What A Great Swerve | Ian Stephens - 925

and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so reach out to Mark and the team at www dot test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au A and Stevens my new friend. Welcome to Roll with the Punches.

are on the same page and aligned. Was really great because I've got to say to if my family, I've been doing this for twenty six years, but really my family does not understand what I do. You know, it's high level weirdness as far as they concerned. What do you mean You're a professional speaker and you make a living out of talking? I don't get it.

Farmers Group had to do this program. And again it might sound like high level weirdness, but it's not. While I was sitting in that room, honestly, tif there was just a quiet whisper. It wasn't like a voice in my head, but it was a knowing, like a gut feel raw knowing that that's what you're supposed to be doing, and that guy out the front facilitating that program, that's the sort of thing that that's your calling, that's where

you should be going. And I'd always enjoyed public speaking during my upbringing, so it was kind of a hint that that's the direction we need. I need to go in with my career. So you know, long story short, I said yes to a move east when we acquired Federation Insurance that took us Australia wide, because I just knew that making a living out of speaking and training, if you weren't on the East Coast, where eighty percent of the head offices were, you were going to be

spending a lot of time in aircrafts. And so I went east and that kind of I went east with West Farmers, but I was I knew and I had my eyes open for an opportunity to move into into speaking and training. Yeah, so that's kind of my back. Do you want to know when I love and I fell in love with speaking? Yes, I was a sixteen year old at a weekend hockey carnival. We're playing this

big event. We're down in Esperance in Wa and I just after we'd won the final, I happened to be off in the lou right, and that's when they selected who was going to do the acceptance speech. So who got dobbed in? Me? Because I wasn't there to defend myself, right, So with three hundred odd people all standing around, I've got to give a speech, and I was so nervous that I made a little fraudyan slip because we were

billeted into the ladies' clubrooms. We had our sleeping bags, you know, and we kind of just slept in there for the long weekend and played all these hockey games. But in my nervousness, instead of thanking the ladies for the use of their club, I accidentally thanked the club for the use of their ladies, And of course that got a massive laugh. The audience was very patient tolerant with me. I was only sixteen at the time, and I kind of got hooked on making an audience laugh.

And so, yeah, that was my first experience as a sixteen year old. So I kind of just was always open to opportunity to speak, and that led me into the training and development industry.

just so moved by and captivated by that. And then I remember having a particular boss in when I was working in sales of a very small business, a small, little print business, and he would talk to us. He would give give it, not obviously not on a stage, but he would he would talk to us in meetings, and I just was really I was intrigued and captivated by his ability to motivate and shift and I don't know, impact people and influence people with his words, and I was I was terrified.

a great speaker. They're able to They're able people can see their own stories within your story. You might be telling your story, but I was taught by a mentor to always turn the mirror on the audience. So a lot of speakers when they're speaking can only you know. It's like they're holding their own mirror up and are seeing themselves as they tell their story. But occasionally, at the end of the story, the idea is you turn the mirror by saying something like, you know, when was

the last time you got King hit by life? As you're telling your story, but that statement turns the mirror. That question turns the mirror and the audience. You can see them kind of their eyes go up left right, they thinking about a time when they got King hit by life, And so suddenly they're relating to you, and you're becoming very relatable. So I love it. It's just an opportunity to engage and tell stories in a way that inspires and shifts people's mindset.

good at it. And so you know, when I'm coaching people in this space, it's how do you change their neurology and they're limiting belief first, and then equip them with some skills and talents to actually do the delivery and the speaking better.

the punches that knock you around in life. But you know, I've also I've I've been through a couple of King hits that I can I can tell you about because it's I really do believe it's it's how you bounce back from things that happen to you that shapes character. You know, I often think of a lot of people can fondly remember, you know, old Mickey, Rocky's coach in

the first couple of movies. Yeah, well, you know, I can always remember him saying to to Rocky, it's like, you know, and I won't try and do his voice, but you know, bounce back. It's it's it's getting back up off the off the canvas. That's what shapes character. And the famous R Lee I always quote him, he said, champions just get up and they go one more round, and that's it. That's what distinguishes the you know, the best and the great from just the good is they

get up and they go one more round. So maybe we'll swing back to the speedball in a while. But when I when I first moved into the speaking industry, I came across a guy called Roger Anthony who had a program called Crocodiles not wader lilies. Right, you can't make this stuff up, right, Crocodiles not water lilies. But it was a metaphor for as humans, we're supposed to be like the crocodile. If we leave the aggressive nature of a crococide, a croc's a prehistoric survivor. It's outlived

