Business Built Freedom

AI is reshaping how businesses market, operate, and grow. Whether you run a small company or are expanding quickly, understanding how to use AI in marketing can help you stay competitive. In a recent episode of Business Built Freedom, John Daddow from Constantech shared his insights into how AI is changing the way businesses approach marketing—and how you can start making it work for you today.  Key Takeaways  AI in marketing is changing how businesses create content, engage with customers, and manage campaigns.  Automation simplifies tasks, while AI makes informed decisions based on data.  Tools like Google Gemini, Meet, and Keep can be integrated into daily workflows.  Start simple and expand as you become more confident.  Concentrate on content, social engagement, and advertising to see real results.  Being proactive with AI helps you stay ahead and improve efficiency.  Read more

Have you ever copied and pasted terms and conditions onto your website without giving them much thought? Or maybe you haven't updated them in years? While they may seem like legal fine print, outdated or missing website terms and conditions could expose your business to serious risks.  Learn how to protect your business with automated website compliance Key Takeaways  Before we dive into Mark Donnelly's insights, here are some essential reasons why keeping your website terms and conditions up to date is critical for your business:  Outdated or missing terms and conditions can cost you. New regulations mean businesses face hefty fines for non-compliant terms and conditions.  Privacy policies matter, too. Rules around data collection and consumer rights are tightening.  Copying from competitors is risky. Terms and conditions need to be customised for your business to hold up legally.  Live Terms automates website compliance. Instead of manually updating terms and conditions, Live Terms ensures your website always reflects the latest legal requirements. Read more

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in the daily grind of running your business with no time to focus on the bigger picture? When you first started, you probably wore every hat—handling sales, admin, customer service, and operations—only to find yourself unable to break free from the cycle.  Learn how to transition from daily grind to long-term growth. Key Takeaways Before we dive into Kerrie's story, here are some key takeaways on how to transition from daily business grind to long-term growth:  Let go. Start by delegating tasks you dislike and build trust in your team.  Fractional management can help. You don't always need a full-time executive. Part-time expertise can be just as powerful.  Processes and systems are your foundation. Streamlined, repeatable workflows will prevent inefficiencies and support scalability.  Think of your business as an investment. Just like you wouldn't manage a rental property alone, you don't have to run everything yourself.  Read more

In the latest episode of Business Built Freedom, host Josh Lewis is joined by Isaac Alexander, a digital marketing expert with a deep appreciation for entrepreneurship and AI's potential. Isaac offers a fresh perspective on leveraging AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to streamline content creation while maintaining authenticity and originality. Read more here: https://l.dorks.com.au/321

In the latest episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh chatted with Jason Tan, founder of Engage AI, about the impact of AI on sales and prospect outreach, especially on LinkedIn. With AI technology becoming a bigger part of business, their conversation zeroed in on how it's changing the game for sales and prospecting.  Read more

In the last episode of 2023, Josh looks back on the year that was. Due to the arrival of new baby Harrison, this will be the last episode of Business Built Freedom for the foreseeable future until later in 2024. Thank you to everyone for all their support - enjoy the holidays and have a great new years!    

Have you ever wondered how Google works? What's the point of the search engine? How do you get to the top? This week, Josh was joined by Tim Nelson from TPR Media to talk about all things digital marketing.  Tim Nelson is the Digital Marketing Director of TPR Media, a full-service digital agency that specialises in developing and implementing online advertising. Their team includes designers, creatives, strategy and digital specialists, right through to in-house production services that provides leading directors, producers, film crew, and post-production services to produce inspiring and incredible content. Did you like the episode? Leave us some love if so. Stay good!

One of the solutions to helping grow your business could be looking towards a strategic partnership for growth. This week, Josh is joined by David Martin from AI Group, who is an expert on all things to do with strategic partnerships. David has been part of Australia's Innovation Ecosystem for over fifteen years and has worked at the executive level across multiple industries including large and small organisations to facilitate innovative solutions to complex and wicked problems. If you liked the episode, be sure to give us some feedback and share it with a friend. Stay good!

When it comes to running a more efficient business, there are some things you can be doing in-house that can significantly improve your operations. Josh spoke to Greg Gunther from Your Business Momentum about one of the best days to do so - systematising your business. Greg has over 30 years experience in business as an owner and advisor. Together with Joshna Daya Greg co-founded a premium professional services firm - Your Business Momentum to help business leaders enduring high stress levels in these uncertain times. If you liked the episode please leave us a review. Stay good!

Have you delved into the world of Facebook ads? Dahna Borg from Bright Red Marketing joined Josh to share some valuable insights on maximise the potential of Facebook advertising.  Danha specialises in Facebook and Instagram advertising, graphics and video production for Facebook and Instagram ads, influencer sourcing and marketing and also offers marketing coaching and consulting. Liked the podcast? Leave some feedback and please share it with a friend. Stay good!

In this weeks episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh is joined by expert share trader Louise Bedford from The Trading Game to discuss everything that has to do with share trading in Australia. Louise is a best-selling author of five sharemarket books, as well as being a behavioural finance expert and the host of her own podcast Talking Trading.  Listen to Louise's podcast here: https://talkingtrading.com.au/   As always, if you've liked the episode, leave us some feedback. Stay good!   

On this week's episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh is joined by joined by Sean Kelly to discuss some ways to get more out of your business.   Sean is the Founder of embrace and Director at moreton blue software where he delivers software solutions using frameworks and components to reduce the time and cost of delivery.   If you liked the episode, remember to leave us a review and tell your friends. Stay good!

On this episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh sat down with award winning real estate agent Nick Stankiewicz to chat about building positive relationships with your customers. Nick is a multi-award-winning estate agent with a passion for property. He consistently keeps in touch with new market trends, identifying client needs and by maintaining constant communication with potential buyers and sellers. If you liked the episode, make sure to throw us some love on your favourite podcast platform. Stay good!

On this week's episode, Josh and Sayju continue their chat about all things to do with migrating your business to the cloud, including what different options are available, the impact it can have, and how to make sure you pick the right solution. If you enjoyed the episode, remember to leave us a review and spread the word. Stay good!

In this weeks episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh was joined by Andrew Weatherley from WCT Advisory to chat about all things to do with restructuring, cash flow, and having working capital.  Andrew has extensive experience in all aspects of personal and corporate insolvency and advisory in Australia. With over eighteen years of experience gained working in two of Australia's foremost corporate restructuring and advisory firms, Andrew is an expert on business restructuring. If you liked this episode, be sure to leave us a review and spread the word. Stay good!  

Cloud computing is a major aspect of thousands of businesses, but there are a lot of mitigating factors that can confuse people. Josh was joined by Sayju Nath, a cloud mitigation expert, to discuss everything to do with the cloud and how to use it to help your operations. If you enjoyed the episode, remember to leave us a review and spread the word. Stay good!

This is the final part of Josh's chat with Bryan Worn. Becoming financially independent is the gateway to generational success, but the journey to get there can be very difficult. Josh spoke to Bryan Worn about achieving financial independence with your business and what it takes to get there.  Bryan is one of Australia's most experienced and respected business and professional services practice mentors. He is on a mission to help business owners be commercially successful and achieve financial independence whilst still enjoying the personal life they want. Hope you enjoy the episode!

Becoming financially independent is the gateway to generational success, but the journey to get there can be very difficult. Josh spoke to Bryan Worn about achieving financial independence with your business and what it takes to get there.  Bryan is one of Australia's most experienced and respected business and professional services practice mentors. He is on a mission to help business owners be commercially successful and achieve financial independence whilst still enjoying the personal life they want. Hope you enjoy the episode!

We all know we need to be effective, and we need to be efficient in business, but what is really the difference, and how do you go about creating a high-performing business? Josh was joined by Mark Pope from Pragmatico to talk about how to unlock high-performance business strategies.  Mark is a seasoned entrepreneur who, after a brief retirement, realised that his true passion lies in helping other businesses thrive. With a wealth of experience in building profitable and efficient businesses, Mark knows what it takes to succeed: a clear plan, high-performance expectations, and ongoing conversations about progress and targets.  Hope you enjoy the episode!

In today's world, there is a lot of talk about work-life balance, and many people are trying to find ways to achieve it. Josh spoke with Linda Joy Benn about how to maintain balance in life and some tools that can be used to achieve it. Linda Joy Benn has been named a transformational catalyst and industry leader in consciousness evolution. She has helped transform thousands of people's lives over the last 20+ years. She specialises in holistic health to help her patients return to being their true authentic selves. Hope you enjoy the episode!

In today's fast-paced business world, it's more important than ever to have access to the right information at the right time. But with so much data to manage, it can be challenging to make sense of it all. That's where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. Josh was joined by Tony Webster from Inviga to explain how your business can be better with AI.  

In this week's episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh talks with Jay Pandya from MVP1 Ventures about all things to do with digital platforms. Jay blends significant experience with digital transformation, complex program management with a high level of ethical practices. He has a fiery passion for the transformational shift that digital technologies are bringing to our lives and deeply cares about our actions' impact on the quality of life for everyone on the planet.    As always if you like what you hear, remember to throw us a review or get in touch!

In episode two of our two-part series with business expert Martin Morris, Josh and Martin discuss growing businesses and Martin passes on five valuable tips to follow for business growth.  Martin is one of Australia's top business mentors and the group chairman of C-Sky. He specialises in brokerage business structures and has over 35 years' of experience across a broad variety of markets, including construction and property developments, telecommunications, networking, e-commerce, insurance, financial services, health, training, and education. He returns this week to provide even more insightful knowledge about business growth.   

On this week's episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh chats with Martin Morris from C-Sky. Martin shares some great tips for making good connections and improving your networking skills.  Don't forget to rate and review if you liked the show!

In the first episode of 2023, Josh talks to Paula McLean about the top 3 digital marketing trends in 2023. Paula is the founder and director of PAK Digital, a boutique marketing group. She started her career more than 20 years ago when businesses had to rely on traditional media for marketing, which often came with big price tags.  If you enjoyed this, make sure to jump across to iTunes or Spotify. Leave us some love, and give us some feedback. Stay healthy!  

In this week's episode, Josh chats to Grant Titman, co-founder of q4 financial. Grant specialises in delivering generational wealth financial services to the owners of 7-figure businesses. He and his team have spent the last 28 years working in this market and have a deep understanding of the unique problems experienced by these small businesses and their owners.

