ELITE : SIX Think Tank meetings are discussed over ZOOM with our members every Friday at 9:30am.
Facilitated by DANNY : DE HEK meetings are recorded for our Podcast, we’ve been doing this since COVID-19 if you’re interested in joining in with us check out our Website.
Transcribed by Otter
Danny de Hek 0:00
We are actually live. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m your host on the facilitator. today. I’m going to lead Rob Woolley , do the introduction for the meeting today.
Rob Woolley 0:09
Hello, yeah, my name is Rob Woolley , and we’re here talking about whether you will fit for business, the business. It’s a thin business and being fit. We’ve got our David Clarkson here from dynamic communications. We’ve got Danny de Hek from Danny de Hek . We’ve got Helen Helen Oakes from Modedevie. We’ve got Paul Starling from canopy Canterbury computers. We got Laughlin McNeal from a Acorva Technical Recruitment. Yeah, don’t look it up doesn’t mean anything. You just made it up. But it’s really impressive. And we’ve got Stefano, and Jaline and Jaline, not actually on video at the moment O no someone escaped from the north. I’ll pass you now on to your host. Danny, thank you
Danny de Hek 1:11
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. That’s the crazy people that come along along to our Think Tank meeting. We have had a bit of discussion before the meeting started. And we’ve discovered there’s some new features on zoom. So today’s meeting will be a lot shorter because we spent time putting moustaches beanies and lipstick on each other. And then we thought we better come together and put together some sort of respectable weekly podcast. So last week, we hit our meeting. I can hear a ringing nose
Rob Woolley 1:11
It is the Telephoned Danny
Danny de Hek 1:41
Oh, right.
Helen Oakes 1:41
It’s got tinnitus.
Danny de Hek 1:42
Yeah, sounds like tinnitus, and we decided that we would talk about being Fit for Business. So if you haven’t been to a think tank meeting before, we normally pick a topic chosen from the week previous. And then we discuss it in four parts. And the four parts are people explaining their experiences, problems, come up with some solutions. And then hopefully, at the end of the meeting, we come up with some takeaways, and then we spend about three minutes coming up with a topic. So today’s meeting will be a little bit condensed might be a good use of words. But I would like to know, your guys for business. When it comes to that, what do you think we’re referring to?
David Clarkson 2:26
I think it’s those things that ensure that you can do the best you possibly can with your business. And so for my money I go back to there was a there was a franchise called fit for business and what they used to focus on was getting your goal set for your business and getting your goal set around your fitness, getting your goals set around nutrition. But another group that I that was an offshoot of that also had another goal, which is having goals to ensure that you have fun, because in actual fact, if you just focus in one area, to the detriment of the others, then everything suffers.
Danny de Hek 3:16
Good stuff. Anyone else want to have a go
Helen Oakes 3:20
David, was that Fun, Fitness, Nutrition and?
David Clarkson 3:25
And, and Business.
Danny de Hek 3:28
Right? I can liken it to when we go tramping. Now I took Helen on our trip. And I was hoping to get there in about four hours. And we finished up taking seven hours, got to the hat at 11 o’clock at night. But we had enough food, we had a tent, I had layers of clothing and I were fit for the tramp. I knew I could get to my destination. Even if I couldn’t get my destination I was well prepared. So maybe that’s similar, in a way with business. That is how I’m looking at that.
Lachlan McNeill 4:00
I think it’s interesting. I mean, the idea of the fitness things interesting. I mean, I was talking to someone who said they might have been on here, they said they went to see someone practice for a tennis match. And they said it was just so boring because the person just did hours of backhands, but I think fit the amount the sort of analogies between fitness for a sport and fitness of business of business are quite important because one, you just have your overall fitness your hearts working well. So therefore you can actually do stuff and it becomes easier as you go along. But also you have the appropriate exercises for what you’re trying to do. So obviously tennis players may not be doing arm curls with big weights, but they might do some that are specific to so and what’s the effect you know, one you get fit. Number two, a lot of the actions become automatic. And that’s I think, really important like playing golf. You don’t have to do play golf. You don’t have to think every time you hit that ball, they become automatic and three, as David says it becomes enjoyable. So I think that the analogies are really quite important. So just like if you’re training for, let’s say, the grand slalom and skiing, you have a set of exercise like with your business, my business requires a bit a bit of tech, a bit of really good analysis, you’ve got a pretty good with people, and you’ve got to be outgoing enough to go and see clients. So the things I focus on,
David Clarkson 5:21
And I think also to just physically being fit, if you’re fed, it means that you can cope with the swings and roundabouts that you find in business, we all know, we’ve been sitting and haven’t been getting any exercise, maybe the pressures Come on, and we’ve had to get budgets done or contracts out, or whatever it is, we’ve had to do. And we’ve been going for sort of two or three days without a break. And in any sort of physical exercise, you start to feel bla. And I think part of that, that group of things is that if you have them all together, that an actual film, it enables you to maintain the sort of balance that enables you to react to different situations that are going to occur in in all the businesses we’re involved in. And so you know, I think it’s, you know, it can. And I think also another thing is around mental fitness, I think is really important for us. So, you know, walking into the likes of TED talks or logging into YouTube’s applications that are or presentations that are around our area of interest. I think all those things help. And it’s, it’s getting, if you like, all those other influences, and that enables us to be able to do what we do.
