Outlier TV Episode with Andrew McCombe Founder Outlier TV

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Andrew McCombe:

Hey guys, Andrew McCombe here from Outlier TV. In this week’s episode, we’re in the metropolis of Jakarta Indonesia, where we’re going to do things a little differently this week. We’re actually going to interview myself, and we’re going to find out about the inspiration and the background behind Outlier

Lawrie Montague:

Come on, let’s go and see how it all started. Andrew McCombe, we’re in a postdoc into the golf club in Jakarta, Indonesia. What the heck are you doing here?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, I’ve just finished filming 14 episodes of the initial series of Outlier TV.

Lawrie Montague:

Fantastic. How has it, how has that gone for you, where have you been? What have you been doing?

Andrew McCombe:

Good question. Uh, absolutely inspiring. I got to hang out with some inspiring entrepreneurs. There are some fantastic people out there doing fantastic things and ultimately what Outlier and what I’ve been doing is going around seven countries in the last six weeks to share their stories with other potential outliers and entrepreneurs to inspire them to do similar with their own lives.

Lawrie Montague:

I mean, you’re going to inspire people if nothing else. You’ve got the Outlier all over your brand. It’s so well you look like a NASCAR mate, isn’t it?

Andrew McCombe:

I want people to know what Outlier is, what it stands for. It’s got a big message behind it, and ultimately it is about inspiring others to be an outlier, be themselves be successful being themselves. And don’t question being themselves, just commit to them themselves.

Lawrie Montague:

So how did that all come about? Where’s the beginning of this story? I mean, here we are right now, Jakarta Indonesia. Where did it all start?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, mate, small-town Dunedin and New Zealand, the bottom of The South Island, or close to. I guess the first thing is, I’ve always had been into sports.

So ever since I can ever remember, I always wanted to be a professional athlete growing up. There’s not a lot of opportunity in Dunedin. I guess I, as an athlete, you don’t know that at the time, you are just growing up, you train hard, you work hard, you see external resources or references like overseas. And I just always, I don’t know how, but I just knew to get where I wanted to go, I needed to work hard and do different things. So initially, it was sport. I played cricket. I was going to play for New Zealand. To cut a long story short.

They made a school rule at my school, they said, “you have to choose cricket over volleyball.” And I also played volleyball at the time. I was in the first six for volleyball at a young age, at high school.  I was in the 1.11. it’s probably my first outlier incident. They told me I had to choose cricket over volleyball. And it was at one weekend.

We had a semi-final for volleyball and Christchurch, which is a town four hours North of Dunedin. And we had a semi-final for a national cricket tournament in Dunedin. So it was a clash, and they told me, I must choose cricket over the volleyball. And one thing I’ve learned or people have probably learned, “don’t tell me what to do.” They told me what to do.

And I went the opposite way. So I chose volleyball over cricket, and it was interesting. That was really a life-defining moment for me because I stopped playing cricket soon after. Which was, in hindsight, was stupid. Um, but it was what it was. I would’ve made more money in cricket than I ever would’ve in volleyball.

Well, at the time, I was going to play for New Zealand. my goal was to play in England and play County cricket and play for New Zealand, et cetera. But it’s funny how life changes, right? So I ended up playing volleyball, but when I looked back, I then trained for the Olympics, the 2000 Olympics.

At the end of the year at university for four years. And then I think we had about three years to train for the city 2000 Olympics mate. That was a life-changing moment that brought me to live in Australia. So I moved from Dunedin to Australia and lived in Manly, beautiful Manly beach. I had to fund myself. So I had a PE degree. I got my PE degree or physical education, and I had to fund myself. Well, if you’re an all-black, they fund you. If you’re a netball nowadays, they might give you some money. If you’re a yachtsman at the time, they might’ve, but every other sport was on their own. Yeah. So I had to fund myself. So I thought, well, what can I do? And I was passionate about health and fitness.

So I set up a personal training studio in Manly and eventually set up three health clubs. But what I found was another defining moment. I loved business, more than I did training, sport day-in-day-out doing the same thing over and over. So stood down from volleyball for a while, from New Zealand. And you had to do that anyway to play for Australia. I ended up deciding I wanted to play for Australia. There were better options and more choices and more people where I was playing and stuff. It also made me realize; I just love playing volleyball. I love training for it. Yes. I’ll go away and compete for it. I don’t think I was good enough at it. But on bad days, I just wasn’t into it.

Lawrie Montague:

Tell me, your mum and dad, how did they play a part in this? I mean, do they have sporting backgrounds, your brothers? You have sisters. I mean, what’s your family background.

Andrew McCombe:

My father was in accounting, had his own practice. My mother had her own office products shop. So they were always entrepreneurs. But very much nine to five, it was they just had a job, but it was a business, and that’s no disrespect to my parents at all. But it was like they bought themselves a job. They had staff and everything else, but it wasn’t a case of leveraging up and making massive businesses or anything.

Lawrie Montague:

Do you think that was just the way It was back in the day, though? I mean that’s a lot of businesses, especially in a small town, I don’t think they wanted it to be their lifestyle.

Andrew McCombe:

My brother was handicapped, so he needed 24-hour care, which my mom did. She was an absolute legend looking after my brother. Another inspiration for me was my brother. He couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything. And yet profound inspiration for me. Growing up with a brother like that, it was embarrassing because I didn’t know how to deal with that. But when he passed away, I was 21 on the day of his funeral, I moved to Australia. I’d pre-planned my trip to Australia. He died a week prior to when I was in Oakland at a tournament.

Lawrie Montague:

And did you know that was going to be the case?

Andrew McCombe:

No, it was suddenly. So I was uncontactable for probably three or four days. I got to this tournament on the beach. I can remember it now; I get to the beach. The night before, I had all these dreams about all my relatives and stuff. And I woke up going, “it was weird. Why do I have all these dreams about relatives?” The bunch of friends and me were an hour up the coast from the tournament. And we took this boat to the tournament. We saw all these dolphins. Anyway, I’ll get to the shore. it was the most sickening feeling ever I had. I went to the shore, and the tournament director came down and said, “Andrew, you need to call your father.” I said, “why?” She wouldn’t tell me. She said, “you’ve just got to call your father.”

