Elevating Excellence: Jim Alenby on Unlocking High Performance in Business and Sport

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Live in the Dream with Curveball Podcast. A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest knows what it means to be good at something versus becoming exceptional. My guest today is Jim Allenby, a high performance coach who has taken the lessons from world elite cricket and transformed them into strategies for senior executive and business leaders. After eight years of coaching, playing interviewing athlete and knowing what's going on behind the scenes, Jim noticed the gap. He noticed that there was plenty of people helping struggling up-and-coming performers, but very few were helping the people that were already successful improve. So we're going to be talking to Jim about his strategies and his cricket play and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. So Jim, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It's um an absolute pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Sure, yeah, it's it's uh it can be a long story or a short story, but the the shortish story is um I'm from Australia, from West Australia, grew up here and like all Aussies, we um we we dream of of playing sport or or particularly playing cricket. It's a very popular sport down here. And throughout my childhood, I was always studied well and did well at school, but the the passion was was cricket. Uh, and then as a an 18-year-old before starting university, I thought I'll go to England in our winter, so there's summer for a gap year, a year off before university starts to to play some cricket and and enjoy the I guess the year before university started. But what started as one gap year ended up being two and ended up being about 20 gap years. So I I never made it back to my original university course that I was supposed to do, but I I had 20 years playing cricket in the UK, and the the last 15 of that was as a professional cricketer. Um played all around the world in in Australia, the UK mainly, uh throughout Asia and India and the subcontinent, and had an absolute ball doing it. And you know, like all things, it unfortunately needs to come to an end at some point as we get older and potentially a little bit more round than we used to be. And and as a I think 35 when I when I stopped professionally full-time, um went into coaching as a as a business and and as a job, and we're still playing at a at a lower level, but but coaching became my my career. Um and and subsequently, in the last I'd say seven or eight years since then, I still have kept the coaching in terms of cricket as a skill, but really developed into more of a, I guess, and more holistic coach from a not just a technical playing point of view, but but more around the mindset and and the mental side of the game. And and performance coaching really is my my passion and and something that that really gets me uh motivated and excited every day to talk to people not only about getting better because they're struggling, like you said in the intro, but but really the those really high-performing people, just getting a little bit extra out of them. So whether it's business or sport, that's that's how most of my days are at the moment. And um very fortunate to to work with some great athletes and also some great business people and just continuing to learn myself as as we go along. So it's uh it's been an interesting, I guess, time over the last 25 years. It certainly didn't uh I guess end or or start how I thought, but I'm very pleased to be where we are today.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Well, speaking of performance coach coaching, you noticed that most performance coaches uh coaching focuses on fixing weaknesses, but what made you understand that already successful people needed a completely different approach?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

I think it was a lot from my own experience initially as a player, you get to a certain level and a certain age, and you're successful, you're doing well, and really the the last little bit is is really tough to get to to go from very good to world class or to go from international level to to best in the world was something that fascinated me. And and to be completely frank, it's something I didn't manage to do myself. I was I was a good cricketer and and you know, played all over the world and and had a had a really awesome career that I'm I'm really happy about. But there probably was a little bit left in the tank that I just didn't get to I guess experience or or try and unlock till it was probably too late physically. So that sort of matching the mental and and I guess emotional side up with the physical ability to execute probably happened a little bit late. So it's it stemmed mainly from my own experience and and then you know, towards the end of your career, you you reflect a lot on on what's happened and and why. Um and I think fortunately in my early time coaching, I managed to work with some players who were who were already good, and it just so happened. I think the ways in which we talked about the game and and the ways in which we tried to work just resonated with those more, I guess, more ambitious people who, yes, they were good, but they really did want to be better and and get as much as possible out of them. And it it leads to a a relatively unbalanced life at times because you are trying to achieve extraordinary things. But it was something that I guess just suited my mindset and I was able to communicate with those people well. Um, that's not to say people who are who are struggling a bit and need to get better. It's not something I do, it's just probably there's a lot of people who are good at that already, which is wonderful, and and something certainly in the last 15, 20 years, we've got more coaches out there able to do it. But I I guess the niche that I found myself in by accident initially was with those real high performing, high-energy people who wanted to to just get that last little bit. And it's a very different way of approaching it. You have to be very direct and and at times risk maybe risk offending people, but that's probably the natural selection that happens throughout your your client, um, your client base.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Well, what can senior executives learn from how elite athletes prepare for a major competition that they aren't learning in the business world?

