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In this week’s episode, Geoff is talking to Jack Anderson who was Finalist in the 2021 7NEWS Young Achiever Awards for Western Australia.
Jack Anderson founded ThrivEd, where he brought together talented writers to author Year 12 textbooks. The proceeds from every two sales are used to produce a third textbook for students who would benefit from the same resource. He has led this organisation to publish two Chemistry textbooks so far and is working to publish another 6 textbooks over the next year with their 20 writing volunteers. Jack is also the General Manager at Ignite Mentoring. He dedicates his personal time to help run weekly classes to give students the self-confidence to tackle life head-on and develop crucial soft skills.
In this episode:
- We hear how Jack assists students in grappling the ever-changing world of education, through providing substantial resources authored by himself and the team at ThrivEd.
- ThrivEd began in November of 2019, authoring curriculum textbooks to benefit students in accomplishing their study goals
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Transcript
Welcome to the inspirational australian’s podcast, where we check to people making a difference in their communities and in the lives of others. And here is your host for today. Jeff griffin. Welcome to the inspirational australian’s podcast stories of inspiring achievements and community contribution. Every week we will celebrate an award program category, winner or finalists. We hope you’ll be inspired and encouraged to know that australia is in good hands, together with our corporate partners and not for profit partners, awards, australia, showcase ordinary people from right across australia. Doing extraordinary things. If you enjoy hearing the stories about inspirational australians, please subscribe. Write us and review us. We really appreciate it. My guest today is passionate about giving young people a more equitable education through access to free textbooks, which is why he found it thrive. It is also the general manager, mentoring was a volunteer with rotary club of crawling in recognition of the significant community contribution he makes. And just 20 years of age. Jack anderson was chosen as a finalist in this year’s masonic way and freemason’s w8 community service and volunteering award, which is part of course of the 70s. chabrol was it’s such an honor to have you on the podcast today. Jack, welcome. Thank you for having me, jeff. I think the honors really mine, i’m super excited to be a part of just a community of people who do such great things and to be able to kind of share my story. And my lessons i think is it’s going to be really awesome. Fantastic. A quick question. Have you joined the alumni yet? Yes, I have. I’m following the facebook page and it’s fantastic. Awesome. Yeah, that’s great jack. You’ve done so much already in your life and I want to unpack some of it starting with tribbitt. It’s really fascinating. Can you tell us how it came about? Yeah, of course. I think for those of the people listening who don’t know what drive it is, which would probably be a large majority. So drive it is a organization that has existed for a year and a half. Now basically what we do is we all the year 12 textbooks, mostly the sciences that really complicated our hope to really dive into that. But I guess it kind of started a year and a half ago in November of twenty nineteen. So I was in my first year of uni, just finishing up and I was doing lots of tutoring all through kind of like out my wake, i’d be tutoring these students and they’d be getting really great results. And I was really enjoying the process date down when I was tutoring these students. I was really kind of frustrated by the fact that there were thousands of students out there who weren’t receiving the same level of support because I couldn’t help everyone. And nor is there enough tutors to help everyone. So I kind of came up with this idea of what if we wrote a textbook that combined all of the student experiences to create this like really amazing piece of work that hypothetically any student could work through. And if they were willing to put in the work and dedicate themselves to it, then they could get one hundred percent on that subject. This was kind of a really crazy concept at the time because there was no curriculum based textbooks that had been written by 19 year olds. I kind of just thought about it and said, just screw it, let’s go for it. So what came next, was me calling up a bunch of friends pitching them the idea and a few of them said yes, a few of them said no. We started with a team of five very ambitious individuals, fresh out of kind of year 12. So we really knew the textbooks pretty well. I guess when we first started something that fundamentally annoyed us about all the textbooks when you’re going through a subject. Usually a lot of the students use three or four, or maybe even five textbooks per subject because they’re all specialty textbooks. And they all generally just do a poor job of the thing that they’re focused on anyway. So we asked ourselves, what if we wrote a textbook that combined everything that all the other textbooks did and did everything better that they were focused on. So it was about creating the first ever all inclusive textbook, extremely ambitious, but we went with it over the course of a year and a half going through hundreds of redrafts to get to a final copy. We finally published our first chemistry unit three textbook, which was three hundred thirty six pages and then another two hundred pages of online answers in twenty twenty one. In the last six months, we’ve signed on three schools this year, and they had to make the decision to sign on a boat with only seeing one chapter. So it was a really big commitment by them because we hadn’t finished much early in the stages and then what came after that after we published our first chemistry textbook was we needed to finish chemistry and write the unit textbook. So we had the mammoth task of writing a second chemistry textbook in four months, which was just insane to comprehend. So we brought on seven new writers and proceeded to write that textbook over the course of four months. We expect it to arrive in the next couple of days for all the students to use, which is just really exciting in terms of where we are now. We move pretty quickly and we now have another 20. So we have twenty five writers in total. And we have the crazy new goal of writing two maths methods, textbooks, and two physics textbooks in the next five months. It’s yet another challenge that we’re focused on, but we’re really going to give it a good crack. I bow bow bow next. I love the story, we hear it around the country with young people who just get this idea and I want to go with it. This had this passion, the problem is as you get older, i think you start to think about old things that could go wrong or that won’t work and we put things off. We think about things that we want to affect them, whatever it is, we find excuses and I love, they had this passion, this idea, and you decided to go with it and all that. Did you go with it? You’ve made it happen and super quick. And now even more so quickly, that’s pretty cool. It doesn’t sound like a very easy journey to me. What is the journey of writing