Episode 69 - Michael Campion

Today’s guest is Michael Campion, a former professional footballer who has since forged a diverse career as a keynote speaker, corporate trainer and podcaster. Michael traces his journey, from football-mad youngster growing up in Hong Kong to the person he is today, recounting the twists and turns of his eventful life and the lessons he has learned along the way. He speaks with our Senior Partner Colin Cohen. Stay tuned.

00:39 Meet Michael Campion
01:22 Life as an Entrepreneur
02:12 Growing Up in Hong Kong
03:38 Durham and Choosing Geography
04:41 Back to Hong Kong First Job
06:11 Football Dreams and Trials
10:17 Investment Banking Detour
11:50 Wine Career and Personal Brand
13:46 Balancing Wine and Football
14:58 Hong Kong National Team Pride
15:47 Sake Startup and Entrepreneurship
16:58 Sake Business Highs
18:10 From Shy to Speaker
19:30 Sports to Corporate Training
20:36 Working With Lawyers
23:05 Persuasion Masterclass Pitch
24:45 Ben Quinlan Partnership
26:27 Golf and Family Balance
28:16 Why Hong Kong Matters
30:07 Scaling Impact and AI
32:08 Human Connection Finale

Host: Colin Cohen
Director: Niall Donnelly
Producer and VO: Thomas Latter      

Established in 1985, Boase Cohen & Collins is an independent law firm equipped with Hong Kong knowledge and global reach. Please visit our website. 

Transcript

[00:39:00] Colin: Hello everyone. My guest today is a man of many talents, Michael Campion. He's a keynote speaker, corporate trainer, drinks industry entrepreneur, and like me, a podcaster.

Previously, he has achieved almost every young person's dream in making it as a professional footballer.

And before any of this, he was a young, but by his own admission, somewhat disillusioned investment banker.

Michael, welcome to Law & More. You have a diverse portfolio. And as I always ask my guests, what's been keeping you busy recently? First of all,

[00:39:43] Michael: First of all, thank you very much, Colin for having me on the podcast.

It's really nice to see you again. I think what's been keeping me busy, I think every entrepreneur or business owner listening to this will agree that when you leave a nine to five, you swap it for a 24-7. So I feel like I'm eternally busy. So running my own business, I've got two kids and just trying to be the best in all areas and inevitably failing at some.

But the beauty of swapping the nine to five for a 24-7 is that I genuinely love what I do, and I can say that hand on heart and look you in the eyes and say it. My clients keep me very busy. I'm very privileged to be an executive coach to some really interesting leaders all across the world now, not just Asia.

And my job is essentially keeper of secrets. I'm always privileged and humbled that people trust me with their careers their decision making. Of course as guide, not as guru, but I'm eternally busy but I feel very privileged to be in such a position.

[00:40:33] Colin: Let's go back in time a little bit. You were born, raised in Hong Kong. Tell me a little bit about your upbringing, your school days here, your early reminiscences of his great and wonderful city.

[00:40:44] Michael: Yeah. I think I am absolutely in love with Hong Kong. I always have been and always will be. I look back on my childhood with immense fondness.

You have this stereotype of childhood in Hong Kong. I think from the outside, and perhaps fair, which is why it's a stereotype that kids grew up in a high rise. In a skyscraper with minimal space. Not much room to run around, but I was lucky. I had the complete opposite.

We lived in Braemar Hill. My father was a teacher at ESF? His entire career. My mother also worked for the English School Foundation. So we're very fortunate. We lived up there in Braymar Hill backing onto the hills and the mountains, we would spend all of our time outdoors either playing football, playing basketball, running around with friends or out in nature, chasing waterfalls, literally. And it was the best of both worlds. We had the city and the skys scraps of Hong Kong, but we grew up like it was a village with unlocked doors. Every single child just waltzed into their friends' houses. And we came home when it was dark and that was, very, what's the word utopian.

It was, it genuinely was. So I always maintained that in the eighties and nineties when I was growing up. Hong Kong was the best city in the world. It absolutely was. Now have we had a few troubles along the way? Yes. But I still maintain this as a beautiful place to live. 

[00:41:51] Colin: Okay. Now, ESF I'm very familiar, I arrived in 81. So I understand where you are coming from. You decided to go to Durham University.

