Matthew Michalewicz is a speaker, author and entrepreneur who has more than 20 years of experience in starting and running high-growth tech companies, especially in the areas of machine learning, predictive analytics, and decision optimisation. He is currently the CEO of Complexica, a provider of Artificial Intelligence software for optimising sales & marketing activities, and a director of several ASX-listed companies. He is also the author of several books, including Life in Half a Second, Winning Credibility, Puzzle-Based Learning, and Adaptive Business Intelligence.
In this episode, Matthew shares his journey as an entrepreneur, his motivations behind his book Life in Half a Second and the five doors you must walk through if you’re serious about achieving success in your career, business, or personal life.
Join the conversation on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram (@synergyiq) and please support other leaders by liking, subscribing and sharing this podcast.
Visit SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us.
Say hello to our host Daniel on LinkedIn.
Where to find Matthew Michalewicz:
LinkedIn Profile
Website: https://www.michalewicz.com.au/
Book Life in Half a Second: https://www.lifeinhalfasecond.com/
Matthew Michalewicz is a speaker, author and entrepreneur who has more than 20 years of experience in starting and running high-growth tech companies, especially in the areas of machine learning, predictive analytics, and decision optimisation. He is currently the CEO of Complexica, a provider of Artificial Intelligence software for optimising sales & marketing activities, and a director of several ASX-listed companies. He is also the author of several books, including Life in Half a Second, Winning Credibility, Puzzle-Based Learning, and Adaptive Business Intelligence.
In this episode, Matthew shares his journey as an entrepreneur, his motivations behind his book Life in Half a Second and the five doors you must walk through if you’re serious about achieving success in your career, business, or personal life.
Join the conversation on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram (@synergyiq) and please support other leaders by liking, subscribing and sharing this podcast.
Visit SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us.
Say hello to our host Daniel on LinkedIn.
Where to find Matthew Michalewicz:
LinkedIn Profile
Website: https://www.michalewicz.com.au/
Book Life in Half a Second: https://www.lifeinhalfasecond.com/
Welcome to creating synergy where we explore what it takes to transform. Whether you are transforming yourself, your team, your business, or your community will connect you with insightful and challenging leaders who share their stories of successful transformations. To give you practical ideas for your own journey. Join us for another insightful episode of creating synergy.
Daniel Franco:Alright, welcome to the creating synergy podcast today we have Matthew Michalewicz on our show, thank you for being here. My pleasure. Danny, will give you a little bit of a profile. Today Matt joins us with over 20 years of experience in starting and running high growth technology companies. And he specializes in area of machine learning, predictive analytics and decision optimization. From 1994 to 1999. Matthew was the founder of fitness forever and a personal training business and later the co founder of CFG investments and money management company that had over $150 and$150 million under its management. his achievements have been recognized by numerous publications including time, Newsweek, and Forbes. He was named the Percy Entrepreneur of the Year University of North Carolina alumnus of the year and Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist from 1999 to 2003. Matthew was a co founder of new tech solutions where he raised$15 million in venture capital and grew the business to 200 employees. He established an alias Board of Directors which included but wasn't limited to the president of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Lech Wasa and the world renowned fraud expert Frank Abagnale who you might know have been played by Leonardo DiCaprio and speak in Spielberg's blockbuster Catch me if you can. New Tech solutions was then acquired by netezza and then subsequently bought out by IBM. From 2005 to 12. Matthew was a co founder and CEO of solvent software and grew the company to just under 200 employees, and $20 million in revenue, before selling it to the behemoth Schneider Electric. Under his leadership, solid software became the third fastest growing company in Australia in 2012, is ranked by Deloitte currently today. He is the CEO of a company called Complexica, who provide artificial intelligence software for supply and demand optimization. And he's also a director of a several businesses or ASX listed companies. On top of this, Matt is also the author of several books, one that I have right in front of me life in half a second, the others winning credibility, puzzle based learning and adaptive business intelligence. So it's exhausting
Matthew Michalewicz:just listening to it. It's pretty,
Daniel Franco:it's pretty profound, though.
Matthew Michalewicz:It's a long journey, a lot of scars,
Daniel Franco:you must be proud.
Matthew Michalewicz:I think. So.
Daniel Franco:The journey of creating businesses, where does that come from? that a childhood? Would?
Matthew Michalewicz:That's a good question, I think it comes from not being satisfied in terms of being an employee. So there's, it reminds me of a saying or, or a general thing I might have read a long time ago that people hate two things generally speaking, there are people that are that hate, complete uncertainty, they don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, they don't know if they're going to live or die have a job, you could see how uncomfortable would be to live in that kind of environment. But what people also hate is complete certainty, if they knew everything, when they're going to die, what they're going to marry and so on. And people fit based on genetics, personality, upbringing, in somewhere in that spectrum. And so I like uncertainty, because with uncertainty, the dream is alive, tomorrow can be anything, you can make it into anything. Whereas a lot of people were very uncomfortable in that and don't become entrepreneurs, because you have to be comfortable with uncertainty. Whereas a lot of people love certainty. They become maybe government bureaucrats. And they stay in roles that are 10 year old, and they have a job security, and they know exactly where they're going to be in 510 years. So I think it comes down to where you comfortably sit on that spectrum. And I love being in a situation in life where anything is really possible in the future, because you're running a business that in itself could become anything. And if I didn't have that life would be very unsatisfying. And and I don't want to say unpleasurable but just you always know what it's like to be an entrepreneur and it's hard to go back. Yeah, you know, a job.
Daniel Franco:But you're on your fourth business now. So three, yeah, all four. All of them were so
Matthew Michalewicz:sorry. But the last last one, the previous two were significant sales. Yeah, where's the previous ones before then this is the fifth one.
Daniel Franco:I tried to look up some prices. They're all But we won't go there. When? When does it? When does? When does the journey slow down for you?
Matthew Michalewicz:I think I don't think it will slow down in the sense that you stop doing the things you do when you just lay in a chair and look at the ceiling, I think what you do changes, so the pace doesn't change. It's the, it's the type of work. So when I was creating companies before, we're even at the beginning of complexity, and I think I might have shared this with you, it was hundreds of sales calls a year, hundreds of flights. It's the kind of guerilla warfare that needs to be done to launch a business. Creating a company, I think, is one of the hardest things you could possibly do in technology. Because you have nothing at the beginning, you've got no brand, no intellectual property, no customers, no employees, no one knows you nothing. And you're trying to turn that into something offers employees brand product, references, and making that jump is very, very, very difficult. And hence why most companies fail in making that jump. But once that jump has been made, your next job would be to create a team that can make that business sustainable. So a team that can market the product, sell the product, install and implement the product and support the product. And once you're able to all of a sudden you're changing what you're doing. And then once you've done that, you actually have a sustainable business that runs by itself, barring unforeseen events. And then again, you change what you do. So I think like this book, life and have a second outlines the most valuable thing in life is time, because you can never get it back. So how you spend your time is probably the most important question you could ever ask yourself. So the pace doesn't change. It's how you spend that time what you do that that dramatically changes. And if I could give you one overall answer to that is you've got to be satisfied with how you're spending that time. So if you keep looking in the mirror, day, in, day out month after month, and you're not happy with the day ahead of you, the week ahead of you, and so forth. That's a very awful way to live. So the changes that you go through in life, kind of realign the spending of time with the things that are of interest to you that are a pleasure. Like I love writing books. And even if there was never any commercial outcome for any book that ever did, I'd still do it just from the sheer pleasure of doing it. So that's the the thing that's important.
