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Dropping Sandbags with Graham Brown
391 Plays3 years ago
The sandbags that weigh a hot air balloon down are a more powerful force than the fire that allows it to rise. And even in your car when you have the pedal to the floor, giving it all the gas you can, the brakes will slow you down and bring you to a stop. The reality is that forward momentum is most often hindered not by lack of effort, energy or determination, but by the presence of distractions. Progress, then, as this week’s guest Graham Brown reminds us, is often less about turning up the heat and stomping the gas and more about dropping sandbags and cutting brake lines.
Graham, an author, speaker, and founder of an award winning podcast agency, joins us to talk about his uncommon journey from selling insurance using phonebook leads to becoming an insatiable entrepreneur, world traveler, and ironman triathlete.
You can follow Graham on Twitter @grahamdbrown
If you search Graham Brown you’re likely to find a very exquisite wallpaper company, which is cool if that’s your thing, but it’s not the same guy (in fact, the wallpaper is done by two guys, which seems right).
Finally, check out this episode of the Revisionist History podcast for a fascinating look into the 2009 Toyota recalls over stuck gas pedals and how braking, or the simple lack thereof, reveals the disquieting reality of humans having a very hard time accepting the blame for their own mistakes.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Uncommon Life
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life, a life worth celebrating and savoring.
Meet Graham Brown
00:00:30
Speaker
Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of your favorite show, Brian's favorite show, The Uncommon Life Project where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Duherst. Thanks for tuning in. We're grateful that you're listening. Thanks for taking the time. Man, we have the greatest listeners and we have an amazing guest and I can't wait to get him on the show so he can go to sleep because he's not in our time zone. Can't wait. Give us our bio. Let's rock. All right. We've got the one and only Graham Brown.
00:01:02
Speaker
Graham is the founder of Pickle & Company, award-winning podcast agency and AI-powered, data-driven B2B podcast group in Singapore. So he's over the pond, as we would say. He is published author on the subject of the digital transformation of communication works, including the human communication playbook, the mobile youth, voices of the connected generation. And he's documenting the rise of mobile culture in the early 2000s in Japan, China, Africa, India.
Career Beginnings and First Ventures
00:01:29
Speaker
and brand love, how to build a brand worth talking about. I can't wait to get into this one. Welcome to the show. Graham Brown. Hey, thank you. It's great to be here. What a welcome. You do have podcasts. Is there any way that we can have like pipe in like a crowd noise? Like just like, Oh yeah. I like that. Or maybe like a drum roll. When you tell a joke, you know, like sort of late show style. Yeah, that'd be too much for our editing team, but I would love it. Graham, thanks for taking the time with us. And this is going to be awesome.
00:01:58
Speaker
It's great to be here. I'm looking forward. We had a good chat beforehand, didn't we? We did. Ground to cover stories to tell. Absolutely. So let me just start out by this. So you used to have an eight to five, as we like to call it, like a real job. And then you were like, no, this isn't going to work for me. And then you actually had your own business. You did the deal and then you sold your business. So give our listeners a little bit of rendition of like a synopsis of your history. And then I kind of want to dive into that a little bit and then we'll move on.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, my first ever real job was actually selling life assurance. And I mean, Philip talked about this beforehand. I'm in dangerous territory here with the real pros. I was in the, from the good old, bad old days, you know, when I, I wanted to become my own boss. And I remember one day picking up the paper, which is used to get the newspaper to
00:02:52
Speaker
Find jobs in the old days and I saw this little tiny square of a box and it just said be your own boss Unlike 35 K or something. It was which back in the day was like wow
00:03:05
Speaker
I could have done that much. Yeah. So I picked up the phone and I went to this presentation and went to this office where they had, it was in London, they had the 24th, 25th floor. All of it was occupied by this company and everybody was wearing suits and there was lots of young guys in there. It was all guys. And it was a lot of energy, a lot of phone calls. I was like, yeah, I like this.
00:03:30
Speaker
This is really sort of toxic masculine culture, but at the time it kind of made sense. I think I can kind of fit in here. And they went through the interview process and my boss sat down, my future boss sat down and said, yeah, it's great. You know, you're your own boss here. You can come in anytime you like, as long as it's before eight o'clock in the morning.
00:03:51
Speaker
That was the deal. Yeah, that's great. And it was one of those, you know, in the old days, the yellow pages, you'd go through yellow pages, the phone book, and you would pitch people on the phone and sell them life assurances and pensions in the old days when you could do that.
00:04:06
Speaker
You can pick up the phone, call somebody and say, hey, Philip, would you like to come in and talk about your investment strategy? And people would come all the way across London to meet you because you were in the 25th floor, right? That was the old days. The wild, wild West. Yeah. And you had to make...
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was like 120 calls a day. Wow. No wonder why you're out. How long did you last in that gig? Oh, yeah. I was probably one of the top survivors of the year. The half-life was pretty steep.
00:04:42
Speaker
In three months. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people left like day one, two, three when they realized actually, this isn't the kind of world in finance that I had envisaged. This is just like hardcore sales and cold calling, quite soldiers doing stuff. But I tell you, it teaches you a lot about business, you know, the hard way as well. And, you know, discipline as well. There would be a guy, there was one of the guys who joined at the same time with me.
