Episode 102 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You chose to grow this business. You chose to pursue a bigger life, a better life. You chose to have more money, you chose to have more freedom. You’ve made this choice to be here and that choice has to have sacrificed attached to it. Good day everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den. How are you Dan?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I’m very well, thank you Rob. Always good to be back. How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I’m doing really well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Awesome. I love it. Yeah. Today a big conversation we’re going to have today. I’m looking forward to this. This is everyone goes into business with positive intentions. Everyone starts this idea with hopes and dreams, better future freedom, control, all the things that are going to come into my world as a result of doing this time, money, you name it. But what most people never really fully appreciate or what they expect is what it actually takes to do that, to make that happen. And I know you’ve got, obviously with Pravar, you’ve got the business you’ve created. I’ve been a part of that too in terms of my own businesses. I’ve been a part of them as senior management, as shareholders, as key person in businesses. It’s the same thing. And I’ve been lucky enough that there’ve been products that have gone up to billion dollar valuations, exits from being a day one startup and through that whole journey, really privileged to be able to see and witness that firsthand up the front.
(01:27):
I’ve spent years of my life grinding away in my own businesses with little to show for it other than the scars. And I can tell you significant six figure debts as a result of that. What I’ve learned though is that the difference between those that actually do make it and those that don’t, you’re right, it’s not talent. It’s not about working hard, it’s not about intelligence. It’s really down to what you and I have discussed this, and this is where this whole episode came about from was landing on whether or not you’re willing to do certain things, whether you’ve got that, what people might call the next factor, but really three things that you are willing to do that most people aren’t willing to do. And I think the starting point for this that we both agree on absolutely is the idea around challenge, the relationship with challenge. And the fact is in business challenge never ever goes away.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It doesn’t stop. It never does. And it’s one thing that you have to accept in business is that we’ve signed up for this thing called being a business owner, entrepreneurship, business ownership, whatever you want to be able to call it. We’ve chosen this path, we’ve chosen to be here, we’ve chosen to take on this role of being an owner, but most people want, they want the reward, but they’re not willing to get the challenge that comes with that reward. But you have to accept that challenge is inevitable and it is going to be there nonstop. You cannot avoid challenges even when you’re going well, you’re going to going to be challenged even when things are hard, there’s going to be challenge, but it’s just relentless, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah. The next challenge is just around the corner no matter what it is and you can’t preempt it. All you can know is that it is coming. You can expect it, but you can’t preempt it. What that challenge is, you can’t be prepared for every challenge by default. That challenge when it hits you is going to come out of the blue, it’s going to come sideways, but you can guarantee it is going to come. It’s almost like the weather outside. It is going to rain at some point. There is going to be a storm when, dunno, how’s it going to look? Dunno. But it is coming and it’s the same here, but it’s not about, I think fearing the challenge, it’s about having a healthy relationship with the challenge that’s going to come.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Correct. Because challenges actually is there for a reason. Challenge growth comes on the borderline of support and challenge. You’ve got to be supported, but you’ve got to be challenged. If you get over supported, you get soft. If you get over challenged, you become hardened. But a healthy amount of challenges inevitable because when you’re going through periods of extreme challenges, it’s setting you up for the next phase of your journey for wherever you’re going. But when things are also going really well, just accept that challenge is there to keep you on the path. It’s there to keep you moving because there’s been times where I’ve gone through some really challenging moments and I’ve grown from it, but there’s been times where things are going really well and maybe I’ve stopped doing things that I knew that have got me into those positions and challenge was just there. It’s almost like I attracted that challenge into my life to wake me up and get me back on the path again. So challenges, it’s not going away.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
No. And do you find that when you have a challenge and you go through that stuff, I know there’s a big key moment in Pravar history or law where you had your big challenge. Even that though, the challenge, you start to get excited by it because you know that getting through that challenge, that’s where better lives on the other side of the challenge. So you’ve got to go through it.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, correct. There’s a number of years ago we had some extreme team challenges going on in our world and it was probably one of the craziest times in my world. Grace was only young and Maddie was only literally only a couple of months old and we just moved into the house we got and things were going really well and just out of the blue we had had some team challenges go away and it happened and I was just thrust back into the team and it was chaos. That’s when you came into Pravar world. But looking back, it was the craziest time, but it was looking back, it was one of the, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I didn’t think that at the time, but looking back, I wouldn’t change it for the world because I look how far we’ve come and what we’ve got today as a result of going through those challenges. But it’s just accepting that in business the bigger you get, it doesn’t mean that challenges go away, it also just means that they just change over a period of time.