Visibility, Innovation & Purpose - Interview with Gordon Jenkins - the Visible Guy

Interviews with Influencers by Dallas McMillan

Title

Visibility, Innovation & Purpose – Gordon Jenkins – The Visible Guy

Image

Interview URL: http://digitalinfluence.com.au/visibility-innovation-purpose-gordon-jenkins-the-visible-guy/ Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWz2obcBUg4 See more Digital Influence Interviews: http://digitalinfluence.com.au/interviews

Gordon Jenkins - the Visible Guy Page 2 of 15

Dallas: Well hello, and welcome to Digital Influence. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing

Gordon Jenkins, the Visible Guy. Now Gordon has a really fascinating history and we were talking earlier about the passion that he brings to business. So he's working in the digital and innovation field, but he's got a unique take on it. I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.

Welcome Gordon, thanks for coming on the show.

Gordon: Hi, no problem, thanks Dallas, thanks for having me, and welcome everyone.

Dallas: Terrific, well I'll let you tell us about who you are and what you do, because it's a bit more of a complex story than some. There's two aspects to your business-‐

Gordon: Sure.

Dallas: And we were just talking about how they're coming together and it's a good example of how quickly the world changes and how we need to respond to the market and our clients. So tell us about you and your business.

Gordon: Sure, love to, thanks a lot. So let's start off with where I am today and then go backwards, and that will actually help you understand how I work with organizations. So straight to the point, people call me the Visible Guy, and that's what I'm getting to be known as and what that means is that I enable invisible people in organizations to become visible.

Dallas: Great.

Gordon: It's not marketing, it's about being visible and something that I call networking with purpose, and let's put that into context that I believe that invisible people in organizations collect social media likes and business cards, and visible people in organizations network with a real purpose to goals. But the Invisible Guy is relatively new, I setup a business called Adaptive Innovation, which is a management consultancy business with a difference, and I think it's got a unique difference. Yeah we focus around the innovation, around opportunity, around success but as you will know Dallas, and people listening here, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of management consultants, business advisors and how do we do something that's real different?

People say how do you do something and straight away I go right into the outcomes I've achieved, and we can talk about some of the outcomes we've achieved, but invariably it's about the passion I've gone in. A little bit of my history, about 10 years ago my wife got diagnosed with a life threatening illness and needed a double lung transplant and I found a passion.


Dallas: [crosstalk 00:02:28]

Gordon: And I found a passion, I didn't find a passion, I started to understand where my passion

was, my passion is really about charity, foundations and really trying to support that. So a lot of what I do in my life today is about the now, the opportunity we've got, and I say you know, in our lifetime we have 680 million heartbeats, that's 24,000, 25,000 heartbeats a day. I'm 46 years old, I've already used half my heartbeats I don't want to waste another single day and when I go into organizations and when I sit with people it's about being in a very competitive industry and change, and changing now. Not tomorrow, tomorrow, we're going to do it now and really the innovation that comes around technology is your friend and not your foe, and it's about how you use that technology in order to do that.

As I tell people about Adaptive Innovation and the stories behind that and the real stories of businesses, a lot comes in about my life, and more people, the clients were more interested about me, about the culture, my culture and my values, and that's how the Visible Guy came about. Because the Visible Guy is about my history, my childhood as being bullied, through the livelihood as a, through going through the issues with my wife, through her transplant. But no one asking about me as a person and that got me thinking about organizations. You hear the comment about the difference between hearing and listening, well we're often seen but we're not visible as organizations and people, and that's really how Adaptive Innovation makes sure that you as an organization and you as an individual are really being visible to your network and to your ambassador, your ambassadors know how your going to be visible.

So that's a little bit about me, I've spent 20 odd years in financial services. A lot of that has been spent on the client facing side, working for investment banks, private equity, ran a family business with my father for 35 years. So yeah my worldly experience is quite vast and quite diverse. My network is huge, I've been able to learn off other people's networks as well. But as a business consultant, as a coach, it's about being accountable, it's about being measurable and it's about having very, very clear outcomes. If it's not those three then we just don't get on really.

Dallas: I love that idea that innovation has to be now. So often we go "oh yeah, we should innovate, oh, maybe later" you know.