00:05:09
Speaker
He didn't do 120 calls a day like day in day out. He had always fall short and they duct tape the phone to his head.
00:05:21
Speaker
That's the kind of culture it was. You could imagine it was really toxic. So that was like my baptism into the world of self-employment. It wasn't self-employment. It was really self-employment for tax reasons, right? That's funny. We just started a new strategy here. Just started. We're going to duct tape the phone to Brian's ear.
00:05:40
Speaker
Actually, this is great. The value that you're bringing right now. Okay. So what did you were like, all right, this is not going to work. And then how did you step into the business that you actually were your own boss? Yeah.
Rise and Fall of the Website Business
00:05:51
Speaker
So this is, so you go back, this was 98.
00:05:54
Speaker
And, uh, not married or married. Sorry. At that time I was not yet married, but I was with my future wife. Okay. Yeah. Every time. Um, see things, her family is entrepreneurial, so it's a lot easier to approach that subject of, I'm going to start my own business. This is kind of an important thing, isn't it? Because you, you know, it's two of you in this business, even though she's not working in it, she's got to be on board. Oh man.
00:06:20
Speaker
We talk about this a lot. Your spouse is not on board. It's not a good idea. Just abort. Change directions. It's a good idea for the first six months. And then when you still haven't got paid, then it becomes an issue. And you won't get paid for the first whatever period. And it's just that belief then. She would have had to draw on the stories of her father and realize that they go through the struggle. So my first job in 1998
00:06:49
Speaker
setting up a business. The first out of the gate from the boiler room was starting a business selling websites in 98 because this was Netscape, Navigator, AOL, American Online, all that stuff. You know, CDs in the post. People wanted websites. And it was one of those days where you could phone up a company again. So I employed that phoning strategy, which 120 phone calls. Yeah. 120. I'm going to phone 120 companies a day and get through to the decision maker.
00:07:25
Speaker
Okay, so I make them. And it was one of those days where you could, it was hit or miss you. If you got lucky, you found somebody who knew what a website was and would pay you. And I remember one of our first clients, I wouldn't name them, but they would, they basically called me and my friend who started this business together in and we, everybody was pretty clueless at the time. And they said, um, we pitched this idea that you could actually sell to their clients, their customers on the website, which
00:07:42
Speaker
and say, Hey, have you got a website? And no, no.
00:07:52
Speaker
which was pretty new at the time. He said, no, no, no, no, we don't want that. I don't remember this guy taking this brochure, this thick brochure and slamming it down on the desk in front of me. He says, see that? I want you to scan that and put it on the website. And he said, okay.
00:08:08
Speaker
And then this whole idea of brochure where I was born, right? Where you would basically go to these companies, scan their websites, charge them on a two or 3000 and just basically give them a website. What was your history in building websites at that point? Or do you just, you had a history of calling and then your buddy had the history of the website. Like how did you get enough like technical? Wow. He didn't really need a lot at that time. You know,
00:08:35
Speaker
If you knew a little bit of HTML, you're in the game. I graduated with a degree in AI, so I came from the world of computing. It doesn't teach you about websites. In those days, websites were
00:08:50
Speaker
Yeah, we didn't even have JavaScript or CSS back then. Do you want a nice gif on the front page and a form? Can I have one of those email icons that spin around? Yeah, good old days. Okay, so fast forward. That obviously took off. Didn't last.
00:09:13
Speaker
It did not last. It was clueless. It didn't have anybody around me that knew how to run a business. It was just a learning exercise. I went from that into what I really cared about because I was in Japan before in the mid-90s. I'd seen young people using mobile phones.
00:09:35
Speaker
and teenagers using these little tiny cell phones and using them to text people. When I came back to the UK, I thought I want to get into this industry somehow, but there was no opportunities because it was still 96, 97. Mobile cellular hadn't taken off yet. Around about 98, 99, it all started happening.
Success in the Mobile Industry
00:09:56
Speaker
I realized that there were these companies who were making a lot of money
00:10:01
Speaker
out of selling cell phones, marketing cell phone services, the telcos, but they didn't have a clue about their customers. There was an in there and we just started writing reports on this stuff. I had no qualifications apart from the fact that I thought that this was what the industry was going to be and how it was going to pan out because I've seen it happen in Asia.
00:10:24
Speaker
And we started writing reports and it became, at the time it was a tough start, but we got some really, really good clients. You know, we were selling to people like MTV, Disney, all the major payment companies like Visa, MasterCard, all the cell phone carriers in the world, all the handset manufacturers. We sold a report to NASA on stage, which was pretty amazing. Wow. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I mean, I remember that. It's a good resume builder.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, the contact form was like, you know, NASA, you know, the shuttle guys. That's what they rode on it was funny. So yeah, but even those guys, European Commission, all the government bought it. So it was a really, really strong product that lasted us 12 years and kind of sold itself in a way.
00:11:12
Speaker
But that was, uh, the front end, the front end of it, you got in. So you were really in a good place. Yeah. But I learned a big lesson there about growing a business, which was, you know, you grow this business and you, you create a cash base, which is, is cash positive.
00:11:30
Speaker
asset which keeps generating cash for you. But to get to the next stage, you've got to invest that cash flow into something else. And I didn't do that. I did it outside of the business. I invested in real estate and property because in 2000, it was a really good market to invest in.