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And I think those challenges, like you said before, sometimes you can be doing, you’re not doing anything wrong, things are great. Challenge shows up. Sometimes there is a failure that somewhere along the lines something’s broken you or you’ve broken something and you’re going to have challenge, but you’re going to fail repeatedly when challenge strikes. It’s not a challenge if there’s not that sort of stumbling feeling as you go through the challenge. It’s not a real challenge unless there is that. And I think that’s important for people to realise as well that it’s normal.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, absolutely. And you said there that you’re going to fail repeatedly and that’s right. In business ownership there is no, you can’t have the desire for comfort in business ownership. You’ve got to accept that things are going to go wrong. Challenges are coming your way. There’s problems around the corner. You have to deal with this today and be prepared to deal with something tomorrow. It could be a small challenge today, a bloody huge one tomorrow. It’s unpredictable. That’s the nature of business. Ownership is the unpredictable nature that is business and you got to be prepared to go on that journey and try something and make a mistake, try something again, have failed, try this. And as they say, it’s just going from one failure to another, failure to another failure until you get it right. But things just aren’t going to be perfect all the time and you got to get out of that fantasy and I think that’s the problem is people in business, especially in the early days, they had this fantasy of how great business and life is going to be, don’t they?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, and I think that’s a big thing around today. I mean you go back even before the rise of social media, we’ll talk about that in a minute, but the idea of these business moguls that write a book and it’s like this is how you do business. There’s one way to do it. I’m perfect at it. This is the way to do it. If you do what I did, it’ll be great. I’m thinking in my mind it’s like a Richard Branson who everything he touched was amazing and if only I could do it like he did, but what they don’t write about is all the failures along the way, even if they mention them, we send to gloss over that and it’s like in my world now, it’s like the social media world where you don’t see any of the mistakes or failures. It’s the perfect cut. It’s the best take. It’s the combination of all the failures adding up to a beautiful photo or a scene like that. It’s all sort of glossed over as everything’s perfect in the end and it’s not.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, correct. And I look back on my journey in business ownership of 15 years, it just doesn’t stop and there’s been things that have worked extremely well, but there’s things that haven’t worked. I’ve gone, there’s had team challenges, I’ve had business partnerships fall over, there’s been issues within programmes that we’ve built and they haven’t worked. I tried so many different things when I was trying to get this business up and down to the ground with different brands and different names and different programmes and different ways of running this. I had hate to think of how many times I’ve got it wrong Now on the flip side, we’ve got it right plenty of times, but it hasn’t been all rosy and I think it’s a fantasy. It’s a myth that business is going to be easy and it’s going to be fun all the time. And the bigger I get then my problems go away is so not true. Business gets bigger, but problems get bigger as well because you’ve got to be able to have the ability to handle bigger challenges and more responsibility that comes with a bigger business.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And it’s uncomfortable, right? You’re growing as you do this, you will grow, you will be challenged, you will have to step up and face the facts and all the things we talk about at Pravar, but you need to understand that that’s going to be uncomfortable. That’s part of can you accept that level of uncomfortability if you like, in terms of am I willing to do that growth.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Growth, yeah. We’ve said it a few times on the podcast that business ownership is really just a personal development journey wrapped around in ABN.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It’s just one of those things where it is going to be uncomfortable and you are personally going to get challenged every day because we say to clients all the time, don’t we? That your business is a reflection of you as a leader and if you are not growing, your business isn’t growing. So this is more business ownership is more of a personal journey than it is a really a business journey, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Is you make that decision and say, I’m going to start this business. You better be prepared for challenge. You better be prepared to go, well, I’m not going to be the same person that went into this. You could come into a perfect record, you could be unblemished, but I guarantee you will get scars, you will get cuts, you will get dirty as you go through this journey. Everyone does. Even the greats, even the people that have succeeded, even the people that tell you, geez, it was pretty bloody hard to do this. They’re only telling you a minute version of what the story was really like.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And it doesn’t go away. When I think about the mindset challenges or the challenges we come up against as business owners, fear doesn’t go away, self-doubt doesn’t go away. The feeling of not being worthy or am I capable of it or can I do it or I’m not sure if that’s possible. Those thoughts that we experience as people, they don’t go away. You look at very, very highly successful people. It’s not that they’ve eliminated those limiting beliefs or whatever it is in their world. They’ve just learned how to manage through them and so that’s the uncomfortableness of the growth that we’re talking about.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, absolutely. I remember as you’re talking about am I capable and can I do it? I remember sitting in a hotel room and it’s amazing how when you think about this stuff, it comes back to you, to you. But sitting in a hotel room in India of all places and shit, it was doing software development. We were using the windows as a whiteboard, so there’s scribble all over these windows looking outside. There was a guy downstairs playing a pipe with a snake at the pool side. It was that sort of thing and I remember being in tears asking the guy I was with that, am I good enough to do this job and see this challenge through and can we solve it because it meant that much. There was so much on the line, the desire to get through that challenge was so great. Now being in tears was one thing, but did the challenges ever stop once I went through that?
