Are You Running Away from Yourself?: Awakening to Authenticity and Redefining Success in Business | with Adrian Knight

Key Takeaways:

-  Even when we cannot see the whole journey ahead, our dreams are worth pursuing simply because we desire it.

-  The only way to know if something is possible at all, is to actually attempt doing it.

- Sometimes what seems to be a big, high, scary cliff, is actually a curb side. But you don't know how big of a splash you'll make until you jump.

Have you ever felt like you're sprinting on a treadmill that's just a tad too fast, powered by the caffeine in your veins rather than the fire in your heart? Adrian Knight, a spirited entrepreneur and endurance athlete, joins us to recount his transformative realization: his globe-trotting adventures were an elaborate dance away from the struggles within. As he shares his moment of utter exhaustion, the spark of change flickered not from the adrenaline of his escapades, but from a yearning for inner fulfillment—a journey that began with a simple question on a TV screen in Perth and led him back to the UK, to the root of his true self.

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Transcript

Kertia: 0:01

Hey, there you're listening to the Other Side of Fair Podcast, where we talk about how personal fairs has hindered your ability to take that next step that will get you to where you aspire to be. What will it take for you to stop playing small and start playing big? Let's get into it. There are so many jumps in this episode speaking with Adrienne Knight, an entrepreneur, an adventurer and endurance athlete. This conversation is a reminder that, although we often try to run away from the things we out to deal with, we can only run so far and it's amazing how our lives can unravel but then finally come together once we decide to just deal with our crap. After all, it's literally impossible to outrun yourself. It's good to have you here, adrienne.

Adrian: 0:59

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Kertia: 1:03

Amazing. So, going through your backstory, you spoke a lot about some of the things that you struggled with, and I want to know, when you were going through that phase, when you were running away from your demons, from the things that were difficult to deal with, what was that turning point for you and how did you begin to take that next step forward in order to turn things around?

Adrian: 1:28

It's a really good question. The turning point, I think, came from a place of exhaustion more than anything else. I'm from England, I was born and raised in England and I've always had a travel bug and as I sort of came into my early 20s, I'd done a bit of traveling prior to my 20s, when I was 18. As I came into my 20s, I started to just encounter and uncover all of these things I really truly disliked about myself and that terrified me, and so my natural response was to run away, and that led to traveling a lot of the world.

Adrian: 2:08

To date, I've traveled over 45 countries, and there were several turning points, to be fair, but they were all rooted in utter exhaustion and desperation. I want to say as well that this running away wasn't working. It was meant to work, but it's not working in all of these beautiful places around the world and that's not making me happy. So what will? Yeah, that was the first major turning point when I recognized that this plan wasn't working.

Kertia: 2:37

What was it like when you first discovered that, ok, I'm doing all these things, I'm traveling the world, I'm having all these amazing experiences, that this really isn't making you happy. This is not the remedy for me.

Adrian: 2:52

I think straight away.

Adrian: 2:53

To be honest, I remember when I left and I traveled out to Southeast Asia and, to be fair, it was a really long, twisty, turning trip from a plane to a car, to a boat, to moped, to get into this really remote island where I got into this log cabin. And as soon as I arrived, up until that point, that had been the point of arrival, the place where, when I get there, I'm going to be on this tropical, literally a tropical island and everything's going to be good. And I arrived and I remember going through the door and putting my bags on the floor in this cabin and I mean I was exhausted from the traveling, but I knew that wasn't it. I was that emptiness and that normal of that dark, clouded emotion was still there. And as soon as I entered into that space, that environment, so that cabin, I knew that okay, this hasn't worked, but maybe if I give it a little while I might start to feel better. But I didn't, and so that just propelled me to keep on moving and keep on traveling.

Kertia: 4:03

I can definitely see that, because the physical exhaustion is there, but then you discovered that you were mentally exhausted as well. You were feeling empty, regardless of the beautiful spaces that you found yourself in, when you realize, okay, this is not working for me. What was that next important step that you took that got you to where you are right now?

Adrian: 4:27

There have been many steps and there hasn't been a journey of a straight line. There's been many twists and turns in the journey, but a particular turning point came. I've always been very sort of aligned to my instincts and to my intuition, and so I trust my intuition implicitly, and that's come from years and years of journaling In fact I've got all my old journals.

Adrian: 4:49

I've just bought them out of storage over the weekend and then I've got 20 years of journals there that I'm starting to work my way through, and that's developed a trust in myself. And so when I was feeling that low, I was sort of soul searching that my instincts or my intuition was saying right now, you go here, now you go here. And I ended up in Perth in Australia, and that was the turning point, the first real turning point that brought me back to the UK. I just came to this insight that after a long time of journaling, there was two things that coincided that I've now started to think are highly connected, that I didn't connect it at the time. It's only been quite recently, when I was discussing this, that the dots started to connect.

Adrian: 5:36

The first one and the precursor was. So I was in Perth, and Perth for those who don't know, it is like a desert city in Australia. It is incredibly hot there and when I was there it was their summertime and they were having a heat wave. So if you can imagine like a heat wave in a desert, like the locals were sleeping out on the beach where it was so hot and the place I was staying.