00:11:46
Speaker
but the actual business itself didn't scale. It didn't 10 X because you know, it was just, it was just manpower. It was just how many sales reps could you get in front of the clients? How many people could service it, et cetera, et cetera. So I learned the lesson the hard way 12 years. We had a run on that.
00:12:04
Speaker
And it was a good job and cashflow was great. But what you're saying is to reinvest that cashflow into systems and processes that would run itself. And new products probably too. Yeah, new products. And take yourself out of the business. Luckily I invested it in bricks and mortar.
00:12:22
Speaker
I ended up earning more from that than I had in the business over 15 years. How many people did you have working for you at that point with the telecom business? The research company, at the peak peak, we had 35 people. We had about 12 in the UK and had about 20 odd in India who were all back office. 50-50 ownership between you and your buddy? Yeah.
00:12:51
Speaker
Okay. Tell me about that. Let's talk through that quick. How is that just as a 50, 50% ownership? Brian and I are that same way, but there's a lot of people who are like run for the hills. Why do they say run for the hills?
00:13:05
Speaker
It's like a marriage. There's not a lot of marriages at last. So there's just difference in opinions and different ways that you want to grow businesses and different, you know, histories that make you think that. And so I think that's probably in the divisional labor to think like, I'm doing more than you. You're doing more than me. Right. Was there any of that between you and for 12 years? Okay. I think so. It is a marriage. I mean, you end up spending more time with this guy than you do with your wife.
00:13:33
Speaker
Right. So that's something to think about. And I think it was good for you. Did it work out? I mean, obviously it did, but yeah, it did until the end when we just kind of, you know, cause 12 years together, we were just kind of gone our own way. And the business had reached its peak. We didn't have that sort of second growth story. And, you know, it was time now to go and do our own thing. So, you know, there was a natural fizzling out of the business at the end of it and the relationship. And, you know, I sold out my,
00:14:02
Speaker
side of the business to him to take over because I just lost my passion for it. But the whole journey that you have to have that, it is a marriage. You've got to have that yin yang. One guy has got to be the maker and one the seller. One guy has got to be the X and the other the Y. You can't have two guys at the same.
00:14:25
Speaker
Right. I want to go, I want to ask about your wife and what she had sacrificed up to this point because like we all know that like our wives are blocking and tackling for us. The people who go are in the business, whether that is your wife or your husband. So tell us just through
Family Support and Cultural Influence
00:14:43
Speaker
the 12 years that you're running this business, like what kind of sacrifice did she make? Cause there's all too often they're never called out and they're never honored.
00:14:50
Speaker
So in this point, like that's like a huge part of where our business is. It's just my wife and Brian's wife have been sacrificing to let us do what we love to do and impact more people. So go ahead and talk through that. And then I have another question, but I'm sorry, poor Brian. It's like, I got questions too, but I'm monopolizing this. Go ahead. Let's talk about the wife question first. Number one. Yeah, that's absolutely important. It's not talked about much in entrepreneurship, is it?
00:15:18
Speaker
And one of the reasons is I feel it's so important is it takes twice as long as you thought it was going to take. It always says, Oh, we're going to break even in a year. Okay. Actually two years. So it, or six years. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's realistic for a lot of people, right? Especially if they're starting out.
00:15:39
Speaker
You got to have somebody on board, a partner who understands because at some point you're going to have serious doubts.
00:15:49
Speaker
about yourself. And at some point, you're going to have serious doubts of whether you made the right decision. Now, if you have a wife or partner who also feels that, that's okay. But if they then start asking questions, like, why did you ever leave the bank? Tell, tell, tell, tell. They have tipped their hand.
00:16:14
Speaker
Exactly. That's right. And it may, somebody have tipped it for them, right? It's like, well, I was having lunch with Dana the other day. Dana? Dana's husband's killing it in corporate America. Look at what he's driving. And they're going on holiday to Barbados.
00:16:35
Speaker
Where are we going? Graham, you speak my love language right now. Keep going. Exactly. So that is how it is, right? You've got to have somebody who's on board. I think, you know, you've got to, you have somebody who's on board, not just about the business, but the complete long term. What are we trying to build? And I think it's similar as well, not changing the subject. I think it's similar with people you hire.
00:16:58
Speaker
that have they worked in a startup or do they come from entrepreneurial backgrounds? I find the best people to hire. It's a similar kind of thing in the early stages. There's a lot of chaos. There's a lot of flux. There's a lot of unknowns.
00:17:13
Speaker
Have they grown up around people who, for them, have had that kind of life as well and worked out? And that's a big thing. I think that's probably the biggest deciding factor of whether or not this person's going to work out long-term in this situation. And so obviously that applies to our partners as well.
00:17:32
Speaker
because they don't understand it. It probably helped that her past, her parents were more entrepreneurial. So she's kind of like par for the course. Good job, Graham. Interestingly, her dad, so my wife's Japanese, her dad owned, he's passed away now, but he owned a
00:17:48
Speaker
a scroll shop, so Japanese scrolls, you know, like samurai stories and like on literal scrolls, you know, these, these things you'd have to roll out and there would be sort of about eight feet long and about a foot high. And then just be like decorated. These are historical
00:18:07
Speaker
It's almost like art plus history plus calligraphy. Oh yeah, calligraphy is amazing. Yeah, so he owned like a shop handed down by his dad to him for like two or three generations in Tokyo and it's still there.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's fascinating sort of family business. Is it still in the family? Yeah, it is. So her brother runs it now. Oh, wow. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a pokey old shot, but you can poke around in it and think nothing of it. And then you'll be next to a scroll, which may be like worth, I don't know, like $50,000. That's the case. Wow. Wow.
