Episode 010 - We answer best listener questions in this special episode

Hi, it’s Harms here with Ro, for another episode of the Seekardo podcast and today’s episode is a special one.

We are on our 10th episode of the Seekardo podcast and to thank listeners we asked you a couple of weeks ago to fire in your questions based on observations, interests or thoughts, or emotional triggers that may have occurred whilst listening to the first nine episodes of the GrowthTribes podcast.

Thank you listeners we’ve had quite a few questions come in, which is amazing and fantastic. So what we’ve done is we are going to work through these questions as many as we can in the time that we have for this episode.

We’ve sort of rephrased a couple of them. We’ve kept the users anonymous and we’ve selected some because they’re also common questions that Ro gets or I get which means that these questions will help the majority. Apologies in advance if we don’t get to your question, but please keep firing them through on the Seekardo podcast because if you guys like this style of podcast we will do more.

Ask us anything.

Ask us any kind of question kind of podcast.

On that note hi Ro, welcome to today’s special episode of the podcast and are you ready to answer almost a quickfire round of questions I guess.

Hi Harminder, yes thank you for again bringing me on, and it’s great to be here. I love this. I think we discussed this about a month ago. This a great idea and as a coach and mentor over the years people have often thrown questions at me and I try to wing back and answer whether it’s through a text message or through response on Facebook. But to do it this way is really powerful.

As you knowin the Seekardo community we have an open forum, because it’s a closes communitythe questions are very deep and very searching, and it gives me a chance to coach people live there. So this is a chance for me to respond as though someone was asking the question as a coach.

Fire away. I’ve had a quick look down the questions. It’s nice to see them, I think we will do as many as we can, as you said, but I’m open and come back with the occasional rantI’m sure at some point during this podcast.

Absolutely.

And if you’re listening to this and you weren’t sure on how to get your question into the process, it’s quite simple. You just head to the new Instagram account, which is @the growth tribes podcast, just go to Instagram find @thegrowthtribespodcast and just direct message us your question.
It is as simple as that. No emails, no web forms just head to Instagram and send us a message with your question or you can say hi and tell us how much you love the podcast, or what you’d like to see more of.

On that note, let me ask the first question.

“Harms and Ro after listening to your podcast and looking back on things I have done in the past. I sense a feeling of regret with the amount of time I’ve wasted. Is this normal or how can I shed this feeling of regret from the past?”

That’s the question Ro and I have a gut feeling that’s actually from episode one, which is what I wish I knew in my teens, 20s, 30s and beyond, because that is where we were actually talking to our past selves in the episode, which is a phenomenal experience for those listening and for us as well.

Ro that questionI guess the real thing is regret here.

Yeah, I’m going to reflect this back on you as well, I’d like you to add to it. But first of allas I’m listening to this my gut feeling is the person that asked this question, I’m assuming we don’t have a sense of the age of this person, but I can’t imagine it being a teenager. Generally because they don’t necessarily have a sense regret having listening to a podcast about what I wish I’d known in my teens.

Probably not somebody in their 20s.

Typically, that sense of regret from my own experience as well, it would be interesting to know what you feel because you’re 30.Typically kicks in around the 30,35 mark it certainly hits people late 30s and early 40s, but it seems to creep in around that age group and if you asked me why I think that is, I think it’s because of these different levels of maturation we go through when we start off with the adventure. We want adventure, we want to go out and discover the world and then we get to the stage where we start to achieve things in life and that’s usually through the 20s into the 30s.

Then you get to the 30’syou start to creep into the first entry level of wisdom growing and that’s when you start to reflect and often start to have regrets. So I suspect this has come from somebody 30, 35, 40. It might be a 50-year-oldsomebody in my age group. Either way, it’s not an unusual experience to feel regret.

I think I’m going to answer the question a couple of ways. The first thing is, and it might sound a little bit satirical, a bit like that’s a coaching type answer. The truth is that any sense of regret you’ve got right now means that you must have gone through an level of awareness, meaning that something that we’ve said, something that has come out in that podcast or these podcasts has triggered a sense in you feeling that you deserve more, that you want to achieve more, you want to experience more. And you wish you’d experienced it at some point in the past, rather than waiting to now achieve or experience it in the future.

The regret is more a measure of what you feel you could have done because now you’re starting to see actually from what these guys are talking about shit; I wish I’d done more.

Is that making sense Harms?

I’m going to check in with you because you have to be my listener if you likeas I’m speaking.

Absolute that does make sense and often the awareness just like you said Ro triggers when you know that there is a great opportunity out there, or potentially you should have been spending your timewiser. And potentially that can trigger from listening to podcasts like this, listening to aspirational things, reading aspirational books. Because I’ve read books and I’ve gone oh my god I should be doing more.That timeI look back and actually there was a bit of regret there because one of the challenges and I’ve heard often is when I ask people or when they ask me, haveyou regretted anything?

I think those people who naturally say I don’t regret anything, I just don’t get sense that is true, I don’t know where that’s coming from because if you’ve done things you’ve tried things, you’ve experienced things then certainly you know you’re not going to make a perfect decision every time.

So naturally there will be things that you do regret and I first had this when I changed my career into building a property portfolio and building a business. I looked at my decade before and I felt like it was a waste of time.

That was my first initial reaction to regret. But now, whenever I feel that feeling it’s a natural feeling.The person asked the question, is it normal? I personally think yes, it is normal, but it’s how you respond to that regret.

I turn that feeling and flip it on its head and I say I use that feeling of regret as motivation and a way to almost give me a kick up the backside to get working on stuff that I know I should be working on. Because I say do I want the next 10 years to be like the last 10 years where I was a bit lazy for example.

So that’s where I approach regret now.

Yeah, I think, we will build on that. The key thing for everybody listening is that what Harminder is sharingas well as is insightful in the sense that if you get to a stage in the future which you will do, every single human being will get to a point where there’s maybe something they would like to have done. They might not want to use the word regret, but the reality is I think everybody has, the people that say I don’t have any regrets.

I think you get to a stage in life where the wisdom of life kicks in and you say actually it’s just part of this massive tapestry, this painting, this chapter or book I’m writing, which is called my life. However you want to phrase it, and part of that journey has been all these different experiences and I wouldn’t be the person I am today had I not had those experiences. So for that reason, I don’t really regret the fact they happened to me.

However, if you actually zoomed in and honed in on very specific things, I think each of us can honestly say hand on heart had I done that a different wayI think maybe I’d have been in a different position in that particular area of my life.

So yes,one hundred percent it’s definitely a natural reaction for every single human being and as you said, it’s how you then use it, you can reframe it, which is an NLP style approach. Which means you give it a different meaning, I’ll comeback to that in a minute or as you said, you use it as the fuel and the fire for not wanting to feel that regret in the future.

So Harminder in the future has an opportunity ahead of him and he remembers in the past thinking, “Shit that last time I had a similar opportunityI didn’t do anything about it and I regretted that. Okay, that’s my fuel to make sure I actually give this a go.”

That’s what you’re referring to isn’t it?You are using it if you likeas a log to put on the fire to make sure that the past regret becomes the fuel, the logs of coal, the logs of wood or whatever you’re going to use to fuel the fire for success in the future. I.e. not to make that same quote on quote mistake that you regretted in the past, that’s what you’re referring to.

Absolutely, but almost I like the analogy of the log there because it is a case of putting a logon at a time and say actually, that didn’t go quite well. How do I ensure I don’t regret doing that again? Because the opposite of that is having a pile of logs and just setting it alight like a bonfire that is almost like a midlife crisis, so you almost want to avoid the midlife crisis stage and setting alight to our massive pile. Whereas one log you know that’s a tiny bit of regret.

I think the where this question may be coming from as well is okay, I’ve regretted a large part of my life, but the danger here is now you’re going to set and sometimes maybe it’s necessary. Maybe it’s necessary to set alight a large pile of wood an entire tree rather than just one log, is that fair Ro?

Yeah I think the key thing here is to make it fuel rather than make it the focus of pain and I’ll say that again, make it fuel rather than focus of pain.