In this week's episode, Josh talks to branding expert James Flaherty about everything to do with it. Stay good! James Flaherty is the founder of Social Beast. He has over 20 years of experience in marketing and strategy in the Australian and UK markets. He specialises in the business-to-business and consumer marketing sectors where his strategies are driven by who the customer is. If you want a review of your brand, get in touch with James Flaherty on LinkedIn.

In part two of Josh's conversation with Ryan McDonald-Smith, the pair discuss Ryan's new book ‘Yes and' and ‘Yeah but', the process behind it all, and why writing books can make a huge difference to your business.

In part one of Josh's chat with world-renowned author and Younique Creation executive director Ryan McDonald-Smith learn from Ryan as he shares a few different changes that he has gone through to allow him to achieve that and gives work-life balance tips and techniques.  

In this week's episode, Josh chats to Sean Castrina about all things recruiting and retaining talent.  Sean is the founder of The Weekend MBA,  a serial entrepreneur, having started more than 20 companies over the last 20 years, and still seeks to launch a new venture annually. He is the author of 4 bestselling business books including 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, Developing The Entrepreneur Within and World's Greatest Business Plan. He hosts one of the most popular business podcasts on the planet- The 10 Minute Entrepreneur Podcast. Check out Sean's wonderful podcast here: https://seancastrina.com/podcasts/10-minute-entrepreneur/

In this week's episode, Josh sits down with Jason Daniels, Founder / CEO at LSKD to chat about all things small business, including making mistakes, why Jason chases the vibe, and the future of LKSD.

In this week's episode, Josh talks to Sarah Pietsch about how the state of insurance in Australia is changing.  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to jump across to iTunes or Spotify. Leave us some love, give us some feedback. Stay healthy!

In this week's episode of Business Built Freedom, Josh chats to funnel expert Luke Charlton about all things leads, including how to make sure you are getting good ones. Listen now! Learn more about Luke's 9 Email Offers That Get Clients for Free at https://l.dorks.com.au/lukecharlton 

We're back! In this week's episode, Josh sits down with Michael Calam from Centrepoint Alliance to discuss all things related to work-life balance.  Listen now or read more about it on our blog!

In today's episode, we chat to Jeremy Streten about the legal aspects of your business, because if you don't take care of your legal obligations, you will be exposing yourself to stress and other and inevitable problems that will surface.  

In this episode, Josh details all you need to know about the upcoming release of .au domain names in Australia.

On this weeks episode, Josh talks to Cameron McMillan from Creating Succession about succession planning for when the time comes to move on from your business.

In this week's episode, Josh talks to strategic planning expert John Hale about making sure you've got the right strategy not only in business but also in your personal life. 

Adam and Jim are back this week to tell us more about the manufacturing industry in Australia and what makes Products For Industry successful. They share 7 tips to succeed in building a long-lasting relationship with clients, leading a team, and managing projects that you can adopt no matter what industry you're in. Listen to the podcast or visit the Dorks Delivered blog to learn more. 

In this week's episode, we chat with Adam Piper and Jimmy Eckert from PFI about the state of the Australian manufacturing industry. Listen or visit the Dorks Delivered blog to learn about how the cost of execution in the manufacturing industry in Australia is the biggest show-stopper, how they can innovate to have something that nobody else has, and how automation in manufacturing, like in other industries, is not removing jobs, rather it's just creating better jobs.

This week, we'll be talking all things business grants with A Better Bid Director Toni Raso. Toni works with medium-sized business owners who want to sustainably grow their business by tendering for work or winning grants. To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

This week, we'll be talking about how to build positive workplace culture in Australia with Andre Van Der Merwe, a Managing Partner at Verity Consulting with over 20 years' leadership experience. To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

This week, we'll be talking about self-awareness around leadership with Lucy Faulconer, a leadership coach with a background in psychology and management consulting. To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

We're always told that you need to create rapport to have better customers that know, like and trust you. What is rapport? How do you know if you've built too much rapport? Can you break rapport? Janeen Vosper from SpeechPerfect.com sheds some light. Listen to the podcast or read more about it at Dorks Delivered blog.

Part two of our engaging conversation with Luke Fatooros.

7 Steps to Building a Smart Business Engine With Luke Fatooros We've all been in a spot in our business where we're trying to work out how to get from A to B or how to get to the next level. But what is the next level? How many levels are there? Luke Fatooros from Ideas Into Business shares with us the 7 steps to building a smart business engine to give you time, money, and freedom. Learn more on how to build a smart business engine at dorksdelivered.com.au Luke's Business Journey Why are there seven steps? What are the steps to building a smart business engine to give you the time, money, and freedom? Luke: Let me start with my $12 million mistake or failure. It's something that I don't recommend, but this was my first step into business. My first business was a store that my father and I shared with $800. We thought we were going to conquer the world, and the first 14 months were a living hell. We didn't know what we were doing. We had all the ambition and enthusiasm, and that was really what got us through the first 14 months. When we eventually learned a few things, such as how to distinguish myself from the competition, my first joint venture took off. After all that pain, it eventually became a $12 million, 65-staff business after five years. I was winning awards like Entrepreneur of the Year, Microsoft top companies, the Westpac finance. And then I lost everything. My partner had to go to the staff and tell them we had to close this business. What came out of that were life-changing lessons. There are three critical lessons I want to share with you, and this was how the seven steps were formulated. 1. Understand Cash Flow Luke: I had to learn how money works and how money flows. The first lesson was to stop trading time for money—I didn't know what that meant. I had to move from a limited earning structure to an unlimited earning structure. When I lost that business, I learned the difference between being self-employed and being a business owner, and I understood creating wealth in business. I realised that my business was worth nothing because it was strapped to me. We become burnt out when trying to build a business the wrong way. It took me 7 years to recover. 2. Work on Your Internal Structure Luke: By contrast, when I built my second business, a distribution business, I had three factories in China, the Philippines, and Korea, and I'm supplying five countries from a desk. That gives you a lot of flexibility with the way you can travel. You're not tied to a location, which is something that's becoming very important with our current times. Luke: If someone saw me with my notebook at my home office, they would think it's a joke, a hobby. But that business was valued at $3.5 million up to 3 years. It's not how fancy a business looks on the outside. It's how structured internally. When I was 12 years old, I was given the opportunity to make these number plate brackets. It sounds like such a boring product, but I was getting $6 a bracket. I was able to make one in 1.5 hours. I sped up my processes. By the time I was 13, I was making 10 number plate brackets an hour, so I was then making $60 an hour relatively. I went on to employ people, but the lesson that I learned was people are lazy. Don't tie things to money, and don't tie things to yourself. If you have a problem or a key person in your business has a problem, how do you overcome that? How do you make sure that you aren't the key person? How was that valuable to the next person that was buying it? 3. Build a Strong Foundation Luke: This comes to this thing called sequencing. You cannot step out of the engine. You cannot hand down management or the responsibilities with regard to the foundation of your business to anyone else. If you have a vehicle that's got a broken engine, you cannot paint it green hoping that the engine would work. That is what people do in business. They change the website or invest in social media marketing and think this is going to grow the business. That has to come at a certain point. Your sequencing is wrong. 7 Steps to Building a Smart Business Engine to Give You Time, Money, and Freedom 1. Optimise Your Mindset Luke: People have this business idea, but people focus on marketing strategies, negotiation, sales, systems, processes, etc. But there's a thing called you. We all have our own personal brands. People don't buy your products and services. They buy you. They buy the image that you are projecting. Every one of us projects a particular image that we think we need the world to see. Relay that to buying a Samsung phone or an iPhone. The image was around the inspiration and message that Steve Jobs had. Who's the owner of Samsung? Luke: Exactly. No one knows who arrived second on the moon. Every one of us has self-sabotaging patterns and limiting beliefs. We might think we're marvellous, but the truth is we're actually not. You want to be the best version you can be of yourself and your business. How do your customers want to perceive you? You have to pay attention to that. When I started my first business, we went from $1 million to $12 million in 5 years. That incredible growth, the prestige and recognition, and so much money coming to my life as a kid made me think I was invincible. It didn't do any good because even though I sort of earned the success, I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't have mental maturity. My ego was running my show—a self-sabotaging pattern. It doesn't matter how fancy you get into your marketing sales strategy. If you have this self-sabotaging pattern, your business is just never going to make it. What I've learned over the years is the people who resist openness, self-development, and willingness to learn are the ones who desperately need this help the most. That's the self-sabotaging trait. That is a disaster in business. Optimise your mindset. The six inches between the ears is the most important six inches to measure on your body. 2. Optimise Your Niche Luke: There are lucrative niches, and the money is naturally flowing into those lucrative niches. The common mistake is when we have meat; we try to sell it to vegetarians. It doesn't matter how fancy your meat is; a vegetarian is just not going to buy your meat. That's not a lucrative niche for your product. My philosophy is to just follow the cash. What you want to do is you want to find customers who buy from you the quickest and the easiest. Out of 100 customers, there will be some of them who will buy from you instantly—they love you and your brand. I call these your real customers. I think this is where a lot of marketing companies get things wrong. They all say that this is your ideal customer, but that doesn't mean those people are actually going to buy from you. When you've been in a business, or you've been trading, and you look back at your history, you see that there's a group that just hands you cash. Shift your focus toward your real customers, not your ideal customers. I analysed why we struggled for 14 months with my first business. My business partner, Gary, was an engineer, so we thought we could do computer programming. We're going to write software to help businesses become efficient and more profitable. We thought this was just marvelous, so we took my $800 and launched the business. No one bought anything, and we couldn't understand this. We kept trying stuff, but the customers didn't want our stuff. Instead, they're looking for computer hardware. We quickly decided that we would give them what they were looking for. We got rid of the software, and we opened a little shop in the back of some shopping centre. No one went there. We started putting the computers where people could see them. We still had a lot to learn, but we started to see a little bit of light. If you are struggling in business, find where the money is flowing. Listen to your customers, what they are looking to buy, instead of ramming your product down their throat. Shift and sift to what the market really wants. My first business really took off because we've shifted and sifted out of selling computer software, which was a dead niche. You can't keep flogging a dead horse, right? You have to be smart enough to move across. How do you make sure you're not emotionally attached to that dead horse? Luke: If you are absolutely in love with your idea, that's a self-sabotaging trait, and you need help with that. My help was a hammer on my head, and now I'm very aware of self-development and problems in my own business caused by my own self-destructive traits. The people who ultimately fail are those who will not let go of their idea. That's ego, and that is a terrible self-sabotaging pattern. Did you fix that through reflection or having other people come in? Luke: Yes. I went through seven years of massive self-reflection and actually understanding that you need to get help in your life. I was not mature enough. I didn't have the structure to be successful in business, even though I was very good at business strategies. I've done a lot of self-work over the years, and the biggest thing is getting rid of the ego. That's not easy for most people. But if you can do that, you're on your way. Is there a certain size of the market that you need to start doing that? If you've been in business for a little while, say you've got a B2B business with 100 clients or a B2C business with 10,000 clients, how do you work out the numbers? Luke: If you've got a bit of history in your business, you can take the time to analyse your database and then categorise them into A, B, and C clients. Who are the people who are just paying you and not giving you problems? Who are the people who won't just buy from you, no matter what you do, it's just never enough? And then who are the ones who buy from you after some hard work. It's not about percentages, time, staff, or size. It's the process. Analyse, and then you'll be fine. 3. Optimise Your Sales  Luke: What do your real customers want to buy from you? I've been in business since I was 23. I've done probably every sales course under the sun, and I've never seen anything that's told me the two secrets that I believe you need to have to achieve success in sales. The first one is don't sell. That's a big one that I've had a lot of trouble grasping. I've realised you shouldn't be doing the sales courses. You are already the best salesperson if you're passionate about your product. Luke: I agree. What you hear is the secrets of closing—how do you trick people into this or influence people? Looping, straight-line persuasion, that sort of stuff. Luke: When someone is buying for you, what is that one thing they are subconsciously looking for? When they walk in, they scan you for one thing before they even want to hear your pitch about your product. It's trust. If I don't trust you, I don't care how fancy your Ferrari or whatever your thing is, I'm not going to buy from you. I'm going to try and find someone else who I feel comfortable with to give my money to. I've never heard a sales course ever tell me that. They all try to show how to influence, trick, close, overcome objections, etc. to get the money in the bank. I genuinely don't believe in that. Even if you do that sort of tactics, will they be long-term clients? Are they going to be happy at the end of the day if you use some psychological neurolinguistic programming thing? Are they going to be the type of client that's going to be a raving fan and going to be sitting in your A-grade pile? Probably not. It's better to build that rapport and relationship and to make sure that you can know, like, and trust the person. Luke: There are two ways that you can build trust to influence sales in the right way. The first one is your personal branding; the second is your hook product. Its purpose is to let your customers experience your value with the least amount of risk. And resistance.  Luke: For example, there are two pie ladies in the supermarket. One lady has a stand with flyers, and the other lady has a stand with a little microwave and pies. The first lady is handing out brochures, telling everyone how marvellous her pies are. The other lady bakes, and she has samples in the oven. People could smell their aroma. She puts some on a tray, cuts it up, and invites people over. The second lady is actually letting her customers try and experience. That's what you call a little hook, and there's no risk. They love it. The other lady is telling everyone how marvellous her pies are, but there's no experience. There's nothing going on there. And that's the two different ways people sell in the world. One of the things I found was my competition was garages. This was the early 1990s, so they sold computers in converted homes. It wasn't a mainstream retail thing. Customers would go in and then speak with some dude behind the counter who is unbelievably knowledgeable on computers, but the customers don't know what he's talking about—ROMs, processors, etc.—so it freaked them out. That's not a good customer experience, which is what customers really want. What I did was I put displays up even if we didn't have a lot of customers then. We had to prove our concept. We knew we were in the money, but we just didn't know how to be known yet.

