I'm in a 200 year old prison. I'm getting one shower every four days. I'm managing to make one phone call every two days and banged up for 23 hours a day. With murderers, terrorists, lifers, drug dealers, violent crime armed robbers Yeah, quite the adventure to be fair.
Hello, everybody, whether you've been listening for a while or whether this is your first time here, we are happy to have you. Before we jump into the episode, it would be awesome. If you could write a review for this show, especially on apple podcasts. So it takes less than a minute or two. It's pretty straightforward. So you click on the show, you scroll all the way down to the bottom. And there's a little button that says, write a review.
And as always, if there's an episode, you really like send it over to your friends They'll probably like it too. Thank you so much. And let's get back to the show. So welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. And I have the privilege of having Peter Sage on. He's a serial entrepreneur author, master trainer, international educator, philosopher, public speaker ever. He'd done pretty much everything.
He actually started and founded over 27 businesses over the last quarter of a century and then spent, and this is a crazy story. We'll get into it six months as an inmate, and one of the most violent jails in the UK, and then won a national award through that for transforming the prison. And then potentially the lives of hundreds of thousands of prisoners actually around the world as well. So he wrote a book called the Inside Track, which is about that.
It'll change your life if you decide to read it, incredible story. So that further ado, welcome to the show here Peter.
Wow. So I love the speed intro there just to get through my life in 30 seconds or a part of it, not, a much better way to hit the ground. So thank you, Michael. A real pleasure to be here.
Absolutely. I'm happy to have you on. We'll dig into the gold here throughout the rest of the conversation. So I want to start off, I want to start off about dropping out of private school at the age of 10, and basically your parents saying if you don't work hard enough, you'll end up emptying the dustbins of the people that you're going to a school with.
Can you talk about how that shaped that really early portion of your life and just the drive and stuff that you got out of that potentially positive and negative?
No, absolutely. And I'm a great believer having spent 30 years studying human behavior. Now that a lot of our, what we leave or perceive to be free will in terms of how we express ourselves is ultimately driven unconsciously by a small number of patterns that we pick up early on. And those patterns are really shaped through the perception of what behaviors we have to adapt to.
In order to get love from the people we want to love from, or avoid the criticism or harshness or rejection from the people that we want love from. And I remember I was in private school, which was a little bit above my pay grade at the time. I'm not an academic guy, but I worked hard. My mum and dad had the typical seventies, eighties.
Yeah. And before that dream of, your kids have to go to college or university in order for you to be a successful parent so that they can get a corporate job, earn more money and therefore be happy ever after which now, as we know is Disneyland thinking. So I was indoctrinated with that and my mother was got to the point where she said, look, your father and I can no longer afford to pay the private school fees. They're working class families. They just wanted to give that kid a shot.
And so they didn't really want me going to the local sort of government state school. knew that there would be nobody pushing me that there's, you go private school for a guaranteed education. You're paying good money. Cause you know, you're going to get your kid in a good school. So college. So they were faced with a dilemma.
And my mom says, I'll take another job, but you won't see me in the evenings, least she get to stay at this hardworking school or you go into the school, the normal school system where the rest of the kids that, we live close to and around, but you know, I'm losing my guarantee. Essentially didn't see these words, but she meant I'm losing my guarantee of a university. So you've got to do it on yourself. And so I didn't want to not see my mom.
I didn't want to put financial pressure on my parents. I'm 10 years old. I might want to, I'll go work harder than the normal school. And so in the summer holiday between the two, she out of love, care and fit. Essentially hammered into my brain that, yeah, if I don't work my tail off at this new school where the teachers aren't really paid that much to, emptying the garbage to the people, I was just at the good school with.
And so, yeah, like any 10 year old that just essentially put the fear of God in me. And because I linked at that point, non achievements to lack of love, I linked yeah. Not achieving to disapproval from parents, which is the same thing for most kids. And so I, in that transition period in the summer holiday where the six weeks everyday I heard you've got to work hard, you've got to make young blah, blah, blah. I became an overachiever. It was molded in the in the clay of that 10 year old.
I had to work hard and be successful. Otherwise I would be nothing. I would be not good enough. I would be unworthy. I would be rejected. I wouldn't live up to expectations. Fill in the blank. We all have one. And as a result, I went out and smashed it at pretty much everything that came across my plate for the rest of my life. At that point now I, I joined the choir, became the youngest soloist, still can't sing, but I must have blamed it somehow.
I joined the army cadets and became the youngest instructor in the history of the British army cadet force, met the queen at sixteens. It's received my award, all of this stuff. Now I joined the shooting team. I ended up becoming a, in the great British championships. I, and then the reality dawned on me that the school method I Can, achieve it everything else. I'm just not a smart guy when it comes to how society classes smart and I'm a visionary, I'm a big picture guy.
I'm a crazy, I'm a, yeah. I was a born entrepreneur. We don't fit into, sit down, shut up, memorize some crap. That's no longer relevant in modern world. So to help you with life and will judge your intelligence by how well you can remember the answers to yeah, non-essential information, right? That's probably out of date and irrelevant by the time you get in the workplace, even if it isn't now. So yeah, I got out of school at 16 and I had the chat with my mom.
I'm like, listen, I don't want to go to university. And I was dreading it. I don't want to go to college. I'm saying I want to get out of school. Why I want to go be an entrepreneur. I want to go start my own business. I want to go do something. That's a 16 years old, man. It took me till 17 to figure out, the entry point, which was basically buying toys on wholesales and selling them on flea markets and trying to make 20, 30 bucks.
Or playing pool because I've watched the Color of Money with Tom Cruise and thought that was a way to get a Lamborghini or something. But the pattern was still running from the insecure ten-year-old that needed to prove to the world. He was good enough and over time and, a passion for personal growth. Cause I found personal growth at 17. I was introduced to Think and Grow Rich to Tony Robbins, to, Nightingale-Conant and that the six cassette tapes that, yeah.
If you know what I mean, you're showing your age and I was blown away. I'm like, wow, there's an industry that teaches you how to be, what school was trying to send me the long way round to try to achieve why not cut out the middleman? Why not cut out how to learn or master the periodic table of algebra. Some b#@S#!t go, to learn how to make more money in a company that doesn't care because I've got a certificate signed by somebody I never met that validates me as somebody. That could be good.
I ain't playing, I'll take the rough with the smooth. So yeah, I went out and that pattern, you could talk about the positive and negative is a two-edged sword. It made me fairly successful at a young age. I bought my first Ferrari for cash at 25. I was flying Concord. I was, yeah, I got multiple businesses. I was, yeah, I could be the idiot buying overpriced champagne on the private tables in the nightclubs. Cause I thought that's what I had to do.
