Simon Alexander Ong (1:52)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (1:52)

Where were you before? In business.

Simon Alexander Ong (1:54)

So I. I grew up with this mistaken belief that to be successful in life you had to earn a certain job title. So when I was a teenager, I remember speaking to my dad and my dad looks like the Dalai Lama. So I thought this would be quite a wise conversation. I remember sitting down with him at the dinner table and I asked him, so when I finish college, what would be deemed as a successful career? And he said, well, Simon, if you become a banker, a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant, I think you would have earned a reputable career. And so seduced by films like Wall street and Boiler Room. And the like, I decided to pursue a career in finance.

Nathan Barry (2:30)

Yeah, you strike me as a finance

Simon Alexander Ong (2:31)

guy at the worst possible time. Actually, this was the middle of 2007, a year before the global financial crisis swept across the planet. And just to make things a little interesting, the company I started as a graduate with was Lehman brothers, which collapsed 14 months after I joined.

Nathan Barry (2:48)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (2:48)

Nothing to do with me, by the way.

Nathan Barry (2:49)

Correlation, causation, there's no way to know.

Simon Alexander Ong (2:52)

Indeed. But for me, I always say that was. Even though it's really difficult and challenging at the time, it was a blessing in disguise because for me it kick started what I believe is the longest journey we as humans make, which are the inches from our heads to our hearts. Never an easy journey, but the most important and fulfilling that we will ever take. And about eight years later, I quit the industry and decided I wanted to run my own business. I was really into the psychology of personal development, understanding what made people show up and achieve the success they did. And so that led me to the coaching industry. And one thing just led to another. I started coaching people. Coaching then led to speaking. Speaking then led to doing a lot of interviews. And then that led to landing a book there with Penguin in 2020, just as the world was entering its first lockdown.

Nathan Barry (3:41)

You tend to make these big pivots, it seems like right before global, global things happen. Again, correlation, causation. So coming from, I think the intersection of finance and that background is really interesting as then you get into the world of coaching because you have this analytical side to you. But then also everything that I hear you talk about in your content and your book and all of this. Right. Is so heart focused.

Simon Alexander Ong (4:07)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (4:08)

What's the relationship between those two for you?

Simon Alexander Ong (4:12)

There's. The relationship is that we listen to both our heart and our mind. The heart knows where you need to be, but often the mind steps in and overwrites it. So let's say your heart is pulling into a certain direction. The mind then jumps in and analyzes every possible outcome. Is this really what I want to do? Am I going to succeed in this? And it's why so often people aren't where they want to be in life. We talk ourselves out of the journey before it's even started, thinking about scenarios that may or may not even happen. But what we come to realize, or at least I did as I began in this journey, is that we live in the feeling of our thinking moment to moment to moment. So your life is essentially what you choose to see. If you choose to see failure if you choose to see setbacks, if you choose to see why it can't be done, your mind will go out and find reasons for it. But if you see possibility, if you see potential, if you see that there could be a way forward, your mind will go out and find it. So you're just sending instructions to your mind all the time, but it's the awareness to know that that is what's causing your reality to be the way it is.

Nathan Barry (5:21)

My background is in computer programming. And that sounds like you had having one program running and then choosing to say, you know, we're going to change some code and we're going to reprogram this. Is there an example where you were able to reprogram yourself and, like, choose to see something different and then have a different life experience because of it?

Simon Alexander Ong (5:41)

Absolutely. So one of the things we can't avoid in today's world is logging onto social media and looking at what everyone around us is doing. And so the trap that I used to be in is I would look at what everybody else was doing, and I kept comparing myself to them. I was thinking, well, they achieved this amount of success because they had certain resources, they had the right network, and if I continue to choose that line of thought, I would never have started in terms of my journey to what I get to do today. But what I learned is a simple reframe that. Instead of looking at others for comparison, look at others for inspiration. So instead of saying, well, why can't I do? How come they've got there? They're just lucky, right? Ask yourself, what can I learn from how they've got there? What can I learn from how they're doing what they're doing? And then how can I just start testing? How can I start experimenting and see what works and what doesn't? So I find my own path forwards. And ultimately, the only person we should be comparing ourselves to is who we were yesterday.

Nathan Barry (6:41)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (6:41)

If we are constantly better than who we were yesterday, eventually we get to reap the rewards. Mm.

Nathan Barry (6:47)

So was there someone specific that you were comparing yourself to that you shifted?

Simon Alexander Ong (6:53)

Just everyone ahead of me.

Nathan Barry (6:54)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (6:54)

Just as soon as I got into this industry, I was just following lots of people, doing incredible things, and I would just consume, consume, and consume. But then I realized that when it comes to social media especially, you have two choices, because social media is just a tool. At the end of the day, you have the choice to just consume, or you can use what's available to create something, to create something of value. And that's What I wanted to do, I wanted to start using it in a healthier way so I could grow not just my brand, but build awareness about what I did.

Nathan Barry (7:28)

So what did that shift look like as you got into the steps that you took to step into that creative role?

Simon Alexander Ong (7:33)

So when I first started, it was just me going to networking events, speaking to people, giving people an experience of what coaching was like. And then on social media, what I started doing was just documenting my speaking. It was showing people behind the scenes, was giving people highlights of my speaking and just writing my thoughts onto articles, onto posts. Blogging at the time, yeah, blogging was the thing that was doing really well. That's how people found out about your work and then just trying to build a profile on these different platforms. And I found that over time that's how people came across my work. It wasn't Google anymore. I mean, some people would still search looking for your work specifically, but people would go straight onto platforms like Instagram or YouTube or LinkedIn to learn about who you were and then they would want to have a conversation and see whether they wanted to do business with you.

Nathan Barry (8:19)

So something that you've talked about really a lot is energy. And the reason I asked how long you've been a creator is I'm curious about how you're you sustain that energy over a long period of time. Because something that I see so many creators do is burnout pretty quickly and they might get to a tiny fraction of the reach that they hope to because they burn out after six months or two years or that sort of thing. And I'm now at 14 years in the creator industry. I think plenty of other people are at, you know, five years before they get traction or all of this. And so when it relates to creators and burnout and their energy, like what do you see people getting wrong in both how they think about it and then the day to day actions that they take.

Simon Alexander Ong (9:05)

For me, it boils down to consistency versus intensity. Okay, we go hard and when we don't see results, we burn out. Yeah, I mean, classic example is when we start a new year, lots of people have resolutions and they go very intense. So if you've never been to a gym that often before, you decide this is a year, that health is going to be my value. And you go three, four times a week. If you go from zero to that without slowly building and focusing on consistency, eventually you find out you can't keep it up, you burn out and eventually you give up your gym membership. So the key is to focus on consistency over intensity. And so when you first start out, it's understanding, well, what does that look like for me? So not to follow what other people are doing, but just say, maybe once a week, posting on social media might be my frequency, and then slowly build from there. Because the key is you want to thrive, not just survive. And the only way to do that is to find a good rhythm that works for you. And we all come from different setups. You know, some people have a team. You might be starting out on your own. Other people might be holding a. Holding down a day job as well. And so you just got to work out, what is my rhythm that I can sustain over. Over a long period, Knowing that something is always better than nothing.

Nathan Barry (10:22)

Right. I mean, something that I. This is not a show focused on beginners, but something that I recommend for beginners is that they start with journaling rather than actually posting. And so that the consistency that you build up is the consistency of logging your thoughts and ideas. And then once that exists, and then let's get to a consistency of refining them and then maybe posting them. Right. And so you start with this much easier step.

Simon Alexander Ong (10:46)

Well, I'm curious what's kept you going? You've mentioned you've been doing this for quite a while.

Nathan Barry (10:51)

I mean, I truly love it. Right. So it's the people that. In the relationships that I have. I also think that you don't truly understand an idea until you teach it, and that teaching is the biggest thing. There's so many things. You know, I love money and finance and, like, the physics behind building wealth. And so something that I've really enjoyed is trying to distill those principles down into something that I can teach. Because they'll be like, oh, yeah, this is why it works that way. You know, SaaS companies have higher enterprise value than agencies. Right. It's a standard thing. And someone's like, why?

Simon Alexander Ong (11:26)

They just do.

Nathan Barry (11:28)

I don't know. You know, but it's not until you can teach it.

Simon Alexander Ong (11:31)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (11:31)

That you realize, like, oh, do you really understand the physics behind it?

Simon Alexander Ong (11:34)

That's also the power of teaching. Because I think when you teach something, you're forced to really understand it and also simplify it. How can you simplify into frameworks or ways where people can get it immediately? And when you pass that knowledge on, that's how we empower other people to also follow on the same journey. Yeah.

Nathan Barry (11:51)

And I think for me, it's having a mission and a purpose of why you're doing it. So this is something that I Keep trying to recenter the team at, at kit around is our mission as a company is that we exist to help creators earn a living and to build valuable businesses. And so I will keep going back to basically learning that making money is a skill.

