Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Crucible.
We're gonna have a really good conversation today.
I met Eleri a few weeks ago and she's one of these people who has had more stuff thrown at her than most people get in one or two lifetimes.
But she has shaken it off, she has stood back up again and she said, come on then and she's had more stuff thrown at her and she's got back up again and she's smiling.
She's thriving, she's flourishing and she is an amazing human being.
And Eleri, thank you very much for being on the show today.
This is ever so kind of you.
Thank you.
very kind of you to invite me actually.
Thank you.
Can you give us a, I guess it's gonna have to be an abridged version of aspects of I fall down, I get back up again, all that kind of stuff.
I can't remember who sang that, was in 80s, I fall down and I get back up again, it's one of those Northern Soul things isn't it?
Well, yeah I suppose I've been on a bit of a journey, in a nutshell, because this could go on and on and on, I don't want this to sort of dominate, yeah everything was going
smoothly.
I've had a few career changes.
I've been a lawyer, I've been a property developer, I've had various businesses in between, all enjoyed with varying degrees of success until one fair day when I was busy
being Midas and away with my little Midas torch and things couldn't go wrong.
At the same time I should have as being Midas, I was very busy being the world's most successful alcoholic.
At the same time, not in denial, I was very aware that I had a major drinking problem, but you know what, I just didn't want to do anything about it, actually.
You know, it will become relevant as we discuss this element later why.
But anyway, whilst I was drinking like an absolute idiot,
my business was going from strength to strength, know, literally from strength to strength.
I whether it was I had that power to sort of deceive or whatever, but I was making more money than I knew what to do with.
had a hedge fund, which was actually a feeder fund.
And things were great on the surface, you know, as is always often the story with many people who, you know, are alcoholics or in addiction or whatever.
So one fair day I had a phone call from the, what was then the FSA, the regulatory body for financial concerns, so the Financial Conduct Authority today, saying pretty much, are
you sitting down?
Well firstly, who the hell ever gets a phone call from them anyway?
And secondly, they never say, are you sitting down?
So I thought, well, this isn't a harbinger of great news.
So the news was basically that the funds that we've been investing in with our own money, client funds, et cetera and so forth turned out to be Britain's largest Ponzi scheme.
Well, it sort of would, wouldn't it?
know, because it's me, you know, it almost didn't surprise me.
It's like, well, yeah, well, you know, sort of, know, because I think there's part of me and you might recognize this, that it's almost like it's not really meant to succeed
really.
You know, there's that sort of weird the imposter thing there that, you know, so in my brain, it sort of translated to, okay, you know, it was never meant to last anyway, you
know, but the real problem here was that for the first time in my life, there was no warning to this.
There really wasn't a warning.
And, you know, we had a forty two thousand pound mortgage bill to pay every month.
had
nearly 68 by to that properties, which we had to pay the mortgages for.
We had to pay our own mortgage.
We had to pay car fees, school fees, et cetera and so forth.
There was no warning.
It was like someone had come along and said, well, sorry, all the money that you're going to get and you'll pay packet at the end of this month, you're not going to get now.
And it's stopping right now.
And there's no warning.
It's tapped.
We're just switching off.
And that's precisely what happened.
So literally.
from one phone call to literally three seconds later, we couldn't access any of our funds, couldn't access client funds, we couldn't access anything.
The whole thing was shut down.
Which, you know, is what happens, right?
I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do because you're the police and you're dealing potentially with proceeds of crime.
I mean, that's what you have to do, right?
You have to ring fence what you think is potentially the proceeds of crime and try and save what you can.
So I'm not being critical of the situation, but it's just what happens.
So...
For the first time in my life, we were left with a situation that we were dealing with, you know, a minor surplus of say 300,000 a month and having to suddenly find the best part
of 70,000 pounds with no money to survive.
So, and that's what we did for the next two years, two, three years, we survived because of the money that we were getting in from our rented properties.
That was quite tough because we had to really be on the ball there.
you know, financing and looking into, what investigations can we run here?
What actions can we bring against the authorities?
Because they were being, not so much that they were doing the wrong thing, it was the speed at which it was being done and the lives this was trashing.
And I cannot, cannot emphasise that, if there's anybody listening to this.
in the Financial Conduct Authority, think upon one thing.
You guys get paid every month at the end of the month and you know that you can pay your mortgage.
You think you're doing the right thing for people, but actually keeping them in the dark and preventing them from accessing their own funds so that they cannot pay their own
mortgages is going to lead to one thing only and that's only going to lead to them losing their own houses.
In our case, people committed suicide.
People's children had to leave schools.
They had to leave university.
They lost their houses You know this whole thing took nearly five six years and ended up in a criminal trial Nothing to do with us, but but it was five years six years of agony
for these people You know and I mean agony and I think people ought to think a bit more about what happens You these people are victims of crime at the end of the day And I
didn't see anybody that no government
organisations step in to assist or to maybe create a moratorium for them, a safe space to enable the process to take its place, to enable due process to take its place and to even
determine whether any crimes have been committed, such that they would be able to be given this space just to be able to survive.
I think people overlook that part.
That's the humanity part of it.
And so what happened to us, you know, because we're us, obviously, and we're and different, we then sort of stumbled along.
So we were lucky we had these properties.
And then three years later, we discovered that people were growing cannabis in them.
Well, of course they were, because again, I just go, well, it's my properties, isn't it?
You know, that's bound to be, you know, why not?
know, I'd entered recovery by then.
So one of the things that we are taught in recovery is to ask the question, the really sort of unerring question of, you know,
why not me?
It's very sort self-effacing, it's a coping strategy really.
So you know that was quite an interesting revolution for me, revelation, well it was a revolution and revolution because as a lawyer you know I'd always been a bit square I
suppose in my upbringing, I've always been a bit you know toe the line, the law is always right, you know do the right thing, never lie, tell the truth because you know that will
free you and
because that's the right thing to do, right?
Until I came up with a situation where the police actually thought I was behind everything.
I was Mrs.
Big.
And I'm thinking, ooh, you know, what is this Mrs.
Big?
This is all sort of weird.
mean, okay, look, I've always been a bit different.
I've always dressed differently.
I've always been relatively outspoken.
I speak various languages, including Russian, which puts me into a sort of very unique category of lawyers, international lawyers.
And, you know,
I'm relatively good at doing what I do because I get on very well with people and I can unite people of all different continents, shapes and sizes.
I put that down to my degree, which was Modern Languages and European Studies.
A big part of that is cultural studies and understanding the psychology of different cultures.
So that's a skill that I've always had and it served me very well.
So the police's view was, well, hang on a minute, you've lost all your money in the hedge fund.
True.
So you must have done it because how else would you survived?
I'm thinking okay well fair enough then do we have this thing called evidence maybe you know maybe a stretch too far and then began a this sort of dual dawn of realization of how
the law really works.
Now that was probably of all of this that was probably the most
disappointing and I'll say that disappointing realization that life doesn't work.
Not only is it unfair, but it doesn't work as it should.
These institutions do not work as they ought to work with the sole objective of finding the truth.
Not seeking to run.
mean, listen, people may think I'm guilty.
Fine.
That's almost irrelevant here.
What is relevant to me and always has been is
finding the truth, because finding the truth is important, it's important to humanity, who we are as human beings, who we are as countries, what our democracy looks like.
Can people trust us?
Can they really trust in our word?
Those things matter to me.
And then I suddenly realized that, you know, unfortunately, I am I
partner then partner found ourselves in the middle of a conspiracy and conspiracy laws have been changed and you know apparently you only need to know one person in the
conspiracy and that was it to you know embroil you in a false blame because the conspiracy the benefit you know the outcome operative outcome you have no idea about now those laws
apparently were changed I thought I might get this my dates wrong but it was around about 97 I think it was a Tony Blair
initiative and it was, you know, looked upon historically designed to try and capture as many terrorists as humanly possible, bring them all into the wider net and that sort of
thinking.
But obviously what's been happening is those laws are being used time and time again to grab anybody and anybody who may or may not know somebody.
And of course I knew somebody in the conspiracy, I knew
My property manager was involved.
I, because I'm stupid and I was an alcoholic at the time, decided to have an affair, as you do.
My mother referred to it as a delightful distraction.
I think she's very Victorian in her, sort of, innocence of life.
But you know, was one of those things that you can only understand this if you're a real alcoholic, right?
There you are, drinking like an absolute idiot.
You know your life is shit and falling apart in front of your eyes and this random person comes along and you think well Why not why not have an affair?
You know one of the things I'll call it that people are not aware does to you it distorts completely Any moral compass you might have?
It's really weird how this happens, and I don't wish you guys to go out there and experiment just to discover this but any That is true.
You know you you know you haven't omit the mind has an amazing ability to
justify if you like your actions when you know morally and I knew morally what I was doing was repugnant and wrong and I still on a hold to that now and that is the case.
Anyway I started this affair and I didn't start an affair with just anybody did I started an affair with the guy who was responsible for running all the cannabis factories in my
properties.
I didn't know that at the time and neither was I complicit in that you know the reality is I wasn't believed is the truth now leave that aside but that is the truth.
And it transpired that my property manager was involved.
You know, the police knew and were prosecuting him for different things.
