When Doors Open And Shut

I had to re-read the email. Surely this was a stitch up. A prankster myself I thought this was the ultimate revenge. I read it again. The McLaren F1 racing team has just invited me to work with them for an ensuing 2 months and emcee their corporate hospitality suite at 7 grand Prix’s across Europe and America. It was around March/April 2007, and I had just finished 3 days with them employed by their racing partner Vodafone at the Melbourne Grand Prix. Arriving at that gig I had no inhibitions. Equally I had no idea about formula 1. Perhaps it was my relaxed and natural manner that appealed to the UK based team. At the time I was project managing the venue I still own and run today. A greenfield pub from scratch. A business partner and I were navigating our way through the start-up wilderness. I had 3 of my 4 kids. The oldest around 8 and a wife who played somewhat of a widow to an early morning radio career, sport, coaching and now business. I couldn’t go.

Reluctantly I sent an email back saying due to these pressing demands I would be unable to run away for 60 days and join this elite circus. Amazingly they still hired me for 2 races that season being the Spanish & British Grand Prix’s. With a world champion in Fernando Alonso and a little known but emerging Lewis Hamilton as the drivers my appetite for the sport exploded. Finally, someone in the finance department did the math and realised the cost employing an Antipodean to travel from one side of the world to the other wasn’t feasible. Fortunately, I have managed to retain the Albert Park gig ever since and enjoyed 2 races in Singapore. I asked the head of hospitality who recruited me where this opportunity was when I was footloose and fancy free some 10 or 11 years earlier. I will never forget her advice. Her assumption was that I wouldn’t have been the person I was that she had seen the potential in. Alternatively, 10 years earlier I may have been more brash and egocentric. Less mature. Less worldly. Marriage, children, and career had left a palette of experience on and within me.

Essentially the timing wasn’t perfect. But when is it? Rather than adopt a ‘sliding doors moment’ approach and ‘what if?’ I often now focus on that everything is exactly as it should be. The days you push harder to tick off your to do list, through to the days where you are almost embarrassed with your productivity or lack of, become better with a “Oh well..that’s what is meant to be” mindset. I am very comfortable now when I reflect that my unorthodox path in life has served me well. I was a butcher, a baker (couldn’t land a gig making candles), de horned calves, a door-to-door salesman, a data traffic controller, an advertising salesman, an emcee, a breakfast radio host and now a publican. I don’t intend to change the varied path either with a gym & health hub on the horizon, a pending podcast and with the right amount of grit hopefully much more.

A theme emerging from a book I’m reading about indifferent pathways titled ‘Range’ written by David Epstein is that you don’t really know what your good at until you have tried it. The 40 years of service in the one job for the ‘gold watch’ days are all but over. Money and fortune are drivers but so too are fulfilment and happiness. There is a balance between setting goals and chasing down dreams and letting life and its wins and losses find us naturally. Only then will real timing take place. Having the ability to see the gift in any negative or the lesson out of any experience is what we all need to be better at.

Possibly one of the most inspiring people I have come across who have pivoted from all sorts of experiences and challenges is my wife. Tania had plans to open a fashion store when a gangly young salesman rode into town and… well… impregnated her! With the business drive put on hold she became my wife and mother to 4 children. Her body was pushed to its nth degree with 4 caesareans. She maneuvered a relatively young husband, moved multiple times for my career and remained a domestic queen. As the kids grew older, she tried her hand at car sales and running functions at our hotel and excelled. But after a thirst for fitness manifested from some health-related issues, she found herself working at a local gym. With the pandemic rendering her unemployed she then decided she could train women herself and started her own health and nutrition model named Fit After Forty. It has been an instant success transforming a section of our home into a fully-fledged gym and now the catalyst for a more industrial building in the city. At the same time, she studied day and night to complete a nutrition degree and is now helping people online with fabulous results. Her band of ‘warriors’ adore her and the energy and knowledge that exudes from her is incredible.

I hear her quite often ask where this drive and energy was 20 or more years ago.

Again, it is time, life, and the universes method of showing you the way. Tania’s challenge getting her ‘body’ back after 4 kids and playing shotgun to my calling has been the best recipe for her to endear herself to other women who have followed her as a client. Had the pandemic not swept in she may well still be working at the gym for someone else. I may not have picked up more books, started writing or undertaken personal development courses. Be open to everything that happens or doesn’t. Believe your best life is only an opportunity away.

Trust that on occasion it isn’t your time. But strike when it is.