SWISH Sales Coaching | Ryan Tuckwood Interview

Best book bits podcast brings you ryan tuckwood founder and ceo of swish sales coaching selling with integrity and selling honestly a proud father multiple business owner advisor investor and speaker ryan thanks for being on the show thanks for having me excited to be uh be a part of it now we'll jump into all things sales soon but take us back to being a mechanic maintenance engineer at the age of 27 you left the uk you had A girlfriend for five years drove an audi tt siberian husky investment property and you were not fulfilled why and

where did you go wait there's a there's some bullet points of uh of my life um yeah so you kind of summarized the whole thing i was a mechanical maintenance engineer for eight years in the uk i was doing something i was good at um and i Was i'm a bit of a perfectionist anyway i've got a level of ocd um so i was a good engineer but yeah as you quite rightly said i definitely wasn't fulfilled although i was achieving um and i think it's an ongoing battle that a lot of people have especially

when they get into the world of sales there's people that are they're selling they're making money they're achieving um but they're not fulfilled maybe they don't Love the product they don't love the the business they work for maybe they don't believe in the support that's on the back end um and i had my first taste of that at 27 so i decided to give everything up jumped on a plane moved over to australia and uh as a backpacker the the visa that i was on at the time you could only work for one company for

Six months maximum so i i struggled to find employment and i was determined not to go back into engineering because i knew i'd get caught up in the financial side of things again so um i ended up where i found myself in a call center smashing the phones just 300 a day getting abuse after abuse um and after about three months of doing that i'm sitting there 21st out of 21 people on a sales board And realized that this this maybe isn't for me um got to a stage that i i now call my crisis

point and it was i guess you'd call it a catalyst for this business um i had 31 cents to my name it was in march 2011 and uh i was sleeping on a bathroom floor i'm on a pool floaty or a lilo depending on where you're listening to This around the world and then uh um one night it was a tuesday night in this windowless box of a bathroom the pool floaties just popped on me and i just sank to the floor and that was it that for me that was the lowest that i've been

in regards to not succeeding not having any financial finances behind me not even having a bedroom or a bed um and i decided i was going to quit um and that day i guess the day i quit The following morning is really the reason that i'm here right now because subsequently as i went into the office tonight and i handed my notice in my sales manager at the time jack who was actually the co-founder of this business with me back in 2014 he wouldn't allow me to quit he he said to me dead straight that

i'm not letting you quit because you haven't even tried And that really hit hard for me because i i felt that i was trying i felt that i was working hard but what he said i hadn't actually done was fanatically obsess over the art and craft of sales and communication which i didn't believe was a skill um and that was the start really of the journey yeah thanks for unpacking that and uh when you said you really hit a low point i was going to say yeah when the pool fall Already pops and you're on

the on the floor you're actually at the lowest point uh you possibly can be so thank you thank you for sharing that story and i had those notes written down as well so yeah getting into that i guess the the catalyst or what i like to call this uh this event uh happened for you when you you made the decision to hey i'm gonna quit and the boss is like no you really haven't given it a crack uh talk About sort of the formation of habits and how you sort of turn yourself around to go

from 21 out of 21 to number one in the company what was the sort of early steps you did with understanding a few of the basics with sales and using your engineering experience to actually engineer sales and say hang on a sec i actually have a growth mindset not a fixed mindset and i can actually learn these these these sales games so what were the sort of early things that you Did to set you apart from other people firstly i'd love to say that i had a growth mindset and not a fixed mindset but i

didn't at the time i definitely had a fixed mindset i was very much of the belief that sales was not a learned skill and i only did the training out of spite truth be told i was almost self-sabotaged so the way it was positioned to me was if you will study and train give me 15 minutes A day just just consume as much content as you can listen to the top performers you do that every single day for the next 60 days and if you haven't moved the needle at all if you're still 21st if

you you haven't improved your financial situation then i'll pay for you to go wherever say jack literally offered to pay for alicia and i to go wherever he wanted in the world um and he said at least then you're leaving knowing That you gave it all you've got so i almost didn't want it to work i wanted because i didn't believe that sales was a skill so i i'd never hopefully this comes across the right way but i never failed at anything in my life so the fact that i was failing i didn't want to

blame me i wanted to blame the industry i wanted to say that sales isn't for me so i'm like all right whatever um i'll i'll do some study i'll do some reading i'll listen some more Calls watch some videos and i just thought wouldn't if i can do it for two more months i've got my flights paid for and that was all i had bringing in my mind but then what happened is i got exposed to the likes of jim rowan tom hopkins brian tracy um zig ziglar jordan balfour grant cardone some of the old

school greats and then they're not so great But i think what i really saw michael was not necessarily there wasn't a definitive moment there was just a combination of processes they all had a system or a process or an order of which they were doing things um so obviously for me i wanted to make more sales i wanted to book more appointments and generate more leads i started to recognize if i changed the order of which i did things with people i could get a better response if i Worked on i mean jordan belford say