[00:42:01] Michael: Yeah, my father went there. Yeah.

[00:42:04] Colin: Followed in his footsteps.

I 

[00:42:05] Michael: did. Yeah.

It wasn't intentional. I think it's just my father was actually a careers counsellor, so he established the. Career guidance at South Island School and rolled it out for all the ESF schools. So he had the privilege of knowing all the universities intimately. I did a few campus tours. He showed me Durham, of course, through roast tinted glasses, and I loved it. I thought it was beautiful. And it's the quintessential opposite of Hong Kong,

[00:42:26] Colin: Why geography? 

[00:42:27] Michael: Again, I didn't know what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do when I was 16, 17 years old. And I think it's actually somewhat unfair that someone of that age is forced to pigeonhole themselves. But you have some people who definitively know, I want to be a doctor.

Or I want to be X, Y, Z. I didn't know. All I knew was I was good at geography. Got A's, and I loved our teacher. Our teacher was fantastic. And she inspired a passion and love of the subject for me. So geography, it was, and I figured the rest out later. 

[00:42:51] Colin: And then you did a masters at Edinburgh?

[00:42:53] Michael: I did. Yeah. Yeah. Love Edinburgh. 

[00:42:54] Colin: In business degree.

[00:42:55] Michael: Yeah. It was bit business management. I think the bit that gets glossed over very often. If I think about my past interviews and podcasts which may be of interest to you.

There was a year in between, of course my undergrad at Durham and my post grad at Edinburgh, where I returned to Hong Kong. Again? I'd graduated with a geography degree. What do I do with that, Colin? Who knows? So I come back Hong Kong and I worked for Mark Granger. 

He took me under his wing as assistant to the general manager. He was of course the GM at a manufacturing firm out in Kowloon.

[00:43:19] Colin: Yes? Textiles. 

[00:43:20] Michael: Yeah, textiles. Exactly right. So you remember well. 

I'm 

[00:43:23] Colin: very close.

[00:43:24] Michael: Yeah. So I worked for him for a year under his wing, and this was actually a great crucible for me to really hone my public speaking skills.

Now, why this was, is because Mark Granger was essentially one of the only expats in the entire company, right? And so he was often forced to the front to deliver any presentations or deliver any sales pitches. Now, after a couple of months, me being completely green, I was basically put forward as the person who should deliver all the onboarding training for new employees at age 21 with zero experience.

And there was a manager who I will not name alongside Mark. Mark is a very gentle human being as there was another manager there who was not. She was very old school very strict and not afraid to criticise. And she ripped apart my my onboarding presentations every single time I delivered them.

But what it did give me was this immense discipline of how to be more concise, how to be more charismatic, how to get to the point, how to keep people's attention. And she just killed me, Colin. She killed me every single week for an entire year. And you know what, by the end of that. My sales training sessions were pretty good for a 21-year-old, so that was quite formative actually that year before I went to Edinburgh.

[00:44:29] Colin: Yeah. So let's just go back a little bit. Sure. Football. Now Mark was a very good footballer. And he was semipro. 

[00:44:38] Michael: He played pro didn't he? Played Sing Tao. I was with him back in the day.

[00:44:41] Colin: So tell me about your football career.

How did that develop?

[00:44:45] Michael: Again, it started very early, took a big segue and then came back, as very circuitous way to playing for the Hong Kong national team. But I played for the national team in Hong Kong up until under 16 I obviously grew up in the football club. A ball was eternally glued to my foot every single day growing up. And my one liner essentially is talent is practise in disguise.

When it comes to football, when it comes to anything else, talent is genuinely practice in disguise. And I know the only reason that I played at a decent level is because I practise more than anyone else. Right there were friends growing up at Braemar Hill. We would kick a ball around every single day who were perhaps more naturally talented than me or gifted, but I overtook them at the end because I was more obsessed.

And I practised more. So yes, I played for the football club. I played for Sing Tao with Mark Granger, Anto, Grabo all gentlemen, some great legends of Hong Kong football. But I ended up throwing it all away basically because at age 16 there was the sliding doors moment where I had a trial at Leeds United, Darby County, Nottingham Forest, and Knots County, that summer in the UK. They all went okay. But I had to make a decision. Do I wanna go all in and pursue professional football in the UK? Because in Hong Kong, there's a ceiling, right? There is a ceiling. Or am I gonna go back to Hong Kong and focus on my studies? Now it's very easy to say I took the right decision, took the wrong decision.

