125 Cracking The Winning Code Paul Roos Shares His Leadership Wisdom

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I'm Mike Boris and this is Straight Talk.

Are you the lady you wish you had?

Paul Roos, Roosie. Welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

It's good to be back, mate. Thanks.

Well, we're still alive, both of us.

If you were Paul Roos in his 30s and coaching, would you take this program yourself?

Absolutely.

Most of the stuff I hear comes back to the same five or six things.

It literally is game-changing.

If you want to be a good leader, you have to be a role model first and foremost.

Test of a good leader is how many weddings you get invited to from your staff.

That's actually quite interesting, isn't it?

It's getting into the routine I think people find hard.

Do something simple, do something sustainable and do something you really like.

My son wrote back, no, Dad, that sounds f***ing s***.

Ha ha ha.

I don't know if I was supposed to edit that or not.

I'm looking over at my producer, but it looks like he gave me a thumbs up.

It's going to be in there.

Paul Roos, Roosie, welcome.

This is not welcome back to Straight Talk.

I don't think we've done a Straight Talk.

We did the mentor.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, we're on a Straight Talk, mate.

I'm trying to work out how long ago it was.

Oh, years ago.

Years ago.

It was pre-COVID.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was a couple of years.

I was thinking five or six.

You're one of my early ones.

Yeah.

And you might not have ever even been on the mentor.

You might have been on what we used to call the Mark Borough Show, the TMBS.

Yeah.

Me and Fordo kicked off eight years ago now.

Yeah, yeah.

Down there at the Cross.

Yeah.

I'm not sure.

It was, again, it was a fair while ago.

Yeah, a long while.

So it's good to be back, mate.

Thanks.

Well, we're still alive.

Both of us are still here.

Ha ha ha.

A couple of our old blokes.

That's a bonus, yeah.

You're killing it.

So I'm going to talk about a whole lot of stuff today, but I just want to reintroduce

some stuff about Paul Roos, the dude, like the guy.

Yeah.

I mean, you're a family man.

You're married.

Yep.

Kids?

Yeah, two kids, yeah.

How old are your kids?

Dylan, 29, Tyler, 27, and granddad, too.

Me, too.

Same here.

So that happened about 18 months ago.

Congratulations.

Where did you get it?

Boy or girl?

Boy, yeah.

Little grandson?

Little grandson.

Rain asked.

It was pretty cool, yeah.

And whose child is he, the boy?

That's Dylan's.

Dylan's the oldest.

Your son's boy.

Dylan's the oldest, and Kat, his partner, so she's fantastic.

So, yeah, it's always good when you're-

How'd you go when you- how'd you go, because I remember how it went, when you're sort of

thinking, when are they going to call me Grant?

Grant's granddad, or Pop, or what was-

You know, the funny thing was, I got asked, what do you want to be called?

And I'm like, doesn't the kid sort that out?

I always thought, you know, it's like a nickname.

You can't give yourself a nickname.

And they said, no, no, no, well, what do you want to be called?

So I had to sort of think through, oh, I don't know, Pappy sounds all right, I don't know,

something like that.

So I'll wait to see what Rainer calls me, but at this stage, it was a funny discussion,

isn't it?

You know?

Well, it's sort of, this sounds ridiculous, but it's literally confronting.

And I said, well, just call me Mark.

Grandpa Mark, or something like that.

This is my first one, I've got three now.

But like, you know, I'll tell you a funny story, and I haven't really told this to many

people, but it's definitely not on air, but I'll tell it to you.

And if anybody gets offended by swear words, bad luck, it's my show, I can say what I like.

And so one of my sons said, we've got a text group, a WhatsApp group, and we're talking

to each other on WhatsApp, and about exactly this point, before my first grandson was born

six years ago.

And-

When my kids were little, my sons were little, they would ask me something, my immediate

reaction was always no.

It doesn't matter what, can we go here, can we have this, always no.

And I would say no, then they've got to get over the hump, they've got to convince me,

it's just a bit of a game I play.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in Greek, the Greek word for no is orki.

Oh, right.

And if I was to write it in English, as my sons used to write it, they'd write O-C-C-Y,

orki, orki, orki.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I was on the WhatsApp group, and I said to the boys, you know, what are we going to

do, what are we going to call me?

I don't know.

We had a real conversation, different sort of, people offer different ideas.

Yeah, yeah.

And then one of my sons, and I won't say which one it goes, I want to call you O-C-C-Y.

Now, in Australia, as you know, we have a tendency to put Y on the end of everybody's

name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paulie, Markie, blah, blah, blah.

So I just thought they'd be funny, and I thought maybe they're having a crack at me because

I want you to just say no, that's orki in Greek.

And I wrote, oh, is that because they used to always say no every time you ask something

and you just put orki.

And when my son wrote back, no, daddy.

That sounds for old cranky cunt.

So I know I was supposed to edit that or not.

I'm looking over at my producer, but it looks like he gave me a thumbs up.

It's going to be in there.

Put a beep in there.

But fortunately, I didn't get called that.

So I get called pop.

Yeah.

So you've got grandkid.

You've got the kids are all good.

Everyone's happy?

Yeah, good.

Everyone's good.

So yeah, look.

How about you?

You in good shape?

How are you going?

Yeah, I feel good.

Actually, I'm really lucky after playing 356 games, I'm still able to run.

I like running.

You know?

I don't run a long distance, but I've always, probably since I've retired,

I've always sort of thought the 3 to 5K mark.

And I still run pretty hard.

So I think that's helped me.

I've never been someone that's going to run 10, 15K because I think, yeah,

my body probably couldn't have coped with that over a long period of time.

In terms of repetitions.

You couldn't do one today, another one tomorrow.

No, we did every other day.

You know, I'll do every other day and run.

And then I do a little bit of interval training, running,

and go to the local gym in Hawaii.

I mean, Hawaii is such a good lifestyle.

You know, it's outdoors all the time.

Like, it's funny when you're leaving Melbourne, which I love Melbourne.

I was in Sydney, obviously, for years.

But when you've got the weather every day is warm,

it's so conducive to getting outside.

You eat healthier.

Yeah, we'll walk in to get a coffee or ride the bike in to pick up some food.

You're just more active when you're in a nice climate.

I think that too about myself.

And you wear less clothes.

I mean, you don't have to wear as many clothes.

And you feel.

You feel a bit more agile.

You feel more inclined to exercise.

Yeah.

I think temperature is bloody important to me.

Yeah.

I mean, I like summer.

I don't give a shit.

I mean, I don't like stinking hot days, but I definitely don't like cold days.

I can't stand it.

And what's the medium temperature you're used to?

I was talking to the boys before about this.

It's interesting.

The first, because we bought the house about 12 years ago,

so we'd only really been there in our summer there,

winter after the football season.

But the last two years, I've been there full time.

And the variance is massive.

Minimal.

Like winter's 25, 26 during the day.

That's now?

Yep.

And summer's 28, 29, 30.

So you don't get the extreme, you know, heat even.

And that's probably something that, I don't know whether it shocked me,

but it's pleasantly.

So, for instance, I can play tennis in the middle of the day.

You know, 1 o'clock, 12.30, walk down the local tennis courts, 30 degrees,

a little bit of humidity.

But I'm so used to when I was growing up in Melbourne, you know,

we'd get the 35, 38-degree days regularly.

Yeah, I get it.

You know, we'd play footy in the year where we weren't allowed to drink water,

which was pretty bizarre when we look back on it.

Practice games, I remember playing a couple of practice games in 40-something degrees.

So 30 is comfortable, really comfortable.

It's a great, great climate in that summer.

I'm looking at you, you look really healthy, like, and you look really relaxed.

What's your regime?

Like, what's your regime look like?

I know you've got consultancies and stuff like that,

so we're going to talk about your business in a moment.

But, like, how do you?

How do you look after yourself in terms of your health regime?

What's that look like?

So I meditate every day.

Tammy and I, Tammy's a meditation teacher,

but we've learned how to meditate, I think, mid-90s, you know.

