Curating your own Story with Richard Hagan

In this episode of The Real P3 Podcast, we have the pleasure of speaking with Richard Hagan about the art of curating your own narrative and defining your professional identity. Richard Hagan, who owns Immersive Publishing, specializes in transforming experts into recognized leaders through strategic publishing and product development.

Richard's life story is a remarkable blend of diverse experiences. He has navigated extraordinary situations, from surviving wildlife encounters to transitioning from a religious community member to a primary school teacher, and ultimately, to owning a successful immersive publishing company. Richard's journey is as unique as it is inspiring, and his insights promise to be both enlightening and motivating.

For more information about Richard, visit his LinkedIn profile.

What You Will Learn:

• Richard’s Unique Journey: Explore Richard’s diverse path from dealing with dangerous wildlife and drug dealers to engaging with orthodox priests and becoming a schoolteacher.
• Transition to Publishing: Learn about Richard's transition to running a publishing company that turns personal expertise into books and online training.
• The Art of Curating One's Story: Insights into how Richard helps individuals curate their stories to impact how others perceive them.
• Beyond Traditional Labels: The importance of moving beyond conventional descriptors to foster deeper connections with others.
• Transformational Experiences: How to focus on creating profound, transformational experiences rather than merely sharing information.
• Power of Vulnerability: Understanding the role of vulnerability in strengthening human connections.
• Challenges in Motivational Speaking: Discussing the difficulties and nuances in the realm of motivational speaking and autobiographical storytelling.
• Emotional Journey of Storytelling: Tips on curating the emotional journey in presentations to genuinely impact and inspire audiences.

This episode is perfect for anyone interested in compelling storytelling, the power of vulnerability, and making a meaningful impact through personal narratives. Join us for an enriching conversation with Richard Hagen on The Real P3 Podcast.

Thank you for tuning in to this insightful episode with Richard Hagen. Don’t forget to subscribe for more enriching conversations on The Real P3 Podcast.

To learn more about Profile Animal Health and their products, visit: https://profileanimalhealth.com/

Connect with us on :
Instagram @therealp3_podcast
LinkedIn @The Real P3
Facebook @The Real P3
www.thesunswinegroup.com

Transcript

Casey
 0:00:00
 Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast. Every Monday, join the Unstoppable team as we explore powerful stories of resilience and inspiration from the leaders shaping our industry. Tune in to start your week with motivation and insights that empower you to be unstoppable in life and business.

Philip
 0:00:26
 Well, good day.

Philip
 0:00:27
 I just wanted to introduce a really cool guest today, Richard Hagan.

Richard
 0:00:28
 Richard's very kindly agreed to record a podcast with me and he's got an incredible bio, which

4
 0:00:29
 I'm going to touch on now.

Philip
 0:00:30
 But Richard, how are you doing today?

Richard
 0:00:31
 I'm doing really well. It was a bank holiday here in Scotland when we were recording.

Richard
 0:00:33
 And so the weather was typically terrible, but it's actually sunny and warm today now

Richard
 0:00:34
 when I'm doing the recording. So, but it's still lovely to be with you and you guys. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to ask Richard Hagan to come on up. Richard, how are you doing?

Richard
 0:00:40
 I'm doing really well.

Philip
 0:00:41
 It was a bank holiday here in Scotland when we were recording. And so the weather was typically terrible, but it's actually sunny and warm today now when I'm doing the recording. So, but it's still lovely to be with you and your gang.

Richard
 0:00:53
 Oh, very nice. Thanks so much for that. Again, I talked about the bio and can I just read through a couple of the lines you placed because I find every single one of them a complete discussion on their own. So, after committing suicide at the Edinburgh Festival, running away from in Puga, standing down drug dealers in Perth and mugged by an Orthodox priest. Like what happened?

Richard
 0:01:18
 Because post that you then survived a couple of years as a six year teacher, and you now run an immersive publishing company, working with various sort of coaches and professionals in the world, turning people's expertises into books and online training.

Richard
 0:01:32
 So there was obviously a huge shift in your life at some point.

Philip
 0:01:36
 Yeah, I've been very lucky. I've had a very, very rich and varied life. It's had its moments and a couple of them are in that little mini bio there. I'm glad that it intrigued you because that's actually my LinkedIn bio. And I kind of almost kind of went to town on making it ridiculous because most people's bios on LinkedIn just, I was bored before I even got to their experience. Let me just wake people up a bit. Yeah, so the big picture bit was before I set up my business,

Philip
 0:02:07
 I was, I set my business up at the same time as retraining as a primary school teacher after 20 years as a member of a Catholic religious community. And I did a year study and then was ordained a priest and worked for 12 years in that community. So that's where the kind of facing drug dealers down.

