Tam’s husband and Discern Co-Founder Andy Cooke

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.

(00:05):
Nice to meet you, Andy Cooke.
It's so nice to meet you finally as well. I know, isn't that lovely?
We can both go into that pretty fast, actually, if we need to.
Yeah, I reckon. So we have met before because you're my husband.
And I was thinking about it. We've been married for 12 years.

(00:26):
All the pressures on. You're correct. Well, I celebrated our 12-year anniversary
last year, if you don't remember. If you don't remember, I was going 12 years,
12 years, and then we're almost at 12 years.
And then I bought the wrong themed gift because I bought you the 12 year gift
and it was meant to be 11. Yeah.
Every year I'm on the, I'm on the Google finding out the different versions

(00:46):
of gifts that you can get.
So you can do the traditional one where it's something, you know,
like paper or, or wood or whatever.
And then of course it's the, you know, post 2010 version where it's like.
Yeah, the modern version.
Yeah. A level five Moulin X mixer for the kitchen or something like that.
It's all very specific to what they're marketing at the time.
You just reminded me of two things. One was when we very first met and the other

(01:09):
one was when we'd been together three months.
Do you remember what you bought me for our three-month anniversary?
Yes, that's right. What did you buy me? I bought you a Lindt chocolate.
And what was the meaning? It was a reference. Isn't it a Seinfeld thing where
he said, you know, third-month anniversary. What is that? Lindt?
So I got you a Lindt chocolate. Yeah, yeah. It was very cool.

(01:29):
A little play on words. It was very cool.
Yeah. That was very cool. Our first meeting wasn't probably as cool.
We met a mutual friend. I was looking to get into training and we were both
going out with other people.
You mentioned it maybe 18 times in our first meeting about your girlfriend.
I was like, mate, I don't want anything from you. I'm just here to find out

(01:49):
about being a trainer. Yeah.
Anyway, and you didn't really. I clearly must have had some kind of foresight.
There must have been something happening at an unconscious level, right? True.
Mentioned the girlfriend. friends keep saying it.
But I have a lot of, you know, I still have some emotional hurt to work through
from that. I know, because of how I described you after. Yes, that's right.

(02:10):
I believe you described me as a business wanker.
I didn't say business wanker. I said a bit of a wanker. Oh, I don't know whether that's better or worse.
We were very professional. Yeah. But, you know, back then you were a bit full
of it, so that makes sense.
I was. I think that's, you know, we're getting very early into
the me being vulnerable and admitting stuff about myself piece

(02:33):
but but but i definitely i you and
i've talked about this i've reflected on the fact that early in my
like standing in front of rooms for full of people talking to
them about stuff bit i was a little bit
game show i was a little bit you know a little bit hey there you know like a
little bit showy yeah but it totally worked oh yeah it did it wasn't particularly

(02:56):
authentic but yeah it worked yeah it worked really well i mean that speaking
of jumping the gun that That was one of the things I was going to ask you about
was your draw to training.
Do you want to start there or do you want to go further back?
Like Wayne's going, do-li-do-li-do-li-do. Do you remember that?
Yeah, totally. I was going to say, you're not too young because you're my age.
No, absolutely not. I've got all the references.
So do you want to go like, do-li-do-li-do, back to being a kid or do you want

(03:19):
to? Well, I'm happy to go wherever you lead me.
I am very much in the journey being led gently by your kind hand.
Is that a hint how I should deal with you from now on? Yes.
I was going to say for the 50-50 of when I say, oh, you know,
I can be a real bitch. I can be a real asshole. And everyone's like, no.
And I'm like, oh, God, now I'm going to interview Andy.

(03:41):
Shall I be going testify? Well. No, no, sorry. You could say testify.
It's really not true. It's not.
It's not. It's part of something. We will talk about that today.
We will talk about it. By all means. We will talk about it. Never.
No, we will. We will. But before we do that, I want to ask you about being in
the room because you sort of came around to training in a way that,

(04:04):
you know, Danielle and I often talk about on this, and I talk to people about their why, right?
And realizing you should do training was a bit of an aha, eureka-ish.
It was, yeah, absolutely.
So tell us a bit about... Well, to then, yeah. Not to baby, but to then.
Okay. So I think, yes, it's true.
I went on a journey and it was a clumsy, unplanned, don't know really where

(04:30):
I'm going kind of journey.
So, you know, I did the usual range of stuff coming out of school and uni,
you know, waited tables and got shouted out by Northern chefs and worked in
call centres and a whole bunch of different stuff for lots of different organisations,
a lot of it in sort of easy to get into customer service-y kind of jobs,

(04:50):
and then would just sort of work my way through to the point where I realised
that it was clearly not the role for me and that I was generally inept,
to the point that I wouldn't be able to proceed any further.
And then I think, and this is always a very dangerous thing to admit out loud,
but the last job that I had of any significance before I made the shift in the

(05:13):
direction that I made was at the ATO of all places.
That's right. I was there for three years in Sydney. You know,
when we were doing our crossing paths thing? Yes, yes.
You could tell a romantic story
about our crossing paths because we really did a lot of it, didn't we?
For the sake of the audience, for the sake of the audience.
We are breaking the fourth wall already for the sake of the audience.

(05:33):
You sounded so theatre then. No.
Darling, I need my scarf over the shirt. Should I say for the record that you're
not gay and get that out of the way?
You might have an alter ego called Tarquin, don't I? Yeah, who wears a scarf and he is gay.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, he definitely, yeah. Well, the last time Danielle and I spoke,
we were talking about my lesbianism. So that's kind of perfect.

(05:53):
I feel like I've taken this off track immediately. No, no, there is no track.
Okay, there's no track. There's no track. Okay, good. Okay. But you know what
you've just made me realise,
that going back in time, I didn't realise that you had your training sort of
epiphany, it was post the ATO.
So you had already lived in Sydney, worked in Sydney.

(06:17):
Well, I mean, I had my training epiphany in a sense at the ATO,
I think that's fair to say.
And then I realised that the dream that came out of that epiphany in a way that
was really kind of kismet-y in a way. Yes, yes.
Okay, let's take a step back because we're literally geographically going all

(06:37):
around the place and one of the things that's in my mind is can people pick
up your accent that's not Australian because we always have this discussion.
So I think you have a very obvious non-Australian accent.
We were having this conversation with one of your good friend's daughters yesterday.
Today. Yes. Did she think you had an Australian accent?
No. Oh, no. She didn't think that I had a British accent.
That's right. Until I started being hoity-toity. That's right.

(07:00):
Well, you put it on, but she thought you only sounded Australian,
whereas me and Susie, her mom, thought you sound English. So you always get different.
It's a generational thing, maybe. I don't know. I don't know.
So let's use that excuse to go back further and work our way back up to training.
So you were born- All right. We'll put a pin in the ATO and our crossing of paths.
Yes. Okay. Okay. So I was born. You were. I can confirm that.

(07:23):
I'm super happy about it. It's been good for me, good for our child.
No, I'm just generally quite approving of the experience of being alive.
I know. Definitely. I thank your mother.
Yeah. I'm very grateful for both of the providers of zygotes.
Don't put that on the birthday card. So, yes, I was born in Woolwich.

(07:43):
Here we go. I'll just give away all of my security questions.
My mother's maiden name was.
My mother's maiden name. My first pet, Twiglet.
God, Grayson's going to have to get rid of. It wasn't my first pet,
actually. It was my sister's first pet. Okay. As long as it's not one of your
passwords. Yeah, absolutely.
So I was born in Woolwich, and there long enough ready to be born.

(08:06):
I don't think we were living in Woolwich.
My parents, of course, if they listen to this, will be able to correct all the missing bits.
And your mum will. Dad was in the army. Yes. So he was in the Royal Engineers in Great Britain.
Yes. And had got there via his youth of Zimbabwe, and mum had got there via
her growing up here in WA.

(08:28):
And then they collided in Europe, and mum extended her holiday by some several
decades. 27 years, I think she told my mum.
So then I was an army brat moving around every two to three years on a regular
basis and I don't know how much detail you want from me. Well,
as much as you want to give, you're the guest.

(08:49):
So you moved around your army and I know at what I thought was a tragically
young age but I've now got a little bit more used to it because of all the moving
and therefore difficulty in going to good schools, you and your sister went
off to boarding school. Indeed.
I whisked off at the age of nine to St Lawrence College in Ramsgate, Kent.
They say of Kent that Kent is the garden of England.

(09:12):
St. Lawrence College is in Thanet, which they say is the compost heap of the Garden of England.
But actually there's a little, just a little section of Thanet, which is St.
Lawrence College, which is very nice and ivy clad. Harry Potter.
Yeah. So we went there when we were doing the, we're engaged.
Let's go and relive Andy's youth and went there and went other places.

(09:35):
I won't do spoilers because, you know, there's other countries to be mentioned.
Okay. But it was very Harry Potter and beautiful, definitely a beautiful school.
And you went with lots of people to school that all, you make up their names, right?
So, I mean, again, Dan will correct my facts on this.
But the reason that Sue and myself could both go to pretty good boarding schools

(09:57):
was because the British Army at the time had this special grant for army kids.
Kids because they knew full well that our educational experiences would have
been what they were up to my age nine, which was to change schools every couple of years.
And it was quite sort of disruptive to the educational process.
Yeah. Your primary school education will probably come back to connected to something else.

(10:19):
But unbelievably, I already know about you. So we got this grant and it meant
that we could go to this school that put us in an environment that was,
let's just say, substantially outside of our normal socioeconomic demographic, shall we say.
Well, when the elephant came to the fate, I thought we were at the next level, right? Yes, indeed.