Simon Alexander Ong (12:12)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (12:12)

Was a transformational thing for me where it took something that was scarcity based and I, you know, watched my parents divorce over like fighting over money and all of that and realizing like, okay, I want to, I want a path to like taking care of my family in a sustainable way and then realizing like, wait, making money is a skill, I can learn this thing. And then achieving all of the goals that I had set out and then basically going around to the world like, do you understand this? Like, does everybody know that you know? And so I felt like I had discovered like the cheat code for a video game and I wanted to share that with everyone else.

Simon Alexander Ong (12:47)

And that's for me, what makes it energizing. You know, you go back earlier about how do we keep it energizing from the longevity of surviving as a creator. It's how do, how do you treat it Like a game?

Nathan Barry (12:57)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (12:57)

Because if you can see the journey as a game, it becomes far more fun and enjoyable. So, so each challenge you see, you treat it like an obstacle to get to the next level. And when you get there, you energize to try and get to the next level and the next level and then you're working out, well, what are the cheat codes that are going to help me break through to the next level? And then for me, that's what makes it so much fun, is you go in without knowing what the outcome's going to be. But just to experiment and treat the journey like a game, something I think

Nathan Barry (13:23)

a lot about is stress. And I have had times, you know, years in the past where I would have like panic attacks and really, really struggle with stress. And then other times where I really, really enjoyed the work and had like a much more, I guess, fluid, easygoing, easygoing relationship with it. But is that as you work with leaders and all that, is that something that you work with them a lot on is their relationship to their work and, and the stress side of it?

Simon Alexander Ong (13:54)

Absolutely. So many people are stressed because they tie their emotional well being to whether something works out or not, or even their achievements. So I don't know if you notice, but when Michael Phelps retired from being an Olympic swimmer within the first year, he talks about how often he had suicidal thoughts.

Nathan Barry (14:13)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (14:13)

And that was because his identity was so tied to being an Olympic swimmer. So when you retire from that career, who are you?

Nathan Barry (14:22)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (14:22)

How do you describe yourself now? And so it's, it's really understanding that you are not your achievements. If you tie yourself to it. Your emotional well being is going to be like a roller coaster. You know, when things go well, you're going to be having a euphoric higher. When things don't go well, you want to shut yourself away from the world. And so it's really focusing on the fact that you can choose to be happy and grateful just for the sake of it. It doesn't have to be tied to an achievement. And in fact, when you operate from a place of gratitude, for me, that's how you access abundance. It's again choosing what you see. If you're realizing that there is so much to be grateful for in this present moment, suddenly your mind finds even more things to be grateful for. You attract more opportunities into your world.

Nathan Barry (15:05)

That seems like something that is really easy to say and really hard to live out. Like, how do you coach people through making that, that transition and saying like, okay, my accomplishments are not my self worth, you know, and all those things?

Simon Alexander Ong (15:20)

Absolutely. I mean, it's one of the things that's hard because it's something we're so conditioned to believe. So if you look at how society judges success, we judge success on external metrics. So usually when you ask people who do you consider to be successful, the traits that go into their determination of who's successful are things like how much money someone is earning, their status, their job title, the company they work with. But if you were to take all of that away and really ask someone, who are you without those things, a lot of people can't tell you because they don't know what that is. And so in a way, when we, when we talk about wisdom and when I'm teaching people to become wiser, I always say wisdom begins with knowing yourself. Okay, who are you? What do you stand for? Ultimately? What is a successful life for you? If you could take away all of these external metrics you choose, what is a successful life for you, what would that look like? And it's starting from there. It's having clarity of purpose. Because going back to something you said earlier about purpose for me, when you know what your purpose is, when you know what you're working toward, when you know what fulfillment looks and feels like for you, that awakens one of the greatest energetic sources within us. It's what wakes us up in the morning, it's what pulls us forward. It's what allows us to do more than our basic job description?

Nathan Barry (16:37)

Okay. So going to that stress, I want to give listeners a handful of tools for dealing with that because I find that most ambitious people that I come across, and if you're listening to this show, you're probably an ambitious, very highly driven person, are going to encounter a lot of stress at some point. It might be self inflicted, it might be whatever comes up from family, from work, from know anything else, opportunities you've taken, the ones that you've missed out on, whatever else. And I want to give it a series of, of tools. And so I'll kick off with one and I'd love for you to share one. One thing that really helps me is thinking about life as a video game like you're talking about and there being a series of levels.

Simon Alexander Ong (17:17)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (17:18)

And so looking back. So I look at a problem today that feels crushing to me where I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do about this. This is so stressful. And I will set that aside for a moment and I will think back to a time a few years ago that I felt the same way. So like an example would be figuring out how to lead a company through a global pandemic and lockdown and everything else. And that felt crushing at the time. Now I look at that and I go, oh, that'd actually be pretty easy. Not easy, but I know how I would do that. Past me was crushed under the weight of that stress. Current me would be like, that's fine, I've grown enough. And so that reflection in time realizes, oh, I have leveled up as a leader, as a human, all of that, to the point that what was crushing before is manageable now. And so now I can go forward in time and say, okay, so the thing that feels crushing now, I bet Nathan three years from now will go, okay, I wish my problems were that easy.

Simon Alexander Ong (18:22)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (18:23)

And so using time in that way and personal growth to put things in perspective.

Simon Alexander Ong (18:27)

So for me, there's three things that come to mind. The very first thing is when you feel stressed, especially if you're going for a very tough situation right now or period is challenging. The hardest thing is focusing on that challenge now because it just makes you more stressed when you, the more you think about it. And so the first thing you want to do is you want to distance yourself from it.

Nathan Barry (18:48)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (18:49)

In order to see the solution that we all know, but often gets clouded by judgment. So for example, if somebody's going through a tough time right now, or perhaps they're procrastinating on something they know they should be doing. I might distance themselves from that situation by asking them a question like, well, if the next year of your life was like the next episode on a Netflix show, what would that episode be called and what would be happening on it that would make it compelling viewing?

Nathan Barry (19:17)

Okay, interesting. That's not where I thought you were going at all.

Simon Alexander Ong (19:21)

So what happens is it distances themselves away from them being in the trenches and gets their creativity flowing. And they're saying, well, I think in the next episode, I would finally break my procrastination and start that project. And they'll be like, then what would happen next? What would make the viewer want to continue watching? And they'll be like, well, the project starts to take off, we start calling some suppliers, and now they're detailing out a plan forward.

Nathan Barry (19:46)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (19:46)

They're doing it, but they're doing it from a distance from them being in it.

Nathan Barry (19:49)

When you move from analytical to storytelling.

Simon Alexander Ong (19:52)

Absolutely. And storytelling has emotion, and emotion is what activates an energy inside of us to realize we know the way forward. So that's an example. Another one could be a client might say, you know, it's really tough in my company right now. I feel like my manager's micromanaging me. I can't get my faults across. Now. If I continue just focusing on that situation, it just makes that person more stressed. So I might say, well, let's for a moment, imagine your team is in a kitchen, and you are all part of a kitchen team to prepare food for a restaurant. And your manager is the chef. Tell me about the chef. And so we're just creating a very extreme storytelling scenario that just takes them away from being in that situation. But we think of it through a different lens, and then it becomes a bit humorous, it becomes a bit funny. And it's like, well, you know, the chef's running about ordering people to do stuff, but he hasn't really prepared it all yet. I'm trying to tell people what to, but no one's listening because pots and pans are just going up. Steam is coming up all over the place. And then we might say, well, how are you going to get the chef's attention? And so we're coming up with a solution, but through a different. Different path.

Nathan Barry (21:00)

So I guess in that case you're going from contrasting. Let's say that the. This person actually works in a remote environment. They're communicating over Slack and email or Jira tickets. I don't know what it is. And their Boss is micromanaging them through these messages or that sort of thing, or the things that are unsaid, you know, or what comes across as passive aggressive in some way. And what you're doing is you're taking out of that real environment.

Simon Alexander Ong (21:28)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (21:29)

And you're going into, you're.

Simon Alexander Ong (21:31)

You're switching up the environment to get them to see their same situation through a different lens. So, for example, in that situation, I might say, well, let's take you out of you and put you in your boss's shoes.

Nathan Barry (21:46)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (21:46)

How do you think he receives information best? And so we're just shifting perspective a little bit. It's like I had a recent conversation with a potential client and he was telling me about all the things that were worrying him and all the things he needs help with. And he felt drowning in all of these challenges. He told me he's a family man. And so I just said to him, imagine you've come back from work and your children come up to you. And one of them, before leaving, tells you the exact same thing you've told me. What would you tell your son or daughter if they told you what you just told me? And suddenly he's formulating answers and he's formulating advice. Because deep down we have that knowledge, we have that wisdom, but it's just having the courage to listen and follow through with it. So that would be one. The second is stillness, is to slow things down so you can see the path forward. And very often we don't rest. We see rest as a reward for working hard or hustling without realizing that work and rest are partners of the same team. So how can you slow yourself down? You mentioned journaling earlier. And just to understand your thoughts at a deeper level, it could be something like just going for a walk in nature and then coming back writing down what came up in your mind. It could be meditation, whatever form that might take. How do you begin to find rest within your routine? Not as a result of having achieved something. And. And that's key to me. And the third is connection to your future self. So what I mean by this is a lot of us make present day decisions based on our past self and that's what holds us back. But if we make present day choices and decisions based on our future self, ie, what would future me do?

