Boss Your Business - The Podcast

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:01]:
What does it really take to rebuild your life and business from the rock bottom? Today, on Boss Your Business, we're diving deep into the grit and grind of overcoming some of life's toughest challenges. First up, the struggle of confronting and defeating addiction. Then, the daunting task of rebuilding a reputation and restoring relationships in business. And finally, we tackle the challenge of achieving consistent, sustainable growth after it all. Joining me is none other than Andrew Spira, a powerhouse broker and lending expert who has seen the bottom and climbed his way up to astonishing heights. After massive early career downfall, Andrew didn't just get back up on his feet, he rebuilt his business to new heights in just a year. He's here today to share his incredible story, his stategies for 10x his business in just a year and his wisdom for anyone facing their own mountain of adversity. By the end of this episode you'll have practical tools, fresh inspiration and the confidence to make real changes, involving life and business.
So get comfortable, stay with us and let's get ready to boss your business like never before.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:25]:
And with that, I want you guys to meet Andrew who is joining us today, all the way from Australia. We finally match time, time zones. I'm so happy you get to join me today. You're just starting your day. Yeah, mine. Mine is coming to an end. My audience already knows what's coming. My audience already knows what's coming. Did little Andrew know you gonna be the guy you are today, walking it in Australia?

Andrew Spira [00:01:50]:
Yeah. I always had a gut feeling I was different. Now, did I think I would get over my adversity? Absolutely not. I thought that I was going to be stuck down a certain path and I've managed to sort of, I guess, fall into a position where I'm fairly well known and doing quite well in Australia. And even though I've been through my tough times over the last couple of years, I think it's good to be back on track now and have rebuilt all my businesses and my relationships with people in Sydney and globally.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:24]:
Now, you already hinted on something. Rebuilding your relationship, relationships locally there in Sydney and Australia. You got smacked over the head quite well.

Andrew Spira [00:02:36]:
It's a long story. I started my business when I was 18. I became a broker in the loan space. I was really a workaholic. I kind of found myself in that business. I developed this Persona, this person and this person was successful and very good at what he did. And I made a lot of money during a short period of time and I guess I didn't work on myself personally. My financial capacity outdid my personal and emotional capacity and I think with the frustration of that, I started drinking.

Andrew Spira [00:03:11]:
And drinking led into substance abuse and I hit rock bottom within two or three years of being at probably the peak of Australian success. With a nice car, living in the best area. Neighbours are all celebrities to being in a position where I had to start virtually from scratch again.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:32]:
How, how has that impacted you? How has that changed you?

Andrew Spira [00:03:37]:
I think it's changed me and I'm also going through a period of change. I turned 26 this year and I could feel that my, my body is changing and my mind is changing and my needs are changing and my wants are changing and, you know, I'm maturing now. I'm growing out of a lot of the old behaviors I used to think were acceptable. Now the, the actual period of the last couple of years where I lost everything and had to rebuild, it's, it's definitely slowed me down. It's made me much more methodical, a lot more slower in the way I do things, I'm not always in a rush. And I think it's made me a lot more sensible, which is why I'm. I've built my business probably 10x of before.

Yvonne Heimann [00:04:19]:
So how has it, how has it changed you doing business, you engaging? I'm like, rebuilding is not an easy thing. And it sounds like it wasn't just rebuilding you and your business. It was rebuilding your reputation. It was rebuilding relationships. What would you tell somebody that's in a similar situation where it's like, okay, I learned my lesson. I got the message. How do you get to a point of having people trust you again, having the respect, building up your business, doing it again, and not falling into the trap of "whatever. I'll just let it be"

Andrew Spira [00:05:04]:
Yeah, well, it's mindset. I thought I fell into it. It's all a mindset game. When it all happened, you know, I thought I was going to get stuck in the cycle of addiction. And, you know, I thought I was going to be a statistic for a while there because things were so challenging. And I, you know, I had issues with banks. I had issues with even people answering my phone calls. And slowly I just kept chipping away and chipping away and chipping away and chipping away and chipping away and chipping away.

Andrew Spira [00:05:28]:
And then I realized that I had the possibility to rebuild myself. Very narrow one. But I knew if I just got through a few little hurdles that I'd be back to where I was. And this year, I've been working all year. I had a period of court cases last year because of my addiction and a breakup with my ex partner. And I just got through that period one day at a time. I chipped away. I chipped away.

