In this episode of the Priority Lane podcast, host Nigel Catt engages with Georgios Mihos, a seasoned angel investor and peak performance wealth coach. They delve into the importance of prioritizing productivity over mere busyness, emphasizing that true success stems from effective decision-making and disciplined execution. Georgios shares his insights on how to evaluate opportunities, the significance of internal dialogue, and the necessity of aligning verbal and non-verbal communication to foster genuine connections. He introduces his 'Pillars of Wealth' framework, which serves as a guide for assessing the viability of business ideas and ensuring long-term success. Throughout the conversation, Georgios highlights the critical role of mindset in achieving wealth and success. He discusses the common pitfalls that lead to failure in business ventures and stresses the importance of understanding market dynamics, identifying problems, and providing meaningful solutions. By sharing personal anecdotes and practical strategies, Georgios inspires listeners to shift their focus from being busy to being productive, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling and successful life.
Shift from being busy to being productive.
The quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions you ask yourself.
Ideas don't create wealth; systems do.
You can never steer a parked car.
Peak performers experience the pain of discipline, not the pain of regret.
Sound Bites
"How can you be productive as opposed to being busy?"
"Our brain loves us unconditionally."
"You can never avoid pain; you can only experience it."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Georgios Mihos
02:17 The Shift from Busyness to Productivity
06:56 The Power of Internal Dialogue
09:12 Mastering Time Management
11:35 Asking Better Questions
14:34 Eliminating Limiting Beliefs
15:45 Leveraging Time Effectively
18:22 Using Data for Better Communication
20:02 Expectations and Conflict Resolution
22:43 Values and Their Impact on Relationships
26:47 The Nature of Television and Advertising
27:04 Introduction to the Pillars of Wealth Framework
28:15 Understanding Pain and Discipline in Wealth Creation
29:15 The Five Pillars of Wealth Explained
30:50 Identifying Market Opportunities
34:30 The Role of Human Resources in Execution
36:37 Financial Resources: The Lifeblood of Business
37:02 Scoring the Pillars of Wealth
38:17 Real-Life Application of the Framework
The Priority Lane: Welcome to the Priority Lane podcast, the show where we explore the power of prioritizing and how it can be used to achieve real growth by doing less, but doing it better. I'm your host, Nigel Catt, and each episode I sit down with successful people to uncover how they filter out the noise and focus on what really matters. Today, I'm joined by Georgius Mihos, an angel investor, co-founder, CEO, and director, and peak performance wealth coach and mentor.
Georgios Mihos: Yeah, I'm great, Nigel. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for the time to have met you.
The Priority Lane: No problems at all, no problems at all. Now, just reading that intro there, you keep yourself quite busy. Let me just recap. So, husband of 34 years, proud father of two, plus you sit on the board of five companies. How do you manage all of that? How do you manage your work-life balance?
Georgios Mihos: Yeah, look, that's a question that I challenge people on a daily basis. You know, as you get to intimately connect with myself, you will understand the power of words. And I tend to get people to refocus from thinking they've been busy to how can you be productive? So that's the first golden nugget I will share with people. How can you be productive as opposed to being busy?
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
Georgios Mihos: And as we know, being busy doesn't generally lead to being productive. So the first thing I would challenge everybody or share with everybody is how can you be productive as opposed to being busy? It's number one. I have some, you know, successful people. I was the youngest player to play Premier League real football in Victoria when I was growing up. You know, played National League when I was 17. So I always played it. I was always exposed at the elite level and I probably didn't appreciate back then, what I know now is that any elite level, whether it's business, academia, sports, anything, you've got to do something very different to the masses. Does that make sense? Right. And that's what tends to differentiate you from most people. And one thing I noticed getting around successful wealthy people religiously is they tend to behave very differently. OK. And the three key drivers around that is attitude, desire, and coachability. That's something which I've really implemented into my own coaching regime.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: And fundamentally, Nigel, I'll challenge you and I'll challenge anybody who's fortunate enough to be able to hear this, is who do we deal with the most on a regular basis? We deal with ourselves, don't we? Who do we talk to the most every day? We talk to ourselves, we?
The Priority Lane: Yep, can't get away from ourselves.
Georgios Mihos: Particularly when you're looking in the mirror. However, suffice to say, because we tend to talk to ourselves the most every day, most people's internal dialogue doesn't serve them in the best possible way. So I'll give you three quick examples. Most people tend to have what I call sabotaging dialogue. They'll say things like, I can't, I should have done this, could have done that. So some of the golden nuggets I give people to move from being busy to productive is substitute the I can't internal dialogue to how can I, first of all. So how can I be productive? How can I make this happen? Because guess who is our number one supporter?
The Priority Lane: I guess it will be us.
Georgios Mihos: Our brain, you're right Nigel, our brain loves us unconditionally. To the extent that it does not care, doesn't question what we say to ourselves. Okay, all it wants to do, wants to prove us right. So whatever we say to ourselves is, okay, I'm now going to go to work for you, Nigel. I'm going to go to work for you, Georgios. So when you say, I can't, it then goes out there and seeks evidence while you can't. So for most people, what happens is you start repeating that self-fulfilling prophecy while you can't. Does that make sense?
The Priority Lane: Makes absolute sense and look I've seen a couple of quotes over the years that relate to this one was was it Einstein, current member, was whether you think you can or you can't you are right.
