#004 - John Kriesfeld - In This Universe with Craig Griffin

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You're in my heart and soul. You turn those dark days into
shimmering gold. I got a true no.
Always. Guiding me home.
You're in my heart and soul, My heart and soul.

(00:41):
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

(01:02):
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, that's a good

(01:24):
question. 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 could potentially talk about.

(01:48):
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 well
on my goals. You give me a goal that I
believe in, I will achieve it. Yeah.
And from what I've seen of, of successful people, it does seem

(02:11):
to be a very common theme is that they're very clear, like
yourself on what the goal is andthen 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. If I believe in the goal, then
it will be achieved. Yeah.

(02:32):
Like we can talk about goals fora 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 Ihad a good time there.
So I'm only going to say nice things about them.

(02:54):
But when I first began working there, some of the girls there
were talking about going to Weight Watchers because they had
to lose a bit of weight. And being realistic, I thought,
well, I could lose a bit myself.And also, it was during my
second marriage. I've had a few of them and my my

(03:15):
second wife could also have losta 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 up and they measured me and they

(03:38):
said, right, yes, to get to yourgoal weight, you have to lose
1112 kilos, we'll say 12. I thought, well OK, and I said
normally the normal person loseshalf a kilo to 1K a week if they
follow the programme properly. And I thought well I'm going to

(03:58):
follow the programme properly. That was never in doubt.
Yeah. 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 andI achieved my goal weight and

(04:18):
people were saying, oh, are you excited, John, that you've
achieved a goal weight? Well, no, there was no
excitement because I always knewI 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 Watchers said to me, have you

(04:41):
considered becoming a Weight Watchers leader?
Well, no, I hadn't. But I thought, well, there's
another challenge. I enjoy a challenge.
Yeah. So I said OK, Yep, let's do it.
So I ended up I was running three sessions a week and I got
nominated in my second year of being a team leader, nominated

(05:05):
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 that I was nominated, there's
only four of us nominated. And I thought, well, that's,
that's an achievement. So yeah, set me a goal and if I

(05:30):
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 they
achieve it or, or when they get there or when they get close to
it. It's the.
Expectation. That's right.
Exactly. You know, and quite often I've

(05:52):
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.
But you know, for the better, better part, they had foreseen
what was to come because they'd they'd planned for it.

(06:13):
They'd set a goal and then a, you know, a map on exactly how
to get there to. And they believed in themselves.
Yeah. I mean, it was the same at
Unilever when when I was managerthere, every manager was given
5K PIS. You know, You know what a KPI
is. Yes, keep.
Keep performance indicators. Playing a lot of that.

(06:35):
I always used to say but we never have Pis, we only have
KPISPIS don't exist anyway. So 5K PIS.
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

(07:00):
meant I got paid more on a bonusevery year.
Then when I achieved my KPIs for10 years in a row, I was given
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

(07:21):
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
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

(07:42):
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
that final destination. That's true, yes.
But as I said, one of the important things though is to
believe in yourself, believing you are capable of doing it,

(08:06):
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 he said whether you believe
you 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,

(08:28):
but also the mindset that you know, that it can be achieved
that that positive outlook, thatopenness to do things like you
with the, the example of Weight Watchers, you know, if you had
of just straight away you foldedto 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

(08:48):
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
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

(09:12):
achieving their weight loss goals because the manager that
Lady took over from, she was allvery lovey dovey.
You know, if if one of the womencame 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, there, there dear, no, at least
you're trying. Whereas I was going, well, come

(09:33):
on, shape up. If if you don't, if you don't do
it, you're never going to achieve it.
I was like the hard taskmaster. 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.

(09:53):
So, you know, there's in that situation, there's clearly room
for both. You know, sure, having that
empathy and understanding and 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, trophies for last and that sort
of thing, it's just so importantto to also have that tough love

(10:14):
and to have that, you know, thatjust being.
It's what I've heard, Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, who I'm a
fan of, referred to as kind 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

(10:35):
achieve a goal, so I was there to help them.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Yeah.
The only way that you're going to achieve that is to again, lay
out that that goal layout the path and then to execute it to
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.

(10:55):
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.
Yeah, awesome. I was a teacher for 20 odd years
and near the end I was around 39and I began to feel myself just

(11:19):
burning out, getting tired, losing the energy that I used to
have with teaching. And I thought I have not got
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

(11:39):
children, no. And I thought I never want to be
one of them. So I've always taught the
children at school, you know, ifif you believe in yourself and
work hard enough, you can put 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 orwhatever, but you have to know

(12:02):
what you can do and can't do. Man's got.
No limitations as Clint Eastwood.
Yes, well, Sharon tells me if I don't know.
So I thought, OK, let's just do this.
So I quit teaching. I didn't know what I was going
to do, but I knew I could do something.

(12:22):
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. Wow.
And so I applied for it. I also applied to get a job at

(12:45):
Shep News. But because I I enjoy writing, I
thought that could be fun, but Iapplied for the job.
Shep as in Shepherdon for. Sorry.
Yeah, yeah, sorry. Likely small to Cherry the
jury's tat. Shepherdon is Shep, Kai Abraham
is Kai, Murchison is merch. But you know, we just compressed

(13:09):
that's. The Australia We abbreviate
everything. Yes, I, I applied for the job
there. I happen to notice that
deviating too much in the topic,but I happen to notice it that
they said that a knowledge of Lotus 123 would be useful.
And I've never heard of Lotus 123 when I applied for the job

(13:32):
and I can't lie. There's something within me that
I just can't lie. I, I tend to, I, I call it lying
by omission. If you ask me a question and I,
I don't want to give you that, that answer, I will weave around
it so that all of a sudden we'reoff track and gone, whatever.
But I can't tell an, an outlightlie.

(13:56):
So I spoke to a few people and said, you know, Lotus 123, what
the hell is it? And someone said, I as a
computer programme, I said, oh great, what does it do?
And he said to do with numbers and spreadsheets.
I said, OK, that'll do me. Got to the interview.

(14:16):
If they had have said, do 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 computer
programme, those spreadsheets, they do such an amazing job with
numbers. And I assumed they knew what I
was talking about because I always knew if I got the job, I

(14:39):
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. 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

(15:02):
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, 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

(15:25):
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 plan was what we call the tomato
season. So during, during the tomato

(15:46):
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 atonce.
And of course they don't grow perfectly to to order as well.
Sometimes according to the weather they're a bit slow or if

(16:08):
it 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 a 2024
seven job type of job. I didn't have any weekends off
or anything like that over threemonths, but I didn't mind

(16:32):
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 manof tomatoes that have come in
during that period. If you haven't got enough
production, then tomatoes go to waste.
If you've got too much production, then people are

(16:52):
hanging around waiting for tomatoes to come in.
Yeah. 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.
Then it's just the weather you have to worry about.
And then they brought in Regalito and we started making
Regalito. Pasta sauce.

(17:12):
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
manager. So I was doing all of that work.

(17:35):
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

(17:55):
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 it would

(18:18):
be, 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 torture factory

(18:40):
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. Oh, 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,

(19:04):
but around that time, yeah. Yeah.
And 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

(19:26):
a job, but a fellow from South Africa applied for it.
His name was, his name was Hill.Hill.
We call him Gill. We call him Gill, but Hill, I
think Dutch background or something.
And he came out and I liked whathe could deliver.

(19:49):
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

(20:09):
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.

(20:31):
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're 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,

(20:53):
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

(21:17):
in backyard. I said there's your.
That's the main thing. That story, there's your yes.
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.

