0:00:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve been trying and you know, I’ve been tested.
0:00:06 B: Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemimah Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemimah, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 B: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast.
0:00:43 Ben Wright: Hey, Jemimah. Hey everyone. Who’s listening? Nice to see you, Ben.
0:00:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Pleasure to be here.
0:00:49 Ben Wright: How’s your day?
0:00:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: I had a near death experience. Actually going to get us some lunch. That was pretty interesting, right?
0:00:54 Ben Wright: Yeah, I’m not aware of this one. Tell me. Sounds very Dramatic
0:00:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well, look, I saved your wife’s life and I just think we need to. I wanted to tell this in a public forum, which is really interesting. So your lovely wife and I, Shaina, we went to go and get some lunch together and you had a couple of calls and I was like, oh, let’s go. We pop down as we’re leaving with our little pokeballs. We’re crossing the road and this guy just was waving at his mate and we halfway across the zebra crossing. And do you know what I have learned today? When you scream dude loud enough, someone will break. It was pretty interesting moment. He was a little Uber driver. I had an Uber sticker. And then he was just like, I’m so sorry. Yelling through the window.
0:01:32 Ben Wright: It’s the heat.
0:01:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: Don’t be sorry.
0:01:34 Ben Wright: Just the heat. It does something to people up here. Well, you know what I think he needs? He needs some personal development around driving.
0:01:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: I would agree with that. I think he needs some training. Probably needs to get some emotional regulation about why he was so distracted on the road.
0:01:49 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:01:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:01:50 Ben Wright: And I know you’re laughing because today’s topic is personal development.
0:01:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: Personal development. Can I just say the highlight is figuring out how you’re going to take a segue conversation. I just keep making a bit more hard for you and you just keep knocking it out of the park.
0:02:03 Ben Wright: I wouldn’t say that was one of my best, but personal development is bloody important. So I don’t care how I enter it.
0:02:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:02:10 Ben Wright: As long as we spend some time on it. So you’ve got most of the floor today. Most of the the floor is yours.
0:02:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: Love to hear about your experiences as well, because I know that this is something you’re super passionate about. But more importantly, I think this is something we see our Clients consistently, really passionate about. This is something that you and I both see people, we see our clients consistently either doing this or not doing this. They’re either growing or they’re failing is really what it comes down to.
So today I want to go through four. I’m sorry, I know, but we’re going to do four today. Four favorite things about personal development and what you can do right now to really improve that and what you should be focusing on. I want to start with by saying personal development is such like a term that’s thrown around. We hear this all the time. Personal development. I’m working on personal development. What does it truly mean and what are the kind of things that break down?
So the first one is, of course, is mental growth. And this is the one that I think most people, when they think personal development, they think things like reading, picking up a book, listening to a book, doing a program. This is the easy one. So this is where we learn new things, where we’re increasing our cognitive function, where we’re increasing our iq, our skill sets, our ability to do things, our decision making. All of this stuff is very use it or lose it.
0:03:30 Ben Wright: Do you know how I look at personal development?
0:03:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Tell me. I don’t, actually. I’d love to know, though.
0:03:35 Ben Wright: I think it’s like a fish. Now someone is going to correct me on this.
0:03:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: Is this a tank thing?
0:03:42 Ben Wright: If fish stop moving, they die. Yes, that’s my understanding of it. And yeah, if I’m wrong, I know I’ll get corrected. I think personal development is exactly like that. If you stop developing personally, you’re not going to die. I realize that can be quite morbid, but certainly can lose a sense of purpose. And those who I see have a sense of purpose. One of the things that I see, there’s lots of things, lots of characteristics. But one of the characteristics I say really consistently is that they are continuing to learn and develop. It’s a habit for them.
0:04:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: You know, I agree with you and I’m going to stay on the fish metaphor for a second because I think this also comes down to. Have you ever owned goldfish? Is this something that you’ve ever done?
0:04:22 Ben Wright: I’ve owned and killed a number of goldfish as a child.
