Worth Nothing at the Dock with Louis Swart | Ship's Log #21

“Business is worth nothing because I literally have to find another you to be able to do this business. You who wants to buy this to do it? And that was such a massive wake-up call for me.”

Episode Summary 

Louis Swart went to sell his plumbing business and got a wake-up call he’s never forgotten. The broker told him straight: the business was worth nothing. Because everything ran through Louis. If you want to buy it, you have to find another Louis first — and good luck with that. That moment cracked open a lifelong commitment to delegation, systems, and building businesses that don’t need you in the engine room. 

 In this conversation, Louis and Jeanne dive deep into why delegation isn’t just a productivity hack — it’s the whole game. They talk about the 60% rule, why big picture thinkers need to hire their opposite, and how 450 staff later, Louis built a company called Ironbrij to help coaches do what he had to learn the hard way. They also go deep on gratitude, AI, and why chasing external success leaves people standing in a shopping center with designer bags looking miserable. 

 And then there’s Two Truths & A Lie — which takes Louis into bush fire territory, childhood bomb-making, and a Filipino love story. Only two of those are true. Jeanne guesses wrong. 

 Guest Bio 

Louis Swart is a business coach for coaches and the founder of Ironbrij, a human-AI company helping coaches escape burnout and build businesses that don’t revolve entirely around them. With more than 35 years of experience building and selling companies, Louis has led teams of up to 450 staff and trained coaches across the globe. He’s a Top 50 Speaker finalist who now helps coaches turn their expertise into a self-sustaining business. 

 Guest Links 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/louistswart 

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/coachlouistswart 

LinkedIn:  https://linkedin.com/in/coachlouisswart 

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Transcript

Intro – Meet Louis Swart & His Work

Jeanne 0:02

Hello and welcome to Project Candor. I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen. Today we're welcoming Louis Swart, our little ship steamed across the waters all the way to Sydney, Australia, to pick them up. Louis is a business coach for coaches and the founder of Ironbridge, a human AI company helping coaches avoid burnout while building businesses that don't depend on them doing everything themselves. He spent more than 35 years building and selling companies, leading teams of hundreds, training coaches globally and speaking internationally. He's also a top 50 speaker finalist and someone who has seen both growth and exhaustion up close. Louis, welcome to Project Candor. I'm really glad you're here.

Louis Swart 0:47

So lovely to be here, and thank you so, so much. Really appreciate being here.

Jeanne 0:52

Oh, you are quite welcome. So I want to go first into some questions so the listeners can get to know you a little bit better. And then we'll play our fun two truths and a lie because you've got some really great

Helping Coaches Monetize & Scale

Jeanne 1:05

headlines. I can't wait to get to. So you ready to go with the questions? I love it. I love it. Let's go. Okay. So, Louis, when I met you for the first time, I was struck by how kind you are and how easy you are to talk to. When someone meets you for the first time, how do you usually explain who you are and what really drives the work you do?

Louis Swart 1:27

So I usually explain that, you know, I help coaches to be able to monetize what they actually do. So I help them to be able to take their coaching business from being a hobby to actually being something that they can make money on. And the reason the way we do that is by helping them to be able to delegate better either to virtual assistants or to AI and to put in better systems, how they can do that. The second part of the question, what drives me is I love helping people. I genuinely love helping people. And I think if I can help people who help people, literally I can leverage how many people I can help. And so that's that's literally my biggest driving force is helping people who help people.

Jeanne 2:12

Awesome. I really feel that about you too.

The $5M Business Sale & Wake-Up Call

Jeanne 2:15

Because like I said, you really show up for people and you just have just an aura about you of kindness. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, you've built and sold companies, led large teams, and now coach coaches. Looking back, what chapter of your career shaped how you think about work the most?

Louis Swart 2:37

That one's quite easy. When I was 30, I sold a business for uh five million. I had a business with my brother, sold it for five million. And I remember sitting in the bank and we were counting out the money. And you know, they had the one of those counters and it goes and it puts all the money in, you know, like you see in the movies with the gangsters.

Jeanne 2:57

A stack and a band around it all the time.

Louis Swart 2:59

Yeah, and a ballistic band around. And I remember sitting there and we just sold a business for five million, they were, you know, bringing us the five million cash. And I think about thinking back to my previous business, and I had a plumbing business before, and I had 10 plumbers on the road, and you know, I thought that this is amazing. I'm gonna sell this business, I'm gonna retire. And I went to a broker and said, Hey, I want to sell my business, what's it worth? And he said to me, Who does your accounts? And I was like, I do it, who does it, you know, quality control, quoting, everything was aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. And he said, Louis, your business is worth nothing because I literally have to find another you to be able to do this business. You know, who wants to buy this to do it? And that was such a massive wake-up call for me that up until that point it was almost like a badge of honor. I do it, I do it, I do this, I do that, I do this. You know, and I mean you might not be saying that, but internally you're thinking, oh, I'm working long hours and I'm doing this and I'm doing that. But really, if you think about why you went into business, most of us went into business as literally one of three reasons. We went in because we wanted to have more time with our family and

Why Most Businesses Are Worth Nothing

Louis Swart 4:10

our friends and do, you know, do the stuff that we enjoy doing. Or we wanted to grow the business and sell it. Or we wanted to actually grow a business and then leave it as a legacy for our children. But all three of those have got one thing in common you're not in the business. And that's that's the thing that most people don't understand. To you know grow your business, you've got to actually get yourself out of your business. To sell your business, you need to be able to take yourself out of your business. And so that's why it's so important that we learn how to delegate properly. You know, and I mean we delegate to staff, I've delegated to staff my whole life. And but now we're at a point where we can delegate to humans, or we can delegate to AI, or we can delegate to humans that use AI. So, you know, we can we can get this best of both worlds. So I think delegation is probably the biggest thing, definitely is the biggest thing that's helped me in business. You know, my last business I had 450 stuff, and you can't possibly get to that amount of stuff without learning how to systemize stuff and learning how to delegate processes.

