The Mojo Maker Podcast with Nikki Fogden-Moore: For Leaders In Life | Healthy Wealthy and Wise

TVC072 Coping With Uncertainty Welcome to one of a special series of episodes dedicated to dealing with uncertainty.  The importance of building courage to lead from within when we are faced with a challenging landscape at work or at home. In this episode learn the art of the NOW, THEN, WHAT and IF quadrant, reaching out to those who can help and making a game plan with communication and transparency.   If you are listening to me while you’re driving today, if you’re on the treadmill, or if you’re out working, or maybe you’re just sitting in the office and you’re having a nano-break, I hope you can find these tips functional and practical. Ask Questions Learn From Others Hold Space – Uncertainty is Not A Sign Of Weakness Keep Learning – Use Your Down-Time Wisely Reach Out For Professional Help Communicate  I’ve had a few of you email me and talk about coping with uncertainty – how to deal with life when you’re working on a project basis, maybe that you’ve started your own business, or you’re on a fly-in, fly-out or a contractor role. With many of the workshops at the moment, especially in mining, oil/gas and tech we’re having some really big discussions about leading from within when work is on a contract basis and the markets are volatile. * What do you do when you have your family and your friends asking you questions about when you will be back at work? * Or you want to plan for your future, but you don’t know when your next pay check is coming in? I want to give you a few of my coping mechanisms today that I coach a lot of my CEO and corporate teams on how we can navigate a chaos to calm.  To make sure that you can go from survival mode back into that shift, of feeling in control in the driver’s seat.  Understanding that there is a plan in place and there’s always a solution.  Let’s get started……   #1 Asking Questions is Not A Sign Of Vulnerability Work with your teams or manager and open up the dialogue and discussion.  Asking a question is a positive thing, it’s not actually a vulnerability.  Being inquisitive, wanting to come up with solutions, putting some ideas on the table or letting people know that you’re perhaps not in the most centred state, you’re wondering what’s going to happen on the next quarter or the next week or the next job’s coming in…. it’s totally okay. Hold your space, be practical and ask away.    #2 You’re Not The First Person To Experience This – Lean In To Those Who Have Been There Before There are people that have walked that line with you as well. There are people that have had loads of experience and probably sitting around the table from you that it might’ve been their job for longer that know exactly how it feels to have this feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. Reach out, get some tips and tools and be proactive.    #3 –  Uncertainty is Not A Sign Of Weakness – It’s How You Deal With It That Counts First and foremost when you’re listening to this, uncertainty and anxiety are not a form of weakness. Take stock of the issues that are really bothering you and think about others as well who may be in the same situation. WRITE THESE ELEMENTS DOWN.  How much do we share? I want to ask you, how well do you really know your colleagues and the peo...

TVC 071 Fitpreneur Pat Hollingworth Meet my guest Pat Hollingworth on episode 72 of The Vitality Coach podcast. Mountaineer, adventure chaser and corporate culture coach, Pat has summited multiple 8000 metre peaks, including Mount Everest and helped his Nepali Sherpa mates set up their own mountain-guiding business based out of Kathmandu. Based in Australia, Patrick learned the art of alpine-style climbing in the mountains of New Zealand, Canada and France, and then the science of expedition-style climbing in the mountains of Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Alaska and Argentina. He’s seen the very best of what alpine style can offer, and also the very worst of what expedition style can deliver. We’ve done a couple of great episodes together, and the second of which I am sharing first, hope you enjoy this discussion finding your Fitpreneur as a leader and the art of communication * Walk and talks, and why sometimes it’s handy to understand that men talk side by side, * Sharing, connecting and ensuring we have being authentic in leadership and life * Using nature as a place for creativity, connection and problem solving * Are you leading with healthy, wealthy and wise   When the gold content really comes out in conversations and the bonds start to happen.   Fitpreneur Walk and Talks Is traditional meeting room style really the way to go in authentic and effective communication? What do you and you teams need to operate at you best:   one-to-one personal time to connect and to really sit down in front of each other activities to allow greater scope and sharing on the go short and sharp discussions the regroup to take notes longer strategy sessions space for personality all of the above I just think that the traditional business approach is almost confrontational, where you’re sitting across one another at a table.  It’s just that conversation tends to flow easier  when you’re walking side by side and to be honest, I don’t only find that with men. I find that with women as well. Fitpreneurs Mix It Up Rather than fixing to one style of communication why not think about a blend of healthy, wealthy and wise that allows you to connect not only on a work front but with friends and family too: Create a shared space Integrate walk and talks Organise a group activity away from your usual environment Understand your team and how they like to perform, think and communicate Understand your friends or family and how they like to perform, think and communicate With experience comes personality and confidence to create the above opportunities – to think like a Fitpreneur. Being a great leader is being able to bring your personality back into the role again, and to be yourself, so that authenticity.   There’s no covering up any perceived kind of deficiency, because every human being is wonderfully flawed. When you’re in a really great team situation you  don’t hide any of that. That’s the beauty of what it is to be human is to accept your own flaws and find your dream team around you, Pat Fitpreneurs Take Time Out for Yourself. Patrick does this a couple of ways and most of all by going into the mountains. Whenever I go into the mountains, the rule is that I’ve got to come back out the mountains better. It’s not clear how I’ve got to be better, but I’ve just got to have improved some way,

