“Excellence is Voluntary” with Donal Casey, former CEO of Rory McIlroy Inc

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Renatus Podcast. My name is Greg Dilger and I'm delighted to be joined today by Domhnall Casey, the former CEO of Rory McElroy Inc. The management company set up following Rory's well publicized split from his agent in 2013. Prior to this, Domhnall was an actuary by trade and had a very successful 22 year career with Irish life. He has been a guest on the Radiss podcast a couple of years ago and you might well ask why we're having him on again. Well, I'll tell you why. He's written a book. It's called Reflections on a Goal Golden Ball. Drawing on his experiences that span childhood bereavement, the corporate boardroom and the C suite of global professional golf, Doan reflects on randomness and luck, the management of talent, the psychology of comparison, our relationship with money, and pressures facing younger generations, all set against Ireland's dramatic shift from economic backwater to modern self assured nation. It's really good stuff and very relevant to all of us in both our business and personal lives. So, Donal, obvious first question, why did you write the book?

Speaker B: Well, I think you have to take some of the responsibility, Greg. When I was on the podcast, you'll remember, I was kind of a reluctant guest initially. And when I did the experience A, I really enjoyed it, got lots of good feedback, but it really started me thinking about it got me into very reflective mode and started thinking about my life under all the various different themes and all that I had learned. And I've really had quite the adventure. So I said, you know, why not try and you know, put some words on it? Like sometimes it's easy to talk about it, but it's much more challenging when you need to put it to words. And then the second dimension was, you know, I had felt my attention span like all of us, you know, I talk about it in the book as the kind of defining issue of our time. You know, we're all losing our capacity for attention in the digital world. I was no different. I could feel it myself. You know, more difficulty in concentrating, more distracted. And I said, you know, it was a really good kind of personal challenge to set myself. You know, I actually write a book. There were times at the beginning I regretted ever starting it. Cause it's quite, you know, it is a difficult thing to do, but the more I got into it, it's just a, um, it's a lovely thing to do. I describe it in the opening note as furniture removal in the brain. Like it just Kind of moves things around in your mind. It makes everything feel quieter and it's really fulfilled everything I'd hoped.

Speaker A: Did you have any coaching or anything like that as to how to do it?

Speaker B: No, not really. I mean, I just started writing. I mean, most, uh, people who talk about coaching, writing, they just say the best practice for writing is writing. And that's not what I did. Like, I wrote a first draft. I mean, Su has been the kind of primary editor of the book and you know, she would be very good at kind of just reading each draft. You just work through it. Like, I mean, I decided on the themes kind of organically, some of them changed over the process and I just kept redrafting. I mean, it's probably, you know, seven goals at each chapter, you know, to get a little bit better each time. The first draft is the hardest. And then at the end I went to a self publishing company called Kazoo. So one of the guys there, Robert Dorn, is a brilliant copy editor. So he kind of polished up some of the, some of the English, some of the grammar. I'm actually pretty poor at written grammar

Speaker A: and doesn't look good when you read

Speaker B: the book, but that's compliments of Robert. But yeah, no, I mean, I think if, if anyone wants to write, like, you just have to write. And you know, it's interesting, the book, like, it's obviously a very solitary journey initially, but it's become very social because you send out chapters to people and, you know, they come back to you and more than yourself. And it's, it's a very, you know, a lot of people have said to me, God, I'd like to write a book. And I say to everyone, you should, like, you know, if you, if you have that instinct in you, uh, I didn't write this to sell books. Like, I mean, if that's a byproduct of it, that's great. But I mean, it's not, it wasn't in any way in the objectives. It was all just around, you know, a real kind of mental cleanse and also, uh, just a process of regaining agency over my attention. And that's what I'm happiest about. You know, I'm able to turn off the phone now. I put it away. It's lovely and quiet. I really like that digital silence now. I almost crave it from a point from, you know, at the start of the process where it was, you know, it's like kind of withdrawal symptoms or something.

Speaker A: So we're going to talk a bit about that. Issue later.

