July 9, 2025 • 58 mins
What do marine insurance, dodgy public speaking gigs at 16, and accidentally thanking a club for the use of their ladies have in common? Ian Stephens, that’s what. This chat was an absolute ride. We kicked off reminiscing about the speaker-fuelled high that was the TBOS conference (where I basically made 70 new besties, including Ian), and then the lad took us on a whirlwind tour through his speaking journey - complete with career pivots, tax drama, and the occasional metaphysical platypus. Ian’s got this wild mix of wisdom, wit, and war stories from the trenches of speaking and sales training. He broke down how he knew he was born for the stage, why being a broke creative sucks (but can teach you heaps). If you've ever wondered how to tap into creativity when your to-do list is screaming at you, or why the universe might tow your car to save your life, this one’s for you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the Punches and we're
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Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
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reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au A and Stevens my
(00:53):
new friend. Welcome to Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Nice to be here, Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
My favorite memories from my recent trip to Queensland and
three two day conference at the Tea bos the business
of speaking.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's it, The business is speaking. Yeah, seventy to eighty
speakers in the room. Was it was good fun.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Like that energy was. I'm addicted to it. It was
the energy and people in that room for a bunch
of people that I knew five percent of online. That
I'd never met in real life. There wasn't I don't
think there was anyone there I'd met in real life before.
And I just couldn't believe how much I felt like
I'd just come home from a high school reunion or
(01:38):
hang out with my friends that I always hung out with.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah. Well, a little shout out to Jacqueline Brooker at
any given Tuesday, who hosted and curated that event. The
business of speaking, I guess, you know, she really understands
how to not only put on a party, but also
the dynamics of either existing speakers or people trying to
break in. And it's an interesting industry, you know. It's
(02:03):
to have a tribe of people in the room that
are on the same page and aligned. Was really great
because I've got to say to if my family, I've
been doing this for twenty six years, but really my
family does not understand what I do. You know, it's
high level weirdness as far as they concerned. What do
you mean You're a professional speaker and you make a
(02:23):
living out of talking? I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
So for you, was it the attraction to speaking that
came or was it the knowledge that you got pushed
into speaking. How did that evolve?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, if we go back on my journey, I was
a operations manager in the West Farmers Group over in
Wa West Farmers Federation Insurance. So I'm a marine bloody
insurance underwriter by trade, would you believe? So, you know,
cargoes and ships and boats and in the insurance world.
But they made me a supervise at a pretty young age.
(03:01):
And I'll never forget. I went along to a training
program called PERFORMAX back in like the eighties for leaders.
Everyone in a supervisory level and above in the West
Farmers Group had to do this program. And again it
might sound like high level weirdness, but it's not. While
I was sitting in that room, honestly, tif there was
(03:23):
just a quiet whisper. It wasn't like a voice in
my head, but it was a knowing, like a gut
feel raw knowing that that's what you're supposed to be doing,
and that guy out the front facilitating that program, that's
the sort of thing that that's your calling, that's where
you should be going. And I'd always enjoyed public speaking
(03:44):
during my upbringing, so it was kind of a hint
that that's the direction we need. I need to go
in with my career. So you know, long story short,
I said yes to a move east when we acquired
Federation Insurance that took us Australia wide, because I just
(04:05):
knew that making a living out of speaking and training,
if you weren't on the East Coast, where eighty percent
of the head offices were, you were going to be
spending a lot of time in aircrafts. And so I
went east and that kind of I went east with
West Farmers, but I was I knew and I had
my eyes open for an opportunity to move into into
(04:27):
speaking and training. Yeah, so that's kind of my back.
Do you want to know when I love and I
fell in love with speaking? Yes, I was a sixteen
year old at a weekend hockey carnival. We're playing this
big event. We're down in Esperance in Wa and I
just after we'd won the final, I happened to be
(04:47):
off in the lou right, and that's when they selected
who was going to do the acceptance speech. So who
got dobbed in? Me? Because I wasn't there to defend myself, right,
So with three hundred odd people all standing around, I've
got to give a speech, and I was so nervous
that I made a little fraudyan slip because we were
(05:10):
billeted into the ladies' clubrooms. We had our sleeping bags,
you know, and we kind of just slept in there
for the long weekend and played all these hockey games.
But in my nervousness, instead of thanking the ladies for
the use of their club, I accidentally thanked the club
for the use of their ladies, And of course that
(05:34):
got a massive laugh. The audience was very patient tolerant
with me. I was only sixteen at the time, and
I kind of got hooked on making an audience laugh.
And so, yeah, that was my first experience as a
sixteen year old. So I kind of just was always
open to opportunity to speak, and that led me into
the training and development industry.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It's funny when you look back. I was just thinking then,
when when when did I start to appreciate it? And
I think of the moments when my dad, who was
not a speaker at all. I mean, he did a
lot of things in his life and none of them
are on a stage, but he would at family events,
he would he would give a speech that moved the
(06:18):
room emotionally and I just couldn't look like I was
just so moved by and captivated by that. And then
I remember having a particular boss in when I was
working in sales of a very small business, a small,
little print business, and he would talk to us. He
would give give it, not obviously not on a stage,
(06:38):
but he would he would talk to us in meetings,
and I just was really I was intrigued and captivated
by his ability to motivate and shift and I don't know,
impact people and influence people with his words, and I
was I was terrified.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, well, you know it's still the case that most
people say they'd rather die than speak in public. But
you know, I always tend to point out if I
push you towards the edge of a cliff and say
I'll either push you over or you deliver a brilliant
speech right now, people will step up and speak beautifully,
(07:21):
I reckon. So it's a skill too, and your dad
obviously had that naturally, just to engage and shift people's
thinking or stir them emotionally. And that's the power of
a great speaker. They're able to They're able people can
see their own stories within your story. You might be
(07:44):
telling your story, but I was taught by a mentor
to always turn the mirror on the audience. So a
lot of speakers when they're speaking can only you know.
It's like they're holding their own mirror up and are
seeing themselves as they tell their story. But occasionally, at
the end of the story, the idea is you turn
(08:06):
the mirror by saying something like, you know, when was
the last time you got King hit by life? As
you're telling your story, but that statement turns the mirror.
That question turns the mirror and the audience. You can
see them kind of their eyes go up left right,
they thinking about a time when they got King hit
by life, And so suddenly they're relating to you, and
(08:28):
you're becoming very relatable. So I love it. It's just
an opportunity to engage and tell stories in a way
that inspires and shifts people's mindset.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Do you think there's anyone when we're not going to
speak about speaking forever? Then we just happened to curious?
Do you think that there's a type of person who
wants to be a speaker but doesn't that can't Is
there something unteachable there some people that are unteachable in
that space, can we teach all people to be a
(09:02):
great speaker?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I believe the latter. I mean, I'm an educator and
a trainer, and I'm also a master practitioner in NLP
and ne're a linguistic programming So I'm a great believer
in the fluidity and flexibility of people's limiting beliefs and
their ability to learn new skills. So I think anyone
(09:24):
can learn to speak better and more effectively. A lot
of people just have to get that limiting belief out
of the way that I hate speaking or I'm not
good at it. And so you know, when I'm coaching
people in this space, it's how do you change their
neurology and they're limiting belief first, and then equip them
(09:44):
with some skills and talents to actually do the delivery
and the speaking better.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah. Yeah, Now, when we were answering about you coming
on this show, tell me how a bit of a
story to tell?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, roll with the punches.
I mean, it's it's just a good fit to me
because a will will swing back to the metaphor and
the prop I use a lot in keynotes. It's up
on stage is my portable speedball stand. So like the
Rocky Ball. If anyone's ever you know the Rockies, they're
(10:22):
hitting his little ball on the platform, I take one
of them with me and I use it as a
metaphor of not only mastery, but of bouncing forward from
the punches that knock you around in life. But you know,
I've also I've I've been through a couple of King
hits that I can I can tell you about because
(10:45):
it's I really do believe it's it's how you bounce
back from things that happen to you that shapes character.
You know, I often think of a lot of people
can fondly remember, you know, old Mickey, Rocky's coach in
the first couple of movies. Yeah, well, you know, I
can always remember him saying to to Rocky, it's like,
(11:06):
you know, and I won't try and do his voice,
but you know, bounce back. It's it's it's getting back
up off the off the canvas. That's what shapes character.
And the famous R Lee I always quote him, he said,
champions just get up and they go one more round,
and that's it. That's what distinguishes the you know, the
(11:30):
best and the great from just the good is they
get up and they go one more round. So maybe
we'll swing back to the speedball in a while. But
when I when I first moved into the speaking industry,
I came across a guy called Roger Anthony who had
a program called Crocodiles not wader lilies. Right, you can't
(11:54):
make this stuff up, right, Crocodiles not water lilies. But
it was a metaphor for as humans, we're supposed to
be like the crocodile. If we leave the aggressive nature
of a crococide, a croc's a prehistoric survivor. It's outlived
just about everything on this planet. It's left over from
the dinosaur era. About a cockroach is probably the only
(12:18):
thing that's been around longer, right, And that's because a
while the old croc is actually going through a five
step process to ensure it gets its prey. So if
we set aside the aggressive nature, it's actually following this
systemic structure to increase the chances that it gets the
(12:39):
weak will tobeast that's coming down to the watering hole
every day. Right, So a croc relaxes, then it observes
its environment around it, Then it starts to manage and
have a lot of patience and then it acts right.
So Roger Anthony intour of crocodiles not orderly. So the
(13:02):
principal character in his leadership program and self leadership program
was called Romper the crocodile Ronpa Relax, observe, manage patients,
and then act right. And if you think about well,
let me ask you the question, tif, where do most
people in life do you think start on that process
(13:24):
where you know, do they relax, do they observe, do
they manage to have patients? Or do they go straight
to act? What's the norm?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Go straight to act? Mate?
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Absolutely? I mean you know, I've asked that question in
twenty nine countries now and it's always overwhelmingly we just
act and then we react to the results that we cause.
So I find a lot of people go straight to act,
then they go back and observe what they've done, and
then they try and manage their way out of it.
(13:55):
So we've got it all stuffed up. And if we
were more like a crocodile, I'd achieve more of our outcomes.
And the analogy is be a crocodile, not a water lily,
because water lilies look pretty, they act pretty, but they're
floating around subject to the winds and tides, so they're
reacting to everything that's going on around them in their environment.
