401 – This Aussie sold $3 Billion: Tom interviews Rael Bricker

Episode 401 – Rael Bricker
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with Episode four hundred and one of Screw the commute podcast. I'm here with my new Aussie friend, Rael Bricker. He's got over 30 years as an entrepreneur and he delivers a series of dynamic task on building businesses by thinking outside the square. We usually say the box, but he says the square will bring him on a minute. I hope he didn't miss Episode four hundred. That was our big milestone episode where I just went over a lot of principles. I've learned after 44 years in formal business and really another quite a few years, ten years since I was a little kid doing side hustles. So most of them you can implement immediately and that really will change the course of your business. So check that out. Episode 400. Anytime you want to get to a back episode of screw the commute, you put screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number. That was 400. Now how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the show has helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it.

[00:01:32] Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the show is helped. You also put your website on there so you'll get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. Now we give you a free gift for listening to the show. It's an ebook that's on How to Automate Your Business. It's the ebook that I wrote on all the tips and tricks I've used to handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. And just one of the tips, one of the tips in this book, we actually figured it out a couple of years ago, saved me seven and a half million keystrokes over the years, definitely saved me carpal tunnel syndrome. So grab that book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. You can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right. I know people are still freaking out with the pandemic.

[00:02:43] You know, the kids are in school one day, not in the next day. You know, if they go to school, I don't know, they're going to burst into flames or so I don't know the crazy stuff they're trying to do here nowadays. But but myself and my students don't worry about that because we have the skill to sell from home already. I've been doing it since the commercial Internet started in 1994, been teaching it for twenty three years. And my students and I don't worry about these kinds of things. Yeah, and it's not that I don't feel for what's going on out there, but it doesn't have to be in your future. Again, if you learn how to sell from home, you can not worry about Pandemic's and you can have a great income coming in and not worry where the next paycheck is coming from. Now, I formalized my training in the form of a school. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world. IMTCVA.org. It's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia USA, I might add. And you don't have to be in Virginia, though it's actually good quality distance learning. And it's it's funny. Now, all these four year colleges that have been ripping students off for years are now all of a sudden, oh, we're distance learning now.

[00:04:04] Like in two days they put together, of course. Well, we've been doing it for thirteen years and have rave reviews from all our students. And you can be making money before you even graduate because this skill is in high demand by every single business on Earth. So check that out at IMTCVA.org. And a little later I'll show you how you can get a scholarship to the school if you're in my mentor program.

[00:04:28] All right. Let's get to the main event. Rael Bricker. He's a collector of experiences and observations. I mean, his experiences ranged from this is this one gets me working like, I don't know, in hell 6000 feet underground. I never heard of that such a thing. He's built the education business himself with six campuses and 4000 students. I mean, he's done all kinds of stuff, but he he wanted me to boil it down for the people listening to this show. He's he wrote a book and we'll be talking about that here. But he says, listen, business is simple. Business is not complex. Dive in and adjust your course while you're moving so real. Are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:05:17] Yes, I'm ready and I'm here.

[00:05:18] All right. Well, great meeting you, man. You're a friend of a buddy, another Aussie buddy of mine. And you guys got a podcast going. I'm going to try to get on that one of these days and tell everybody what you're doing now. And then we'll take you back to see how you climbed up to get to where you are today.

[00:05:35] Thanks, Tom, and great to be here this morning. It is the vagaries of Tom change are interesting because it's six a.m. for me.

[00:05:44] Yeah, yeah. I'm not a morning person. It's five o'clock Eastern Time here in the USA, so I'm wide awake. But thanks for getting up early to get on the show.

[00:05:54] No problem at all. So currently I run a number of businesses. I'm one of those is as a professional speaker and that started about seven years ago, actually talking to people about how to create excellence in their businesses that that came out of another business. So I 20 years ago, I left the venture capital environment, the craziness of venture capital just after the that crash in in two thousand and at the end of 2000, 2001, when the markets crashed and I went out on my own and had no idea what I was really going to do. But I kind of knew I was going to help some companies. And I started helping them raise small amounts of money from investors. They then said, oh, we'd love some loans. And I went, well, I don't know how to get loans, but I'll find out. And so I found out that in Australia I had to be something called a mortgage broker or finance broker. And I started that business. And then I said, that was great. Can you do our home loans now and and our mortgages for our investment properties? So we did that, too. And recently we clocked through in that same business that I still earn around three billion. That's with a B in mortgages. About seven years ago, I was asked by the mortgage industry to talk at the conference on how to build a mortgage business. And I had such fun doing that. I thought, well, why can't we apply the skills to every other business? And so therefore was born raelbricker.com in my speaking.