00:18:51
Speaker
What do they call it? Like a national treasure. They can't export it. You need a license to export it because it's a part of the heritage. So yeah, it's pretty amazing. But I guess, you know, that as a key, if you grow up around that, that inculcates you with this idea of work ethic and sacrifice and etc, etc.
00:19:08
Speaker
And a lot of work for maybe not a lot of return. That's the neat part. Okay, so where's the old telecom business that now that you sold it, where is it at today? Because telecom is just a, you know, it's not a dying breed, but you really got to adapt and change. So I'd love to hear that. Yeah, it's gone. That was 10 years ago. Wow. So 2012, I was out. Yeah, it was probably- So you got off of the peak. And then probably off to the peak, jumped the shofka a little bit.
00:19:35
Speaker
You rode the wave a little bit longer than you thought. Just stay a little bit longer. Hold on. Still holding. Yeah. There's a bit of ego in there. I'm really curious here, just hearing your trajectory and just, you know, we've done this a lot. You've done this a lot. I'm curious after that, you know, you kind of cash out. So do you take a time off before you go into the next thing? Yeah, absolutely. That was the big decision.
Minimalist Travel Adventures
00:20:00
Speaker
We didn't, I didn't need to work at the time. I didn't want to.
00:20:04
Speaker
And that was the major driver. My son was six. So we, we sold all our stuff and really detoxed. It was like, uh, I really was kind of fed up with all the
00:20:21
Speaker
the stuff, literally the stuff that you accumulate through life and through business. I just wanted to detox everything. So we sold everything and got all our possessions down into three suitcases. Wow. You know, it was like eBay for like six months constantly people visiting the house and got rid of everything. Go to the house, got rid of cars, these, everything gone.
00:20:48
Speaker
And then we traveled the world. We bought a one way ticket to New Zealand and just started an adventure. It lasted us six years. You know, just hanging out, living places, you know, put my son into schools, local schools, like a year here, a year there, just really want to go and experience. And it became a bit of a wild adventure. I mean, you know, it's pretty extreme doing that, but I wouldn't do it differently.
00:21:16
Speaker
Right. So let's talk to the selling everything. Yeah, that sounds great. But would you have done that if you didn't have this huge influx? I don't know if huge is the right word, but an influx from the cashflow of you selling the business. Yeah. It wasn't a huge influx. It wasn't enough to retire. It was enough to make the next few years pretty comfortable, but I had made more from my real estate
00:21:38
Speaker
than anything else. And so that was the more, that was probably more of the decision base. Like, okay, I have this, these bricks and mortar assets that if everything goes wrong, I still have that. That's my 401k, if you like. Yeah. And you never sold those, those, those you kept. Okay. All right. And that's the importance of building, you know, multiple assets at the same time. And I think the power that a business affords you in doing that. Oh yeah.
00:22:09
Speaker
But it seems to me with a lot of the people that we've interviewed, you know, and especially here in like the Western culture where it's like work, work, work, work, work, perform, perform, perform.
00:22:21
Speaker
you know, that time off or that sabbatical or that gap. It just feels like a lot of people are scared to do it, but it seems like some of the most, I don't want to say successful cause I don't like that word, but you know, the most passionate or impactful stories are like, they had that time off to like regroup, recalibrate. And I just think there's a lot of wisdom in that it seems like. So yeah.
00:22:44
Speaker
I would say that the scared to do it part is really interesting. I feel that when we go into that, we think what we're scared of is, oh, you know, I could travel the world. God knows what would happen. Or, you know, something might happen to me or my family or fear of
00:23:02
Speaker
something awful, you know, or getting hijacked somewhere or like falling ill, all these kinds of fears that you have, irrational fears. But actually what I discovered, the real fear is not that, the real fear is other people. The real fear is what other people will think.
00:23:22
Speaker
of you. Yeah. And it's not like there is this, you know, you open the door of your house and there's this baying hoard out there sort of shouting at you going, what are you doing? That's not, it would be easy if it was, but it's these subtle hints and nudges. Yeah. Like people may say things like, what are you going to do about your son's education? Right. And like not doing it in an approving way. Or when you mention your plans to people,
00:23:52
Speaker
You know, even you say to people, oh yeah, we're going to go and travel. And people just kind of remain quiet, like, hmm. And then they'll switch the subject. Like, did you see the game the other night?
00:24:05
Speaker
I don't even know how to enter into it, right? Yeah. Exactly. I think you're right. Like there is a lot of perception of what other people are going to think of me. And like Brian and I, so we're financial advisors who really try to like bring people into their passions and like go out and do it. Like start getting paid for it.
00:24:23
Speaker
And there is this cliche of like, well, don't don't do that or, you know, wait till you're retired or go get an eight to five job until you have enough in your 401k, which we're not guaranteed tomorrow. So we're always trying to like impact people and empower people to go after what they're really excited about. And so, but you're right, there is something about what what will other people think of me?