what you want about the guy like he made me aware of tonality and tonality not being speak louder or quieter that's a volume and and that awareness i think a few things just started to click into place for me and i was all of a sudden able to keep people on the phone for longer i was able to beat a gatekeeper if somebody gave me an objection i at least had a a process to to not necessarily overcome it i Didn't overcome every objection but i was able to deal with it so i didn't fear

them which meant that i was increasing my activity rates i'm i was going home in the evening less stressed my wife was getting a better version of me and within five weeks all of a sudden i'd crept up the leadership board and i was number one in five weeks and it and i can't tell you it was categorically when i said this language pattern it was Just a combination of things and um i guess that was the foundation for swish as well because it was developing me as a person not just not just this is

how you close deals and that's we don't want that to be swish we want to develop people um and yeah i went from 21st to first in five weeks and within 18 months i was running a team of 47 and did over 300k in comms and it literally i don't say this in a glib Fashion it literally changed my life because i realized two things number one sales is impact i was able to support my dad's been pretty ill for best part two decades and i was able to support my family and send money home

for them and number two sales is a process it is a skill that can be learnt by anybody um and that was really then The the kick on for i can't be the only person in sales right now that doesn't want to be in sales that isn't naturally gifted linguistically um and maybe is getting a bit anxious on the phone and they're more of a natural introvert so we created swish with the mission of changing the perception of the industry so that we can help good good people authentic people articulate the value of what they

do Better without compromising any values yeah thanks for breaking it down and yeah some of the notes i got from that was yeah definitely having that mentor or that leader in the company that actually had belief in you and actually spent the time to train you and then you learning from the greats the jim rohn zig ziglar tom hopkins all the all the great people behind me in the books and i've learned from them as well and you know going out there and say you know What i i can learn this this is a skill

it is a process many people have mastered it and giving it a red hot crack as well what did you do after that and when was swish sort of born yeah what what did you do after the call center and managing and doing over 300 k's and comms what was the next steps from youtube yeah i think it kind of organically grew as i became more of a leader which i never really see myself as initially i We were we were recruiting quite a lot within the business um some people would succeed some people would

leave um some would last two weeks um and then they would get to um what did you call it the this moment this moment yeah i this moment yeah they get to their own moment and their version of what mine was when my my lilo burst and then they would quit and they would walk away and i was getting frustrated we've seen People walk away before giving it a really good go and i kind of had that conversation with jack ringing in my ears that there's there's too many people slipping through this industry even at

our business where we were without their what their money their expectations weren't managed they weren't provided with the right training they were given capability training but not mindset training Um and i started to really love the morning meetings the the one-on-one coaching the barging phone calls guiding people reflecting on their own um uh their own sales acumen and then i i think i'm sure i had a conversation with jack and i'm like i think i like coaching and he's like i love coaching um and he and i said what would we coach he's like well

what do we know and all we knew was well Engineering and sales and i said but the the big problem is that people can't find um or people won't get given a go in sales if they haven't got experience or if they do get given a go they don't last more than two two weeks so we actually decided to create in 2014 or early 2014 was the idea then for about six months whilst we were jack actually retired for six months essentially but was building this business with me on the side and we Created a

not-for-profit sales recruitment agency which at the time was called isr training and recruitment so instant sales results and the aim was to take anybody regardless of experience and put you through two to three days worth of sales training with us i'm in a classroom and at the end of those days you would be equipped with the skills predominantly i will say back then predominantly call Center-based with the skills to be able to go into a role and at least hold your own and we did that we had that model for about two to two and

a half years maybe three years um and it was it worked phenomenal we had every single week we would get 17 18 year olds maybe they were lacking in a bit of confidence they maybe they'd never had a sales role before they'd Apply for a job they'd go through our training we put them through the training and then we created a digital online academy in 2016 to support them in their first 10 weeks in the role as well so that when they did hit that this moment we were still there for them and supporting them

and we would manage their expectations and we had like a 96 placement rate every week into roles we did two and a half thousand people into Work in just over two and a half years um and it really gave us then credibility in the market as sales trainers um because we never charged the business for the placement so there was no risk to a business and it what happened in time was imagine if we put you into a business with no experience then you're their top performer in the first 10 weeks the business owner would

then come back and go can you now train the rest of our Team and that's kind of how we then evolved into corporate and business sales trainers i guess yeah and fast forward 2018 and shark tank was that experience like with shark tank and had they had to go down terrifying um in in a word uh it it went down because jack forced it to go down i didn't want to do it and so i remember in november 2009 2017 slash december jack jacket approached me And asked me if i what about i thought about

going on shark tank and i said i think that's a stupid idea why why would we do that we were we were already growing at a tremendous rate and we had a great reputation albeit southeast queensland um i would like oh in my head i'm like why would we risk that why would we put ourselves on show as sales trainers um and risk not making a sale live in front of another about a million viewers per Episode uh and he said that's a shame because i've already applied so so he never gave me the choice

