well, yeah, they happen much more regularly. And level 0.01 traumas, they happen every day, they happen every hour. They're just moments that we're unwilling to experience. And when we have those moments, we feel that pressure and stress, and instantly fight, flight, faint, freeze is activated. And we're, we're taking a shallow breath in order to activate our adrenal system to prepare for being attacked. As an example. And little parts of our mind can get stuck in those moments, and, and we can develop the habit of taking a shallow breath. We have this thing called adrenal fatigue today. Oh, I've seen a lot of evidence that suggests that that is really mostly caused by too much shallow breathing, not enough centered breathing. Yeah.

So when did you come across this I, this aha moment at the time in 2007, I think you said what was going on that led you to this discovery?

Well, yeah, it was actually 2006. I had been running a business for 10 years where I ran an outsourced sales solution. So larger corporate companies would hire me and my business and I would build sales teams for them. So they would give me their brand, they would get, they would trust me to then recruit a team, train them on the product and the legals and compliance of that industry. And we would go out and build that sales team to represent that client. So the customers we were dealing with, whether they were business customers or residential customers, those customers would think that we were the client. We weren't, we were an authorized representative and I ran that business for almost 10 years. And like a lot of business owners, that was my first business. I started it when I was 21 and I had lots of really high highs and I had lots of really low lows as well. I went through the typical roller coaster of business and 2006, I've been running it for probably 9 years then. And I found myself at another low low, but you know that feeling of when you feel like you've hit the wall. I had hit the wall quite a few times and I always just got back up and brushed myself off and had another go, attempted to push the wall over or, you know, break it down. But in 2006, I hit the wall again and I didn't really feel like I had the energy to pick myself up and dust myself off and go and break the wall down. I'd hit the wall too many times and got to a place where I went, man, something's not working, something's not right. I don't really know what it is. I had always hired business coaches to support me and I found that they had good information, but I found most of it was really difficult to implement. But in 2006, I met a group of people that I now call my research team. Their average age is almost double mine, so they've forgotten more than I've learned. And they were the ones that introduced me to some really fundamental concepts that I had just never learned anywhere.. I'd never seen them. I'd never had exposure to them. Centered breathing was, was the first one. And for me, it really had a profound effect really quickly. And so when something has a profound effect, when something is a successful action, it's, it's advantageous to make sure you take that on board. And I did, and then started making sure. And when I shut that business down and decided that I wanted to learn from this group of people, that was the first thing that I made sure I implemented with every person that I was supporting.

That's amazing. How many other things have you learned that you could share? Not sharing them all, but I'm just curious, is it a dozen things that are just that fundamental or 100?

So there's lots and at the same time, some of them require a fair bit of explanation and conversation and introduction, but I'm more than happy to share as much as I can right now. I think one of the most significant underlying concepts or principles in terms of an approach to being more successful in life and business is I talk about it in terms of sovereignty. It's understanding that you are a sovereign being. You are the king or the queen on the throne in your world. And as the sovereign, you create your own reality. And so it's an approach of extreme ownership. Anything and everything that happens in your life and in your business, you've created it. And if you take that point of view, you will always be able to find what was it that you did or didn't do What was it that you said or didn't say? What was it that you did too much of or too little of that created the problems and the challenges that you have? And taking that point of view of extreme ownership is the first step that allows you to then change and develop and alter your thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes. Yeah.

Are you familiar with core energy leadership and 7 levels of energy and catabolic and anabolic energy as it relates to kind of that mindset. Have you come across any of that in your studies?

So I'm not necessarily familiar with exactly the words that you're using or the labels that you're using, but I'm sure if we talk about it, then I'm confident we'd be able to explore it a little bit.