And that's really helped in a stressful environment,

obviously playing for a few years after I learned, but also coaching.

So that's a sort of wake up, meditate.

As soon as you wake up, you meditate.

Yeah, as soon as we wake up.

And what are you talking about when it comes to meditating?

Are you talking about box breathing?

Are you talking about, you know, proper meditation where you relax the feet?

Or what are you doing?

Yeah, I just sit up in bed, you know,

just close my eyes.

Sometimes we do it to music.

Sometimes we have, you know, a meditation sort of app or teacher

or something like that.

It goes for 20, 25 minutes.

Other times I'll just pop up in bed, yeah, 10, 15, 16 minutes or whatever.

Yeah, so that's really good.

As you said before, mate, when you're in a hot climate,

my biggest challenge is what color T-shirt to put on a pair of shorts.

So you're not putting a jacket on.

And then we might.

I'll walk down and get a coffee, you know, or go for a run or go to the gym.

So most days, pretty much every day we'll be doing something, you know.

I'll join the local gym.

And again, I'm probably at my age, less is more because it's easy to get in.

I think sometimes, you know, these fad diets or fad, you know, like apps or,

you know, I've got to run a marathon, I've got to run.

And they're just not sustainable.

So my message to people is find something that works for you.

Is it walking the dog in the morning?

Walk the dog.

You know, so for me, I never run more than, you know, 4Ks, you know,

so nice and short, sharp.

I still run pretty hard.

I'm still pretty competitive with myself, which is frustrating when you're 60.

You know, your best times were back when you're 25.

You're never going to get that back.

Never going to get that.

I go to the gym.

I'll do like more of a circuit training type thing, try and get out in 20, 30 minutes.

And I think because I've done that, you know.

All your life.

All my life.

It's really easy for me to do.

I don't think I was ever going to be, even though I played sport,

I don't think I was ever going to be an ultramarathon or run a triathlon or whatever

because I enjoy exercise, but I don't love it.

You know, like it's not something that I love playing tennis, you know,

so I'll go down and play tennis, you know, golf.

So I'm more of an active participant.

You know, when the boys were growing up, you know,

we'd have some full-on pretty hectic basketball games, you know,

one-on-one in the driveway or whatever.

So I've always been competitive in terms of, you know, the games,

but I've never, I could, was never going to be someone that ran a marathon

and said, oh, I have to run a marathon because I miss.

Or bench 150 kilos.

Yeah, or bench 150 kilos because I miss sport so much.

Enjoyed my time playing sport.

Learned so many lessons, you know, and obviously we'll go into those.

But yeah, I just got into a nice simple routine and that's my message to people.

Get into a simple routine.

Don't be spooked by, you know, someone you've seen on television that, you know.

Or a book that someone gave you Christmas to read.

Yeah, book that someone gave you Christmas.

And you look at it and you start it for three days and you go,

oh, I'm that exhausted.

It is dense.

Yeah, I just cannot sustain this.

So that's my main message.

Do something simple, do something sustainable,

and do something you really like.

And what about nutrition strategy?

Again, I'm pretty similar because learning about football was more around

in those days when it was part-time.

You know, we'd train in the afternoons and I don't think we had a dietician

until I came up to Sydney full-time.

To play or work?

What's that?

To play or coach?

This was playing when I was playing.

Yeah, yeah, yep.

Finished playing in 98, came up to Sydney in 90, end of 94, for 95.

So you started from Fitzroy.

Started Fitzroy.

And then Fitzroy got moved up effectively.

Well, I left the year before South Melbourne became Sydney.

South Melbourne, okay, right.

So I came up here.

But again, it was probably the same, just moderation.

You know, like just, you know, that bag of chips is going to be worse

than that chicken salad sandwich, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

So making just smart.

Making smart decisions.

I'm still similar.

But again, I think the weather, you know, the acai bowl for lunch

as opposed to the cold weather when you go back to Melbourne,

it's, oh, I might get a burger and chips today sort of thing.

So again, common sense.

You know, we all know what we should and shouldn't be eating roughly.

Without being told.

Without being told, you know.

But, you know, there's a little person inside of us all the time that goes,

oh, that chocolate bar looks – again, I've probably been a –

I like the dark chocolate.

You know, the two rows.

I'm a two-row man a night, not a block.

But how do you maintain that discipline?

Have you always been that way?

Yeah, it's funny.

It's a good question.

Probably because of the discipline of sport, you know,

because like I played for 17 years.

You know, we – and again, when we started, just to give you an idea,

the listener's idea of a day, it's dramatically different than what it is now.

So we would, you know, we would get up and train at Kerford Road, you know,

6.30, three mornings a week pre-season.

I would then go to my first job, which was the AMP.

So I'd get to the AMP, I don't know, 8, 8.30.

I'd then work all day to 4.30 to try and get to training at –

you know, or 4, get to training at 4.30.

We would then train four nights a week, you know,

and that training was two, two and a half, three hours.

I'd then drive home and I'd joke – you remember this.

I joke about this.

I worked in real estate and I got my first mobile phone, the ones in the car.

Yeah, the big ones.

Yeah, and the best thing about that was ordering food on the way home.

Yeah.

Yeah, because I was driving home at 8 o'clock at night

and there was a nice pizza past the place not far from where I live.

So I'd, you know, bang, bang, bang in the middle of the car.

Oh, yeah, Paul Roos again.

Oh, Roosie, what do you want?

And I said, oh, can you get me the spaghetti bolognese?

Yeah, I'll pick it up on the way home because that just saves some time.

Get home, you know, if I did cook, cook, eat, jump into bed at 10 o'clock,

10.30 and then do it again the next day sort of thing.

So I think just through that discipline –

And a rhythm.

And a rhythm, 100%.

The rhythm is –

It's important.

Someone asked me the question the other day about what's important.

It's easy to get out of a routine, but once you're in it, it's –

again, it's a little, you know, the chatter in the head going,

yeah, just do it, just do it again, just do it again, just do it again.

But it's getting into the routine I think people find hard.

And also getting sometime out of the scatter approach too

because like if we get out of the routine and we lose our rhythm

and then we get into something that's a bit more scattered,

that can be just as addictive.

Yeah.

Like because you can't – your head just doesn't want to get back into a rhythm.

Yeah.

It's actually dining out on –

Yeah.

Oh, fuck, I'm going to get a bit of –

Yeah, chaos.

Chaos.

I'm going to get a bit of midnight.

I'm going to get up at –

Yeah.

I can't sleep.

I'm going to get up at four.

Yeah.

I might go to the gym.

I'm going to eat.

Then I'm going to eat well the next three days.

Then I'm going to eat like crap the next four days.

Yeah.

Then I'm going to get on the piss with my friends on Friday night, Saturday night.

And so for me, it's making a conscious decision about the three things,

the three most important strategies.

It's about exercise.

Yeah.

It's about your nutrition.

Yeah.

And finally it's about your sleep.

Yeah.

And then overlaying all that is just knowing that you've got to maintain this rhythm

of those three things.

Yeah.

And I mean clearly –

You just mentioned something really that's really of great interest to me is meditation.

When you were playing football and or when you were coaching football, the Swans,

did you – was meditation a thing?

We started it.

So we brought in –

It's a good question.

Because we – Tammy did her PhD in parapsychic science with a dissertation on meditation.

So when I took over coaching the 10 weeks I took over 2002 when Rodney Eade left,

did the 10 games, got the job full time.

So we decided to – this is my thing with meditation is we spent so much time on below the shoulders,

you know, 3K time trials and there was a minimal gain.

You could still – now if you're a young person coming in, as you know, from 18 to 22,

you're going to get a really good gain.

But most of the players from 22 onwards go away at the end of the season,

try and improve your 3K time trial, try and improve your bench press.

He's gone from, you know, a 10.15 to a 10.12, you know.

It's marginal.

Fantastic.

He's just done a – instead of a 125 bench, he's done a 127 and a half.