Danny de Hek 6:52
I had a chat to a young guy who does extreme running like 60 kilometres at a time. And every time I go for a five k run, I’m trying to do my best time push as hard as I can. And he said, haven’t you heard of the 80/20 rule and I go, what in business, he goes, No and running is 80% of your running, you should be doing at a very slow pace. And see if your heart rate is normally around about 150 or 160. Next time you go out running, run your heart rate at 110. And he said and then you will be able to have more stamina, and you’ll be able to run further. And I thought that was really good advice. But personally, when I’m out running, I do like to push myself. But I think that’s the same in business in a way because you can actually push yourself but not get more done.
Helen Oakes 7:39
It’s working smarter, not harder.
Lachlan McNeill 7:44
Just to interject here a little bit. Are we just diving, we straight onto solutions before sort of going to experiences?
Danny de Hek 7:51
Okay
Lachlan McNeill 7:51
A little bit just
Danny de Hek 7:52
Why don’t you take the meeting?
Lachlan McNeill 7:54
No, no, I’m just sort of saying because at the moment, I mean, in terms of experiences, I certainly know with me, I could be very easily very sedentary in my job, I sit here with three screens and four screens in front of me. And all I need to do really is I could just sit here all day. And I do find that when I am not been doing quite a bit of exercise. And I I probably bike twice a week, but still not enough, I’ll be adding more exercise and it does have a difference. But my experience is that it’s very easy to convince yourself, when you’re sitting here. If you think long enough, you’re thinking of excuse not to do any exercise, it’s a pain, you’ve got to go and do the exercise, then you’re going to get a cold down there, you’re gonna have a shower afterwards. And then excuse something else starts. So my experience is quite often is that if I start in the morning, and I sit down and start just just check my email. I’m sitting there for hours later. Yeah, no, nothing. So my experience is that I have to try and put the exercise in the beginning. That’s the only way it works.
Helen Oakes 8:51
You got to book it in like a meeting in a way. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 8:56
That’s great.
Lachlan McNeill 8:56
But also make it before you get those long distractions. Because if you want to focus on stuff, and I we probably all have jobs, we have to get in the zone. You don’t want to be in the middle of the zone. It’s like Oh, hang on, somebody’s got to go for a run. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 9:09
I’d like to get it out of the way in the morning. I find I actually get more done in the afternoon. So I have to agree with my experiences. And I don’t like if I worked in an office environment, doing exercises or running to work and get into Word work all sweaty, were having a shower doesn’t put me in the right frame of mind. So then I like procrastinate with that idea and think I’ll do that later on or tomorrow or Sunday.
Lachlan McNeill 9:29
Yeah. So early in the day. In fact, I’d say before anything else? I mean, I like to get up in the morning. I’ll have a glass of water and then I’ll do exercise before I go near my email but I certainly found I had real trouble for that because I would sit down my expense I’ll sit down and there it was this morning god yeah.
David Clarkson 9:52
Yeah, the eyes the same as same as you like and you know, like I used to do a lot of long distance running. Yeah. And marathons and what have you. And I used to find, if I, if I, if I had work on, you know, was something important that was happening, then I wanted to get to work and get into it sort of business. But if I did, then, by the time I got to the end of the day, I felt, you know, and can focus on gain, and then you’re tired at the end of the day, and you come home, and I don’t want to do that. You know, I just, that’s the last thing I want to do. And so, for me, if I didn’t do it in the mornings, a lot of the time, it didn’t get done.
Lachlan McNeill 10:34
Yeah. Okay. I’d agree with that. I mean, I go biking on Thursday night, and I struggled to get out the door. I’m almost almost always in the zone. And at the end of the day, because in recruitment, you talk to people, and then at the end of the day, you’re often writing profiles and reports. So you think in your mind, you’re writing and then oh, I’ve got to go biking. But the only way that works for me is I actually meet other people there. Otherwise, I’d never turn up.
Danny de Hek 10:57
Yeah, yeah. So accountability. Is it what you’re saying?
Lachlan McNeill 11:01
Well, I’m just saying my experiences that is that is it’s very hard to do things in the evening. Certainly, we can we can sort of deal with solutions later on. I guess. I’m just thinking.
David Clarkson 11:12
I think one of the things I used to find locked on to was that if I had extended sessions of pressure, yeah. And literally stay with the job. And it may be, you know, work 1012 hour days, in day after day out day sort of business me you find, or what I used to find was that I’d get burnt out. And I’d slow down. I wouldn’t recognise that that was happening that day.
Lachlan McNeill 11:43
Yeah.
Stefano Pietroiusti 11:46
Isn’t it difficult to maintain the balance, though, because in our space, like things change all the time, and we just find that like, when something new comes out, you tend to focus more on like, delving yourself to meet deadlines and learning new stuff and all of that. So your other fitness levels, like in mental health, and like your fitness and or the, like your body health and all of that, that life takes a strain. And that’s what we like battling slotland to find the balance between all aspects where we can actually spend more time like getting fit mentally, like healthy, because we just get so immersed in like all the technical debt, that that comes on board. Yes. Like when you get back out doing stuff, that’s when you can actually benefit into other areas.