Adrian: 6:01

One day I was walking past the TV and I wasn't watching the TV as someone else was and an advert was on or something was on TV that just caught my attention and I just heard this one phrase, which was caffeine is addictive. And at the time I was drinking a lot of coffee and you know, we all know, caffeine is addictive. We know that coffee can be addictive, but for some reason that just landed right and I instantly decided that I was going to not drink coffee for seven days. And what happens after that, bearing in mind this was we're going through a heat wave in like a desert city. For the next two days. I came down in severe withdrawal symptoms, so I was shaking or sweating or shivering. The people who I had met, they were giving me loads of extra clothes to like wrap up. I was really like under the weather and I just thought, wow, is this the hold that caffeine has had over me?

Adrian: 6:57

And it was shortly after that experience when, by this point, I had not drunk coffee. I think it was a look of like within a week I'd not drunk coffee within a week and I was journaling and I just came to this insight that what I wanted to do was I wanted to build and that was it. Like that was the only insight I had. I just wanted to build. I didn't know what that looked like, I didn't know how I was going to build, I just knew I wanted to build and that was enough. That was enough to make me realise that this running away wasn't working, that I needed to go home and confront whatever it was. I needed to confront it, however uncomfortable, and to start that journey, and that was the next step. And the journey has, like I've only and I think this is very common Like you can only ever see the next step, you can never see the whole journey. It's just like what is the next step.

Kertia: 7:50

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. You can never see the whole journey. You can only see the next step, the next immediate step, and that is so true, and I feel like a lot of the things, that a lot of times, when we get deterred from doing things is because we are trying to see what the whole journey can be like and because we are so afraid of the unknown. We can't see the journey, simply our minds. We go to that space whereby we begin to imagine all the things that could go wrong. A lot of times that it tears us because we're so focused on the journey and not on what can we do today, what step can we take tomorrow in order to push us forward into that direction, instead of trying to figure out what the end result would be right away. It can be such a deterrent sometimes, I find, and even for me. So I love that you said that, because that's exactly what it's about Just figuring out your next step and how you can move forward with that.

Adrian: 8:59

It's so true, and the best analogy I've ever heard of this was by Jack Cranfield, who co-authored the chicken soup for the Seoul series very, very successful series of books. And he talks about it as it's like you're driving from Los Angeles to New York at night and you've got your headlights on on the car and you can't obviously see the whole journey. You can just see what's in front of you and you just, if you keep going, you will end up in New York. And I've found from you know the various sort of life situation I've sort of found myself in over the years, that, to be absolutely concrete, true.

Adrian: 9:37

Yes most people will not even turn the car on because they can't see from Los Angeles to New York. Exactly, but that's not the point. You're only meant to be focusing on the next step.

Kertia: 9:48

Exactly, exactly. I love that analogy. I know you formed your children's education group. I'd love to know more about that.

Adrian: 9:57

I mean the first one to say is that I'm More surprised than anyone when like where that business is at the moment and how quickly it's expanded and grown. I've got a four-year-old daughter. I remember when I discovered that I was going to be a dad. It was a real turning point again another major turning point in my life, as it is for many new parents when I took a lot of time out and just spent it by myself and asked myself questions such as you know, what type of dad do I want to be? What is the plan? Is everything that I previously wanted the same, or has it changed or some aspects of it changed? And it kind of led me to the insight that the plan hasn't changed, like the plan hasn't changed.

Adrian: 10:43

I've always wanted to buy and sell businesses, but I wasn't doing it at that time, and so I realized, if I was ever going to do it, now was the time, and so that led me down the path that I'm currently on, which is I buy and sell companies. I typically buy them, turn them around there's normally some level of stress or distress to them and then I either sell them, but in the case of the children's education group, I've kept them and built up this small group of companies. So we went from a complete standing start to sort of a multi-million Revenue within I mean technically it was just over 24 months.

Adrian: 11:17

It went really fast and we come in the educate just under 10,000 five year under five year olds every academic term here in the UK and it started with attending my daughter's class like baby classes and Just looking around and going to different classes and just being a little deflated by the experience. That seemed to be Like it was about the kids, but it wasn't about the kids.

Adrian: 11:45

Yeah, it was more about the person running the class and them trying to get the numbers, and I just felt it's such a key area Of a person's life, like those first five years are so formative to how a person goes on to live their life. I guess, felt that I wanted to play a part in that, however small. I had no aspirations or growing a big business there. I just I just wanted to play Apart in my own way and it was, and still is to this day, about the kids. Yeah, fast forward a couple years and we've got you know, many, many employees, multi-million revenue with and we're having this impact and I just feel like we've barely got started and it just reinforced to me the importance of understanding why you go into something. Yes, because it was purely, and still is, about the kids and that just changed everything.

Kertia: 12:39

We talk a lot about understanding your why and knowing your why and how far that can get you. When you focus on that and that fact, it has such a huge impact when you can zero in on why it is that you were doing what you're doing and why it is so meaningful to you, even when you cannot see the journey far ahead. It is that why and knowing that why and sitting with that allows you to get to the next step. That is amazing that you were inspired by what you saw among the classroom structure at your daughters. Was it a school or a daycare at the time?

