Simon Alexander Ong is an award-winning entrepreneur and personal development coach. His Book Energize: Make The Most of Every Moment, is a must-read for anyone who wants to get more out of their business, career, and life.
In this episode, Simon discusses managing your energy instead of time, how to get published, and protecting your personal energy.
Bob: Simon, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Leadpages podcast.
Simon: Bob, thank you so much for having me.
Bob: I cannot wait to hear your tips and ideas around personal energy, and we're going to get into that in just a minute as well. Some of your business tips that you've learned in your entrepreneurial journey. First question though: how do you love to transform the lives of your clients?
Simon: For me, I love transforming the lives of my clients through very different ways, whether it's my coaching, whether it's my speaking, whether it's through the medium of writing. So my posts on social media or the book Energize that I published last year. I'm always interested in experimenting with new ways to impact people's lives because I understand that not everybody receives information in the same way, and that's what keeps me on my toes. It's really understanding how audiences receive that information and to experiment in new ways to relay that information and to inspire them to what is possible.
Bob: That's awesome. And can you give a specific example of someone who has come up to you after one of your talks or came up to you during one of your workshops and said to you, this is how you've impacted me with what you've done?
Simon: Definitely. I remember when I was speaking at an event in London. It was a fireside chat about my work, my journey, and my book. And this lady came up to me at the end after we did the Q&A, and I stayed behind to talk with some of the guests and sign books. She said to me, Simon, I remember first going to your event. You may not remember me back in 2019 at a university here in London. At that time, I think you just finished the corporate world and you were moving into entrepreneurship and running your own business. And she said, Your insights on marketing, thinking differently, and building a startup were so insightful that it inspired me also to explore ways to transition out of the corporate world and to start my own business. And a lot of what I've done was you inspiring me from that moment of meeting you in person to realize that actually, I have what it takes to make these things happen. And very often I'm the one that is stopping me from making progress. And so to have individuals like that come up to me, whether it's in person at an event I'm speaking at or whether it is a direct message on my social media or an email to my website, that is the greatest reward for the work that I get to do, to know that I have positively impacted their lives. Bob, I'm a big believer of the fact that our value as human beings is determined by how much more we have given to the world than we have taken from it. And there's no better feeling than knowing that your work and what you put out into the world is positively impacting people's lives for the better.
Bob: That's fantastic. I love that attitude towards giving to the world the value that you have and obviously that's something that we believe very strongly here at Leadpages. Obviously, as a customer, you know that as well. Let's talk now about that finance background that you have and what had you either frustrated or opportunistic, whatever the case may be, to jump to entrepreneurship instead of pursuing this life and economics that you started to pursue out of university.
Simon: So the reason I ended up pursuing a career in finance was because when I grew up I grew up in a very strict Chinese household and my family informed me as I grew up and I was thinking about what I wanted to do in my life. They informed me that success was defined by how much money I earn and the job that I was pursuing. So for them, if I pursued a job within medicine, accounting, consulting, law or finance, I would be deemed successful in the eyes of my wider family. And so when I was a teenager, I grew up watching films such as Wall Street and Boiler Room, and that made banking and finance a very attractive industry for me to explore. So when I graduated, it was the middle of 2007, which was probably the worst possible time to enter the financial services industry, a year before the crisis sweeping across the planet. And even more so when the first company you work with is Lehman Brothers, which collapsed into administration 14 months after I started as a graduate. The crisis, in some ways, Bob, was the catalyst for me thinking about what I wanted to do beyond finance. I started asking myself questions such as is this really success? And what does success really mean to me? And the second thing I asked myself was what sort of impact I wanted to have in the world? Because I never really thought about that second question until I was going through the crisis and really questioning my career choices. Now, the reason the first question of what success meant to me was an important question to explore was because as I looked outside, and saw people unfulfilled and unhappy in their jobs. What I began to realize quickly was that they were exhausted not because they were physically doing too much, but because, one, they were doing too little of the things that brought them joy. And second, they were running someone else's race. And I realized at that moment that I was running someone else's race. I was living a life not true to myself, but a life for other people. And it took me a while to really understand what success meant for me because up until that point I was very much in a bubble of spending my social life and my working life around people in finance. But I started with curiosity. I asked myself, well, what am I curious about that I could start exploring? And so questions started popping up in my head, such as what could I do beyond finance? What would a career in entrepreneurship look like? If I were to start a business what would I start? What books would I need to start reading in order to change my mindset and to see what I could do with the life I have? What seminars could I attend? What podcasts could I listen to? What audiobooks could I download? And so my curiosity led me down this path of eventually leaving the corporate world and starting my own business.
