Stop Drifting. Start Taking Responsibility | Douglas Kruger

0:00 SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I have to speak in front of 40 CEOs. Who am I to do this? Now the simple switch, and it's so easy to do, but you have to do it consciously, you have to force yourself to do this, is to change that to I can't believe I get to speak for 40 CEOs. How wonderful. This is not a trauma event in my life. This is a wonderful moment. I'm going to enjoy it. And that change in your own self-talk starts a cascade of changes in how you think and approach and behave in that scenario.

0:33 SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the turning point. My guest today is a man who spent many years studying success, reinvention, and what separates those who continually grow from those who slowly drift into mediocrity. He's a Hall of Fame speaker, best-selling author, and one of the world's leading thinkers on relevance, positioning, and personal growth. But beneath the books and the accolades lies a fascinating question. Why do some people adapt, evolve, and even thrive when the world around them changes, while others get left behind?

1:05 SPEAKER_01: Today we're exploring turning points, reinvention, personal responsibility, and what it really takes to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world. Douglas Kruger, welcome to the turning point. Thank you so much. That was such a nice intro. Can I get a copy of that? You can if you want, yeah. That was lovely. So I I recorded an intro with um a recent podcast guest, and and he loved it so much, he made me say it again.

1:30 SPEAKER_00: Let's let's add a dramatic echo for the second time around. But that was great, thank you. And I it's a joy to be with you. Good, good. So what's been keeping you busy recently? Uh keeping me out of mischief. Well, um I I'm recently back from uh from a trip to Albania, of all the strange places to go, and uh catching up on everything that I haven't been able to do over the past couple of weeks and raving about Albania. I've I've become a one-person tourist bureau. Whereabouts in Albania? I was in Tirana, their main city, and I had no idea what to expect.

2:00 SPEAKER_00: And I must say I was incredibly pleasantly surprised. It's this vibrant, wonderful up-and-coming city, a couple of decades out of some of the most severe communism the world has ever seen. And I mean, just a highlight of the trip, there was a 27-year-old who did a walking tour around the streets. The streets are beautiful, you know, they've got these really creative buildings that have faces built into the balconies of historical figures, and they'd light it up at night. I mean, it's wonderful. He's telling the story of how his mother used to cue for up to five days at a time to get their family's ration of milk.

2:35 SPEAKER_01: Wow.

2:35 SPEAKER_00: When I say five days at a time, I don't mean you would get milk each of the five days. It was like day one, no, go back home again. Day two, dawn until dusk, nope, and try again on Wednesday. And you look around now, and it's this vibrant, booming place with business and and a degree of freedom. Um it's just so inspiring. It was it was a wonderful trip.

2:55 SPEAKER_01: I'd I'd love to go at some point. I've I don't know much about Albania.

2:58 SPEAKER_00: I mean, the only thing I I I knew some Albanians when I lived in Manchester, but they were slight slightly dodgy, but I suspect there are still some slightly dodgy ones there, but uh but I must say, what what a wonderful experience if you get the chance.

3:11 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I will do where where did you fly from?

3:13 SPEAKER_00: I I was supposed to fly directly from Jersey to Heathrow and Heathrow to Tirana. What actually happened was the flight out of Jersey was delayed the entire day. I missed the one from Heathrow, which meant that, you know, late night at the little airport hotel, early morning up again, and then I flew via Frankfurt. My luggage made it to Frankfurt, but no further than that, and I went from Frankfurt to Tirana. Next day the luggage caught up. Um I mean, I was exhausted out of my mind by the time that I got there.

3:42 SPEAKER_00: Uh arrived in a little hotel, and I wasn't even aware because it was so late, that they had placed me next door to the Grand Mosque. And what happened was at 11.30 that night, they did the first of the calls to prayer, and that went for half an hour. And the next one was at 4.30 in the morning. So yeah, I'm afraid the audience uh met a slightly shattered version of Douglas the next day.

4:04 SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell All day delays aren't great. I remember we had an all-day delay going to a friend's uh 40th in Dublin, and we we stayed in the lounge all day, and by the time we by the time we got to Dublin, we were we were rather well oiled, let's say. Isn't travel exotic? Um so th this is called the Turning Point Podcast. So for people who may not know your story, what what would you say are the key turning point moments that have shaped who you are today?

