Full Transcript

James Laughlin, Life Coach, Leadership Coach and Executive Coach in Christchurch, New Zealand Blair Chappell, Property Developer in Christchurch, New Zealand 

 

James Laughlin  00:00 

Welcome to life on purpose. My name is James Laughlin, former seven-time world champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week, I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show. I'm incredibly excited to welcome in today's special guest Blair Chappell. Blair is joining us from Christchurch, New Zealand, where he is the co-owner and founder of the Williams Corporation. In today's session, we talk about how Blair builds wealth, how the company was built and how he taken it forward, and ways in which you can implement this thinking and these strategies in your life. And in your business. I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, Blair, I just want to say a massive Welcome to the life on purpose podcast.  

 

Blair Chappell  01:02 

Thanks James. It's good to be here. 

 

James Laughlin  01:04 

Yeah, good to see you again. Last time as a person this time is digital. And as most people around the world, right, and I know COVID is forcing most of us to do this. So really great that you made time, I know, you're a very busy and focused individual, you did some really cool things with the Williams Corporation. So, I'd love to know before we get into some of that stuff. What led you to this point, because I look at you and I go, Wow, he really lives a life on purpose that he's doing things purposefully. He knows where he's heading. He knows who he is. What led you to this point, whether it was your parenting or schooling? 

 

ON HOW HE STARTED HIS BUSINESS 

Blair Chappell  01:35 

Now a really good question, actually, I suppose it's all those things where I was fortunate to start in business quite young. So, Matthew, my business partner, and I could sort of try out a lot of different things before finding the right thing that we ended up being good at. And I think it was one of our really key things to success has been able to start young at a really small scale and learn what doesn't work. Before also having commitments and family and heaps of stuff you got to look after, and just sort of really just been able to do it, do what you want, when you want try lots of different things. What sort of only yourself to be responsible for. 

 

James Laughlin  02:11 

That's amazing. And when you talk about that, and I think of some of the greatest, like, say Jeff Bezos, another person, Bill Gates, they've tried lots of things, Steve Jobs, they keep trying until they hit the bull's eye. So, for someone that's listening, they're going, Yeah, I'm young. Yeah, I'd like to live that life. I want to create that lifestyle. Where do they start? When they come up with an idea? Or they have 100 ideas? How did they just take the first step? 

 

STARTING YOUNG 

02:33 

Really good question, I suppose like one of the most powerful things we did was try lots of things. But then also one of the biggest handicaps was trying lots of things. So, I think it's sort of it's really easy to get caught up in the notion of our millionaires who have 10 sources of income or 12 sources of income. And when we started out, we sort of had a business doing temporary things, and we were about 18 or 19, it was going reasonably well, then we thought the best way to get there is to have 10, businesses doing reasonably well, as opposed to just one. And then the sort of the best lesson I learned from that is just, if you want to be the best at something like you're always going to have competition in your space. And if you think that you can do something really well, part time versus your competition, who's got nothing else on your table, or just doing one thing full time, they're always going to beat you. You need to try lots of things to figure out what works and what you're good at. But then you have to accept the reality of probably narrowing down into one or two key things. And as far as getting started, it's depends on the person. I think if someone knows an industry or a field that they know they're passionate about, they know they want to get involved. I think the best thing to do is actually go work for essentially the company you idolised I wouldn't say follow a copy. But someone in your space, you're like, this is the company that's motivated me to get involved and say construction. Because in a sense, you're getting paid to learn, you're getting surrounded by the best people and then industry, you're getting paid for up. And then that will sort of teach you a lot of lessons that otherwise might have taken you significantly longer to live. And if you just started from day dot with no experience, and just sort of punch your way through it. Yes, definitely. I suppose just if you know what you want to do, then just go find someone in that field and kind of get as involved with them as possible. And if you don't know what you want to do, I suppose it's probably the hardest thing people face. It's just a time thing really. It's just writing things down and trying things talking to people trying to, I wouldn't say work experience, but just immerse yourself in different topics until you're sort of got like, that's the that's the one I want to be.  

