The Seamus Fox Podcast.
This podcast has been created to share real life experiences from inspiring people in all walks of life, those who have engineered change in their own lives through a shift in thinking and beliefs. I want to share my own journey and have others share theirs so that it can help inspire others to crete the internal changes thats needed to create long lasting life changes.
The Seamus Fox Podcast.
From Gym Ownership to Online Coaching: Seamus Fox on Value Alignment and Transformational Leadership
This episode highlights the significance of understanding human behavior in achieving both personal and professional success. Seamus Fox discusses his transition from a fitness-oriented career to mentoring CEOs and emphasizes the importance of aligning individual values with goals for meaningful change.
• Seamus shares his journey from personal trainer to CEO mentor
• Importance of identifying and aligning personal values with goals
• Discusses the psychological aspects behind self-sabotage
• The impact of neglecting personal health on business performance
• Strategies for creating lasting change through behavior understanding
• Insights on building community engagement in online environments
• Announcement of an upcoming event with Dr. John DeMartini focusing on personal growth and fulfillment
If you're ready to dive deeper into your mindset and values, reach out and see how Seamus can guide you on your journey!
Guys, today I have Seamus Fox on the podcast with me, who is a mentor to CEOs. Seamus, thank you very, very much for being on the podcast with me today. I'd like you to introduce yourself to my audience and tell us a little bit more about this mentoring to CEOs that you do.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, damien. It's good to be on the podcast. So, as you already mentioned, my name is Seamus Fox. I'm a coach and a mentor to CEOs and business leaders, but not specifically not just only CEOs and business leaders. I work with a lot of different people as well. But I've been coaching for the last nearly 20 years, started out in the fitness industry as a personal trainer, had fitness businesses for a long time. Made an exit out of the fitness business. This year at the start of this year actually I had a gym that I had for nearly 13 years sold up the gym. At the start of this year I made the full transition into just working online, coaching ceos, business owners and more around the mindset and human behavior rather than the physical and the health and the fitness. Still, health and fitness, but not the in-person physical personal training, let's say I would have done in the gym.
Speaker 1:Okay, what sort of a gym did you own?
Speaker 2:A personal training studio, small PT studio.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll be taking a few notes, because there's stuff there, this stuff there, that you're saying I'm like, oh, I like that, I might come circle back to it. So if I'm looking away for a moment, that's what, exactly what I'm doing, the pins in the hand. Okay, so your personal trainer studio that you had, it was it? It was just something that people would come to or would you run classes and whatnot in it? What was your? What was the studio like?
Speaker 2:yeah, so the studio, it started to give you a bit of a backstory, uh, on that. So probably about 12, 13 years ago I was in australia and I was working as a personal trainer over there short period of time and when I came back I started a boot camp. And the boot camp started with around 10 12 people on a beach and then that kind of quickly grew and, grew and grew and grew and literally I had like hundreds of people turning up and we were running around the streets in Derry, running around beaches in Derry, and I opened up my first studio and at the time it was just all bootcamps and it was great because there seemed to be like a bit of a craze at the time Damien and the town, and it was just like I seem to be having that wave. Um, I grew that studio within the space of about 11 months and then moved into a place that was, uh, probably twice the size that, which was around 5,000 square foot, um, and then had the bootcamp same, but we kind of transitioned.
Speaker 2:I could see the fall and it was starting to kind of weather away and then, while they're away, and then we opened up small group personal training and from there, then started to build teams and bring other coaches on board and hire personal trainers and hire coaches and have them deliver the the pt sessions from there. So it was basically a small group pt and sometimes groups of four, sometimes six, sometimes 12, and they basically booked in slots that suited them best. We ran the normal times from six o'clock to eight pm at night, monday to Saturday, and then the odd Sunday session. So yeah, I was doing that for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Good man, and when you? Because you're telling a very similar story to my own. As you got on and you started to build the teams and, like other coaches would say, run the stuff or run the classes for you, how involved were you still? Were you able to pull away or did you find that you were still there?
Speaker 2:yeah, so for a long period of time. At the start specifically, I was kind of there building it, obviously, building the culture, getting coaches and that um were getting familiar with how want the things done and training them up etc. But then for a period of time I was able to fully remove myself from the gym um, and we can touch on that later as we start to understand that we look more and talk about human behavior but for a period of time I had just kind of had the gym basically running, had a good team on there and I didn't really need to be there. Be there as much, then, damon okay, good, good, good, good.
Speaker 1:And for how? How long do you think you've done that for? Like from that point where you were able to remove yourself? How long did it take you to get to that point from when you started the gym?
Speaker 2:um, because of the nature of the, the business itself, it was more boot camp. When I started doing the small group personal training. Um, at the time I remember flying to London to meet up with a guy called Jean-Claude Foucault they don't W10 and there wasn't really like a small group personal training here. There was no small group personal training gyms and units. So I flew to him because I'd met him at a talk the year previously and he was talking about small group and he literally kind of wrote out on the back of a brown paper bag this is kind of what you should do and this is how you should do. It caught the flight back home again and then went right okay, this is what I need to implement.
Speaker 2:It took about a year for that transition to happen because there was a lot of people that obviously were just familiar with us running big classes and boot camps. So it took about a year. We had a lot of people that left and then we had to remarket and just bring people back in again and the model that was now new because most people didn't really kind of get it at the start. Um, so I'd say it took a few years because we were bringing something that we bit new again and you had to get people familiarized with it, and then bringing coaches in that system as well too, to coach them up and have them be familiar with it as well too.