I didn’t know what happened. He told me your brother’s died. Maybe there was a turning point in my life. I was just shattered. My flight was on the 22nd of January, 1997. His funeral, I think, was the day before. So I found out a week earlier, I managed to get back to Dunedin and went to the funeral. I flew in the night before. I went to the funeral, the next day flew out, and I was gone to Australia. Which is, in hindsight, not a great thing. I had no family support over there. I had a good mate with me at the time. It was my partner. And it was just grief.

Six months of total grief. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was there to train, and I had no motivation for it. Eventually I used my degree in physical education. I thought, “well, I can’t keep doing this.” So I set up a personal training studio in Manly, and that was hard, man. It was really hard. It was the early days. Like nowadays, people go to the gym, and I had to literally pull them to the gym. Nowadays, with Instagram and everything, everyone just wants to go to the gym just to look good. I couldn’t get them to the gym. So it was a battle for the first few years.

Lawrie Montague:

Is that because you just didn’t know what to do to get them there?

Andrew McCombe:

When you look at it like that, it was a massive learning curve, which I thrived in. You know, I loved the training component too, but I also love the creativity of how to work it out and how to get them there. I soon realized I wasn’t really a trainer as such. I guess my vehicle was training, but I loved the business stuff behind it and working out, you know, the marketing, the sales.

Lawrie Montague:

You did have a PE degree, so you didn’t have a business degree. So how did you learn to develop business? Because you know, I’ve got to know you over the years and you’re very good at business, and you’re very good at hustling and generating products and content and so on. So how did it get to that place?

Andrew McCombe:

To be honest, when I was 10, I tried to start a carwash. Just me and my mate. My parents had about three or four cars. And we’d put them out in the driveway, and I had a mate, but I was always the one to coerce people into doing things. So they’d just come along for the ride. We were going to wash these cars, I’ll do the soap, and we’re going to time it. And so I’d wash the car, and we’d time it. We’d do the other three cars. That was for about an hour. So I worked out, on average every 15 minutes we could do a car if it was the two of us. I did the numbers that went, “well, if I can do four cars an hour at the time, it was going to be ten bucks. That’s 40 bucks.”

I don’t know what I was thinking. But anyway that was that night. My dad’s cousin owned a garage on the other end of Dunedin, which in reality is not a long way now, probably a 10-minute drive. But as a kid, I had to go from after school at three o’clock to get there. And on the first day of getting there, it was Monday morning and Monday afternoon. I had a gut feeling, and I knew, “geez, Mondays, aren’t gonna be busy.” And people aren’t looking to get their car wash on a Monday. But the week prior my mum had spoken to my dad’s cousin and he said, “yeah, go for it.” And my mum rang on Monday. She said, “Andrew, I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

She rang him again and said, “look, I don’t think he’s going to do it.” And you know, in hindsight, it probably was not a bad thing, but that was sort of my first foray into starting a business. I never actually got to do it, but that was it. And then we used to go out in the forest and bag up pine cones and then sell them for 20 bucks way back there. Now you’d get them for five bucks, but we’d sell. The funny thing was that we’d sell them to our friends, that we went out in the forest with the parents and their kids would tell our parents. But that was way back in time. But the business, I had the health clubs, and I started with wine, and I always just kept wanting to grow.

The first two years, it was hard. I was in a standalone personal training studio. It was tough. I had my partner; my beach volleyball partner was also my partner in the business. He had different values. He just wanted it as a hobby. I wanted to do it as a business. And I just said, “look, man, I can’t really do this.” it was nothing against him. It’s just I do things a hundred percent or nothing. And I wanted to do it a hundred. And so I bought him back out. I was training with a client at the bottom of the hotel and Manny, the Pacific hotel, and I looked up, And I thought, “Why don’t we go to that gym there?” And he said, “Go there.”

“See if they’ve got one. And if they have, maybe offer to put your equipment in there, and in return for rent-free space and see how you go.” So I thought, “Oh, that’s awesome. I’ll go and have a look.” Went up. They had the dodgy assault equipment. It was perfect. And I went and said, “I’ve got brand new equipment. And I said, “what we’ll do,” this is where win-wins come in. You know, it’s really important as a business person to be about win-win. I said, “look, I’ll put all this new equipment, and you give it to me, rent-free. I will have a certain period of time each day that my clients can use it, with preference. Your hotel guests can come in and use it. But if I’m training clients on equipment, we’ve got right of way essentially.”

“But any other time, they can use it at their own accord.” General manager, Michael Johnson, said, “Fantastic”. He is still in the hotel game. Now just a brilliant operator. Now, what was powerful for me there? And this is something I would tell any entrepreneur; I hadn’t had anything. I had equipment, but I had value. And he valued it because he had no equipment or dodgy old equipment. But I valued his space because what space gave me, it was instant access. He also gave me the massage contract, which was phenomenal, and it was coming into the Olympic period. So everyone was splashing money everywhere on massages. And we picked up their corporate team building, which was at first, I remember we made 1100 bucks for one hour’s worth.

And I was training. It was 60 bucks an hour for one on one session, which is not leverageable. But I hit this 1100 bucks for an hour. And I went “shit, there’s something in this.” So I changed my way of thinking. And then I thought, “well, what if I had more than one place?” And the beautiful thing with a relationship with hotels was it was a feeding ground for massage, team-building, location, and a win-win rent-free. But the kicker for me is they had a swimming pool. They had change rooms, sauna. They had a spa, and they had a huge outdoor area, which I didn’t have in my little dodgy little studio in the back of a phone shop.

And it was on the beach in front of Manly. So we would take the clients down and out on the beach and everywhere else as well. And we had the best view of Manly, looking out over the ocean when we’d stretch and everything else from our outdoor area. So it went from that. And then I went, “how many more of these can I have?” Just before the Olympics in 99, I got another gig in the city. Brand new hotel, just finished. Took over the contract for them. A guy from New Zealand, David Norman, brilliant bloke. He ended up managing it for me and a few others. I worked out of Manly and that nine to 10 o’clock period, I’d go into the city.

