[00:00:00] welcome back to the Energize with Bram podcast. This podcast is designed for you if you're a change maker, as a business owner, an entrepreneur, one of those people, has a crazy idea, a bold and passionate dream. Today I'm super thrilled. Reason being: I've invited a guest, I'm glad he came along. This guy is busy. He knows that time is money. There's always plenty of opportunities for this guy. One of the things I really appreciate about him is that many years ago, we decided that we would do some work together, and, he gave me kindly the opportunity as a new arrival to Australia to work with his team.
And he and his business partner assembled the dream team, for two days offsite, paid for the venue, got everybody there, accommodation, food, wine, a whole lot. Guess what? Only to find that the day when I was supposed to rock up. I arrived late. I didn't know how to get there. I got lost somewhere in the bush. Payment was received earlier and I was yet to [00:01:00] deliver the goods, and I was late. I felt I was letting him down. Here's the beautiful thing now, where this person really inspired trust. We sometimes say that as a leader, you can be an inspirational leader, you can be a top down driven leader.
You can be a level three leader. As Stephen Covey says, all these sorts of things. That day I understood in my heart what great leadership means because when I rang him with pain in my heart and anxiety and pouring sweat and everything. This guy just said, Bram, it's okay.
We'll entertain the team. Just drive safely and come here and join us when you're ready. Suddenly all this anxiety fell off my shoulders. With this being said, Brad Jansen, very much looking forward to having this chat today with you. Thank you so much for joining us.
Pleasure to be here, Bram.
I've forgotten that story it's amazing in those moments how we can leave lifelong impact. Thanks for sharing that.
It was a great two days we had [00:02:00] after. Not everything always goes according to plan. Sometimes you have the best of intentions and then life gets in the way. How is it that you can keep such a composed attitude in the face of adversity, setbacks, and just change the plans, especially knowing that you like plans and executing them?
I think composure, there's internal composure and then the facade of composure in that moment, there's enough anxiety, panic around you. What use is then adding to that? If we focus on the outcome we're looking for, a leader in that moment should get to refocus on what are we here to achieve and do.
And despite the thing that life will throw at us. How do we steer the ship back on course? We are where we are. Let's get back to the goal. Or we can sit and wallow in the things that have gone wrong. That's just a waste of energy. Very outcome focused. I think this is a learned skill over time.
And look, anything I say today, [00:03:00] I don't talk from a place of, wow, I've figured these out. I've stolen everything out of books, out of podcasts like yours, books that I read, And you get little bits and nuggets and go, oh, I could apply that in life. And I think one of the things that I've learned and applied over time, and I'm getting better at it, I don't think I'll ever master it.
when life comes up. We can get caught in that limbic emotional trigger and be anchored. In that cortisol anxiety loop. Or we can detach from it emotionally and get back on process, back on system use, what am I here to achieve? Get back to that neocortex processing part of the brain instead of the limbic brain and actually get back to the job at hand.
Doesn't mean we should shut the limbic brain down. It's there to keep us safe. But once we've recognized it, once we were cognizant of that, we're in a limbic triggered state. Recognize it. Let it do its job, and thank it. [00:04:00] Hey, thanks for trying to keep me safe in this moment. You've done your job. Now move to the side.
Let's get back to that programming brain, that calculating brain where we're able to effectively lead people through process rather than through emotion. That's already a great gem there. I love that.
It's a learned state and it's probably continuous improvement or a continuous journey. you don't really master it as such. Sometimes we give into it and, it could easily get us off track. Could you expand a little bit on one of those where you might've let the limbic system take over and then afterwards you were like, oh my!
I think one that's been a consistent theme that pops up for me in a negative way is that once I've laid out plans as a group we've agreed to a strategy. And an execution plan to go with that. And maybe some metrics and measurements that says, by this time we should be there.
That time we're gonna be there. Here's the behaviors we're gonna agree to that support the execution of that plan. My [00:05:00] brain tends to lock hard onto those things, and then I chase perfection. That's not a good thing, by the way. I've had to learn to sanitize that moments. When the team around me are not behaving or delivering in a way that's to that plan precisely, I would experience a limbic trigger my brain would start. Saying, why don't they like me? Why don't they respect me? Why are they doing that? Are they doing that to piss me off on purpose? It would be that real emotional, take it personal state over time I've had to decouple from that.
It's not about me. people are different and the lenses they look through in their lives are different. That's a skill I've had to work on, a shadow behavior I've had to wash out and sanitize for myself. How do I make room for people to come at their pace and not make this about me?
My job to keep them on the journey
based on their state, not trying to bend and force them to my will in the state I'd like them to be in. So that's an [00:06:00] example where I constantly have to check myself on that. it's very easy to get frustrated and start pointing the finger.
someone once said to me, try this. If you point a finger, remember there's three pointing back at you. So every time you point a finger, there's three pointing back at you. Look at yourself first. It's one of those little gems always stick around.
I love how you're always so receptive to continuous learning. Just so that the audience understands, you're one of us, right? Entrepreneur, business owner. Let's fly over what your history looks like and specifically, you've created businesses from scratch and build them into, what, a hundred million dollars or something in revenue?
Yes.