I could be the person with the, the fancy-schmancy suits and stuff and absolutely miserable. Didn't have a life completely insecure and not happy. And I thought that this was the way to be happy. So of course now I understand. It's not that I have a Ferrari and three businesses and all the risks. Clearly it's only two Ferrari's and six businesses there. That must be the key because I'm not there yet. And that game was, never ends.
Yeah. And so I've worked as, I'm sure you have Michael with many people that unfortunately her have got very close to their grave before they even get close to the awareness that, that ain't the game to play. And some people that don't come across that insight never do get the side of of life understanding it. I've worked with people with $700 million that were miserable on antidepressants because they weren't a billionaire yet thinking that a billionaire would make them happy realizing that.
Of course, when you're a billionaire, it gets even worse. Now you've got more to lose. So you need to build in case you lose the first, I mean, it just pick a number. I was very grateful to, to grow out of that awareness. And it's not something that you learn in school. It's something you learn by being slapped hard enough that you'd have to be in the slow learners club. Like I was for long enough to realize that there's a better path.
Can you talk about that? I mean, you describe it as like the rumblestrip of life. Can you talk about what that specific and it's a literal one for you as well, that really slapped you out at that. Can you share that for the audience?
Yeah, sure. Again, we have an inbuilt sat map.. It is called our feeling center and yeah, if you're able to listen to that, the feelings, rather than your interpretation of the fears around them, and yet we call that intuition rather than justification. But for me, if you're, if you program into the GPS destination and you go off track it's okay. The GPS is going to continue to say, Hey, make a left turn, make a U-turn. Yeah, come off with the next junction turn around.
Now that happens in like, It just doesn't happen with language and signs and sat down with a mechanical voice. It happens in circumstances. That mean that life gets harder.
The further you go off track, if there's one thing I've learned is if you're not living your purpose, giving your gift or being focused on what you can do to add value to your mission, too scared trying to get enough cash, to prove to people who don't give a crap that you're good enough, or that you can have enough certainty because you were under the illusion, it exists, then life's going to kick your ass until you wake up. And so for me, I was getting, you know what I call the rumblestrip.
Now you drive down the freeway, you're veering off track. And to use a health example, be. Yeah. You're not hitting the gym as often. You're having a few little bit too much junk food. You're supersizing your meal more than you. And now all of a sudden your pants are a little tight. You've got to get some new ones. It's like, oh, okay. That's the starting point. But you ignore it because you enjoy junk food and you meet your friends in that lunch, they reading McDonald's and yeah, blah, blah.
So yeah, a couple of months later, now you need a new pair of pants, but now you can't take the stairs anymore because it's too out of breath. You can't play with your kids, soccer, like it used to, but you ignore it and you keep going. And then all of a sudden, yeah, you wake up in an ambulance because you had a mild heart attack. I mean, there's always feedback. And so in a health example, we get it. It's like dummy. Choose the salad. Yeah. Get your ass in the gym.
But when it comes to business, we're blinded by that link of achievements. Equaling. Good enough validation. And so when we re we're ignoring the warning signs and it's not tight pants, it's tight blood pressure, it's relationships not flowing. It's forgetting, th the kids wear a sports stay because you've got to put it in the calendar at the office, or you're now haven't got enough energy to have sex when you get home, because you're too busy, fighting dragons all day.
And now the one person that you want to be emotionally available for, you're not. So, and that creeps up until the point where sometimes it's a heart attack. I E relationship breakdown, filing for divorce. It could be your key staff you've been taking for granted, because you've been finding, fighting fires, thinking they're just doing their job feels under appreciated or accepts a better offer.
Yeah. So we always have that feedback, that rumble strip, and we need to get out of our own way to be able to listen to that, especially in business, because business can be all consuming.
If we are on the path of thinking that I need to achieve more in order to be more so, yeah, I had my wake up moment, which you probably know it was driving home two o'clock in the morning from the office as it, my usual time, I used to enjoy my nights in the office because the zoo had gone home and I could actually get stuff done and I'd get my three, four hours sleep to be back up to be in the office for five or six so that I can actually have some remnant of a day before the zoo arrived at
nine o'clock. And then I was basically fireman peak for the next eight hours. So I was exhausted. Now I was in my twenties in your twenties, you're invincible. And nothing's ever going to happen to you in your twenties yet that kryptonite doesn't exist. So I just kept going, but your body. And I was just so exhausted. I fell asleep, driving home. I hit an intersection of 60 miles an hour. I, I had the rumble circle literally slapped me around the face in a lucky way.
I say, lucky, I wasn't hurt there. Wasn't too bad. There's nobody else involved. The car was pretty upset, but yeah, other than that, I remember sitting at the side of the road and one of those come to Jesus moments where you're like, well, hang on a minute. What happened? And if I asked myself someone who's question is, am I finally going to be honest with the answers on the answer was, yeah, I'm building a monster, trapping me. why am I doing this? Who cares? What good am I to the world?
If I end up in a ditch, upside down in a car that I worked my ass off to buy a and now it's going to be the one thing that, in tombs me, cause I haven't got the energy or strength to enjoy it. I haven't got the ability to. Yeah. Okay. I've got more money. What does that mean? Oh, I can decorate my, the prison of my life with better quality artwork. Well, who wants that? So yeah, that, that was the turning one. I was 27 years old and it was a turning point.
It began a three year journey to really understand that my life had been driven unconsciously by the need to prove I was good enough. The need to be significant. Why I didn't have an education. All my friends went to college. They're all smarter than me clearly. Yeah. But they're all working jobs. They don't like for just about enough to pay the payments on stuff they can't afford to prove to the next person that, they're as good as they are. I mean, yeah. What a joke.
So I realized that I've spent most of my life craving significance as a vehicle to try to get connection and approval. And when I saw that, I'm like, what the hell have I been playing? Well, what's really matters here. What am here to do, but I need to make more money. No, I've played that game to the extent that most people are still playing, by the way I'm play. I've played that game to the extent that I realize that's the tunnel with no cheese right now. It's a nice tunnel.
Yeah. You can put all sorts of stuff in ensemble and you can now have shelves with Rolexes on and you can do all kinds of stuff. But ultimately, know, if I equate it to a movie, Michael, you, if you land a role in, let's say the fast and the furious, you get to play with some pretty nice toys. You get to drive some pretty cool cars. But when the movie finishes, you get to take them with you. You got to hand them back at the end. So why are people starring in the movie of their life?
Thinking that they've got to get enough stuff, because they're going to take it with them because that seems to be the game. They think that. When you realize you don't, you realize the illusion that you had done actually own anything. The whole concept of ownership is flawed play with that one.