4:30 SPEAKER_00: Well, I grew up in Johannesburg in South Africa, and uh I was born at the time that apartheid was coming to an end, which meant I grew up in a very, very unusual set of circumstances. South Africa is a vibrant and strange country. You have these extremes of wealth and poverty and uh super high-tech, uh sort of first world technology right beside extreme poverty everywhere. Uh South Africa was uh was a world lead at things like hospitals and and certain technologies, military technologies and so on.

5:03 SPEAKER_00: And you would f you would you would I grew up in this situation where everything was in flux. I suspect what that makes you do is to question your world perhaps more than other people would. You look at other countries, what works and what doesn't. You look at your own, and it makes you hyper-aware of success principles, of the things that create failure, of the things that harm people. And I suppose that that has been a constant part of my own psychology. Hopefully to the better, I try to collect answers that help people.

5:36 SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that that's is effectively what I do for a living. I write and speak on things that work and that make things better.

5:41 unknown: Yeah.

5:42 SPEAKER_01: And and all of us, we are all a product of our past, whether we like it or not. And and um, you know, everything that's happened in in my past, even my period of time when I was struggling back in 2020 post post-surgery, I wouldn't change any of that because the lessons that I've learned from that have made me the person I I am today.

6:01 SPEAKER_00: Yes. Well, I mean, I grew up in uh a neighborhood that was incredibly mixed in terms of uh wealth levels, and that's not unusual in South Africa. And one of the stories that I use as a standard part of my keynotes today, because it had such an impact on me, was the kids around me were playing with incredibly expensive toys like quad bikes and Nintendo sets, and we simply didn't have that option. We we we were kind of struggling by comparison. And my dad built a rope swing that ended up outperforming these high-tech solutions.

6:30 SPEAKER_00: It was this insane rope swing that you'd swing over the roof of the house, over the telephone wires. I mean, this thing was a danger to all in sundry. But what was interesting to me was that it outperformed the high-tech options. And it was the beginning of looking at the world differently and saying, you know, if you ask a different question, you can see things in different ways. My dad was a very uh is a very unorthodox, intelligent but sort of off-beat character. And I think that's that's been a very big part of the why I look at scenarios perhaps a little differently.

7:04 SPEAKER_00: Yep.

7:05 SPEAKER_01: That's a fascinating story. But when did you leave South Africa?

7:07 SPEAKER_00: Uh five years back. Uh for forty years there, five years here now, uh living in Jersey and and absolutely loving it. And I think what that does, again, is it gives you an outsider perspective. You look at things like uh productivity, technology, leadership, and there are things I believe you can see coming in from the outside that perhaps local leadership can't because it's the water in which they swim.

7:29 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I I get that as well. I mean, I've lived in lots of places, and and I've also had the privilege of having roles which have enabled me to travel the world, uh, which I've really, really enjoyed. And I think everything that you do and everywhere you you go and work brings a different perspective to situations. Um was there ever a period in your life where you felt that you were kind of stuck or uncertain or on the wrong path?

7:51 SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely. There's even a song that goes with it. My sister and I talk about this often. There's an old John Denver folk song, and he's got this plaintive lyric where he says, When I think that I'm moving, suddenly things stand still, and I'm afraid because I think they always will. I mean that one is just gets me to the core of my being. Um I don't admit mind admitting, I I am afraid of getting stuck. I don't want a life that has potential but goes nowhere. The simple sort of sense of carpe diem seize the day, make the most of of what time you have means a very great deal to me.

8:26 SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something quite useful and quite healthy in that. You know, people turn away from their fears. There are psychologists who argue that turning and facing your monster is one of the best things you can do. So for me, it's the idea of living smaller than the light within you should permit. And that that haunts me. Yeah.

8:46 SPEAKER_01: And and um I I read a book, I forget which book it was, that's not a very good quote, is it? Um but but the um the boy was saying that he remembered, or the guy, he was a man, saying he distinctly remembers when he was seven years old, driving past a graveyard with his grandfather, and his grandfather saying, Look at all those graves over there. Each one of them is a fantastic artist, singer, creator, doctor, astronaut, but none of them realize their dreams.

9:12 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I mean, that's the opening of Dead Poet Society. Look at their faces, the same hopes as you, the same hormones, the same dreams. Did they wait until it was too late to make even one iota of what they were capable of because they are now food for worms, boys.

9:27 SPEAKER_01: So, in in your experience, what's the biggest lie people often tell themselves that keeps them stuck and keeps them from changing their lives?

