CGU #004 - John Kriesfeld - Craig Griffin Universe

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Hey, John, welcome along. Thank you so much for joining
me. Really appreciate it.
I appreciate you taking time outof your to out of your day to be
a guest on the show. So thank you.
Well. Thank you for inviting me,
Craig. Great pleasure.
Now, I guess knowing you, you'rean extremely busy person with

(00:32):
many irons in many fires. So I guess the hardest part is
to to, you know, work out exactly which to start on.
But perhaps that's the first question of how is it that you
are able to successfully navigate so many things all at
one time? Yeah, that's a good question.

(00:54):
And I have thought about that from time to time, but I I
appear to be a very organised person.
I mean, when Sharon came onto your podcast, she just started
talking. But when I knew I was going to
be on your podcast, I made a list of all the things that I

(01:15):
could potentially talk about. And then for each of those, I
put in bullet points so that I wouldn't forget something
important. Yeah, that's great.
I've always been focused as wellon my goals.
You give me a goal that I believe in, I will achieve it.

(01:37):
Yeah. And from what I've seen of, of
successful people, it does seem to be a very common theme is
that they're very clear, like yourself on what the goal is and
then creating a, you know, a pathway, A blueprint, a map on
exactly how to get there. Yeah, I have to believe in the
goal. Yeah.

(01:57):
If I believe in a goal, then it will be achieved.
Yeah. Like we can talk about goals for
a moment if you like. Yeah, definitely.
Because one of my careers, I've had two main careers, one was
teaching and one was as a production planning warehouse
manager. I can mention Unilever because I

(02:18):
had a good time there. So I'm only going to say nice
things about them. But when I first began working
there, some of the girls there were talking about going to
Weight Watchers because they hadto lose a bit of weight.
And being realistic, I thought, well, I could lose a bit myself.
And also it was during my secondmarriage, I've had a few of them

(02:44):
and my my second wife could alsohave lost a little bit of
weight. But rather than nagging her and
saying come on, lose some weight, I thought if I go along
to Weight Watchers, it might encourage her to also go along.
That part didn't work. But I went and they weighed me

(03:06):
up and they measured me and theysaid, right, yes, to get to your
goal weight you have to lose 1112 kilos, we'll say 12.
I thought, well, OK, and I said normally the normal person loses
half a kilo to 1K a week if theyfollow the programme properly.

(03:27):
And I thought, well, I'm going to follow the programme
properly. That was never in doubt.
So I thought half to 1, Yep, three months.
So that's, that was my target, my goal.
So I did everything correctly and the three months came up and

(03:47):
I achieved my goal weight and people were saying, oh, are you
excited, John, that you've achieved your goal weight?
Well, no, there was no excitement because I always knew
I was going to do it. It didn't come as a surprise
that was I was going to get there.
And The funny thing is, once I achieved my goal weight, Weight

(04:09):
Watchers said to me, have you considered becoming a Weight
Watchers leader? Well, no, I hadn't, but I
thought well, there's another challenge.
I enjoy a challenge, so I said OK, Yep, let's do it.
So I ended up I was running three sessions a week and I got

(04:29):
nominated in my second year of being a team leader, nominated
as the Weight Watchers Team Leader of the Year for Victoria
and Tasmania. Wow.
Very cool. Well, I thought maybe it's just
because I'm the token male, who knows?
But it was, I didn't win. But I, you know, just the fact

(04:52):
that I was nominated, there's only four of us nominated.
And I thought, well, that's that's an achievement.
So yeah, set your goal and if I believe in it, it will be done.
Yeah, that's again a similar theme I've seen with successful
people is not only do they they set the goal, but then it's not
necessarily a surprise when theyachieve it or or when they get

(05:15):
there or when they get close to it.
Expectation. That's right.
Exactly. You know, and quite often I've
heard people that are successfulasked, you know, are you
surprised? And you know, the response has
been similar. It's like, well, yes and no.
I mean, I have had a little bit of luck in the success has
probably been even greater than what I'd expected.

(05:36):
But you know, for the better, better part, they had foreseen
what was to come because they'd they'd planned for it.
They'd set a goal and then, you know, a map on exactly how to
get there too. And they believed in themselves.
Yeah. I mean, it was the same at
Unilever when when I was managerthere, every manager was given

(05:57):
5K PIS. You know, You know what a KPI
is. Yes, keep.
Like keep performance indicatorsplaying a lot I always used to
say, but we never have P is we only have KPISPIS don't exist
anyway. So 5K PIS.

(06:17):
So I would look at it, analyse it and work out how to achieve
them. And every year I achieved my 5K
PIS and after three years they made me a high performer, which
meant I got paid more on a bonusevery year.
Then when I achieved my KPIs for10 years in a row, I was given

(06:39):
sustained high performer and given a extra bonus at the end
of the year. But the fact that I was
achieving those KPIs was never asurprise because I planned for
it. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
It was inevitable. It was there from the very
start, which again, you know, I've, I've heard it compared to

(07:02):
setting a course, you know, in acar with AGPS, you've got to
know a, exactly what your final destination is, where you want
to go. And then whether it's choosing
the GPS or a map, you want to have a clear path on exactly how
you're going to get there. There may be alternatives, you
know, there may be different options, but you've you've got a
relatively clear path on exactlyhow you're going to arrive at

(07:23):
that final destination. That's true, yes.
But as I said, one of the important things though, is to
believe in yourself, believe that you are capable of doing
it, Henry Ford said. And I've got a lot of quotes, so
I might throw in a few from timeto time.
But love a good quote. He said whether you believe you

(07:44):
can or whether you believe you can't, you will be correct.
Yeah, that's such an awesome quote.
It's one that I've used before and it's just so true.
Just having that, you know, that, that well, a, the belief,
but also the mindset that you know, that it can be achieved
that, that positive outlook, that openness to do things like

(08:07):
you with the, the example of Weight Watchers, you know, if
you had of just straightaway defaulted to, Oh, no, I'm not
interested in that. And I discussed this last week
with Sharon too. It it's like if you've got that
openness, that willingness to tojust have a go, that's half the
battle. Well, I hope being bored and I
enjoy a challenge. So that was a challenge and it

(08:28):
was, it was me pretty much. And the room full of women.
There were hardly any men came along, but they all responded
well and they all, most of them were very, very successful in
achieving their weight loss goals.
Because the manager, that Lady Itook over from, she was all very

(08:49):
lovey dovey. You know, if if one of the women
came along and said, oh, you know, I've been bad this week
and I haven't achieved what I wanted to, she'd go, oh, well,
they're there, dear. No, at least you're trying.
Whereas I was going, well, come on, shape up.
If you don't, if you don't do it, you're never going to
achieve it. I was like the hard taskmaster

(09:10):
and they tended to respond to that.
Yeah, bit of bit of tough love. Yes, tough love.
And I've often said that I have a strong belief in everything
being about balance. So you know, there's in that
situation, there's clearly room for both.
You know, sure, having that empathy and understanding and

(09:30):
compassion for people is important.
But especially in this day and age of, you know, everyone
getting a place, everyone getting a trophy, you know,
trophy's the last and that sort of thing.
It's just so important to to also have that tough love and to
have that, you know, that just being, it's what I've heard Gary
Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, who I'm a fan of, referred to as kind

(09:55):
candour. So, you know, it's, it's still
about being completely open and and honest and yeah.
Frankly, that's what I had, kindcandour, but they were there to
achieve a goal, so I was there to help them.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Yeah.
The only way you're going to achieve that is to again, lay
out that that dull, lay out the path and then to execute it to

(10:16):
actually, you know, along the way be steering the ship and,
and and aiming towards that destination too.
Tell us a little bit about Unilever.
Some people may be familiar withthe brand.
You know, it is a brand that that owns numerous other brands,
but a large multinational company.
Well, I can talk about my journey through Unilever.

(10:38):
Yeah, awesome. I was a teacher for 20 odd years
and near the end I was around 39and I began to feel myself just
burning out, getting tired, losing the energy that I used to
have with teaching. And I thought I have not got

(10:58):
another 2025 years in me. I just become old and cynical
and I've seen too many teachers who'd got old and cynical and
who was still teaching and it wasn't fair for the children.
And I thought I never want to beone of them.
So I've always taught the children at school, you know, if
if you believe in yourself and work hard enough, you can put

(11:22):
whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve within reason.
I mean, I'm never going to pole vault over, you know, 15 feet or
whatever, but you have to know what you can do and can't do.
Man's got. To know limitations as Kleenex
would. Say, well, Sharon tells me, if I
don't know. So I thought, OK, let's just do

(11:47):
this. So I quit teaching.
I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I could do
something. Something would come along.
And at that very point in time, the only time ever Rosella back
then, advertise for a senior clerk.
I've never done it before, have never done it since.

(12:07):
Wow. And so I applied for it.
I also applied to get a job at Shep News.
But because I I enjoy writing, Ithought that could be fun.
But as a job. Shep as in Shepherdon for for.
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, sorry.
Likely small to Cherry the jury's tat.

(12:31):
Shepherdon is Shep, Kai Abram isKai, Murchison is Merch.
But you know, we just compressed.
That's the Australia. We abbreviate everything.
Yes, I, I applied for the job there.
I happened to notice that deviating too much in the topic,
but I happened to notice it thatthey said that a knowledge of

(12:54):
Lotus 123 would be useful. And I've never heard of Lotus
123 when I applied for the job and I can't lie.
There's something within me thatI just can't lie.
I, I tend to, I, I call it lyingby omission.
If you ask me a question and I, I don't want to give you that,

(13:16):
that answer, I will weave aroundit so that all of a sudden we're
off track and gone whatever, butI can't tell an, an outlight
lie. So I spoke to a few people and
said, you know, Lotus 123, what the hell is it?
And someone said I as a computerprogramme, I said oh great, what
does it do? And he said it's to do with

(13:39):
numbers and spreadsheets. I said OK, that'll do me.
Got to the interview. If they had have said, you know,
Lotus 123, I would have had to have said, no, I'm sorry, but I
didn't. And they didn't halfway through
the interview. And I said, oh, and by the way,
Lotus 123, what a great computerprogramme, those spreadsheets,

(14:01):
they do such an amazing job withnumbers.
And they assumed they knew what I was talking about because I
always knew if I got the job, I could soon learn it.
I can learn anything I put my mind to.
So I thought I could learn that.Yeah.
And within two weeks after getting the job, I was doing
Lotus 123 all over the place. So.

(14:21):
I believe that was the early forerunner of like Excel
spreadsheets. Excel.
Yes. Excel.
Yeah, yeah. And Excel's been my friend all
the way through as a production planning manager.
But anyway, I got the job there.And that was at that point
Rosella was tomato processing, so it was just tomato soup,

(14:43):
tomato sauce, tomato paste, and we did a bit of Pickles and
chutney. They still make the best tomato
sauce or or ketchup as some people may nowadays.
Yeah, but it's not made by Rosella anymore.
It's made overseas, I think because they sold the brand.
Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so I got the job
there. Part of the Rosella production

(15:10):
plan was what we call the tomatoseason.
So during, during the tomato season, we bring in like 6070
thousand tonne of tomatoes over a three month, 2 1/2 month
period. But they've got to be staggered
as they come in. You can't just bring them all at
once. And of course they don't grow

(15:32):
perfectly to to order as well. Sometimes according to the
weather they're a bit slow or ifit warms up they're a bit quick.
So somebody had to manage the tomato season and so they gave
that job to me. Thank you very much.
So off that was like 2024 seven job type of job.

(15:56):
I didn't have any weekends off or anything like that over three
months, but I didn't mind because I enjoyed it.
It was a challenge. So you have to work out what
production you can put in the plan in order to process the man
of tomatoes that have come in during that period.
If you haven't got enough production, then tomatoes go to

(16:18):
waste. If you've got too much
production then people are hanging around waiting for
tomatoes to come in. So there's a shortfall, yeah.
That that was quite a bit of a challenge, but once you do it
for a couple of years, it becomes quite easy and it's just
the weather you have to worry about.
And then they brought in Regalito and we started making

(16:39):
Regalito. Pasta sauce, Yeah.
Yeah. Pasta sauce.
Sorry. Yeah.
Then chicken tonight. Everybody knows chicken tonight,
I'm sure. Yeah.
Definitely. Brought that in and we began to
expand and then we had a Lipton iced tea.
We brought that on board as well.
And by this stage I've been promoted to the planning

(17:02):
manager. So I was doing all of that work.
And of course they gave me the warehouse on top of that.
Thank you very much. That was also more work but I
didn't mind. So just planning all of that.
And then we had a factory in Melbourne at Knoxfield doing all
the cup of soup, all the dry foods and there were, they had

(17:25):
13 lines down there making cup of soup.
And they decided to sell that factory and send all the cup of
soup to be made overseas. And our factory manager said,
well, now hang on, hang on. If you invest in our factory,
we'll make the cup of soup up here at Tutura.
So they weighed up the pros and cons and decided that would be

(17:49):
would make more sense actually to do it here.
It wouldn't have all the supply chain issues and wouldn't have
to change all of their formulas because the materials overseas
were a bit different to what youget here.
So they then decided to invest $20 million in a Tutura factory

(18:10):
and, and bring up all of those 13 lines up to here and.
When's this? What sort of time are we talking
about? When would this have been?
2010. OK, sure.
Yeah, 15 years ago. So yeah, still sort of similar
money to today. I suppose it's the equivalent of
25 million or. Yeah, maybe a little bit later,

(18:34):
but around that time, yeah. Yeah.
So that was more, more work I had to then plan and work on.
And I, I finally said at that point, I, I think I need an
assistant manager. So they advertised, actually
they advertised all over the world for one.
And I had a fellow from, I had alot of people from India wanted

(18:55):
the job, but a fellow from SouthAfrica applied for it.
His name was, his name was Hill Hill.
We call him Gill. We call him Gill Gill.
I think a Dutch background or something.
And he came out and I liked whathe could deliver.

(19:18):
So I appointed him. And the interesting thing about
that, which is a Side Story, buthe and his wife came out and
there are two things. One, his wife couldn't believe
that there were women driving trucks in Australia and women
driving tractors in Australia because that just didn't happen

(19:39):
to the women in South Africa. OK, right.
Wow. And also they went to, they
arrived just before Christmas, so they went to a Christmas
function up in the park with their children, their two
children. And they couldn't believe that
the parents would just let theirchildren run all over the place.

