Mastering Success And Happiness - podcast with George McGerhin

00:00 In this episode of the Team Superdad podcast, I talked to George McGerhin, an absolute awesome guy, an ultra marathon runner, owner of an incredibly successful recruitment company in the States, former fat bloke and all-round top guy. I know you're going to love it. Roll theme. Welcome to Team Super Dad. Real dads creating their best lives ever. More time, more money, more fun. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad. Hello and welcome to the Team Super Dad podcast. My name is Johnny Jensen. I am the founder and creator of the Team Superdad community and mastermind.

00:44 It is a pleasure to have you here, dads, mums, wherever you're listening at home, on your run, in the car. This is the place for dads who want more. Team Superdad is a community, like I said, of dads, dads who are up to stuff. You could be a successful dad who's looking to make gains. You could be a dad who's struggling a little bit. Maybe you want to make more money. Maybe you're fed up with your work. Maybe you are incredibly successful, but perhaps not very fit. Wherever you're at, this is the place to be. We focus on the F5, which is focus, fitness, finance, family, and fun. There is a secret and F, the six secret F

01:25 is very much in the relationship sphere. But we are all about having a great time in our life, falling back in love, falling back in love with your partner, a new partner, having more fun with your kids. This is the place to be. And our podcast and expert hangouts are intended to be some fun. It really is an opportunity for you to put your headphones on, to put your smart speaker on, and to spend some time with me and my guests. Some of the guests, I try and get, I'm building it up basically. I want to get some famouses on. I've got a list of cool people, authors, celebrities, DJs, footballers, other sports stars, etc.

02:05 But I'm also really keen to make it real. I'm also really keen to have just dads on. Dads who've got a cool story to tell, dads who've overcome some sort of challenge. Dads who are up to amazing stuff. I mean, the world's full of amazing stories right now. And so the more of those that we can get on board, the better. If you know someone, if you've listened to another podcast, if you think there's someone who should come on the Team Super Dad podcast, please just send them over to me. They can find me on all the Team Superdad channels, the website.com, the Facebook groups or page. Just search up Team Superdad. We're TeamSuperdad HQ on Twitter and Instagram. So come and find me. And more to the point, if you are listening in, if it's the first time, welcome. If you're a regular

02:46 visitor, if you are a regular listener or viewer, let's say, then have you left a review yet? Have you left me a review yet? Do it. Get on over to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you're listening in. Please leave me a review so that we can spread the Team Super Dad podcast far and wide. And most importantly, help dads. My story, you might have all heard of it. Go back and listen to some of the podcasts if you want, but it's been very much about rebuilding and creating my life the way I planned it, not the way it actually turned out. And so with my children and with Team Superdad, it's all about going out and having a great time and smashing it in the world.

03:31 So that's really what George is all about. What a top guy. I got introduced through a fellow podcaster who'd had him on their podcast. And so he's in America. I got hooked up with him through his team, really slick. I got the meeting invite down, sent over, he sent over his info, I sent over the briefing, and then we got chatting. And he didn't realize that we just thought we were getting to know each other. I thought it was the recording. And he's got his life working so awesomely. He was just able to say, yeah, fine, we'll just do it now. And we had such a chat, such an absolute crack. I'm pretty sure we're going to become mates because of this.

04:14 We're going to get together in London when he's next over, have a beer together. He's a runner, not just a runner, actually, a ultra marathon runner. And curiously, as we found out, he used to be fat, like obese, clinically, morbidly obese. He said, I used to be 135 kilos. And from my like biggest loser USA days, I'm thinking 135 kilos. Like, hang on a minute. And I got the app out on my phone and converted it into stones and pounds. I was like, that's 23 stone. He said, yeah, yeah. I was massive. Absolutely massive. So listen in, like, hear his story, hear how he found out that times that his weight had to change more than anything.

04:58 And just hear the different moments. moments in his life that encouraged and drove him to step up and to step up and where he overcame hurdles where he saw through his own fears and concerns about getting started and he's just got an awesome life from spending summers in peru to spending three months working at ground zero um like quite full on sifting through the rubble um you know as one of the the the the team there um his family his children and and just a top bloke just so easy to get along with in chat too we could have spoken for hours and we had to wrap it up in the end no doubt we may even get him back on and chat some more about the bits that we missed out so without further ado stay tuned right to the end and uh

05:47 ask send over some questions if you've got questions the videos you can watch if you're watching this now then you'll be able to see the video but also the lives are on on the facebook group the team super dad group on facebook and they go out live on the youtube channel so come over subscribe join the group just engage with the community be active be a dad who wants more and you're going to get more by participating in the team super dad gang without further ado let's roll the interview and i'll see you on the other side oh good evening welcome to the team super dad podcast you would have just heard the introduction but now we are into the interview and i've got uh someone all the way from america here george mcguerin uh in new york or not too far just outside new york it's been uh an introduction from another podcast guest that i spoke to and he said you have got to speak to george

06:40 and we've just been chit-chatting getting to know each other before and he was absolutely spot on so you can see the both of us if you're watching the the video you can see the both of us uh smiling away so we are definitely on the same page as far as as far as fit goes so uh and we've actually both realized that we weren't quite on the same wavelength about whether we were recording the show or getting to know each other so we have been flexible and and we're here tonight good evening george how are you johnny how you doing it's it's uh i feel like we've spoken what for 15 20 minutes now right prior but i feel like we've done this 18 times already so it's awesome to yeah it's awesome to and you should you should tell your the audience like the confusion of i thought it was just going to be a quick intro you know sort of nice to meet you and uh yeah totally and i've got my kids downstairs like on best pay

07:26 because because it's friday night and uh uh we've watched some tv and stuff already but um but no they're they're going to be watching live and maddie well into the into past bedtime but that's all that's cool as well and and it's great that someone uh like yourself can be so flexible you know it's it's the idea that you know we'll get into your into your you know what you're up to and your your success in a minute but it's it's great that someone who is achieving at the level you are at um but has this flexibility around their time as well so it's just i think that's that's an inspiring part of what we can hear more of this evening well no i appreciate that but we we have the um the thing i like about your show is that a lot of the a lot of things that you you stress i mean that's that's how i've that's not

08:06 only that's not how i run owning the business but that's also how i just do things right so yeah it's uh yeah this is this is i can tell you right now i mean you and i are gonna have a very easy conversation because yeah totally i'll probably be asking you questions as well as you're asking me right yeah exactly and that's that's that's you know for anyone who's listening for the first time on team super dad podcast that's the nature of this uh we generally end up speaking mainly to dads and the essence of it is just about like how did you get to where you're at or what was your story and and sometimes that's fitness sometimes it's adventure other times it's business uh and quite often actually it's a bit of all of it

08:42 and in amongst that as well we've got you know got the experiences the very shared experiences of bringing up our kids uh and for anyone that's listening you know what whatever george shares tonight i really encourage you to to listen to that from the perspective of your life like where where could you stretch a little bit where could you take a risk where could you be bold in your decision making and and and that's really what team super dad is about it's about for dads who want more to be more to make more and to play more and if you're interested in that then come on over to the team super dad uh website or the community on facebook just search up team super dad we'll be happy to have you over with us so george you've uh you're a dad you just told me that yeah i've got two i've got two kids i've got a nine-year-old and a five-year-old right so one's uh the nine-year-old uh he thinks it's cool because i'm on all these podcasts and things he thinks it's a cool thing right yeah yeah uh but then he said to me he said why don't just people listen to their radio like why were they doing the podcast thing you know so

09:37 he is kind of a and then i've got a five-year-old who's like the extrovert you know squared i mean he's just he's off the wall right but uh it's amazing how when you have to i mean you know it's because you have two kids but the one is so different than the other um well i'm lucky i'm lucky Mine are pretty similar. And a boy and a girl. So, you know, they could be into anything different, you know, but actually, they're both, they're both 100 mile an hour, fully extrovert. There's not much space not to be, to be quite honest, in my family. But funnily, the oh, it's just escaped my mind.

10:15 Oh, my, my stepson was, was, was, you know, was relatively different. But when I bumped into my, my, what would be my ex-step mum kind of thing, and my story's quite messy. She said to me, oh, you got what you wanted then. And I said, what did you mean? She said, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy and a girl. And I'm like, what? She goes, yeah, when you were a kid, you always said you were going to have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, and a girl. And she was like, you've got it. And oh, I know what I was going to say now. Yeah, my kids, well, they're just 100 miles an hour. And so my ex-wife, when she couldn't understand it, she said, We need to get him tested. We need to get him tested. I was like, what are you talking about? He's too hyper. He's too high. It's like, I never met a kid who wasn't this hyper.

