Chris Hogan, founder of MeMedia Marketing Agency shares media facts and entrepreneurial stories to keep you up to date on current business trends in the online marketing arena.
Listen to episodes
60 recent
February 1, 2026Episode 1461 hr 6 min
Daniel Willis & Chris Hogan on Marketing Agency Life, AI & Mental Health
Chris Hogan sits down with Daniel Willis, Chairman and CEO of Claxon agency, to tackle the real challenges facing agencies today—from shrinking budgets to the AI revolution.The State of Agency LandDan doesn't sugarcoat it: times are tough. Marketing budgets have shrunk to 30-40% of what they were just two years ago, yet boards still expect the same level of growth. The result? Agencies are doing more work for less money, margins are being squeezed, and more agencies are closing their doors than he's seen in his seven years in the industry.AI: Threat or Opportunity?Both Chris and Dan believe AI is a game-changer, but not in the way many fear. Dan's philosophy is simple: "AI won't replace agencies, but agencies that use AI will replace agencies that don't." The key? Let humans do the creative thinking and ideation, then use AI as a tool to execute those ideas more efficiently. Claxon has been using AI to create campaigns for $20-30K that would've cost $80-150K traditionally—properly democratising high-quality creative work.Beyond the Business: Wisdom for FoundersThe conversation goes deep into what it takes to scale successfully:Advisory boards over business coaches: Dan's not shy about his views here—he reckons most business coaches are a waste of money. Instead, he strongly advocates for building an advisory board of experienced people who genuinely want to give back. Claxon had a six-person advisory board when it had only four staff.Mental health matters: Both blokes open up about their struggles. Dan shares his battle with severe anxiety and panic attacks that led to some dark times, whilst Chris talks about his own challenges with depression. Their message? Sort your mental health first, because without it, nothing else matters.The power of silence: Dan champions taking time away from constant input—no podcasts, no music, just thinking time. Like fasting gives your body time to heal, mental quiet time lets your brain solve problems it couldn't tackle when distracted.Knowing your strengths: Dan's candid about not being the best operator—his strengths are relationships, vision, and commercial strategy. The lesson? Hire people who are brilliant at what you're not.The Bottom LineDespite the challenges, both Chris and Dan reckon it's an incredibly exciting time to be in the agency game. Good humans and great agencies are more important now than ever. The key is embracing change, using AI as a tool (not a replacement), and, most importantly, doing it together rather than competing.Agencies aren't going anywhere—they're just evolving.
January 29, 2020Episode 443 min
Google Updates 2016 Say Popups are Bad - Get Fact Up Episode 44
Google Updates 2016 Say Popups are Bad - Get Fact Up Episode 44Published Sep 5, 2016 Thanks for joining us for the 44th instalment of Get Fact Up! Wow - 44 episodes. Google have recently announced some updates which effect every visitor to their SERPS and everybody listed. They’ll be removing the “Mobile-friendly” label from search results pages. Why you ask? We'll we're about to explain it to you! Please, grab your coffee and enjoy the 44th week running of Get Fact Up! Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GOOGLE UPDATES SAY POPUPS ARE BAD | GET FACT UP #44 - G'day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of Me Media. It's time to get fact up on some recent updates that Google has announced, and one that we absolutely love. Cause it's all about popups, and popups are bad, m'kay? - Peter Meyers from Moz recently released an article which stated how Google are leading by example on updates to their SERPS which include a serious move towards single column layout by removing ads from the right column. Knowledge panel has also been moved to the top left, and the local three-pack map listings are now at the top, also. Google's massive push for mobile friendliness means that they'll be removing their "mobile friendly" tag from the search engine results page listings. Google says that this change is designed to declutter its search results, and that 85% of all pages in the mobile search results are now mobile friendly. So, 15% of you are still not mobile, eh? Come on. Hurry up!\ - In other updates, TechCrunch says good riddance to popups, and Search Engine Land says, kind of politely, that they're really happy with this update as well. Google recently announced it'll be cracking down on intrusive interstitials on January 10, 2017. Because this type of ad can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller. So what's an interstitial? Ah! It's a terrible word to say, for start. It's actually a full page ad, or gateway page, that you have to get rid of. It's damn annoying! Google went on to explain which interstitials are going to be problematic. These include popups that cover the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they're looking through the page. Another one is standalone, full page ads that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content. And the one above the fold ad, which makes the page appear similar to a standalone page, but the original content has been in-lined underneath the fold. So, stop trying to be so damn tricky, and just give us great content without making us have to click something. Thank you Google for ridding the internet of these stupid popups. Because if you're gonna continue to use them, then Google's actually probably gonna lower your ranking. And that's about all we've got time for. And, we're glad to say, these popups are going away. Stay awesome, Australia, we'll see you next week. And, make sure you're more mobile friendly. ♫Suddenly we roll♫ Popups are bad, m'kay? M'kay!
March 29, 20212 min
Bonus - How To Create an International Team - Clip From ProActive Podcast #125
In this clip from episode #125 of the ProActive Podcast, Meryl Johnston and Chris Hogan discuss curating an international business team, internships, and content marketing.
January 29, 2020Episode 274 min
Ahopify Shopping Cart Software Review (Part 2) - Get Fact Up Episode 27
Published May 9, 2016 This week we continue the 3 part series on Shopping Cart Platforms. If you’re starting a new online business, or bringing an existing business to the online world, Shopify is one of the easiest e-commerce builders available to help you create a complete online shop. To make sure you select the right e-commerce platform for your business however, be sure to check out part 1 and 3 of the series. Third party email domain name hosting i.e. Google Apps Shopify pricing plans for different feature requirements. Shopify's own app store allows plugins for additional customisation. There are over 100 free and premium themes to choose from through Shopify. Need support? Shopify have FAQ's and 24/7 Support available. Ensure your online store is mobile friendly so it can be found by mobile searchers on Google. If you are interested in MeMedia's Design and Development for e-commerce websites, or need any assistance - Contact us to discuss your project. Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #27 TRANSCRIPT - Good day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan. Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up. Today in our second part of our three part series on shopping carts, we'll be covering Shopify. If you're transferring from a legacy shopping cart system or starting a new shopping cart business, then Shopify could be right for you. It's been touted as being the easiest shopping cart platform to get up and running in practically minutes. So let's have a look at some of the positives of Shopify. With its Light Plan being only $9 dollars US a month, Shopify represents one of the cheapest ways to start selling using a hosted solution. Now obviously things can get a little more expensive as you want to add more features to your shopping cart platform. But, Shopify actually allow you to have unlimited products and data transfer from as little as their basic plan on that US $9 dollars a month. So, it's pretty great way to get up and running quickly and cheaply. And with the next plans costing $29, $79 and $179 US dollars per month for more features. The other clear benefits of growing are that your credit card transactions fees go down slowly and its important to know that Shopify payments credit card fees can be configured to be billed in your selected currency. Eg, Australian dollars. It's important to know that you can also choose from a Shopify payment gateway or a third party gateway. Shopify payment gateways can keep your costs down. Shopify is currently the leading online shop builder. Powering over 243 thousand online shops and it's helped businesses process over 14 billion dollars worth of sales. They have 24/7 support not to mention a huge following creating tons of helpful Shopify tutorials. Shopify is also extremely flexible and has many apps to meet your needs. And to extend the functionally of your online store, Shopify offer a large app store where you can choose from over 1000 different apps for you to plug in. Tools include accounting, customer service, inventory management, reporting, shopping, social, email automation, fulfillment and more. All of these apps can help you run a successful online store. As well as offer you the ability to plug in a point of sales solution into your bricks and mortar store. So with Neto, they had a limited amount of themes. Shopify has 100's if not 1000's of themes for you to select from and you can also customize those with your developer or get some support directly from Shopify. Please make sure when selecting a theme that you choose a mobile friendly theme and there's heaps there to chose from. So you should be all right. Now let's weight up a few of Shopify's cons. In addition to the monthly service fee that you'll be paying Shopify. There are credit card transactions to look out for and also payment gateway transactions. The payment gateway transactions can cost anywhere from point five of a percent up to two percent per transaction. That's the lowest value for the highest plan and obviously the highest value transaction fee for the lowest plan. So let's put that into context it's going to cost you 50 cents to two dollars per $100 worth of transactions. That's not too much There is however one way to remove that transaction fee. And that is to use Shopify payments there own payment gateway system. Now let's have a look at some of the apps. The Shopify Office 1000 apps to extend the functionality of your eCommerce website. A lot of the apps are not free and they charge you a monthly fee to use them, which adds to the total of your monthly bill. Some of them can get quite expensive such is the popular Instagram shop plugin adding $100 dollars US per month to your existing bill. Something MeMedia found when using Shopify is that it can be super quick to get set up. But may require a bit of technical knowledge to do so. The other thing is selecting that plan can be a little bit confusing so I hope today's presentation has helped you understand each of those costs barriers for you. So when choosing a plan, please make sure you watch which feature you absolutely need to make sure your shop is running smoothly. Shopify offer 24/7 support so that you don't get lost in that technical mine field. If you feel like you need some local support put up your hand and MeMedia can help. So if you're looking for a solution to get up and running fast and your not really sure how many products your going to have then Shopify might be right for you. That's all we have time for this week we'll see you next week Australia. For our review of Bigcommerce and we hope that you are one step closer to becoming a global local, selling your wares all over the world.