So let's fly quickly over your history professionally speaking. I was born in Cape Town South Africa in 71. I got brought up in a society that was run by the apartheid regime where basically success failure, your position in the world was determined by your physical [00:07:00] attributes around the color of your skin. That was embedded in law in that country. I left there when I was 13, 14, but I was mature enough to see that it's really tough getting born or brought up in a world where societal, cultural, and the law is stacked against you if you're the wrong color. That embedded in me a fierce, almost pain driven drive and will to do something special when opportunities arose. Opportunities were actually forbidden for people that were non-white. I saw my parents family around me, people in our community that were non-white, like I'm not white, it really meant that when an opportunity comes grab it with both hands, and go,
'cause you don't know when they're gonna come.
Coming to Australia, my parents decided to immigrate. I was 13, 14. It opened up this world of abundance and opportunity. I came to a country that said, your position in life will be based on your own commitment to discipline.
Blood, sweat, tears. It's not gonna be [00:08:00] about color, religion, gender, all that. And in Australia is true to that. It's amazing country and offering equal opportunity. I think that instilled a real burn and desire in me and my parents played a big role in making sure their kids were exposed to those inequalities around opportunity.
School I was smart, but a really poor student and I just didn't have those disciplines to sit and study when one should. The rugby field, the swimming pool and the football field seemed far more appealing than a textbook. I did enough to scrape through, did some, time at uni, f around, probably spend more time in the uni bar than in the lecture theaters, which was good fun.
I gave away uni. Was wasting my time and did a diploma in accounting. Went into an accounting career, practice management, accounting inside private companies. That was really fun, enjoyable. Got to get in the boardroom, so to speak, through the accounting door and realized pretty quickly that accounting was a good lens into entrepreneurship because at the end of the day, business, we talk [00:09:00] about our purpose and our missions and our strategies, but it comes down to the p and l and balance sheet, unless you've got a p and l and balance sheet, you can't do all those other good things. If you've got a really healthy p and l and a really strong balance sheet, you can do a lot of good with that as well. But you've gotta get that right first. The numbers have to be right first. So I really enjoyed that.
I ended up joining a small private company in the Industrial Services industry. So they're looked after companies like Adelaide Brighton Cement, Western Mining Corporation that became BHP and worked my way into a general management role where I got to run that business.
We grew that to be a large business national footprint, and we were running some pretty sexy projects all across Australia. Fast forward a few years, we got taken out, acquired by an ASX 100 listed company.
And in part of that acquisition, I signed a contract to stay on for a couple of years, and I ran South Australia and Western Australia.
Did well, always hit [00:10:00] my numbers, but I just got to that point where I felt I was moving my eyes away from an outward client focus to a more inward and upward looking, what's the share price? What are my quarterly forecasts? Am I gonna hit or exceed my forecast?
There was this incredible pressure, literally on a daily, weekly basis where the number one thing that mattered was what we're gonna tell the marketplace as an ASX listed company. And that company, through its mergers and acquisitions, was heavily leveraged. So hitting its numbers was critical because it actually lived or died by its debt levels.
And this was in 2006-2007 when capital was almost free, capital was throwing money, and then as we hit the GFC, everything tightened and anyone over leveraged got scrutinized hard. So I jumped out of that. Actually walked away from a really large incentive options package that was based around the share price.
My suspicions ended up [00:11:00] being right because the day I left, I think the share price was $14. And within a year it was down to less than a dollar. Not 'cause I left, but because it was obvious that, the fundamentals in terms of the mergers and acquisitions they'd made at fierce pace, which the market once loved was unsustainable.
They were buying businesses without proper due diligence. And were buying liabilities more than assets. The house of cards did come down. It was an awesome ride. Learned a lot. I then took a break. I'd been working pretty hard, running around the country.
Seen mine sites in places you wouldn't believe in Australia. It's an amazing place. Decided I'd do some investing myself, and got involved in property. Always loved property. Who in Australia doesn't? And that led to property development.
Some people I've been involved with previously through the business I was running wanted to do some development.
So that put a bit of a consortium together. We had one key capital partner who injected the capital in 2000. They were residential properties. This was about [00:12:00] 2007-2008. Everyone was buying smaller blocks and chopping 'em up into twos and threes to make money.
You couldn't lose always a good sign of a bubble and a bubble. It was, 'cause the GFC hit 2008 and all of a sudden that business got itself in trouble. the balance sheet went underwater. The, I suppose that assets we'd bought were probably turn into liabilities, as the market self corrected.
And the only way to bring value back into that book was to actually do the construction ourselves for the dwellings we're gonna put on there because let's capture what would normally be a builder's margin outsourcing. I'd had enough business experience to be confident that we could acquire a small builder.
And scale that. We end up doing it organically, grabbed a couple of people that were well known in the industry and started offering construction services out into the marketplace, to other developers as well. Long story short, over a period of 12, 13, 14 years, built that construction business into, yeah, I think we in [00:13:00] our biggest year, top a hundred mil in the group.
And by then it was construction, property management, strata management, Real estate agency and development. So we're doing everything across that sort of property development spectrum and vertically integrated. The brand was Quattro, a known business in South Australia.
We grew really fast and, did exceptionally well. It was a very good business, highly systemized, and it was geared to go fast and hard, so lower margin but really crisp systems that would drive production line through those vertically integrated business units.
Yep.
Then in late 2019, I positioned to sell a lot of those divisions, had cashed in some ancillary profit, the jewel in the crown, the construction business, I'd had a couple of deals on the table in late 2019 to sell out. Was time to change, to take a break? I was running pretty hard and maybe pivot industries more pure investment and [00:14:00] capital than, hands-on.