Yeah, there's, there's, uh, it's something I've been introduced to recently. There was a book written like I can't remember the name of the book. I think actually, I think the book is named Energy Leadership. It's probably 15, 20 years old. It's been around for a while. And there's a, there's a whole coaching program that was developed around it. But the fundamentals behind it are there's 7 levels of, of our core energy. And the energy is either constructive and growing and attracting and or destructive and catabolic and, and destroying. And the different levels are, can be assessed through an assessment, and awareness of the different levels can help you raise and lower your level. And I'm not a, um, I'm a maybe a student of it, but not, not a PhD or a master's student by any means. But what At this level 7, you're in the creator level, which is what resonated with what you were telling me. And you are creating your world. And when you're in that level of thinking and an energy, you're— it's your sovereign domain, I guess, is the way you put it. It sounded very similar. And those that can— when you can raise your energy there, you are in peak performance. You're in the passion zone. You're in the energy zone. You love what you're doing. You're ideating. You're creating. And then the levels go down from there to the victim and the flight and fight levels of energy at the very bottom. So there's a spectrum there. But I was curious if you'd run across that in your studies.

So yeah, that is really interesting because it sounds to me like I've heard of people talking about attitudinal levels. I've heard I'm familiar with a, a scale of what you might call tones or, or states of existence. And so if you're at the top of the scale, you are— you have intention without reservation. You are the king, total choice. You are on the throne. You're creating. You are causing everything in your life and you're causing it the way that you would like it to happen. And as you move down this scale, you go down through series of tones that degrade. And the further you degrade, the less able you are to create what you want. Now, fascinating, this, you know, this ties in with what we spoke about earlier. The very first tool that's available to every single person in order to begin to move themselves up that scale is centered breathing.

Yeah, I'm excited to continue to explore this with you because the, the commonalities are there. So what's another tip— or not tip, but what's another tool or resource that you identify that really stands out for you that you've implemented or recommend other people implementing to get to that sovereign and stay at that sovereign level?

So I think, I think there's a couple of things that are really key to being able to develop and change and create the life you want. The first thing is beyond being present and centered and using centered breathing. The next thing is about being willing to inspect, being willing to inspect your own thoughts, ideas, reactions, ways of communicating, decision-making processes, your attitudes, your competencies. It's about being really willing to inspect yourself. And when you're willing to inspect, that's when you're able to change. What's the opposite of being willing to inspect? Well, the opposite of that is being critical, negative, and blaming everybody else for the problems that exist in your world. Yep. And that's a surefire way to move yourself down that scale that we've been talking about. If you want to move yourself up the scale, it's about being willing to inspect that you might be the problem. And then what goes hand in hand with that is— I'm gonna use some specific words here. It's about being willing to confront, being willing to confront reality. Being willing to see things as they really are rather than how you would like them to be or how you think they should be.

Yeah, willingness to confront. Some of the things that have helped me in my exploration of these energies is, is an awareness and then an acceptance also. And so willing to confront, uh, and accepting, you know, what is as part of that confrontation, I think is really important.

Don't you? I, I do. And, and I think I'll, I'll interject there because sometimes what can happen is that when I use the word confront, um, sometimes people can think that I'm talking about confrontation or being confrontational there's a different definition for the word confront that I'm using. And the definition is your willingness to stand and face with ease, to see what is and face it with ease, right? Not with anger, not with aggression, not with resentment or hostility, just to see it as it is and face it and handle it.

And to not be judgmental of what it is as good or bad.

It just is, right? Correct. The moment we move into judgmentalness, now we have our attitude and tones coming out. So if we move to judgmentalness, if there's a little bit of critical, negative, blame, or unsupportive within our attitude, then we're instantly going to go to that place. Yeah.

And that doesn't help us. Judgment's a sneaky one. And I have this conversation a lot with myself, and I have it with my family members and others. We're taught to kind of follow rules and there's laws and then we judge people. But really, should we? So that's one question. The second thing is a lot of times we kind of, I feel we will implicitly judge somebody as doing something right or wrong, not in the legal sense, but in the using our moral reality as a right or wrong and litmus test. And should we? Probably we should. I would say we shouldn't. But then the hardest thing that I've found to get past is we judge ourselves. And that creates a lot of negative energy or lower energy levels when we think, oh, I just did something that was bad or wrong, or I did something that was good or right. When accepting it as it is without placing judgment is a much healthier way to think about things. And it's a, it's a sneaky, sneaky battle I have with myself quite often.