9:34 SPEAKER_00: I'll give you two for the price of one. I have time and it's not my fault. We have so little time. Um, this is something my dad impressed on me from a young age. He he often used to say, it goes so quickly. And the sense of saying, it's not my fault, I am a victim of my circumstances. You know it may even be true, but it's not useful. Regaining that sense of autonomy over your life starts with saying, it's entirely up to me. If this is where I am, it's what I have done, it's what I have created.

10:02 SPEAKER_00: Even if that is a fundamentally unfair thing to say, it is a useful thing to say. It means taking back control of the reins and saying, if I am not happy with this, it is entirely up to me to make that change. And I often use this uh simple sort of example when um I write a lot of books, so inevitably people say, How do you how do you write a book? And I say, Well, the thing is nobody forces you. There's no one running behind you with a whip. You have to initiate this entire massive project of your own prerogative.

10:34 SPEAKER_00: And I often say to people like that, open Microsoft Word and save the headline today. Don't think about one day when I will write a book, because that is a formula for never getting things done. Start the document and date it. Give it a headline, even if you're going to change the headline later and go, that's the day I started my book. Now you may have no idea how to begin, but you've begun, you've made a start. Now you have the sense of, this is a thing that I can do. And the human mind does some wonderful things thereafter.

11:03 SPEAKER_00: It's as though your mental receptors get turned on for the things that you need. You start to notice them around you. It's the same basic phenomenon as saying, think about a red car, and you'll notice them everywhere. Think about the book and the topic that you want to write, or the grand goal you want to achieve. Now you have turned on the part of your mind that is information seeking. It looks for ways to do that and it starts to vacuum up ideas, inputs, and information. If you don't make the start, it doesn't do that.

11:34 SPEAKER_00: So take take radical charge of your life and start now, not tomorrow, but today. Yep.

11:40 SPEAKER_01: You mentioned the important point there as well. And a lot of that goes back to the subconscious. So your subconscious mind is a goal-getting, goal-crushing machine that will stop at nothing until it achieves what you desire. Yeah. Unfortunately, most people feed their subconscious mind with, I'm so stupid, or I'm useless, oh, I'll always be fat, or I'll never achieve anything. And that's why they stay stuck.

12:03 SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely. And and um, self-talk is something that I work on consciously and I try to teach when I speak to others as well, because it is so powerful. I mean, I come from, you know, my faith says life and death is in the power of the tongue, and I absolutely believe that. Um so I'll give you a quick example of how I used to do exactly what you're saying. You'd have a massive speech and say, uh, I don't know, 40 CEOs in the audience. What is the natural inclination? You go, I can't believe I have to speak in front of 40 CEOs.

12:31 SPEAKER_00: Who am I to do this? Now the simple switch, and it's so easy to do, but you have to do it consciously, you have to force yourself to do this, is to change that to, I can't believe I get to speak for 40 CEOs. How wonderful. This is not a trauma event in my life. This is a wonderful moment. I'm going to enjoy it. And that change in your own self-talk starts a cascade of changes in how you think and approach and behave in that scenario. It makes the world of difference. You know, we we were chatting earlier about a entirely different topic, and saying that um AI is uniquely good at looking back over information and reading patterns.

13:13 SPEAKER_00: The human brain, by contrast, has this unique ability to think forward in story. And it's able to think forward in terms of these hypotheticals, what might be, what could be. And we have great control over that if we realize it. If we realize that we can dream about the life that could be in positive or negative terms, and that is under our control with a little training, a little coaching, uh, a little self-discipline.

13:41 SPEAKER_01: It it takes time and it does take time, yes. So the men that I I work with and and coach as well, this is a big part of what we do. But it takes it you have to be persistent at it and do it every day. You can't just simply one day tell yourself that you're a millionaire and the next day you wake up and and you've got uh all that money in your bank account.

13:59 SPEAKER_00: So yes. And you know what helps uh to a great extent is is also a husband-wife partner, is to simply and honestly tell them, I'm struggling with these things. This event comes up and it feels like a trauma moment for me. And I know it shouldn't. It should feel like a big opportunity. And I'm trying to talk to myself in different ways. And that little bit of humility shared often means that you then hear that echoed back at you when you need it. And if you can do it for for that, for the person in your life as well, what a difference that makes.

14:29 SPEAKER_00: You start to become what we might call an upward aiming culture. Rather than having a a culture between your you two people between amongst your family that tears itself down, it becomes one that aims upward and tries to prop one another up. And what a valuable change that is. And it's not an easy one, it's it's a hard one that you have to fight for. You go first.