(10:40):
So when Mrs. Bassatney brought the elephant to the fate to give rides to kids
and flew in at the beginning of term in her helicopter and things of that ilk,
that was definitely an indicator that I was in a slightly different echelon, shall we say.
And, of course, because it was a British educational institution that was quite
good, it was the United Nations. So Tam always-

(11:05):
Again, back to our audience, Tam always, you always say.
I'm swapping between interviewer and wife. So the interviewer is like,
yes, do whatever you like. And the wife's like, don't look at the camera.
That's not how we do it. You want to give me some notes? You're going to literally
see the 50-50 in action. Honey, don't have to look at the camera.
So you always take the mickey out of me, of course,

(11:27):
because whenever I mention people from school and I'm talking about Daniel Daniel
Gendria or Iman Moverhead or Kokyong Kong or any of the very real people that
I actually went to school with that are real people.
If they existed, I expect them to get in touch.
If they don't get in touch, I will have proof. You know I don't stay in touch

(11:48):
with people in my life. There's no chance of that happening. That's true.
So yeah, so I went to boarding school. Where are we going next?
Yeah, so you went to boarding school and then you went to university and you
went to the The University of Sussex. Indeed, yeah.
The Rolling Downs of Sussex. We went to Sussex too. We really did a History
of Andy tour. Yeah, I know. It was good. I enjoyed it.

(12:11):
Well, for me, it was nostalgic, wandering up the streets of Brighton and to
my little terrace-housed place that I spent most of my time in my dressing gown
in. There was definitely nice bits to it.
Yeah. Definitely nice bits to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
What did you not like? Well, we've already discussed this. There was quite a

(12:31):
few challenges on that. Oh, indeed.
So, yeah, being in Europe and the cold and the freezing and all that sort of
stuff and you having kind of a perpetual cold.
I did have a cold for the three weeks of the five.
I had a very… What was the name of that German place, that German city that we were in?
Rottenberg-Albden-Talba, I think it was, something like that. Yes.

(12:54):
We'd come from the lovely Biot Hotel where we stole morning breakfast every
day to make it into our lunch. Yes. Do you remember? Yes.
We stole breakfast every day on that trip to have lunch. It was fabulous.
It was awesome. We stayed at, we went to Schloss Neuschwanstein.
That's right. Did I say it correctly?
You know I'm going to have to repeat it now and say Schloss Neuschwanstein.

(13:16):
Yeah. To anyone German, of course, I probably got that wrong too.
Well, I mean, you know it's our greatest risk to our marriage is the way that you pronounce things.
Indeed. And we will not mention the Spanish city with the way you say it.
Oh, come on, you've got to let me now. Well, I've told you, you can take the risk.
So if there are divorce papers at some point in the future, there'll be a line,
unreconcilable differences, including the following.

(13:39):
And the first bullet point will be me saying Barcelona. It's a...
I think you'll find that's Barcelona.
I get away with saying it twice now because I'm doing an interview.
Buenos Aires. But I now have to say it because I used to say Buenos Aires and
you go, actually, it's Buenos Aires.

(13:59):
I'm really coming off sounding really good here.
Well, I think it's good to get that out as well. He's a pretentious person.
Yes, he is. Remember how when we first met I had a certain opinion and some
of that has cleared away.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you've taken some of the edges off of me. Let's put it that way. Oh, God.
True. So, boarding school, uni, so many girlfriends.

(14:21):
We're not talking about any of them, but you're busy. Yeah, I know.
Oh, we didn't set up a safe word.
Oh yeah, we were going to set up a safe word. We were for this interview because
I had two reasons that we were going to have a safe word.
The first was that, you know, if you start doing something that's going to make
me cry in public for posterity, because, you know, you have a way of being able
to do that occasionally.

(14:42):
Right. So I was going to get ready with a safe word for that.
And then the other is if we were doing something that would be destructive to
our marriage in this conversation.
Right? Like I feel like this is going in a direction it shouldn't. So two separate ones.
What about. Same safe word. Both will do. What? But how do I know which direction
it's heading in? Oh, it doesn't matter. Both are equally important.

(15:04):
Me crying, ruining our marriage. What about if I mention Mercedes?
Because it's always an extra reason. No, because then you might forget and it'll
be like, you know, you're doing a cross-promotion slash bid for advertising support.
It's always a cross-promotion slash bid for. No, I want to go with pineapple.

(15:25):
Okay. It's not going to be easy to throw in, but that's fine.
Okay. Okay. Boarding school, uni, girlfriends.
Yes. Speaking of girlfriends, tried to come to Perth and one of them didn't
help you get to the airport. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.
That's not pineapple, right? No, no, that's not pineapple. No,
no. So yeah, I was meant to be coming out to Australia.

(15:47):
My girlfriend at the time was not particularly a fan of that concept,
but had mostly got on board with it.
And myself, herself, and another friend were supposedly driving me to the airport.
And yeah, I missed my plane. And what was the consequence of that?
Super popular with my parents, who had paid for the original ticket.
Yes. Who cleverly, I think, you know, in terms of, you know,

(16:08):
creating parental boundaries at that point said, no, no, we're not paying for
another ticket now that you've missed your flight. Yes. You're going to have to stay and-
earn the money to get the next flight once you can afford to replace the one
that you wasted. Well, I mean, appropriate. What were you, 21?
Yeah. As it turns out, I ended up getting a loan from them and I ended up paying

(16:28):
off to deal with that situation.
Yeah. Because I had Buckley's chance of earning enough money from the meagre
pub work that I was doing at the time.
So you had been to Australia once before, before coming to live? I had in 1988.
We came via Singapore. It was very exciting.
And we spent time, of course, with the fam. We arrived at Perth Airport.

(16:51):
And you know how people rock up to the international arrivals and there's like
this big crowd of people waiting for individuals to come out? Yes.
The crowd was our family, like the whole crowd. It was fantastic.
But, of course, really bizarre for me because for me, really most of my early life,
my extended family were those people who sent me ill-fitting jumpers for the

(17:16):
size that I was a year ago for Christmas and stuff like that.
And then occasionally rocked up and came and stayed with us in various places
around England and Europe to say hello.
Your family, your foursome family, mum, dad, Sue and yourself was really the,
was the unit, right? The type nuclear. And somewhat that continues to be the
case, less so, but, yeah, there's still that flavour.

(17:37):
Yeah. I learnt pretty quickly not to dog you out to your family too much because
the loyalty would kick in even if I was absolutely accurate.
I feel like we would have been a –.
On a number of occasions, I think there were girlfriends or boyfriends of either
one of us that, you know, noticed what it takes to sort of elbow your way into

(17:59):
our nuclear circle, as it were.
Yeah. I don't think I was really fully aware of that until more recent years, to be honest.
Yeah, well, I mean, of course, we've got there in a very nice way and we have
a very nice time now. Super kumbaya.
Even to the point where your parents will sometimes dog you out to me.
So that's been a nice. That's always a good sign, right? Really good.

(18:19):
I feel like that's an indication of success. I feel like I've got a level of
loyalty to you and them that they can occasionally go. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So you come out to Australia, you've been once before, really big move, right?
Like for you, Anzu, you're young adults and you leave the country where all
your mates are, all your background is.

(18:39):
Yeah, and it wasn't nothing. nothing i think
i'd had a lot of training around okay where
am i now kind of thing yeah right but it was definitely a cultural shift
for sure coming out here to west australia you
know going going from sort of being in growing up various i mean we you know
despite the fact that we were army brats we actually didn't do a huge our radius

(19:01):
wasn't that big it was you know various places in germany various places in
the uk really that was it fundamentally but we'd had this life where
we were living in a place where within half an hour, 45 minutes,
you could be in another culture, in another language,
across a border.

(19:23):
To the most isolated city in the southern hemisphere.
In the world, I believe. In the world, right. The most isolated capital city
in the world. I mean, and glorious.
I remember thinking, and I'm sure that this is the same sort of thing,
I think when I was listening to Ash talking to you the other day,
She probably would have had the same sorts of comments.

(19:43):
My experience was I got here and, of course, I'd been before,
like we said, in 88. Yeah.
But I think it was really once I'd been here for a while and living and going
to work and so on, and I'd come out of the house and I was still living with
mum and dad because I was paying off my debt to them for the ticket and all
the rest of the stuff that I'd got by way of debts.

(20:03):
So I'm at their place and I come out of the front of the house and I look up
and the sky is so much further away than it's supposed to be from a pommy perspective,
you know, because it's usually a lot closer, a lot darker, a lot cloudier.
And it was always fabulously blue with a couple of fluffy numbers up in the distance.
And I would go, wow, that's amazing. And then I remember, I don't know precisely

(20:27):
when, maybe a month, two months in, there was a small part of me who went,
oh, you know, kind of like, oh, the sky is blue again, like that, you know.
And I had this complex web of feelings of both being delighted still but also
a little bit disappointed that I was finding that kind of boring now,

(20:47):
but it was, yeah, it's really fascinating.
And then there's all the other, you know, cultural norms that,
you know, we can get into.
Yeah, and 21, so you're 50 now. So, you know, almost 30 years ago,
Ash and I were talking about this, you know, Perth is a very different place now to what it was then.
And your parents had bought in really then a really outer sandpit suburb,

(21:08):
right? Yeah, poorly sandpit. Oh, yeah.
They were one of the first houses, weren't they, in that development?
A hundred percent, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like now it's green and has trees and is pretty.
So that was another contrast, yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. Because I'd gone from
either Brighton or Upper Quinton, which you've also visited.
I have, indeed. Sounds fabulously British to my ear now.
Yes, it does. So we were in the middle of the Cotswolds, surrounded by rolling fields.

(21:31):
That's right. Don't get them mixed up. We were in Upper Quinton,
in Dobby Road. Was Upper Quinton better or was it just a geographical reference?
I think probably if you asked a couple of the residents of Upper Quinton,
and they would have said it was better. It definitely had a little bit of a...
Slightly higher class feeling to it. Do you know, you will know this being married

(21:51):
to me, but I grew up in Yokine.
Yes. Yokine used to be known as Mount Yokine.
And there was quite the upset when they dropped the mount because when my parents-
An actual change to geography just.
Well, see, when my parents bought Mount Yokine was, you know,
there's a water tower, which anyone in Perth can have a look for from the hills.