'cause that gets pretty tiring consistently over time. And yeah. Unfortunately COVID hit in March, 2020, the deals I had on the table pretty much evaporated. Good news was I had this amazing book, like I had a hundred million dollars work-in-progress book.
Including taking overheads into account for the following two years that had $10 million worth of profit embedded in that book. So 30 million. 30 mil gross profit. 20 mil overhead to get me there. Nets meet 10 mil profit, really healthy, and we'd really owned that medium high density space in construction.
We're first brand to brand in that. Not to say we owned the market, we're still a small part of it, but we're well branded in that and had great contracts with public listed companies, government, large developers. We know the story of COVID, the supply chain jammed up construction probably led the charge on supply chain disruption.
I couldn't get enough people and trades through the sites. The [00:15:00] machine I built was high volume, lower margin. As the supply demand imbalance magnified, A lot of it through government stimulus. They did what they thought was necessary at the time, but a lot of the stimulus of the residential construction sector meant that my trade base diluted and were running to where the margin was.
I couldn't get the throughput through the cogs part of my p and l. Literally on a daily basis, we'd be getting letters from suppliers. Typically construction has 70 key cost centers: windows, bricks, doors, roofs, timber. Every day we were getting, prices have gone up 5%.
Prices have gone up 5%. Timber went up 70%. Steel went up 70% those two products alone made up 25% of the cost of my hundred million dollar book. It essentially meant that what the forecast profit was became negative 10 mil because the prices overtook the sale contracts.
I couldn't move the sale contracts. There were Australian standard [00:16:00] lockdown commercial, DNC contracts for those in the industry. You know how severe the risk is on that, unfortunately, that risk sunk me and I had to liquidate the business because it went underwater.
So I chewed out cash reserves, kept limping, thought we'd come out of COVID and everything would be okay. But yeah, just bit by bit died at the death of a thousand cuts. Unfortunately, I lost that business, which was sad to lose such a valuable asset that had been, over a decade of labor, love, blood, sweat, and tears.
It's a transaction that ended up not where it should have. The big learning from that Bram is, in hindsight look at it and say, yes, there was COVID, yes, there were trades that ran away from contracts I had with them to better paid jobs, et cetera.
Now, I've had to really think this through. As we travel through life, things will happen. You are either at cause or you are at effect. What does that mean? Some people call it above the line, below the line [00:17:00] theory. You live below the line when life happens and below the line says, oh, it's because of all these other things that this happened to me.
In other words. Whether it's conscious or subconscious, we're declaring that where we end up will be a result of external influences. So I've worked really hard in the last year or two to say no. I've gotta go back and reflect on that as being above the line thinking. If I could go back and relive, despite COVID, despite all the things that happened, what could I have done that meant I could have better navigated that crisis?
Because what that means is I'm then match, fit to go again because I know what I can do despite the environment to still have better outcomes. Specifically, what does that look like, Brad, if you go above the line and that thinking like how could you have managed it differently or in the next time something like that happens, how would you deal with it?[00:18:00]
Yeah. There's two or three or four things. For growing a business aggressively as an entrepreneur, which I think a lot of your audience would be.
I always hated lazy balance sheet. Where I had spare cash, I would say, why is it sitting in the bank? Why have I got a few million spare I need to put it to work, so I'd always get it reworking.
New systems, new software, new assets, new deals, new computers. I hated seeing lazy cash on the balance sheet because that was lost opportunity. Entrepreneurs should say, what is the worst crisis, whatever that may be. What would it mean in terms of how long I could sustain without revenue or losing money?
If we went into a World War, another COVID hit, had I practiced that, I would've left deeper reserves on my balance sheet. I missed getting through that by 4, 5, 6 months. I ran outta cash just six months shy 'cause I had a new book coming that was better.
So had I had that [00:19:00] discipline to basically say, let the ambition of entrepreneurship not get ahead of good risk management to protect the asset. Once the asset's worth protecting, then I think I would've left deeper reserves.
Secondly, I love my people that I employed. You saw that firsthand. You did some work inside our business.
Yep.
And I treated them like family. So you get this connection with people and once the business wound up, all the people have gone on to bigger, better jobs, higher paid. The association with the brand meant they were able to go on and build better careers, right?
So I'm proud of that. However, I committed once COVID hit to make sure our people got looked after. So I let the balance sheet slowly chew away by maintaining a wage bill that had I moved quicker to redundancies would've slowed the burn rate on cash reserves. So the learning from that?
[00:20:00] I was too emotionally connected to my values around, look after the people. Had I actually looked after the numbers in a time of crisis by taking advice around me to make tougher emotional decisions, then it would maybe have got through as well. So that's the other thing.
Who do I have around me to hold me to account in making tougher emotional decisions, harder decisions sooner that are necessary to avoid in a time of crisis, Yeah.
The third thing is I got to a point where I prided myself in the business having no debt, and it didn't, and I had a good balance sheet, but I'd lost my relationships to a degree with capital and with banks, right?
Because I saw them as a necessary evil at some point. If I could go back, I'd have banking partners that [00:21:00] I had a regular relationship with even though I may not have walked down the altar with them. Because at the time when I needed debt, everyone needed debt.