Daniel Franco:So on the book life in half a second, which I must say, had a profound impact on me. I read it when I think it was 2014 you wrote it was that when I know in 13 when you when you came out? Yeah, so I think I read it in 2014. And at the time I read just before read the book, I read the alchemist Oh, yes. Very famous book. Yeah, very famous by his Paolo Coelho. Yeah. And that book is a story of a journey of a young boy he goes through and the ups and downs and the difficulty in taking the first step and finding himself. Yeah, everything amazing book. And probably one of the most recommended books that I've given one of my father's favorite, all time believable. Just after I read, the alchemists are picked up a friend of mine, handed me over the counter was at my old job. And he handed he goes have a read of this. This guy's from Adelaide. He married he's from he's from the US he married and an Adelaide. No, that's not true. It's not. Are you from the from pole? Yeah. And I married a Polish girl. So there's no title. We'll go into that. Yeah. So he goes, he lives in Adelaide. That's true. Yes, we got lucky. So I've picked up this book, and as a follow up to the Alchemist, and you've probably never had this comparison. But as a follow up, I've got this story, which tells me of this journey, and the faith that I needed and the belief that I needed myself and Yep, and the risks that you need to take. And then I pick up this book, and it steps out how clearly I can do that. It had such a profound impact on on my life. And I love I'm very much like you, I like facts. I don't like the airy fairy fluff that comes in there that people know the secret and all this sort of Yes, yeah. The love that you've got the reference notes, and we've got this information. Yeah. And not only that further detail, I'm a bit of a sci fi geek as well at heart. And so your concept of the life in half a second at the same time. There was I think it was I checked the date it was released after your book. So that's a caveat here. Neil deGrasse, Tyson hosted a TV program called Cosmos Spacetime Odyssey and we've already talked about the origins of the universe. Yeah, and he put the lifetime of the universe into a calendar year. And he's kind of follow the exact same steps, outline. So I've had two of the same pieces of information come in and then followed by the steps. So my life I think from I think was really pivotal point in my life. And number one, thank you for that,
Matthew Michalewicz:No better feedback an author could get than that. Thank you.
Daniel Franco:Absolutely. And but I'm so interested in how your brain works to come up with that and how you've come up with that perspective. So could you give a bit of a background as to what yet so that listeners can understand?
Matthew Michalewicz:Sure, sure. So being an entrepreneur since I was 18, so I went to the University and had my first business fitness for ever in the university really taught me some very hard lessons very, very quickly. So unlike a job where you show up and someone pays you a salary, as an entrepreneur, you actually have to make something happen to be paid, you have to find a prospective customer convinced them to do something, by a service by a product, deliver that product or service, collect payment from them, right, there's all of this stuff that you don't you don't think about as an engineer, as an employee. So I really began to appreciate how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur and why businesses fail. And being a kind of a person that wants to do everything humanly possible to succeed, I began reading a lot about entrepreneurial success. And that spilled over to just the concept of success in general. And as I achieved entrepreneurial success, which which might have been eight years later in the first tech company. So what I was asked to give it a lot of talks on what I thought were the fundamental drivers that enabled success. And this was still in the United States before long before the book long before coming to Australia. And I probably had like presentation with like a dozen factors that were really important to success, like one of them is credibility, because people don't buy businesses don't buy from organizations that are not credible, that won't backup that. And then from that, over time, it and further reading and reading research papers, doing my next company, etc. I distilled it really just the five factors and everything could fit into those five factors. And I had a really good keynote, which was called Five doors of success, where I explained in detail why it works, and so on. And a refiner probably delivered that keynote, probably two or 300 times before the book was written. And then when solved software was sold the company before complexa, I decided to take all those presentations, all the research notes, and just put it into a book. For no other purpose, then I wanted it to live in a document that was like, like, rather than in a presentation or in a podcast, etc. I've always loved books, I wanted to put it into a book, and I had the time to do it. And and when I began writing it, I fell in love with the stories that are in there, it made me relive certain things in my own past, it made me rethink certain subjects, you know, you think you have a good understanding of a [inaudible audio], you have to communicate it in a book, it makes you sometimes requestion. Okay, hold on, is that really how it works? Or is it? Is it this is this the right example together? So it gave me the opportunity writing the book to read fine, the thoughts and the messages to a greater level of precision than you would do in a 45 minute presentation. And then out of that came the book. That was the kind of the whole journey from beginning to end
Daniel Franco:The concept of the half second. Yep. Where did that? Where did that spark you? Because it's life changing for people who are when I say Alchemist was one of the most recommended, I'd say yours would be in that top two or three? Wow, well, because I generally package them up as abundant or so read these two ones, the journey once the practical starts.
Matthew Michalewicz:Wow, that's Yeah, that's a huge compliment. Thank you. And how did I come up with that? First of all, I love cosmology, quantum mechanics, physics in general, I love those subjects because they deal with the nature of reality, what is real, it's almost like today's science, specifically, physics has reached the point of philosophy, where where I've even seen talks in in major conferences between philosophers like that, that practice maybe they practice Buddhism, or some kind of, and world leading physicists that are Nobel Prize caliber. And what they're discussing is what is real and what isn't like what does this table really made of? These are still unanswered questions. So having a love for that topic, the age of the universe and really when the Big Bang started, what was before the big bang was that perhaps a black hole in another universe do black holes compress matter and then create other universes on the other side, having always a fascination of that I've always appreciated how very short everything is in cosmic scale. So so so being a practical person and spending a lot of time with other people. You see the stresses the war The anxieties that people and companies have not that they're not justified these worries and anxieties they are. But when you put them into that cosmic perspective that hey, the whole thing's gonna be over in the blink of an eye, it kind of makes you kind of look at it a different way. So I wanted to merge those two things in the book, rather, it being the kind of book, hey, you know, a fanatical book, make the most of your life and do this and do that, etc, I wanted to overarch it with this overall message. It's so short, it's so incredibly short.
Daniel Franco:And that's where the life in half is.
Matthew Michalewicz:Correct? Yeah, the original title of the book was the five doors of success, just like the keynote there, but that hundreds of times, and the opening chapter that you reference, was actually the last thing I wrote the very, very end as a call to action. And then when reviewers read the book, they said hey, this is so powerful, you should bring it up the introduction, which I did change the name of the book and then I wrote what is now the conclusion which has cosmology and different things that are interesting in the universe.
Daniel Franco:It's fascinating so for just for the listeners the concept is that in the the universe 13.8 billion years ago something like that the Big Bang happened and since then the human human story begin yep 22 minutes ago,
Matthew Michalewicz:I The scale is slightly slightly different to the age of the planet the age of the planet the planet and scale that down I think to a year Yes. And then within the within the course of a year so kind of like yeah, then 22 minutes ago civilization began and in your life is going to be a second and so forth. It's so it's so fleeting there it's it's actually hard to comprehend it is and and wrap your head around
Daniel Franco:the the Neil deGrasse Tyson Cosmos reference that he put it from the beginning of the universe makes you shorter. He was saying, Yeah, the human human species began at 1159 and 37 seconds, and it might be over a 12:01
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, that's right. No one will ever know.
Daniel Franco:Exactly. Right. So it is it is amazing. To when you gain that perspective, how short life is? Yes, it my my life transformed. I think a big part of my change of thinking was the wall. And you wrote it in the book, too, which was, and you referenced it not? Five seconds ago, when you said I think I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted to have it written down. I wanted to leave something. Yes. Yeah. I thought what am I leaving behind? What am I going to do for people that who may remember me? You know, I'm going to have children one day. I do have two children now. And I'm on that journey. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was fantastic. For me, so thank you for for, can we go into the five steps, whatever you like. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love just for you. Not sure I remember them. But let's draw. Well, from what I what I've got, I've got here was defined was the first one that you go. Correct.
Matthew Michalewicz:Correct. So you want me to talk to it? Or do you have some questions?
