Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.

Lisa Tamati: You're listening to Pushing The Limits with your host, Lisa Tamati. Thank you once again for joining me. Today I have another exciting podcast with a man named Daryl Urbanski. Now, Daryl is a very well known business coach. So today, quite something different for you. This is all about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Daryl is also a martial artist. So, he uses a lot of analogies from his sporting as we do in this podcast, from a sporting life and how that helps him in his career and also helping others build businesses. Now, he's helped over 1,000 businesses in his career in 50 different industries, and this guy knows how to grow and scale and overcome problems. So, he's a real expert in this area, and I really enjoyed our conversation. 

Before we head over to Daryl in Vietnam, just wanted to remind you, if you're into finding out all about your genes, and what they have to say about you and how you can influence your genes to live your optimal lifestyle and be your best self, then make sure you check out what we do in our Epigenetics Program. So, this is all about understanding your genes and how they are expressing at the moment how the environment is influencing them, and then optimising everything, from your food to your exercise right through to your mindset, your social, your career, all aspects of life are covered in this really revolutionary programme. 

Now, this programme is not something that we've put together; this has been put together by literally hundreds of scientists from 15 different science disciplines, all working together for over 20 years to bring this really next level cutting edge information about your genes and how you can find out how to optimise them. No longer do you need trial and error; you can work out what the best diet is, when the best time to eat is, exactly the right foods to eat right down to the level of, 'eat bok choy, don't eat spinach', that type of thing. And as—but it's so much more than just a food and exercise. It also looks at your health and anything that may be troubling you and future and how to deal with it. So, it's a really comprehensive programme, and I'd love you to check it out. You can visit us at lisatamati.com, hit the Work with Us button and you'll see our Epigenetics Program. 

We've also got our online run coaching as normal, customised, personalised, run training system, where we make a plan specific to you and to your needs and your goals. And you get a session with me—a one on one session with me and a full video analysis of your running so that we can help you improve your style, your form, your efficiency, plus a full-on plan that includes all your strength training, your mobility workouts, and great community, of course. So make sure you check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. 

And the last thing before we go over to the show, I have just started a new venture with Dr Elena Seranova, who is a molecular biologist from the UK, originally from Russia, and she is a expert in autophagy in stem cells, and she has made a supplement called NMN. Now, you may have heard of this nicotinamide mononucleotide. It's a big fancy word, I know. But you will be hearing more about this. It's been on the Joe Rogan show; it's been on Dr Rhonda Patrick show, some big names now talking all about this amazing longevity compound, anti-aging compound. Now, this is based on the work of Dr David Sinclair, who wrote the book, Lifespan: Why We Age and or How We Age and Why We Don't Need To. He is a Harvard Medical School researcher who has been studying longevity and anti-aging and is at the really the world's forefront of all the technologies to do with turning the clock back and who doesn't want to do that? 

So I've teamed up with Dr Elena to import nicotinamide mononucleotide, our supplement from NMN bio into New Zealand and Australia. So if you are keen to get your hands on some because this was not available prior in New Zealand, I wanted a reputable company, a place that I could really know that the supplements that I'm getting is quality, that it's been lab-tested, that it was a scientist behind it, a lab behind it, and this is a real deal. 

Now, I've been on this now for four months and so as my mom and my husband, and I've noticed massive changes in my life. Certainly, weight loss has been one of those things, that stubborn last couple of kilos that I've been fighting have gone without any muscle loss which has been really very interesting. It improves also cardiovascular health, your memory cognition, the speed of your thinking; all the things that start to decline as you age. And the reason this is happening is because we have declining levels of NAD, another big word, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And this NMN is a precursor for NAD. 

So, lots of big words, lots of science. f you want to find more about that, you can head over to lisatamati.com, under the Shop button, you will find out all about our anti-aging supplement NMN, and we're about to launch a new website which will be nmnbio.nz, but that's not quite up there yet, but it probably is by the time this podcast comes out. So, check that one out to nmnbio.nz, bio, just B-I-O. If you want to stop—well, not completely stop aging, but if you want to slow the clock down and get the best information that's out there then make sure you read Dr David Sinclair's book, Lifespan it's an absolute game-changer. You'll be absolutely amazed at some of the stuff that's happening and what they consider my mononucleotide can already do. So check that out. Okay, without further ado over to the show with Daryl Urbanski. 

Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Today I have the lovely Daryl Urbanski with me who is sitting in Danang in Vietnam. And Daryl, this is gonna be a little bit of a different episode because usually I've got some health science-y thing or some are elite athlete doing—well, not to say that Daryl was not an elite athlete because he is into martial arts. But Daryl’s specialty and what he's come to share with you guys today is, he is a business expert and a marketing expert, and also a mindset expert, I would like to say. So Daryl, welcome to the show. Fantastic to have you. 

Daryl Urbanski: Yes, it's an honour and pleasure to be here. We've had some good conversations, like minds, two birds of a feather. Just an honour and a pleasure to be here.

Lisa: Yes. Thank you so much, Daryl, for coming on today. So, Daryl and I cross pass by his lovely lady who organises half my life as far as the business side of things goes. So it's been a fantastic liaison. And—but Daryl was actually here on his own accord. And he's—so Daryl, I want you to give us a bit of a brief background, where have you come from, how did you end up in Vietnam? And what do you do for a living?

Daryl: Right, so I'm Canadian. So I'm from Canada, travelled all over the world, and I don't know if it's too short. So that's where I come from, I ended up in Vietnam. That's a long story. So I guess I'm Canadian. I'm in Vietnam. I help businesses or websites get customers and keep them to make more money. And that's really kind of it in a nutshell. It's been a long journey. 

