Apart from CEO at 22, what are the five key books I should read and why? 

I recommended How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie last time. So definitely that is one book that I believe everyone should read. 

Second would be the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. I've read that I think four times already since I was 12 years old. Fantastic book. Those are the laws of leadership. Leadership is important in all areas of your life.

In your own self-discipline, you have to lead yourself. In your marriage, you have to lead. In your family, you have to lead. If you're the guy you have to lead with protection, With provisions, with spiritual leadership. If you're the wife, you have to lead with nurturing, caring, and supporting, honoring, respecting leadership is really just super important and learning the laws behind it that will serve you for the rest of your life.

Another book that I really love. That I recently read would be Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, the rules of negotiation. It just helped me out because I'm a sales guy and I negotiate. As the CEO, I'm the guy who fixes stuff. There's something broken or there's a conflict between people, maybe between client and an account manager. I'm the guy who comes in and tries to fix things. And that involves negotiation. That’s why business people in the Philippines are called negosyante. You have to negotiate. You can't be a businessman if you can't negotiate. So that one is a really good book. 

Another book would be Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Being a team player is super important for me. That book helped me to learn about what breaks down a team. What makes it dysfunctional and how you can deal with it. It's such an easy read because Patrick Lencioni writes it in a story narrative where he's just like narrating a fairytale, but in kind of a real-life, telenovela kind of way. So you learn the principles as you read the story. And that for me, makes it very easy to read. 

Another book would be EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey. Because I'm a businessman and I had to scale up my business. I had to make it bigger. I had to deal with all of the accounting, legal. I have to make processes, train people, improve my hiring processes, improve my firing processes. All of these things that you don't think about when you're starting up, because when you're starting up, all you think about is: How can I improve my cashflow? How can I survive? How can I make revenue greater than my expenses? That book entreleadership is definitely something that I think a lot of people should read. Iit's super underrated because not a lot of people know about that book.

The default answer would be the Bible. And I think you might figure that I'm, I'm cheating by giving this answer, but I think it is a book that has changed my life the most. So I've read, I've read the Bible for 14 times already, and this is my 14th time to read it. I'm in the book of Ezekiel and the principles that I learned there are secondary. What is primary for me is how I am able to listen to God and his will for my life. That for me is life-changing. That for me is super important. That took me from where I was to where I am now.

When I was younger, I said, this doesn't make sense to give 10% of what you make the God, how can you make more from that? But I fatefully gave my tithes when I finally had my allowance in college. So that was a small amount and I still giving my tights up until now, now that I'm doing business and the revenues is bigger than my allowance and, you know, God has always been faithful.

He has always provided for us. That promise it's true. It's very true in my life. It can be true in yours. That’s why I cannot not include the Bible in the top five books.

How do you find motivation when times are hard?

To be honest, times are hard right now and it's tough to find motivation. To be honest, it is. I guess what we can do is to listen to people who are able to make things happen right now. I think that that is one big way to have some motivation in your life. There's a lot of things to be thankful for.

I listened to a podcast recently. I forgot which one, but what that person did to be motivated is to write down 10 things that he or she would be thankful for that day. And that, that helps if there are at least 10 things you're grateful for. You're thankful for for the day. Write it down or say it out loud that helps to motivate you. No matter how down you are, no matter how out you are out of the count, it helps to motivate. Because you know that there are things that are good in your life. There are things that you can look forward to in your life. Motivation for me is it's about contentment and gratitude. It's not about heights. It's not about emotion. It stems from contentment and gratitude. So if you are content you're thankful, even when times are hard, you can be motivated. 

Do you think there's always a downside to success?

I do think there's a downside to success. That's why there's a Bible verse:

Pride comes before the fall.

I don't think you're going to be proud if you're not successful in anything. There is that downside to success. The biggest enemy of success is success. Because a lot of companies, when they're successful are ready, they stop innovating. They stop experimenting, they stop working hard, they stop doing what made them successful and that causes them to fail. There are a lot of downsides to success. If you're able to study books like Jim Collins, his book, How the Mighty Fall, you will learn that big companies, how they. Run their business to the ground is because of ego pride and because of their success.

