Using Calmness as a Strategic Advantage with Alexander Avanth

In today’s fast-paced world, stress often feels inevitable, especially for entrepreneurs and leaders. But what if calmness could be your greatest asset? In this episode, we sit down with Alexander Avanth, an expert in high-stress management and strategic calmness. We’ll explore his journey, his techniques for staying calm under pressure, and how embracing calmness can transform your business approach. Tune in for valuable insights that will help you stay grounded, no matter how high the stakes.

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Thank you Alex for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode 442 Global from Asia, using Calmness as Strategic Advantage. I’m really excited for today’s show with Alex Avanth. Let’s tune in today, globalfromasia.com/outcalm. Welcome to the Global from Asia Podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

And now your host, Michael Michelini. So I’m [00:00:30] here in Bangkok, got a little petite hotel is called, and. Got cotton candy and popcorn and coffees and water. So I took this little lobby and I made a pretty amazing show, I would say with Alex. He’s here in Bangkok, he’s also working with me on, , personal development and and just this calmness.

As well as in hams, the startup, our decentralized e-commerce marketplace, where we had this roadshow for gold from Asia and I [00:01:00] got sat down right here with him yesterday and got to do an amazing interview with him. I think you’re gonna enjoy, I hope you can use this for your own development as a business owner entrepreneur.

We’re under high stress a lot and we have to use that to our advantage. So let’s tune into the show. Alright? And then after, I’ll give some of my. It’s feedback from the road show we did. If you’re curious in Bangkok here and some highlights. See, are you looking for USA banking solutions for your e-commerce [00:01:30] business?

I am proud to say mercury.com is supporting the podcast here, third year in a row at Global from Asia. And we’re proud to say, ’cause we use ’em ourselves for many of our own Amazon brands and e-commerce brands and joint ventures with our US structures. And they’re super easy to do online application, no fees, and they have great customer support.

Have helped us with trouble with Amazon Seller Central over the years about some receipts and statements. And everything like that, so we’re so happy to say thank you, mercury, for supporting our show, being a [00:02:00] great service and supporting other e-commerce sellers. We’re really proud to say they’re a sponsor here and we also have a video tutorial as well as an overview and a special link with a little bonus for you as well for us under certain conditions.

Check it out@globalfromasia.com slash mercury for that information. Thank you for listening and thank you Mercury. Alright, thanks everybody for attending to another Global From Asia podcast. It’s a, , I feel like he’s a special one. I always love all our interviews, but we have Alex [00:02:30] Avan here. He’s I got a lot of titles in my, in my opinion partner with us in our, our new Web3 startup at Hamza and Load Pipe.

Also really been working with me closely in his outcome business as a strategic, which is actually a topic of our show, is using calmness as a strategic advantage. I think I’ve seen improvements as well, so I wanna share with you some of the experiences and hopefully you as a business business owner can also get some [00:03:00] experiences too.

So we’re here in Bangkok as well at a nice hotel in th lore right before our meetup, so thanks for coming on, Alex. Thanks, man. Good to see you as well. Yeah, I really, really appreciate it. And happy to be on, on board your podcast here. Yeah, it’s been on the list. We’ve had this like Google Doc for like over a year.

And Wendy will be happy to have this. She loves Yeah. What you do and and that whole, , mindfulness and, uh, but maybe you could explain a bit about Yeah, yeah. About that. Yeah. So, so I think to, to pitch myself to the camera here. My name is Alex. I’m Ty [00:03:30] and Danish, which means that I’m living in Thailand, but I used to live in Denmark as well.

I moved here a few years back. Before that I lived in the Philippines where I first came. As I was headhunted to work for a very, very large organization there. So my, my career has been mostly in I guess you can call it like behavioral economics. I’ve helped people understand how they can change their behavior, usually using emerging technologies or different ways of working with new tech to revamp their business or [00:04:00] corner specific markets that they develop interesting products.

So I’ve, I’ve done that for. Almost 10 years. But I’ve also been an entrepreneur. I’ve run a few different businesses in different sectors. When me and Mike met back in the days was in Amazon aggregation, I ran one of the first aggregators out of Asia out from the Philippines. And I think that kind of opened me up to the fantastic world of e-commerce.

Yeah. But in the recent years, I’ve pivoted quite heavily as a result actually of, nearly burning [00:04:30] out, working in, in the, I guess you can call it private equity, e-commerce sector. It was a very, very tough part of my career. It was very much how do you say, a grind every day. A hustle. Definitely Mike is, is PS ding a little bit.

Here he is recalling the, the old days we used to work together in the. Kind of the heart of Manila developing or trying to turn around the, a graphics studio there that there’s Amazon listings. So also done that. But in the recent years, I’ve become more of an advisor, [00:05:00] consultant and coach.

I also run an investment fund here in Thailand that focuses on early stage startups. And then I partner with a number of exciting companies, one of them being Hamsa. Yeah. Yes. Where I’m helping Mike and the team, I guess you’d call it organizational development, setting up the right structures of the management team, expanding out their growth.