My parent as an academic, they said, focus on your studies. And I agreed. I agreed. So that's why I went to Edinburgh and why I ended up in investment banking. And only then after quitting investment banking during my quarter life crisis in my mid twenties. Did I come back to my original dream, which was to play professional football?

[00:46:12] Colin: Yeah. But you played professional football here, which is a big difference for being professional football in England and playing for those forests, for example. And Lee's all premier league clubs. Regrets that you didn't really go down that route? 

[00:46:27] Michael: Regret Yes and no. Because again, hindsight's 2020, so I know looking back. Ability wise, I was not far away. Because I trained alongside the likes of Michael Dawson, who went on to play for England. Some great players at all of those clubs that I mentioned. I wasn't a million miles away. I potentially could have made it, but there, there's no point kind of regretting that.

What I do regret is the fact that I was less confident, less forthright, less aggressive than I could have been. And that's something I've managed to develop later in life. Yes, there's regret that I didn't pursue the original dream with full vivacity and aggression that is required to be a professional athlete.

But I am proud of myself that later on, 10 years later, I was brave enough to throw a career in banking away, which would've made me a lot more money, by the way, and gone back to football, albeit in Hong Kong and say, you know what? I have unfinished business. I wanna represent my country. I wanna play in the Premier League here.

And I think I can do it.

[00:47:15] Colin: Yes, because I always remember you. 'cause I mean I did referee quite a lot actually refereed in the league here in my early days.

But I did a lot of refereeing at the football club. And I remember we knew you were quite young,

You were good. And I remember that as well. And you were very respectful to the refs compared to some of the other people who give me a hard time.

[00:47:33] Michael: There were some negative role models.

[00:47:34] Colin: Exactly. Just for our listeners. I still do referee on the Friday night and there's a team called the Gazelles, who I'm their referee and there's a team called The Dynamics, and this is where, bringing it up to date, that's where you do your Friday night exercise with sort of footballers play for the dynamics and enjoy your games. 

[00:47:52] Michael: Exactly right. We're all over 40 years old. Some of us over 70 and still getting out there. And it's great, it's social, and that's what I do it for. It's more for the social aspect than the the competitive instincts these days.

[00:48:02] Colin: And it's quite interesting. I was recently refereeing the Gazelles and we've now been able to bring in assistant referees, 

[00:48:11] Michael: Which you didn't have the benefit of. 

[00:48:12] Colin: Never had that. But now we have, and these were learning their careers. So they football, they provide, they do the run the line. Of course all the gazelle's go at these nice young refs.

You One's a girl, they were 16, and then next minute they're shouting at them. So then I yellow card them, then give them an orange card and they can only come back on if they apologise for upsetting the...

[00:48:34] Michael: I like that, it's good.

[00:48:35] Colin: Which I thought was a very good way of dealing with. Okay, let's go back a little bit.

Banking, how did that all come about?

[00:48:41] Michael: Again, I think this is not unique to me. I think especially during that age or that era, that moment in time, if you were somewhat smart at school, university, you got good grades, you were funnelled into certain areas, and the top performers at school and university were generally funnelled into, finance, right? Or consulting, it was finance management, consulting, perhaps the law as well, of course. But you would be targeting, your magic circle law firms, your white shoe. But it was the absence of a plan really that led me into banking is just, this is what smart, ambitious people do.

So I'm gonna get funnelled into it, and I think I tricked myself into believing that I could find fulfilment there. Now, I'm not a natural numbers guy. I'm not quick with numbers. I've always been better with words than numbers. So already, even though I got in the front office of the Royal Bank of Scotland and was objectively doing fairly well.

It always felt slightly unnatural to me. It always felt uncomfortable, and I always felt like someone was going to tap me on the shoulder and say, I figured you out. You're not supposed to be here, because it just didn't play to my natural strengths and natural skillset. Now, I guess the area I can give myself credit for is realising it pretty early because a lot of people will do decades in a career, not just investment banking.

This is not a dig or a slight on investment banking, but many people spend decades in a career and then realise, oh. I don't enjoy this, but I'm stuck. And you've got the proverbial golden handcuffs, so to speak. But I got out really early.