10:56 Welcome to our world kind of thing. And no surprise, we're divorced. Well, I tell you, I mean, I'm 45. I turned 45 in April, right? Oh, we're just as similar. I'm a year old. When's your birthday? May 12th. Okay, so I'm, yeah, so I'm an April guy. So it's, so it's, it's, I think it's a great age, by the way. I think you're, I think you're old enough not to make the same mistakes you made 20 years ago, right? You're energetic enough to be able to do things, right? And then you're, you're wise enough, you know, to take a little bit of risk, but but, you know, and sort of mitigate some of those risks, right? But I think it's great. I think, I think it's a great age. And, but now you can have a lot of think I lost my trip, my track here on the age thing. Yeah, no, it's funny. I've literally, I think I've got, you've got. Yeah, we're too excited. We're too excited.

11:40 I'll go back to that. So this is proving my point, actually, what I was about to say. Yeah. Is that when I was, I mean, when we were kids, this whole ADD thing, I mean, it didn't exist, right? Yeah. Like there was no, there was no, okay, you know, you're a little, you know, you're a little too energetic, right? So go for here to this special class and it didn't exist. And now, now they've got, I mean, they have a class and course and specialists for every kid that has, you know, if they, if they like, you know, I don't know, sort of scrambled eggs. They've got a psychologist for that. And it's kind of, I mean, I think it's, we were able to just kind of grow up, right? Without, and it never was a, it was never a deficit for us. It was just like, okay, that's who we are.

12:24 And so I see that. I don't know about you, but here in the United States, there's some parts of the country where kids, they play soccer or football, right? And the school systems don't keep score because they don't want the kids to know that they're losing or winning. Yeah, shocking. I mean, it's, I mean, that was different. You and I were kids. It was, it wasn't like that, right? Well, and I talk a lot about this. You know, I think that, you know, the fat kid that comes last is way ahead of every other kid that didn't even enter the race. Right. And if he or she works their ass off and the next year they come second to last, then that's a massive win, you know, and so the idea that they're losing and shouldn't be in the race or that we shouldn't keep count, I think is completely the wrong message.

13:09 And there's an element of when you know in the in the little leagues, I know you guys call that our kids playing football, soccer. They we would keep scoring the match, but they didn't keep a league, like to see who won the league. They kept, they kept that, that kicked in when they were nine years old. But the kids knew. The kids knew exactly. Of course they did. And all the parents have got a little WhatsApp group with the thing on. So it's like this complete false, false reality. But yeah, at sports days, you know, the balance, the beanbag on the head and hop round in the circle. I'm like, okay, fine, but now can we do the running races? You know, now can we? Right, right.

13:49 Well, I mean, you don't know this about me, but I used to, like back in the day, I was something like 135 kilos, right? So I don't know if that's in stone, but it's a pretty decent weight, right? And I used to think I was just, you know, I would, I used to always think, I mean, just people just in general, they make comments about the weight. And I used to think my mind, I was like, okay, I can lose the weight, right? But, you know, it's really, it would be much more difficult for you to become intelligent, right? I would think that in my head, right? Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And so, but it was, it was, it was, sometimes I think there's an advantage, right? There is an advantage, but at least I was present, right? And I think being present as a kid or father or business partner, that's half the deal, right?

14:33 So 100, as in kilograms, 135. Yeah, I think that's 290 pounds. I don't know what is in stone. It's here 21 stone. Yeah, that's pretty. And I'm like one in meters. I'm like 1.7, 1.77 or something like that in a meter. So it's not really, it's like 5'9. nine and a half. It's not so you, so you are properly, properly obese. Oh, yeah. And I had the listen, listen, I mean, uh, Johnny, I had the issue where I would, I would say, well, I don't, I don't eat that much. Like, I don't, you know, I eat, it must be genetic, right? And it wasn't genetic. I mean, I would just plow through food. Six quarter pounders is not genetic with a

15:14 slurpee or whatever. It was, I mean, it was just my idea of, I mean, it was just the, the, and I'll tell you, I mean, talking about how the innocence of kids, right? I was crossing the street, and a four-year-old said, and I was going, I had gone to doctors, and I was on all these medicine, you know, blood pressure. And the doctor's like, listen, you can, you can make all the money you want, but if you're not healthy, you know, it's, it's, it's irrelevant. Uh, and uh, and now it's crazy that I run ultra marathons and I've done, I don't know, but um, crossing the street, a four-year-old said to his mom, he said, Mommy, why is he so fat about me?

15:52 Yeah, he's four, right? Yeah, yeah, so, and uh, the mom said, I mean, the mom wasn't any politer than the four than her son. The mom said, Well, he's not fat, he's morbidly obese. You know, it's like, just put a nice label on it. Don't worry, you know, at least they're at least they're honest. Uh, and then the kid responded to the mom, Will I ever be that way? And then she said, No, because you, you know, you watch what you eat and you control what you eat. And I thought, Jesus, like, if I can't fool a four-year-old, right? I'm not tricking a four-year-old, you know, my body's probably a little smarter than the four. I mean, internally, uh, maybe I should kind of take this seriously.

16:32 And I thought, okay, let me, we talk about habits, right, and stacking and other things. Um, I thought, okay, I'm just not gonna, I used to drink, uh, you know, sort of Coca-Cola like it was uh, like I was like, I own the company. I mean, I used to drink that. Like, it's okay, you know what? I'm just gonna get rid of soda for my life, anything carbonated. And uh, okay, so how old were you when you were this size? Let's see, I'm 40. I'm 21, so this is uh, let's see, 45, this is like 15 years ago, yeah, 15, yeah, so 15 years ago. So, I just, I mean, I used to, I used to always do sport, and then you get to a point where your metabolism catches up, and you just, you don't, you know, the same mistakes you make when you're 18 and 19 in terms of how you eat catch up to you when you hit your 30s, right?

17:12 And uh, and I was always, I don't know, I was always uh, I was always liked sports, but you get to a point where it just, you know, it's, I don't know, it just gets out of control. And it's funny how, you know, one kilo becomes three kilos, becomes five, and it's just next thing you know, you're like, oh my God, I just gained all this weight. Yeah, but that kind of, that kind of malaise is interesting for anybody. Like, you can like, well, where, where in my life is that happening? Is it, is it money? Is it my relationship? Was it was all right? And it was average. And now it's really bad. Like, like, where, where is everything slipped down? And it's so easy, right? It's so easy to get into that thing. You just, and you're, you're, um, and this is, and there's a couple of things that we talked about this before about, you know, when you were coming off from off the mountain.

17:53 Um, but um, I, I mean, I, that would never, that would never happen to me now. I've got a team of people, you know, I've got a trainer guy, I've got a runner guy, I've got a business coach. I mean, I've got all these coaches in my life. I call it, you know, it's, it's just, so it wouldn't, it wouldn't happen now. But the four-year-old was like, hey, you know, and that, and it's funny how these, these little interactions, but I think if you're, you know, if you run a business or if you're a parent, sometimes these little hints, they're, they're, they're, the message is much bigger, right? Then, than, than just the, you know, the very, I mean, I was just crossing a street. It wasn't anything. No, I know. Do you know what I love about those? You know, my, my, my faith journey has been, as, you know, has been a winding road.

18:33 And where I find myself now, I had, I, I, I have Christian beliefs, but I have a very broad faith. And, you know, you could have heard someone say that about you any number of times before then. I did. But it was that day and it was that moment and it was that kid. And it was, there was, there was a moment there where that was the right time for you to hear that. And was, and was that the, you know, was that the spark for something to change there or did it come some sometime after that? I mean, that was, that was the, that was the first piece, right? And then I, and then I was like, okay, I need to exercise. I mean, the doctors tell you you need to exercise and it's different. Like, I mean, you go to the, you know, you, you, you, you do, you exercise, right? For you, it's more of a habit and it's more part of your life. It's not, you know, are you telling your kid to be quiet? You should get your, get, get him over here.

19:17 I don't know what it is, Rose. Oh, just leave it in the pot. It's fine. I'll sort it out. Yeah. Thanks. That's good. Well, you can, you can't, you can say, tell me what it is. She's actually trying to be helpful. She's putting the dinner that we didn't eat into tubs to go into the fridge. So that's blessed. That's good. You know, it's, but the, the, you know, these, there's these little things that they talk, they speak to you. And then, but I mean, you're right now, you know, you go to the gym, you, you. you're physically active. It's just part of your, it's part of your life. It's not really, you know, you know, I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I went for a run this morning. It doesn't feel like exercise to me or, or it's like, oh, it's just part of my thing, right? I get up, yeah, go for a run.

