Masks, Control, and The Entrepreneurial Journey: Wes Towers

Summary

In this episode, Christian Brim interviews Wes Towers, the founder of Uplift 360, a digital agency focused on trades and construction. They discuss Wes's journey into entrepreneurship, the challenges of self-doubt, and the importance of personal growth in achieving business success. Wes shares insights on navigating personal challenges, the impact of parenting on business, and the duality of success and personal well-being. They explore the importance of authentic connections, leadership styles, and the effects of COVID-19 on society and business. The conversation emphasizes the need for resilience, the significance of celebrating wins, and the importance of controlling what one can in life and business.

 Takeaways

• Wes started his business at a young age with limited experience.
• Self-doubt is common among entrepreneurs, but it can be overcome.
• Joining a networking group helped Wes build confidence.
• Personal growth is essential for business success.
• Parenting experiences can significantly impact business decisions.
• Success should be measured beyond just financial income.
• Celebrating small wins can boost team morale.
• Leadership styles can evolve based on personal experiences.
• Controlling the controllables is key to managing stress.
• Authentic connections are vital for personal and professional growth.

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https://calendly.com/cbrim/30min

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.518)
Welcome to another episode of the Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Wes Towers of Uplift 360. Wes, welcome to the program.

Wes Towers (00:13.995)
Thanks Christian, pleasure to be with you. Coming at you from Melbourne, Australia, so it's my morning, you're probably your afternoon.

Christian Brim (00:21.486)
Yes, it is. You did the math correctly. I We had a Event where we had clients in last week and he lives in Boston, but he had come from a shoot in Australia it wasn't one of the big cities and I don't remember which it was anyway He flew back on the 17th to Boston then turned around and came back to visit us in Oklahoma City 48 hours later

or 24 hours later. And I'm like, man, you are committed, because I don't think I could have flown all of that and then got back on an airplane. And then spoiler alert, he gets here, and he gets sick. So I it wasn't from anything we had, he must have brought that contagion with him, but had to get an

Wes Towers (01:09.417)
Yeah, no doubt all that travel, that's quite tiring, isn't it? We're quite a distance from the rest of the world, but I suppose the advantage with these types of tools and technology, podcasting, it's fantastic to connect from the other side of the planet. Yeah.

Christian Brim (01:21.856)
It is. It is. But that doesn't replace wanting to go to Australia. That's definitely on my wife's bucket list. we'll be gumming at some point. I'll look you up. So tell us about Uplift 360. What is that?

Wes Towers (01:34.571)
Perfect.

Wes Towers (01:38.549)
Well, it's a digital agency. So we work mostly with trades and construction, industrial brands, those sorts of businesses. My little business, it's been running for over 20 years now. So it's been a wild rollercoaster ride as most businesses are. Ups and downs, challenges, personal challenges. In business, it feels like everything's just amplified. So I enjoy it. I enjoy the journey.

Christian Brim (01:50.702)
Nice.

Christian Brim (02:08.173)
How did you get into being an entrepreneur?

Wes Towers (02:13.345)
It was always a vision of mine. always wanted to be an entrepreneur, start my own business. But it came around a lot earlier than I had anticipated. I'd only really been working for other companies for a few years. I had a friend who tried to start his own agency and it was just too hard. So he said, I'm going to throw in the towel. And I said, well, what are you going to do with your clients that you do have? And he said, well, you can have them. So that was the start of my business.

Christian Brim (02:41.675)
Nice.

Wes Towers (02:43.349)
up, I think there was only two or three clients and I was completely naive to business. Whilst I had a skill set, I knew how to do websites and all the agency stuff, the design, etc. I had no idea how to run a business, so I had no idea how to do a client meeting. I remember the first meeting, just sweating, slow march, red faced, just totally naive, you know, how to run books and do proposals and all this kind of stuff. I felt like a fish out of water.

Christian Brim (02:46.027)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (03:12.609)
How old were you when you did that?

Wes Towers (03:15.809)
Uh, well, it have been, uh, 23 or something like that, from memory 24. Yeah. So...

Christian Brim (03:21.687)
Okay.

Christian Brim (03:25.613)
Yeah, I started my business. I was 26. And yeah, I remember a lot of that feeling like you're kind of faking it like, you know, and that went on for a long while, to be honest with you, until I figured out that nobody knows everything. And a lot of a lot of people are faking it. And I found that the best way to approach it was just

Wes Towers (03:37.279)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (03:54.574)
admit my ignorance and ask, ask the question. I remember the first time I had never been a professional witness and a law firm reached out to me and said, Oh, can, can you be a professional witness? And I'm like, sure. And they, interview me and then they say, okay, well send me your CV. And, know, and I, think she knew when she said it and saw the look in my eye that I had

no idea what she was talking about. But I said, absolutely, I'll send it over. Because CV, especially at that time, this is many, you know, over a decade ago, that wasn't a common term in America. So I had to go figure out what CV meant. But I think what you're talking about is, you know, that fear of you're going to be found out that you don't really know what you're doing. When when did you overcome that?

