Welcome to the mentor. I'm Marke Boris Stellar petro Conco. Welcome to the mentor. How are you going well?
Thanks Mark, Thanks for having me.
You're the founder and HEO of the Rio Group and you're an author. Will talk about stuff a bit later and doing lots of other things. But look at it. What does the Rio group do or what's Rio do? There's nothing that will putting down steel, is it? No?
No, no no, But have been usd the question multiple times. We're a national recruitment, professional services and executive search firm Eastern Seaboard, Western Seaboard, Southern Seaboard of Australia.
And not the Northern Sea Board, not yet, not yet.
I'm not sure what sort of recruitment we do up there.
Yeah, so recruitment of what that? What are we talking about you?
White collar, finance, insurance, technology, business services, admin, staff, admin's staff, anything, white collar marketing.
Right, and white collar is interesting term these days. White collar. Hopefully it's not going to get counseled for saying it, but is white collar? What does that relatively speaking? Say? Maybe competit? Blue collar? What do we mean by.
White collar professional? So people that generally have done a degree and they've got some form of professional experience in a functional area like accounting. And then obviously you've got you know, your clerical which is not driven by yet admin.
Yeah, so it would include admin people, yes.
But that's not the predominant focus of what we do.
Right. For example, you know, if I have a finance department and I need accountants to work in the finance department, some like your business Rear group, you would be recruiting people into my business that can actually assist in say accountspiyable data's management CFOs, that sort of stuff.
Correct.
Yeah, I have wandered, like in today's world, does that your model work with the way people tend to employed people in some of those roles, not all of those roles, but in some of those roles, say, out of the Philippines, how do you how does that affect your business or does it not affect your business?
It doesn't really affect our business when you look at the total macroeconomic life cycles. So large organizations will outsource to large providers in the Philippines or in India, and then you know, you might lose some of the recruitment in that clerical level, but certainly not in any sort of you know, more value add level, so anything above say one hundred k, you know it's all local, but that that tends not to work sometimes. So what we find, and what we've seen with many large as sexes, is
that they'll outsource. They'll do that for four years, and then they'll come back and they'll in source. And it just depends on who the CFO is because as you turn executives at the top end, you turn the strategy, and when the strategy changes, the execution plan changes. So what we find is that recruitment, we pick up recruitment along the way. So you know, we've just got to
be agile and understand. You know what's happening in the market, who's outsourcing, who's insourcing, and you know what are the changes that are happening within an organization.
That's what of makes sense too, like you, because if I'm a new CFO, and these things happen in cycles. But if I'm a new CFO of originally large company, first thing I want to do is build my strategy. And by the way, generally speaking, the strategy before me
is never any good. We're not good enough. And I'll put in my strategy and then the early period, I want to make sure that everybody's sitting in front of me or somewhere near me so that I can get my strategy executed, because it's about not about building strategy that's not that hard, but the execution piece is really hard. So getting local people to help you get it executed up and running, so to speak, is probably pretty important.
And then I might schedule period in my CFO ship where everything's running smoothly, and then I might start to think, hang, I've got to reduce cost so that I'm like, Okay, now I've got it up and running. My cycle is now going to maybe shift few of the costs outsourced, a few of the costs of somewhere else, usually at the admin level. And because I have been through these processes myself, not as a siefhoe but in businesses that I own or I watched the CEFO do this stuff.
So that's a good point. You make a really good point, quite an interesting point. But it's an interesting point for someone who might be an employee because their life cycle usually depends upon the life cycle or the individual who's employing them or who they're ultimately reporting into.
Correct that's what creates the opportunity.
Yeah, and that's a two way thing. If you do nothing about it, if you're the employee and you do nothing better, or if you're not aware of it, and if you're not watching what's going on, you could get disadvantaged by that. But if you are aware of it, you can become advantage by that in lots of different ways.
Can I just go back? That's just had nothing to do with your business, but I just always interesting talk about from my point of view, So if we could just go back a bit, You've got a whole heap of things that you do. Like you involved in academia, you write books. It looks like you, you know, you do the self mastery framework, which is something you want to explore. And you know people at Google says your TikTok better they get you to talk to their staff.
I presume because I know that Google often Matter and Matter actually often brings people in to talk to the staff from out as part of their education programs. As one of the offerings that people like matter. I guess Google does it do people like meta do? I want to talk about those a little bit later, but I want to find out how did you become this person. You know, what's your story? Where did you come from? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, Well look I'll start with where I am now, and then I'll just quickly and I'll take you back to kind of the seed. I've been in the recruitment game for about twenty years, interviewed thousands and thousands of executives.
Across my time, but not in your present form.
