NZ's consumer debt Ponzi scheme! And the solution? | Sasha Lockley | 2 Commas Podcast with Josh Comrie

It's a way that I think about it which may or may not help.

I think that a lot of life is about embracing the beautiful paradox of the existence of life.

At a high level, for example, we as individuals are incredibly unique.

We have our own DNA, our own fingerprint, our own views on the world, our own way of being.

But if you zoom right out, we're one of eight and a half billion odd souls on the planet who essentially are exactly the same.

We're all made up of energy, protons, neutrons and electrons and atoms, other bits and pieces.

And we're all bumbling our way around in the world trying to find our place.

and what it all means for ourselves and those that we care about.

And so that's one of the paradoxes.

And so how it relates to this thing here is that I think it's a bit of a gift that I'm a Gemini.

I don't believe in star signs and reading the newspaper, but I believe there's traits that can be associated with the time of year.

And so I have that ability to assume different characters.

And I think about the characters that I play in life and the character that I am when I'm speaking on the big stage at a public speaking event.

is a little bit different to the guy that is playing with my nephew, who's four and a half years old, who's running around the house being a nutter.

Some of those things can cross over and is a little bit different from the guy who's trying to think of a compelling and a helpful thing to write or a facilitation exercise, you know, whatever these things might be.

So the kind of characters that I, you know, kind of adapt and over time You know, I was watching the Hulk Hogan documentary and the question, the big question was, who was the real person? Terry Banyan or something or Hulk Hogan? You know, who's become who? And so you kind of go, am I one or the other or am I all of those things? And I think for me, that's what I've made it mean anyway.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I did this master's thesis on entrepreneurial storytelling and that came up around one of the reasons that businesses fail to scale after the founder is this identity piece.

So the identity of the business and the identity of the founder are so inextricably linked that unless you do really deliberate work to separate identity, then the business is more likely to fail.

It's been brought up so many times in the conversations that I've had with founders over time.

I struggled with it myself in my first business.

What are some definite things that you've seen people do that enable them to make that separation work? So how is that? Is there a playbook? Are there some tips that you can offer to people so that, and this may be the way that you approached Money Sweet Spot, which we're going to talk about in a second, but some things to make sure that your identity and the business's identity are not the same thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's natural for anybody to start a thing that is about what you believe is true in the world.

But over time, it's about creating the story of the business and what it believes.

And one way that you do that is through the types of people that you hire.