Bob: That's very cool. And did you have a mentor, either in person or virtual that helped give you a little bit more encouragement along the way? Or did you have to wind up doing this mostly on your own?
Simon: So I would say my very first mentors were those whose books I read. So the books I read were classics such as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz and the Teachings of billionaire Yen Tzu by Colin Turner. So that got me started into having these, I guess, virtual mentors in my head guiding me through the writings in the book. I got involved in a mastermind to access the resources and insight of other people who were on the same journey as me. And that experience, even though it wasn't a formal mentorship but it was a group of mentors, if you will. That experience taught me that the fastest way to make progress in any area of your life, your business or your career is to design an environment around you that makes it impossible not to succeed. So the habits that I aspired to embrace were their normal. These were the habits they were doing every single day. And very quickly I adopted them. I started changing the people I spent time with. I started changing what I read. I started upgrading the intensity of my actions. My goals went from big to galactic to astronomical and it transformed what I saw as possible. The journey from that point became a lot faster than I had anticipated. Within just weeks, for example, Bob, I had my website up. I was speaking at a local event. I had social media channels put up. I was just putting myself out there and collapsing that gap between idea and execution. I had this strong bias to action, which I think is such a crucial ingredient to success that every time I had an idea, I was either experimenting with it or I was researching whether that would be a viable path forward.
Bob: I love that. And many of the listeners know ‘take action, revise later’ is my business philosophy. So I think we're on the same page about that. And we love the opportunity to collapse things right, to make them faster, but to do so in a way that gets a result that's desired or maybe pivot to something different. We'll talk a little bit more about making decisions and choices here in just a bit. But I am curious about a decision you made not too long ago, which was to take what you learned and the expertise you developed and turn it into a book. So first of all, how long did you realize you wanted to make a book and then how did you actually get it to where that was the action you were going to take?
Simon: So I'll share some behind-the-scenes on this because I think it's really cool for people to know how the book came to be and that it wasn't just a straight line of it just happened and I got this deal. So if I rewind to the middle of 2019, I was sitting in my study, I was reviewing the months that had come to the first half of the year and looking forward to the final half of 2019. And when I was looking at my list of priorities, writing a book was on that list, but it was not even close to the top three of the things that I wanted to do. And there's a lot of things that I want to do as an entrepreneur. A couple of weeks after I put that list together, a boutique publisher approached me and said, hey, Simon, have you thought about writing a book? We've been following your work and we think you would have a lot of good stuff to share with the public. And I said, no, but I'd love to have a conversation and see where this goes. So we had a conversation which was very fruitful, and they came back with an offer. But when I looked at the offer, for me, it looked like a win/lose. A win for them and a lose for me. And so when I shared it with Laurie, my wife, she said to me, Simon, if you were only going to write one book, would you be happy with the publisher that has just given you the offer? And of course, the answer was no. But that conversation set me on the path to getting the book deal because I sat down and I reflected on the question that if I was to get a book deal, who would I be happy working with? And so I wrote down all the publisher's names. Penguin, Hay House, Simon Schuster, HarperCollins. And I started researching these companies. I started looking at book launch events that they were hosting in the next few months in my city. So I could go along and I could be inspired by the authors, but I could also connect with some of the editorial team that were attending in support of their author. And I used those months to build up my network within the publishing industry to really understand how publishing a book worked. And it was the end of that year where I sent a bespoke message to all of my contacts within each of the publishing houses. And I look back, and I think the reason I sent it during Christmas was because people tend to be happier. They tend to be more helpful during the Christmas period. And so I psychologically took advantage of that fact. But I didn't get any responses from the publishing houses until a few weeks later. In fact, the only response I got back was from Penguin. And they said to me, in January 2020, would you be open to coming to our office to have a conversation about some of your ideas? And that's really how the book process started. I went to their office. We had a conversation. I was able to share a little bit about my journey and what I would write about if given the opportunity. A few months later, after back-and-forth conversations, meeting other members of the team, I then got the book deal a few weeks after the United Kingdom went into its first lockdown on the back of the COVID Pandemic.
