In this episode Alana Stott discusses her journey from Scotland to California, overcoming adversity, including her husband’s military injury and their subsequent transition to civilian life. She addresses the reintegration challenges veterans face, the significance of resilience and purpose, and her diverse ventures from human trafficking advocacy to non-profit consultancy. The conversation also delves into balancing a demanding security business with family life, emphasizing clear communication, mutual understanding with her partner Dean, and involving their children to maintain family values.
Episode Highlights:
04:15 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
05:05 The Stigma of Success in the Military Community
10:42 Redefining Masculinity and Success
15:26 Finding Purpose Beyond Wealth
32:17 The Unsung Heroes Behind Success
34:02 The Art of Asking for Money
38:56 The Impact of Instant Gratification
50:00 Raising Resilient Children
Meet Alana Stott, a dynamic entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist dedicated to empowering women and children. As the founder of Wolfraven Omnimedia, Alana creates and champions inspirational stories, including her own, while advocating for causes that make the world better. 2023 marks a milestone year with major film, television, and book releases, including her business and philanthropy guide “How to Ask for Money,” her memoir “She Who Dares,” and a series of children’s books. Alana is also producing innovative TV series and films that celebrate human resilience and female empowerment.
Episode Transcript:
00:45
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Alana Stott, MBE is an author, producer, publisher, philanthropist, entrepreneur. She lives her life to solve problems and make the world a better place. From humble beginnings in the north of Scotland to her life today in California.
01:14
She has faced adversity head on every day, proving that with belief and hard work, anything is possible. I should have just hit record from the beginning because we already had some great stuff. Alana, thank you for being here and for taking the time. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it. Yeah. You have a lot going on and we were talking about your marriage, talking about your work that you’re doing now and the importance of, how do I say it? Nobody hates a successful veteran more than a veteran.
01:43
It feels like. Yeah, for sure. You guys know how to hate yourselves. We really do. And it’s peculiar that that’s the situation. Can you tell us kind of what you’ve seen sort of that some of this? And as a matter of fact, you kind of had to experience it in some capacities. Yeah, when I started my relationship with my husband, I was a bank manager. I was like 100% single, never dated. I worked, I bought houses. I…
02:12
done everything was career related, career or non-profit side. It was just, I was a very busy, busy person and then I happened to meet him and then he kind of introduced me to the world of military. My father was military but in Aberdeen it’s not really, there’s not really a military base or a community there and we have like the reservist type of action there but there’s not a base so he really introduced me to the world.
02:38
of Milich and then we moved down to Poole, which is the way the special forces are based. I was really immersed in the community, the wives club, how the guys work, and just seeing things completely different. But it wasn’t until he was injured that I could see exactly how the kind of institution worked. I’ve always been the kind of person that fights a narrative. So I always wanted to join the police when I was younger, but I made it to the first interview where I started having…
03:06
an argument with the recruiter and not so much an argument, just a debate, you know, like how they tell you that it has to be one way and then I would say well maybe there’s another option. You know, I studied psychology for a while but I used to disagree with Freud or I would have different like ideas of how it might have worked or how it might be different. I read the Bible and I think well maybe there was another way, maybe that’s been misinterpreted, you know, I read the Quran and done the same thing so I’m always questioning, like always always questioning
03:36
So when Deem was coming out of the military, like he’d been injured, he didn’t know what his path was gonna be. He still had a huge loyalty to the military. But I was seeing that they weren’t being very loyal to him. It was kind of like a one-way street. And then also the wars they were fighting, it was very much a one-sided idea of why they were doing it and why things were happening. I’m a follow the money kind of person. So when I’m looking at why something’s going on, I’m thinking it’s not for that reason. You’re not doing it because you want to.
04:06
protect the women and girls of Afghanistan. There’s another reason here. And then so I would go into a rabbit hole, I’m diving down rabbit holes constantly. So it took quite a while for Dean to really transition his mind out of the military. And when I say a while, probably five to 10 years before we could really get his mind away from how that was working. And then I would see different things like Dean would be offered who dares wins, SAS who dares wins.
04:34
And the producers approached Dean for that show. They flew up to Aberdeen. We sat down. It was pretty terrible what they presented. So we presented a different idea of how it would be. And then they ended up having that show commissioned. And then when Dean asked the MOD if he could do it, they said, no. At this point he was injured. He wasn’t working. Like it would have been great for us. But because they said no, Dean was like, okay, I’m not doing it. And I said, but they don’t own you. You can do whatever you want to do. They can’t tell. But because he was so conditioned, he was saying,
05:02
I can’t do it, that’s it, I’ll turn it down. There was a few other guys who had already been either discharged, just suddenly discharged or other things might gone on. So they decided to take up the role and had a very successful career in it. But what I did notice was when anybody was doing anything within TV, book, film, anything like that, the other military community would almost turn on them. Someone was doing a successful podcast or they were doing…
05:29
they’d written a book that had won best seller rather than support and they were turning. And I could see that it wasn’t because of what they believed, it was what they were conditioned to believe that you’ve got to train to be the soldier, to fight to protect your country. And then when you leave, just go quiet, go into the silence, go into obscurity so that we want all that skills to work for when you’re working for us, but don’t take them outside and work in the outside world.
05:58
you know, then a lot of people are turning to drugs and alcohol because they’re so confused in their mind about what to do or unfortunately, as you can see that the suicide statistics are speaking for themselves and that and I think it is that conditioning of you can only do it for us and then once you leave, if you dare step outside, then you’re letting down your brothers, you’re letting down your country, you’re letting down. So the confusion in their mind is really strong.
06:24
and it can take a long time. And then if they’ve not got the right people around them or they’re hearing things, I know many guys who have started businesses or started putting their head above and then they’re getting targeted at by their brothers. And it blows my mind. I’m like, guys, you guys need to stick together. And it’s a sad state of affairs. And I think, as you say, like we have this loyalty, we have this nationality to our country, which I think is important for us. But at the same time, we had to be very honest.
06:54
and at least see the writing on the wall. What you’re talking about in the culture, I see that here in the United States, if I’ve seen a successful veteran, you know, I spoke to many of them, I do business with many of them and I get to know them. And that’s very much it where in many people’s minds, the veteran is supposed to peak his life purpose in service. And whether that service is four years or 25, that’s the best thing he’s ever going to accomplish. And then when he steps outside of that, and then like you say,
07:23
And again, we get these skillsets, we get this conditioning, we learn these lessons, we learn these leadership capacities, we understand motivations and different things, and we get that skill. And they, people think that it’s just this thing that you put on a shelf, but as you’re saying, once we get out and now you have life experience in addition, and now you have a marriage and now you have children, like all these lessons have more depth, more texture and more.
07:50
complexities that make them even more valuable. So taking that life lesson and taking that wisdom and then applying it to these skill sets we’ve been given, it’s even more valuable to a company or organization, whatever it is. But yet, there’s a lot of stigma attached to that from the veterans that you shouldn’t be doing this. And then you and I were mentioning how that sometimes whether people want to admit it or not, there’s a stigma with veterans saying, well, this person may be damaged or PTSD or whatever the case may be.