So we ended up going to court originally for, you know, the ostensible idea was that, you know, I'd lost all my money and decided, how am going to survive?
I'm going to make, I'm going to hand over all my properties or majority of them to this person because I loved him.
grow cannabis for me.
Well, that you know, and I said, well, well, that's great.
That's lovely.
Thank you very much.
Now we've had the Daily Mail headlines.
We actually get down to the observer facts.
Where is the money?
Well, nobody seemed to be that interested in where is the money that seemed to be a sideline conversation.
Now, don't forget, I'm a trained lawyer.
I do like to deal in fact, something not fiction.
And this is my life we were talking about.
I'm thinking, well, you know, if I'm apparently guilty of all of this, that's fine.
But you do need to proffer some evidence.
Now, it was interesting.
Nobody seemed to be interested in any evidence.
think what it was, think by now, know, my barrister thought I was some sort of internet, you because I speak Russian, right, clearly, right.
And I certainly must have thought that I was part of a James Bond movie.
You know, I was, of course, I fitted the bill of Mrs.
Obviously Big, you know, and of course she'd have an affair with an Albanian, because why not?
Well.
who knows why not, except in fact you're a raging alcoholic and you'd probably had an affair with a post box at that point if it had shown you any form of attention that would
have had any chance of just raising you up from the shitty life that you were in, even temporarily to make you feel better.
But that's by the way.
So anyway, so we were prosecuted, nobody believed that we, know, the question came up about money and the prosecutor just said, well, know, Miss Coslet is very intelligent.
She would have probably squiddled it offshore.
Well, okay, well, that's great, isn't it?
Isn't that great?
You know, hello, do we need not need some actual evidence?
Is the burden of proof not on you have to prove this?
Then I suddenly did dawned on me.
I thought actually no, it's not is it that's in the textbooks?
That's what you're taught in law school the reality of it and this is where they're very clever is all they need to do is convince 12 You know people random people
the trial bar length went on and on and on.
So, you know, like most of the people, these split into two camps, either, you the unemployable or those who'd retired.
So we had nobody who, I mean, you any business person on that jury, can guarantee you, would have gone, hang on a minute.
That's a lovely story that she loved this man and she would have handed all her properties, but you can't on the one hand have, you know, an area cost that does nothing
for money.
unless it's for money.
And then suddenly she's completely changed her whole identity overnight.
And there is no money and we can't prove money, but she's guilty.
There's something not right about this, right?
And there was something I don't think there's a lot that was right about it from day one.
You know, like, for example, did we actually do it?
For example, you know, I didn't see very much effort being undertaken by the police to try and really interrogate forensically.
You know, there's a possibility that we've got this wrong.
And then I didn't realise, again, stupid naïveté because I was just naive, that there's this thing called proceeds of crime.
And I remember then my lawyer saying to me, the first thing he said to me was, you do know why you're here, don't you?
I sort looked at him sort of quizzically, no.
Well, you're here because you're the only person in this conspiracy that actually has any assets left.
You're needed for proceeds of crime.
Because when they find you guilty, they will take all of those assets and they will distribute it.
they will pay for the trial.
And of course, I didn't realise that the proceeds of crime element of all of this is a period of time, you you'd think, would you not, that the proceeds of crime means exactly
what it says on the box, namely the period of time from which they can show that you have benefited from a crime, let's say, and it ends upon the period that you stop benefiting
from that crime.
But of course, they changed the law.
So your proceeds of crime...
they can actually go back and take from you things that you were given on the day that you were born.
So they were able to, of course we were found guilty unanimously because you just needed to put me in front of a jury when look at my CB and they've decided, yes, of course she's
guilty, she speaks the Russian, this is very strange.
you know, so off they went and basically took the rest of our assets and that was job well done.
And that was it.
So off we went to prison, which I actually really enjoyed.
contrary to what everyone says, know, because I went with the right spirit.
I thought, well, I can't change this situation.
I am powerless, right?
So there is no point in me fighting an unfair system.
This is not about me.
This is just about, this happens to people all over the world, day in, day out.
For me, the question was, you know, what do I do with this situation?
How can I live my best life here?
What can I do to serve others?
What can I do to serve myself?
And I started teaching women to read.
And I absolutely loved it.
I absolutely loved it, Hamish.
It was the best thing.
If I had to name one job that I really loved of all the things that I've ever done, it's that.
Because it was that you don't often get in life an opportunity to...
You know, some of us talk about, you know, things I never did volunteering in Africa or anything like that, but friends of mine who have talked about similar things happening to
them where there's nothing transactional here.
There's one person teaching somebody to do something and being able to observe and watch how that person's life changes in front of your eyes.
From suddenly being realizing, well actually, I can read.
I can understand, I can do these things.
And watching their confidence change, and watching their whole demeanor change, when you witness something like that, that is definitely from another planet.
Now that is priceless, you cannot put money, and for that, I am grateful that I went to prison, because I would never have experienced that in my life.
you know, And it's got to have been, you know, it definitely is probably the most satisfying thing I've ever done in my life.
You know, I met some amazing women, really amazing, and I have to say too, amazing officers, right?
Because I am a huge fan of prison officers.
I think they are seriously overlooked in terms of the work that they do.
We treat, it was like our home.
It was home for us, you know, and the little gates that we had, the little spats like families.
We treated it like, it was like being one big family, you know, where we're always falling out or not falling in.
But, you know,
we really looked out for each other and I laughed like I've never laughed like a jelly belly you know I laughed because it was like for the first time in a long long time I was
given the grace of a period of time just to reflect for me it was almost like my body and my head had said right you're not going to stop through your own accord so we're going to
stop you for you
You know, we say, don't we, in things like recovery, we say...
you know, the higher power, for me it's a higher power anyway, it works in mysterious ways, very mysterious ways.
And don't tell me it doesn't have a sense of humor because it's so sure as hell does.
It might not work in the way we want it to work, but it gives us everything we need.
And it gives us the real opportunity.
So anyway, so that's what happens to me.
I came out prison with nothing.
43 quid discharge grants and suddenly I found myself in a situation.
my god I've got to start businesses again with nothing and the most Important thing that I learned was that what happens to an individual which is always Subsequently informed my
interest in human beings You're you know, you're no longer this great lawyer.
You're no longer this hedge fund manager You're no longer this property you're no longer any of that
It's almost like Anno Domini, know, BCAD, you know, that sort of thing.
And, you know, you're now a convict.
And upon release, you are an ex-offender.
That is your identity.
Now, of course, you can shoot, I mean, certainly that's maybe how society views you.
Now, I wasn't playing that game, unfortunately, for society.
Because I, and I had to, you know, it was a tough time.
I made a conscious decision.
I'm going to tell people about my criminal convictions, can hear them sort of rooting around in the back.
you know, thinking, yeah, whatever, here she comes, the convict, yeah, whatever.
But fine, know, so I've managed to set up businesses as a direct result of coming out of prison, no help from those who were supposed to help people coming out from prison,
because I was the wrong type of prisoner for them.
I was like a bit too intelligent.
I was the wrong type, because they're still busy in this old 18th century world of, prisoners have to be poor people.
I'm always fascinated with that, this idea of let's strip people of their humanity, let's strip them of their dignity, let's strip them of every single congruent asset that they
require to survive.
And let's be really surprised that we have a reoffending rate that's going through the roof.
Because guess what folks out there?
You too would turn back to crime if you were stripped with nothing.
or down to nothing because that's what we do as human beings.
We are designed to survive.
And that's precisely what I did, Hamish, and I did it because I've got to, you know, luckily I got into recovery in 2006, 2012, and that saved me because it gave me a
psychological framework and a belief system that sat way above compass morality of the law or people.
It sat in the universe.
And these laws were universal and it didn't matter to me whether I met people on 12-step programs or whether I met people who were religious or spiritual.
It didn't matter.
We all had this one thing in common.
We had a true belief in a power greater than us.
And I love the concept to this day.
love that concept.
I'm aware we haven't done much talking.
I've done quite a lot of monologuing.
What was supposed to be the five second or the five sentence highlight as to a diatribe.
So I'm sorry about that.
I think that was wonderful.
you know, you've painted that to be taken anyway.
Injustice, pour me, beaten down, stripped, as you said, beaten, left for dead, and then expected to, well, who gives a shit?
You know, you're a criminal.
And you've gone, nah.
Not today, thank you.
And you know, that's, that's, that's why I introduced you as remarkable because, know, I haven't heard all of that story and that, is, that is astounding, but that, you know, none
of that surprises me the way the humors come out.
I love the fact that you were helping people to learn to read, you know, that, that is wonderful.
And another thing that's three people I've had on the podcast have been to prison for two for drinking, three for drinking.
Well, God, I mean that to be fair, to be fair.
I mean that...
But they've all said the same thing, you know, I had I was in a box and I had time to reflect.
I didn't have to deal with all the other stuff.
And in fact, the fourth person, her body broke down and she was in a wheelchair for a year.
Same thing.
She was in a box.
Her body said, if you're not going to stop, I'm going to stop you.
Arguably, when I went to rehab, I was the same thing.
I was put in a little box where I had to process.
think about things, feel things, tap into that higher power, which I didn't understand through the AA.