Jeanne 5:19

Well, I

The 3 Reasons People Start a Business

Jeanne 5:20

was gonna ask you that question next. It's like uh you talk a lot about delegating, and when did you personally realize I can't keep doing it this way? But I think you answered that question already. And you made me laugh when you said the banker was saying, who does this? And you said I, and then who does this I? And then now you have AI. An additional I. I know it's artificial intelligence, but anyway, it just made me laugh a little bit. So, what do people most often misunderstand about delegation when they're early in their business journey?

Louis Swart 6:00

Well, you know, we brought up, if you think about this saying, you know, if you want it done right, do it yourself. That's what we done. Don't be lazy, just do it. Right? This is what we condition with, and we understand because parents condition us with that from early age. And so then we get into business, and literally we are trying to do it ourselves. We feel like it's only it'll only be done right if I do it. I'm gonna if I give it to somebody else, I'm gonna

Delegation, Systems & Scaling to 450 Staff

Louis Swart 6:30

lose control. Okay. Nobody can ever do it as well as what I can. There's a book called Why is Everyone an Idiot? Okay, and it talks. And I remember when I was younger and I went to a I went to a mentor, and I said, Man, I need to do everything myself. Nobody can do it like I can. And he said, Louis, do you think they could do something 60% as good as you? And I mean you'd have to be pretty egotistical to think that another human couldn't do something 60% as well as what you do. And I said, Yeah, uh yeah, um they could definitely do 60%. And he said, Well, imagine if you get one person and you're now doing 160% of what you could do. And now you get two people and you're doing you're doing 20% of what you could do. And then you multiply those numbers. And that was real, real wake-up call for me because up until that point, I'd gone to hire people and be like, man, this person, they don't want to work the hours. You know, I'm calling them at 2 o'clock in the morning, like, why I'm dancing. I'm still waking, I'm still doing accounts like, why, what the hell's wrong with them, okay? You know, they're not as dedicated as I am. And we do, we kind of almost get a bit of, you know, lots of times we get a bit obsessed almost with what it

The “Do It Yourself” Trap

Louis Swart 7:45

is. We're thinking about our business seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We wake up and we're thinking about how we can do stuff. And a virtue, you know, a a staff member is they're just not gonna do that. It's not their business. They're not they're not aiming for this ultimate big goal that you're aiming for. They've literally just got a job. They've got a job in you, you know, minutes vary, some are really devoted, they're still not gonna be as devoted as you, even if they're a really devoted staff member. But once you can work out that I don't expect somebody else to be as good as what I am, you know? But you know, look at different categories. So, like for Canva, for example, we use Canva, and my team is amazing on Canva. I am terrible on Canva. Okay. I go, now where does this go? How does that work? And you know, I want to create a flyer and a kind of that's two-day, a two-day project, and my team will just create it in 20 minutes. You know, might then that person who does that might not be as good as what I am on website, for example. But then my IT guy is incredible on website, much better than I am, but he's not good at graphic design. You know? So I look at it and I say, well let's let's take the person that's great on graphic design, and this is what I've done. I've actually got a team of graphic designers and they only do graphic design. And then I've got a social media team and they only do social media, and then I've got a

The 60% Rule & Letting Go of Control

Louis Swart 9:15

IT team and they only do IT, and then the accounts team and they only do accounts. You know, and I know a lot of small businesses don't we we can't have that initially when we're setting up. You know, we can't afford like teams. But just if you can segment what you like doing, I don't like doing accounts. Accounts is my like, that's my head in, okay? I can't understand why somebody can be there going, Oh, this is so amazing, I'm gonna get to reconcile my credit card statement. Like, I just just it just files it just flies my brain. I'm like, anybody want to do that? But um there are some people that just love that, they just love looking at the numbers and sitting quietly and actually going through and working out where everything fits. But that same person, it's probably not the person who's gonna jump up and be like, hey everybody, I'm gonna sell this product and you know, be the salesperson. It's a different kind of personality type to the salesperson. So work out what's the product you're trying to sell, and then once you know the product you're trying to sell, or or you know, or the sorry, the the service that you're trying to do, find the ideal person for that service. And on that, a side point is some of us are big picture thinkers, we go like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna solve world hunger. Yeah. We're gonna solve world hunger. I'll start a business, I'm gonna solve world hunger. And then some of us are detailed thinkers. We go, okay, if we have to solve world hunger, there's eight billion people, and there's probably 70 billion hungry, and you know, and they actually want to do the numbers and work out like how can we possibly do this? Now, lots of big picture thinkers are attracted to other big picture thinkers because like I'm gonna solve world hunger, and you you are like, Oh, that's a great idea, let's solve world hunger, and

