just to know, tell me more about your vision.
My vision, okay.
My vision really in a nutshell,
I've been in business for like 30 plus years, Wallace, yeah?
So it's a long time to be in business for,
so I would like to think that I've got a little bit
of wisdom that I can share and offer
from 30 years of business, right?
But I think my vision's actually shifted quite substantially
and I think that's probably the same
for most of the listeners here.
Is it, you know what I mean?
Like your vision shifts,
like when your priorities change
and just life changes, right?
So for me, my vision has actually shifted recently.
One of the things that I specialize in is I help founders
to effectively scale up and exit
from their business operations within 12 to 24 months.
So one of the things that I'm super passionate about,
one thing that I've been doing for the last seven years
is I've been living the free life.
What does that mean in a nutshell, right?
So there's no point in me preaching about something
if I've never lived it before, right?
That would be, that would me being a hypocrite, right?
So for the last seven years, I've been a,
you wanna call it a digital nomad
if you wanna call it that, right?
So I've had the opportunity where I basically
had the opportunity to be able to set up my business.
Now I can work wherever I want in the world.
I could be sitting on a beach in Hawaii
with my pina colada and making money on my laptop.
So, but for most people, right?
They have this ideology or this perception reality of,
shit, I would love to do that.
I would love to achieve that, right?
But for some particular reason, right?
Whatever their thought process of,
their ideology of what success looks like
and why they actually, you know,
started a business in the first place is so, you know,
kind of out of place of what they currently do
on a day to day.
So what I do is I show them a different way, right?
Love that.
So for the last seven years,
I've been living in Scandinavia.
I've been living in the Mediterranean.
I've just got back from the UK.
So obviously I have a British accent, as you can imagine.
And most people turn around and say,
why are you, did you ever come back here?
That's a very good question.
But you know, I've got kids as well.
So I've got four kids, two older, two younger ones.
So it was kind of like, you know, like a personal element,
but going back to your question around vision.
So one thing that I know that many people don't know is,
and I don't know if you can relate to this,
but do you know of any businesses,
now say they're an accountancy practice
or they're an attorney and they've been in business,
they've got like 35 years of experience, right?
They're so good at what they do.
Like they're like a well-oiled machine.
Yeah. All right.
But the big challenge is they'll get to their 50s or 60s
and I'll ask them the question.
I'll be like, so tell me,
what's your exit strategy looking like?
And they're like, pause, right?
So interestingly enough,
so less than 48% of people in this world
have some sort of plan, right?
It might be in their head or whatever it might be,
but less than 18% of people that are in business
actually exit from their business.
Wow.
So my vision is to improve those statistics
quite significantly, right?
Yeah.
And I'll tell you the reason why.
So if I'm running an accountancy practice,
I'm an attorney, whatever it is,
and I've been in business that long, right?
I'm obviously shit hot at what I do, right?
But the big challenge, okay, is I'll ask them,
I'm like, so what are you gonna do when you retire
or do whatever it is?
They're like, I just gonna wind my business down.
I'm like, what?
You're just gonna wind your business?
What about your clients?
Oh, you know, they'll find someone.
I'm like, dude, what is the matter with you?
Like, why don't you see your business as an asset?
Like you can actually be making some money
off your business and you're telling me
you just wanna wind it down.
I pity you.
I literally use that word, I pity you.
Because they have this ideology.
They've, you know, this is interesting, right?
Because they're so good at what they do.
They're super passionate about what they do.
They live on the day-to-day basis.
They live in the operations, right?
All the time.
And the big challenge is that they then don't spend
enough time working on the business.
They've been working in it for so many years.
And so they've, it's like kind of,
you've heard this analogy before.
You cannot pull a horse to water and make it drink, right?
You've heard that, right?
Yeah.
Exactly the same scenario, yeah?
So that's my vision, my friend.
I love that, I love that vision.
And it's such a unique vision in itself
because you've had that experience
of running your own businesses
and you've now got this freedom,
this digital nomad life.
And I love the energy and passion that you carry.
I wanna recognize that,
because as you speak,
even through the screen across the pond,
I can feel how passionate you are about this vision
of helping business owners, executives,
make that exit, have that exit strategy.
And that's so huge.
