Tell us a bit about you. Where are you from? What do you do?
I am from Montreal, Canada and I’ve been in the world of human performance for over thirty years. During that time I’ve trained, rebuilt and supported the performance of some of the best athletes in the world. I’ve worked in the biggest performance environments and seen what it takes to be the best in the world.
Why were you drawn to the London Real Broadcast Yourself course?
Well, there’s a couple of different things that happened for me. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a radio DJ, but my dad convinced me not to do that because he thought I needed the university degree. So I didn’t do that. I shelved it. But I’ve always wanted to do something broadcast oriented. It’s just been in my gut. I used to watch all the different talk shows and I found them fascinating, so for a long time it was always burning in me. I went into what I did and I was quite successful in it, but I’ve always had this feeling like I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do.
So when your programme came up and I had had the desire to start a podcast. I wanted to broadcast and I wanted to have deep personal conversations with people. I saw what you were doing, the kinds of conversations you were having. I really liked that. I wanted to do that. And so when your programme came up, I was like “push the button, let’s do this”. Ultimately, I love deep conversation. I love connecting with people. I love the idea of broadcasting and getting my message and their message out to people. That’s really why I did it, and I’m really happy I did.
Had you tried doing this before yourself? Or had you thought about any other routes?
Well I would say it’s been burning in me for the last few years as you know, a big hairy audacious goal to do, you know. But I kept looking at what I would do and the resistance of starting it would always kind of got in the way. The resistance was always that I didn’t want to take a step forward and then make a wrong step and be wasting time. I’m not somebody who likes wasting time so when I saw this programme would really construct it for me and just give me the process, I was really excited about that because I knew I wanted to do it, but I just couldn’t take that leap of faith by myself.
Why London Real?
I’d encountered you online and watched some of the stuff that you were doing and I like the way you do what you do. I like the conversational aspect. I’m not a Q&A person so much as I am let’s talk about what it is you like to do and why, and understand it. I could see that the way you run what you’re doing is very much that. You want to find out about your guest and you want to take that and explore it so that you become better and your listeners become better. So I felt it was the perfect link for what I wanted to do. There might be other programmes but clearly you’re doing what I would like to do in a sense.
What was it like that first week? I kinda drop you in this group with people from all around the World, there’s an Accountability Doc., and Live calls with me. What was it like being in that situation?
I found it was a nice culture to be in. I like the competitiveness that you created in it. I liked the team vibe. I thought we happened to have a really good team of really good people, and we all sort of stepped up and helped each other. I just liked the way it sort of spring-boarded you. You felt like you knew what you needed to do and it was just a matter of doing the steps.
I didn’t really have a lot of resistance in this programme. I had one time when you and I talked about the Excel spreadsheets, email and documentation – I don’t really like that stuff much because it’s not my forte, it’s not a world that I’ve lived in all my life. But you know, I stepped into it and did it. But getting out there and doing it was not hard. It was really actually very pleasant and I was happy I did it. And I got a lot of really good feedback from people that I did it with.
Talk to me a bit about this community. What’s it like being connected with all these people around the world who have these different ideas?
It’s wonderful because you don’t expect it. In some sense you’re becoming vulnerable in front of other people about what your weaknesses are, what your inabilities are. And to know that no one is judging you but actually helping you is a really nice thing. Everybody kind of pushes you when you need to be pushed. That was really powerful, especially in our group. We had some people who were better with tech, we had some people who were better with sound. We had people like myself who were more comfortable with just talking in front of people and doing stuff. So each one of us sort of influenced the group when it was necessary to move them forward. And then coming here to graduation, you know, I’m really glad I came here and did this. To meet you, to meet the gang…it’s a fascinating experience to go from virtual to real.
Okay, biggest takeaway from the course, something that will serve you in the future, or something you learned, or something you figured out how to do going forward?
I really think you can do anything you want to do if you just really put your mind to it and construct the pathway. And sometimes you have to be vulnerable enough to know that you can’t always construct that pathway yourself. I think people struggle with the concept of spending money sometimes to do the things that they want to do. But to me, money is just a mechanism for taking you in a direction you want to go. So many people save pennies but fail to ever achieve the things that they want to achieve. So yeah, the programme is not cheap but at the same time, it delivers as you said yesterday, it delivers. I have a podcast now. Don’t let your inability to know how to do it stop you, you know. Step over that line. Somebody’s gonna help you get there even if you have to pay a little bit for it at some point. So that’s my biggest takeaway really.