What I mean by that is, if you hold onto too much regret you actually start going into a victim mode and it’s a whole different experience altogether. It’s like having the logs, but they’re piss wet through, you’vepeed all over them they’re soaking wet. They’ve been out in the rain and now you try to use them for the fire but you’re doing it from a place of scarcity. You’re doing it from a place of pain, you’re doing it from a place of, why did I do this? Why did I do that?I can’t do this again, maybe I should get on and do it differently next time.

That is very different to, okay I made this mistake before I regretted it and I said to myself, I’m absolutely not going to do the same thing again. Use that as a leverage point to create success as opposed to a leverage point to create failure, because I’m focusing as a victim of what was a past set of circumstances. Very, very important distinction there.

I’m going to stay on this themethough, because I want to share two personal shares.

Okay.

When I was 35 years of age, what happened to me was I sat in a room learning about property and we teach this now. You come and help out on a lot of occasions and we go out and we run these amazing property events and we teach people how to become financially free through property.

I remember sitting there at 35 and I felt so shitty. I was like how come I’m sat here at 35 years of ageI didn’t know this stuff before; I could have been doing this five, seven, eight years ago. I could be financially freenow; I didn’t have to be sitting here now not being financially free.

I went through a short period and I say short period it was literally about an hour of processing this over a period on the first day, kicking myself a little bit beating myself up.Oh man why didn’t I know this and I quickly dug into what would, of course, at that time been my understanding of the personal development world which is use it as fuel.

So I just said, okay, no point in regretting I need to move forward. So for me it is a very quick process and what I’ve learnt is mainly because of the experiences I have, but a number people I’ve coached is that if you wallow in it. If you wallow in regret, you start to become a victim of the very regret that you want to avoid having in the future.

So instead of you climbing out of the hole and building a mountain, you just become piling in the shit.So the regret becomes all this mud around your ankles and the more you focus on it, the thicker the mud gets and then you get locked in. And we meet people like this who literally become victims and they’re victims of a set of circumstancesof poor decisions they’ve made, something that happened to them. Could have been a parent who said something to them in the past and then they regretted not acting and doing something differently.

If you spend too long focusing on the pain of the regret you ultimately become a victim and again I’m checking in with you, does the logic of that, have you seen that? Have you witnessed it?Have you experienced it on a personal level?

Absolutely Ro and then that victim scenario, or that the level of regret becomes a story associated with that person. So if you were to have an opening conversation with that person, it’s almost like that story would come out every time.

Exactly.

They would tell the same story to you, the same to me, the same story to their friend. The same story to their aunty, whoever interacts with them and it’s almost because, oh yeah that’s okay for you or I didn’t do that because of this, yeah, but this and then that story seems to hold them back for years. Then it becomes a decade then it becomes two decades and it’s still holding onto that same story.

Yeah and actually, if you’re listening to this and you know people around you that fall into this you know, subtly you might want to recommend they listen to this podcast.Because you might try and tell people something, but it takes another way of explaining it for them to go, “Oh my god that’s exactly, I’ve done that, I’m doing that, and I’ve done that in the past.”

For example, when people come along to our total transformation events and you think about an event where there’s two, 300 people in a room going through a massive shift. One of the first things I’ll have people do at the start of the weekend is to have an opportunity to unload some bullshit on another person. And they tell them all the baggage, all the stuff, all the victim, all the regrets whatever it is they have, or been carrying around with them for the last six months, 12 months, hour, two hours, two years, whatever. And they go bleurgh, and at the end of that bleurgh that bullshit share, the other person just simply listens and says thank you for sharing.

So the next time you find yourself wallowing in regret and starting to focus on language that on another person, take a mirror out and just say to yourself, thank you for sharing. But then, move on beyond that. You’ve got to move beyond the past, so we can get into the future.

I love that.

Thank you for answering that first question Ro.

My gut feeling with question number two is it’s to do with the money episode from memory, I’m just pulling this up now is episode number three, understanding your money beliefs management and how to attract more into your life.

So, question number two now is focused around episode number three and the question Ro is:

What do I do if my partner is not responsible with money and I want to make some of the changes you discussed in that episode number three?

That’s just me adding context here.

How can I make him follow this system?

I’m going to fly through that again.

What do I do if my partner is not responsible with money and I want to make some of the changes you discussed in episode number three. How can I make him follow this system?

That’s the question Ro and I emphasised the word make there, intentionally.

Let’s put him or her because obviously this is a lady referring to her partner, whether it’s husband or boyfriend. But it could equally be a her. I don’t know if you remember Harminder with the Seekardo community we have our live get-togethers, where part of the membership is they get the chance to come and spend half a day with us.

Yes.

And one of the subjects I talked about was money if you remember at the last Seekardo gathering that we had. Well, there was a lady that stuck her hand up and actually asked this very same question.

She said,“I want to make changes, but my partner I don’t know if he will be open to doing that. What can I do to make him do this?”

I think I want to reverse the question here and first of all say to whoever has asked the question, but for everybody that is listening. I know this from personal experience that you physically cannot make anybody change their values, their beliefs or their outlook on life.

You can challenge me on that and say, “That’s not true, I helped my friend stop smoking, I helped my friend the other day to stop being negative.”

Yes, you can certainly help them change their momentary state of mind and you can certainly get them to reflect on the world in a different way, but ultimately they are the person that makes the change, not you. I think that’s really important and I say that for another reason, because I just recently was approached by somebody to help them deal with a situation of jealousy and anger.The said Ro, “ Would you be able to do some NLP hypnosis style work with meplease? I’m open to do whatever you need to do.”

I said okay I’m going to start by asking yourself a set of questions and I’m going to get you to reflect on the past month of whenever you’ve felt jealousy or anger or frustration. I’d like you to start to capture on paper what you are feeling and what was the trigger for that and I think upon that to start with loads of insights will come from it. The reason I’m doing that is because I don’t want to be the person that fixes you.

I don’t want to be the person that gives you the solution, I don’t want to make you change because if I make you change you’re going to have to keep coming back to me for the solution. But if I can give you some tools to help you get the insights that will ultimately give you the opportunity to take responsibility, to then deal with your anger and your frustration of jealousy towards other people. This was on a WhatsApp message by the way, an 11-minuteWhatsApp message.
The response that came back was amazing.

Voice was higher, energy was high. They were like, “I’m inspired just by the questions you asked me.”

So even without me saying a word. Hopefully the answer is coming out in the way I am sharing thiswhich is, we can’t make other people become responsible for the way they deal with money. But what we can do is we can start to give them insights, we can start to give them a different view, start to share with them some of the learnings that we’ve got and possibly some of the potential risks for the ultimate consequences of us not learning to manage our money properly.

By doing that what we are saying to somebody is, look, honey, I love you very much. I’ve been learning these amazing tools about money management, in fact I’ve been listening to this great podcast with this young guy and older guy, and they’ve been showing some really interesting insight. And I realised I’ve been actually doing certain things the wrong way, I just wanted to share with you what I’ve been learning and what I think I’ve done wrong.

Now if I came to you Harminder and you’re my partner and I said that to you, what would be your natural reaction? Because I haven’t prompted thisquestion, I’m literally saying to you how I deal with it.

What would be a natural reaction if I’d sat down with you and used that approach? Let’s say you weren’t particularly open to start with, what would be a natural reaction for me coming to you with that approach?

Well actually I’d like that approach Ro because my natural reaction would be, you’ve kept the emphasis on yourself in that scenario. You said you feel like you’ve been doing some things which may not have been right or you may want to improve it.

What you’re not doing which would probably get my back up and get me defensive is saying, “Oh my god you’ve done this Harms, the way you’ve been managing this money has been wrong. Dr Ro said this is the best way to do it and you’ve been doing the opposite.” So I’m getting who is this Dr Ro guy, don’t ever mention his name around me again and I’ll be getting pissed off naturally.

I think by approaching it in a sensitive matter, diffusing the situation before the situation even arises is a gentle way to approach it, because the topic of money is a sensitive topic and we spoke about that in the podcast.

It’s so deeply ingrained in us and it can really trigger people in different ways and even within a relationship which this question is orientated around, often at the start of the relationship money won’t be a large part the conversation, but sometimes it gets triggered five years later, 10 years later, when the relationship has money challenges.

I think if you can have these conversations earlier in a sensible way like Ro has just started the conversation, I think I would not have my backup. I would be open to listen to what you had to say next.