Adrian: 13:23

It wasn't, neither it was a. It was like a local village hall where One of the one of the locals who the business owners were running these children's classes. They run three or four of them a week. It was technically like extra curricular activities for the children before they get into some of the kindergarten and like the preschool stuff. But that was kind of the point because it's these years that are the most formative and it just felt like what was being delivered was barely acceptable.

Kertia: 13:59

And it often is like that. Yeah, it often is like that because, you know, we see it as parents all the time. I'm also a parent of two girls and we see it as parents all the time. We all want the best for our kids and when we go into a space whether it's a school or a school it's a school or a daycare, a program for children. We see the energy of the teachers and the facilitators and the energy that they're given to the kids into the program or the classroom and you see what is being taught or how they interact with them, and a lot of the times we might not be happy with what we see. But for you to take that and say that I want to do something different, I want to find a way to improve on children's education or children's programming, how did you come about Taking that step to get it into that? Was that your background prior to this, or Did you just kind of start from scratch and figured it out along the way?

Adrian: 15:08

Very much the latter. So I've got no background or experience in kids, kids, childcare, literally nothing. But one thing I I always have had is a very strong desire for life and for living a full life, and so, for example, sports. A lot of people watch sports. I don't. I'd rather go and play them, even if I'm terrible at it. I'd rather go in and be on the field Rather than watching someone else on the field. And I feel very much like that in other areas of my life, because when I see someone playing on the field, particularly at like a professional level, I look at it and think that person's living their dreams and I'm sitting here watching that person live their dreams and there's something about that Like no, you don't really hear people sort of say it from that perspective, but it's true and I just like what I want to live my dreams.

Adrian: 16:05

And so, yeah, I don't have time in many ways to like watch, say, stuff like sports, because I want to go out and do it. And that was Exactly the same with the children's business. And we've all. Like, all of the stuff that I've done, I've got no real I mean I scraped through, like Education. I've done just enough to keep my head above water. Sometimes I didn't quite keep my head above water, yeah, perfectly capable of, but I've just everything I've been like. Well, the only way to know whether you like it or whether you're good at it or whether it's, you know, something worth pursuing, is to actually go and try it. And If it's not something you like or if it's something that just doesn't fit in to what you want to do, there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying that and going on to the next thing.

Adrian: 16:50

Yeah, and my parents used to be out there with send with, like, why can't you just stick at something or why can't you just, you know, choose something and do that? But I used to say to them I just don't understand why I would want to spend 30 or 40 years of my life doing something that I know Right at the start I don't enjoy. Like, I appreciate there's a learning curve to everything, but that's not what I'm talking about here. Like it's, why would I do something that I clearly am not enjoying? Yeah, and you want me to do that because you think I'll be happy. Like I'm telling you now, it's not making me happy, so I don't see how time is going to add it to that.

Adrian: 17:28

And so, yeah, it's very much that mentality, like the best way to learn is to do and just to get stuck in and Figure it out. And what you realize is that when you're standing on the cliff's edge, it feels as though it is a cliff's edge and it's a massive jump. When you jump, you realize you're just standing on curbside. Honestly, it's like the smallest little jump, yeah, and you may jump in the puddle, but because it's curbside that you barely make a splash and then you realize that people don't Really care because they're so busy thinking about their own journeys and stuff like that. So there's really nothing for people to lose. There's like there really isn't.

Kertia: 18:09

I love that. There are two things that you said. We speak about this a lot on the podcast when your parents are questioning what you're doing with yourself, and we speak a lot about that parental expectation or the external Expectations that has nothing to do with you, what you want, your passion, what is aligned with you and authentic to you. I love that you took ownership of that. I love that you took ownership of your authenticity. You know what works for you. You know what doesn't work for you and although others your parents or anyone else they didn't get it, you were okay with that because you knew you didn't enjoy something. What's the point? Right? And so a lot of the times we Go to university, we study something that we really don't enjoy.

Kertia: 19:10

When I was in university, I remember one of my Friends from high school. Her parents wanted her to be a doctor and she went in. She studied life sciences. She had Zero interest in becoming a doctor Zero, and she confided this to me. She was just like I Don't want to do this, I really want to get into film. She wanted to get into Arts, she wanted to do film and that was her passion. But here she was in the university in Mindjoo. I went to the University of Toronto they have a very good media program there as well how their parents allowed her to follow her passion, to follow what was Authentic to her. She could have been in that program, she could have pursued that program Right. But she kind of went along with what her parents expected of her, you know, taking these courses, these science courses and all those things, with the hopes of her going to med school. And at some point she told me that she is not getting the degree that they thought she was pursuing, that she was possibly will pursue something completely different while doing film on the side. Is she a doctor today? No, she works in film and she's doing quite well in film. But it just goes in line with what you're saying.

