Life on Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was recorded on Drug Wallamuta Land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life on Cut.
I'm Laura, I'm Brittany, and it's a what was that?
Okay, I was just going to start this intro again because I just made a mistake. But let's just cause betas bade, none of us have really slept because we went to a performance last night, a concert of sorts.
Da da no No. We are running on about four or five hours sleep today. And the reason for that is, I know, I said on the other week that it was going to be my first confide dancing with the stars, but then there was some like crazy ass production issues that happened.
So last night was the night.
Sunday night was the night I gived my little lass off.
You really did, So it's a I don't know, Laura. Can we say where it is? Can we say where it's filmed? Can we say what we did last night?
Or to be honest, I'm actually not even sure how much of it I'm allowed to tell you yet because obviously so the show Dancing with the Stars is pre recorded and we are competing now, and then it comes out I don't know a couple weeks, maybe a month weeks, who knows, who knows exactly when it comes out. But basically the competition has now started and I don't know how much I can tell you or can't tell you. But Britain Keisha were both there. My mother in law came, Matt came, my sister came with.
It was a whole thing.
It was a whole thing, and I embarrassingly threw my body around a dance floor in front of a lot of people.
No, so it's out at a Sydney Olympic Park, which is like Homebush Stadium.
Will you tell the details? And then I can't go in trouble the.
Sign nothing you keep me on the show. It's out at Olympic Park, which is a great facility, but it's also an hour drive from us, and it was quite late at night, so we all went out there. We piled in and TV takes a long time to film like it does. There's a lot of setting up and a lot of redoing the set.
There's a lot of time in between performances as well, Like everything when you watch on TV is like it's really snappy, it's really I mean, obviously they're making a TV show, but there's a lot of stopdowns in between each dance. And when there's a stop down between each dance, there's some poor guy in the crowd, which is like everybody gem and then everyone in the crowd has to go.
Yeah, we woo girled.
We were woo girls for six hours, six hours, six hours of wooing.
Yeah, Kish and I were worked it out. We left the house for seven and a half hours. But to watch your one minute, isn't that crazy?
There's what like seven couples dancing and you get one and a half minutes out of each of them, so it's pretty much an hour. It was one and a half minute throwing bodies around a dance floor.
Actually, when you do the math like that, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, but it was worth It's that's seven hours no sleep was worth watching your one and a half minutes because there's nothing there's actually, you know, there's so much prep work, right, like we don't see you, we don't see the dances for a long time. You're in the audience for literally hours as they're going through what the night's going to be and prepping and showing you where people gonna come.
If there's a fire, exit over here, and I'm like, we will run, don't worry, were out, It's okay. But then when the dancers start coming on, nothing makes you happier than like hearing the music, seeing people moving, seeing people have fun, and it like reinvigorates you with the energy. And then when you came out and did your thing, it was like we were just like screaming the whole time.
You looked amazing. Okay, I know we can't.
It's so shit because I want to tell you everything now, and as soon as I get fired, yeah.
But I will get into a lot of travel from Channel seven.
But as soon as I can tell you exactly what's going on, of course you will all be the first to know. But look, there is a real variation in skill set. Let's just say that there's some very very very good dances and then some very very not good dances.
And I'm definitely on the not good side. No you are.
I think you're sitting somewhere happy in the middle at the moment, there's room for improvement, but it could be way worse.
Though.
Yes, there was poor I'm not gonna name anyone, but there's one couple that were to stand out for being terrible, but everyone loved them. I'm not evenna say if it was a man and a woman, everybody loved them.
It was so endearing.
There was just an unfortunate mishap in the dance, but there's always that. There's always somebody that is really no good. That's why they cast, Like when they cast the Bachelor, they cast the people that are gonna find love. They cast the people that are gonna be ridiculous and cause drama.
Same with dancing with the stuff. It's definitely one thing I realized.
So you train so hard for so long that you feel like if you're terrible, the whole of Australia is gonna look at you and be like, oh my god, this is so cringe.
I'm so embarrassed for her or him when you like that.
But watching everybody, the people who were genuinely terrible are probably my favorite dancers to watch because they're so cute, Like.
It's I don't know, I don't say that a patronizing way.
I just mean, like I will if you give them a bad score, I will protect them with all my heart because they're so.
Happy to be there.
Well, so you know when you're shit right, like oh yeah, yeah, it's really you do hurting me fucking clue, let me tell you that.
But you know when you're bad, so you know what the score is going to be.
And I think that at the end of the day, they're just I imagine you're just happy to be there and you've had fun. It's not like a legitimate competition that you haven't trained your whole life for it and you don't make the final like this is you, guys.
Let me tell you, there's nothing more clear than moving your body and realizing that the beat is not when you're moving it like halfway through and you're like, this is not in time, nothing about this is your fucking time.
But I think also, you guys probably are all a lot harder on yourselves than what the audience sees. So in your head, not you, but like dancers, because there were a few people that made a couple of little mistakes, and then the way that they described it was that the mistakes were bigger than we saw. So you guys know you're making mistakes because you know the dance. The audience doesn't necessarily know that unless you've someone's dropped someone. A lot of the time we don't know just how
big the mistake is. So I think I don't know. I think I had fun. I had a great time. I can't wait to see more dances.
Well it's not very long away, okay, so it will be on TV in a couple of weeks time. You can all laugh at me together, or don't laugh at me, like, please get behind me.
I need the sport. It's really really tomoralizing.
But I'm doing my absolute fucking best, guys, and I honestly, as much as I've loved it, I cannot wait to never do a jive kick ever again in my entire life.
My favorite thing, and I cannot wait for you to watch back, is to see your face, your facials.
Your facials will liver and free in my mind for the rest of my life, and I cannot wait. It sounds like is this chicken tracks like this happening? Is this adrenaline? Why she just sculled five v's at the back? I was baked in adrenaline, fear and faked hand, just fucking all over that, Dancel. I would make sure we get some precious schedule.
Let's get some freeze frames. When it happens, we can just do a series of my face. I know everyone listen, this is like, what are you talking about? But look it's coming and it's joyful. It's worth the way. Okay, there's a few things we want to talk about. On today's episode. We are interviewing Mark Borris, who do you know what. I loved this interview and for anybody who doesn't know who he is, he's literally like a business superstar.
He's easily one of the most successful businessmen in Australia. He was the host of Celebrity Apprentice for a long time. You know, love our reality TV shows.
And The Apprentice, The Apprentice and the Celebrity Prentice. Yeah he did both. Yeah.
He told everyone that they're fired, you're fined.
Yeah.
He was the one that had to point and be like, you're fired, you're fired now.
One of the reasons why I loved this chat is because you know, we do love our relationships. Here is the way he spoke about his business successes, but alongside
his life challenges. And I say that because Mark himself has had three separate divorces, and I think from the outset, you can look at his life and think he has been so incredibly successful, which he has been, but he really talks about this concept of not being able to have it all and the priorities and where things sat in him life in terms of priorities, and how him selling his very first business for literally hundreds of millions of dollars half a billion dollars, half a billion dollars
is what also cost him his long term marriage and relationship. And so it is a great conversation around not just success, but around divorce and around how priorities sit in life, whether that be your focus on work or your focus on relationships and connection.
Yeah, it's nice to hear.
It's actually quite refreshing to hear someone say the truth. I don't want to say that as in other people don't, but you constantly hear this, you know, it's like the live Luf love thing, all the memes that go around. You do hear people say you can have it all. You fucking can't you if you work your ass off? You know, we all have the same hours in the day as Oprah whatever, if all of these things, like, yes, it's true, we do all have the same hours, but
we know that this, you know, is surface level. The fact that he was like, you really can't have it all. You can have aspects of all of it. You can have a relationship and be really successful, but one of them is going to take precedence, and one of them is going to suffer. For Mark, his drive in life and what he lives for is work.
It is business.
He sold one business for five hundred million dollars. He still works constantly. He's constantly still doing things because it's his drive. It's what fills his coupets, what fulfills him. And he'll honestly say, I know my relationship suffer. And now moving forward in his relationships, he'll say, my partner now or whatever, whoever he will be with, has to understand that that is going to be a big part of his life. And they're going to have that conversation
early on. And I think that that's probably something a lot of people don't want to hear, but it's the truth for him and for his life, and he knows now to move forward, if he's going to make a relationship work. He has to be really honest and say this is probably going to, you know, be more important than you.
I think it's interesting as well because we see this not just with people who are business people, but something that you've experienced for it as well. We see with professional sports people when somebody has something in life, whether it's their career, whether it is their sporting challenges, whatever it is that takes main priority, we can think that they're being selfish in their relationships. But something that Mark
spoke about was it's not about being selfish. It's about talking and being honest about what is a priority to you, and then people can choose how they want to be a part of your life. In response to that, and I think one of the things I mean when you just said this whole conversation about having it all Michelle Obama, I love the quote which she said, which was you can have it all, just not at the same time.
