Six business exits 100M deals | Peter Holgate

Peter sits downs and shares his business experience from starting, scaling and selling six different companies in different industries.

Peter shares his first impressions of Medellin, Colombia, after arriving from Mexico. And how today he coaches founders to become the best possible leaders

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well welcome guys. We're here with Peter for a speaker interview. Peter, thanks for coming to Medellin.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Well, thank you for the invite, Thomas. Uh it's very surprising. I haven't been here before, and I can see why you like it.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Absolutely. Yeah. So you came from uh Mexico, like near Cancun, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yeah, I live in the Yucatan, so I drive over to Cancun, take the cheap flight out, and uh it took as long to get through customs as it did to fly.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yeah. Yeah, I heard about that. I heard they're actually going on strike here in Medellin, unfortunately. But but no, you're here for a mastermind this weekend. We have uh inner circle mastermind for our group. You're one of the speakers. Super honored to have you here. You're also a mentor, you've been helping me with the community and different things. So it's an honor to have you here. And just for those who are listening, would love for you to just briefly introduce yourself, your background, experience, and maybe also what you plan on sharing uh this weekend with everyone.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Happy to do that. And I'd also like to hear what benefit I've provided you along the way. So it's tangible and real. So Peter Holgate grew up in South Africa, moved to Canada, subsequently moved to Mexico during the pandemic, and lived there with my seven children and my very lovely wife, who tolerates a lot of uh uh a lot of my life. Uh my background is uh very different to most people's. I didn't finish high school, uh, was conscripted into the army, spent four years in the army, uh I uh became a top cyclist, uh, spent some time in Europe there. I was a police detective back in South Africa and then worked at a couple of crappy jobs. And along the way, uh I was shot, stabbed, bombed, and I broke my neck and couldn't kill me off. So I'm still here, despite all of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I want to hear about each of those stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, their stories. And when I first told my wife, she said they're hard to believe from a Canadian's perspective. It's it's very difficult to understand that this is the reality. But uh it's true, and uh obviously I've had to deal with all of those experiences, part of my life experience. Started a business about 35 years ago. Uh, it was in the outsourced game. We were doing outsourced payrolls at the time, grew that into an outsourced risk treasury function business for large EPCM firms, uh, ended up selling that. And between then and 30 years later, I built up six different businesses. Uh, I've raised tens of millions in capital, created multiple nine figures in these businesses. My last business, we used large-scale sound waves. We put them underwater, we we acquired a sonic generator, we put the sonic generator underwater, and we extracted the precious metals from waste electronics. So essentially you drop your cell phone in and we shake out the gold. Very cool. So uh at the end of that, I was a little bit burnt out, decided I want to change. And so uh I invited a guy to come live with me to coach me, 24-7, super successful guy, Olympic medalist, great cup winner. So uh Uncle Bob, as my kids called him, lived with me for two years, changed my life, realized I didn't want to build another business, but I really wanted to help entrepreneurs. And having gone through the cycle many times from startup, raising capital, scaling up, then doing the acquisitions and mergers, plus the organic growth and the exits at the end. Um, I feel I've got a good enough skill set to help entrepreneurs see around the corner, see what they can't see, really help them elevate their game beyond what they could do without my help. Uh, I'm very selective on who I work with. You're one of them because I think you're an extraordinary human being. I think there's incredible potential in you, and I'd like to see that being realized in the world. So I'm saying that live. Thank you. Can never take it back now, it's recorded. Um, and so my focus for the last while has been uh helping entrepreneurs on two fronts. One is the functional side of things. In other words, how to how to get those sales, how to build a culture within the organization that works, how to do strategy properly, how to get your financials organized, so you've got the right debt-to-equity ratios and so on. And then beyond that, I like to help the entrepreneurs become a better businessman by elevating their internal game. So we'll do the hard, deep work, we'll do the mental conditioning, and uh, we'll elevate you not just that you're good at business, but that you're a leader in business. So that's my focus. It's pretty broad-based. And I get a lot of fun working with a lot of cool people who do a lot of cool things, and I feel like it's a double paycheck. They pay me well, and I get the benefit of seeing what they bring to life in the world.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