(14:18):
Where the wily old croc is very purposeful and deliberate
in landing its outcome, so be crocodiles not water lilies.
And yeah, fascinating program. And in fact, when I first
arrived into Victoria managing West Farmer's Federation Insurance, everyone about
(14:40):
eighty of my employees had all done this crocodiles not
waterer lilies program. And the thing that amazed me tip
was the stuff had stuck. I haven't been on many
training programs where like five years later this stuff has
stuck and people are using the principles. So here I
am the new manager. I've got my team of six
(15:00):
reporting to me. We're considering closing down one of the
branches in Victoria. And then Neil Trestata goes, well, I
think we need to romper this, and I've gone, what
you know, And then they taught me the romper principle,
which made sense, and that got my interest up to
go experience this crocodiles my orderlilies program that everyone had
(15:23):
done and understand the language and the tools and the concepts,
and Tiff, by the end of day one, you know,
keep in mind, I've moved east looking for an opportunity
to get into speaking and training. And at the end
of day one, having met Roger and experiencing his program,
I started quizzing him about what was his vision for
this and where was he going with it and does
(15:45):
he need some help. By the end of day two,
which happened a fortnight later, where in in depth conversations
about the role I might be able to play for him.
And by the end of day three it was a
day every fort Note over six weeks, I had made
the decision that I'm leaving the West Farmers Group and
I'm going to join Roger. And I was kind of
(16:11):
I'm a planner, I'm out of insurance, I'm risk averse,
so it's like, I'm going to resign next April. This
was like October and then I'll start working for you, Roger.
But a month later it was like, you know, Tiff,
when you've already made a decision to move on in
your life, your mind's already gone, but your body's still
trudging into work each day. And I just couldn't do it,
(16:33):
so I handed in my resignation and like six weeks later,
I was working for Roger. And that started an interesting
journey because like three months later, I'm facilitating the odd
training program. I'm maybe doing the occasional keynote. I'm loving
life now, living what I felt was my calling and
(16:55):
my purpose. But I was also dead broke because I've
got a young family and there's still all this money
going out in the back door and now there's not
much coming in the front door for a while. And
so you know, that was an interesting time when you
can't pay your bills and your wife with two young kids,
(17:16):
is going, hey, how are we feeding the kids? This week?
The f post has declined again? Right, And I don't
know if any of your listeners can relate to this,
but if have you ever noticed that financial stress tends
to magnify any cracks that exist in a relationship. Yeah,
(17:37):
and long story short, my ten year marriage just crumbled
and fell apart. So that was like a massive king hit,
you know. Go on six months, I'm in business for
myself now, contracting to Roger and crocodiles not water lilies.
I've fallen behind on my GST the ATO clean after
(18:01):
a personal tax bill, you know, and and I joke
with people that I was literally the four d's. I
was now divorced. I was you know, I was desperate,
I was depressed, and I was a demon supporter. It
just doesn't get worse than that, doesn't drop it unless
(18:24):
you follow Collingwood. No, no, no, let's let's not go there.
Let's let's not get into all that. But you know,
that's when I was really down and out. That that
that that period of my life. I kind of look
back on it now and there was a couple of
principles that I've learned from the CROCS program that I've
(18:46):
used my entire life. Whenever, you know, whenever life has
king hit me, I've managed to lean on them to
to get me through it. Yeah. So that was probably
the first time I literally had to roll with the
punchers and they were coming thick and fast, you know,
and I was thinking, do I need to go back
into the insurance industry. I didn't want to. I'd put
(19:10):
my feet in the water of speaking and training. I
jumped in head first in the deep end, and I
loved it, and I didn't want to have to go
back to a salary position in an insurance company. That
felt like death to me. But what do you do?
(19:31):
I put my resume out there and I started that process.
But luckily I spotted an ad in the paper that
literally it was one of those ticked the boxes ads.
You know, do you have experience in managing a sales team? Yes?
Would you like to be an international speaker and trainer? Yes?
(19:53):
And I'm going wow, It's like wow, and so yeah,
another long story short. I ended up for three years
working with a company called Marcureing International, who were a
big sales training company in forty three countries around the world.
And that's where I really cut my teeth on learning
the art of training facilitation. But I also after three years,
(20:19):
I was the longest serving consultant. This was a big
international consulting firm and they burned their people quickly, so
you know, two years, I'm the longest serving consultant. So
I made a decision pretty early. I'm going to learn
from this, but then I'm going to go out on
my own a second time and with some knowledge this
(20:41):
time and do it right, which I did. In ninety nine,
I left and went out on my own again. Yeah,
so there you go. There's some of the times I've
rolled with the punctures.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Did you start building that before you left or did you?
Could you not?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yes? No, Well, and from an integrity point of view,
I think I built up like six weeks leave that
they owed me. So I handed in my resignation and said,
I'm taking you know, you've got three months notice, but
I'm also I'm going to take my six weeks leave now.
(21:21):
And I literally I didn't approach any of their clients.
I went out and I saw one hundred and fifty
organizations across Melbourne who and I prospected and I just
I did the activity and I ended up eventually doing
business with about three that had definite training and development needs.
(21:44):
And so this time I was smarter. I actually locked
in a contract with each of those three to do
twenty days of training and development for them across the
course of the year. And so I locked myself in
for sixty days with three, so three companies times twenty days.
But that left me the rest of the year to
(22:05):
get out there and keep prospecting and build my pipeline.
And yeah, so that's kind of how I got into
it the second time.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
What did you learn? What was the most important things
you learned in the working for a company an organization
that made it work the second time?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Well, it actually it actually didn't, Tiff. I learned very
quickly that I never want to go back to working
for Demand or the woman again. I reckon. Within six months.
I knew that because there was a particular incident with
the manager that I reported to, and it was like, Okay,
(22:49):
I can't afford to walk out here today, but you
have snapped rapport with me so badly. I don't trust
you anymore. Our values aren't aligned. I'm going to learn
from this experience and set myself up to go back
out on my own, but do it differently, in a
(23:10):
smarter way this time. Yeah. So, I think the greatest
lesson I got from going back in and working for
our corporate in the training industry was that I never
want to report to anyone again for the rest of
my experience on this planet and for the last you know,
since since I left them in ninety nine, I haven't.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, I feel that in my bones.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, but it comes with a new set of pressures.
You are responsible for the revenue you create, You're responsible
for the sales activity you do. You're responsible for everything.
And if you've got any small business owners that are
learning listening to this, it's like you've got to have
(23:54):
so many multiple hats that you put on take off
every single day. Right, I'm our sales manager, I'm our
business development manager. I have to put the hat on
of being a facilitator and a trainer and sometimes I've
got to put my keynote speaker hat on. The other
times it's my administration manager hat. I mean, you name
(24:15):
it advertising manager year. You've got to do it all
when you're in business for yourself. So I think it
takes a bit of resilience.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Which is strongest hat and what's your least strongest hat?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
I think financial acumen would be my weakest. So I
learned early have a good accountant. Have you know, someone
handling the book keeping who knows what they're doing in
that space, because I shouldn't be doing that type of work, right,
And it's probably only in the last five years that
(24:50):
we've got to the point where I now like I
made a decision, Karina, and I made a decision there's
only three things I actually should be doing. And this
to come across as egotistical, but speaking training delivering is
one the sales and business development activity. I don't believe
(25:11):
in outsourcing that to anyone else. You know, with speaking
and training, they buy you. So I've got to be
doing that. And then product creation, so creating programs, writing books,
getting new e learning programs up at our portal, any
of that content creation stuff I need to do. But
(25:32):
everything else, again not coming from an ego point of view,
but it's below my pay rate. I shouldn't be doing it,
so outsource it to someone who's a good at it.
And secondly I get on with doing stuff that's around
my gifting. Yeah, and probably the strongest hat for me
given time, I very much lead into the marketplace being
(25:57):
a salesforce effectiveness specialist. Having managed large sales teams, I
do a lot of salesforce effectiveness. My keynotes are usually
around sales. I can do a lot of other things,
but that's the point the end of the market that
I go out and position myself as that's my selected
available market that I that I talk to, so sales.
(26:20):
When I've got my sales and business hat on that,
that would be the strongest hat.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah. Is that your favorite or is that the one
you're best at.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, oh, no, I think content creation, author writing, creating
E learning programs, designing a new module. That's when I'm
in my happy place, right, That's that's when I can
feel like you know, I won't, I'll just I'll just
(26:53):
call it. That's when I feel connected to a higher
power if we want to refer to that. That's when
I can feel my all in being stirred when I'm
particularly when I'm writing and creating. I think the sales
business development hat is the one I've learned to be
very good at. I teach and educate in that space.
(27:13):
So I have to just buy miror you know, I
guess I want to walk the talk in that space. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I'm always interested in the creative space, being a creative
and those of us who are managing a business, and
how do you how do you cultivate and nurture creativity
when business? Running a business can become all consuming and
(27:46):
overwhelming and you're in charge of everything and it's very
hard to switch off.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yes, yep. So I was having a conversation with a
friend who's a speaker in Singapore yesterday and we talked
about the power of time blocking so it's like at
six am in the morning, actually doing what again, I'll
drop a couple of principles in if you're happy, Tiff,
(28:14):
we've already talked about Romp of the crocodile. Let's talk
about Pet the cat. Pet, which is a cat see
the link a pet cat. But PET stands for personal
energizing time. It's time on your own, free of all distractions,
to actually connect in to source all the universe. But
(28:39):
it's about just having some quiet time, to personal energizing time,
to re energize yourself. So Roger taught me the habit,
and look, I'm not perfect. I fall off the bandwagon
some weeks, but I noticed when my life gets out
of control, if I go back to doing a PET session,
(29:02):
get up early, no interruptions, No one's up yet, no
one's phoning me. I don't even look at emails. But
I just take twenty minutes to think, to ponder, to muse,
to look at my diary of what's coming up. And
it's like, oh, okay, you've got that program with NEOs
life now in three weeks, Well what could you do
(29:24):
there that really recognizes John Desports and the role he's
played in your life over the years, because he keeps
coming back to me from different companies, and it's like
then some creativity flows, but you've got to set the
environment to tap those creative juices. So for me, it's
that and pick it. Some people, evening people, they might
(29:47):
do it at ten thirty, but I'd rather get up early,
have twenty minutes just not looking at emails, not looking
at social media, just sitting quietly, planning, musing, pondering and
creating a space to receive inspiration. That's really what it's about.
