How Small Improvements (10% Wins) in 7 Critical Categories Can Double Any Business (With Australian Entrepreneur Pete Williams)

Audio Transcription

I have a confession I want to make for all the business coaching members of the thrive nation. Last night I made several regrettable decisions. Did you? I stayed up, but normally I go to bed at 8:30 or nine. Normally I normally I’ll go to the 8:30 at night. A lot of times I’ll go to bed at 9:00 at night, you know, I looked down at my watch and I threw caution to the wind because we were playing pool with Aaron antice, the, uh, the head of Shaw homes, the largest home builder in Oklahoma and Steve Currington and Jonathan Kelly. And so you and yourself or playing pool and my wife’s there and John’s wives there and you’re in your, you’re hanging out. Wife’s there. And I looked down at my watch and I said, you know what? I’m going to throw caution to the wind.

I’m going to play pool until 10. Last night I went to bed at 10:30. Oh Gosh, and I have had this, this feeling of a regret, blankets, moral, a dissonance, and I feel like right now I feel like right now to me, not that it is, but I feel like it’s probably 5:30 in the morning right now. Sometimes I have that feeling and I feel like I went to bed closer to 11. Yeah. And I think to myself, why in the world? Why in the world? But I stay up to 10:00. I know. Why was that you were dominating my man. Think you went four games in a row. Well, think that to balance out the four games I lost. No, to me, I don’t. I’m just thrive nation to our next guest. I share that because our next guest, we called him, he had to call him at a different time. For him it was a different time because he’s from Melbourne, Australia, Melbourne. His name is Pete Williams and Pete Williams is kind of a big deal. Um, he’s a podcast who’s interviewed Robert Greene, the author of 48 laws of power. Come on, he’s interviewed Michael Gerber from the e myth. That’s right. He’s interviewed Tim Ferriss and he is a very successful entrepreneur in his own right, so now that he further ado our exclusive interview with Pete Williams, the Australian entrepreneur, this guys built several multimillion dollar companies. You’re going to love this interview.

All right. Thrive nation. Back to the thrive time. Show on your radio and podcast. Download in the hits. Keep coming on the show. Hey, do you realize that we have. How many podcasts are there in the world? Will out of the Wall Street Journal, said a couple of years back, there was 530,000 podcasts in the world and that’s a couple years back, right? And I, I believe now the estimates are over 600,000 people are consistently podcasting at some level. I’ve got some really good news. This justin, this just in given that Gimme, that Gimme that you try again. This guy here, me do it again. This just. Thank you. That’s a good thing. Now you’re on. Now you’re on point. We were the number one downloaded podcast of all the podcasts on itunes. Yes. Again, last Friday, last Friday. The entire day. Yes. The entire day. So again, why do we know that? Because we stock, we’re obsessed all day because we have no value on the world and the world outside of our business success because that’s where we get.

All right, so we on today’s show, as a result of having a lot of great listeners out there, uh, we get to have great guests and so we have Pete Williams on the show and for the listeners out there who aren’t familiar, um, he’s kind of a big deal, kind of a big deal and uh, although you never really know what your read on the interwebs, whether it’s true or not that I, I, I’ve read that our next guest is the cofounder of numerous businesses across varying industries from telecommunications to ecommerce and he made a name for himself at the age of 21 when he sold Australia’s version of Yankee stadium, the Melbourne cricket ground for under $500. I don’t even know what that means. So Pete Williams, welcome to the show and please help me sort out what that means means

you’re doing great. Fantastic. Good day today. Tell us about this. This, this, this stadium transaction. I, I read that and I’m going, what does that mean? Does that mean it’s, it’s a pretty crazy story. It’s a few years old now. But um, I, um, when I finished university, I actually lived in Florida, Florida for a while and was working over there at athlete’s foot having a great time medical, the usual crazy love story. And then the visa ran out and I got kicked out of America. So came back home to Australia with the plans of getting my business coaching stuff together and then flying back to the US and living happily ever after. And during that time, while I was back in Australia, I worked at another athlete’s foot store that had just opened up. So I was kind of helping get that store off the ground. And I was reading books behind the candidates.

It was quite slow. It was always opening up, not a lot of foot traffic. So I was reading books upon the cantor and one day I was reading a book that told story of a guy from Brooklyn, um, I actually think it was from Jersey actually be bought all the timber that was part of the Brooklyn Bridge Walkway back in the 19 eighties and word around the campfire is he made a, about $2,000,000 selling little certificates up with the history of the Brooklyn Bridge and an inch by inch square that timber he got on Johnny Carson’s light show and a whole bunch of stuff. And it was a really cool idea. So I started thinking, how can I just rip that idea off and replicated here in Australia, right? Yeah. And the Melbourne cricket ground, which as you said, is our version of Yankee stadium. It’s 100,000 seat football and cricket stadium.

So it’s massive here in Australia. And, and uh, the part of the standard had just got demolished for a renovation. And I remember going with my dad to watch ozzy rules, footy and cricket and all the crazy sports that you guys don’t have over there. And sitting on the on really hard wouldn’t say it’s so I thought I’m going to take that idea and replicated and made a few phone calls from the record company that was doing the demolition. A bought a whole bunch of timber, but they also had carpet. Now I know that sounds even weirder and stranger, but I’m the Melbourne cricket club has a really well known and prestigious members area, which is like a 50 white list to become a member. So I became a member of this club. You get to go to any event that the grant as part of membership and it’s pretty prestigious, but the carpet in the dining room and the bar was really, really ugly but also really famous.

It had the crest of the um, the club on there. So I was like, oh, done. Bought that over the phone as well. And then made a series of frames up with a photo of the MCG. A piece of this really ugly but famous carpet, a little plaque outline in the history of the MCG. And then read a press release 21 year old cells the MCG for under 500 bucks because the frames were $499 and that just went bananas here in Australia. Got so much exposure and so much media attention. It was just a really fun project that I’m really was the kickstart for my entrepreneurial endeavors sense. And uh, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun and still get to tell the story and learn a lot through that project.

So now you’ve, you’ve moved on since the age of 21 now just so you know, I’m trying to one up all of our guests. That’s a way to build friends really. And it’s an American thing. We, we went up each other, but when you’re in a really nice way to get attention, you know, it was like I actually got thrown out of college, the college that my wife was attending at the time. So you got deported, right? Because your visa expired and I got kicked out of college. That kind of separated from my, a love interest from oral Roberts University and for recording a, a parody song about the school’s president that he did not think was as funny as I did. And so I, uh, I think you played it on every student’s in phone recording part where I cannot take credit there and Mr p dot c dot. So one of our, a college roommate guys, he put that on the student voice mail system and post it out every day. So no matter how many times you would the message it kept showing up and they couldn’t figure out how he was doing it and it was pretty awesome. So we, we share and being excommunicated from our love interest there for awhile. So now it sounds like your story ended actually in the love story that you ended up with your wife. The girl I was chasing, we, uh, went out separate ways.

Oh No. Was it the crying game where you found out that she was actually a man, like it got weird or is it just ain’t got weep and not that we’re good. Okay, good. Okay. Sorry, I just have to dip my toe in the Australian water and I come back, bring it back onto vegemite and things related to Australian business. So Pete, he wrote a new book here called cadence and you talk about how small improvements, little 10 percent wins in seven critical categories can double any business. And uh, when first off, when in America, when I hear the phrase double a business, there’s two things I think of. One, I think of the Saturday night live, a parody of the Chicago Bulls were. The super fans would say that both double stuffed bears. So that’s where I think at first then I think of really, really is it possibly to double. So you have the floor, my friend. Tell me about this new book cadence and how the small improvements 10 percent wins can double a business.

Sure. It does sound a bit ridiculous and it does sound so cliche and styles letter and hypey, which I completely get that. The thing with this framework is that take the live feed out in the wine business and it is all about just getting 10 percent improvements. So it’s the compound effect of small wins in critical areas that compound to give you the doubling of your profit in your business. Could you walk us through, maybe because your book, by the way, for the listeners out there, it’s jam packed with actionable your content. So if you get the book cadence, a tale of fast business growth, we’ll put a link to the Amazon where you can purchase it on Amazon. I will put a link to the on today’s show notes. All the westerners go out there and bilateral listeners. They just basically buy the books that we recommend and I’ve read the book, went through the book action. Lot of specific things you can do, actions you can take. Can you walk us through some of the action items are actionable things you can do from the book? Yeah, absolutely. I’d love to do is give a bit of a backstory to give some context to it, if that’s cool with you guys. I love. I’m an Australian. I love telling stories and sharing a camp fire stories and things from the APP back walk about. Yeah, you bet. Let’s go walk a bit. So basically after the whole mcj venture that we spoke about, I, um, started the telco group, which is the most obscure thing to fall into. I’m not technical, I’m not a phone ticket such I’m a marketing guy and what we found is that, you know, this is 15 years ago or so when Google and the Internet really making a massive wave, uh, here in Australia and people were dumping the yellow pages or the white pages and going to google to find solutions to that problem.