textbooks look like? I guess you just gave us some brief understanding of it, but what’s involved? Because surely, you must get approvals to put this into the curriculum or whatever it is. Sounds very complex. Yeah, I’m going to try and probably break down a lot of what you said. I think that’s a really great question. I guess the first one I want to talk about, I think this might be of great use to a lot of the listeners is when you’re coming up with an idea that’s as crazy as writing a textbook at 19 years old. You can choose to look at it in two ways. I guess you can either look at it in what people have done in the past, how it’s been traditionally done, and the reasons why you can’t do something. Or you can kind of look at the problem and say, hey, what are the fundamental truths that go into writing something as complicated as the textbook? You say, can I do each of those aspects? And if you can, you go for the idea which is kind of what we took into going in this journey. We are the first young people to write curriculum based textbooks. There was so much doubt going into this and a lot of people never really caught on to what we were doing. We had faced extreme rejections from so many schools, but they are now knocking back on our door. So I guess that’s one for the listeners is just really look at things and believe in yourself rather than what other people think at the end of the day. In terms of what goes into actually writing a textbook. I think writing any textbook is never really any easy feat, whether it’s a study guide, whether it’s an exam book or whether it’s a content book, they’re all extremely complicated and have a lot of intricacies. The even crazier part about what we did is just how unprecedented our format is in terms of the scale at which we were trying to pull off our chemistry textbooks between the two. One thousand pages in total, which is I think, pretty unprecedented for a year 12 textbook. I would have to be probably the biggest textbook out there for 12. These books have two hundred and eighty pages of questions and almost five hundred pages of answers on top of great content on top of just the scale of it. Everything in our books challenges. What is being done by the status quo and what it means to be a textbook from writing with an informal student to student voice, to completely restructuring question sets and reshaping how they’ve been done to having 15 fictional characters in our problem sets. And writing a novel inside the books so that our problem sets follow 15 characters on their journey through chemistry. Everything that we did kind of challenge what had been done in the past. That made it extremely difficult because with innovation when you’re trying to come up with something new that’s never been done before, it comes with a lot of trial and error. So we had these giant textbooks with everything being different to what’s being done in the past. We just went through so many drafts, it’s really difficult for me to cap. The amount of work we put in, especially in the first year and a half by for instance, our first chapter we did over one hundred drops and it took us four months of working every single day. Just to get that one chapter and to really understand what we were trying to do. I think we were very lucky because our team was never a team of thinkers were more of a team of doers. We just really kind of are good at putting our bums in our chairs and just sitting there seven days a week every single day and just continually working on it page by page and combining it all together. We were never really naturally gifted writers, nor are we the smartest kids in the state. We were just people who just really believed in what we were doing and really put in the hours on a daily basis. I remember we started recording hours in the first two months in the Christmas and January period and we were just clocking insane hours. And we just realized at that point that there was just no point of keeping track. We just kind of just went with it. Hopefully the listeners can kind of understand that businesses are generally a lot more complicated than they look. You don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into until you do it. But I think the benefit is, is once you start and once you really start working on it on a day by day process, you get so stuck into it that there’s just really no option to quit, no matter how much work it ends up becoming amazing. And just that tenacity to keep going and driving yourself towards the end goal is so important. And I think your purpose, your life is really critical as well. And I’m sure that’s made a significant value for you to be able to keep going and to reach these targets of full months. That is unheard of and absolutely wild. So I commend you on that. It sounds like just thinking about what would be involved and how much work they have contributed. Now you mentioned that you’re not necessarily the smartest in going around, but I have to imagine if you could write your own exams well, so it wasn’t an issue. It’s just how many textbooks have you produced and how many more are coming digital and hard copy? Looking back on what is spoken on so far, I think I’ve missed one fundamental part of our organization, which is we do have a two for one model. So for every two textbooks we sell, we use the proceeds from those sales to produce a third textbook. And that textbook goes into a low socioeconomic school. It goes into their libraries so that the students at those schools can hire those out every single year. And not suffer the burden of buying textbooks in terms of kind of where we’re headed in the number of textbooks . We do have digital copies that we are working with campean to currently set up, which is really exciting. So every textbook is going to come with a digital copy. We are very ambitious group of people and I think we only really have one definitive goal at the end of the day. We have this idea that we want to have 12 established textbooks in the next two years. So that cross maths methods, chemistry, physics, math specialist, maths applications, and English, big, heavy hitting subjects that really have kind of lacked good quality textbooks for decades. yet we’re hoping to make a stamp on that in terms of impact. I’m a big fan of the idea, but the result comes a long time after your hard work. You can put in hard work for a long time and you find that the result is very delayed. It’s a very exciting prospect, but I think the scale at which we’re going to have impact is beyond my comprehension at this point. What we are potentially looking at and what we expect is the chemistry. We sold one hundred copies this year, which was fantastic. And the next year we’re expecting to sell about two thousand copies. And then every following year, as the year 12 students come in, we’re hoping to get that number closer to the five thousand mark for chemistry, which is the number of students in, wa, there’s also the potential to go to queensland and a few other eastern states who have a line syllabuses in regards to other because as well, we’re hoping they’re going to have the exact same kind of trend start small, grow big ones. We’re established in the market because it is a big sign to say, hey, you 20 year olds, we’re going to buy your books and let our students learn the entire year’s worth of content through