00:24:44
Speaker
And who cares what other people think of you? Because the truth is, and I love that you said this, is they're worried about something will happen to them. You know what? Something will happen to you. Something will happen to you. And you know what? You're going to be better for it. Yes. And it's going to happen anyway. And how are you going to process this? Do you want to process it on your terms or somebody else's terms?
00:25:05
Speaker
And anyway, yes. And so even if you do this old uncommon life, as we call it, you're going to run into huge challenges and those challenges are going to produce endurance and character and like steadfast. All the characteristics that we all want, but we're not going to really sign up for that usually. But what you find is like when you do
00:25:26
Speaker
Take the plunge like you do start seeing like do things do happen and you know how to adapt and overcome and you're way better for it. And so we love helping people step off the proverbial bridge and let the parachute open up because in that drop is where life happens and when that parachute happens you get a look up and see and look around and see all the beautiful scenery and see what you've just come from.
00:25:50
Speaker
And there's a lot of people who are just like, I'm not getting up on that bridge and we'll try to like dissuade you from doing it. But you're right. It is the perception of other people that people are like, I'm getting off the bridge. I can't do it. There's no way, you know? But, but yeah, this like condescending, like, well, and we always say, well, well, they can't do it, but it doesn't mean it's not for you and watching people get deterged.
00:26:15
Speaker
I think that's the key, isn't it? Because if you do it, then they say, why didn't I get up on that bridge? Yes, exactly. I love it. That's a painful question. So you're traveling the world with your wife and what, six year old at this point? Yeah. Son? Yeah. So the first you get your, all your luggage ready and you look at each other, you and your wife and your wife is all on board of this way or she like, I don't know, you know, I don't know. She's all on board. Yeah.
00:26:41
Speaker
Okay. And you go to New Zealand. We fly to New Zealand.
Settling in Lanzarote
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And then you get off the plane and you're like, the Browns are here. Yeah. What are we doing next? So you've got to find a part, a place to stay, right? Find a place to stay. Yep.
00:26:58
Speaker
Get your son in some kind of education. Not yet. Not in New Zealand. Okay. No. Okay. Well, we only spent a few months in New Zealand and then we, we had the choice, you see, we could go to the South Island of New Zealand or we could fly to Fiji. So we thought it was the same price, but we're going to Fiji. I knew an answer before you told me. AOB.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the B wins every time. So, yeah, we went out to Fiji, then we just kind of hopped around, ended up in Hawaii, then.
00:27:32
Speaker
California, then across to Florida. We just went all the way around and then we settled all the way out into the Mediterranean. We went to Cyprus and then down to... We actually settled... At this point, we were traveling nomadically. Then we settled... There's a group of islands off the west coast of Africa called the Canary Islands.
00:27:54
Speaker
And then technically part of Spain, but they're geographically part of Africa. So we landed there and landed on one of the islands called Lanzarote. It's like a mini Hawaii, it's a volcano. And we settled there for, that was the first settling down for a year and a half.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah. So that was kind of like, I got my son into school, got him into this like really sort of chilled village school where nobody spoke English. Wow. And he was six years old. It was beautiful. It was like, you know, he doesn't have any brothers or sisters, but you know that you joined and day one, they're like singing, playing soccer, Spanish kids, right? You know, it was just like, we're just going to play all day. It's crazy. Let's talk through this because everybody thinks that they want to travel a lot.
00:28:43
Speaker
But traveling is hard work. Oh yeah, you're right. I mean, it sounds great. And at least you had your family with you. At some point, you know, like you just, it just feels good to just kind of hunker down. So talk about this, just traveling and how I'd say this is awesome.
00:29:01
Speaker
I'm so glad you brought this up because you look at the Instagram feed. Now you look at my Instagram feed and like, okay, there's a Fiji sunset and then I'm in Samoa and it's Hawaii. But let me tell you about the reality behind that guys is that, you know, it's,
00:29:18
Speaker
The thing is if you take away a lot of your comfort support, so that's not just your house and your nine, eight to five job and you know, your commute and your routines, but it's the people and the communities you belong to, right? You strip all of that away and you're very vulnerable.
00:29:38
Speaker
And add to that, you're tired and you're hungry. You know what it's like when you fly to a new country and it's just hard just to find something to eat. And you know, like this, the supermarket doesn't open at the hour that you want it to do. Like they do back home and they don't sell for you or use your card. Yeah. It's kind of stupid things. No. Yeah. It's like amazing race all the time.
00:30:03
Speaker
It's right. And that is it. And you, you, you know, with that and you're dragging a family behind, you were hungry. Oh man. Yeah. Now that's a reality that is not talked about on those Instagram feeds, right? It's you're often hungry and vulnerable and sometimes scared.
00:30:21
Speaker
Right, you know I love analogies, Graham and definitely Brian. It's almost like you see a new mother with a beautifully sleeping baby. Yeah, yeah. In a beautifully like white pristine dress, you know, but what you don't see. What is all the other stuff? Oh yeah, the survival mode.
00:30:42
Speaker
Which is like, you know, bringing up a baby in the first few months, you're just keeping this thing alive, right? And sometimes in traveling, you're just staying alive. I know it's, you know, it's not dangerous, but you're hungry and you're looking for shelter. It's hard.