It's amazing. You have so much, so much to talk about there, like so much depth in that background uh that we could dive into. I'm curious, how long have you been doing the so since the last business you had, how long has it been since then that you've been doing what you do now?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yeah, it's been about seven years. Okay. And I typically work with five, six, seven clients at a time. So pretty selective on my roster. Uh, obviously, I have my own investments in companies that I help as well. So that uh it's a two-way investment and me, me giving the help in there. So it's been about seven years. I feel I'm finally starting to become somewhat competent at uh at coaching. I like to say I'm not a virgin trying to be a sex therapist. I actually got the experience to do it. But even so, it's taken me a while to to really dial in and figure out exactly how I can best serve entrepreneurs, how I can be there at the right time, give them the push when they need the kick in the ass. I can say, okay, now I'm pushing you hard, other times to dial to dial it back and allow them to just kind of make some mistakes and really have them ride their developmental edge the whole time because it's compounding over time. If every day, every week, every month you ride that edge, you you end up superior after a year or two or three. So, yeah, the answer to your question, seven years. Um, the current uh thing I do a lot of speaking about is uh this identity that we have as entrepreneurs and how it ends up holding us back. We have these internal rules, for example, successful people must work harder than other people, you know, or successful people never take a day off. Or so I'm finding I'm helping my clients with this deep inner work where we deprogram those unhelpful heuristics that live inside so they can replace them with ones that work better. So we keep the stuff that works, but where it becomes limiting, we start to transcend that. We say, hey, what would it look like if you could decide what those internal heuristics were? Um, and so it's two parts to it. There's the functional part of business, and then there's the internal growth part.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

What do you usually find when you're working with entrepreneurs? Um, let's say at different stages, because you work with mostly very successful entrepreneurs, you know, people, I mean, in the range of anywhere from, I would say on the low side, maybe a million, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, to 100 million plus, right? What are the identity shifts that you see a lot of the entrepreneurs need to make at those different stages of scaling?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, really good question. And as any good lawyer will tell you, it depends. Um, and so what's very interesting is sometimes the entrepreneurs are on the higher end of the scale, right? Let's say they're running a billion dollar plus business, they are sometimes less evolved, if that's the right word, than entrepreneurs who are scaling up to get to the million for the first time. Sometimes the entrepreneur who's in the early stages of their business, building it, has more self-awareness, they're more open to coaching, they're more reflective on where they want to go, and they end up being better leaders in the long run. The person who gets to the high numbers from a revenue perspective, for example, sometimes has a lot of luck on their side. They time the market correctly, or they get there through the pure drive, you know, the uh the Steve Jobs way of doing things. Um, but it doesn't always serve the individual. So it's there's not really a correlation between the individual's progression through the evolution to be a better leader and the size of their business. It really depends on the individual. There's no, there's no like, okay, coming to a million, you like this, from a million to ten, you like this. Uh it's constant growth that needs to happen. Obviously, on the business side, it's well known what you need to get to the first seven figures, right? And then from then to ten is the next inflection point that typically happens as you start to put the necessary systems in. I think companies oversystematize and this causes problems. I like to have organizations which are very nimble, nimble, agile, adaptable. And uh so my way of approaching this when I when I coach clients is to help them avoid the trap of becoming rigid. You're not a big corporate, so don't try and put in big corporate rigidity to do things. So I have my tools, my methodologies that I like to introduce and and coach clients on using. And then from 10 to 100, you go through this mid-cap uh business development. And there's a different set of uh skills that are need, a lot more, a lot more delegation, uh strategic planning and communication. It's different in a smaller company when you're more hands-on. So as leaders, entrepreneurs go through these different phases. So the coaching needs to adapt to allow them to transition through each of these phases. I'm sure you've seen entrepreneurs where they get stuck at a certain level, and you think, well, why haven't they progressed beyond that? And I like to say my job as a coach is to read the label on the outside of the jar when the entrepreneur is stuck inside. Right. So I don't try and be an expert in his field. I'm never going to be as good as he is, but that's my advantage. My advantage is I can be objective and say, here's what I'm seeing. It's out of left field, and you're not seeing it. So let's have a discussion on how you want to handle that.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

