Really Good Conversations

About Really Good Conversations

In our hyperconnected world, it feels like we are becoming more disconnected than ever, so we are on a mission to bring people together through conversation. Welcome to 'The Really Good Conversations Podcast', where we delve into the minds of the wonderful people and businesses we have met in the processes of launching our card game. We will be uncovering their secrets, learning about their biggest mistakes, and sharing the key lessons they have taken from it all. So, if you're looking for an engaging chinwag mixed with business insights and a good pinch of fun, you're in the right place. Let's have a really good conversation...

Publisher

Amy Faulkner

Category

business · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

21 May 2023

Latest episode

4 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

79 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   4 Aug 2026

   Social Courage: How 500 Lunches With Strangers Changed My Life with Nick Bendel

   Summary What could change if we stopped hesitating and started more conversations? Nick Bendel challenged himself to have lunch with 500 strangers, transforming from someone who preferred staying home with a book into an advocate for social courage. In this conversation, Nick shares what six years of lunches taught him about rejection, confidence, listening and genuine human connection, and why we do not need to feel ready before we take action. Guest Nick Bendel is an author, speaker and social courage expert. His book, The 500 Lunches Effect: How Social Courage Changes Everything, explores the lessons he learnt from meeting 500 strangers over six years. Overview Nick shares how the project began with a flight from Sydney to Melbourne to meet his very first stranger and why approximately 95 per cent of the people he approached never responded. He explains how repeated rejection changed his relationship with fear, why confidence usually follows action rather than preceding it, and what his lunches revealed about listening, insecurity and the difference between being interesting and being genuinely interested. Nick also reflects on the lunches where the chemistry simply was not there, the difference between a connection and a friendship, and the emotional moment he realised lunch number 500 was complete. Key Outtakes Confidence often comes after taking action, not before it Rejection can become something we learn from rather than avoid Good conversationalists focus on being interested Dominating a conversation can sometimes come from anxiety or insecurity We do not need to turn every connection into a friendship for it to have value For more information on Nick Bendel: https://www.nickbendel.com/ The Book: The 500 Lunches Effect How Social Courage Changes Everything https://www.nickbendel.com/book/ Transcript Amy (00:02) Welcome to the Really Good Conversations podcast. Today's guest, Nick Bendel, is an author, speaker and social courage expert who set himself the challenge of having lunch with 500 strangers. Last year, I was lucky enough to be one of them. Nick has now turned the lessons from those conversations into his new book, The 500 Lunches Effect: How Social Courage Changes Everything. Today, we're talking about connection, confidence, curiosity and what can happen when we have the courage to start the conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Nick. Nick (01:07) Thank you for having me, Amy. Amy (01:09) It is so good to reconnect properly. I looked back and realised it was July last year that I became part of your challenge as one of your stranger lunches. It's amazing to see that you've now reached the 500 mark and beyond, and that it has all come to life in a book. We'll talk first about our experience and then get more into your world. Can you remember our lunch, any of our conversation or what your perception was when you met me last year? Nick (01:52) I do remember. You were lunch number 491 out of 500, and we met at a Thai restaurant about 500 metres from where I live. I've been there a few times since and I even remember the table where we were sitting. I remember you telling me about growing up in the UK and then moving to Australia. You were back in the UK during the pandemic, and it was while you were there that you came up with the Really Good Conversations cards. I'm lucky enough to be a proud owner of some of those cards, and I've used them with various friends. You also have a wonderful branding agency. Amy (02:40) I did put you on the spot there, didn't I, just to see what you might say? Even when we had our lunch, I remember being amazed that when I asked you about other people you had met and experiences you had had along the way, you could recount the number of every person you'd spoken to, their name and what they did. I thought it was amazing that you still had all of that knowledge. Was there anything about our lunch that aligned with what you were hoping would come out of this experiment? Nick (03:20) That's an interesting question. There were a few broad things I was hoping to get from the lunches. I'm an introvert. My idea of a good time is staying at home on my own with a cup of tea and a good book, so having these 500 lunches was very out of character. I wanted to improve my social skills, change my mindset, become more comfortable putting myself out there, become more emotionally open and build a great network. Apart from those things, I was very open-minded about how the lunches would develop. I didn't really have any rules other than wanting to meet a diverse range of people of all ages, backgrounds and professions, which I was able to do. When we had lunch, I was simply looking to meet someone different. One thing I noticed from the lunches in general, and from you in particular, was that most of the people I invited never replied, which of course is a no. The minority who did reply tended to be more positive, open-minded and proactive than the average person, and you are that sort of person. There are very few people who would have the social courage to create the conversation cards you created or to start a podcast. I would say the same social courage, positive spirit and open mind that leads a person to do those things is probably what leads them to want to meet a stranger for lunch at a Thai restaurant. Amy (05:13) That's amazing to hear. If you think back to the start of this six-year challenge in 2019, can you recall those first lunches? What were you most nervous about before lunch number one, and what actually happened? Nick (05:34) Lunch number one is an interesting story because I actually borrowed the idea of having lunch with strangers from a woman in Melbourne named Kaylee Chu. She had 100 lunches and published a book about it in 2019. I discovered the book just before she published it, pre-ordered a copy and was really impressed. I was inspired by the positive changes that had come into her life as a result of those 100 lunches, so I thought I should do something similar. I ended up doing 500 rather than 100. I contacted Kaley and said, "I've just read your book. It's amazing, and you've inspired me to have 500 lunches. Would you do me the honour of being my very first lunch? I'm based in Sydney and you're in Melbourne, so if that's okay with you, I'll fly to Melbourne to have lunch with you." To my delight, she sent me a very friendly reply and said she would like to have lunch. I remember that day very well. It was 27 August 2019. I woke up at 5.00 am at my home in Sydney and left at about 5.15 am. I walked roughly two kilometres to the train station, caught the train to the airport, flew to Melbourne and then took a bus into the centre of the city. I walked into the restaurant where she was waiting for me, and we had lunch for about two and a half hours. She was very confident and poised because she'd had a lot of these lunches. I was nervous and wasn't really sure what was going on, but she was very kind and helped me through it. After our wonderful lunch, I caught a bus back to the airport, flew to Sydney, took the train back towards home and then walked the rest of the way. I walked through the door at 9.00 pm. It was a really intense day and one I'll never forget. Amy (07:29) When you describe yourself as an introvert whose idea of a good time is staying home with a cuppa and a book, that sounds like quite a mammoth day. Nick (07:40) That's a very good point. I hadn't thought about it that way, but yes, flying 1,000 kilometres to have lunch with someone is a mammoth day. Amy (07:50) For people listening, it's worth remembering that you genuinely didn't know Kaylee Chu. You travelled across the country to have lunch with a complete stranger, which many people would find incredibly daunting. You must have approached a lot of people to secure those 500 lunches. How did people tend to respond when you invited them? Did you receive more rejections than acceptances? Nick (08:29) Absolutely. Probably 95 per cent of the people rejected me, and almost all of them said no by not replying. In six years, I think only three, four or perhaps five people replied to say no. I don't hold it against the people who weren't interested. You only need one reason to say no. They might have been busy, thought it was some sort of scam, or assumed I was trying to sell them something or convert them to my religion. Who knows? If someone had invited me to lunch before I started this challenge, I would have said no. I was the introvert who liked being at home on his own. There's no way I would have had lunch with a stranger, so I don't hold it against anyone for not wanting to meet. But the overwhelming majority of people who said no did so by not replying. Amy (09:28) What did that teach you about rejection? Did it knock your confidence at first, and did it become easier to deal with over time? Rejection is something a lot of people fear. Nick (09:47) I'm really glad you brought that up because it was one of the most profound lessons I could have learnt and became transformative in my life. It ultimately led to this concept I became so passionate about: social courage. Social courage means doing something when you don't feel ready, or when you feel you might be judged, criticised, mocked or rejected. There are so many things in life that we want to do, but we hesitate because we're worried about the reaction. When I started sending invitations and people didn't reply, I remember telling myself, "Nick, don't take it personally. It's not personal." That helped, but part of you still feels bad, especially when someone seems really interesting and you hope they want to meet you, but they don't reply. That can be deflating. Through being rejected so many times, I won't say I became immune to rejection, but I developed a different relationship with it. I stopped seeing rejection as the enemy and started seeing it as a friend. I now think rejection isn't something to avoid; it's something to actively pursue, because you can't get good things without risking rejection, and often a lot of it. Receiving all those rejections taught me a valuable life lesson. I'm now comfortable with rejection, and that gives me the opportunity to ask for things I wouldn't have asked for in the past. Amy (11:40) That is brilliant. You've mentioned how capable people are often held back by hesitation, and perhaps we're more capable than we think. What role does hesitation play in the way we connect with people we don't know? Nick (11:59) I think it's massive, in both our professional and personal lives. Generally, when we don't do something that would benefit us, it's not because we don't know we should do it, because we don't understand the benefit, because we lack motivation or even because we don't know how. It's because we hesitate. We worry about how other people might react. Are they going to laugh at us, judge us, call us an idiot or mock us? Are they going to ask what gives us the right to do that? Are we going to feel embarrassed or humiliated? We hesitate at the key moment. I'm generalising, but what stops us is usually not a lack of knowledge or motivation. It's a psychological blockage. If we can overcome that hesitation and build more relationships, both personally and professionally, we're likely to experience more happiness and success in both areas of our lives. The key is not to think there's something wrong with us for experiencing hesitation and doubt. It's perfectly normal, and everyone goes through it. We also shouldn't think we need to become confident before taking action. Confidence comes after the action. Doing scary things where you would normally hesitate is what gives you confidence. Amy (13:42) If we think about what makes a really good conversation, what did this experience teach you about the difference between being interesting and being interested in people? Nick (14:02) I would say being interested is more important than being interesting because, ironically, if you are interested in people, even if they do most of the talking, they're going to think you're interesting. I'm reminded of three things I learnt from people I had lunch with. One was a man named Ronnie. He told me that when he meets someone, he tries to give them the opportunity to speak about something they're really passionate about. I borrowed that idea and found it's a good way to build rapport. If I give you the opportunity to talk about something you're passionate about, whether that's the podcast, the conversation cards or your family, you're going to engage with the conversation and it will mean something to you. That helps us build rapport. It works well, but it's not a trick. You need to be sincere. When you are sincere, the other person senses that and opens up to you in a genuine way. I learnt another valuable lesson from a man named John. He told me that all of us like to teach one or more things to other people, usually something we're passionate about. If you give someone the opportunity to teach you something, it makes them feel valued and can lead to a great connection because they're able to share knowledge that matters to them. Even though they're doing most of the talking, they're likely to think you're a really good conversationalist. The third piece of advice came from one of my early lunch dates, a woman named Julie. She told me that when she goes to a networking event and meets someone for the first time, she pretends they are the most interesting person