Lachlan McNeill 12:33
I think I certainly think of myself as at no stage what I have nothing to do. At no stage, do I have an empty inbox ever? Boy, something every time that’s important that I have to leave to go and do exercise,
Danny de Hek 12:46
So you can make excuse for your actions quite easily.
Lachlan McNeill 12:51
That’s right. You know, I think half the trick is not thinking to be honest.
Danny de Hek 12:55
Why don’t we just book in a time every week and do something like,
Helen Oakes 12:58
Well, this is what I put this shedule Yes. shedule your exercise?
David Clarkson 13:06
Danny, Danny, the very fact that we are here, saying that we in fact, do that. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 13:14
That’s a really valid point, actually, because there is a certain breed, you cannot run a business. If you don’t have commitment, and you don’t do things regularly. You fall apart. If you do the office. We just got to one of somebody I know. He’s just started up in business. And that was the statistics. new businesses don’t last there’s a reason for that.
David Clarkson 13:33
Yeah. 80% of businesses don’t last beyond the year.
Helen Oakes 13:37
It’s right. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 13:39
We are breed of a so we’re gonna take I mean, like, we’re going through a bit of a hard time at the moment, we’re going to reinvent some of the stuff I’m doing. But we’re resilient bugger aren’t we, we will find a way I can’t see us going back to the supermarket, getting a job. Nothing’s to supermarket workers. We needed you guys. But you know what I mean? Yeah.
Rob Woolley 14:00
I think I think when I heard this, you know, initially, right, when you guys were talking about being fit for business, I thought, well, if if you were saying that business is a sport, then you’re going to play the sport. But you’re going to take time out and you’re going to practice before the sport, right? So what a lot of us actually do is we’re playing the sport all the time, right? So if you use the analogy of playing tennis, if you play tennis over and over and over and over, you’re gonna learn how to serve backhand forehand volley up to a point but unless you actually stop and say today, I’m going to practice on a SUV. You’re never gonna master the SUV. Yeah, yeah. And I think that professionals have professional development. And they decide you know, that every year they’re going to learn You’re like a new spy, you know, like and they may Do that. Yeah, like an hour a week? I don’t know what they do. Right. But I know that with professional development, they’re always developing, developing, developing. And there’s an interesting thing here with most of us who work online, is that is technology changes. We’re actually incorporating a little bit of our professional development as well right to learn what is the new technology? How do we use it.
Danny de Hek 15:27
Reminds me of watching this girl who was climbing these rocks in America. And you know, she’s a brilliant rock climber, you would expect a rock climber to be practising on rocks, but they’re not. They’re always at the gym doing weight training, you know, and there’s hours in it. And same with Formula One racing drivers, you’d think they would be driving the cars around getting good, but they don’t they spend most of the time I think, five hours a day, just doing strength training on there necks, because of the G forces. And that always surprises me people in business, what they actually do in business, but in sports, what they actually do to train, it’s nothing what you think normally. Anyone has good experiences?
Lachlan McNeill 16:09
Certainly lately, I’ve certainly in terms of my recruitment side of things. And personally, I think the key thing is to know who you are really, because I mean, I’ve got an accountant, she’s really good at working way through long lists of stuff, which just kills me to be honest. And the trouble is, I don’t like to even go. So I still find myself sometimes 10 o’clock at night, going through the intricacies of, of GST and trying to work out how to claim expenses. But you know, I realised at one stage, I just really have to let go of that. And I guess the point in terms of fitness or business, is just knowing your strengths and weaknesses to just being honest with yourself is pretty important.
Helen Oakes 16:49
Best thing I did was get an accountant? You can claim for things you didn’t even know you could claim for? Or that you can claim for. But you wouldn’t have known how to claim for this.
Lachlan McNeill 17:00
Exactly Right. That’s a good experience. I’ve had a lot of that experience thinking, Oh, I understand how GST works and, and UK VAT. I understand how that works. But you actually don’t you don’t know what you don’t know. So my experience is I went to an accountant, exactly the same thing. And he came to me and he said, he said, I’ve just given you 8000 pounds back because you weren’t claiming your car properly. You are. And I thought, wow, I love this accountant. Will you marry me?
Stefano Pietroiusti 17:28
Exactly our problem, too. Like, we just end up doing too much with our United States and things that you have the in a giveaway, and it’s a good fit for you. Is that a specialist in the end here?
Lachlan McNeill 17:41
Yeah, certainly. But yeah, absolutely. And it doesn’t take much time. I mean, I know they want to do to the DC these people. Something is glaring. I had a guy yesterday, and he was from Burma. And I said, Okay, I said, What’s your visa status? He said on on the permanent residence. I said, that should be sticking out on the top, you’ll CV the number one thing I see from Burma, you know, but he got a permanent residence. You know, that’s revital. You know, no one has to go through a little visa hassles, you know, in Auckland, you know, they said, Oh, I can think of that. I thought people just might work it out. And I said no, 95% of people in Burma don’t have a work permit. And I but there’s just little things in it. For me. It was a two minute thing. Yeah. So So yeah, as I sort of experiences is knowing what you’re not not appreciating, or trying to appreciate that you don’t know what you don’t know.