Andrew Spira [00:05:58]:
I chipped away. I managed to get an investor for my business. He, he put a million bucks in. And then I got some money unstuck from my settlement with my ex partner. I slowly started building my business. And now, now, now the business is on track to do about $30 million this year. Before I was making 3 million a year. So I've 10x my business.

Andrew Spira [00:06:17]:
Yeah. In 12 months.

Yvonne Heimann [00:06:20]:
That's, I'm like, that's quite an accomplishment. 10x your business in just only 12 months.

Andrew Spira [00:06:26]:
In 12 months and last year I spent nine months of it pretty much stuck.

Yvonne Heimann [00:06:32]:
So would you, would you say there is like one thing that you attribute being able to do that to some. Something that has changed or something that you were able to implement that really put you in that position to be able to 10x everything this fast?

Andrew Spira [00:06:51]:
I Keep things very simple now. I don't complicate things. I don't go out looking for extra work. I. I just do the simple things, right. And keep persistently at them. Actually, I'll tell you something. You know what I say to my staff every day? Because they're always wanting to change things and change little bits and pieces.

Andrew Spira [00:07:08]:
I said, you want to know how we get rich? We do the same thing every day for a long period of time, and that's what we're doing. We're not changing anything. Same product, same destination, same goal, and we're just chipping away every day. And we're really. Things are starting to get some big momentum now.

Yvonne Heimann [00:07:27]:
I love that systems. Systems and process person over here, right? I'm. Anybody that's just listening and not watching, you might not have seen me smirk in the background. For everybody that has not come to the point of do the one thing, do it over and over again. We got the same goal. Why? Why is it that doing the same thing over again and sticking with the same goal, why is it that that is reaping results?

Andrew Spira [00:07:55]:
Well, from the outset, you need a product that works. And sometimes you get lucky with that, sometimes you don't. But you've got to be realistic. You can't just hope for the best. You have to establish your target market and establish that there's a target market and then go for it. Not trying to completely reinvent the wheel constantly. And then you document every process. That's what I've done with my business.

Andrew Spira [00:08:22]:
I've documented every process, and we've just stuck to that process for a year now, and it's working. You know, we're hitting that. That go period again.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:30]:
And I'm like, the nice thing is, again, smirking over here. For anybody that's just listening, the nice thing is when. When you have built that process that's working, you can do the little polishing where it's like, oh, there's something that did not work quite right, and you polish it. And that's where that growth comes in. Because again, as you just said, you are not reinventing the wheel over and over and over again. If you try something new, it's something new, something you potentially haven't done before, something that you haven't tested, something that you haven't sold to somebody before. It's new. You're not gonna get the same results.

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:09]:
You got doing it the second time, doing it the third time, and doing it the fourth time. So love it. It's like you are talking. You're talking my love language of systems and processes, now. How do, how does your experience, how do you take your experience and help your clients with it? What do you, what do you do for your clients? I'm like, I know you have a huge real estate portfolio. I know you work with clients. How do you help clients? What, how does that.

Andrew Spira [00:09:44]:
I've got, I've got out of real estate now. I'm. I sold all my properties. I sold every single property I had. I own a couple of properties outside of Australia which I'm gonna hold on to. But yeah, I've got a, I've got a place in Manila in the Philippines because all my staff are there and then I've got a house in the Pacific as well.

Yvonne Heimann [00:10:02]:
So you scale down to your personal property.

Andrew Spira [00:10:05]:
I'm living a bit like Elon Musk. I'll go to a nice hotel and then I'll stay there for 28 days in a suite and just get room service every day and whatever. So that's my lifestyle at the moment. But I'm a lender. I have a merchant cash advanced lending business in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Australia is my biggest business. I've got a 50 million dollar loan book in Australia, probably a 10 million dollar, just under 10 million dollars loan book in the UK or 10 million pound loan book in the UK and I've got a 2 million loan book in the New Zealand. So most of my business is out of Australia and we're doing business loans for small to medium sized enterprises.

Andrew Spira [00:10:46]:
That's my niche. I've always been good at short term lending.

Yvonne Heimann [00:10:50]:
Always good at the, at the money thing. Yeah. How, how do you think your knowledge is, is helping you help your clients? The, just the, the shift in mindset just having been through something like that because I'm like something, something is there 10xing your damn business in 12 months. I'm like that's amazing. How are you different for your clients? I guess that's the question I'm asking.