Speaker B: Yeah, so it was, um. No, I mean, I'm really delighted to have written the book. I think it's a lovely book and I think there's something for everyone in it. Like, it's kind of. Even though it's quite personal. And I wrote it with a degree of, you know, that you would need a bit of familiarity in the story. And that was very deliberate. Like, I didn't write this for a big audience, but there's quite some quite universal stuff in it all the same, even though I came at it from quite a personal dimension. So, um, it's great. I'm delighted.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think, dawn, the thing I found about your book with, um, the individual chapters, they're all sort of related and not related. It's a number of different themes you pick up. And we try as much as we can in the time constraints of podcasts like this just to sort of COVID some of the bigger themes. And to me, it really. It's such a natural thing for you to do. You've been a kind of a mentor all your life, really, even from quite a young age, you were kind of mentoring people. And it seems so obvious now too, with the experiences you've had, both in the corporate side and then into the sort of Rory McIlroy Inc. Side results, the corporate side, but are hugely different. You've learned a lot and you've developed some strong views on things through all that experience, and you just feel the need to give it back.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think the blurb on the book talks about it being a part mentoring conversation. And I mean, one of the core ideas that kind of runs through my life is, you know, talent. Like, I've always been interested in talent. I've always been good with talent. And I've, you know, I've really have this really strong conviction around this idea I called Excellence is Voluntary because it's such a different way to look at any kind of collective endeavor where you, you kind of understand, you know, the really best people, they're all volunteers, you know, at some level, when they're bringing the best of themselves to anything, whether it be sport, whether it be business, whether it be a family, whatever, they're bringing a part that's voluntary that they, that's not compelled. And, uh, so much additional to their

Speaker A: fact that their employees are their professionally paid players or whatever.

Speaker B: Yeah. If you're talking about real talent, they're bringing so much more. Like, talent gets measured, in my view, in multiples. Like it's 2x or 5x the average employee or 10x? Well, let's go to the ultimate, like, start with a good. The extreme version. So the extreme version might be Rory McIlroy. So what would. What's Rory as the kind of average golfer? He's probably a thousand X. You know, in talent terms, you know, it's an extreme version, way out the right hand side of the bell curve. And so then you wonder, so you know, everything that's coming out of that system, you know, called Rory McElroy, like, it's all voluntary, it's all coming from inside, deep down in itself. I talk about molten lava as the kind of source of the energy that creates this excellence. And it's quite relevant for Rory in that there's so much drive in there. Like, I'm. It's, you know, if you people think about his career and obviously you have all the highlights and he's obviously won the career Grand Slam. The thing that I find the most remarkable is the longevity that he's kind of, you know, I think it's 812 weeks this morning in the world's top 10. It's. He's going to burst through a thousand weeks. He's going to be ahead of Tiger, ahead of Roger Federer. And I suppose it's easy to use that as a number, but when you step back from it, you kind of imagine like 20 years at the top of a global talent pyramid. How is it even possible? And it's possible because of this, you know, unbelievable sense of drive, but also this kind of sense of self. It's all invisible. Like, you can't see this.

Speaker A: Do you think that regular golf fans have any real understanding of what goes to make a Gallic?

Speaker B: Rory, too. They have some sense of it, Greg, but they don't. It's hard to, like, I always think about it in numbers. So you've got this pyramid, like, even if you've got a pyramid of 70 million golfers, it's kind of extraordinary to be at the top. But even if you said that the pyramid is, you know, 50,000 elite golfers in the world are aspiring golfers, and to be at the top of that is pretty amazing. So it's just that so much of. So much of what is required is invisible. Um, and so much of it is coming from inside the person. So the idea that you're going to control this level of talent is a complete misnomer for me. It doesn't come from control. And so you go back down into the normal world of business. I always came from the Ideas that all these people. I had a load of talented people working for me in different roles, but I never considered myself as controlling them. I always considered myself as. I'm a conductor, a facilitator, a cheerleader, whatever words you use, but you're just trying to get them to. You're just encouraging them to bring all of themselves to work. And a lot of it you're not going to see, you know, like somebody does a piece of work and where they're the real guardian of the quality. So it's not me reading it and saying, oh, I think this could be this. And, you know, it's not like that. It's. Somebody is their own guarantor of quality. And they say, you know, they're. Even though they're tired and they don't want to look at it again, they just do it. And you have. That's where I always was wondering, what is it that creates that? Like, how do you get. Why do people go that extra mile? Why do they become twice the average employee, five times the average employee, ten times the average in terms of their contribution? And it's all in this kind of voluntary space. They're more connected to the mission of the business. They've got more autonomy over their world. They're working freely. I mean, the culture and atmosphere in a group is hugely important. I talk a lot in the book or the whole chapter on fun and humor. That's such an essential part of this idea around talent. You don't get extreme talent and then have a kind of turgeon atmosphere. You know, it has to be light, it has to be kind of infused with even a little bit of irreverence. You know, that's what it is. Like, you know, there's a little from.

Speaker A: From what. You know, and you're. You obviously don't know every company and the inside of every company. Is there enough of this around the corporate world?

