Dreaming for a Living with Paul Barry

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Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to Milestone, episode 350 of the Business Development Podcast.

And today I have an absolutely incredible individual to introduce you to.

Today we're speaking with Paul Berry.

Paul is a TEDx speaker, author and ikigai consultant who has spent his life at the intersection of performance coaching and transformation.

With over two decades as an acting teacher at neda.

Director and performer, Paul brings a deep understanding of human behavior, storytelling and presence.

He has founded multiple ventures, spoken on international stages, and guided leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives through the process of aligning what they love, what they're great at, what the world needs, and what they can be paid for their true ikigai.

Today, Paul is focused on helping people cut through the noise, rediscover their authentic DNA, and build lives of meaning and adventure.

Whether through his upcoming Pacific Crest Trail fundraiser, his creative projects, or his work as a Nikki Guy coach, Paul embodies the belief that you don't have to do just one thing to live fully.

You just have to do the right thing for you.

He's proof that when you align passion with purpose, you don't just make a living, you make a life.

Paul, it's an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to have you on our stage today.

That's easy for you to say.

Thank you so much.

And I have to say, as you were giving me the wonderful intro, I remembered a Perth radio station back in Australia that interviewed me years ago and they did this amazing, glowing opening and told all the wonderful things that I'd done in my life.

And then they said, welcome, Paul.

And I had to tell them that that was the wrong Paul Barry, that they just.

I'd never been a journalist.

I'd never lived in England.

I'd never done that.

Oh, wow.

I am the guy that you introduced.

Well, and.

And the listeners will never know, but I. I got so twisted and tongue tied because you're just too damn epic.

But you, you're such a professional.

You smiled your way through it and you got here, so that's a good thing.

Oh, my goodness.

Man, it's crazy.

350 Episodes as of the release of this, actually, this weekend, we're technically releasing episode 272.

So we are ahead.

We're living in the future right now.

Like, I think right now.

You mentioned you are on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Yeah.

I mean, if people are hearing this, that's where you are.

I don't know how much I can say right now, but I think I'm halfway in Canada now.

I can come so hard.

Well, I hope.

Yeah, it's pretty beautiful, I bet.

Especially by the time you get to the Canada side.

So I hope you're having an incredible trip.

I hope you're safe.

I hope that life is treating you incredibly.

But, yes, as of the moment, we are here in this podcast.

Man, I'm excited to chat with you.

You've had an incredible career.

We've spoken multiple times at this point.

Every time I talk to you, Paul, I leave with a smile on my face.

You literally just have that incredible energy everywhere you go that just makes people light up, makes people happy.

And I'm just excited to have, like I said, this conversation with you today.

And who knows, maybe we'll set a few people on a cool new path that they never really thought about before.

I hope so, if it's the time for them.

Yeah.

And I think the first thing that I would sort of talk about when I talk about what I do is that you remember the unconscious incompetence going to Abraham Maslow's unconscious incompetence going to conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and then unconscious competence.

This is a concept that came to.

That was introduced to me maybe 20 years ago, but it kind of changed everything in terms of my teaching and my coaching, my business and my life.

So what I'm hoping, at the very least today, is that a lot of people who are unconsciously incompetent at the idea of ikigai or some of the stuff we're talking about will, at the very least now start to see it everywhere in their life and start to see the questions coming up.

I don't know that anyone's necessarily going to change their life in a second.

Hopefully, maybe if the time is right, as I say.

But at the very least, I think if you are.

If you just don't know what you don't know.

So today, everybody, you're going to know some stuff.

You're going to know whether you like it or not.

I'm going to say you can't unknow something, Paul.

You can't unknow what the red pill.

Or the blue pill.

You better be ready for the red pill or the blue pill.

Whatever's fun.

But yes, yes.

Well, we could say going down the rabbit hole, and that'll make way more sense to people later,.

Even sense to you and me.

But, you know.

That's right.

That's right, Paul.

You know, for the people listening, I'm excited, like I said, to kind of get into the teachings today, chat a little bit about Icky Guy, which is something just hasn't come up too much on this show.

And, you know, 350 episodes, which is pretty incredible.

I think it's going to be a bit of a milestone episode for a lot of people and maybe, maybe a game changer for a lot of people.

But before we do that, I would love to just better understand you and your story.

We were talking before, and I was like.

I was like, so you're from Australia?

You're like, no, Papua New Guinea.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, I clearly don't know anything about geography.

Well, the interesting part about that is that I come from.

Was born in a tiny little town called Popondetta, which had about maybe 200 people in it, in a place called Papua New guinea, png, as we call it.

And it was actually a part of Australia.

It was a colony of Australia when I was born.

That old.

That I was a part of a disbanded colony when I was born.

It's, like, different.

While the Romans took over Gaul, or after Gaul, anyway.

So I was born there, and my dad was a teacher and my mom wasn't a nurse yet.

She was raising a family.

But my parents talk a lot about how it would have been impossible to raise five kids.

I'm the youngest of five kids.

It would have been impossible for them as a teacher and a nurse, to raise five kids unless they were in a place like that.

They got this wonderful opportunity in this beautiful, safe place with amazing people.

And just think about just living on a beautiful island in the middle of the Pacific.

And he was teaching, and they were.

It was small and it was safe and it was fun.

And then we moved to the thriving metropolis of a town with Six and a half thousand people in Australia.

So it went from 200 people to six and a half thousand people.

And then I grew up there until I went to uni, where I thought, you know what?

I'm sick of these big cities.

I'm going to go to an even bigger city which had 20,000 people in it.

Yeah.

And then eventually got into drama school and went to Sydney where there was a couple of million people.

And I was literally walking down the streets.

Like I was walking through South Central LA in the 80s.

I was like, oh, my God.

I was thinking I was gonna get attacked or something and no one cared.

And so then I spent three years studying drama there and acting and came out and started teaching there as well as being a professional actor for 16 years.

Moved over here to Santa Monica, Louisiana.

Santa Monica in particular, in 2010, continued the teaching for a little bit, then wound that up after I did my TEDx talk about acting.

I'd written a book, 60 articles for Backstage.

See still see actors.

I taught on film and TV and commercial.

That's cool.

And then I was like, you know what?

I really, I really need to just put that behind me and just see what comes next.

But I didn't want to just go back to complete scratch from anything.

So I started thinking, what would I do?

Well, I've been a coach for so long, I just have been coaching acting, something else.

I could coach like corporate communication or speaking or writing or anything.

Then that would be a kind of cool way to segue into a new field, but not starting entirely from scratch.

And I sort of got into high ticket coaching and consulting.

And then I started helping people grow high ticket coaching and consulting programs to either start them or build them or grow them.

Yeah.

And then because they weren't doing what I was telling them to do, I started an agency.

So I would just do it for them.

And then after the pandemic hit and like, so many people lost, I think 20 grand in the first week of the pandemic.