 

James Laughlin  04:41 

And I love that. And it's like when you say that I'm thinking of success leaves clues. So, when you start to model someone who's doing what you want to do, you're learning from the clues that they're leaving. 

 

Blair Chappell  04:52 

Yeah, definitely.  

 

James Laughlin  04:53 

 So cool. So you had all these things potential opportunities going on. Now you're with Williams Corporation. You guys are driving an amazing product and business. So, what was the catalyst to go? Okay, we've got 10 options. No, no, no, we're going to go into this funnel in this, this bucket here. And we're going to work on this and we're going to make a world class. 

 

05:12 

Now suppose for a wallet we had last year, we started to break things down and just like labour and labour with contractors. And then instead of spread ourselves a bit thin, we got trucks and diggers and drain layers, and we're in like a waste management company. When I say company, just everything you can imagine, but pretty much dried up. And then sort of in Christchurch, after the earthquake rebuilt market, the market went from being really hot, lots of work on just sort of tightening up a little bit, that sort of bit rebuild sort of plateaued and finished off. And we sort of went from having these 10 businesses or making a little bit of money to 10 businesses sort of all treading water or losing a bit of money. So, sort of time to do some soul searching and going well, one wants to be like doing and into what's actually making us money. And then, it came back. So, we like building homes and make money doing it, it was enjoyable, that required the least amount of staff. And then essentially, that money was being used to prop up all the businesses which on their own face probably wouldn't survive. So that was sort of quite a clear strategic moment of going well. We know what the writings on the wall, we need to keep doing what we like doing and what's making us the money and get better at that. And then let's wind up the rest of it. And just focus on the one key thing moving forward, which was property development, and it's now Williams Corporation. And it was probably after that time, maybe three years of actually figuring out what our product does. What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? How do we refine it? How do we actually get a scalable business model? And sort of as soon as we sort of managed to evolve from doing like renovations and single house spec homes into that multi-unit space, that was sort of the lightbulb moment of Yeah, this is the formula we know how to do it. Now let's scale this as much as we're getting. 

 

KEY THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHEN BUILDING A BUSINESS 

James Laughlin  06:55 

That's brilliant. I love that. And so, for people who have a business, or they're thinking about it, and they're maybe part timing, they want to move to full time. What are the key things they need to be considering when they're running a business? If they're a solopreneur and they want to build a billion-dollar Empire, it's going to be difficult. So, what are the key things that you think about when you think of business in terms of team finance, marketing. What are those key buckets that you have in your mind, as a person who's running a large company? 

 

Blair Chappell  07:22 

I suppose one of the main things that made Williams Corp. was that we always were very sales focused. So, I sort of go for business as a sphere going out into the marketplace, you want to have sales at the tip of the spear. Because you see a lot of people, they sort of go well, if I go from part time to full time, I'll do more business, make more money, etc., let's say in a company, but generally that should follow from, I have too many sales, I don't have enough time, I physically have to leave my job to be able to deliver the results for my clients, as opposed to go in, I'm going to leave my job and in try getting sales to come. And then it's kind of important to get the sales there first before getting too far into it. And it also depends on person's own responsibilities. Do they have a mortgage to pay? Do they have a husband or wife? Do they have children? And going? Or is it just me, myself? And I and I can always go and move into my friend's couch or something doesn't quite go as planned? Yeah, it's sort of risk appetite and imbalanced by as just a good vessel to go into full time? Or is it actually a part time business that small? Probably isn't the right long-term thing 

 

James Laughlin  08:36 

100%. And if we think about the individual who's trying to amass wealth, they're trying to get to that critical lump sum that magic number, the safe number? How do they do that? Well, if you think about your approach, and you're working towards or maybe you're already at getting to financial wealth, and freedom or abundance, how does someone go about figuring out the number they need, that they can, and then determining a vehicle to help them get there. 