08:21
Yeah, and then they really go for the negative, you know, like you’ll see that when jealousy hits or whatever it might, the reason might be if somebody does something wrong, you know, I, I rive on my failures. I write about it in my books, like failures and mistakes and everything. Like if you’re not making mistakes and failing, then you’re not trying hard enough. If you’re sticking to your comfort zone, you probably won’t make any mistakes. But every single day I’m failing and it’s great and we should be celebrating it.
08:48
but these guys, they do something wrong or 12 years ago they said this or something and printing it out where the media’s running with it, fellow veterans are tearing them down. I’m thinking guys, I believe in karma and I believe that we should support each other and we should be building each other up, but you’re playing right into their hands by trying to tear down your fellow guys. So I would hopefully wanna see a shift in that where we can all realize that.
09:16
given these skillsets and if you’re not allowed to use them, you know, the average guy in the UK Special Forces is joining the military around about 17, 18, and they’ve got about a 22 year career at least. If I were coming out at 40, like that’s still another life to live, at least another life to live. And if you’re then being told, well, you can’t talk about what you’ve done, you can’t use those skills, you can’t, you know, you’ve become a leader and you’ve become a leader in some of the harshest, toughest environments and thrived in them.
09:45
and then what you go and do a nine to five desk job and kind of put yourself away into this little shell, into this little hole. Your mind’s gonna not thank you for that. No, and it’s another reason why it’s so important for us as this kind of warrior mentality. Learning the art of war is one thing, but we have to learn these additional skillsets, these soft skills, because what good is it for me to go on the battlefield and survive and then not be able to enjoy the very thing that I’m fighting so hard for, my country, my…
10:15
my wife, my kids, or whatever it is that I value. Nietzsche says that a warlike man wages war on himself in times of peace because our identity is wrapped around this idea of this is what I’ve done. But if we have to ask somebody else what our identity is, chances are the identity that they try to assign is not gonna be in our best interest. We have to be willing to find that on our own. And that’s very hard for veterans. Yeah. And I think there’s also, you know, there’s also a…
10:45
a movement right now of this is how men should be like there’s a certain way that a man should be and that this is the type of wife they should have and this you know if you want to be the perfect guy you have to be like this your wife should be like this your kids should be like this and I think that’s you know the one thing that Dean and I talk about a lot is that we’re not perfect like far far from it and how conventional society says we should be set up is completely the opposite you know we we’ve tried it the way where we tried to make
11:13
Dean the entrepreneur and Dean to go out and do these things. Dean is a warrior. If I say to Dean go build that hut over there, he’ll go build that hut. If I say go carry that 100 pound bag around the street for the next two days, he’ll go and do it. I give Dean lists and he goes and does it, but as regards to who’s going to be bringing the income into our house or building the empires, that’s on me. We have that relationship where we’re completely open about how that…
11:41
is going to be and each of us have our strengths and weaknesses and we work with that and we don’t look at how we’re being told that we should behave and I think if we’re pushing that and there’s so many kids that are being told now that they have to earn like seven figures and drive a Ferrari and do all that just to be a man and you know I’ve spent I spent the weekend actually with some guys who were really struggling with that mindset and we we actually just got them more in touch with their
12:09
they’re feminine and that’s not being like, we’re not talking about pride or something at this point, we’re talking about actually just being in touch with that really strong part of a man that is his his feminine side that is hugely lacking from, you know, maybe a lack of mother’s love or maybe a lack of understanding of how they’ve grown up and then all this like, you’ve got to be a man, you’ve got to be a man this certain way. There’s a lot of ways that strong men can still have this nurture inside them too.
12:38
So we’ve been working a lot on that lately too. Well, and that’s the prerequisite for anything else about like a higher development in my opinion. If I don’t have that capacity to tap into that other side, how can I show compassion in my life or to my daughter? How can I deploy pragmatic empathy towards somebody else if I can’t give it to myself or understand that it even exists? As warriors, our goal is like, we push, push, push, we drive, drive, drive, I get that. But eventually you will hit a point where you will break, you will face some sort of adversity.
13:08
that will crush you. And if you have no other skill sets after that, then you’re just this empty shell of a person. Again, that’s what we see happens. Veterans go through this adversity, these hardships, they serve their top tier operators. And then when they get out, if they don’t know who they are, and that’s sort of taken from them, then it is very empty. And now drugs or suicide or all these things become, and even in society now where we have this modern misery device, the cell phone and…
13:36
you know, 24 seven access to all these things. It’s very easy for us to bombard ourselves and satiate ourselves with artificial stimuli or artificial like metrics that mean nothing in the end. So being able to understand lots of times it’s not a goal that we’re trying to achieve. It’s the emotion that that goal would evoke for us, that purpose, that meaning, Oh, if I drive this Ferrari or if I have a seven figure, whatever it is, that makes me a man. It’s like, well, do you find peace?
14:06
Do you feel fulfillment? I think what the warrior, when you’re out there, when you’ve been sent to war, you didn’t go to war because you watched Call of Duty and you loved it. You’re going because somebody who are playing into a building and hurt your people, there’s a country that women and girls aren’t allowed to be educated. You’ve got a mission, a reason to stop the badness. Sometimes you have to use darkness to fight darkness, but it’s coming from a light place.
14:36
there’s still so many wars to fight, but in that same context of dark versus light and needing, we need the warriors to be able to fight those things. But I always say that my every single day I wake up and what am I going to do to help the world help other people? What can I make a difference in today? If that isn’t part of your world, if you’re not focusing on like the outward and what we’re doing, then
15:01
I think that’s where a lot of depression and stress and anxieties come from. If you’re focusing on getting that car or getting that extra zeros in your bank account or like, can I drink Cristal today rather than cheap wine? Like, it’s really inward and it’s really like no matter how much money you make, no matter how many cars are in that driveway, it’s never going to satisfy that desire because the desire is within you to help. Like it is within you to help people. And that doesn’t come from like…
15:30
OK, I’ve made a lot of money, I’m going to donate some money to a cause. For the warrior mindset, it is really getting in there and saying, what can I do to fight this badness today? And I think that if I find that Dean’s maybe having a bad day or his mental health is literally, OK, who needs help right now? Let’s go help someone. Somebody needs fixing. Let’s do it. And to me, that’s how mental health can be fixed very, very quickly. It is. And we find our purpose in serving others many times. And I think that
15:58
Like you said, when we’re going out and doing something positive, something proactive, it helps us take sort of that focus off of us and what we’re feeling because it’s easy to be mired in that. And again, we all have ups and downs, but when we allow that down period to turn into days, weeks, or months, now that eventually becomes sort of the existence of that person and that’s their identity, and they’ve kind of paid themselves into this corner and now they don’t even know how to get out of it because that’s kind of what they’ve identified with.