How to Leverage Social Media to Generate Clients With Chantal Gerardy We're always told to leverage social media sites to bring in more business, but what does that actually mean? Sometimes just putting up posts of cats or just resharing things work. Some things don't. This week, Chantal Gerardy, an online business strategist, talks to us about how to leverage social media to generate paying clients. Get more tips on how to leverage social media at dorksdelivered.com.au Should you be on all social media sites? Is there any reason you should be on every single social media site?  Chantal: Hell, no. We wouldn't sleep if we are on every single platform. I honestly believe that we just need to be where our ideal customers are, but we also need to be where it makes us comfortable. If you're not comfortable on a certain platform, then maybe that platform is not for you. Why Facebook is the best social media for marketing? Chantal: Facebook is my favourite because there are so many people on Facebook. I love being on Facebook, and I love working with clients on Facebook. It's quite a user-friendly platform and it's social, which means you don't have to be overly sales-y. You can focus on building meaningful relationships, and you can find your ideal client on them. Should you do your digital marketing? Eating Apples Versus Growing Apples  A lot of people have someone who's managing their Facebook profile, a niece or a nephew, and they wonder why it's not bringing any more people. My personal thought is if you're really good at eating apples, that does not mean you're really good at growing apple trees. That's the way that I would define the difference between someone who's using a platform and someone who's actually jumping in to use the platform to make money. I'm sure you see that all the time.  How does Facebook digital marketing work? How does Facebook digital marketing work versus just putting up posts of cats, dogs, the last job that you did, or smiling customers?  Chantal: There are just way too many people out there, and there are way too many cats and dog photos. Like you said, just because you can log into the profile and share your cat photos doesn't mean you know how to generate paying customers. The good news is that you can learn how. Many business owners think that they actually have to get a marketing degree or they've got to outsource it to someone else. I'm massively hyperactive and completely non-techy and I taught myself social media marketing, but I learned how to do it the non-fluffy and cookie-cutter way. I was able to transform my business and get paying customers. If I can do it, anyone can do it. But there is a skill to it.  If you don't want to be stressed, overwhelmed, and frustrated, it's important that you learn how to properly use the things that you are going to use in your business, which means reading the instructions. Organic Reach Versus Paid Advertising There are a lot of things when it comes to Facebook and marketing that people get confused with, such as paid advertising versus organic advertising. What is the difference between the two? What works and what doesn't? What did work and what do you think is going to work? Chantal: We have to realise that the social media platforms are businesses so they're constantly going to be asking you for money. Does organic work? A lot of people say that it doesn't work. However, for myself and all the clients that I've worked with, we see massive results. It's like building a house. If you don't get the foundations right, which is kind of like your organic strategy and your organic marketing, it doesn't matter how much money you put on it, it's simply not going to work. At the end of the day, it's how you position yourself online. You have to make sure that you position yourself as a professional. You've got to understand your privacy settings. If you're going to be a little bit aggressive or risque in your marketing, then you've got to have some sort of crisis and management plan in place. You've also got to know how to hide things, block people, and report things. If we're going to use these things in our business, we've got to learn how to use them properly. How do I start marketing on Facebook? Chantal: If you choose to do organic marketing and you set up your profiles, you follow the instructions, and you do them correctly, then you learn how to get it all started and get it working for you. The next part of that is the growth side of it. Just putting content on a page that has no one following is not going to get you business. Launching a product when you haven't gotten some hype about it beforehand doesn't mean you're going to have a massive stream of clients coming in the next day. What's really important is you sit down and you focus on three things: Skills - develop your skills Strategy - have the end in mind System - spend only a few minutes online yet make sure it's actually working and generating your clients without having to pay for advertising. A lot of people will say that you've got to do advertising. I think everybody is hoping for a magic pill, and there isn't one.  Do you need a website to start a business? There's a scenario we like to play on the podcast, which is if you've just started running a hair salon or a pie shop, you've got no customers, and you've got $5,000 for marketing, where would that $5,000 be best spent to get a return?  Chantal: The scenario is my life. I came from South Africa to Australia. I knew absolutely no one and didn't have a cent. I was in a saturated industry, and I didn't even have $5,000 to put towards a website.  Nowadays, you don't need a website. A lot of people say you've got to have the website first and then social media. For me, you can generate paying clients from social media. When you make money, go and get that website. You need that website, but which comes first, I'm always going to say social media.  If money is important, it's more about getting those clients and you can position yourself online. It is something that business owners could do. If I had had $5,000 and the experience I have now, would I have gotten the website? I think I would have invested in myself as a business owner to be better in business and to develop my skills. I think that's something that would have been a valuable tool, especially when you are just starting out and you don't have customers. You only know what you know, right?  It's like the chicken and the egg, isn't it? When we're talking to different business owners, most of the time they've got one of two major problems: they've got no money coming in and they've got all the time in the world or they've got lots of money coming in and no time. So we try to get them more time. They might spend $1,000 on something, but then we're removing a process that's costing them $3,000 over 12 months so they've got that money back. They've spent a little bit, but they can see the results from it, like the chicken and the egg. What are the best Facebook marketing tips? If you're just starting off fresh, what are the best Facebook marketing tips to make sure that you're spending your time appropriately on the platform and you're not just trying to find friends? Chantal: For me, it's your personal branding. Maybe because I came from South Africa, I was always around privacy. I wanted to understand the privacy settings of the social media platforms that I was using because I am cautious about how my kids would be seen online, especially when you're trying to go out and generate customers. How do I want to be seen? I'm an extrovert, so I don't mind having everything public, and I don't mind going out there and shouting things from the rooftop. But I was very conscious of the fact that a lot of people are introverts and maybe they don't want to be the face of their brand. So it needs to be an understanding of how you want to position yourself on social media. There is no right or wrong strategy. There's a different strategy for each person. Second, don't forget to tell your personal story, your journey, your business backstory, how you got to where you are and what you're passionate about. At the end of the day, it's social media, which is social, and people want to connect with you at a deep and meaningful level. You will become memorable just for the story that you've shared. Don't forget to keep telling those stories online because someone who has a similar experience will connect with you, and that becomes a part of what you do. Personal branding is really important, but strategy or words are also important. When I first started out, everyone said to me, just be visible—take everything, give it away for free, and just shout it from the rooftops and go online and just go crazy. That's freaking exhausting! It's disappointing when there are crickets and you get absolutely nothing from them. When you consider a strategy, it's about working out who your ideal customers are, where they're hanging out and figuring out how you're going to best communicate to them, not in your language, but their language.  We can communicate through written words, photos, and videos, so it's important for us to take some time to consider how we are going to effectively communicate what it is that we do to the people that we want to do it with so that we can get a yes from them and then find those people online and then present it to them professionally with the end in mind. Don't just give it all away for free. It's not selling if you're servicing someone and they're happy to pay you. It's servicing. A lot of people are scared about that call to action, but a call to action is one of the most important things that you need on social media. You have to let people know what the next step is. You've got to let them know how available you are, or else, they won't click and then you won't get a view. You'll get scrolled over.  Can you do too much digital marketing? Can you do too much? Chantal: As a business owner, I think you can. You'll just burn out, and you'll get so frustrated.  Before starting with me, a lot of my clients used to sit on their phones or laptops all the time. They even go to the toilet with their phone. They couldn't leave it because they were so scared that they were going to miss out on something.  That's where the system comes in. You've got to book it into your calendar—your time to do your online marketing, create content creation, do your growth strategy, generate clients, and engage or follow up. It needs to be part of your business model.  