That didn't relate to me at the time.
But the themes there, you know, you have had to, they have had to, we have had to make sense of something and then turn around and have a choice.
You know, am I going to be the repeat offender?
Am I going to thrive?
And you've chosen to thrive as have these other guests.
But that's a hard, really hard decision to make because, you should be bitter.
Most people...
And you what that is?
You see, now this is really interesting for me in terms of psychology.
One of the things that stood against me throughout my trial was that
I wasn't bitter.
I was not willing to point fingers at others when I was invited to do so, whom I could not say, hand on my heart, that they had done something.
You know, I was going to tell the truth and I was going to stick to my core principle values.
And I can remember thinking in my cell or the police station actually.
I'm thinking about this really deeply.
That when you plead not to get...
because I was putting myself up there for an eight, ten year sentence.
And the only question that came through my mind was this.
You have to live with your decision for the rest of your life.
And that, you know, and I remember, you to thine own self therefore be true.
And all I had to give was the truth.
I can't control people, places and things.
I can't control what people may or may not think.
I believe in karma now and I know that one day justice will always prevail because it always does because the universe ensures that it does.
It may not be in the time frame that we want it to prevail.
Note.
we all know that's an ego moment, but it does always, if you look back over history, it does always prevail.
So I know that the truth will come out.
But I also thought that because I have no attachment to material things, believe it or not, although people are constantly or were constantly saying about me, I don't do
anything if it's not for money.
I'm thinking, well, they just haven't got me, have they?
Because they haven't understood me.
Again, that's not my problem.
That's, you have to let it go.
You have to let that go.
Because it's not, it's the not letting go of that bit that will kill you in the end.
Because it will live inside here and you'll constantly be thinking, but I didn't do it.
Why didn't they believe me?
knows why they don't believe me I don't know and it's got nothing to do it's not my business actually all I can do is put myself into action controlled by a power greater
than me and get the fuck on with it I've been dealt the cards that I've been dealt with if you've got a higher power in your life that means you've got massive energy in your tank
and you can overcome anything
Because the trick in life I've learned is these were just, let's be honest, I was like an addictive gatherer of things.
You know, I could have come, you know, I find myself even today falling back into addictive behaviour.
what are the stats?
You know, how many viewers have you got?
How many clicks have you got?
Who's saying what?
You know, it's addictive behaviour.
It's the same nonsense.
I had to stop doing that.
It doesn't matter how many people join us or don't join us.
Who cares?
What matters is the right type of people join us or don't join us for the right reasons.
And you know, because we're taught from day one that our job in life is to be good, go through school, have a good job, go to an excellent university and then start the
institution process.
We ought to be taught, and I wish to God I have been taught this, because AA taught me this, is we should be thinking first and foremost of how can I serve
this planet that I live on?
How can I help others?
How can I contribute?
What can I do to help others?
And I think that's why, you know, there was no bitterness.
I would have been very interested to have seen what would have happened to me had I not been in recovery, had I not been in an AA and what would, whether that bitterness would
have happened or not.
I never did have that bitterness because I just thought, well, these are people who unfortunately are seeking a quick outcome for their own gain and benefit because they're
in a system which encourages the points mean prizes.
sort of behaviour pattern.
So I can't blame them.
Every single one of them got promoted and you know, part of the proceeds of crime stuff gets given to the local prosecuting police force.
But of course, they have to, one day we all have to meet our maker, don't we?
One day we all have to seriously look into, you know, that judge will have to seriously think, did I do the right thing?
Did I preside over innocent people potentially going to prison?
And if so,
Am I going to atone for it or not?
I don't know.
It's not my business, but you know, everybody will have their opportunity one day to make their amends or not.
But I don't live in the past.
What is in the past is in the past.
They're just things.
I'm more interested in the present.
I'm more interested in enjoying life day by day because life is bloody brilliant, right?
It is bloody brilliant.
It's totally unpredictable.
It's designed to send you completely potty if you let it.
But it gives you the most amazing, amazing opportunities every single day.
All we need to do is open our eyes and get rid of the noise.
If we can get rid of the noise, the dangly golden thing, follow me, follow me, I'll make you a billionaire.
And if we can actually focus more on what's in here, I learned that it's not an outside job, it's an inside job.
And that actually all you need in life to survive, and I proved this, I left prison homeless with 43 quid.
All you really need is a strong belief in a power system which is greater than you.
to be able to rely on it when all else has failed you.
And a strong sense of purpose and self.
Who are you?
Why are you?
And what do you like to do?
Which will lead you to that space of, and you will know when you've got it, you will feel that you're doing the right thing.
Because guess what?
You will be happy.
And let me tell you one thing, happiness
Trump's making millions all day long.
All day long.
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah.
You don't, don't really need to qualify that you're spot on.
is isn't it when, when you are doing what you enjoy doing, when you're happy, it becomes it does it becomes effortless.
It doesn't equal easy, but it becomes effortless.
It's aligned.
mother was a school teacher and every day she loved the tutors and the stewards.
just loved them.
It was like soap opera, wasn't it?
It is a soap opera really.
But you knew and you could see the way she taught that.
time she taught it to a sixth former new, she would bring it.
It was like listening to Lucy Worsley or something like that.
She'd bring it alive.
The joy for her was the carrying the message bit, transmitting that piece of history, that time in history, different ways of looking at things and watching those kids turn into
critical thinking beings, coming up with their own ideas and daring to think.
Now that for her gave her so much joy.
You could see she wasn't doing it for the money.
That was her life.
And she loved it.
And I can, you know, there's so many teachers that I had as very fortunate who, and again, came back to this police, not so much the police officers, but the prison officers, 100%.
These were people that were paid very little money, but they had a passion and a commitment and a dedication that I have never ever, ever seen before in my life.
And I think that, you know, these people were extraordinary, extraordinary human beings that changed lives.
I want to go back to, because I think this is very important, I want to go back to the moral compass.
Because I remember saying I have lost my moral compass when I was drinking badly.
I did not know, I don't like right from wrong, I didn't know what was moral.
I had no bearing.
I was a ship without a sail or without a rudder.
I was just existing.
Explain that to me.
How do you find your moral compass?
How do you know here, because it's not really here, how do you know when you are aligned with your purpose and with what is important and to bring back that sail, that rudder and
ultimately happiness?
What is your comprehension of that?
And you mentioned higher power at the same time.
So maybe bring maybe that is part of it.
don't know.
Well yeah, but it is part of it.
think we're all born not good, not evil, but we all have a feeling, an inbuilt chip that tells us what's right and what's wrong.
I believe that, know, maybe I'm wrong.
There might be some mutant genes, who knows?
But I think in the vast majority we all know what's right and what's wrong.
And the way I try to do it now, I don't always get it right.
is always ask the question behind the question is why aren't you you know try and seek out the motives why you're doing something and that's a bloody uncomfortable little journey no
no of course i'm not being manipulative of course i'm not trying to get someone to join silver tree of course i'm not trying to do that well of course i fucking am you know
obviously you know but you know and that's okay as long as the motive is an honest motive right
But if you're trying to cover it up with, know, there are lots of benefits to joining Silvertree and loved one friends, which are good benefits, right?
But the hard question that I always have to ask myself is the, what's really driving you?
What's the motive?
Now, this is really important for me because I can easily slip back into what I call drinking behavior.
And this is what I do.
So I'm very good at that.
covering up the, you know, I'm trying to help somebody.
Right fine, great.
Well you're trying to help somebody Eleri, what you should be doing is just helping them, giving them the options and letting it go.
So why have you phoned them 20 times and chased them?
and by the way I'm not bipolar but these are conversations that happen in my head right you know and I have to and I have to self-examine so I have to examine my behaviour.
on a daily basis, often hourly basis, right, because I slip and I'm very open about this with people I slip into because sales for me is an addiction, right?
It's an, you know, more is one is never enough, right?
More, more, more.
But the funny thing about it is, okay, I've got more, more, more.
I'm them.
Why feel great?
No, I don't.
I more.
You think I sort of noticed by now the parallels after many years.
But that's what I've got to do.
have to ask myself the real true motive.
And I make myself write it down.
And that's horrible because I'm getting away from what the real motive is.
you know, look, it's not like a self-flagellation process here, but it's a process of discovery.
then you can at least try then to correct your behavior.
That's all we can do.
None of us are perfect, but at least I'm trying.
And I think that's the thing.
then resentment is another one for me.
I've got to watch out for that because somebody said, very good friend of mine said to me, don't let people live rent free in your head.
I thought, what are you really talking about?
And then sort of suddenly the concept has come to comprehend the concept over time.
But resentment can be created by an expectation.
And they say, I he's taught me that resentment is an expectation under construction.
And if you really draw it, really power it, down, that's exactly what it is.
If you go back to your motive, you want to control the outcome of this process.
So you're not coming, as we say, to equity with clean hands.
You're coming with a premeditated outcome that you want to control.
Now these are very, you know, it takes you years to get it.
Well, maybe not, but these are things worth practicing because you will get to the true source.
You will know instantly what your real motive is and you'll be given an opportunity to correct it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
trying to do.
And it's hard, it's hard because it goes, it speaks directly often against your ego.
