All right. Today, we're talking about how to live a life of intention. My guest today is Finney and Kelly. He's the author of a new book called intentionality. I'll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned. Welcome to the smart business revolution podcast where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders, and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now, let's get started with the show. All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here. I'm the host of the show and, you know, every week I get to talk to interesting entrepreneurs, founders, and, you know, business people from all walks of life. And if you've listened to some of my past guests, you know, I've had everyone from, you know, CEOs or founders of Netflix, Kinkos, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, YPO, EO, Activation Blizzard. Lots of great guests on there. Today, I'm coming from The Foot Hills of McCall, Idaho, where I'm on vacation with my family. But today's guests, and I have so many people in common, and I have so many people in my life who just rave about today's guests that even though it took a long time for us to align our schedules, I was not going to miss this opportunity to have this conversation. I'm really excited about it. And of course, this episode brought to you by RISE 25, our company where we help B2B businesses get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-view podcasts and content marketing. You can learn more about what we do at RISE25.com. But let me tell you about today's guests. First, a shout-out to a couple of mutual friends, Mike Simonson of Altos Research, Devin Koch of Team Swell, Franca Winchester of Pacific Crest Group, Alexi Cashin. We have so many major friends in common, and they really rave about Finnean. I can't emphasize that enough. Finnean, I have to tell you, your name has come up so frequently in different gatherings in the entrepreneurial world, in the EO world. And so when the book came out, I said, we have to talk about it. So I'm really excited about it. But you are the founder of Intentionality Inc, and the new book is called Intentionality, a Groundbreaking Guide to Breath, Consciousness, and Radical Self-Transformation. He has an extensive background in financial advising, wealth management, and he also has done a lot of workshops, keynote speeches, and stuff like that. We'll hear all about that. I've been very involved in Entrepreneurs Organization, which I also have been very involved in and has been a big impact on my life. But let's start Finnean with your background. You grew up in the island of Tasmania off the south coast of Australia, had a little bit of a rough upbringing just in terms of your relationship with your parents. But I've always been fascinated with Tasmania. To me, growing up in California, it's always been this far-off place, which is beautiful when I look at the pictures, but I've never visited. What was it like growing up there? Well, thanks so much, John. And that was a very flattering and humbling introduction. And I love the SF crew. They're just great people and being great supporters as well. So Tasmania, I'm one impressed that you actually know where it is. It seems a lot of Americans, the only connection is Tazzy Devil. And people always like, "Do you actually have them?" And I went, "Yes, I grew up on a farm and I had hundreds of them at nighttime, screaming and making different noises." And that's a bit of a representation of Tasmania. It's very wild and very rugged. And we are an island culture. We would call Australia the rest of Australia the mainland. Are you going over to the mainland? So in some regards, it was a wonderful place to grow up. It's got so much diverse terrain. In two hours, you can be in the most pristine beaches in the world, to great mountains to climb, to lush rainforests. It's a real mix to farmland as well. And so that was an adventurous spirit. But then there are also some limitations of a smaller place to grow up in is the opportunities or what you even knew was possible was constrained. So I ended up getting myself into a private school and in that private school, the sign of success was literally to be a doctor, a lawyer or accountant. That's all we knew. And my family was a family of doctors. My friends' parents were doctors as well. So my five best mates and I, we were all very focused on the academics and also the sports people, jocks that you'd call them. And we all got accepted into medicine. And I just knew that couldn't be my path. I looked at my family. I never enjoyed the concept of it. But that was literally the program. And the programming was, well, if you're the best, you have to be a doctor. And there was a part of me, and I'm sharing the story because it gives you a little bit of a realization of who I am. Yes, I can follow the program, but only for so long. And then I just went, this isn't for me. And I started asking questions, well, what could be cooler than a doctor? And this is where my ego was coming through. And I saw a helicopter pilot come to our school and do a conversation as an army officer. And I went, that could be cooler. And I got selected as an army helicopter pilot. And it wasn't my path, but it was my ticket out of the traditional path. I knew I didn't want to live in Tasmania. I knew I didn't want to go down the medicine path. And it was a way out. And sometimes that is enough. I think that's a big lesson that I've learned in life is, and this definitely what I help people with, everyone always wants to know the next thing while they're in the current