Wes Towers (04:26.497)
Yes.

Wes Towers (04:36.449)
Right.

Wes Towers (04:53.341)
It just was a slow progression. wasn't any one day. It was just about building some confidence. so similar to you, I started to realize that everyone's a little bit flawed and everyone feels a little bit.

underprepared in some ways. So I joined a networking group, which was a high caliber of business leaders in that group and seeing them week in, week out, I kind of learned a few things by observation and being mentored to a degree with those people. But I realized they all had failings and flaws and personal issues and all of that. And it wasn't just me. So it put my mind at ease to think that, you know, we're all this kind of the same. We might be at different,

areas, stages of developing as a business, but they all started where I started. So get over myself, get on with the business.

Christian Brim (05:44.395)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. I just had a brilliant author and I'm going to recommend the book again to the audience and to you personally with the book is called great leaders live like drug addicts. And Michael Brody weight wrote that book. And he went through rehab as a young man.

And the book is essentially how he translated what he learned in drug rehab to his business life and leadership. And one of the things where he started with is this idea of masks, that we wear masks to compensate for our fears, right? We're afraid of something, so we put on a mask.

Wes Towers (06:29.578)
Yeah.

Wes Towers (06:36.459)
Yeah.

Wes Towers (06:46.497)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (06:46.517)
And this is in any context, it's not business. But I know, again, what we were talking about there is really that mask of I'm gonna be found out that I don't know everything, that I don't know what I need to know. And that can be a real thing, right? Like if someone in business is expecting you to know how to do something and you need to...

to get them comfortable with, I can deliver. But it's kind of an insidious thing where if you're not careful, you're always pretending to be something that you're not quite.

Wes Towers (07:30.995)
Yeah, yeah, the facade, the masks, we all wear them to a degree. I wrote a book as well and draw some similarities with a friend of mine who became a drug addict as well. So business lessons learned through observing how he went about life. And so the mask aspect was a big thing. kind of, we were similar age and we had children

Christian Brim (07:53.452)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (08:00.909)
at the same time roughly so we were really well connected but a few terrible things in his extended family occurred and he reverted back to some of his youthful habits of drugs and so and he got himself into a terrible situation but some of the lessons I could observe in him

Christian Brim (08:12.351)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (08:21.513)
obviously unhealthy, but in a lot of ways, but he could always find a way to get the thing that he wanted the most and that was the drugs. And so in business, sometimes we need that resilience as well to figure out a way, okay, things aren't exactly how we want them to be, but what's it gonna take to get you to where you need to be? So that's the positive learnings from.

Christian Brim (08:29.293)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (08:44.897)
from him. I mentioned it in my book. I changed his name. I can't remember what I changed it to because I wanted to protect his privacy. But yeah, so many lessons from him, but also the mask wearing thing. You know, I've been able to, I can go into some horror stories if you like, but I've been able to compartmentalize, you know, in dire situations, it personally.

Christian Brim (08:45.271)
down.

Christian Brim (09:10.913)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (09:11.073)
but being able to function at a high level in business. And I realized that was beneficial for the short term, but it was no way to live a sustainable and successful life for the long term. So I had to go and get some serious help and figure out some things about myself so I could last the journey.

Christian Brim (09:14.593)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (09:28.991)
Were there, through that process, and thank you very much for being candid, were there things that you learned that you thought were personal? So growth you had or things you learned about yourself that you thought only showed up personally that in fact actually were showing up in the business as well?

Wes Towers (09:53.921)
Probably was. I thought everything business was fine and it was going well. But once I worked on myself, I went to see a psychologist who was really quite progressive and got some things sorted out. Business boomed after that. certainly my personal issues were holding the business back to a degree. Whilst I thought it was great and you know, most people would have thought it was doing well and it was. It had the opportunity to do even better.

Christian Brim (10:09.004)
right.

Christian Brim (10:14.26)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (10:25.015)
Well, yeah, and that's one of the things that's I use that word again, insidious about business is that if you're if you're if you're making money, right? Every everything can be checked off as being okay. And and that's not necessarily the case. And I don't I don't think there's necessarily a correlation between your personal growth.

Wes Towers (10:42.411)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (10:55.411)
and the success of the business. But in other words, you could be successful in business and still stunted personally and not growing personally. But to your point, at some point, you're going to reach the limit of yourself. And once you uncap that and grow yourself, your business explodes.