19:59 But it had to, it had to, it has to be pushed into that sort of if you know, they're like chunks of your day chapters of your, you know, of your mindset is like that when when fitness becomes something that you just do. I'm just, I am a fit person. Um, you were telling me before, you know, you walk to work now, um, but it's become quite normal. But even someone who's an ultra-marathon runner, there was a time when walking to work just seemed a bit weird to you, even though it was a 15-minute walk, right? Exactly. And you have to, I think there's a sort of neuroprogramming, right, involved where you need to, you know, we, and the first thing, you know, so the first five seconds when you and I were on camera, I said, hey, tell me about that book you've got behind.

20:39 We started talking about all these habit books, right? And I'm fascinated by habits. I'm fascinated by, and I'm, and I'm one of these guys, like just personally, um, uh, my team knows that if they say, George, you need to call John, you know, I don't know, call, call, call Johnny tomorrow at three o'clock. I just, I won't call you. It's impossible. Yeah. But we've learned just the way I, the way I sort of uh function, you know, if it's on the calendar, then it's impossible that I'll miss that call. It's, it's pretty much, I mean, it's, yeah, there's a 99.9, I just don't miss the call, right? So I think you have to, as a person, you have to figure out what works. For me, what works is lots of repetition. And then I just, it becomes normal.

21:23 I don't, and talking about things, you know, I don't use any white sugar. I don't use sugar at all. I mean, I zero sugar unless it's like a from a fruit or something like that. That's the only sugar I get. Or, and if I want to sweeten something, I'll put, I don't know if you've used the like dates, you can put dates and things in Vitamix. But even that basic habit of not putting sugar in a cup of black coffee, I used to, you know, I used to load up the, just my coffee alone must have had 250 calories, right? Between the milks, milk, and the sugar. You do that four or five times a day. Yeah. So, but it becomes a lot of these things. I decided to stop these terrible habits and then just create new ones.

22:00 And substitute them in. And a lot of that comes from knowledge as well. My ex-wife, she got very ill, and it was a sort of a gastro autoimmune type condition. So it meant that I went away and learned a load of stuff. And I too found out about processed, not just processed foods, but processed, highly processed, you know, sugar and bread and rice. And simply the fact of if it's white, don't have it. Go to what the normal cut, the natural color is. So just to substitute brown rice for white rice. And it was so funny when Corona kicked in and everyone was like wildly stripping the shops of everything. All the rice and pasta was gone, apart from brown pasta and brown rice.

22:44 It was like it was the devil's food. But actually, it was the opposite way around. That was the healthy stuff. Yeah, well, we had, I mean, the same problem here, right? All the canned goods were gone. Yeah. You could buy, you could buy, I mean, you could buy beans, uh, garbanzos, I mean, loose, you know, like the non-canned, you could buy, I mean, you, and that's, that's what you should be eating. You shouldn't be eating stuff from the canned processing. So, my, my other sort of, you know, from a health thing, uh, I mean, I've got a long way to go, right, in terms of the way I, but I don't eat anything processed, right? So if it comes from a, I mean, it's pretty basic, it's really based. It's a really like, it's a, it's a simple mindset. If it comes from a factory, right, I just won't eat it, right? So that's kind of how I see things.

23:24 And I don't, I'm not like one of these guys that eats organic everything, but I just, uh, in our house, we don't have, there's no microwave, there's no can opener. There's no. Wow. I just, I mean, it just, there's no need for it. I mean, you can eat and you know, that's that's fascinating that is as well. You know, people say like, how do you give out smoking? Well, for starters, stop buying cigarettes, or how'd you cut down what you're drinking, stop buying booze? I've never thought of how do you cut out processed food, throw your microwave away and get rid of the tin opener. I mean, that's that's as simple as everything, but it's, it's a, it's a fabulous hack. I mean, you realize, and you realize how well you feel afterwards when you eat real food, right? So it's like I juice most days and and that has been as now part of just

24:06 what's your what's your i've got a what's your juice recipe what do you do so at the moment i'm really because i did a bit of a test around celery because i was reading all these people talking about celery so um no you're fine it's fine so celery so uh the whole thing of celery i just bought i just bought a masticating slow juicer as well so i've got i've got moved from a centrifugal whizzy one for everybody else one and and juices it that way to uh to uh to a slow juicer which basically squashes it all down and so it really squeezes everything, so it doesn't have any heating bulbs. It keeps it, keeps it more healthier. And just for anyone who's not listened to this before, I started on NutriBullet.

24:48 That was infomercial type, that's where my journey started basically. So, yeah, so the whole thing is celery, then half a lime, a big bit of ginger, kind of like half my thumb size. The more I get used to ginger, the bigger the bit of ginger is that goes in it. But I mean, it's so good for your liver and uh and your gut gut health. Uh, and then uh oh, cucumber, pretty much about half a cucumber. Um, and so that's like a really green juice. Sometimes I'll put an apple in there, but I'm not really, I've just been trying some different things. And similar to what you were saying about knowledge and about knowing what's going into you, I was spinach and beets or beetroot for English people, um, lots of carrots.

25:30 So, I've just changed it up a little bit where I was eating a lot, juicing a lot, a lot of carrots, and now I'm really into celery as an experiment. Um, but I do still use the NutriBullet. What I'll do is I'll make the juice, and then sometimes I'll put it in the Nutribullet with cranberries or something like real or blueberries for like that real high antoxidant kick, right? There's there's so many, there's uh, there's one too, if you like. So, I have a Vitamix machine, right? So, same, yeah. So, I take, so I have it, I take spinach, right? So, real spinach, uh, so but I think it's a cup or two, maybe two cups of spinach, uh, so two cups of spinach, uh, half half of a red apple. So, it's a more it's a sweeter type of the apple, right? Um, half of a lime, just the whole thing, just double-yeah, I love lime, yeah, yeah.

26:12 Same thing as the you know, as the sort of the thumb version of ginger, yeah, uh, and then just a cup or two, cup or two, cup or two of sorry of water, so uh, five cubes of ice blended, and and uh, and I drink the whole thing, so it's no, I mean, the fiber comes with you know, just I don't filter it out, and uh, that's an awesome right now. I'm on this like intermittent fasting thing where I go from 7 p.m. to yeah, yeah, which I feel great. I mean, I've done it for like six, seven months now, uh, and I've gotten used to it, but um, the spinach, carrot, the you know, I haven't tried the uh your recipe because I, from what I know, you have to be careful, right, with tumor, and it kind of sends you something. No, do you know what? I've you mean careful in terms of how quick it goes through you, yeah, yeah.

26:57 Um, I'm way past that now. Uh, it can make me a little bit gassy sometimes, and I'm trying to work out exactly which ones which which fruit and veg does. But have you tried turmeric? Have you put any turmeric in your you know what? I've just been reading up on it because I cook with uh or turmeric, we call it a beer, turmeric. I cook with it a lot. Um, if I make an omelette, I'll put it quite in there because it's quite a nice taste in an omelette. But um, now I'm just realizing it's same as ginger, you can buy it and juice it. And the health kick from turmeric, turmeric is insane. So, um, well, and I think there's a there you have to add black pepper, I think. There's a there's a there's like a there's like a clause to the oh, okay, there's there's more. There are more, I think it there are sort of more benefits if you use black pepper and there's a you have to look that up, but it's it's uh yeah, yeah, yeah.

27:41 Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm just uh putting the finishing touches on a on a so I've got a program, a long program called the F5, which is a long program, but I'm just putting the finishing touches on a 14-day challenge and putting a basic level of juicing into this 14-day challenge. It's all about adopting one habit in the each key area, basically. So, get sweaty each day, adjust your diet, um, set a goal for like the two-week period. Um, and there's some other stuff around family and fun about hanging out with your kids or date night and catching up with old friends. But but you know, for people listening, you know, something like you've lost a drastic amount of weight, went from drinking gallons of Coca-Cola a day to being absolutely fascinated in your health, chucking away a tin opener in a microwave, and we're having a conversation about juicing.