Philip
 0:02:28
 You missed out a bit about them being in their Y-fronts. Maybe that doesn't translate to Zimbabwe. But that was me knocking doors and hearing packs of rock bounding down and the door being held open literally by a gentleman in nothing but his Y-fronts holding the dogs back.

Philip
 0:02:45
 So, yeah, so it's just little moments like that that kind of when I think back on my experience, they make me laugh, weren't funny at the time, but make me laugh. And then being in Jerusalem on a pilgrimage and literally in the church of the Holy Sepulcher being assaulted by a Russian Orthodox priest. Yeah, kind of an interesting experience. I would love to know how you got that right. I've been to Israel myself and it's an

Richard
 0:03:12
 interesting country, obviously pre all the all the chaos that's going on now.

Philip
 0:03:15
 Yeah, tragic.

Richard
 0:03:16
 And it's very divided, right, Israel? You've got huge Muslim and Jewish communities and there's a very marked divide in that country. It's tangible.

Philip
 0:03:26
 Yeah, and the Christians are the same. That's the whole, the irony of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is where both they have the crucifixion site and the burial site in the same building, historically, well, theoretically anyway, and it is literally segregated into this community, this little bit, a couple of, I'm not sure if it was the Ethiopian cops, but their small community all got sick. And so they've ended up getting pushed out of their bed and had

Philip
 0:03:55
 a little bit of the roof to look after. You know, that's the kind of getting together with you, chatting to you, exploring what is it that we can do to kind of create something more powerful, more transformational, more, I think, fundamentally more human and humane.

Richard
 0:04:19
 Yeah, I really like that. And that's kind of like something I take into life. Like I don't really view myself as very religious in anything. I just feel that we need to respect and learn to respect everyone and be kind and constantly just be the best versions of ourselves that we can be for the planet because it needs good people.

Philip
 0:04:38
 Yeah, I'm not going to go into my current state of faith or lack of it or whatever, but I suppose my bottom line is now that I don't really believe what people say, I just want to see how do they treat others? Are they genuine? Are they human? Are they loving? Are they generous? Then if they are, then I might pay attention to what else they talk about,

Philip
 0:05:02
 but without them I'm not really interested in their, not their perspective, but in their dogma or their belief systems. Let me see a good human and then I'll pay attention to the other stuff.

Richard
 0:05:12
 I really like that and I relate to that a lot. So Richard, we managed to link up through LinkedIn, possibly the buyer that stuck up, but definitely you'd worked with Nuffield Scholars. So thanks to Nuffield again, because in a roundabout way, you assisted a lot of scholars with doing their presentations and getting ready for their presentations, because part of the scholarship is writing a report, but also getting up and presenting.

Richard
 0:05:38
 How was that experience? You were integrating with a lot of scholars, different personalities.

Philip
 0:05:42
 It was a complete kind of unusual experience for me. I kind of got that, again, it's all humans and networking. I went along to the Nuffield Conference kind of on the back of one of the authors that we worked with for a few years, who is a presentation skills coach,

Philip
 0:06:00
 a guy called Jezre, phenomenal guy. And he's worked for years with the Nuffield scholars who are going to do the presentations. And because of the pandemic, they, for a couple of years, they've got double cohorts doing presentations. So he needed an extra experienced pair of hands in the room to run one of the sets of students on the day. And it was just magic because I used to train other people in speaking skills, preaching skills, presenting themselves,

Philip
 0:06:31
 but I hadn't done it in quite a long time. And so it was just amazing to be in the room and just enjoy an insight into a world that I knew nothing about, the whole agriculture world. In fact, what got me was that in my head, this is all farmers and farming people. But when you actually heard their stories or their experience, it

Philip
 0:06:55
 was just an enormous wealth of different experience, different insight and completely different roles and functions. In my head, it was just farming. And that was shattered and an amazing experience. And I did teach a few people to do lots of vocal exercises and good Scottish accent. So I've infected a few with that, thankfully, which is really, that's my life's mission, get the Scottish accent out there.

Richard
 0:07:21
 That's brilliant. I think I can do Braveheart word for word. So we all started and love the idea of Scotland. I haven't been there yet, but it's definitely on the cards. Nuffield does that. I've referred to it a lot in the podcast series, but it brings very interesting personalities to the table.