Georgios Mihos: You're right. Absolutely, right? So I say to people, when you look at the word right, it starts with R, doesn't it? Right? And my challenge to people is how do you get from being busy to productive? You want to be rich or right? Guess where the masses play at? The masses tend to play on the right side of the equation. Whereas the select few tend to play like ourselves on the rich side of the equation. And what that means is we tend to be focused on results, not opinions.
The Priority Lane: Yup, yup, yup.
Georgios Mihos: That changed my life dramatically, Nigel. When I understood if I can get around people that have got better results than me, that uplifts me also. Does that make sense? Right? So it's shifting from being busy to productive. It's shifting from being right to rich. Right? And part of that, because our communication model and fundamentally, you know, what we're talking about today, Nigel, when you break it down, it's all about communication, isn't it?
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yes, yeah.
Georgios Mihos: Whether we're communicating one-on-one like you and I know now, whether we're communicating to a group of people, or whether we communicate to the most important person in our world, which seems to be ourselves, it's all about communication. And 93% of the communication model is what they call non-verbal.
The Priority Lane: Yup, yup, yup.
Georgios Mihos: And 7% is what they call verbal. So give an example Nigel, let's say you're walking towards me. Okay, you're coming towards me and I say, hey Nigel, geez, you're looking pretty good today and I'm pretty flat on my own and looking down. Would you believe that I'm being sincere and genuine when I make that statement?
The Priority Lane: No, no.
Georgios Mihos: More likely not. Why? Because my non-verbal and verbal are not matching. Whereas if you're coming towards me and I look at you, I make eye contact, I've got positive health energy, I geez, Nigel, you're looking pretty good today. You think you're not? Yes. Now here's the key. How do you go from being busy to productive? When your non-verbal and verbal are congruent, you create momentum. When you're nonverbal, unverbal or non-congruent, people will always listen to you nonverbal. Very, very important. 93% will always outweigh the 7%. Make sense?
The Priority Lane: Makes sense. So when you're non-verbal and verbal are congruent, you're on the right track, you're heading places. Okay, okay. Another thing I remember is I saw quotes somewhere that the body won't go where the mind doesn't tell it to.
Georgios Mihos: Correct. Well, that's, you know, I've got a classic saying around that. You can never steer a parked car.
The Priority Lane: Yes, yes, yeah.
Georgios Mihos: Makes sense, so you could have the best car in the world, Maserati, Porsche, Ferrari, whatever you want. Know, you could be Mr. Bean and have a Formula One car, but if that car is parked, doesn't matter. You can't steer it, can you? Right? So going back to your original question, how do I manage my time? Because fundamentally, we all have the magic 86,400 seconds every day. And I was challenged about 27 years ago.
The Priority Lane: No, no.
Georgios Mihos: When I was asked in actual fact let me go back and what really changed my life. Do want to know what that coming moment will change my life Nigel? I went from managing 400 corporate staff you know in the matrix on the treadmill working 70, 80, 90 hours a week
The Priority Lane: Okay.
Georgios Mihos: You know, income capped, no leveraged income, I'll never get paid in the future for the effort I was doing at the time. But I remember hearing this question, in actual fact, I'd love to give this gift to everybody. Is that okay? This question changed a lot. I remember hearing this question, the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself, yourself.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, absolutely.
Georgios Mihos: Okay. So I remember, because I never used to enjoy public transport back then. So I used to drive to the CBD every day. And you know, I'd see the same person trying to, you know, rush across the road to get the tram and the same guy putting on his tie and spilling the coffee and the same lady trying to put on the makeup. I remember, you know, for about six, seven weeks, I kept saying to myself, what am I doing here? What am I doing here? What am I doing here? And you alluded to this earlier, Nigel.
Georgios Mihos: You know, the definition of insanity is behaving the same way expecting a different outcome. Well, I was asking the same question, thinking I was going to get a better outcome. Well, I'm not. I was just repeating it, right? What am I doing now? And I didn't know. And then I remembered, aha, that what I call bullfight moment, BFO, blinding flash of the obvious. Okay, if the quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions you ask yourself, how could I ask a better question? And this question changed my life. said, okay, what am i my passionate about and it was like a lightning just hit me. Bang! And I remember my left eye looking in the rear-view mirror and I said oh you know what I'm passionate about? I'm passionate about changing people's lives and then remember nonverbal verbal? The exiles of nonverbal, the nonverbal voice kicked in right? Okay? And we can tell the dialogue. Well how can you honestly change other people's lives when you haven't changed your own?
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: And I said, that's it. I don't know how, who, what, when, but I made a decision that day. And I talk about when you make a purposeful decision, mountains are moved. Okay, mountains are moved I made a decision that I was going to go to find out how, what, who, when, why, why did a select few people in our world create real wealth? And most people just work hard 30, 40, 50 years. Because again, these are not my stats, people can look at their stats. 97.3% chance of people after working 40, 50 years, tend to retire or die broke. They're the statistics. So I said to myself, all right, so how do I move from 97.3 to 2.7. Does that make sense? And guess what I've found out Nigel? I found out that
The Priority Lane: Makes sense, yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: Granted, sometimes there's an exception to the rule. There might be somebody that gets born in a billionaire family. But most people don't like that, correct? Right? Here's the shift. Here's how I went from being busy to productive, from wanting to be right to becoming richer. Right? Is identify the universe does not discriminate when it comes to wealth and success. What identified the people that were on the 2.7% side of the equation consistently
The Priority Lane: Correct, yep.