In my present form, I am a full time CEO of this agency. I've got a couple of other businesses. I've got my academic positions, my board positions, and you know, somewhere in between everything, I do a bit of recording and a little bit of content production. But that's the capacity that I've been able to grow over the last twenty years. But no, my full time job is CEO of group.
Before that, the how'd you become CEO of rare Group? And why did you decide to form this group?
You know your questions. Let me finish.
Now I'm in charge of you. You're used to being in charge. So today, oh no, the apprentice is coming in today. You have to answer the questions.
No, no, no, But look where it all started.
Was I wanted to be a doctor, like a medical doctor.
Yes I did, and I knew from a very young age that was what I want to do in my life. And they used to call me doctor Goose, even as young as five years old.
Doctor Goose Goose at home, you meet at.
Home, right, I'm Greek. My grandmother used to call me gordrul Lamore and that got shortened to Goose, and right through school. My nickname at school, you know, year five, year sixty seven was doctor Goose, and it was very clear to me that that was going to be my vocation. I did do a medical science as undergraduate. I did finish my internship year at Westmeat Private Hospital, a Westmeat
public hospital. Sorry, and I did not like it. I chose the wrong degree, and so I retrained myself as a psychotherapist and then I started a business in Balmain called Mind Connection, and that psychotherapy practice treated people at the level of their mind. So I was treating sick people, different types of sicknesses, but from a different perspective. And I was charging one hundred and eighty bucks an hour.
And went to the bank to get a loan to buy house, and they wouldn't give me a loan because I was a sole operator I was a small business owner and I couldn't get ahead. And I thought, you know, how am I going to pay off this degree? What am I going to do? I can't get ahead here, so I need to go get a job. So I closed that business down in Balmain and I went and
got a job. And see, I had this degree, this clinical degree, and this incredible bedside experience and a clinical mind, and then I had experience as a business owner in psychotherapy, and I didn't know where to go to get a job. And I was forced to get a job because back then we were talking twenty years ago, it was difficult to get a loan and I wanted to get a loan. I wanted to buy a house. So I got a job at Johnson and Johnson Jane Jack as a medical rep.
So they went, well, you know this, girl, I've got. All I've got is an internship year, is clinical experience, and then this business. So really, I'm twenty five and I'm still a rookie. I still haven't got any experience. I'm in massive debt, massive.
Massive debt, and has and you need debt, nah, like.
The business, you know said a lot of money into that business, and so get this job and I'm repping, and I thought, you know, there's going to be more to life than this. I've got this you know, academic background, and then I somehow fell into recruitment. And what I realized when I got into recruitment, because it's kind of like a series of failures, like job one failure, You're never going to be a doctor. You don't even like it. It was far too process driven for me. Job to
clinical psychotherapist. Start your own business, that's exactly what I am.
I'm you know, kind of an entrepreneur, but couldn't make any money in it and was forced to leave because of the situation of the time job number three Johnson and Johnson Medical repping wasn't using my brain, wasn't really contributing, not really selling products basically yeah, selling you know, knocking doctor's doorsteps and having kind of those sorts of conversations wasn't going to be only did it for two years and then fell into recruitment, and I didn't as a recruiter.
As a recruiter, so finance recruitment and I was good at it.
But that's so out there, it's so weird. How did someone whoever it was the recruiting companies say, Okay, your job will be recruiting for finance companies or for companies who need financial people. How do they pick that like you?
So recruitment's a sales job. So all you need is very very strong at KIM and up here. You've got to be able to read people. You've got to be able to ask questions. You've got to be able to make deductions on what people tell you, and you've got to understand ecosystems. So you've got to say, well, if this person has this kind of layer and this type of skill, you've got to be able to match them to strategy, culture and functional needs of organizations. And if
you can get those two right, you're in business. And within a very very short period of time in this organization, I became their Asia Pacific number one recruiter. I was really good at it. And what made me good at it, I think was my medical background. How's that because I was able to treat each one of my candidates as a patient. So I asked them questions like employee. You know, the people I was into me, the people that wanted to leave their jobs, the people that needed a new job.
Yeah, the person you're going to place that's correct, and asking them.
More psychotherapeutic questions like why are you here right now? What's brought you to this space? Why don't you like your job? Deeper than profiling, much deeper than profiling, I would say, going deep into their value and belief motivations. And that created some really beautiful work. And then the GFC hit and I was still doing very well, but my boss was made redundant. Then my boss's boss was made redundant, and then my boss's boss's boss was made redundant,
and I thought, oh my god, what's going on? And they were all females, and I ended up being the last female in this organization back in two thousand and nine, and I turned to my fiance at the time, who's now my husband. I said to him, I actually don't think I can keep working here because I want to get married, I won't have a baby. I don't feel that this is the environment that's going to allow me to do that. Would you be interested in going into business with me?