January 29, 2020Episode 344 min
Conversion Rate Optimisation - Get Fact Up Episode 34
Published Jun 27 , 2016 ike past episodes of Get Fact Up, Chris has been inspired by his recent trip to Sydney's Search Marketing Summit. One of the speakers Chris met with was Tim Ash, author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimisation, and CEO of SiteTuners. Conversion Rate Optimisation may sound super techy and boring, but let us tell you....it's far from boring. It's what online business is all about. Optimising your website to encourage conversions, who isn't on board for that? Tweet Tim here: tim_ash Tim's book is available on Amazon Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #34 TRANSCRIPT - Good day Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It is time to get Fact Up. Today, I want to cover up some of the stuff I learnt at the search marketing summit 2016. Yeah we've been through that, but there's some awesome content that I still have to share. Today it's going to be about conversion rate optimisation. Conversion what? Of course it's a cool name that we've created in agency land for some of that technical stuff that we do. So what's it all about? Conversions right. Really quickly what is cost as a conversion? Well of course a sale class is a conversion, a contact form is, but maybe just getting people to navigate to where you want them to go on the website could also be classed as a conversion. Conversions rock. So, today I wanted to share with you, who I met there was keynote speaker, Tim Ash. He is also the author of the best-selling book, Landing Page Optimisation and CEO of SiteTuners. Tim presented bundles of awesome information on how to improve your website so that it, ideally, converts more people or guides people better throughout your site. He had some great content, I'm only going to share one little piece and I hope I do it some justice. So, let's dive right in. One of the most important takeaways that I got from Tim's presentation was that choice kills. Reduce complexity with a series of simple selections. Tim shared an overview of strategies which will assist you in guiding your visitor to either buy on your website or to land on those pages where you want them to go. So, let's have a look at those. We need to limit choice. According to Tim, we can only keep up to four items in our non-rehearsed memory, which means that you need to limit the amount of choices available to your users when they're visiting your page. This could apply to absolutely anything on your website. From selecting the right section of your website to navigate to, or selecting which product category you should choose, and maybe even which price package might best suit you amongst what seems like a sea of pricing packages. Cutting the selections down on your website to be no more than four will help funnel those users into the areas you want them and create more conversions. Which brings us to our second point, where we want to make those choices absolutely obvious. This can be done by adding a sash to one of the four pricing options or even increasing the height of the one you wish the customer to choose. Alternatively, for navigation through to parts of your website or shopping cart, you might have all black and white descriptive photos and one full colour promoting visual bias. So now, let's take another look at the price packaging options and show how manipulating context and order can help increase conversions for what you want your visitors to click on. So, if we take a look at your four package options all priced up, then changing the order of them from highest on the left to lowest on the right, this can give your middle or basic packages a psychological edge. Similarly, if we look at category and navigation structure pushing your most popular on page visual buttons around so that they are visible in one view without scrolling, and not exceeding four options, you can once again, assist the visitor. The last point we wanted to cover is that we need to understand that prices are pain for our website visitors. If we look at our price packaging options, simply removing the dollar figure from your price packages, but maybe include the currency you're trading in could give those packages another psychological edge. Well, if Tim Ash is listening, I hope we did his presentation or at least a small part of it, some justice. Absolutely, we would recommend, getting Tim's second book, Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions, which we've included in our blog. Thanks for listening, Australia, we will see you next week, so that we can get you all Fact Up. I'm converted, I believe, praise it, praise it, baby.
March 15, 2022Episode 13342 min
Trustpilot Reviews With Stephanie Gillies | ProActive Podcast #133
Gaining consumer trust is one of the hardest parts of business, but new research from Trustpilot suggests there is a simple and powerful way to do so - by exhibiting positive company values.
The study, released in late 2021, found that “49 per cent of Australians now consider a brand’s stance on social, political and environmental issues before buying products or services.”
This trend likely emerged as a response to years of disingenuous messaging from companies, greenwashing, greed, and less than ideal transparency.
Compounding public skepticism of brands is the prevalence of online scams. In 2020 alone, Australians filed more than 216,000 reports to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s ‘Scamwatch’ website, reporting around $178 million as lost.
So how are your potential customers deciding whether your business is worthy of their patronage?
The quick answer is, they’re checking your social media (44%), asking friends and family (43%), and reading user-generated reviews (43%).
In Trustpilot’s research they discovered that “89% of global consumers usually check online reviews as part of their online buying journey, and 49% of global consumers consider positive reviews one of their top 3 purchase influences.
Depending on the type of business you operate, consumers will often Google your brand or product name accompanied by the word “reviews” or “scam.”
Addressing these searches on your own website is great, but having a third party platform that helps reinforce your trustworthiness is a major bonus.
Trustpilot is, without a doubt, one of those important third parties.
While Google reviews are great, and managing and responding to them can help you improve your Google ranking, even this platform has its limitations.
According to Sendgrid Data (2019), 38% of Aussies have a Gmail account which means that potentially 62% of the customers you ask for a Google Review may not be able to complete the task.
This presents the opportunity for Trustpilot to be a great alternative or addition to Google Reviews.
In light of all this I decided to conduct a podcast with Stephanie Gilliesfrom Trustpilot to ask her some burning questions.
January 29, 2020Episode 10914 min
Influencer Marketing Legals with Tegan Boorman - Get Fact Up Episode 109
Published Oct 28, 2019 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia Studio here at Burleigh Heads for episode 109 of "Get Facted Up". And I have with me Tegan Boorman from Social Law Co. How are you Tegan? Tegan Boorman - Good, thank you, how are you? Chris Hogan - Excellent, thanks so much for coming in to the studio. We had a chat a little while ago out and about on the Gold Coast and it was quite interesting. We were talking about influencer marketing and I guess the contractual arrangements that maybe they're not doing. Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Yes. Chris Hogan - Or some of the pitfalls that are happening in influencer marketing at the moment. Tegan Boorman - Tricks and traps, yep. Chris Hogan - Yeah, so we did touch on some of the things we need to say around, you know this is sponsored content. Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Mhm. Chris Hogan - Can we just reiterate that again for the audience? - Yeah, so basically it needs to be apparent and clearly distinguishable as being sponsored content when they're posting it. So that may be they do the #add, or #sponsored, or some other way to actually endorse the fact that it's a commercial arrangement and the reason why they're actually posting it. It doesn't necessarily have to be that every time. In my opinion, risk wise you would be better off to do it because, then it's obviously, absolutely clear that's it's an ad and everyone seems to know if you use #ad it's very clear that it's a paid endorsement. You are better off to do that, however, it's not in every case necessary. Chris Hogan - Right, so that's a great DIY thing that influence marketers should be doing right now. Tegan Boorman - Yes. Chris Hogan - Off ya go. Tegan Boorman - And a lot of them are doing it. More and more I'm seeing you know the big brands that have started not so great in terms of their disclosure. I'm seeing changes and they're starting to implement some more of the DIY stuff, so that's fantastic to see. Chris Hogan - Great, so what are the some of the pit falls that are happening beyond, you know like-- Tegan Boorman - Disclosure? Chris Hogan - Yeah, and why do they need to engage a lawyer? Tegan Boorman - I guess without a commercial agreement, you don't really know what they terms are between you, and you're leaving it open to a court to determine what the intention of the parties were when they actually entered in to that arrangement. So by having an agreement, you can actually turn your mind to the facts and what you want from the content that are creating and what's expected of the influencer. And for the influencer in return what's expected of them and how that content's going to be used. You really are taking it out the realm of, you know, we think we can use it like this and let's just grab it and run with it to a more commercial approach. And this is become a business now for people. They need to be clearer on what they are paying for and what they can do with it and by having commercial agreement in place, it takes them a long way to actually be able to say, this is what I paid for and this is what I should be able to do. Chris Hogan - So for example, we might be taking a photo of somebody showing a product and that it's meant just for Instagram alone. Tegan Boorman - Correct. Chris Hogan - Maybe their brand goes, oh no we want to use it on all of our packaging or a billboard or something along-- Tegan Boorman - That's right. Chris Hogan - Those lines. And that's not what the influencer signed up for. Tegan Boorman - Well that's right because an influencer might have a different fee that they would charge for that. And they might have a you know a package of services that they offer. And it might just be for a one off post that it's a small fee however if you want to use that content and create a huge big campaign around it, then that's an extra fee they could be earning extra money for that. And that may not be what they've considered to be you know what they were doing for that fee. So yeah. Chris Hogan - I'd say influencers starting out as influencers might be like, open to that, yeah, happy to be-- Tegan Boorman - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Anywhere because that helps-- Tegan Boorman - More exposure. Chris Hogan - Raise their profile right? Chris Hogan - So where are we seeing, I guess these contracts coming in. Is there as, you know, is it based on followers? Tegan Boorman - It's a tipping point, it's a risk consideration that needs to be thought through by both the brands that are engaging the influencers and the influencers