Richard
 0:07:38
 A lot of them are crossroads, a lot of them change drivers, and it definitely tries to identify the future leaders in agriculture and world food security. So it's a fascinating group of people. Rachel, we were gonna chat today a little bit about what you do,

Richard
 0:07:52
 and we had quite a few different options that we could talk through, because you guys bring a lot to the table with your sort of immersive publishing and the courses and the coaches and everything you guys bring.

Richard
 0:08:02
 I think it's very broad, but the one we picked up on, because I think it's part of my journey today as well, where I currently am with the Unstoppable Vision, is curating your own story and how to call yourself.

Philip
 0:08:15
 Yeah, I mean, we chatted probably six, seven weeks ago, and it was such an interesting conversation. We're in the same time zone, but our contexts are so radically different, although I was lucky enough to visit Zimbabwe back in the late 90s, early 2000s.

Philip
 0:08:33
 It was, I'm trying to think, I can't remember the dates. It was the time, one of the elections that was run magnificently, I'll leave it there. Operation. Yeah, so it's an interesting time to be out. But what struck me when we were chatting was that your focus on resilience

Philip
 0:08:54
 and being unstoppable and wanting to make a difference, that we got chatting about how we present our message, how we share it. And then afterwards I was thinking about that quite often one of the things I find very challenging when someone's wanted to write or do a talk is that they present a very chronological version of themselves. So like, I did this, then I did that, this happened to me, then this happened. And yes, it's all interesting to them,

Philip
 0:09:24
 but for someone else, it's just a series of things happening and I'm not really engaged or involved. And also, thinking back to particularly my time in the community and Counseling and doing therapy and all that stuff the story that people accept about themselves and then that they live by is so dominant and yet we never really look at it and we can shift it and I kind of call it curating rather that because none of us tell the whole story because

Philip
 0:09:56
 So much has happened to us. So what is the story of the tale I'm telling today? Because that's where our strength or our challenges are going to come from.

Richard
 0:10:07
 And how do you make it interesting? Because exactly that's what people are surprised that I struggle to read other people's bios, like autobiographies or things like that, like those long stories, because exactly that, you're reading someone else's series of events.

Richard
 0:10:19
 But like for me, and you hit the nail on the head there, like how does that relate to me? And how do we, in what we're trying to achieve and what we're trying to do, or anyone in their field of work or business impact someone else's life by,

Richard
 0:10:31
 obviously, your story is your credibility or who you are and your reference point, that's why people want to hear from you, want to listen to you, but you need to get that message across that relates to them, that doesn't become sort of a long-winded drag.

Philip
 0:10:43
 JORDAN If I come at it from two different angles, so there's almost the curating your story for yourself, so that's how you or I process the whole of the things, the stuff that's happened to us, and how we tell that tale. But then there's what you're kind of hitting on here is then is that how do we present ourselves

Philip
 0:11:07
 to another person? How do we describe ourselves? How do we introduce ourselves? How do we relate? And that's what when I'm talking about, you know, we need better names for ourselves or better descriptions for ourselves. And I think it goes to one of the things, again, working with authors is that they're often trained to present information, you

Philip
 0:11:28
 know. So if somebody says, what do you do? Well, and immediately they'll go, well, I am. So in my situation, I've done this until fairly recently. I'm a publisher. I help people, I, you know, I publish books and publish online courses and it's okay. It's like a fact, it's data, but it's not really about anybody but me. And so one of the challenges is our name, how we define ourselves and describe ourselves should help us stand out for all the right reasons rather than bland. And as soon as we say I'm a farmer, I'm a trainer, I'm a coach, I'm a consultant or I'm a leadership coach or an HR consultant. We have immediately defined and described ourselves in everybody else's

Philip
 0:12:13
 terms and everybody else's generic language. And it becomes almost instantly impossible to stand out because we've right up front said, put me in this box.

Richard
 0:12:27
 Yeah. OK. OK. Yeah. That's interesting.

Philip
 0:12:30
 And so I think a lot of people are, there's a lot of comfort in that, because I know that, you know, I've spent all these years in this training. I know all this expertise. I could call myself a farmer or a coach or a trainer.

Philip
 0:12:42
 There's a kind of self-comfort in that, but it doesn't help us connect at the level of a need that somebody else might have. And I think that's how do you call yourself so that it connects to somebody else's need or to someone else's joy or happiness, whatever it is you need.

Philip
 0:13:01
 And that's about transformation, not about the information that you want to communicate.

Richard
 0:13:06
 I'm just thinking about it now, like how we call ourselves differently, because it's amazing that you said, like, you absolutely do. You put it into those boxes or those silos, and it's a write-off in a way, because, like, okay, he's a this or he's a that.