 

Blair Chappell  09:02 

I suppose one thing that someone told me once, which is really true, is you don't know how poor you are until you have a little bit of money. So, whenever you think you need, as bad as it sounds, when you get there will probably be significantly, probably not as satisfying as what you want it to be. And you'll also realise you probably need a lot more. And I know it sounds cliche, but I think also making money is more or less the byproduct of doing a good job. I think it's too easy to try but money at the forefront of what you do or what a lot of people do. We're really used to just go: What is my product or service? What does it cost me? What do I make from it? What's my market demand? Is it going to make enough money to satisfy me? My sort of magic number? That really aren't to be a lot of business didn't even bother starting because you can look on the back of a napkin go, what does this look like if I make it as big as possible, and a lot of businesses would go off. And that's a lot of work a lot of a lot of capital to make $200,000 a year. Whereas in another business, you can make 10 times the money with significantly less risk or capital or staff, manufacturing facilities, etc. 

 

ON INVESTMENT 

James Laughlin  10:18 

And if people are thinking, we don't want to run a business, we don't have it in us to do that. But we want to invest, whether it's stock shares, real estate, if they wanted to go down the real estate route, because that's what you guys do. And that's what you're really well known for. What would be a good starting point, if someone's in their 20s, or 30s, and they're like, you know what, I want to start building wealth down that route. Where do they start, 

 

Blair Chappell  10:40 

I suppose at the pains of people want to be an active investor and more of a passive investor. Like I think there's nothing wrong with people being extremely good at their career, having a salary job and in investing that money into more of a hands-off property investment transaction. But then I think that people out there that want to sort of try and become developers or be sort of residential renovators, that's more around just a really small project and just learn the process. As don't try conquer the world on your first deal. And people sort of say to me, I want to be a developer, I just say, go buy a really cheap section, and go down one house and expect that to take twice as long as you think well, and probably you'll make half as much or no money, you probably shouldn't lose any. But you'll then learn the process and understanding that you want to do on this, I think a lot of people are better suited to just stick in at what they're good at and their job. And instead of going, I'm just going to buy a rental property for two years, I'm going to five to seven of them, and I'm going to pay them down over 20 years. So, it sort of depends how aggressive people want to be. I think people get so caught up and think you see what they're getting and what makes them money and trying to sort of sacrifice that, whilst trying to do investment.  

 

James Laughlin  11:57 

100%. And if people were to come to you guys, and they want to be hands-off, can you help facilitate that for them in terms of investing in creating a portfolio? 

 

Blair Chappell  12:08 

Yeah, definitely still, like, we're not financial advisors, ourselves, but we partner up with financial advisors. And a lot of it's just, what's your household income? How much can you afford to save? How often can you buy a house? What house is best for you. It's more of a capital gains approach something that's more sort of yield driven, with the ideal goal of people getting a portfolio of say, three to five properties, and then pay them down in time for retirement, or when they reach retirement having enough equity where they might be able to sell to declare an additional the other three, and then get that's $100 - $150,000 a year passive income once they retire. 

 

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY VS RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY INVESTMENT 

James Laughlin  12:45 

Brilliant. And do you think, you know, for people who are rookies out, do you think that there's a big difference, with knowledge, the knowledge gap between going commercial property as an investment versus residential? 

 

Blair Chappell  12:57 

I think it comes back to risk appetite, and also just what group you're in, like, if all your friends are in commercial property, that's probably the path you'll take. And if all the people you hang out with their in residential rentals, that's probably the path you'll take. But I think there's probably some really good viable interlevel Commercial Investments. And then also, they do come with higher deposit requirements that more tenancy risk, different bank assessment criteria. But there's different no right or wrong, like I know, extremely wealthy people that just do residential and extremely wealthy people just do commercial. And then some people that have a little bit of both.  