Gordon: Yeah, it's really interesting now. Not only is it now but give it a go, you actually have to give it a go and understand when it doesn't work, why it doesn't work. It doesn't necessarily mean your wrong, it's the old analogy about what makes a great basketball player, it's not the shots you've achieved, it's not the three pointers you've hit, it's the three pointers that you've missed and learning from that. Innovation changes so quickly and I think we often try to do things ourselves and what innovation really allows us to do is not to use it. So for example, I've got someone in Peru who enters all my business cards into my CRM system, cost me eight dollars an hour. Why? Well I'm dyslexic so my typing sometimes is wrong but I know someone can do it and it saves me two or three hours a week to do it, so why not use technology that way.


My articles and everything are all written by me because no one can write for me. But

someone can do all the spellchecking and the grammar checking and using the innovation behind that. So that's what we bring into business and try to be really different about. It's like you know we're on Skype now, we're on this Google hangout thing now, so this is innovation. Whereas before, four, five years ago we would've been on the phone.

Dallas: Or just not done it.

Gordon: Or not just done it, yeah.

Dallas: It opens up all these new doors, doesn't it?

Gordon: It opens up the new doors, there's no barriers, and I think in organizations and people today when I go into see them, it's really about the desire to change. If people say they don't want to change that's okay, to me that's laziness and that's their own decision. When people say we can't change then it's really about understanding why you don't think you can. You can change, because everyone can change, it's whether they want to change that's the issue, if that makes sense.

Dallas: Yeah, great. So tell us a bit more about who you work with. What are the problems that they face or the challenges or opportunities they see that make them think look we should get in a innovation specialist, and I've heard Gordon is good. What makes them come to you? What situation are they in?

Gordon: So yeah, it's really interesting. About 98% of my clients are all referrals. I'm trying out some really interesting things on marketing just through Instagram and twitter at the moment. It's really interesting the interest I'm getting for the Visible Guy through Instagram and twitter, versus Adaptive Innovation and if people have a look at the websites they'll see the websites are completely different. But when you dig deep and look at the framework and the programs, the framework and the programs are very similar. So it's understanding the marketplace on that side is how it's attracting for me. That's quite an interesting prospect.

Comes back to this thing about listening. So often when I sit down with people and organizations or individuals, I listen. Which is hard for me because I like talking, and you listen and in essence we look at the barriers. What I'm trying to find out is the barriers of change. What are the barriers to change and why, and part of that is understanding the barriers and the knowledge you gain from that and I think that one of the reasons that people come to Gordon is not because of the solution, but my network. This network with purpose, it is a very, very deep network and it's a very wide network. One thing I learnt very quickly in this business is don't try to do everything yourself. You're not expected to do everything yourself, what you're expected to do is understand solutions and understand how to drive solutions.

So let me put that into context, when I work for one client we saved 100,000 dollars in


SEO marketing for them. Now I'm not an SEO expert by any chance, and they went "oh, we've saved 100,000 dollars" I went "no, no, no. 98% of your clients are referrals. You don't need to get people to come to your website, what you need to do is when they're on the website, what are they then doing?" So the 100,000 dollars was redirected into a different digital marketing expense. It's not saving the money but it's using the 100,000 dollars in a different way which a more measurable an outcome process.

I sit down with organizations and they often say "you know, we've got problems with our sales" and I go "okay, talk to me more about your sales" and they say "well, you know, we're not hitting sales targets." Okay, why aren't you hitting sales targets? As soon as you say we're not hitting sales targets, that could be for a number of reasons. It could be because its got the wrong salespeople in, it could be we've set the wrong sales target, it could be because the communication is wrong. It could be because the clients just aren't interested in the products, there's a number of different factors behind that, and one of the questions I often ask, and I was at a networking function last night and they were talking about sales and I gave the example of a car showroom.

If your management team comes down and says "you've got to sell 10 cars" and I say to Dallas "you've got to sell 10 cars" and Dallas goes "that's great." Dallas is thinking well actually, I was thinking I was going to have to sell 13 cars a month, but now I only have to sell 10 cars. Now if you changed the question around and go "Dallas, how many cars you think you can sell?" "Oh, I think I can sell 13." You've gone okay, well I've just got a 30% increase in my sales and then you turn around to Dallas and go "well if you can do 15 a month instead of 13 a month, do you think that's a stretch?" And you go "oh yeah" and you say to Dallas "well if you were to do 15, what type of reward would you want?" "Don't know" and then go to Gordon and say to Gordon "how many cars do you think you can sell, Gordon?" And he's gone and said "oh, I'm thinking I'll sell eight" and you go "oh, okay." Well they're below your expectations, so you can see straight away as a management team if you go in and you're telling Dallas to sell 10, and he's your great salesman, he's taking his foot off the pedal but then you go to Gordon who can only sell eight.