16:28
wore your identity to this sort of like pessimistic, almost victim mentality, which is the antithesis of who they were or the reason why they joined in the first place. Yeah. And I think, yeah, you’re right that the phone, their social media will give you so many options on, okay, how do I fix this? You know, you go to some, you know, Dean speaks at a lot of events and these kind of how to be a better man event type of thing. And the rooms are always full. You know, people are paying money to come and sit in a room to be told.
16:55
how to be better. And I think there was one that I watched with Dean and this group of guys went to this event, it was a Saturday. How do I be a better husband? How to be a better father? And I felt like just standing up and saying, go home, it’s Saturday, go home and be with your wife and kids. That’s how you’d be a better man, be a better father. But it’s sometimes just really, really simple like that, but they’re just looking for the answers. And there’s a lot of people making a lot of money for these guys looking for the answers.
17:22
those influencers that are out there right now and they’re driving their Ferraris and they’re doing these things. I’m like, where did they get the money from? Look at where they got the money from. Is that how you… Because we could all make… I could go and make seven figures tomorrow. Like, no, but we could all do it. There’s plenty of ways to do it. If we take, you know, one of the larger influencers in the world right now, like he made his money from porn effectively. And if you could go and do that too if you wanted to. But in that time where…
17:49
traumatizing people, abusing people, hurting people. Some might say trafficking and other things that are going along with it. So there is plenty of ways you could become a drug dealer. Like there’s so many ways that you can make money if you want to, but that shouldn’t be the focus. The focus should be what is the purpose first, what problem are you solving? What are we gonna go into? And then the money just comes later if that’s important. Yeah, it takes care of itself. And I ask people questions, I’ll say,
18:19
you know, what do you want more of? What would having that do for you? And then will you know when you have enough? Because if your default answer is always more and more, more or push, push, push, eventually there’s a point of diminishing returns. Yeah, and I would say that the majority of the clients that come through our way, they require coaching or needs, they are in that C-suite level and they’re…
18:45
they’re just lost, you know, they keep making more money, they keep getting more stuff, like things get bigger. I’ve got one gentleman at the moment, he lives in a 10,000 square foot house by himself and he just keeps making more money and it keeps growing. Almost like for every $100,000 you make, it’s just a bit more pain coming into your life. Like there’s a bit more hurt, like we need to find purpose in your life and find some sort of legacy that isn’t just about how much money you’re gonna leave behind. I’ve met many multimillionaires that are miserable.
19:15
And like you said, if you can pull back and just give them a second to say, again, if you can’t have a conversation with your wife or your kids or strangers, then there’s not enough money in the world to fill that gap or the classic example, right? You have the C-suit executive that finally gets to X amount of dollars in the bank. And they’re like, why am I still fucking miserable? It’s like, well, because you haven’t done any work on this guy. And you’ve you’ve fixated on this metric, which is fine. But
19:42
Again, we don’t have to sacrifice everything else in our life to achieve this metric of money. As a matter of fact, if we do it properly, we can have these mutually inclusive things that are helping us get better. So I can be better physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I can pay attention to my wife, to my kids, to everything. And I don’t have to sacrifice these other things. As a matter of fact, when they’ve kind of hit that zenith of like where money no longer has that effect that they want to drive them.
20:10
These are the other things that have to come up. And then they vicariously allow this with the money to flow. And at that point, like you don’t care anyway. So what are they losing? Well, I think that’s it. You know, I worked with heroic hearts project, which is a veteran nonprofit focused on psychedelics. And most of the time when the people going through the retreats, they go back to childhood. And why that’s because like when we were the happiest, you know, none of us knew what money was. You know, we went outside, we got really dirty, we caused trouble, we got into adventures, we created.
20:39
fantasy lands and warriors and kingdoms and we were happy and I think even as adults now and I think when you do see the guys going through the retreats and they go to that place where they’re into that childhood state come out of it you know we’re sitting in Mexico or Peru or Costa Rica with like nothing like literally like no one cares but I don’t know if you’ve ever been through any of these retreats but after you know one or two days there like nobody cares what you look like what you’re wearing like it’s just
21:08
you at peace with nature. And it’s some of the happiest times for some of these people. And then they go back to reality and it’s like, it’s hated. That’s why the integration phase is so difficult because you’re going back to this reality that you’ve created and then you’re like, actually, it’s not that great. I want to be back there with nothing but Earth and Mother Nature. And I even think, you know, when I was traveling, my husband broke two world records when he cycled
21:37
Argentina to Alaska. And I drove down the support vehicles. And I remember driving through Guatemala and these kids just had nothing like nothing, nothing, nothing. But I’ve never heard laughter or happiness or fun like I’ve seen it there. I seen a bunch of kids just playing by the stream under the bridge and this sound was just incredible. You could just sit there and listen to their happiness and not an iPad between them, not just stick some fun. That was it.
22:07
Yeah, and it’s interesting because you can go to a country like that and it gives you tremendous gratitude for what you do have, but then it’s also a reality, a check of, man, I may have these material things, but I don’t have that sort of peace. I don’t have that sort of childlike wonder and ability to just laugh and enjoy whatever the hell is going on in this present moment. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I mean, I live in Orange County in California and we’re really blessed to be living here and
22:35
It was a long journey to get to the US for us. But so we’re very grateful to be here. But in Orange County is very much a materialistic place. I love my people that live around here. But I’m like, there’s so much more to life than all this stuff and all this money. And what’s crazy about it is I’m an hour from the border of Tijuana, like right here. Oh, wow. Yeah. And my nanny that comes in every day, she, you know, she’ll finish work today and she’ll head down to the border.
23:04
she’ll take like food, clothes, anything that she can to help the girls’ schools down there and the orphanages down there. And it’s quite like this contrast of just this line of them in here is quite crazy. Yeah. And then you and Dean have many projects that you’re working on together. You’ve got, tell us what you have in the works. We actually came to the US, so we left.
23:34
It actually took Covid, so Dean and I were sat the first week of Covid. That was pretty much the first time we’d stopped and we’d sat down. We met in 2009 and it had been non-stop since then. The greatest thing about Dean and I was that what we realised quickly was that we had that same mindset that we wanted to help people. So when we came together, it was like we never thought we would meet someone with that same, only the mindset to help, but the belief that nothing was impossible. So that was really cool to meet somebody else like that.
24:02
And then from 2009, we just didn’t stop. You know, Dean was injured. We had the baby. We set up our first company. We were working human trafficking straight out. We worked with veteran nonprofits from the beginning. Then we were doing we set up our security company in 2011, and that was really hectic. Worked in anti-piracy for a while. So I qualified as a ship security officer, then a company security officer, which meant I could run the ships.
24:31
the Gulf of Aden anti-piracy stuff was really strong at the time. So it meant that I could do a lot of the homework while Dean was away on the ground a lot of the time and with the kids and things. I qualified as a bodyguard while I was pregnant. So funnily enough, there wasn’t a demand for pregnant bodyguards. Really? Weird. But there was so much involved in running a security company. So logistically, I was really well placed to be able to do that and Dean liked being on the ground. So it worked.