 

James Laughlin  13:35 

It seems that you've got absolute clarity of focus, you know, where you're headed, you know, the numbers, and you guys have great communication within the team. So, when it comes to goal setting, like for you, personally, for the team. Do you sit down and go Okay, the next five years, this is the next 24 months, this is what we're doing? What's your goal? Or your objective process? How do you make a process to move forward towards that? 

 

ON SETTING GOALS 

Blair Chappell  13:58 

I suppose it's more like we're big believers and having what I call a really big goal, where we sort of have 100-year plan of what the businesses and what we want to achieve and why I want to be around in 100 years-time, then we have sort of a more tangible, 10-year plan roughly tracking what we want the business to be looking like progressing through those ten years. And then you sort of have your immediate goal of the next 12 months. But it's sort of really big, but unbelievable makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. But it's sort of you want to lift your thought process to instead of selling 100 homes a year how do we sell 1000 and we're backwards from that, as opposed to sort of being a normal business. But I go let's try grow 10% a year. We tried to go nuts, go for really unobtainable goal and work backwards from that, which essentially works backwards from sales and marketing. 

 

James Laughlin  14:50 

That's brilliant. So, you set your vision and then you reverse engineer the process from there. 

 

Blair Chappell  14:55 

Yeah, like we sell just under 700 homes, and we go, we want to sell 15 to 2000 homes this financial year. So, step one, let's double our marketing. And then let's see if we can double our leads. And let's say, not what breaks first. But then if we go okay with me, I got too many leads, we need to get more people on the sales team. And then I sort of have to work backwards from that, just with that same ethos of sales with the tip of the sphere, and then work down the sphere as needed. I think too many businesses grow everything else to try their growth without actually seeing if the sales are going to be there. And then all they do is get swamped by overhead and achieve the same result. But with double the cost of operating. 

 

BALANCING PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND PERSONAL LIFE 

James Laughlin  15:41 

Amazing, that's such a great insight, a lot of people will probably not take that approach in their first step. So, to hear that, and I hope somebody is listening to that. Step into it. That's bloody brilliant. I love it. And obviously, you're doing massive things like huge things, and you guys, you know, you have a life to match it. So, what are the challenges with professionally driving really hard? And then balancing it with health, with relationships, all that other stuff? How do you how do you manage it all? 

 

Blair Chappell  16:09 

I think it really helps business wise, just doing one thing and doing one thing really well. So even though we have a lot on, that's more or less the same kind of products, the same systems, the same processes, not bogging yourself down and unnecessary admin, day to day in the business. And that sort of frees you up where you're not trying new things all the time. So, the business without bugging, there's lots of things going on, that's not playing on your mind every night, you're sleeping really well. And indistinctly, empowering your team to be responsible for the work they do. And that obviously flows on to essentially making you feel clear and good. So, you can go in the gym, you can do date nights, you can do time away. But I think too many people wait too long to empower their team and try and do it all themselves, which really comes to the detriment of growth. Not the other way. 

 

ON THEIR GREATEST OBSTACLE 

James Laughlin  17:01 

What was your greatest obstacle? Was there a point where you guys were kind of two or three or four of you guys juggling some things? Then you realise, okay, there's a tipping point, we need to hire what was there an obstacle between where you guys were at where you needed to get to when you were hiring? 

 

Blair Chappell  17:14 

Yeah, I was kind of stomach what I said before we sort of the business grew because we started selling essentially a lot more than what we were so you sort of grow the sales team, okay, well, now when they throw the consenting team, okay, now we need to grow the delivery team, okay, we need to grow the finance team. So, it was reasonably incremental. But it was definitely that point of just, I suppose, we do the same thing over and over again. So, say a widget for us and say, a block of 15 townhouses, you know, the exact one to 100 steps to deliver that project. So then, you know, sort of what each part of the team's capacity constraints are, and know when a second person or third person or fourth person is needed? Because we're doing the same thing over and over again. 