Wes Towers (11:16.159)
Yeah, 100%. Things can hold us back even if we don't realize it. I mean, yeah, so at the worst, the worst of it all, I was under my desk in the office crying like a baby and I realized I had an important Zoom call to be on in five minutes. So all red-eyed, I didn't put the lights on so they couldn't see my red eyes.

just pretended I had a poor camera. But I closed that deal. The biggest deal with whatever one is a business. And I realized, hey, man, I can, I can compartmentalize really well and get the job done. But this thing's going to kill me if I don't sort it out.

Christian Brim (11:55.53)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (12:00.005)
So that was really a pivotal turning point for me. I've just been just newly separated and I found out it was all of, it was pretty abrupt. So I found out something in the marriage that wasn't, I believe redeemable because it had been going on, I realised for quite a while.

Christian Brim (12:07.403)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (12:19.201)
And so from one day I was in the family home and the next day I was sleeping under the desk at the office, you know, so and then wondering what the kids are going to think because you know, you don't explain all of it. It's unhelpful for them to know the whole story. The kids and to realize, you know, you probably know a bunch of things that might be said about you and you you can't you can't sort of.

Christian Brim (12:40.48)
Right.

Wes Towers (12:43.931)
that you can't sort of vindicate yourself because that's unhelpful for kids. So you know so many challenges at that time. Yes I had to correct some things in my thinking and get on with life.

Christian Brim (12:46.454)
Right.

Christian Brim (12:59.976)
Yeah, I had a conversation with a colleague, a fellow entrepreneur with an adult child that this adult child did not go the direction that they had expected and not necessarily in a harmful way, but it was painful to the father, right? And

Wes Towers (13:26.56)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (13:28.492)
We had a very long conversation and I related to him, you know, in that meeting like all of the failures I had as a parent and you know, some I know, some I don't know, right? Like, mean, you don't really know necessarily how you affect your children until they're grown and adults and then they come back and tell you. And sometimes it's not the things that you thought were screwing them up.

It's it's other things they say, well, know, and you're like, I have no recollection of that. But the conversation kind of turned to this idea of what you control and and, and it really shows up with with rearing children because I know I did as a parent, I thought I had a lot more control than I really did.

Wes Towers (14:26.047)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (14:26.154)
And that sets yourself up to some, some nasty surprises. If you think that you're in control of the situation, whether it's your, your personal relationship or business, and then you end up like, shit, I really didn't have any control over that situation at all. Have you had a, have you had a similar experience?

Wes Towers (14:42.568)
you

Yeah, for sure. mean, it's always the concern as a father to raise your children so that they...

You don't cause too much damage. There's always some, it feels like there's always some level of trauma that we pass on. Maybe it's because of the things we face ourselves, you know, we seem to reflect and echo the same things that happened to us, even if we didn't love that experience. So it's an interesting thing.

Christian Brim (15:11.34)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (15:15.212)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (15:22.165)
I was, because time with the children was taken away from me and that was a massive thing. I was just, I just had to start reflecting on all the good times that I did have. got to coach them in basketball, for example. So I was there at training and game day and taking my daughter to dance and.

Christian Brim (15:34.358)
Hmm.

Wes Towers (15:40.929)
and all these things, all these time investments, while it felt at the time a huge pressure because you're trying to run a business but also do all this stuff, I realized, hey man, I'm so glad that I invested that time when I did because it was soon gone, abruptly gone. So I would say anyone who's a father with the children, cherish that time even though if you're running a business as well, that's...

Christian Brim (15:56.256)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (16:08.317)
It's high stakes, high pressure sometimes, but just invest in your children because that relationship will hopefully last forever.

Christian Brim (16:18.368)
Yeah, they're going to be the one that picks your nursing home. you know, you right. You got to play the long game here, right? But no, I'm glad you said that because I won. Yes, I think we we, we repeat the mistakes that we learned or experienced. Even when we try not to, it usually shows up in a different way.

Wes Towers (16:22.145)
Yeah, true. That's a good way of looking at it.

Yeah.

Christian Brim (16:48.076)
I think that you can, you know, I I've had this conversation on the show multiple times that I think entrepreneurship can be a great tool for personal growth. or it can also be a coping mechanism for you to deal with things that you don't want to deal with. And you know, I've seen this

more times than I can count of entrepreneurs that have had successful businesses as as men and then you know their their marriage is is in shambles or they are completely estranged from their kids or you know their health their their health takes a wallop and I I don't

Wes Towers (17:38.944)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (17:43.752)
I just don't think that's healthy. And that's where I go back to success and the business is kind of agnostic. It can be good, it can be bad. If it's good, it allows you to ignore a lot of things that you should deal with.