What would you say is like the biggest shift that you find uh when working with your clients or different entrepreneurs? Would you say it's more of the strategy or more of the identity? Like what is what is it typically that you find that's holding most entrepreneurs say they have a goal to get to here, but they're over here, right? So what do you find that's that gap?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yeah, so so here's the bad news. People don't like to hear the bad news is the dysfunction of the leader is the dysfunction of the organization. And so the more the leader is able to evolve and grow, the faster the organization grows, always and every time. And so if the leader is open, you find that the leader's open to approaching strategy from a different context. Whereas the leader's not open to that, he'll continue to follow strategies that are somewhat successful, but not nearly to the potential of the organization. So the individual development always precedes the organizational development, always, every time. I I have three rules that I that I share with my clients. My first rule is success is all in the setup. So if everything upstream works, everything downstream is good. But if you pollute the river upstream, everything downstream is polluted. So as part of this rule, if the entrepreneur shows up with frustration or anger, the team picks this up and they then respond accordingly. So a leader who arrives impatient and angry doesn't get the best out of his team. They might think, he might think they is or she might think they're getting the best out of the team, but they're not. And unless they're open to seeing this, they won't do it. So that's rule number one. Rule number two, success is all about relationships. And so people who understand that business is built, true business is built on relationships, not on some functional buying and selling or some transaction, always do better. And rule number three is success is all around a shift of context. So if you're able to see things from a fresh perspective, then you have success. And when all three talk together, you have tremendous success. So now you ask the question again, what is what is the one thing that makes an extraordinary leader? Well, it's the leader that's open to a shift of context, who gets their setup right, and understands that it's relationships that build everything. If any of these three are missing, then the business is going to be thwarted and the individual is going to be thwarted. So if you see, if you if you can understand applying a higher order set of rules, you don't become stuck in rigid, oh well, somebody said at one million you must do all the sales yourself or or something like that. No, these three rules will guide you as to what's best for your circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah, I think I've heard a quote, something, something along the lines of that you are your business, basically. Your your business, said differently, is an extension of you. Right. And that's kind of what I'm understanding that you're saying is that it's all based on the leadership. Uh, you use the word leader a lot. Uh the leader, leadership, dysfunction of the leader in the success of the company. Yeah. So is it true that you believe that the the individual themselves and their capacity to lead and their leadership development and skills is the number one determining factor and how successful they'll be?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Well, let's take it a step further than that. Let's look at it from the perspective of if business is a vehicle for personal growth, which is a good way to see it, right? It's just a game in the end of the day. We add zeros to our balance sheet. That's all we do at the end, right? The real benefit is not the balance sheet, but the personal growth we undergo along the journey. So the extent to which you can see business as a game and the personal journey and the personal growth as the real work that needs to be done, the more you can step away from the precursor that it has to be. The individual is the driver of everything else. But yes, I uh in businesses, the entrepreneur the leader, the entrepreneur has a disproportionate impact, not just on the business, but the lives of everyone in that business. And um, you can lord the business, and then so what if you're if you're just another doofus, if you're just another douchebag. Yeah, well done. Like nobody cares, nobody wants to be around you. So I think the personal development part of it is integral to being a really good entrepreneur. I think why not use it as an opportunity? You've taken the risk, you've stepped outside of the nine to five, you are in the accountable class. You know, people who are bureaucrats are unaccountable. They don't pay a price if they're wrong, but as entrepreneurs, we pay a price when we're wrong. So why not take the fact that you've stepped out of the safety net and you're living your life to the full? Why not live your life to the full as a human being as well, not just as a business leader? So I think uh the two can work very well together. I mean, business is life for most entrepreneurs. Yeah. It's not like we just switch off and say, oh, well, at two o'clock, I that part of my life ends, right? If you're like me, when I was an entrepreneur, I'm thinking all the time, how can I improve the business? What do I need to work on? Let me get back to this client over here. Uh there's a continual desire to grow and improve the business. And so I think the for entrepreneurs, they merge together for the most part. And this is where you get into burnout and uh too enmeshed in what you want. And so being able to individuate outside of the business and avoid the traps