25:00
But we just didn’t stop. We just, we had another child kept going and then COVID was like, no, no, you have to stop. And I think the first week we kind of went, what are we doing? Are we like in a happy place? Are we in the right situation? And we both said, when we first met, we both said we always wanted to live in America. That was always the dream. We just let 10 years pass without really thinking about it. So we checked it out as to how it would be possible. And
25:27
thought what we’ll just go. I had an ESTA, which is like a visa waiver program. Dean had a visa because he’d done the bike ride, so he had like a B1 visa, which allows you into the country. The only problem at that point was there was a, UK couldn’t come straight to the US because of the open border policy. So because of COVID, you couldn’t come in. So we had to then do two weeks in Mexico, but it also meant we couldn’t come in just to check it out. So we didn’t know where we were gonna go.
25:57
So I literally put like a pin in the map. I knew it was California and we just checked out schools, the districts and Orange County was coming up quite well. We said, look, we’ll just do that. I went on Zillow, I found a house and then we just moved here. So when we arrived, we didn’t have any work. We didn’t have, we had the eight bags between the four of us, like that was it. And we weren’t technically allowed to work because our visa didn’t allow for it.
26:26
So within a couple of months, Dean got approved for the EB1A visa, which is the extraordinary ability one, which is the highest tier you could get. But because of COVID, all the embassies were closed, so we couldn’t actually get the visa approved for us to be able to work. And then he got offered some work in Australia, and they said he couldn’t leave to do it. So we had to stay in the country, but we weren’t allowed to work.
26:52
And then the other problem was me and the kids were still on estus. So we had to leave the country. So Dean couldn’t leave. We had to leave every 90 days and we had to maintain our business in our home and everything in Scotland to make sure that we weren’t like a threat of just staying here illegally. So we had to keep doing that. Unfortunately, because that is the rule, like you’re allowed to do 90 days in and out, but they don’t like you doing it. And I started to be holding a secondary and then.
27:21
I think on my third or fourth trip, they actually took me into detention center and it was held overnight in this wonderful detention center in LAX. Yeah, they take your underwear, they take your shoelaces, they do everything. It was kind of intense. So it was a real battle to get to the point where we eventually got our visas approved and we could stay here. But we done it the right way. That was…
27:48
the thing. I mean, we could easily have worked and we could easily have just stayed here and nobody would have known, but it was we want to make sure that we’re here the right way. So I think about $50,000 later and a lot of movement, we eventually got our visa approved. So in the meantime, I was writing and I would write my books. We still had the security company. So Dean had the security company transferred over here. And it was, I think when we first arrived, it was the Trump-Biden
28:17
And there was a lot of unknown in this country. Now we came from a country where we don’t use weapons, like our day-to-day security work isn’t weapon related. So when we came over here, all of the work we were doing was intelligence-based. And one of the things I just kept getting asked for was more like due diligence work and background checks and things. And I think that was because of COVID as well, people couldn’t have face-to-face meetings and we couldn’t get the energy of people, like they needed more deep dives.
28:45
that way. So I was getting a lot of requests on that side of things. Dean was doing a lot of work, physical security and doing vulnerability assessments and work like that. None of which were weapon related, which was great. So it just gave us a little market that was individual to us. And then it would just come to like the problem solving. I love a problem. I was a debt collector when I was younger and I used to love fixing the problem rather than just like, I was never going to force somebody to pay me. Like that wasn’t going to happen. But
29:14
I would go in and I would say, look, how did we get into this problem? What could we do to fix it? Let’s do budget plans. Let’s do, you know, all these types of things. And then, then they would pay me. And I became the number one debt collector in Scotland at that point, because people would pay me first. Cause I was fixing their other things too. So I was coming across a lot of problems here that I was like, I can fix that and I can solve it and I don’t really know why I’m not a lawyer. I’m not an accountant. It is like that. I just had an ability to see a solution from something. So that.
29:42
almost became like a little business in itself, just a little problem solving business. And then I wrote a book called How to Ask for Money. And that was based on a conversation I was having with a Newport client. And he’d got to the stage where he was here to send an invoice to a client and he was terrified. He was like, I hate this part. I hate asking for money. I’m like, that’s crazy. Like I love asking for money. What is it that you struggle with it? And then I realized that it was actually a huge struggle in a lot of people’s lives.
30:11
I know that Dean always struggled with it. He liked to do the work. He just didn’t like to send the bill for doing the work. It was something that he found very uncomfortable. So I wrote this book. It’s focused at nonprofits, I would say, but it works for business and it works for anybody really. It works for even asking for a pay rise from your job. It just really gives you some of the tools to be able to do that. So then that brought me into nonprofit consultancy, where I would go into a nonprofit who maybe are struggling to raise what they need to raise and then just work out how we can get them to those.
30:40
those targets and that’s a great job because I select that based on nonprofits that I actually would support and that I do like. And then we always set a target and they always set it way too low, which is great because I know that we can hit higher. And really I’m just training them just how to be a bit more confident, have a bit more belief in what they’re going for and increase what they think they can do and just expand their mindset a little bit. Because a lot of people that run nonprofits are not business people. They’re going into
31:10
Exactly. So I’m just trying to give them a bit more of those tools as well. So that’s quite fun too. Yeah, I think we’ve got obviously Dean’s just finished doing a Netflix show on TV, which was like three years from start to actually broadcast. And that was a lot of fun to work with. I was the nutritionist for that show as well. So I studied nutrition when Dean was doing his bike ride so you couldn’t get somebody to actually feed them properly. So we’ve done that. I mean.
31:37
I probably missed out another 10 things about what we do, but my list is pretty crazy. I’ve got three kids that could literally be from like my daughter chipped her tooth today. I’m not on headphones today because my 22 month old ate my headphones this morning. So they’re broken. And then, you know, and then I’ll get a call. Um, a helicopter went down in Cambodia and they need an extraction. So like, I’ll need to deal with that. And then.
32:04
land grabs in Hawaii, you name it, like I’ll be dealing with it and any given day, it’ll be a very, very varied amount of things to do. And then you also, you guys also have that behind the scene. Yeah, we set up behind the scene. We weren’t really sure about podcasting and if we wanted to delve into that, but a lot of the work that we were doing and a lot of the people that Dean was working with, I would always end up having to deal with the wife.
32:30
Dean was booking on a podcast, I’m speaking to the wife, and Dean’s trying to do a business that I’m speaking to. And I was starting to realize more and more that the person that the world sees, there’s somebody behind them who’s running that show, who’s pulling all the strings. We work as a team, it’s great, but even just down to footballers and actors and actresses, there’s a person behind them who’s running it. And a lot of the times it’s the wife, other times cousins, mothers, fathers, brothers, there’s somebody there who’s…
32:58
really supporting it, but kind of goes as that unsung hero. So I wanted to hear more about them and why they decided to do that and why they decided to like put their own careers aside or even down to just, you know, wives a lot of the time, I say wives because it is probably more on the female side, but they get together, they put their careers on hold, have children, they support their husband, they build things up, but they can often be, their needs can often be put aside. So I wanted to hear more about how that worked.