Also I think what we have to remember is that we don’t think about the partner, so we know it’s a him, but what we don’t know is how old is, we don’t know what his past experiences are with beliefs. This is a good opportunity to listen to the podcast again ideally with your partner if he is open to doing it.

If this is a life partner, i.e. permanent partner, an engaged partner, husband or a wife who in this case is the husband and this is a long-term relationship without a shadow of doubt if in this case, the wife is genuinely wanting to make changes and she’s realised there are things she wants to do to improve and he’s not prepared to do that, then we may have challenges in the relationship.

Because fundamentally if two people aren’t growing together, two people aren’t aligning their values, if two people aren’t evolving and understanding each other’s beliefs and being sympathetic to that, but also being empathetic. But also wanting to grow with the other person then there’s a deeper issue here because, yes, she might manage to force him, persuade him, whatever to atleast adopt the new money management system she wants to use. She might even get him onto the Seekardo and if they haven’t tried that this another great place to go by the way for the lady that’s listening to this.

If you go to the Seekardo community, www.growthtrribes.com and if you go onto there and take advantage of the really crazy offer on at the moment, whilst we are recording this it’s one pound from memory, is it Harms?

Yes one-poundspecial offer.

One pound for one month go and take your husband onto there if you can and see if you can listen to two series on there. One is the money series, mastering money and the other one is the relationship series because there may be something deeper going on here. It might be that you need to work on something within the relationship because if he’s unhappy, what we don’t know is he might be open to making changes, but because there is a conflict between the two of you, he might be deliberately doing whatever he can do that’s the opposite to what you’re doing.

So even though he might actually realise, “Shit I do need to work on my money and I want to take care of my finances, not just mine but us as a couple. And I want us to have more wealth and be more successful, but because I’m so pissed off in this relationship I’m just going to do exactly the opposite to whatever you’re trying to get me to do.”

No amount of trying to make him do anything is going work. So I would strongly recommend take advantage of that month to start with and stay with us if you in the community if you want to on the monthly subscription. But use that month at least to go and listen to that relationship series because it might be that you listen to something in there and you realise, “Ah there is an issue here we need to work on first before I can even help him deal with the money.”

I know I’ve gone a bit of tangent Harms but is this making sense?

I’m checking in with you because you’ve been in an amazing relationship for a while, but I know that you’ve had to go through this evolution yourself over certain subjects. It might be other way round, where Geena’s been frustrated with you, and you’ve had to come back to the table and been open to this.

I would say yes, typically when we are working with people always this is deeper than money, almost always.And what I thought was quite refreshing is the recent Seekardo meet up that whole experience you just explained to the listeners, there were many couples that were Seekardomembers brought their partners to a personal development experience for the first time ever.

That’s true.

They basically listened to the advice here and they basically said to their partner, “Listen to the podcast, come to the meet up.Just experience this from a third party, from somebody like Dr Ro, somebody likeHarms. They’ve got involved in our relationship, so there’s no bias here they just want the best outcome and they’re going to give some information based on different scenarios. Then it is up to you if you implement it.”

You spoke about my relationship Ro and in the past that’s the same process we followed. We are not the same people, but what we did is we attended the same transformational events together, read the same books, listened to the same podcast in the car. All the information that was valuable like the money mastery system and things that are occurring in Seekardo or things we are listening to like the podcasthere; we would listen to together.

Your past events, Turning Point, Communicating with Impact, my lovely wife Geena and I would attend those events together. Often it wasn’t convenient for one of us because of time. It wasn’t convenient for one of us because of work, it wasn’t convenient for one of us because of whatever was happening in our life, we made time to grow together.

I think if you are listening to this and your partner is not listening just get them to maybe buy into the fact that you want to grow with them together. I think that’s a romantic thing in quite a strange way, an unconventional romantic thingrather than taking them out to the cinema, come take them to transformational event. It’s quite quirky, it’s different, but when you leave the event you’re both going to be on the same page.

Then instead of one person asking us this question, you both can ask us a question as a couple.

I did exactly the same thing 17 years ago with my partner. My fiancé and she at the time hadn’t been to any personal development events at all. It was a Tony Robbins event and it was a birthday present and I said we will go to the event if you don’t like it within half an hour to an hour, we will leave.

This had been my world for so many years and she hadn’t been into that space. So we walked in and just sat down and one thing I’ve learnt over the year’s is don’t say anything about the event, don’t tell them anything, just ask them to have their own experience. Don’t tell them what to listen to,to watch out for, because the minute you do that you’re giving them your own set of values with rules around the experience of it.

She was hooked within 20 minutes; she was totally hooked and she stayed for the whole experience. It was amazing. But I learnt not to force that upon her and I think that’s the key thing.

If we bring it back to the money question because this is all linked to money ultimately, what I would say to this lovely lady is for now, just adopt everything you’ve been learning from us, go and listen to the money mastery series and start to implement it yourself.

And if you’ve got a joint account with your partner and he’s really not prepared to do somethings you need to do; you may need to start seriously considering starting to manage the financial side of what you can take control of yourself. Might be you have to come back and check in with us.

If you come and join us on the Seekardo communityI can certainly offer coaching if you put yourself forward to this, I can do some coaching live with you there if thathelps, but for now I think carry on working yourself and your own system and see if he’ll come on board.

Start introducing to him the concept of some of these tools and I think more than anything start to align your values. But that’s a whole different conversationaltogether, because until your values are aligned you’re going to find it really hard to encourage him to do anything like this. Because he just won’t be in the same space as you, Idon’t want to be negative, but I want you to be realistic in the sense that we’ve got to get him on board to see the opportunity to change first, before we start to quote on quote make him do anything else.

Absolutely Ro.

Thanks for answering that question. I hope this has been useful to the listener and the wider audience as well because many of these questions have been chosen because they apply to more than just the individual, but like we’ve shared with you we’ve pretty much been through a similar scenario, if not exactly, but something similar.

So Ro are we okay to move onto the next question?

Yeah please do.

AwesomeRo, I’m conscious that we’ve almost done a mini podcast episode of the first two questions already, so we are going to have to speed them up slightly for this next set of questions.

The question is:

I have looked at coaching and mentoring before but decided to save my money. I was unsure whether I would get the results and whether it would be a waste of my money. What is your view on that and has that ever happened to you?

That’s the question that has come in from the listeners, that’s a cracking question. I’m going to come back to you in a minute on this one because I want to have an older voice and a younger voice response to this, I think it’s very important.

Ultimately, I think we do talk a lot about this through all of the podcasts and certainly within the Seekardo community. I personally don’t know anybody and I know a lot of very successful people, millionaires, multimillionaires, financially free people. I don’t know anyone who has not achieved any level of success in what they’re doing without some form of a coach or mentor period.

I was recently watching the series ‘Inside the mind of Bill Gates’.

Amazing.

I think I mentioned it to you and we were both discussing it and there is an amazing scene there, I can’t remember if we talked about this on the podcast or not but there’s an amazing scene where he is sat in a café. In fact there are several scenes where he is sat in a café with his mentor and his mentor is Warren Buffett. He is older than him and I mean when you’re a billionaire who do you hang out with? You can’t really hang out with a simple millionaire; you’ve got to hang out with somebody that will stretch you to a completely different level.

I’ve been privileged to share the stage with people like Richard Branson on a couple of occasions and the last time I think I shared the state was down in South African. I’d done a section on property and he literally came up behind me and did a section on business and he strongly, vehemently advocated the use of mentors both within business on a personal level. And he actually said, “No matter what I do I’m looking out to go into a new business or expand to new opportunity. I will look out for who is the best out there, who I think I can get guidance from and I’m not just looking for people that succeeded, but also looking at people who have had challenges and how they overcame those challenges.”

Anthony Robbins, arguably one of the best coaches, if not the best coach in the world for the last 30 years in terms of what he does. He constantly talks about the need for modelling. Modelling is basically modelling those people that have done something that is above and beyond where you are right now and what you want to achieve.

So yes, one could argue you could save money in the short term by not paying 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 or more, which is what people have paid me for short-term mentoring. And yes, you might argue that’s a lot of money, but when I sat down with somebody and help them save years of time, i.e. literally shave years of their working career. I mean the same thing happened to you to some extent, how old are you now? You’re 30?

30 yes.

You’re 30 right?You were financially free at what age just remind me.