that others fall into. I think it's integral. I think it's one of the benefits coaching provides you with. It provides you with the guidance, the guidelines, the accountability to achieve, but also the somebody to have your back as you're going through this journey where somebody can say, hey, listen, what do you think about taking a holiday? And that's the code for saying, I see you've worked, you know, a week of 14-hour days. Have you thought of uh dialing it down a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Sure. Yeah. So what would you, what advice would you give to someone who is wanting to improve their business and they know that that really the number one thing they should focus on is that personal development uh themselves, the leadership. Of course, in addition to coaching, like uh you've already suggested, but what would you say is like some things that someone in that position that wants to grow can do personally so that they can have, you know, reach the goals or success or whatever it is that they want to achieve.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah. You've already said coaching, and yet I think it's underrated. I'm gonna say it again. Uh, not just coaching, but having the right coach on your team, right? My life changed when I had a coach come live with me. I had an Olympic medalist that I invited to come and live with me and coach me 24-7. And it changed my life. Every morning I'm at the gym. He won an Olympic medal as a wrestler. So you know, every morning, 5:30 a.m., I'm at the gym doing burpees. Wrestlers love burpees for some reason till I throw up. Um, but it really, it really set my life in a different direction when I had the mentoring and input. So it might not be coaching, it might be mentoring, it might be guidance, I think is the single most important factor. The second most important factor I'd say is the ability to control your mind. Most people cannot sit for five minutes silently and focus on one thing. Really, in this world, we've trained people to be functionally good, but we don't manage ourselves very well. So I would say the second most important attribute or most important skill is not so much a business skill, not a functional skill. It's not like learning to sell or something. It's gaining control over your thoughts and mind. When you do that, you will upgrade your internal processor, you'll become smarter by doing this, and uh, you'll become happier, more internally well adjusted. And in turn, life starts to flow easier. And so you can live your life in a state of perpetual stress, anxiety, worry. We can go through life the same, we're full of joy, happiness, love, and people respond accordingly to do it. So I think the second most important thing after you've got somebody who can provide you with the guidance and mentoring and coaching along the path, which I think is critical. We don't get enough of that in our world today, is to spend the time conditioning your mind, learn to do it. It's a tough skill. It's something which you have to work on as intensely as you work on at the gym. And the benefits of that become when you're able to think more clearly, make better decisions. One of the key things that I give public talks on is decision making, how poorly people normally do it. Most people make decisions without a framework, without uh conscious understanding of the biases they bring into their decisions. And so I see the thing that hurts entrepreneurs the most over the long run is consecutive bad decisions they make. I tell the story of Ronald Wayne, the guy who sold his Apple shares. He owned 10% of Apple and he sold his shares for 800 bucks, and he got a he got a payment of 1,500 bucks to never sue them, right? Is his waiver of liabilities. And I think if he hadn't done that and just held on to his stock, he'd be worth $100 billion or more today. One of the richest men on the planet. And so this is a good example of how decisions impact everything entrepreneurs do. And as entrepreneurs, we spend so little time improving our ability to make good decisions. We have this hubris to think, oh, I'm smart, I've hardworked, I've built a business, I naturally make good decisions. I would say that once you've learned to control your mind, you're able to make much better decisions. And over time, good decisions, compounded, separate the great entrepreneurs from those who do okay, from those who fail. Because we all have the same deck of cards, we all have the same 24 hours a day. And the people who are able to think and make better decisions, compounded continually, always, always, always do better than those who don't. Whether it's deciding who to marry, people make good decisions or bad decisions. That single decision determines your fate as an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Big decision.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Right. Who to take on as a partner, as a co-founder can make or break a good business venture, who to get financing from, if they're aligned investors or they're strategic investors, or they're just quick money flip guys. So every one of these are crucial decisions that entrepreneurs have to make well. And if you're not well versed in controlling your thoughts and how you approach these things, you very often approach it with fear, anxiety, lack of rationality, lack of full understanding. You don't get rule number one, the setup in place. So in order, I would say coaching would be a number one, get yourself a good mentor, a good coach. Rule number two would be learn to master your mind. It's hard work to do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Before we get to number three, how do you control and master your mind? No. How do you become well-versed in that?