(22:12):
And it's the highest point in Perth. And it's right near my parents' old house.
Us in Melt, Yokine, and then the bit down the bottom where Finder Square and
those dog swamp is, that was Yokine.
And dog swamp is such a, I know, I just, I just, I love to just imagine the
people sitting around the table making the decision. It's like,

(22:33):
what do we go with? I don't know.
Something Bambi, Crescent, you know, Butterfly, Kiss, Maine.
That's how you know you're in a sandpit suburb. Meadow Whisper.
No, Dog Swamp. Misty Falls, Caldersek.
That's the biggest sand in Southern Ireland.

(22:53):
Autumn Glade. But they weren't doing it in those days.
It's like, what's it called? It's a swamp and it's got dogs near it.
It's called a dog swamp. It's shaped like a dog.
Oh, is that why it's called a dog swamp? Well, it was. They cut some off to
build a shopping centre.
I don't know what it's shaped like now.
Lame Dog Swamp.

(23:14):
Oh, that's fantastic. So no wonder people wanted to live in Mount.
Oh, Mount Yocon. It's lovely. City views. You know, if you had a tall enough
house. We didn't, but that's by the by.
So you came out to Australia, you were dealing with the sand,
the blue sky, you're 21, and then this is the start of the time of having all
these little weird sort of, we're not going to get anywhere with these kind

(23:37):
of jobs just to experiment and pay the bills.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I've got a little bit of emotional stuff in amongst
some of that, too, because I was very kindly helped out by family members on
a couple of different occasions.
So my auntie, oh my God. I think it's your cousin.
Annette. It's my cousin, Annette. My auntie, let's just pretend like I was saying

(24:01):
this all along. My auntie Maureen's daughter...
Annette was at that point working in HR for a now non-existent organisation called Paxton Mobile.
Great name. I think it was short for Pacific Star or something like that.
And they were having a crack at trying to break into the telecom world and failed miserably.

(24:23):
But she got me one of those customer service jobs that I did a half-assed job
of doing for as long as it was possible to do. I think you would have done a good job. I was okay.
I was okay. Were you really half-assed? Like, eh. I don't know.
I mean, I think people would have, you know, I think this was the early stages
of recognising why I needed to become a trainer because all of the stuff that

(24:47):
was around communication, I was fine at.
Yes. You know, people say very nice things about my customer service.
Yeah, I was going to say. And I explained things to clients.
Yes, wonderful. All that sort of stuff. But if there was any requirement to
fill out paperwork or do anything remotely boring or maintenance-y,
I was hopeless And I was always the one being, you know, quietly spoken to about,
you know, not getting that stuff done. Yeah, well, actually,

(25:08):
that wasn't dissimilar for me.
And I think that's why we've had certain challenges in that side of our current business.
I remember I commented to a manager of mine, my first manager in pharmaceuticals,
and I said, you know, thanks for being my manager in more ways than one.
And it was that, you know, I do a good job, sell well, have good relationships.
But then, yeah, I had certain paperwork that needed to be due or,

(25:30):
you know, I was always late. One time I had a mobile bill because we had a budget
on our mobiles and one of my friends who was in HR said, Tam,
you've got to do something about your mobile.
And I said, oh, no, no, it's always over. Don't worry about it.
And she goes, your name got specifically mentioned in the senior management meeting.
You were in the quarterly notes. I was, my literal name. That bill got paid pretty fast after that.

(25:54):
Yeah. But, yeah, so you did. So you see, if you had been on the Paxton mobile
plan, you would have called me and I would have talked to you about that unpaid bill.
You're not even half-assed now and it was 29 years ago. So there you go.
So that was one of the several jobs. And then there was another just to keep
the theme of me sort of generally not, you know, paying back people for their kind efforts.

(26:17):
Another job and another point in time, not immediately after the Paxton mobile
job, was interestingly enough for Annette's husband, Keith, who's traditionally
been a bit of a wheeler dealer and he was quite an entrepreneurial fellow.
And he bought a computer shop in Nedlands.
And he said, I'm going to put you in as the manager.

(26:39):
And I, of course, started freaking out immediately and asked 58,000 questions,
as you well know I do when I'm faced with a novel situation.
And he was satisfied enough by my inquisitive nature that I was the person for the job. Oh, wow.
I believe also that he could pay me, you know, reasonable but perhaps less than market rates.
I don't know. I have no memory of precisely what I was being paid.

(27:00):
I was probably being paid very generously.
I don't know. That was very cynical of me to say that. It's fine, no.
But he kept it in the family and I did a medium to ordinary to not really very
good job of managing a retail environment and learning about PCs and getting
them repaired and stuff like that.
And I think he really would have preferred that I had been more entrepreneurial

(27:22):
like him and sort of grown the empire.
But all I could really be was a storekeeper and an average one at best.
I blame him. So a little bit of guilt around that. Nah, like what the hell was
he doing? Hang on, he might watch this.
You know, but that's fine.
Because if you look back, like a store manager, what skills does it require

(27:44):
and then what are your skills?
The interview process needed to be much more vigorous because,
yes, you would have been good with customers.
But as a manager, all the admin staff, all the technical staff and then the
computers themselves, like you ended up being an IT trainer, right?
Having the courage to go out and sort of break new ground and find new clients

(28:05):
and all that sort of stuff.
I mean, hell, how long have we been running Discern for now? About eight years.
Eight years, and I still, I'm very glad that we've got to the point where I
don't have to do anything like that any longer, right? That's fabulous for me.
But in the early days, I do distinctly remember the contrast between you and

(28:25):
me going to a network evening on one of the nights where the other had to stay home with Sam,
and, you know, you would go to the network evening and you'd talk to the person,
you know, who's running it and say, right, who do I need to talk to?
And then you were like a very friendly shark making your way through the crowd
and connecting. Looking for the blood.
Coming back with hundreds of business cards and new connections and I'd rock

(28:48):
up and awkwardly stand next to the dude near the drinks table for an hour and
a half and have a lovely conversation but make absolutely zero progress in business development.
I don't know if you went to many networking years actually when you told me how each one had gone.
No, it really wasn't. It wasn't a winning strategy for us. No,
well, the yin yang is what works for us, right?

(29:11):
Because our strengths and weaknesses, we have a couple of matching weaknesses.
So that's a bit of a trick.
But in terms of our strengths and weaknesses, that's worked out pretty well.
And I was saying to Sam the other day the same thing.
Actually, no, I was saying to you because you felt guilty about not organising
his crazy birthday party.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. And I said, yeah, I organise the crazy birthday
parties and then you do all these other things.
Yeah, we had a treasure hunt. That went really well. Oh, it was so good.

(29:33):
So he decided he wanted a scavenger hunt and it had to end in time zone in Midland.
And if anyone lives near Midland, let's just say Asterix Exciting Shopping Centre.
You never know what's going to happen.
Yeah, yeah. So we decided because of the weather in winter, we couldn't do the
scavenger hunt outside and he wanted it to end in time zone anyway.
So I said, okay, let's do it at Midland Gate.

(29:54):
So we sent out this invitation that he had written on pirate paper.
He was very, very controlling about that invitation and very.
I don't know where he gets that from, really. I was going to say,
I don't know why I'm getting karma for what you're like.
And that was a wife moment. But it's very lucky, right? It's very lucky for
him that he's got the two of us because, as we said when you and I were last

(30:17):
talking about this, when he says, oh, Dad, we should do blah,
blah, blah, blah, like any kid would, right?
Let's do blah, blah, blah, and we can get a giraffe and a blah, blah, blah.
My first reaction is always an internal groan and wail of pain and anxiety.
Yes. And you go, yeah, okay, and you just start working on how to make it happen. Yeah, yeah.

(30:38):
It's a really good combo. It's a really good combo. and then you'll play computer
games with him and unlike me, not throw the controller across the room and throw
a tantrum because I don't know what I'm doing and I hate it.
And your avatar is like roaming around looking at the ceiling.
Yeah, and you two are just laughing at me as I run around Minecraft looking at the sky or the floor.
Oh, yeah, no, that's too painful actually. Divide and conquer.

(31:00):
Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Got it.
Was that a slice of pineapple or a full pineapple? No, it was going to head
in a pineapple direction because the pain of that whole thing.
But yeah, we went to Midland Gate and we did get other parents involved to protect
the children from who else might be in Midland Gate. Yeah, yeah.
And they ran around and we had both of our mothers waiting in stores,

(31:23):
holding clues and a code number.
Stressful, but they managed it. Well, yeah, because both you and my mum,
who have similarities, if anyone hasn't read a Margot-style theory around relationships,
that's what's going on here.
So my mum said to me, look, it was fine at first. She was in the first store.
There was four groups, each with an adult.
She said it was fine. I saw the

(31:44):
four turn the corner with the adult and I thought, right, I'm ready to go.
And then the rest of everyone came around the corner and I had 20 kids and they're
all trying to grab their clues and it was terrible.
Why didn't you stagger it? And I said, Andy said that an hour before it started.
Are you going to stagger it? And I said, no, I'm not staggering it.
Let's just go for it. Anyway, they all ran through Midland Gate.

(32:04):
They all got their clues.
We traumatised one of the mothers. The other one was fine. Yeah,
because my mum was super chilled. She was happy as Larry.
Yeah. I walked past her on my way to time zone because I was free once I'd set up the games.
I told them if they run, the security guards were going to take them out.
They totally believed me. I said, every security guard has been told if you
run, you're disqualified. disqualified and if your adult has to yell your name

(32:26):
more than once because they can't see you, you're disqualified.
They found loopholes though, you know. Why?
Oh, there was a lot of skipping. There was a lot of speed walking.
Yeah, there was a lot of that going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They think laterally, those kids.
Yeah, but that's what I say to Sam. You're meant to be thinking as an independent thinker.
And then he goes, mum, Montessori is not about independent thinking.