00:30:58
Speaker
And that can cause fractures in the relationships between the families when you're hungry and you're sort of fed up. So it's a real stress test. I'm a hungry person. Not a good person to be around when I'm at the airport and they've shut down all the cafes. ATM doesn't work because my card doesn't work in that network, right?
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah. So you get hunkered down this amazing island. Your son seems to be thriving, playing soccer and singing. Yeah. And you and your wife are like, now she feels happy. You guys are here for a while. And then when do you start thinking like, you know what? I want to go do something again. I want to create something. Probably after about a week.
Ironman Challenge and Personal Growth
00:31:44
Speaker
That's just an entrepreneurial thing. I just have to learn to shut that thing up for my family's sake because you know what it's like when you're an entrepreneur? That is always on. There's no volume switch on that voice in your head, right? It's always there. So you just managed to go with it and live with it.
00:32:03
Speaker
What's the one of the reasons why it was a great place to live it's been a year and sunshine amazing lifestyle and culture so chill so relax the spanish just like sitting out drinking coffee chill you know they like to take three hours for lunch it's very different from the world that we're all used to isn't it is on the go with time hey one thing i never noticed never ever saw
00:32:28
Speaker
those of you in the U S same in Europe. I never ever saw in Spain, somebody walking with a coffee. It's like, I see that all the time in the U S or in New York walking. I noticed that. And what do you think that is? Tell me that? Yeah, this is weird. It's illegal. I don't know. It's just culturally unacceptable. Like when you have a coffee, you send it down. Yeah. Brian Philip Graham sit down. It's like, we're going to have a coffee and chat.
00:32:59
Speaker
And that's it. They don't do that over in Europe? I thought that's what they do. I thought like this is my perception is like you just sit down and have 14 hour hour, you know, seven, seven hour dinners. I don't think that happens a lot anymore. I think that's probably how it used to be, right? But not anymore. But you've got to go to these islands for that, right? In the Spanish are a bit like that Spanish manana manana. But like even the Spanish think that the island is a lazy. So it kind of gives you an idea. But it's a beautiful place. But after a while,
00:33:28
Speaker
You know, you start to kind of something missing here. I did the, there's a, an iron man triathlon there. Oh, it takes place every year. I did that completed that. That's a big deal. Graham bypassing it, but that's kind of a big deal. All right.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, all the pros train there. Cause it's like, you know, year round sunshine, a lot of the European pros go and train there. So there's a big training camp out in Lanzarote. So it's good. Honestly, this, this really does say something about your wife because to train for an Ironman, like you, it's, it's kind of like there's sacrifices that are made by her wife. Cause it's kind of a lonely deal and kind of, she's not training with me for sure. Yeah. Right. But it probably scratched that itch for you of like, Oh, I got to keep my mind doing something.
00:34:14
Speaker
And there's a goal in mind, right? It is a challenge. So I probably scratched the itch for a while. And you did it. Were you happy with your results? Yeah, really happy. I did. It was a full. It was the first fall I ever did. So just for our listeners who don't know, it's 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking, 26.2 miles running. Marathon, yeah. I'd never run a marathon before. So when I came off the bike, sort of eight hours in, I had a marathon to finish.
00:34:43
Speaker
That was pretty cool. I think it's just an amazing experience. They can't take it away from you. You do it and that's it for life, right? You've done it now.
00:34:54
Speaker
I had a friend who did one, uh, in Wisconsin, which is a state close to here, but, uh, he did it and he was driving back and, you know, like you're just, your body's like, what the hell just happened to me? What did you make me go through? And so they were walking into probably three, two hours away from the Ironman spot. They're walking into a gas station and it was rough road for him.
00:35:17
Speaker
you know, like he's like just was in the car, cooped up for two hours after running and, and like just a slow walk and he looks across the parking lot and another guy was same walk and they looked at each other and it was just like this instant like credibility. Like you're awesome. I was like, I kind of want that actually. You do. Yeah. It's the suffering. There's something about it. What is it? I think it's,
00:35:43
Speaker
I don't know, somebody once said that suffering is the closest thing to heaven. And I thought about it, that it really made me think is that there's something otherworldly in suffering and putting yourself deliberately in these situations where you experience that A, to feel alive, but also B, to feel really raw, you know, the rawness of the experience that you feel. Yeah.
00:36:06
Speaker
you actually feel the pain that just reminds you what it's like to be alive. There's something in that I haven't really explored it enough or articulated enough. Yeah, but I'm glad we talked through it. So you got to do another Ironman
Podcasting Journey in Asia
00:36:19
Speaker
or it's like one and done. I don't know. It's never one and done. There's always some finished business is always like, yeah, I could have done five minutes better on my bike time there. So that will always bug me.
00:36:32
Speaker
Right. It's a lot of time though. You know, it's a full-time job like training. You're doing 20 hours a week training. So 20 hours a week training, 20 hours of eating, and then like 20 hours a week extra sleeping. That's full time. And still trying to balance a family. Oh yeah. Well, you can talk about your training plans. Welcome to entrepreneurship.
00:36:54
Speaker
Okay, so you're going so you're there you're now you're got done with an Iron Man. And then when do you start pouring yourself into because your new gig or your I shouldn't say new, but the gig that you're doing now is podcasting, right? I'm telling stories and things like that, which obviously I don't know if you know this, but like you could probably be successful at anything with your accent. Totally like jealous from being a dentist, maybe.