And I think Mark is the perfect example of that.
So that is all coming up now before we get into speaking to Mark. Something we did want to talk about. We on Thursday's episode were talking about Carolina Santos. If you listen to ask Gunkut, we were talking about how she had slid into Michael Disorto, which is the Australian fashion label, to get herself some free tickets to Australian Fashion Week. Now, there was a DM exchange. That exchange was shared across a few news outlets. It was doing the reund it was doing the rounds, and she was
shut down by the fashion label. But the thing that we discussed was how it is more problematic when a brand or a restaurant or something shares dms from an
influencer to try and shame them. The reason why we wanted to bring this up is because there has been more revelations that have come to light, and also some of you guys slid into our dms and we always want to make sure that we are giving you the right information and we're discussing things in the right way, and when we do make an error or don't have the right.
Information at hand, we want to address that.
So we assumed that the brand were the ones to release those dms, which was kind of what was implied at the time by the articles that had come out at the time when we'd done the recordings. But since then there has been more information and it wasn't the brand who leaked the DMS in the first place. It was one of Carolina's friends. So basically, Carolina apparently put it on her stories on her close friends Instagram story here where you have.
Like ten of your friends and that's all that the only people that see it.
And one of her fucking friends screenshot it and sent it to the news outlets.
Yeah, like a dog, yeap, good friend. You want to keep those friends around. I think people were us included, but everyone was making the assumption that it was the brand, because who in their right mind would release their own humiliating dissing Yeah, so that's why the assumption was made that it was obviously the brand, because everyone's like, who
would possibly do it? But to hear that it was, I mean, and this is all assumptions again, Like I don't know if the friend has come out and confirmed us, so we're going to say that. But now the story is that, yeah, it's a friend that leaked the DMS, which I think is wild. Who is doing this to their friends totally?
I mean, like it's probably time to have a bit of a reassessment of who's in your close friends group.
It's literally like the very smaller Australian version of the Wagatha Christie shit that went down in the UK.
And I think most people would have heard of the wagon Wagath. Why do I have a lot of troules saying Wagatha.
I think most people would have heard of the Wagatha Christie situation that went down. But Rebecca Vardy is basically these wags And I don't like the term obviously because people call me one, but I'm going to call other people for the sake of it, because it's obviously a play on words. It was this fight between some wags and it's they're obviously like, I get the Christie.
Who you know? Okay? Can you guys get it? I don't look. If you don't, you can google it. It's fucking fascinating as what it is, but it's the same sort of a thing.
It was like one woman's life like being ruined by all these leaks that were happening, and she couldn't figure out what it was and ended up being one of her close friends that was leaking it.
And it was this.
Big like investigation that they did internally on their Instagram to figure out who the friend was. It went to court, they got sued, like huge, huge drama in the UK.
I mean, here's another like thought, just don't use close friends on Instagram.
I do not use that. I do not trust close friends.
I mean I trust my close friends, but I don't trust the people I put in close friends on Instagram.
One close friend on mine, and it was an accident. I accidentally starred them one day. I don't even know how to do it. And it's just my sister Sherry, So like I feel like if anything got leaked on.
My page, I know what it is. Well, look, coming back to this for one quick second.
We spoke about it obviously on Thursday's episode, and in this instance, like Michael Disorto, they did not release the private dms. But we have seen it happen in the past. We have seen restaurants do it to influencers. We have seen it happened on many occasions. I do think that there is still a conversation there around why it is kind of fun. I guess to humiliate influences when they have asked for something or they have kind of slid
into a brand or company's DMS. But ultimately I wanted to say to the few people who did message and sent us the update on that information. Thank you, and also, I hope Carolina had a fucking great time of fashion Week because it looks like she's still well. She did make it looks like one of those dms actually worked, if not to the microshow. Anyway, there is one more thing I wanted to talk about before we get into interviewing Mark. There was a research study that came out
recently in the States. Now, look, it is a United States based research study. Maybe the answers are not applicable to Australia, but I would go so far as to say that maybe there's some correlation that could apply here. Probably a pretty good sample, a pretty good sample, and a pretty good example. So six thousand people were surveyed on a website called bonusfinder dot com.
Sounds super fucking legit, bonus find out at Oxford dot com.
A dot com survey. Six thousand people is not a small sample size. The survey was about bachelor and bachelorette parties and cheating. And this is a pretty fucking alarming statistic. More than seventy percent of Americans cheat at bachelor or bachelorette parties. So the survey found that of six thousand people, including the soon to be betrothed and their guests, more than seventy percent admitted that they have cheated on their partners at bachelor or bachelorette parties.
That is a huge statistic.
I think it's probably important though, to keep in mind when we talk about this, like, cheating is a pretty massive range of a spectrum, right. Everybody has very different ideas as to what constitutes cheating, and I think in order for the survey to kind of be correct or to have some sort of validity to it, this was
the range. So it was ranging from anything from flirting, downloading a dating app during the parties to sexting or sleeping with someone, whether it's an escort, someone at the party, or somebody from the night.
But the thing is what the study clarifies is really important.
The cheating is a spectrum, right, So for some people what constitution cheating does not constitutionting for somebody else. So some people are okay with flirting, some people are okay with messages, some people are okay with a lap dance.
So these statistics have to take that into account. And they did break these.
Statistics down even further now Thirty three point one percent said they had a lap dance, Twenty one point three percent said kissing. Eleven point two percent admitted to sleeping with someone eleven point two that's still pretty fucking hard, getting freaky yeah. Nine percent said they got hot and heavy in the sheets as a threesome.
Also a huge nine percent is huge? Why is everyone having three sims?
Am?
I the only person in this room who hasn't had a three ReSm? I haven't. But have you had a threesome? Oh my god? We all have vanilla?
None of us? Oh my god, how Keisha you've got okay? I know last week we were hiring because Keisha's now got a boyfriend. We're also hiring if you've had a threesome out there. We need someone in this group.
Who's a bit more fucking like risque.
Tell me what you like the kink here, the fucking better. We've got an opening.
So this is interesting because I think for me, I wouldn't want my partner to be going and having a lap dance, right. I would be like, that's not cool. I don't like it. I'm not okay with it.
I just break up with them? Is it a break up of all events, I.
Don't think it's cheating, right, Like, if it's just a lap dance, if there's just something you can, like if you depend one dance in the club like that these days, I don't constitute it as cheating personally. If there's touching, yes, But if he was on a bus and I'm not saying I like it, but I'm like, I'm not going to break up with him. But for somebody else that's not acceptable, and that's okay. That's because everybody has these different boundaries.
Okay, I have a question for you.
Yeah, would you constitute a lap dance cheating if it wasn't paid for, if it was just from a girl who they'd met that night, Yeah, and she gave him a lap dance, is that cheating?
Yes?
So I'm so cooked that if it wasn't a Bucks or bachelorette and he'd just gone out and got a lap dance from a chick, I'd be like, cool, you've purposely gone out to try and cheat on me.
And I'm not saying it's okay.
So there's an exchange of money and it meant nothing to her, then it's okay.
Well, I mean, if it's a job for her.
There are twenty guys that are all having fun seeing someone off and the girls coming around. She's done a dance in front of Just Say It's band for a couple of minutes and moves on. Then I'm like, okay, I get it, more so than if you just went down to the local and.
Got a lap dance from a chick that wouldn't slide. It's interesting, isn't it.
I don't know why we see a bachelot and when I say we, I don't mean us specifically or even you listening to this episode. But I don't know why some people think that a bachelorette party or a bachelor party is a get out of jail free card when it comes to fidelity with your partner, Like why do the rules not apply that apply on every other big Saturday night out.
Well, I think it's well, I mean, it's this idea of come on, this could be your last time for the rest of your life. Like everyone knows you don't cheat in a marriage, so it's now we'll never you know, Like I think that that's what happens. It's also fueled by drugs and alcohol. I think there's a lot of miscommunication in there, Like a lot of people don't really
want strippers, and this is bachelorettes en bachelor's. A lot of people don't want them, but their friends just think it's the fun idea and it's all organizer and once you're there, you don't want to be the people that's like, I don't want this. I think there's a lot of things that go into it, a lot of different reason.
Peer pressure along with temptation, because like you wouldn't normally go out on a Saturday night and have strippers or have that sort of like hyper sexualized experience, which I think is synonymous with a bachelor batchet party.
I have a wild story actually, I know somebody that, like a couple that were getting married and on his Bucks night he cheated.