So were you kind of realize that, okay, the Telco space, you know, selling phone systems and that sort of equipment to businesses was a massive gap that no one was really earning online in Australia. So we started this business purely as a sales and marketing company that just happened to sell phone systems. We weren’t tickets as I said, so we started the business to actually generate leads, make the sale over the phone and then effectively hand the phone system to a subcontractor to go and install for the customer. So we were almost basically making a sale and then giving the client or competitor. Wow. So you, which you, how did you think of that idea? I mean you’re, you, you seem like you have had success like myself in different industries and I’m just curious how your mind works because I feel like we are, you are my Australian brother from another mother. Uh, I feel like you, you, you study things and you figured out how they can apply to you. I just want to, I want to get into your head. How are you? How’d you come up with that

kind of idea? She had dumb luck really. Now I will with the MCG project because again, like I think the worst in the worst injury my hands I’ve ever had was a paper cut about 15 years ago. Like I don’t do manual labor. So when the MCG project was going, I couldn’t make the frames. I had no idea how to actually make the frames. So just by sheer luck, the way that business model was set up was,

all right. Thrive nation. When we return our exclusive interview with Pete Williams in Australian entrepreneur who’s had massive success, and we’re going to break it down his newest book, cadence, this guys interviewed Tim Farris. Michael Gerber, folks. He’s kind of a big deal. Stay tuned. It’s our exclusive interview with Pete Williams about his newest book, cadence. Check them out online. Find them online that it’s Pete Williams right here on the thrive time. Show on your radio. Stay to negative emotions. Dominate [inaudible] DOT com. Will Not take your talk about me. I can take that. Abuse is the truth. Either make that school boards to my mentor, my yoga horseback. I wasn’t young.

All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the conversation. It’s the thrive time show on your radio. No, Eric Chop. On today’s show, we’re interviewing a guy by the name of Pete Williams Williams from Melbourne, from Melbourne, Australia. For the people out there who are not familiar with Pete Williams. This guy is one of the top podcasters in Australia. He’s had Michael Gerber on the show. He’s had a Robert Greene, the 48 laws of power. He has had a tim ferriss. The author of the four hour workweek on his podcast, he’s had some massive guest, big names right there, and uh, we’re interviewing hinders can we had to actually call them in advance to interview him because he’s in Australia different time than we have, but I wanted, I wanted it to happen to, to Sean’s mindset on this and to Jason’s mindset. Sean is a business coach and Jason is the Super Manager of the elephant in the room.

We have multiple stores and he manages the managers. So guys don’t want to. I want to get your take on this. When we interview people that are sort of a big deal. Shawn, do you, do you like having guests on the show that are kind of a celebrity guest? Does that matter to you? Do you, would you rather hear interviews with people that own small businesses? What’s your, what’s your preference? I just want to get your take on this. Uh, I think we have a good mixture of both, but having, uh, having people like Jim stovall or you know, Jonah, Jonah Berger Berger on like those podcasts are powerful wisdom. They have a deep, deep background and a whole set of accomplishments that we can all learn from. So I think those guys are huge, but then also bringing it back down from their massive success to, you know, joe plumber out there who really wants to grow his small business and it’s just looking for that next step where you guys are in our coaches meetings on, uh, in the mornings at 6:00 AM, where we teach our coaches, you know, we’re teaching the coaches business principles and systems and I know most people don’t get a chance to be in those kinds of meetings.

They don’t get a chance to be surrounded by, uh, the Aaron antice, you know, largest home builder in Oklahoma. They’re not around the top optometrist in their state. Dr Zellner, they’re not around people that owned banks. I’m not around people that, um, how does that impacted you, Jason would being in a environment where the average person in that room, the room is successful? Oh, it’s been fantastic. Uh, one of my favorite things about meeting anybody who has, you know, anybody who’s self made, they’ve grown their own businesses watching, they’re just like grind and work ethic because I like to think that I have a good work ethic on my, on my own, but seeing somebody else’s who was just like worlds above mine is just super motivating. And that is why I love having guys like Pete Williams on the show because again, I admire the grind.

I think a lot of people today say they love. I played a video at our elephant in the room meeting on Friday for our staff. We’re td jakes was being interviewed by Steven furtick and it’s hysterical, but a td jakes explains when most people will put a post on facebook or instagram that says on my grind that they usually post that when after they’ve woken up at like 10:00 PM or 10:00 AM or they think that’s part of their grind. Ten am, they overslept. They’re not getting anything done and they’ve worked hard for one day in a row and they’ll put a Hashtag on my grind. They’re looking for a fainting couch and grinding is all about sustainable effort. It’s about implementing sustainable effort where you just are grinding, but you’re also implementing proven system. You’re not. You have to work hard mentally and hard in terms of just your effort, your physical work.

You’re and I want to get Jason’s take on this because you manage people and can you talk to me about the mental effort that goes into working hard because you could love people willing to work hard and I was. I’ve certainly was guilty of this early on in my career where I worked a lot of hours and I put in effort, cold calling, those kinds of things. I remember at one point I had cold called for months in a row and had never listened to one of my calls I made when I ran dj connection. So I was making calls for months, but I never listened to my calls and I had never listened to my eye and it never listened to my calls and I wasn’t using a script that worked. And so after about six months I thought, well, I gotta pray. Listen to my calls and they were so awful. Then I go, there’s lucky man. I’m, I’m, it’s a miracle. I even booked anything ever. My calls are terrible and this script doesn’t make sense, so I want to get into that because you’re really good, Jason, about applying mental effort, you know, and it kind of thinking strategically on how to help the company and the team. Can you talk to you about the mental effort that goes into managing as many people as you manage?

Oh Man. So many levels. I start mine off with. I get up no later than 4:30 in the morning every day and then I have to game plan what I’m going to do and find the most strategic way of going about getting everything done because one of the things I hate more than anything is having something on my checklist that’s not done by the end of the day. Here we go. And so I just go through my, my action items. I know where I need to be at, what times I know who I’m going to be speaking with. If I’m speaking with anybody and I just. It took me a long time to learn this move, but I have to take emotion out of the equation and just think what’s gonna be best for me, what’s going to be best for my future, what’s going to be best for the company that I serve? So exciting to hear him say those things.

Yeah, that’s awesome. So thrive nation, uh, our, our next, our guests that we’re going to go back to his interview here in just a second. Pete Williams is a grinder just like you, but he’s a grinder in Melbourne, Australia. It turns others grinders all over the planet. So if you want to hear a success story and somebody who’s a grinder just like you, you are in luck. Now back to our exclusive interview with Pete Williams from Melbourne, Australia.

So we started this business purely as a sales and marketing company that just happened to sell phone systems. We weren’t tickets as I said, so we started the business to actually generate leads, make the sale over the phone and then effectively hand the phone system to a subcontractor to go and install for the customer. So we were almost basically making a sale and then giving the client to a competitor. Wow. So you, which, how did you think of that idea? I mean, what, you’re, you, you seem like you have had success like myself in different industries and I’m just curious how your works because I, I feel like we are, you are my Australian brother from another mother. Uh, I feel like you, you, you study things and you figuring out how they can apply to you. I just want to, I want to get into your head. How are you, how did you come up with that kind of idea?

She had dumb luck really well with the [inaudible] project because again, like I think the worst in the worst injury my hands would ever had was a papercut about 15 years ago. Like I don’t do manual labor. So when the MCG project was going, I couldn’t make the frames. I had no idea how to actually make the frames. So just by sheer luck, the way that business model was set up was obviously there was a press releases and all the marketing around the MCG frames is I’d make that sale over the phone. Some would send a vaccine with an order order over the phone and then I’d call up the local picture framers who had a whole bunch of the carpet in photos sitting there and say, Hey John, I’ve got two more orders, can you please make two more frames up, hit then make the frames at Cola Korea, billy, there’s two frames ready to be dispatched.

