#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards
Are you feeling stuck in life, wanting to grow, improve your income, or build a stronger community? Join performance coach Jordan Edwards as he interviews world-class achievers—including the Founder of Reebok and the Co-Founder of Priceline—who share their success stories and actionable strategies. Each episode provides practical tips on how to boost your personal and professional growth, helping you implement changes that can make a real difference in your life.
This podcast is designed for anyone looking to make progress—whether you're aiming to improve your mindset, relationships, health, or income. Jordan distills the wisdom of top performers into easy-to-follow steps you can take immediately. Whether you're stuck in your career or personal life, you’ll find new ways to get unstuck and start moving forward with confidence.
How to get unstuck? It’s a question many face, and in each episode, you’ll hear stories of how successful individuals broke through barriers, found purpose, and created systems to overcome obstacles. From building resilience to developing a success mindset, you'll gain insights into how high achievers continue to evolve and grow.
Looking to improve your income? This podcast also dives into financial strategies, offering advice from entrepreneurs and business leaders who have built wealth, created multiple revenue streams, and mastered the art of financial growth. Learn how to increase your income, find opportunities for advancement, and create value in both your personal and professional life.
Jordan also emphasizes the importance of building community. You'll learn how to expand your network, foster meaningful connections, and create supportive environments that contribute to personal and professional success. From philanthropists to community leaders, guests share their experiences in building impactful, values-driven communities.
At the core of the podcast are the 5 Pillars of Edwards Consulting—Mental Health, Physical Health, Community Service/Philanthropy, Relationships, and Spirituality. Each episode integrates these elements, ensuring a holistic approach to self-improvement. Whether it's enhancing your mental and physical well-being, giving back to your community, or strengthening your relationships, you'll receive actionable advice that’s grounded in real-world success.
This podcast is for everyone—whether you're an entrepreneur, a professional looking to advance, or simply someone seeking personal growth. You’ll gain actionable steps from every conversation, whether it’s about increasing your productivity, improving your health, or finding more purpose in your life.
Jordan’s interviews are designed to be perspective-shifting, giving you the tools and inspiration to transform your life. From overcoming obstacles to building stronger habits, these episodes are packed with practical insights you can use today. Whether you're looking to grow in your career, improve your income, or enhance your personal life, you’ll find value in every conversation.
Join Jordan Edwards and a lineup of incredible guests for thought-provoking conversations that will inspire you to take action, improve your performance, and unlock your full potential. No matter where you are on your journey, this podcast will help you get unstuck, grow, and build a life filled with purpose and success.
#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards
#243 - Life Is A Game – Are You Playing Or Just Working?
What happens when you trade your corner office for a street piano and find more meaning in playing for strangers than climbing the corporate ladder? Steven Ridley's remarkable journey from investment banker to globe-trotting pianist reveals the transformative power of following your instincts, even when logic screams otherwise.
"I'd wake up miserable, knowing all I'm going to do today is something that's going to make me more miserable," Steven confesses about his former banking career. Despite winning accolades and earning substantial money, he found himself caught in the "golden handcuffs" that trap so many high-achieving professionals. His breaking point came unexpectedly - winning "analyst of the year" only confirmed how deeply disconnected he felt from his work. What followed was a spontaneous resignation that his CEO predicted would "ruin his life."
Instead, that leap into the unknown led Steven to a secondhand piano on a London street, where playing for passing crowds yielded more than just coins in a hat - it delivered genuine joy and human connection. "Money has a price," Steven reflects. "What I was paying that morning in banking was everything - my passion, my freedom, my health, my relationships, my future." This powerful insight flipped his understanding of value upside down, leading to performances in 82 countries and eventually creating his own piano academy.
The most compelling aspect of Steven's story isn't just his personal transformation but the wisdom he shares about creating your own path: take small, consistent steps rather than being paralyzed by the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Focus on providing value by asking "What can I do for you?" rather than "What's in it for me?" Embrace playful curiosity instead of rigid planning. And perhaps most importantly, recognize that "the only thing harder than chasing your dreams is not chasing your dreams."
Ready to reconsider what success truly means in your own life? This episode might just be the permission slip you need to take that first step toward authentic fulfillment. Your piano in the street is waiting.
To Learn more about Stephen Ridley:
Linkedin: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/mrstephenridley
To Reach Jordan:
Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/
Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.
Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call
This is the dude who was laughing at me. Four years later, he wants me to work with him and I didn't do it. But man, that felt good. That felt fucking good. Dude, that felt good.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, what's going on? It's Jordan Edwards with Hashtag Clocked In, and we're here because we have a special guest today. We have Steven Ridley. He's an investment banker, turned performer, turned business owner, and he does it all. So, stephen, excited to have you on the Hashtag Clocked In podcast. Thank you, brother, and for you, how do you get into performing? Because it's not an easy task.
Speaker 1:It's not an easy task, that's true. You know, I got this thing. Somebody just sent me a picture I'm playing in a couple of days in dubai and sent me a picture of a stage and it's a giant gantic circle surrounded by a lot of empty chairs with just a piano in the middle and it's. It's really daunting to look at that and go all right.
Speaker 3:So there's no backup dancers. It's like no smoke machine.
Speaker 1:How to get into it, I don't know, I don't. I. I always love music. I was a kid. I was a kid in a village 40 people, um, yeah, no, no other kids, wow, the youngest person after me was my dad. Uh, nobody was a musician, least of all me, but we all loved music. It was a very musical place, like you walk down the street and there's different songs coming out, different people's houses, and my dad loved elvis. Yeah, he loved a lot of things and I just saw it's a weird thing because you come to my village and you go oh man, it's so idyllic because it's this British countryside place, little cottages, but when you're living it it feels super claustrophobic. You can't go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can drive on a motorbike until it runs out of gas and I'm still in the countryside Like there's nothing, and that's its own form of trap when you're a kid. But I could listen to music and be anywhere, yeah, and I'd see my dad. My dad was super frustrated, angry guy and he'd listen to all this. He'd become elvis. My mom would be super stressed driving to work. She worked in a hospital as a nurse and she'd drive there and she'd listen to dolly parton and then she'd just become dolly parton basically no, I, I love that because, when you really think about it, music is a mood enhancer and music can take you to a certain place.
Speaker 1:100 and, and I just wanted to go more, go more. And then, and that was it, I just I begged for lessons. I got the lessons and then the lessons were, and then I just I just kept diving and kept diving I think music itself just pulled me into it and um, and then I became a performer.
Speaker 3:It's just well, that's wild, but yeah but it's very interesting because nowadays everyone thinks music, piano, classical and, like when you think, even drums. People are like broke performers, you know what I mean. Like obviously there's some people that make it a lot, don't though, yes, I had the same thought, dude.
Speaker 1:It was never realistic for me to become a musician, because I was like I only only know like Mick Jagger, and and, and then you know the dude who's in the pub, who's?
Speaker 3:like struggling to get by.
Speaker 1:I don't know anyone in the middle and so, and I don't want to be the dude in the corner in the pub and I don't think I can be Mick Jagger, so I guess I'll just go back to the real world. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what was that process like for you? Cause I know that this happens around like high school, college, where you're like where am I going? And so many people are so lost and they just go to the path that they think is right or that their parents think is right for them and yeah, I mean, I felt like I was having my midlife crisis multiple times in my teenage years and, uh, a lot like I had a lot of.
Speaker 1:I was a deep kid and I would think a lot, way too much, and I was surrounded by people that weren't happy. Yeah, my dad worked a job he didn't like and I didn't want that. And my mom worked a job that I think it gave her a large sense of purpose, but it definitely she wasn't happy. Yeah, and then everybody around me was you know, I live in a place with with huge unemployment, and then, and then everybody who is employed is lucky to have a job, but they don't like the job they're working. You know, my uncle made playing cards in a playing card factory. It's not his dream, you don't want to make. And my auntie worked in a supermarket. That's not the dream.
Speaker 1:And uh, so I I just saw a lot of and, and so then I'm sitting there. Well, what's my? Because none of this future looks great and all I had was get a good job. Yeah, that was the line, right, you work real hard, you get a good job. And that sounded good because I didn't know anybody with a really good job. So I thought, well, that sounds good. And so that was for the longest time. That was just like, okay, the goal, yeah, my way out of here is hard at school. Focus on the next exams, focus on the next thing. And I never really thought about I mean, I played music every day, but that was not on my radar at all. It was just I got to get out of here, got to get a good job, and that was it. I assumed that was true until I got the good job.
Speaker 3:But you start to realize that you have these aspirations and these goals and there's a lot of times where we have so much value that we put into it and like we put in so much time and effort, and we start to think to ourselves, is this worth it? And then you achieve it and you're like, oh my god, is this really like what I wanted?