Richard
 0:13:18
 But then I'm thinking, okay, how creative do we need to get in that, like, to make that impact? Like, does it have to sort of sing your personality? Because, yeah, it would be really interesting to know what you think. We'll have an example of how you would call yourself

Richard
 0:13:33
 differently, like if you were a coach or, like, a resilience coach or something like that, how would that stand aside? And we did talk a little bit about it the other day, you know, like the whole motivational and resilience angle I'm taking,

Richard
 0:13:45
 like try not to fall into the trap of being the sort of macho type vibe, which is not what I am because the biggest thing we try and bring to the table is strength and vulnerability. But it's very easy to be categorized in that sort of area.

Philip
 0:13:58
 The vulnerability piece is really important for human connection. I think it's also the sense that, so if I'm in, I'll keep it in a business context because it's slightly easier to handle in that context, but in a business context, we run our business or we are in a role in our business to achieve something, to make a difference, whether that's to the bottom line of the business, to change the results of clients that we work with,

Philip
 0:14:32
 to feed hungry people. We are there to create an impact, to make something different from the way it is if we weren't there. And most of us don't describe ourselves in the terms of that transformation.

Philip
 0:14:48
 We talk about mechanics or processes. And I think one of the things that really intrigues people is when we talk about what we do for them rather than what we do ourselves. So, and again, this is something I'm experimenting with because it's so easy to fall into this. So it's because a publishing business appears to be about books and courses, most people want me to talk about a book or a course, but they're never going to write a book or write a course. So it's just academic knowledge. Whereas if I talk about how do you, I help people kind of mine the hidden gold in their

Philip
 0:15:32
 lives, find those seams of gold, excavate it, that stuff that is uniquely valuable about their knowledge, their skills and experience, and then shape and present that in powerful ways that move people, that touch their heart, that get them to think differently, that get them to take action and move their lives, their business, their results, their relationships on. At least for me, even just describing it in those terms, I'm not talking books, of course, when talking about that transformation, they wonder, it makes me feel much more energised.

Philip
 0:16:06
 And I know since I've been experimenting with this over the last six months or so, I can see people's eyes open up wide because it's not what they expect. And even if they've never thought about a book or a course, they can go inside and imagine what would it be like

Philip
 0:16:23
 if I could discover that thing inside me that I undervalue and which is super valuable.

Richard
 0:16:29
 NEIL I think it's powerful. I feel like I can relate a little bit. So I feel my whole life is changing direction because prior to two years ago, I was just bumbling through life and existing and doing the best that I can in a terribly turbulent environment.

Richard
 0:16:43
 And it's taken people that come through, spend time with us in Zimbabwe, in our lives, listening to our stories over campfires. And that engagement allowed me the opportunity to see what we'd been through, through other people's eyes, and was really able to sort of ignite what I call a dormant passion in me to really take this on. And proudly so. Like, I'm proud that right now I can look back

Richard
 0:17:07
 through multiple hardships in my life and say, you know what, this is actually amazing. This is stuff other people can use. Like, well, how have you done it? How have you pulled through, whether it's bankruptcy or divorce or suicide or anything like that? How have you managed to navigate really difficult environments? And now we can wrap traumas up as a gift almost and say, you guys, here you go.

Richard
 0:17:28
 You know, this is, you've got everything it takes to get through it. And that was really nice to have that sort of effect. What I feel you might be doing in other people's lives now is letting them see what they've got in them and being able to put that on paper.

Philip
 0:17:39
 NEIL Yeah, and the challenge is, your experience is always your experience. It's unique to you. And the real work in our business we call the real work of authoring is to turn that from your own experience, it's super valuable for you, but to then do this, it's kind of like a middle space, you take your experience and what it means for you and what you've learned, and then you're looking at who is it I want to share this message with and where are they, where are they starting from, what's the struggle, the pain, the hope, the fear, the challenges

Philip
 0:18:17
 that they face, and you don't just say, well, here's my story and here's what I've learned, you kind of go into a middle space where you, we call it the authoring work or the meta level work where you figure out well, that's how I did it and how I've done it, but what are the dynamics, what are the movements that I can teach someone else that let them take control of their experience, not copy my experience or copy my like five step formula, but how can they see the world in a way that powers them and helps them get better results. And it's quite a tricky one to describe

Philip
 0:18:54
 that, but you are essentially, you are moving beyond your own experience to a space that you create, it hasn't existed yet, and then you bring your audience, your reader, to that new world, that new space that you both sit inside. And it almost sounds kind of mystical, and it is, because the work of an author is to create an experience of change, not to write words down or to write a course. It's to create that space, that place where someone has an experience of transformation. And that, it's like magic when someone begins to enter into that process. And it's what happens, I'm guessing if you think back to

Philip
 0:19:34
 the books, the talks that have really touched you, they might have had a powerful story, but something in there and the way they presented it, your story moved into that reality and was changed by it. And that's why it struck.