thing. And that's very hard to do. You don't know the perfect thing, and you can never foresee what's possible in your future. If you'd asked a 20-year-old Phinean, well, he was a fan now, what would he be doing? He couldn't dream of what I'm doing right now. Imagine if my aspirations weren't there. I imagine we took a glimpse of who you are today and showed that to you when you were 16, 17 years old, you wouldn't be like, "Forget it, no way." Yeah, but that's the beautiful thing. So I either tell people like, "Just do something," because a big lesson I learned in the military was just make a decision. Just go somewhere, and then if you're walking the wrong direction, you'll work it out, and then you can change your other direction. But if you stand still, it doesn't work. And then the other part, which are the biggest thing I tell entrepreneurs is create some space. In this space, that's where the true insights come through, and you can actually make better decisions from that place as well. I know that was a bit of a segue from the upbringing, but I just wanted to say that was a big part of my life. The phrase, don't lean your ladder against the wrong wall comes to mind, because you could have gone down the medicine path. You realize that wasn't right for me, and it's almost like you try a different bowl of porridge, and then you try this one, and then you find yourself leading up to 100 soldiers. What was going through your brain? At that point, when you started to doubt, "Oh, geez, I actually went down the wrong path again." Yeah, so it was interesting. My first part was when I was on pilot's course, and this was a very privileged experience that I got to have. The amount of thousands of people who applied for my one spot, it's ridiculous. I got in there, and I realized, "Wow, I don't have the same passion that everyone else has here." There was most other people there and wanted it since those three years old, and I would come off a flight, and I'd be like, "Oh, that was pretty hot, and it was okay." Other people would just be buzzing and jumping in the walls, and then they would want to be played with their remote control planes on the weekends, and I just wanted to get out of there. It was an interesting experience where I went, "Wow, I'm missing out on something here, and this doesn't feel integrous to me. It doesn't feel right in my experience." That's where I started making me question. It doesn't matter how good it looks on paper. If it's not lighting it up, it's definitely not worth it. That was the next discovery in my experience going, "Okay, yes, this was a better option than medicine, but it's still not my option right now." I had to start exploring different places. You end up going to the world of finance. How does one go from military to finance? How did that connect? One was, I was very good at maths and physics. I had a maths and physics degree in the military. I also, from a very young age, because of just my situation in my family, I learned how to make money and manage money at a very young age. I quickly worked out that money gave me freedom, and I was always thinking about, "Okay, how do I have enough money to be able to do this?" They create these different scenarios. It wasn't just money for the sake of it, it was always about what it meant for me. I also saw how much money had controlled so many people in my life, whether it was like, "I have to go do this because I want to be prestigious." They were following a career that they didn't care about, or in my family, it was always this thing that they didn't really care about money, but then there was always, "We couldn't do something because of money." I just went, "There must be a better way to live life in that regard." So when I was in the military, I actually started trading some currency and equities, and that was the moment where I realized, "Oh, I don't have to stay in the military. I can earn money quite easily myself." That was another freedom piece, and that gave me the confidence to leave. Then I started wanting to help other people stop using money as an excuse of why they couldn't do something. I saw so many people who had more money than me, but they were doing less things than me because they just had this story around money. I saw it with wealthy people, with people who have not much money, and I realized it's all about our relationship with money, which actually is more important. Very early on, I was an investment manager, but the whole premise was, "What does this money mean for you? What are we doing with it?" I saw so many people who lost money in the global recession who didn't actually need to lose that amount of money, and now they were feeling really sad and depressed about their life. It was all because they actually allowed ego or ignorance to really drive some of their decisions. I just wanted to help people on that journey. Ultimately, it doesn't seem that far away from what I'm doing now. It's basically freeing people from their own narratives. Now, you actually focused on helping millennials, which I find that a lot of times people kind of bitch and moan and complain about the younger generation, which is something that we've been doing for centuries, by the way, a whole generation always complaining about the younger generation, as if it's that much different. Tell me a little bit about, did you notice any generational differences, or why did you decide to focus on that? Because there's a lot of times people in their 20s or 30s, they still, the money is the older people, the people in their 50s, so they kind of focus on