Speaker 1:yeah, and it's fucking rough to admit that. Yes, when you put in that much time and work, it's like you've got to it's. It takes a lot of courage to go. I don't think any of this was the right move. Yeah, but I'm now six years, seven years, ten years, twenty years into this path and you're like that takes some serious work to go oh, a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:And there's a lot of people listening right now who probably are on that path or they're even maybe further down the path, where they're 40s, 50s, three kids, family, college, and it's like I gotta make money. Like what do you mean? Right? How can you just be like you don't like your job, everyone doesn't like their job.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what my mom said. So I end up getting this job in banking. I go to university, I get a job in investment banking. I'm in the top team of the top investment bank in the world. I'm told by everybody I'm successful. Yeah, uh, especially the people who worked there. And uh, and I knew that, I knew, like I didn't know anybody who was. Yeah, just, I was the only guy I knew who'd ever did that yeah so I was like, wow, that feels amazing from an intellectual perspective.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, look at me. But really on the day-to-day I'm miserable. Yeah, I hate this job. I hate this life. It means nothing. I'm doing back, solved nothingness. I have no impact on the world. I know what my next 30 years looks like and it's not inspiring. And I wasn't worried about money for the first time, really, yeah, my dad died when I was 15. When he died, we were very worried about money and I had to provide. Yeah, so I'm in banking and now I'm not worried about money. I'm not buying different color helicopters every week, but at least, like I know I've got hot water and I know I've got-.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you bring up a very good point, because most of us don't realize that it comes down to food, shelter and clothing. Literally, that's all you need and that can be down to any scale, right?
Speaker 1:And after that, the next nourishing thing that you need, yeah, is adventure, absolutely, and I genuinely think what's wrong with most people is just no adventure. Yeah, I was driving here and I was looking out the window and I was like it's just everyone's bored, like it's not, especially in america. You've got a car, you've got a house, you've got a thing. I know there's a constant struggle to like, keep that going. But beyond that, what enhances a life is great human connection, great great friendships. Adventure, yeah, like doing something that's oh and you and you got. And then, pretty much as soon as you get a taste of the adventure, you're willing to give up the shelter for the adventure. Yeah, the food not so much, but foods. You can figure the food out. But you start looking at your shelter and you're like well, hold on. Like if I'm just stuck in the same house all day, every day, how much adventure can I really have?
Speaker 3:yeah, no, it becomes this interesting thing where it's I was actually talking with my coaching group about it last night where it's how often are we comfortable and how often are we uncomfortable? And you start going through these phases of like oh, what used to make me very uncomfortable makes me comfortable now. Which?
Speaker 3:is a little scary, right because then you got to chase that uncomfortable that adventure, that thrill, that excitement, right. So you're, you're in the, so you're in the place, you're in the banking and you're like not for me, most people would say that and then they're like, suck it up. So what did you think and how'd you go through that?
Speaker 1:Look, I thought the same thing. I had no safety net at all. I couldn't go back to daddy. It was like and everybody around me, could Everybody else in that job was from that family go back to daddy? It was like, and everybody around me could everybody else in that job was from that family from that family, the double barrel surname, the pinky ring, the whole thing and, uh, you know, blah blah rothschild.
Speaker 1:Blah blah, you just know the surnames and you're like, oh, cool, so I know why you're here, okay, um, and I didn't have any of that and I was very aware I didn't have that. I was the diversity hire from the full background and, um, I, it was scary as hell and I called my mom up. It was 4 am in the morning. I was about a year and a half into it. I knew week one. I didn't like it. It just took me a long time to admit it to myself. Yeah, I called my mom after a year and a half.
Speaker 1:I was extremely depressed, yeah, and uh, I'd got this horrible dark thought, very dark thought, yeah, but I'd wake up miserable. Yeah, and I would know all I'm going to do today is something that's going to make me more miserable. Yeah, and then it's over and then it repeats and I had a worst feeling in the world, but I, I would genuinely be happier if I didn't wake up, because I would wake up sad and I do something that makes me more sad. Yeah, that's not nice. You do that every day, every day, every day you start. I would genuinely be happier if I didn't wake up, because if I wake up sad and I do something that makes me more sad, that's not nice. You do that every day, every day, every day you start thinking, well, what's the point of all this? And I'm not that guy.
Speaker 3:No, but you bring up a really good point, because I actually went to an immersive like kind of like a men's retreat and they were. We had similar conversations about this and it takes you to this point of, okay, bring that idea out 60 years, and this is what everyone in the audience can do. Push that idea out to when you're 80 years old. How will you feel? Will you feel better, that you were safe, right? Or will you have regret, right? So now you're carrying this regret versus this new idea of, hey, if I leave and I go, try to do it, what happens? I could be a failure, be a failure, yeah. So now you got to fear failure and regret at the same time. Yeah, and it's like which is worse?
Speaker 1:yeah, and I had to answer your original point. I'd held my dad dying at 15. He died in front of me. It took about three minutes to die, tried to save his life, couldn't save his life, but I was looking in his eyes like I look in yours, yeah, as they transition. Nobody talks about this, but your eyes change color when you die. Really, yeah and uh, and I saw this moment of him dying and that is my future, like he's the next generation, and I watched that and it stayed with me. From that moment I was like, okay, I don't have that long. Yeah, and he spent his whole life saying one day, one day, and he had a lot of sensible reasons not to change.
Speaker 1:And now I'm in a cemetery belt burying him and with a bunch of other people, I had a bunch of smart reasons not to change. Yeah, in this depressed place where you know it was in this village, we buried him in this village and driving through like all this poverty to get to the cemetery and I'm like the cemetery is full of people who made sense about being here. Yeah, everybody made it make sense to stay here. Yeah, and because where I'm coming from, people don't leave, yeah, and and look at it all and and I had that. And now I'm sitting in an office and I'm being my dad. I'm miserable, I'm making it make sense because the money in the bar. I call my mom up and I tell her I'm miserable. She says, look, everybody's miserable. At least you're gonna pay for it. And uh, I was like, is that enough? Yeah, and now I've been super naive. Am I stupid? Am I the stupidest guy in the world to leave this right now? I don't know, but I do know how the other story plays out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I that scares me a lot, yeah, and so I got a tremendous sense of the fuck it's yeah, I just decided to go fuck it and and let's see, and and as naive as this is, I've been really influenced when I was young. I've been really inspired by and this is why I think it's great for kids to read and not just sit on an ipad but I've been really inspired by novels. I've been inspired by the adventure of the hero story yeah, the hemingway book, the f scott fitzgerald book like they had a life that was romantic. I was like, well, and, and maybe it's crazy, but I want a like that. I want a life that feels a certain way. I want to experience huge love and loss and risk and I want that. I want to sit with stories when I'm 80. And so I thought, well, let me take a shot, because you can always go back. This is a big thing for the audience. You can always go back to a shitty job you don't like. There's loads of them, there's.
Speaker 1:So many of them there's like there's so many, there's endless opportunities to do that. But if you get a shot, you know it's nice to try and build something and get around something that you want to build and and and fuck it like, yeah, it's really not that deep, it's not that serious, and yeah, and you start to realize that you literally only have one life and there's only so much time you have with the people that you're with and the people you're going to meet.
Speaker 3:So you start to realize, hey, do I try to have these incredible experiences or do I sit at home and just play it safe? Yeah, and we start to realize opportunity is abundant and we have to go after that. So what was the wake-up call for you? Obviously, you had many things, but what made it go? Hey, this makes sense. This is the time, this is the now things.
Speaker 1:But what made it go? Hey, this makes sense. This is the time, this is the now. I won analyst of the year and that was it.
Speaker 3:I was like I won something and I hated it literally I I imagine the people that wanted to win it.
Speaker 1:I, yeah, I know, I know they actually liked it. Yeah, it's, it's funny, it's. It's. Uh, yeah, I won that. And I got taken in a room and a guy called tim um, a nice, nice bit dim tim is what we used to nickname him uh, he was like the highest paid guy in the bank and, um, he gave me this big long speech about what a privilege and an honor and a blah and a blah. And I was just sitting there like I hate every part of who I am right now, like I don't care one shit about this and I had no big plan. I just I'd spent two years now sitting at a desk trying to figure out what else could I do, what could I do, and I just was too tired and too in in that life.
Speaker 3:So I think you're bringing up a really good point. I don't mean to cut you off, but, Steven, when you start saying like I'm in that life, you start to realize that people get so self-centered about what they're doing and they're in their bubbles and they can't see outside their bubble, they can't lift their head up. I usually call it like where there's a forest and everyone's in the forest and then they lift their head up and they go. I'm actually outside of the forest. There's many different options here and that happens to people all the time. So how do you lift your head up above that?