Andrew Spira [00:11:20]:
I'm obsessed with my business. I am, I live and breathe it and I have for eight years and I think that's why I'm good at it and that's why I've scaled down everything. I'm not doing this business and that business and I'm a marketing guy so I'm good with Facebook and Instagram and TikTok marketing by, by trade. But my product is the short term business loans. That's what I've always been good at and passionate about. So I've really scaled back my lifestyle and I'm just doing these unsecured business loans now. And, you know, how did I keep my clients? My clients were the most upset when I went through a period of court cases and I was offline. Like, I used to get Christmas cards and hampers delivered every year and all of a sudden not being available for my clients really affected them.

Andrew Spira [00:12:01]:
Like, I was getting calls and texts and emails. When are you coming back online? So I think that says something in itself. And my staff as well. My staff kept me through it and when we rebranded, everyone was there and available and we managed to get things back up and running fairly quickly. And now we're with a plan and now it's the plans executed. We're just waiting for the. It's just time now. I'm not going to go out and make changes.

Andrew Spira [00:12:25]:
I'm just going to keep doing the same thing every day and wait for it to really pop.

Yvonne Heimann [00:12:27]:
You've done different things. You've done a whole bunch of different things. Do you think you needed to do these to get here? So where I'm going with this, when you, when you look out there for business coaches, so so many say one product, one target market, one solution. Now, my question to you is, you have done different things. You are focusing on one thing now. Do you think you should have done the one thing right away or did you need the knowledge of doing the multiple things to get where you at now with your one thing?

Andrew Spira [00:13:02]:
I think I needed the smack in the face to get to where I am now. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think I'd be anywhere as wise and successful or knowledgeable without being smashed in the face and screwing up all those other things and brilliant ideas. So, no, I think it's been a journey and a process to get here. And sure, I had more money before and I lost at least $15 million in two years cash and started from almost zero again. But it's now, once I do it again, which I will, it's just a matter of time now. We'll. I'll.

Andrew Spira [00:13:39]:
I'll know how to keep it and sustain it and. And grow it even further. I won't make the same mistake again.

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:43]:
I'm like, you've proven once you can do it. So it's not a question of can we or can we not? It's just a question of, yep, now it's here.

Andrew Spira [00:13:54]:
And how much guts and how much guts do you have? And determination. Like, even now, I've been struggling the last three or four months. I had a Period of eight months where I was just go, go, go, go, go, working 14, 15 hours a day, socializing, throwing myself at everything, and I just crashed out. I burnt out in June or July this year after I settled with my ex partner. And, and I've struggled through the last four or five months now I'm starting to get better. But it's just how much do you have? Like, how much are you really willing to go without giving up?

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:24]:
And has that, has that burnout period impacted how you do every day now?

Andrew Spira [00:14:30]:
No, I just went back to basics. I take it one day at a time. At the moment, I get up at the same time, I get up at 6:30, I meditate for half an hour, I don't look at my phone, I have a shower, I have a coffee, I go for a walk and then I get into work. And I'm really just going through the motions at the moment. And some days I'm still bad and some days I'm good, but my bad days I'm still okay. Like I'm fairly experienced now with running this business, so I know what to do. And yeah, there was a period where I was missing. I missed two or three weeks of meetings in September because of burnout.

Andrew Spira [00:15:03]:
And that's never happened before. But it does happen. And to people out there going through those types of periods, don't be too hard on yourself yourselves. The bad times will pass and you just get back up and get going again slowly, slowly.

Yvonne Heimann [00:15:17]:
The only constant is there is no constant.

Andrew Spira [00:15:19]:
That's it.

Yvonne Heimann [00:15:20]:
What's in your future? What's the plan?

Andrew Spira [00:15:24]:
Look, I'm getting more into helping people. So I've launched andrewspira.me, I'm doing, I did some charity work in Vanilla, but I'm doing a lot more stuff in Sydney now because I'm really entrenched in the Sydney city community now, mainly Darlinghurst area. And yet when I got back, I did some outpatient work, some cbt and they said, listen, you know, you've come from hard beginnings like these people and you should come and talk at a certain function on every Wednesday night. So I'm doing a lot more work with homeless in Sydney, youth on the streets around Darlinghurst, people that are homeless in Woolloomooloo. I'm doing charity handouts and assisting with donations and talking to the younger kids that are going through similar periods to myself at a certain group on every Wednesday night at the O'Brien center at St. Vincent's and I've also got a bit of a mentorship following group. I've got young kids that have subscribed to my newsletter and my ebook which they're reading about overcoming adversity and challenges.