So I'm curious. I mean, you have these three years and it, it's a process of uncovering this. I'm curious, what did that look like for you? Like you had that moment on the road and that might've, kick-started it for you, but what did that look like to unpack like, oh, I'm actually doing these things because I don't feel enough and I don't feel significant and I'm actually looking for something different. I'm looking for approval. I'm looking for connection. How did you go about unpacking that?
Well, it was started the process of me looking for answers because the path I was walking down, they weren't fitting, oh, I'll be happy when, while there's a ton of people listening to this that are playing the game of feel great when... And Yeah. There's no destination there. If you go back to the 16 year old version of you and show them where you are now, they were playing the game of feel great. When you got to where they think you are now,
Yeah.
and we're still playing the game. So yeah, that's, as I say, that's running east, looking for a sunset and blaming the fact that your sneakers aren't good enough. I don't mean, oh, you personal trainers, not good enough or your diets out of shape or whatever it is. So, if I just keep running harder, get better shoes, then yeah. Then I'll get my sunset running east, not going to happen. So I was searching for answers because the model that I'd been sold, wasn't working.
And again, when the student's ready, the teacher often appears and I really started learning more about human behavior, human nature. What is it that makes people with nothing, happy? Not pretend happy, not like, oh I've lowered my standards. So I'm not as disappointed. That's the BS that are authentically more joyful, whether they have a million in the bank, whether they're a million in debt. Now, whether they're with somebody on their own.
That, that joyful their center being that the core gravity is yeah. Happiness for no fricking reason whatsoever piss me off. How do you do that? Right. And this was too simple. They were playing the game of feel great now. Not feel great when. Not feel great if. They were playing the game of understanding that if I'm focused on contributing not focused on what I can get to prove to the world, I'm good enough to be able to contribute.
Yeah.
Then the stress goes away that's focused on. Yeah, understanding that everything in the physical world by its very definition means its destination is non-physical. So what are you so caught up about? And then the essence of who you are is far bigger than most people realize or settle for. And that really started me on a path of understanding that there are certain needs that drive people. And the day of awakening comes through a couple of key and profound awarenesses.
The first one is the day that you realize that life is not a comfort centric experience. It's a growth centric experience, which essentially means that they, you stop focusing on you trying to be comfortable and realize your here have to be in the gym of life because you're born an athlete who's after the gold medal people that win the goals that they're oh crap. I gotta go to the gym again.
No, they're on fire with a purpose of mission to inspire other people, that country, whatever it may be, but you take somebody who's never been in gym and say, you've got to go work out. It's like, well, hang on a minute. No. So that you realize life is growth centric, not comfort centric. And the whole thing about comfort zone is a complete oxymoron. The longer you're in a comfort zone, the more uncomfortable your life gets, why it's got nothing to do with comfort. It's a familiarity zone.
That's what it really is uncomfortable because I don't want to handle the uncertainty of What it means to step outside of that. In case I fail in case I'm ridiculed in case I'm not good enough in case it's scary. Well, welcome to earth school, and that's why we're here. So day 1 on the journey to emotional maturity is the day that you realize life is growth centric, not comfort centric. And the second awareness that goes along with. It's the day you finally become, okay not being liked.
Oh, that's a twist in the heart for some people. Why? Because the reason they started that business was to be good enough to be liked. The reason they're still with the person they woke up with this morning is they don't want to risk being unlikes. Even though they know it's a sham or what prevents them from having the courage to face or fix a broken relationship or an unfulfilled relationship or level of sexual relationship.
And that is the fact that they don't want to rock the boat because it means admitting that they're wrong or having to apologize for some crap that, that too willing to blame other people for rather than step into their greatness and say, Hey, listen, I'm human too. So yeah, those two things are what really the gradual awareness over those three years went from being an intellectual level of understanding.
Because most of what I'm saying here, Yeah, but knowing you're not doing things the same as not knowing, so you don't know it. Oh, I know that meditation is good for you. Yeah. How often do you want to say, wow. I've missed it for a few weeks. You don't know squat. When you know, meditation is good for you. It's because you meditate. Now you may know about meditation, but knowing about meditation, isn't knowing meditation. Yeah. You live in China.
A lot of people may know about China, but you can only know China by being in China. Right. So, the core here to, to the people listening, if they'd been running on this hamster wheel of frustration, mediocrity you've stagnation, whatever, it may be on fulfillment, to some extent in between distracting themselves with momentarily aspects of short-term highs by achieving some sort of goal, they thought would make them happy to realize they weren't is when you really know.
That I don't need to be liked. I don't need approval. I'm the star of my own damn movie. That doesn't mean to say that you want to be an asshole. Doesn't mean to say you want to be arrogant or not caring, not have empathy, that's that's down to your values, but if you're giving your power away, because you're in trying to control the outer world rather than create it from within, because it's an expression of who you are.
If you're trying to build your business, rather than have your business be a reflection of who you are, then I can predict the next five years. I am, I don't want to swap.
What does that internal, what does that internal work look like? Cause I mean, you're right. There's a difference between knowing that there's a difference between really knowing in terms of actually living that, what does it look like to first off discover that place within yourself? And that's a constant process. And then also how to reflect that out to other people.
The gateway is courage. when I say this, I also want to back up the fact that none of that is outside of your grasp. It's just in a different part of your life. It takes courage to start a business. It takes courage to sacrifice, certainty for freedom. It takes courage to bet the house on the farm and be the one that eats last. When everybody else is mortgage is relying on you to make the decisions and CEO or founder. I get that. So you have courage and you're a business owner.
You have courage, you're a parent, you have courage. And that takes courage to bring something into this world that doesn't come with an owner's manual, right? So you have access to it. Where else would you need to apply that? You'd need to apply it in the area that most people, don't want to look, authenticity, self-honesty. From a place of saying, Hey, listen, I don't need your approval, which is why I'm.
Yeah. to tell you that, yeah, I screwed up or, Hey, listen, I don't need your approval in order to make this decision. It doesn't mean say I don't care about you, but the only approval I need is my gut, my heart, And, mind being aligned in what I believe to be my truth. And if that's leaving a relationship, if that's walking away from a business partner, if that's taking on a competitor, if that's going into a new market, that's Virgin territory.
If that's pivoting the business model, this moves fed your kids up to this point, but now is no longer serves you because the government's doing some bullshit. So yeah. Move the goalposts. Courage is the gateway. And if you don't step up to the plate, life's most likely going to give you a shove.