You need to understand what are the barriers. Well I don't understand the jargon that used for the technical side that you want me to sell for the engine. Oh, okay so if we give you more training on the engine and the components of the engine, do you think you can get to 10? Yeah. Okay, well let's do the training. So you've actually gone and asked the questions about why, and then I look at that and go okay, well that person needs some development training. That's not me that-‐

Dallas: Yes.

Gordon: Does that, but one of my partners has won the 2016 HR Leadership and Development Program, so why wouldn't I bring that person in to help with the development program. Get that person skilled up and then I'd work with that client to make sure that they could actually get the sales. Once we know they can achieve the sales, if the sales drop off it's not a sale problem you've got, it's a person problem not wanting to do the job. That's the type of detail going, I think often people come in here and go right into


solution mode and we're just trying to work out well, what are the problems? I talk often about having a panoramic view and sitting on top of that mountain, getting away from all the noise and just looking down at what is actually going on in the business and how do we go around it.

We talk a lot about referrals in how'd you go and ask a client for referrals, in the process to go to do referrals. People say to me we have a problem, one firm we did what I class as a CIA program, which is a client intel program and we generated three years worth of referrals.

Dallas: Wow.

Gordon: Three years worth of referrals with a 40% conversion. So in the first year they could've achieved 1.5 million dollars in new revenue on a 5 million dollar revenue base.

Dallas: Gee.

Gordon: Right. They didn't do it because they didn't know actually how to go and ask the client for the referral and how to actually upsell. What the clients have actually said to them we want to sell.

Dallas: Right, yep.

Gordon: Sat down with another client, we found out clients actually think they were cheap but staff thought they were expensive, so it talks about the value proposition. So it's not about your sales, you can't achieve your sales and you think it's a client problem, no it's not, it's the staff think that your product is actually expensive. So they're actually not valuing the service that they're delivering, so they client is not the problem, the client is actually internal. So those are the things that we really look at and when it comes to issues like that internally I might have to bring in an accounting firm, I might have to bring in a business analyst. It's not necessarily me to do, but it's all about the accountability and knowing what outcomes we're going to get.

So that's why I think I'm a little bit different, in terms of clients I get from all different types of sectors. A lot of this revolves around coaching as well and at the moment I'm coaching, it sounds quite strange this, and we'll talk about innovation, there's an 18 year old lady in Costa Rica, believe it or not, a lady called Sofia, and Sofia is a bassoon player and she's been awarded into the Conservatorium of Sydney. What we're trying to do with it, we're really trying to make her visible so she can get some funding.

Now I got no idea about music, in fact I got thrown out of a brass band because I couldn't hit the triangle in tune. Right, I'm bad, but I actually sat down with her and just talked to her about what she's doing, how she's doing it and we got her onto social media. We've identified a few people but then you forget, she says to me "oh, you going to do this bird thing?" The bird thing, the bird thing, what we're doing Instagram, we're doing LinkedIn, the bird thing, twitter. Right so you think an 18 year old knows all about twitter. No, it's not, so the perception that you think people know.


So I got clients from there all the way through to my current client at the moment is,

one of the bigger clients I'm dealing with is a firm, an organization called Able Australia. Able Australia is one of the largest disability organizations in Australia, and we're really doing some really interesting with their clients and their employees around what is known as client intel appraisal. So the CIA program I deliver, and what's really interesting about that is people with disabilities often aren't asked what they want and they need because of their disability in trying to communicate with them. I've taken a platform from the States that has both responsive, from the mobile perspective but also accessibility from a disability perspective. So now we can actually go down and actually ask the person needing the service what do they actually want. What are the problems they actually want and what do they actually want to do it. Now it's not a difficult system to use, but there's been a heck of a lot of time and investment on my part to ensure that the products I'm bringing along is the right product, and can deliver it to the client.