And also I am, I have been privileged enough to help Mike on his CBS Cross Border Summit. Yeah. Which is coming up when, [00:05:30] man, it’s like we’re recording now. It’ll be about a month away when this should go. Is live? Yeah. Yeah. Soon. Yeah, soon. Very soon. Sixth Annual. Yeah. Yeah. I think in that role, you’ve been to a few of ’em now, right?

I, I, I have, yeah. I, I, first one was in Guang Joe in 2019. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right before the Covid Yeah. Craziness in October, right before 19, before the world ended. I was about to say stop. Seriously. Yeah. And then, well, we saw each other right before Covid. When Covid was happening. [00:06:00] So it was a, it was a good time up until of course, COVID happened.

But what I’m helping Mike with in that area is mostly just organizing that, of course, we speak about business, business is important, but I think what we’re talking about today is more what many people consider fluffy element out calm, calmness as a competitive advantage. Right? Calmness seems to be something we we, we almost sacrifice as we hustle and.

Build a business and my thesis or what I work with is that it, it needs to move very well hand in hand with [00:06:30] how you grow your business. And I’m, I’m looking forward to share a bit more about how we do that. Yeah. Especially being and you I agree. I agree. So yeah, let’s just, I would dig in a little bit of some of the, some of that comments even on this show, right?

I mean, should I just focus on business, business content, right? Like, is this, , even gold for me, we call it, there’s three topics we try to cover. Business, lifestyle, and I forgetting the other now. Business, lifestyle. Travel. Travel, yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. And , I don’t know where to put [00:07:00] this, but I feel like it’s very important and I feel like a lot of people don’t don’t treat themselves good.

I mean, I feel like that’s, maybe it will, that’s a whole topic about treating yourself as a business. Owner. Yeah. Well, right, because I think a lot of us take care of everyone else. Your team, your partners, your investors. Yeah. Your family, but not your yourself. Right. So I, I I hope this show can, can help you to do that, to treat yourself well.

I think that’s a, a lot Right. About taking [00:07:30] care of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And, and as well, taking care of others, right? Yeah. I mean you can’t really be selfish with calmness, right? If you are calm, if you’re a calm individual. If you’re a calm leader, you often inspire this in your peers. It’s not to say, I think, and this is perhaps where we can start.

Yeah. It’s not to say that calmness is a passive position. Right. It’s not like we, I am asking you to sit down and not do anything. I’m asking Mike, when we work together on this, do a [00:08:00] lot of things. We have a lot of sessions lately. Yeah. And and in one of these sessions I don’t know if you’re comfortable with us sharing this.

Let’s go. That’s why we’re doing it. I’m drinking a little coffee, right? Yeah, he, he can drink a bit of coffee here because but my, my opening sentence to Mike is always empty your mind. Right. And, and I do this in confidentiality and with the permission of Mike, we can of course talk about some of these areas, but.

In our last session, which was two and a half hours it was, it was more of a strategic session. Mike uncovered 55 things he [00:08:30] had on his mind. Yeah. A lot of my minds. A lot of his mind. Right. And, and that’s not to say that the, , all of them are equally important, but it’s 55 things that require your attention some time during the day.

Right. And that, in that moment, we asked you to kind of bring it to the table right then and there. And as an entrepreneur, you have a lot of things on your mind all the time, which is natural. Mm-Hmm. But how do you take action on them? Right. [00:09:00] And so the action is actually the idea of outcome, right?

Outcome is my company That’s right here. Yeah. Outcome com outcome. It came from me. It came to me. Yeah. It was actually a, a almost a gift from my, my wife. I, it was 2021 and I was in a very fierce negotiation. Discussion with a number of US lawyers. And it was about a case we had going on with some issues of a, of a company.

And these calls, I was in Germany, these calls was in the middle of the night, three o’clock at night. [00:09:30] They, these guys were in New York. Oh no. And they were tearing me apart. Right. And I remember stumbling into bed one night, and this was like on the third day. And my wife asked me, , what’s wrong?

I told her what was happening and I told her I can’t outsmart these people. And she told me instead, why don’t you try and out calm them? Yeah. I didn’t know the story. Yeah, you never heard it, right? Yeah. So, so this kind of tricked my mind as a background. I, I’m also an avid meditator. I’ve meditated about a thousand hours in my life.

[00:10:00] I’m a ordained Buddhist monk and I am also an international speaker on neuroscience. I have a. Background in in neuroscience from the University of Copenhagen COHA Business School. Sorry. Awesome. So, so it’s not like a topic for me that’s new. I’ve studied this for many years, but how do you actually out calm someone else?

How can I become more than you? Right. That was kind of my, my trick. Calmest person in the room. Exactly, exactly. How do I become the calmest person in the room? And that’s the question we work [00:10:30] on, right? Because whether or not you’re sitting in a here fierce negotiation with a number of people that you need to convince about something, or you’re trying to raise capital, or you’re trying to scale your, your platform, your e-commerce platform, whatever it might be, you’ve gotta start these actions from a point of deliberate calmness.