(30:08):
And then continuing on the time blocking theme. The current
book I'm writing number seven, I think I said last
week in the Gold Coast. I've landed on the title.
It's going to be How to Be Happy Without Money,
and it's going to retail for thirty eighty nine hundred
dollars right, Not really, it's called shift selling. It's about
(30:33):
the new way to sell in a hybrid world, given
we've been through COVID and a lot of people have
to sell hybrid not face to face, and it's the
combination of both now. And it'll be the book that
goes with my consultative selling skills program. But it won't
get done unless I block out time like three times
(30:53):
a week two hours just I do nothing else but
focus on just writing that book and putting myself in
the right state. And as an NLP practitioner, I'm very
aware that your state of mind, and I'll click my
fingers with that, because the state you're in impacts on
your behavior and the results you start getting. So we're
(31:17):
lucky we've got a bit of space. But I have
a particular desk in a corner in a room in
a house that is my writing station. I don't do
anything else there rather than write. You know, Karina pays
some bills from there and does a bit of recipe
planning from there. But when I'm sitting there, that environment,
(31:38):
that space clicks me into writers mode quickly, right, And
you can call this high level weirdness, but I'll do
it now. I spray a bit of you know, a
room missed spray, and I get myself into the right zone.
I put on a piece of music in the background
that helps me just it anchors me into writing space
(32:00):
really quickly. So I think the answer is to You've
got to create the environment where that creative side of
you can flow quickly, right and I do love that
about NLP neurolinguistic programming. It teaches you that you can
put yourself in any state in a neurosecond. You just
(32:23):
have to set the right environment and trigger a few
anchors that put you there really quickly. Yeah. So yeah,
that's what I do to create that environment to be creative.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, I've found I have to toddle up the road to
disconnect my computer from all this rubbish, take my little
laptop up to the cafe and sit out in a
quiet room in the back of the cafe up the road.
And it's funny to me. So it's literally it's the
same computer. Like I've literally still got the browser open
(32:58):
with the thirty eight thousand tactics you'll there, but for
some reason, in that environment, I don't click through them.
I don't think of all the other things. It's just
me in a word document.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Focusing.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yes, and and there's the keyword focus. When you put
yourself in that same environment time and time again, your
subconscious mind has been trained this is your focus zone,
and so you get really focused on the one creative
or whatever task you want to do when you're there,
and you're able to resist that temptation to and we've
(33:32):
all done it. We click on social media for one
minute and then I love that cartoon. I saw whether
the lady's kind of clicking on social media, And twenty
minutes has passed, and then it scans out and her
husband's in a ditch, having come off the bike, you know,
blood pouring out of them, and she's going, oh, yes,
I was supposed to dial triple zero, wasn't I? And
(33:55):
we do. We get distracted by everything and we go
down these rabbit holes rather than lasering our focus on
the task at hand. So you've you've created what I
call a laser zone, and it's for you, it's that cafe.
For me, there's a there's a bench outside under a
(34:16):
picnic cover close to where we live, overlooking the Malulaba River,
and if I go there, I can focus on one
particular task. So if I've got to write a proposal
to a client or what I call an action plan,
it's like I'll say to Karina, I'm just heading to
(34:37):
the river office because I know that's the zone where
I can just focus on that one task and get
it done quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
So late last year I went to India. I went
to the Himalayas. It was the most amazing experience of
my life. And when I came home. So because we've
done hiking over there, I made a weekly ritual of
going down every Thursday morning to the Dandy Kong's here
in Victoria. And I had no phone, no input rule.
(35:09):
It was just me and the walk, me and nature
and it was and like I talked about it so
much because the the busyness that we all live in.
It was like every time it was an argument. Same
as when I used to do boxing training. Every time
it was time to drive to training, it was like,
(35:30):
I'm tired, I hate this around, why do I do this?
And then you go and then it's amazing and it
was like, oh, it's an hour's drive to the danding
Oongs and an hour back and really busy, and you
could just go and walk on the beach. But it
was every time I got there, you just have the
eye would have this visceral response, right, I just feel
my body shift in my mind would just and I
(35:53):
just observe where my mind wanted to go for the
you know, for as opposed to the rest of the week,
which is directing that mind where it's going to go.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, And I think the important thing there is nature,
whether it is the beach, but there's something about getting
out into the bush and just you're being with nature
and grounding very very very important for that creative side
of you. And I think just given all the business
and the white noise, just to have a break from
(36:23):
it it is important. But you've got to schedule it,
and it takes commitment and it takes some discipline to
follow through on it. Because easy to do, easy not
to do. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I like the little stories we make, and this
might be a story or it might be real. But
every time I went by myself, I came across an
e kidnap And the second time it was walking, i'd
walked past it and I stood in front of it,
and it walked straight up to me and it put
its poor it's hand I call it because it looks
(36:56):
like a human hand in a glove, put a little
hand on my shoe, and it looked up and I
thought I was feeling. I was like, oh my god,
this never happens. Oh my god, Oh my god, my God,
to my God. And then when it walked off, I
looked went to look at the video, and I had
taken a photo and not recorded it. But every time
I went by myself, I saw on a kidnap and big.
I went, all right, this is a thing, this is
(37:17):
my spirit animal. There's something here like this, and it
just made me. It was just something to anchor to
to go. There's something in that. Do it. Sometimes we
need something big, we need to have something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, a bigger vision as such. Sure, yeah again.
You know, I keep referring to Roger, but the Roger
Anthony crocodiles and my water lease, he had a big
impact on my life. Be passed about maybe a decade ago,
but every now and then, when I'm out in those
sorts of environments, I'll see an eagle flying around in
(37:52):
the sky. And an eagle was one of his principles about,
you know, thinking big. That the king and the queen
of the sky. Right. Have you seen the talons on
the bloody things so massive, right, and their windspan. So
the eagle teaches us to have a bowl vision, to
(38:12):
think big. And of course they've got amazing eyesight. They
can see a little field mouse from three thousand feet
right and down they dive and that tenacious you know,
on average they strike fourteen times to get their prey,
so that tenacious little buggers as well. And yeah, I
always see you know, And I don't know if it's right,
(38:34):
but I reckon maybe the eagle is a spirit animal.
And I just I get a nice thought from Roger's visiting, Right,
Roger's got a message for me, just to get out
of the minutia and chunk up and have a look
at the bigger vision you're trying to trying to achieve.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, what practices do you have? Four? I guess in
with shaping maintaining your mindset.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Two things and unapologetic plug for the book shift mindset. Yeah,
it hasn't It hasn't f It has an F in
the word shift, right, because what we don't want is
a shift mindset. We want to shift our mindset. We
don't want an fless shift, as I'm always saying. So
(39:27):
in there I talk about a couple of strategies. One
is one is mind control or mind management. So your
conscious mind and a lot of people go to the
grave without understanding this. Your conscious mind controls your subconscious
It always has. For example, I say to U TIF
(39:47):
that's a lovely yellow singlet you're wearing today, or jumper,
and you, at a conscious level you go, but my
jumper thing is actually black, it's not yellow. So you
manage your mind and you flick that thought. And you've
had that ability ever since, you were able to challenge
things and ask why. That's when kids are developing their
(40:08):
conscious mind and because I said so doesn't cut it anymore. Right.
Have you got kids?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
No? Hell? No?
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Hell?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
No fur kids, but they're challenging right.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Yeah, we've got fur babies as well, but I've also
got two from my first marriage at are now thirty
one and twenty seven. But when they get to about
age three ish, they start asking why all the time,
and because I bloody said so just doesn't cut it right.
You've got to explain things to them. But even to
this day, you've had the ability to flick out a
(40:42):
thought and replace it with something more resourceful. So even
when I'm down and out and king hit by life
and I'm divorced and I'm desperate and I'm in debt,
it was always flicking out that mindset of I'm a
loser and replace it with I'm learning from this. There's
(41:03):
a lesson in this and this is going to shape
real character and stories I can talk about. So it's
literally that mind mechanism incomes a negative thought, flick it
out and replace it with something more resourceful. And people
say to me, it can't be as simple as that,
and yet it is. It is just that consistency of
(41:24):
stop saying negative shit to yourself. You know, you're the
one who puts yourself down so many times during the day,
and if you just court yourself and stopped and flicked
it out, right. So I grew up on the back
end all three boys did. I think. I mentioned it
last week in the Gold Coast that Dad would look
(41:46):
at you a certain way when you've done something silly
that he didn't agree with, and he'd go, faired income, son,
you are studying to be a bloody idiot, right, And
this was like fairly constant. We joke about it in
our family. Now you've only got to do something a
bit a bit weird and someone will go feed income.
You're studying to be an idiot, right, and we quote Dad.
(42:07):
But it also came with a cost because when West
Farmers made me a leader and they put me through
an EQ intelligence test, and I debriefed it with the psychologist. Now, yeah,
you know, I'm not up in the top five percentile
of intelligence on this planet, but apparently I'm no slouch either, right,
(42:31):
And yet when he shared my scores with me, I went, oh, no,
I think you've messed this up because I'm not that bright.
I'm not the sharpest tool in the tool shed, right,
I'm studying to be an idiot. So I'd taken on
this subconscious stuff all my life, and that was surprising
(42:52):
when he pointed out, like, mass is not my strengths, tiff,
I think I was only at the sixty fourth percentile
on mathematical intelligence, but verbal I'm in the high seventies.
So okay, I'm a speaker, so that kind of makes sense.
But your creative intelligence, I'm like up in the mid
(43:13):
to high eighties. So again, I'm not a neuroscientist, but
I am quite creative. And that was a real defining
moment for me when I shifted myself talk about perhaps
what's potential if I apply myself, So flicking out those old,
deep seated things and limiting beliefs you've taken on and
(43:37):
replacing them with something that's more resourceful. So instead of
the oh, God exercises a chore until you replace that
with it'll take a little bit of commitment, but twenty
minutes in, I'm going to be feeling great, right, And
that's the mindset that gets you out of bed and
(43:58):
into the sports shoes and off to a gym or
off to the nandy dongs in your case. Right. So yeah,
that's the first thing, control your mindset. And the other
principle that Roger and I talk about in our first book,
The Seven Step Pathway to Mastery, really based on his
crocodiles not waterly self leadership program is the swerve principle.
