Mastering Personal Evolution and Business Growth, with Pete Taylor

Ever thought about the link between your personal journey and professional success? Pete Taylor, a devoted father and business mentor, gives us an insider's look into his life. He shares his evolution from a teen, battling physical and verbal bullying, to an entrepreneur and leader of a men's movement. He reveals how a simple decision to hit the gym sparked his personal transformation and later fuelled his business aspirations.

Pete's story doesn't stop there. He goes on to explain how the changes he made on a personal level had ripple effects on his professional life and even those around him. Get ready to learn how professional problems can stem from personal issues. Pete talks about the critical role a mentor plays in identifying blind spots – those aspects of your life that you might not even realize need work. He shares his mission to help others recognize and address these areas of their lives.

Our conversation concludes with a deep dive into Pete's transition from the corporate world to his entrepreneurial journey. We discuss his podcast, The Awaken, where he explores the topics of human potential and high performing teams. He generously shares tips on setting healthy boundaries, peak performance protocols, and the implementation of the 80/20 rule. Pete's insights are a gold mine for leaders eager to boost both their personal and professional lives. Connect with Pete on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/pete_taylor/ Follow his instagram for daily stories on the frameworks he uses with clients to free up their time and create 7-8 figure founders.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of the Catalytic Leadership podcast. Each week, we tackle a topic related to the field of leadership. My goal is to ensure that you have actionable steps you can take from each episode to grow in your own leadership. Growth doesn't just happen. My goal is to help you become intentional about it. Each week, we spotlight leaders from a variety of fields, organizations and locations. My goal is for you to see that leaders can be catalytic, no matter where they are or what they lead. I draw inspiration from the stories and journeys of these leaders, and I hear from many of you that you do too. Let's jump in to today's interview. I'm so excited to have Pete Taylor on the show today. Pete, thank you for being here. Pete is a father and a business mentor. He is passionate about human potential, strategic planning and high performing teams. Today, we are going to hear about what he is up to and how you can learn more from Pete. Pete, thanks for being here.

Speaker 3: 1:19

Pleasure to be here. William, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:22

I would love for you to begin by sharing some of your story with our listeners, Pete, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Speaker 3: 1:33

Yeah, okay. When we had this discussion the other day and actually I was just talking to a group of 75 men today and I very, very quickly told a story and it started to piece together as I was telling it, I was like, actually this is really where my leadership development really really started. Without sounding too I don't want to use the wrong word here, but I'm going to go way, way, way back when I was 12, 13 years old, because it's only now when you're able to look back is when this Steve Jobs says, when you can really put the dots together and you can piece it together. I'm like, okay, that makes so much sense.

Speaker 3: 2:17

When I was 12, 13 years old, my bone structure, my muscle density, was three years below where it should have been. According to the doctors. I was abnormally small for my age. At that age you've got young boys, teenagers, and they are starting to go through puberty and all these emotions and feelings are coming up. And I was small. They used to call me little Pete and that resulted in the boys bullying me physically, the girls bullying me verbally and it played to havoc and torment on me in my younger years.

Speaker 3: 3:01

What that led me to was during the gym at a really young age, like when I was 15 years old. I was super, super young, purely because I just wanted to get a bit bigger. I just needed to do something to change the way I looked. What that led me into, though, was that I had this realization at a really young age that it was well within my power to make my own internal changes, both internally and externally. Just by going to the gym, I was feeling better, I was looking better, my confidence was increasing. Mentally, I was just becoming a better teenager. I was, you know, and that helped to slow down the bullying and the Pete being picked on, and it slowed down the little Pete. That was really like the starting phases of my personal development era, which then led into me joining corporate, which then led into me sitting at my own business, which then led into me now leading, quite literally, hundreds of men. I can piece that all the way back to me starting that personal development journey when I was really young.

Speaker 2: 4:19

It's so fascinating to me to listen to a leader's journey. I don't think if I were to go back and talk to Pete at age 15, you would have seen yourself doing what you're doing now, would you?

Speaker 3: 4:30

No, no, not at all. I was in a bad place. You know, I was a very uncomfortable little boy.