SPEAKER_02 7:06

I think the business world, as I've seen it, probably the last seven or eight years and and the last probably three years, more senior and working in slightly bigger businesses and and higher-end people is I I just I think they need to remain ambitious for longer. And I think in in business it's hard because everything happens very slowly. You you move up the ranks quite slow, you you become a you know, a manager and then a senior manager and then maybe a director or or however the I guess the hierarchy of the business works. And it can really feel like you're doing a lot of work in between the moments of I guess reward. And and that's something with sport, you you have a weird, I guess, experience in sport where when you're trying to make it as a player or as a coach, you do a lot of work for for no feedback. You you're practicing, you're preparing, you're you're trying to make it into the team, or you're trying to make it as a professional, and you spend five, maybe ten years when you're already quite good, just not getting any feedback or reward. And and the ability to keep motivated and to keep grinding away when you're not getting the external probably support or external rewards is is very difficult. And I think in the business world, what I've seen, especially in leaders, because they're the ones that are they're there to achieve and they're there to do the good work or look after their teams, they often find they're not getting a lot of external support or external validation. And I think it's just developing that way of making sure internally you can understand you're doing a good job. You can understand people around you aren't always going to give you credit and they're not always going to give you a pat on the back. But but I think being motivated by your own internal drive to compete or or to perform or to inspire others is really something that happens a lot in sport, particularly at the start of your career, um, and particularly prior to social media and media now, where obviously everything's very public. I think in a in an era previously gone, sport largely was, yes, it was on the TV on a Sunday or a Saturday, but in between it was very quiet and players had to, they had to improve and get better without any sort of external stimulus or external, yeah, as I say, feedback. So I think in the business world, you need to go long periods of time without knowing if you're doing well or without knowing if if your team around you is really, I guess, buying in. So it's developing those, I guess, internal checkpoints and internal ways of being comfortable that you're doing a good job that that I see a lot of business leaders not doing and therefore not understanding how well they're actually doing and then being motivated to improve themselves. So long way of saying developing some internal systems to to make sure they're always checking in on themselves and always looking to improve as well, because that's you know, it's easy to settle. And I think ambitious people, when they settle, find it really uncomfortable to not be achieving and not be not be improving. So you almost have to develop your own roadmap or pathway to improvement and also give yourself your own feedback at times.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Well, staying with the topic of improvement. Athletes often review their performance after a game. So um talk about what an effective executive performance review looks like and why do so many leaders avoid doing them.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Oh, I think performance review is is often seen as a as a negative now because it's often a very defensive move. It's a I don't want to get sacked or I want to get a good score. Whereas I guess I was very fortunate performance reviews for us when we played sport were very much around, you know, if you were doing well, it was quite obvious. Like I said earlier, it it's there's a lot more outward, I guess, stimulation or your statistics are quite visible. Whereas I think performance reviews now have become more of a defensive tool, maybe by HR, um, maybe by um maybe by internal mechanisms in the business to to maneuver work, I guess, workers or workflow around. And I think it was designed initially as a way of looking for ways to improve, and now it's become ways of of defending a position. So what I've I guess talked to a lot of executives about in their own review process is not just reviewing the outcome of what's happened in the business or throughout a board meeting or throughout a sales pitch or or a team workshop. It's more around reviewing the process they went through to get to the point where they delivered the pitch to the client or they or they stood up on stage and spoke to a crowd. And you know, did they make good decisions on the way? Did they prepare accordingly? Did they give themselves the best chance of success? And if they did all that, then the outcome really becomes less, not less important, but less of a measure of success or less of a measure of whether they've done a good job or not. And I think once again, that's really hard in business, as it is in sport, because ultimately it's a it's a results-based or or outcome-based game or pursuit. So very hard to be process-driven, but but I think once again, if we can create systems for executives where they review preparation and they review decision making along the way, they tend to get better long-term results themselves and their teams. And I think that's something we've developed with a number of leaders, certainly here in Australia and a bit in the UK and throughout Asia, is they're actually looking at that, they review their preparation and then a small amount of review is done on the actual execution or the or the outcome. But really, that review of preparation has given them a chance to to succeed more often, I think, with with a more automated process that eventually becomes becomes habit. So it's really powerful to watch really senior people just get better and better and and just love that process.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Why do you help someone identify the difference between simply being busy versus actually performing at a high level?