Kertia: 20:46

Sometimes others do not understand our journey. The choices that we make might not make sense to them. It might seem like we don't know what we want or we don't know what we're doing. You're kind of just all over the place or floating somewhere. It's hard for people to understand that. This is also okay. It is also a part of the journey. It's okay to not know sometimes it's okay to try something and not like it and try something else, and not like that, too, and try something else until you figure out what really works for you, right?

Kertia: 21:22

I think growing up is instilling us that we need to know what we want, and a lot of that also comes with our parents expecting us to be something, to be something that they had wanted to be, or maybe they just hope that we can be that thing Because society has ascribed some type of status to that. And this is the dilemma that my friend had at the time Her parents insisting that she study medicine and become a doctor, only for her to completely do something else. And now she works full-time in film and she's doing amazing. So I like that.

Kertia: 22:06

You kind of understood that about yourself, whereby you knew that, okay, you might not understand this, but this is what is authentic to me, this is who I am and this is my process.

Kertia: 22:20

You don't have to understand my process, but my process is necessary for me to get to where I need to be eventually. So that's one thing, and the other thing that stood out to me was when you were speaking about the kind of mentality that you have, because that is in line with the question that I wanted to ask you next the knowledge and experience that you have gained from all your travels and all the adventures that you've had, how do you implement that into your daily life? From what you said to me, I could already see that because, as you were saying, have these experiences knowing what works for you and what doesn't work for you, seeing other people live their dreams and having that mentality of I'd rather do than sit here and watch I'd like you to continue answering that question. You've kind of already touched on that, because I could see a lot of that in what you said, but I'd like you to flesh that out somewhere.

Adrian: 23:30

I just want to say, before going on to answer that question, that something you said there about they're going against what others may think, because you're being authentic to yourself and you said it will be okay and everything will be okay. And I feel really, really strongly about that, because when people ask me if you go back to your 18-year-old self or your child or whatever age, one thing would you say I always say it will be okay, because from such a long time I didn't think it would be okay.

Kertia: 24:02

And.

Adrian: 24:02

I now recognise that other people think it won't be okay to not follow the wishes of their parents and to pursue what their heart's telling them or what they want to do. But it will be okay and your parents are in the example of your friends. They are only suggesting and guiding that path because they ultimately want what's best for you, but also they want what's best for them in terms of the peace of mind and stuff like that, and I just feel like it's your life and you need to live it the way you want to live it. No one else but a lot of people won't understand. You probably won't understand, and it's also unfair to expect other people to understand, especially if you don't understand. So it just comes back to it will be okay. I really strongly feel that. I just wanted to touch on that because that was something I struggled with for years and if anyone else really hears that, then that'd be amazing.

Adrian: 25:05

When I was in the gym this morning, I just had this phrase going on round and round in my head, which was we don't work on our work, our work works on us, our work is doing us rather than we're doing our work, and I feel that is a really sort of deep statement that has a lot, of, a lot of different sort of conversations to it, but I inherently feel it's true and it's the same with the travels Like how do I sort of implement the skills and the experience and the insights that have gained from traveling in a large part of the world? I'm very blessed to go to some pretty remote and extreme places. So in March of this year I was in the Arctic Circle participating in a multi-day endurance event and it was like being on another planet. But how do I implement that? So I just feel that when you go through, you know you experience life like it does change you and life almost does more to you than your experience in life. That makes sense. You see things differently. Your perceptions and your opinions and beliefs are based on, like insights and experience that you know a large majority of people don't experience, not because they can't, but because they won't take the steps forwards, the step by step, to do that or to do whatever they want to do.

Adrian: 26:30

And so I'm in a place where I crave simplicity, I crave space and bandwidth. People would fall off their chair if they realized how I spent my day. Like I wake up at 4am every day and I normally stop around 8pm. But I'm not actually working in the conventional sense on like my businesses or buying and selling businesses. When you look at how I spend my day, only maybe a couple of hours of my day is spent on those activities. The rest of my time is spent focused on, like personal growth, how I'm developing and growing myself, and that has been sort of the key that has unlocked everything for me. That was the key that got me through the personal struggles and the addictions and the battles that I went through, particularly in my 20s. It was the key that allowed me to achieve very rapid success in the inverted commas in a more traditional sense. That was the focus, so that place of understanding. That was the best use and the highest leverage use of my time came from those experiences and different twists and turns.

Kertia: 27:48

How do you organize your life in a way that you are able to do that, to do exactly what you do, to live your life the way that you live it on a daily basis?

Adrian: 27:58

So I'll tell you how it started, because it didn't just happen overnight like into this place. So and it's actually only happened relatively recently, and I'm talking within the last 12 to 18 months, where I've shifted into this place and I could still film myself shifting even more yeah, it was coming up about two years ago. I was just waking up at 2.30, 3 in the morning with severe anxiety and panic attacks and I mean like severe and I was laying in bed, kelled in a ball. My partner, my wife, now became next to me and just laying there, kelled up, in a state of utter dread that the world was coming in and all this stuff was happening, and it would take me around an hour and a half to sort of talk myself out of this. And so I'd be getting out of bed and I'd be mentally, emotionally, physically exhausted, absolutely exhausted, and the day was just going to start it and it resulted in me going to see a therapist because I knew something had to change. And when you look at my life, then I had multiple companies from the buying companies, I had a lot going on and I was working every hour under the sun pretty much I was working from home and my daughter, who was also at home. I was seeing her for less than one hour a day. Wow, the real sense on, because I just like sort of like locked into my office at home and I realized that a change was needed.