You put it in context. When you said, like, when you persevere for your dreams, you always have to invest your time. And when you're a parent, you're always going to juggle. And sometimes families put the sides since the reasoning is we work because of them. Here's something I learned when you put God first in your life, remember Matthew 6-33 “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all of these things will be able to you.”

When you put God first in your life, I learned the success will follow. However you define success to be. It's true in my life as well. Whenever I don't book God first, whenever I make a decision ahead of God, I don't pray about it. I don't think about God thinks it fails.

Success does not follow. Failure follows. Heartache follow. Headaches follow. But whenever I put God first, I pray about it. I ask my wife what she thinks. I put my family first success does follow. It may follow suit a lot later, maybe delayed may come a year or two later, but success does follow. Juggling between family and business for me is, is a difficult thing, but it's a no brainer when push comes to shove. You have to put family first. It's hard for you to keep on telling them that, you know, I'm doing this because I love you. I'm doing this because I want to support you, but you lose them along the way because they don't see you anymore. They don't hear from you. You don't spend time with them.

Having the juggle, but the in family and businesses that if you're saying that you're doing the business, you're investing so much time and effort for the business because of your family, but your family is losing you, then it doesn't make sense. You have to put your family. The business will be there as long as it's generating cashflow revenues greater than expenses. You're okay. You don't need to sacrifice your family for that. You don’t need to put your family on the altar of your business.

What qualities do you look for in the people you hang out with?

The number one quality is something where they're more successful or better than me, that I want to be successful or better in. So if, for example, they're better at me in basketball. I want to hang out with them. If I want to become better with basketball. If they're better than me with a public speaking or with reading or with selling while on stage, then I would want to hang out with them more because I want to learn that and you can only learn that from people, who are better than you, who are more successful than you. It's hard to learn it from people who are at the same level as you are and you're just pushing each other, encouraging each other and patting each other in the back. Although that helps, but it would be a lot easier and a lot faster and a lot more validated if you learn from people who have gone the way, those are the people I would probably hang out with. 

How do you start a conversation? 

Just say hi. I understand that there are people who are sometimes awkward or find it difficult to just find or start a conversation, but it's going to be weird, if you just chat out of the blue, it's going to be a little bit weird, but really if you want something so bad, I personally do that because I'm in sales. I've been doing sales for a long time since I started business 10 years ago. I had to sell SEO. When you think about it, SEO is not really easy to sell it because 10 years ago, people had no idea what SEO is. They're like “SEO search engine optimization? What is that?” 

It's hard to sell SEO. You have to keep on practicing. I've been practicing for 10 years. I have my elevator pitch now. it's easy for me to start a conversation about SEO. But really, if you want to start a conversation with someone, just say, hi. Just let them know what you do or ask them something or give them something of value. That's the easiest way for me, give them something of value. If you know they're struggling with something or they want to know something, give them the answer, give them what you think that just enables you to go down a good conversation route. 

What is the importance of branding for you? Tips on how to establish it. What is your brand? 

Branding is important because that is how people perceive you and know you as a company. I remember I thought about this. The most important thing in branding is consistency. You're consistent with what you do with how you show yourself to the outside world. If you remember Nike and they ask you what's their logo and what's their tagline. It’s easy to answer.

The checkmark and the tagline is just do it. It hasn't been consistent, consistent, consistent over the years is the same, but I'm going to name Adidas though. Now I know that the logo might be the same. But the tagline. I don't really remember. You might not remember, but the last tagline I remember yeah. That they made that was really good is Impossible is nothing. 

Problem, they have a different tagline now. The consistency is gone. That's what I think branding should be all about. You have to be consistent. If you're not consistent, you will have weak branding. And one of the biggest advantages of branding is if you have good branding, you can demand the price. 