(32:46):
It's just about being kind.
Yeah, I would debate that. I don't think Maria Montessori was quite that simplistic.
The local primary school govey kids look pretty kind to me. We might have to
think about this whole thing. So I feel like we...
Are you worried about us going off track? You know, that's the way my brain

(33:07):
works. Okay, where would you like to go? I think we got as far as...
Pax Star Mobile followed by managing the store. Yes, that's right.
And my guilt over the various ways in which I felt like I let members of my
family down despite the opportunities that they gave me.
That's right. That I've never actually directly apologised to either of them for.
Just hand them this tape. I just like to say it over and over without actually

(33:30):
ever talking to them. I just said tape, hand them this tape, like in the 80s boom box.
Or to stand out the window with it on your shoulder going, I'm sorry.
What's the movie? I can never remember which of the Brat Pack movies it is.
Maybe like Pretty in Pink or Girls Just Want to Have Fun or one of those.
Where there was basically just an accepted norm of stalking is okay because it's romantic.

(33:55):
So, yeah, so I did that and I did various other jobs.
Let's not bore everyone with all of those. But the common theme was get in,
do the job for a while, Yes.
Realised that I liked the comms piece and the human piece and the explaining
stuff piece and not a lot else.

(34:17):
And then I, due to a romantic dalliance of the time, shifted to Sydney at some point.
I'm just skirting around it. Lovely. Okay, so moved to Sydney.
We were very old when we got married.
That's right. It is okay that you saw other people. Yeah. If we don't talk about it.
Actually, I was having a conversation with a girlfriend the other day and I

(34:39):
was saying how your family doesn't get jealous. You and Sue are really good.
And me and my sister were like, what the hell? Like, that is so weird. You guys are like, hey.
Yeah, I experience jealousy in a different way.
So got to Sydney. What do you mean you experience jealousy in a different way?
And then just let it drift off.
Oh, it's pineapple. No, no, no. I don't know. What's your jealousy?

(35:00):
I don't know. I don't know.
I feel like I need time to think about that, the answer to that question.
Okay, so you can talk about the ATO with or without a romantic.
I feel like there was two women involved in Sydney. Three, actually.
Yeah. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. I did a bridging process.
Yeah, I came with one from Perth. Actually, no, she was already living in Sydney.

(35:21):
Yes. So I moved over to join her there and I was already working at the ATO
in Francis Street in Northbridge.
Oh, you got transferred and you were already in there.
PTCCC or the PPPTC or something like that. It was the Personal Tax Client Contact
Centre, something like that, PTCCC.
And we were basically just sort of on phone lines helping people,

(35:45):
generally getting shouted at on a regular basis by members of the Australian
public about how crap the ATO is and how upset they were that they weren't getting
a bigger refund and why wasn't I told about this and blah, blah, blah.
So we did an awful lot of, it's actually really, Really, you know,
these early customer service days, you know, is where I, what's the cliche?

(36:05):
Cut my teeth. Cut your teeth.
Dealing with exploders and emotional situations.
Yeah, but what are people doing ringing and abusing the ATO?
I ring the ATO and I'm like, good morning.
There's no logic to it. And blessings to you and all who come after you and
your family. But we know how this works.
People are always, you know, there's a story you tell about Centrelink and everyone,
you know, basically giving daggers to the two people left behind the counter.

(36:29):
Oh, yeah, yeah. And they're the only ones there. I know, I know.
Like, why are they copying it? I know. Like, they're the ones actually doing their job.
I know. And the ATO can make very serious decisions about your future financially.
Like, you know, love you, namaste. Yeah, absolutely. And there were some interesting
personalities, let me tell you that.
Like, you know, there was definitely people who would, you know,
hold a grudge and if they could make things happen. What do you mean, in the staff?

(36:50):
Oh, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I mean, imagine doing that job.
Did you know, you would know this. I worked at the Synergy Call Centre when
I was doing my grad dip in coaching.
You do, yes. Yes. When I had a different partner. With your friend who was very,
see, he just watches over me. Cool, you don't care.
Fine. And yeah, and I worked in the Synergy Call Centre and we also had upset people.

(37:13):
And one of my friends, Lucas, who I haven't spoken to in a long time,
but he was my mate at work.
Yeah. And I used to turn myself inside out, like we're cleaning out the shed
at the moment and I found a comment from one of my customers and I got chocolates
from the team lead because Because it said, best service I've had in several calls,
11 out of 10 for care. Like I've got a gold star sticker.

(37:35):
So my friend Lucas used to sit next to me. I'd be going, I'm so sorry.
I think, you know, it's going to come back on this particular time.
Oh, I can understand your frustration. How terrible. That's what I'm doing.
And Lucas would be next to me going, actually, the streetlights aren't for your
safety, mate. I think you'll find.
And you could hear the person. That's the council's responsibility.
You could hear the person screaming, coming out of his earpiece. Yeah, absolutely.

(38:00):
But he was much healthier. He sort of went home and slept well.
That's right. He didn't get the stomach ulcer. No.
Yeah, he was just letting it go. He's like, mate, we're casual people earning
20 bucks an hour. You don't need to take that shit on.
And I was like, yeah, but I want to have them have a better time.
I'll never forget. So at the ATO, there was a point, and this will probably
come up in a later conversation. I'm hoping to be invited back as a guest in the future.

(38:23):
Well, we'll see how you do. And we might talk about how many pineapples come
out of the woodwork. No promises.
But so, you know, one of my go-to stories about – The interviewer's happy to
have you back, but the wife's not so sure.
The story I will sometimes break out when I'm talking about,
you know, different reactions to customer service settings was once I'd been

(38:46):
at the ATO for a little while, I actually did climb a little bit of the ladder.
I managed to get myself into a position where I was some kind of a,
I think I was a subject matter expert in capital gains tax for a little while
and I was doing some other second level thing.
There's all the govey numbers, you know, APS 3 and 4 and I think I got to 4

(39:07):
and 5 and then maybe one level up from that.
Anyway, at one point, a part of my job was to do what they called coaching.
It wasn't really, it was a sort of an evaluation process. And you'd have the
person on the phone and then there'd be a little umbilical cord connection to
the phone and you'd be there with your headphones listening in to both sides

(39:30):
of the call. Your call may be recorded for training purposes.
Exactly. And it was recorded, but for the most part, actually,
it was being listened in to live at the time.
And there was a lady whose name I forget.
That's probably good. And I wouldn't change her name to Protect the Innocent
because she is so far from that, or at least she was at the time.
Whoa. Well, but my favorite thing was there was, you know how it goes,
like you call in for any of these mobs and you have to identify yourself first.

(39:52):
And there was a series of questions, you know, I need to ask you.
And so, you know, the textbook way to do it would be to say,
oh, if I could just, I'd love to help you with an inquiry.
You know, if I just need to ask you a few questions just to make sure that we've
identified you correctly and then we can proceed.
Lovely. If I could just hit your name and your date of birth and stuff like
that. And she'd go, name.

(40:14):
And then of course they'd get their name right. Cause it's hard to get that
one wrong, but like, you know, she'd go address and they'd give one of their
addresses. And if it wasn't the one on the system, she'd go, nah.
I think really hard what her name is because I want to say it.
This wasn't just under normal circumstances when she wasn't being watched.
This was when the umbilical cord was connected.

(40:37):
So I'm like, oh, wow, okay. What did you do with her? Performance management required.
Yeah, but. Well, I mean, you know, I did what was necessary.
When you said name, what we like to do is.
I'd love to know where she is, but that's the thing, right? She did.
Oh, really? Someone tracked her down and took her out on the steps of the Parramatta building?

(41:01):
I thought she'd more got unwell from her bad attitude in life.
Oh, no. Yeah. No, I don't think so. You think she's prospering?
I think she was a little bit like Lucas.
I think she just got it out.
Don't say she was like Lucas. I loved Lucas. Oh, I'm so sorry.
Yeah. I mean, yes, he wasn't great at customer service.
That lady sounded like a dragon in general. Yeah, to be honest,

(41:22):
she wasn't. Was she a delight in the tea room?
No, she wasn't a delight in the tea room either. She was not a delight in the
tea room. She had a lot of anger in her. But she was very good at working the
photocopier. She'd found the right place to work. So she worked there for 27 years.
That's it. Because we're not, we cannot train anyone else to use that photocopier.
We're sticking with Marjorie.
So, to get back on track once again, I was at the ATO and I'd done the work

(41:44):
around, you know. Just need to stop for a minute.
Just do a little refresher that you are the guest. I'm the guest.
We talked about this prior. Back in your spot. And that you might find it hard
to go with the fact you weren't running the show. Yeah. I know.
Well, because, of course, you know, that's me. That's my living.
I'm at the front of the room. I'm the one calling the shots.

(42:05):
I know. I know. I say, when?
I say, who? I know, but that's fine. That's good.
Consider me, I'll take this as my first and final.
So that's fine. So you're at the ATO. We've got, now it feels awkward.
It's an awkward atmosphere.
Feel the awkwardness. And just work with the difficulty.
I just posted that. It's by Michael Caine and he says work with the difficulty

(42:29):
and you use the thing that's difficult to go to the next level,
right? So we'll use the difficulty.
Let's do that. And say, I'm happy also to get back on track.
So we want to talk, we, this whole conversation four and a half hours ago started
when we were talking about the epitome of, no, not the epitome,
the eureka moment of I should be a trainer.

(42:50):
Yeah. So you're at the ATO, you said when that happened.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm at the ATO and an opportunity comes up to run some
training for some new procedure or system or something.
Okay. And I, yeah, I just got really enthusiastic about it.
And I did, you know, what we do as a matter of course these days and created

(43:11):
something that I thought would be, you know, fun for people to attend and was
actually effective, that they'd remember stuff afterwards.
And like, you know, in the early days I had the chockies that I threw out to
get, you know, people's questions and all that sort of, you know,
all the singing and the dancing and so on.
Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it was a low bar.