14:50 SPEAKER_01: It's changing the narrative, isn't it? And then you when when we met last year at the speaker factor, you may remember but you were speaking before me, and my subconscious initially said, Oh, Douglas, he's a great speaker. Uh you've got a hard act to follow. But then I flip the script round to be like, wow, I must be amazing. They put Douglas on as my warm up. I love that. That's fantastic.

15:12 SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's how you do it. And that's how you're gonna do that. And you are superb. You are superb. You know, also, you talk to yourself in context. You go, the audience isn't here to compare me to the speaker before. When I'm up there, they hope I do well and that they'll get to enjoy me. And that's true. And that simple context and self-talk can change things.

15:30 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that there's there's rarely a public speaking occasion when you go up and people are willing you to fail. Yeah.

15:35 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Uh maybe if you're in government, but yeah, other than that.

15:39 SPEAKER_01: Well, the hardest audience I spoke to was 250 uh year ten school kids. And and that was really tough because they were not very engaging because it's not cool to engage with someone who's coming in to do a careers talk, and and I could could just feel their death stare. I I I survived it anyway. So here you are. Yeah. Yeah. Um let's talk about reinvention now, because I mean this is an audio podcast, so people can't see, but you are you're in good shape. You'd obviously look after yourself. Have you consciously had to work on that?

16:09 SPEAKER_01: Have you been through a period of reinvention, or have you had to let go of an old version of yourself to become who you are today?

16:15 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's actually a great question. I was the skinny kid at school. I mean, I you know, I often joke that like when we had PT days or PE as it's said here, uh I'd wear the tiny little shorts and my legs look like the beginning of a barcode. I now go to gym really about sort of three days out of four, and I take weightlifting and bodybuilding quite seriously. Now I'm never gonna win a Mr. Olympia contest, but thank you. I'm, you know, I'm I'm I'm in good shape and I feel good about the way that I look.

16:40 SPEAKER_00: I am the most unlikely candidate to be in that kind of shape today. And it comes down to a funny thing. There's a technique that you you teach to leaders, and it basically goes like this. When people are struggling, award them points in advance. In other words, just sort of help them a little with a sense of confidence that they've already made a little bit of progress. My best mate did that for me. Straight out of high school. We were uh at a mall somewhere and I was looking at t-shirts, and he asked me, Why do you always buy such baggy t-shirts?

17:09 SPEAKER_00: And I go, Well, I'm trying to hide my arms, I'm so skinny. And I really was. I mean, I I looked like I'd come out of a war zone. And he says, No, dude, I I'll I'll never forget his wording. He says, You've got funky forearms. You should just do a few push-ups and keep going. And though that little term, you've got funky forearms, was the pivotal moment that changed my entire approach to this thing. I went, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe I can work on this a little, maybe I can try to. And that led into going to gym, which led into taking it seriously, which led into watching bodybuilding videos, which is now what I do, like half of my life.

17:45 SPEAKER_00: That simple little comment that he made, that input, changed things for me. And I now try to do it for others on purpose where I get the chance. Now give you an example. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a public speaking contest. I get asked to adjudicate and to watch these things like half of my life. And the person who won was being congratulated by a hundred people from the audience, and you know, there's the whole thing going on. And I know how this works, so I go looking for the person who came second, and I find her around a corner having a quiet cry.

18:16 SPEAKER_00: And I started with the whole sort of hug and the commiseration and so on, and then I just said, Listen, I've been watching speakers for years. You are amazingly good at this. Don't worry about this contest, keep going. Because you very nearly won. But it's not about this, it's about how good you are at this. You could do it for a living if you wanted to. Keep going. And I hope that that does for someone like her what people have done for me. And people have done that for me in various areas of life.

18:45 SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was also, quite aside from being skinny, maybe because of it, I was the shy kid at school. Somebody said you did really well on that presentation, keep going. Uh you don't know how you're going to change people's lives with these little inputs. So if you can do it, do it on purpose.

18:59 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that's so true. And I I love to do that as well with people now, because you it's a small thing to you, but you don't realise the knock-on effect. Yeah. So I I may have said I can't remember, but I used to really struggle with with public speaking and a genuine phobia of standing up on the stage. Uh, and then um it was once, I think it's back in 2012, um, when I was at an SAP uh technology event, and we done an all-night coding event, and I was asked to go and present uh in front of 150 people.

19:28 SPEAKER_01: Um and I was terrified, but I remember seeing on Twitter afterwards people were saying, This guy's good at speaking. I'm thinking Brilliant. Wow, how to your own surprise. Yeah. And it does really make a difference.