He’d go to pick them up from the frame and deliver them. So I literally set the, making the styles and doing the marketing. I didn’t do any actual creation or delivery of those MCG memorabilia frames and that was kind of just more out of luck than actual strategy. But then I’ll kind of like, oh, this is kind of a nice business coaching model. So when we started the telco, my two business partners in that business had a little bit of experience in the Telco world. Uh, and then we kind of applied that same lazy business model or strategic. You can look at it and went, that’s how we started the telco and that we focused on sales and marketing and then at source implementation, but it causes a problem quickly.

Thrive nation. Stay tuned for more of our exclusive interview with Pete Williams. Do you want to save money on your office and printer supplies? Jeff? I do. And if you’re out there and you agree with me, then you need to get ahold of onyx imaging.com right now. If you order your office and printer supplies from onyx imaging, you’re going to receive a free printer, copier clay, a free printer copier. Tell us a printer supply.com.

Attend the world’s best business workshop led by America’s number one business coach for free by subscribing on itunes and leaving us an objective review. Claim your tickets by emailing is proof that you did it and your contact information to [email protected]. All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time

show on your radio and podcast download. On today’s show, we’re interviewing Pete Williams, who Pete Williams, Pete Williams, he’s from Australia, Melbourne, Australia. Throughout his life he has built several multimillion dollar companies and, uh, he has a very, very successful podcast, one of the most successful podcasts in Australia. He’s interviewed Robert Greene, the bestselling author of 48 laws of power and mastery. He’s also interviewed Tim Ferriss, the best selling author of the four hour work week, one of the early stage investors and facebook and Uber, a Tim Ferris. Just look up Tim Ferriss, many would say the most successful podcaster of all time. Tim Ferriss, author of the four hour work week, Tim Ferriss. He’s also interviewed the absolutely legendary entrepreneur and author Michael Gerber. Michael Gerber is the author of the e myth book series. So if you’ve ever read the e myth book series, or Never Heard about the e myth book series, Michael Gerber is the author of that book.

And, uh, our main, our next guest, Pete Williams, has actually had Michael Gerber on the show. So he’s a big deal and he’s talking about his journey to success in his new book cadence. He’s also teaching how you can double any business by just making small 10 percent improvements. Just little, small, 10 percent improvements in different areas can ultimately double the size of a business. How do you do it? What’s he talking about? Stay tuned. It’s the thrive time show on your radio. Our interview with Pete Williams, it appears as though business is fun for you. It appears as though this is a life giving thing. Um, can you, can you talk to me a. can you give us kind of a look into your personal life and so that maybe most people do not know about you?

Yeah, sure. Yeah. I think business has always been my thing. My mom loves to tell this story and she tells it way too much. Is it? When I was about three years old, apparently I’ve got crayons and drew arrows all the way down the hallway and my mom being the wonderful and that she was before she scolded me and made me go walk about and kicked me out of the half. She asked me, why did you draw arrows down the hallway? And apparently at three years old, my answer was so, you know, how to get to my office. Perfect. Now I don’t know where that came from. My mom was a math teacher. My Dad was in logistics. It’s not really in the bloodline. Uh, but somehow mom tells the story that I’ve always kind of been that way. Um, and that had that little weird, crazy Ben, you know, uh, you’ve also interviewed a lot of people that have kind of that weird, crazy bent. I’m Robert Greene as an example for those out there who aren’t aware. His book mastery is, I would say right now, my second favorite book I said think and grow rich is my number one. And Robert Greene mastery is my second, uh, his book, 48 laws of power, I would say was the most, uh, colon cleansing book I’ve ever read. It was like, it was like a deep Cohen Glands. I mean, that book was like refreshing, but also like really just like, I don’t know if I want to do this, don’t make me feel bad and good with how many specific candid, just how life is. So can you talk to me about interviewing Robert Greene? What was, what was that like? I mean, was that a, a fascinating experience for you or just talk to me about the relationship with Robert Greene in his books.

Yeah, he’s fantastic. He’s a tend to a bit of a friend now, which is nice. It was intimidating because he is a master in so many ways and he’s very well research and that for me, the amount of research I did for that interview, um, you know, obviously read all these books and I think I listened to probably five or six other interviews that he had done to kind of figure out what questions he hadn’t been asked. So there was a lot of time spent trying to figure out, okay, how do I make an impact for him? So it’s worth his time and it’s not just cliche, you know, click, click responses, uh, how do we actually, you know, really offer value to the listeners that is different. You know, everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people know Robert and have probably heard him interviewed before and went, okay, well I want to get something different.

So there was a lot of time spent trying to do the research because, you know, he’s the King of research. I had lunch with him last time I was in la a or she’d be about 18 months ago and he was I think three years into a new book, which isn’t even really released yet. Like he spends years, like year date tape into his content. It’s, it blew my mind. I’m like, man, like this is 18 months ago. I think at the time he said I was, he was about 80 percent the way through the book and that was 18 months ago and still not finished. Like it’s just intense. Um, which means obviously as a raider and consumer who’s content you are getting the best cliff notes, like you are getting well research and it comes through and it is just awesome. Is a really, really great guy. Um, but uh, as he is racist, yeah.

What I do is I’m going to, when we put today’s show up there, I’m gonna have Eric Chop take photos and he’ll put it on today’s show notes, but I have all of Robert Greene’s 48 laws of power written on my wall in the man cave and said we’ll make sure we hashtag you guys okay. And so you can just tell Robert there’s a crazy guy in the center of the universe and Tulsa, Oklahoma who’s obsessed with the book 48 laws of power. And I want to get back into your book here. It’s better than having the auto deduction on your wall. That would have been a bit more awkward. Yeah. Know the art of seduction. I had to scrub the walls and take that down. Thanks for bringing that up. We’ve already moved on. Awkward. Awkward. Okay. Alright. So moving on. Mental Colon cleanse. So this is the, the next business coaching question I have here for you. You know, you seem to be motivated from a place that most people can’t relate to. A Kanye West refers to it as dragon energy apparently likes the drag energy of Donald trump, but it’s this like motivation to, to you, just you, you seem to be excited about the way life is. What motivates you to do what you do? What keeps you? I mean, you’re having so much success. What’s motivating you to write a book like Kayden’s?

Yeah, appreciate it. I think it’s probably, I guess a combination of a few things I’ve mentioned before. My Mom’s a math teacher, so I’m guessing the teacher vibe is in my blood. The entrepreneur ship stuff isn’t, but the teacher stuff is so I just really like kind of sharing the framework that we learnt that sort of turned out businesses around and be able to say, here’s what we’ve done. Let’s share it. Like I don’t want to be the guru at the top of the mountain, you know, with crazy sales letters and courses and all that sort of jazz. It happens online screaming at people. Uh, I just to say he’s a book that really influenced Ad Business and I’ve shared the framework with friends and, and people in my sort of close circles and it’s really helped them as a way to kind of get clarity on what to do because I think a lot of business owners don’t know what to do every day when they opened their doors.

And hopefully this framework you’ve given them, that roadmap says that there’s also that like, you know, as I said, like I can’t make stuff with my hands. I’m not an artist. I’m not a, I can’t sit there and build stuff in the backyard. Like, you know, I’ve got a five year old and there’s no chance in hell I’m going to build him a cubby house because it will fall down and kill him. So this entrepreneurship business thing is about as close to creativity’s. I can actually get like I love, here’s an idea, let’s see if we can make this happen. And I guess it’s my creative outlet in a business sense and that’s how I kind of look at it and treat it. And it’s, um, it’s been a fun journey. Oh, here we go.

Here we go. You don’t want to be. You don’t want me to climb the mountain.

Thrive nation. When we returned, CSI will take us back into his Dojo of Mojo and we will continue interviewing Pete Williams. Kind of a big deal in Australia. The best selling author, the top podcaster, that is Pete Williams. If you’re out there saying to yourself, you know, during the break, I’m looking for something proactive during the break, I want to make some serious changes. In the next 30 seconds, go to [inaudible] dot com, the [inaudible] dot com. And schedule a free consultation with a proactive accountant. Stay on top of your taxes. Get proactive with your account, and go to hood CPAS that come today.