(44:23):
So it's represented by a platypus. So if your listeners
just I'm sure they've seen a platypus through glass in
a zoo for example, or on the television, you watch them.
They are constantly swerving around rocks and longs. They just
turn obstacles into a game. It's like how they entertain
themselves and pass the time. And there's a lesson in that,
(44:47):
how do we view every obstacle, every punch that comes
our way. We can roll with it better if we
just see it as an obstacle, not a king hit
as such and swerve our way around it. So the
way I teach this is like, imagine you're in traffic
and it's a bad day. Something's gone wrong in Melbourne
(45:09):
traffic where you are tif it's taken you forty five
minutes to go what normally takes fifteen. You know, and
you need to be somewhere for a critical nine o'clock
meeting perhaps, and like you just know, there's no way
now you're going to get there. You're probably going to
be a good twenty thirty minutes late. So stress. But
(45:29):
if you go back in time, it was when the
alarm went off this morning and you hit it and went,
I'll just snooze for seven more minutes. I get away
with that today, I'll be fast on my preparation process.
And you doze for another seven minutes. Now, I deliberately
don't say sleep, because I find this fascinating human behavior.
(45:49):
We hit the snooze button and then we lay there
for seven minutes, not getting any more sleep, but justifying
why we can do it. And then we hit the
snooze button another time. And if you do have a partner,
significant other, spouse, all of a sudden there's a foot
in your back, kicking out of bed, saying come on,
you're going to be laid again. So now you're under pressure.
(46:12):
You're not going to have a nutritional breakfast. To break
the fast, you're gonna you know, you're going to munch
down an unhealthy muster and on your drive to work
sort of thing. So, and who's put you under all
this stress you have by your behaviors and your decisions
and you and your mindset. But back to the story.
We're stuck in traffic. You finally get up to sixty
(46:33):
kilometers an hour. After an hour of this, you're you're
bridging seventy, you get up to eighty, and all of
a sudden, another vehicle, bus, truck, car, motorcycle cuts you
off in traffic. Now what do you reckons The normal reaction.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
To this tip unsavory language.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Absolutely, and a bit of European sign language. You're trying
get up beside that person to give them the hairy
eyebrow and wehear and curse at them and let them
know you're not happy with them, Which is really interesting
behavior because you're giving away the only thing you've actually
got control over, which is your mindset. You're giving it
(47:12):
away to someone else, and they're going to turn left
or right or get off of the next exit, and
you're never going to frigg and see them for the
rest of your life. And yet you've let them affect
your state of mind. So here's I put this challenge
out to everyone. I get to speak and breathe the
principle to here's the challenge for your listeners and for
(47:32):
you tip and my wishes they come true. I'm a
good manifesto. So I'm going to put it out there
that everyone will have swerves over the next few days
where people will cut you off in traffic. Now, there
will be no accidents, there will be no bingals, but
you will have to break to avoid a collision because
(47:52):
people cut you off in traffic. It's going to happen.
And what I want you to all do when it
occurs is you have to say out out, whether you're
in the car on your own or with others, you
have to channel the platypus and you've got to say
what a great swerve and actually congratulate them on the
(48:13):
quality of the swerve. Right, And you've got to be
You've got to be really authentic about this. That and
genuine in like the mindset is, I couldn't have pulled
off that swerve and executed it with three weeks practice.
You just did that beautifully right, and you watch You're
(48:33):
confuse the hell out of them because they know they've
cut you off. And when they look in the rear
vision mirror, here's a person who's staying calm, collected, and
in control rather than getting stressed out. And you've used
the swerve principle. What a great swerve represented by the
swerving platypus, anything that hits you from left field in life,
(48:55):
what a great swerve, right, It's an anchor, it's in
any terms, it's a reframe. You're actually looking at it
through a different lens. Right, Because normally, when we do
get to that meeting just in time to be half
an hour late, right, someone actually says to you a tiff, oh,
(49:15):
good morning, And because of what's happened to us, we
go who said, it's friggin good, right, and we're in
a lousy state. Whereas when you go, what a great swerve, right,
you stay in a good state and you're controlling your
own mind. And Karina will attest to this. I've had
police pull me over because I'm fifteen kilometers over the
(49:37):
speed limit and you got fine. But once he's written
me the ticket and I know I've got two hundred
and fifty dollars to pay and three demerit points gone,
Karina will attest to the fact that I've gone, what
a great swerve. Right. I can't control what's happened. I
can control my attitude to what's happened. Yeah, this is
(50:00):
really important. You can't control your first thought. But when
I met Karina for the first time, she'd done some
work on all this stuff, and she stretched, you can't
always control your first thought. You've got total control over
your second one. Yeah, yeah, So what a great swerve.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah. I remember in COVID when we were having our
awesome Melbourne lockdowns where we could leave the house one
hour day and couldn't go other than five kilometers, and
I ducked over to the supermarket grab some stuff, you know,
like there's no one around because everything's closed but the supermarket.
And I'd come out to my car and it had
(50:36):
been towed away because it was in I didn't realize
it was a fifteen minutes own because and it was
just like but you know, what I remember. I remember
going one, how lucky that because I'm watching in our
community pages where people are asking for work because they
(50:59):
can't pay their rent, And how lucky that I can
afford to absorb this major inconvenience minor inconvenience. But also
I remember thinking, we never think about that, maybe, like
imagine if when the worst thing happens, we always think
about the better options, And it's like, what if that?
(51:20):
What if I had got in my car and drove
down and then at the intersection someone wildly slammed into
my car and I had this major accident where I
end up being severely injured.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yep, Like I'll.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Never know that, but maybe that maybe that was the alternative,
and the world just went well, if we towe this
car away, that won't happen. You just get a few
hundred dollars to pay the toe people to get it back, ye,
end of story.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
It's a great swerve, but it could have been the
catalyst that avoided me even bigger swerve exactly. And that's
I think a belief that I was espousing during the
whole COVID and the lockdowns and Victoria Melbourne. You did
it tough, but compared everywhere else in Australia. And it
was a great swerve. So there's swerves and then there's
(52:08):
great swerves right that you're kind of through gritted teeth go, well,
that was a freaking great swerve, but you're still practicing
trying to reframe it and see the good in it.
And I was saying to people, I actually honestly believe
that the universe has got your back. It's actually working
for you, not against you. So that's the position you
(52:30):
took that maybe maybe this stopped me having a horrific accident,
so I'll be grateful for it. And that's what the
swerve principle helps you do. Reframe and look for the
good in it. It's always there. You know. Nanna used
to say one hundred and two and a half she
lived to and I remember her saying this, so dozens
and dozens of times, every cloud has a silver lining, right,
(52:51):
That was her version of the swerve principle. Yeah, and
you know I've been through Okay, it's ten years ago now,
but you know, Karina and I got king hit by
some bad tax advice and next minute there's an ATO
bill again, and then there's a company tax billin. Before
(53:11):
you know it, there's this debt that has to be paid,
and without knowing it, the ATO hasn't responded to the
correspondence and the suggested payment plan. They just put our
company into liquidation in the federal courts and wound us up.
And it's like, my god, what a great swerve, right,
(53:32):
and having to go through all go through all that
being king hit by life again and there was a
pattern there that I had to learn that bit about
financial management and have some good people around me to
look after that because I wasn't doing it, you know.
So swerve's just coming left, right and center. But you know,
(53:54):
in that moment Tiff, we when Dad passed, he left
a little bit of money to each of the boys,
the three of us and their partners, and it was
enough to pay because we've been king here and had
to sell everything to get out of this debt, and
we wanted to own a property again. Dad had probably
(54:18):
funded us the equivalent of whatever the stamp duty would
be on this purchase, but we didn't have the twenty
percent right too. But we went and found this house anyway,
the one we're living in now, and loved it, fell
in love with it way out of our price range. Anyway,
we didn't have the money, but you know, we just
said to the real estate agent, look, we've got the
(54:40):
stamp duty. We can put down a bit more money
in about three months time, but let's get creative. Can
the owner look at some creative options? And long story short,
we bought this home with twenty five grand down, We
paid the stamp duty, the owner stumped up some vendor
finance for three years. When COVID hit the property went
(55:03):
up by forty percent. We refinance paid him out his
twenty percent and still had good equity in the home. Now,
if we hadn't been keing hit by life like you
and your Ka Tow, we would never have asked the
question are you open to some creative options? We would
(55:25):
have just struggled on trying to raise the money eventually.
But we would have missed this opportunity. And for him,
he'd sold this house, they'd backed out twice, he had
to move it because of some other investments. But he
didn't need all his money, he just needed a decent
lik of it. So it was perfect timing. And we
(55:46):
had rented for eighteen months in NUSA, not twelve months.
If we had a lease for twelve months. We would
have been committed where we were for another six months
when this house became available, but because we had an
eighteen month lease there, it was like divine timing. All
the stars aligned, the universe had our back, and if
you operate to that, you can to bring it back
(56:09):
and close it out. On your title of your show,
you know, roll with the punches your podcast, I think
rolling with the Punches a lot of it is about
mindset and being prepared to just roll with the swerves,
look for the good in it, and there's always the
next step there somewhere.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah, your race, You're amazing.
Speaker 3 (56:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
I love watching you on stage. You were you having
a very very and I say this honestly have a
very very magnetic stage presence, and as a person in
the speaker in the crowd at that event, your ability
to show the very best in that style of craftsmanship
(56:55):
and also point out the moments that we might miss
was just a really great experience for me. Like I've
raved about it quite a bit, said to so many people, Mate,
I would I would be a speaker in for sales
of all things if I could, you know, if I
could emulate what Ian Stevens did on stage, like so great, thank.
Speaker 3 (57:16):
You for the feedback. It's that was confirmation for me
that my people, you know where I love playing as
we would be speakers or trainers, speakers, mcs, facilitators, you
name it. But they're looking to up level and take
it another notch. And that that was my that was
my ideal audience and I had a blast. So I'm
(57:36):
glad it went over well. And yeah, I appreciate your feedback.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Amazing. Where do we go to online to stalk you?
Follow you by your books and do the thing?
Speaker 3 (57:47):
Look, the easiest thing would be Ian Stevens with a pH.