Daniel Franco:Go for it, I just want to hear
Matthew Michalewicz:that the I probably the the first two are the most important, because they make the rest kind of click into place. But the fundamental two things that are needed to succeed, to achieve something is to know what you want to achieve, or otherwise, existence becomes random, your business becomes random. It's like starting a business. And there's no goal. There's no goal about which market you will serve, what you'll do, which sectors, then things are random. You mean someone you do this, etc? things might happen or might not. So I think it's fundamental that we actually define as clearly as possible what it is that we're trying to do? Yeah. Because then your mind has a focal point, you begin thinking about it, you begin turning it over in your head, you can begin reading and absorbing other material and comparing it to the mental image of God in your head, you can begin asking questions about that mental image of your of your goal, what's the best way to achieve it? What are there any parallels that I can look to? Are there any shortcuts your mind has now gotten something concrete to look upon and focus on I think that without that, nothing else matters. That's the kind of the end end of the journey but and but the second one and equally important, and when I was writing the book, I even struggled whether the second one should be the first chapter or the other way around, because I tried both ways. And I can tell you later why why chose the way I did, but the second one is actually having the desire to achieve the goal. Because most of the goals are not achieved the vast majority like look at New Year's resolutions, I think a quote somewhere in the book that depending on which country in which year and which statistic, you look at something like 80% of new year resolutions are not achieved. And the reason for that is that people don't desire the goal as much They do something else. So they set these you know, they wake up on January one, I want to lose weight and I want to be a millionaire and I wanna have a different job and I wanna have my own business and I want to get married or divorced or have kids or get rid of kids, whatever they do, but nothing actually happens because it's this kind of wishful thinking, complacency. Yeah, the hunger for it doesn't exist. So the word desire is used by different texts, different speakers, different people in different ways. They might call it motivation. They might call it ambition, they might call it hunger, but it's, it's the same thing. It's this drive. That's a very popular popular word I call it desire. So you have to have this burning desire to actually get the goals
Daniel Franco:put purpose is a thing or a
Matthew Michalewicz:purpose, kind of broaches bigger topics, you know, what my purpose is this your meaning and so forth. We're here I'm just talking to beginning of I'm talking about animalistic desire for something like the desire for a pair of shoes. Yeah, something like, you know, a pair of shoes is not my purpose. My desire for it is so intense that no matter what, I'm going to get those parachutes whether I have to steal them, kill someone for them, work for them, right. So I'm talking about that rawness of emotion. Yeah, almost. And so when you couple, a clear goal, with very intense desire, it actually makes the mind continuously think about that thing. I use the analogy of falling in love. I was unfortunate enough to give a keynote not too long ago before the virus broke out. And I asked the audience, probably a couple 100 people in there. How many of you have been madly in love before? And only a few people know how hope pitiful forget the rest of my keynotes. Fall in love?
Daniel Franco:That's the follow up question. How many of you married Yeah,
Matthew Michalewicz:I stopped. I changed gears. But I use I use. Because when you when you're madly in love with someone, what happens is you want to be with that person, that that's the goal to be together, however, and the desire for that other person makes you only think about them, right? So I try to use that as an analogy for another four goals in general, imagine feeling about a goal, that way where you're in madly in love with the goal, and you just cannot think about anything else. Imagine how much effort you're going to put it, and how much focus you have on it. So the other door is
Daniel Franco:the Blurred Lines. So is there like you're using the love example? Yeah. And then you can use business in the same breath, right? Yes. I have a burning desire to start and create my own company. Yes. But what that company does what that company is doesn't matter. Same thing with love. I have a burning desire to be in love. But
Matthew Michalewicz:no, it's different. It's different. Why? I mean, if you have a, I don't know that the difference between someone having a burning desire to be in love versus the burning desire of being in love, I think are two fundamentally different. The first one is a logic thing. Yeah, I would love to be in love. I would love to have a business. Yeah, where's the second one is the actual emotion itself. So I'm talking about so I mentioned that at the beginning. I'm not sure if it was in the podcast, or before we started then I'm writing several books at the same time. And one of them is a fiction book and I'm learning how to write fiction extended, like it'll be four times longer than this book and you have characters and you have plot. My love for that book is so intense that I think about it all the time. And it's not about I don't think it'll ever be published. I don't think it's ever going to have a commercial outcome. But it's the love of language, it's the love of putting a story into text. You can see kind of like your own DNA flowing into the words and then you have the like an artist or a sculptor or a painter you know you can you can shape it and form and you can make it look beautiful and sound beautiful. And my love for that endeavor is so great that without a doubt I'll finish it and there is no commercial goal at the end of it but I'm so focused on it because of the desire to do it. It kind of makes it happens by itself almost so what happens in new year resolutions is people set a goal I want to lose weight yeah they're not really in love with that. No, they don't not every Yeah, absolutely so so they so they have perhaps a clear goal
Daniel Franco:I think about food more than
Matthew Michalewicz:correct their love is actually for socializing at the pub and fine wine and beer and all of that kind of stuff not actually for exercise and and fasting days.
Daniel Franco:I think it's that you don't appreciate it. It's that the others trumpet they
Matthew Michalewicz:they beat you have other desires that are more important greater.
Daniel Franco:Well, it's the connection between people sharing food and alcohol and sitting around a table enjoying a nice wine and some yes We'll far outweigh my desire.
Matthew Michalewicz:I can't wait. I can't wait to start eating. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:So the next one, then we go into belief.
Matthew Michalewicz:Yes. So keeping in mind that I really think that the first two are pivotal, because the next three have limited applicability. Without the first two being in place, you don't know what you're going to achieve, or what you're going to go after. It's the end of the journey. And if your desire to achieve that it's not really, really intense, you're not going to put in the effort, you're not going to think about you probably forget about it. Actually, it's what happens in terms of belief, or the research that exists on behavioral sciences and performance of children in schools, placebo studies from different disciplines, not just from entrepreneurship or from business, really point to a factual conclusion that our beliefs are more important than reality. And that sounds like a really airy fairy kind of statement that the reason it's true is because people act on what they believe, rather than what is real or not. So so and you see that you might, you might see that in riots, you might see that in legal confrontation, etc. People don't act on the Absolute Truth. In fact, the Absolute Truth might be unknown. They they built, they act on what they believe, is the absolute truth. So people have to believe that they're, they have the competence and the ability to achieve the goal. Because without that fundamental belief, you don't try if you fundamentally believe that something is impossible, the only logical action you could take is not is to do nothing, because it'd be wasted, kind of action. Correct. So people that go after difficult things, at least some of them have at least some part of them have that belief, it can be done if for no other reason that other people have done it. Yeah. So and this is a very, very difficult subject. In general, it touches upon human psychology, upbringing, how you were raised, what your parents told you, when you were growing up, how they how they shaped your view of the world. And then there so it's difficult from that perspective, but then it's simple in the sense that that people should understand belief comes from the environment from how you, again, how you spend your time, but specifically with who you spend your time. So if you spend your time with people that are self limiting, or negative, everything's impossible, you can never succeed in Adelaide, and why would you ever do that, etc, you end up taking on those kind of beliefs. If you spend time with people, anything that's possible, and you can build a global business from Adelaide, and that can be done this way. And that way, etc, you take on a different set of beliefs. So that's the third door third
Daniel Franco:door. So I'm going to package those three up questions or Schorsch around those three divine design beliefs. I am an entrepreneur, there is people out there who are creating their own businesses, let's use a random rule of thumb number that most people will say, I want to build a million dollar business but buy a million multimillion dollar business. I, as the owner of this business, want to I want to earn a million dollars a year get right, yeah, that's what I want to earn. What does that look like I say, this is what I'm going to create. And then you start defining those goals. Yes, and and creating some clarity with numbers of what that looks like. The desire is there to create this business. But then that gets fundamentally broken down the moment you realize that to create a multi million dollar business that goes to Australia wide. I'm going to lose and have to sacrifice something. And we have to sacrifice family time with loved ones time with friends times eating and drinking the fine wines with people that I genuinely want to be around. How do you understand that when you set these goals? Yeah. And is that what you find? Again, this is the overpowering desire and belief system? Where does it all fall into place for you?