We’re now entering the Dojo of Mojo and the thrive time show.

Welcome back to your daily Dojo of Mojo. Joe Joe.

My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former U s SBA entrepreneur of the year, and our next guest really is not in that category. He is one of the top Australian entrepreneurs of the year. He is one of the top Australian podcasters. Our next guest has interviewed Robert Greene, the best selling author of 48 laws of power. He has interviewed Tim Ferriss, one of the number one podcasters of all time, the selling author of the four hour work week in early stage investor in facebook and Uber. What never heard of it. Tim Ferris, I mean, this guy’s interviewed Ray Dalio, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s huge. He’s a bestselling author. You can find his book four hour work week everywhere. This guy has interviewed Michael Gerber, the best selling author of the e myth book series, and now he is on our radio show and podcast today. He’s talking about how you can make small improvements to increase the size of your business quickly.

He’s talking about making small 10 percent improvements in seven key areas of your business that will allow you to actually double the business within a course of a year if you just make 10 percent small incremental improvements and these specific seven areas of your business. So now back to our exclusive interview with Pete Williams and for those of you just tuning in, we’re going back to some audio here were Dr z is entering into his Dojo of Mojo and attempting to bring Pete Williams into his Dojo of Mojo Mountain. Man. It’s an incredible, an incredible dialogue and exchange. You don’t want to miss out. Here we go. Oh, here we go.

Here we go. You don’t want to be on top of the mountain. You don’t want me to climb the mountain, find the cane and walking to find you to get the answers, to snatch the pepper from your heart. But yet you keep the secrets.

One thing that I want to know of all the 10 percent I can change. What’s the most important?

MMM.

Interesting.

I climbed the mountain. I found the case. I’m not. I should play the music so you can get. You can do the old Chinese.

A little bit of annoyance on skype. They’re a little bit of a delay, but I’ve climbed the mountain. I found you. You’re sitting in a lotus position and you got your legs crossed or hands. I don’t know, they’re in the upward dog during the sleeping bear, sleeping bears my favorite bottle. Sit there, he’s the quarter. You’re sleeping and I find you. And I poked the bear and I say, hey bro, what’s up? And then you tell me what’s the most important 10 percent I can do, chuck, one of those really annoying gifts. No Dude. Oh please. This is the thing. So what this is, this is the breakdown. This is the cool thing with this, um, this framework is that in any business, whether you’re a retail store and accountant, you’re a furniture manufacturer or you run a commerce. There are seven things that drive profit in your business. Come on. And I’m not talking seven. Well, seven sins or seven, everything. It really annoys this number seven because it sort of seems so cliche, but it’s a great number. Forty to 49. I mean, come on, you got, it’s got a wonderful number. You know, come on the days that I’m not, but, but it’s overused, cliche. But anyway, so there’s seven things that drive your profits in a business. So they’re suspects. If you look at the retail store example, this is how many people walk into a retail store.

That’s she suspects, okay, you’ve got your prospects. If you were a shoe store, how many people actually put up their hand? Say, I am seriously a potential customer focusing time on and talking to differently, and these are the people who try on a pair of shoes. You’ve got your conversions. What percentage of people will actually try on a pair of shoes? Open up that wallet, give you the credit card and go charge me tag josh and you might talk to me. Then you’ve got average item price. What is the average price of the items we sell across your store? You’ve got your shoes, you’ve got your socks, you’ve got installs, you’ve got cleaner, you have a range of products. What’s your average item price? Then you’ve got artists for sale, you know? Would you like fries with that? How many people buy a pair of shoes and also buy a pair of socks or buy a pair of shoes and an insole to swap out to keep and increase the law.

The life of their shoes is a shoe salesman. Me Coming back out. I love it. I love it. I love it, right? Yeah. That’s it. Transactions per customer. How often do these people come back and buy from you again and what’d you have in place to automate and systemize that? Then live in number seven is your margins. What’s your overall margin than your business? Now, I’m guaranteeing you listening right now. Going, yeah, those seven things. I’ve heard them before that it’s just boring. It’s nothing new. Yeah. Great, but the thing is, yeah, those things aren’t overly new for a lot of people. I think most people don’t really identify the difference between suspects and prospects and that’s a massive shift in how you talk and how you communicate to somebody, but the biggest thing here is, as you said before, is that these seven things, if you increase each of those by only 10 percent, if you increase your conversion rate from 15 percent to 16 point five percent, a 10 percent boost. If you can increase your average Ireland’s presale from one point, one autumn’s to one point two, one items, again, really small adjustments, correct. What I’m trying to relate to. These things don’t run a mechanics agencies. The compound effect is the bottom line of your business will double your profits, will double with seven small incremental 10 percent wins. And that my friends is the mind shift mindset shift and the thing that will really transform the way you operate and work on your business.

You, you, um, you’re, uh, a person who appeared, I think you think deeply on a complex subject and you seem to do a very good job of simplifying that, you know, making you about it to a level where you can then simplify it in, in teaching. I think that’s what teaching is, is making things actionable and relatable and under understandable. What is your process like for writing a book like this? What, what is your process like? Do you, uh, go up to the mountain and then you, obviously you leave when you’re done with the book, but I mean, do you go up to the mountain and you got to seclude yourself? Do you do to Robert Griffin method where apparently, uh, you obsess on a subject for three consecutive years? I mean, what is your process for writing a book process, process process? Well, this one was interesting. It was about two and a half years because I’ve spent my day to day running my own businesses, like I’m not a full time author so I can’t kind of go and hide in a cave for three months because I’m guessing my staff had run a buck and a comeback and you know, it’d be very, very different.

So this one was interesting. It’s a parable, so it’s a business story and it’s based on a true story. So it’s based on a box store which was literally across the road from our office in our building and the way we run our companies and the stories about a boxer who’s struggling to grow and starts training an athlete. His first iron man triathlon, which I did when I was 29 years old, and the stories is basically at 20 weeks of him coaching this athlete who is Ironman triathlete. I’m athlete coaches, the business owner, the store owner on how to apply these seven levers to his business. So it’s based on a true story. So this happened seven or eight years ago and so the book was a bit easier to ride because it was based on a true story of candidates, was able to bullet point out, okay, this is the order of how the conversations went, here’s the order of how things went and obviously added a few bit of bit of extra sort of juice to the story to make it engaging and interesting and valuable.

So I kind of had this really rough outline of what the story was going to be because it was a true story. And then, um, through a couple of mutual friends, found a fantastic editor who worked on probably one of my favorite business books, which is also a business parable called built to sell by John warrillow. Amazing book template to put that on. The show notes built to sell or listeners are voracious readers and buyers of booker ration. So I’m putting on the show notes, paranas there early. I’m like, can you share the title? That book one more time? I want to get that on the show notes built to sell back to you. So I found um, the team will, the, the, the editor who worked on John’s book, uh, and it basically gave her the, the crux of the book. He’s like the general, like branches to the tree and she was able to put the color on there and the lady, she sort of helped build the characters and build a story element that we made it really, really engaging. So it’s about a two and a half year period, just purely because I’ll, you know, I would put it down and then, you know, I’ve been working in the business for whatever particular reason.

Then a month later pick it back up and go again. So it was a slow process for me purely because I had real world businesses, like I’m in the trenches doing the actual stuff I talk about. Um, so it was really fun process. It was very different. It’s very, but I had someone help me sort of add the color and the engagement to the story and it’s not that blend traditional business book, which it started out as and then I went, this is not gonna work and then pivoted into this business coaching story. Now I want to talk to you about stoicism because this is something that I think that a lot of people underestimate the importance of. I mean you, you’ve had your, in the past, you’ve had tim ferris on as a guest, you had ryan holiday on as a guest. You had Robert Greene on as a guest, people who are openly in favor of stoicism, which is basically having the courage to accept what you can’t control and focusing on what you can and not get into upper down. I mean being consistent and that stoic mindset. Do you also share in the stoic mindset of some of your past guests, Tim Ferriss, Ryan holiday, Robert Green? Is that your mindset or how do you stay emotionally engaged in so many different businesses? Because there’s got to be something horrible happening every single day and something great happening. Stay tuned. It’s the thrive time. Show on your radio.