And what was he doing?
So he was a small business owner himself. He had a couple of businesses. He actually had five businesses, and he goes, Okay, Babel, I don't know anything about recruitment, but if this is what you want to do for the rest of your life, let's give it a crack. So I resigned. He sold his last business to John Houston actually had an important export business. He sold it to John Cuson. Yeah, that's correct, and so I sat out my noncompete and then in twenty ten together we
launched Reo Group. He had zero experience in recruitment. I had two, and somehow, fifteen years later, we are.
How important do you think it is? Do you you think it is in hindsight having had the experience as a because that's a hard cell. Working for the pharmaceutical companies that they going around to doctors. That's a hard sell because you know, as you walk out the door, the next one, why is it walks in? And whoever it is, they'll walk in and the doctor's being inundated by the surface. So how important was in hindsight was
that selling? I hate the words selling? Was that relationship building experience?
I would say what that taught me was hard core cold introductions. It was so cold. They gave you little training and they said, here, you've got your clinical work papers, go and rock up to that doctor down on Victoria Street. You go and you introduce yourself. You let them know who you are, and you've got to tell them about your drug and we're going to monitor you and we're going to see how much of your drug gets written in that location, in that brick.
And so.
Medicin's Australia have changed the rules. Now it's all changed. I mean we're talking twenty years ago, because you really should not be using sales techniques to push drugs, but that's what we were doing. So what they taught me was how to be fearless and how to accept the fact that you are going to walk in that doctor is going to say I'm not interested. Please please don't. You're just a rap. You will feel disrespectfed, disrespected. Your academic background will be.
Over looked, dismissed, overlooked.
You are a glorified coffee runner and you had to manage that yourself.
It goes off and wonder about that. So your cold calling, I mean I presume you just ringing the doctor the medical center up.
No, you just walk in.
There's no calls, no calls, a walk in this walk. So you sit down there waiting for your turn, as in pretending that you're having a consultation or no, no, no, You go.
Up and you go up to the receptionists, tell them who you are. They'll put you in line and you sit there in your way.
Oh really, yeah, it's.
And then you've got maybe thirty seconds at the at the counter to have a conversation with the doctor if they let you. And you know, these poor.
Doctors, I have so much at the county. You don't go into the comment sometimes if they like it, you did, but they liked you you did. Otherwise you're talking on the talking on the run.
So what's great training?
So I was going to say, what did you learn from that thirty seconds then that people could use today? I mean, what are the sort of fundamentals you got out of that in terms of either getting into the room so you can have a longer conversation or at least getting them to give you an email address or something. I don't know. What do you try to do?
Is this? You've got to do the volume. Not every call that you make, not every strike that you make, is going to land. So you've got to do the volume. And it's that traditional sales funnel. The volume tells us that so long as you're doing enough, you know the funnel, then it's some point it's going to drop into a sale, let's say, or something will convert. But if your volume of leads or your volume of activity, if if it isn't high enough, if you're not touching enough people, then
you're not going to convert. So what that taught me was just do the volume. This is not about quality. This is about volume and see over time. What volume does is it permits the opportunity for quality to become available to you. You've got to earn the right to have a quality conversation. You can't just go in and have a quality conversation. No one's going to trust you. You've got to earn that right. And how do you
earn that right. You've got to do the hours, you've got to do the calls, you've got to do the work. The volume, and that usually informs an opportunity. You know, you touch that doctor y. You know, for us in recruitment, you touch that client enough times after three or four touches, so like, okay, I like you. I'll give you a moment and at that point you've earned the right to have the right conversation.
That's really interesting. So the concept of hard work or being prepared to do things over and over and over again is to some extent statistically controlled by just normal conversion rates. So don't expect are you saying, don't expect to be I'm going to convert ten out of ten. I'm going to go against the grain. Most people aren't going to convert one out of ten the general rules. Some really good people might convert one and a half out of ten or one point eight out of ten.
But I'm going to do ten out of ten. Therefore'm going to instead of doing one hundred points, I'm going to going to do ten appointments. You can't go against the trends, you can't go against the stats. So you've got to work with the stats. So that just means therefore, don't be shitty, and don't be disappointed if you choose
this environment. Don't be shitty. Don't be disappointed if because you've got to do one hundred calls a week or one hundred visits a week, or whatever the case may be, and you might have to do it for a whole year or two years or three years just to get your rep wrap up, your reputation up, and also your contacts up and your sort of flow flow state rhythm rhythm.