[00:07:23] Well, let me get this straight. So you somebody just ask you. To do something, you went and figured out how to do it and fill their need. I mean, how how much cleaner can it get to get a business started? I mean, that's great. So people like, you know, for years try to figure out what they're going to do. But you just hey, the market said, give me this. And you gave it to him.

[00:07:47] Yeah, pretty much so. I mean, it's they're all related. It was about how to grow business. And I was obviously focused on the finance aspects at the time. And so, yeah, that's what I did, is I went out and said, well, how do I get these people loans? And I guess that's the approach I've taken through 30 odd years of business is, you know, you don't always have to spend life. A lot of people spend laugh. And I hear them saying, I've been researching this business for three years. The world is very dry three years ago. And so, you know, that was where that philosophy came in. I'm just diving in and adjusting you, of course, while you're moving, because sometimes you have to go into the research is incomplete. I'm not 100 percent sure, but let's try it. You know, as your podcast says, screw the commute, Well, you know, Richard Branson said, screw it, let's do it. You know, it's just doing exactly that. It's about going and saying, yeah, we think there's an opportunity. Let's try it. What's the worst thing that can happen is it fails and we do something else.

[00:08:49] Yeah, of course. I teach people to, you know, be careful with your money. A lot of the startups during the dotcom bubble, they were just throwing millions of dollars at kids that were wet behind the ears and and, you know, buying pool tables and massage chairs instead of running a business. That's part of why why it failed. But but, yeah, you just you dive in, which is the title of your book, right?

[00:09:15] Yep. Correct.

[00:09:16] Tell them about the book.

[00:09:18] So the book came out of the talk, it initially started when I spoke with the mortgage industry and I thought that was fun, I got on the plane on the way back to Perth, and so put Perth into context where it is. It's on the west coast of Australia and it is a big country.

[00:09:34] So from Perth to Brisbane is a New York L.A. distance. So that would sort of put into context the size of the country. We're in a two million people city on the west coast of Australia. So I spoke in Melbourne at this conference, I got on the plane, I had an iPad with me, and I thought, let me document some of my thoughts, and that's why I started writing this book. It was just spur of the moment. I was on the plane, whiskey in hand, and I wrote two thousand words on the flight home. And then for the next nine months, I got up at six in the morning and wrote for half an hour every day. And then I suffered from imposter syndrome. I went, No one wants to know my story. So I put it away. I put it away for about two and a half years.

[00:10:22] So yeah, I'd started professionally speaking, I had been going around the world consulting to businesses

[00:10:30] And I did nothing with the book. And then I was in South Africa working at another company and had a dinner with a cousin of mine and who said to me is his wife has just left her job at twenty five years at a news at a book business. So she was the head buyer and she'd gone out on her own as a publisher. And I said, well, let me send her my manuscript and find out what she says. And I sent it to her and she said, Write ten thousand more words and you've got a book. So that was what happened in twenty seventeen. I sat down, I wrote ten thousand more words, sent it to her. She did all her magic. And in May the 18th of May 2013, it went live on and all the good sites, Amazon Book, Topia, etc..

[00:11:14] Wow. Well jeez. Now hopefully the next one won't take that long.

[00:11:21] No, the next two are in production.

[00:11:24] So there you go.

[00:11:25] Yeah, yeah. So the first of those is actually been in progress for about two years now. But it's it's it's working title is if culture really a strategy for breakfast. What's for dinner? And it's I have a passion for generating rich and robust cultures in businesses. A lot of my clients, a lot of the time I spend on stage is all about culture. And what I did is I decided that I had to take my own experience. Although I've got 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, it's based around two continents and I needed to take that broader. And so took advice from a great speaker, friend of mine who lives in Singapore. And I went out and interviewed companies and my target is 100 interviews. covid got a little bit in the way of that, but I'm at 87 so far over twenty five countries and those interviews will become the same that that book, which is talking about what makes rich and robust cultures and conversely, what makes toxic culture in organizations. So that's the second book project. The third is an ebook that I'm about halfway through, hopefully have it out by early March twenty twenty one. And that is

[00:12:42] A book called Building Excellence. It's one of my passions. I'm known as the Business Excellence Guy and speaking circuit.