Yeah.

So I started to think this is really untapped.

You know, no one's really worked on the mind.

So in 2003, Tammy brought it in.

And we didn't make it compulsory.

We just said, look, this is – and all the players – and I played at Sydney,

so we'd already known, you know, knew the players and were social with them

and all that sort of stuff.

And most of the better players started the practice, you know,

and they did it with Tammy and they did it regularly.

And there's no doubt, you know, in such a hectic environment,

it made a huge difference.

So when I went to Melbourne, it was a little bit more mainstream

when I started at Melbourne in the 2014 season.

So we made it compulsory.

You know, we'd meditate twice.

Twice a week before our main sessions.

And then we started doing some visualisation before the games.

Now, Melbourne, for those footy fans that don't know, when I took over,

they'd won two games the year before.

They had six years of horrendous performance.

So there was some real psychological scars for the players that were there.

So, again, it was really an important part of rebuilding their psyche,

not just as athletes, you know, but the psychology around, you know,

my self-worth, you know.

I'm getting beaten every week.

You know, how do I deal with stress and how do I build relationships

and all that sort of stuff.

So, yeah, so when we started in 2003, it was not as mainstream.

2014, a bit more.

But now most footy clubs, AFL clubs, will have someone

that does some form of mindfulness.

It seems to me that just listening to what you've got to say now is that

when it comes to coaching a football club, which is, you know,

to some extent is really no different to running a business

because it is a business.

It's been the business of sports.

It's the business of winning.

Yep.

And, you know, the stakeholders, et cetera,

you've got to look after all your stakeholders.

But it seems like that one of the things that you incorporated

into your coaching career, probably consciously,

but unconsciously you also probably had in your playing career,

and no doubt you've got it through your whole life now because, you know,

like if I just wind it back, you consciously have, you know,

routines and rhythms for yourself.

And you certainly do it in relation to your business as well.

Yeah.

It looks like to me that when you were a coach that you mapped something

out within the club.

So you actually had a program, you know, it included meditation.

It included certain training sessions.

It included pre-seasons and post-seasons.

It included rehabs.

It included looking at players' profile,

making sure that this particular individual has a propensity to have this

happen to him in those days.

Yep.

How important was –

Conscious mapping as a business person and coach,

I don't mean in business, but as coaching a team in the business

of winning football games.

Yep.

How important was mapping to you?

Incredible.

Like probably two main points to that.

So I retired in 1998 and I, as I explained,

didn't really become fully professional until mid-90s when I came to Sydney.

So there was sort of this changing dynamic of leadership.

My first coaches, you know, and you would have been the same

when you were doing your sport.

It was just top.

It was down.

It was yell and scream.

And to be fair to Wolsey and Parco, like they were working during the day as well.

Like they were coming down.

There was not time to build relationships and even talk too much about tactics.

So it was almost this, you know, motivation by fear.

But we were self-motivated anyway, you know.

But then I got to Sydney in 95 and that was the first time I didn't have a job.

I sat down at the end of my desk when I retired in 1998.

It turned out to be one of the best things I ever did.

And I didn't even know why I did it at that particular point because I didn't know where I was

going to end up.

I didn't really have aspirations to be a coach at that stage.

But I sat down at my desk and I wrote down the things I liked about my leaders

and the things I didn't like about my leaders.

And I wanted to do it through the eyes of a player.

What did I want from my coaches?

And it turned out to be 25 points.

And that was one of the mapping processes when I got the job in 2003 full-time.

I went back to that piece of paper.

I had it for eight and a half years at my desk at Sydney.

And I took it out.

It was the first document.

I took it out when I coached Melbourne.

And the way we explain it to leaders today at Performance by Design is,

are you the leader you wish you had?

Really powerful.

Are you the leader now that you wish you had?

When you were an employee.

So that was the first part of the mapping.

The second one came a bit by accident.

It was funny because I'd done 10 weeks of coaching.

And we'd won six games and lost four.

And I don't know whether you remember.

There was this Choose Ruse campaign that came through the Sydney Morning Herald.

So I sort of –

and there was another coach that was supposed to get the job.

So all of a sudden at the end of the year,

there was sort of this battle going on between me and this other coach.

But I was working and all that sort of stuff.

I ended up getting a phone call from a mate of mine who was a reporter,

a football reporter.

He goes, oh, Rusey, we spoke a bit about the other coach and what are you doing.

He said, oh, when are you presenting to the board?

And I said, what do you mean?

He goes, oh, I heard you had to present to the board.

And I said,

mate, and I'm the coach at the time.

No one's told me.

Mate, I haven't heard this.

And he goes, well –

and I said to him because he's a good friend.

I said, do you think I should ring the footy manager?

He goes, yeah, if I was you, I would.

So I hung up from him and I rang my footy manager who's turned out to be a good friend now

and was at the time.

And I said, mate, am I supposed to present to the board?

He goes, yeah, it's probably a good idea that you do.

And I sort of thought then I'd go, they were hoping I wasn't going to present to the board.

So then they'd give it to the other person.

And so –

now, Paul Roos didn't present to the board.

Well, you didn't tell me.

Someone tipped you lucky.

Someone tipped me in which is lucky.

So that was the second part of the mapping.

And it was a bit of a pain in the backside.

But it turned out to be the best thing.

And so I rang a mate of mine because I'm terrible on the computers,

my IT guy, Anthony Carl.

And I said, Carly, look, can I come in?

And he was great too.

And that was where the mapping started.

I said, okay.

You built a PowerPoint presentation with your mate.

Built a PowerPoint presentation with, you know,

what we're going to stand.

What are we going to stand for?

What are some of our principles?

What are the expectations of the board?

What are the expectations of, you know, the team?

What are our KPIs?

You know, I even did an analysis of the best team in the competition

and I rated their players.

And then I rated our players and said the gap is this.

This is who we need – this is what we need to do.

This is how we're going to train, you know, medical staff and all that.

And, again, to your point, when I first – I was angry.

After having done it, it was the best thing I did because it just took

all the information out of me.

It made you articulate it.

It made me articulate and it kept me accountable to it.

That was the other thing around it.

So I had – then I had a map or a roadmap to go, well,

this is what you said you were going to do.

You know, you better hold yourself accountable.

So I got my individual leadership code that I wrote down in 98

and now I've got the map for how we want to play,

how we want to do things.

And it's probably the thing as we start to talk more about business,

you know, the processes are so important.

And learning how important they are in football,

it's such a repetitive business and everything is systemised,

everything is a process.

When we meet for reviews, you know, when we train, you know,

that's why – like I just don't understand how people are late.

This doesn't make sense to me because we play a game at 2.10 on a Saturday.

It starts at 2.10.

We have a match committee meeting at 8 o'clock on a Wednesday.

It starts.

It starts at 8 o'clock.

We have a review because everything is so systematic.

It's probably one of my biggest, you know, bugbears when we do workshops now

and I just sit and look at my watch and, you know, 905, 906.

But what it is, it's your culture.

It's what time does the leader normally walk into a meeting.

That's going to set the –

The tone.

So the system, mate, is so important.

It's funny you should say that because, you know,

probably Australia's greatest exponent of boxing,

in terms of – I'll just take this silly thing off –

in terms of boxing, Jeff Fennec, when he was training me one day,

he said to me when he decided to train me, he said,

well, I'll see you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.

Yeah.

This is a long time ago.

And about two hours later I got a text, don't be fucking late.

Yeah.

Anyway, when I got there, I didn't really know where he lived.

I was going to his house to train and I didn't really know the area.

And I was like a minute, two minutes late.

He wouldn't answer the door.

Yeah.

He'd come out and he said, listen, you want me to fucking train you?

Yeah.

You turn up on time.

Yeah, right.

He said this is the last time.

And we're mates.

Yeah.

We're mates.

Yeah.

He said this is the last time we'll ever have the conversation.

Yeah.

Either next time you won't be trained and I won't even answer the door.

Yeah.

Or you'll be here on time.