Because if you panic into them. If you become all stressed and you react to all the circumstances and you raise your voice, it often doesn’t result in the decision that you want to do. It often costs [00:11:00] a little bit of relational capital, right? And it’s very hard to come back from such a reaction if, if you, if you lash out or if you panic, you have to kind of repair the damage that has been done.

With that said, of course, sometimes you need to get angry, right? You need to get the. You need to show people that you have passion in this. You have a lot on the line and everything, but not every time. You can’t live a life where everything is an urgency. You can’t live a life where 55 [00:11:30] things needs to happen.

Yeah. Right at once. So that’s the practice of outcome. It’s finding out what is it that you can return to so that every time you start from a point of deliberate calmness and then you go to war, and you’ll be surprised. I did a lot of research with this. All the great thinkers, the out of war, right? Many of different books about Chris Ross.

Yeah. Never split the difference, right? Negotiation strategies for the FBI, all these intensive moments, they always start in [00:12:00] a calm, collected mind. Mm-Hmm. Right. The art war has this beautiful saying that it is the perfect arrow that’s released from a calm hand. Mm, right. So, so if you start thinking your life into the number of decisions you can make with a.

Clear mind. My bet is that you will see better results in your business. Okay, so, , we’re here in Bangkok, Thailand, and in Asia. Right. And the show’s called Global from Asia. And , you have [00:12:30] unique experience. You, you said Danish and, and Hai. I guess the reason what I’m getting towards is, , I, I grew up in, in America, right in in Northeast like Connecticut, New York, New Jersey.

I was on Wall Street. These people were not calm New Yorkers. Yeah. Like, and they always told me like, I have to be more aggressive, more fierce, more vicious. Yeah. I was like, but they tried to change me. Yeah. In, in, in both my fraternity in college and in my Wall Street days. ’cause I was like the, I, I don’t think I [00:13:00] changed that much, but they tried to say, you’re too nice, you’re too passive.

You gotta like, be aggressive. You gotta like, be hungry. You gotta like. Go for the, go for the throat, go for the jugular. Like get that money from the, ’cause I was doing trade settlements. I wasn’t a trader. I had a series 7 63, but I was like calling and I had to get them to know my trader’s number. ’cause sometimes there’s trade discrepancies, so I say you gotta fight for that, you gotta get our number.

You like, but what I’m really trying to say is like east versus west, right? Mm-Hmm. I love that. Here across culture. I [00:13:30] feel like westerners are more not calm. Yeah. More. Aggress aggressive. And especially in China, I feel like other parts of Asia, the, the factory boss is like straight faced, right. Doesn’t show the emotion.

Like, is that, is that what this is like showing, not showing your emotion, not showing? Is that what, is that what it is like? ’cause I think Americans or Westerners, like maybe in general, but definitely Americans we’re more like cowboy. Yeah, yeah. Is that, that’s a weakness. That’s not the right way to be, [00:14:00] I mean.

I think it speaks into the way the world works, right? The way the world works today is that capitalism and making a lot of money seems to be the best way for us to see that you are successful, right? Mm-Hmm. But if you go here for example, and you meet a monk in a temple, and he sits with a smile on his face and he’s calm, is he not successful?

Right? So my thesis is, , do whatever makes sense to you, but make sure that you don’t do it for the wrong reasons, right? And the, is the trade off [00:14:30] of your family’s happiness, is that fair for your aggression towards a bigger bank account? Mm. Like is, is that a trade off that makes sense to you in the long run?

I’ve, I’ve told you a few times, right, that the only people who are going to remember those late nights where you work and you hustle and you yell on the phone, those are gonna be your kids, right? Yeah. When they grow older. Yeah, they’re gonna remember the time which you sacrificed for the ideals that you believe are most important to you and your family.

And [00:15:00] in the West, I mean, even in Denmark, man, Denmark, Denmark was, for so many years, it was crowned the happiest country in the world. But I’ll tell you secret, it’s also one of the countries in Scandinavia that has the highest antidepressant usage per capita than any other place else. Wow. And so there’s something weird going on in the West about, , what does it take to be happy?

Right? And it’s not to say that, again, not showing emotions, being aggressive, [00:15:30] going for what you want it, it’s less about saying that those are bad things or those are good things, and more about you feel you live a life where you’re not leaning all the way into the next moment because the current moment is just not worth it.

Mm-Hmm. Right. Because in that current moment you might have a family, you might have parents that love you, right? That haven’t heard from you in a very long time. You might have not had a good night’s sleep for a month or two. You may, , sacrifice those social relations that [00:16:00] you have around you.

And a lot of people are willing to do that, right? They’re willing to just sacrifice all of these things in order to quote unquote make it, yeah. For whatever making it means to them whatever success is to them. For, from my perspective, I can guarantee you one thing, and that is for the future, it won’t be calmer than today.