Wes Towers (17:58.515)
Yeah, 100%. That's so true. And I suppose the thing to go back to, why did you start business in the first place? And probably the reason was because you could create a lifestyle around it. Maybe that was initially to be able to do things with the family and to provide for the family, obviously as well, a big part of it.

Christian Brim (18:06.765)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (18:21.441)
Maybe there was aspects of freedom that you were chasing as well. So to reconsider and say, hey, am I getting that freedom that I...

Christian Brim (18:30.338)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (18:30.549)
that I was chasing? Am I investing the time with the kids that I, you know, how do I adjust to get, you know, to create the business that I wanted to in the first place? Sometimes it feels like, you you start a business and you're free to work any 80 hours a week that you want, you know, it's when everyone else is working 40 hours. So that's kind of how it feels sometimes.

Christian Brim (18:54.989)
Well, no, I think that's a brilliant observation because I would agree with you on the surface, every entrepreneur starts a business with the expectation. They may not be their motivation, but their expectation that they're going to have time freedom and financial freedom of some mix. And what I find without intentionality is the business becomes the tail that wags the dog.

And it becomes this creature that sucks all of your time, all of your energy, and it can crush you without intentionality. Like you said, you got to be intentional about guarding your family time and guarding your personal time and guarding your mental health. And you've got to say those are non-negotiables and the business takes second seat to those things.

I know personally as an entrepreneur that sometimes feels like failure, right? Like, you know, I could work more, but I choose to do these other things. And then I see other business owners more successful than I do. And then there's kind of that like, well, you could do that if you would just do more work harder, try harder. And then you start feeling guilty.

Wes Towers (20:19.199)
It's all about how we measure success, isn't it? So success is about income. Whilst obviously when you're starting out, that's the first hurdle you need to create a big enough income to sustain yourself. But most of us get to that point, but then we don't change gears and realize, the more that we're getting doesn't actually change our life in a meaningful way. It's just numbers in an account somewhere. Once you hit a certain threshold.

Christian Brim (20:21.517)
100%.

Christian Brim (20:37.974)
Right.

Wes Towers (20:49.185)
It really doesn't make that much difference to us, the income. So it's about thinking about what truly is wealth, the wealth of being, your family, your health. You you don't appreciate your health until you lose it. Everyone says that. My health had deteriorated a lot. So starting eating healthier, going to the gym, those sorts of things, doing some.

Christian Brim (21:00.173)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (21:16.949)
helpful activities like breath work even and just various things to clear my mind as well.

Christian Brim (21:19.639)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:24.555)
Yeah. And, for most people, you know, the, the financial gains of a business don't show up overnight. Right. And so there can be this incremental growth and, you kind of adjust to it. And so you, you don't ever take the opportunity to look back and see how far you've, you've gone and to say, you know, if you'd started out where you did with nothing and you look forward and saw yourself here,

wouldn't you have been satisfied? Wouldn't you have been happy? Wouldn't you have been at a boy? But instead, because it happens gradually, you're like, well, I could be better. I could do more. And the thing that makes me nuts about entrepreneurs is like when they get together socially, I'm not saying all, but there's a tendency for them to be a little bit, you know,

it ends up being a dick measuring contest and it's like, well, you know, how big is your business and how many employees do you have or what's your market share? However they measure it, but never ever have I been in a conversation with entrepreneurs in a social setting of saying like, well, you know, I've grown enough because I want to spend more time with the family or I want to take care of me. I never heard anybody say that.

Wes Towers (22:48.939)
Yeah, it's so true. Maybe it's more of a male entrepreneur aspect as well. It might be just a male trait, isn't it?

Christian Brim (22:59.021)
It probably it probably is I've had women on this show, but I've never asked that explicitly But yes, they probably don't struggle with the same things That we do as entrepreneurs for sure

Wes Towers (23:10.059)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting. so I think you touched on something really interesting and even something I might look at adjusting in my own life, having just listened to what you said. So celebrating the successes. I remember a guy that I know he was running a, he's a friend of mine. He was running a magazine at the time and

Christian Brim (23:28.044)
Hmm.

Wes Towers (23:36.219)
you know, getting a new advertiser on board was a big deal for them. That's kind of what they were selling. That was their business model. So whenever a new customer came on board, they had a bell and they would ring the bell. So the whole office would celebrate. I mean, think little habits like that.

Christian Brim (23:50.721)
Right?