Speaker B: Very little of it is my experience. You know, everybody's coded in this idea of control. And the manager or the boss or the CEO or whoever, they're kind of. The paradigm is very much, you know, they're kind of directing. And, um, it's even in the language. You know, it's. It's director and all of. Whereas I've always found the best people, they're not directed. Like Rory isn't directed or he's an extreme. But even take someone like Harry. Harry's a good example, actually. So Harry Diamond. Harry diamond, yeah. He, like, he's an absolutely perfect example of excellence is voluntary it's all invisible. Nobody understands what Harry is doing. It's all away from the camera. It's a massive amount of preparation. It's extremely diligent and, you know, prepared. It's like nothing else. Nobody sees it. You know, you have somebody. People then criticize him for not being more directive with Rory, which is an insane suggestion. Like, I remember when Rory lost the U.S. open at Pinehurst, you know, Smiley Kaufman came out and publicly kind of blamed Harry, which was a kind of ridiculous idea. Rory had missed his first put, uh, out of 500 from inside three feet. And yet Harry diamond was to blame. But like Harry, what Smiley said was, Harry should have stepped in and changed the club that Rory was going to hit. Now, you don't. Like, he's never done that. They talk about the club and they arrived at the club. But something that is really intrinsic to Rory is he makes his own decisions. And that's what has made him. It's got him to six majors, it's got him to whatever, 812 weeks in the world. Number one, six majors, career grand slam. And now we're going to change the process at the point of kind of maximum consequence. You know, it was a ridiculous suggestion. And it's just not understanding what the signature of the system is, which is Rory owning his own decisions, being completely in control and taking responsibility for them. You never see Rory giving out to his caddy ever, because he understands the fundamental principle in golf is that he's the owner of the decision and he makes the decision. So you're not going to have Harry stepping in then just he's over the ball saying, oh, I think it's a six. But it's, it's been a very, you know, I write about it in the book a lot. I talk about Roy keane and M. McCarty. But the, you know, the fundamental idea is that the really best people, it very much comes from within. And the standard kind of management practice is kind of trying to control it out of them. And I, you know, I think I say it in a really simple and pithy way in the book. You know, it ignores one basic reality. Human nature is that none of us like getting to been told what to do. So, like, it's amazing how widespread this kind of idea of micromanagement is. And it's, it's getting more. Yeah, if you ask me, you've got the kind of surveillance, you know, organization now and you have the work from

Speaker A: home and work in the office and directives to do come into the office because people are CEOs probably are uncomfortable that the work isn't being done properly at home.

Speaker B: Uh, fundamentally, that's a control idea. You know, you want. You want to have them. And I like to be honest, the people who lose the most from working from home are young workers because they're missing out on all this tacit knowledge. But, like, for lots of people and lots of knowledge workers, you know, spending two or three days at home is actually optimal.

Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, you just mentioned Mick, uh, McCarthy and Roy Keane. There obviously is a huge movie about it now and all that. But I think your point in the book is, had they grasped this difficult nettle earlier and had a few cups of tea, I think, as you referred to it, that this Saipan thing would never have happened.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I kind of just. I described it. You know, it's a really good example of control versus volunteer, like Mick McCarty's most important job. Like, I'm not saying that Roy wasn't easiest to manage. Of course he wasn't. You know, he's a kind of headstrong talent, normally is. But Mick McCarthy's main job as a manager was to have Roy Keane on the pitch. And, um, even though they didn't have the best of, warmest of interpersonal relationships, there was no reason both of them wanted the same outcome. It's not like Roy didn't want to be on the pitch, but they just weren't able to kind of manage that relationship. They weren't able to just get through that whole kind of, you know, build enough interpersonal chemistry. I think it was an entirely avoidable situation. And it's a good example of this idea of, you know, who is. Who has the power here. It's kind of power as well. Power and control. You know, who has the power. And I suppose I think one of the reasons I've. Being a good mentor, generally, being a good leader, is I've always seen the power away from myself. I've never seen myself as having the power, because I don't. The people, all the people who are working in the. In the group, they're the ones with the power. It's like in a sporting situation, you know, the manager might have the power, but he's not on the pitch. You know, it's. You know, it's easier to understand in a sporting situation. Like, they have the power to pick the fifth, the best 15 or the best 11, but they don't have a power after that. Once the ball is thrown in, that's it. And it's kind of the Same in business. You know, I think a lot of people don't understand how little power they have. And as you go further up the talent curve and you go into, you know, the exceptional employees and the, you know, the really high contributors, the level of power you have goes down and down. So it's, uh, a, it's, it's a, it's quite an interesting way to look at the world.