If you do too much, you will burn out, you will get frustrated and it's not sustainable. Even if you've got someone in your business, let's say I have a receptionist and while they're not answering the phones, they're doing other admin stuff like doing some social media posts, is there a chance that a potential lead looks at your profile, sees there are updates twice a day every day and thinks we must have too much time or too much money? From the perspective of a person looking in, do you think there could be a bad problem by having too much on your social media page?  Chantal: It's not a problem. They were going to stalk your page and see a whole lot of valuable stuff that you'd strategically put out there from your content bucket. That's not the problem. The problem is actually the step before that. If you're constantly posting stuff, you're not allowing the organic reach of things to come in. If people aren't engaging, it's just going to go dead. You're not actually going to get that engagement, which means you're not going to come up on people's feeds. You might be posting every five minutes, but you're going to mess up with the organic reach. You've got to allow posts to go on and reach people, but you've also got to have a growth strategy, meaning you've got to go in and grow your page. If you're putting posts up but there's no one on the page, it's not going to happen. You've still got to take those profiles and grow them. For example, on Instagram, it means following hashtags and doing hashtag searches, which is the same as in LinkedIn. It's going into groups or communities that have got your ideal clients, and I call it "peacocking." Peacock in front of them and let them know what you do. Content creation is only one part of it. It's obviously a very important part, but the other part of it is the growth part of it, meaning that you've got to go and do joint ventures, collaborations. Get your customers involved in your marketing, i.e. user-generated content. There are influencers, but I don't really like that word. I prefer to say raving fans or cheerleaders. We've got to also encourage that part happening in your social media and get that organic reach going. Josh: What is a good reach? If you've got 1,000 followers or 1,000 people who liked your page, is 5% to 100% a good reach? Chantal: There are a couple of factors. First, where did those people come from? Have you only just got the page going or has it been dead for months before? History is so important. As long as your Insights each week is going up, that's all you're looking for. If it's not going up, you're going to ask yourself why. You've also got to look at the time of the day that you're posting. You've got to look at the audience and the type of content. Is the content suitable for the audience?  You've got to respect the platform. Facebook is an older platform. It doesn't use hashtags, but it's more social and storytelling. Instagram is more about the images. It's a younger demographic, usually under the age of 25. There are so many different aspects, and you cannot let your ego get in the way. Making it about just the engagement is what I call ego metrics, which doesn't fly for me.  I have had many clients who called me. When I asked them where did they find me, they said they've been following me for 5 years on social media. And I had no idea. They've never engaged, they've never liked anything. They've just had all these touchpoints across all these social media. Suddenly the time was right and they picked up the phone. Do I have to throw in the towel just because I didn't get a like? No, so don't worry about it. Just keep checking your insights, and make sure they're green. That's good advice. I know I've looked at these metrics and wonder why this post got so many more views or shares and this one didn't, hence, this one seems better. It's just the people at the time. The algorithm is always changing. What is shadow banning?  You were talking earlier about shadow banning, where a page might not necessarily get the results or the traction you'd expect it to. There's Facebook and Linkedin jail. Tell us more about it. Is there a way to get out of it? Chantal: Yes, on Facebook and LinkedIn, you can go to jail. The funny thing is when this happens to someone, sometimes you get notified but sometimes you don't.  A lot of the time people didn't even know that it happened or why it happened. I always tell people that they need to ask and to consider what they were doing that got them into that trouble because chances are they might go down that road again. Also, they've got AI, artificial intelligence. In the olden days, it was humans but during the pandemic, they actually increased the amount of artificial intelligence. When something suddenly happens and it just doesn't seem right, they could just suddenly put you in jail. Do they tell you or will your reach just go down? Chantal: I know with Facebook, you do get notified. I've had people that have had their group feature taken away for a whole year. I've had other businesses marketplace for a whole year. Josh: What did they do to do that? Chantal: A lot of the time, they are spamming. In Facebook's Marketplace, you are not allowed to advertise your business. Facebook is a business. They want you to pay for advertising, and they give you a page. Use what they give you for free, but the Marketplace is to sell secondhand stuff. It's not to sell your business. When you sell your business there, they'll give you a warning. If you don't listen, they'll take that function away from you forever. When you close down your personal profile and try to set up another personal profile, they can pick it up. You've got to go to another computer, you got to clear cookies, etc. To lose those functions to all the platforms are different. With Instagram, they won't even tell you. Suddenly, you'll have no action for a week on your Instagram page. Usually, it happens when people run out of hashtags to use and they just use the same hashtag again and again. Instagram notices you're using this on every single post. Facebook's new one at the moment is it'll take away your ability to comment in groups. If you've been engaging in groups but you are copy-pasting the same promotional campaign in groups every single day, Facebook will stop you from doing that for a week. You can go into groups and watch, but you can't actually engage. At the end of the day, it is about relationships. Spamming is not relationships. Spamming is like what you're trying to do to get a quick magic pill. Messages: Dating and Marketing  If you're on Tinder and you send the same boilerplate "how is your day" message to everyone, how engaged do you really think that the other person is going to be? They'd know that that's not hyper-targeted. You can write something that's relevant to the time and the person. Is there anything you shouldn't write or shouldn't say when doing Facebook marketing?  Chantal: I spoke about personal branding, and it's really important. I'm a little bit cheeky, so I'll be a little bit cheeky, but I work one on one with clients, so they got to kind of be comfortable with that when they work with me. So that's kind of letting them get a feel for me even before we even start working together. In recommendations or reviews on Facebook, you can't swear or use profanity. If there is, you can actually report it and they can remove it. There is actually a setting in Facebook for you to turn off certain words on your page. So a lot of people that are in marketing or cryptocurrency might come onto their page, and you can control them. You can go into your page and you can set it up so that no person using the word "scam" can post on your page. This comes back to skills. People don't take the time to develop these skills and understand these platforms, but all those capabilities are there when you know how. Free Facebook Marketing Resources  How do you help people who want to know how they can do better in Facebook marketing? Chantal: The best thing to do is to subscribe to the website, and we'll have a whole bunch of freebies there. We've got content calendars, 21 content ideas that outsmart the algorithm, how to get ready for Facebook ads, and how to save time and money online. Jump on, snap it up and get onto the email list because we'll keep you up to date when things change because they change all the time. It's more important than anything. The playing field is always being updated.  Recommended Author: Sandy Foster  Are there any books that influenced you to become the person you are now?  Chantal: When this little South African girl came to Australia, she had some money mindset issues. As a business owner, that can actually hold you back and stop you from taking some of the risks in your business or at least enjoying some of your business. Sandy Forster has a book. She's an Australian, and she's on the Sunshine Coast. I've done the Wildly Wealthy programme twice.  I find her book really helpful. It's mostly for women, but it is for some inspired men. And I got a lot out of it because I love health and fitness. One of the things that I really think it's important to take time out to do is to just get your willpower and your muscles strong as well, and that's your money-making mind muscles.  I've gone down the struggle of being overweight. I changed my mindset completely, so I couldn't agree more with making sure that the instrument that you're using, being your body, is in the best shape that it can be if you got to make the best decisions. Talk to Chantal Gerardy What is Business Freedom to you? What is business freedom to you? Chantal: Business freedom for me is simply making sales without spending your life online and having a balanced life. To me, freedom is the ability to know that sales are still coming through the door.  For my social media, I've got a system in place and I'm still making sales. My business is still running, and I'm away camping. To me, that is business freedom. I love having a reoccurring income coming in, knowing that what you've built up there is going to lend itself to your hobbies and what you want to do. Join Our Facebook Group!   If you enjoyed this, jump to iTunes and leave us some love. Stay good, stay healthy and hopefully stay out of lockdown. 