When I was a kid I was an orphan and my adopted family, actually my step adopted dad's the one that really raised me and his brother, my uncle. We would visit him every time we went to Toronto, and he was a bit of an entrepreneur. He also did some property management in that and every time we went to visit I almost felt like he was kind of like the Godfather. What I meant was people were always coming by with like, a gift basket or to thank him for something. So the impression that was put in my mind was like to be an entrepreneur is to be of service to the community, and to get people's respect and adoration for the good that you're bringing. And that was really like—I know, there's all sorts of different like your salesmen, and everyone's got different images. But that was when I was a young kid, I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be valued by my community, too’. So that really laid an impression on me at a young age. 

Again, I didn't have the lemonade stand, I didn't mow lawn, but I did shovel driveways. We have so much snow in Canada in the wintertime. We would shovel driveways for money. I did have a newspaper route. And just at a young age, I just kind of felt, maybe because I was an orphan, but I felt the need to be self-sufficient and self-directed. Yes... 

Lisa: How to be your own ship, really. 

Daryl: Yes, sort of. Yes, I just—I also had issues like I did air cadets when I was a kid. There's some other kids, they were using their authority outside of cadets to try to, like, lord over people and stuff. And right away, I kind of learned at a young age, you kind of have to be careful—you can manage up, let's just put it that way. It's not just managing down, but you can manage up, and you can choose who's above you too, it's a two-way street. So I really laid an impression on the young age. And then when I was 17, I added a co-op in university with the company called marketme.ca and they were just one of the early pioneers of online marketing. Got me into the whole business growth avenue and that...

Lisa: The rest is history. Yes, now that's fabulous. So you from like, in my young years, like I was an entrepreneur from the get-go. I never fit in in anybody's corporate square box. Tried—I tried, I failed. Did you have that feeling like you were just outside of like, you just wanted to be in charge? Because you've been in business, basically, since you were 17 years old. And you've learned a heck of a lot on this massive business journey that you've been on. And you've helped—I know that you've helped over 1,000 businesses in 50 plus industries. And you've really grown into this role of helping businesses scale up and grow and develop your own systems around this. 
But did you have an idea when you were that 17-year old that this was where you were going, and this is the direction? Or has it sort of meandered throughout time?

Daryl: No, I was—because I think I had a lot of, they say, like everything, I'm not maybe everything that I am and not knowing my biological roots, and that as a kid left me really to kind of be given the path of self-discovery, you could say from a young age. A lot of confusion, maybe anger in my younger years as well. But what really made the difference, at least in the earliest days, was that when I was 17, I ended up at Canadian government programme called Katimavik, which means ‘meeting places’. Inuit, which a lot of people call them Eskimos. But now we say the people of the North, the natives of the North they’re Inuit, which means snow people. Eskimo means meat-eater or flesh-eater. So they don't like being called Eskimos, you call them Inuit, but Katimavik is an Inuit word, and it means ‘meeting place’. And it's a government programme that's been on and off over the last 40-50 years in Canada. 

And really what the—when I did it with the terms of the programme where it's a social programme sponsored by the government, 17 to 21-year-old youth, and then what they do is they put a group of 10 kids together, and the group of 10 kids is supposed to represent Canada. So, what that means is that they grab some from the east coast, the west coast from up north they try to make it, so it's representative. Like we had half guys have girls. French, we have three French speakers, right? Then the English speakers. We had an Inuit guy Kenny, who when he came, he actually didn't even speak English. We always knew when the phone was for Kenny because we didn't—it all be like, '[mumbles] Kenny this is for you, I don't know what's happening, either it's a bad connection, or this is someone who talks in their language'. 

And that programme, what we did—when I did it was we spent three months in British Columbia, three months in Alberta, and three months in Quebec and in every province, there was a house. In that house, there is a project manager, project leader...

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: ...basically he was someone that would go to the house, and they were there, the whole duration of the programme. And this isn't a pitch for the programme, but I feel like it was—my life was really before and after. 

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: Because life skills I got from this... 

Lisa: That's cool. 

Daryl: ...so every place would have a project leader, and they would organise full-time work for all ten kids. And you were like a volunteer full-time worker, and in exchange, the government and I think this businesses may be paid a reduced hourly wage, I don't really know the details of it. But you worked for free, and in exchange, the government paid your grocery bills, they paid your rent and your travel expenses, and you got 20 bucks a week for like toothpaste and whatever else you wanted. And that was—it was a fantastic programme. I learned so much when I was in Alberta and British Columbia. I worked at a native band office, which is in Canada, we have a lot of native land, and that's land, like, we were the original immigrants. We took over the landmass, and then we gave the natives, ‘This is your land’, and so it's like a country within a country, and a band office is like their government office. 

Lisa: Right.

Daryl: So, I actually worked at an Indian band office, Similkameen Valley band office and Iwe helped build sweat lodges. We did all sorts of stuff. I work there newsletter, helped communicate with the community. In Alberta, I was a seventh-grade teacher's assistant at a middle school, and a social worker assistant and I worked with a librarian as well. And then in Quebec, I was actually a mayor's assistant for three small town, 150 people. But you had a full-time job in each place, and then after work when you came home, the 10 of you were basically instantly signed up for any community events that were going on. 

I remember in the small town of Karamea we built something like 20 out of the 25 of their Christmas floats for their Christmas parade. We did soup kitchens, music festivals, like, you name it, and there's just like, instantly—if there was something out of the community like the project leader would know about it and just drag us, and we just show up be like, 'Hey', and it was like ten pairs of hands. Like just we were coming just to make things happen. 