that, but you focus on millennials. It is. Interesting. We actually started with the baby boomers first, and we built a very successful business there, and then two things happened. Our friends started asking for help, which were millennials, and we didn't know what to do with them. The financial system was not set up to help them at all. Then the other part was some of our clients had children who wanted help as well. We went, "Okay, here's an interesting opportunity. What do we need to do? What would we love to help people learn at a younger age?" That's where we set up a very coaching model first, because the model was built on investments. You can only make money off a percentage of the investments, and if you're starting with zero or sometimes debt, there was no way to make money. We actually did something which was very controversial. We charged a monthly coaching fee, which on their percentage of assets was a ridiculous amount of money, but if they kept on their same path, they would have the same situation in a year or two years or three years or four years, and what we would always say is, does it really matter if we've charged you, say, $6,000, just throwing it out, and you've gone from $0 to $100,000 over a year. It doesn't matter if we've charged to $100,000. It's better than where you're going to be, which is a zero, and that's where that value-based pricing was. What we did was we automated things, we worked on their money psychology, we set up just the optimal strategy for building wealth, and before you know it, people who are in really average situations, one day, wake up as a millionaire, because it is a formula. It's math. It's pretty simple, but the problem is, is the math and the investment world never took in the human psychological element, and they're like, "Oh, we've mapped out the perfect plan," and then they'll come back a year later and they didn't do it, because they're human, so you've got to work on, what are their blocks? What are their sappeters that are blocking them from having that experience? Same in losing weight, whatever it is. It's the same philosophy. You've got to get to the core. It's not just information, and that's one of the biggest challenges in the modern-day world is, the intellect loves to feel like they understand something. The intellect goes, "Oh, I understand that," and you can understand everything. It doesn't mean you apply it. The problem is, is that we love feeding the intellect. Now we have access on the internet to every bit of information, and we can read something, and the intellect goes, "Oh, I understand that," but that doesn't mean you actually know it. Knowing it is when you have a felt experience, and you actually apply it, and one of what we need to help people do is to go, "It's not just enough to consume this," you actually have to do the behaviors. You have to actually match this up, and that's how you get the transformation. Effectually, what we did was, we would help them, help themselves to do those new behaviors, and we would put systems in place to enable that for them. That's the same in any transformation, really, is to go from a place of understanding to a place of knowing. So, you've designed this business and system, and helping all these people to turn around their finances, but at the same time for you personally, you've achieved a lot, at least, on paper, right? You actually moved from Australia, you are living in a mansion in a ski town, which, I don't know how you developed the love for skiing growing up in the Mediterranean, but somehow you did. So, on paper, it seems like everything's going well, but then your marriage crumbles, and things start to unravel. So, take us back to that period in time of what that was like for you personally. Yeah, it actually goes back to what we're just talking about, the intellect. I was very connected to my intellect, and I looked at how to live life, and what I thought would help me and create security and freedom, and I mapped it all out, and that looked like selling businesses, having a financial independence, living in a mansion in Beaver Creek, skiing, having a beautiful wife, and on paper, I actually achieved all of that. The problem was that I didn't realize that there's more than just the intellect. There's something deeper. There's there's this subconscious mind, which is governing most of our daily thoughts and behaviours, and ultimately our feelings. And in that place, when I achieved my vision for my life, the when that I'd been waiting for, the great illusion came crashing down. I was hoping that when I achieve all of this, I will feel worthy, safe, secure, and it actually didn't happen. And in that moment, I didn't know what to do. And it was very confusing. And then it seemed like a lot of random events all occurred at once. And basically, my whole life unraveled in front of me. And that was the moment where I really had to face myself. And it was a very confusing time because my a big part of myself was just going, all right, Finn, you know how to do this, just go build another business, go make money, find another partner, and it's all going to be better. However, I had to really look at myself and go, I know where that path goes. I've played out that path. I've played out that path multiple times. So what's going to be different this time? And I had to look at myself and realise, well, I'm the connector out of all this. I could have been the victim of the experience and on paper, it looked like I was a victim. But if I realised that I'm a creative moan reality and I'm the connector, I had to try