Speaker 2: 4:40

I think that what you're doing now, pouring into and investing in particularly men right, you have accomplished and what you are doing and what you see ahead of you is incredibly inspiring. Can you talk a little bit about what's next for you?

Speaker 3: 4:59

Yeah, so right now I am leading a movement of men and it's so weird for me to say that A couple of years ago I'd been like what the frick is a movement of men?

Speaker 3: 5:11

Like that was not in my vocabulary right, let alone my vision. It really really wasn't. Just two years ago, I was running a business. I had a team of 20 people. We've done really well. We build it from literally our living room floors all the way to three-story building in London and prestigious building. We're winning awards for our work. We went from designing garden chairs, we did architecture, interior design and construction. We went from designing garden chairs all the way to multi-multi-million pound developments and we're doing really well.

Speaker 3: 5:44

However, I didn't feel great. The external was Pete's doing really well. He has a big team, has a good company and has a nice house and so on and so on. But internally I felt lonely. I felt like I was being walked over and pushed over. I really felt like I was at a level two on my potential as well. I knew that I was playing a smaller game. What that led me to do was, in the end, it was like a straw that broke the camel's back. One minor, minor problem arose on a Saturday morning from a team member and I decided to leave. I was like right, do you know what? That is it? I'm going to leave the business that I essentially grew and created from scratch. I'm going to start the deeper internal work on myself. I'm going to heal myself and in doing so, everything that I learned I'm going to share.

Speaker 3: 6:52

As it happened, there were plenty of guys just like me. They were an abundance of men that were doing well in certain areas of their lives but in others not so well. Maybe they're doing level 10 in their fitness and level 10 in their business, but their relationship was level four. We started this journey and we started this essentially a program for guys working on our psychology.

Speaker 3: 7:22

I was really fortunate at the time, and still fortunate now, that my then mentor and now business partner is doing his PhD in positive psychology, is training psychotherapist, has built a big nine figure business and he's now in his second year of life. At the second mountain he was like well, pete, let's do something for guys like you. We did, and that was two years ago, and now that has grown and grown and we've got quite a list of thousands of men in our groups. Now the trajectory for us is to really impact. Our next target is a million men. That is the target and we have a great plan in place to impact a million guys just like me who know that they can achieve more out of life.

Speaker 2: 8:12

You know, so many of the people who are listening are entrepreneurs like you. They're leaders, they're agency owners, they're business owners and I think they hear what you're saying and they think, yeah, that's amazing, that's inspiring. Has it all just been up into the right? Has it just been just easy the whole way? Have you had any challenges, as you have made these unexpected turns A?

Speaker 3: 8:38

hundred challenges, everything. It's just like I'm not sitting here in my high horse. Me and my wife. We're now going through a divorce. We decided five weeks ago we're going to separate. For me, I'm literally leading a group of men and what I am promoting is that we can live better lives, and it would be very out of integrity of me to have a relationship which was diminishing and was kind of on paper average, and very out of integrity of me to not have the hard conversations with my wife and they just this isn't working and we need to do something about that. That actually, me going through the hard work, me going through the deeper work, is, in turn, helping all the guys that are in our program so who are also going through bad situations and crappy situations with partners which they have to navigate and it can be very, very difficult to navigate when you're on your own.

Speaker 2: 9:52

But I think that authenticity is why people lean into you, pete. I think that's why they're leaning into the movement that you're leading, because they see somebody who's real, who's not just going to paint this highlight reel Everything is great and wonderful all the time. You're painting a picture that's real, that there are still struggles, there are still challenges, and you're not going to try to gloss those over.

Speaker 3: 10:16

You're going to be real about those 100% For me for a very, very long time, and what society taught me, and even what my parents taught me, was to suppress my emotions and suppress my anger and suppress everything that I really thought when I did get angry and then maybe that rose into aggression or I felt shame and I felt guilt or whatever that emotion looked like, whatever was going on or there was going on in my relationship, not to talk about that, just to sweep it under the carpet or just suppress that and push it down.