33:28
how that can be built up and just shine a light on them a bit more. And it’s been great and we’ve done different types of episodes. Like this season, we’ve even because Dean went to eight different countries for the Toughest Forces on Earth show. I thought it was a really great show. I don’t know if you had a chance to watch it on Netflix, but it was Dean would go to different camps, visit special forces and various elite units around the world and see how they operated. But.
33:52
once I’d watched the episode, I was like, I want to know more about them. I want to know more about why they’re doing it, what their families are like. So this season we’ve interviewed them and that’s been really great. I love that. And real quick, while we’re talking about how to ask for money, what is the biggest misconception about asking for money? What is the biggest block that people have? And then what advice would you have for them to be able to overcome that? I would say it’s the preparation, a lot of expecting someone
34:21
else to know what you know. So they can say, well, you know, a lot of the time they focus on the cause. If we’re looking at nonprofits, for example, we’re focusing on the cause and we’re saying, you know, end in childhood cancer is really important. And that might be really important to you, but it might not have any care to that donor. Like, okay, nobody wants children to have cancer, but really he doesn’t really care. Like, what is the benefit going to be to him?
34:46
So in the book, I can tell you from start to finish how to get a really good pitch if you do everything. So we talk about meditation, eating well, preparing for the bit, but you don’t have to do all that. I just say the basics of preparation, like knowing your figures, knowing your numbers and treating it as a business rather than a cause. Even if it comes down to asking for a pay rise, like going in and saying, well, I’ve worked here for years and he’s got a pay rise, so why am I getting it? Like, I want more. That’s not gonna work. You need to be telling that person.
35:15
every single reason why you deserve this pay rise. Show them your figures, show them your numbers, show what you’ve done for the company. Make it impossible for them to say no and have all these figures, but not be demanding or entitled. Just really just know your stuff. And I think we’ve seen many people that have come out in the sales world and talked about things and it is knowledge. Knowledge can destroy most fears the more you know. Yeah, I think that’s a great way to look at it. And like you said,
35:45
Also, doing that kind of preparation, most of the time that means we’re either putting it on paper or on a spreadsheet on a computer. And when we have it in front of us like that, the fear doesn’t exist on paper. All those objections are in our mind. Once we have it on paper, it’s like, well, actually what I’m asking for is not really that astronomical or it’s not out of the question. As a matter of fact, I may probably should be asking for more.
36:08
Yeah, and I love working with nonprofits when the penny drops with them. You know, when we have that first conversation, they will tell me all the reasons why they’re not going to achieve that amount. And I’ll say, OK, let’s look at the reasons why we will achieve it. You know, like economic uncertainty, all these things exist in every business. Like we’ve all got that beer, but there wouldn’t be businesses operating if it wasn’t possible to go forward. So let’s look at all the reasons why it should happen and all the benefits and what problems are you solving and all these things and get all that into the pitch.
36:38
And then we’ll slowly start to see that what you’re asking for is actually not that much and we can increase it. And then let’s look at actually like, what is the dream? What is the goal? Like, you’ve told me this bit, but what do you really, really want? Like, I wonder, you know, close two orphanages because orphanages are hubs for trafficking and like people like J.K. Rowland, she runs nonprofits that aim to end orphanages. And she took a while to actually get to that bit where you’re saying.
37:06
I want to end orphanages by 2050. I want no more orphanages in the world. And a lot of people that donate to orphanages, they’ll be like, that’s crazy. Like we want orphanages surely. But when we find out that 80% of kids in orphanages have living parents and communities they can be living in, we think, well, could we reinvest that money into those communities and make it possible for the kids to actually live with the people they should be living with? It becomes a different narrative and you can see why she’s doing what she’s doing.
37:35
she has to have that final goals so we can understand why we’re doing all this, not just like let’s close to our foodies. Yeah, that helps us reverse engineering, that helps us educate people in the process of engineering. And that’s key. And then that leads me to something that we’re both passionate about, which is ending human trafficking. And we were talking off air about, I think if people understood how prevalent it is and how it’s ubiquitous in so many ways.
38:04
that maybe would change their perspective on that, or maybe it would at least change the way that they see it. And they become more aware of it where it is in plain sight, as opposed to just saying, oh, well, but like you were saying, there are some things like, obviously human trafficking is bad, you know, child sex slavery and all this stuff that they’re doing. I mean, those things are heinous, but there are so many other aspects that are so far reaching and touch every aspect of many people’s lives. They just don’t even see that it’s there.
38:29
Yeah, it’s $150 billion a year industry is the rough number that we come up with. So when we look at like the United States Marine Corps, that’s $46 billion a year budget they’ve got. So we’re looking at like three times the size of the US Marine Corps that we’re trying to take down. So it doesn’t happen by just going and rescuing a child from sexual slavery and having the hero shot or any of those types of things. It’s a huge network that we need to pull down. So things like.
38:58
I was talking earlier too about the instant gratification that society is now and that contributes to so much of it. Like fast fashion is a huge part of human trafficking that people fight very hard to end, but some people might say, well actually, you know, it employs people and people get jobs. But when you’re saying like a 12 year old kid is spending 21, 22 hours at a machine and then sleeping under that machine for a few hours and then getting back up to the machine and…
39:25
hugely unsafe circumstances. We’ve got many, many documented cases of factories going on fire, just packed with people and lots of people being killed. Yeah, okay, they’re earning, but is that the way that people in 2024 should be earning money? The wealth that very few parts of the world have got, few nations around the world have got, we could put that around the world. And that is coming from the…
39:51
The reason we’ve got these kids working 20 hours a day in factories is because the demand for clothes, for example, is huge now. You know, my great-auntie Molly, she was born in 1924. She was my idol. And she had this little tiny wardrobe with three pairs of trousers, two dresses, one for weddings and one for maybe summer dress. Her wardrobe was tiny and she had this little capsule wardrobe of what she would wear.
40:19
And when she died at 96, that was what she had, and maybe four pairs of shoes in total. Like that was it. Today’s society, I think, has, you know, 10 times that amount easily, and then coming through Amazon, and we can get pretty much whatever we want whenever we want it. And it’s taken away from so much pleasures as well. I mean, I remember when I was 12 working for the summer because I wanted this pair of Levi 501 jeans. Like it was like, this is what I really, really wanted.
40:48
And you know, my mom provided us and we were fed and we had like a home, but there was nothing else. You know, that was, that was it. And she worked three jobs to be able to do that for us. And when I started working when I was 11, it was just really to get extra little treats and then these jeans were something that I wanted. And I worked all summer and I saved up and then I had enough. And then I went into the store and I still remember going into the store and buying those jeans and the feeling and everything that you get from that.