00:37:19
Speaker
That's exactly true. But love your accent by the way. Thank you. So podcasting, tell us your journey on that. Yes, I've always been a storyteller and always found that it was not an easy gig to make money out of. And it was always something that you were told off for when you scolded as a kid for being a storyteller.
00:37:40
Speaker
But what happened was, after the time when we left Lanzarote, we ended up moving around a bit more, ended up on Okinawa.
00:37:50
Speaker
which is an island, part of Japan, right out towards Taiwan, the subtropical island, beautiful. And we lived there for a bit. And so we're in Asia now. I wanted to get back into Asia because, you know, I've been there since the nineties. I love the culture, obviously because of the family as well. And wanted to get back to it. And I also wanted to be part of the growing Asian tech scene because
00:38:15
Speaker
2017, it was really picking up. Everything was sort of tracking what was happening West Coast by about three or four years.
00:38:24
Speaker
So they hadn't really had the unicorns yet, but everything was really picking up. China was obviously growing fast. And so I wanted to be part of that. And so we moved back to Okinawa and really I felt that I didn't have a way to connect with people. So really by chance, and it started before we got to Okinawa, but I really picked it up is I started a podcast purely
00:38:48
Speaker
because I wanted to reach out to people. I was on this tiny tropical island and I wanted to reach out to people all over the world and hear their stories about tech. And I kept it focused on Asia at the time. And that, you know, when I say all over the world, that's four billion people. So I started a podcast called Asia Tech Podcast. And the goal of it was just to get founders and entrepreneurs from around Asia to tell their stories.
00:39:16
Speaker
And there'll be people like me, you know, people just starting out a lot of early stage startups. And I started that purely to connect with people, not as a business, but because I was kind of missing all of that. And I had done the Ironman, so I wanted another challenge and wanted to connect with another community, another tribe. And that was a great way to get back into it. So I started as a hobby and it grew. And then,
00:39:43
Speaker
Well, let's say about 30 or 40 episodes in where I really started building an audience, you know, and I was getting thousands rather than, you know, 10 hundreds of the beginning. Um, and there were people that did listen to, because they were doing me favors, right? They're friends, but now it sort of gets to thousands. And then people started asking me in saying, Oh, you know, how do I do this? And people started reaching out to me.
00:40:11
Speaker
And you know, people started asking me questions like, how can I start a podcast? Cause it was 2017, 2018, still very, very early in the day. And I continued that podcast for, I did 503 episodes of that one. In what timeframe? Cause that's real. Well, you got to keep feeding that beast. Oh yeah.
00:40:33
Speaker
timeframe, two and a half years, I think. So 2019, yeah. I mean, at some point we were doing like three or four, four or five a week, like daily. Wow. Okay. And then you would just automatically post them or would you like do it in a cadence?
00:40:49
Speaker
There wasn't really a consistency of the cadence like this. I mean, now, absolutely, you have to have consistency in your cadence to really rank on the podcast platforms. But back then, it didn't matter. Back then, to grow an audience of a podcast in 2017, 2018, you just needed a podcast. That was it. And obviously, the rules have changed a lot now because of competition.
00:41:13
Speaker
But that was just about how do I build a podcast, how do I build an audience and it all came together. So I did 503 episodes and that really became an onboard into a business because 2018-19 we moved to Singapore to start the podcast studio. I was still doing the podcast, set up a podcast studio, raise a little bit of capital for the startup and then set up a podcast agency.
00:41:38
Speaker
And really, it kind of pulled me. It wasn't sort of a part of a master plan. It was always like, you know, people kept asking me and bugging me about this. And I thought, this would be really a lot of fun, you know, helping people start podcasts and working with some great people. And so it really was, okay, let, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to systemize this thing. And that became an agency and nobody had really, that was the first podcast agency in Asia.
00:42:06
Speaker
You're talking four billion people. So there wasn't a playbook. Right. Four billion people that all have stories to say, like all of them are uncommon in their own way. Absolutely. None of them know how to start a podcast or a successful podcast at that. So what a perfect industry to jump into. Well, it's kind of reminded me a bit like telecoms 20 years before, right? It was always, you know, when I went into telecoms in 98, 99,
00:42:31
Speaker
People were saying no I was saying because my gig in telecoms in 98 99 was it was a company called mobile youth Which was about how young people use mobile phones? That's why MTV bought it and Disney bought it, right? And everybody said to me in 98 99 that we don't do kids. We're not interested kids aren't the future of mobile I was like no no no I've seen a younger are texting sharing content. They're like no I said that's what I've seen and that's what I believe and I
00:43:00
Speaker
I think there's something maybe attractive about being an outlier, having to prove people wrong in the first two or three years. Yeah. Early adopters and early adopters and the other, well, diffusion of innovation. Yeah. Trying to see the distant signals, if you will, that others don't see. That's where I think there are opportunities.
00:43:22
Speaker
Well, I was looking at on the way in, I looked in, it looks like, I don't know this, I haven't like fact checked this, but it looks like Singapore is going to make Bitcoin legal tender. Yeah. It was Singapore or Malaysia, but... It's quite advanced in terms of crypto here.