Speaker A: Donald. One of your, um, things that comes up quite a bit in the book is the idea of self confidence and the relationship with what you're just talking about now and talent. How does that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so. So we're all in the talent business. GRE like, you know, obviously it scales down from a collective endeavor, but we're all in the individual talent business, which is ourselves. And I've always felt that confidence is, you know, a huge part of every, you know, life outcomes. And even as a parent, you're in the talent business, you're trying to help your children, you're help trying to help them find their strengths, you're trying to help them build resilience. And it all comes down to self confidence. It all comes down to, you know, I, uh, talk also about the stories we tell ourselves. And you want your children telling themselves good stories that, you know, they're very capable in this area. They're very, you know, and they're able to overcome setbacks, which are absolutely inevitable. And if you're not having setbacks, you're probably not endeavor, you know, you're probably not aspiring enough. So, you know, there's a big part of managing talent is building people's self concept and building their self confidence. And I always just try to meet people on the best side of themselves. Um, the more you do that, the more a. They feel better about it and then the more they're willing to kind of be vulnerable and they're willing to say, well, I'm really good at this, but I'd like to be better at that. And that that's very good. When people can get into that conversation with themselves, it's much more constructive when it's coming from your, you know, it's coming from inside again. It's all this idea of again, coming from inside. Like, even if you think Renatus as an idea, like Renatus is fundamentally a talent business. You know, you've got all the P. Ls and the, you know, total addressable market of your target companies and your business strategy and everything, but it's fundamentally just a talent decision. Like you're looking at, you've got money, capital to deploy, and you're just looking for talent. And I would say 90% of Darnass's selection decision is built on talent. And you're just finding the right people with the right attributes. And it's very, you know, it's. A lot of it is intuition, you know, intuitive. You're just trying to. You get a sense of a team or a founder and you say, you know, I. You know, we. We should back them. And that's all. That's all. So every. We're all in the talent business. We're in the talent business as ourselves. We're in it as parents. We're in it, you know, within our business and sporting endeavors. It's just a. It's just, you know, runs through everything in life.

Speaker A: Donal. Another theme that comes up quite a bit in the book is the issue of digital overload, social media, stuff like that. And it's very current at the moment with the various legislation and changes in Australia and possibly the uk. Um, well, you've been banging on about this quite a long time about social media, uh, and it's adverse effects, which could elaborate a little bit with your thoughts on that.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, God, written the whole book on this. Yes. Yeah. Um, and as I said right in the introduction, like, the impetus for writing the book was to try and regain control over my own attention. So I could feel it slipping. It's kind of. It's, you know, I certainly am not in any way, uh, removed from this kind of global trend, so there's just so much happening in this space. But, like, if you start just at the basic idea which I talk about when I talk about living other people's lives, is when I was at the fringes of celebrity for 10 years, you know, I hated being too close to it because you just have this sense of being watched the whole time. And I would say there's a tremendous cost to being famous that people don't see. It's a very uncomfortable sense. Now, maybe you get more comfortable if you're. If you are actually, you know, if it's your daily life. But I think the world has become, you know, it's become very performative. It's become very observed. People who are famous really don't get to live a normal life. The consequences of any mistakes are kind of amplified.

Speaker A: You know, for example, Harry diamond getting blamed for not giving Rory the appropriate.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's not. Most of it is nonsense. And yet. And then it's, you know, encircling the globe with people commenting on it and, you know, then he's walking down the street and people are saying this, that, and the other. It's not like it's. The privacy costs on being famous are very significant and they're very long lasting, I suppose.

Speaker A: So did this surprise you when you got into Rory's world and were part of that, that world plus and all the adjacent wealth that you talk about?

Speaker B: It, uh, did surprise me, I think. Yeah, it did actually, Greg, when I think about it, because I was always surprised at how obsessed people are with celebrity. Like, I could never figure out why would you be like, you know, you've got your own life to lead. Just live it like. And suddenly somebody that is kind of famous wanders past you in the world and your attention is completely consumed with them. You're out, maybe out with your own friends or family, and yet all you're doing is looking at this famous person and then you're looking for your kind of selfie or photo and it's up into your social media and all of the rest. Like, it's all built on an illusion. Like, yeah, that's what my fundamental thought on, like, it's. None of this is real life and it's so much of it is performative and it's so distracting from the lives we should be leading. Don't get me wrong. Like, you know, our smartphones are just miracles. Like, they're remarkable devices and we have the world at our fingertips. And there's unbelievable functions, functionality, whether it be Google Maps or Uber or, you know, accessing your bank, accessing your bank accounts, you know, sports results, anything. Like, you've got the world at your fingertips. So they're like, there are, they are remarkable inventions, but unfortunately it's kind of evolved now to a point where they've just become attention predators. And they're, they're really, I think they're eroding our humanity. Our attention spans have kind of. Of shortened to kind of 40, 45 seconds. You know, people don't read anymore. They don't kind of get to think and reflect. My book is kind of ironic because first of all, people don't read much anymore. So writing a book is a hopelessly optimistic act. And then to call it Reflections on a Golden Ball is kind of interesting because there's not a lot of reflection goes on in a world of digital overload. So it's kind of certainly countercultural in both of those ways. But I do think the effects are. I would like to think that from the bottom up, there will Be some sort of pushback against where we're headed with this.