Speaker 1:So probably over a couple of years, damien, to be honest yeah, I owned a CrossFit gym for 10 years in Melbourne and you know it was that it was as much as I would pull away being part of it and the community, because that's what it is. I've noticed that with online stuff now it's you create a community and your guys just stay with you because, yeah, they're there for the coaching, but they're also there because they're chatting with other fellas and they're like, oh yeah, he's doing that and they're learning from one another. And it's the same model I had with my crossfit gym is like create events, get people together, have group webinars, all that sort of stuff, and that's what keeps it bubbling. It's moved from the in-person space to the online space. I feel it's a very similar transition or it's a very similar model that works in both spaces very, very well, because when I moved online originally I didn't think you could have a community online, but how dumb was I.
Speaker 2:When you look at social media like instagram and facebook, they are communities yeah, and it's one of them, it's one of the keys to actually having a successful online presence and business as well, which is keeping that community filled and I think, if you like, I didn't really want to transition myself out at that time anyway which is keeping that community full and I think, if you like, I didn't really want to transition myself out at that time anyway, which is why I was still on there, because I was still pretty much active on there and coaching on there. But then there was a period of time then when I did and, to be honest, it was a period of time when I felt most lost because I'd removed myself from the thing loved, which was coaching are you a family man, seamus?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah yeah, do you have a family and everything when you were running the gym? Yeah, yeah, kids as well too, yeah okay, because, yeah, it's when you're running the gym. It's unsociable hours 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 6 in the morning, 8 pm and especially at the start, when before I had like the ability to build a team at that time. You're doing almost all of it and I worked seven days a week in that gym at the start.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, 100%, it's unsuitable hours, especially with kids yeah, good man, good man, well done for navigating that. And you're exiting out of the gym. How did that come around?
Speaker 2:I just knew over the last probably couple of years, damien, that it wasn't really something that I could see myself growing into even more over the next like five, ten years.
Speaker 2:Most of my work and if I look back at the thread of my work even over the last 20 years, like before I opened the gym 12 years ago, I was personal trainer for for eight years before that.
Speaker 2:So most of the things that I've always really been inspired by and really studied was always around kind of the behavior aspect, the psychology of it, the mindset of it, and that's been a thread the whole way through. So probably around about six, seven years ago I started to notice that even more, and especially in health and fitness, why does one person get a result, why does another person not? Why does one person keep a result, why does another person not? And I wanted to really dig deeper and understand what's really going on, because it's not calories and it's not training, so there's something going on underneath the hood and that kind of made me dig that we bit deeper and they understand human behavior more. And then over that period of a couple of years it was like, right, I know that that's not where I really want to be. I don't really want to be in the gym long term, so it's just wise they make that transition right okay and that's interesting.
Speaker 1:You had an interest in interested you an intro look at that money, time's gonna say interest in the one sentence sentence. So you had an interest in human behavior way before you were even like owning a gym or anton. Where did that come from?
Speaker 2:ultimately, that came from sorting out my own shit. To be totally honest, damien, no wanting to find out more about myself, wanting to find out why was I kind of stuck? What were the things that I was getting up to and like the patterns that I had repeated in my own life as a late teenager, early twenties, the kind of hassles I found myself in, the problems I found myself, in the stuff that I had found myself in, I wanted to understand me more, and when I understood me more, I could then start to understand other people more and when I really started to understand a lot of the things that were going on internally, by working on me I can see that it's just the same for other people. So I'd say that the I wouldn't say fascination, but the real kind of inspiration to learn more about human behavior was probably going back to looking to understand myself first.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, and if you don't mind me asking, what was it that you needed to discover what was going on for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there was just things, damien, like feeling lost for a long period of time. So I left school, grew up here in Derry for your listeners. I left school at 15 or 16. Didn't sit any qualifications, Just out the door as quick as I could, thought at 15 or 16, you're going to be grand, you'll know it all, you'll find your way. Didn't turn out that way. Did every single job that you can imagine for a period of about seven or eight years.
Speaker 2:And then had the party scene scene, probably around 17 or 18, and just find myself in like circumstances, environments, groups that I was just running around partying with and just getting up to all sorts, and I was kind of on a slippery slope. I wasn't going anywhere too fast, to be totally honest. Um, and then an event happened when I was about 21, 22. I smashed my car head on under a wall. That was out of my mind, drunk for a few days partying, no recollection of getting under the car, and when I got out of the car, commotion ensued. There was a guy there who was an angry onlooker, smashed me in the face, busted me open, hit my head off the concrete and kind of brought me around around, to be honest and I was like what's going on here, like what happened? Blah, blah, blah. And from then that was on a Saturday morning but 10 30 AM. From then, damien, I got arrested, taken to the cell and thrown into the cell. I was taken back out later, got my bloods taken, threw me back in the cell again they try and sober up. And then they charged me and then they let me out and I woke up the next morning covered in blood in my flat and I was like right, what is going on? What's happened? And that's when I started to really look at myself. For like months I was just low as a snake's belly, trying to figure out what to do, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do, and I was just kind of jumping between jobs like on the door, living in the brew, trying to get a job here, trying to get a job there, and just kind of eking me away. They made me try and earn a few pounds, but that event woke me up and that event started to put me on the right path.