But as I'm talking to the client about the products and services they're delivering, what we're finding internally is there's a lot of technical jargon, and what they're using internally and they assume that people understand on the outside. We're finding that people on the outside don't really understand it, or aren't necessarily using the same jargon and what we're finding out of that is there's actually some great product upsell along the process. That services that clients are using from other service providers when it makes it more efficient to use it internally. We're also finding where the believe in services are required for the future as well. So we're asking some really deep questions and we know we're on for a winner because whilst we kind of kept this relatively quiet, we're getting already inquiries from national bodies within the disability sector about the findings. They want to know about how we've got the system to develop it.

Dallas: Great.

Gordon: So it's quite a varied range.

Dallas: Yeah, definitely diverse.

Gordon: And it's diverse, and what's really interesting when you go into an organization and the management team actually turn around and say "well, can we do this? Can we do this? Oh, we should really want to do this." You become the facilitator. You don't as a business apply it, I don't even have to sell myself now because the management team can actually see crikey, we've got something, we can really dig deep into our client knowledge and ask staff [inaudible 00:17:19] and why? Because the outcomes for the client are going to be brilliant, and to me that's an innovation that probably I would say two years ago wasn't available, 12 months ago wasn't available.

Dallas: Wow, great.

Gordon: So it's brilliant.


Dallas: Awesome. Hey Gordon, I'm really keen to hear more about the Visible Guy versus Adaptive Innovation because that's a really common question with entrepreneurs and as someone who's sort of in the marketing and strategic direction space, I know you will have long and hard about your own situation. I have to, you know, you end up with these business brands and personal brands and sometimes it's hard to know how they fit together. So tell us a bit about your experience with those two, why they were born separately-‐

Gordon: Sure.

Dallas: Why they're coming together.

Gordon: So-‐

Dallas: What people should do, everyone wants to just know should I be a business brand or should I be a personal brand. Tell us the one word answer.

Gordon: So, let me put it in a simple way, if you go and ask four people for their view you get eight different answer and you'll be more confused, whatever you're doing. So let's do Adaptive.

Adaptive Innovation has been a natural progression of me in business for 20 odd years, right, 25 years. The Visible Guy has been ... it's passion that's been there but I've not really understood it until now, and that doesn't mean I've missed an opportunity, what it means is [inaudible 00:18:49]. Let me go back and explain what that's about. When Wendy got diagnosed with her illness and we don't know how long Wendy has to live, whether it's going to be another year, five years, whatever, our life changed, we got off the corporate gravy train and we started completing bucket lists.

We're on our sixth bucket list now, the fifth one was quite interesting because that had shooting involved in it and I wasn't quite sure what shooting meant, but we went to Vegas and did some shooting. But completing that bucket list was really my purpose because that really enabled me to have real clear goals and achieving it, and let me tell you some of the things we've done. We've gone to Italy, we spent three months in Italy, two months in France, I've learnt to cook in Tuscany. We've eaten at some fantastic restaurants, our passion is food and wine. Food and alcohol.

When I was a kid, I was bullied as a kid and people knew I was getting bullied and I got bullied for about four or five years and no one really did anything about it, and I had to learn martial arts to actually get myself out of my trouble. There's times when I thought life is probably not worth living any longer, on that side. I struggled through school, I wasn't the most intelligent guy, got through to university and in my last year of doing my master degree, found out I was dyslexic. I thought crikey, if only I would've known six years ago, eight years ago my english would've been a lot better.

Then when I've come through to work and I've worked in big corporates, I've always been the person who is being seen in organizations but I've never really been visible. It


almost felt like sometimes things were happening, when the big changes were happening I was never really there. So I was always missing out on something and then when things happened with Wendy, yes all right all the focus was on Wendy but I really needed some help. I really needed some real emotional coaching, coaching about what was going on, life and death situations. But no one cared about me, no one asked me how am I doing, Gordon? Or what am I doing? And when they did find out that I needed care they put me in touch with a very old female psychologist, in a hot sweaty room. I spent 175 dollars talking about my life, came out and thought ... they're putting me on a path that other people have trod because that's the only way to solve the problem and what that means is that I realized in my life suddenly that we shouldn't tread the path other people have chosen, you should tread the path that suits you. You might get to the same outcomes but you need to tread the path that's right for you.