in the room. Once she frames it that way in her mind, it immediately changes her body language and mindset. If Amy is the most interesting person in the world, I'm going to hang on every word she says and listen closely. You'll sense that, you'll open up and we'll have a great connection. I implemented those three tips a few years ago, and they're incredibly valuable. They lead to much better conversations because you make the other person feel valued and respected, which helps you build rapport much more quickly. Amy (16:53) I love that. I had some questions about how we can help someone feel safe enough to move beyond small talk, and I think everything you've shared can help with that. What do you think most people misunderstand about being a good listener? Nick (17:12) I don't want to be too critical, but most of us are not very good listeners. Most people think listening means keeping quiet until it's their turn to talk. They're not really listening actively. When you're not actively listening, it shows through your body language, and the other person can pick up on it. This all happens at an unconscious level, but much of communication is non-verbal. The biggest thing people get wrong about listening is that they're not really doing it. As a result, they send negative non-verbal cues that the other person picks up on unconsciously, creating tension between them. If we put aside our need to talk and impress the other person, and instead adopt the mindset that everyone has something interesting to share and something we can learn from, we will listen more closely. That will show through our body language, and we'll have a much better connection and conversation. Amy (18:40) That makes me think about the other side of it. What have you discovered when you're talking to a total chatterbox who leaves very little space for you to take part in the conversation? Nick (19:05) That's a very good question. I've changed the way I think about people who do a lot of talking. In the past, I probably would have said, "That person was really annoying. They wouldn't stop talking or let me get a word in." Now, after having lunch with so many different types of people, including many who dominated the conversation, I have a different view. Often, although not always, it's not because they're self-absorbed, don't care what you have to say or don't want to listen. It's because they're feeling anxious and insecure. When we feel that way in a conversation, talking about ourselves can feel most comfortable because there's nothing in the world we know better than ourselves. Often, when someone won't stop talking, it can be due to insecurity. Rather than feeling annoyed, I now tend to empathise with them. I try to see things from their point of view, understand them and get a sense of why they might be talking so much. If they're nervous, I look for opportunities to make them feel more comfortable. I've noticed that the more comfortable they feel, the less likely they are to control the conversation and the more likely they are to turn it into a back-and-forth exchange. Amy (20:46) I can relate to talking more when I'm nervous because silence can feel uncomfortable. From your experience, and without naming names, were there any lunches where you thought, "This is a challenge. This isn't going how I expected it to go"? Nick (21:34) There were perhaps half a dozen lunches where we really struggled to find any chemistry. I never thought it was the other person's fault, and I never thought it was mine. I saw it as the luck of the draw. I have a certain personality, they have a certain personality, and sometimes they simply don't come together. On those occasions, I tried hard to make the conversation flow, and often the other person did as well, but sometimes it just didn't work. If you meet enough people, sooner or later that's going to happen. Amy (22:14) You've met hundreds of people. What did the project teach you about the difference between connection and friendship? Nick (22:25) Friendship requires some form of emotional connection, which is often down to how two personalities come together. It also requires emotional openness from both parties, as well as some commonality in interests and values. That is very different from a casual acquaintance or connection. You can have perfectly good and enjoyable relationships with casual contacts: someone you talk to occasionally at work, someone you meet through business circles or a parent you see each weekend at your child's sport. Those conversations might last only a few minutes and then be over. We don't need to put pressure on ourselves to turn every connection into a strong friendship. Casual acquaintances can be enough, although it's also important to have a few strong friends. I tend to think we shouldn't force it. If you feel you need more friends, instead of trying to force a friendship with everyone you meet, try to meet more people. The more people you meet, the more likely you are to develop a genuine friendship. Amy (24:08) I love that. It can become more difficult to make new friends as adults, particularly as we move through different stages of life or relocate somewhere new. I'd like to touch on the book itself. The challenge took place over six years, so at what point did you think this experience could become a book? Nick (24:56) It was very late in the process. I think I started writing it six to eight weeks before I finished the lunches. Throughout those six years, many people asked whether I was planning to write a book. I always said, "I don't have plans to write a book, and I don't have plans not to write one. I'll get to the end and decide." Once I reached the end, I decided I would like to write a book because I wanted a record of my experiences. Having those 500 lunches was the best thing I've ever done in my life. If I didn't create some kind of record, I felt I might look back in five or ten years and regret it. I was never motivated by money. I have nothing against money, and if people listening want to give me a lot of it, I'm not going to talk them out of it. But most books sell either no copies or very few, so if you write a book to make money, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed. My goal was to create a record of my experience and write something meaningful. If I achieved those things, it wouldn't matter whether one person or a million people bought the book. Amy (26:28) You typically wrote a LinkedIn post after each lunch, capturing information about the person and some takeaways from the conversation. When you returned from each lunch, did you have a process for documenting your feelings, observations or anything else you had picked up? Did you create a log of some kind? Nick (26:55) I may have had an advantage because I used to be a journalist. Before I began the lunches, I had already become skilled at listening to people, gathering information, sorting it in my head, deciding what belonged in a story and working out the order and angle. After each lunch, while I was travelling home, much of that process happened naturally in my mind through years of habit. There was often a particular reason I wanted to meet someone. They might have had an interesting job, done something in their past that interested me or been pursuing a project I wanted to learn about. Because there was usually one thing that led me to want to meet them, I would ask a million questions about it because I was genuinely curious. That would naturally form the angle of the post because it was what most of our conversation had been about. Some of the posts almost wrote themselves. Amy (28:03) When you completed the book and looked back across the whole journey, were there any lessons that only came to light through the writing process? Nick (28:27) That's a really good question. Writing the book forced me to take a lot of information that was buried deep inside me and articulate it. To put it another way, and I think I'm paraphrasing Carl Jung, I was making the unconscious conscious. This is information you already know because it's buried inside you, but once you articulate it, you suddenly understand it better. That certainly happened to me with the idea of social courage. Social courage was a theme throughout my lunches, but it had never been articulated, so I wouldn't have been able to explain it. I was practising social courage by organising the lunches and contacting people, most of whom never replied. I also noticed that many of the people I met were very successful or had achieved amazing goals, sometimes in their personal lives, and so many of them had displayed social courage. There were also occasions when they lamented not doing something. Often, the reason they hadn't done it wasn't because they didn't want to or didn't know how. It was because they were worried about what other people would say. Social courage was a theme throughout the lunches, but I wasn't consciously aware of it until I sat down to write the book. That's when it gradually emerged. Amy (30:12) It sounds as though the experience gave you a different perspective on many of the people you met, from the chatterboxes to those with whom there wasn't an immediate connection. But you couldn't stop at 500. How did it feel to reach the end, and what does the continuation of the project look like? Nick (31:05) I'm going to keep having these lunches forever because, when I say it was the best thing I've ever done, that isn't hyperbole. I mean it literally. If it's the best thing I've ever done, why would I stop? I remember reaching my 500th lunch. The two of us walked to the front of the restaurant to pay, then he left while I went back inside to use the bathroom. We said goodbye, I closed the bathroom door and suddenly a wave of emotion flooded over me because I was alone behind that door. I thought, "Wow, this is now over. This incredible adventure is over. I've met so many remarkable people, learnt so much and made some really good friends." I became emotional for a while, but I never wanted it to stop. I'm continuing to meet people. In the 11 months since I finished, I've had lunch with another 19 people. The pace has slowed considerably. Previously, it was 500 lunches over six years, or a little more than 80 a year. Now I'm doing around 19 or 20 a year, and for the foreseeable future it will continue at that slower pace. These lunches give me the opportunity to meet amazing people, learn, improve my social skills and practise social courage, so why would I ever want to stop? Amy (32:39) I love that. It's exactly how I feel about this podcast. Doing these things opens you up to experiences and people you might not otherwise encounter. Before we move on to some Really Good Conversations questions, I'd like to touch on the increasingly digital world we live in. You started this challenge in 2019, so what happened during the COVID period when we were in and out of lockdowns? Did you pause the project or move any of it online? Nick (33:20) I'm in Sydney and, for those who aren't familiar with what happened here, we had two lockdowns: one in 2020 and another in 2021. During the first lockdown, I had Zoom lunches. They were good, but not as good as the real thing. During Sydney's second lockdown in 2021, I decided against having any Zoom lunches because I wanted to wait for face-to-face meetings. One benefit of those Zoom lunches was the opportunity to meet people from outside Sydney. If I was going to have a Zoom lunch with someone in Sydney, I might as well wait and meet them face to face. So many of the people I met on Zoom were in other parts of Australia or overseas. Amy (34:13) That is one of the benefits of the digital space. From experiencing both formats, what do face-to-face conversations offer that digital communication can't fully replicate? Nick (34:28) Face-to-face conversation is so much better because so much communication is non-verbal. It's body language and tone. You do get some sense of both through video, but it isn't the same. There's something about being opposite someone in real life that leads to a deeper conversation, a more powerful connection and a more lasting relationship. Amy (35:02) Thank you for everything you've shared. It's a fascinating topic, and I love the challenge and experience you've been through. I can see how it will continue to evolve and adapt. I'm now going to ask you some questions from our cards, and I'm pleased to hear that you've used your pack with some of your friends. Question number one: if you came with a warning label, what would it say? Nick (35:36) This one's easy: "Warning: this guy will ask you a lot of questions." Amy (35:41) Brilliant. Question number two: what is one piece of wisdom you would like to pass on to future generations? Nick (35:53) Start before you feel ready. Amy (35:59) I love that. Question number three: what is the biggest misconception people have about you? Nick (36:08) This might sound a bit strange. Quite a few of the people I had lunch with had heard of me before I contacted them because they had been reading about the lunches on LinkedIn. I think they assumed that, because I was meeting all these people, I would be very gregarious, outgoing and talkative. I'm actually the opposite, and I think that surprised a lot of people. Amy (36:44) I love that answer. Has there been a particular conversation that changed the direction of your life or had a profound effect on you? Nick (37:01) Not one particular conversation, but the lunches as a whole made me much more open-minded and emotionally open. Amy (37:16) The final question I ask all my guests is: if you could ask anyone, dead or alive, one question, who would it be and what would you ask? Nick (37:25) I'm going to choose Oprah. One thing I've always admired about her is her incredible people skills and ability to build relationships with all kinds of people. I would ask, "Oprah, what is your number one tip for building relationships with people you've just met?" Amy (37:53) That would be a great answer to hear. Nick, it's been so good catching up with you and having this conversation. Where can our listeners find out more about you? I'll include the links in the show notes. Nick (38:09) Thank you, Amy, for the wonderful chat. People can visit my website, nickbendel.com, or find me on LinkedIn. Amy (38:17) Fantastic. I look forward to hearing about your upcoming lunches and what you do next. You'll need a new challenge after this one. Nick (38:26) Thanks, Amy.