just about everything on this planet. It's left over from the dinosaur era. About a cockroach is probably the only thing that's been around longer, right, And that's because a while the old croc is actually going through a five step process to ensure it gets its prey. So if we set aside the aggressive nature, it's actually following this systemic structure to increase the chances that it gets the weak will tobeast that's coming down to the watering hole

every day. Right, So a croc relaxes, then it observes its environment around it, Then it starts to manage and have a lot of patience and then it acts right. So Roger Anthony intour of crocodiles not orderly. So the principal character in his leadership program and self leadership program was called Romper the crocodile Ronpa Relax, observe, manage patients,

and then act right. And if you think about well, let me ask you the question, tif, where do most people in life do you think start on that process where you know, do they relax, do they observe, do they manage to have patients? Or do they go straight to act? What's the norm?

And the analogy is be a crocodile, not a water lily, because water lilies look pretty, they act pretty, but they're floating around subject to the winds and tides, so they're reacting to everything that's going on around them in their environment. Where the wily old croc is very purposeful and deliberate in landing its outcome, so be crocodiles not water lilies.

And yeah, fascinating program. And in fact, when I first arrived into Victoria managing West Farmer's Federation Insurance, everyone about eighty of my employees had all done this crocodiles not waterer lilies program. And the thing that amazed me tip was the stuff had stuck. I haven't been on many training programs where like five years later this stuff has stuck and people are using the principles. So here I am the new manager. I've got my team of six

reporting to me. We're considering closing down one of the

branches in Victoria. And then Neil Trestata goes, well, I think we need to romper this, and I've gone, what you know, And then they taught me the romper principle, which made sense, and that got my interest up to go experience this crocodiles my orderlilies program that everyone had done and understand the language and the tools and the concepts, and Tiff, by the end of day one, you know, keep in mind, I've moved east looking for an opportunity

to get into speaking and training. And at the end of day one, having met Roger and experiencing his program, I started quizzing him about what was his vision for this and where was he going with it and does he need some help. By the end of day two, which happened a fortnight later, where in in depth conversations about the role I might be able to play for him.

And by the end of day three it was a day every fort Note over six weeks, I had made the decision that I'm leaving the West Farmers Group and I'm going to join Roger. And I was kind of I'm a planner, I'm out of insurance, I'm risk averse, so it's like, I'm going to resign next April. This was like October and then I'll start working for you, Roger.

But a month later it was like, you know, Tiff, when you've already made a decision to move on in your life, your mind's already gone, but your body's still trudging into work each day. And I just couldn't do it, so I handed in my resignation and like six weeks later, I was working for Roger. And that started an interesting journey because like three months later, I'm facilitating the odd

training program. I'm maybe doing the occasional keynote. I'm loving life now, living what I felt was my calling and my purpose. But I was also dead broke because I've got a young family and there's still all this money going out in the back door and now there's not much coming in the front door for a while. And so you know, that was an interesting time when you can't pay your bills and your wife with two young kids, is going, hey, how are we feeding the kids? This week?

The f post has declined again? Right, And I don't know if any of your listeners can relate to this, but if have you ever noticed that financial stress tends to magnify any cracks that exist in a relationship. Yeah, and long story short, my ten year marriage just crumbled and fell apart. So that was like a massive king hit, you know. Go on six months, I'm in business for myself now, contracting to Roger and crocodiles not water lilies.

I've fallen behind on my GST the ATO clean after a personal tax bill, you know, and and I joke with people that I was literally the four d's. I was now divorced. I was you know, I was desperate, I was depressed, and I was a demon supporter. It just doesn't get worse than that, doesn't drop it unless you follow Collingwood. No, no, no, let's let's not go there. Let's let's not get into all that. But you know, that's when I was really down and out. That that

that that period of my life. I kind of look back on it now and there was a couple of principles that I've learned from the CROCS program that I've used my entire life. Whenever, you know, whenever life has king hit me, I've managed to lean on them to to get me through it. Yeah. So that was probably the first time I literally had to roll with the punchers and they were coming thick and fast, you know, and I was thinking, do I need to go back into the insurance industry. I didn't want to. I'd put

my feet in the water of speaking and training. I jumped in head first in the deep end, and I loved it, and I didn't want to have to go back to a salary position in an insurance company. That felt like death to me. But what do you do? I put my resume out there and I started that process. But luckily I spotted an ad in the paper that literally it was one of those ticked the boxes ads. You know, do you have experience in managing a sales team? Yes?