Speaker 1:I mean the way I recommend is torching the entire thing. That's what I did. I mean, just to give you an idea, like I wake up in the morning every day. I wake up, I'm late, so I go to bed at like 4am. I got to wake up before stock market opens, so I'm waking up at like 6.15. I'm very underslept, I'm very tired, my teeth are wobbly because my immune system's shutting down, my hair's falling out. I'm aging rapidly and I know it. And I've got 135 unopened emails in those two hours on my BlackBerry. And now I'm walking down the street. I decided to live near the office so I could enjoy the walk to work. Never enjoyed it, couldn't tell you anything about it. I sit there, I'm tap, tap, tapping on the BlackBerry and then it's all day just stress and BS.
Speaker 1:And then it's the end of the day and then you go to bed and I would, on my lunch break so I'd go to the toilet or in the boring parts of the day, I'd dream about what could I do. And I had these wild ideas, but I bet they was made up. I thought I could, maybe I could work in fashion, because I always loved dressing people and dressing women and dressing men and my mom wasn't self-confident so I used to like dressing her and then she'd feel sexy and that was nice and um. So I thought about that oh, no, all right, well, I could be a pilot. Yeah, because I remember one time I was at school and the military came and they were like, oh, you can be a jet pilot. It's like, oh, maybe I could be a jet pilot, but it was all unrealistic to me. It was just and uh. So how did I find it is? I just took myself out. I was like, look I'm. This is miserable and if I don't change, it won't change. And I just ejected myself with no plan and I really mean no plan, no safety net, no game plan, no, anything. I just said I'm out and uh, it was 11 am on a thursday I up, I went to the top guy in the office.
Speaker 1:I'd never actually talked to this guy. He's the CEO of the whole bank Like way, way, I'm way below his pay grade. He did like I don't know why. I thought this was appropriate, but his desk was in the middle of the office so I went hey, could I have a word? He looks at me like who the fuck are you, and me like who the fuck are you, and that's it. He's like, yeah, sure, and then they had these glass conference rooms around the outside of the office. So I go in this glass conference room. Everybody is looking at me. Yeah, you can feel like they're pretending not to, but yeah, everyone's looking at me. I go in the room and I like thanked him for the opportunity. I'm gonna leave, and he looked at me kind of like who are you?
Speaker 1:like who are you? And super confused and he kind of like got it, said something on an intercom and then a lady brought in a contract and it was all empty, all the all the content of the contract was empty and he was like all right, what number do you want? Do you stay?
Speaker 1:yeah and he thought I was making a power play. He thought I was like trying to negotiate, like I'm gonna go to that bank if you don't give me a raise, and so it's like all right, what number do you want? And I'm looking at this thing and that was that was the hardest moment there, because I was like I know exactly what's going to happen here. I could write a really big number. They might say, yes, he's going to say yes, but then I'm stuck in it and if you leave, you've got to give back that big number, but you get it after tax, so you'll never be able to give them back. And it's called the golden handcuff. Yeah and uh. I was like I was looking at that. I was like, wow, I've heard about this and here we.
Speaker 1:And it's really different when you're in the moment and I had this out-of-body experience of just like moving the paper away and then being like that isn't what I'm doing. He's like what are you going to go do? And I was like I don't know. And he like tilted his head and he looked at me and went, wow, I've never seen anybody ruin their life before. And when he said that my heart dropped out my chest because I looked up to this guy he's clearly very accomplished and I thought, oh shit, what have I done?
Speaker 3:but the important, the super important thing here to realize is that that person didn't have the life you wanted 100 and we take advice from the wrong people so often. Yeah, and that's why I started this podcast, because it got me interacting with people where I'm like he's living. He's living the life, yep, and I want to talk to him about how the life is lived.
Speaker 1:This dude had a miserable family life and a 250 000 paperweight on his desk. I was and it said everything to me. I'm like you got he used to. He used to be very proud of this paperweight, yeah, and I'd look and I was like you, dumb motherfucker, like what?
Speaker 3:are you doing? No, and people don't realize, because they get their power and their ego from this role and this significance and you start to realize that none of it matters if your family doesn't like you. And you're on your third divorce. Like what, what are we doing? Like, and you start to realize, like, what is the most important thing to me? And that's where you start having these transformative thoughts of like, how am I going to do this? Yeah, so what was the first?
Speaker 1:step after that. Uh, so I quit that job and I walked down the street in total shock um, and I can only imagine and I was like I don't know what I'm gonna do next, and so what it is?
Speaker 1:I, I, I saw this. Everything looked interesting. The weirdest thing I was walking the same street that I'd walked to work. But this time I'm walking and I'm looking around and everything looks amazing. So I look and I see this dude painting and he's painting this building and I'm like, oh man, that looks cool, I could be a painter. And then I see a dude cutting hair. I'm like I kind of like getting my hair cut and like the guy chat, I cut. And like the guy chat, I could be a barber. I see a dude driving a car and I'm like, oh man, I mean, I love driving, I love chatting to people, maybe I could like be a taxi guy, and yeah. And then everything looked like I could try that for a month. I could try that for a month. Who cares? Like I could try that.
Speaker 1:And then I saw a piano in a vintage shop, an old secondhand shop, and I was like, oh, I just want to play the piano, like, oh, this is so what I need, just just the self-therapy of it. Let's sit down. I kind of went into it. This dude came up he's like, hey, if you want to play it you've got to buy it. And uh, it was 100 pounds. So I ended up buying this piano and then he made me take it out the shop. So he helps me carry this bigger than that thing, yeah, out the front of the shop. And now I'm sitting in the street with a piano and I don't know how to move it, don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like I'm just gonna play it and then try and sell it and back or leave it or I don't know but and I sit down and I play this song and I'm petrified I remember being petrified and that felt really not.
Speaker 1:It's a weird thing, but it felt nice to be scared, because I'd felt nothing for years. I'd just been numb for so long that I was like whoa, this is what's going on. Like my chest is beating, I'm sweating, I feel genuinely nervous and I don't know why. And I start playing this song and I just kind of close my eyes and I go into it and then I got this sudden sixth sense. It's been a few minutes and I'm like I've been lost in the music and I kind of come back to reality a little bit and I have this sixth sense that someone's behind me. And then I suddenly think hold on, a minute. I'm here, I'm in the prada suit, ms tie rolex, I'm about to get mugged. What am I doing? I'm sitting in the middle of the street. It's kind of a dodgy street. Yeah, oh, what an idiot. And uh, I feel this bad thing behind me and I'm like, oh no. And then I just I'm like, well, he hasn't robbed me yet. If he hasn't robbed me yet, then he must be waiting. It's like okay, so I'm playing this song. I'm like what am I gonna do? All right, I'm just gonna have to turn around and just like go for it. And so then I suddenly finish the song like bang, and then I turn around and I turn around and it's like 600 people stood there, whoa, like that. It's profound moment. Completely silent, the whole street completely silent. It's funny because now if I finish playing, you immediately get an applause. For some reason, in that moment I finished playing it's silent and I'm silent and I'm looking at them and they're silent and they're looking at me. And there was this moment that felt like it lasted a long time and then I burst out crying and then everybody just ran over and they're clapping, they're laughing, they're hugging me. It was the most trippy what the heck is going on? Moment and I was wearing a flat cap and I threw it on the floor because I was awkward. So I just threw it on the floor and it piled up with money, overflowing with money on the floor and I was was like what is going on? And I'd lived in london two years.
Speaker 1:At that point I'd not really made any friends because I didn't really have time for it. I made like 100 friends like that, people coming up telling me their personal stories. They want to take pictures, they want me to sign stuff. I don't know why they want me to sign stuff and giving me their number, we've got to hang out. And this. And I was like whoa, and I met a dude who made shoes and I met there was such a random collection of people and I was like, wow, this is like nuts. And then they all left. It was like an hour before they left.
Speaker 1:So I'm sat an hour of talking to people. I was like, wow, this is, and I'm having this weird day. I was a banker this morning and now what am I doing? And I'm still in my uniform and like and then I pick up this hat full of coins and and I go across the street to this coffee shop. I count them all out, it was 16 pounds, 34, about 25 us, 25 bucks best money I made in my life. Yeah, because that money was free. And I realized in that moment money has a price. There was a price you're paying for the money you earn. Yeah, and what I was paying that morning in banking was everything my passion, my freedom, my freedom, my sanity, my health, my relationships, my future. I felt like I was sacrificing everything for a check and then suddenly I did something which is what I've done my whole life.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's the thing that is like playing Xbox and getting paid for it, which people do these days. But it was like this is the thing I love the most. And somehow I'm sitting here counting coins on a table and I remember buying the coffee. Yeah, because I had to pay for the coffee and I was like this doesn't even feel like my money, like it's weird, like this is a free coffee. I did nothing for this coffee. Yeah, and that was. It was the trippiest experience, because my whole life, before banking, I'd always worked like pretty, I'd worked jobs, I'd work like.