(43:32):
To be honest, that I was having to clear in that environment.
But I do remember there was this one guy in my team, because I later became
a manager of a team there,
and there was this one guy that when I left finally to go on my merry way to
other things, he actually came to me.
He had been a member of the course that I'd run,

(43:55):
and after being in that room, he kind of like, you know, He got proselytized
to the religion of Andy a little bit to the point of a little bit of awkwardness on my part.
I liked the attention, but I didn't like it simultaneously.
He's a little bit of a fanboy, but he said lovely things.
So I can't say anything negative about him. And I genuinely mean,

(44:20):
he really was real about it.
But it was, well, we've talked about this before.
It's weird. it. I spend a lot of time being the centre of attention,
but I don't like being the centre of attention simultaneously.
I'm okay with it if it's the role that I'm playing, but if I'm me in real life
and people are a bit sort of too, you know, they give me a bit too much love,

(44:43):
I back off. Oh, absolutely.
Like you did with me, you know, when we were first together.
A little bit. Oh, yeah. Remember? You literally said Ed, you're a bit too much.
Really? I did not. You did, you did, but we can talk about that off air.
I think we might. But you just reminded me of something that,
you know, a lot of performers are like that.

(45:05):
You know, like I was talking about Steve Martin one other time and just the
genius that he is and he's famously shy and Michael McIntyre saying that,
you know, he didn't describe himself as an arsehole, but he said,
I'm pretty serious when I'm not doing this.
And I've got my glasses on and I'm walking down the street and I'm kind of a
serious guy. People will get hold of me and go, oh, my God.
Yeah, yeah. And he's like, no, no, man, I'm not on like.

(45:28):
Yeah, well, you remember that time that I was in Borders Books, right?
And when Borders Books was a thing in Perth because it's an existence for very
long. Well, it's a thing across the world.
And, you know, I was grabbing a coffee and someone was like,
I don't know, about 25 metres away and they went, Andy.
Yeah. I was like, hey, you.

(45:48):
Because, of course, I don't have any memory for names at all. Even when I'm trying.
I knew her I knew her well I knew you know that she liked kite surfing and had
three kids I don't know now whether that was actually the facts but you know
I remember all that so I don't remember names so I have that experience that weird kind of.
I don't know what the level is below D-grade celebrity, but like a long way down the run.

(46:12):
Like whatever you are as a local trainer. That experience of being recognised in public.
I think it's Z-grade. Yeah. Not to be too harsh, but.
Z.0. I'm talking about myself as well. Like, you know, yes, we're trainers, so a few people.
Yeah. I mean, you know, it of course is in the thousands now,
but I think we're up to 8 billion in the planet, so it's probably not a vast.
But it's a fun thing to reflect on that, not to get too up myself,

(46:37):
but it's a fun thing to reflect on the fact that there are people that could
develop a parasocial relationship with you in a sense, you know what I mean?
Like we have our shows that we love and we watch and our celebrities that we follow and so on.
And you get to the point where it's kind of like you really feel like you know
them and then you realise that if you were to actually come across them in real

(46:57):
life, you'd go, hey, oh, no, that's actually right.
I don't know you at all. Like my mum did with Alan Bond walking into the Blue Duck in Cottesloe.
My mum, who's a famously shy and quiet lady, and said, hello, Alan.
Yeah. She came in the dream. Hello, love. And she goes, oh, my God. What did I do?
I just said hello to Alan Bond. I'm like, don't worry, it probably happens all
the time. But you feel like you know people because of that experience. I totally agree.

(47:20):
It wasn't that long ago. Because you and I both have that element of show person, not show person.
Like often, even when I rock up here to do the podcast, I'm sort of quiet and
fractious and anxious. And then I spend a lot of time with Danielle and feel better.
Yeah. I was thinking about how Danielle in this process is a bit my emotional
support animal, but I don't think it's really complimentary enough.
Describing her as an animal, probably not. Well, we are animals,

(47:43):
but my emotional support Danielle.
Yes. But do you remember that time? it wasn't that long ago and I was at a client
and I'd given one of my more gung-ho kind of speech kind of training sessions
and I'd been in my most, you know.
Yeah, yeah, tap dancing. And this particular person, who's a very interesting
personality, saw me in one of the offices and I wasn't in training mode and

(48:05):
I was thinking about a coaching client.
I was about to talk to a senior manager. I couldn't have been more quietly vibrating, you know.
Yeah. And she comes in and points at me and goes, oh, here's trouble.
Oh, and I was like, oh, hello, and I said hello quietly and I may as well have slapped her in the face.
Like she looked so shocked at how quietly I said hello to her and I was like,

(48:27):
and I was trying to G myself. Oh, hi, you.
It was all too late. As soon as I'd said, I'd sort of must have gone like that
and then said, oh, hello, you know.
Well, I mean, this is the thing, this energetic management piece is a really,
like I know we've talked about a hundred times, this is a really fascinating thing for me.
You know I'm an introvert, that I need my cave time, that I need to,

(48:49):
you know, I'm a grumpy bugger.
Sam knows better than anyone how grumpy I am. Yes, yes.
And then you do these things where you put the hat on and you do the performance and so on.
And then there are certain circumstances that are particularly challenging.
You talk about being on site, of course, you know, like we have a mining client
that we do a lot of work for.
And when you're on site, you're kind of,

(49:13):
there's a sort of a semi-requirement to be on kind of all of the time that you're
out of your donga and around the place.
Oh, absolutely. Because people know you a particular way.
Yeah, it's a bit challenging. It's no joke, right? It's why,
aside from the getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning piece,
it's why I'm always so knackered coming out of those stints up there.

(49:35):
Oh, I mean, the people that work up there really, particularly those people
that have to work and manage people, It's pretty extraordinary that they can
cope and they are as tough as anything.
They're so tough and they're so tough that they think if it's normal.
I was up for one day and one of the very nice managers up there and I'd only
been up one day, which meant, you know, getting up at quarter to four and we

(49:57):
were talking to one another at say 4pm on my way back home.
And I said, oh, I've only been up for a day and I'm so tired.
And he said, are you? Like really surprised.
And then he goes, that's good. He goes, that's good. You're still living like
a normal human that hasn't adjusted to this strange world. And I was like, yeah, that's right.
You're not getting up at 2 o'clock in the morning to go to the gym before work.

(50:19):
Yeah, I think the earliest we knew of was a fellow who got up at 1 a.m.
To go to the gym for an hour and a half.
And then work a 13-hour day. Yeah. And then rinse and repeat.
Right. I'm amazed by the stamina. Me too. I really am.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a wonder we haven't had more people running towards us to help us with that work.

(50:41):
That's right. Yeah. Well, it always helps us realise that we're actually handling a bit, right?
Because when I asked one of my very good friends and a very good trainer years
ago, I said, oh, would you like to come and help us with this work?
She said, oh, tell me a bit about it. And I described it and she goes, oh, no way. Oh, no, no.
And I was like, what? She goes, oh, not in a million years am I doing that.
When I want to let myself off the hook, I go, yeah, and we do two to three or

(51:03):
four days of that And then we
come back and we go, we have to slot right back into nine to five world.
You know, my favorite contrast, of course, is, you know, being in the crib room
trying to find the one dusty cup that I can have a cup of tea out of.
And then I rock up to one of our accounting clients who have literal sparkling
water taps in their one of several delightful kitchenettes next to their offices and stuff like that.

(51:30):
It's a different world, isn't it? Hey, you've just reminded me,
one of the things I wanted to do in this talk today is I actually wanted to
talk about how fabulous our clients were.
And because we never really have an opportunity to do that.
And we will often comment in the privacy over our own home slash Donger office
at home, you know, how much we've both enjoyed the clients we've had and how

(51:50):
we enjoy more and more the work we do and how we work with them.
So I don't really want to give a shout out to particular names because that
might feel like a… I was going to say, are we naming and faming? I don't think so.
I just made that up just then. Naming and faming. Yeah.
Yeah, it's probably not going to catch on, is it? Sorry, I went into wife mode,
not interviewer. I would have gone, oh, that's great.

(52:12):
And I just immediately went, nah, like Marjorie in Sydney, nah.
It's a no from me. Try again.
Sorry, hon. It's fine. It's okay. It's fine. You've got to put them out there
and some of them stick, some of them don't. You know, it's like your spark can
grow. Grow, but repulsion is forever.
Thank you for repeating it. It is not catching on, but I think it's worthy.

(52:33):
The world would disagree.
So yeah, we won't name and shame them, but what would we say about them in general?
So, you know, there's differences amongst our clients in what they need and the people they serve.
But I think the number one, the thing that we've been able to do is particularly
over time when desperation has decreased, right?
Because at first it was like anyone, anyone will do anything, right?

(52:55):
Particularly with both of us in the business. I always tell the story of our
friend and very successful colleague, and I will name her because there's nothing risky here.
I'm Danielle McNamee, who runs a wonderful HR business that helps other businesses
that need HR rights called Process Works.
She's an absolute machine and has grown this small business empire.

(53:17):
And we had started the business. You were developing the website over, what, 17, 18 months?
It certainly would have felt like that to you. It was absolutely the best way
for me to procrastinate getting on with anything actually purposeful.
Yeah. Well, it's a very good website and there's a lot there. Well, yes.
The version we've got now, of course, is an entirely different one from the

(53:39):
one that I created for, it probably was about six months. Yeah, it was six months.
It was six months. I think part of the reason I have a back problem right now
is because I spent so much time
sitting in bed designing subsections of a website that never got used.
Yeah, yeah. So there's a tip for any new entrepreneurs.
Oh, we could do tips for new entrepreneurs. Okay, keep that in your mind or
I'll put an asterisk in my mind, come back to that because that's super useful,

(54:02):
their first year particularly.
So we were talking about, oh yeah, so Danielle, she was giving us some mentoring
very early days and I was still contract training.
So you were doing the website and I was working for our previous clients as
a contract trainer to have some income so we could eat and pay the rent and all the rest.
And Sam was about probably two at this point, two and a bit.
And I meet with Danielle one day and she says, yeah, you have to stop contract training.