28:32 And I really want to encourage people to realize that actually the healthy one is a more normal conversation than the processed factory stuff from a bottle type conversation. And I don't know, I mean, I haven't, it's been in my wife, uh, she's a she's like a workout queen. I mean, she's so she's a stay-at-home mom, right? But she's, um, she walked, I think, first time she walked into one of these kickboxing classes at this new gym she had signed up for, they, they, they, they started coming over, you know, all the, all the girls started coming over and asking tons of tons of questions. And uh, she was kind of confused by it, you know. And then she realized that they thought that she was the kickboxing, the new

29:11 instructor, right? But uh, she was, uh, but she's also, I think it also makes if you have, and my kids are pretty healthy too. Like they're, but I think if you, if it, if, like you said, if it's, if it to you, it's normal, right? Then to it's just, it's a, it makes it a lot easier. Um, and you see this too. You see somebody who's maybe they're overweight and their partner isn't. I mean, you know, it's sort of you've got to. no i i get that that baffles me when i see that it baffles exactly or you've got the partner that's trying to lose weight and you've got the the or you've got the person that's trying to lose weight and the partner the partner is just you know you can just tell they're not healthy not supportive yeah and you think it's just you think about just the refrigerator um i'm i'm i mean i'm not trying to

29:53 to to be condescending here but some of the breakfast that you see people when they're walking down especially in like major cities what they eat in the morning to start their day from a from a i mean if you know from a fuel standpoint it's just like it's like how do you i mean they must be they must be crashing by the time you know after lunch is done right and uh i don't get sick i don't know about you but i don't get sick i don't i haven't gotten sick like i just don't get sick it just doesn't happen yeah and i think that's that's so important in this in this new world that we find ourselves in now is that people got to tune into their immune system and we're like well what exactly am i putting into myself and what could i do to to increase that and um i try not to be too

30:33 flippant about corona because clearly it is something that kills people but um but i i'm healthy enough that i pretty much you know well i'll tell you what i'll tell you if you've seen this in london or you've seen this and i've seen this in new york uh you see you see folks with i mean it's just because of coronavirus you see them with the sort of the the masks the mask covering yeah um and then they're chain smoking you know and you're thinking like could i like that's not like the cartoon they're sitting on the branch cutting it like yeah i mean and i sometimes just like running by and i'm thinking like it's not you know the the coronavirus probably statistically is probably not going to hurt you the the smoking is not the yeah more so totally totally i mean it's not but it's it's it's amazing how there's a the saying of health is wealth right and it's it's so

31:19 true i mean it's it's it's uh my this is a cool thing i mean my my nine-year-old he he said hey daddy like can i come running with you and i was like well if you want to come running it's like a five o'clock in the morning thing you know you got to show up and you got to be i mean you got to be with me and uh so yeah cool so so i'm now running with my nine-year-old and and to us it's normal to be 45 and like and you feel great um but there's a lot there are a lot of people that are 45 50 that are not they're not able to do that and totally you know and we're running like i mean he's he's nine so we're just doing like 5k yeah like 5k in like 20 23 25 minutes you know for i mean exactly and

31:58 and he will aside from what you're up to if we can instill that in our children at that age they will grow up with that as just part of who they are and and um and i truly believe this from my own experiences growing up and i'm putting this into my kids and my family in america who've been such an inspiration to me is that put that health and fitness into someone's life at an early stage and they just it just becomes normal for them so then they will always do it well i mean it's so true right so but the the parents i mean they're they're they they the kids copy the parents and then you know it's it's so if you're the um i just i i'm just fascinated by you know i'm fascinated by and i'm not i'm not like a health nut per se but

32:38 i'm conscious of i'm conscious of if okay so um you know did i eat did i eat some greens today or salad or what did i eat yesterday or i'm just conscious of what i'm doing right so it's like here's a here's a great i don't know if you've uh this is my new version of like uh it's not i don't i don't drink gatorig but um we have bottles of this in my in our house just bottles of it so it's hibiscus you know hibiscus yeah we just take that the real you know just the the loose the loose loose leaf uh you know and and we just with the uh we just with boiled water just tons and tons and tons of it and just let it sit out and then we we literally bottle it with with just glass bottles and we have that stacked in the fridge you can even take it

33:18 like an old wine bottle right yeah sometimes the wine bottles with the screws down instead of the corks and uh we just have that and that's that's kind of it's refreshing it's great for after a workout it's healthy actually for the gut um as well as for hunger i mean just there's a lot of for blood pressure it has the same benefits but it has the same benefits as like cranberry or pomegranate right yeah so uh i'm gonna search you up i'll find out that's what i love about these conversations you you hear about different uh things that other people are doing and then i can bring it into to my diet um you'll be and your kids i mean my kids drink it they they it's it's a it's it's a it's a delicious refreshing um and if

33:58 it's also even decent like if you had a spicy curry or something like that i mean it's just refreshing right it's very refreshing um and that's that's that's been my in our new thing the last i don't know four or five months but it's replaced at least at home it's replaced you know drinking tons of sort of like h2o i'm drinking that there's no sugar in it right um and it's just i don't know it's just a wonderful you know i'm gonna hunt out some hibiscus and let you know how that goes well listen this this health chat is i'm loving it and we can definitely come back to that i've got some some questions about your your sort of family setup as well but just to kind of go a different direction into your into your business subject um

34:38 you've got two very successful businesses you've been involved in recruitment for over 20 years and how you started that business is an interesting story as well particularly for guys who are listening to this and they're thinking i need to make a change in my life i'm not really that satisfied in my work so tell us about what was the inspiration for your for your well first of all tell us how great your businesses are doing which i don't mean that as an opportunity for you to show off but i think you know it's right it's it's it's a pleasure to be able to speak to people who are being a success in the world um you're making a difference to all your staff the people that come through your business you know so i acknowledge you for that um but it's it's it's i i want this to be a motivation to people

35:17 listening right so i i i did this i mean my my route was was like okay and i was told this at home right yeah if you as a kid and i i think you have to be careful when you're a parent sometimes to to you know sometimes your fears are not or you know they're not really you know sometimes you shouldn't really give your fears and you know you shouldn't pass them on to your kids right so yeah yeah so i i was taught as a kid like many people you know if you if you study hard and and then you get you know you sort of go to decent universities and you can find it you know land a decent decent job and and uh uh and mark and i talked about this before right about you know sort of the big four um you

35:57 know life will be good and then you can work there the rest of your life and life is great right that's what i was taught so so i did some of that and uh and i was in i was happily you know working in the in new york so i you know i went to some decent schools and then i worked at some of the big four like the price water houses and the youngs of the world yeah and i and i received a call from a from an executive from a from a headhunter recruiter who was hanging out in miami the guy was in miami and he he called me up and he said hey george and this was in january right so uh in a january and uh how long ago what sort of year so this is this is now uh we just so this this this is so it's two year 2000 right so we're 20 years now

36:37 this is literally right so um so he calls me up and i'm it's it's miami in january is wonderful weather 25 celsius i mean it's just you know it's new york is like the opposite yeah 26 below yeah yeah yeah so so it's so uh he's like he's like it was a thursday he's like hey george there's a german company here i'm not going to mention who they are but there's a there's a german company here they're you know they're doing some consulting um we'd like you to come down and just visit us right i'm like okay cool i'm like when do you when do you want to when do you want to talk tomorrow it'd be great you know so i'm like all right fine so i get a the flight's like three hours from new york to miami miami in january is beautiful new york like i said is just terrible so i get down there and i know have you ever been to you ever been to miami yeah yeah so for those at least you know for for those that haven't been to miami it's kind of like my

37:32 the uh i mean the nice part of it right so yeah it's like you know it's like my or maybe a visa or or it's just a or barcelona maybe but just beautiful weather and uh so you know i get there and they're like all right george you know we're gonna give you 40 or 50 it was like 40 or 50 000 more than i was making which was like it was just like whoa extra years wages yeah i was like whoa it's just crazy you know and they're like this one catch you have to start here um on monday i'm like ah yeah i can do that you know like no problem so so i i literally fly back the same day on a on a friday and i tell everyone hey i'm going to be living in miami everyone told me it was it was the most terrible idea like

38:12 you know like who is this german company what are they doing you know like you know who's who's the person to be working for and no i'll be fine you know it's it's like i i was fine so i'm there i i don't think i was there on a monday but i was there like on a tuesday right i sign a lease they told me by the way this is you know when you get older you learn not to do this uh they told me george just take care of the rent stuff and the furniture and we'll take care of you later don't worry about it okay i can do that you know so i sign a one-year lease yeah in miami yeah um weeks you know the first week i buy furniture on credit like you know buy now pay nothing for 23 years

38:49 right just financially it was just a mess and uh so i did that for about it was like two and a half three months and then one day i walk in and everyone's like oh man uh everyone's sad you know i'm like what's going on they said well we're gonna close down germany said we're gonna close down the office like we're out of a job you know there's no like we're done you know and that was my first realization okay this you know this is maybe you know this isn't this isn't cool and uh so so i i had asked one of the uh one of the hr ladies i was like what do i what do what's next you know so she's like well what you should do is the following you know you should go collect unemployment right and uh at least you can get paid while you're looking for your next job you know i'm like okay makes sense you know i'll do that so i go to the

39:38 unemployment office and uh i'm thinking that was that was pretty much the first one of the few first times in my life i'd really i guess you know i failed right quite failed i mean it wasn't it wasn't a failure at all it was just i think it was a learning it was part of the learning curve but back then i was like oh my god um and i'm sitting there and i'm thinking and i was i think i had i've had the benefit at least innately i analyze okay like how did i win how did i lose what happened here was it my fault was it somebody else's fault was it the and i started thinking and i thought and i thought okay i didn't really do my homework but at the end of the day i lost my job because somebody else decided just to close the whole office down i wasn't really i did and then i thought you know what if i and i used to play basketball on weekends with these guys all of them were like entrepreneurs you know they were just one guy sold fruit he exported fruit and he wasn't he wasn't really he wasn't the brightest guy another guy was really bright and he