There, there, there is no price to pay for a calm mindset, right? Mm-hmm. You’ll arrive in that future and it depends on your ability [00:16:30] to be at, be at peace with circumstances, but not necessarily being passive about working towards your future. Right? You, you can’t be lazy on your future self. But you can perhaps be kinder towards how it is that you’re going to get there.

The, the only way reason I say this is because I honestly haven’t met many quote unquote successful rich people that have sufficiently [00:17:00] arrived at a place that they have found peace. They kind of tie themselves into this belief that it’s the problem that will allow them to arrive at success. But the problem never goes away.

There’s always another thing that you can challenge and grow towards. So that metric doesn’t work because it’s, it’s, you’re just gonna have another problem. It’s gonna be another zero that you’re gonna add to your amount, right? Mm-Hmm. So, so how can you make that road worth [00:17:30] traveling, but at the same time, better for yourself, your family, your friends, the world with your presence?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot in there. There’s a lot in there. Yeah. In my, my perspective, I think going back to East and West, I think the Eastern way, there’s a lot of, of course there’s benefits in the west, but I feel like the West left lost a lot of, I feel like the Right, like is more transactional Yeah.

In the west, [00:18:00] right. Like, make money. Yeah. , and then there’s like, I, I think of 50 cent. The rapper. Yeah. I think of even Gary VI think he’s kind of changed some of his stuff. I used to watch him much more and he’s great. I’ve learned a lot from him. Gary Vanerchuk, but , he’s like hustle, hustle, hustle.

Yeah. Yeah. Don’t sleep. I think he’s changed that one. But , it’s like, and there’s that mentality of like, hustle and do what, . Yeah. I follow that alone. I still actually am doing that, but I feel like what we’ve been learning is, is I even share with me and, and helping me is.[00:18:30]

I don’t wanna say not hustle, but be more, I guess, strategic or what did you say about all this hustle stuff you see? Yeah. What’s your response to hustle? I mean, the pitch opened up with this as calmness as a competitive advantage, right? And there’s this beautiful idea in the art of war that you can win the greatest warriors win without fighting, right?

Mm-Hmm. And. I think that idea is very difficult for us to perceive because everything [00:19:00] needs a certain amount of effort, but we also have to be mindful what kind of effort we put into things, right? If, if your results have arrived at your ability to stay up very late at night, right? I think you are looking at the metric late at night rather than the actions that takes place during the, the, the, the night, right?

So from my perspective, I get very specific, like I like to. I like to distill things down into the most simple form, right? Mm-Hmm. So, [00:19:30] if, if if you have a, a goal for yourself as you have, right? You, you wanna build a, the World’s first Web3 eCommerce platform, okay? How do you do that? Well, you have a few developers that develop a platform.

You have a community that comes on board. You have a structure that allows them to interact with each other and say, okay, how do we do that? Okay, well, you get people in a room that can program. , you get communities that are proactive that can fill out forms about what, okay, so how do we do that?

So the, the [00:20:00] distilling of action points down into the most purest basic form for me is always, you gotta make sure that people are in a position, in the right position to take the right kind of actions and you gotta inspire them to do that, right? Mm-Hmm. Now can you inspire them best by yelling at them?

Yeah, exactly right? That’s I made that mistake. , that makes sense. We all have, we all have. Right. I just need to tell them for the, , 26 time how to do that job. Right. That, that explanation [00:20:30] is, is, is fair because it’s, it’s what we believe is the fastest way to do this. But one thing is for sure, you’re not out calming people, right?

Mm-Hmm. You are not being the calmest person in the room at that point. As a matter of fact, you are pretty pissed. And you’re trying to figure out how to arrive at the result by being pissed about it. Mm-Hmm. And so what if there was a way where you weren’t pissed? Right. And then, and then I have had challenges as well.

My people are like, you can’t be too nice to people. It’s like, it’s not about being nice, it’s about being fair. [00:21:00] Mm. And it’s calmness, not a fair position for me to work in, in a world that makes me stressed beyond my measures. Why wouldn’t I work with people that make me calm? Towards a goal that we want to do together.

That philosophy for me inspires me more than, than capital. Yeah. Working with people that helped me arrive at successful metrics for the world, but at the same time, successful metrics for myself that I become a more caring, more thoughtful, [00:21:30] more present person, working on things that will do the same for others.

Why the hell not? I agree. Right? Yeah. A few things on that, like Yeah, when I first moved to China from the US I, I had, I had had staff work for me while I was in the us I had these work at home moms. They were military wives, so they couldn’t get a normal job ’cause their husband was traveling and so they had these virtual, it was like a virtual assistant before it was a [00:22:00] virtual assistant.

Okay. But I had never had like a, I worked in Wall Street, was not like a normal office, but. So China was like the first time I had this like, office environment. Mm. And I had I think the high, like 10, 10 staff. And, how do I say, I almost thought it was an, I don’t wanna say advantage, but it was just the way I was as an American in China because I would have these outbursts and I, I, I know that they didn’t like it.