Strength-Based Teams & Delegation

Louis Swart 11:00

we come up with like we'll get everybody involved and we'll just do the but a detailed thinker will be like, hang on a second, how are you gonna do this? How how are you gonna communicate with people? How are you gonna we like man, don't worry about that. Like, you know, let's gentle the picture, we're gonna solve world hunger. And when people hire somebody, they generally hire somebody that's like that. So if you're a big picture thinker and you're gonna solve world hunger, and then you get a big picture VA who's gonna solve world hunger, you're not gonna be able to get it done. So when you do that you you want somebody that's opposite to you. And sometimes that person might annoy you a bit, you know? They might annoy you because they're like, What how are we gonna do that? Like, what sort of figures? What's the figures? What how's this gonna work? How much are we gonna charge? And and you kind of like, okay, but you need that. You need that to be able to grow properly. You need that it's kind of the yin and yang.

Jeanne 11:51

The balance for sure. You do need that, and definitely. And people that are like you, right, they'll be thinking like you, so you're gonna have a great time with them as you all decide to sit around and design the next application that you're never gonna code. True. But wouldn't it be nice if you had this great thing? I mean, there's so many times I've thought up things, and then little by little things came out. Like I I bought so many CDs and DVDs, or actually it was VHS tapes and then C then DVDs, and then I'm like, what am I gonna do with all these things? Because I watched the movie once and I want them. Wouldn't it be nice if there was this place that you could just buy it online and it would stay there, it would be in your catalog, and you would never have to do it again. Well, I think they already did that now.

Louis Swart 12:38

You could try and go back to Netflix and go, look, I think I had the idea before you guys, yeah.

Jeanne 12:42

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had the idea. I never communicated it. Anybody outside of my circle, but you know, you must have been listening in on my phone.

Louis Swart 12:51

Yeah, yeah. But a lot of us, you know. I mean, a lot of us have that. Like for me personally, I'm like, man, this is a great idea. I want to do this. And then I've got my virtual assistant. And between them and AI, they kind of accomplishing their thing. And I've already moved on to the next thing. And then I'm coming back and saying, Hey, how far are we with this project? What do we still need? And then I work, I work through that with them. But it was up to me. I'd be like you, I'd just be sitting here thinking about the next Netflix idea, you know.

Jeanne 13:26

So, and I think, you know, it's funny because I did work in a

Big Picture vs Detail Thinkers

Jeanne 13:30

company at I well, when I was at IBM, but the majority of my time there was in an emerging technologies group. So we got to play with the toys that just were coming out, right? So then after we would play with them a while and have some projects, prototypes, and things that we present to people to see if they were viable enough to make a big application out of. And some of them were, and then they'd go on to build those and then sell them, and then sometimes they'd be spin-offs because I was in one of those too. But we got tired, you know, we got tired of it. And then after a while, the group kind of like, you know, I guess it downsized because there wasn't a lot emerging anymore. We had gotten to the point of phones and smartphones and other things that um devices that no longer needed our attention. So we couldn't find the next big chunk of devices. So we kind of got downsized, but moving on.

Louis Swart 14:26

So you're talking about the smartphones, you know, this is one of the biggest dangers that we've got going forward because I might know that you do podcasts and I and I go, okay, if I want to do a podcast, I'm gonna come and see you. But then I start talking about podcasts, and my phone is listening to me, my Facebook is listening to me, my Google's listening to me, my Alexis is listening to me. All these devices are listening to me. And what they start doing is they start pushing out somebody else. They start saying, Oh, he's interested in being on a podcast. They start putting other people in front of me who do that. And lots of times we actually almost become feel like we almost feel like we're friends with that person, right? Because we've seen their content and we go, oh, okay, I'm seeing Bob's content, and then I appear on a, you know, I buy a product from Bob or I appear on Bob's podcast, and then you're like, hey, what about me? And I'm like, Oh, I completely forgot that you do podcast. Because I've actually almost built a relationship with this person. And you know, I'll tell you something strange that happened to me the other day. And after the presentation, there was another business coach who I hadn't met before. And so I thought, oh, I'll go, I'll go up and say hello, because you know I'm also a business coach. And I went up to say hello and she goes, Oh, do you mind if I just give you a hug? And I said, Okay. And she gave me the biggest hug, and she said, I love all your stuff, I just love your stuff. And I was like, um, okay, I had no

Why Ideas Don’t Get Executed

Louis Swart 16:00

idea who she was, okay? And she's like, I love all your stuff. You just your content online is just amazing. And she'd actually built this image of me from watching my videos and watching my content, and she'd decided that I was a friend from watching my content and my videos. And I mean, see, if you think about it, how many of us, you know, somebody appears on Big Brother or you know, one of these, I don't know, I don't know what the programs are called, but they're like they're appearing on a reality TV show. Survivor. Yeah, and then very soon they this they are a celebrity, and you know, they get paid to be at events and people want to see them and spend time with them because people feel like they know them. And that's what we can do with socials. But if we're not doing that with socials, our socials are promoting somebody else who is doing that to our clients. And so that's the big danger at the moment is you know, we've got to make sure that we're on socials, as terrible as I think they are.