But I didn't have the relationships that established businesses had. And banks basically got to the point, where they went, we're gonna look after our existing customers. We're not taking on new customers, especially in construction.
So that was one of the other, there's probably a hundred micro learnings as well.
The key learning is as we travel through life, constantly challenge yourself. The minute you see yourself playing victim to environmental factors that have led to undesirable outcomes, take ownership and say, if that happened again, here's what I would do to make sure that didn't happen.
Because I think, to me that's like going to a gym and breaking those muscles down and then letting the recovery come for better outcomes.
The biggest learning is stay at cause. Don't be at effect of environmental factors that are easy to take on as alibis [00:22:00] and go, oh yeah, this happened because of those things.
It's no tougher thing to say, this happened 'cause of me. And therefore next time I'll be better.
Taking ownership, owning it. Be proactive.
Absolutely.
That's it. Great learnings there. Appreciate that. Thank you. I like how you went about that and really appreciate the openness and, walking us through what happened, how you dealt with it, how you reflect on it and all of that.
If you were to extrapolate all these years of working for others, working for yourself, having all those trials and tribulations, successes and failures. What would you say if you were to distill it back to the core, the stuff that you would say, Hey, if I would've gone in with any of my ventures as an entrepreneur with these things, that would almost guarantee success.
What would those things look like?
That's a big question. I'll have a poke at a few answers to that. Probably the first one, and this meant a lot to me, once I lost the business, I [00:23:00] needed to fall back on some sort of framework. That took me away from the emotional curve. So wave away the fog and see clearly.
A book that found me at the right time, which I'd recommend to anyone that hasn't read, is Steven Barlett, the Diary of A CEO. Steven's a serial entrepreneur. He's had many businesses that have been successes and many that are losses.
At the start of the book, he focuses on the businesses that were losses and the learnings from that. Five bucket theory, right? He says there's five buckets to frame around and imagine as one bucket fills it.
Bucket one is our knowledge. Consistently feed our knowledge, our own brains right now, whether that's books, whether that's podcasts, meeting with people that have been and done what you're aspiring for, you've gotta chase the knowledge constantly. Do you have knowledge as a [00:24:00] systematic discipline in your life?
Could I open your diary and see that two, three times a week you've got dedicated time to reading or listening? Do you listen to audio books to and from work in the car? What's your systematic pursuit of upping your knowledge? The knowledge bucket flows into the skill bucket, right?
So knowledge without applications is useless, but knowledge with application, it develops skill. Yeah. AI is a good example at the moment. We're all hearing it. There's a lot of noise. It's promising everything from it's gonna wipe out the world through to, it's not gonna have that much of an impact.
As entrepreneurs, it's our responsibility to build our knowledge. And as we build our knowledge, what are you doing as an entrepreneur to actually apply the skill of ai? Do you have chat GPT? Do you have Claude? Do you have Copilot? Ideally three, doing different things. And what are you doing every day to play with it and learn it?
So knowledge, skill. The next bucket cascades into your network, [00:25:00] Who's in your network? I'm thinking from a business point of view. There's the LinkedIn network, but also who are you regularly catching up with across various disciplines, be it capital, leadership, customers, supply chain, do you have a network?
And are you constantly working to keep that network activated? You're a perfect example. Since I've known you, have you ever missed sending me a message on my birthday right now?
For a lot of people, that sounds corny, but it's funny, right? You send me a message every year to the point where if you didn't send me one, I'd actually get worried. You don't wake up on September the fourth and go, oh, it's Brad's birthday today. You would have something ding you a day or two in advance but it means everything to that person.
So what are you doing to engage with, activate your network, add value to your network?
Do you understand your network well enough where you know what's happening and where you can take something that costs you nothing and actually connect dots that brings them value, right?
Then [00:26:00] you've got a network that'll fight for you and turn up for you when you need.
The next bucket is resources. Network naturally leads to resources. It could be everything from tapping your network's knowledge. Capital, it could be lending some equipment, whatever it may be.
It might be, Hey, who do you know in this space? I'm looking for an expert in this field, right? Connecting dots. So network leads to resources. Without resources, you can't scale an organization.
And then finally, all of that cascades into the final bucket, which is our personal brand. We each have a personal brand.
What's the job of a brand? A wise man taught me this. He said, the job of a brand it sets an expectancy. We all have a brand, whether you like it or not. Why? Because your brand sets an expectancy. So what does your brand say? Does it say to people around you, in your network and to your resources that when the chips are down, you're gonna turn up [00:27:00] or are you someone that can't be relied upon?
Does your brand say they can have confidence to tell you something confidential?
Once you define what you want your brand to be, how you want the world to see you, then it's on you to shape that brand and stay true to it.
The hardest thing is actually shaping it, defining your brand, your true north, your purpose, your belief system, your ambition, and then behaving in a way that's consistent.
The time brand gets challenging is when you're faced with short term pleasures or attractions around dopamine hits, that's off brand.
Are you gonna choose that dopamine hit behavior? Are you gonna stay true to your brand?
So the way Steven Bartlett in the book articulates that meant a lot to me. He says, those first two buckets, knowledge and skill, no one can take that from you and no one can stop you building those buckets.
Yeah.
So when I lost the business and that book found me, [00:28:00] I focused on those two. I read more furiously, and applied skills harder than ever. I reengaged with my network and found that the network was perfectly intact. I think my previous brand had done enough where people just saw it as oh, that was a temporary blips. Part of the journey.
