Hello and welcome to The Growth Workshop Podcast with your hosts, me, Matt Best and Jonny Adams. In this podcast, we'll be sharing insights from our combined 30+ years experience and hearing from other industry leaders to get their thoughts and perspectives on what growth looks like in modern business. We'll cover all aspects of leadership, sales, account development, and customer success, alongside other critical elements required to build an effective growth engine for your business.
This podcast is aimed at leaders from exec all the way down to line managers. Jonny, tell me what was interesting in your week? Matt, two things this week. Firstly, I've been super excited to welcome our guest speaker today, Dan Moore, which is going to be amazing and can't wait to hear some of the insights that he shares. Secondly, I'm going to admit something to you both. I was once an avid, cyclist. I say once that's past tense and, I bought a bike, which is not motorised.
It's pushed by my feet and body, in August and I have not ridden it since. And now I've ridden it twice this week and I feel fantastic. So there you go. Jonny, I'm surprised you can sit down. If you've not ridden a bike since August and you've ridden it twice in one week, if Luckily this isn't a video podcast because no one can see me. I definitely would be struggling right now. Thank you, Jonny and as you say, so great to have Dan Moore joining us.
We're super excited to dive into to dive into your story, Dan, and talk a bit more about your book, Control, Influence and Accept for now. Before we do that as is customary on our podcast, we'd like to ask what's been interesting, what's been going well, what's happened that you'd like to share with our audience this week? Even though ostensibly I've been retired , my schedule starts every day at quarter to six. And this morning was a kind of a milestone.
I do a five mile run a couple times a week. And this morning I was feeling particularly good after the first mile, so I did the second mile in eight minutes, 25 seconds. Not too shabby for an old guy, but that was a good milestone this morning. My wife's a yoga instructor. We do yoga three times a week. Just doing my best to keep fit and ready for the future. Puts my sort of being on the bike twice to shame.
I don't want to tell you my, my miles, but yeah, I definitely, I think I did those miles slower. Anyway, Matt, I'm keen to hear what, what have you been doing? Punish me more. Mine's more like yours, Jonny, I'm afraid. I have set myself a bit of a goal and actually Dan, I know in your book, you use a lot of running analogies and reference marathons and half marathons and what have you. I've been trying to get back into running for a goal that I've got coming up in a couple of years time.
I got out for a run this week, which was good. It was probably a bit like your bike ride, Jonny, and it wasn't very long but it felt fantastic. And that's what it's all about, right? Getting back on the horse, if you like. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today, and we'd love to dive into your book, right? Control, Influence, Accept, for now. So tell us what, what prompted you to write the book?
It's interesting, you know, there's an old saying, everybody has a book inside of them waiting to come out. But the real catalyst for me was doing a presentation, which I do all over the place. This happened to be at a university in Colorado. And sometimes there's students in the room, sometimes parents, sometimes instructors. But one of the parents in the room came up to me afterward and didn't smile a bit, he just said, nice presentation. I said, thank you.
He said, have you written this into a book? No, I smiled and he said, you should. And he walked away. That's about 2016. So as these things happen overnight, it finally got published in October, 2023. But the catalyst was somebody saying you should. And then further, I was challenged by my CEO to finish it within a certain timeframe.
Because I wrote about 2 pages of it, almost immediately felt really proud of those 2 pages, set it aside for a couple of weeks, those couple of weeks turned into 2 years. When I looked at it again, I said, my goodness, I need to get going on this. I mentioned it to my CEO and he said, then I challenge you to finish it by the end of the year. So they say that a goal is a dream with a deadline. And so now my dream had a deadline. My wife and I went on holiday to the Azores, where she's from.
And I think I wrote 80 percent of it in the third week of that holiday. Found a great coffee shop overlooking the ocean. Very calm environment. Just cranked it all out. So the prompting was somebody saying, you should get this stuff out there to the public. But the actual push was from other sources, and then internally taking that on board. Wow. I like that definition of a goal and there's a part in your book, Dan, where you say that sharing that objective, sharing that goal.
And that's what helps hold you accountable. And I'm slightly fearful of doing that on the podcast, but maybe down the track, I'll share my, my goal that I've got for a couple of years, which is a big, long race that involves running, cycling and swimming. So there you go. There's a clue. Dan, in a section of your book, you recommend that we seek successful people and that's really why we're here today, right? Because Jonny and I have done exactly that talking to you.