(12:27):
No, but it was my relationship with challenge that changed. It was like why am I trying to overcome this idea of am I going to be capable enough that I’ll never have to deal with the challenge of this again? And once I got that through my head and went through it a few times and you develop as a person, this is decades ago, but as you develop and you mature and you start to get this big word resilience about you, about challenge or you change that relationship with challenge, you start to look forward to it. You start to run towards it. You don’t fear it. Like you said, it’s something that you get to live with rather than try and move past.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, as you were talking through there, I look back on that huge big challenging time we had in 2021 here at Pravar and is I needed that. I needed to go through that. Just like you needed to go through that in your journey and we all do as leaders come up against those times where those things we rub up against those experiences or those experiences come into our world to test us to number one, how bad do we want it? And number two, it’s to challenge us to step up and play a bigger game and show us what we’re really capable of. You needed that moment in your world to be able to break through that upper limit to be able to go, yes, I can do this. I needed that back in 2021 to be able to take my leadership to the next level and steer this business to where it is today. We needed that, but if we didn’t have the willingness to overcome that challenge and become more resilient and be a better version of ourselves, we wouldn’t be here today because we would’ve shrunk back into the known and the comfortability of where we were back in that time.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you wouldn’t give it up for anything, right? Those become the moments that end up defining who you become the next phase. Let’s look at the next one then let’s look at, alright, the word we’re going to use is sacrifice. And this is really around for me, there’s a price to pay. There’s a price that you’re going to have to pay regardless. No one gets out. It’s not free to run a successful business. There’s always a price to pay and sacrifice is a huge part of being able to deliver or run a successful business.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
There is, and the first one that comes is time and energy and probably more so I would say in the earlier stages of business, I remember when I first started coaching and I knew that this was what I was destined to do and I knew that running a coaching business, it was what I was going to do and I was 25 at the time, so I was probably in my critical social years of my life when I should be out travelling and hanging out and partying on weekends. In the first number of years of coaching, I walked away from friendships, not, I shouldn’t say walked away, but I spent less time with friends, which mean I drifted away from certain friends. I worked crazy hours at the start. You got to get a business out of the ground. I was working days and nights and that meant I was missing out on social events. I’ve missed out on time with family, I’ve missed out on time with friends, I’ve missed out on parties and family events and everything. That’s what we mean by sacrifice. You’ve got to make a choice what you want and especially in the early times of business, when you’ve got limited structure around you, you sacrifice so much time to be able to get the business up and out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, we talk about this all the time in terms of relationship with time that you’ve got all the time there is, which the obvious question that comes from that is, well, what are you going to do with it? So when we say sacrificing time and energy, it’s not so much I’m giving it up, but what am I going to invest my time and energy into? And you’ve got to be able to say, well, the time and energy it’s required to get this business out of the ground to make that next step to develop myself as a leader, whatever it might be, am I willing to sacrifice enough of the time and energy it’s going to take to see this through? And that’s where I think a lot of people think. It’s like there’s some idea that I can have all of it for everything. There’s not, there’s a finite amount of time you’ve got all of it that there is, but there is still a finite amount.
(16:53):
Energy’s the same thing. Kids are going to miss you. And I see this a lot and it’s hard to talk about sacrifice and not sound like, I don’t know an old person that’s saying, well back in my day, but the same thing is true. I remember my kids missed me greatly or they probably, I hope they did. I missed them greatly. It was probably more to the point when I was travelling a lot. There was a time when I was starting my coaching business and being overseas and even in software development, my record was like 31 weeks of the year and we had a young family that took up a huge amount of energy, a huge amount of time, but that was the price and you’ve got to be willing to accept the fact that there is a price to be paid to run a successful business.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And it doesn’t stop either. And I think that the mistake, a, we see it a bit, especially with clients who start to grow their business and achieve a taste of success is that they claw their hours back and then they become complacent with the time and responsibility of what it takes to run a great business and they try and run what we deem a lifestyle business doing $3 to $5 million acting on a part-time hours sometimes and they or try and run a bigger business on set hours, they’re an employee. It’s like, well, I will turn up at this time and I will finish at that time and I will not work past those hours. But when you’re running a business, the business does not care about the clock. A business runs 24/7 and there’s got to be times where you lose a key member or a key team member or a big job falls out of your pipeline.
