The catalyst of change is yourself. You can't be sitting

there too much just in a situation you're not happy with and

It's okay to make mistakes as long as you're learning from them. I

don't think anyone's entitled to anything. If you want something, you fucking work for

If you're not willing to do more than you're paid for, you'll never be paid

for more than you're doing. You have to willingly give and graciously receive.

If you are looking for progression, I promise you that

the guy that is putting in extra to someone that is not is

going to be the one to move forward. Welcome to the Better Bloke

Podcast. I'm Matty. I'm Rob. And we're just a pair of average blokes

We're going to speak about all things highs and lows of what it feels like to be a bloke,

plus speak to some legends along the way about what it takes to be a better bloke. Let's

get stuck in. Welcome

back. Episode four, the Better Bloke Project Podcast.

I'm Rob. I'm Mat. And today, what are

Energy. All right. Are we ready to go? We're ready. All

right. In recent months, we've seen a whole bunch of posts come

into the Bloke's Advice group, sort of talking about guys being stuck,

right? They're looking for whether it's a change in career, need more

money, all those sort of things. It's, I guess, driven by

we've seen a kind of fucked economy, you

put it lightly, it's all those things. Have we seen that

like come across in the group? What are these guys like asking

I think that what the majority of the posts coming through are change

of careers, funnily enough. So it's sort of

is opposite to what you would think people would be doing in a fucked

economy, essentially. You think, you know, stability and all that sort

of stuff is what people want. But I think that it's that bad now

that blokes are just at a point where

they're willing to roll the dice and go, fuck, I need to change or

Do you think the motive for that is financial? They're feeling stuck financially

that they can't go up or that they're just sick and tired of doing

the same monotonous shit and want to like actually experience something

I think it's probably a mixture of both. To be honest, you

can't stay doing the monotonous shit forever

and just

keep doing it and sort of better yourself both

financially, mentally, physically. So sometimes a

change is a good thing to

Yeah. I think either way it comes from like a position of feeling stuck.

Yeah. And that's where we've seen a lot of guys kind of talk about

like, I've been doing this shit for 15 years and

whether it's, they're looking to, you know, do

the same thing, but go out on their own or trying to move up in their company

or their way of dealing it is let's do a whole new career. Like

Yeah. That's what it's been mostly that we've been coming, coming

across as it's complete industry changes. So,

it's, I don't even know, like, well, you

for example, how, you've been in your industry for how

A decade? Yeah. Do you, like, do you have any itch to,

What I do is I kind of work in marketing and branding and content. So

like certain roles have been more geared towards being on

the camera, the tools, like creating films and

photos where others are more like, um, you

know, marketing driven, digital marketing, e-commerce, that sort of thing. So

I think it's a field where I can get enough variety in it

and I love it too. So like I'm not looking for a change

but there is a lot of variations. It's not like I'm going to

a job site, I'm not just putting up the same sheet

every single time. So for me, my change and

growth can come along the course of my career. Um,

if, if I wasn't experiencing growth or like maybe

the money wasn't where I felt like it needed to be, I wasn't moving forward fast

enough or the particular thing I was doing starts

Yeah. And how do you go, like, how would you go about that? Cause obviously

it's something that I would say the majority of boys are

going to have to face throughout their life. is

taking that plunge and like it's, there's no denying how

Yeah, not the majority of blokes, every bloke. Like unless you want to

sit in doing the same thing from fucking 16 to

No, I think it's what 70 something now,

67 and a half, but by the time we get there it's gonna keep going.

Like, it is scary and I think being educated

and logical about it, like, you

know, I wouldn't recommend anyone sees

their job as being stuck so they go and quit without a game plan

for afterwards. So it happens all the time. You

see people interviewing while they still have jobs. They're talking to recruiters. If

you do want a complete change of industry, be

willing to start at the bottom. Understand that that might

look like a pay cut or it might be a pay cut. And

it's going to take a while. Have a good view on

where you can move up to. So ideally set some goals. Where will it

be in 12 months, 3 years, 5 years? And just

doing it logically, don't put yourself in a shit position, but start getting

Are you a firm believer in it's

easier to get a job if you've got a job too? I think that's a

It depends what the job is. I don't think we live in a world where

it's super hard to get a job. But to get a good

job, to get a job that fulfills you, to get something

that aligns with everything you want and it pays you the money you want, yeah, it's

hard. I

don't know like if it makes much of a difference if you do or don't have a

No, I think it's a lot with what you just

said, the money that you want, the money you

Yeah. And again, got to be systematic about it. I

want to earn this much. What's

my pathway to get there? Like it's pretty easy, you can look up,

you can talk to people, ask people sort of what are you making? Like

how much experience do you have? Like if you

want to, I don't know, say you're a mechanic

and they earn a pretty set amount across the board if you're just in

the shop somewhere, you can talk to someone about what does a

diesel fitter in this realm make? What's the training required?