and that's just jack know my personality i would have procrastinated on it so um for the next three months we've we prepared for it and we then flew down to sydney and um yeah i guess if you've seen the episode the rest is history we we became the first company in the hospital um in The history of australian shark tank to secure three with steve andrew and glenn so it was an amazing experience but yeah definitely terrifying yeah awesome and then yeah fast forward now you uh recently uh awarded sort of last year prestigious distinguished

talent visa as per stray's global talent program so congratulations on that as well so yeah getting back to sort of swish you tell us what it sort of stands for it's selling with integrity selling honestly Yeah let's sort of go through it and how that sort of came about as well what are you doing now with the company yeah the uh i mean swish itself it's an evolution of isr training um i remember we were talking about a potential rebrand um i remember sitting in the boardroom with jack and and we were trying to discuss

names because isr training it just never really hooked anybody it didn't mean anything And jack said is there anything that you say in training consistently that um that we could use and i said i don't know i kind of start every training session by saying to people we want to change the perception of this industry and we want to show you how you can sell with integrity and sell honestly i mean that's what we truly believe in and then we just almost almost at the same time i went swish selling and it just kind of

said And jack loves basketball so that that kind of that just stuck um and i guess it started off as a bit of a fancy acronym and a belief system and it's really now evolved into um an education or a curriculum that is designed to work on both skill set and capabilities and mindset and resilience so building building the best people not just building the best sales person and over time now i've been able to bring in Um a cohort of coaches i've got 14 coaches and that that that includes the the sharks as well

our investors so they're they're available and they speak on some of our elite programs um but and that can cover everything from sales body language public speaking mindset resilience systems hr that there's coaches in all facets because what we do know is that sales is not just one division it's Everybody's part in the organization if we can get everything streamlined we can maximize sales opportunities so that's um that's where the name came from and then over time once we'd come out on the back of shark tank of course it gave us a lot of credibility

in the market and we evolved from being a company that trained individual sales people to now focusing on larger corporate to enterprise companies and then training All of the people within that company if that makes sense yeah yeah absolutely and i can tell from experience i know you've worked with friends so i've been involved with mercedes-benz and some property company as well yeah fantastic information and advice as well you're also a podcast host as well and i've watched quite a few episodes so i'm actually a big fan of of the swiss podcast especially of the

episode with grant cardone who's sort of been some of Your favorite guests and moments so far this is probably my favorite guess if i was to go with i mean grant grant was you might not know this michael but grant was my first ever interview um ever i i know so i started to start at the top um and that was a it was a bit of a blag he was a a mutual friend of andrew banks who's one of our investors and we knew he was coming over for a brisbane conference um and grant's

daughters go to summer camp with Andrew's grand grandkids so um so we've got that connection so he was literally the first one i ever did and my wife even if we were going up in the hotel in brisbane we're in the lift and my wife's like are you nervous i'm like i wasn't until you said that um so that that would be one of my favorites because it was definitely me stepping out of my comfort zone and um although grant's methodology doesn't always lend to the australian market and I don't i don't support everything that

he teaches he's definitely had an impact on me with um his 10x role and the mindset around that so love that one and cherie leverton who's an american female sales coach she is um she she talks about heart-centered heart-centric selling she was phenomenal she's a wealth of knowledge um and i thought she was brilliant but then a bit left-field i i've interviewed some Of my team for the podcast as well so just actually being able to sit down with my operations manager my marketing manager at the time and and dissect what makes them tick and

talk about their journey that might not have been necessarily in the limelight or public facing and it made me recognize that i don't need to have a brand or a name on the podcast that every single person has a story to tell And we just need to know the right questions to ask to get it out of them yeah absolutely and that's the power of podcasting and especially being a podcast coach you you get to choose who you want to chat with and learn the topics and and ask the questions and sit back and and

learn as well so yeah it's a great little thing free training it's it's free training yeah i i can tell you some stories of the people i've interviewed and yeah for me i it's like I get a 10 000 coaching session in 45 minutes every single day so it's great who's your favorite by the way just out of interest i interviewed dr john d martini the other day which was great so that was going full circle i've got one of his books there so you know he's wrote 30 000 books published 40 40 books lives

on the world chip and all he does is travel and teach and research and yeah so that was probably my favorite recently mj demarco on saturday so yeah A lot of a lot of great people and you meet a lot of great people especially in the book space and i'm in yeah it's fantastic but getting back to sales i've been in sales for 15 years myself and yeah selling is basically as you know selling yourself and getting getting to the point of selling let's start with the basics so the basics is basically mastering your state

of mind and before you sell so can you talk about the importance of not only presenting well Having a first impression you talk about 4.18 seconds to make a first winning impression but talk to me the importance about how important it is to first have that state of mind before you go into a sales environment yeah 100 so it's often asked where does the sale begin um and we've got what we call our negotiation ladder it's a 10-step sales process and it begins with preparation stage one is preparation and there's a few different Facets to