So every three months, you had a full-time job, evenings and weekends, except for Sunday. You basically anything in the community, you were instantly signed up as a volunteer, and every two and for two weeks, every three month period, you would build it, you would stay with a local family for two weeks to like, see how they live. And that was really insightful because I didn't know any other family or how the family operated. But then I got to see inside the workings, like, 

I remember this one family, I stayed with the three, the parents, the father was in finance, and he was always, like, his suit and his hair's so proper. He was very strict and very like this. And his kids on the other side, they had like mohawks, spike collars and black nails and eyes. And it was so funny because I felt like it was a yin yang. I felt like the kids were the exact opposite in the extreme of the parents, and just watching the dynamics of people. And also every week, a boy and a girl would stay home from their full-time jobs, and they would be the mum and dad in the house because we had a budget like for groceries and they would have to cook and clean. So that nine months experience when I was 17, I came out of that with more life experience than a lot of people and…
 
Lisa: What an incredible programme and how lucky... 

Daryl: Yes.

Lisa: ...for you, like, because so many kids go off the rails, as they say at that point yet, and they get lost and to have the sort of a structure of development and experience must have been a real game-changer for you.

Daryl: Yeah, I mean, we moved around a bit when I was a kid, but we ended up settling in a city called Kingston, Ontario, which also happened to be the penitentiary capital of Canada. And so it was a unique community because you've got Queen's University, which is one of the top three universities of Canada. You've got the second-largest military base. It's almost one of the largest government employment cities. So you've got these high-income earners in the public sector, and then you've also got this great university. Some of the largest businesses out of Canada, actually, even in Kingston, like we've got one of the largest real estate investment trusts. There's a company that makes the shafts for all the pro golf clubs outside of Kingston. It's kind of weird, you got these unique massive spikes of success. But then because of the penitentiaries, a lot of families move to Kingston to be closer to the family. So then you have these areas where there's like when you get out of jail, you just settle in the town that you're in, and so it's weird, and I actually didn't think I was gonna see my 21st birthday. 

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: I was in high school, and I didn't—I had a friend that was found in a lake rolled in a carpet... 

Lisa: Oh, gosh.

Daryl: ...and things like that. And I didn't think I was really gonna make it. 

Lisa: So, really dangerous areas to be growing up as a youth.

Daryl: But then, I always say when you live in a city, you don't live in that city, you live in your bubble in that city. So my bubble was mixed. It was a mixed bag. I was in the middle—I grew up in a nice suburb, but through school and all that, I got involved with lots of different things. But in this group one day, they spoke at my high school, and they're talking about, 'Yo, we're getting to travel Canada for free'. Like, I was like, 'Hey, that sounds great. I need to get out of here. I don't see a future. I don't see a future', and I signed up and that was what I did. And then after that because of being involved and so I almost got kicked out. 

Now, after the first two months, I was on my last warning, you get three warnings, and you get sent home. And every time you make them, you have to write a commitment to improve. And I was like, I just thought I think that project leader didn't like me, but I was like, on it by a hair. And it was so funny because I remember when I made the first three months, we moved to the second location, I was like, 'Wow even if I get kicked out now. Now I've learned everything that I could learn from this programme'. Three months, Alberta and I met all sorts of new people and new experiences. And I was like, 'Wow, I made it to six months. Now that I'm going to Quebec, now I've learned everything, I mean, so good'. And then the next three months, and then I finished it like, 'Wow, I made it to the end. Now I've learned... 

Lisa: You're an expert.

Daryl: ...programme, right. But now here it is years and years later, and I met because they were like family, the other ten kids, right? And I still catch up with them every now and then, like I learned through, 'Why? You got a kid? You got three kids'?

Lisa: In other words, we all say we're no’s all the time. And then we're actually just at the beginning of our next journey.  And it's all stepping stones to the next part of learning and stuff. But what a fantastic I wish we had a programme like that here because I mean, it must cost a lot to run and be really difficult to organise. But man, they could change lives, say for kids who are just lost and don't quite know what's the next step and how many of them are be.

Daryl: It's a fantastic programme. It's actually I don't think it's running in Canada anymore. Again, because of the cost that it gets government funding, it gets taken away. The Trudeau lineage is the one that started—they tend to be behind it. There was a big scandal in Canada 'we something charity' and it sounds like that they were going to give a billion dollars in one organisation that does something like that. But of course, it got into, like, where's money going and people arguing and is that a good use and I think nothing happened at it. But it's a shame because...

Lisa: It changes your life.

Daryl: Well, I think right now there's a ton of people, especially the younger kids who need a sense of responsibility. I think in some ways, I don't want to go on a big rant. But I think life is full of challenges and hurdles. And it's like, through overcoming those we develop our character. And some people, they just have such a cushy like... 

Lisa: Yes. 

Daryl: .Things have become so politically correct. We've softened all the hard edges. I remember seeing in Toronto, they replaced a bunch of the kids playgrounds, because kids were falling and getting hurt. 

Lisa: Yes, yes. 

Daryl: Like, yes, but that's, like, you climb a tree, you fall, like, you don't...

Lisa: There's no consequence to anything anymore. And there's no, like, yes.

Daryl: It's like participation awards versus achievement awards. Like, we really, in some ways, become a society of participation awards versus achievement awards. And that's...

Lisa: I totally get it. I totally agree. Because I mean, I'm showing my age, but I grew up in the early 70s and stuff, and it was a rough ride. I'm lucky to be alive.

Daryl: Not everyone. Not everyone made it in adulthood. Yes.

Lisa: And, but you know what, I wouldn't change that for the world because I don't want to be wrapped up in cotton wool and bounce around like a bunch of marshmallows for the want of a better expression. I want to be able to climb trees and cycle. I had to laugh yesterday. We live in a little village that, sort of, no police around here. And you've got all sorts in, and it's a lovely village, it's a sort of a beachy resort-y place. But you get the kids, they got no helmets on, and the other ones are on scooters, and there's three of them hanging off it and other people with their youths, and the kids are on the back, which is all illegal, right? 

Daryl: Right.

Lisa: And I'm not saying it is good, but I do have to smile because it reminds me of my childhood because that's where...