Yeah, it is. And it's a sneaky battle that you're not alone in. Um, we— so when someone first comes to engage with us, we like to make sure that we're being objective in our analysis and really clear about what is this engagement about, what are we actually looking to support this individual or this business to achieve, and what are the metrics, what are we going to measure success by. And we— one of the members of my team created a series of diagnostic tools that we use across the different services that we provide as a business. So if someone's coming in because they want to improve their own sales skills or they have a team of 50 salespeople and they're looking to help all 50 of those people up their game, we have a diagnostic tool called the Salesability Test and it literally tells us exactly what the person does and doesn't understand and what they are able to do and what they're not able to do on the subject of sales. We have another diagnostic tool that is a more broad evaluation, and one of the things that it measures— it measures attitude, and it also measures something that relates to what you were just talking about, and it's self-esteem. Now, self-esteem, you can define it as the good feeling that you have with yourself, and another definition is it's your subjective opinion of your own worth. Now, there's a lot of people out there who fall into this trap of judgmentalness towards themselves, and what it means is that fundamentally they, they end up spending a lot of time kicking their own ass. Now, your knees aren't supposed to bend that way for a reason. It's not a good idea to do that. And the end result of them being overly critical of themselves is that they, they walk around not knowing that they actually have a low self-esteem, and that has a huge impact on all of the things that they seek to achieve in their life. So I really strongly relate to what you talk about. I see low self-esteem far more often than I ever would have thought I would see it.

Yeah, when you start looking for it, it's, it's so prevalent. It's a very— it's an everyday occurrence, I think, for most people to somehow naturally judge something or someone or themselves. And awareness is the first step. When you start aware, becoming aware of yourself judging, and then, then you see it everywhere, and then you can work on it, and you can, and you can realize it, and you can do your best not to. Um, but it's sneaky.

It's a sneaky battle. Yeah, I think it also comes down to another So here's another thing that I've learned over the last 15, 16 years with the team I work with is that there's really only— this is gonna sound strange, it's gonna sound like it has nothing to do with what we were just talking about, but bear with me. On the subject of goal setting, there's only really two types of goals. This is where I've landed on this subject after spending 10 years teaching people how to set goals and doing all the research and watching all the videos, I really think there's only two types of goals that we can set. One type is, I'm going to call it an objective goal. If you are familiar with goal setting, you'll have heard the acronym of SMARTER goals. So specific, measurable, achievable, really, okay. So objective goals have a very specific end action. They will be something that if you tell a complete stranger what your goal is, the stranger will understand it in less than 15 seconds. And then if you give that stranger access to data, the stranger will be able to measure whether or not you're on track to achieve your goal. There's your 3-point test for an objective goal. Now, if you set a goal and you run it through that test, if it fails even one of those items, then the chances are that what you have is actually a subjective goal. And those are pretty dangerous because they actually are unachievable. They are completely subjective. There is no end outcome. And but they sound like a really good idea. So, you know, as an example, If I set the goal to be happy, that's a pretty dangerous goal to set because if I ask 100 people what's happiness, I'm gonna get 100 different answers. There's not a really clear line in the sand that you're gonna cross when you achieve that. And setting a subjective goal means that you've actually set a goal with moving goalposts. Because if I have the goal to be happy, I might be sitting and saying, all right, well, what's gonna make me happy? I know I'll be happy when I have this much money. I'll be happy when I drive this car. I'll be happy when I have a house in this suburb. I'll be happy when I have, you know, a wife and kids. I'll be happy when And so I'm now going to spend the next 5 or 10 years of my life going out in order to get that much money and buy that house and have that car and the wife and the kids and all the rest of it. And I'm going to arrive at a point in the future where I have all of that. But if I still have the goal to be happy, all of a sudden, all that's not enough.. And now, you know, I'd really be happy if I had this much money. And, you know, the house in the suburbs is okay, but I'd really be happy if I had the bigger house in the nicer suburb over there. And the car is all right, man, have you seen these newer models? And speaking of newer models, man, the wife was okay, but I really reckon that I'd be much happier if— and so the goalposts move. And the goalposts moved because they were never fixed in the first place. Now, how does that relate to what we were just talking about? Well, the concept of right and wrong, it's completely subjective, right? There's no such thing. It actually doesn't exist other than through our perception.