Let's get to the shove, I mean, there's lots of different aspects in your life, but there's one in particular, literally wrote the book on it. So you started out, you're living in Dubai, you're driving McLaren. You have a huge multi-million dollar company. Can you share the shove that ended up happening? I mean, it's years after that, but can you talk about
certain, I know the one you're you're
I'm pretty certain you
Uh, Yeah, sure. I mean, I had a great life in Dubai and I I was buying, selling IT equipment on the side so that, to make some profits, small margins to try to offset the risk for investors for more capital, we were building a huge world-changing project.
I put millions of dollars in, out of my own pocket, my entire fortune and six years later, I'm back living in the UK and I get a knock on the door from a hundred million dollar law firm, basically representing one of the companies that I bought $12 million worth of kit from seven years before paid in full and resold part of it at a small margin, one, two, 3%, something like that suing me for $17 million. And I'm like, what's like, we didn't give you permission to resell it.
So we're suing you for the difference between the wholesale price. We sold you on the retail price in store for start. I thought they were on crank, but from a logistics perspective and integrity, second, I said, okay, show me the contract that I signed that says I wasn't allowed to resell it. I'm not an authorized distributor. I'm not bound by the terms. Oh, well it was implied bullshit. Yeah. I've had to call my next witness. The implied. Please know it doesn't work that way.
Yeah. So, they said, look, we don't want to go to court, give us a hundred grand. We'll make it all go. And I'm like, this is financial bullying. Yeah. And yeah the sort of ego warrior energy in me that doesn't stand for bullshit, the kind of indigo it was like, no, go screw yourself. It's going to cost you over a hundred grand to defend it. Yeah. You must have just cut your losses.
And I was a smart business guy should have sat down with them and figured something out and thought, okay, let's learn that lesson next time. But my, my ego at that point was already riled and I basically says Kindly leave and we'll stay friends or something to the effect of that were far shorter letters, didn't play ball. They then and they froze all my accounts globally. They tried to squeeze me into a settlement. I didn't want to do it. I thought they were unjust.
I thought they were, as I say, posturing, I thought it was like, just cause you got the biggest legal muscles in the playground. Do you want to bully the little kids? None of not standing for, then hit me with a contempt of court application saying I'd breached the freezing order. I'd done all this other stuff. I'm like, I haven't done that. I looked at it. I've gotta be honest. it was typical courtroom theater. I mean, it was smart how they try to set it up.
It was talking about, you distort context in order to present your version of content. There's context is definitive. Yeah. You're a parent and you see a another parent you're walking down with your four year old by the hand through the middle of town. And you'll see another parent crossing the road with effort. And all of a sudden, know, you see him impatiently yanked the four-year-old across the road.
And you have judgment about that from where you're at, because that's not how parents you had, the parents have more patience and tolerance. Yeah. We always project our own judgements. And then you see that what the parent was doing was risking their own life, pulling the child out of the way of a moving bus. And you suddenly have a completely different appreciation of what happened, why? Same action, same force for poor different context. Context is definitive. So they would twist context.
That's what court barristers do. Nobody goes into court to lose. And so I show up in court with my legal aid barista, cause I ain't got any money for finding legal. Now they show up with a hundred million dollar law firms spending 200 grand on the actual action. Just for this. It's just the committal that the suing me for 17 million bullshit. Never got to court because I knew it wouldn't. Right, because it was complete BS, but they ran with a committal, sold it to the judge.
I think it ended up in six months in jail as the only, non-criminal. Never been arrested, never been found guilty. Never been been accused of a crime still, no criminal record. You get the idea it's like, and I'm unsegregated. I'm thrown into jail, the most violent prison in the UK. Cause it was the closest one to the world. I should have been there like 24 hours before putting some holiday camp.
And it took four and a half months to process me and ended up in, I mean, I walked in and saying to my 50 staff, I've just got to pop into court next week and get rid of this bullshit. I never came back. Didn't see it coming,
Oh,
Lost my business. I went from 50 staff to three staff in three minutes. I got saddled, even though I was on legal aid now with a government appointed attorney, I had to pay all the legal costs that they throw at me. Yeah. I mean, it was just a shit. They put a charge immediately against my house. If I didn't pay. I mean, I was running a business. I just sold $50,000 for the tickets to my business seminars that was happening the following month now.
And that was a break even, or slight loss on the front end. So we spent 50 grand on Facebook to sell 50 grounds of the tickets. And our 50 grams of the people want their money back in, I mean, it was, you get the idea and there's nothing I can do. I'm in a Victorian 200 year old prison, I'm getting one shower. Every four days, I'm managing to make one phone call every two days and banged up for 23 hours a day.
And yeah, with murderers terrorists, lifers, drug dealers, violent crime armed robbers and yeah quite, quite the adventure to be fair. It, they didn't see it coming.
That's one way to describe it. Can you talk about your mindset going into that? Because, I mean, that's just, I mean, it's unfathomable and then your mindset, even above that is just unfathomable to me and I would assume most people, but talk about your mindset going into that.
Let me give some context as well, because I mentioned earlier that we're here to grow and we're here to contribute and we're not here to stay comfortable and watch Netflix. So understanding that we're in the gym of life, your personal trainer, whatever label you want to call it is going to, if he, she, it, they, again, pick a label, cares enough about you. They are going to put you on time trials and there's going to be surprised frickin sprints.
And you're going to have to go do the regional competitions before you get to the national to be selected for the Olympic team and everything else. It's not always going to be comfortable, as I said, but you are going to get tested. It's not about trying to avoid the tests we get. It's about understanding how best to take them on because they're there by design. If you're not falling off the horse, it's not riding hard enough. And nobody get sense of that.
The stables in earth to sit on the horse inside the stables, because they're afraid of opening the door for it to Gallup. So you're going to get tested and I call these graduation events at this level. Now, day-to-day we get what I call BLTs, basic life tests.
If you're a relationship coach expect to have an argument with your spouse so that you can prove that you can demonstrate and walk your talk And if you're a health coach expect to have a health challenge so that you can demonstrate your authenticity about applying what you know, and therefore you're qualified to teach. It's how the game is set up. If if you haven't got patience or you're heavier, and you're a parent, your kids are going to specialize in what it is that you need to learn.
That's just by design. Okay. So I've been teaching mindset Self-mastery positive psychology. That. Yeah. Don't be a fricking victim. Yeah. There's a better way to play for many years. Am I going to get thrown into to the, the surprise exam? Mid-terms hell yeah. Let's say it's a graduation event. So when it looked like it was going south, which was yeah. Quite soon because yeah, they have better lawyers. I might my fiance at the time I got my wedding got counsel.