Georgios Mihos: behave very differently to the other side of the equation. Does that make sense?
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: And what I also did, I didn't understand at the time, I eliminated some of the limiting beliefs that I had. For instance, I grew up, well, I didn't have enough capital, therefore how could I create wealth? You know, I came from a blue-chip collar type of family upbringing. My parents made me grateful, best parents in the world. But they knew so much, they instilled in us, you've got to work hard, you've to work hard, you've got to work hard. But when I moved from 97.3 to 2.7,
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: I started to learn, yes, you have to work hard, but how do you create leverage?
The Priority Lane: Yes, yes.
Georgios Mihos: How do you go from being busy to priority lane, productive lane? I love that. And what I realized was the universe does not care about your age, your sex, your color, your creed, your cultural background, your appearance, your experience. Yeah, let's give the audience a test. Are there people wealthier than you who are older or younger? The answer is yes, correct? Therefore, it's got nothing to with age.
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
The Priority Lane: Yes, yes, absolutely. Yep.
Georgios Mihos: Are there people shorter or taller than you? Are there people darker or lighter than you? Are there people heavier or not as heavy as you? You know what I mean, right? Are there people, you know, maybe not as good looking as you or, you know, better looking than you? Now, I know in my case it's a bit hard. I appreciate that, Nigel. Thank you. OK. But what I realised going through this, identifying this, becoming aware, it started to take away my limiting beliefs, my excuses why I couldn't succeed.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: You
Georgios Mihos: that make sense?
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah, so you're getting your brain, your bigger supporter, you're getting rid of the barriers and you're going, there's no reason why I can't do this.
Georgios Mihos: Correct, and this is how I found how to fast track it. How can we leverage our 86,400 seconds in a day? Because everybody has the same 86,400 seconds in a day. It's a simple formula. It's 24 hours in a day, there's 60 minutes in an hour, and there's 60 seconds in a minute. So it's a simple formula. That's how you get 86,400. How do we leverage it? How do we get that to become our best friend? Because to be brutally honest, and it's the only way to be in life, you know, it's funny because
Georgios Mihos: People said to can I be honest? And I look at them and I go, does that mean you haven't been honest so far? To be brutally honest, know, talk about life is not a dress rehearsal. Well, depending on your beliefs, it might be, but let's put that aside. The most important asset I've come to appreciate is time. Right, it's time because time is so priceless. So how do you use time effectively? And the thing is, you've got to learn how to master yourself. That's what I've come to appreciate.
Georgios Mihos: and that's what I empower people. How do you master yourself? So look, I wasn't sort of probably prepared for this question and I spent a whole day in this and I'll go really deep, but I will do, I'll share these golden nuggets. The thing I do on a Sunday night, which works well for me Nigel, is I identify my roles. How do you manage yourself? You've got to identify your roles. So what are some of the roles that I have? I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an uncle.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: I'm a pet owner. love my dog Harvey, right? I'm a pet owner. I'm me. I'm a CEO. I'm on the board. I'm a colleague. Yeah. So what I tend to do every Sunday night, I will identify what are the six to nine key roles I want to focus for that week. OK. Then I identify what are four to six outcomes that I want to
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: Okay.
Georgios Mihos: achieve that week for those roles. So for instance, a husband might be, you know what, I want to spend some quality time with my wife. Because what I learned, interestingly enough, wealthy people allocate time to outcomes, even to their partners.
Georgios Mihos: And one thing that my wife and I have started to re-engage, again, we used to do this religiously for about five years, is we used to allocate one night a week just for us. And I'll tell you, that made a significant difference to our relationship and our business. Because the more in tune I was with my partner, the less unproductive time I had to deal with other stuff. Does that make sense? Right?
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does.
Georgios Mihos: And the other benefit also, Nigel, what I found was this. I found by allocating that time, we could have real deep discussions. Because who do we talk to the most? Again, ourselves. I used to say stuff to myself thinking I told my partner. But because I was saying it to myself, I actually thought I told my partner what I hadn't told her. Does that make sense? Right? So again.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah, I've done that myself. Yeah, yeah.
Georgios Mihos: So you can relate, yeah? So Sunday nights, I manage my time on a weekly basis. Sure, I have three month goals and six month goals and 12 month outcomes. And once a year, I'll sit down and assess my last 12 months and I'll refocus what I want to over the next 12 months. And then you've got to test, measure and monitor, right? So I'll give you a real example here. Another thing I identified is successful people use real data, real information. So I was coaching somebody recently and they were getting very frustrated
Georgios Mihos: their communication with their life partner because they were having difference of opinions about what was happening in their lives and I said them well how do you know what your version is more true than your partner's version?
Georgios Mihos: This is all to me. It is. said, yeah, because it's perception versus perspective. You've got perception. The other person has perspective and vice versa. I said, I'll give you a challenge for the next month. Document the two activities that you guys have got conflict. OK, document. Don't tell your partner. Document. So one of the conflict I had is their partner kept complaining. All I do is I cook every week.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: And he says, well, I know we don't because we go out a lot. I said, well, where's the data? How do you prove it? Correct. So for the next month, he documented how many times they stayed home, who cooked, when they took takeaway, when they went out. And the first 18 days, the partner was shocked that she only cooked four of the 18 days. But in her perception, all she was doing was cooking.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: Mmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Georgios Mihos: Does that make sense? Right. And the more you say to yourself, the more you think it's a reality. And he was saying what he did. Makes sense. So what he did instead of having this verbal disagreement, he produced data. Because here you go, I've documented it. On this day we did this, on this day you cooked it. And she went, wow, what? Seriously? So do you think her attitude changed?