Yeah, you've got to build it. You know, there's there's a lot of there's a law around this. You've got to you've got to work with the law l A W or l o.
R l a W.
You've got to the laws of the world, right, Yeah, you know.
There is a because you know there's some people say the l O I E in other words, it's sort of folkloric that you just got to do lots of volume to get cut through in other words, and and that's sort of like it can be a bit folk lourish. But you're saying it's sort of like a law of the universe. It's like nearly a statistical law. You're you will not be the statistics of people who are interested in your product. It doesn't matter how good you are
at it. You might you might, you might get at the upper end of the statistical range, but you're not going to sort of outperform it by ten times.
No, you're not a superhuman.
Unless you do can do ten times as many meetings.
I saw a meme on LinkedIn recently on Federer, he said that he only lands fifty two percent of his serves. The other forty eight percent he fails, and yet he is one of the best tennis players of all time. And the message in that is he is not perfect. Fifty two percent of the time he lands, at forty eight percent of the time he doesn't. And so even
our greatest athletes aren't landing every time. So why would it be any different for a corporate Why would it be any different for anyone just in the standard work environment?
Has that got Has that got something to do with the in reflective sense, something to do with the target the person or targeting and you're in the case of the example just gave us the doctor or the medical practitioner. Has it got something to do with the attention span of individuals? Is that got something to do with understanding and respecting how busy they just how busy they are?
Has it got somebody to do with understanding or being aware of the ability to cut through when somebody is really busy in a busy environment like a day, surgery or whatever the case may be. What do you think that's got to do with Because it doesn't necessarily we shouldn't necessarily reflect on ourself saying oh bloody ell, I was hopeless. I couldn't get through it. To the individual, it's probably more about the individual. It's more about understeing the individual.
I think it's a few things. I think that first of all, it's attitude within the individual. There needs to be an underlining, underlining attitude of growth mindset call it. They have to have a positive relationship with failure. But second to that, they have to have a positive relationship with failure.
What does that mean? A preparedness to fail?
As humans, we move away from failure. Failure is painful and we tend to move to it's pleasure, so we like the nectar of life. The thing is with failure, failure and growth are symbiotic in nature. They go together. So you can't have growth without failure. And if we're going to talk about landing success, then what underpins that is growth. So if you can't have growth without failure, and this is a universal law, so you know, you can't grow your muscles without going to the gym and
having them tear. You have to tear your muscle. Failure take it, you have to take it to failure. So you can say everything in life, failure informs growth.
The thing is it stimulates, it.
Stimulates, it informs it. It's a pathway. The thing is with that is is that because our psychology moves towards pleasure and we don't have a very good relationship with failure, what it does is that when we do fail, we tend to experience negative human emotions like shame, blame, guilt, fear, anxiousness, and all of those negative human emotions which exist within the ego tend to be a barrier for us to go ahead and go I know I'm going to fail
at this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Like I'm here talking to you, I've never spoken to you before. This could be a failure. I could say something I shouldn't, but I've never done it before. So I've given myself permission today whenever I do something that I've never done before, allow myself the opportunity to fail, because only in that failure am I going to be able to reflect and
take the learning. So the positive relationship with failure means that it gives me a pathway to go, Well, I'm not going to be I'm not going to nail it. I'm not going to nail it every time. Maybe fifty percent I might al it. So it's okay if you don't know it today. And what happens is is then when you have that type of attitude, it creates space for confidence because you can't have you're not born with No human is born with confidence. Confidence cultivates through the
space of detachment from your ego. You can't fake confidence. Confidence is natural, It comes deep within. You can create confidence in a functional area. For example, I've done four thousand hours of recruitment, you've done four thousand hours of podcasting. You're good at it, okay, But that doesn't mean you're deeply confident. Still very capable people have a lot of self doubt. Capability and confidence are different things, although they
get misconstrued often in corporate or in life general. So coming back to failure, having a positive relationship with failure allows us to try things and understand that it's very possible that you're not going to be that good at it. But only through trying do you have a pathway of self reflection and learning. And when you learn, you grow, and when you grow, your capacity grows. When your capacity grows,
life affords you more. When life affords you more, more happens, more opportunities, more taps on the shoulder, more fun, more pleasure. And so we're not really talking about that cycle that often there's a little on growth mindset, and you hear it from some of these big you know speakers, academic speakers, but actually at a functional area, you know, a a in a real give me, give me the real truth, show me how it's done. That's what we're not really talking about. And on top of that, you are not
rewarded for failure. Our reward systems, rem and Benz systems are rewarded on success. And so there's a bit of a trick here.