Yeah.

And it was a very important – you know, like he's right.

You're training for – it's serious.

Yeah.

You've got to do it properly.

Yeah.

Well, the way I look at it too is almost like if you tell me to be here,

at a certain time, I've got to respect your – and I agree to it.

100%.

I've got to respect your time.

If I turn up 10, 15 minutes late, I'm telling you my time's more invaluable

than yours.

That's basically the message I'm giving you.

It's a pretty arrogant way to, you know.

Well, in his case, Rosie, what he was sort of saying is, hey, Mark,

there's a difference between coming over for a beer.

Yeah.

We're friends.

Yeah.

You can turn up 20 minutes late, whatever, doesn't matter.

But this is different.

Yeah.

I'm now the coach.

Yeah.

I'm now the leader.

Yeah.

And you're going to learn from me.

Yeah.

And we're going to do this properly.

Yeah.

Like otherwise, don't go about this in a casual way.

Yeah, it's a discipline of – yeah.

It is not – and it's business.

Yeah.

It is business.

Yeah.

Like, you know, like it's about winning something.

Yeah.

Or not losing something or not getting beaten up in the terms of the ring.

But like – but it's different to casualness and mapping, timing.

Yeah.

Expectations.

Like too many people in business go about in a casual way.

100%.

They bring – and by the way, post-COVID is worse.

Yeah.

Bringing into the office environment or bringing into the business environment casualness.

Yeah.

I just don't accept it.

I think the other thing, mate, is they keep kicking the can down the road.

This is the other thing I don't understand.

It's funny having come out of sport for 17 years and then coached for 11 and a half years.

Like in sport, if you have a meeting and a deadline and a game, you can't push that game out.

You can't –

It is what time it is.

That's the time you have to play the game.

You have to pick the team.

You have to train.

What has really surprised me in the corporate world is how easy it is to kick the can down the road.

Oh, Roozie, you know, I know I asked for that, you know, proposal.

But look, don't worry about it.

I'll push the meeting back.

Yeah.

I'm sitting there going, mate, hang on.

I just spent all last night doing the proposal and you're telling me you pushed –

it's a funny, you know, habit that people have got themselves into.

And that's what it is.

It becomes a habit.

The habit for me, as you mentioned, is turn up on time, do what you say you're going to do.

If the game's on then, that's when the game's on and you map out the week.

But the learn – unfortunately at times, the biggest – the thing I look at the corporate world is we're not teaching those sorts of things.

We're teaching X's and O's.

You know, whether that's through the school system, the university system, and then I get my first job in IT or marketing or sales.

I'm just teaching the transactional part of the job.

I'm not teaching, you know, the other skills that go into being an executive or running your own business or things like that.

Or being a leader.

Being a leader, 100%.

We're not teaching leadership.

So then what we're doing is we're asking the person when they get to the leadership role to become a leader, but they haven't been taught the skills to do it.

So they're floundering and they're going back to what's natural and that's doing.

And we call it the player-coach syndrome.

It's rife in the corporate.

Because what they're used to doing, the head of marketing, who we're now saying, can you help everyone marketing?

Can you delegate?

You know, can you empower?

It's really hard for them to do that because they don't really know what that looks like.

What is easy is to do the work.

And then what happens?

It erodes trust.

Because I start doing the work.

You're supposed to do it.

You go, well, why the hell – well, I'm going to do it.

Ruzi's going to do it anyway.

Or you start and I butt in and go, oh, mate, I'll do it this way.

So it just – it's a different world.

It adds to everyone's frustration.

So we have to teach more of those skills to help our leaders become leaders.

And do you think that there is one – I don't want to say – I guess I'll say one size fits all,

one set of skills fits all, or do you have to sort of construct it for each different environment?

In other words, there might be some common denominators, but generally speaking,

do these things need to be customised per business?

It's a good question.

I think there's some.

Skills.

Because people ask me all the time, what are some of the skills of a leader?

I think there's the consistent ones that you mentioned.

To be a good leader now, there's certain things you have to do.

Yeah, every job's got – there's still a technical component to every job

and there's still a complexity around certain things.

Like a skill base.

Yeah, skill base.

But also – and even in terms of numbers.

If you've got a small business that's got 10 people as opposed to Bunnings,

it's different mechanisms and processes and all that sort of stuff.

I guess what I'm talking about is probably more the character of the leader.

You know, again, get back to you.

Are you the leader you wish you had?

What's the character of the – you know, he believed in me.

She believed in me.

You know, they let me do my job.

You know, they're really good communicators.

They're really honest with me.

You know, those things shouldn't change, really.

What about if you never had the leader?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Let's say, you know, you never experienced it.

It's a bit like some kids never have that as a parent, never experienced their parents.

And then when they become a parent, they become the same parent that they experienced.

100%.

Well, my son Dylan runs a program called Prince to King,

which is mentoring young 14 to 22-year-olds around some of the things that we're talking about.

And I run the leadership program for them.

So one of the things I say to them is do some journaling during the day.

And I wish I had have done it.

Like I did it at 90.

What does it mean?

Do journaling.

So at the end of the day, you know, if you see a good leader,

it might be someone at the cafe you've gone to.

So it's not someone in your inner circle.

But all of a sudden, I've gone to a cafe, you know,

I've noticed something happen or I've gone somewhere else.

I wish I had have done some more journaling.

Just at the end of the day.

Just take notes.

Take notes.

What you've seen, what you've observed.

And I talk to them a lot about that because they might necessarily be in your inner circle.

And often, if you don't have the leader, write down the bad things.

I don't think that was – and it's a bit hard to do with mom and dad, you know,

when I'm dealing with these boys.

But often the parents are on the call and they're agreeing.

They're shaking their heads going, yeah, I've got to be a better role model and, you know,

et cetera, et cetera.

But I think that's invaluable.

What do you see during the day?

Humans have got pretty good natural instincts.

I like that.

Geez, I didn't like that.

But then we get conditioned by leaders.

I didn't really like that.

But it seemed to work because Rosie yelled at me all the time.

You had authority.

Yeah.

I don't know.

So then when I become a leader –

You're the same.

I lose my instinct.

And I go back to my role model, which is exactly what you're saying.

So observe things around you.

Some of the players I think – I'll say it the other way.

I think some of the players that missed opportunities were ones that looked at sponsors' events,

you know, celebrity things, whatever it is, as, oh, this is – yeah.

The ones that learned the opportunity was – I was trying to mark Boris at QBE function.

You know, it was awesome.

I had 10 minutes with him.

Picked up some really good tips.

Use that as an opportunity to meet people and ask questions and understand people.

So then if you haven't got them in your inner sanctum, you know, you can still reach out to them at some point and know what's right and know what's wrong.

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This whole concept of leadership is really, I think,

sort of complex in that if you're an individual in a business or in a footy team,

you're a captain or something like that, or you're a coach, because you are the leader of the club,

you're the CEO of the business, the game, the team, if you're the coach.

This concept of leadership is quite, I think, is quite, for me anyway, is quite complex.

I mean, I'm a leader of a couple of businesses.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And often I get it wrong.

One thing is I know that's really important is be open to getting it wrong.

Yeah.

And never think you know everything.

100%.

Yeah.

And it's become more complex in the last few years.

Yeah.

Because before you didn't have to take as much notice of people.

Yeah.

Now you have to take notice of everybody.

And if you don't, you could be in the shit.

Yeah.

And what does performance by design, you know,

what do you guys do around becoming a modern leader as opposed to an ageless leader?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

There's a difference.

I think one of the things that's really important,

is self-awareness.

You touched on that.

So I'll go the individual and then we'll go team.

So individually, there's no such thing as a perfect leader.

I've never met one.

I don't know whether you've met one.

No, definitely.

There's no such thing.

But I think the problem is when we get a certain role,

we think we've got it because we're the perfect leader

or everyone's got to rely on us.

No.

Authentic leadership is, mate, I made a mistake.

I'm sorry, guys.