And it took a year to recover from that.

And then I was like, cool, things are going okay.

And then my mom and dad both got cancer back in Australia.

So I went back to Australia and I nursed my mom for a few months until she passed and spent that beautiful time with her.

And my dad came out of a major operation and I nursed him for the next 10 months and he's still happily alive today and almost 92.

Wow.

And then by the time I came back, and this is where it really takes us up to what we're talking about today.

By the time I came back to LA and I was sitting here basically with a clean slate yet again in my life, which has happened a number of times, and I was like, man, what am I going to do?

I've got to get a job.

Do I start another company?

I've got a million ideas, which direction do I go?

And I was like, hang on.

How many times have you had clients that you've spoken to about Ikigai because they got a business and they come to you saying, I need cold email, I need Facebook ads, I need a new website.

And the first conversation I have with them is, can we just put that back 15 minutes?

And like, you're asking me now, let's go back to the start.

Have you heard of Simon Sinek?

Starting with the why?

And I talk to them about where do they want their life to be in the end?

Why did they start this business?

What is the purpose of this business for them?

How do they want this business to make them feel?

And then are all of those things being checked off?

And almost universally the answer, other than you, the answer is pretty much no.

Some of them, a couple of them, maybe three of them.

But not all.

Four major qualities in ikigai are being checked off.

And we rationalize and justify that by saying, yes, but it pays the bills.

And in another 10 years, I'll have more than enough money to be able to go and do whatever I want.

We all know it doesn't work that way.

So I came back and I said, well, I've had this conversation with so many people about ichigai, but I've never properly done my own exercise on ikigai.

I've never done it for myself.

So I did the list.

So ikigai is four circles, overlapping what you love, what you do well, what you can get paid for and what the world needs.

Now many of us are doing what pays well or what we love or where.

Like me looking after my mom and dad, I was doing what my world needed.

They needed to be looked after.

Yeah.

Or doing something that I'm really good at, like acting or performing, but if it's not paying, it's not helping anyone and nobody wants it, then what's the point?

So I went through and I took what I loved and I just wrote a massive, exhaustive list of everything that I love.

And then I had to keep reminding myself, and this is what I tell everyone, had to keep reminding myself not to try and make what I love fit into one of these other Circles, because that's a later job.

The first job right now is what you love, because if you start jumping ahead, you'll miss out on so many things that you love because you'll say, I can't get paid for that.

No one knew that.

I'm not even good at it right now.

So you start by saying, what are all the things I love?

So you can go on.

You can say, hey, ChatGPT, I'm going to call you Bob going forward.

Can you please confirm?

Hi, yes, I'm Bob.

Great, Bob.

I was just listening to this guy on a podcast talk about the Japanese concept of ikigai.

And I'm really interested to see if I'm already fulfilling my ikigai or if there's something I can explore there.

And Bob's gonna say, fantastic.

What a great concept.

What do you currently do?

And then have that conversation.

And if Bob stops talking to you, you just simply say, keep asking me questions until you think I've gotten to something that could be my ikigai.

So let's start with what I love.

Oh, what do you love?

Give me a list of everything you love.

I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I hate vegemite.

I love vb, but I hate fosters.

All of the cliches that you think about Australians, completely incorrect.

And just go through what I love.

I love family.

I love changing the world.

I love being passionate.

I love conversation.

I love building communities.

I love all of that.

Great, fantastic.

Now make a list of that, Bob.

I'm going to come back to that.

And then what's the next thing?

And Bubble said, well, what are you good at?

And you say, well, I'm really good at, you know, making risotto.

Mushroom risotto with a beautiful white wine and fantastic.

You think, how on earth is this going to have anything to do with my ikigai?

And then what can you get paid for?

And that can include folding laundry, babysitting, driving a carpool, whatever, anything, Anything at all that you could get paid for.

Plus the stuff you have obviously been paid for as a professional.

And then what the world needs.

And some may even say, hey, start there.

But what does the world need?

The world needs more simple conversation.

It needs people to be more filled with love and passion rather than anger and hate and fear.

It needs truth, not fake news being put out constantly, all the time.

It needs clean water.

It needs education.

It needs people to believe that maybe there's something bigger than themselves in the universe.

Whatever it is that you think or believe or desire for.

The world to need.

And you're like, clearly, they need this.

Now you're starting to see if the world needs it and you can be paid for it, then you've got a job and there is a market for it, or there is a market for it and you got a job.

But there's no point if there's a market and you've got a job, if it's not something that you love or that you're even good at.

And we often think, you know, Richard Branson was the one that said, if someone comes to you with an opportunity that's amazing, just say yes and then work it out later.

And part of me feels like that's a great piece of advice, and part of me feels like that's a terrible piece of advice because that's a great icagui job for someone who already loves and is good at that thing.

Like, if you take it, you're really, like, stopping somebody who could be much better and enjoy it more.

And maybe what he meant is, say yes, take it, find that person, give it to that person, take a finder's fee, and then say to them, when you see something that's great for me, please hand it on to me, and I will do the same, or we'll just swap it, because that's just what we do.

But I've always been a big learner of new stuff.

I can do lots of different things.

I'm by no means a master of millions of different things.

But in this process of being interested in a lot of stuff, being curious about so many things, I've become good at a lot of different things to the level where most people will never even get to that level because they're all focused on one thing.

So I came back, looked at my acre guide, did all of that, and I was like, well, it has to involve communities, has to involve tech of some kind, has to involve changing people's lives, has to involve a sense of humor, has to involve the outdoors and so on.

And I just went through all of this, and the first thing that came to me was building.

Because by this point, I'd come back, and in the first year back, I'd hiked a couple of hundred miles all around the different trails around LA and been out to Arizona and Flagstaff and all sorts of different places.

So I was like, definitely.

It'd be great if it was, like, a hiking community or an outdoor community.

But I was like, I'm not into the RV community.

I'm not into the loud cars driving around so it's not all outdoors.

And I thought, definitely hiking, definitely.

And then I started getting into the through hiking world.

And I was like, oh, man, that through hiking world is really fascinating to me.

I've never even camped overnight once anywhere in my life.

And you were talking about hiking for five or six months from Mexico to Canada, and the idea kind of got in my brain and just started eating away.

But I'm like, okay, let's say I love that.

Let's say I could get good at that.

Does the world need it?

How can I make money from that?

Someone's going to pay me to just hike.

This is where you start going, hey, Bob on ChatGPT, how would I make money by hiking the PCT and straight away, write a blog, create a YouTube channel, start putting shorts on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, everywhere, get sponsors.

And then when I started thinking that way, I started thinking, well, actually, when my mom passed, she said, I don't want anybody to buy me flowers.

Tell them to donate that money.

It's just a waste of money.

Tell them to donate that to the leukemia foundation.

And if they want to, they can do that in my name.

And so everybody, we told everybody to do that.

And she raised some money for leukemia before she passed, and in fact, posthumously.