that um and one of them definitely is is state of mind and mindset and i think it starts there but not with self it starts there with other people managing your expectations that are a bit more experienced than you so if i take take one of our new starters here angela she's been in sales for 25 years extremely experienced she's run um very very successful international businesses um she's got no ambition to run a Business again um but and she's she's very comfortable in the b2b space but i know our average sales cycle is about

eight to nine weeks with her with a larger corporate which is who she was focusing on so from a mindset perspective she could have come in here and with all that experience expecting to hit the ground running mate lots of sales in the first few weeks be top of the board that our data does not suggest that's going To happen so what i need to do as a leader is let her know and and really break down our average sales cycle comparative to our average transaction value so that when she gets eight nine ten weeks

in she's not disheartened and i don't lose her because she's not performing and then you add on two to three weeks to find your feet understand the systems the crm the products the process um the cultural fit We're probably not going to get a sale out of angela for the first 12 weeks but the danger i've seen in in businesses is that managers don't do that to sales people they say yep you come in these commission opportunities this is the potential and they try and sell them and they oversell it so i'll almost do the

do the reverse and and and try and talk people out of the role or undersell it and what that enabled us to do and Angela actually made her first sale on week 12 it was bang on end of probation to a t it meant that we don't create that roller coaster because all i need to do then is get consistency on the front end activity level so i manage a mindset by managing expectations around the reality of the role firstly and then there's there's a few things from a from a state of mind perspective we

do a Lot of personality profile um training we talk about emotional intelligence um we we we obviously do a lot of capability and um skill set training and i'm a big believer in the fact it's that if you've got the skills and you've got the tools it will remove a level of fear if i if if it doesn't matter what you say to me whether you're a gatekeeper a decision maker an influencer and it doesn't matter what you say i have an Ability to deal with it not necessarily overcome with it i can deal with

it i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fear anything you remove fear you increase activity so the couple of things the preparation stage yes yes mindset managing expectations um and then also uh giving people the the skill set which will remove our level of fear as well yeah definitely and some of the notes i got from that actually said preparation but i like he said expectations and you Know setting the actual expectations for the salesperson is is is key you don't want to throw someone in the deep end and say you know go out there and

sell 10 and really it's not about selling tenants about the process of selling and the day-to-day process and with that process it's a skill set if you look at a if you look at any trading like a plumber for example they don't go out and say okay install three Tours and here's some talk that they know the process they know the steps they follow so you've got to treat sales as a as a toolkit as well and i like how you said it's not about overcoming objections it's about how you actually deal with those and

having the knowledge in that skill set to take way away removes that fear as well so yeah a lot of sales people might play with one particular style one cricket bat they got one persona and They they like to sort of one particular personalities but something you identify as well in your training is identify how to communicate with all different personas as well talk about the importance of you know not just disc but that we do there are multiple different personalities and personas that we deal with how important is that to know who you're dealing

with yeah i think it's exceptionally important even even away from sales like just life relationships That it's almost ignorant to to to think that everybody thinks the same as we do and acts the same we do that is inspired the same as us that is motivated the way we are we're not we're we're all cut from a different cloth and and we we will have different motivational drivers that are also um flexible at different times of our life and and experiences can dictate that so the the The analogy i give is that you could be

the best french sales person in the world but if you're trying to sell to me in french i don't understand you and it's the same reason we read the five love languages i dare say you've read that book and and we read that because we respect our loved ones so much to speak their love language right i want to know what my wife likes like does she does she prefer Words of affirmation does she like accent what what does she like and i want to make this relationship work but then when it gets to sales

we don't spend time understanding consumer behaviors not on a granular level which is what i've obsessed with for the last four or five years so that we can adapt to just and respond and speak their language because what that will allow you to do is connect with everybody and The the age that we live in right now technology dictates that i can find out everything about your business at a click of a button i can find your clients i can i can get testimonials i know about your products i can really find out your pricing

if i wanted to even if you don't have it on your website i could get it somewhere so the the business is already exposed the products are already exposed what is not exposed is the sales professional The the one point of difference and and i believe if we can really maximize that um and give you a great example right you were you were at mercedes before right so you know they're the agency model they're now following so now there's there's no flexibility in the price point it's that every vehicle anywhere around australia and new zealand

is is exactly the same so i can't cut you a deal i can't throw in This that and the other i can't knock off a couple of thousand dollars i have to purely sell you on you choosing me to do business with i think that is a bloody amazing model because it sits perfectly with the swish methodology and creating clients for life not just smashing somebody over the head because it's the 31st of march and i want to make make my quota for the quarter yeah and one thing that talk about which i really love

it's securing clients for Life and you talk about not closing but but value exchange as well i really like that and that ties into the second thing that you and your company are big on which you've never sold somebody until they buy from you a second time can you expand on that and what what do you mean by that yeah yeah literally just talking about that we um we just bought on board today or yesterday um pexa property exchange australia so a huge listed company and And i said to my team this morning that's this

is just the beginning of this relationship because we do thoroughly believe that you haven't made a sale until somebody engages your services twice um and that the the message behind that is that it's now our job to give them what they didn't expect to get so we're not here to meet expectations we're here to far exceed them and we want to reinforce that message constantly with our team so The way we do that is it's part of our negotiation ladder so they're hearing about it all the time that the second that we transact and i