He’d look after it Most of the day. Then we got another one at the Grace Hotel, and in another part of the city, beautiful, beautiful place up in the penthouse in the roof of the hotel. It was the same gig; We had conferences, we had massage, had personal training, and could sell memberships. I didn’t sell membership in my first one. It was too small, but the city ones, we had hundreds of members. So it was like bread and butter cash coming up, cash coming in. Plus, you had a premium one on one product. But what I found, Lori, was the more staff I had, the more clients I had, the more places I had, the less time I had for myself, the less money I was making for myself.

I just went, “this is too hard.” And it was really interesting, at that time, I had two of the best staff I’ve ever had, and they were great mates as well, Steve Proctor and Dan Maitland, brilliant, brilliant guys, like brothers. They would run one of the health clubs. We shut one of them down because the general manager was an asshole. I’m going to say that out in public. He was an absolute wanker, and he just wanted us out. So he was just a prick about it. So we’d got out of that and had the other one, the boys ran it for me. They were fantastic. And then between the three of us, we were just trying to work our way of scaling up. At one point, we’d have 60 health clubs in the next three years, and they are doing that nowadays.

But at the time it was just (Speaker: so summer, I mean, most don’t right?) Well, I don’t know how they make money, to be honest. it’s just a lot of overhead. (Speaker: They try to get that money upfront. Right. So come January, new year..) There are a lot of clubs that hope they’d get their money upfront. They actually had the members don’t turn up, which is to me crazy because how do you get repeat business? And there’s a big chain in Australia who has a 5% retention rate, based on that model. A lot of people are coming in there, but then you’ve got to keep finding them. They say, “if you look after someone, they tell ten people.” No, they might tell three people. But if you have a bad experience, you might tell ten people. In that regard, I find it’s easier to look after people, and they will tell others, and they do the marketing for you.

Lawrie Montague:

It’s interesting. That was a great story. Wasn’t it? It was building up, like it’s fantastic. It sounds great. We’re expanding where clients are coming in, the money’s coming in, and then you go, “but hang on a sec. Here’s the reality.” the reality is I’ve got X amount of employees to look after. I’ve got to look after them, and then you stop looking after yourself.

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah, good point. You know, they had free food and the cafeteria, so that didn’t help because I’m now in the office downstairs doing systems and strategic stuff. I lost contact with clients, which I really love. I love helping people. I love that interaction and that connection. And I believe I can make a massive difference, but I’d lost that. And I think I was trying to be this business guy, a leverage guy for a period of time, but it wasn’t leveraging or growing. It would have been better just to stay me actually being training with the other lads and making a lot more money and having a lot less staff and worries.

But I also know that it doesn’t fit my personality. I don’t like feeling trapped. It made me feel trapped. So anyway, cut a long story short, I had stopped playing volleyball at the time, but to play for Australia and I wanted to play volley again. I did a meditation retreat, and I just kept feeling this volleyball. So I was just tuning in. I want to play volley again. So I started playing volley, and it’s a really sad part too. I went away. I played in Europe and came back. And at that time of being away, I knew I was done with the health clubs. And I came back, and I told the lads. No, I told them just before I left, I said, “mate, we’re going to close this down.” Offered it to them.

“You guys can take it if you want.” And it was devastating. Cause I like my brothers, we had this big plan, but all of a sudden, I changed direction because of the meditation. I got this clarity on what I’d rather be doing. I haven’t seen the boys a lot since then. I still keep an eye on them on Instagram, on Facebook. But it was like a hotspot taken away. I’ve also been hesitant since they have a lot of stuff since, because we had such a great thing and I don’t want to let people down in that regard. And they were pretty hurt by it.

But the interesting thing was, going away and playing volleyball, I just met a new girl at the time. She became my wife six months after coming back from volleyball. She came with me, and she’s in one of the Outliers series, Jacinta. She’s a gun, right. Looking back in history, and you look at ebbs and flows and weaves, and decisions. I look at every single one of them, they’ve taken me to a new spot. They’ve introduced me to certain people, and they’re leveraging me up to a whole new level of the game.

Lawrie Montague:

How has that sporting background helped you in terms of say things like motivation, determination, grit, and so on to keep pushing forward when things get tough?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, good question. I think the key is; I’ve always loved the sport. It doesn’t matter what it is. Every business I’ve ever had has been sport related. Outlier’s a bit different, but it’s inspiration and passion related as well. And I love giving back to people. So the first thing for me is passion. I’ve always been passionate. It wasn’t a hard thing to do from a sport perspective. Then I’m all about performance. I’d always ask myself, “how can I be better within myself to compete at a high level?” It’s probably quite an innate. It wasn’t something that I learned. It was just always there. As I remember, I used to go to the gym at 14, and my mates wouldn’t go, and I’m like, “come on, boys, let’s go to the gym.” They weren’t into it—none of them.

And I remember one of my mates saw me when I was running back from the gym, I would have been about 16, and he saw me, and he goes, “mate, I saw you running home today.” And he goes, “mate, if you can do it, I can do it.” I thought, “man, that’s awesome.” He’s seen me out there, doing it. And he got into his own fitness and running, inspired by it. And I’m just being me. I’m just doing it. It disappoints me a little bit when guys don’t.. I remember when I first started playing golf, and I was trying to get all my mates to come, and they wouldn’t come.

And I just feel a bit bummed cause I want them to be feeling what I’m feeling. Performance to me has always been, you pick a goal? You pick a vision, you go, “well, what’s it going to take to get there?” You assess it, or you measure it along the way. You have tournaments to test yourself against others. I just think if I’m really honest, I just loved it. And so the same with business, I love business. Do I love business, or do I love creating? I’d say love creating more than business.

Lawrie Montague:

I was going to say, yeah, what’s the, what’s the favorite part for you? It’s the content development, right?