[00:12:50] And I, I love the building blocks that make up business excellence. And what what can you do as a small business? As an entrepreneur? You don't need to to do the big bucks. You don't need to spend the millions and as you said, go on the pool tables, in the bean bags and the fancy coffee machine. Right. But what can you do on a on a on a basic business level to look at components and what components are not the traditional components that we look at. It's it's the things that have made me successful in small business. And how do we translate those into other people's businesses? And so that ebook will be out sometime in March. Twenty, twenty one.

[00:13:30] That's only a couple of weeks from now.

[00:13:32] So that's only a couple of weeks from now.

[00:13:34] Yeah, I like the speed now the compared to the first book because you know, things do change so rapidly. I heard one guy say, don't worry if your kids don't know what they want to be when they grow up, because it probably hasn't been invented yet.

[00:13:48] Absolutely. And in fact, a lot of my corporate work with companies is saying to them exactly that is is you've got staff, don't lose your staff. So there's been this whole view in the world that and particularly small businesses, you know, they want to employ someone and they go, oh, yeah, but I don't know if I'll need this person skills in two or three years time. Well, it's actually cheaper for you as a company to retrain that person. And what are you going to retrain them as well? We don't know because our first jobs haven't been invented yet. So what it goes back to philosophically, just dive in and then adjust your course as you move along.

[00:14:24] Yeah, and you'll be lucky if they're there in three years anyway, so.

[00:14:28] Yeah. Well, if they're millennials, probably not.

[00:14:30] Yeah, exactly. Right. So so let's take you back. Were you an entrepreneurial kid there? How did you come up through the system?

[00:14:38] Yeah, I was pretty much an entrepreneurial kid, I started my first business at the age of about 15, so I started working. I needed to work. My parents couldn't afford

[00:14:51] To to, you know, couldn't afford much action. So I started working. Just after the age of 14, I had a sort of interest and passion for electronics and and radio. Actually, I became an amateur radio nut at the time.

[00:15:06] Oh, I just got my you get licensed and all that stuff.

[00:15:09] Yeah. So I had my license in South Africa. I had a zero six Alpha Delta Alpha and then I moved to Australia and I ended up with with Victor Kilo Six Alpha Delta Alpha. That sounds really technical for this time of the morning, but I gave it up because the Internet and the world was just moving. I didn't have the space to put up Antion here at home. And so I sort of gave it up about 15, 18 years ago. But my interest in that got me a job at a small electronics shop in downtown Johannesburg that sold basic electronic components and kits for building things and it sold radio equipment. And so I got to play with some of the best equipment, which was pretty cool.

[00:15:55] So you're saying you're from South Africa and was born in a little town off the coast and grew up most of my life in .Johannesburg

[00:16:05] And there so I got this job and people would come in and buy cost areas. In those days from the shop, we also sold stereos and then they'd go, well, do you know somebody who can install them? So in my absolute belief in myself, I went, yes, sure, I can do that.

[00:16:24] That's of course, how you started a business over. I realized I realized after after after stuffing a few of them up that I went, yeah, anything that has to do with my hands and make me money, probably not the way I should be going in business. I should be using my brain and not my hands. And and I have an immense respect for for people who can use their hands. I love my time out is doing woodwork and constructing things at home.

[00:16:52] But none of it would pass the test of being a proper tradesman. Right.

[00:16:56] I know. I know that feeling. Yeah.

[00:16:59] But that said, it's my time and it's my release, and so, yes, so that was my first business when I was 15 at the age of 18, I bought a mobile discotheque and I ran parties. Oh, there was a lot more work than it is today where you have this tiny little mixing desk that plugs into a computer and two little speakers that check out thousands of what we had, you know, heavy, heavy speaker boxes and a big two turntables set. We had about seven speakers or eight speakers we used to drag around. My son, who's eight, is 16 now and loves music, has actually inherited my vinyl collection from those. Oh, I have over a thousand well over a thousand seven singles

[00:17:42] From the 80s. Wow.

