01 squash lessons for marketing interview bonuses/mex/squashlessons.pdfdr marc dussault is a veteran...

Squash Lessons for Marketing Lachlan’s Business Breakfast Radio Interview on 2RDJ

14 December 2006

- Transcript -

This is the transcript of a live radio interview that took place at 2RDJ’s studio in Sydney on Thursday 14 December 2006. Although it has been edited, the raw, interactive elements of the discussion have been purposefully kept – we hope you’ll enjoy reading the transcript as the listeners enjoyed their commute into work that morning! Dr Marc Dussault is a veteran of Jay Abraham’s strategies with more than a decade’s experience in dozens of industries across three continents. His passion for business is closely followed by his love of the game of squash. This transcript is dedicated to Marc’s squash partner, Simon Gogolin – 2005 World Masters Gold Medallist Champion, 2006 World Masters Silver Medallist, 2005 and 2006 Australian and NSW Masters Champion all in the 45-49 age category.

LACHLAN: Good morning, you’re listening to Lachan’s Business Breakfast on 2RDJ.

My guest in the studio this morning is Dr Marc Dussault. Good morning

Marc.

MARC: Good morning.

LACHLAN: It’s been a while.

MARC: Yes it has. Last time we spoke we were with Jay Abraham back in August.

LACHLAN: That’s right, that’s right. Four months ago. Wow. It doesn’t seem like four

months ago –

LAUGHING AND UNCLEAR TALKING

LACHLAN: It’s been such a busy time, it’s been a very busy time.

MARC: Yes, it’s been a pretty good year, actually.

Squash Lessons for Marketing Lachlan’s Business Breakfast Interview on 2RDJ 14 Dec 2006

© 2006 Dr Marc Dussault www.MarcDussault.com 2 / 44

LACHLAN: Yeah, we’ve had a very good year from a financial point of view, it’s been

quite busy. My business has done pretty well. How have you been?

MARC: We’ve done quite well, in fact. the whole Australian economy I think is

doing well on the back of the commodities boom, and the entrepreneurial

spirit that’s taking place, and, yeah. It’s been a good cycle.

LACHLAN: Yeah, no worries. And so you’re going to give us some lessons from

squash.

MARC: Actually, it’s a sports metaphor, it’s called squash lessons for marketing

your business.

LACHLAN: Right, okay.

MARC: And the reason I use a sports metaphor is just like in sales, you have a

scoreboard, and the scoreboard just never lies, and it’s a very harsh critic.

LACHLAN: Yes.

MARC: But I use the sports metaphor because there are a lot of concepts in

marketing and business strategy that are a little bit ambiguous for some

people, and intangible. But when you put it into a sports metaphor, it’s

actually quite an easy thing to comprehend, and it’s actually a little bit of

fun, you know, you can laugh about it, because everybody has fun playing

sports. I’m a competitive squash player. I’ve been playing since I, I got to

Australia about six years ago.

LACHLAN: Right.

MARC: And so I enjoy the sport, and I just give some metaphors that people can

have some fun with, and just – just put it in their minds what they ‘re doing

on a daily basis, because when we play sport, we know what we’re doing.

In business it’s a little bit harder to see ourselves actually playing the game

of business.

LACHLAN: Yeah. Well, in sport there’s defined rules and there’s defined goals to



score the appropriate points and things like that. In business things can be

– those lines can blur a bit, unless we put some things in place to make it

work.

MARC: Absolutely.

LACHLAN: Okay. Well, that sounds like we’re going to be in for a fun morning.

MARC: Yes.

LACHLAN: I haven’t played squash for a long time, and once you stop they reckon you

should never start again –

LAUGHING

MARC: It is one of the most injurious sports in the world. It’s also one of the best

sports for fitness. But yes, it’s a sport that doesn’t leave a lot of room for

compromise.

LACHLAN: No, no, no, it doesn’t, the brick walls and glass walls don’t –

LAUGHING

MARC: It can be expensive with the racquets if you keep hitting the walls!

LACHLAN: Yeah, well, and also doctor’s bills.

MARC: Yes.

LACHLAN: We won’t go there, though!

LAUGHING

MARC: Well, some people shouldn’t be playing squash, and in business it’s the

same thing. You have to pick your sport, you have to pick your industry,

you have to pick the business you’re going to be in, and decide at which

level of the game that you’re going to play. So yes, we’ll have fun this

morning.



LACHLAN: Yeah, it sounds good. Okay. All we have to do is put on track, get

ourselves organised, then we’ll come back.

BREAK

LACHLAN: Marc’s just told me his little journey in this morning, and mine was just as

bad, trying to come – I dropped my wife out at Merrylands and came down

the M4, this morning it was the worst I’ve seen it so far this year.

MARC: Yeah, I was coming in from the city on Parramatta Road and the first ten,

fifteen minutes there was nobody on the roads in either direction, and

within fifteen minutes it’s chockablock on the other side, and that’s early,

six thirty in the morning, and there were people getting to the city, it’s

unbelievable.

LACHLAN: If you want to go anywhere you get up earlier and earlier and earlier, it’s

just, just wild stuff.

MARC: So for those listening in the car, thanks for listening!

LAUGHING

LACHLAN: Yeah, we’ve got a captive audience.

LAUGHING

MARC: Enjoy the ride in, hope we make it more enjoyable, that’s the point, that’s

why we got up so early this morning, to make it a little bit more pleasurable

for a few more people.

LACHLAN: Okay, so you’re going to serve, now, are you?

MARC: Yes, absolutely, I’ll serve the ball!


MARC: The funny thing about the squash analogy is, you know, when we think

about business, a lot of people just show up on the court, figuratively



speaking, and they just bash the ball around. And they just figure if they

can bash the ball around better than the next guy they’re going to win the

game. And the reality –

LACHLAN: No tactics.

MARC: - the reality is you have to have a strategy, and you have to have tactics.

Now, if you’re playing someone that’s not as good as you are, you’re

probably going to win. But the chances are he’s just going to lose faster

than you’re going to win. There’s a difference between winning a game

and having someone else lose the game. In business it’s getting more and

more competitive, and people realise that if they can’t actually control their

game, they’re really not in the game at all. That’s why you see a lot of

angst in small business. I’ve been involved with small business for about

twenty years, and with the Jay Abraham strategies, we basically cater to

small to medium sized businesses. People are feeling more and more

threatened because the players on the court are basically getting better

and better. But you have to come to the game with a strategy.

LACHLAN: Yes. And to beat the opposition.

MARC: And to beat the opposition. Now, I don’t actually believe that business is a

zero sum gain, because I actually believe in unlimited wealth from the point

of view that just like for example oil, and yes we know that the oil price is

going up, but if we just go back twenty years, the actual fuel efficiency of

cars has gone up four times, so the cars are four times more efficient. That

means basically that the oil reserves, at least from the point of view of car

[oil] consumption, has actually gone up four times. So as a technology

increases–

LACHLAN: The only problem is that we’ve had an increase in population, so ????

MARC: Yes, no, no, I understand, but the fact that –

LACHLAN: But the efficiency of the automobile has increased four times, yeah.



MARC: That’s right. So – and in sports, you have to beat the opponent. But in

business, all you really have to do is you have to win your game. And the

game is won in your head. But you have to have strategies, and you have

to know what game it is that you’re playing.

LACHLAN: Exactly.

MARC: But I guess if I look at the sports metaphor just as a basic starting point,

most people don’t realise that they’re actually playing a game. They don’t

realise the rules that they’re playing to, they don’t realise that people are

keeping score, and in some cases don’t even know that the metrics that

they should be keeping to actually determine whether they’re winning or

losing, how fast they’re winning or how fast they’re losing.

LACHLAN: Exactly.

MARC: And when, when you’re playing a game, you know what the scoreboard’s

going to say, and you actually know that you’re going to play, you know,

best of, best of five, so the first three to win, gets this award, and then it’s

the next competition.

LACHLAN: Exactly.

MARC: But, yeah, it’s an interesting way to look at business.