Speaker 2:I've always been involved in health and fitness, from the young age of seven, from the young age of seven, playing football, boxing, et cetera. And I got away from that when I was about 17,. 18, got away from that and the party scene and that event got me back in the alignment with something that I've always really valued. And then I started bodybuilding and I competed in a bodybuilding show at NABBA, mr Norton in 2005. I did the first timers in that. I won that show and that gave me a platform as a bodybuilder, but it also gave me a platform as a personal trainer and then that kickstarted the personal training career and then from then on, it just started to begin to shift and change. So that's a wee bit of a long story to the question, but it kind of gives you some context on the way I was looking to find out more about myself yeah, good man that's.
Speaker 1:That's a hell of an event to be involved in yeah I was going to ask what happened, but yeah, that was a wake up and a half yeah, well, it took about another year.
Speaker 2:There was other stuff that was going on as well too, and running the court and all sorts of stuff that was happening at that time and deep down, like internally at that time, they meant I knew that I deserved more, they knew that I wanted to do more, but I had just probably shitty beliefs that right, I'm not educated, I haven't got qualifications, I can't have to do these things. Until I went no, I don't fucking have to do these things, I can do something else. Do you know what I mean? I can really start to empower myself, and when I got that chance to do something that I loved, which was becoming a personal trainer, from then on, when I started to become self-sufficient, I did everything in my power to educate myself and keep that going growing good man, good man.
Speaker 1:So from then, you've competed in the bodybuilding, you've won your first show, you've now got this platform. You're coaching people. What was the next step for you? What was the next evolution in this growth for you?
Speaker 2:So I was working one-to-one with at the time it was all just personal training, one-to-one personal training. And again I was working with a lot of business owners at that time, just coaching them looking to get healthier and fitter, um. And then that kind of transitioned into the boot camps. The boot camps started to grow from there and in the gym started to grow and had like a couple of different units at one time, um, and the plan was do you grow that way? Do you have like, uh, of different units at one time? And the plan was do you grow that way? Do you have like multiple different units? We had three or four at one stage. We were creating a franchise and we're trying to grow that, but it wasn't that either. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:So the natural transition for me was when I was constantly personal training and the business was growing and was doing well there. It was starting to look at different areas. So I started then coaching personal trainers and coaching coaches as well too, but it was always, if I go back, it was always around the human behavior aspect. That's the thing that actually really always lit me up, um, so I just naturally kind of gravitated towards that over the years okay, and with human behaviors, as we're talking here now, what is it?
Speaker 1:what is it that you notice when you're, when you're talking with people? You're working with people. What are you picking up on that? Other pts and fitness coaches may not be that, you know, can make the big difference well when it comes to well.
Speaker 2:At the time, as a personal trainer, what I was picking up on was and I'll be totally honest going back years previously. As a personal trainer, I had the expectation that other people should value health and fitness the way I do, and that people should be doing the same things that I do. They should be eating right, they should be training right. They should have the same value in health and fitness. But every single person lives by a unique set of priorities and values, and no two people are the same. Yours are completely individual, mine's are completely individual. So if someone's coming on and saying that they want to be fitter, stronger and healthier, january is always a prime example. February they're gone again. It's not because they maybe don't want to actually be healthier and fitter, but they've got other things in their life that are more of a priority. They've got other things in their life that are higher in their value system. It could be their business, it could be their family, it could be their social life, it could be traveling, whatever it might be. And what I started to notice was when I was coaching people on health and fitness was right. I need to get them to really understand what their values actually are, because, no matter how much they say they want to get fit, strong and healthy, if they don't really value it, that's not going to happen. So what I need to do is I need to get you to be able to link health and fitness to something that you really, really value. So it could be your kids, it could be your family, right? So what are the benefits to you? Getting further, stronger and healthier? How does that benefit your family? How does that benefit your kids? How does that benefit your business? How does that benefit your social life? Whatever it might be, that's higher in your priority and if I can get you to start listing as many different benefits and linking that to the highest value, your behavior begins to shift and change because you have more meaning in doing those actions.
Speaker 2:Now, that takes a period of time. In doing that, it's not going to happen just overnight. But if you've got meaning and purpose in doing things, you're going to do it. We only do anything unless we perceive that it's going to give us a according to their highest values. So if their highest value is family and they think that going to the gym is going to be a disadvantage, they're not going to go to the gym, they're going to stay with their family. But if I can get them to link how it actually improves that area, then things begin to shift and change for them, and then the behavior begins to shift and change.
Speaker 1:Okay. So a client comes to you and they're like right, Seamus, I want to get in shape. I want to, you know, improve my health. What's your first steps with them? Are you trying to nut out these values first, or how do you approach your coaching with a new client?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, right now it's not really around the health and fitness that people are coming to me specifically with. So the first protocol that I'll do with any client, no matter who it is or what they're coming to me with anyway, is the value determination process. I'll take them through their values and get them to understand what they are, and most people have a misconception of what values are. Most people also subordinate to other people's values. They look at other authority and think that that's what they should be doing, and they subject themselves to trying to be somebody else instead of being themselves. People think values are like honesty and integrity and respect, and those are moral ethics a lot of the time. But your life demonstrates what you value. So when I go through a process with a client, I'll get them to look at their life by asking them a series of questions and get them to see what their life has actually really demonstrated which is most important for them, and sometimes it's like a weight off their shoulders. They feel like they're authentic again. They feel like, ah right, this is who I am, this is what's really important for me and I can just get to do this. I can get to be that. So, if they want to be fitter, stronger and healthier healthier and I take them through their values and it's not on that list. That's why they're not fitter, stronger and healthier, because it's not a priority. So I need to get it on the priority list by linking it to something. It is so that they start to shift and change. So people have motives, conscious motives and unconscious motives. You know, if somebody says I want to lose weight but you're not losing weight, well there you know. If somebody says I want to lose weight but you're not losing weight, well there's a motive there not to lose weight. So, no matter how much you tell me you want to do something, if you're not doing it, there's a hidden benefit to not doing it. So sometimes I'll have to go down that road and look and say, right, okay, so what's the unconscious benefit that's stopping you from actually doing that? Because we only do anything if we perceive a benefit on it. So there might be an unconscious motive there that's stopping someone from getting fitter, stronger and healthier.