I mean, my fiance at the time says, honey, this isn't going the way we want. I'm like, yeah, you could say that. she says, could you even go away here? I mean, ultimately contempt could carry like a two year prison sentence. You do automatic half. If you're a civil prisoner, you're not a criminal, but that's the people that I don't know. I cough over the judge.
I mean, embezzled thousands or millions of dollars behind the courts back, or I dunno, breach a restraining order and go beat up a spouse. I. Contempt of court is yeah. Anyway, they sentenced me to 18 months,
Gotcha.
which means that I did not, I do nine months. And then couldn't conditionally discharge. We did appeal and they dropped it to 12 months. So I served six, but I'm, by the way, I would have been out sooner if I was a criminal, but because exactly I've got parole and probably you get off after it, about, if you could behave you usually about a third, you do a third, you go home, you get put on electronic curfew tag, blah, blah. I'm not eligible for that. Cause I don't have a parole officer. Why?
Because not even the police knew I was in prison because I was never arrested or accused of a crime. So I don't have a parole officer. Therefore I can't get parole. Therefore I've got to do half instead of the third of the actual sentence. Anyway, you couldn't make it up or part of the fun, but right back to your question about mindset, I knew that one of the most defining aspects of humans that the human personality and what governs behavior at a deep seated level is identity.
See if you're an entrepreneur and you see yourself as an entrepreneur, you're going to do what entrepreneurs do. You're going to take calculated risks. You are going to work bank holidays and Sundays and everything else, right? You are going to do all of that stuff. But if you're an employee, you haven't gone to work on a Sunday. You're not picking up your phone to check your email from work on it in the middle of the ballgame. You're an employee. Entrepreneurs that's just part of the course.
So identity gum, something vegetarians don't eat meat, not because they've got different teeth, they meet, they don't eat meat because their identity is I'm a vegetarian. For whatever reason, they choose to adopt that moral health pick a reason. So identity is key. If I went down the steps and into the cell, With the identity of a victim, you already know where that's on all leads. If I show myself as a prisoner, I'm going to be complaining. I'm going to be bitching.
I'm going to be talking about what ifs and if onlys and blah, blah, blah, and unjust and all this kind of stuff. How far is that going to get me my ability to demonstrate some might my falling, my students, my friends, myself, that I'm bigger than that. That if this is a test, now I may fail, but I'm going to swing the damn bat.. And so the identity that I chose immediately, I was walking down the stairs. I'm going in here as a secret agent of change. I'm an undercover jedi. Why?
Because most of the people I've helped over the last 20 years have been people I was able to reach because of the world we live in either online or in seminars or yeah.
I've never been in a prison before the people that are, they're usually on the kind of people in my seminars, maybe the real people I could help the most are the ones that, or that need me the most are the ones I'd never get to see, which is why life, the universe, whatever three letter word you want to pick that is sending me in to go help people and the walk, my talk. And that was my belief. I started off cheering up all the guards in the holding cells.
They probably don't have a reason to smile that they're getting people, kicking, screaming, shouting, bitching, whatever. It's not a happy place. Well, let's change that. Let's see how many answers, how many guards in the court I can get to smile before I get on the bus. I said, I play a game. Anyway, I go in and I'm on a mission. I'm on a mission. I know I'm here to help people. And because that was my focus, my intent, my identity. That's what I did. Yeah. Why do runners run?
It's their identity. It's what they do. Somebody, who's not a runner looks at somebody says, what do you mean? You've got to go out and run. It's raining. Well, yeah, but I haven't ran for four days so they don't get it right. Or identity. I'm a secret agent of change. So I'm doing secret agent of change stuff. Right. And I'm getting into, I'm worming my way into conversations. I'm understanding people's pain. I'm reframing, I'm giving them tools.
I'm I'm trying to be for want of a better comparison, a Florence Nightingale, holding a light in places where people never see light. Now, again, I there's enough examples in history that have been able to do that, that if I get within 1% of, yeah I'm honored. I'm humbled. I went in and I just did what I did, what I do. I mean, I was a trainer for Tony Robbins for 15 years. I learned a lot of how to deal with, people's stuff.
There's a lot more crazies in Tony's seminars than there are in prison. Right. And he probably, it would probably be the first to admit that, to be fair, in a FACEIT, know, I'm being facetious, but I had a tool set that I was able to use, and it would have been more criminal for me not to use that in there. And it would be to just write it out. See I got a lot of people off drugs. I was stopping suicides.
I redesigned the intake system to reduce violence between the wings that, that is being adopted in prisons all over the world. I wrote letters to my students every two weeks, taking them along on the ride in my private journal and letters, essentially showing them what I was doing. So that it's a, Hey, listen, just because teacher ain't in class doesn't mean to say you can skip school. I'm on a field trip, right? Yeah. that was my language. What I wrote.
I'm on location filming the prison scene of the movie of my life. I'll be back, but for now, let me show you what I'm doing so that if you've got problems in your life, the contrast frame should help because if I Can help it being in here and still smile and still have a great time. I mean, the game, what would excuse you, got, if you come home having a bad day and it was fine, the guards that the guards the guards would often say if I was out on the wing and say, oh, Mr. Sage, how are we today?
Because they know the answer. And it was in, it was absolutely authentic. We were like living the dream and then start laughing because I was skipping. I was having an absolute blast. Now, was it all sunshine? And roses knows it's not all sunshine and roses outside of prison, but where do you live and where do you visit? So if you live in the gym, you can visit Domino's once in a while, anything. But if you live in takeouts and fast food, getting points, you can visit the gym once in a while.
And I ain't going to do a lot. So where do you live? Where do you visit? So I like to live in joy. I like to live in yeah. High state emotions. Does it mean I don't get upset? Well, yeah. I was honest in the book on the third letter I wrote about the times I cried the times I doubted myself. I mean, it was a test. It wasn't an easy place. I mean, you've seen prison break. It was that kind of place. And so yeah, you would dance, but I never felt in danger for one reason.
Not because I wasn't in danger. There was blood on the floor every day. There was attempted murders, as a commonplace A guy was stabbed to death just before I got there But the reason I didn't feel endangered is because I felt I was there to serve. And therefore I felt I was governed at a higher level of protection because I wasn't trying to be the biggest cat in the jungle. I was trying.
Yeah, add value to the ones that we're trying to posture up to be the biggest cat in the jungle, because they're too scared to admit that they were fricking one. Get the idea.
Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, you talked a little bit about some of the things, so you mentioned really briefly contrast frames. So I'd be curious for you to break that down a little bit. And one thing in particular, I mean, do you have a story there's a Muslim there's Christian and they're atheist and they're arguing in prison. Can you talk about that one?