Helen Oakes 18:34
So delegating your strengths and weakness.
Lachlan McNeill 18:36
Yeah.
Danny de Hek 18:37
Get some else to do my Exercise
Stefano Pietroiusti 18:40
Your strengths and delegating your weaknesses.
Lachlan McNeill 18:43
Yeah, yeah. Well, back to fitness. I have been cranking out my exercise. I now do exercise reasonably, every day. I did a 15 minute hip thing today. And I’ll do like that or a bike ride, or sort of scrunchie exercises every day now. Yeah, it does make a difference. And it’s a journey. My experience is that it’s a journey. And don’t you wreck it? My experience is don’t overdo it in the first day. Danny
Helen Oakes 19:13
We picked it up a lot last year, and we really did. We’ve got a personal trainer on a Tuesday. Yeah, and it’s an hour and a half. And he really pushes us. And then we’re on a Wednesday we were actually going to a physio for about three or four months who was tweaking my back and playing with Helen shoulder a little bit suspect about that. When we go and do a five k run on a Saturday morning. But on Monday, I went for a five k run. And then on Wednesday night I went for another five k run. So we’re doing about 10 to 15 K’s a week. Now we’ve only we’ve just gone out and started doing it. We’ve actually going part of our routine now. We’re constantly sore. You know, but let’s put our minds in a really good place.
Rob Woolley 19:55
Like years ago. Yeah. I used to be like a runner. I also used to be a coach for athletics. And it’s interesting because you can tell if you are where I used to be that a person is not doing it regularly if you’re talking about any particular exercise routine, because if you’re doing it regularly, you don’t talk about it. So if you were, you’re exercising every morning, yeah. Then you just exercise every morning, you know, like it after a month or half a year, whatever you like. You’re just Yeah, like, you would never tell anybody about your exercise. Yeah. Because it’s just Yeah, like what you don’t do
Lachlan McNeill 20:41
Like cleaning your teeth. Yeah,
Rob Woolley 20:45
Exactly. And I think that’s interesting. Yeah. Like, if you talk to anybody about anything, right? If they raise what you saying is a common or mundane thing, but they’re talking about it, it actually tells you this is not a regular event for them.
Lachlan McNeill 21:04
That’s exactly right. It’s like the people who Instagram their salads. Yeah, right.
Danny de Hek 21:11
Because when you’re trying to generate a new habit, sometimes you need some accountability. And by telling people like me telling people, I’m stopping drinking for 12 months, you know, and then I know that if I tell you guys, and then you catch me drinking, you’re gonna I thought you stopped drinking. But if I know that, you’re gonna say I thought you you know, you know, science. I think that’s the other side of it. Because it’s about creating new habits. Yeah. And how long does it take to build a habit? How long does it take to log on money drinking one bottle of wine a week at the moment?
Helen Oakes 21:43
I mean, we
Danny de Hek 21:44
I have a three this week. And it’s like it didn’t have it didn’t last. But if I told you guys, my goal is only to buy one bottle a week, a month. Sorry, one week, a week and then you see a list of bottles of red wine behind me. Yeah.
David Clarkson 21:59
Yeah, I think they coming back to that, though, Danny, one of the things he does, he’ll help you achieve what you want to achieve around any of the goals that you might have in life, is that accountability thing, and it’s more, it’s more likely to happen if you kind of be held accountable, because the old story, you think about the fact that you’re going to have to tell people what you’ve done. And then that gets you going in the direction of you’re doing what you want to do. Or what you’ve set yourself to do, and sees you doing that gets you get your mindset around the things that you’ve seen you want to do. And I think that’s really important.
Danny de Hek 22:41
Because going vegan, it was really funny, because no one actually goes good on you might was few people do, a lot of people got on couldn’t give up meat might. So it’s sort of a thing that I wanted to do. But everyone has to debate it, you know, to a certain degree, which has been an interesting thing.
Helen Oakes 22:57
It is interesting, the whole vegan thing, because you know, people look nuts, not yours if you’re some grainy and you’re trying to save the world and all of that, which, you know, part of it could be the world but this guy was on last night talking to or I can’t remember what it was. He was on the news. And he was the ex ambassador to the US. He’s a New Zealand guy. And he lumped vegans and with anti vaxxers and herpes and everything else and it’s like, hold on, you know, just because you’re a vegan doesn’t mean you’re out there weird person. It was quite shocking the way he said it.
Danny de Hek 23:43
He was a middle aged fat guy.
Rob Woolley 23:46
I have to say though, like, up until I I kind of really worked out what what a Vegan is, is that the only change in dietary intake was you either eat meat or you don’t eat meat. Yeah, like you’re either you’re a vegetarian or you’re like, more normal. And if you were a wild animal conversation used to be Oh, hi. Yeah, like, are you a vegetarian? And they go, No, I’m a vegan. And it was like, if you were talking to anybody else, you know, like you said, Oh, yeah, like is Helen a vegetarian? No, she’s a vegan. And it was like this was like those radical You know, this isn’t just vegetarian because they’re here we can get a head around that. No, this is this bizarre thing. This is like, why at the far end of the spectrum, and it was haven, having met the two of you and you’re talking about being a vegan, I get exactly where they come in from.