0:04:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Excellent, excellent. One of the things with goldfish that’s really interesting, if you buy a little glass tank, that is the tiny one that you would have on a desk at work.
0:04:32 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:04:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: If we all recognize those and you put a goldfish in it, that goldfish will stay the same size and it will swim around and it will be happy if you buy a slightly bigger tank. Do you know what happens to the goldfish?
0:04:42 Ben Wright: I’m assuming it grows.
0:04:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: They get bigger.
0:04:44 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:04:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: And as soon as you start having bigger and bigger ponds for these fish to be in, the bigger and bigger that they get. And it’s the same thing, I think, with humans. I think if we keep the fish really sticky, we’ve got some farmyard stuff going on the last couple of episodes. I like it. We start getting fish that are getting bigger and bigger because their environment, what they’re exposed to.
0:05:03 Ben Wright: Right. Love it.
0:05:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: They’ve got more ability to grow, to move.
0:05:07 Ben Wright: Got it.
0:05:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Maybe the fish metaphor is ongoing.
0:05:10 Ben Wright: People talk about personal development, but let’s. Let’s give people more than a fish metaphor.
0:05:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I love that. So. Well, I think I’ve made my point. I’m kidding. What I will say with this is that I think this, the more that we’re consuming, the bigger that we’re going to get, the bigger the tank that we need. So if we keep with this metaphor, the more books that you’re consuming, the more personal development that you’re doing in a mental capacity, the more learning, the more conversations, the more. And it’s really simple stuff. Getting a masterclass membership. I have one of those. I think it’s great. I’ve learned about cooking. I’m not good. Trying to get better. I’ve learned a lot about, you know, styling a home. Things that I’m personally not maybe so driven by, but sure, fairly interesting.
0:05:52 Ben Wright: Well, you’ve never cooked for us.
0:05:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: I will.
0:05:55 Ben Wright: Great.
0:05:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: And you will regret it. And here we are.
0:05:57 Ben Wright: So the point here is the point for point number one is mental growth.
0:06:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Mental growth and personal development is absolutely a key, like as a cornerstone for everything. If we’re not learning where we’re dying.
0:06:09 Ben Wright: I was taught growing up that when I say growing up professionally, growing up, that 10% of your professional time should be dedicated to personal learning, personal growth. Now, when you look at those numbers, let’s say you work a 40 hour week. That’s four hours of every week for most people. That’s daunting.
0:06:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: That seems like a lot.
0:06:31 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. However, what I’ll do is I’ll share how I encourage people to get those four hours done each week, perhaps as we go through, because I don’t want to jump in ahead of your points. But what it does is it supports the piece you’re saying around. We need to make sure we’re always learning.
0:06:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Wow. And one of the tips I would definitely Give here. And I’m sure this is where you’re going to go with it. These are completely unscripted episodes. We just take our talking points and the other person adds value, too, as we’ve discussed before. But one of the things is, I like, really stolen time for this. I think you can do stolen time.
0:07:02 Ben Wright: Stolen time.
0:07:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think you can definitely find times where maybe you’re in a car, going for a run, going for a walk, and I think that’s something I definitely.
0:07:10 Ben Wright: Want, and that’s where I’m gonna lay down. So definitely, you know what? Do you wanna rip the band aid off on that now?
0:07:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it for sure. Cause this is something in the car. How much time do you spend driving? We spent a lot of time driving last year.
0:07:22 Ben Wright: Me personally, no, don’t spend much time anymore at all. But I. I spend a lot of time exercising. So for me, it’s about finding podcasts where I can exercise and go to the gym. I spend a lot of time. I have a lot of literature sent my way, so I carve a little bit of time out in my diary. I have conversations with people that I respect who have either subject matter expertise or life experience. So I get some of my learning done that way. And I also get some done where I’ll actually devote some time. So mighty might have gone to bed and I’ve got a little bit of time then. Or I’ll be reading some books or I’ll find time in the morning. So I find that I get my four hours a week done. About two thirds of it is actually stolen time.