(20:00):
Because in South Africa you haveyour children right against you
with your arms around them. Whenever you walk anywhere,
they're right there. You never, ever let them away
from arm's length. And here they were just running
everywhere. So that was an eye opener for
them as well. Just the the freedom that we
had. That change of mindset, yeah,

(20:22):
yeah. It did.
So we don't get all that sort ofcrime.
We didn't back then all the crime that you were getting in
South Africa. And and I showed him the the,
the front page of our local newspaper, which said at that,
on that day that I that he was there stray dog, malls, pet dog

(20:47):
in backyard. I said there's your.
That's the main thing. To happen, there's your.
Yeah, that's, that's, you know, so, yeah.
And they're still living here and they're still very, very
happy now. And he's gone from strength to
strength. He's no longer at Unilever, but
he's got his own company up in Queensland.

(21:07):
We're doing very, very well. So, yeah.
So what else about Unilever? No, they're, they're a great
company to work for. I had no problems at all.
And they employ local, so it gave many, many people in the
area a job as well. So yeah, that was good.
And I know we've discussed previously they, they previously

(21:30):
started as the old lever and kitchen company, I believe
kitchen. Yeah, overseas, yeah.
Well we became we were Rosella, then we were Uni Foods and then
Unilever, but Unilever was a lever and kitchen.
Right. I see.
Yeah. How long did you end up staying

(21:50):
with them with Unilever? I think 21 years.
Oh, right. OK.
Yeah. And just kind your tyre.
Oh yes. Well, I mean, like I got paid
good money, I can't complain about that.
But there was a lot of pressure,a little bit of stress as well.

(22:11):
I've always said that the jobs cause pressure and people cause
stress, and there's a bit of a combination of that.
But I've seen people hang on when they're under pressure as
they get older for too long and then they have a stroke or they
have some sort of medical condition and the rest of their

(22:33):
life has been ruined. So I thought, I'm healthy, I've
got enough money now, time to just retire, move on.
Yeah, yeah. I've I've always been able to
make that sort of decision well,without any regrets.
I used to have a motorbike. It was a Yamaha Midnight

(22:53):
Special. It was a special bike.
It was shaft driven, not chain driven.
OK, so you could you could just drive along AT120K.
Not that I ever did. I wouldn't be like that.
And no vibration on the handlebars.
No nothing. And I sold it and people said,

(23:16):
oh, you sold your bike? And I said, yes, I noticed I was
missing volleys on the net playing tennis.
And I said, what's that going todo with your motorbike?
And I said, well, if you've everridden A motorbike, you know,
you have to be totally aware of what is happening around you at
all times. Your reaction times have to be
spot on. There are so many problems and

(23:38):
issues that can occur from othercars, you know, drivers,
whatever, that if you're, if you're starting to slow down, if
your reactions are no longer what they used to be, then that
you could be in trouble. So because I was no longer
hitting those volleys on the netthat I used to get to or
anticipate or see or react to, Ithought, sell a motorbike.

(24:01):
Yeah, yeah. It's good that you saw saw that
writing on the wall and that is,excuse me, I guess that is a bit
of a theme for you as well as that ability to to self manage
and and self regulate both in your personal life and your
professional life. Well, hopefully, I mean, I know,

(24:23):
I know I'm intelligent because I've done the IQ tests and all
of that. And I was going to talk about
one of one of the books I've written talks about sliding
doors and one of the, the, the biggest slide indoor moment in
my life was when I was five years old, OK, people think,

(24:46):
well, how can that be 5 years old?
Why is that a slide indoor moment that because I, I was
quite clever at school when I was in prep or they call it
formation year now my, my teacher asked my parents to come
up to the school and they said little Johnny is quite clever.
We we're thinking of putting himstraight now into Grade 1.

(25:11):
So I was half a year in prep. So we're putting him into grade
one. That will challenge him a bit
more. Little Johnny didn't have any
say in it, but my parents thought, OK, let's do that.
So all of a sudden I was in grade one and then the year
after I was in grade 2 with all the kids who were at least one

(25:33):
year. Some were two years older than
me because I was a tall person. Anyway, I fitted in quite OK,
but from a maturity point of view, from that point on, I was
always a bit more immature than everybody else in my class all
the way through primary school and high school just because of
my my age. So yeah.

(25:55):
And when it came to playing cricket and football, well, I
wasn't strong enough or whateverphysically there to play in the
school football team or cricket team.
But I was a good swimmer actually.
I had, I had my own coach. He would pick me up before
school. Well, well before school.

(26:18):
So I bet it's at 5:00 in the morning.
He picked me up and take me to the pool.
It was Brunswick pool, which washeated, thank goodness.
And I would do all the swimming,all the training, and then he'd
drive me home and then I'd go toschool.
And he, I remember in Year 6, soswimming sports is underage.

(26:39):
So the kids I was swimming and swimming and against were all
Grade 4 and Grade 5. And because I was a good
swimmer, I won and I said to my mates, yeah, I won that.
And they go, yeah, yeah. But what do you reckon?
They're in the grade four and five.
Of course you're going to win. But I should have been grade
five. Yeah, exactly.

(27:01):
Got no accolades for that. So.
But what I was getting at was sofrom that, from prep on, I was
now one year ahead of where I would have been if I had have
stayed where I was. And then if I'd have stayed in
prep, we wouldn't be having thisconversation.
I wouldn't be sitting here talking to.

(27:22):
You. I got to high school, went all
the way through high school, decided to become a teacher,
went to teacher's college and that was the last year of the,
what they call the TPTC, the trained primary teacher's
certificate, which was only two years, two years.

(27:43):
The year after they brought in the, there's a different one
diploma of education, which was three years, the same course, by
the way, the same thing, but they just expanded it over three
years. Wonderful.
So if I'd have stayed in my right grade, I would have got

(28:04):
the teachers college one year later and then done a three year
course. So I would have got out of
teachers college when I was 21. I got out of it when I was 19,
so I would have been been two years behind my current timeline
if I'd have stayed in prep. So all the schools I went to,

(28:25):
all the people I met, I mean, I met my first wife up near
Mujerra because I applied for school up there.
All of that would have changed completely.
I would have had different. I mightn't even become a
teacher. I could have, you know, become
something else because of that one little change or major
change when I was in prep. Yeah.

(28:47):
So just slide indoors. You think about yourself there.
There are things that have happened that if you've gone on
a different path, where would you be?
Yeah, 100%. It's mind blowing the amount of
cascading carry on effects of just that one tiny little thing.
You know, like you say, it's a slide indoor moment that just

(29:08):
has an ongoing effect on the rest of your life, literally.
And we don't even know. I mean, I'll talk about the
example of you're in the supermarket.
This is just a minor example, but it works.
And you've got a trolley full ofof shopping and the little old
lady comes up behind you with two items.
I'll do that again. And you and you think, oh, OK,

(29:33):
you go in front of me because you've only got 2 items.
I've got a whole trolley. You're being nice.
So you let them go in front, andbeing a little old lady, you
know she takes forever to get a purse out and then she can't
remember her her code for her card, and she Potters around and
finally, finally, she pays up and moves on.

(29:53):
But you're now 3 or 4 minutes behind where you would have been
if you hadn't have let her go through you.
If you just kept going and left her behind you, you would have
been finished four or five minutes earlier, which you think
was nothing. That's a minor thing.
But 5 minutes earlier, an unlicensed driver high on drugs,

(30:17):
out on bail, went straight through the crossroad where you
would have been with your car atthat very point in time.
You would have smashed into you.Life is either very, very badly
damaged or it's all over. But you never know that and.
You'll never know. You would know 100%.
There is so many of these thingsthat happen and you never know

(30:38):
about it, yeah. People had decided to to turn
left or turn right. People that were about to leave
home and you know, forgot, oh, Iforgot my wallet, I forgot my
phone or whatever. I turned around back in.
They will never know. But like you say, that accident
that they may have avoided or, you know, that's right, someone

(30:59):
that they ended up meeting because they were there 3 or 4
minutes later than what they would have been that again, you,
you just, you wouldn't have met that person otherwise.
And they could end up being yourbest friend or end up being a,
you know, wife, husband, partner.
It's, it's just, it's bizarre and you'll, you'll never know,
but it's just one of those things that the, the changes,

(31:21):
you know, it's kind of that, that, you know, the concept of
the multiverse they talk about where there's literally an
infinite number of options of, of the life as we know it based
on alternatives that could have happened in each and every
second along the way, you know? Well, I met Sharon just through
that sort of thing. I teach guitar and many years

(31:46):
ago I thought I'll go to the community house and just see if
they need somebody there to run guitar classes.
So I went along and Sharon was the assistant manager there at
the time. And the manager there went and
spoke to her and asked if, you know, they're interested in
running a guitar course, a guitar class.

(32:09):
And she said no, no, no, we don't care about that sort of
thing here. That's all fair enough.
And I was, as I was leaving, Sharon has sort of overheard a
little bit from her office and she popped out and said, oh,
excuse me, Sir. What?
What was that you're after? And I explained to her about
teaching guitar and she said no,I think that would be a good
idea. Then she went back and spoke to

(32:32):
the actual manager and said no, I think we should do that.
And she said, oh, fair enough, whatever.
Wow. So that's How I Met.
That's How I Met Sharon at that very point.
Now, if she'd have stayed in heroffice and not wandered out to
see what I wanted, I would have walked out that door.
And that was it. Wow, It's amazing.
Sliding doors. Yeah, 100%.

(32:53):
Of course. Sharon Handley, our guest from
last week, who shall forever be known as hashtag 003, yourself
being hashtag 004. Yeah, look quite Craig.
Just just on that, Craig, I was hoping to wait a few more and
become hashtag 007. I know, look, it's going to be a
highly coveted position. Yes.

(33:14):
And you're like, I'm sorry. I was just going to save it, but
you know, quite the power couplethat you you both are to, you
know, you both. We refer to ourselves as a power
couple. I definitely, you know, all
jokes aside, you guys really arelike both professionally and

(33:35):
personally. You, you complement each other,
You work so well together, You bring out the the very best in
each other. From what I can see, it's you.
You really are a power couple in, you know, in every
definition of the term. I won't talk too much about
Myers Briggs, but I'm a big fan of Myers Briggs.
But Sharon and I are the complete opposite in every

(33:57):
category. I told people, you know, where
I'm strong, she's weak, and where she's weak, I'm strong.
Yeah, the very definition of a of a successful couple right
there. No, no.
Did you hear what I said? Yes.

(34:20):
Good. Like I say, it's the very
definition of a successful couple right there.
Anyway, I wanted also to just, I'll talk about writing at some
stage as well, if you've got time for that, but.

(34:41):
We've got all the time in the world, so yeah, definitely.
I've been married three times and the first, my first wife,
was very active, very sporting, and that's what attracted me to
her. There she was a top netball
player, top basketball player and #1 squash player, very good

(35:01):
at whatever sport she took up. And because at that age I was
very sporting that that's what attracted me to her.
The thing about marriages and couples is quite often you're on
a different path, but at some point your paths, your paths
crossover and interact. And at that point in time, you

(35:24):
think, yeah, we've got a lot in common.
You know, we're, we're very similar because our paths are
very similar, but the direction of both paths are actually going
to move away from each other. And you just happen to be in the
point where you're intertwined or crossing over at that time.
And we, yeah. And we, we gradually grew apart
and we no longer had the same interest and, and feelings that

(35:48):
were there initially. And being true to my own nature,
I thought, well, OK, that's it. We just have to say that's it,
stop, let's move on. Which is what I did wasn't easy
by the way. It never is.
But you need to be strong withinyourself because again, I
thought to remain together with this person now for the rest of

(36:11):
my life would not be good for me.
It wouldn't be good for her. So yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, moved on.
Yeah. Then my second wife was very
musical, very creative from a musical point of view.
She was very, very talented as asinger and she was.

(36:36):
That attracted me to her becauseI at that stage I was becoming
more, well, not really musical, but creative.
I was looking at writing and doing those sort of things.
And the creative aspect of her life then attracted me to her.
And then I'll talk about music abit later if we get time.

(36:56):
But then again, our paths were intertwined, but again, they
moved apart and I moved on to the final stage in my life,
which is a spiritual side. And Sharon's very spiritual.
And that again attracted me to her, the spiritual side of
things. Because something happened to me

(37:17):
when I was with my second wife. If you got time for that story.
Yeah, please. Because the question is, do you
believe in life after death? I do, yes.
You've you've got examples or. No, it's.
It's more a case of it's just what I believe, not so much that

(37:38):
I have proof or or evidence of it.
It's more a case of, you know, sometimes you have to believe it
to see it rather than you have to see it to believe it.
It is, but something happened tome where now I know that there
is something beyond our current physical side.

(38:00):
Wow, that's interesting, isn't it?
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
There was, well, there's a lady called Deb Webber.
She's a spiritualist and she talks to dead people.
When people have passed over, she'll be able to bring them up
and and talk to them. And Glenda, my second wife, was

(38:25):
very much into that side of things as well.
She used to meditate with candles and very interested.
And just to go back a little bit, one of my ancestors on the
Dutch side, my my great aunt wasa medium.
She used to go into a trance andstrange people would talk

(38:49):
through her and then when she came out of the trance she had
no idea of what had happened. Yeah, wow.
My father told me about her. He said when he was in the in
the Navy, he was in the the Dutch merchant marine.
He and a couple of his sailor buddies went round to my aunt's

(39:10):
house and one of them, one of his buddies, was rubbishing the
fact that my aunt was a spiritualist, not rudely I
suppose, but just being a bit derogatory.
And she had an old wooden table,had three legs and a screw top,
You know, you sort of very, veryold fashioned.

(39:31):
And she said to the three men, you wind this table on as tight
as you possibly can, which they all did rounded on that was it.
And she said, right now you put your fingertips on the table,
which they did. And she focused her mind and the
table began to slowly unscrew. So my father thought, there's

(39:54):
something there. So when you tell me that story,
I thought I wonder if I've actually inherited.
Any of her abilities, you know, because it's a Direct Line
almost. Yeah.
So in my 20s, I began to hold seances.
I could actually focus my mind in a way that I can't describe

(40:15):
because I don't know how I'd do it.
But I would call up spirits to come to the seance and they
would come. And I was talking about that to
my my family one day and they were rubbishing me.
Come on. That's just, you know, people
are pushing the glass. You know, that doesn't actually
happen. And I said, right, let's do one.