Honestly, how much should sneakers cost? It should not cost a lot. And yet Nike for a lot. Their markup is huge and they're making a lot of money out of it. They're even listed in the stock exchange in the U S. Same with Adidas, even if they're not that consistent with their tagline, they still have pretty good branding. They're also listed in the US stock exchange, which means they have billions in the market cap. And one of their sneakers costs a lot. And that really is just because of branding. Yeah, they have good products, they have good sneakers, but a lot of companies also have good sneakers without that kind of branding and they're selling for a much cheaper price. Branding is important because you can demand price. 

Same with SEO Hacker. I think we have pretty good trending. So we demand price and a lot of our competitors follow our pricing model on our website. That's because of, again, good branding. So it is worth investing in your brand. Be consistent. 

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What are the top five skills you would advise a newly graduate to learn, to thrive in the future to be successful? 

First skill communication. Communication is super important. How you communicate with people. Will you be able to engage them? Communication doesn't mean talking. It doesn't mean speaking. It doesn't mean speaking on stage or typing in chat, You know how to formulate words. That's not communication. You know how communication starts? By listening. You have to learn the art of listening. 

You need to learn how to listen first. That's the key to great communication. If you, if you make the other person feel like, Oh, this guy really understands me, then that person would be more open to listen to you as well. And great communication happens in between. 

The second thing that you need to learn to thrive in the future and to be successful, I think is sales, nothing happens until someone says something.

Sales is one of the oldest skills in history. It is one of the oldest professions in history, being a salesperson. You cannot be successful if you cannot sell it. Whether you are a businessman, an employee, an inventor, or an idealist, you have to learn how to sell. If you don't know how to sell success will be ever elusive. It’s hard to find success in life if you don’t know how to sell.

The third one would be the ability to accept criticism in short humility. It's hard to hear people say bad stuff about you, things that you need to change. That's how it is as human beings, It’s really difficult. But if you keep rejecting, that the chances of you improving is very small. The easiest way for you to know your weaknesses and blind spots is usually from how other people see you.

The fourth skill that you need to be successful in the future is to delay gratification. You have to learn how to delay gratification. You cannot do things now when you want it when you feel like it. That is difficult to do. The idea of pay now, so that you can play later is real. The idea of play now, but you will have to pay later is also real. 

If you keep playing now. and then now it's usually when you're younger, when you have more energy, when you can network better and you have to pay later, what happens is usually you end up poor. 

The fifth thing for a newly graduate to learn, to thrive in the future to be successful. And you have to let me say this because I'm a man of faith born again, Christian. I think one of the skills that you need would be to have a daily relationship with God. That is one of the secrets that I always say is right in front of you. I keep saying it, but people don't follow it. It's mind-blowing, but really that is something that is super necessary for life. There are a lot of promises.

So if you read the Bible, if you learn to have a relationship with God, even if you just read the Bible, the book of Proverbs, you actually learn a lot of things and these things will help you to succeed in life. So for me, that is a skill. I would consider it a skill just because not a lot of people do it just because not a lot of people invest time in that. They would invest time and money and effort in their personal growth in their public speaking in their personal finance management, in their insurance. But they don't invest in their spirit. They don't invest in their soul, which I think is a very real part of us. And it's something that everyone should invest in.

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Do you think emotional quotient is more important than intellectual quotient? 

I think both is very important.

It's not IQ smart. It's EQ smart. That's it. Patrick Lencioni mentioned humble, hungry, smart. That's what they look for in a hire. That's also something that we look for in SEO Hacker whenever we, I have to hire someone. How we're able to look for these things is to ask questions. How do you know when someone's humble? You ask them, what's the biggest mistake you've done in your past job? You ask them what's the reason why they left. You ask them what is the biggest thing that disappointed your leaders in your last company? If they're humble, they will tell you the story. 

Then you have to probe, you cannot take things at face value. You have to ask the same question in different trousers. What that means is when you ask them, is there something that disappointed your leader or your direct leader or your direct report during your tenure, in your past company? And so they tell the story and then you ask, so what did you do to fix that? And then you ask, so what did these people say about you? 