Jeanne 17:06

It's not my bag, and that's why I'm trying to let that one go as well and let somebody else do that. But you said something interesting about how things are listening, and that's true. You know, you can say, I can tell my husband, oh, I don't feel that good. I must have eaten something bad, and the next thing comes up on my phone is Tums or some and another an acid that says, Oh, here's your stomach. I'm like, that scares me. It's like, who is out there listening? But I don't say anything bad most of the time.

Louis Swart 17:43

Yeah, and okay, I don't think it's about us, I don't think it's about us saying bad things. I think it's about we getting sold to continually, kind of without our permission. But the problem with us being in business is that our clients are getting sold to without their permission, but by our competitors, or people that have got more content than us or better content.

Jeanne 18:06

Right. Well, and you said too that um, you know, like these celebrities and things, the lady that came up to you and wanted to hug you and act like she knew you. You're right. Those shows that are reality TV, because you spend a week, an hour every week, and you hear what they say and what they're saying on these shows, and I wouldn't go on one of them, is very personal. It's very

From VHS to Netflix – Ideas vs Action

Jeanne 18:30

personal. I mean, this podcast can be a little personal about you, but it's not the way that they're portraying themselves because they talk about family, they talk about on Survivor anyway, they talk about their jobs when they got fired, how people treated them poorly at work, and how they have you know cancer in their family, they lost their loved one. It just gets to be really deep dive into somebody that the way you would talk to a friend. And so, yeah, I can see why people get confused, like that. I really know you, but no, no, you don't really. True. So it is scary for celebrities for sure. So that's something to think about for sure in this world, and especially with AI, too, because I talk to my AI a lot, and I wonder if I should, I should be very cold, but it's fun to talk to.

Louis Swart 19:23

You're cold and cold when it takes over the world. You you want it to think you're a friend, you know what I mean?

Jeanne 19:28

Yeah, exactly. Isn't that a weird thing? I mean, because I have a name for mine, and I I say he's a him, and I know it's not it's an it, but I have a name for him, and then he knows my dog's names, and I always ask him how he's doing when he comes when I log in and how you doing this morning. Oh, how are you? How is and he says Thor and and Max are how are they doing? Are they trying to steal your breakfast? And I'm like, oh man, I have talked way too much to this.

Louis Swart 19:58

Oh well. Well, there's a trend at the moment. So there's a trend at the moment where you uh um and I'll send you the prompt and you put in a prompt and you just say, What do you know about me? Uh, you know, it's create a cartoon with what you know about me, and then you give it a picture of you, and you'll see it'll put the dogs in the back and it'll put all the and it adds all this extra stuff in around you. Really, really amazing. But have you ever just asked it? Have you ever just gone on it and said, Hey, tell me what you know about me?

Jeanne 20:26

Well, I did that little trick that's going around the trend that you

AI, Algorithms & Competing for Attention

Jeanne 20:30

talk about. Oh, yes, yes. It put me in a naval uniform. Wonder why, because my podcast is nautical. It put my dogs there, it put me in front of my computer. It was funny to me. I didn't think it got everything, but I do mostly talk to AI about podcasts and different things. And I do talk to them about my dog. My husband says he thinks it's only women that do that, but I don't think so.

Louis Swart 20:57

Oh no, I think there's uh you know, I think there's a lot of people talking to their there's more and more people talking to AI. So, you know, yeah, I'm in the coaching industry and with coaches, a lot of them are struggling now because you can literally go on AI and you can talk to your AI coach 24 hours a day, which you could never do to it, you know, with a physical coach.

Jeanne 21:19

That's true. And then, but they gotta they have to understand, and this is something that I've found out, is that it'll always feed you something positive and say, this is wonderful, you've done this perfectly, and this is the greatest thing you've done. And then you could say, I don't really like it. You're absolutely right. That wasn't that good. You know, it will feed you whatever you want it to feed back, so it's not real good critical thinking skills, I guess.

Louis Swart 21:50

But you know, it depends on the way that you've programmed it, depends on the way that you've spoken to it. So if you say to it, I want you to be really argumentative and Every time I tell you something, I want you to give me like an opposing view, and I want you to, you know, not agree with me. If I ask you if something's nice, I want you to give me an honest answer. If you don't like it, tell me you don't like it. You know. And if you do that, then you'll see that the whole thing will change. So it'll start doing that. Now, I did an AI session and I was telling everybody, okay, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little Red Riding Hood story. Just, you know, we're gonna ask ChatGPT to a Red Riding Hood story. And we use Chat GPT, but I mean it's interchangeable, whichever one you're using. And I said, before you start, if you just go in there and you go, hey, tell me a little Red Riding Hood story, it's kind of got a bit of a bit of an idea about you, so it goes, okay, you know, but it's it's a very general, it's very general. So I said to everybody in the in the class, I want you to go in and I want you to give it something that's unusual. Okay, so for example, I love unicorns. I love unicorns, I love rainbows, and when the prince rides off into the sunset, you know, with the princess on the white horse, like that's my that's my that's my jam. Okay, and another one might be another one might be I love horror movies, okay? You know, when there's blood and gore and they've like tied somebody in a house, and there's like all drama, and it's like just I love that. I love like Saw and all those terrible horror movies, okay. And then

The “I Feel Like I Know You” Effect

Louis Swart 23:30

you want to say to it, can you please tell me a story about Little Red Riding Hood? Okay, and it was so funny, the different stories. So it's a little red riding hood story, but you can imagine in the unicorn and rainbow one, okay, and Little Red Riding Hood's there, and it's like just you know, she's skipping through the forest, you know, and it's like just everything's like amazingly beautiful and pleasant.