(18:32):
Sometimes you’ve just got to dig in and do whatever it takes to keep the business moving forward because you can’t expect your team to do that if you are not willing to do that and it’s not their business, it’s yours. So when you’re in business, the time equation sometimes goes out the window that there’s a whole weight of responsibility and obligation as a business owner to keep things moving forward that there’s times where you’ve got to be able to be all in and there’s got to be times where you’ve got to be, you can step back, but you can’t run a great business working the hours like an employee. It doesn’t compute.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
No. My mom always used to say at times she goes, sometimes you’ve just got to do overtime and that stuck with me. It is true. Sometimes you’ve just got to dig in and you’ve got to do it. You either do that or you don’t do it. No, no. Sort of how do I trade this off?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Correct. I know there’s been times where I’ve been on holidays, you’re on the phone, you’re on the computer, you’re on the iPad, and so it’s not like you can’t have absolutisms in business. There’s been times where we’ve lost key team members and you punch in 80 hour weeks because you’ve got to keep the business boom, you’ve got to look after clients, but there’s been times where you’ve got the flexibility, but it’s times one of those things. We had a great conversation with our legacy clients the other day. It’s like you can’t run a legacy style business working like being a lifestyle leader and that hit home so much to those guys because they’re trying to run an 8, 10, 20 million business, sometimes acting like a $3 million leader and it just does not work. You got to be able to put in the time and the energy and the effort to be able to build this business that is successful in the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, for sure. Next one is part of sacrifice I’d like to talk about is comfort and security and for me this is all about certainty. If you crave certainty in your world, if you want to have a world where everything fits in its place and you’re a control freak, then this is probably going to be a big, big challenge. And the sacrifice of giving up comfort, security and certainty is huge for a business owner.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well, it’s the comfort of a paycheck. It’s the comfort around financial success. There is no guarantee. There’s times where you’ve got money in the bank, there’s times where you’re sitting up on Sunday night thinking, how the fuck am I going to make payroll tomorrow? That’s the security and comfort you’re talking around around where’s your next dollar coming from.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
And everyone has it. I dunno a single business owner that hasn’t sat up in the middle of the night and gone, shit, how am I going to pay for X? Everyone has that and it sucks and it’s something that you will face that and the sacrifice of that, I don’t want to have that in my world, just doesn’t enter in it’s part and parcel of the price of doing business is you’re going to have that feeling, you’re going to have those moments, those gut punches of like, holy shit, I don’t know how this is going to play out, but you find a way.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
This is where the thrill of business comes in is you’ve got to learn to be uncomfortable in those situations and you’ve got to be okay with just learning to navigate those places. You’re going to be sitting up, there’s going to be times where you are waking up at 2:00 AM sweating around what’s happening in your world. There’s been times where I’ve been sitting in the shower shedding a few tears because I dunno if I’ve got what it takes or if I know I can do it. This is the sacrifice you’ve got to make and that’s what we mean mean by the discomfort and chasing the security because whether it’s the certainty around pipeline, it’s the certainty around money. Those things all go out the window in business every day is uncertain and so you’ve got to be okay with a large amount of uncertainty in business because business in its own nature is uncertain.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, you will never make a decision if you’re waiting for absolute certainty in business. There’s always going to be a risk. There’s always going to be a downside. There’s always going to be the chance that it doesn’t come off. I mean that’s why they have all these disclaimers on investments. This is not usual performance. This is something could turn against you. All of that’s true, but at the end of the day that’s just part and parcel of doing business. There’s always going to be that. So you’ve got to learn how to, again, just like challenge, you’ve got to change your relationship to risk and your relationship with certainty. You’ve got to be able to weigh up the opportunity and have a positive outlook on things. So you’ve got to be able to work in this space and find a way to live with uncertainty as opposed to just saying, I want to create a world where there’s no second guessing, it’s all laid out and all said and done. What about the third bit of this? I am so keen to talk about this sacrifice of what we’ve talked about before a normal life. Talk to me about what you think when I say to you going to sacrifice. Part of sacrifice is sacrificing the fact of having a normal life. What’s that to you?