LACHLAN: Yeah, no, it’s a very good one. Because, like you say, most people have

no idea. They would not know even on an annual basis, whether they’re in

front or behind. It’s only when they – the accountant’s gone through the

shoe box and gone through all the receipts and invoices and stuff and said

“What do you think you’re doing?”

MARC: Exactly. It’s shocking. I ask people – and, you know, when I speak in front

of, you know, hundreds of people, and I ask them just by a show of hands,

how many people have metrics for their company? Basically a score card.

You know, less than ten percent of the room put their hand up.



LACHLAN: Exactly. I could imagine that.

MARC: And you can’t win the game of business if you’re not keeping score. And

it’s not a question of being better than the next guy, it’s really being the

best that you can be at the game that you want to play. And the fun thing

is as a business you actually make your own rules, and if you change the

rules to your advantage, well, guess what, you can win.

UNCLEAR TALKING

LACHLAN: I play golf. It’s a very unforgiving game, but you’re playing against yourself,

you know, you’re playing with a bunch of guys and that’s all fun, but really

the person you’re trying to beat is you.

MARC: That’s right.

LACHLAN: So, yeah, it’s a very horrible hook.

MARC: Yes, the hook and the slice…

TALKING OVER EACH OTHER

MARC: Absolutely. And it’s funny, if we keep to the, to the metaphor of golf, one of

the things in golf is if you ever realise, those of you who have played golf,

is that the minute that there’s a water trap, what do they keep looking at?

The water.

LACHLAN: As people do, yeah.

MARC: Yes. But the reality is that if you don’t actually – if you don’t see it, if you

actually remove it from your mind, you can actually hit the ball straight, but

the chances are it becomes a magnet, because you get what you focus on.

LACHLAN: Yeah, well, exactly. There’s a hole up at, up on the Central Coast that’s

ninety meters. And right in front of the tee’s a little creek. You will not

believe how many balls go plonk, you know fifteen meters, straight into the

water. Who hits the ball fifteen metres? Not even my kids when they were



little – and they’re not little anymore, you met my son on the way in…

MARC: Yeah, he’s not little anymore.

LACHLAN: He’s much bigger than me, the rotten thing he is.

LAUGHING

LACHLAN: But even he could hit the ball more than fifteen meters. So if you –

MARC: It’s the psychology, and the psychology of the mindset of a champion, you

really only learn – and one of the reasons I shall maybe tell you the story of

why I actually play squash, and I play squash every single day I’m in

Sydney, when I’m not travelling. And the reason I started to play squash is

if you apply yourself in squash or any other endeavour other than business,

what happens is how you play that sport or how you play that instrument,

or how you devote yourself to that activity is basically mirrored in how you

actually live your life. And a lot of people – one of the shocking statistics,

and this isn’t just Australia, it’s all in the developed countries, and I’m

talking, you know, basically the US, Canada, and Australia for my

immediate experience.

Someone was telling me that in my generation, and I’m forty three, in my

generation eighty (80) percent of people in my age category had

succeeded in sport at some point in their life. So they’d achieved some

kind of sports excellence – whether it was in primary school, high school,

or university, eighty percent had achieved excellence.

LACHLAN: That’s amazing.

MARC: So they knew what it was to achieve. Today’s generation, the young

twenty year olds, eighty percent have – you have the Generation X or Y,

that generation, eighty percent of them, have never excelled at sport, even

though they’ve had that opportunity, I’m talking about people who have

already graduated from university.



So what that means is what they lack is the ability to actually know what it

takes to actually excel at something. And I’m not advocating that you have

to be a sports fanatic, because that’s really not the point. But if you can

actually excel at something, whether it’s sport, or it’s a musical instrument,

or whatever, whatever the pastime might be, and there’s a lot of, you know,

very good endeavours out there – how are you going to recreate that in

your business and in your personal life?

LACHLAN: You can’t.

MARC: You can’t, because you have no point of reference. And that’s one of the

things that –

LACHLAN: That’s a wild thought.

MARC: It’s shocking when you think about it, it’s sad.

LACHLAN: Yeah, you know, we grew up, you know, I’m six years older than you, I’m

forty nine, you know, so, yeah, I’ve played cricket, I’ve played rugby union

at high school, I’ve played other sports -

MARC: Sure, you had a variety of opportunity.

LACHLAN: I’ve played -

MARC: To find what –

LACHLAN: Hockey and all that sort of stuff, and, you know.

MARC: So you know what it takes to win, and it’s not easy.

LACHLAN: No.

MARC: It’s not a given, it’s not just handed to you just because you happen to be

together, you did something -

LACHLAN: No, no, we worked together.



MARC: You worked together, you developed patterns and strategies, and tactics,

and -

LACHLAN: Nobody could get near us.


TALKING OVER EACH OTHER

LACHLAN: We had one goal scored against in our last year together.

MARC: That’s incredible. That’s incredible.

LACHLAN: But it was the same thirteen guys, basically the same eleven guys on the

paddock all the time. You know, and we were basically invincible.

MARC: So that’s why I use this is as a metaphor, and I spoke at a public event last

year, and I just threw one of these sports metaphors out, and there was a

squash one, and somebody came after me, came after the event to talk to

me and said “That was an incredible sports metaphor”. He says “You’ve

got to use more of those metaphors, because sometimes you talk about

these business principles, and yes, we think we can intellectualise them,

but if you put them in something that we can visualise it makes all the

difference”.

LACHLAN: Our generation and the generation – and especially the generations that

come behind us, they’re extremely visual, because we all grew up on

television.

MARC: Oh, of course, yeah. The visual, instant gratification, and they want to be

able to picture what it is, yes, absolutely.

LACHLAN: Yes, - INAUDIBLE - it’s all that sort of stuff these days, because if you

don’t, you know, you lose half your audience, you know. The great thing

with radio is, you know, I just – we usually just go in short segments - but

metaphors is the way to go. Yes, amazing. Very good.



MARC: So the metaphor I used in that particular example is that a lot of people in

business are focused on trying to hit the ball. And, you know, that’s a very

valid thing, you pick up a book on how to do whatever it is in business or

marketing or sales, and you read the book. But the funny thing is in

squash as we all realise, those of us who have played, and for those of you

who haven’t played, it’s a little black ball in a white room, and the goal is

basically, very simple, to hit it before it bounces twice. Now, this little black

rubber ball doesn’t bounce very much. Now, if you’re from Queensland it

bounces a lot, because it’s hot and the ball bounces, but especially in

winter, even in New South Wales in winter, the ball won’t bounce very

much. So the biggest challenge everybody has when they start is getting

to the ball.

So if I spent two or three hours with you as a business consultant, coach,

mentor, advisor, talking to you about hitting the ball, and you can’t get to

the ball, guess what?

LACHLAN: You’re wasting my time.

MARC: I’m wasting your time, you’re wasting your time, and then you’re getting

frustrated. So in business, you have to realise that which step are you –

are you trying to get to the ball? Because I can tell you techniques about

how to get to the ball. Then once you get to the ball, I can say look, have

some fun, hit it, because now you’re getting to it and it’s fun, but then once

you’re at the ball, then I can start telling to you how to actually hit it,

develop the strokes, and then once you’re good at that, then you can start

talking strategy. But there’s no use talking to you about strategy if you

can’t get to the ball.

LACHLAN: Yeah, exactly. Alright.

MARC: So it’s those kinds of things, and people realise – and you ask people “Are

you getting to the ball in these three or four dimensions of your business?”

And in some cases they’re absolute masters, and in other cases they

completely fall apart. It might be sales, it might be production, it might be



client service, it might be marketing.

LACHLAN: Or the big one.

MARC: Which is?

LACHLAN: Getting the money.

MARC: Yes, yes.

LACHLAN: Accounts receivable.

MARC: Accounts receivable, yes, I mean, yes, I mean, no accounts receivable and

you basically don’t have a business.

LACHLAN: That’s right, yeah. If you don’t get any money in, you know, you’re wasting

your time.

MARC: Absolutely.

LACHLAN: Yeah.