Bob: That's crazy. That time frame, whenever somebody starts to say 2019 is part of their story in 2020, I start to think, well, what was the impact of the pandemic? And obviously, you get a book deal before you wrote the book, which is unusual for a lot of people listening. They tend to write the book, self publish the book. Two or three down the road is the one that they go to a publishing house with. So any other tips that you had once you had the deal, to actually finishing it, to getting your butt in gear and actually typing or writing, however it happened, to getting that book out there?
Simon: Yeah. So a couple of insights I would share, and it goes to one of the things you said just now is that getting a book deal isn't easy. I mean, the obvious way for us to write something and put it out in the world would be to self-publish it. But to get a book deal with a traditional publisher with a big brand name that has a global footprint is tough. It's not easy. And so two things I learned from that process is number one, people do not buy your ideas, your products or your services as much as they buy your energy. So when you go and pitch your idea, when you go and present who you are and share your story, if you're able to energize them through your passion for your work and the passion for what you want to share with the world, that becomes infectious. And also it's about balancing the building of your network with the building of your credibility. So it's fine to go and say, hey, I've got an idea for a book, would you want to work with me? But if you aren't backing that up with credibility, it's very difficult to sell whatever you have. So because I was already pushing out content on social media, through video, through blogs, through articles, through posts, they were able to see across my social media platforms what I was about and the sort of content I was sharing. So that backed up whatever I was talking about during those conversations and meetings. The second lesson I learned is that writing a book is not an easy process. If you have ever gone through the process of writing and then marketing a book, you know it is not an easy process. Writing a book is really about two components. The first 50% of putting a successful book together is making sure you have a decent book, you've got great content and it's going to impact people's lives. Now, that's the piece that most of us know when we put a book together. However, the other 50% is understanding how to market the book. Because if you have a great book but you don't know how to market the book or you're not actively thinking about ways to get it out to a mass market, then no one's really going to know that you have a book and what the book is about. And that was the part I really enjoyed, was understanding how to get that out to the world. So that's the second insight I learned through the experience is it's really two parts to making a book successful, having a good book in the first place, and then being able to market that book in ways that get people talking. And the third insight is that writing a book takes a hell of a lot more time than you can ever budget for, especially when you are writing a book during the COVID Pandemic and have just given birth to a child and have become a parent and speaking, which was a big part of my revenue, collapses overnight. Nobody is running events because nobody can run an event as the COVID Pandemic spread across the planet. And it would be a few months before companies shifted and adapted to virtual conferences and virtual events. And so that made it a lot tougher for me to write the book, having all of that happening in the background. So you just have to budget that you are going to underestimate the amount of hours and work required to finish the book.
Bob: Yeah, those are really great insights. And if anyone listening is interested in getting that social media credibility, I would encourage you to go back a few episodes and listen to the interview I did with Simon's wife, Laurie Wang, and enjoy some YouTube and social media strategies, which we're not going to tap into today. But speaking of family, your wife growing a business during pandemics and so forth, what kind of lessons have you learned over the last couple of years about being a two-entrepreneur family and being able to both succeed in independent enterprises?