And we'd love just to get a bit more dive into some of the detail around where CIA came from, what's important for you and our audience on this podcast, Dan are leaders, are practitioners, people out there who are looking to develop themselves and help develop their businesses, ultimately with growth in mind.
I know, obviously Jonny and I very familiar with a lot of what you talk about in CIA, as both members of the team here at SBR Consulting, which you're one of the founding members, of course. Jonny, you mentioned to me just in the lead up to our conversation with Dan today that you'd had an interesting conversation with a large travel organisation, about CIA control, influence and accept.
Could you maybe explain a little bit more about that for Yeah, thank you, Matt and Dan, it's really topical because, my history, I spent just under 10 years working in the B2C world in a travel firm. For the last four years, uh, SBR consulting, I've supported a different travel firm grow, and are currently over 1 billion revenue, in terms of the size of the business. This morning we delivered control influence and accept the model to them.
And we're delivering it across this month because there's 60 leaders that are generating 1 billion pounds worth of revenue. And travel is really interesting. And I wanted to pinpoint that and travel as leaders, or if you work in travel or you even take trips, like you just mentioned to the Azores, we're all susceptible to these very unfortunate circumstances that can arise, those are all out of our control.
So this morning when we were talking to the travel firm, we were describing CIA control influence and accept and how using that model can be really beneficial to preparing for peak readiness when driving a business forward. And I'm curious from what you've understood of using the CIA model in your time as a leader, how do you best describe that model?
And what are some of the core concepts of control influence accept that you might share with people that might be listening today or to other organisations that might suffer from challenges like I've just described there. Well, Jonny, people aren't suffering from challenges and they probably wouldn't be alive. So it's normal for people to do that. I suppose for a long time I've been fascinated by the concept of energy and personal energy in particular.
So far I've not met anyone that has an infinite amount of energy. I've got quite a lot, but not infinite. And so if we take any of our energy and we put it into something we can't really influence at all, nor control, then we're taking it away from things that we can.
So the notion of CIA is understanding that with this finite amount of energy, if I can just identify some things that even though they're worrying me, they're bothering me, I'd like to do something about them, but I just can't at the moment, put those on the shelf, just lay them aside. And that's the notion of the FN, the for now part of the CIA. Doesn't mean I'm going to ignore it forever, but for now I'm going to ignore it and put my focus on what can I control and what can I influence.
These are the things that I think are really breakthrough concepts for people. We've all got to do lists, we've all got things that are, are concerning to us, but if we focus on the things that we can actually personally control, or indirectly control, which means we can influence, then the things that we just need to accept forever, maybe we don't have to accept them forever. . Most of the changes, in fact, in society that made society better.
It'd been because somebody identified it, but they didn't try to tackle the problem directly . They said, develop the skills, the expertise, the teamwork to then influence and affect that problem for the better. So that's the whole notion of it. Where CIA originally came from, who knows? But I do know that the addition of Four Now is something unique to what we've done at SBR because if we just say CIA. It almost says, okay, I'm just going to give up.
I just have to accept , just have to give up. And I'm not a believer in ever giving up. So we just need to accept it for now, not forever, just for now. And let's do the other things correctly. That's the whole notion of that. Delighted to hear that this word is spreading around the world because it's such a valuable concept. It lets us catch our breath. Breathe for a moment. Okay, what can I control? What can I influence? And that's the illustration I use in the book.
Imagine a waterfall of things. Just waterfall flooding down on top of us. But just before it hits us, this diverter drops into one of three buckets . The control bucket, the influence bucket, and the except for now bucket. And if we can concentrate on the first two, that we do so much better with the third one. Amazing. Thank you.
And it resonates, as I say, 10 years ago, using the model myself with the team at the travel firm and now sharing that back to other organisations, it can be super powerful. And I really liked the position around adding the for now piece because we can accept for now. And then with the capacity or the deep breath that we take, actually give ourselves the opportunity to action and change that. So, thank you so much there, Dan, for sharing that, Matt, back to you.
Thanks, Jonny. And, Dan, again, the point there around influence, and I'd like to just dive into that just a minute, specifically when we look at leaders and a lot of what Jonny and I talk about on this podcast is from a leader's perspective. How do you think leaders can really. leverage that influence that they have to create a positive impact within their team.