27.

So 27 right, the fact that a 27-year-old nowadays would likely work till 67 in the United Kingdom, you’ve effectively shaved 40 years of your life. If you saved 40 years of working monetary, let’s say you put 50,000 a year salary against that, that is two million if I’ve got my maths right. You’ve saved yourself 2 million in terms of salary time, have I got my head round that right? I think I have.

You’ve done 50,000×40 years, so yes 2 million spot on.

So effectively the time you spent not just with me but with the other mentors you have when you came through your property training. Yes, you invested what 20-25K but that has won you back £2 million worth of time in a salaried job. Now it’s a hell of a lot more than that when you look at what you earn as a property investor and what you’re going to continue to earn in the future.

The challenge I think for most people, I get this now as a 53-year-oldbut when I was younger even I remember thinking do I really want to pay a coach £150-£200, £300 an hour? Do I want to pay a mentor several hundred pounds? I can keep that money in my bank account and try and do it myself.

But what I discovered was six, 12,18,24 months later I hadn’t got anywhere with certain business that I tried and this was in my 20s, I was trying to do it on my own. One of the reasons I got into network marketing to be fair, network marketing didn’t really work as a model for me personally because I wasn’t cut out for that particular business model.

But what I took from it was the line of mentoring and coaching I got from the people that were above me in that particular business, and what I took most from it was actually personal development and communication skills that I developed. And I took them to own my expansion of my business and then I got mentors and coaches to help me do that.

Now you’re 27 when you were financially free. I think I met you when you were about 25. 

What’s your view of millennial’s today when it comes to coaching and mentoring?

Because it might be different to the one I had when I was back at that age.

I think Ro there is still a semi-resistance to working with a coach and a mentor because of the amount of information available online that is accessible. You can find so much information online that sort of answers your question, you can type anything into Google and pretty much find an answer or a very low-priced informational product that is out there, that’s available.

I totally agree. The cost of this sort of content you’re right is very cheap.

It’s very cheap, so it’s very cheap and very available. Now the challenge with that is that’s the knowledge part of the element. It’s generic it doesn’t apply to a specific scenario. It also does not apply to you.

So what’s the magical thing a coach and mentor does is if you’ve ever worked with one, the first thing they do is they’re asking questions about you, what’s your scenario?
What do you want to achieve?
What strengths do you have?
What weaknesses do you have?
What’s the opportunities that you can access?

Because not everything is accessible to everybody depending on what situation you’re in. For example, what is your capital starting position depending on that will depend on what kind of property strategy you start, and that’s a property specific one.

Now you can be in business so now you need to work with a coach and mentor whose business specific and if you’re still debating whether to have a coach and mentor, I highly recommend listening to episode number two just re-listen to that. Because we do address a lot of these challenges.

But Ro to answer your question, I think that the resistance is because people feel that the generic knowledge which is out there via low-priced low value courses and informational products, that’s fantastic. But what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t add the experiential part to the scenario.

So now somebody who is 20 to 25 years old we’ve got a choice as a millennial. We can either walk the path and experience everything ourselves, which is what I think some people are inclined to do, bizarre point of view from my point of view.

Or they can take the other path and say who has experienced this and has a knowledge which is what we talked about in the episode. And can they save me decades worth of time rather than me and my ego going and attempting to do what I want to do and maybe it takes me 20 years when it should have taken me two.And that’s how much you can shrink something by getting the information plus the experience and then the final part is accountability.

And accountability is paired with action.

I’ve been there that’s why I can talk about that in the sense that when I was reading books on business and real estate and property it was great, perfect, I’m reading all these books. But there was no actual action off the back of it because I wasn’t taking advice from somebody who has experienced it, walked the walk and I think that’s the missing element.

When you work with a mentor especially they will bring the experiential part to the game and when you work with a coach they can guide you on the path that’s right for you. And I think if millennials can approach that, that’s important. And if you take business and property aside Ro in your career what the millennial’s have within our career is something that your generation never had, which is multiple careers.

So one of the things I was told when I was younger, which I remember from my early teens is,“You’re going to have a job for life.” The moment I got to 22, 23, I realised actually I’m probably going to have four, five different careers in my lifetime. So to transition from career one to two, the coach can help guide you there. From two to threea career transition coach can help guide you there, because there’s going to be a lot of stuff happening during that transition period and you may be transitioning from one speciality with the whole artificial intelligence, technology coming into play to a completely different industry.

For example I went 10 years as a railway engineer to now starting a different career as a business owner and a property entrepreneur so you need a coach to transition from that. So for millennial’s I think the quicker we can get comfortable with working with coaches and mentors the better and the quicker our transition will be when change comes, and it’s going to come. We have no choice but to seek out.

Without a doubt.

I’ve writtenthree things down as you were talking there; I’ve got a notepad here can you make a note Harminder, I think we should do a podcast on career transition. Within the Seekardo’s community and the vault there, we actually have an amazing series where I do interview, a five-step process with one of the U.K.’s leading career transition coaches. You’ve literally sprung a thought into my mind which I think will be a good actual podcast for us to do and she goes through step-by-step firstly how she did it. But then, how she’s coached some very, very, very high-level people out of their careers who were stuck because of their attachment to that career.

So go and have a look for those of you that haven’t been into the community yet and go into the vault because that’s a great series. That’s the first thing I wanted to cover very quickly.

Two other things, I’ve just drawn a diagram out to simplify it.

Because you’ve just touched on a very important thing and that is there is a lot of free content out there, so for millennial’s these days we are so used to and not just millennialsbut all generations now, there is so much free content. This is a free podcast today and there is a lot of value in it, and people often mistake that for coaching but it is different.

I’m going to capture this in my head and try to illustrate it as a diagram in your minds.

Step one is inspiration, what free content gives you is inspiration and insight. It gives you, oh my gosh. For a lot of the time we can become addicted to the free content because every time you hear it’s free, it’s new and fresh and exciting we can get inspired, we get insight. But it doesn’t get the results you looking for.

So what happens then is you move to the next level of learning which is usually some sort of paid process like a subscription, Seekardo being a classic example of that. Or you buy some online products they’re lower cost, you might go to a seminar this lower cost could cost you two, three, four, five. Total transformation for example, people come along to that they pay money to be there, it’s ab incredible event and they get on that clarity and focus.

What you get from the next level outside the free content is clarity and focus, you start to understand the subject deeper, you start to get a sense of focus, but you’re not necessarily getting the results yet.

You’ve started to implement it but you’re not quite there yet. Then you get to the third and the top level, which is coaching and mentoring, and what that gives you is acceleration and results because now you’re working with somebody that takes the inspiration and takes the insight, takes the clarity and the focus and now works out a bespoke rational structure plan with accountability, to get you to exactly where you want to get to at a specific time.

And for thatbecause it’s one-to-one you’re going to pay more for it. But then that means you’re going to get bigger results from it. That’s my simple formula, I’m just recapping what you said there. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that to me is really clear.

I love that Ro and that does make sense because it puts a simple three step process for somebody and why the free content is important is because what’s inspiring to me and what’s insightful to me is going to be different to what’s inspiring to you. You would then focus on maybe a different kind of wealth vehicle for yourself and then go down that path, absolutely fine. I think that is massively important, which is why the free content is out there, but like Ro said don’t necessarily spend you know an entire 12 months on free content without specialising.

As part of that specialised process is getting in front of a coach and a mentor to get you exactly that, acceleration and results because Ro if I was to share my personal opinion, if I was to build a property portfolio without the coaches and mentors that I’ve worked with, it would have probably taken decades to get the results we’ve got. And then we’ve got the results, then thatall gets systemised then we can go move on to different things in life and then transition into something different, without spending the next 40, 50 years doing the same thing.

I think that’s where a coach and mentor has been tremendous for us.

An example is that it took us about a year and a half to get to a point where we found certain organisations that would give us guaranteed rents on properties for up to seven years. And I remember going through a process with you and my business partner and telling you what we did and you went and managed to do the same thing in a matter of about three or four months, do you remember that?

That was fantastic yes.

That’s a classic example of accelerated result as a result of leveraging off somebody else’s direct knowledge and experience in the market, so coaches and mentors 100%. Look at the value do not look at the cost that will be my ending sentence to that.