[00:50:02] Colin: Yeah. And then that brought you back into when you came back into Hong Kong. Exactly. 

[00:50:07] Michael: And then via a year in Canada. 

[00:50:08] Colin: So arriving back in Hong Kong. Wine business. Yes. So tell us a little bit about that. We all like our wines.

[00:50:16] Michael: Yeah, we all do, we do all like our wines. They should be enjoyed, right? So for me, during that year in Canada, just for context to paint a quick picture. I'd left investment banking, sold everything I had.

My then girlfriend, now wife, we moved to Whistler. So we lived in the mountains during the Winter Olympics, which was incredible. Barely had two pennies to rub together, but we enjoyed life and this is where I was trying to find out a new career path for myself where I could actually do something that I loved and I was genuinely interested in.

I was genuinely curious about, so I discovered the wines of the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. That is not the natural place to start a wine career, but I got pretty obsessed with finding out about the terroir, learning about the different grape varietals. And I found a master of wine called James Clue MW, who just so happened to live around the corner from me in Vancouver during that time. I called him up and I said, look, I want to get really knowledgeable really fast. And he said, lucky for you. I have a course starting in a couple of days. So I just went straight into it, blindfolded, all the sommelier training.

Long story short, I ended up starting a wine blog. So this is before the age of podcast. This is before Instagram. Before LinkedIn, I wrote a tiny blog on the internet with my tasting notes and my thoughts on the wines I was tasting. And then when I landed in Hong Kong a few months later, my one year visa had run out.

I had two job offers within the space of, without exaggerating, I think 24 to 36 hours, which is great. And the reason I was able to walk into a job in a completely new industry, which is, wine sales, was because of the power of personal brand. It was the power of sharing my thoughts online.

And I would imagine there was probably less than a hundred people who read that blog, right? If I look back at it, it was probably horribly amateurish. But the fact was, I was willing to put my thoughts on the internet. And I got rewarded for it. And I think that's a really good, powerful lesson early on.

And that was a fantastic job. So essentially selling wines to all the five star hotels, private members clubs in Hong Kong. Great job. If you're a wine lover,

[00:52:06] Colin: Yeah. And then at the same time you were able to do a little bit of football.

[00:52:10] Michael: Which seems an awkward marriage, right? Yes. So the awkward marriage was at that exact same time, I'd landed back in Hong Kong selling wine, swirling wine all over Hong Kong.

I was playing semi-professional football for the Hong Kong Football Club, which is when they were in the, I believe we were, yes, we were in the Premier League Premier. So we'd been promoted to the Premier League that season. So I remember, I will admit this on air, that there was one particular game against South China, right?

So South China were the real powerhouse at the time, top of the league. And we were playing them at the Hong Kong football club at, 7:00 PM that evening or whatever. I end up running into the changing room super, super late, right for the football club. Because I'd been at a wine tasting. I had 2, 3, 4 glasses of red wine.

I run into the change room, obviously don't tell the gaffer, and he's put me in the starting 11, go on to play 90 minutes against the best team in the league, even though we lost, I think six two a won man of the match. So that was a bit of a poor merc and poor geco moment perhaps. Not to be advised, I strongly advise you doing so, but again, it just showed you the awkward tension I had between, trying to forge a new career for myself, but also following my passion, which was to be a professional footballer full time. And it was the end of that season, I managed to get a contract.

[00:53:19] Colin: Yeah. And then that also led you into a national team.

[00:53:22] Michael: It did. 

[00:53:23] Colin: And so you're playing for Hong Kong? Yeah. Proud moment for you going out for Hong Kong. You You are half Filipino and you're Dad's English, so it must be very proud at that moment.

Very few people ever do that, 

[00:53:33] Michael: So few. And again it's not something I like to shout from the rooftops, but it is something I can feel immense in a pride in that, that pulling on the Hong Kong national team Jersey as someone who's born and raised here.

Yes, I'm half English, yes, I'm half Filipino. I don't have Chinese blood, but I'm immensely proud of this city and being able to walk out. Into a stadium of 25, 30,000 people. That is a feeling that I will never, ever forget. The wall of sound that hits you when you do that is incredible. And I didn't get as many caps as I wanted to.