19:40 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. It's also worth remembering that the negative feedback also doesn't matter. No. You you're always in a world now with with social media norms where people feel so free to attack one another. It's not real. It doesn't matter. If that happens to you, the best thing to do is to dismiss it. And because these are not people who know you or care about you. And it's just such a common thing these days. It's it's unfortunate.

20:03 SPEAKER_01: It's what I say to my daughters as well, you know, if if if um if a good friend or a member of my family says that was really shit. Yeah, you don't pay attention. Then then maybe it is. But if someone from the streets is, I don't really care.

20:14 SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

20:14 SPEAKER_01: So uh many of the people listening um are are usually kind of men in their forties and fifties, because that's who who I work with. A lot of them will have successful careers, good families, and and stable lives, yet they still feel they're capable of actually achieving more. They feel like maybe something's missing. So what advice would you give to those sorts of people?

20:32 SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's a wonderful place to be because we are at heart meaning-seeking creatures. We are not supposed to be content. Contentment is actually not a particularly healthy thing. We should be grateful for the good things in our lives, but content can mean that you actually start slipping back and not fulfilling your full, full potential. If you feel that, don't take it as something negative. Turn and face your monster. What's missing? Is it a sense of adventure? Is it a sense that perhaps the world is bigger than what it has recently become for you?

21:06 SPEAKER_00: Okay, acknowledge that, that's fine. But where to from here? Do you want something greater in your career? Do you perhaps want to go hiking with your son? Are you looking for meaning in different ways? What what does meaning mean to you? What does it look like? I mentioned that whole thing of w humans are able to think in possibilities, in stories. Start to think uh in an A versus B. And what I mean by that is the A is the positive. What does a good story look like if you flesh that out to as great as your life could possibly be?

21:42 SPEAKER_00: Now take as much time and trouble to flesh out the B, which is the worst thing for you. What don't you want? You imagine two years from today, I'm still sitting in the same cubicle. I'm still having the same arguments with the same people about the same dumb things. If something in your soul revolts, Against that good. Okay? That means that that is not what you want for your future hypothetical. Thinking in these stories helps to clarify it. There's a wonderful little exercise that I sometimes do with leadership teams.

22:12 SPEAKER_00: It's called the miracle dream. And again, you do it in the positive and the negative. I'll just do the positive here to show you how you do the steps. You wake up in the morning and a miracle has happened. You are living your ideal life by every metric. But here's the thing in this exercise, you don't know it yet. You've woken up and it's happened in the night while you were asleep. So what do you see? Now this is important, not what do you feel, what do you see step by step as you go through your day that is visibly, noticeably different?

22:46 SPEAKER_00: For example, you walk to your car and it's the Pentley, you walk into the office and this is different, that functions differently, this client is waiting for you. Or you open your diary and it says flight to Frankfurt today because I'm meeting with. What do you actually see step by step as you go through the entire day and spend a few minutes going through the whole day to fill in the detail of the thing? What that does is it shows you, picture by picture, what it is that you desire. And then you can start to go, why am I not there?

23:20 SPEAKER_00: What does the contrast look like? How do I get there? But key to this exercise, it's not how do I feel different, it's what do I see as I live through this day. It is an incredibly powerful and useful exercise.

23:32 SPEAKER_01: It's really good. And again, it's something that that I do with some of the people I work with. It's it's imagine it's in a year's time now, and and we we get them to create a persona of of the new them. Yes. What does the new you look like? What do they do on when they wake up in the morning? How is their day? And then we look to say, well, what are the gaps between where you are and where you want to be? And how do you kind of bridge those gaps?

23:55 SPEAKER_00: Yes. And think big with those things. I mean, you you know, you might w w wake up and and say, I see that they have aired my interview about the new book or the new album or the new then you go, okay, well, when am I going to write the new book? Right? There's step one. Let's start today.

24:09 SPEAKER_01: How much um of the success how much success actually actually do you think comes down to talent? And how much of it comes down to personal responsibility?

24:17 SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's such a great question to ask a speaker because we see people who are immensely talented and getting nowhere, and people who are earning huge amounts of money and you regard them with some suspicion. So the reality of the thing is there are things that successful people do that are replicable. If you take, for example, my industry, j just as an example, in the speaking world, to get new speeches you must be seen on a stage. So if you are really good at it, that will help. But even if you are average to mediocre, the more often you do that, actively and by design, the more successful you will be.