Exactly. And so the moment we go to judgmentalness because they've done something wrong, Well, have they? Yeah, I was having that conversation with one of my teenage daughters about right and wrong, and maybe it was my older daughter, I don't remember which one. And she said, well, there's a clear, like, right or wrong, Dad, when it comes to laws. And you break the law, that, that's wrong. And that's right. Nice. And I explained to her that The law is black and white, and if you break the law and you don't break the law, there's consequences, but that doesn't mean that's a right or wrong thing for us to judge. But the way it's been explained to me by people that I think on this subject makes some sense is that there are things that we believe are our core values and that we believe in and that we want to have part of who we are and And those can be morals, values. And we can choose to align ourselves with people that are like that or not like that. And that's one way of thinking right or wrong. If I want to be around and I appreciate and I value people that are more in this lane than in that lane. So I'm not judging the other lane. I'm just staying around the people that are in my lane because that's who I am. And that's kind of helped her think through that, but at the end of the day, she still said, that was wrong, Dad. I, I, you know, it's hard to argue with the 17-year-old.

Well, hey, when I was 17, I mean, I knew everything, right?

Yeah.

The older I've gotten, the dumber I've become, I think. I'm not sure. Yeah, that, or the older I've gotten, the dumber I realize I used to be. Yeah. Yeah, the right and wrong thing is fascinating and particularly when it comes to the law because the law is not based on right versus wrong. It's based on case precedent. Yeah, legal versus lawful. Yeah, they almost never argue lawful in a court of law. They argue legal because lawful has to do with morality and justice and that's not how the legal structure is set up.

Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating topic. It's fun to explore and have conversations around and go back and forth. The other thing I've found that helps me, and I'm curious on your take on this as well, and it's through this leadership learning that I did, was when we get attached to outcomes that also creates some energy issues because we're so attached to a specific outcome that if we deviate at all from it, that can create this negative energy where if we're accept— if we remove the attachment, we can still head towards that goal or that direction. And if we don't quite get exactly there, we're not upset. And that detachment from a specific outcome has done wonders for me as as a leader trying to, as a visionary, I have a specific outcome I see 3, 5, 10 years in my head. And whenever I used to start to deviate that direction, I'd get anxious and angry and combative and like, but you know, we're gonna go this way 'cause I see it and that's why I'm attached to this. But as soon as I realized that I don't have to be attached to a specific outcome like that, the whole world opened up, and that anxiety and that negative energy that I would carry around went away. Have you explored or seen anything like that of your own?

100%. In fact, I think what you've just said is really, really fascinating. So when we're attached to an outcome, we're fundamentally sitting in an expectation. Now, I've done a lot of research in and around expectations and disappointments. When we have expectations, that leads to disappointment. But what is it that creates the expectation? And I think a lot of people go around sitting in expectation without knowing that they're doing it. And there are 5 phrases that I've isolated down where when we use these 5 very specific phrases, it is these 5 phrases that create the expectation that we sit in that then means we get to disappointment, frustration, resentment, even anger and hostility. And it's fascinating because you— when the way that you just talked about it, you actually used one of the phrases where you realize that you don't have to. So the 5 phrases that lead to expectations or create expectations are have to, need to, should, gotta, and must. And the moment we allow ourselves to think with those phrases, we're immediately oppositional to whatever it is that's actually happening. We have an expectation of what should happen, and when that's not being met, we hit disappointment, frustration, anger, resentment, hostility, and now we're a mess. We're no longer able to think quick. Clearly, and we hit those sometimes subtle and sometimes not subtle at all feelings of resistance that I spoke about earlier. And that's where we are all of a sudden no longer able to think clearly and make decisions that are in our own self-best interest, and we're no longer able to communicate effectively.