Nathan Barry (23:32)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (23:33)

Then that changes the game. Even a process of visualizing yourself sitting down on the table and the person opposite is your ideal future self. What would he or she tell you about where you are in the direction

Nathan Barry (23:46)

you should Take is there an example from either your own life or a coaching client where they were able to have that clarity when getting advice from their future self?

Simon Alexander Ong (23:56)

So I can speak from personal experience. When I was contemplating quitting my corporate career, it was probably at the time, the toughest decision I was about to take.

Nathan Barry (24:06)

What made it so hard?

Simon Alexander Ong (24:07)

Nobody in my immediate family had ever run a business. They'd always worked for someone. And my environment wasn't full of people that were entrepreneurs. I grew up in an environment where everybody worked jobs, they would go to college, follow the blueprint that most of us follow in life. And so what made it hard was, if I quit this job, what would my parents say? What would my friends say? There was a lot of thoughts running through my head. And so what I started to do was to close my eyes, imagine myself walking to a room where there's a table in the middle, pulling out the chair, sitting down, and seeing my ideal future self in front of me and just asking him, what would. What would you do? What would you do? What path should I take? And just as a result of doing that, I realized the poor and the excitement came from going into the unknown. It came from just exploring what I hadn't done before. Because I think that when you go into the unknown, the beauty of it is that anything is possible, but you've got to put yourself there. And just to change my environment, it told me that the first step to getting anywhere in life is to design an environment around you that makes it impossible not to succeed. So I started changing what I read, what I watch, what I followed, what I listened to, who I spent time around, the events I went to. And that just really helped to change my vision of what could be possible.

Nathan Barry (25:28)

That's so interesting. I'm imagining the, like, the advice that your future self would give in so many different scenarios. But, yeah, it. It gives clarity where you're saying, you know, I. And I've done that, like, coaching other people through something of just like, okay, that's interesting. Like, trying to set it aside and then create a different scenario where the end, like, well, what advice would you give this person? And they give the advice and they go, oh, that was me. Okay. You know, it's like. But you. You created that distance. The other one that I found is really helpful whenever someone's stuck. Like, not taking any action at all is to have the framing around, like, doing a favor for your future self. Like, whenever someone, you know, can't get past the procrastination or, you know, you're like, you know, it's just like, hey, today all I want you to do is do one favor. Could be tiny, could be medium sized. I don't care. For your future self.

Simon Alexander Ong (26:22)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (26:23)

And so that, you know, that could be eating right, that could be working out, that could be going to bed at a reasonable time, that could be making a little bit of progress on the book project you've been working on, any of those things, but it's just a little bit of a favor to your future self. And then also to have some gratitude for something that your past self did.

Simon Alexander Ong (26:42)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (26:42)

And like, if you. It's just these tiny little things. Like, what's one thing I'm grateful for that my past self did? Okay, well, you know, I'm grateful that I, I, my past self sat down for 30 minutes, made progress on the book, trying to write. And then the favor that I'm going to do for my future self is, you know, I'm going to go to bed at 10 instead of staying up till midnight watching a Netflix show. You know, something like that.

Simon Alexander Ong (27:05)

Yeah, that's okay. And that's why for me, beginning with the end and mind is so important. So when we wake up in the mornings asking ourselves, how will I know that today will have been a productive day? How will I know that this week will have been a productive week? And then just work backwards. And when we think about the action we take is to focus on the feeling after having taken the action, not the process of taking action.

Nathan Barry (27:29)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (27:29)

So, for example, with the, with the book, rather than focus on what you've got to do to complete the number of words or to get to your goal, focus on the feeling of how it would be. Like once you're there, you've written the 500 words. How does it feel? How does it feel to have written 500 words today and set yourself up tomorrow? Because when you focus on that, that's an emotion. And emotion is all about energy. And that emotion excites you enough to want to do it. It's like if all your friends are watching a TV show that you've never heard of, the excitement that they share, the feeling that you see they get from having watched this show, almost seduces you to also want to watch the TV show. Even though you've said to everyone you've got no time, you find time to watch it because there's now an emotional connection to wanting to watch that show.

Nathan Barry (28:17)

Right. Okay. I want to dig in on this, the emotion side, because I spend all of my time not quite all but so much of my time in the logical, analytical side. And you're talking about, just focus on the feelings. Like how. How do you actually make that shift?

Simon Alexander Ong (28:34)

Well, first of all, I'll share my. One of my favorite quotes by Maya Angelou, which goes, people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but they will never forget the way you made them feel. And feeling is simply a transference of energy. And I first learned about this when I, you know, I often share about how I now have short hair. But when I was a teenager growing up in secondary school, you might not believe this, Nathan, but I had longer hair. I would used to spend 20 minutes every morning gelling up my hair, okay, preparing to go to school. And one summer I decided, I'm just going to shave it off. I was back home in Malaysia. I'm just going to shave it off. And I come back to school in September. I remember being in the school canteen and a friend of mine comes up to me and he says, simon, have you heard of the rumor going around about you? I'm like, no, what are they saying? And keep in mind, this was before social media, before the Internet. So people would often make up rumors about what you did during the summer holidays. And they said, people are saying that you spent the summer in a Shaolin monastery learning kung fu and you had to shave your head. And I was thinking to myself, that's why nobody's coming up to me or wanting to start a fight with me. And I kept it ever since. And so the reason I often share that story is because we are telling ourselves stories every single day about our past, about our present, and about our future, and what we can or cannot do. And stories is what activates our ability to get things done. Stories are also how we influence other people. The best communicators in the world are able to tell great stories. And it's the stories that sell because they activate something inside of us that makes the audience relate to whatever that communicator is saying.

Nathan Barry (30:09)

Hey, I hope you're enjoying the episode. I wanted to jump in really quick to suggest one thing you should do this year if you want to grow your creative business, and that is to show up in person at conferences. You can do any of these great creator conferences, but the one that I would specifically recommend because I organize it is called Craft and Commerce. So for the last seven, eight, nine years, I don't know how long it's been now we've been hosting an in person event for creators. And it's Basically, the event that we wish we had early on in our creator careers. We've got incredible workshops and speakers and just so many great things happening. But the thing that you're going to enjoy the most is the hallway track, the conversations at restaurants, over lunch, or just around the event with other creators. My creator career changed drastically when I started showing up in person, building relationships, and then having those other creators help build my business with me and build me up and provide accountability and masterminds and so much more. So I would say get in person with creators. Show up to Craft and Commerce this June, and if you want to grab your ticket, you can do that@kit.com conference. It sold out last year. It's probably going to sell out really soon again this year, so make sure to do that right away.

Simon Alexander Ong (31:13)

Okay.

Nathan Barry (31:13)

Going back to this idea of stress and thinking about, I guess, your relationship to work.

Simon Alexander Ong (31:19)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (31:20)

I'll give a specific example of something. I was reflecting on my year. So this was, you know, we're recording this in January, so maybe mid December. And I'm sort of reflecting on the year and realizing that we accomplished so many incredible things this year. But the first thought when I was like, what was 2025? Like, I was like, oh, it's stressful. And then I went back and I realized we actually took all these amazing trips as a family. Like, I had a really good balance to the year. I did so many of the things that I wanted to do. But stress is the thing that stood out because of, like, some tough team transitions at the end of the year. And, like, it was more of a recency thing. And I remember thinking to myself, wait a second, this is weird. Like, I have accomplished way too many of my goals. Like, I went back 10 years, and I was like, whatever Nathan in 2015 hoped and dreamed to accomplish, like, Nathan in 2025 has exceeded those by 10x or more, like, in all these different categories. Like, just to name a few things. Like, the company is at over $50 million a year in revenue. The dream list of clients. It's not even. It's not just the biggest names in the creator space. It's the biggest names in the celebrity space, you know, and, like, and everything. And so if I were to rewind 10 years, like 2015, Nathan would be shocked.

Simon Alexander Ong (32:43)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (32:44)

At two things. One, how successful everything was. And two, how 2025 Nathan felt about it. Like, how can you achieve all of this and be that stressed? And so I basically made a decision, even just, you know, three or four weeks ago, of, like, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna loosen up. I'm going to deliberately have a different relationship because, you know, with my own stress and emotions, because otherwise, what am I doing? And so I'm curious if there's similar transitions that you've helped people work through, and some of your processes and what

Simon Alexander Ong (33:18)

you shared there is not uncommon, because what I'm hearing is the reason. Or maybe one of the reasons that the stress has manifested is because wherever you are in your journey, you're focused so much on how far there is yet to go.