TVC069 Stressed To Success.  Overspent and undernourished? What to do when you’re stressed, finances, energy and your mental hard drive is depleted. This podcast topic came via some of you who wrote in and asked how, when I coach with my clients, how we can so quickly get them feeling back in control and having a clear road map. Predominantly many of you said most of your stress always came back to being worried about finances and money. You’re not alone. So let me help you fast track from chaos to calm. It doesn’t matter how experienced we are, there are many, many paths that lead us down the road to financial fear, as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, as a small business owner, or just someone that’s trying to make ends meet.    In this episode I help you assess what’s keeping you awake at night and assign tasks to regain your feeling of confidence and control.   First up I want to share with you a little story. I’ve got a really wonderful client, extremely intelligent and driven, he runs fantastic companies. On the surface it was all mega amazing. Underneath there was fear, panic, anxiety and bucket loads of stress.  Every morning the first thing he would think about was worry and concern about finances, about staff, about business, about clients, about all sorts of issues. As soon as he woke up. The first thought in the morning was a stressful thought. It wasn’t about being alive, abundance, gratitude, opportunity, wisdom and experience. “John” went to sleep at night and woke up in the morning with exactly the same feeling of chaos, anxiety and feeling out of control.     What happens when we are in this phase/state of internal chaos? You’re not making great decisions because everything is derived from fear and a thought of ‘lacking things’ time, money, ideas, support You’re no longer bringing your personality into your decision making  – you’re being robotic and not connected You’re no longer tapping into your experience with a sense of calm to decision making and navigating your way through the week. The smallest elements can throw you off track You’re not enjoying the journey anymore   When you’re really in survival mode, where you’re just putting one foot in front of the other, life is where your agenda rules you, you’re putting out fires and just keeping your head above water –  you’re really not ‘in charge’ anymore.   I call this  “survival status” – the pointy start end of the Chaos To Calm model. A model I’ve been using for coaching and workshops for over 10 years – how to assess where you are and make a game plan for getting back in control.   So how can you make the simple steps to get back in the driver seat? Here are my top tips to replenish your personal and commercial vitality and take stock of whats really going on: Assess Select Assign Implement Step 1: Assess where you are right now It’s time to press pause and take yourself out of survival mode, into awareness mode about where you’re sitting with your finances, your business, your concern, so we can start doing some actions and create some tasks around it that will have you feeling back in control. Stress 101: Grab a sheet of paper and write down every single issue, every single worry, concern, roadblock, procrastination barrier, negative thought, write everything down, and really brained dumped on what I call the &...

TVC068 Play Bigger Influencer and Innovator, Silicon Valley’s Al Ramadan Welcome back to the Influencer Fitpreneur Series.  I’m honoured to have a special guest on the show,  Play Bigger co-author and true innovator, Al Ramadan.   Co-founding partner at Play Bigger Advisors, Al has been a CEO, Entrepreneur, Operating Executive and Sailing Technologist. He is also a mentor, father and favourite uncle to an ever-growing circle of next-generation superstars. I met Al when we were both on a fabulous island in the Pacific, Namotu, and he was just about to launch his new book – Play Bigger; how Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets. A true definition of a Fitpreneur,  I hope you enjoy listening to this episode, as much as we did recording it. Al in San Fran and me sitting on the opposite side of the globe in Australia. At the time of this podcast recoding, Play Bigger was announced as one of the top 5 in leadership and strategy books in the US for business. It’s been a hell of a journey. Al Ramadan An Influencer From The Start In the early ’90s Al applied data science to Australia’s Americas Cup by showing data along with video – an innovation in sports performance analytics. As a result of this work, Al co-founded Quokka Sports, which pioneered data-intensive sports immersion on the Internet and revolutionised the way people experienced sport. He then joined Macromedia – and Adobe,  after Adobe acquired Macromedia, where he spent almost ten years changing the way people think about great digital experiences on the Web and on then-new mobile devices. At Adobe, Al led teams that created the Rich Internet Applications category and helped develop the discipline of experience design. Collaboration and Consciousness In 2011 Al started up his current big project, the company Play Bigger Advisers, with his 2  ‘brothers in life’,  Dave Patterson and Chris Lochhead. This new project meant the reach of knowledge and shared experience was going to go broader and make a bigger impact than ever before.  “At Play Bigger, we help those that are already successful in venture capital, already established, take their businesses to the next level, to the ultimate transcendence” Al states that working in co-category design is a unique discipline. It’s a new thing, just like product design, company design, industrial design, experience design, all of these design methodologies have appeared over the course of the last 20 or 30 years.  The wonderful thing about silicon valley and everything else is creating something before the market even knows where to put it, and that’s often the challenge of innovative minds, is that they have an idea that doesn’t fit in a box yet.   People,  when purchasing, like to think in categories, so you may not realise it but category design is one of the leading product development areas in our day to day world. From cereals to diary products, washing products to bikes and cars.  For example an SUV is a category.    Writing Play Bigger The Book Due to their innovation and experience in Category Design,  Play Bigger advisors were repeatedly asked by people to do projects and they just couldn’t accept them – “we were too busy“. So this sparked the idea for Play Bigger the book. “We all thought collectively, the right thing to do is to try and get this discipline articulated in the form of a book“.  The next step: Collaboration on a whole new level. Al, Chris and Dave, bought in legendary author, Kevin Meaney who wrote the definitive guide to I...