0:08:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And I think it’s really important to find that time that works for you. That might also. Multitasking is really important. I do a lot of mine, honestly, while cooking and cleaning, if I’ve got to do laundry or I’ve got to mop the floors or whatever that looks like, and, you know, we have to do those things too. Why would I not use that to do something else as well? I do a lot of flying, which is the other time that I do a lot of audiobooks.
0:08:27 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Great Stuff. Yeah.
0:08:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: So point two, if you go to, like, times two speed, you can generally pay attention to what’s happening there. The next one I want to talk about is social growth. And this is really, really important. We’ve done a whole podcast episode on this very early days when we did this. The sum of five people who we are around deeply impacts who we’re going to become. This will impact Every part of your life, this can be your business, your financial, your relationships. The people that we around will impact us greatly. The better quality of person that we’re around, the more people that we’re exposed to. Different cultures, traveling can have really huge impact on how we perceive the world and what our drivers are. And I think this is one that the more connection and the more growth that we have in that social arena really does impact us as people and therefore impacts that business.
0:09:16 Ben Wright: Okay. So when we’re talking about social growth, if we’re wanting to personally develop, then we need to be mindful about the type of people that we’re spending our time with. And spend time with people who you think you can grow with or grow from.
0:09:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:09:30 Ben Wright: Okay, good one.
0:09:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: And again, just. We’ll go back to the fish metaphor. The size of the tank. The bigger the tank that we’re in, the bigger capacity we have to grow here. The next one is emotional growth. And so I know that this is one that we have spoken about, about choosing your reaction, not reacting emotionally at times. But one of the things that I really found with personal development, particularly the leaders that I work with, is a lot of them have quite volatile reactions to things when they happen. And that’s a learned response. It’s something we do. It’s an automatic default response. I find that good leaders and entrepreneurs and business owners that are moving forward, they really take that time to learn from those mistakes and learn at those gaps and that gap level, which I know you love a good gap, that gap level. And go, you know, this is a real issue. This is something I don’t like that I’m doing here. I’m recognizing that I’ve not managed this situation well, that my behavior wasn’t maybe in alignment, that I wasn’t the best version of the person that I’m wanting to be, because we’re always acting in that next version that we want to be. And we have to acknowledge the mistakes that were made. And I think the first thing, one of the biggest key parts here for every person on their growth journey in any sort of personal development, is to go, where. Where are the gaps? Where have I made mistakes? And what can I do better in?
0:10:44 Ben Wright: Okay. And that’s particularly from the emotional growth point of view.
0:10:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that that will just drive everyone else as well. Like, it’s really gonna help your social growth if you’re owning your mistakes. It’s really gonna help your mental health as well and your mental growth. If we’re leaning into those.
0:10:59 Ben Wright: Yeah, I Think emotional growth, so social growth, I think is quite straightforward. Right. You surround yourself with people who you want to learn from. I think mental growth, again, is somewhat straightforward. You find good content or good sources or resources. As to how you can learn from emotional growth is the one where I would be suggesting you get. You look more towards some professional help with for sure. Right. There’s, you know, certainly hard skills from. From your mental growth. You’re gonna look for some help with absolutely no problems there. But I think the emotional growth is also a good one to talk through. How do I handle situations of uncertainty? How do I handle situations of stress? How do I handle my emotions when they boil over? Lots of great people, whether they be generalist coaches through to coaches that focus more around your psychological development. Lots and lots of opportunities there. So cool. Okay, I like that. So we’re three and we’ve had mental growth, we’ve had social growth, and we have had emotional growth.
0:11:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:11:52 Ben Wright: What’s number four?
0:11:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: Final. I think you might like this one. Physical growth. This is one of your favorite. We’ve done a whole podcast episode this on wellness and health and really ensuring that those things are tight, that we’re taking care of ourselves because that is the greatest impact in every part of our personal development. And I know this is something you’re really passionate about.
0:12:10 Ben Wright: Huge. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a big believer that if you’re a leader who turns up in the way you’d like your team to turn up, then they’re more likely to do it. If you’re a leader who turns up but asks your team to turn up differently, then I think it’s a lot harder. And I’m huge with everyone that I work with around making sure that you are in good health because nothing else really matters. If you’re not in good health, your work, your family, your friends, your hobbies, they’re all going to suffer.