And then how difficult is it to get into that industry? You

can kind of work that out and then build a roadmap to

sort of be your pathway. But any transition is going to

Yeah, and I guess that's sort of, it's a good thing that what

you've just said is like you can find all that information out. And that's probably, we've

never been in a time where communicating with

anyone has been easier. all the

amount of boys that just put a post up and they go, Oh, Hey, I'm looking to get into this

field that we literally hundreds of people in that field that

are in blokes advice that give them every bit of information they

need to know. That's, that's

essentially all anyone needs to do to find out what they need to know,

whether it's worthwhile taking that jump or

if they need to do more research and maybe check their finances first. So yeah, that's

Yeah. And it's looking at all the different factors. I saw one the other day where some

bloke, he had back problems pretty much. So he was trying to

get out of his industry to something, you know, more suitable for

his longevity, which, you know, smart move. He was young kid,

like 22 or something. And then people were able to chime

in. I think he put out there that he wanted to landscape, probably

Well, and that's where the comments sort of went out. Oh, look, actually gardening

is kind of like a lot easier because you're not moving massive

shit. So maybe look down that route. And then other people would chime

in and be like, this is what I'm doing. And it's actually like the

barrier to entry is not that high. Like you could look into this. So

yeah, having a whole thread of comments is a bit of a cheat sheet helping

I think bloke's advice is a bit of a cheat sheet to most things in life.

It's blokes helping blokes. That's what it's all about. And

that's the thing, when there's 300,000 people in a bloke, it does, in

a bloke. What a lucky bloke. What a lucky bloke.

It's a bit of a train. It's, man. When there's 300,000 people

in a group, it doesn't matter what you're going through. If it's, I

got this problem in my career, if it's, I

don't know, something to do with your family situation, something

to do with, you know, trying to get on your veterans benefits,

it's 300,000 guys and there are

people that have faced exactly the same situation. They've

done the fuck ups and they probably have the solution. Yeah.

So, you know, it's like going to uni, they give you the answers, but

this is free and it's from guys that are, you know, actually like you

Yeah. And I think that's the important thing. It's real world lived experience and

it's boys that are, they've done

exactly what you're trying to do. You just

need to take the advice. I'd say like, you don't need to action it, but

take it all on board. And it's like anything, any questions you

asked, listen, acknowledge

them, do your own preparation though.

I think that, that all comes down to that. You need to, you

need to put in your own, your own prep to know what

it is that you want and action it

Good stuff. That's, that's that. Um, so looking,

I guess at our own careers, like have

you like had any moments where you feel

like you had either big wins or wrong choices?

Every day. Both. Both sometimes. So, I mean, so

I'm in sales. Obviously, you're going

to have wins. You're going to have wrongdoings or

losses, I guess, so to speak. I

think the important thing is, and it sort of touches back on

what we spoke about a few episodes ago, is it's okay to make mistakes as

long as you're learning from them. So, you can't keep

fucking up. and doing the

same thing over and over again, expecting to do the right thing. You

need to utilize what you've done and

change it. Say, no, you got to this point. Okay. I'm

going to go this different direction now. That's

how you get the wins. You're not going to have wins every time though. But

you need to stay consistent and just keep pushing through essentially. And

I don't know, if you ever get stuck, which

is what we're talking about now, know when you need

to change it up. That may not be an industry change, that may not be a job change. Just

change something that you're doing to

Yeah, I think that's definitely

something people need to take on board. is

the catalyst of change is yourself, right?

So you can't be sitting there too much just in

a situation you're not happy with and doing the same thing and

expecting the same result. A big one for me

is like I've chased a lot of things in

the last 10 years and a lot of them have been like very

I don't want to say catastrophic but like a lot of people wouldn't

be happy with, you know, putting so much time and so much effort into

something like that. And, you know,

it was financially costly, like maybe I was working, there was

It was a lot of two-minute noodles because I made the decision. I wanted to work for

myself. I wanted to do this thing. But I hadn't really got the skill sets

for it. I went in hard. I jumped in. And

Do you reckon that's a lack of preparation? Or was that just lack of

Lack of knowledge, uninformed optimism. I

saw people doing all this cool stuff. I'm like, I can do that too. But

very much what we're doing now in this space.