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You can’t run a successful business and have a normal life and I’m probably comparing a normal life to someone who doesn’t own a business and talk employment. They turn up, they work their hours, they switch off, they get paid and that doesn’t exist in business. There is no off button in business. Everything starts and stops with you and it’s not like you clock your 40 hours and turn off, you’re on all the time it you’re on 24/7. You’re thinking about things, what’s happening here? What’s happening there is, and when we link it back to sacrifices, you’ll be sacrificing time with friends, time with family social events. There’ll be times where you’re going to miss out on a good friend’s wedding or a significant event or a family’s birthday, significant birthday because you’ve literally got to work. This is someone with a normal life. They navigate their work around life, but when you run a business, you’re constantly trying to juggle business and family and life altogether and it’s fucking messy and that’s where the sacrifice comes in.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah, for sure. I think about it in terms of elite sports people and things like that, and I’m fortunate enough, my wife coaches, she’s an assistant coach at the WNBL level in Australia and she works with elite sports people all the time. So seeing some of the best players in the world and how they prepare and the sacrifice they make in terms of a normal life, it’s not normal. It’s only normal what they do in the context of the world they live in. If you want to be an elite sportsman, you live an elite sports person’s life, these women give up so much to perform at that level, be it Olympians or NBA players, whatever it is, they do the best in the world. They don’t live a normal life. Training is training, diet is diet. That all comes before a whole heap of other things that are probably higher on the list for other people, things that might be even more enjoyable, easier to obtain, provide more certainty, all of the stuff we’re talking about and seeing them do that time and time again, it starts to feel normal when you’re in that world a lot, but only because you’re in that world and I think business ownership’s the same thing. Why we’re successful at Pravar and why we’ve got such a great community is because guys have finally found a place where this is normal life. There are people like me that don’t live a normal life or don’t want to have a normal life because we’re all business owners, but when you step into the real world, the normal world, you start to stand out like a fish out of water.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, correct. I look at our, let’s use our lifestyle lifestyle clients for example. There’s 60 odd businesses in there and collectively they’re doing just shy of $200 million collectively between them. And we have to remind those guys that it’s like boys, you are not normal. You’re a little bit messed up in their head because you got to be to run a business that’s doing on average $3, $3.5 million dollars to $4 million, that’s not a normal life and you are not a normal person to be able to shoulder the responsibility and make the sacrifice to run a business at that level. So stop trying to be normal when you are extraordinary. And a lot of the guys don’t see themselves as extraordinary, but what they forget is that they’re in the top couple of percent of business owners in the whole of Australia let it own the trade space. They’re not normal people and they can’t get to that level of business being a normal person.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
No, and having a business of your own is not a way to get back to a normal life. It doesn’t exist. Like you said before with the legacy people, those guys stepping up where they fall short sometimes and they get confused is, well, I did all this so I could have a normal life. It’s like, no, you’ve chosen to, you’re now playing at the next level up. That’s a whole nother level of not normal life that you’re going to be a part of.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Correct. And it’s something that we have to remind clients a fair bit. It’s like, okay mate, we get that you’re going through challenge. We get that you might be doing a little bit tough at the moment, but never forget you chose this path. You chose to be a business owner, you chose to grow this business, you chose to pursue a bigger life, a better life. You chose to have more money, you chose to have more freedom like you’ve made this choice to be here and that choice has to have sacrifice attached to it and you can never forget that because otherwise what you’re doing is you’re chasing a one-sided fantasy of the result without the sacrifice required to get there and obtain it over a long period of time. It’s impossible to do so. Never forget that if you want to play a big game, it’s going to require sacrifice. You’re going to attract challenge. It’s just inevitable part of the process.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
And you’ve got to be willing. It’s not just do I show up to it? It’s like I haven’t got a choice. Are you willing, and I think this is the big question, are you genuinely willing to exchange those things that we’ve talked about so far? We’ve got one more to go, but are you willing to exchange those things we’ve talked about so far for what you are trying to build? And that’s the question you have to answer or be able to answer in order to keep moving forward. And you can ask yourself that question almost every day at times. That question doesn’t go away and your option to be able to opt out anytime you like, go for it.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And it’s not just you and something as came to me as you’re asking that it’s got to be that as a family unit you’re willing to do it as well because I know that Jac, my wife, she runs our events and she’s a part of the business, but she also understands that I was running this business before we got together and when we got together, she probably didn’t realise at the time, but she also signed up for this life too of business ownership. Even though she doesn’t have her name as a director in this business, that comes at a cost too. And it’s not just you listening, are you willing to pay the price? It’s got to be that you and your wife or your partner have to be willing to pay the price together because when we run 10 events a year for example at Pravar, Jac knows that that’s almost one a month that I’m away and that’s the price that it pays to run this business when times get tough and there’s challenging moments through this business, we have to communicate and talk about it, but Jac just knows that there’s got to be a price to pay to be able to navigate that challenge at the time and that’s why we’re able to run a great business and have a great relationship and family life as well.
(31:00):
So it’s also remembering it’s not just us as the business owners who have to be willing to pay the price. You’ve got to make sure that you and your partner and your family understand what you are all signing up to make this business work at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, once you’ve made that choice, I think this lends us right into the third thing we’re going to talk about. Once you’ve made that choice, you’re now going into a space where its responsibility happens. Once you’ve made that choice, you’ve cleared those hurdles of challenge, you’ve decided you’re going to pay the price, you’ve talked it through and everyone signed up to this, then responsibility hits. So it’s not enough just to get challenged and then sacrifice a whole heap of shit in your world to be not normal, all the stuff we just talked about. But now it’s about the weight of obligation. Now it’s not just about you anymore and that’s a huge one because now people depend on you. You’ve now got employees, the employees have got their own obligations and all of it starts to come back to your shoulders. All of it comes back to your ability as a business owner to navigate the challenges, to see the way through it and to actually deliver on the promise or the vision that you had as a business owner when you started.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Correct, and this is probably the biggest thing that weighs heavily on my shoulders at Pravar if I’m honest, is as we’ve got bigger, obviously the fruits of the rewards of the business get bigger, but so too is the responsibilities and we’ve got 15 people directly reporting under in our team, so their whole families are relying on this business to succeed. But we’ve got 135 clients on the books right now that ultimately in the end of the day, Rob is responsible for that. That’s a huge responsibility, but it’s not just those clients, it’s their families and then all their team members and everything. So the amount of people that at Pravar for example, we directly impact are in the hundreds if not thousand, thousands of people by the time you consider the size of their client’s teams, that’s huge. People rely on us, the team directly do, and our clients directly rely on how Rob shows up and the decisions that I make on a day-to-day basis and that responsibility is not lost on me. And that causes me sleepless nights at times because there’s times where I’ve got to make critical decisions around where we are going and what we’re doing and what we’ve got to keep doing to ensure we get the best results for our team and our clients. And so a lot of business owners forget that though. They don’t realise the responsibility that they forget the responsibility they have I think is the most important thing.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
So for you, is it enough to, and I know you are, but be aware of the responsibility and not take it lightly like we talk about all the time, but is it enough of that or have you got a way that you deal with that responsibility because you think about it all the time, nonstop, it would drive you crazy, you’d almost be paralysed. So how do you navigate that responsibility of people depending on you?