Speaker A: It's kind of coming, isn't it? Yeah, there is.

Speaker B: Well, obviously it started in Australia with the social media ban, but there's more needed. Like it needs to become, it needs to become socially unacceptable to be sitting in front of people with your phone, like looking at your phone, looking at your phone, texting while you're in a conversation. And I don't know how far we're away from that, but it's a kind of crazy idea when you think about it. You know, you have this, all these measures now where, you know, we have what's called a loneus epidemic. We have a relationship recession among 25 to 34 year olds where like, you know, a huge percentage of them are not in relationship, have never been in a relationship. This is kind of mad. Given that, you know, these tools are supposed to be about social connection. The biggest one for me, I do think the absence of reading and reflection is a re. You know, you know, essentially reading or learning or transferring information across and down to generations is kind of what has driven humanity forward and to be eroding, that is to me.

Speaker A: Are you surprised, Sorry, Don. Are you surprised that the companies. And whether, you know, I don't know whether these are unintended consequences or not. I guess some of the, some of them are. Some of the byproducts of the social media are bad. Are you surprised that companies aren't more openly doing something about it? They seem to be sort of a bit resistant to it all because it suits them business wise, clearly.

Speaker B: I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not surprised.

Speaker A: Given your position on this particular issue, are you ever accused of being a Luddite?

Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes. I mean, increasingly in recent years, yes. Um, and I think it's something I'd nearly like to embrace at this stage. Like at the start you go, God, yeah, God. You know, a Luddite is a very anti progress, anti science idea. It's a very good rhetorical device by the technology overlords to kind of say, you know, everyone who is against this or everyone who has kind of concerns here, they're in the kind of Luddite community. Because I think we need more Luddites now. I really like. And uh, I didn't, probably two years ago, maybe even I would have been saying, oh, I do need to be, you know, I should be a bit more progressive and maybe I'm just being a snarky old man. Uh, whereas now I increasingly feel, I think we need a bit more company on the Luddite side of the fence.

Speaker A: Yeah. Donal, another big theme coming through the book. It's interesting that it would, given your history of managing money in the early days and then being involved in the whole world of global golf and the adjacent wealth and all that kind of stuff, like, money is something you have lots of views on as well. Tell us about your thoughts on our relationship with money.

Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, our relationship. Money is an really interesting idea because despite the fact that I've worked in financial services or, you know, wealth management or whatever you want to call it, for all of my career, you know, there's very little conversation about our actual relationship with money. You know, there's lots of talk about investment returns and, you know, all man, you know, financial instruments, but it's actually a much more mercurial and mysterious substance. Someone who's written brilliantly on this recently is David McWheer. He wrote a book, literally, called Money, and it really covers the kind of history of how humans and money have interacted, you know, over a very broad millennia. And it's really interwoven into that. The two journeys of money and humans are completely interwoven, and it's very deeply wired in everyone. It's a very personal thing. You know, people talk about, not never talk about religion and politics in polite company, I think you could safely add money into that territory. You know, people are very private about it. So I find it a very interesting thing to think about. You know, what is money for? You know, does it serve us? Uh, is it our master or servant and all of that. One of the things I say to people when I'm chatting about, you know, the adventure I've had, you know, I say that I was a visitor to the world of the super rich for 10, 10 years or more. And, you know, I bring back great news, which is none of them are happy. And even though it's a little bit tongue in cheek and it's kind of more the broader system rather than the golfers, it's not that tongue in cheek. It never stopped surprising me how poorly money translated into kind of any sense of contentment within that kind of milieu, you. I was always wondering, why is that? And there's a couple of things. Like, one is, it's a very competitive world. So when I sat back to write the book and I thought about my kind of life journey, and the golden, um, ball idea comes from this idea of Monte Carlo simulations. You think about your life and you say, oh, God, I wonder where did I land up? When I started out in the Thai in 1968, there was loads of things you could have ended up in very broad stretch of places. I think I've ended in a remarkably lucky place. But I still have the context of the 10,000 simulations when I think about my one outcome. Whereas I get the impression in the world of the super rich that they end up competing with each other rather than the world, and the competition never stops.