MARC: So one of the things that I see is what’s called, in squash, is called bashing

the ball, and the men, unfortunately, with our testosterone and our egos,

we get on the court and we see that little black ball and we sit there and we

start bashing the ball, and it basically means, you know, playing full on, and

just smacking the hell out of the ball as hard as you can. And you think

that the faster the ball goes, the better it is. And the reality is you’re

expending and exerting a lot of effort. So for the first five minutes, you

might have an edge, but after five or six or seven or ten minutes, you

basically wear yourself out.

LACHLAN: Yeah, exactly.

MARC: And the, the analogy is bashing the ball versus hitting with a purpose. And

I remember I was up in, in – actually, I should say West, in Perth, and I had

a coach, and he said “When you hit the ball, what are you thinking?”



LACHLAN: I remember what I was thinking when I first started playing, I wanted the

ball to come off the back wall and bounce on the ground.

MARC: Yes. But he asked me that question, and at that point I’d been playing for

maybe two years, or something, I’m embarrassed to say this, but about two

years, and I said “I’m not quite sure, I’m actually just trying to hit the ball”.

And he goes “But you hit the ball very well, so why are you not thinking

about what you’re trying to do with the ball, why don’t you hit with a

purpose?” And I said “Well, what do you mean by hitting with a purpose?”

He says “When you hit the ball, in your mind, before you hit the ball, think

of where the ball is going to go. Don’t just hit it to get yourself out of

trouble. So the minute you start thinking you’re going to go down the line,

or across court or a drop, hitting with a purpose, you’re going to be much

more effective”. So from that point -

LACHLAN: Yeah, because you’re wearing out your opponent.

MARC: You’re wearing out your opponent, because he or she’s not thinking about

hitting with a purpose. So what’s the equivalent in business? Well, in

business, it’s we get to work every day, and a lot of us, and I count myself

in this, so I’ve learnt a lesson as well, and I keep learning every day. I play

with a squash champion, his name’s Simon [Gogolin], and he’s great,

because he keeps teaching me lessons that I need to learn every day. So

we’re always, always learning.

And so by hitting with a purpose is when you come in to work every day,

instead of just bashing the ball to work really hard, you have to come in to

work with a purpose, a thing that you want to accomplish that day, and

outcomes that you want to reach. But if you come in to work and you’re

just there just to work hard and to do the ten or twelve hours, or the eight

hours, or whatever your day is, you’re really just really bashing the ball,

and you’re spending a lot of effort for nothing. And just take the time to

think of where you’re going with whatever you were doing this morning.

And how many of you are in the car today not quite sure what you’re going



to do this morning?

LACHLAN: Well, a lot of people start off with Plan A, and end up with Plan Z, because

something happens on the way.


LACHLAN: Yeah, they don’t plan for the unseen.

BREAK

LACHLAN: You’re listening to Lachlan’s Business Breakfast and my guest is Dr Marc

Dussault, and we’re talking about squash.

MARC: Yes, just before the break we were talking about hitting with a purpose, and

we have to bring that home from the business point of things. When we

talk about hitting with a purpose, it means being specific about the

outcomes that we want for our business. The more specific we can be in

anything we do will improve our results. So if you just hit to hit across court

so the ball goes into the corner, that’s one thing, but if you hit the ball so it

goes into the cross court, it doesn’t bounce off the back wall, that’s a

slightly different outcome, a better outcome, and if you think about it, the

chances of achieving it are much better.

So for example you want to place an ad to get more sales, well, you know,

that is a very general outcome, but if you put an ad to get sales from a

specific target market with a certain percentage response rate with a call to

action that people will actually take action on, then that is going to get you

a better outcome than just placing an ad to get your brand across.

LACHLAN: Yeah. You spend two thousand dollars here, and you may or may not get

a result. – INAUDIBLE – word the ad slightly differently, then that two

thousand dollars, instead of being down the gurgler, as they say, could be

much better. You’re hitting with that purpose.




LACHLAN: Very good, yeah, okay.

MARC: Now, another analogy from the game of squash is there’s two ways to play

the game, one is you can either develop the rally, so in other words you

basically hit the ball around, and then you wait for what’s called the loose

shot. And that’s what’s called strategic playing, so if you’re good enough to

hit the ball around, what you do is you wear out your opponent and your

game gets better and better, because if he or she is running fast – running

around more than you are, you basically get the advantage.

But what most people do when they start, is they want to kill the shot. That

basically means you stand there waiting to hit that winner. In business

you’d be surprised at how many people just stand – literally, like at the T in

the middle of the court just waiting to get that big hit. And you know what?

That big hit rarely ever comes!

LACHLAN: LAUGHING

MARC: No, exactly, you’ve got to move, and you’ve got to develop the rally

because if you get run around, guess what, that kill shot’s not going to

come.

LACHLAN: Not from you, anyway!.

MARC: Not from you, and not often enough. Because even if you get one or two

kills a game, if you’re playing a game to fifteen or to nine, you’ve got to get

nine or fifteen of those.

LACHLAN: Yeah. Or you have to know how to serve, etc...

MARC: You have to be able to serve, you have to be able to return the serve, you

have to do so many different things, it’s not about getting the kill shot.

There is no champion that can just stand there and just kill every shot.

Now, he can if he’s playing a beginner, but that’s not a game. And in

business you’re not playing with a bunch of beginners.



LACHLAN: It’s not competition.

MARC: No. And the marketplace is so much stronger than that. To look at the

business analogy, what it means is when you’ve developed a rally, it

basically means that you’re hitting what you’re comfortable hitting. You’re

running the person around, so you hit the ball wherever they’re not. In

business it’s the same thing. The analogy is what you want to do is you

want to set up your marketplace so that when a client is ready to self-select

into your sales funnel, they will choose to do that, and then you can go for

the kill, you can go for the sale, you can go from making sure that you send

the invoice when they’re ready to receive it. It should be a foregone

conclusion that when that ball pops out of the wall, that you know that it’s in

your zone, boom you can get the sale.

What most people do is they provoke it prematurely, they provoke it, and

then what happens, what they do is they hit what’s called the tin, which is

the bottom -

LACHLAN: Yeah, that ugly -

MARC: The nice, ugly thing at the bottom –

TALKING OVER EACH OTHER, LAUGHING

MARC: It is a beautiful sound - when your opponent hits it, but not when you do!

LAUGHING

LACHLAN: That’s right, you go “Oh, out”.

LAUGHING

LACHLAN: How many customers do you go “clunk”?

MARC: Exactly. Hitting the tin is one of those psychological things that – you’d be

surprised how many times you hit it…

LAUGHING AND TALKING OVER EACH OTHER



MARC: It’s just like the little creek in golf. And in business it’s the same thing, it’s

losing that account, that sale, and some of them, they’re small orders, right,

it’s just, you know, the beginning of the game, the point doesn’t seem to be

that important, so it’s not a game point every time. But if you stop tinning

the ball, guess what? You start winning more games.

LACHLAN: Exactly.

MARC: And I was playing with three or four different players, and I have multiple

partners that I play with, and one of my – well, my champion friend, his

name is Simon, he just basically said “Marc”, he says, “if you want to start

beating the other guys”, he says “all you have to do is stop tinning”. I said

“What does that mean?” He says “Just hit it up, and you’re better at

running around, chasing the ball than they are, and you’re just going to

start winning”. Guess what? From that week on, I started being

competitive with those players, and within two to three weeks, with a few

lessons, I started dominating. And it’s just one distinction.

LACHLAN: Instead of trying to go for [the kill shot]….

MARC: That’s right. And, and hitting the tin in business is going for the really

cheap sale. Really – and you know, you know when you’re doing that,

you’re provoking, you’re pushing someone, you’re forcing them into a sale,

they’re kind of reluctantly doing it because they feel like they have to, and

that’s not a good feeling, because they can either -

LACHLAN: Yeah, it’s not win-win, is it?

MARC: No, it’s not win-win. And it doesn’t get you referrals, it doesn’t get you

testimonials, and it doesn’t build the momentum that you want to build for a

business.

LACHLAN: They’ll buy once or one thing instead of – instead of becoming a life long

client, but they’re a one off sale.