Yeah. , I know they didn’t like it. And it’s not like I was saying it was [00:22:30] okay, I did that. I would feel bad that I had done that. But I thought that was just like the way to like, maybe I don’t wanna, maybe not motivate, but I guess push. Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, I was probably, definitely in the wrong way, but I mean, there’s still some, I mean, I don’t think I was horrible to them, but I would push, I did that as a way to like push and, and some of them of course would leave or not deal with it.

But I, some are still my good friends, they’re like really good sellers. Yeah. They call me like teacher. Because I would like, , I always take on [00:23:00] too much that I could, it was like overwhelming amount of stuff, especially when I first got there. Yeah. It was like overwhelming and some of ’em would like embrace it and work and learn and grow.

Even inside my current team with in the headstone team, I, I, they say that even on a call before this, I, I overwhelm people and I, I, I kind of like do that as a way to have them sink or swim to grow. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. I don’t know if that’s still the wrong, I’ve gotten better, but I remember I had those outbursts in China because it was so stressful there, especially, [00:23:30] and I was learning all these things and there’s a lot of things happening.

Yeah. One, one note to that, there, there is a poem by Rumi. Do Rumi? He’s a Persian poet. He has a beautiful saying. He says that beyond the fields of no, beyond the concepts of right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Right. The idea that we have, I, , I’m acting in the right way, I’m acting in the wrong way, is also very difficult to kind of pinpoint when it comes to finding your calm [00:24:00] position, because I’ll tell you why.

Who the hell am I to say what’s best or worse for you? Right? Mm-Hmm. I, I don’t know what’s going on in your life, Mike. I can sit and witness it. I can listen to it. What I’m more interested in is that you are living through this authentic you. That is the best version of Mike that you can live with. Right.

And I think that that takes a lot of honesty. What I’m hearing you say here is that you were a tough, , American coming with your style here. [00:24:30] Mm-Hmm. To clarify, I still think I wasn’t as tough as New York Wall Street guys. I felt like I, I would say that I’m like, I’m not as bad. I know I’m not as. I thought it was like a cultural difference, that it was just not unavoidable.

But I was still not, I would say I’m not as bad as my Wall Street. No, no, no, no. But I, I was bad in their eyes, ? And, but, but even the, the quote unquote bad Wall Street boss has moments where he’s a genuine great guy, right? And I think that might be the thing in you that shine through [00:25:00] that has allowed people to stick with you.

Because being a very direct and assertive individual is a good technique for some. And you can do that and be calm at the same point. Mm-hmm. Right. There’s a lot of great leaders throughout history that has been extremely assertive, direct, maybe even raise their voice to a certain degree and still remain calm about it.

So, so the idea of calmness, again, as a competitive advantage is that you have this depth where it may feel to [00:25:30] others that you’re losing it, but actually you aren’t. You’re just being extremely direct with your intentions. Mm-hmm. And so the cost you have to keep an eye on is when you actually lose it.

When you go from a situation and you’re thinking, I’m so exhausted, right? And I can’t believe I said that, or I should have said something different. That’s where you are not calm. That’s where you are. Panic, right? Mm. So this technique of being , loud wall Street, Deutsche Trader right? [00:26:00] Is, is okay as long as it doesn’t cost.

Your internal calmness as long as you do this from a position of surplus. Right? Yeah. I’m just thinking like they wanted me to yell back in New York. Yeah. So like they would yell at me and they would respect me when I would out respect at them. I would, they exploded me. They would be almost not respect me for not excluding today.

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the other side of outcome. That’s. You’re no longer [00:26:30] outcoming yourself, you’re trying to outcome others, right? Mm-Hmm. I mean, you, you have to first calm yourself down before you can calm others there. There’s a beautiful story here. Buddha, back when he was, , fun story about Buddha.

Buddha was a guy our age, right? He was 35, 38, 40, whatever it was only this point, he became enlightened. Oh, okay. I didn’t, he wasn’t a g He was younger. No, he, he started, but it was. He became the Buddha at 35. 35, I think. Wow. But , then, then he was just a, a guy who walked [00:27:00] around and had this way of, of viewing the world that was very attractive to others.

My thesis is, is Buddha’s around today, he’d probably be a CEO because he was a very proactive, very smart individual. He made some great decisions. Right. He had a clear understanding of the problem, and there’s a story where he came to a city and . His influence at that point had already grown quite white.

And there was a man in that city who had his whole family, , meditating, being peaceful, and he couldn’t stand it. He was, he was furious. He was thinking, what the heck are we doing? We are not, [00:27:30] we’re just cultivating peace of mind. Now what about, , building something or doing something? So he was pissed and he ran to the Buddha and he said, listen, I can’t believe this.

You were just a fake guy. You just. , screwing everybody over. And Buddha looked at him and took it in, right? This yelling, man, this Wall Street banker. And what he told him? He said, if I come to your house and I bring a gift, right? I bring you a gift and I give this gift to you, but you choose not to take it.

Who does the gift belong to? [00:28:00] It belongs still to me. It’s the same thing with anger. Anger has this idea around it that. My anger is only justified if I can get you angry. Mm-Hmm. Right. Look, look at how the political system works in this world. I need to trigger you because I’m triggered and if you don’t get triggered, my triggering is completely worthless.