Yeah, yeah, that's— those words definitely create that that, um, that attachment, the expectation. I guess an expectation is kind of an attachment.

It's that they're almost synonymous in that sense. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, it's also, um, it's those phrases are a subtle use of force, or, or a use of subtle force in order to attempt to force something to happen or to be a certain way. It's, it's kind of the opposite as seeing things as they really are. It's, it's attempting to make things different using degrees of force. Um, and it's fascinating because a lot of people who manage teams, they don't recognize that they're very subtly causing a problem in the way that they're managing their team, because they're actually telling their people that they have to do this and they need to do that, and they've got to make sure these things get done this week and we must achieve this together as a team. And so they actually don't recognize that those 5 phrases are— they're the phrases of expectations. They're also the phrases of subtle force. They are the phrases of, I could even say, suppression, because they don't support a person to be on the throne as the king or the queen.

Yeah, well, and I think that's the, uh, that's the problem with the current thought process around goal setting and strategic planning, and that is prevalent and, and quite effective in organizations. It's counter to what we're talking about, which is to not have attachment, to not set expectations. And there's a— I think there's a blend of— you can still have goals and things that you're moving towards and expectations for your team, but you can do it in a way that allows for much more fluidity and flexibility and the sovereignty that you're speaking of, the lack of judgment when you don't hit your goals. And there's ways to do it, and we can still have the same or better outcomes, I think, and happier people if happiness is a goal.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think one of the ways that we can do that is it's pretty clear to me that having expectations doesn't really work. It only works a very, very small percentage of the time. But the fact that it does work sometimes is what keeps it going. Yeah. But if we move from expectations to really clear agreements. Well, then there's no ambiguity, right? I'm not gonna hire somebody and tell them my expectations are this. I'm gonna hire them and say, listen, these are the agreements that I would like you to keep. These are the agreements that I'm gonna make with you. And these are the outcomes that I'd like you to agree to work towards. And we're gonna work together to get these things done. And/or more. And when it's really clear agreements and the actions that they're gonna take are based on really clear agreements, expectations don't play a part.

Yeah, I love that. I just did a session with my team and we follow generally the EOS Traction model of strategic planning. If you're familiar with it, it's essentially you set quarterly rocks or priorities, and that's— you align towards those, and you have a hierarchy of roles that you kind of fit within, and goal setting that is kind of top-down. So we did a different approach to trying to get to the same place at the end, and it started with asking everybody what their core— what are 3 values they individually have that are important to them. So we spent a good part of the exercise just sharing something that each of us value and an example. And for me, an example was I value freedom and how that plays out in work is I don't like having set schedules and that's why it's hard for me to pin down. And so it was kind of explain why I do things aligned with the personal value. And we learned so much about each other sharing those core value stories. Then I asked everybody in their own words, describe what your role is in this company and where you're most passionate. And so everybody spent time sharing their roles as they saw their role and where they were most passionate. We learned also so much about each other. As somebody who'd done the expectation setting before and role setting before, the self-described roles were more spot on, but equally as valid as the roles that we'd previously given people. And then I asked everybody to set 3 priorities that they have that they think is important for the company that they do this next 90 days, and they set their own priorities. And then I asked everybody, for what help do you need from everyone else in this room for you to be able to to meet those goals that you're setting? And that conversation around what they thought was important and what they needed from each other, then we agreed upon it as a team, what we would each do to support each other's goals to be achieved. And now it created this team approach. At the end, we had the same, like, boxes filled on the, the chart, but the way we got there was completely different. And the buy-in and the engagement was so much stronger that way. It sounds a lot like what you're talking about, the agreements.