Psychological Safety at Work With Geoffrey Wade How do you work with your staff? How close are you to your staff? Dorks Delivered Director Joshua Lewis and Geoffrey Wade, the founder of Onirik, talk about psychological safety at work.  What Is Psychological Safety in the Workplace? What is psychological safety in the workplace? Geoffrey: It's a piece of techno-jargon, isn't it? It sounds really good. I'm comfortable using technical jargon. However, I prefer to think of it and describe it as team dynamics. The academic nomenclature has its place, but it's a lot easier to think about it in plain day-to-day terms. People Speak Up Geoffrey: Team dynamics cover how we work together with one another, how we communicate with one another, and how we behave with one another. As a leader, we create a culture or an environment where people feel safe to speak up. They are comfortable asking questions. They feel safe to critique the status quo and make mistakes. In the context of the team in the organisation, they classify mistakes as "learning opportunities" rather than "they made a mistake." We made a mistake. Let's clean it up and what did you learn from that? What would you do differently next time? Safety is not really about creating an environment where we live in cotton wool. By "safe to speak up" I mean we can ask questions like, "What the hell's going on here?" and the team will take that without feeling threatened because they know the questions are about learning and improvement. We can challenge one another, and we can be a little provocative with one another. I can tell a lot about the research, but I'll tell a story. It happened in Queensland last year. There was an underground coal mine up in Northern Queensland. There's a big heavy machinery underground churning out coal. When you mine coal, there's a flammable explosive gas, so the mines were carefully designed with ventilation to remove that gas, to make it safe for workers to be there and operate machines, and to avoid undesired explosions. They've got a new longwall up and running, and they were getting about 60% more gas from the coal than they anticipated in their design. That was a real problem because they couldn't evacuate the gas as quickly as they needed. Everyone knew about it—the workers, supervisors, and managers—and they kept running that machine, generating more gas than they could clear. No one spoke up. You can predict where it went. Thank God no one was killed, but people were injured. The CEO of that company said he was stunned that no one felt safe enough to speak up. People could have died, but they were continuing to work in that really dangerous environment because they didn't have the psychological safety to speak up. The Precursor of Other Measures Geoffrey: Psychological safety is the precursor of so many other measures that are important in a business. It is the lead indicator for employee engagement and mental well-being. It's a really critical human wellness measure for your workplace, and it correlates with other work satisfaction measures. These then correlate with productivity, performance, customer experience, and growth. And these correlations are not random. Like many people, I believe employee engagement is an important measure. But as a statistician, I also understand that we can show a correlation in an individual organisation between employee engagement and other performance measures. You can get Gallup's data, which was pulled from 200 companies, and then massaged it so it all fits together. Across 200 companies, they could show a correlation between employee engagement and commercial outcomes. In an individual company, you can't. With psychological safety, we can show statistical correlations between psychological safety and the KPIs that matter. You get correlation coefficients and impact percentages, and that's profound. It's an important measure, particularly when you can show an organisation how they can get a healthier, happier workforce and great commercial outcomes for all other stakeholders, customers, shareholders and the wider community. Is It OK To Say Anything? Your workplace is a working, breathing organism. You want to make sure that people are listening and that the left hand is talking to the right hand. With that, is it okay to say anything like "I hate that the toilets are only cleaned once a week" or "I hate that this X, Y, Z that's happening is impacting my life?" Is there a limit that you should be putting on yourself as an employee? Geoffrey: Is it okay to speak up with almost anything? Can you ask questions that are not politically correct? Yes, you can in a psychologically safe environment. What sort of questions should be safe to ask? Pretty much any question. Is there a stupid question? No. People ask a question because they truly do not know. They are asking the question in order to learn. They didn't know and realised that the gap in their knowledge needed to be plugged in because there are real consequences, so they ask the question. Do the questions have to be politically correct? No. One of the dilemmas that we have in our nation is some well-intended politicians passed laws that say I'm responsible for how you feel about what I say. That law is wrong and fundamentally flawed. You are responsible for how you feel about what I say, just as I'm responsible for any emotion that I evoke in response to what you say. But I'm also responsible for what I choose to say in response to what you say. I'm responsible for my emotions. Yet the law is saying that I have no control over my emotional state but the rest of the population do, and therefore they are responsible for my emotional state and they have the keys to me and they have to use it wisely, otherwise, I'll sue their butts off. It's very easy for everyone to be holding a thought but we feel uncomfortable because we should be able to do it. I had a friend that came into my house with a girlfriend. I'm a bit of an investment entrepreneur and I don't mind sharing my earnings from my properties, and she looked at me like I was absolute dirt because I had more than one house, therefore, I'm a capitalist. Geoffrey: You said something that offended her, but you didn't offend her. Your language didn't offend her. She chose to be offended because she had a different belief set. She could have just chosen to go, "Okay, Josh is building financial independence for his family and himself. It's different to my map of the world. I don't have to be offended because he does stuff that's different." Exactly right, and that's a big problem that we have with speech at the moment. Why Should You Measure Psychological Safety? Geoffrey: We've done some workplace-wide studies in Australia, and they're suggesting that as much as 40% of the workforce is working in that context where psychological safety is low. When we work with organisations and measure it, we find that number is about 20% to 30% of the organisation. Psychological Safety Affects Your Team's Performance Geoffrey: The other thing that we find is there's a huge correlation between those quadrants and the performance; the teams that have got a high psychological safety are always the ones that are performing the best and they have greater resilience and agility too. They adapt to change more quickly and effectively. I had a conversation with a leader, who is the head of HR, and he thinks that psychological safety is fine in their organisation, which had 3,000 people in it. I asked him how he knew, and he said it's subjective and he just feels it. The observation I made was when psychological safety is low, people don't speak up, they don't ask questions, they don't rock the boat and challenge the status quo, and if they make a mistake, it's swept under the carpet—there's silence and invisibility. Will subjective assessment know what's going on? No. You have to measure it. When you measure psychological safety, you can see what the return on investment is going to be if you decide to fix it. But you have to measure it and you can do so at a low cost too. There are some tools that actually show you what it's costing you or what you can realise in terms of value to fix it. Some of the measurement tools for the human wellness dimensions are hideously expensive. I'm against that because I want organisations to be able to measure the stuff at a low cost and then have a budget to fix the problems. Measuring it should be fast, accurate, and cheap. Psychological Safety Embraces Diversity and Inclusion Geoffrey: The other thing about psychological safety that's really interesting is it embraces, encourages, and supports diversity. You can ask a provocative question or a different question, and the rest of the team accepts it and doesn't get offended by it. You come in and you've got an entirely different culture and you speak with a different accent and the team will embrace you because they know that you will have a different perspective because you come from that culture. You will ask different questions, too. Sometimes there's genius in that, and they want it. If no one spoke up, you wouldn't have the diversity. You just have a dictatorship. The reason you have a team is to have that. Fear and Anxiety Grow Without Psychological Safety Geoffrey: If you don't have psychological safety, what you have in its place is fear and anxiety. You've experienced fear at some point in your life, whether it's physical, emotional, or psychological fear. If you recall those experiences, what happens? There's a kicker of adrenaline and your brain freezes. You go into a fight or flight mode. Your workforce needs to solve complex problems, manage effective communication, and innovate and deal with change. If you've got anxiety and fear and you've got a workforce whose higher brain function is compromised, their ability to innovate, solve problems, and deal with change goes out the window. That's costly for them because health-wise, they're running on cortisol and adrenaline and they're not feeling good. They're better with endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin—the nice feeling stuff that makes your brain entirely resourceful so you can perform better. Think of me as a newbie in retail and it's Friday. I've been with the company for a month and I've just had a rocking day. I've made 20 sales today, which is the best of the best. I'm performing, a star retailer, after only being with the company for a month. I'm walking out the back of the store, and I tell my boss that I made 20 sales today, but he says, "Yeah, Jeff but your floor is undone, and I really needed you to make 30. Why didn't you make 30?" What's going to happen to me? I'll be deflated, destroyed. Geoffrey: It's unlikely I'm going to talk to my boss again next week. He just silenced me for a long time. There are simple things leaders have got to understand in terms of what they say and do in those simple, day-to-day contexts, which have consequences. We've all been in a situation where winds were taken out of our sails and not necessarily always at the best of times. It's interesting because sometimes as a leader, you say these things at an inappropriate time, but you then reflect on it but you don't necessarily tell the person that you stuffed up and you shouldn't have said that. You sort of hold it to your chest. Geoffrey: That's a brilliant example. If my boss came back to me 5 minutes later and said, "Hey, Geoff, I think I just blew it." If he apologised, that is fantastic for someone who is new with the company. There's a lot of research about trust that says if you screw up but then acknowledge it, own it and fix it, you wind up with deeper trust between you and the other person than if you've had a flawless relationship. I think that that's a lesson for everyone because we've all been in a spot where we've lost our cool whether it be in family or in business. It's important to be able to understand the ways that you can come back from that. That all comes down to psychological safety, being free and transparent so we don't have this baggage that hangs about you. How Do the Dynamics of Communication Change With Business Growth? Growth can be very stressful. Growth can bring in a whole bunch of different types of chemicals, whether it's growth in your family, like a new child on the way, or growth in business. In a small business, it's very easy to have the boss relay exactly their belief systems and why they're in business and have a productive team. How does that happen when you get bigger, when you get to 10 people, 20 people, 100 people? How do the dynamics of communication change with business growth? Geoffrey: The answer is not complex. We look at a big organisation and we go, "Wow! How do they do it?" However, the experience of your team and your immediate supervisor trumps the organisation. Certainly, it has to come from the top, but when you think about it, we just do it team by team. Your average span of control is 9 or 10, so if you have 100,000 employees, divide it by 10. That's 10,000 teams, so it's not so much that I have to work with 100,000 people. It's 10,000 leaders. If I measure what's going on, and I find 2,000 have actually got it nailed, another 2,000 that with or two changes would be world-class, another group, say, 3,000 that got quite a bit of work to do, I'm down to the 3,000 leaders who really need attention. To build psychological safety is not complex. It is about setting some frames. Leaders will say how the team is going to operate and that they don't know everything and when someone is making a mistake, they need them to speak up, ask questions, contribute ideas. When we contribute as a team, we will listen to what you have to say, we'll respect it and no one's going to put anyone down and ask “where did you get that dumb idea?” People are going to ask you with courtesy and respect, and they will ask enough questions until you realise for yourself that there are holes in the idea and then we pack it and move to the next idea. We also set the frames in our team that it's a learning environment. Often, in the organisational context, we think it's an implementation problem or an execution problem but it's a learning problem. How do you execute your interactions with feedback and trial-and-error? How do you make a change? You need that learning culture, that learning environment, and the understanding that it's a learning problem to help you have an agile, responsive, growing organisation. Whether it's a team of 5,000 or 50,000, it doesn't matter. It's within a team of 5 to 10 people where it happens each time. Ultimately, you need to have people who are comfortable being leaders and driving the organisation, but make sure that they're very elastic. They need to be ready for change and be ready to hear what's going on—not just listening but hearing what you're saying. Geoffrey: You need to measure psychological safety because it's a tricky beast. It also has commercial consequences and consequences in terms of benefits for the well-being of your workforce. Western nations are passing more and more laws around psychological safety. That's becoming a compliance issue. You actually need to be able to show that you have it under control: you're measuring it, reporting it and managing it. Otherwise, you can be liable for consequences you don't want. It's better for business, better for everything and may become mandatory. Recommended Book: The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmonson If there are people who are looking to engage more or create a team that's able to speak out, how do they go about doing that? Geoffrey: Come talk to me. You can go to my LinkedIn profile. I've done a number of postings and very simple videos explaining it and how to make the changes. It's a leadership thing, and it's not complex for leaders to learn what to say to set it up and what to do.   Connect With Geoffrey Wade on LinkedIn Geoffrey: There's plenty of literature out there. The leader in the field globally at the moment is Amy Edmondson, a researcher from the US. She has published an excellent book on it. She summarised 20-30 years worth of research papers. Get Simple Readings and Research Around Psychological Safety  What Is Business Freedom to You? What is business freedom to you? Geoffrey: For me, business freedom is the next threshold of this business. I'm a chairman of a couple of companies and the CEO of a company that specialises in helping organisations measure and improve business performance through psychological safety. I think business freedom would be getting to the point where the business doesn't really need me in the day-to-day marketing, sales and oversight of the operations of the business. I'm not there yet. Ask me at the end of 2022, and I'm confident that I'll be able to say I've got that business freedom that I described. Others describe it as working on the business rather than in it. I'm still a bit of both. In my chairman roles, it's very much working on the businesses but in the psychological safety stuff, I'm still doing a bit in the business. We were also talking about retirement. You should ask my wife about that. When someone asks when I'm going to retire, she says he'll still be working at 85, he loves it. It's not work, is it? I can comfortably drop tools and do whatever I want right now. I do what I do because I love doing what I'm doing. Geoffrey: It's a legacy I want to leave. My work is about building that legacy and influencing the people that our business connects with in such a way that their work life and their home life are richer, happier, more meaningful. For me, it's not about work. It's about impacting in a positive way the people's lives that we're lucky enough to intersect. I get a real sense of meaning from what I do. I think that's a noble purpose and it's important to be able to know that so you are working towards something and business is just a vehicle to achieve that. Join our Facebook group!  If you have enjoyed this episode, make sure to jump onto iTunes, leave us some love, give us some feedback and always stay healthy out there.