She was that clever.

She raised this money after she'd actually died.

She's a very clever lady.

And at that point, I'd said to myself, I would like to do something to raise money for the leukemia foundation in her name.

And then I started thinking, after a year, when I hadn't done it yet, I was like, you know what?

I've hiked so many miles.

If I was raising 10 cents a mile from a few hundred people, I would have raised a stack of money right now, some money anyway to give to the Leukemia foundation.

And as I started doing that, I started thinking, pct, Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide, the long trails in New Zealand, hiking across Australia.

And I was like, if I did this as a thing, this could raise money.

It's not money for me, so I wouldn't get paid for it, but it would fulfill what the world needs.

And the world needs a cure for cancer.

That is one thing.

The world needs my world, me and my mom.

My world needs me to have that full grieving process and for me to fulfill what I said I would do for mom, which is what I said, not to her, but I would do, which is in her name, raise money for the Leukemia foundation in her name.

So that covered what does the world need at least?

And I was like, okay, so if I'm doing that, then I feel very good that I'm not just being selfish.

And what do I love?

I love the outdoors, I love hiking, I love challenging myself.

But it's not just that.

I love the community as well.

I love content creation as well.

I'm actually really good at it.

I used to be a filmmaker and I still want to be a filmmaker.

Which makes me then come back and say, can I be a filmmaker on the trail?

Of course I can.

So that draws in another thing that I'm good at.

Yeah, the world needs to be able to see more of the world and people who want to thru hike need to see what it's like.

So that world needs it as well.

That gets to fulfill what I'm really good at.

What I love, love the storytelling, love the filmmaking, love the outdoors, love the community.

Can I get paid for that?

If I put it on social media, go on YouTube, have a Patreon, build a network, then there can be patrons supporting me, but also sponsors in advance.

I can say, hey, I'm going to do this to raise money for the Leukemia foundation, but I need to be able to afford to go, so what if you sponsor me with to the tune of X amount of dollars?

So you see how like.

And as we said in another conversation, ikigai is not a fixed position.

If I'd done my ikigai before Australia, it would have been very different.

If I'd have done it 20 years ago, it would have been very, very different.

If I do it in 10 years time or even 5 years or even at the end of the PCT, it may be very, or wherever I get to on the pct, it may be very, very different.

But I love the fact that I can always come back to it like my North Star or a guiding star.

And I can say to myself, why am I not feeling great right now?

Everything seems to be fantastic, but I'm just not feeling great.

And a lot of people, you and I talked about this knowing that there are a lot of people who have this feeling everything's going great.

They got the money, they got the relationship, they got the car, they got the house.

And they're just like in themselves.

They don't believe the world even needs what they do.

Oh wow, that's powerful.

And, and I'm just gonna maybe bring our listeners in on, on what it is we're talking about.

Cause that's a bit of an inside conversation, but I was recently speaking with an incredibly wealthy, incredibly experienced entrepreneur who at the height of their career, found themselves wanting to kill themselves, but ultimately had everything.

Basically said, I had the.

I had the sports car, I had the money, I had the houses, I had the vacation property, I had my family, and I hated myself.

That was literally the words out of this conversation.

And it blew me away.

Because it's everything that, from the outside looking in, that you would think that someone would need to be happy.

And anyways, that brings them back into what we were talking about.

How many times in our.

In our lives have we heard that someone has taken that extreme measure?

And I've had a few friends that have, unfortunately.

And everybody says, oh, wow.

But everything was so great for them.

First of all, as I said to people all the time, like we used to say in sales and marketing, like, don't spend money from someone else's wallet.

You have no idea what they have in there.

And emotionally, don't make judgments based on what you think someone else is going through.

Good, bad, or indifferent.

You have no idea.

Their life can look really tough.

And they're like Daniel Day Lewis used to say.

But I think people think that I'm a lot more depressing than I actually am.

I'm actually a pretty upbeat person when I play these characters.

Like, I really get into them, and people think that I'm torturing myself.

I'm honestly not.

I'm just working out.

There's a problem with the character, and I'm just constantly trying to work out how to solve it.

And eventually you solve it, and then you move on to the next thing.

So there are people that we think are in dark places and they're not, and people we think are in light places and they're not.

But that's why I want ikigai to become so much more a part of our everyday conversation.

Because imagine, like, being at when you say to someone, are you happy right now?

And they go, I think so.

End of conversation, huh?

No, tell me which parts of your life you're happy in.

Because if someone's like, well, you hear people talk about their job and they're like, I like my job and it's good, and there's possibilities for career advancement, but I don't really get away enough, and I'd love to go head off with the family, and I don't know, sometimes I just don't feel it's that fulfilling.

Well, ikigai will answer all of those questions for you.

Whether you know it, whether you do the work, whether you follow through on it, or whether you take action on it or not is another story.

But if you were to ask Ikigai and you can do this through Bob Bob pt.

If you were to ask and say, listen, this is what I do, this is what I love about it, this is what I'm good about it.

This is what frustrates me instead of just saying, should I stay in this job?

Well, your boss sounds like a bit of an asshole.

Maybe you could get another job just like that with a nicer boss and then you move to a same job, a little more pay, nicer boss, and you're still not fulfilled.

Well, it's because you don't believe that selling what you're selling or promoting what you're promoting or making what you're making is even necessary in the world.

And I watch a lot of influencers on YouTube, especially in political discourse, and they know that the world does not need what they are selling, but they are loving how much money they're making from dividing people.

And so if I could just get even those people to question, take a weekend away, just stop at the bullshit for a second and just do what Russell Brunson did when he was going through his kind of like, what do we do next with ClickFunnels.

And he caught up with, spent some time with Tony Robbins.

And Tony Robbins really got to the bottom of what he wanted when he started the company.

And what he wanted was not to be the CEO of a company.

What he wanted was to make websites buildable by any small business owner so it didn't cost them a fortune, take them forever and prevent them from getting to selling stuff, which is where they make the money and then they can have the life that they want.

So Tony Robbins said to him, it sounds like you might want to be the chairman and get someone else to be the CEO.

He's a smart guy, he could have worked that out.

But he didn't take the time to get into that open meditative state and get that inspiration either from a literal mentor or divine inspiration, wherever it comes from, to say, huh, yeah, right.

Maybe.

Even though I think this position can get me what I want, it's not.

It's just not.

And I went through that myself recently with an app that we built.

And when I came back and I met my business partner, I was like, this is it.

This is my acre guy.

It's got tech, it's got community.

We can make a lot of money from this.

It can really change the world.

And then I realized the platform that we built this on was just not going to evolve Quick enough.

It was built prior to integrated developer environments where you can just quickly do stuff with AI.

Gotcha.

And so then by the time we started trying to use it, we were undoing stuff while we were doing stuff.

And eventually I got to the point where I was like, we're going to have to start from scratch anyway.