The Priority Lane: perception becomes reality.
The Priority Lane: You
The Priority Lane: Yes.
Georgios Mihos: That's how you deal with things, with real data, real information. know, Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, audience may have heard of, I know most people have heard of Warren Buffett.
Georgios Mihos: I reckon about 20% of people have heard of Charles Munger when asked the question. Basically partners in Berkshire Hathaway for decades. Yeah, decades. Charles Munger, Berkshire Hathaway. And they've all been interviewed. And the journalists said to them, how have you two been able to be so successful consistently? What 24% returns every year for the last 38 years or something like that, right? That's a pretty good return. Would you agree, Nigel? To do that consistently compared to what the masses get for their
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
The Priority Lane: okay.
The Priority Lane: Yeah. absolutely.
Georgios Mihos: money, right, we can talk about that another day, right? And Charles Munger looked at Warren and he said, it's simple. And said, how? He says,
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: We under promise low expectations because what? Well, you've been returning your investors 24% year in year out for 38 years. You see, if you want us look at conflict in any relationship, whether it's partner to partner, husband to wife, wife to husband, whether it's parents, children, siblings, friends, colleagues, it's because the expectations are different.
Georgios Mihos: That's the only time there's friction. Now all these I can encompass in my chapter that I'm launching called about signal versus noise. You know, look at people like the Warren Buffets of the world, the Charles Mungers of the world. I love looking at these people, know, the Elon Musk's of the world, the Steve Jobs of the world. know, some people think they're ruthless. You know what I've learned? They're not ruthless. They're actually focused. There's a difference.
Georgios Mihos: Most people are heavily on the noise side of the equation. Peak performers are on the signal side of the equation. Okay? So here's a challenge for the audience. And I haven't met too many people who have taken this up. I was asked this question 27 years ago, and it was a huge challenge. I was challenged. I was asked, if you could ignore everything for 12 months.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
Georgios Mihos: your family, social occasions, know, all this stuff. And you can be totally focused for 12 months on your wealth side of the equation, knowing that in 12 months time, you'll set up you and your family for the next eight, 10 generations. Would you be totally focused on doing that? And that's a big challenge for most people because it means you're giving up weddings, birthdays, and what if somebody dies? So you know what will influence and we won't cover that today because of time, but all that comes down to a water and Charles are talking about expectation.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, it is.
Georgios Mihos: and what's inspired around that is your values. Your values influence your behaviour.
Georgios Mihos: So again, can I give a real example in a relationship? So you could have a husband, a wife or life partners and one of them values wealth, financial wealth and it's in their top three priority of values. And the other one could be more a socializer, likes to travel, likes the five-star lifestyle. If you've got two people with different values, you're gonna have conflict.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah.
Georgios Mihos: Because one wants to invest, the other one wants to consume. Can you see that? In a business, yeah, okay, fair enough. Fair enough.
The Priority Lane: Yep, like I said, accounts and marketing.
Georgios Mihos: Yeah, somebody that's more social focused is about somebody who's more about the numbers, right? We're using it in business sense. But again, how do I manage my time is identify my roles for the week, identify the outcomes for the week, and got to understand about inspiring and empowering other people in your company. You know, they got to make mistakes. Sometimes the best learning is in making mistakes. It's the hardest learning, but it's making mistakes.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: So true, so true. And look, thank you for those pearls of wisdom. What you were talking about there is essentially what the podcast is about, how to prioritise and how to focus on what really matters as opposed to being distracted by the noise.
Georgios Mihos: Great.
The Priority Lane: Now before we dive into the business side of things, we're going to get into our historical event. As you know, each episode we delve into a quirky historical fact of the month we're in, which happens to be January. And today we're going back 100 years, 100 years to, where are we? January 26th, 1926. Scottish investor, yep, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of his electromechanical televisor to almost 50,000
The Priority Lane: scientists in the attic of his London workshop. The first images were of a ventriloquist dummy like Stookey Bill. Stookey never went on to become famous. Later he used 20 year old William Taiton, an office boy downstairs to sit for him. There were wires all over the place. He used cardboard discs with bicycle lenses, lamps, scrap wood, biscuit tins, an old tea chest filled with an old engine and old batteries to make this go round. He attempted to transmit images via
The Priority Lane: mechanical scanning discs and cells pioneering the transmission of moving images making a huge step towards modern TV. Northern Irish
The Priority Lane: entrepreneur and friend Oliver George Hutchinson became a key partner and investor promoting the project. wrote press articles predicting it would become as successful as the wireless radio. In 1927 Baird transmitted the first long-distance TV pictures over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow. In 1928 the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission.
The Priority Lane: His first transmission was from London to New York, sending mechanical images using a landline from a London transmitter to then shortwave radio across the Atlantic receiver. Now, if you were around 100 years ago, George, is that the type of project that you would have got involved with?