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Yeah. So we've known this for about 5,000 years. And the process is to train your mind to be able to focus on one single thing. Um, I use the breath for the very specific reason that it's very neutral. And you have to do away with all the distractions, all of the screens and the music and the sounds and the noise, and train your mind to be able to concentrate on one pretty boring thing. And when you can do that for an hour, when you can keep your mind focused on a single object for an hour, you can then deploy this very well-conditioned mind to consider a problem, consider a challenge you're having, consider a decision you have to make. You want to fire somebody. Do you fire them now? Do you wait? You know, what happens if you fire them too soon or too late? Have you ever fired someone too soon? All of these critical decisions entrepreneurs have to face are best made when the mind is controlled and you control your thoughts. As we said when we start, if you just ask somebody to sit for five minutes and concentrate on one thing, they cannot do it. And so they lose the power to see reality for how it truly is. A man I respect uh deeply, Ray Darlio, uh taught me in his manifesto that he wrote to find the underlying truth. And obviously he runs Bridgewater Capital, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. So to find the underlying truth before he places billions of dollars on an investment bet makes sense. I think the same thing applies to us as entrepreneurs. So if we're going to find the underlying truth, but our mind is all over the place, we're never still long enough to discern what is really going on here. So we make suboptimal decisions and we go through life without being truly present. We spend all of our time in the future thinking what could be, when I get there, when the strategy applies, or in the past with all the regrets, oh, I wish I'd done that and should have thought of this. And so I see these entrepreneurs at the latter stages of their career where they've got some financial success. They've done okay on the winning the money game, but they're stuck with these identities which are limiting and they're not happy. They're still frustrated, angry, short-tempered, lacking joy in their life. And I think, what a waste. You've gone through life and you've arrived at this point and you haven't truly lived. So for me, the three tying together. Good ability to control your mind will help you in all aspects, whether it's planning your strategy, working with your team, handling complexity that comes with being an entrepreneur. So if there was one single skill that I would encourage every entrepreneur to work on, develop, it would be learning to control your mind, condition your mind. People call it meditation. For me, it's more mental conditioning to do it. And then obviously the benefits of meditation flow, the ability to buffer stress, you'll, you know, you'll handle stress better, you'll be more effective. There's no downside to doing it. And then thirdly, deploying that in meditation. Making good decisions. And so if you have all three together, you've got the right guidance. Somebody can look around the corner for you, see the blind spots, have your back, help you anticipate what's coming next. You spend the time conditioning your mind as to become a superior human being, a superior entrepreneur. And then deploy your well-conditioned mind in making really good decisions. I think you're unstoppable. I think there's nothing in the entrepreneurial world you cannot accomplish.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