Daryl: A little bit recklessness, a little bit of foolishness. We don't want it, but the world has real limits. 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: And especially as a parent, like I have a daughter now and it's like, I call it careful neglect. I try to carefully neglect her in some ways to force her to develop and grow. 

Lisa: Beautiful.

Daryl: It's like neglect under supervision, that's probably the best way to do it. Because if I always do it for her, and then I'm not there like they say kids who grew up with a single parent tend to be more independent than kids that have two parents, although kids with two parents tend to do better overall. I want a blend of that. The kids with single parents, they are more independent because that's expected of them. There's not all—you can't... 

Lisa: backup. 

Daryl: It's not all the swaddling. 

Lisa: Yes, no, I totally agree. And like, not even just for kids, but like dealing with my mum with her disability, I had to—and people would criticise me heavily, but I used—I make her do the hard stuff. Like, if she's struggling to get out of a chair at night and she's tired I don't get up to help her and not because I'm an asshole but because I need her to learn which muscle it is to push and people would, like when we're out in public that'd be standing there watching me watch her struggling and I'd get abuse sometimes. Like, ‘why aren't you helping’?

Daryl: Yes, yes.

Lisa: That's all I'm doing. I have to do it all the time with her because I'm teaching her new difficult tasks all the time. I'm having to put her through some painful regimes and training. And because I've been an athlete all my life, I understand that pain often, when in training, in difficult training sessions and stuff make you stronger, and make you more able to withstand. I mean, that's what exercise is all about: you hurt yourself, you get stronger, you hurt yourself, you get stronger. And with mum's training, it's very often like that. So okay, she's not a kid, but it's the same principle. I have to let her go. 

Or winching out when she got her driver's license, and I would let her drive my car and go around town. I mean, I'm still panicking half the time, a nice—and for the start, I would shadow her, like from behind. She didn't know that I was following her way right through the town where she went so that she had that backup. But she didn't know she had that backup.

Daryl: As I actually had been saying that to Kathy, but my daughter, I'm like, I won't stop her from falling, but I'll do my best to always catch her. 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: I'm not gonna try to stop because sometimes you're like, 'Your daughter and you try to pad the room'. And I'm like, 'I gave her a pair of scissors'. This is when she was really young, gave her scissors, 'Don't, she'll cut herself', and I'm like, 'Yes, and it'll be a valuable lesson'. 'You're right'. And I'm right here, and it'll be a vet ship. She'll learn a valuable lesson; I don't know if she doesn't, I feel like that's partially where we have things like all these school shootings and that. These kids aren't growing up on farms. They've never been kicked by a horse or a goat, or they've never hit themselves in the foot with an axe. So they playing these video games of extreme violence and sexual violence in the movies and they feel these emotions, like really common as a teenager. They have access to such powerful tools. 

I'm Canadian, but in the States, they sell guns at Walmart and so you've got a kid that's angry, he's got no real sense of the reality of the world around him in terms of like, what happens if you fall out of a tree and break your ankle, that's so distant because they grew up in a city and it's just, it's more just surviving and social dynamics versus a social and environmental dynamic. 

Lisa: I totally agree.

Daryl: And I go to school, and they lash out with guns, I really feel that if those kids grew up with more hard labour in their lives, more physical—even if they just had more physical training conditioning. You play hockey, you get hit too hard, like something like that, it would have less school shootings because they still feel the same emotions, but one, they'd have different outlets, and they would also kind of respect it better. It's like my jujitsu. You mentioned I do jujitsu. 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: I feel like it's very—when you guys are new, you get a lot of these strong guys, and they try to tough on everybody. And they just, it's useless. And they get beaten up by the more skilled ones. So then when they develop skill, they're kind of like a 'Hey, like, I know what it's like to be the one getting beaten up'.

Lisa: Yes. Which is the correct method.

Daryl: Like, the power, the skill is earned. So, you treat it with better respect.

Lisa: Humility is always a good thing. And I think learning.. I've taken up skimboarding with you, and I don't bounce very well at 52. But it's really important that I do something that I'm really useless at.and I'm having to learn a new skill. And I sometimes ski myself because if I don't get the stage, that's when you start losing those skills. And I don't want to lose any of my abilities, and I've still got good reactions and stuff like that, so I want to keep them. So I constantly want to push myself outside that boundary. 

So let's dive in a little bit to your martial arts, and then we'll get onto your business side of things because what you've done the years is just incredible. What sort of lessons have you learned—I mean, that was one—but what sort of lessons have you learned from doing Jiu Jitsu in the discipline that's required for this very tough sport?

Daryl: Yes, that's great. So yes, I did jujitsu for about six, seven, maybe eight years. I haven't trained, probably in a couple years now. I've been doing more kind of CrossFit and my own physical training, but I think the lessons are through any—you learn about progression over time. You learn things like the fundamentals are fundamental. You kind of learn the basics, but then you get bored with those, and you want to learn the fancy, advanced stuff, but then it's hard to apply it and get it to work. And then through just time and observation and training with the greatest you understand it really is about the fundamentals. Virtue is doing the common uncommonly well. 

The fundamentals that we learned are the stuff that's actually working against the highest level black belts. The basics that you learn, you see that happen at the highest level World Championships in the biggest competitions, and the really great to the ones that can do the basics and just walk through everyone with them. Like, 'How are they able to do that so well'? Everybody knows what's happening. Everyone knows what to expect, but they can't stop it from happening anyhow. 

Another lesson was it's a game of inches in the beginning because jujitsu is kind of like a submission wrestling, submission grappling.It's not so much punch and kick.It's more about pull, roll, and just and using things like gravity. So there's things about drilling how practise makes perfect. You learned the rule, like 10,000 hours that it's if I've been training for 200 hours, and you've been training 10 hours, generally speaking, I have a major advantage. If I've been training 2000 hours, you've been training 100 hours, typically speaking, I'm gonna just mop the floor with you because I've—there's nuance detail and you can almost endlessly drill into the fundamentals. 