Lachlan McNeill 24:53
It used to be extremists and stuff like that, because most Vegans I knew lived in teepees, you know, and that’s it.
Rob Woolley 25:00
Have you been to Northwood latey Lachlan?
Lachlan McNeill 25:02
Like they did their own eyebrows, you know? And use this to be a joke. There’s a pilot joke, there’s How do you get help? How can you tell if there’s a pilot at your party? And the answer is he’ll tell you. And how do you know if a pilot’s halfway through his conversation? You say that that’s not enough about flying Now let’s talk about me. So my seats just collapsed. So, so funny.
Helen Oakes 25:31
It’s why we prefer to say plant based don’t look at myself as some hippy Vegan and plant based that, you know,
Lachlan McNeill 25:40
They did tend to be but the fact is, I think the problem is that no one likes to be preached at and that’s absolutely fine. Because the fact is, there’s a lot more vegans as a huge thing on with what Bill Clinton did about veganism and, and the fact is, I eat a tonne less red meat than I did I think about when I eat red meat. And I I eat. I mean, don’t tell anyone but I sell it the other day and I actually enjoyed it.
Danny de Hek 26:06
Alright guys, I’m just to get the meeting back on track, we’re gonna go over time by miles. Okay, we’ll do a bit of rapid fire stuff. So we’re talking about being fit for business, it might be physical mental, what we feed ourselves, habits, what problems are we having, we’re trying to keep fit for business. And just read a couple more you can us.
Lachlan McNeill 26:26
Is it’s actually hard when you’re unfit, you know, run fit. It’s making that transition. And you might feel like a bit of an idiot if you go to a gym. And it’s been a while.
Helen Oakes 26:38
Making a transition imagine
Rob Woolley 26:41
Imagine this, if you will, right? If you were Danny and you went for a jog for 5k because that’s what he’s heard. And that’s what he is talking about any trail of any, any gotten in the habit of doing 5k every day, every day. And he thinks, hey, I’m nailing this guy on. Like, I’m really fit. Bla bla bla bla bla. And then he runs into a professional marathon runner. Yeah. Is he fit now? Because I think that our level of fitness in our scope, and our vision is usually as doing the same thing every day inside a little box. And we actually forget how did these other people? Yeah, like create huge businesses? How are they millionaires, multimillionaires, We, if we keep exercising, how we’re exercising, we’re going to be fit for how we’re exercising, right. But if we go to the news level, we need to not add exercise for that.
Danny de Hek 27:38
What is it fit for your business, because I watched shark skin literally last night, and I was watching these five rich guys. And I think Richard Branson’s even beyond that programme before, but I notice a lot of businesses that come in, they’ll ask them how they how much turnover they had for the first year, and some of them will say are $20,000 the second year $50,000 3rd year $80,000. And that you see them looking at it going there’s no money out for me, because they’re on a different run aren’t they but the person with the business was hoping that they’re gonna, and I go, we can’t, you know, what do they call it when you make the growth of that business is limited? So they’re not interested in investing? Yeah, doesn’t mean that person standing in front of me hasn’t got a brilliant business. But then he relieved to be fit for there business, don’t they?
Rob Woolley 28:21
No, no, they don’t they This is the whole thing. Because if you keep playing tennis, you’ll get fit for playing your tennis. Or if you want to play against the other guys, right? Then you need to exercise how the other guys are exercising.
Helen Oakes 28:38
So they’re saying that I fit for your own business?
Rob Woolley 28:42
No, because we are fit for our business we do our issue is maybe we are not fit to grow into any other business.
Lachlan McNeill 28:54
The problem might be might be the fact is you’re not deciding what level you want to be in because if you just wanna have a business with yourself, and awesome outsourced work, that’s very different to say, Oh, what a create a company that’s got 500 people.
Danny de Hek 29:12
And I think if I was trying to build my business into a company that hired 500 staff, I’m certainly not doing that.
Chris Cameron 29:20
Well came to your the vision, what’s your vision? Yeah, you’re gonna have a vision for your business. And then you’re gonna start with you’re fit for that vision, all you need to change to meet that vision.
Rob Woolley 29:30
Your automated a lot as well, you know, which means right you can scale. Right? If you hadn’t automated it you can’t scale.
Danny de Hek 29:40
Do you want to scale?
Rob Woolley 29:42
Well, not necessarily, right. But the assumption is, is that we want to be more than what we are because if we’re happy with how we are, then we’re fit.
Danny de Hek 29:53
The interesting thing with this run that we do on a Wednesday night, where are you training with people that we’re doing 100 kilometre run Another guy who did a 60k run. And then we went out for drinks on Friday night. And there’s a guy that does the goat run 34k’s as a training thing for the coast to coast. Every every weekend, he’s doing a 34k run in the hills. And I’m thinking I don’t want to be that guy. But I like learning from those like minded people who are into fitness. You know that what they do for nutrition? The mean the mental side of it, like how I’ve done a half marathon, when I get to the last 5k’s I think I’d never ever are going to do one of these. Again, I’ve done for them. I had don’t understand the mentality of people that can do 42k’s. So I love listening to those guys and going well, how did you get yourself to that stage?