TVC067 Design Your Winning Weeks – Every Week Welcome back to The Vitality Coach Podcast. Thanks so much for those of you that have left a review on iTunes – we are well over 65,00 downloads as at October this year, in 85 countries so it’s great to have so many of you tuning in. Plus messaging me about topics that you’d like help on. There’s a real struggle for many people at the moment with so much going on in our lives. Technology that saves time is reducing our time out,  we’re almost never ‘off’. So why do we still use the same script and rules for balancing our week and managing our schedules that we did 10-20 years ago, when clearly our time management landscape has changed? By thinking about your week every week and creating a game plan you can: reduce stress look at how you’re going to use your hours wisely press pause before answering emails and phone calls generate space for you to operate to your full potential That’s todays’s podcast is all about designing your Winning Weeks. It’s a crucial part of my Vitality Road Map™ program and has been for years.  My top 5 tips on Designing Your Winning Week How to rewrite your rule book and blend healthy, wealthy, wise aspects during your week. 1 Plan Your Week, Every Sunday I know this sounds completely simple, and most people start off doing a great job but they stop being disciplined about it.  You need to be disciplined because if you don’t plan the week you want you’ll get the one you’re given. 2 Be Practical You’re not the fairy godmother or a wizard where everything in the whole list is going to be possible. What vital commitments do you have and what is VITAL for you to achieve. Identifying these across all areas of work and home life is important to ensure you are chipping away at your goals.  Make It Visible: I sit down with a piece of paper, turn it landscape and I map out my top 6 pillars of a winning week.   * Health and wellbeing * Admin/career/productivity/client work * Family commitments * Friends I want to catch up with * Me time * Giving Back All of those  6 pillars are across the top of that page – in one row. Then I assign a few MUST do’s under each pillar heading For example for health and well being this week I’m going to plan some runs in, yoga, a massage this week and I’m doing some mini meditation minutes.  My health and wellbeing also means eating healthy, making sure I have good groceries and getting the food order or whatever else organised so I can choose that I’m fuelling my body as well as the fitness aspects of the week. The second pillar I go through is what core client deliveries do I need to do this week?  What are my vital areas of business? Who am I checking in with? What am I delivering on and then also what about personal and business admin; invoices, bill payments, insurances. I always check in every week on my KPI’s and my commercial goals like I recommend to my clients. I do the same thing, and I look at areas that might be coming up that I need to red mark or ear mark for planning and succession as well. My personal admin and finance, my client’s career productivity deliverables. What workshops am I giving? Who am I doing personal coaching courses with this week? What people do I need to follow up with in terms of new inquiries? Where are the vital areas that my attention needs to go to in terms of my career productivity and my personal admin.

TVC066 How To Manage Busy Today’s podcast is all about managing busy. How to run your week rather than let your week run you.   There is a difference between hard work and working hard. In today’s episode I’m chatting you through some simple tools to keep yourself in charge of your day. Consistently. If you do what you love and you love what you do, you’re going to have an abundance of energy over what you normally think is possible.  As most of you know, especially those of you who follow me on social media, I’m rarely in one place for longer than a few days. This year has been a very big year for travel. I met lots of incredible people via my corporate vitality workshops,  speaking engagements, private Boardroom Retreats™ and private coaching with clients who inspire me right back. 2017 is already looking booked. More of the above, a series of book launches from Aspen to NYC, throw in a few trips to Fiji, and it’s all happening. Exhausted reading that? How do I keep my energy, my passion, my vitality and my focus for what I’m doing.  It all comes down to managing busy.  Schedules, times and deadlines don’t change. It’s how we handle it that matters… harness your energy keep that focus know when to have downtime know how to take nano-breaks manage your personal space, especially when you have a public-facing job where you’re surrounded by a lot of people or you’re transitioning from working by yourself and then suddenly your kids come home and there’s a whole lot of noise and chaos. There’s a real art to finding that blend during busy periods when you’re building your empire or when you’re creating a life that you love.  Here’s my top tips on Managing Busy a) Go back to basics and keep it SIMPLE Don’t let chaos take you off track from being productive and thoughtful and also not getting into making decisions out of fear or panic. We can get pulled off direction with shiny objects and I know that I do a lot of different things. b) Use your 90 Day Plan as your compass to Manage Busy I constantly have to ask myself, “Is this part of my 90-day plan?” I religiously print out my 90-day plan and I break it down into immediate three tasks, my seven-day tasks, the 30-day goals that I have to achieve, and then where I need to be in those 90 days. I have that printed out in front of me. I take that with me. I review that before I accept appointments, before I have guest podcasts scheduled in, and before I plan my travel as well. Be productive! I use the car trips from the airport with my driver on the way to a meeting to do phone calls. If I’m extremely tired, then I put my phone down and I use that time for meditation. What it’s all about is looking at your day differently and looking at how you can best use the time. The time is not going to expand or contract. We have the same numbers of hours in the day as everyone else. It’s just how we use it and I think that’s really important.   c) Be selective with your time and your energy to Manage Busy I’ve always said yes to a lot of things, but now in order to be the best version of myself for the people that I coach and for the companies that I work with, I have to manage that workload and make sure that I have the mental agility as well as the physical agility to keep everything going.  Pause before you commit Check your diary and check your winning week plan Look at the next 30 days Ask yourself  – is this VITAL? Can it Wait? Can i delegate