As I said, sounds like a start of a bad
I can literally sounds like a joke.
but no, I mean, well, to address the first one in contrast frames relates back to basic neurology, know our brain is hardwired to give meaning based upon contrast. And even now our sensory data makes that meaning, if you're in a dark room as somebody flicks the light on, it's like, oh, it's too bright. But if you coming from outside into that room, you don't say it's too bright because by contrast it's not.
And so if you have a a pay rise at work and you get given a 10% pay rise and you're all happy about it, and you find out your coworker next to you, does the same thing, got a 20% pay rise. You go from being happy woman. It's a pissed off the next. Why? Because now you're contrasting your 10% to 20 instead of the 10% to zero. So contrast frames are a powerful way. And of course in prison, what's the best way to help people of that level, contrast it to something much damn worse.
So I have several, I had a lot of books sendings the library was pretty much under stocked. It was full of crap. So I had a load of copies of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And I would challenge prisoners that were in victim mode to read the book and tell me several things that were grateful for about being in Pentonville my prison rather than Auschwitz. Yeah. I there's always something to be grateful for now.
I was with one person who was upset because they missed the birth of their daughter, or they were going to miss the birth that the daughter. And I'm like, well, why aren't you grateful for being in prison at a time where they wouldn't have a memory of it? The X that I was going to get married to, I spoke with the last week she called me actually, because the cat just died and it was my cat for several years as well. And she felt I was on and she was in bed.
Now she's in a new relationship and she's got a kid with that relationship. We're still good friends. Yeah. Just because you choose to walk different paths from a level of emotional maturity, does it mean to say, no, you can't be friends. So, and she was upset what's something you can be grateful for. And she was quite sad I don't know, I loved the cat. She found it dead one morning, and it was only about 10 years old or whatever.
I'm like, well, you've got a 12 month old kid the kid loves the cat, but the kid won't have any memory of the process. If that kid's three, four years old and they're bonded to the cat and the cat dies, they now have an understanding of what death and loss means. And that can certainly influence again. So one that you be grateful for is that if poor old Fluff decided to check out, thank goodness you did it now. I'm not when yeah.
Is three years old and would probably not understand, or form meanings in the mind that could project further on in terms of fear of loss and now become codependent in relationships because their earliest memory is being, having things that like taken away. You get the idea.
What was your contrast frame like for yourself personally?
Well, there's certain different things. So for the cell that, I mean, the cell was a crap show. I mean, it's a tiny little place. Right. It's got two people in it. Usually they don't like each other. Yeah. You've got no privacy. You've got cockroaches rats. Yeah. You've got no hot running water. You've got, sometimes the toilets don't flush it. You got that. You got the idea.
Few years before I'd run the Marathon de Sables which is an ultra marathon across the Sahara desert, we were sleeping on the sack cloths with sandstorms blowing sand up our nose at 40 kilometers an hour. We could feel the scorpions and camel spiders calling over our legs. Holy crap. What I would have given for that prison cell,
Great. So you've just done something.
You, you got to try that. Let's say that you go to a like a local concert gig or whatever. Let's say three, 400 people in a, decent, outdoor venue outside of bar. That's got like a parking lot and don't think about three, 400 people. Okay. And you get there late and you're at the back and you're probably, I don't know, 60 yards away from the band. Oh crap. I want you to get closer.
Now, if you were at Yankee stadium and the band was playing and there was a hundred thousand people and you were that close, what kind of conversation would you be having with yourself? Yeah. Contrast frames are powerful. If you know how to use them, the problem is most people use them against themselves on what's missing. That's like taking a really powerful tool, like a cannon and pointing it at your own head.
Yeah.
All right. Rather than pointing it at the limiting beliefs that are causing negative emotions, With regards to the
The Muslim Christian, athiest
book diffusing the time bomb. Yeah. So in, in the 45 minutes a day that we got to sometimes get out of the cell and walk around, I would be on the lookout for, I was basically an intervention seeking missile. I'd be looking for who I could help, where I could help. And and at one point I was walking past a conversation that seemed pretty heated.
In fact, you could tell people were spacing away from it, and there was three guys and they're all facing inwards and all, you could they were past listening to the other person. They were waiting to talk to justify why they were right, the other was wrong. So I thought I breezed by and see if I could pick up on something and it didn't take long to figure it out. Yeah, it was religion. You gotta a Muslim guy that, who was essentially having a go at the Christian.
Cause the Christian was indoctrinated into thinking that, when you start using references of ISIS and blah, blah, blah, and all the rest of it. And so all Muslims are bad and you have fanatical. And this guy was like, no, that's just media, selective, blah, blah, majority, a peatland. And you've got all this and he was getting angry at defending his faith. The Christian was getting angry at the fact that they weren't willing to take responsibility for, being a terrorist.
Yeah. And the guy in the middle was an atheist thinking. They're both stupid because it's all bullshit and you're arguing over some fantasy. You can never prove you got the idea. Yeah. Nice.
Nice Nice conversation. Get some D.
Yeah. The challenge is when you start looking at the energy dynamics, you can tell when things escalate and they're on a path and that had a one way drive. And most of the prisoners that were armed most have a weapon of some level. Yeah. A shank or yeah, Even something as stupid as a tap that's been taken off to put in sock. Yeah. You could say you had a padlock assignment. There's always something. And you could see this starting to posture up.
It had gone from a kind of conversation to a debate to, yeah. Now it's going to get those words are running out now when that happens. Yeah. There's most likely going to be somebody lying on the floor in blood, the alarms go off the, on the guards, running the dogs are let loose some, yeah. we're put back in the cells and probably not let out for three days just to send a message. And not only did I not want that, but you know, I'm here to help.
So I thought, can I get invited into this conversation at maintain the illusion of significance for the people that are in it, because otherwise you're just stepping up and being a fourth corner of the challenge, square reshift the context of the arguments. So it takes the stinger out of the tail and then melt off and hopefully do some good secret agent of change. I say, yeah, that's what I didn't, I can't, I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to walk up and sort of going to headbutt me.
I mean, it's not exactly a a rehearsal it's real, but theory doesn't cover the price of admission to the high levels of greatness. You can tattoo that on your eyelids. So yeah, I went up and I basically asked the question a question's a really good pattern interrupt. You've got to interrupt the pattern because if that's escalating, you've got to step in and change the energy. And the best way to do that is a non-associated question. That's from an unthreatening place.
That seems somewhat polite, but yeah, so I got I casually walked by. I said, what can I, excuse me, do you know if we get an exercise today? Because normally after being in the wing, you should go get exercise, but it doesn't always happen because the guards don't want to get wet. So if it's raining, which is 360 days in England, then yeah, you don't go out socialize. Do you know if we're going to get exercise today? And the Muslim guys his name is Aziz, good guy, I really don't know.