something else. And I started going inward and going, what could be below the surface that could be driving these set of scenarios? And that's where I went on a big human transformational element. I did a deep study of all the different spiritual texts and religious texts. I explored every different mentality you can imagine in life to really get to know myself. And that's how I define spirituality is getting to know myself. And once I explored this, I realised, whoa, I had some strong faulty narratives running all the way back from my childhood, which was still dictating how I approach life now. And I went, I need to free myself of that. But that required a deep sense of responsibility in taking agents in my life and also confronting some things that I did not want to confront. And I'm very grateful for it now because I mean, a lot more liberated place. I still have my own journey, my own challenges. But I definitely, I didn't even know this state of being was possible. What was those things that you felt you had to confront? Well, there were certain things like I hadn't spoken to my dad in 18, 19 years, because of things that had happened my childhood. I'd resentment against my mom. I had to face some of the things like I had a body complex, which sounds silly, but like I did. And ultimately, I had to face that the things that I thought that I had processed, I hadn't actually processed them. I had processed them on an intellectual level, but they were still on a deep, somatic place for me. And that's what I really had to face. And I had to face the fact that, yeah, there was a little boy who wanted more love and just couldn't get it. And it wasn't actually about him. It was never about him. It was just the fragility of the human condition is that no human can give unconditional love. And that's what ultimately we deserve. And that's a, that's a something which I now help other people go through journeys with is, because a lot of people love to justify or rationalize. I'm like, oh, my childhood wasn't that bad, or my parents were good, or this situation. I went, we're not trying to blame anyone, but we have to have to face the situation that none of us got what we needed, which is just pure love. So I've watched some of the other interviews that you've done, and you discovered a few simple things like breath being exposed to the sun, maybe those long winters in Aspen were the problem. Talk a little bit about how those simple things helped you through this dark period. Yeah. So a lot of the times when we're in a challenging period, we believe that there's nothing that can help us, or we need something from the external to change, or to come into us. The challenge with that is, is that then we're at the victim of other people, and we may be limited by the opportunities. And I just, I started focusing on what is it that I can control? What do I have available to me? Because I truly do believe, like nature, we are provided with everything we need to live, but we forget that sometimes. And I just started going, well, what are things that make me feel better now? That's what I was really focused on. I couldn't think of goals in the future. I was just all I was focusing on was, how do I get through this day? And I started reflecting, well, what are the things that make me feel better? And there were things like going for us a walk, sitting in the sun, being connected to my breath. And when I started doing these, I started feeling better. And then I started realizing, maybe that's the answer of life, is starting to focus on our feelings more, rather than the goal. Because my goal was, I wanted to build my financial wealth back again. I wanted to find a new partner. All of that was too daunting to deal with. But what I could do was, what could I feel better in? A little bit more peace, a little bit more joy, a little bit more love now. And I started prioritizing feelings over outcomes. And my whole life just suddenly became free. I felt like I could do something right now. And I didn't have to wait for some arbitrary time in the future to feel better. Now, let me be devil's advocate here. There are some people that pursue pleasure. And then they just kind of become hedonist. Maybe they're not as disciplined as you were, or as outcome-focused as you were in the first half of your life. How does one prevent going down that path where they just pursue pleasure for pleasure's sake? And they don't pay their bills. They don't get a job. They just play PlayStation all day long, or whatever. I'm so glad you asked that question, John. I'm fascinated how little people ask that question. And it is the question that needs to be asked at this point. So I'm not saying that it's just about pleasure or these great fleeting experiences, because that's not fulfilling. What I'm talking about is how do you get to that deep place of peace and have overall joy and love of your life? These are state of beings. And you cannot do it if you're not living a balanced life. And we see this all the time. We see this in spiritual communities. They bypass life. And they go, "I'm just going to have these great experiences and flows." But then we're still in the human experience. And then this money side starts pulling them down and that actually takes them out of that spiritual experience. So my whole thing is be honest with yourself and really ask, "Is this short-term pleasure? Is it going to bring lasting joy?" And most of the time, it's not. And that's part of being honest with yourself. Now, it's okay sometimes. To be honest, when you're in a really bad place, go for