Speaker A: It's a kind of rash race.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's just a race with no end. And there's this kind of continuous. You know, it's very positional. So everybody is kind of positioning themselves against everyone else with, you know, whether all the symbols that go with that, whether it be watches, clothes, houses, it obviously scales up into, you know, airplanes eventually, but not even, you know, yachts goes eventually. And then it goes into your space company. Like, poor Jeff Bezos is very disappointed now that he only has a small space company compared to Elon Musk's, you know, so it just gets into this extreme land of comparison. So I came across the ideas of Rene Girard, which. This idea of mimetic desire, which is kind of a very subconscious thing that pulses through us where your neighbor. You don't realize how much the people around you are influencing your own desires. It's a lot of it is subconscious. And once you read it, you kind of see it everywhere. I saw a lot of that in the world of the super rich. It's very. It's competitive, it's positional. There's all sorts of signaling going on, and there's a surprisingly limited amount of contentment. M. And that was always that. I always found that interesting. And I kind of became quite attuned to it as I spent more time there. And I suppose when you think it makes you think about it, like, what is money for? And all of those kind of more kind of fundamental questions. And I distilled it down to three or four ideas, which is like, obviously it's for freedom and autonomy and choices. You know, that's money at its purest. You know, it's giving you choices. But sometimes too many choices. Choices is a bad thing. Unconstrained, you know, where you have. I talk about, you know, if you could paint a house every day, then it becomes very complicated to paint a house because you've got. You're remaking your choices all the time. Whereas back here in the real world, if you only paint a house every three years, you make a choice once and you stick with it. So this idea of having unlimited choice is probably not a good thing to have. Obviously, you know, certainly as you get older, and it's part of my life story. The. The, you know, health is a very important currency as you get older, the most important really. And, you know, then you get into this idea that what's. The. What's the most sustaining idea in terms of your life? Mostly it's relationships. And so money is a very good thing if it can be converted into relationship capital. So I observed much less contentment than I expected in the world. And, you know, I tried to bring that now. M. Now that I'm out of that and back here, as I call it in the real world, you know, I try and think about money as much more around freedom, health, relationships, and even giving. You know, giving is probably. It's the purest form of investment in your relationship with yourself. I think definitely people with abundant resources should do more giving. In fact, that's one of the things that America is probably is pretty good at and pretty evolved at. Philanthropy. Yeah. So it's a very interesting experience that. That part of the adventure was just to see how money was woven into. It leaves. You know, there was some very interesting things to. To take away from it.

Speaker A: It's a hard one to. To educate people on. Um, because this is a kind of an unstoppable journey that people go on. And the money kind of more money makes them want more again. And it's.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it seems, as I say, it's a very mysterious substance. Really. One of the ideas that gets talked about a lot is generational wealth. And that's kind of one of the. One of the drivers of this more and more and you know, people. That's how people justify the kind of more and more and more because they're kind of providing for their families. Families. And we all know that that's a mirage. Uh, you know, instinctively we know that the kind of, you know, the further as money passes down through the generations, the less likely you're gonna have good outcomes. So that's just a way of people making peace with the kind of race continuing. Um, so I think what I witnessed is, and this is very. This comes through in the world of sport when you solve for money, and that's what you're only solving for. There's a lot of trade offs. There's a lot of trade offs that you're making that you're probably not doing it consciously. You end up with a lot of negative trade offs. Another thing I say to people is from that world of the uber rich. When you come back to Ireland and you say if you take an organization that doesn't solve for money, you find it very attractive. So if I take the gaa, they're a sporting organization that solves for lots of things. Obviously they have to solve for money because they're not just solving for money, They're SOL for volunteerism, they're solving for community, they're solving for family, they're solving for inclusivity. You know, it's a very impressive organization. When you see some of the monetization of sport elsewhere, which I talk about a lot, one of the things within even the money dimension that I emerged with was just kind of new admiration and affection for the GAA as an organization that has kind of really managed itself without an exclusive focus on money. Because even in the current, you know, we're right in the heat of the championship season now and you see, say someone like Pat Spilani gets rabbiting on every couple of weeks about, this is crazy. We shouldn't be having all the championships crushed into such a short space of time. And I think he's completely wrong. Like, this is an example of this is what good looks like. This is an organization that looks after the whole sporting pyramid. We have a season for the elite inter county level and then we have the other half of the year for the club and the community and the whole, whole pyramid is looked after. And I think it's brilliant. And I actually think, you know, anyone that is only solvent for like the kind of shop window and is forgetting about the bottom half of the pyramid. It's exactly what's happening in the world elsewhere in the world of sport, like the World Cup. It's, yeah, it's brilliant to watch on TV and all that, but its connection with the kind of grassroots game is kind of almost non existent. Like nobody can afford to go to the matches.