Mm-Hmm. Right. So, so this kind of feedback loop ends without calm, right? It ends with a [00:28:30] proactive engagement to say thank, thank you so much. But what? No thank you. Right. I’m, I’m not gonna take this one. Instead, I think we should focus on the things that we can do together, right? And so, trying to find a more elaborate way of saying we don’t need to yell at each other because it’s actually not the result.

The result is not the yelling. The result is making more money from the client, growing the business, making better hires, , fixing the problem, whatever it is. So why don’t we come back to [00:29:00] that? Those techniques are very foreign to us. Because we are not allowed to. Mm-Hmm. You should react to me when I poke you.

You should poke me back, man. But it doesn’t have to be that way because if I keep poking you and you go home to your kids and your wife, you might poke them as well and then they poke each other and poke each other at school. Right. This, it is, anger is exponential and you see it in the world. Anxiety is, it’s a terrible mental state that is very contagious.

[00:29:30] Right. But you, it can stop and you can still make money. You can still build a business, you can still find peace among your family members. You can, okay, yeah, that’s great. Don’t, don’t receive, , you don’t have to accept it. I just feel like, especially in my early days in Asia or in China, there was another story where I had a bad quality problem from a factory and the client was of course, really angry.

And I remember this is in 2007 when the. I didn’t have email on my phone. I think [00:30:00] maybe people had it, but I didn’t have it yet. I go back to my home office and refresh my email. We have a big f the captions, I think he used the F word in the subject line, but I dunno if it was the F word or not, but it was all caps, subject line.

We have a big problem and , he’s, ’cause he had, it was going to his client, he sold to a store and so it was like his chain reaction. And I went to the factory, all emotional, angry. And he, the factory owner, , male, of course, , I don’t know, middle [00:30:30] aged. And we had met him before, but he seemed to have no emotion or he didn’t receive my gift of anger or stress.

Mm. He was not stressed. Mm-Hmm. I feel like that’s, people said about Chinese factories or Chinese bosses, or maybe that’s the Asian way, which is. Right. Because a westerner receives the anger and has 40 emotion. Right. We have, I think Westerners have show more emotion, right. But the Chinese or Asians don’t seem to show the emotion back.

And then we went all the way to, I think I, I had a partner in the business [00:31:00] at the sourcing company and we both went there together, stayed at a hotel, went to the, went to his big office and he’s just totally calm. Yeah. And we’re like, even, it was multiple days. We were still angry and stressed and. He’s just like not concerned, not emotional, not angry, like calm.

I guess he’s better than us, right? Like again, it’s not about better or worse, right? Because who do we know? Maybe he seemed calm, but it’s because these problems were nothing in comparison to his sick daughter at home right there. [00:31:30] I think this story is good, Mike, because it also brings into light that we don’t know what people are going through.

Mm. So when people are reacting to circumstances and they might seem angry. You don’t know where that’s coming from, that might be something terrible happening in their life. And it’s not to say that we can care about every person’s problem, but it is to say that you shouldn’t necessarily just allow the first reaction to circumstances to be the way people are.

Right. And, and to give you an idea of this, there’s another great story since we are [00:32:00] in the story mode about this Chinese farmer, right? You’ve heard it, right? He has 10 white horses. One day, one of the horses runs away the. The, , the Cold City comes to him and says, oh, it’s terrible. And he says, let’s see.

Next day the horse comes back with 10 other wild horses, and the village comes to him and says, it’s fantastic. , let’s celebrate. The day after one of his sons breaks his leg as he falls off trying to break in one of the wild horses, the village comes and says, oh, that’s terrible. And he says, let’s see.

The next day the army [00:32:30] comes looking for recruits. They’ll overlook his son because he has a broken leg. The village says it’s fantastic. He says, let’s see. The moral of the story is this. You do not know the outcomes of good fortunes or bad fortune. You don’t know. You might make a million dollars and , you might get cancer the next day, so things will change.

That’s, that’s what we can be absolutely certain of. You may have much better access to healthcare because you have a million dollars, but there is absolutely [00:33:00] no guarantee that things will turn out in your favor in the long run. Mm-Hmm. Right. So for, for situations like these where you go and see your person and it seems so stoic and calm and everything, that’s great.

But even if that’s the case, you don’t know, right? You don’t know what the result of that might have been. Yeah, I agree. I, I’ve been, I know I feel like throughout today’s talk, I’ve brought it up, I feel like Asian ways to be acting calm, or at least not to show your emotion. ’cause even my wife was just Chinese.

She’d always see that in me when, [00:33:30] and she’s always trying to calm me down. And , basically since I’ve known her, she’s always been trying to, I guess, help me, right? Yeah. Calm me down or not show my emotions, not show weakness, right. I feel like weak showing emotion is showing weakness. Yeah. I mean, depends if your wife tells you she loves you, is that weakness?