Three, two, one broadcasting live from the center of the universe, presenting the world’s only business school without the BS with optometrist and Entrepreneur, Dr Robert Zellner and us Sba entrepreneur of the year, Clay Clark. Get ready to enter the thrive time. Show on Talk Radio, 1170, broadcasting from the box and the topic today, thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. During this next segment, I am interviewing Pete Williams about his newest book called cadence. You might say to yourself, who is Pete Williams? Well, Pete Williams is a very, very successful Australian entrepreneur. He has one of the top podcasts in all of the planet, and especially over there in Australia. He’s sort of a big deal over there and the kangaroo country. Now. This guy is actually interviewed. He’s actually one of the top podcasters in his country and he’s interviewed Robert Greene from a 48 laws of power. He’s interviewed Tim Ferriss, the best selling author and podcaster of the four hour work week fame. Um, he’s interviewed Michael Gerber from the e myth revisited series and he has a new book called cadence. So now that any further ado, my interview with Mr Pete Williams from across the pond. How do you stay emotionally engaged in so many different businesses? Because there’s got to be something horrible happening every single day and something great happening everyday. I mean Dr Z, his auto auction, we’ll sell a thousand cars on any given Friday and there’s got to be something bad happened and every week for him and good. The good, the bad. Talk to me about you. Do you embrace the stoic mindset? Talk to me about your philosophy.

I do my best. Yeah. Look, I’ll have bought Ryan’s book, the daily Stoic and I, I try and read that daily and journaling the daily journal every day. Again, don’t do it religiously, pardon the pun. Yet I try and do it as much as I can and yeah, I think I do try and live that. I think as entrepreneurs it is a great operating system because as you rightly pointed out, there is stress, you know, you have staff who do some silly things, you have customers that it said you have to deal with and know the stoicism. It gives you that perspective to step away and go, okay, let’s, let’s have some context here. Let’s sort of not be so tied into this that your business is a separate living, breathing thing. It is not you as the business owner and I think a lot of small business owners, particularly when they’re struggling and don’t have a framework or a roadmap to follow, they really do tie that business a success to their emotional and personal success and that is a massive skill set. You need to actually have that bright because you know, my wife is not entrepreneurial at all. What you ask her, what I do, she has no bloody idea.

That’s a really good right, because I come home and when I’m not in my office working like we don’t talk business, she hasn’t asked me how my day was. She doesn’t sort of engaged in what happened at work because she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand it, doesn’t care, and that’s been really good for me. So that’s a very nonconscious act of stoicism that actually happens because my wife is not engaged in the business, should be to take the profits and spending on Louis baton, but she doesn’t actually want to get involved in what actually generates that, you know, she’s happy with the end sausage. He doesn’t want to know what goes into it and that’s been really good for me. And then she knew that before she met me, I was crazy like this beforehand and it’s been a real driver for our relationship and for my business success because I have that cutoff and for those who don’t have that, stoicism can provide that and I think that is one of the massive benefits of trust.

I have a question for you and if you want to plead the fifth and said clay, now the answer, I’ll tell you the answer now and I put the cream on it. If you put the cream on it for three weeks, it’ll fix your problem.

Right. This is worldwide. Well, that’s my move to get out of any awkward situation. I go. Can I shoot you my rationale? Welcome. No, here is. Here is the tough question I want to ask you and again, you can plead the fifth if you don’t know Gimme. Some gimme, some done, done, done. Well, I guess so many of the entrepreneurs out there, they leave. They get into the the world of entrepreneurs so they want to start a company because they love the idea of time freedom, financial freedom, and then there’s crazy folks like Dr z and I were between the two of us, you know we’re involved in now 14 multimillion dollar brands. A Z is he actually bought a bank at the bottom at the worst time. Whereas he bought a bank. He bought a bank here right before the economy collapsed where our county were out chasing cows and pasture literally right before the economy crashed.

Got It. I never actually chased one, but I chased point before the warning signs by the way. So it’s still valued high and then he bought high and was trying to sell low and so it was a bad deal. So now that banks been very well. Regent Bank is doing very well. Three little pyramids. Yeah, 500 million. We bought it like 70 something million ounces. It’s doing well. So come on now that I’ve told you a rough patch for z there with his business, was there a specific time or a specific day where you thought to yourself, this was the bottom of the bottom? This was the deep end of the pool. I’m wearing scuba gear. I’m, I’m, I’m stuck and I’m out of oxygen. That oxygen. I’m at the bottom of the pool. But if you. Is there a moment in your career where you thought to yourself as an entrepreneur?

God that was awful. Oh, every third Wednesday of every month. I don’t know. Yeah, absolutely hates of those stories. I think know the biggest one for me, and it’s going to sound so cliche and set up, but 10 or so years ago when that story I was telling you earlier that we were literally selling phone systems. Then giving them to our competitors, we thought we were really, really smart and it was, it was proving the business model that we could generate leads, we can make sales, but we sat down and went, hang on. We started looking at the profits of the business and we weren’t growing and we’re like, what’s going on here? And then we kind of had this massive obvious Aha moment. It’s like, okay, if someone bought a phone system from us and then billy bob is the one who went in and installed it, train them, got to working for Billy Bob.

Oh it billy bob powers that person wanted to buy more handsets, you know, increase their phone system, who are you going to call the people who just sold it to them or the person who actually gave them the care and love. So we were literally basically just gifting customers to our competitors and that was a big part for us. I’m at sheet, this is not good. So it was at that point where we sort of realized, okay, this is not going to scale, this is not going to grow and give us what you want. We’re playing a lot of coin into sort of proving the business model and getting the leads and making the sales. But there was absolutely no back end for us and that was a massive problem. So that’s where we sat down and went, okay, what is actually driving the profit of your business and what drives a puppet of every business?

And it was in that kind of turmoil that actually these seven levers framework actually came. So I know it sounds so cliche and set up, but that was a massive problem for us. And then about six years ago we were eating all those confidence cookies. Yes. And yes fought. We were kings of the world and to the point where this is how crazy it was at one point in time in the building where we’ve been for 15 years, there was an outdoor retail store and a finger food catering company. So we always have to know the business owners as we were there. And you know, not crazily walking around beating our chest, but you know, yeah, we’re successful, we’re doing well. And we literally basically bought into every business in our building, um, which was great and had some massive successes with them, but also had some massive five is because, you know, we weren’t really doing the due diligence on the business we were buying or the partners were going into.

And although we were great at the sales and marketing staff, there are other elements of business you’ve got to worry about. And there were some interesting times during that period where we kind of were invested in various things were out of a lot of those businesses now, some successful exits, some not. But that was an interesting time where we’re kind of just massively over leveraged ourselves and massively over believed in our own petition. You ran through a few awesome topics there and not everybody speaks right? Yeah. Your accent sounds very believable at this point. I know, I know you’re probably probably a jersey and you’re just. I mean we get that, but the thing under the Turnpike, you said a couple of concepts or you said there was no back door profit in that. Break that down.

Back in. I’m sorry. Yes. This is the repeat business you have. You know, I think every business you spend all your. Most businesses spend all their time focusing on new suspects, new traffic, new leads. Give me the new Gimme, the good Glen Gary, Glen Ross. What did an amazing movie. And the problem is that that’s great, but the real growth of a business, the real I hope. I hope a t and t is listening to this right now because go ahead. Continue. The money’s in the back end. The money is in the repeat business. It’s in the, the customers who you sold to once that buy again and again and again. You know, someone said to me say this to me a while ago and it really resonated and I wish I could remember who it was so I can give them credit. So let’s say it was you guys.

When I listen to a podcast a while ago, the thing was if 70 percent, just 70 percent, let’s, let’s forget this 100 percent number, if just 70 percent of every single person that you sold to was still a customer of yours today, what difference would that make to the bottom line your business? And that was such a revolution revolution revolution for me because business coaching people say, oh, imagine if every single customer that looks real realistic, not every single customer is going to still be in business client of yours, they’re not going to still be in business themselves. There’s definitely muppets that you want to fire. Like, you know, one of our values in our businesses, we, we, we don’t, we’re not in business with Jim Henson and that’s it. That’s the value we have in our business on the wall. It means that we don’t work with muppets, so we happily fire clients if they’re just annoying.

And so like 70 percent, I think things are realistic number that could have been achievable and that’s it. You know, if 70 percent of your customers was still with you today, how big would your business be? And, and the reason it’d be so big is because of the back end, it says, customers who bought from you five years ago, six years ago, six months ago, who continue to buy from you today had a great experience. You’re still in touch with them. You still talk to them. You still communicate to them that the back end. That’s the way the real growth. I think I’ve distilled what he said, a phrase we could put on a shirt here. If you want to be a successful business owner, you want to have a big back end.