40:33 he had a computer programming company and another guy it was it was just but they would show up with these cool cars you know and i was like that's i need that you know they all had their own business and i thought okay i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna start my own business now this is what i'm gonna do yeah so uh my plan was to walk into one of these recruiting companies kind of hang out there for a couple months and uh just to be able to buy some time and then you know so that's what i did i walked into to this one firm the guy was super cool he he i convinced him to hire me for free right and uh just a couple months into it we decided like i was i was naturally good at it and and he said

41:12 listen like hey let's be partners or let's just go you do your thing i do my thing and you know it's probably you're yeah you're gonna have a great future ahead of you he was a super cool guy yeah and uh and then he convinced me he's like you need to listen you said you want to have your own business like you'd be great at it you should do it you should do it you should do it so i did it and then it went i mean you think it's good it gets better it doesn't get better it gets worse so having a business is really difficult i think i mean it's just a pivot point like you have to it's really difficult it's not as sexy as like the instagram nonsense you see but it's not like that right um so i went from like being broke to i don't even know if it's the word broker you know for three years right i was worse uh and then i just knew in my heart you know i

41:56 knew i didn't want to work for somebody else i didn't want to i didn't want to if i was going to fail i wanted to fail because it was me yeah and and the one thing i really liked about what i did which was to me was a huge challenge is that as an owner or an entrepreneur you literally get paid to the exact penny right that you're worth yeah you know and and there was there was no more time for excuses of like okay i'm underpaid right i was paid exactly and i'm still paid today exactly what i've right so that's what i love about being an entrepreneur and having and being able to create things you're you're paid exactly what you're worth and the market you know so there's no more like my boss is terrible well you know you're the boss right so uh

42:37 so three years into it the year four things went really well i then hired up to 50 people i had 50 people on my team so i went from zero it's like a zero to hero you know sort of story um all my clients were banks financial institutions insurance companies and then i went back from in 2008 2009 i was gonna say you're you're in 2000 i've done the math there was frustrated i was thinking okay that's i know it's coming now 2008 yeah so what happened so i lost so by then you know i was there's a there's a there's a financial you know guy that here in the states uh dave ramsey you gotta know him yeah yeah i'm dead free yeah right so so i was the i i i mean i could have been i mean i was just a disaster financially

43:17 i think there we go from the kids let's see here it's just down there yeah so so you'll you'll appreciate this so he started talking about so i went for back to zero i had i was you know i think i just lost like two or three homes at the time you know like i you know because i have it was a disaster right uh i was just financially messed i was i was he said you can't you get to a point where you outsell you can't your stupidity catches out catches up with your yeah i forget what he says but stupid taxes or something like that yeah no but i was i was i was a good salesperson but my stupidity eventually you know outpaced myself okay right yeah yeah right so so that's what happened so i had to build again uh

44:00 and i and i had you know offices and people and it was just it was disaster and i thought okay if i could do this again and this is this is this is more in line with kind of way you know the way i live now and the way you live and and i thought okay how would i do this right first of all i'm going to tithe 10 not to the church but 10 to some emergency business fund yeah every time the megarian group group gets some sort of sale, I don't care if it's a dollar or if it's $100,000, 10% will go into some sort of emergency cash fund, right? So I'll do that. Okay, cool. Never again will I have an office. I'll have an office maybe that I'll rent for myself, but my team will be total, you know, virtual, right? And this was like 2009. It didn't really, it wasn't really

44:42 called a trailblazer there in that respect. Skype had just come out, and I think you could change your number so that it wouldn't look like you're calling from Skype. And there was a thing called Vonnage, and I was like, oh, cool. I can, you know. So I started to hire people, and then I, so now we have 30 people, right? But we have two businesses. One is an executive placement business. That's an eight-figure business a year. And then the second business is a branding business. So we're working with people that are making from $300,000 a year to $4 to $5 million, right? A year. So it's an interesting, it's like the who's who of that's like a personal branding business.

45:20 Yeah, it's executive branding. So we're on the search on the search side, right? We, and then this, that, the second thing, which is the executive branding, it was just that, you know, you have, if your clients ask you the question, same question over and over and over, right, for help, you can, you can pretty much create that into a service and you can sell it, right? And that's what we did. So that was just a mistake. It was just enough, if enough people ask you the same thing over and over and over, you think, okay, well, obviously they see me as an expert. Why don't I just charge them for it and see what happens? Yeah. As a beta test, and we kind of beta test it. That's a seven-figure year business, right? The interesting thing is that

46:03 the smaller business, let's say, it creates relationships and it gives us an excuse to go after the because it's the same, it's the same. Same people, same pool, yeah. One's a B2C play, one's a B2B play. Yeah, but the B2C customer is also your B2B customer, right? Yeah, in my digital marketing work for the last 20 years, my own businesses, which was the last 10 years until I started Team Superdad, worked with a lot of recruitment companies. And so it's just that virtual cycle of the person you place becomes the person who retains you as the agency. But then when they remove, they become your client again, or they become the person. Exactly. So, but we, but the hard time, the hard part about that is sort of the acquisition of the client, right?

46:44 How do you get to that? Because they already know they're already using somebody, right? There's a relationship form. But if you can get into a different angle, which is a lower price point, it's much, it's much easier. So that's, that's kind of the business. But the model we have now is you can pretty much, you know, I can, and everybody in my team, I mean, I've got somebody, I've got an awesome guy from the UK. He lives half of his time, he lives in South America. The other part, you know, he's in Northern England. It's just, I've got a lot of people that you just, the, the, the, it's not a lifestyle business, but, you know, I can live and work and and that whole four-hour work week hanging on a beach in Mexico, like I've done that, I've done that, right?

47:22 Um, the truth of that, though, is that it doesn't, it's not like a three-week thing. Like it took me, you know, I would say, you know, 14, 15 years to figure out how to get to that, right? Yeah. So, um, but it's, it's, it's a specific, was that a goal that you had, or that just evolved as your life evolved and you were like, to start with, you had to hustle and you enjoyed working that amount of time, but then with your partner and your children, had the business got to a stage where it could support you being less involved, or was it always a goal that you wanted to have that? No, I, right. I, it was, it was, uh, it was never the goal. The goal was always just to like, hey, if I work hard, work hard, work hard.

48:02 Yeah. Um, but I, you get to a point where financially you it's almost like you need to work, right? I mean, you, you, you know, you always need to work, but you get to a point where it doesn't, it feels you're like, okay, financially we're doing fine, but but what's I'm gonna plug my computer in so it doesn't hang up on your hair. It wasn't um, so you get to a point where financially you say, like, is it really worth all the, I don't know if this happened to you, but you know, and I thought, okay, um, at least in the business, okay, if I make if I make a hundred thousand dollars for business, like I'm a rock star, okay, cool. If we do, if I, if I make 200 grand in this business, man, I'm gonna be a rock star, right? If I make half a million in this business, I'll be like, life will be better.

48:45 And you realize that you're less happy, you're not as happy. I mean, you're happy at you're happier at the $150,000 point than you were at the half a million dollar point, right? No, I hear that from a bunch of people I've interviewed. Yeah, I mean, it's just a quality life issue. So I got to the point where I thought, okay, I can either do this for the next 10, 15 years, right? And just hate it, or I can decide to, you know, just to just to reinvent the wheel a little bit. started reading all these books like the four-hour work week and the E-Myth Revisited. Yeah, I like that one. And I might have a chance to meet Michael Gerber, by the way. But they're reading all these books about time management and delegation and focusing on your why.

49:30 And I was like, huh, I could do that. And I started to implement systems and processes and give more responsibility to my team, even though they're like, George, I don't know what I'm doing. Well, yeah, that's fine. Go ahead, figure it out. They're like, yeah, I'm going to ruin your business. I know, but if, you know, just go ahead, figure it out. We'll figure it out. So I started to use a lot of time management skills. I'm at the point now where I run one person, he runs the rest of the team, and I just deal with it. I pretty much just deal with him. And he sends me an update once a day via WhatsApp, right? And I'll read this to you so you can see to some of your listeners that have how it goes, but it's pretty much, it's the same format every day, the WhatsApp message.

50:10 And it's, it's, I'm going to read it. There's always, there's, there's, and this is based on Mark Cuban, how he manages all of these startups and things, Mark Cuban. It's these are the topics that he goes over. Yeah. So these are exact topics every day. It's the same format and he fills me in, right? Just as an update. Pipeline, he doesn't have the pipeline, you know, for certain things. So, you know, things we might close deals, like current deals that we have going on. Team issues, technical or system or tools issues, right? Guidance. So like, does he need any guidance on anything? Okay. And then the next, the next thing that finance, so he gives me the finance, financial look, yeah, I'll look.