If I would've been allowed to do home economics, which is cooking back in the UK, there's no doubt I would be a cook or one of the best chefs in the world. But I had to do metalwork, and I know today I'm safer with my sushi knives than I am with a hammer and screwdriver. Right, give me a hammer and screwdriver you'll knock down the house, give me a set of sushi knives and I'm absolutely fine.

Dallas: Yep.

Gordon: So the Visible Guy came about, I met a guy in Melbourne, and I'll give him a plug, he's called the Bucket List Guy.

Dallas: Yep.

Gordon: And I sent him an email, took me six months to send him an email and I said I don't know where I'm going with this but people find my story quite interesting. My story is also affecting my business and I sent him a list, and he goes you're the Visible Guy. He said no, you're the Invisible Guy and we worked on the story of the Invisible Guy, and the Invisible Guy became very negative. Started giving the wrong message, so we changed it to the Visible Guy and it's about helping people, it's about coaching people. But as I started talking about that, people were relating that to Adaptive Innovation.

Dallas: Sure, yeah.

Gordon: I'm going no, they're different. They're different, they're different, they're different, they're different. But the market has moved them together and what this really means is do not try to defy where the market is moving you. If the market is saying that the message you're giving is aligned, it is aligned. So today as I sit here, corporations take onboard Adaptive Innovation because of the systems, the framework and the programs involved in that. Individuals take onboard the Invisible Guy, because that's personal coaching, that type of stuff. Leaders of organizations mix and match the both, and what I say to people is don't try to put a label on it. It's what's underneath it that it's really, really important. You don't know whether you're engaging the Visible Guy or the Adaptive Innovation, it is in a sense it's a whole, what I class as a black hole. It's everything underneath it.


In terms of how I get paid and where my life is, and this again is really important in

terms of the message that we give to clients, about 25% of what I earn on the Visible Guy goes straight to our, we run a foundation called Lungitude Foundation. 25% of the that goes to that foundation and about 10% of what I earn on Adaptive Innovation goes to the foundation, the difference between that is one has to pay for my private wealth.

Dallas: Yes.

Gordon: Because we need to feed and live, and the other one is a foundation so I'm very clear about what goes through. But that straight away, talk about innovation, when clients hear about that they want to know more about the foundation, about why and the purpose. Why? Because that makes them understand who I am and what I am, the culture. I'm not going to deliver a service that they know benefits thousands and thousands of people and let that reputation be damaged. So it's really-‐

Dallas: Tell us a bit more about the foundation and the work it focuses on doing, Gordon.

Gordon: Sure, so the foundation is called Lungitude Foundation. The long name is Lung Transplant Research Australia, Inc.

Dallas: Uh huh.

Gordon: [inaudible 00:24:51] and I hate the word not-‐for-‐profit. I do not like those words because a not-‐for-‐profit organization is a profitable business, it has to be run like a business.

Dallas: Yes.

Gordon: So the first thing about our foundation is we're a totally governed foundation. We've got all the governance in place, including the IP and the trademarks. As any business owner listening here, if you do not have your trademarks and your IP in place, get it in place. As a side note, the Visible Guy has gone from page eight on Google to number three on page one in a matter of two weeks. Do you think I've got my IP in place?

Dallas: Yes.

Gordon: I've got my IP in place, absolutely I've got an IP in place. So Lungitude is ... it provides research funding to the lung transplant team at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, towards understanding lung transplant rejection and lung life. It's a foundation that's emerged from another foundation that was setup about 12 years ago and again it really comes back to business, you have to understand when a business needs to be changing and to evolve. The name of that foundation was the Margaret Pratt Foundation, means probably nothing to anyone here. It's not associated with the Pratt family in Melbourne, it was because it was associated with one person. So we needed to change the name of that foundation, so we've established a brand new foundation with new governance.


What we've managed to do over the last 10 years with this foundation, is we've managed to initiate research which today is saving lives all around the world. Not just saving lives in lung transplant, but we now can work on people to prevent them from having a lung transplant because the research is so good they may not need a transplant to start with.

Dallas: Great.

Gordon: It goes into stem cell research, it goes into blood cell research and really collaboration, again organizations, so we're doing a lot of collaboration with the Red Cross in terms of blood cells. So to give you an example as a lung transplant recipient, if you were to get an illness, we're now able to go in and found out whether it's the lungs that are sick, as in the DNA of the person who provided lungs-‐

Dallas: Sure.