But I freaking hope so because, it's been canceled for the last two days and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they treat us like animals. And of course now the other guy jumps in says, yeah, why can't they just get a fricking umbrella if they don't want to get wet? That kind of constant. Now you've got an agreed. You actually got a path of agreement rather than, so you've diffused the initial sort of headbutting to now standing same side of the table over a subject.
Now, even though it could go back to that, as soon as you walk away, should you not be able to continue? So I'm like, yeah. Tell me about it. I need to get some fresh air and how they can fricking keep assessing, because I know that if you start complaining stuff that they don't like, the guards, the situation, whatever, you're all going to get agreement that nobody's coming in saying, I'd give this five stars on TripAdvisor. Right. So I said, that's what I turned around.
And and this is all like, well, what are you guys chatting about? Don't let me ask him. I said, oh, well, yeah, thinks that all Muslims are blah blah and all the rest of it, yeah. Well they are and the other guy sort of chimes in and said can I ask a question? And I said, you guys seem to the guy that the Muslim guy who was leaving the sort of posturing. I said some I've never been able to figure this out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm always in awe of people that really get and understand the message.
Again, you're maintaining the illusion of significance, but then what you need to do if a significance is the primary driver here, which it is in an argument, like actually I was trying to be right. And right. That the others are wrong. You need to link insignificance to the continuation of the pattern. So yeah, just me about it. Yeah. I've always been an awe of people that really understand this are fascinated.
I said, but yeah, from my limited understanding, which I'm sure both of you could enlighten me on it, but the Christian and the Muslim, cause now I'm talking about religion, not one of the other, I says it seems to me my simple brain that yeah, a lot of the spiritual teachers taught the same stuff or the same kind of message, which is that really, you should have.
You should come from a place of tolerance, understanding and compassion, even if the other person isn't smart enough to see your perspective. And, from where I see us as, yeah, it's like having different teachers teaching the same syllabus, but in different schools in different ways. And I'm surely somebody smart enough to get that wouldn't be, waste time on being un- smart enough to argue the toss over whose teacher was the favorite teacher.
They'd probably just be grateful that their teachers know the best one in their mind. Am I on track. I mean, you can see them what kind of processing. All right. And yeah, the as the conversation kind of went forward, literally within 30 seconds, one of the guards shouts exercise. Right. Which means that they're opening the doors and everyone's piling out. It's like, oh God guys, I tell you what, you must be the lucky charms!
I don't know which God you're praying, dude, but I'm happy you are it's like, if you're like, wow. And he hang out with you guys more, anyone started walking with us as this. And we walked around young, typical, midnight express walking in a circle in the central, the courtyard. And we just got chatting and we became friends, but I, as I did with the other guys, but yeah it's so common to have people that get hooked into a pattern and then you're on a conveyor belt.
You're not even a choice in the matter. You're too busy being controlled by your emotional hormones, that justify why you need to be right. And it only takes a little bit of technique, understanding courage to be able to step in. To try to soften. And if it didn't, I might've gotten the up headbutted and I'll know next time to choose a different question.
Yeah, that's a little way to put it. Could you talk about, I mean, there's the stories for days and we'll talk about the Inside Track. I mean, your book here in a little bit, but coming out of prison, it wasn't like sunshine and rainbows for you either. I mean, you have like quarter like almost a third of a million in debt. No credit rating. Can't open a bank. Can you talk about that?
I mean, you just went through this crazy experience, but then even when you're coming out, it's not like you're through the woods, you're through the woods in that point, but.
I'm yeah. I'm out of jail. Just say 150 people. I owe seminars, tickets trips around the world to I've got the legal costs, breathing down my neck, threatening to take that the last asset I have, which is my and I get hit with two other fairly significant sort of punches in the stomach.
One is that the fact that the girl I was with my fiance at the time admitted to having an affair for most of the time I was in there, because she was so scared to, that, one person kind of muscle and took advantage. And the other thing was that I was the first American express century in black card holder in the UK. I was a charter member for Centurian. So my, I had a million dollar credit limit on my. Yeah, that's I got 20 years multi-decade 9, 9, 9 credit rating.
But of course, with your partner, you give them a supplementary card. Cause I don't be bothered to pay for shopping and hair and nails and all that kind of stuff, whatever. So, on salaries and of course, because I went away and because I was hit with so much debt, she was convinced by certain members of our family that I was going to have to go bankrupt. Everybody thought I've got to go bankrupt because that's the only one way.
Well, I didn't and yeah, but if you're going to go bankrupt for X, then there's no difference between going bankrupt for Y so she's got a supplementary card and she's trying to think, well, I need money for the next six months to live on. I probably got about 30 days before Amex put a hold on the card. So yeah, let's go shopping. Let's run it through my PayPal. Let's pay off my car. Let's buy some Rolex's let's send my family to heritage let's.
I mean, I could go on the irony is when I came out of jail and not only I don't have any access to credit. I actually owed American express more money than I out Hewlett Packard, which is the it company that took me in. And yeah, all the other stuff that came out of fell out of that. So yeah, by contrast prison seemed a little easier to be fair to deal with it. But yeah, I it's, again it's part of the lesson, what can you do to really come to a place of understanding? Not judgment.
Yeah. She was scared. Somebody put a details on social. Some of the people that had bought tickets for threatening her, she was a college, late twenties and she's. I live in the country in a home where, you know, at night and she's on her own someone saying, I'm going to come to your house and beat you up. If you don't give me the money I'm going to, I know where you live and all this kind of stuff. I mean, No. one was there to help.
One guy steps up who's got a secret fantasy and before, yeah, she's got a different chest to put a head on at night to feel certain again, I get it. I totally understand now. A big lesson for most people is that when we judge from our own model of the world before getting into the other person's shoes, you can never come from a place of making the right call, usually emotional.
So when you can step into somebody's shoes and understand people do things for reasons might not be your reasons may not be my reasons. We would do different things in their position as us. We would never do different things in their position as them because they did that.
Right.
And so when you can put yourself in somebody else's shoes, the point where you would make the decisions they made with their history, their beliefs, their emotional state, their whatever it is right wrong, good or bad virtually is irrelevant. It doesn't mean to say you will make that when you step back out of the shoes, back into yours, that you were judging from, but at least now you can understand it and you can pick extreme examples on that all day long. I'm not making it.