I shouldn't have done that.

I messed up.

Or.

Now, Mark, can you tell me?

I'm not sure about tomorrow's presentation.

Can you help me?

All right.

So that's the best leaders that we work with now are really self-aware.

We also have an executive team in most businesses.

There's a reason we have an executive team.

And we often stop our workshops an hour, hour and a half in

and we ask that question because typically when the executive team gets together,

marketing person's got the marketing hat on,

the IT person's got the IT hat,

the salesperson's got the sales hat on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So we will often stop and say, guys, do you see yourself as a team?

And you can see the look on their face.

They go, oh, yeah, that's an interesting question.

We go, because if you don't, we'll leave now

because we're going to get a collective set of purpose, values, behaviors,

bring you all together, teach you some certain skills.

But if you don't see yourself as a team, and 100% of the time they say yes,

what does that mean?

If you don't have a certain skill, lean on your team member.

Guys.

Guys, that's why we're in the room together.

And that's why we're doing this workshop

and that's why we want to pull this business forward

because if you don't know something, there's every chance that Mark might

or Ruzi might or someone else might.

But even those basic concepts I think sometimes get lost

because there's so much complexity around a lot of businesses.

We just do, do, do, do, do.

We're really transactional rather than building relationships.

So, yeah, and the third part is do we really know who we are?

Yeah.

And what we want to be?

Yeah.

And most companies have a purpose or a mission statement and values.

But do they live them?

Do they systemize them?

Do they breathe them?

What we do at Performers Podcast, we go to another level.

Right.

And what's the behavior under trust?

Because trust might be slightly different for you and I.

And we'll get them to think about it.

What are the behaviors that are holding you back?

All right.

What are the behaviors you want to reward and challenge?

And where do you want to go?

And once we set that framework, it becomes a lot clearer.

And again, footy clubs do that really well.

And the induction process at footy clubs is, you know, at Sydney, for instance, I wouldn't

induct the players, you know, the players would, the new players would come in, captains

would go, here's our blood's culture code.

This is what we do.

This is what we stand for.

Now, we know you might go off the rails.

We'll pull you back in.

We'll help you.

But they're inducting them into the system straight away.

So then you've got the opportunity to go, I don't really believe in this, but I think a lot of times in the

corporate world, there's a lot of people who don't believe in this.

There's a lot of people who don't believe in this.

In the corporate world, we just get people in and we don't even know what their value is.

Go and do your job.

Yeah, go and do your job.

We don't know what their value system is.

We actually don't even know if they're aligned to where we want to go as a company.

Transactional, go and do your job.

And then the problem is two weeks in, we start to realize there's some behavioral differences.

And then we either just walk past them and let that person get away with it, you know,

and everyone gets frustrated.

It's funny you should say that because recently I was asked to do a talk and I was in the bush and I

had to go talk to a whole lot of farmers.

And I was talking about the Reserve Bank governor and her decision making around interest rates

and all that sort of stuff.

And I had the thought to myself, at the end of the day, we talk about data and the data says this

and the data says that.

Therefore, we've got to act in a certain way.

This is how she would speak.

Politicians are in the same position.

She's not a politician, but she sort of is a politician.

Yeah.

We've never been told, to your point, what her values are.

She's the person who's determining how much interest we're going to either receive if we've got money

in deposit or how much interest we're going to pay if we've got a mortgage or our kids are going to pay,

how she's going to affect the economy.

We don't know what her values are.

No.

We don't know whether she's Labor, Liberal, Nationalist, Greens.

I mean, or what do you believe in, don't believe in.

And it's funny, she is very transactional.

So she would take the view that she's got a really important leadership position in our nation.

There's nation ending or nation building position.

And no one's bothered to sit up and tell.

And no one's bothered to tell us, including her, this is what I believe in.

Yeah.

This is who I am.

I just want to let you know who I am.

Instead of, and as opposed to what she's doing right now is just doing a job.

And I can see lots of businesses that I've been involved in and lots of businesses I own

and lots of businesses I observe are the same.

So they bring in the new gun head of marketing from great credentials from blah, blah, blah,

and it all looks good on a piece of paper.

But we need to find out if you're coming into my environment,

and if you're going to lead me, I want to know what you stand for.

You're 100%.

So how does Performance Design solve that issue?

That's part of our workshop.

So probably the third stage of our workshop is a relationship building exercise.

And we call it the storytelling.

And we have four questions, and it's exactly that.

And it literally is game changing because suddenly we go from being a transactional group to,

and some of the stories.

And some of the stories that have come out of it are incredible.

Well, give me an example.

Don't give me an example.

But like I don't quite know what you mean by storytelling.

Do you mean the individual comes in and just says, look, I am what I grew up.

So I'm happy to share it.

Yeah, look, who do you admire?

Yeah.

Okay.

Tell us an achievement in your life.

Tell us a time when you've faced adversity.

And tell us your individual purpose.

Right.

Admire.

Not so much in terms of the business, but your own personal stuff.

Well, it's also a test, too, of how well they know.

Because if you've got a really close group, you'll find they'll share some really good

information.

And we ask the leader to go first.

And they normally set the scene for the rest of the group.

Who you admire is normally aligned to your values.

Yeah.

I admire Mark because I've heard him speak so many times.

He's super honest.

He tells it the way it is.

He believed in me.

Suddenly we're going, okay, that might be the value system of the achievement.

And it's not only a – we don't give ourselves.

We don't give ourselves a pat on the back either.

And that's a big thing in any environment.

And in sport, too, by the way.

And in sport as well.

You can't sit there admiring your last kick or your last punch.

So that's design.

Mate, well done.

Great.

Have a listen to that.

Everyone goes, gee, that was pretty cool.

I didn't know that about – I didn't know Mark did that or Ruzi did that.

So we're starting to get deeper below the, you know, how's your wife, how's your kids,

or how's your husband, how's your partner.

What university were you going to?

Yeah.

Or where was your last job?

It's a pretty same.

Yeah.

Sydney went on the weekend.

Where was your last coach?

Yeah, exactly.

And the adversity piece can be really, you know, really –

And what's that mean, adversity?

Well, you know, anything from – you know, we've literally had, you know,

people say, well, you know, my son at 12 years of age, you know, had cancer.

You know, people's jaws hit the ground.

Like – but no one knew because to your point,

no one knew the story behind the transactional person that was doing the job.

So it ranges from, again,

what you're prepared to share, but it's about, you know, again – and the story there is

when we face adversity, often we don't have an option.

We've got to get up in the morning.

We've got to put our pants on or dress on or whatever.

We've got to get out of bed and we've got to just keep moving forward.

So we're starting to get to the bottom of what makes people tick.

And you think about the people in your life that you have the most honest conversations with.

They're the people that you have the strongest relationships with.

So suddenly, as a business –

we're starting to understand people's value set.

I know a bit more about what they've achieved.

I also know what they've been through.

You know, the number of text messages and emails and phone calls after the sessions,

you know, if we're doing a two-day session the next morning, we go, well, how did we go last night?

Oh, you know, I shot Ruzi a text message.

I rang him and said, you know, thanks for sharing.

That was – it literally is game-changing because suddenly we're going to work with someone

that we're really in touch with.

We're going to work with someone that we're really invested in.

And that – again, that's the lesson from a footy club.

Probably the last change at a footy club was the relationship piece.

You know, there was this notion that a coach couldn't really get close to the players.

And I understand why.

That's gone full circle now.

As long as you're honest, you know, tell them the truth, you know, set really good standards.

Someone – there's a really good – I can't remember who told me this.

Test of a good leader is how many weddings you get invited to from your staff.

And I thought, that's actually quite interesting.

Yeah.

That's interesting, isn't it?

Whereas 40 years ago, it was sort of like probably the opposite.

How many weddings you don't get invited to because you tell them, you know.

Yeah, tell them.

But that's an interesting way to look at it.

So we're starting to switch the mindship of leadership as just this top-down,

you do, you do, to this relationship-building exercise around a culture code

and around standards and around KPIs and around, you know, the technical side of it.