And then I said, okay, if I were to start a company from scratch right now, would it be this company?

Wow.

I want to talk to you about that really briefly because that can't be an easy decision, especially not once you've dumped many, many, many hundreds of hours into developing something.

Walk me through that conversation, because I think there's a lot of people who would say I've dumped, I've invested way too much time in this.

We're just going to start fresh.

Yeah.

And I had dear friends saying to me for a month, if not couple of months leading up to the decision, so I was CEO of the company.

So I had to tell the board, this is what I think we should do.

And sometimes they'd be like, oh, I'm not sure we should continue.

And I'd say, no, look, this is, I think this is going to work.

And then they were like, all right.

And then I had to say to them, it's not.

You're all right, it's not going to work.

But, you know, we gave it everything we could.

But I had people telling me from the outside, I really think you should cut your losses and you should move on.

But I had a lot of faith in the idea.

But I think my faith was more in the idea than our ability to execute on that idea.

And had I, had I started from scratch the day I came to the company, we would have built it pretty quickly and it would have filled almost the entire roadmap that I had in my mind.

And even if that had failed, it would have failed much quicker, a lot less expensively.

And a lot of people who quit their full time jobs to work for us and then had to go back and find work again, we could have saved them a lot of heartache.

But I have to say, the ending of a company is, as my mentor was telling me, it's never easy, but you have to let yourself off the hook by saying it actually happens all the time.

Most companies don't succeed in that.

They don't become unicorns, but there is success in what you've created and you iterate and you change and sometimes the same product has a different name.

Airbnb wouldn't have survived if they didn't go selling cereal of Obama and McCain before the elections.

And they made themselves like few hundred thousand dollars, which was enough to keep going until someone invested and said, look, if you can get people to buy that crap cereal, you can get people to host springs in their home.

And, you know, sometimes you got to do stuff that's completely tangential to your main thing to keep going.

And other times you just got to say, like I did.

My mission will never stop.

This is not the vehicle.

And I tried months beyond to make it the vehicle, but it wasn't the vehicle.

And while you're doing something that's not the vehicle, you're doing a disservice to the investors, to the team, and ultimately, as the captain of the ship to yourself.

And because this was really the first time in my life, I think, that I had genuinely treated myself like, I'm going to be the last person on this ship when it goes down.

I'm going to be the captain that goes down the ship.

When it came time to tell the users, to tell the investors, to tell the team, to tell our channel partners, everybody, other than one person, everybody was universally supportive.

Not just supportive, like they were over the top.

You did everything.

This happens.

The mission continues.

I'll be there to support you whatever you do next.

You've done amazing things.

Nobody could have got this as far as you did.

Not just friends, like strangers, channel partners, all sorts of people.

And I think that comes with really being respectful with everybody along the way, really thanking everybody for everything they're doing along the way, Even when the money starts to run out and you can't pay people, giving them an honest, unambiguous option, which is, I would love you to continue with us and take the risk with us, but if you can't, I absolutely understand not tricking them into, yeah, I'll pay you later, or something like that.

So by the time it ended, there was one person who'd been given a lifetime discount for 50 bucks and been refunded in full and was threatening to go to some consumer body or something.

I was like, dude, please.

I'll see you in court.

No worries.

That's awesome.

I'll be lovely to meet you in person.

Other than that, everybody was just amazing.

And I think I loved that aspect of it so much.

If that was all I learned from the experience, if that was all I got from the experience, then I would carry that into whatever the next venture is.

To say this, we all know that anything can fail, but it's not going to fail for Lack of trying.

It's not going to fail for lack of passion.

It's not going to fail for ego or laziness or bullying or any of the crap that goes on in business.

Sometimes it's going to fail because it simply isn't a market for it or it's simply not the time for it.

And I think in some ways, we were way ahead of our time, and then in other ways, we just got there too late.

And that's.

That's not the way to create some fantastic new.

That's not a way to create some fantastic new app that needs to be bringing on thousands of people a week when you're starting out to prove that it's.

It's got legs.

Either way, incredibly commendable.

You did come an incredibly long way.

Like, we.

We actually talked when you were still doing this particular project, and you were telling me some of the successes you'd had along the way and some of the.

The channel partners that you'd already connected with.

You guys had done an incredible, incredible, incredible job.

Thank you.

I was surprised to hear that, that you'd chosen to pull the plug on it, but obviously there were lots of things that went into that decision.

And I guess for me, the question that I have for you as the leader was how.

Obviously that has to be really hard, right?

Regardless of, like, you know, regardless of.

Of if it was the right thing to do or not making the decision to just be like, okay, like, I've already invested tons of my time, my.

My money, investors money, and now we have to pull the plug on that.

I would just love to.

I would love to understand from you.

And for our listeners who maybe are struggling in their own organizations right now, maybe they're having to get to the point where maybe next month they're gonna have to pull the plug if things don't turn around on them.

Talk to me about the mindset, the.

And by the way, this is very off topic to where we were going with this, but I think there's.

I think there's a very valuable lesson in this because of this challenge and your choices and how you got through it, and frankly, just how optimist or optimistic and just, like, positive you are as a person, how were you able to justify the loss or, like, the failure inside and not take it as a personal failure?

I think I did.

I mean, I.

When you're in a relationship for years and then that relationship ends, even though you know it's not right anymore, you can't help but think about what you would do differently.

When every time someone has said to me, oh, I'd go back and I wouldn't change a thing, I think you're an idiot.

I would change everything, if only to see what happens.

That's different, you know?

Sure.

Because everyone says understandably, like if you.

All of the failures that you made, all the things you did wrong, they've made you who you are today.

Fantastic.

So I would like to go back and fail at a whole bunch of new things because they will also turn me into whoever I'm going to be next.

There's no downside to going back and changing things.

I don't dwell on stuff.

I'm not sitting living in regret.

But I look back and I think of all the decisions that I would have made differently.

But this is where it ties into what we're talking about.

Ikigai.

I keep thinking I came to the company and I started working with the company.

I basically pitched to my business partner, my then soon to become business partner.

I pitched to him something that he should do, I think with the company to use AI and conversational AI in particular to make habit building conversational so people could literally just talk to it and it could help them build habits.

And in that conversation I realized, if anyone's going to do this, I'm the person that should be doing this.

And so the conversation ended with.

And we'd had a few conversations like you and I have about his company.

And I thought at first, oh, it might be like a consulting gig.

And then I got to the end and I said, no, if anyone's going to do this, it should be me.

And I said, I think I should be the CEO of this company.

And within two minutes he accepted and said, I agree.

I think that's great.

You know, you finally got to the decision that I thought you should.

But my whole pitch was based on this is this is my ikigai right now.

Everything that I love, that I'm good at, that the world needs, as far as I'm concerned.

And I know it's a starter, but if you can pay me, then this is my ikigai.

And so we worked out something that would get me to my ikigai.