(21:37):
We're doing very, very well. Thanks.
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

(21:58):
previously they, they previouslystarted as the old lever in
kitchen company, I believe kitchen.
Overseas, yeah. Well, we became we were Rosella,
then we were Uni Foods and then Unilever, but Unilever was lever
in kitchen. Right.
I see. Yeah.

(22:19):
How long did you end up staying with them with Unilever?
I think 21 years. Oh, right.
OK. Yeah, and just change your tyre.
Oh yes, Well, I mean, I got paidgood money.
I can't complain about that. But there was a lot of pressure,

(22:40):
a little bit of stress as well. 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

(23:01):
condition and the rest of their life has been ruined.
So I thought, I'm healthy, I've got enough money now, time to
just retire and 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 Special.

(23:24):
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.

(23:45):
And people said, oh, you sold your bike?
And I said, yes, I noticed I wasmissing volleys on the net
playing tennis. And I said, what's that going to
do with your motorbike? And I said, well, if you've ever
ridden 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.

(24:07):
There are so many problems and issues that can occur from other
cars, you know, drivers, whatever, that if you're, if
you're starting to slow down, ifyour 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 net
that I used to get to or anticipate or see or react to, I

(24:29):
thought, sell a motorbike. Yeah.
Yeah, it's good that you saw sawthat writing on the wall and
that is, excuse me, I guess thatis 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,I know I'm intelligent because

(24:54):
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 biggestsliding door moment in my life
was when I was five years old. OK, people think, well, how can

(25:16):
it be 5 years old? Why is that a, a slide indoor
moment that because 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 quiteclever.
We we're thinking of putting himstraight now into Grade 1.

(25:41):
So I was half a year in prep andso we're putting him into grade
one. That will challenge him a bit
more. Yeah.
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 year after I was in grade 2 with all the kids

(26:02):
who were at least one 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, when it came to playing

(26:27):
cricket and football, well, I wasn't strong enough or whatever
physically 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.

(26:47):
Well, well before school, so I bet.
So at 5:00 in the morning, he'd pick me up and take me to the
pool. It was Brunswick pool, which was
heated, thank goodness. And I would do all the swimming,
all the training and then he'd drive me home and then I'd go to
school. And he I remember in year 6
swimming sports, it's underage. So the kids I was swimming

(27:11):
swimming and against were all grade 4 and grade 5.
Yeah. And because I was a good
swimmer, I won, yeah. And I said to my mates, yeah, I
won that. And they go, yeah, yeah.
But what do you reckon? They're only grade four and
five. Of course you're going to win.
But I should have been grade five, yeah.
Exactly. Got no accolades for that so but

(27:35):
what I was getting at was so from that, from prep on, I was
now one year ahead of where I would have been if I had have
stayed where I was. Yeah.
And then if I'd have stayed in prep, we wouldn't be having this
conversation. I wouldn't be sitting here
talking to you. Yeah.
I, I got to high school, went all the way through high school,

(27:57):
decided to become a teacher, went to Teachers College and
that was the last year of the, what they call the TPTC, the
trained primary teacher certificate, which was only two
years, Two years. The year after they brought in
the, there's a different one diploma of education, which was

(28:21):
three years. Yeah, yeah, 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
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.

(28:46):
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,
all the people I met, I met. 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.

(29:08):
I could have, you know, become something else because of that
one little change or major change when I was in prep.
So just sliding doors, you thinkabout yourself there.
There are things that have happened that if you have gone
on a different path, where wouldyou be?
Yeah, 100%. It's mind blowing the amount of

(29:29):
cascading carry on effects of just that one tiny little thing.
You know, like you say, it's a slight indoor moment that just
has an ongoing effect on the rest of your life.
Literally. And we don't even know.
I mean, I'd 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 of

(29:51):
of shopping and the little old lady comes up behind you with
two items. I want to do that again.
And you. And you think, oh OK, 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. And being a little old lady, you

(30:11):
know, she takes forever to get apurse 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. But you're now 3 or 4 minutes
behind where you would have beenif you hadn't of let her go
through you. If you just kept going, left her

(30:32):
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, out on bail, went straight through the
crossroad where you would have been with your car at that very

(30:53):
point in time. He would have smashed into you.
Life is either very, very badly damaged or it's all over.
But you never know that. You never know you would know
100%. There is so many of these things
that happen and you never know about it.
Yeah. People had decided to to turn

(31:13):
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, turned around, went back in.
They will never know. But like you say, that accident
that they may have avoided or, you know, that's right, someone
that they ended up meeting because they were there 3 or 4
minutes later than what they would have been that again, you,

(31:36):
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,
you know, it's kind of that, that, you know, the concept of
the multiverse they talk about where there's literally an

(31:57):
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, I met Sharon just
through that sort of thing. I teach guitar and many years
ago I thought I'll go to the community house and just see if

(32:21):
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.
And she said, no, no, no, we, wedon't care about that sort of

(32:43):
thing here. It'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 the actual manager and said, no,

(33:03):
I think we should do that. And she said, oh, fair enough,
whatever. So that's How I Met.
That's How I Met Sharon. That 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%, of course, Sharon

(33:24):
Handley, our guest from last week, who shall forever be known
as hashtag 003, yourself being hashtag 004.
Yeah. Look, 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. Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry, I was.

(33:50):
Just going to save it, but you know quite the power couple that
you you both are too. You know, you both.
We refer to ourselves as a powercouple.
I definitely, you know, all jokes aside, you guys really are
like both professionally and personally.
You, you complement each other, You work so well together, You
bring out the the very best in each other.

(34:10):
For what I can see, it's you're,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 category.
I tell people, you know, where I'm strong, she's weak, and

(34:34):
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. Good.
What is the? Plan.

(34:54):
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. We've got all the time in the
world, so yeah, definitely. I've been married three times

(35:16):
and the first, my first wife, was very active, very sporting,
and that's what attracted me to her.
There she was, top netball player, top basketball player
and #1 squash player, very good at whatever sport she took up.
And because at that age I was very sporting that, that's what

(35:38):
attracted me to her. The thing about marriages and
couples is quite often you're ona different path, but at some
point your past your path crossover and interact.
And at that point in time you 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

(36:01):
of both paths are actually goingto move away from each other.
And you just happen to be in thepoint 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 were there initially.

(36:21):
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.
Yeah. Because again, I thought to
remain together with his person now for the rest of my life

(36:43):
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 a
singer. And she was.

(37:06):
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.

(37:27):
But then again, their paths wereintertwined.
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 mewhen I was with my second wife,

(37:49):
if you've 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
I have proof or or evidence of it.

(38:11):
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.
Wow, that's interesting, isn't it?

(38:31):
Yeah, definitely. And this happened to.
You well, there's a lady called Deb Webber.
She's a spiritualist and she talks to dead people when people
have passed over and she'll be able to bring them up and and
talk to them. And Glenda, my second wife, was

(38:55):
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

(39:19):
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

(39:40):
house. One of them, one of his buddies
was rubbishing the fact that my aunt was a spiritualist, not
rudely I suppose, but just beinga bit derogatory.
And she had an old wooden table,had three legs and a screw top,
you know, sort of. Very, very old fashioned.

(40:01):
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

(40:24):
something there. So when you told me that story,
I thought, I wonder if I've actually inherited any of her
abilities. You know, because it's 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

(40:45):
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.
Ah, 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.

(41:06):
Let's hold the sounds right herein the kitchen table right now.
So we, we cut up some cards withthe alphabet and yes and 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, turn
off the lights, whatever. Now my father said no, no he
went he was watching TV so he wasn't in the room.