And I would like to ask the question,
the follow up here is,
do you ever approach any of these business owners
that maybe it's not that they're wanting
to dwindle down their business,
but maybe they've become so in love with the business
that it's hard for them to let it go.
And kind of what have you,
you've been, have you seen that in your experience
with the work that you do?
And how have you navigated that?
That's a really good question.
I would probably say that, yes, absolutely.
I can probably have daily conversations
with people like that.
And listen, it is a mindset more than anything else, right?
There's a lot of psychology that goes on, right?
Think about this, right?
You start up a business many moons ago, right?
You've put your blood, sweat and tears into it, right?
It's your baby.
That's what it is. It's your baby.
And so there's this kind of like,
there is a number of things that go in for your mind.
Number one, you have this kind of fear of letting go.
And that's a big fear that tends to come up, right?
But there's also this kind of like,
should we say, not just fear of letting go,
but there's this kind of like, you know,
because I built this, I'm so proud of it.
I don't want someone to take control of it, right?
So there's this sense of like loss of ownership,
loss of control, right? You got it, right?
So you've got this loss of ownership,
this loss of control, but it's also the fear,
the fear of if I make myself redundant from my business,
whether it be to exit, whatever it is,
what the am I gonna do?
It's so good, yeah.
Right? So here's the thing, like,
one of my questions is like,
so I get a lot of people that come to me,
they're like, hey, so I'm thinking about
exiting the business or whatever,
they're like, great, tell me about your succession plan.
They're like, what, what do you mean?
I just wanna, I just want the money.
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's bigger than that, right?
Anyone can sell a business to make money.
But I know that deep down,
it's not about necessarily about money.
Come on.
So some of the leaders that I work with, right?
A lot of founders, right?
I get them to understand not just the vision
that they wanna create,
but also the impact that they want to leave
and the legacy more than anything else.
So it goes back to what is the impact I wanna create
and what's the legacy that I wanna leave, right?
So they may have this, I don't know,
they may have this visualization of,
I wanna do more philanthropy work.
I might wanna go into helping more young entrepreneurs
start their own business or whatever it might be, yeah.
I want them to better get a better understanding
of, okay, you've exit in your business.
You've made yourself redundant.
Now, what the hell are you gonna do now?
Yeah.
So there is this fear of kind of,
so when you've been in business for a long time,
there's this kind of fear of,
you know, retirement is,
it's kind of seen as a bit of a negative thing, right?
When we think of retirement,
I don't know what,
when you think of the word retirement,
what does that mean to you?
You know, you're thinking about the idea of success.
So I'm curious, what is success for you?
Success for me is,
I've kind of given you a little bit of a take on it already,
but for me, because I've been in business,
I'm not driven by money.
I couldn't give a shit about money, right?
My version of success is being able to create a legacy, right?
So good.
I want people to remember me for the right reasons, okay?
To help people with their exit,
to help them to live a much happier, healthier,
more purposeful led life, right?
That's kind of, that is what I would see what success is.
But success to me is also around the impact that I make
and the lives that I change, the value that I give, right?
And value is very subjective, right?
It is.
But ultimately, if I'm also a big fan of excellence, right?
So you might have heard that, right?
So my background is in elite athletics, right?
I used to study and train with Olympic athletes, okay?
So I was kind of like wired into
already kind of like training my mindset
of what excellence was.
I already had a taste of what excellence was.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally makes sense.
And so every morning, every day,
is always making sure that if it's all about the 1%, right?
So what does that mean in layman's terms?
Every day, making sure that your,
and you would have heard this
from a very well-known author called Darren Hardy
called The Compound Effect, right?
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I think back here on my book show.
You've got a great book, right?
Yeah, great book.
And it's so true.
So if you improve your personal growth,
your learning, right?
Whatever it is, okay?
But I'm a big thing on personal growth and learning.
Now, if you were to watch a YouTube video,
listen to a podcast, read a book, right?
And you did that religiously,
every day, your knowledge is gonna go up by 1%.
That's right.
Yep.
So it's kind of like this version of personal growth
and learning, and you're gonna be able to do that.
So it's kind of like this version of personal excellence,
being the best version of yourself,
but moving the needle every single day.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and a vision for yourself.