was taught the com completely opposite to this i was trained that once you make a sale you get somebody's credit card details you put the phone down you've got 45 seconds to get on to the next person now it's how can we go above and beyond what can i do for them right now in this Second when people are at heightened state of buyers remorse they may be questioning whether this is the right decision for them what are the little one-percenters that i can do a little text message a video on linkedin send them some

cupcakes that are branded i don't know whatever you want to do that make them go wow i wasn't expecting that and when you do that and you do it without expectation the natural byproduct is That your business is going to grow they might not use your services again but they they're certainly not going to look at you any less and they might give you a referral as well so um so that's really what that message is about yeah and it's also about the power of always thinking long term and sales people need to have a

buy-in with their particular product service in the company as well so if the sales person is not bought into the company long-term and they're Mainly i'm going to smash it to the 6-12 months close as many deals get as much commission as possible and then slickety-slick will smith chris rocks make across face i'm out see you later it's actually not good for the company so as as an owner of the business and sales manager as well your job is to not only recruit people train people the right way but get them to buy into the

company as well for that for that long term vision as Well talk to me about the power of persuasion and why you know books being written on persuasion but how important it is for not only to build rapport in those early stages but to continue with persuasion with sales persuasion is an interesting word um i mean i don't i personally don't really lend to it and i don't i don't throw it around in here i want persuasion and influence and convincing first three Letters the word convinced i don't agree with um we like the word

inspiration it's one of our values um can we can we inspire somebody to take action for the for the greater good right we're not a charity we we want to grow as well we want to make money make no bones about it but can we do it and we and we actually positively impact people as well so um if we talk about inspiration then what we consciously think about is I want to inspire somebody to take action um through my discovery phase and through the the value exchange or the transaction completion whatever you want to

call it um but also post so even with our customer experience team here it's how can they inspire them to now use the program how can you inspire them to engage in a live session we do two live sessions a week in our in our on demand program how can you inspire them to want to be in it not tell them that you have To be there because that's part of your program but make them want to be there we don't do what we need we do what we want that's more emotional so there's a

constant reinforcement of that message as well that our three values are integrity inspiration and be the change to see the change so if i know and i hear this a lot because i've spoken about it many times that might i used to have a debilitating fear of public speaking And and it was in only post shark tank that i decided to get a public speaking coach um that allowed me to to become a better version of me on stage and you saw me in sydney about melbourne you saw me melbourne melbourne jordan belfort m scene

with dasha with your fancy jacket your superman jacket on and yeah you killed it you did a fantastic role so congrats on on the public speaking in Emcee yeah i appreciate it i like it i mean that that was the biggest gig at the time that i'd ever done there was 1100 people i think in the room but i know people see that part of my journey and they a lot of them know if they've been following us for a few years that our first gig there was three people there and i didn't do it

i bottled it i i left jack to do that so i know that when i share that story that does inspire other people to go you know What maybe i could do that as well so what that means by by default is that i'm constantly asking my team in here how can you be the change for them to see the change how can you step out like if that means that i have to force myself onto a stage in front of a thousand people that means i might be able to impact one person in that

crowd and they might not use my services but they might go do you know what i'm going to do some public speaking training or I'm going to stand up in front of my team tomorrow morning i'm going to deliver a better more eloquent speech because if ryan can i can like you know i mean i want to be a hero but i think we not we've got to push the boundaries a little bit yeah one thing i want to sort of deep dive into is you said a word which i really like which is called

reinforce can you talk to us about sort of your team your meetings i know you have a meeting at 802 in the morning and no one shows up late because it's an odd time can you talk about how you structure your team and how you motivate and reinforce and role play as well yeah and so again if you look at human behavior we know that it takes us two and a half hours to get informational decay and according to the ebbinghaus forgetting curve we'll we'll retain less than 10 of information within 30 days um so

We know categorically and cobits i mean i've got to be careful how i phrase it it's been great for us in in that respect because i think people have appreciated the power of small bite-sized digital learning as opposed to let's just get into a one-off conference that motivates for 24 hours that's not what gets results so reinforcement is scientifically proven to get better results and to get more out of people so Internally we role play four times a day and so if we talk about the two and a half hours to get informational decay i

don't want the team getting two and a half hours in and then forgetting what we spoke about first thing in the morning so i mean i'm truly told i'm not always involved in those sales role plays but the sales team will get together um after each break so after morning morning huddle after first break After lunch and after the afternoon break and they'll just do a quick two to three minutes that's it it's not not too in-depth it's right we're going to practice our intro i'm going to practice my discovery questions can i go through

this particular objection that i feel like i'm getting a lot at the moment and they just go back and forth a couple of minutes and then back on to back onto zoom or phones or whatever they're doing yeah i know you're a fan of soccer as Well and i know i don't follow you on social when you you've got your little boys playing soccer but it's just like any sport or skill you train you train your train you play you train your train you play if you're at work you work your work you train but