Speaker 2:I'll give an example. I had a client who worked with me for about 18 months. Damien lost a lot of lost a lot of weight. Got him there around about um, just over 19 stone, but then got stuck and for a few months we were kind of like hammering or hammering out the training etc. But then nothing was budging and I was like, right, okay, let's look at this. So I brought him into the office, took him through a few things, different couple exercises and got him to see right, okay, so when was the last time that you were under 19 stone?
Speaker 2:He says when I was 19. I says okay, did anything happen? Like what happened? You're 19? He says my son was born. I says okay, brilliant, what else happened? My girlfriend at the time, who is the son's mother, split up with me. I says, right, okay, so you've associated that with a painful experience. So if there's a painful experience there that you are assuming that if I go through that again, that caused me so much fear, it caused me so much anguish, it caused me so much pain. Do we want to go there? A lot of the times, no. So we had to go through a process of being able to kind of collapse that and link different benefits to how it would benefit him, his family, all areas of his life to getting under 19 stone. And once we started doing that, that really within a few weeks, he started losing the weight again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing that it is that it's in the brain, right? One of the coaches I work with, lewis Potts. He put this in a webinar before and I use it myself now you can't have a physical change unless you have an identity change, and the identity is in your mind. So what you've literally done there is you've gone into his subconscious, found the black space and just broke it down, exploded, and the time after that is just the dust settling and him making the change. I talk about this a lot. It's not about the nutrition, it's not about the weight you want to lift on the bar. It's about what's going on between the ears 100% and his situation.
Speaker 2:There was a few other things like family dynamics as well, too, and sometimes that may play out where it's trying to keep a family dynamic in a certain way. If he feels that he was able to lose weight, then maybe the brawler was getting jealous or the brawler was falling out. There's going to be reasons and benefits there not to actually lose that weight. So there's a lot of different things that can go on as well, too, consciously, unconsciously, within a family dynamic that tries to keep a certain balance. So it's always wise to maybe look at some of those things. That's not the case for a lot of people, though, damien. Some people want to get fit, strong and healthy. It might be just. They just need the accountability, they need some direction, they need a kick in the ass, they need someone that's making sure they're checking in with them. They need to just shift their values a wee bit so, but a lot of the times, if it's not happening, then it's wise to try and find out why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if there is someone listening to this now and they're like that, you've just described me like I get down to a certain way but I just can't seem to budget anymore and they've tried it many, many times. You know you get these people. They lose a bit, they gain back on, lose a bit, gain back on, like what's your advice to them if they've tried everything and it hasn't worked?
Speaker 2:They probably haven't tried everything and it hasn't worked. They probably haven't tried everything, as we know. I would look at and go, and I had this conversation with someone recently again who was looking to lose weight and he said that he hasn't been losing weight in ages. And I said, well, what's the benefits to keeping the weight on? He says there is none. I says what's the benefits to keeping the weight on? He says there is none. I says what's the benefits to keeping the weight on? He says there is none. I says, well, if there was no benefits to keeping the weight on, you'd lose it. So what's the benefits to keeping the weight on? And then it started to click. So he was able to list 15 different benefits of why he wanted to keep the weight on. That doesn't sound like somebody wants to lose it. So what we had to do then was right, well, how can you get the same benefits by losing that weight and and trying to shift that for him?
Speaker 2:So sometimes it might be that if you're not losing weight, there's a reason that you're not losing it. There's a motive there for you not to lose it and it's wise. They look and go okay, so do I actually really want to lose it. Am I really actually determined to lose it? Why am I holding on it? Why am I keeping it there?
Speaker 2:It could be a past experience. It could be something to perceiving right now. It could be that you perceive that it's too much work to go and do that. I have to start track calories to go and do that. It's just another, another stress. I'm running a family, I'm running a business. I've got all these different things. This is another thing on top of the workload I don't really want to actually look at.
Speaker 2:So there'll be motives there that are keeping you in check. There's no right or wrong on it, because that motive that you have to not losing weight might be something that is honoring other areas of your life and benefit in other areas of your life as well too. So there can be a lot of things at play. But for me, Damien, it's really looking at the understanding. If I'm not losing it, what's the benefit to not losing it? How can I get the same benefits in other areas? Or how can I begin to shift my values and bring health and fitness higher so that I start to value it more and that I start to change my behaviours and see how it's benefiting other areas of my life that might be more priority. Kids is a perfect example.
