Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 184 today, and we're talking about a topic which I think I've spoken about this a couple of times, but it's come up. It's a question again and it really talks about risk, and the question itself is what's a risk? You've taken that completely changed the course of your life, and how do you view risk-taking now because of that experience? Now I've got the perfect answer for this, because this whole podcast is based off me taking a risk, so we're going to dive into that. We're going to talk about a few different things. I'm going to answer it personally as well, but I think there's a few other things here that we can bring into the conversation that will resonate with a lot of you and that maybe you can all take something away from it. Buckle up. But I will say before we start if this does resonate with you, if you enjoy these conversations, then please subscribe, comment all those great things and share it with someone. Let someone else hear why risk-taking has changed my life and how it can change theirs too, because, at the end of the day, I want to help more and more people further their lifestyle. So if you can do, that would mean the absolute world to me. Let's roll the intro and let's get into it. So the question again is what's a risk you've taken that completely changed the course of your life, and how do you view risk-taking now because of that experience?

Four years ago I did decide to take the chance on myself. I remember chatting with my boss at the time, more than four years ago now, and saying look, I want out right and I had been tossing and turning about, always wanting to create a brand around furthering your lifestyle. And six months prior to that, I had been challenged big time because I was building the brand under a different name and I was trying to work with co-collab, with different people on their lifestyles and share their presentation of the lifestyles they had created and then play that back to hold through social media and videos and things like that, to encourage and inspire others to go live their full potential and actualize and further their lifestyle. Now I was called out. I was called out and said hey, you're doing all this, but you're not even doing it yourself. You're working a nine to five and I was like that's fair game. I was challenged by it big time and the more I looked about it, the more I looked about it it came back to a community thing, that I was trying to sell shirts and put branding on that and things like that. So I think now I need to go back to the roots and I need to go back to showing people that if you want to further your lifestyle, you got to do the work, and I've always had the ambition and I've shared this story numerous times on the podcast, but if you're new here, I'll share it again.

Ever since I started working full-time which was back in like 2013, I remember listening to a bunch of different podcasts the Solopreneur Hour, the Smart Passive Income podcast by Pat Flynn, and they were all starting the journey of building what would now go on to be millions worth in businesses in terms of creating a lifestyle that they wanted. I wanted to do the same. I didn't know what that looked like. I wanted to be my own business owner. I wanted to have my own business. I wanted to not work the nine to five. I wanted to be a millionaire. I wanted to be all these great things, but I didn't know how. So I just kept working. But I continued to scratch a few different itches and figure it, try and dabble into that a little bit.

I've always been dabbling in, trying to find something that sticks, that I can pursue, and eventually something did. I had the click moment of how about I start a podcast and share and talk to other people about furthering your lifestyle, but at the same time I focus on building out my own dreams and ambitions and goals and see what happens. Because I had been working on my dreams and ambitions but I was only doing about one or two hours on a weekend because that's all I had the brain space for, because I was working 50 hour weeks. And I figured out, I did the math and it was going to take me like 40 years to achieve what I wanted to achieve if I was just going to be working weekends and that's not good enough I'm not going to sit around for 40 years and try and make that happen. It's not worth it. So I said to myself I really need to see if any of these ideas that I have are branch out, are really going to stick or are really going to fly and I figured the best way to do that is just to take massive action, take the risk, the big risk, of step away from the nine to five and take a chance on myself. And I've documented that journey on the YouTube, on this channel, since day one and it's changed a few times in terms of how that's developed. And I've focused on my business, I've focused on my running journey, I've focused on the podcast, just through creating a space where I really just want to encourage and inspire and motivate other people to aspire further in their own dreams. And that's my mentality, that's my focus. I'm building a business for me, I'm doing this podcast for others and that's it. That's really it and I want to show that when you put in the hard work and you take the risks, then you will get the rewards.

Now, taking risks are risky, right. Fortunately, my background project management. I did a lot of risk management. We were in charge of governing the risk management process for our clients and we're talking about risk registers which had hundreds of millions of dollars of risk vulnerability If those risks actually actualized. There was a lot of things in there which we had to deal with. When we do calculated risk-taking, the idea is that you're taking strategic risks rather than impulsive decisions. You're backing it up with data, you're backing it up with understanding, you've got information, you're making informed decisions and you know how to mitigate those risks. You know how to tolerate those risks and you know how to tolerate those risks and you know how to potentially know that. Okay, am I happy for this risk to occur? For instance, if you're investing $1,000, are you happy to lose that $1,000 with the chance that maybe you'll make $10,000, or are you not comfortable? So that's really what it comes to Now for me. I risked the nine to five.