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, so you've touched upon a few good, really good points. And let me just talk about two that have really cropped up one, once you have a goal and you have a very strong desire for it. And you really believe not just you know, superficial talk, but you really believe you can do it. Not that you just say it, but don't but don't. Yeah,
Daniel Franco:I think I think a lot of entrepreneurs out there would believe that they have the ability to do what it takes. However, there's this other alternate. Yep.
Matthew Michalewicz:So let's talk about two things. One, what's missing is typically the fourth door which is the how the knowledge and the knowledge actually breaks down the steps from current state to future state. So I have a clear goal. I have to have, and I believe I'm capable, what usually is the next sentence but I don't know how to and that's super common because they haven't done it before. So how can they you know in an expert way, know how To achieve something that they've never achieved before, so it's perfectly normal and logical. So then it becomes this investigative process of augmenting the knowledge. And you can through meeting people through reading, through watching attending events, whatever the case might be, to understand what the path is, and to your point what's required to achieve that path. So and that raises the second point, which is the point of trade offs, there is always a cost for everything that nothing is free. And this comes back to this is why desire has to be so absolute in the things that you set for yourself. If you want to be a champion bodybuilder, if you want to be an entrepreneur that builds a multimillion dollar business, or you want to be in some small percentage of people that have achieved some amount of success, the sacrifice and by sacrifice, I mean, the time required to do that is huge. And that is time that you're not going to be able to use to be at the pub with your friends, or to be with family, and so forth. So there's two things from that statement, that fall out. One for you to make those sacrifices and stick with them, the desire has to be high. This is why again, new year resolutions and other things fall over, we ended the second thing and this is a personal decision and choice that every person should make, you need to make the determination that that sacrifice is worth the goal. I can't tell you how many successful people I've met and a lot more successful than kind of me, you the people that we would meet but but people that have become billionaires, for example that they write books about, and I've had the fortune of meeting and spending time with, I can't tell you how many regrets they've passed on to me, where where they conveyed, that the thing they pursued wasn't in the end worth the trade offs that they made, like, like one very famous person in the US said, I spent my entire career doing x. And I got to the top of my game. But along the way, I've now got no relationship with my children, I can no amount of money can buy me taking them to the park or a baseball game or or getting in bed and reading them. Nighttime story and so forth. So this is kind of the situation where some very elite goal is achieved. And the price for achieving that goal has been so high that in retrospect, someone looks back on their life and said, God, that really wasn't what Yeah. And and that's why it's the knowledge is very important, and the decisions of personal ones that people have to make.
Daniel Franco:So I want to ask question on that. Because you and I both believe that there's a specific formula through everything. Can you talk about books, you're a big reader, I'm a big reader, if you walk into a library, and there's 1000s and 1000s of books there with all knowledge. Someone's just had a thought they've been an expert in what they've done. And they've written a book about it to teach others, right. So nine times out of 10, what you're trying to achieve has been achieved, agreed, agreed someone else is the formula that's in place. And this think of an excel formula, or you know, data equals this cell equals this cell equals this cell. Is this formula, always at the sacrifice of family and kids and whatnot. Because I hear that so you talk about the billionaire's you talk about the millionaires, the people who have built these multi national businesses global business, yes. They've always had to sacrifice. Yep. Family. Yep.
Matthew Michalewicz:All. Yeah. So I can tell you from personal experience that it doesn't have to be that way. And I don't feel like I've sacrificed any family along the way. So I've had a couple of benefits. One is I had the benefit in the US of meeting successful people hearing those stories and reflecting and it comes out in life and have a second and reflecting on how I what kind of father I want to be. And I really wanted to my father always had a lot of time for me because he was a university professor. He was not a business person walking into school every day pick me up, I sat in his office, we traveled together. He was never the guy that was working eight to six in business trips. And I never saw him was the it was the opposite of that. So I wanted to be that kind of father. But But hat but also I have business aspirations. So one thing was, in the first three companies that I ran, I didn't have any children. So I was married with my wife for and I don't want to lie to almost a decade before we had children. And she worked in the business with me. My father was in the business and we saw each other all the time. So you don't feel like you're sacrificing your family because you're fat. It's a family business. Yeah. And they're in it. That business is sold and they've achieved a different level of financial independence or status and so forth. I've written a couple of books, we moved to Australia, we decide we're going to have children. And that first year, the business was, you know, infancy there was really nothing there. I wrote stories for magazines. I wrote another The book, etc. And then when the business got going, I made sure that there's several things. One, if travel happened, I would drive the kids to kindy, or to school or be back for dinner and so forth. In other words, and I'll go through some specifics that are more meaningful, but I tried to constrain the business with my family, rather than constrain my family with the business. Most people fill their calendar with all the business stuff. And whatever is left, they put in their family. For me, it was the opposite. I never wanted to end up not that I was going to become a billionaire. But I don't want to have a story like that, or I wish I wished I knew I could do it again and spend more time with my kids. I didn't want to be that kind of person. So there were things that I put into the calendar, and then whatever was left became the business. And without a doubt, I think I could have achieved more in business had that not been the case.
Daniel Franco:So that's the sacrifice that you
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, but so for example, when we were going into state, the kids were still in kindy at solvit. I cold called from Adelaide for two weeks, set up appointments for the next two weeks. My wife and kids got in the car. We drove to Melbourne, we stopped in the Grampians along the way. Then we rented an apartment for two weeks in Melbourne. I did all of the sales calls, came home to the apartment, we had dinner, we went out for dinner. And then we went back via the Grampians. And I must have we must have done that trip, I don't know a dozen times 15 times and then there was enough business to open a Melbourne office, hire people and I didn't need to do that anymore. But then I did it with Sydney, and we flew to Sydney, and Sydney was established. And then the business got to a certain level of scale, right and actually need to do those things anymore. We had a sales director salespeople and so forth. So at each and each year, we've got another home in Europe. This is actually the first year in a long, long time. Like since living memory. We used to go away for two or two and a half months with kids and family and let the business kind of fend for itself, which I think is healthy. For the people in the company, they have to step up, they have to make decisions and so forth. It's healthy for the entrepreneur because they disconnect the refresh they're able to think about life about business have new thoughts, but also intense family time during during that period of time. So I never felt like there's other examples that I can go through. But I never felt like getting to where I am now in life has been at the cost of kids in any one of those years. And that is a very conscious, methodical decision made early on rather than the my guess again, what you believe if you believe you have to sacrifice you're gonna sacrifice
Daniel Franco:family. I think this is I am ambitious. At heart I have this burning desire to create and but never at the sacrifice of being
Matthew Michalewicz:correct. And you've got to believe that you can achieve your ambitions without absolute without sacrificing the one thing that I where Daniel, which made a real difference in my life. And it was one of the first things business mentor told me he said, your job in the business man. And this was when I was either still in the university or just out like really early on is to make yourself redundant as quickly as possible as in like all of my entrepreneurial advice that I've ever received, that's probably been the best because as soon as you make yourself completely redundant, not that you will leave the business, but you can now you get your life back. Yeah, now you can spend time with family, you there is no constraint or call on your time that must be satisfied or something will collapse. So you begin at the end and all the dependencies on you, you get a few customers you grow and you take this bit of responsibility and hire someone for it. And then you keep going and saying I can't wait until we get to this next level because then I'll take this bit of responsibility I have now hire someone for that and you're looking forward to the day when all of its gone. And then you can be in the business and do whatever you want strategic activities
Daniel Franco:Vantage listed holistically
Matthew Michalewicz:we got those yet correct working on your business, you know doing strategic things, etc. Or you could come in once every two weeks and and see how things are going and let a management team run it like you look at private companies like visie Industries, what are they now 7 billion in revenue? Surely, you know, Anthony price not coming in every single day making sure every single thing is working. So that for me is an aspiration at a smaller scale to have a company that has that level of sustainability without the owners influence. And that is, in my view the key to not sacrificing family along the way. So if you if you make yourself vital to the businesses ongoing, you're never going to be able to remove yourself and you're always going to be sacrificing family.