(54:25):
And I said, oh no, that's our only income. And she said, well,
starvation's a great motivator. Yeah.
And I thought, all right, because I'm very easily swayed. I was like,
you seem to know what you're doing. Okay, I'll stop working. Yeah.
Hence became probably the most stressful year. Yeah.
I think you would agree, though, it really was the right choice. It was.

(54:48):
Horribly stressful. It's that classic,
you know, cliched burn the boats scenario. It was the right advice.
So it was the right advice. advice and what I would say is if I could turn back
time, I think when people are starting a business, particularly where in a couple
situation with a child, both people are involved, you need a buffer of money.
If I could turn back time, we would have had three months worth of reasonable income up our sleeves.

(55:15):
You imagine the reduction in stress if we had had that available.
And we We got, we, you know, the truth is we both landed a very important client
early on and we got family support and we couldn't have done it without it, right?
So for someone who's like, okay, I want to be totally independent,
I reckon three months, maybe you're not going out to Chez Pierre every night

(55:39):
on that budget, but you've got enough for beans on toast and the rent and petrol.
Maybe don't spend a year living in South America, work through all of your reserves
and then come back into a not particularly favourable economic circumstance
and try to start a new business in a...
Was temporary depression. Yeah, it was that, wasn't it? It wasn't depression.

(56:01):
That's a massive exaggeration, but it was definitely a low point in the market.
It was a low ebb in the area we worked in, which is an extremely competitive area already.
Yeah. And then, of course, we had this total misunderstanding because you were
like, oh, we're doing this for other people. We could just do it for ourselves.
We're really well known.
Of course, we weren't known as us. We were known as contract trainers and we
were under agreement not to talk about that when we were trying to get new clients.

(56:24):
So we were really starting from pretty much zero, right? Really, pretty much zero.
I mean, we'd cleared enough of our non-competes by being away for a year to,
frankly, if we'd wanted to, bend the ethical boundaries we could have.
But this wasn't the way that we were ever going to operate. No.

(56:44):
We've said this a hundred times, like being as naive as I was in wanting to do this thing. Yes.
Uncharacteristically was my idea, but that you then really made happen,
truth be told, really was a saving grace for it to happen at all.
Because my standard operating procedure for most things is to go,

(57:08):
no, it probably won't work.
Yeah, that's right. I think it was a combination. I think you wanted to do your
own thing. I'm naive and always say yes first.
It's like Daniel's improv. I say yes and. So you said, why don't we have a business? I go, okay.
Like it wasn't much more than that, right? And then we started into this hardship for whatever reason.
Maybe we were talking about intuition before.

(57:30):
Maybe intuitively you thought with this particular woman, I could do this because
she'll do that bit and I'll do my bit. I think you're right.
The truth is now the combination is what works because you provide a level of
service that's really extraordinarily high, right?
That's why we have the repeat customers we have. We both do a a good job,
but as a trainer, I think you do a particularly good job and our customers would agree with that.

(57:54):
So once we get work, we tend to keep the client.
So now, of course, eight years down the track, we've got this rolling thing
that, you know, I really, I can, I said to you not long ago,
the cortisol dropping for me of not having to think where's the next client
coming from, having that pretty permanently for five years.
It's pretty hard emotionally.

(58:16):
Yeah. And to think I am fundamentally responsible for bringing that person in.
You and I talked a lot about that it wasn't just me worrying about it.
I did feel like the buck stopped with me in terms of bringing new people in.
And then, you know, let's be fair, you know, I would definitely bring at least
one business card back from networking evenings if I was so,

(58:37):
you know, you can't undervalue that, you know, high quality.
Because their teams are. That's right. Exactly. Enormous team.
They've got their wife at home doing the accounts. Great long-term value as
a client. Desperate for training.
Yeah. Yeah. So. But yeah, no, I mean, I mean, I think, you know,
like when you look at that, we were talking about what advice would we give,
having a little bit of money aside.

(58:59):
Apart from that, it's a little bit like when I was talking to Danielle last
around Hugh Laurie's thing, you know, it's a terrible thing to wait till you're ready.
Yeah. The more I muddle through anything, including this, the more I think I
don't know that there's any other way to start than starting and then apologising
for mistakes as you say. Yeah, yeah.

(59:22):
There's nuance to that, right? Like I think there are people out there with
an entrepreneurial drive but without a lot of sense who kind of put a lot of
things in place that are going to cost them.
Yes, yes. But if you're the kind of person that's willing to work bloody hard
to deal with what you overlooked by way of detail very quickly,

(59:47):
then yeah, that drive to just get started is an important one.
You've raised a very good point around money and capital because you'll see
new businesses will get a new premises, a new vehicle, things that are alarming
to me because it's like you don't have the business yet to pay for those things.
And I think, you know, the statistics are terrible, right? If they're still

(01:00:10):
true, most businesses fail in the first year, the majority within the first five years.
It's no joke going to small business. There's a million people in Australia
in small business, a million and something. And, you know, it's a lot of people
out of however many we've got now, 22 million, several of those are children.
Yeah. Several are retired.
I mean, I always feel a little awkward about offering any kind of really authoritative

(01:00:35):
advice around, you know, starting business or being an entrepreneurial person.
Given our journey, right? We definitely have needed to survive and figure out
how to get the money and so on.
But we also operate in an environment where our overheads are small because
it's mainly our intellectual capital that we're relying on.
And us and our brains and our voice boxes and so on.

(01:00:58):
We made a decision a long, long time ago not to have employees.
So that helps. Of course, we've got our delightful subcontractors now, which is very nice.
Very nice. But it is quite a lot different from some of the more bricks and
mortar businesses that just don't have the option not to be paying rents and
hiring staff and there's a whole piece there that we didn't have to deal with.

(01:01:23):
It felt like a risk, right?
Yeah. It felt like when we started and we weren't making enough money,
it felt like we could lose everything. But the truth was that wasn't actually true.
Yeah. The risk we had was we'd have to go and work for someone else.
And for me, it felt like the same risk as anything else. It felt huge, that risk.
A little bit like that risk that you run when you go to another city to make

(01:01:46):
it big and then you have to come back home.
Yes. You know what I mean? I mean, it's got that same kind of flavor to it,
you know, that kind of, oh, everyone will see what I tried and – do you know what I mean?
Yes, I agree that that was probably one of the concerns for sure for me because
I realized one of my big like platforms in life I wanted to get to was having

(01:02:08):
a business that was successful completely from our own creation.
So not subcontracting, not getting a source of income.
Yeah, not having someone else bring the – Yeah, bring the whatever.
Yeah, whatever the cliche is. I know, I know. Bring the deer from the hunt or something like that.
Yeah. So once we got to that point, that definitely satisfied something in me.

(01:02:29):
But then, of course, I'm always like, okay, well, what's the next thing?
I actually saw a fellow talking on, I feel like the guy's name's Lewis Howes.
He's got a massive podcast out of America.
And I can't remember the name. He's got three or four podcasts.
And one of the ones is he talks to experts.
And this particular expert was talking about dopamine. And he was talking about
how people that are driven to succeed or create things, they sort of can't help

(01:02:54):
but try to then go for the next thing.
So it is kind of a, you know, okay, what's next? What's next?
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the dopamine piece, isn't it? It's the drive to as
opposed to the getting to the destination.
Yeah. Well, he was talking about when people get a lot of enjoyment at the thought
of something versus doing it.
And I've realized that about myself, you know, not when it comes to my...

(01:03:17):
But in every other way, you know, like whether the dream, you know,
I had the dream about having the old caravan.
Do you think Mercedes is listening, honey? Not now, but will they be?
Yeah, they'll go back through the back catalogue. Probably. Once you've got,
who is it we're getting on?
Is it Hugh Laurie first? Hugh Laurie. Okay.
I don't know if repeating his name makes it happen. I don't know. Is it like Beetlejuice?

(01:03:42):
Well, I was saying to Danielle the last time she and I spoke,
Stephen Fry's coming to the concert hall in Perth. Yeah. And I thought,
they're very good friends.
Maybe Hugh's coming out for a trip. Okay. Yeah, that's the way,
Ed. I don't think they're actually a couple.
Do you know what, how rude is this, right? And how demented am I?
I go, oh, Stephen Fry's coming out. Maybe I could ask to interview him.
And I was like, nah, I don't really want to.

(01:04:04):
Oh, okay. Right. I didn't want to. Yeah, well, I mean, you know,
it's good to know what your preferences are.
Well. Well, I'm fascinated by that. I almost want to dig in and ask you a follow-up question.
So I find Stephen Fry interesting, you know.
I've read a few of his books. Yes. I think I've read at least one.

(01:04:26):
I'm a fan of his vocabulary range.
No doubt you are. I've certainly learned a few words from him.
Well, as you know, I learned my words from you.
What a fecund environment has been created in this podcast here.
Indeed, it's bucolic. That was not an Irish swear word.
So, yeah, and of course I've read his autobiography, so I know a little bit
about his tortured past and stuff like that.