I stepped away from a $150,000 plus job and that security and that sense of not having to worry about it. I was a good employee and the only way for me to get fired was to do something dodgy or yeah, I wouldn't see myself being redundant or anything like that, so I figured I have to leave, otherwise I'm never going to make the progress that I want to see. I had to do a calculator risk on that. How am I going to make money? What does that look like? What is it going to require? How much money do I have in my savings to keep me afloat if things go south, and when and what time would I be willing to say no, this isn't worth it. I'm going to step back out and go back into the workforce. I did all that calculation and I think, if we pull away from that and think about from a society perspective risk, I see risk as an opportunity and we need to shift this mentality of that risks are fearful and viewing it as a pathway to new opportunities. This whole business that I have my reselling business is built purely off risk. I've taken some big leaps and big chances to make those happen, but I'm figuring out how to make them happen because they're opportunities.

We're in the business of problem solving. Risks are problem solving right. The risk may be, this may occur, okay. So how do we make sure that won't occur and then we get the better outcome? That's essentially what we're doing Now.

There is components of this which means there will be uncertainty when doing risks right. But you got to be careful with the uncertain because if you're not comfortable with it, don't embrace it. But when we do embrace uncertainty, it does enable some huge growth. And I embraced what was going, the uncertainty of I didn't know what was going to happen, but at the same time I did, because I was the one in control, I was the one driving the ship, I was the one taking the steps forward. No one else was going to do that. So it's like on me If I don't do it, no one else is going to do it. Therefore, the growth has to happen.

Of course, there's also the fear of unknown, but again, when you back up taking risks with data and information, we can step into this unfamiliar territory with confidence because we have understanding. There is components of risk-taking where it is all unknown and when it is like that, maybe it's not worth taking because you don't know what you don't know. And you've got to be willing to weigh up that risk versus reward balance. Usually high risk equals high reward. Low risk might not necessarily be big. If you can find a low risk with really high reward, that's great, but sometimes if it's too good to be true, then it probably is. So you have to have that perception and understand it.

Now, depending on who you are and your age and if you're younger than me, older than me, you're going to have different perspectives of this. You're going to be really comfortable with it, some of you are going to be very uncomfortable with it and some of you just maybe it's all new to you, so do got to take that into account. And it's like if we look at risks from a perspective of fear, of failure we spoke about fears last week and sometimes we're too scared to take a risk because we're too scared to fail and therefore we never actually take action. Therefore, we never even get a result. And I think that's sometimes worse, because you're not losing anything, you're not gaining anything, but you're not actually learning anything. If you take a risk to do something and it's calculated and let's say you have a 50-50 chance of getting something back in return or not, if you don't get anything back in return, you get lessons, you get learnings, get perspective and you get experience. But if you take a risk and you reap some rewards, you get all those things lessons, learnings, understanding, perspectives but you also get the reward of whatever it is, that's, tangible money, whatever it may be. So you do need to weigh those things up.

And there's also the pain point of what's it called Like security versus freedom, like a lot of us want to be secure and I was stuck in the nine to five. There's nothing wrong with the nine to five. If that's your jam, that's your jam, that's good. You can make some good money and you can be safe and secure in a job like that forever. You might not either, but the reality for me is it wasn't that I was worried about the stability of my job. I was worried about the stability of my freedom and being able to pursue into these new ventures, pursue into the things that I want and make those things happen. I knew it was going to take a lot more time. That was the risk. The risk was this might not happen overnight. This may take five, 10 years to do Year four. We have a long way to go, but it's what I wanted because I feel like it was a short-term pain comparatively to a full life for a long-term gain. That's the way I looked at it.

We see of the food chain in their industry and people ask them how did you get to where you are, like, how did you get so successful? And they say a lot of hard work. I took a lot of risks and that's it Right. And what does that look like? It looks like taking making those decisions that make you uncomfortable. Making the decisions that other people aren't willing to do, doing the work that other people aren't willing to do, because that's what transforms you. And the other thing is, if you can make a decision quicker than someone else and you're able to solve it quicker and you're able to execute on it quicker and you're able to grow from that quicker, you will be more successful. And it's not about being more successful than someone else, but I'm just saying you will achieve the results you want to achieve quicker because you're learning. You're failing, you're making mistakes, but you're redirecting, you're learning. On top of that, you're compounding that your ability to grow, to understand, to make money or whatever it is and you will rapidly succeed and grow compoundingly to the results that you want to see.

It's an interesting thing because, with all that what I just said that stuff isn't spoken about in school. That stuff isn't spoken about in school. That stuff isn't spoken about when we're kids there's probably like this narrative is it the right word? A cultural or society narrative in which people talk about and they glamorize these things around. You don't want to start a business. You want to get into a job where you're secure. You don't want to go do all those things. Maybe don't take your time off, because people want to see that you've got experience and you can work in this industry. This is starting to change, though. When I grew up, I had to provide 10 preferences to join university and I said, but I don't like those things, I want to be this. And they said, yeah, but if that doesn't get accepted, you need to have a job. I said yeah, but I don't want to do a job I don't want to do. And they said you need Like it was a really weird mentality and, as an adult sharing that to a kid, they should have done better Right, and I ended up where I needed to be anyway.