Rob Woolley 30:43
I think it’s actually incredibly easy right to get to that stage. Yeah, like it is yellow. I used to do there every weekend. Yeah, like when I was 18. So it’s just Yeah, like you alternate? Yeah, like the long and slow. And you know, like, if you can run for an hour, and you are able to run an hour regularly, you should be able to run anything.
Danny de Hek 31:10
Yeah, solutions good stuff Rob, thank you.
David Clarkson 31:14
It’s fine. Find somebody to be accountable to for your goals.
Helen Oakes 31:20
Good idea.
Danny de Hek 31:21
Yep. I love accountability.
Helen Oakes 31:24
Yeah.
Chris Cameron 31:25
Set goal
Danny de Hek 31:28
SMART goals.
Lachlan McNeill 31:31
I would certainly say treating as a journey. What I mean by that is just like fitness, you’re not going to instantly I mean, the thing is, we talked to two different things. One is personal fitness. Other one is, is your business. But and certainly, certainly in terms of business, it’s that you’re not going to suddenly really understand marketing after a weekend course. So you’re gonna want to understand that after four or five years. And if you treat this as as a journey, just like fitness as a journey, I think that’s really important.
Chris Cameron 32:04
You’re gonna know when you go to set that goal, though otherwise, you’re pointless, because you’re going to know where you want your business to go. We have Fitness, Personal Fitness to go.
Lachlan McNeill 32:14
That’s almost exactly what I’m talking about before Chris, actually, I work for a company that they corporate and they did project engineering. And what they did is they had a project and they would identify everyone’s skills and what they needed that no more than what was needed for that project. That’s it, we wanted this project, we need that so they could work out who needed to develop the skills, but only to a certain level. Because certain people love doing 3d modelling and the animation stuff, but they only needed a certain amount. I think the important is working out what what level you need to go to, you could put an awful lot of effort into, you know, marketing or accounting that you just don’t need just because you love doing it.
Rob Woolley 32:49
Exactly, yeah, you need to work out the opportunities and and the skills you need.
Lachlan McNeill 32:54
Yeah. But I just I just noticed that a lot of people do a lot of what they like doing more than they need to, like engineers love solving problems. They work through systems, and they play around with their, their accounting system to the nth degree and they customise things. But actually, what they really, really should be doing is develop this sales skills of going out. But no, they just don’t find something more to do that needs to deal with the accounting system and their codes. Because that’s what engineers do.
Danny de Hek 33:21
I think they’re cool, isn’t it? Yeah,
Lachlan McNeill 33:25
Be honest with yourself. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 33:29
Good stuff, guys. All right.
Lachlan McNeill 33:32
I know Danny is short of time. But I certainly think the transition when you’re not fit on something you’re not good at something is actually just facing up to it. For example, you know, I’ve been in business for years and years and years. But on accounting stuff, actually reading a decent set of accounts in a proper way. I’m rubbish at it, you know, I should almost go to accounting 101 and join the people who have that because I almost need to understand that. But why there’s a shame. I’m a grown up and I feel like I’m going back to kindy.
Danny de Hek 34:02
When I started my painting and decorating business, my business partner said he would take care of all the mundane things about running the business. And then when when we started working together, he went and hired an accountant. And I thought, Oh, yeah, that wasn’t silly.
Rob Woolley 34:16
Well, he did it. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 34:18
And I think that’s great. So you just don’t think of the obvious David.
David Clarkson 34:21
It’s really it’s really interesting, Danny, because when I went on the road for BP Oil as a young fellow, they wouldn’t let us to the sales and marketing course until we’d gone to you know, we’d gone to either night Tech or University and done accounting one, and, and, and the commercial law one. So there was there was a company, you know, this mind you a international company, but they recognised exactly what Laughlin saying, you know, you need to have a broad range very often to be able to be successful. what you’re doing and so if you need the skills, go and get them. Yeah,
Lachlan McNeill 35:06
David does that sometimes, like going to the gym, when you’re certainly not the skinniest person around? You have to think, right? I’m going to walk in that place and I’m going to feel a bit stupid. But actually, you know, I always remember when a school if you get a haircut, you get people used to make fun of you when you come along. They owe you Baldy, you know, and, and the fact is, after the second day, now, everyone’s forgotten about it, you know, you have a hard time the first 10 minutes and off you go, but you have to face that, and you and get through it. And it’s really, you know, what Toastmasters is like how many people just don’t walk through the door? Same old thing. Why? Because that feel it that that anticipation of the shame or something. But I think that honesty, just walking in there and getting stuck in is really important. Even if you you know, even if you feel as you sort of don’t belong.
Danny de Hek 35:54
Where can we get help them? Like we have some places? What were some good courses to do? Is that what we’re talking about
Rob Woolley 35:58
Ask the ones already at the next level?
David Clarkson 36:01
Yeah. Hey, but Danny, sometimes people try and overdo it, do too much, you know, think I can’t do it until I’ve learned such and such and such and such and such and such, and it just goes on. And then the end, all I do is spend the time learning and not doing, that old saying, feel the fear and do it anyway. You know, that’s the thing. And that’s the attitude that we’ve got to build on ourselves, and be prepared to make mistakes. You know, if we get it wrong the first time, that means we’re more likely to get it right next time, you know, name of the game.