MARC: Correct. And you know when you’re doing it, you actually know. Anybody



who’s in sales, and you know, I can imagine how many people are in their

cars just going “Oh yes, I know, I’ve done that”, and it’s just a gut feeling

that tells you. And it’s hard to resist.

LACHLAN: Well, because the Neanderthal comes back out with the club.


MARC: Another thing is, and this is something that we all learn when, when we try

to improve ourselves, is, you know, what are we going to work on? And

one of the things I learned – I guess about three or four years ago, actually

– yeah, three or four years ago, is not to just play with one racquet and one

pair of shoes. I just thought “Well, what difference does it make?” The

reality is if you’re actually going to play regularly, you want to have multiple

racquets and multiple shoes.

You want to take that factor out of the equation, because if you only have

one racquet and one pair of shoes, when your shoes wear out, you have to

start with new shoes. Your new shoes are actually going to throw you off,

because they feel different, they grip differently. The racquet’s the same

thing, the strings will go, and then all of a sudden – first of all your strings

will break, at some point, and then you have to wait to get the new one, but

when you get your new racquet, it’s not the same feel.

So that’s a variable that you have to take out of your game. So if you’re

competitive, you have to have multiple racquets.


MARC: But you don’t think about it until you get to the point where that actually

makes a difference.

LACHLAN: And then once you’ve got multiple racquets you can sort of say this one’s

got slightly older strings, I’ll start -




LACHLAN: I’ll start with this one, and he thinks he’s got an advantage over me, I’ll

change racquets to the newer one about halfway through the game, and all

of a sudden the ball’s zinging past him and he doesn’t know what’s

happening.

MARC: It’s the same player, but, but the tool that’s being used is different.

LACHLAN: It’s slightly better.

MARC: In business, what you have to do is stop playing with variables. You have

to – and this is where you know, entrepreneurs – they’re great people. I

love them, because they’re so creative, and they’re so innovative, and

they’re so excited and have so much enthusiasm. But you know what the

problem is? They keep playing with stuff. They keep changing everything.

LACHLAN: Well, they want to change things, because that’s how they are.

MARC: That’s what makes them successful entrepreneurs. But you know what?

LACHLAN: They often have to bring somebody in behind them to keep playing the

game, keep playing the game right.

MARC: Yes, absolutely, yeah, you need an administrator for an entrepreneur to

actually systemise the business, but if you’re a sole business entrepreneur,

which, you know, ninety five percent of the businesses in this country are –

there’s one point three million small businesses in Australia – which is

great, because it’s entrepreneurial, you have to teach yourself that skill.

LACHLAN: Or get a bookkeeper.

MARC: Or get a bookkeeper.

LACHLAN: Thirty five bucks an hour. A few hours a week. Which, as you’re saying,

that’s bringing – that’s bringing in the other tool, that’s bringing another

racquet into the game.

MARC: That’s right, that’s what you want – yeah, exactly, it’s bringing that racquet



into the game, and it’s taking that variable out. To do that you have to

have the discipline. You have to realise that as an entrepreneur you want

to come up with new ideas, but the minute you have something that’s

working, you need to stick to it, you need to make sure that the variables

for that equation that’s working for you – first of all is known to you so that

you know what you’re doing right, and so you know what you’re doing

wrong. Write it down, ideally, if you can, NO, not if you can, you definitely

have to write it down! Then use your innovation to do something else,

rather than keep playing with something that’s currently working.

LACHLAN: That’s what the old saying is, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. So if you want to

get creative, get creative with another product.

MARC: That’s right. So in squash it’s if your backhand is good, focus on your

forehand. If your volley’s not good, focus on your volley. If your drop shot

is weak, then work on your drop shot. But once you’ve solved one of the

problems, leave that alone, focus on something else. Work on your

movement for example, move on taking the ball early.

LACHLAN: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You’ve got to become more strategic in what you do.

Once you’ve mastered one part, yeah. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

MARC: One of the things that I learned having – I’ve had mentors, I’ve had

coaches, I’ve had people I’ve played with, and I’ve had people that are

much better than me. One of the things in the analogy was that I was

having problems with my backhand, and I do what’s called breaking my

backhand, so that means that my wrist is actually bent, and it shouldn’t be

bent, or it’s bent the wrong way, because it actually needs to be bent the

other way. What that means is I don’t get enough power to hit my

backhand. If I’m in the perfect position and everything’s right, yes, I can

get just as much power as the next guy. But I have poor technique.

So everybody up until that point said “Oh, you just break your backhand,

and therefore you don’t have enough power”. So I had a coach, and his

name is Neil Forsyth, he’s a really great guy. He’s retired now, but he’s



been coaching here in Sydney for about ten years. And he said “Yes, I

realise you break your backhand, but the problem isn’t your backhand, the

problem is you getting to the ball”. I said “Excuse me?”. He says “Watch”.

He says “Just change this, and get to the ball differently. So go at it – go to

the ball from a different angle, and see what happens”. Within thirty

minutes, my backhand problems were fifty percent resolved. I still have

things to work on, but it’s getting to the ball that was the problem.

So what’s the analogy in business? The analogy in business is everybody

has challenges. Even including me, you know, I have, you know, expertise

in Jay Abraham strategies that have been developed over the last thirty

years, and they are formulas that you can use, and even though you can

be a master at these things, there’s always something that you can

improve. But the thing is what you don’t realise, unless someone else can

see from a different perspective, is that it’s not how you’re hitting the ball

that’s wrong, it’s how you’re getting to the ball. In business, it might be the

three things you’ve done before the sale, it might be your logo is

inconsistent, or your slogan or your unique selling proposition, is

inconsistent with your branding, it might be inconsistent with the

marketplace, the colours might be off, the vocabulary that you use for your

ads might be off, and yet your product is fantastic, and your staff is great,

and your customer service is great, but you don’t know what it is that you

actually need to change to get a better outcome. So if you can get a

mentor or a coach or an advisor -

LACHLAN: Or just listen to your staff.

MARC: Or just listen to your staff, or your clients -

LACHLAN: And the clients, yeah.

MARC: But you’ve got to ask, you have to ask for that feedback. That’s another

thing in sport, in this country, which is quite surprising when I started taking

lessons at my local squash club, I noticed, and then I asked my coach the

question, I said, you know, “How many people do you coach?”, and, he told



me six, seven or eight people. He said “The funny thing is most of them

are foreigners”. And I said “Well, what do you mean?” He said “They’re

either American, Canadian, British or whatever”. I said “Well, why would

that be?” He says “The Australian philosophy, psyche, is not to get

coaching”. And I said “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

I mean, you know, first of all, Australia loves its sports, and we’re really

good at sports in this country, I mean, we’re world leaders with a

population of eighteen million, I mean, we beat Americans with a

population of three hundred million, you know, in many, many sports, so

we’re disproportionately excellent at sports, but the general population

doesn’t get the coaching that they should be getting, because there’s this

philosophy that “Oh, look, I think I can do it on my own”. Look, you can get

really far on your own, but you can get there a lot quicker if you have

someone there that helps you, you know, cut to the chase and give you the

distinctions.


MARC: So that’s one thing, because you’d get that different perspective, and if you

listen to your clients, if you listen to your staff, because your staff are your

greatest asset, absolutely your greatest asset, you’d be surprised what you

can learn.

LACHLAN: Yeah. And the funny thing is how many people won’t listen to people, you

know, they think they know it all, it’s my product, I invented it, I did this, I

did whatever, and, you know -

MARC: It’s because they’re successful.

LACHLAN: Yeah, it’s working, I’m making money, but how much more money could

you be making if you listened to some people.

MARC: One of the things that’s really important, it’s not just about making money.

It’s about having balance in your life. If you can actually play the game



well, guess what, you can get off the court and not be huffing and puffing,

and the huffing and puffing in business is you actually don’t need to work

sixty, eighty hours a week. You can actually get the same outcomes

working forty or fifty instead of sixty or seventy hours.

LACHLAN: Yeah. Or generally, the amount of work you do in the sixty or seventy, is

the same as for thirty or forty, it’s just a lot less efficient.