So there's one perspective which is looking at it for yourself, but what about from the leader's perspective and how they can use the teachings of what you talk about in your book from an influence perspective to influence others in their team? That's a really good question, Matthew. I think that the best thing for a leader to do is to make this concept very explicit to the team.
There was, if a team takes on board the idea of CIA they're faced with a challenge, they get together to brainstorm it, they could actually pull out a white board or piece of paper , just mentally saying , which parts of this within our control, which parts of this, the things we can influence, which parts of things we just need to accept for now, it helps the team focus their energy as well as the individual focus their energy.
So I would suggest that any organisation that is wanting to keep people moving forward. Should really do this as a conscious effort as part of their teams. By the same token, the leader who's got to get some results done needs to understand that part of the job is to get results, but it's also to keep their team engaged, involved, and with it. We've all had some leaders that push so hard, they may get the result, but nobody wants to work with that person any longer.
So that the proper leader says, we've got to get results. We're going to do it together, but I want to do it in a way that I can keep my people really engaged because people don't mind working hard. What they don't like is if they feel they're being neglected or ignored and put off, decide like they're a burrow or a donkey of some kind. Instead, let's keep everybody engaged in the process , and that also is going to help with retention, excitement, and future development of people.
So I strongly recommend just making this an explicit part of anything that an organisation would do. Dan, an interesting point there around the retention piece and keeping hold of people is a real challenge. We just I don't think we're through it yet, but we've been grappling with this sort of war against talent, right? And going back, Jonny, to the client you're working with.
I know that's been a real challenge for them and across COVID with the ever changing environment and a big part of developing and maintaining a good, strong team that can help you and your business grow is to keep that team together. Keep hold of that talent that you want, that you see as critical to developing your business.
Super interesting, when I think about influence Dan and reading the book, something resonates with me when I started my time at SBR Consulting, which hugely passionate about working here and I know that we've worked with many businesses and individuals. And still now we get messages 10 years on how we've influenced and supported those people grow themselves and grow their own businesses, et cetera. But I remember you calling me up and it was in November 2019.
And you called me up and you said, Hey, Jonny, I'm really looking forward to you joining SBR Consulting. And obviously my response was absolutely. President of the Southwestern gimme a call. I'm absolutely gonna say that. And I was, 'cause I was bouncing like Tigger and I remember you sharing some insights around how important it's to have the utmost resilience making sure that my nose was strong 'cause it's gonna be bruised. Those are the words that you used.
And to me, I was just like, what is he on about and you're completely right. I started my journey at SBR and my nose was super bruised, if not bloodied. And the last time I had that was when I was playing rugby back in school. It's a great anecdote that you share because you have influenced my career and you shaped the start of my career.
And one of the points that I'd love to hear some insights from you about would be is you've interacted with so many people across the 50 years that you've had at Southwestern plus all of the other people that you've shared anecdotes from in the book as well. So many, many people that you've interacted with through industry leaders. But what are some of the key lessons or insights from these interactions that you've had that have had a lasting impact on your own leadership philosophy?
So what are one or two things that you can really draw upon that has shaped your leadership philosophy, that when people read the book, they can hear you talk in that book, which I think is fantastic. So how has that shaped your leadership philosophy? If you wouldn't mind sharing a bit of insight around that. Now, that's a great comment, and I'm glad you know it's quite resilient , Jonny. Bit of plastic anybody that's in sales is going to get it bent out of shape more than Yeah.
question about that. I think all of your listeners, and most of us, go to conferences from time to time. We'll go to a meeting or an event. And if you really get into people's motives for being at the meeting, it falls in a different category. Some people frankly look forward to going to the conference because it's a day off for them. They don't have a pressure on those. I'm going to go to the meeting and chill out, have some nice food, some good wine. That's where I'm going to go.
Other people go half heartedly taking some notes and listening. Other people go fully engaged with the idea of who can I learn from at this conference, maybe not a general speaker, but somebody I can meet. So as part of the direct selling association for many years, I was invited to join a conference involving some. Industry executives of various types.
One of the people that I had a chance to sit down with one on one was two levels below Warren Buffett in a big, big conglomerate, called Berkshire Hathaway. This was Scott Fetzer company. This gentleman ran a couple of very large companies and he was talking about what do you do when you have a troubled business? What we do in SBR, we help a lot of businesses that are very successful become even more successful.