Danny de Hek 36:37
And I really believe in that because I’ve people asked me if I made any mistakes in business, and I often say no, because everything you’ve done is a learning experience. And I readjust all the time, and you and it’s like being in front of a on a yachting boat, and you’re changing your course all the time. You don’t sit there and go in a straight line to the end of success through.
Lachlan McNeill 36:57
But one of the most terrifying
David Clarkson 36:59
Here at Toastmasters. And you can say what’s feedback, doing, basically feedbacks there to help you fix your mistakes. And so you’ll be around next time.
Lachlan McNeill 37:11
Yeah, that’s right.
Danny de Hek 37:12
Just in the respects of time. I’m just gonna I’ve got a lot out of this meeting, even though we’ve done a lot shorter. So what about some takeaways? Just what have you got? I did like your comment near David. I’m trying to put it in a nutshell really is a fear, the fear and do it?
David Clarkson 37:25
Yeah, feel the fear and do it anyway. It’s an oldie but a goodie.
Danny de Hek 37:30
Yeah. Anyone else got any takeaways with that?
Rob Woolley 37:36
You need resistance to grow?
Danny de Hek 37:41
Yeah, that’s good. Because when you’re at the gym, and you’re lifting weights, it’s not how much you’re lifting from the time, but you need good control, and good resistance in a way isn’t.
Lachlan McNeill 37:54
he often feel they’ll wish there was a skills audit that you can do. This is what I want to do business, is this going to give me some little tests, see where I stand, not something you do in public. And this is, you know, like an IQ test or something and you can’t find the Go button. But it’s something we evaluate your skills in terms of your marketing, your understanding of accounting, your technical skills, for that appropriate business that you’re running, that would be kind of useful, a skills audit.
Helen Oakes 38:23
Business Laughlin there is a business
There is a business, honestly, think that would be a good business there, you need some people with that accounting, marketing. You know, the marketing side of things is tricky, because half it’s getting outside. So it’s a physical hands on thing. But, you know, I just think the takeaway is that a lot of people just kid themselves.
Danny de Hek 38:43
I reckon if I went and done a course, and I turned up at Hagley, a bit half the class would be here, about to start a business for themselves, but no one would actually be doing it.
Lachlan McNeill 38:52
That’s right.
David Clarkson 38:53
The same as writing your book, Danny.
Helen Oakes 38:57
Well people start but they never finish. Yeah, write books.
Stefano Pietroiusti 39:00
Yeah, writting a book building a boat all those things.
Danny de Hek 39:06
Showing love to your partner. Anyone else got any takeaways. You don’t have to have any more.
David Clarkson 39:15
Last takeaway is, is we’ve talked about it but don’t be afraid of asking help.
Danny de Hek 39:20
Ask for help. And that’s what we do here.
Rob Woolley 39:23
Asking the ones who’ve already done it.
Danny de Hek 39:26
David. How do I make lots of money quick.
David Clarkson 39:32
Get have one good idea, Danny.
Danny de Hek 39:36
One good idea. I’m staying focused. I think it’s really important knowing where you’re going. Yeah. Like my yachting example suppose. Good stuff go either way as you got enough out of here to actually come up with a really good topic for next week.
Lachlan McNeill 39:50
That’s right. By the way. I actually got quite a bit of a checklist thing last last year, I think, and I actually edited it last week and I edited it a Wednesday checklist. So stick my head up and think around what I’m doing. That’s good quite well.
Helen Oakes 40:02
Did you put that thing online? on the chat box? Laughlin?
Lachlan McNeill 40:06
What was that the,
Helen Oakes 40:07
I think you had something and we were gonna have a look at it.
Lachlan McNeill 40:10
I was gonna share my screen. I just didn’t work out how I could put it.
Danny de Hek 40:15
I’ll just do it now just want to add a file. I just want to switch screens before we do. So just so you know. This is how the website right? And if you click on home, you’ll get to the homepage of me. But at the bottom, we’ve got the latest blogs. Oh, yes. All right, and you’ve got think tank top checklist, 2021, and more in a fitness. So it takes me about three hours after this meeting to compose this. But what I do is we, we scribe the whole meeting into text. And then I also release it as a podcast. And when you see the person’s name like Helen, and you click on that, it takes them off to Helens profile. So we’ve got quite a few. I think I’ve done 87 podcasts at the moment. And these are podcasts. So make sure your profiles up to speed. And also, by all means, when you’re on the podcast, you can click podcast here, and you can also pick what platform you’d like to subscribe on. And then if you really feel keen, it’d be nice if you were on the apple podcast or write us a review when they’d like that would be much appreciated. But saying that we’ll say a topic that we had this today was really, really good. What about next week’s topic? Where do you think this went? “Fit for Business” What do we got?
Rob Woolley 41:37
I think I think we need to allocate an amount every daily exercise, you know, like and so I don’t know if we want to talk about anything around that or not.
Danny de Hek 41:48
When do you do your exercise? Rob?
Rob Woolley 41:51
I’ve got an exercycle right here. I think you can just actually see the edge of that. And whenever the thought exercise pops in my head, I hop on the and do five minutes.
Helen Oakes 42:01
Have you ever got a Cubii Rob?