themselves. So the real legal risk in terms of failing to disclose and what not comes from the A triple C's ability to be able to enforce the Australian Consumer Laws. So under that you need to make sure that you know you're disclosing things properly and as part of that the A triple C have put out guidance and said that they're more likely to investigate things where you know there's widespread detriment or risk of detriment and that these are you know blatant disregard for the legislation and particularly if you keep coming to their attention, it's going to be an issue for you. Chris Hogan - Sure. Tegan Boorman - You know it needs to be a risk assessment that the brands and the influencers are making at the time of you know thinking through their campaign as to whether or not we need to go and get an agreement or you know is it sufficient for us just to sort of make sure that we're agreeing on terms. Or is it just a let's just grab it and run with it because we think the risk is low here but the thoughts around disclosure should always be there from the start. Chris Hogan - Great, and so what are some of the other pit falls that are happening before, during, after influencer engagement? Tegan Boorman - I guess for fees so there was an example recently in Victoria, where it actually went through the courts whether or not she was entitled to a certain fee. So it was an ongoing sort of arrangement and you know posts were sort of added at her discretion but there was no influencer agreement in place and at a later date she decided to archive a lot of those posts and then go and collect her fee and you know rightly so. The brand said well where's the posts? I can't even see them. I haven't got the value that I thought I was getting by this being on your Instagram page. So you know that's an that's an example of you know a consideration if she had an agreement to say these are the posts. I'm entitled to archive them after this date. You'll pay this fee for individual posts and in that specific situation as well they had agreed to revise the fee halfway through it which overly complicated it as well. Whereas that should have been in writing from X date these posts onwards are you know subject to the higher fee and this is what we expect from it. So it really takes out the uncertainty and the risk of a dispute arising by having those agreed terms and setting out what you're doing for the fee that you're getting. Chris Hogan - Sure, so people charging fees based on maybe just a post to their wall or newsfeed for argument's sake. Than a story and then maybe getting extra for if that particular piece of content gets a certain amount of engagement. And then are they also discussing the fact that well that was all organic. We want to put a boost budget behind that now. Tegan Boorman - Uh huh. Chris Hogan - You know, can we can we discuss that and-- Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Yeah. Chris Hogan - And clarify what that is and what that means in terms of dollars and cents. Is that sort of stuff happening too? Tegan Boorman - I mean how they charge and what they charge for is so dependent on the influencer. Chris Hogan - Sure. - So I guess they charge what they can get, right? So the more followers they've got the better the brand alignment is going to depend on what they're going to charge. So they're each free to charge whatever fee they like. What becomes standard market practise, you know they might have a one post fee. They might have a you know a campaign fee. A brand ambassador fee. It can be any number of structuring in terms of how they charge it but yeah if it's the intention to actually sort of expand that campaign beyond the initial thing there should be some sort of mechanism and the agreement to sort of determine what fees if any are adjusted in that situation. And you know what further input the influencer might have. Chris Hogan - Great, so are brands getting themselves in trouble more than the influencers, like for example, are brands you know sort of you know we'll just use that image on our packaging or on a billboard or something like that. Are they been a little bit sneaky and and pushy here or? Tegan Boorman - You probably seen in the news recently there's been complaints about various different teeth straightening companies for example. So it is ultimately going to probably fall back more onto the brand. Because like all traditional forms of advertising you know it's where the brand is placing their product and there's an obligation to make sure that you know they're following the self regulated guidelines in that process to make sure that you know they're compliant with all the codes et cetera and in this case you know your clearly distinguishable provisions now and sewed it into the code of ethics. So yeah it is gonna fall mostly back onto the brand. That's not to say that the influencer doesn't have their own exposure and risk in the situation because you know they're a party to it and also the agencies connecting them so that's also you know they can be an accessory to this and it's a whole other landscape for them. Chris Hogan - Yeah, agencies, I know a couple. Tegan Boorman - Yeah. Chris Hogan - I was going to ask about the, I don't know what it was actually. Tegan Boorman - Lost your train of thought? Chris Hogan - Yeah I did, sorry it's a really great conversation and oh, unfair contract law. So does that sort of come in to where the brand might be going, hey we want you to do all of this for this. Tegan Boorman - It's always a consideration whether or not you know those provisions are you know enforceable, absolutely. But it's a commercial deal. So if they've agreed to you know provide the services on that basis, then that's the commercial arrangement that they made. Chris Hogan - So suck it up princess kind of thing. If you write or sign the contract. Tegan Boorman - You should be getting legal advice on your contact to start with. But yeah there's always you know mechanisms to protect in certain situations, so yeah. Chris Hogan - Yeah, okay, well. Where does it go from here? Is there is there more pitfalls that are happening that? Tegan Boorman - I think there's going to be a little bit of an onslaught of more awareness around you know content rights and usage and you know who owns what piece of content and what can be done with it. Specifically because we're about to see a new code come in in relation to influencer marketing that's going to make this more apparent to everyone involved. So you know influencers who might not have otherwise been aware that how that content can be used or that it can't specifically just be used and you know the influence that brand runs with it and then owns the content. Once that awareness comes in there's probably going to be more disputes that arise I'm expecting. But on top of that it's probably going to be clearer that they need to have an agreement. So I'm expecting this is going to be a bit of a game changer in terms of regulation. In terms of growing the industry up a little bit and in terms of you know turning it more into a transparent business transaction and needing the contract that goes with that. Chris Hogan - Sure, where does copyright come in? Because a lot of people would say, hey if it's on social media it's free from copyright so I can use it anywhere I like. Tegan Boorman - Not correct. So you know there's always the ability to share content and the platform's create the mechanism for that so if you're on Facebook and you know, you share a piece of content that's different than saving that content, and then posting it to Instagram for example. That's different and especially if you're passing it off as your own work at that stage. Chris Hogan - So you citing the resource, you citing the-- Tegan Boorman - That's right, you are citing it because you're actually sharing the piece of content that the owner, hopefully the owner, of that content has posted. If you're sharing it and when you share it you can see that person has posted it, and you're just commenting on you know, what a great piece of content it is or that it's useful that it might be something that your connections might find interesting, it's very clear that that's, you know they're actually citing that that's not their content. When you actually copy that content and you know go and use it to create your logo or whatever, then that's that's a problem. Chris Hogan - What if a influencer is shooting some content for a particular brand. - [Tegan] Mhm. Chris Hogan - And the brand is in shot, and there happens to be another brand like in the background or emblem on the shirt or something like that, that doesn't want to be associated with that brand. Tegan Boorman - Can be a problem. But I mean they're in a photo and it's difficult because they've created, the owner if the copyright is the person who brings that piece of content to existence. So it might be the photographer's taking the photo. They own the rights in that photo. If you've got an issue with being in that photo. I mean these guys could have a problem with this. Like it's you know-- Chris Hogan - They don't. Chris Hogan - Livin rock, if you haven't heard of them, livin.org mental health, charity. - So yeah, I don't think there's much behind that in terms of issues. I mean there are businesses and we have a client for example that is in the business of creating content that uses multiple brands. So it's a, you know, it's a situation where she will have five brands approached her and they're related products. And that they, you know, work well. They will cross promote each other and she will take images and those images are then shared by each of those brands which increases, you know, it cross pollinates their audience and increases their followings. Chris Hogan - That's why we love collaboration. Tegan Boorman - That's right. So it's all about collaboration and then you know having the agreements, we did all the agreements for her that underpinned all that to make sure that she could do that and that, you know all the parties are on board with that. Chris Hogan - That's a very good example when you need to contract. Tegan Boorman - That's right. Chris Hogan - Yeah, real real important. Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Yeah. Chris Hogan - Excellent advice Tegan. So how do people stay across what Social Law Co are up to? What's the socials and what's the web address et cetera? Tegan Boorman - So where we've got a business profile page on LinkedIn. All of the socials, so TikTok, Instagram, Facebook all the usual ones. So it's actually a division of former lawyers so when we spoke last time I mentioned social lawyers, this is a specific sub-brand for that firm that caters specifically to this market. We made the decision that it really needed it. So in branding around it and it's got a very specific audience. So that's the rationale behind the change of the names in that scenario. Chris Hogan - Cool, so we have no contract with Tegan. So you could use this content. But Tegan has-- Tegan Boorman - Voluntarily. Chris Hogan - Voluntarily, sat herself down and spoken on camera for MeMedia and for you. So thanks very much for your time Tegan. Tegan Boorman - That's okay. Chris Hogan - I really do appreciate it. Tegan Boorman - No problem. Chris Hogan - And we gonna share this out across the social. So keep sharing guys. We've got plenty more coming to you from MeMedia Studio. In fact we're ramping up again. We've been a little bit quiet if you've hit our website. But there's actually some excitement in the air so. As it heats up for summer, woo-hoo. Chris Hogan - Cheers. Tegan Boorman - Thanks.