Mm, yeah, that’s true. Right? So it, again, it’s difficult to say right and wrong here because what do people know, [00:34:00] right? When I take an interest in you, Mike, and we practice the position of outcome, I focus a lot less on the business. Right. We ended up in our last kind of session to have three habits that you are going to build.

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s, let’s, yeah, let’s talk about it. Yeah. Because for my sake, I need you to be a great leader. A, , a guy who can drive this company to success, but I can’t afford you to have a family that’s dysfunctional. Hmm. I can’t afford you to [00:34:30] be sleep deprived. I can’t afford you to be clouded in your mind when it comes to going into great negotiations or whatnot.

So I look behind the scene and I say, what’s fuels Mike? What calms Mike down? What is it actually that matters to you? I haven’t shared this with you, but I’ll, this will be your first I have a technique of a model I’ve developed. Nice. Let’s hear it. Yeah. I call it the three Ps. Okay. Right, so outcome is the constellation of three positions, [00:35:00] presence, purpose, and power.

Okay. That’s right. Presence is your ability to be here now with whatever it is that’s in you. Right? If it’s 55 things you have in your mind, if it’s a bit of anxiety, if your heart rate is up, if you have sweaty palms, because there’s so many things depending on you, whatever, can you be present with it?

Can you sit with it for a while? Can we be okay with it? Not moving? Okay. Purpose is number two. Purpose is why you are here now. Yeah, [00:35:30] right? Why are you actually here now? Why are you worrying so much about these things? What matters to you? Why do you wake up? Why do you drive yourself to the point of starvation, energy wise to achieve these goals?

Right? Is it family? Is it $10 million? Is it making the world a better place? I don’t care. Just tell me what it is. The last P is power. How are you now going to act as your present with your purpose? How are you gonna act on that? What is the power you’re pushing through? What is it that you’re driving?

What negotiation are you engaging [00:36:00] in? What decision are you taking? What is the relationships you’re building? Power is a very, very important point, but there’s plenty of people out there that just live with power. They just push and push and push. Them. Mm-hmm? Power, power, power, power, power. But no presence, no purpose, right?

You have people who have purpose and power. I wanna make a million dollars. Right. I wanna just push ’em that, but they never arrive to the circumstances of their life right now, and then one day they wake up and they don’t understand why they have chest PAL patients [00:36:30] palpitations. Right? They don’t understand why their family doesn’t speak to them anymore.

They don’t understand why they don’t really have a social circle. Right? Because they’ve never been present in their circumstances. Mm. Then you have people who are just present. They just sit. They don’t do anything. They remain inactive. They just are there. Right? You don’t wanna be that either. And you don’t wanna just have purpose.

You can’t just say, oh, , these purpose driven people are those who are, they don’t really take action in anything. They’re never really present. They’re just kind of living in their own world, and they are [00:37:00] pretty much impossible to work with. So if you can make the constellation of all three things, if you have presence, if you have purpose, and if you have power, you can constantly drive.

Calm, clear, but very, very action driven decisions in your life. Yeah. Thanks for, yeah. I was gonna kind of go into it. I feel like that’s answering it, but that’s some actionable stuff. Right? I like, we’re kind of getting towards the end. This has been a really good conversation so far, but I feel like those three Ps, if somebody listening could write down.

Yeah. [00:37:30] Well, presence I think is, we’re all, presence is not different for each person. Right? Presence is not being in the past or future, but just being here. But I think purpose and. Purpose. I think everybody has different purposes, right? I mean, that’s something people should define, their purpose, their why power.

I think that’s like more, that’s like making it happen, but I think purpose is the one maybe people should define. That’s like an action. That’d be good. I think if people listening could, what’s your purpose for doing all of this? [00:38:00] Yeah. Actually, even yesterday at the, the venue for the meetup tonight, the, the venue person is, wants to start his own business.

Okay. And he’s like, how can I make money fast? I just wanna see money in my bank to motivate me to do it. To continue. Yeah. Yeah. And I said to him like, well, I guess that’s a motivation, but I, I don’t know if you really succeed in that venture, if you’re just doing it. Maybe that’s, but I, I felt like I said like, why are, [00:38:30] why, why are you doing it?

Right? Yeah. Because he was like, if I see money coming in from my work, then no motivate me. ’cause he couldn’t get motivated to start his own business. He was still working in a, in a, in a corporate environment. But I said, yeah, of course that might motivate you to get money in your bank account. But I was saying more like, why are you doing it?

Yeah, that’s what I had told him. I mean, poverty is also a good motivator. Mm-Hmm. I’m, my mother at the age of 18, moved from Thailand to the UK with no English, no money, no nothing, just because [00:39:00] she didn’t wanna be poor. Mm-Hmm. So she took a leap of faith and I, I couldn’t be more proud of her. I mean, in my eyes.

She knew her. Why it, I don’t wanna be poor. Right. So, so it, if it can be a good motivator, but often it’s limiting. Money is limiting because the number, it’s just a number. Yeah. You can’t talk with money, can’t hug you. Right. It’s, well, I think there’s also no end ’cause people. That want money? Just want more money.