50:52 This is daily, right? Once again, I get an update on this. And then we've got, and then the last piece is observations, right? And that's it. And there's six things, there's six topics. Every day it's the same thing. I mean, it's the same. And so please say them again because some people would have, they wouldn't have been paying attention. And then when you said those are the six things, they'd be like, oh my gosh, what were they again? What were they again? I'm sorry about that. So the, so the first thing is pipeline, which is clients that, right, that were, were, you know, clients that were, were pretty much about the clothes, right? That are, you know, we'd call it sort of bread in the oven, right? But the second thing is it was sort of like pipeline, but they're deals, right?

51:35 Sometimes maybe somebody, maybe there's a deal you're working that's not going that well or it is going well. They're not really your pipeline, but it's deals. That's the second thing. The third thing is team, right? Any team issues or team updates. The next thing would be guidance, right? Do you need any, do you need my guidance or so that's your you're here? You're managing him. And so he's telling you whether he needs any guidance to allow him to be better in his role. Exactly. Like, hey, George, I have a question. Next piece is finance. So he tells me the financial, right? It could be, you know, if you have debt or marketing or the financial part of the piece. The next thing would be, you know, so any process before, project updates.

52:19 And then, you know, which could be technical issues, could be, it could be tools issues. Gmail's not working. The website's down, right? You know, whatever. Yeah. And then the last thing is observations, right? In terms of his observations of what we should do. Now, we started out with him just telling me, hey, George, here's all the problems. What do I do? That's how we started out. And then I learned, you know, listen, let's, let's, and I was, it was taking me a lot of time to respond back, right? You know, with what I would do and step by step. And now it's, he tells me what's going on. He gives me a solution of what he's going to do, right? And then if I think there's a tweak, I'll tell him the tweak. If not, I just go, okay, like in line, you know, okay, okay, okay.

53:04 And I literally copy paste, okay, okay, okay, six times. Yeah. And I give him a little tweak, and that's once a day. Every morning at nine o'clock in the morning, I get a WhatsApp message from him. And then we do a once a week call, a team meeting, right? We do this, you know, conference call, and I would, you know, Zoom and things like that. And are you confident that he's then managing that down in a similar way to how many is it? How many is he managing that down to? He's got 20. He's got, he's got 28 people, right? Yeah. And then he's got three people in his team that he's, he's, he's liked it so much that he's actually started to do it. Now he uses my system with them. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I've got that. Yeah. Yeah. So now it's, so that's, that's kind of what we've done.

53:46 And it's, it's, and then we do our team meeting. And during the team meeting, uh, everybody's able to sort of talk about, hey, here's some revenue ideas, ideas, or here's kind of what's not working. I'm all about, this is what I, and this is every week we stress the same thing. Yeah. And this is the thing, like, it's like, it's like, Johnny, tell me, and this is, you know, usually sometimes you kind of bitch your bitch about your boss. You know, if I was my boss, I would. I wouldn't do this right this is a waste of time or this is this is terrible I don't know why we do this right so I encourage my team to say that I want to know why you think that yeah and and then just give me a solution so we talk about can we automate delegate remove pause or stop right and I want I tell my team you know I want I

54:28 want to stop stop I want to start removing things from your life so we don't have to do it So every week people tell me, hey, George, you know what? I'm spending three hours a week on a signature scraper on an email. Can we buy a signature scraper that goes into the CRM so I don't have to do it anymore? So we've been able to automate some of our a lot of our business and that's going to help us, you know, later on we're going to start scaling, but that's going to help us scale later on. I love that. You're going to scale the eight-figure business. Good work. That's a nice thing to be able to do. That's the second time this week I've heard automate, delegate, remove. So a guy was just talking about how he manages his time. And he said, because it was two guys hosting a webinar together and they worked together and Suraj was saying to his business partner, he's like, you're a machine.

55:15 You just, you know, when I first started working with you, I couldn't believe how much you logged, like you kept track of stuff. And he said, now having been working together for four years, I totally see the power of it because he said, because there's no waste with you. There's no waste. And that's when he then took over and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I automate, delegate, remove. And he says, well, if you look at, and the other thing is that you can also pause, right? Sometimes pause is a good, it's a good, you know, for one of our projects we had, I think we had spent like $40,000 on a website, right? That was looking, it would look great and everything else, but it had taken so much time out of my own day that I told the developer, I'm like, hey, listen, we're going to put this on like just time out real quickly. And he was like, $40,000.

55:59 You just say timeout. Like, I don't get it. And I explained to him, I was like, listen, I've got a way bigger problem trying to solve here right now. Like, I get it. Like, it is a lot of money, but I need to, so I think it goes back to that Pareto 80-20, you know, kind of principle as well. You know, what are your core? I mean, I can tell you, I have a board. My office is a mess today, but I'm going to show you on the board, it talks about, and there's a guy, we talked about James Clear Atomic Habits. Yeah. Awesome to look up. He talked about, you know, what are your top drivers? And I try to focus my day on sales generation, revenue strategy, and I call it game design, but it's pretty much process improvement. The beautiful thing about having, you know, like you get to control your own life and you're, you know, you get to design your own game.

56:42 Like, that's a cool thing, right? Like, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's just a, it's a, it's a cool thing. I mean, I don't know. When was the last time you had worn a suit and like you've actually worn a suit and tie? I mean, last time. Exactly. I can't think. I can't think. For a business situation, I, I, I don't know. So if I'm going to London to present something, maybe I would have, but even then, it would normally be a pair of jeans and a blazer type thing. Exactly. And you know this, right? And if you're, if you walk in and there's a meeting and there's, there's a bunch of guys in suits and ties and the guy that's not in suit and tie, like, who's the guy?

57:19 You need to be worried. Who's the guy you need to be worried about, right? It's the guy who has to be tied. So I mean, I'm in like an under armor, you know, you know what I mean? Like, what, yeah. So, um, but that's, that's the beauty of having your own, you know, being your own, you know, running your own game. I call it, it's game design. You get to design the way you need to do things. And I had, I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day, and they were talking about, she said to me, do you think you're an entrepreneur? And I was like, oh, I don't know. I think there's a spirit inside of me, which is, and then, and then I think where I was pausing was just around my level of success.

58:01 You know, and I was, at one point, my agency, we, we did 350K in a year. It was our third year. We had five staff. I was running at this big event that I was heading up that was running twice a year. $50 or in pounds? In pounds. So yeah, we're pushing for 400K. And so like that was, that was growing and it was being a success. And then loads of life troubles happened and it started to go the other way. But to lose track of, well, no, there was that success there. So don't say, oh, I'm not a success because right now it's not going as well as I wanted it to. Or deciding that I was making a change from the digital marketing to Team Superdad.

58:43 And then you're like, okay, well, now what does success look like? Because I'm starting from the bottom. Starting something completely, completely new. And so I paused for a second there and I thought, I'm not sure. Now she said to me, you know, I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs and she said the thing that she was trying to stress this point to me was she said, about working faster, Johnny, like making decisions. decisions faster, almost like that, that fail forward type, fail quickly, fail type type thing. And I really took that on board because I can see that actually the momentum and the speed at which I could be moving at, there's no reason why I can't be. It's just some sort of

59:26 concern pops up, or am I getting this right or am I getting that right? And actually, just particularly as the world is today, move forward quickly. And people doing podcasts and webinars from their home or the newsreader, the kids coming in behind them. The world right now is ready for just, let's make it happen and move forward quickly. And I think you have to be able to adapt, right? With this, with just everything. It's just, you have to be able to adapt. And I would peg you as an entrepreneur. I mean, that's how I, you know. Yeah, thank you. And it's just an interesting question to be asked and catching myself pausing. Well, for you, it's for you, it's normalcy, right?

1:00:06 For you, it's it's and by the way, I want to make a comment to the folks that are listening. You know, we had you had showed me your list of, you know, your list of all these things that you wrote down when you came off the mountain, right? Yeah. And I don't know if you've thought about this. I mean, and I think like you're, you're, you're fixated on, yeah, right? That is the piece of paper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So you're, I mean, you're, you're, in your story, and I'm just telling you, you know, your version of the story is you focus on the mountain and then you come down and you write, you write down the list, right? But if you think about this part, like, what about the guy, you, the guy that actually had the courage to actually go up the mountain in the first place? Like, you, you went up the mountain, right? And that's, that's also, I think, part of your story

1:00:50 because not everybody does that, right? And the fact that you were even there up the, you know, I mean, it's, it's like you were, when you were saying, hey, George, I wasn't on this mountain and it was like, couldn't see anything and I got down and I started writing things down. I was hearing as well, like, shit, like the courage to go up there and be up there just already speaks sort of how you are, right? So that's why to me, you're an entrepreneur. It's not, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, you, you're sort of, you're already taking risk and assessing things. And I don't know if you've thought about your version. No, that's, that's brilliant. I love that. And I hadn't thought about that before either. So my, exactly, my big thing about the story was the, the, the, the brainwave, the vision, the idea that we, that there's, that there's other dads out there who want more from their life.