And as you said, it's complex, but I'm really probably more talking about

the characteristics that I believe.

Virtues.

The virtues of what it – what it takes to be a good leader.

And it works the other way too.

Should a good leader then actually ask his next in line and the next in line,

the next in line, should the leader actually ask those questions?

So let's say, you know, you've done a review of the business

and there's some hard discussions to be had with, you know, three or four of your people.

And does a leader outsource that to somebody else or does a leader sit in on those meetings

and sort of, you know, have those hard discussions?

Or should you get the next in line to do it?

Like, how involved is it?

Because, I mean, a leader can't be involved in every transaction in the business.

But how do you – how do you equip a leader as to when he knows he's got to –

or she knows they've got to get involved and when they – when it's okay to hand off?

That's a complex question and that's the complexity of a business.

But I would – I would say it's probably – I'll give you an example.

So Sydney, I was more a doing coach because it was my first job, you know.

So I was more a doing coach.

Which means what?

Yeah, the – getting in, teaching the players how to kick and mark and handball and –

Basic skills.

Yeah, skills and setting strategies and all that sort of stuff.

And obviously I had great assistant coaches.

When I went to Melbourne, you know, I was really the foreman of that footy club, you know,

and more doing the things that you spoke about.

You know, great assistants who played with me or coached with me in Sydney.

I knew they knew the X's and O's and they were fantastic.

So I would be in those meetings.

That's what you're talking about, in with the medical department,

in with the fitness department, you know, talking to, you know,

Josh Marnie and the recruiting officers, you know,

probably trying to put bushfires out before they start.

Yeah, I was going to ask, are you in there to get information or are you in there

to be seen or are you in there to influence outcomes?

Initially influence.

Initially say, well, I'm new at this club.

This is the way I would like it done.

But I respect your role and what you do, but as you're going through it,

you're holding people accountable or empowering them and making,

you know, often I'd be in a meeting, I wouldn't necessarily have to say much,

but don't underestimate the very presence of, we did a session recently,

I won't tell you what organization it was, big organization,

and really important part of the organization.

And I remember saying to my business partner,

you know, one thing that I find strange that the CEO hasn't poked their head

into our session and he goes,

man, you're right, you know, and again, I'm not, I'm not, because they're busy.

It's a big company.

Sometimes we get busy doing stuff every day and sometimes we've got to step back

and actually get involved in these things.

Hundred percent.

And I said, look, just poke your head in for 10 minutes, half an hour.

Anyway, the last day of the session,

we went around and said, you know, how did it go?

Do you enjoy it, blah, blah, blah, expectations, et cetera.

Said, oh, look, I was probably just a little bit disappointed that the CEO didn't drop in.

So if I'm picking it up

as an external consultant, they're picking up it as well.

And I guess that's the feel of a good leader.

It's there's not a, you know,

a 10, 12 meetings, 13 meetings, 14 meetings.

I think the feel of the good leader is, OK, what is important for me today?

I've heard this. No, that's OK.

Mark can cope with that.

He's, he and I have been together for a long time.

He can run that section.

I don't know, Peter over there, he's new.

I probably haven't spent a lot of time with him.

I know he's got a meeting with his, you know, his marketing team.

I'm going to poke my head in there today.

I'm going to give him 10, 15 minutes.

That's the feel of a really good leader, because the problem is

the number of times you would say, people go, I'm busy.

What are you busy doing?

We've got to be careful we're just not busy for busy's sake.

Yeah. You know, busy is an easy term.

It's also an avoidance technique too.

A hundred percent.

So what are you busy doing?

Is that more important than that?

And sometimes it's avoidance too.

Sometimes we don't want to have those hard conversations, you know.

I've seen it.

I've seen that a lot.

Yeah.

So, OK, Ruzzi, so just I want you to, I hope you don't mind this, but this is a little bit,

I'm not here to promote you, but I do want to promote something.

So I do want to talk about your business.

So the business, the business itself

became a business at what point in your career, in your life?

Post-footy.

Yeah, only when I finished football.

So I got a phone call.

I got an email actually from an Aussie guy who's living in Canada.

And he'd seen me on the couch and he knew I was married to an American.

He was doing some leadership stuff in Canada.

He emailed me and said, you know, Ruzzi, I know you're interested in, you know,

maybe moving to America one day and taking the stuff you've done to the college

system or the professional sports system over there.

So then he came to Australia.

He'd been mentored by a guy known for a long period of time.

And just sort of out of the blue, we all agreed, let's get this up and running.

So that was about six years ago.

And sort of really probably taking the concepts of sport that I've learned and

combining them with more sophistication of profiling, relationship building.

You know, we have a platform as well of performance and a platform on our website,

which we offer people after workshops to systemize what they do.

But 95% of our work is now in the corporate space.

We still do some work in sport.

But look, the thing I love about it is, I

think, as you would know, most people understand concepts.

Like Brene Brown talks about psychological safety.

And, you know, Simon Sinek, I think he talks about trust and all that stuff.

I still think there's a confusion about how that relates to me and my business.

Totally. You know, look, it sounds good.

Psychological safety sounds good.

But how do I implement it?

Probably, to say what Performance by Design does best, I think we put those concepts

into a simple workable,

simple framework that people can go after our workshops, which they often do.

This is the best workshop we've ever done.

Now I get it.

Now I understand, you know, a values-based system.

Now I understand we do a lot of profiling as well.

But most people do the personality testing profiling.

Here's your profile, here's your computer, here's your desk, here's your strengths,

here's your weaknesses. We'll do it in the concept of the team

and we'll explain, you know, the strengths and weaknesses.

And look,

this is, so again, putting these concepts that people are familiar with,

but don't really know how it relates to me.

Still, people think culture is party,

person, ping pong, you know, it's the old five o'clock drinks.

A.M.P., mate, when I worked at A.M.P. in the early 80s, Friday,

and I played footy on Saturday, so I didn't go to many of them,

but Friday night was just drinks, everyone getting blind.

Yeah, absolutely blind. And they thought that was culture building.

That's culture building.

It couldn't be further from,

Well, particularly today, we're a long way from that sort of stuff.

So who typically, and how do they contact you?

Like, I mean, you don't even live in the country, but like, how does it all work?

Like, yeah, I mean, we have a website, www.performancebydesign.co.

Look, I'm pretty content with LinkedIn.

Like, I really like that platform.

You know, I've connected with some really cool business owners and leaders and we

reach out to them through LinkedIn, through my profile.

Yeah, so I'm...

What size business are we talking about?

Like, is there anything or...

Anything.

And it's a really good question.

People ask me all the time.

It's leadership related.

If you're a leader out there that is really

self-aware, is not really understanding, that's OK, no problems.

We'll come in and we'll help you, we'll systemize it.

So we always talk about it.

The leaders that don't want to be held accountable, they're the ones that we won't.

Yeah, because ultimately, and this is where it becomes the most challenging.

If you want to be a good leader, you have to be a role model first and foremost.

All right. Because as you mentioned before, a bit

about the parents of the boys or whoever, auntie, uncle, will start to do the things

that they do. They'll do the things that they see.

They see. Not what they're told.

No. And this is really good.

One of the really good...

If you want to do a test of your culture, ask the newest person, once they've been

there a week, OK, and ask them, what do you see in our culture?

Because to your point, they're just going to tell you what they saw.

They're not going to tell you what's on the wall.

And they're not going to tell you what the HR person

saw in the interview process.

They're going to tell you what is actually happening.

Oh, yeah, no, great.

Everyone was on time. Everyone's helpful.

Everyone's helpful. Everyone asked questions.

Everyone got back to me and people rang me.

Or if you get the old,

you know, or they don't want to be honest, then you know you've got a poor culture.

You haven't created that safety network, but it's a good way to analyze your own culture.

Well, how does someone sort of sitting there listening just now, you know,

your business, big or small, doesn't really matter.