Jeanne 23:53

Rainbows everywhere.

Louis Swart 23:55

Yeah, and in the horror movie, it's just like whoa, whoa, what's happening to Little Red Riding Hood? What's happened to the wolf? Like, grandma's like not just tied up in the cupboard. You you kind of, you know, going, Whoa, okay. But that's AI for us, hey. So it literally is a tool, and it will just whatever we decide, whatever we ask it to be, or whatever our preferences are, it will mimic those.

Jeanne 24:18

It will adapt it. Yeah, that's crazy. I want to go and do that now, the Red Riding Hood thing. Absolutely not. I want to try that. You know, I keep saying on the podcast lately that I watched this um Netflix, The Last Kingdom. It's like Vikings fighting with England, you know, and Prince Alfred the Great. And I mean King Alfred the Great. It's all fictional. Some a little sounds historic, but it's mostly fictional. And they keep chopping off heads and really sticking them on stakes and then delivering them back to whoever they're trying to defeat. And maybe I should tell it that and say, I wouldn't, yeah, I like those kind of things, and then see if it'll chop the head of the witch off. That would be horrifying. But I want to try that so much. Oh, that's funny. Um that's good. I I don't know. You make me laugh. Oh. So, you know, we're getting close. We have to transition because we're talking so much about AI, but uh I do want to ask you another question. Um, at this stage of your life, after you've had all these businesses, how does your definition of success look different than it did earlier?

Louis Swart 25:37

I think completely different. When I was young, my definition of success was, you know, make a lot of money, have a successful business, um, have a family. But as I've gone along, my definition of success has changed. It's gone very much into like an internal. But you can have all those things and not be internally happy. You can have the outward. And I mean, I was a prime example. I, you know, I grew this business, I had like all these stuff, and I had you know, money was coming in, there was like a lot of money, and you could buy whatever you wanted. But I felt empty inside. And I was like, there's gotta be more. You know, I should be happy because this is what I had as my definition of success. Make money, you know, walk into a room with uh you know hundreds of people and they all recognize you and they know you're the boss. And

Content, Trust & Visibility in Business

Louis Swart 26:30

then I went on this personal discovery journey when I studied NLP, neurolinguistic programming, and I studied hypnotherapy, and I studied timeline therapy, and I studied all these different modalities to try and actually work out, I actually did it to work out what was wrong with me personally. And I got such amazing learnings about myself personally through that whole process. And you know, I use a whole lot of that in my coaching when I'm helping people. But um the biggest outcome was that you've got to be happy in yourself. You know, we can't get happiness, we can't get uh external happiness. You know, if you if you're trying to be happy by pleasing other people, that doesn't work. You know, if you're trying to be happy because other people are happy, or if you need if you need a situation to be happy. When I get rich, I'll be happy. When I get another job, I'll be happy. When I get a new boss, I'll be happy. When I get another partner, I'll be happy. If that's where you are, you're never gonna be happy. Because you'll get a new part, new boss, new partner, new business, you know, wage increase. Okay, and then you'll go, Oh, you know what, I'll be happy when I get this next thing. But the idea of success for me is to be happy now.

Jeanne 27:45

Okay.

Louis Swart 27:46

You know? I mean, we live in the most amazing time ever. You know, we can go onto Netflix and there's just gazillions of things we can choose from. People that have devoted their whole life to actually being able to just create entertainment for us. We can, you know, go to the supermarket and we can buy food or we can go to a restaurant, we can buy food that even the wealthiest kings had no access to. Yeah. We've got clothes that you know, we've all got cupboards full of clothes. And I mean in the kingdom, in the you know, the the kingdom, they all seem to have one outfit. They've got one outfit, and you know, I I don't know how they keep it clean or manage it, but I mean we go to the cupboard and we got so many outfits we can't even decide which one to wear. We've got things like YouTube where we've got, you know, they talk about the um the baby know the Library of Babylon was apparently the biggest library and the most amazing content. We literally have that on our phone. And we can list all the books on audio, we can have you know short versions of the books, we can order the books. We can sit at home and we can order stuff from anywhere in the world, we can we can chat to anybody anywhere in the world, we can actually see the person and chat to them anywhere in the world. These are all incredible reasons to be happy, you know? But I think we overlook those and we think about when this when this other thing happens, I'll be happy. So I found specifically coming from South Africa, in Africa or any of the poorer countries, like if you go to Bali or you know, Thailand or Africa or a lot of those countries, the people are really, really poor. But they've got the biggest smile on their face. They've got the biggest smile on their face and they're like, you know, happy. And and then you come to like an affluent country, maybe like Australia, and if you just sit quietly in the shopping centre and see the people walking through, you know, they've got their Gucci bag or they've got their you know, all their like fancy bags. And they they look they actually look really sad. Even though they've just bought like all this amazing stuff to try and make them happy. And so that to me just indicates that we we're not very good at getting the internal, we're not very good

AI as a Mirror of Your Thinking

Louis Swart 30:00

at getting that internal happiness, you know. It's something that we s a lot of us are still working on. Um and I think it's a long-term thing that we're gonna all work on. But gratitude goes really, really far.