MARC: Yes. That efficiency is where you can get a lot of improvement. It’s little

things that all add up. In squash it’s about how you get to the ball, for

example, one of the things that I was doing when I was training with, with

my friend who ended up winning the world championship in the Masters

last year, we were doing court sprints. And court sprints basically means

you run back and forth -

LACHLAN: Up and down the court.

MARC: Up and down the wall, twenty times, in less than sixty seconds, and you do

that five times with a minute break in between. Now, I’m just tired telling

you that -

LACHLAN: I’m just thinking about it going “Nah!”

MARC: You might think it’s easy, but, you know, if anybody’s tried it, it’s an

absolute killer routine to do. What it teaches you, it teaches the brain that

you can run twenty times in less than sixty seconds. It puts it into your

neuro-associative system that one: you can do it, and second: that it’s not

going to kill you, and third: that the distance of the court that you run is

twice the distance that you would run from the T, because the T is the

middle of the court. So you’re always running half the distance. You’re

running there and back to get back to the T. But what it does is it

conditions you. Just being able to do that, just getting that level of fitness,

can pick up your game ten or fifteen percent.

LACHLAN: Because if somebody sends a shot and it drops it in the back corner, you



can make it to the back corner. If he does a drop shot the next shot, you

know you can make it back to the front wall.

MARC: Not only can you do it, you can do that twenty times!

LACHLAN: Yeah, yeah, but you can do it, and knock your opponent out, because he’s

expecting to put it in the back corner, you to be rushing to the back corner,

and no way are you going to make it back to the front wall.

MARC: Exactly, that’s right.

LACHLAN: Then you get down to the front wall and put it in the back corner, and he’s

standing there, and -

MARC: And not only do you get it, but you get there in time to be able to make an

offensive shot rather than a defensive shot.

LACHLAN: Yeah, that’s right, that’s what I’m saying, you get there and -

MARC: Correct.

LACHLAN: - you put it in the back corner or you’ve -

MARC: You’ve dropped it.

LACHLAN: You’ve dropped it in front of your toes, there’s no way he can get to it, and -

MARC: No, you’ve put him on the run.

LACHLAN: LAUGHING

MARC: So in business it’s the same thing. If you can, if you can teach yourself that

kind of discipline, and you can do what’s called your own court sprints in

your business, and that means making sure that your systems are in place,

that your customer relationship management system is operational, that

your website is up, that everything’s integrated so when somebody places

an order it comes to you automatically, that you have another responder

that sends out the message “thank you very much”, that someone calls a



week or two later to make sure they received the DVD or whatever, the

book that you sent, whatever the case may be. When you have that kind

of discipline, then you can count on yourself, on your business, on your

staff, to be able to deliver the result, because that capability is there.

LACHLAN: Yeah, no, it’s amazing. It’s great. You know, it’s amazing how, you know,

getting to the ball. Knowing where the ball is and – well, most people know

where the ball is, but getting to is that, the gap.

MARC: Absolutely. One of the things in business is it’s a very lonely experience,

and I’m sure a lot of people can sympathise, if they’re owner/managers,

business people, and one of the things you should get, just like you do in

sport, is get yourself a fan club. Look, I’m not, I’m not a world champion

(yet anyway), but I’m definitely my [World Champion] friend’s greatest fan,

and what happens is by having somebody encourage you, you know what?

You pick up your game.

LACHLAN: Yeah, you do.

MARC: So get yourself a fan club, either your spouse, your family, your staff or

your clients, it’s a great thing to have.

LACHLAN: Yeah, it’s fantastic.

BREAK

LACHLAN: You’re listening to Laughlin’s Business Breakfast on 2RDJ, and we’ve been

talking about squash, metaphors for business.

MARC: Squash lessons for business.

LACHLAN: Squash lessons for business.

MARC: Imagine that.

LAUGHING

LACHLAN: Sorry about the technical difficulties we’re having this morning, it gets a bit



distracting when things don’t quite go the way they should, but -

MARC: We’ve had a few technical challenges, but I was just watching Lachlan play

around with all the buttons, and for those of you in your cars and listening

to the radio, you should see how many buttons there are in this place, it

really is incredible. We were just talking about technology, and to watch

him fiddle around with all the buttons, when you see a master at play, you

can see that, you know, you have the skill that you’ve developed over the

years, and it’s the same thing in squash and the same thing in business,

and whenever you can observe someone who’s good at what they do, as

you are, you can pick up distinctions, and just watching you, I’ve picked up

a few things that – you know exactly where everything is, so you don’t get

fazed by the technical challenges. And that -

LACHLAN: No, no, it’s distracting, but it’s not -

MARC: It’s a little bit distracting, but you’re under control. And that’s how you want

to be in your business.

LACHLAN: Of course, yeah.

MARC: But that’s what you realise, and sticking to squash analogies, once you

know how to play tennis, for example, you can usually pick up squash, you

can usually pick up badminton. And then if you’re fit you can pick up other

sports as well. In business it’s the same thing, so if you’ve worked on a big

[broadcast] desk, you can come to something here that’s multi-dimensional

where you’re doing basically everything, and you can adapt quite quickly,

because you have that inherent skill set.

And that’s what experience is, and in our businesses, and as business

owners, it’s just a matter of determining where our best skill set or the

highest and best use of our time is. And that’s interesting as well.

LACHLAN: Yeah, that’s good. It’s what we’re saying here, you know, most people

have the coordination as in, you know, ball skills, the bat on ball, whether it



be -

MARC: Yes, eye-hand coordination, yes.

LACHLAN: Yeah, hand-eye coordination, same thing. So basically if you can play

cricket, golf, you can play – basically play any hand-eye coordination type

sport. And business is the same, you know, we think we know one

industry, that you would – you know, your skills are reasonably transferable

across industries that’s why not so many years ago we had the

diversification boom, if you like, where people thought “Hang on, I’m good

at this, what can I take out of this into the something else?” because of the

way the world was back in the late ‘80’s, early ‘90’s, things were crashing

left, right and centre, and, you know -

MARC: Oh, look, I’m forty three, and I grew up where people had single careers.

And my father’s still working, you know, in his early seventies, still working

full time and he loves his career as an engineer in Canada, and he loves it

with a passion, but he -

LACHLAN: Yeah, and he doesn’t go to work.

MARC: What’s that? No, he does go to work, to play building dams – you know,

hydroelectric dams for electrical power, and he just loves it, and, you know,

he goes out on a construction site, he’s found his calling. But I’ve had four

or five careers, and I think the average is something – a little under ten

different careers in a lifetime. That’s very exciting, but it’s also very

daunting, because every time you need to start over with the skill set that

you have, you’re starting to play something new, so there’s the excitement,

but there’s also the challenge of picking up something very quickly. So if

you get into the habit of learning how to pick these things up quickly, guess

what, you have a competitive advantage.

LACHLAN: Exactly, exactly.

MARC: And the sports analogy for that is cross training. So if you play squash and



then you swim, or if you swim and then you play squash, or you run, or you

cycle or do whatever, what you’re going to do is you’re going to develop

your body’s capabilities in other ways. So obviously if you’re playing tennis

or squash, you’re going to develop your right shoulder, your right arm, or

your left arm if you’re left handed. But if you can actually cross train, what

you can – you can actually do and you can actually improve your squash

game by playing another sport. You can also destroy your game by

playing another sport. For example, most squash players cannot play

tennis at the same time.

LACHLAN: No, because they’re different muscle groups.

MARC: It’s different muscle groups, and it’s a different stroke. It’s a different

position of the ball relative to your hand on the racquet. So it can

completely throw your game. In business it’s the same thing. Sometimes

people want to diversify, and they say “Oh, if I do this, but if I just do this on

top of it, you know, I’m going to make more money”. No. You’re going to

destroy your game, which if it’s squash, which is your primary game by

playing tennis. Sometimes people get into alternative business models for

completely wrong reasons, because they think it will actually help them,

when in fact it will actually destroy what they actually had in the first place.