(40:36):
Let's hold the sounds right herein the kitchen table right now.
So we, we cut up some cards withthe old bed and yes or no, all
those sort of things. We got a, a glass in the middle.
And for effect, we put a candle on top and lit the candle,
turned off the lights, whatever.Now my father said no, no, he
went, he was watching TV so he wasn't in the room.

(40:59):
So I called up some spirits withmy mind and they they appeared,
we're asking questions, the glass is moving around.
And my sister said to the spirit, what was the name of the
lady that my dad went out with before he met mum?
And it came up IVYIV. And my sister said to mum, who's

(41:23):
Ivy? She said, never heard of Ivy.
I don't know any Ivy. And my dad came out for a drink.
And my sister said to my dad, who's Ivy?
Who's this Ivy you're going out with?
And he says, Ivy, only Ivy I ever knew was the one who was
going out with you before I met your mum.
Now he wasn't in the room. Nobody else in the room had that

(41:44):
knowledge. Wow.
So I thought, oh, OK, there there's something in this sort
of science business. But then shortly after that, a
lady told me that what I was doing was very dangerous because
I didn't know what I was doing, which was clear, I didn't know
what I was doing, she said. I was leaving myself open for
all sorts of bad manifestations that could come, you know,

(42:08):
through from the other side. What do?
They call that the the Master's apprentice.
Oh, there you go. Could be.
The famous story. So I stopped doing silences, but
I, I had that ability just recall that I could call up the
spirits when I wanted to. So Deb Webber came to Shepperton

(42:28):
to talk to dead people and it was held at the Shepperton RSLI
shouldn't say Shepp at the Shepperton RSL.
And there would have been a couple of 100 people in the big
auditorium they had there. So I've gone along with my with
my wife, Glenda, and we're sitting there and she's Deb's

(42:50):
going through the routine. Is there a day that I want to
talk? I got a David whatever.
We'd been there about an hour and I was bored.
And if I'm bored, I'm dangerous.I can't help it.
Not in a good way. So, yeah, so I thought, wouldn't
it be great if Deb came over andand spoke to Glenda?

(43:11):
That's why we're here for surely, you know, So I focused
my mind as I used to and I, I called up the spirits in the
room. I commanded them, which maybe I
shouldn't have done, but I commanded them to get Deb to
come and talk to Glenda. And when I refocus, because when
I focus, I sort of the outside world just disappears and I'm in

(43:35):
my internal world. When I came back into the room,
it was all dead quiet. And I said to Glenda, what's
going on? And she said, didn't you hear?
Deb's not happy. She said somebody, somebody in
the room is channelling. Wow.
I think I know who that was. I didn't mention that.

(43:55):
I didn't say it. But then Deb's gone.
Oh, hang on. Oh, I've got a couple of spirits
here who are most insistent thatI come and talk to this lady.
Truly. She came over to Glenda and
said, there are two spirits who are saying I have to come and
talk to you. Now how?
How could that have happened if I hadn't have actually made
contact with the outside other, you know, the other realm, who

(44:19):
then brought Deb over to talk toGlenda, And then Deb just said,
oh, this is most unusual. That's all they wanted.
They didn't. That was it, because that's all
I told him to do. Yeah.
So Deb and Glenda had a bit of achat about nothing much.
Then Deb's gone back, looking for is there a Herald in the
room or whatever? But that happened now.

(44:44):
How could that have happened if there wasn't something there?
Yeah. Wow.
And what was your reaction to that at the time?
Like did that? Oh.
Great. No, I felt very pleased with
with with what I'd done. But when I told Glendra about it
on the way home, she was furiousbecause I'd embarrassed her.
I'd embarrassed Deb, she said. Oh, you're like the Heckler who

(45:07):
thinks they're more important than the comedian, I thought, I
don't care. I know that there's something
beyond our current plane, our current realm.
Were you surprised that it happened?
Did you feel vindicated or you just you, you already knew that
was. I knew, yeah, 'cause I I'd done
it before. I was not surprised.

(45:29):
I was pleased, mind you. Yeah, but I have another story.
Because people believe things all the time that actually
aren't real. And I'll give you the story.
I'll give you the story that people believe now that is not
real. Yeah.
That's when I was at Unilever and I was playing in the band

(45:53):
with my wife. We, we, we were a duo.
She did all the singing. I wasn't allowed to sing for
some reason. I don't know, but I just played
the keyboard and the guitar and we had a gig just off the Hume
Hwy at Wandong. It was an old hotel that had
been converted into a reception centre and we're playing there

(46:13):
for a group that had employed us.
We went there earlier to set up and inside the building the
pillars weren't weren't brick orconcrete.
There were tree trunks. There were like 1/2 a dozen tree
trunks up and down the middle ofthis big hall supporting the

(46:34):
roof. OK, it's most unusual.
And the lady there was all dressed in black and she had a
lot of cats. She was a cat lady.
And she was chatting to us and where you're from, etcetera.
And we said, oh, to Chura. And she said, oh, that's most
interesting. She said a, an Indian fella just

(46:55):
called in yesterday. Yep.
The passenger in his car had to go to the toilet urgently.
You know, she was in a bit of trouble.
So they called in here and he said he's going to Unilever and
TE Chura to take up a a new position, you know, in the
factory there. I thought wonderful and didn't
think any more about it. On Monday, it was announced that

(47:21):
we were having a morning tea to welcome the new R&D person to
the factory. So we've all gone along to
morning tea and whatever, and the fellow's name was Nitin.
So, so I've called that. Of course they called him
Needle, which is very, you know,they could have been more

(47:42):
creative, but no Nitin. So Nitin made a bit of a speech.
Then he was being introduced to all our different groups around
the room. And just before it came to my my
group, for some reason the thought occurred to me.
Don't know where it came from. Most of my thoughts just come to
me without me thinking about them.

(48:04):
As he shook my hand, I jumped back and said, What they've
gone? What they've all gone?
What I said I just had a vision.What I had a vision.
When I shook Nitin's hand, for some reason, I just saw this big
room and in the middle of the room, they're all these trees.
I don't know why there are treesin the middle of the room, but I

(48:27):
saw these trees and there was a lady, an old lady dressed in
black, and she had cats. There were cats everywhere.
And just in my vision, I said I had a great art, you know, she
used to have, you know, visions,I think, you know, maybe.
And then we'll go. Nathan's manager is going.
Come on, John. What?

(48:48):
Stop mucking around. What are you doing?
Because I had a bit of a reputation, I'm sorry to say.
What are you doing? Stop mucking around.
I said no, no, I had a vision and Nitin, of course, said go,
Oh my God, that's true, he said.Yeah.
That all happened. It all happened.
And he said, yeah, there's it's it's lady.
There are three trumps in them cats.

(49:10):
He said it's true. It happened.
I had to go there because, you know, the lady I was with had to
go to the toilet and it's all true.
And I said to the manager, I said, how could I've never met
Nitin before in my life? This is the first time I've ever
met him. How could I possibly have known
about tree trunks in a building and cats, ladies in black?

(49:35):
How could I have known that? And I, I gave the because
they're going, oh, I, I don't know.
And I gave a quote from SherlockHolmes, which I've written down.
Sherlock Holmes said when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
I told them that and I walked out.

(49:58):
Dropped the bike and walked out.How could they disprove it?
I must have had a vision. There's no way I could have
possibly have known any of that.Wow.
That's so even though it wasn't true, they believe it was true.
That is cold. And tell me, did you do the big

(50:20):
reveal or did you just leave them hanging with that?
About a few years later I went and spoke to Nick and said I,
you know what happened? But all the rest I never
mentioned it. Oh wow, they'll think I've got
this ability. They wouldn't shake hands after.
Yeah, everyone's like, yeah, no,I'm good.
I don't want to. Yeah, the high 5, that's enough.

(50:46):
Yeah, I'd prefer not to physically touch you just in
case, yeah. Spiritualisms.
It touches on a really good point and something that I
personally believe to be the case is that there are
charlatans and there are genuinecases.
And quite, I mean, we, I think as people, we generally try to

(51:13):
go to an all or nothing. It's, it's like it's either 100%
true in every case or it's 100% false.
It's a, it's a scam. But I think the reality, again,
coming back to, you know, that that's sort of a balance is that
there are cases where, you know,like whether you're talking
about spiritualists or, you know, you're talking about

(51:34):
mediums or clairvoyance or, or whatever the, the specific case
is that there are some genuine cases where people do have
genuine abilities. And then there's some absolute
charlatans and fraudsters, you know, whether they're, they're
just trying to make money out ofpeople or whatever the case.
And unfortunately it, you know, the, the people that are, that

(51:56):
are genuine, therefore don't getenough recognition because
they're tarnished by the, the charlatans.
I I actually also read tarot cards.
Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you about the
tarot. Tell us about tarot from the
perspective of someone who knowsnothing about it other than than

(52:17):
the word you know, tarot and tarot.
Cards. Well, probably going back to
your point, probably more than half the tarot readers are
charlatans, Yeah, who are just there for the money.
They they read the person in theroom, they they tell them what
they want to hear or they're telling.
Them. It's a big.
It is, yeah, Yeah. And I tell them ambiguous things

(52:39):
that could or could not happen or that that might mention half
a dozen things. And if one comes vaguely true,
they go, oh, yeah, I was told that, yeah, yeah.
She's really good. That was, that's how it should
be. I actually went to, when I was
with Glenda again, we went to a spiritualist who was doing

(53:00):
giving a talk about, you know, spiritualism and all that sort
of thing. And I was focusing on what she
was saying. I was focusing on her and her
words. And after the session, she came
up to me and said, young man, never come back to one of my
readings ever again. She said you were giving me a

(53:23):
headache, actual headache. So just my energy was affecting
her so. Wow.
Strange, isn't it? Yeah.
Was it anything you were aware of at the time?
No, not at all. No, I was just focusing.
I, it's just my focus. I went to somebody else because

(53:47):
later on another time to have my, to have my fortune told,
whatever they see, what they would come up with, because they
again, they'd be working with Glenda and telling her things
and she seemed to think they were OK.
So I went and sat down with thisperson and she just said I can't

(54:07):
take your money. She said your mind is just so
busy. I just I can't read it.
And so she said, no, you have togo.
So there's something going on. But anyway, from a tarot point
of view, people who tell the future, they're the ones who are

(54:28):
making it up. Because if she's just not yet
written, we change the future inthe present.
And you, you can make 100 different decisions within the
next hour that will change your future completely.
I mean, through physical harm orthrough financial decisions or

(54:49):
whatever it might be. You don't know the future.
When I was doing the the seances, I actually spoke to a
spirit and said, can you tell methe attached loader numbers for
next week? I thought, let's make something
out of this. And the spirit said, yeah, of
course, sure, no worries. I said, what are they?
So it was a lady, she told me. I wrote them all down, went and

(55:13):
bought a ticket just with those numbers in it.
Waited for a week, not one number came up, nothing.
So in a sense, after that I said, can you tell the future?
And they said, no, I can't tell the future.
Not yet written. Yeah.

(55:33):
Yeah. So.
So the tarot readers who talk about the future, they're the
ones who are just half of the money.
I do tarot in a different way. For some reason, tarot interacts
with your subconscious. So I always tell people if
you've got a, a decision or a question that you want to know

(55:55):
the answer to bring that along and through, through the use of
the carbs and through me talkingto you, you will come to the
answer. You'll find out what it is that
you want to know what decision you need to make.
Yeah. And that that has worked so well
over time. But you have to have an exact

(56:17):
question. The more rambling the question
then the more inexact the answer.
Yeah, OK. So, for example, you've got a.
If you've got a question that you would like to ask, if I was
a tarot reader, what would it be?
What's something you want to know that you don't know the

(56:42):
answer to? That's a really.
If you're saying will I be, willI be a successful podcaster, we
don't know. That's very ambiguous sort of
question. It's going to be more exact.
OK, so I guess you know, just topull an example out of thin air
specifically will or would therebe 100th episode of the podcast

(57:06):
of the show? I can, I can say yes, but I'm
only guessing and the cards couldn't tell you either.
That's just too open ended and it's we're talking about the
future. Yeah, yeah.
And again, you like you could, you might say yes, and that
might have been the case. But then I could intentionally
stop the podcast and never do. Another one.
For you at the future. Yeah, I failed, yeah, but so

(57:30):
have you. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
And they've got to be very exact.
A lot of it is to do with a yes or no type of decision.
I had a lady once came and she was in two minds about whether
she wanted to continue a relationship with this person.

(57:52):
Should I or should I'm not? Now that's a fairly exact
question, yes or no. So through through the cards and
whatever and me talking and asking questions and whatever,
she already knew the answer. Yeah.
Yeah, subconsciously she knew the answer and when it came out

(58:13):
that it was break this off, she said.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
She already knew it. Yeah, but the tarot cards bring
out what we're still in our subconscious that we're
repressing or suppressing. It's there.
We just don't want to actually face it.

(58:34):
Yeah. So that's how I use tarot.
Yeah, that's I was going to say.And so do you see your role
there for like, you know, going back to that example where
you're actually helping to get to that answer that they pretty
much already know? Yes, that's how it is.
The cards go through. The first card is the past in

(59:00):
regard to the question. All right, talking about the
past and whatever card comes up,we'll talk about that could be a
bad card, a good card. And we talk about hidden
influences in your life, things that are happening that you're
not aware of, or maybe it's sortof semi aware of talks about the
present, what is happening in the present.

(59:21):
Then we talk about what are your, what are your weaknesses?
What are the things that you need to work on in order to
actually become maybe a better person or more, more in control
of your life? Then it could be what are your
strengths, things that you're very good at.

(59:43):
And then there are two cards that I end up with.
One is this is the outcome to your question and the the final
card, it's one that I pick because normally everybody picks
their own cards. So they their energy will choose
the card and I pick a card and Itell them this card has got

(01:00:03):
nothing to do with your question, but this is a card
that will is important for your future that you need to be aware
of. Do you know about spirit guides?
Somewhat, yeah. Yeah.
Unfamiliar with the concept. Yeah, I can either believe in
them or not believe in them. But I have spirit guides and I

(01:00:28):
know them. I have an ability to see other
people's spirit guides. I don't talk about it very much
because it's an uncomfortable thing and most people think, oh,
that's just, you know, you're a lunatic or whatever.
But in a, in a tarot reading, myspirit guides are talking to the

(01:00:50):
other person's spirit guides because those spirit guides know
the ants, that they know what ishappening.
So that will talk to my guides who will talk to me, I will talk
to her. It's called the Golden Triangle.
So there's a rotation going on between the outside realm and

(01:01:11):
the our current inside realm. So my spirit guides will help me
to ask the right question and tosee where where she should be
going because of what her spiritguides have told mine.
OK. So when you say a triangle, it's
like our realm to that realm andthen back to us kind of thing.