Speaker 1:Yeah, be healthy for your kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So like what would the benefits to your kids be if I'm fitter, stronger and healthier? Well, longevity is one. You might have more energy for another. You're teaching them generational habits. You're teaching them good habits. There's loads, there's loads. So you start listing as many different benefits as you can, and if we only take action because we perceive more advantage over disadvantage, well, now we're starting to see the advantages in this and that can begin to shift and change. I've got clients to do this with their kids, and their kids come up with many different reasons as well too, and then kids will come up with all sorts of things that you probably weren't even thinking about, and then maybe tell you a few home trips as well yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good, I like that you're thinking about, uh, and you'll get it all there, and you're like, right, okay, boom, boom, boom, it starts to click for you.
Speaker 1:So there's a few different things, but bringing it higher in your values is probably one of the most important things that's good and obviously you you work with vast amount of people, but you you work with ceos like men that are highly stressed men, women that are highly stressed, very time poor, uh, being pulled from Billy to Jack with all sorts. The benefits to them looking after their health is like if they do start doing it, what benefit can they see in their business if they do start really focusing on themselves?
Speaker 2:Well, it's massive, like the benefit that you're going to see in your business if they start focusing on yourself. Your business is an extension of you and how you're thinking and how you're feeling about yourself is how you show up in your business. So if you start to think better about yourself, feel better about yourself, start to feel more confident in yourself, if you're starting to improve your sleep, your nutrition, your health and your fitness, if you're starting to do all these different things, what happens? Your energy goes up, and there's a connection. When your energy is up, what happens in your business your business is usually up as well. So when your energy starts to go up and you start to look after yourself, it's a direct impact in your business, especially if you're running teams Like if you've got teams and you're managing a big group of people and you've got people underneath you, then if you're eating shit, sleeping shit, feeling shit, are you really showing up as the best version of yourself within your business? Are you really leading in the best way you possibly could? I would say not. So the direct impact from that is you start to show up with more confidence. Other people begin to feel that and there's just a compound effect, that kind of ripples through the business and ripples through the team, because you're feeling good. And not only that, damien like the challenges that you get in your daily life, the challenges you get in your business. When you've got a clear head and you're feeling good about yourself, you're able to handle those challenges better. So there's um, there's so many different effects and so many different benefits to looking after yourself as a CEO, as a business owner. For sure, stress, like stress being the biggest one. If, if you're a CEO and you're working and you're running a big company and you've got a lot of responsibilities and you're not looking after your sleep, you're not looking after your nutrition and you're not looking after your shelf in general, then sometimes those small challenges can compound and seem massive, where your ability to be able to deal with them differently because you're looking after yourself is so much greater.
Speaker 2:Um, and when we're not feeling good, a lot of the times, when we're not doing the thing we actually really value, the thing that actually really lights us up and gives us most energy, most inspiration, we're trying to escape and our behaviors, a lot of the times, will be in those escape behaviors, habits that are maybe destructive, maybe more drinking, maybe just binge eating, et cetera. So all of those symptoms, a lot of the times, that appear in your life and business, are a way to try and get you back to be your most authentic self, which is living in your highest values. And that's why, for me, working with CEOs, getting them really, really aligned with their highest values, is so, so important, because then they can understand the thing that actually really makes them tick. And when they understand the thing that really makes them tick, they can go right.
Speaker 2:Okay, how do I automate the rest of this? How do I delegate the rest of this? How do I eliminate the rest of this so I can get on with doing the thing that actually really drives the business forward and I can bring other people on the team to do all the low priority stuff. Because when you do low priority stuff, you don't feel like a high value person. When you do the high value thing, you feel like a high value person, and if you're a ceo and leader on the business, that's how you want to feel very true, very true.
Speaker 1:So what are the main movers, the main things in a CEO's life that you see that makes the biggest difference to their energy.
Speaker 2:Delegation for sure is one thing Making sure that you are delegating all their stuff out. As I said, like if you're delegating out the low priority stuff, if you're constantly getting caught up in the low priority stuff, that's going to bring your energy down. When you understand that if I do the thing that's most inspiring to me, my energy goes up and when I live in my highest values, I want to expand out. When I live in low values, I contract and I pull energy down. My energy starts to go down and sometimes we need other people's energy to bring us back up again. But when we're doing the thing that we really love, we can do it all day long. We expand our energy out.
Speaker 2:You've been doing what 36 hours Coming off the back of a plane from Australia and America and you're on a podcast. You're working, but you're doing what you love. You weren't doing the thing that you love and it was a drag. You'd be finding all sorts of excuses to get out of the podcast, to get out of the work that you're doing, because it's not something you really feel inspired to do. But when you're really inspired to do the thing that you love, your energy goes up.
Speaker 2:So the changes that I see when I get them aligned with their values is is that, then, we're looking at, obviously, sleep, we're looking at nutrition, we're looking at other things, um, that they can look at to improve just how they're thinking, how they're feeling and how they're showing up on a daily basis. So there's a lot of different things that we we cover, but one of the key points is is getting really aligned with what's most inspiring for you and then beginning they organize your days, your activities, your habits, your weeks, your months and around the thing that actually gives you most meaning and most purpose, so you can show up on a daily basis with the most energy.
Speaker 1:I like that, like that. That's solid advice. It's actually advice you I need to take. There's a lot of bits and pieces editing my podcast. I spend so much time doing that, but I like recording the podcast. I like talking, so that's something that has been on my mind. It's on my list here. I need to outsource that so if there is anyone listening. I'm open for interviews.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, man. It's just a simple thing I do with clients. I go right, I want you to put a line down the page and on the left-hand side I want you to write at the top, shit list and on the right-hand side, love list. Put all this stuff down on the left-hand side, the shit that you might be doing right now that you don't want to do, that you don't need to do that. You keep getting caught up in that, drags your energy down and go write ADE.