He got an escort.
Now he didn't get it. This situation where you know, it gets a bit out of control, the friends organizer turns into a lapdownce. Someone pays a bit of extra, he's slept with an escort, he had sex, Yeah, whole kiting capital. And then he wouldn't have said anything. He would have taken that to the grave. He would have just got married and taken to the grave. But a
few days goes past. She's doing all the washing anyway, she finds a receipt and in his pocket was a receipt with an unusual name at the top and the date, and the date was the night of the Bucks party, and then it had a very large one sum of money, got this weird name on the date, and the weird name on the receipt wasn't where they were going on the bus because she knew what was happening, you know, as the watch she's like, what are you guys doing this night?
You know? And she was like, something doesn't seem right.
So she ended up going full inspector gadget and she as, you do, yeah, one hundred percent, I would inspect a gadget the shit out of that receipt.
She googled it.
It turned out it was a brothel, so she said, hey, what can I It's like when you go to the canteen and you got two dollars at school, you like, what can I get for this much money? And they're like, you can get two chicken chippies. She called up and she's like, what can I get for this much money?
But she called She googled the brothel.
Then she called it, and she was like, what services can I receive?
Yeah, like when you go to the canteen years old for your lunch order? Yeah, what can I get for like four hundred bucks? Five hundred bucks? And because she wanted to know, what fuck? What do you get for that much money? And basically you get everything, you get the whole service. So she figured out through all this investigating that he had, yeah, slept with someone, so he.
There are something better than a female detective who thinks that something's gone down, like a woman in a relationship who was being scorned, unstoppable.
I in my past relationships have been the most thorough.
I could probably solve a fucking murder with how thorough I have been across social media.
I have friends literally one for in particular. No, I'm hooked. What happened? Did they get married? They got married? They just got married.
I know, I know, I know they talked it out, and I don't know what level what was said. Obviously it was positioned as drunk mistake. I'm sorry for whatever reason, but they ended up getting married.
Yeah.
Postponement of wedding no to.
Expending it too hard. It's really hard to postpone a wedding. You know you postponed it twice. It's not on me to comment. Everyone's situation is different. I don't know what i'd do in that situation, but for whatever reason, they decided to continue and get married as per normal. I'm sure things weren't normal in the relationship and they had a lot of work to do, but at the end of the day, she's obviously decided that she still wants to spend life with this person. They'll probably go to
the therapy and do whatever else. But at this point, she's like, full far out. The wedding's in two weeks. What am I gonna do?
My issue with this is, though, is that I think if you're somebody who sees bachelor parties as a pass out, then what stops you from doing that in other aspects of your life? Like I don't think that people just
go one and done, do you know? I mean, I think if you have that level of disregard towards your partner, like if you're okay with pushing the limit, which obviously most relationships would have those boundaries, then what's to say that when you're in another situation where there's alcohol or peer pressure or it's heightenedly sexualized that you're not going to make that same.
Well, because I think it's the mindset. I think it's the mindset of, like, you get married once in your life, and the idea of marriage is the fact that you're monogamous. So then it's the idea of, well, I'm only getting married to this one person's rest of my life. I'm also only having one last night, and this is my last night. And I think people get sucked into this mindset. Now I think it's fucked Like. I don't think it's
a get out of free pass. I don't think it's a you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas night at all.
I think it doesn't matter what night it is.
It's cheating, doesn't matter when it is, doesn't matter if you think it's your last time, meaning thing doesn't if you paid for it, Like for me, it's.
All kind of I mean, yeah, and we all know that there's different levels of it, like we said at the beginning of this, But the only thing I think that is maybe incorrect about that is that it's the assumption that it's only the groom or bride doing it.
The bride to be or the groom.
But the statistics of this and the reason why I wanted to talk about it, the reason why I thought it was so effing wild is because of this six thousand people that were surveyed, the seventy percent, this was not just the bride and groom.
This was people going to Bucks or bachelorette parties.
And I think that the reason for that is because there is and I know it's one of the reasons why it's such a trigger for some people. They don't want their partners going to bachelorette and Bucks parties because they feel like it's an environment where their ability to say no or their ability to resist temptation is extremely tested. Which for those people who feel like that, or we feel like they can't trust their partners in those situations, that must be a really frightening feeling.
God, Ben probably doesn't have to worry. I'll have a high team. Karaoke can be done by like nine pm. Yeah, we were in bed at eleven. I had two pregnant people at my hand.
Your head was like we hit hard at about three pm.
We were peaking at two thirty in the afternoon and we were at home having pizza and cups of tea at nine thirty.
We were having dnms around the lounge with cups of t at nine thirty pm.
Yeah, and not even dnms because we were off our face on drugs.
It was just D and m's.
Because we had tea old that was Tia said she had a great time.
I'm not going to pretend it was the night of my dreams. I had a great night. Like for me to have hit it, to have the fun, to have done the rounds. Do I had the dreams, had the shots, had the dancing, had the karaoke, and be back in bed with pizza at nine pm?
I'm like, oh, she can't dress.
All right?
Let's check to Mark, Mark, welcome to life on cut cool?
I'm sure?
Is it cool?
Do you know what you're in for?
You got no idea?
What's your favorite sex position? No, I'm joking, that's no.
Can I have more than one? Yeah? Well I really like and I don't want really embarrass you.
Okay, hit me.
It's nothing embarrassing on top, woman on top.
This is going to make no sense to anyone who hasn't yet listened to Mark's podcast, But look that that's all coming Mark. We start every interview the same way. We want to know what your most embarrassing story is. It's called an accidentally unfiltered story, and you know it's just such a nice way to humanize yourself.
Well, I got one for you. So many years ago. I got four sons and my young son at the time was fifteen mile to some would have been early twenties. And i'ed them all to come meet me in Greece because they have different others, so I know them all to come and meet me. And they all went on one flight. I was already there, but I'd flown in from another country, not Australia. And I always take sleeping tablets as soon as I ride because I get jet
lag and I take something times help me sleep. So soon as I arrived, were in Greece in this unbelievable hotel, I said, meet me up in the bar, even though he was only fifteen young was the fifteen It doesn't matter in Greece before seven eighteen, come on up, and I started drinking whiskey like usual things, which I like to do. So we had a few dreams, had dinner. I looked at the bath and all sort stuff and I said, guys, I'm going to go to bed. You
guys are going to do what you want. I went to my room and I took my sleeping tablets I normally do. I went to sleep, and then in the middle of the night, I felt the need to get up and take a peek. So I went up and opened the door to the bathroom, and then the door closed behind me, and I realized I was in the hall naked. Naked, No, I wasn't clean on the door, but by this time I was in such shock. Well
what the hell like? I completely woke up, and because I had a sleeping tablet, I had a couple of whiskeys, the whole thing acted against me, and I was like, oh my god. I was a total panic. I saw a phone. There's like a wall phone on the thing, and I tried to ring the reception that there's no one answering, because it's like two o'clock in the morning, and the Greek's unnestly they good at that sort of stuff. I saw a dude walking down to his room, so I put my hands he and I said, hey, mate,
can you let me in your room? Let you lend me a towel. I see must have sounded like the biggest bullshit story of hoping you could speak English and he couldn't. Started to speaking to Greek. He couldn't speak Greek, so I don't know what nationality was he German or something like that. Anyway, fortunately let me in the room, gave me a towel, went outside tuck and then I asked him to ring the reception they come out and
save him. But it was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life because that Only a couple of years prior to that, Malcolm Fraser, when he was a Prime Minister of Australia had got caught in a hotel room in one Chai and a part of Hong Kong naked outside his room and the media just hammered him. And I was doing the appearance of this sort of time, so I was just so worried that it was going to get out in the media. They probably we'll get out the media now, but it's too late.
Because I told him it's about there's like power in telling the story yourself. It's when you get caught out that then they take the power away from you. But when you're like, oh yeah, this happened, so they can't even make fun of you anymore. I told you front foot, but you're very lucky to have an in Greece and not in.
How'd you get what's the end of this story?
The reception came up and they just opened the door for me to let me in the room. When I was the first thing they said, we need to see ID.
What the fuck? Well, pull it out of my ass crack, then let me have it for you, giggling.
You can see who I am online. That's so funny. I'm glad you got in safe. Look, most people know you.
You just mentioned from the Apprentice and celebrity Apprentice and a bit of a one of the most successful businessmen in Australia. I would say, I don't know if you'd referred yourself as that, but I reckon probably would. Yeah.
Well, I don't know if success means but yes, well if you're doing in a traditional sense in terms of numbers and stuff like that, yes, yeah.
I feel like this is going to happen a lot in this interview.