My biggest problem today is my own, well, my biggest problem today, and always has been, is my ego.
Because my ego is like obviously intergalactic and no nose back, no bounds.
So my problem is that I have to really knock that ego out and just say,
Well, my thinking, let's be absolutely honest with you, and actions haven't exactly got me to some of the best places.
know, some of them might be my fault, some of them might be other people's fault, so what?
But I had a part in it, whether we like it or not.
I had a part in it because I was there.
So it's really watching that ego and learning, and that's why I keep going to my program stuff, because I'm being reminded on daily basis.
to right-size my goddamn ego and try and get rid of it the best that I can.
Once I can get rid of ego I can allow that higher power, that learning of structuring life in the right way to come in such that I'm working, I know this might sound bonkers to some
people, this is how I do it, that I'm working in service to something greater than myself which is purely good that I can trust in.
This thing is good.
It's not bad.
And when I do that, I feel happier.
I don't have any anxiety.
There's no stress.
And I know I'm working for the best possible outcome.
And that is a bloody brilliant place to be in.
No money can buy that.
That is a place of safety.
That is a place of happiness.
You've taken away the negative thoughts and negative feelings because you don't allow yourself to have those.
If you do have them, you write them down immediately and you deal with them immediately and you find out where did they come from?
Are they coming from fear within you?
It might be, you know, for example, a huge thing today, fear of financial insecurity.
Hmm.
what if we were to do, and this is what I did when I built my businesses, I had to throw myself entirely on the mercy of this higher power thing.
And I had to do life completely differently.
Now, there is no way under ordinary circumstances that anybody with my background would have risen to where I am now, because it just wouldn't have been possible.
So I have to accept that there has got to be some other
involvement in my life that has nothing to do with me.
Everybody says you know how do you do it?
No no no I do nothing by the way that's rule number one.
I obviously haven't done very well on my own steam we know that by the evidence the evidence clearly demonstrates that therefore this has all been done by something much
bigger than me and only when and in proportion to
when I let that thing into my life and I've managed to shut up and listen.
Really.
That's not to say it tells you, you can have no opinions, but, you know, again, we know where this sort of stinking thinking leads us to.
I have an opinion and I'm going to, I don't quite agree with that bit of the big book or that bit of the programme, so I'm going to superimpose my own bit on it.
You know, of course,
You know, this sort of nonsense thinking.
My best thinking got me to the gutter.
But you know what?
My best thinking did give me something.
It gave me a gift of desperation.
And it's through that gift of desperation was I able to start living again.
I was able to rebuild my life.
And it's quite tremendous how quickly it's happened.
It's got nothing to do with me.
Let's be very clear about that.
Nothing to do with me.
I like tremendously the bit where you said you, you know, you have to stop and check.
That is one of, one of the great things about being in recovery.
have to make sure, as you said, am I doing this for gratuitous pleasure?
Am I doing this to numb the fear, to hide, to escape, to repeat the stories?
Am I doing this because, you know, I've actually got to deal with something and it's far easy to do that with a couple of drinks down my throat.
that.
Personal query every day, every hour is hard, but it's a damn sight easier than going back to drinking and all that chaos.
absolutely.
And yeah, it's not fun.
And there's nothing more uncomfortable to admit.
Yes, I am an arch manipulator.
You know, I absolutely am.
However, if I'm
If I'm manipulating to serve, I'm encouraging, I'm empowering.
I'm not playing with words.
There's a different energy to it.
You know, I can, I can still use an aspect of that trait.
I'm a people pleaser.
I love helping people.
If I'm doing that for, if I do something for you, then you're going to give me back.
That's, that's the unattractive side of it.
That's the greedy.
That's the yucky side of people pleasing.
But if I'm doing it, as you said, for no, no agenda, you know, I'm in prison teaching someone to read and you're watching their confidence do.
that that is you know i'm not doing that to get something back from them that's just the byproduct
And it is a different way of thinking, isn't it?
And it is a different way of being, and it doesn't make sense, but it is really empowering.
It doesn't make sense because we have been, I think, conditioned to be autonomous.
I think that's one of the most dangerous teachings that we could ever have taught children, you know, that we are, you know, you will power through, you will get through.
And, you know, there's a time and a place for all of that, but we need other people.
We need to learn to leverage socialization and other people's skills.
You must have seen people, and I'm not one of these, but people who are just brilliant at getting people to do things and how they operate.
I look at those people and I think, wow.
Now I'd have been screaming within sentence number two.
What do mean you're not doing that?
Why?
These are your orders.
I just don't have the temperament for that.
That's not the thing, right?
But part of life's journey, I think, is recognising what are you really good at and what are you really not very good at?
So think of it like this.
I always find this quite interesting.
So, you know, we're all shoehorned, sort of in a way, by our own desires or...
or whatever to become the doctors, the lawyers, the whatever it can be, business owners, this, that and the other and everybody attributes a value to that.
Well let's be absolutely honest, we only attribute a value to it because we think that that equates to a really good person, a really good career, financially secure and pillar
of salt of the earth and society.
Has that ever worked?
I wonder about this all the time.
Why can't we attribute the same value to a cleaner or a lorry driver?
Because what if that surgeon doesn't really want to be a surgeon really, he'd like to be a refuse director or a cleaner?
you know, one half the problem in this world is we love to label everybody with things and we create our own little, we spend loads of times trying to
get rid of hierarchies, we?
Everyone is equal.
And then actually by the same token, we are very busy recreating the hierarchy around money.
And this is all just bollocks because there is no such thing as money.
It's energy to start with.
And once you realise that money is energy, when you emit at the right energy level and you're happy and then you're afloat doing what you need to be doing, people will come.
People will come.
That's what happens.
You see this in politics all the time.
Most of them are clearly not in their flow.
We know this with the stupid Labour Party, sorry I'm not going get political, but know, there they are screaming at the Conservative Party, you know, look at all those freebies,
look at all those...
and they're going to do exactly the same thing.
Which tells me that the motivation, real motivation, behind them wanting to do that job is not serving, it is power.
Now that is that.
You know, and I wonder sometimes, you know, if in schools we could focus on people doing things that makes their heart sing and then pay them.
Can you imagine what would happen in the world?
Hey, Mischa, I often imagine this in my little weedy head.
Where everyone was paid the same, right?
Now that would be interesting, right?
Now that would be really interesting.
Everybody was paid the same everybody would have two cars.
We would have two lovely holidays a year You have your four-bedroom detached house.
Don't worry about it.
It's done.
Right?
Everyone's the same.
Yeah, okay, you know You know you want to go off and and build a business then you can have your mansion, know that that's fine But in the main everybody is the same right and
you know, there's loads of jobs choose from right?
You can be a cleaner you could be a Lorry driver you can be a psychologist a psychiatrist.
You can be a surgeon you can be this
you know, within the job world.
Forget industry for five seconds, right?
Self-made people.
I wonder what would happen.
I really wonder what would happen.
People would then do what they want to do, right?
And that's the problem.
in a world where we've loads of people who are just doing totally what they shouldn't be doing.
Which means, which tells you why they then try and fulfil that hole in their soul by seeking out more money, let's say, in the private sector, because they're trying to make
themselves feel better.
Or they seek out alcohol or they seek out food or drugs or reckless abandon just to
and squashed, name but two.
Absolutely, yeah.
Just to put some fun, maybe simple as that, put some fun and some happiness back into life.
Yeah.
What a harrowing thought, isn't it?
But actually, isn't all this actually so much more simple than we've actually ever thought about it?
None of this is complicated and the answers are staring us right in front of our eyes.
So we need to seek the motive now of why do our politicians, for example, or people generally, what are they truly scared of?
And it will come down to, you know this from recovery and I know this,
There'll be fear of insecurity.
my God, what will happen to the school fees?
What will happen to the horses?
What will happen to the luckier?
Because that's what we've built.
We've built a society that pegs itself on how wealthy are you.
Yeah, yeah.
That's it.
What do you do?
First thing you ask somebody.
Yeah.
Nice to meet you.
Hi, I'm Hamish.
What do you do?
I'm a lawyer.
I'll chat with you.
I'm a builder.
well.
Exactly.
And you know what, when I was in Kazakhstan many, many years ago, one of the most beautiful things that we did there, had a Sunday, sorry, a Thursday evening dinner club on
my veranda, because I had the nicest veranda.
And we had a symposium of the most beautiful people there.
had the head of the, we had the British ambassador and his wife.
We had me.
We had a couple of lorry drivers.
They used to pop in and out, you know, sort of.
who are hilarious because they used to go, you know, they were just lovely.
We had a couple of construction people.
We had the head of Balfour Beatty.
had, we had the point is we had some seriously high end people, very, very, very important people that in the city of London, you know, the lorry driver and they were never mixed,
right?
And, you know, people like the head of the World Bank and people like that, you know, and yet you had staffers too, normal people.
and some local people who could speak really good, like in Turkish, who could speak really good English.
And what I loved about those meetings is all the barriers were brought right down and these people became human beings.
And suddenly the lorry driver was just as important as the head of the IMF.
They were talking about their annoying kids with their really annoying habits and finding out that actually what creates us, what keeps us human is the identification.
So we focus on what unites us, not what disunites us or whatever the word is, know, separates us.