Yeah, awesome. I love it. There's a book that I want to ask you about. Have you ever read Humans Are Underrated? No, I have not. Okay, so the author is Jeff Colvin and the title is Humans Are Underrated. And based on our conversation, I think you would really enjoy it and I'm 100% certain that all of your listeners would get huge value out of that book. But without giving it all away, the first 80 pages, the author writes about the changes that are occurring right now in automation and robotics and, you know, that whole side of life. And he writes about how the changes are already happening. 10 years from now, there are going to be roles that humans have been doing that humans no longer do because that's all been taken over by, by robots and automation. He then asks the question, well, if that's the case, then what's going to make a human valuable? What humans will be most valuable over the next 10 to 20, 30, 40 years? And the entire rest of the book is all about that one idea. And if I boil it down into the most basic message that his book brings across, it's that, you know, in 10 years' time, there'll be far less people employed as doctors because there are gonna be robots that perform surgeries that doctors do right now. There's gonna be far less people employed as lawyers because there's gonna be computers that will analyze the data and tell you what your chance of winning a case is. And he gives loads of examples. So if that's the case, does that mean there'll be zero lawyers? No, no, no, there'll still be lawyers. But the people who will still be lawyers will be those with the best human interaction skills, the people who are able to use empathy and good communication skills to bring the message across. Because there's one thing that humans depend on and that is interaction with other humans. We are by nature very social people, the majority, and we don't trust robots to deliver us a message. If I'm gonna be going in to have surgery, I don't want a robot telling me that I've got a 63% chance of success because I'm getting my kidney operated on, right? I want that message delivered by a human who's going to be able to engage with me and see all of the cues and the subtle— use all the subtle skills necessary to be able to make sure that I'm okay and I can hear that message. And that's the same across all aspects of business. The most successful businesses are going to be those with the most able people on the subject of human interaction skills. Fascinating.

I'll get that book. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Appreciate the recommendation. But it's excellent. One of the things that he talks about in the book is there's a, um, there's actually a free test that you can do online, and it's called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. And this test is, I think it shows you 26 photos, 20, 26 images, and the images are nothing more than from the top of the eyes, so the eyebrows, down to the bridge of the nose. And that's all you see is an image of a person's eyes. And you get, I think, 4 options, and your task is to choose of the 4 multiple choice options, what is this person feeling? Oh wow. It's a way of assessing a person's empathy, which is your ability to understand what's happening for someone else.. Now, one of the things that they did in this book was that there was a group that took school-aged students. And school-aged students today spend all sorts of time on screens. It's amazing how much time they spend on screens. So they took these students and gave them the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. And then after they'd done the test and they all got assessed They took these kids away out into the bush. I'm using Australian sayings here, but they went out, they went out into a camp, and, and they had, I think it was a whole week with no screen time at all. And they were engaged in activities that involved them engaging with each other, you know, making eye contact, communicating, talking for an entire week. They then came back and gave them all the same test again. And every single one of them improved. So how do you improve your human interaction skills? Well, you do it, you practice, you engage in it, you engage with people more, you seek to understand. The more you do that, the better you get. And those are the fundamental skills of leadership and sales.

Yeah. Love it. Well, let's switch gears just for a little bit and tell me a little bit about yourself and what you like to do for fun in Perth.

Oh man, Perth is a spectacular place to live. We don't want the secret to get out too much. So let's not have too many listeners tuning in right now. We can cut this part of the show off. Perth is an adventurer's wonderland. So Western Australia as a state, is absolutely spectacular. I have always loved the outdoors. So camping, fishing, I really love off-road motorbike riding. So I ride dirt bikes and the southwest of Western Australia has just amazing country to ride through. The other thing I've in the last 5 years become absolutely fanatical about is boating. We have some of the most amazing boating in Western Australia that I think exists on the planet. We've got a river that runs right through the center of Perth called the Swan River and it is a beautiful, beautiful river. And when the weather's a little bit rough out in the ocean, the river's always fantastic. And then all up and down the coast of Western Australia, there are spectacular spots to go. My wife and I, we're lucky enough to spend a month on our boat down in a place called Dunsborough and Busselton at Christmas last year. So we lived on the boat for a month and we were away on the ocean, you know, eating fresh fish and it's, yeah, Perth's a pretty special place. And if you go north in Western Australia, there's an area up north called the Kimberley. Now, if anybody's listening to this, if you have never heard of the Kimberley in Western Australia, Go and Google it right now. It is one of the most incredible places on the planet. And if you ever get the chance to do a trip or a tour through the Kimberley or even just go to one spot, go to a place called Kununurra and then go out to a, it's essentially a cattle station with a tourism business on it called El Questro. And that is one of the most amazing places on the planet. You can see everything that exists in the Kimberley on that one property. And it is, you can spend 10 days there and just not be bored.