I didn't play as long as I wanted to. I had to retire because of injury. And I never quite hit the heights I wanted to, but you know what, it was worth it.

[00:54:06] Colin: Yeah. And also it gave you a new perspective as to your career. Now I do remember one thing. I I've been heavily involved in football in Hong Kong with my role in the Hong Kong football club, and about eight years ago, I hosted a lunch at the Hong Kong football club with a premier referee, Martin Atkinson, who was very well known.

My good friend Mike Riley, asked him to come out and invited you along and you brought a bottle of nice sake. Now tell us a little bit about that, Martin was very happy with that.

[00:54:34] Michael: It's funny you bring that up because again, it shows the world of wine and spirits colliding with the football world. So as I left professional football, this would've been 2014. So I've retired from professional football. What am I gonna do with myself, right? So I have to leverage my wine and spirit's expertise and just so happens that I, meet some friends who are launching a new Japanese Sake brand.

They've developed this concept from scratch. They found this beautiful brewery in the mountains of Nagata prefecture in Japan, and the idea is to take over the world with this luxurious Japanese sake that is made to the most beautiful, precise specifications. And try and get it into all the best nightclubs and bars in the world.

So I joined them on that quest. That was my first real proper deep dive into entrepreneurship. That's, 12 years ago now. And, I'm still involved. I'm still one of the owners. We haven't quite taken over the world yet, but we can be immensely proud of what we've done. We created a Sake that scored 94 points in Decanter Magazine, which is nothing to be sniffed at.

And that taught me an immense amount trying to build a business from zero, a physical product. And again, we got it into 10, 11 different countries in the world. At one time, COVID really hit us for six, unfortunately. But at one time, every single plane in the sky. Korean Air had a bottle of our Sake on it.

And Cathay Pacific, it was the number one product on duty free sales on Cafe Pacific. Again, as a Hong Konger, very proud and it's been a great teacher for me, I think building that business.

[00:55:58] Colin: Now, I'm very interested. So you're doing that. You then started commentating on TV, doing football hosting events, you corporate days when the football club were, where we had the big sevens. You are the person sort of the keeping everyone under control, remember we had one of the referees were out there, Anthony Taylor, we had a big football star trying to get things out of them. 'cause you now then to develop your business into this coaching and the ability to, public speaking as well,

Early days was and how it developed into your business.

[00:56:31] Michael: Yeah. I, and again, nothing succeeds as planned as my business partner Benjamin loves to say.

Nothing succeeds as planned. And I think where I am now is the absolute correct place I'm supposed to be because it is an amalgamation of all the things that I've experienced, and all the things I'm good at because I've worked at them. So for context for people listening, yes, I'm a professional speaker.

Yes, I'm an executive coach, but I used to be incredibly shy. I used to be really introverted, so the part I missed out about my childhood at ESF. Or that idyllic childhood is I was sick for a lot of the time that a lot of people don't know. I was very shy. I couldn't put my hand up in class. And that same summer that I failed, and I will use the word failed to get a contract at Darby County, Leeds United Nottingham Forest, those clubs, I made a decision.

That I will not go to bed at night without having one conversation with a stranger. That was my KPI. So just to get over my social anxiety and fear of public speaking was to have one conversation with a stranger every single day. Now, I'm 42 now, so that's 26 years of intentional practise every single day, of course, I dove into the books, I read everything.

I consumed, everything I could on the art of communication, psychology, poetry, everything else. But the only reason I have any authority to teach someone is because I've solved my own painful problem. I know it can be learned. I know this isn't natural, but it becomes natural over time. And again those repetitions really started as you said, with those football events.

So as a footballer, I was injured a lot. That sucks. But the upside was they had to use me on Radio, on TV because I could string two words together. They had. To have me justify my salary. So I would do these large events for 500 people, a thousand celebrities. You've been at those dinners, right?

They are intimidating, but if I can do it again and again, I get better. People get to know me more. And again, it just, over the years, parlayed more from sports into the corporate world because we're in Hong Kong, right? This is a city of finance, a city of commerce. It's a city of entrepreneurs.

And over time people started to ask me less to. Present the sports events, more to present conferences, more to speak on panels, and then eventually someone asks you for advice and says, I wanna speak the way you do. Help me do that. And now the bread and butter is really going into law firms, investment banks, private banks, and teaching larger cohorts on the art of presentation.