Ian Stephens speaks dot com and that will get you
to my books and yeah, you name it, and thing
about what I do. So Ian Stephens speaks dot com
with a p h in Stephens, not a vyeh. I've
got a p H. I've got a p H. I'm
(58:09):
just working on the d D.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
I love that. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone, go
check it out. The links will be in the show
notes if you want to check out Ian Stevens and
we will see you next time.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
Thanks Steve.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood,
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the Punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family
Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au A and Stevens my
(00:53):
new friend. Welcome to Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Nice to be here, Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
My favorite memories from my recent trip to Queensland and
three two day conference at the Tea bos the business
of speaking.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's it, The business is speaking. Yeah, seventy to eighty
speakers in the room. Was it was good fun.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Like that energy was. I'm addicted to it. It was
the energy and people in that room for a bunch
of people that I knew five percent of online. That
I'd never met in real life. There wasn't I don't
think there was anyone there I'd met in real life before.
And I just couldn't believe how much I felt like
I'd just come home from a high school reunion or
(01:38):
hang out with my friends that I always hung out with.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah. Well, a little shout out to Jacqueline Brooker at
any given Tuesday, who hosted and curated that event. The
business of speaking, I guess, you know, she really understands
how to not only put on a party, but also
the dynamics of either existing speakers or people trying to
break in. And it's an interesting industry, you know. It's
(02:03):
to have a tribe of people in the room that
are on the same page and aligned. Was really great
because I've got to say to if my family, I've
been doing this for twenty six years, but really my
family does not understand what I do. You know, it's
high level weirdness as far as they concerned. What do
you mean You're a professional speaker and you make a
(02:23):
living out of talking? I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
So for you, was it the attraction to speaking that
came or was it the knowledge that you got pushed
into speaking. How did that evolve?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, if we go back on my journey, I was
a operations manager in the West Farmers Group over in
Wa West Farmers Federation Insurance. So I'm a marine bloody
insurance underwriter by trade, would you believe? So, you know,
cargoes and ships and boats and in the insurance world.
But they made me a supervise at a pretty young age.
(03:01):
And I'll never forget. I went along to a training
program called PERFORMAX back in like the eighties for leaders.
Everyone in a supervisory level and above in the West
Farmers Group had to do this program. And again it
might sound like high level weirdness, but it's not. While
I was sitting in that room, honestly, tif there was
(03:23):
just a quiet whisper. It wasn't like a voice in
my head, but it was a knowing, like a gut
feel raw knowing that that's what you're supposed to be doing,
and that guy out the front facilitating that program, that's
the sort of thing that that's your calling, that's where
you should be going. And I'd always enjoyed public speaking
(03:44):
during my upbringing, so it was kind of a hint
that that's the direction we need. I need to go
in with my career. So you know, long story short,
I said yes to a move east when we acquired
Federation Insurance that took us Australia wide, because I just
(04:05):
knew that making a living out of speaking and training,
if you weren't on the East Coast, where eighty percent
of the head offices were, you were going to be
spending a lot of time in aircrafts. And so I
went east and that kind of I went east with
West Farmers, but I was I knew and I had
my eyes open for an opportunity to move into into
(04:27):
speaking and training. Yeah, so that's kind of my back.
Do you want to know when I love and I
fell in love with speaking? Yes, I was a sixteen
year old at a weekend hockey carnival. We're playing this
big event. We're down in Esperance in Wa and I
just after we'd won the final, I happened to be
(04:47):
off in the lou right, and that's when they selected
who was going to do the acceptance speech. So who
got dobbed in? Me? Because I wasn't there to defend myself, right,
So with three hundred odd people all standing around, I've
got to give a speech, and I was so nervous
that I made a little fraudyan slip because we were
(05:10):
billeted into the ladies' clubrooms. We had our sleeping bags,
you know, and we kind of just slept in there
for the long weekend and played all these hockey games.
But in my nervousness, instead of thanking the ladies for
the use of their club, I accidentally thanked the club
for the use of their ladies, And of course that
(05:34):
got a massive laugh. The audience was very patient tolerant
with me. I was only sixteen at the time, and
I kind of got hooked on making an audience laugh.
And so, yeah, that was my first experience as a
sixteen year old. So I kind of just was always
open to opportunity to speak, and that led me into
the training and development industry.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It's funny when you look back. I was just thinking then,
when when when did I start to appreciate it? And
I think of the moments when my dad, who was
not a speaker at all. I mean, he did a
lot of things in his life and none of them
are on a stage, but he would at family events,
he would he would give a speech that moved the
(06:18):
room emotionally and I just couldn't look like I was
just so moved by and captivated by that. And then
I remember having a particular boss in when I was
working in sales of a very small business, a small,
little print business, and he would talk to us. He
would give give it, not obviously not on a stage,
(06:38):
but he would he would talk to us in meetings,
and I just was really I was intrigued and captivated
by his ability to motivate and shift and I don't know,
impact people and influence people with his words, and I
was I was terrified.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, well, you know it's still the case that most
people say they'd rather die than speak in public. But
you know, I always tend to point out if I
push you towards the edge of a cliff and say
I'll either push you over or you deliver a brilliant
speech right now, people will step up and speak beautifully,
(07:21):
I reckon. So it's a skill too, and your dad
obviously had that naturally, just to engage and shift people's
thinking or stir them emotionally. And that's the power of
a great speaker. They're able to They're able people can
see their own stories within your story. You might be
(07:44):
telling your story, but I was taught by a mentor
to always turn the mirror on the audience. So a
lot of speakers when they're speaking can only you know.
It's like they're holding their own mirror up and are
seeing themselves as they tell their story. But occasionally, at
the end of the story, the idea is you turn
(08:06):
the mirror by saying something like, you know, when was
the last time you got King hit by life? As
you're telling your story, but that statement turns the mirror.
That question turns the mirror and the audience. You can
see them kind of their eyes go up left right,
they thinking about a time when they got King hit
by life, And so suddenly they're relating to you, and
(08:28):
you're becoming very relatable. So I love it. It's just
an opportunity to engage and tell stories in a way
that inspires and shifts people's mindset.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Do you think there's anyone when we're not going to
speak about speaking forever? Then we just happened to curious?
Do you think that there's a type of person who
wants to be a speaker but doesn't that can't Is
there something unteachable there some people that are unteachable in
that space, can we teach all people to be a
(09:02):
great speaker?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I believe the latter. I mean, I'm an educator and
a trainer, and I'm also a master practitioner in NLP
and ne're a linguistic programming So I'm a great believer
in the fluidity and flexibility of people's limiting beliefs and
their ability to learn new skills. So I think anyone
(09:24):
can learn to speak better and more effectively. A lot
of people just have to get that limiting belief out
of the way that I hate speaking or I'm not
good at it. And so you know, when I'm coaching
people in this space, it's how do you change their
neurology and they're limiting belief first, and then equip them
(09:44):
with some skills and talents to actually do the delivery
and the speaking better.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah. Yeah, Now, when we were answering about you coming
on this show, tell me how a bit of a
story to tell?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, roll with the punches.
I mean, it's it's just a good fit to me
because a will will swing back to the metaphor and
the prop I use a lot in keynotes. It's up
on stage is my portable speedball stand. So like the
Rocky Ball. If anyone's ever you know the Rockies, they're
(10:22):
hitting his little ball on the platform, I take one
of them with me and I use it as a
metaphor of not only mastery, but of bouncing forward from
the punches that knock you around in life. But you know,
I've also I've I've been through a couple of King
hits that I can I can tell you about because
(10:45):
it's I really do believe it's it's how you bounce
back from things that happen to you that shapes character.
You know, I often think of a lot of people
can fondly remember, you know, old Mickey, Rocky's coach in
the first couple of movies. Yeah, well, you know, I
can always remember him saying to to Rocky, it's like,
(11:06):
you know, and I won't try and do his voice,
but you know, bounce back. It's it's it's getting back
up off the off the canvas. That's what shapes character.
And the famous R Lee I always quote him, he said,
champions just get up and they go one more round,
and that's it. That's what distinguishes the you know, the
(11:30):
best and the great from just the good is they
get up and they go one more round. So maybe
we'll swing back to the speedball in a while. But
when I when I first moved into the speaking industry,
I came across a guy called Roger Anthony who had
a program called Crocodiles not wader lilies. Right, you can't
(11:54):
make this stuff up, right, Crocodiles not water lilies. But
it was a metaphor for as humans, we're supposed to
be like the crocodile. If we leave the aggressive nature
of a crococide, a croc's a prehistoric survivor. It's outlived
just about everything on this planet. It's left over from
the dinosaur era. About a cockroach is probably the only
(12:18):
thing that's been around longer, right, And that's because a
while the old croc is actually going through a five
step process to ensure it gets its prey. So if
we set aside the aggressive nature, it's actually following this
systemic structure to increase the chances that it gets the
(12:39):
weak will tobeast that's coming down to the watering hole
every day. Right, So a croc relaxes, then it observes
its environment around it, Then it starts to manage and
have a lot of patience and then it acts right.
So Roger Anthony intour of crocodiles not orderly. So the
(13:02):
principal character in his leadership program and self leadership program
was called Romper the crocodile Ronpa Relax, observe, manage patients,
and then act right. And if you think about well,
let me ask you the question, tif, where do most
people in life do you think start on that process
(13:24):
where you know, do they relax, do they observe, do
they manage to have patients? Or do they go straight
to act? What's the norm?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Go straight to act? Mate?
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Absolutely? I mean you know, I've asked that question in
twenty nine countries now and it's always overwhelmingly we just
act and then we react to the results that we cause.
So I find a lot of people go straight to act,
then they go back and observe what they've done, and
then they try and manage their way out of it.
(13:55):
So we've got it all stuffed up. And if we
were more like a crocodile, I'd achieve more of our outcomes.
And the analogy is be a crocodile, not a water lily,
because water lilies look pretty, they act pretty, but they're
floating around subject to the winds and tides, so they're
reacting to everything that's going on around them in their environment.
(14:18):
Where the wily old croc is very purposeful and deliberate
in landing its outcome, so be crocodiles not water lilies.