And then there's just the progress. You've talked about learning new skills. Last year, I learned how to handstand walk. I can now handstand walk about 20 feet, I'm gonna be 38 in a couple of months. 

Lisa: Wow, I can't do that. 

Daryl: Yes. 

Lisa: I'm jealous.

Daryl: It’s specifically for the skill development, for the neurological developments, to like to balance in a totally different way and physical development. So I mean, you just see you learn about people, you learn about how your emotions impact your decision making in certain respects. You learn about how it's not just training, but it's also how to recover and rest. And we talked about this I think before I interviewed you for my podcast, like, silence is part of music just as much as music is, the difference is it's intentional.

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: Silences, intention. So it's about doing things with intent. Taking a concept like I want to learn and get good at this and breaking into pieces. And I was talking about this to my friend yesterday. Actually, I forget how it came up. But he's talking about something, and work, and the situation, and how to avoid, and I remember I was training and I was fortunate to do some training with Rickson Gracie in my early parts of my training career, legendary fighter guy. 

And I remember I kept getting caught in these triangle chokes. Triangle choke is a type of choke. And I kept getting caught in these triangle chokes. I remember asking, like, 'How do I get out of it'? He says, 'Well, don't let them put you into it'. I'm like, 'Yes, I know. But I already got into it. Now what do I do'? he's like, 'Don't let them put you into it'. And I just wanted—I wanted the cure, and I was like, 'Yes, but I want it' and there are, there's some things you can do. But the real answer is... 

Lisa: Prevention

Daryl: ...prevention is so much better than cure. Like, well it's good...

Lisa: Great principle.

Daryl: You're in it, like, you gotta panic, you got two or three options, you got to panic, you're gonna spend a lot of energy, you're gonna flail and struggle, it's gonna be close. We can talk about how to do it. But really, the best solution is, don't let them do it to you in the first place. Note and recognise the signs and protect yourself before it happens.

Lisa: That is a great law for the whole of the health paradigm that I live under.

Daryl: Yes. How do I deal with heart problems? 

Lisa: Prevention, prevention. 

Daryl: Prevention. Yes, exactly. And you know proactivity.

Lisa: Yes, occasionally,you will still get caught out and you will still and then you want to know those tricks. But in the first line, let's learn prevention and then we'll look at how do we get out of this mess?

Daryl: And another really—which kind of ties in and then we can if you want to move on, move on. But this one, I think is also really, really, really important. When I first learned martial arts, I always thought it was about doing things to other people, I'm going to do this too, or I'm going to use your leverage against you. I'm gonna do this to the world. What I've really realised is two things. One, it's not even necessarily about doing things. It's about two things it's about not doing things externally, it's about self-control. It's about boundaries. 

So we just talked about 'Don't let him put you into it'. That means that I have to have boundaries around things. Will I let him grab me here? Well I’ll not allow that. Well, I let him grab me there. And I'll be like, 'Okay, whatever. And I'm going to try to do some'. So again, when people start and forgive me, I don't want to go on a huge long rant on this. But when you start, I'm going to do this to you, going to do that to you and I'm trying to do this... 

Lisa: You got to be kidding.

Daryl: ...and so I don't even care what you're doing to me. When you get—later, it's like what do I accept? What are my boundaries? 

Lisa: Wow. 

Daryl: What situations do I let myself enter into? And that was—and then the other thing is that a lot of times it's not about what you do. It's not even about winning. It's about who makes the fewest mistakes. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Daryl: It's really—it's not even about being the best, the smartest, the brightest. It's about making the least mistakes. 

Lisa: Wow...

Daryl: In this situation, how many doors do I open for my opponent? 

Lisa: I totally... 

Daryl: These things are great, right? 

Lisa: Yes, yes, yes.

Daryl: There’s just me posing on the world and more about controlling myself. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Daryl: And am I allowing myself to be manipulated this way? Am I allowing myself to be grabbed here? Am I allowing his energy to mess with my mindset?

Lisa: Wow, that is gold.

Daryl: In a tournament, I've seen them lose the match before it even begins. Get you two guys step up, and the rest get in there, and they like their eyeballing on each other. 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: You see one guy like and he's just kind of coward. Like he lost before we even get started. So...

Lisa: I haven’t seen that in ultramarathons are—another sporting analogy, but I've seen when people start bargaining with themselves and you do during an ultra. You start saying, 'Well, if I just get to there, I'll be happy with my results’. Or if you start to negotiate with yourself as how far you can get. And when I'm when I see people going, 'Well, I've at least done more than I've ever done before and therefore it's a success'. And when I start to hear talk like that, I know we're in the battle, like we are in the battle. And if they don't change the mindset, they're not going to because they're no longer in that, 'I'm gonna do this, come hell or high water there in the' Well, it's okay to fail and it is okay to fail. But in the battle, you don't want to be in that mindset. You want to be in that mindset, like, 'I'm going for this and I'm giving it everything I have.’ 

When you start to negotiate with yourself where ‘It would be okay if I got to that point, and therefore this is the longest I've ever run and therefore that's still a success'. When you start doing that type of bargaining with yourself, you're in deep shit basically because you've got to tune your psychology around too because otherwise, you're going to give yourself a way out. 

I remember when I was running in the 220k race in the Himalayas that extreme altitude and I had a point where I just completely broke after going up the second path, and it was about—I'd been out there for 40 plus hours in a massive snowstorm. I had hypothermia. I had altitude sickness, asthma. I was just completely good enough reasons to be pulling out. And one of my guys came back to me, and I said, 'I think it's only two kilometres to the top of the mountain because you're calculating in your head'. And he came back and said, 'No, it's six kilometres to go'. And that just completely broke my mentality because six kilometres, I was going out 3k an hour, it was two hours of hell, and I couldn't, and it broke me. And I just fell into a heap and started bawling my eyes out, and everybody was giving me permission to give up. They were like, huddling around, 'You're amazing. We're so proud of you and you did everything you could', and then there was one guy. And he came over, and he shocked me, and he wasn't smiling, and he wasn't patting me on the back, and he was like, ‘Get the F up now’. 