So I want to go to the brain and to come back because I actually want to talk about a little bit more about the detachment as well. Yeah, your your proposition about detaching, and I want to know what that means because it's easy for someone to say it, but what does actually mean to an individual who's listening, who thinks, okay, well, how do I detaches from these things? So that I can sort of it mean it's amount of just saying I don't care, I don't give you
a shit. What is it. What is what is actual detachment? And where does it start to start off about? Does the stuff from being aware of what detach minutes and then just practicing it. But I want to go, I've got to go the break. I'll go to the bank and kind it come straight back. And that that's the stuff I wanted to sort of dig into. Then I want to sort of also, if you don't mind, is talk about your book? Does your book talk about these things?
Self mastery too? Is this what self mastery is about? Is understanding these concepts? So going to go and break. I'm back from the break, and he was still a Petro. I would like to sp I prefer to call you petrol, but it doesn't matter. We'll call it petro conca. And we've been talking about this pretty amazing stuff in terms of to use a broad term that everybody over uses. But mindset and mindsets made up lots of different structures.
No mindset, I know you don't function one area.
But I'm just going to talk about it for the sake of this audience. What would otherwise normally be considered mindset, But it's so many substructures within that conversation on its
own it's crazy. But in terms of mindset or how to shape your thoughts relative to potential failure, relative to just keep going and keep knocking on doors at a very fundamental level, and with failure always occurring or occurring a lot of the time, or no success occurring, perhaps the probably better way putting it, It doesn't have to be failure, because failure is a good way, maybe a
better way looking at it is. And you tell me what you think is instead of thing about us something as a failure, And when don't we think about it is just wasn't successful? Yeah, I didn't succeed? So what if I failed? I feel a lot worse if I say should I failed? That seems to me to be a lot worse as a word that we always use as opposed to saying I didn't succeed on that occasion? How do we and you talked about detaching ourselves. They're not physically attached to something. What do you mean by
that detachment? Is it a a sense?
Give me the just I'm going to answer that question. Just give me the space to answer it fully. Okay, I've got a layer a little bit walk through it. Let me walk through it self. Doubt. Why do people have self doubt? What a successful people have self doubt? Why do some people have confidence and other people don't have confidence?
Or a peer too?
Or a peer too? Okay? These were questions I started to ask myself a few years ago before I wrote my book, because I saw a lot of it in the people that I was interviewing. From my psycho psychotherapeutic background, what we know to be true is that your ego, which is the construct of your mind based on your values and beliefs, it's the lens by which you navigate your life, is also the voice in your head. Do you have a voice in your head? Do I talk to your day?
Sure of yeah?
Sometimes? Okay, you've mastered it, right, But for a lot of people, they haven't mastered it. And that voice in their head, which is their ego, the voice of their ego, says things to them that they shouldn't. It says things like, you're not going to make it, no one's going to like you, you look ugly, you're fat, etc. Okay, And so I call my voice in my head Tammy. I've given her a voice, so the name, Yeah, I've given her a name. Sorry, So I spoke to Tammy this morning.
I told Tammy just to stay in the car so Stella could be present with Mark today. So the ego is created over time. It takes about twenty one years for the ego to become fully evolved. The Mazzi development stages of psychologist says that between zero and seven, your values and beliefs are created, and then from seven till twelve you go through a modeling period and then your relationship period where you're fully formed at a mind level. But the most important period of time is zero to seven.
And what happens during that time is your parents or the people that you are. You know that you raised you. They gift you your values and your beliefs. So if you were born into a particular religious sector, if you were born into a particular culture, your parents got divorced, somebody died, whatever happened between zero and seven has imprinted on you your values and beliefs. Now, what is a
value on? What is a belief? A value is for example, money, and a belief around money is money doesn't grow on trees or easy come, easy go, or everything I touch turns to gold. Everyone has a belief system around money. Another value is sex. A belief system around sex is shouldn't have it before you're married, or if you come from a Latin American culture, is it's free, enjoy yourself. It's better be enjoyed. Right, It depends on what culture you come from.
Right, although Latin American listeners, let me know, have fun.
