bravo charlie club

015 - Explaining the self help industry, what you don’t travel without and how much of your neighbour’s lawn should you mow?

Richard Uren and Ben Flintoff Episode 15

• Richard simplifies the self-help industry down to one powerful principle.
• Travel rituals revealed: Richard always packs tea bags while Ben shares the background behind why he always buys jelly beans upon landing
• Listener feedback re-raises the great snorkel debate and airplane window seat etiquette is dissected.
• The conundrum unpacks how much of your neighbour's lawn you should mow.


Send us a text by clicking here

Join the WhatsApp inner sanctum for early access to all episodes as they drop and share feedback straight to us! Only 48million more subscribers to catch Real Madrid!

Email us through hello@bravocharlie.club

Share a rating or review if you think we are worthy.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bravo Charlie Club podcast, making you 12 and a half minutes more awesome each week. He's Ben. I'm Richard. Let's go, ben. How are you this week?

Speaker 2:

I'm well, mate, and I'm here to welcome listeners from Singapore. As you know, I'm dedicated to welcoming new listener countries as they join us. So that would be hello, salam and ni hao. It's a melting pot of multicultural goodness in Singapore mate, it is indeed I love Singapore.

Speaker 1:

Welcome Singapore, yes, and I think going with only three welcomes is probably not enough. Multicultural goodness in in singapore.

Speaker 2:

So there's indeed, I love singapore, welcome singapore, yes, and I think going with only three welcomes is probably not enough. But, um, yeah, that that's it, we're in, we're in. Hey, um, my linkedin feed and I mainly spend my time on social media, and linkedin, um is all about self-help industry right now, and there's just so many ways to cut it up, and I just wondered is there a way that we can just filter it down to something very simple, because there's too many feel-good?

Speaker 1:

quotes. There's lots of feel-good quotes, isn't there? Really, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Can you help me out? I just want one thing I can write on the wall and just move away.

Speaker 1:

So I saw one recently which I did write down. I kind of scrapbook everything into Apple Notes.

Speaker 2:

You're the one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's me. I saw this come through in Uncle Sean's five tweets. Go, uncle Sean. It said do what makes mornings exciting and nights peaceful I love it, I love it. Yeah, I think it. Um, the credit was to shane parish, because, uh, uncle sean always credits his sources, but uh, I think it just.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, just just captured something nice yep, do what makes mornings exciting, so you're looking forward to getting out of bed.

Speaker 1:

Yep exactly, and nights peaceful.

Speaker 2:

Do what makes nights peaceful, so that you can relax at the end of a day and get off to sleep ready for the next day. Get up to do it all over again. Yeah, that's it, so you've literally solved self-help industry in one sentence.

Speaker 1:

There is some other. You've got to get to that state.

Speaker 2:

I guess You're not going to make a billion dollars from that, but I think you're probably going to be a much happier person than some of the stuff I've seen being posted.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, I've got an example of that. I've got a friend who was born on April 1st, which around the world is referred to as April Fool's Day, as you would know. She's renamed it April Genius Day and she does not even hear April Fool's Day. It just doesn't even occur to her that that's a thing. She just thinks that April 1st is April Genius Day. It's her birthday and it's her mindset.

Speaker 1:

I love it.

Speaker 2:

I reckon that just on her birthday that would make her excited in the morning and peaceful at night. I love it. Yeah, it's just a change in mindset, isn't it Very?

Speaker 1:

nice, Very nice yeah easy.

Speaker 2:

Hey, tell me something. You traveled a lot. We spoke about your Alice Springs trip last week. What do you buy every time you land? What's the one thing that you just have to go past a shop and pick up? There's always something.

Speaker 1:

There is always something. But even before I check into the hotel I usually take tea bags from home, because hotel tea is often terrible and you don't want to buy 100 tea bags while you're out because then you're just carrying 90 tea bags around for a whole trip. So I take a Ziploc bag, I'll throw a handful in let's call it 10 tea bags, maybe for a three-day trip. But I always get milk because they give you those little UHT milk things in hotel rooms. But you'll get four of them and that's one cup of tea.