1:01:35 And actually, we already know the people around us. We just need to make it happen. Um, that was, that's, that's the fabulous story for me. But actually, like you're saying, other people are going to hear that story and be like, you're up a mountain in a blizzard across a crevasse, roped together, lost. Exactly. That's, that to me is the cool. I mean, I know that also the coolest part of the story is the letter, the writing part, but the cool, you know, the cool part of the story is that the fact that you're up, you're up there, right? Like, that's the, that's the wind to me, right? And I'm sure you had, you know, 100 things you'd done before that. A lot of people, I mean, you had mentioned too that, you know, at that time, it was just difficult in your difficult time in your life. A lot of people would have just given up and said, you know what? I don't really feel well. I'm not going to do anything for myself.

1:02:19 And they just wouldn't have been even on the trip, right? So it's, there's two ways that there's, there's, there, and this, this might, this is sometimes, you know, sometimes it's very American, right? But there's two ways to lose, right? You can lose and kind of just be like, okay, I'm going to get up right away. Cool. It's part of the game, you know? I think Americans, we're very good at that. We're very good at like, oh, you know, we lost. We'll just get up and do it again. But there is a good way to lose. And losing is it's impossible to do well in life if you're not expecting. Like right now, I can tell you, you know, like things are, you know, life is, life is, is, is great.

1:03:02 Things are going well, right? I don't know. Maybe, maybe next year it's not going great for me. I don't know that, right? However, I do know that if it doesn't go well for me, that's cool. You know, I can take that, but I'll get up again, you know? And I think that's what an entrepreneur is. When you finally accept that piece that, you know, everything's going to be cyclical. And even if I hit a rough patch, I'm still going to get up. That to me is a real entrepreneur. It's not the like you get punched down and you stay down. It's like, you know, if things went terribly, you know, just you would, you would do it again, right? You would just get up and do it again. Keep going. Yeah. And that's actually a perfect part of my notes I've written here. And this is a perfect way sort of as we go into the last few minutes.

1:03:47 You're an ultra marathon runner, right? And we were talking there about getting up from tricky situations and keeping on going. There can be no greater metaphor for that than keeping running when you're when you're, and I've done. I've done a marathon I've done some triathlons but the idea of an ultra marathon uh is it I don't think it's it's not so much mind-blowing for me I know I could be up for it but it's just about getting to that point and being ready and actually signing up I'm gonna tell you that's it that's a that's a mind that's a mind blockage thing going in your head because if you've done a marathon you can I know for a fact you can do an ultra marathon I say this because I had never done a marathon my i i i'd finished three or four

1:04:29 let me let me ask you my point was going to be about bold decisions like what does it take to what does it take to make bold risky decisions um and it it dovetailed perfectly into what we were just talking about the mountain and and um and being an entrepreneur um so yeah so sorry it's please carry on but that's that was the way my context was like what does it take to make bold decisions well i i think you just need to say yes right like it's it's you can i can tell you right now if you if you tell yourself i can do this ultra marathon thing right you'll you'll do it it's it's i had i was uh i was uh when i started to get you know a little fit i was running i'd run like a 10k event and then i'd run a half you know 21k

1:05:09 and uh i was in a running group and there was there's a there was one guy he was he was cool man he had he was like super fit and he was doing ultra marathons and some other people were doing these marathons and just so everyone knows this is this is this is part of your weight loss journey isn't it this is where you i was already i think i was already i mean i was already by then i was already you know i was already you slimmed back down but i mean this just so everyone knows this wasn't when you were 20 years old this is this is recently more recent this is i mean i've been i've been running running probably for it's since it's like 10 years now right 10 or 11 years when i started you know i mean you get to when you're you're there's a point where you're just and i'm gonna use the word fat because i think i can because i you know like really you were yeah 23 stone yeah yeah i mean you're just physically they tell you to exercise but you just can't it just it's really

1:05:55 hard uh so uh but i was running with these guys and and and we're running along and and and i was like oh cool tell me about the ultra marathon thing uh he's like yeah that's what i do and one of the marathon runners said during the run he said yeah but george you're like you you should do a you should run a marathon first you know before you run an ultra marathon like that's just the process yeah and then i and this is i think and i wasn't trying to be sort of aloof or or trying to be flippant to him but i just said well how many ultra marathons have you run like just i don't know like it wasn't i wasn't trying to be rude yeah do i even run any you know and i thought well like he's not really the expert on like you know like the ultra

1:06:35 thing yeah yeah and then i and then i said to my my ultra friend i said do you think i could run an ultra marathon without ever running a marathon he's like yeah you could totally do it like don't you know he doesn't know what he's talking about so that's what i did so i i must have run three or four ultra marathons before i even ran my first marathon just so people know how far's an ultra marathon mine was like 80 80k so it's like 50 miles yeah yeah so it's it was trails so it was like some of the some of them go from like eight to 14 hours so it's it's yeah it's um i mean you eat a lot right it's not you just not you're not running you're running you're walking you're eating uh sometimes yeah i've read i've read i've listened to david goggins book yeah

1:07:13 yeah have you have you read have you heard uh the he became well known because of uh living with a seal have you read that have you heard that audio no i haven't and just so you know when you were talking about your business loads of what you were saying sounds very i've listened i'm just listening to the trillion dollar coach at the moment bill campbell he was he was like the coach to uh and the business exec to to apple and google like loads of competing companies who shouldn't have had the same coach and he's working with them all that's why they're called the trillion dollar coach because it's fascinating very what's the so his premise is what just because that's probably a book i'd probably read what's so he came from a sports background he was a uh a high school and college football coach and then he just end through through a change of jobs and a chance meeting ended up in silicon valley okay and basically was his

1:08:04 whole um modus operandi about putting teams together and raising people up as leaders had just just generated success after success after success and um it's it's a great book he's he's dead now and he wouldn't contribute but so they after his death the uh the author went around and spoke to loads of people he'd worked with and put it all together it's called the trillion dollar coach brilliant but the ultra book i've read um yeah david goggins and the other one so there's a book called living with a seal which is uh jesse isler right um he and this is how david goggins became i guess semi-famous right yeah so jesse isler was this he's

1:08:44 he was an owner of a of a professional uh sports team his wife is a billionaire right and he he signs up for this ultra marathon you know with him and his like i think it's i mean i'm paraphrasing paraphrasing here. Him and his like eight buddies or 10 buddies. They've got this cool tent, you know, coolers and cool seats and fans and like, you know, and this guy shows up with just a lawn chair. I think it was like a bottle of water and like a rag or something like that, sits down and he, and he, you know, Jesse Isler says to the, he asks the gentleman who happened to be David Goggins, like, where's your team? He's like, no, there's no team, it's just me, right? I'm doing it by myself. So Goggins runs this whole event, which is, they said was like absurd.

1:09:26 He finishes and then he just leaves it. He doesn't wait for his medal, no ceremony. He gets his chair and leaves. So Jesse Isler decides, I'm going to look this guy up. And then he reaches out to him and he said, listen, I'm in New York City. I'd love you to live with me. He was a SEAL, Navy SEAL. I'd love you to live with me in New York City. Just train me and like, just, you know, give me what you got in just a month, you know? And so Jesse Isler talks about the audiobook is much better than an actual. It's one of these books where if you're in your car. No, that's it. That's that's why I love you'll be it's it's but it's one of these things where if you're in your car, you'll literally not go inside so you can listen to it. Listen to 10 more minutes. I've done that. It's a it's a terrific.