Georgios Mihos: Well, just, I sat there listening to your introduction on that topic and the semblance is absolutely because I love innovation. It reminded me, was at the Australian Open yesterday and it was amazing seeing these cameras hanging from the ceiling down and looping around. It's just unbelievable where TV was 100 years ago to where we are now. That is amazing. The semblance is absolutely this high probability because I love being a value creator. I love being part of, and again,
The Priority Lane: yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Georgios Mihos: Again, it goes to the point we make earlier, Nigel. What is the TV? It's just a communication medium and advertising revenue vehicle. That's what it really is, it? When you think about it. Yeah, that's a great topic. Yes, correct.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yep, Well, that, yep, yep, people monetize everything. Yep.
The Priority Lane: So with that, so if you're around 100 years ago and you're approached by John Logie Baird and his televisor, this would be a commercialization readiness project, I'm guessing. You'd implement your Pillars of Wealth POW framework. So can you give us a bit of background on what led you to develop this framework?
Georgios Mihos: Yes.
Georgios Mihos: Yeah, look, again, learning curves, raising awareness, moving from being busy to productive and everything I covered before. One thing I will add before I sort of delve into that is one thing I also learned is the word pain. Most people think they can avoid pain. You know what I learned, Nigel? You can never avoid pain. All you can do with pain is experience it.
The Priority Lane: What's that it.
Georgios Mihos: you're either going to experience the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Does that make sense? Right? So I guarantee a hundred years ago, there would have been people that may have come across that opportunity and hesitated or, you know, they were too fear driven and guaranteed five, 10, 20, 30 years later, they would have seen what would have happened and thought,
The Priority Lane: Yup, yup.
Georgios Mihos: And the same, and that hasn't changed. are people experiencing the pain of regret today because they didn't do something five, 10, 20, 30 years ago. And in five, 20, 30 years time from now, there'll be people experiencing the pain of regret. Peak performers experience what I call the pain of discipline, the pain of now. Okay? So when I look at my pillars of wealth system, you know, it's because over the last three decades, I've spent, as you alluded to earlier, Nigel, full-time investor, know, entrepreneur in property, healthcare,
Georgios Mihos: Cybersecurity, innovative technologies, capital engagement. And over that time, I kept seeing similar patterns. A few succeeded and most didn't. Does that make sense? Good ideas can't fail me, not because they were bad, but because the same risks were being ignored over and over again. I realised early on that wealth doesn't come from ideas. It comes from systems, discipline and execution. Does that make sense? So I started formalising the filters that I was already using before committing capital, time or
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm, yep.
Georgios Mihos: reputation. Okay, so I created what I call my five pillars of wealth. Is it okay if I go through them with the audience, Nigel?
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah. So before you do that, so essentially this evolved from what you were doing as an investor, assessing opportunities.
Georgios Mihos: Yeah, I started originally as an angel investor. I thought I would leverage my massive cash flow in my business. Because fundamentally people, some people are arguing business is better than property or property is better than shares. And as you know, we're not giving any advice. This is just general information, general data sharing, general education. Yeah, this is what I've learned. The wealthy don't get caught up in opinions. They get caught up in results. They get caught up in monetization, commercialization, leverage.
Georgios Mihos: What I've learned about the wealthy is they tend to have one or two major asset classes that creates huge cash flow. Then they invest in other asset classes. Does that make sense? Whereas the masters tend to have a major asset class which is a job, but we know what job stands for, we? Just over broke, right? The challenge with that pillar, if that pillar collapses, does their revenue. So what I realized in the early days, business cash flow allowed me to invest in different asset classes, but also invest in pending big
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: opportunities and I went from being an angel investor and saw the mistakes people were making around me to then to then started becoming a very active leverage investor. Does that make sense?
The Priority Lane: Okay, okay, that makes sense. So that's the foundation of the pillars of wealth. So yeah, why don't you take us through that?
Georgios Mihos: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: Pillars of Wealth, as we mentioned, is commercial readiness tests. Again, I want to emphasize ideas don't create wealth, systems do. It's important to understand why most ideas fail. They fail because there's no real market. So the first thing I look for is there an existing market. It's very, very important because if you've to go and create the market, there's too much effort with very, very small possible success. Does that make sense?
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: Yep, okay, okay, so step one, is there an established market that you can be tapped into?
Georgios Mihos: Correct, so existing market is money. Why? Because it means somebody else has already gone and spent the dollars. They've done the testing, they've done the research, they've now proven the market exists. There's no existing market.
The Priority Lane: and they've educated consumers.
Georgios Mihos: Correct, you're not actually building a business. You're actually running an experiment. That's where most people go wrong. They fall in love with novelty instead of demand. Demand is inspirational. I wanna take you through, excuse me, I was about to cough there. So once you identify the market, the next step we look at is, okay, have you identified a problem in that market? Very important.
The Priority Lane: God, what?
The Priority Lane: Okay, yep.
Georgios Mihos: So the market, just the markets, one. Number two, you identified a problem in that market? Markets don't create wealth, by the way. You know what creates wealth? Problems do. So you've got to identify a problem in that market. The question here is, what pain exists? How painful is it? How often is that occurring?
The Priority Lane: Okay, yep.
Georgios Mihos: If the problem is an obvious, recurring and painful, customers won't move. And if customers don't move, revenue doesn't move either. So now we've gone from one, two to three. What's three? And you now provide a better solution, Nigel. Did you want to say something there before I go on?