Andrew McCombe:

I love it! and it’s always with a purpose. It’s content with a purpose. It’s all about inspiration. It’s sharing a message; it is trying. I believe people have infinite potential. I believe I have, and people think I’m arrogant, but I don’t. I just believe I do. And if I want to do anything, I can. I don’t say that in an arrogant way. I say that in a total belief way.

Lawrie Montague:

Yeah. You say it in a confident way; you have a lot of confidence in yourself.

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. Self-belief. But for example, I was skiing the other day for the last time in 25 years, and I’m hopeless. But I know I can get good soon and I just have to have a process. I just know I’ll get a great teacher, and I have got a great teacher or a couple of them over there—my friends in Japan. We follow a process. We’ll do it. We’ll work our way through the levels, and I’ll get there. It’s not hard, cause it’s a formula. It’s a no brainer. As long as I stick at it, it will happen. And that’s all I’m trying to do with Outlier and all the businesses, is inspire others.

Lawrie Montague:

So nowadays you’re still pretty much a one-man show, and you just recruit a whole lot of people, which we can do in this space. Now the Internet’s amazing, you know, when you first started out, it wasn’t like that. You’ve got to go and spend money to get flyers. And what have you. And you know, there’s a lot more grunt work that you can now outsource to a whole lot of people, and at a pretty reasonable, I mean, you’ve got a team pretty much around the world doing what you’re doing. So let’s just talk about where, where Outlier is going to move to. What is your vision of that?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, it’s a good point. There’s two sides to that. So one is the outsourcing side of it. I’ve got a team, but they’re not with me all the time. I don’t like being around people all the time. I’d rather do a video and have a hundred thousand people see it. They may have the same conversation, a hundred thousand times. We’ve got cameramen, we’ve got editors, but the editor’s working at the moment as I’m talking here, the cameraman is behind the camera. I don’t need a big team. I just think it’s ridiculous. Wastage. It’s gross wastage, and others will disagree, but I totally disagree with you. I know how to do it. And it’s just giving jobs, and it’s charging people way too much money to do things.

Lawrie Montague:

They price themselves now. It’s a new market now. Right? I mean a lot of people just getting their phone out there, and there’s so much content online, right on YouTube and all the different social media platforms. People don’t really know. And the younger generation doesn’t care at all.

Andrew McCombe:

it’s not about that. Anyway. It’s about a message. It’s about the passion, the feeling, that will hit it, and I will connect with it and engage with it. Going back to the health clubs, just to come back to your question. Around the year 2008, I could see the internet was coming. And I went to an internet marketing workshop that talked about turning a service into a product and then selling it online. And I was a personal training studio and health clubs in a physical place. And I couldn’t get my head around how that works.

How do you turn a physical thing Where people come and see me, into a product that I then sell. Anyway, I went to this internet marketing seminar; they were talking about this. And I finally got it. It was a real paradigm shift. As it is for a lot of people in the internet world, not so much these days, but at the time that set me off on a whole new journey. I spent a hundred thousand dollars on a website, which I could have got for free now. But at the same time, it taught me a big lesson in learning.

So you have this website, it costs a hundred thousand bucks, and you’re going, “so what? It’s in the ether as a brochure.” Well, it doesn’t mean anything. No one’s finding it. It’s checking a brochure down on the green here and hoping someone finds it. So the powerful thing for me though, is learning how to market that website, to get traffic, to take an action that I wanted them to do, which is to create. I’ve created a health and wellbeing program that they could do by themselves. I wrote a book called “Activate your life”, which is about experiencing ease in your health, wealth, relationships, business, and or career. And there’s a whole message behind that. E being energetic, A being analytical, S being spiritual, And E being emotional. So all pillars of ourselves are in alignment, when they’re all in alignment, things flow.

I’ve had this whole message. I turned it into a book and to a website, and I was a speaker. I’d go and speak and sell the books at the back of the room. They could do the online program. And then I do coaching on top of it. So I turned into a coach as well. And then I turned that into teaching others how to do the same thing, to activate your business, how to start, grow, and automate your business. But what I found is, I was helping these people and they are mainly corporates, because they had some great corporate relationships where I was part of work-life balance programs and stuff. And I would coach company’s staff on how to increase the work-life balance. But the funny thing was that all come to me because they were dissatisfied with the company they were at and they were looking for an out.

I get engaged with these companies. They pay good money for me to go and run programs. And then these people will leave because I’m trying to get them in alignment with themselves, and they leave and decide, “it’s not for me.” Then they blame me. I’m like, “you serious.” anyway, that was one side. But the other side was a lot of them. I was teaching how to do it. That would be like being at the edge of a cliff. I’m at the edge of the cliff with these guys. And I’m saying, “right, guys, I know how to get here.” And we’re going to jump off this cliff, jump with me. I jumped, they’d stay. I looked around, gosh, shit. They haven’t jumped. I’d be in the water at the bottom going, “jump, jump!”

It’s going to be fine. And they were terrified. They didn’t want to leave a nice cushy income, even though they hated it. That’s the mainstream Outlier, the mainland versus the islands. So you try and get them to jump you. They just have don’t. (Speaker: It’s the security thing. Isn’t it?) So anyway, back to the question. Throughout that process, I learned all of this stuff that then comes back to what I know now; it gives me the tools and leverage to be able to do what I do with TV. That gives me the power to be not location dependent, create anything anywhere I want in the world, to be seen by thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people by creating it once.

It’s leverageable many, many times over and that’s something else I try to teach people. diving back to the business side, I was like, “this is too slow.” I’m frustrated, you know, these guys aren’t jumping off the cliff. So I thought at that point, just stop playing beach volleyball. And I wanted to find a sport. I could play by myself. So I was relying only on myself because with beach volleyball there were four people and often they wouldn’t turn up, or they just wouldn’t be going as hard or wouldn’t want to train hard. My whole thing has always been high-performance. I just go hard at whatever I choose to. And if I’m not choosing to do it, I couldn’t give a rats.