Would you like to be an international speaker and trainer? Yes? And I'm going wow, It's like wow, and so yeah, another long story short. I ended up for three years working with a company called Marcureing International, who were a big sales training company in forty three countries around the world. And that's where I really cut my teeth on learning the art of training facilitation. But I also after three years,

I was the longest serving consultant. This was a big international consulting firm and they burned their people quickly, so you know, two years, I'm the longest serving consultant. So I made a decision pretty early. I'm going to learn from this, but then I'm going to go out on my own a second time and with some knowledge this time and do it right, which I did. In ninety nine, I left and went out on my own again. Yeah, so there you go. There's some of the times I've rolled with the punctures.

I went out and I saw one hundred and fifty organizations across Melbourne who and I prospected and I just I did the activity and I ended up eventually doing business with about three that had definite training and development needs. And so this time I was smarter. I actually locked in a contract with each of those three to do twenty days of training and development for them across the course of the year. And so I locked myself in for sixty days with three, so three companies times twenty days.

But that left me the rest of the year to get out there and keep prospecting and build my pipeline. And yeah, so that's kind of how I got into it the second time.

you anymore. Our values aren't aligned. I'm going to learn from this experience and set myself up to go back out on my own, but do it differently, in a smarter way this time. Yeah. So, I think the greatest lesson I got from going back in and working for our corporate in the training industry was that I never want to report to anyone again for the rest of my experience on this planet and for the last you know, since since I left them in ninety nine, I haven't.

business development manager. I have to put the hat on of being a facilitator and a trainer and sometimes I've got to put my keynote speaker hat on. The other times it's my administration manager hat. I mean, you name it advertising manager year. You've got to do it all when you're in business for yourself. So I think it takes a bit of resilience.

only three things I actually should be doing. And this to come across as egotistical, but speaking training delivering is one the sales and business development activity. I don't believe in outsourcing that to anyone else. You know, with speaking and training, they buy you. So I've got to be doing that. And then product creation, so creating programs, writing books, getting new e learning programs up at our portal, any

of that content creation stuff I need to do. But everything else, again not coming from an ego point of view, but it's below my pay rate. I shouldn't be doing it, so outsource it to someone who's a good at it. And secondly I get on with doing stuff that's around my gifting. Yeah, and probably the strongest hat for me given time, I very much lead into the marketplace being a salesforce effectiveness specialist. Having managed large sales teams, I

do a lot of salesforce effectiveness. My keynotes are usually around sales. I can do a lot of other things, but that's the point the end of the market that I go out and position myself as that's my selected available market that I that I talk to, so sales. When I've got my sales and business hat on that, that would be the strongest hat.

very good at. I teach and educate in that space. So I have to just buy miror you know, I guess I want to walk the talk in that space. Yeah.

to actually connect in to source all the universe. But it's about just having some quiet time, to personal energizing time, to re energize yourself. So Roger taught me the habit, and look, I'm not perfect. I fall off the bandwagon some weeks, but I noticed when my life gets out of control, if I go back to doing a PET session, get up early, no interruptions, No one's up yet, no one's phoning me. I don't even look at emails. But I just take twenty minutes to think, to ponder, to muse,

to look at my diary of what's coming up. And it's like, oh, okay, you've got that program with NEOs life now in three weeks, Well what could you do there that really recognizes John Desports and the role he's played in your life over the years, because he keeps coming back to me from different companies, and it's like then some creativity flows, but you've got to set the environment to tap those creative juices. So for me, it's

that and pick it. Some people, evening people, they might do it at ten thirty, but I'd rather get up early, have twenty minutes just not looking at emails, not looking at social media, just sitting quietly, planning, musing, pondering and creating a space to receive inspiration. That's really what it's about. And then continuing on the time blocking theme. The current book I'm writing number seven, I think I said last week in the Gold Coast. I've landed on the title.