Cause they can, they can make stories up. They can invent stories. But if you keep on asking these probing questions, pretty much the same question, just ask them a different way or ask in a deeper way. Then they'd have to tell you the story. If there's inconsistency, you know, that this person is not really that humble because if they were, they would tell you the entire thing. They would have the integrity to tell you the entire thing.

How we measure hungry is we try to figure out if the person really did his or her research. Do they know things about us or not? Are they from a rich background or not? Are they here for just a couple of months and then will they leave? Will they just try to learn from us, make us a stepping stone? We cannot grow with people who are mercenaries. We cannot grow with people who are just going to make us stepping stones, it can be a good trade. Six months of work, six months off this amount of salary. It could be a good trade in some cases, but most cases, we would rather hire someone who is going to play and work with us long term.

That means they have to be hungry enough. Usually, we check the person's background. What do their parents do? Are their parents working or are they retired? Are they married? DO they have kids? Are there other people depending on them? How hungry is this person? Will this person choose their job or pick jobs or say, that's not my job? Will this person have a winning attitude, a winning drive?

Because usually, in basketball, the center player does not tell the point guard that it’s not their job to dribble the ball and vice versa. The point guard doesn't tell the center player. It's not my job to rebound the ball. 

Why? Because they play to win. If you play, when you're, you're not going to the other people in your team, that's not my job. People who are not hungry enough will say, that's not my job somewhere in their tenure with you. 

Smart. Lastly, we see smart, easier, because for me, if it can not be straight in the eye during the interview, if you don't know how to answer my questions during the interview or if you don't have questions after all the interviews and it asks you, do you have questions for me?

If you don't have questions, usually I consider that it's not being smart enough because you should have questions, right. For me, for the company, because you don't know so much about us and you should know you should be curious enough. To be able to relate with us better. You should ask questions. So that's another thing that I'm looking at whenever I interview someone.

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Sean

You have shared how you're able to change people through time and how you're able to influence the mindset through conversation. And that is just really a gem right there. And you also mentioned that a lot of people, the construction industry, especially being a competitive industry is struggling through this pandemic that we have right now and it is getting more competitive. I do agree with you on that one now to wrap things up if you can give one big advice to struggling entrepreneurs, which, you know, this podcast have a lot of struggling entrepreneurs listening in, or people who are professionals that are also struggling in their career might have gotten laid off, even. What would your one big advice be to these people?

Elinor

To give one piece of advice relevant to all is to remain future-focused. I live in the future. I am grounded in the present, but I am in the future. And the future has always been yours to create. the future has always been uncertain. You're aiming for it, but it's always been uncertain. So you have to be able to be comfortable with uncertainty. It's always having this strong belief that the future that you always desired is still attainable. No, one's taken that away from you right now. What we are experiencing right now, it may be one of the greatest challenges that people have in their careers. To, to really see that we really haven't lived out the full economic impact of all these shutdowns and pivot and everything. Time will tell.

Have focus on the future and then look at, okay, what do I actually need to do today to get there because a plan what's that quote a dream without a plan is just weird shit. It's like people do not take enough immediate and massive action in the present to get the future that they want. 

Two pieces of advice is to remain future-focused and take immediate massive action in the present to actually make that happen.

Sean

So this is the struggle of a lot of people. Not a lot of people are visionaries or future-focused like yourself, and maybe some of them are wondering, Hey, Elinor, you mentioned future-focused, but things are just so hazy right now in blurry. I couldn't see pass through how do you do it? How do you lift that haze and finally be able to see, Oh, this is what the future could look like with the good percent of certainty. So how do you propose for them to be able to achieve that?

Elinor

I'm a visionary and there are only very few people in the world are actual visionaries and the world needs visionaries and thought leaders to save the world from itself. 

But that has taken time. That clarity of knowing what it looks like for me that came by journaling and that took time.