We're probably going to segue when something comes up, but that's an interesting point. What is success to you? From the outset? I would say, okay, worth a couple of hundred million, give or take. I know that there's no number for you because you could probably have another hundred million tomorrow.
To me, that success, But what is it to you?
Well, I always say to you from my point of view as success, from my point of view as the family you raise. So I'm only interested in my sons and my grandson, and that's the most important thing to me, because my measure for success is what I would think my mum and dad would like to see in me. And my mother's passed away because recently, not that a couple years ago, but my dad's all life, So what would they feel was success from their point of view,
And it's not about money. Mom day couldn't care less about that. Just as long as I got a good kids and good grandkids and I'm a good son, that's success to me. So that's the most important thing to me.
How I mean, speaking of your family, how were you raised? Because I think there's often this assumption that if you're somebody who is hugely successful that maybe there was a bit of a silver spoon, or you're a nepo baby. I know that term gets thrown around quite a bit these days. What was your childhood like and the way that you got into business? How did that come about?
Well, my child was very stable, so that's an important thing I had. Both parents were married, stayed married, loved each other, and good parents to me, good husband and wife to each other as far as I could see anyway. My dad was a very hard worker. Neither one had fancy jobs that my dad came to strat couldn't speak English. My mum taught him to speak English. He worked in factory's whole life, worked hard, lots of jobs. So I was brought up as a kid who saw hard working parents,
very stable, loving parents. My mother was very creative, very smart, well read, never had many opportunities in life, had no opportunities in life basically, but driven. And she got us to play piano. Like I had to learn piano from an early age. We did all the sports. Yeah, so I didn't grow up with the silver spoon. I grew in the west suburb, Vicinia, and I went to a little Catholic school out there. I didn't sort of walk into a business, but I saw hard working people and
people who want to improve their lives. So I guess that's probably the probably how I started. I just want to improve my life. I didn't think I had a shoot live. I didn't grow up with a chip on my shoulders. I never felt like, oh, well, I'm going to go and get this car, because I never saw that car. No, that wasn't my deal. I just wanted to work hard. I always wanted to impress my mom and dad. I don't mean impress them so much. I wanted to do the right thing by mom and dad.
Always wanted them to feel proud of me. That's sort of what drove me to a large extent. I remember when I sold the Wizard business. It's written out everywhere how much we sold it for, and it was, you know, in those days, in two thousand and four, that's nearly twenty years ago.
And for anyone who doesn't know how much that was sold, it was half a billion dollars.
I love that you say, like back then there was a lot of money back in no market.
Still a lot of money now.
Yeah, but people talk about, you know, unicorns and stuff like that. But you know, that amount of money then is in terms of equipalment today is huge. And the night had happened, I was in New York because I had to go to New York to receive all the payments and signed documents and stuff like that. I was just there by myself, and I remember walking up to a certain place that General Electric had sort of set
the settlement would be. And it was eleven o'clock at night because they had to settle in Australia as well as New York, complicated, and I just walked up there on my own that was building that when it was sort of pretty much closing through a security system, walked in there, signed some documents, got paperwork, et cetera. Brought back to my hotel, and put myself at pizza in my room in New York. I always wanted to try in New York pizza and I hadn't really been before.
So that's how I celebrated at dating me wrong. It was important, but it wasn't that important to me.
I'm trying to put myself in that position right now. What was it?
And you don't have to say numbers, but what was your wealth like before you made that exchange? Were you just working hard, still making decent money, but nothing extraordinary, and then this company's coming in and said I'll buy you for half a billion. Was it an actual huge jump or were you already worth a couple of hundred million?
No? No, no, no, I was my previous life. I was working as a professional, worked at a chart accounting firm which I was a senior partner of, and then I sort of sold that. Then I worked in a law firm for a number of years. You know, I did well, I had reasonable money.
You did well, but normal, well.
Just normal like every professional would do. I was like forty eight when I sold it, so you know, I had accumulated some assets, but nothing particularly great from my point of view. You know, the extra money wasn't going to buy me anything. But I still can only buy a pizza for I got the concierge to order for me. It's still anti cost me twenty five US dollars or something. I mean, I got all this money, I can't go and buy a better one. So it didn't make that much difference to me to my life.
I feel like it make a lot of difference to me.
Yeah, I mean that it's interesting because I think that, I mean, my first question is coming into that sort of success, and also that purchase is exchanged. Obviously, you built the business up. But then you have this massive sale coming into that much money, which is an incomprehensible amount of wealth for some people. How does that change you as a person.
It didn't change me. It just didn't change me.
You know.
The most important thing for me was it was on page two of the Wall Street Journal. Was such a big sale for someone General Electric? It was a big sar. I've got a clip of the Wall Street Journal still somewhere. But the thing that sits in my drawer still to this very day is a letter from my mother, who waited three or four weeks after the sale, and she wrote in a letter, I wanted to wait until the noise was down, and she told me what she actually thought of me as a kid, as her kid doing this.
Wasn't the amount of money, but she talked about the effort that I put into it. If she watched my effort, that was probably the most important thing to me, to be honest with you, I mean that, and today it's a mere memory. It's a mere moment in my life. And people say that's successful. On that day, yes, that was worth a lot of money. But maybe the next day the shares that I got in General actric might not have been worth as much. In fact, they were not, but they might.
Have been mine a technicality were scowed over that.
Way, but there might have been worth less. So because there's just one line you draw on one day in the sand, and anything had happened every day thereafter.
Maybe I didn't ask the right question then in terms of how it changed you? But how did it change the people around you? People who were in your sphere, who are in your life, who understood this. Did it change their perception of who you are?
Maybe? I think probably audiences changed the perception about me, And I think it probably I grew an audience as a result of that. My friends didn't really change, and I was still got the same.
Like you're getting dinner tonight, though, And well, a.
Bit of that happened round The wedding press became much more expensive, Christie's became much more expensive. I became a godfather a lot more often.
I'm making you mind, godfather, godfather.
I mean it also resulted in me getting divorced too, So you know the effort I put into that. Unwittingly, I didn't realize what you're to do quip a relationship. I didn't realize that I wasn't doing what I should have done to keep the relationship. So a lot of the success came as a result of what I sacrificed. And I didn't know of sacrificing it, but I actually sacrificed a long term marriage. And you know, the mother of some of my kids. I didn't know that.
Is that because you just put one hundred and ten percent of yourself into the business at that time.
Yeah, I more than one hundred percent everything. I didn't realize that because when I was growing up, my dad worked three jobs and that's what he did, and Mum did what she did, and Mum also worked, but like it was a partnership, you know what I mean, And no one ever looked like to me. No one ever questioned anything, and it looked right to me in my case. And I never saw Dad take Mum out for dinner. I never saw we never had holidays, We didn't go
away anywhere and all that sort of stuff. So probably I just stupidly assumed that that's how everything works, and I just did what I saw. I didn't think about it. I just do what I saw, and I didn't realize that you had to spend time with people to make them feel appreciated, appreciated and that you cared about them and stuff like that.
Well, I guess there's a sense of I don't want to say relationships work because it's not, but it requires work, especially of a long period of time. You do have to come to a point where you prioritize it and put effort in, grow together, make sure you're given each other enough. And I think that's where a lot of people probably do go wrong, is that they forget that. They think, oh, we're good, We've got the piece of paper. Well, I don't need to put the ft anymore.
They're always going to be there. And it probably really showed you, I imagine.
What was important in life. You got the money, but you lost something that you loved.
Yeah, I sort of regret it. But I'll be honest with you though, I discovered something about myself and that was that. That's the blog on to bit. I love work and that is the most important thing to me in my life. That's the view I take not many people and honestly say that, and not because I want to work, but because I want to do the things that my work delivers. You know, my work. I'm lacking in my work in the homelown business, I help people
get homes, or I help people through stressful periods. My podcast business, I'm trying to tell audiences about what it's like to own a business and share those sorts of things with people. So I see that as really important, not because I want to work, because I see that as a great undertaking, a very important thing. That's what I think I'm here for. I'm not necessarily here for making someone have a good relationship with me. Therefore, I have to find someone.
Who happy to play second fiddle almost well, not.
Second fiddle, but they might have their own undertaking or they understand that this is how you have to be with Mark. And I don't mean that in a sort of ruthless way.
I think that this is such an interesting self discovery. And I say this because I've witnessed it and my friend's relationships some of them also witnessed it in I think sometimes in my own relationship, we can often tell ourselves that the reason why we're working so hard is because we want to do it for our family.
We want to create a better life for our family.