And that is a really I mean, that's quite a polarizing example. That's a very good way to describe what is a value on what is a belief? And see, we've got these belief that sit around our values, and that becomes the lens by which we operate in our life. And our lens is our ego. Now, coming back to your question, you are not your ego. You are not the lens by which you operate in your life. That lens is changeable. Sometimes that lens doesn't serve you. You see,
the seed of all negative human emotions comes from the ego. Anger, sadness, guilt, shame, the experience of anxiety and depression all comes from this part of our mind, our ego, and it's given to you. So if something happened to you between that period of time, it will could possibly play out in your later years of life. An example from a corporate lenses is that I'll often get a mid thirties individual that's just about
to start their executive career and something's happened. There's been an altercation at work, the amount of lost their joab or there's no connection between them and the CEO, and they rock up to my doorster and they're like, I think I need a new job. And at that point, I'm not asking them questions about their skills. And you know, you know you are unable to execute on the strategy or you know, how do you manage change and do you understand how to create a culture and environment. I'm like,
tell me about yourself. Let's go back to the beginning of your life. And by the way, this is what executive search firms do. This is how they profile. They go back to the beginning of life because what happens then generally creates your leadership style. It generally creates how you operate in life. So if you need if you are experiencing these things, or if you want to make changes in your life, you have to go back to this operating model that you've created. It's kind of like
a pizza base. You've got to pick off the toppings that your mum and dad have been given to you. So a question for you, actually just a demonstration. Have you ever felt sadness or guilt or that feeling of anxiety do you have? Have you ever felt any negative human emotion?
Not? Really, I've never been depressed.
I'm not talking about something clinical. I'm talking about happy. Let's go with a positive. If you ever feel happy, I.
Don't really get happy. The only negative only emotion I really it is anger?
Anger?
Yes, okay, that's the only one all the rest of.
All right, So let's work with anger.
Average.
Let's work with anger. Okay. Can you perceive when you're angry? Angry?
Do I know what makes me angry?
No? Can you perceive it when you're angry? Can you say it, I'm angry?
Yeah?
Okay. So there's an awareness inside of you that has perceived that emotion.
But to do that I alread to answer a psychiatrist. So I went, I did therapy for all this.
Yeah, good, okay, So we need to teach people how to do that for themselves. So the fact is is that that anger sits in your ego. But the fact that you're aware of it is that there's an awareness within you that can perceive that anger. There's a deeper awareness and intelligence. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to separate the difference between that which is
ego and that which is your awareness. And when you can do that, when you can accept that that which is your operating model of life, which is given to you from your parents, from your family. First of all, you didn't ask for it was given to you, and you can change it over time. The aware it means that you can detach from that, you can become you can sit in your seat of consciousness and be the observer of that anger. It is not the same thing. You and your ego are not the same thing. So
coming back to your question, how do you detach? First of all, for you to be able to attach, you have to be aware. This is just fundamental basic psychology. One oh one ego, you do different things. Awareness that can observe the feeling. That is actually what we work with in psychotherapy and it's what we need to start
teaching everybody out there. Basic like getting a glass of water and having a drink, You've got to be able to understand that which is ego versus that which is you, and how to detach from that, because if that is a parasite in your mind, the worst parasite is a
negative mind. By the way, If that's if that ego is running a system of thinking that is not serving you, and you the consciousness, the awareness is enmeshed in that, then we have the epidemic that we are experiencing right now, which is the mental health one.
So what would you say to an employer on what you just said? What would an employer take from that? And what would an employee take for you just said so much? Let's start with employer.
Start with an employee.
I hate the word, but doesn't matter. I just hate the word employer. Sounds terrible, but.
Well, look, every employee, generally speaking, every employer is also employee.
Well to me, everybody works for themselves, and I call an employee because there's a different sort of reward system and there's regulations around it. But employees still work for themselves the end of the day. They're giving you their time and effort, skills in reach over money, and they are employers giving them a seat, space and opportunity in return for their time. So that's yeah, anyway, it doesn't
really matter? Manager, manager, So what would you say to a manager of people or someone who wants to recruit people into their organization from what you just said? What do they need to know? From what you just said?
First of all, a disengaged workforce costs our global population nine trillion US dollars a year. It's about nine percent of the global GDP.
Is that about productivity or.
Audibly disengage employees?
What's that mean? So?
A disengaged employe, according to Gallup survey, is linked to individuals that are experiencing any given point in time and go sadness, skilled anxiety, and stress.
Right outside of the office, maybe in their private.
Life, in their life. Just there's no I really think there's such a thing as separation between life and work life. I think it's pretty a mesh these days realistically. So in life life, those according to Gallop, those that have been experiencing those five negative human emotions, anyone or ale, anyone, any one of them. I mean, each one has a separate line item and has a separate statistic attached to it.
But if we can kind of grab them as a collective, eighty to ninety percent are actively disengaged in their job. So if you have an individual that is experiencing these things, it's very likely that they will be in some form disengaged. In the same report, it's said that people that were thriving and happy were seventy to ninety percent engage actively engaged in their job. So what we have here is a question is a chicken or the egg? As an employer, is it my role to make people happy? No?
Not possibly either, No, not possible either.