Wes Towers (23:53.429)
that remind everybody, know, we're all on a team, not everyone's selling the ads, of course, but we're all on the team together and we're celebrating the successes. I think maybe I need to start looking at how I celebrate the successes because business is going great. It's never been better, but I'm probably not taking stock of it, you know, enjoying those wins as much as I could.

Christian Brim (24:16.425)
I know I don't I can tell you that this is my 29th year doing this. I don't celebrate the wins enough. And I'll tell you even worse. This has been a long time ago, probably 10 years when you get my age. It's hard to reference. But I remember someone saying one employee said to another, yeah, if you're waiting on Christian to give you a pat on the back, you're going to be waiting a while.

And, you know, at the time, I'm like, yeah, that's probably right. But I didn't, I didn't understand that that was a bad thing. Right? Like, you know, that that what someone just said about you is is not good. And the but that's the way I treated myself, right? Like, I didn't give myself pats on the back. I'm like, this is what you're supposed to do. And, you know, next up, do more and

I think the attitude of gratitude is very powerful, but you have to start with yourself before you can give that gratitude to others.

Wes Towers (25:29.025)
Yeah, that's so true. I mean, you're speaking about team members potentially that, you know, they might lack the confidence that we spoke about earlier on, you know, starting out in business, we have a lack of confidence and we realized everyone has a lack of confidence starting out in business, but employees potentially lack confidence as well. And they need that encouragement when they've done something well that spurs them on too. So it's an interesting thing. Maybe it's just the human condition for all of us.

Christian Brim (25:45.608)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (25:59.607)
you know,

Christian Brim (25:59.906)
Well, let me ask you this because I've, I've, I've, this is kind of an observation I've had. I, grew up with this idea of leadership that was really grounded in what I had experienced in athletics and, and what I had observed in like the culture around the military. And there's this.

you know, for men specifically, there's this stoicism. And then there's, there's also of just like, it's about having this very high expectation and holding everybody to it, which certainly works. I'm not, I'm not saying that it doesn't work, but it came to a point where it didn't work for me. And I had to understand.

I had to understand that really my role is helping my team become better leaders themselves as opposed to like, I'm controlling all the variables and I'm going to, if you're not toeing the line, then I'm going to call you out and you know, have you had a similar experience as a leader in your organization or how is it different?

Wes Towers (27:27.137)
Yeah, well, I suppose similar to you, I think the upbringing and so on and our experience shapes the way we do anything and certainly leadership is a massive part of that. I grew up in a cult church. It wasn't super harmful, but it was definitely really quite controlling and so on. So that was the form of leadership you kind of see that's, you know, so that's unhealthy.

Christian Brim (27:53.549)
Mmm, yeah.

Wes Towers (27:57.267)
Also the other aspect, so there was a bunch of moving parts to the puzzle that made me me. And so dad also, he grew up in an orphanage, so he didn't have any fathering understanding at all. didn't, he didn't grow up in a normal home. So, so he's starting from ground zero. So he did incredibly well given the starting point he came from. But so I had that, in, can understand what, you know, it might've been a little bit difficult.

Christian Brim (28:09.429)
Wow.

Wes Towers (28:27.009)
growing up with that, but then the church layered on top of that with their controlling mechanisms. So I think to a large degree, I wanted to counter that. So I probably read and explored a whole lot of other things and other ideas and philosophies of how to relate to people and care for people. And so probably I learned a lot of stuff just from books and reading and listening to...

Christian Brim (28:29.036)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (28:40.14)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (28:55.765)
various things as well. yeah, if you don't like the circumstances you're in, all you can do is educate yourself on a better way of doing things.

Christian Brim (29:07.661)
I want to put a pin in that and come back to that. But what you just said, I had a comment on. You're 100 % right. And I think that's what entrepreneurs excel at is they see the potential of what could be, not what is. And so if there is something that they don't like, then they say, well, I'm just going to change it. Right. But what showed up for me most of the time

was the things to change were external to me. Yeah. And, and it was, it was about, you know, if something didn't go right, it was, the employees or the customers or the economy or, know, whatever else it, I, for a very long time, never looked in the mirror and said,

Well, maybe what needs to change is me. Yeah, I mean, it's that seems to be a natural human condition of like, if something's wrong, we feel wronged, we're hurt. We don't like the situation. It's always starting with, you know, external as opposed to internal. And the thing the thing we miss there, I think, is that the one thing that we have absolute control over is ourselves.

The external things sometimes we can control most of the times we can't but you know if we if you don't start to say even if even if you're in a you know a situation where someone hurt you and it was a bad situation like you were quote end quote innocent You have to ask your question yourself the question. How did I get myself into that situation? Right like I mean you you contributed even if it was a small amount

to being in that situation, so is there something to learn?