And that was just a total amazing, we did that, there for a year and a half, we did that every Thursday night.
And I'm still in touch with quite a few of them now and they've always
back to me said you know what that was special that we've always remembered that as because we we were able to talk to normal people they were able to talk to us and we were
able to all find out that actually we're totally the same guess what you know surprise surprise and yeah that was just lovely
You know, but I think that's the thing that we are now in a world, I think, and this is sad, of we're constantly trying to divide and conquer is what's happening.
Everybody has to have a label.
You're either ADHD or non ADHD.
You're either this or you're that.
You're identified as a tree or a post.
I don't care whether you're identified as a whatever you are.
Who cares?
Who are you?
And who are you really?
Mm-hmm.
Well, who do you think you are and who are you really?
Yeah.
And are you able to...
really show us who you are because the sort of stuff that I do as you know is all about you know I do a lot of work with businesses small businesses but startup businesses in
particular to help them get on track and it comes down to what I call what we call the five S's you know and it's like that cocktail party line that you were talking about you
know you get to stand right on the doorstep of the department store
and say, imagine this is your department store, who are you?
What do you really want to do?
Not what somebody else told you you should be doing, but what do you really want to do?
And the amount of friction you get there is unbelievable.
But I would say to people, you can't work with people, I can't work with you, unless you're going to be brutally honest and prepared to do the work.
Because if you're not prepared to do that work first you'll never set up a successful business because you don't really know why you're doing it.
Your mood is operandai will change every single minute of every different day because you will be so fixated on all the things that's going on out there.
The noise, you'll be following this woman, following that, the next.
You'll be in chaos and you'll be horribly, horribly unhappy.
Again, that comes back to recovery where you've you've had to start making those choices.
You've I mean, I don't remember the the steps in the in the in the big book, the good book, the big book.
Now that's interesting, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, in the in the in the Good Book of 12.
Yeah.
But you know, have to make amends.
You have to check in and you know, what did I do wrong?
Yes, I did that.
I did that.
I was doing the best I could.
You know, I've said this countless times on this show.
I used to throw empty bottles out of the car while I was driving because that was less shameful than going home and hearing them going into the tin bit dustbin.
I don't do that, but that that action was less painful than going home and being caught with bottles of booze.
That was the best I could.
Hey, it doesn't beat my story of rocking up in my X5, you know, it was like, you know, yeah, you the token X5, the last possession I had, and actually ramming the goddamn car
full of bottles and then doing, you know, almost like a moonlight flit at one of those, you know, you know, those things, reason supermarket bottle banks right at the back of the
car park as they used to be, you know, thinking that no one's seen you.
Well, there I was, decanting, you know, hundreds of bottles into this thing.
And then this woman pipes up in a lovely little mini and deposits two bottles.
I'm thinking, hmm, now that's how it probably should be, On a number of different levels, because what that woman had done was that she had factored her cleanliness routine, if you
like, or housekeeping routine, as part of her life that was important enough.
to see through to the end and do the next right thing.
And that's one of the things that recovery has taught me is to when I'm in a turmoil in my head, bring it right, right, right, right, right down to the next right thing.
Hmm.
you know, really bring it down to the next right thing and do the action and complete it.
Don't leave it half done, do it completely.
Yep.
Wind it back to the beginning.
I have to do the same thing.
like, it's all gone crazy.
I have to go, you know, right back to what happened at the beginning.
Yeah.
Breathe in, breathe out and repeat.
Take a step forward.
It's literally like sometimes I'm having to relearn to walk every day.
But it does, it gives you that place to start again, doesn't it?
And not make the same mistakes, to see things differently.
And as you said, it's that self care.
Yeah.
and then
I'm journaling, you know, when you feel these negative thoughts come into your head, write them down, because writing them down is writing them out of your head.
Just very quickly, you might have an acronym for it, know, big black dog, you know, all fine, no reason, negative energy arrived, you know, fine.
Yep.
It's little coping strategies, isn't it, to replace those coping mechanisms.
Yeah.
Totally, totally.
It's been a fabulous conversation and it is, isn't it?
It's being aware.
We have to be a little bit more aware, a little bit more cognizant, a little bit more curious, a little bit more observing of what's going on around us.
What are we doing, our habits?
But you get used to that practice.
You get used to making that effort.
As you said, you get used to that journaling.
and checking in and saying, am I being a dickhead?
Am I being an idiot?
Am I being manipulative?
Why am I being manipulative?
Why am I being a dickhead?
And then
that is importantly, why am I being as well as that because that's the real reveal that it will be because of an insecurity, something probably within you isn't right.
Or certainly that's my experience.
It can be like I'm mirroring my
internal emotions onto others through my actions is what I found and that was a big revelation for me because I've really done the, until I was about five or six years sober,
I'd never really done the hard work on that and that's an area I need to practice.
I mean this is stuff that I need to practice daily and I mean or twice daily and if I am out of sorts I need to seriously recognize
it, remove myself from the area of tension just temporarily and you know go for a walk around the block and really meditate on it and the way I do it I just say look this is the
problem I have a problem with this person that person it's probably to do with me you know this person triggers x y and z in me and I ask my higher power again
like San Tocqueville bonkers, but this is what I do.
I ask my higher power to take that away from me.
And I would say, you know, never has it failed.
Never has it failed, yeah.
As long as I've been willing to do the addressing bit of what's not working and why, because that's really critical.
You can't just say, you know, I don't like this person.
Please take that away from me.
Well, why?
That's your problem that you don't like.
And God's not going to, know, God, you're high.
Hi-Fi is not going to do for you what you were too lazy to do yourself.
know because there's a process here and it's it's actually a process of sheer discipline.
Mm-hmm.
you know, that once you get into it, it becomes a way of life and it becomes instinctive.
I would say the biggest thing I've learned this year is to slow down.
And that, you know, that gives me that chance to think, but I still struggle to slow down.
I still struggle to make that effort.
But when I do, can, yeah, it becomes, I can actually see things before they happen.
You know, I realized that if I do that again, I'm to get that outcome.
You know, I'm not going to change the outcome doing the same thing unless I start to change something a little bit.
Yeah, and I have to agree with you.
I've had to do that this year too and learning to slow down has for me been the singular most difficult thing to do.
But actually they do say this, like in the old adage, slow down to speed up.
And that actually is so true.
So for those who are in any doubt about the verity of what's being talked about and the efficacy of what's being talked about now.
Think back to your school days.
Off you battled on the bus at 8 o'clock or 8.30 or 7 or whatever it was.
But you're back home by 3.30 or whatever it was usually.
School used to finish at 3.30, right?
Just have a think how much you as a human being actually achieved and learnt.
during that small, relatively small space of time.
You weren't working 16 hours a day.
And that, I've often thought about that and I thought yeah, because the difference was between now and then is then they made you have processing time.
That was given just as much authority.
as the doing because by not processing and that is the one unifying thing that we are never given today we are never given sufficient time to process things properly hence
we're always in a rush we're always on to the next thing we're always on to the next and we don't finish things and when psychologically we do not finish things properly that
leaves our brain
in a state of mess.
So that's one of the best gifts I think you can give to people is to, or we can give to people is to say to me, learn to slow down, to speed up.
Because what it will do, it will enable you to focus very quickly on the things that matter, the things that really matter.
Get rid of the noise.
And before you know it, you're focusing on what is important.
And before you know it, your business will be thriving because you will be focusing on the right things.
because they feel right, not on the wrong things.
And this whole nonsense of, you know, and it might be, you know, get rid of social media for a while, get rid of it permanently, or choose the channel you want to, you can't be
everywhere all at once, and neither should you be.
tell people I only do LinkedIn I don't communicate in any other way that's okay as long as people know
It's all about managing.
I mean we are living in this world of techno crap at the moment.
It's out of control but we have a choice.
We don't have to join in with it all.
We know that those who are joining in with it on a daily basis are becoming very ill.
We know this.
The evidence is right in front of our eyes.
So why are we so busy like Lemming is doing the
fear of missing out.
Fear of missing out.
If an idea is a good idea, it will reach its right audience.
The other thing I've learned in business, this is probably one of the hardest things, So, you know, people you might come up with the best idea in the world, right?
And there's no reason why it should fail, but it fails.
That's just life.
I've stopped trying to control the outcome or what other people think of my business ideas.
If they can use it, great.
Because I've started to look at it more in terms of if the universe wants it to happen, it will make it happen.
All I need to do is stay humble and stay in service.
I need to get out of the way.
That's all I need to do.
Nothing else.
And I swear to God, the moment I do not do that, Hamish, things go tits up very, very, very, very, very quickly.
Because my ego comes back, whoosh, as if it was no...
And that is the same ego that makes me drink, you see.
That is the same voice that goes, you know what, it's been nearly 12 years now, tell you what, know, one day at a time, why don't you just have a drink?
Yeah, why don't you just have a drink?
Fine, have a drink and just see what happens.
And watch the whole house of cards tumble down.
Thumbnail down, there you go.
I love your thing about school and I just remembered one thing about school.
What do we have a lot of at school?
Playtime!
How often do I put playtime into my day?
Before 9 o'clock and after 6 o'clock?