There you go. That’s an American idea. Baby. Got Back. That’s an American idea. That’s impressive. That’s impressive. I didn’t know you were going there, Pete, but that’s a a good, good tip for the listeners out there. We’ll put that on a shirt and a baby back. Ribs. Now. Pete, I want to ask you a question though. In concept,

you own a business. Do you treat the new client better than the person that’s been with you for awhile? Whoa, whoa. That’s offensive. That’s offensive.

And that’s why throughout that thing about a t and t, it’s completely, it was kind of like, Hey, if you’ve never been with a and t we’re going to give you the equipment and, but you’ve made our patient, or if you’ve been our client for 12 years, you don’t get crap. You get what I mean.

So, I mean, you’re, you’re, uh, the seven steps, 10 percent bringing up, I mean, what would you say to that? I’ve owned a business and I have a choice of. I’m trying to build new business obviously. So I give out a promotion to new clients and I have a client that’s been my client for five years, uh, you know, a customer for five years and they come and say, hey, you know, I heard about your promotion over here and uh, you know, is there any way I can take advantage of it and say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because you’re already a client.

All right, here, don’t get taken into a corner. Yes.

So what, what was the obvious answer is absolutely love who you are. We’ve come a lot of your customers. Love your fridge. Fridge on that a little bit. So I think there’s two things. One thing that you mentioned that popped into my mind is probably the second best business book of 2018.

Here we go.

It’s a book called how to never lose a customer again. There you go. Now we’re now. We’re getting somewhere navigating. If you guys haven’t had jelly on your show, get him on your show. He is awesome. Joey Coleman, Joey Coleman, and this book. Seriously, it’s a second best book of the. Can I real quick? I just want to, I just want to make sure it’s what we call them and I’m putting this on the show notes here. Joey Coleman. Everybody check out the book. We’re putting on the show notes. Joey, we’re coming after you. Pete. Back to you. Okay. So this book, it’s basically a book of how to wow and love and onboard your customers in the first hundred days. No thrive nation. One way to wow your customers in the first 30 days is to give them something free, so when you check out our good friends and show sponsors, onyx imaging for all of your office printer supplies

they’re going to give you, they’re going to give you some free stuff right away. They’re gonna. Give you a free printer or copier simply for checking these guys out. No monthly fee, no service fee. Save both time and money on your office and printer supplies while using onyx imaging,

presenting the world’s only business school without the BS

teaching business skills from a to z we booked. The goal of this show is to help you with them.

Welcome back to the thrive time show on your podcast download. On today’s show, Australian Entrepreneur Pete Williams teaches you how you can double any business by making small 10 percent improvements. During this interview, Pete breaks down his new book cadence. Now, if you’re just tuning in for the first time and you don’t know who Pete Williams is, he is a very successful entrepreneur in Australia. Uh, he’s done everything from the telecommunications services business to eat or ecommerce, and he’s really made a name for himself by interviewing the WHO’s who, uh, in the world of business on his Australian podcast. His podcast is absolutely huge over in Australia. He’s interviewed a American entrepreneurs such as Tim Ferriss, the bestselling author of the four hour work week, a Robert Greene, the bestselling author of 48 laws of power, an incredible book by the way, and the book mastery. And he’s also interviewed, emailed the email writer, the author of the e Myth Program and philosophy himself, Michael Gerber, so that any further ado, let’s get back into our interview with Pete Williams as he breaks down how to make small improvements in seven critical categories. So you can double the size of your business. Stay tuned.

Know it’s all about existing customers, loved your existing customers, because if they stay with you, you don’t have to worry about legion. Just the referrals will come, the experiences will come, they’ll stay with you, they’ll grow with you. So that’s a big thing there. Yet you want to make sure the person’s first hundred days is amazing because how you start, it’s how you finish. I think that, you know, thinking about when you dated your wife back in college was the first hundred days were probably possibly the most amazing consecutive hundred days you have ever given her. Now I’m sure you’ve given us some amazing separate 100 days over time but never in one block and that is what sold her on you. And I think joey’s messages, great roles that a great roadmap, massive, lots of, lots of examples. It’s an amazing book and so I think, you know, really loving your new customers because I think there’s actually three segments.

You sorta mentioned, new customers and existing customers. I think there’s actually three segments. There’s your prospects. These are people who aren’t customers yet loving those people. So they actually, I’m a customer once. They are a customer, loving them for 100 days so they pour the love on, pour some sugar on me. Any guy. So you actually are overdelivering. You’re exceeding expectations and I think a lot of people forget about that segment. And then you’ve got obviously your past customers to make sure they come back to you again. That’s your transactions per customer. That’s what it is about getting them back and how can you put the systems in place that gives you continuous 10 percent wins in that area because the other three segments you really got to worry about when you have your customer. If I’m sitting her thinking, which one do I put the most love on? Is it equal? Is it one more than the other? Talk to me. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m, I’m, I want to send out a coupon. I want to sit down with something. I wanna I wanna, I wanna. I wanna own a boat and sent out a blast. And what? What do I do? Who Do I. Who Do I love the most? I think the. It’s a cliche, but it’s always easier and cheaper to sell to an existing customer than a brand new one. There you go.

Okay. Now I have. I have a tough. It’s probably going to be mean. I’m just telling you the bad cop all day. Listen, I have done some deep research into a pete, the Australian culture. In fact, I had a roommate before. I knew you even existed. Just at the kind of preparation I put into this. I got a roommate in college. Yes, yes. Have you eaten kangaroo yet in your life? No. Okay. Well then you know you have the complete Pete, my roommate in college. My name is Clayton Clark. That’s my given name. My roommate in college, his name was Clinton Clark and he was from across the pond from Australia and he could imitate an American in a way that let me know that we sound weird and, and you guys sound smart. So everything you’re saying today sounds interesting. So at any point during the interview, if you want to imitate an American, I just throw that out there.

That’s something you can do. I put it on the side if you want to do that, we give you that opportunity. But you’ve interviewed in your lifetime, you’ve interviewed, you know Tim Ferriss, Ryan holiday, a tim ferriss famously moved from Silicon Valley and then he moved to Austin, Texas, where he now offices and broadcast. Can you walk us through where you office, where you podcast, where you work, what is your office environment look like? Are you and your own buildings? You said you’re in a building now with a bunch of other business owners. Do you have in your house? I just want to get into the behind the scenes stuff that you probably don’t cover a lot in your other interviews. I just want to, I want to get into that because I know that that lifestyle entrepreneurship is powerful.

Yeah. Cool. Well a day in Australia and basically everyone leaves within a stone’s throw of or, or kangaroo hop from the beach. So I am, uh, not far from the beach. My offices about half a mile from the beach. Beautiful sounds, which is fantastic. I’m in there about three days a week at the moment. Um, and then I work from home one day a week, which is about half an hour down the coast from our office, again, pretty close to the water, which is where I am right now. And then I spent a day of the week, uh, as a professor of practice with Deacon University. So in, in the university doing a bunch of crazy stuff there. So yeah, look, I like to be near water. I’m a, um, that’s the kind of a Australian thing really, which is the reason when I moved to the US I’m like, alright, done la a lot. Where am I going to live?

Going to Florida or you like,

uh, not quite. I like, I enjoy it, but uh, I wouldn’t call myself an awkward man and I’m definitely not going to do an American accent because I know a lot of Australians who moved to the US. They ended up getting a bit of that. US Wang say it’s terrible. I’ll just 21 year old living, I’m just, you know, half an hour from south beach. I’m like, I’m going to milk this Australian accent for everything I’ve got. So I was very strong in making sure I didn’t pick up the, uh, the u, s Wang and kept that Aussie accent for those nights out on south beach.

Should you travel to Oklahoma and you go out into the rural parts of the community if you want to fit in and what you’re going to want to do because we broadcast from the center of the universe. We have sophisticated audience here in Tulsa. It’s very. So if you go out 40 miles east or west, what you want to do to fit in. If you want to get a school bus therapy of that, we want to get a school bus in, park it in the law. They don’t maintain it at all and get a refrigerator and just let the earth let the nature take its course nature to. And you want to get a mullet and you want to make sure that you have a. You only Tan your, you don’t, you don’t Tan anything but your arms. But then you take your shirt off when you mow the lawn and you have a beer in your hand and you say things to people like, well by God I’m going to mow my lawn and you have like a weapon on you at all times and that is how you would fit in. So if you wanted to come to Oklahoma and fit in with us, you would need to just tan every tenure arms and don’t turn your body at all while you’re swimming. Then a few months and then come here, take your shirt off, mow the lawn, have a beer.