Nathan Barry (33:34)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (33:34)

And when you're always focused on how much further you've got to go, you're always going to be stressed. But when you take a moment to step back and say, well, look at how far I've come.

Nathan Barry (33:44)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (33:45)

Look at the journey I've been on, it makes you grateful for the present moment, and you start to let go a little bit. You're not so tired to the next thing and the next thing, because otherwise you're going to be in a constant state of anxiety. You're not living in the present or the future or the past. And you fall into this tragic scenario of living as if you are never going to die and then dying, having never really lived. Because you're neither in the present, the past, or the future. You're just in your thoughts. You're constantly thinking about things that may or may not happen. You focus on control, when in many cases, all you can control is your input. And so when you kind of loosen up a little bit, you get to enjoy life more. You get to be open to circumstances beyond your control. And sometimes things work out better than you imagined. But when you start to try and control everything, that's what creates stress. Because stress happens when an expectation does not meet what you are thinking about. So you might expect something to happen doesn't happen. That creates stress. So loosening your control on the outcome being exactly the way you want, it helps to reduce that feeling of stress.

Nathan Barry (34:53)

One of my favorite authors and entrepreneurs is Jason Fried, who founded Basecamp, and he wrote a bunch of books, Rework, Getting Real, all these great books. And he talked about learning to play the drums. And as he's playing the drums and all of that, his teacher is like, you have to loosen up. You have to hold the drumsticks loosely.

Simon Alexander Ong (35:16)

Mm.

Nathan Barry (35:17)

Because you're not getting the sound and. And all that. You're. You're death gripping the drumsticks, and it is not working. And that stood out to me so much because I was like, wait, that's what I'm doing. I am. I am controlling. I'm holding tight, and I'm trying to shape and create this outcome. And, you know, you could immediately see how if you were doing that, like, nothing is gonna sound right in the drums, and it's not gonna work well in business or life at all.

Simon Alexander Ong (35:40)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (35:41)

But I think it's a really hard shift to make that.

Simon Alexander Ong (35:42)

That picture you've created is the equivalent of somebody holding so tight on something, focus on a particular result, and trying to force something through when life doesn't always work that way. And it reminds me of Wing Chun. I don't know if you heard of Wing Chun is a form of martial art.

Nathan Barry (35:57)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (35:58)

But it was actually invented by a female. It was invented by a nun. And the reason she invented Wing Chun was because she was challenged to fight a man. But of course, strength versus strength, she couldn't win. So the reason she designed Wing Chun was she observed animals in the environment, and she wanted to understand how she could beat the other person's strength but without having strength herself. And it was simply by loosening up, by loosening her grip, by going with the flow and using the person's strength against them. And that's how Wing Chun was born. Wing Chun was simply her understanding of how to beat the person in the fight. And she actually won the fight simply by loosening up and using the opponent's strength against himself.

Nathan Barry (36:42)

So if we take that into the practical world, what's an area of your life that you were able to loosen up and not be so attached to the result?

Simon Alexander Ong (36:51)

And, yeah, I think for me, it's certainly been parenting. Yeah, parenting.

Nathan Barry (36:57)

It's, yes, control that child and see how well that works for you.

Simon Alexander Ong (37:01)

Parenting is tough because as parents, you naturally have certain expectations that you want your child to meet, and you hope they do certain things, make certain choices and decisions, but you realize you can't control them. They're their own person. And every child is different. And this is why you might have the first child, and it's like, oh, my God, I really enjoyed a child. They're so well behaved. They eat and sleep so well. And then you have a second child that's completely the opposite. What went wrong? And so I think parenting has taught me so much about loosening up in the sense that you can't control every aspect of that person. You can only guide them. And that's why I think there's a lot of similarities to leadership. You know, you can't control every single team member and employee all you can do in your position is to guide them towards a compelling future that you then hope they make the right choices. And so with my daughter, it's giving her the emotional space to share what she's going through and simply acting as that guide. And one of the things I learned from psychologist Adam Grant, actually he speaks a lot about this in some of his work, is that children, as they grow up, between 0 and 10, their default when they experience something for the first time or they're nervous about going to school or doing a new activity, is they go straight to mom and dad and say, mom, dad, what do I do? I'm a bit nervous. Or, I don't know anyone here. What do I do? Now, as parents, we jump straight in, we offer advice, we give them help. And this is kind of the same for adults in the sense that when you have a partner who may has gone through a tough day at work and your partner comes back and they share what they've gone through, automatically we, as the other person, we feel like we have to jump in and offer advice and guidance. Now, what he said is that you want to spin it around to try and get them to coach themselves by you being vulnerable. So vulnerability being a path of connection. So instead of me just constantly giving advice to my daughter, I might say to my daughter, when I'm noticing she's a little nervous, I might say, you know, dad's feeling a little nervous right now as well. And she might go, really? You get nervous as well? I'm like, yeah, I'm speaking at this event next week. It's the biggest audience I've ever spoken to. And I'm feeling a little nervous because I don't really know the audience that well. What tips do you have for me? And suddenly her eyes light up and she goes, well, dad, you know, you've always done this and that, and they've always enjoyed it. And so suddenly they come up with the most purest forms of wisdom and advice. But for them, it's almost like they're talking to themselves as well. So when they next experience something similar, the child is thinking, actually, I can just do the same thing. So they're learning to build that resilience and the fact that they can trust their own wisdom.

Nathan Barry (39:54)

It's a very similar thing as, you know, what would your future self do? Or all that. But in this case, it's just. It's a different person. And so you're giving them that distance from the problem. I think telling those stories is so important as well.

Simon Alexander Ong (40:07)

Of. And it's trust as well. It's trusting that you've done the best you can. And whatever they do, it's really up to, up to them to take it forward in the same way in the business. I've spoken to a lot of different companies and I've noticed that the teams that feel that they are trusted, supported and appreciated always perform better because they have been given a freedom to do what they were hired to do and are just guided towards activating their full potential.

Nathan Barry (40:35)

Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about this idea of control and trying to control the outcomes. I was doing that a lot in parenting. I have three boys. They're 14, 11 and 6. And my 11 year old really struggles with a lot of things with his school, with just really a lot. And the more I tried to shape and control the outcomes, the worse it got. And the last few months, all I've tried to do is spend a lot of time with him. And so we're doing a massive construction project on a fort that he wants to build in the backyard and he's talked about it for a long time. He wants to build a hobbit hole in the backyard. We have a little farm and there's like a hillside and all of that. And at first that was a ridiculous project and I don't know how to do that and, you know, all this. But I realized that when I didn't know how to help him, I was trying to control all these things and I thought and said like, what if, what if? The only thing I tried to control was how much time we spent together.

Simon Alexander Ong (41:42)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (41:42)

And so I said, okay. You know, finally he's like, dad, let's, you know, can we build a hop hole? That's. Instead of saying like, I. What do we even do it? Like, that's, that's. I just finally said, okay, because I knew it was something that was going to give us, you know, a project that was going to take hundreds of hours of us doing things together and just being.

Simon Alexander Ong (42:03)

And the key is you're doing it together, so you're learning together, you're being challenged together. And even asking him, well, what do you think we should be doing next? And that brings you into the present moment. It's like over, over the Christmas holidays, my family, we love doing jigsaws together.

Nathan Barry (42:20)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (42:21)

And the reason is because you're not distracted by any technology. You just focus on building this jigsaw and you're doing it as a team and that's quality time. And when we finish the recent Holiday period. I remember asking my daughter, because I'm getting her to do some regular reflection, and I asked my daughter, what was the most memorable thing you did in the past two weeks? And it wasn't a present. It wasn't visiting Santa. It wasn't doing all of these outings. It was simply, I just enjoy spending time with mum and dad. And what we realized is that the greatest gift we can give to someone else is, is our energy and our presence. Not time, but energy and presence. And children especially can feel that, you know, they can really notice that. They can notice if you're distracted or your, your mind is elsewhere, or they can tell whether you're actually present with them, listening to them and connecting with them.

Nathan Barry (43:09)

You actually just gave me something about, I'm going to change how I interact with August, my son, on this project. I am. I have a plant like we drew up. We know what to do, but I have more of it in my head. And so he's like, dad, what should we do next? Okay, well, we need to run electrical before we can put it in insulation. So why don't you grab the drill and start drilling these holes and we'll run electrical wire and all of that. What I should do instead, and what I'm going to try to do when I come home from Dubai is to ask him, okay, you know, let's go work on the hobbit hole. What, what, what do you think we should do next? And I bet he would get, you know, he'll, we're far enough into the project, there's probably four or five things that he'd be like, well, let's do this part of it, like, great, you know, and let him drive more of that. And, and that's holding it even more loosely. And because even though we're spending a lot of time together, it's still pretty outcome focused.

Simon Alexander Ong (44:06)

Right.