24:55 SPEAKER_00: And you will end up in these scenarios where immensely talented people will look at more successful people than them and say, this is not fair. Well, it's not about fair, it's about doing the right work. And that starts with asking the right questions. Which things work here? Again, just using myself as an example, for a speaker it might be to write a book is a big deal in your world. So don't be the person who fails to write the book and then sits back and wonders why you're not getting anywhere.

25:24 SPEAKER_00: What are the metrics of success in your world? For most, I mean, taking you mentioned guys in their, say, 40s, 50s, and so forth, the number one determinant of success in a corporate career tends to be how often you present in front of teams. And this is Harvard Business Review. They say the thing that you should invest in above all others is speaking well in front of groups. Because when you are seen at the front of the room, seen to be leading the meeting, you are perceived as the leader in these scenarios.

25:51 SPEAKER_00: The promotions, the leadership opportunities gravitate toward that person. So if you're currently looking at your world and going, why am I not getting promoted? Are you doing the thing that is known to work? If not, start. And you mentioned earlier the fear of public speaking. It's universal. Everyone hates it. So, you know, if you're listening to this and going, but I don't I don't want to speak in public, I fear it. Congrats, you're a human. Yep. That's all of us. Okay? But the person who volunteers for it gets the edge.

26:21 SPEAKER_00: So what are the metrics of your success? Start pulling on those levers. Yep. Yeah. It's comfort zone. You don't grow when you're in your comfort zone, do you? And you find it's not as bad as you thought it was. Try try the small one. Lead lead the Friday morning meeting. And you go, This is not the horror show that I thought it was. It's actually quite easy. I could do a little more.

26:40 SPEAKER_01: So uh let's move on now. Um life has a habit of knocking all of us backwards at some point. So what mindset would you say helps people move forward instead of becoming bitter, resentful, or stuck when that happens?

26:52 SPEAKER_00: It's a great one. It happened to me um during the lockdowns, which killed my the speaking industry stone dead. Yeah, just about two years. And then on top of that, we moved to Jersey on the strength of my wife working in financial services. And I had a strange one at the same time. I I'd written a novel which was nothing to do with my normal work, and that was published and kind of took me away from the speaking world for a while. So you're going kind of three to four years of nothing now start again in a different environment.

27:20 SPEAKER_00: And I think the number one thing is you take everything personally, and that's not useful. It's why is this happening to me? Well, it isn't happening to you. You're just not pulling the right Libras. Okay. Start pulling the right Libras and things begin to happen. And it always goes slower than you expect at first. Viewed in, say, within one calendar year, it will be less than you expect. Viewed over five calendar years of of consistent effort, it will be more than you expect. Those five years are going to go by either way.

27:50 SPEAKER_00: So will you write the book, will you do the speech, will you get involved in the thing? Will you start pulling the levers? And I think the thing to keep in mind is you're not being victimized by the universe. You and you are not separated from your goals or your desired success by a matter of years. You are separated from it by a number of actions. And it is easy these days to determine which actions lead you in the right way. The answers exist. For example, in the corporate world, you need to be seen speaking in public more often.

28:21 SPEAKER_00: That's an answer. There are answers to all of the questions about what informs success in different industries. Do not remain ignorant of them and work hard instead of smart. Add the smart cuts, the breakthroughs, and then work hard. Do the things that work, switch off the part of your soul that's going, why me, why am I being victimized? Simply follow the success principles. They will add up.

28:46 SPEAKER_01: Yep. And what you said there as well about the why me. A lot of that comes down to belief as well. And I I do a lot of uh work with my in my coaching group about people's beliefs. And uh it's not all poor me, I'm I'm always going to be useless. So what's a belief you held strongly maybe 10, 20 years ago, that you've completely changed your mind about now and what caused the shift?

29:08 SPEAKER_00: Gosh, that's a really good one. I'm not sure I have an immediate answer for it. I suspect perhaps one of the things is comes out of the world of research on on how brains work, which is you can have all the facts and stats and charts and graphs and numbers, and still not be able to persuade people. And that's a big one in my world because I started off as a very young speaker, so the difficulty was in establishing credibility. And that means you you want to go straight to things like the facts, the charts, the graphs, the look look how legitimate I am.

29:41 SPEAKER_00: Turns out that's not the best way to persuade people. The part of the brain associated with persuasion responds way better to picture stories and moving imagery, basically people who who speak in stories. So I have had to, to some degree, unlearn the insecurity that says you have to prove it at every turn, and simply go with stories work better. And your question is actually gonna stick in my mind for the next few days. I'm gonna sit up at three in the morning on Tuesday and go, oh, that's a thing.