Speaker 3:The real difference here is that you felt the work was the work and you always put in like, well, you don't work a piano, you play a piano, exactly. So I just played. So my point being here is that a lot of the time in our life, we always gauge our job as work and we always gauge what we're doing as work and we never view it as, hey, this could be play, and you use the different word for it, which makes it even better. But what if we play podcast? What if we play any of the roles that you guys want to do? What if we play whatever and I think this is so important for the audience to realize that, like you can't give up on your dream.
Speaker 1:And what if life's not that serious? And what if it is a game? And what if, when you get into that playful attitude, that's the attitude that makes it all pop? And that makes it all pop and and I've been like it's not to say I'm without stress I'm probably I have more stress now than I did in banking, but it's the same stress that you have. Playing a game? It's yes. And are you playing a game? You want to play?
Speaker 3:yes, because whether you like it or not, you you are in a game every everybody is in somebody's game and even if you're an entrepreneur, then you're making your own game up, but you're still in the government's game, where you're still in your own game, and sure I mean, there's different areas we overlap you have a universe, I have a universe.
Speaker 1:We overlap, we could get real philosophical about it. But like there's a degree to which you exert yourself over existence, yes, and the application of yourself to existence is the game, yes and uh. And you can actively do that with imagination and with creativity and with courage, or you can not. You can kind of passively sit in defense waiting to live, and then oh, now I'm aging, so I can't do it, and oh well, now there's always a million reasons not to. There's always going to be, and um, but I tell you that's the hardest part, that's one of my yeah.
Speaker 3:That's one of my favorite things about you, and doing the research and the pre-call and just talking with your team is realizing that it's not always about hey, it's going to happen, it's going to come our way, but it's more like hey, we're taking action and we're going to move towards this goal. Whether we like it or not, whether it's good for us or bad for us, we're moving towards the goal. Do what's required. In that action and that's what I find so impressive about your story is because it's so much of hey. It's not about us listening. It's not about doing all this stuff. It's not about new information. It's take action Right. Learn about the goal Like do something, go play the piano in the street, see what happens.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go beg for money. See what happens, like go provide some value. Business doesn't start until we collect our first dollar, because there's so many times where you sit there and you're like whoa, like I think I got a business here, I think I got something, and it's like get one person to give you a dollar, you have a business. Yeah, I mean, obviously, when it's SaaS companies and other stuff, it's a little different. But yeah sure.
Speaker 1:I think the general idea of like a new entrepreneur is, like, let's try to provide value to people. Yeah, that's a. I, I can understand that. I, I had a. I give this talk to a lot of people, where a lot of people now come up to me and they, they ask if they want to change their life in some way or they want to improve something. Uh, I don't necessarily say it that way because it's a little late on the chain. Yeah, like, if you just focus on how to get the dollar, because I was thinking about that in the bank, yeah, I'm sitting there. I'm like well, I currently get the dollars, yeah, and so I'm gonna have to give up a lot of dollars. What else makes this many dollars? Nothing like banking was the highest paid job in the world. So, uh, that's what trapped me to match that is very challenging.
Speaker 1:It was very challenging and nothing that I'm gonna go do by myself. I'm gonna have to start at the bottom in anything I do. So we'll equate to the same amount, right? So that that was the trap. The safety net safely suffocates the dream. I wrote that in a lyric. And the more I fill my pockets, the less it all means.
Speaker 1:Um, but if you rewind a little bit, how do you get the dollar? Is you give somebody something? Yes, and the question that any aspiring entrepreneur ought to ask themselves is what can I do for you? Yeah, and make that you the biggest definition of you possible, make you the whole planet, yeah. What can I do for you? Yeah, and if you can answer that question now, you're finding your purpose, and you might not have an answer yet, but then that tells you what you need to do next. Maybe it's skilling up, maybe it's going and learning something. Maybe it's maybe you're going to go build the next chat gtp. Yeah, like. I got a coffee on the way here. There was this dude and he's like, he's very, very friendly guy. I don't like the coffee. I'll be totally honest, I don't really drink coffee, but I go. I see this dude, he's just a ray of sunshine, yeah, and I like, like that guy, yeah, the guy's got something going and I get.
Speaker 1:I end up get. You know, I. I gave a coffee to my girlfriend this morning, but he's got something figured out because he's given more than a coffee and his shop's booming. It's called Two Crow. You've got to go check it out. The dude is killing it because he's creating an atmosphere and you can tell he's not there just to give you a coffee. He's there because he's got a vision for what this coffee shop feels like. I get the impression he watched Friends in the 90s and he's like that's what I'm gonna make and he's making that atmosphere and people go for it. You could do that with anything. You could do it with a barbershop, you could do it with a taxi driver, you could do it with anything. You could do it. You wouldn't even have to change a thing in your life. You could look at your exact job right now and realize, wait, a minute, I'm capable of giving a lot of value. And then, naturally, what comes next? After you give the coffee? What do I give him? $7. Yeah, shocking, but $7. Good. And now?
Speaker 3:he's making his dollars, but also at that same point, like you said, sometimes you don't even get the value back. But you have that self-confidence in yourself that you're doing the right thing. You don't.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't matter because I say this, it doesn't matter if you get the value back, because now you've tapped into something you can do unlimited times. When I sit in the street, like I was sitting in the street playing a song, sometimes I get paid, sometimes I don't. Yeah, there's been times where I go to do a show and then people do funny things and the business gets a little funny and all that. I got screwed over a bunch of times because they were changing the contracts. And I'll give you one example of why this is a big, big thing, because my attitude now is like and sorry to swear, but fuck you, you can't stop me, don't pay me. I'm still going to do it Because my value is what I can contribute to the world. So I'll give you a very real example.
Speaker 1:Before the war, I was going to do a show in Ukraine. I was quite well known there, and so I'm going to do this big show and then the government was trying to take it was it's super corrupt, so they wanted to take some money. And then, okay, you got to pay them off, okay, but now they want more, and now they want more, and now they want more, and it's basically the whole bag, yeah it. Well, it was more than the bag. Like we weren't making enough to be able to pay off all this, like yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just got, I said to the organizer, I mean I, I'm in London, I'm like all right, I won't get on the plane, like okay, no concert, that only hurt me and it only hurt all the people that wanted to come see the show. And I was like man, this sucks. And then we were putting out this. It was around COVID. So we're like look, it's because of COVID and they were making these fake things about COVID. Meanwhile, every but for me there's a covid restriction and I decided you know what stuff it.
Speaker 1:And I went there and, uh, I just put a piano in a park and I was like you want to come, you're like you want to come, see me, come to the park. Yeah, and 15 000 people came to that park. Whoa and uh it so many people came to the park that the roads which surrounded it there was no parking, so people just left their car in the middle of the street. So then all the traffic of the city just got stopped in kiev and then all the helicopters come out and the police come and it became this moment.
Speaker 1:It was like a beautiful thing, it was an amazing thing but that and I didn't make a dollar. Yeah, but I didn't care because I'm like, because it was worth so much more I'm here to play. You can pay me or not pay me something. There's times I've been overpaid, there's times I've not been paid, but I'm gonna play. Yeah, because if I let my environment start dictating what I'm gonna do, I'm now the effect of my environment.
Speaker 3:I can't no, I'm gonna decide. The whole point of doing this was to do things for the right reasons.
Speaker 1:Right, and if I stay on this path of what can I do for you? And in my case, in that moment I wanna provide some beauty. Yeah, if I keep doing that, eventually the things come. But I've done this so many times now, I don't even look about it. Does it come? Does it not come, it doesn't even matter, because it comes eventually. Yeah. So maybe it comes now, maybe it comes later, it doesn't matter. Like I just want to throw myself, like I now know the lane, I'm going to throw myself into that lane and I'm not going to pay too much attention about what I get back yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's always premature. It's always premature, like if mick jagger was counting how much he got paid on that first show, he would never be the Rolling Stones, of course, because I'm sure for the first two years they got nothing. Yeah, and every musician movie, it's the same thing. For years they're getting screwed and screwed and then suddenly they're getting a million dollars a show. Yeah, it's like, and it's the same in business, I'm sure they're sitting there in the garage and everyone's taking advantage of them, and then suddenly they're open AI.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think that's so important that it's not a straight path. There's ups and downs along the way and you're not always going to get what you think. But, Stephen, the really interesting thing about you is that you played in so many countries 60-plus countries or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 82 is my last count, 82.