TVC064: Blending Business and Personal Vitality with CEO Boris Musa Today’s podcast is all about building sustainable business vitality, with the CEO of the worlds largest Barramundi farm. Doesn’t sound like a normal pit stop on the Vitality Tour – but there is nothing average about my guest CEO Boris Musa or the company he leads. Winner of the 2015 Boss Magazine Young Executive Awards, Boris demonstrates a clear mission to blend commercial excellence with a sense of community and sustainable best practice. Balancing business and personal vitality for a healthy bottom line and wellbeing for the environment, himself and his staff. Not only that but the decisions they make and the way the company is run is having a direct impact on a global market and putting rural Werribee, in Australia’s Victorian state, on the map internationally. That’s exactly the type of leader we want to hear more from.     Almost half the global barramundi industry’s seed stock will be produced in Wyndham, following the opening of the world’s largest barramundi hatchery in Werribee – Mainstream Aquaculture’s hatchery in Lock Avenue. This rural location in Australia’s Victoria state, will export barramundi stock to 14 countries across four continents.. Making this the world’s leading provider of recirculating aquaculture food-fish products. What’s so interesting about this? Three things as far as I am concerned * Strong business and commercial leadership * Personal drive, energy and conviction for making an impact and a difference – and being able to keep the pace * Tangible on the ground activities that grow a sense of community, family and connection for those inside the organisation. Here’s the 5 top tips on creating business and personal vitality when you’re leading from within: (remember this applies to running a small business, a start up, a family or a large organisation…)   * Have a Vision * Communicate * Create a Clear Culture * Be Accountable * Be Conscious Have a vision For Boris it means creating a truly sustainable approach to the business. “We are growing a fish and in doing so we’re substituting fish that are derived from capture fisheries and I think seafood is the only protein that is predominantly source from the wild. That’s not sustainable and 90% of global capture fisheries are either fully exploited or over exploited. It’s a very strong theme that we can communicate and that does permeate throughout the business that here we are, operating a fully contained enclosed business growing a premium source of protein and in doing so preserving the integrity of wild fisheries all over the world”.  Don’t assume everyone knows the vision: Leaders we shouldn’t assume that that sort of information is going to diffuse throughout the organisation and throughout the stakeholder base. Leaders need to communicate that. That’s our job and we make sure we remind people that every single role in our business is making a difference and it’s making a difference towards a very important mission.   Communicate It is critical to articulate not just the objective and the mission, but also translate that into the journey. What do we need to do day after day, week after week, month after month to deliver our objectives. Ensure an ongoing process of interacting with the organisation to make sure that we don’t deviate from what we’re trying to achieve and we all recognise that we play a really important role. There are a number of cultural aspects throughout the business. Communication flow, transparency information.

TVC063: Remarkability With Rowdy McLean What makes individuals great, do their personal best and be their personal best? It’s the focus on being remarkable. I’m fortunate enough to be in a very special Mastermind group with international super star speakers, authors and coaches Rowdy McLean, Jane Anderson and the fabulous Keith Abraham.  My dream team. Keith and I have done a couple of podcasts already on living your purpose and how to kick procrastination once and for all – so I asked Rowdy on my show to talk all things Remarkability. Remarkability is just going beyond the vanilla, the plain, the same-old same-old, the day-in day-out, the stuff that everybody else does. It doesn’t take much to be remarkable, you’ve just got to step up above the crowd and that’s pretty easy to do. Rowdy Here’s how you can develop the mindset and skills to be Remarkable: First up have the right mindset The one thing we all have complete control in our day is our mindset. If you’re not back in control, you’re not off to a very good start. Why do you think people get challenged with actually having a positive mindset and they quickly go into the stories of, I got stuff in traffic, my kids were sick, I feel horrible. Why do you think it’s such a struggle for people to get that remarkable mindset. I think the world leverages drama much more than it leverages possibility or positivity. For some reason, the western world got caught up all in this – the more drama, the more attractive it is. So you pick up a newspaper and the first ten pages are all about drama. You hop on the nightly news and the first news items are all about bad stuff. I called it “fear-mongering”. You either make decisions from fear or you make them from an opportunity perspective. When I coach people, I say “Are you making a decision because you’re afraid, or are you making a decision because you see an opportunity in it?” Be Conscious I think one of the best things to do is just be conscious today about what is everybody else around you doing and try and do that little bit better than them. Like you just said, opening a door for somebody, giving a lovely hello to someone. “It’s as simple as doing the stuff you wouldn’t normally do and the stuff that other people wouldn’t normally do”. If you repeat that, those little tiny things time after time after time, you’re energy will change. Not only that, your perception, people’s perception of you will change. Lead by example. If you want other people to display remarkable behaviour, then ask yourself every day what can I do today that makes me a great human. Can I listen to my staff more, can I provide more time for people to delete up and outward, can I actually listen to my kids and find out what’s going on at school? I think the power of being conscious and pressing pause and knowing that everything you do has a ripple-effect is probably point two, that on an every day basis you can be remarkable by just being conscious of others around you and by leading by example. Sometimes we turn up at work and our mind’s on the next meeting or it’s on the trouble that’s going on at home or sometimes where you go to have a cup of coffee with a friend and they’re checking their emails. Wherever you are, just be present, right there, completely, a hundred percent. Even that’s just remarkable because people just aren’t present. Leaders aren’t present and employees are wondering what’s going on,

