Ep416: Doug Gordon – Live Your Purpose Every Day

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. To join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive the following five free benefits first, you get the risk reduction checklist I've created from the lessons I've learned from all of my guests. Second, you get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return. Third, you get a 25% discount on all a Stotz Academy courses. Fourth, you get access to our Facebook community where you can get to know guests and fellow listeners. And finally, you get the curated list that I've created the top 10 podcast episodes. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Doug Gordon, Doug, are you ready to rock? I'm ready to rock. That's the American in media you ready to rock? Well, let me tell the audience a little bit about you. Doug Gordon is an international speaker, a radio presenter, and CEO of DNS performance optimization. He spent 21 years in the investment industry selling hedge funds, and mutual funds b2b to global banks, institutional fund managers and stockbrokers. He held positions of head of risk or head of sales and marketing, and sales director at two of the top fund managers in Europe. In 2012, he had a near death experience, which was the same year he did an industry record of over $1.75 billion in sales in just one year. Doug, take a minute in Philly further tidbits about your life.

Doug Gordon 01:50
Yeah, well, thank you so much, Andrew, for having me on. It's a pleasure to be able to talk to you beautiful audience. And Well, look, I, I had a great career really grateful for everybody I met and everybody I worked with, obviously 2008, it was a bit of a tough time, that led to kind of stress elements to operations that went wrong three years of chronic pain, near death experience in 2012. And then eventually pivoted after the ego was broken down a bit out of the industry, into helping people in terms of coaching, consulting, and corporate training. And now I work with people like Dell, and Salesforce, Facebook, many SMEs, CEOs and sports stars and stuff in terms of coaching, consulting, corporate training, and doing a lot of keynotes as well. And I've just got a book coming out very soon called high performance success without stress.

Andrew Stotz 02:36
So that's basically Wow. And what would you say is like, you know, your key secret sauce, the thing about you that you bring to your audience to your clients that, you know, that's unique about you, besides, I love the you know, without stress part?

Doug Gordon 02:52
Well, I think what's unique about me is that I help people make it happen in life. And my make Aquaman is all about mindset, getting people into the flow, I've got a program that helps people get into the flow, get rid of those parental programs that you might be playing. Second is actions, I help people build the right actions in place in terms of practical steps of understanding where they are and what they're trying to achieve in terms of their business through business plan, pie mapping, activity mapping, and so on. Then, in terms of knowledge, I help people get the right knowledge, you know, so they know their client know their product or their industry. So they match their client needs through USPS. And then finally, I help them optimize their energy to optimize their performance in life, and helping them to find their true purpose in what they do. So they create a love what they do the love for the people they work with, and a love for the clients they're working with. And Jose loves it also an acronym for lots of vibrant energy. So that's me and I have lots of vibrant energy, and I always bring it to the park.

Andrew Stotz 03:41
That's fantastic. And you know, I'm just curious, like with think about a typical client, I mean, they're successful, they're working in big companies, they're at senior levels. A lot of young people listening to this think that those people really got their shit together, they know what they're doing, and they're really doing well. And you know, when I work with in the corporate environment, you know, they're very impressive people around, but yet, maybe not. Maybe we all need help. What are some of the like blocks or some of the other things that you've seen, let's say with really successful people that really can benefit from what you bring them?