Speaker 1:

And it doesn't taste that great either, and it's. Uht milk and it's UHT milk yeah, so I'll get a 600ml or a one-litre milk carton and yeah, check in, pop it in the fridge.

Speaker 2:

So hang on. You come from the airport. You're not saying take me to the hotel. You're saying take me to 7-Eleven.

Speaker 1:

Well, if you're in Melbourne, there's a 7-Eleven every 50 metres.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it's usually not that challenging. Yeah, how about yourself, Ben?

Speaker 2:

Jelly beans, jelly beans yeah, I always land and buy jelly beans and I have to send my wife a photo of them.

Speaker 1:

Have you got a type of jelly bean? Do you go jelly belly or do you just go standard glucose jelly bean or like where do you stand?

Speaker 2:

honestly, it's whatever's on sale normally. To be honest, um, being diabetic, you eat enough of them to not be too too attached to it. Um, if I'm really on my game, I actually carry skittles ah, yeah, okay my go-to because they come in a pre-packed 15 gram um. You know, satchel, yeah, sachet, um, but I have to send a photo of them to my wife.

Speaker 2:

To prove that you've purchased A that I've landed safely and B that I've got hypoglycemic backup. The reason for that is my insulin pump used to have a function where it would Bluetooth to your phone and then you could add a care partner and it would send the status to that. And obviously I had Tanya on there while I was doing the beta test. Oh yes, and one day I had a hypo and I was in Melbourne and she had to geolocate me to find out which hotel I was in and then rang the hotel, asked them to take me up a pineapple juice or orange juice, and I got a knock on the door. When you're a hypoglossian, you're basically not very conscious. No, you're conscious, unless it's going really bad, but you're not aware. And I still got this knock on the door and this guy standing there with a pineapple juice saying here your wife says to drink this, and I was like what my wife's here, I don't know what.

Speaker 2:

But it was all because of this technology where she was looking at my blood glucose levels and going, that's fascinating.

Speaker 1:

So was it right? She was right, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I was in all sorts of strife. Yeah, possibly saved my life. Wow, that's full on.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of awesome.

Speaker 2:

Interestingly, I got charged for the pineapple juice, of course, of course.

Speaker 1:

That'll be $17, sir.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, plus service charge. But look, honestly, that's sort of become a thing for us. So I have to tell her I've landed safely and um, and then I've got appropriate backup so it works well and um, haven't had a, haven't had a miss since I've certainly had hypos since, but I've always been prepared so yeah yeah, there you go there you go um. Hey, any listener feedback coming through the door?

Speaker 1:

we did have some listener feedback this week. Ah Ben may have been slightly directed at you with Ari your position on snorkels in pools.

Speaker 2:

Snorkels. This is a gift I keep on giving.

Speaker 1:

It's still going.

Speaker 2:

Hold on, this is the bed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he mentioned that.

Speaker 2:

if you were truly swimming as if training for escaping a burning boat. He asked if you swim without goggles and casual clothes. Oh, fair call, fair call, yeah, yeah, okay. So the call out was I was unhappy with people using snorkels in pools and I said at the time that I'd like to think I was training as if I was swimming away from a burning boat. Yeah, okay, hopefully, ah, we can put this to bed. But you're right, I do swim with goggles and I do wear normal swimming attire, which, I would argue, you could probably strip down to if you're on a boat anyway. But yeah, I'll take it on. Yep, fair call, fair call, I've got one here. El actually asked if you were a window man, richard.

Speaker 1:

I am, I am all the way.

Speaker 2:

Yep, and I'm the aisle man all the way. Who has jurisdiction on the blind in the window?

Speaker 1:

Well as the window man, I'd say the window man, yeah, of course. Well, I think you do. The window man's got control. The aisle man can put a request in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, how is the request normally met? Like if someone leans over, they have to pass some sort of test first.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I've actually ever had anyone ask me to close or open the blind, apart from the stewardess. Yeah, of course. It's like you know we're coming in for landing. Please put your blinds up. What you know? Noise-cancelling headphones are great, so yeah.