I'm doing this because I'm contributing back to this in a monetary way. You're growing and growing, but there does come a point where no amount of extra money is what's needed to grow that family unit. It's time because that's the one thing you can't actually purchase. I think that sometimes we can almost try and fool ourselves that you're doing it for a different purpose.
But that's such an honest.
Revelation that you had that you were like, yes, that relationship needed more time of me, but the thing that I wanted to do was business, and that's the thing that you continue to excel at.
And my family, including my kids, of course, that reason is Secondary'll be honestly, because like my kids are all grown up down, they're all living their lives. They're not saying Dad, thanks very much for you know, how hard you're work and the things you give us or gave us, you know, And I don't expect it to that from them either. I have to have a purpose in my life, and I don't mind being selfish. I don't mean selfish and extend to hurt people. I don't want to hurt anybody.
But selfish is looking after yourself and understanding what's important for you. So there's nothing wrong with I think, in my opinion, doing what I'm doing.
But I think that's also evident for you.
It's almost self explanatory the fact that you've made these monumental sales, you have monumental wealth, you still go to work every day and do multiple businesses. It speaks for itself because you could go and buy an island and a yacht and no one could ever see or hear from you again.
But you're not.
You're out there doing the work and trying to educate people and be educated yourself. That's an intrinsic drive that people either have or they don't. One thing I'd like to dig a bit deeper in that you just said. You said that you didn't really change much when you
came into this wealth. What I'd like to know is was there a level of trust that changed within you that maybe you haven't thought about a lot, But I would imagine there are a lot of people that might want to be a friend now, A lot of people that might have wanted to date you when you became single for reasons that are obvious.
You have a lot of money. There are a lot of people that want an easy life.
You're also a handsome man, Marked, Or you're very handsome.
No, you are, You're very handsome.
They're only dating for your money, that's it. But other great qualities and attributes.
But how do you know you take that aside, if you weren't handsome, it doesn't matter. There are people out there that the attraction is the money. It's not physical, I mean, or.
It's the lifestyle that one can provide. We'll give it to Mark.
He's handsome, he's intelligent, he's got the money. But was they that started to pull back a bit and worry that people were coming into your life, especially romantically, for the wrong reason.
It's interesting to ask that question because what happened was that my wife, her and who got divorced, she became unwell, very unwell, and as a result of that, the boys, the three sons to her, came and lived with me, and I was very conscious of their mum being un well. I want the boys seeing women come into my life, so I actually I wouldn't say it was celibate, but for a long period of time, but I was very
conscious of not having relationships during that period. And the only woman they saw was the housekeeper, and I was very conscious of not upsetting my boys because I was upsetting enough for the mum being unwell, and I didn't want to sort of make it worse for them. They
had to just live with their dad. That was a bit of a hassle, you know, because I'm you know, you can't be the mum, yeah, you know, and mums provide different outcomes and dads, I think, and I was really conscious that, so I just didn't want upset the apperquite so, to answer your question, I avoided that. I didn't. I didn't have that issue. I mean, I'm sure there would have been some out there who might have gone, you know, might have come to me for that reason.
But I avoided that, and I'm sort of to be frankly, I really feel quite happy that I was able to sort of manage that process and I got really involved with my kids. And I also had a business in India, so I used to travel to India once every four weeks. And I'd say that for ten days.
So I got, that's where you do what you need to do.
No, not in India.
I thought, that's what's mon.
No no no, I didn't know, no, no, no, no. India is a bit tricky. You know, like in Idia the pretty smart like they work out in a minute, like what you're up to totally.
What is it in terms of becoming such a prolific entrepreneur for you? When was that shift between being like I want to run one business or turning a small business into a complete conglomerate.
How did you make that shift?
And is it so much for you about what the business is or running businesses in general. I don't know if that's very clear what I'm saying, but I think there's a big difference for some people. Some people have a passion for running our business because it's the mission of that business, and whereas other people can have their fingers in multiple pis and it's the actual logistics of running a business that kind of gets them off.
I'm not so interested in the running of the business. I find that pretty hard and can be a bit tedious. So I have, like you have lots of people in my business who work for me, like lots, That in itself is a bit of It can be a bit of a challenge too, but because I'm not perfect at handling people, but I do have a head of HR and a whole HR department who do all that stuff. For me, I'm more interested. I'm a curious person and I'm interested in learning all the time, and I get
curious about things. So I also look at something that I think I can take on. So my podcast. I was walking back from the gym one day and listening to this American Life and I said to my business partner, I said, mate, I reckon, we could do this. And then he said, okay, let's have a crack. So that's like eight years ago. We went and hired a little studio down to King's Cross. We started this podcast called My Boris Show, which became the mentor but had no
idea what we're doing. Which did it for fun, but it was a curiosity thing that made me do it. And then once I broke through it and I understood how it was done, I then like to turn it into a bigger business. So that's my thing. I like to go can I do this? And lots of things that have failed at but can I do this? It's a new idea, it's a new thing. Yes, I can do it. Now, how do aterna into business? Make money out of it and employ people? And then I guess someone else to
run it? So I don't run the podcast. I don't run Yellow Big Road, Yellow bic Road runs your self. Wizard ran itself. You know, we had hundreds of staff. Wiz was another example. I saw John Simon's Aussie home Loans along with McCrow bank taking on the banks and pulling their pants down, and I thought, I know about that marketplace because I have a master's degree in that particular aspect, and I thought I could do that. So I was curious as well. I could do it, and
I started off for the next thing. And I had this big business, but I didn't run it.
So what do you think, then, is the difference for somebody who runs a small business who's working in their business all the time, but knows that they want to make that transition to scaling. How would you say, or what is the first steps to being able to go from that kind of day to day where you almost feel like you're bogged in it and you can't grow because you're out capacity, to then having the freedom of being able to work on it.
The scaling is a really difficult thing, a really difficult concept. But scaling for me means you've got to be in a market. This is what I call it the rising tied So I was a rising title liquidity in the world. What I mean by that is that it wasn't that people want to borrow money, not that liquidity in the wizard business or the l big row business for that matter, but liquidity in terms of money available to lend to them. So, because there's no point people wanting money from me if
I can't actually get access to it. So I understood the rising tidle liquidity in the world, and I knew where to get it, and I knew how to get it. My game was, could I build a financial technology model. Financial engineer is something that allowed me to borrow money from the global markets at the same price that banks do, so that I can competitively lend to this train market.
That was my game. And if you're trying to work out how am I going to get my business scard up, You've got to know that you can get supply the item. You've got to be able to supply the item at scale to the market. People think scaling up is about getting more people to buy my item. Scaling up is about getting more content to supply to the marketplace.
Excuse my ignorance, where did the money come from when you were privately loaning to all of these hundreds of thousands of people. Where was it was it just outside investors that you promised an interest.
To or no, no, no, no, well sorta. So there's a thing called capital markets around the world and money money markets. Money looks to attach yourself to an asset in the world. It could be mining, it could be home loans, it could be real estate. It's always looking to find where it's going to get its highest return with the least amount of risk. And Australian mortgages are one of the best returning asset classes in the world with one of the lowest risks because Australians always pay
the mortgage back. We have the lowest default and arrears rate in the world and have done for thirty years. And there was a lot of money floating around the world. So I would go every six weeks, I go with my team to the US and then to Europe, and we'd raise a billion US dollars and different currencies, but let's say billion US dollars. And I would go to see Bill Gates's company, Bill Gates' foundation, or I go
to see Merrill Lynch. And I had this group of people I would see be ten cities in the US, ten countries in Europe, and I'd raise a billion dollars. They would say to me, this is a return we want and I'd say, well, this is the return I'm going to give you. And by the way, you're going to have a mortgage sitting underneath, which is a strain morgin. And I convince them how our asset class was performing.
And over time I built relationshships with them, and they were so flush for money they had to get rid of it because they couldn't leave it to sitting in an account doing nothing. So I would give them a place for them, an asset class for them to get rid of it on. And I did this for years and years and years. And that's the part of the business I ran. By the way, everyone thinks I was the marketing go and doing TV. So now I ran the part of the business which was a supply money.
I ran the important partner.
That's that's the imazing important part in every business. In your podcast business, it's about your content. How do you supply your audience with a new, interesting content and lots of it? And probably more often because they have a time, they want two podcasts with what they want a third one a different Yeah, he's got like five six seven a week, Joe Rogan like, and it's how can I supply more of these? Going to replicate myself in lots of ways, and that's sort of how I model my businesses.
Do you ever struggle with imposter syndrome or you know that you have the confidence now from the years of successes, or is there ever just a time where you're like, well, I don't know how I put another one off.