a lot of jobs they just work work work and you're never actually correct in bad form so it's actually quite interesting about the the reinforcement you need to be told if you're not doing something Wrong or if you're doing something right repeat it but it's so powerful role-playing and and reinforcing and i think there's so much money left on the table by companies that just think yeah you're a salesperson you know how to sell we'll let you go do your numbers no but you're actually you're closing ratio could be a lot better saving money making

more money there's so many avenues towards that as well so it is all about Leadership who's running the company who's managing the company and making sure that's that's done correctly as well segway in a little bit talk to me a little bit about some of your non-negotiables in your daily life and what advice do you have for for this with non-negotiables yeah so non-negotiables that we set a part of our goal setting um and weekly rhythm um so we have we have our iv list that we create so at the end of every single day

Before we knock off so before we leave the office um or before i finish work so i my my one of my non-negotiables from a structured perspective is that i'll be finished here at 5 30 right so 5 30 to 8 o'clock it's family time it's something that i've been working towards for a few years that i knew i was going to have kids i've got two young boys now and that i wanted to enjoy that that that evening period once they finish kindy And alicia's finished work so 5 30 to 8 o'clock non-negotiable that's

that's family time and kids go to bed 8 30 till 10 30 11 o'clock that i then pick up my computer again and i'm working um my wife knows that we we i manage expectations around that's the lifestyle and she's happy because we get the family time in between i don't work um weekends really anymore either so that that's a couple um then at the end of your working day we write down The six major tasks that we must complete tomorrow um and then we prioritize them in order of importance and then we uh we

brian tracy eat that frog so we put to the top of the list what is the um what is the worst thing and we're gonna do that first so setting up my day is definitely a non-negotiable from the day before a couple of other ones that um and i guess i'm really conditioned to Because i don't even think about them anymore and kissing my wife um good morning good night i'm not saying i love you like so that it translates these days as just a quick kiss on the forehead before i leave that's pretty much

it but i still do it because it's just i've done it so long and i had it written down in front of me and drinking two two liters of water um every single day i don't always do it right and i think this needs to be Really hammered home with non-negotiables yeah as you go and none when we talk about goals and non-negotiables i think people get lost in this and they go i couldn't possibly do that every single day for the rest of my life that's not the point i don't drink two litres of

water every single day but i drink more water than i used to and and that is the point because it's it's front of mind um a couple of Business ones and so to touch base with three potential clients so anybody that's in my pipeline and touch base with three existing clients that are in my pipeline um show gratitude to um a team member so that might be a quick text message or a slack message or just saying that i appreciate what you did i noticed that you did this today so i'm conscious about intentionally doing

that um so there's a there's a few little Random ones there yeah they're good i got a lot from that as well right and some of the other stuff you talk about you talk about ordering your network and intentionally selecting a new network and you know dropping a loser friend picking up a winning friend that's one of my ones but yeah reducing your exposure to negativity and misaligned individuals by ordering your social network connections tell me the importance about Sort of leveling up your your network and you know at the end of the day sometimes

our light shines bright so you need to let people know to wear sunglasses because you're not going to dim your light you're going to keep shining and growing brilliant i got that from one of my author friends which was really cool but yeah talk about ordering your network i i don't think i really appreciated it until shark tank true truth be told or Even until i started doing the podcast and then i started to meet some really really elite performers um i used to think it was fluffy but i used to think all personal development

was fluffy i don't come from that world back home in the uk and i i didn't write goals until i arrived to australia so i was 27 28 years old um and what i what i had realized was that when i There's probably a real big penny drop here when stephen glenn a couple of our investors they came to the office post shark tank so this would be about september 2018 or 2019 no 2018 so when it went through so we we filmed it in march we didn't get the investment until september so there's six

months worth of due diligence and they came in the office and we had a three-year plan and they had a three-year plan and there was Millions of dollars difference in the three-year plan and i remember glenn's saying my job here as a mentor as a coach is to raise your line of sight right and get you looking up and out not down and in i want to raise your line of sight get you looking up up and out not down and in and jack and i didn't have the ability to think as big as they

did in reality because we hadn't seen it those guys in andrew banks has already got online training programs over in China and the us and doing hundreds of millions of dollars so they saw the potential that we couldn't see and that is the beauty around aligning yourself with the right people and and then on the flip side of that it's auditing and removing or reducing your exposure is the way i try to phrase it because some people we can't eliminate and and and let's be clear what i mean by that is family members right people

that are Close to you when we first started to grow this business when i started to try and grow my personal brand and i started putting content out there on social media i got ridiculed by the people closest to me because they're the ones that feel comfortable enough to do it and they and it was all a bit tongue-in-cheek and what i realized as i started to study humans it was it wasn't done maliciously but it was an Unconscious defense mechanism on their part because the more i grew it was exposing what they weren't doing