But what I didn't do in the whole process was do regular check backs to see if this is still my ikigai.

And so when you ask me about, like, what should people do if they're thinking right now if their company's going to fail and it might wrap up, you know, they might have to fold in two months or Something, and everyone's telling them, no, don't be a failure.

You got to push through.

Like, you know, Alex Herlosi can make this a success.

So why can't you make.

No, Alex might just go, dude, just dump it in the trash.

Mr.

Wonderful would say, take it out behind the barn and shoot it.

Not because this can't be an amazing idea, but because while you're holding onto this dog of an idea or this wounded thorn of an idea, you cannot be starting something that is a unicorn.

You can't be creating something that is a slam dunk.

I think we said the other day, Howard Aiken, who invented the first IBM computer, said, don't worry about people stealing your ideas.

If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

I don't think that different types of meanings.

But I'm like, you might as well be just starting something brand new.

But go to your ichigai.

And I'd say to anyone who's thinking, gosh, this might wind up do this ichigai exercise.

Because you may be freaking out about having to close something that isn't your ichigai anyway.

It's not even three of these things.

It's not even two.

It's only one.

It pays me or I love it or I'm good at it, or it's a charity.

The world needs it, okay?

But if the whole thing is going to wind down and all you're getting from it personally is paying, all you're getting from it is the warm glow of feeling like it's going to change the world and it's about to close down.

Well, it's not doing either of those things anyway, because it's not going to pay you and it's not changing the world.

So what I'd say to everybody is, I would say look at your life right now and say, are you fulfilling your ikigai?

Because you might look at what you're doing and say, this concept is not working.

This app is not working.

This business is not working.

This community is not working.

Ah, I'm only doing two of those four things.

What if I bring in these?

There's a whole new offshoot of that same community of that same app.

Maybe we can use exactly the same tech that we used, but in a different format.

Now, that tech that wasn't working somewhere else because there's so much competition and we're so far behind.

Maybe that tech is actually future forward.

Like it's a future piece of tech for another niche.

Within a niche community like thru hiking that ideally love.

Ah.

So maybe I can tweak that tech and give it over here and I can charge for it.

And now I can get at least three of my ikigai.

So if anyone's thinking of wrapping something up, ask.

First of all, are you doing your ikigai right now?

Because if you're not, maybe that's not such a great tragedy, roughing it up.

And if your ikigai is slightly over here, maybe pivoting and iterating that more into something that is your ikigai is the thing that's gonna make it come back to life.

Okay.

Okay, that was gonna be.

My next question is like, do you have to have all four initially to win?

Like.

Cause obviously you might have a really great idea.

It might be lined up with your purpose, your passion, but it doesn't make money yet.

But that doesn't mean it can't make money.

It just means that you gotta get this idea off the ground before it does.

Would you still pursue that until you came to a conclusion that you couldn't get the fourth?

It's a really great question.

And I used to think that the purpose of ikigai is your work and your play and your love and all of that is all rolled into one all the time.

But I've come to the conclusion that your life just has to have the balance.

And so you may do a job that you are good at and you get paid really well for, but what you love is you just love hiking on the weekends and public holidays when you.

Whenever you get the chance.

And what the world needs is more trash to be picked up along these trails.

And so you take a garbage bag and you a trash bag and you just pick up stuff as you go.

And your life is, I'm doing good in the world.

I'm cleaning up the environment.

I'm doing it in a place I love.

I go to work.

And that pays for everything else.

If that makes you happy, then fantastic.

If that makes you fulfilled, fantastic.

So in answer to your question, if someone wants to start a business, but it doesn't pay, if something else is paying them, it doesn't really matter, does it?

But eventually, when we get to retirement, which typically I think we think of retirement as being, oh, thank God, all the work is done now I can do what I want.

But then a lot of people retire and then they die not long afterwards because they had a purpose to get up every day and do the work and do the job.

And then like, I knew People back in Australia who said their fathers died months after quitting work of 60 years of work because they just went bored to, literally bored to death, got nothing to do, got no purpose and they just didn't wake up.

So like, what is your purpose in your life?

And so let's say the first theory is correct, that your life and your work and everything can be all done together.

Which I still, I still believe, but I accept the other.

Then when you find it or when you create it, that thing by definition does not exist in the world.

So if I find this amazing piece of tech or a gadget that I can build specifically for thru hikers at a price point that they love and there's a market enough for it, and I'm really good at that, by definition that thing doesn't exist.

Therefore I'm in a category of one.

If there's a market for it, if I can charge for it, if I'm really good at it and I love it and there's no and I'm in a category of one, why wouldn't that become my life?

Like why wouldn't that be my entire life?

It's super interesting because when I'm hearing you say this, what I'm hearing is pretty much the story of nearly every entrepreneur I've ever met.

Yeah, they were passionate about something.

They wanted to be their own boss, they wanted to start and pave a brand new path.

Yeah, like to me, when you're talking about icky guy, all I'm thinking is, man, this is like entrepreneurship in general.

For the most part, I would say at least three out of the four parts, nine times out of 10, because most entrepreneurs are out trying to do something that has never been done before in their own very specific way.

So it almost immediately on day one falls apart.

When you try and do everything by yourself.

You're writing your own emails, you're doing your own marketing, you're trying to phone Walmart and everywhere and get your product in the store and you're getting doors slammed in your face all the time.

You don't love it, you love what you tried to create, but you don't love all of the shit you have to do to get there.

Most of the time you're not even good at it.

You watch Shark Tank and some people come on and they go, I just knocked on 5,000 doors and in a weekend I got my first deal with blah blah blah and I just hooked up with this person, now a multimillionaire, and I want you to invest in me Then you've got other people who've created amazing products, created beautiful brands.

They run a business brilliantly, but they suck at sales, they're terrible at cold calling.

And then they're told, you just gotta do it.

Mark Cuban's like, you just gotta go out there and you just gotta do it.

You gotta suck it up and get out there and do it.

You don't deserve to be rewarded if you don't.

Well, hang on.

Russell Brunson, on the other hand, would say to you, I've never run a Facebook ad in my life.

I don't even know where to start.

I went to people who know how to do it and I said, would you like to do it?

And they said, yeah.

And I was like, great, because I want to build websites, drag and drop websites.

He was really good at following.

Still to this day, I hope is really good at following what he loves, what he's good at.

He knows the world needed this because this didn't exist.

We have to get a web designer and pay them a fortune.

And they'd take forever.

Change one word, you'd have to pay him 50 bucks and wait three days till Monday for them to come back and change that work.

He knew that was a scam, that was stupid.

So the world needed it, he loved it, he was really good at it.

And yeah, he could get paid for that, right?

So when entrepreneurs start, of course we.

It's our ikigai.

We love the idea that we can make money from it.

It is what we love.

We think we're good at it and we believe the world needs it.

If we don't do market research, then we are saying, if we don't do market research, we are saying the world needs it without knowing whether the world needs it or we know some people need it.