Adrian: 29:27

And what I'd done and this was like one of the outputs of working with this therapist was I started to realize that I just needed some time in the day for me, I needed a bit of space, and so I've always liked early mornings, but I certainly wasn't getting up at 4am then, you know, not in the traditional sense. So I started getting up a bit earlier and just having the first 15 minutes of the day for me and I wouldn't look at my phone, I wouldn't do anything, no one else was up. I'd go downstairs I don't drink coffee anymore so I would make a cup of tea, a cup of English tea, and I'd sit there. You know, stroke my dog, stroke my cat, say hello to them, and I'd just sit there and in a very short period I noticed that I was starting to feel better and these sort of like attacks, these anxiety and panic attacks at night, weren't happening as much, and when they did, they weren't severe, but I've got a bit of a taste for it.

Adrian: 30:21

Like you know what, it's really nice to have a bit of time for yourself. What if I got up half an hour earlier rather than 15 minutes earlier? But I use that time because I want to start reading a bit more. I love reading and I use that time to read some pages of the book and have my cup of tea. And I did and I felt even more better. And then I was like, well, what else can I do? And I've actually, I really want to try meditation. So why don't I get up an hour earlier and do this and this and this?

Adrian: 30:49

To the point now where I'm, at 4am, when I get up and I genuinely, hand on heart, go to bed excited to wake up at that time, like 4 to 7, 7, 30 in the morning. That is my time. I read, I meditate, I visualize, I then go to the gym. You know I love training with weights. That's my personal preference, like I've done advice that for everyone, it's my preference and I come back and I start my day.

Adrian: 31:15

But what happens and it's taken me a while to connect the dots here is that most of us, when we wake up and I was no exception to this.

Adrian: 31:25

We wake up as a level two or level three version of ourselves and we go straight into my mode, go straight to dad mode, we go straight to work mode. The day starts by creating that bit of space to focus on you. What happened is I walked through the door from the gym, bearing in mind, at 7, 7, 30am, some people are still in bed, some people are getting out of bed. I walked through and I'm a level seven, level eight version of myself because I've just spent some time focusing on me. So what that has done is I immediately go into dad mode, but I'm a much better dad than I was before. Like, significantly, the relationship with my daughter blows me away and I didn't expect it. But from a work perspective, what that also gave me which was a complete surprise, a complete gift I wasn't doing it for any of this, but it started to give me clarity and I started to look at things and I'd be like, hmm, what am I doing now?

Adrian: 32:22

I'm spending a lot of time with this, but then I'd also have the confidence to make the changes, and so, over a period of like sort of like 12 months or so, I started making all of these changes in my work life where I recognised I didn't want to be spending my time doing that or dealing with these people or looking at those. You know that bit of paperwork. I'll find another way of getting that done or I'll completely cut it out of my life, and so it's sort of the balance has shifted almost to the other way, where, because I've gotten so much from this focus on myself, I now spend the majority of my day focused on that, because it's just adding so much value, and that's where all the graffit has come from.

Kertia: 33:06

So I love that. A lot of people don't realise how important it is and how much you can get out of just sitting with yourself. Just sitting with yourself, just sitting in that silence with yourself, that moment with yourself. Not everyone loves to read. I love to read, but, as you said, you were sitting. You started out sitting out with your tea. You know, you took the dogs for a walk. Even just sitting in silence, those moments with yourself, it's almost sort of like a meditation.

Kertia: 33:44

When we know how meditation, the effects of that, how good that is for your mind. You know that in the next few minutes, the kids will wake up or you will have to start getting ready to get your day started. You know all the things that you know you will need to busy yourself with, but in that moment of stillness when all there is is you and your cup of tea or your pets, allows you to be present. For me, I believe that that is the beginning of sitting in meditation, before you actively began to say oh, I want to actually take an extra hour to actually practice meditating, whereby you know what I mean. You are now completely aware. This is what I am doing and this is the purpose of why I'm doing it. I think a lot of people take it for granted just just being still.

Kertia: 34:51

It makes such a difference. Even for me it brings so much clarity. I find that the ideas that I have, they flow freely and easily. When I am completely still, for example, I might receive a text message or an email and in the moment, in my logical mind, sometimes I am not sure of the way forward. How do I respond to this? Because, you know, sometimes you get messages that are not so great or the situation is a bit sticky. There are times I would just be lying there or just coming out of sleep or just a moment when I'm just completely still and suddenly all the answers come flowing in. I wasn't even thinking about the email or the text message, but somehow I now know exactly how to respond to that, how to respond to that person and handle that situation perfectly, and it always works out.

Adrian: 35:53

And to give yourself space is not having a TV on.

Kertia: 35:58

Yes.

Adrian: 35:59

Not sitting still, but on Facebook or Instagram.

Kertia: 36:03

Exactly.