(01:01:36):
Yes, it is. Yes, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
Your spirit guides are there. Everybody has three, maybe 4,
sometimes 5, but they will only help if you ask.
And we often call it a gut feel.I've got this gut feel, you
know, I don't know where it's coming from.
It's your guides trying to knockon your head going, you know,

(01:02:00):
this is what you must be doing. My guides, they just sit in the
background drinking coffee and reading the paper because I
hardly ever, ever need them. They're happy when I've got a
tarot card obsession because allof a sudden they're being.
Used they're like OK, here we gowe're.
We're in because I, I don't needthe help.

(01:02:22):
I, I'm quite happy with, with myown decision making.
But every now and then when I do, then I will ask.
So then they go, OK, cups down boys.
He wants this. So you know, go they come in and
have a bit of a chat. You've done meditation.

(01:02:43):
I've dabbled with it a little. It's not something I've really
done regularly or done a lot of,no.
Yeah, I do meditate a little bit.
Nowhere near as much as I should.
Yeah, My mind is very, very active, and I have trouble
making it quiet. But when I do meditate properly,
I always meet this old man on a bench.

(01:03:03):
You're just sitting there just waiting for me, dressed in white
with a beard. So I just sit down next to him
in the meditation and we talk and he he gives me advice.
Don't know where it comes from. Does it my brain just making it
up or is it actually from the spirit world?
And then I think, well, OK, thank you for that.

(01:03:25):
And he always says it's been toolong, you know, where you, where
have you been? I think, well, you know, I'm
busy. Yeah.
So your meditations is always there.
Always there. Wow.
Somebody said it could be your future self sitting there
waiting to talk to you. OK, so who knows?

(01:03:47):
Yeah. Wow.
And and when I say the the spirit guides that other people
have, is it just my brain, my mind making it up, or am I am I
actually aware of them? See.
I can. Yeah.
You got 3-4. You got four.

(01:04:07):
I can see 4. Guides.
Four. Yeah, yeah, they're there to
help you. They're there because couple
have been assigned to you right from the get go.
They've always been with you right through.
Others come and go as you require them and every now and

(01:04:29):
then you will get a guide. If you're if you reach the high
level within yourself then the universe will send a guide, a
younger guide normally who died early or hasn't been very
successful when they were alive to learn from you.
Wow, OK. So that when they're reborn in

(01:04:52):
the future time, they will go back with more understanding,
more knowledge, and they won't make the same mistakes that they
made in their in their first life, or second, or third, or
15th, whatever it might be. Isn't that interesting?
Could you think of like they're there just to serve you, but.
No, but they're there to learn. Some of them are there to learn

(01:05:13):
from you. Most are there to help you, not
to serve. Serve's the wrong word.
They're there to help. They're there to clarify things.
So whenever you get a gut feel, yeah, see, my gods are saying
now, yeah, go, bro. Whenever you get a gut feel,
that's your gods knocking you onthe head.
And that's how they talk to you.Wow.

(01:05:34):
So that's why your gut feels arenormally always correct.
Yeah, 100%. And that's something I, I think
a lesson that I learned very early on in life is to go is to
be very instinctual, to listen to that gut, to listen to your
instinct to. Listen to those.
Feelings. Yeah, yeah.
But you know, there's a lot of people that that don't that

(01:05:56):
whether they use logic in inverted commas or, you know,
reason, you know, what's, what'sthe?
You won't find, you will not find a more logical person.
We maybe will, but I'm one of the most logical people on the
planet. Very, very logical.
Yeah. But one of my feelings or one of

(01:06:18):
my, it's a belief, I suppose, iswhat's the point in being
intelligent if you never actually use it?
And part of being intelligent isthe ability to change your mind
or to embrace a belief that is different from what you
originally had because you've had more information.
Yeah. So I've been looking at being

(01:06:42):
supercilious or whatever, but yeah.
No, no IA 100% agree. And you know, that that is
something that I've I've prided myself on is that ability to to
have that openness, not to just go, oh, look, the next thing
that comes along, I'm going to believe to be true, but just to
go, Hey, what if there's a, another opinion in the room
other than my own? You know, it's just that kind of

(01:07:03):
know thy self Socrates thing that I've spoken about
previously on the show, just to go, Hey, I don't have all the
answers. I don't know every fucking
thing. I have to be open.
And I guess, you know, I have that that openness to to other
views and other perspectives andthat I'm not always right, you
know? I mean we shouldn't be wishy

(01:07:23):
washy and just changing our mindWilly nilly but.
No, no. I.
I I've said as well that a sign of lack of intelligence is that
you never change your mind. Yeah, yeah, and there's a lot to
be said backing your own beliefsand backing your own opinions
too. Of course, but the moment you
get something new that you need to listen to and understand and

(01:07:44):
then maybe make a change in yourbeliefs, that should be done.
That's a sign of intelligence. You get people to go.
I've always believed, it's all the way through.
My dad believed that, my grandfather believed that.
We've always believed that in our family.
Well, you're not using any intelligence at all, just going
with what is there. I'm not going to pick on on

(01:08:04):
religion, but a lot of people just get their beliefs from
religion, never question it, andthat's it.
That's the end of their thinkingabout beliefs.
Yeah, totally agree. That's probably my biggest
criticism of religion, too. Yeah, so.
Not to say that I don't believe in, you know, an afterlife or a

(01:08:27):
higher power, It's just that I don't believe that religion is
the the journey to get there. I've heard the The Stairway to
Heaven, obviously a famous band,a famous song rather, but it's
the description of man using religion to try and build
exactly that proverbial stairwayto heaven.

(01:08:49):
Oh yeah, I couldn't agree more. And a lot of people just use
religion as a crutch as well, you know, They don't have to
think it's done for them. Yeah, it's a shortcut to
thinking. Yeah, that doesn't mean it's
correct. If you look how religion has
changed, change their beliefs over the years.

(01:09:11):
You know, I looked up the other day because I was thinking about
religion. How many religions are there on
the planet, do you know? It'd be in the hundreds.
It'd be at least 100. 10,000. Wow.

(01:09:33):
A lot of a lot of those are veryminor, but there's a group of
people who believe in what that religion is telling them.
Yeah. Now that can't all be correct.
I think that I think there's 12,maybe a bit less major religions
in the world. OK.
Yeah, yeah. But if it was all correct,
they'd be 1. Yeah.

(01:09:56):
And they wouldn't be fighting each other in order to prove
that they are the one. Yeah, to prove my religion's
better than your religion. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah. Someone said it's the opium of
the masses. Yeah, yeah.
Very much so. Well, you know, and it's
cleanly. It's clearly been used

(01:10:16):
historically as a way of controlling people, of as a way
of exerting power over people. Yeah, Yeah.
Exactly why do you think the Bishop exists on the on the
chess board power? Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, sorry, I was going to say it.
It, it just becomes a way of controlling the masses of, of

(01:10:38):
using that power, not for any kind of spiritual benefit, but
just as a, you know, as a, as a proxy way of, of governing
people, of, of being power over people.
Yes, yeah, don't, don't upset the apple cart because if you're
a good person and don't protest,you will go to heaven.

(01:10:59):
Yeah, and if you do protest and upset the apple cart, you're
going to go to hell. So people go, Oh well, you know,
better not better not upset the apple cart.
I better just be a nice person so they go with the flow.
Yeah, promises, you know, promises in the afterlife that
if you do this, you'll get that and you know that that kind of

(01:11:23):
approach to. And look, you know, if, if I
very much believe in whatever works for people, you know,
whatever works for the individual, your your way might
may not be my way, my way may not be your way.
And you know, for some people, religion may provide that that
structural, that comfort that they need power to.
Very important, very important for people who need the comfort

(01:11:45):
that they have got it. Otherwise they're lost.
You know, they want, they are, they're upset, they're confused,
they're lost. Religion gives them a, a, a, a
firm basis what to believe. Yeah.
So they're happy doing that. It's just not me.
Yeah, I don't believe that the ends necessarily justifies the

(01:12:07):
means, but if it does get them to that place that they need to
go and no one gets hurt along the way, what's the harm, you
know? Yeah, no, it's fine.
Yeah. And you can believe in it.
Just don't try and make me believe in it.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
The problem becomes when a they're either trying to to
convince other people to have that same belief and, you know,

(01:12:30):
then cheating on people for not having that belief.
You know, and there's, without naming any specific religion,
you know, there are a number of religions that do exactly that,
where if you don't believe in this religion and, and
everything that we say that it contains, then that's it.
That's the end of you. And then that, that's been a way
that a lot of especially the major religions have used to, to

(01:12:53):
control people. You know, if you don't do this
exact thing or have this exact belief or perform this specific
ritual, then how dare you? You know you're you'll be
vanquished to hell for all eternity.
Yeah, I think we should move on.But look, it's fascinating and
I, I think it's safe as long as it's, it's a safe discussion as

(01:13:16):
long as you're not singling out any religion.
But for me, talking about religion generally, regardless
of what that religion is, for mepersonally, there's an inherent
danger in, I guess following or,or tying yourself to anyone
religion. Not to say that I don't have

(01:13:37):
beliefs or that I'm not spiritual or that I don't
believe in an afterlife. It's just I don't believe in
that stairway to heaven. I don't believe in building my
own religion or or or set of beliefs to get there, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I believe in the 10 Commandments, so I believe in
them. They're my beliefs, but I would

(01:13:57):
have had them regardless of whether they were religious
beliefs or not. Yeah, yeah.
That's just, that's just who youare as a person.
Yeah. So yeah.
Yeah, amazing. Back to the back to the guides.
Oh yes. Were were they something that
you were aware of? Because I find it fascinating.

(01:14:18):
Were they something that you were aware of, like even as a
child, or was it something that you became aware of later in
life? No, later in life, something I
became aware of as a child, which was a bit profound for me.
I was 12 years old and that I realised one day I will die as a

(01:14:43):
12 year old and it wasn't a tenuous thing.
One day I will die. Therefore, I need to do as much
with my life as I should as I could, rather than just let it
drift by, which is sort of, sortof helped.
I mean, I don't know how many 12year olds have that profound

(01:15:04):
understanding that one day they actually will die.
No. It's, it's going to happen.
It will happen, will happen to everyone.
And I think there's someone elsesaid we all have two lives.
I think it was Mark Twain. We all have two lives, and our

(01:15:26):
second life begins the day we understand we only have one
life. Right.
Wow, that's fascinating. Do you remember Was it?
Was it a specific thing? No, definitely, definitely do
not waste it. Yeah, yeah.
And I, that's a lesson of itself, you know.

(01:15:49):
Do you remember if it was something specifically that made
you start to think about that? I mean, look, 12 is that kind of
age where we are starting to. And a.
Question to be curious and to look at things.
Was there something specificallythat made you look at your own
mortality? No, it just occurred to me.
Wow. It.
Was just there. You want to hear another saying

(01:16:13):
that I sort of incorporated whenI was about about 12 years old
from my mother maybe a bit earlier even, because it was
something very important that she told me as well.
And that has also pretty much directed my whole life.
She said. If it is to be, it's up to me.

(01:16:33):
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Nobody else will do it for you. If they do, that's a bonus.
But if you want it done, if you want to achieve something, you
are the one who's going to have to do it.
Yeah. Don't wait for somebody to hand
it to you. Yeah.
So all the way through my life, if I want to achieve something,
I know there's only one person who's going to be doing it.

(01:16:54):
Yes, me exactly. Yeah, I heard somebody talking
about this exact point in reference to, you know, the
secret. And the secret works for some
people and there are elements I find in it that that do
resonate. But it's like you can't will
yourself to suddenly grow wings and and fly to, you know, to

(01:17:16):
become Superman. You know you can fucking
manifest benefit that till the cows come home, but you're not
going to sprout a red Cape or wings and start flying around
the place. You can use positivity and
belief to move in a direction towards towards certain things,
especially things that are actually can be done that are

(01:17:37):
achievable. You know, that are realistic,
But it's kind of that thing of it's not to say that we don't
have a a destiny, that there's not a certain amount of of fate,
not that it's necessarily predetermined, but unless we
meet things halfway, unless we actually step in that direction,

(01:18:01):
you know, what are that? What's that famous saying that?
What is it opportunity? What's the saying opportunity is
where preparedness meets chance or there's a saying people will
know the same, but there's a saying, you know, you actually
have to to to step in that direction.
Things aren't just going to magically happen.

(01:18:23):
It's not like the secret where you can just go, Oh my God, I'm
just going to, you know, will myself to fly or whatever the
case may be, and it's going to happen.
You actually have to be a willing participant in in moving
in that direction and making that thing happen as well.
You have to meet, you know. I understand what you're saying,

(01:18:44):
but I think there's another component to that and that's
energy. We all have a certain energy and
it's hard to explain or define. You can meet somebody for the
very first time and you can likethat person straight away.
There's something about that person's energy that interacts
with your energy and you just, you get on really well and there

(01:19:09):
are other people. The moment you meet them, you go
no, they don't like that person and there's no reason for it.
No, but their energy is wrong according to your energy.
Yeah, yeah. Now, if you look at the secret,
people often take it too far, which is what you were saying.

(01:19:30):
Too literal. Yeah, well, there's somebody I
knew who read the book and they began to manifest the BMW in the
driveway. Well, it never turned up
surprise, but and what they should be looking at is OK, what
you focus on, the more you focuson something, that's what you

(01:19:51):
get is a saying about focusing what you want to achieve as
well. But we have an energy and if you
put your energy out there, you want to achieve something and
focus on that and work toward it.
You have to do the work. That won't just happen by
itself. The energy will then interact

(01:20:14):
with the universe, and the universe will then help to
provide more of what you're looking for.
But it's very important that youalso have to be involved in the
process. It just won't happen by itself.
You've got to put yourself out there.
There was AI. Think Jerry Seinfeld.