Because I firmly believe that anyone can be taught to become a more persuasive, more confident communicator, and everyone wins if you can do that, right? If you can help a shy person find their voice, if you can help a boring business find their narrative, that makes it more interesting. Everyone wins.

[00:58:57] Colin: Now, Law & More is the name of my podcast. So I thought I would regret not asking you about lawyers.

[00:59:03] Michael: I'm glad you will. 

[00:59:04] Colin: So tell us what you think about the lawyers. 'cause you've been asked to help lawyers. Yes. We are wear a rare breed. We think we know everything when we don't. A lot of lawyers just sit in their offices and don't go to court. I'm fortunate to admit I've been able to do everything. So tell us about your experience with Lawyers.

[00:59:20] Michael: Yeah. So there's lawyers in the family, right? So my youngest sister, I'm one of three is a lawyer. My uncle was a partner at Eversheds for decades. Again, so some level of familiarity with the breed.

And then, what part I always conveniently leave out of my CV is that I did spend about six to nine months as a legal recruiter or headhunter. So when I was in Hong Kong, and again, searching for things to do. Between the Sake business and professional football, I ended up joining a great firm called SSQ, great firm, headhunting firm based out in London.

And they move lawyers from, law firm to law firm, private practise. So I was really thrown in at the deep end and I thought it was something, why not? Why not give it a go? Their team was very persuasive. They brought me on board, but I found out very quickly that it's a very difficult job because recruitment is hard enough, right?

But then again, we only had lawyers in private practise as our target market. And again, highly risk averse, highly thorough. In terms of their thinking, very methodical, generally speaking. So they're not the kinds of people who will impulsively leave their firm, rip things up and jump over to another firm.

So that was very challenging. But again, every single experience I've had. Has taught me something valuable. And the beauty is now in my corporate training and coaching work, I have a number of lawyers who I work with one-to-one, or I can go into a law firm and have some understanding of the lingua franca.

I have some understanding of who the different players are, magic circle, white shoe, et cetera. I know what they do. So there is that little extra layer of respect they have for me as a trainer. 'cause I'm not just coming in and preaching to them and not knowing anything about the job. I have some semblance of understanding of what they do.

[01:00:52] Colin: So what you would do, and if I'm wrong, tell me off. So if you go in and you would try and help the lawyers to communicate to the clients or to. Use skills internally. And to be a part of a team and work together. As was my firm here now, Boase, Cohen and Collins herding lawyers is like herding cats.

Everyone has their own opinion in a smaller firm. So if I asked you to come in to coach us, what would you be doing? I Gimme a sales pitch. I'm interested.

[01:01:26] Michael: Yeah. So I think at the highest level would be to get everyone together in the same room, first and foremost. And as you said, it's like herding cats. So that's maybe the hardest part, but I think a lot of people don't know what they don't know.

So when it comes to the art of communication, when it comes to the art of the sale, and again, as every job. As a partner, it's just sales, right? You have to feed the business if the associates want to eat, someone has to hunt and that's you, the partner. So they haven't been taught on the art of communication.

They haven't been taught on the art of the sale and business development. And every single workshop I do, I always start with a little hand raiser, right? I say, who here has had formal public speaking training or presentation skills training? 

Almost zero ahead. Almost zero, it's almost close to zero.

And again, for me, you've been wandering through life. You're perhaps very intelligent. Perhaps you're great with clients, but it's trial and error, right? That's all it is for a lot of you. And what I'm trying to do to them again, is, what it's like with lawyers if they're gonna be quite apprehensive and defensive to begin with.

So I need to show them something that they don't know and that's really. Opening up the kimono and showing these are all the layers of influence. These are all the psychological triggers. These are all the emotional buttons that you can push in a ethical way, by the way, to make someone buy into your ideas.

Because again, a lot of your job is persuasion, correct. I need to get someone to buy into my worldview to buy into my point of view. And there are techniques that you can use to do that more effectively, right? Rather than pure trial and error. So I think it would probably be a one and a half hour, 'cause I know you work on billable hour, so none of my law firm clients wanna gimme a half hour, a full day.

It's always a power hour over a lunch or an hour and a half masterclass on, the art of persuasion influence and how to have more, I think, emotionally intelligent client conversations. 