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Rob has to show up as the best version of Rob every single day. That’s the most important thing where I have to be, and this is the hardest part of business, is business doesn’t give a shit if you’re having a bad day, it doesn’t care if you’re tired, you’re worn out, you’re stressed, you got personal things going on in your life, got cashflow challenge, whatever it is, doesn’t care. You got to keep showing up. And so this is why at Pravar we’re so big on leadership development and habit improvement to be able to get our clients to be the best version of who they are and how they show up in terms of health and wellbeing and energy and mindset and mental capacity. That’s how I’ve been able to navigate it because of if Rob’s not on the top of his game, then we can’t expect this business to be either. And comes back to that saying is that the fish rots from the head down is that as the leader, everything starts to stop with you and you’ve got to be willing to show up as the best you can. And that’s how I navigate it on a day-to-day, week to week basis.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think as a coach and as coaches and as coaching team, we say the same thing to coaches. It’s game day every day. You can’t pick and choose when you show up for clients and when you’re coaching, it’s the same thing. Business ownership obviously the next level of that, and I think that comes to the next point, which is you can’t walk away either. You don’t get to just walk away. I said before that you make the choice whether you do it or not, but once you’re in and you get to this level of responsibility, you don’t get to just walk away. You are in a sense, you’re on the hook for this regardless. You’re the last person that’s going to get to walk away from this.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
And even if you’ve got systems and team in place, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, absolutely. Nothing’s going to unchain you from the business other than not having the business. That’s the only thing that gets you out of that mode. Like you said, you’re always on and it’s sneaky, but it’s like electricity running through you. You always switched on. Unless someone breaks that circuit, you’ll always have the potential energy in there to throw towards the business. You’ll always be required. That energy’s going to be taken, all of that stuff’s going to happen. So bad days, people leaving or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. It’s still going to be on you and you don’t get to walk away from that just because someone else did or because the market decided something was going to be something that’s not on your plan. It doesn’t always go according to plan.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Going to be dangerous when I say this because there’s a fantasy in the business world that I will have this business that works without me. It’s bullshit. It’s not real unless you genuinely put in a general manager and you take a complete step back. That is one of the biggest fantasies that the market has bought into such a marketing spin. It’s bullshit. Unless you’re willing to put someone in and they take pretty much control of your business, you will not have a business that runs without you. And I even know we used to joke about it all the time, it’s like, alright, Rob’s gone away. What’s going wrong? Whenever I used to experience it all the time, whenever I’d go away the first day of my holidays, I’d be getting phone calls going, Rob, something’s gone wrong. And here I would be on holidays. And remember the first time I took a break and I literally just turned my phone off. Guess what happened on your first day?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah it didn’t go well.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Shit went sideways, didn’t it?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
It did, absolutely it did. And there was nothing you could do about it. No one could have foreseen it. It wasn’t like things were bad, it was just that was guess what time for a challenge, time to deal.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I remember that time I remember just talking about this one is you can’t walk away. I remember that time that we’ve had some funny stories over a period of time. I remember that time where Jac and I went through a really crazy time. There’s been times where we’ve had really great team other times we’re not immune. We’ve had team challenges along the way. And I remember that time Jac and I went away and I was so hanging for a holiday just a long weekend away. And Jac’s like, come on, let’s go down the peninsula. Let’s just get away from this. I’m like, oh yeah, okay, let’s do it. And I remember we headed down on Friday and we pulled up at a winery down in Peninsula and I got a phone call from one of my team members and I was like, they don’t work Fridays, why is he ringing me?