(01:04:47):
I think that's what it is. I feel like I know him and I've read enough about
him. And quite frankly, I think he's a bit of an oversharer.
Now, is that projecting much?
I was going to say, is there some sort of a vibration thing happening there?
It's like, oh, Stephen, really, do we have to hear any more about you?
But no, it is that. It's that I feel that there's nothing to plumb there because

(01:05:12):
he's either said it all before or he's going to say it at the console.
You can literally ask questions when you go.
And I'm sure he'll be lovely. As I'm saying this, I'm having some regrets in
being so close to having him on because I think he'd probably actually be very
interesting. I'm sure you can win him back, hon.
I've just got to get back in touch with his agent and this time not hang up on him,

(01:05:37):
Mr Fry is not accepting calls at this time I don't know why he would have an
American agent, maybe he probably would,
and we decided, Danielle and I decided we're just going to start emailing people like Hugh Laurie,
I actually looked up RuPaul and RuPaul you can go on their very famous famous

(01:05:57):
agent website, like, oh, I can't remember the name. They're like the biggest agent in Hollywood.
Yeah. And you fill in a form saying, where do you want them to speak?
How much are you willing to pay them? What's the dates?
And I thought, I'll fill all that out. How much are you willing to pay them? Zero.
And then they'll say, I'll get some admin person call me. Is that a table?

(01:06:17):
No. No. We can't afford Roo. Yeah. But Roo's husband is from Perth.
Is that right? Yeah. I didn't know that. So he lives in Wyoming.
He's a rancher. Have you seen him before? No. The husband? Beautiful.
Even taller than Rue. Rue's about 6'4 and his husband's taller.
Anyway. I only really experienced Rue Paul indirectly over your shoulder as you're watching.

(01:06:42):
Drag Race. The 68,000th episode of Drag Race.
Rue, don't say anything else about Rue because we won't. Oh,
no. Oh, I love his work. Fantastic. Excellent. Beautiful. Yeah.
King of the, king, queen of the catchphrase, for sure. Marketing machine.
Oh, seriously. But you should see when- To be honest,

(01:07:02):
to get serious for a moment, though, the thing that I do love from seeing RuPaul
indirectly is that with all of the fabulousness and glamour and the stuff that
I know appeals to you, the aesthetic side of that is just amazing.
Yes. But the thing that I particularly like is how strongly RuPaul's brand is
around kindness, is around,

(01:07:24):
you know, looking after each other and looking after yourself and,
you know, and that's been really consistent for so many years.
That's why we reference him often on here because he talks about your saboteur.
He talks about, you know, how to love yourself.
And, you know, I can't remember, I think it's season 16, episode 9.
I've given it a shout out before.

(01:07:45):
People come for their tic-tac interview with Roo and the joke is,
would you like a tic-tac? and they say, no, I'm watching my weight.
And he has a big bowl of orange Tic Tacs there. Oh, I see.
And he says, and in these meetings, the drag queens come out,
the finalists, and they're all crying with gratitude for who Roo has been for
them and the heartfelt nature of it and the love they have for him and him for

(01:08:09):
them. And it's just very pure.
The whole thing is a pure expression of love and people being who they want
to be and accessing that freedom. And, you know, I was talking with Danielle
when we last spoke about my LinkedIn post.
I did my Whispering LinkedIn post. Yes. Yeah, I was watching it just before
this interview. Yeah, yeah, right.
A bit weird. And on that, I, oh, God, I just lost my place because I went into

(01:08:32):
wife mode and thought you hadn't supported my post well enough.
So then I went, oh, no.
Yeah, because I felt like you were saying something bad about my post. No.
Okay. But you said the whispering, about the whispering. Yeah.
Yeah, I know. No, I thought it was a little bit like you were trapped in the
boot of a kidnapper's car, but that didn't mean it wasn't good.
Yeah, yeah. But why was I going to talk about that? RuPaul, LinkedIn.

(01:08:57):
Then I got, God, I. You're talking, we shifted, we went, RuPaul's husband lives
in Perth. Saboteur, yeah, yeah. That's why if they come over for a trip. Yes.
Because you never know, like something, the husband's family might have a wedding
or a funeral or something and Ru might come too.
And then what the hell, why not go in a podcast studio in South Perth?
You could manufacture a chance encounter.

(01:09:17):
Right. Oh, it just so happens. You wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't have time
this afternoon. Speaking of putting people in boots.
I don't know if he'd be up for it after we kidnapped him. Yeah,
I absolutely don't know what I was talking about with the – yes, I do.
So I put the post on and I put it on very constricted, worrying about how the

(01:09:41):
podcast was going to do, was it going to be successful. I got constrained. The whisper post?
Yeah, the whisper post. I got constrained in the way I was.
Remember when we were in Claremont and you were going, I've got to get you out
of Claremont because I was like,
I've got to make a million dollars and I've got to be the next Oprah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you've been immersed in the cultural mores.
In the mores of the environment.
World. Anyway, but when I shared that post, it gave me this real freedom again,

(01:10:04):
like I had when this idea first started.
And I put a comment and I used George Michael's freedom, you know,
and that was him coming out as homosexual, but you get the same idea, right? Yeah, yeah.
Freedom, you know, like these drag queens, Toina RuPaul, they were expressing
their full and true self and having the time of their life.
And since I've been doing that, that experience is there so often for me.
Like it's here now as I say it. It's just pure joy and freedom and,

(01:10:28):
you know, just wonderful.
Yeah. So on that note, when I was talking about your training epiphany,
I thought it was when you went to England and got a job as a trainer.
Wasn't that when the kind of clouds parted?
Really, that's when it became a real thing.
So so yeah at

(01:10:50):
the ato it was i desperately just
want to do something that feels more than what
i'm doing right now and that i don't feel particularly good
at like i was okay at the things that i
was doing and i i liked learning the things that i needed to
learn and you know i didn't mind being a subject matter expert about particular
areas and actually that was the first I can't remember whether it was that I

(01:11:12):
ran the singing and dancing procedural kind of training that earned me my fanboy
first, or whether it was...
Yeah, I think that was the first thing. And then I was asked to run this three-day
course that had already been in existence for some time on capital gains tax.

(01:11:33):
So you imagine, you know, it was like my first great white whale,
really, to take a three-day course learning about the intricacies of capital
gains tax in the Australian tax system.
I'm having a very strong internal experience. into something that wasn't just
an enormous coma risk. Oh, my God.

(01:11:56):
So what did you do? And so I think that's part of what got the juices flowing
because I had a moderate level of success with that.
Like I got good feedback from the people that went through it.
I did it in a few different places.
I had my first ever trip away to run a course. It was super exciting.
I got sent up to Newcastle. Swanky.

(01:12:18):
Stayed at a hotel, did the whole thing. I went to the Newcastle tax office and
ran the session. Did you have the buffet breakfast?
And someone, I must have, it would have been fabulous.
And I wandered around Newcastle, you know, in the early evening.
It was actually really, it was kind of exciting.
Yeah, it would have been very exciting. And so I ran the course for those guys

(01:12:38):
and then, you know, they said really nice things and one of them made a card
for me and got, you know, everyone signed it and, you know, and I've still got it somewhere.
And so, you know, there was the ego hit of that. But, like, there was also the
joy of taking this thing,
you know, like you've heard me say a thousand times, one of my big loves is
taking complex things and trying to convert them into something that is actually

(01:13:03):
digestible by the average person, right? Yes.
And so, yeah, that's what that was. And that sort of got things flowing for me.
And so then when I left the ATO and I went over, followed a new romance to…,
One of the three or another one? One of the third.
Follow new romance to a… You could have had a different profession. Got in a different way.

(01:13:24):
I don't know what you're trying to say there. I do know what you're trying to say.
So, yeah, so we went on a kind of ostensibly a working holiday back in the UK.
Wow. And lived in sunny Birmingham. Oof.
Fabulous. Oof. And we were there for winter. And so I got to really solidify
the decision because I'd been back to UK at least one time before that from WA.

(01:13:50):
Yeah, right. Just for a little backpacking holiday.
And roamed around in Ireland and various other places, hitching rides with lots
of very interesting people.
But that time I was on holiday, the Birmingham time, I now was working and living a life.
Yeah, right. And we were there in winter and didn't have a car.

(01:14:10):
And I was catching the bus in the rain and the dark, of course.
Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, go to work in the dark, come home in the dark.
Yeah. possibly have a lunch break where you might see a little bit of sky of
your lucky kind of experiences most people from the UK can relate to.
And that was the downside. But the upside was I went along to this thing that

(01:14:34):
I totally thought was going to be some kind of a timeshare slash cult experience
because it was an advert in the newspaper and it said,
come along to our information session and then if you wish, you can do a quick
15-minute interview interview afterwards and we'll consider whether we'll take you on for this role.
And the role was to train people on various Microsoft products like Word and

(01:14:59):
Excel and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah, right. I didn't have a clue about any of that sort of stuff, but it totally clicked.
It was like, there's a technical thing that I need to understand.
I need to learn it enough myself to understand it. And I need to teach other people.
That's me. I'm in kind of thing. Yeah, right. But I went with Great Reservations
because having read the advert and it seemed a little too good to be true that

(01:15:20):
you could just come along for the interview without even having to give them a CV or anything.
He sat in a classroom and they did a spiel about the organisation and then I
did the 15-minute interview and they liked the cut of my jib. Wow.
And so I waited around. I didn't know at the time, but I waited around for a
couple of days waiting to get the answer on whether or not I'd got the gig.

(01:15:41):
And when I got the gig, honestly, I've honestly never been so excited in my
life to that point about getting a job.
Job for the listener and he just corrected what
he was about to say because he knew if he said i love my wife i
love my child because he knew if

(01:16:01):
he said i've never been more never been more
excited poor thing can you imagine in line edit yeah so but that actually is
the truth up until that point like every job that i got yeah i was excited if
i got the gig you know it's nice it's like yeah there'll be some money and I'll

(01:16:22):
meet some nice people and blah, blah, blah.
But there was never really a high level of excitement of, yes,
I got it. The best feeling in the world.
That's like the 2006 grand final when the Eagles won. That was the best day
of my life up until that point. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I was 33 when they won that.
That's sad, isn't it? I've never been happier than at the end of that football

(01:16:44):
game up until that point.
That's right. Wait, are you editing at all at this point? No, no, no. No, no.
Why? Why were we weirded? Oh, no, no, no. That's after. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, fair enough. Yeah, 2006 it was. Yeah, I'll accept that answer. And I jumped up then.
We won by one point against Sydney and I think they'd won by five against us
the year before. Tragic.