Right. That’s the thing. That’s the thing. They’ll never be [00:39:30] fulfilled more. Oh, I got a million, I got 2 million, I got 10 million, I got a hundred million, I got 2 million, I got billions. Like I want more billions. Trillions like, yeah, yeah. Which is okay if that’s the way you wanna live your life, but, but just say it then.

Just define it. Just be peace with it and then be present in it to, to the last point about present. I think people, we are always present. Technically, if I ask you to be in the moment with me right now, you can. Right? Yeah. But often I, I can’t tell you because you’re sitting with emails, you’re sitting with three screens, you’re sitting with [00:40:00] a, , my gloves these back to back meetings.

Right. It’s just back to back to back to back to back. So where you, where’s your presence there? Right. Where, where do you stop up and you reevaluate whether or not you’re still doing things that are purpose driven. Are you still executing with the right power? So I teach him a breathing exercise. Yeah. I remember that.

Yeah. Just to break it up. B2B. Yeah. B2B. There’s a article me, I’ll, I’ll share with you on that. Okay? Yeah. We’ll put some links on the questions, but whatever it is that makes you present in the moment, right here, right now, [00:40:30] practice it once in a while, right? You don’t have to sit for meditation, flowers, and hours and hours to be present.

You can be present right now and then you can reevaluate if what your power is doing, is it still doing what’s best for your purpose and your presence, right. The, the synergy needs to be existing because if not, you’ll find yourself doing something that is probably super important for other people than you.

Yeah. I love it. Yeah. I, I feel like we can go on for a while, but this has been [00:41:00] amazing so far and I really appreciate course, Mike, working with you all, , and and having share. I I hope people got something from this and. You, , you have com.com and then you have, you can work with people there.

Yeah. Yeah. You’re welcome to connect with me on my website com. Dot com. If you’re a startup that’s based in Southeast Asia, you’re interested in funding at the early stage go check out more futures, Southeast Asia. We do check sizes, equity loans, bridge loans, whatever you [00:41:30] want. And if you, but if you want to be, working as a more calm leader connect with me in outcome and I’ll be happy to speak with you. Great. And this little last plug for Cross Border Summit? Yeah. Alex will be there. We’ll have some sessions with him for, for mindfulness and of course just networking. It’s really high quality networking events.

, people may. It’s , connect with a lot of the at attendees and speakers is one of our biggest feedback. So you get to meet all these amazing people, November 3rd to fifth, 20 [00:42:00] twenty4@crossbordersummit.com. And that’s, that’s a wrap for now. I think Alex and I are gonna get into our, our sessions after this.

And thanks for watching. Save the date Cross-Border Summit. 2024 is coming back. 2020 threes was epic. Never got such great feedback in all of our events. Cross-Border Summit 2024, we’re planning already a year in advance. It is a full week of amazing things. There’s pre events, post events, workshops, trainings, elephants, sanctuaries.

[00:42:30] We have a lot of amazing things here in Chiang Mai, Thailand again, so I would love to see you there. We’ve already pre-sold some tickets. To previous people. We will be opening up tickets soon. Subscribe to get updates at 2024 dot cross-border summit.com. Also, check out videos and testimonials from last year as well as all of our years we did ’em in China.

And this will be our sixth one. It’ll be great to meet you there and network and make some great relationships. I can’t wait. [00:43:00] November, 2024. Thank you, Alex. I’m sitting in the same seat that we did the recording before I head off. To Ho Chi Minh. And then after this interview we did, we went to the roadshow here in Bangkok.

Our second one, global Asia and Flippa are doing an Asia roadshow for us ever. And it was, it was really epic. Full house. It was really exciting. Hirsch helped put this together here in Cock. He’s in the community and a friend for many years. I really appreciate the support. It’s also great to work [00:43:30] with Flippa on this road show.

I’m literally gonna go to the airport right now, just making this outro before I leave the hotel. I’m not sure if I’m gonna get cotton candy or not, but maybe skip that. But. Let’s keep on pushing our limits and using calmness as a competitive advantage. I’ll be honest, I’m still, I guess we’ll never be perfect, but I’m still dealing with stress and anxiety and pressure, but I’m trying to use, be aware of it first is just being aware of it, right?

Just knowing that you’re [00:44:00] stressed. Taking even a few second break before you respond to someone or do something right or take an action. Just, just think first, right before you say, or before you do. Just think first. Be aware of your feelings. So that’s some my quick learnings and, that’s it for today.

I hope you have a great day. I wish you the best in your business and in your life. I really, really hope this show and other shows we do and , the events and the things that we make here help you to grow. And also it’d be great to see you at Cross Border Summit. It’s [00:44:30] just about a five weeks from now.

People from Bangkok coming. We got some people came that already have a ticket. Some people are picking up a ticket. It’s our sixth annual and it’d be great to support us. Thanks again for listening. I’m gonna pack and go. Take care. Bye-Bye. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com.

That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning [00:45:00] in.