2. 

   20 Jul 2026

   Gut Health, Food Myths & Why Inflammation Isn't Just About What You Eat with Lee Holmes

   Summary How much of our health starts with what's happening in the gut? In this episode, Amy speaks with Lee Holmes, clinical nutritionist, bestselling author and founder of Supercharged Food and Supercharge Your Gut. Lee shares her own health journey, from autoimmune symptoms and fibromyalgia to discovering the role food, gut health and lifestyle can play in healing. They discuss the connection between trauma, chronic stress, the nervous system and inflammation, as well as the food marketing myths we're sold, what to watch out for in supermarkets, and why healing isn't always about having the perfect diet. Guest Lee Holmes is a clinical nutritionist, yoga and meditation teacher, wholefoods chef, bestselling author and founder of Supercharged Food and Supercharge Your Gut. After experiencing autoimmune symptoms and fibromyalgia, Lee began exploring food as medicine and went on to build a global wellness platform, product range and collection of health-focused books. Her latest book, Eat to Heal, explores the connection between trauma, the nervous system, inflammation and chronic illness. Overview Lee Holmes joins Amy to discuss her latest book, Eat to Heal, and the bigger conversation behind it: how food, stress, gut health and the nervous system all connect. Lee shares why symptoms such as bloating, tiredness, inflammation and brain fog shouldn't always be dismissed as "normal", and why the body often gives us clues long before we listen. The conversation also dives into misleading supermarket labels, the low-fat myth, ultra-processed "health" foods, children's food marketing, and why Lee would remove protein bars from the health food aisle. Lee also reflects on building Supercharged Food across Australia, the UK and the US, and shares the wisdom she wishes she had known sooner. Key outtakes Why gut symptoms such as bloating, constipation, diarrhoea and tiredness after eating can be signs your body is trying to communicate with you How chronic stress, trauma and nervous system dysregulation may contribute to inflammation and long-term health issues Why "low fat", "natural", "heart healthy" and "high protein" labels can sometimes be misleading The supermarket section Lee would cull first Why healing isn't about perfection, and why food fear and self-criticism can become part of the problem Find out more: Lee Holmes Supercharged Food https://www.superchargedfood.com/ Eat to Heal - https://superchargedfood.myshopify.com/collections/books/products/eat-to-heal-book-by-lee-holmes Supercharge Your Gut - https://www.superchargeyourgut.com/ Transcript Welcome to the Really Good Conversations podcast. Today I am joined by Lee Holmes, a clinical nutritionist, bestselling author and founder of Supercharged Food and Supercharge Your Gut. After her own experience with autoimmune symptoms and fibromyalgia, Lee built a career around helping people use food, gut health and lifestyle tools to support healing. Her latest book, her 12th, Eat to Heal, explores the connection between trauma, the nervous system and inflammation. It asks whether chronic illness needs to be understood not just through the body, but through our stress responses, our microbiome and our lived experiences. In this conversation, we'll go beyond the book and speak to Lee about the wellness myths we're sold, the supermarket habits that are keeping us stuck and what she wishes more people understood about healing. Welcome to the podcast, Lee. Lee (01:32) Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Amy (01:36) Thank you so much for your time. I've already been diving into the book and I've been loving it. This particular topic of gut health and inflammation is something I've been keen to learn more about. For anyone listening who perhaps doesn't know your work, how would you describe what you do today? Lee (01:57) I'm a qualified clinical nutritionist, as you mentioned. I'm also a yoga and meditation teacher, and I run a business with a product line of 20 different products. My work sits across the holistic side of health and wellness. I love talking to people about the gut and food as medicine. How do you use food as a healing instrument in your life? That's the basis of it. My work cuts across clinical nutrition, gut health, the brain and the nervous system. Amy (02:32) Brilliant. There was a quote in the book that jumped out at me. You said your kitchen is your best form of medicine, without needing a prescription. This is now your 12th book, so where did this journey begin for you? This wasn't your previous career. Lee (02:53) No, it wasn't. Previously, I worked at the ABC in Sydney. I was in the music department, working with The Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas, helping to make their albums and videos. I worked in the children's music department, which I really loved. During that time, I was a single mum and I became really sick. I was going in and out of hospital. At the beginning, I wasn't listening to my body. I kept working and pushing myself, but my symptoms were getting worse. My hair was starting to fall out, I had hives all over my body, I was achy, I was exhausted and I lost a lot of weight. Eventually, when the symptoms were really screaming at me, I went through what I found to be a very complex medical system. I was trying to get answers and going from doctor to doctor to figure out what was wrong. I had lots of needles, scans and tests, and it took a long time. Eventually, I was diagnosed with a non-specific autoimmune problem and fibromyalgia, which is where you feel really tired and achy. I was put on a combination of medications, and those medications also came with side effects. It became hard to differentiate between the symptoms of what was going on and the side effects of the medication I was taking. I spoke to my doctor and said, "Do you think this has anything to do with my diet or my gut?" I had noticed that when I ate certain things, my symptoms would really flare up. They said, "No, nothing to do with what you're eating. It has no relevance." I asked if I could change my diet and give it a go, and they said, "Yes, certainly. It won't make a difference, but you can try." I had to leave work, which was my dream job, so I was really sad about that. But after coming in and out of hospital, I went back into my kitchen and started experimenting at home. For some reason, I knew my tummy needed gentle foods. When I was working full-time as a single parent, I had been putting ready meals in the microwave, not knowing I was reacting to MSG, preservatives and other ingredients in those meals. I went back to basics and started to discover that some of the things I was eating were making my symptoms worse. I changed my diet and started eating very real, gentle, simple foods. I documented it on a blog called superchargedfood.com. From there, I started writing, and writing about it really helped me. Social media had just started, so I began writing little blogs and putting them on Facebook. It was amazing because people from all over the world would contact me and say, "That happened to me. I was put on steroids. I blew up like the Michelin Man. I had the same symptoms as you. Then I changed my diet, my tummy got better, the hives stopped and my hair started to grow back." It was really interesting. From there, I started to write my first book. That's how it all started and how I got into health and wellness. Amy (06:22) Wow. It makes me think that many of us are brought up to believe you go to the doctor and the doctor has the answers. Different generations can have different views on this. My own parents in the UK might say, "I'll go to the doctor for a prescription," and I'll ask, "Have you considered other things, like diet?" As humans, we've been trained to want the quick fix. In some health systems, it can become, "Go and get some medication and that will fix it." But often, for people, that can be masking something deeper. Lee (07:02) Yes, I think it can. When I started looking into food and ingredients, I realised there were certain foods that gave me similar relief from symptoms to the medications I had been given. For example, things like curcumin and turmeric. The curcumin within turmeric is powerfully anti-inflammatory, and it helped a lot of the inflammation in my body without all the side effects from the medication. Then I learnt about garlic. I was exploring different ingredients and how garlic is antiviral and antibacterial. Instead of relying only on the antibiotics that were affecting my gut microbiome, I started to lean more into real foods. They really are quite powerful, and they did help. Obviously, I'm not against medication. If you need medication, I'm not against it. But for this chronic condition, I wanted to find things I could use that felt less damaging in the long run. That's how I looked at it. Amy (08:06) Your latest book, Eat to Heal, explores the connection between trauma, the nervous system and inflammation. In simple terms, what is that connection? Lee (08:18) There is a connection. I didn't learn this at the beginning. I went through years of practising clinical nutrition and studying to become a qualified clinical nutritionist. Over time, I saw more and more patients in my clinic and started to put together the link between trauma, chronic stress and the body. Trauma and chronic stress are not just emotional experiences. They can affect the body and lead to inflammation through a rise in cortisol, blood sugar dysregulation and changes in the gut. Chronic stress can affect the gut lining, the gut microbiome and the vagus nerve, which is part of the communication between the gut and the brain. These things work together and can keep your nervous system in fight or flight. You could take the best supplements in the world and eat the best food in the world, but in clinic we were noticing that people with nervous system dysregulation were not getting better. To get to the root cause, I looked at the relationship between the nervous system, the gut and the brain. Amy (09:39) When people hear the word trauma, they often think of one big life event. What do you think is misunderstood about what trauma can actually be? Lee (09:50) Trauma can be a single catastrophic event, but it can also be low-level stress from everyday things, such as relationships, work issues or other stresses. Those things can also keep your body locked in fight or flight. It can absolutely be childhood trauma, but it can also be the smaller stresses within our everyday lives. Our inner critic can also keep us locked in a fight or flight response and keep driving chronic inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation then leads to immune dysregulation. You might notice things in your body and wonder, "Why am I so itchy after that food? Why do I feel so tired? Why can't I get up in the morning? Why is my brain foggy?" A lot of that can be driven by inflammation in the body, and that can come from chronic stress. It's all joined together. It's not one thing or one symptom. Amy (11:01) Absolutely. Even the opening line of the book says, "Tired, achy and fed up? This book is for you." I started reading it and said to my husband, "She's speaking to me." What have you seen in terms of unresolved stress and emotional experiences showing up in the body? Lee (11:23) When your nervous system is chronically activated, it can change your biochemistry. It can affect serotonin and those feel-good chemicals. It can change you biochemically, and the pathways can change as well. Vagus nerve activation and the brain-gut connection can change too. It can change your immune response, including how long you take to get better, or how your immune system is activated by certain environmental factors or foods that you're eating. You can get pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are reactions and cells that happen in the body and can build up. Your immune system can start functioning poorly and become dysregulated. You can get IBS symptoms, bloating and many other things in the body when you're under chronic stress. Amy (12:18) What do you think people get wrong about gut health? Lee (12:21) I think people assume it's normal to have diarrhoea, constipation or gas, and that these things are just part of life. But they're not normal. It's your body trying to communicate with you. It's trying to tell you something. It might be telling you that your microbiome is off. Perhaps you've been drinking too much, eating too many sweet things or eating too many processed foods, and that balance has shifted. That might be what's driving things like bloating and tiredness after eating. Listening and tuning into your body is really important. Amy (13:05) From my perspective, gut health feels as though it has become a much more popular topic over the last year or so. How have you seen the industry change? Are more people talking about it or creating products around it? Is there more understanding now than when you started out 15 years ago? Lee (13:26) One hundred percent. There is so much more awareness, which is really great. When you look at the gut, it is the engine room of the body. Everything you eat and drink goes through the gut. It's connected to so many other systems in the body, including the brain and the immune system. Seventy to eighty percent of your immune tissue is located in your gut, and ninety percent of your serotonin is manufactured in your gut. It really is the engine room. I feel like now a lot more people, even in the medical profession, understand how important gut health and the microbiome are, and how keeping the gut healthy can help your immune system work well and make you feel better. Amy (14:18) For people listening and thinking, "I am feeling stressed," where should they begin? How can somebody start to work out whether they have gut issues, whether stress is playing a role, or whether it is a combination of both? Lee (14:29) It can be complicated because there are conflicting messages out there. Firstly, if you're eating certain things and getting a reaction afterwards, perhaps keep a note or a little diary. If you eat processed foods and feel really bad afterwards, take them out of your diet for a little while and see if you feel better. That's one way of doing it. You can also see a nutritionist. There are tests you can do, such as a microbiome test, to see the state of play. You can also go to your GP and speak to them. There are lots of different avenues. It depends on the current state of your gut health. If you're losing weight, getting really bad diarrhoea, feeling exhausted and unable to get out of bed, that's a sign to see a doctor or nutritionist. Amy (15:36) What can be hard is that we can think we're eating healthily and making the right choices, but the products we're buying in the supermarket might contain ingredients that are not as good as the packaging suggests. You do some great supermarket videos where you call out certain products on the shelves. For those listening, what are some of the worst food marketing myths we've been sold? Lee (16:08) There have been a lot of them. I think the low-fat myth is a really big one because I feel it has done enormous damage to people. Low fat is not necessarily good. When fat is stripped out, refined sugars, emulsifiers and highly processed ingredients are often put in. Those things can be damaging to gut health and the lining of your gut, making it harder for you to absorb nutrients from the food you're eating. Even if you think you're eating healthily, low-fat products may contain additives that can damage gut health. New research also shows, in terms of cardiovascular disease, that it's not really about cholesterol as much as it is about inflammation. Inflammation is driving cardiovascular disease. There is new research out there. I think you're better off eating normal whole foods, rather than thinking low-fat products are healthy when they can contain additives that damage gut health. Amy (17:19) I remember, a number of years ago, my mum in the UK was part of one of the weight-loss groups where they measure things in "syns". She was told not to have avocado because avocado was a syn. I thought, "But no, Mum, it's a healthy fat." Then those same companies might also sell low-fat cereal bars or similar products. It can be difficult when you feel you're following guidance from different sources and being put on a particular path. I saw a nutritionist a number of years ago when I was getting wedding-ready, and she said that when you walk into a supermarket, you can pretty much discount the majority of the aisles. The aisles you really want to be in are the fresh fruit and vegetable section, and the proteins. If you think about it, the cereal aisle is largely processed. Lee (18:22) Yes, even fortified foods, such as fortified cereals and products with added nutrition. When you look at them, they're injecting synthetic vitamins into those foods. Synthetic vitamins are not always easy for our bodies to assimilate or process, and some people with sensitive guts can't absorb them well. Fortified foods were a really big thing a few years ago, with iron, calcium and things like that added in. But they're not necessarily better for you. Amy (19:00) It makes me wonder how food companies can get away with this. Sometimes I feel supermarkets need to do more to protect the consumer. I remember learning that ingredients are listed in order of quantity. You might pick something up and see that sugar is one of the first ingredients. That was an eye-opener for me because, at what point are we actually taught how to read labels? Lee (19:40) Becoming your own label detective is really important when it comes to the supermarket. You're absolutely right about the amounts of ingredients and the order they're listed in. I think one of the worst things is when a product says "natural flavours". Natural flavours can mask highly processed foods, ingredients and synthetic compounds. Also, when something says "heart healthy", it can still contain added sugar and other things that distract you. The front of the packet might have something like "heart healthy" written really big and bold, so you're not necessarily turning it over and reading the ingredients list. Then, when you do look, you might see maltodextrin, citric acid, polydextrose, corn syrup and similar ingredients. Those are all highly processed ingredients and not good for you. Amy (20:42) If you could cull a whole section from the supermarket, which would you remove? Which is the worst aisle? Lee (20:49) Do you know what I'd remove? This is going to be controversial, Amy. I would remove the protein bars in the health food aisle. The whole health food aisle, all the protein bars. You would think a protein bar in the health food aisle would be super healthy, but they're not. They're full of ultra-processed ingredients, such as maltodextrin, E-numbers and emulsifiers. Research now shows that certain emulsifiers can strip your gut lining. You can get little holes in your gut lining, or perforations, which can lead to food particles going into the bloodstream. That can lead to dysbiosis. They also call it leaky gut. That can lead to an immune response, which leads to inflammation, which can lead to chronic disease. It sounds crazy, but honestly, in the health food aisle, that's what I would take off the shelves. Amy (21:48) That's great to hear because I do walk down those aisles and feel sceptical. Sugar is an interesting one because now we have sugar-free products, but then there are other ingredients, whether it's stevia or other alternatives. What's your view on alternative sugars? Lee (22:09) For me, I lean towards things like raw honey, a little bit of maple syrup and coconut sugar because they're easy to digest. Coconut sugar can sometimes feed the good bugs in the gut, the prebiotics. Things like erythritol and artificial sugars are not so good. Some artificial sugars can be neurotoxic and can create neuroinflammation and brain fog. There is research out about that as well. I would go back to basics with honey, maple syrup or that kind of thing. Fruit as well. Whole fruit is always really good. Amy (22:51) What is one of the worst things we regularly see in supermarkets? Lee (22:55) I think one of the worst things is the way we market to children, particularly products that are considered natural but have a lot of artificial colours in them. Those dyes and colours can affect sensitive children. Those E-numbers and ingredients can be a problem. I would love to see healthier children's options in the supermarket. Amy (23:25) It is a minefield. As you said, it comes back to basics. Many moons ago, particularly in the UK where I grew up, you had the butcher, the fish market and the fruit shop. Obviously, supermarkets have become bigger and bigger. We've learnt to expect convenience, eating on the go and food we don't have to prepare. So we end up grabbing a lot of this other stuff. Lee (23:55) Yes. Convenient options, lunchbox foods and things like that. Marketers have understood that and created flavours, tastes and appearances designed to entice children and families to buy them. But they can be really detrimental in the long run, especially if you're eating them regularly. Obviously, now and again is fine, but if you can go a little more natural, that's always