Danny de Hek 42:06
No, no, it doesn’t know what a Cubii is even know what a Cubii is? What’s the Cubii thing you see on the info commercials in between the Chase and the people that sit on the peddles.
Helen Oakes 42:17
Eating ice cream and peddling.
Lachlan McNeill 42:20
All right. I think one of the most wonderful things about those online exercise machines is one of the most attractive features as you can you can quietly slide that under the bed when you don’t use it anymore.
David Clarkson 42:30
And leave a there.
Danny de Hek 42:34
And I think even though Rob might have just talked about doing five minutes with exercise, it’s not really the time or the amount, is it? It’s not it’s actually having that routine. Yeah. Are we talking about routines or something like that? Or are we talking about creating habits?
David Clarkson 42:50
Want about that?
Danny de Hek 42:52
Creating habits.
Rob Woolley 42:53
How about removing the barriers to doing the exercise? why there was a psychologist to see one of the exercise. And he tried, tried, tried, tried tried any always failed. And he worked out right there the hard thing for him, between him exercising or not exercising, is getting dressed in the morning. And so he decided that he would go to sleep in his exercise gear including the shoes. Right, so he slept in a shorts and a T shirt and a pair of sneakers. And he got up every morning and he just had to walk straight into the car has clothes from the bag in the car that he’d put in the night before. And he drove straight to the gym straight in the gym. And it was easier for him to exercise that way. Because if he didn’t go to the gym, he couldn’t go to work. And the shorts, say it has to consciously undress and feel really guilty doing it. Right if he avoided the exercise.
Danny de Hek 43:54
So he made the less point of resistance disappear. That’s what you’re saying is it.
Rob Woolley 44:00
Yeah, I I could and I was looking at this yesterday, I could remove the handlebars or for that. And I could have an upright work desk. I can slide that underneath, hop on there and be cycling all day at my desk.
Danny de Hek 44:17
Please don’t. But you could.
Lachlan McNeill 44:19
Be slightly disturbing, actually.
Danny de Hek 44:22
All right,
Rob Woolley 44:23
Lean mean racing sardine
Danny de Hek 44:26
I think we can discuss it and deep next week. So I think next week’s topic can be creating habits, looking for good habits and all those sort of techniques along the way. But hey, thank you for coming along today. And I will stop the recording. And if you are listening to this podcast, I haven’t introduced to everyone today but as I said it is a blog on our website. You can go through and find everyone’s profile. And please do come and join us don’t feel like you have to be a stranger. We are going to help me guys.
David Clarkson 44:54
Hey Danny, why don’t you just call it one word call it exercise.
Danny de Hek 45:00
O my goodness.
David Clarkson 45:02
And that can cover a multitude of sins from mental through physical, the whole nine yards.
Danny de Hek 45:08
Or actually,
Lachlan McNeill 45:08
Can I can I push back on that a little bit? I think one of the problems we had today was we had sort of two different subjects that were flicking from one to the other than the other. And now there’s a correlation that between them, I think we can do enough on one subject. You know, if it’s a physical exercise, we could easily talk for the whole meeting on that. What do you think Dave?
Danny de Hek 45:28
What do you mean?
Rob Woolley 45:31
I’m talking to people yesterday, that if you have a problem, and you Google it right, then you want the answer to that to a specific problem, right? And that’s what everybody who writes really high on Google answers a specific problem and they write a blog as a specific problem. What is their specific problem? Yeah,
Danny de Hek 45:50
I got crack lips.
Rob Woolley 45:53
You got more than cracked lips as a problem Danny but yes we can talk about crack lips.
Helen Oakes 45:58
Creating habits, because that’s what we want to do. We want to create habits and stick to them. What about we had another word in the creating lasting habits?
Lachlan McNeill 46:07
What about creating lasting business habits to be honest, because I think, as I say, I certainly felt today that they were going off on tangents too quickly.
Danny de Hek 46:16
Yeah, yeah the business side of it, there’s what we probably could go back to isn’t is it creating business habits?
David Clarkson 46:22
Yeah
Helen Oakes 46:25
Lasting business habits
Stefano Pietroiusti 46:26
Lasting business habits.
Lachlan McNeill 46:29
Yeah, like it. Good.
Danny de Hek 46:30
Okay. Give me an example when you guys want just so we can get people here for next week.
Rob Woolley 46:35
I think you’re going to struggle to come up with an example of that, to be honest, because I think if you think about habits, all start right, then you can work out an example easy, and then apply it to whatever you want.
Helen Oakes 46:48
Well, you could even do something like, you know, getting up at a certain time every day, we all work for ourselves. So we have to get up at a certain time.
Lachlan McNeill 46:59
For example, for me, though, I get in touch with clients and I can easily fall out of that. So developing a habit around just keeping in touch with the clients, even if you don’t have something of immediate need. That to me is a habit, you want to make it a habit. And quite often you’re really busy on other stuff. It’s easy to ignore keeping in touch with your other clients.
Danny de Hek 47:19
Next week’s topic is going to be a goodie. So let’s go creating lasting business habits. As I said earlier on, thank you for listening and do tune in danny.co.nz if you’re wondering where this is coming from or search ELITE : SIX as this is our members and it’s been awesome, and I could keep talking all day long, but I’m gonna cut this stuff off and midstream.
Transcribed by Otter
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