Wes Towers (31:12.149)
Yeah, for sure. It's really interesting. There's always, I suppose it's what created the entrepreneurial spirit you touched on that we try and find a way to create a better outcome and we have that mindset to change things. So things that are inside our control and outside our control, that's something I kind of learned.

from watching footy, we have AFL Australian rules footy. And I remember a coach saying, we control the controllables. And I thought, wow, that's such a interesting thing that we're talking about injuries, know, that unexpected injury mid game and, and so on. And he said, well, we just focus on what we can, we can do. We control the controllables. So, you know, I thought that's exactly how you need to do life. mean, things go wrong. You get injured, your star player goes down. We can't.

Christian Brim (31:41.75)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (32:00.397)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (32:08.875)
dwell on that in that moment, you've got to figure out what changes you might need to make in the structure of your team or make adjustments to get the result that you're trying to go for. if we focus on the things we can't control, that's a stressful scenario. I mean, that's where we get stuck in loops and we can't break out of those loops because we're always thinking in a circular, you keep going around and around and around, you don't move forward.

I I've found myself in those stressful scenarios a few times. Yeah, think control the controllables is a great strategy for life.

Christian Brim (32:47.084)
I love that. We were just having this conversation in our home church this weekend about worry. But the insight that I had was like, we stress about the things that we can't control. And we ignore the things that we can control.

Yeah, and it's like exact opposite of what we should do.

Wes Towers (33:13.461)
Yeah.

Wes Towers (33:19.349)
Yeah, with a speak from a church perspective, the faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So maybe we've got faith in the horrible, the opposite. So the opposite would be true, wouldn't it? So if you have faith is a substance of things hoped for. So it's evidence of things not seen. If you flipped it around and you had a worry or a fear, it's the opposite to the faith. So it becomes evident and manifest in our lives.

Christian Brim (33:26.86)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (33:45.804)
100 %

Wes Towers (33:49.249)
But it's sometimes hard to break out of these things. think really all of us need insight from other people in our world. I don't think we're meant to do life by ourselves. So you need people in your corner, mates, we would call them in Australia, mates that can speak into your life and help you along that path. So, you know, if you get yourself in a rut, they can help dig you out of it.

Christian Brim (34:00.333)
100%.

Christian Brim (34:15.296)
Yes, because the analogy of you can't read the label when you're in the bottle is, is, you know, true for all of us that we can't see ourselves as others see us. Yeah. And, having someone that truly cares about you, that is willing to tell you the truth about yourself is gold. I mean, it's absolute gold.

Wes Towers (34:29.867)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (34:44.748)
But those those relationships are where the most friction are right because someone someone In this conversation with last week I had with the other Father another father said yeah, but but they love you enough to hate you and and that's that's one of the things you find in those relationships where people that do really care about you and

Wes Towers (34:44.843)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (35:13.512)
you they start speaking into your life about the things that they're observing. It's never comfortable. And a lot of times, you know, if we're not willing to be humble about it, can can end up very ugly.

Wes Towers (35:31.361)
Yeah, I think that's so true. We all need the unreasonable friend. Sometimes it just feels unreasonable, but they're 100 % right upon reflection.

Christian Brim (35:36.843)
down.

Christian Brim (35:43.702)
So I want to go back to you. You talked about your upbringing and your father's upbringing. How, if you know, either good or bad, how, how did that work out with you unpacking that as an entrepreneur?

You said you kind of like decided that wasn't what you wanted and so you were actively searching for alternatives. It seemed like very early on. But was there a point where you had to exercise those demons, if you will, or?

Wes Towers (36:22.059)
Yeah, probably as a young man, I probably went a little bit haywire having so much control and then moving out of the home and because I needed to move location for university. So living by myself and things went pretty haywire as often is the case for young people moving out of home. But probably I was slightly more so than others just because of the level of control. But I think once I got over that kind of little

Christian Brim (36:48.491)
Hmm.

Wes Towers (36:51.915)
phase of university and going and getting a career. It just felt like starting from ground zero, like everything was a clean slate. And so I just thought about what I wanted for my own life. Dad did a great job, as I said before, considering the circumstances that he grew up in, he did an incredible job of being a father.

The church thing was, you know, that wasn't helpful for sure. A friend of mine, he also grew up in the church, a different branch, but the same thing. He got kicked out. He's a musician. And they said, you can't play music. Either you choose between your music or your church. And he chose his music. And so like that was a number of years ago. And so that still torments, I can still see that still torments him.

Christian Brim (37:45.366)
Mm.

Wes Towers (37:52.257)
being alienated from his family to a large degree because they don't encourage relationships outside of the church. That's what cults do, that control. So growing up in that scenario wasn't helpful, but it certainly made me think about what...