Yeah, or if I get out for a walk?
yeah.
huge on-play time in junior schools which is so much so that I'm sure you can still remember some of those you know the games that we used to play in and the excitement used
to feel playing a game of rounders after a bloody dull maths lesson the way that they but they if you think about it they're managing very short periods of time but what they've
done is they elongated time
such that those are crannulated, the fortress of your memory and they live there.
know, fun that we had in the...
I just don't know what it is, know, but this is the thing.
But it stopped, didn't it?
The moment you went to high school, that fun in many ways stopped.
They stopped teaching us.
Do you remember?
I don't know what they did in your junior school, but I used to love the way they taught things through projects.
They taught people through projects.
Learn about the Vikings.
You had to build the ship.
You had to paint the things on the water.
There was art.
There was woodwork.
There was a dressing up, putting on a play.
There was learning about their cooking habits, their home habits, their battles.
What did they, you know,
you know, you were sort of living, breathing and exploring it from like a 360 which created a real interest.
I just wish they did more of that in school today over a longer period of time.
I was joking with a friend the other day, said what they should do is rather than have economics lessons in the sixth form, said right this is the problem.
solve it.
No right, no wrong answer.
And you know, no books allowed and I don't want any Keynesian or whatever, you know, series, I don't want series.
I want to hear from your inner mind to the best of your ability how you would solve it and you have the right to re-change all the boundaries of the world if you want to.
You can change governments.
Nothing is out of bounds.
And I would just love to see what would happen.
And I bet you we would have some really awesome, enduring, life-sustaining and permanent changes made for the benefit of the planet and the human race.
Yeah, I like that.
I like that.
I can almost see people doing that in a, in a business environment.
You're running a workshop and say, right, here are the rules.
This is what you've got.
You've got to get A to D any way you want.
Yeah.
And it's got to involve fun or this or that.
You've got to do that.
Yeah.
And what would be interesting in business, right, is this.
And you'd have to tell them, right, and I want you to write down every single negative thought that automatically came into your head for reasons that you couldn't do this, this
and this.
Because those are just as important, right?
Those will highlight the thinking problem areas or the construction problem areas of how society has actually been organized.
We can expect a lot of this is an organisational issue in terms of how we have organised ourselves and until we are going to have the really brutally honest conversation around
these things and I mean brutally honest, primitively honest, back to children basics, nothing is going to change because we are trying to change society.
and people with pre-known solutions that used to work for other methodologies and other times.
Now we know, Einstein tells us, this never is going to be successful, it will never work because we're using tools of the past to cure the present.
and the same person, we say in recovery we say the same thing, the same person will drink again.
Absolutely.
I've been reading Robert Fritz, his path of least resistance.
What an amazing book.
There's no cure.
There's no solution to drinking.
There's no solution to so many things.
You have to change foundations.
And then, you know, by creating.
And when you start creating, as you said, you look at what doesn't work, you create something, the energy is different.
I'm not solving, I'm creating.
and that you're bringing magic, you're bringing change, you're allowing it and it's expansive.
It's hugely expansive and it's also very, very cooperative.
And yet you try doing that.
And I think this is where a lot of people like me just disassociate.
I'm very interested in politics, but I look at them, just despair.
I look at it as a child.
I look at them as children in kindergartens.
It's a very, that type of sort of, it's very, very, very childlike,
You've got to support us for giving you this free-line whipping if you don't you're expelled.
Well, what is this?
You know, I don't want to be governed by poor, I'll idiotic self-centered and self-seeking, unevolved individuals because that's unfortunately what we're talking about.
We're talking about an evolved human species with agendas.
This is not good.
It's not good for them.
It's not good for society.
And it's definitely not good for humanity.
Never before have we experienced, I don't think, a time where we've had so much wealth concentrated in the hands of the Sophie.
Everybody was up in arms, weren't they, about Jeremy Corbyn?
my gosh, my gosh, redistribution of wealth.
I'm not sure anybody's talking about religious repression of wealth, but there were some very sound arguments, I thought, in his work.
The only problem there was, once again, is ego, if it's not my way or the highway.
What you really need is evolved human beings who are capable of working in consensus with others, guess what?
For the best outcome.
Yep, not for the party.
not for the party, but for the people.
I would love to see a political situation where you get rid of all parties.
Parties for me is the thing of yesterday.
I can agree with people of all different parties.
I don't fit into a political party.
I never did because I like, I want people, want the best.
If you're truly motivated to help your community, let's come up with ideas.
Yep, isn't it?
It is.
It's if you can only vote for the red because the red is the way, even if the greens way is even actually better, but I can't vote for the green way because I'm red.
You know, that is just bonkers.
That is not forward.
That is
If you were living on Mars right or whatever, know, they must be looking at us going dear look at them.
Look at them poor little creatures You know that they're actually because what we're doing is we are actually self imploding our own body of work We are becoming narrower and
narrower and narrower and the money world is sticking together narrower and narrower
and is seeking to take over the power from the poorer of the poorer.
You know, I've always said to you, there is no need for example, nobody in this world should be poor.
You know, and that's the end of it, nobody should be poor.
But when you've got an IMF and when you've got a European community and when you've got all these people who are self-seeking and busy, know, probably they're self-seeking,
that's not fair on them.
You know, they're stuck is what it is, they're stuck in reverse.
They're desperately trying to find ideas about the future.
they're stuck because the ideas are not from things that have gone on their table in the past.
The ideas need to be fundamental overhauls.
They need to be back to basics.
Take those kids back to the classroom and say there are no rules at all.
You can change everything.
Don't think of the consequences, just think of the outcome and what would happen.
And there's none of that happening.
It's all about control economy.
How can we continue doing what we did before?
How can we continue manipulating what we did before?
You know, and I think that, you know, the proof of the pudding is people are now disengaged to the degree that you can tell by the amount of people that vote or how voting
goes.
mean, you know, hello, seriously.
Do all of those people who voted for Labour really want the Labour Party in?
No they don't.
They were just fed up.
It was a protest vote.
It's like, all of these things are protest votes.
Because people don't really know what they think.
Because they don't take time to...
Because again, they're supposed to be shoehorned into one party or the other.
That is a wrong way of thinking.
We need to be encouraged to think...
ourselves and put forward the best possible idea that will serve our country, serve our community, serve the world better and work with other people who think like that.
It's really quite simple, it's not actually as difficult as people may think.
Yes, there will be ruffles, yes there will be noses put out of joint, but somebody needs to be brave to create this brave new world.
Old as Huxleys ubiquitous words, you know, somebody has to take the reins of change now because we are just surrounded by idiots, sadly.
Yeah.
And worse than that, they're unevolved idiots.
And by that I mean people who are not willing to self-examine their own progress.
That's where it becomes dangerous to me and be open-minded and humble enough to say, look, I don't know everything.
I want to learn from others.
I'm curious.
That is a sign of great leadership for me.
People go, do you know what?
I know what I know, but I'm curious to learn what you know.
Because maybe together, and all of us together, we can do something great here.
I think you've really nailed it on the head, haven't you?
When you're prepared to be open-minded, you're prepared to listen, you're prepared to have your own belief structures and ideas challenged and maybe, wow, that's wrong.
As soon as we realize that what someone else's idea is actually better than ours and we have that humbleness to go, hey, I like that.
I know, yeah.
And that now, you see, that is the thing that I, you know, that's the number one offender.
That's something I come across now all the time.
It's like, not invented by me.
I mean, you can see it from the funders these days, know, Innovate UK is the classic example, but they wouldn't even know innovation if it hit them on the head because, you
know, they are not coming at this from the right, you know, according to them, it must be something with a SaaS balance element to it.
Why?
But they can't ever answer the question why and whether it's appropriate.
It just needs to be in there.
It's a bit like an A level project.
And then, it must have an AI component.
Why?
know, this is the image, it doesn't actually make my blood, but I don't get cross about these things anymore, so it's attached, why I've taught myself to.
Because AI might be the right thing for a certain business, but it might totally not be necessary for somebody else's business, but neither makes it more or less innovative than
the other.
Because innovation isn't putting...
AI into somewhere just because you've been told it needs AI.
Innovation is about thinking critically through a problem and deploying a workable outcome.
That is innovation, not, it has AI in it.
That is the antithesis of innovation.
And that is what is stymieing business today, because unfortunately, and that's where the bad
elements come in the bad actors, know, where people say, well, you can only get funding if you include this, this, this and this.
So before you know it, things that are funded as so called innovative are not enhancing our economy and not moving.
These things need to be measured to the progress of our economy.
Not on what we think it may be, just because Elon Musk has declared it so.
It might work, might not work, but the point is it works really well because Elon Musk is somebody that goes through that evaluative process, by the way.
know, detailed, and that's why he can tell, you this is why I'm doing this, I'm doing this because I want to do this, this and this.
He's very clear about that.
It's, it's, it's, it's a cognitive way of thinking it's, it's doing it with intention.
As you said, it's, it's teamwork and yeah.
Doesn't have to have AI and just because that's the current buzzword and it might work.
might not.
Yeah.
And indeed you might need AI, but it make it less or more innovative.
It's just that AI is a tool.
That's all it is.