(41:30):
So I called up some spirits withmy mind and they, they appeared,
were asking questions, the glasses 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

(41:53):
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 I was
going out with you before I met your mum.
Now he wasn't in the room. Nobody else in the room had that

(42:14):
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,

(42:38):
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, butI, I had that ability.
Just recall that I could call upthe spirits when I wanted to.
So Deb Webber came to Sheppertonto talk to dead people and it

(43:02):
was held at the Shepperton RSL. I shouldn't say Shep 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 going through the routine.

(43:22):
Is there a David 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'tit be great if Deb came over and
spoke to Glenda? That's why we're here for

(43:42):
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 whenI focus, I sort of the outside

(44:03):
world just disappears and I'm inmy internal world.
When I came back into the room, it was all dead quiet.
Wow. 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.

(44:25):
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? Yeah, if I hadn't have actually
made contact with the outside other, you know, the other

(44:48):
realm, who then brought Deb overto talk to Glenda.
And then Deb just said, oh, thisis 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

(45:09):
whatever, But that happened. Now, 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

(45:30):
on the way home, she was furiousbecause I'd embarrassed her.
I'd embarrassed Deb, she said. Oh, you're like the Heckler who
thinks they're more important than the comedian.
But 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?

(45:50):
Did you feel vindicated or you just you already knew that was?
I knew, yeah, Because I'd done it before.
I was not surprised. 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

(46:13):
people believe now that is not real.
Yeah. That's when I was at Unilever.
I was playing in a band 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

(46:33):
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 for a group that had employed
us. We went there early to set up
and inside the building the pillars weren't weren't brick or

(46:56):
concrete, they were tree trunks.They were like 1/2 a dozen tree
trunks up and down the middle ofthis big hole supporting the
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 in her, where you're from,
etcetera. And we said, oh, to Chura.

(47:19):
And she said, oh, that's most interesting.
She said a, an Indian fella justcalled in yesterday.
Yeah. 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 Teixeira to take up a a new

(47:40):
position, you know, in the factory there.
I thought, oh, wonderful and didn't think any more about it.
On Monday it was announced that we were having a morning tea to
welcome the new R&D person to the factory.
So we've all gone along with themorning tea, eggs and whatever,

(48:04):
and the fellow's name was Nitin.So, so I've called that.
Of course, I called him Needle, which is very, you know, they
could have been more 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 he came to my mygroup, for some reason the

(48:26):
thought occurred to me. Don't know where it came from.
Most of my thoughts just come tome without me thinking about
them. As it shook my hand, I jumped
back and said, whoa, they go, what?
They've all gone. What?
I said I just had a vision. What?
I had a vision When I shook Nitton's hand, for some reason,

(48:49):
I just saw this big room and in the middle of the room there are
all these trees. I don't know why there are trees
in the middle of the room, but Isaw 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,

(49:12):
I think, you know, maybe. And they will go.
Nathan's manager is going. Come on, John.
But 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 Niton, of course said go, Oh
my God, that's true, he said. Yeah, that all happened.

(49:33):
It all happened. And he said, yeah, there's this
lady. There are three trumps in them
cats. 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
Niton before in my life? This is the first time I've ever

(49:56):
met him. How could I possibly have known
about tree trunks in a building and cats, ladies in black?
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,

(50:19):
whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
I told them that and I walked out.
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.

(50:42):
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
reveal or did you just leave them hanging with that?
About a few years later I went and spoke to Nitin and said I,
you know what happened? But all the rest I never
mentioned it. Oh wow, they all think I've got
this ability. They wouldn't shake hands after.

(51:08):
Yeah, everyone's like, yeah, no,I'm good.
I don't want to. Yeah, the high 5, that's enough.
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

(51:32):
charlatans and there are genuinecases and quite, I mean, we, I
think as people, we generally try to 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

(51:54):
that's sort of a, a balance is that there are cases where you
know, like whether you're talking about spiritualists or,
you know, you, you're talking about 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

(52:17):
know, whether they're, they're just trying to make money out of
people or whatever the case. And unfortunately, you know,
the, the people that are that are genuine, therefore don't get
enough recognition because they're tarnished by the, the
charlatans. I I actually also read tarot
cards. Yeah, yeah.

(52:38):
I was going to ask you about thetarot.
Tell us about tarot from the perspective of someone who knows
nothing about it other than thanthe 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.

(52:58):
They they read the person in theroom, They they tell them what
they want to hear or they tell them.
It is. Yeah.
Yeah, I tell them ambiguous things 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, yeah, I was
told that. Yeah, yeah, she's really good.

(53:19):
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, giving a talk about, you know,
spiritualism and all that sort of thing.
And I was focusing on what she was saying.

(53:40):
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 headache, actual headache.
So just my energy was affecting her so.

(54:02):
Wow. Strange, isn't it?
Yeah. Was it anything you were aware
of that at the time? No, not at all.
No, I was just focusing, right? It's just my focus.
I went to somebody else because later on another time to have
my, to have my fortune told whatever they see what they

(54:23):
would come up with, because theyagain, 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 this
person and she just said, I can't take your money.
She said your mind is just so busy.
I, I just, I can't read it. And so she said, no, you have to

(54:45):
go. So there's something going on.
But anyway, from a tarot point of view, people who tell the
future, they're the ones who aremaking it up.
Because if future's not yet written, we, we change the
future in the present. And you, you can make 100

(55:09):
different decisions within the next hour that will change your
future completely. I mean, through physical harm or
through financial decisions or 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 me

(55:29):
the 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
bought a ticket just with those numbers in it.
Waited for a week, Not one number came up, Nothing.

(55:53):
So in, in a sense, after that, Isaid, can you tell the future?
And they said, no, I can't tell the future, Not yet written.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, So the tarot readers who talk about the future, they're
the ones who are just half the money.
I do tarot in a different way. For some reason, tarot interacts

(56:17):
with your subconscious. So I always tell people if
you've got a a decision or a question that you want to know
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.

(56:40):
Yeah. And that that has worked so well
over time. But you have to have an exact
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?

(57:07):
What's something you want to know that you don't know the
answer to? That's a really good question.
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

(57:30):
specifically will or would therebe 100th episode of the podcast
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

(57:51):
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
have you. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
And they've got to be very exact.
A lot of it is to do with the a yes or no type of decision.

(58:13):
I had a lady once came and she was in two minds about whether
she wanted to continue a relationship with this person.
Should I or should I'm not? Now that's a fairly exact
question. Yes or no.
So through through the cards andwhatever and me talking and
asking questions and whatever, she already knew the answer.

(58:38):
Yeah. Yeah, subconsciously she knew
the answer. And when it came out, 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.

(59:00):
It's there. We just don't want to actually
face it. Yeah.
So that's how I use Tara. 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?

(59:21):
Yes, Yeah, that's how it is. Yeah, the cards go through the
first card is the past in regardto the question.
All right, talking about the past, whatever card comes up,
we'll talk about that could be abad card, a good card.
Then we talk about hidden influences in your life, things

(59:41):
that are happening that you're not aware of or maybe you're
sort of semi aware of talks about the present, what is
happening in the present. 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

(01:00:04):
life. Then it could be what are your
strengths, things that you're very good at.
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 is one that I pick because normally
everybody picks their own cards.So their their energy will

(01:00:27):
choose the card and I pick a card and I tell them this card
has got 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

(01:00:48):
somewhat? Yeah, yeah.
Not familiar with the concept. Yeah, I can either believe in
them or not believe in them. But I have spirit guides and I
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,

(01:01:09):
that's just, you know, you're a lunatic or whatever.
But in a in a tarot reading, my spirit guides are talking to the
other person's spirit guides because those spirit guides know
the ants, that they know what ishappening.
Yeah. So that will talk to my guides

(01:01:29):
who will talk to me. I will talk to her.
It's called the Golden Triangle,right?
So there's a rotation going on between the outside realm and
the our current inside realm. So my spirit guides will help me

(01:01:49):
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.
Yes, that is yes, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK. Your spirit guides are there.