[01:03:06] Colin: Now you're a podcaster playing the inner game. 

[01:03:09] Michael: Yes. Which is a little bit of a sport reference there as well.

[01:03:11] Colin: The inner game. And one of your first guests were Benjamin Quinlan. Yes.

Tell us about that. I'm interested.

[01:03:17] Michael: yeah. Yeah. Ben, lovely human being, superb guy. We are business partners now, so all of my corporate training I run, with his firm, Quinlan Associates, which sounds like a law firm, Quin and Associates, he always says, it's a bit of a joke.

We're not, we're a strategy consulting house. But Ben was someone I identified fairly early on. Again a very proud Hong Konger, right? Half Australian, half Chinese. But he wears a double hat, right? He's CEO of a strategy consulting firm by day, a standup comedian by night. He's one of Asia's top award-winning comedians.

I just loved that double hat, as someone who has to be very straight laced. Perhaps during the day but has this almost, switch that he flips come nighttime. So we ended up recording together during COVID. We had a beautiful conversation, lots of laughs for about 90 minutes and we kept talking for another four and a half hours.

He basically said, look, I'll cook you dinner. We recorded at his house, I'll cook you dinner, you stay here. And he locked the door after about halfway through and he said, you are not leaving until we figure out a way to work together. I said, okay, I better get comfortable. Let's figure this out. And that was back in 2020.

So he made me head of corporate training a couple of months later. So I've been a partner at the firm since then. So that's almost six years coming up now. So all the corporate training I run with him alongside him. Usually it's me leading the workshops but he is there as my partner in crime.

And then all the speaking and executive, coaching work one-to-one is generally run across my own business, but in six years of business doing together, I think we've had two arguments each solved in the space of 60 seconds. And that's really hard to find, I think really hard to find.

[01:04:48] Colin: Yeah. And you know you are a corporate trainer. Podcast host like myself. You are very busy all the time. How do you relax.

[01:04:58] Michael: Golf.

[01:04:59] Colin: Oh no, that's interesting. Now, where do you

[01:05:01] Michael: Typical, 40 plus year old.

 I guess golf is the new obsession. I say new obsession. I played as a child as well. And I don't play golf for the reasons a lot of people do, which is, ooh, it's good for networking. Ooh, it's a high status thing to do.

I love sport and I love anything that requires dexterity, motor skills, coordination and I love the fact that I'm in nature for four to five hours. And I don't look at my phone, so I make this a very strict rule. You play golf as well, right? Okay. Yeah. Some people in the buggy will be on their phone making deals, brokering, sending emails.

For me that four or five hours is sacred because I am so busy, I'm constantly connected to my clients. If I'm not with my clients, I'm selling I'm trying to drive new business because, again, I have no salary, right? It's a pure drive, revenue drive model.

If I'm not out there putting myself out there in terms of podcasting, speaking on stage, helping people. I don't eat and I've got two kids, and Hong Kong's expensive, right? So I am always busy. So I use golf as a way to spend time in nature with people I like. We have conversation. I can relax for four to five hours.

Now again the other clue in the answer is my kids. I love my kids. I'm very proud of the fact that, I honestly couldn't care less about my career as long as my son and my daughter love me. And will always wanna spend time with me. And what I'm very fortunate in doing and having, is that because I was a professional footballer, we only train two to three hours a day.

So I had 21 hours to spend with my kids and I started quite young, which is great. And then again, as an entrepreneur, yes, I'm busy, but I choose when to be busy, right? I don't have to clock in. I don't wear a lanyard, I don't have a boss to report to. So if I wanna sack off Tuesday afternoon and pick up the kids from school and go swimming, I'll do that.

But again, I might just work till 1:00 AM anyway and make up for it.

[01:06:37] Colin: Now you were in Singapore, now you are permanently back here in Hong Kong. And Hong Kong has had its problems, it's an interesting place. Different from Singapore. Yeah. Your views of Hong Kong at the moment?

[01:06:52] Michael: I'll caveat by saying I have not a bad word to say about Singapore, 

[01:06:55] Colin: I honestly think I enjoy Singapore. It's a good place. 

[01:06:58] Michael: As do I, right? And I think a lot of people will try and play the polarising card on the table and say, oh, Hong Kong's way better than Singapore. We had a great time, we had a fantastic three years there, as a father, someone with a young family.