Speaker A: Yeah, Donal, you, you use a phrase called coming down the mountain. You mention it in the book and just remind us exactly what you mean by that. It's kind of the later phase in your career, I think, is what you mean.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I talk about life, uh, having this kind of upside down new trajectory where we start out in life and we've got lots of mountains to climb, we've lots of big things to do. You've careers to build, families to raise, you've got all these different goals and you reach a certain point in your life where, where whatever has materialized has materialized and you're kind of a little Bit older. And then you've got to figure out how to, you know, how does the journey unfold from here? A lot of people were surprised with me when I left at 55 and said, and I was very fortunate to be able to do it. But, uh, it was something that was. I kind of had been in my mind probably going m back as far as age 40 when I left Irish life. And it was quite a big change in my kind of framing of careers and identity and all of that. And I always had this idea that life, there's a natural rhythm to life. You have your kind of natural climbing phase and then you have to kind of. You get a bit older, hopefully you get a bit wiser. And, you know, I've ended up constructing this new phase around writing, around mentoring. It's a very interesting way to come down the mountain.

Speaker A: Would you. Obviously, a lot of people are coming down the mountain, are getting close to coming down the mountain in terms of. Not that you have all the answers, but generally, what would you advise people just who are facing into retirement right now, now, in terms of the psychological approach to it? Because I do think people struggle with it in terms of. Many of them are defined by their jobs. And then when they finish their jobs, they feel at a bit of a loose end. They don't, you know, the connections with people start to fade, that they're essentially corporate connections and can be a little bit lost there. And what would you advise them to do in that sense?

Speaker B: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Greg. Because, say I do a bit of work with Paddy Mahoney in Biograph and he Biograph Wealth Advisors. So they send out these articles every month, you know, maybe 10 from all the different publications, and you don't have to have subscription to read them. It's a nice little process. And Patti tells me that the articles that always get the most readers are the ones around the challenge, the psychological challenge of retirement, the identity transformation that that requires. And how do you, you know, the relationship challenges. So it's something that's, I think, bubbles around everybody's mind. And I do think it's back to this idea of identity. A lot of time we get so wrapped up in our careers, our jobs, our roles, that we forget that they're finite and that there's going to be a time when you're not going to have them and you have to be kind of ahead of that. I reference a quote from Annie Duke in the book where quitting on time almost always feels too early. So I think that's A really good encapsulation of the challenge, the later life challenge. You have to. You know, I think it's best if you get ahead of it. You know, I'm not saying everybody should do what I did, because it's, you know, if everybody, you know, jacked it in at 55 and went writing and mentoring, I don't think that would be good for the world either. It was just good for me. But it's a big part of life to get right. Like, it's something that I intend to do a bit more writing about and a bit more thinking about, because I think it's a fascinating part of the journey. I'm lucky because mentoring. So mentoring is a very good fit for it, because as your brain evolves, you probably get a little wiser and a little less fast in terms of your, you know, speed of thought.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But you, you know, Hopefully. Yeah. And file retrieval, it's like library up there. And the file retrieval in the library definitely slows down. At least I hope that's normal. But you do get a better overall picture on things, and you can be kind of very helpful to people if you apply it. So it felt like a very natural transition.

Speaker A: Is there a risk going back to some of the other points? Is there a risk that people, the younger brigade, who you're trying to mentor may see you as somewhat passe, or you're a bit. You wouldn't understand the sort of new world, the new paradigm we're in now. Uh, that. That was the way they did it in the. Is there a risk of that, do you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's always a risk of that. I mean, you have to try, and you have to try and avoid becoming, you know, getting anywhere close to the grumpy old man archetype. So that's on me. But there is a. There is a risk. I mean, ultimately, like, I think mentoring is about what can you do to kind of help people feel better about themselves? How do you make them clear about the path ahead? It's not. It's not that hard, really. And one of the mentoring roles I talk about in the book is around Kildare football, which is a surprising one. It's not that surprising at all because it goes right back to the very beginning. But it's something that I've got a huge amount of kind of energy and meaning out of, because I find it, um. I find it fascinating that Kildare could go 100 years without winning an all Ireland title in a county that's the fourth most populated in the country. And you know, full of talent. So it's a really, it's a really interesting encapsulate of all the ideas.