Speaker 3: 10:49

Push it down. The problem with that is that one day we're exploited CB yeah Like steam in the teacattle right. Ac yeah, and I absolutely learned this in the success of the Awaken man project, which is what I'm running now is that as I grew as a man, as I grew as a leader, like everything else grew with me. The business is just on this great momentum and I can see that, because I am growing as a man and I am leaning into all these problems that most guys would just go. You know, I'll ignore that, I'll suppress that, I'll push that away. Cb.

Speaker 2: 11:29

I think there's a principle there so goes the leader, so goes the team. Right, we understand that. But what you're describing is so as goes the leader, so goes the business. If you're going to develop yourself, if you're going to invest in yourself, that's going to have ripple effects, not just on the people around you but that for sure but also on the business that you're leading, what you're creating and starting, and that has implications for everybody, no matter where they lead.

Speaker 3: 11:55

AC 100% Like professional problems. They're typically personal problems, just in disguise. Cb.

Speaker 2: 12:06

Talk about that for a second, because I think that's something a lot of people really don't see. But I think there's so much truth there AC.

Speaker 3: 12:16

Yeah, here's a lovely example, and we call this part X. So this is like a form of you might call it self-sabotage. In the morning I'm going to get up and I'm going to go to the gym. And then it comes to the morning and part of my brain says oh Pete, do you know what, mate? It's cold outside and it's still dark. It's 5.30 in the morning. Listen, you trained already this once this week already to stay in bed. Just chill out, mate. You can train tomorrow, but just stay in bed now. And I listen to that voice. And so I stay in bed and then 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours later, it's like 10 o'clock in the morning and I'm pissed off. Why didn't I train the gym? My energy is actually lower than if I would have kind of go out of bed earlier and train in the gym.

Speaker 3: 13:17

You idiot, pete, you always do this. You say you're going to do something, then you don't do it. It's like you break your own internal promises, right? That's a small example of a personal problem at home, but how's that showing up in the business? Because if you say you're going to do something and then you don't do it, right, and because it's not only easy, a form of breaking a promise to yourself, but it's also a form of building discipline. Then, when you do the hard things that you don't necessarily want to do, like get out bed in the morning and go to the gym, it's hard right. But if you don't do that over and over and over again, you start to lose your discipline, and then how does that translate into your business?

Speaker 2: 14:03

That's really good, and I think that's something that a lot of people need to spend some time reflecting on that. The professional problems have roots elsewhere, the business problems have roots elsewhere, and digging into the root causes sometimes that's difficult for each one of us to see in our own lives. This is why it's helpful. This is why, for years, I've had a coach who helped me to see what I can't see. You can't see the whole picture when you're in the frame. Yeah, and that's what you're doing now with the movement that you're leading Right, you're helping other people to see what maybe they've never seen before in their lives.

Speaker 3: 14:40

Yeah. Another example here is me being a nice guy. I actually prided myself on being a nice guy for good 15, 20 years. I really prided myself on being the nice guy. I'm a good guy and the women in the end they go for the bad boys, but then they come to the nice guys, right? But I learned that me being a nice guy was not attractive and was also punishing my business.

Speaker 3: 15:11

And this is how I'd say yes to everything. I'd feel obliged to say yes to everything, like I had no boundaries. In fact, I didn't even know what the word boundary meant. Right, for me, a boundary was a fence in the garden. It was nothing to do with me personally. But the problem with that is when someone would ask me to do something and I would feel obliged to say yes because I'm a nice guy. It then might take me away from doing the higher value tasks in the business, or it may just instill that culture that it's okay, pete will fix it. Yeah, don't worry, just go to Pete, he'll fix that, not a problem, he's always the guy to go to. And that can translate both in business and at home, whether it's with your partner and you're not setting boundaries and saying yes to everything, whether it's your children, Right, they both correspond.

Speaker 2: 16:11

You know entrepreneurs and business owners leaders. They bring you in now as a consultant to help them to see what they can't see. Like if you're coming to work with somebody, say with a founder, and they want to accelerate their profit but they're not sure how to do that, what's the first thing you do when you're consulting with them?