Speaker 3:So how does someone like 82 countries? Most people are like, hey, I traveled to 100 countries, this is a big deal Playing in 82 countries from this small town, countries from this small town. How did you expand your mindset? Cause most people are like, hey, I'm scared to go on the plane. Man Like I'm like, how do you think about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was really yeah, and I was also scared of performing. I still have like pretty bad stage fright. It's the weirdest thing. But I've learned to like it's not stage fright, it's just.
Speaker 3:I really give a shit Like I care to like it's not stage fright, it's just I really give a shit like I care. I love that. I love that mind change, because we start to think so many times there's something wrong with us and it's like, no, that's actually our strength yeah, I didn't get stage fright in banking because I don't care if I win or lose, I don't care.
Speaker 1:That's why there's no fright. I'm not attached, I'm not attached, and winning doesn't mean anything and losing doesn't mean anything. So what? What kind of life is that? Yeah, one of the greatest indexes. People all the time are like if you found something and it's scary to you, that's a mate. You obviously care. Great, now you're in the game. Yeah, go play like um.
Speaker 1:So how did I, how did that come about? Is I worked something out? And this is the investment banker in me. But I think in two different ways. I'm very artistic and I'm very entrepreneurial. Yeah, so when I started playing in the street I love math, I've always loved math and I sat there doing the coffee and I did this.
Speaker 1:After the first song, I was like well, hold on a minute. I guess there was five, 600 people right there. I was playing the piano, for I have no idea, honestly. Five minutes, 10 minutes, okay, and then I've got the 16 pounds 24. So if I did that every five minutes, then my hourly salary would be blah, okay, but and I started thinking, whoa, this could actually like be a thing. Yeah, I could survive on this. And this is the beginning, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I then had another thought and and this came because I immediately went back out I started playing the piano again and, truthfully, I didn't care about the money. I, yeah, because when money's free, you don't care about it, you just give it. Like what I'm doing, I love it so much. I'll do it again and again, and again and again. Take the money, I'll just do it again, like it means nothing to me. And homeless people used to come and pretend they were giving me money and just rob the whole box. They did it all the time. I didn't, I didn't even stop songs, I was like all right, like I'll just keep playing, I'll make some more, yeah, I.
Speaker 1:But the thing that changed was and I recommend this to so many people, and this is a big thing, for, like, you want to grow a company, you want to grow anything, you want to grow a movement. Step one, attention. Because the actual value of me playing in the street was two things. I got to do something called market research and something called promotion. Market research was every five minutes. Nobody wants to stop, they want to go get the bus, the train, they're late for work. Nobody's trying to come to the steven ridley show and and I've got to figure out how do I stop a bunch of people that don't even want to stop?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that makes me work on my craft. Yeah, and so very quickly I became I was in people don't believe this like, oh, it's easy for you because you're a great musician. I'm like I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't. Go go look at the first videos on youtube. I couldn't sing. Yeah, half the notes I hit are wrong. Yeah, I loved music. I wasn't that good at it. Yeah, but every five minutes I've got to get better to stop the audience Get the better, and so I'm learning what works, what doesn't work, what works what doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Now, if I was doing that with just a show in a pub, I'd have to do a whole show in a pub to then realize, oh, that didn't work either. And now I'm depressed because I'm four weeks into this and I'm failing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the way of doing the market research and testing quick enough, but I was doing in 10 minutes yeah, I do five minutes didn't work, all right five minutes in an hour.
Speaker 1:I've done what somebody would normally do in two months of shows in a day, I've done what somebody might do in a year in traditional music, and I did this for nine months. I did it every single day for nine months. In nine months, I've developed my craft. I know what I'm doing. I know how to Captivate how to get attention.
Speaker 1:I can take people I mean, in London most people don't speak English because they're on vacation Like I can take people who don't even speak English stop them, I can make them laugh with a joke, and they don't even speak English into something. Yeah. And then the second part is the promotion. So that's the market research. And when I said, like you've got to get good at something, what can I do for you was increasing every time I played. Yeah, because I was getting better and better and better. I had more to offer, more to offer. So then more people stopped, so my confidence goes up.
Speaker 1:The next thing that's occurring is on brick lane, which is the first street I played on. There's 120 000 people a day walking down that street. Oh wow, there's five mad Square Gardens every day. And even the Beatles don't play five Madison Square Gardens in a day, like Justin Bieber can't do five Madison Square Gardens in a day. So the number of people I am hitting is ridiculous. And so how do you go to a bunch of countries? I just put it out and then I mean, literally every five minutes, a dude's coming up oh, I've got a bar in New York. Oh, I've got an ashram in India. Oh.
Speaker 1:I've got a cocktail chain in Australia. Oh, I've got the number one ice cream shop in Corsica. Where's Corsica, I have no idea. I've got this and people are coming up and for the first part, I didn't even think I was an artist. I thought I was having some fun for a month, but and then, at the end of all this, I had this huge stack of business cards. This was the coolest day of my life. Yeah, one off. I've had a lot of coolest days of my life, but at that point this was one of the coolest days of my life.
Speaker 1:What had happened is I'd start getting really good at it and I'd block a street and so the police would very quickly come, because now the traffic stops and people walk on the road and so it's dangerous, and so the police very quickly come. And because they see that I'm doing it every day, the police have, like, as soon as they see me, they come to stop me. So then I went to the next place and I go to westminster and I play near big ben and the same thing happened. So the police are coming, then I get moved on. So then I go to, like I went to new york, I did it in new york.
Speaker 3:new york man, they asked quick with it so yeah, they don't mess around, yeah, they don't mess around.
Speaker 1:So as soon as I get the piano, I start playing the second. I had like 200 people. Boom, the police are there, yeah, and I was like man, this is, this is getting tough. And they treat me like a criminal. I'm not a criminal, I'm a dude playing music. But, yeah, I was like man, this is hard. And so I sat and I looked in my uh boxing.
Speaker 1:By this time I had just a suitcase full of business cards, yeah, and I sat down and I was like, do I keep going with music or not? I don't know. It's kind of been a wild adventure. I'm loving this. I'm gonna do one more thing, yeah, just one more thing. And I'm ready, like at that point I'm like I'm ready to go back to the real world. Okay, I can say I'd like the best time of my life and I can always look back and be happy in this moment. But, um, I took all the business cards and I wrote an email and the subject line said yes and uh, the body of the text was hey, you met me in the street. I was a guy playing the piano, you had this amazing idea. I thought about it. My answer is yes, yeah, send, and from that email.
Speaker 1:That's how I went around the world. Just invites everywhere, invites everywhere, and everywhere you go is the next invite. Because I'll give you an example the first show I did that I was paid for was for a shoe company called Florentinian Baker. Yeah, it's this really fancy independent shoe designer in Italy. Okay, well, it turns out she makes shows for like loads of celebrities. Yeah, chris Martin from Coldplay buys her collection every season and Tom Cruise gets a collection every season, so her hookups were like insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I go and do that show, and one of the people who come to that show is this really famous writer in Italy. He's got this like bestselling book called Vittorio Bongiorno, and so then he invites me to do 21 shows around Italy. And now I'm doing an Italian tour and because he's like, this guy who's at his show is a dude who owns this cool independent fashion designer called allegory and they're doing milan fashion week for the first time and they're looking for a guy to make the music and actually you could be pretty enough. You're gonna be the face of allegory, oh well, and now I'm there, and now I'm in vogue. And now and now, because I'm in vogue, now I look like a, and so now I'm getting an invite to go and do and it just boom, goes to boom, goes to boom, and before you know it you don't recognize. And that's how that came.
Speaker 3:And that's where the action, because this is the gold guys. This is what it really is. It's accepting these invites of hey. This might be a waste of time, this might not be valuable, but I'm here to perform and serve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and look at the sequence of that. It wasn't that I tried to start with that. I had no idea I'm going to throw myself into this. Yeah, it was literally. It was the scariest part. Step one was okay, I'm going to do something and I suck and nobody seems to believe that, but I sucked and I knew I sucked. I can't sing. I knew it. I'm half deaf. I've been told by singing teachers I'll never be able to sing Like that's. That's a fact, right. So, but still naive and stupid as I am, with everybody telling me I've lost my mind. I go and do something. That's step one. Step two was I'm now working on the craft. I didn't realize it, but I am working on the craft very intensively until I've now got something I can exchange, and at that point there's a lot of people who then now there's a demand because you have something to give, and so now all the people that want to get it, you just go and give it to them and now you're in business.