Yeah. A plea for saying that things are right or wrong. That's not my judge. Oh, well, somebody, yeah. She cheated on my best friend or, this person. Yeah. A rat drunk driver ran over my son or whatever. I get it. Yeah. It's tough. There's a lot of weight on the bar and a lot of the lessons we learned in earth school, but if you were that person at the bar having drank that much with that amount of alcohol, that amount of decision-making abilities, if you would have drove home as well, why?
Because that's what they did. Yeah. But I don't understand that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's evidence. I don't get it. And of course you don't, but the fact that it happened you're demonstrating your inability to understand, not their ability to make decisions. So, coming from that place, I say it doesn't matter, make it right. Right. I'm not condoning anything here. Don't get off that horse if you want. But there's a power in you being able to understand Stephen Covey.
I had the great pleasure of sharing the stage with Steven before he passed away. Seven habits of highly effective people was one of the habits seek first to understand, and then be understood as a parent. And so, yeah, I had a lot of weight on the bar throughout that, but how, if you really want to know that the letters that I wrote to my students during that experience, which is now the book, the Inside Track. And again, I'll just state. This is not a book I wrote about the event.
This is not a post-mortem examination with a spin on it. Now I've got access to a, a fancy computer I can type on. These are the handwritten letters that was unfolding in real time. During that at the event is it's a window into the reality of things as it unfolds. And as a result of those letters that have helped so many people.
Off the back of that, the business that I have right now, I'm mean I, three years ago, I was, I got back to about a quarter of a million in debt, one month rent at the bank. And right now I'm running a multi eight figure business. Why? Because people know that I've walked my talk, not this about me. I don't care about me. I don't care if you know my name, I care about can what it is that I went through help you. And that was your original intention.
I walked down the stairs and it has it's you read any review on Amazon, Good Reads, audible or whatever. It's changed the life of pretty much everyone that's read the book and I'm proud of that. What I swap a second, never. What would I choose a different government sponsored book writing course next time probably.
I
think I'm kind of done. Yeah. I'm done writing with a pen,
from that one. Right. You don't have to come back to high school,
but Hey Michael, here's one thing you need to know about earth school, The Olympics is every four years.. Just because you pass one test. I mean, it may not. Yeah, that doesn't mean to say that we now coast where it might do freely. I'm not every day is a judgment
prison day.
yeah, we all have our challenges and if I can help one person shift their mindset a little bit to make the current challenges, they have a little easier to navigate or give them some hope or some tool or technique that minimizes the pain a little. Then every one of those days in that six months was worth it.
Yeah, absolutely. Talk to me about where people can go to connect with the tools and stuff that you have and the book as well.
Yeah, well. Obviously easy to find on social Instagram or Facebook, have you been able to find me, but they I do want to do something. The books had so much of an impact it's won multiple awards has gotten, pretty much some of the greatest names and personal growth and said, it's the best book I've ever written. It's got amazing testimonials in there, but the I want to get it in more people's hands now. I'm fortunate enough in position where I can, I don't need the money to just bite me.
I'm selling books, I'm a business guy. But yeah, you can go to, Amazon can pay 24 95, but I want to do a deal for the people that are a part of your tribe, because a they've just given us an hour and 20 minutes of their time. So that's, I want to reward them with something. But yeah it, there is a hard cost. Obviously it costs me about $14 being open to have it printed, to have it shipped to the warehouse, to have it stored, picked, shipped, and then posted directly to somebodies house.
About 14 bucks is my breakeven on that. I'm going to invest $4,000 to have a thousand copies of the book set aside for any body that wants to grab it. If they put the other tenant nanny, I need 10 bucks to cover towards the shipping because people don't pay something, they don't pay attention. And if you don't value this for 10 bucks, then it's not the book for you, but don't go to Amazon and pay 24 95 I'll I'll invest. I'll give you a cost minus four. I'll cover the four.
And if you really want to do that, go to getpetesbook.com/successengineering. And yeah, there's a thousand copies there when they're gone.
Awesome. I really appreciate that for the audience and really appreciate, I mean like you talked about there's, you've been motivational speaker, you've done that for so long. But going through what you did and just walking the talk and living it is just unbelievable and thank you for what you're sharing and the hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be impacted from that. So I really appreciate your time.
My absolute pleasure again, where we can never take anything for granted. It could all go in a heartbeat. We know that whether it's the final scene of your movie, whether it's a curveball out of left a field that throws you in the slammer or, whatever it might be, we all have our own stuff to deal with it. And everyone's trying to be the best version of themselves, even if they're struggling. I get that.
So if we can all just show up with a little bit more tolerance, compassion, understanding that everyone's going through their own movie. Some people are born to star in a drama. Some people have got to hit the head on the sidewalk to learn how to tie their shoe laces. And other people have done that enough times that they want to try to help others tie their shoe laces. So, yeah, I've, as I said, I've been in the slow learners club for long enough.
It's nice to be able to try to give something back or at least inspire somebody through a story or some hope or some technique that makes it real so they can apply it in everyday life. That you don't have to get to go to prison to use this stuff and to leave that to the dummies like me.
Perfect then we can read about it. I really do appreciate it. It was very, I mean, just incredible. So I appreciate it a lot. I really appreciate what you're doing.
No, my pleasure. And yeah, anything I can do to support or say I've got a lot of stuff out there that's free on social. I try to help with on the YouTube channel, but yeah, hang around. I'm always trying to, do some the next crazy thing to inspire that I've just signed up for the transatlantic Talisker Whiskey Atlantic rowing race. So,
I have I had Max thorpe the, is the world record holder for the transatlantic row on,
be breaking any records.
I'm going to have Damien Brown on and he's solo rowed it across
I'm going with one of my childhood friends. So yeah, we're w we're set. We can't get until 20, 24. So w we're in and hopefully at 52 years old, when I'll be, then it should be able to inspire some people to say, oh, I'm too old. I'm 50. I'm too old to go and do anything. yeah, Well, let's let's go play a game that hopefully I can demonstrate again, not so much the physical side, we've all got the ability, but it's the mental at that level is the mental side.
Gets you up at three in the morning till your two hour stint on the rower? Having not slept because the waves and the seasickness and your hands are raw to the bone and it's freezing. And you just want to go home and pull your Snuggies over your head. That's the time where we get tested to show up. And if I can't go do that's my next Olympics.
Perfect. Or your scheduling, like life. I don't want to go back to prison, but I'll row across the Atlantic.
Better on my terms,
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Pleasure Michael.
Before you go, I would love it. If you actually just shared this episode with a friend, I'm sure. While you were listening, you know, someone just popped into your head and you're like, oh, they would probably like this as well. So it's really easy. You just click the share button on either the website or whatever podcast platform you're on and send it over to them. And chances are, they'll probably like it, too until next time, keep engineering your success.