you instead of some 50 year old person who’s been teaching the course for 30 years and has a much better understanding of the scale of it’s going to be crazy. And the number of textbooks we’re going to donate, i know next year we get to donate about six hundred of each chemistry textbook which is just going to be awesome. I’ll never really get to see the impact that will have every other year. So it’s going to keep on growing, i think, which is just really exciting. And it’s what keeps us going every single day. Is this idea of what it could become like making such a real difference, giving people an opportunity to decide beyond even your comprehension of how that might impact their future forever. So it’s not just for you 12 or something just for that subject. It’s for life. How that, my sister, confidence, sister employment, everything in fact, so all power to you and your team. How do you get accreditation as an education department thing that you have companies with or just how does that work? You can either look at the things that might stop you or the things that you can just fundamentally know about textbooks and then go with it. So when we started accreditation, never really crossed our minds, but then it seemed, every second person was asking us about how are we going to get these accredited. And the funny thing is, is there’s no accreditation process behind textbooks. I’ve thought about this for a while as to why that is. And I think a general rule of thumb is that if you’re setting out to write a textbook, then you should really be able to read the syllabus that the state provides for a subject. It’s the decision of schools as to what textbooks they’re going to use every single year. So if your textbook is missing things, if things are wrong, then you’re not going to have a great deal of success anyway. So it’s in the interest of the author to make sure that the, these books are aligned with the syllabus and are aligned with what year 12 students need in terms of how we keep ourselves in check. We usually have one teacher helping us to edit each of the books because we understand that we do not know everything that there needs to be. So the chemistry books, we had a teacher called neil rumble, and he’s taught chemistry for over 40 years. And he was just fantastic at tearing the book to shreds for us and telling us what we needed to get right. But yet there’s no real accreditation process to it, which is funny, but yeah, when you’re setting out to do a textbook, you’ve read it that many times that you’d hope it’s right. By the time you get to a final draft. And I think the thing that stands out to me is that you are relating directly to other young people, no disrespect to academics, and they’re amazing. We work with curtin university programs and they are extraordinary through the faculty of Education that young people can relate very directly, i think with the young people and how you translate and communicate through textbooks. So I think there’s something to be said for that. And I, I guess if I was a headmaster or in charge of a syllabus or a faculty or whatever it is, I’d be looking very carefully and closely what you’ve got to offer because it is very real and relevant to young people. I think. So what do you talk to us about what some of your goals and expectations are and you’re right because things for small business and growth or potential. And it is related to a witness credibility and of course growth in the market for doing so. It will take time, but I love that you’ve got goals and good expectations. Are there? What are your other future plans to thrive in? Do you see an extension of maths and chemistry or is that a major focus? I guess the reason we focus on the sciences and the maths is because it’s definitely something where students have struggled or ever. It’s something where it’s always a subject where some kids get it most don’t. And the textbooks that they have are not there to cater to help students who don’t get it. That is kind of the reason that we stay in the world of stem. Currently, in terms of the future plans, we always kind of between the founding members were all extremely ambitious. So we come to each other with new ideas every second week and they’re big ideas. So we kind of contemplate them, we give them a crack and we stick to the ones that we think are right. Something that I’ve found is like I can never really predict what the future is going to be for this organization. It seems that every single time I have a plan, it just goes another way. So I just keep working on a daily basis as hard as I can and as long as everyone else is working on a daily basis as hard as they can are on the right direction. In terms of kind of like one fundamental focus and it’s a reality for us is we’re an organization run by students and to upscale people to the point where they’re able to innovate and lead and come up with textbooks that are of the level that I know them to be and the founding members know it to be is an extremely hard thing. We’re hoping over the next two years to be able to create it to be something that we can eventually pass off. Because obviously we do this all for free and it’s probably not sustainable for me to write for the rest of my life for free at the end of the day, even if the organization does collapse. I think the one thing that we’ve always said is we’re just going to put all the textbooks out there for free online, hopefully in the next two years will be very established. So students will be like helier, i will just use these textbooks. Hopefully they’ll all be downloadable pdf, and if it’s saving paper at the end of the day, I’m not really complaining and it’s served a great purpose. As long as we have the products out there, it’s up to the students to use them. So irrespective of what happens with the organization, i know that the impact is going to be really big. It certainly sounds like it’s a massive undertaking and you guys are extra. So congratulations on first coming up with the idea. And actually, the hard part is putting into practice and then making it grow so fast, which you’ve done, and I commend you on that as did the judges, of course, in selecting you as a final and so well done to you. You’re also general manager at ignite mentoring, and I know there are a lot of synergies to what tribe is about. Tell us about ignite and your role there . ignite has a very special place in my heart. I’ve been with ignite for three years now and I’ve kind of had moved my way up through the organization as I’ve just come to love what we do. ignite is a university run organization. We have over one hundred and seventy volunteers every semester. And these are mostly university and tertiary education students. So kind of like eighteen to twenty five, I’d probably say. And what we do is we go into low socioeconomic schools, where the students usually come from more disadvantaged backgrounds. And we run nine week programs every single week, our mentors and coordinators go into these schools into these classrooms, to teach students kind of the fundamental soft skills such as teamwork, leadership, public speaking morals and critical thinking. All of these are really important skills that they may not have been exposed to yet. We try and use really fun and engaging activities to expose them to these really cool new concepts that they can