some pleasure. Like, whatever gets you out of that place to have a little bit of a catalyst, but for sustainable joy, you have to approach life differently. And it doesn't mean that by focusing on feelings, you're going to give up all goals. I'm just saying prioritize the feelings over the goals because so often, we get so thick as to fixed on a goal or outcome. And you may have set the wrong goal. That happens all the time. We see this in business. We see people who set a vision for their company and they get so focused on it and they don't realize the market has changed or their personal situations have changed and they deem their happiness only if they get these results. This is something that Mike Simonson always talks about. He hates sales targets because what are they generally? They either limit you. You didn't realize you could actually do more or they instantly make you depressed because you're off target. So instead, could you focus on how could you feel really proud of your day? How could you feel impactful? And if you do those things, the byproduct is you get the results. And that's what I want people to focus on. How do you then make this transition from this epiphany, these discoveries that these simple things like breath, like sun, going for a walk, things like that that they had an impact on you? How did you make this transition to? Now I'm going to take this to the world and I'm going to help other people because that's a big shift. Yeah, it is. And it's funny thing is, John, it also isn't. The key is how I did it was I embodied it. That was fundamentally all it was. I was living and breathing it out of my own need. And then people like Mike, Mike was one of my early champions. He's like, this stuff you're doing, it's working. I want to know about this. And people just start asking it. And that's something what I've realized in life. Sometimes, and I've been a culprit of this myself, is I've wanted to share with the world things before I've properly embodied it. And it's okay. It's okay to do that. But it's a lot more powerful way to completely embody it and then have people naturally talking about it. And for five years, I hid from the world, actually, John. I completely, I was off everything. I was just focusing on my internal journey. And then just people like Mike would say, hey, come speak, come do this. And then naturally, enough people start recognizing you for a talent, and you start realizing, oh, maybe this is a valuable thing. And then we start sharing it to the world. So it was definitely more of a pool than a push. And that's how I like to live my life now is, I used to strive. Now I be and allow the pool. And I'm like, oh, I'm on the wave now. It's time to start spreading this message. I love how disconnected, you know, you can't possibly connect where we came from to where we are from, you know, raised on an island off the south coast of Australia, family of doctors to military career to finance, all these different things. And now you have on your website videos of yourself doing these breath work workshops, where there's a DJ in the back of the room. And I'm like, what's going on here? So I have not been to any of your breath work workshops. I have you and I have many friends in common who have and who rave about it. Benny Fowler is a super bowl champion has got a quote on your website raving about the work that you do. So for someone who's never been to one of your workshops, what is it that you do that can take this simple thing that we do every day and turn it into a full on experience over a couple of days. What's different? So the difference is the level of intention that we bring to it and also the energetic field that we create. At our core, we are just energy, we're vibration, we're particles vibrating. And we know that we have energetic fields that go past our skin. We I walk into a room, generally people feel uplifted. Someone else walks into the room, they might go, whoa, the energy's just got sucked out. No communication or anything. It's just these energy fields connecting in that regard. And these energy fields want to resonate together. So what we can do is we create a space where it's a container, an energetic field, almost an attractive field of transformation of possibility, of safety, of exploration. And then we help people connect to their breath. And through an intentional practice, we have a practice where the breath starts moving energy through their body. And ultimately, what we're trying to do is to use the energy of the breath to go into the subconscious and dislodge the suppressed energy that has happened because at some point in our life, we didn't want to feel that feeling or we didn't feel safe to that feeling. And we suppressed it. And then that created a program, which then just habitualized throughout our life and created these less desirable circumstances. So with the music and the subconscious priming and their breath and this safe, energetic field, they can have the opportunity to actually release this. And in a very short amount of time with a lot of energy, we can have radical transformation. People can walk out there going, whoa, I didn't realize I was hanging on to this for a really long time. Or the sadness or the resentment, they can, they can free themselves of it, and then they can walk out in a different way. So ultimately, all I'm doing is creating a container for the individual to access the wisdom that is available to them, the intelligence is available to them. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know that's even possible. And this is why that saying is you are the sum of the five people around you. That's because it's energetic fields. They start rubbing off on you. And that's all I'm doing in that place is going, I know what's possible. I've seen it many times. It's there. Nothing that you've been through is that that crazy. You deserve this. And through that, it creates that possibility for them to explore it. And that's that's one of the magical miracles I get to witness all day long. I don't fully know why it happens, but I don't need to understand it. I just know it. I've seen it too many times. And I've felt it so many times. And I know we're running a little short on time, but the book, a book is a huge undertaking. What inspired you to put it all in a book? It was, I felt it was very unfair that only a few very privileged people got to have some of these insights. And also with myself, it took me seven years of deep commitment of study and research to distill the information of how to recode ourselves. And one of my abilities is to be able to use a lot of information, distill it down into a process or a methodology for other people can use it. And now it's a way where I can help people free themselves and liberate around the world. And that's ultimately what I want. I want people to realize you do not have to accept your current situation. No matter what you've gone through, you can change it. It can be transformed. It just requires intentionality. I do want to ask you a little bit. There's, especially in the EO community, there's a lot of people they're interested in, in other, I guess we'll call them modalities, psychedelics, sound healing, things like that stuff that a younger me would have probably rolled my eyes at. But I've been, as you say, you know, being around the five people that impact you the most, you know, I've been around a lot of people that kind of open my eyes to different types of experiences. And just touch on some of those other modalities. And because obviously you, you kind of seem like breathwork is the one that you're most passionate about, but you write about these other techniques in the book. So I just want to ask you about them. Yeah, there's, there's a whole part in the book about the energy interventions. I basically, I call them a category. I've named it. It's an intervention with energy. And it could range from sensory deprivation. So I've done darkness retreats, I've done silent meditation retreats, vision quests, medicine journeys. They're all incredible because they get into the subconscious and they give you a job opportunity to release them. The key though is, is that if you don't do the daily behaviors, the repetition, and I like to think of it as the brushing and flossing your teeth, you're going to end up going back and needing these energy interventions again, which is like going back to the dentist all the time. So yes, they are powerful. They're, they're so incredible. They're, they're like the nuclear bombs of, of the weaponry. However, you also need the simple daily task. And I think that's a bit that's been missed in the world right now is the integration piece and how to actually bring this into the life. And what I love about EO and my PO, these organizations are is because you get put into groups with different people, people from different walks of life, and we're completely vulnerable when we're completely exposed. It, it exposes you to things that perhaps you had a story that, oh, that's, that's dangerous, or that's not safe. And that's what I love about it is now people who would have blocked something and now trying something. And they're doing it because they're witnessing the change in the other person. They don't need to buy into whether that's right or not. They just go, well, it's working for you. Maybe I could try that. And that's why I always say to people is just try it. Try it on. Don't trust me to have the, have the experience and then trust yourself. And that can be very liberating rather than just blocking things for the sake of it. Yeah, I mean, the, really the majority of the time that someone's dismissing something, they don't have any personal experience with it. They're just saying, I'm blocking this out. There's no way that it could have an impact on me. And they're bringing their own baggage to the table. Totally. And that's what in SF, like, people love to, to criticize Burning Man. And they're like, I've, I've heard Burning Man's not good, no good anymore. It's got commercialized or anything like that. And I go, have you been? And they're like, no, and I went, how about you go? Because there was no place on earth like it. It doesn't matter how much it's changed. It's still so much better. But you're blocking yourself through your own interpretation. Yeah, this has been great, Finney. And I'm glad we finally made this happen. The book is intentionality. Where can people get it? And where can they learn more about you and the various different workshops that you offer? Thank you. So the best place to go to would be to intentionality.com. It will have every single book place on the world, whether it's selling it. And also you can get a free trial to my app where you get all the breath exercises and different intentionality tools, which is ultimately the most important, because I always say you're one breath away from intentionality, because when you take that breath, you have an opportunity to respond instead of reacting it, react with an old program. Awesome, Finney. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, John. Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