Gordon: Whether it's your body that's sick. Whereas before you treated the whole person, so that's a bit like with the computer. If your computer is broken, do you reset everything on your computer or do you just go in and find out what part of that program is not working and correct that program.

Dallas: Sure, yeah.

Gordon: That's in simple terms, right. But that's innovation, that's where commercial, for profit and not-‐for-‐profit organizations have got together and really worked about it. It's a fantastic organization, the beauty of what we have is we don't know how many thousands of lives we've saved or we've extended. What I do know is that Wendy is coming up to a 10th year of her lung transplant, being a lung transplant recipient. She didn't expect to get past three years.

Dallas: Wow.

Gordon: Then we didn't expect to get past five years, then we didn't expect to get 10 years. She's now threatening to be with us till I'm 85, and I'm going fuck, I don't know whether we can afford that. But it's a real passion, that's the passion when we talk about organizations and don't leave it till tomorrow. U do it now, your competitors aren't leaving it till tomorrow. You need to have both a tactical and strategic advantage against your competition today, and you need to make sure that you've got some sustainability to alter at the same time.

[inaudible 00:28:36] Foundation, in terms of a strategic plan, in terms of raising our awareness [inaudible 00:28:43] organization, even down to the fact that we make one of our values is we must have fun. We must have fun in what we do.

Dallas: Uh huh.

Gordon: Right, if we're doing this for 16, 18 hours a day, we need to have fun.


Dallas: Yeah, for sure.

Gordon: To me it's a real passion, to give you an example last night I was at a function, it was a

private equity function and they said "you know, do you have any real problems?" I put my hand up and said "look, I have a real problem about how you differentiate between the emotional need and the physical need." So I'm focused on the foundation to keep that running, but how do you keep on doing the business at the same time? And just by talking to that I've picked up a client on the backend of that who wants some coaching about their business, about how to get the right culture in their business. So it's really interesting. To me it all comes together, I know it might sound a bit mish mash but Invisible Guy and Adaptive Innovation is really ... a name, just two names. Underneath it continue innovation, continued learning. Continued being able to be visible, ensuring that I stand out.

Dallas: Yeah, for sure.

Gordon: People know who I am. To the extent that now I get introduced as the Visible Guy.

Dallas: Yeah.

Gordon: People-‐

Dallas: So if someone is listening to this and thinking oh look, that sounds kind of interesting but they're not really sure where to take it, what are some sort of red flags that they might need your help or that they should be looking at innovation or alternatively, things on the horizon, big opportunities that people should be gearing up for. What are some indicators of people who would be ideal clients for you or someone like you?

Gordon: Sure. So a couple of things along that. I started off really about ... I focus on the difference between client satisfaction and client loyalty. The two things are completely different and people assume if you've got client satisfaction, you've got client loyalty. They are completely different. Let me do that for you. You're on a Telstra phone, you're happy with your Telstra phone and you just use it. No problems at all, you just use it, you just use it. However, if Optus come along and say here's a better deal and it's going to save you 100 dollars a month, you'll swap. Right, you're satisfied but you're not loyal.

Dallas: Yep.

Gordon: If you're at Cairns Airport and the only airline out of that is Qantas, right you're absolutely loyal to Qantas because you've got no choice.

Dallas: Sure, yep.

Gordon: It doesn't mean that you're satisfied.

Dallas: Yes.


Gordon: Yes. That's two very simple ways, there's an absolute difference and people get mixed

up between client loyalty and client satisfaction. People that use me just usually ring me up and say "hey Gordon, can we have a chat? I've got a problem. Oh, I think I've got a problem."

Dallas: Yep.

Gordon: Or "hey Gordon, I want to go into this market, I just want to check with you how I enter this market." Or some people ring me up and they've been referred through to me and they wanted coaching, so where do I direct them to? First thing I direct them to is my clients. I say "well go and speak to my clients and find out some references." I've got a white paper on client loyalty and client satisfaction and anyone that's here can just contact at [email protected] and I'll send them a copy of that or go on the website you'll get an automatic connection for that.