then go on and work to improve. Kind of like a second outcome of our programs is to help build student self-confidence. So in the classroom where being super supportive, extremely positive for the students and just being good role models for them. So that hopefully they can kind of see a greater level beyond themselves. And hopefully work towards new and greater heights. One final thing we do is we run excursions to u’wa every semester. These are completely funded by ignite and we take approximately one hundred students to and we run activities all day and we have careers there at the end. And it’s all about immersing the students in what the future could look like for them, whether it’s university, whether it’s tife or whatever that may look like we kind of just show them what’s possible and what’s out there for them and get them thinking about those things in terms of like what my role is as the GM, my main focus is just on managing the team managers and the leadership team. So we have about twenty five people in our executive and leadership team. And we’re all really focused on making sure that ignite runs successfully every single semester. It’s a very giant workload to manage between the programs, to getting fundraising to the marketing, to managing volunteers and just our operations. So all of these teams and team members play a fundamental part organization. So I’m just very focused on providing an environment that facilitates their good work and I try and help them wherever i can make sure things are going smoothly. And just to help with the direction of ignite in general and make sure that everything’s going the way that it’s meant to go. Fantastic. And I believe it should 10 year anniversary this year if you’ve got big plans for what’s going on for that. Yeah, so ignite was founded 10 years ago and it’s just fantastic to say how far It’s come . Yeah, we do have a cocktail tonight that we’re currently working on. It’s on Friday, August 20th. So we’ve been working really hard to that to bring together all about possible in tears and just any of the community members to celebrate something that has had such an insane level of impact that again, you never really get to see. We’re introducing these concepts such as public speaking, teamwork, and a lot of these things the students have never really experienced before. They have cross collaboration with classmates that they’ve never been with before. And we know that it forms these bonds and these ideas in the students brains that then go on to turn them into some really powerful individual. So we haven’t really had a moment to celebrate it over this last ten years. And we do want to bring everyone together to just celebrate something that was started by a few people and has grown into something that is just ginormous and so important as well. It’s really critical what you do inside. That’s amazing. And I think you’re celebrating, sometimes we forget and appreciate just what we’ve done, unless you reflect back sometimes to have the time energy to reflect back and say, you know, it’s been pretty cool. What we do is pretty amazing. I know the words, australia we’re so proud that we get to tell people that may not have known about stories like yours right now. It might never have found out about all of it to expose that to tell the community about it gives us such pride and we feel so privileged to have that opportunity to tell these stories because they’re amazing. What you do is extraordinary, thrived and ignored by a powerful, massive massively important things for young people. Congratulations. That does my heart. A lot of good to hear those stories. I remember getting ready for woodstock . We’d been setting up during the day and I was wondering back to my room within the hotel to quickly get changed before we had to do a rehearsal with the finalists. As you probably remember before we started and it was a group of people coming in the foyer to check in and laughing or excited, and one of the girls i the sign that I’m so nervous. I can’t wait for tonight. This is so fantastic and someone else said, yeah, we’re so proud of you and I thought, you know what, sometimes you just forget the value that recognizing people has and people like yourself don’t do it for the accolade or the pat on the back. But to get that is so special and it’s so nice particularly when it’s not expected to know your work is validated, appreciated, and so down to again and at that moment I just thought, oh yeah, know, it really makes a difference for everybody. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a nominee or a winner is important. It’s crazy to think about the impact that all of this has. I find that the podcasts, i listen to it quite often i try and do one every two weeks or so. And I, I look for the nuggets and everyone’s talks because I think that it’s really cool to bring together people who are, who are making a difference in the community. And just to know that there’s people out there who really care about the things that you care about and to know that there’s such a diverse amount of work going on is just it’s really powerful and it really inspires. I think everyone whether you are being someone on the podcast or just listening to it, it has an impact that you can’t really comprehend. You mentioned you have one hundred and seventy volunteers. I know it is volunteer driven. All of those hundred and seventy volunteers involved in going out to the schools or the various realms. Yeah, so one of the key principles that I love about ignite is even if you’re the president, if you’re the GM, if you anyone, you have to go to a class every single week. So these run throughout the semester, what you find is you have two classroom coordinators and about seven mentors. So the coordinators more experience and I help run the classroom like a teacher. And then the mentors are very much one on one with the students chatting amongst themselves. We have training days every semester and it’s a great journey to try and upscale all of these people all at once and get them into the classrooms the very next week. Yeah, everyone’s a part of it, and it’s everyone’s favorite part is and it’s the reason that we do it like I wouldn’t really enjoy my role as much if I wasn’t able to go into the classroom every single week and see the impact. To find volunteers, i would get a lot out of this as well. Probably as much as the students. Yeah. volunteer work is just, I think it’s such a powerful thing because and it does things for you. And so many levels that you can only really ever realize in hindsight, you’re doing things for free to begin with, which just shows like if you’re doing it, it’s something you’re probably pretty passionate about. If you can just do it in your spare time and you want to do it, it’s really fantastic to have this way of figuring out what you actually want to do with your life. And I think even beyond that in the classroom, you learn so many things about how to be a good role model for students. How to communicate with younger people and how to run a classroom like something that teachers train for four, five years, you’ll throw it into after five hours of training. So you’ve got to grow pretty quickly. You’ve got to learn how to relate to kids and to teach them really important concepts and allow them to engage with really kind of fundamental