(01:02:12):
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 knock
on your head going, you know, this is what you must be doing.

(01:02:32):
My guides, they just sit in the background drinking coffee and
reading the paper because I hardly ever, ever need them.
They're they're happy when I've got a, a tarot card session
because all of a sudden they're being used.
They're like. OK, here we go.
We're in. We're in because I, I don't need
the help. I, I'm quite happy with, with my

(01:02:54):
own 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 andhave a bit of a chat.
You've done meditation. I've dabbled with it a little.

(01:03:15):
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.
He's just sitting there just waiting for me, dressed in white

(01:03:37):
with a beard. So I just sit down next to him
in the meditation and we talk and he, he gives me advice.
I don't know where it comes from.
Is it my brain just making it upor is it actually from the
spirit world? And then I think, well, OK,
thank you for that. And he always says it's been too
long, you know, where you where have you been?

(01:03:59):
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? Yeah.
Wow. And and when I see the the

(01:04:19):
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. I can see 4.

(01:04:40):
Guides. Four.
Yeah, yeah, they're there to help you.
They're 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 goas you require them.
And if in there and then you will get a guide.

(01:05:00):
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 afuture time, they will go back

(01:05:25):
with more understanding, more knowledge, and they won't make
the same mistakes that they madein their in their first life, or
second, or third, or 15th, whatever it might be.
Isn't that interesting because 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 from you.
Most are there to help you, not to serve.

(01:05:46):
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 on
the head. And that's how they talk to you.
Wow. So that's why your gut feels are

(01:06:06):
normally 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.
Guys. Feelings.
Yeah, yeah. But you know, there's a lot of
people that that don't that whether they use logic in

(01:06:29):
inverted commas or, you know, reason, you know what's what's.
The 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 my it's a belief, I suppose, is what's the point in being

(01:06:54):
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 yeah, being supercilious or
whatever, but yeah. No, no, I, I 100% agree.

(01:07:17):
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 another
opinion in the room other than my own, You know, just that kind
of know those self Socrates thing that I've spoken about
previously on the show, just to go, Hey, I don't have all the

(01:07:39):
answers. I don't know every fucking
thing. I have to be open.
And I guess, you know, 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
washy and just changing our mindWilly nilly but.
No, no. I I've said as well that a sign

(01:07:59):
of lack of intelligence is that you never change your mind.
Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot to be said
backing your own beliefs and backing your own opinions.
So of. Course, but the moment you get
something new that you need to listen to and understand and
then maybe make a change in yourbeliefs, that should be done.
That's a sign of intelligence. You get people to go.

(01:08:22):
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.
You're just going with what is there.
I'm not going to pick on on religion, but a lot of people
just get their beliefs from religion, never question it, and
that's it. That's the end of their thinking

(01:08:43):
about 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 higher power, it's just that I
don't believe that religion is the journey to get there.
I've heard the The Stairway to Heaven, obviously a famous band,

(01:09:06):
a famous song rather, but it's the description of man using
religion to try and build exactly that proverbial stairway
to heaven. Oh yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And a lot of people just use religion as a crutch as well,

(01:09:28):
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. You know, I looked up the other
day because I was thinking aboutreligion.
How many religions are there on the planet, do you know?

(01:09:52):
It'd be in the hundreds. It'd be at least 100. 10,000.
Wow A. Lot of a lot of those are very
minor, but there's a group of people who believe in what that
religion is telling them. Yeah.
Now that can't all be correct, Ithink.

(01:10:13):
I think there's 12, maybe a bit less major religions in the.
World. OK.
Yeah, yeah. But if it was all correct, it'd
be 1. Yeah.
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.

(01:10:34):
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 being used
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

(01:10:55):
chess board power? Yeah, definitely, yeah.
Sorry, what did I say it it? It just becomes a way of
controlling the masses of, of 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

(01:11:18):
people. Yes, yeah, don't, don't upset
the apple cart because if you'rea good person and don't protest,
you will go to heaven. 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

(01:11:40):
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 approach to really.
And look, you know, if, if I very much believe in whatever
works for people, you know, whatever works for the

(01:12:01):
individual, your, your way mightmay 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 that they have got it.
Otherwise they're lost. You know, they want, they are,
they're upset, they're confused,they're lost.

(01:12:23):
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 means, but if it does get them
to that place that they need to go and no one gets hurt along

(01:12:44):
the way, what's the harm, you know?
Yeah, that'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, then cheating on people for not
having that belief. You know, and there's, without

(01:13:05):
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 waythat a lot of especially the
major religions have used to, tocontrol people.
You know, if you don't do this exact thing or have this exact

(01:13:27):
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 long as you're not singling out
any religion. But for me, talking about

(01:13:50):
religion generally, regardless of what that religion is, for me
personally, there's an inherent danger in, I guess following or,
or tying yourself to anyone religion.
Not to say that I don't have beliefs or that I'm not
spiritual or that I don't believe in an afterlife.

(01:14:11):
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 inthem.
They're my beliefs, but I would have had them regardless of
whether they were religious beliefs or not.

(01:14:31):
Yeah, yeah. That's just, that's just who you
are as a person. Yeah.
So yeah. Yeah, amazing.
Back to the back to the guides. Oh yes.
Were they something that you were aware of?
Because I find it fascinating. Were they something that you
were aware of, like even as a child, or was it something that

(01:14:53):
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 a12 year old.

(01:15:14):
That 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, sort
of helped. I mean, I don't know how many 12
year olds have that profound understanding that one day they

(01:15:36):
actually will die. No.
It's, it's going to happen. It will happen, will happen to
everyone. And I think there's someone else
said we all have two lives. I think it was Mark Twain.
We all have two lives, and our second life begins the day we

(01:15:58):
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. Do you remember if it was

(01:16:20):
something specifically that madeyou start to think about that?
I mean, look, 12 is that kind ofage where we are starting to and
just to be curious and to look at things, was there something
specifically that made you look at your own mortality?
No, it just occurred to me. Wow it.
Was just there. You want to hear another saying

(01:16:43):
that I sort of incorporated whenI was a bit, about 12 years old
from my mother maybe a bit earlier even, because there 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.

(01:17:03):
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.

(01:17:24):
Yeah, 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

(01:17:46):
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

(01:18:07):
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,

(01:18:31):
you know, what are that? What's that famous saying that?
What is it opportunity? What what's the saying?
Opportunity is where preparedness meets chance.
Or this is 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

(01:18:52):
magically happen. 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. Understand what you're saying,

(01:19:14):
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

(01:19:40):
are other people. The moment you meet them, you go
no, don't like that person and there's no reason for it, 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.

(01:20:00):
Too literal. Yeah, well, somebody on you who
read the book and they began to manifest the BMW in the
driveway. Well, it never turned up
surprise, but what they should be looking at is, OK, what you
focus on, the more you focus on something, that's what you get

(01:20:24):
is a saying about focusing what you want to achieve as well.
But we, we have an energy and ifyou 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 with the universe, and the

(01:20:45):
universe will then help to provide more of what you're
looking for. But it's very important that you
also 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. Yeah, I was just thinking

(01:21:05):
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 jury famous jury you.
Can tell you can tell you. No, no, you tell it no.
No. But Jerry Seinfeld held a a big
conference. He he was the the main speaker
for a big conference. So on how to be successful.