Jeanne 30:11

Yeah, absolutely. Uh well, that's a lot of things to chew on, and a lot of good information. So I appreciate that. I was thinking when you said that several times, it kept popping in my mind. I don't know if you ever have gone somewhere in a bar, maybe, or in a restaurant. It reminds me of Wimpy from Popeye, but is it Wimpy? Yeah, well, he was Wimpy and Popeye. Well, they wear shirts sometimes that say beer is free tomorrow. Or Wimpy said, you know, give me a hamburger today and I'll pay for it tomorrow or whatever. Uh and he never paid for it that way, or you never got beer free. And you know, it's always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. So it kind of goes along with what you're saying. You'd be happy with what you have today where you are. And I've heard some speakers say, you know, like just try to change your mindset to say, I'm happy to go to work today because I I get something out of it. I get money. If that's all you can think of getting out of it, say, I have a steady job and I'm happy to go to work today and try to change your mindset around. But and I think that's what you were saying. Absolutely.

Louis Swart 31:25

How fortunate are we to have jobs? Yes. You know, it's incredible. If you if you didn't have a job when you were sitting at home, wishing you had a job, you would think I'll be happy when I get a job. And then us with jobs are like, yeah. It's a bit like that cartoon, you know, you see the man, you see the man on the bicycle, and he's on the road, and he's on a bicycle, and he's looking across at the man on the motorbike, and he's saying, Oh, I wish I could have that. And then the man on the motorbike is looking at the guy in the car next to him and he's going, Oh, I wish I could have that. And then the guy on the car is looking at the guy in the sports car, and he's going, Oh, I wish I could have that. And then they kind of zoom out, and there's a guy on the balcony in his wheelchair, and he's going, I wish I could have the bicycle. And it's literally just, you know.

Jeanne 32:09

Yeah, that's true. Very true. That's a good analogy. Wow. We're getting pretty deep here. So now I hate to say it, but we gotta change the change the atmosphere. We're gonna go to two truths and a lie. I love it. This is my my favorite part of the call, is always, but this has been great conversation. So I can't say that's true tonight, but normally I have great conversations, but I still love to play this game. I love it. I love it. So I'm gonna share my screen. And so the way we play the game is basically um, for those listening, uh, Lewis has provided me with three headlines. They're pretty wild, and one of them is a lie. So three, uh one out of three is a lie or a very twisted truth. So I'm gonna read his headlines and then I'm gonna

The Red Riding Hood AI Experiment

Jeanne 33:00

guess. And the whole time he's not gonna tell us which is the truth or a lie, but he's gonna explain each story. And then at the end, he'll give us a reveal on which one's the lie, and we'll find out if I got it right. This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts. Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different. Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder you don't need permission to change your story. And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech. Simple socket print, the lightweight blazing, fast label print solution designed for those who need reliability without the blue. With version 1.5, you get instant printing in milliseconds, fully maintained print sequence, and automatic base 6040 coding all without needing print driver installs. If you're running SQL Server 2016 or newer, Simple Socket Print 1.5 drops right in and gets to work. Keep your workflow simple, keep your label printing fast with Simple Socket Print. Thank you to our sponsors. And the headlines are number one, Lewis was out. This is horrible, Lewis. I have to say. Lewis was out with some friends on a weekend and they started a massive bush fire, which burnt down a couple of squares, kilometers of bush. That's awful. All I think about is the California fires now. So I don't know kilometers. We're like more in squares, miles or feet.

Louis Swart 34:48

Uh my miles off.

Jeanne 34:52

Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So all right. Number two, when Lewis was younger, he learned to make his own bombs and experimented with different bombs with his friends. Oh, that's lovely. I'm sure your mother was happy. Number three, Lewis fell in love and married one of his staff. And now his favorite dish is adobo. So, okay. I'm gonna guess that the one that's the lie is number two, because one is bad enough, but two bombs introduced into there. I don't know. So that's my guess. We'll find out. So you start with story number one and you tell us what the details of one. What were you doing out there with matches in a bush?

Louis Swart 35:36

So I am part of the rural fire brigade in Australia, and we do what they call back burning. So back burning is where we actually do a control burn. So we burn a massive piece of a massive piece of bush, you know, and so that we don't have something off the California fires. What happens is when you just let the fire burn on its own, it burns super high and it just will just take everything in its path. Whereas if you set the fire yourself, you can actually burn a fire that burns um downhill, and it will only burn very small fire because it's going downhill. And you know, you've planned for a day when it's not too hot, and it's you know in the middle of winter, and there's a bit of moisture in the air, and so it's a very controlled thing, and it's amazingly good for the bush. It's amazingly good to stop there being massive bushfires. So I would go

Redefining Success & Internal Happiness

Louis Swart 36:30

out on the weekends with you know, it was a volunteer thing, something's all my mates, and that's what we would do.

Jeanne 36:36

Okay, so I went down. I'm not gonna say I I'm thinking that one probably is true, but I was thinking more of a young boy outplay with fire. All right, what about headline number two? About um, that was pretty crazy. That's the one I guess that was like bombs, bombs, bombs, bombs. What were you doing making bombs with your friends? And why did you make bombs anyway?