January 29, 2020Episode 1019 min
Mitch Cator CEO of Sabre Digital - Get Fact Up Episode 101
Published Nov 2, 2018
January 29, 2020Episode 11136 min
Becoming a Key Person of Influence with Mike Clark - Get Fact Up Episode 111
Published Nov 11, 2019 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you from Burleigh Heads studio here at MeMedia, for episode 111 of Get Fact Up, and I have with me guest today Mike Clark, who is the Queensland state leader for the Key Person of Influence. And if you haven't heard of the Key Person of Influence, basically you might know of a guy by the name Dan Priestly, who's an Australian who moved offshore and developed a great programme called the Key Person of Influence, and wrote several books around it as well. So, Mike, welcome to the show. - Beautiful, welcomed to be here. Thanks for having me Chris. Chris Hogan - Mate so, how did you come to be here in Queensland running Key Person of Influence programme? - Do you want the short story or the long story? Chris Hogan - No Mike, well, yeah. No. - No, I mean, so Dan is the creator of Key Person of Influence. The methodology that effectively we stumbled across by the first sort of six years of my career and our career together, we spent a lot of time with people in business, who had a shit tonne of influence basically. People, I mean, you mentioned Richard Branson, so we used to put him on stage in the UK, people of that calibre and a few levels beneath. And then when you spend enough time with people who do business in that sort of capacity, you realise that the way they operate, the way they think, they think differently to a lot of different business, or normal business leaders do, everyday business leaders. So, basically from, you know, short story is with business with Dan here in Australia we had a, my first year of business had a pretty rapid success, taken a business from one mill to eleven million turnover, they couldn't sustain the growth, so we found ourselves jumping on a plane, going to the UK, and would master the art of running events which is how we gave this business so much growth, and then-- Chris Hogan - There were Triumph in events? - Yes, Triumph at events, that's right. And so then we found ourselves in the UK, launching a few speakers, promoting people, as I mentioned it, who had a lot of influence, financial crisis hit, our business fell apart , and we were given some sage advise by an organisation and a guy who's had a huge impact on our business, who just said listen, you're not building any intellectual property in your business, until you actually build intellectual property, you make some good money, you know, promoting other people's stuff through selling events, 'cause we were events and promotional organisation at the time. And he said until you actually develop your own intellectual property, you won't be able to build anything evaluation in your business. And that was the pivotal moment, because that was the moment then, when Dan sort of consolidated, you know, all these observations we'd seen from working with these influential business leaders, and figured out that there's five key pillars that they consistently applied, and he wrote a book about it. And so the premise was, what if we could show everyday business leaders who are struggling to stand out, how they can have greater influence by applying these five pillars. And then, that was 10 years ago, you know, jump forward, you know, we've now had 3000 people work with us and we've crossed 8 cities around the world, four continents, and I work with us over the 12-month journey, which we call an accelerator, and it just works, you know, it just really works, and I took that as my cue around that time, to step away, to grow a business that I scout across Europe. But I've reconnected with the guys after 2017, after I exited my business, birth of my second daughter was very difficult and challenging. Thankfully we made it through it, very grateful for that, but it shook me to my core, being away for 12 years, living in the UK, and I thought, you know what, time to come home. I started catching up with Dan a bit more frequently, and you know, pitched me an idea, he said, "have you seen your work team since you stepped away?". And I was like, "No I haven't, what's up?". And then so I just sort of checked-in, I was just blown away by the level of commitment that we have to just helping people implement. So we basically give away our ideas for free, get people to engage in those ideas, and they go, "Wow, that resonates.", and then, we pay for it, you know, and I believe businesses these day, they'd need to charge the implementation of the ideas. And so that's what the accelerate is about, and I spoke to a lot of people, like literally 100s of them before I decided to make that step, and the feedback that I got was just exceptional from hundreds of clients, and so I said, well, how about we hatch up a deal on our licence in intellectual property, to get back involved at the game, and so I've moved my family back 14 months ago, to now, basically we are, you know, a licenced intellectual property for the state of Queensland. So I'm working, going around Queensland, finding some world-class business leaders. So, that's the medium story I'd say. Yeah, fantastic. And what I find fascinating is that this, apart of the story that I didn't know, and you know, my perception was that Dan sorter it a little bit of business here, and then, you know, but did a lot of business in the UK, and was about to launch his Key Person of Influence work and ran a programme in Brisbane that I turned up to, so that I met him about just before he released his first book. - [Mike] Okay. Chris Hogan - But he was, I guess he was stress-testing some of those ideas in his workshops maybe, and-- - Absolutely, yeah. The early years of it, I mean, it's sort of, so what we do now is we show people how to turn their ideas and their thinking, and what I find is that a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs have a lot of influence, but it's just poorly packaged. It's like, in a one-to-one conversation they can skit somebody a prospect who maybe has a perception about what they do, what they industry, and then when they sit down with this business leader, this business leader is able to have a conversation and share these light bulb moments, to get and go, "Whoa, hang on, "I didn't realise it was like that, "I didn't realise the stats on things, "and I didn't realise that that was the problem "associated to it.". And then as a result of that, they can completely shift the mindset of the individual. And so that's what thought leadership is effective, that's what influence is, it's shifting the mindsets of people, almost like changing the radio dial, from one station to another, and so effectively, the idea around it is that you then need to just package that more intelligently, into intellectual property. So the way that ideas work, they have my ideas, to method, to product, to software, which becomes intellectual property that's highly scalable. And so, in the early stages, just like we did and we show our clients to do, Dan was going out there and saying, "Well, these are the things that I think, "these are the five pillars I think "that are the things that people need to apply.". He did some personal coaching with a few clients, to just get them to do that, and then when we launched in the UK, we had these people staying up on stage and go, "Yeah, actually, you know, I've applied these five things, "they frickin' work." Chris Hogan - Yeah, exactly. - And then we had a lot of highly, you know, a lot of very experienced mentors, who would also share in that sort of, you know, who could also resonate with those five pillars. And that's what I did intuitively. And so, the reason I share this is because it's the process and the method, the same thing that a lot of business owners do, that they know they're sitting on something valuable, but what we've got to do is we've got to go out there and then basically codify that as effectively, codify that, put into method, put it into framework, put it into an infographic so now it makes a visual sense, and then we need to then go out, and basically, stress-test it, and prove that it is the actual thing that does get the result. So, that's the sort of, that's how it all kicked of. And obviously we're now 10 years into it where, and I got a lot of case that is behind it. Chris Hogan - Yeah, exactly. And because I've met Dan so long ago, to be honest, I believe there is no such thing as that original idea, so, you know, I met Dan, I was influenced by many other people, you know, across the industry, Marty Weintraub from Aimclear, I don't know if you know him, you know, Simon Sinek, you know, Seth Godin, there's just so many authors and amazing people around the world that have helped influence and shaped the methodology that we implement here. But what I find absolutely awesome and amazing is that I've started the KPI programme and I've seen what you guys are doing for me that I've been doing for clients for years, but I needed you guys to do it for me, because I couldn't do it for myself. It was hilarious, like, oh God, I do this stuff for people, you know, I help them understand who their client is, I help them understand what their values are, but I'll be back at it if I can do it for myself. And it was... And that was part and parcel of problem and that we hadn't actually really codified, we haven't really codified. We had a methodology, but there was elements missing in the system and the process and the codifying of it, hadn't been properly stress-tested, and so, thank you for the push, you know, several months ago, where you said, "Look Chris, just get that idea "and get out there and stress-test it." And that didn't just come from you, Grant Cardone said that on stage at Success Resources Australia event as well. The time from idea to actually implementation or execution needs to be super short, because you need to know if it's gonna fail or not. And that time frame, if you keep it nice and short, then essentially you can iterate on that and move forward. - Give feedback. You expect your first version to be crap, it is a bit of, just as, manage expectations. Chris Hogan - Well, it's awesome in your own world, right? - It is, it is. Chris Hogan - [Chris] It's awesome in your own world. - Expect the first version and the second even to be crap, and you iterate, but you get to take that feedback and go from there, but just touching on a couple things you mentioned there, mate, is there's this phenomenon called proximity buyers, and that's what we observe, is that, as business owners, we've got so many ideas, and particularly someone who is highly creative like yourself, you have so many ideas, and where it could be going, that stuff. Chris Hogan - Yeah, that wake me up at 3 a.m. in the morning. - Exactly, right. And 'cause you've been sitting on these ideas for so long, and sometimes it could be months, sometimes it could be years. I just worked with a client recently, who's been saying, she's literally just gotten out of financial planning, and she's been wanting, she's exited a business, just joined us, and you know, I've been wanting to get this idea off the ground for like years, but has just been not able to do it yet. You know, so sometimes these things get so close to us and there's so many elements to it. So the phenomenon of proximity buyers is effectively, it's hard to delineate the things that are closest to us, which are the ones that are valuable and which are the ones that are crap, basically. Chris Hogan - True, true. - So, basically it's almost like we devalue and we underappreciate the things that are closest to us. Like, if you just ask most spouses that question , it's a phenomenon, your partner was like, "Honey, you be doing this and this." as she keeps mentioning this a few times, you're like yeah, yeah, okay, and all of a sudden somebody else says it, and then you go, and then you come back, "Hey honey, guess what?" she's sitting there like, "Mate, seriously?" . You know. Chris Hogan - I think it's hilarious that you brought that example. 