(01:21:29):
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 Jerrycame on.
Madison Square Garden was it. Yeah, yeah, Madison Square
Garden sold out. Yep.
So these people have spent a lotof money.

(01:21:50):
They're there, they've turned upwhatever done the pre, all the
all the speakers have done theirbit 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.

(01:22:13):
It's not going to happen 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 would
have told it? Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently there was.

(01:22:33):
The reaction was, oh, it's JerrySeinfeld, so it's a bit.
And he's going to walk back out on stage and took about 10
minutes before people went. I don't think he's coming back.
I think that was actually it. Do 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 to focus on what you want to

(01:22:58):
achieve, which is what I've always done.
Once I get a goal, that's what Ifocus on.
So a. 100% yeah. And I was going to say, and that
leads back to the very start of our conversation of setting that
clear goal and then setting out a a road map on exactly how to
get there. And look, it may not, it may not
play out exactly that way. There may be certain obstacles

(01:23:21):
that pop up in, but having that idea of a where you want to go
and then some kind of a road mapon exactly how to get there,
that's, you know, that in itselfis the secret.
Yep, planning. And are there elements of luck
or chance along the way? Sure.

(01:23:41):
And again, that that comes back to that, I think, I think the
quote is something along the lines of successes 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

(01:24:02):
chance, you know it meets 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, if I hadn't have quit,
if I have procrastinated, I wouldn't have seen the ad, I

(01:24:25):
wouldn't have applied, I wouldn't have got the job.
Who knows where I could have ended up.
But I made my own luck to a degree because I just made the
decision and then did it. Part of many old knock saying
just do it. I think it's black.
Yeah, I've always believed in that.
Just do it. Sharon will say.

(01:24:46):
You know what 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

(01:25:06):
life are often the best. It's such a such a simple but
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 youcan do it, I can do it.

(01:25:28):
Whatever anybody else has ever done, if it's within my path,
within my my zone, if you can doit, I can do it.
Yeah, yeah. Many years ago my brother took
up skydiving. He was never into football and
cricket and whatever, but took up skydiving.

(01:25:50):
I thought, what the hell, if he can do it, I can do it.
So I went along, did the training, had to go to a lecture
first 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.

(01:26:11):
OK. You, you jump by yourself.
No tandem jumping. So we had the practise.
We, we got to the airfield, had 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, had all that, the strings

(01:26:34):
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 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

(01:26:56):
the door. Is to jump.
We would not land with you in the plane.
Wow. But back in those days, too, you
didn't jump and then have to pull your your RIP cord.
They had a a static line. Static line?
Yeah. What?
You see, roller 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

(01:27:20):
four or five hours and it was myturn.
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 have to let go
and make your big arch and whereyou go.
So you did a couple of those, a couple of jumps.

(01:27:41):
But one of the things I rememberis prior to the jump, there was
a lady with a red top on and shewas, 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 skydiving people around.
So she got up, went up in the next flight and four people

(01:28:07):
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.

(01:28:28):
They're shaking the plane, the 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. And the instructor said not with

(01:28:52):
us, lady. That's your first and only jump
with us. That's right.
Yeah. 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,

(01:29:12):
so I know I can do it. You've played the odds and
rolled the dice. Been there.
Done back T-shirt wanted. 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

(01:29:34):
prior to our conversation today,but just you're going to.
Break, 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

(01:29:59):
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

(01:30:20):
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,

(01:30:40):
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.

(01:31:03):
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 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.

(01:31:24):
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 Dutch great aunt I was talking about, she was very,

(01:31:47):
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

(01:32:10):
she will affect the other gods. Ah.
I see, right? It's like this white light comes
from 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, the elderly gentleman you that

(01:32:32):
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 thereis a, a large and I don't know

(01:32:53):
if you can see this or not, but 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 supposedly so I was told.

(01:33:23):
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. 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 a

(01:33:47):
beard and it was a it was like aPakistani man there as well.
Wow, I. Can't.
There was like a Scottish lady with an apron also there, a
young girl who's there, she's there to learn from you.
And there's another one that is further back.

(01:34:10):
I can't see him. So yeah.
Fascinating. Is it real?
Is it just my brain making that up?
Who knows? Yeah, yeah.
Well, and again, it's it's just that that making off at what you
will and, you know, being open to to interacting with it and to

(01:34:32):
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
and and just is and you use it as you need to.
And you said yourself it's, you know, your guides are sitting

(01:34:54):
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, normally I can resolve all my issues by myself,
make my decisions that I'm happywith by myself.
But when I can't this when I talk to them.

(01:35:16):
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 mantra that I go through what I say beforehand.
Could you share that or is it something personal?
I'd have to go and read it. I'd have to go and look it up.

(01:35:36):
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 kept
safe and to be guided whenever Ican't make a decision for them
to step in and help. Yeah, wow.

(01:35:59):
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, justso much that we don't
understand. I think we have a tendency,
whether it's the the influence of society to see these things

(01:36:24):
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 partof the one.
Like anything that we don't understand is magic.
You know, if you said to someone100 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

(01:36:48):
been the you know, the the stuffwell, you know.
Even say to somebody 30 years ago about our current phones.
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, the phone was Dick.
Tracy. IPhones, whatever.
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.

(01:37:08):
It was all you know. And that's kind of in reverse
because I think sometimes we canhave scientists that can make
these things, but they're not necessarily the people that have
come up with the idea we needed the the great storytellers.
We needed, you know, George Lucas or you know, the people

(01:37:32):
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 or we could do that.
And it happens gradually in steps and.
Jules Fern, HD Wells, all of those people.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, things that Once Upon a

(01:37:52):
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 yet.
That's all it is, and there's somuch in the in the universe that
is spiritual but also connected to science.
They're intertwined, but we don't understand it yet.

(01:38:15):
Yeah, yeah. Just want to talk about writing
for a moment if I can. Yes, yeah, you have written a
book. Give that book a flag of books.
We'll pop it in. 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.

(01:38:35):
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. We exist entirely through our

(01:38:55):
memories. All your knowledge is something
you've learned. You know it is, 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
another, if you could wipe out all the memories of the person

(01:39:20):
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 thought occurred to me, but
does it? Is it or is it memories?
Do they exist separate to your consciousness?
They probably do. But with my thought it was OK.

(01:39:45):
Why can't we transfer knowledge,transfer memories?
Now you, you imagine someone like Einstein who's on his
deathbed, you know, he's got another two or three weeks to
live at the most. If you could then take all of
his relevant memories. I mean, as I mentioned in the
book, you don't want to transferhis time when he was.

(01:40:05):
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've then that scientist then
doesn't spend the next 20-30 years trying to get to the level
where Einstein currently is overnight.

(01:40:26):
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

(01:40:47):
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,

(01:41:07):
you know what, if I don't write 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 the
bookshop at Sydney Airport holding a book.
And I thought, wouldn't it be great if somebody came out of
the bookshop holding my book? The only way that's going to

(01:41:30):
happen is if I actually sit downand write the work, do the work.
All I had was the idea. I hadn't even started writing
it. So I started writing it and we,
we had a lot of boring meetings at at work.
I think most companies have all these boring meetings.