Are you running an old business but feeling like you're flogging a dead horse? Or are you running a new age business and pushing in the right direction where things can be done in a way that's leveraging your value but not your time? What is an innovative revenue model? Get more tips about new-age business models at dorksdelivered.com.au Samantha: An innovative model is very dependent on what you want, and I think this links straight back to your podcast: Business Built Freedom. Traditionally, we go into business for ourselves or one that's built around our expertise. We don't then look at moving forward, instead we kind of look back to how everyone else has done it.  It's shifting towards what success actually means to you—not what success should be—and towards building a habitat in your business that links all the way from your vision based on what you want to the financial statements, leadership, people, process and systems that you want. The next part of that is enveloping that in core values, safety and accountability.  The main issue around this structure is that we have not been taught how to do any of that. We've been taught how to maybe do our product and financial statements, but we haven't been able to talk about how to actually run a business. It takes 7 or 8 minutes to open up a business. Most of us spent years getting qualifications, I spent a decade learning how to be an accountant, but it did not teach me how to run a business. It's something that should be taught more at school and as a career. I am guilty of it. I've been a cowboy trying to work out how to get to where I'm at. I've learnt by touching fire, most of the time realising that's not a good idea. That's the problem. As technicians and as experts, we are taught not to make mistakes, but if you're building a business, you have to make mistakes and you have to make it safe to make them.  Failure leads to success. If you don't have any failure, you won't have success. If you're mining, it's very unlikely you're going to strike gold the first time you hit the ground.  Leadership Is the Most Important Part of Any Business Samantha: We mainly work around experts and dollar businesses that have products or services that are very much needed, like IT. The problem is they're built around one person, and then we don't even know how to look after ourselves. If you're building any kind of business, the leader is the most important person but the leader tends to come last a lot of times. First, you actually have to learn people skills. I know this because I've made so many mistakes. The good thing is I've learnt from those mistakes. I'm a very curious person by nature and I always ask myself "how can I make that better?" It wasn't until very recently I realised that if I'd look after myself, then my people and everything will follow. That was a really big learning experience. For me, it's to stop people who want to change—those who actually understand that it will take some changes and show that they actually have to change behaviour and skills to go forward. We think that we can just continue doing things the same way and then we can make those $ 2 million dollars.  Particularly in the expert style of businesses, we've got spreadsheets. I don't know how many spreadsheets that would say I would take this from here to here, and then you get to the end of the year and wonder why that didn't happen. It's because you actually have to make it happen and you have to have skills and you have to bring your team on board too. Nothing leverages a business faster than all in with your people. Safety, Trust, and Collaboration  Samantha: We have to learn how to make collaborative spaces. We have to learn how to trust. And the biggest thing to trust is to create safety.  You have to actually create safety to make mistakes, and I'm not talking about doing three times the wrong way—that's slackness. What I'm talking about is going and experimenting, rewarding that and finding ways to actually measure it. Actually say, "we're here and we want you to make mistakes," but you have to send rules and boundaries around that and actually then demonstrate it. The biggest thing about leadership is actually leading by example. You do not get your team to do something that you're not willing to do yourself or you haven't done yourself. If you want your team to go on a high-level change, be ready to change.  I think this is the biggest mistake I made, particularly when I was in a very large accounting firm. I was trying to change, but a lot of our leaders did not. A lot of the business structures that we have now are not built for that. They're built on expertise and ego and everything else. We have to start shifting this, and I'm on a journey to find out how to do that. There isn't a lot of instruction on this, but there are ways to have really safe conversations and communication. Building Relationships Toward a Heart-Centred Business  Samantha: If you look at what's happening in the thought leadership area around this—the ones I follow are Bernie Brown, Simon Sinek, and Jim Collins—they're all talking about heart-centred businesses into the future and how we shifted from muscle-style businesses to the industrial age type of businesses to brain-style businesses, such as IT and accounting.  We have to build relationships, but no one teaches us how to build relationships and how to build community. The way most people spend their time is in businesses, so businesses have to be safe. And by safe, I mean you can come in and bring your problems to work. There's a framework for you to have a conversation, such as if you're having a bad day, and someone else will pick it up for you. All of that sort of stuff doesn't happen. How to Quantify Value  Samantha: First of all, we have to acknowledge it. When I say success on your own terms, the concentration is I want to make money. There's no question about that. You need to make money so you can empower other people. Your profit and loss should be how much can I help and pay my staff and my family, and then your balance sheet should be what's my worth and what's my value, my asset value and cash flows, how you fund it. Surely you need to concentrate there. But you also need to say what success looks like and how I'm feeling, how I'm working, and how my staff are feeling. If you concentrate on that, I can guarantee counterintuitively the money actually follows. It follows where the good energy is.  That comes down to passion and why you do what you do. Listen to Finding Your Passion With Joshua Lewis We're talking about different business models and leadership roles. If you've got a lawn mowing business or you're a solo entrepreneur, it doesn't mean what you're doing needs to go if that's what you love doing. It does not mean that the asset that you're creating or the vehicle to your success has to change. That's a big thing. Own the Kogs  We were talking earlier about the way to shape a business and the way kogs can work in a business. I'm happy that I've written myself out of a job. I'm no longer the main kog, but I own the processes around the kogs and how everyone works together, which is a lovely position to be in. Samantha: That's so interesting because those processes that you're talking about are your asset. If you can repeat them again and again, you've got an asset, you have a business, you have a business asset; you don't just have a job or the people in your business don't just have a job either. Owner Alliance and Valuation Samantha: I started this work really early on when I used to do a lot of business valuation work. The biggest thing that would hit a valuation faster than anything is owner alliance, and most businesses up to the $10 million mark have a massive owner alliance issue. Now, that issue does hit you on the valuation.  If you've got somebody who the business is relying on, not just from a technical point of view but also from their mind they're not sharing, the valuation goes. What is interesting as you look forward now is those people are burning out. They're dying early. It's a health issue as well, and you've got to think why. Listen to Inspiring Wellness With Karen Pyke Samantha: Going back to your example, if you want to be a control freak—and that's okay—and you want to build a small business that makes lots of money, you can do that, too. The model of your business just needs to be built on what you want. So if you want control—although there is no such thing as control—or if you want that or you want the perception of it, build a model that suits you. This is the problem. We should have these big growth businesses. We should have a model. We should have an online model or whatever model. Don't get too stuck on that. Ask: What do I need? How can I explore that and find that?  If you want a business that's small where you control all aspects of it, you can still make quite a good coin out of that. It's just that your systems and processes and everything will need to be worked on. We often go, "we've got to go." Sometimes, the growth you need is internal as opposed to external. It's very hard to say this will be the model of the future. I think the business models of the future are going to be very much based on the humans who run them. Financial Independence, Retirement Early  You're familiar with the FIRE (financial independence, retirement early) movement. It's about finding out what are those key things in your life that you want to be doing that brings you to that retirement spot. Now, retirement to people is a lot of different things. Some people just think it's a number, 65. As for me, I'm retired now. I'm happy with what I do. Do I do too much of it? Sure. Does it give you the shit sometimes? Absolutely. But if you're retired, is everything just going to be roses? I don't think so. There are things that will still give you the shits. I look at the income streams that I've got coming in and the way that I've distributed the eggs in our basket—between real estate and the businesses that I'm running—and I'm very happy to say that if I wanted to stop doing what I'm doing, I could stop doing it. And that really empowers you to make the right decisions. You're not dealing with C-grade clients. You're dealing with people that you can be happier to work with. But how do you know if you've got a C-grade client or an A-grade client or if your business is running like a machine, you're running a new age business model or you if you don't have these processes in place? The other day, I went into a business that was still using timecards. It doesn't integrate into their systems like, they can't make sure that no one's doing something they shouldn't or they're doing what they're meant to be doing, etc. And that's where finding your A-grade client, your A-grade staff and focusing on your business are really important. The Transformative Business Model If we're looking at a business in a transformative stage, how do you apply the transformative business model? Samantha: The people who would be asking that question are the people we're looking for. How do we actually shift it? Honestly, it's one step at a time. When we start working with businesses that have got blocks, the first thing we ask is what type of person are we working with and what energy do they have? Do they want to change? We work with a lot of businesses and we start where you're at right now and we have a look at it. We always start with that process of finding out where you want to be personally as the leader because the business does not disconnect from the person. About 10 years ago, I didn't get that. You do not become a new individual when you walk through the doors of your office, and you certainly don't become a new person when you walk through the doors of your home. If you're dragging shit around with you, you're going to drag it all over so it's most important that you are happy and that you find joy in what you do every day. We need to start there, and then we build around that and we see where the next rock needs to go. Usually, it's around staff and actually starting to talk collaboratively with staff and then the changing skill sets. Once you get the staff going and they're coming up, then if you are still using fax machines, then your staff will tell you, they will then take it, and they will empower it. If you hear me say we need to start working on systems, processes, people, financial statements, and all of that stuff, the first thing it probably would cause is absolute fatigue. We've got to start undoing that first and then you've got to bring other people on board. Create a Collaborative Space Samantha: If you're a small business, that might not mean employees. Some of the business models of the future that we're working with are collaborative. So how do you work with the people around you? How do you work with your clients? How do you actually look at what your clients do and can they help you with it? But the first start to anything is what the hell do you want? Not many people ask that question. The way you said it actually is perfect. Why We Do What We Do  I went through a spot where I was wondering if "Dorks Delivered" is the right name for our business. Is it really relaying what we're trying to do? We were called something else many years ago, and we changed to talk to Dorks Delivered in 2009.  And then I read Find Your Why by Simon Sinek. I got whiplash from how fast I stopped and thought that I'm going to change everything around. Over the course after about 4 months as I was reflecting on absolutely everything that I was doing in life—why am I brewing beer, why am I automating the gardens, why do I have fish—what it came down to is I realised that personally, I love automating things and bringing back time. Why do I do it? Because I want more time. We only have that time once on this earth. I've got Our Shout Marketing, Dorks Delivered, and Business Efficiency Experts. I asked why am I running these businesses? And I thought that all of them are doing the same thing. They're automating a certain aspect of your business, like using technology as a fulcrum to better your business.  Ultimately, what we do isn't transactional with a business. It's transformative. We want to make sure that we're changing the way that they're using these tools, not just calling itself to say that this tool is a bit blunt. It may be to change from using a tablet to a laptop or laptop to a tablet or a desktop to a workstation or whatever the situation is. In reflection, I love automating things because it brings me more time and you have a fuller life. That's why I'm in business. Knowing your Why allows you to have that trickle down and impact the rest of your business and make sure that your staff are aligned with your ethos and ideas. It was only when I was reading through notes that I made in a diary when I was 12 that it all clicked. And I've always been automating things. I started building electronics at a very young age, started automating my bedroom, making it so that I could click a button on the remote control and the door unlocked.  When I was 13, I had all these things that I have been building, like an automated manufacturing line for technically the first business that I started. I was doing it because it was making me more efficient. It allows me to earn more money because I'm more efficient.  It was only by reflecting that I realised I've been automating my processes from Day 1. I was very lucky that I was given the opportunity to earn money through product development, instead of per hour, so I looked at the fastest, most plausible ways that I could create what they wanted me to create. Finding Your Why Is Hard but Worthwhile Samantha: When you're looking at that, one reason it's so uncomfortable to do is quite often people come up with something that is what they want, but not what they should want. If you've worked in a business for 20 years and you realise that your passion is actually being creative and finding change for people, it's really hard when you're in that. My passion, my Why, never changed.  The first time I saw Simon Sinek on TED Talks, I wanted to make sure that people do not compromise their personal goals for the business ones. It makes decision-making really efficient. Every decision you make from then on is around that. So you're an efficiency expert and if you know where you want to go and you don't even know how to get there, that actually puts you on a longer path. The other efficiency thing is we teach a lot, so getting people around you who are on your Why saves not just time but also a whole lot of energy. Finding your Why is hard. No one is saying that it's easy. It took you a long time. It's taken me a long time. But there is a process that you can go through.  About BlueprintHQ If someone is thinking about changing to a new age business model or at least wants to have someone check in on their processes, how do you go about that at BlueprintHQ? How can someone get more information or more importantly, maybe a health check on their business? Samantha: Jump onto our website and hit the free consultation. You can book a meeting with me for about 20 minutes. For me, it's really important to build relationships straight up. And I love talking to people and really connecting to see if we can help. Worst case scenario, on that call, I'll give you some tips and tricks and give you value that's so important to us. I just love talking to people. It's one of my passions in life. My husband and my kids hate it because I'll go into a cafe or anything and I'll talk to anybody. We have a podcast called Business Habitat. I would love for you to have a bit of a listen. We talk about this stuff all the time. We get a lot more into the behavioural issues and what needs to shift. We have really interesting people who have built businesses that are different from the normal. We're looking for really curious, interesting people. If you think that's you, give us a bell and we would love to have you on too. Listen to Business Habitat Episode 78: Building Business Freedom with Joshua Lewis  I'm going to be having a listen because I love seeing people do cool stuff, especially around Southeast Queensland and on a global scale which can help and impact businesses.  Recommended Books: Dare to Lead and BE 2.0 What would be the most influential book that you've read that people could dive into to get more information? Samantha: There are so many. I am a Brené Brown a freak. Her stuff is fantastic. It's all about being vulnerable. From a leadership point of view, I think her last book, Dare to Lead is very operational. It tells you what to do. And I just don't think you can go past Jim Collins' BE 2.0. It's so practical, and it has a bit of a mud map and a road map as well. What is freedom to you? What is business built freedom to you? Why do you do what you do? Samantha: So I can ride my horse in the middle of the day and not feel guilty about it. That's the hard bit there. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to jump across iTunes, leave us some love, give us some feedback. You guys drive the direction of who we speak to and the content. We've got to the Top 11 Business Podcasts. Stay healthy and stay good. 