Awesome Ro, so this question has to be quick otherwise we are not going to get all of the answers in.

Sorry!

Ro this one has come to you specifically and it says:

Dr Ro, what things piss you off?
When do you get most wound up or annoyed with people?

So, what things piss you off and when do you most get wound up or annoyed with people?

Obviously this is going to be me answering this not you. So I’m going to keep it really simple, apathy is the first one. Lack of interest, lack of inspiration, being uninspired. These things piss me off in people on the simple understanding that every single human being has the opportunity to be inspired by anything.

You can be inspired by just someone else smiling at you, knowing they’re having a great day and they’ve smiled at you and you’ve felt some warmth from that situation.

In the same way for me apathy pisses me off because you wake up in the morning and you have 24-hours, you and I have the very same number of hours that somebody on the street has who is just about surviving and has barely enough food to survive. And every single minute of their day they’re spending trying to find food and we equally have the same amount of times as somebody who is a billionaire and in that day goes out and makes one million pound.

You can attach it to money, you can attach it inspiration. We have the same 24-hours some person can go out there and touch another person’s life. They can feed them, they can help them, they can guide them, they can care for them, they can look after them, they can nurture them because they’re dying, ill. They’re a loved one in the same way that somebody else there could be sat in front of the TV, knowing that a member of family is not well, knowing a member of the family is ill or who they need help. Or possibly an elder member of the family that can’t get down to the shops and just needssome support, and that person is sat home, watching the frigging TV because they’re apathetic.

That’s what pisses me off.

It pisses me off when people have an opportunity in their life to do something. It doesn’t have to be massive, it’s not about achievement but it’s about being able to give beyond themselves or to do something to inspire their own lives. Pick up a book, read a book, switch off the TV, switch off the Internet, switch off the game you’re playing on the computer or the iPad. Or sitting talking about shit to somebody else when you could be doing something else.

So apathy pisses me off. You’re probably getting a rant coming on here.

Yeah it has started.

Talking about other people for no reason than just to talk about people, and we can get caught into that occasion if we are fed up or annoyed about something, but to wallow in it, to persistently talk about it, to make it the subject of every single conversation and to make it the focus of that conversation that pisses me off. Because in that same 15 to 20 minutes that you had moaning and complaining about that person unless it had at the end of that conversation some form of solution, some sort of way to change your way of thinking, or to help that person or to disassociate with that person, then why have that conversation?

Because as I said recentlyon a live video that I did on Facebook when I was in Denmark, why have that conversation if it’s not going to serve you or that person?Because it might be that you’re bitching and whingeing about that person and they’re sat home having dinner not even thinking about you and yet you’re thinking about them.

I think that’s another thing that really pisses me off. The other thing I find these days that pisses me off is the amount of time people spend just focused on other people’s lives on the Internet.

I see people sat reading online magazines now like people or whatever it’s called or they go into this Hollywood type movie channels where they’re listening and watching the lives of movie stars. This person was on the beach with somebody else, this person was found kissing somebody else. This person was half naked on the beach, this person was caught drunk in a nightclub.

They’re fucking lives let them do what they want.

Why should you be worried about what Leonardo DiCaprio is doing because of the situation with a girlfriend or whatever. You know what that guy has done amazing stuff for the environment.

Why should you worry about something that Kevin Hart did just recently where in fact he has done an inspirational video on Netflix where he talked about some of the learnings, that’s worth watching. But why go and read about stuff that he did that was slightly negative?

He did it.

It is his life. If you don’t live your life and make your own mistakes and go through your own learnings and go through your own inspiration, all you’re ever going to do is live your life through a fucking screen and by looking at the Internet. They are the things that piss me off.

I think that question is well and truly answered.

Ro the next question we have and if you’re listening at home, I have nothing to add to that. That’s well and truly answered.

The next question is actually pointed towards myself:

“Harminder I love the podcast you and Dr Ro did on anxiety, I wanted to ask you a personal question.”

I actually get this question a lot, I’ve just quickly read ahead.

“When you reached the point when you are ready to leave your job after building a property portfolio. Did you get anxious? Had you delayed it. How did you deal with any fears or risks?”

Great question.

I get to go silent, good.

That is a really good question and I think first thing to put into context is and again it’s a bit of a coachy introduction which is, you have to put my life into the context of my life at the time.

I had just got engaged to my fiancé and my fiancé was supportive of everything we were doing, and we had an aligned set of values and beliefs that we wanted to go build a portfolio so we could gain back the time, so ultimately, one day we could be full-time parents.

That was our mission, that was the context of why I was doing what I was doing at the time. So what we didn’t have was children at the time, we didn’t have lots of bills and expenses here and there. But what we be both did have keeping in context was well paid jobs in the sense of if you take the average salary of the UK isbetween £25-£29,000. We were earning above the average salary, so that’s what I say when I say in terms of a good salary.

That was the context of where we were. Now the question was werewe anxious when leaving that? The answer is yes of course I was anxious and heading back to one of the questions that we’ve already answered is I had to work with a coach, mentor no names, by the way, it was Dr Ro. To help guide me through that process because I could have stepped away from my career about 10 months before I actually did decide to step away from that salary.

The big thingI was holding back from and resisting was that ultimately my identity is at a certain level that was attached to that career.

I was 10 years in that career, I’d worked pretty much a promotion every other year, I was getting promoted and I was going to continue to go up to a certain point. Within every industry there is a certain step on the ladder that you can get to. So it was a case that if I step out of my careerI’m no longer an engineer, I’m no longer this person. I no longer have a team I’m managing team, a team of about30, 35 people Iwas managing, I no longer have that team. I no longer have that position I held.

All of these things played into my anxiety for stepping out. Plus, there was the financial element as well. So property is a passive income if builtthe correct way, but it still requires attention. A property still can get voids if you’re a running HMO strategy. You could have a few voids in the house and that becomes an expense.

One of the things we had to ensure and Ro walked us through is the property portfolio built in a way that the income is strong, the income won’t dip month by month, so you have a level of certainty and security with what kind of income you’re getting in.

Now that was the logical side of things and what really helped me make the decision and analyse the risks is,the question here is how did you deal with any fears and risksIt was really thinking about the opposite parallel universe as such, and what I mean by that is, I started to get more scared of actually staying in the job than stepping out of it

Because we’ve got thatsecurity layer of income in place and the challenge I had was if I did not step away I was saying no to opportunity, I was saying no to adventure. I was saying no to exploration, I was saying no to variety.

I was saying no to leading a no limits life and what I mean by that is, leading a life where we have a say in the outcome of it. So what we didn’t have to do is clock in every day at 9AM and clock off at 5 PMevery single day, five days a week for 40, 45 weeks of the year. And then ask for two, three weeks of annual leave allowance to my supervisors and say can I please have some annual leave.

That’s the world I was stepping away from into a world where actually we can now do what we want to do, so I was just really reframing it in my mind and that’s something that Ro helped me identify you know.If you’re earning this much in your job, get out there, get out into the open wide world with the skills that you now have and go earn double that go and triple that. Go make it your mission to be a full-time parent, which is what you wanted to do in the first place.

Does that make sense Ro?

Yeah I think the other thing as well is when I listen to what you’re saying, what was clear as well was you were logical. Although we can use the word anxiety, but I actually if you remember I said, you’re almost trying to rationalise it. And rational lies. It was like you were logically giving me an argument why this hadn’t been done, why you hadn’t made the decision, why you hadn’t made the move and the coaching was more me just ripping all of that out of the way and saying okay, fuck all that stuff. Let’s look at the future and how does it look?

When we painted that picture with the two of you sat in front of me it was completely, and your face just lit up. I think you knew it was there, but you’re still in your engineering head. It was like you were trying to put a project management around the argument, it felt like that anyway.

And if I had not had that conversation with Ro and this links nicely into the mentor and coach topic, I would probably have stayed in the job for two, three, four years longer and if you put that on a timeline linking to question one which is regret, Ro and I may not be sitting here doing this podcast. Closing the door to one thing doesn’t mean there’s not an open door elsewhere and then it’s a case of for me, okayI feel this is right and Ro is spot on there.

No decision is entirely logical, it doesn’t have to make perfect sense to you, but there’s got to be a bit of a balance and we’ve made a decision, we haven’t looked back Ro and it’s great question.