(01:41:51):
So yeah. And you have to go.
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'll stop. And I'd write it down.
Now, the person giving the talk or the lecture or the whatever,

(01:42:13):
go. Oh, John's interested.
He's making notes. It's.
Really into what I've got to. Say so.
I did a lot of my writing duringthe meetings, so that was good.
And I finally finished it and itwas 370,000 words long because I

(01:42:34):
thought I'll know when I get to the end because that will be the
end. So wrote it, finished it.
And you've heard of John Marsden, the author.
He had a conference to get together at his place in the
country, had like a farm. And we had Pan, all the big book

(01:43:01):
publisher in Australia were 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.

(01:43:22):
It's far too long. You meander all over the place.
There's no definite theme. Maybe you think you should think
about flower arranging. I thought, oh, that's not what I
was expecting to hear. But then I looked at it
logically and that was far too long.

(01:43:45):
My ego had gotten in control of 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.

(01:44:05):
No I wasn't. I realised I had to be true to
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.

(01:44:27):
Oh God, they got another 100 to come out.
Yeah. So 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.

(01:44:49):
So I just kept culling, kept taking things out, kept culling,
kept asking, does this contribute to the central theme?
No. Yeah.
Out. Yeah.
Got it down. I got it down to 190,000 and
that was it. I couldn't take any more out.
Not without actually impacting the story, yeah.

(01:45:10):
That I I got to that point and Iknew that, but what I discovered
was that Australian publishers only publish known authors or
they would do a a biography of some famous person
autobiography. Yeah.

(01:45:31):
So if you're an unknown person in Australia, forget.
About it. Exactly the same.
Exactly the same with film making.
Sorry to jump in, but exactly the same with film making, both
in Australia 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.

(01:45:55):
It's this it's become purely a business thing and it's just all
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.

(01:46:16):
It's crazy. It is.
I mean it's a lot of self publishing going on now, but
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, maybe England or America, whatever.
And finally a publishing companyin America picked it up and

(01:46:39):
said, yeah, we'll publish it, which they did.
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 pop pop it in the the comments and

(01:47:02):
pop the link in there. Yeah, I mean you can still buy
it online, Colin, 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 sold in England, it sold in India,
sold in New Zealand, sold in Australia.
Dimmicks, all those other book companies didn't sell it for
quite a while. And so I can say I'm a published

(01:47:26):
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, oh what thehell, let's give it a go.
So I wrote this poem, but it wassatire.

(01:47:51):
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 picture a bulletin, and I'll talk about
that a bit in a moment. And I have it here just by

(01:48:15):
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

(01:48:37):
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

(01:48:57):
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

(01:49:17):
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

(01:49:38):
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?

(01:49:59):
This one here, Yeah, two years, one year ago.
Oh, OK, right, right. Well.
Oh yeah, because when I had my book published, I just retired
as well, and our local communitypaper, the Tortura Bulletin,
invited me along to be part of the committee, thinking maybe my

(01:50:21):
writing skills could be useful for them.
But it was a very bland paper back in those days.
It was 16 pages, black and whitenewspaper type of paper.
And they just talked about school issues and what was
happening at the church and the local Flower Show, which meant

(01:50:43):
that most people when it turned up in your letterbox, would just
Chuck it in the bin. Mean that they what we did, what
they did back then was everybodyin Tochura and surrounding areas
got a copy for free, so it was all paid for by advertising.
Yeah. Yeah, So the more advertisers

(01:51:03):
you could attract, then the moreyou 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

(01:51:24):
away, go live in Shepperton. So they asked me to become
president for some reason. Who knows?
These things just sort of alwayshappen.
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

(01:51:45):
things your way. So I said, first of all, we're
going to have more things in thepaper that people who don't have
children at school, who who don't go to church, whatever are
going to find interesting. Yeah.
So I implemented a a short storycompetition and had people send
their store their their stories in and if they're appropriate,

(01:52:07):
we would publish them. Yeah.
Which we did. And that attracted more
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

(01:52:30):
and after the third one was published, I thought, well, they
went well, maybe I should start writing some.
So I started writing my short stories, which I then used to do
like 1 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

(01:52:51):
of things that would be interesting to people.
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 mom.

(01:53:11):
Well, for some reason I was working at the community house
and they had the Italian ladies used to go there for 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 to
do it anyway. Hey, John.
John, I said yeah, Ciao. So you're no bit of Italian.

(01:53:33):
John, this Amara Merle, we go tothe coffee shop.
We no way ever see the Mara Merle.
Where is this Amara Merle? I said, well, she's there, just
not looking hard. Not for 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 Merle. Yeah.
So Mara Merle's been going for 10 years now.

(01:53:55):
So. Yeah.
So yeah, I got involved with thepicture of.
Yeah, with the Bulletin president for for the last 10
years. I just resigned recently because
we were thinking about moving N,but we've changed their mind on
that one. But I'm happy to remain resigned
because of of other things I want to do and work on.

(01:54:16):
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 while a couple of years ago and
I thought, well, 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 myinbox pop up John Kay's short

(01:54:38):
stories. Yeah, well, I have a short story
website, they're all on there. 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 Krisfeld.

(01:55:02):
Krisfeld. You can spell John, but Krisfeld
is KRIES for Sam, F for Fred. eld.substack.com and it's all
free, doesn't cost you anything.People go, oh, it must be a
scam. No, it's free.
Nothing. My son actually put in the

(01:55:24):
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.
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

(01:55:49):
the stories, I thought I'll publish them in a book, short
story book, which I've done. And then I began writing
serials. So from month to month, you
know, they would 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.

(01:56:10):
Hasn't been published yet because the fella who's doing it
is drawing pictures for them andit'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, 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

(01:56:33):
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.
Yeah, fantastic. You 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 audio book

(01:56:55):
version. Yes, you are.
How far have you got there, Craig?
Probably about 1/3 of the way through.
Oh really? Yeah, that's good.
And you're enjoying the story. 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, whenthey first published the book,

(01:57:18):
they spelled my name wrong on the cover and I took it back and
said, hey, come on, I'm not Chris fled and Chris felt, Oh my
God. So they had to republish all the
books again, which meant that I,well, the books had the the
error they took back and they destroyed.
But I kept the box of them about50.

(01:57:41):
And I've given a lot out to friends and family and I still
play tennis on a, on a Monday social tennis.
And I gave out some, I gave out a book to them for nothing
because it 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.

(01:58:04):
So yeah. Yeah, I think my observation of
the of your writing, I think something that makes it so
successful is that it's you. It's exactly your personality
transferred into what you're right.
So it, it, you know, it, it brings a little bit of you in
terms of being quite deep, quiteintellectual, but also that that

(01:58:28):
mix of, of, of humour that, 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 write. I think that's one of your your
secret sources, I guess. And that's also a problem when I

(01:58:52):
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

(01:59:12):
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,

(01:59:36):
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. It's only when you shut the book
that they disappear. So yeah, as I was writing it, I

(01:59:57):
had to keep in mind who they 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 those
characters, I had a person in mind who represented that
character, and then I would justchannel that person in my mind
whenever that person was speaking or doing something.

(02:00:20):
So it's 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

(02:00:43):
the character in their mind. And it may not be exactly the
same character that, well, there's no way it could be the
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.

(02:01:05):
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

(02:01:26):
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, how often have you read a book and enjoyed it?
Great book. And you say the film, you go,

(02:01:47):
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

(02:02:11):
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. I can't think of it either, but
yeah. Yeah, well, you know, he, I'm
going to have to quickly Google it, Jack.

(02:02:32):
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.

(02:02:54):
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.
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.