But we've aligned ourselves with people that know exactly what they're doing.

And we've set ourselves up with preparation. I

think the big thing is we knew this

wasn't our forte. So we've reached out to people

that it was. And not being afraid to ask the question is

Yeah. And looking back at

like those failures, right. If I

didn't do them, I wouldn't be in this situation. So yeah,

you can look at it like a failure in the moment, but realistically it's

kind of just a course of actually trying things, so

I don't regret it. Like, yeah, it was wasted time, it created a

lot of hardships, but it was learning how

to get through and navigate those sort of things. So I think as long

as guys are not completely uninformed and

think, hey, if I jump ship, go solo, in six

months I'll be making twice as much money, have all the time for

my family, I'll tell the wife, it's going to be sweet, knowing

that potentially that's not going to happen. And there might be,

At the risk of sounding cliche, is

I think everything you do builds you. Yeah. But

people learn lessons from negativity and

hardships at a much faster rate. Like when it costs you,

like a lot of money, or it costs you a lot of time, or it costs you

the relationships that you care about most, That's

the learning experience because like you feel it.

Yeah. And then, yeah, on the backside

of that, you create this drive that

comes from feeling that into not wanting to feel it

again. And that's a drive to learn things to do it better or,

you know, do things a different way, making sure you're doing it the right way. And

then like you do it again and you still fuck up, but you fuck up a little bit less.

With that, because you're diving real deep here, so

I want to keep on this train of thought. But

sort of touching back to something I asked the group

last Saturday night was, what

do you do when you're in your own sort of head,

I guess you could say, stuck in a spot? And this is

not related to work, but it could be brought on from work. Obviously,

you would have been in a lot of moments during those periods where you were like,

fuck, what am I doing? Why am I still doing this? Like,

what did you see yourself doing to help get out

Yeah, to be honest, like I was, I mean, it's happened a

fair bit, but I was young and dumb. And for a guy that's doing

the Better Bloke project, I didn't handle it always the best way. definitely

didn't talk about it. Like there was times where I was just in my car

like a mess and no one ever knew. I think

guys go through that a lot but there also wasn't

like as many podcasts and stuff out there where

like there was no Goggins. There was no people telling

you that this is all part of the story. So, I

don't know, I just soldiered on, like, it didn't get so bad

to the point where, you know, I was super, super

dark on it. Yeah. But I had so much invested in it that

I just had to... You're sort of too deep to... I was too deep, just keep

going, keep going. Eventually, like,

probably the biggest pivotal moment was when it all got too

much to go into, but I'm like, this is not working. We've

been doing this for quite a long time. I'm

Yeah. Right? Was that a hard decision to make because of

how invested in it by time and financially that you were?

Yeah. And because it was a different future, like I thought my future was here and

I was having to be like, look, it's been too long. It's

not working. I have to be reasonable with myself and

cut this. Like, there was other factors which made it a little bit easier,

but I ended up on the other side of this situation

going, what the fuck do I do? Like,

everything I thought I was going to do doesn't exist anymore. I

So... So from what... from what you felt then is going like,

you know, fuck, what am I going to do? What did

you do? Because obviously, like, yeah, you're in a good position now.

So you've gone through all that turmoil. You bounce

back. You essentially, most

people looking from the outside in would say, yeah, fuck Matty's crushing it,

We're talking seven years ago was this

probably biggest event. So the first thing I did

was just lean straight back on the skills I did have. I was good at e-commerce and

I was good at content creation. And I knew enough people that

I could get myself into the freelance world and actually contract that

stuff. Got money in the door, like I wasn't making anything

but it was enough. It's enough to keep you afloat. It kept me afloat and

I did that for near enough 12 months before

you know got to the stage in life where I'm like it'd be

kind of good to get a house and stuff like that and that's when I'm like

So I went from the freelance stuff for a bit of consistency, a

bit of security and I went looking for jobs. And

I guess people would

Um, yeah, you could call that I'm a brand manager for a

skate company. Yep. So, you know, I do work in an

office. I still film and stuff like that, but, um,

I was able to get into a role like that. Um, fantastic

company boss and stuff like that. And. I

was a right fit at that stage and the company grew and

I was able to grow within the company, which I think is

important because I would have hit a roadblock in

a year or two with my progression if the company wasn't

able to facilitate. So I've been lucky in that aspect because a

lot of people get to this level. Can I get a pay rise? No.

Can I get a promotion? No. Can I do something different? No.

Like at that stage, you need a new company, right? I got

lucky in that stage that, you know, I was able to kind of go in

the direction that I was growing in anyway. Yeah,

No, I think that sort of touches back on what we're talking about with the

monotony of staying in one company and obviously there's

a lot of statistics out there at the moment with you know, back

in, you know, maybe our parents' time or like our grandparents' time, people

left school, stayed in that one job the

entire time, where people

aren't doing that now. The average time spent in a workplace is,

I think, at an all-time low. I could be very wrong with that, but I'm

sure I've read that somewhere that Guys just aren't or

guys and girls aren't staying in a position inside

No, and I can tell you as someone like in management at

a company, people aren't staying. Yeah. Like people are chopping and

changing a lot and you know if you're not in a career like

a doctor or an engineer where you're very specialized, You

know, you can chop and change careers. You can go from this sort of HR role

into this other sort of managing people role without it being

HR and jump all over the place. It's

kind of a good thing because it stops people feeling stuck by

the increased exposure to opportunities. And

But being that you've, like you just mentioned that you've been in

those different roles, obviously in the company you're in now, you've sat in with

a lot of interviews. Yeah. So just say me,

Joe Blow was coming from

a HR position. I didn't want to work in HR. So I've gone and interviewed, I've

got an interview in your company for a completely different

role to HR. What are some tips and tricks that you would

suggest going in to an interview blindly, essentially,

Look, an interview is a competitive environment. Like at

the end of the day, the better the job, the more people want it, you're competing with

them. So, I mean, you can be qualified for a

job like really, really well, but if someone else

is there that's more qualified and more suitable, It

doesn't mean that you couldn't do the job, it just means that there's someone

that you're competing with that's better than you. So how do you sort of

face that? It's upskill. Obviously

the presentation of yourself I think is super important. There's

people like me now sitting in interviews where I

don't really look at resumes like I feel like a

60-year-old would. Yeah. I don't look at uni. I

don't look at a whole bunch of shit. Like, I'm just trying to get an idea

of can they actually do the job. Not because they went to uni eight

How much of a role does it play, them fitting into the team that you're working

around? Like, if someone comes in, they could be the best person on

paper. If they put off fuckwit vibes, How

are you managing that, like, I guess, performance versus fuck-wittability,

Yeah, I've faced that a couple of times. And

not necessarily fuckwit, like you don't hire fuckwits.

Like you're spending a lot of time with these people, it's not worth it. But

there's a couple situations where I'm

not sure if the person has aligned with my

ethics or just like feel like

I could hang out with them. One of the times I

was like, Matt, stop being a dick. He's

good. Higher. Yep. And

it actually turned out not to work. Yeah. Like

it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it's like we weren't really gelling like

there's too much of a difference in our personalities. And then another

time there was this girl who was really

good. Like on paper, all her work was awesome.

And there was another guy who was like also really

good. And I felt like the girl was

better. I felt like I could work with her a little bit better,

Does that make it easier to hire or harder to hire? Because I

know a lot of stereotypes will say there's

a guy in a management role. Oh, this

very attractive young lady is looking

to get the role. He's obviously going to hire her. But it

I'm glad you brought it up. So privilege, pretty

privilege is something that does happen. And I'm

aware that people would think that. So I didn't want to

hire her. Purely just based off the fact that... I didn't want people to think

Yeah, fair. I guess she's not going to walk around with a

No, like they'd see her work, see she's good, but also like I said, no to

this other bloke and blah blah blah. So I actually grapple with this

heaps because I'm like, oh what are you doing? Like I don't want to be

sexist. But I also don't want to be a misogynist and

hire her because she's hot. But I don't want to not hire her because she's a woman. And

I had to actually speak to a whole bunch of people and play

this situation out in my head. I did hire her. And

like regardless of what she looks like, she was great at the job. I made the right decision.