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Um, it's a constant challenge. I think we're all busy being busy, and I I think it's uh no one has completed this, or no one has fully achieved the you know, the utopia of of only being busy with things that are important. But the the I guess the drill that I've done a lot with with execs, particularly, is is get them to make a decision. And this goes to decision making, but it also goes to to business, I guess, busyness. And one of the drills we've done is you know, spend a day, preferably a week, but maybe a day, just reviewing every decision you make and and not avoiding any decisions. And what they find is one, they develop a good decision-making skill or muscle, but they also decide the decisions that aren't important for them to make. And I think one of the big things around busyness, and I guess linked into that is decision fatigue, that I'm I'm really, once again, very passionate about and spend a lot of my time speaking about, is we need to learn how to be good decision makers so we can know the decisions we don't make. And I think I think if you can get to a point where you either empower others or accept that some decisions just aren't as important as others, so you can make them quickly. That's where I'm seeing people get a lot of time back. Rather than ruminating on a decision that maybe doesn't have a massive payback or isn't as important, they can say yes, no, maybe later, whatever the answer is, very quickly, when it's just not time-sensitive or it's not important right then. And then they can give enough time and attention to the really important matters in the business or in their lives. And it it's it's a case that sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, but getting them to make as many decisions as possible for multiple days or a week enables them to realize just how I guess important some decisions are, but more importantly, just how important some decisions aren't. And that's where they can not they can often save a lot of five, 10, 30 minute parts of their week, and and they can really claw some time back. And and yeah, as you say, I mean, so many people are busy being busy, and and that's probably one of the least efficient things to do in your life, I would say. So it's really rationalizing down what does take your time and attention and and what can really be, I guess, slightly quicker decisions and and move on to the next, you know, important subject. So yeah, it's it's about selecting what isn't isn't important, I guess, and and if it isn't, it it's trying to offset it to someone else or or to you know, perhaps just make a decision slightly quicker.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Well, in elite sports preparation makes all the difference when pressure arises. So what are the biggest preparation habits that you have noticed that make the big biggest difference for leaders facing high-stakes decisions?

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Um, I guess just sort of following on from the the previous, I guess, answer around decision making and and training yourself to be better and and quicker at it, I think what I see have seen with elite athletes and still see today and and starting to see with business more is that the preparation itself is it's more doing a lot of simple things over a long period of time. So it's a it's a collation of of many years or or many hours of effort come into a moment where the actual outcome or the execution becomes not automated because that's the wrong word, but it becomes a lot more natural to just to do rather than have to keep thinking back and keep second guessing. So I think those in sport, but particularly those in business as well, who think there's one life hack or one productivity hack or one preparation hack, probably tend to struggle a bit because if if their big thing is, I know it's a bad example, but if their big thing is they need to have an ice bath before an event, and for some reason there's no ice bath, then they can often feel a bit stuck or or like they've got no chance of success or or achieving what they need to. So it's it's very much around stacking habits, and that's something in sport you do a lot of. You spend a lot of time doing the same thing over and over, and finding interesting ways to do the same thing over and over is not easy. But I think in business we have to make so many of the same decisions so often that we can often become a little bit, I think is I don't know if it's complacent, but it's perhaps not as not as sharp as we need to be. So I think in terms of productivity or preparation or or you know, preparation hacks, I think it's really doing simple things at a high intensity really is what works in sport. Um and not to not to contradict my previous message around you know letting a lot of decisions go, if it's your core skill, if you're if you're a baseballer and your core skill is throwing, they are gonna do that at extremely high intensity quite often because they need to be world-class at it. And I think if if they're if they were to ever think, well, I already know how to do this, I don't need to throw today, then they're gonna really struggle. And I think it's the same in business. If you're an accountant and your skill is forecasting um cash flow and you spend some time being complacent and not doing that at high intensity or or at high uh visibility or high energy, you're not going to retain high standards and world-class standards. And I think to the point of the topic of the show, what we're talking about today, around people who are already good being better, they don't necessarily do things differently to other people. They just do the same things that are higher intensity more often. So I think that's the real lesson when we we talk about prep hacks. It's it's it's doing the basics but at a higher intensity and doing them often. People talk about world-class basics a lot, but I don't think they go into enough detail when they explain it. So the way I talk, especially with the cricketers, about it is doing basic drills, but doing them extremely high intensity and pushing out the length of time we can keep that intensity up for.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Well, what role does self-awareness play in high performance and what can a person do to discover the blind spots that may be preventing them from reaching their full potential?