Doug Gordon 04:14
Well, here's the thing, Andrew, right. Every single successful sports star has a coach, right? Every single one, you know, whether it be Tiger Woods, whether it be the best American football player, rugby player, soccer player, they all have coaches, I mean, you know, the rugby I'm big into rugby, right. And they have kicking coaches, Scrum coaches, pastors and coaches, fitness coaches, mindset coaches, all for the same team or for the same people. So, you know, I think people are recognizing more the benefit of being able to mastermind with someone who comes from outside of the business rather than just inside of the business where they're blowing smoke up your ass. So I think it's really important to get a different perspective, because we all are basically, you know, products or our parents or preachers or teachers. Our past relationships, right. And sometimes we hold on to anger, resentment, lack of forgiveness, or guilt in some way or form. And sometimes, you know, people like myself can help you release these energy blockages to focus on what you want, rather than what you don't want. And, you know, I find so many people, you know, coming to me sometimes, you know, to improve their performance in what they're trying to do. So they can make more money, or to be more productive. So they get more done in less time with less stress, or they want to optimize their energy because they've had some kind of health or stress issue. And they know that I've been through it so I can utilize my experiences to help them as well. And my unique selling points is one that in terms of what I've been through, and also worked a very high level reporting strain to CEOs all the time. But also, I've also you know, as a train fund manager and trade investment advisor, I sat you know, while at Threadneedle and I was able to sit in analyst meetings, listening to CEOs, CFOs, and CEOs tell me you know, what works and what doesn't work within their business. So I've got a very good comprehensive idea. And then I'm sitting in with fund managers who are managing portfolios of billions, you know, talking to potential clients about what works, what doesn't work within their portfolios within the companies and why those companies are doing well. So you learn a lot over 21 years, obviously. And then now with my radio show, I've interviewed people like jack Canfield, Lisa Nichols. You know, Stephen Covey, Gary McGann is the chairman of Paddy Power Betfair, these type of people have been highly successful in their fields and become New York Times bestseller film stars, or just top CEOs and utilizing what I learned from them as well to help the people that I'm working with. So I think there's two sides to the kind of USPS that I can add value to people. And I think it's very important to understand, you know, I'm here as a mastermind, as well as trying to tell you what to do.

Andrew Stotz 06:37
Wow, what a varied experience. I mean, I've been in the, in the south side of the financial industry, basically, as a broker. And one of the things that I've totally enjoyed about that work over the years is getting on a plane from Thailand and flying to London, flying to New York, flying around the world to meet some of the brightest minds in fund management, both hedge fund and you know, long only funds and thread need on many other companies in in all around the world, and then to bring your ideas to challenge you know, to bring them to the some of the brightest minds, this was always such a challenge, to originate an idea, do the research on it, and then bring it out to the world. And I just found that job as an analyst, one of the best. But I also remember that, you know, when I first started out, I didn't really understand about sales. And after I started meeting great salespeople in the business, I realized, like what you go through on the sales side, so you know, trying to bring all the pieces together. And so yeah, it just brought me back thinking about that. So thanks for that. My pleasure. Yeah, well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story. Okay, well,

Doug Gordon 07:58
we discussed this before I'm so obviously having been in the investment, I thought I'd better give one monetary one, and then I'll go into my real one. So the one monetary one was when I moved back from I moved back to Ireland, because my ex now because I'm no longer married to him, he's still alive. And my ex father in law had cancer and kidney failure. So I gave up the job in Columbia Threadneedle to come and work for one of my clients called Davey over here in Ireland and Dublin, when I did that, I sold the home. And so you know, in terms of that, we're near about 1.5 million in cash, which I put in the bank. And I left it there until we found the new house. And I was hoping that will be within six months, it ended up being two and a half years. So my worst investment ever was cash. I was watching the market going like this, and I was sitting there going, Oh my god, I wish I'd had put it into the market. So that'd be my worst investment terms. But my actual worst investment in life is following one following other people's dreams, but also following money. Rather than following what was truly inside here. What was truly meant to be for me as well. And I think that happens so many people, where they follow their dreams of their father or mother's dreams or their brother or sisters dreams. And that said, Oh, you must do this, I did this and they get into that. And they don't really follow their true dream. They don't align to their true self and follow their true mission in life. And I think that's when, you know, when people are not following their true mission in life and not following truly what they're supposed to be doing life. They end up getting ailments, getting stress, getting depression, getting anxiety, because it's almost like their true self is giving them a slap in the face going on. You're not doing what you're meant to be doing. And if your ego isn't listening, you're going to get that slap again and again and again and again, until eventually you listen to yourself and get on track. And that's exactly what I had. And now that I'm doing what I'm doing and all these elements in the past, and miraculously, they've all gone away when I suddenly align what I love doing and love helping people and focusing on adding value to people rather than focusing on how much money I'm going to make out of it. Now, as it happens. Thank God. I'm very grateful. For that I'm making a lot of money out of it. But it's not the focus, the focus is focusing on where, you know, how much value can I add? What, what can I do to help this person to, you know, feel a sense of purpose in their life as well. And then I had him even in when I was working in one of my companies, I started doing a bit of kind of Tony Robbins type, and kind of meetings after work, but a few people. And one of the guys came up to me said, Doug, you know, I'm fed up, I'm an IT guy, I'm fed up, I said, he said, every single day, I'm solving issues in terms of it. But I don't feel any sense of purpose. You know, you're the sales guy, you get to go out and meet clients, and all that kind of stuff. But for me, I've got no purpose. And I said to him, I said, well look at what you're actually doing. As a company, we're investment management company, we're helping that granny or grandpa, you know, buy a better home, have a better holiday home, give more to their grandchildren, their children to their chair, favorite charities, we're basically making better lives for people. So every single time that you solve one of those it issues, you're helping us do our deals better, your valuations better, do our investment research better, whatever it might be, you're helping us solve an issue so that we can produce the best possible results for our end customer. And in turn, you're making a life better.