topic. The amount that you learn, the friends that you make, it’s just all such a great journey. So no matter what you get involved with in relation to volunteering, as long as you’re enjoying it, it’s just there’s so many learning benefits that you only just realize when you look back. Yeah, absolutely spot on. Now believe jack, you were an active member in rotary club. crowley as well. I know your time is so limited because of all the chaos that you do. But tell us about some of the things that you were doing at the rotary club while you were there. I remember when I first joined rotary, my perception of it wasn’t, i wasn’t quite sure as to what I was getting myself into. I love the saying that everyone’s pretty out there and it’s not really something for young people, but I got involved. And I found that there are a few like minded young people within the organization and everyone that is just so supportive. They are absolute powerhouses there. And you walk out of every meeting ready to take on the world because you just say you get to see the pinnacle of perth and see people who are really taking on social equity challenges and trying to make a more, a better world in general. So they threw me in the deep end with a lot of projects that we run. They were never hesitant to kind of give me feedback . They were just fantastic. So I did a few projects. I know I led for Christmas which was a rotary led initiative across about six clubs where we did food drives and we collected food around the Christmas time. And then that all went to food bank. So we collected about six thousand kilos of food and then more recently I had left rotary actually, but there was a project that I’d been working on. And that was a gala dinner to raise money for mental health. That was something that was just completely out of my depth and something that I didn’t think was possible and nor did the rest of our young team there. But our president and just some of the most amazing people i’ve ever met managed to show us how it’s possible and we managed to raise fifteen thousand dollars for mayo, mental health. And that went to a few different charities that don’t receive government support. So we had about one hundred and fifty people attend on the night, and being in the rotary of crowley was a fantastic experience. It inspired so many of my ideas. So anyone looking to get involved in anything, I really advise, particularly the rotary of krolick. They’re fantastic, otherwise go to a rotary club in your local area and I think it’s such a great place to start and to get inspired by how you do, what do it in 2008. That baffles me. That’s for sure. And I feel a little bit inadequate In what I’m doing so. And that happens every would not feel very good. In fact, you go around talking to all the sponsor partners predominantly. That’s the thing the so I said, what have I done with my life when I was young? You know, how do I try to keep pace with some of these young people in terms of what I do, what I thought I was. Wow. And you are extraordinary. So I really take my hat, my proverbial hat off, and say thank you on behalf of everybody for what you’re doing, but it’s extraordinary. Now if I can go back to when you were nominated for the seven ejectable awards, must have given you a sense of pride and validation to know that your work, particularly the work of friday night and what you were doing at rotary so highly regarded and viewed as important by the community. Yeah. When I applied for the award, i remember i’d seen it for a few years and I wasn’t really sure if I’d have any chance in the award. But I’m a very big fan and it’s something i’ve been always working to adopt is this idea of just giving things a go because you won’t ever regret giving something and you’re just going to regret not doing it. So I wrote the application, I really enjoyed the process of just reflecting on everything I’ve done because I usually get so caught up in the next thing. Then I became a finalist for the kind of semifinalists and then a finalist, and each time I was more surprised than the next. And then on the night it was just something that I never really imagined. It could be. I mean, as you said before, you think you’re doing a lot and you think that you’re really giving life a crack and then you just see some people who are really pushing the boundaries of Human potential and of service above self. I walked away from that night, not even winning the award which was well I think that the guy who won it was super well deserved. It was just fantastic to see him when he was truly just insane. But I walked away from that night just amazed at what everyone has done. I think young entrepreneurs, young business people, young people who want to get involved in non for profit workspaces. It is again a bit of a lonely journey where you just feel like you’re doing so much and you just wonder if there’s people out there doing the same amount. You feel a bit crazy sometimes and then just to go to that night and say that some people are definitely the same as you. Yeah, it’s indescribable. And I know that next year I’m just going to attend not being a nominee. I just want to go and just absorb what other people are doing and see some of just the crazy things that people do on a year by year basis. It is pretty incredible, no words and I really encourage you to nominate again. It absolutely never know. You are extraordinary and there’s so many terrific people and I hadn’t really thought about the concept that it’s really inspiring to know that there are others doing what you do when you’re not the only one and that we are in good hands and people aren’t that future they are now, but they will be our future as well, but they are inspiring and leading the way now what you’re doing and what the others are doing. Right there at the forefront of achievement for the nail. And that’s really important and it’s nice to know that there are so many doing such awesome stuff and a big shout out to mel. And matt at freemason’s who absolutely loved the awards. And the synergies with freemason’s of giving back to the community very much aligns to what you do and what a sponsor the award. So we’re very, very fortunate to be able to know and cherish the things that people like you do, but also to work with Partners like them are equally as committed to not just stand up again for another three years freemason’s and in no small part is that because of the stories of people like yourself that are so thrilled to want to continue. fostering people like yourself and not tell the stories you talked about. So what you really enjoyed about the whole night was that one at Pacific and it was the one highlight to you on the night you can think of that’s probably putting you on the spot. Was there one thing in particular you thought all that was amazing. That was impressive. Yeah. It’s really hard to pinpoint it to one moment because I think every part of the night was just each new category was just amazing to see what people had done in their respective areas. There were some speeches that I think brought the crowd to tears a few times. And I know that the person in my category, andrew bannister, he gave a fantastic speech. I just sat there in admiration and just thought, just to say how much, how hard he’d worked for how much this recognition really meant to him. I think it just, it