So I’m all or nothing anyway. I wanted a sport that I could play by myself, but I still play with other people. And me and my beach volleyball mates, on a Saturday, we’d go and play the beach volley, up at a local club for six months or so. And these are some of the ones I was trying to, and I said earlier, I was trying to entice them to come more often. And I’d just be sitting on the balcony of my club now looking at it.

It took me six months to realize that golf was the sport I was looking for, but it sent me off on another journey of total passion. I’ve ever been more passionate about anything other than family. And I went, “how can I get paid to do this?” So I looked at my options. I went, “well, I don’t want to work in a pro shop.” I don’t want to be a pro because I’m not going to be good enough and I’m too old, and I’m going to have to hit thousands of balls. And I don’t want to, so I thought, “well, what do I want to do?” And I thought, “what about traveling the world, playing golf, and sharing it with others?”

Lawrie Montague:

Just say that again, what you just said. I mean, so you’re in golf, and you go, “I think I want to make some money.”

Andrew McCombe:

How can I get paid to play golf?

I wanted it to be paid like a professional athlete, but not do it like a professional athlete.

Lawrie Montague:

I’m involved. I’ve been involved in that business for a long, long time. And you hardly ever come across someone yet. If someone wants to buy an existing business as a business, but to start something from scratch, this has gotta be an interesting story. I’m sure.

Andrew McCombe:

I just remember reading the magazines, and I kept wanting to play these different courses. I just had this burning desire to play all these amazing courses. And it just felt like an adventure. It’s probably the best way to put it. And I just thought, “what can I do?” So I looked at myself; I always look at myself and see how I operate. I thought what’s my preferred mode of delivery. Well, it’s TV, it’s video. And I thought, “well, if I had all the time and all the money in the world, what would I do?” I would travel the world, playing golf, and share it with other passionate golfers and tourists. I came up with the concept of a golf getaway. There’s a TV show called “Getaway” on TV.

And it’s a travel show. I thought, “what if we did that for golf?” That took me a bit of time to get my head around, how it’s going to work. If we went around the golf course, you got the first hole. You got the 18th. So there’s the start of the story, the 18th is the end of the story, in between, there are other holes. So we’ll show the signature hole at every course, the hardest hole and a few holes in between. We’ll interview people. Cause my preferred mode is to ask. I like asking questions of people. I don’t like to just get up and present. I started with a good mate of mine, Shawn Fey, we started the first 20 odd eps together and had a great relationship. We’d go and play the course.

And it was just him and me. Then we’d have the odd segment where we’d interview people. because it was me and him, it wasn’t going to work long term.

People would get sick of the same story. So what I changed it to was me with the general manager or with a pro or with a celebrity and pulling out their stories along the way. I Would have some golf tips in between. And they would have a review at the end, as every golfer does, have a beer at the end of the game and talk about the game and stuff. And that just went nuts. We had all around New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Thailand. I met you in Perth. Golf University is my passion for education. Then halfway through golf getaway, turn to credit golf university, which has all online programs and golf schools.

That’s how we met. I called you, and we connected. When I first moved to Australia, I had a girlfriend who was a professional golfer, a famous professional golfer in Australia. And this is trippy. We went to a clairvoyant, and the clairvoyant said, “one day, you’ll have a golf show.” And she had a golf show at the time. I’m going, “this lady is nuts!” Absolute Nutter. Fifteen years later or whatever, I’ve got a golf show. Not that it had anything to do with that. I didn’t even think about that.

Nicole loved you as a coach. You’re a different kind of coach. She loved that. Anyway, we ended up connecting, through a head coach of golf university. Then it evolved from golf to golf university. We filmed the “search for scratch” documentary together, where we had six people over three months. We created the 19th hole channel. We’ve got great YouTube channels, and that is the next phase I started. I did so much. That was ten years for me; five years of it was amazing. The other five years was like slamming my head against the brick wall. And that was like dealing with the people in the industry, not golfers the people in the industry.

Lawrie Montague:

Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Andrew McCombe:

I don’t want to go into it, but I’ve never met such an archaic mindset of people in my life. And that essentially is what outlier is; it’s the opposite.

Lawrie Montague:

You are so big into personal development, Andrew, and helping people to get to where they want to get to. So outlier is a perfect extension of the way you think about the world, having been close to you and work with you and seeing your work with some of the clients. So let’s carry on. Where’s it go to?

Andrew McCombe:

I had four or five years of serious frustration. I thought I was going mad. I did so much introspection. Why am I attracting this shit? Cause I believe, our external reality is a reflection of our internal.

So anything that happens outside of me and my physical body or physical environment is starting inside of me. It’s a mirror. I just tune into myself and go, “where is it in me that I’m attracting this?” And I just had so much passion for golf. I’m like, “well, it can’t be me because I’m so passionate. What is it going on here?” But I think I’ve since realized that there’s the me level, at the passion level and the vision level and everything, But I also think there’s a soul level. That it’s got a bigger purpose for me. I really just looked into it, and I went, “well when I started golf getaway, it was about inspiring people, places, and passions and sharing it with other passionate golfers and tourists. And I went, “well, what’s wrong with where it is now?”

It’s inspiring people. So I went, “I want to deal with inspiring people again.” So Outlier is inspiring entrepreneurs, inner-preneurs, social-preneurs, dreamers, innovators, creators, business people who are living outside the comfort zone. And with the series of credits so far, I haven’t felt more pumped again. Cause I get to hang out with people that are like me. We have normal conversations. I’ve had a situation in golf recently where a general manager said to me, “why did you film that hole? We cut a tree down three months later. And at the time, no one was there to tell me, “Don’t film that fairway.” I felt like shooting myself. I thought, “am I fucking crazy?”

That was my last straw. So I went, “I can’t deal with these people anymore.” I wanted to reconnect to myself and others like me, and hence Outlier is that. For the last seven countries, I’ve been in six weeks, I just feel alive again. I’m back with the people. I feel like I’ve found my crew again.

Lawrie Montague:

Where’s it going to get to from here? That really interesting cause you’re talking about a crew or team. So what’s the vision of it look like?