Actually can I add to it a personal share?

This person may listen to this I don’t know in the future, but I have a very close friend of mine who he left his career he was actually in the army, and just recently just last year he was saying that he’d seen some of his peers and they’d got to very, very high levels in the army since he left the army. And he was having slight regrets and maybe should have stayed in there longer, he could have been in that position.

I said to him but look at the situation you’re in, you know you don’t have to get up and go to work. You get to see your kids, you get to take them to school, you get to spend time with them. Travel around the world and do experiences with them and you’ve built a property business. Look at all these other things and I think he was feeling that maybe the property business could have been bigger. Maybe he could have achieved more and I think it was just that and this can happen to all of us. There’s a little bit of looking back over the fence and seeing how it looks from the outside, and that comes back to the sense of how you measure success.

Do you measure is against labels, titles, levels of career change?How far you go up the corporate ladder? And I’ve managed to steer my way through that over the years I’ve never had any regret. But I know occasionally it happens to people and this is where it’s really important to not get anxious about it but to decide.

I remember saying if you want to go back, go back.

If I said to you right now Harms, you know what I think you should go back to work on Monday. What would be your first reaction to that?

I’d say no way.

I was just about to touch on that. I was about to say if you said to me, or your ex-military friend I tell you what go back for a year and then tell me what you feel like at the end of the year.

Exactly.

If we went back into the workplace it may have looked great from the outside because you’re seeing all your friends and again going back to social media, they maybe posting “I’ve just got this promotion, having this dinner”, or whatever is happening in that circle, because often people do talk about work on social media as well. It sounds great until you have to go on the conference call, until you’re on call 24 seven. Until youare too busy to have a conversation with your kids in the evening, which is what we envisioned into future if I took all these promotions would I really be there for the children?

Possibly not especially if you’re in the military you’reaway for long periods of time. There is no comparison. I think you’re spot on there Ro.

The nice thing wasif you’ve listened to everything we have talk about and because I am older, I’m almost acting like a coach and just as a reminder really it’s a very insightful person and then he got it.

I think it’s just that moment of reflection, but great question. Great answer by the way, I think that anxiety you framed it well. I think it was an anxiety but it wasn’t a massive anxiety because I think you placed the logic in front of you andyou were weighing up, I guess ultimately the anxiety comes to that the very final point when you actually have to make the decision.

Exactly, and then after that, it’s a big relief. If I put myself back in the picture it’s a big relief. Then we had a lot of lie ins for about four, five months after that after a decade in the workplace and then we started to get busy again.

“Dr Ro you made it sound lovely to have kids”

Hold on is this referring to the podcast we did on parenting?

I believe this is ‘Am I ready to be a parent?’, it must be that, but also for those watching if you’re interestedin parenting Ro often at least once a month is putting out parenting video onto his Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. So do go check it out if you’re interested on parenting topics.

“Dr Ro you made it sound lovely to have kids and I wanted to ask about the challenges you feel you have faced as a parent? Which elements should we be prepared for and knowing these now put you off?”

Okay so would it put me off knowing, okay that’s a good question.Just recapping in my mind what we talked about in the series was am I ready to be a parent and I think the overview I gave was that ultimately you said it, people say it is never the right time to be a parent, there’s lots of ways you can look at it. It could also be the right time or it could never be the right time.

My view was and if you remember I said this, the opportunity to walkdown the street with your daughter and this has happened to me several times, has stopped and pointed to a flower or smelt it.My daughter Live is in that phase at the moment, or pointing to a butterfly, just watching it or getting it on their finger and that moment how do you replace that?

You can’t replace that it’s priceless. I was sat watching her the other night she wasn’t very well and she just looks so calm and peaceful whilst she was sleeping. They are all the things that are amazing about having kids and you are never, any parent you talk to they will always talk about those things.

But are the challenges?

Absolutely.

Are there things that you have to put aside? I think that was the other thing we talked about, people say to me, “I can’t have kids because we can’t travel.” And I was explaining if you remember how much travelling we’ve done.

In fact I’m recording this actually right now, whilst I’m staying in an air B&B in Denmark travelling with our kids. We’ve driven across Europe we were in Belgium went to Brussels, then we drove up to Germany, stopped there, then we come to Denmark. We were going to go to Sweden but we decided to stay here now.

All those things can be done, but it has come with challenges travelling 2,700 km with two children is not a doddle. They get irritated, they don’t have the same patients that we as adults have. So as much as you want to play spot this and spot that and what colour is this outside the window, there is a point when they get frigging frustrated and you’re going to have to stop. We plan the journeys; I would have just driven it non-stop through the night. I would’veprobably stopped at a charging point couple of times in the car, taken half an hour nap and then carried on and got here and done a Rambo on it all night. But you can’t do that with kids.

So one of the challenges you’re going to haveas a parent with kids is the minute you have children you said it as wellHarms going to seminars. Earlier on in this podcast you said myself and Geena no matter what the circumstances we found a way, but what you didn’t mention you said, if you’ve got something else going on, find a way to get aroundit. If you’ve got a social event cancel the social event come to a seminar, if you’ve got a work event cancel the work event come to the seminar.

If you got kids okay, that’s not quite as easy.

So the parents listening are saying, “Yeah but Harminder I’ve got two kids it’s not quite as simple as you think. Going to a three-day training how do I find someone to look after my kids?”

Then it becomes more challenging. So what we found is our seminar experience of learning definitely changed. When they were really young my mum would come and she would bring her to the hotel, so literally she would stay in hotel. We would go down and Stina or I would go up and see if the kids are okay and come back down and these were like three-day training seminars.

I remember going to a TR Becker event once and my mum was with us.

I think the challenges are going to become more obvious when it comes to being able to go away and to drop things and quickly go and do something you used to be able to do easily and quickly. That’s where you find the challenge comes in.

I‘m going to use the word challenge because it’s more challenging in the sense that you’vegot to manage that now and what I mean by that is travelling across Europe has been a lot of fun, but we’ve still had to feed them.My youngest is like me, she can go, go, go, go, go, energy, energy, energy and suddenly if she gets hungry, bang, she just gets frustrated. She starts screaming or crying and you probably don’t believe me because you’ve only seen the beautiful to her.

Whereas my eldest is a slow burn, she’ll burn slowly and even when she’s hungry she doesn’t make a lot of noise about it she just says, “I’m hungry daddy.” Whereas my youngest is completely different. My eldest is calmer and my youngest is fiery and that happened twice on this trip, it happened today actually when we were out. You have to learn to manage those situations and that’s when it becomes challenging because even the calmest, most level couple when you’ve got two kids pushing all the buttons, that’s when you go I just need a moment of silence.

And this is where you are thinking, okay, so that podcast I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t have kids right now but that’s part of the decision you have to make as a parent you know. If you think it’s going to be some nirvana it’s not and I didn’t paint that picture what I said is, it’s got some beautiful experiences but you’re going to have to accept that with it comes some changes as well.

Travelling definitely you have to manage that, if you want to get out for the evening and your kids are really young, we found it actually very difficult and I don’t mind admitting that because as you knowHarminder you met me after we’d been doing this for a while.But we travelled a lot with Savannah. I mean a lot. So by travelling to different countries we never felt that we had people in those countries that we could trust enough to leave her, so we weren’t in a position on any of those travels apart from in Scandinaviawhere Stina’s mum was, where we could actually go out for an evening alone.

So no point when we were in Australia did we ever have a night out on our own. So we made our nights out with our daughter. We would go out and have dinner, we would go out and walk along the beachfront and she’d be sleeping in the pram. When we went to Barcelona and we lived in Barcelona for 10 months on a beach. We would walk along the beachfront at nine, 10 o’clock at night on the basis that hey, she’s asleep or she may still be awake, but we don’t want to lose the experience. We just didn’t have it as an opportunity to have it completely with our own time.

For us we chose to give up the opportunity when we were travelling to have if you like date nights. There were date nights with Savannah being, is this making sense? I’m chatting a lot here.

That does makes sense, I think if you revisit that episode because one of the things Ro does talk about is the lifestyle and that’s also why I asked Ro the lifestyle question which is, how did your lifestyle change? Because that is typically the biggest thing that’s going to change for you and that lifestyle means social events, your lifestyle at home, what’s your lifestyle with your work, with your job, businesses. Everything is going to change of course it is, and that’s a given Ro explains that quite well in the podcast.