just was a really humbled level across the whole crowd when we all listened to him speak. So it was awesome. That was very touching as were all the finalists and nominees across very different reasons. So well done to me and to everybody else. Well, the award nominations are actually going to get very soon. Would you encourage listeners to nominate someone? Absolutely. As I’ve kind of emphasized before, whether you think that the person is going to get it or not, I highly recommend nominating a person. Everyone underestimates their own potential. And then when it finally clicks it clicks. So give it a go. The application is not excessive and I think it’s a very good, self reflecting process. Either way, I think your friends or whoever you’re nominating will appreciate it that you’ve just been given that form of recognition, whether they win or not, just to show that you do notice the good work that they’re doing. I think it is. It’s super worthwhile. And my advice is just attend the awards night either way it’s, it’s probably one of the most powerful things that I’ve ever been to. So I would just really advise people to go down, spend the night there, made some amazing positive people and learn a lot. Great, and we didn’t, that’s the bonus nod. Thank you. And the people are also terrific at pan-pacific. I treat you like family, the staff there. So yeah, it’s a great idea to make a weekend or a night of it. And pacific, or somewhere in the city to really maximize the enjoyment of the evening. How do you think the awards can make a difference? A real tangible difference to people who are nominated. It does it in so many different ways. There’s not, is a splash in terms of the effect it has, but there’s just so many ripples that flow out from it. Just whether you’re a semifinalist, a finalist, a nominee, or just an attendee on the night. You walk away with new ideas about yourself and you start to kind of consider, you look at what other people have done and you say, maybe i’d like to do something like that. If they’ve done it, then I can do it. When people actually act on the things that they say that they’re going to do the impact of that. Again, as I’ve reiterated a few times, it’s just you can’t comprehend it, it just has these ripples that go beyond you. It goes onto the next person who inspires the next person. It’s really hard to put into words how much impact something like a night like this can have, but none of us start on our journey and none of us do what we do for recognition. We just really care about the thing that we’re trying to tackle. We’re passionate about what we do and just to have someone recognize you for something that you do in your spare time. And you just do because you really care. It makes it all the more worthwhile, i think, and I think for people listening, the purpose of the nomination is exactly the reason that you nominated it. exposure and credibility, and kudos to your organizations gets the word out there and it helps build what you’re trying to achieve. That is, I think a really important thing to do. And if anybody wants to nominate someone or even know more about sponsor partnership opportunities, drop me an email that cheffing awards australia. gee, that’s not a double effort towards australia dot com or go to our website which australia dot com and check out the nomination pages for the various sites and programs. And you can also get sponsor information from there as well. So to put something that we might not know of, I think my approach to life is a bit analytical in the sense that I love to put concepts out there, put out ideas and then just see what happens. So I’m always trying new things on a daily or weekly basis, things that I’ve never done before and I really enjoy that. And then eventually i find that sometimes things stick. So I think one of them that’s really stuck with me and something that’s really probably a bit odd is I train a lot of australian ninja warrior, so I don’t know if you’re familiar with the sport. It’s like an obstacle racing equivalent kind of thing where it’s all flashing cameras and throwing your body around onto all these obstacles. So there’s a really great australian community and I really get around it. I found the sport a year and a half ago, thinking, oh, I could do this, I went there and found out it’s a lot harder than I thought. And me and one of my best mates have been training there very intensely ever since. So I spend most of my late afternoons training for that. We have like the TV show, obviously the National finals and the world. So there’s a whole kind of competitive circuit. The thing I think I love about the sport the most is it’s like 50 percent physical and 50 percent mental. When you’re doing these giant catches, or you’re facing down these obstacles that you’ve never seen before, it’s very much you have to believe that you can do it. Otherwise you’re not going to do it. And I think that it kind of just translates back to life in a lot of ways, which is you have to believe it before it’s going to happen. So I just love the sport, both the physical demand of it and the mental kind of side to it. I think about it is both jointly together and if you haven’t got one switched on the other, then you’re in trouble. So it must be on channel seven because I’ve watched it a few times. And if it’s not sorry. Yeah. So when are you going to try out for the TV show? Yeah, I tried out this year, so obviously I had the show recently. I got onto the like the final like they get. I think it’s like ten thousand applicants. Yeah, I got onto the white list, so I was like on call, ready to go. Didn’t quite make the cut this year, but that’s just motivated me more to I wasn’t expecting to get on my first year again, that just comes back to that idea of just get things ago because I didn’t even think I’d make it through the First round of the interview process, let alone the other 10 that they made us do. So. Next year I’m very hopeful to get on and give it a really good crack. I will be watching my show you let us know how the alumni group and everybody else will make sure we get this khorasan group. So what’s your driving passions that makes you tick? I think passion is a really kind of complicated idea. I think a lot of people think of like, passion is like something where you wake up once you find your passion on a daily basis, you wake up with a giant smile on your face. There’s no doubt is just like all sunshine and rainbows . But for me, passion is like just on a day by day basis, kind of appreciating the things that I do being proud of it and being able to see it through. Even though there’s a lot of days when I don’t particularly enjoy what I do, I’m demotivated. So that’s what passion means to me. In terms of what I’m kind of passionate about, it’s something i’ve really tried to think about for a long time because I have a lot of time to think when I’m writing, obviously. And I think the two things that really kind of drive me is to work as hard as I can to show others what’s really possible for them. And the second is to bring others along for the ride. As I kind of go up in my life, I love the external ideas of being accountable to others. So I always try my best to bring myself and help other people in every way that I can and to bring people into my ideas. And all of these crazy ambitions and say, hey, let’s