30:12 SPEAKER_00: But but off the top of my head, that there's one. Yeah.

30:16 SPEAKER_01: That's interesting. I mean, but beliefs do change over time as well. It's you know, a lot of the people who who I work with, as I said, have this belief that they are stuck in their kind of unhealthy body or whatever else. And it it's it's daily work on that mind to try and convince the mind that you're not that person anymore. Start believing that you're the person who can be fit, who can have a marathon, and who can achieve great things.

30:39 SPEAKER_00: And there again, it brings us back to that thing of someone else advanced uh giving you a few points in advance. You know, someone who's say desperately unfit is mired in a self-narrative of I can never fix this. And actually, you know, it turns out that if you you go walking for a few minutes each day, that'll make a huge difference. It's simple. But it's the narrative that's actually the bigger problem. And when someone simply speaks into your life and says, You're actually doing quite well with this, just keep going a little.

31:04 SPEAKER_00: Here's a thing you can do. That can make a big difference. I often think of um, I don't know if you remember that scene from the end of the first Lord of the Rings movie. Sam is trying to go after Frodo in the little boat and he plunges down into the water. There's this dramatic moment where the one hand reaches down into the water and grabs the other. I often think about that, you know. We we sometimes get so mired in our own narratives that it's like you can't rescue yourself. You actually need someone to help you.

31:29 SPEAKER_00: And I think it's one of the best things we do. So let's try and do it for others where we can.

31:34 SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And and part of that as the world is related to our subconscious mind. We're programmed to do the same thing we did yesterday because it kept us safe. The subconscious mind wants to keep you safe, wants to keep you warm and sheltered, and procreate. So so sitting in a in a room on the sofa, eating and procreating is what the subconscious mind wants us to do. But but that's not helping you grow as a person.

31:58 SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not. Yeah.

32:00 SPEAKER_01: Um, what's the most difficult truth that you've had to accept about yourself in order to keep growing?

32:05 SPEAKER_00: Oh goodness, that's a great one. I mentioned being shy coming out of high school. I have had to force myself to get past that. And if you had to meet me at a public convention where I'm up on a stage speaking and chatting with people afterwards, you'd never know. And you'd never know because it's been a hard, hard road to defeat that. And it it still pops up in small things. Like the other day, my wife and I were at a at a theater show and she asked me, like, go and go and grab us a drink at the bar.

32:33 SPEAKER_00: And I had this moment of blank horror where it's like, I have to walk up to this bar with an ambiguous cue and sort of talk to strangers. And and I had to catch myself and go, dude, what are you doing? You're you're 10 miles past that problem. But it's it's a it's still deep-rooted for me. So I I suspect what can happen is if you are very aware of something that is a a difficulty, a weakness for you, and you learn to overcome it, you can actually go quite far the other way. I mean, I now speak on stages around the world, and people would never guess that the nerves or the fear or the social awkwardness are there.

33:08 SPEAKER_00: But they are, and and it's been a hard path to overcome that. I have overcome it so far that I can now stand up in front of leadership groups and speak about my own fears and insecurities as part of an illustration. So if it's helpful to anyone, it can be done, and you can b you can go so far past solving that problem that you can almost become master level at solving it for others. Hopefully that helps someone.

33:33 SPEAKER_01: That's great. And it's it comes down to self-awareness. I mean, I I am I'm naturally quite introverted, which is something I didn't really realize because when I was um I mean I I've given up drinking back in 2024. And most events that involve going out networking, um, business events, I would usually have been drinking.

33:53 SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

33:54 SPEAKER_01: Um so so uh the the kind of introversion was masked. As I've come out of of drinking and going to these events, I'm suddenly going, Oh, I've got to talk to people. Yeah, and and I'm not drinking. What am what am I gonna talk about? Yeah. But having the awareness of that, it helps me to then prepare and I actually feel better better and stronger for it.

34:13 SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there's a wonderful little technique there, and you've just nailed it there, that it's called when this happens, do that instead. So it's just a basic preparedness thing, and it's uh a leadership coaching technique that you use on your teams with your family, your children, and on yourself, exactly as you've expressed. You say, when this situation comes up, I'm sick of that. I I don't like it going wrong in that way. So when this happens, I'm going to do that instead. And you bring in a replacement script.