The Priority Lane: Okay. I... Yep.
The Priority Lane: And no good having to have no problem without a solution.
Georgios Mihos: Correct, so you've identified the problem, however, you've got to come up with a better solution, because if you're just going to go reinvent the wheel, the market already exists, somebody's already got it, or there might be multiple major market share owners already. So you've got to create a better solution to be able to capture that market. Does that make sense? Now, better doesn't mean perfect.
The Priority Lane: Yep. Yep.
Georgios Mihos: It means meaningful, better in a way the customer actually cares about. know, Steve Jobs says, get it done before you get it perfect. That's a mistake a lot of people make. Okay? Can you do it faster, safer, simpler, more accurate, easy to execute, easy to implement? There's no clear reason for the customer to switch. You're competing on hype. And hype is not a strategy. Does that make sense?
The Priority Lane: Yeah, so on that, so better could mean a number of things and in different markets something being better in one way may be great but in another market no one cares about it. How would you assess what is meaningfully better?
Georgios Mihos: If I go through the, let me finish the next three pillars and then I'll give a real life example. Where I've implemented this whole process in a real life example and we're actually heading towards an IPO in the next 12 to 18 months. I'll come back to that if you let me, okay?
The Priority Lane: Okay.
The Priority Lane: Okay, great.
The Priority Lane: Okay great, so just to recap, we've got the established market, we've got pain and we've got a solution at the moment. Okay, what's next?
Georgios Mihos: Correct, well done, fantastic, I love that. So Pillar, great, great. So I get a lot of phone calls on a regular basis on this Nigel and I just can quickly do a test over the phone, very quickly on my head, right? Most people think they can tick the first three pillars. Where most people fail is Pillar four and five, okay? Or I'll send them a challenge, I'll give them some feedback and come back to me in three months time or six months time and I'll take you through my score system soon. But Pillar four is what I call the human resources, okay?
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
Georgios Mihos: So, you know, the team involved. So critical. Ideas don't execute, people execute. People, even in this technology savvy world we're living in, people still think they can discount people. We'll never discount people, right? So people are still a key ingredient in the success process because they've got to execute. So I look at leadership, operational capability, who actually carries the pressure when things don't go to plan. Most failures I've seen weren't idea failures, they were executions.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
Georgios Mihos: execution failures. Does that make sense? And ego, and ego. A lot of projects that I had invested in in my early days, Nigel, that were going nowhere. The comma link I found is people lacked the skills and the execution. They were the wrong people in the wrong roles.
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, well I've found in, just in my experience, people invest in people. You can have great ideas, but if you don't have people to execute them and people that are gonna be accountable, it's not worth it.
Georgios Mihos: Correct.
Georgios Mihos: Yep, yep, you're just in the noise, I don't understand this one. And the last pill is financial resources, okay?
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
Georgios Mihos: We identified that there's a logistic market. We identified the pain factor in the market. There's a problem. We identified that we can provide a better solution. Right. We're now identifying who are the people involved and then financial risk. So human resources, we've ticked that box and box five is financial resources. Okay. Why? Because cash flow is oxygen. Without it, everything else stops. The question is whether there's enough runway to reach the next value infliction point with our panic decisions. Many ideas die not because they were
Georgios Mihos: wrong, but because they ran out of oxygen too early. that make sense? So understanding financial resources, you know, as opposed to capital injection, as opposed to how do you make that win-win consistently and having a plan for an exit, right? Stephen Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly effective People, his first chapter talks about you do an exit on your life. And there's a challenging chapter. actually says to you, He even write how will your funeral look? Who will come to your funeral, you know.
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: going to be there. It's challenging, right? But you take that analogy into your businesses. It doesn't mean you're grounded to that exit, but if you don't have an exit, you don't stake things in your favor. Does that make sense? So how do I bring all these things together?
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep, yep, yep. So, okay, so we've got those five pillars. Yep, yep. So, yeah, so are they, how do they come together?
Georgios Mihos: So I have a score, a scoring and discipline focus, right? So I give each pillar a score one to five. So I'll give you a real life example in a second, but one to five, right? So obviously the high score the better. It's not golf, it's not the opposite. It's more basketball, baseball, cricket, soccer. The higher the score, the better. So anything above 22 out of 25 is commercially ready.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
Georgios Mihos: amber means they've got to reach structure and red means that they have to stop. Okay? So I'll give you...
The Priority Lane: Okay, so just on that, are there weightings or are they all completely a five is a five regardless which pillar it's in?
Georgios Mihos: Yeah, so each pill gets a rating of one to five. So 22 to 20.
The Priority Lane: Right, so one pillar isn't more important to another, they're all of equal importance.
Georgios Mihos: Now they're all equally important, but obviously they're sequential. They're sequential. Because you could have a great team, but if you haven't identified the market, what have you got? You could have a great team, but if you haven't identified a better solution, what have you got? Make sense? So 22 to 25 is proceed. 18 to 21 might need an assessment or restructure. 14 to 17 is what I call high risk, and less than 14, not now.
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep, yep, I'm fine.
Georgios Mihos: You know, that doesn't mean they might want to go away six months, 12 months, but that's the process. Okay? So I'll give you a real life example. You know, there's a, let's have a look at a market. I'll ask the audience this question. Is there a market or is our population getting older? There's a growing gray market, isn't there? Yeah?