Adrian: 36:03

I always find it interesting if you go for a coffee in a coffee shop and you look around and see how many people are just drinking their coffee, you know not talking to anyone, or you know not looking at their phone. Yes, how many are just. And it's scary how few people can just sit in their own space. But that's the starting point and it's so accessible, it doesn't cost anything. Anyone listening to this. If you're driving a car, you could pull over now for five minutes, turn everything off and just be, and you tend to find that stuff starts to come up and I hear this a lot with meditation.

Adrian: 36:42

So the people say, oh, I tried meditating, but my mind kept going off on this direction, I kept thinking about this, but they don't realize that that is part of the process of meditation is coming up and you have to just persist with that and very quickly it starts to sort of settle down and then you can get into a place of being a bit more mindful about it. But it's so hard to measure, which is why people, I think, struggle with the concept of the value and benefits that can bring your life.

Kertia: 37:14

Absolutely, and that's why, when you were telling me about you just sitting with your tea, that thought occurred to me. That was the beginning of your meditation, because when the phone is away and it's just you, the phone is away, the TV's off yeah, of course you have your thoughts and all those things, and people don't understand your thoughts won't go anywhere. The brain is doing what it does. It will not stop. But meditation is like anything. It comes with practice, right?

Kertia: 37:48

You don't learn how to ride a bike the first time you try to ride a bike. It's the same thing with meditation. You don't learn how to quiet those thoughts the first time you try to quiet those thoughts. It comes with practice. And even when you're at the stage when you are now better skilled at quieting your thoughts, the thoughts still happen because the brain is doing what it's meant to do. But now, when you're at this space, when you now know how to ignore it and put it in the back, whereby it's now not the primary focus, that's what it does over time, and so now you can sit in that stillness for much longer and it's easier. It allows your brain to mature in a way that it's unimaginable, because I find that, when I am still so many things unfold for me in my mind, in my state of being, the way that I move through my day and interact with others is completely different.

Adrian: 39:00

I always think with meditation it is hard to measure and it is hard for people to connect the benefits with the practice.

Adrian: 39:08

But it's very nature you're sitting there, it's like mindfulness, and I said normally one of the best ways to get a sense for what it can do to you is to do meditation, like meditate for seven days in a row and then don't meditate for the eighth and see how that eighth day goes and see how you feel. That's when you start to become a bit more aware of oh, today has not flowed as much as the previous days and I feel a little bit off, but I can't quite put my finger on it. That's the way and that's how I've stumbled across. A lot of this and a lot of these insights is when I've sort of put myself into a place where I've done things almost out of a state of necessity, like I simply needed to just have 15 minutes to myself like first thing. But then it's when you don't do those 15 minutes and you're like, ah, I feel rubbish again now. Maybe these two are.

Kertia: 40:11

I love that for you. I love that you are capable of spending your day like that. That is amazing because in the Western world you're always going, You're always on the move Most of us, at least. You're always on the move. The cog in the machine, it just never ends. So the way that you've been able to structure your life, that is amazing to me.

Adrian: 40:42

It still feels as though it's very much evolving, as with all things, and it's very much evolving in many ways. I can't quite believe it because of all of the people that I know. How is that typical? Like go, go, go, go, go, 100 miles an hour, absolutely taking this, pushing it as hard as I can, and it didn't work and it resulted in those 230 to the 30 and wakeups. And so if someone would have said to me two years ago that you would be waking up at four, I probably could have believed that and spending time reading and then meditating and going to the gym, I probably could have believed that as well. But if they then would have said to me that you'd get home from the gym and you'd be in like dad mode and you'd help get your daughter ready for school and you take her every other day and you'd be picking her up at three o'clock, so any calls, and that you need to be done before then, I wouldn't have believed that.

Adrian: 41:43

My calls were going late into the evening. The reality is I have maybe two or three calls a day in Max. Now they tend to be a couple of hours max. I don't even have calls every day. I tend to spend the rest of the time focused on executing my priorities, which are always focused on activities that will improve me as a person, and that I would hardly do any like work in the traditional sense. I definitely wouldn't have believed that. And then if they would have said that you'd be earning more money than you ever have done, I never, ever, would have believed that as well, like it's so counter-intuitive.

Adrian: 42:22

But I've also started to see this with others who have, particularly in, like, the business world. They've risen quite high. They're much further than where I'm at, and a few of them are. Look at their lives and they spend a lot of their life in a state of flow. They're not rushing from thing to thing. Sometimes they are, but not in a permanent state, and they tend to be entrepreneur. They tend to be business owners, but they are very much paid, whether they know this or not, on the quality of their decisions rather than the quantity. So they may make two or three decisions a week, maybe even a month, but those decisions will have an impact that will generate them an incredible amount of money or a significant amount of money, whereas before, certainly a few years ago, I was making hundreds of decisions a week in the nature of my business.

Adrian: 43:22

But what the quality of those decisions? And did the low quality of those decisions that were being made result in the problems that were coming up down the line? Like I now look in hindsight and think, yeah, they probably were. It sort of ties back to what I was trying to point to when I said about you coming in as a level seven, level eight version of yourself and you've got that increased sense and state of clarity and you realize, wait a minute, this is a low quality opportunity or low quality decision that I'm about to make. Why don't I just not make it? Why don't I take it out of my life? Yeah, and that was where, yeah, it all sort of progressed.