How do they know that they might need

to have a couple of days set aside by perform and engage performance by design?

Like, how do they know or how do they?

Yeah, but what are they should be asking you questions?

The first thing is reach out to me and we'll have a conversation.

No, but how do they know that they should even reach out to you?

Should they be sitting there going, fuck, things are shit here or what is it?

The best companies we work with and this is part of the problem.

Often people wait till they get a really bad culture.

So then when we come in, they might have been a six or seven

when they started to think about that.

Now there are two.

So we spend the first six months getting them back to a six or seven.

So there's no reason why anyone shouldn't reach out.

Now, that's what I'm saying.

We have to work with everyone.

But what I'm saying is just that simple

awareness of all sorts of different ways.

People ask me, you're going to coach again,

which I'm not, but I would never coach without an external consultant.

Never.

Because the external consultant sees things that you don't.

And a lot of it's positive.

Let's switch tack a bit.

Often we will go into our workshops.

Yeah, we might have met with the CEO or the head of such and such.

And I go, you know, things are going well,

Roosie, the coach is not great, blah, blah, blah.

So we go in with a little bit of a brief,

but we like to not get too brief because it's good to hear it.

More observational. You want to do observations.

Exactly. Part of the workshops is our audit, really.

So and often we will go

to the CEO in the break or the end of the first day.

Jeez, you're hard on yourselves.

You're actually, you've got a really good bunch of people, really knowledgeable.

And they go, oh, really? I said, yeah.

Because when you're in it, it's like watching your kids grow.

I talk about this all the time.

When you're watching your kids grow, you see little incremental.

Someone hasn't seen your kids for six months.

They go, jeez, Dylan's got bigger.

You go, oh, oh, really? It's the same as your culture.

So when we come in as an external,

or when the external consultant came in at Sydney or Melbourne,

you know, they're going, oh, mate, you've let that slip.

Oh, have I? Oh, jeez, you've done really well in that area.

Do you realize that? And I go, no, no, no.

Because we're in the weeds all the time.

We're doing stuff. We come in, give a helicopter view of it

and just hold you accountable.

And sometimes it's big shifts we have to do.

Other times it's just systemizing it, keeping me accountable,

doing some reviews and just reinforcing what you're doing on a regular basis anyway.

So you're coming in,

you're coming in for a couple of days and you do a review, I guess you write a report

and that report goes to whoever engaged you in the first place, could go to the board.

Then what happens, you know, they say the board says, oh, OK, we copy all that.

That's it. We get it. We got to do something about it.

Do you set up a program?

Yeah, so normally that's where the bespoke part of it comes in.

So we would, you know, we would normally pitch probably a 12 months program initially,

but sometimes we'll just get in and do a bit of research and do a day or even sometimes we'll

come in and do a, you know, like a three hour session.

Well, I'll give a keynote and we'll just do a little bit of it just to give them a snapshot.

So, yeah, most of it's tailored to the business, you know, around what we do.

We have a set system to start and then we'll go, OK, we think this is what you

should do based on our observations, but there's other times where we can we can

pick that up through our, you know, when we do the business development session

with the CEO or the leader or whatever, tell us about it, what does it look like?

But we can always modify that anyway. But the best companies we work

with, we work with, you know, two, three, four years and we just continually come

in and make sure that they're continually systemizing their processes.

Well, what about like, let's say, you know, the business is like

it doesn't need a business coach, but let's say the individual who owns

the business as a proprietor might only have five people and they're probably

saying, well, look, I can't really afford to have a program that goes for 12 months,

whatever the case may be. Do you do like go in and sort of like coach that individual?

Like just go through with that individual?

Yeah.

About how to become a leader of his or her business?

Yeah, we do that a lot.

And we've actually found it's interesting, probably

sort of halfway through COVID, I reckon that became really, you know, on our websites,

we're noticing we're getting a lot of traction around, do you do individual

coaching, do you do individual coaching? So it's become a bigger part of our business.

And it makes sense.

And to be honest, the companies that we work both with teams and individuals make

the biggest jumps quicker because we're working with the team and obviously, you

know, within that workshop, the individual is getting some really good tools.

But then all of a sudden, if we're doing it separately as well.

So it's definitely jumped.

A lot more people now are looking for coaches, looking for business coaches to

help them, you know, more, for us, it's more along the lines of those

characters that we, you know, what does empathy mean, Rosie?

Well, hang on, you know, what's my brand?

We talk about a personal brand.

Well, you tell me, what is your personal brand?

You know, were you trustworthy today?

Did you do it?

What are you going to say you did? Well, what do you mean?

Well, pretty simple question.

You know, did you do what you say?

Oh, no, you're right.

I actually I said I was going to do this.

I didn't do it.

So, you know, it's just keeping people

on track and giving them the tools to be good leaders.

And if you were running a footy team today,

and you could go back and Paul Ruiz in his thirties coaching,

would you take this program yourself back into your own footy environment and put

put your leadership team through it?

I presume an AFL team has a leadership group and you have the younger kids and you

have the club president and you've got everybody else in the club,

all of whom respond and get responses back from the players.

Because too often footy clubs, I know this from a league's point of view,

is that the team's usually a product of the board and the administration.

You've got a shitty board and a shitty administration.

You're going to have a shitty team.

I don't give a damn how much talent's in the joint.

Yeah.

Would you take your program into your

own football environment? Yeah, 100 percent.

I think, again, it's probably as we get older and wiser,

sometimes not wiser, but hopefully we're wiser the more we get older.

We're definitely getting older.

But I think when I start to listen, you know, if I listen to your podcast or

other people's podcast, often it comes back to the same things, doesn't it?

That's probably the thing that I realize now more so than when I'm 30.

It's like putting an old head on young shoulders when you're 30.

But

to answer your question, absolutely.

Because most of the stuff I hear comes back to the same things.

Yeah, some people deliver it in different

ways, but there's probably five or six things that it really comes back to.

And a lot of it is around values and culture and leadership and

the things we talk about, accountability and empathy and authenticity and safety

and all that sort of stuff. When people talk, you know, when we pull

the noise away from the conversation, everyone's pretty much saying the same

thing, you know, I want to go into a workplace where I feel valued.

You know, where I get good training, where someone's honest with me.

You know, when I mess up, you know, they don't smash me, but they come and wrap

their arms around me and they say, look, you know, how can we do this better?

They're asking me really good questions, et cetera, et cetera.

So the answer to the question is absolutely,

because that's fundamentally what we're trying to do.

Can I ask you a question?

And I've often thought about this when it comes to the topic of leadership.

Is there really such a concept as leadership or is it more better described

as followership? In other words, I'm not leading anybody.

They choose to follow me because of the things you said.

I show empathy and support and blah, blah, blah.

There's a list of things.

Is it, would be better described as followership?

Or is it a better word for it?

I don't want to say an influencer because an influencer's got a bad con.

No, no, no, but today it has.

It's a different connotation.

But a leader should be there to

influence, you know, to, to, to get people to come on the journey with me.

Now, the other, is it on the, that's interesting, is it on the journey?

Because someone asked me this about the other day, about this the other day,

and I said, well, what I really love about business,

the businesses that I've been in, is I think that I have helped some people

who directly report into me to become the best version of themselves.

Yeah.

So it's more really helpful.

I mean, I think it's something like David Gingell at Channel 9.

I loved him at Channel 9.

Because David helped people become the best version of themselves.

And there was absolutely no ego there, he couldn't give a shit about himself.

I think what we're talking about is probably two different things that are related, though.

What I'm doing the here and the now, so I'm working for, you know, you and your company,

you know, but I'm also, I should be learning individual leadership skills

because I'm not going to stay there the whole time.

One of the philosophies we had at Sydney

was, you know, I don't want you to be just a bit of football.

I want you to be a better person.

So when we're at the company, we should be, let's get on the journey together and let's do it.

But as you said, part of that is, I want you at some point,

if we can't give you an opportunity here, I want you to leave and go somewhere else.