Speaker 1:And now you're traveling the world and it very quickly gets very, it's very. That bit's very fast.
Speaker 3:That scaled very quickly and you start to realize that it's not always. You never know what's gonna happen. Most people would be like don't play on the streets, that's silly, that makes no sense. Everybody said that. But you start to see it and you start to realize why it makes so much more sense and why a lot of the free items people don't want to do because it is a lot of hard work and it is a lot of consistency and it is a lot of rejection and you just start to realize that anything's possible though, because, stephen, you're a great example of like what is possible. I bet you you probably had some of those bankers walking by you playing the piano.
Speaker 1:I can almost guarantee that those bankers walking by you playing the piano. I can almost guarantee that. Even better still is the guy who was my boss in the bank yeah, four years after I quit. Who, by the way when I, when I left, was laughing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was sitting at his desk chuckling to himself about what an idiot, why because he's so smart yeah and uh, and there was an email chain which another guy in the office started because somebody took a picture of me when I was playing in the street. I took off my shoes. I really got into it, yeah, I took off my shoes and, and so somebody took a picture and I looked like a beggar because my feet are all dirty and they're sweating and playing. And there was this email thread making fun of me about this is what happens if you leave banking, you're going to be begging on the street and and I was still on the email chain, yeah, and I saw hundreds of like responses to this people, people laughing, making fun. So this dude I'm not going to say his surname, but his name's Mike and he was my boss. Four years later, when I'm now playing for royalty and royal families and Forbes billionaires and I'm on the super yacht with this dude and I got hired to go play for this dude who I've become friends with. He was a very successful dude and he'd hired a super yacht in Capri and I posted a picture from the side of this yacht and you could see by the name of the boat who owns it, which I didn't know. That that was the thing, but that's the thing. So this guy who was my boss found that out.
Speaker 1:And then I get back to London. Hey man, how's it going? Man, I'm so inspired by your story. Let me take you for a. Takes me to this fancy ass club which we used to take the clients to. It's really expensive. So now he's taking me and I'm like, wow, this is cool. Hey, um, we, we want you to do introductions to some of your clients and we can give you x percent of the fee revenue and blah, blah. And now he's pitching me. Yeah, this is the dude who was laughing at me. Four years later he wants me to work with him and uh, and I didn't do it. But, man, that felt good, that felt fucking good Dude that felt good.
Speaker 1:I never did it and I will never do it. It wasn't. You know, it's not the move.
Speaker 3:It's not the move but it felt amazing. That was very valid. Yeah, and sometimes you need that. Sometimes you need to realize like I am on the right path and for them. I can't even imagine what that guy thought going, oh, the right path and for them.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine what that guy thought going, oh shit. I gotta talk to this guy again, yeah, and the last time I saw him I had to pretend to have a certain personality, because you're my boss and I've got to have like this kind of you know, you can talk completely differently and now I realize, yeah you don't realize how unfilled, how much you filter yourself when you're in these environments that you don't enjoy and you're like this isn't me.
Speaker 3:This is like you don't even know who I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was that was that journey, and and that was that was the start. I mean it's, it's then, just it's an evidence, domino down. Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 3:No, no. The other part that's super interesting about your story is that you actually built an academy, so you did this thing where you're not just the talent but you're also a business owner, and you start thinking about that a different way. So because most people, like we've talked about, have no clue how to even do business in the first place. I know you did investment banking, but it's still like hey, this is-, I promise you investment bankers don't know how to do business.
Speaker 1:This is very different, yeah.
Speaker 3:So how was that transition of going like hey, like maybe we should do this, maybe we shouldn't do this gonna do this, like so very similar.
Speaker 1:I had no idea what I'm doing. It's almost the same story. I had no idea what I'm doing. I had a very, very high passion for it. Yeah, um, and I'd been playing piano all over the world and then people coming up to me after the show saying, oh my god, that's so cool. You remind me how much I want to play. Yeah, you remind me like, oh, you know, I had lessons as a kid or this, and I'd hear the same story over and over and over, which was people want to play, but they tried this and tried that and it didn't work.
Speaker 1:And then I start thinking, you know, it's funny, I hated learning piano. It was so painful. Yeah, 20 years it sucked. And then it was really fun, yeah, and then now that I've got to the end, to me it's very fun and, like a lot of things, when you really understand something, it becomes very simple. So to me now, learning music was so complicated, but now I've got there, I'm like it's so simple and I start thinking to myself well, I wonder if I could make something where learning it would be fun and simple, because if I did, every person I'm talking to would want it. Oh man, that would be cool. I don't know how to do it, but that's kind of interesting man and I couldn't let go of that thought.
Speaker 3:I think the other incredible thing and like the audience can realize this is that what Stephen's talking about is he's constantly doing market research, he's constantly hearing what the people are saying and what can be a service to them. And I think whenever you guys are getting all these interactions or these questions or comments or whatever they are, you can start to realize like, hey, hey, there's a lot of opportunity here. Hey, this isn't just this, there's a lot more depth to this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just want to give you props there and well thanks, you made me realize that when you said it. But I am doing that, but I'm always asking what can I do for you? What can I do for you? When I meet you, like when we met, we were going to do this on zoom and I was like how do we make it cooler? Like I'm always like how can I make this cooler? How can I make this cooler? How can I make this better? How can I? What could I add?
Speaker 3:Another. Sorry, I just do this, but the other point is that, like Stephen's starting to do, he asks himself better questions. He's not asking the questions of hey, how do we get this done as quick as possible, it's how do we make this as cool as possible and as impactful as possible and how do we really make a change? And like we were on the pre-call and you're like I'm in clearwater, I'm in tampa, oh, opportunity, yeah, like, and you start to realize that people are close to each other and there's really a great ability and when you come together in person, it really does make a difference 100, and and the value add of going that extra mile is what makes the thing work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was the same on piano, by the way. Everybody plays piano a certain way. And then I'd look and I'm like, well, okay, that's, I'm bored by that. So what can I do? Well, I like rock and roll and I like drummers and I like all these crazy, and that's me. So I was like, oh, you know, instead of pretending to be this, I'm just going to rock out. And then that was what was working. The school was an interesting point because, unlike when I went to be a pianist, at least I know how to play piano, whereas when, whereas when I go into the school, I don't know. This, it's a brand new area. It's a brand new area. I've got to invent something that I don't even know if it's possible. But it was a very similar thing of. First of all, it made no sense In the beginning.
Speaker 1:It made no sense, and I was pouring all of my income into trying stuff out that didn't work over and over for nine years. Oh, wow, yeah, nine years of like, oh, I've got an idea, yeah. And then I get a couple of guys and I try and it didn't work, and like, oh, yeah, back to the drawing board. Oh, I've got another idea. And then, and I'd film it and I'd do the whole thing, and then I'd look at it and I go, oh, that sucks. And then back off we go and then trying this and trying that, and it wasn't working.
Speaker 1:But at the same time I'd have these little wins. Like one win was that like to make my show more fun. Initially I was like, okay, I don't know if I can do. You know, I don't know if I can build a school or build a new way of learning piano, but what I can do is like I've discovered these little tricks, and so I would pull audience members in my show onto the stage and in one minute I'm going to teach you how to play something You're going to play for everybody in front of everybody.
Speaker 1:And then that was always the bit like the whole audience would go like wild when I did that and I was like, hold on a minute, hold on, I'm not okay. Then I run back and I'm like, okay, let me.
Speaker 3:And that process of like discovering little nuggets and testing and you start to realize that that interactive part makes it. Hey, if the show only has 500 people, I might be one of those people. If the show only has a thousand people, I might be one of those people. If the show only has a thousand people, I might be one of those people. If the show only has 10 people, I might be one of those people. But people get so excited about the opportunity to share the stage and it's just such a more valuable thing because now you're taking someone who doesn't know how to do something and you're like we're gonna learn this right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's gonna be beautiful. And the wild thing that happened from that and this, by the way, was like how I've marketed the school has been entirely from this moment again, accidentally, yeah is why was the rest of the audience going so crazy? And and what I learned is the reason that they all love that so much is because now they believe they can do it. And who doesn't want to do that, right, yeah? And and then I was like, oh, that's one of the biggest things that's stopping people from wanting to learn is they don't believe they can because they've they've had this painful past experience or they've other people that they know have.