We got some other businesses that truly need to call emergency services immediately because they need some help with their sales. And I was keenly aware of that person when, when he said, well, I thought at first that he says, first thing you do is make a list of all the problems, figure out which ones you can tackle and go tackle them. He completely shocked me. He said, when I'm dealing with a troubled business, the first thing we do is take a list of all of the assets.
What are the things that are going right with that business? And I was completely shocked because he's going at it so differently. And I said, well, John, why do you do it that way? He said, well, anybody can make a list of problems, but if we can look at things that are going right, it's almost like a seedling in the spring. That one little green shoot can really develop into something great if we can make it happen.
But if all we look at is a charred landscape and they're burned out, everything else is not going to ever grow. So first thing to do is make a list of the assets . Then we say, which of those can we invest, employ and make even better? That was a huge wake up call for me. Most of us like to be problem solvers. So we look for problems, but the solution to many problems lies right there within the organisation.
It may be the problem is the bottleneck is, is leadership and underneath the leadership is somebody terrifically great that just needs to have an opportunity to really make some things happen. So that was a really key insight many, many years ago that since I, I guess I've tried to pull it in as well. Yeah, we do a conference in SBR for many years now called the art of selling consulting services, our signature first conference.
But one of the things that we challenge people to do is be consultants to themselves. First of all, study what are you doing right? What's going well, how can we expand on that? We take that whole notion into what went well, even better if in terms of a post event, post action analysis of anything. What went well almost goes against our nature, but if we can think about what went well, even better if, it keeps people moving in a constructive, positive direction.
And most people frankly prefer to go to work in a place that's uplifting and positive, not a place where it's always pressure, it's a lot of criticism, it's a lot of downward direction of things. So that, that's one thing that really made a difference is whenever we go someplace, let's figure out who can we seek out and spend time with. I suppose I had that in my head starting as an 18 year old, I just finished my first experience in selling with Southwestern Advantage in the summertime.
And the end of the summer, we had a big awards banquet and seminar. I asked my manager, so Jim, who should I spend some time with here that I can learn from? He pointed across the room and he said, that young man right there. His name is Dave Causer. We call him The Cause. I think you'll really enjoy him. Turns out Dave Causer and I were then were colleagues for nearly 50 years. He's now the president of Southwestern Advantage. But learning from him as a young guy helped me so much.
So having the open mindedness to realize I might know a couple of things, but most things I do not know at all. Let me learn from some other people is a really big one. There's some great points. The first part of that resonates with me where I think back at my time outside of my career and in sport. And when we used to talk about how to better our sporting team, we used to not just look at the areas of weakness actually in the team.
We used to look at the areas of strength and how we could double down on improve the margin of whether the striker was great or the midfielder was great. And it's that philosophy of looking at what's great in the business or in the team and improving on those strengths. Something that we don't regularly do 'cause we've always got that negativity bias to go and look at the negative side of things. I think that's a fascinating part that you shared there.
It's so interesting Dan that that positivity or productivity. I think one of the things in my own journey at SBR, when joining that helped me the most actually was being aware of self talk. You talk about that attitude, but as we talk to clients, as you talk about in the book, it starts with that self talk, and that's the bit that you can truly control what you're saying to yourself.
There's a bit that I'm going to quote from the book, which comes from the chapter of constructive self talk, which I just love, which is, Most of our self talk is like a puppy that hasn't been housebroken. It runs wherever it wants, brings both joy pees randomly with enthusiasm.
And I think it's the best description of self talk I've ever heard, what I pull out of that is that it's really actually quite hard to control that self talk, but when you can pull out that joy and despite the fact that maybe they're peeing, we can pee enthusiastically ourselves, right? And just the attention that we have to pay to what we're saying to ourself, what we're telling ourselves to make ourselves really effective in what we do is so, so critical.
Self talk is one of the things that's probably most misunderstood in terms of this internal motivational game we all play. Many people picture that there's a character in an American TV show called Saturday Night Live and the character would sit in a corner and look in the mirror and say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. And he was really a parody of self talk. That's really not what it's about at all.
If we do that, it can really edge into self delusion in a big way. Which is why I very consciously called, called the title constructive self talk, not positive self talk. Positive self talk is, is very important, way better than negative self talk, of course. But sometimes if we just are in a terrible situation, people might misinterpret positive self talk to say, everything's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's great. It may not be beautiful. It may not be wonderful. It may not be great at all.