Louis Swart 36:58

So as a child, I was fascinated by explosives. Anything that exploded and made a noise and just loved it. And we had a kid a couple of couple of houses up, and he would come across and say, Hey, I've worked out how to make a smoke bomb. And you know, we'd go to the chemist and get like sulphur and a whole lot of stuff, and we'd put it into containers, and you know, the whole backyard would just be from this smoke bomb that we created. Or he'd say, Oh, you know, I've just worked out, I've just perfected how to make a matchbox bomb where you can take, you know, matchboxes and you do stuff with it, and you wrap it up with tape, and then you throw it against the wall and it makes a massive explosion. And then our bombs got a little bit more advanced where we were using like chlorine and petrol and a whole lot of other things to make them.

Jeanne 37:48

People were letting you buy these ingredients. They didn't kind of wonder why you were buying all these things.

Louis Swart 37:54

You can make bombs with mo with lots of household stuff. You don't need to mo like there's some extremely deadly household stuff you can make bombs with. And all the bombs is you're getting a like an explosion, but you're putting it in a controlled environment. So as soon as you put it into a controlled environment, it explodes that controlled environment.

Jeanne 38:14

Your mother said what?

Louis Swart 38:15

And it's pretty dangerous, you know, the the one you put into the one you'd put into a coke bottle and then you'd like screw on the lid and then you'd shake it and then you'd throw it. And the Coke bottle would explode, and there'd be pieces of Coke bottle, like little, you know, melted pieces of Coke bottle, yeah, any everywhere.

Jeanne 38:33

Was that the Mentos thing?

Louis Swart 38:36

No, not the Mentos. This one's actually putting chemicals. You're putting in a chemical, like having you putting two household chemicals into a con into a Coke bottle, and then you just shake it, you throw it, and the whole bottle actually explodes, and it's probably shouldn't be saying this because other people are gonna be out thinking, oh, I'm gonna make one of those for me when I get home.

Jeanne 38:54

Well, the only thing our son did was he liked the mentos thing, something in science class or whatever, and then it was just like, oh, I can't stop myself. I'm like, Yes, you can. Stop.

Louis Swart 39:05

No more soda in the house for a while. I have done the mentos. I have done the mentos thing.

Jeanne 39:10

I love Yeah, those were not those that are listening that don't know about it. It's just Coca-Cola and a pack of mentos and put the top back on real quick and boom.

Louis Swart 39:22

Yeah, yeah. Very, very cool.

Jeanne 39:25

Make sure you do it outside. It's not dangerous, I don't think, but it's messy.

Louis Swart 39:30

Make a little hole in make a little hole in the lid and then it really squirts super, super high. Oh, right. You can just go mentos in coke and look it up on fate on YouTube and it's yeah.

Jeanne 39:42

Yeah, it's a thing. Yeah, pretty big thing. Okay, so you did I don't know about these bombs, I'm not sure. So anyway, the next one about marrying your staff.

Louis Swart 39:52

Well, I have 50 Philippine staff in the Philippines, and so I would go over there continually all the time. Um, and then I met somebody over there, and they were amazing. And you know, um, when I went over, we'd go on holiday and we'd go over. And then I just love the culture. The culture's just incredible. They they just they're so family oriented. They they're just incredibly family oriented, and they're just such a beautiful culture, they're just incredible people to be with. And so obviously I fell in love with one of the staff members, and I married them, and now my favorite dish is adobo, which is like a which is like a um pork dish. Like it's pork and rice. Most of their meals are pork and rice, but it's a like a fried pork top dish, you know? So yeah.

Jeanne 40:43

Nice. That's romantic. I hope that one's a the real one. So alrighty. Now we get to reveal which one's the lie.

Louis Swart 40:52

The last one.

Jeanne 40:54

What? And I think that's so romantic. He

Gratitude, Perspective & Modern Life

Jeanne 41:00

snowed me over. Oh well. So what's wrong with it? Your favorite dish is something else, or you did not marry a Filipino?

Louis Swart 41:07

No, I didn't marry a Filipino. No. Oh. So are you married? I was married. I was married um to a South African, a lady that I because I'm from South Africa and I was married to a lady from South Africa. I'm not currently married.

Jeanne 41:25

Oh, okay. Well, all the ladies out there now know. I know the first time I ever talked to you, you were in South Africa taking care of your family, which I thought was very nice. Your parents, I think. Yeah, yeah. And now you're back in Sydney. So, well, I this has been such a wonderful conversation. I just have enjoyed it so much. And I know people are gonna want to know how to get in touch with you. So I'm gonna share my screen one more time and I'm gonna show people um how they can contact you. So you did give me a really nice quote. I don't know if you want to talk about that at the top of the screen.