do this. Let’s go for it because we both win at the end of the day. life is just such a circumstantial and complicated journey. And I think if I can kind of help people along the way and help provide frameworks, whether it be through textbooks, through books, through videos or whatever, I end up doing. I think it all comes back to this idea of just trying to help others and show them what’s really possible for themselves. And I find that so motivating, which is why I kind of pushed myself to be the greatest. I can be so that I can show others what they can be. Sounds good and makes sense to me, and I think you’re a very honest analogy of passion and that was spot on. And I think you get caught up in this tv scenario of passion, of jumping for joy every second and waking up and jumping out of bed passionate. And it doesn’t always work that way. You run your run on, it can be demoralizing, it can be deflating and depressing. Sometimes when things don’t go the way you plan, or you hope because you’re so passionate about it, and the passion doesn’t have to do that every every second. So you’re spot on, it is about what you believe, your purpose, your why that helps you do what you do. But as you say, there are times when it all gets a little too much weight feeling like what do you do to help resettle bounced back during those times. It’s another concept that I just think about all the time and I test and I try and figure out what works for me because people’s misconceptions about what hard work is. I don’t believe in the idea that you should work 14, 18 hours a day. I find that to sustain a mindset where you can actually see something through to its end, you need to do something that is sustainable for you on a daily basis. I’ve been experimenting with like, how do I recharge when I overdo things, which I do quite often. Kind of like the idea of like taking holidays like I know, watching movies or going to the beach and stuff. It’s all pretty good for me, but I find a lot of the times when I’m doing these kind of things, I’m really just thinking about what I could be doing instead of just doing the things that I love to chase. Obviously this isn’t going to work for everyone, but it’s something that I found just words to make is as long as every single day, I can wake up and be happy with the things that I’m going to do that day. Then I don’t need to recharge, as long as I’m happy with the number of hours I want to work the number of hours. I want to train on the day. As long as I’m surrounding myself with people and not getting too isolated in all of the writing, i find that I’m pretty good to go every single day. That obviously has its limitations. Sometimes I will just go to the next level with writing or we’ll have these really stressful periods. And I find that I will have days off like reset days where I just either reset my life or just do nothing for a day and just hang out with people. Usually, I recommend for the like the listeners. I think that how people reset is such an individualized thing because we’re all so different. So you really need to experiment with what works for you if taking holidays and everything. Which is what a lot of people like to do, works for you and do that. It just depends on like, like I unconventionally, find that, that doesn’t work for me, but that’s just me. So do what works for you and test and fail and test. And I think that’s great advice. Great advice indeed. I remember when I was going on holiday, i was very boring after the first couple of days and I was getting so it is all relative. You’re right. We had a talk first, national real estate agent are very passionate, longtime supporter of the program around the country. And their ceo came out as a very good speaker, and it came to our office and spent a couple of hours with that team. Talking about leadership and stuff, and answering questions from a team. And someone asked about work life balance, what’s work? Life balance, what’s your perfect scenario? And they said, well, you know, there’s no such thing because work life balance is what it means to you. There’s no such rule or scenario that fits everybody. It is what it is for you. If you’re passionate about your job, you love it and you committed to it and you want to work 12 hours a day. And then you want to go home and do whatever that’s work. life balance. If you like a job, he said first thing, get a new one, but it’s more important to you to be and see at home. Or as you say, you don’t like holidays during the holidays. It’s not a, there’s not a formula. You can write it in a textbook to work life balance or passion, you know, it’s not, it’s different for everybody. It made me think when you were talking about it on it is for experiment, find what works for you. And if someone says, you can’t work 10 hours a day, that may or may not be relevant. You, you only want to do five, six or seven or whatever it is. Whatever makes you happy. What if you don’t listen to other people, but I think your advice is really invaluable. I think that’s like a really good summary of it. And I think fundamentally it just comes back to being bold, being yourself. I always used to when I first started out writing textbooks, i tried to be like everyone else. I just like I try and fit in and do the things that other people were doing that I thought you needed to do. And it wasn’t sustainable because I was being torn between doing the things that I want to do and doing what other people want me to do. So whatever your life looks like on your terms, whether it’s you want to spend as much time as you can building fantastic relationships with other people. Or you have a passion that you want to see into its fruition. It’s just really about accepting who you are, not worrying about what other people do, accepting what other people do as well, don’t judge people for what they do, figuring out what works for you and just going internal rather than looking externally about it. I agree. So what’s next, jack anderson I always kind of get worried telling people about like, what’s next? Because I said a lot of things. It’s hard for me to comprehend. It’s not that I necessarily believe in what’s next to me, whether or not it will happen. I just believe in it through the actions i do on a daily basis. That’s my form of belief is if you’re actually doing the things that you think you need to do to do the thing, then you believe it. You can believe it mentally. But at the end of the day, it comes down to doing the things that you want to do. There’s a few big projects, but I think the main focus is like, I’m really passionate. Like obviously I’m passionate about education in the context of schools. I think that’s super important, but something I’m probably more passionate about is education in the context of life. But I’m very interested in educating people about the one thing that they are with every single day, which is themselves. I think as I kind of said before, I think life is just this really complicated and unique journey. And I just want people to have kind of frameworks and things that they can use to live a life that they believe that they would really make for. And live a life that they want to. I’m currently working on another book in my spare time, with another friend which I hope to publish in five months or so. I want to use that book for a bigger goal, which is to