41:15
And, you know, I live in Orange County now and I see like the kids just get whatever they want whenever they want it as soon as they want it. I mean, I could probably go and order anything right now for it to be delivered within two hours to my door. And it’s like taking away so much of that good pleasures that we used to get. And then when we add that sort of feeling into the bad side of it, like the sexual slavery and things, that’s again because
41:42
we have a demand that needs to be satisfied and it’s getting higher and higher. And we’re coming away from that kind of loving partnerships that we actually long for, that everyone longs for. And we’re able to just get whatever we want on the internet whenever we want it and at any age. Like kids are growing up with porn, like kids are knowing more about sex now than any time. And I’m not saying that we should like shelter, like I shelter nothing from my kids. Me and my kids talk about absolutely everything. Me and Molly talk about
42:12
She’s 13 now and we talk about human trafficking all the time. Everything is very open, but they can literally get whatever they want and see whatever they want and think that things are normal. What they see on Pornhub or whatever it might be is seen as a normal thing. That this is how loving relationships might be. And that’s really scary, but it all comes down to that instant gratification side again. Yeah. If we can tackle that, I think we could tackle a lot of the issues of trafficking right now.
42:41
I agree and that comes back full circle to what we were discussing before about if you have a veteran that has this work ethic and you hire him, he’s going to be an asset to your company. He’s going to understand genuine leadership in hard times, which what do we hear everybody screaming about now? Leadership, we need this. And when times are tough, we need somebody that can step up. But yet we see generations that are coming up now where the work ethic is not as robust. Some of their skin is not as thick.
43:10
And I’m not saying that they have to, you know, go in and act like they’re Gen Xers, but they do have to understand that deprivation breeds appreciation. If everything comes to you easily, then you respect nothing. And literally the adversity that they are facing is this idea of mediocrity where nothing brings some pleasure. And unless it’s all out ecstasy, then everything else is impossible to endure. And now there’s no place for them to ground themselves. They have no idea of what reality is. And like you said, if you don’t have that grounding,
43:40
How can you have a relationship with somebody? How can you understand what loving, compassionate, empathetic relationships look like? And if it’s all this transactional experience, then that’s not teaching them the right things. Yeah, I mean, everybody wants the end game, don’t they? Everybody wants like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but they…
44:01
work that goes into it. Like if you were to really put it down, everything that we’ve done to get to this space, do you want all that as well? Because that is what it is to get this one little thing here. And I think that, I mean, I hear kids now to be a YouTuber. Why? Why is it we’re getting out of that? Well, because you can get really rich from it. Okay, so why do you want to be really rich? And then we can start to break it down as to what is the actual goal here. And a lot of it is just they think that that is what’s going to make them happy. They see it on the internet, they see it on
44:31
Instagram, et cetera, that this is what, and I firmly believe that every single person who is there doing these influential channels, like I know a lot of them, they’re miserable. Like life is not great for them because they’re so unfulfilled. And for those that don’t understand this either, that influencer life, it’s a hamster wheel. Like they can’t really get off of it. Like they have to make content, so to speak. They can never stop. They have to constantly do this stuff.
45:00
They can’t say, I want to put the phone down and just get the hell away and like, go to this other country where there’s no wifi for months at a time to really do some introspection to figure out what the hell I want. They’re never going to have that luxury. It’s really sad. I think that I haven’t met, and as I say, a lot of the work that I do is in the problem solving world, so I deal with, I’ve dealt with influencers, I’ve dealt with royalty, I’ve dealt with like every…
45:26
aspect that you can think of. And I think the influencers to me have been some of the saddest people that I’ve met. And the other thing is when they hit that level, and they can often hit it really young, they do not know who to trust. Like their trust levels are at zero. Like they don’t have that grounding to really say like, this person’s a good person, this person’s a bad person. When you’re in the celebrity field as well, you know, and one of the people that I work with in Beverly Hills, they’re
45:53
forensic accounting department’s got like 4,000 open cases. These are cases of like managers and talent agents like ripping off their clients because they’re, as soon as you hit fame, you’re an open boot for abuse and extortion and whatever else it might be. And then your life is just, who do I trust? Like, where am I safe? Like, is this person recording me? Is this person trying to get dirt on me? Like, well, there’s a horrible, horrible life that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. When people say like, I want…
46:22
fame and fortune. I’m like, do you, do you really? Yeah, you have to ask him, like you said, what are you trying to achieve? What emotion are you trying to evoke from this feeling of success for satisfaction or security? And as you say, if we’re really honest, then we realize that we can reverse engineer that somewhere else. And we can still do that without like compromising our integrity, without violating our ethos or creating a bunch of inconsistencies that, again, when people don’t realize that these things are not scalable or sustainable.
46:52
And then it may make them hopefully think twice about stepping on the path or if they’re on that path, understanding that just like you were pointing out with Dean, like we have tremendous agency in our decisions, but we had to make sure that that agency is directed towards the things that really are something that’s important to us. So for you guys in 2009, getting from that place to 2020, I know that
47:18
COVID was horrible for many people, but it did make a lot of people stop and step back. That’s why I always had that adversity as a gift mentality, because when you’re at that place and now you have to stop for a second and really look around and say, oh shit, this may not be what I wanted. Or why have I been working so hard to get to this thing that in the end doesn’t mean anything or is unfulfilling. Now all of a sudden you can start saying, well, what is the default? Well, if I’m the CEO and I’ve built this X million dollar company.
47:48
The answer is more of that, but eventually they get to that place where they no longer have that drive or they can no longer get to that place or, you know, the 40 year old executive is now overweight. You know, they can’t physically do those hours. They’re type two diabetic or they’re pre hypertensive. And again, they’ve a lot of these relationships to just fall apart around them. It’s like, well, the very thing that you claim to be working so hard for, you don’t even have an idea what the hell that is. Yeah.
48:16
You know, I grew up, the area I grew up in was, you know, not the greatest of areas. But I mean, I say we nobody had anything around us, but we were a community. You know, we all looked out for each other and it was nice in that way. There was a lot of crime and there was a lot, but we never really committed the crimes in our own areas. We went out to the rich areas. So it was actually quite a cool place to grow up. But my mom, you know, she got sick when I was about 13 and then, but she was always very strong on.
48:45
getting the right education. She didn’t want me to go to the local school. So I ended up getting like a scholarship bursary for one of the private schools in town. And there was only like four of us that got that. And everybody that I went to school with, you know, had horses and lived in the country. I loved school. I loved learning. I liked that it was something that was really interesting. And I’ve probably gotten better with the teachers than I did with the pupils. Like it was, that was my, my place that I enjoyed being.
49:14
But everybody at school had an issue with me because I was from the wrong place. And everybody where I lived kind of was like, why are you going to that school? But it’s interesting when I look at who really weathered COVID well, it’s the people I grew up with. They have resilience. Like they know how to go through tough times. They know how to deal with fear.