Yeah, that’s the gun in my pocket. Don’t back off my lawn and carry a loaded weapon at all times. And you’ll fit right in. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the move in and have a fondness for guns and gold. That is, that is a move that’s teaching you how to speak to me. You know, I mean, so because you know, you’ve done the interview people in Australia and we call them bogans voguing rednecks or bogans for us. Yeah. We’re. Now that we’ve done this interview, what I love interviewing, he’s one of our best interviews we ever had. I, I, that’s a bogan down my beer for Pete. Whenever we’ve done the interview, it’s only a matter of time before you come to O’kane about hang out and hang out, and we have our in person workshops pay. You got to come out to whenever we’re at,

when we come back with more from our exclusive interview with Pete Williams, the acclaimed and renowned Australian entrepreneur and podcaster, but before, before we come back, I’d encourage everybody to take 10 seconds during the break and look, ask yourself this question, do I have a proactive accountant and if you feel like you don’t have a proactive accountant, go to hood Cpas Dot Com hood cpas.com and see if they’re right for you.

Ready to enter the thrive time show

they submit for grading or would not be talking to everything from bring or was it just with the school as well as a kid? It’s the thrive time show all about all about. All about you

thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time. Show. On your radio and podcast download, during today’s podcast, we are interviewing a man by the name of Pete Williams, who’s Pete Williams will pin. Pete Williams is a bestselling author and a podcast celebrity. This guy has interviewed the WHO’s who in the world of business, everybody from Michael Gerber, the author of the myth book series a from Tim Ferriss, the best selling author of the four hour workweek and the four hour body and one of the early stage investors in Uber. You ever heard of Uber? What I mean this guy is is is the best. He’s interviewed Robert Greene, the author of two of my favorite books, which is mastery by Robert Greene. A unbelievable book, 48 laws of power. I mean, this guy, he. I’m just telling you, this guy is the real deal, but you probably haven’t heard of him yet because he’s from the other side of the pot. He’s from Australia, so he took time out of his busy schedule to tell us about his newest book there called cadence. So now then he further ado back to our exclusive interview with the King of the Kangaroos. Mr Pete Williams.

Now I want to ask you about Tim Ferriss and your fondness for Tim Ferriss. What? What do you like about Tim Ferriss is the author. What did you enjoy about interviewing? Tim? Talk to me about about Tim Ferriss and what he’s been like. What? What? What do you like about tim?

Yeah. I think Kim, she’s willingness to fail, which is probably from a lot of people don’t really articulate it that tim and you know, he’s obviously that guy who likes to go and test stuff and try stuff and he’s been very lucky. Had success in his first business. Hates first book, really took off with strategy and focus. It wasn’t just dumb luck. There was some strategy and focus that made him successful with the book launch and that just giving you a massive platform to do what he loves and he tracks everything and he is willing to fail. I’m willing to try, and I think this has been hinted at and he’s spoken about this in a few locations, but this has been tim way before the book way before, four hour work week, way before the business and that I think every workout he has ever done since high school is tracked a notebook like this guy lived that before he had the platform to talk about it.

So I think of people go, oh yeah, Tim’s great. You’re so lucky you can sort of, you know, spent all this time researching the four hour body and the four hour chef and doing all these fun experiments and trials and tests. Well, yes, it’s negative platform. We can do more of it, but the actual method to his madness was well instilled years before, uh, and the proof in terms of every workout, every single white he’s ever listed, lifted is recorded in a notebook. It’s just insane. And that’s who he is and that is why he is successful. It’s not because he had dumb luck with the book launch. It was because that’s just the way you operate. And um, you know, my team do some stuff with him behind the scenes and I see how he operates and he is, he’s a machine in, in perfection and that sort of stuff. And that’s where the results come from.

Well, all I want for Christmas is a little Pete Williams interview and Little Tim Ferriss’ interview. And then I just want, I want all I want for this year is Robert went. Robert. I’m going to, I’m going to have to have duct Robert Bone to come down here and see the 48 laws of power that I’m used to decorate the man cave here at Camp Clark and chicken palace. I want to ask you this, talk about to me about the grind. I’m looking you up researching you. It seems like you grind but in a sustainable way. So what, talk to me about your schedule on a daily basis, a typical day out there in Australia for you. What does that look like? What time are you getting up? What’s your routine? What are your, what are your habits? Get us into the Pete Williams experience

now. Okay. I’ll give you the average because everyday is different and I’m not gonna sit here and say I am sorry mechanical that this is the retainer I follow every single day. Like that’s just a robot I think is a little bit. So it’s confirmed you’re

robot. It’s just said that I’m bs.

I wake up at five, eight, nine, five, five, five, 30. I’m getting up in the morning. I’m often going to the gym, trying to lift some weights, trying to be healthy. That’s kind of fallen off the wagon a little bit at the moment. We just book launch and a few other projects. So that’s, that’s the normal morning his gym, swim, something like athletic, uh, it’s a way to win the day before the day starts. Um, that’s something that I think that was a Robert Grain thing actually. I think that’s one of his, um, real messages is, you know, try and win the day early by doing something. I know he’s a massive swimmer. He swims a lot. Uh, I jim run swim bike, some sort of fitness thing generally in the, in the office when I’m going to the Telco by about seven, 7:30, uh, going through emails and then most of the day is either stretch strategy and, and, and planning stuff or, or babysitting. You know, when you have a business, it’s, you’re trying to focus on strategy and direction for the business and then just babysit in the staff in a good way. No, I’m sure you guys know this as you, you spend more and more time just

sort of how many humans do you work with on your team approximately because we between Z and I, there’s hundreds and hundreds of teammates, you know, because we have a, some brick and mortar companies and so, you know, haircuts, I mean we can scale the digital marketing and simplify all we want. But a human has to currently cut hair. You know, this just from a human has to actually be a teller at the bank. Um, you know, we do online banking. Yeah, that’s the thing. But there’s also the auto box and there’s mechanics, there’s people clearing title. There’s just optometrists centers, there’s, there’s, there’s people that are actually doing carpets, I mean something. And I know that you, um, Jon Acuff had basically said a best selling author, he had said that you’re kind of like the sequel to the lean startup, which teaches about the importance of trying to scale your business by having less people being simplifying. How many folks work on your team? Just going to walk us through your, your, your team, what that looks like.

Yeah. Well, in terms of direct employees that actually work in the companies that aren’t directly, it’s about 30, 35.

It’s so good. It’s so lame. It’s like buffalo or bison meat.

The relationships with some of our suppliers and our ecommerce businesses who do a lot of drop shipping for us. And then we’ve, you know, we’ve partnered with another company in some projects that they’ve got about 45 staff, but then like they work for us but not directly in terms of. They’re not directly in that pyro. So it, it, it, it get to 100 quite easily when you sort of really stretch, stretch, really just sort of say, look, this is what’s in the net. But in terms of direct employees that I write the check for every week, it’s about 30.

We, we, we, we worship you. That is awesome because seriously, when you manage a group, a large group of people that. I mean that’s the goal is to keep it lean because we manage a lot of people, a lot of personalities, a lot of conflicts lot. How come I wasn’t promoting? Why was she so I wanna I wanna ask you this. How do you deal with the internal team, your internal team? Do you have, how do you deal with a lot of people say I want to be an entrepreneur until you manage 10 or more employees because once you have more than 10 outcomes, the org chart, right? And call 30 people want to reach out to you once a day. That’s a disaster. Was 30 I’d say. Yeah, it’s a lot. So talk to me about your org chart managing your team. These are things I haven’t seen you cover a lot on some of your past interviews and if I can’t, I want to dive, dive into that.

Yeah, well I think, you know, the team was a lot larger a few years ago, um, and we kind of got smart about strategically working with partners and stuff. So one of the ways we, I would have skylar and get what we want and grow is partnering so you know, that is another business that we are sort of encouraged with one of a better term and it’s their responsibility to manage their team and drive one element of the group. And that takes some of the pressure off me personally and my business partner personally.