Simon: I think what I've learned is something I've known, but it keeps reminding me of its importance. So when Laurie and I got married, we reflected on what made our partnership work. And I think one of the most important factors that made our relationship work was we were constantly working as a team. So what I mean by this is that we were each other's best cheerleader. We were always supporting each other. We were giving words of encouragement, we were chipping in when we needed to chip in. And we saw each other as a team, not as one, better than another, per se. Of course we would be better in some areas than others, and that's where we would complement. We would kind of help each other in the areas we were better at. But ultimately we saw each other as a team, as equals, as people who could succeed very much independently. And when we had our daughter Sienna, that again reminded us of its importance because raising a child as well as running your own businesses in the background of a very turbulent economy and chaotic situation with the COVID pandemic made it even more important for us to work together as a team. And just to give you an example, Bob, of how that worked in practice, I remember a few months into the writing process, I was going through quite a tough time mentally. And I sat down with Laurie. We had a deep conversation and I said to her, I don't think I can hit some of these writing deadlines because all of this is a lot tougher than I imagined. A lot of curveballs had been thrown our way and I had to adapt my business as well as taking care of our daughter. Nobody could visit us because our families were living abroad. We couldn't have childcare because nobody could visit our home. And Laurie said, hey, I'll tell you what, why don't you focus on just getting the book done? And for the next six or seven months, if it gives you the time and the oxygen you need to get it done, I will spend a bit more time taking care of our daughter. I can pause a few things on my side and maybe we reevaluate in six or seven months. And I can pick it up again. But if you need that time to get the book done because I think this will be very important, let's do that. And it was just the openness for both of us to share what was on our mind, the challenges that we were going through, and just being open to support and making some short-term sacrifices in order to win together as a team in the long term. As I often say, when it comes to relationships, either we win together or we learn together. And that approach of acting as a team has been, I think, one of the greatest ingredients for our success.
Bob: I love that. And you said that it took this conversation planning out six, seven months. Did it actually wind up taking six, seven months, or did you wind up having that time compress a little bit faster?
Simon: So it actually took a little bit longer. She ended up kind of focusing more on Sienna and stepping back a bit from work for around ten months. But when she did come back to doing what she wanted to do, she very quickly caught up. And kudos to her. I mean, she very quickly caught up with everything and she started building out her YouTube channel, which has done incredibly well in the last year or so. It's now over 10,000 subscribers, and so it's been great to see that journey. And then when I got the book out, I then in turn supported her from a childcare perspective and allowed her to kind of go out again and build the work that she was doing. A lot of pre-pandemic. And so it's just been nice that we can understand that for each of us, we will go through different seasons in our journey, and when we're going through a particularly tough season, then one of us can support each other.
Bob: I love that. And my last question before we get into your real sweet spot of genius is you speak a lot, you travel a lot, both with and without your family. And now that the pandemic is at a reasonable level, where we're doing most of the things we did pre-2020, any tips you've picked up along the way of managing, again, the energy during your travels? You're in London, but you travel to the US, to Dubai, to other places. How are you managing your travel, energy, and family at the same time?
Simon: Sure. So as best I can, I will try to bring my wife and daughter with me for travel. Obviously, that's not always going to be the case, but when I know I have travel coming up, I tend to lessen the load on my calendar in the days leading up to the travel and the days coming back, because that just allows me to spend more time with the family just before and after I come back for my traveling. But I think that the traveling I do is important. I'm a big believer that proximity is power. And if people can meet me, have a conversation with me, connect with what I do in the cities that I travel to, I think they buy more into the work that I'm doing and the mission that I'm on. And also, from a personal perspective, it gives me new ideas. When I travel to Dubai or Los Angeles or San Diego, I come away with different ideas from the conversations I have, from the people I meet, from what I see in the city, from what I hear of other speakers on the circuit. And so for me, that energizes me. I come back with all of these new insights and ideas that I end up sharing with Laurie, and vice versa. When Laurie travels to do her work, she comes back, and we love sharing the new insights we've gained as a result of traveling and meeting new people.
Bob: Yeah, I love that. And when this episode comes out, you're going to be in New York, I'm going to be in Orlando. So traveling is definitely a fun thing to do, but manage it well.
Let's switch gears now to your sweet spot, your Zone of Genius, which is around energy. Your book Energize came out about two years ago, almost now. And at this point, I think that as people consider what they're doing, how they're spending their time, et cetera, this concept of energy is really important. So I'd love for you to first share what's a misconception people may have before they learn about the kind of work that you do around personal energy.