SPEAKER_02 21:02

I think the uh self-awareness in high performance is not always evident. And I say that as someone who probably wasn't as self-aware as perhaps I should have been at the best parts of my career. It's when you're a high performer and you're performing well, everything is wonderful and everything is easy and everyone loves you, and it's just the best. And I think it's uh you can often find ways of not rationalizing back to the real world. And I say that with the utmost respect and having made some mistakes myself at times, but I I think it's gonna sound a bit uh corny or a bit generic, but but being process focused is extremely important for grounding people and keeping them level. But I think equally it's it's trying to it's trying to have a bit more perspective over not just your own one skill that you're world class at or you're a high performer at, but it's starting to try and be aware of whether it's what's next or or what's gone before you or what other people are up to as well. It's trying to learn lessons from other industries I've found has been really important personally to me to, as I say, to go from sport to business. But equally, when I see other sports people, getting them some experience with business leaders gives them a different perspective on what they're doing that day and and perhaps some things they can pick up from business, for example. And and equally a lot of the work now I do is around business leaders trying to get lessons from sport. And I think what they end up seeing is there is a few ways to be a high performer, but a lot a lot of the basic traits remain similar. But what they're experiencing in their day-to-day is not abnormal, it's just not talked about a lot because not a lot of people understand it. So I guess trying to get perspectives from other industries and other people has been a really important tool we've used. Um, so it it's it's very difficult. Self-awareness is very, very tough in high performance. You're by nature extremely um you're looking at your own performance more than others, that and that's how you've got so good. So I think just trying to find ways to to speak with with like minded, balanced people is extremely important.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Well, you've spent years around elite athletes and media and interviews. So what have you learnt from elite performers that separate the best from everyone else?

SPEAKER_02 23:28

I think in terms of the interviews and around speaking on podcasts, for example, but the the interviews before podcasts were around is I think we we need to be very careful that we don't, I guess, commit an idea or commit a overly ambitious statement without fully understanding the ramifications or or the long-term impact of it. And I think as a young person coming into new environments and especially being successful early, we all get excited and we all want to, you know, show how good we are and show what we know. So I think as I've got older and particularly in the business world, it's become really important that business leaders as well as sports people, they they probably just need to consider their messaging before presentations or before interviews or before media opportunities. And I think because it's so quick to spread now virally over social media or or AI picks everything up or podcasts, which are great, it's it's just very important to, I guess, get your own thoughts in order first and really consider your own perspective and your own values, etc., before I guess being too outward about what we're saying. I mean, I grew up in a time before social media at the start of my sporting career, and I'm very grateful I did. And also grew up in a time before camera phones, which I'm even more grateful that I did. But I I think now everything's so public that we just need to really consider our messaging first because it it might be an interview you did as a 21-year-old comes back as a 35-year-old and is shared, or in business you might deliver a speech or have an interview with a client or a potential staff member. And you just need to be very mindful of what you say. And I guess probably just being a bit more careful and deliberate in what we say has has been a big learning for me. And once again, that's that's learned from experience of not always getting it right. So that's that's probably the key things I've learned from that side of things.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Well, how should leaders respond when something doesn't go according to plan and is failure actually useful if you know how to review and learn from it?