or didn't have the the the drive to do so even when i talked to people that were closest to me about business i realized that i was unconsciously taking business advice or even sales advice from people that have never run a business or any parenting advice from people who Don't have kids so if i know that conversation is going to happen with the same person over and over again if it's a family member for instance i'll just reduce my exposure to that part of the conversation so i might still talk to them as frequently but

if i know that every time i talk about business to somebody and they go you work too hard that will not make you happy you're going to run yourself into The ground you're going to kill yourself that will go in eventually and you'll slow down you'll suppress your potential you won't have high activity levels and i didn't want that to happen to me so because i love what i do and the thing was they couldn't appreciate that i actually love what i do because they'd never loved what they did so again it wasn't malicious so

what i do now is if i feel the conversation's going to go towards business or they go so how's Work it goes fantastic anyway how's things over there how are you going and i just i control the conversation right so i'm still having frequent catch-ups but i don't allow myself to get caught up in a really am i do i live in is my house too big is my car too nice should i buy that watch and they're the little questions that were starting to niggle away at me in the early days when you put

yourself in a different room and then you tell them that i've done This amount of hours this month or i've this is the types of clients that we're we're looking to partner with and they go why are you not thinking bigger than that why are you not looking at the american market and they literally raise your line of sight so i'm very conscious about creating hit lists which sounds horrible and even down to on a personal level me and my wife created a hit list at the start of last Year and again this year which

people do we want to hang around with like we've got kids and we've got we've got a business each as well so we realize that we can only really not only but we're better connected with people that have kids and have businesses if you have kids that's all right you kind of get it but if you don't have a business you don't get the whole picture so we create a hit list of couples anybody listen to this now they know They're on this hit list um that we wanted to spend time with it meant we

were more fulfilled on a daily weekly monthly basis yeah it reminds me of a conversation i had recently with dr john d martini and he spoke about sort of the value letter and everyone's got a different value later and i think the older we get not only are we very conscious on our value ladder like my valuations people education knowledge sharing books Authors and stuff like that so if you don't fit into those things you know i'm not gonna open up to you and i'm not gonna you know invest the time energy emotions uh with

that particular person so but we're also ordering other people's values and once we know their values stack like okay it doesn't online because we know that and you talk about this as well the only precious resource we have is time and it's an investment you know spending Even 45 minutes with us chatting if our values weren't aligned you know we we wouldn't be having this conversation and i think the older we get we realize about about values and we only want to spend time with people that we can actually grow from them and learn and

have that open space where we can talk about exactly what we feel in our heart instead of what we pretend to talk about yeah how's the weather how's the football game how's this and we're like Yeah i really want to talk about real things i think that's huge too one last thing before we sort of wrap up this is an odd one but you talk about scheduling your diary a full year in advance and sort of in the year ahead and ensuring you've got enough time for yourself and your family but blocking out your diary

for 12 to 18 months in advance can you talk about sort of your process on that and the power of sitting down every year and you know doing those chunks of time And blocking that out uh in your in your journal and diary yeah 100 um so i've got a couple of really good mentors by the way around this and one of them is dr glenn richards obviously business partner now um but also anna samios who is a phenomenal phenomenal scaling up coach she's the only female certified scaling up coach you would have maybe read

scaling up by vern harness yeah and she's amazing and she's she Spoke to me a lot about protecting my diary um and and respecting my own time and and also conditioning people around me to respect my time as well so what we did was sit down and we looked at the next quiet point in my diary um and we realized that i was just going around in circles like i was wanting to work on the business but i couldn't because i was too busy working in i was doing 35 40 hours a week delivering training

via Zoom or flying around the country and it just wasn't sustainable i was going to crash and burn at some stage and i'd already done that a couple of times and usually when i go on holiday and stop so i don't get to enjoy the holiday because i actually crash and get sick talk about the story you actually did crash you you burnt out you passed out what happened you literally you know he died or something i don't even really die but it sounds like No but you're like you were out and then you came

back too yeah um that was that's i was in bali um so when we first started this company we were about two years in and jack and i had had a conversation about we've been working 40 and 15 hour days seven days a week probably wearing that as a badge of honor as well like telling everybody how hard we work for no money we didn't pay ourselves for the first two years um and we said We need a break so um jack booked a holiday alicia and i booked to go to bali and we were

two days in it was um the second morning we were at breakfast and we had a very conscious conversation around not talking about work anymore um so alicia had her salon we were talking about building another business as well on the side so breakfast we said that's it no more talk Next six days was going to enjoy the holiday um so we we mentally and verbally switched off from business chat and then went for lunch that same that same day so a few hours later and i was in we were in the restaurant um i

hadn't had a drink just for the record and i started to i started to feel a bit light-headed and i said to alicia so i'm going to go back to the room i don't feel good at all hey and then i i just Remember standing up to go back to the room and then the next thing i knew i woke up in the restaurant i'm in a wheelchair um i've got an oxygen tank on me and i've got sick all down my front um and and alicia was like right in my face screaming at me