Speaker 2:How do I automate that? How do I delegate that? How do I eliminate that? And then that how do I delegate that? How do I eliminate that? And then write your love list and you'll see, the love list is probably a few things and that's the highest value usually for you and it's like right, okay, how can I start to just make sure that I'm doing less of this and doing more of that? And if you're running a big, a bigger team and a bigger company, generally the resources will be there for you to be able to do that. But sometimes it's the other stuff that we need to kind of look at in order for us to do that as well too, because there might be fears there and securities there, etc well.
Speaker 1:It's correct me if I'm wrong. I think one of the fears for a lot of people is that you're so involved that you no one can do it as well as you. You know it's letting go of a particular task.
Speaker 2:I know that's something I struggled with in my gym, but when I actually did let go of that and I let my coaches do the work and gave them the autonomy to, they actually were better yeah, 100% yeah yeah, I remember, like at the start, when I had brought on and employed my first personal trainer and I was still going down to the gym every morning at half five getting ready to open up at six o'clock, and my wife says to me. She says what have you employed somebody for? Why are you down here at half five in the morning? It was just all like the same thing. No, and then I realized, right, he probably thinks that I'm just on here standing watching over him and making sure he's doing all things right, and I was to be honest for a certain period of time. But then you have to realize, right, okay, as you said, you have to give him the autonomy, you have to have a bit of trust and you have to go right away.
Speaker 1:you go and that's the way a team grows as well. They like the responsibility. You know, we know, as fellows, if you're given responsibility, like even in school I remember like two people would be picked in the class to make the tea for the teachers and have it prepared, have the staff room prepared for the teacher, like getting the honor of doing that almost meant like you were one of the teachers and it was a brilliant thing. And you know we forget that as business owners. It's like you give someone the more responsibility. Well they're. You're gonna see what they're all about. You're gonna see if they were worked in client. But a lot of people will rise to the top and if they make a mistake you correct it. But let them at it again. Give them the responsibility and watch them thrive on the percent.
Speaker 1:On the percent now you have got an event happening in February where you have Dr DeMartini yeah, dr John DeMartini yes, now, I've just seen your social media. I haven't heard of him before, but when I looked up, looked him up, he's pretty damn popular he's. He's up there with Bob Proctor and the Secret. Maybe they did work together at a stage.
Speaker 2:I'm not too sure if they did work together. They probably have over the years for sure but he was in the Secret. Bob Proctor was in the Secret. If people don't know, the Secret was a movie. It was created by Rhonda Byrne. It was a book as well, too, and that's where I kind of first seen and heard of him. To be honest, the Secret was one of those things that I had really started at the start, when it was personal training. It was probably the first insight into going all right. So if I control my thoughts, I can control like this, I can start to control how I'm feeling, and that was like one of the seeds that was planted for me, like really starting to take that path as well too.
Speaker 2:Um, he was on that and he's been studying and teaching around the world. He lives in a ship called the world that sails around the world and he literally travels to every single country on the planet teaching and speaking, and I became really familiar with his work in 2016, his book, the Breakthrough Experience. My father passed away in 2016 and I was given his book and I started to read the book and I couldn't really grasp it, to be honest, because my head just wasn't in it. I was in grief and I started to read the book, but I put it down and then I came back to the book again. Then, probably around 2019, and started to become more familiar with this work. 2020, I did one of his courses called Master Planning for Life, and then I started to deep dive into even more of his work and more of his courses and I did his signature program, which is called the Breakthrough Experience, which I highly recommend anybody that's listened to it. You can do it online or you can go and do it at an event. And when I did that course, I was like I want to learn this, I want to understand what that is and I want to understand how I can take that and apply it as a coach and in my life. And I went and I became a qualified facilitator in the demartini institute with his method and from then, over the last five, six years, I've just been studying more and more of his stuff, taking his stuff, using it in my own life, using it in my business and then applying it in my coaching as well too.
Speaker 2:And why I resonate so much, I think, with his his work, damon, is because there's a when it comes to mindset and when it comes to human behavior. There's a lot of stuff out there that's just fluffy and his was very much grounded and there was a tool that was backed by science, has been backed over the last 50 years of him taking information. He studied over like 32,000 books and he's distilled like the wisdom of those books and the wisdom of the ages and their method. That's reproducible and as a coach, I wanted something that I can take and go right. Okay, I can produce a result time and time again with something like this, and that's why I like really started to gravitate towards more of his, his work, and do more of his stuff. Now he's got a vast amount of different courses you can do, but for me, learning his information and learning his wisdom has been so empowering as a coach and it's helped me really scale up my business as well too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen your post about that it is. You can learn so much from the right mentor, and I myself have worked with many, many mentors throughout my time and I had an amazing experience with Gerry Hussey, who's the Irish version of that allows you to transcend, level up, however you want to describe it, and a lot of people do find certain events very woo-woo and you know a little bit out there, but that's just maybe that event. You've got to find the right one. I've been to some fucking shit shows, but then I've been to other events and it's just fucking blown my mind and I think that's what you have to do. I was described to me before a lot of coaches and a lot of mentors like we're, we're all like flower, we're all like florists, all all right, the flowers are all the tools and we just put the bouquets together slightly differently and you just got to find the mentor or the coach that has the bouquet of flowers that you like the look of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, and I've studied with loads of different mentors and loads of different coaches still have coaches at this time as well, too. I've had business coaches and coaches in all different areas. Um, but yeah, a hundred percent. Has event for me. I've been to Tony Robbins events and it's very much like rah, rah and your face, and where his event is like you're going to work and you're working on yourself and you're you're learning. For me, it was like really starting to understand what I was teaching and kind of the tool behind what I was teaching, that when you learn this and you go to that breakthrough experience and you even just do the event, you can take that and then start to look at it and start to implement it on a day-to-day basis for yourself or or as a coach as well too. Damon, 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that approach Practical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not just throwing information at you or like motivational tactics. It was very much like, right, here's something that you can actually implement. You're working on yourself, on the breakthrough experience, for one. So you're not going there to listen to information, you're going to actually work on yourself yourself. So if you come in with certain charges that you might have about yourself, certain charges about other people, certain things that you've maybe looked at in the past, that were negative events, etc. You're going to go to work and you're going to go to work and collapse in a lot of those judgments, um, and you're going to come out of that event fit and empowered and it'll shift your perspective. And then you can take that tool with you and go right, okay, I can use this. Or if you want to take that further as a coach, then you can go and study how to actually use it more efficiently and what was your breakthrough?