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Welcome back to the thrive time show. Have a business question. Email us today and [email protected].

Oh yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. I’m. I am so excited for our next guest, for our guest. We have on today’s show, Pete Williams. For those of you just tuning in, this guy has interviewed the WHO’s who of the world of business books, business leadership, thought leaders in the world of business. He’s interviewed Robert Greene, the best selling author of 48 laws of power and mastery. He’s interviewed Tim Ferris from the four hour work week, the four hour body. He’s also interviewed Michael Gerber from the e-myth book series, and he is a very successful entrepreneur in his own right, having started and grown multiple businesses over there on the other side of the pond too, though. He’s based in Melbourne, Australia, and so Pete Williams is the name you’re going to want to look up find Pete Williams because his newest book is powerful and practical. His newest book is called cadence. We or he actually teaches you and I seven critical categories that if you just improve them by 10 percent and any existing company you can double the size of your business. What is a gentleman? Check out his book cadence. We’ll put a link to it on the show notes without any further ado, back to my interview with Pete Williams. You’re gonna. Love it.

So that helps a little bit in terms of strategically skylling. It tends to orientation we have divisions, you know, we have our team leaders were not a very highly old chart and business, but we have our clear definitions, you know, in terms of in the, in the telco business and that in that group, I look after the marketing and the operations side of the business and my business partner looks after the sales element. Uh, so that kind of, at least there’s some differentiation of who owns what and it helps. Having a business coaching partner definitely makes, makes it easy because you can, you can basically double the management responsibility, which is nice. And, you know, I think right now we have probably the best team we’ve ever had asked me a couple of years ago, I would’ve said there’s definitely some bad fruit on the tree yet right now we do have a team that’s really, really good. And you know, the last, I think four employees are talking about this yesterday, the last four employees that we have in the business all came from existing staff referrals. Oh Nice.

But you just fed right into the question that I’ve been dying to ask for the last time. When was the last time he fired somebody and, and how did that look?

Yeah. So the last time I fired someone would’ve been

two and a half years ago. Are you kidding me?

Right. Are you kidding me? And how did that look and why?

Uh, so yeah. So this person we hide, it was probably a really silly high. We hide them without doing massive due diligence. We kind of knew this person and we had a reasonably experienced with them. Uh, but there was some, I won’t go into details yet. We hide him, didn’t do the due diligence and he didn’t finish his probation. Uh, it just wasn’t the right fit to love the details by the way.

Okay. So, so okay. So that was a two and a half years ago. Can I ask what was the last time I fired someone in the last two and a half hours?

Exactly.

Sleep because with have a lot of people and it’s just. And the one thing about our industry, we have great people at elephant in the room, our men’s grooming lounge chain, but we have to interview so many people because hairstylists are kind of like, I’m not sure they are in Australia. I mean there. Yeah, just kinda like artists meets employee. There’s a Britain that art that sizzle to the workplace and to gather some great sizzle, some great sparkles to bring into the workplace. Now we’ve had to sit through a lot of people there, Pete, to find some good people. Now Pete, I have one more tough question for you and then I want Dr Z to. He can end it with. I’ve got a bow. I got the final question. If they want to direct our listeners to anything you’re working on right now, my friend.

So here we go. If you could think about entrepreneurship objectively for a second, and you say, okay, here we are. I’m only going to have a week left. I’m towards the end of my career. I realized this is my last week as an entrepreneur. I’m going to sell it all and be done. What would be the tip from, from your, uh, your, your years, your years as being an entrepreneur, starting from the bottom, get into where you are. If you could just distill it all and say, okay, here is the one thing I wish I would’ve known. What is, what is that one tip you would give to all of our entrepreneur listeners out there?

Ooh, good question. We’re still, we’re just understand the difference between core and mechanics. I think the difference is, is core of mechanics in it. What is mechanical in Your Business and what is core to its growth? Let’s look at. Let’s use a car mechanic as an example. You know the actual action of doing the thing you do, fixing the the car, getting onto the hood, that’s mechanics. Anyone can do the mechanics of being a mechanic, but the core skill to grow a business is actually understanding the drivers of the profit, what need to do to actually increase the business and I think so many business owners don’t make the differentiation between core and mechanics. They know their tools, they know their stuff really, really well when it comes to the mechanical element of their business, but they don’t take time to differentiate and distill and step away from the mechanics to figure out, okay, this is the core thing that I need to do to grow my business and this is my core focus time. Am going to spend Monday afternoons every Wednesday, the first two hours everyday. I don’t really give it mad and how you apply it, but if you decide, okay, this is my core focus time, I will not be doing mechanics. I’m going to focus on the core thing and the core things that will drive my business. And once you make that calendar entry and that differentiation, that’s where you can grow and really make a difference to your business, I believe.

And that’s for the listeners out there who aren’t familiar with the terminology or the semantics, that’s where Michael Gerber, also a guy you’ve had on your podcast, I’m Michael Gerber, talks about working on your business versus working in your business. So we see so many entrepreneurs that aren’t able to say, I really don’t care about anything else right now because I got to work on my business. They’re so busy working in the business. I appreciate you. You sharing that nosy. You’re known however a contract for, you know. Yes. Right. Lock onto the bus. Yes. Throw Michael under the bus please.

Dude, dude, dude, I was fighting for the Santa Fe. I think the issue, like Michael was great in talking and explain the difference between in and on. The problem with the amish is that he never really light at, Oh, what do I do when I’m working on my business? So all these people go, yeah, great on versus in, you got to work on or you can’t work in it. You got to work. Not Everybody’s working at my desk and I shut the door staff, you know, don’t talk to me. I’m going to work on my business. Here I go, here I go, what do I actually work on? I don’t know what. There was no. Here is the blueprint of what to work on in your business. He met. He really gave people the differentiation. You can’t be a technician, you’ve got to be a manager or an owner. But when I work on Monday,

can I tell you real quick what I used to do as a result of Pete, I want to make sure that there’s no, I agree with you and this is what I used to do before I understood the processes and workflows and core and mechanics and these things. I used to do this

say social media called the manager for the 14th time within the last 15 minutes for the resort. My Rolodex, because I’m old enough to have had a lot of interest by chair again and again to put a new flat screen on the wall, but it’s not quite flat because it was the year 2003 and I

focused on things that didn’t move the needle and so I agree with you. That right there. Michael Gerber, we love you though. You’re. You’re a great American. Great American. Great American. Now I have the hardest hitting question. Oh Jeez. Oh, because I like to finish out position

with the. With the question that really, really matters. So beat. Are you ready? I’m sitting down for the first time in an hour off. Sat down. Oh, here we go. It’s about darn time. I believe you. By the way, do you want me to get some music for this? Are you just going to go cold Turkey? Now? I’ll get some music. You want some music? Kind of a hardcore. Okay, let me say this. I’ll just. Do you want me to. We have a listener who called in and he said, Oh, Pete listened this question wrong. This is what’s going to happen. Some queuing up the, if you don’t get it wrong, the wrong intention, Alyssa, we had to cut them off. The show’s creator said he’s too intense. It’s going to be what he said. We recorded that. We’re put on the show notes. Here we go.

Stop and I live in a van down by the river.

If you get it wrong, you might end up divorced and living in a van down by the river. Thrive nation. If you want to hear the rest of this conversation with Pete Williams, just head on up to thrive time show.com. Again, head on up to thrive time show.com where you can find the podcast and it. By the way, we archive every single business coaching broadcast up there. There are thousands of podcasts with big name people. Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for for Nike, for Pizza Hut, for Michael Jackson, for Prince interviews with Nba Hall of Famer, David Robinson, NBA greats like muggsy bogues with nfl players like Rashad Jennings. I mean we’ve got the WHO’s who? The guy who used to manage Walt Disney world resorts, Lee Cockerell, so many great interviews. They’re all up [email protected], so if you want to catch the rest of the, this exclusive interview with Pete Williams, just head on up there to thrive time show.com. But if you’re out there saying to yourself, you know, uh, I am right now and I’m looking to do and in the immediate near term is I’m looking to add onto my building. I’m looking to actually build a commercial building or add onto my commercial building and I’m looking for somebody I can trust. I would encourage you to check out our good friends at Williams contracting. That’s Williams contracting. You can find them online at [inaudible] dot com. It’s will dash con that come with any further. I do three, two, one boom.