(01:20:34):
Yeah, I was just thinking exactly that, which you and I
have spoken about before. I didn't mean to jump in, but I
was just thinking exactly the same thing that the Jerry
famous. Juries.
You can tell you no no. You tell it no, no.
Well, Jerry Seinfeld held a big conference.
He was the main speaker for a big conference, so on how to be

(01:20:57):
successful, and people paid a lot of money to get a ticket and
they had, you know, press speakers and whatever to warm up
the audience, you know, before Jerry came on.
Madison Square Garden. Was it?
Yeah, yeah, Madison Square Garden sold out.
Yep. So these people have spent a lot

(01:21:19):
of money. They're there, they've turned up
whatever done their pre, all theall the speakers have done their
bit has Jerry clapping and cheering, whatever.
And he walks out onto the stage and he says the secret to being
successful, do the work. Just walked off again.
Think of what do the work. It's not going to happen

(01:21:43):
magically by itself. So whether people complained or
not, I don't know. But that is the secret.
Do the work. Yeah.
Otherwise, forget it. Yeah, yeah.
That's why Is that how you wouldhave told it?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, apparently
there was. The reaction was, oh, it's Jerry

(01:22:04):
Seinfeld, so it's a bit and he'sgoing to walk back out on stage
and. It.
Took about 10 minutes before people went.
I don't think he's coming back. I think that was actually it.
Did the work. Yeah.
Yeah, so the secret's all very fine, but you've got to do the
work. But the secret of the secret is

(01:22:26):
to focus on what you want to achieve, which is what I've
always done. Once I get a goal, that's what I
focus on. So a. 100%, yeah.
And I was going to say, and thatleads back to the very start of
our conversation of setting thatclear goal and then setting out
a road map on exactly how to getthere.
And look, it may not, it may notplay out exactly that way.

(01:22:49):
There may be certain obstacles that pop up in.
But having that idea of a where you want to go and then some
kind of a road map on exactly how to get there, that's, you
know, that in itself is the secret.
Yep, planning. And are there elements of luck
or chance along the way? Sure.

(01:23:11):
And again, that that comes back to that.
I think, I think the quote is something along the lines of
success is where opportunity meets preparedness or or
something along that way. So you know, again, it is that
you know the goal, the road map on how to get there and then
that small amount of of luck or chance, you know it, it makes

(01:23:34):
you along the way. I agree.
Yeah, completely. But quite often you make your
own luck. Yeah.
I mean, when I quit teaching that that ad was the only time
ever in that two week period, ifI hadn't have quit, if I have
procrastinated, I wouldn't have seen the ad, I wouldn't have

(01:23:56):
applied. I wouldn't have got the job.
Who knows where I could have ended up, but I I made my own
luck to a degree because I just made the decision and then did
it part of and the old knock saying just do it.
I think it's like, yeah, I've always believed in that.
Just do it. Sharon will say, you know what

(01:24:16):
about whatever. And I said, look, just do it.
What's going to happen? What's the worst thing can
happen? Yeah, just do it.
And that's I think half of the success of that slogan is that
it is so simple, but it is so true and resonates so well with
everybody. You know, simplest things in
life are often the best. It's such a such a simple but

(01:24:40):
true thing that sometimes you need to just do it.
Coming back to that that action and and doing the work.
Just do the work. Just.
Do it. Just do the work, it's the same
thing. One of the things I've also
always believed in is is if you can do it, I can do it.
Whatever anybody else has ever done, if it's within my path,

(01:25:03):
within my my zone, if you can doit, I can do it.
Many years ago my brother took up skydiving.
He was never into football and cricket and whatever, but took
up skydiving. I thought what the hell, if he
can do it, I can do it. So I went along, did the

(01:25:25):
training, had to go to a lecturefirst of all where they
explained if we die it's our fault.
Fair enough. OK.
Sign the waiver. Yeah, we had to sign a waiver
because in those days there was no tandem jumping.
Oh. Wow, OK.
You, you jump by yourself, no tandem jumping.
So we had the practise. We, we got to the airfield, had

(01:25:50):
to stand up on a box and jump off and do a roll.
That's how you're laying fellas.OK, we're fine now.
And I went into where they were packing the parachutes in a big
shed and all that. The strings are lined up or the
ropes, whatever lined up and they're packing them and they're
laughing and joking. And I think, come on fellas,
focus. You know, this could be my

(01:26:11):
parachute you're packing. But anyway, so they had a rule,
once you get in the plane and goup, the only way out is through
the door. Is to jump.
We would not land with you in the plane.
Wow. But back in those days, too, you

(01:26:32):
didn't jump and then have to pull your your record.
They had a static line. Static line?
Yeah. What?
You see all the troops, you know, they're lined up, jumping
out of the plane. They all attached to a static.
Line, yeah. Yeah.
So we had that. So got in the plane, they were
four or five hours and it was myturn.

(01:26:52):
Had to get out onto the stand onthe wheel.
They locked the wheel hang on tothe strut of the wing.
And when the instructor went like that, you had to let go and
make your big arch and where yougo.
So yeah, did a couple of those, a couple of jumps.
But one of the things I rememberis prior to the jump, there was

(01:27:16):
a lady with the red top on and she was, you know, blah, blah.
I'm going to become an instructor.
I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.
This is great. I'm going to be one of the, you
know, best guy diving people around.
So she got up, went up in the next flight and four people

(01:27:37):
jumped out and she hadn't appeared yet.
And finally she's out there on hanging on to the the strut.
Nothing's happening. So then they've taken the lock
off the wheel. And so she's sort of slipped and
still hanging on. They're shaking the plane, the

(01:27:59):
wings and whatever they get to shake her loose.
Finally she let go screaming from about what, 6000 feet?
You can hear her all the way till the parachute opened.
Finally landed when she came over and said, oh, that was
great, that was wonderful. I can't wait to do that again.

(01:28:19):
And he trusted said not with us,lady.
That's your first and only jump with us.
That's right. Yep.
So, yeah. Wow.
Amazing. So that was just a matter of
just do it. I can do it.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if he can do it, I can do
it. So yeah, it was fun.
Yeah. I only did a half a dozen.
I thought that's it. I've kept the fight, you know,

(01:28:41):
so I know I can do it. You've played the odds and
rolled the dice. They're done.
Back to football and cricket, yeah.
Are you up for a quick break there?
OK, go for it. All right, let's do it.
Cool, we'll be back. There's something that I've
often thought about you like prior to our conversation today,

(01:29:06):
but just. You're going to break, so you're
going to mention to the world, are you?
I just thought about me. It's all good though, but it
just struck me in the break, just reflecting on our
conversation today that you, oneof the things that makes you so
interesting is that you are not so much a contradiction, but you

(01:29:29):
are a meeting of points where, for example, you are a very
intellectual person, very, very logical, very methodical.
And yet that intersects with your, I guess your spiritual
side, your philosophical side. You know, it's quite common for

(01:29:50):
people to excel in a certain area, whether they are very
spiritual or very intellectual or very practical, very hands
on. But you are one of those people
that reminds me a bit of my own dad.
He's very much the same, very smart, very intelligent person,

(01:30:10):
but has built houses, can build things, can fix things, is is
very practical. He has that intersection as
well. And it just struck me in the
break and it is something that Ihave thought about you before
that you are one of those peoplethat does have you do excel in
multiple areas. You're not just very spiritual
or very intellectual or very practical.

(01:30:33):
You you do excel in in kind of all things.
No, it's kind of you to say, butit just sort of happens.
I don't go to out of my way to. It's just what I believe in or
what feels right or what the brain thinks I should be doing.

(01:30:54):
Yeah. I get coming back to that, I
guess, instinct and listening toyour, your instinct and being
very aware of who you are and what you're all about.
Well, apparently I've got very good guides, so there you go.
But that such great aunt I was talking about, she was very,

(01:31:16):
very powerful. And she hangs around, but
because she's so powerful, she has to sort of keep a fair
distance away from from me and the other guides.
But she's there to help wheneverI need it to.
So I'm blessed in that regard. When you say she has to sort of
hang back, why is that? Because of her power, she will

(01:31:40):
she will affect the other gods. Ah, I see, right.
It's like this white light comesfrom her when I look at her,
when I see her, she's got this very, very bright white light
all around her. Wow.
And then it's conceivable that you, like, you say, you know,

(01:32:00):
the elderly gentleman you that you, you sit down beside with
the white beard. Is that you?
Is that your future self? Or yeah, maybe, maybe you could
potentially become a guide for someone else one day too.
Yeah, yeah. I was told previously that there
is a, a large and I don't know if you can see this or not, but

(01:32:24):
there's my guide or one of my guides is supposedly a very
large, stocky big, you know, physically big kind of a
gentleman with AI think it's like a big red beard or a big
brown beard, like a big stocky Highlander kind of a guy

(01:32:46):
supposedly so I was told. Yeah, I can't see him, but then
I'm not right. I'm not with you at the moment
physically. So, yeah, yeah.
It's hard to tell, and the moment you've said that then
that puts that image in my mind anyway.
That's right. Yeah.
So then you're looking for that particular thing.

(01:33:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I saw a Red
Indian, but I didn't didn't see the big stocky man with a beard
and the Red Indian didn't have abeard.
I think it was a it was like a Pakistani man there as well.
There was like a Scottish lady with an apron also there, a

(01:33:34):
young girl who's there. She's there to learn from you.
And there's another one that is further back.
I can't see him. So yeah.
Fascinating. Is it real?
Is it just my brain making that up?
Who knows? Yeah, yeah.
And again, it's it's just that that making of it what you will

(01:33:56):
and, you know, being open to to interacting with it and to
benefit benefiting from it as best you can.
You know, it's not something we it's, it's like the pushing the
string analogy. You know, it's not something you
have to control or you have to manipulate or have that control
over. It's just something that's there

(01:34:18):
and and just is and you use it as you need to.
And you said yourself it, you know, your guides are sitting
back, you know, reading the paper, waiting for.
You. I know because I don't need
them. No, I'm very self sufficient.
So yeah, Yeah. And normally I can resolve all
my issues by myself, make my decisions that I'm happy with by

(01:34:40):
myself. But when I can't this when I
talk to them. And so when you're doing, for
example, when you're doing a tarot reading, it's then using
the guides, it's tapping into that.
Yeah, I open up to them. There's a a mantra that I go
through what I say beforehand. Could you share that or is it

(01:35:02):
something personal? I'd have to go and read it.
I'd have to go and look it up. It's just about being part of
the universe and allowing positive energy to flow through
me and have all negative energy just flow into the earth and
nourish the earth and to be keptsafe and to be guided whenever I

(01:35:24):
can't make a decision for them to step in and help.
Yeah, wow. That is the basic basis of the
mantra, But I I'd have to tell it to you exactly.
I have to go and read it. Yeah, that's fascinating.
Wow, it's very cool. There's there's, you know, just
so much that we don't understand.

(01:35:45):
I think we have a tendency, whether it's the the influence
of society to see these things as mutually exclusive, you know,
it's either like science or spiritualism.
But quite often I think it's more the case that they are part
of the one. Like anything that we don't
understand is magic. You know, if you said to someone

(01:36:08):
100 years ago about or said to someone 500 years ago about a
car, let alone a self driving car or a computer or the
Internet or AI, this would have been the you know, the the stuff
well, you know. Even say to somebody 30 years
ago about our current phones. Yeah, 100% Yeah, the phone
technically crazy. IPhones, whatever.

(01:36:30):
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah, that was remarkable, Dick
Tracy. 30 years ago it was only in Star Wars, and 50 years ago
it was Dick Tracy. It was all, you know.
And that's kind of in reverse. Because I think sometimes we can
have scientists that can make these things, but they're not

(01:36:50):
necessarily the people that havecome up with the idea we needed
the great storytellers. We needed, you know, George
Lucas or, you know, the people that did Dick Tracy to come up
with the idea of, hey, imagine if you could talk into your
watch and communicate with someone for a scientist to then
go, hey, you know, we could probably do this and we could do

(01:37:12):
that. And it happens gradually in
steps and. Jill's Fern, HD Wells, all of
those people. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, Things that Once Upon a time were just the stuff of
fantasy and, you know, they become.
So again, back to that point, the things that may or may not
be possible, it may just be things we don't know how to do

(01:37:33):
yet. That's all it is, and there's so
much in the in the universe thatis spiritual but also connected
to science. They're intertwined, but we
don't understand it yet. Yeah, yeah.
I just want to talk about writing for a moment if I can.
Yes. Yeah, You have written a book.
Give that book, apply books. We'll pop it in.

(01:37:55):
Yeah, we'll, we'll pop the the links down in the in the
comments. Start with your first book.
I should have brought them with me but I haven't got them here.
But the the first book I had wasan idea I had when I was in
teachers college, some part of one of the courses we were doing
and the thought occurred to me. We are our memories.

(01:38:22):
We exist entirely through our memories.
All your knowledge is something you've learned.
You know it. It's remembered.
There's nothing about you that isn't part of your memory.
And if you could transfer that memory from one person to

(01:38:43):
another, if you could wipe out all the memories of the person
to be transferred into, and you transferred all the memories
into that person, does that person then become you?
Yeah, because that's where. You.
That's what occurred to me. Does is it or is it memories?

(01:39:05):
Do they exist separate to your consciousness?
They probably do. But with my thought it was OK.
Why can't we transfer knowledge,transfer memories?
You imagine someone like Einstein, it's on his deathbed.
You know, it's got another two or three weeks to live at the
most. If you could then take all of

(01:39:27):
his relevant memories. I mean, as I mentioned in the
book, you don't want to transferhis time when he was having an
affair, whatever, in Paris when he was 21.
You want all of his exact knowledge.
If you could transfer that into a young scientist on the way up,
you then and that scientist thendoesn't spend the next 20-30

(01:39:51):
years trying to get to the levelwhere Einstein currently is
overnight. That person has all the
knowledge that Einstein had. So I called it memories to die
for. Because if you get, if you had
the technology to transfer memories, if you put that into
the wrong hands and scrupulous people, and if that person then

(01:40:17):
became. If you are your memories, then
you could live forever was just a thought I had.
So that sort of resonated with me for quite a while.
And when I turned 50 I thought, you know what, if I don't write

(01:40:39):
this book now, it's never going to happen.
And I saw I had to go to Sydney for a conference for work and
there was a lady came out of thebookshop at Sydney Airport
holding a book. And I thought, wouldn't it be
great if somebody came out of the bookshop holding my book?
Well, the only way that's going to happen is if I actually sit

(01:41:01):
down and write the. Work.
Do the work. All I had was the idea hadn't
even started writing it. So I started writing it and we,
we had a lot of boring meetings at work.
I think most companies have all these boring meetings.
So yeah. And you have to go.