Speaker 1:And so the challenge wasn't just building a product that makes learning piano fun, fast and simple, which, nine years later, I did. It was also then. But how do I get people to believe in themselves enough to even give it a shot? And then then that's where I was like I can demonstrate cool stuff. And that's again where I then learned from the streets of like, well, why don't I make the? I'll just give it away. So then the first thing was like I'm going to give away a free class. Just come, it's my equivalent of playing in the street. Come along. Maybe you'll keep walking, maybe you won't, but now I'm going to show you some stuff and I'm going to blow you away. I'm going to show you like it. It's. There's a degree of like. It's like the stage show. It's like, just come and check it out. If you like it, you'll stay for the show, if you don't, that's fine. And then that was the same thing then.
Speaker 3:And then it was the testing and the iterations. And this is so important for the audience to realize because it's not just steven story. This applies to everything we do, like I think. When I think about that, I think about my wife who went skiing for the first time, and she was. She grew up in Florida the whole time and didn't know how to ski Right. So we take her skiing. She's like this is terrifying, it's scary. Why is a three-year-old better than me? And I'm like that's because you've never skied before, right, so we're so hard on ourselves and it's how do we give ourselves a lot more of that grace of like, hey, one, maybe we didn't learn the right way. Two, maybe we just haven't done the activity enough right. And that's what we don't realize, because we want to be an adult and we want to be competent in everything. And it's like no, you just never practiced that.
Speaker 1:You're not going to be good at it. I can give you the perfect analogy. There's two things for that. First, the guy who was a ski instructor. Right, yeah, once upon a time he was like your wife who couldn't ski, yeah, and then he's done it a few times. He's then researched himself and iterated himself into somebody who now can give value. What can I do for you? I can teach you to ski, yeah, and now he's getting paid to teach people to ski, which for a lot of people is a dream life. Even for me I'm like man, that sounds cool, and the same in the school, like for a long time. I'm not yet qualified to teach you, and so I'm figuring it out, figuring it out, figuring it out. Nine years, nine years. Okay, now I've figured it out, now I can exchange with you and now I can give you something and then get something.
Speaker 1:And now it's a business and the same with your like. The perfect analogy is actually the people who come into school, because one big objection people have that I have to overcome to get somebody into my school is yeah, but they have no self-confidence. And I'm like, but why would you what? It would be crazy for your wife to be confident about skiing. Yeah, because she's probably gonna break her legs if she does like. You shouldn't be confident yet because you don't know how to do it. Yes, but you, you will gain the confidence in baby steps. Just take this first step with with me, and that's. I've got this weird phone.
Speaker 3:No, you're good, but I think that's an important thing to build. Repetitive action gives you that confidence. So, whatever skill you're trying to build, whether it's sales, whether it's music, whatever you're doing in your life as the audience is to realize hey, repetitive actions consistently, and then taking that information and realizing the data, realizing what's changing, realize what you're testing. You're going to have to get better.
Speaker 1:If you're taking action, you're going to have to get better Right and the business comes way down the line than when you are better.
Speaker 3:But most people delay the first sessions. So, like Stephen was saying, he did nine months and every month was equivalent to a year.
Speaker 1:Oh, nine months in the street.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but every month was equivalent to a year in the street. And you don't realize, because you're compounding it so fast, that you're just getting better and better and better. And you're like oh, the crowd didn't like when I did blah, blah, blah. The crowd did like when I did zah, like it makes a difference.
Speaker 1:I can tell you a story to illustrate how true this is and this everybody can find himself in this guy's story. Um, his name is matt. I recently interviewed him on my youtube channel. He's one of my students and he'd taken lessons when he was a kid and he didn't go very well, and so he got this idea I'm no good at music. Yes, he still loves music, he still wants to be a musician. He's got this idea I can't be a musician right. And then he goes and becomes quite successful. He gets a job, he's, he's working this job, he's got the family, he's now living in germany and he got hired in some big company and then he started his own thing.
Speaker 1:And if you look at this guy from the outside, you go very successful guy yeah but he's still inside is the little boy who wants to be a musician, yeah and uh, as cool as all that is, still, he's got that dream, yeah. And so then I'm chatting to him and I'm trying to like, okay, dude, you gotta come to school. And he's like, yeah, no, like I know I can't do that. And I'm like how can you be so positive in this other area of your life, but in this, yes, but in this, not? And he's like, no, and you know I, I, you know I, I it's not, I don't have time, I'm busy, I'm, I'm too old. You know, my memory is not what it used to be. My fingers aren't. They're a little stiff now, but he had like a million excuses, right, but all those excuses weren't helping him achieve his dream.
Speaker 1:And and but. This perfectly illustrates what you just said, because I'm going to tell you where he got to. And it was in just just under a year. So after six months he's been through this. So the program's 10 minutes a day. You, so after six months he's been through this. So the program's 10 minutes a day. You practice 10 minutes a day. On average. It takes people six months to complete.
Speaker 1:So about six months he starts having jam sessions in his house, inviting local musicians around. Oh, wow, and he's, and, and now he's making all these friends, yeah, and they're like cool people, artist people, and so they start to make a band and then they record music and he turns his office into a recording studio and then he puts out this thing on social media. He's's never had a social media, decides I'm going to make an Instagram. And, uh, he puts out a video. One of the first videos gets a million hits, wow. And then, within a year, he'd gone from a guy that didn't believe he could play and he was correct to playing concerts around Germany on the weekends. Still got the family, still got the business. And now he's playing shows and hundreds of people are coming out and singing along with him and he's living a dream he never thought possible.
Speaker 1:If I go to him and and me from the outside, I was like I know I can take you there. I've done this to thousands and thousands and thousands of people. But he looked at me like I'm crazy. He looks at me like what kind of scam artist are you? And it was unrealistic, as I would have done, by the way, if you came to me 10 years ago and said steven, you know, in 10 years you're gonna. That's not how you get there. That's you don't become an olympic skier by. I'm going to be an olympic skier some people do but the better thing to do is I'm going to focus on how do I clip my feet in the skis. Yeah, and by getting him focusing on step by step by step, very quickly. Yeah, we're at a place where he couldn't recognize, but he wasn't taking action because he looked at his goal and it was so far from where he is. He's like what's the point in starting?
Speaker 1:because I'm a million miles from this yeah, and that's, I think, what suffocates so many people. It was the same for me, like why did I not become a musician at 11?
Speaker 3:because mick jagger's unreachable it's the lack of clarity and it's the lack of understanding what the first step is, the second step, the third step, the fourth step and you don't know how many steps there are and you're just sitting there and you're going like that would be really cool. I don't know how to get there.
Speaker 1:Right, and the truth is, you don't need to figure out how to get there. You need to figure out what's the next step. Yes, and when you've taken that step, like when you put your left foot forward, you can figure out where your right foot is going to go next, and pretty quickly you're going to be eight steps into it, and eight steps you're somewhere you could never predict you could be. And that, by the way, is the adventure. Yes, the adventure is how do I get my left foot forward right now, like, what can I do to move that foot forward? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And what do you think allowed you to get out of the perspective of? Because I know a lot of people in the UK and kind of have that struggle of like, hey, we're just gonna, we're gonna work our jobs, we're gonna be I believe my friend said overworked and underpaid or something like that and they always have that mindset. So how did you have this global mindset established? Because obviously there's like people who came out and reached out to you but it's like it's another thing to go. Hey, I'm reaching out, hey, I'm hopping on the flight, hey, I'm going and I'm leaving, and most people can't leave their hometown. So how did you believe that to be?
Speaker 1:possible. I don't know if I did believe it to be possible, but I wanted to find out because I'd read so many of these kind of inspiring books. At university I studied philosophy, politics and economics and I was very interested in reading philosophy books and I'd read Aristotle, nicomachean Ethics 2000 year old book and I'd be inspired. But because I didn't take action on it, I'd then become cynical. And the cynic is just somebody who's given up, I know, because I was the biggest cynic and so I'd read all these self-improvement books and then eventually I'd become very cynical on the subject of self-improvement. But the reason was because I wasn't taking action, yeah, and then eventually, because I became so miserable, I was like why don't I just give it a shot and let's just see? And it was just refreshing to have the unexpected yes, and I will tell you right now, nine times out of 10, it doesn't go the way that I thought. Yeah, but it's cool and I can do something with it and I can make it work.
Speaker 1:It's a story when we got in touch with each other I don't know that we're going to be sitting here right now Like I don't know what the intro call is going to be. I was in between two very stressful meetings. When we first talked, I was like I don't even know, okay, I'm going to jump on the call. And now here we are and I'm loving it, and who knows where this then leads Maybe there's somebody in your audience now and they changed their life. And now I meet them in two years at a show, or and, and.