going to be better. Amy (24:21) We could talk about this topic at length, but I'm also intrigued by your wider business journey. You're originally from the UK, you've been in Australia for many years, and you've built your business across Australia, the UK and the US. How have you managed all of that? Lee (24:44) Thank goodness for the internet. The internet has made it much easier to work and has created closer relationships with other countries, in terms of how we communicate and do business overseas. Obviously, being from England, I love England. It has my heart and I have a beautiful community there, so I go back twice a year. I also head over to America sometimes. We have our products in America as well. I think the world has become smaller in a way because communication has made it easier to connect and stay connected to people. Amy (25:34) When you started with your products, did you launch them in Australia first and then take them overseas? Lee (25:42) Yes, I launched them in Australia first, then into New Zealand, England, the US and Korea. We've got a great relationship with our partners in Korea, and I've been over to Korea, which was really fun. We're expanding across the world, but genuinely, Amy, it's not just about the business for me. It's about reaching as many people as possible with this healthy message and continuing my mission. At the heart of my mission is helping to improve people's health. I want to do that affordably and within the resources people have access to. I'm really passionate about reaching as many people as possible and helping them genuinely feel better, have vibrant lives and have energy. Amy (26:53) Books like this one, and your others, make that more accessible. They provide education around the things we've been talking about, and this book also includes recipes. Out of interest, have you noticed a difference in how people in the UK, US and Australia approach gut health, food and wellness? In my novice opinion, the US seems like a very pharmaceutical-driven culture, and they have so much access to fast food. Everywhere has its own complicated health system, but how do the different markets differ in their approach? Lee (27:40) I would say, with all due respect, that I find the UK to be very healthily sceptical of the health and wellness industry. They are slowly coming around and understanding more about the impact of healthy foods. They are very open now, whereas when I first started, they were quite closed. I feel they are much more open to it now, and they do their own research. They're amazing. I do talks in London and people ask the most interesting questions. They're so clued up. I love that. In America, I feel the pharmaceutical industry has a stronghold on a lot of that industry, but Americans also love to jump onto trends, such as keto, paleo or the latest thing. At the moment, it's peptides and wellness influencers. They're really open, but they go deep into trends. I think Australians sit somewhere between the two. They're healthily sceptical, interested in trends, but also aware and inspirational. We obviously have a big outdoor lifestyle, and that's a big part of life here. As you were telling me, you take your son paddleboarding and do outdoor sports. I think, as a culture, we have more of a health and wellness aspect to who we are. Amy (29:16) I love that. It's interesting because there are differences and nuances in the different countries and what they're open to. Before we go on to some questions from our pack of cards, what's one thing you want people to know that you wish you'd known sooner on your health journey? Lee (29:33) I wish I'd known what I write about in my current book, Eat to Heal, which is that perfectionism is not always a good thing. Having the perfect diet, eating the perfect foods and taking the perfect supplements, it goes much deeper than that. Sometimes not eating something because you're afraid to eat it is probably worse than eating the thing you would have ordered. By that, I also mean the nervous system and the huge role it plays in health and wellness, as well as our thoughts and perfectionism. I used to be a perfectionist. I think I was a typical Virgo perfectionist, trying to do everything right and being self-critical. I think we do that with ourselves in health and wellness. We try to be perfect, we try to do everything well, and we look at each symptom and wonder, "Should I be doing this or that?" rather than looking at ourselves as a whole. This book ties everything together and looks at things in a more holistic way, without being so self-critical. Amy (30:49) I love that. You shared some excellent stories in the book, and one that springs to mind was someone who I think was a yoga teacher. On paper, she had the perfect diet, with lots of salads and healthy foods, but through your work with her, it sounded like her body was almost asking for nourishing, warmer, different styles of food. It is complex and so personal. We're all looking for the quick answer, the "how do I lose five kilos?" information, or the latest dieting trend. But it really is a personal conversation with your own body. Lee (31:33) Yes, I completely agree. I studied Ayurveda as well, which is the ancient medical system from India. When I was doing a lot of my research, I went to India and studied it. That is all about living in alignment with your own constitution. It's about being able to tune in on a daily basis and think, "It's cold today, maybe I'll have a warming stew," or, "I've been travelling a lot, I need some grounding foods." It can be as simple as that. Or, "We're in this season, let's try to eat a little more seasonally." Just little things like that. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of your diet. Amy (32:15) Fascinating. As we're all about conversations and the work that we do, has there ever been a conversation on your journey that shaped you or changed the direction of your life? Lee (32:30) That's a really good question. Let me think about that. I think the conversation I had with myself would be the one that changed my life. Not doctors, experts or researchers I've spoken to, but the conversation I had with myself while living with a chronic condition. I realised that a lot of it was coming from me, my thoughts and my nervous system, rather than all these different inputs. So I think it was the conversation I had with myself. Amy (33:05) That's lovely. Thank you for sharing. Now I'm going to ask you three questions from our pack of Really Good Conversation cards. Question number one: if you had a warning label, what would it be? Lee (33:13) If I had a warning label, it would probably be: be prepared that if you ask me to go and see a movie with you, I'm probably going to be asleep by 8:30pm. When you're on the couch with your partner or a friend, going through Netflix and trying to find something to watch, By the time we've found something, within the first ten minutes I'm asleep. Then I'll keep waking up and asking, "What happened? What happened?" So don't expect to watch a movie with me after 9pm. Amy (33:55) Brilliant. Question number two: what is one piece of wisdom you want to pass on to future generations? Lee (34:02) From my yoga and meditation learning, I think it's really important to try and live in the moment and be present as much as you can. When you're thinking too much about the past or too much about the future, you're missing out on the current moment. I live in Palm Beach and I love walking around my area. Every day, it's a non-negotiable. I go for a little walk from my house to Palm Beach and back. Sometimes I don't even take my headphones. I don't listen to anything. I'm just in the moment, listening to the birds and taking time to enjoy it. That has become the highlight of my day, and I feel it really regulates my nervous system. It's something I think is really good for health. Just a little walk without too many distractions, looking around and noticing things. Amy (34:57) Absolutely. I sometimes do the same when I go for a walk. I realise I don't need to fill my head with anything else right now. Question number three: if you had a superpower, what would it be? Lee (35:10) I think I've got a really good superpower in intuition. I have a lot of dreams, and I'm able to predict things that happen. It happens all the time. For example, I woke up this morning and said to my partner, "I was just dreaming that someone was connecting a hose pipe and it was broken, and water was gushing everywhere." He said, "That's because the guy is here fixing the broken pipe, and he's hosing downstairs." I didn't hear it or anything, so it was really weird. I think it's my intuition. Amy (35:53) Goodness, you've got a bit of a psychic talent there. The last question I love to ask all our guests is, if you could ask someone dead or alive a question, who would it be and what would you ask them? Lee (35:59) I really love poetry, and there is an old-school poet called Alice Duer Miller. She wrote a book called The White Cliffs around the Second World War. She was American and wrote it about her relationship with Britain, because she had gone over and fallen in love with a Brit. She wrote about how she, as an American, saw Britain. I think Churchill read the book at the time and really loved it. Somehow, it influenced the partnership between England and America. Wouldn't that be fascinating, to see how someone's work, writing or poetry can make a big impact on wider things in the world, including politics? I would love to interview her. Amy (37:08) I love that. Thank you for everything you've shared today. We could talk at length about this topic, but tell our listeners where they can find out more information about you, the new book and your current work. Lee (37:22) The book is called Eat to Heal, and you can buy it at any bookstore. You can also buy it from my website, superchargedfood.com. If you're interested in gut health products, you can find me at superchargeyourgut.com. I'm also on Instagram at Lee Supercharged, with a D, and on Facebook I think I'm Supercharged Food or Lee Supercharged as well. Reach out if you have any questions about gut health or anything like that. We'd love to chat. Amy (37:55) Brilliant. Thank you so much for everything you shared today. Lee (37:59) Thank you for having me. It's been really nice chatting with you. Amy (38:04) Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode and that it's left you with something to reflect on or talk about beyond this conversation. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information on today's guest. If Really Good Conversations are your thing, share this episode with a friend, hit subscribe and join us next time.