Nathan Barry (44:06)

We are building this thing. But if I ask him, hey, what should we do next? Yeah, then it's so much more presence focused.

Simon Alexander Ong (44:13)

But. But it also feels like they're valued. Yes, that my contribution is valued, like one of the things that I do. And I share a lot with companies as well, because I think it's important when they have the team meetings, is often in team meetings, it's the same people speaking. It's the same people contributing to decisions. But if you can find ways to include people, you actually find, not only does morale go up, but productivity also accelerates as well. And so we have a family committee, and it's a way to kind of get my daughter involved more in what we do and not for her to be just told what to do. So it might be, for example, where we're going cinema. And last time we went to the cinema, it was dad's choice of what to watch. And then it's okay, the next time it's your choice and the next time it's mom's choice. And so now they feel like their contribution is valued. Or we're doing the chores this weekend, what chore do you want to do? And we just put all the different choices on the table. She gets to pick, but it's one that she is naturally drawn to and she wants to do. But then we're going to do some as well. So then it feels like you're really operating as a team. And she feels like what she shares, what she tells us, it's also valid, it's listened to. And I find that really gets her involved and she wants to actually contribute. She actually wants to help us.

Nathan Barry (45:23)

Yeah, I love that. Okay. Thinking about this level of intentionality and energy as a leader, how. How do you think of, how do you coach people to show up and like the energy that they bring to their companies?

Simon Alexander Ong (45:37)

Absolutely. So energy. I sit through four dimensions and I sit for four dimensions which are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Nathan Barry (45:45)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (45:45)

Now in many cases, when we think about energy, we only focus on the physical. It's things like get more sleep, have a healthy diet, do more exercise, and those are things we can see as externals the most. But the invisible stuff is mental, emotional and spiritual. Mental energy is all about your mindset. It's your creativity and how you respond to things that don't always happen the way you expect. Emotional energy is all about relationships, relationships with yourself and the relationships with those around you. And spiritual energy is all about meaning and purpose. And so if we look at the world around us, a lot of people I see are exhausted. Not because they are physically doing too much, but because they are doing too little. The things that bring them joy and they're running someone else's race. They haven't figured out for themselves what success means. And the way I explain this to people is I imagine you and I were to go to a buffet now we go up to the food stations, we pick up our food, we come back and we sit down. I guarantee you that we would not sit down with the exact same looking plate of food and it wouldn't be in the same quantity. It'll be very different looking. It's the same with success. So we need to look at all of the influences and inputs as just inspiration. And what do we take from that? To design our own philosophy, to arrive at our own definition of success and then work towards that. So that's all to do with spiritual energy. We talk about it a lot in popular culture. In Star wars, they call it the force. In Maori culture, they call it mana. In my Chinese culture, they call it chi. But we don't actually think about it when it comes to ourselves. And the difference between energy management and time management is that time management assumes your energy is constant for that entire day, whereas energy management appreciates that it fluctuates throughout the day. So you could have a whole day free to get work done, but if you're not energized, you're going to waste it, you're going to procrastinate.

Nathan Barry (47:38)

I've done that once or twice.

Simon Alexander Ong (47:40)

Whereas if you have a certain level of energy, you will get more done in hours than most will get done in days, because it's what you bring into the hours, not how many hours you work. And that's important to understand. So that, for me, is how I see energy.

Nathan Barry (47:56)

Okay, so let's take that to the example of the creator business.

Simon Alexander Ong (47:59)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (48:00)

Right. Where maybe we have a massive project like the. Or something that's really important.

Simon Alexander Ong (48:05)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (48:06)

The writing towards the book or maybe even like energy makes a big difference in writing. But it matters even more in, say, the YouTube video that we're producing.

Simon Alexander Ong (48:15)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (48:15)

Did I show up with reading the script off the teleprompter and no energy, or was I able to bring in this energy and enthusiasm that's going to come through on camera and be this exciting thing?

Simon Alexander Ong (48:27)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (48:28)

How would you go about structuring your day and thinking about bringing the right energy to the right scenario?

Simon Alexander Ong (48:35)

Well, first of all, I would say when it comes to communicating something, and this goes to the same, whether it's a YouTube video recording or a bit of content you're recording, it's the same. When you speak to an audience live is whatever you're speaking about, it has to be about something that you are fascinated by and that you truly enjoy.

Nathan Barry (48:51)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (48:51)

Because if it is, you're naturally going to be energized. It's like if you ask a friend who just watched a really good show or really good film, what film or show should I watch next? When they talk about it to you, you need to worry about their energy. They're going to light up and say, oh, Nathan, you really got to check out this TV show. It's amazing. I've already gone through the first season. Yeah, the energy is flowing. And so if it's a topic that you enjoy and that you really find yourself connected to, the energy will naturally come. Now, outside of that, it's how you prepare ahead of recording the content. Are you kind of doing it last minute where you're rushing to get it recorded, or are you doing in a way where you've prepared, you set things up and you're ready in the right state to record and get that energy across? So the preparation is very important. Again, whether you're speaking in front of an audience, whether you are recording content or sharing anything live that you're looking to put out to a bigger audience. So it's how you prepare and then your connection to that material.

Nathan Barry (49:49)

Are there things that you think about not just energy on a daily basis, but on like across a week or a different period of time?

Simon Alexander Ong (49:56)

Yeah, I see a season. So there'll be seasons in your year where you know your energy is going to be tested more than others. So, for example, we've mentioned book a couple of times. So if you've got a book about to launch, you will know that in the four to eight weeks before the launch and the four to eight weeks after, it's going to be pretty intense.

Nathan Barry (50:14)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (50:15)

So you might be doing a lot of podcast interviews, you might be doing a lot of PR related activities, traveling, book signing, traveling. And so if you know ahead of time the impact is going to have in your energy, you can say no to a lot more things ahead of time. You can clear the diary ahead of this season, picking up just so you have the energy to deal with whatever's going to come into your inbox. So that's how I see, I see my year as seasons. So summer and Christmas, for example, what I call the quiet seasons. And I use those seasons to reflect, spend time with the family and just disconnect. And then there'll be particular points in my year where business really picks up. You know, beginning of the year, towards the end of the year, where there are big conferences going on where people want to book me to speak.

Nathan Barry (50:54)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (50:54)

Or I'm launching something that I need to just block out a bit more time for, just so I've got the energy to deliver whatever it is I'm looking to deliver with. The best that I can do are

Nathan Barry (51:04)

there, you know, what other energy decisions have you made in your life to, to make it so that your energy most matches the, the way you want to show up or the outcomes that you're trying to create.

Simon Alexander Ong (51:13)

I think it's a mindset as well. If I'm going to mental energy, I'm, I'm a creative, which sounds weird coming from someone who used to come from finance.

Nathan Barry (51:21)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (51:21)

But I love thinking differently. And for me, creativity is one of those skills that is going to become if a, if it's not ready, is going to become so much more important as AI takes over a lot more of our functional skills. And so creatively, it's just the ability to see things and do things in a different way, often in ways that has never been done before. And that for me is what really gets me going, is really understanding how can I do something in a way that has never been done before. Now in marketing, they call this utp, which stands for unique talking points. So what happens is when you build unique talking points into your business or what you do, people can't help but share about it on their social media, on, on their platforms because you in effect, turn your customers and your audience into your marketers, they become your marketers. And I remember talking about unique talking points, talking about sort of like finding creative ways to get you energized from a mental point of view. A friend of mine in London opened a nightclub a number of years ago and it's a very competitive space. You know, when you think about what you want to do in an evening, you're spoiled with choices.

Nathan Barry (52:27)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (52:28)

But he decided to think about what would my unique talking point be that would get all of the guests telling all of their friends about this club and doing the marketing for us. So they ended up getting some train tracks on the ceiling of this nightclub. And if a VIP table were to order some shots from the bar, the bartenders would put the shots into this toy train. They would light the toy train up to be on fire. It would go along the train tracks to the table and Day of the Dead characters, because it was a Mexican themed bar, Day of the Dead characters would come out and take their shots and give it to the table. The moment the train is going through that nightclub, everyone's got their phones out, taking photos, videos, selfies, and they're just marketing it for on their behalf. And so that's the power of thinking about unique talking points and really accessing that creativity. And that's, for me, what gives me that mental energy. It's really being inspired to see things differently. It's why I love connecting with people from very diverse backgrounds. Now, if you only look at your competition, you can only be as Good as your competition. But when you look beyond your industry, when you look at other people doing well in different sectors, you're able to bring that inspiration into your own industry and stand out. It's how Steve Jobs came up with the MagSafe cord for the MacBook. On the trip to Japan, he noticed the rice cookers that had this magnetic cord. And so curious. He wanted to know the reason behind it. And the company told him, well, the reason we have these magnetic cords is that if a child was a trip on the wire, the wire would come off, but the appliance would stay still. And Steve came back to us and he said, we're going to bring that into the next MacBook. And that was where the MagSafe cord was born. And when it came out, the editors and the journalists said, what a genius move. This is such an innovative bit of design. But it was inspired by looking beyond his industry.