It fucked with my head a bit, but that came back to the type of person you're

going to hire. I felt like I could get on with her better and

that definitely played in. But all of those people had proven

on paper that they could do the job and in the interview. Like,

you need to be able to talk to me and explain what

How, I guess it's probably not as important in your side,

but I feel like it still would be, is the

importance of a handshake. I know it's sort of something we've touched on a little

bit in the last few years anyway. I

personally feel that a handshake says a lot about a bloke. Obviously

the fields that I've worked in are heavily male dominated, so you're

shaking hands with everyone daily. How

important is the handshake to you in obviously

you're sitting, sitting there judging someone that's coming

in to want to work with you? Is that playing into an

Yeah, I think it sort of falls into

the makeup of their overall aesthetic and demeanor. Like,

yeah, a strong handshake's great. Um, but also overall

presentation, like, you know, how are they carrying themselves? Are

they like coming in? I've had a guy come into an interview

in thongs and in the course of the

interview, he kicked his thongs off and put his bare feet up on the chair. Mate,

I am like the most roof-raff fucking dude, but... That's

No, I think that's a good point to make is because I'm

a big believer in like confidence is key with

anything in life. There comes a

point when there's confidence and then arrogance.

And arrogance can be very disrespectful. That

was probably one of those times that... Oh, he had arrogant vibes

And, you know, I didn't call him back and all the rest. I think for

the blokes listening to this, maybe that

are thinking of career change or just potting around in maybe like

lower roles because they're trying to get higher up. It

is that confidence. But also the... way

you're able to articulate or show that you're willing

to be of value to the employer. Like, can you

get across to this guy that even if you don't have all the skills,

you're going to work fucking hard and you're going to be able to make it in

I think it's important that anyone that's going

out and going for an interview and a role, no matter what it is, that's

a very good point to look at is your going

into a business, that business owner wants

to see what his return on investment is for you working

for him. So if you're not going in confident that you're

going to be the best person for that job, why the fuck is he going to hire you?

For sure, and there's been this weird culture form in

the workplace, kind of. It's kind of always happened, but during

COVID, the work from home, all this, like, employees started

getting all this, like, self-confidence in

their ability, and also, like, pushing back on the corporations, like, nah,

I'm not doing my overtime, I'm not doing this, not doing that. But

in the real world, where real people live, and we're all trying to run

businesses and actually make money, you want people that are

gonna put in. And obviously

there's a line where big companies can take the piss out of people. I'm not saying you

should let yourself get railroaded. But if you are looking for

progression, I promise you that the guy that is putting in

extra to someone that is not is

It's also probably good to add that there's

a limit on how much extra you should put in. You don't want to piss off anyone else that you're

Oh, no, don't be that dick. No, it's

you still, it depends on what role you're in. If you're working in a team environment, you

don't want to go out essentially railroading everyone

else to put yourself above

them. Obviously, if that's what your goal is, fucking go

for it. You probably shooting yourself in the foot

to an extent with, uh, with your social activities inside of

work, but I guess it's horses for courses,

essentially, isn't it? It depends what your goals are. And that's sort of something that

before going into that, even before you

even start looking into other roles, people

need to realize the importance of setting out their goals and knowing what

it is that they want to achieve. And that's, that's

Yeah. I want to leave it on a quote and

I want to get your opinion on this cause you kind of just touched

on it, but this hit me hard cause I see a lot of people complaining about

not getting their pay rises and stuff like that. And

I think it's related to their ability to

show their value to the company. If

you're not willing to do more than you're paid for, you'll never be paid for

more than you're doing. You have to willingly give and

graciously receive. Do

I don't think anyone's entitled to anything. I'm a

pretty firm believer in that. If you want something, you fucking work for it. Entitlement

is what's wrong with this country at the moment. It could be a worldwide issue.

I don't know. Australia is pretty bad. Australia is

pretty fucking bad for entitlement at the moment. We

could talk about that for hours, even coming down to participation awards

and all that sort of shit, but I won't. We'll save that for another episode. But

yeah, I don't think anyone should be entitled to anything.

And on that note, we'll call it wraps on another one. Find

us on the socials. Fourth episode in now, so hopefully

you guys have checked it out. Make sure you're following us on all the Better Bloke

pages. The project's about to kick off. We've got some super cool events

in the works, they're coming. Touching back on what we were talking about before,

if anyone's feeling a way where they're stuck or they want to find out

more information about job opportunities or

anyone in that field, jump over to Blokes Advice, the group, reach out.

Private group, Linktree, Blokes Advice, ask the question, put

it out there, you never know what'll come. Sign us off, Rob.

So, last week I may have said stay better, implying

that everyone was already better. So, we'll jump back to

be better. Thanks for tuning into today's episode of

Better Bloke. If you got anything out of it, show some love by dropping a five-star review

If you want to learn more about everything we're doing, head to the description, hit

the links and follow us on the socials. If you want to learn more about the project,