 

ON SCALING THE BUSINESS 

James Laughlin  18:00 

Brilliant. So, in terms of scaling, so we fast forward 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, you know, what are your ambitions as a company when you're scaling from here, where you are now? And where will it be sitting in that, you know, two decades, 

 

Blair Chappell  18:12 

I suppose, it's like, there's always going to be market risks of getting too big on one city or country. So, I suppose like New Zealand, ideally, it's around 15 to 1700 homes a year. And I would really like to go take on Australia, and just tried to sort of a low scale test case and three different Australian studies, just a block of stuff and each. Park there for a year, see how it goes, then go What are the sales? Like? What were the council is like? What's the government like? What's the margin like? the construction site? and see if there's a viable market, and then essentially replicate what we've done here over there. So, the next one to four years, that sort of time period? And then ideally, just see where else we can take that around? around the place? 

 

James Laughlin  18:57 

You'll be a global Titan before we know it. Hell, yeah. I love it. And it's interesting. Yeah. So, the one word that came to mind as you're saying, that was testing, like, kick your idea. And then test it, get out there and test this. You're going to Australia with an open mind, not these preconceived expectations or ideas. You're like, well go there. We've got a formula. We're going to test. We're going to market we're going to try the we're going to evaluate, and then we'll make a big decision whether we invest long term. 

 

Blair Chappell  19:26 

Yeah, 100%. I think that's one thing we learnt quite well when we went from just developing and crushes when the Auckland market, we sort of bought three or four projects to test the market and exactly what I just talked about, where I would have been a lot easier if we just did one and just hit the one except it's going to take a year longer to get there. But I just learnt all the lessons in one project and then replicated on scale. And then that worked really well for us and we then branched into Wellington, just having that one test project, and then we'll go from delivering seven homes in our first year to 200 the following as supposed to having that growth appear fast at the start, but actually, it's not. But just a bit of aggressive patience is what's required. 

 

ON WEALTH 

James Laughlin  20:10 

aggressive patience or loving, aggressively patient, I need to be more of that at times as a as a young dad, well, not so young anymore. But as a dad with a youngster, aggressive patience would be a good thing. And let's talk about wealth, right? Because there's so many connotations around wealth. And, you know, some people have this anti wealth thing like, hey, money is bad, or, you know, money doesn't grow on trees, there's negative wealth mindset. So, as someone who's operating with millions of dollars, and you're investing and you're transforming other people's lives in the process, what do you think, is a great way to think about wealth and hide it? How wealth can help the world, the community? 

 

Blair Chappell  20:49 

I suppose it's more like there's an abundance of wealth and money, I think is a preconception that if someone's done well, and going to wealthy, especially in New Zealand, it's at the detriment of somebody else. And I don't know there are some corporates and large businesses where that is the case like they might get wealthy that were on the Amazon rainforest, or drop 50,000 litres of crude oil and the bloody Gulf of Mexico. I think, generally, it's more shifting the focus away from capitalism and towards ethical capitalism, where we can make money and builders can our suppliers can the person we bought the land off, this doesn't give us money can the homebuyers can when they sell their home? So, I think it's more people don't need to look at wealth as a win lose, it can be a win-win. And the fact is, like right now there's $11 trillion. And banks getting negative interest. Like there's just so much money in the world. Yeah, people are so caught up that just because you have you taken it from someone else. When that's not the case, or in most cases, that's not the case. 

 

James Laughlin  21:55 

For you, as you're building wealth. And you know, when you look at the span of life, you're still really young, and you're doing incredible things. What's it allowing you to do for your own personal life and your family, your friends, your community?  

 

Blair Chappell  22:08 

You can do, obviously, you can do what you want. But you don't need to worry about buying food, paying your fair bill, paying your mortgage, if you want to go on holiday, you can. If you want to take friends out to dinner and cover the bill you can. So, it's more just I think it frees up your mind to think at a higher level. I think there's actually a lot of studies showing that if people are worried about paying their bills, essentially puts their mind and primate state of going on living hand to mouth, and then they can never think about getting the theatre proven themselves to house their relationships, their business, their job, etc. 