Yeah.
So it was a real pleasure to come back and the brand was completely intact. If I needed to pivot industries and rebuild a network, so be it. I was up for it.
You obviously kept meeting up with people. Like you say, you kept feeding yourself with new knowledge.
Talk to us about your mentors, the people that have been in your corner and how that actually has served you over time. I'd like to ask you also, talking about your inner circle, the people that have been in your corner, they've been there for you through thick and thin, the people really around you that, you could sit down with, talk to, bounce ideas off and be challenged by. Talk to us about the value of that in your life.
It's really interesting 'cause you [00:29:00] learn a lot about people and who your inner circle is or isn't. What I learned, the inner circle were the ones like, get over yourself. You've got stuff to do. Get on with it.
They never offered sympathy. They saw sympathy as veneer and hollow. What they offered was empathy and coupled to a healthy dose of a slap across the head now and again, and the challenge of let's get moving. What are you doing next?
There's too much talent, skill, experience. So I think the inner circle was really challenging and at times a bit confronting.
It's I've just lost a child. Can you just cry with me for a moment? And they're like, hell no. It's hurry up, get back to it.
So I actually appreciate it and it sounds a bit harsh, but it's actually one of the best things. Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, there'd be people I didn't really know. They're [00:30:00] definitely not in VA inner circle, but I'd pass 'em in the street and they'd almost come up with a tear in the eye when a hug and go, are you okay?
And I think what I learned is, they look from the outside in and fear things like that happening to them and feel that pain. I've translated that into what's our risk profile. Are you willing in the pursuit of doing something special to put yourself in a position where you could get hurt?
Or are you gonna, I think one of the, is it either The Tiger in Rocky? I think one of the best lines in that song is, it might be another Rocky song. There's a, in a song, inspirational song, there's a line that says, where you start to trade your dreams for reality. And I think what happens is as we get older, we become more protective of the little empire we've built, whatever that may be.
And there's no right or wrong, I'm just saying, naturally we become more risk adverse. Understandably and it's different for everyone. But that's one thing I've [00:31:00] challenged myself and asked myself, and I say, everyone else, entrepreneurs, be honest. Are you gonna pay the price of success?
Or are you gonna live with the price of regret?
That's an interesting one.
Yeah, I think, I wanna keep going. I didn't wanna regret going, oh, that hurt a bit. I'll just play it safe now. It's no, now I'm ready to really go.
Like you say, it's a natural tendency for people to, once you build something like you called it an asset, if you go too hard on applying the capital or the lazy money that is lying around for aggressive growth, you can very easily jeopardize the asset and everyone in the team and your own livelihood with it.
And so this is what I always find interesting. I sometimes see people coming to me friends of mine who always worked for someone else.
The employee's mindset versus the entrepreneur's mindset, they're very different. I think sometimes people romanticize the idea that, being an entrepreneur, you've got flexibility, money, time, you can do whatever you want. You don't need to, say to anyone what you're up to [00:32:00] next.
And I say, yeah, but do you know all the other stuff? It's painful, it's sweat. Sometimes you don't pay yourself. Sometimes you take your savings and put it back into a business. You might have a tax bill that you didn't have the cash for.
Do you see that? Do you see the 70, 60 hours, 80 hours work weeks? The sleepless nights, the extra time on holidays and weekdays and you never turn off. Do you see that? What's your perspective on that, Brad?
I listened to a podcast the other day. I'm not a scientist, so I'm paraphrasing what I heard, but take the principle. One of the biggest transformations in society over the last few decades is that if you look at our parents' generation, our grandparents' generation and prior, they lived in the pursuit of fulfillment and purpose around a well-defined value set.
Fast forward to now, we live in a society that craves pleasure on very short term cycles. [00:33:00] Our chemical profile internally has shifted. Craving dopamine hits, sugar hits. It's represented in our diet. We basically want the next donut. Crispy Creams. Look around us. If you drive through the CBD, chances are on every corner, you see those little Uber eats motorbikes, the little panda eats ones, the little yellow boxes. People are literally staying at home just ordering food all the time and not wholesome food. It feels bloody awesome. Food's entertainment. Dopamine hits around, like even getting out and dating.
Now we don't go to pubs and put ourselves in a position where it hurts the rejection of asking to buy a girl a drink, or asking for a dance. It's safer to sit on an app and go through a hundred females or flip it if you're the other way around. Yep. Swiping left right. There's no pain that goes with it, right?
We live for the dopamine hits of likes on Facebook, I look at teenage kids nowadays. You wanna make 'em depressed. Someone befriends [00:34:00] them on Facebook. You wanna make 'em feel good? Oh, I've got another friend. Every time there's a ding on the phone, every time, we do something that's a short-term pleasure, we get that dopamine hit and that's an addiction.
It's a spike. Then we go, oh, that dopamine was good. Where's the next one?
Whereas long-term fulfillment, which is about practicing discipline over time, where you don't get the short term sugar hits along the way, produces serotonin. That's actually the lost fundamental in society.
And the question for us as communities. How do we get back to rebalancing this pursuit of purpose? Long-term fulfillment alongside the dopamine hits. How are we balancing short-term pleasure with long-term contribution and purpose and transcendence in our life? So that's my thinking around what you ask, Bram.
Have you seen that playing out in your team at different generational [00:35:00] levels?