Andrew Spira [00:16:30]:
And what is the next few years look like? Look, I like to work on my business probably for one more year. I'm just, I'm sticking with it and hopefully after that it's a good life. I don't think, I don't plan on working like this. I want to have a more fulfilled life, have a family and settle down.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:48]:
Yeah, love that. So I love how you are giving back to the community, how you are helping others that are, that are experiencing similar. So I'm curious, I'm one of those visualization pieces. I'm curious a year down the road, two years down the road, what does life look like?

Andrew Spira [00:17:06]:
I think this time next year life is very different. I think business wise probably have close to $1 billion business. With my current lending business. I think personally I'd like to be completely anxiety free. I'm really doing a lot of work with cognitive behavior therapy at the moment and I'd like to be spending half my time giving back this time next year rather than just working, working, working. So obviously like to meet a girl next year and settle down and have a family too.

Yvonne Heimann [00:17:40]:
For anybody that in the trenches right now that's like what the fuck am I doing? that doesn't see an out. Do you have a tip for them? How, how do you pull yourself up by the bootstraps? How, how do you keep going when it feels like there is no going?

Andrew Spira [00:17:58]:
You need to go back to basics and set small goals for yourself. You know, most people just struggle even to get out of bed and not binge on, binge on Netflix. I didn't even realize that until this year because I've always been go, go, go, go, go. And you know, get up at the same time every day, have breakfast at the same time every day, do a little bit of exercise every day, go do some work every day, socialize every day it's getting back to those basic skills that will get you out of get it, get you out of the hole. And I know people that are in the hole when you say to them, bad times don't last, it doesn't help. But really they don't last. Things do pass even if they, even if you get an hour of relief every day. It's better than being constantly in an anxious loop.

Yvonne Heimann [00:18:42]:
Like what I'm thinking of right now is like Mel Robbins talks about the 5 second rule or just counting down the 3 2, 1, and get out. Do you have something when it's like, yeah, but I don't want to get up. That. That helps you get into that moving.

Andrew Spira [00:19:00]:
I. I tell myself I'm in control of my. My mind. Not my mind's in control of me. I'm in control. I just constantly repeat, I'm in control. I'm in control. I'm in control.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:09]:
Yeah, I like that. I like that because it's like when we. When we look at it, sometimes our. Our body and just the hormones and everything is just off, just takes over. So I like that. I like the. I'm in control. It.
It just, it is that power of. I'm taking it back no matter what. What? Black, black clouds are happening right now. Done. We are doing this. I like that.

Andrew Spira [00:19:33]:
Yeah, yeah. Look, I go, I've got that wow factor. So I can go to a meeting, raise money. I can do 50 meetings in a week. But I go through crash periods and I didn't start going through crash periods until this year. And it's just going back to basics. That always works. And people with that wow factor that are able to do crazy things and operate on two or three hours sleep, it happens to them as well.
It happens to everyone.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:57]:
For everybody that wants to dig into all the things you are doing, how can they connect with you?

Andrew Spira [00:20:00]:
Yes, I've got a website, andrewspira.me. They can connect with me. My contact details are there. I've got an ebook there available now through Amazon and I've also got a newsletter which I'm pumping out weekly, but I'm always online. If you want to contact me through the number there, I'll respond.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:15]:
That is amazing.

Andrew Spira [00:20:16]:
And that reminds me, I've got to respond to a couple of people that messaged me yesterday when I was busy.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:21]:
By the way, I got a couple. I got a couple waiting.

Andrew Spira [00:20:25]:
Yeah, it's always like one of them's like, oh, I want to do. Can we go into business together? I got this thing to invest in. I. I'll see what he's got to say.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:33]:
Yeah, so you're always listening everywhere. I love that. And as always guys, it's like we're going to have the link in the description. It's all there, easily accessible and amazing story, especially at your age. Now, now I just aged myself. It'll it'll be interesting to watch and see how everything play out over the next year. I hope everything is happening as you plan. And thanks so much for coming on.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:00]:
Thanks so much for sharing your amazing story with us.

Andrew Spira [00:21:02]:
Thank you.