One of the concepts that we teach with the Jay Abraham strategies is a

term called antimimeticisomorphism, okay –

LAUGHING

MARC: That’s – that’s a big word, isn’t it? Now, it’s not –

UNCLEAR TALKING and LAUGHING

MARC: Now, if you take it into its components, it’s anti-mimetic-isomorphism. So

the first one is morphism. To morph is blending into things, everybody

knows what morphing is…

LACHLAN: Yeah, changing from one thing to another.



MARC: Yeah, changing from one thing to another. The other one is iso, which

basically means the same, and mimetic means you mime, you copy

something, and anti means the opposite of it. So anti-mimetic-

isomorphism basically, in really technical terms, is monkey see, monkey

do.

LACHLAN: Right.

MARC: And what happens in business? When we start a business, what do we

do? We go into the marketplace and we look and see how everyone else

is doing business. And guess what?

LACHLAN: We copy them.

MARC: Yeah, we copy them, and guess what, we think we’re going to be smarter

than everyone else who’s been in this industry for twenty years. Guess

what? That doesn’t work. No. Because even if you get a five, ten percent

improvement, it’s not enough to have a sustainable competitive advantage.

You have to go counter culture, you have to do something different. And

that’s – you learn that skill by understanding other industries, and going to

trade shows for basket weaving, or handicrafts, or, or automobile

manufacturing, or anything that is outside of your realm of expertise, just to

see how the other half is living. What the other half is thinking. Certain

things that they’re doing that can have a massive impact on your business.


MARC: And then all of a sudden, guess what? You have a shot that no one can

return. Guess what? You can win a lot of games pretty quickly.

LACHLAN: Well, look at Tiger Woods, you know, eighth year – eighth year in a row.

He’s been voted the best golfer in, in America, by his peers.


LACHLAN: That’s outstanding.



MARC: He does a lot of things differently than most people. He weight trains,

which, you know, up until his era, very, very few [golfers] did. All he did

was not just play golf, he weight trains, he cross trains, and he’s got – I

think he’s got eight coaches. And it’s just a golf swing. But no, it’s not just

a golf swing. It’s multiple components of the golf swing.

LACHLAN: Well, it is, yeah, you’ve got to play golf to know that it’s not just a swing.

MARC: No.


LACHLAN: Where are your feet, where are your knees, where are your hips, where’s,

yeah, you know, it’s a real mind game. It’s a lot more of a mind game than

most people think. It’s probably – he’s probably also got a sports

psychologist.

MARC: Yes he has, yes. He’s got more than one. And he’s a brilliant – he’s a

brilliant individual, I mean, he was gifted from a young age, but it’s not the

physical talent that’s made the difference, because there’s people I’m sure

that were more talented than him, but didn’t have the mental acumen to do

what he’s done. And you have to be disciplined and focused.

One of the terms I use and – it’s actually quite succinct, it’s that you are

either reasons or you are results. The funny thing is – and you find it you

know, when, when you play any sport, and you win, and someone says

“Mate, how’d you go?” “I won”. That’s it, that’s all you have to say. Now,

the other guy comes off the court and you say “Mate, how’d you go?” “Oh,

you know, the ball was cold, you know, my racquet strings are off, my

shoes were slippery, the walls are dirty – did you see the crack in that wall?

The guy up in the gallery was talking, you know, I should have got more

lets” you know, and those are all reasons, and they’re excuses, you know.

You know what, sometimes it happens that you’re just not playing well, you

know, and everybody can understand that, because you can’t always win,

there is no champion in the world that wins every single game.



But we all know that there’s a difference between losing and being beaten.

You know if the other person’s playing better than you, guess what?

They’re better on the day. But when you get off the court, and you know

that you could have beaten that person -

LACHLAN: Oh, that’s the worst.

MARC: That is such a bad feeling. In business it’s the same thing. We’ve all had

bids and tenders and clients that we know we should have gotten. And the

competitor just got it because we didn’t play full on and we didn’t do

everything that was needed. There are other times when, you know what?

The competitor deserved to get that account. And you know what? We go

to bed at night going “Damn, I wish I would have got that. But you know

what, they were better, they’re closer to them, they’re in New South Wales,

we’re in Victoria”, or vice versa, whatever the reason is… you can’t win

them all. No one wins nine love, nine love, nine love every game. You

have to get -

LACHLAN: We wish.

MARC: We wish. I get on the court every day, and like I was telling the listeners

earlier, I play with the world champion, and I’m not a world champion, yet

anyways, and he’s been playing for thirty years, and he’s a really great

guy, his name’s Simon. Every day I show up I want to beat Simon. I think

I’m going to beat him. Sometimes I do beat him, because he lets up, and

he lets me into the game, and I win, but I haven’t beaten him, he’s let me

win. But every day I go in hoping, expecting that I’m going to win.

Otherwise, why show up?

LACHLAN: Exactly. I used to – back when I lived in Melbourne, I used to play with a

couple of guys, one hit off nine, and one hit off thirteen.

MARC: Yes.

LACHLAN: And the guy that hit off nine was giving lessons all the time. I beat him



once, which was pretty cool, and then I couldn’t beat the guy who hit off

thirteen.

MARC: Really?

LACHLAN: These guys played, you know, twice a week, I was lucky to get – back in

those days, I was lucky to get once a fortnight, never mind once a week,

and the last game we played before I came back to Sydney, I whipped the

pants off him. But my game had improved so much, and my first shot I just

nailed that first one -

MARC: And you knew the day was yours, didn’t you?

LACHLAN: Yeah, yeah, it’s just – yeah, you just know, whether you’re talking about

squash lessons or business -

MARC: Yes.

LACHLAN: I got it right this time!

MARC: Yes, you did!

LAUGHING

MARC: Yeah, it’s a different concept, a sports metaphor, to explain things that are

less tangible for business, to help business owners basically see

distinctions that can help them in their business every day.

LACHLAN: Yeah, no, it’s great, no, it’s fantastic actually. Yeah, so if you’re stuck in

traffic, you have to listen to us. INAUDIBLE

MARC: You definitely have our empathy, if you’re stuck in traffic.

LACHLAN: We were talking just during the break there about the – Marc’s big

commute to work, the four minute walk to the next block.

MARC: Yes.



LACHLAN: It probably takes longer waiting for the elevator!

MARC: Yes, it does actually, and I’ve been living in the city since I got to Australia,

so I live right at World Square, and so I work – when I’m in the office I work

literally four minutes away, so I don’t have the pleasure of a commute that

most people in their cars right now will have. One of the things I miss

actually is the fact that when I did commute, early on in my career I did a

lot of driving, out on the road and selling for my company… I was doing,

you know, twenty, thirty thousand kms a year, that most small business

entrepreneurs would do. So I’d listen to a lot of tapes in my car, and I

actually miss that, because somebody was saying that half an hour in your

car every day – sorry, half an hour commute, so half an hour there and half

an hour back, it’s an hour a day. That hour a day, if you listen to a

motivational or instructional tape in your car, or, you know, CD obviously

now, it’s equivalent to a university semester every year.

LACHLAN: Wow.

MARC: Yeah. And you would never think that that would be the case, but it’s

equivalent to a university semester, because you’re a captive audience,

yes you’re driving and you’re seeing what you’re doing around you, but

because it’s an intense experience, especially if you’re alone, you can think

through, and you’re not distracted with other people talking in the car.

When I realised that, somebody told me that, I just thought “Wow, that’s

fantastic”, because now you can basically educate yourself on downtime.

It’s just a great thing to do, so if you don’t have those kinds of tapes, you

know, you should definitely get them, or they’re not tapes now, CDs, you

should definitely get them -

LACHLAN: Or iPods.

MARC: Yeah, iPods, absolutely, yeah, I’m using my iPod now to record this. And,

you know, I’ll replay it, and -

LACHLAN: Podcast it.



MARC: Yeah, podcast it, and yeah, it’s great. Technology today is just, just

phenomenal.

LACHLAN: Yeah, it’s just accelerating away, isn’t it?

MARC: Talking about technology, when you talk about sports, you always want to

have the best equipment. You always want to have the best racquet, the

best shoes, the best socks, whatever. My socks I think are eighteen or

twenty five dollars each!