Oh, absolutely. Knowing your audience as entrepreneurs, I'd say if you have an employee base, right? When I started my career, there was high unemployment. I offered businesses I'd go and work for free just so you could gimme a resume to help me get a job. Whereas now, rather than us interviewing, and I'm generalizing here, the balance has shifted Now we interview people, we think we're interviewing, they're actually interviewing us. Like in the first interview, it's not around what value they're gonna bring, it's them that wanna know what we're gonna do for them.
Yeah.
What's your policies around saving the planet? What's my work from home balance versus go to work? Now, I'm not judging right or wrong. I'm saying the dynamic shifted. We are living in a world where you need to have embedded in your strategy, what are you doing for those short term needs where people need those short-term recognitions.
Fulfilling their sugar cravings along the way, as [00:36:00] well as long-term career building. How many of your clients spend an enormous amount investing in training people?
Investing in mentoring people. HR systems that do performance reviews.
One-on-ones team building. Cultural development are all long-term plays. Those things take time, but if you don't have the employees willing to come on that discipline around building a great long-term environment, then all you're doing cycling people, in fact, you're training people for your competitors.
Because that personal get up and leave for the extra, like a thousand dollars a year.
Yeah. Obviously, you're investing in knowledge and skills, which people can't take away, The people move.
So the challenge for entrepreneurs with the workforce, yes, there's all those things we say that we should have in place.
There's fundamentals of good people management, but perhaps we need to be clear on embedding some of those shorter [00:37:00] term, pleasure things that give people that balance. So we've gotta balance long term and short term. I learned this through Ashton Bishop from Step Change.
There's Hertzberg Two Factor Theory, where it talks about those basic, fundamentals, the sanitization things in the workplace, but also the secondary factors what are you doing over and above your competitors?
Yeah.
You don't have a sticky workforce. The rules have shifted.
Motivation, engagement, all of that. How you get people to really commit fully to a brand, a purpose, a mission, a company, Is all really depending on those hygiene factors. We all know the pyramid and stuff.
I think workplace is definitely, it's worthwhile for them to make sure they cater for all of that, especially as things have changed. I like how you always reference that science as well with the dopamine versus serotonin hit, short term versus long term. Great stuff. I wonder, from where you are today, Brad, what would be the advice that you would give your younger self, say before you started [00:38:00] your own entrepreneurial career?
I'd guide myself on two or three things. Probably the number one is knowing that the price to pay is discipline. And what I mean by discipline? It's maintaining an awareness that you're staying in a state of, not perfection, but a state of doing the things that need to be done. Doing the right things at the right time, even if you don't feel like doing them.
And even if you, no one's gonna catch you out. So it's that self accountability around discipline. So success in any endeavors, easy to map out on a page, like a strategy. Here's the plan, if that plan gets executed, it'll work. Where I think it falls over is whoever's in charge the leader or the management team keeping themselves and the people around them accountable to doing the things that need to be done at the right time, [00:39:00] especially when life gets in the way, especially when it's inconvenience.
I'd say, discipline's number one. The people that I see succeeding continuously are the ones that are practicing discipline the most, and they're the ones that never talk about it.
I find it interesting that you mention that because to me, having known you now for 15 years and having seen you in action over the years, you seem like a super disciplined human being, almost like a superman. Why would that be the advice to your younger self?
One of the disciplines where I fell down, Bram, I've always held myself to high levels of accountability and discipline, but I seem to be able to hold myself to it easier than I hold other people to.
With workforce over time, I've bought into people's excuses and let them off the hook a bit easier in those moments. One of the things where I critique myself is that people with repeated behaviors where the writing was on the wall, I was easy to buy into "oh, they're having a hard time and give 'em [00:40:00] another chance". So there's an area of discipline where I wasn't holding myself to account.
The plan on the page said, you need a team around you that are pulling alongside you. Too many times I would pull that person along expending energy to help 'em out. Do you know what I mean? Was I helping him? Not really. The best thing to do was actually tell 'em to go.
So there's an example of discipline, discipline can be a veneer. You can wear it from the outside looking in. You can look disciplined, you can say the right things. But I know there's plenty of times where I shouldn't have had the third glass of wine and then burnt the afternoon, which is really easy to do in those moments, right?
Where I should have got back to the office and spent another hour or two being productive, right? But I'd put that off to the next day 'cause I was having fun in the moment. It's not about perfection. But maintaining a really good awareness of, I should be doing this, but I'm choosing to take the more pleasurable path in the moment.
I'm glad that you also had a bit of fun along the way.
One thing that I really liked that you said earlier [00:41:00] is you referenced show me your diary and show me where you actually are taking time for learning and development.
From that, I'd like to step back a little bit and look across the whole diary. What does your diary look like and what sort of recommendations do you make to other fellow entrepreneurs that are looking for more productivity? And their diary is obviously a key to that. What do they schedule?
So what does it look like? What do you recommend entrepreneurs to schedule in the diary.
The diary, I think should cascade in line with the buckets to a degree. That's how I've approached it. I'll just touch on the five buckets because I can't help but tinker with things and supposedly improve things.
I've invented a six bucket which I think should come at the very front: health and fitness.
I think the fitness bucket sits before the knowledge bucket. I'm not talking about health and fitness from a, I'm staying alive point of view. I'm talking health and fitness from a high performance point of [00:42:00] view. If you do health and fitness well, be keenly aware of your blood work, your hormone balance, your nutrient balance.