[00:17:44] Yeah. So I had a nightclub, I had a nightclub in the 80s and yeah we, we would have continuous music, so we had bands. But the minute the band took a break the deejay was playing and then the then the band would start up. So it was continuous music playing. But yeah, I have a lot of the records from back those those days, but most kids wouldn't even know what it is that they saw.

[00:18:09] Oh absolutely. And that was you know, they've been sitting in the garage, you know, in two different houses here in Australia. And then my son has this massive interest in music and he plays in a band and all sorts of things. And he he just has taken to the vinyl. But, yeah, there was sort of my next journey and I ended up managing one or two small start up bands in South Africa and ended up very involved in the in the music scene. There became president of the university radio station. So I met some really cool, interesting people along the way. But my first business, my first real business that that made money started six months after I got married. And I and I use that term because I and I arrived home six months after being married.

[00:18:56] Which term? Getting married?

[00:18:57] My good paying job. I'm going to give up my good paying job and go out on my own and live on the edge. And she said, sure, let's do it. And that was 30, just as we just celebrated our first wedding anniversary, so we've managed all those ups and downs of intrapreneurship.

[00:19:13] Good for you. But we skipped a little area there from from the deejay working the DJ stuff. I mean, did you go to college? Did you you know, what regular job did you chuck to get start your own business?

[00:19:29] Ok, so there were a few things in there. Yes, I went to university. I went to college. I did an undergrad degree in electrical engineering. Again, I my parents couldn't afford to send me to university. I got a scholarship from a company called Anglo American, which was the biggest mining house in South Africa at the time. And that's how I ended up 6000 feet underground.

[00:19:51] Oh, there we go.

[00:19:53] South Africa has deep level mining. So gold we worked on. There are gold mines there. There are four kilometres deep. But the mine I worked on was called vol reefs and the shaft particular shaft I worked on was about six thousand three hundred feet deep, which I call sixty three level. That's how they determined in mining terms. Wow. It has a rock temperature of about 30 something Celsius in the 90s

[00:20:21] And at that level and six thousand feet below the ground, that's 90 degrees.

[00:20:27] Yeah, correct.

[00:20:28] It's water as you go down. Yeah.

[00:20:30] Oh yeah. Because it gets I guess the world gets cooler as you go up. So I guess that makes sense. I was in a deep mine once but in Virginia. But we didn't go 6000 feet. I know that.

[00:20:42] Yeah.

[00:20:42] So it was, it was an interesting time of my life. I was twenty one. I knew at the time something interesting. I knew that I didn't want to be in the corporation. I didn't really know what my direction was. But being in a massive corporation like that and then and then 19 months after joining the mine, I got an opportunity to move back to Johannesburg, to the Anglo American head office. And I was in this department in head office and I was a A grade C four engineer. And I was that important because as a grade C employee, I parked in the third parking lot away from the office. And if I was the next level employee, I would have parked in the second parking lot away from the office. And I knew I knew then that there was never going to be. My life, like I knew that that for waiting for the corner office and the promotion and leaving at five to 2:00 in the afternoon was just not my life. And so a number of months after that, I got an opportunity to go to business school to do an MBA. And an MBA is not a requirement for entrepreneurship. I have to say that an MBA is a great tool for teaching you how to be a corporate employee. I went to do the MBA because I was interested in finding out everything I could about various aspects of business and that's what I created my MBA for. I didn't treat it like a pass to becoming an entrepreneur.

[00:22:13] Yeah, we tease. We tease on our show about, you know, MBAs are competing for jobs at the coffee shop, you know, Starbucks. Yeah.

[00:22:22] And it had nothing to do with it. And so I think the MBA and I did my MBA in nineteen eighty eight and yes, I mean I did, I'm a bit crazy. I did two master's degrees at the same time. So did my MBA and a master's in engineering in software engineering. So I kind of perceived that software was the way to go and I thought maybe let's do a master's in that area.