Yeah, I did. In the early days of a Wizard, I certainly did you know. I remember someone said to me, let's do an advertising campaign. Kerry Packer said he was my partner, Kerry in Wizard business, and he said, let's do an advertising campaign. I've never done ad before, and he said, I want you in it, and he said, I want you to look at the campra. He told me how to do it and everything, and I had to go do an ad and I didn't know what I was doing, and I've definitely felt like I was imposter,
Like I was forty years of age. So I just turned up in a white T shirt and a pair of jeans and a pair of boots and I had a like a V neck jumper onderneath, and they says that we're going to wear for the ad like I'm doing banking ads. Like bankers in those days, we're walking around tires and suits. And I turned up and said, well that's I thought this would be okay, and they said, okay, well whatever, we'll run with. It actually worked that well.
Believe that's your point of difference.
You wouldn't have known at the time.
I didn't know. I hadn't have a clue.
It's literally what people say, Oh, he's not like the rest. And also you probably look more trusting when someone comes.
In in a suit and stuff like that.
Something's not right and I was different too.
How many employees do you think you have worldwide?
At a guess now, employees and contracts are a couple of thousand.
And what do you think your employees would say about you? If I asked them if I said, what is Mark like as a boss?
What do you think that'd say?
Hopefully? I think not everyone agrees with my views on the way the business should be run. I think some of them get feel as though I don't spend enough time with them, and it's not possible for me to spend enough time with them, Like this week, I was in Melbourne. Tonight, I'll be in Brisbane the next night, I'll be in Hobart. Next week I will go to New Zealand because we've got a conference in New Zealand.
And I get to a point and then I'm going to do all my podcasts somewhere in between, and I'm going to live a normal life, to try to live a normal life in between. So I don't probably don't get to see everyone enough, and probably that would be the thing that they would like about working with me. We don't get to see Mark enough. But I do as much as I can, and I'm always back feeling.
So then sometimes my kids known some enough, so then I know my kids ring my EA to make an appointment, point to me have breakfast or lunch, but they just know it's more efficient to do that. Yeah, you know my kids when I send my kids, they're older, but you know, they're all in the thirties plus. But at least I've set up a structure, and I know Laura has a similar structure. That's why I made a comment
to you about the other day. But you know, like I see all the parts that I have to satisfy, and I try to structure it up as best I can.
But how do you find balance?
When you say you try and find structure, I guess when everything is needing a bit of you, and everything is needing more of you, how do you prioritize the parts that are most.
Important to you?
And that sometimes creates a problem.
For me, creates a divorce.
I can create a divorce or medical problems. You know, you can get run down, which happens sometimes and every now and then I have to give myself an uppercut, and so I saying, I, Mark, what the hell do you think you're doing? Why accepting that invitation? Why accepting that? Sometimes I go yes to everything, and then I realized, what the hell have I done to myself? And particularly if you get the flu or something in the middle
of it all, it's pretty tough. So I'm backfilling all the time and then over now and then empty the backpack. That's too much, Yeah, and I just overreact and take it all out. Someone doing anything for a couple of days, that's it. I'm big on weekends being no phone, no emails, no messages, but emails are a little bit tried to read less business stuff and try to relax. I really think
you need. I need two days out of every seven just in my garden, visiting my dad, seeing my grandson, that sort of stuff, and banal tried commonplace, boring sort of stuff, you know, like watching Netflix or something like that. Yeah, that type of thing.
What was the transition like for you when you started to progress into the media sphere not just being someone who is running successful businesses from behind the wall, that you then became the face of what running a successful business was like?
How did you make that transition? And was there a period where I don't.
Know, you struggled with it or that you were kind of out of your depth at a completely new medium.
Yeah, that's a good question, Like.
That first commercial in the white T shirt.
Apart from that, I mean, but it's such a big thing. There's one thing to run businesses to then be the face of what that means, and I think like in your role you kind of became the godfather of that.
Look, this is Fennick. I was not that an aware person. I didn't really know what the fuck I was doing.
Naivety. It goes a long way.
Something and I'm one of those people who will try anything, so I'll give it a crack. I'll say yes to anything. My mum always used to say. She'd say to me, I booked you in for in a Steadford like a competition, piano competition. Like I just think I don't want to do that, Like, but okay, I'll do it, mum. And my mother always said, have a go at anything, whatever it is, go and try for this footy game, and
you might get into the webside. So I just did all those things because other people suggested it, and it wasn't a conscious thing. I thought, well, shit, maybe I won't get accepted by the media, maybe I will, maybe this could be a blowout. Whatever. I just went and did it, and I thought, whatever the consequences are, i'll deal with it down the track. And I never really knew at the consequences because, as you said, I was noive to all this stuff.
I also think it comes down to a personality type though, as well, because for some people, some people are real forward planners. Some people need to know that they have all their ducks in a row before they start something. And it's almost that like procrastination wheel that stops people from getting a head start because they need it to be perfect or need to know what the outcome will
be before they can actually take the first step. And then there's other people that have the confidence to kind of charge forth into the unknown and just figure it out along the way. And that's definitely a personality trait which you seem to take into not just business, but into how you've approached media.
Well, that's exactly my personality traits. It's not a strategy. It's probably more a strategy these days now I'm more aware of myself, but it was definitely a personality trait. And it's a bit like modeling, you know when you said a lot of people try to perfect the model before they launched the model.
Yeah.
One thing I know about modeling, particularly like anytime modeling catwalk No, no, not that one.
You should perfect before you get on the cats embarrassing business modeling is that you will never know all the inputs that you need to put into the model to make the model accurate.
So therefore you might as well just start off and start refine the model as you go along. So that's how machine learning works, how you get AI. The machine refines the model as it goes, because it learns about the model, and that's sort of how I am. I
take the view that I'll learn a long way. I'll pick up how I got to fix this thing up, and I'll change my direction or my strategy, whichever or tactically whichever way I got to go, because I think that's the best way, because I'd rather just start it because I'm starting because I'm curious in the first place. I want to see if I can do it. I mean, I wanted to know what I can learn from I'm interested in learning. I want to learn about as many
things as possible. I want to meet as many people as possible to see what I can learn from them. And I don't want to sound like that's a terrible thing, but it sounds terrible, But I actually like to get something from you. And it could be a question you asked me, challenging me about something I've never thought about before. I'll give you an answer and I think, wow, I didn't realize that before. Or it could be me doing my podcast, or I'm actually asking you questions. I want
to get something out of you. It's very selfish again, but it works, and if you do it in a nice way. You don't offend anybody, You try not to be hurtful. You'd be as sensitive as I possibly can. I'm not always that sensitive, but be a sensitive as possibly can. That works. I mean that's one of the reason why I stopped doing the apprentice show with a celebrit apprentice, because I felt as though it was a system that was a bit offensive. You know, reality TV can be a bit hurtful.
Yeah, I mean that's an understatement.
Yeah, in what ways did you find the Apprentice was having?
Well, it's always about Look, reality TV doesn't workun lesser as emotions. Yeah, and you've got to get villains and heroes.
Jeopardy as well, you've got to be some kind of cliffhanger that maybe not even is there and.
They wanted to come back for the next episode. Drama leave it on a certain way.
I also think the audience wants to see people in your position being hard on people and cutting people off, you know, mid sentence, telling them their piece of shit. It's why Gordon Ramsey is so successful in terms of his reality shows.
It's this is what people are attracted to for something.
Do you think that was the case.
No, I still actually do, and we've had these discussions even if you look at things like The Bachelor. But I hate seeing it happen when a storyline's developing for somebody and you know they're pushing it. You know, people are getting bullied and trolled and people being nasty. But they've tried it where it was all lovey dovey and nothing, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because humans want to feel better about themselves by also watching other people not necessarily succeed.
I totally agree we got BRIT's saying because I think for so long people say like, oh enough with the drama, like it's too much. You know, I can't watch it anymore. But yet Maths is the most watched reality TV show in Australia, and the entire show is based around putting people together. They'll put a couple of nice couples that work out, but the majority of people who have been partnered because they are literal polar opposites.
If you're punching yourself there for watching it, it'll be the most explosive.
I ever watched an episode. I mean I do.
I watch it and I'm a sucker for it, But I think outreach culture. We're attracted to it throughout social media as well. You know, social media algorithms within Instagram are created in a way where it knows that if you're angry about content, you will stay on that content for longer. You will view content that makes you angry for a longer period of time than what you will
view content that makes you feel good. And so it works that algorithm if you are outraged about something, if you're angry about something, that content will get pushed out to a bigger audience.
And if you say, had a really lovely day today, drink a lovely coffee.
But was that fed to you Mark on the show? Was that fed to you you know, like going and be brutal today?