Simon: So I would elevate it to productivity. So I think the big misconception about productivity is that to be more productive, I have to manage my time better. But actually, what we come to understand is that energy management, not time management, is the ultimate key to productivity. Let's say you are time-rich but energy-poor. What happens is that you end up procrastinating or wasting the time you do have. But when you are energy-rich, even if you are time-poor, you get more done in those hours than most would do in the same time frame. So this is why energy is so important. And when I talk about energy, I see it through four dimensions: physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy, and spiritual energy. So when the majority of us think about energy management, we tend to focus exclusively on physical energy. Just take your mind back to all the New Year's resolutions you would hear from friends at the beginning of each year, and chances are they would all be about physical energy. I'm going to join a gym class. I'm going to improve my diet, I'm going to get more rest. It's all about the physical side of energy management. But we don't tend to focus as much on the mental, emotional and spiritual. And those things are important if we are to live with more purpose and intentionality each and every day.
Bob: Within that idea. I'd love for you to share a bit more about how can we deal with our calendars. One of the chapters I've had the chance to listen to of your audiobook, which was well produced, by the way, hopefully maybe we'll get some tips about that towards the end, but is around energy and protecting your energy. So talk a little bit about these energy shields that we can create with our calendar.
Simon: So when it comes to managing our calendars, we're so quick to say yes to that meeting that has been put into our calendar. We're quick to say yes to the social event that has been put into our calendar. But how quick are we at saying yes for me time, to blocking out time just for ourselves? Because unless we do that, there will always be someone else trying to get that time from us and we'll never have time for ourselves there.
Bob: All right, so I love this idea of making sure that we schedule some time within our calendar. That obviously involves saying yes to some things, saying no to other things. I have listened to your chapter around this and you mentioned an actual friend of mine as well, Bob Berg, who you learned some lessons from around saying no. I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle around the idea of not filling their days with yeses. So can you share some tips that you've learned along the way, maybe from Bob as well, on how to say no in a way that still provides energy to both involved?
Simon: One of the things to do that allows us to protect our time is to think about your not to-do list. Often we think about all the things that we must get done on our to-do list. But how many of us have paused to reflect on what is our not to-do list? What are we committing not to do? So we have the space and oxygen to focus on what matters. And an example I share in my book was from a conversation that I had with Bob Berg, the co-author of a book called The Go-Giver, which had a massive influence on my business journey. And one of the things he said is that when you say no to someone, don't just say no. What you want to do is to express gratitude for being asked to be involved in something and then saying no. So, to give an example, if somebody asked me to be involved in a project which I don't really want to be involved in, I might say something like, thank you so much for considering me for this project. It is an absolute honor that you feel that my strengths and my skills would add value to the future of this project. However, given my commitments at this stage, the answer is no. And I have to make space for the current projects I'm involved in and I don't think I would do this service if I was to be involved in it. So what you're doing is you're still saying no, but you're saying in a way that is respectful of the gesture and explained in a way that you are grateful for them thinking of you.
Bob: I love that and I also enjoyed that you mentioned in the book about how not to fill your no with excuses and can you speak to that a little bit? Because I think it was really fascinating and it hit me hard because it's something I am guilty of all the time. And I appreciate this other strategy which is actually more honoring of both parties involved.
Simon: So often when we say no, we tend to feel the need to give an excuse. So no because of this reason. The problem with that is that when we give an excuse for the no, it gives the other person an opportunity to challenge that excuse. So it could be no because I'm not going to have time to do it next week. It could be challenged by saying, hey, well if you can't do it next week, we can do it next quarter. We're happy to wait until you have time. And so what you want to do is avoid making too many excuses that can be challenged. Just say no. I appreciate the gesture, it's very kind of you to think about me, but this is a no, unfortunately.
Bob: Yeah, I like that. And I like this idea of not basically treating it like it's a sales conversation. Right. Because you will have some very persuasive people who know how to handle objections and guilt you into creating space in your calendar for it. And typically that kind of action doesn't turn out super well, at least I've found in my experience. Let's talk a little bit more about these energy shields that you create to make sure you're protecting your own personal energy but also providing as much maximum energy towards the things that you're focused on. What are some other tips that you have to protect the mental or spiritual or physical time that you have to be able to commit to key, focus things that you want to prioritize?