[00:22:46] And that's what I did. I finished the MBA program and joined a small software house, but in the marketing role. So I actually already was starting to shift out of the technical background. I joined the software business, a technical software business, but in a marketing business development role, and stayed there until mid 1990 just after I got married. And that was when I decided to go out on my own. And here is the flaw in that theory. But it's a funny flaw. My business partner and I were with twenty six year old MBAs, MBA graduates, and we thought we could teach the world how to run their businesses when we'd never run a business. And so but we had absolute total belief in ourselves. And, you know, your listeners, entrepreneurs and people wanting to be in business, wanting to make the leap of faith to get out of the corporate jobs and go out there. I think the biggest thing that actually kept me going for 30 plus years is an absolute belief in self.

[00:23:55] And the view that I never got down know that I would say, well, OK, it didn't work. Let's just adjust the course, let's do something else. And so that's exactly what happened. We started out with this this high hopes of a management consultancy. We both could speak. We both knew how to stand up on stage. One of the things the MBA did teach us was the ability to present at a corporate level. And so that was quite one of the skill sets and that's what we did. So we went out, we started this business, we pitched it to a whole lot of companies and we surprisingly actually won some work, which is which is probably the most surprising thing in my life. We want some work. It was a good contract for us, and then three months later, that company decided to do an internal restructure and canceled our contract. And so we were sitting around going, what should we do now? Now we've left our corporate jobs, we've borrowed money to start the business. What do we do now? And then a an organization that was called the Institute of Marketing Management at the time in South Africa started offering and put South Africa into context. This is six months after Nelson Mandela's release from jail, just six months after the banning the unbanning of the African National Congress and about three years before the first democratic elections in South Africa. So a massive period of transition in South Africa. This Institute of Marketing Management said to us, look, you guys are well qualified. You can teach marketing. You've both been in marketing. Why don't you run a diploma course?

[00:25:30] Because it's it's an alternative to university for those kids, and particularly the majority of the South African population who had the the black population in South Africa had really poor schooling. And so they they couldn't get into university or formal education systems. And so the institutes it was why don't we start running our program, which is a three year program, but run it over four years to get them Tom to catch up. And why don't you start that? And so that's what we did. We dived in and started it. We we rented some premises. We started and at 20 students by the end of 1990. So to start, of course, in 1991.

[00:26:14] So, yeah, It's just about it. That's how we got into the education business. But then we were in the right place at the right time. I have you know, I admit that timing is everything. We there was this massive hunger for education amongst the population in South Africa and for an education that would get them jobs. And so that was how we started the education business. And then we found innovative ways to advertise that didn't cost us a lot of money and grew rapidly and then had the balls to go out there. And let's open another campus. Let's open another campus and within five years had six campuses running.

[00:26:56] That is that is amazing. So we got to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we'll get real. And by the way, his name is spelled RAEL, but it's pronounced RAIL. We'll get him to tell us about his podcast, how he got started in that and what it's what it's doing for his business. So so folks about don't know. About twenty three years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head in that people like me were charging 50 or 100 thousand bucks up front to teach you what they knew about Internet marketing for small business. And and I knew a lot of these people. You give them fifty grand up front, they'd be hiding out in Brisbane or South somewhere because never help you. So I said, you know, that's not fair to small business. I'm going to I'm going to turn this on its head. So I charge an entry fee that was much smaller. And then I tied myself to your success. So for me to get my fifty thousand, you had to make two hundred thousand. Well, people really liked this idea because they knew I wouldn't disappear on them. And seventeen hundred plus students later and twenty, about twenty three years. It's still going strong. It's the longest running, most unique and most powerful and successful mentor program ever in the field of Internet marketing.

[00:28:13] And I have no trouble saying that because I dare people to put their program up against mine and nobody has the guts to do it because line for line we give so much value. I'm a total fanatic about your success. I mean, you have an immersion weekend at the Internet Marketing Training Centre. Real Monorails Partners has been here before. We have our own TV studio here. We shoot marketing videos for you every all our work with you is one on one. You're not lumped in with people more advanced or less advanced than you. We'll even take over your computer screen, show you where to click, where not to click, what to do. We teach a strategy and then you also get a scholarship to my school I was telling you about earlier. So you can either use it yourself for extra training or gift it to someone. We had one guy join my mentor program and then gift to his daughter and he had spent eighty thousand U.S. dollars on her crappy education, not to mention she was out of the workforce for four years. That's another at least two hundred thousand dollars. And she was working a crappy job. Well, after he gifted the school to her within one month, she was making a thousand dollars a month on the side. Three months she was making three thousand and four months.