Andrew McCombe:

It’s multiple mates. It’s the TV show, just purely to share inspiration. And I want to help other potentials, other entrepreneurs or outliers. So people who might feel lost, feel like they don’t belong. Feel like they don’t fit into the system that doesn’t work for them.

And there’s a lot of those people, many of them check out, they commit suicide. They go, “this place doesn’t work for me. I’m out.” That saddens me to the core knowing, it’s not the system. You guys can be yourself and be successful by being yourself. A lot of people see the external world and go, “It doesn’t sit with me.” And it’s getting worse. Instagram, people are looking at Facebook and all the social media going, “everyone’s portraying perfection.” It is absolute garbage. People in the gym, taking photos of themselves. Ridiculous. Anyway, so outliers the opposite. I want to embrace the community. I want to create a community of people. The outliers that we’ve interviewed will all be part of the community.

There’s no money to be exchanged. It’s just; we’re all a team that helps each other out. We might work with each other in a business sense or whatever, but that doesn’t matter. But the community will be like a Facebook group. We’re all getting together. If you’ve got any issues, you’ve got anything you want to share, et cetera, we just help each other. There’s a TV show. There’s the community. It is obviously like a brand, like a brand of clothing or something where people buy it because they feel like they are part of the message. there’s also the production side. So we will obviously create all these shows and interviews and a lot of ‘how-to’ videos and promotional videos. I believe the difference in what we offer is engagement and connection through the stories. How many ads do you know that sit for someone for 45 minutes or so talking about their background and history and what their values are and what their business is about.

Lawrie Montague:

You never see that. And you know, there’s not a lot of focus on the outlier. It’s mostly focused on successful people who are upfront, like celebs and people like that. But there are so many people behind the scenes doing brilliant things, which your TV shows are going to highlight. That’s the great thing about it.

Andrew McCombe:

That celeb bullshit, people are famous for being famous and offer no value. But yet some of them are the wealthiest people in the world. What is that about?

Lawrie Montague:

I’m not sure how long that can last. I don’t follow any of that, but the great thing is what I like, what you just said there is, you’re going to give people the opportunity who are going to recognize themselves as being an outlier and say, I would like to be able to develop myself and my brand around that.

Andrew McCombe:

Thank God I found my crew. These guys resonate with me. I hope they feel that in their heart. Yeah. I get to hang out with these guys, but they’re now going to teach me a process on how to start, grow and automate myself and to be my own brand or my own message or my own vision to make a difference to the world. We celebrate differences to make a difference. We don’t bring people down for being different. We don’t tell them to believe a certain thing. And if they don’t, we kill them or ostracize them or whatever; we’re the opposite. We’re saying you have power in your uniqueness.

Lawrie Montague:

Well, I know some of the people that you’ve already interviewed are doing extraordinary things, and they’re doing things that would be inconceivable to a lot of people and probably fair to say that, particularly with outliers, they hear a lot. They hear people saying, “it’s a crazy bad idea. Won’t go anywhere.” I mean, that’s a classic, right?

Andrew McCombe:

Everyone I talked to get the naysayers. The naysayer is just someone who’s got fear, or they’ve got doubt or their own insecurities. And they’re too afraid to do it themselves. But like the bully, they portray that through trying to be powerful and get energy from others by bringing them down. You know what, that goes on to something. I, too, could do that. But again, that’s a self-reflection process, which not a lot of people do, but it’d be great if they did and then just took the jump. And what would you rather do? Would you rather die giving it a shot? Or never give it a shot and be depressed the whole way through life? Cause you only get one life. What would you rather do?

Lawrie Montague:

I’d rather do what I’m doing. The great thing about your logo on your cap there, Andrew, it says it all. There’s so many people; the black space within the white ring is where most people are. And then you’ve got the outlier that sits outside the circle. I think that perfectly describes the type of people that you want to help. Right?

Andrew McCombe:

A hundred percent. There’s a lot of outliers in the mainstream. They are like a big bit of rock that hasn’t been chiseled yet to realize it they’re in there. But I know if they watch this, they will feel it. There will be a part of them that feels what I’m saying, what you’re saying. and they will shed the rock and become the statue, which is essentially their own self.

Lawrie Montague:

I think they can be proud of the fact that they are an outlier, that you actually can help them to identify that part of their identity. A lot of people, they might be somewhat introverted. They’re banging at whatever they do every day and working hard at it. But they just don’t want to be around a lot of people.

Andrew McCombe:

That’s what I talked about. An entrepreneur is more introverted, but also very clear on their internal values. But they’re not externally projecting themselves, but that doesn’t matter because the power of the incident, like you, could sit in front of a camera as an introvert, but still, there’ll be some fear of getting out to the world. But there are so many platforms now, where you take the footage of yourself, whatever your messages and you share it.

It doesn’t mean you have to be with those people. You’re an introvert, and you’ve had millions of views online. You don’t have to be with those people, but you still love being with people, but when it’s your choice to be around them.

Lawrie Montague:

Absolutely. It’s when I feel like being with people. Not very often, but it happens. But I’m just one kind of person that’s out there. In fact, there’s a bit of a focus on that now, you know, there’s been some books written recent times, about that type of person that doesn’t really want to be around a whole lot of people, but of course, it can also be a more outgoing type of person, right. It can be any type of personality.

Andrew McCombe:

An outlier is a person, place, or thing that’s different from the group right now. The funny thing is I believe every one of us is an outlier. We have a unique talent. We may just not know it yet. Just think about that as a concept. I feel we have to fit a system that doesn’t work for us, and we know it’s not working, cause it ain’t working in the world at the moment. Cause there’s conflict. This famine, there’s wealth. Then the hugest discrepancies between wealth from the poor, et cetera. And we know that system doesn’t work. Then by default, that’s a feeling to say, “there must be a better way!” And an outlier is more likely to take the step to make that change and make that difference.

Lawrie Montague:

Andrew, you’ve talked about your background and how you got to be where you are today. And you’re definitely an outlier based on your description, but what are some of the characteristics of an outlier? What are some of the things that, if someone was an outlier, how would they know that?