00:43:42
Speaker
That's what I wanted to ask. I mean, you've obviously had a history of being on the forefront of what's breaking and business to business, you know, how to leverage this across multiple platforms, multiple countries, continents. What do you see, you know, I think podcasting is obviously, I don't want to say maturing, I still think it's early, you know, kind of like Airbnb, but what do you see kind of as that next forefront? Hmm.
00:44:07
Speaker
Yeah, we were in a really interesting time with podcasting. It's definitely maturing. It's professionalizing. I would say what I've really focused on, what our team is focused on is corporate podcasts. And there are a lot of people that do this. A lot of people do the exciting stuff, you know, like true crime or
00:44:26
Speaker
the hardcore history type podcast, which are great. I love all that Joe Rogan, but a few people want to do the corporate stuff because it's hard and it's requires a different mindset and a different set of relationships.
Future of Corporate Podcasts
00:44:42
Speaker
But I always feel like, you know, you really make money when you find a category of one that nobody else wants to serve.
00:44:53
Speaker
And I think when you are able to identify that you can double down everything messaging, you know, the biz dev process, the funnel pricing, all of it to match that category of one, because people don't want to serve corporate podcasts. But I feel that corporate podcasts of 10, maybe a hundred times bigger than consumer podcasts, because think of all the money.
00:45:17
Speaker
spent on public relations, all the money spent on events, on press releases, on white papers, on analyst events that really go nowhere. And I feel that that's such a huge opportunity. And I see that in the same way that I look at those other opportunities that people just kind of rejected because they didn't see what was right in front of them.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah. Or they don't have the discipline to happen. I've even noticed that, uh, you know, some of the crypto projects that I follow, they've kind of launched a corporate podcast, uh, you know, to kind of, so I, yeah, I see what you're getting at there playing out right now. Yeah. It's more of a long game. It's an investment in an asset, isn't it? Yeah. I think about it. It's like building your brand, your personal brand and your, you know, it's top of funnel stuff.
00:46:10
Speaker
And you think about a brand like Nike just came to my mind when you said that of like all the athletes, all the creators in that business, all that goes into doing Nike on a global scale, like how many stories and lessons and wisdom are packed in there and how many consumers would wanna just plug into that.
00:46:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And you've got to think about even in their story, the way they went into it was really about building the community and the athletes. That was all about their play, the love for running, the love for the sport. Rather than, you know, we want to make really, really good shoes, which is really sort of the byproduct of that. Graham, this is, this is a fun question. If your life was a movie, what would the title of your movie be?
00:47:00
Speaker
What would the title of my movie be? I don't know if I can think of a witty one liner. It would have to be, I don't know, what would it be? I'd have to look at some of the other movies. I think that probably I would borrow for something like that. What else? The Joker. There you go. I don't mean that would go down well, but it'd have to be something like that.
00:47:25
Speaker
Well, I mean, I'm super grateful we got you on the show. Thanks for taking the time. I mean, your uncommon life is real. And I love how you just constantly are adapting and changing and also appreciating, you know, your spouse along the way. And then also kind of pulling back to the Asian roots. It's just really neat. And so I'm grateful that you took the time with us. Any closing thoughts that you have for our listeners that are like just maybe too scared or too worried about somebody else and what they think.
00:47:55
Speaker
to start their own uncommon life? Yeah. There's a lot of people out there, isn't there, who are probably staring out the window.
Final Advice for an Uncommon Life
00:48:04
Speaker
I would say to people that, you know, I'm going to steer away from the obvious trite statements that I can give about, you know, life is an adventure, these kind of things. I would say that, you know, the key to
00:48:16
Speaker
really living life on your own terms and living an uncommon life is to be aware that in our lives that we build up a lot of clutter that prevents us from doing this. I think that the nearest analogy, I know this is the analogy show, it's like flying a hot air balloon.
00:48:37
Speaker
Is that, you know, to fly hot air balloon, you don't try and fly harder. You don't sort of, you know, force it up into the air harder or, you know, like with more power. But what you do is you just take those sandbags out of the basket and you throw them off.
00:48:55
Speaker
Right? And the balloon rises naturally. And I feel that that's kind of within all of us, is that what we're trying to do is like we're stuck on the ground, weighed down by these huge sandbags, like blasting, blasting, blasting on that burner, but it doesn't move. And what is holding us back is the expectations of other people. And the stories that we tell about ourselves, which imprison us,
00:49:19
Speaker
Once we take those and they could be objects or things or the totemic items in our lives like my job title or my car, once we declutter that, then we're able to rise naturally. We're able to make decisions based on our own terms as opposed to
00:49:39
Speaker
meeting the expectations of other people that's a tough process but it's a gradual process that we can all take you know starts with working from home perhaps it starts from, you know, not adopting or a job title which puts you in this hierarchical position within an organization.
00:49:56
Speaker
where it starts with making small changes and nudges to your life which help you make better decisions because you see more clearly. That's a long-term process and that's the constant adaptation, constant tweaking and living an examined life which I think is all part of the journey.
00:50:16
Speaker
Man, that's great. It's a way to close it out, Graham. Well, hey, we really appreciate your time and we just, we hope that you have huge success in the future. I love what you're doing and I'd love to maybe catch up some more later. But up to this point, you've been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I've been your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Dewhurst. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks again, Graham. Have a good day. Thanks, everybody. Don't be uncommon. Bye-bye.
00:50:39
Speaker
That's all for this episode of The Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.