Nathan Barry (54:23)

Yeah. And then you're just not. It's not another me Too copycat product. It's pulled from a totally different place. And I'm thinking about the rice cooker that we have. And it has that magnetic cord. Right. Because the last thing that you want to do is to drop a rice cooker on a small child.

Simon Alexander Ong (54:38)

Absolutely. And so that's why for me, to keep me energized throughout this entrepreneurial journey, I'm always seeking to learn from people with different backgrounds who are successful in different ways. So if we look at the content creator space, it's not just your YouTuber, it's your TikToker, it's your Instagram, it's the person that's built a big newsletter, the person that's built a great audience in a variety of different mediums. What are they doing that I can learn from? Especially if they've done it in a way that is different to what I've seen. Because as you start to collect all those dots, your ability to then connect them and learn from them allows you to make that progress forward.

Nathan Barry (55:11)

There's so many examples of pulling from different industries. Two that worked really well for me.

Simon Alexander Ong (55:16)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (55:17)

One is when I was in the design space, I would see all of these web designers put their work on these gallery websites. There's like CSS galleries or that sort of thing. And it was all of the trends in design, and people would copy that, and everybody sort of made things that look the same and they needed inspiration, and so they went to their peers and they got inspiration. And sure enough, it all trended towards one area. What I ended up Doing that I found was much better is I found that clothing brands in particular would have really great source of design. So I would go to like Banana Republic in the mall and they would have like their, you know, their fall collection would have this interesting blend of colors and textures and typography. Or you look at the, the clothes themselves and the tag on it would have like an interesting texture to it. And it's like, oh, well, let's. What if I build a website that's inspired by this fabric, this texture and the font that they chose and I was, you know, fairly blatantly copying from something, but it didn't, it felt totally new in my world because I took it somewhere completely different.

Simon Alexander Ong (56:24)

But, but that's creativity View. Creativity isn't about inventing something that has never been done before. It's about creating something as a result of your, your influences. You're drawing from different things to give birth to something new, but it's influenced by things that already, already come to pass.

Nathan Barry (56:41)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (56:41)

And so that's all creativity is. But in order to activate that, we have to be curious. We have to follow our curiosities.

Nathan Barry (56:47)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (56:48)

In the same way that Steve Jobs did, in the same way lots of other people have done. The same way that you did is to follow our curiosities again without being attached to the outcome and seeing where they may lead. And often they can lead to very interesting insights, opportunities or introductions.

Nathan Barry (57:01)

Yeah, I love that. The other one that, that was important for me is the blend between the startup world and the direct response marketing world. And so the first book that I published, I had a long form sales page which in direct response world was very, very common. Right. Long form sales pages. The copy is very, very important. We're addressing all of the obstacles. But they would do it in this, like poorly designed yellow highlighter. You know, anyone who's spent time in that space knows that look. But then at the same time I would go over, you know, I spent all this time in the world of startups where simplicity, elegant, like great design really, really mattered. And so I came out with these, this landing page for my book. And everyone's like, I have never seen something like this. And it was just the intersection of those two worlds because it was great copywriting a long form sales page, but it was beautifully designed. And it's like I just took two industries, like very, very common practice in two different industries and merged it together. And everyone's like, I've never seen this before.

Simon Alexander Ong (58:06)

And you're like, and that's originality. In motion. You just connecting different industries together. I mean, this is how we, how we launched my first book. I mean, we partnered with the Connaught Hotel in London, which at the time was the world's best bar. And my book is called Energize. And they designed an energized cocktail.

Nathan Barry (58:22)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (58:22)

And so for the first few weeks of launch, if you ordered that cocktail in a bar, it would be mixed in front of you and then presented on a signed copy of my book. We partnered with a celebrity chef, we did a seven course menu where each course was inspired by a theme for my book. So communicating personal development and leadership through food. It was a unique experience. And then we partnered with an artist.

Nathan Barry (58:43)

And it's noteworthy. It gives you unique talking points.

Simon Alexander Ong (58:46)

Exactly. Gives you so many unique talking points that people can't help but share and talk about it. And then an artist created this beautiful abstract painting based on my work. And again, things that often in many cases have never been done before.

Nathan Barry (58:59)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (58:59)

But it's just as you say just now, it's simply the intersection of two different industries given birth to new thought.

Nathan Barry (59:05)

Let's dive into this because the book is coming out right. If we rewind in time a little bit and you're thinking about, okay, I have a message that I want to get in front of a lot of people first. Are you tied to an outcome on that or no? How did you distance yourself from, from the outcome?

Simon Alexander Ong (59:22)

So, so for me it's again, it's letting go of the outcome, being grateful. So for me, if I'm honest, I was really grateful. I had a book there with Penguin. Many people would, would love to have a deal with a publisher like Penguin and then to get the likes of Simon Sinek, Ali Abdaal and like to endorse the book was for me already a huge win. So for me, whatever happened after that was a bonus. But for me, in terms of the marketing, it was like, well, what are some cool experiments I can try and just treat it like a game, gamified a process. And we just had a whiteboard up on our wall and we just had all of these different channels that we wanted to experiment with. And the way I describe it is a lot of authors who are about to publish, it's the equivalent of their strategy. It's equivalent of driving through a narrow country lane in the sense that once you hit traffic, you can't go anywhere. And so a lot of authors, when they have a new book coming out, they just go into social media.

Nathan Barry (60:11)

They do the exact same Thing, buy

Simon Alexander Ong (60:12)

the book, buy the book, buy the book. It's just, buy the book, buy the book. The message the whole time is just get my book. But that's not going to be effective because when you put new content out, each piece of content has to be slightly different. I mean, it can still be about the book, but it has to be something that's a little indirect, a unique

Nathan Barry (60:29)

way to get attention.

Simon Alexander Ong (60:29)

Yeah. Because it appeals to different segments of your market. Not everyone's going to resonate with just buy my book all the time. And so when we looked at the different channels, it could be things such as what book clubs could we reach out to? So when they recommend this book in a month, suddenly you have hundreds, if not thousands of people buying the book. What podcasts could we get on? Which people could we collaborate with? What sort of stunt marketing could we do? What activations could we do? Who could we collaborate with? What events could we speak and so on. So with all of these different channels, and I liken that to driving on a highway. So unlike the country lane, when you hit traffic, you can't go anywhere in a highway if something doesn't work out, you just keep shifting lanes.

Nathan Barry (61:05)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (61:05)

You just keep moving lanes. You're just constantly experimenting. And so that's how I detach from the outcome, is I just focus on the fun of it. Let's just treat this journey as a game. I've already. I'm already in a very good position. I'm really grateful having got a book deal and having got these incredible names to endorse the book. Let's just have a bit of fun with marketing and see where it may go.

Nathan Barry (61:26)

Yeah. You're holding it loosely. You're optimizing for fun. You're in gratitude all the way through. And you're saying, what can I do that's unique? Something else that helps. I mean, it really stands out as I'm starting to come down the final stretches of finishing my own book and thinking about promotion, realizing like, oh, yeah, by default, I'm just going to run the same playbook that everyone else does. And so two things is, I guess, changing the way that you brainstorm. One is having like a no bad ideas brainstorm.

Simon Alexander Ong (61:55)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (61:56)

You know, where you're just at the whiteboard. What are the craziest things? I would never have thought of partnering with a hotel and a bar. Yeah. You know, the cocktail on a copy of your book. Like, even if only five people ever ordered that. And you. But you got the Instagram reel and. Exactly that's worth it.

Simon Alexander Ong (62:11)

It's the novelty. Yes.

Nathan Barry (62:14)

Right. So you know, you can do this, like no bad ideas, and you're throwing things out there, writing it down. And no one's allowed to say, like, well that would never work because. Yeah. And so that's one side of it. The other that I find really, really helpful is stepping into the pre mortem and that's basically going into this. Instead of no bad ideas, it's this project has failed. I know we're, you know, not too tied to the outcome, but let's say that the outcome is we, you know, we didn't sell 50,000 copies. We sold 50. You know, we didn't reach the people that we wanted to. We didn't achieve this goal. The startup that we're building shut down. Why? And we just step in, into this world. So we're saying, okay, it's a year in the future, it's completely failed.

Simon Alexander Ong (62:56)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (62:57)

What are all the reasons why? And in, in listing all of that out, you can identify, I think you're doing two things. You're identifying the, the reasons that it would fail. And it's very tempting to go, oh, but we'd fix it with this. No, no, remember, it failed.

Simon Alexander Ong (63:14)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (63:14)

And you just write down here's all the reasons that it, that it failed or that could possibly have failed. And then the other thing that you're doing is you're getting all those anxieties out of your head. Yeah. Because then it's even like listed out and you're like, oh, well, if it failed because of this, like, we still learned a lot. Right. You can, you can sit in that world. And so I think the pre mortem and knowing that you're gonna do that really allows a team to step into the, the brainstorming, the positive thinking where it's so easy to like, I throw out an idea or let's go the other way, you throw out an idea. And I go, well, devil's advocate, like, you know, that would never work because of this. And like now you're crushed.