 

James Laughlin  22:40 

Absolutely. That's so powerful. Yeah, when you look at the human needs, you know, certainty and significance are the first two, uncertainty is really around financial certainty for a lot of people, and then a safety. And so most people are still operating there. They don't get done to those spiritual needs, which are contribution and growth. And when you talk about thinking, you know, higher thinking that's brilliant. So something I encourage a lot of my clients to do is create think time, whether each week, at least an hour, a couple hours would be great, where they sit down, they ask themselves thought provoking questions, they flesh out business ideas, scalability of the of the current ideas. Bill Gates takes two weeks a year, where he goes to a lake by himself with like, 20 books. 

 

Blair Chappell  23:22 

And yeah, all right, I've read that. Yeah, he's gone a long time to thank you that 

 

ON THINK TIME 

James Laughlin  23:29 

iBut you know, people like him, like you take him more well, even Warren Buffett. So, Warren Buffett only needs to make three good decisions a year. That's it, most of us need to make three good decisions a week, he just needs to meet three year. So, when you think what is your process? Because you think big, I know you do. And the results prove it. So hi, do you think? Do things down? Do you ask questions? Do you seek mentorship? 

 

Blair Chappell  23:54 

I suppose the times where there's a lot of thinking involved. But also, just since we have a roadmap and a goal so clearly laid out, you sort of know exactly what you need to do on any given day. So, there's always we schedule time to do like a strategy, maintain and innovations maintain sort of bit more high-level thinking. But since it's just the same thing day in, day out, it sort of becomes just built into your day-to-day structure. It's not something that you have to go, I haven't thought for a while let's make a plan about what we're doing in a year's time. Because it's all been met down and work backwards from. 

 

James Laughlin  24:29 

It's a part of your framework, it's part of the fabric of who you are. 

 

Blair Chappell  24:33 

That's just part of the day to day. We sort of have a sort of a business ethos, get one step better every day. And that's not a one particular area that's just asked what we do every day, what the team does every day, what the contractors do every day. It's just, I think growth and successes 10s of 1000s of small things done slightly better. There's like too many people focused on it's not working with the one big change to make it work.  

 

James Laughlin  24:59 

So rather than global changes. It's a bit micro changes.  

 

Blair Chappell  25:03 

Just 1000s of small little tweaks and adjustments. 

 

James Laughlin  25:05 

That's brilliant. I love it. It's almost like a Formula One team, you know, when they're adjusting? 

 

Blair Chappell  25:08 

Yeah. Well, yeah, they spend what a million dollars to what, like 10 million per second or something just insane. 

 

James Laughlin  25:15 

Totally. We'll wrap up here shortly. But one question I had for you was, in terms of your teams, and leaders within those teams? How do you empower them and help them grow as leaders? 

 

ON EMPOWERING LEADERS 

Blair Chappell  25:28 

Mmm, good question. One, we run a reasonably flat management structure. So, we don't have layers upon layers of management. And then two, we have very transparent and clear systems and processes. Here's your role, here's your job, here's the system process to follow, here's the expectation. And then it's sort of also there's always an open door to management if you need to talk to them. And then we've got easy ways to essentially look at those systems and processes. So, there's not that sitting this thing going, as James doing a good job, is it not? Have you ever thought about that you can easily check the work the system, the process, and then get involved if there is a problem, or at least reassure yourself that there isn't a problem. 

 

James Laughlin  26:07 

That's great. So, you remove all ambiguity, it's really clear what's going on? 