(38:44):
So I answered it and I was literally sitting in the car ready to go and he was like, bang. He’s like, I’m sorry Rob, and I’ve only been here two months, but just letting you know I’m resigning. And I just went, are you fucking serious? Like mate, what are you doing? You knew I was going away for three days. You knew how stressed I was. Couldn’t this a wait till Monday and it was the craziest time. But that just shows that you can have the best intentions, the best plans, but you can’t just walk away from it. Stuff like that happens. You are going to get resignations on holidays, you’re going to get pipelines that fall over when you’re trying to have a break. You’re going to have things that go sideways all the time. This is just business. And you got to learn to deal with that. And I think that’s the message I’m trying to get here is that things go wrong and you can’t just hit timeout so you can have a normal life when you run a business. Business in life is so intertwined.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And as disappointing as it is, and I know you were as angry as it makes you in the moment, no amount of you layering on more anger, more disappointment, more I deserve this break is going to help you through it again. None of that, no one’s going to go, you know what, you’re right. You’ve done enough that may, oh, let’s take that away from you for now. We’ll wait until Monday for that to happen. Or when you get back from holidays, we can deal with it. The demands of the business, it is like having a child. It’s like having a baby in the house. They demand things that you either deal with it and you sort it out or it dies. It’s as simple as that. At the end of the day it will go sideways.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah. Well Jac did say to me at that time, it’s like as soon as I got off the phone and told her what she’s going on, she’s like, well, it looks like the car’s having a sleepover and we’re getting on the piss. So we went, had some lunch and hooked into a fair amount of wine and went back to the hotel after that. Pretty boozed to drown away the shit news that we got. But whatever man, just get up on Monday and get back on the horse.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
You do. And that’s business, isn’t it? It’s the saying, it’s like, well, that’s part of business. You can’t fight it.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I like that analogy you said there with a baby. We’ve got three young kids at the moment. It’s like no matter how you want to live your life as a parent, when we got three young kids, you almost have to live your own life around those kids because that’s the demands of it. And it’s the same in business. It’s business and life is so intertwined when you’re a business owner. You can’t just hit pause on business and go, well, I want to pretend I’m an employee for the next three months and just have my flex and my time and everything that it’s not how it works. You got to run your life around business from time to time.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
You do. Which is why we talk about that concept. We won’t go into it now, but integration versus balance. Balance is bullshit. There’s no such thing. There’s always going to be something out of balance is trying to maintain a balance and that it’s a fair system. It doesn’t work that way. It needs to be done when it needs to be done. And that way it doesn’t go away even when you succeed. I think that’s part of this. Yes, when things are shit, things are shit. Everyone knows that stuff happens. It sucks. But even when things are going well, that responsibility, that ability to show up on you, like you showing up at your best every day. And we do this, you and I talk about it all the time, but showing up as game day every day is hard. There’s a responsibility in that in itself. You’ve got a shit day coming up. Your routine is I go for a walk in the morning. I bet there’s times where you think I’m just going to get in the office and slog this shit out. I don’t want to do it. It sucks. I’m in a bad mood. But you have to step above that. You have to rise above and say, I’m going for a walk. I’m getting out no matter what. I’m going to stick to what it takes for me to show up as best as I can today.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
For sure. And that’s the other side of the equation of business though. And that’s the fun part though, and we’ll get to that in a minute around what’s the trade off of all of this? It just doesn’t sound like we’ve just had a big negative conversation. But that’s the fun part. That’s the challenge that you’ve got to embrace in business ownership is that’s the journey, the personal journey. You’ve got to be willing to go on and that’s the enjoyable part.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
And we can sit here on the podcast and just talk about how great it is all the time and look at what you can get. And if you came and coached at Pravar, you can have the most amazing life in the world. And if we were all social media about it, then that’s probably what 99% of the world’s telling you. But hopefully today’s been a discussion that just makes you think a little bit more. It hopefully shows you what it’s really like and what it is going to take and what is normal in the sense everyone goes through it. You would’ve experienced it listening to this, you would’ve experienced those challenges, you would’ve experienced those questions and the prices you’ve had to pay. But have you really thought about it in the sense of what it’s doing for you and how is it going to make you better?
Speaker 1 (43:35):
I really like what you said there is we did a feature session where I was in where I told the 15 years and I started just rattling off all the problems and challenges that..
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well, let me set it up for the people listening. So what we did was this interview, Rob and I on stage behind us all we had as a slide, and we love our slides when we do events, ask any of our clients, but as we were doing this, there was one slide and all it was was a graph of the growth of Pravar. And we looked at this line and it started off in just going up. It was just a nice steady growth graph that looked like shit, this business has done so well over 15 years. And we started there, but then the whole conversation that went through that was, okay, tell us what happened when this point hit and this next high point and this next high point and the answers you gave as we went through, it wasn’t, well guess what, we signed a mega contract or we picked up 50 clients in one go. It was literally, well, that was really interesting that point because at that time, just before that happened or just as that happened, there was the challenge which you’re now going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
And we got to the end of that and clients and one of the clients in particular is like, oh Rob, you are human. You went through this. And it’s like, yeah man, I run a business too and it’s fucking hard. And so if you are listening you here today, it’s just like we’re trying to normalise this conversation around challenge. And if you are going through challenging times, just know that this is part of the journey. You signed up for this and when you’re going through good times, it’s got to be hard. When you’re going through hard times, it’s going to be hard. And that’s why there’s that saying that says choose your hard, choose the path that you want to go down. And I just know personally, I would not swap this for an instant. My family and I, we would not be living the life that we are living have the amazing business that we’ve got, the fun that we have, which comes with responsibility, the life we’ve got, the house we’ve got, the wealth we’ve built. We wouldn’t have that if we hadn’t have run this business over the last 15 years, but just know that it’s come with sacrifice.