TVC062 The Key To Ultimate Success Achieve Your Ultimate Success By Bringing Business and Personal Vitality To Life. How integrating healthy, wealthy and wise is the key to ultimate in long term success. I always say you need to run your body like you do your business. Know your personal goals as well as your business goals and ensure these 2 pillars are blended within a winning week. Seems pretty straightforward, so why does this effortless energy for both business and life together, elude so many leaders at home and in business?   First up – learn to integrate not negotiate your time. Work Life Balance is a myth – the actual results come when you have a work life blend – a fully integrated week that enables you to work on building your business and your personal life to reach it’s potential. Without throwing one area out for the other. Know Your Why: * When is the last time you re-evaluated your personal goals and definition of success alongside your business ones? * What does true success and vitality mean to you? If you can’t clearly define it – then you’ll get what you’re given. Just like businesses our personal and health goals need to be realigned as experience, life phases and priorities change.   When you do your business planning or 90 day health checks on the bottom line, why not check in on your personal goals and wellbeing as well.   Secondly understand that Ultimate Vitality is living a life that encompasses the 6 pillars of Vitality® Daily. 1. Health and Wellbeing – fitness, food, time out, de-stress 2. Admin/Productivity/Career and Future Proofing – budgets, business, career development, succession planning and growth – know your books at home as well as work 3. Family time – quality time NOW 4. Friends who you genuinely enjoy the company of – choose wisely 5. ME Time – specifically without distractions, just a complete re-boot 6. Giving Back – can be by spending some quality time with your kids, mentoring someone at work or doing something small on a local level.. Simplicity and authenticity are the key elements.   It seems like a lot to fit into one day. The answer is it’s not – it’s just about changing your perspective on what healthy, wealthy and wise actually looks like and what the roadmap is to get there.   Finally: Get out of your own way: Often the biggest barrier we have to achieving energy, harmony and sustainable success is our own stories about “how things should go”. How the day should go, how many hours you should be at the office, what exercise should look like and the fact you “should” get home to your family. There’s a lot of pressure that is not based on real facts at all. Just assumptions and an old mindset.   As a leader at work you are also a leader in life. Communicate your goals, share your successes, inspire others to lead their best life in and out of the office. Our work if truly aligned, is an extension of ourselves.   Our personality, skills, knowledge and approach needs to shine through at all levels in the boardroom and at home. * Review personal and wellbeing goals every 90 days like you do your business * Make family time and fitness transparent in your agenda * Be clear about your priorities without grand gestures – consistency is key * Lead by example   Be accountable, be transparent, re-assess goals and your day to day time allocation regularly. If it’s not adding to your Vitality Bank then most likely you’re making withd...