(01:17:05):
And we won by one point and I jumped up and my cousin said, I think you're having
a stroke. The whites of your eyes have gone red.
Oh, wow. Yeah, it was extraordinary. But I'm making it about me and it's about
you, but I can relate to that sense of, oh, this is wonderful.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was fabulous.
And I was alone in the bedroom of a place that we were renting from some weird

(01:17:29):
fellow who was a boxer but operated what I think were dodgy call centres in Taiwan somewhere.
Oh, wow. And it was all very sordid. Yes. But there was this one ray of...
Sunlight coming from the heavens about this new job
that i'd got and and it it really did turn out

(01:17:51):
to be a turning point for me like a turning point you
know i got in i went through a lot of stress i
mean i definitely remember the the three o'clock moment of the the night before
the morning of my first ever excel advanced course where i had to teach people
about how to do nested if functions and i still didn't understand the concepts

(01:18:12):
properly myself and i'm like how the How the hell am I going to do this thing?
So there was a hill to climb, but it was a super satisfying hill.
It was, yeah, fantastic.
And so that's the bit that got me into the whole training extravaganza.
Yeah. And then, you know, later I came out.
So that was New Horizons, little mention of them. Yeah, who still exist,
right? Who still exist. They're a large global entity.

(01:18:34):
And so I came back out to WA and managed to convince the branch of New Horizons
here in Perth to give me a subcontractor gig. Oh, yeah, yeah.
And then branched out from there to places like Drake and ATI Mirage and the
Australian Institute of Management and all of that mob.
Which is probably around the point that I met you when you were doing that kind

(01:18:54):
of work. And then, you know, branched out into the leadership and comms stuff
and, you know, the rest is history.
Yeah, it really shows how much has built layer upon layer, right,
of the level of learning and understanding to show all those skills and help
all those people over years and years and years, right?
Because that first New Horizon, England, speaking of 2006, it probably wasn't dissimilar timing.

(01:19:18):
When were you over in England? Can you remember?
You're in Sydney, 2002, 2004. I think we've had the conversation before.
I reckon it would have been 2006, 2007.
It was one of our lines on the map crossing points.
Yeah, it was. Because I spent a little bit of time there.
Maybe it was the, I can't remember when I was in Glasgow visiting Jude,

(01:19:39):
but I feel like we've discussed it and that I might have literally been in the
city at the same time. Yeah, yeah. We definitely had enough crossing points.
We could make it sound romantic if we wanted to. Yeah. But that's not the topic for today.
Yeah, we'll schedule that for a later date. Well, it's actually interesting
because I was thinking about, you know, there's lots we have talked about,
but lots we haven't as well.
So I think you may have to be a repeat guest because when I think about Sam,

(01:20:03):
and I've got to ask Sam's permission to talk about him and I've already talked about him today.
That's right, I've got to get it cleared. I'll have to check with him between
this and being published, but he'll be fine. He said, as long as I tell him, it's fine.
Yeah. And then we haven't talked more about the trip, which for some of our
friends, they'll be so relieved that we haven't.
Yeah. And then, I don't know, we could talk more around the kinds of things we work with.

(01:20:25):
Mm-hmm. And of course, we've got your subject, which is a pretty juicy run around
your ADHD that we haven't even touched on.
There's so much we could still talk about, but what we might do is we might
come back to visit some of those topics.
So I think it'll be very useful for people to hear you talk about your experience
of ADHD and how that's shown up through your life.
But it feels like too much of a topic for right now.

(01:20:46):
You're right, though, to say that it is a slightly bigger subject. I feel like it's too big.
And I want to make sure we do it justice because I know that I'm,
you know, like I'm a member now of an, it would seem, ever-growing club because
every second person I talk to these days has got a recent, often, ADHD diagnosis.
And actually, often a very highly skilled club.
When I think of the people I know with ADHD, they've got a lot to offer.

(01:21:09):
So it's a very interesting world.
And you know, there's always still a part of me, even though,
you know, I've literally seen the effect of, you know, the steps that I've taken,
there's always still a part of me that's like, ah.
You're not really, come on, get over yourself.
It's just, you know, you're a bit disorganised and harebrained and you're giving

(01:21:30):
yourself an excuse by making up a story.
Yeah, yeah. So I think that's worth talking about too because at least a couple
of my clients who I've talked to about this stuff who have similar challenges,
you know, one of the things that got in the way of them speaking to someone
professionally or considering,
you know, medication has been the whole I don't want to cheat thing.

(01:21:51):
I don't want to, so yeah, yeah, let's, let's.
Yeah, we'll talk about that fully.
What I will say about what you just said is Peter Slocum, who we interviewed
recently, she said when you're mentally ill and you're in it,
it's very hard to recognise that ADHD isn't a mental illness in the same way
as depression or anxiety.
But I can say as your wife, the change has been phenomenal and we'll dig more into that.

(01:22:15):
To finish off this episode, here we are today, we're sort of in August 2024. 24.
We've talked at a level about our life so far and about work and about marriage, but only a little bit.
What are you most enjoying right now and what do you think is next?
What floats your boat as we sit here and what are you hoping for is next?

(01:22:38):
Or is it too big a question? Oh no, it is a big question. I'd like to try and
have a crack at answering it.
Is that the question? What do I most enjoy? Yeah, like right now in life,
what do you most enjoy about the point you're up to and what do you look forward
to or have you got a path as to what's the next thing?
There's a few different angles on that.

(01:23:00):
You know, one of the things that I like about getting older,
and I know that I'm not, well, I don't know, define old, right?
You're not old. Otherwise, I am.
But one of the things that I've really found myself enjoying in probably,
I don't know, the last five to ten years is –.
Relaxing a little bit more about who

(01:23:23):
i am to other people and who i am around other
people and being much more comfortable with just being me and not not not having
to work so hard or be so anxious about how i present myself to the world and
and you know i i often feel like Like, you know,

(01:23:46):
I'm certain it's why there are so many Freaky Friday style movies out there
of people swapping and it's an older person swapping with a younger person.
Yeah. Because that whole, you know, youth is wasted on the young thing.
Youth often isn't wasted on the young. But the truth is, if you really could
take the just it's all okay and it's not that big a deal-ishness of someone north of 50.

(01:24:10):
Let's say, and put it into the body of a 17 or 25-year-old, oh,
my God, what a life that person would have.
And, of course, there are 17 to 25-year-olds who are already or at least from
the outside seem to be living that life.
And I'm sort of retrospectively horribly envious of them because I definitely was not that person.
No. Like I was just this maelstrom of, you know, self-consciousness and worry

(01:24:33):
and anxiety and all those things that we are, you know, at that age.
And if I could just transpose the ease, I enjoy that very much. Yes.
And that's sort of connected also to professionally.
You know, I, I, I don't, I, I, I suspect it's, it's never the case that no one,

(01:24:56):
that a person has absolutely zero hint of a smell of, uh,
what's the syndrome I'm looking for? Word? Word?
Aphasia? No. Aphasia? Possibly memory loss.
Hypocritic? No. I don't know. Imposter syndrome. Okay. Right. So, yes.

(01:25:17):
Did I mention that I communicate for a living? That was perfect, right?
So, imposter syndrome, that sense of, you know, being in a setting professionally
and having that kind of, oh, I hope that I figure out who I actually am,
you know, that kind of experience.
I have that less and less and less. Yeah, yeah. And I enjoy the...

(01:25:39):
The assurance of knowing that
i can reach for an answer in a lot of circumstances but
also probably more than anything else and this is something
you've helped me with immensely because of course you know my earliest
sort of real professional drive is towards being a trainer and being at the
front of the room and being the person with all the answers right and so as
we moved more and more into our coaching work one of the things i first had

(01:26:04):
as a challenge was a not leaping in too too quickly with advice and giving people
answers and mansplaining stuff to them.
But secondarily, being willing to cope with the discomfort of actually not having
an answer and being able to just take a step back and go, I don't know.
I honestly don't know. Let's talk about that. Let's have a look at it.
Maybe we can go away and think some more.

(01:26:25):
And just having that experience, for me, the comfort of just knowing that that's okay.
It's okay not to have the answer. It's okay not to be the expert.
It's a perfect summary point to this conversation because it ties into the experience
of doing this, where you're up to in your experience of your own life.

(01:26:47):
And on a broader sort of spiritual level even, it reminds me of,
I think it's a Buddhist teaching and they talk about, you know,
you have to be okay with the idea of falling and you don't know what's underneath you.
And then you realize there is nothing underneath you. and that sort of loss of control,
loss of perfectionism, loss of getting stuff right, being caught up in how things

(01:27:10):
should be is where all the joy lives and aren't we lucky to be able to visit there, you know? Yeah.
And it is visit still, you know? Of course. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But it's good. It's a nice place to have a little mini vacay.
Yeah. And the longer there, the better is my thing now. Absolutely.

(01:27:31):
So I really appreciate you being here today. It's been quite strange,
I think, for both of us as husband and wife and interviewer and guest. I think that's right.
But it could have been worse. I think it went well. Yeah. I mean,
we got like a half pineapple. It was a full pineapple.
Okay, fair enough. But yeah, I really appreciate it because it's a bit of a

(01:27:52):
thing to do this. And yes, you will be a repeat guest and back to my husband.
Awesome. And we've got a date night tonight. Yes. Yes, we're off out.
A rare date night. It's been fabulous.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that too. Beachfront room at the Rendezvous. Oh, yeah.
Fancy. Fall 90s. Last time I went to have a martini there, they had to get the
olives from the kitchen and they were marinated in oil.

(01:28:12):
And I had literal globules of oil on the top of my martini and I still enjoyed
it. Shout out to the cocktail bar of the Rendezvous. Woo!
They've got Kahlua, so. That's, yeah, absolutely. All right,
let's wrap it up. Okay. Thank you. And to our sponsors. This is...

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