Speaker 3: 16:37

My consulting has evolved as I have, because I used to go into consulting businesses and just go straight into their P&L, straight into their systems, and that really does work. But what I've found to be one of the most effective strategies here is going straight into the founder himself. Typically, what I see is the founder himself is the biggest bottleneck and he doesn't like hearing that or she doesn't like hearing that. But when we start to reveal how they are spending their time and where they're spending their time, so we do a real simple time audit like where is all the time being spent and then where they're spending their time, are they being effective? And just that alone can typically A free up the founder with a load of time but also put him into a position where he's working in a more effective manner and it increases the profit of the business just by doing something like that.

Speaker 3: 17:42

And the next thing I look at is his health. He's eating, he's moving, he's sleeping, because I know from my young age, 15 going to the gym. I took it for granted for a good 10 years that, oh, doesn't everyone feel this way? Hasn't everyone got energy at four o'clock in the afternoon? Is this not normal? It's really not, and an area to really look at is that. Hang on a minute, if I can take this CEO from and he's doing a good few million here and I can see his energy levels, he's at 60% If I could just take him from 60 to 70, and then we can free up his time and then we can make him more effective with his time. Oh, my God right, we've grown the business and it's just session number one. We haven't even looked at the systems and the processes and delved into the pay. Now.

Speaker 2: 18:38

You have a protocol for peak performance that you talk about. That helps your clients get more done in a day than most do in a week. I'd love for you to share a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: 18:57

I work with structural discipline. Now, structural discipline is around protocols and habits and routines and procedures. It's putting the protocols in place that prevent us from procrastinating or from going on to the next shiny object or from just missing. What we want to do is make it undeniable and unreasonable for the founder to get to his target, to get to the standard of a personal living that he wants to get to, but also into the business revenue, whatever that top and bottom line is that he wants to get to. How can I make it unreasonable?

Speaker 3: 19:41

We work with something on collapsing time. How can we collapse time? How can we aim at the founder more effective but also take him away from doing the $10, the $100, even the $1,000 tasks that he's probably still stuck in? And then look at the 80-20 principle on what's actually working, what's truly, truly working and when. 80-20 that and go from the 20%. That gives us the 80% of the result, the 20% of the effort, 80% of the result. Can I do it again? Can I? 80-20 to 20%, because now we're up to 96% and it's when we're really, really effective. So we're really really. Now we're starting to collapse time. The most effective things are being done more. They don't be quicker and it's just focused on what matters. We then install protocols to ensure that that work is being done and the founder is effective. We get so much more done. You're talking 10 times more work being done than the average.

Speaker 2: 20:59

That's a real need for particularly, I believe, entrepreneurs and business owners, because they never feel like they have enough time. They never feel like they get enough done. There's always more, and at the end of their day, it's not like their list is finished, it just rolls to the next day. Of course, what you're describing is a different way of looking at that.

Speaker 3: 21:21

All right. So when I first started in business, I was in corporate for 15 years and I loved corporate and I climbed a corporate ladder and I did the Braille there and I loved the environment. It was only when I realized that I could do something different. I went into building my own business.

Speaker 2: 21:38

So you have a podcast. I do Tell me a little bit about that. What do you do? What do you talk about?

Speaker 3: 21:47

What do we talk about? So we got the podcast. It's called the Awaken man. We started this podcast 18 months ago. It has grown exponentially and it's us two there's two of us guys and we talk about everything very openly. But there's also, of course, structure and frameworks to the podcast. So one of our best episodes is how to have hard conversations with your partner, and there is a method, there's a framework on these other things to start following. We've got episodes on why men should quit porn and we've got episodes on what men do to numb. There's every episode on, typically, the things that men don't talk about, or we talk about, but it's a joke. We're saying it as an underlying joke, but we know deep down it might be scrolling on social media or it might be going to watch Netflix or whatever that looks like, and it's just like a form of numbing. So we talk about all sorts, everything to do with our man's brain works and just the stuff that we go through.

Speaker 2: 22:58

And, again, your goal is to help men move from where they are to where they could be, where they can be, where they want to be. If you could go back and talk to yourself, pete, when you were 15 years old, you could tell yourself one thing. What would you tell yourself? Take more risks.

Speaker 3: 23:19

Take more risks. Yeah, I like I take risks about. Just there'll be two things. It'd be take more risks really. Stop caring of what other people think, especially the people that don't really matter in your life and I see that a lot.