Like, lots of people love buying my jams around my apartment complex, but then I go into a store and just crickets.

Like, nobody wants to buy my jams.

So market research is something that most of us don't do properly when we're entrepreneurs.

We are so in love with the idea of this that we don't do the market research.

And when my company ultimately failed, I said to myself, the next thing that I do that is a company or an idea like that, I am going to do proper market research on it before I go into it.

And it's like saying, you know what?

I'm not going to sleep with anyone on the first date.

I'm going to wait until I find the right person.

Oh, well, that didn't work.

What are you doing tomorrow?

That is a first for the show.

Oh, goodness.

Yeah.

No, I. I get what.

I get what you're saying.

Yeah.

Well, there.

I don't know.

Well, is there anything in life that is absolutely perfect that you just nail and you're like, I'm not doing the shit that I don't want to.

I feel like it doesn't matter what you do.

There's always probably something, but then that's part of those tasks.

That's why I love Ichigai, being a guiding star.

Because if you don't regularly come back and ask yourself whether it's ikigai or whatever philosophy or whatever concept you want to follow, however you do it.

I used to talk about being in a corridor, and there are two walls.

There's how I want to feel every day from when I wake up to when I go to sleep.

And there's what contribution do I want to make to this planet while I'm alive?

And when I was least fulfilled in my life, there were no walls on my corridor.

I was just all over the shop, or there was only one, and that was, I was doing what I loved, or I was only doing what other people needed.

And sometimes the corridor was narrow, sometimes the corridor was wide, but I could modulate that based on where I was at.

If I was feeling like everything was too good, or I was feeling like everything was too bad, then I could at least work it out.

When I then discovered ikigai, it filled in gaps that the corridor analogy had.

And so, like, I would just say to anybody, like, when you get to the point when you're doing stuff that you don't love, that's fine.

Do you still love the company and everything else?

Because if you do and you're doing some stuff you don't love, it's okay because you really love this.

But oftentimes we start doing the stuff we don't love for the thing we loved, and then we look back and we don't even love that thing anymore.

So now we've got two things that we don't love.

And we're doing it because it pays us, but it's not even paying us properly.

And then we start looking and we go, does anybody even want this?

Everyone's like, well, oh, my God, this is anti ikigai.

Like, this is.

Exactly goodness.

Yeah, no, I know.

I know what you mean.

I guess I just look at you.

Mean, there's things in my.

In my entrepreneurship day to day that, yeah, aren't.

Aren't Ideal, but I don't hate them.

Um, I think, you know, I talked about it kind of earlier on, and I feel like whenever I found myself being like, I don't want to do this anymore, I pivot.

I find something else that I also love to do, that maybe I love to do more than what I was doing previously.

Like, and, you know, I mean, this podcast was a great example of something that opened up a lot of doors and set me on a completely different path than I'd ever planned when I first launched my company.

Right.

Like, now I'm doing teaching and training and coaching and community building.

These weren't even part of the plans, but they definitely became the thing I love to do.

And so we kind of talked earlier on, and I said, like, is it possible to accidentally fall into your Gigi?

Because I think that's what happened to me.

Failing fast is really important.

And that's.

I've always thought I would love to have a podcast, but I think it's like, oh, I'd love to be married to Jennifer Garner.

I don't know.

You don't know?

I love the concept of being married to Jessica Biel, but I don't know if I would love that.

And ultimately, so, like, you got to try it.

You got to do it.

And I've got friends that have gone and they've done 50 podcasts, and then they're like, it's not for me.

But what you can't do is buy the microphone, spend all of this money on setting up your studio.

Don't do anything for three months.

Then you get in.

The first guest is crap.

And so that doesn't quite work.

And then you put out three different times that no one knows when they're coming.

Your friends don't even come.

And then you go, well, see, podcasting sucks.

Like, you have to do it right, do it quick, do it consistently, even if it means, like, I'm trying to think of.

What was the name of this YouTuber I used to follow?

And he did exactly 10 years of YouTube videos, Tom Scott.

And he really, really did a lot of work on these videos, really interesting videos.

And he got to his 10th year, and he said, I'm done.

He said, you know, I said to myself, I would do this for 10 years.

I think he said five years.

And then he upgraded to 10 years.

And then he just got to the point.

He said, this is no longer fulfilling me in any way, shape or form.

I'm going to take time off.

I may be back.

I may not enjoy the videos.

But he's just started to come back now after a couple of years.

But he knew if I'm going to say whether I love this or not, or whether this can be a career or this can be the earner or this can be the way I change the world and I can't just try it once and it doesn't work.

I have to set myself a goal.

No matter how uncomfortable that becomes, I'll get through that.

Because, like, going to the gym, you know, it's not going to be comfortable all the time.

You know, it's going to be weird and strange and sticky and icky and hurty and you're going to feel pain afterwards.

But you have to say to yourself, I'm going to do it for a week, I'm going to do it for a month, I'm going to do it for six months, I'm going to do it for a year.

And at that point I will say to myself, no more.

And so I think entrepreneurs, the people who think entrepreneurially but never take action are problematic because they've constantly got ideas but they never do anything with them.

And then there are other people or like serial entrepreneurs who do a little bit of stuff but they never really finish anything.

And then you've got the other people who just will stick with the one thing for 20 years, even though there's no sign on the planet that this is desirable to anyone or ever going to pay them back.

So, like I say, ikigai is this.

It's just a guiding star.

And every time I get to, like, when I came back from Australia and I could not have been in a worse place, I just lost my mum, My dad had recovered, but I didn't know how long he was going to be around.

I'd given away or lost pretty much all of my business and came back to a very expensive city like LA and was like, what do I do now?

What a great thing to use to be able to check in and say whatever I do.

I'm starting here.

Like Simon Sinek, start with the why.

I'm starting with the ikigai because I can go and get a job, I can go and apply for jobs.

First of all, even if I get one, it's probably not going to be my ikigai, so it's going to frustrate me forever.

Or worst case scenario, I'm going to go for all these jobs and I'm not going to get any of them and I don't want any of them anyway.

Like, none of them are my ikigai.

And now I'm not doing my ikigai and I'm just getting caned by all directions.

No responses.

You're not qualified, you're overqualified, you're too old, you're too this, you're too that.

And now, like being rejected by people on a dating site that you're not even interested in.

Like, you're in a worse position than you were before.

So I said, I'm going to use this as my guiding star, my North Star, every time I feel like, ah, what am I doing here?

And you may say, you're right, but I'm doing some stuff that I don't like.

When you look at it, you may go, oh, well, thank God I'm doing those things.

Because without those things, I'd be doing everything that I don't like.

Now, can I find a way to take what I'm doing and turn it into something I love?

And if not, can I find someone in my community who does love this thing?

Their ichigai is probably missing this thing that is the thorn in my ichigai right now.

And I can give that to them and they can go, ah.