And yeah, fascinating program. And in fact, when I first
arrived into Victoria managing West Farmer's Federation Insurance, everyone about
(14:40):
eighty of my employees had all done this crocodiles not
waterer lilies program. And the thing that amazed me tip
was the stuff had stuck. I haven't been on many
training programs where like five years later this stuff has
stuck and people are using the principles. So here I
am the new manager. I've got my team of six
(15:00):
reporting to me. We're considering closing down one of the
branches in Victoria. And then Neil Trestata goes, well, I
think we need to romper this, and I've gone, what
you know, And then they taught me the romper principle,
which made sense, and that got my interest up to
go experience this crocodiles my orderlilies program that everyone had
(15:23):
done and understand the language and the tools and the concepts,
and Tiff, by the end of day one, you know,
keep in mind, I've moved east looking for an opportunity
to get into speaking and training. And at the end
of day one, having met Roger and experiencing his program,
I started quizzing him about what was his vision for
this and where was he going with it and does
(15:45):
he need some help. By the end of day two,
which happened a fortnight later, where in in depth conversations
about the role I might be able to play for him.
And by the end of day three it was a
day every fort Note over six weeks, I had made
the decision that I'm leaving the West Farmers Group and
I'm going to join Roger. And I was kind of
(16:11):
I'm a planner, I'm out of insurance, I'm risk averse,
so it's like, I'm going to resign next April. This
was like October and then I'll start working for you, Roger.
But a month later it was like, you know, Tiff,
when you've already made a decision to move on in
your life, your mind's already gone, but your body's still
trudging into work each day. And I just couldn't do it,
(16:33):
so I handed in my resignation and like six weeks later,
I was working for Roger. And that started an interesting
journey because like three months later, I'm facilitating the odd
training program. I'm maybe doing the occasional keynote. I'm loving
life now, living what I felt was my calling and
(16:55):
my purpose. But I was also dead broke because I've
got a young family and there's still all this money
going out in the back door and now there's not
much coming in the front door for a while. And
so you know, that was an interesting time when you
can't pay your bills and your wife with two young kids,
(17:16):
is going, hey, how are we feeding the kids? This week?
The f post has declined again? Right, And I don't
know if any of your listeners can relate to this,
but if have you ever noticed that financial stress tends
to magnify any cracks that exist in a relationship. Yeah,
(17:37):
and long story short, my ten year marriage just crumbled
and fell apart. So that was like a massive king hit,
you know. Go on six months, I'm in business for
myself now, contracting to Roger and crocodiles not water lilies.
I've fallen behind on my GST the ATO clean after
(18:01):
a personal tax bill, you know, and and I joke
with people that I was literally the four d's. I
was now divorced. I was you know, I was desperate,
I was depressed, and I was a demon supporter. It
just doesn't get worse than that, doesn't drop it unless
(18:24):
you follow Collingwood. No, no, no, let's let's not go there.
Let's let's not get into all that. But you know,
that's when I was really down and out. That that
that that period of my life. I kind of look
back on it now and there was a couple of
principles that I've learned from the CROCS program that I've
(18:46):
used my entire life. Whenever, you know, whenever life has
king hit me, I've managed to lean on them to
to get me through it. Yeah. So that was probably
the first time I literally had to roll with the
punchers and they were coming thick and fast, you know,
and I was thinking, do I need to go back
into the insurance industry. I didn't want to. I'd put
(19:10):
my feet in the water of speaking and training. I
jumped in head first in the deep end, and I
loved it, and I didn't want to have to go
back to a salary position in an insurance company. That
felt like death to me. But what do you do?
(19:31):
I put my resume out there and I started that process.
But luckily I spotted an ad in the paper that
literally it was one of those ticked the boxes ads.
You know, do you have experience in managing a sales team? Yes?
Would you like to be an international speaker and trainer? Yes?
(19:53):
And I'm going wow, It's like wow, and so yeah,
another long story short. I ended up for three years
working with a company called Marcureing International, who were a
big sales training company in forty three countries around the world.
And that's where I really cut my teeth on learning
the art of training facilitation. But I also after three years,
(20:19):
I was the longest serving consultant. This was a big
international consulting firm and they burned their people quickly, so
you know, two years, I'm the longest serving consultant. So
I made a decision pretty early. I'm going to learn
from this, but then I'm going to go out on
my own a second time and with some knowledge this
(20:41):
time and do it right, which I did. In ninety nine,
I left and went out on my own again. Yeah,
so there you go. There's some of the times I've
rolled with the punctures.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Did you start building that before you left or did you?
Could you not?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yes? No, Well, and from an integrity point of view,
I think I built up like six weeks leave that
they owed me. So I handed in my resignation and said,
I'm taking you know, you've got three months notice, but
I'm also I'm going to take my six weeks leave now.
(21:21):
And I literally I didn't approach any of their clients.
I went out and I saw one hundred and fifty
organizations across Melbourne who and I prospected and I just
I did the activity and I ended up eventually doing
business with about three that had definite training and development needs.
(21:44):
And so this time I was smarter. I actually locked
in a contract with each of those three to do
twenty days of training and development for them across the
course of the year. And so I locked myself in
for sixty days with three, so three companies times twenty days.
But that left me the rest of the year to
(22:05):
get out there and keep prospecting and build my pipeline.
And yeah, so that's kind of how I got into
it the second time.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
What did you learn? What was the most important things
you learned in the working for a company an organization
that made it work the second time?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Well, it actually it actually didn't, Tiff. I learned very
quickly that I never want to go back to working
for Demand or the woman again. I reckon. Within six months.
I knew that because there was a particular incident with
the manager that I reported to, and it was like, Okay,
(22:49):
I can't afford to walk out here today, but you
have snapped rapport with me so badly. I don't trust
you anymore. Our values aren't aligned. I'm going to learn
from this experience and set myself up to go back
out on my own, but do it differently, in a
(23:10):
smarter way this time. Yeah. So, I think the greatest
lesson I got from going back in and working for
our corporate in the training industry was that I never
want to report to anyone again for the rest of
my experience on this planet and for the last you know,
since since I left them in ninety nine, I haven't.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, I feel that in my bones.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, but it comes with a new set of pressures.
You are responsible for the revenue you create, You're responsible
for the sales activity you do. You're responsible for everything.
And if you've got any small business owners that are
learning listening to this, it's like you've got to have
(23:54):
so many multiple hats that you put on take off
every single day. Right, I'm our sales manager, I'm our
business development manager. I have to put the hat on
of being a facilitator and a trainer and sometimes I've
got to put my keynote speaker hat on. The other
times it's my administration manager hat. I mean, you name
(24:15):
it advertising manager year. You've got to do it all
when you're in business for yourself. So I think it
takes a bit of resilience.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Which is strongest hat and what's your least strongest hat?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
I think financial acumen would be my weakest. So I
learned early have a good accountant. Have you know, someone
handling the book keeping who knows what they're doing in
that space, because I shouldn't be doing that type of work, right,
And it's probably only in the last five years that
(24:50):
we've got to the point where I now like I
made a decision, Karina, and I made a decision there's
only three things I actually should be doing. And this
to come across as egotistical, but speaking training delivering is
one the sales and business development activity. I don't believe
(25:11):
in outsourcing that to anyone else. You know, with speaking
and training, they buy you. So I've got to be
doing that. And then product creation, so creating programs, writing books,
getting new e learning programs up at our portal, any
of that content creation stuff I need to do. But
(25:32):
everything else, again not coming from an ego point of view,
but it's below my pay rate. I shouldn't be doing it,
so outsource it to someone who's a good at it.
And secondly I get on with doing stuff that's around
my gifting. Yeah, and probably the strongest hat for me
given time, I very much lead into the marketplace being
(25:57):
a salesforce effectiveness specialist. Having managed large sales teams, I
do a lot of salesforce effectiveness. My keynotes are usually
around sales. I can do a lot of other things,
but that's the point the end of the market that
I go out and position myself as that's my selected
available market that I that I talk to, so sales.
(26:20):
When I've got my sales and business hat on that,
that would be the strongest hat.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah. Is that your favorite or is that the one
you're best at.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, oh, no, I think content creation, author writing, creating
E learning programs, designing a new module. That's when I'm
in my happy place, right, That's that's when I can
feel like you know, I won't, I'll just I'll just
(26:53):
call it. That's when I feel connected to a higher
power if we want to refer to that. That's when
I can feel my all in being stirred when I'm
particularly when I'm writing and creating. I think the sales
business development hat is the one I've learned to be
very good at. I teach and educate in that space.
(27:13):
So I have to just buy miror you know, I
guess I want to walk the talk in that space. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I'm always interested in the creative space, being a creative
and those of us who are managing a business, and
how do you how do you cultivate and nurture creativity
when business? Running a business can become all consuming and
(27:46):
overwhelming and you're in charge of everything and it's very
hard to switch off.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yes, yep. So I was having a conversation with a
friend who's a speaker in Singapore yesterday and we talked
about the power of time blocking so it's like at
six am in the morning, actually doing what again, I'll
drop a couple of principles in if you're happy, Tiff,
(28:14):
we've already talked about Romp of the crocodile. Let's talk
about Pet the cat. Pet, which is a cat see
the link a pet cat. But PET stands for personal
energizing time. It's time on your own, free of all distractions,
to actually connect in to source all the universe. But
(28:39):
it's about just having some quiet time, to personal energizing time,
to re energize yourself. So Roger taught me the habit,
and look, I'm not perfect. I fall off the bandwagon
some weeks, but I noticed when my life gets out
of control, if I go back to doing a PET session,
(29:02):
get up early, no interruptions, No one's up yet, no
one's phoning me. I don't even look at emails. But
I just take twenty minutes to think, to ponder, to muse,
to look at my diary of what's coming up. And
it's like, oh, okay, you've got that program with NEOs
life now in three weeks, Well what could you do
(29:24):
there that really recognizes John Desports and the role he's
played in your life over the years, because he keeps
coming back to me from different companies, and it's like
then some creativity flows, but you've got to set the
environment to tap those creative juices. So for me, it's
that and pick it. Some people, evening people, they might
(29:47):
do it at ten thirty, but I'd rather get up early,
have twenty minutes just not looking at emails, not looking
at social media, just sitting quietly, planning, musing, pondering and
creating a space to receive inspiration. That's really what it's about.
(30:08):
And then continuing on the time blocking theme. The current
book I'm writing number seven, I think I said last
week in the Gold Coast. I've landed on the title.