What are your thoughts on visualization? Goal setting, visualizing, meditating. Because when you describe meditating, you're talking about conditioning your mind, focusing on just your breath. But what about uh the people that believe in manifesting, that uh, you know, feeling it before it happens, type of thing, so that they can prepare their, you know, body and mind before the experience.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah. Um, so I think it has its place, and I think its place has been blown up beyond what it should be. So if you're a top athlete and you're visualizing your your your putt or your your swim stroke and you're getting the benefits of the neuromuscular conditioning, okay, great, do that as part of the activity. I'm not a great proponent of goals. And people say, oh, but aren't goals everything? I've been taught by Brian Tracy through to everyone you ought to write smart goals. Who came up with smart? I don't know. But someone did. And if you ask somebody about goals, they'll come back with smart goals. And yet I've never seen somebody who suddenly said, Oh, goals changed my life. Oh, I went from being, you know, like this, and now I had a goal and then life changed, right? Um what I see instead is people who are feeling less than because they're always behind the goal. Hey, you didn't hit that goal. You didn't lose. You lost eight pounds, you didn't lose ten pounds, you're a loser. And so this preoccupation with goals, I think, is misguided. And I encourage my entrepreneurs not to have goals. I like them to have two things. I like them to have ranges, and I like them to focus on the delta. So by the delta, I mean the incremental changes that occur towards a range. Why is this more powerful than choosing a goal? Well, you're hitting a goal, and let's say your goal is to lose 10 pounds this month. Every day you're checking, oh yeah, I'm down a pound this week, and oh, I've got to step up about a pound two weeks, and then you get to 9.5 pounds, and you're a loser. You didn't hit your 10 pounds, and you didn't have the feedback mechanism, which allows you to learn from what the process is telling you. Whereas if you had a range, you say, look, I'll be somewhere between eight to six pounds. Now there's a direction, I'll be somewhere between eight to twelve pounds down at the end of the month, and you can course correct along the way because you care about the delta, you care about the incremental change in your weight. You can now say, Oh, what am I doing wrong that's going to hit the goal? For example, if you want to lose 10 pounds in a month, you can just stop eating for a week. You will you will hit your goal. And so we start to make suboptimal decisions, as we come back to decisions, suboptimal decisions driven by the wrong incentive. So goals start to drive the wrong incentive throughout organizations. I see this very often when entrepreneurs want to put performance schemes in place and they use goals instead of ranges for this. And then you start having people cutting corners to hit the goals, to make the bonuses, and you end up with economic value add problems where people look for the revenue without the complementing investment to continue the growth of the organization. So for me, uh goals are for losers, and what I prefer is to love the delta. Delta drives decisions. If you're tracking the delta in your financials, for example, you're loving the variances. You've got your forecast where you think you're going to be, and you're looking at the variant the with the actuals and the difference between the two, the variances. The variances will tell you more than all the goal planning in the world. All the forecasting for the next 36 months is worthless. But that delta will tell you exactly what needs to change the very next week or month to let your business grow at its optimal rate. So goals can also be self-limiting and they destroy people's self-esteem. If you've got people who continually miss their goals, you will break down their esteem. And so the delta increases people's esteem. In other words, every time you lose a pound and you celebrate that, you're going to feel amazing at the end. It might take you two months to lose the 10 pounds. Who cares? It really doesn't matter. The fact is you've done the right actions to lose the 10 pounds and you've celebrated every step of the way and you feel amazing. So what happens the next time you want to take on a challenge, the next time you want to change direction? You don't have imposter syndrome appear anymore, you don't have self-doubt creep in. Imagine, imagine there was entrepreneurs with no self-doubt, no imposter syndrome, who had solid esteem all the time. I would take that all day, every day. Then this goal setting where we strive for a goal and eight out of nine, eight out of ten times we miss it. And my ultimate question for people who are into goals is so tell me about your New Year's resolutions two years ago. How about this year? Right. Right. And those are nothing more than goals. And so to me, goals are one of these fictions that we've been sold that I think distract us from really doing the work of understanding the delta, where does the incremental change have to happen? And incremental change is compounded. And so if you have an organization that, for example, let's say I've got three, three, it's three sales channels, and you start to figure out which is the right sales channel, you boost down, you double down on that, you do advertising in that channel, and you look for new opportunities, that company will be way better off in terms of understanding these incremental changes than the company that just sets some arbitrary goal. You know, if you're in a public company, you've got to have guidance, that's different. But for most companies who are private, you can choose how you determine the range you want to end up in and take the actions that will lead you to the top end of the range. So instead of having a goal of reaching, let's say, a million dollars a year in revenue, what if you said I'll be somewhere between 700 and 1.2 million, if that's the range? Now you can start to do the activities to be in the upper end of the range, right? And the lower end of the range is where you start having trouble, right? Under 700,000, you're going to lose money. And so how do you move up in the range rather than, well, I hit my million goal, I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yeah, that's a very interesting perspective because you're right. So many people, you know, that I've listened to, like Brian Tracy, you mentioned, Jim Rohn is a big component of that. I'm sure Tony Robbins, like all of these people are, you know, set the goals, Earl Nightingale, you know, you become what you think about type of thing, which I believe has its place and its its value. But uh I like what you're sharing on the on the range because you're right. So often people can set a goal and then not achieve the goal, even though they made progress, but they ignore the progress and just say, I didn't get the goal, so now I'm a failure. Now I'm stupid or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