It's an implementational tool that if you know how to interrogate and prompt it correctly, it may work for you, but it may equally not work for you.
But it's got nothing to do with innovation.
Innovation is coming up with, it's so simple.
Think Leonardo da Vinci and developing the helicopter.
I think it was him, I've probably got this wrong actually.
For some reason in my brain I'm thinking,
Did Leonardo da Vinci firstly design the helicopter?
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, this is innovation.
These are people who thought beyond what is possible now, that innovation or people who can, you know, I identify that there is a problem.
This is how I intend to fix the problem.
And this is why I need help to fix the problem.
Not do I or do I not have bloody AI involved.
That is not innovation.
That was somebody else's innovation.
I mean, it's innovative what AI has done, but it's not the be all and end all.
And it certainly shouldn't be a measure rubric for whether or not you get innovate UK funding or not.
I was just absolutely crazy.
But I'm hearing that from so many sources now.
And again, unfortunately for me,
back to my recovery, that's an area that I have to step away from because what it does, it encourages all the bad actors within me, ego-based character actors, to start on the
retaliatory thing.
And that's not a good place for my head to be.
That's just not a safe space.
just let them do what they're doing and just let them get on with it, stop trying to control them.
I think you've brought it back nicely there.
It is, it?
There is very little that we can control.
We control our reactions and our actions and how we respond to people.
We can't control a lot more.
When we work from that, it's super empowering.
Resentment, you mentioned that a while ago.
For me, that is not an Achilles heel.
That is chopping my head off at the neck and that's it.
That's all that's left.
It's just a terrible place to be.
it's watching people do stupid things that I think, you know, getting resentful is, a really slippery slope for me where I can get into that negative behavior, into that
addictive behavior.
and yeah, go back around again.
We're back to keeping an eye on ourselves, being curious, checking in all those really simple things that just allow us to
not really care less about if that's going to happen or that's going to happen because that's beyond our control and from that space we're free aren't we we're free of that
noise and we can just get on and have fun and slow down a bit yeah
Because actually, see, this is something I was told in early recovery.
I remember somebody saying to me, I wish you a really slow recovery.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
But now I understand what that means.
Because the fruits of recovery are fantastic.
And my AA sponsor said to me once, she said, why don't you try?
Just try, right?
Let's see what happens if you were to run your business through AA principles.
Just literally try it as an experimental area.
I you like experiments.
So just take your arms off the rudder and let it run it for you.
All you have to do is play second in command and do what it tells you to do.
And just see what would happen.
and
I have to be truthful, I started off doing that and it was great and then as soon as I experienced some success, my hands are straight back on that rudder.
Straight back, within seconds.
So my journey in business has been very much this idea of push, pull, push, pull, push, pull.
Now I think really at the dawn of my 12th birthday, need to be, I need to make a decision.
Because they often say it takes you a long time to recover.
really get to grips with some of these tools properly and to have experimented and tested things out and I think I'm at that point where I've really got to make a commitment now to
write you know either because my my AA sponsor has made a lot of money that means stupid amounts of money and I didn't know that actually until very recently because she doesn't
talk about it ever
Which I think is amazing because one of my problems is I think it's a feeling of not being confident maybe.
I sort of have a burning need to tell people.
We haven't really explored that yet so we don't know maybe for another chapter.
But she said to me, once you can really learn to let go, really let go.
and realise that your only purpose in this world actually is to be in recovery and to help other alcoholics.
That is your only purpose.
And help others who want to set up in business and help them.
But don't waste your time helping those who don't want to be helped.
Yeah.
Yep.
Try and learn it from that because I think you would stop the lag, would stop the hanging on, you'd stop the pain of why aren't they doing this, this is mad.
You'd stop also wanting it more for them than they want it for themselves.
Yep.
Yes.
because that's a people pleasing trait that I have.
When you can see it, because I have my gift, if you like, I mean, we talked about, you know, what is your superpower, but in a way, one of my superpowers is that I can see
things already completed.
You give me a business idea and I can tell you within probably two or three seconds whether it's a go or not a go.
It's either going to be a copycat business in which case you're going to need a lot of funding and it's only going to last for four or five, six years.
or it really is something that is going to knock the socks of people.
But because I can see it completed.
And I get very frustrated when I get the excitement of seeing something completed.
And I think the person presenting it is just like deadpan and doesn't even realize what they've got.
But it's none of my business, actually.
It's a bit like, it's a curse, yet it's a bit like being maybe when you work in energy, right, and you can see into people's souls, you can see their energy fields and you can
read them.
And you'll know whether they're telling the truth or not.
And then there's that temptation to interject and go, well, actually, that's not really what you think, is it?
What you really think is this, this, this, and this.
And again, I've spoken to a number of people I know who do this and they've all had to say, we have to discipline ourselves that we do not read people.
We don't do it because it's so easy to do.
And for that very reason, what will happen then is you step in.
Tell me a bit about your business and what you do and how you serve people and how people can find out more about you and what you do because I think what you do is quite
remarkable as well.
I run a business called Silvertree, Silvertree Exchange, so they can find me, you you can email me if you want to, that's Eleri, E-L-E-R-I, at silvertree.co, and that's a silver
V-A tree, not E-R.
And the whole premise of silver is that, again, you know, when we came out of prison, you know, we had no money, so we had to create our own.
which is precisely what we did.
We had skills but no money to deploy those skills.
So I had legal skills, my partner had, or my ex-partner had amazing, amazing IT skills.
We had no money to set up businesses.
So that's how it started.
So we created this exchange.
He built it.
He's a genius with IT and we built this currency system.
So he built my tech for me for my business, my legal firm, McGuire Mitchell, which enabled me to start off and get first clients.
But I paid him by way of this currency that we use, this silver currency.
And it's very simple, really.
One silver is one pound.
So we operate in the UK.
you know, whatever we charge, I'll just explain it it's basic.
So the idea is that
many businesses are not operating at full capacity.
So there are gaps.
Now what's spare capacity?
So if you go to a shop, everything that you see for sale right there in front of you is actually technically spare capacity.
Because until it's been sold, hasn't, you know, the person who owns the shop has had to go out to the wholesalers to buy it all in, right?
So it's a minus on the ledger.
So it's fair capacity.
same thing with an empty table in a restaurant, let's say.
Every moment of every day that thing isn't sold, people aren't sitting at that table, that's bare capacity.
mean a restaurant still has to run, you still have to pay your staff, you still have to pay for your utility bills.
So, same with a hotel, know, a spare room.
Once the opportunity of renting it out that night has gone and nobody's taken it, that opportunity to sell it has gone forever.
Right?
So all it is, is way of looking at things differently, right?
So you've got your cash business.
on average that might give you 60 % out of 100 % capacity in a month.
So you've got 40 % there which you could sell but you haven't sold, right?
You haven't sold it.
So what do you do with it?
What most people do with it was just say, God, well that's shit, isn't it?
And move on.
What I'm saying is, there's a clever way to do this.
If you were to trade that 40 % of their services, so for example, the shop, for example, if you were to sell that stuff on the Silvertree platform to all, we've got hundreds of
members now, they would then be able to...
pay you immediately in our currency silver or it might be a blend of silver and cash it's up to you but you would be able to sell that stuff out immediately and you would then use
that silver to buy stuff that you need instead of having to pay cash to enhance your business and it might be accountancy services might be legal services which is what I do
it might be
graphic design service, might be social media services, might be VAs, might be whatever it is.
Everybody could be trading in this way.
And this is the plan, as far as I'm concerned, of how you eradicate poverty.
Because whilst you are singularly, as a world, tied to this thing called cash, don't forget, back in Sumatra, when cash was invented,
Cash was never meant, it was an accounting methodology, that's all it was.
It was not a social construct, it was not a who are you anyway moment, it was actually a demarcation of the amount of bails of hay that you were owed in payment is what it was.
You remember, this was when they went from bartering to essentially cash.
bartering doesn't work because what happens if I want something but you don't want what I've got?
I want what you've got but you don't want you've got a mismatch of needs.
So that's why money was invented and so why can't we have other forms of money?
As long as tax has been paid on it to the government which is the right thing to do the government has no problem.
with exchanges like this because they like it because they see it as encouraging business, not detracting from business.
So that is why I think every business in the world ought to be part of this movement.
Two, with a view to the more people we get involved, before you know it, Tesco is going to be involved, right?
They always get involved in everything.
You know, Starbucks will be involved, the petrol station will be involved.
And before you know it, there won't be blooming.
financial problems because council can pay their staff partly in silver because they can pay, they can then charge council tax partly in silver.
They can then pay their contractors partly in silver.
Before you know it, you've got access to a whole new swath of money, which has the same value.
Nobody's doing a tax dodge.
This is not money laundering.
This is pure, simple, sensible, basic economics.
designed to ensure that our economy will be sustainable for the future and when not governed by what however goes on in Ukraine or the blame in Gaza thing or you know we're
too volatile to which you intermingled with everybody else so we need to find a way to become self-stained this is called growing up is what it's called it's evolution
know, Silvertree isn't the only people who do things like this.
There plenty of exchanges around the world.
But why can't we buy property in this currency?
Why can't we go and buy a car?