It's going to be How to Be Happy Without Money,
and it's going to retail for thirty eighty nine hundred
dollars right, Not really, it's called shift selling. It's about
(30:33):
the new way to sell in a hybrid world, given
we've been through COVID and a lot of people have
to sell hybrid not face to face, and it's the
combination of both now. And it'll be the book that
goes with my consultative selling skills program. But it won't
get done unless I block out time like three times
(30:53):
a week two hours just I do nothing else but
focus on just writing that book and putting myself in
the right state. And as an NLP practitioner, I'm very
aware that your state of mind, and I'll click my
fingers with that, because the state you're in impacts on
your behavior and the results you start getting. So we're
(31:17):
lucky we've got a bit of space. But I have
a particular desk in a corner in a room in
a house that is my writing station. I don't do
anything else there rather than write. You know, Karina pays
some bills from there and does a bit of recipe
planning from there. But when I'm sitting there, that environment,
(31:38):
that space clicks me into writers mode quickly, right, And
you can call this high level weirdness, but I'll do
it now. I spray a bit of you know, a
room missed spray, and I get myself into the right zone.
I put on a piece of music in the background
that helps me just it anchors me into writing space
(32:00):
really quickly. So I think the answer is to You've
got to create the environment where that creative side of
you can flow quickly, right and I do love that
about NLP neurolinguistic programming. It teaches you that you can
put yourself in any state in a neurosecond. You just
(32:23):
have to set the right environment and trigger a few
anchors that put you there really quickly. Yeah. So yeah,
that's what I do to create that environment to be creative.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, I've found I have to toddle up the road to
disconnect my computer from all this rubbish, take my little
laptop up to the cafe and sit out in a
quiet room in the back of the cafe up the road.
And it's funny to me. So it's literally it's the
same computer. Like I've literally still got the browser open
(32:58):
with the thirty eight thousand tactics you'll there, but for
some reason, in that environment, I don't click through them.
I don't think of all the other things. It's just
me in a word document.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Focusing.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yes, and and there's the keyword focus. When you put
yourself in that same environment time and time again, your
subconscious mind has been trained this is your focus zone,
and so you get really focused on the one creative
or whatever task you want to do when you're there,
and you're able to resist that temptation to and we've
(33:32):
all done it. We click on social media for one
minute and then I love that cartoon. I saw whether
the lady's kind of clicking on social media, And twenty
minutes has passed, and then it scans out and her
husband's in a ditch, having come off the bike, you know,
blood pouring out of them, and she's going, oh, yes,
I was supposed to dial triple zero, wasn't I? And
(33:55):
we do. We get distracted by everything and we go
down these rabbit holes rather than lasering our focus on
the task at hand. So you've you've created what I
call a laser zone, and it's for you, it's that cafe.
For me, there's a there's a bench outside under a
(34:16):
picnic cover close to where we live, overlooking the Malulaba River,
and if I go there, I can focus on one
particular task. So if I've got to write a proposal
to a client or what I call an action plan,
it's like I'll say to Karina, I'm just heading to
(34:37):
the river office because I know that's the zone where
I can just focus on that one task and get
it done quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
So late last year I went to India. I went
to the Himalayas. It was the most amazing experience of
my life. And when I came home. So because we've
done hiking over there, I made a weekly ritual of
going down every Thursday morning to the Dandy Kong's here
in Victoria. And I had no phone, no input rule.
(35:09):
It was just me and the walk, me and nature
and it was and like I talked about it so
much because the the busyness that we all live in.
It was like every time it was an argument. Same
as when I used to do boxing training. Every time
it was time to drive to training, it was like,
(35:30):
I'm tired, I hate this around, why do I do this?
And then you go and then it's amazing and it
was like, oh, it's an hour's drive to the danding
Oongs and an hour back and really busy, and you
could just go and walk on the beach. But it
was every time I got there, you just have the
eye would have this visceral response, right, I just feel
my body shift in my mind would just and I
(35:53):
just observe where my mind wanted to go for the
you know, for as opposed to the rest of the week,
which is directing that mind where it's going to go.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, And I think the important thing there is nature,
whether it is the beach, but there's something about getting
out into the bush and just you're being with nature
and grounding very very very important for that creative side
of you. And I think just given all the business
and the white noise, just to have a break from
(36:23):
it it is important. But you've got to schedule it,
and it takes commitment and it takes some discipline to
follow through on it. Because easy to do, easy not
to do. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I like the little stories we make, and this
might be a story or it might be real. But
every time I went by myself, I came across an
e kidnap And the second time it was walking, i'd
walked past it and I stood in front of it,
and it walked straight up to me and it put
its poor it's hand I call it because it looks
(36:56):
like a human hand in a glove, put a little
hand on my shoe, and it looked up and I
thought I was feeling. I was like, oh my god,
this never happens. Oh my god, Oh my god, my God,
to my God. And then when it walked off, I
looked went to look at the video, and I had
taken a photo and not recorded it. But every time
I went by myself, I saw on a kidnap and big.
I went, all right, this is a thing, this is
(37:17):
my spirit animal. There's something here like this, and it
just made me. It was just something to anchor to
to go. There's something in that. Do it. Sometimes we
need something big, we need to have something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, a bigger vision as such. Sure, yeah again.
You know, I keep referring to Roger, but the Roger
Anthony crocodiles and my water lease, he had a big
impact on my life. Be passed about maybe a decade ago,
but every now and then, when I'm out in those
sorts of environments, I'll see an eagle flying around in
(37:52):
the sky. And an eagle was one of his principles about,
you know, thinking big. That the king and the queen
of the sky. Right. Have you seen the talons on
the bloody things so massive, right, and their windspan. So
the eagle teaches us to have a bowl vision, to
(38:12):
think big. And of course they've got amazing eyesight. They
can see a little field mouse from three thousand feet
right and down they dive and that tenacious you know,
on average they strike fourteen times to get their prey,
so that tenacious little buggers as well. And yeah, I
always see you know, And I don't know if it's right,
(38:34):
but I reckon maybe the eagle is a spirit animal.
And I just I get a nice thought from Roger's visiting, Right,
Roger's got a message for me, just to get out
of the minutia and chunk up and have a look
at the bigger vision you're trying to trying to achieve.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, what practices do you have? Four? I guess in
with shaping maintaining your mindset.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Two things and unapologetic plug for the book shift mindset. Yeah,
it hasn't It hasn't f It has an F in
the word shift, right, because what we don't want is
a shift mindset. We want to shift our mindset. We
don't want an fless shift, as I'm always saying. So
(39:27):
in there I talk about a couple of strategies. One
is one is mind control or mind management. So your
conscious mind and a lot of people go to the
grave without understanding this. Your conscious mind controls your subconscious
It always has. For example, I say to U TIF
(39:47):
that's a lovely yellow singlet you're wearing today, or jumper,
and you, at a conscious level you go, but my
jumper thing is actually black, it's not yellow. So you
manage your mind and you flick that thought. And you've
had that ability ever since, you were able to challenge
things and ask why. That's when kids are developing their
(40:08):
conscious mind and because I said so doesn't cut it anymore. Right.
Have you got kids?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
No? Hell? No?
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Hell?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
No fur kids, but they're challenging right.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Yeah, we've got fur babies as well, but I've also
got two from my first marriage at are now thirty
one and twenty seven. But when they get to about
age three ish, they start asking why all the time,
and because I bloody said so just doesn't cut it right.
You've got to explain things to them. But even to
this day, you've had the ability to flick out a
(40:42):
thought and replace it with something more resourceful. So even
when I'm down and out and king hit by life
and I'm divorced and I'm desperate and I'm in debt,
it was always flicking out that mindset of I'm a
loser and replace it with I'm learning from this. There's
(41:03):
a lesson in this and this is going to shape
real character and stories I can talk about. So it's
literally that mind mechanism incomes a negative thought, flick it
out and replace it with something more resourceful. And people
say to me, it can't be as simple as that,
and yet it is. It is just that consistency of
(41:24):
stop saying negative shit to yourself. You know, you're the
one who puts yourself down so many times during the day,
and if you just court yourself and stopped and flicked
it out, right. So I grew up on the back
end all three boys did. I think. I mentioned it
last week in the Gold Coast that Dad would look
(41:46):
at you a certain way when you've done something silly
that he didn't agree with, and he'd go, faired income, son,
you are studying to be a bloody idiot, right, And
this was like fairly constant. We joke about it in
our family. Now you've only got to do something a
bit a bit weird and someone will go feed income.
You're studying to be an idiot, right, and we quote Dad.
(42:07):
But it also came with a cost because when West
Farmers made me a leader and they put me through
an EQ intelligence test, and I debriefed it with the psychologist. Now, yeah,
you know, I'm not up in the top five percentile
of intelligence on this planet, but apparently I'm no slouch either, right,
(42:31):
And yet when he shared my scores with me, I went, oh, no,
I think you've messed this up because I'm not that bright.
I'm not the sharpest tool in the tool shed, right,
I'm studying to be an idiot. So I'd taken on
this subconscious stuff all my life, and that was surprising
(42:52):
when he pointed out, like, mass is not my strengths, tiff,
I think I was only at the sixty fourth percentile
on mathematical intelligence, but verbal I'm in the high seventies.
So okay, I'm a speaker, so that kind of makes sense.
But your creative intelligence, I'm like up in the mid
(43:13):
to high eighties. So again, I'm not a neuroscientist, but
I am quite creative. And that was a real defining
moment for me when I shifted myself talk about perhaps
what's potential if I apply myself, So flicking out those old,
deep seated things and limiting beliefs you've taken on and
(43:37):
replacing them with something that's more resourceful. So instead of
the oh, God exercises a chore until you replace that
with it'll take a little bit of commitment, but twenty
minutes in, I'm going to be feeling great, right, And
that's the mindset that gets you out of bed and
(43:58):
into the sports shoes and off to a gym or
off to the nandy dongs in your case. Right. So yeah,
that's the first thing, control your mindset. And the other
principle that Roger and I talk about in our first book,
The Seven Step Pathway to Mastery, really based on his
crocodiles not waterly self leadership program is the swerve principle.
(44:23):
So it's represented by a platypus. So if your listeners
just I'm sure they've seen a platypus through glass in
a zoo for example, or on the television, you watch them.