3. 

   30 Jun 2026

   Live by your standards, not your excuses with Matt Formston

   Summary What does it really take to stop making excuses and become someone you can trust? This conversation isn't just about blindness, sport or breaking records. Matt Formston AM joins Amy to explore identity, trust, accountability and what it really takes to stop making excuses and become someone you can trust. Guest Matt Formston AM is a world champion surfer, world champion cyclist, Paralympian, Guinness World Record holder, business leader, keynote speaker, husband and father of three. Overview Matt Formston AM has built an extraordinary life across elite sport, business and leadership. Diagnosed with macular dystrophy at the age of five, Matt was told he would lose most of his sight and face a life of limitation. Instead, he went on to become a world champion athlete, business leader and author. In this conversation, Amy and Matt explore why blindness was never his biggest fight, how bullying and anger shaped his early years, and what it took to rebuild himself through trust, accountability and what Matt calls his hard standards. They discuss the difference between genuine limitations and inherited excuses, why "standards without consequences are just wishes", and how self-trust is built one small promise at a time. Key outtakes Why blindness can be deeply isolating, and what people often misunderstand about it The difference between genuine limitations and inherited excuses How Matt's parents helped shape his "Why Not?" mindset Why standards, consistency and time are essential to building trust How one small non-negotiable helped Matt rebuild self-trust For more information: Matt Formston https://www.mattformston.com/ Pre-order the book 'Why not?' https://www.mattformston.com/books/why-not-pre-sale Transcript Amy: Welcome to the Really Good Conversations Podcast. Today I am joined by Matt Formston. Matt is a world champion surfer, world champion cyclist, Paralympian, Guinness World Record holder, business leader, keynote speaker, husband and father of three. At the age of five, Matt was diagnosed with macular dystrophy and told he would lose most of his sight. He now has less than three per cent peripheral vision and no central vision, but has gone on to build an extraordinary life across elite sport, business and leadership. His story is featured in the Netflix documentary The Blind Sea, and his new book Why Not? explores what he calls his eight Hard Standards: the principles that helped him rebuild his life from the inside out. This conversation isn't just about blindness, sport or breaking records. It's about identity, trust, accountability and what it really takes to stop making excuses and become someone you can trust. Welcome to the podcast, Matt. Matt: Thank you, Amy. That was a bit of a mouthful, so I appreciate you getting through all that. Amy: There is certainly a lot to include in your bio, across life, work and sport, so thank you for joining me. People hear about your achievements, the Guinness World Record and the Netflix documentary, but in your book Why Not? you have the opening line: "Blindness was never my biggest fight." So we'll start there. What was? Matt: People often assume that because I'm blind, that is my biggest challenge in life. And there can be an excuse for that. But actually, I went through school and got bullied a lot. Kids would say, "How many fingers am I holding up?" I was one of the first kids in Australia to have a laptop, and I'd write stuff on my laptop, walk away, come back, and they'd highlight everything and delete all my work. It was endless bullying. It escalated to the point where, if I was running after someone, they'd run under a tree branch and duck, and I wouldn't see it, so I'd run straight into it. It was full on. Because of all that, I found that the way to resolve bullying was through physical altercation. If someone bullied me, I would end up fighting them. I learnt that if I hurt someone, they would not bully me again. So I had this learned behaviour that if you fight someone, you get an outcome. Talking never got an outcome. The teachers would say, "It's okay, Matt, they only just did this," because they didn't see the mountain of little things that built up to the absolute destruction of my psychology. I took that behaviour out of school and into early adulthood. I would get into pub fights. I played elite sport through school: representative rugby league, ice hockey, full-contact sports. Against all the odds as a blind kid, I played these sports, but then I lost sport and I basically lost my identity. I went into this spiral. I had bad relationships with women. I had bad behaviour. So my biggest challenge was getting out of that learned behaviour and thinking the whole world was out to get me. That was my biggest challenge: getting my way out of that bad behaviour and getting back to being the kid who was able to be selected in rugby league, rugby union and ice hockey over sighted kids because he put the hard work in. Amy: Gosh. So many of us listening cannot even relate to that experience. School can be hard enough, never mind with a disability and the bullying as well. What do you think most people misunderstand about blindness? Matt: There are so many things, but one thing I would say is that blindness is a very isolating disability. For example, if you go into a pub environment and it's loud, most sighted people start lip-reading without realising they're doing it. If you go into a loud environment one day, put your hand over your mouth and try to communicate with your friends. You'll realise how much you're using your eyes to lip-read. I'm not able to use that skill, so I go into a pub environment and I'm isolated. I'm there by myself. At school, if my mates left the classroom and the teacher said, "Matt, can you just stay back for a bit to make sure you understood the lesson?", they were actually isolating me. I would never find my friends at lunch and I'd spend lunch by myself. Blindness creates a lot of isolation. Obviously, you can't drive, so you're not able to get to places. It really creates a lot of isolation. The other thing I'd say is to do with any sensory disability. People say, "When you lose one sense, your others get stronger." I'm sure you've heard that phrase. Amy: I have, yes. Matt: Because of the amount of times I've told my story now, in interviews and media, I've worked out my take on it. I've spoken to doctors about this and I believe it's accurate. It's not that the sense gets better; it's that your ability to capture the data gets better. You live in a visual world where most of the data you trust, you see with your eyes. That data is supported by things you hear, smell and sense in other ways. I'm not able to trust my eyes, so I don't trust that data. I use data from my ears, for example. I can hear in a courtyard, or I can hear things that will tell me where a certain type of food is. Then I can use my nose to smell and verify that that's what it is. I can smell a chemist. The reason I know my hearing definitely isn't better is because I'm a husband, and I'll always not hear my wife when she asks me to unpack the dishwasher. Amy: I think that's a common husband trait. Matt: Exactly. But it's not about the hearing. It's more about the data not being captured. So the misconception is that when you lose one sense, the others get better. I don't think they do. You just get better at capturing data from those other senses. Amy: That makes a lot of sense. You're tuning into it more and verifying if that's a trustworthy source or not. You were told from a young age that there were things you wouldn't be able to do. How did you learn the difference between a genuine limitation and an inherited excuse? Matt: This is where I have to give credit to my parents. At the age of five, my parents were told at Sydney Eye Hospital by a professor, one of the heads of ophthalmology in Australia, that I was going to go blind. I had full vision until I was five, we believe. They were basically told that the son they had all these aspirations for — getting married, having a job, playing sport — that was all gone. He won't be able to play sport. He won't really get an education. He'll never get a good job. He won't have many friends in life. That was the prognosis. My parents believed the diagnosis: yes, he is going to go blind. But they didn't believe the prognosis. They never told me all that. They protected me from that information. When discrimination happened behind the scenes with my parents, they didn't tell me, "We've been told you can't do this." They just said, "Get on with it. Go and do this." They would deal with the "you're not welcome" conversation until they got to, "Okay, we'll let him have a crack." In the first rugby league team I played on, parents were saying, "You're bad parents for putting your child with a disability in harm's way," rather than, "You're great parents for giving him an opportunity." The other part is that we were brought up in a household where we weren't allowed to use the word "can't". That's where the name of my book, Why Not?, comes from. A lot of people say, "My dad said that too — there's no such thing as can't." But my dad didn't stop there. He would say, "Why not?" It was the worst idea you could ever have to say, "I can't do my homework," or "I can't do something," to my dad, because he would say, "Why not?" And he would keep asking. "Explain more. Explain more." As you start explaining your "can't", you actually start explaining the solution. Then he'd say, "Right, so it's not a 'can't' problem. It's an 'I'm not able to do this yet' problem, or 'I don't have this capacity yet', or 'I need X to help me get to this.'" Then he'd say, "Okay, you've now found what you need to do, so go and do it." Amy: That is amazing. Credit to your parents, because what the medical professionals were saying was a limiting prognosis. That can be such a big problem for people who go through some sort of diagnosis in their lives: the mindset can limit people immediately. Whereas what your father said gave you a different foundation. I remember being told, "There's no such thing as can't," but I don't know how much I was probed beyond that. It probably stopped there, and you were still left thinking, "I can't." Matt: Exactly. How do you get from there to doing it? I think it's the "why not?" part that gets you to the conversation and to the point of saying, "This is my plan now." You've got a plan of how to get there, as opposed to being told you need a miracle to go from "I can't" to "I can." Amy: I love that. I know we touched on this before — you've got three children and I've got a four-and-a-half-year-old as well. I'm trying to instil that mindset in him when I ask him to do something and he says no or that he can't help. I'm trying to get him involved and ask, "What can we do to help you do the thing? Have a go first, and then we'll help you." You share in the book about standards. What were the private standards behind all these public achievements? Matt: There are eight standards, so to reel them all off is a bit tricky. But one thing I'll say is that one of the standards is literally standards. If you talk about a business, for example, you've got values on the wall. Everyone's got their three values or five values. People would probably call