What is it about Friday the 13th?

Chapter one of my second book

Friday 13th March, 2020 - Melbourne Airport, Australia

What is it about Friday 13th?

The week leading up to that Friday had been brilliant. I spent almost the whole week delivering face to face client work across Melbourne. It was a perfect mix of coaching, speaking at events and facilitating leadership team sessions. It was exactly the type of week for which I had left my successful corporate career to found GiFT631, my leadership and self-development business.

I arrived at the airport a little tired and very happy. Then everything changed. My tiredness disappeared as fast as my happiness. As I was flying back into the Gold Coast I was flying with the budget airline Jetstar and not their full service owner Qantas, I was in a different terminal and did not have the comfort of a lounge. I found a spot to drop my bag and open my lap-top before looking up at the departure board to see there was a serious delay on my flight and many others.

There was even worse news as I started to catch up on emails, text messages and contact via Linkedin and What’s App. My future diary was collapsing with a repeated phrase of:

‘I/we are really sorry Andy but I/we need to cancel/postpone my/our event/conference/meeting/offsite/training.’

I hadn’t checked my emails or messages until I arrived at the airport as I wanted to stay focused on my final client of the week and avoid any ‘distraction.’

The ‘distraction’ was now huge. I had been in business for less than three years and suddenly GiFT631 was at serious risk due to the emergence of something I knew very little about at that stage.  A global pandemic, Covid-19, had announced itself and it was about to dramatically change and reshape my world. All whilst I sat in the Jetstar terminal, eating sushi, one minute questioning I would get home that evening then questioning whether I would have a business to go home too!

‘Hi Andy’

I looked up to see my Sydney based friend Chauncey who came over to where I was sitting. We exchanged conversation about what was happening to our respective flights but also the increasing grip the pandemic was starting to have across Australia. Chauncey asked if I wanted to go for a beer to catch up and pass the time.

In hindsight I made a great and a little surprising decision. My normal

‘Yes, absolutely, why not?’ came out as a

‘No thanks mate, I just need some time to think and to make  a few calls.’

We parted ways and I decided to find the quietest spot I could in the ever crowding terminal. I needed some serious Mozart time.

Mozart time is my longest standing daily habit. It is time for myself, by myself and with myself. Time when I switch off any technology and look to isolate myself from the world and all that is going on. It is my daily thinking time and Mozart is just the name I give it.

Very early on in my career, I realised that you need to have repeated time to think, to question what you are doing, why you are doing it, how you are doing it and how you can do it better. It is a time to think about your goals and the things that are either occupying your mind or should be!

How can you live a high performance life without thinking as opposed to just doing. As Ray Weekes said when I interviewed him, ‘you need stillness to hear yourself think.’

So many of my breakthroughs and new ideas come from Mozart time. Clarity emerges from Mozart time. Clarity of goal, thought, purpose and action. Clarity about what to do and what not to do.

It is a break from the relentless bombardment of modern life, from the multiple inputs from technology as well as people, and chance to stop doing for a short period and get off the hamster wheel of life.

In that moment, in response to that question from Chauncey I recognised the need for an extended appointment with Mozart which was not easy to do in a bustling airport terminal full of people hit with delays and other concerns.

My Mozart time went from half an hour to an hour to two, then three and ultimately five hours before the plan finally took off for the Gold Coast. It was in those five hours that my dream for GiFT631 was re-imagined and re-born.

I had left the corporate world in mid 2017 to pass ‘The Rocking Chair Test’ which became the title and subject of my first book. I wanted to be sitting in my ‘rocking chair’ in my 90s looking back on my life with the satisfaction that I had followed my own dreams and finally lived true to my passion and purpose. In the first year of being self-employed I had developed a chosen affirmation which I write and repeat daily:

‘I am loving being the CEO of my own life and the time and financial freedom that it provides.’

In essence, this is what I am striving to do each and everyday to pass that test. Creating the freedom to travel and experience different cultures, the freedom to do amazing work with amazing clients and to write, speak and help others achieve their potential. The freedom to live in at least three countries each year from 2027: Australia, the UK and a chosen other, starting with Spain and then Italy. The freedom to work when, where and how I wanted. This desired future state was suddenly under huge threat and I needed to response.

To quote Robert Frost’s famous poem, I had taken the road less travelled and it had made all the difference. I was used to leading large people centric distribution businesses, at times up to 2,000 people in both the UK and Australia. I loved so much about leading big teams but I had found even greater fulfilment being totally dependent on one person - me. As such, I knew there had to be a new road, like to be even less well trodden due to the ever restricting and changing circumstances caused by the pandemic.

Early in my sales/service leadership career I had repeatedly used the ‘two shoe salespeople’ story to evidence that there is always an opportunity as long as we bring the ‘right’ attitude and mindset to any given situation. So many people see the barrier as demonstrated by the first shoe salesperson, so few seem to see the opportunity as per the second. I wanted my teams to see everything through the lens of that second shoe salesperson.

See this #giftbite on the shoe salesperson story:

I revisited that story in the terminal that day - a little pep talk to myself to keep going. There would be many closed doors. I had to remember to keep looking because close to every closed door there is an open window. Most people stop at the closed door, I would  not. To be successful, it would require resilience, persistence and a mental toughness.

It would also require discipline. My long time friend and colleague Tony Longden always said

‘Without discipline you are lost.’

Since the 1990s I had progressively tried, tested, developed and refined a series of winning habits, routines and frameworks which were critical to my self-belief and confidence. I would come to rely on these more than at any other point of my life.

I also knew it was critical to pivot the GiFT631 service offerings as there wouldn’t be too many face to face events happening (ironic humour as there were none!). I would need to do this rapidly and drastically to keep GiFT631 afloat in the choppiest of waters. A new mantra was born that day. It was time to #pivot2win