So it’s how do you manage that when that time comes, and one of the things he points people to is the time management series in the Seekardo vault, so www.growthtribes.com head over to the vault and then just select that series. You may just want toexplore the time management series because I think that’s something you know when we have childrenI’m going to be revisiting myself, because I’m going to have to get more efficient with my time as well.

And the life balance series as well, which is slightly different to the time management series, two important series. Just to add to it as well we’ve had more arguments as a couple, more high-volume discussions as a couple since having the kids than we did before we had the kids.

High-volume discussion.

That’s another way of saying arguing, I’m trying to make it sound a little bit more constructive. We’ve had more of those because you’re now discussing how to deal with two human beings that are evolving, growing, that have their own beliefs and values. And you know, I might react one way and Stina might react another way, and before I know it the two of us are disagreeing about how we reacted to the children.

In our case there are four of us in the family so that it is going to happen, if you can’t deal with that as an adult, then you’re probably not ready to be a parent and I’m not trying to put you off but what I’m saying is,you’re going to have to be mature enough. That doesn’t mean to say you have to be 50 before you have kids, but at least feel that you’re ready to take that on. It’s a chance to grow, our kids come into our lives I honestly believe this spiritually and emotionally.

Kids come into our lives to teach us a lesson, a life lesson, personal lessons we grow through our kids. We grow because they bring something to the table their little souls have been brought here and their journey is to pass a message on to us, it gives us a chance to evolve as well.

That’s why I say to people if you’re really thinking about having kids, it’s going to be a massive opportunity to really discover more about yourself. It is genuinely a beautiful experience and with it comes the opportunity to face challenges in high-volume discussions.

I love that Ro.

I tell you what do we have time for two more questions?

Alright if we keep them quick.

Alright let’s keep them quick because the next question actually ties in quite nicely to this. The next question is:

“Dr Ro and Harms you are spot on with people having children later.”

So the same episode but it looks like that was quite popular one.

“You are spot on with the concept and idea of people having children later, and even getting into serious relationships later.”

I think they’re talking to the millennials at the moment.

“I am seeing this with my friends who are dating someone new at the age of 30, 31, and even later. So with this in mind, how do I make sure the person I’m dating wants children and is ready for children since the new relationships are starting later.”

I think that is a fascinating question.

Woah okay so you know the simplest way to answer this question is when you go on your first day you need to have with you a 27-page journal. Now that 27-page journal needs to have every other page blank and every other page written with a specific set of detailed questions, no I’m only joking.

I knew where you were going with that one.

Where you ask them questions over dinner and if they don’t get the right answer then you quit the relationship at that point.Jokes aside.

Best date ever.

Total Transformation events which used to be Turning Point events, people used to bring a partner, a new relationship partner with them and say they if we can go through the three-day training maybe we can find out if we are supposed to be together. It was fascinating to see the changes that happen to people.

On a serious note, I think it’s a bloody good question because at 30,31,32,33, 34,35 years of age and I was in that situation, I was 35 when I met my fiancé she was 13 years younger than me. I actually jumped straight in with some pretty deep conversations as did she becauseshe’s very emotional and emotionally developed person, much more emotional development than her years. We got into very deep conversations quickly.

I think that’s the key point here is if you meet someone and you feel a strong connection with them. Don’t be afraid to start having more meaningful, the word is meaningful conversations and start to have conversations around values.

Now if you don’t know what I’m talking about here I think this has come up in one of our previous podcasts, you might be able to help me out here Harminder. It’s certainly in the GrowthTribes vault and it’s certainly conversations that happened, for example, when we ran our last GrowthTribes gathering one of the subjects we talked about was values, because people were struggling to choose the order of their values. And the youngest people we had actually in the GrowthTribes gathering was an 11-year-old,13-year-old right through to people, 50, 60 years of age.

And one of thingsI was explaining was that if you are misaligned with your values in any relationship, if that is wrong to start with then as the relationship evolves although you might be attracted to each other physically, sexually, and there is a sense of variety that can very quickly get out of alignment if you’re not aligned with the values.

I think what I would say is if you genuinely want to have kids and I’m going to bring it back to you in a minute Harminder, if generally want to have kids and you are at an age where you’re 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 years of age and you believe that it’s one of your higher values, then I would say as quickly as possiblehave a values conversation with that person.

So in answer to the question how do I deal with this in any relationship, then talk to them about their values and you can bring out through questions, asked them what is meaningful to them. Ask them what’s important to them.
How do they see families figuring in the future, how do they value families?
How are their family lives?

Here’s a great question to ask somebody, imagine you had kids right now. How would you be as a parent, how would you see yourself as a parent?

Make it a fun conversation but get to those meaningful conversations early and if you find the person you’re talking to can’t even go remotely to that place, quite frankly, you’re probably with the wrong person to start with. That may sound like a bold statement and slow me up if you think I’m going off track here Harms, but we are talking about a question where somebody is saying how the fuck do I cut to the chase quickly? That’s ultimately what the question is.

That’s ultimately it, I think you nailed it.

How you cut to the chase quickly is you simply early in those dates, I wouldn’t say the first or the second date maybe you can start bringing it in. By the third date if you can’t be getting to that level of conversation, then I would say, because that’s what you get to quickly then you’re probably with the wrong person.

If you go to the GrowthTribes vault, I know we keep talking about the GrowthTribes in this section but I’m just thinking of lots of Seekardo series that we’ve got. There’s a brilliant series on ‘Who am I?’and that series essentially helps you look at your values, but it gives you some brilliant questions that you could use when talking to another person, so that might be worth having a look at.

I think that’s how I am going to answer the question Harminder. If you want to add something as a millennial because you’ve been in this space, you’re kind of there already as a person. Any views you want to add to that from your side?

I think you’ve actually summarised it fantastically. And remember everybody listening that these series and things we speak about I’ll linkup on the show notes, so GrowthTribes/podcast.

I think the thing that stood out to me Ro is have a high value discussion not a high-volume discussion with your partner or your future partner or potential personal you’re dating. Just have that meaningful conversation. I think that’s the big thing that stood out for me and don’t be afraid to have that conversation because if they doback away and say, “Oh this person is a bit forceful,” then Ro is spot on, it is not the right person for you.

Because if they are not at the age of 30 to 35 starting to get into that mature state to have that conversation, then you’re with an immature person and again, I’m just following on your lead here Ro with a bold statement. Because they’ve had their 20 years, they’ve had in their 20s to go explore stuff, do exciting things, and maybe another question you can ask them is, tell me some cool things you did in your 20s.

Because what you don’t necessarily want and again there is no right or wrong here it is just an observation, is somebody who’s done nothing in their 20s and now they want to explore everything with their partner in their 30s and having children is not a part of that exploration.

I think that’s something to look for as well, because what we often find is people are so obsessed with their careers in their 20s Ro that one day wake up in their 30s and think shit, I’m now 15 years into my workplace. Whereas in the past, careers were starting later you were getting those promotions later. Whereas now people who are 25, 27, because they come to the workplace with such a great skill set, they are very savvy. They are very switched on. They are getting promotions so their identity is attached to their career place. Next thing you know they’re 32, 33, 34 years old and they’re thinking,“Oh boy, I’ve not thought about partner, I’ve not though about children, I’ve not thought about where I’d like to live one day my dream home.”

So all this gets pushed back slightly now because there is so much emphasis upon the career. There is slightly a millennial thing going on here, so I’d say just be conscious of somebody whose experienced nothing in their 20s and they now are in their 30s andchildren are not a part that, because they haven’t travelled. They haven’t understood who they are.

Yeah, I’m laughing as you’re talking because this goes back to the first question which is regret.Imagine you’re having dinner with somebody and they spend the first five minutes saying, “I really regret not doing this in my 20s, but I’ve made a decision to do this in my 30’s and 40’s. I want to be out there and do all the things I should have done in my 20s,” and they’re regretting it you should be thinking hold on there is an alarm bell here. They’re actually going to take action on that right now so now I’m not so sure.

You could say to them, how would you feel about doing that with kids? And if you see them go “What?”, then it’s probably the wrong person to be with at that moment in time. Go back and see them in ten years’ time.