Christian Brim (37:59.351)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Towers (38:15.187)
Even what the Bible really does say, if you want to look at it from that perspective, I think that the grace message, if you want to think about how it should be and what the message really was, grace is a powerful way to live life. It's such a freeing concept because we're all flawed and we make mistakes, it enables us to get better and move forward.

Christian Brim (38:23.126)
Hmm.

Wes Towers (38:44.619)
and not be bogged down by something that might have gone wrong at some stage.

Christian Brim (38:50.602)
Our pastor this last weekend used the term breathtaking grace. And I'm like, yeah. But to your point, I don't even think it has to be a cult. I think of another colleague where his father was a pastor and they're estranged from his kids, so his grandkids.

You know, it absolutely, whether it's a bona fide cult or not, it seems like the church slash religion ends up causing a lot of division and a lot of friction.

Wes Towers (39:45.121)
Yeah, I think that's right. And oftentimes, I mean, it might be less of a cult, just a regular kind of church and probably for the most part, the leaders have good intentions for the people they're trying to protect and safeguard people. But the overreach actually causes the inverse and opposite, because it's not building people in the right way.

Christian Brim (40:01.696)
Hmm.

Wes Towers (40:11.943)
It's probably good intentions a lot of times, it's just not creating anything.

Christian Brim (40:19.646)
I heard a pastor describe it this way. He asked God what a religious spirit was and he was talking in terms of like the Pharisees and like...

In any case, God said to him, he said, a religious spirit. So religious spirit being a negative term, right? Like you're, you're, using it in a wrong way. God told him, said, when you use the word of God for your purposes, as opposed to my purposes. And I'm like, yeah, that, that is the definition of a religious experience. So.

And I, and I, I think yes, you're in the intent is to protect people, but there's also a lot of people that use it because they're trying to justify themselves. Right. And, ultimately at the end of the day, I think that's a lack of faith because if, if I'm, if I'm comfortable in my faith, I'm happy to share it with you, but I don't need you to believe it. It, that, that doesn't affect my faith just because you don't.

believe what I believe or think the way I think doesn't change how I feel about my faith. Yeah.

Wes Towers (41:45.067)
Yeah, yeah that makes sense. To have your own personal convictions doesn't necessarily mean someone might share the same view and that's perfectly fine. You rock solid on your own beliefs and convictions. I think that's a part of maturity, isn't it? It's just all of us go through that journey where we're not quite sure of ourselves as young men and young people but as we get older we're more confident.

in a whole lot of things.

Christian Brim (42:15.052)
Some we shouldn't be confident in, but you know, yes.

Wes Towers (42:18.123)
Yeah, probably. Yeah, and I suppose that's part of why older people like myself, I'm 47, so older than I was. But the nature in which we communicate to the younger people, kids, for example. So sometimes it feels as though you could just tell them, this is what you should do. And you feel as though that the decisions are simple and that they should.

go a certain way, if we remember back when we were at that stage of life, we didn't necessarily know the right path and decisions and to...

Yeah, sometimes the way in which advice is given needs to be done graciously as well.

Christian Brim (43:07.36)
Yeah, I don't I'm not even sure if like, my current self went back to my 25 year old self and said, Hey, dumbass, do this. I don't even know that I'd listen to myself. I'm I mean, I seriously believe that. So why would I listen to somebody else if I wasn't going to listen to my own?

Yeah, it's nuts. But you said something and I need to recall it to ask the question. Normally I don't have these awkward pauses, but I think it left me. well.

Wes Towers (43:49.544)
haven't we? no doubt.

Christian Brim (43:50.849)
Well, and that's what Randy's there for on the back end to edit that shit out. so, I think, I think for me it's, it's also about being uncomfortable with the unknown. Like I, I think as, as we mature, we, understand that there are some things that are just beyond our understanding, beyond our capacity to understand beyond our ability to control and just being.

humble enough to accept the situation rather than try and control it. I, you know, you talk about confidence. I want to have the confidence of the 75 year old man that's in the gym locker room walking around completely naked. Because I'm like, that's the energy that I want. I'm not quite there yet, but like you've got it dude.

Wes Towers (44:44.897)
Yeah, that's true.

Christian Brim (44:48.415)
Yeah?

Wes Towers (44:52.075)
Yeah, think, yeah, all the things we speak about the human condition and so on, because we do websites and marketing and so on, it feels to me with AI and the rise of AI, there's an erosion of humanity in some of these things. And I think those that are able to focus and bring these things back, the human relationships and connections and...

Christian Brim (44:52.16)
That's what I'm-

Christian Brim (45:09.772)
Mmm.