49:35
you know, are we going to be able to eat? Like, are we going to be able to get shopping? Is the electricity going to go on? Like, they live through that. You know, the people that I went to school with had never lived through adversity or hardship. You know, and I have people in my life that have never gone through any sort of financial hardship or anything. And when it does hit, it’s, you know, they generally do turn to me because it’s like, how do I deal with this? What do I do? Like, I’ve never been through this before. I love the fact that I know what it is to not eat in or…
50:05
being cold or like struggled for somewhere to stay because it just gives you that extra fire in your belly to say, well, I don’t want to go back there. But if I did go back there, I could handle it, but I don’t want to. And I’m going to do my best to make sure I never do. And I think the only struggle that we have as a couple, Dean and I, because Dean grew up in homeless shelters as well. And he’s, he’s had it too. And we’ve got three kids that want for nothing now.
50:29
And we’re letting over, like we need to give them some resilience. We’re not going to stick them in the woods and leave them there or something. We need to do something to get them building up. But the great thing is we do have like a border so close to us there where we can see that and we can go down and we can do things. They can teach them how lucky they are in life. But that is a difficult one. And I think that first generation of being a bit more successful, it is difficult to try and keep the kids on the right path too.
50:59
Yeah, I was at an event and there were many very successful people there and they were saying that exact same thing. How do I allow my success to not spoil my kids? And when you ask how old their kids are, they’re like, well, they’re 15. It’s like, if you haven’t already started to implement this, it may be tough to fix that mentality. However, we can still give them something because even these microadversities, small things.
51:26
can equip them a little bit because like as you’re saying, and we see now that’s what the trend is. Nobody wants to face any hardship at all. They don’t want any discomfort. Even a small inconvenience seems like the end of the world to them. But if they have had that existence until they’re 25 and then something big happens, they may never recover from it. That may be like their ceiling for whatever their development is from that point. So given these understandings, like you said of
51:53
being hungry, being cold, understanding this like, hey, we’re gonna do this intentionally for an hour, this discomfort, I just want you to understand, it’s gonna suck and you’re gonna hate it and you’re gonna survive. Yeah, I think with the kids, they’re very much like that. Where they have Molly’s friends, some of her friends have got credit cards, they literally do not want for anything, they’ve got everything they possibly need and then some. Starbucks is full of 10, 11, 12, 13 year old kids. I’m like, what?
52:23
Yeah. What you’re paying for a coffee was like my food budget for the week, like when I was growing up. And, you know, there’s certain things that I’m glad that I’ll never have to teach her. You know, I grew up with a lot of abuse, like I was taken advantage of a lot, and that’s what got me into the trafficking and various things. And I had to go through those things, I think, to be able to fight this and to help other people. But that’s the one thing that I’m 100% on is that they’ll never go through that. Like that’s my…
52:52
my ceiling, like they will know, my girls will know their worth, my boy knows how to treat people right, like we have that strong part of our household. They’re going to go through tough times, but never in those on my watch anyway. So for people that are listening to us right now and they’re hearing us talking about adversity and resilience and how to get stronger, if they’re facing some sort of hardship in their life right now, what advice would you give them to get through it? I mean, I can only speak for myself and I think that everybody deals with it differently, but…
53:22
I’ve always had a method that I give myself time. When the hardship happens, when the problem happens, when the thing hits you, sometimes you have to deal with it immediately, I get that. But sometimes, like, my general way of handling something is I always say 24 hours, just give me 24 hours, let me sleep. I’ve got a very interesting way that I fall asleep. If something really, really bad happens, I’ll fall asleep and it’ll just be quickly, it’ll just be a little nap that’ll have it in my brain and just processes whatever is going on.
53:48
and then I’ll wake up and I’ll get it fixed. And Dean knows that, that if something happens in this house, if there’s a problem, if there’s an issue comes up, he just needs to give me 24 hours. And I give myself that time. And I really try and think of it as in the longterm, how much is this gonna affect? Like it is a problem. Now I think anything that hits us is awful. And when we get that gut feeling or that yucky feeling, it’s really awful to go through. But thinking about it longterm, like how is that gonna affect us in 20 years time? If it’s not.
54:17
that bad, then let’s work back, work back in stages as to how much we need to be really concerned about this. And that can be, you know, like something like the loss of someone, and that is going to affect you in 20 years, but it’ll die down, it’ll get better, it’ll get easier, but you have to give yourself that time to work through it. And then put a plan, like I’m a big, I write everything down, I do lists, I break them down, I don’t go for the gold.
54:45
straight away, like we break it into segments, like how can we do each stage, do it step by step. And I often find like the best thing I can do whenever it’s like way overwhelming is just talk to someone. Because sometimes the problem just doesn’t seem as bad once like I have that conversation with Dean, I’m maybe making a bit too much of it there and it just dissipates a little bit when somebody else is involved. And that’s friends, family, therapists, whatever it might be, but I think if you can kind of share that problem it becomes less.
55:15
Yeah, when we unpack it, it helps. And then, like you said, sometimes we make the adversity out to be more than what it is. We make a mountain out of a molehill, as we see in the United States. And also to your point about the taking a nap component. So we have the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight, and we have the parasympathetic, the relaxed one. And lots of times if we’re overstimulated from like this, like stress standpoint, taking a nap or feeling fatigued is very common and being able to just lean into it the way that you do.
55:44
that gives your subconscious a chance to really chew on it, gives you the chance to, it’s like a form of detachment in a positive way. And then you wake up and you’re like, hey, I got the plan, let’s do this. That’s impressive. Yeah, for sure. And so like I was terrible at self care before. That’s something that I was really, I was help everyone else keep going, like go forward. Like if you don’t sleep for three days, that’s fine. If you don’t like just keep going. I think now since hitting my 40s, I’m definitely not that like,
56:14
40s has not slowed me down at all. In fact, I think I’m in better shape and better health, everything than I’ve ever been. But I take care of myself a lot more. If I want to get a massage, I’ll go get a massage. If I want to retreat away for a weekend, I’ll do that because the kids need that in me. They need like mom at full strength for them. So taking little moments to just really kind of love yourself a little bit more is very important. Yeah. How did you meet Kelsey?
56:43
She’s the one that connected us, by the way, to everyone that’s listening. So Kelsey and I met, Dean was introduced to Kelsey through his ghostwriter for his book, and then one of Kelsey’s earlier podcasts, and when he was talking, he was talking about me, so I got introduced to her, and then we just gelled. Kelsey is literally probably the opposite of who I am. I always look at, like, if I was Scooby-Doo, she’s Scrappy-Doo, you know, like, that’s us.