Singapore is idyllic, right? 'cause it's incredibly safe. Everything works. Everything is designed backwards from the family unit right. Now, why am I happy to be home? It's better for my son in terms of his schooling. We don't have to go into the specifics, but again, we found a beautiful school here in Hong Kong for him that is right for him.

And that's really important. So we are here for the long run. I think there is no more glorious site than being on a Cathay Pacific aeroplane flying over Kowloon, East to West or West to East and looking at that skyline with the impossibly Green mountains behind. Every single time, I'm 42 years old, I still don't get bored.

I still peer out the window. I still want the window seat. It is Jurassic Park meets New York City, right in Asia and the verve, the energy. Is coming back. It's not gonna be what it was in the eighties and nineties. Someone said it beautifully. Hong Kong was a moment in time. It's not a place. So the place we have now, the city we have now in 2026 will never be what it was before. You have to accept that. What could it be? And can I still view it as somewhere worth living, somewhere worth creating, somewhere worth setting down roots. And I think the answer is yes, unequivocally yes.

So I'm still bullish. Hong Kong. 

Now 

[01:08:17] Colin: it's your home. It's your place. And I've been here quite a long time. Coming soon,

[01:08:23] Michael: How many years now, Colin?

[01:08:23] Colin: 81, I came. So 40, 40 plus, 47, 48 years here. Now with your business, where do you see you going? I'm gonna podcast you in another 3, 4, 5 years. What's your future for your work? 

[01:08:35] Michael: It's a really interesting question. I like it. So there's two parts.

Number one is. I wanna have more impact at scale. I need to be able to help more people. And the hardest part for me is I'm not able to clone myself. Yeah. Because one-to-one coaching is not scalable, which is why I do the corporate workshops I can help more people at a time now. So for me, at three to five years, if we do this again, hopefully I'll be running a lot more retreats, a lot more large scale events where I can help more people at scale, which is why, for example I ran my first public available masterclass for a hundred people in Club Lusitano alongside Benjamin Quinlan.

And another lovely human being, Jennifer Mka again. So a hundred people in Hong Kong. Anyone can sign up and try and teach them everything we know about the art of public speaking. So more events like that. Number two, the AI question, right? The AI elephant in the room. It's a barbell, right? So there's nothing in the middle that's gonna get carved out.

And you're gonna have people that are AI consultants, AI engineers, prompters and they're just all in on AI. On the other end, we still want the human touch, okay? So physics right, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? So as much as people will rush headlong into the arms of AI. You are already seeing an increasing clamour for digital detoxes.

Yeah, there are hotels and retreats specifically set up where you are not allowed to be on your phone. There is no wifi. You put it in a box when you check in, and you do not see it for the entire week. So I think there's gonna be an increasing need for human connection. Because, ironically, we're more connected than ever, but more disconnected than ever.

We feel very atomized and isolated, right? We have our entire world, in our phone, and we're not speaking to the person in front of us. I was in Sai Kung the other day, and the table next to me, there's four people, right? Four young people in their twenties sitting together. If I think back to when I'm with my friends in my twenties, we're having a laugh.

We're insulting each other. You know it. It's a loud, vivacious table. Every single person was on their phone. Four people not looking at each other on their phones. I'm thinking what's happening here?

[01:10:26] Colin: I, agree with you entirely.

[01:10:28] Michael: Yeah. So I, this is why I'm actually counterintuitively really bullish on what I do, because I still think people wanna look each other in the eye.

They wanna feel connected, they wanna hear stories. There are certain things that AI cannot give you. AI has never had its heart broken. AI has never raised a child. AI has never wanted to quit a job and can't bring themselves to do it. And you need to have that human factor, I think, so that's why I'm really bullish on what I do.

[01:10:52] Colin: I understand completely. My biggest difficulty is getting my grandson away from his iPad. He comes around and he knows more about than I do getting around the iPad, all the selections and all the rest of well, your whole world is in the iPad, the phones as well. Interesting times. Thank you so much for joining us on Law And More. It's been a privilege talking to you and I'm looking forward to having you again in a few years time and we can catch up again. Thank you very much. 

[01:11:20] Michael: Thank you, Colin. I'll hold you to it.