So and the goal becomes the focus, not the process to improve. Right. So the process to improve is is superior, in my opinion, to goal setting. So if if uh Brian Tracy had said, hey, figure out the process to get better, and you'll blow through any goals you might have had, you'll exceed the goals you expected, uh, and you'll feel good every step of the way that you get better. If if there's a business that grows uh uh that you know adds 50% of its revenue each year, not as a goal, but because they're improving, that compounds and you know, within 10 years you're wealthy.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

So you shared that uh you got stabbed, shot, bombed, and broken your neck. Yeah. So we don't have a time for all of these different stories that I would love for you to share, but I would love to hear uh one of those uh stories. You pick one of the four, but I'd love to hear what actually happened in uh either you breaking your neck or being shot or stabbed or bombed. Um, just for those listening, because you have so much different life experience. I know we talked a little bit about business, but I'd love to just wrap it up with something uh like life experience-wise.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yeah. So this is my excuse for why my business card used to say recovering arsehole, and my wife would say some days less recovering is probably a bit of PTSD. So I was a police detective in the most violent country in the world, South Africa.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

And um my job was to interview suspects because we knew there was an amnesty coming and we didn't want to waste resources. What is amnesty? Amnesty is when you get given a free pass. So there was gonna be a new government. And if you were a card-carrying member of a political party, say the ANC, it doesn't matter that you murdered people, you gang raped women, or you had armed robbery, you were robbing banks, you were gonna get off scot-free. Really? Yeah, that was the deal. That was the political settlement. It's politics, it's dirty as hell. And so my job, because of my experience in the military, I'd been uh fast-tracked into a detective role in the army. I uh sorry, in the police, I was able to bypass being a uniformed officer and go straight into being a detective. And uh, I was able to use my experience in the military to understand the modus operandi of whether these criminals belonged to certain political parties. And typically we would uh try and catch our suspects two, three o'clock in the morning. We'd see where their girlfriends were, we'd go and catch them unawares. And we got a call, me and my partner at the time, that a particular suspect we were after was in an area called uh Alexandra's uh slum that's outside of Johannesburg. It's about a million people living in two square kilometers, so it's a pretty intense place. Anyway, it was during the day, it wasn't like what we would normally do. And um, so as we get to the place, somebody's notified him and he's running. And so I run after him and I grab him and I've pinned him down on the floor. And I didn't see his friend come behind. My partner had gone behind the building, and uh this friend came behind and stabbed me many times with a sharpened motorbike spoke. You sharpen the end and you put a piece of wood on the other, and you have an effective little weapon to stab people. So uh I ended up lying. This guy escaped, and my partner eventually came round, but by then my lungs had collapsed and I was they were filling up with blood, and I was I literally had a couple of minutes left as I was choking in my own blood and living in you know in this sewage-filled street, and I'm thinking, well, this is how my life ends. It's a sunny day, and I'm going into shock, so I'm alternatively laughing and crying. And you know, when you're in shock, your body loses control over uh the emotional response that you have. And by pure fluke, my partner went to the main road. He walked over to the main road and a paramedic van was coming and he was able to stop it. And the guy in the paramedic van, his name was Johan, was an ex-was a boyfriend of one of my ex-girlfriends, turns out enough. So anyway, he arrived, and you know, I'm I'm feeling very not good. My heart had actually been scraped by this thing that had plunged into me. So I had a lot of pain because my my heart muscle had been uh stabbed by this thing as well. And he gave me what was called a hemonothorax, where they puncture your lung from the side, from the outside. They open up your ribs and they stick two fingers in, they cut you in, and they stick a tube in there and then they sew it closed around so they can allow your lung to drain and re-inflate. And so uh shortly after this, my girlfriend said to me, The girlfriend at the time said, I think you should try a different uh different career. I'm not so sure I'm happy with visiting you in the hospital where uh where you almost didn't make it. So yeah, it was one of those periods. I of course I needed to learn this lesson often, one of those periods where you're watching death arrive, it's a little bit slower than you would have hoped, and uh you you see what death is like. It's there, it's it's coming for you. And then you let off the hook and like, oh, I have another day to live. So I have a very uh optimistic view that I have another day to live.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Wow. When was when did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Oh, I must have been I was uh 21 at the time.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

You're 21. Yeah wow, and that was the first like death close to death experience.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

In the army, I was I was uh bombed, and that was the first one.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

And that was before you're 21.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Yeah, yeah. I was uh I failed high school, right? So I couldn't escape uh conscription. We had were fighting a war in Angola at the time. It was South Africa and the US versus Cuba, Moscow, East Germany, and the local Fopla faction. Um so this is a fairly large scale where hundreds of thousands of men were committed to the to this battle. It was uh you know the domino theory of the communists take over. Um, and so I was a conscript, I was just a peon, got uh recruited into the military as a as a conscript, as a slave. Uh, you know, didn't finish high school, off you go. So, you know, 16, 17, there I am learning how to be a soldier. Anyway, I was uh uh it the in my fourth year that I got shot. We had a bad encounter, and there was another another story for another time. Yeah. So first time was uh about three years in, then four years in, and then uh uh left the military, then went cycling, thought I'll be a professional cyclist in Europe, uh, was on track to do everything I needed to do, broke my neck in an accident, broke my pelvis as well. Then came back to South Africa, uh, became a detective, and then uh and then that happened. And then I think for men, as we hit our mid-20s, we stopped being so daft, you know. Uh in the army, I we jumped out of aeroplanes, we had all this crazy stuff, and now I'm scared of heights. Now don't even put me on a two-foot ladder, you know. And uh I think something happens as we transition from being young bucks in our early 20s to to more mature. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

Would you say that those experiences had um obviously had an impact on you? Right. Um, but getting like I've heard stories of people who've almost died, they've had like this moment of realization and they shifted, you know, their whole perspective about reality or life. Would you say that you experienced something like that after you had one of those instances happen to you? And if so, like what was it that happened?