It's a bit silly that we don't get that support of being willing to take the risk and find yourself Right A lot of the time. It takes us years till we find ourselves, because the risk is not there. We don't take the risk to find ourselves. We get stuck in someone else's dream or world or adventure and we work for someone else, and we're then comfortable and too scared to step out of that comfort zone because it's too risky and we might lose the good that we have when really, yeah, they could be good from a coding perspective, but deep down, you're not happy.

Now I'm speaking from a generalized perspective of my own understanding and how I've gotten to this position. This might not be you, that's fine, but I'm hoping there's some things here which are relevant to you and resonate with you and challenge you and encourage you, because at the end of the day, I want to encourage you as a listener to really assess. I'm not saying you should be taking heaps of risks, but are there risks that you can take with confidence that are going to give you a better outcome for what you want in life? Right, when we have a perspective shift, when we change the way we frame things, when we look at things from a new perspective, it opens up new opportunities. And if you can take a moment and just weigh up, are you happy? All those different things but then thinking about okay, what's something that you want to achieve? Maybe you want to run your first marathon or your half marathon.

And naturally we think, oh yeah, but it's going to be a lot of hard work. Oh yeah, you've got to take the risk. You're going to have to do the blood, sweat and tears. That means you're going to have to compromise in other areas. It means you're going to have to make sacrifice. It also might mean you might get an injury. It might be harder than you expected. It also might mean you might not even finish it, but the risk's worth it because if you do, you're going to be a better version of yourself, you're going to feel achieved. You're going to feel accomplished, you're going to feel successful and you're going to be happy and you're going to then want to go take on the next thing. That's going to give you that ability to grow, to become a better version of yourself. And that's a risk versus reward.

Doing a marathon or doing a half marathon is low risk, it's just work. It's a lot of hard work and the payoff I guarantee you, mentally and physically and emotionally, will change your life right. But it's a grind, it's a lot of hard work and, like with anything, you can't expect to take low risk or high risk and not have some level of skin in the game. Right, it's more about what skin in the game is there and unfortunately, you know, it's easier for us to chuck a thousand dollars on something and hope that we're going to get $10,000 in return and it's harder for us to say, hey, let's commit to six weeks, 10 weeks or 20 weeks of training and it doesn't even cost you. It just costs you the physical time. But that will change your life more than $10,000. $10,000 might change your life for a year. It might enable you to get a car, it might enable you to get closer to a deposit. You run a marathon or a half marathon. I guarantee it will change your perspective of life and it will give you you'll work through some demons that you didn't realize you had.

Anyway, we digress and I get off a whole different. I'll get on a whole different subject. My point is like really think about what it is that you're doing. Challenge yourself in the sense of is there something you could be doing better and why aren't you doing it? What is the thing that's holding you back? What is the risk here? Is it because maybe you feel like you might fail? If you fail, you're going to learn a lot. Right, is there a net that can catch you? Is there people around you that will support you? Maybe you want to grow the business and maybe you're too scared to take a leap.

Do some calculations, run some numbers. If you spend this much money, based on the data these are the sales how much time will it take to get the money back. Will it work? And then obviously put in some tolerance levels of let's assume worst case. How long will it take? Let's assume best case it gives you a sense of understanding and a new, fresh reality of maybe this risk isn't that bad. You know, when it comes to investing risks and this is not financial advice that's risky stuff, right? Just because it's worked well in the past doesn't mean it's going to continue to grow in the future. It might, but it might not. That's a little bit more challenging.

So my challenge to you is think about these things and see if there's some things that you can start to change and maybe dabble in and try a little bit different, to take a bit of a risk. And maybe it's just going to say hi to the pretty girl that you see at the coffee shop all the time. What's the worst that will happen? Right, she'll say no, she'll say yeah, I don't want to talk to you, or maybe she'll say that on the Spotify version and Apple podcast version. But most of all, if you enjoy this, if you resonated with this, if you found something that was encouraging, then please share it with someone else that you think can benefit from this Because my goal is to help you further your lifestyle and help others further their lifestyles, because what my lifestyle will look like might not be what you want, but I think we're all trying to get to somewhere, where we want to be, and all these components we discuss in these episodes and these podcasts are all going to help us get there, and I think the more people that understand that and as we share between each other and we learn more, I think we can all grow quicker and learn quicker and achieve where we want to be quicker.

So that's that. Appreciate you being here. More than happy to continue the conversation as well. If you do want to leave a message or a comment, drop it down below here on the YouTube version. Otherwise, we'll be back here next week. You have a wonderful day, cheers.