Andrew Stotz 11:10
And when you have that realization and sense of purpose in terms of what you're doing, you get a love for what you're doing a love for the people you're working with, and a love for the end customer as well, which creates, as I say love is an acronym for lots of vibrant energy. Hmm. And can you remember back in the day when you know, maybe remember a day, a weekend, a period of time where you were really like getting close to realizing that this is, you know, I've got to get out of this. And I've got to do I've got to follow my heart.

Doug Gordon 11:37
Yeah, well, I remember, in 2012, we had a particular emerging market debt, right. And we had Jupiter asset management, which is one of the big asset managers in the UK. And they had a significant a couple of 100 million in our emerging market debt fund. And we lost the entire team, basically, there was a, it was in the press, I'm not giving anything away, there was a rogue trader and the fund management team got fed up, and all bar one of them left to go to standard life. And they move there and set up and set up there instead. And we had one guy left, he was a Brazilian guy could only speak English, I always wondered whether you just didn't know they were going he didn't go with them. But he's actually a really talented fund manager, it was just his language skills weren't particularly good. And I remember anyway, it could have been a long story short, we had a potential loss of like 250 million. And I knew that they were in our structure. And I knew they're interested in a European equity fund as well. So I thought, you know what, instead of them taking the money out that you potentially could move the money within the weight saving capital gains tax across to our European equity fund, without having to capitalize those gains. And as well as that I thought, I'm going to try and work with this fund manager to teach him exactly what the customer wants, and see if we can keep money as well. So we went in, we pitch and I've done a lot of work with the guy. And not only did we keep the money, but they also went to the European equity fund as well. So we went for a potential loss that year of you know, something like 230 million or 250 million, I can remember the exact amounts, it's on their fact sheets have looked back to actually gaining over 500 million in because they went they catch the MD fund and put money into and also bought the European equity fund put about 300 million to that as well. So it's like a win win all around. But I had that and normally as a sales guy like is your biggest deal that you ever have that single deal like 550 million in a year. And the Save as well of the 230 million. So you got sunny going from, you know, a holding within, you know, your company from this company of like 230 million to like 800 million plus, you should be going yeah, this is amazing. But actually, I thought to myself, Oh, is that it? That's all? No, I realized that, you know, it was just numbers. What really meant a lot more to me is actually sometimes sitting in front of those clients when they're telling me about their marital problems or their children problems or whatever. And actually, in those sales meetings where we talk about, you know, the product for the first half hour or whatever, but the second half hour, because they know I'm an interesting guy, they want to ask me questions about how they can solve their problems in life. And when you do solve someone's problems in life, and give them what they really want their real true need. And something that truly makes them happy, then that is really fulfilling for you as well. It's that sense of giving, and seeing that sense of, you know, the success of your giving helping someone else, and really matters and that's what really turned me on. And that's what I do now. And that really keeps me you know, alive in terms of what I'm doing now. And you can I hope you can sense that now I

Andrew Stotz 14:40
can definitely feel it. Alright, so let me ask you what lessons did you learn from this experience?