 

Blair Chappell  26:10 

Yeah. And it's also stops people from like protectionism, where managers worried about what I want someone else to say my job sell, sort of lock the information away and hide it from everyone else. We're sort of always treated as if they're really transparent, open manner, and sort of get rid of the scarcity mindset going up sounds better than you. That's not a true, that's a good thing. Why would you want everyone under you to be worst? Are they too many managers are worried about empowering their team, because they're worried they'll get the emotion and someone else will get put on their place, as opposed to realise that a good business is big enough that everyone to have their own success, it doesn't have to become the structured system of the person behind me is always worse than me. 

 

James Laughlin  26:52 

That's so cool. And too few businesses take that approach. And that's why you see politics. You know, it's so active in a lot of workplaces. Yeah, part of the culture. So that's lovely that you've done. I think that's powerful. And if we were to look at your competition, so you don't need to name competition. But how does that drive you when you look at, you know, the goats of property development, whether it's in Australia and New Zealand, whether it's in North America, when you see them, whether they're individuals, or they're big brands? What do you do when you see that? what they're doing with their opportunities, what they're doing with the revenue scale? How do you use that to drive what you're doing an innovative? 

 

27:28 

 

ON COMPETITION 

Blair Chappell  27:30 

I suppose it's more, especially in the property development space, generally, everything you see in the marketplace will be say, one year old, I drove past on Spanish project. That was their thought process from a year ago, that's an arbitrator. So, it's quite a hard space to try. Like, I know, a lot of competitors, sort of copy through other competitors. Whereas I think what we've always done quite well is just focus on what we do focus on what our buyers want our market feedback, and go through our own projects go and if we'd built what's the game, what would be the small little tweaks and changes we'd do. As it's kind of like, whenever you photocopy something through a printer, every time you copy it, the quality goes down. I think too many people in the development space, see something and try copy out without realising that it just won't be as good as what that first person managed to produce. 

 

James Laughlin  28:21 

That's awesome. So, you run your own race. 

 

Blair Chappell  28:24 

Yeah, essentially, that's why I was like, they're on I like looking at, like Harry trigger golf in Australia is built 75,000 apartments. But then also, that's quite a different marketplace. But I can't go build up 75-storey apartment building in Christchurch led the same success that he did doing it in Sydney. So, I think it's more just yeah, running your own race and just improving your own products, not necessarily trying to copy other people's. 

 

James Laughlin  28:50 

That's fantastic. I love it. And the last question wanted to ask you, so it's the life on purpose podcast, and I ask everyone that comes on is to you, what does living a life on purpose actually mean? 

 

ON LIFE ON PURPOSE 

Blair Chappell  29:02 

I think it's a mixture of things, I'd say it's being happy with what you're doing every day, you only get one chance. It's also empowering people and the people that you bring up with you. Like I say, I know a few people that are really wealthy, but quite lonely and miserable. And I think you get just as much away from a non-financial sense of business as you do from a financial sense, whether that be clients being really happy with their product or staff, improving their own processes and their own sort of self-purposes, empowering them to look after the children, their husbands, their wives, etc. I was like living a life of purpose isn't just yourself, but also those key people around you. And it's a lot more than just sort of financial merits. 

 

James Laughlin  29:48 

That's amazing. Well, hopefully everyone who's listened to that will take some notes on that because what you're doing financially professionally is just incredible, but what you're doing in your personal life matches and I think that that's the real synchronicity. And that's the dream. The way that you get from what you do is that there's all these things that happen and you create from that, that process of thinking that way. So thank you so much for taking the time. And the company and epic year ahead.  

 

Blair Chappell  30:12 

Yeah, no, thank you don't be maybe we have to catch up in a year's time and see how see how we went and our goals. Let's do it.  

 

James Laughlin  30:20 

Cheers, Blair.  

 

Blair Chappell  30:21 

Thanks, James.  

 

James Laughlin  30:31 

Thank you so much for listening in today and investing in your own personal growth. Please hit that subscribe button. I would love, love, love. If you'd leave me a rating and review as it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks. And folks, it's that time, get out there and live life on purpose.