Kertia: 44:03

That's amazing. I love that for you. That is the mindset a lot of us need in order to be able to live like, truly live right, not live in to work and to acquire and to pay the bills. Of course, we need to do all of those things right. We're still human beings on this planet. We need to survive, of course, but truly live in a sense whereby you haven't lost that connection to yourself, meaning that you're working, you're succeeding in your work life, in your business, in your career, but at the same time, you're succeeded in your home life, in your relationships, in your relationship to yourself, you not having to give up that connection to yourself and to the people around you in order to give yourself to the world and to everything that we need to do in order to survive on this planet. It is so important to be able to do that, because it's hard. What we think about a lot of the times is the million things that we need to do and the million choices that we need to make and the thousands of expenses that we have, and, of course, yes, we have to be responsible about those things, but when we can integrate that level of connectedness that we need to ourselves through, as you said, meditation, spending time with yourself.

Kertia: 45:51

You also said that you journaled. These are things that are important to bringing you back to yourself, helping you to get present Right, and when you are able to do that, you can function better in your life, in the way that you show up to the rest of the world, in the way that you show up in your job, in your business and to your relationships, and so that is amazing that you've been able to do that. While you've been able to have that turning point, switch the way that you've been operating from having waking up with anxiety to waking up and being excited about having that moment to yourself to meditate, to be still to be present, to read and to continue with yourself. Improve, matt. I think that's really beautiful.

Adrian: 46:42

Thank you, it has been an amazing journey. I'm also very conscious that it could easily go back to where it was if I stopped doing the activities that I'm doing and yeah, and I'm conscious of that, with other people as well. But I also think with, if someone's listened to this, maybe things aren't flowing for them as they want, or they're not quite happy or they're lacking that purpose whatever that problem is or that issue or challenge is just to know that, just as it did for me in fairly severe emotional states, like the tides turned, it came for them as well.

Adrian: 47:21

And it tends to happen. For me it happened a lot quicker than I expected. I felt better pretty much almost immediately, certainly within a week, which, in the grand scheme of things, really little time. It's just having the right structure and the commitment to want to live a better and healthier life, yeah.

Kertia: 47:42

So you buy and sell businesses. How did you get into that and how do you integrate now your current practice, coming from everything that you've been through a lot of those challenging things and now you've been able to transform that and be on the other side of that. How do you implement that, moving forward?

Adrian: 48:04

I've always wanted to buy and sell businesses. I don't know why I can't explain it but ever since my teenage years I've always wanted to do it. I don't know anyone, or didn't know anyone else, who did it. I had absolutely no connection with it, other than I just had this idea that I felt I'd like that. I started when I discovered I was gonna be a dad. Yeah, that was sort of the time to get things going. Yeah, I mean, it's fitting really well with how, like, my life is evolving.

Adrian: 48:34

The thing about buying and selling businesses is that like it takes time. You can do it quickly. My fastest acquisition, I think, was about four weeks, but that's still like a month and that is really fast. Typically, I'd say a fairly quick deal would be around three months. An average deal would be six to 12 months. Doesn't have to take that long. It's very much down to what you know like as a buyer and also how motivated the seller is. But that is like it's not like a nine to five. It's not something that takes up all your time. There's like high leverage activities, so you may have some stuff to review that could take a couple of hours or a morning and then you send it off and you're kind of done.

Adrian: 49:15

Where I see people go wrong and where I went wrong people who go down this path is that once they bought the business, they then go into operate it day to day and then all of a sudden, the CEO, the managing partner, whatever that term is, the president, whatever that term is and you're immediately getting sucked into the operational stuff. And that's where you very quickly are spending 60 plus hour weeks and that was where I was at a couple of years ago sucked into that. And some people love that. Some people really relish being the boss and going in and doing that, and if that's you I'd say bravo, like it's wonderful, like you live in and doing what you want to do. But that was never me. I knew that I'm more of an entrepreneur than a CEO. They're two very different skill sets. And yet here I was as an entrepreneur, being a CEO, and it was when I started to get clarity by first giving myself bandwidth and using that bandwidth to develop and grow myself. That was when I started to come to the realization that I'm a duck trying to climb a tree here. Like it's, I'm complaining to completely one game, and that also gave me the confidence to then follow through and start making changes.

Adrian: 50:41

So some businesses are closed down. I had my first exit, which is a couple of years ago. Then I started to maneuver and shift things so that I didn't need to be involved in the day to day and also I made it absolutely perfectly clear to my team that they don't want me involved in the day to day because if I will, then it's probably gonna cause a bit of chaos. To this day, I'm still very like I make a point of that so that they don't fall into because there is of this misconception that because you're the owner, you also have to be the boss and as an owner you ultimately are the boss. But bosses come in different shapes and sizes and I would much rather be the person at the gym at 11 am on a Wednesday morning or on the beach or anywhere in the world, and I've got someone else running my business, someone who I trust, someone who's far more capable of me than for me to be in there.