Richard
 0:19:50
 NEIL It is, and it's interesting, we speak about it a lot as well, as people don't always remember what you say, but they remember how you make them feel. So if you're able to tap into any one of the strong emotions, they will always remember you and potentially

Richard
 0:20:04
 because of that remember something important. We're not going to all remember everything everyone said. It's how you made that person feel that's going to allow them that memory to last.

Philip
 0:20:13
 Yeah, I have a bit of a challenge. I'm not sure if we spoke about this before around the whole motivational speaking circuit and the autobiographical kind of books. And even in the business world, so many business books are essentially kind of dressed up anecdotal biographies or autobiographies that this happened to me and that means this. And you look at

Philip
 0:20:36
 it and then 10 pages later, they're contradicting themselves because actually it's not coherent. It's not substantial. It is just a collection of anecdotes with points attached. And actually what, when somebody is doing a motivational speech, quite often what people can go away with is remembering the feeling of, they told us a really sad, really powerful story,

Philip
 0:21:00
 and it reconnected me to some stuff in life. And they wrapped it up and they went, you know, and so you described this big trauma, and you're the describer, and then they'll come in and they'll say, and to get over that, all you need to do is like sit down in the morning

Philip
 0:21:16
 for five minutes and breathe deeply. Meanwhile, that person is in an experience of serious discomfort and I kind of find it a little bit abusive, I have to confess, in that context. And it is presenting somebody into pain and then putting a kind of really cliched superficial level response, but not taking responsibility for eroding the emotional journey of a presentation. Sorry, that was a little bit, that's one of my panic moments.

Richard
 0:21:46
 That's incredible. No, I'm really glad you said that because it's definitely something I'm going to need to pay a lot of attention to. You know, I come with a lot of empathy as well as a highly empathetic person as well. So I got to guard myself too, because I am able to sort of feel and respond emotionally to what others are, but it's exactly on the reverse foot too. If you're able to do that as an impact on the other foot,

Richard
 0:22:07
 you know, how do you take that to sort of fruition or fulfillment so that that person can actually, and that's what we want, a real change in that person's life.

Philip
 0:22:15
 Yeah, absolutely. And that's what's so exciting, what's energizing about it, and I think it's why developing skills, becoming a kind of craftsperson in it, becoming a storyteller, but in the richest sense of that. I don't mean like, here's an anecdote, by the way, I'm going to tell you a story, and here's what's going to happen in

Philip
 0:22:35
 the story, and here's what the story means. And that's how people are trained to speak. Tell them what you're going to tell them, you know, tell them you're telling them, and then tell them you've told them. And you like, it's like, as a preacher, as a former preacher, you go like, oh my God, that's just like the prescription for sleep. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and actually like, does nobody teach you to shock? And I mean, this will be disruptive. Right. Everybody's heard this, this kind of thing a thousand times already. You have a responsibility to wake people up so that they really, if you have something important to say that can make a big difference to their life,

Philip
 0:23:17
 then don't preface it with 99% of the same stuff that everybody else is saying, because they won't even get to the bit where your 1% of value gets through. So focus on that 1% and go, right, and I just want them to know this. How do I build the whole thing to that moment where this lands powerfully.

4
 0:23:39
 Absolutely. Brilliant.

Philip
 0:23:41
 The book thing, I look at the first page of a business book and it's amazing how many of the introduction pages every paragraph begins I, or every two or three sentences. I literally close the book. Really? I am not interested.

Philip
 0:23:59
 Interesting. This book is for me.

Richard
 0:24:02
 Yeah, you've given some brilliant advice and shared, you know, what you do as well and what your company does. I'm grateful for it. You know, I think we need it in the world and exactly the advice you give is advice I need to hear as well on my own journey. So thank you because this is all we have time for today, but thank you so much for taking

Richard
 0:24:20
 the time for speaking to us and letting us know about you.

4
 0:24:24
 We really appreciate that. We really appreciate that.

Philip
 0:24:25
 Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Take care.

 
 
 Transcribed with Cockatoo