Inspiring Wellness With Karen Pyke  Are you healthy as an entrepreneur?  We are all busy workers. We all work too hard, but I think work and play are relative to your position and mindset. In this episode, Karen Pyke from Inspire Wellness talks to us about health mindset. Learn more on how to be a healthy entrepreneur at dorksdelivered.com.au How To Tell if You Are Healthy Sometimes, you're running from appointment to appointment, you go to these fast-food restaurants and ultimately that can have a detrimental effect. What are some of the telltale signs that show if you are healthy or not? Karen: I think health is a really hard thing to define. Different people have different interpretations of what health is to them. The general telltale signs are a little bit of tiredness, fatigue, headaches, bloating, aches and pains, and needing to grab a coffee to give you that extra energy boost. They're the things that tell you that the body is not probably functioning the way it needs to function. How To Work Out the Balance Can you have too much of a good thing? What if you're working too hard but you love doing what you're doing? Karen: I guess it's working out what is too much. There are 24 hours in a day. Can somebody work 24 hours a day? Potentially they can, but it's what is going to happen later in life if you keep working at that speed. We need to have a balance within life. Between work, play, and rest, the body can only function a certain amount based on the nutrients that it receives. If you're continually burning all of those nutrients and you don't refuel your body either by taking a rest, by what you eat, or by what you drink, eventually something is going to stop. That's different for different people. That could be 6 weeks for some people, and 6 months for others. We know that there's a certain amount of sleep that the body needs, and it's when we sleep that the body repairs and recovers. That's when it sets you up for the next day. Some people can survive on 6-hour sleep. Some people need 8 hours. Some people probably can survive on 3 or 4 hours at a time, but eventually, something will give. I have a lot of respect for sleep. I think it's the most important thing. If you don't sleep well, your muscles don't recover so if you go to the gym, you're kind of just wasting your time. Why Do Entrepreneurs Need Good Physical and Emotional Health I became single in 2017, and that meant I lost a business partner and obviously my mental health wasn't 100% while I was going through a breakup. I thought I could power through it, so I continued to do whatever I could. I was eating reasonably healthy and going to the gym, but the amount of work that I had to do meant that I wasn't in check with my balance. I went from talking as a reasonably confident young man to developing a stutter; I wasn't able to talk on the phone. I could not get words out. We had to start culling clients so that I didn't have that happening inside me. Be Aware of Your Balance What are some of the ways that you can make sure that you don't find out the way that I found out? How can you make sure that you keep yourself in check beforehand? Karen: I believe that everything in life is individual. There's no one right or wrong for every person. It's really kind of sitting down and looking at your day, your life, how you feel—everything—on that individual basis. 1. Plan Karen: When my clients come in and I feel that they are running a little bit too high, I tell them to stop and have a plan for their day and themselves to know what they're doing. We give a lot of time. As entrepreneurs, we want to put so much time into our business. You can only put that much time into your business if you put into yourself as well, so plan your time around yourself and your nutrition. What am I going to eat today? How am I going to fuel myself? Can I get nutrient-rich food into me or is it going to be the fast food, the empty calories, the kind of things that aren't going to fuel me for success? I truly believe that planning is the key to everything that we do. It just sets you up for success. 2. Assess Karen: Work out what's realistic in your life. Is it just me? Is there anyone else that I need to give time to within my life? Do I have a family? Have I checked in on my friends recently? Have I been out socially? If you're not doing those things and the only thing you are focusing on is your entrepreneurial pursuits, something's going to have to give eventually. You've got to give time back to yourself and nurture yourself. Is it okay to sort of go on stints and not have a balance throughout the whole week? For instance, you got a big project or starting a business can be a huge amount of work. Is it okay to work hard for a month and then play hard for a week or two? Karen: No, I don't think so. I believe that balance should always be there. Obviously, there's always going to be things that come up and impact our day. We planned to work for 5 hours but ended up working 10 hours. That's okay every now and again, but that shouldn't be every single day. Ask yourself what didn't happen that day that created that? It's reflecting on those moments and how you can prevent that from happening. I think every day should be balanced. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. I've gone through phases. I've built up my business, and it was financially stable. I'm in a service-based industry so I'm meant to be talking to people a lot. When I started being unable to talk to people, I was spinning my wheels. I haven't built the business to the success that I wanted it to be, and mentally, that isn't a good spot to be in. Physical Health and Mental Health Your nutrition and lifestyle hopefully support your mental health and your physical health. Your mental health plays a big game, your physical health plays a big game. From an entrepreneur's perspective, how are they tied together? Is there something that you think you need to get yourself mentally well to get physically well? Karen: I think they're both so closely interrelated. It's so hard to define and say if I concentrate on my mental health, my physical health is going to be great or if I just concentrate on my physical health, my mental health is going to be great. It can't be that simple. It's really looking at everything as a whole and thinking about how you can understand when those points are out of balance. Stop and allow yourself to understand. Ask yourself: What are the signs that I'm becoming out of balance? What do I need to do to bring myself back into balance? If I'm really busy at work, the first thing I drop is the gym. If I haven't gone to the gym for a week and a half, I find myself lacking clarity and that affects me mentally because I haven't been doing the physical exertion that I would have otherwise. I don't know any way out of that. I think it's just about being aware of it and bringing yourself back into balance as soon as you have. As you said, it all ties together and it all feeds together. Karen: I have one particular client who's suffering a little bit with their mental health, and they were going to the gym too much to help themselves with their mental health, to give them clarity. But then, they were working really hard as well, and that was impacting their mental health. Something had to give, and I actually told them to have a day off the gym. Sometimes we think that we need to go to the gym to help with our mental health, but sometimes the gym might be impacting our mental health more. With deadlines, I tell people to stop and think what would be the worst-case scenario if they didn't hit the deadline. Is the world going to end tomorrow if you don't put that extra hour in when you're absolutely exhausted and you need to go to bed? What happens if you actually go to bed, you get up in the morning, you're fresh and you find a solution to your problem within 15 minutes, instead of spending extra 2 or 3 hours at night trying to fix it and work it out? Sometimes it's okay to not always push for those deadlines. A fresh night's sleep is huge. My PT said having a rest and a break away from work is great to sharpen your sword. Your mind never stops. When you're sleeping, everything's being put into order. Our mind is always working. "Go to sleep with a question, wake up with an answer." A big problem that I have is I create synthetic timelines and synthetic deadlines. "I have to get it done by this date. Why? Because I said so. I've got other things that I want to work on that trump this project. I just want to see this project finished." But I'm also a stickler for details. I don't want to see it 80% finished; I want to see it 99.99% finished. That is a downfall for me, but again, being aware of it helps you out. Karen: Like with kids, we always tell our kids to actually get up, walk away, have a break, go outside, and play for a while, yet we don't do the same and we think we can't because we've got to get this finished. The truth is we can and if we actually take those breaks, we give our mind a bit of a rest so the thoughts come back. It's like the network, which is being clogged with thoughts, clears up. How Do Entrepreneurs Eat On average, how do you see the diet of entrepreneurs? Are we generally healthy or generally not healthy, or is it widespread and mixed? Karen: Absolutely. I think that a lot of the time, we don't understand the importance of fuel inside us and what that actually does to help fuel everything else within our body. Starting Is the Hardest Bit Karen: A lot of people always get up with good intentions, but then work-life balance doesn't actually hit the way it's supposed to. We then don't always follow through on our good habits. We become too busy, so we grab those fast foods or pull into service stations on our way running between clients. We don't actually drink enough water. I think everybody eats the best way they feel they're eating for themselves at the time, but it's not necessarily the right food to fuel them and help them with the energy they need to get through the day. Fast food is not only not healthy but also pretty expensive. I lost 38 kilos, but what I found was not having some of the temptations there really helps out. I saw something the other day. What they did is they put the guitar right next to the lounge and they put the TV remote in a drawer in a bedroom. When they get home from work, they don't sit down and watch TV because now it's too inconvenient to grab that remote and have that bad habit. This then changes that habit into a good habit, and then they started playing the guitar. Starting is the hardest bit. You need to remove some of the ease to get the bad things, create friction there and make it easier to get some of the good things and produce good habits. Follow Through on Good Habits What is normally the timeline that you'd say to get people conditioned to be in a good balance? Karen: I really do work on individualised nutrition. I encourage people to eat real foods again, not McDonald's or KFC, the real whole foods that you can buy from the outside of the supermarket, not the inside aisles, but the garden market, the butchers. Once I get people eating the right foods for them to fuel them, the change is pretty instantaneous. People can recognise within a couple of weeks that this is the right food to fuel them. I normally work around a 3-month period to really kind of understand that somebody can eat a certain way and make a habitual change to keep this ongoing. We don't need to be grabbing snacks