'Cause it's exactly what's happened in my life. I have a mentor that says a lot of the same stuff as my wife, and took a little bit of time for me to actually recognise that and go, you know, I'm just gonna listen to you. - You're one of the best mentors, right? Chris Hogan - [Chris] Yeah. - Completely. You're not alone with this, you're not alone. And it's one of the things that for a lot of our clients is some of their biggest insides is that they're already sitting on, like, a huge mountain of value, and it's just, I've got a knack and our organisation has just found this knack of just teasing that outta people effectively, so you can just, we've already crossed over 60 different industries, it's not about the industry, it's about the lack of visibility and influence in the industry. And so the reason why this is so important, is that, you know, Pareto's law, 80/20 rule, is that, like, 20% of your clients generate 80% of your revenue, 20% of your clients generate 80% of your frustration. And likewise, for income distribution inside any industry is that typically the top 20% share an 80% of the spoils, you know, the revenue distribution in any industry, so the goal is to really get into that top 20% and the way we do that, is we have to become differentiated and the things that allow us to become differentiated often are the things that are closest to us like your story, your philosophy, your values, your ideas around this. And it's sometimes, is just having somebody else like myself and people and their mentors and our accelerator just get, whoa, hang on, get back to that, tell me that again. That's frickin' valuable. We need to package that up, you know. And so, it's easier when you get to sort of do that across a lot of different businesses like we do, so. Chris Hogan - Yeah, now I still remember, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we sat in your office at your house there, and my disparate thoughts and all of these things really close to me, and just being able to dump it on someone that was strategic and could see, you know, I guess similar things to what I can see when I'm talking to other people, so it was like, you were me for me. And, and, I... There was so much value in that. - Awesome, I really appreciate it. Chris Hogan - And you know, we uncovered, the values that are closest to me and why I do what I do, and it was a pivotable point. - Yeah, that's awesome. Chris Hogan - For not only me personally, but I believe here at MeMedia, you know, we've actually really discovered our true why. And it's actually changed our culture internally, and and we're applying, I guess, what I've learnt through that story and codify it, you know, what we do here, so our methodology, and our why and our purpose, you know, for our clients now, and have seen amazing results, like only in several months of changing up our strategy for them. - That's awesome. Chris Hogan - Yeah, it's pretty fantastic. - Can I just mention something on that, because I think this is really key, and it's what I'm really passionate about, is that what I've seen through working with literally thousands, tens of thousands of businesses, like, when we got to the UK, we were running events, I mean, at some stages 16 to 18 events in a week. It was just full on. I was living in this bubble for about, literally about five years were just eat, sleep, breathe, workshops, events, programmes. I didn't know any, I didn't have any friends over there so all the clients became friends, so it's just like this bubble of entrepreneurship that just was like intense. Chris Hogan - Wow. - And so, what I've seen over the years and what I've observe is that, a bit of my pet peeve around certain ways, that certain businesses are marketed around, getting people to lean out of their business, someone says hey, jump onto this funnel system or this tool and technique around, sort of just increasing your visibility. And the fundamental premise with someone that it's about building a system where you step away from your business. But it's not what I've seen to be true. What I've seen to be true is that business owners that love what they do, they lean into their business. You know, they lean into it. You don't have to lean into it forever. I was just hanging out with a guy last night, he's built up a phenomenal business here in the Gold Coast, and now he's got a management team, and you know, it is one day a week on that side, but he leaned in heavily, he leaned in for like 20 years, you know, and it was his passion, and the reason I share this is because I think, what I love saying and what I... I love hearing that story man, because, about what you just shared now, because a lot of times business owners, they can go through their business and then they've tried lots of different things and they just get a little frustrated sometimes just, a bit jaded with things and really part of what we're about is just helping business owners to peel back those layers and just to reconnect like, why are you doing this? What's the real purpose, and I'm saying this quite a bit at the moment, I will create a video on this soon but, is it I've really, I love it when business owners, their business becomes an expression of what they wanna see in the world, you know, it's not about leaning in and trying to build a system while you're stepping away from it. It's actually about building a business you want, is leaning to it further and build that up, and then an event in time once that's really up and humming and you then had executive management teams so it's then when you can step back from it a bit, right? But first and foremost, you've got to just lean in and just be, reconnect the passion, on why you do what you do, and it's awesome to hear that, like, you're then sort of helping your clients to reconnect with what they're doing. Chris Hogan - Well, it's not unlike Simon Sinek's story which I reheard again just two nights ago. - Oh, cool. Chris Hogan - He actually developed his, you know, start with why, you know, codified, you know, why, how, what. Why, what, how, sorry, might forget his golden circle, but he actually, that came from a story. And so to is as yours, your experience and many of the people that you work with, it's all your personal story, and that's what we're doing too, we're helping, we're taking people on this, you know, personal discovery journey, and you know, discover your personal values, your personal purpose and then your business just becomes a vehicle for that. - Spot on. Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Because if it can't be a vehicle for that, then it's being something that you're not-- - Exactly, you know you can grow it, right? Chris Hogan - Yeah. - It's sorta like you're tryin' to build something like that is, you know, I wanna have a successful selling but I don't really care about it. Chris Hogan - Yeah. - It's like, that never really works as a strategy. There are exceptions of the rule occasionally, right? But for majority of people that is not a good approach. Chris Hogan - I wait in borders, you know, a Subway or a McDonald's franchise, you know? Because they make money. But I don't really believe in that. I don't really, like, the food's gross, you know? My reason for being here is not actually helping people be healthier, you know, like, I'm just feeling their gut on their way to their next, you know, gig, you know, sort of things, so-- - And that's one of the confusing thing is there are some examples like I can't even think of my mind when that has worked for certain people but I think that for majority, as a rule of thumb, like a general rule of thumb, it just, it doesn't work, you know? And there are some exceptions to it, without a doubt. But, I just think that you're gonna have a better reality of the world, like, for me I keep coming back to this thing around, what's my ideal day? What does my ideal day, what does my ideal week, what does my ideal month, what does my ideal year look like? And that's what I'm shaping, you know, so part of like, what I'm doing now, my thing is business and human potential, and this, you know, entrepreneurship and human potential and boom, that's me and my core. Anyone who knows me throughout my life would say that's true. And so, this is an expression of what I'm doing. I often say this, I love my clients, I love what they're doing, and I can see myself doing this forever, you know? Maybe not as intense as what I'm doing now, but, you know, so and I just think that a lot of business owners that, like, your point around building business that isn't something you want to be, you know, seeing in the world, is it, there's always tough days in business. That's the thing, like, and if you're doing something where you're not really that passionate about it ends up becoming something which you just, you gonna check out when it gets really hard. And so, whereas if you love it, you know, it's ingrained of who you are, you see the tough days through. So, it is, you know, essential in business. Chris Hogan - Well, there's a whole, I guess it is the whole of a story behind that too, you know, when you're in the you're in a hole, there's a reason why you're in the hole and you've done several things wrong, and Jim Carrey actually, and passion, you know, passion actually only gets you so far. - Yeah, without a doubt. Chris Hogan - Because, Jim Carrey actually described it really well in, I think, a quote that goes around the internet quite a lot at the moment, that he believes depression is absolutely real, but he also believes that people aren't getting enough sleep, they don't have their nutrition right, they're not hydrating properly, they're not getting enough sunlight, they're not exercising, and so, you know, if you're in a hole, just look at all of those five things. How many of those five things have you actually done right in the last three days? Like, three days, seriously, you can be impacted heavily just awful last, right, or alcohol, you know, what's your alcohol consumption like? Are you having enough sex? You know, are you actually, you know, like, are you actually having enough human interaction, right? So I've just added three more, but-- - Yeah, your passion, just live in your passion too. Chris Hogan - But, yeah, but, I'm with you on the passion thing, but I think if you don't have these things-- - Yeah, a hundred percent. Chris Hogan - These things, then effectively you're not going to be able to function, and you're not going to be able to actually live your purpose. - Yeah, a hundred percent. Chris Hogan - And so, I had that experience recently where, a pressure cooker situation I'm so thankful for, very grateful for, but I hated going through it, was almost living an entire year and so out a week, and at it was all because basically I had four out of five of those major things all wrong, as if I was going to be able to be passionate and, you know, and live my life on purpose, if those things weren't correct. But coming back to being passionate-- - It's almost like having a vehicle, if you were a car , and it's almost like your car was driving around with-- Chris Hogan - Flat tyres. - Flat tyre, oil's down to you know, close to empty. Chris Hogan - Nothing in the radiator. - Like, what, I'm not feeling so well. Yeah, you know, wanna top some things up. Chris Hogan - Yeah, your windscreen's fogged. You can't see. - I've got no idea what's wrong, maybe there's a-- Chris Hogan - We've hit dark, you know, we're lost somewhere. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. Chris Hogan - So yeah, being passionate. So what those personal, you said something earlier, and I think it was about, I guess, I heard, 'cause I'll change what you said, 'cause I do that all the time, I heard, you know, sorta human performance optimization or building human resilience. You and I have something very much in common there. How did you discover that you were very passionate about that? - Good question, great one. Over time... It's one of those things sort of like, you know, proximity buyers, you know, like, when I played in my football years, my soccer years, I call it football, come from the UK obviously, that's, you know, as always the motivator, the captain of the team, trying to cheer the team up and then a good mate of mine that has got a brain business round the corner here in Burley, you know, we would always, even when we lived together in union we started studying personal development books, and always I remember I was creating these, like, Mike success systems, haven't thought about this but I actually, when I was in union, I actually had this desk and I had this little mapped out little system, on Monday I'm gonna do this, on Tuesday I'm doing that, here's my goals, and, then I got into what was that, Amway, Amway, in Network 22 or 21 or something it was called at the time, and that was the best decision I made that year was getting in, the second best was getting out, so I've got complete respect for people who are in the industry, who do that, but it was a real, it really just taught me anything, I'm gonna make anything of myself in this world, I gotta work at it, you know? And so, you know, and I was constantly listening to all the CDs and then back in those CDs obviously , and I was just trying to apply everything, so I just naturally, I think intuitively I was just going down this path, at just trying it as of self discovery and then, when I met Dan and the guys, I just got out of university, was HR Manager for a boat building company, and this guy was doing pretty much everything opposite that I was learning of best practise of HR in the business, and he was in everything opposite to that. I thought, okay, this guy has got 60 people in his business, if this guy can do this, surely if I apply best practises I could do something better. So, then I just came across Dan, and Glen Carlson is my counterpart in New South Wales, and there these 22 year old kids running workshop for adults on how to run a successful business and create wealth, and I thought, what the heck? What gives these guys the right to do that? And so that was when I first met Dan actually here on an event on the Gold Coast, and then I just ensured we joined, you know, I just, I pitched them for a role, I created the role for myself, pitched them for it, so I'm coming to work for you, 'cause I was really reached at, poured at, and he said, "You know, "if you want to become a world-class entrepreneur, "you gotta learn to sell.", so I thought, great, this is my opportunity, you know, and I literally hit the phone sometimes 16 hours a day, 'cause we call, we do running events in Perth, so I get up at eight, start calling eight in the morning, and I'd be finishing up sometimes calling up until nine o'clock in Perth