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Yeah, I mean reviewing is extremely important. I think reviewing success is just as important as reviewing failure. And and like I mentioned before, on the the decision making and and the process focus, I think the the best reviews are based on how we prepared or how we made decisions leading up to an event. And I think there's a there's a very easy framework to follow for that. And it's and it's based around, you know, did we consider all the options? Did we prepare accordingly? Did we take into account the client or the opposition or you know the the internal person? So the the really big focus when when I've done reviews both as a player, then a coach, and now when we do a lot of reviews with with business leaders is as I say, it's it's reviewing the process of both successful actions as well as unsuccessful actions or or events. And after a key amount of data or an amount of time or amount of uh actions that have happened or repetition, we get a critical mass of data that we can then look back through and say, you know, we prepared X, Y, and Z these three times and it was successful, but we missed out Y on this one and we weren't successful. So it's repeatable systems to do the review, and it's as I say, it's based on the preparation and decision-making process throughout, rather than just win-loss or success fail. It's it's looking at how we got to the moment of the performance. And this is something that's really important in sport because it all happens very quick. You know, did the did the batter hit enough balls that week? Did they do the correct drills for the conditions? Did they prepare for the opposition they were playing that week? And all those things. If they can say yes to all of that and then they just didn't perform on the day, then it's not catastrophic. We can always go back and and refine the the small things that maybe they got wrong in that moment, whether it was technical or mental. But if we don't get the prep right, we just don't know what the, I guess, what created the the unsuccessful moment. And equally, if if we don't have repeatable processes, we don't know why we've succeeded either. So I'm a big, big advocate for reviewing process, and I'm a big advocate for reviewing in the same way each time so that we can create sufficient data to look at our decision making and look at how we we arrived at that moment.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Well, if you could give every CEO, executive, or aspiring high performer one principle from elite sports that they could immediately apply to their career, what would it be and why?

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Oh one one thing is difficult. I think it's once again, very, very uh hypocritical because I was not good at this. However, I've learned it's it's thinking a bit more long term. And I think in sport, you have a good game, you're on the front pages or back pages, ideally, not the front. Yeah, in sport, you have a good game, you're on every interview, you get photos in social media, you have thousands of likes on your whatever platform, and and you feel you know like you're on top of the world, and then you have a bad game two days later and and you feel like you're useless again. So, same same with business. I mean, I I go through it in my own business and also the people I work with. You have some days where every client says yes, or every meeting or coaching session goes well, and it's absolutely great. And then you have days where just nothing lands at all, and and you don't always know why. So I think it's thinking long term is so important in sport because it's so up and down. And I think in business it's also the same concept is to out to be able to achieve what you want to over a long period of time. There are going to be some absolutely terrible days in there as well as some absolutely fantastic, you know, days filled with elation and filled with excitement. So I think, yeah, what one thing I've probably done really well since I finished playing was thinking more long term about you know what I was doing, whether it was skill acquisition or whether it was starting a business or running a business or working with with high performers. Um, I certainly got it wrong at times when I was playing sport, and I've got it wrong at times many times in business as well. But I guess as we get older, we get wiser, and I think the earlier you can think long term and stay a bit more level, the more chance you have of of that sort of continued ongoing success rather than I guess moments of brilliance and and moments of of despair, as it were.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Well, for someone who might be listening right now, they might be successful but feel like they've hit a performance plateau. What is the first thing you would tell them to examine?