(02:03:18):
Something like that, Yeah, yeah.Yeah, and you know, Tom Cruise,
obviously, you know, smaller, stockier guy and like, massively
successful 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 involvementof of Lee Child's directly even

(02:03:42):
did a small cameo role in the show itself.
But he's actively one of the theproducers, one of the you know,
he he's actively involved in theproduction of the TV series with
Alan Rickson, who is actually 6 foot 5, nearly 6 foot 6 is I
believe at about 260 odd pound. He's a big boy.

(02:04:07):
He's a big, big boy. And again, people are connecting
with it, especially the hardcorefans of the writer of the
original story, because they cansee more of what the author
originally intended to be. The character, you know, Alan
Rickson, they feel embodies thatcharacter more than what Tom

(02:04:28):
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'stake 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.
It probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to end up as ATV

(02:04:50):
show and you know, they've made the subtle difference of the
movie was Jack Reacher in the TVseries?
He's just Reacher and that's oneof kind of his, his catch
phrases, you know, whenever. People.
Refer to him as Jack Reacher. He's just Reacher.
So it's just Reacher the TV series compared to Jack Reacher,
which was the, you know, in the books and and in the movie.

(02:05:13):
But yeah, great example of, you know, how that character evolved
from a book to a movie, then to 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 latest Rachel book he wrote with

(02:05:34):
his 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 maybe Lee Child just did the

(02:05:57):
overview or whatever it might be.
Yeah, I but he hasn't got it, doesn't have the same, the same.
Yeah. Yeah, so.
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 artists do that as
they get older. They they'd Co write with

(02:06:18):
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 to cull off some of the words

(02:06:39):
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? Mindful.

(02:07:00):
Mindful. OK, Explain.
Oh, it makes you think. Oh, OK.
Yeah, yeah. Actually, I, 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.

(02:07:21):
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

(02:07:42):
think. Well, what the hell, you know,
you'd have to read the book in order to understand what I'm
saying, but I won't say any moreabout it to give it away.
Because 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.
You don't know what's going to happen at the end, but at the
same time it still makes sense. And isn't that interesting that

(02:08:07):
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 arevery timeless.
So that you can take something that may have been written 10
years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, but the themes still

(02:08:27):
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. I mean, it has been played out

(02:08:50):
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'tthink what it was, but there was
like a 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 were about to die.

(02:09:11):
And yeah, yeah, I 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,
in the 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, that part of you that's not

(02:09:34):
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. Are we going to see a situation

(02:09:58):
where people are augmented in terms of like they're here, You
know, at the moment it's like a set of goggles where it'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 implants

(02:10:18):
or, or whatever the the next step may be?
You know, how far before we see that?
You know, I've heard theories ofwhere we could potentially
become like a hybrid of, you know, like a Cyborg kind of a
deal. But it's still our
consciousness, the $6 million man, the cyborgs from Doctor
Who, the the cyber man, It's, it's, it's those kind of themes

(02:10:41):
playing out again, you 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, yeah. If you understood the process of
memory, could you make an artificial memory?

(02:11:03):
Yeah. And having said that, I won't
say anymore. 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

(02:11:24):
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
with Sharon. Just had a day at what at what
point in time, you know, evolution did we become self

(02:11:45):
aware? If you believe in evolution,
then at one point in time we go all the way back to amoeba 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?

(02:12:09):
I'd say not. So at what point, at what point
in our 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.

(02:12:30):
So at what point do we become self aware and how did it?
Happen 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.

(02:12:51):
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 understandwhat self awareness actually is.

(02:13:16):
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 endin about another What?
No, it's already ended. I'm sorry.
Yeah, 2012. Yeah, it already passed.
Yeah, but but also in 2017, we were told we had five years

(02:13:39):
left. Yeah, before global warming
killed us all. So yeah, that's right.
Yeah. But yeah, so self awareness is a
topic just in itself and that'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 imagined it would have been

(02:14:00):
higher, but there you going. Yeah.
So when can we expect the next book?
Do we have a approximate paid inmind?
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 the small, you

(02:14:23):
know, compendiums. But I thought I need to write
one more. But I wanted it 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
adventure. So I've said it back in the past

(02:14:49):
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,
but I've got probably another quarter there to finish off
writing. I need to find time to do it.

(02:15:10):
I'm very aware that 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'm just goingto do this IQ test and just see
where I'm at and where it came out.
I was very happy with. So I've got Do you wish to?
Reveal what that what that scorewas.

(02:15:33):
Said I was gifted. What?
You knew that. It came out at 130.
Four. 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 didn't matter.
So yeah, I want to just. Another one I'm not sure exactly

(02:15:55):
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 cells have started to diminish,
but I was still happier for it to be at that level at my age
now. It's interesting when I read
your first book. The.

(02:16:17):
You know, if we could only use one word to describe what the
underlying theme was. And then I thought this again
when you were discussing about how you had to sort of cut it,
cut back both the, you know, theamount of words, but also the
amount of themes. The, the theme that stood out to
me most of all, the very first time was immortality.

(02:16:38):
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
were saying about the book and how you know that there were
other themes that sort of had topop out.

(02:16:59):
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 book was. To me, it's very much
immortality, which again ties back to, to what I was saying
about timeless themes and how it's, it's very relevant to, to,
to today. You know that that idea of, of

(02:17:20):
our mentality and of evolution and you know, how does that play
out with AOI and augmented reality and all these other
things? And I agree, what you're saying
is correct. What I was saying was what would
I like to leave the reader with?And it was a thought.
The legacy of the book, perhaps?Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(02:17:44):
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 we're pretty much
stuffed. Which again, you have to come

(02:18:05):
back to what your, your belief system is to, you know, your
higher power, what your, what 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
my book. No, no.
So. There's only one ending if.

(02:18:25):
If what what I've 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 or
whether it's purely a work of fiction yet to yet to be seen to
be decided. Yeah, no.
Time will tell. Yeah.

(02:18:46):
Well, we very much look forward to seeing the the next book come
out too. And once I can get it completed,
the audio book version of of your your.
Book No, that'll be good. I I would like that to happen.
Yeah, yeah, definitely just helps it to reach another
audience as well. You know, I'll put my hand up
and say I'm the first to to findit a lot easier to read a an

(02:19:09):
audio or to listen to an audio book 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 podcast because while you're
driving or, or doing something at home, you can be listening
and, and you know, you can be doing that at the same time as
doing something else, whether you're exercising or driving or,

(02:19:31):
or whatever the case is. And it's just such a an
efficient use of time. I find I love audio books to,
you know, some people don't, some people can't listen to
audio books and they prefer the actual book.
But for me, the audio books are just brilliant.
Oh, it depends on the situation.If I'm driving audio, I'm a long
distance. An audio book is great.

(02:19:51):
Yeah, yeah. But if I want to read for
pleasure, then I'll read. I don't listen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, everyone'sdifferent horses for courses for
sure. But yeah, look, we'll make sure
that there's there's links to toall of your work and you know
that, that people can can find access to all of these things
and know where to go for sure. And you've given us the website,

(02:20:14):
so people can already be lookingthat up as well of.
Course, yeah, I'm expecting to have more people, more traffic.
Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.
You and me both. I got, I got, I got 50 at the
moment and I was hoping to get 100, but 50 is halfway there.
Well, everyone jump on it. We'll put the links in the in

(02:20:34):
the comments. Jump on and sign up and check it
out 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 up? Sign it off.
How much time we got? All the time in the world, as
much as you want to talk. Can I talk about netball?