(01:41:25):
So I would sit in the meetings with my notepad and pen thinking
about the next part of dialogue or the next part of the book.
I had to write just writing it in my mind.
And I would come to a, yeah, that's good.
And I'd stop and I'd write it down.
Now the person giving the talk or the lecture or the whatever,
go, oh, John's interested. He's making notes.

(01:41:46):
It's. Really what I've got.
To say so I did a lot of my writing during the meetings.
So that was good. And I finally finished it and it
was 370,000 words long because Ithought I'll know when I get to
the end because that will be theend.

(01:42:08):
So wrote it, finished it, and you've heard of John Marsden,
the author. He had a a conference to get
together at his place in the country had like a farm and we
had pan all the big book publisher in Australia were

(01:42:33):
attending and we'd already submitted our manuscripts to
them and they would then come back and give us feedback on
their manuscript. I thought, great, they're going
to love it, they're going to be a star, going to be famous.
The lady said it's far too long in meander all over the place.

(01:42:56):
There's no definite theme. Maybe you think you should think
about flower arranging. I thought that's not what I was
expecting to hear, but then I looked at it logically and that
was far too long. My ego had gotten in control of

(01:43:18):
my writing and I was writing things that oh, they'll think
this is clever. Oh, this is a witty thing to
have. I had sub characters.
I had subplots. I had things all over the place.
Winding here, winding there. I was so clever.
No, I wasn't. I realised I had to be true to

(01:43:39):
my central theme, so all the subplots, all the sub characters
had to come out. So I went from 370,000 words
down to about 250,000 and the lady had said 150 Max.
Oh God, they've got another 100 to come out.

(01:43:59):
Yeah. So I had to go back and rewrite,
re edit, take stuff out. There's a saying with, with
writing, do not fall in love with your work because the
moment you fall in love with something, it can never come
out. And I had to take things out.
So I just kept culling, kept taking things out, kept culling,

(01:44:22):
kept asking, does this contribute to the central theme?
No, out. Got it down.
I've got it down to 190,000. And that was it.
I couldn't take any more out. Not without actually impacting
the story, yeah. That I I got to that point and I

(01:44:43):
knew that, but what I discoveredwas that Australian publishers
only publish known authors or they will do a a biography of
some famous person autobiography.
Yeah. So if you're an unknown person
in Australia, forget about it. Exactly the same, exactly the

(01:45:07):
same with filmmaking. Sorry to jump in, but exactly
the same with filmmaking both inAustralia and internationally.
You know, Hollywood's famous forit that they only want to do the
safe thing. They only want to bet on a shore
thing. They don't want to take chances
on the new or the up and coming or the the yet to be discovered.
It's this, it's become purely a business thing and it's just all

(01:45:28):
about safe choices. And it, you know, it means that
in both the case of, of authors and writers and film makers,
that there's a lot of people that don't get the opportunity
for that reason is that, you know, because they're, they
don't have a, a body of work already.
They're not willing to take the chance.
It's crazy. It is.
I mean, it's a lot of self publishing going on now, but

(01:45:51):
that doesn't get to the wider audience and it gets to wherever
you can actually distribute. But anyway, I sent my manuscript
overseas. I thought, well, OK, if
Australia doesn't want it, maybeEngland or America, whatever.
And finally a publishing companyin America picked it up and
said, yeah, we'll publish it. Which they did.

(01:46:12):
Or that's how I've got the book done.
Hang on, I thought there's one in that bookcase behind me, but
doesn't matter. I'm fortunate enough to have a
signed copy, but I'll I'll I'll pop pop it in the the comments
and pop the link in. There, Yeah, I mean you can

(01:46:33):
still buy it online, Collins still sell it, whatever, but
it's the price has gone up for some reason.
But anyway, so yeah, they published it for me and it's
sold in England, it's sold in India, sold in New Zealand, sold
in Australia, Dymex, all those other book companies didn't sell
it for quite a while and that soI can say I'm a published

(01:46:56):
author. Yeah, 100%.
I actually discovered that I could write without knowing it.
When I was in, I think, year eight, year nine, they had a
poetry competition. I'd never written poetry in my
life, but I thought, what the hell, let's give it a go.
So I wrote this poem, but it wassatire.

(01:47:21):
I'd never heard of satire, but my poem was satirical without me
realising that I was involving satire.
And it won, won the competition.So I thought what maybe I can
write. And I wrote a poem for the local
community paper, the Tatura Bulletin, and I'll talk about
that a bit in a moment. And I have it here just by

(01:47:45):
chance. What a what a coincidence.
Here's one I prepared earlier. Yeah, it's called the blind
date. You have to listen very
carefully. That's just how I Yeah.
So the blind date. She looked in the mirror and
studied her face. Not a classic beauty, but an

(01:48:06):
ageless grace. Her mouth was too large for her
beautiful smile, and her clear blue eyes showed a soul without
guile. They met at the cafe.
He said, I hope this is fate to meet a beautiful woman on a
Valentine's date. She thought he was handsome and

(01:48:27):
said, my name's Kay, perhaps we should order.
I haven't eaten all day. He waved to the waiter and said,
I'm Jim Cole, I work in accounting.
It's a challenging role. They discovered each other as
the blind date progressed. To enjoy such a night, they felt

(01:48:47):
they were blessed. He thought Kay was spirited and
unbridled fun and dared to believe that she was the one.
However, for Kay, one thing was quite plain.
When this night ended, she wouldn't see him again.
When your mouth is quite large, then one obvious goal is to

(01:49:08):
never be known as Missus K Cole.That's gold.
The best part about it is you don't see it until the final
line. That's right.
How old were you when you wrote that, do you reckon?

(01:49:29):
This one here. Yeah.
Two years. One year ago.
Oh. OK, right, right.
Wow. Oh yeah, because when I had my
book published, I just retired as well.
And our local community paper, the Tortura Bulletin, invited me
along to be part of the committee, thinking maybe my

(01:49:50):
writing skills could be useful for them.
But it was a very bland paper back in those days.
It was 16 pages black and white newspaper type of paper.
And they just talked about school issues and what was
happening at the church and the local Flower Show, which meant

(01:50:12):
that most people, when it turnedup in your letterbox, we just
Chuck it in the bin. I mean, what we did, what they
did back then was everybody in Turchura and surrounding areas
got a copy for free. So it was all paid for by
advertising. Yeah, yeah.
So the more advertisers you could attract, then the more you

(01:50:35):
could put into your paper. But because nobody was that
interested in what they were talking about, not many people
advertised in it. And the first year I was there,
the the president had health issues and decided that she was
going to resign, retire, move away, go live in Shepperton.

(01:50:57):
So they asked me to become president for some reason.
Who knows? These things just sort of always
happen. So I said, well, if I take over,
then we'll do things my way. That's how I operate as well.
Yeah. So, oh, yeah, yeah.
We find you can be present, do things your way.
As I said, first of all, we're going to have more things in the

(01:51:19):
paper that people who don't havechildren at school, who don't go
to church, whatever, are going to find interesting.
So I implemented a short story competition and had people send
their store their stories in andif they're appropriate, we would
publish them, which we did. And that attracted more

(01:51:40):
attention. And I was going to say, and and
that is sorry, but that exact model is today what they know is
the attention economy. It's like bringing the
attention, you know, by having that attention, that's that
brings the audience and that's what allows it to keep going.
Yeah, so we had we had three stories that were publishable
and after the third one was published, I thought, well, they

(01:52:04):
went well, maybe I should start writing some.
So I started writing my short stories, which I then used to do
like one every month or two. And I put in, I made up word
searches and Sudoku's and I put in quizzes and I put in all
sorts of things that would be interesting to people.

(01:52:26):
Ma Merle appeared and she was a crotchety old lady who
complained about everything but always thought that she was
perfect. I won't tell you who Ma Merle
is, but she lives with me. And people, people loved Marmel
for some reason. I was working at the community
house and they had the Italian ladies used to go there for

(01:52:49):
bingo. And I was in there one day just
walking through their room and they said, John, excuse my
Italian accent, but I'm going todo it anyway.
Hey, John. John, I said, yeah, Ciao.
See, I know a bit of Italian. John, this Amara Mill, we go to
the coffee shop, We no way ever see the Mara Mill.
Where is this Amara Mill? I said, well, she's there, just

(01:53:12):
not looking hard enough for you.You go there when she's not
there, but oh, she's around. She's around.
We want to. We want to talk to Mara Mill.
Yeah. So Mara Mill's been going for 10
years now. So.
Yeah. So, yeah, I got involved with
the the Chura. Yeah.
With the Bulletin president for for the last 10 years, I just

(01:53:35):
resigned recently because we were thinking about moving N,
but we've changed their mind on that one.
But I'm happy to remain resignedbecause of of other things I
want to do and work on. But I still do a lot of writing
for the the bulletin and still do all my quizzes and different
things. But had a poetry competition a

(01:53:55):
while a couple of years ago and I thought I'll write a poem and
that was when I wrote. Yeah, that's fantastic.
Yeah. Yeah.
I must say it's a bit of a delight every time when I see my
inbox pop up John Kay's short stories.
Yeah, well, I have a short storywebsite, they're all on there.

(01:54:16):
What's the website? We'll pop it in the link.
Anyway, we'll pop the link in the description.
But I'm going to tell you right now so that people can write it
down while they're driving. It's so it's my name John Chris
Feld, which Kris Feld. You can spell John, but Kris
Feld is KRIES for Sam, F for Fred eld.substack.com and it's

(01:54:44):
all free. It doesn't cost you anything.
People go, oh, it must be a scam.
No, it's free. Nothing.
My son actually put in that little bit down the bottom when
we first set it up. If you like these stories, you
can buy a coffee. Buy John a coffee, but you don't
have to. I don't care.
But if you like the story, buy John a coffee.

(01:55:07):
Yeah, some people do. Most people don't.
Doesn't matter. I'm just happy to have the
stories out there. So when I finished about 20 of
the stories, I thought I'll, I'll publish them in a, a book,
short story book, which I've done.
And then I began writing serials, so from month to month

(01:55:31):
you know they will carry on. And one of them was about 5
episodes long. So I've got another book coming
out with all my serial stories in there.
Hasn't been published yet because the fella who's doing it
is drawing pictures for them andhe's got to finish off all the
pictures. Wow, that's.
And then the last one I had was the book book called Doing Life,

(01:55:53):
which is all about, you know, sliding doors and swings and
roundabouts, and that's just being published.
I was actually went into Colin'sbookstore in Shepparton
yesterday to see if they were interested in it.
They took a copy and they're going to give it to the buyer.
If the buyer likes it, then they'll they'll put some on
there on the shelves. It's entirely up for them.

(01:56:14):
Yeah, fantastic. Never know if you don't give it
a go. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah. And I'm actually fortunate
enough at the moment to be recording the audiobook version.
Yes, you are. How far have you got there,
Craig? Probably about 1/3 of the way
through. Oh really?
That's good, And you're enjoyingthe story.

(01:56:35):
Yeah, yeah, it's great. And like, you know, like
yourself, there's just always a lot going on at once.
But, you know, just keep chipping away at it and doing
the work. Doing the work.
I actually, when they first published the book, they spelt
my name wrong on the cover and Itook it back and said, hey, come
on, I'm not. Chris fled and Chris Feld, Oh my

(01:56:56):
God. So they had to republish all the
books again, which meant that I well, the books that had the the
error they took back and that they destroyed.
But I kept the box of them about50 and I've given them all out
to friends and family and I still play tennis on a on a

(01:57:17):
Monday, social tennis. And I gave out some, I gave out
a book to them for nothing because it that was spelled
wrong. But the feedback from them was
great. 1 old fella who I thoughtmight not like it because he's
very churchy. He said he couldn't put it down.
So, yeah, yeah. I think my observation of the of

(01:57:38):
your writing, I think something that makes it so successful is
that it's you. It's exactly your personality
transferred into what you write.So it, it, you know, it, it
brings a little bit of you in terms of being quite deep, quite
intellectual, but also that, that mix of, of, of humour that,

(01:58:01):
you know, a little bit of a dry sense of humour that, that
you're quite famous for in certain circles.
But I think you don't. Yeah.
I think you allow your personality to, to come through
what you're right. I think that's one of your your
secret sources, I guess. And that's also a problem when I

(01:58:22):
was writing Memories to Die for,because I had like 6 or 7 main
type of characters that couldn'tall be me.
Only one of them is me, so all the rest had to be entirely
different, completely different to me.
So what I would do is I would channel people on you and become

(01:58:42):
that person whenever I was writing that particular
character. Yes, yeah.
So that way it worked. Yeah.
And again, that's probably one of the great secrets to success
for successful writers, whether they're they're writing novels
or, you know, whether it's a screenplay is to successfully be
able to put you into another character or into another role,

(01:59:06):
you know? But after a while as well, I
noticed the characters become alive, that they exist.
As long as you've got that book open and you're reading it, they
exist. They're there.
Yeah. It's only when you shut the book
that they disappear. Yeah.
So yeah, as I was writing it, I had to keep in mind who they

(01:59:29):
were, how they would think, how they have thought, what sort of
behaviour they're going to be having going forward.
But as I said, for each of thosecharacters, I had a person in
mind who represented that character.
And then I would just channel that person in my mind whenever
that person was speaking or doing something.

(01:59:50):
So it was no longer me. Yeah.
And I I know from the perspective of someone who as an
actor, has played other other characters, characters that
other people have written. That's another step.
Again, it's one thing to to write a book or to write a
screenplay, and then the reader is creating the character in

(02:00:13):
their mind, and it may not be exactly the same character that
well, there's no way it could bethe same character you've
created. It's the character they create
in their imagination. The next step from that, whether
it's a play or ATV show or a movie, is for an actor to give
their interpretation of that character as well.

(02:00:35):
And it's always very interestingto see, especially for writers
where they say that they're seeing that character and
they're seeing the elements thatthey had written into the
character come alive. But then there's this extra
layer that the actor has bought to that role, to that character

(02:00:56):
that they they either didn't seecoming or it is what they saw
for the character. But then there's a whole nother
layer to it that the actors actually bought to that
character as well. Yeah.
And that's very complex. Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, how often have you read a book and enjoyed it?
Great book. And you said the film, you go,

(02:01:16):
why? Come on, that's rubbish.
That's not the book. Yeah.
Because you interpret that book in your mind, and what you're
seeing on the screen is a producer's minimal
interpretation of the same book.Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Because that to leave out so many elements in order to fit it
into a timeline. Yeah, there's a really good

(02:01:41):
example of that with I've Gone Blank on his name, the guy that
wrote the Reacher series. I know him, yeah.
Famous famous author. Can't.
I've read all the Reacher and I can't think of it either, but
yeah. Yeah, well, you know, he, I'm
going to have to quickly Google it, Jack.