So what I would recommend is a gratitude practice. So focus on everything that you do have. Because a daily gratitude practice is so powerful. And you do that for 30 days, even 10 days, your whole outlook changes. You're able to get through that uncertainty and looking at what you don't have and living in that fear. it grounds you because you, I really do have a lot. I mean, we are alive and we are breathing. We are humans. We can create anything that we want. That is something to be grateful for at a minimum. I mean, we get to have a human experience. We're not having a dog experience, the human experience.

And what I would also recommend is this is how I started my journey, was to go full immersion into the books, the podcasts of the type of people who inspired me.

During times like this, you focus on what you can control. You feed your brain with positive content, the books, the podcasts, the conversations, the right content on social media. You ground yourself with the gratitude practice and your mental resilience, your mental muscles are going to get stronger.

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Sean

I'm sure there have been a lot of people who have been able to attend your coaching programs, your mentorship, your workshops. I wonder, are these people more of company, founders, or professionals, and when they have finished your sessions, do they go on to become founders or do they have a sort of a level up in their careers as professionals, what happens then? 

Elinor

Of course, they have a level up in, in their career. When you work with people, first of all, you develop the mindset. Skillset without mindset is not worth anything. And that's when a lot of people go wrong in the marketplace is they just teach you the tactical tools That's what people buy because it's easy. They think it's going to work. It's just a bandaid solution. It doesn't work. So the mindset transformation and expanding people's worldviews, expanding people's bandwidth of possibility. That is something that is with them for life. 

Because I have worked with Ron, that emotional intangible outcome and the work that I've done on myself to know myself, to know what I'm here for, to really be able to articulate your passion, to be all of who you are, that's with you for life. 

That isn't something that. It's intangible. And again, I keep on repeating it because that's the value of mentoring. It stays with you forever. 

And then of course you go into the more tactical pieces. So this is how you might leverage LinkedIn in order to scale your career. This is how. You develop a personal brand that is based around you as an individual. And this is how you, for example, position yourself, the marketplace. This is how you have a level of congruency in your career. And of course, that attracts more opportunities because you have the ability to stand out. In the social age, but it's really, really important to be seen. 

People want opportunities. People want clients and to have them, but they don't want to be saying that, just get us standing out. It doesn't work that way either. When people work with me, you get the mindset and you get the skillset. And what I do, it's all paced together. You get to be that leader, you get to have this congruency with everything that you do. You get to understand things that you wouldn't have come across because it's unconventional and it's not publicly available knowledge.

There are many benefits of engaging a mentor. Sometimes I tell people I don't care if it's me. It doesn't definitely doesn't have to be me. I'm not the fit for everyone, but somewhat.

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Sean

Why The Construction Coach? How did you come upon that title? 

Elinor

That was a universal download, long story, short. But for the podcast. When I was navigating the start of my career, I felt lost and overwhelmed and generally confused at the magnitude of the industry. In Australia, there are many, many players, there are many different tiers of organizations. There are many different types of projects that you can have exposure to.

And we did within all that. There are just so many people and personalities and people doing so many different things and that'll felt, as I said confusing. So I was navigating my career, but I was still the press who was perceived as successful, but I didn't feel that. Of course, that develops. And when I graduated my master's degree from my master's degree at Melbourne university, because apparently not there, but here you study construction. Not that you needed, agreed to achieve massive career success in any industry, especially not construction. I started tutoring because I always need more to my life. I love doing more and I fundamentally love mentoring. 

So I said, look, I have a surplus of time. I finished my hectic degree. I'm going to go to tutor. And I did that for two years, but the conversation were made really turned from the technical into the mentoring. And I would find that people would always come to me. Elinor, how do I build my career in construction? I don't know where to start. I don't know how to do it. How did you do it? What is this? What is that? And I'm sure you've had it before. You should always build a business around what people come to you for.

And that's exactly what I did. So I got to a point in my tutoring, it was just not feasible to be doing one-on-one anymore. It was time-consuming. It's not a scalable model. It wasn't working. So I asked the universe a better question. How can I reach more people? And that was in February, 2019. And in April, 2019, we had time off from work.