It is an amazing spot. It sounds fascinating. What's the easiest route to get there from the US?

There's no such thing. No matter what way you cut it, no matter what way you roll the dice, it's a long journey. I've come to, I've gone Australia to the US and back via, you know, you fly to Sydney, then you go to LAX or you stop off in New Zealand, go to LAX and then go from wherever.

You're coming through Sydney or New Zealand going that route.

Yep. The other option is you leave Perth and head the other direction. So whether you go via Dubai or, you know, one of the other countries that way and then head from there to Boston or go via Singapore. There's a lot of options, but no matter what way you do it, you're traveling for, you know, when we leave Perth to get to, I grew up in Boston. So I'm originally from the US. I've lived over here since I was 21. And when we leave Perth, we arrive in Boston on the same day, even though we've been traveling for sometimes 32 hours, right?. But when we leave Boston to come back to Perth, it's always 2 days later. We leave Boston, we arrive in Perth 2 days later. We lose a day on the trip back. So yeah, it's not necessarily the place that you want to come to for just a week unless you're flying first or business class. You want to make sure you make it worthwhile and have at least a couple of weeks, if not a month here.

Really?

How far is it from Manila? I've never been to Manila, but it's not that far. There's actually quite a few places that we can fly to from Perth where it's quicker for us to fly internationally, like, as in we spend less time in the air when we fly to Bali in Indonesia, for example, that takes less time than it does to fly to Sydney.

Yeah. So yeah, we're very isolated. Well, I do get to, um, go to Manila once in a while. I've got a business over there, and I, I traveled there last May, I think, and bolted on a trip, a quick trip to Singapore. And my next trip, I think I'm gonna hit Vietnam for a couple days. But it sounds like if I can figure out a way to add a couple of weeks to my trip, I should come to Perth.

I've traveled extensively throughout the world and in particular throughout Australia. And yeah, Perth's a pretty special place. Perth's a big country town, but it's also basically an oil and gas town. Oh, is that what's the main— Yeah. Yep. Mining and oil and gas. So, you know, Western Australia, Australia generally, but particularly Western Australia is incredibly resource rich. And now Perth, I believe still has the highest percentage of millionaires per capita of any city in the world. And that's largely due to the resources that come out of Western Australia. It's crazy. So, you know, Perth Airport, is, um, it's, it's here in Australia known as FIFO. So if you work FIFO, you fly in, fly out. So you'll leave home and you fly up to your mine site and you spend whether it's 7 or 14 days up at work, and then you fly out and come back home and you'll be home for 7 days, for example. And a lot of people have that roster. So at certain times of the day when you come into Perth Airport, all you see is is fluorescent clothing everywhere and, you know, safety clothing everywhere because everybody's going up to the mine.

Gotcha.

That's fascinating.

Well, I'm so excited that we had a chance to talk today, and, um, you've opened my mind up to breathing, centered breathing, and, uh, traveling to Perth.

I'm—

it's one of my— one of my joys is when I feel most at my highest energy level and sovereignty is, is travel. And so I will make a trip to Perth.

It will happen. And when you do, make sure you let me know you're coming, and we'll, we'll go and have a beer or a glass of wine.

Absolutely, for sure. And I will make sure that I catch that book and get a chance to read it and share it with our listeners as well. Fantastic. And thank you for our listeners for, for being on today. It was, uh, I hope you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did. We We talked a lot of, a lot of different things. And please reach out to Mike if you got questions about what he does and about some of the things we talked about. The notes will be full of contact information so you can catch his information that way. And thanks for everyone for your time today.

And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes. And more episodes at fractionalcsweeteretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com.

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