One Wave Is all It Takes – Tackling Depression and talking facts on how to support those around you at work and at home.  Mental health, what does that really mean? Is that confined to social media, teenagers, those out of work, stressful situations in your career or not really finding a place anymore in life and not being able to talk about it – at all…. It could mean suffering with bipolar or depression or having hereditary illnesses in your family and not feeling you can actually share this with your kids, with your colleagues. In today’s podcast I chat with Occupational Therapist and passionate surfer, Joel Pilgrim, about the new foundation ONE WAVE IS ALL IT TAKES; supporting those in local communities effected my some form of mental illness or depression. The what, they why and how this is so engaging – one wave at a time.   Joel forms his therapy around getting out in the ocean, having the ability to forget about everything else out there and just go surfing. He saw the absolute amazing impact that had on people. “When you try and connect inside in a more clinical setting, in an official way, there was no way you could kind of create that engagement”. According to Joel, it’s all about the community, that’s the one thing that’s really going to change the way we move forward with mental health. Connection, engagement, education are all things that play a part in that but without community we don’t really have that sense of we’re in this together.   And from this idea of community comes ‘One Wave and Fluro Fridays’, a movement of 20,000 people around the world. Connecting to this message that one wave is all it takes to really turn around your life. Founded by Grant Trebilco, this is an initiative to bring mental health sufferers and their families and their friends together to create an environment where you can just come and collectively share. Fluro Fridays have been represented in 101 locations around the world.   Why are we talking about this now? It’s not like depression or mental illness is new, but today we are seeing younger people come through or specially working men, between the age of 35 and 50 with the highest depression rate at the moment. * Do we feel like we have to put on this fake mask: I’m doing fine, I’m a big rough and tough guy? * How is social media influencing this and the virtual world? * Are not allowing people to connect and have real deep relationships due to an ever increasing online presence. * Even though, everyone’s “connected” people feel very lonely and they’re very isolated.   Making depression OK to discuss One of the challenges we face is the stigma around talking about your personal life with someone that you’ve never met before.  How do we overcome this? How do we make people open up? * So what happens when someone starts to open up? * We all want to ask questions, are you okay? Here are Joel’s 5 tips if you are confronted with a friend or a family member that comes and says, “I’m not OK” * Open up the dialogue. * Give them the space. * You don’ have all the answers. A lot of people often say, what do I say? I don’t know what to say, how do I deal with this situation and my simple response is: you don’t need to know. Its simply, I’m here for you and I’m going to help you get through this. * Acknowledge and make them feel safe. No judgement, you don’t have to give a solution, you just have to say, thanks for shearing, you’re not alone anymore. * Do they have someone to speak to? If you’re close with them, that could be you.

TVC 060 Digital Detoxing With guest Tim Reid Digital Detox and the art of looking up. Part of the influencer series is scouring the world for people who really are living and creating the life they love not only in business but also in life. I didn’t leave the continent for my next guest as he’s an Australian native and well known in the podcast wilderness… I’m very fortunate to have snared a little bit of time away from the very popular Tim Reid. Founder and host of Australia’s number 1 marketing podcast, The Small Business Big Marketing Show.  Tim and I talk turkey about digital devices and the art of looking up.  A no-nonsense approach to getting connected to what really matters in business and in life.   #digitaldetox101   Here’s some quick pointers on what you’ll learn from this episode with Tim * The internet – it’s our everything and yet we don’t need it every second of the day * The importance of looking just 3cm up and what you’ll notice as a result * Key roles parents play in setting boundaries * Key roles leaders play in setting examples – getting up away from your desk, having more face to face time, less emails unless necessary and picking up the phone more often * The fact that peoples dying wish is not to have made more Facebook posts – but to have more friends, more time with people they love and more connection with those and the wonderful things around them * Try the smile game (without being too creepy..) just make more eye contact for a split second with people, smile when people hand you your change or your coffee, stop talking on your phone when you go to order something, be present. The online thing’s here to stay. The internet will take off and we can acknowledge that it’s only going to grow. However, let’s not let it rule our lives. Tim mentioned it used to rule his life and he has chosen not to let it. From a marketing stand point there has never been a better time to market a business, or to build a personal brand. The opportunities to do that are extensive and a lot of them rely on being online but that doesn’t mean that you should spend your entire life online. It’s even more relevant when you start to try and bring a family up and instil different values and boundaries around iPads, iPhones and computers. I’m the father of 3 teenagers yet I’m this marketing guy who talks about there’s never been a better time to market a business. I’ve got to embrace both and I do say to my kids, “Hey guys just look 3 cm up. There’s a world around you. Look out, look people in the eye.” I fear that we’re losing that ability to communicate on, what we used to, on a human level.   SO WHAT’S NEXT Remember the importance of being yourself, of building business relationships on authentic contact, of going to visit a friend  instead of just staring at their life online. Of asking your teams at work and your teenagers at home how they really are – and not be staring at a screen while you do this.   The role we have now is to learn to bring back the balance between human connection and connectivity.   To bridge the gap between what people say and what we really do. To reach out, to have a conversation over dinner and to really listen, to walk and talk for meeting and notice nature around you. To harness time out for creativity and to recharge our energy levels and personal wellbeing so we are truly equipped to live a life that demands time, space and communications online. 1 thing you can do right now to digital detox:

TVC 059 Creating Culture with Virtual Teams Balancing your budget and your business when working with virtual teams… What about creating the culture for your brand with people you’ve never met? In a growing online world where entrepreneurs, online marketers and stay at home mums are running businesses from anywhere – there’s been a huge rise in the number of virtual jobs up for grabs. The job market has opened up online, businesses can run from anywhere. All of a sudden Virtual VA’s, EA’s, freelancers, design, website gurus and experts in admin are popping up from India to Los Angeles and Ukraine to the Philippines. Their promise: to help you make your work day easier and build the company you want. A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organisational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. Source wikipedia * So how do you know the best resource for you. * Can we actually create a sustainable connection and culture with people you’ve never met? We’ll that’s exactly what today’s podcast is about.  Friend, and ‘mr online’ himself I chat Virtual Culture with Studio One Founder Greg Merrilees.  Greg shares his view about the power of finding virtual support for your products and service. We know what it’s like to try and find your dream team, to grow your business and start the element of outsourcing or expanding your own team. Which ever way you decide to go there’s still an art to creating a culture and placing some clear guidelines up front so you and your resources can be connected and engaged on the job at hand. In this podcast we review * When’s the best time to think about bringing in extra support * How to you determine who you need and what tasks can be fulfilled * On-boarding your support people * Creating a culture that spans countries and timezones * The importance of personal connection * Being authentic * Recognising when you need a person in house rather than online representing you and your brand. Team Vitality is made up of a combined resource from overseas design, transcription support to onsite business and customer relationship development, key design and style gurus: plus a little black book of much loved film crew, photographers and support staff who I’ve worked with for the last 10 years. * No matter what size of business you’re running when ever you bring new people into your business it’s important to recognise they are there to add value and feel like a part of the journey, as much as is relevant. * Don’t expect everyone to have your evangelistic drive for what you do and how you do it. be open to fresh ideas and be clear about expectations and deliverables from the get go.     Bringing your business and your brand to life with those you work with is a continued evolution and a fine balance that takes a combination of processes and passion to really make it work. We learn as we grow and that goes for both sides of the entrepreneurial fence. Culture can be created virtually you just need to define what that is in the first place and what it looks like for those that are working with you from afar. Be professional, work out your budgets, your skills required and don’t skimp on the human factor of showing appreciation and connection to the bigger picture. You get to write the script – do your research, determine your resource needs and ask around before you commit to a trail of VAR...

Eyes Wide Shut – The Need To Digital Detox Why we need to disconnect to reconnect. Hot topic right now. Digital detox. In fact I have been asked to write about this for different publications almost every week over the last few months. * We can’t avoid digital living. * We know it’s a certainty. However have we forgotten the power of old school connectivity. In person, no screens, no strained vision, no over active texting, typing or swiping. Just actually looking up. Yesterday I was on the phone with speaker and Small Business Big Marketing founder Tim Reid who said – if only my kids would look 3cm up? It’s a whole new world from that perspective. Indeed. So let me minimise your screen time on this post – make it short and sweet yet as practical as possible. Despite all the technology we have in our lives that is supposed to save time, it seems like people are more stressed and time poor than ever before. This is not “news”. Communications regulator Ofcom said UK adults spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, compared with the average night’s sleep of eight hours and 21 minutes. That’s more time on digital devices than sleep.   According to Nielson Research US, americans spend up to 60 hours a week consuming content across up to 4 devices!! Australia is not far behind either. Eye strain headaches, posture issues, fatigue at work, lack of sleep and lack of physical activity are just a few side effects of too much screen time. We all know this is certainly the case; what worries me is that intelligent, savvy people who know what healthy living means, are not taking the most basic steps to slow it down and reboot their hard drive each day and get off line to reconnect. Is this you too? At a certain point, your body simply says ‘NO’. It may be in the form of a cold or flu, poor eye sight, a niggling pain or injury, headaches, digestive complaints, skin disorders, insomnia or just the fact you feel exhausted and can’t concentrate efficiently during the day. By the time it has come to this, it is already a reflection of a low immune system and the cellular impact of stress. A lot of emphasis is placed on exercise and diet for general health and wellbeing, but a big part of the wellness and vitality picture is often left out: mindset and mental clarity and getting back to basics with the three core pillars of Vitality; fresh air, fresh food and a fresh perspective.   Taking regular nano-breaks away from your laptop, phone, tablet and TV can rapidly produce great results in just a few minutes a day every day: 1. Reduce the effects of dry eyes and strained vision 2. Create a pause of mental clarity and creativity 3. Reconnect with your surroundings and your purpose 4. Make better informed decisions from your gut instinct rather than a reactionary 5. Notice your posture and your breathing 6. Improve sleep 7. Reduce stress 8. Increase mental and physical vitality   How can you start right now to help deal with stress and help your body cope with daily mental and physical demands? By giving yourself a regular digital detox.   Here’s some practical tips for a daily reboot: Digital Detox During the day: – Place a sticky note on your computer that says “ take a nano break” get up and walk away from your computer, go talk to a colleague personally rather than emailing across the room. – Stay off Facebook/social media in the morning on the way to work – listen to music, a podcast or read actual book instead – Take a fresh air break at lunch time, rather than eating lunch with your phone or iPad in front of you