And come alive.

And now I can be alleviated from the pain of that thorn that kept sticking into me every time I had to do that thing I didn't love.

And AI has honestly helped so much because a lot of those pains in the ass were things like doing the copy and the marketing stuff.

And well, now AI can help you so much with that and even producing podcasts and stuff.

Like, I'm sure AI must really help.

I've got a friend who runs a, who created a platform which I told you about, and it's specifically for producing podcasts and it's uses AI and stuff.

When I, in fact, when I met him and I saw his platform, I was like, are you using AI for this yet?

And he's like, no, should I?

I'm like, dude, listen, before I did my company, I'm like, you are going to be left behind if you don't put AI into this, like, asap.

Yeah.

So, yeah, what you're seeing, what you're seeing on the production side for AI is that most shows are still being produced by a producer.

So I pretty.

I still produce my own show.

I actually, I learned the whole thing doing this and I love it.

I love producing shows.

I'm actually producing midway through our conversation.

It's still processing, but yeah, it's one of those things where AI is coming into it, but typically it's like as an assistant within a plugin or tool.

Exactly.

But it's nice because it shaves a lot of the time from you having to do all those manual edits yourself.

So even though we're still mostly producing our own shows, the tools that we're using within our editors, like Adobe Audition or Premiere Pro or whatever, are getting smarter.

Yeah.

When you think about like, oh, like someone who has a clearer life or business than me, here's their website.

Put it in and press a button and it gives you a bio of that person or it tells you about, you know, all of that stuff.

You are still doing it, but it's just faster.

You could have written it or you could have paid an assistant to go off and research, which we used to do, but you just don't.

And that's what I loved about when we built our app with the stuff I loved the most about it was the channel partner stuff because I was building in the back end an opportunity to go to someone's website, take that website, paste it into our system and it would create an entire profile for them to co brand our app for their audience.

I spent so much time working with the team and doing this myself, where I could do it through Notion and if we'd update over here and it would go into there and, and it would create these entire networks with the images with the, the A prompt that would turn it into a summary of who they are with all of their habits.

So the channel partner, when they would come to it, we would say, would you be interested in using something like this?

It was already built, would take 20 minutes to build.

Whereas months before it was taking our team two days to build, then a month before it was taking a week to build, then a week before it was taking a day to build.

And then it could be, I could eventually do an automation process where we could find the type of leads that we wanted to be channel partners, send them an email, they would click on it, they would see their own network automatically created.

Just like you create a Facebook page these days that you could create your own and you could see how you could use it with your audience and it's your pictures and your influence now.

AI made that completely possible to do within minutes.

Wow.

And I was still manually doing it.

I was manually doing it in minutes rather than manually doing it in days.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you, what do you think that means for our future, Paul?

Like, what do you think that means for like the future of people and our icky guys?

If we can Implement AI to make the shitty jobs better.

Well, I was having a conversation with someone the other night who said, I don't think we're too far away from needing a universal basic income, which is what Elon Musk mentioned many years ago.

But there's been a lot of conversation.

There's been a lot of fun around the world.

There's little communities that have already been implementing ubis and seeing what the result is.

On one side, people feel if you just give them money, everyone's just going to waste their time.

On the other side, if you give them the money that they need, they won't be wasting their time on the freaking job.

Maybe they can do something good in the world.

I am optimistic enough to believe that AI is going to get us to the point, us collectively to the point where all the stuff that just literally cannot be done by AI or robots.

We are going to have to say, or we're going to willingly say, just do it.

Just please take care of it.

The problem of the amount of electricity that it uses will be solved by the, the hydrogen batteries or whatever we work out by using AI to help us create that technology.

And then we got plenty of water, and then that's not going to be a problem anymore.

Plenty of water, plenty of power, batteries that last long time, that can run the AI.

And we'd have to worry about it destroying the planet at that point.

What would we do if there were no jobs?

It's weird to think about, isn't it?

Like we would.

Who knows?

I don't know if we know what we would do with ourselves.

I would like to think many people would spend more time with their family, spend more time with their parents.

They would travel more, they would read more, they would learn more.

Maybe they would start to create every single person that you talk to.

If you said to them, just randomly said to them something like, why did you ever stop writing?

Almost everybody will go, how did you know?

Or if it said to them, why did you stop drawing?

Almost everybody will go, or if you say to them, why did you give up on that business idea?

Or when are you ever going to do that business that you're thinking about?

Most people would go, how did you know?

Because most people aren't doing the stuff that they really want to be doing in their world because of their job.

Interesting.

Their job is supposedly, I always ask people, why do you have a job?

Oh, because I got to pay the bills.

Why do you have to pay the bills?

I mean, you don't have to.

You could Literally hike the PCT and you know, save up the money.

Get your pack, hike the end of the pct, turn around, come back again.

Now along the way, maybe you can clean windows for people.

Well, I don't want that life.

Okay, so you're making the balance that you're having a life that you don't want for this amount of money versus not the life that I want because it's not going to make much money.

Like you have to ask yourself, ultimately, why do we have jobs?

Most jobs, most jobs don't need to be done, let's face it.

Like things, trash needs to be taken away.

People need to be operated on.

You know, food needs to exist.

We could all make our own food, but then someone would need to deliver the manure.

No, no, we've got all sorts of shit we can put on.

You know, we can make compost that we can put on.

Really think about what needs to exist and then think about what the world really needs that isn't being done.

Cats and dogs are just dying in the streets.

People are dying in the streets.

We've got marriages breaking up.

We've got elderly people rotting away in nursing homes because their families are working too hard to go and visit them.

Just go through all of the things that are needed in the world that we're not doing.

And if I say, oh well, what would happen if we had all the time in the world?

Everyone would just fall into crime and it would just be like Sodom and Gomorrah.

No, that would be fun for a.

While, but no, yeah, not sustainable.

Maybe people would do what they do in developing countries where families stay together.

The elderly don't get kicked out of the home and the elderly have the wisdom.

There's a great show called Blue Zones.

I don't know if you've seen it, but the guy has traveled around the world and investigated why these particular populations have really high longevity rates and looked at all of the different things.

And one of the things is actually ikigai, like being able to find that balance in their lives.

Some sort of a faith, some sort of good balanced whole food diet, but largely plant based diet, keeping families together.

And it goes on and on and stuff that you just like, oh yeah, duh, of course.

But moving your body, walking a lot, getting up and down, whether it's gardening or crafting or building things by hand.

And he looked at all of that and he was like, wow, so can he come back to America and he's reverse engineered.

Yeah, high longevity areas.

Can you come and get people to buy in to.

Yeah, we would like to do the same thing.

Guess what?

That's the toughest job.

Because I think my theory is I don't think anyone wants to be old.

I don't think people want to live forever.

I don't think if they think their life sucks now, imagine what it's going to be like when they're my dad's age, 92.