Doug Gordon 14:46
Well, the lessons I learned is that we all are a product of our parents or preachers or teachers in our past relationships. As I was saying earlier, let me hold on to parental programs and you cannot change Those parental programs unless you have one, awareness, and to acceptance, because the awareness and the acceptance allows that change. So I always give a, you know, I give a, an exercise out to people where they, first they have a look with all the traits, the parental programs, the things that don't serve them. And that could be ego, it could be lack of self love, lack of feeling worthy of success, not actively listening to your colleagues and your relationships, your spouse, and all that kind of stuff. And if you write all those down terms, yourself aware ones and then have a look at the people around you pick five people that test you in somewhere for maybe in business, maybe in relationships, maybe a mother and father, and, and then write down all their traits and have a look at those five people and see if there's an commonality between those five people. And then if there's even between two of them, own it, because the people that come into our lives, mirror back the areas that we serve. And if you can utilize that reflection of what you see in them as a way of self improving in yourself, and understanding that they're coming into your life to help you to grow, to evolve, to learn, and then eventually hopefully, teach someone else as well. makes life so much easier when you're going through some real shit with someone who's really giving you a lot of hassle, either in business or in a relationship. And you can look at that someone and say, Okay, what am I learning in this situation, what's mirrored back in this situation that I can learn from, it changes and turns that situation on the head, to be a confrontational one to being a learning situation instead, and very powerful. And then you get self aware of us your mirror views. And then finally, something I learned as well is to then phone a friend from someone you really trust and ask them to tell you everything they see in you that they don't like as well. So then you've got yourself aware of use your mirror views and your phone events, or friend views and write them down and then find a coach like myself and voice them out loud. And the reason why he was loud is because it's a bit like when people go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and they're asked to voice it out loud that I'm an alcoholic. And I accept that I'm willing to change. Because you're voicing Atlanta triggers three parts of the brain, including the subconscious, which allows the awareness and prove to the subconscious, the awareness, which allows the acceptance, which eventually allows the change, can't do that without voicing it out loud. Without getting it out and allowing it to then you know, then once you've done that, rip the piece of paper up into shreds, throw it down the toilet burner, whatever you need to do, and feel that energy dissipate. Then take another piece of paper, write down the all the I am grateful Satan's ROI, or the I am statements of what you want to be. So I am worthy of success. I am you know, an amazing person. I am humble but confident. And I am actively listening to other people all the time with love. And voice that for a minimum of 21 days perfectly 60 days, looking yourself in the eye in the mirror with your hand in your heart with real passion. And watch the neuroplasticity that changes within your subconscious. If you do it properly. I promise you're about pro American footballers crying their eyes out in my office, because they release that energy. And they get rid of the distractions of worrying about this worrying about that and they get laser focused on what they want. And when you get laser focus because you got rid of all those crap, all those energy blocks, then you can get more done less time, less stress, and be more aligned.

Andrew Stotz 18:12
Wow. Well, let me summarize some things that I take away from what you've talked about. It just kind of brings me back to a story that I'll tell you, Doug, about myself is that when I was 17, I found myself in drug rehab, basically. So talking about Alcoholics Anonymous and 12 step programs and that type of stuff. And it took three different drug rehabs in about nine months. But when I left that final drug rehab, which was in 1983, I was really free. I still, of course, you as you were saying, you know, you don't get rid of your parental tapes, you know, and you they're always there to some extent. And you know, I had some, but generally, I was free. I was like a bird. And I was free. And I remember the first year so coming out, I didn't have any money, I didn't have any job. It wasn't it definitely wasn't going to be able to go to college, and I worked in a factory. And I was just happy every single day, I would meet my friends after work, and we would just hang out, we'd go to a meeting or whatever. And then I just I always go back to that time and remind myself that you don't need money to be happy, you know, friends, and a healthy life and all that basically can bring happiness. But then as I went through my life, I just kept looking for the next I just kept taking the next opportunities that came. And I just you know, there were some things I didn't enjoy, like some of my jobs and stuff, but generally, I just kept going further. And I've always kind of done what I want with the people I want. And that's been you know, really helped me to enjoy and so you kind of you made me feel a little bit grateful. I still have plenty of things to work on and listening to what you're talking about, you know, reminds me that and that that's that's the first thing that I Thinking about the second thing is, you know, when you talked about the IT guy, and talking to them, I mean, this idea of bringing purpose to our daily activities that sometimes we get caught up in the mundane of life. And we forget the fact, you know, and I tell the story of my mom and dad who basically weren't rich, my dad had a good job at DuPont and work there, all of his career, my mother was a housewife. But when my mother came to Thailand, I brought her to Thailand to live with me, after my dad passed away, and we went to the finances, and she wasn't in great shape, because she had had some strokes. And she was slowly recovering from that she's much better now. But I said, you know, Mom, you've done it, you know, between you and dad, being frugal, and being careful, and, you know, investing, you now have enough money to last the rest of your life and not be a burden on me or your, you know, my sister. And, you know, if somebody who didn't see the purpose, was managing your money, and helping, it could have been a much worse outcome. So there's a danger in losing purpose, not only in just like, day to day, it's, you know, no fun. But you can hurt a lot of other people. And so I think what you were telling that it guys that grandma and grandpa that are reliant on this, you know, this is valuable. So I think the lesson I want to take away from what you've talked about is the idea of, for all of us, for all the listeners, no matter what you are doing, bring purpose to it. And you may not have a chance to do your dream thing right now, but bring purpose to what you're doing today. And that's what I take from you, Doug, is there anything else that you would add to that?