Daryl: You're so close.

Lisa: ‘You're so close, you're not failing, and I'm not letting you fail and get your ass up off the ground. And I'm going to stay here with you. And I'm going to walk you up top of that mountain’. And that was key because it got me over that psychological break—I broke, but he picked me up, and he got me back on my feet. And I followed his instructions. I just did what he told me to do, put one foot in front of the other, and he got me over that hump, literally. And it's this type of stuff that you learn through sports; it's just so valuable.

Daryl: It's just overcoming obstacles and just testing yourself. You don't know what you're capable of until you do it. You can spend all day reading a book about tennis, but until you're out there actually playing it. And there's learning you have to learn, you can learn through reading through lecture through conversation, personal experiences, and through other people's experiences and that's...

Lisa: That's what this is about.

Daryl: Yes, I mean Alan Watts has this great video called The Dream of Life. Imagine if every night you went to sleep, you could dream, however many years of life that you wished and because it's your dream, you can make them as wonderful as you want it. And so for the first—let's say you're dreaming 100 years of life every night. And maybe you do this for a couple of years, every night for a few years, you're dreaming 100 years of life. And all these lives that you're living, they're all the most filled with all the pleasures and all the wonderful things that you could possibly want. And what do you think would happen? And over time, you would kind of get bored, and you would want some risk and some adversity. And then eventually, you would want to be able to dream and go to sleep, and not know the outcome. ‘I want to go to sleep. I want to have this adventure, but I don't want to know the outcome’. 

And that's kind of like that's almost like life. And if you could dream a lifetime every night in your—in a life of eighty years, you could possibly dream the life you're living right now. And that's the whole thing of evolution. Evolution is about growth and challenge and overcoming obstacles and...

Lisa: Yes, obstacles like phone calls coming in the middle of your podcast. 

Daryl: But, we got—everyone’s with me.

Lisa: I think people listening to my podcasts are quite used to interruption. You just cannot stop the world from functioning half the time like somebody's phone is somewhere. 

Daryl: Murphy's Law, you just gotta keep on recording. If you wait for perfection, it's never gonna happen. 

Lisa: Exactly. You could panic now and start editing for Africa or another way, you could just get it out there and apologise for what happened, which we'll do. So, Daryl, I want to move now because I think there was absolutely brilliant and really insightful. 

I want to move into the business side of things. And you've had a really successful business. You've taken lots of businesses to the million-dollar in a plus businesses from scratch, you've done that over and over again. You've helped people scale up and develop these systems and mine the data and work out all this complicated world of online, which is I'd struggle with daily so I want to know from you, how the heck do you do this? And what are some of your greatest secrets from building businesses over a long period of time now?

Daryl: That's a great question. There's a lot of different places to start; I think one of the hardest places and where I've had the most failure myself is getting something new going because well, one, it's just not my superpower. But if you've got someone that's got a proven concept, and that's really how in the beginning, I should look it up. 

But I got my seven-step rollout system. It's like you always start with a market first. So that means you always have to start with a need and or want so because you can't—the idea of selling ice to Eskimos. It's not about doing mental gymnastics and pushing something on someone that they don't want. That might happen in the world. There might be people that invest a lot of time, energy and resources in that but I have no interest. It's really tough to be like I'm gonna generate this demand. It's not there. The demand already exists. People already want to feel beautiful, people already want to be entertained, people already want to travel and to explore the world. So these needs and wants and that already exists. The idea is that you want to stand in front of it. The demand and want is already there and it's constantly evolving. And every time someone a business comes out, and you create a new product or service to fix a problem there'll be a new problem. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Daryl: Because now, like before the internet, the issue was how are we going to have these conversations like we can? You’re New Zealand, I'm in Vietnam, how will we do this? Well, now Zoom is created. These companies created tool, and they created tool. And now here's Zoom, but then what's the next issue? And then what's the next problem? So problems are markets, not demographics. 

Lisa: Oh, wow.

Daryl: Not demographics, the problem is a market. This is the problem that we solve for people. Once you've got that a lot of it—for me, it's like different ways that you can go, but the purpose of business is to locate a prospect, turn that prospect into a customer and then make a customer your friend. 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: It's really a big part of it. It's tough to have a business survive. There are businesses that survive off one-time sales, but the vast majority of businesses need recurring business, recurring freight, ongoing relationships. And a lot of businesses aren't thinking about how to do that. And so, your business is a service to the world. And so the first thing you have to figure out on a small scale, ‘What problem do I solve’? And when you solve a problem, you kind of need to create, I call it a black box. This black box maybe is a mystery to the outside world; we can use a dentist's office people come in crying and in pain on one side, they go through the black box, which is a series of checklists, checklists for this, checklist for that, checklist for next thing, okay, check that we did this, this, this, this is this, boom, they leave smiling and happy on the other side. So that's the black box. That's the problem-solving box.

Lisa: Wow. 

Daryl: The problem-solving box, all the company is one group of people solving a problem for another group of people via a product or service. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Daryl: Before that problem is, and you've got it, now you need to design it. Here's some people solve problems really well, but they don't do it in a way that's scalable. So the rule of 10,000. Now I know how to solve the problem. Now I know THE kind of the type of people having that problem. How do I solve 10,000 of these problems for people, think, if I had to bake a pie if I'm trying to bake one pie versus bake 10,000 pies...

Lisa: It's going to be more efficient.

Daryl: there's a different mindset that you got like, I need a bigger kitchen, I got to do that. You've got like planning in batches, and food storage, it changes the nature of things. And then you got to kind of go out and find those people and that's like a marketing function. 