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Okay. Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yes.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: In their population, we identified, and not just their population but across the board, we identified one in 25 people have an issue in swallowing medications. Why?
The Priority Lane: Really, 1 in 25
Georgios Mihos: 1 in 25 people dysphasia, could be Parkinson's, car accidents, issues with the oesophagus. Some people, there's a huge market place of people that are too fed, cannot swallow for whatever reason. Okay, some could be short-term.
The Priority Lane: So it's not age dependent, it could be across all age groups.
Georgios Mihos: No, it's age-dependent either. Obviously the older, you know, that one in 25 bracket is growing in the older market, but it's not age-dependent. I've seen kids as young as eight years old who are chew-fed, nine years old who are chew-fed, cannot swallow, cannot do what you and I, in most cases, what people take for granted every day. So we identified a market that needs medications. That's the first thing we identified. In that same market we identified there's a challenge within being able to swallow those medications because
Georgios Mihos: A high percentage of medications are made in tablet form because it's a cheaper way to manufacture. I've seen data, I've seen reports where some medications in liquid form could be 10 to 100 times more costly to produce.
Georgios Mihos: Okay, so the market we identified is a market that people struggle to swallow medications. And by the way, when I talk about people, it also, there's another division we've now launched, an animal side, because animals cannot swallow medications. That's another huge market, right? So keep that in mind as I take you through this process. So I'm involved on the CEO of a company called Life Assist Technologies. That company owns 100% of a company called Metasist.
The Priority Lane: Really?
The Priority Lane: okay. Yep.
Georgios Mihos: which is a human side and vet assist, which is the animal side. So taking you through my power system, pillars of wealth, power, right? Let's have a go. Okay. Let's do a rocky, right? The first thing we identified, is there a market? So we give that a five. Absolutely. Bam. Thank you very much. Okay. Next thing we identified, is there a problem in their market? Massive. Massive. you know,
The Priority Lane: Okay, yep.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: You
The Priority Lane: Yep. Click that off.
The Priority Lane: Absolutely.
Georgios Mihos: We met a guy, phenomenal testimonial. He used to take his three to five tablets in the morning with coffee, but it wouldn't take him in the evening because he couldn't swallow. And the reason being is wouldn't, know, crushing was very cumbersome, very antiquated. We had a university did a trial where they showed crushing your tablets could lose up to 50% of medication. Unbelievable.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
The Priority Lane: Mm-hmm.
Georgios Mihos: Okay, there's safety issues, yeah, 50%. And we've got the report. Also, there could be safety issues. I could be crushing tablets for you, Nigel, and I could risk re-breeding that in. It could affect my health. Okay. So, now, there's some medications that you're not allowed to crush, because they're getting enteric-coated they're slow release. You're supposed to get them into your gut, and it's supposed to slowly release the medication. Right? Okay. So, there's issues with that. So, this gentleman,
The Priority Lane: 50%
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: This gentleman had an issue with swallowing. His pharmacist got involved with us. Phenomenal. He tested over 100 plus medications, nutraceuticals and compared it to crushing as opposed to using our solution and said, I've got the ideal client. So rings him up, says, come in here, I want to show you this unit, it's amazing. You don't have to worry about crushing, hurting your wrist, wasting your medication, all this stuff.
The Priority Lane: Wow.
Georgios Mihos: He says, you go. it's in enteric-coated Let's call your doctor. So they called the doctor and said, can you give us a supplementary medication that's crushable? Ghezghe? Unbeknownst to us and the pharmacist three months later, he takes our unit, our solution and flies to Europe for a holiday. Hadn't been away for years. In his words, we've actually saved his life.
The Priority Lane: wow.
Georgios Mihos: Phenomenal. So again, let me go through this process because I'll sort of jump ahead with this exciting story. One is, is there a resistance market? Two, is there a problem in that market? Absolutely both human and animals. Three, can we provide a better solution? Yes, because we don't have the risk of losing 50% of medication. In actual fact, the university said we deliver 98% plus of the medication. We don't have the safety.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah.
The Priority Lane: Yep, just on that, sorry, I was gonna say, what is that solution? What is that?
Georgios Mihos: So we have a solution where we will liquefy the medications instead through ultrasonic technology, right? We liquefy, you know, we have our unit, we have our beaker, which is a consumable income. So you've got to use the beaker in a unit to be able to work. And also I'm not sure if you've tasted any medications recently, Nigel, but a lot of medications are very bitter. So we have masking flavors for the bitterness. They're huge.
Georgios Mihos: So we have tangy orange, solid caramel, smooth chocolate. We're getting great feedback. So let's go back to do we tick the first three boxes? 100%.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
Georgios Mihos: Then box four and five is human resources capital, financial resources. So the first three I will give five out of five. So I'm already at 15 out of 25. Yeah. The next one, we've now got an established board, right? 100 years of combined business success experience. We've got advisory board. We've got the pharmacist on board. As I mentioned, we've got veterinary.
Georgios Mihos: professional vets on the animal side on board. So based on our assessment, we tick number four, human resources. I would give three out of five for capital because now we're going on an exciting capital engagement roadshow. Yeah. So we've taken the business to the point now where we've got both sides traction. We've got resellers involved. We've got national distribution partners involved. We've got some trials happening in North America, in Asia.
