The 5 Doors to Success Most People Never Open | Matthew Michalewicz

Matthew Michalewicz: Living Life with Urgency Fear is a survival emotion created through evolution to keep you alive. Speaker 2 Fear is an indicator that you're doing something new. Yeah, It's an indicator to keep going. Most people are afraid of failure, the shame, humiliation. Speaker 1 But what really terrifies them is failure in front of their peers or family or friends. If I don't have goals, I can't fail. If I have goals but I never tell you, then I can't fail in your eyes. And of course, I'm just sabotaging myself. When your goal is too far from your current position, it becomes demotivating, demoralizing. As a simplistic example, I'm homeless and I'm broke on the street and I want to be a millionaire. The gap is so huge. So science has again shown that if you can take a goal and unpack it into milestones, it becomes a bridge. Speaker 2 Just by social media too. They're going to external sources trying to find people who can save them. Speaker 1 Everything is now, now, now, and it's television and bills and then the kids are screaming and then the phone rings. And I've seen business just run like that. If you don't have real crew desire for your goals, change the goal. Yeah. You mentioned to me before that it's like a tree planted in the wrong spot. Speaker 2 Yes. And then you think the tree sucks. Meaning you think you suck. Yeah. Take the tree out, put in a new environment. It'll flourish. Speaker 1 Yes. Do the things that are easy, which is nothing. Your life will be hard. Do the things that are hard, it will change your life and then your life can be a lot easier. Speaker 2 Being someone who's helped me flourish as an individual and I feel so lucky now to get to share you with the rest of the world. This has been something I've wanted to do for a really long time, Matthew. I've, I've wanted to sit you down in the chair inside the studio and be able to share with my world, A, first of all, how much of an impact you've had in my life and B, to extract the wisdom selfishly from you so that we can, we can share it with the world. And I, I, I want to kick things off first, if you don't mind. I mean, it is my podcast. I'm allowed to. Speaker 1 I'll take over shortly. Speaker 2 But for now, I know, I know, I know you're really ready to go. But but the biggest thing for me was that I remember sitting in a cafe with you doing what you call a gold pyramid about my speaking career. And at the time I was billing about $1500 a keynote. And then you told me that I would one day command 50,000, a $100,000 a keynote. And I thought at that point you were crazy. Like I just, I, I didn't believe you. And I reflect on that a lot. And I, I think about my career now and I've been able to exceed those goals that we've set. And the most beautiful thing about you, Matthew, as a friend and as a mentor, is that you've always seen things in me that I couldn't see in myself. You believed in me before I believed in myself. And you often say, oh, it's because I could see the potential, but I think there was very little potential to see. But I think that's one of your greatest gifts is that you see things in people. You help people live out their fullest life and achieve things beyond what they believed themselves they could achieve. I mean, we're sitting in a studio now that I also think you've played such a major part of because I would not have become the man I am, the entrepreneur. I am, the person I am if wasn't if it wasn't for you. So, Matthew, thank you. Speaker 1 Then, you know, my heart melts with with such kindness coming from you. But the relationship has been utterly mutual and two way. And that's what beautiful friendships are about. It's it's not a one way transfer of knowledge or inspiration or any of those kind of things. But when it becomes this two way synergy of each person improving the other and kind of like the tuning forks stinging and and helping each other vibrate at a higher frequency. It's been a beautiful relationship and you've impacted my life just as much, if not more, than I've impacted yours. Speaker 2 Yeah, Thanks, Matthew. And it's crazy these things keep happening between us where we keep thinking it's a simulation. Yeah, right. Like just this morning. Yep, just this morning you pulled out a notebook that's on who? Who got that for you? Speaker 1 Head of HR in the company I run and. Speaker 2 That's amazing. So she got you a notebook a like a Ferrari notebook, which is really fancy. I got the exact same notebook from one of my best friends four days ago. You got it three days ago. 2 days ago, isn't that? Speaker 1 One day apart, one day apart, how many notebooks are there in the world, different variants, etcetera, all the days that they could be given and we got the exact same 124 hours apart. Speaker 2 Oh, that's in seven and things like this keep happening and, and it's such a special relationship. Our families are so close and, and I think that's why I've always wanted to sit you down because you're, you're very sensitive about your age. So we won't mention you're right. Are we allowed to? But we won't mention it cause Matthew in the I. Speaker 1 Made in goat smoke this morning I put on all my creams. I should be looking 10 years younger so you know, using all your tips. Speaker 2 Won't won't vote down Matthew. The Inspiration Behind the Book's Title Don't roam me into that look as as we dive into this, I live in half a second. Can you share with the audience where did the inspiration for that book come from? And even the title itself, I mean, like, how did you how did you come up with that title and what inspired you to go on this journey of writing this, this book? Speaker 1 Like you've been, I've been an entrepreneur all my life and as you would know, and other entrepreneurs that might be listening, the odds are stacked against you as a business owner. You know, most businesses fail within five years, etcetera. So I come from a scientific family. My parents are academics. My father was a university professor for a long time. So I was raised in an evidence based household. So I was interested when I became an entrepreneur to seek out research that was proven to aid success. I just wanted to tilt the odds a little bit in my favor. That was how it started and having been an entrepreneur for the last 30 years, I really spent a lot of time in the 1st 10 reading just out of personal interest, studies that had been done on different subjects that impacted success. And I had collated all of this information. So every time I read a study, I held onto it. And as the businesses I ran became successful, I was asked to speak at events, to share a kind of, you know, knowledge, secrets of success. And I would share this information that I had researched. And over time, I built a presentation called The Five Drawers of Success. And I found that all the research, thousands of papers, everything could be distilled into 5 principles. And from that, I wrote the book. And when I was writing the very end, it wasn't even the last chapter was the epilogue, the conclusion. I wanted to create a call to action. And I took the age of the planet and condensed it into one year. And if you condense the age of the planet into one year, our life time is half a second. Yeah, as a ratio. And it was. Yeah, as a ratio. And it was so powerful. I touched me when I wrote it. Then I said that needs to be the title of the book. And I brought that epilogue to the beginning and started the first paragraph with that analogy. That's how the book came to be. End the title. Speaker 2 And then because in everything you do, there's this sense of urgency, yes. You always have this sense of urgency that things do it now, don't wait yes and and that again has become the tart of book. It's half a second, so you've got to do it now, otherwise it's gone. Half a second is. Speaker 1 Gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's there's another half second. Speaker 2 Is there? Yeah, you've died and and. Speaker 1 You've died multiple times. You've died again. Yeah. Speaker 2 If you've listened to this point, you've died 47 times already, right? So, so I think it's my math is off on that, but that's OK. Overcoming the Illusion of Immortality and Narrow Living Moving on, I think where, why, why do you have that? Do do do you think, is there something in your life that has created that, or is it just that metaphor in your head that you keep thinking about because you're so healthy, you're still so young, kind of I. Speaker 1 I think you know your your question is 1 around nature versus inertia. Where do things come from? Where do behaviours come from? Why are we the way we are? Why why do I have an urgency for living in the next person doesn't. So I think it's conjecture. In my opinion some of it has to be personality, the way your why or the way your make up, but also the influences you've had in your life, which we've talk about influences and each of us have been big influences on each other. So one of my big influences was Jack London, the famous author Call of the Wild and so on. He died a little bit more than 100 years ago. And his main slogan was I'd rather be ashes than Dust. And he had this sense for urgency of just every single day He was going to just, you know, ring out the water like a wet towel and get every drop of life. And he lived by that principle heavily influenced me. I loved his writing. And you just, you reflect on that, you can't help but think some of it, you know, got soaked into your DNA and became you in the process. And you pick up that urgency as well. Speaker 2 I mean, that quote would rather be ashes than dust. Powerful people would need to sit with that for a minute because yeah, again, I'd rather burn and and be I've done something and then, then, then just sit around and just collect. Speaker 1 Dust. It's the top part of a longer quote where he talks about, you know, I'd rather be the shooting streaking comet in the sky, lighting up the whole sky, etcetera. Fallen tourist. Except then the dust on, you know, and cobwebs and so on. It's a beautiful, beautiful longer quote. Speaker 2 So, so why do you think people, most people don't have that urgency? Why do you think people don't? Because because I, I, I hear people say things like I'm just killing time and, and we, we don't feel that sense of urgency. Why do you think people don't feel that? Is it because there's an illusion that we think we, I mean, even hidden in people's language, we hear it. You'll catch most people out and say they, they say if I die. Yeah. What do you mean? If you die, you're going to die. It's when I die. And I think you you can hear in people's language, in their everyday language, people, we think we're immortal, especially when we're young. I don't know what it's like to get to where you are. But. But, but what I'm saying is you don't have to keep doing the knife gesture, Matthew. But what I'm, what I'm saying is, you've had this when you were young too. Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 Correct. And and and you still have it now. It's not like now as you get older, you're starting to feel it more and more. You've always had this. So I'm just trying to understand that part of it. Speaker 1 It it's. Speaker 2 Why do most people not feel it or or are they living under an illusion? Speaker 1 I think it could like again, there can be as many explanations as there are people in the world, but just my personal view. My my personal view one is that what you said, if I die, death is usually such a confronting thought topic. Just imagine blackness. You never wake up. You go to bed at night and it's blackness for a trillion years. Then for a trillion trillion years, you are never aware again. The worldwide, most people don't like thinking about things like that. In fact, there's almost a mental block that happens. So you live always in the present. And by always living in not in the present, you know, like not thinking about the future of the past, but you're not thinking about death. And then, then it conditions. Yeah. Then it conditions you to have this viewpoint. If I die, you could. There's just no room in your brain. And you've never contemplated not being so. I was raised on a lot of literary that influences when I was younger that had a motive of, you know, the hero's journey, the the hero might die at the end or he confronts mortality. And it was always a topic that I thought about deeply for whatever reason, that it's going to end one day. And with influencers like Jack London, if you can make the most of it each step along the way, because you've thought about that, you're not going to be one day. It just becomes a way of living, a way of existing. And a second reflection then is that there is such a I, for lack of a better word, that I personally get from living fully that I don't want to live not fully. So imagine having just the intensity of life every single day, whatever that intensity is, loving your spouse, being with your children, you're enjoying ice cream, seeing the sunset. It doesn't have to be materialistic things, but you are intensely living. It's very difficult the next day to just not live to just because, because you crave it. It's such an experience. So I think I, I think to answer your question is this might be a long winded answer answer, but if you've never lived fully a single day, you don't know what you're missing. And hence it makes it so easy to just live every single day like that and not be contemplating about not being not have an urgency and so forth. So I think again, there can be many explanations. This is just kind of my personal view on it. Speaker 2 It's, it's a really, I, I see a correlation because in, in my world, I teach communication and your voice has this incredible range and most people play with a very small part of their range and they never explore the outer edges of their voice, their body language and storytelling. It's the same thing with life. I think people tend to live in a very narrow range and that becomes the norm. And that's all you know, that's all you've known and that's all that will ever be. Great analogy, right? Whereas what you're saying is as you start to expand the way you live, taste more flavours, experience more things with family, intensely experience love. Now, once you know that exists, you can't go back to the narrow band. Speaker 1 That's it. That's and it reinforces the urgency of living. So once you've lived with urgency, even today a week, you've you now know what you're missing by not living like that. So it becomes the self reinforcing process. But if you've never lived like that, you don't know what you're missing. You don't even know you're in the narrow band. Speaker 2 And I think. Speaker 1 If you've never seen rain like. Speaker 2 How do you know? How do you know? How do you smells feels like everything. And I think if, if we, if we take that and make it really pragmatic, then is that if you, if you, if you're sitting there in life and you feel like you're in a little bit of a monotonous state, a rash. Speaker 1 Or yeah. Speaker 2 Break the pattern. Go do something different this weekend. Don't sit, don't watch Netflix, don't do what you've always done. Expand the range. Go do something that makes your heart race. Go do something that makes you feel a little bit scared. And then I think that's how you expand the range. It might even just be go to a different restaurant than the one you keep going to eat a different cuisine you've never eaten before is expand the palate and and I think that will create desire and and and and this this want of more. Otherwise you just the same all the time. Breaking Monotony and Embracing New Experiences And I love what you've said and, and I think we could even add to it. A listener could. I would encourage them. And that's how it began for me. Just write down one thing that you would have on your bucket list in the future and then try to do that one thing this year. And then once you've done it, you now know what you're missing out on, etcetera. It leads you into position, gosh, next year I should do two things from my bucket list. And then the year after that. So everything begins. You know, the longest journey begins with the single step. All these changes in behaviour, perceptions, etcetera, begin with these very small steps. You discover, like you say, something new, something that you really hadn't experienced before, and it changes the trajectory from that point. What happens next? Speaker 2 I, I, I think even from a personal standpoint in, in, you know, we, we catch up all the time and it's like even you've helped me improve that in just the recent months of calling out. I love what I do. I love my work, Matthew, but because I love my work so much, sometimes my narrow band is I work all the time. And you called that out with me on a Sunday morning at 6:00 AM. You're like, then I haven't really seen you take a break. I haven't really seen you rest. I haven't really seen you enjoy your life outside of work. And I think even with what you did with me in the last few months, I've I've since been to the Gold Coast with my family and I rarely go on vacations. And then I went to Sydney again to help my son achieve his bucket list item, which will see The Lion King. And now that you've made me do that, I've booked in Japan and I'm taking Japan. I'm, I'm, I'm going caravaning. So I think. Speaker 1 That's beautiful. Speaker 2 Yeah, and thank you. Because I think not just most people, me, me included, I fall into the trap of living within a narrow band and then forgetting to expand my palate and taste the flavours of the world. Because once I tasted it, now I want more So. So thank you for continually reminding me and and. Speaker 1 If you can't share your best with your closest friends, then yeah. And your family, it's life's not worth living. So I'm I'm thrilled to hear you say that. And you have just in recent past, I mean you yourself for an example and have experienced you make once more change opens up, but and it changes what happens next? Mindset and Overcoming the 'Too Late' Excuse Yes, it does, it does, it does. And and and, you know, we're about to get stuck into the lessons of the book now too, but I just, I, I, I also love the subtitle. You know, the subtitle you have is How to Achieve Success Before It's Too Late. Yeah, and and too late. Do you mean before you're dead? Speaker 1 That's what I yes, yes OK and I and I've pulled out examples even in the very introduction around Ray Kroc or Colonel Sanders from KFC. But even listening to recent podcast, there was one that where some best selling author published their first book just about turning 100. What? Yeah, that that was my reaction in the in the Cartwright. So you have if and by the way, I believe just like you, that mindset is so important in life. And if you have this mindset that it's only too late when I roll over and die, you're going to live a fuller life versus a mindset, gosh, when I get to 60, my bones are going to creak. I can't do half the things. In 70, I'm in mental decline. In 80 I'm in a wheelchair and 90 I'm just waiting for death at that. Speaker 2 Point. Don't even don't. Speaker 1 Even knock, knock on my door because I'm just I'm just waiting at that, right. So mindset is such and by the way, in life and half a second there are the placebo studies and real scientific literature that supports this view. What you believe actually happens, especially physiologically. So I think the belief that it's only too late when I roll over into the grave is a great belief for living fully and increasing quality of life. Speaker 2 Yeah, I, I want to, I want to add to that if I may too, because I, I, I feel like there's an element of too late when I think of too late. I I looked at it metaphorically in terms of there's going to be a too late when my kids no longer want to go on trips with me. There's a too late for that too. Speaker 1 But you can change. I believe that you can even change that. So say the kids. So imagine the. Speaker 2 So make it more exciting. Speaker 1 Imagine, imagine that you haven't spoken to your kids for 40 years and yet think of how many families and relationships are like that, where they where they've drifted apart. It's really only too late to repair, to mend, to go on another trip. Beautiful when you're dead, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 That is the true too late. Speaker 1 That is the true too late. It is too late to go back in time when when, when our children are two years old and to, you know, put put them on our shoulders and walk through a theme party. Yeah, it might be too late for that. But in terms of true success, repairing relationships and letting others know that you love them, care changing and influencing people's life. The only time I believe it's too late is when you're dead. Speaker 2 Well, that's a very inspirational way to look at it. Is that the doors not truly closed? Correct. You're actually dead. Speaker 1 Until it closes. Speaker 2 Because because I see again, I fell into a trap of thinking like this and I think most people do in that they'll say at 40, they'll say at 50, they'll say it's too late for me to start that thing. Well, not really. It's actually not too late, correct, correct. And see that's but that's such a more it that serves us better. Speaker 1 Yes, but but it's also in my experience and and doing research for life and Half a Second all those years ago that people use those kind of sayings as excuses. Yeah, they do. So they like the idea of something, starting a business, moving someplace new, being in a relationship, not being in a relationship, writing a book, not writing. They like the idea of something, but they don't really want that thing. And so they will mask it with an excuse. I'm too old, I can't, I work too much, it's too late. It's. Speaker 2 Too late in my life to. Speaker 1 Correct, correct. So if you really want something, repair a relationship, write a book, start a business, change your career, follow a whatever that thing is, you can still do it as long as you're breathing. Speaker 2 And then while you were saying that, I, I just immediately went to examples of because again, I wanted to defend that excuse to go, oh, maybe it is too late for some people when it comes to fitness. But then I remembered hearing about a 7 year old that did a marathon that ran an ultra marathon. So it is so much of it is it is excuses when you really think about it. And yeah, that's wild. Yeah, but but we tend to default to that. I mean, I caught myself out. I defaulted to that straight away. Speaker 1 I always tell people that the things they tell you they can't do, could they do them if their children's lives were at at shake, if someone put a gun to their children's head and said if you don't do that, they die, Could could it become? Speaker 2 Possible. Yeah, absolutely. Oh my God. Of course I. Speaker 1 Could do it. Swim the English. I'd do it twice. Speaker 2 Well, I can't swim, so I might die. I'll die trying, but I'll die trying, right? 50 Cent. Thank you for that. Defining Your Personal Success in Every Life Chapter You, you break this book into five different doors. Let's talk about the doors. Let's talk about the doors. So if you think about the first one, it's clarity. Why do we need to start with clarity? Why is that important? Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's hard to achieve anything. And keep in mind that that when people hear the word success in Western cultures and society, they associate that with money, with financial materialistic kind of outcomes. The book explicitly states the beginning. Success is how you define it. It could be living a peaceful life in the hills, time with your family, given to charity and being able to pursue a passion. So success is something we define for ourselves and that ties back to clarity. If you don't know what your definition of success is, then the whole rest of the book is useless. Like there's nothing. No one can help you, no material can help you if you yourself don't know what you're trying to achieve, right? So that has to be the beginning. What is be clear about what it is that you want and I'm and again, not necessarily materialistic things. It could be like repair success for you could be having a great relationship with your children, which has been a damaged relationship for say 30 or 40 years. That might be the definition of success. And now you're very really clear on it. And now what you're going to do is achieve that particular outcome. But clarity has to be the beginning and. Speaker 2 I think that's where most people stuff up, including me, because when I thought, when I initially thought of success when I was younger, when I was in my early 20s, I just thought success was just money. Yeah, I thought that's all that it was. Speaker 1 Most young people think. Speaker 2 That yes, I think because we don't spend any time on that part of the journey, we're not taught to really deeply think about what success means in this chapter, because success changes every chapter. That's why clarity is so important because you need clarity in every different chapter of life, right. Whereas I think and what happens is some people carry an early definition and what success is in the early 20s, just lots of money. And then they, they, they never redefine that. And they just keep carrying that same definition of success all through their life and then find themselves in now in their late 50s, unhappy, so much wealth, but then unhappy it's because they've never gone back and go, what chapter am I in now? What does success mean now? And how should my actions change as a result of that? Speaker 1 I, I, I agree with you and let me make the argument in favour of young people, right? Because, you know, young people, they just. Speaker 2 We're crossing to the other side, Matthew, That's why. But. Speaker 1 To to be fair, young people, everything is new. Life is new, existence is new experiences and, and so much going on, so much going on and the things that are really exciting, they require money. I'd like to go see the world. I need money. Oh my God, look at that amazing car. I need money. I'd love to have a house. I need money. I want to go and see a show. I need money. Right. So, so the excitement and newness of a life of living is often tied to money. So it makes up. But there's another reason that's even deeper than that. What's the biological reason? We exist to procreate for a species to survive, right? And the way you look at the animal Kingdom and, and, and you look at males fighting for females and for territory. The male fights for territory to attract the best females so they can mate and the species can procreate. Well, take that to human beings. It's difficult for a young man to follow the biological kind of purpose of existence to to create offspring and so forth. When I've got no home, no stability, no way to feed myself, no steady income. So money. It makes perfect sense that that is what we need at the beginning. So it's not this kind of slander against younger people that you know that they have no values and all they care about is real, definitive and good reasons why that's the case. Speaker 2 That's beautiful. Life makes me feel better about my goals younger. Speaker 1 If I really said it. Speaker 2 But I think that that's such a beautiful way to look at it. It's. Speaker 1 True. It's true. Speaker 2 It's it's not born out of a lack of depth and thinking. It's born out of necessity. Necessity. Speaker 1 It's necessity very well. Speaker 2 We, we, we, we need that. OK, so then you've got the clarity. Do you have any thoughts or do you have any frameworks? And well, how do you achieve that clarity? Say different chapters of life, Say I'm in my young chapter. I think I feel that that's already determined for me because that is the thing we all tend to chase because of biological needs, like you said, because of to procreate and to have a family. But then if you get to a point where you've got that financial stability, so say now you're in your late 20s, you've got a great job, you've got a great career. How do you gain clarity on the next step? What what are the the ways of thinking to get the clarity in different chapters of your life of your life? Speaker 1 Yeah, if any one of these things was easy, there wouldn't be a million self help books, there wouldn't be life coaches, there wouldn't be all this wisdom and millions of hours on YouTube and so and so forth. These are difficult topics. What gives my life meaning that and when I find it, the meaning, as you say, changes as I change through time and so forth. What I have observed personally is that people don't give themselves enough me time to strategically think about their life and where they are. So look at everything is now, now, now and it's television and bills and the job and I'm in a traffic jam and then the kids are screaming and then the phone rings and this, where's the, and I've seen businesses run like that, right? Just total chaos all the time, 24/7 chaos, chaos. If you can extract yourself, which is difficult, but if you can extract yourself from that chaos and just think strategically about your business or your life, where am I? Where do I want to be? What's changed for me in the last 10 years? Like you say, I've got a steady income where I'm more financially secure. I've got a family now, I've got a spouse and so forth. So the things that I wanted as a younger man or woman, I've got now. What's next? What's going to give me meaning? Fulfillment. In my experience, most people just don't have the the bandwidth or the time where they don't allocate the time to answer those questions properly. And then a business is the same way. Speaker 2 And then they end up going to other people, hoping other people will help them discover what that is. Speaker 1 Give them the answer. Speaker 2 Whereas the reality, the answer only they can give, correct? They want to give. So it's, it's not because I think that's the thing about social media too. They they're going to external sources trying to find people who can save them and tell, but no one knows you as well as you. I think a lot of the times exactly what you said, they just have to sit with themselves. Sometimes we know the characters of our favorite shows better than we know ourselves. We follow stars in their lives and who they're dating now and who they've just recently divorced. We know them and their lives more intimately what their goals currently are then we know ourselves. So I think there there's just there's such a important thing in what you just said is just sit with yourself. Get to know yourself in this chapter and you will have. You'll find it. Speaker 1 Yeah, my my father, which I greatly admire for sure. I. Speaker 2 Love him too. Speaker 1 And, and funny quotes he always used to tell me as a kid, he would say, Matt, if you don't have a brain, be careful whose brain you use. So it's a similar kind of thing. And that's a very blunt way of saying it. But if you can't think for yourself and decide for yourself what it is that you want, you got to be really careful whose brain you're going to use that's going to tell you what you want and how you should live your life and what you should be doing. Except that's a dangerous place to be. Speaker 2 More than ever, that is a problem now with social. Speaker 1 Media, I agree. Speaker 2 Yeah. It's like you, you have to analyse that thought you just had. Is that your thought? Yeah, yeah. This thing you're currently chasing, is that you that's chasing that? Is it actually you that wants that? Yeah, that that that's, Yeah, Thank, thank you for jamming on that. I think, I think that alone is incredibly powerful. So whichever chapter you're currently in, think meaningfully about what it is that you actually. Speaker 1 Set some time aside. Yeah, set some. Set half a day, an hour in the morning. Speaker 2 What you can spare? Speaker 1 Yeah, what you can spare and have a strategic planning session with yourself. God I I, I I cannot ove emphasize the importance of that. Speaker 2 You have clarity now? Aligning Your True Wants with Your Goals Yeah. Once you have clarity, you say the next thing that's very important is desire. Let's talk about that. Yeah, so. Speaker 1 In my view, one of the biggest obstacles to people achieving something in their life is a misalignment between what they think they want and the desire for that particular. I'll give you a very simplistic example. So I'm in a job and I don't particularly like that job, but I'm going to be very clear about the next 12 months of my life and I'm going to set a goal of getting a promotion. But then secretly I really hate that job and I hate my boss. And if, if I had it all up to myself, I'd go and do something completely different. Clearly there's a complete misalignment between what I really want, which might be to have my own business where I sell boats or be a tour guide or do this and a job that I'm stuck in. So this is the second thing. I don't know if you've read the statistics, but depending on the year and the country, anywhere between 50 to 90% of New Year resolutions get abandoned. Even though they're very clear, they get written down. Why is that? Well, my new Year resolution is I'm going to quit smoking. I'm not a smoker, but you've seen a lot of people try to quit smoking secretly. They don't want to quit smoking. Smoking, yes, they know it's bad for them, but they like the feeling and it's social and and so forth. Again, misalignment. So desire is so important in terms of being aligned with your goal because it is the driver. It's the, it's the prime mover that's actually going to get you out of bed each morning and move you towards whatever you want to move towards. One of my personal heroes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, he wanted to be Mr. Olympia. He wanted to be the youngest Mr. Universe in the history of bodybuilding, which he ended up being. But that was a clear goal, but he had to get up, you know, 4:00 or 5:00 AM everyday train for two hours, do another two hours in the evening, etcetera. The desire and the goal were perfectly matched and it and it moves people that don't or imagine being a writer. I want to write a book, but I sit in front of the computer for five hours and nothing appear. I like you got to quite. Do you really want? Speaker 2 To like is this. Speaker 1 Is this really? Is this really so? The reason desire is critical? If you don't have real true desire for your goals, change the goal. Don't feel bad, don't get stressed. Don't don't look at the mirror and say, Oh my God, why me? Why, you know, why can others do it and not behind you those none of that's true. You just have a misalignment. Just change the goal. You got to have a kind of goal, Vin, where you have to jump out of bed in the morning and you can't wait to go. And if you have that kind of desire for your goal, you're gonna fly. Speaker 2 Well, it's an alignment check. Speaker 1 And life is amazing. Think about amazing. Life is if you jump out of bed in the morning, you can't can't wait to ride. You can't wait to lift weights or run or whatever the case might be. Life's amazing. Speaker 2 I love that because, and I love that it's a second step because it's an alignment check. It's ABS detector. Yeah, you just wrote down what you wanted and then perfect, but your own internal BS detector. So you wrote down this beautiful goal That sounds amazing. And then you check your desire and you don't want to do the work. I think there's a big misalignment there. Yeah. And that's how you make yourself unhappy. And then that's how you also ensure you'll never achieve the goal. Speaker 1 Correct, correct. And so think about other people that have perfect, they're genuinely excited about their work, genuinely, they're going to put in the work, they're going to love it, and they're going to outperform any human being that doesn't have that alignment. Just clearly. Speaker 2 And then don't lie to yourself in this process. I think, I think a lot of this requires you to be really truthful with yourself, like you said before. And don't, don't feel bad because if that's not your goal, that's. Speaker 1 OK, they feel bad to, you know, do they have these kind of just change the goal. Speaker 2 But I think a lot of people will also write down certain things. Sometimes it's not what they're writing down. They've got somebody else's brain in their head writing it down. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think the beautiful thing about this process is that you're getting to know yourself and you've got beautiful checks along the way to go ahead. But is that really yours? Yes. Yeah. Is that really yours? Well said. So. So it's almost a it's a pathway back to who we really are. Yeah. And I think that's so beautiful that that's kind of designed in that way. Speaker 1 Yeah, you've said it perfectly. Speaker 2 Yeah. Changing Your Environment to Build Self-Belief And then the next thing was in belief, Yes. Yeah. How does that fall into it? Speaker 1 I I view Chapter 1 clarity and the last one is the bookends and the middle desire, next belief. And the next one we'll talk about is the enablers. So belief is an enabler. It's either going to be a massive tailwind for you or a headwind. And that's an easy example. Say you want to achieve something and you are not in a peer group. In fact, you don't know anyone in your life that's achieved something like you want to be an author, but you don't know any authors. You want to be a marathon runner, you don't know any marathon runners. You want to be an entrepreneur, you don't know any entrepreneurs exactly. It's tough. It's tough to believe that you can do it because you have several things happen. One, you've got no examples in front of you. You've got no one telling you how to do it, which is the next door, and you've got no one kind of building you up. Yes, you can do it and so forth. So I always say that one of the easiest ways to change belief, and you would know this better than anyone, is to just change your environment and specifically change the people you spend time around. So far. I'm scared of heights, by the way. I don't know if you know that, but you do. Speaker 2 That yeah, I'm scared of that. Speaker 1 Too, You've got the same notebook as me. Speaker 2 Why do I even ask? I'm just the Asian version of you. Speaker 1 Why do I even ask that? Being scared of heights, I would not do rock climbing. However, if I wanted to be a rock climber, what I would do is find 5 rock climbers, spend time with them, learn everything that they and talk about these fears. Did you ever fear heights? And they might say no or they might say yes, yes. Well, what did you do about it? How do you handle it? You know, all of this kind of stuff. And and then I could ask them what would be the first thing that you would tell me to do as a novice, as someone that's never rock climbed before. And so all of a sudden your whole belief system changes around that. All it takes is just remove yourself from one environment, inject yourself into another. You're surrounded by people that rock climb every single day. And of course, rock climbing is a metaphor for anything. You can fill in the blank and your belief changes. And once your belief changes, you act, you move, you wake up in the morning and say, I can do it. Speaker 2 And you'll find that the things that you're scared of your current environment, most people around you are also probably scared of that thing too. So some of the things. Speaker 1 You're making them scared and they're. Speaker 2 Making you scared and then you stay scared and you never do it. It's like starting a business. Most people never do it because everyone there around has never started a business. So then there's fears around that, right? And that fear is, is, is it like a perpetually enforced? Yeah. Speaker 1 Oh my God, never start a business you don't do job security. Speaker 2 9 out of 10 businesses. Speaker 1 Fail. Why would you do such a? Speaker 2 Stupid. Speaker 1 And itself we did. Or she died. Did you hear about that guy? You know his neighbors, dogs, cousins, you know grandmother. They started a business and they failed. Like you never want to do that. Speaker 2 I love you put the dogs into it. That's brilliant. That's fantastic. So do you surprise? I, I think well, because what I want to say is use a real example with us, right. So when, when I started my speaking career, I, I really wanted to, to speak and you were one of the very few in SA that like, you know, I watched to speak and I went, oh, that's the kind of speaker I want to be. Whereas most speakers I watch them, I'm like, they're not, they weren't that great. So I, I just remember you haven't even seen me speak yet. So there's a moment in our, in our, in our friendship where you have never seen me speak before. And you are about to launch life in half a second. And we just, we had, we just had a meal together. We got on so well, you found I found out that your parents live next door to you. You found out that my parents live with me. And we're like, Oh my God. Speaker 1 Me too. My friend went to had lunch with you and I thought, Oh my God, I meant to. Speaker 2 Just make this go. Speaker 1 It was just like me, just. Speaker 2 It's like I found my twin brother. It's like kind of like Danny DeVito and and I've I know you're I'm a DeVito exactly. I just say I know I want to be able to watch and you can be Danny DeVito. And then from that moment you made this crazy call, you're like, hey, I know you want to start your speaking create. I know you think it's scary. You know what, I've got an opportunity. You opened my book launch, but you know, I was in a position, Matthew, where I had no speaking gigs coming in yet. At that point I didn't have all these opportunities and just being changing my environment, bringing a speaker who who was very established speaker into my environment. You opened up an opportunity for me straight away. So I think not only does it change your beliefs, it opens doors that you didn't even know existed. Speaker 1 Absolutely. Speaker 2 And you open that door for me straight away. Speaker 1 And I got to, and I got to, I mean, that story's incomplete. And you know, it's it's incomplete because every listener to this to this session has to know that indeed, I had never seen Vin speak. And when I saw him speak, which was at the first book launch, we did multiple cities together, I deeply, deeply, deeply regretted inviting him to launch my book because I had to go next. And no one after Vin spoke, no one remembered the book or mad or even why they were there. They just wanted to go and talk to that. I remember kind of like, but I want to make a couple of points. And this ties to believe you without a doubt made me a better speaker. That for me was so confronting and so scary, but having the benefit of like, you know, I'd written Life in Half a Second at that point in in some ways, it was at this grand moment where I'd like I found a friend that was amazing. I, I believe it to this day, the best in the world and I get to like be beside that person, learn from that. So I had to improve dramatically. I'm never, ever, ever going to be able to match what you can do, but I am the best that I can be because of our friendship and because of that book launch. And that's why actually Life in Half a Second is so special for me. It's less about the material and so forth. It's, you know, the jobs off as the 6th book I read. It's our friendship. Like that book for me captures when we met, when we launched it together, all the funny things that happened, etcetera. So that's why it's got such a warm place in my heart. That was such a scary moment. That was just your. Speaker 2 Terrifying fear. You have to be. You have to be even more honest now because you were scared for multiple reasons. You were also scared because you've also never seen me speak so before. You were impressed by me. You were almost having a heart attack because just as I was about to walk on stage and do the first gig in your heart, you told me that you're like, God, I hope it's good. Oh. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Not that good. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. But, but see, that goes back to the other thing too, is that I think it's, it's incredible because I, I, I wouldn't have had that opportunity to, to kick off my speaking career in such an incredible way. You had clients from the biggest companies present in the audience in Australia when you're doing your book tour. Yeah. Remember the accounting firms? Yeah. BHP, they booked me for events right after that. You launched my career into the stratosphere because I was better than you. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I didn't know. I didn't know how much better I was than you because after I was like. Speaker 1 But do you know how good that makes me feel to hear, to hear you say that? Because that's what real friendship is about. That is the essence, what you've just captured and it and it, it's the third door, you know, belief, it's exactly what you've captured. Not only does it change your belief, but it opens doors. Someone says all of a sudden, hey, talk to this person, go there, go and do this. And without kind of being in that environment with people doing those kind of things, it's very hard. It it's harder than it has to be. That's a nice way of saying. Speaker 2 That and and and what's scary to think is that I had all of those abilities, Matthew, but I was in the wrong environment. So as long as I was in the wrong environment, nothing happened. Speaker 1 Yeah, you, you mentioned to me before that it's like a tree planted in the wrong spot. Speaker 2 Yes, and then you think the tree sucks, meaning you think you suck. Take the tree out, put it in a new environment. It will flourish. You know, and it's scary for me to think that if I never met you, if I never changed my environment, which I think a lot of people because changing environment is hard. It's excruciating. You know, it's hard like you have to think about rejection. You have to you fear rejection. What if that person doesn't want to spend time? But if you never ask, well then you'll you'll never end up meeting anybody new. Speaker 1 Do the things that are easy, which is nothing. Your life will be hard. Do the things that are hard, which you've just described. Go out of your comfort zone, face rejection, do something new. It will change your life and then your life can be a lot easier. That's something we, you know, again, we share in common and we believe in. Speaker 2 And, and and just so people know, my perspective of it too, of the book launch is that I rehearsed like crazy for those Matthew, I didn't want to let a friend down. I didn't want to be someone who ruined your book tour. I mean the weight on that the the weight of yeah, no, no, no, it. Speaker 1 Became a vincio, yeah. Speaker 2 Where's Vince Book? Where's Vince Book? Yeah. Speaker 1 And Vinh signed Life in half a second. Speaker 2 You know, I, I I reckon I have signed more Life in half a second copies than you. I agree. I agree. Because without a doubt, yeah, yeah, without a doubt. Like that's why I said I should be a co-author at this point. Next run I'll have my name on that. Speaker 1 I'm getting a sticker that we're going to put. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 Because it's wild. And you know, after that as well just says, you know, I think I've always felt so much debt when it comes to our friendship because every, every speech I did in that point in my career, I'd have a suitcase of your books that at the end of my keynotes that I do, you're not even in it. And I'm signing your books. And Craig, our videographer off screen here has footage of me signing thousands of these books and giving them away. So Matthew, again, like I think what a beautiful moment where we get to share this story. I mean, I wouldn't be here without you and and maybe you wouldn't be where you are without me. And, and maybe this book now is such a symbol of our friendship, yes, that we now get to share with my audience and. Speaker 1 We both get to. Speaker 2 Sign it, you know, and you get to. You get to sign it too. The actual order gets to sign, which is great. I think that's such a that's such a beautiful things coming together. Yes, things coming together. That's that's awesome. All right, so we've got we've got the clarity. Yep. Alignment with the desire. Yeah, alignment with the desire. We've got the right beliefs because we now know we need to be in the right environment. So if your current environment doesn't give you the beliefs necessary shift, Yep, don't stay there. Acquiring Know-How and Navigating Challenges What's next? Speaker 1 The next door is related to belief, and that's knowledge. So think about it this way. You know what you want, it's aligned with your desire. You believe you can do it. You don't know how to do it. Yeah, it's as simple as that. Knowledge. Yeah, knowledge and so on. So all of a sudden the the 4th door of success is making the necessary investments in yourself, which could be formal education, could be just. And This is why being around people that have done what you want to do, give. Speaker 2 You knowledge? Absolutely. Speaker 1 Right, So if you want like the user going to the the example of, of speaking, if you're around speakers and they're earning A livelihood from speaking, well, they've done what you want to do. How did they do it? How did you start? What advice can you give me and so on. So that is immediate knowledge. Not only is it a change in belief and and a form of inspiration and encouragement, but it's a form of knowledge transfer and it's critical. So all of the like clarity and desire and self belief is going to hit a brick wall unless you actually know what to do, right? It's. Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I remember again, just using that same example so people can kind of see how this all worked. But in spending time with you, not only did you have me open your, your book launch and we did all of that and then all the gigs started coming in from that. I said, well, then Matthew, well, I can't keep doing book launches with you because you've already launched the book. So, you know, he's like, can we launch the book again? But then you said, no, no, Vin, there's such thing as a speaker agency. And then you recommended me to one of the biggest speaking bureaus in Australia. And you called the owner and said that this guy is one of the best speakers you'll ever see. You have to sign him, right? Speaker 1 Now I said the best and in fact I remember that call and my exact words is to the owner of the speaking agency. You should hold on to this guy. You then with the both hands and both feet. Speaker 2 Instead of the best. Speaker 1 In the world right, that was exactly what I. Speaker 2 Said. And then they signed me on the spot. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it was one of the greatest things they ever did. That was that was good for you and that was great for them. And as a as a friend to both, it made me feel good. That's just it's it's. Speaker 2 But that's the knowledge gap. I didn't understand the industry. I didn't know the plays in the industry. You taught me about the players in the industry, how to play the game, how to, how to be able to create a real long lasting career in this. And then it ended up helping me be able to be a speaker in the US globally. So I think that that that environment it serves like you said, multiple purposes. Not only does it give you the belief, it gives you the know how. Speaker 1 Yep, and and Vin just said to that every journey. I don't know of a journey that doesn't have ups and downs, right. There's like in any good movie, you've got the reversal of the hero, the hero's journey, the ups and downs, major setbacks, except life is like that. A journey towards a goal or to what's what we define as success is like that. And if you're in a group or a set of people or an environment where you're around people that have had those experiences, they can help you through those ups and downs as well. Because sometimes a low can be devastating, can be absolutely devastating. And in fact, you might think it's the end. And then you can meet with other people, other entrepreneurs as an example. And they say, oh man, that's nothing. You know, I've had, I've had 10 events like that. This is how you deal with it. This is what you should do. Get back on your feet. That's just normal, Matt. That's that's kind of what happens. But if you don't have those, how do you know? How do you how do you how do you pick yourself up it? Speaker 2 Makes me think of when I was on my journey of being a keynote speaker. You got to understand, in the Vietnamese community, when you say you want to be a keynote speaker, they have no idea what the hell that is, right? What the hell? Speaker 1 Don't do the accent because I'm going. Speaker 2 To start that and then you start doing the accent and you're not allowed to. So what the hell. Like they just, they, they, they don't know what a keynote speaker is and they to them impossible, right. So my whole life, this thing I wanted to be it's impossible. You can't do that. No, no, no. And then I met you and it was simple as, oh, this is how I'll connect you with this person. So I think again, the impossible becomes possible when you're in the right environment and when you have the right knowledge. And, and I think just to make it really clear, I think knowledge in today's world in, in 2026, this year, knowledge comes from again, books, online videos, AI people it comes from. So like never has knowledge been so readily, readily available. I just think now you, you go back to the whole thing. Some people just don't have the desire. Some people just don't have the clarity of what they want. So what? So even if I have all the knowledge in the world with valuable my fingertips, no one's searching for it because they haven't done the work to get to know them, to do the alignment check of what they want and then to put themselves in the right environment. So, so much of that is if you don't know what. Speaker 1 You want, you're not going to be searching on how to do it because you don't know what it is that you've been searching for. Yeah. So, so you can see how you can see how all of that's. Speaker 2 Related together. And then that's why I love the sequencing of this. I think the sequencing of it is so critical. So. So if you, if you know what you want, you're in the right environment, you got all the right knowledge now you got the plan in front of you. Breaking Down Goals for Consistent Daily Progress Yeah. What's missing now? Action. Yeah. Speaker 1 So, and that's why I said the beginning and the end are bookends. So if you know what you want, you have to take action, daily action towards getting it, which we'll come to in a second. And then the three things in the middle, desire, belief and knowledge are the enablers. When you have alignment around desire, when you're in an environment that is conducive to believe, you make the necessary investments in knowledge. You can see how all of those. Speaker 2 Much easier. Yeah, easier and without the middle bits. That's why sometimes you go, I know what I want. Yes. Why am I not just doing it? Yeah, It's because the enablers aren't there. Speaker 1 Correct. Correct. And some of those enablers might actually be detractors. So not only are you not in a group that is, yeah, but but you're not even. Absolutely, but not even the wrong people in the sense that they haven't done what you want to do. But they're the kind of people that say it's impossible, or they look down on it, or they think it's. Speaker 2 They scare you? Yeah, absolutely. They scare you until. Speaker 1 They hold back. They hold back the action and in everything in life and have a second, which I think is an interesting aside, is footnoted. So it's not a book on opinion. It's a book based on studies that have been conducted across multiple disciplines that enable these 5 doors or these five factors and and they're footnoted to the actual study. But when I was researching action, because action seems simple, I just get up and I just do it. But here's an interesting thing, and this is again proved through scientific studies. When your goal or what you want is to far from your current position, it becomes demotivating, demoralizing. As a simplistic example, I'm homeless and I'm broke on the street and I want to be a millionaire. The gap is so huge that it's, you know, you sound like a crazy person. Or I'm 100 kilos overweight and I want to have a six pack. The distances are so, so large. So science has again shown that if you can take a goal, which is clarity, and unpack it into milestones, you start with major milestones, you know, a mid or medium milestone, baby steps, it becomes a bridge. It's like a bridge unfolding between where you are and where you want to be. And people that do that are much more likely to stay the path and achieve the goal. And people that just have this elite, a chasm. Yeah, that's right. As you see, I've got a chasm. I've got to take a leap of faith. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Indiana Jones and Last Crusade, you know, So he made it in that. Speaker 2 Case I can't think of a movie. Speaker 1 Where they where? Speaker 2 They wouldn't make a movie. Speaker 1 Yeah, but but see, that's Indiana Jones and he takes the step. Most people don't take the step, it's too large, it's never going to happen. Why even waste my time going to the gym? Why even, why even waste my time trying to improve myself while I'm living on this? That's just so ridiculous. See how I do more like how easy it is to get into that mindset. And when I'm 100 kilos overweight or I'm living on the street, I'm clearly not spending time with millionaires or, or spending time with bodybuilders or fitness and usually with fitness. So everything's more difficult. So the action part has science around it too. And then every day you could look at you and we call it a gold pyramid, which you've got the goal at the top, it's unpacked, you just look at it. What are the things I'm going to do today to enable one of the small boxes on my goal pyramids? You can do daily activities towards a box in your goal pyramid. And the box enables the end goal that you want such an elegant, simple, you don't need to buy anything from anyone. It's free. You don't need to get pills or, or it's, it's, it's, I loved the elegance of it and it's supported by science and it's proven that people do that. Do these kind of things have a greater likelihood of achieving whatever it is that they want to achieve? Speaker 2 And, and that gold pyramid is something I remember as I was building my speaking career. We, we would meet every Sunday at a cafe and we would meet there every Sunday at a cafe and all, every time you made me bring my gold pyramid out and you, you checked every week. So which one on the bottom have you done? Yeah. Which one have you done that moved you towards what you wanted? And then you had one, too. And we'd compare and we kept each other accountable. But it's true, Matthew, because from that point, I met you. I wanted that speaking career globally, but it felt like a chasm. And I didn't realize that I was stuck in a state of analysis paralysis. It's just it's just too much. I'm being delusional. And then when you help me map out that goal pyramid, I it was such a strange experience because I go actually this, this could work, but only once I saw all the steps, whereas when I tried to do it in one, it doesn't work. And I think and and and Matthew, I, I think you you've been generous enough too. That is it alright if we link that video? Absolutely. Because we'll. Speaker 1 Link the actual gold pyramid template and have some videos on how to construct it, how to unpack it. Speaker 2 You've got a deep dive 30 minute video that walks them through how to do it. Speaker 1 Craig and my father was an educator all his life at the university and I love educate like you're an educator. You know, we love helping other people, we love educating. That's why you create programs and books, etcetera. So it's such, it's such a great feeling that you've got materials that you've collected from decades and it can help someone do something in their life. So we're definitely. Speaker 2 Going to thank you, Matthew. So so if if you're listening to this and you want to do that, look, there's a there's a video underneath this video that's going to be again, Matthew walking you through the gold pyramid. And then I just want to say too, if you're listening to this, I used that to achieve, I think something that most people in the speaking industry look up to because I was able to build this global career and I used that. You know, I think it's one of those situations where I always say, you know, it's not about putting me or Matthew on the pedestal right now. It's putting the lessons that have made us who we are and and this goal pyramid that you're going to go and learn from Matthew and Matthew so generously given the template PDF for that as well. Do it and and the goal doesn't have to be this incredible speed. It doesn't have to be business or it can be life. Absolutely. Rebuilding a connection with a family member that I love. Speaker 1 More time with family. It can be anything. You're if you just clear on what it is that is you've just you've taken the first massive step. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's such a good feeling too. And. Speaker 2 What I love about this, Matthew, and thank you for your generosity. Because what that means is they can literally go through all the five doors that we've just mentioned as they're mapping out their goal pyramid. Absolutely. And now, instead of waiting for a new year to do a new resolution, do it now. Speaker 1 Urgency. We start now. We started this conversation with urgency. Speaker 2 Yeah, and do it now. You rather become ashes than dust. So yeah, I love that this is. You're really good at this, Matthew. Speaker 1 Next time I come to your studio, I'm going to bring the slogan and we're going to put. Speaker 2 It up. Put it up somewhere. I'll bring the stills, the screwdrivers. No, don't, no, don't bring the juice. Just bring the frame. I'll get someone who's good at that environment. We're going to. I'm going to. I've got an environment for that. I've got people for that. Yeah. I don't trust you. 100 holes in the wall. Speaker 1 You'll have the water coming in sideways. Speaker 2 I have to say I, I, I'm, you're, you're incredible at this medium. You, you, you can't be invisible to the world. And I already know from doing this one with you, we have to do more well. Speaker 1 I think, I think each time we get together, it's like this like like the number of times, like before we started filming today, we recollected the number of flights we took together and it's like we're having our own philosophical discussion or motivational session on the plane and the whole plane has to listen and participate. Speaker 2 They always get annoyed by the The last trip we were on, we're sitting because because unfortunately the way we sat, we weren't next to each other. We're across the aisle from each other and. Speaker 1 Fortunately for everyone else, everybody else and. Speaker 2 Then a German in the back just leans over and goes, can you guys shut up? Why People Don't Aim and the Fear of Judgment Hey, this has been amazing. I mean, I want to ask you again another question now that we've been through the five doors of success, Right. So people from first door all the way to the last clarity, all involved, very important. I think main reason why people are unhappy is because they end up achieving something they don't want. So this whole system protects you from that in every chapter of life. But then in the book, you also speak about how most people don't aim. Yeah, most people don't aim for something. And I'm not sure if we're being too repetitive in asking that question, but it's why? Why don't people aim? Is it because they don't have a, they don't believe in themselves? There's a comeback to environment again, Like what is it that like what what what? What causes monotony? Speaker 1 Yeah, I, I, I want to say two things. One, this statement that you made around the gold pyramid and that they can use it immediately and so on. There's one additional very important point. No one should ever feel that the goals they've set for themselves are written in stone like the 10 commandments and they're unchangeable. And if I change them, I'm a failure. And, and that kind of answers your second question as well. If I never, if I never aim, if I never write anything down, if I never tell you then what my goals are, etcetera, you're never going to look at me in a funny way. I'm never going to have to admit to you that I failed at something and so forth. So, so one thing that I failed to mention, but it's critical. You will change with time. You know, we have a saying, the you of tomorrow, the you of tomorrow is not the you of today. We all change. So you have to know that your goals are going to change. So you have to know that whatever you write, there might come a day where it's just no longer appealing. It's out of alignment. Again, it was in alignment, but it's just out of alignment. And then you're going to change them because it's not written in stone or in cement and so forth. I think a lot of people have a fear of one failure in general, but what really terrifies them is failure in front of their peers or family or friends. And so if I don't have goals, I can't fail. OK, if I that's a big one. If I have goals, but I never tell you, then I can't fail in your eyes because you never know what I'm trying to achieve. And of course I'm just sabotaging myself. One of the things that science has proven and is in the book and I've talked about is an enable of success is telling everyone you know what your goals are. People that do that are more likely to follow through and succeed than people that don't for these particular reasons. So I think there's a lot of like, as we're discussing a lot of psychology, but it's simple psychology. It's not like, you know, textbook stuff, it's not gimmicky, it's stuff it's just you need to let go of this kind of fear or otherwise you're, you're in my personal view, you're just going to live a closed life. You're just going to be afraid of everything. Someone's opinion failing, falling down. It's what life is about. You know, kids, they get on a bicycle, they fall down, they get in a, in a, in a sand pit, they fall down. We get on a presentation stage for the first time, we choke. It's life, it's just life. And that's how we grow and we develop and, and we become who we are in the end. And you've got to have that kind of mindset when we talk about the topics like this. Go out there and give it your best shot. You would know then I want it to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I talk about it in life like clearly I don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I want to. And my, and my parents were terrified. I said I'm not going to uni, I'm not going to study, I'm not going to do any of that. I'm just going to spend 4 hours a day in the gym and you're drinking. Yeah, eat 100 eggs, gallon of milk, 2 kilos of meat and I'll and I'll make millions of dollars like Arnold Schwarzenegger. What could go wrong? Right? My parents, but I, I put it all out there. I trained like hell. You just cannot train harder. And I know that I couldn't have done more and it wasn't meant to be right versus living with that feeling. Oh, if I just tried, if I had just done this, I think that's a terrible thing to live with and it causes regret and these kind of bitter feelings in in the end, I'd rather tell people and fail like be ashes than dust. I'd rather go out there with fire and tell you then this is what I want and I don't. Just like a comet, it falls to the ground, it burns out. I've had like the my bodybuilding days and I feel great because if I had to do it all over again, there's nothing more I could have done. I'm at peace. I'm at rest rather than living as dust. I wish I could have been a bodybuilder. I wish I could have been a writer, wish I could have been an entrepreneur. I wish I had asked that girl out on a date. I wish I had done that, but I was always too afraid. Fear as a Progress Indicator and Demystifying the Unknown Everything you're saying, Matthew, I mean, I violently agree with. It's just I think most people are afraid of the failure, the shame, the humiliation, the judgement. And I think as entrepreneurs, we, we're quite resistant to that because we, we, we had to have been resistant to that. Otherwise we wouldn't be aware. We can't. Speaker 1 Succeed as an entrepreneur without failure. You just can't. Absolutely. Speaker 2 And and but how does someone who doesn't have that thickening of the skin through years of us being on? Speaker 1 We answered our that question 20 minutes ago. Environment got to be around people that have done it. They would have experienced the failure. Speaker 2 And that's normal. Speaker 1 That's normal. Yeah, that's normal. That's just part of the journey, like and and they'll ask you about your desire. Do you really want to do this? Because if you really want to do this, this is what it entails. Speaker 2 It's like some of my students who create content online and they say, oh, then I've created content online and this person left. The really mean comment, you know, does not mean I shouldn't be doing this. I'm like, look at my videos, this is normal and and instead, but instead of teaching them, instead of them going this is wrong, this means I'm on the wrong path. I'm not no, no, no. That's an indicator you're on the right path and and then it switches your thinking straight away. Whereas when you don't have anyone around you. Speaker 1 You don't. Speaker 2 Have as your internal perception, so you think it's wrong and then you stop. Speaker 1 Yeah, imagine if no one had ever told you about weight training or body building and you go to the gym and you do bench presses for 10 sets and curls, etc and you are in agony. Then you're like, this is bad, you should stop. This is I'll never go on back. I can barely move. This is going to cripple me for the rest of the month, right? Speaker 2 And you know what feels good? Eating a doughnut. Yeah. So I should keep doing that. Yeah. So then, then, then, then that. It does feel good, though. Yeah. It does feel quite. Speaker 1 Good. No one can argue. Speaker 2 With that, I, I, I think there's something you said in the beginning of this little part of what we're talking about too, that I think I, I want to zoom in on. Embracing Identity Shifts and Life's Natural Evolution And it's that some people are also attached to a goal that they've had for the longest time. And there's an attachment to it. They can't let go of it because now it's a part of their identity, right? And then they can't let go of it because there's a, there's a saying I often say in my classes, but this is communication related. But I think there's, it's fractal in that. I think it applies here too. Don't be so attached to who you are in the present. You don't give the future version of your chance. Yeah, it's the same thing. Don't be so attached to the goals you have in the present because that those goals you have in the present, this this serving you in this chapter of life. But like you said, we, we don't stay the same person, correct? We evolve, we grow different priorities and the goals need to shift with that. Speaker 1 Yeah, and your identity as well. I mean, the point that you raised is a good one, but if the, if a person feels like I can't let go of my goal because it's part of my identity and who I am and who would I be without that goal? Think about it in a broader spectrum of 80 years, the average lifespan of a human being. It was a time when your identity was being a kid, being a student. And imagine at that point in time said, I'm never going to let go of my toys or the bicycle or I'm never going to be a, you know, a college student. I'm never going to have a job, etcetera. I can't let go of this identity then, right. And then you do become a student in, in higher education, high school or university, you do have a job. Eventually, by the way, your identity at some point was being single, then it's married and in the future your identity will be retirement at some point, you know, and So what? So our identity just by nature will change just by the cycle of life, the seasons of life, etcetera. And if you have this mindset, I think you're missing the bigger picture of this natural evolution of our identity over time. And that's why have that kind of untouchment is hurting you and it's unhealthy. It's. Speaker 2 My view, and I love that season analogy because you, you, you're trying to go against nature. Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, by the cycle of life. Speaker 2 Yes, you, you and and and and going against that is going to create you pain yes and I think a lot of the pain that we experience in this life is we're we're we're forcing things to be the same when the natural nature of we're. Speaker 1 Frustrated, we experience angst, disappointment. We want to hold on, but we can't. All these kind of negative emotions. Speaker 2 And and if you feel those negative emotions, I, I think this is such a wonderful moment to reflect, to sit with yourself, to get clarity again, to go is, is some of the pain that I'm currently feeling is me being attached to pre a previous version of myself, previous goals that have changed, but I haven't thought about what is the next chapter. So now I'm in this constant state of trying to keep things the same. Speaker 1 Yeah. And this whole concept that that you've just said about the attachment, Yeah, we have to identities or to a certain phase of life. The the novel that I wrote, Jobs are for Suckers, is really about how that craps people in a particular life. It traps them. It's what you've just described. Speaker 2 Like. Speaker 1 You phrased it and I can't let go of that goal. You're trapped all of a sudden in a certain way. So breaking out of that is really, really, really difficult. You get stuck into a particular way of living, thinking, being, identifying with that makes it so much harder related to be someone else. And it will be someone else, but it'll be hard. Speaker 2 It will be and I think that that's why I love and thank you because I got to be on the back of this book. Yes, on the whip. The single blurb on the. Speaker 1 Back. That's right, the single endorsement. But but that book is also a special place in my heart because it literally would not exist without you. And, and again, for anyone that reads it, this is a novel and unlike life and have a second. I started it eight years ago and I've still got emails when I sent the first draft. Speaker 2 Chapters which were. Speaker 1 Awful. I mean, they were awful. When my own family read it, they said just stop writing, You're not meant to be a writer. And I felt so down. And I would really question it, you know, because I wasn't spending time with otherwise. And then you'd respond back. Speaker 2 Oh my God, this is so. Speaker 1 Funny, then you would have this underlined and read and when this guy said this, I was dying with that and I laughed. I've got one e-mail where you said I read this on an airplane and I was laughing hysterically and it and see that one person you was enough motivation and encouragement for me to pick it up. A few years after that, I think it was six years ago and say, you know what, Vince saw enough in those beginning chapters where I'm going to pick this up and I'm going to try to finish it. That's awesome. All it takes is 1. Just one. Isn't that amazing? Speaker 2 And and and the reason why I picked this up too, besides the fact that I got to be in on. Speaker 1 This. Notice you're not looking at the cover, but who. Speaker 2 Cares about the cover. Look at my name there. It's so cool. But the reason I picked this up is because what I loved about this one, and I know it's a novel, it's slightly different, but it allows us to, and I wrote it on the globe on the back too, because it allows us to, to look at some of the really difficult parts of life that sometimes we're afraid to look at it ourselves. But then when you're reading it through a novel, it forces you to reflect yourself too. So when you see the the the characters of the book go through the trials and trepidations and the suffering, it then causes you to take a moment, put the book down and go, you know what? I'm a little bit like Riley. I'm a little bit like the characters. I'm a little bit like them. Yes. Because I need to reflect on my life. Is this what I actually want to do? Yeah. So I think it it does it in such a clever way, such a humorous way, in such a deep way, in moments that make you reflect yourself. Yeah. I think it's beautiful. Reflecting on Life Through Novels and Shared Philosophy I, I and then from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your encouragement because it's such an like I always wanted to be a writer and it was one of my big dreams to write a novel, which is much more difficult than that than non fiction. And if it wasn't for you, the book wouldn't exist. So there's this like eternal debt of gratitude to you and our friendship to making it happen. And I, and what I love about novels is they are an art form and you get to create a story that hopefully makes people laugh, cry, feel something. But it also gives you a medium or an opportunity to infuse your own life's philosophy, beliefs, the way you see the world and the way you see people into kind of the, the, the sand or the foundation upon which that story is built. And I remembered I had the idea for the book 20 years ago. I was sitting in a traffic jam. Everyone sits in a traffic. Actually, I sat one Oh yeah, today on the on the way to your studio. But on that particular day, it was more than 20 years ago, probably 25 years ago. I'm sitting in the traffic jam on the highway in a suit and tie going downtown. And I just remember looking in the rearview mirror and seeing the guy behind me also sitting in traffic in a suit and tie. And then I begin looking around and everyone's sitting in that suit and tie. And I, and I remember vividly that day because I didn't want to be there and I didn't want to go to the meeting that I was going. And I'm just more kind of, I'm thinking, I don't want to be here. So I'm conscious of of the of the thought and then when I look around, I kind of have the thought, you know what, probably these people don't want to be here either. That was the genesis of the idea that we spend this very half a second life that we have doing things we really don't want to do and deferring things that we really want to do to a later time, which for many people doesn't come. So life on half a second and jobs are for sacres are in many ways similar a they're written by the same person. They share similar philosophies, but jobs are fasacas explores in novel full form this concept of living a life you don't want and what deferral means and how you could live it in in another way very related to life and have a second which is action oriented to change someone to actually have some tools where they could go and change their. Speaker 2 Life, Well, I think you, you sense that urgency all throughout it. And I think I think as people dive into the books and read them, I think you it it, it helps you look at all areas of your own life. Yeah. In ways that sometimes you don't look at because you're scared of what you'll find. Yeah. And when you can read it in a story form, it's it's, it's easier, it's weird. It's easier to see it in others 1st and then reflect upon yourself then then look into yourself first because you haven't looked in there for a long time. But how? Speaker 1 True is that think about how easy it is to give advice oh 100% but how hard it is to see your own issues or problems and take your own advice so so easy to tell others what to do it's. Speaker 2 Just so much more. Yeah. I just found it was a gentle way for me to self reflect on my life. So it's beautiful. And I, I, I encourage those listening to this to, to dive into these books and they're, they're incredible. I, I, I didn't want us to, to end just yet because I still have a thought too, in that I think one of the things that stops people from achieving the things they want is fear. Fear is such a big thing, even public speaking, it's the thing that people fear the most. And, and I've seen some incredible speakers come through my time who don't do it because they're scared. But the ability is there, the vocal is there, the body, like the stories are there. Fear stops them from doing it. Speaker 1 It's my one of my favorite topics. Couldn't agree. Yeah, favorite topics because because it's it's like you've said, such a major inhibitor of action major, major just like you've you know, I don't know whether it's true or not, but the saying is that public speaking is the number one fear more than death, right? Every everyone has regardless of whether that's true or not, people do fear generally public speaking. So here's just my my 2 observations about fear that I think could help listeners. The first observation is that fear is a survival emotion that has been created through millions of years of evolution to keep you alive. And it is triggered when new experiences come to light because new can be danger, new environment, new people, danger, danger, danger, danger. If I go and embarrass myself on stage, danger, my standing, my ability to earn money, my ability, you know, so it's, it's, it's a dangerous signal, but it's the way people should look at it is it's an indicator of progress. You could like it's it'd be impossible for us to write out our goals like, like you wanting to be one of the best speakers, if not the best speaker in the world, however you character authorize that, whether it's through the amount charged by keynote or however else. And by definition, not do new things in accomplishing that. And by definition, when you're doing those new things, not experience fear, right? It's just it's, it's physically impossible, right. So I always so that's the first thing. Fear is your indicator of progress towards a goal. And if you're not experiencing fear, I'm willing to bet that your goals are just nothing, nothing you haven't done before. Like, you know, I'll go to work. You're doing nothing new. You're doing nothing new. So. Speaker 2 Fear is an indicator that you're doing something new. It's an indicator. Speaker 1 You keep going. So imagine you've never started a business before and your goal is to start a business. How much fear are you going to expect? A lot. But how much fear will you experience the second time you start a? Speaker 2 Business a little bit less, but yeah. Speaker 1 And then by and then like for me, I've been an entrepreneur for more than 30 years. It's just the way of living. You don't even think about those those kind of things. But the second one, which I think is a more practical and more important, is fear as an emotion and it paralyses people like these people that have terrors in the middle of the night. You know they'll get up on stage and they'll shake. It's uncontrollable. What I have found helps, and again through research helps, is to take an emotion out from this emotive realm and put into the realm of logic. So name the thing. OK, even when you say I'm afraid right now, even just by saying that