Yeah, totally. Well, well that's how they first approached me. They just said, this is a Trump show. Here's a video DVD. Watch that. That's how the show goes. And I said, well, I don't want to say you are five because it's a non Australian thing, and they said, well that's part of the FOS. You have to say it, and you have to point your finger, and.
So you had to be like, you're fired serious.
You weren't allowed that so.
That sometimes they refilmed it, refilmed it, and it could do another take. You point the finger harder, say and like, and it's harder to say the second time, third time especially I've already said it once.
The poor persons.
Oh no, I know exactly. But TV, as you guys know, TV is a tough thing when you see behind the curtain what actually goes on. But I have to say it was a great experience for me as well. I met some good friends. I've still got some good mates out of the various contestants. I met a lot of people in the production crew, still good friends of mine. I enjoyed a hell of a lot. Not towards the end though, it wasn't so good.
Was it a direct.
Invitation from Trump for you to be the host of the Australian version?
Now?
It was a guy called Mark Fennessy who used to own Free Mental Media and they had the global production rights of the show. The shows in twenty five countries. I did get to meet Trump, and in fact he contacted me once I was chosen. He contacted me through the people who do the management of around the world. He invited me to New York. I turned him down,
and he got quite upset about it. He said, you know, I'll send you a free ticket business class ticket to come to New York and he stayed Trump Town and I said I don't want to come, and he said, were you seriously, I'm so and so on off for your free trip. I said, Mad, I'm by my first class ticket myself if I feel like it. I don't really. I wouldn't stay your hotel anyway.
I don't need your free business.
So he wasn't very happy with that. But I had lots of interview I interviewed him here in Australia when he came to Australia once a few years back. No, it was Mark Fantasy brought it to me. I was sort of doing nothing in two thousand and nine and he said, mate, someone suggested you for the show. Do you want to do a trial? I said, I don't know the show. I had never seen it. He said,
he's a DVD watch it. We're going to come in and we'll come in the week and we're doing some TV people and cameras and will bring some actors.
Practice your pointing, you do that and just.
Go through the process. And I went through it. And I said to one of the guys at the end who he was an actor, and he answered me this question that I asked him, and it was so fucking stupid his answer, And as I said, that was the one thing that clinched the deal.
Because you were polarizing. You came across as.
Yeah, he's going to say something that's unfiltered, right, and that's where they want unfiltered comments.
Did you when you watch it back, did you dislike the way that you were coming across? Did you dislike the way that you were framed if you were being made to kind of be this far more just like opinionated and angry and seem like your your thoughts on things were so much further in the direction than what you necessarily felt to say normally. Did you watch that and go, that's not authentic to who I am as a person.
To be honest with this, some of the people did annoy me.
Yeah, ah, I didn't have to act that one, so.
And I was saying what I actually thought. Look, you know what it's like, they got you on the set for twelve hours. Yeah, in the studio, like they posted my boardrooms, Oh my god, I get there are six in the morning. It was seven days a week start
at six am. I had a pre production briefing what happened the day before, and I'd be sitting there at six am and by eight o'clock they'd have all the celebrities at four thirty five am in the morning getting made up, and that all come because we used to have twelve people in the show and they'd all turn up and then be there like four or five o'clock
in the afternoon. Some would say something so stupid. I mean, I had to tell able running with Pauline Hanson like a shocking one, like and she wanted to walk off the show and she can't because they saw an agreement you can't walk off the show we had, you know, like I won't say what she said, but it was really dreadful what she said. And another one one of my sons was actually my advisor in one of the shows. In two of the series, there was nearly a punch
up between him and Jason Akamanis, the AFL guy wasn't film. Fortunately. I remember Johnny Stefferson, the Olympic runner for him to me to runner and Jeff Ennick were on one show and they nearly had a punch up which I had to step in between the two of them out the back in a storeroom. And so at the end of the day you get pretty agitate yourself. So a lot of stuff that came out was me just being honest.
But I did have a bugger mere. So there was always they always talking to me from the production unit outside saying she's not watching, she's lost your gaze or some of that, or he's not paying attention, or he did this, that and the other. So they were always prompting me to rip in and every now and then if I felt there was a flat spot, I would.
Who was the I mean, we just said some of the celebrities who might have been the hardest for you to deal with, But who, in your experience was the best celebrity that you had to work with?
Julia Julia Morris. Yes, not Julie Giller. Julie Giller didn't come on. I would have loved to have Julia Morris. She's so funny, so cool, so quick and gets it like she was just brilliant in everything she did. So she was definitely one of my favorites. And look like they all are doing this to get a leg up into TV mostly mostly.
To extend their profile, to build on their profile, I think, which is fair. I know, and sometimes we say it like that's a like we're like, oh, they're just doing it to build their profile. Everybody's doing every opportunity their work career is to get a pay rise or to get a raise or increase their employment. It doesn't matter if you're in media or if you're working as a sales assistant. Like, we're all working hard to get noticed.
Sign no drum with it, Yeah, and that's what the show was sort of about. It's about getting celebrities who trying to get back into the scene. So I had no drama with it. Where I had drama was where they weren't straight with me. I don't know people I've been straight, but David Haslhoff was sort of really interesting. Like we had the holf on one series there and I remember saying to me, he said, Mark, I've got to go to Austria. I've been booked to do the
birthday party of someone, mister Glock. The guy's got the glock pistols, some old dude. And I didn't realize that Hoff was so famous in Austria. He's very famous. Oh yeah, totally famous. So he was on the wall when the Berlin Wall was coming down, singing some song in German for everybody was It was like a number one hit in Europe. So Hoff had no understanding of the rules of the show. Zero I've got to go, I'm going to earn a whold of money. Hold the show until
I come back, which is what we did. We had to stop filming until he came back because the item fired him and I had no reason to fire him, so we had to hold the show until he came back. So I got to sort of see some already already knew Hoff because I had a girlfriend in la who was friends with Hoff, and when Hoff was married and his friends with his wife, and those are the days when he was drinking a lot and his wife is drinking a lot, and they're in the sort of breakoup period.
And when he came back to Australia, unfortunately, somehow the current fair of one of those shows showed a video of him that was on YouTube, of his daughter crying to him about Dad stopped drinking. And then when he saw it, we're filming and you come up to me and said I'm out. I'm leaving the show because you guys have embarrassed me on Australian television. It was n nothing to do with me, mate, like I didn't you know?
And that was a YouTube video totally And I end up having to put him up in my apartment in the city of Macross Street for three weeks. We lavished him with everything he possibly imagine and we had a sort of pretty much bribing him back into staying on the show. But they're interesting people. But to answer your question, Julie Morris by far was a standout.
Oh I love the water compliment, I know.
And she isn't like Australia's darling. So it's so nice when you hear about people that we see on TV every day when there is amazing is what you hope they are?
She really so and she still texts me and says hey you going and all that sort of stuff. And I have everybody's text, every being persons on the show. I have all the text numbers and when they left I would send them a little note and text and say how are you going? They will have my text number two say look I'm sorry I had to fire you, but.
Like you but you're so y before we do let you go, I mean, I feel like we can't have possibly Australia's most experienced businessman without asking you what would be And this is a very open question, but what would be the best piece of business advice that you have learned over the years.
If you've got a business that's selling into somebody, make sure you're selling into what is called a rising tide. So know what is a rising tide globally, not just in Australia, globally. So it could be something to do with artificial intelligence, because there's a rising tide there. I mean, who knows whether the tide will go to, how quickly it will rise, or whether it will ever be deflated.
But any business that has some application to artificial intelligence and machine learning today as far as and like chat you between all that sort of stuff, from my point of view, is a good place to start to build your business aspirations. It could be something to do with technology podcasts. Example, it's probably tougher today, but like when we were setting up our.
Podcast when we started, yeah, it was a rising tide and being an early adopter, the idea.
Of adopt early and find out what is a rising tide. So always be paying attention with what's going on locally, but probably more importantly overseas. And where's everyone directing their attention in the early stages. And do I have an application? Do I have the skills and application to go into
that environment. Don't try and get into those environments after seven or eight years when it's completely full and very competitive, because then you're just going to be either buying yourself or investing in a business that's you could probably go and get a job somewhere in the same amount of money and have nowhere near the hassle. So look for the rising tides.
Mark, thank you so much for being a part of the pod. You are insightful but also a joy to speak to. Thanks going ask so much of your time today.
Thanks very much.
I'm pretti about you. But I'm going to start a business.
I find the rising tide.
I'm rising the tide running all the way into the sunset. Well, you guys know we never finished an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our lowlight of the week.
I'm gonna kick it off, so alright, just been there, girlfriend, that's all. I have one quick suck.
That was just like a real, real suck, which is I've been horrifically ill.