them their standards as well. I would challenge that. My definition of a standard is something that actually has a consequence. If it doesn't have a consequence when you don't adhere to it, then it's not a standard. It's a wish. My challenge to businesses is: if it's really a cultural standard, if that's what you say your values are, then if people don't adhere to those, there needs to be a consequence. Otherwise, you're telling the market something that you're not being consistent about. That builds into one of my other standards: trust. I believe everything I've done in sport and business comes back to trust. Especially in an era of AI, where we don't trust our AIs because it always feels like they're just going to tell us what we want to hear. It comes back to this formula that I've built, which is: Standards × Consistency × Time. The standard has to be something that has a consequence. Then you need to do it consistently, showing people and showing yourself that you do it consistently. Then, over time, that builds trust. You can have self-trust, team trust, leadership trust, customer trust. They all apply to the same formula. Amy: What do you think breaks trust faster than people realise? Matt: Not adhering to that formula. If you don't have the standards, or people don't actually know what the standard is, then people don't know what you stand for. Think about global politics at the moment. No one knows what these people stand for because they change their mind every two minutes. Then that comes back to consistency. You might have a standard, but if you're not consistent with it, or if you change it with different people, that will build distrust. In leadership, if you're not treating your team the same way and people are treated differently, that will build distrust. Amy: I guess you can come at the concept of trust from business, family and sport, because in your sporting career you are often relying on other people to be your eyesight. How do you get to a space of giving that total trust to somebody? Matt: It comes back to that formula every time. They've shown me they're going to hit a standard, and they're going to do it consistently over a certain amount of time. Then I know I can trust them. At a sporting level, I got towed into a 51-foot wave. It's a five-storey building of water, and I can't see the wave. Most people who go to Nazaré in Portugal, where the biggest waves in the world are and the records are set, have all these gates before they go. They can look at YouTube and say, "I don't want any part of that." If they get through that gate, they fly to Portugal and stand on the headland, look at the wave and hear the power of the waves smashing against the cliff. That's another gate. If they go through that gate, they go out on the jet ski and can see it from the water. They can still say yes or no. There are all these gates for sighted people. I don't have those gates. I have to use trust with my team. I can't trust my eyes. I can't use that data. The data has to come through my team telling me what it is. Then I get towed into the wave, and my team blows a whistle. I have to trust that when they blow that whistle, they have put me in the right spot, and I drop down a five-storey wall of water. If you're talking about trust, I don't know that there are many things in the world that require much more trust. People die there. Three weeks after I was there, someone died surfing a 30-foot wave. I was on 50-foot waves and I'm blind. There are consequences. But I believe if you build capability and trust in your team, anything is achievable. But you need to build it with the right people, and you need clear standards and consistency. Amy: Communication must be a huge part of this too. If a whistle gets blown, that has to hit at exactly the right moment. It must be a lot of pressure on the other people as well. Matt: It is. And the pressure goes both ways. If I haven't done the training and I die, the guys towing me are the best big wave surfers in the world. We're talking about Dylan Longbottom and Lucas Chumbo. They're literally the best guys in the world. If they kill the blind guy, the world media had already said I was going to die. It's the same narrative, the same voice that told my parents when I was five that he can't do life, he's not going to get a job, he won't play sport, he won't have many friends. The world media said, "He will die at Nazaré. Blind guy can't do this." When I was trying to play rugby league, the mothers were saying my mum was a bad mother because she let me play sport. It's the same voice all the time saying, "He can't. He can't. He can't." But I've built enough trust in myself because I've shown myself that if I have the right standards and I do it consistently, I'll execute. So when the world says I can't now, I just laugh and go, "Well, you're not the expert. I'm the expert in what I'm doing." The other flip side is, if I die there and I haven't built the capacity to do it, then that affects my team. It required me doing a lot of work. I can hold my breath for six minutes. It takes a lot of physical capacity to do that. If my team didn't think I had the capability to do it, they wouldn't do it, because if I die there, they lose their livelihood. They're getting paid by Red Bull and other big brands to do their job. They're not going to get re-signed next year if they kill the blind guy. It was the same with my cycling career. I was on a tandem. If I lean the wrong way, we both die. So the trust is not just about me trusting my team. It's about them trusting me to have the capability to do the things we're doing as well. Amy: With everything you have set out to achieve in life, both in your corporate career and your sporting careers, has a lot of it been driven by a desire to prove people wrong? Matt: Yes, for sure. There's a pivotal part in the book where I talk about how the main thing that changed my life, when I was on that bad path, was that I really wanted to get married. I was having all these failed relationships and I was blaming the other person. "She did this, she did that." You can always blame somebody else. I had just had a failed relationship. On paper, everything looked good. I was a sales director, I had property in Sydney, and on paper everything looked lovely. But I wasn't happy. I didn't think I was thriving. So I wrote down a list of 12 things I wanted in a wife. Even though I can't see it, I just wrote these things on a piece of paper. Then I realised that, out of the 12 things, I wasn't six of them. So it was unreasonable for me to want someone to have all those things if I didn't have them. Then I rebuilt myself with the standards that are in the book. From that point on, I stopped trying to prove to the world that I could do things. It wasn't about them anymore. It became about me and what I wanted to achieve. Since I changed that mindset, now I do things to contribute. I've rewired everything from having to prove people wrong to saying, "This is something I want to do." Now I get to do all these things. I'm on boards, I'm on federal government advisory committees, I'm an executive, and I do all these different things at the same time because I've built that capacity. The key thing for me now is that I get to add value, because I love being part of a team. Whatever team I'm in, I know how I add value and what I don't do so well. I know what I do really well, and I make sure I add value before moving on to the next thing. It's the same as when I was playing rugby league or ice hockey. What's my position in this team? How does that add value? Then I do that well. Amy: When you had that realisation and started doing that self-reflection work, did you have external mentors or coaches, or was it something you had to do alone? Matt: It was just me. It was all me. I was so independent and so scared of being seen as a failure that I wouldn't let anyone else give me guidance up until that point. A lot of blind people are fiercely independent, almost independent despite themselves. I still am now. I have found some amazing mentors after that point, but up until then, it was just me. The way it started was with the standards piece. The first standard I held was that I put a chin-up bar in my doorway. I wasn't allowed to walk in or out of that door in my bedroom without doing 10 chin-ups. If I'd gone out to work in the morning and left my keys in my bedroom, I would do 10 chin-ups on the way in, get the keys, and do 10 chin-ups on the way out. That was the first standard. I started getting out of bed at the same time and having these black-and-white standards that I wasn't allowed to budge on. That was how I built trust in myself. Once I built trust in myself, I started building it with teammates. Then with leadership. It kept expanding. Now I've got this really fulfilled life where I get to be a dad, a leader and an athlete. We haven't talked about freediving yet, but my current goal is to set a world record in freediving either later this year or early next year. Once you implement these standards in your life, even though it's hard work, it becomes easy. Amy: The reward must feel amazing when you achieve those goals and challenges you set yourself. We touched on this before: I know I'm great with external accountability. If I've had a PT or worked with coaches, when I know that appointment is coming up, I will do the work. Last year I was learning to play golf, and I knew at the next lesson the coach would ask who had practised, so I was at the driving range the night before. I can identify in myself that I'm good with accountability to others, but how do you build that personal accountability within yourself? Matt: In business, you would have a strategy. A one-year strategy or a five-year strategy. I would say it's very important to have a five-year strategy. Across all the strategies you have, you probably don't go back to your personal five-year plan and ask how that plugs into the strategy — whether that's a fitness goal, business goal or whatever it is. Amy: Yes. I'm great at writing them, and then they stay in Google Drive and I forget to look at them because I get too busy. Matt: So flip it. Write a five-year strategy for you as a person. Then, instead of looking at the business first, look at how what you're doing externally plugs into that. You still need to do those things, but ask: is this allocating an appropriate amount of time to each piece? That might sound selfish, but it's not really. If you do well in everything you do, then you're being selfless because you're helping your teams achieve. For me, it's about priorities. The thing that is the biggest priority gets the biggest chunk of time. If at the moment that is to get physically fit, that's the priority. Everyone will have challenges in life. We've all got system issues with work and different problems. But as soon as you have a health problem, you have no other problem. That is your problem. If being healthy and happy needs to happen for me to be more successful in other areas and contribute better to my team, then that should become the priority. You allocate the appropriate amount of time to it and you don't negotiate on it. It becomes one of those standards that is not negotiable. That will help you achieve better, be happier and healthier, and have more energy in other areas. Then you'll be more