It may be the worst situation on earth, but constructive self talk says somewhere in here we can do something about this. Let's do that one thing. Let's do another thing. Let's do another thing. You spoke a minute ago, Jonny, about the travel business. Although every business was hit very hard by the pandemic in 2020, I don't think any business was hit any harder than the travel business. In our family of companies, we have a travel agency, a travel business called Southwestern Travel.
And early in the pandemic, I was interviewing Terri Rickard, the president of that company. I said, Terri, in the travel business, I mean, you guys were rolling along and then all of a sudden these things hit. What did you end up doing? We had to refund all kinds of money, had to cancel all kinds of things. How did you manage your head? She said, I just said to myself, okay, Terri, what's the next right thing to do? I'm gonna go do that next thing. Now, what's the next right thing to do?
We're going to do that next thing. That was a great example of constructive self talk. Because when chaos is all around us, the easiest thing in the world to do is, it's all around us, chaos, it's, ah, screaming and yelling, never solved anything. At the same time saying, it's all wonderful, when clearly it's not wonderful, doesn't help at all. Constructive moves us forward, it moves us in a good direction. Sometimes it might even sound a bit negative.
Uh, I remember, for example, when I was having trouble motivating myself, which you may find this hard to believe, a door to door salesperson would have trouble motivating himself. But I was having a terrible day in Texas. It was really hot, humid. My friends were having a great time back home. I wanted to be with them very much. And so I was dragging instead of moving quickly. I actually wrote down a phrase of self talk. I wrote down, work, you slug.
Now you might say, that's pretty negative stuff, but it really worked for me because I was picturing a slug. Most people know what a slug is. A slug is, it's like a snail that can't afford a house. And nobody wants to be a slug. And so when I'd say, work you slug, they'd say, I don't want to be a slug. So I get myself moving. You might say, that's pretty negative. It wasn't negative at all because it worked. So constructive self talk is what works for the individual.
Keeps them moving in the right direction. It keeps them not just getting paralyzed with fear, doubt, confusion, second guessing themselves, et cetera. Our brains are amazing, amazing capability. Nobody even knows how much the brain can actually achieve. But because of that, it can run randomly all over the place. So if we can keep our self talk a little bit more narrow, narrowly focused as Terri did, when she said, what's the next right thing to do, let me go do that.
That's constructive self talk. I think what you share there is as amazing, you paint that picture with the words that you use that then creates that image in your head and ultimately an action or reaction, which I think. Fascinating. And I love how the book simplifies itself. I love sharing this conversation with Matt and meeting great people like yourself.
One of the things that I've learned over the last, five, 10 years about myself is that I've got a fear of failure and I've got an element of not wanting to be exposed towards failing and. I've probably never admitted that, okay, I have never admitted that, let's say probably in front of many people that are listening, let alone to my close family and friends.
I guess from your experience, not just work, but just in life, when you hear someone that says they're scared of failure, a lot of the book talked about, you need to fail to carry on growing, et cetera. How would you coach or share a few words to someone like myself or some of the people that are actually scared of failing and how do they move themselves into a comfort, comfortable situation of failing?
Thanks very much for your humility and your honesty on that, Jonny, because people would look at somebody like you, tremendously successful, great life, amazing business record after record. Wouldn't even believe you had a fear of anything. But I think the first thing for us to understand is that we are realistic, we're human beings. That's the great thing about us. We're not machines. We're humans. Humans have emotions. Emotions can include fears of various kinds.
The only people that never have a fear of failure, in my opinion, are people that never try anything. Because we want to do well. That's, that's innate in people. The higher the goal, the more difficult it might be to achieve. The greater chance we won't achieve that goal. The question is, what is failure? Does failure mean you don't achieve your goals? Does failure mean you didn't hit a certain level? Well, maybe so. But to me, true failure is very different than that.
True failure is something when we simply don't try. When we just don't want to give it a go. Not hitting a result is not failure. Not giving it a try when we can and should. I think is a failure. And so partly it's defining what we really mean by failure. Fear of failure often involves also fear of approval of other people or fear of disapproval, really. When I do well, I get lots of props. People cheer for me. I get plaques awards. It feels good when I don't do well, I'm kind of ignored.
And I don't want that feeling. Identifying what really motivates us is really important. Recognition is a powerful motivator, but as we grow and as we mature, eventually we realize it's not about me getting recognized, it's how can I recognize other people. And that takes a while to get to that point. Um, I think you've actually hit that point a long time ago, you just don't give yourself credit for it.