(45:48):
Just know it’s come with challenge. Just know it’s come with the responsibility. You can’t have all that reward without the things that come with it. And I think that’s what you’ve just got to accept that if you want a bigger life, if you want a better life, if you want live this amazing life and have the freedom that you want, you’ve got to accept that this is the reality of what it takes to play at this game. Sport and business is no different. If you want to be elite sports person, this is what it takes. If you want to be an elite business person, this is what it takes. So if you’re listening here today going, yeah, I resonate with some of those stories, just know you’re in the right place and that it’s not that you’re potentially doing anything wrong, it’s just that potentially you’re just going through the normal waves that is business ownership.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, I love it. I’ve got a question for you. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this. I just thought of it then as you were talking. Would you say you live a comfortable life or an uncomfortable life?
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I’m a person that likes structure order routine, and I like things to be in certain places and I think I thrive on that. I strive for that, but I know that I wouldn’t be where I am today if I don’t have a healthy relationship with uncomfort. So even though I do love comfort, I’ve also got a very healthy relationship with uncomfort and I think I thrive on it actually. I thrive on challenge. I thrive on uncomfort and I perform at my best. When I’m in challenging situations, I step up and it shows me what I’m capable of. During those challenging times with my team when COVID hit, it was I look at those moments and go, man, Rob, you went to another level, man, you went to another level and it showed me what I took. So even though I love my comfort and routine, I thrive on challenge and uncomfort. Does that kind of make sense?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
It does. I dunno if it answers the question. There’s no right or wrong answer, but it’s just interesting to think, isn’t it? Would you say you live comfortable or do you live in that state of discomfort and there’s just times where you need to probably do both? I’m just trying to think about how I would answer that. I like the discomfort. I know I’m going to grow. For me, it’s like, well, this is an opportunity to grow and get better. That for me is huge. But yeah, I’d say there’s still probably a propensity to live comfortably is still there. It’s not like you’re saying you’ve got to live under extreme stress all the time, but you’ve got to be able to have that place where you are happy to be uncomfortable. It’s not that you run a million miles from it. You will push and lean into it rather than just run away from it the minute it shows up.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, it’s probably why we’ve got one of our Pravar principles, one of our three is never settle. We’ve got face the facts never settle and make shit. It happen with a dollar sign, unapologetic about making money. It never settle as probably the antidote is the antidote to complacency, which is comfort. And I think that I’m always very wary of complacency and comfort. I’ve seen when clients become complacent and comfortable, what happens? And I think that I’m very wary of, I enjoyed the moment, but I’m very wary of not getting complacent for too long. I’ve seen what happens.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yeah, yeah. No, I understand what you’re saying. That was my off the cuff question for you to probably wrap this one up. I think you answered it very well.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. Today was more just a conversation around just the truth. It’s the truth around what it takes, and I think hopefully we’ve helped you bust some myths, but break through some fantasies, get rid of this idealism around. I’ll have this business, this grandiose life, this business that will operate without me. These are just catch phrases and marketing spins and fantasies that some business people latch onto without understanding the real reality of what it takes. It’s going to be challenged. There’s going to be sacrifice. Don’t underestimate the responsibility that you carry as a business owner, not only to your team, your customers, suppliers and everything. And so this is what it takes to run a great business. So hopefully you’ve taken something from it. If you are feeling like you are not a normal person, not living a good life probably means you’re on the right track.
(50:30):
So just embrace your imperfections and crack on and keep pursuing that amazing life that you’re trying to build for you and your family. If you would like some support in this now, there’s going to be times where you do come up against challenge, you don’t have the answers, and you need some clarity to be able to help you have the right mindset, the right skillset, and develop the right strategy to keep building the business in life that you want. And you are chasing that right now in your journey in business. Then jump across to strategysession.com.au. Fill out the form book in a time that suits us both. Let’s have a great call in terms of where you’re at and where you’re trying to go, and let’s see if coaching with the Pravar Group is the right fit to be able to help you navigate this crazy thing called business and life. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and looking forward to coming back to you next week with another other episode here on The Trade Den. Until then, take care.
(51:20):
Catch you soon.