0:12:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. Your quality of life. And we’re not doing this, so we’re not having good lives at the end of the day.
0:12:50 Ben Wright: So episode eight, we spent a fair bit of time around health and fitness and how you can make sure you’re in tip top shape. I think for me, the key piece of advice around growth at a physical level is to get really clear on the physical, the health and wellbeing elements that are important to you. Right. Is it what’s your physical activity that you like? What’s your, you know, physical or your spiritual activity from, you know, that does come into your physical health? That is A yoga or Pilates or something like that.
0:13:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, absolutely.
0:13:20 Ben Wright: They blend a bit of both.
0:13:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: They do.
0:13:21 Ben Wright: And then thirdly is how can you get that done with most bang for your buck? And I gave the example back in. I think it was episode eight around how I always have bathers, towel and goggles in the car because I know that I need 45 minutes to get a good swim in. And when I’m really pressed, I can get that done if I’m organized. And then. So for me, that’s how I think physical growth happens, is there’s a level of organization. There’s.
0:13:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And it needs to be part of that as well. So when we’re talking about physical health, and if you haven’t listened to that podcast, it was incredible and you gave some really great insight there. But a couple of things was, firstly, is your body. And so that’s just at a very fundamental level, how’s your inner health, blood pressure, how’s your stress levels? How are you going get some blood tests done, making sure that you’re in the best capacity. I know that when, if we get the flu or we get a really decent bug and we’re out for a week, we are a week behind where we want to be. There’s no sick leave.
0:14:16 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:14:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: I can’t ring the boss and be like, hey, mate, listen, sorry about coming in. Someone else to do it. Yeah, I’m the boss. It’s very unfortunate. The next is nutrition. What are you putting into your body?
0:14:24 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:14:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: And this can be as simple as one conversation that we had the other day, like, do you need any vitamins? And I was like, I packed mine, thanks. And it is just knowing what your nutritional needs are and if there are any gaps. I’m not saying to everyone here that you have to go out and start keto or you have to go out and start no carb. We have to go out and start these crazy diets. You don’t have to do that, but you have to know what you’re putting in your body for fuel, because that’s ultimately what it is. Exercise. You talked a lot about that in this section, that movement aspect. And I think really one thing that. And I know we’re going to talk about this a lot in future episodes, but the exercise portion directly affects the mental health. That really does have a huge impact on your ability to function, how you’re going. And also then finally, my favourite part, sleep.
0:15:09 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
0:15:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: All of that is strongly impacted. So let’s go through those five things.
0:15:14 Ben Wright: Well, that’s Only four. But I’ve got some really good news for you.
0:15:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: Have you got a fifth one?
0:15:17 Ben Wright: I’ve got a fifth one.
0:15:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: Can’t let me have four.
0:15:20 Ben Wright: Yeah, it had to happen. If you go Back to episode 23, we spoke a lot around an effective training program and I think I’d like to make number five. Team growth.
0:15:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: Team growth.
0:15:31 Ben Wright: Yeah. I love it. Sorry. Probably without notice. Team development. How do we really impact that heavily? And there’s three things really like people listening to think about. Particularly if you haven’t listened to episode 23. Training. Coaching. One to ones. So it’s a training program for your team. I won’t go into detail other than to say just go and listen to episode 23. It’s the easiest way to do it. Coaching. It’s roll out a coaching framework. I’ve said before that training is knowledge transfer. Coaching is knowledge enhancement. Right. So we need to make sure we’ve got a coaching framework for the development of our team because that will simply make sure that the training we’ve run through is embedded and sticks with the team. And then the last piece is one to ones.