I'm now taking the emotion, I'm putting it on the table. Let's say my fear is this particular cup. I'm afraid now I'm going to explore this cup now, see how my logical part of my brain's turned on. I'm now in analysis mode. Why am I afraid? Well, but let's say keynote speaking. I'm afraid of going up and not delivering A keynote. I make a joke. No one laughs. I embarrass Pierce myself. I forget what I say. OK, what's the worst that can happen? How can I prevent that fear? So like, by the way, I've said a lot of jokes on stage where there was death silence. Speaker 2 I know I was there all. Speaker 1 Right, you didn't need to say that, right you. Speaker 2 Didn't need to say I was there for many. Speaker 1 Of those but but you would have also seen that sometimes I have found ways to recover from that and and when no one laughs, I would say something like. Speaker 2 That one was for me. That one was for me. I speak. Speaker 1 Yeah, right. And then people would start laughing. I say. I say, look, I talk so much that some jokes I've got to just say for myself just to keep myself engaged and motivated to speak in front of you. It's such a good book. And then people start laughing. I said, don't laugh. That one was like that. You do not laugh more and then they laugh more. Right. So. But but but the important thing is that that came through identifying the fear. Yeah. Yeah. And once you once you remove it from just paralyzing emotion and begin talking about it in a logical framework that you can analyze and what's the worst that can happen? And if that happens, what can I do? That's all logic, etcetera. You're going to dramatically reduce your, it's like a business. I fear starting a business and failing, going bankrupt, losing my home. OK, how do I make sure that doesn't happen? Well, I won't give any personal guarantees. And if this doesn't happen by this date, then I'm not going to, I'm going to shut the business down and I'll do this. Except that's how you take the unpick the fear, defang it, remove its power. Speaker 2 I I love what you're saying because I think a lot about scary movies. The the monsters in the movies that are the scariest are the ones you can't see. And when you can't see it, you feel more scared of it. And you think of the main character. The main character is always running away from it, running away from it. And then there's always a turning point where the character turns around and faces the monster. And the moment they face the monster, they're no longer scared. You as the viewer, you're no longer scared once you can see it, identify it, know where it is. So I think a huge part of fear comes from the unknown. Yeah. And what you're doing is you're making more of the unknown known. Yeah, I know the bottom of the cup of the cup. I know the inside. I know the liquid. I know what's inside. I know. So the more knowns that you can start to extract from the thing that you fear, it becomes less. Speaker 1 Scary. Yeah, that's very good way of. Speaker 2 Putting it whereas, Yeah, I think people tend to just avoid it, avoid it, avoid it more, unknown more. And then the more you know less, the less you know about it now, the scarier it becomes. Yeah. Whereas. And it's so funny because this is so fractal. It's so crazy. I think I've never seen it in this much clarity until we've talked about it like this. But it's like, it's what we've spoken about here. When you spend time with people who know about the thing you're scared of, who aren't scared of it, who can describe to you in detail the thing you're scared of, You'll you'll be less scared. Like I've met a lot of unknown. Speaker 1 Absolutely. Like I've met lots of entrepreneurs that have never sold a company before and they fear and by the way, there's good reason to fear those things like like it is a legal contract, share purchase agreements, you're you're making representations and warranties. You could be sued. You could actually, they, they could be a transaction structure where in the end they'll take your company for nothing if you don't know what you're doing right. So there are things to be afraid of. However, if you've spent time with people that have sold their company, don't demystify all that. Here's the five things you need to look out for. Then make sure this doesn't happen. Go and use this lawyer. By the way, when I sold a company, this happened to me. You got to look out for that. Imagine meeting a lot of people. Why? It's like it's just a thing. You shine a flashlight in it. What's in this thing? OK, I need to look out for that. I need to look out for that. I need. And then if I'm in that group, once I'm in a transaction, I can go and revert to them. And I mean, that can be anything that can be keynote speaking, that can be rock climbing, that can be being an author. So you see how it impacts belief, but knowledge and it disarms the fear. It all can all through environment, all through people. So no wonder that people that spend time with a certain set of people, and if those people are successful, they're more likely to be successful because of these. I mean, it's just you don't need to be a rocket scientist to see how obvious that is just from the things we've talked about. Speaker 2 I think if you're listening to this right now, write down something you're scared of this year. Just write one thing down that scares you and make an effort to take action to get to know that thing a little more. Whatever it is that scares you, whatever your cup is, go learn about that more. Because I think as you learn about it more, make more of the unknowns known. You'll find yourself less scared of it as you do that, as opposed to just continually ignoring it. So I think just make a pragmatic for yourself. Speaker 1 Yeah, you just remind me of a funny story I watched Conjuring 4 and I. Speaker 2 Haven't seen it yet. Speaker 1 Yeah, I have this apartment and I've invited my family and sometimes I'd spend the night there when I've got like a morning flight etcetera. So I can just just go and leave. Anyway, my whole family left after conjuring and I went and took a bath. And while I'm in the bath, I heard the front door open and close and I thought I was my younger son. And I'm yelling at him, Arthur, you know, make sure you do so. And so he doesn't respond. So I don't think I thought he left something, etcetera. And then something else happened. But the third thing was that where the bath is, there's a wall and there's a peg for a towel. And I'm reading in the bathtub and out of the corner of my eye, that hanging towel turns into a little devil that turns around and looks at me. Oh God freak out and I think it was for the next two or three weeks I'd hear voices in there idea so that's that's like a rule one no more yeah yeah when I'm staying alone and it's alright and I asked my son like why did you come in and and then leave I didn't come back no one came back so it was when when you. Speaker 2 Don't you work out what that noise was? No. Speaker 1 No. And then and then the next morning I was writing or and I'm sitting, I'm having a coffee, it's very early in the morning and I hear breathing behind the chair. Yeah, so it just off topic, but oh. Speaker 2 Gosh. Speaker 1 It is so pronounced. Speaker 2 I think it's, I think it's just one of the I think it's one of the side effects of getting older. You're starting to hear, you're starting to hear things, starting to see things. Matthew. Oh man, keep taking your. Speaker 1 Calcium tablets I'd recommend conjuring you get a good scare. Self-Actualization and Sharing Knowledge in Later Life And not getting older and I think I think I'd love to to to kind of end our time together with a question. This book is about success and you being in this chapter of your life now, I think you you, you alluded to a little bit, but what's your definition of success for you in this chapter of life, Matthew? Speaker 1 Yeah, I, I first of all, I've reflected on our conversation that we've had this morning and we started off by saying younger people view success in materialistic terms. I think that's true. And I gave the reasons. I think in the middle years of our life we view, or my view of success, was the time that I could be with family and my children to really be there for them so they could be the best human beings and have the best. Speaker 2 I've watched you do that. Speaker 1 And so I could impress memories. Speaker 2 Yeah, you've done that so well. Speaker 1 And now that they're older, early 20s, you know, it's like the things you can't go back in time and do those things. To answer your question specifically, for this part of my life, it's really for me, self actualization and and self actualization for me is authorship and sharing knowledge. And that knowledge can come in the form of novel stories like Jobs of Fasaka's tool boxes, instructions like Life and have a second. It can come in the form of podcasts and others. But there's no better feeling than hearing from someone, something you said or something you wrote. Really. Yeah. Impacted me. It changed. I used to teach entrepreneurship at Adelaide University for a decade and it was such a feeling when you'd meet someone on the street, you know, eight years later and they said I took your class 8 years ago and it made me become an entrepreneur. It changed my life. It made me do this, it made me do that. And so I love that. And that's really I love that the most. And that's the thing that I think from now to whenever the end is, which I hope is going to be a long time, I'd like to continue doing. Speaker 2 Oh, that's, that's such a beautiful response. And and you know, and nightly you just said early chapters, you've done your middle chapters. So you're on the last set of chapters, brother. Speaker 1 I think you've phrased it too dramatically because, because you've made it sound like last chapters, but look, one third, one third, one third. But another way of looking at it is the calling. Yeah, yeah, right. That's right. That's right. Like how much do you remember from from the first two years of your life? I mean nothing, right, Right. So, so I think you can underweight those. We can underweight those. Speaker 2 I should have framed the question is so Matthew, in your last chapter of life? Speaker 1 What is your cause? Speaker 2 But I but I think that's beautiful. And I just really want to say too, is that I've watched you live those middle chapters so beautifully. You know, Matthew, you inspire me from the standpoint of being an entrepreneur. You inspire me from the standpoint of being a father and a husband. You inspire me as an entire human being. So I, I just want to say thank you. I want to say I love you as a friend, as a mentor. You, you've, you've been someone who's helped me flourish as an individual. And I, I feel so lucky now to get to share you with the rest of the world because I think you should not be a secret. You should not be someone someone hidden away in your apartment because I know you love wearing your rock. Your own. Yeah, hearing voices. You got to be careful with that. Less scary movies. But I just want to say thank you. Speaker 1 Thank you, Ben, you know I love you like a brother and the things that you love in me, just so you know they wouldn't exist without you and that's the most important. But I am who I am because of your influence. Speaker 2 Thank you, Matthew. And what a beautiful place for us to bookend this, this podcast. This won't be the last one. I'll be back. Yeah. You've got an Arnold line in there. Just so you all know, he brings in Arnold Schwarzenegger scripts every single time he can. And you, you got it. Made a. Speaker 1 Fraternity pledge way back in college that I would never do an interview without. Speaker 2 Adding, you've got it right in the last. Speaker 1 Moment. Yeah, yeah, it's a pledge. OK, so. Speaker 2 So big thank you to all the listeners and Matthew, until next time. Speaker 1 Thanks for having me, Ben. It's been a pleasure. Speaker 2 Thanks brother.