Andrew McCombe:

I think I mentioned it earlier. I don’t like being told what to do. I hate to work. (Speaker: So you’re a nonconformist?) I hate conformity. Absolutely hate it. Even at school, I was growing up; I was 16, all the boys, all my mates would hang out every day, we would wear the same jacket. We had the same bikes. We did certain things the same way. And I said to the lads, “What are we doing?” And I got ostracized for it. But I’ve always just asked questions. An outlier is going to ask questions. They’re going to look at the world differently.

Lawrie Montague:

Are they a team player?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, I don’t know if they are initially, but they’ll build great teams. They’ll have a set of values. And then they’ll attract people with the same values to do something similar, or those people that are attracted will do similar in their own.

Lawrie Montague:

So will they have the team as a sort of like the circle on your logo, but they still sit outside of that, and they might be called the leader of that team?

Andrew McCombe:

Call them a visionary or a creator or something. It’s not like I’m anti team. I love team sports, but I’m always within that team. I’m going to give a hundred percent within my role on that team. If that makes sense. I always expect the others to do the same, but often if I see that they’re not that shits me as well.

Lawrie Montague:

I have the same problem. That’s one of my big bugbears of life and something I’m dealing with in my age. But it’s taken me a long time.

Andrew McCombe:

I think that outliers probably have a high-performance mindset, a growth mindset, an adventure mindset, travel, potentially. I love to travel. Like it’s newness, freedoms is another one. Love freedom as a value.

Lawrie Montague:

Andrew, one of the things I see a lot online, you know, when you’re scrolling through social media and you see the ads come up about the guy that’s on the beach with his laptop on his lap and there’s the waves out there and everything else and making money online. And there’s no doubt that particularly the youngest generation, one of the younger generations, they’re really attracted to this idea of that kind of lifestyle. Like traveling the world, making a living while you’re.. (Andrew: Digital nomads?)

Yeah, exactly. And you know, my wife and I, we love to go to Bali and we, wherever we go, whatever hotel we stay in, we tend not to stay. We’re staying four-star site. There are lots of people that are sitting there with their laptops. And so let’s talk a little bit about that. Are outliers those types of people?

Andrew McCombe:

I think a lot of them would be. They want the freedom, they want the choice, they work when they want to work, but they’ll definitely work hard, but they don’t want to be constrained to an office, dogma, or a system. They’re not really attracted to that side.

Lawrie Montague:

Now, when you say you work hard, describe working hard. What’s working hard mean?

Andrew McCombe:

I think working hard is getting a result. It’s not about busting your ass. It’s about doing what you need to do to get a result in the most efficient and leverageable way. Now it takes years to get to understand that. Because in the past, it was just – work your ass off. And there was a whole dogma out there around working your ass off and hustle, hustle, hustle, and go, go, go, you know, 18 hours a day. And that, to me, that’s bullshit. That’s madness. For me, it’s about leverage.

We’re sitting in this beautiful golf course, owned by one of the wealthiest people in Indonesia. And he has the same amount of time as everyone else. But he has 60,000 employees or something like that. So he’s using time and the time of other people to get a massive, not just as a golf course, but a heap of other things for himself. So is he busting up his ass? He wouldn’t say he is because he loves what he does. He definitely does, but he works hard. He would work many hours a day, but it wouldn’t feel like work to him. So there’s a balance. You’ve still got to put an effort, but it’s not about busting your ass.

Lawrie Montague:

And as you mentioned, back at the beginning, you talked about when you first started out, and you started to expand your gyms and health club concept, and it got more complicated. And you know, you’re dealing with a lot of other issues that you weren’t dealing with when you’re just on your own. So a lot of people that are outliers, I mean, you can get one person working off their laptop and creating a great business, but it’s possible still to create a gigantic business.

Andrew McCombe:

It is different for everyone. Everyone has different passions, desires, visions, dreams, goals. We’re saying, “do whatever you want.” You can have an infinite amount of properties and businesses or whatever. I don’t want to be responsible for a lot of people. I don’t wake up thinking about that. I think about what I can create. It’s inspirational that I can share with people. So it’s different for everyone. I’d say tune into what’s important to you or yourself. What do you value? So write a values list. I also love the whole, “what’s my preferred mode of delivery?” If I was living on purpose with a passion, with this vision of making a difference, whatever that is for them, I would then say, “how do I want to deliver that to the world?”

Back to my golf. I wanted to have a TV show that showcases all that stuff. That allows you to think then about the structure and framework of it.

So Roger Hamilton is a good mentor of mine. He has a great formula. It’s when you combine your passion with your talent; you provide the most value. When you leverage that value on online marketing and systems, et cetera, you create flow. But where does it start? Back at passion. Time’s talent. And he has a talent profiling tool that you can use. There are eight profiles. My passion was golf. My talent was the creator. I go, “well, what can I create related to golf?” It’s a simple formula, and because I’m so passionate, you instantly will feel my value outlier. I’m passionate about inspiring people.

I’m a creator. I’ve created Outlier, and people hopefully will feel my passion for that. And it provides value. They want some of that value exchange. Cause it’s gonna make a difference to them.

Lawrie Montague:

It’s interesting. You say that the passion side is a big one, but I’ve seen you when you’ve been incredibly frustrated when you’re bumping into people that just don’t get the message. They don’t get it. Even though I’ve heard your message, and I thought people really need to hear this message. But some people just don’t hear the message. So how does an outlier deal with that? I mean, you’re that guy, and you have gone through that. Cause you said five good years. Five, not so good at years. Right?

Andrew McCombe:

The analogy I use for that, it was like having a Ferrari, and I’m the Ferrari, And I don’t mean that in an arrogant ego way, but I’m in a red, fast Ferrari.

Slamming into a brick wall. Right. what that really means is that a massive amount of energy and passion are coming in and being blocked by incompetence, ignorance, fear, resistance to change. (Speaker: Does that sound like a normal person that possibly sits within the circle?) A hundred percent. I don’t understand that.

Lawrie Montague:

But you do understand that; you do understand that that’s most people. Right? But that’s not an outlier. That is the people that want that security and safety of their job and getting their pay check every fortnight or whenever.