but i couldn't hear anything it was almost like i was deaf it was really quite strange um and apparently i had a fit um i just collapsed in the restaurant and everybody came running over and i Started having a fit and throwing up on myself that's a horrible story and they they couldn't really put it down to anything all of my vitals were okay but i had to explain to me afterwards that stress was almost like inertia that i got this two years worth of stress i'm going around in circles and i can't see a

way out and then i do take a break and i just stop and then stress comes and just smacks you in the back of the head So because i didn't have we like the work-life balance which i also know doesn't quite exist but i didn't have any level of balance eventually it caught up with me so knowing that now and really trying to fight that happening again um i've i've got total control and protection of my diary so i i do block out 12 to 18 months in advance i i clear my monday morning and

my friday afternoon um it's officially Sanity time but in my diary it says strategy and it's monday morning is is empty i don't have any appointments on a monday morning because i don't want to be sitting there on a sunday night with my family panicking because i've got to prepare for a monday morning meeting so i've got the team meeting but that's okay but i don't do any customer facing on a monday morning friday afternoon exactly the Same premise because i don't want to be coming out of the office on a friday stressed that i've

got things to catch up on friday afternoon is close those loops so i bookended my week firstly and then i said i can't physically keep doing 35 40 hours worth of training like it is mentally physically emotionally draining me and my clients are not getting the best version of me and we worked out what was optimum and It worked out 10 to 15 hours worth of training a week is what i could actually deliver and so we built that in we said when do i want to do it tuesday wednesday thursday so i'm available for

three to five hours tuesday wednesday thursday for the next 18 months and that's the only time my team can sell my physical training um and and then around that is business Development training my team administration meetings and so forth and i just created my perfect diary and then learned how to fit my clients into it no it's perfect it's ordered in your time one one of the goals i've got and i'm practicing at the moment is to have easter every single week what that means is it's good friday and easter monday and people say oh

you're available friday so no it's good friday and i said no it's not and i said not for you it's Not but for me it is that that's that's one thing that i look forward to telling people and having that you know working four days off with the family i've got two kids myself two young kids and a wife so and then working three days on full time but then choosing to work you know saturday mornings most of my clients in america and obviously the time the difference is great so i'm up at you know

4am 5am and spend two hours every morning so that That's fun but yeah it is all about sitting down you know stopping pausing reflecting breathing having a holiday and saying you know what what does this mean like what where where is this business going where is my life going and what's important in the value in the value deck as well i think that's a good point michael like where where where is the business going and where do i fit into it like i'm i'm very aware i've never taken a business or 100 Million dollars a

year i haven't so i i probably don't have the skills to be able to do that right and that's okay but there's a great book there i'm assuming you've read every book in the world by the way i haven't no just the good ones i don't need to know how to do that i just need to know who can do that and and that's the whole premise of everything in business and delegation i don't need to know how i just need to know who and and so what I've i've got a goal a grander goal

that by the time maverick my eldest is three and a half um so in 18 months time he'll start school properly and so not pre-prep school i want to be able to take him to school and pick him up at the end of the day because i absolutely love that that trip it's so cool when he runs to the car and then i've got fox who's 18 months behind him so by the time they go to school can I have this business to a stage whereby it runs um a full at full pelt with a

general manager a ceo in place that means that i don't need to do morning meetings i don't need to be here i don't do training at those times and i can i can have that balance with my children as well so i don't miss out on that so i've got the reason behind strategizing my diary now i'm not going to get to that stage in in two years Time or 18 months time and then go i just want to be able to take an afternoon off it's like no everything i'm doing right now is geared

towards that sounds a little bit i interviewed this guy named jeremy harbour a couple weeks ago and uh he's done a book called go do deals and he said a business owner really should only be having four meetings and they're basically with mergers acquisitions joint ventures and exit strategies so in terms of taking The company to 100 million you should be having those particular uh meetings and i was like well that actually makes complete sense once you read these books go to deals but yeah that's definitely a notable goal is to drop your kids off

pick them up and and just have that lifestyle balance too and it's about ordering your personality where is your energy why what does your day look like and having those expectations with your family and yourself as well so yeah You've got so much content out there we could we could literally talk for hours about sales coaching and things like that but where can people sort of find you reach you you've got so much content online what's the best ways they can sort of deep dive into your sales methodology and philosophy's online if they want to

connect with me personally um linkedin instagram and facebook pretty straightforward um in instagram i put a bit of content out There personally as well but otherwise um the youtube channel so swish sales coaching we've got lots and lots of content that goes up there um and uh swishes obviously across all the socials as well so yeah pretty ryan took it all three sales coaching we should be pretty easy to find ryan thanks for being a guest on the best book beats podcast thanks for sharing your story and yeah all the work you've done so far

so my audience out there if you need a Sales trainer or a sales company for your company if you're a business owner ceo and i want to train your stuff definitely reach out to uh swiss and and they will help you out so ryan thanks again for being a guest and enjoy the rest of the day and hopefully the rain stops in uh down uh brisbane and gold coast okay cheers appreciate it mate thank you