Daniel Franco:And I guess that falls well into the knowledge piece then yeah, isn't it? Yeah, it's
Matthew Michalewicz:knowledge is power.
Daniel Franco:Oh, it's the number one commodity in the world. I think Yeah. You should know that. You can do anything. Yep. The there was when on the knowledge point you talk about a man Reviewers a mentor of mine once told me and I think this what started my journey of reading, reading books was. And I do a bit of property real estate outside of, of my business as well developed me that just under six or seven properties now, nothing major, but just I have a love for fantastic. I have I come from a construction background family using home construction. And it was my mentor in construction, actually, who told me, he says, then he goes, you know, the big beautiful homes that have these really fantastic large libraries. Yeah, and he's like, Okay, so those libraries, they're not. They're not built because the people are millionaires. They're built, because they will that the money that they obtained started with that law. So
Matthew Michalewicz:the library was first a
Daniel Franco:library. That's great. The house comes around the light.
Matthew Michalewicz:Fantastic. Yeah. It love it. It's really powerful.
Daniel Franco:I completely changed my thought on knowledge. What that actually meant that, yeah, this is the size of your, your foundation. Yes. IT's great. The more that you read. So yeah, it was powerful for me. So what's, what's your share? So the last one is action. Yeah, the hardest? Yeah. So it's the leap of faith, isn't it?
Matthew Michalewicz:It's the work. And if I've learned anything about humanity, most people don't like to work.
Daniel Franco:You know, very easily, especially Australia.
Matthew Michalewicz:It's a very ugly statement. And but the work required to achieve what we're talking about is intense. It's, I can give you two analogies, like one from all the programs that I've run keynotes that I've given, I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've met that have come up to me and said, Matt, can you just give me some advice, I've got a really big week, next week, I've got a so what's going on, and they would say I've got a presentation on Tuesday. And I would think my God, that's a big week, you know, that should be 9am. On Monday, there should be four more presentations like that on Monday, and then and then the rest of the week, right. So you have this complete distortion disconnect here between what's really required, we're different versions of reality isn't correct. It's like, you know, someone goes, goes to the gym and rides a stationary bike for 30 minutes, and then does some curls with some light dumbbells versus, you know, arm shorts and spending four hours in that gym, and then and so forth. So the scale of work is different, depending to what you want to achieve. And that's when it gets very difficult. And because most people just human nature is not the case. evolutionarily, we were created to conserve calories, conserve them by not thinking too much about things, conserve them from movement, hoard fat, all of that kind of stuff. We haven't come evolutionary Lee from a place where our body is designed to work as much as possible and expend as much calories as possible. It's the opposite. So you're kind of fighting against let's weight losing weight is so hard, you know, you're fighting against the evolutionary developmental tool. That's
Daniel Franco:why
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, this is like, you know, you're fighting nature. It's like one of the hardest things in the
Daniel Franco:world when using the excuse lately that my my gut is overhanging because of my posture is bad.
Matthew Michalewicz:But now, I'll send you an email with 10 sites. A week,
Daniel Franco:my evolutionary
Matthew Michalewicz:for 10 weeks. But this is why action is difficult to take. And this is why again, your desire has to be so great, because at the end of the day, the only thing that's going to make people lift themselves out of a chair and do something is the desire to do it. So if the desire is really small, we stay in the chair. But if it's raging, you got like, how much easier would it be for me to not get up at 430 in the morning work on the book, yours probably 150 different books that I've got on fiction writing, whether it's dialogue creations, or fiction analysis, or subtext or plot developments, etc. How easy would it be not to do any of that, and instead lay in bed and have a cup of coffee and watch TV, etc. But I feel like I have to do it. I just I love it. I had I have. And so even though it's difficult, and it's I've been working on this fiction book for a year now and in the background, I felt like I've developed enormously as a writer even even since writing this, it requires action that goes against comfort. And yet you do it because your desire is so great to do it. And when we get to the last one action action can be over a very extended period of time. It can be sacrificing in nature traveling or whatever the case might be, and it has to be sustained. And the only way that all of that is going to happen is if the goal that has been said the desire is high. Can't wait to jump out of bed. Yeah, and continue. And if it's not like that, it's I wish you know in my years Daniel I've come to the Inclusion that businesses don't fail. And I'm talking about startups and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs give up. Because it's so hard to get up every day and go through all of the actions required to build a business. It's just so difficult. That unless you really want and you want it more than anyone else, giving up just just the easy path,
Daniel Franco:I heard a quote, and I don't know who it's attributed to. So I can't quote him, you look it up, you might better find it. It was the two hardest things in the world is to start. And number two is to not give up. Yeah, yeah, two things. When it comes to business. I
Matthew Michalewicz:think the second one is harder. Yeah. Because I mean, it's easy to start a book, but then to continue.
Daniel Franco:This that is, I think that's something when even when people come to me and asked me, then, you know, what are your thoughts? Yeah, it's the power of just starting your power of just having it correctly. I'm not ready. Yes, my website's not ready yet, because I've just got to get this sorted. And it's just like, just go, yeah, just start just go with it. Because if it kicks off, if it starts working, or if something happens, and all of a sudden, you're then pushed to finish the website quicker, you're then yeah, wish to make that decision quicker. And it? Yeah, and the power of just beginning I agree, she agreed. The thing that I want to ask you in, in in creation of businesses, what is the motivation for you to continually keep creating? So I mean, I have a goal yet to create a business and you know, I'm not gonna lie, I'm transparent if someone came and knocked on my door in 10 years time and offered to buy it, I'd be interested in talking to them. So a what's the feeling I'd like to talk about that the feeling of and the general the general is happiness or Greg, great, and gratitude that you have, you would have felt by that journey? And then once that has reached in in so solid, it is solid, as has finished, or have been sold? The desire to start again, you have to start again. Are you? Is it the chase that you love now? Now, I've
Matthew Michalewicz:reflected on that question quite a bit. And the answer to it has been different. For all of the businesses that I've that I've started. In the case of complexica, I never thought after solver that I'd ever started another company again, I told people that I wouldn't go
Daniel Franco:so far I've read previous buyers that say you're retired.