Georgios Mihos: in Australia. actual fact, one of the smartest things we did, and I'd like to share this gift, as we were getting NDIS accredited, we getting all our trademarks ticked off, we were getting our electrical certifications ticked off, we did a soft launch where we gathered our technology, our units, to select a few people as a value add. Conditioned that we got some feedback. Good, bad, ugly, different, whatever.
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: The feedback's been phenomenal. Some of the testimonials that we've been able to get from those, well, one of them led us to a veterinary group here in Melbourne, and they're compound pharmacists. So we didn't understand that these people compounding every day, right? They took our liquefying unit and tested some of the medications that they were compounding. And in their words, we were able to reduce about 50% of their labour time in their business. Huge, massive.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: wow.
Georgios Mihos: Plus we're able to save some of it on their raw materials. Because when you're compounding, you tend to be guesstimating seven days, 14 days, 21 days, 30 days out. Make sense?
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: Here, because they got liquefying on demand, they changed their model. They loved our technology so much. A few months later, Rick Seltos, we caught up with him and we showed him our business plan on the animal side. Obviously, they were interested on the human side, but they thought, hey, we're there to be involved. More exotic avian bird side. And I didn't realise there's over 600 species of bird that they have to medicate on a regular basis. Can you believe people spend thousands of dollars on birds, exotic birds?
The Priority Lane: Really?
Georgios Mihos: found in some cases they're in families for 30, 40, 50, 80 years. Crazy. So, Nigel, when we did, this is what's exciting. There's three truths. We know what we know. We know what we don't know. However, we don't know what we don't know. Does that make sense?
The Priority Lane: well.
The Priority Lane: you
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yep, yep.
Georgios Mihos: I already know that people spend thousands of dollars on exotic birds. I already know that exotic birds, reptiles, guinea pigs, rabbits, global huge industry. I already know that the projections are the crushing industry is going to hit 1.2 billion US. Right?
Georgios Mihos: It's just crazy. So when we did our marketing business plan on the animal side, we thought cats, dogs, know, horses, cattle, they said, as big as you think that potential market is, exotic birds, reptiles, guinea pigs, rabbits, makes that part of the indigenic significance. They ended up investing in our company at an $8 million valuation at the time we had no revenues.
Georgios Mihos: So that gave us massive confidence that we're on an exciting path. Does that make sense? In the meantime, we've got trademarks for both Life Assist, Met Assist, Vet Assist, both locally and nationally We've got our national reseller distribution agreements in place. We're talking to groups overseas. We're presenting to an audience of...
The Priority Lane: Wow. Yeah.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Georgios Mihos: hundreds of thousands of people next month in Sydney, high net worth investors and family officers. And we're really excited. 28 years, Nigel, to be brutally honest, I never thought I would get involved in being actively involved in these, but I designed my system, which got me engaged. Does that make sense? More and more. So I give my score on my pillars of wealth, 23 out of 25. I'm missing two now.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Georgios Mihos: is hitting our financial targets. So we're on track to achieve that over the next 6 to 12 months. I hope that clarifies some value there for the audience and I'll offer you the opportunity.
The Priority Lane: Yep.
The Priority Lane: fantastic
The Priority Lane: look, absolutely and what we'll do, we'll put the details of the websites if you like on the bottom of this video as well so people can go there and have a look.
Georgios Mihos: Sure, sure, happy to. Look, because I travel a lot, I just tend to give out my, because I'm on the board of five different companies, so I tend to just give out my Gmail address. So if anybody wants to engage, if anyone wants to give more information, I'm happy to share my direct Gmail address. that's okay, Nigel? Yeah, Georgie asked me, I said gmail.com, and if you want to add that on there.
The Priority Lane: Yeah.
The Priority Lane: Yep, absolutely, we'll... Sorry, repeat that again, George's.
Georgios Mihos: So GeorgiosMihos at gmail.com. that's G-E-O-R-G-I-O-S, GeorgiosMihos, M-I-H-O-S, at gmail.com. Or gorgeous George's, whatever you want, Nigel. I appreciate that.
The Priority Lane: And we'll put that on the links in the podcast as well.
Georgios Mihos: And I'm happy to email anybody my template for them to use in assisting their own business. Happy to give that as a gift because I've been invited on behalf of the Pridery Lane Group and I appreciate the time. Nigel, thank you.
The Priority Lane: No.
The Priority Lane: Yet no problems at all, George. And look, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here. You've really uncovered some pearls of wisdom there. And I love going right back earlier. You were talking about the nonverbal and verbal, being congruent to move together, to move ahead. And then quality of life will be determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself. I mean, that's some really great stuff. And then your Sunday night plans. I'd never thought of that. As you've mentioned,
The Priority Lane: You fill a number of, well we all fill a number of different roles. Well, take those roles seriously. Plan out what you want to achieve. Five outcomes, I think you said for each of your roles, what you want to achieve that week. So look, it's been an absolute pleasure on there. I'm sure our listeners have enjoyed it. So thank you once again, Georgios
Georgios Mihos: Mike, you work at MNIGES and I'll finish off with this, Keith, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And that's so true.
The Priority Lane: There we go, there we go. I ran a business planning business for a number of years and yes, I use that a fair bit as well. So that's it for today's episode of the Priority Lane. Make sure you tune in next week for the next edition. Thank you.