Speaker 1:But one thing's for sure it was going nowhere until we did this. Yes, and that's scarier than me, than anything else. And and I, I, I know the price of inaction, because I did that game for 22 years and I'm not going back because the price of not doing it like yeah, it's the only thing harder than chasing your dreams is not chasing your dreams. Yes, that's the only thing. The only thing harder than chasing your dreams is not chasing your dreams. Yes, that's the only thing. The only thing harder than chasing your dreams is waking up in the morning and knowing that nothing is going to happen today. Yeah, absolutely 100 chance I'm not achieving my dream today, day after day after day after day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that fucking sucks yeah, because you're not moving towards your goal and even if it's small incremental steps, like even if you have like obviously there's different levels of different jobs and different intensities, but but sometimes it's just like take the first step. You have a Saturday, you have a Sunday, like take some time and do that towards that goal, whatever that goal may be. And I hope that Stephen's story and just our conversation here is a reminder of you can do whatever you want and don't let the dreaming just be for the kids, like it's true, a lot of the time we lose our dreaming mentality. Yeah, for the kids.
Speaker 1:Like it's true, a lot of the time we lose our dreaming mentality. Yeah, I talk about this thing called playful curiosity. There's an attitude that you have when you're a kid you're curious. Curious means that your interest is out. You're interested. Yeah, the definition of interest is directing attention. So you're directing your attention into places like this and as you become an adult, through force and fear, the attention starts to go in. Yes, and now you're not interested, you're interesting. Yeah, and that's a trap. Yeah and uh. The second thing is playful. Like you start out playful, everything's a game. Yeah, you say to the kid, run over there and then come right back.
Speaker 1:All right, there's no reason, there's no payday, they just do it because it's fun and then the kid gets to be like nine years old and they say well, i'll'll do it, but I want pocket money. Yeah, give me a dollar, then I'll do it. And then they get a bit older. Well, now I need $5. They get a bit older, now I need $50. They get a bit older and you end up with a guy that won't do anything unless you give him a bucket of cash. And now he just won't do anything in his life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the funny thing is that they do a lot of things that they will do for free, like they'll go home and watch TV all night. Oh, no one paid you to watch TV, you're just doing it. But we have these different habits and these different things we do on a consistent basis, and then the joy comes from oh, I got this new toy, or I got this new car or this new pool or this new travel or this, whatever it is, and you're not really enjoying the life and enjoying the inherent experience of what you're working on constantly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I give a challenge to everybody watching. This is scary. I'm gonna tell you right now If you can go a month with no TV, no phone, no bullshit, no social media, you'll realize what you're not confronting, because you're doing all of that to anesthetize yourself. It's an anesthetic, it's a non-conference. I'm too stressed and you know, right now, just at the thought, really think about that. Really imagine you come home and there's no tv, there's nothing else to do other than you've got to sit there with your thoughts, and you'll know what those thoughts will be. Yeah and you'll, you will climb the walls. The initial thing is no, I go crazy, I go crazy. You probably would start with, but that's because the situation you're in is crazy yeah and then you start figuring it out bit by bit by bit.
Speaker 1:The the greatest gift my parents ever gave me was boredom. Yeah, I grew up in the countryside, borders, all hell, and that's what got me on a piano. Yeah, and, and then you know, I'd sit in the streets and time after time, yeah, and you've got to let yourself get bored, get uncomfortable and then get to something better. Otherwise you're going to spend the next 30 years watching that TV talking about oh well, and then that's it, you're on the floor down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you'll realize this from time to time if you're really living or other people are living. And one of the biggest reminders of this for me when I was younger was if I tell stories, am I telling stories about other people or am I telling a story about things I heard? Or am I telling my own stories? And you start to realize pretty quickly, like, am I living an interesting life? It's pretty fun, yeah. Or am I doing this for other people? And you start to realize that there's only so much time we have on this planet. Know what everyone has food, shelter and clothing, especially in America. Like, yes, we say we can't, but if you have a friend who will bring you in, like you'll be okay. And it's Just how do we go after that dream that we want to build? What even is our?
Speaker 1:dream and I'll tell you. You made me realize something. By the way, it's been a nice conversation, but I remember saying in my 20s I met a guy and his name's Simon and I worked with him, simon Poole. He was in my job with me and he quit shortly after me. He got very inspired by me but almost immediately went into an office job that he hates even more. Yeah, and then I remember sitting with him and then he was really miserable. Yeah, and he was like, yeah, but how? How do you know that you're gonna pay your rent next month? And I was like the funny thing is, because by that point I'd started traveling all over the world. I was like I can throw a dart on a map and I now know somebody who would have me stay with them. Yeah, and they'll give me food and I can crash in them. Yes, and that's the wealth of my life. I can drop me in india right now.
Speaker 1:Off the top of my head there's a bunch of people I can call up who I've met through playing piano in the street and I've got a place to stay and I've got a friend and I've got, and just through that collaboration I'll be able to figure out the next step. Drop me in new y, I've got a buddy. Drop me in Nashville, I can find a buddy. And if I can't find a buddy, I'll find a piano. And then I'll have a buddy Like it's, it's an amazing, and whatever is your piano, you're going to find an activity, you're going to find a thing where like that's confidence. By the way, drop me anywhere in the world. You can't take my creativity, you can't take my work ethic, you can't take my imagination. You can't lose that stuff and that's, that's the only value you've got. So drop me in the middle of nowhere with nothing. I've still got my imagination, I've still got my courage, I've still got my creativity and I'll go figure it out.
Speaker 1:All I've got to figure out is one step I love that I've got to figure out one step, yeah, and then I'll have the place to figure out the next step and if and as long as that's my focus yeah, my focus is not sitting there doing mental masturbation, but instead I'm just taking action yeah, what could be a step?
Speaker 1:and everybody, if you're watching this and you feel some kind of pumped up, go figure out a step. Take a pen and paper right now. Don't go back on your phone, don't scroll onto another video, don't go. Do take a pause. Go make a cup of tea, sit down and write out what's the step I could take. Yes, pick a goal. Any goal doesn't even matter, by the way. If it's wrong, you can pick another goal next week and just pick fucking anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah and write step one an example of that would be also because obviously, we saw how the piano works. Another example is like I want to run a marathon, just get some running shoes and go on a walk. Like you don't have to run the marathon, you don't have to do any of these challenges, but you need to take action. And this whole point of this entire call is to help people take action on whatever they want to do, because we only have one life and we have to go out and make that happen. But I love the fact that you brought up hey, it's not even about me, it's about the relationships that we've built and those people trust me and they'll house me and we can figure it out.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are a lot nicer than you think yeah, and let's say you're going to that marathon thing, right, and you're like, let's say, you go crazy and you quit your job to be an ultra marathon runner. You're gonna be the next david goggins makes no sense, but you're gonna do it. And you're 300 pounds right now and you're ladled in debt and you've got 250 kids and you've got all the reasons in the world not to do it. And let's say you did go and do that, right, yeah, and you throw yourself into it. You know what you're going to do because, of necessity, you're going to go to every run club that exists.
Speaker 1:You're probably going to make a thousand friends in in the first three months and through those thousand friends you'll figure it out. Yeah, because there's going to be one guy holds a camera. The other thousand people will start sharing it, or you'll get your first viral video. You get invited to do a talk. Now you're a speaker, you're getting 100k to go speak. You're going to figure like, but you cannot predict it from sitting on the couch and I couldn't predict this from sitting in a bank. I could have still been in banking and I wouldn't have been able to figure out. What am I going to do next?
Speaker 3:No, because you can't figure out all the steps going forward. You have to just trust yourself and be encouraged and be able to step into that confidence. Stephen, you're absolutely incredible. Where can people learn more about?
Speaker 1:you. Oh, dude, I'm everywhere. Just type my name. Instagram is my favorite. I do have a tiktok, but I don't even someone else is posting on there, but instagram is my favorite. I say this all the time if you want to be in touch with me, dm me, email me. I'm on linkedin. I write articles on medium and substack. I have a website, ridley academy.
Speaker 1:You can and this isn't an empty gesture be in touch. Yeah, you can, dm me, you can be in touch. Whatever I want to help. I want to be a friend to the world. I want to. I, I, that's, that's what I'm. I want to do, and the next phase of my life is very much like communal, really. Yeah, I feel I have stuff to share. Yeah, and I want to. I want to help out a lot of people, like, yeah, it's, I don't want a linear solo journey, I want to include a lot of people in it and, and so you know, find me, dm me, email me, come visit me, like whatever you need, I, I want to be a friend to the world and uh and I've not figured it out, by the way I'm one percent on my journey. Yeah, if I'm one percent ahead of you, then let me at least show you that, and then and I'm looking at the next guys to show me my next one percent and yeah, and um, that's it. So absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thank you so much, appreciate it. Awesome. There you go.