Absolutely and I think that answers it well and again just really listen to that podcast, we do answer these questions in layers, but it’s a fantastic question.

I’ve made a note here.High volumediscussions and high-value discussions, why don’t we make those two-chapter headings in the new book that we are writing at the moment on GrowthTribes? What do you think?

That would be amazing. For those of you listening when you do see the book come out look out for this, there will be a chapter called high-value discussions. I think that’s a brilliant title to a chapter.

I love that, yes noted.

Again, for all the listeners listening thank you for listening and entering these questions and again if you want to know where to place these questions to get them answered in the first time, because maybe you thought, I was a bit worried I didn’t want to submit a question.

We don’t mention names because some of these questions can be personal, because one thing we do in the Seekardo community and the Seekardo podcast is we have meaningful high-value discussions.

Hopefully you know by nowthis is not a surface discussion. So to do that just go to the Seekardo podcast on Instagram and you’ll find it there and send us a message.

So finally onto the last questionand this ties in nicely with the last episode we didwhich was, ‘How to achieve what you want in 2020’, that was the episode.

Ro the question is,

“Okay I’ve set my goals. But the thing I am really struggling with and I struggled with it in 2019, is sticking to my goals. I struggle with this and it is an ongoing thing.”
That’s how they’ve phrased the question.

“To give you some context, I am passionate about them because I understand you said you have to feel passionate about your goals in the episode as well.”

So what we know is they’re passionate, but they’re struggling to stick to their goals and they’re asking us the question what do I need to do?

Okay, so I think the first thing that comes to mine when I hear that is, and again, if they were online with us now I’d ask them coaching questions. If the person is listening to this and wants to be coached I’m going to keep throwing it out there because this is what we are going to be doing in 2020, is get yourself into the tribe and actually put yourself forward to be coached on this particular subject. I’m happy to do it with you live there whilst we are in the tribe.

The first question I would ask that person is and I suspect the answer is no to this and it goes back the other question we had earlier is, did you have an accountability coach?

I know this even from my own experience. If I don’t have people around me that I am accountable to, or accountable with, as business partners because I have many things going on at the same time as well as being a parent, sometimes even for me certain things can slip down the pecking order of commitment as well as importance and urgency.

I think the first thing to do is once you set your goal is write down who you are prepared to be accountable to apart from yourself, of course, to make sure that you’re not going to slip on these goals in the future.

Meaning, let’s say, for example, Harminder was your coach and you’d engaged him to coach you, you would know that every two weeks you will be calling him up for a half an hour call and that during the previous two weeks, you would have achieved X, Y, and Z. And that when you speak to him in two weeks’ time, he’s going to ask you, how did you get on with the three goals you set yourself two weeks ago? Goal number one how did you get on with that?

Then you become accountable to that person in this case Harminder. And the coach’s responsibility there isapart from kicking your arse and making sure that you take action is to also find out several things. Number one, what was the reason that you didn’t achieve the goal if you didn’t achieve it, and what can we do moving ahead and again I’m asking you these questions because you can actually write this down now. What can you do moving ahead to make sure you don’t make the same mistake again and you achieve it the next time round.

That would be one of the questions they’re going to ask you.

Another question they’re going to ask you iswhat resources were you lacking that stopped you achieving this goal? Because that is very important and number three, one of the questions they’re going to ask you is time perspective.What time did you dedicate to this, and should you be dedicating more time to this in order that you do achieve it, moving ahead.

Now Harms I don’t know if you’re picking up on this, but I’m kind of answering the question by being a coach at the same time. Do those three thingsplus the accountability, do you think that helps in this answer here?

I think that does answer the question and if you want an example of what I did in the past actually Ro I don’t know if you remember, but five, six years ago now one of the early things you do with people who work with you is you implement a buddy system and an accountability system.

Correct.

Where you would pair people who are on the same level. So you’re pairing people who are working towards a similar goal and their job is and actually in the backgroundI’ve pulled out my buddy call log, just checking on the questions and you’ve actually worked through those questions. And we would just go back and forth with our accountability buddy and log that as well to see really see a trend in trending results. Are we working towards results or are we just exerting effort for the sake of exerting effort?

Or I’d like to have that many properties, I’d like to have that much income. I’d like to have a sixpack but really I’m spendingno time doing it. So that’s the goal of the accountability buddy. Now we’ve created that environment within the Seekardo as well.

One of the things that Seekardo members get is they have an online community.

So as well as Ro personally coaching anybody who wants to be coached in there, it’s coached as a live experience. So, other members can learn from it. Also other community members are go-getters, they’re people who are going out there doing things, getting busy, achieving extraordinary things.Small businesses, medium-size businesses, large businesses, property companies, online companies, it’s exciting, it’s anexciting place. We’ve got full time parents, retired people who have retired at an early age.

There’s a fantastic mix of people and one of the things that people will do for you if you reach out and ask is hold you accountable for your goals and you can publicly declare them. That’s a great way to get public declaration of your accountable goals in the safe space. But put the goals in front of people who are going to be rooting for you. People who are supporting you and almost your online cheerleaders and that’s what I like to refer to us as. We aren’t going to say that goal is too big. That goal is not good enough or I can’t believe you didn’t achieve that goal last week.

It’s all about being a cheerleader and supporting you in order for you to go achieve those goals.

Thank you for raising that, I thought about the fact that we can bring them into that space as well right now, but it’s a very good point Harminder.

If anybody is listening to this and you are listening to this right at the end of 2019, but it could be that you’re listening to it in any year, because these are evergreen recording at the end of the day. And you want to get into that foldearly do it quickly. Come and join us in January, February, certainly January 2020one of the first calls I’m going to be doing is over money. We’ve got a gentlemanwho put his name forward to be coached about money, some blocks he has got with money.

But the other thing of course is if somebody comes on and says these are my goals A,B,C,D, E,F,G,H,I,J,K. What you won’t get is people saying that is bullshit, there is no way you’re going to achieve those. But what you might get is someone like myself or Harminder or one of the more senior people within the group, saying looking at those goals on a scale of one to 10, how realistic you think it’s going to be to achieve those 18 goals you’ve set yourself by the end of February?

At which point it gives you an objective chance to step back and go actually that’s a good point, realistically I might achieve five of these. So then you start to get coaching through the fact that people are feeding back sharing their own experiences as well, so you’ll find that there will be a natural feedback rather than a critical feedback.

Absolutely Ro well and I think if that’s the space you are in then go grab the opportunity, head over to the growthtribes.com and you’ll find the information there. There is a chat app on the website as well so do speak to one of the team just to make sure it’s right for yourself.

So what I’ll say Ro is thank you for answering these questions. One of the great things on the podcast is normallywe follow a theme, a trend so there’s an extra challenge, an extra layer of challenge here where we are going back and forth. But I think everything tied in nicely.

Again massive thank you for submitting your questions and for those who want to submit in the future just head over to the growth tribes podcast Instagram page, send us a direct message in there, ask us your special question in there and we will log it for the next time we do one of these special episodes.

For those who didn’t get their question answered apologies, but keep plugged in you know, head over to the Seekardo ask us that question personally one on one. Often it may be because the question is very personal and you just need a quick-fire response from Dr Ro or somebody else senior within the Seekardo community to get that answered.

One other thing Harminder we haven’t mentioned it, and it may come in as a question, but if anybody asked a question about the Seekardo gathering the live get-togethers that we have. If you would like to attend one we are likely to be having another one early 2020.So feel free once you’re inside the tribeask that question and those dates are going to be issued very soon and that will be a great chance to actually meet some of you that have been listening to the podcast as well.

I look forward to that as well.

Awesome Ro, any final words?

No just have an amazing 2020, or if you’re listen to this in and its 2020, 21, 22 have an amazing next year. Hopefully these have been great tools that have helped you.Keep listening and keep sharing the message of GrowthTribes. If you’ve got friends you think would benefit from it I would love for them to come listen to us and I would love to see you join us in the Seekardo so I can actually talk to you. And I know Harminderwill be doing the same thing as well.

Lots of stuff to learn and amazing opportunities to experience in the future.

Amazing.

Have an amazing 2020. Wishing you all the best from myself, Ro and the whole team at Seekardo. Thanks for listening to the Seekardo podcast in 2019. We shall see you in 2020.