That the fact that, that we all want the recognition, but if we can help build other people, that's the deepest and best form of recognition ever possible. So dealing with fears is, is really, first of all, acknowledge that it's real. You feel it. feel it for sure. But can you do anything about it? This is where the CIA kicks in again. Which parts of this can I control? And if I can focus on those bits, influence the others, I can get through it. I can rebound.
I guess as I've had a chance to meet some amazing people over the years, I've never met anybody that didn't have some severe setbacks. What people might call failures. I really have never met anybody that's done well that doesn't have that. Because without that, we can't appreciate the victories. We really can't, we, we just get kind of jaded or we get so afraid we begin to narrow our scope. We don't try big things anymore because we know we can win at this.
But people that go through that actually become sweeter, more interesting, better people, more fun to be around because they, they don't try to be super person. They're just who they are. So I think it's refreshing when you find people that understand that failure. I met a guy a couple of years ago. He said, yeah, I've had a great career. I've made three fortunes and I've lost two of them. Hopefully I can hang on to the third one.
So he had a great sense of humor about it and a little humor helps a lot. When we talk about failure, I find, your example, Dan, of what Terri did. And it's that, I think that, that links back to that failing fast approach as well.
And I think that can sometimes, certainly for me, the bigger we build up a task or the bigger something feels that fear of failure, Jonny, that you referred to, certainly my own, I don't necessarily think I had a fear of failure, but I remember a key point in my youth where I failed at something and I was and I still to that day, that is that way motivator. That is that thing that stops me from not preparing properly. That's that thing that motivates me towards doing something better.
But I think there's a really interesting parallel we can draw here as well around that example that you made there about Terri and that, uh, I'm just going to do this because I can do this today. And it goes back to that for now. She's accepting that she doesn't have to accept this and run like this forever. But right now, this is what's going to work.
And I think it's, I think certainly when I was reading the book, when you look at all the different things that you talk about and the advice that you give in that book and the stories that you share, I think one of the things that sort of pulls it all together to me is just how you can piece all of those components, those different bits together, that's really going to just help you in being the best that you can in that moment of time and as you said it's the FN at the end that's
probably should be the big letters on the cover in my, you know, it, you know, CIA small, but it's the, for now, it's, it's nothing's finite, nothing's final. Good point. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. As I think about also this whole reaction to setbacks, I've never seen a greater example than the team at SBR. I was actually over there the week, the pandemic shut everything down, the weekend in March 13th, 2020.
Stuart and Alan, who are the heads of the organisation, and I had just finished a run of three Vistage conferences that time sales Vistage sales forums, one in the north of England, one in the Midlands, one in London, and it's interesting as the week went on. The 1st one was on a Tuesday . And the word was beginning to spread about
this terrible virus creeping across the world . But it was a small room, 40 people, everybody shaking hands, etc. By the next day, in the Midlands, people were kind of greeting, Nice to meet you, hello, nice to see you, no shaking hands, not getting too close . By Thursday, there was a lot of toe touching, a lot of, Nope, nope, how quick can I get out of this place?
With the businesses based on face to face training, face to face interaction, SBR was in a really, what you'd call an existential crisis at that moment. I was so amazed that in less than one week's time, the very first webinar series called Selling Through Disruption was launched. About 300 people got into that one. Nobody knew what to do. How do you sell if you can't even talk to your people?
And the SBR team did that in such a brilliant, amazing way, basically being a beacon of the CIA message through their own internal actions. Really incredible for that. And so many people that attended these webinars said, okay, so there's something I can do, but I don't have to just sit back and just die in my business. There's something I can do. That was just incredible, brilliant, and amazing, and shout out to Geraint Bater, the best financial guy in the whole universe.
Ger just controlled every single penny during that whole process. Incredibly close management to make sure that we could keep the business going to keep this message delivering. So it's really great teamwork when people can apply this self talk, these, all these principles at the same time as a team. Really shows there's nothing in the world we can't do something about. If we just band together, use our brains, use a resource, there's nothing in the world we can't do anything about. Amazing.
Dan, thank you so much for sharing those insights there and those experiences will live with us for a long time and really proud of how we moved through those periods of time and also supported each other and our partners and also, our loved ones and family as well through that, for those challenging times.