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah. And I thought so the gap between solvit being sold and complexica, starting up I think, was more than two years. And the way it came about was really two things happened. One, and this is the most significant I was said, you know, George's on way mouth. Yes. So George has to sell caught up in their feet. Yes. So George has two sons the same age as my two sons. And I think it was 2013. I finished the book, the book was out. And I saw George teaching his sons how to make a coffee or one of the sons and serve it. And it was the whole thing. You know how to make it on a machine had a plated had a had a purpose, everything. And it really touched me to see that I was waiting for a meeting, I came up to him. And I said, Well, that was that was really touching moment for me. And George explained how he grew up in a restaurant. His father taught him the best that was in him. He wants to do the same. It's not that he expects his children to run restaurants is just what he knows. And he wants to convey it to his children. And I thought to myself, at that moment, Jesus, I would love to convey entrepreneurship, to my kids in that kind of way, not through a book or a podcast, but not through telling, but through showing. And that idea fermented coupled with another one that I really love working with my father, my father's my next door neighbor. So we live next door to one another. I've spent my entire I immigrated when I was a kid, I'm an only child and very close to my parents, and the other co founder Constantine was my father's student 25 years ago, and has been involved in every business. We live on the same street when we're very close. So given that we'd worked together for a long period of time, it was this restlessness that existed in my father and them to do something again. And coupled with my kids, I had this inspiration that I would love to show them everything that I show them that I knew about business. So when complexity was incorporated, I explained shares to them. I explained what a company is. And I remember one of the I mean, they they come here to staff meetings, they've traveled to the other offices, they look at financial reports. I've taken them to dinners and lunches with some of our customers and invited their kids and explained how things work. And some of the insights that my kids have relayed back have been incredible, like right at the beginning. One of the first questions when the Company was being incorporated. They said of complexity a gets money, do we get like that? And I said, No, no, no, come on stupid, yeah. Complexica against it. And then they go to pay Complexica has to pay the bills and do this, etc. And then I sit and then I said, What's left? They say they say, we get three founders of a Complexica, okay? If there's a profit, there could be a dividend, but he might re invest. When they, they were looking at financial reports, or even a better story, when I took them to a dinner with a CEO of a company, later, that CEO ended up getting fired. And I explained to my kids, you remember that CEO, you met that big dinner we had, etc? That guy got fired? And I said, how he was the boss, how could he get fired. And I say, there's a difference between being the boss and being the owner. Yeah. And all of a sudden, they began. So it created this huge amount of dialogue, where I feel like if I died tomorrow, which I'm not expecting to do, I feel like I've really passed on a huge amount of information. It's kind of like if I was a movie director and have shown my kids how to make movies, it's the same kind of thing they understand in a great detail, contracts, staff, HR, winning businesses, holding events, the whole journey, all of that kind of stuff. And not that they've been super engaged. But there have been some bits where they've been really interested in Yeah, how this works, etc. So that's been much more of a motivation for me and complex. Yeah, then then, then then other things, whereas insolvent, one of my primary motivations was the love of innovation, it's their love of, of being in boardrooms or an executive teams, and hearing that they want to do something that's never been done before. And if they do it, it will change their business, it will transform them or give them a competitive advantage. It'd be like this table that we're sitting at Daniel, them telling you, if we could do something that's here, just off the table, it'd be incredible. And it requires innovation. And it requires things that haven't been like the printer record project that we're doing now. It's kind of like a world first of creating a global platform that it's almost like the digital winery, like there's a digital oilfield, the digital mind, this is kind of the equivalent. So I love that aspect of innovation of I could never create a business and sell furniture or build website, there has to be this element of of breaking frontiers and innovating and doing something new. So there's more to say on that. But the motivation to do it changes with time. And it's not some shallow motivation, the love of the chase, whatever, whatever that is, it's something usually quite meaningful and tangible, that it gives you huge personal satisfaction and provides meaning to your life. And that will change as you know, you have kids as the kids grow up as your as you progress through the stages of life. Yeah, well, your purpose for life changes your goals and desires change precisely and why you do things changes as well.
Daniel Franco:I'd love to touch on some background, your your commonly thrown in the same sentence with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Matthew Michalewicz:That's a good company with a lot of people I wouldn't want to be in the same.
Daniel Franco:He's a well, an idol of yours. Yes.
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah. That's probably the early childhood. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:I I'm a recent reader. I've read it twice now of Total Recall. Is his work ethic is incredible. It's second to none is second to none. Yeah. What can you elaborate? have you built your, your career based on his same work ethic? I because you, you've we've chatted, but yeah, you said to me that what you do is you go out and you find just people who have done things. Yeah. And you just maybe get
Matthew Michalewicz:a couple of couple of things that I'll say one. If you liked Total Recall, there are two fantastic books that were that are written by a ward were written by award winning writers on on Schwarzenegger that 100 times better. Recall. One of them is True Myths. And the other one is the People's Governor. And they are they read they read like novels, the quality of writings, so they're much better than
Daniel Franco:Total Recall. Just he rarely is his autobiography.
Matthew Michalewicz:Correct. But the way it's all written is kind of like a workout. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, it is. Uh,
Matthew Michalewicz:yeah. So secondly, is that I try to mimic Arnold's work ethic. I think it's almost impossible to mimic. Like, there's only so many days that you could go into the gym and work out for four hours before you collapse, for example. So there's, you know, you talk about outliers, exceptions, etc. It's a person that I can't find a parallel with, you know, how many people do you know that have reached number one position in a sport, then became self millionaires through business then reach number one position in movies, the highest paid actor of all time, and then reach the highest position in politics that he could attain, not being born in the United States. So it's something beyond lack, yond, etc. And part of it has this huge work ethic kind of behind it. What he did teach me in reading the books, and I've met him a few times, is that you have and this is really the opening chapter, not the opening chapter, but the first door of success, you have to be really clear on what you're going to go after. And then you've got to outwork anyone else that you're going to
Daniel Franco:hear that and I've only read the Total Recall his autobiography as you can hear that in just the way it's written. Yeah, he he creates clarity for his goal for you to understand. And he's Yeah, just go oh, my God is so detail Yeah, into how Of course, he's going to achieve it because it's mapped
Matthew Michalewicz:and this goes to the last door of success action might my other idol, which I hold in equal esteem, long dead now, jack landers we pass more than 100 years ago, but his secret can be summed up in one sentence work all the time, there was a secret to success. So this is a guy that got a sixth grade education. And then by sleeping four hours a day, and studying the rest, 18 days, studying grammar, studying English, how short stories work, teaching himself how to type, how to write, etc, ended up being one of the highest paid authors of all time Call of then, Wild White Fang all Harrison Ford is in the call of the wild movie that came out. So I really respond to Arnold and jack London are self made rags to riches stories, they're very entrepreneurial, they were very clear on what they wanted. And the work that they put into it is second to none, no one worked like either of those people to kind of achieve the goal. How easy would have been to give up?
Daniel Franco:Oh, easy. Yeah. When it has had, you know, for a young teenage boy had a lot of females chasing after him, he could have chosen the wrong wife just from from that the party life I guess is where and he just didn't relent. And that's the other thing, though. It's the you talk about all these outside distractions. And you know, it's the entrepreneur that gives up? Is it the entrepreneur that's giving up? Or is it that other things become more important? What's this
Matthew Michalewicz:the same thing kind of in the end, by the way, there are very legitimate reasons to give up. So life circumstances change, your value system changes, whatever the case might be. So I'm not down playing with poor hiring people again, but but many times people have grossly underestimated the effort required. And then when they find out what effort is required, they they can't sustain it for the period of time required. And then, given that kind of a course. And it's not just an entrepreneurship, sports is simply like kind of a it's everything. Even people that just want to develop a career, it requires a sustained level of output over an extended period of time, it is very difficult to maintain, unless your desire is there burning every single day. Otherwise, it becomes an awful existence.
Daniel Franco:That opens the door to the current situation that we're in, which is COVID. Yep. 19. And a few people have come to me during this time and sit down, what do I do now become redundant? of, you know, my career paths? All of a sudden, at a halt? Yep. And my constant, and my standard reply is, invest in yourself. Yep. Now's the time to invest in yourself. Because out of this, you want to be in front of the next guy or the next girl. Yep. Where you have an improved knowledge beyond and it just keeps coming back to that knowledge base, improving yourself and the mindset to continue with that. Yep. What's your advice for people now?