Doug Gordon 21:42
Yeah, I mean, I literally was just off before this call with them, one of the Dell VP guys, and we were discussing in terms of, you know, managing people in terms of a business as well. And it's even investing in terms of that is that a lot of people come in, and they have the energy of complaining. And the energy of complaining is the opposite of the energy of gratitude. And, you know, the most successful people in the world. dr. john demartini, is a friend of mine, he's been on them. He's at the secret film, he's a multimillionaire in New York Times bestseller. And he always says, if you think about it, think about it, you bring about it. So you know, visualize what you want in life, and really be grateful for everything you have, because you open yourself up to receive more. And in business, especially when you're complaining, you're wasting energy. And if you can, when you're coming to your boss, or any of your subordinates, go up to them in a positive manner of not complaining that energy about something that's going wrong, but take the awareness of what's going wrong, and come up with solutions and focus on the solutions. How can we get to here, rather than being down here. And that's the most important thing, because so much energy in this world, his work is wasted on gossip and complaining. And whereas if we focus on what we want, rather than what we don't want, we get the energy focusing and going in that direction as well. And that's in everything in life. People complain about past history, what happened to me in the history, what happened to my society, like people in history as well, I emphasize, and I understand, but let's get to the solution as quickly as possible, what we want. And the more we talk about the past is where we stay. Whereas when we talk about future and what we want, we'll get there quicker. So let's do that.

Andrew Stotz 23:14
So simple. not always easy to understand or realize, but someone like you, I know can help a lot of people to visualize that and realize that. So based upon what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn in your life, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Doug Gordon 23:35
Well, I believe that will come down, you're shining our light, right? So gleam your light every day. So my gleam acraman is have gratitude for everything you have, because you open yourself up to receive more, learn something new every day, because when you're learning you're growing, exercise to honor your body every day, have that awareness of where you are and what you're looking to achieve, and also the programs you're playing. And then meditate not necessarily just to reduce stress, to increase energy, but also to visualize your goals and visualize the steps, procedures and processes in place to achieve those goals as well. And every single multimillionaire that I deal with, they visualize and somewhere for every single morning to make sure they get their day going smoothly in that what I call a float.

Andrew Stotz 24:16
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's a masterclass. Now, last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Doug Gordon 24:25
Well, my number one goal for the next 12 months, I've been asked to do various TV shows, radio shows, is to get the TV show in particular up and running, and bring on some inspirational people that can add as much value to people out there like your listeners as possible in terms of that radio show and also to continue in terms of adding as much value to my clients as possible in terms of continued clients, and to make them align with their true self in order to complete their true mission in life.

Andrew Stotz 24:57
Well, listeners, there you have it, another story. of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you my listener reduce risk and increase return and happiness in your life. To achieve this, I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com. And I look forward to seeing you there. As we conclude, Doug, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you teaching alumni status returning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience? No, I

Doug Gordon 25:33
just say go out and clean your life. Enjoy your life. And remember to focus on what you want, rather than what you don't want. Everything in life is energy. Thoughts are energy speeches, energy, thoughts lead to speech, speech leads to actions, actions leads to habits and habits leads to destiny. So think smart, talk smart, work smart. And if you're really smart, you might get in touch me some coaching and consulting.

Andrew Stotz 25:55
What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Doug Gordon 25:58
and LinkedIn, LinkedIn is something that I utilize, and I love LinkedIn, and please get in touch. It's Doug Gordon, on LinkedIn DNS performance optimization. been my pleasure to help.

Andrew Stotz 26:08
Fantastic and we'll have the links in the show notes. So just go to the show notes and click to get in touch with Doug. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.