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah, it's it's probably the biggest thing I come across, especially in sport, is is people who have been really good. They get and and bearing in mind the ages of sport people are different. As as a 30-year-old in sport, you're coming towards the back end of your career. So please don't take this age as the same if if in business. Um but I I think it's it's the main thing that gets the people of that late 20s, early 30s age, when if I start working with them, when they've already been good, they've probably been close to world class and they're sort of deciding if they want to push and and and try and go again and and improve, or they're or they're happy at the level they're at and and they have wonderful careers, and that's fine. It's really about it's more internally re-almost resetting goals and resetting what you want to do with your career and what you want to achieve. And I think it it's a hard one. Sport's a really weird one because you get paid the most amount of money in the last year of your career, generally. I know there's examples, especially in in US sport where you know there's there's veterans, contracts maybe for the last year or two, or players might move teams to free up salary cap. But generally in sport, your your best contract's your last one, and it's and it's very difficult to to let it go at times. And and sometimes people find the, I guess, the drive to push to stay in the game a bit too late. So back to my point around physically maybe not being able to achieve what your mind wants you to. So what I've encouraged people to do when they have plateaued is to reset goals. And you know, when we're young and we're starting in a career, we know what our goals are pretty loosely, but then I don't think we get quite specific enough as we go through our career and as we get to an age where we do plateau, because we've probably achieved what we set out to do, which is a regular job. It's move up the chain to a management level or or whatever the level is that you get to. And it's a very long time between going from there to the next level. So I think it's it's resetting goals, it's being more specific with them. And perhaps it's a case where you need goals that are outside of your current job that are that are ongoing and you can achieve more often. Um, because going from finance director to CEO might take 10 years, but there's other things off-field or out of your out of your day job that you can look at at achieving and ticking off those goals. So, yeah, resetting goals, being more specific with them has been what I've seen work the best. And it and it's not just the long-term goals of becoming CEO or whatever it might be, it's it's the shorter term goals as well. So we always need to be achieving something, and and high-performing people, when they're not achieving something, find themselves really stuck in almost like a caged, uh caged line. So making sure that uh that pacing doesn't happen, always, always achieving, and yeah, that the specificity of the goals becomes more important, but the higher, the higher up you go is would be my um best advice.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Nothing overly new or revolutionary. I've I've done a um something I've been really keen to do for a long time now, is I've I've run a newsletter that I've I've written about high performance and a lot of what we've spoken about today, from um from goal setting to decision making to you know all the various parts of high performance. Um for no other reason, but I had a lot of thoughts in my head that were unspecified or probably hadn't refined to the messaging that I needed to to be able to speak more, I guess, more publicly or or more directly with people about it. So I I've done a newsletter series which I've really enjoyed. It's just on LinkedIn. It's not a um, it's not paid or anything like that. It's just it's just my thoughts that have that have come out and written some articles based it on a lot of the professional sports people and international sports people I've worked with and some of the examples of the work we've done together, um, as well as some some business as well. So hopefully if if if interested, please just have a look at those. Um outside of that, to be completely honest, it's it's a pretty busy time. It's running several businesses and coaching several international players and teams takes a lot of time and effort, and that's good. So, yeah, at the moment, it's just a lot of what I'm trying to do is is talk to people about these topics and get feedback and really understand if it's being explained in a way people understand. Because I I'm really, really passionate that everyone should be able to get the high performance mindset and and the ideas that happen in sport, it should be explained in a way that that people who haven't been in those environments can understand. So just constantly refining my messages and and just constantly trying to trying to speak in a way that's both interesting, informative, but more importantly in a way people can resonate with and understand. So outside of that, nothing overly exciting, nothing uh, you know, I've got no movies coming out or anything like that. It's just grinding away and business as usual and and having the time of my life, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

So, what's the best way people can keep up? Witch, you have a website or is it on LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_02 35:54

No, LinkedIn's the best for those. I do have a website, it's just playerschoice.com.au. Um, the reason I have that website is when I finished playing cricket, I set up a coaching website for cricket, and and it's I've got a lot of uh a lot of people that I've coached over the years, so it made sense to keep that website going. Um so yeah, just playerschoice.com.au and all the newsletters will be going on there. Um, it's just a place where we share some information as well about the the sports people I work with too. They're always happy to do the odd interview. So yeah, please, please check it out. Um that's where we're at.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

All right, we'll close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if there was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

Well, I just think it's such a a great thing to listen to podcasts like like this one and and and any opportunity to learn new experiences or new ways of doing things is it's just so uh it's such an important thing at the moment. And I think with AI, obviously, what's happening with AI is is extremely fast. Um it's August of 2026, it's it's happening quick. Um, social media is happening quick. I think it's really important that we keep thinking for ourselves and keep uh keep our decision-making skills uh refined, keep training them, keep making decisions as often as we can. It's so it's so easy to delegate our thoughts out. And I really believe that I believe AI is extremely important, and I think it's gonna do some wonderful things as well. But I think as as people who are looking to perform, to improve, to do things in the world that are that are interesting and exciting, I think we need to keep making decisions and keep thinking for ourselves as much as we possibly can. Um, and and joining you know, website, sorry, podcasts like this, it's so great for me to be able to do it. And hopefully listeners are just finding opportunities to to refine their own thoughts um rather than always being told, told what to think. And I'm very optimistic about what's going to happen in the future, but uh I think yeah, we're in for a rough few years and keep uh yeah, just keep on trying to be as human as possible and and have as many human conversations as we can, and um, I think it'll all be okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

All right, ladies and gentlemen, playerschoice.com.au is and LinkedIn is the place to keep up with everything Jim is up to and gonna be up to. So please be sure to check him out. Also, if you want to keep up with all things living the dream, visit www.curbball337.com. Please share the website to show to everybody that you know and tell your friends about signing up for the email list to keep up with all things living the dream. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Jim, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.