My name is Chris Andersen and I help men build their confidence through my Cultivated Confidence coaching program to help them more easily achieve their goals.
I work with my clients during mornings, evenings and weekends as I help Aussies save on home insurance throughout the week in my role at Compare The Market.
Over the last few years, I worked in real estate and wrote a few reports that you may find useful, as below:
On the first Friday of each month we meet over a few beers and some interesting conversations at Beers With Mates.
Each month, I interview someone to learn more about them and their business or career on the podcast.
If you have any questions, please reach out at ando@andoandco.com or 0424 682 636.
You can also listen to me telling my story so far on the podcast or read my answers to Tim Ferriss’ Tribe of Mentor questions below.
1. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
I really value books and I share my library widely but I haven’t often given them as gifts. Instead, I give recommendations then an offer to lend the book. For someone with similar interests to me, these are the books I’d recommend:
Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl – A must read for everyone. Key takeaway – If you give up the will to live, you will die. Those with something to live for will endure hardships more easily.
Give and Take – Adam Grant – A great book to confirm that being a good person, a giver, is the right move. Instead of looking at someone like Donald Trump, a taker, as a beacon of success and thinking you should try to emulate him.
The Billionaire Who Wasn’t – Conor O’Clery – A story of entrepreneurship leading into a hugely successful private business and a pact to give away a fortune over a lifetime. You can also watch the video to learn more.
Social Intelligence – Daniel Goleman – Human relationships define the quality of our lives. This book helps you improve the quality of your relationships.
Mindsight – Dan Siegel – Empathy is a superpower, as is being able to understand what’s happening in the mind of another. This book walks you through case studies of mindsight development to show you how you could also develop your own mindsight.
The Brain the Changes Itself – Norman Doidge – The next 100 years will be defined by our ability to understand how our brains work and how we can adapt to suit them. This book points out that our brains CAN change and develop through to death, but only if we keep them active and adequately challenged.
Flourish – Martin Seligman – For much of history, psychology has focussed on minimising negative emotion and getting people from -1 to 0. Positive psychology focuses on moving people from 0-1. This book outlines the various topics covered in positive psychology like grit and resilience and was written by the founding father of the science.
Resilience – Eric Greitens – Life will be difficult at times. Our best strategy is to become resilient and better able to move from suffering to strength. Here, a former Navy Seal and Rhodes Scholar writes letters to a friend to help him through his struggles with PTSD and, in doing so, he also helps us through our own difficult times.
Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins – Another Former Navy Seal tells the story of how he overcame intense physical and psychological obstacles like domestic violence, learning disabilities, debilitating injuries, ultramarathons and even breaking the record for the most chin-ups in a 24 hour period. Goggins is an example of the achievements that are possible through callousing the mind and developing enormous mental toughness.
Relentless – Tim S. Grover – Similar to Can’t Hurt Me, this book helps you understand the mental toughness and determined mindsets of high achievers like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade and was written by their coach, Tim Grover.
To Sell is Human – Dan Pink – We don’t fully appreciate it but the ability to influence is a hugely valuable skill and we’re often required to exercise it in our daily lives. This is the book for salespeople and influencers who are afraid to call themselves salespeople. Once I’d read it I became become more open to developing my sales and influence abilities and I felt better about my chosen career in client service, marketing and sales.
The Coaching Habit – Michael Bungay Stanier – We all love giving advice but often it’s unnecessary. Sometimes it’s best to just listen, ask questions and help the person figure it out for themselves. This is a coaching skillset and The Coaching Habit is the best book I’ve found on how to easily apply it in our everyday lives as friends, partners and managers.
Mindset – Carol Dweck – It was only when I read this book that I realised I grew up with a fixed mindset. Switching to a growth mindset has been key for my development and this book best explains that phenomenon and what to look out for when coaching and leading others.
Mastery – Robert Greene – Throughout history, masters passed on their knowledge through apprenticeships and good apprentices sought out the best masters. This book offers up a broad collection of mastery journeys as well as some best practices to follow on the road to mastery. Again, the growth mindset plays a big part in these stories.
Intuition – Paul Fenton Smith – Since we live in the information age, we’ve grown accustomed to thinking our way through problems and ignoring some of the more intuitive abilities we’ve cultivated over the ages. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell are two of the more popular books covering off on this topic. While they’re interesting from a more cognitive perspective, Intuition offers far more exercises and activities for you to develop your abilities.
2. What purchase of $ 100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.
With streaming apps like Spotify and Soundcloud readily available, we have almost all the music in the world on our phones at all times. A decent set of headphones is a worthwhile investment. The Audio Technica M20X comes in under $100. I paid a little more and bought the M40X for under $200. They’re worth it.
3. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a”favorite failure”of yours?
I took career break from my role as a management consultant in 2013 and took some time to consider my next steps. I moved to Toronto, Canada at the same time. I’d never considered working for myself before and I wanted to try it out. Failure scared the hell out of me so I had a history of taking the safe path to minimise the possibility of failure.