TVC056 The 90 Day Plan Welcome to the art of the 90 Day Planning. Do you have lots of great ideas, wish lists, mood boards and to-dos… that never eventuate to anything? Is procrastination and day to day life getting  in the way of really creating the life that you love? Ever wondered what everyone is going on about with their 90 day plans? Think this is just for corporate? Think again.   Today I want to talk to you about something that’s been a basic part of designing the life that I love and working with my clients on a very specific task: getting their goals off paper and into reality. There is nothing more powerful than the practical art of planning.  The best way to make your goals a reality for sustainable success is to deploy your 90 day plan. This is not a new concept – in fact it’s used in almost all the coaching, business and development plans I know. It works. The 90 Day Plan is a simple, effective tool to make sure that you’re staying focused and on point for what your real goals. In this podcast I chat about: * How to talk less about resolutions and more about creating action * Working on focus for what you really want to be achieving at the end of 90 days * How you’re going to get there in 90 days * Understanding the driving force behind conviction and purpose * Making sure that the goals you do write down are really relevant to you and resonate   I want you to kickstart your year with conviction, with action, and with clarity.  To support you in achieving the best year of your life and to keep a sustainable way for you to plan every 90 days, to review it, to have that piece of paper front and centre, to have that conviction for what you want to do with your life, why you want to achieve it, and how you’re going to get there. Groundhog day: If you keep putting the same goals down on paper every year and you don’t achieve them, are they really ones you want to achieve? Or are you just doing it out of habit? It’s time to start getting realistic and to avoid the storytelling in your head. Be inspired by what people can achieve, but define goals that are relevant and special to you. Find your WHY. If you have a strong conviction for what you want to achieve, you won’t be taken off track. Ask yourself, “Are these my goals? Is this important to me? Would I do anything possible to achieve them?” If you can answer yes to all those things, then you’re right on track.   Key steps to develop your 90 Day Plan: 1. Download and print the 90 day worksheet (SEE BELOW AT BOTTOM OF THIS POST) 2. Choose what THREE goals you would like to achieve in the next 90 days 3. Write out where you need to be in 30 days to be on the trajectory to accomplishing your quarterly goals 4. Determine what specific actions you can take in the next 7 days to build momentum towards your goals 5. Write out those negative thoughts that are preventing you from achieving your goal 6. Pick THREE things to you can do TODAY to set yourself up to reach your 90 day goal   Where is your focus going to be? Where do you want to be within the next 90 days? What things do you want to look back on and cross off your list on that piece of paper? Who do you want to spend more time with? Do you have a goal to spend more time with yourself to bring harmony and balance back into your day? What is a personal goal that you have? Do you have health, fitness and wellbeing goals? Do you have any financial goals? Don’t forget to declutter your finances!   Whether you’re running a business, a family, or you’re just getting some personal goals up underway I can’t wait to connect with you and see you shine.  

TVC057 The 3 Pillars For Ultimate Leadership In Business and in Life In this podcast I share the top 3 pillars of creating change as a leader and living the life you love, not only in business but in life with your family, with your friends and just for yourself. As a parent you’re a leader. As a good friend you’re a leader. As a colleague you’re a leader. As a Manager, as a CEO, as a Senior Executive, you’re a leader. We are all leaders in life. Whether you’re running a business, building your own brand or just trying to balance family life with your own personal happiness – then you need this magic trifecta to have those around you acknowledge, understand and support what you do. * Leading from within * Leading by example * How to lead others Here’s what’s up on today’s post: * Why those three things all interconnect and are so vital for harmony, peace, and conviction when you really want to live a life you love – right now. * How can we create change, and be the change that we want to see * In the podcast I also discuss the power of the DNA model, recognising tight spots for growth and awareness. What to leave behind and what to take on with you each phase. * Here’s how Step 1: Lead From Within  There are really no short-cuts to having a life that you love.  It is actually about living it yourself.  So whether you are talking about managing change for your own life, managing that of a company, I want to talk to you about the role of leadership – of being the best person you possibly can. What lies behind us, and what lies before us, are tiny matter compared  to what lies within us. Ralph Waldo Emerson: It doesn’t mean that you have to be an expert in all these areas of life or business.  Contrary to the point, great leaders continue to learn, hone their skills, keep informed, and look for fresh ideas. Whatever it is, you need to keep educating yourself; test out your theories; do your research; and believe in your plans that you put into place. From admin and finance to fitness and family – we continually learn and evolve if we’re open. A great leader, a great parent, a great entrepreneur recognises the need to delegate too the values and skills that you need around you in your dream team. Define your goals, then create a game plan. Action those elements daily and weekly that reflect the direction you want to go.   Step 2: Lead by Example If you don’t walk the talk, and demonstrate by example with consistency and integrity, then how can you expect those around you, those you work with, or your kids, to do the same? Great leaders don’t tell you what to do, they show you how it’s done. Once you start leading from within and practice what you preach, and actually put best practice into place, you can start leading by example. We are all decision makers in our lives, whether it’s inside an organisation or just our own day-to-day life. * Do you want to grow a culture inside your family and inside your business that maintains it’s values. * Do you want to have core performance.  To achieve what you want to do, and sustain it. * Do you want to be agile with change, go with a new strategy, overcome roadblocks, being flexible to deal with everything that comes across your path is vital. Recognise your actions are backing up your words.  * Is what you’re doing really reflecting who you want to be, how you want to lead, and how you want to lead the life that you love?   Leadership applies to all projects at home, just as much as business. If we can find a way to practice what we preach; if we can find it relevant and applicable for those around us, the results can be amazing.