SPEAKER_00 35:51

So I I wish I was smart like other people. I'm I'm slow to learn. I need to bash my head and make the same clearly I have to bash my head and make the mistake over and over and over again. So, so no, uh in fact, um it just uh I doubled down on my determination, right? To to continue on this path. What really changed for me, one of the reasons why I changed what I do as a career now, is um I I thought I would explore uh meditation more seriously. Um, because I'd I'd read a tome, a selection of books called the Pali Canon, which is really the description of the early Buddhist philosophy, how they transferred how they transitioned from this idea that you had to have an eternal uh life or nothing when you die, right? Is there a heaven? They call those the eternalists or the Nihilists. And they wanted to find a different philosophical path. And the philosophical path they found was what they called the middle way, and it was neither the ultimate where you live forever, nor was it there was the nothingness. So they found this different philosophical path. And I wasn't so much much interested in the philosophy, but more the experience of meditation. What would it happen if you really got into meditation seriously? So the same way I would go into business, it would be by all in focus. After a while, I uh with some coaching, I had some really good guidance and coaching, I uh approached what are what are known as the jhanas or the absorptive states in meditation. And these absorptive states are available to anyone. We've known about them for 5,000 years. In those states, one starts to see beyond reality as we see it now. We see the true nature of reality. And after experiencing what I understand to be the true nature of reality, where you see timelessness, you see ego as being a collapsing wave function, you watch it being formed and dissipate. Once you've experienced that firsthand with your own knowledge, you can't really go backwards. You can't go back and go back to the striving world where everyone's on this hamster wheel, this hedonistic treadmill, looking to add another zero on their balance sheet. You realize there are more profound things in the world that are worthwhile exploring and getting to know. And so I would love to take entrepreneurs into this space so they can see the impermanence of everything, the unsatisfactoriness of another zero on the balance sheet, and let their egos dissolve and see who emerges after that. The most extraordinary human being emerges after this experience. So for me, the big awakening moment didn't happen in the fierce throes of battle or fighting cancer or climbing Everest. It happened in the quiet solitude of contemplation where the realization of what really is occurs, occurs to everybody in the same way. Um, and that changed my life forever. My children say they used to be the mean, angry papa, but now I've become the kind, loving papa. And I would have said to you if you'd asked me 10 years ago, yeah, drive, strive, push harder. That would have that was my nature. Now, having uh having seen a different reality, I I believe uh I believe compassion, love, kindness are virtues to live one's life with. And I think striving will only take you so far in the functional realm. Getting deep in a in a quick call, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Amazing. Well, Peter, it's an honor. I'm super excited this weekend for you to be with us to share your experience. You'll also be guiding some uh meditations in the morning that I'm also excited about. I think you do your own events or you have your own circle, you do some things. So maybe you have something, something coming up. And for those who want to reach out, obviously, if you're a member of the group, if anyone's listening to this and and and wants to connect with you, happy to uh introduce. You work with a couple members in the group right now, including myself. And I just have to say personal experience from the I think it's been three months, more or less, has been absolutely transformational. So I have to just thank you for you know all the insight, um, knowledge that you've shared with me. Um and I highly encourage anyone who's looking for a coach to at least connect with you and explore if it if it resonates to to work with you more. But where can other people hear about the things that you got going on and connect with you as well?

SPEAKER_00 40:11

Well, firstly, thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. And I'll put it right back to you. You're the one doing the hard work. So the reason you're having the results is you're putting in the effort and you're open. So well done to you. So people can always reach me at peter at peterholgate.com. That's H O L G A T E, like the toothpaste with an H in front. Email's the best way. I am on currently I'm on LinkedIn as my only platform. So connect with me on LinkedIn. I always set aside time to have conversations with entrepreneurs. So if you'd like just to have a conversation and discuss a challenge you're facing, I'm always down for that. So reach out and no expectation. It's a way we can determine if there's a fit for us to connect beyond. Um, I do have my own group that I run in the background called the Enlightened Capitalist, as the name says by itself. It's really not for everybody. Um, and so there might be a fit for that for people. Of course, we have retreats and we do that over there. My my real focus that I that I'm looking for is I always want to find entrepreneurs who are open to growing, who are determined, who want to see things differently, and start a relationship. It may not be a work relationship, I may simply uh help them with different things. And so if they want to reach out, Peter at Peter Holgate, send me an email, find me on LinkedIn, or go to my website, which is peterholgate.com. Um, you'll be able to find out what I'm up to. And I would love the opportunity to connect with any of the people in your group. What I've experienced in your group is is such high-caliber entrepreneurs. Uh, you know, I'll put it back to you. If people are looking for a you know a house, a home, and they want to be with top quality people just like them, then I would say you're the place to go to uh connect and build those relationships. Your community really is very strong and uh I think it's got huge potential.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

Thank you so much. All right, Peter. Gates around this has been an honor.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Yeah, my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Good.