Speaker 1:what was the the thing that? Because there's normally something. What was it for you that happened in that event that you enter?
Speaker 2:for me. I worked on a couple of different things. I didn't go to the event with anything major to be totally honest, 10 minutes but what? What I went with the event, um, or I went to the event with was when, like, I was working on a couple of judgments, but there was nothing major. But what really got me was the tool itself, and I seen other people in the event as well too that were having kind of like big breakthroughs, major breakthroughs, but it was really understanding the psychology of change for people and really understanding how this tool could really implement change in people's lives.
Speaker 2:And I use that tool on a day-to-day basis for myself.
Speaker 2:I use it with clients at a coach and it's just a series of questions. Literally, as he says, the quality of our lives depends on the quality questions we ask ourselves, and if we have quality questions to ask ourselves at certain times, we can get different answers. Most people have so many built-up emotions and perspectives of things that they perceived happened, and the big part of what I do as a coach is looking at what it is you perceived happened and getting you to see it differently. As Wayne Dyer says, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change. So it's a method that takes you through a lot of that. The processes are the things that you might have perceived and getting you to flip your perspective on it and get you to see the order and what was once chaos and find how it's actually served in your life to get you to where you are right now. So it's, it's a series of questions that get you to like, look at things differently and get you feeling empowered again instead of disempowered I like that.
Speaker 1:I like that. Yeah, the coach I work with he's very big on a good coach asks the right questions. Yeah, like there's a lot of coaches out there that are like they're great with their information, but they're telling you. They're telling you what to do, but it's you have to be the one that comes to the conclusion. You have to be the one that decides well, is it going to be this way, I'm going to do it, or that way? Not a coach telling you because there's more, I suppose, autonomy to it. It's like you're the one coming to the decision of this is the direction I should go. So I really like that. I really like that. It's it's a series of questions to lead you to where you need to get to yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:And the thing is as you mentioned as well too, sometimes as a coach, it's it's having the courage to ask those questions. No, at the end of the day, as a coach, I'm there to get somebody results. You can't be afraid to ask the question that you know might get a personal result, even though it might be challenging. So you have to be willing to go. Now I'm going to ask this question because this question needs to be asked and I'm going to hold you accountable to answering it because you're here to get a result. You can keep running your story and not get a result, or we can look at something differently and get you to shift your perspective on it and see things maybe as they were instead of how you perceived it, and then get that result for you which leaves you feeling empowered and leaves you feeling different. And I've literally seen people like, literally, their physiology change on a call, where they're stressed and tense up, and then the next thing, they're relaxed and they feel calmer. And one of the things they say a lot of the times is I never seen it that way before, and the big time, the big reasons we don't see that way before, is because we haven't looked. So it's. It's a powerful tool and aiding you to be able to go and ask the right questions and help people move forward, because people hold on to versions of stories that cripple them. 100, 100, yeah. So in our lives, like anything that we experience, we create a perception of and we store those perceptions subconsciously, and a lot of the times, if that was a negative event in our mind, then we store that subconsciously. That event runs us. We don't run it, but if I can get you to go and look at that event differently, then we start to take control again. We start to empower ourselves Instead of that running up and eating space and time in your mind when you can shift it. It's powerful stuff, seamus. It's very powerful. Yeah, it's a powerful tool, and Dr Dean Martini is going to be in Belfast in February, the 24th of February, at the Titanic Hotel, and he's going to be talking about a lot of this. So he's doing a keynote speech, 90 minute keynote speech. We're talking about the science of success and fulfillment, but he's going to deep dive into a lot of those different principles. He's going to deep dive into a lot of the things that we've kind of spoke about here. Um, he's going to speak about the method, and I think the big thing that bringing him to Belfast for me is about is is getting him to share the wisdom that I get to listen to when I'm in his events or I'm in his courses, et cetera, and getting to share that with other people so that they again come to the event, leave the event feeling inspired. And there's no better time to do that, which is a new year, february getting yourself inspired, getting yourself aligned, getting yourself focused again on what it is that you want to create so you can move on to 2025 in the best way possible Brilliant in the best way possible Brilliant.