Simon: I used to say yes to a lot of things, but now I end up saying no to a lot more. And what helps me decide what shields to put into place is understanding what I want to achieve and also understanding my values. So if something does not contribute to me furthering my impact or it is not aligned to my values, the easy answer is no. Now, compared to when I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I now have people working for me. So I have a talent manager, I have a content team, I have people that can help filter all of the inquiries I get. So if somebody approaches me and say, hey Simon, I would love for you to speak at this event or I'd love to do an interview with you at a Fireside chat with this company. Then I'll say great, why don't you talk with my talent manager and she can kind of run through if this will be a great opportunity for the both of us. So having somebody there that can help filter out some of those opportunities just gets me a hell of a lot more time back. So for me, if it allows me to focus on my physical energy i.e I can still commit to getting my daily exercise in, to eating well, to having time to decompress and review my days and weeks, to spending time with family, then those shields are there to protect that. And then beyond that I can evaluate opportunities as they come. And so I think that productivity is therefore less about adding more to your task list, to your schedule and more about doing less so that you can actually enjoy life. Because the tragedy so many of us fall into is we end up living as if we're never going to die and then die having never really lived. So the ability to live in the present moment, to spend it with the people you love, doing the things you love, is an opportunity we should not forget. It's an opportunity we should not put to one side in the pursuit of more.
Bob: I think that's really wise thoughts. Another question I have around energy you talk about in the book is around money. Obviously people listening to this are entrepreneurs. They are not in a nine to five most likely or they want to escape it whenever they can. And so people's relationship with money can be stressful in a lot of different ways. How do you think about money? What's the mindset you have around money that you encourage others to embrace so that they can have a more positive energy around it?
Simon: Sure. The thing with money is that when we look at mental health, your relationship and the amount of money you have or don't have can heavily influence your mental health. And so that is why when we look at our approach to money involves two things. The first is how healthy is your relationship with money? Because if you have a negative relationship with money, that is going to impact your ability to make money. And then second is how you approach money management with the required discipline. So you have to approach your finances as the CEO of your business. So what I mean by that is you have to know your numbers. So many people are afraid to look at their outgoings and their incomings because they don't want to deal with the reality of the situation they're in. I was in a bad position a number of times in my early 20s. But because I was willing to be honest and to face up with what was causing me financial misery. It gave me the opportunity to change things. And by acting as a CEO of my finances, I looked at all of my incomings, all of my outgoings, and evaluated every single line in my statements to see is this something that is absolutely necessary? If not, how can I eliminate or minimize the cost so that I've got greater freedom to use my money towards something more important rather than just spending it for spending sake? And what I realized through not only my own journey but also the conversations I've had with clients I've coached, is that real wealth is not about how much you earn. Real wealth is about how much you keep after you've spent from the money that you earned. And so you may look at someone who says they earned six figures or seven figures, but the real question is, well, how much do you have left in the bank? Once you spend on all of the expenses, rent and the bills you have to pay, that's the real wealth. And so one of the lessons I learned early on, which was important as an entrepreneur, is to always pay myself first, because what happens is as soon as we get money coming in, we spend it first and then we keep whatever's left after, which sometimes can be a very small amount. And so having a healthy relationship with money and being disciplined about how you manage your finances is important if you are to succeed as an entrepreneur. Especially when at the beginning, you might not have a lot of money. So you have to get creative and you have to sweat your assets and sweat what you do have in order to scale what you're doing.
Bob: That's really good advice as well. When you look at the way either you're dealing with money that you shifted that mindset. Did you do that just through hard knocks or was there anyone else or kind of a tool that you might have learned about that helped you understand the ins and outs of business finance? Obviously, you went to school for economics, so maybe you had a little bit of a head start, but anything when it came to the brass tacks of entrepreneurship that helped you out.