(02:02:02):
Child, Lee Child. Lee Child, well done.
Look at you. Who needs who needs Google?
Exactly that. He originally wrote the books.
Very successful. People were creating the
characters in their mind, then went to the next step of it
becoming a screenplay and being released as a as a movie.

(02:02:24):
So it was Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, massively successful.
Obviously, you know, anything that Tom Cruise has involved is.
Yeah, but even though Tom Cruiseis nothing like Jack Reacher A.
100%, yeah. And this was some of the
criticism at the time is that, you know, Jack Reacher's this
giant big, burly, you know, 6 foot.
I think he's in the books. He's 6 foot 6.

(02:02:47):
Something like that, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And you know, Tom Cruise, obviously, you know, smaller,
stockier guy and like, massivelysuccessful film, awesome films,
you know, loved them. They were massively successful
everywhere. Then the next step from that in
recent times, it's been redone as ATV show with the involvement

(02:03:10):
of of Lee Child's directly even did a small cameo role in the
show itself. But he's actively one of the the
producers, one of the you know, he he's actively involved in the
production of the TV series withAlan Rickson, who is actually 6
foot 5, nearly 6 foot 6 is I believe at about 260 odd pound.

(02:03:36):
He's a big boy. He's a big, big boy.
And again, people are are are connecting with it, especially
the hardcore fans of the writer of the original story, because
they can see more of what the author originally intended to be
the character, you know, Alan Rickson, they feel embodies that

(02:03:57):
character more than what Tom Cruise did.
But I mean, look, you know, and,and hats off to Alan Rickson.
It's a great, great series, but he's paid full homage and full
respect to Tom Cruise and said, hey, look, you know, let's take
nothing away from Tom Cruise. Without him, this would never
have happened. You know, like it wouldn't have
had the the massive success thatit's had.

(02:04:17):
It probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to end up as ATV
show. And you know, they've made the
subtle difference of the movie was Jack Reacher in the TV
series? He's just Reacher.
And that's one of kind of his his catch phrases.
You know, whenever people have heard him as Jack Reacher, he's
just Reacher. So it's just Reacher the TV

(02:04:38):
series compared to Jack Reacher,which was the, you know, in the
books and and in the movie. But yeah, great example of, you
know, how that character evolvedfrom a, a book to a movie into
the the TV series and the the sort of life that it took on.
There is a little addendum to that in the Jack Lee Child's

(02:05:02):
latest Rachel book he wrote withhis son, and it's not very good.
Oh. OK.
It lacks the normal child, Lee Child's sort of punch, panache,
slow rhythm. The rhythm isn't there.
So I'd say the majority of writing was done by The Sun and

(02:05:25):
maybe Lee Child just did a overview or whatever it might
be. Yeah.
OK, but he hasn't got doesn't have the same the same writing.
Yeah, yeah, that punch. I would never buy another one
with both of them on the cover as the writers.
Isn't that interesting? Yeah.
Wow. So.
A lot of the others do that as they get older.

(02:05:47):
They they would Co write with somebody.
You think they're you haven't written anything, you've just
sort of put your name on the cover.
I see. So if we see one of your books
pop up with someone else's name on yes, no, don't buy that one.
Don't buy it. Don't buy it.
Going back to your first book, you mentioned about how you had

(02:06:07):
to cull off some of the words and then you were kind of
looking at the central theme using only one word.
What would you sum up the theme of that book as?

(02:06:28):
Mindful. Mindful.
OK, Explain. Oh, it makes you think.
Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah.
Actually, but I don't know if you've read that book.
Have you read it all the way through?
Yes, I have. Yeah, some years ago now, but.
Yeah, yeah, but nobody has ever predicted the ending.

(02:06:51):
No. And the the ending that I had
for the book now, since we've had the pandemic is so spot on
because I didn't know about the pandemic when I wrote the book.
No. But the the ending is very,
very, you think, well, what the hell, you know, you'd have to

(02:07:15):
read the book in order to understand what I'm saying.
But I won't say any more about it to give it away, no.
Spoiler alerts. All all the people I've spoken
to go, oh, I didn't see that coming.
So to me, that's the sign of a good book.
Yeah, you don't know what's going to happen at the end, but
at the same time it still makes sense.

(02:07:35):
And isn't that interesting that you wrote that pre pandemic?
And yet I think one of the one of the characteristics that
successful writing has is that in a lot of ways, the themes are
very timeless. So that you can take something
that may have been written 10 years ago, 50 years ago, 100

(02:07:55):
years ago, but the themes still play out today and it's still
very applicable today to today. And I think that book is a
classic example of that where the the themes are in a lot of
ways are even more applicable now than than when you possibly
wrote the book. Like in terms of where we're at
at the moment with AI and consciousness.

(02:08:18):
I mean, it has been played out in in, you know, some movies,
the idea of someone's consciousness being put into
someone else's body. There was a famous film, I can't
think what it was, but there waslike a company and they were
taking your, your consciousness,your soul kind of thing and
putting it into another body. And it was for rich people that

(02:08:40):
were about to die. And yeah, yeah, forget what the
name of the film was, but and then that's that idea.
I mean, it was like in Futurama where, you know, they take your
brain and put it in the glass inthe glass jar.
You are your, your thoughts and you are, you know, coming back.
Are you your memories? Are you your thoughts?
Are you your consciousness? Are you your, your, your soul,

(02:09:02):
that part of you that's not physical?
You know, And I think those things, especially now with,
with AI and as we move into an era where we may or may not, I
mean, you know, where they're starting to, we're finding that
point where they're growing human tissue onto microchips.

(02:09:26):
Are we going to see a situation where people are augmented in
terms of like the, the heat? You know, at the moment it's,
it's like a set of goggles whereit's like augmented reality
where it's combination of what you really see and, and what the
goggles are creating. Then does that evolve into
becoming a microchip or implantsor, or whatever the, the next

(02:09:50):
step may be? You know, how far before we see
that? You know, I've heard theories of
where we could potentially become a like a hybrid of, you
know, like a Cyborg kind of a deal.
But it's still out conscious. The $6 million man, the cyborgs
from Doctor Who, the the cyber man.
It's, it's, it's those kind of themes playing out again, you

(02:10:12):
know, like, do we see that happen?
With without saying too much because I don't want to say too
much, but no artificial memory. Could that be?
Could you make artificial memory?
Yeah, yeah. If you understood the process of
memory, could you make an artificial memory?

(02:10:33):
Yeah. Having said that, I won't say
any more. Read the book.
Yeah, yeah, 100%, yeah. But you know, these themes are
are very interesting with where we're at on the very brink, like
we're in the in the very pioneerdays of of AI, of artificial
intelligence. Will AI develop the ability, you

(02:10:54):
know, to have memories? There's the big discussion, of
course, you know, will it develop self awareness?
Will it develop consciousness, which then is the whole
Terminator thing? And you know, yeah.
Well, I was discussing that withSharon.
Just had a day at what? At what point in time in our
evolution did we become self aware?

(02:11:17):
If you believe in evolution, then at one point in time you go
all the way back to Aniba and, and, and the single cells become
double cells all the way through.
And we became, you know, apes, an ape like a person.
Now the chimpanzees and, and gorillas, are they self aware?

(02:11:39):
I'd say not. So at what point, at what point
in their journey did we become self aware?
And how did that happen? I mean, I don't think my cat is
self aware. No dog.
They have an awareness of their surroundings but they don't want
to think about the future, you know, You know.

(02:11:59):
So at what point do we become self aware and how did it
happen? That's in dogs.
It's normally when they walk past the mirror and they kind
of. Look, is that, is that me?
Yeah. But again, they don't really
have that full concept of of self awareness.
No, actually, again, talk about Sharon.

(02:12:21):
I think she mentioned this in her podcast with you.
Like 95% of people believe they're self aware.
Yeah, only 15% actually are selfaware.
Going to say yeah, that was fascinating.
All the people listening now would be going, yeah, but I'm
one of those 15%. I'm self aware, yeah, but you
have to understand what self awareness actually is.

(02:12:46):
So maybe that's the time for another podcast.
But yeah, yeah. The fact that only 15, according
to the scientific university studies, and therefore they
can't be wrong. Yeah.
Couldn't be wrong. I mean, the world's going to end
in about another What? No, it's already ended.
I'm sorry. Yeah, 2012.
Yeah, it already passed. Yeah, but but also in 2017, we

(02:13:07):
were told we had five years left.
Yeah, before global warming killed us all.
So yeah, that's right. Yeah.
But yeah, so self awareness is atopic just in itself and it's
not for me to talk about. Yeah, Fascinating, though.
Yeah. When Sharon was saying that
that's statistic, it's like, wow, you know, I, I would have

(02:13:29):
imagined it would have been higher, but there you go.
Yeah. So when can we expect the next
book? Do we have a approximate date in
mind? Do you have a?
Actually, I have another book that I started writing maybe 10
years ago after the first one was published, The big book, not

(02:13:51):
the small, you know, compendiums.
But I thought I need to write one more.
But I wanted to be totally different because the first one
was a thriller. Actually, somebody said it was
to rival Dan Brown. So I'll take that, but I wanted
something completely different. So I thought historical

(02:14:12):
adventure. So I've said it back in the past
and it begins at the Battle of Waterloo and it just goes on
from there. These things happen to our hero
all the way through right to theend.
So many things happen. So yes, historical adventure,

(02:14:33):
but I've got probably another quarter though to finish off
writing. I need to find time to do it.
I'm very aware that I, I am ageing.
I'm very aware that the brain does start to disintegrate as
you get older, which is why I thought I better I'll, I'll just
go and do this IQ test and just see where I'm at and where it

(02:14:55):
came out. I was very happy with.
So I've got Do you wish to? Reveal what that what that score
was. Said I was gifted.
What? You knew that.
It came out at 134. Oh.
Wow, that's great. So that's not bad.
Yeah. Not quite genius.
I was a bit disappointed there, but then I knew I wasn't, so it

(02:15:18):
didn't matter. So yeah, I want.
To yeah, I'm just another one. I'm not sure exactly what mine
what mine is. I did one way back when I was 21
and it was very high. It was higher than that, so I
figure over time the brain cellshave started to diminish, but I
was still happy for it to be at that level at my age now.

(02:15:43):
It's interesting when I read your first book, the, you know,
if we could only use one word todescribe what the underlying
theme was. And then I thought this again
when you were discussing about how you had to sort of had to
cut back both the, you know, theamount of words, but also the
amount of themes. The, the theme that stood out to

(02:16:04):
me most of all, the very first time was immortality.
You know, if somebody said to me, what is the one central
underlying theme that ties the book together, it struck me that
it was immortality, which is interesting based on what you
just said. And also, you know, you when you

(02:16:24):
were saying about the book and how you know that there were
other themes that sort of had topop out.
Well, that's why I was interested to ask you what you
thought the, the kind of what struck you as one of the central
or the central theme of the bookwas.
To me, it's very much immortality, which again ties
back to, to what I was saying about timeless themes and how

(02:16:44):
it's, it's very relevant to, to,to, to today.
You know that that idea of, of our mentality and of evolution
and you know, how does that playout with AI and augmented
reality and all these other things?
And I agree, what you're saying is correct.
What I was saying was what wouldI like to leave the reader with?

(02:17:07):
And it was a thought. The legacy of the book, perhaps?
Yeah. Yes, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. To be very aware of what is
going on, yeah. Or what could go on?
Yeah, fascinating. Well, we'll be very interested.
Because if what I had in the book ever becomes true, then

(02:17:28):
we're pretty much stuffed. Which again, you have to come
back to what your, your belief system is to, you know, your
higher power, what's your, what's your faith, what your
beliefs are and as to how that, that all plays out in the, in
the bigger scheme of things. Yeah, but no, not according to

(02:17:50):
my book. No, no.
So. There's only one ending if.
If what what I got in the book is true, there's only one way it
can end. Yeah.
So we'll see if whether you're Nostradamus or or whether
whether it's purely a work of fiction yet to yet to be seen to
be decided. Yeah, no.

(02:18:13):
Time will tell. Yeah, well, we very much look
forward to seeing the the next book come out too.
And once I can get it completed,the audiobook version of of your
your. Book No, that'd be good.
I I would like that to happen. Yeah, yeah, definitely just
helps it to reach another audience as well.

(02:18:33):
Yeah, I'll put my hand up and say I'm the first to to find it
a lot easier to read a an audio or to listen to an audiobook
rather than to actually physically read a copy.
It's just, you know, with so much going on in all of our
lives at any one time, it makes good which which is the success
of podcasts because while you'redriving or doing something at
home, you can be listening and and you know, you can be doing

(02:18:57):
that at the same time as doing something else, whether you're
exercising or driving or, or whatever the case is.
And it's just such a an efficient use of time.
I find I love audiobooks to, youknow, some people don't, some
people can't listen to audiobooks and they prefer the
actual book. But for me, the audiobooks are
just brilliant. Oh, it depends on the situation.

(02:19:17):
If I'm driving audio, I'm a longdistance.
An audio book is great. Yeah, yeah.
But if I want to read for pleasure, then I'll read.
I don't listen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, everyone's
different horses for courses forsure.
But yeah, look, we'll make sure that there's there's links to to
all of your work and you know that that people can can find

(02:19:39):
access to all of these things and know where to go for sure.
And you've given us the website,so people can already be looking
that up as well of. Course, yeah, I'm expecting to
have more people, more traffic. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
You and me both. I've got, I've got, I've got 50
at the moment and I was hoping to get 100 but 50 is halfway

(02:20:00):
there. Well, everyone jump on it.
We'll put the links in the in the comments.
Jump on and sign up and check itout and let's let's get it.
Yeah, exactly. Unless I want to buy you a
coffee. Let's get it up to 100.
Yes, thank you. Awesome.
Anything else you want to touch on before we sign that Sign it
off? How much time we got?