57:13
She’s very, very passionate about everything that she gets involved in. You would definitely want her on your side. That’s for sure. She’s the type of person that you want right next to you in your corner. She barks a lot. She is very, very loud about what she believes in, which is awesome. But yeah, she’s a very cool girl. Yeah, well, she, for those of you that don’t know, when I was talking to her after her, she’s like, I’ve got somebody you’ve got to talk to. You’ve got to meet her. And I was like…
57:42
connect us, let’s make it happen. And that’s nice, like you said, you have the opposite attract component with that, or even with your husband, where like you said, he’s the executor, but you’re like the mastermind. And with my wife, it’s the same thing, where she’s an entrepreneur as well. But this is because I was divorced before I met her, but this is the first relationship I’ve had where I truly feel no matter what happens, she’s got my back. I fear there’s no…
58:11
concern about anything, whether it be money or business or properties or anything, because she’s always had my back. She always will have my back. We have a very clear, concise conversation about every day pretty much, where it’s like we clean the slate. What’s your day like? What’s going on? She’s much more organized than I am in some capacities, which that definitely helps me out. And then so that gives us the ability to really maintain that relationship in a way that’s sustainable for both of us.
58:41
And knowing that that person has your back and truly is your teammate and your ride or die and all the things that people talk about, it cannot be understated. And as an entrepreneur or as a leader or as an author, you need somebody that is on your side or at least a spouse or a significant other that is not going to drag you down and bitching moan that you’re not home at five o’clock, you know, why are you still working on this or that or the other? She understands when I’m away on business for weekends or weeks at a time even.
59:11
you know, she’s just like, hey, go crush it. Like that’s the kind of support you have to find. I think it’s just trying to understand how that works. And I do get that it’s really hard. You know, there’s been years where Dean’s been home 21 days a year. It’s a hard life to live when you’re living with people that are out with the norm. I think the special ops community is like a 95% divorce rate. So I do get it. It’s a really hard position to be in.
59:36
and you have to deal with more than the most. But I grew up, I would even where I grew up, it was the oil and gas capital of Europe. So most of the guys that lived there were like three weeks on, three weeks off, or it was like rotational work. So I kind of knew what that cycle was like. And my grandma, my granda was, well, he was merchant Navy, and then he was with Shell for a number of years. And she always used to say that whatever day he docked, it was the day after she used to see him. So he would come on the…
01:00:04
come on shore and then all the lads would go to the bars and then they would just drink for like till they fell down pretty much. But my grandma never said like he had to come home like do that, do your little decompression and then come home and be with your family. And that’s the way they done it. And they had a very strong loving relationship till the day they were both gone. And for me, I’ve always said like, I would never put Dean into a box of like, you’ve got to work nine to five. Like he worked with me for a little bit.
01:00:33
After Libya, he’d been, I think one time he’d come home and all his clothes were soaked in blood and he was like, can you get the stain out? And I was like, no, but I can’t keep doing this. You know, like your lives are running out. And I said, look, I don’t want you to die. Like at this point, you’re risking it. So let’s think of something else. And he worked with me in property development for a while. And he was so bored. I could see it every single day in the…
01:01:02
in the meetings that we’d go to, like he was just, I was like, okay, that’s not going to work either. And that’s why we, we decided on the bike ride. So we, we said, look, I just picked up the Guinness book of world records. Kind of threw that. I mean, I said, pick something. And he actually picked, um, Tyro to Cape town, which is across Africa, uh, to cycle his bike that way. Um, but then I didn’t think that was good enough. So I found the world’s longest road, which was Argentina to Alaska. So he cycled that and broke.
01:01:30
the world record and done it in 99 days. And then we raised over a million dollars for mental health at the same time. So that was just trying to keep him stimulated. And even now, like it’s still like the Netflix show, I knew that that was going to be perfect for him because he would be out doing things with the guys. And there’s absolutely zero way that I would say to him, go and do a nine to five job. It would be so disrespectful to who he is as a man. Yeah. And like you said, it would be something that would be sustainable or fulfilling for him. And.
01:01:58
Like you said, you want to see him happy, you want to see him achieving, you want to see him embracing that component. And when we can take, like you said, that warrior aspect and channel it towards things that actually mean something, and that’s the win, that’s the battle that we should be fighting every day. For sure. And I think, yeah, he took a while to really understand me as well. Like we had to, when I met him, I was very driven, entrepreneur, et cetera. And then I had Molly and it was like, I…
01:02:26
you know, when you’re working in the security industry, you could be writing proposals. If I wrote it from Alana’s stock, I got zero reply. Nobody would reply. If I write it from Dean’s stock, they would reply to me. So it’s almost my identity got completely lost at the same time. And I had to really like build that up. And it took me quite a while to come back and say, actually, no, reply to my email, right? Reply to Alana’s stock. It’s me that you’re speaking to. And then when Dean realized that, then he…
01:02:53
supported me in that, then it became a bit more of a powerful force where he didn’t accept people being disrespectful in that way. You know, a lot of the times, especially if we’re dealing with the security world, a lot of the times they want to talk to Dean and Dean will literally be like, I don’t know, Alana does that side of it, you know. If you want me to come and rescue you, I’ll do that part, but Alana needs to organize it. So you need to speak to her first. And we have that, and Dean, as I say, like Dean will go and do…
01:03:21
work every day of the week, but he’ll never charge for it. So I’ve always got to be there to make sure that it’s getting paid for and everything that we do, like we could get a phone call today and it could change. You know, and we were in Disneyland on October 7th and Dean was in Israel October 8th. So like our days change in like a split second, but I understand that and I know that that’s how it works and he understands it. And if at any point either of us didn’t like it, we would tell each other and then we would change.
01:03:51
love that. And that’s what a partnership is, right? It’s marriage is a partnership. It’s a team based exercise, so to speak. And then with the family, of course, you know, the way that you’re conducting yourself, you’re teaching your kids what to look for, what to value, what to try to find, what a healthy relationship looks like. And I think that you guys are a great example of that. And they say the only thing we do differently now is we include the kids in the conversation too. So when D went to Israel, we told the kids and
01:04:19
Okay, what’s dad doing? He’s going to help people. Okay, great. Like they, they understand, they know we don’t go into too much detail, but they know that, um, there’s a reason that that’s not going to be there now. Whereas when Molly was younger, it was like just dad’s away and we don’t really know why he’s away and it’s a bit confusing. Now we have that family meeting. You know, the kids hate it when I say family meeting time, but they know something’s about to come. Yeah. And that’s key. Like you said, if we, if we frame it properly, it makes more sense as opposed to, oh, that’s not home. It’s like, well, there’s.
01:04:49
more than that. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be him. Yeah. For sure. Alana, thank you so much for everything, for all of your time. I know that you’re incredibly busy and you took a lot of time to talk to me today. Where can we go to support you to learn more about you, about your books, about everything you and Dean have going on? Well, we both got our own websites,
01:05:16
It’s very good. It’s Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. And then say our website tell you probably like 30% of what we actually do because it’s still undefined. Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you for everything that you do and thank you for being so open and honest about how you attack the evil that is out there in the world today. Thank you, thank you for having me. It’s been great. Appreciate you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