Simon: I would say when it comes to money management, what really motivated me to make money in building a business was that money should never be an end goal. Money should be a means goal. So what I mean by this is if you're looking to make a lot of money, which is no bad thing, because the more money you have, the greater the impact you can have and the more choices you can make. But if you are to make a lot of money, the question you want to reflect on is what would that make possible? Why is making money important to me? What opportunities would that bring to me that I cannot access in my current situation? Because what you then come to realize is that money is the equivalent of fuel to a car. So when you drive a car, in order to know how much petrol to put into it, you've got to know your destination and then you know how much fuel to put into your car and then you can start planning for the route ahead. And it's the same thing with money. Money is fuel, but fuel to get you to where. And so if you don't know where you're going, then you can just say, I want to make a lot of money. But there's no specific details about that. A lot of money could be six figures to one business and seven figures to another, or even eight figures to another business. So once you know why you want to make a specific amount of money and how you will use it, then you're giving purpose to the accumulation of money. And then it makes it a hell of a lot easier to understand how to accumulate that wealth in order to achieve your vision or your mission.
Bob: In your book, you mentioned a lot about writing things down, journaling in the morning, making your to-do list, your not to-do list. Do you also recommend kind of a list of where will the money go that I'm accumulating for the wealth? Is that another level?
Simon: Definitely. This is what we call the act of visualization and connecting yourself to the energetic intensity of that future as if it was happening in the present. Because what happens is that when you have a plan of where that money is going to go and what you want to do with it when you get the money, eventually it has a purpose to it and you have the focus of putting into places that would generate a return on investment. The thing is that if you look at studies done on lottery winners, the winners that have no plan on what they would do with the millions if they were to win the national regional lottery jackpot, they end up spending all of that money and in a couple of years time, they end up in a worse position than they were before. They won the money. But the winners who had a plan, the lottery winners who knew what they would do if they were to win the jackpot, actually end up even richer than they were when they won the jackpot because they had a plan, they had a focus for that money. So when it came in, it flew straight out into the exact channels that they were always imagining and visualizing that that money would go into.
Bob: I never understand why people don't just do the annuity in the States. I don't know if this is the way in London, but in the States you have the choice of all of it now and a third of it, or get it over time, like do it over time, you can make as many mistakes as you want over 30 years. Each year you get a fresh start. But I digress.
Simon, this has been awesome. I have one final question for you, which is, along your travels, perhaps you're listening to audiobooks or podcasts or you're doing something to help both energy levels, but also just your learning, because you're a constant learner. Anybody you're focused on learning from these days that you'd love to share with our audience today?
Simon: Good question. So many people. When I travel, I watch lots of documentaries, I listen to audiobooks, I read magazines, I read books, I have conversations. And so I'm really learning from a wide variety of different people, whether it's learning to speak better, communicate better, write better. But I guess the one person that I've been inspired by, purely from a writing perspective, because my book got published last year and I'm excited about the possibility of maybe writing a second book, are the likes of Ryan Holiday and Matt Haig. So, Matt Haig and Ryan Holiday are prolific writers. They release a book on average every two years. And to release that many books requires such dedication and commitment to the craft. And that inspires me. That inspires me because I know how difficult it was to get one done, let alone five, six or seven. And so for them to have achieved what they have achieved, it inspires me. And I'm hoping to learn from what they've gone through in the experience of writing all of those books.
Bob: So as people go on from this conversation, they want to learn more about you. Where can they go to pick up your book, and where else can they connect with you just to be in your space a bit more?
Simon: Sure. Thank you, Bob. So if you would like to get a copy of the book, you can go to the website getenergizebook.com and you can click on one of your favorite retailers to purchase a copy of the book from. In terms of social media, I'm on all the major social media platforms, but the two I use the most are LinkedIn. You can search Simon Alexander Ong and Instagram. My handle on Instagram is @simonalexandero
Bob: Excellent. And for those of you that do go to Getenergizebook.com, it's a perfect example of a book launch landing page built with lead pages. Nice job with that. Thanks so much, Simon, for being on our session today. I really enjoyed it and look forward to seeing that second book come out sometime in the next maybe two years.
Simon: Right. Thank you so much, Bob.
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