Wes Towers (45:20.289)
and so on. They're going to be the big winners moving forward as we see more and more AI take over. Those perfected videos that we see, I think people are going to crave the authentic.

Christian Brim (45:20.394)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (45:36.981)
Yes, I a different pastor several months ago had made the comment that he was speaking about America and he didn't cite a study or something. So I don't know the veracity of this claim, but it definitely resonated. He said, we've never been more lonely than we we are right now as a group of people. And that that definitely tracks. And it speaks to what you said that the the authentic connection

with others is the missing piece. And, and it's pre AI. I mean, it, you know, I think with with the internet and then social media that just exasperated that to the point where you've got people that have no real human connection.

Wes Towers (46:23.819)
Yeah, it's a terrible scenario, the social media addiction really. I mean, you see people wandering around the street, just reading there or looking at their phone. I mean, I'm no expert in this field, from what I understand, it's that little dopamine kick that people need all the time. Yeah, there's that. So there's the social aspect, the social media aspect, but also obviously COVID lockdowns were massive.

Christian Brim (46:42.348)
100 %

Christian Brim (46:52.328)
yes.

Wes Towers (46:53.685)
Yeah, here in Australia, we were the worst in Victoria. So we had some of the worst lockdown experiences in the world. So it had certainly a lot of detrimental effects for business and for people, you know, and to find our leader at the time was saying that trust the science, this is what the science says, but it's only been exposed in more recent times that he was just making stuff up.

and he wasn't really supported by the science people in the background. He wasn't actually listening to them, he was overreaching and we live the consequences of that even today with businesses still struggling.

Christian Brim (47:37.311)
Yeah, I made the comment in the midst of it. And I was the only one in my family that did not get the COVID vaccination. And I was harassed by everybody in my family. It was brutal. But I was sitting in that moment. And I'm like, I never really understood how Nazi Germany happened.

Like how does a democratic government and people end up with someone like Adolf Hitler? And what I saw during COVID, not just the governments and what they did, but also the people's reactions. Like how much people will give up out of fear. It really opened my eyes and

Wes Towers (48:23.999)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (48:34.365)
I think to your point fundamentally broke some things. I really do.

Wes Towers (48:39.327)
Yeah, we had two people turning on each other where, you know, as you experience like family members against family members, dobbling people in for silly things upon reflection. Such a brutal time. And as you say, it just sort of happened so quickly. Like I had no understanding that that could even happen. But you know, that's what fear does. We spoke about fear earlier being the opposite to faith.

Christian Brim (48:46.379)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (48:57.238)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (49:01.578)
No.

Wes Towers (49:08.552)
so to speak and

Christian Brim (49:09.416)
Yes, yes, and the opposite and the opposite to love. You you mentioned grace. mean, like that, that to me is their opposite of each other.

Wes Towers (49:11.967)
Yeah, as business latest. Yeah.

Wes Towers (49:22.283)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's crazy in wild times and anyone in business, everything's just amplified to a higher level it feels like. So when crisis like that happens, it affects businesses more if everything just seems to be dialed up a notch. So entrepreneurs.

Christian Brim (49:43.308)
Yeah, in a lot of ways, I mean, we had 10 clients come in from around the country to meet last week. And one of the very first topics we were talking about was this just general anxiety. And sure, there are reasons why. I mean, know, the LLMs and technology that...

I get it, it's real, you have to deal with it. But there's it's kind of beyond that. There's just like this blanket of anxiety that everybody's feeling at a base level.

Wes Towers (50:25.281)
Yeah, 100%. There's so many things going on in the world. We're experiencing much of the same things that you would be. know, cost of living, a lot of people. It seems like here in Australia, the divide for the rich and the poor is growing, which is not ideal. It feels like there's a K-shaped, someone described it as a K-shaped chart. So it's people that are increasing, increasing dramatically and those that are going.

backward are going backward faster than ever before. then we've got inflation problems. That's from COVID largely as well, because, you know, they were throwing around printing a whole bunch of money. And that felt great at the time everyone had this money for nothing. But obviously that comes back to bite eventually and it is now.

Christian Brim (51:01.643)
Yes.

Christian Brim (51:13.332)
You always have to pay the fiddler. Wes, how do people find out more about you and Uplift 360 if they want to learn more?

Wes Towers (51:16.683)
Yes.

Wes Towers (51:25.419)
Yeah, brilliant. Uplift360.com.au is the business. So yeah, digital agency, we do websites. We haven't spoken much about that, but that's cool. We do websites and SEO and all that fun stuff, mainly for trades and construction businesses.

Christian Brim (51:41.142)
Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast, and until next time, remember you are not alone.