that night, so it was just a baptism of fire. I thought I was good at sales, I realised I was shit. That's what you talk about when you got this for 10 thousand hours mastering you craft but also, you know, do a thousand pitches, 'till you get it right, and anyway, long and short of it is, we ensured we ran our events the first five, six years when we were promoting speakers, and when we went into the UKs, we were literally promoting people who we just were passionate about, we were studying their material, and we wanted to share them with the world, so John Demartini was one of the guys we promoted at the time, Roger Hamilton, "Wealth Dynamics", you know the wealth dynamic system was phenomenal. So those are the two speakers we launched into the UK, and then we promoted people like Bob Proctor, and then we also ran some events with a guy called Mike Harris, who'd build three billion-dollar companies, T-Mobile was one of them, and so we just had, like, we were promoting people who we just thought were awesome . So that's what I mean, and sort of, we intuitively stumbled across is, we were always looking for speakers, and that's where the methodology came about, 'cause we were looking for people who could stand up and who had a pitch, and we even had an email template, and this is where the constructs of the book came from, because we had so many people approaching us, saying, "Can you promote us?". And Dan and our team were reading these emails and well, can you stand up and do a pitch tomorrow, you know, do you have published content that demonstrates you the authority on this topic and the industry, do you have a range of products, you know, from CD products on the front end, so chunky stuff that we could share on the back end, do you have a good profile if I googled you and checked you out online, we're gonna find some things in, can you bring some partnerships that would leverage your trusted scale? If someone could tick yes to all of those boxes, we were like, well, let's talk, because potentially we could have done business. You know, one of the guys we were this close to sign a contract with, was Tony Robbins. You know, so we were literally, there was the potential change of hands, and we were considering whether we should promote him or not, and that was around the time where we've realised that the reason why we didn't do that one, sort of answers the question actually, I haven't thought about it like this before, is that, that was very much, very heavy around the personal development angle, and we were promoting speakers that were sort of in that line, but the inside for us was that what we really were passionate about, all of us in team was actually entrepreneurship, and moving in that direction more. So although that was, you know, exciting for us I think where we wanted to take the business, and where Dan and Glen and the entire team took it was down on the entrepreneurship angle, and that's where we've been in the last 10 years, but I think that's why it sort of, just following your passion early on, just following like, intuitively, where are you gonna take it, 'cause I was always one of those guys in school where, I never, it's not like I went oh, I wanna be this, I wanna be that, you know, I didn't really know my path. It's why I went sort of backpacking as soon as I finished high school. I was trying to find myself and I think I just gradually over time of just following the internal needle on my compass I in fact, stumbled across it, and then on point reflection, like, I love the Steve Jobs Stanford presentation he give to the graduates of Stanford University and this is great talk, if you just google Stanford address by Steve Jobs, you'll see this brain talk, where he talks about, you know, life is about figuring out, you know, it's the way you wanna go, and its hard to connect the dots going forward, but it's easy to connect them going backwards. And so, often, sometimes you have to, if you're not sure on what you wanna do, you just sort of follow your passion and follow your interest, of where that takes you, and you know, I also surrounded myself with a lot of mentors who have given me some advice. One of my first mentors just said, "Work to learn, not to earn.". Which is why when I pitched the sales role, I was earning like I think my basis, few hundred bucks a week , which I spent more, drive at it, drive at Brissy everyday. But I was just, literally learning, you know, had to get in there and sell. So anyways, and it's the point of reflection looking back, then when, hang on, this is my thing. Now I'm crystal clear, you know, I have to play in the game for so long that this is just what I wanna see in the world and help entrepreneurs who can maybe sort of speed up that journey for him. Chris Hogan - I think you're absolutely right. And that's, I think, what's been my pivotal point too. Is actually age. You know, I follow my compass similarly to you and and it wasn't until sooner than my 40th year where I reflected on my life and what I was passionate about. And went, oh it's this, this, this, this and this. And I have plenty mistakes of course, I've learnt a lot, a lot. - There is always a shit tonne of mistakes. Chris Hogan - I've made, I think I've made more but I know I haven't. - More lessons to come. Chris Hogan - Yeah. Oh god, here we go. But, yeah, it's, you know, whatever I'm passionate about, what things have I done right in my life, and that I have to continue doing, or do more frequently, who have I surrounded myself with, what types of people, and who should I not surround myself with. - Completely. Chris Hogan - What types of people, what are their activities that, you know, I know that screw me up, what's the things that I eat or drink that I know that totally screw me up. - [Mike] Completely. Chris Hogan - And so, you know, I've gone plant-base to several years ago thanks to my sensei's advice. - [Mike] Yeah. Chris Hogan - I frequently do martial arts and because I discovered that to be super important, you know, increased my exercise output, found that Grant Cardone, super-high energetic guy, you know, 60 years old. - He's 60?! Chris Hogan - 60. - I didn't realise. Chris Hogan - But he's jacked. - Wow. Chris Hogan - He is jacked for 60. - I didn't realise he was 60. Chris Hogan - Yeah, man. And like, he's a hot man, you know, like-- - Good, got to be the bromance going on there. Chris Hogan - Oh, for sure, for sure. But he's an alpha dude, right? - Yeah, completely. Chris Hogan - What I saw about him was, why is he so successful, and this was just from studying him on stage, I was two seats back from, you know, the stage, and I was like, more energy out, the greater the energy out, the greater the return on energy and alphas need that, you know? And I think, well, business owners actually need that, especially if they are the alpha. They have to put out heaps of energy because they get it back. So I discovered that too and energy equals, you know, that energy output can be exercise, you know, and you don't have to be talking to people all the time, but those things are really important. And then things that I have to cut out. Alcohol, forget about it, you know, like, just cannot touch this stuff, because it sends me in reverse, you know, it's dehydrating for one, it's a depressant for another, and, you know, I've discovered through talking to my clients, who are supplement retailers, good day Todd at Sporty's Health, what some of my nutrition mistakes are, you know. - Beautiful. Chris Hogan - Surrounding you puts-- - Yeah. Chris Hogan - Jeez, I need these, really need these, all of these people in my life, and it's like who's the, I guess, what's the round table, what's my advisory board actually look like? Just for me to operate. And my wife's essential, understand that, mentors, you know, nutrition, okay, I need my training coach, and I need my business coach. I guess there's just five of the essentials right there. - [Mike] Yeah, absolutely! Chris Hogan - And then Jim Rohn's quote, you are the average of the five people you hang out with most. If I can hang out with those people every week, then I'm on point. I don't know how it got there, but I think it was just lots of things you said resonate-- - Yeah, a hundred percent, what you mentioned earlier about being really mindful who you choose to spend time with and choose not to choose time with, it's a conscious choice around things. Chris Hogan - Of course around this sense and I wasn't in there, six. - Yeah, and I absolutely think that this, that's what I've done throughout my whole life, it's consistently, I'm just trying to hack my body. I'm trying to hack, hack, hack for the one that's a bit of an overused term, you know, I mentioned before over in the health, health sort of programme we're doing at the moment, I've got a coach who's advising me, Cody McCullough, he's from the Gold Coast, he's phenomenal, with just helping you understand these 360 different types of body types, and knowing your body type is instrumental, getting back to like, how do you-- Chris Hogan - I know Cody. - Yeah, so Cody. So, he's one I'm working with, and he does a phenomenal job of just analysing, he gets into like, measuring your bone density, like, your brain circumference, length of your fingers and just because the length of your fingers, I was looking at being one body type, but because of the size of my knee that completely put me in a completely different category, and it was just phenomenal, the level of detail we can now go to to then understand what your ideal... As an example, this one I'm big fan about, sort of getting into these daily habits and routines, you know, and I've tried for many years to get up nice and early and I've got friends who often laugh at it like, if I heard this I'd be chuckling and go, oh, they're up naturally up at four, five o'clock in the morning, and it's just like, poof, and they're awake. Man, that has never been me, and I've forced myself, I've literally done it for months, to force myself to get up five, six o'clock, but I'm just dead tired in the morning. And so doing this analysis was really fascinating, as we mentioned when we came in. I am a fan of this routine, I don't really feel hungry up until lunch time, so I used to force myself to eat, but then I felt uncomfortable about it and now I sort of have my shake, my wheatgrass in the morning, been doing that for about 15 years about a litre and a half of that, as my wake up, and I don't eat about, easily, like, yesterday I didn't eat until 2:33 I think it was, that was the first time I ate, and now I'm taking ownership of that, because now my body is all about digestion and, you know-- Chris Hogan - But it comes back to the individual, doesn't it? And that's what's the importance in it. - 100%, this is exactly right, this is-- Chris Hogan - Everybody's saying you have to get up early and you have to eat breakfast, you have at this time da, da, da. No, no, no. - You gotta listen to your body, you gotta listen to it. And then things what we're talking about here overall is about just tune in to yourself, if it's not clear for you, understand, just listen to your body, but also just be proactive. I love what you were talking about, surround yourself with people you want to be surrounded by. Put yourself in the environment, I love the Warren Buffet quote, which is simple but it's really true, 80% of success is just showing up, and just put yourself in an environment where others are gonna be around, where you can't stand to meet those type of people. So, huge advocate of all that sort of stuff. Chris Hogan - Awesome. Mike, thanks so much for your time. It's been a great chat. In fact, we've gone over my usual, but it was so good. How do people stay across, what it is you're up to and what can we expect from you over the next sort of 12 months, say. - Oh, that's an exciting one. Chris Hogan - What's one of the highlights or what's one of the goals that you-- - A couple things, a couple highlights. We were only running events in Brisbane when I first came in then I expanded us into Gold Coast and then Toowoomba and Sunny Coast and so on, and Mackay, and now I'm expanding us to around 11 regions around north as that was Byron, Ballin, and nine regions in Queensland, so running events all over Queensland too, so if you want to just check out Key Person of Influence workshops, you can go find one of the events, come along with my guest to one of those three-hour workshop, and the other thing I'm about to be launching is a Podcast. Chris Hogan - Beautiful. - So that will be coming out soon. If you wanna stay in touch though, just feel free to google me, just type in Michael Clark Key Person of Influence, or Michael Clark Dent, you'll come across my LinkedIn profile, and then if you wanna get access to a free copy of our book Key Person of Influence, I'll be happy to send you a copy, literally just type in dent.global forward slash start. So dent.global forward slash start. Send you a free copy of the book. Chris Hogan - Beautiful. - But mate, thank you so much for having me here. It's been fantastic. I love working with you, buddy. I look forward to seeing you just continue to expand, and your influence as you play this game even more, and thanks for the opportunity. Chris Hogan - I appreciate your time and energy too, mate. So, thanks so much for watching, guys. Plenty more coming to you on memedia.com.au and we're sharing across all of our socials as well. Cheers.