Is your relationship with food one where it provides nutrients to fuel your body to do great things? Or is food a point of pleasure where it's a reward at the end of the day and you can just eat whatever you want 'cause you deserve it that day? So what's your relationship health and fitness like?
Because if you get that right, RABs is entrepreneurs especially, and it should apply to anyone in life. Maybe there's another 10, 15, 20, 50% of additional performance up here. That discipline muscle. A lot of times we think it's willpower, grinding through. Maybe the truth is you've got some sort of nutrient or hormone imbalance in your body where the odds are stacked against you.
You're fighting chemicals where you've got some sort of imbalance if you address that naturally through [00:43:00] your data points and then supplementing accordingly, what appeared to be that missing 15, 20% of willpower discipline is actually just a physiology thing and you unlock potential, then I think that opens up a new path.
So the first thing I look for in my diary is my fitness training regime? I'll literally diarize the supplements I've gotta take every day. If you open up my diary, you'll see I've either gotta swim, run or bike.
One or more of those seven days a week, every day. And I track what I ate, track my nutrients.
Was it always like that? No, but I think this last couple years, reflection's got me to get the priority right on that six bucket. And I've noticed the energy levels, the quality of my sleep, it's become quality over quantity. And in the back half of the day, I am like, whoa. Now I go to a corporate lunch.
I only want to drink water. I don't want the alcohol 'cause I've got shit to do that [00:44:00] afternoon. I've got things to do. So first thing is that Learning. So I listen to Audible.
Problem with Audible. I'll listen to the book and then as I'm like fourth sentence in, the author says something really profound, and then my brain's going down that path and then I drift back and 15 minutes has gone by. I was like, I just missed the last 15 minutes. So I thought, how do I overcome that? Firstly, I listen to Audible on, depending on how heavy the material is, like 1.25, 1.5, maybe up to two times speed.
Every time I finish a chapter, I stop the book. Then I go to chat GPT, and I ask it for that book. To summarize chapter one for me, what are the key points the author made? What are the key actions I should employ? What are the takeaways, insights? I've got a standard prompt for that.
In OneNote, I've got a library system. I copy and paste that. I read that carefully and it takes me five minutes. I ask it to [00:45:00] summarize in no more than 10 bullet points. I read that carefully and it locks in what I've heard.
Then I'll move on to chapter two. I make sure that at least one chapter a week I'm doing that. One book per week, I go deeper by doing that. I've found that really locks away the knowledge and where there's actions that it challenges me to take.
'Cause sometimes in a book they'll go, Hey, go to ww blah blah blah and do this exercise. When I'm doing that, I'll put that action in my diary and say, let me go there and do that exercise. So it sounds like a lot of effort, but, I'll reference another book, Atomic Habits, James Clear.
That's where you're building discipline through those atomic level habits, one habit at a time, and they start to stack on top of each other where it becomes automatic. And as James Clear says, a lot of times we hear it takes 21 days to a better habit. That's not true. It takes more like 70.
So that statistic ease [00:46:00] that if you go 70 straight, whether it's days, weeks, whatever the cadence is for the endeavor at hand, you've got a 95% chance that habit sticks and becomes part of life. Whereas 21 days you just become used to the habit, but it's still only got a 50% chance of sticking. So that's the other thing in my diary.
The third thing is I'm always looking at, those five buckets, network, resources and brand. I've literally got time in there each week to look at those things. And again, I'll use OneNote to keep notes for myself and constantly be challenging that I'm evolving that and just spending, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes a week checking in on brand.
What am I doing? Have I gone too many weeks without catching up with someone where there's a value exchange possibility in my network for a lunch, for a coffee, just checking in? My diary reflects the buckets and then the things we need to do for work.
You just do [00:47:00] them as and when you need to. But I think first and foremost is transcending and getting those core pillars in place. The work stuff will drop out.
So how much of your time, percentage wise, would've gone into health and fitness, knowledge and skills and network and personal brand? Like how much percent would you allocate just on that pre-scheduled?
Yeah. That's a really interesting question. I've gone a little insane on the training and fitness front. I'm doing about 14 hours a week 'cause I've decided to do, Ironman triathlons again.
I'm not an athlete. I'm like that squarely middle of the pack guy that's got no athletic ability. But, I appreciate doing Ironman stuff. It takes you to dark places and forces you in those moments when you feel like giving up, oh, I don't wanna do that run today. It's raining outside. Getting out and doing it, just building those mental muscles.
So 14 hours there. However, does that mean I've lost 14 hours outta the week? No, [00:48:00] because as I'm getting fitter and healthier and the 14 hours includes my nutrition routine and my supplement routine, I'm actually getting other tasks done quicker. The 14 might net out to be only eight because I've bought back six hours in other things.
I become more efficient in other things I do. I'm really learning AI and that's never ending because every time I think I've learned something, it shifts in a few weeks time. Growing so fast. I'm doing mundane tasks now using ai in ways that are saving me hours each week. I might spend three, four hours watching a YouTube video following what they say to try. But when I use those skills in my work environment, that four hour investment's buy me back 10 hours.
So I think we need to look at our diaries. Sometimes it's a value trade off. If I invest time here Will it buy me back time there?
An investment. It's not a cost.