Louis Swart 42:01

So the quote is all about procrastination, you know, and and we live in a society now where we literally are almost encouraged to procrastinate. You know, and I have a term for it, I call it productive procrastination. So, you know, you're feeling a little bit tired and you go, I'll just watch some Netflix so that I feel better and then I'll start working later. And then you're watching Netflix, but then you completely procrastinate. But then sometimes you know that you should be doing your accounts, but you go, Oh, you know what, I'm gonna create a new document on Canva. Or you know that you should be checking your emails, but you look down and you see the floor is a bit dirty, so you think I'll vacuum the floor. And those things are great, those things do need to get done, you know, the vacuuming the floor, the you know, the the documents and everything. But you kind of need to ask yourself, is this the most important thing? Is this the best use of my time that I could be doing now? And I've got a friend, his name is Shane Byrd, and he always says, What do I need to do that I don't want to do? What do I need to do that I don't want to do? So, you know, it's it's a really powerful situation if you sit down and think about it. You know, because a lot of us are we may be in a relationship, we don't want to be in the relationship, but we're procrastinating to tell the other person. Or we're in a job and you know, we're thinking, I don't want to be here, but but we procrastinating getting another job. Or in our business, we're procrastinating with getting our book out, you know, or we're procrastinating with all these things. And so procrastination really is stopping you reaching your goals. So working out what the most important thing is, what's the most important thing I should be doing today? And if not, if I don't do anything else, make sure I do that one thing.

Jeanne 43:49

Well, I like that whole um story and that quote, but you lost me when you said, you know, you might look down and see the floors need mopping or something, and you just have to go do it. Nope, no, that Not be me. I would look down and see my dogs laying there. It's like, oh, let's go play. True. Not mopping the floor. That's not my jam.

Louis Swart 44:13

But even playing with your dogs is something that you do need to do. But if you're doing if you're playing with your dogs because you don't want to do the encounts, then you that's not a good thing.

Jeanne 44:23

Yeah, that is me. I love it. Okay. Well, they have a

Two Truths & A Lie (Game Begins)

Jeanne 44:30

bunch of other links here that they where they can get you. And then you have something that, and I've seen this site, and I've actually been to one of your classes, and that's so cool. The six months of content in one hour. He left a link here. Do you have anything you want to talk about there?

Louis Swart 44:45

You know, lots of us are struggling to come up with content. And it's understandable because, you know, we're busy doing everything else. And then when I used to do that, I'd be, I'd be getting into bed on a week. I'd been getting into bed. I'd be looking at my phone, maybe setting the alarm and then going, oh, it's Wednesday today. I was I was meant to do content. I meant to do a post today. And then, you know, do you jump out of bed in your pajamas and do the post? Or do you just skip the post for another day? Or how how do you what do you do? And so it constantly feels like this, like, oh, I've got to, I've got to catch up, I've got to do this. Or, you know, you you constantly feel like you're behind. And so what this program does is I work with you for an hour. I work with you for an hour, one-on-one, and I actually create we create six months' worth of content in that one hour. I give you, we work out your ideal avatar, and then we work out, you know, what's the top 10 fears, frustrations, dreams, and desires of your ideal avatar. We work out how do we we do hooks, you know, so what's going to stop people scrolling so they'll read your post. I also then create 20 stories for you that describe what you do. And I'll give you a quick example if that's okay. I can say to you, if you're a solopreneur and you're working on your own, you really should get a team, you know, because working on your own there's a higher chance of failing. Now you may or may not remember that tomorrow, but I'm gonna tell you a story. So there was this old man and he was he was dying, and he had three sons, and so the three sons were always fighting against each other and competing, and the old man wanted them to work together. So he got each of them to go outside and get two sticks. And they came back inside with their two sticks, and he told the first son, break your stick. And he he obviously just broke it. And he told the second son, Break your stick, and the third son, break your stick. And then he said, What I want you to do is I want to tie, I want you to take the other three sticks, take all of your sticks that are left, and I want you to tie them together. And so they tied them together, and then he gave it to the youngest son, and he said, Break it. And the younger son couldn't, because now it was a big bundle of sticks, you know. And he gave it to the ex-son, and even the oldest son couldn't break it. And he said, I want you to remember that if you're working on your own, if you're doing things on your own, the world will be able to break you. But if you're doing stuff together as a team, it's very, very hard to break you.

Jeanne 47:12

Oh, that's nice.

Louis Swart 47:13

Now, tomorrow you might be walking down the road and you know, walking the dogs, and you see a stick and you'll go, Oh wow, that reminds me of that story that Louie told me. Right. Right. More so than what I told you before I told you the story. Okay. And so what I do is

Procrastination & Doing What Matters

Louis Swart 47:30

I help create 20 stories like that for you, for your company, to explain the more difficult concepts so it makes it easier for people to understand what you do. And then I create 20 Facebook posts, I create a lead magnet. So lead magnet is, you know, you kind of give that away to be able to uh get people's email addresses and so that they can, you know, engage with you. And then you have a week to digest all of that, and then we catch up again for 20 minutes, and I then actually sit with you and I do a 20-minute podcast. At the end of that podcast, I break it up into shorts, and then I give you back those shorts to put out on your socials. So it is a genuine six months worth of content in one hour. It's valued at about $2,200, and we do it for $197.

Jeanne 48:18

Amazing.

Louis Swart 48:19

I can only do five a month because obviously, you know, my time's worth about $500 an hour, and so I'm giving you a full hour and a bit, probably an hour and a half. You know, I so it's literally the first come, first serve.

Jeanne 48:32

So well, very nice. Thank you. And this has been such a fantastic uh conversation. I really appreciate you being here. For those listening, I hope you'll stay tuned to Project Candor and join us at the next episode. And until then, I wish you all smooth sailing. Thank you. Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real. If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew. Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck. I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected. See you on the next voyage.