I took a commission-only role with Investors Group, a financial services company where I learned a lot and met the sales targets for a year, although I also earned less than my previous year at KPMG. That felt like failure.
I joined a real estate team, Scholarhood, where I thought the financial opportunities would be better and I could work with some awesome people. Again, I learned a lot and had some success, although it was a difficult situation where the team’s pipelines gave me plenty of clients but I felt I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to provide a quality service given my lack of Toronto real estate knowledge. Finally, I left the team to build my own real estate business within a Keller Williams Brokerage focusing on the area where I lived near the Danforth on the East side of Toronto.
I wasted a few months learning the ropes and getting everything perfect before I started prospecting for new business. At the six month mark I broke my leg and launched a marketing campaign that I’d been working on. It took a long time to develop but it didn’t deliver the kind of results I wanted. What it really did was quench my curiosity, so I learnt a lot but that didn’t pay the bills. Still, I built my first website, so that was a milestone. It still felt like failure.
I started prospecting during my recovery from my broken leg but I was working at nowhere near the activity level I had been working at on the team. This meant I had more knowledge now but far fewer clients. I learned the hard way that businesses don’t run very well when the pipeline is dry.
I joined a team at Path Real Estate to hold me accountable and my activity level and results improved. They also taught me plenty about sales training, role playing and coaching. I gave up half of my revenue to be on that team. It annoyed me that I had to pay such a large financial cost to make up for my lack of accountability. I made the decision to leave real estate and I moved back to Australia.
From a results perspective, I view this period as a failure. From a growth perspective I view it as a success. The key lesson I learned was that personal accountability is paramount to success in business and life. I also realised it wasn’t yet my strong suit.
Most people hire a coach or a personal trainer to keep them accountable.
I figured it wasn’t really necessary to hire a boss so I built an accountability group for daily fitness activities. The accountability group turns my personal effort into a team outcome and this ensures I don’t let myself let the team down. I’ve also translated this accountability into my work activities. It’s interesting to note that one good habit breeds more good habits.
It took a few difficult years for me to learn this lesson and it certainly felt like failure, but it’s set me up for future success.
If you’re interested, membership in our accountability group, Ando’s 88, could also help you on your path toward future success.
4. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it — metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions — what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing” Benjamin Franklin
5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)
I invested a year into working for Scholarhood, a real estate startup in Toronto. We worked alongside another more established financial services startup. Ratehub. I was there when we acquired an industry leading brand, Zoocasa and started rebuilding the team to suit the future vision. Because our website delivered so much value, we were best in class for online lead generation and it was awesome to see how quickly a well-considered website can fill a sales pipeline. I’d never witnessed what it was like for people to turn their dreams into reality before. Let alone people under 30. I was hooked. It made me realise my need to work on my own projects in order to feel fulfilled.
6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
I love a lot of things that people hate, like public speaking and job interviews and conversational role play. I don’t personally consider these things as absurd but I know they’re not for everyone. I’d hazard a guess that it was probably drama class growing up that turned these absurdities into strengths.
7. In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?
Daily Accountability – 50 push-ups. Best done in a group of friends in our group.
8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the ”real world”? What advice should they ignore?
Start early. Use your years in University to get out there and start listening to other people’s stories, contributing to their dreams and considering your own. Reach out to people you admire and ask for what you want, especially if it aligns in some way with what they want. Gain experience. Be willing to work for free. Hang out with people that have done far more with their lives than you have. It will start to become normal. You’ll live up to their normal and your experience will be so much further ahead than it would have been had you continued to hang out only with your natural peers.
If you can, leave your home town for at least six months. Force yourself to meet new people, soak up the scenery and question your old thought processes. I found the new environment helped me immensely.
Read books. Listen to podcasts. Follow your curiosity and share what you’ve learned. Align yourself with other growth-oriented people and push each other to cultivate outstanding lives. Along the way, give everyone in your network an opportunity to meet one another. Ask them to do the same. A rising tide will lift all boats. You can find one at Beers With Mates on the first Friday of each month.
Don’t play it safe. Consider yourself the writer of your own story. Imagine that you’ll have to read it on your deathbed. Everyone at your funeral will get a copy. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing”. In my opinion, it’s better to do than write, but there’s always both!
9. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
You shouldn’t get too close to your clients. Always have them meet you at your office.
10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?
I typically lead with yes, or try to change the offer to better suit me. Learning to say no could be my next lesson!
11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)
I go for a walk listening to my favourite music. Near water or nature is best. If I need to think I skip music with lyrics and I like to stick to continuous mixes so the breaks don’t interrupt me. Soundcloud is best for that.
I’ve been a fast walker before but I realised it’s way more enjoyable to take your time when possible. it’s just not worth it trying to become the fastest walker. If only I could think similarly about bicycle commuting!
For more of the story before I moved to Toronto and moved into sales, you can read these 12 Tips from Toronto.