Yeah, [00:49:00] exactly. Recently I read another book, A guy called Dan Martell.
the book, Buy Back Your Time. He's the one that got me on the AI path and he's got a great chapter on working with an EA, VA, whatever you call it. If you are thinking about an ea, va, pa or you already got one, or you've had one and gone, I need to do it myself
honestly, the chapter on that, I think it's chapter nine from memory, I promise you, if you work with any of those, go listen to that chapter. The amount of productivity I've unlocked through an offshore VA's absolutely insane. I've felt like I've created another Brad. It's taken so much anxiety outta my day.
I am not looking over my shoulder as much, and I'm literally following his process. And yes, you've gotta find the right person. To put this in perspective, I used one of the work platforms to try and find my VA. It took me six people over 12 weeks getting it wrong [00:50:00] to find the person. So she's number seven and I've worked with her now for six to eight weeks and she's a gem.
When they come together it's like angels on harps singing from heaven really something special.
I say cheers to that. It's funny how you mentioned this because my next guest who is an expert on VAs, who's coming in and we're also gonna talk about that same book then. So it's gonna be interesting.
Brilliant. I'd encourage, I've mentioned three books today, anyone that hasn't read 'em, like getting into it. So Diary Of A CEO, Steven Bartlett. Atomic Habits by James Clear. And Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell.
I'm a Vistage member. I was at a Vistage group a few weeks ago as an all Vistage day. Someone I know in the audience, there'd been a hundred members in the room, asked a question of the speaker at the end and they were articulating their frustration around time management.
I went up to him afterwards and I just wrote down, the name of the book, the author. I've known him for a decade and put it in his front jacket pocket [00:51:00] and said, call me in a couple of weeks once you've read this.
He's called me and he's like an evangelist around this book. This is the best thing I've ever heard. It's changed my life. That Dan Martell book is something special.
Yeah. I've read many time management books. I also did training in that space with Brian Tracy.
Yeah, I agree. It's the best book that I've seen time management to date, and I love the system on how to prompt your va, train him, hire them. Having followed the system of looking at your diary and, putting your emails in certain buckets. It's great stuff.
Do you mind if I add one thing to that quickly, Bram?
If you look through the late nineties we had the advent of those diary systems, the binders and you had those whole diary management system. Then we moved into the PDA, like the little digital, do you remember those? PDAs with a little pen and you could do your diary electronic. Then we moved into Microsoft Outlook Exchange, where you could move tasks and contacts and diary and all that, right?
For decades we've been on this. Time management thing. What Dan Martel's [00:52:00] done for me is unlock what I think is the holy grail question. It's not about time management. It's about energy management.
And that's really what that book unlocks. How do you manage your time in the way that means when you need to bring your best self? Your energy to get maximum leverage. 'cause that's what leaders do what's the difference between a leader and an employee?
I pay an employee for an hour's work, I get an hour's worth of output. As a leader, I need to put in one hour's effort and generate 10,000 hours of output. Which means that hour better be jam packed full of energy and knowledge and wisdom. So it has that ripple cascading effect of thousands of hours beyond my hour in that room. And that's what that book does. It teaches the entrepreneur, the leader, how to bring it in. Minimal time for maximum output. True leverage.
Love that. And love the comment on energy management. As a last one here, [00:53:00] we could easily keep going on this track for a long time, and this is probably my longest podcast to date, so you've done a good job, mate.
Well done. If people want to reach out to you, how can they find you?
Emails probably easy. Email's, [email protected]. Phone number is 0478484143.
I know we do Bram, so I'm always happy to meet with people. Have a coffee and exchange value.
I was just about to say, 'cause you're obviously one of those people that understands that your network actually contributes way more to your net worth. It's important to have a good network and exchange value.
Mate, it's been a pleasure. I really want to thank you for sharing generously with our audience. This is obviously gonna become a video as well as something that people can listen to, so we're gonna share all of that.
What's your next venture? Your big thing for you?
A couple have still got the cover over 'em. They're like half complete statues [00:54:00] of David where I haven't quite chiseled them fully. So I'll keep the cover on those. At the moment, I'm working for a private equity firm. We call it precision equity, where we're working across sectors and it's really about the precision of the deal.
And we'll look at deals. Early revenue that's about to go through the phase. Now I'm running one of the funds for them. They're standing up a commercial property fund, a long term unlisted property trust up at Angle Vale. They secured 35,000 square meters, and I'm helping bring that to life through long-term quality leases.
And then, building the buildings that the tenants and their businesses will occupy. It's quite mechanical. It's my home turf being property, but, it's affording me a little bit of bandwidth to figure out the next Big things. Maybe in the future, I can talk about what that thing is.
Yeah, that's very exciting. How cool is it that now you're on the other side where it's actually the financials?
I look forward to beating up all the builders that work for me. No, be nice to your [00:55:00] builders. They got a tough gig.
Thank you so much and wish you all the best. And, we are in touch, so I'm sure we're gonna do breakfast or a glass of wine.
Keep up the good work, Bram. Like, the value you're sharing by doing things like this for people in the community. You know how important that is. I'm sure you get that feedback all the time and every time I'm out and about and your name comes up, it's always, people light up. That's the effect you have on people. Keep doing what you're doing.
Appreciate it. You have a great rest of the day. And, all the best also with your triatlons.
Thanks, Bram. Cheers. See you everyone. Bye.