January 29, 2020Episode 10624 min
Ben Southall, Best Life Adventures - Get Fact Up Episode 106
Published Dec 21, 2018 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you from Burleigh Heads here on the Gold Coast and I'm here with a special guest today Ben Southall, who you may know as the Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, won that competition. Was it The Best Job in the World in 2009? Ben Southall - Yeah, nearly 10 years ago now, so that was I suppose my introduction to Australia. That was back in the days when Tourism Queensland were trying to market the Great Barrier Reef to the world and I'd just gone around Africa in a Land Rover and run a website and a blog and that was the criteria they needed to do that job and 34,000 people later, I was the winner. Easy isn't it? Chris Hogan - So, hopefully you're not best known for that anymore because you've got some cool stuff coming up and you've been doing some really cool stuff ever since. So, bensouthall.com is pretty much the old placeholder for the old biography I guess in the life before now and now you have bestlifeadventures.com which is about to go live, probably go live by the time we actually launch this. Ben Southall - I've fingers crossed if it goes and be up by the end of the week, that's the plan. Chris Hogan - So, what is Best Life Adventures? Ben Southall - Okay, so I suppose the whole Best branding started nine years ago with The Best Job in the World and ever since then, we've tried to sort of encapsulate my passion for travel and adventure, sharing physical challenges in the great outdoors with, what started as a local audience, has become an international audience now. It started off at first, I suppose, a spawn of Best Life in the World was the Best Expedition in the World, which was for me getting in a kayak for four months retracing Captain Cook's route all the way up the east coast of Australia through the Great Barrier Reef all the way to Cooktown, that was a project for Tourism Queensland, so that was The Best Expedition in the World. And then in 2015 my wife Sophie and we drove from Singapore all the way back to London in my old Land Rover. That took a year, and we called that The Best Life in the World. And that was to go and find people on that journey who had smiles on their faces every single day, love what they did whether they were a taxi driver or a CEO of a company, what are the criterias in life that give people a smile on their face and make them want to get out of bed in the morning? That was The Best Life in the World. And we have these lovely theories about what it is. Whether it's family or friends or money or the best job. Whatever it is, what are those things that give people that recipe for life. And a lot of it will revolved around interaction with family and doing great things in the great outdoors. So every time I've come back from one of my various adventures, there always is at least one, maybe 10, maybe 50 people that say. I would love to go and do an adventure like that. What do I have to do to go and do it? So I knew there was this gap in the market. There was a niche there were people, they've got cash, they're time poor, they wanna go on these adventures. So why don't I start curating them, making it from scratch, making them left of centre for anything you're gonna get from a standard travel brochure and do the extremes of life and the extremes of the world because people like entrepreneurs are adventurous in their mindset, they love what they do, they love challenges, they love innovation. So I can find innovation in the adventure space, package it up, market it and take people out there, small bespoke groups of people, there's a gap in the market that means there's business opportunities there. And hence, Best Life Adventures was born. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, so one of the common things I see run through all of your adventures is building resilience. Ben Southall - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Why is that so important and how does it transcend from going on a holiday or an adventure back into business? Does it actually, is there a crossover? Ben Southall - Well yeah, I mean we deal with a range of clients now. We deal with government clients, we deal with corporate clients, we deal with private groups and all of them, all the people that come on these seem to be people that want to achieve the most that they can out of life. They wanna prove to themselves that they can do the best that they can in their personal life and their business life and they can go out there and suck as much as they can out of this short limited time that we get on planet earth. They're people that wanna get up and do things. They're not people that lay in bed until 11 o'clock in the morning on the weekend, they're up at sunrise, they utilising their day. They're making the most out of it. They're building great friendships. And that sort of reflects from the personal development into the business world because what we're finding and I believe this is the truth is that the people that really wanna achieve lots in their personal life are the ones that are gonna achieve a lot in their business life. So, the world of adventure and entrepreneurship I think are very closely entwined in the fact that adventurous people love to get out there and do things and entrepreneurs love to get out there and do things. We started off Best Life Adventures really with the Advance Queensland Initiative of the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur. So Mark Savey and I, good friends, sat down and talked about the idea of going and proving to yourself that you can achieve something with a physical adventure in the great outdoors, makes you realise that you're able to take on these hurdles that you think you're gonna struggle to clear but by the time you've gone out there and given it a go and you've cleared that hurdle and you've realised, I didn't think I could run a half marathon and you sit down at the end of the half marathon and go, wow, I'm a lot better that I thought I was, maybe I'll do a marathon. And you set your goals and you move those benchmarks and you keep going further and further and further. And so the idea of resilience is if you can develop a strong mindset as an individual, based in the great outdoors where you've got no distractions from mobile phones and you can take people's laptops away and you can stop notifications. If you can focus on being in the moment and concentrate on achieving something for yourself, you can translate that back into your business life. When you get home and realise, okay, we've got tough times coming up as a business. I know that I can go through the shit and come through the other side and be better off for it. And that's why The Best Life Adventures' theme is all about building resilient individuals in the great outdoors to make them better people in life and ultimately better business people. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, is it just through their experiences and I guess, those tough times that people learn through these adventures or is it actually a bit of a classroom scenario? What's going on on these adventures? I mean, I've read Aaron Birkby's blog from the Everest Base Camp Trek. Ben Southall - He went through the ringer. He really did go through the ringer. Chris Hogan - He totally did. He kind of scared the pants off me a little bit. Ben Southall - And off himself quite literally. if you read the blog. Chris Hogan - Yeah great blog, actually we'll link to it in our comments but is there a classroom scenario? Is there time to sit down and share with other entrepreneurs? Ben Southall - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Do people just dump on each other, you know? Ben Southall - It's different horses for different courses, it really is because we are running a very different catalogue of experiences, really. If you're on a private group and you wanna go and trek to every space camp that's all about the experience of meeting new people. Walking through a tough challenging environment, seeing some beautiful landscapes. But at the end of the day, at the end of what could be a six to eight hour trek for a day, sitting down and having those conversations with people. So that's the sort of private group side. The idea of the government programme, the adventure programme that we do through the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur is very much about building community. It's about not just building the resilience of the individual, but about building the resilience of the Queensland Startup Community because better connected people have better opportunities and can problem-solve a lot easier. If I know that 11 o'clock at night on a Friday, I'm trying to punch through to a deadline and I'm thinking, how the hell do I get 3D printing done to get this product off the line by Monday? Oh my God, I remember Chris, I was sitting with him by a campfire in Tasmania, we had that conversation, I now feel comfortable enough to pickup the phone, call Chris and ask for some advice on it. So, for the government programmes, some of the best parts that we have, we don't push people to 110% of their physical abilities during these programmes, we push them 99%, but we leave space that in the evenings, the campfire conversations that people have are the biggest benefits to the individuals and the community as a whole. Those open networks that are formed through using adventure as an engine and as a medium for breaking down I suppose the barriers that sometimes normal networking events might have. You know, you stand there with your glass of beer and you say hi, what do you do, and what's your business all about, what do you study? It's very shallow, single dimension. If you put someone through a physical adventure as part of a group, so and so, maybe Cody will pull John up the hill cause he's really struggling that day. Or John will turn around the next day and say, okay Cody, I saw you had some emotional issues but can I help you through this? The community that is built up through this programme is so much deeper and longer lasting than anything that I've seen in terms of networking. I think there needs to be a study in what is an effective networking tool. And I will put my hand up to say that shared adventures are one of the best ways of really connecting on a much deeper level than I've certainly ever seen before. I think that's what we're really trying to do. We've built up out of the back of the venturer programmes that we've done, we've done four now. We've done the Whit Sundays, we've done Tasmania, New Zealand, we went up to the far north Queensland to Wujal Wujal and we're off to another one in the end of March in Mongolia. The people that have been through this programme all are natural members to come into the society of extraordinary adventurers. So what that does is that open up other events that we go and do, so we might do walks up in Springbrook National Park, we might do a sunrise sup down at Burleigh, we might go and do an evening drink session up in Fortitude Valley. What it does is it opens up that group of 20 people that came on one trip to this whole cohort of 80 to 100 people now that we've built up through the Venturer programme. The longer it goes, the more IP allows you to develop because you're building up that network of friends who down the line, are gonna be not just your buddies and the people that you've gone through the mud and shit with but ones that are gonna help you in your business. That's my theory. Chris Hogan - Sensational, the mission to Mongolia, Mission Five to Mongolia looks absolutely sensational. I've watched all of the shows on Genghis Khan and all that sort of stuff and I've always dreamed about a trip to Mongolia. Is that it's ideal for, people like me who dreamed about that or should people that are dreaming about sitting on a beach at the end of the business year in Fiji to really relax and wash out all the year that's been, are they suited to the Mongolian trip? Ben Southall - Mongolia is a real buzz word at the moment. I think there is a lot of interest in the slightly left of centre destinations. And I think there's an air of mystery to Mongolia. It's sort of that far off land that we know is covered in snow for a lot of the year. We don't really know much about it because not many people go there. To go to somewhere as remote as Mongolia for Venturer programme is a bit of a step outside of my comfort zone as well. I think it's not just about challenging ourselves physically on these, it's about challenging ourselves emotionally and culturally and this trip yes, there will be a physical element to it, not nearly as much as we've done in the some of previous programmes because we're gonna be challenging people culturally. We're gonna be living on the Mongolian Steppe which is at the end of the Mongolian winter. It's gonna be five degrees probably in the daytime. We're gonna be rugged up in reindeer coats. We're gonna have thick winter boots on. We're gonna be moving with the Nomadic herders who herd these vast flocks of reindeers, I don't know what a collective term for reindeers are but it's called a flock for now. Chris Hogan - Probably just a herd. Ben Southall - A herd of reindeer. So we're gonna be moving with the Nomadic herders as they move from their winter pastureland to their spring pasturelands. We are gonna be learning from the eagle hunters out there that use eagles obviously for sourcing their food. We're gonna go and find a local mountain that's at least 2000 metres above sea level so much higher than kosciuszko will be or is. So there's a physical element, cultural element. And ultimately, because we're taking people who've been involved in the Queensland Startup Community from not just in Australia this time, but from overseas. The opportunities it will offer to people from the Queensland Startup Community to network with other people who've successfully migrated their business to say San Francisco, or to London. Those people are gonna come, we've got a really good cohort that we're working with from our own Birkby Startup catalyst. We're recruiting from over