Simon Alexander Ong (63:54)

Cause you're like, oh, you know, but

Nathan Barry (63:57)

we can full, fully stay in the positive side. Brainstorming, no bad ideas and knowing that in 30 minutes or an hour or another day, we're then going to set all that aside and switch into the fully the negative side. And instead of balancing both things side by side, we're going to separate them, but give each their due.

Simon Alexander Ong (64:15)

Yeah. And also an interesting thought to throw into the mix instead of just brainstorming what's also good is to question storm.

Nathan Barry (64:22)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (64:23)

And question storming is just throwing out questions into the middle of the room and seeing what comes of it. So it could be simply like, well, what's the craziest marketing strategy you've seen in the worlds that you operate in? Because now you're given permission to do it on the table to share from their personal experience. Someone might be interested in gaming, someone might be interested in racing, someone might be interested in shoes. And then you just say, what's the craziest marketing campaign you've seen in the things that you're interested in? And then they just go, oh, actually I really followed the. This particular product or this brand. They just did an amazing marketing campaign on this. Great. Tell us about it. And what you're doing is you're drawing from people's backgrounds and experiences saying, well, that words. What can we learn from that?

Nathan Barry (65:04)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (65:05)

And bring into what we do. Because if it's just purely brainstorming, some people might not feel confident that their ideas are valuable. So that's why some people just don't contribute. But when you throw questions out that you're giving permission for people to share their insight and wisdom, what I'm realizing

Nathan Barry (65:21)

about that is the question I would throw is more naturally is, what's the craziest book marketing strategy that you've seen? People like, well, this. This guy I follow in the uk, like, partnered with this bar and, you know, you'd have examples like that. But that's like the. The web designer.

Simon Alexander Ong (65:37)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (65:38)

Just copying from the other web designers.

Simon Alexander Ong (65:40)

Absolutely.

Nathan Barry (65:41)

But when you say, what's the craziest marketing strategy you ever seen? Yeah. Then we go way beyond books. Then we're throwing out all of these things and maybe only like, maybe 20% of them would be relevant if we pulled from books. And because now we're pulling from all of marketing, only 3% or 5% is relevant. But then it would spark something else and you just go in much more.

Simon Alexander Ong (66:01)

That's how you come with these ideas. Like, recently I got interviewed by a friend who is launching a book in the uk and just by diversifying his inputs, he found that one great idea was when he does street interviews, was instead of just holding a mic, put the mic on your book.

Nathan Barry (66:16)

I saw that, I watched that clip and I sent it to my team, actually.

Simon Alexander Ong (66:20)

Because you're keeping it visible in the content and it's the book. The whole way is going back and forth and that book is going into your subconscious.

Nathan Barry (66:26)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (66:27)

And that's what it's about. It's all about subconscious marketing. Because even though he's not explicitly saying, hey, guys, this book's coming out, buy the book. It's just a natural conversation, but a book is in.

Nathan Barry (66:35)

Was that. So the clip that I saw was with Tim Armu.

Simon Alexander Ong (66:37)

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. Yeah. And so we initially started the conversation without the book and then it was actually, let's experiment with it because I saw this in another video.

Nathan Barry (66:46)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (66:46)

And then we tried it and then we looked at it and we thought, actually that's. That's a really good bit of content because the book is visible for the entire conversation and even when you're speaking, I've now shared it with other speakers as well, that if you've got a book coming out, walk onto stage. If you're walking from left to right, walk on stage with a book in your hand and put it on the lectern and then walk off the stage with a book in your other hand. So that the front cover, the book is always visible to people taking photos and videos of your speaking.

Nathan Barry (67:13)

I love that. But yeah, like, I mean, even from a content creation perspective. Yeah. I always think about. I had a guest on the show who told me to really think about the, the visual hook for a short form video, the audio hook, and then any title hook.

Simon Alexander Ong (67:30)

And.

Nathan Barry (67:30)

Right. And so for every short form video that he's putting out, he's like, where's you need to hit all three of these categories? And I was always thinking about like, just the audio hook. What am I saying? He's like, no, you need both. But when I saw that reel on your page.

Simon Alexander Ong (67:43)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (67:44)

The, the book being used as the microphone holder gave was a visual hook.

Simon Alexander Ong (67:50)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (67:51)

Even before I got into the audio and the title hook and all that.

Simon Alexander Ong (67:55)

And so, and those hooks are so important. I, I remember again, just me looking outside of my own industry. I follow a nutritionist on YouTube. And when she was announcing her book, the title, which created a huge amount of curiosity, was something as simple as, I've been waiting three years, I'm finally able to come out with this. And now you're like, well, what is it?

Nathan Barry (68:16)

What is it?

Simon Alexander Ong (68:17)

You're thinking, what's he going to share? And so it just hooks you in to want to watch the video.

Nathan Barry (68:21)

Ah, there's so much good stuff in there. I want to go back to energy and particularly energy with the team.

Simon Alexander Ong (68:26)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (68:26)

So something that I think about a lot is what energy am I bringing to the situation? Because running a team of 10, 20, 50100 people. People are always looking to you like, nathan happy, Nathan upset. Is this a good idea? Is this not? And I naturally give off like fairly negative energy or at least neutral. Like, okay, give me an example. At one of our team retreats this maybe two years ago, Scott, one of our product managers who actually lives in London, okay. He gave this incredible session about the App Store that we were building. It was super early in this App Store project and so he led this whole brainstorm. He facilitated it so well and all of that. And afterwards I came up to him as like, Scott, that was so well done. Like, you nailed it with that session. I'm so excited. And he goes, really good, because every time I looked over at you, I thought like, wow, he's so pissed, I'm probably gonna get fired. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I thought that was amazing. How did you think that? He's like, you just. And I, you know, he kind of didn't finish that sentence. And I was like, I have resting bitch face, don't I? And he was like, you said it, not me. You know, but what I realized is that the natural energy I was giving off was just, was just negative. And I didn't mean to.

Simon Alexander Ong (69:37)

Yeah. It can be often unintended. But what it tells me is that so much of our communication is non verbal.

Nathan Barry (69:44)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (69:45)

You know, there's only a small percentage that is, that is verbal for what we say, but the rest is the non verbal stuff. How we look, how we react, how we respond. And often when I, I'm trying to help people respond better. Especially if you're just in the audience and you're, you're in a position of leadership and you want to support that person on stage. It's just imagine it's one of your sons on stage and one of your sons is performing in the school play. How would you respond to your son's performance? Yeah, naturally. It's one of a proud father, right?

Nathan Barry (70:12)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (70:13)

So it's just a picture. How would a proud leader or a proud manager respond of their employee on stage?

Nathan Barry (70:21)

Oh, that's such a good framing. I love that. Yeah. And if you bring that energy, that's going to allow someone like going back to our drumsticks analogy. Absolutely right there. If they're leading, the tighter they grip those drumsticks, the worse it's going to go. And then they're going to see that it's going badly and they're going to pick up on you noticing that and it's, you know, it's this vicious cycle.

Simon Alexander Ong (70:42)

It's like, why? If you are doing something that's important to you and you have a mentor, you have a close friend or partner in the audience, and they're responding and they're cheering you on and they're yelling for you, you find that extra bit of energy to go the distance.

Nathan Barry (70:55)

Yeah.

Simon Alexander Ong (70:55)

And it's the same way, you know, if you're a young child and you on stage and your parents are in the audience and something goes wrong, but your parents, like, you got it. You got to keep going. You'll get there. Don't worry about it. You just suddenly have this belief in yourself. And for a lot of us, we just need someone else to believe in us first, to just give us the energy to perform.

Nathan Barry (71:12)

Yeah. So thinking about that, that framework of bringing that proud energy.

Simon Alexander Ong (71:17)

The proud energy. Yeah.

Nathan Barry (71:18)

Yeah. Because then that's going to allow someone to loosen up. I mean, in my talk yesterday here at the conference. Yeah, right. I was a little thrown off because maybe about 10 minutes before going on stage, I realized this stage is in the round. Like, I've never given a talk before where the audience is on all four sides of me. And so I'm like, wait, you know, it's a short talk. I know it pretty well. I know I can deliver well. But now you've thrown in a variable that throws me off. And I'm like, how quickly should I turn to each side? You know, do I. Like, what do I do here? And there were a few people in the audience. I think of Gabriel, who runs the Creator Leaders group in the uk. You know, he was on one of those sides. He was sitting front and center with this great, smiling, encouraging energy. And so anytime I was like, you know, in my head of, like, am I doing the right thing? I'd kind of come around. And there's Gabriel just feeling, like, thoroughly enjoying the talk and supporting me. And I was like, oh, you know, I was getting that proud energy from him, and it was like, what I needed.