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, it two answers come to actually one answer, but let me preface it by the following. The current environment is so much different and more difficult than any previous crash or crisis, like the global financial crisis, or the tech crash or even things that came before it. Because there is a restriction on our ability to travel and interact with other people, which didn't used to be the case. So if the restrictions didn't exist, and this was just a major, major downturn, we're in downturns, lots of people lose their job. The advice that I'm going to say next would still be the same. But what I would also advise is get out there and meet as many people as possible. I also think that's the secret to entrepreneurial success. You know, the size of your network is a huge determinant in your ability to succeed, people that have huge networks, and are well known and know a lot of people, it's easier for them to find the next job. It's easier for them to win business. People refer them in and so for everything, if no one no relationship, yeah, absolutely. If no one knows you, and you've got 15 connections in LinkedIn, and everything's difficult, you're unknown, no one can vouch for you, etc. So I've always believed, and this is when we talked about where this book came about, early on, when I was giving keynotes. But long before the book in the US, one of the key things that I would preach is build your network to the maximum size before you need it. This is the similar that people begin developing a network once they're made redundant, once they think about stuff, you need to think about three years ahead of time, start building your network so that if you're ever made redundant, you can fall back on a big network and so on. The problem with today's environment, you can't really do that. You can't, I'm getting all these invitations on LinkedIn, that are awful, you know, every invitation comes with a message, hey, I want to sell you this, right. So so it, it's not really the ideal way to meet people and develop networks because everyone's gone to digital. And it's much better to do in person. So I think the current environment has to play itself out so that people can get out there again, and do the relationship building what everyone can do. And this is the second component to it is not only invest in their knowledge and read books, and attend courses, whether they're virtual or or we're listening to podcasts so that they know more, but they could actually do something that increases their own brand value and their own worth, so to speak, one thing that they could do is they could write a book themselves, it's actually not difficult to write a book, imagine spending 10 or 15 years in something, probably got some unique insights on that. And if you could write that up into a text, and even have just basic editing done for it, you could load that to Amazon, it could be printed on demand. And you could go and apply for jobs while leaving a book on the table, about this particular sector, what you've learned, and so forth. So I think people not having the ability today to go and travel, meet people and develop their network, like in pre crisis days, still have the ability to make themselves more knowledgeable and smarter. But they should also think about what they could do to increase their own brand, and their own personal differentiation in the marketplace. And if it's better than sitting at home and watching TV, go on, right and then have to be a big book be 50 pages, could
Daniel Franco:even blogs, just yeah,
Matthew Michalewicz:blogs, articles, white papers, you know, let let me write, because these are the things that create different differentiation in job interviews, right, there's million candidates. And sure they've got different education and salary requirements and experience and so forth. And most of them I'm willing to bet are not going to come with publications or with books or, or things like that. So I think they even buying books and reading them on how to differentiate yourself in the marketplace would be a great style. And probably in those books, which I haven't personally read, I'm sure there's great tips on what you could do to differentiate yourself and you could follow them. So those are the kinds of things that I encourage people to do. And once they can go out and expand their network, they should make that a personal KPI, each week, each Friday for them to know more people and have had coffees and sit downs with more people than their than the previous week. So I know 100 people in the start of Monday, come Friday at 210, next Friday to 119 etc. But in the world of that we're in now that you're saying that you're getting hundreds of Yeah,
Daniel Franco:LinkedIn message I wouldn't do this virtually. Because it's a be said yes. Is it a phone call? It could I mean, I'll tell you what, how else other than this?
Matthew Michalewicz:Well, you could do it. I've always been a face to face kind of person. So you could do it in South Australia because we're more or less in a state that has eradicated the virus. Right. But you're not going to go to Victoria. Yeah, and have meetings when I came to South Australia. At the very beginning with my wife before the business was started. I went and found this is how I met grant mature. Mm hm. And how I met a lot of different people is actually created a letter in which was an in an email about myself about this two paragraphs. I'm a migrant from the States. I've got a background in technology, entrepreneurship, etc. I'd love to meet with you for 30 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever I put into it, just to better understand Adelaide, your industry and so forth a police center. 100 letters or emails with an attachment and the end the attachments were different publications that I had from the US. One of them was a good one from Time Magazine. So they did a full feature on my business. So it came with some credibility. But out of the those emails that I sent, the majority agreed to see me and I met playford Capital back then and Deloitte and red sand KPMG mentalisn, MHM. There was a paragon funds, etc. And there was no agenda other than this one imprinted principle in my brain, build a network before you need a network. Right? So I had all this time to go and meet people. While my wife was pregnant, I was writing a book and just learn about Adelaide without selling them anything with many of those people, they were interested in the states and how things were and so forth. And they ended up being friends kind of for the for the long haul. So the building the network is a really important
Daniel Franco:that without a doubt, yeah. So the example of thing learning Adelaide is a good one. But what about people who've been there late or been in that state for a long time? What's the sort of? Do you have a tip on? What they go to could be? it just learning about your industry? Yeah.
Matthew Michalewicz:But it comes back to what their goal is. Yeah. So my goal was, I knew I would start another business and I needed kind of the lay of the land. All of those I wanted to meet people of influence partners and law firms partners and accountants.
Daniel Franco:if you're if you're interested in health industry, yeah, don't target those people in the health industry.
Matthew Michalewicz:And it could be venture capital funds. It could be media that covers health, you could cover you could cover it from a wide variety of different angles. It doesn't just have
Daniel Franco:to just anyone and just try to build that network. Correct. Correct. Reach out with an email, though. Yeah,
Matthew Michalewicz:then again today. The reason I hesitate is just today's time, today's you're getting bombarded with correctly, everyone's sending emails. And it's just more difficult than then. Oh, yeah.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. No, I smell you finding the same as why I own a small business and just having a title Director. I get my inboxes full with emails. Yep. Yeah. So I hear you, I guess, the struggle is, how do you get face to face with these people without?
Matthew Michalewicz:Yep, go through your current network? network? Yeah. Is there is you know, I looked at degrees of separation and LinkedIn. Yeah, I remember, one thing that I did at the beginning, I don't think this exists anymore when I came tattle is that I took a class. And I can't remember who put it on, it might have been the Department of Economic Development, or it might have been some other organization anyways, around networking. And it was such an interesting class, probably 20 people in it. And the facilitator showed us how to do polite knocking at events if you want to join a conversation, etc. But at the end of the day, you had met 20 other people, and you had learned some skills around networking events, and what to do and so forth. So I think like, all of the questions that you're asking can be coupled to a statement you made earlier books exist, that talk in detail to those subjects. Right. So if your network is weak by a book on how to grow your network, yeah, that's the kind of the first step and and and with the caveat, that it's just more difficult in this environment than it would have been half a year ago. Yeah,
Daniel Franco:absolutely. Beautiful. I'm just conscious of your time. A few, just a few other questions. what's what's next, for Matthew?
Matthew Michalewicz:It depends on the time horizon, you know, I don't think there'll be much change over the next three years, the business will continue. They'll be a few new books and so forth. But at some point, when the company is listed, it, it requires even less involvement to have my own add left to right, you know, a dozen books. And I'd love to team up with a few people that I've been talking to over the years, and perhaps make a film, something to do like comedy around like office space, or something along those lines, I'm not talking about you know, like command, terminator, as much as I would like to make a movie like that. But something that you could realistically make as an independent filmmaker, and you could write a script for on subject matter that you know, very well, corporate world that you can make engaging and entertaining and which could be filmed in Adelaide, and so forth. So that is kind of where my head is. My kids are 15 and about to turn 14. So you've got the high school years and so on. And I've greatly enjoyed living in Adelaide, and like, there's a quote I'll tell you about in a second. I think I'll live here for the rest of my life and kind of be buried here or claim Yeah. That's perfectly fine. reminds you of the scene in Return of the Jedi, where there were Luke Skywalker and Han Solo on that little skiff and they're about to be thrown into that hole. And in Luke Skywalker tells Han Solo I was born here. You No and Han Solo turn sim says you'll die here, you might have not been born in Adelaide, but you have the feeling you love it so much that you'll end up passing here.