It's going to be How to Be Happy Without Money, and it's going to retail for thirty eighty nine hundred dollars right, Not really, it's called shift selling. It's about the new way to sell in a hybrid world, given we've been through COVID and a lot of people have to sell hybrid not face to face, and it's the combination of both now. And it'll be the book that

goes with my consultative selling skills program. But it won't get done unless I block out time like three times a week two hours just I do nothing else but focus on just writing that book and putting myself in the right state. And as an NLP practitioner, I'm very aware that your state of mind, and I'll click my fingers with that, because the state you're in impacts on your behavior and the results you start getting. So we're

lucky we've got a bit of space. But I have a particular desk in a corner in a room in a house that is my writing station. I don't do anything else there rather than write. You know, Karina pays some bills from there and does a bit of recipe planning from there. But when I'm sitting there, that environment, that space clicks me into writers mode quickly, right, And you can call this high level weirdness, but I'll do

it now. I spray a bit of you know, a room missed spray, and I get myself into the right zone. I put on a piece of music in the background that helps me just it anchors me into writing space really quickly. So I think the answer is to You've got to create the environment where that creative side of you can flow quickly, right and I do love that about NLP neurolinguistic programming. It teaches you that you can

put yourself in any state in a neurosecond. You just have to set the right environment and trigger a few anchors that put you there really quickly. Yeah. So yeah, that's what I do to create that environment to be creative.

I don't think of all the other things. It's just me in a word document.

minute and then I love that cartoon. I saw whether the lady's kind of clicking on social media, And twenty minutes has passed, and then it scans out and her husband's in a ditch, having come off the bike, you know, blood pouring out of them, and she's going, oh, yes, I was supposed to dial triple zero, wasn't I? And we do. We get distracted by everything and we go down these rabbit holes rather than lasering our focus on

the task at hand. So you've you've created what I call a laser zone, and it's for you, it's that cafe. For me, there's a there's a bench outside under a picnic cover close to where we live, overlooking the Malulaba River, and if I go there, I can focus on one particular task. So if I've got to write a proposal to a client or what I call an action plan, it's like I'll say to Karina, I'm just heading to the river office because I know that's the zone where I can just focus on that one task and get

it done quickly. Yeah.

as when I used to do boxing training. Every time it was time to drive to training, it was like, I'm tired, I hate this around, why do I do this? And then you go and then it's amazing and it was like, oh, it's an hour's drive to the danding Oongs and an hour back and really busy, and you

could just go and walk on the beach. But it was every time I got there, you just have the eye would have this visceral response, right, I just feel my body shift in my mind would just and I just observe where my mind wanted to go for the you know, for as opposed to the rest of the week, which is directing that mind where it's going to go.

to my God. And then when it walked off, I looked went to look at the video, and I had taken a photo and not recorded it. But every time I went by myself, I saw on a kidnap and big. I went, all right, this is a thing, this is my spirit animal. There's something here like this, and it just made me. It was just something to anchor to to go. There's something in that. Do it. Sometimes we need something big, we need to have something bigger than ourselves.

the bloody things so massive, right, and their windspan. So the eagle teaches us to have a bowl vision, to think big. And of course they've got amazing eyesight. They can see a little field mouse from three thousand feet right and down they dive and that tenacious you know, on average they strike fourteen times to get their prey, so that tenacious little buggers as well. And yeah, I always see you know, And I don't know if it's right, but I reckon maybe the eagle is a spirit animal.

And I just I get a nice thought from Roger's visiting, Right, Roger's got a message for me, just to get out of the minutia and chunk up and have a look at the bigger vision you're trying to trying to achieve.

It always has. For example, I say to U TIF that's a lovely yellow singlet you're wearing today, or jumper, and you, at a conscious level you go, but my jumper thing is actually black, it's not yellow. So you manage your mind and you flick that thought. And you've had that ability ever since, you were able to challenge things and ask why. That's when kids are developing their conscious mind and because I said so doesn't cut it anymore. Right. Have you got kids?

thought and replace it with something more resourceful. So even when I'm down and out and king hit by life and I'm divorced and I'm desperate and I'm in debt, it was always flicking out that mindset of I'm a loser and replace it with I'm learning from this. There's a lesson in this and this is going to shape real character and stories I can talk about. So it's literally that mind mechanism incomes a negative thought, flick it

out and replace it with something more resourceful. And people say to me, it can't be as simple as that, and yet it is. It is just that consistency of stop saying negative shit to yourself. You know, you're the one who puts yourself down so many times during the day, and if you just court yourself and stopped and flicked it out, right. So I grew up on the back

end all three boys did. I think. I mentioned it last week in the Gold Coast that Dad would look at you a certain way when you've done something silly that he didn't agree with, and he'd go, faired income, son, you are studying to be a bloody idiot, right, And this was like fairly constant. We joke about it in our family. Now you've only got to do something a bit a bit weird and someone will go feed income. You're studying to be an idiot, right, and we quote Dad.