They are constantly swerving around rocks and longs. They just
turn obstacles into a game. It's like how they entertain
themselves and pass the time. And there's a lesson in that,
(44:47):
how do we view every obstacle, every punch that comes
our way. We can roll with it better if we
just see it as an obstacle, not a king hit
as such and swerve our way around it. So the
way I teach this is like, imagine you're in traffic
and it's a bad day. Something's gone wrong in Melbourne
(45:09):
traffic where you are tif it's taken you forty five
minutes to go what normally takes fifteen. You know, and
you need to be somewhere for a critical nine o'clock
meeting perhaps, and like you just know, there's no way
now you're going to get there. You're probably going to
be a good twenty thirty minutes late. So stress. But
(45:29):
if you go back in time, it was when the
alarm went off this morning and you hit it and went,
I'll just snooze for seven more minutes. I get away
with that today, I'll be fast on my preparation process.
And you doze for another seven minutes. Now, I deliberately
don't say sleep, because I find this fascinating human behavior.
(45:49):
We hit the snooze button and then we lay there
for seven minutes, not getting any more sleep, but justifying
why we can do it. And then we hit the
snooze button another time. And if you do have a partner,
significant other, spouse, all of a sudden there's a foot
in your back, kicking out of bed, saying come on,
you're going to be laid again. So now you're under pressure.
(46:12):
You're not going to have a nutritional breakfast. To break
the fast, you're gonna you know, you're going to munch
down an unhealthy muster and on your drive to work
sort of thing. So, and who's put you under all
this stress you have by your behaviors and your decisions
and you and your mindset. But back to the story.
We're stuck in traffic. You finally get up to sixty
(46:33):
kilometers an hour. After an hour of this, you're you're
bridging seventy, you get up to eighty, and all of
a sudden, another vehicle, bus, truck, car, motorcycle cuts you
off in traffic. Now what do you reckons The normal reaction.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
To this tip unsavory language.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Absolutely, and a bit of European sign language. You're trying
get up beside that person to give them the hairy
eyebrow and wehear and curse at them and let them
know you're not happy with them, Which is really interesting
behavior because you're giving away the only thing you've actually
got control over, which is your mindset. You're giving it
(47:12):
away to someone else, and they're going to turn left
or right or get off of the next exit, and
you're never going to frigg and see them for the
rest of your life. And yet you've let them affect
your state of mind. So here's I put this challenge
out to everyone. I get to speak and breathe the
principle to here's the challenge for your listeners and for
(47:32):
you tip and my wishes they come true. I'm a
good manifesto. So I'm going to put it out there
that everyone will have swerves over the next few days
where people will cut you off in traffic. Now, there
will be no accidents, there will be no bingals, but
you will have to break to avoid a collision because
(47:52):
people cut you off in traffic. It's going to happen.
And what I want you to all do when it
occurs is you have to say out out, whether you're
in the car on your own or with others, you
have to channel the platypus and you've got to say
what a great swerve and actually congratulate them on the
(48:13):
quality of the swerve. Right, And you've got to be
You've got to be really authentic about this. That and
genuine in like the mindset is, I couldn't have pulled
off that swerve and executed it with three weeks practice.
You just did that beautifully right, and you watch You're
(48:33):
confuse the hell out of them because they know they've
cut you off. And when they look in the rear
vision mirror, here's a person who's staying calm, collected, and
in control rather than getting stressed out. And you've used
the swerve principle. What a great swerve represented by the
swerving platypus, anything that hits you from left field in life,
(48:55):
what a great swerve, right, It's an anchor, it's in
any terms, it's a reframe. You're actually looking at it
through a different lens. Right, Because normally, when we do
get to that meeting just in time to be half
an hour late, right, someone actually says to you a tiff, oh,
(49:15):
good morning, And because of what's happened to us, we
go who said, it's friggin good, right, and we're in
a lousy state. Whereas when you go, what a great swerve, right,
you stay in a good state and you're controlling your
own mind. And Karina will attest to this. I've had
police pull me over because I'm fifteen kilometers over the
(49:37):
speed limit and you got fine. But once he's written
me the ticket and I know I've got two hundred
and fifty dollars to pay and three demerit points gone,
Karina will attest to the fact that I've gone, what
a great swerve. Right. I can't control what's happened. I
can control my attitude to what's happened. Yeah, this is
(50:00):
really important. You can't control your first thought. But when
I met Karina for the first time, she'd done some
work on all this stuff, and she stretched, you can't
always control your first thought. You've got total control over
your second one. Yeah, yeah, So what a great swerve.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah. I remember in COVID when we were having our
awesome Melbourne lockdowns where we could leave the house one
hour day and couldn't go other than five kilometers, and
I ducked over to the supermarket grab some stuff, you know,
like there's no one around because everything's closed but the supermarket.
And I'd come out to my car and it had
(50:36):
been towed away because it was in I didn't realize
it was a fifteen minutes own because and it was
just like but you know, what I remember. I remember
going one, how lucky that because I'm watching in our
community pages where people are asking for work because they
(50:59):
can't pay their rent, And how lucky that I can
afford to absorb this major inconvenience minor inconvenience. But also
I remember thinking, we never think about that, maybe, like
imagine if when the worst thing happens, we always think
about the better options, And it's like, what if that?
(51:20):
What if I had got in my car and drove
down and then at the intersection someone wildly slammed into
my car and I had this major accident where I
end up being severely injured.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yep, Like I'll.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Never know that, but maybe that maybe that was the alternative,
and the world just went well, if we towe this
car away, that won't happen. You just get a few
hundred dollars to pay the toe people to get it back, ye,
end of story.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
It's a great swerve, but it could have been the
catalyst that avoided me even bigger swerve exactly. And that's
I think a belief that I was espousing during the
whole COVID and the lockdowns and Victoria Melbourne. You did
it tough, but compared everywhere else in Australia. And it
was a great swerve. So there's swerves and then there's
(52:08):
great swerves right that you're kind of through gritted teeth go, well,
that was a freaking great swerve, but you're still practicing
trying to reframe it and see the good in it.
And I was saying to people, I actually honestly believe
that the universe has got your back. It's actually working
for you, not against you. So that's the position you
(52:30):
took that maybe maybe this stopped me having a horrific accident,
so I'll be grateful for it. And that's what the
swerve principle helps you do. Reframe and look for the
good in it. It's always there. You know. Nanna used
to say one hundred and two and a half she
lived to and I remember her saying this, so dozens
and dozens of times, every cloud has a silver lining, right,
(52:51):
That was her version of the swerve principle. Yeah, and
you know I've been through Okay, it's ten years ago now,
but you know, Karina and I got king hit by
some bad tax advice and next minute there's an ATO
bill again, and then there's a company tax billin. Before
(53:11):
you know it, there's this debt that has to be paid,
and without knowing it, the ATO hasn't responded to the
correspondence and the suggested payment plan. They just put our
company into liquidation in the federal courts and wound us up.
And it's like, my god, what a great swerve, right,
(53:32):
and having to go through all go through all that
being king hit by life again and there was a
pattern there that I had to learn that bit about
financial management and have some good people around me to
look after that because I wasn't doing it, you know.
So swerve's just coming left, right and center. But you know,
(53:54):
in that moment Tiff, we when Dad passed, he left
a little bit of money to each of the boys,
the three of us and their partners, and it was
enough to pay because we've been king here and had
to sell everything to get out of this debt, and
we wanted to own a property again. Dad had probably
(54:18):
funded us the equivalent of whatever the stamp duty would
be on this purchase, but we didn't have the twenty
percent right too. But we went and found this house anyway,
the one we're living in now, and loved it, fell
in love with it way out of our price range. Anyway,
we didn't have the money, but you know, we just
said to the real estate agent, look, we've got the
(54:40):
stamp duty. We can put down a bit more money
in about three months time, but let's get creative. Can
the owner look at some creative options? And long story short,
we bought this home with twenty five grand down, We
paid the stamp duty, the owner stumped up some vendor
finance for three years. When COVID hit the property went
(55:03):
up by forty percent. We refinance paid him out his
twenty percent and still had good equity in the home. Now,
if we hadn't been keing hit by life like you
and your Ka Tow, we would never have asked the
question are you open to some creative options? We would
(55:25):
have just struggled on trying to raise the money eventually.
But we would have missed this opportunity. And for him,
he'd sold this house, they'd backed out twice, he had
to move it because of some other investments. But he
didn't need all his money, he just needed a decent
lik of it. So it was perfect timing. And we
(55:46):
had rented for eighteen months in NUSA, not twelve months.
If we had a lease for twelve months. We would
have been committed where we were for another six months
when this house became available, but because we had an
eighteen month lease there, it was like divine timing. All
the stars aligned, the universe had our back, and if
you operate to that, you can to bring it back
(56:09):
and close it out. On your title of your show,
you know, roll with the punches your podcast, I think
rolling with the Punches a lot of it is about
mindset and being prepared to just roll with the swerves,
look for the good in it, and there's always the
next step there somewhere.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah, your race, You're amazing.
Speaker 3 (56:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
I love watching you on stage. You were you having
a very very and I say this honestly have a
very very magnetic stage presence, and as a person in
the speaker in the crowd at that event, your ability
to show the very best in that style of craftsmanship
(56:55):
and also point out the moments that we might miss
was just a really great experience for me. Like I've
raved about it quite a bit, said to so many people, Mate,
I would I would be a speaker in for sales
of all things if I could, you know, if I
could emulate what Ian Stevens did on stage, like so great, thank.
Speaker 3 (57:16):
You for the feedback. It's that was confirmation for me
that my people, you know where I love playing as
we would be speakers or trainers, speakers, mcs, facilitators, you
name it. But they're looking to up level and take
it another notch. And that that was my that was
my ideal audience and I had a blast. So I'm
(57:36):
glad it went over well. And yeah, I appreciate your feedback.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Amazing. Where do we go to online to stalk you?
Follow you by your books and do the thing?
Speaker 3 (57:47):
Look, the easiest thing would be Ian Stevens with a pH.
Ian Stephens speaks dot com and that will get you
to my books and yeah, you name it, and thing
about what I do. So Ian Stephens speaks dot com
with a p h in Stephens, not a vyeh. I've
got a p H. I've got a p H. I'm
(58:09):
just working on the d D.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
I love that. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone, go
check it out. The links will be in the show
notes if you want to check out Ian Stevens and
we will see you next time.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
Thanks Steve.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood,
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