LACHLAN: Wow.

MARC: They’re a ridiculous price when you think about it, but they’re double lined,

and they’re made so that the friction between the two layers of the sock

removes the friction between your foot and the shoe.

LACHLAN: Okay.

MARC: So that you don’t get – you don’t get corns and blisters.

LACHLAN: Blisters, yeah, yeah.

MARC: And the socks will last easily more than a year. Whereas before my socks

would wear out, you know, every two or three months.

LACHLAN: Yeah, well, exactly, yeah.

MARC: So you have to have the right equipment, and in business it’s the right

CRM package, it’s the right – you know, equipment on your desk, it’s the

right computer, it’s the right telephone system -

LACHLAN: The right software, yeah.

MARC: The right software. And when I say the best, it’s not necessarily the most

expensive. Because sometimes the cheapest shareware is the best thing

for you. In the case of racquets I’ve used Wilson, Dunlop and Head, all for

different reasons. The first time when I got a Wilson racquet, I wanted

what’s called a hammerhead to get power. Then I went to Dunlop so I



could get more feel with the ball. And now I use a Head, because the

Head has a new intellifibre technology that straightens my mis-hits. So if I

don’t hit in the centre of the racquet, it auto-corrects for that.

LACHLAN: Oh, wow.

MARC: So three different racquets, over the last six years, that I’ve used, so the

best racquet for me has changed. In business it’s the same thing. The

tools that you have are going to change. You have to keep abreast of

what’s out there, and it’s not necessarily what’s more expensive. With the

internet today, there are so many things that you can get, very

inexpensively, and, you know, I totally endorse buying all the software out

there, and not to make, you know, copies that are illegal, but you don’t

necessarily have to spend fifty thousand dollars on software.

LACHLAN: No, no, you don’t have to get a software manager in - a software engineer

in to do something else.

MARC: No. Now because you can have ASP or hosted solutions, you don’t even

have to buy the software, you just buy the server, and the software sits on

the server somewhere. You don’t have to worry about backups and

security because it’s all taken care of for you. But you have to determine

what’s right for you, what’s the best racquet for you, not because it’s two

hundred and seventy five dollars, or a hundred and sixty five dollars, it’s

the one that feels right in your hand and works for your business. You’ll

evolve your business as your needs will, as well.

LACHLAN: Exactly, yeah, you know, it’s, obviously some part of that is personal

preferences and comfort and feel and that’s fine, you know, you’re in the

business of making money, so, you know, a car’s a car, you know, you

could probably get away with a little tiny smart car, but, you know, who

wants to drive around in a smart car? Not everybody.

MARC: Not everybody, no. There are different cars and there are more cars now

than ever, because people want to individualise themselves.



LACHLAN: Exactly.

MARC: In business it’s the same thing. So the other thing we’ve been talking

about is playing better players. You know, in sport, you always get better,

and everybody knows this, by playing better players. Now, how do you do

that in business? Well, playing better players in business basically means

you want to network, and you want to be amongst people who are as good

as you, or better. Not necessarily in your industry, because if they’re

actually in other industries you can be more open, you know, for

competitive reasons. But if you can get into a mastermind, if you will, that’s

what we call it, and it’s a special concept that was coined by Napoleon Hill,

everybody would know that from Think and Grow Rich, if you’ve read the

book, if not, you definitely need to read that book.

LACHLAN: It’s a book to read, yes.

MARC: It’s a classic, it’s an absolute classic, Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon

Hill. If you can be amongst better players, better business people, what

you’re going to pick up from them are tips and tricks that you can’t pick up

on your own. You know, they’ve gone the hard yards, and they’ve learnt

the lessons. And guess what – a five minute conversation can save you a

lot of heartache, and I think it’s an ounce of perspiration is worth a gallon of

blood.

LAUGHING

MARC: And I don’t remember who told me that, but I when I realised that I thought

“Yeah”. An ounce of perspiration’s worth a gallon of blood. So it’s pretty

graphic, but you know, if, if you can get to your destination with less effort,

why not take that road?

LACHLAN: Yeah, well… networking, it’s absolutely the thing to do these days. There

are so many events on, you know, and some are not that expensive, you

know, go and do a breakfast, you know, twenty bucks, big deal, fifty bucks.



MARC: You’d pay that just for the breakfast.

LACHLAN: Yeah. Well, basically you’re paying for some food. Usually you get to sit

around, and hear somebody share something, but I don’t go necessarily to

listen to what the guy’s got to say, I go to meet people, you know, I just –

most events I go to I try to go by myself, I try not to organise a table, not

because I don’t want a table full of people, but if you go with a table, you’re

going to sit with people you know.

MARC: That’s right. The point is to meet new people.

LACHLAN: That’s right. I like to go by myself. Or maybe take one other person. And

the reason is that you get to meet people, share what’s going on, you

know, I love networking, that’s, you know, that’s one of the things that

really makes my day.

MARC: Yes, you’re definitely a people person, you enjoy talking to people, I can

tell that about you.

LACHLAN: Yeah, yeah, so, you know, and so going – I love events that have a

networking coffee time after – at the end, you know, they all try and do it at

the beginning. But nobody’s got anything in common at the beginning, you

know, we’re all strangers… To just sit around and have a cup of coffee

over breakfast, you don’t really get to talk – you get to meet them, but you

don’t get to – get to the nitty gritty. I like it when, you know, somebody’s

planned an event, and at the end of it there’s a cup of coffee at the end,

after breakfast. Or, you know, lunch is better, I prefer lunches, because

usually the speaker’s on fairly early, and they have dessert and coffee at

the end, or dessert and port at the end, or whatever, you know, and you

get a chance to sit and talk to people, you know you can pick their brains.

When you start going to some of these events, you get to know who’s

good, especially if you go to the same ones, you can target some people.

MARC: I mean, you know when you come across a champion of industry or a

champion of sport or, or in any endeavour, you know just by the way they



carry themselves, and what I find fascinating is to ask them the questions

that nobody else asks. When you do, you find out stuff that you never

knew you’d actually find out. One of the things, when you hear a champion

speak, and it was funny when – well, not funny, it’s interesting to me that

when somebody wins something, whenever they win Wimbledon or, you

know, the Australian Open or whatever sport accolade it is, do you know

what the first thing they say, or they think? It’s now that I’m a champion, no

one can take this away from me.

LACHLAN: That’s right.

MARC: It’s true. Because everything else – you can lose your money, you can

lose your spouse, you can lose a whole bunch of things, but a

championship, you’re always that champion, you’re a world champion,

you’re a Wimbledon champion, you’re whatever. The other thing is when

they actually retire – and it’s fascinating, when Andre Agassi retired, I’m a

great Andre Agassi fan, because he’s such a fantastic individual on so

many different levels, when he retired he – and he admitted, like many

other people of his caliber do, is what they’ll miss are the goals and the

metrics that they lived their life by. Because if you’re at that level, you have

to literally measure everything, and you have that discipline. Some people

feel that discipline is like a four letter word, well, not four letters, but, you

know what I mean.

LACHLAN: Yeah, exactly, yes, it’s a dirty word.

MARC: Yes, it’s a dirty word, exactly, and they don’t realise that the discipline

actually liberates you, because if you have a systematic way of producing

success, guess what? You have the flexibility to do other things. Then to

have your personality – and Andre Agassi obviously had a lot of personality

in tennis, and when you can do that, it’s really great because it liberates

your mind, because the system, or the discipline, takes care of the

drudgery. I’m not one to like details, and I think most entrepreneurs really

despise details. But if you have a disciplined, systematic process, guess



what? It [the business] takes care of itself so that you can dream and

create and innovate, because that’s what drives us as entrepreneurs.

LACHLAN: Yeah, like you say, sports is fantastic – you’ve got Agassi, who’s a fantastic

sportsman, not that he’s not a fantastic person, but, you know, he’s retired,

he’s, INAUDIBLE

MARC: Every time he got on the court, he came to play.

LACHLAN: He came to play.

MARC: Because he loved the game, and he had the passion, of playing the game.