So I think one of the things that the world needs, and this is what I hope I'm providing in what I do, is a true reason for living forever.

And if not physically, and I don't care if I live physically forever, but if what you're doing is truly changing the world, affecting the world in a positive way, improving the world, improving people, then it should be an immortal idea.

I grew up with Shakespeare, who did Shakespeare as actors?

Shakespeare will always be taught in schools.

Shakespeare is immortal.

Johnny Depp will be immortalized because of the work that he's controlled.

Daniel Day Lewis, the work that they've contributed.

Taylor Swift will be immortalized.

As long as we are not creating work that is making the world a worse place, dividing people, making people less healthy.

And this is why I say a lot of jobs that exist don't need to exist.

Like, some of the food we make,.

Like, they're not helping.

Yeah, I get it.

Yeah.

So I think if the world.

If you imagine if at school as a kid, without being even told, it's Ifigai.

Imagine if your teachers just helped you get to the center of your own.

You could guide and then taught you what you needed to make that a life, rather than taught you all of this stuff that you.

They've.

They taught it because they've been taught it and they taught it.

They've been taught it well.

They don't need all that stuff.

What if I just want to be Steve Irwin?

What if I just want to travel the world and go, oh, crikey.

Like, isn't he's a lovely old felon?

Like, what if you want to do that?

Like, yeah, there's things you want to learn about running a business and running a conservation group and.

But you'll learn that on the road.

You'll learn that with the people that you run into.

You can do a course.

You could go to Bob on ChatGPT now and ask Bob to get that.

But school is such a long time and then University college is such a long time to be learning all of this stuff just in case.

Yeah.

Rather than find.

And like, this would be a good job for you, this would be a good career for you.

Hang on a minute.

What's my ichigai?

It doesn't matter if I would make a fence.

And this is why immigrant kids tend to have this argument more often with their parents than anyone else.

The immigrant parent has come here and given up everything, sacrificed for the child.

And I want you to have the best opportunity.

Be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer.

And they're like, I just want to sing.

And they're like, don't you dare stand up comic.

You know, I want to do a one man comedy magic show with a rabbit puppet, you know.

Well, I think that's a good segue.

Paul, this has been an incredible conversation.

Thank you so much, man.

I love talking to you.

I might do a part B in it in we.

I think we might need to.

I think we might have to have another conversation when you get back from the Pacific.

What is it?

The Pacific Coast Trail?

Is that the one?

It was on the coast.

It'd have nice Pacific Crest Trail.

The Pacific Crest Trail, yes.

Yeah, we'll have to have a good conversation about that journey.

I think that would be a great, a great conversation.

I'll probably look a bit thinner by the time.

Yeah, probably.

Oh, goodness.

Yeah.

But before we get into that, because obviously speaking of a one man rabbit show or magic show with a rabbit, please, you know, bring our listeners into what you're doing.

First off, how do they get ahold of you if they want to go through some, some coaching, some consulting into getting to their aki and then, you know, bring them into a little bit about what your next plan is?

Well, the first thing I'd say is go to dreamingforaliving.com There's a Steven Spielberg quote.

I don't dream at night, I dream at day.

I'm dreaming for a living, which was an early kind of thing that I was already unconsciously thinking about ignoring guy back then.

So go to www.dreamingforliving.com ikigai and you can find out whatever you need.

So, yeah, I've done lots of different things in my life and Ikigai really helped me realize that I can follow one path and do that with my entire heart.

And then go, you know what?

I've done that.

I've written a book, I've run a company, I've created an app, I've written plays and feature films and acted and directed and taught and done professional speaking and all sorts of things.

But one thing that I always wanted to do was a magic show.

I always wanted to on my 50th, I did a little magic routine just to see if anyone would find it interesting.

And I just killed it.

Just slayed.

And it was so much fun.

And then I couldn't get that seed out of my brain as it grew into a one man show, which is now me playing a character in two parallel universes that gets taken from one through a wormhole into the other by a giant rabbit puppet.

So the show's called Continual.

And I really want it to be something that I could take to festivals.

You know, I'm the kind of person that I want to be able to have someone say, you know, there's a group of people over there that need to be entertained for half an hour.

And I can either walk in and I can do all of my mega memory stuff with them and dazzle them and make their lives better.

I can go in and do magic tricks with them.

I could go and teach them about business, I could teach them about branding.

I could help them with their ikigai.

I always wanted to have a house that when visitors came, if they're like, oh, do you have a battery charger?

I'd open a cupboard and there'd be the battery charger.

They'd go in and they'd find exactly the food they wanted.

And a bunch of people need to stay for the night.

And there was blankets and there was pillows and there was.

And I want to be like that as a person too.

I. I don't want anybody out there to.

To be hopeless, basically.

I don't want anyone to think that there's no way to go.

They don't know how to go.

How do they improve their lives?

How do they have the life they want?

I want them to know, if I can't help them with that, I've got a very vast network.

And if I don't have someone that can help you in my network, I will find them within 48 hours.

But everybody on this planet is here for a purpose.

They may not know what it is right now.

For some people it's spiritual.

For some people it's just magical.

For some people it's comedy.

And for some people it's charity, whatever it is.

But everybody's here for purpose.

You can't wait your whole life to even discover what it is.

They say the two greatest times in your life, two greatest days of your life.

The day you're born and the day you discover why.

And the sooner you can discover why, even better, because then you use ichigai as your north Star.

And every time you get into the work that you don't love so much, you can keep guiding yourself back to the center of your ichigai, the center of your ikigai.

And if that doesn't fulfill you, then I don't know what will.

Wow.

Yeah.

What a powerful way to end today's show.

Paul, that was absolutely incredible.

I know we connected over LinkedIn.

Is that the best way for people to get a hold of you these days?

Obviously, if you're on the trail, may or may not have access.

Yeah, I'll guide you to my Patreon, but I haven't created it yet.

Or maybe I have by the time you see this.

But anyway, you know what I was gonna say, when you do get that done, just shoot it over to me and I'll make sure that at least with the launch of the show, we get that up there and maybe get you some support on the trail.

That would be amazing.

That would be really amazing.

Ye.

Thank you.

So I think, like, dreaming for a living is going to be my hub for a while.

But look, I always say Google.

When I used to be an actor or acting teacher, I'd say to people, just google Paul Barry, acting teacher.

When I was on TedX, I would just say, Google, Paul Barry, TedX.

Now I'm just going to say google Paul Barry ikigai.

Hopefully by the time you see this, that will mean something on Google.

And if not, you'll find me.

You'll find me.

Look for the rabbit.

Amazing.

Follow the rabbit.

The rabbit, Follow the rabbit.

A little matrix reference.

I love it.

All right, Paul, this has been absolutely incredible.

Thank you so much for, for hanging out with us.

I wish you the absolute best of luck on your Pacific Crest Trail hike and I very much look forward to our next conversation.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much, Kelly.

Always a pleasure.

Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.