We also know that the way that people remember things is the way that they feel and the way that you make people feel is the way that you write an author, a great book or share some insights that have been with you for the last 50 years. And it would be cruel to keep those to yourself. And therefore, that's why you've shared them to the wider public and to people that know you or don't so much. But how do you want people to feel having read the book?
What is the thing that you want them to feel like? So I thank you for that question because that really goes to the core of what has always driven me and moved me and motivated me. Probably the best comment came from a young lady in her early 30s who's dealing with cancer. Her mother's also dealing with cancer. So these two incredibly close people are dealing with cancer.
They both got the book and read the book and amazing note from one of them saying, thank you for helping me accept my situation, helping me accept myself and realize there's good that can come from anything if I don't sell a single copy to me, the whole notion of comfort, somebody getting some comfort, some encouragement and maybe a road map. That's why I wanted to write the book for people to feel like they can sit down maybe with an old friend and share stories.
And that's what the book is about. It's about stories. Hopefully with an old friend. I am an old. Hopefully I can be their friend to whole notion. This is is I want people to feel encouraged that their life is, it may not be perfect at the moment, but nobody's is. I don't think anybody has a perfect life, at all. Nobody. And the people that we think have a perfect life have all kinds of problems they keep well hidden from everybody else. But understand that it is my life.
It's my one, one life that I've got. I'm going to do the best I can with it. I'm going to get some encouragement. I'm going to work on the things I can control, the things I can influence. And I'm going to turn things around in a good way. That's the whole purpose of the book and thanks for asking about it. Thank you very much for sharing. So Dan, thank you so much, obviously for joining us today. You're very close, intimate part of SBR Consulting.
You know us extremely well being a co founding member of the business over 20 years ago. But it'd be great for you just to share a little bit of insight around how you know SBR Consulting and what your relationship is to SBR Consulting over the years. Well, thanks for that one, Jonny. I guess you could say I'm a midwife for SBR's birth. I didn't actually do the hard work of it, but I was definitely part of that process.
The first European sales leader we had in our company is a man named Lars Tewes. Lars was the first sales director. He headed a successful search business, but real heart was about taking the concepts he'd learned from Southwestern Advantage as a student and spreading them into the business community at first, just in the UK. He's as English as they come, and he just wanted to make sure that people in Britain understood self talk, goal setting, proper attitude , working without giving up on it
. And he said, let's do a sales training business . . We tried a couple of times in the past very unsuccessfully, but Lars and his co founder, Cheryl Harding. And myself, Gerry Halford, Lee McCroskey, some other people in our business, put our heads together. And at first we said, let's just teach a lot of good sales principles. None of us were excited about that. Instead, we want to get to the core of what moves people to do better.
And this is where the notion of the triangle happens . The whole idea of process, the whole idea of sales motivation, the whole idea of the things that are so important to what we do in our business came about. So being a part of that early and helping to write content. In the early days, it was kind of fun. In fact, we'd, we'd write a presentation and give it the next day.
And that's how little time we had to prepare for things, but the content was good, despite the fact we were pretty rough around the edges or time with good clients said, this is helping me a lot that grew to others, grew to others, grew to others, grew to others. So I give lots of credit to Lars and to Cheryl for getting it going. My early role in it was tremendous. Not, not that I contributed much.
It was a good experience for me to could watch this grow just beyond belief, helping, 45 different countries this last year, clients, delegates all over the world, maybe more than that, companies, large and small, some household names, some not so well known, getting close to a thousand different client companies now that you've influenced in SBR. And the message is getting out that spreading the original vision for the business was simple.
When people think about accountancy, they have some major firms that come to mind. They might think about business transformation. Another firm might come to mind, but when they come to sales, who comes to mind? That's the overall mission of SBR consulting. And FT has recognized the last two years in a row hats off to you all for that. So the word is happening. It's all taking place as it should.
And my congratulations to all of you and not just the people that are on the front line, selling and delivering with people like Oli Booker, people that make these things happen in the back, the back wings of everything to make it work without it. Wouldn't have a business at all. Dan Moore, thank you so much for your time today. Author of Control, Influence, and Accept. For now.
Really appreciate you taking the time to talk us through some of your experiences, share some of your insights, share some of the stories from the book. For more insights, make sure you subscribe. And if you enjoy the journey, don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback fuels our growth. Until next time, keep up that forward thinking mindset. Goodbye.