LACHLAN: That’s right.

MARC: When you do that for your business, your clients know it, they absolutely

feel it and they get enraptured by that experience.

LACHLAN: Well, it’s like your dad, he plays with dams and electric motors and all that

sort of stuff, and -

MARC: He sends me e-mails, like being on a construction site, and he goes “Oh, I

don’t know if I’m still up to it”, and it’s like “Just be careful”, because he fell,

and, you know, he’s seventy something years old, and he’s still able bodied

and outgoing, and he’s on a construction site flying in helicopters and

things like that. I can just see him. He’s like a kid in a sandbox. Literally.

To see that – I mean, for me, I only have one hero, and it’s my dad,

everyone else I admire and I have mentors, but he’s lived his life as we all

want to, as business people, enjoying the passion of creating something. In

his case he creates dams that create electricity. In my case I build people

and I build businesses. We all have the passion that got us into business

in the first place.

LACHLAN: Exactly.

MARC: I wanted to share one more thing before we run out of time, and it’s one of

these things that when you think about it, it will just really blow your mind if



you’ve never heard this story before. There was a coach – and this was a

basketball coach, okay. So it’s still a sports analogy, but it’s not squash.

He had a team, and it was high school, and he wanted to do an

experiment. So he took literally, you know, sixty kids, and randomly – so it

had nothing to do with talent – he took three sets of, of these high school

boys, and he said I’m going to do three things. One is I’m going to coach

them, and they’re going to practice two hours a day, every day, for three

weeks, okay? The next one, I’m going to coach them for an hour, and then

I’m going to have them lie down on the court and visualise for an hour.

And then the third group, they’re not going to touch a basketball for three

weeks, and they’re going to lie down, on their backs, on the basketball

court, and visualise for two hours, okay? What they’re going to do is

they’re going to visualise doing free throws, you know, when you stand

there and you try to – you know, after a penalty… Guess which group had

the best outcomes for free throws after those three weeks?

LACHLAN: The guys lying on their backs for two hours.

MARC: Yeah. And all they did was visualise. So what’s – what’s the conclusion?

The conclusion there is that you can be driving in your car, visualising

yourself doing something in your business, listening to a motivational tape

an instructional tape, whatever that is, visualise yourself doing things for

that half an hour, and that’s going to give you a better result than doing that

for that half an hour. Because you can actually visualise and experience

things faster in your mind than you can actually do them. So by watching

videos, by watching DVDs, by reading books, by visualising, you are

exercising that skill. It’s amazing what the mind can do. I was blown away

– I couldn’t believe it, I actually couldn’t believe it when I heard that.

LACHLAN: Yeah. There’s this basketball coach, it’s a team that had been to the

championship like five times, they’re the ones who had lost each time. So

before their last session, he gave them a pair of scissors.

MARC: A pair of scissors?



LACHLAN: A pair of scissors.

MARC: Now what sport was this?

LACHLAN: Basketball.

MARC: Basketball?

LACHLAN: Because the winning team cuts the net off.

MARC: Oh yes, of course, yes, of course, yeah, the tradition, around the rim, yeah.

LACHLAN: They’d never done it. They’d never done it.

MARC: And so he gave them a pair of scissors. That’s great!

LACHLAN: He gave them – guess what they did that week? They went out and won

the championship, because they’d actually, you know….

MARC: That is such a great story, I’d never heard that one.

LACHLAN: Yeah, yeah, I was hoping you’d remember the team. It’s quite a famous

story, apparently, you know, I just remembered it as we were talking about

it…

MARC: I’ve heard a lot of them, but I hadn’t heard that one, I mean what that –

basically does, is it preframes you for the expectation of the outcome.

That’s beautiful organisational behavioural theory.

LACHLAN: Yeah, it’s amazing, isn’t it?

MARC: If you can do that for yourself, then you know, the things you can do – but

you have to start somewhere, you know, and that’s the thing, if anybody,

you know, that’s been listening today, I mean, if you can just start doing

something that we’ve talked about today, just anything today -

LACHLAN: One of them, would be great. It will change, it will change it. Any one of

the things that we’ve talked about would change it. Getting to the ball,



that’s a good one.

MARC: I love that one.

LACHLAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was, yeah, that’s fantastic.

MARC: That’s your takeaway for today, isn’t it?

LACHLAN: How many people don’t get to the ball? How many people don’t get to

accounts receivable? How many people don’t get around to invoicing?

That’s a big one. Writing that invoice, you know.

MARC: We work with a company called The service manager. They help

companies that have people out on the road. Something like ten percent –

it’s shocking – ten percent of service businesses, you know, electricians,

plumbers and whatever, don’t actually invoice the work that they do.

LACHLAN: Wow.

MARC: Like, at least some of the work that they do. And I think the total turnover

is five percent of the value.

LACHLAN: Wow.

MARC: Because they forget, you know, it falls between the cracks. I mean, that’s

five percent. So if you’re an electrician, plumber, and you’re making, you

know, two, three, four, five hundred thousand dollars of billables, right,

because, you know, there’s equipment and whatever, I mean, that’s

twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars a year.

LACHLAN: That’s a retirement fund.

MARC: Of course it is. Because that’s every year… every year for twenty years,

that’s a million dollars! But you know what, they’re just not getting to the

ball, they’re just not taking care of those things. Now, if they have

software, or, or a system, to do that, then guess what, they can get to go

on vacation, they can have a very nice retirement, but at least they’re



getting to the ball and doing something when they get there.

LACHLAN: That is wild. That is wild. The one thing, you know, on big picture,

entrepreneurial type, you know, the invoicing and getting paid, you know, if

you don’t have those two, you’re not in business.

MARC: You’re not in business. maybe the final squash analogy for everyone is

we’ve always been – we’ve all been at some point on a sports field or on a

squash court, tired. And when you’re tired, what happens, your game

breaks down.

LACHLAN: Yeah, it does.

MARC: And you have to get back to the basics. Squash is you want to play the

ball deep, you want to run the ball down, you don’t want to tin the ball, and

then you want to wait for the loose ball. In business, what you want to do,

whenever you’re tired, or you’re frustrated, what you want to do is you want

to get back to what you do best. And what you, Laughlan and what I do

best, are two completely things. Different skill set, different experiences.

Always go back to where you’re comfortable. Where your circle of

influence is, your comfort zone is. And then, you know what, just expand

that a little bit, step by step. But you know what happens, a lot of people,

when they hit that obstacle, and they’re frustrated and they’re tired and

they’re cranky, they start beating their heads, and beating themselves up

because it feels good to beat yourself up when you’re frustrated. It feels

good because you think you deserve it, but the reality is if you just get back

to your basics, and do what you do best, and just take a deep breath and

just go “Okay, what should I be doing now? What can I do best right now

for the next two, three hours?” Guess what? You’re mood will change,

and then all of a sudden your destiny will change. That’s one of the things

that I think is key for everyone.

Just wrapping everything up…

Sport is fun, you know, when people say it’s not about winning, yeah, you



hear that all the time, but it is all about winning, it’s about winning the game

of playing – having fun, playing in a sportsmanlike fashion, and making

sure that you do things ethically. It’s not just about winning at any cost, it’s

about doing the right things for the right reasons, and enjoying the process.

I hope that everyone that has been listening in to this morning’s broadcast

has enjoyed the process, Laughlan and I had a great time about four or five

months ago when Jay Abraham was in town for the boot camp seminar.

When he invited me to come back this week, I thought “Well, this will be a

great opportunity to launch this new sports metaphor based on squash”,

because I’m an avid competitive squash player.

I just want to acknowledge my friend, Simon Gogolin, who’s a world

champion, for everything that he’s taught me about squash. It’s been great

sharing with you these concepts and thank you for listening this morning,

it’s been great fun.

LACHLAN: Thank you Marc. It’s been a fun and valuable morning.

END OF RECORDING

For more information on Dr Marc Dussault’s products and services,

please go to www.MarcDussault.com

For more information on Jay Abraham’s products and services,

please go to www.JayAbrahamAsiaPacific.com.au

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