productive, and you won't have to spend as much time in those areas because you're more productive. Amy: For those listening who feel like they are making excuses, or know that their standards have slipped, what would you say is the first honest step to take? Matt: Pick one standard. For me, it was the chin-up bar. Pick one thing you know you are letting slip and don't let that slip again. Just pick one thing. If you try to do all of them at once, it's too hard. Pick one thing, do that for a couple of weeks, and show yourself you can do it. That's building self-trust. If you know you've let your standards slip, they are your personal standards. If you're not even holding your own personal standards, how can you expect others to hold theirs? How can you hold standards as a team? How can you hold standards as a leader? It's showing yourself that you can trust yourself because you're going to hold your standards. Once you can do that, you can do everything else better. Amy: I love that. I can be guilty of going from zero to hero and trying to do all the things at once. It might last a few weeks or a couple of months, then things get in the way. Matt: Just do one thing at a time. In the movie I've got on Netflix, one of the things I say at the end of the film is: just do one thing and do that well. That's what I think I've become very good at: doing one thing at a time and doing that really well. That's how I'm able to wear so many different hats. The other thing I'd say is that we talk a lot about identity being a fixed thing. We think that to be authentic, you have to have one identity. I think that's a flawed concept. I think you have to have one set of values and one set of standards, but how they come out in your different identities will look different. Me as an executive looks different to me as a dad. If I'm with my mates in a pub and we're mucking around, that personality in the boardroom is not going to add value to that environment. We are all different people. So why not identify how we turn up differently in different environments and lean into that? Work out how you turn up differently and amplify that, rather than dulling it down and trying to be the same person everywhere. Don't change your values. Don't change your standards. Just change how you present. Amy: That's brilliant. Before we go on to some of our Really Good Conversations questions, I wanted to ask: as you revisited your story to write this book, how did that feel? Matt: It was hard. There was crying. There were tears. One of the first things in the book, in the first chapter, is called "Rock Hard, Marshmallow Soft". I've surfed 50-foot waves, broken world records in cycling, and I'm a blind guy who used to fight in pubs. I don't think anyone can say I'm physically soft. I'm probably as hard as a man can get physically. But emotionally, I used to be really hard too. One of the things I learnt was to become emotionally soft. I can be rock hard, but I can also be emotionally soft. I think that's a trait more men should have. But I think teaching all men to be soft across the board is not helping society. We need more hard men, but men who can also be soft when they need to be. That's one of the things I learnt going through the book: how I've become the man who is comfortable being as hard as you can be in a physical environment, but also really soft with my children and soft with my teams when I need to be. It was a journey. From my test readers, I know the first eight chapters are hard reading. My life was hard. There were a lot of really hard things I went through. Readers have said to me, "It's really hard." And I was like, "Yeah, but you're only reading about it. I had to live through it." So yes, it was a journey. Amy: Thank you for sharing that journey and for putting the book together. So many of us cannot relate to the journey you've been on, from the disability to the record-breaking achievements, the corporate job and family life. It's fascinating to learn from people like yourself. One question I've been asking people this year is: can you recall a conversation that has profoundly changed the direction of your life? Matt: I don't know if it changed the direction of my life, but it definitely would have changed the direction of my life. It was a conversation I had early in my career. I was on an escalation with a customer and I lost my patience a bit with them. Afterwards, a senior leader who had overheard the conversation pulled me aside and said, "The way you treated that person then — was it okay?" I said, "Well, I followed the process." He said, "That's fine. You followed the process. But did you treat them in the way that you should have?" I was all about what she did and what she said. I was making it about them, not about me. Standard excuse behaviour. He said, "Next time you're in a situation like that, I want you to think about that person as your mother or your sister." At the time, I didn't have children, but he said if I had children, think about them. That really reframed things for me. Every time I had a heated discussion with somebody from that point on, I reflected back on that. I thought, "Is this the way I would want someone to treat my mother, my sister or someone I care about?" It changed the trajectory of my career and the way I treated people. I moved away from the perspective of thinking, "They should be doing this because I expect them to," and it allowed me to be more patient and empathetic. One of the standards in my book is that empathy is a superpower in leadership. That is something I do really well now. I have empathy for my teams and understand where they're coming from. I spend time finding out what they do. That superpower I have as a leader came from that conversation almost 20 years ago. Amy: That is such a good reminder. So much of what we see in the world, whether it's comments on social media or how people speak to each other, makes you wonder: would you speak to a relative like that? They'd probably say no. I'm going to ask you three questions from our Really Good Conversations cards. Question number one: if you had a warning label, what would it say? Matt: Warning: gives very direct, strong feedback. Amy: I love that. Question number two: what is the biggest misconception people have about you? Matt: That blindness is my biggest challenge. We've already gone over it, but I think it can't be understated. Amy: Question number three: what is one piece of wisdom you want to pass on to future generations? Matt: You can achieve so much more than you think. It's such a cliché statement, but you really can. My life proves that we are all pretty lazy. We think we have big goals, but they're pretty small. So set bigger goals than what you think is possible. I say to my kids that my parents brought me up with "no such thing as can't", and obviously I do the same thing with them. My son is 12 now. When he was 10, he came into the room and was trying to learn how to do a Rubik's Cube. He was frustrated and said, "Dad, there is such a thing as can't." He didn't say it about the Rubik's Cube. He said, "I can't fly to the moon with my arms." I said, "Mate, I think you can. If you're 10 years old and you really think that's your life purpose, to fly to the moon with your arms, and you're myopic about it, nothing else gets in the way, and you work hard every day, you'll build relationships, build technology, find ways of getting revenue, and do all the things someone with a really strong goal does. You'll either learn to fly to the moon with your arms by the time you end your career, or you'll have created so much value in the wake of that goal that it will have been a worthwhile life." He didn't like the answer to that question, but I really think we need to set bigger goals. And I think if he really wanted to fly to the moon with his arms, he could probably do it with technology. He did end up learning to do the Rubik's Cube, by the way. He got down to about 18 seconds, then gave up and moved on to something else. Amy: I love that. Maybe he had the dopamine hit of finally achieving it, and then the exhaustion of thinking, "Thank goodness that's over." He probably kept going just to show you he could do it because you said it was possible. I don't know if I've ever completed a Rubik's Cube myself. I think back in the day, we just peeled the stickers off and put them on the other side. The last question I love to ask all of our guests is: if you could ask someone a question, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you ask them? Matt: I thought about this before I came on, and this is going to be a very controversial answer, I think. I would go back to someone like Genghis Khan and ask him what standards he believed helped him manage and lead an army of that size, and keep everything together. We can take the values aside and all the bad things that happened aside. From a leader's perspective, if you could ask, "What are the top standards that helped you manage that army?", I think we could bring that back into modern society. I think we've lost our way from a standards perspective. To take lessons from great leaders who were able to do things that are hard to even imagine — the amount of cultural leadership, physical dominance and emotional leadership required to do something of that nature — would be fascinating. Amy: That is a fascinating answer. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything you have shared in this conversation today. We could have gone in so many directions and covered so many topics, but I was really keen to explore more of your journey and the "Why Not?" philosophy. I think that is a good reminder to leave everybody with. Before we finish, tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, the book, and what's on the horizon for you. You touched on freediving earlier, so give us a little more information for people who would like to find out more. Matt: You can follow me everywhere at Matt Formston. LinkedIn, Instagram, all the different socials, and mattformston.com. The book, Why Not?, should be out on 1 August, and on audiobook as well. There are things like the freediving in there too. I didn't think it was possible for me to ever dive through a shipwreck because I can't see it. There's a story in the book about cycling, big-wave surfing and my four world titles in surfing. One of the last stories is me diving through a World War II shipwreck. My dive coach is holding the front of my blind cane, which I use on land, and I'm holding the back. We swim down 60 feet underwater on a single breath through a shipwreck. There are lots of stories and lots of goals. By the end of this year or early next year, I want to set a world record in freediving for depth. My biggest goal, though, and the thing that will make me feel my life has been worthwhile, is if my children become good people. I have lots of different clients I coach, businesses I talk to and keynote stages I stand on, but there's no more important client that I have than my three children. I hope they become good people one day. That will mean all the lessons and standards I've built are worthwhile. Amy: That's beautiful. Thank you so much for everything today. Thank you for your time, and best of luck with that next challenging goal later this year. Matt: Thank you so much.

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