1:10:09 He's just extremely funny. And he talks about how, you know, he would take him out running or he'd say, listen, you need to do like a thousand push-ups. I mean, sorry, pull-ups. And Jesse Isler was like, I can't do one. He's like, well, we're not leaving this gym today until you do a thousand. And it's just absurd. But and then, but he, Jesse Isler never talked about who the person was because the person, Goggins, didn't want really motority, right? And later on, I guess, you know, he became, but he's a Goggins is a great, yeah, he's a, he's a good example of, just, I mean, he's just a, just an interesting guy. I mean, he's, he's a beast, right? Yeah, totally. And listen, we could talk for hours, right? But

1:10:48 I know, I know. Just briefly, as we finish, like, what, what's been your, I just want to ask you one final thing as we wrap up, just about sort of your kind of your family, just sort of like, how do you, how, what's like your success sort of measure for your family? But as far as the ultra marathon, what's the worst experience of an ultra-marathon runner so far? The worst, uh, I would, I mean, this is just my experience. Pretty much after five hours, I don't care how no one, no one enjoys any of it after about five, six hours. Like it's pretty much not fun anymore. That's just, that's been my experience. The interesting thing about that is you, you actually, you're

1:11:29 instead of like, you know, instead of it hitting you and you mentally become, you actually, you're actually waiting, you actually wait for it, you know, like you wait for the moment where you say, okay, my body's telling me to stop. So I've learned to, I've learned to, I've learned to wait for that moment, right? And then you, when that happens, you think, okay, now I'm sort of at normal. I'm at the normal stage I should be, right? So that I think that's one of the, one of the internal secrets of the people that do longer distance, you know, events. And there's a, there's a pivot point where your body tells you, hey, listen, just, you know what? Just call it a do not finish or, you know, for people that don't, just, just stop now. And, and some of these events are like circuits. So you can, it's, it's where, you know, you can stop there. And, um, but they're, they're, you have to kind of appreciate some of the pain points as well, right?

1:12:13 It's part of the process. I don't know. I was, I was, uh, I was in a mountain in Peru for an event, um, 80 kilometers. I was up there for like 12 hours and I got lost by two hours. And I didn't, they had literally after 70 kilometers, um, they literally, they, they pulled me off the mountain because it wasn't safe for me to be there. So I didn't, I trained for a year for that. And I didn't, I didn't finish, not because I stopped running, it was because they told me, like, hey, brother, you can't run anymore. We're going home. We're closed. Yeah. Like, it's not safe anymore, you know, like you're in this. And this was in altitude and things. It was a North Space challenge. Totally, just, it was hard. But I didn't finish the event.

1:12:53 Like, there's things that, but you, you think, okay, I'm a, you know, I'm a failure. I didn't finish. Like, I, I've learned, you know, you, I don't know, life is short, you know what I mean? Like, you don't need to, I don't take those things too seriously, you know, and I'm not, I don't know. It's just, it's one of these things where, and this is a, you brought up something about, this is important for me. Kids, it might, my, I've got two kids. I mean, everybody thinks their kids are well adjusted, but I mean, I've two kids that are pretty well adjusted. They're not spoiled. They, you know, they're, that's, that to me is a big deal, right? Like, they know, you know, they know who I am, obviously. You know, I play with them. We play all the time. We've got this thing, like this tickle zone time. It's like 8:30 to 9, pretty much 8:30, 9 o'clock at night.

1:13:37 There's a part of the house. If they're in that part, I can just tickle the house. I mean, it's just, we have a nine-year-old. You've got your thing. It's like a, like a, it's the George and his kids or me and my dad. It's something you've created. created with them. Yeah, we created, I mean, with this whole, you know, the coronavirus thing, they're not going to school. So we've got, they've become, you know, like World Cup champions in the backyard with the soccer and the football. And we've created, you know, volley, I don't know, it's like balloon volleyball inside the house with a shoe. And like, it's a pretty normal, you know, it's pretty normal. But I, I, if I had a choice, I mean, this is just the way I am, but if I had a choice between, you know, family or money, I'll take the family 110% of the time. There's no, there's no question, right?

1:14:21 So that's some people choose money over the family. To me, I think that's a mistake. I think the family, that is your legacy, right? It's like, however you teach your kids, like your three kids, you know, they're going to teach their kids the way you taught them. And that's, that's way more important than any financial success you can have, right? Or even failure if financial failure is like a big deal. If your kids are well-adjusted, then to me, that's a big deal. Yeah. You've done, you've done your job there, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, I appreciate your show. Yeah, you've already asked me. You've already answered where I was leading to you on that end point about kids and family there.

1:15:02 George, it's been an absolute pleasure. There's definitely more opportunities for us to catch up and chat. I've heard and learned so much from you this evening, especially about my ultra-marathon entry, which obviously is now pending. You should totally do it. I mean, I'm telling you, if it's one of these things you've had like an itch to do, I'm telling you, you can, so I'll just give you a tip. Like when you ran your train for your marathons, you did one long run on a Saturday, right? That's what you did usually. So you just do, you're going to think this is crazy. You just do two long runs. So you do one on Saturday and you do one on Sunday. The Sunday, instead of going like hardcore, you can walk for 30 minutes.

1:15:43 You can run for 30 minutes, walk for 30 minutes, run for 30 minutes, walk for 30 minutes until you get used to it. And then little by little, you know, it's kind of like you just, you stop walking and then you can do it. You can pretty much after about 60. And you just keep jogging. Okay, yeah. Yeah. And after about four or five months, you can do a double long run, double Saturday, you know, of like 30K, and then you can do a 30K on a Sunday and you kind of becomes normal. So, well, I will certainly be, if when that time comes, I'll be blasting through even more books on Audible, that's for sure. Yeah, awesome, man. So, George, you know, obviously, you know, in terms of what you do in the world, isn't it not really relevant for people trying to search you up and connect with you?

1:16:23 But the, you know, where is do you share your story ongoing? I know you're on a lot of podcasts. Is that what people should do? Just they want to hear more from you. Should they just look out for you on podcasts? Yeah. So I've got, so I'm, I mean, if you, it's, I think I've been on like 25 podcasts in the last couple of months. I'll be on. We didn't even get to that. You've got a target of 200 or something. Yeah, it's exactly. It's like, I think I'll be on 80 or something like that, but it will be, it will be 200, right? So it's, and I, I, I'll tell this story if you don't mind. Yeah, go for it. The negative podcast I was supposed to be on today that I would turn down for your audience. So you're, there was an email that we had gotten, we had received today. I was supposed to be on a podcast before Johnny's pop, you know, before Johnny's show.

1:17:03 And the host said, hey, George, we might have a problem. He had sent this email to my team. We have a problem because a lot of my podcast is like they're kind of, you know, they're not nearly doing well and they're not really happy souls and they're coming out of a depression. And George might be a little too upbeat for our audience. He might be a little too positive, you know, for the story, you know, for the people that we work with and our listeners. And we kind of, I just told my team, oh, listen, you know, like, that's, yeah, I mean, I'm like, like, send them our, send them our condolences, you know, and

1:17:46 a book on positivity. Yeah, so that was a, that was a, that was an odd, like, I've been on a lot of, by the way, this is, this is one of the most enjoyable ones I've been on. Like, it's, thank you. We've been on two hours now, it feels like it's five minutes. Uh, and and uh, but that was an interesting, like, so I think you have to know who you who you fit with and fit in well with and who you don't fit in well with. And yeah, like, I'm not, you know, I'm like, I'm not one of these guys that's like, oh, life is terrible. Oh, it's the government is, you know, it's not like that. I see. So that was the podcast I was supposed to be on today that we kind of said. So you've swerved the bullet. You swerved a bullet and you're on Team Super Dad with me. That's absolutely. Awesome, man. Awesome. George, well, you are certainly a Team Super Dad member. It's an absolute pleasure to have been talking to you.

1:18:29 I have no doubt that we will talk again in the future. And until then, the weekend's coming. I hope you have a lovely weekend with your kids in New York. And all the best to you, sir. Johnny, thank you, man. I'll give you a big hug from New York, man. I appreciate that. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Cheers. Thanks very much. very much. Wow, wow, wow. Loved that. Probably the best interview I've done. Probably the most enjoyable interview I've done. No discredit to the others. But it was just old mates, basically. And so fascinating. So I just love his get up and go.

1:19:08 He's living just outside New York, as you heard. An eight-figure business, a seven-figure business, ultra-marathon runner, epic, epic. So my question to you guys is, where can you step up? What is it about your life? What have you got going on? Where do you want to go 10% bigger, 10% more? For me, the big challenge next coming up down the corner is dating. We're going to get back into that realm somehow, somehow. Probably by asking someone out. Probably that's how we're going to get back into that. But also, kicking off Team Superdad and really making this the world by force that I plan it to be.

1:19:49 So look out for the Just One Goal challenge coming up and the F5 mastermind, which is launching in July. My goal is to get 20 dads onto that first running of that program. You know, I guess it's a pilot, but the exciting thing about the pilot is we get to shape it and morph it based on how it's going and what people want out of it. I've already got a whole bunch of awesome coaches lined up along with my skills and experiences. It's going to be epic. So come on over to teamsuperdad.com and pre-register for that. Join the group so you get to see all the updates. And thanks for staying this long. Thank you so much. The end bit is the best bit, whether you're in the car on a run or I don't know, where else could you be?

1:20:31 Cooking food, maybe. I know that I listen to podcasts all over the place. So thank you for joining me. I'll see you on the next podcast. Team Superdad out. This has been Team Super Dad. Find us at teamsuperdad.com.