But I also sit down with people and say "well okay, let's organize a 15 minute Skype call and we'll just chat." No cost, that 15 minutes sometimes goes to half an hour. But it's just chats about finding out where we connect. In terms of where people should start looking if they think they want help or if they think they should start looking at their businesses, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I don't tend to do a lot of reading because I'm a dyslexic, I don't tend to do it. You can do podcasts on the go and audio on the go. I listen to a lot of people, I learn constantly. As a coach I have a coach and as mentor I have a mentor. You never stop learning. I'm inspired by some of the most remarkable people in the world, famous people and not so famous people. I'm absolutely empowered by the ability to get off your backside and just do it, don't make excuses. I use a thing that nothing is impossible because I am possible.

Dallas: Yes.

Gordon: Understand the difference there, and that the word change actually says can change. So don't give me any excuses. One of the biggest questions I ask people on the mentoring side is are you living or are you surviving?

Dallas: Right.

Gordon: They say pardon? I say tell me are you living or are you surviving? Because we want to be living and I learnt that the hard way. Just surviving day by day is not the way to go, it's not good for your health, it's not good for your emotions, it's not good for your interactions with people. You really got to be living, you got to have a purpose and that purpose for me is the passion, and people say how do I find my passion? I said you don't find a passion, everyone has the passion, what you don't realize is you don't understand what your passion is and what to do with the passion.

Dallas: Sure.

Gordon: And there's a difference between that. I can't tell Dallas what his passion is but when


you understand what your passion is, we'll help you explore that passion and expand it and involve it in your life, and that's where we crossover from the Visible Guy to Adaptive Innovation, in terms of really exploring that and going into then getting some really great outcomes on that. Hope that makes sense.

Dallas: Yep, for sure. Fantastic. Well thanks Gordon, there's been some real nuggets there.

Gordon: [inaudible 00:35:10]

Dallas: You did share briefly your details, but could you just tell us again how people can get in touch if they'd like to know more about what you do or have a talk to you.

Gordon: Sure. So my email address is [email protected], my twitter and my Instagram handle is @imthevisibleguy

Dallas: Uh huh.

Gordon: And contact me, I'm more than happy to have a Skype call with anyone and just talk about what they want. Invariably, I might not be able to help them. It might not be me, but it might be my network, and you know what I introduce my network. To give you an idea, in the last 12 months I've introduced around about 38, 40 people in my network to other people because there's business to be done with other people. I'm happy to have a Skype call, happy to send a copy of the eBook, if you really want to call me, you can call me on my mobile. 0414 414 481 and typically being the Visible Guy, yeah, I'm all over social media. So those I think are the easiest way to get a hold of me and I'm happy to have a chat with anyone to go forward. Because that's how we met, Dallas, we met because-‐

Dallas: [crosstalk 00:36:30]

Gordon: There was something I wrote on social media. You were intrigued, I was intrigued that you were intrigued. We got together, we had a conversation, probably about six months ago now I think it was.

Dallas: Yes, it was.

Gordon: There was a connection, I said let's hold on a minute because something is changing in my life and bits and pieces, and we've kept in touch and that's where we've come from. There's intrigue behind, that's how we develop relationships and you know, that's how we network with purpose.

Dallas: For sure, and something that's stuck with me over the last few years, is that so often when we're feeling stuck in life or in business and we think oh, I just need more money or if I could just buy this thing or if only we lived here we'd be okay. But so often it's not a thing you need, it's a person and someone else has the answers and it might not be someone you know directly, it might be someone that someone else know. So rather than thinking what's the thing? Think who's the person?


Gordon: Exactly. This sounds really stupid, but the daftest question is the question you don't ask.

Dallas: For sure. All right, well fantastic Gordon, I really appreciate your time-‐

Gordon: Thank you. Thank you Dallas, it's great.

Dallas: And it's been a pleasure talking to you.

Gordon: Cheers, thank you. Thanks everyone for listening.

Dallas: Terrific.

Gordon: Cheers.

Dallas: Thanks again, and we'll see you all next time.

V i s i b i l i t y , I n n o v a t i o n & P u r p o s e – G o r d o n J e n k i n s – T h e V i s i b l e G u y Image

Interview URL: http://digitalinfluence.com.au/visibility-innovation-purpose-gordon-jenkins-the-visible-guy/ Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWz2obcBUg4 See more Digital Influence Interviews: http://digitalinfluence.com.au/interviews

Leadership & Management

Visibility, Innovation & Purpose - Interview with Gordon Jenkins - the Visible Guy