(02:20:22):
All the time in the world, as much as you want to talk.
Can I talk about netball? Let's do netball.
Let's talk about netball. Netball.
Because for some reason I appearto be a good netball coach
without really knowing why. It just sort of happened when I
was at Coburg Primary School teaching there and netball team

(02:20:44):
needed a coach and nobody put their hand up.
So I was looking after grade 5. So I thought, well, I can do
that. And there's a fellow there who
used to coach netball. He's very good.
He just didn't have time to coach.
So he said he would help me, he would teach me how to coach
netball, and he did. He was very good at what he

(02:21:07):
taught me and I picked up understood what he was saying.
So the first year I coached it, the girls did quite well.
But the second year I coached it, they won the Victorian
primary school's netball championship.
That beat every other school in the competition.
And I thought, wow, that was, you know, amazing.

(02:21:29):
And then I I got promoted. I went to a small country
school, Nimal Jera called Nangelok.
There was a school down the roadcalled Kalignan, which is
Angelock back the front. And we only had, we had I think
9 girls in grade, 5:00 and 6:00.So if you're a girl in grade

(02:21:52):
five and six, you're in it. You were in the netball team.
Yeah, you've made the team. Yep.
So I coached them and because ofwhat I'd learnt on how to coach,
we beat all the other small schools in our competition, beat
them comfortably and I thought, well, I'll just see how good we
are. So Redcliffs was a bigger school

(02:22:13):
up the road. So I gave him a call and said,
you know, do you mind if they come and give your girls a game
of netball? Because they had, we had 80 kids
in our school, they had about 300.
So I thought that'd be a challenge.
So we turned up, we played that first quarter, we're about eight
goals to two up and the lady, the netball lady took off all

(02:22:36):
her girls and put on a brand newteam because she was doing us a
favour, she thought by just giving us her seconds and not
her first team. So but we're still beating them
comfortably. Didn't matter.
Then I thought, all right, let'skeep going.
So Mildura Central had 1500 students, had four grade six

(02:23:00):
classes. So they had so many goals to
pick from that which is grade 6,not even grade 5 and 6.
So I said to the girls, let's give them a game.
We beat them as well. So somehow I have a netball
coaching ability. We went to a Lightning
premiership, these same girls inSwan Hill and they put us in the

(02:23:24):
second division because of our size.
And I said no, no, no, we shouldbe in the top division.
Oh no, no, you're a small school.
You go in the in the second division, that's fine.
We played our first game wall ofthem.
They came and said no, you should be in the top division,
which they put us in and. You said you think.
We won. Yeah, we still won.

(02:23:45):
We beat it. We took home the trophy.
I went to what What? Lake Primary School as principal
down there. And so coach the girls netball
because I enjoyed doing it. I had a grade five team.
The grade six team coached them together, but Grade 5 and grade
6 and we we beat the other schools in our area.

(02:24:09):
Then we we went to a big one daytournament in in Warrnambool.
And so I took down my grade 6 girls to see how how that would
go. And I took my grade 5 girls down
for experience and they were in two separate halves of the draw.
Guess who played off in the grand final?

(02:24:31):
My Grade 5 girls against my grade 6 girls.
I was going to say this ended upin grade 5 versus grade 6.
What I thought, Gee, So what I've been taught by this fella
went, what he taught me was really good.
And then I hadn't coached. I quit teaching.
So I stopped coaching netball. And I hadn't coached netball for

(02:24:54):
about 30 years. And I was tutoring a girl, and
she was in Grade 4 at the time. When she was in Grade 5, she
said she just joined the netballteam.
And she said, can I show you my netball step?
I said, yeah, go for it, which she did.
And I said, no, that's wrong, which it was wrong.

(02:25:17):
And I showed her the right way. And at that very point in time,
her father came into the room and said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm showing her her netball step.
And he said, oh, you know a bit about netball.
I said, yeah, a little bit. They said would you mind coming
along and and helping the girls because they haven't got a
coach. Wow.
And it turned out the girls thatin the team, they called

(02:25:40):
themselves the Leftovers, that was their name because the
association had picked all the best teams for the top, all the
best girls for the top team, allthe ones after that for the
second team, then the Leftovers were in the bottom team.
And it's these girls were the the Leftovers, the Dregs.
I think they called themselves the Dregs.
The Dregs. The Dregs.

(02:26:02):
Classic underdogs. I said I'll I'll coach them, but
we've got to train twice a week and we'll do it my way because
the association had the rule. The girls had to play in all
different positions all the time.
And I said no, we play as a teamand the way to play as a team is
if you learn your position, thenknow how to play in the team

(02:26:23):
within that position. So yeah, they were OK with that.
So I started coaching them. I went and saw their very first
game before I started coaching. They did not throw one goal, did
not throw a goal. They were hopeless.
They were dregs. So begin working with them,
catching, passing, throwing. I said, rule #1 never, ever pass

(02:26:45):
to a girl is not leading. Rule #2 whatever I say, you
listen. Rule #3 there's no I in team.
End of story. So we began working, began
practising, began playing, and we began winning.
They began throwing goals and winning.
We came up against the number two team.

(02:27:06):
They've been picked as a number two team.
The girls who weren't quite in the top team and they were
thinking, oh, here's an easy win.
We beat them. Twelve goals to wait.
They weren't happy. I remember that.
And then the teams went, then wewent into Shepparton, into the
Shepparton comp, which is a muchbigger comp, My same goals and

(02:27:27):
that other Totura teams are there as well.
We ended up playing in the grandfight.
We we beat the top Totura team as well in the way, but we ended
up playing the top team in Shepparton who were undefeated.
We played them in the grand final and we beat them by three
goals. The girls were so happy.

(02:27:49):
So for some reason I can coach netball.
Yeah. Wow.
Which interests me. Take me through exactly what
your mindset was. What was the what was the the
underlying process behind that? I knew I could do it.

(02:28:10):
I I knew I was capable of makingthem into a good team.
But when I went, when I was principal at Calamba Primary
School, the girls they had had hardly won a game in three
years. So they were always on the
bottom of the ladder. So I started coaching them.
They lost their first three games, but they're getting
closer. The 4th game they won.

(02:28:31):
Never lost the game after that. Yeah, on the grand final.
So the process I have works. Yeah.
But part of it is tough love. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For sure. It was the success in them being
a team, in working as a team. Team, always team.

(02:28:52):
Yeah, you're playing the position is best suited for you
that I decide, not the one that you want to play.
We can't all be goal attack. So I will look at you, look at
your abilities and some, some girls are natural defenders,
some are natural attackers, someare natural runners.
Yeah, and there's your team straight away.

(02:29:13):
Yeah, yeah. Your runners always play wing
attack, wing defence, centre. Your defenders play defensive
positions and you got your your goal is But I I told my goal is
you must throw fifty goals everyday without fail at school.
I don't care where fifty goals. There's no point in all the
girls working hard in defence, getting the ball to you.

(02:29:33):
Then you miss and they get the ball back.
What's the point of that? If you get the ball, you should.
The ball goes in the goal ring in the story.
Yeah. Which they?
Did Yeah, I've, I've heard a similar story about Michael
Jordan. You know, everyone sort of sees
the the end result and the the the massive success that he was
at the end. But it was, you know, throwing

(02:29:57):
the 1000 hoops each and every single day, seven days a week,
365 days a year that no one saw.You know, that was that was
where the the true success lied.Yeah, I.
Mean, sure, he was gifted, you know, he, he had a gift.
There's no two ways about it. But it would.
Again, it was doing the work. It was the hard work behind the
scenes that no one saw. Yeah, but there are a lot of

(02:30:19):
girls who are gifted who never have a chance to show their
gift. A lot of people, because they
don't, they're not trained properly or don't practise
properly or whatever it may be. Yeah, or they're not coached as
well. They're not given the.
Yeah, well, one one of the parents asked me to keep working
with her girl after, you know, the team after the season had

(02:30:40):
finished and she's now in the one of the top girls in the
Chapman squad for her age and she's playing in the team now
that that doesn't lose. Yeah, true.
And yet she was one of the drags.
And so it was the same mindset, the same underlying philosophy

(02:31:01):
and process that you applied, whether it was, you know, the
school netball team or a business team at, at Unilever.
It was that same, that same. Yeah, I'll.
I'll just finish with one final story because probably time
people are nodding off now, but when I was at Coeberg Primary
School, we had a very crowded yard and it was on a slope and a

(02:31:27):
school sports day came around. I only just sort of started
teaching there and the teachers had been there a while.
They got the crossbow team and the football team.
They coached all of the different sports, you know, the
shot put in the high jump and the running.
They needed somebody for the tunnel ball team, so I got the

(02:31:48):
tunnel ball boys and the tunnel ball boys were all the
leftovers, all the boys who couldn't run, couldn't jump,
couldn't throw that they put them somewhere.
So I had the under 11, under 12,under 13 boys.
And Coburg at the time was made up of a lot of Greeks and Turks
and Italians and of course Australians combination.

(02:32:10):
He's. Had all these leftovers.
Now, the the previous person whocoached him in the past, because
we're on the slope, he hadn't tunnelling downhill.
I thought, Nah, stuff that we'regoing to tunnel up the hill.
Yes. So they had to work a lot
harder, tunnel up, yeah. Yeah.
And I focused on the delivery. You should never have to touch

(02:32:33):
the ball on the way. If you've got to touch the ball
on the way, you're going to slowit down, you're going to divert
it. So we practise delivery.
We could never actually pick up the ball and run to the finish
line because the schoolyard wasn't big enough.
So we worked on that, came to school sports day.
I just hoped that the boys wouldmake it, you know, not come

(02:32:54):
last. You know, they'd be good.
Under 11th went first and they won.
Right under. 12th went next theywon.
Under 13th went they won. So all three teams are now in
the regional sports. And that assembly on the Monday,
it was OK who got a blue ribbon.And all my tunnel ball boys put

(02:33:15):
their hand up bit of praise and whatever because most of these
boys have never won a thing in their life.
And now they're being praised atschool assembly for winning the
tunnel ball. So off we go to regional sports.
Under elevens went first, they won under twelves went they won
under thirteens, they won. So now we're off to the the

(02:33:38):
regional, the end of the sport where each region has its
winners to find out who are the Victorian champions.
And my three net, my 3 tunnel ball teams were still there,
just tunnelling up this, tunnelling up the hill.
This works well because at the moment they got on the flat, all

(02:34:00):
of a sudden the ball was just racing, you know.
So the Under Elevens went first.They won in record time.
Nobody in the Under Elevens had ever won that quickly and they
got a medallion. Under Twelves went next.
They also won, not record time, but they won, and now the
Thirteens also won in record time.

(02:34:21):
All three teams won the Victorian championship.
Tunnel ball and all I've done was teach them how to deliver
and how to tunnel up the hill, so I don't know.
Change the approach, change the mindset.
And the boys became winners in their own mind and that helped
as well. Yeah, just shows it, doesn't it?

(02:34:45):
You know, it just sometimes you just need someone that they can
see things a slightly different way that has that that slightly
different approach. You know, it's kind of like Dead
Poets Society, you know, where Robin Williams gets them to
stand up at their desk and look down.
It's exactly the same thing. It's just having a slightly
different approach. It's just having.

(02:35:06):
We we also practise every day. Yeah.
Every day. Yeah.
Again, do the work. You know, back to what we said
earlier, it's about showing up and doing the work, but having
that different approach, that different perspective.
At the end of the of the of the first round, the school sports.
All are good boys, all are good runners, all are good high

(02:35:26):
jumpers, whatever. All wanted to come in and be
part of the Tunnel Ball team because that was still winners.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. These boys have earned it.
They've earned it. You've had your chance in your
in your sport. Let them win or fail by their
own. So no, no change.
Yeah, Yeah. The underdogs who don't have
their right to be there. Yes, and, and the other thing

(02:35:47):
was all these Italians and Greeks and Turks who've been
fighting in the yard for the last 12 months and their
friends. Wow.
Sociably, they had cohesiveness they didn't have.
Before isn't that amazing yeah again one of the themes sport
bringing people together and. And laughter.

(02:36:07):
There was laughter because initially they bounced the ball
up into the groyne of the personbehind them.
We'd all love yeah, but the boy got groyne.
So, yeah, like that's tying intothose kind of universal themes
of, you know, of the underdog, of sport bringing people
together, of, you know, the things that bring us all

(02:36:30):
together rather than, you know, the bring unite us rather than
divide us. Yes, that's right.
Yep. Well, I think I'm done.
You're done. Stick me with the fork and tell
me I'm done. Yep, well long enough.
I've either put people to sleep or they're going, well, bring

(02:36:50):
him back again. I think you'll you'll find that
there's been plenty in here that's kept people more than
entertained, don't you worry. No, but thank you for having me
and I do hope it has been entertaining.
All I've done is talk about things I've, you know, believe
and have done. So we'll see.
And when the new book comes out,eventually I'll I'll might come

(02:37:12):
back. Yeah.
And like I say, we'll make sure that all the the links are there
for people to check that out forsure.
I think there's been a lot of value.
I think there's been a lot in there that that people will
certainly get a lot out of a lotof encouragement, a lot for
people to learn. So thank you, thank you, thank
you, thank you so much for for coming along and, and for

(02:37:34):
sharing your your wisdom and your knowledge and your
experience with us all. Good.
I had a couple of quotes. I don't know if I've done them
all. Hang on.
Oh, yeah, Einstein. Stay away from negative people.
They have a problem for every solution.
Yeah, that's gold. And one that is very important.

(02:37:59):
Comfort zones are where dreams go to die.
I like that. So I'll leave that with them as
the last thought. I was going to say, what a great
note to finish on. Don't let don't you know, don't
give up on your dreams. Don't let them die.
All all your dreams exist outside your comfort zone.

(02:38:20):
Otherwise, it's not a dream. Yeah, 100%, Yeah.
Yeah. You're what do they say if
you're you're uncomfortable, you're normally in the right
place. Well, you're growing if it.
Feels like you're a little bit out of your depth.
That's growth, Yep. Awesome, John, thank you so, so
much. It's it's been an awesome show,

(02:38:43):
totally different to to Sharon'sas we knew it would be.
But between Sharon's show last week and your show this week, if
people don't get value out of that, then they won't find value
anywhere. Oh, I'm glad you said that, and
I hope your ratings go up and upand up.
I'm sure they will. How could they not, Right?
All right. Thank you for that.

(02:39:04):
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
You have a good one. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Cheers, bye.

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CGU #004 - John Kriesfeld

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}CGU #004 - John Kriesfeld