Adrian: 51:38

So, but again, it was clarity that came from taking the time out for me, because up until that point I was so busy doing the doing and so caught up in everything that I just couldn't see the forest through the trees.

Kertia: 51:52

Yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs need to understand that you don't have to do everything. You have a completely different skill set and everyone's skill set and their know-how is unique to them, and, as an entrepreneur, you might be able to come up with all these great, wonderful ideas and implement different things, but you can't do it all. You know there is no one. I don't care how smart and brilliant you are, you don't know everything and you're not great at everything. There are things that you could be really good at and there are things that you can be absolutely genius at, and then there are things that you're just okay at, and when you're trying to run a business the things that you're just okay at or the things that you're not good at at all someone else needs to do that for you, even if it means someone else running your business, and a lot of people, a lot of business only struggle with this because of the ego thing more than anything else.

Adrian: 52:52

It's like I've got to be boss.

Kertia: 52:54

Yeah.

Adrian: 52:55

I've tried being like, try being a CEO. I'm not very good at it, I don't particularly like it. Why do I want to continue being the CEO? Like right back to the very first start you know start of this conversation. That doesn't make any sense to me. But that person over there, wow, they would be fantastic as a CEO and they come alike in that role and they are far better, far more talented, far more knowledgeable than I am. Why would I not want to put them in there?

Adrian: 53:23

And obviously you need to structure things right so that there's incentive and so that there's protections. As a business owner, that's relatively straightforward to do. But why would you not do that? And it's normally shockingly a lot of people don't, and it's normally because of the ego side of things.

Adrian: 53:41

And the other thing, if a business isn't making enough money, so if it's making under, you say 100,000 in annual profits. You know 100,000 is a lot of money, but some business owners would look well, I could have all of that. But I would argue and say well, you could, or you could pay 60, 70 for someone to run your business. What would you value more? The 100,000 that you work in 70, 80 hours a week and under all this stress and pressure? Or would you rather have 30,000 and you have one half day meeting a month and the rest of your time is free to spend how you please, which could also be doing another business and repeating the same model? So, like it's just a yeah, it's a perspective thing.

Kertia: 54:28

I love it. So I know we gotta wrap up quickly, but I wanna know what advice would you give to someone who wants to get into buying businesses, whichever they'd like to do what you're doing right now? What would you advise a new entrepreneur? How would you advise them to go about doing that?

Adrian: 54:47

Mm, you have to get educated. It really is the start point Buying businesses tends to like. When people look at it, they're like, wow, that looks fantastic, it's all like raised into glasses and there is a lot of great stuff to it. But you need to know how to protect yourself because there are risks. You need to know how to approach it in the right way so that you are certainly not, you know, selling your house, taking your life savings none of that. All of my acquisitions I've done with none of my own money, so I haven't actually risked anything and at the start I didn't have anything to risk, so it was a case of needs must.

Adrian: 55:28

So, yeah, getting educated and getting a decent guide. I thoroughly and highly recommend it will protect you, it will shortcut your journey 10 fold and it will probably save you, probably make you 10 times the amount of money then you actually spend on that like education and guidance, because they would just be able to see things that you just won't like even think of having to look for. Yeah, and I'm still the same today, like years down the line. There's still stuff I'm learning on a daily basis and like, wow, how did I not see that a year ago, but I now see it so yeah, getting someone to guide you.

Kertia: 56:09

Mentors are so important. Mentors can really change the game for you when you're getting into business, so I love that you mentioned that. And how did you do all of this without risking any of your income, without using anything that you?

Adrian: 56:25

have Didn't really have anything to risk. To be honest, I had a business at the time. It was barely I was barely paying myself. I had a team of people there. We had a good reputation. Our customers loved us. I was spending all the hours of the day working in it and not getting anything out of it, which was why I spent a lot of time when I discovered I was going to be a dad, really considering what did I want to do with my life? What type of dad did I want to be? I knew that I've always wanted to be like a hands-on dad.

Adrian: 56:59

I wanted to be there, I wanted to be at bath times, I wanted to be taking them out on mini adventures and mystery tours and all of that good stuff. But how could I do that if I was working the hours that I was working and also how could I support it if I wasn't actually making any money from it? So when I went into buying businesses, I didn't have anything to risk. And then, as I've sort of grown in that field, I've just learned to protect what you have really, and because I've done deals where I've not had to risk personal assets, it made me realize well, why would I do a deal where I am risking personal assets? Because no deal is ever like. There's no one deal I've seen and I've looked at hundreds upon hundreds that has been like this is the game changer, like it's nothing like that. It's sort of slow and steady.

Kertia: 57:47

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much, Adrian. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.

Adrian: 57:53

Likewise. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. The questions have really got me thinking.

Kertia: 57:59

Awesome, amazing. I'm happy that I could have done that. Thanks so much for listening. Head over to the pot inbox and send us your voice recordings. It's like sending me a personal text and I do reply. So definitely, looking forward to all your feedback, and if you'd like to connect with Adrian, I've linked his socials below this episode.