there overseas to bring some more people back, we're all on foreign land. We've all gone somewhere slightly different. We all don't have the ability to just call up our friends in the evening because we'll be disconnected. So to have that cohort learn from each other, from an international community is one of the biggest sell cards that we've got for this. We've got adventure capitalists coming, we've got Leanne Kemp, Queensland's Chief Entrepreneur for this year coming along as well. We've got three or four female founders and it's always been a tough gap to fill. The female founders, sort of age 25 to 35, quite often they're looking after families, so we try to really recruit a lot more from that area now to try and get a level playing field of people. We've got people coming from corporate backgrounds. We'll have two or three coming from university scholarship winners that really have got that injection of life and that youth element to them. So we're trying to build this complete circle of the Queensland Startup Community so that people can learn from each other. And cherry pick who they sit down with that night for a campfire conversation, who they decided to go and do the eagle hunting with. So it's gonna be a really interesting group with between 15 and 20 people. We're gonna have seven days, eight nights out there in the Mongolian Steppe and it's just gonna be an absolutely whack sensation. Chris Hogan - It certainly would, I would love to do that Venturer programme for sure. Bit of a toss up between Everest and that one because they're a month after another. Ben Southall - Yeah they're a month apart, so we now do sets of every space camp trips every year. The next one that comes up over the Easter window, so the seventh to to 21st of April. Yeah, for me it's a bit of time out of the country at that time of year but that's when you've got that wonderful transition in the Northern Hemisphere from winter coming to spring and that's when you really find the people on the ground, this is what we're gonna learn a lot as well, resilience is not just about what we get as a group of people involved in the startup community. For those Mongolian herders to go through the toughest times of harsh Arctic winters and to come through and see spring on the other side, it's that sort of corelation between tough times in business. and when all of a sudden every tree is in fruit, every flower is coming out and the good times are there. I think we're gonna learn a lot from the Mongolian herders when we take people there. And the same with the Everest Base Camp Trek, going there in April, in the tail end of the winter, all of the trees are coming out into flower, everything is looking good, it's getting healthy. It's a lovely time of year to be in high altitude Himalayas just as it is in the Mongolian winter on the Steppe. That's gonna be great. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, we, me media are huge supporters of mental health and sharing I guess experiences and even our own stories around mental health challenges and how maybe we've overcome them. So LIVIN is the charity we choose to support and I wear it openly on my sleeve. Mental health, resilience, they go hand in hand, right? Ben Southall - Yeah, I think the mental health thing, especially the great outdoors, I think that's one of the things these days. And I think I've been guilty of it. The Best Job in the World was all about telling your story via social media and that was the early days. There was no Instagram when Best Job in the World days. It was very much just the early days of YouTube, Facebook was there, Twitter was there. I think the further it's gone social media wise now, I'm starting to back off it more so, just because I'm seeing that it is almost more detrimental. For me, I use it as a marketing tool for my business. But in terms of constantly storytelling, constantly looking at how many likes you've got or constantly having to get that feedback, it is a mental health issue and it's gonna be a stronger and stronger one in the future as people look to stylize themselves based on what other people are thinking online. I think that's definitely detrimental to people's long term health. Using the great outdoors as that disconnection time is our best time to realise who we are as people to build up those real friendships. I'm sitting here looking at you in the eye. I'm gonna shake your hand physically. To be able to help that person up a hill. That sort of thing, that real human interaction is something that is slowly but surely drifting out of our lives as we use up more screen time as we sit there and we double tap on our images to like them. That to me, yes I still have to use it for marketing but I think the more we can back away from that in the future, and the more we can reconnect with our planet and people out there in the great outdoors, the better that is for mental health around the world. Chris Hogan - Absolutely, I'm 100% on the same page. I use it for marketing, I don't use it a hell of a lot for myself, in fact, sometimes I find myself in the scroll and it tends to last about five days for me. A whole week I'll realise that this isn't healthy. I'm spiralling, ya know? Ben Southall - It's very easy to do, it's such a simple, it's almost this scheduled thing of what is the first thing I do in the morning when I wake up? I rollover, I put my phone in my hand and I check what's happened in the time that I've been offline overnight. And that's a really bad habit to be and I've really considering now, putting my phone downstairs in the kitchen and physically walking down to it in the morning as one of the last jobs that I do in the morning. I'll get up, I'll have my run, I'll go for a shower and then maybe I'll come back onto my phone an hour later. Let's see if I can make it stick. Chris Hogan - Well, I kind of do that already, but it's for kids though, right? I think it's super important to teach them the importance of understanding the emotion behind what people say on social media. Why are they choosing to say that there? That they're really stuck in their own mind and actually, it's almost like verbal diarrhoea through thumbs. Not getting no emotional feedback from anybody else on what they're saying so they can say whatever they like and they can be as mean or as nice as they like. And then they hit send. Ben Southall - It's gone and you caused the problems. Chris Hogan - And causes all these issues, right? Ben Southall - So, this is one of the sort of things I used to talk about. When, in the early days of Best Job in the World, it used to be very easy for somebody to come on your blog and leave a comment. And it was a throwaway comment. They could write it in 30 seconds, like you say, and press send and it was done. If you rewind, now I'm gonna prove my age here, if you rewind to the days when there used to be a comments page in a newspaper, if somebody really wanted to have a negative comment they would sit down with a notepad. They would handwrite a letter, they'd put it in an envelope and they'd post it off to the editor of the newspaper and it might be printed a day later. So that was early feedback, that was your comment. So you would actually stylize a letter and you'd think about what you were saying. You'd probably have a rewind, delete, go back again. Whereas now it is so instantaneous. Being able to press send, that unfortunately, everybody and it's usually the worst of the worst will put their message out there, press send. And alienate or give somebody an issue or knock somebody's ego and it's not a great way. Bullying, online bullying is a really problematic thing these days. And with my 18 month old son, I really am trying as hard as I can not to constantly put photos up and publicise it, I don't want him to live life in front of a camera like I had to do for five years. Chris Hogan - It's funny that we got onto this topic. The love and hate relationship with social media and how it affects mental health. I think we're not alone here, there seems to be a lot of people going through the same thing. What I love, I love the reference to the campfire entertainment. Campfire entertainment, there should be more of it. Ben Southall - Yeah. Chris Hogan - If you've got the opportunity to light a fire in your own backyard, I encourage you and all your family to go and enjoy that as many nights of the week as you can. Ben Southall - We did this on Saturday night, exactly that. We had the fire-pit going, we had friends down at our place on Saturday night and we sat around and chewed the fat and it was just wonderful being able to be out there, hear the sounds of nature, looking up and just about see the stars on Saturday night. But it just was a really grounding experience and I think I then felt on Sunday morning like I was more connected to the people I'd sat there with than I would have been if we'd just gone down to the pub or sat on the beach and watched the sunset. We were there, we were immersed in the moment. No one had their phones and you were forced in a good way to be there with your best mates. Chris Hogan - Yup, so if you can't do that, light a candle. Light some candles, turn the lights down. Ben Southall - Or like we did on venturer one, cause it was fire ban on the wet Sunday, everybody got their head torches, and there was one that had a red head torch we put them in the centre and everybody stood around for three hours around a red head torch thinking it was the embers of a fire. And it still worked. Chris Hogan - Beautiful, where do I go from here, you know? I'm on board, I wanna go and do one of these. If I can't do this one, if I can't do that one then I'll plan for the one after. You're running multiples. I know you wanna get tickets sold. I want you to get tickets sold because to be honest, the more people that have mental health clarity around life that are in my community, the better my community is gonna become, so it's absolutely selfish. Ben Southall - I think as entrepreneurs, we struggle with that a lot because we are so focused and fixed and so driven as individuals that we want to make something work at all costs. And that could be we apply ourselves so much in our business that we don't leave time for friends and family and just us and making time and I think Aaron Birkby's Peak Persona Programme is a really good one on that where you take stock of where you are, you look at the things you do in a day and you assess who you are as an individual. You put those building blocks in Place to better prepare your mind, to line your life with the things that are important to you, to take time out. The venture programme is very much about that. That's what we've tried to build. The first one started off as just an adventure. We didn't really do much in the way of mindset coaching or workshopping, and as we've gone on and developed this we realised there is more and more value to be taken from sowing seeds of conversation with people and letting the conversation flow naturally. We're not there as a therapy session. We're not trying to go out there and be a, ya know. Chris Hogan - I like the sowing the seed, though. Ben Southall - It's just literally drop a question in the start of the night, have three or four that you'll populate the night with. Then everybody just takes the conversation from there. And there's no alcohol involved, apart from the last night cause you gotta have a sendoff. So it's just those good natural conversations that just flow and as we've gone from Venture one now through to delivering Venture five, I know that we're gonna have a really good one with this one because actually bringing a group called the Nomadic School of business in to help us with all of this. So, they basically correlate the relationship that the Nomadic herders have with their pastureland and you with your business. So look at the Nomadic herders over the course of 12 months. What are the threats that attack them over the course of 12 months. It could be a lack of pasture ground. It could be wolves, it could be extreme temperatures. They're the threats that they struggle from every day much like in business, you're struggling with your staffing. You're looking cause there's more competition coming around. How do you deal with those threats? Aligning those two mindsets and learning from the Nomadic herders as they will learn from us as business people, is that really interesting journey that we're gonna take people on through Mongolia. So it's gonna be five days on the Mongolian Steppe, five days worth of mindset coaching, of head space engineering so that everybody comes back having had a great adventure, yes. Having gone to a new country for culture experience, yes. But connected better to your community and maybe just a little bit more streamlined in your thought process of what you are as a business, where you want to go as an individual and how the next 12 months are gonna pan out. Chris Hogan - Fantastic Ben Southall - Is that sold? We're done. So, bestlifeadventures.com is the website that will be up by the end of the week. There will be an apply now box in there. If not, if you wanna apply for the Venturer programme, the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur website has got great links in there. Or me, benbestlifeadventures.com is the best place for, we're cycling the world's highest road next year. We're motorbiking the world's highest road next year. We're going to Everest Base Camp twice. We're going to Mongolia for the Venturer programme. There's a whole load of new stuff rolling out. I would love people to get on the Best Life Adventures Facebook page, like the page and we will put some great content out for you. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, thank you so much Ben. Ben Southall, bestlifeadventures.com bensouthall.com if you like. That's it for episode 106 here at me media. You can see that the content is changing, why not? If there's a message, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's factual, we're gonna share it. Keep watching, you can see all the episodes on memedia.com.au, cheers. Ben Southall - Nice one, mate.
Is this your show?
Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.