However, is it my role to deliver the strategy? And is it my role to deliver to the shareholders the P and L? And is it my role to deliver what it is in my job description? It? Yes, it is. Okay, Well, now what you're dealing with is you're dealing with a landscape where people need help. And one in two Australians will experience some form of mental health episode in their lifetime and one in five Australians experience it at least once on a yearly basis. And so you have to
be dealing with these new inputs. These are the new inputs.
So we have to teach people employers what just call it, managers.
Managers and employees. We have to teach people that stress that they're experiencing. They can manage it if they know, if they learn how. And I'm not talking about exercise and meditation and you know, you know, having kind of healthy habits. I'm talking deeper than that. I'm talking about becoming learning the inputs of becoming your own psychotherapist. So you know, Oh, I'm experiencing a bit of fear right now. What can I do about this?
Oh?
Okay, I can breathe out longer than I breathe in, and I can activate my vagus nerve and just decompress a little bit, so I can bring that back in. It's the individual's responsibility to manage themselves. But we've got a collective voice out there, which is my job's crap or you know, I don't like my manager. It's two sides of the story.
So but should do employers have any obligation around this? So? Yes, So I'm an employer and I've got some people, and I can notice that there shoulders are slumped over. It's a bit of body language or something like that, and they're not. They just don't seem to be themselves. What's my obligation? What should I be doing? Shall be saying? You, Okay, what was the deal?
So, I mean, I actually can't say from a legal perspective what their obligation is, but yes, they have an obligation to run business. Yeah, it's got to roll up as a sea. You first got to decide that mental well being is a priority, a strategic priority, and therefore, if it's a strategic priority, it gets written down as something that you're going to invest in. You allocate funds to this particular area. Because if you understand that this is important, then what happens is is that you won't
get to a point. It's less likely that you will get to a point where you will have a disengaged employee. A disengaged employee can be influenced by an engaged manager. So the advice to employers out there is invest in
your managers. Teacher managers how to deal with this. Hrbrid Business Review published an article in August of last year stating that for us to do this, for us to change the connection and the engagement of people in the workforce, the one thing that we've got to do is we've got to teach our middle managers how to be cognitive behavioral therapists. Quite unquote teach them, so CBT teach them neuro linguistic programming. And I couldn't believe my ears. I
couldn't believe what I was reading. Yes, the world has changed and we've got to change our skills. The World Economic Forum publishes a report every year called Skills of the Future. In twenty twenty two, a new skill landed on the top ten skills list. That new skill was self management self mastery. This year twenty twenty four, six out of the top ten skills that we need for the future, which is the future for World Economic Forum is five years from now, six of the top ten
were self mastery skills. And so what's happening is is that we need to learn this as a hard skill like picking up a phone and knowing how to create an app or create a podcast. And so I'm out to normalize it. My full time job is the see of a recruitment agency, but I do this as this is my life's work.
Give me a broad explanation that your life's word meaning outside of your business, this is something that you have ambitions about making or maybe perhaps not changing, but adopting.
Yeah. Look, I wrote a book called Stoneheart, Light Heart. The Intelligence of Self Mastery, Stoneheart, Light Heart, The Intelligence of Self Mastery, and I wrote that book, and that book has been recognized by multiple universities, and it also got me my honorary fellowship at Western Sydney UNI. And
the universities are really progressive, actually very progressive. They are teaching these ideas now in business school and I'm a guest lecturer at many business schools at the moment, teaching our younger generation how to master their ego, how to detach from their ego, how to build a healthy relationship
with failure, and how to cultivate confidence. At the end of that, I guess the story I can share with you with this book and why it's become my life's I really think it's, you know, the good work that I'm going to do in my life. As I wrote it, and an executive from Chart Accounts Australia picked up the book and read it and said this is I love this book and I'm going to bring this into our community.
And they've got one hundred and thirty five thousand members in Australia globally actually, and so over the last couple of years I've been working with them and I do so many keynote speeches for them, and they givet my book to so many of their members, so many people in the audience. And then I was so grateful to this guy, who's really, you know, taking this work forward
with me. And then one day I was at Western Sydney UNI and I was doing some work with them, and the dean of the business school dear speech, and then I was mixed up. I was a keynote, I was a guest lecturer, and I did my lecture on self mastering. At the end, he came up to me and he said, excuse me, I talk to you so yes, my name Stella. He goes, I know who you are. He goes, I was given your book eight months ago. And I said, oh, wonderful. And he says, I need
to tell you something. He goes, I'm an economist, I'm a professor, and I'm the dean of this business school. Your book changed my life, said how so? He said, all my life I really wondered who I was, and your book gave me a pathway to integrate who I thought I was and who I was. And now I know why I am who I am, and I feel so comfortable with that I want to let you know that your book is on my bedside table, and every time I go overseas with my job, I take your
book with me. And I started to cry. And I started to cry because it was the individual who gave me that feedback that made me realize that this is my life's work. And so I now create reels on this I record, you know, for an hour every week.