But it also came with a cost because when West Farmers made me a leader and they put me through an EQ intelligence test, and I debriefed it with the psychologist. Now, yeah, you know, I'm not up in the top five percentile of intelligence on this planet, but apparently I'm no slouch either, right, And yet when he shared my scores with me, I went, oh, no, I think you've messed this up because I'm not that bright. I'm not the sharpest tool in the tool shed, right,

I'm studying to be an idiot. So I'd taken on this subconscious stuff all my life, and that was surprising when he pointed out, like, mass is not my strengths, tiff, I think I was only at the sixty fourth percentile on mathematical intelligence, but verbal I'm in the high seventies. So okay, I'm a speaker, so that kind of makes sense. But your creative intelligence, I'm like up in the mid to high eighties. So again, I'm not a neuroscientist, but

I am quite creative. And that was a real defining moment for me when I shifted myself talk about perhaps what's potential if I apply myself, So flicking out those old, deep seated things and limiting beliefs you've taken on and

replacing them with something that's more resourceful. So instead of the oh, God exercises a chore until you replace that with it'll take a little bit of commitment, but twenty minutes in, I'm going to be feeling great, right, And that's the mindset that gets you out of bed and into the sports shoes and off to a gym or off to the nandy dongs in your case. Right. So yeah,

that's the first thing, control your mindset. And the other principle that Roger and I talk about in our first book, The Seven Step Pathway to Mastery, really based on his crocodiles not waterly self leadership program is the swerve principle. So it's represented by a platypus. So if your listeners just I'm sure they've seen a platypus through glass in a zoo for example, or on the television, you watch them. They are constantly swerving around rocks and longs. They just

turn obstacles into a game. It's like how they entertain themselves and pass the time. And there's a lesson in that, how do we view every obstacle, every punch that comes our way. We can roll with it better if we just see it as an obstacle, not a king hit as such and swerve our way around it. So the way I teach this is like, imagine you're in traffic and it's a bad day. Something's gone wrong in Melbourne traffic where you are tif it's taken you forty five

minutes to go what normally takes fifteen. You know, and you need to be somewhere for a critical nine o'clock meeting perhaps, and like you just know, there's no way now you're going to get there. You're probably going to be a good twenty thirty minutes late. So stress. But if you go back in time, it was when the alarm went off this morning and you hit it and went, I'll just snooze for seven more minutes. I get away with that today, I'll be fast on my preparation process.

And you doze for another seven minutes. Now, I deliberately don't say sleep, because I find this fascinating human behavior. We hit the snooze button and then we lay there for seven minutes, not getting any more sleep, but justifying why we can do it. And then we hit the snooze button another time. And if you do have a partner, significant other, spouse, all of a sudden there's a foot in your back, kicking out of bed, saying come on, you're going to be laid again. So now you're under pressure.

You're not going to have a nutritional breakfast. To break the fast, you're gonna you know, you're going to munch down an unhealthy muster and on your drive to work sort of thing. So, and who's put you under all this stress you have by your behaviors and your decisions and you and your mindset. But back to the story. We're stuck in traffic. You finally get up to sixty

kilometers an hour. After an hour of this, you're you're bridging seventy, you get up to eighty, and all of a sudden, another vehicle, bus, truck, car, motorcycle cuts you off in traffic. Now what do you reckons The normal reaction.

rest of your life. And yet you've let them affect your state of mind. So here's I put this challenge out to everyone. I get to speak and breathe the principle to here's the challenge for your listeners and for you tip and my wishes they come true. I'm a good manifesto. So I'm going to put it out there that everyone will have swerves over the next few days

where people will cut you off in traffic. Now, there will be no accidents, there will be no bingals, but you will have to break to avoid a collision because people cut you off in traffic. It's going to happen. And what I want you to all do when it occurs is you have to say out out, whether you're in the car on your own or with others, you have to channel the platypus and you've got to say what a great swerve and actually congratulate them on the quality of the swerve. Right, And you've got to be