Speaker 2:And where can people get tickets to that event? You can get tickets if you go onto LinkedIn, if you go on my social media any of my pages Facebook, instagram drop me a message, but the links are in my bios. So if you click the link in the bio, the tickets are there. The VIP tickets sold out within 24 hours. So there's other tickets that are still available now. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it sold out within 24 hours. Um, so there's other tickets that's still available now. So, yeah, I'm looking forward. It's going to be a great event brilliant, brilliant, and this is your event.
Speaker 1:You've created this event, correct? Yeah, yeah, fantastic so you'll be speaking as well, I, I assume yeah, yeah, yeah, but he's he.
Speaker 2:I'll be speaking um at the start, but it's more about bringing john this year, as he wasn't for sure yeah, fantastic, fantastic, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:So we're getting close to the end. But what I want to ask you is if someone's listened to this now and they're just super stuck and they're just, they want, they want to make a change in their life, but they just don't know where to start, what is your advice? What is your advice, what is your go-to advice for that person?
Speaker 2:First of all, realize that nothing is broken and that you're not broken either. So many times people are beating themselves up, giving themselves a hard time, thinking that it should be something else, it should be somewhere else, it should be earning more, it should be lighter, it should be heavier, it should be stockier. My business should be doing X. I would say stop comparing yourself to somebody else outside of yourself, first and foremost, and find out what it is that I should be stuck here. My business should be doing X. I would say stop comparing yourself to somebody else outside of yourself, first and foremost, and find out what it is that you really value. If I keep comparing myself to somebody else outside of myself, I'm never, ever going to arrive and I'm never going to feel fulfilled. So I would look at my life and see what I really value and see how my life has demonstrated and what I actually really value, and realize that nothing might actually need fixed. But if you keep comparing yourself to someone else, you're going to keep thinking that you need to be fixed. So look at where you are, look at how it's serving you, look at what your life is demonstrating is important for you and then if it's about shifting and changing that. Okay, make sure that your goals, that you set, the vision that you set, the things that you're going to go and actually do, are aligned with the thing that's most important for you, because if it's not aligned with the thing that's most important for you, the chances of you succeeding are minimal. And then you're going to beat yourself up and call yourself self-sabotaging and procrastination and all these different things, but they're just symptoms that get you realigned again to set goals that are actually authentic for yourself. So I would look at my life and see what it demonstrates and then go right, well, how can I get to do more of that? How can I get to live in my values more? How can I feel more inspired to create whatever it is I want to create, but making sure that it's really important to me? And then to stop comparing myself to other people, because anytime that you put somebody else in a pedestal, you put yourself in a pit and you think what you see in them you don't have, but you do, but you just have it in your form. You have it in your area of expertise, you have it in your values. So look at your life and see how it's actually serving you, how it's actually benefiting, you have a sense of gratitude for it.
Speaker 2:But then if you want to create some changes in your health, your fitness, your finances, whatever it might be, go right, okay. So how do I do that? But how can I set these goals in alignment with the thing that is actually really important for me? So to start to move towards it and to start to take action and just start to gain momentum? And if you do that on a consistent basis and you have a vision for yourself there, the chances of you succeeding are going to be more. Because if you set goals that aren't part of your higher values, you're going to, when it starts to get challenging, you're going to escape again. But how you know you've got goals that are aligned with the thing that you actually really value is you're willing to pursue the pains and the pleasures to perceive it and to achieve it. So hold on, Seamus, everything's frozen oh yeah, can you hear me?
Speaker 1:yeah, you're back to me now. Yeah, yeah, you pause there for a second. I think that was my internet that decided to go a bit of a wobble, okay.
Speaker 2:So yeah, as I was saying, what I was saying was, in setting goals, make sure that it's really aligned with the highest value, because you're willing to pursue the pains and the pleasures in order to achieve it. Usually, if it's not linked to the highest value, you'll escape when it starts to get challenging. So realize that, first and foremost, there's nothing broken. You're not broken. You are where you are. But if you want to begin the shift and change, look at the highest value that you have and make sure that your goals are aligned with that so you can actually move towards it I think I've seen one of your videos on your social media saying that uh, recently and you know what?
Speaker 1:hearing it put me at ease, because you do, I like I do get swept up in that, and I'm sure other people do as well. It's like I see other fitness people like myself in certain positions in their life and I'm like, why am I there? But exactly what you said, well, I, their values are different to mine. This is what I want over here. I'm moving at the pace I need to move to get where I want. I don't need to live in Dubai, I'm in fucking Australia. I'm happy out. I don't need to have this XYZ, the Rolex watch or the glasses or this, that and the other. I'm in Australia, I'm doing my thing, I'm living my life. So, yeah, it was one of your videos I've seen and I was like my shoulders relaxed down when I heard it. So I think that is solid advice Figure out your values and head towards those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you can't figure them out, look at what your life has demonstrated. Look at your life it's demonstrating what you actually really value.
Speaker 1:Amazing stuff, Amazing stuff. So if someone is listening to this and they're like I need a mentor and Seamus sounds like the man for me, how do they get in contact with you?
Speaker 2:They can get me on Instagram, they can get me on LinkedIn, they can get me on Facebook or on my website, seamusfoxcom, and they can reach out to me in any way from any of those channels, damien.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Well, listen, seamus. You've been an absolute gent and a legend on this podcast and thank you for sharing your story and your wisdom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for having me on, Damien. I really enjoyed it Giddy up.