And I want you to be better for the experience of coming here.

So, you know, when someone says to me, oh, mate, I know, you know,

Roosie left, you know, the company and Batizi's been of value, I should be proud

of that, you know, because for whatever reason, I haven't been able to offer

that opportunity, someone had that role, but that's a great compliment to you.

Oh, what a great person.

You know, gee, what did you teach them over there?

You know, they're so engaged.

They're so loyal.

They've got a great personal brand, they're good people.

And that's what you're talking about.

We should be, we should be upskilling people to come on the journey with us at

the time, but also to have their own journey that we're proud of, regardless

of who that is.

So they asked me on the ABC many, many years ago when I did the Australian

story, which was like 20 years ago, it really seems irrelevant today.

But they asked me what was, what did I think was my greatest achievement?

I said exactly that.

I saw some people become so bloody good at their job.

Yeah.

That I was so delighted that they could get, they actually could leave me and get,

if they wanted to, they could have left and got the best jobs in my industry

in banking in the whole country.

They could have walked into any job they wanted.

And then I thought, hang on a minute, don't give yourself a pat on the back,

because that wasn't me doing that.

That was them doing that. I didn't do it.

But maybe I helped them a little bit.

I might have inspired them a little bit or

motivated them a little bit to become the best version of themselves.

It helps when you're part of a movement.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

When you're in a business that's taking on the banks in our case in those days.

Yeah. You know, because you felt, wow, I'm doing,

I'm making a difference here, I'm making a change.

How important, and this is my last question to you,

but how important is it for someone like you to come in or alternatively

the leader of the organization or the leadership group of the organization

to recognize what is our purpose in this world?

And it's not, you know,

making money that is sort of one stakeholder would like that shareholder.

But what is our real objective here?

What are we trying to do for every one of our customers?

How important is that part?

I literally did this exercise with my son this morning.

He's got two coaches now at Prince to King.

And I literally did that with him.

And we had a 15, 20 minute session this morning because I wanted to set up

the conversation for next week and I said that I said, guys, what do you,

why did you set up the business, Dylan?

Because it's easy in our world and I'll tell you whether it's sport to win

a premiership or, you know, banking to make the most money or get you say,

it's really easy to lose sight of why we start or what we do.

It's fundamental.

It is absolutely fundamental to know why we exist, you know.

And I had this conversation, you know,

yesterday I was doing some work with the Rugby League team and I said,

I think one of the things that Sydney have been able to do is when people come

to the game, they know they're going to try really hard

and they know there's going to be a really good product.

Yeah.

And again, they're not going to win every week because if we hang on,

I remember saying to this to the board, you know,

how do we define success in this footy club?

Because if we're saying it's the premiership one,

there's only one successful team every year, it just doesn't make sense.

There's 17 unsuccessful teams.

It's too remote.

It's too, it's hard.

But to your point, I absolutely agree.

Why have I started this business?

What am I doing?

And it happens a lot where we get to that point and we can see it that the person

that started the business has completely lost sight of what they've started

and they've lost their connection to what they've started the business.

And then all of a sudden they've just become X's and O's and they're panicking.

They want to, I mean, want to float it.

I need some money or whatever.

All of a sudden, go back to if you do this the best you possibly can.

Let me tell you what's going to happen.

You'll get an investor.

You will get that money.

You will make the profit.

But if we lose sight of that, I don't know.

That's when, in my view, that's when business really start to struggle.

And of course, we've got to make the assumption that that the original

objective, the original purpose is not only one you understand and have,

but it is a right purpose.

Yeah.

Exactly. It's one that's going to be.

It's one that there's demand for, there's need for.

And there's one that you understand, the one that you can actually prosecute.

You have the ability to prosecute.

And there's a whole lot of stuff that goes around.

It's funny, Kerry used to always say to me, when we were in partnership, he used to say to me,

you know, son, you know, when are you going to start to increase the margin

in the business? Like, you know, because we were out there just building market share.

Yeah. And he kept saying, you know, put your price up, put your price up, put your price up.

And then he would say about decisions, I said, Kerry,

I am always going to make

decisions, not in my best interest and not in your best interest, because we're the two

shareholders, I'm going to make decisions that are in the best interest of the business.

Yeah, yeah.

And I said, then you and I will make the most money.

Exactly. Yeah.

And that's how it ended up.

I mean, I could have put my price up, but I might have missed out on market share.

Yeah.

I just said everything we do will be in the best interest of the business and our customer.

Yeah.

And if our customer, our deal was to

make sure the customer's got loans

at a price that was better than the bank's.

Yeah. Simple.

Yeah. That's my proposition.

Yeah. And as you know, as David Gingell sort of

influenced a part of my, because, you know, he was a boss at Channel 9 at the time.

But David's influence on us was,

for us, was you come to us,

we're not about judgments, we're about home loans.

So we're no judgments, just home loans.

That was our strapline.

And of course, Eddie helped quite a lot.

Yeah. Kept telling everybody in Melbourne that and David kept me on the footy show.

But it was good to have distribution of that.

The message, that's important.

But at the same time, I have to say that people like Gingell

looked at my business from afar, like a consultant, but he wasn't.

But he's one of those guys who always gives, you know, wants to offer his opinion,

which is great. He looked and he said, Mark, that's what your business is about.

You're not making judgments because bank make judgments.

Yeah. And people feel disempowered.

They're nervous.

You tell people, no judgments, just home loans.

Yeah. And he said, and all you have to worry about is that.

You keep doing that and you're going to build a great business.

And really, it's pretty simple.

We start off right.

There's so much information, as you know,

that's where you've got to be careful now as a young person, entrepreneur.

There's so many Instagram people, there's so many people who've got podcasts.

There's so much noise out there.

And a lot of them that particularly my oldest son listens to,

I've got to break down the message.

And, you know, there's one guy, I won't mention his name, he's a real estate bloke.

And the other day it was like, this was literally what he said.

He said, I took a hundred million.

And I borrowed nine hundred million from the bank, got a billion dollars,

bought four billion dollars worth of real estate.

And I said, Dylan, why are you listening to that garbage?

Like, who on?

But then you've got to sort of, this is the problem.

You've got to try and break it down into those concepts.

It's not quite as simple as having a hundred million and then borrowing

nine hundred million, then buying four billion dollars worth of property.

But there's some of the messages that these young people are getting now.

And then to connect that

to where this person is at.

You know, five person business, ten person business, twenty person.

How do you make that connection?

Yeah. What's that bridge look like?

It's a long, it's a big bridge.

But if you go back to, you know, I started a shoe business because I had bad feet,

you know, and I, you know, plantar fasciitis or whatever it is.

And I made these shoes and they're absolutely unbelievable.

That's more sustainable than taking a hundred million and adding nine hundred million.

And that's a real challenge, isn't it?

It's a big issue at the moment.

Particularly for startups or young people,

because they're just getting inundated with success stories.

And you're not going to get the bad, you're not going to get the stories

on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and every other place.

You're only going to get good stories, success stories.

And all of a sudden everybody starts to measure themselves against that.

Yeah.

And some of these things are totally relevant and just never achievable.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Or maybe in a lifetime they might be, but like generally speaking, not achievable.

And it's quite confusing.

And I think we've got to go get back to the fundamentals.

Yeah.

And I agree with you.

And I think that, I mean, I love the fact you take your football experience as a player.

You probably didn't consciously understand that at the time.

Then you became a coach.

You became conscious of what a coach needs to do, but you probably didn't

consciously know how you're going to turn that into a business.

And then you retire and you become a businessman.

And you run this business, Performance by Design.

And you're now out there sharing that with businesses, big or small.

So, mate, really, I think it's awesome.

I really appreciate it. Mate, you look so fucking good.

You're killing me.

I'm thinking about it.

Maybe I'm going to move.

I don't know, Gregor Honnes or something like that.

But you look fantastic.

Thanks, mate.

It's great to see you again.

I loved the last time and I've loved today.

So thanks for having me on.

Thanks, mate.

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