Speaker 3: 23:43

I see that in myself and I see that with plenty of guys that we work with that might hold themselves back from making the power moves or making the bold moves, because they're worried about what someone else may think. And typically when I ask them who that person might be, they might not have a name or might just be like I'm thinking about Karen and Sally, who follow me on Facebook, who don't really mean a lot, but it's like it can get in a man's way, and it certainly got in my way for many years just, and it wasn't necessarily Karen or Sally or for Facebook. It might have well been like my business partner who I'm really, who I'm very, very close with, but I was worried about, like, their reaction and what they may think. So then, didn't make the bigger or bolder moves, right? So take more risks, stop worrying about what other people think. That's what I tell 15 year old Pete.

Speaker 2: 24:37

And I think that's good advice for everybody who's listening. Is there a book that has made a difference in your journey, one that you would recommend that leaders read, and say that if you can put one book on your to read list, this is the one you want?

Speaker 3: 24:49

to put. Yeah, I got two books, one for the man, one for the business. For the business, Delivering Happiness by Tony Shay, and that absolutely it's like I still use those principles now and we were. I have a completely different business. My business is more like community, online, Right, and I use those principles that I learned from Tony through that and like we are based one of my core values, which was deliver Wow off the back of reading that book. It's a fantastic book If you're looking to build an amazing culture, looking to build an amazing team and looking to build an amazing product that your business grows off the back of having Wow customer service. So Delivering Happiness.

Speaker 3: 25:35

And then the book for the man would be Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. That is, that's an incredible reason. It's a book I like to read once a year. It just changes your. It certainly changes changed my perspective on life.

Speaker 3: 25:57

It's about Victor Frankel, who went through the Holocaust.

Speaker 3: 26:01

Right, he's like he's gone through terrible, terrible ordeals and survived that and he's a psychologist and he like documented and really like assessed, like how he reacted, going through like I think it was four years and how like other inmates went through that and their thought process.

Speaker 3: 26:23

And then what? Like the one, one of his biggest takeaways was that you can never take away a man's freedom for his attitude in any given situation. So between stimulus and response there was a gap, right, and in that gap a man can choose his attitude, and that's what you can't take away from him and like, if you can grasp that concept, it's mega, mega powerful. You have to really think about that and consistently remind yourself of that concept, and I have to like catch myself when I'm feeling myself like going into, like I am reacting rather than responding. So the situation has happened and rather than me giving a response to that, I'm just reacting to it quick, boom, boom, right, but if I slow down and you get good at this, this is called reactive discipline. That in the middle there, between the stimulus and the response, there is a gap and as a man, the only thing that cannot be taken away from us is our attitude there.

Speaker 2: 27:28

As we taboo on the episode. If people walk away with one thing from this episode, what is the one thing you want them to walk away with?

Speaker 3: 27:37

You don't have to walk this path alone. It's good. I was a pride in myself, in being a lone wolf for a long time. I'll leave the pack and I'll do it on my own. I'm a lone wolf. I assume you come to learn that lone wolves die alone in the wilderness and you don't have to do it alone. Being part of a strong group and being part of a pack is extremely empowering and powerful, and if you haven't got a pack, go find one.

Speaker 2: 28:13

I know folks are going to want to stay connected with you, Pete, and continue to learn from you and maybe even join the community that you're forming. What's the best way for folks to connect with you?

Speaker 3: 28:25

Yeah, two ways. Follow me personally on Instagram it's Pete underscore Taylor. And the next thing is I talked about self-sabotage earlier. We have a fantastic secret podcast series on that and it's innerenemycom. So if you go to innerenemycom, put your email in there and it'll be sent straight to your phone. You can listen to a micro podcast on self-sabotage and it walks you through the tools on how to get over this and through this. It's mega powerful, Pete.

Speaker 2: 28:59

Thank you so much for being a part of the show today, for what you've shared and the honesty and authenticity that you've brought to this conversation.

Speaker 3: 29:10

Thanks, william, good to be here.

Speaker 2: 29:13

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Speaker 2: 29:49

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20-plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. If you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.