If people, you know, if you pay, I don't know, 20 grand for a car, whatever it is, and that person needs that 20 grand in silver to go and pay a digital marketeer to do a year's
worth of content for them.
Who cares?
So that's what we're doing.
it is a digital platform, a cashless digital platform enabling people to trade with our currency.
For the benefit, the only benefit to them is to make themselves more cash rich.
That's the only benefit.
It is not, you want...
Silvertree billionaires it might be for some people it might not be for others, but that's the point So I wanted to do something with my partners that was Fundamentally going to
change the way we do business forever Which is fair to all?
It's not based on who are your parents in which school did you go to?
It's not based on How much money have you got in the bank and how much collateral if you got it's based purely and simply on
how good at you at doing what you do.
Simple.
So I go back, I have a cafe and I want to pay my accountant.
I sell coffees for silver.
I pay my accountant with silver.
He might come, she might come back to my coffee shop and then buy coffees back again.
it's, simplistically, it's another currency.
It's like using euros rather than pounds.
Yeah.
Nobody needs to be scared of it because it's another currency just like using euros instead of pounds.
What we need now to do is to enlarge the scope of people in the audience that know about it and see that this is as well as not instead of cash.
It's got nothing to do with taking cash away from you.
Quite the opposite.
It adds cash to your purse.
And of course, the other thing I do as you know is I run Love Entrepreneurs, which is a fellowship.
Mm-hmm.
It's not a business network, it's a fellowship where we share with each other our experience and our strength and our hope and our knowledge so that we all contribute to
helping each other become better business people and our secret source there is the Big Fix where we invite businesses all shapes all sizes to come along and say hey I've got a
problem I've got an idea.
What do you think guys?
know, so we do a like a sort of blend between a dragon's den thing and a, you know, a sort of live soul mapping.
And they do that over two days.
And the idea is that the audience becomes the business owner and they've got to, the audience has got to solve the problem for the business owner.
And that's quite, that's quite, quite good fun.
And one of the solutions we've always got for everybody is, know, you should join Silvertree because it's a brilliant currency.
It will reduce your cash expenses dramatically and get you loads of new clients.
And then the second thing we do in level entrepreneurs, so we do the big fix, then we do business planning for people and then we get them funding.
And we use the SEIS mechanism, but we do a blend of silvertree funding.
So silvertree and us have got a relationship where they will pre-fund a lot of our business ventures, which is fantastic.
And we can get people funding very, very, very efficiently.
Again, I was horrified to learn more about the SEIS scheme and again to learn about the tax breaks that were happening there.
Thus, they were only encouraging and attracting people who wanted to invest in businesses that actually make losses so that they could offset those losses against their forward tax
income.
Now, to me, that is a scam.
That is scandalous.
because it goes against everything I stand for, namely to help businesses thrive and survive.
I'm not interested in helping the billionaires anymore.
They've got, there's enough stuff out there for them.
We need to help grassroot businesses who are deserving of our help to find and empower themselves, to find a way to travel through the morass that is the mess that we have
today.
And the only way to do that is to step aside and be different.
They always say, don't they, if you want to stand out from the crowd, step aside and do something different.
Do something different.
I mean, when I joined Love Entrepreneurs, it was amazing.
As you said, just to explain a bit more, you invited me and explained my business, what I want to do, how I want to do it.
And then, it wasn't intimidating.
It was questions.
Had I thought about this?
I had a dozen people.
helping me with my business, which was wonderful.
And then you all scurried off, came back again and said, try this, try this, try this, try this.
And just like, and I had to write it down.
But as you said, you, you you, you gave me that information back and it's, it's a group of people who are serving other people.
You know, there's, there's no agenda beyond supporting each other.
You're not trying to take anything off people.
I think it's fantastic.
I'm very glad I found you guys and you know, that's the reason we're chatting the way our world's bumped together.
But I think it's a supervision and I'm getting my head around the silver tree because again, it's the same thing.
It's a different way of doing something.
a all it is, mean again it's a tool that is innovative and what you really want is a whole bunch of people making it their own because of course don't forget, we want or rather I
want other people to come to me and say well you know why don't we do this, let's do that, great do it because I'm going to learn from you guys you know the whole point is I don't
want and this is again the flat structure that I want you know
I learn just as much from other people as they can learn from me because there's only a limit to what I...
I only know what I know.
I don't know what you know.
But I do know that together all our ideas will be brilliant.
But again, I'm noticing, and this is maddening really, that people are so used to being told what to do by a leader and they're not used to devolved ownership and control.
things where they actually are and I think this has got something to do with the way people have been brought up now and that the times that we're living in everybody wants
everybody always needs to be told what to do whereas what I want to try and do is to empower people to stop thinking
let's make this my own, let's integrate this currency into my business and see what I can do with it.
You know, let's, you know, it's that sort of thing.
people, which is why you're seeing that so many businesses now thrive and survive because of AI apparently and SAS projects because they're being dictated to how to think, what to
think and what to do.
Now to me, that is one of the most unhealthy developments that we could ever have because we've stopped thinking.
The moment we stop thinking, we stop creating.
Yeah.
And you know, winding right back to the beginning, this is something that you've created from necessity, from a series of unfortunate events, and, not becoming bitter, not
becoming enraged, not becoming suicidal, not drinking yourself to all those opportunities you had just to say,
Fuck it all.
You haven't done that.
You've created something, created, you haven't solved a problem, you've created something brand new.
And it's got a life of its own.
It really has.
that vision, yes, you're suggesting people take accountability and responsibility for their businesses, for their lives.
Empowering.
The day I stopped drinking and empowered myself and got help with it, everything changed.
I am like you, I'm grateful for that gift of desperation.
Wasn't so much fun, but you know, at the other side it is remarkable.
it's, things have to change.
And I think, yeah, I think what you've shared with us today is really exciting, really, really exciting and hopeful and empowering and yeah, truly, truly remarkable.
remembering one thing though, remembering one very important thing, this is not a one-man job right, this is very much not a one-man job and you know if it wasn't for the structure
that I the spiritual structure that I have around me you know that gives me all the people power that I need.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's not charge on by yourself because you can't do that.
I think this has been a really, really fabulous conversation.
We could talk all night.
God for your poor listeners Hamish, your poor listeners.
I think they will be saying we want a Eleri back.
She's got so much to tell to share with us.
Very quickly, where can people find out more?
You've mentioned where we can find you on silver tree, but where else can we find you?
Are you on social media or anything else like that?
I mean, I'm rubbish at social media to be honest with you.
I would just invite people to WhatsApp me in the first instance.
I mean the reason I'm rubbish on social media is I have so much stuff I've got to respond to.
So in the first instance what I ask people to do is just to contact me on WhatsApp.
Well, we'll make sure make sure those details are in the show notes and your superpower.
What what is your superpower from life through life because of life or however?
I think really, I mean, I did say to you you asked me this at beginning that it would come to me during the course of this discussion.
I think I go back to what I actually mentioned it.
It's that ability to see things that others don't.
So see completion that others don't.
So I can see the full project dynamic.
And I think that is something that is a real skill.
It's not a skill, it's a power it's given to you.
It's not something you can develop, you just have it or you don't.
can innately feel into will something succeed?
Or I can see something, can, suppose energetically, can feel is this thing likely to work or not?
And if so, what does it need in order to work?
I've yet to be wrong about that, certainly in recent businesses and it needs more development, more fine tuning and more time spent on perfecting it, but that's it really.
It's that ability to see things, which means when I work with people to get funding or when I work with people to do the business element of things, I know if they follow in the
steps that I've taken.
or see that need to be taken, they cannot not but fail.
The problem comes when they take over and start to know better than you.
And this is a, and I run this like an AA sponsorship thing really, where it's got to be, yes, it's a two way process, but ultimately I am the teacher, that's why they're paying
me.
They are the pupil, not the other way around.
Because if you, if you,
swapping it around onto me.
If you gave me an in, should I take the M4 off your hands?
And I'd be telling you how to do your job, you know, I'd be, because that's just how I'm, that's the alcohol, that's the madness inside me, right?
And so you have to keep it really tight to keep people under control because it's about time management and imparting that knowledge as quickly and as efficiently as humanly
possible.
And it takes time and you have to search out the right kind of people.
But if they're self-searching, if they're not humble and prepared to listen, not in a, look, I wield a massive stick, such a way.
I'm not talking about that kind of, you know, but if they're not prepared to listen to experience, then I'm not going to work with them because I can't get them the results that
they need.
And it's my reputation on the line and I choose.
I'm quite choice about who I work with because I need to see that, you know, humility within them of being prepared to listen to what I've got to say.
You know, I've worked with the partners that we work with now for over 10 years and I know that they deliver every single time on the button.
Brilliant.
Well, I think that is a that is an amazing gift and
Yeah.
When people are prepared to learn, prepared to listen and, you know, work from experience.
mean, that's where you've got that experience.
I've got that experience in my field.
You know, we've developed that through blood and sweat and prison and this and that.
and yeah, I think remarkable, truly, truly remarkable.
And Eleri, thank you so much for being on the show.
I've, I've enjoyed this conversation.
said,
We could go on all evening, but it is time to stop because we're almost on the two hours.
but thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, humor, and yeah, definitely being not normal because it don't work no more.