So there's—actually, I can share this. So last year, I actually spent like $40,000 hiring all these research teams to help get down to what are the critical success factors for small and medium-sized businesses? 

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: We came up with eight, there's actually nine, but the ninth one is government and economic factors. And it's not realistic that a person is going to influence. 

Lisa: No. 

Daryl: Not one person. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Daryl: No, it's not realistic. So the ones that we can influence is things like self-efficacy, which means your ability to be effective with your time, your energy, just yourself and through others. So it's like leadership is part of that, right? Your time management is part of that like mindset might be part of that. But self-efficacy, strategic planning, marketing strategy, market intelligence. So these are different market intelligence is understanding the needs, wants desires, problems of the people of the marketplace, and the competitors, the available options. 

So it's market intelligence is like, what's going on out there? And then marketing strategy is how am I going to get my message across. Then you have sales skills and strategies, sales strategy. And then you have money management. You have business operating systems, which is—it could be technology, it could be simple checklists, it could be meeting rhythms, it could be a hiring process, that's the operating systems. 

And then you've got business intelligence, and business intelligence is like the awareness of different things. So for example, like you are working with my partner, Kathy. She's helping you with your podcasts, you're getting greater awareness on how many downloads are we getting and how many people are sharing the downloads and how many people are listening and then coming my way—that's all business intelligence stuff. 

Daryl: It's the idea of not just doing activities, but to actually measure… Right. But it needs to be aware. It’s like wearing a heart rate monitor, right? Like how's my—that's an intelligence system. How's my heart rate doing? How's my heart rate variability? 

Lisa: Yes. I do all of that. 

Daryl: What's my sleep pattern? 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl:  Am I waking up twenty nights? That's like business intelligence. Those eight factors really are the critical make or break focus points for business. 

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: And anything that you would do for a business should back into one of those. So, team building activity. Well, that's kind of self-efficacy, maybe operating systems, it depends. You're going to do a podcast, well, that's a marketing strategy, right? And then the strategic planning is the plan strategically of how you're going to pull the strings together. And like, we know how you plan you develop, how you plan to meet people, is there a thought process and from all this stuff?

Lisa: And the hard thing is for the young entrepreneurial. I know we have a lot of people who, in business, starting businesses, or in developed businesses and wanting to scale further. You’re wearing so many hats at the beginning, like you're in charge of all of those departments if you like, and that is the very hard thing at the beginning. Once you get a team around you like we're at a stage now where we have small teams that are helping us with different aspects of what we do, and we're trying to outsource the stuff we're not good at. It's not our specialty, because we don't want to waste... But at the beginning, you have to do it all. And so you're just constantly wearing these multitasking hats and not being very efficient. 

Daryl: Right.

Lisa: How do people get to that next rung on the ladder? And this is something that where we've been backwards and forwards going on for a long time. How do you get to the next stage? And how do you make an effective team? And how do you outsource certain things, but not the other things? And it's getting to that next level, isn't it? 

Daryl: Yes.

Lisa: And at the beginning, you just forbought everything. 

Daryl: If you've been doing a lot of activity, and you're not really sure what's working, a simple way to think about this is forget Uber and Grab and these other... 

Lisa: Yes, this huge... 

Daryl: Originally, if you were a cab driver, you would have a car, and your idea first figure out where are the people who need to be driven places and then pay money to do it. Maybe it's taking kids to school, maybe it's picking people up at the train station, or the bus station or the airport, maybe it's doctor's office appointments, right? Like every week for whatever. 

But first, if you were the taxi driver, first, you'd have to figure out, how do I keep my schedule full every day? How do I keep myself busy every day? And so first, it's where are the customers? And where do they want to go? Right? Where are the customers and where they want to go? Can I take them there? You get paid in size over the relationship, and the problem you solve. What that means is if I want to get across town, but I have all day to do it, I can walk, right? But if I'm in a hurry, if my child is sick, and they're bleeding, and I got to get in the hospital in half the time, that's a bigger problem. I'll pay whatever, right? I can rent a car, I could bike, right? If I don't want to rent a car, I could pay more to have someone, you get what I'm saying? 

Lisa: Yes.

Daryl: I could pay someone to drive me. So there's a scale of problems. So first, like, where are the customers? What do they need? Where do they want to go? And then how do you get yourself busy? Now that you're busy what's going to happen is now you have to do is you have to train someone and had it on quality control. How do I deliver this consistently? What is my doing? Because when you do something for someone, why—what's making people really happy? What's making them not happy? Right? How do I make sure I have a consistent good experience for people? Good. 

Now, how do I help more people? And then if you're the cab driver, you might have to take a pay cut? Because at some point, you might have to bring someone in and have them drive the car for half the day.

Lisa: So you can focus on the business. Yes, yes. 

Daryl: You can focus on getting another car and getting that. And so there's this weird period where it's like, 'Hey, I'm busy full time, but I can't be any busier'. So I can charge more money, or I'm going to hire someone, give them some of the work. 

Lisa: Yes. Big portion of the money.

Daryl: Right. They're gonna take a pint of the money. And now I'm going to get the second part going. And that's actually how Kathy got started. So Kathy is working with you. And one of the beginning she had some clients online, and I was like, 'What do you like doing the most? What's the one thing that you think you can do a lot of? And she really enjoys the writing component', and so we got her really busy. And then she hired someone, and then right? And then she was busy, and they're busy, she hired another person. And she had another person on now she had like a team of six, she's got some, like 26 people now. But in the beginning, she had like four or five, six, 'Hey, now you need a manager'. 'Okay, well, now I need a manager', okay, and that's your manager for the team and the next problem and building that out. And that's a really natural way to grow. 