Daniel Franco:So the book releases that we've got some,
Matthew Michalewicz:yeah. Next year, we'll release the one on artificial intelligence. And then I hope maybe late that year or early The following is I want to release a book that is on business to business selling. And it's what I talked to you about earlier this morning, everything that I've learned over 25 years around effective selling in a business business environment, because in my view without being really good at selling all of the other stuff doesn't matter. Yeah, there's I really believe in the quote, nothing happens until a sale is made. It's the beginning. It's you know, the car being put into first gear and the clutch being released, all the other things fall into place behind that. Absolutely.
Daniel Franco:that opens the doors to a couple of extra podcasts there on artificial intelligence and sales and sales. I'd pick a team to get you here on the sales one, too. I know Michelle, out my business partner. She's like you're talking about artificial intelligence today. I said, No, no, that'll be the next one. So I wanted to listen to that. No problem problem. So yeah, we've got if we don't live far apart, yeah, exactly easy to organize Excel over. So the one question that I asked, everyone who comes on the show is, what is your favorite book? Yeah. And on number two to that, what is the book that you've recommend the most
Matthew Michalewicz:favorite book. It could also be the one that I recommend the most, but I'm not sure. But it's by jack London. It's called Martin Eden. And it's a semi autobiographical book, it's considered one of the top 100 books ever written. It's much it's much better than Call of the Wild the white thing, but describes his journey in a novel of being penniless nobody, and becoming one of the most famous writers in the world. And his journey and the work required to achieve it. I've probably read that book hundreds of times I know it by heart, I can quote it. Because not only is the story so incredible, it's like, you know, Total Recall, you read about the work is just unbelievable. But it's a gripping book around romance, the why he did it, and he's caught he's not jack London in the book. He's Martin Eden. So it's so it's his most powerful book, because he personified the protagonist with himself in it and related to talk to him so much. So I will end this. The second reason I love it is it's beautifully written. So not only is it a masterful story with an incredible amount of truth to it, but the language and the way it's written is is beautiful as well. My second favorite book is called Captain blood by Raphael Sabatini. It's a pirate story that's been made into movies many times. And my own personal creed, as an entrepreneur kind of comes from that book about loyalty to your team, having a small group of people that accomplish the impossible. And when I often send books out, or I have friends that I meet with, those are probably the two books that mean the most to me, that I send because they're very, they influenced me in a very profound way, like Martin need, and I read it when I was 16. And it showed me what can be achieved when you work hard. And Captain blood, I read it around the same time showed what a leader should be like, in very difficult circumstances, and so on. And there's millions of other books that I've read that are practical nonfiction books. And you know, over time they come and go, there's new books, etc. But the kind of classic literature of a story that you changed your life where you read and you remember the character
Daniel Franco:Well, that's the alchemist, correct.
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah. See, it's the same kind of thing. It has that novel, look to it.
Daniel Franco:Sorry, but it's a story of hardship. It's a story of growth. Yep. Yeah. So amazing. What is one thing that you do on a daily basis
Matthew Michalewicz:workout
Daniel Franco:workout? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed a bit of Wow,
Matthew Michalewicz:I'm gonna go running after this. Yeah, you've inspired me to lose kilos. gonna skip lunch if I run 10 kilometers
Daniel Franco:after the one
Matthew Michalewicz:I don't know. We'll have to fit it in I've when I was younger, I thought that I could be a champion bodybuilder.
Daniel Franco:And is that way fitness is what was it fitness
Matthew Michalewicz:forever. Even before that time I the first time I ever lifted a barbell was when I was 14. And since that day, I don't think a week has gone like I've had a few injuries that that have forced breaks but even those breaks were very, very short. And I've got a big gym in my home and it's a it's a it's I don't feel good unless I feel in the morning the the the feeling of cold weight crushing you. And I know it sounds crazy. And I'm sure there's some kind of chemical explanation, endorphins being released, etc. But it kind of sets you up for the whole day with an amazing energy positivity and so forth. And I love it.
Daniel Franco:Is that your type of meditation? I guess?
Matthew Michalewicz:I don't meditate. So I don't know what like I've read books. But don't meditate myself.
Daniel Franco:I think what it does is it you can't, you're concentrating on your soul thing is to live.
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, you don't think about other things. It just Yeah, like you really enjoy, like, I play music that I like. And I've always enjoyed. And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, you have to enjoy the thing that you're doing. So it doesn't matter. I don't go and lift for a commercial reason. Just like I'm not writing a fiction book for commercial it's just the love of it, and so forth. So the closer you can make your goals to that kind of intrinsic love that you have for certain things, personal interests, etc, the more likely you are to succeed, because those things are things you would do anyway. Yeah, they're just things you're inherently interested in.
Daniel Franco:a grade I, I was working out all the time I was doing the F 45 is hardcore. And I fell in love with it, not because of the fitness piece, but because of the community that it creates. Does that mean the same people every morning, having you there for 45 minutes, you know, sweating, sweating and our together pushing each other. And then you go off to work. And you talk about networking? Yeah, some of those people have ended up being clients of ours. Fantastic. just purely because you know, your relationship zone without really, you build a level of trust with these guys, because you're helping them they're helping you. Yeah, yeah. So the workout thing I need to get back to it is COVID put out a few of the really put on a few kilos. And in fact, upon reading and re re re read the book before we this interview today. And the fitness thing that you go into and how you concentrate on your health and fitness is ring. I've sent an email last night actually to say can I respond back? I need to do something to get back into it. Because I feel like my body is shutting down now in the sense like I feel like my back's always sore from leaning over. Whereas just going up and stretching, you know lifting weights and even going for a run or just moving in. Without a doubt. Yeah, without I was once told a quote to rest is to rust. And yeah, I can feel that happening. Yeah, body now
Matthew Michalewicz:The body unfortunately is going back to the statement I made earlier one that preserves calories. And muscles continuously require calories to sustain themselves. So what the body does is it eliminates any muscles that you don't use. In fact, I read a quote from an article about space travel for astronauts space travel, but astronauts going up into the space station. And if they didn't work out, they would lose in some incredible amount. I think it was something like 20% of their muscle tissue in two weeks, or something like that, imagine like like instantly disappears and they lose 1% of their bone mass, I think a month or something like that. So the body immediately start cannibalizes itself to get rid of tissue that requires calories to sustain itself. And then once Of course you've got less tissue, there's less calories being burned. So it's easier to get fat, you're
Daniel Franco:This feeling of getting out of bed now post weaker, structurally weaker, it's easier to injure yourself pull lower back, you begin feeling aches that you didn't have before. So it's absolutely critical to to push the body in an intense way. So that the body signals I have to have these muscles because on a regular basis and being exposed to these kind three months ago when I was training. Yeah. All right. I got out of bed and I was sore because of training.
Matthew Michalewicz:Yeah, it's sore from laying down. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:I'm sore from laying down. What is that? But I'm not that old. That's what is throwing me here is like something is really wrong that I'm feeling sore from doing nothing. Yeah, that's a problem. So yeah, I'm definitely getting back on the horse. Fantastic. So thank you very much pleasure time today. It has been an amazing and insightful podcast. And just yeah, I could tell next time we could go for hours. Yeah, absolutely next time so let's book him in depth. Hey, I will make it we'll make we'll make it in some time but I'm
Matthew Michalewicz:I'm easy to find. Whether it's on Faceboo sure the listeners will get lots out of this. Where can we find LinkedIn, I've got the book ha a website life and a halfase you? Do you want to be found and where can ond.com. And I've got a personal website my last name which is M ke which.com.au. Michael wh ch What did I say? mccalla Wi s as either Okay, and then the c mpany has website complexica com. So, yeah, I'm not one to hide.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, right. And there's a fair few YouTube videos. Yeah, I think are worthwhile watching that as well. We've got some good content. Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you very much pleasure, Daniel. Till next time, easy. Bye bye.
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