0:16:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:16:09 Ben Wright: Most leaders have one to ones with their team members. They’re generally weekly or fortnightly most of the time. There’s a few that do it every three weeks or every four weeks. And what I find is that generally personal development or team development is left to your annual performance reviews and then a program set. And I’ve got a lot to say around one to ones in a different episode. But the really most impactful wonder ones that I see have a section carved out. It’s generally at the end. Right. Once you’ve got through all the hard stuff that talks about team development, personal development of your team member. What are you doing? Where are you up to? How are you going to make it stick? I guess in the aim of a really good one to one, it’s what have you achieved? What’s getting in your way? What are we going to do next?
0:16:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, great.
0:16:50 Ben Wright: So love seeing that from a very functional point of view added to your one to one. So I’m sorry to throw a fifth in, but I think that’s.
0:16:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: We can’t have four. I understand. And I think if anyone’s ever wondered, I think people would be home going. They’ve definitely scripted some of this.
0:17:05 Ben Wright: No, no, no. I can. I’m going to assure you it’s not. But also for those that don’t know that are new to the podcast, I hate doing things in fours. It’s threes or fives. For me, it’s a long history of what’s most impactful for teams. I love threes the most, but I won’t. I won’t go to fours. I’ll go to fives. Cause they’re just for me, so much easier to remember.
0:17:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. We’re not going to forget number five now. So those top five things. 1. Mental growth. Let’s make sure that we’re developing. Making sure that we are training, that we are doing the things that we need to do. Reading. Audible. Amazing tool. Masterclass. Amazing tool. Ted talks. Incredible. And bite. Sizable. 15, 20 minutes. Similar to this podcast. Another great option, social growth. We need to get around people who are smarter than us, who know things more than us, who are better connected than us. Go listen to our summer five episode. And talking about getting around the right people. Really, really helpful for that, for the connection, for the confidence, and also just to help you grow as a human. Number three, emotional. We need to make sure that we’re learning from our mistakes, making sure that we’re developing as a person. Anytime we get stunted in that area, I think it has a really overwhelming impact on everything else. Physical health being absolutely paramount here. And number five being team development as well.
0:18:15 Ben Wright: Great. Excellent.
0:18:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: All right, Silver bullet, what do you got? It’s got to be five, right?
0:18:20 Ben Wright: I hadn’t even thought of that. Yeah. Wow. What’s most important for me? Look, I am going to.
0:18:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve never seen you lost for words before. This is a really nice moment. Wow.
0:18:31 Ben Wright: I think it’s actually the reason I’m lost for words is because they’re all important. But I think we have to start with physical health.
0:18:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Agreed.
0:18:37 Ben Wright: If we’re going to develop, we’ve got to make sure we’re fit and healthy and our brain’s in a great state to be able to take on that new knowledge. So I’m going to reluctantly say that our physical health is the number one now. That obviously it’s not just exercise, it’s diet, sleep, and it’s even probably relationships with our family and friends in there. So there we go. Number one, Ben. Stuck for words.
0:19:02 Jemimah Ashleigh: I just need to take a second because this is a moment that we haven’t had before. And I’m actually.
0:19:08 Ben Wright: It’s taken 26 episodes for you to.
0:19:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Have a moment where you’re like, I don’t have anything to add to that. I was like, wow, that’s a thing. My silver bullet today would be extremely similar. I went through ill health a few months ago, and can I just say 0 out of 10. Did no work, got nowhere, relationship suffered, home life suffered. Did no personal development because if I wasn’t able to do anything because my health was down.
0:19:33 Ben Wright: Yeah, cool.
0:19:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: It is absolutely the valuable lesson here.
0:19:36 Ben Wright: Great. Good podcast. Well done. Jemimah. There’s something else that I’m taking out of today and I’d never thought about this, is that I think it’s time I got a goldfish for my daughter. She’s four and a half going on five. I think she’d absolutely love it. So that’s going onto my list for this weekend. And you know what else? She’s going to get a new friend out of that. We’re your friends in business. I haven’t done one of them in a little while, so she’s got a goldfish. We’ve got you as our friends in business and we’re here to help you if you need. So get in touch at any point in time. But thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
0:20:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Thanks. Can we name the goldfish Jemimah?
0:20:08 Ben Wright: No. Bye, everyone.