Simon Alexander Ong (72:19)

And just imagine how you felt that. Right, right. And imagine how someone else would feel when they get that same. That same experience. And this is where, you know, when we go back to gratitude, for a moment, the way I tell people how powerful gratitude is, is imagine if your manager or your boss were to send you a voice note or come up to you even, and say, hey, I just want to say I'm really grateful for the effort you put in yesterday. It really contributed to us winning the pitch. How would you feel? How often do people do It. And so what I say to people is, as often as you can go up to someone and verbally tell them how grateful you are for them, focusing on something specific or drop a voice note to someone if they're not within your proximity, that's not just in the professional setting, but it's also in your personal setting as well. So how can you drop someone a voice note to tell them how grateful you are for them? Yeah, because voice carries energy. That's important. If you send them a text message, it just doesn't land the same. Yeah, because you don't know the emotional state they were in when they, when they wrote it. But when you tell someone verbally how grateful you are for them, you're expressing gratitude. And it doesn't just impact the recipient, it impacts yourself as well.

Nathan Barry (73:29)

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I mean, that's a simple action item that you can do that any leader could do coming out of this episode is just say, you know what, let me send a voice note to. If I have a team of five people, yeah, let me go spend five minutes total. Right. Like this is a very simple action to send a 60 second voice note to each person saying, hey, you know, right. We're at the end of a year, any of this time. Like, hey, I really appreciate the work that you did this year. I was just reflecting on 2025 and, you know, made a huge difference and we could not have gotten here without you. And I just want you to know that I'm honored to work with you and so proud of the work that you do. Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (74:03)

And it's incredible because I think once you start expressing gratitude, you access this sort of web of abundance. So I got invited to speak at a, at an event by Canon. So Canon, the camera company in, in the uk, and the person that put me forward as a speaker was someone that was in the queue about five years prior at an event I spoke at. And I stayed right until the last person had a question they wanted to ask me. And we briefly met maybe for about three or four minutes, speaking only a couple of minutes. And then she ended up following me on Instagram and she put me in contact with Canon and she said, I want to put you forward. I met you a few years back. I didn't remember her, but she said, I just wanted to express my gratitude because you stayed behind to speak to every single one of us that had a question to ask you. And I'm helping Canon with this new event and I would be delighted to put you forward as my way of expressing gratitude back. And so you access this web of reciprocity. The more gratitude you put out in the world, the more that comes back.

Nathan Barry (74:58)

I also just think about, yeah, all the relationships. Like, the creator world is built on relationships. And it's. It's the little things. If you listen to a podcast episode and you express the gratitude for the thing in there that you took away, or you follow up for a friend, like, hey, I was just thinking about you and really grateful for the time we spent together at that conference. Right. It gives these little touch points. It's just such a great place to hang out.

Simon Alexander Ong (75:21)

It's an appreciation of the fact that you never get to the top alone, where you are as a result of all the people that have helped you get your partner, your children, your colleagues, your team. And that's why, for me, the favorite part of my book is not any single chapter. It's the acknowledgment section. Because when I wrote that, it just reminded me of how important the people around me have been and the role they've played to help me get to where I am today.

Nathan Barry (75:49)

I love that. Okay, the thing that I want to end on is what stops people from taking action? There's so many things where, like, I want to do this, but I'm not going to, or I can't make myself, or, like, as you're working with clients or in your own life, what do you see that stops people from taking action?

Simon Alexander Ong (76:09)

I think there are three things. First two, fear and self doubt.

Nathan Barry (76:14)

Okay.

Simon Alexander Ong (76:15)

First, fear of the unknown. Fear of what's going to happen. That stops a lot of us. Simply put, though, nothing beats fear like practice. You've just got to chunk things down to the smallest possible action and then build from there. Second, self doubt. Self doubt stops us because we're doubting our talent without doubting our potential and our capability to adapt to whatever the world throws away. And the third is trust. Trust in what you have to offer. And the way I put it is that there are always two sales that happen in business. The second is selling you to others, and the first is selling you to you. And until you can sell you to you, well, the second will always remain a challenge. If you don't see the value that you have to give to the world, how is anybody else going to see it? But if you see worth and what you have to offer, other people will see it as well. They will feel it, and they will want to work with you in some form.

Nathan Barry (77:11)

Yeah. Oh, I love that. How do you think about Bringing this idea of energy to decision making. Because often when we're making decisions, like, the thing preventing us from action is knowing which decision to make. And so. And we're like, if you told me, like, nathan, you need to make a decision on this, like, all right, so pros and cons list, like, let's spend all of our time in the intellectual space. But that's not where you do it if you're following energy.

Simon Alexander Ong (77:38)

Truth is, deep down, you already know what the right decision is. We all do. It's the courage to take that action. So to give an example, one of my favorite activities that I like doing with coaching clients when they're in a mood of indecision is I take the two decisions and I say, I'm going to put a coin in one hand. You've got to choose which hand the coin is in. And if you choose the hand that a coin is correctly in, you choose this choice. If not, you choose the other. And often when they choose the hand without the coin and have to choose the alternative, I can tell from their body language that wasn't the result they were hoping for. They wanted to choose the hand the coin was in. And so that tells me, deep down, we already know the path we want to take. It's just discovering the courage to venture into the unknown.

Nathan Barry (78:25)

Yeah. I've done this as well with. You know when you're trying to make a decision, and it sounds flippant, but you say, flip a coin.

Simon Alexander Ong (78:31)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (78:32)

You know, heads you do it, tails you don't. And so someone's like, wait, you're gonna. You're gonna put this decision down to a coin flip. And you're like, yeah, of course. When that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is you're creating a moment. You're creating an opportunity that you can react to.

Simon Alexander Ong (78:47)

It's a moment of insight. Yeah. It's a realization that you know the path you're meant to travel on. You just have to find the courage to now believe you can make it happen.

Nathan Barry (78:57)

Yes. If you flip that coin or you choose the hand and it says, like, yes, do option A, and you go, oh, I feel relief. I feel, you know, a sense of peace or purpose. Then you're like, okay, that's what I meant to do. And if you feel disappointment.

Simon Alexander Ong (79:14)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (79:15)

Or something like that, then you're like, oh, well, okay, I like, I. I then go with that, you know, and

Simon Alexander Ong (79:21)

then that's all about energy. Because if a vision is so compelling and magnetic in nature, it just pulls you forward. You don't need motivation. It pulls you forward. That's excitement. And so you're following what your heart is telling you. If your heart is saying, we're really excited about this, then you follow that wisdom. If you're feeling tension inside, then of course that's another sign that's saying to you, maybe you're not meant for this. It's why people talk about this term Monday blues. You know, you finish the holiday, you finish the weekend, you got to go. You have to go back to the office on Monday. And people talk about the stress or this depressing feeling they get on a Monday that is the physical manifestation of something that is draining you. When you do something that is not aligned to who you are or an extension of your skill set. You have this physical manifestation of fear, of like, I'm not living the life I'm meant to live. But when you're doing something that energizes you, you can't wait until Monday.

Nathan Barry (80:13)

Right.

Simon Alexander Ong (80:14)

You're looking forward to the emails coming in again. You're looking forward to an ocean of possibility ahead. It's a very different feeling.

Nathan Barry (80:20)

Yeah. And I'm. What I'm realizing is the reaction that I want to have when I encounter that feeling and notice it is curiosity.

Simon Alexander Ong (80:28)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (80:28)

Is then going, okay, why do I feel that way? Because it might be that I'm very frustrated with work overall. Or it might be something. Or it might be down to those one interaction.

Simon Alexander Ong (80:37)

Yeah.

Nathan Barry (80:38)

That, like, subconsciously, oh, I'm going to run into this person and I haven't given them the feedback that I'm so, you know, like, I might realize, oh, I'm actually just worried about this interaction because I haven't shown up authentically to who I am and I'm afraid of that conversation. It's like, oh, well, that I just need to seek out that conversation and I can let go of all of it.

Simon Alexander Ong (80:55)

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not to avoid the things of discomfort, but to actually find a way to face them head on.

Nathan Barry (81:02)

Yeah. I love that. Simon, this has been amazing.

Simon Alexander Ong (81:04)

Thank you so much.

Nathan Barry (81:05)

Thank you so much for coming on. Where should people go to follow your work and see everything that you're doing?

Simon Alexander Ong (81:11)

I'm on all the major social media platforms, so you can find me on YouTube just by searching my name, LinkedIn, Instagram. My handle is imanalexandero. Or you can check out my newsletter on my website, simonealexanderong.com, which is hosted by Kit.

Nathan Barry (81:26)

Thank you so much for using the platform. Nothing brings you more joy than playing a tiny role in in powering the businesses of all these amazing creators.

Simon Alexander Ong (81:35)

Thank you so much.

Nathan Barry (81:36)

Yeah, thanks for coming on. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.