Speaker A: A conundrum.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a, it's a conundrum. It's an unsolved mystery. And I've been very engaged with, with that, increasingly so, and hopefully more in the, in the future with that challenge. I've got very friendly with Brian Flanagan, the football manager, and some light touch mentoring with some of the players. And I'm asked a lot, why, why is it? And I suppose I start with what the problem isn't. The problem is certainly not one of personnel. So there's absolutely oodles of talent in the county, brilliant set of young lads that are currently in the squad, brilliant backroom team. And then you say, God, why is it not coming together? Yeah, and I think I bring it down to a few ideas. Like, you know, obviously there's patience needed with, you know that if you're going to transfer underage talent to senior level, there's probably more patience needed than you understand. It's probably a five year journey rather than a two or three year journey. There's a lot of kind of experience to accumulate. You know, it's a profoundly psychological challenge, particularly when there's a kind of long famine that you're trying to, you know, you're trying to bridge a very long gap. But the one that's become clearest to me is it's, it's a, uh, it's a psychological safety challenge in Kildare in that the players, the fans want it so much and they're kind of, they're in some way tortured that the consequences of failure impacts the player's performance. You know, they feel that weight. English soccer team is a bit the same in a kind of wider dimension. So if you take that as an idea, if you take that as a coming down the challenge or coming down the mountain kind of little role, like, that's fascinating. So, like, I consider myself to be extremely lucky to have met Bryan, to meet the players and suddenly have this kind of little engagement and there'll be others and you. So that's the. I think you do have to kind of take a bit of a leap and you probably have to do it earlier than you want to. But I think people that do it, most people would say, God, I wish, you know, I, um, wish I'd done it sooner. And I think that's what, that's the journey of the retirement process, you know, is not being that person who says, I wish I'd done It sooner. Yeah, I definitely will not be saying I wish I'd done it sooner. I will be. I'm just delighted the way it's kind of slowly unfolding. You have to go through periods of liminality and doubt, doubt and all of that. But, you know, as it kind of unfolds, like, I didn't know I was going to write a book when I finish up. I didn't know until I, you know, I did the podcast, I meet you do the process then, now I've written a book and maybe I'll write another one. And, you know, it all unfolds if you kind of have enough faith around it.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're getting towards the end now. Just I'm curious now. And you've, um, left. Left the Rory McElaren Three years or something. Two or three years now. You got off an incredible fast moving ship there and you've chosen a different road. Are there any lingering regrets there that what you might have done or how do you feel about it all now?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's a question I get asked a lot, Greg, and it's a great question. Like, obviously Rory has won two masters, you know, since denim, I've enjoyed both of them. So, you know, lots of people ask me, God, you know, why. You know what? You have enjoyed staying and being part of that. And it kind of goes back to my Irish life days. You know, when I finished up in Irish Life, it was a very turbulent time and it turned out to be really helpful in my longer term journey in that it kind of changed how I. It changed my whole way of frame in my career versus my person versus my family, et cetera, et cetera. And I never allowed the world of the golf system, as much as I enjoyed it. I never allowed, allowed it to become part of me. Like, if you came into our house, all you would see is books. You wouldn't see any memorabilia, which is very unusual. You know, it's just, it's kind of emblematic of, you know, I didn't. I had kind of moved past that idea of it being part of my identity. And it turned out that the Irish life blow up, which was, you know, very difficult.

Speaker A: So when you blow up.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I left, you know, I was part of the group CEO selection process. You know, I left in what I would describe as, as, um, challenges. I wouldn't say controversial. Like, you know, people go for the top job, you don't get it. Typically you leave. You know, it's, it's, it's not a. But it's not an easy process. Yeah. You know, and it's not one that I recommend for. For. For others. Ah. But it. It's had a profoundly positive effect on my life. That's really because it. I became. I talk about this a lot in the book at the end where, you know, I became much more rooted in my community, a much better husband and dad, you know, much more present. And that dimension, uh, that experience really helped me remain a little more detached in the Roary world. I didn't get sucked into the kind of real glamour and glitz of it, and it meant that I was able to leave. So I've kind of come from middle Ireland. I've had this experience in a very kind of interesting and kind of distant world. And now I've come back to middle Ireland and I come back wiser. It's. I'm really delighted that I did, like. Do you know what I mean? That I, you know, I didn't. I didn't get lost. I think there was a time in my life where I might have got lost in that world, uh, whereas I didn't. And that's probably the thing I feel nearly best about. Um, it probably comes true at the, you know, I think I say it actually in. At the End of the Community chapter. I think it's a bigger achievement than any career milestone.

Speaker A: Donald. I think we'll call it a day. By the way, when is your book being published, or. I have it here in front of me, but when can people buy it and. Or Access it online?

Speaker B: 25 June.

Speaker A: 25th of June. So it's coming, I can tell you.

Speaker B: Uh, or just published.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm biased and I was consulted several times along the way and I read some of the chapters and Are all the chapters. But it's great stuff. I think it's such a bold, brave move to do. You don't really think it is. I think it is. And you have a super job. It's a great read. And I'm sure, I don't know, it'll be in Neeson's and the usual, uh, outlets. And it's online, I think, on the audiobook now. I've never listened to an audiobook. I might try that one and just. Well done you.

Speaker B: Thanks, Greg, and thanks for having me on again.