You've got to be really authentic about this. That and genuine in like the mindset is, I couldn't have pulled off that swerve and executed it with three weeks practice. You just did that beautifully right, and you watch You're confuse the hell out of them because they know they've cut you off. And when they look in the rear vision mirror, here's a person who's staying calm, collected, and in control rather than getting stressed out. And you've used

the swerve principle. What a great swerve represented by the swerving platypus, anything that hits you from left field in life, what a great swerve, right, It's an anchor, it's in any terms, it's a reframe. You're actually looking at it

through a different lens. Right, Because normally, when we do get to that meeting just in time to be half an hour late, right, someone actually says to you a tiff, oh, good morning, And because of what's happened to us, we go who said, it's friggin good, right, and we're in a lousy state. Whereas when you go, what a great swerve, right, you stay in a good state and you're controlling your

own mind. And Karina will attest to this. I've had police pull me over because I'm fifteen kilometers over the speed limit and you got fine. But once he's written me the ticket and I know I've got two hundred and fifty dollars to pay and three demerit points gone, Karina will attest to the fact that I've gone, what a great swerve. Right. I can't control what's happened. I can control my attitude to what's happened. Yeah, this is

really important. You can't control your first thought. But when I met Karina for the first time, she'd done some work on all this stuff, and she stretched, you can't always control your first thought. You've got total control over your second one. Yeah, yeah, So what a great swerve.

just like but you know, what I remember. I remember going one, how lucky that because I'm watching in our community pages where people are asking for work because they can't pay their rent, And how lucky that I can afford to absorb this major inconvenience minor inconvenience. But also I remember thinking, we never think about that, maybe, like imagine if when the worst thing happens, we always think about the better options, And it's like, what if that?

What if I had got in my car and drove down and then at the intersection someone wildly slammed into my car and I had this major accident where I end up being severely injured.

was a great swerve. So there's swerves and then there's great swerves right that you're kind of through gritted teeth go, well, that was a freaking great swerve, but you're still practicing trying to reframe it and see the good in it. And I was saying to people, I actually honestly believe that the universe has got your back. It's actually working for you, not against you. So that's the position you took that maybe maybe this stopped me having a horrific accident,

so I'll be grateful for it. And that's what the swerve principle helps you do. Reframe and look for the good in it. It's always there. You know. Nanna used to say one hundred and two and a half she lived to and I remember her saying this, so dozens and dozens of times, every cloud has a silver lining, right,

That was her version of the swerve principle. Yeah, and you know I've been through Okay, it's ten years ago now, but you know, Karina and I got king hit by some bad tax advice and next minute there's an ATO bill again, and then there's a company tax billin. Before you know it, there's this debt that has to be paid, and without knowing it, the ATO hasn't responded to the

correspondence and the suggested payment plan. They just put our company into liquidation in the federal courts and wound us up. And it's like, my god, what a great swerve, right, and having to go through all go through all that being king hit by life again and there was a pattern there that I had to learn that bit about financial management and have some good people around me to look after that because I wasn't doing it, you know.

So swerve's just coming left, right and center. But you know, in that moment Tiff, we when Dad passed, he left a little bit of money to each of the boys, the three of us and their partners, and it was enough to pay because we've been king here and had to sell everything to get out of this debt, and we wanted to own a property again. Dad had probably funded us the equivalent of whatever the stamp duty would be on this purchase, but we didn't have the twenty

percent right too. But we went and found this house anyway, the one we're living in now, and loved it, fell in love with it way out of our price range. Anyway, we didn't have the money, but you know, we just said to the real estate agent, look, we've got the stamp duty. We can put down a bit more money in about three months time, but let's get creative. Can

the owner look at some creative options? And long story short, we bought this home with twenty five grand down, We paid the stamp duty, the owner stumped up some vendor finance for three years. When COVID hit the property went up by forty percent. We refinance paid him out his twenty percent and still had good equity in the home. Now, if we hadn't been keing hit by life like you and your Ka Tow, we would never have asked the

question are you open to some creative options? We would have just struggled on trying to raise the money eventually. But we would have missed this opportunity. And for him, he'd sold this house, they'd backed out twice, he had to move it because of some other investments. But he didn't need all his money, he just needed a decent lik of it. So it was perfect timing. And we had rented for eighteen months in NUSA, not twelve months.

If we had a lease for twelve months. We would have been committed where we were for another six months when this house became available, but because we had an eighteen month lease there, it was like divine timing. All the stars aligned, the universe had our back, and if you operate to that, you can to bring it back

and close it out. On your title of your show, you know, roll with the punches your podcast, I think rolling with the Punches a lot of it is about mindset and being prepared to just roll with the swerves, look for the good in it, and there's always the next step there somewhere.

was just a really great experience for me. Like I've raved about it quite a bit, said to so many people, Mate, I would I would be a speaker in for sales of all things if I could, you know, if I could emulate what Ian Stevens did on stage, like so great, thank.