And part of what helps you do that is documentation and training, an edge explained, demonstrate, guide, and power. First, explain how you do it. Let me demonstrate it for you. So you can see it done. And then let me guide you in doing it with you. And then I'm going to empower you to do it on your own, make some mistakes and learn from them, and just repeat that process. 

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: So it's an edge thing. And that's creating documentations and systems. But then you've got to actually keep—now you're getting into a different level. How do you communicate a vision? How do you keep a team productive? How do you monitor progress? How do you—because we're talking about self-efficacy, right? If you hire someone that could be brilliant, but if they don't get the work done, and now you're getting into people skills, and how do I communicate? And how do I help them tap into their own internal motivation? So they're not just showing up, clicking on the paycheck, and just clocking out, going home just on their phone all day. So these are different tiers of problems that people fall into. So I don't know if I read a whole of...

Lisa: No, these are perfect, Daryl, and it does highlights here. There's always the next level.

Daryl: Crazy amounts of entrepreneurship. 

Lisa: No, but, like getting out of the startup gates is the hardest part and you dealing also with self-doubt and imposter syndrome often, and can I do this? And people telling you you can’t. Your family members or friends going, 'What the hell are you doing? And you've tucked in your regular job for this'? And you know, that 80% or more of businesses fail. I can't remember what the statistics were, but they're pretty horrific. And you're wearing all these hats. And what you then see is a lot of people starting to burn out. And that's really like part of what we do is all about managing stress and not burning out and how’s the basics of health because you need to do all that in order to be successful because there's no use having millions of dollars in the bank, but you are dead because that isn't going to help anybody.

Daryl: I've seen that. I've seen people sacrifice—I see people make money and keep their health at the same time. But I've also seen a lot of people sacrifice their health to make money and then end up spending all that money trying to get their health back.

Lisa: To get their health back. And I must admit like I've—not for the—just for the business but saying in rehabilitating mum cost me my health. I ended up nose diving because you're working 18 hour-days sometimes and you just go and helpful either trying to make the mortgage payments at the same time by the hyperbaric chambers, or the whatever she needs and trying to rehabilitate, and running all these juggling balls that we all have in various combinations. And you can't work yourself into the absolute—into the grave if you're not careful. And that's why health and resilience and stress reduction and stuff is what we do.

Daryl: Yes, it's always best to have people—one of the biggest—and I've done this before, I've done this a couple of times, unfortunately. Better to collect money first and then develop a product. What I mean is like in my hometown, they're opening up a gym, and they were building, they bought this building, they were kind of doing rentals on the inside, and they set up a trailer outside. And they were actively marketing and were signing up people for the gym that was not yet finished being built... 

Lisa: Brilliant 

Daryl: ...so they're not yet open. And what happened was at some point, they just closed down the whole operation and left. And what it was is they had a pre-launch goal for themselves. ‘We need to generate this many new members in order to breakeven, or we stop’. And that's a really good thing, and you don't, it's like if you just get pre-orders, Elon Musk did this with, I think, the model three. He made $100 million having people prepay $1,000 on a car. He hadn’t built the factory to make it. 

Lisa: Wow. But then it’s Elon Musk.

Daryl: Well, no, but, yes, okay, but I mean... 

Lisa: Reputation.

Daryl: In any way you shape or form it because he built a prototype so he had something he could show people, and they could see and they could—he could articulate what his vision was. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Daryl: And then he said, 'Hey, if you want to get one and be one of the first you have to make a non refundable $1,000 deposit' and he created $100 million, which is proof of concept. 

Lisa: Wow.

Daryl: Use that $100 million to build a factory and then charge them the rest of the money for the car. 

Lisa: Brilliant.

Daryl: And that is of demand. And this is where people go wrong. For example, I like baking pies, my hobby is baking pies. I like baking pies. People praise me all the time for my pies. Man, it would be so great if the whole city just praised me for being such a great pie maker. I'm going to build this business for me and how great my pies are. I'm going to plan this logo, and I'm going to plan the layout. I'm going to plan the menu, and all this stuff. And then I make all these pies. And then what I do is I tell all my friends about my pie shop, and they go, 'Wow, Daryl, your brand color is so nice, and wow what a nice logo and what a nice menu', my friends come in and make an obligatory purchase. 

Lisa: Yes. 

Daryl: Because they're my friend, but that doesn't last. And then I go through the seesaw where they buy the purchase. They make a purchase. So now I stopped telling people about my pie shop because I'm busy making the pies. But while I'm making the pies, there's no one getting people to come. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Daryl: I deliver those pies, but they're just my friends. They're buying out of social, like social contract, you're my friend, not because it's something they need. And this business is to fulfill my ego as a business owner, it's not to provide a service to the community. 

Lisa: Wow. 

Daryl: Because to provide a service to the community, I might like making pies, but I need to figure out who needs pies and I might find that there's some office buildings where these people are so busy, they don't have time to cook they're always on the go. And so I would make pies to go, and I would make a custom for their dietary nutrition perhaps. And now it's a symbiotic relationship. It's not a self-serving ego-driven business. It's fulfilling a need. That's something—that's why the market intelligence part is so big of those eight because it's how—you might not have everything else in line, but if you're trying to sell gourmet food to people as they leave in all you can eat buffet...

Lisa: And I've done this before I've made a course because I think it's what people want, and then worked out later on that, no, that's not quite what they wanted. They wanted something slightly different. So, we all always do now like questionnaires and polls, and ‘what is it that you need’? And how do you want this? 

Daryl: It’s in the phase.

Lisa: Yes. And then start—yes because you can think you know what your customer wants and needs, but they will tell you better what they actually want and need. And so always listening to your customers and always seeing what direction are they going in and what do they need next is another good thing. So okay, I've done this part of the thing, but can you actually add on something else another service that will be a benefit to them, that you can provide to them, and create what you call the value ladder so that you have more things ready to go. 

And all this is really, really complicated, but you've done this with lots and