[00:29:28] She was making six thousand dollars a month as a side hustle and hadn't even graduated yet. So this is stuff that every small business need so well. We teach you you can use for yourself in your own business. You can work for somebody else or both. So it's very, very powerful. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com, that's the mentor program and I'm very accessible. No high pressure here. If you want to just talk about your potential future online and young people in your lives online, I'll tell you what, it's the best legacy gift you can ever give to a nephew, niece, grandchild, your own kids, so that they're not coming home and living in your basement because they can't find work. So they check it out at GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:30:20] Let's get back to the main event. Rael Bricker is here. He's my new Aussie friend and he's now he's Orsi now. I don't know if he's really Aussie or South African living in Aussie. We'll ask him about it. But he's got a podcast based on excellence and I really love the term excellence. You've heard me talk about it a lot on the show here, but tell him about the new podcast. And are you an Australian citizen now or dual or what? What is the deal with your citizenship?

[00:30:46] So thank you, Tom, The answer is I chose to become an Australian, I'm an Australian citizen. I travelled on an Australian passport. I support the Australian rugby team and mainly because I made a decision that if I wanted to be successful in this country, I needed to immerse myself now. Yes, I still have, depending on who I'm talking to, you know, strains of a South African accent coming through. But I made a decision to immerse myself culturally into Australia. So I went out and met Australians. I my very first business partner in the mortgage business, was a footy player. So that's like American football. But the Australian version called Australian Rules, he played at a very high level. He actually played professional cricket for Australia and he was well-connected

[00:31:40] With people in that sporting sense in Australia is driven by sports. So him and I really got on well. He introduced me to amazing people. In fact, he was also working in the brewery before joining me. And so he knew another nightclub owner. So we had a very mixed bag of clients. But I immersed myself in the culture. I was too old to start learning how to play Australian football, but I ended up playing hockey again. Field hockey, that is grass hockey, which is a very big sport in Australia. An Australian team is one of the top teams in the world. So again, it culturally, I made myself Australian and two of my kids were very young when they arrived here. And my son is born in Australia. So, you know, we're very much an Australian family. Twenty one years on.

[00:32:28] Beautiful. So Tom about the podcast. So Lindsey Adams and I started the podcast. We've been talking for a while. We we are great friends. He's been a great mentor to me as a professional speaker. He's actually got an award from the Australian Government for services to the global speaking community. And I'm sure when you chat to him next, you ask him about his Order of Australia medal in that regard. So Lindsey and I have a network of people around the world and around Australia, and I had this view of excellence and why excellence? Well, because I don't believe you can ever be perfect. I believe you can be excellent, which is just being the best you can be at whatever you want to do. And so Lindsey and I were talking one day and we went, yeah, we both agree with that definition. Let's strive for excellence.

[00:33:23] But excellence is just being the best we can be. Let's go and interview people. You have a story to tell or have some wisdom to share. And that's how we got to the it took us about a year to actually get the first episode recorded. We then recorded twenty episodes, put us up live, but without telling anyone so that when people started looking at our website we actually had twenty episodes up and running. We had episode forty five went on Monday, we've got fifty eight episodes recorded. So we were about two months ahead in our recording right now. And we're getting amazing stories from people, amazing stories of excellence. So, so, so just ideas and people all around the world have been contributing. It's been a fantastic experience and it showcases what we do, both Lindsey and I in different ways as a speakers, mentors and coaches.

[00:34:21] Perfect. Yeah, I mean, like so we just got our four 100th episode last Monday and. Yeah. And now I teach people to make yourself the sponsor. I don't try to get two dollars from somebody to sponsor your episode, sell your own stuff. So that's what I do all the time. So, you've got a new book coming out and it's not quite done. There's this episode is going to drop but where will they find, where can they find you and where can they find the book? And you're going to have I think you got some free before too, right?

[00:34:59] Yeah, absolutely. So there are a few freebies. There is. The new book will be available as a download on Excellencepodcast.com or raelbricker.com. And it's very simple to get hold of me. I'm pretty much on all the social media, even the latest clubhouse.