I need a lot of space to think. I'm a thought leader and thinking is the fundamental practice of what I do. And we were away from work. I had time and I just got a universal download, the Construction Coach. I was up till 5:00 AM that morning, filling an old book with ideas, registering an ABN Australian business number and filling a notebook with ideas, and designing a website.

Just figuring out how to a website. I had no idea. A month later I launched, but it was only a blog because. You think small, what will people think, what will society think? I don't know if this is going to work so on, so forth, you know, the negative conversation with yourself, a year and a half later, it's turned into a business that is being featured on Yahoo finance.

I released a book on Friday as well. I have a podcast. I run masterminds and multilevel of mentoring within the construction industry, as well as full-day workshops, events, and whatnot. It has just organically grown quite quickly because what I found is that I've hit on a niche. Not in the market place, but in the industry, because there is nothing like what I do in terms of career development specific for the construction industry.

But not just career development because 70 to 80% of people in the world have average careers. There's nothing average about what I do and what I want for my community. This is about building exceptional careers, where anything is possible. 

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Sean

If there's one big piece of advice that you will give to leaders and entrepreneurs and managers who are out there struggling in this pandemic. And consider themselves are that they're actually in crisis. What would it be? 

Vipp

That one piece of advice would be to be ruthlessly creative. Do not stop thinking normal cause we are living in abnormal times. And if you are facing adversity, you're facing a shutdown, a closure, or whatever, you have to be ruthlessly creative in establishing or getting whatever you want. 

You have to be ruthlessly creative the half, and that means negotiating to the very best I am negotiating with everybody and I'm saying two things. The first thing is it's not that I don't know. I want to pay you it's that I can't pay you yet. Either you half patience based on the past relationship that we've had as a business to business, that I've been you on time and things like that. But if you just have a little more patience or we can cut it right now, and you can take me to court, which will take you about a year, two years.

That's where you're going to be was because, you know, once the pandemic's over, then life will start going back to normal, but you're going to have to make something right. To bounce back with. 

Sean

That's true. Fantastic. 

Vipp

So now's the time to focus on all the skill sets that they don't teach you and practice them.

Sean

So be ruthlessly creative and some of the entrepreneurs and leaders out there might have to negotiate ruthlessly, not just with vendors, but maybe with their own employees. 

Vipp

Absolutely. They have to. And it's not something I know that you know, people are scared to say what I'm saying, because it doesn't sound correct or proper, but you're a businessman it's kill or be killed. You can only eat what you kill. It sounds nice to be called an entrepreneur, but it's more relevant to be a businessman. Cause a businessman is actually doing the business. My son wanted to call himself an entrepreneur. I said you know what? That word doesn't mean. Anything to me, it just means like it's a serial figure and that's fine.

But at some point you have to go from an entrepreneur to an enterprise where there is an exchange of value with what you are creating or producing and where someone is consuming what you create or produce. And they're prepared to give you value because what you give them is a value. So they give you money in return.

Be ambitious and stop being an entrepreneur and be an enterprise where there's a transaction involved. And then my thing with the people who are really struggling with business or things like that is stop calling up everybody, your banks, your electricity company, your water company. And you'll actually be surprised at how lenient people are being at this moment. 

The standard leniency at the moment for you to pay your bills is three months. All of these call centers already have it. They're not going to say it to you because they don't want just to make their own cashflow suffer. Right. But if you provide a proper conversation or proper negotiation with them, they automatically are empowered to give you three months, not two and a half months down the line. You can call them and say, Hey, nothing's improved. So I still need a little bit more time. Could you please give me a little more time? They will still say yes to me. I told my landlord, I said, you know what? If you increase the rent, A, nobody in their right mind is going to rent this place. Number two, I'm going to tell the media about it, that during the pandemic, during one of America's worst crisis, there was one landlord out there who wanted to increase the rent of these poor students. I said imagine that name going down, they would just love that story. So he panicked. So that's where you, ruthlessly negotiate.

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