(02:20:57):
Let's do netball. Let's talk about netball.
Netball. Because for some reason I appear
to be a good netball coach without really knowing why.
It just sort of happened when I was at Coburg Primary School
teaching there. Our netball team needed a coach

(02:21:18):
and nobody put their hand up. So I was looking after Grade 5.
So I thought well, I can do that.
And there was a fellow there whoused 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 taught me and I picked up,

(02:21:40):
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.
And then I I got promoted. I went to a small country

(02:22:03):
school, Nemoljera, called Nangelok.
There was a school down the roadcalled Kalignan, which is
Nangelok 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
five and six, you're in. You were in the netball team.

(02:22:25):
Yeah, you 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 Red Cliffs was a bigger
school up the road. So I gave him a call and said,

(02:22:45):
you know, do you mind if you come and give your girls a game
of football? 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 them first quarter, we were about
eight goals to two up and the lady, the Nepal lady took off

(02:23:06):
all of her girls and put on a brand new team because she was
doing us a favour, she thought by just giving us her seconds
and not her first team. So, but we still beat them
comfortably, didn't matter. Then I thought, all right, let's
keep going. So Mildura Central had 1500

(02:23:26):
students, had four grade six classes.
So they had so many goals to pick from.
That was just 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

(02:23:46):
coaching ability. We went to a Lightning
premiership, these same girls inSwan Hill and they put us in the
second division because of our size.
And I said no, no, no, we shouldbe in the top division.
No, no, no, you're a small school.
You go in the in the second division, fine.
We played our first game wallet them, they came and said no, you

(02:24:09):
should be in the top division which they put us in.
And you said, you see? It we won, yeah, we still won.
We beat it. We took home the trophy.
I went to what what Lake PrimarySchool 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

(02:24:32):
together, but grade 5 and grade 6 and we we beat the other
schools in our area. Then we went to a big one day
tournament in the 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

(02:24:53):
for experience. Yeah.
And they were in two separate halves of the draw.
Guess who played off in the grand final?
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
when what he taught me was really good, and then I hadn't

(02:25:17):
coached. I quit teaching.
So I stopped coaching netball. And I hadn't coached netball for
about 30 years. And I was suturing a girl, and
she was in Grade 4 at the time. When she was in Grade 5, she
said she just joined the netballteam.

(02:25:38):
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.
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.
He said, oh, you know a bit about netball.
I said, yeah, a little bit. They said would you mind coming

(02:26:01):
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
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

(02:26:22):
second team, then the leftovers were in the bottom team.
And it's these girls were the the Leftovers, the Dregs.
I think they call themselves theDregs.
The Dregs. The Dregs.
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

(02:26:44):
different positions all the time.
And I said no, we play as a team.
Another way to play as a team isif you learn your position, then
know how to play in the team within that position.
Yeah. So Yep, they were OK with that.
So I started coaching them. I went and saw their very first
game before I started coaching. I did not throw one goal, did

(02:27:05):
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
to a girl who's 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

(02:27:27):
practising, began playing and webegan winning.
They began throwing goals and winning.
We came up against the number two team.
They've been picked as a number two team.
The girls who were quite in the top team and they were thinking,
oh it's an easy win, we beat them.
Twelve goals to wait. They weren't happy.
I remember that. And then the teams went.

(02:27:51):
Then we went into Shepparton, into the Shepparton comp, which
is a much bigger comp. My same girls and the other
Tutura teams are there as well. We ended up playing in the
grand. We we beat the top Tutura team
as well in the way, but we endedup playing the top team in
Shepparton, who were undefeated.We played them in the grand

(02:28:13):
final and we beat them by three goals.
The girls were so happy. 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

(02:28:35):
underlying process behind that? I knew I could do it.
I knew I was capable of making them into a good team.
But when I went, when I was principal at Colandra Primary
School, the girls they had had hardly won a game in three
years. They were always on the bottom
of the ladder. So I started coaching them.

(02:28:56):
They lost their first three games, but they're getting
closer. The fourth game they won.
Never lost the game after that, yeah, won 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

(02:29:18):
a team, in working as a team. Team, always team.
Yeah, You're playing the position as best suited for you,
but 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 and they're

(02:29:42):
your team straight away. 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 told my goal is you must
throw fifty goals every day 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

(02:30:03):
you, 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 I've. I've heard a similar story about
Michael Jordan. You know, everyone sort of sees
the, the end result and the, themassive success that he was at

(02:30:23):
the end. But it was, you know, throwing
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.

(02:30:44):
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
girls who are gifted and 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

(02:31:06):
with her girl after, you know, the team after the season had
finished and she's now in the one of the top girls in the
Shepherd and 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 dregs.
And so it was the same mindset, the same underlying philosophy

(02:31:31):
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, 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 Coburg Primary
School, we had a very crowded yard and it was on the slope and

(02:31:57):
the 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
you know, the football team. They coached all of the
different sports, you know, the shot put and the high jump and
the running. They needed somebody for the
tunnel ball team. So I got the tunnel ball boys

(02:32:21):
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. He's.

(02:32:41):
Had all these leftovers. Now the the previous person who
coached him in the past, becausewe're on the slope, he had them
tunnelling downhill. I thought, Nah, stuff that we're
going to tunnel up the hill. So they had to work a lot
harder. Tunnel up.
Yeah, yeah. And I focused on the delivery.

(02:33:01):
You should never have to touch the ball on the way.
If you've got to touch the ball on the way, you're going to slow
it 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 the school sports day. I just hoped that the boys would

(02:33:23):
make it, you know, not come last, you know, they'd be good.
Under 11th went first and they won right under 12th went next
they won. 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

(02:33:44):
And all my tunnel ball boys put their hand up.
Bit of praise and whatever because most of these boys had
never won a thing in their life and now they're being praised at
school assembly for winning a 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

(02:34:09):
regional, the end of no, the sport where each region has its
winners to find out who are the Victorian champions.
And my 3 net, my 3 tunnel ball teams were still there.
I thought this tunnelling up, this tunnelling up the hill,
this works well because the moment they got on the flat, all

(02:34:30):
of a sudden the ball was just racing, you know.
So the Under Elevens went first at 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 13's
also won in record time. All three teams won the

(02:34:55):
Victorian championship. Tunnel ball and all I'd done was
teach him how to deliver and howto 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. Yeah, just shows it, doesn't it?

(02:35:15):
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.

(02:35:36):
Having we, we also practise every day.
Yeah. Every day.
Yeah. Again, do the work.
You know, back to what you 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 of the
first round, the school sports. All are good boys, all are good
runners, all are good high jumpers, whatever.

(02:35:57):
All wanted to come in and be part of the Tunnel Ball team
because they were 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 are don't have
their right to be there. Yes, and and the other thing was

(02:36:18):
all these Italians and Greeks and Turks have 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 of sport, bringing people together
and. And laughter.
There was laughter because initially they bounced the ball

(02:36:40):
up into the groyne of the personbehind them.
We'd all love. Yeah, after all, you got
groined. So, yeah, like that's tying into
those kind of universal themes of, you know, of the underdog,
of sport bringing people together, of, you know, the
things that bring us all together rather than, you know,

(02:37:02):
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, it's been long enough.
I've either put people to sleep or they're going, well, bring it
back again. I think you'll you'll find that

(02:37:24):
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
back. Yeah.

(02:37:44):
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

(02:38:05):
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.

(02:38:30):
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.

(02:38:50):
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 probably.
Sidetrack, that's growth, yeah. Awesome, John, thank you so, so
much. It's it's been an awesome show,

(02:39:13):
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.
Oh, I'm sure they will. How could they not, right?
True. All right.

(02:39:33):
Thank you for that. Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it. You have a good one.
Thank you. Thank you.
Bye. Cheers, bye.

(02:40:07):
My heart is soul.

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#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;}#004 - John Kriesfeld