[00:35:17] And which is where we met, by the way.

[00:35:20] That's where we met on clubhouse.

[00:35:22] Yes. I'm talking about podcasts. That was exactly what it was about. And rael@raelbricker.com and is the easiest. As I said, excellencepodcast.com does have a free a number of free downloads already for people who want some tips and traps on how to build their businesses better. So there are two up there at the moment. When is sixty questions. Ask when you meet people and how you want to build rapport quickly and one in seven and a half tips for four business hacks to make your business more excellent, and the third, when building excellence as a as an ebook will be available there shortly.

[00:36:02] Beautiful. Thanks for getting up so darn early. I know. Is very early there in Australia and I really appreciate it. And we like also to hear perspectives from around the world. And you're definitely a world traveler and and doing great in the speaking business. Thanks so much for coming on.

[00:36:20] Thank you very much. Can I. I'd like to share a story about paying it forward. Sure. Because I think that's what we forget about as entrepreneurs many times in our lives

[00:36:31] Go for it.

[00:36:32] When we started the education business, we bought a building. So again, diving in. We had no idea about property and commercial property, but we wanted to house ourselves. So we bought a fifty thousand square foot, eight storey building in downtown Johannesburg. We housed our business in there and then we got complimentary our education businesses to follow the rest of the building. We also built in the basement of the building a little two bedroom apartment so that our staff, our cleaning staff, who had to work obviously after hours to clean the place because students were there during the day and didn't have to commute because at that time was still under apartheid, you know, people would have had to commute an hour and a half to get home. And so it was a challenge. So we built this apartment probably highly legally because we weren't we weren't allowed to do that. We just did it anyway. And and we built this and we housed one of our staff over there. The second part of that is her son finished school. She came to us and said, look, my son's finished school. He's got a reasonably good year 12, you know, final year graduation, but nothing to get into university. And we said, no problem, we'll give him a scholarship to do one of our programs, our marketing program. I had forgotten about that incident for many years, you know, it was something that happened, I was in my 20s, we did it

[00:37:57] And we left it about four years ago. I got an unsolicited I got a contact from South Africa guy trying to connect with me on LinkedIn. And I thought, well, he's in a senior marketing role. He was using his African name because that's become the norm. A lot of a lot of kids in South Africa, black kids were given Anglicized names because the the apartheid government couldn't pronounce their their African names or their real names. And so I got this LinkedIn connection and it shows, you know, young marketing guy in South Africa. And then he sent me a Whatsapp LinkedIn message. It made me cry because he had just been appointed as marketing manager of one of the major networks, the mobile networks in South Africa. Any message to thank myself and my partner because we'd given him the opportunity to do this course? Twenty five years. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

[00:39:00] Well, you know, that actually brought tears to my eyes and it taught me about the principle of paying it forward as as a businessman, that sometimes it's not all about the bottom line. You have to watch the bottom line. You have to know your figures. You have to make sure you're making money. But sometimes you just have to do things because they feel right and those come back in multitudes to help you.

[00:39:23] What a beautiful, beautiful story. And I totally, totally relate. Good for you. Or would you say good on, you

[00:39:32] Know, then about two years after that, I was back in South Africa. It was the 30th anniversary of the business school and, well, the fiftieth anniversary of the business school. But that invited past graduates to come and speak. And I went back to speak to the current MBA group and they said I could invite some guests from the public. And I invited him over and he got his mother on the line who's now retired. And we had a chat and we had a coffee together. It was a really nice evening and it was good to see him and see how the impact we'd made on these students

[00:40:09] Who we didn't really know anything about the business when we started it. We got so passionate about what we were achieving that passion drove the success of the business.

[00:40:21] Well, that's that's probably the greatest lesson you've you've given us today. So so thanks so much for coming on. It's been great. Great meeting you. And I'm sure we're going to talk again soon and everybody will go over to Excellencepodcast.com and grab those freebies. So thanks so much.

[00:40:41] Thank you very much. And thank you for having me as a guest on screw the commute.

[00:40:46] I'm happy to have you. All right. And tell Lindsay I said hi. All right, everybody we'll catch y'all on the next episode. See ya later.

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