create my first independent documentary. So I want to take the concepts in the book that we, we have written, and use that to apply it to, to create a documentary that can then create a message that reaches a wider audience than people who read books. So it’s a project that I’ve been sitting on for a little while now, and it’s super complicated, but we’ve been working pretty hard at it and I’m super excited to see it coming to fruition over the next year or so. So I guess you have to stay tuned for it. So it’s pretty exciting and I presume you’re writing that book in the hours that you meant three hours that you meant to be sleeping at night. So I’m sure when else you’re going to be fitting that in that that’s pretty massive and I ask you, what’s next? You’ve got a lot of what, what’s next on at the moment is a lot of things on your agenda that you’re right in the middle of growing banking and just doing brilliantly. So again, congratulations for all that. Do have any other words of wisdom or encouragement from the ruling parties with so many good things and so much good stuff. Is there anything else you can think of that would be really encouraging? Yeah, I reckon i could talk for the next hour about this kind of stuff. You could tell it’s something that I love. I think wisdom is just, it’s kind of whatever you think it to be. I’m not necessarily right. I just say the things I think have worked for me, and I guess when you walk away from something like any of these podcasts, it’s just important to apply the things that you hear. I’ll leave with a few like pieces of advice that I think are pretty important. And the things that I’ve learned, i guess it’s very valuable for people who are kind of starting their journey and for the listeners who are really just getting going. I think the first kind of fundamental truth that you only realize when you actually do it is you’re going, you get out of life, what you’re willing to accept. I love the saying if you fight hard enough for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you believe you can write your books in a year, you write new books. If you believe you can write one, you will write one. And if you believe you can write five, you will write five. It really comes back to I believe that every single day you should force yourself to believe something greater than you are currently so that you grow to become something like that you are greater than in this present moment . So it’s really about just believing, dreaming big and acting on a daily basis towards those dreams because you only really get one go at life and there’s no real issue with failing with failing. You just learn, so don’t be afraid to be wrong or to fail, just really set goals for yourself and give it a good crack. I think on that as well. Probably like an equally important concept to understand is like I talk about these things with such simplicity. But I think when you’re starting anything new, whether it’s a book, a documentary, whether you’re starting a sport, whether you’re trying to do well academically, whatever it may be. Everything that you start is really hard and you just have to have this willingness to suck at it. For a really long time before you see any kind of great result, a lot of people trying to skip over the hard parts of their life and the difficult journey that they had to go through to become the person that they are today. So when you’re going out and trying new things, whether it’s a success or failure, i just understand that every single time you step outside and try something new, you will learning something that others around you will never learn because they were too afraid to tell you that first step, the number of ideas that I’ve had that have failed. I can’t even count them anymore, but I don’t really care because each time I try something I just get a better idea of what the final idea is going to be. Just enjoy the experience, enjoy the process, do things that you really care about and give it a really good crack by pretty powerful words. And fortunately, there is a translation, as well as the fact that people can reply podcasts as well as they pick up all of that while you’re driving and want to chop down some notes. You can get the notes, or you can rewind, listen again, as I’m prone to doing some really powerful words that might really inspiring. No wonder you’re forging ahead and writing notes. How can our listeners connect with you? And of course your projects online and how do people get involved in what you’re doing? I’m not much of a social media guy. I have facebook. That’s the only one that I really use because and I barely spend any time on it. But if you want to connect with me in terms of like your own projects, or you just want some feedback, just feel free to give me a message on Facebook. Just find me, I’m sure I’m somewhere on there in regards to thrive. And if you want to join our team, obviously we’re working on and methods right now. So if you want to help write these textbooks and be a part of the movement, just feel free to type in drive it on Facebook or drive edg that you and you can apply there. We have a really great team of twenty five passionate individuals. Very same process, you can find us on Facebook, instagram everywhere. I think not so yeah. Feel free to get in contact. I’m always happy to answer questions and take people on board if they’re interested. What about linkedin? You’re on linkedin as well. Yeah, I used to have linkedin, but I did delete it because I find it’s obviously like my opinion, i think it’s an extremely valuable thing, but the things that I’m doing on a daily basis aren’t related to a lot of the things that other people are doing. And they’re extremely long term and difficult projects. So I find that if I’m constantly looking at what other people are doing, it can sometimes motivate me heavily. I’m more of a fan and I understand that networking is extremely important, which I try my best to do. But I find that at this point in time, I prefer just to focus on what I’m doing, get those things done, and I’ll be sure to download it in the future. I think that I, I’m pretty, pretty impressive story because it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. You’re a true inspiration. As I said, a powerhouse. Thanks so much for sharing some of your story with us. ceccarelli. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. On and thanks everyone for listening to everybody. enjoyed hearing some object story today and until next week, please remember bitcoin because together we make a difference. I hope you enjoyed today’s interview as much as I had. We would love you to subscribe to our podcast app that you won’t miss an episode showing us each week as we talk with ordinary australians. Choosing extraordinary things. Did you know that awards australia is a family owned business that proudly makes a difference in the lives of those that make a difference for others? And we thank our corporate not for profit partners to making award programs possible to, you know, someone that’s making a difference. Or maybe your business might like to sponsor an award. Contact us through our instagram page. inspirational thought australians head to our website. awards, australia dot com would be great if you could share this site with your network. 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