Now I feel like I've taken over you. You're so dramatic. I only think Matt is the second most dramatic person. Well horrifically ill.
Oh no, I was hovering over quite an I do for myself. Yeah, it was really bad, and I feel like I've taken over you. I feel like there was a little while ago that you were on this you were sick all the time, and I was really healthy.
Now I feel like I'm getting sick all the time. But I'm not healthy. I'm like a shell of a human. All I do is dance, dance, dance.
I do is dance, dance, dance.
So really sick, as in this has not happened to me before. But I got really bad vertico in my sleep, which is where the world is spinning and then you start vomiting and you cannot move your head anyway or you vomit.
I vomited for twelve hours straight.
It was wild, and they thought that it maybe was a side effect from doing the skin treatment.
Nothing related nut. I didn't know anyway. We won't to go too deep into that for now. So that was one suck and now I'm going to go into my suite. We will go into another suck. So my swite bear with me. My sweet of the week was I never hang anything in my house. I got some art recently and I loved it. I moved my house around, I moved to my furnishure around and now there are these big.
Walls that were like really barren. So I was like, I need to hang some art on there.
And so I got all romantic and I.
Produced thes laughing because.
She knows online ordered three frames of photos to be delivered to my house because I'm too lazy and don't have time to go do it. Of Ben and I when we did that really funny on the spare of the moment professional photo shoot at the Louver in Paris. If you don't know that story, guys, we were at the Louver in Paris and this Rando photographer asked to come and shoot us. We thought it was a scam, we said yes for a laugh, and we ended up
getting these really beautiful photos from it. So I ordered three of them and printed them out decent side, and I put all three of them on this one wall in my laundroom really next to each other.
I thought it looked really good.
And I was so proud of the fact that I did it on my own. I hung it, I measured it. I was just really feeling myself. The pictures are great, and I'm in love. This is going into my suck is. I thought it was really nice. I've never been in love and put a picture up of me and my partner in my existence first time.
All my friends do it, everyone else does it? Anyway, Do I do that?
Do people put off?
Yes? I go into my friend's house and there's like giant nude photoshoots of them. Anyway, really yeah, so producer Keisha and my other friend Kim. Yes, I'm naming shaming you, Kim. They both they both come into my house and just start tearing strips off me for the fact that I put photos up of myself and my partner in the lound room. First of all, they were like, Okay, it either looks like someone's died. Someone's died and this is
a shrine, or it looks like a wedding shoot. And apparently you're not allowed to put photos up of yourself and your partner unless you're married. Now I disagree.
I think that is bullshit. I'm calling bullshit.
Why do I have to be married to put photos up of me and my lover?
I don't think it's that Like I mean, I have a couple of little photos of Matt and I. We got this like little pack and there was a few photos of us.
And like all once you put on the wall.
They're like hard picture frames that you put on like a little side table.
So there's a couple of those of Matt nite.
I think it's more the fact because your lounge room is the first room you walk into when you enter your house.
I don't have a west wing in an east wing. I've got a tiny apartment totally. You walk in and there's a lounge room.
So maybe it looks like a shrine because it's three big photos together. But can I just in your defense, because your partner and you're doing long distance, you don't see them every day, so it's nice to have like a daily shrine to sit and look at.
Also, I sort of did it because he's coming here in two weeks to visit, and I want him to be like, oh cute, Like I mean something to her.
She's done something. Well, you think he's gonna see it and be like, babe, why have you got a shrine?
Because because I showed him and he thought it was really cute. And at the end of the day, fuck you, produce a Keyser and Kim, I will shrine the shit out of my us.
I love to know.
I would love to know who has big photos of them and their partner put on the wall.
I know, but they're usually wedding shoots. Is the difference. But what if I choose to never get married and just be in love? Does that mean I can't also bask in my own love.
No, You're allowed to bask in love. That's beautiful. I'm so happy with the basking and the loving. But I would like to know where the limit is. Like I know that a picture in a picture frame on a side table is completely fine, and so.
If it transitions to the wall, it's not okay.
But if it's bigger than a four and it's on a wall and there's three of them, is that not appropriate? Like? What limit to the proclamation of love? Are you allowed to have in your own living space? Or love?
Yeah, declaration whatever? Or can you just have whatever?
Love?
Can you have like.
A full fucking artwork made of you and your partner and your love of each other.
I mean, you can do whatever you want.
And just to clarify, guys, this isn't like they are only A four sized photos. There's three of them, so it's more like an A four. Yeah, but then they've got the frame so I had to couple of centimeters.
But then there's three.
But they're all of the same shoot, which I thought was a vibe. But I'm not very good at aesthetics. So it's all three different photos from the loop which stuff you all.
I like it. I can't wait to see this. I can't wait.
I'll take a photo of you because you don't come to my house anymore, so hard they ever get to come to your house?
That's not true.
I was there the other week, but I was quite offended producing she wants to put it on Insta.
I don't know if I'm there.
Yeah, I don't think we can put it on instat because that just opens it up to a vote of people saying whether it's okay or not okay, which I think. You know what, it's your house. You do what if you want to in your house? And that's Okay, if you want to do a shrine of dildos on the wall, that's fine too.
This is my point.
I was so taken aback that these two were laughing at me and had the audacity to laugh in me in my own home after I bought them dinner.
I was like, the hide of them. I think it's fine.
I've seen heaps people with photos of their partners, and I reckon, if we do a poll, which you know.
We're all gonna do, we're gonna do an Instagram pole. I think it's okay.
I don't have a single wedding photo in my house, not a single one.
Yeah, but that's.
Doesn't shock me because you're a very disorganized person.
Oh you think it's just because I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Oh.
Absolutely, that will never be done because it's not a priority for you at the moment.
You've got too much other stuff going on. But nah, I just don't.
I mean, we've got them in a nice book, and Matt got a lovely wedding book made up. I just don't think I'm a wedding photos in my house kind of person.
I think it's a I don't know, it's a beautiful day that shocks me.
I think it would be nice to have a wedding photo you get once in your life, the best day of your life, I hope.
Yeah, I think you should print one. I'll print you a couple. Well, you know where to buy them, so could you for me? I'll send you the link, swipe up, temps and on.
All right, guys, So my second sweet for the week is my suck is a boring one. And I know, I mean I say quite a bit recently, but I'm going to say it anyway. Things have been so busy recently. I've had Matt's mum come in and stay with me. She's not suck. Ellie's actually my sweet. She's fucking amazing life saver. But I just literally have not seen my kids. Like training and fitting work schedule around everything has meant that I'm out of the house at six am.
You miss Marley's eighteenth birthday. Yeah, Marley's moved out her home.
I am not home until seven pm most nights, which means I'm pretty much missing from the time that they wake up until the time they go to bed. I know it is just a period in time, Like I know, it's only for like another eleven days of filming. But it's really hard, and it's been now for like the last couple of weeks that my ability to spend time with them has gone les less and less, and it's at the point now it really affects me. I get up in the morning and I feel really sad that
I can't spend more time with them. Yeah, it's fair, And I know for me as well, as much as I've loved doing Dancing with the Stars, it's been really really.
Fun and I love all the work that I do.
I know that like that's it for me for a while, Like I need some I need some time out.
You do, Yeah, but it's like, do not say yes or anything else. I was hoping you'd say that. I hoping you get there on your own. Yeah.
I just it was my nephew's birthday party on the weekend, which I couldn't go to, and I just feel like I'm missing out on stuff with you. It is.
It's one of those things in life that sometimes saying yes to one opportunity means there's a sacrifice in another aspect of your life.
And we talk about that with Mark Burris.
It's one of those things and you chose this opportunity, which you've had a great time and you've learned, and but something had to give and it will be over soon and you'll be back on track.
You definitely need to go take a fucking breath and get a message.
And I need it's a magnesium and maybe sit a nice bath to get laid. No, had sex the other day. Yes, Nana took the kids out at lunchtime and I was gonna have a nap, but we had sex instead lunchtime nap. Yeah, I had lunchtime sex. Midday minusion to Yeah, it was like literally one o'clock and I was like a literation.
Did I have a midday threesome with my mother in law? I just went for the literation thing.
No, No, okay, I haven't had any reasons, as we established earlier, and my sweet for the week is my mother in law. And the reason for that is that Ellie Matt's mum has taken three weeks of annual leave to come and live with us, and she has just been doing everything. So she's been cooking, she's been cleaning, she's been filling up the love cup for the kids because I've not been there to do it. And she just is fucking amazing and it really reminds me that it takes a village.
You can't do it all in.
Your and you know, I think that's kind of been the theme of today's podcast episode.
Yeah, absolutely, Well that is it from us. Guys. If you love the app, jump onto Apple Podcasts.
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