all the time. We don't need to be using caffeine to pick us up for energy. There are other ways to fuel ourselves. Just Give It a Go, Work With Nutrients I was also dealing with a lot of skin problems like dermatitis, eczema, and psoriasis. I went to a few different places, and they told me to cut out certain foods for about 3 months. The list was as long as your arm. Surprisingly, all the whole foods, all the good foods that don't have preservatives in them, weren't on the list. I decided to cut out everything on the list at once and eat just the healthy things that were nutrition-dense but calorie-poor. The advantage is I lost about 2 kilos a week. The gym kept most of it off, and that was three and a half years ago. I realised I am thinking clearer, performing better, and sleeping less but not because I didn't have the opportunity to sleep but because my body was just waking up. I'd go to bed at 11 PM and then I'd wake up at 3:30 AM, and my mind would be racing with thoughts and energy. I also started doing polyphasic sleeping—sleep for 30 to 40 minutes in the afternoon—and I don't drink caffeine. It showed me the importance of food, and that changed my relationship with food completely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P8Av1hRqjU Do I still like eating pizza? Absolutely, but I'm aware of what is good and bad food to have on a pizza. I was on a quite heavy meat diet, and I cut out all meat because they were on the list. I went raw vegan for three or four months, and it was amazing. I was still building muscle and checking with body composition scans. I told a few friends that I thought I found the elixir of life, and they said they could never quit meat. Karen: The way I look at it is it was the nutrients that you found. I never look at calories in food. I couldn't tell you what calories are in a particular food. I never work with calories. I only work with nutrients. It's the nutrients that your body needs to allow you to sleep, have clarity, function, and allow metabolism to work again. Once you've got all those nutrients right and if it's the excess weight that your body wants to release, it will release it. If it's dermatitis that you want to get rid of, you've given your body the right fuel through those nutrients to get those metabolic pathways working to help with those skin issues. By cutting out all of what I call non-food—the foods that have no nutrients in them—you started to put nutrients back into your body and that's what your body needed for fuel. I went to lose the eczema. Before that, my hands would open up in the middle of the night and start bleeding all over the bedsheets. It was absolutely terrible, so it is a huge transformation. As I said, it really lets you sort of respect the position that you're in. My wife's father was diagnosed with cholesterol and high blood pressure about six years ago. He was told he needs to be on these tablets and do this. And he decided to just try being healthy: eat healthily, go to the gym, and have balance. He's running a business with 50 employees, so he definitely understands the stresses of running a business. When he lost the weight, he's never felt better in his life. All the health problems that he had were all gone. Everything is perfect now. It's just about finding that balance. Pressure, Stress, Alcohol, and Relaxation It's important to know how to deal with pressure and stress. When it comes down to relaxation, pressure, and stress, where does alcohol sit in the mix? Karen: It's interesting the way alcohol is dealt with on a daily basis. When we look at the Australian dietary guidelines, they used to have a certain level that we can actually have alcohol. Recently, they've taken that out. There is no prescribed level of alcohol in the Australian dietary guidelines. The way I look at alcohol is, as with everything else, we should be able to enjoy things if we want to. We shouldn't rely on them to provide us with relaxation. We shouldn't be using them to help us calm down if we're stressed, and I think that's then where alcohol probably gets abused a little bit. It's like, "I've had a really stressful day. What am I going to do? I'm going to sit down, have a beer or a glass of wine." That's when I think it's taken out of context. If you're having a nice meal and you're sitting with friends and everyone wants to enjoy a nice glass of wine, that's great. But it shouldn't be used to fix a dysfunction within the body or for stress relief. Sometimes, we use alcohol to celebrate and socialise, but it can be the demise if you're using it to paralyse any of the symptoms of stress. I'm guilty of that. I know that I've been in a spot where my mind is going at a million miles an hour and you have a quick whiskey and then all of a sudden you kind of just focus more, but it's not for the right reasons. We shouldn't be doing that. Karen: Absolutely. It's like having a whiskey to fall asleep. My question is why can't you sleep. Let's work out why we're not sleeping first and let's fix that. If you want a whiskey, you have a whiskey because you're enjoying a whiskey, not to get you to sleep. And not enjoying a whiskey every night unless that's your job. Metabolic Health and How To Inspire Wellness You've been running Inspire Wellness for a little bit of time now. What are the reasons that people would want to come to you? How can you help them out? Karen: What I work on at Inspire Wellness is metabolic health. Metabolism is responsible pretty much for everything we do. It's responsible for movement, heat production, stress, weight gain, weight loss. There are thousands of chemical reactions happening in our bodies every single day. Our lifestyle, what we've eaten in the past, the toxins we're exposed to basically takes it all out of balance. What I do is pull that back into balance. We do a body reset. We actually look at individualised nutrition for everybody because everybody walking through the door has different requirements for the way they eat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1H7LUmulJM At the moment, there's a lot of information out there on the Paleo diet, some vegan diets, the Mediterranean diet. Yes, they'll work for some people, but they won't work for everybody because it's not what that person needs. The people that I work with are the people who recognise that there is a dysfunction happening within their body, within themselves. Whether they want to lose weight, they're experiencing headaches, or they're on medications that they don't want to be on anymore and they want to take control back of their life, we help them with food. Food and fluids are the only things you can put inside you that will actually get everything functioning again. There's not a lot of exercises that you can put inside you to do that; exercise has other benefits. It's really looking at anything out of balance, like after we eat, do we get bloated after we eat? Do we have to sit and have a rest after we've eaten because we have no energy? That's a dysfunction within the body. That's why we look at them individually. We find out the right foods for them, and then we teach them how to eat them to then live their life. We only have a certain amount of time within our lives that we work. At the end of that time, we want to enjoy the rest of our life. We want to be able to travel. We want to be able to spend time with our grandkids. We want to be able to walk along the beach. If you don't look after yourself through your working life, when you get to the end, there isn't any time because you're out of balance, you've got dysfunction, you've got some lifestyle disease. We're in too much pain that we don't get to enjoy it. I want everyone to enjoy the rest of their lives. You are exactly right. We're working for most of our lives. "If you put wealth before health, you'll be sure that when you retire, you'll be spending your wealth on your health." I was only talking earlier about my mom and some of the problems that she's running into at the moment. She lives a reasonably healthy lifestyle, probably could have eaten less of some of the deep-fried food. The thing is things can happen to anyone, but putting as many preventative measures at least doesn't accelerate whatever could happen to you. Karen: And I think recognising those symptoms. When people come to me, we go through a certain number of questions, like do you ever experience headaches? They would say they get it most days but that's just normal. I would say that's not normal. I think it's actually allowing yourself to realize that something is not right and something is out of balance. Sort it out now, and feel great again. I want everyone to feel amazing. When I went through that transformation, it was amazing. Beforehand, I was having pizza once or twice a week. I was going out for Korean barbecue once or twice a week. I was eating heaps of food and not necessarily the best types of food. But once you find that balance, it'll change your life. Contact Karen Pyke and feel amazing again! We take our car to the mechanic every six months to get a service and a check. Check in and see where you're at. It would be worthwhile. If people want to better understand their positioning, to be able to deal with things such as stress or understand more about the health of their body and wellbeing, is there any book or resource out there that you would suggest? Karen: What I would do is I would do a Google search on metabolic health and what it really is and really understand the signs and symptoms of dysfunction within the metabolism. Jump onto Inspire Wellness and learn more about Metabolic Balance® It's about being aware of it. When I was overweight, I thought that the amount of energy that I had is what I was meant to have. I thought that the way that I was waking up every morning—feeling a bit groggy and wanting to click the snooze button—was how it should be. Being aware of it changed my life. I feel like Superman now, and before I felt like a sloth, but I wasn't aware that I was a sloth. I thought this is just how it was. Karen: Before, I was actually a vegetarian for six years. I was eating incredibly well. I gained weight. I couldn't lose it. I was tired. I wasn't sleeping that great, had aches and pains. I was eating a great diet, but it wasn't the right diet for me. So it's not just eating bad foods; it's sometimes eating the wrong foods for you. A lot of my clients that come in would write down what they're eating and it's a great diet; it's just not the right diet for them. That's definitely good advice. I've got friends that have tried doing what I'm doing and on Day 3, they're feeling like they're going to fall apart. What is business freedom to you? What is business freedom to you? Karen: There are probably a couple of ways of looking at it. Business freedom to me is having a business that doesn't feel like work. I work because I love doing what I do. Also, knowing that I can stop when I need to but having something where I'm giving back to people, like resources so people can still go to my website and find out how to stay healthy. It's also having a business where I can spend time with my family, with my friends. Putting those boundaries in place within a business so that I'm not the business all the time. It's the vehicle to support them as opposed to the other way around. If you enjoyed this and want to ask Karen, join our Facebook group or go to Inspire Wellness, leave us some feedback, send us some love at iTunes and stay healthy and stay good.