I don't make money from it. You make money from books, not even a cent, okay, But I give my time now to this area because I believe that in this crazy world where people are mentally sick, that they must learn this one tool, because I think that he can remarkably change.
Has mastery that one tool.
Well self master is the umbrella that actually talks to mastering the division of you and ego. You've got to be able to.
Do that so putting ourselves away from our ego. So sometimes I remember of many years I read a book. I can't remember the name of the auth. He as a neurologist, but it was he wrote a book with an illustrator like a comic strip illustrator, and the book
was called Neurocomic. And he actually explains in an illustrative way with some narrative, how we build a story up about ourselves neurologically, in our neurological system, and then that story keeps getting affirmed by things we do and people that we meet, and we keep building up the story, which is, like what you're saying, the ego, that's how I am, and we actually think that's the person we are.
And then when we think about plasticity, the plasticity of the brain or the satellitar system within the brain, that is, you can actually change who you are as long as you recognize that this is just a story about yourself exactly. And appeal often say to me, well, you know, once age, you weren't a partner of chart accounts. Then you become a partner of a law firm. Then you became a developer,
and then you became a finance business. Biba, now you a podcast because I don't have a view on myself because I read this book like thirty odd years ago, and I knew nothing at that stage, wasn't I was just interested. I knew nothing by that stage about plasticity and stuff like that. But you're right, I mean I was actually becoming quite clear to me in my mind, the ability to reinvent yourself. Let's call it is about detaching yourself from who you think you are. Yes, you
call it the ego, let's call it. You know my story? Yes? And your parents lay down the plank for your story in the beginning. I mean you have done it. You were going to be a doctor, and then you're reinventing yourself to become a salesperson. Then you reinvent yourself, etc. In other words, flexibility. And people often say how do I remain relevant?
Not me? Not how Mark grew ultimate strategic question, how.
Do you remain relevant as or how can they remain relevant? Well, the first thing is to your phraseology is you've got to detach yourself from who, your ego or your story and look at what stories are relevant out there? What are people looking for? You know, what they want to talk about? Exactly where they going with stuff? Yes? And so I think that's fascinating. So I don't remember the name of your book. I know it's in the show notes, but could you just tell me the name of your
book again? And where can people get it? Stoneheart, light Heart, the Stone Heart, Lion Heart, light Stoneheart, Lightheart.
The Intelligence of self mastery and when it can be purchased globally from every single book to Angus and Robinson, Amazon, It's on Spotify, it's an audio board, it's a digital you can get it everywhere. It's sold everywhere.
And I know you've said this is your life work, but outside of your real business, which is matching people up. But what about if people ask questions about it? Can they get you on a Is there a Facebook page or is there an Instagram page where they can? Actually you're not going to talk to me individually, but no.
No, no, no, no, I've got I've got an Instagram page with pretty big following. Actually, I've got a TikTok page LinkedIn. I publish all of my work on all socials.
And so where what does that call? Now, you're let's call it your Instagram page.
For example Stella Petro contra Stella dot or just still Stella my full.
Name pe I should say it's p E T R O U correct the C O N C H A correct. So, because I'd imagine what you're doing with your content is you're actually sort of probably asking questions that people haven't asked you or may have asked you but you just decide in a content says, well that's good one. I might just play around with that that whatever that is, and do you talk to it?
Yeah? I talk to it, you know. I get emails all all the time from people. My socials are huge, actually, and I create content specifically for them.
And there's no money in it.
As you say, no, no, no, this is this is totally a passion project history anyway.
So people are going to be looking Instagram for all sorts of things. Perhaps if they're got a question, or they're feeling a little bit self doubt, or they're whatever it is, that's the sort of thing they should be doing.
I am writing a second book the moment. I'll publish it next year called self Mastery at Work. And I'm halfway through producing a course that I'm recording at the moment so people can do this work in their own private time. I'm doing a lot of workshops for large listed businesses at the moment. They are training people, are training, they're training their staff in this. They're realizing we need to train, train, train, train, train.
Well, big companies and employees, if you're looking for a way of improving your your ability to live a better life. Not a necessarily happy life, but a better life. And it'd be corporations. If you're looking to have a better business, get on board with this. Let's call it recognizing understanding mental.
Health and it's connection to productivity and success in business.
For success yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever that might be. Stella petro Conca, thanks very much. Thanks man, really appreciate it.