Andrew McCombe:

And they’re entitled to that. But going back to Outlier. I want to work with outliers. Cause we will have the best time, we’ll have the best flow. We’ll have amazing adventures, travels everything.

And I can feel the inspiration just thinking about it. We will be in heaven.

Lawrie Montague:

One last thing on this. Cause I think it’s important. We both sat in on seminars where you’ve got a seminar leader, and the seminar leader is passionate like you about what they do. And you’ve got all these people that want to be passionate, but maybe they’re not all passionate yet. Maybe the ones down the front, putting their hands up all the time and they’ve got it. But most people don’t get it. How will you deal with that?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, it’s a good point. How I deal with it is, I tune in, and I’ve actually got a tool I can share with people. It helps them tune into what they’re passionate about. Cause they’re effectively in their head.

Passion’s a heart-based thing. They just need to tune into their heart, which is in their body, and it will start to talk to them. How do I do it? Well, I tune in. Through meditation, through certain modalities, spiritual modalities, or physical modalities that allow me to get in tune with the subconscious. I see other people to help me with that too. So I can get out of my head. Often if we do it on ourselves, we’re in our own head still, trying to control it.

And meditation is different for everyone. It could be surfing; it could be guitar, it could be singing. It’s whatever you do where you feel like time stands still. And all of a sudden, you’re listening to the inner voice that’s going on. And you’re feeling amazing.

Lawrie Montague:

Now do beliefs block that? You know, like a person’s set of beliefs, this belief structures that they have, that they are running every day, the patterns every day.

Andrew McCombe:

A hundred percent. I wouldn’t go there, but let’s look at religion. How much does religion block people on possibilities? (Speaker: Well, they don’t even know.) But they’re running a subconscious belief around something that had been instilled at a young age. Usually, between the ages of zero to seven, that’s running them. So all we do is go back to that age, but certain techniques and tune into that. See what it is. There’s a lot of lost energy. Still, back in that part of their life, that’s running their life. Trauma, traumatic events, things, their parents said primarily or people of influence that are actually running their life now, which is just crazy.

So if we can go back, clear that emotional charge, free it for the present moment. Now, all of a sudden you got that energy available in the present to deal with what you’d rather be doing, or at least be tuning into what they’d rather be doing.

Lawrie Montague:

Now, a lot of people want change, some level of change, Andrew, right? They maybe want to be an outlier type. Maybe they’ve got a feeling that they could be, but change is difficult, right? That is what people are told all the time. But is change difficult? You know, you’re talking about this now, and you mentioned before hard work, you have to work hard, but if you’ve got passion, then it doesn’t feel like hard work. So how does someone that is, you know, frightened to take the step? What should they do?

Andrew McCombe:

Well, the key is mentors, for starters. Hence why we put together this series. Realize you were frightened, at some point. I’ve been frightened. We’re all humans. It’s not like we have some super freaky people who don’t feel emotions, but the reality is fear is an emotion, and it’s an illusionary emotion. Fear will come up to stop us from feeling another feeling, which is another conversation in itself. So if we can work out the actual feeling that’s trying to stop us feeling, “I’m not good enough. I don’t want to go back to that time; it was traumatic or whatever.” If I can tune into the feeling I don’t want to feel and feel it; it usually takes 15, 30 seconds. It clears it. And then the opposite feelings usually come up.

So change to me is not hard. If people think change is hard, it’s a belief. That’s all it is. And then it’s just a process.

Get clear on what you want to see in your mind with absolute clarity; feel it in your body with absolute certainty. And then the more and more we can do that, e.g., We start to resonate with what we want energetically. It starts to show up in our external world.

But you have to take responsibility that you are the creator of your own environment or your own reality. That’s the first step. You then have to commit to the process and the fastest way to attract it. See it in your mind with absolute clarity, fill in your body with absolute certainty. So that’s like a visualization process, a design process, but then the feelings that come with it.

So I might say to you, “Laurie, why do you want to be a golf coach?” It’s not that you want to be a golf coach. It’s the feelings of being a golf coach will give you. If we get clarity on those feelings we want to feel and feel them more often. All of a sudden, Lori’s a golf coach. So is change hard? I don’t think so. Is it a process? A hundred percent. Can it be taught? A hundred percent.

Lawrie Montague:

So essentially outlier is going to do those things. It’s going to help people who may have the feeling already that they are that type of person. That they don’t always fit in. And they don’t always conform. And they don’t really like the idea of superstructure the way it is in everyday life. And so what you’re going to be able to do for them is help them to develop that into something real, something concrete, something that can take them from passion to pension. I heard you say one time, and that was so beautifully said.

Andrew McCombe:

Well, it’s not just me. It’s all the other outliers. And you know, the services they offer. And for me, it’s a platform. It’s a message. And it’s a community. And the delivery modes of that don’t matter at this point in time, other than letting the viewers know they will be there and they are there to support those people. That’s the most important thing for me. As long as we go back to celebrating difference to make a difference through ordinary people, doing extraordinary things. And that’s all we want for everyone else, is for you to do ordinary things or as an ordinary person to do extraordinary things, which ultimately will make a difference to yourself and to others.

Lawrie Montague:

So, Andrew, I mean, it’s been quite enlightening for me to talk to you about you and your passion, where you’ve come from to where you are now. You got any last thoughts on this?

Andrew McCombe:

I was taught by my brother, who couldn’t do anything mentally, physically nothing. But we’ve been given a life. We’ve been given all the passion, all the talents, all of the skills, all of the physical ability to do anything we want on this planet. So I believe that we all deserve and owe it to ourselves, to go out there and be the best person we can be with those skills, passions, talents, et cetera., we’ve been given to make a difference in this world. So that would be my final message.

Lawrie Montague:

That’s fantastic. Andrew, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. I mean, I’ve learned an enormous amount. I’m very excited about Outlier, and I really believe this is the time for this type of program to be seen and heard and experienced by a lot of people. So thank you so much for your time, mate. It’s been great. Thanks. Thanks for getting it out of me. Wow. There it is, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

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