34:39 SPEAKER_00: Now you've you've presumably found answers that become the script, which is maybe force yourself to walk up and shake someone's hand, start a story, uh, get involved in whatever. It doesn't matter what informs the script, so long as you have one. So to use that on yourself, you go, what is the problem that keeps recurring that I hate? I can't I can't stand it when this happens. Go, all right, what comes just before it? What's the catalyst for that? The catalyst is I go to an event, I'm not drinking, others start to drink, and now I feel awkward.

35:07 SPEAKER_00: All right, insert a new script at that point. You try it once and it it mostly works. It needs a little refining, and you go, I'm on to something here. Uh and and that's how we change behaviors. Yeah.

35:19 SPEAKER_01: Love it. I'd be interested just to touch on daily habits now. And we are a product of the habits that that we build up over time. Some of us have good habits, some of us have bad habits. But what's one habit or routine that you now couldn't live without?

35:33 SPEAKER_00: Gym 1 is a very big one. I I spend a great deal of time taking that incredibly seriously. But I suspect if I had to give an answer to that one, it would be writing as a form of thought. And I do it in several different ways. I I write a little column here for the The Jersey Evening Post, which is my own thinking about the landscape and scenario and what's happening locally. I also do it for in a business context for different magazines and publications and so on. But I apply it to myself too. So I will write things in narrative form.

36:06 SPEAKER_00: Using your example of going to an event and not wanting to drink, I would actually write it out in sentence form. I go, Doug, I'm I'm not okay with this. This keeps happening. What is a better way? And I would literally write it out. Once you've done that, it's unignorable. You resolve your problems that way. And it's just what psychologist Jordan Peterson talks about when he says, Turn and face your monsters. Do it in text. It works incredibly well if you sit and write it out. You say, This is the issue.

36:32 SPEAKER_00: I'm not happy with this, I want to change. And even if you don't have the solutions yet, the fact is you've turned and faced your monster. So you will now start looking for ways to solve that. And that's good enough for now.

36:46 SPEAKER_01: I think there's something um powerful about getting something out of your mind and doubt. Oh, very if it's your your worries, your concerns, your thoughts, your ideas, they're out of your mind then. Yeah. And you you can clear your mind, park them. Otherwise, if you go to bed with all these uh concerns in your mind, it's uh your subconscious runs right, doesn't it?

37:03 SPEAKER_00: I do it for everything. I mean, I've got a little file on my phone and I was using this in Albania, just simply titled Better Travel. And it's it's a collection of everything that goes wrong and how to solve it. I mean, I mentioned the the the mask at four, four thirty in the morning. So I'm up at now at five trying to prepare for my workshop, and I discovered that they don't have coffee in the room. Now you can go and get like this five-star pot of coffee at breakfast from 7 a.m., but all they had was chamomile tea, which helps to put you to sleep.

37:32 SPEAKER_00: So onto the better travel list, and in fact I did this immediately, I went and onto Amazon and bought several little coffee sachets, which will now live in my bag. I will never have that problem again. Ever. Everything that goes wrong in house to prepare for be the title of a new book. Yes. And you know, I mean, you joke, but it it is so powerful. Uh so just to sort of segue off into the corporate world, Chick-fil-A, the guys in the United States who are one of the uh best-selling fast food outlets, they have a wonderful problem, which is they have the biggest, but also the fastest moving cues in the United States.

38:06 SPEAKER_00: And their whole business model goes, you should play whack-a-mole with problems. And it's so powerful. They go, all right, so you've got big cues. What do you do? That's a problem, that's a constraint. Find a way to solve it. And in their case, it's all right, don't wait till the cars get to the window to order, have someone walk along the queue and take the orders. Good, you've played whack-a-mole with that problem. But what you've done is you've pushed it down the line to the kitchens. Now the kitchens have to go faster.

38:31 SPEAKER_00: Good. Go to the kitchen and play whack-a-mole with their speed problem. And they make the point, and it's actually quite profound, that the world's best performing anything, companies, organizations, businesses, brands, countries, individuals, all have this habit of playing constant whack-a-mole with problems. They just go, how do I become a better version of? And they keep targeting the things that are wrong and improving them one by one. And they they also make the psychological point that it's not a bad thing, it's the path to becoming the greatest version of.

39:05 SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's it's quite profound.

39:08 SPEAKER_01: All right, Douglas, that's been really great. Let's let's leave it there. Thank you for coming in.

39:11 SPEAKER_00: Such a pleasure.