Speaker 2:

So there's the ranking. Right there, it's the aisle man at the bottom, the window man in the middle and the stewardess at the top. Yes, yeah, got it, and heaven forbid, we see the pilot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's not. Oh good, that's bad, that's not good yeah, All right, that's good.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for the feedback and if you do want to leave feedback, drop us an email hello at bravocharlieclub. Or join us in the Inner Sanctum the link will be in the show notes or just respond to comments. I noticed at Spotify you can actually leave a comment.

Speaker 1:

I know We've started to get a few come in. It's exciting.

Speaker 2:

I've responded to a couple, which is fun. Got a beautiful comment actually about our piece on eulogies. A gentleman wrote a very heartfelt message about the number of eulogies he'd actually been had to give and how it was an honour and a gift to remember a person. Really appreciated that feedback from listener MR. Hey mate, the conundrum of the week what is the appropriate amount of your neighbour's lawn that you can mow on the sidewalk? The?

Speaker 2:

appropriate amount yeah, so you know. You know, when you got that adjoining, like do you go all the way across to their driveway or do you have to leave a neat line like what's the what's the etiquette?

Speaker 1:

what do you follow? Well, I think it's a bit like you know. I think it's a bit like the whole this week, this monday, next monday kind of thing where it depends on the day you're kicking off from as to whether you use the this or the next. So with the, if you've only got a couple of meters between, I would say, your boundary in their driveway, you just mow up to the driveway because it looks better. But if you've got 15 meters there, you know I'm probably not going to mow 15 meters. I mean, maybe I would. Maybe I would if I'm out there already, if they brought you a beer.

Speaker 1:

If they brought me a beer. Yeah, I could be bribed. I'm easily bribable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you've proven that across the journey. Be bribed I'm easily bribable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you've proven that across the journey, so, uh, so I think, yeah, it's case, case specific it's interesting that you mentioned that, because our home, the the part to the my neighbor's lawn, is about three or four meters, and so it's a no brainer for me. Yeah, you just mow it, just mow that little bit, and then if it took me more than 90 seconds, I'd be going really slow. Yeah, um, but our front section is 15 meters, like it's 12 or 15 meters, like what what you said and my neighbor mows it, so he's mowing this three or four meters section and he's a champion, like, so I just take him a bottle of wine from time to time.

Speaker 2:

I don't even know if he drinks wine, but um, it's always gone. Yeah, um, but um, the nicest person I've probably never spoken to, yeah yeah he just always wants to mow my lawn. So yeah, it's an interesting one. So we haven't really really solved it, though we've just. It's going to come down to the person and to your point. It comes down to the day or how you're feeling.

Speaker 1:

But some amount. I think that there's.

Speaker 2:

I think you need. I'll probably challenge you on that. I think you need to be consistent. If you mowed it one time and then cut it off the second time, a regular neighbor would be like hang on, what have I done? Did I not put the beans out?

Speaker 1:

What's going on here? Yeah?

Speaker 2:

You know, like if you used to give someone a birthday card and then you stopped giving them a birthday card. Like you know, it's a tough one. Like I told everyone on my 50th birthday that I was forgetting everyone's birthdays. I was no longer remembering them because that was a line in the sand. I was very good at remembering birthdays up until a certain point and I was like, nah, I've turned old.

Speaker 1:

You've got processes and systems. Surely they're all in your calendar. You've got a birthday's calendar.

Speaker 2:

I know you do I deleted them?

Speaker 1:

Oh, did you there, you go.

Speaker 2:

Most of them, All the people I told I was forgetting birthdays I deleted theirs. We've moved away from the lawn part, but it's an interesting. That'll bring me on to probably another conundrum, which is how late is too late to mow the lawn Something to unpack next week.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we'll touch on that one. We'll touch on that one. Well, that's it, richard. We've listened to this. We've been BCC'd on our week In next week's show. What we are actually asking is what exactly is a money can't buy experience? Um, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that one. See you next week. Bravo, charlie, club out and that's the pod.

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

The Inner Chief Artwork

The Inner Chief

Greg Layton
My First Million Artwork

My First Million

Hubspot Media
Stuff You Should Know Artwork

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts